#too many fandoms and actors in this post

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[mulderscully]

i used to take breaking mutuals really personally and in some instances it can feel that way. like there are mutuals i've had since 2013. that is my FRIEND for life, you know? breaking that is unfathomable to me but other times i genuinely enjoy a mutual on a personal level but we rarely talk and our fandom opinions are just too different and we have tastes too different that it just is okay to break the mutual when that happens imo. esp if people don't tag and you keep seeing stuff you don't vibe with. and that isn't personal.... imm rambling but if we were ever mutuals i probably still love u and even if we never were and we interact a lot i definitely love u

[talkativelock]

I have watched the One Piece Live Action. It was good. It was very good. I have a complex relationship with OP and didn't expect to love it so much. I am resisting the urge to hyper-fixate. I think I might be losing.

[deviousdiesel]

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[brynnmclean]

I can't believe I still have to see posts about how much better ROP would be if Celebrían was the lead vs. Galadriel. As someone who has Tolkien Brainrot, I understand the appeal, I really, really do. As someone who has had to interact with so many people who either do not care about Tolkien Lore but are interested in fantasy television shows or are Jackson film fans first/foremost/only, y'all. Galadriel is a known character and a decent intro to lesser known characters.

Hate to break it to y'all but Celebrían is OBSCURE. I'm pretty confident in saying that if you get outside of Tolkien Fandom online circles, you could tell people that Elrond was married to Galadriel's daughter and the response you would get would be, "oh, I didn't realize that" because it's touched so lightly in the films. Celebrían isn't even MENTIONED by name. Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure if anyone mentions that Galadriel and Arwen are related at all!

My point is the show is meant to appeal to more people than us over here with Tolkien Brainrot!!!!!! I love Celebrían, but Galadriel was an easier sell to the potential of a wider audience as a lead. For a show that needs to go through so much lore very quickly, having Galadriel as the lead because she's 1) female [the overwhelming amount of male characters vs. female characters in the Legendarium is another post], 2) relatively familiar, and 3) has a set characterization to lead toward for an arc vs. her barely-even-mentioned-in-LotR daughter is a no-brainer.

[dropthedemiurge]

Fun statistics time:

- In 2022, I wrote 50k words on AO3. In English (not my native language)

- In 2023 per September, I already wrote 57k words.

- THIS IS LIKE A COUPLE OF BOOKS yet it's all slash fanfics about characters from Thai BL/QL/gen series xD

- I even worked for a few months writing articles about my obsession with some of these shows. Like professionally. Made some directors/crew of those shows happy^^

(i actually speedran learning how to write in english because my writing was clumsy at best if you look at my previous fandom and first fics on ao3, and now I'd like to think my fics are not that bad)

But damn. The way Not Me, Bad Buddy, The Eclipse, Be my Favorite, Moonlight Chicken and Only Friends just inspired the heck out of me??

I'm personally shocked. I literally picked up writing and drawing again because in my other kpop fandom the creative community has gradually died down, and here I'm like. Friends! Prompts! Fests! Meta posts! Fix-it fics! Character studies after every episode! Crossover AUs! Comics! Arts from pretty pictures!!

(tbh my drawings became worse in a sense that I do fast sketches after episodes or photos that inspired me and don't do heavy illustrations that take a long time; but also I write 3-4k fics in one sitting and I guess that's what my creative soul wants to focus on🍀)

Damn. I love you guys (my discord friends especially) for enabling me and I love these shows (even tho I interact with them and actors not in an intended fanservice way probably) and I didn't expect to fall into something like this. But that's truly what I needed.

[hargrovel]

they’re fictional characters in fake realities. care about them/their motivations/behaviors/nuances/morals/backstories/relationships etc. etc. fucking etc. however much in whatever way you want

consider not treating actual human beings like shit! consider not conflating a person’s taste in & feelings about & subjective understanding of fake fucking people with who they are as humans irl! the self righteous high ground behind-the-screen bullshit is so. tired. & it doesn’t make you better than anybody else — it just makes you an asshole & you should maybe feed your ego some glass

[thebicanary]

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[evilkitten3]

idea for a cartoon/anime/tv show/whatever:

starts off as typical rpg-esque fantasy story BUT the narrator is just a little too invested/vindictive, a lot of the npcs sound really similar, and every now and then the characters fuck up something they should've aced/do something so well it seems like the rules of the universe broke for it to happen.

finally at the end of the first season, the group has beaten the big bad du jour, and the scene goes black on them celebrating in a bar/angsting over some new horrible realization/something suitable for a season ending... and then instead of going black all the way, it zooms out and the viewer learns that it actually is an rpg being played by a bunch of kids in an after-school club/a bunch of grown-ups on their off-hours/something else like that, and that the "season" has ended bc the players are about to go on break or something.

the next season takes up roughly where the last one left off, this time beginning with the players reuniting and vaguely referencing what they did offscreen, but once the gameplay starts up again, the story has a few minor inconsistencies due to the players having forgotten some things. and since the audience is now aware that this is in fact an rpg, there are scenes where the characters do something and then the players realize they forgot to factor in some rule or other and have to backtrack (maybe there's a rewind effect, or maybe the characters just restart their conversation from scratch and act like the first bit never happened

as the game/show continues, we continue to learn more and more about the players' characters via their backstories coming into play, but the details of the players' lives remain incredibly vague– none of them are ever named, although they occasionally name other people, and the players age between seasons (more dramatically if they're students). one of the seasons ends on a rather disappointing note: no final boss, no dramatic revelations, no sign that anything major occurred irl. just a very sudden, abrupt ending in which the players say goodbye like they usually do. the next season begins after a significantly longer time gap than usual, with something major having happened offscreen (maybe the students graduated or one of the players lost their job or maybe one of them even died suddenly).

nonetheless, they all attempt to pick up more or less where they left off– only bc they've grown and changed so much, they have a much harder time connecting with the mindset they had when they started playing as that character. slowly, the story begins to shift focus from the fantasy characters to the players and we begin to learn more about them as people (still not their names tho (unless one of them died, in which case we learn that one's name)) as they continue to play, and emphasis is put on the difference between the complex natures of the real players vs the simpler ones of their fictional characters.

finally, in the last season, the gm pauses the game after some mildly important battle or other and admits that the end goal they had in mind when the game started all those years ago no longer seems to fit what the game has become or who any of the players are. the group decides to continue the game anyway, but as the game/show continues, the art/set for the irl-game parts gradually becomes more realistic and lifelike while the in-game parts start looking more and more... flat, for lack of a better word. eventually, the game ends, and as the gm said, the ending isn't great. it's not awful, but it's not particularly good either. the gm and the players ponder what they maybe could change to fix it, only to slowly come to the realization that they've been losing interest in the game for a while now, and were only continuing to play out of habit– what they really enjoyed was spending time with one another. one of the players hesitantly suggests that they meet up again the next week like usual, only this time somewhere else, to try something completely different. the group agrees, and they all pack up, say goodbye to one another, and go home. as the last person leaves the game room, they turn off the lights and close the door, thus ending the story.

[this-charming-primevalmusic]

EXACTLY

one big thing i think people outside fandom (like, all fandoms, fandom in general, not any particular one) tend to misunderstand is they know it's a subculture of people who are weirdly deeply invested in fictional media, and they hear about drama caused by people in those subcultures being unhinged in not-fun ways, and they think the unhingedness comes from the fact of being overinvested in works of fiction.

which is a natural assumption, but in my experience that's not really the case? like in my experience the drama llamas in fandom are usually not the ones who are just genuinely very deeply into the fiction. i've known people who are basically thinking about star trek or x-men comics or supernatural pretty much 100% of their free time and ime that type of person is usually very nice and surprisingly functional in their regular life. when someone's a constant nexus of fandom drama it's usually not that they are obsessed with the actual work of fiction the fandom is about, it's at least one of the following:

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but their unhealthy parasocial relationships with one or more of the people who created it

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but some elaborate shared-universe subset of fanfic about it that's only barely related to the original at this point, and/or an esoteric reading-against-the-text reinterpretation of the source material (often if the canon is active and ongoing this leads to becoming actively hostile toward it for its inevitably increasing failure to conform to their preferred fanon)

what they're obsessed with is not the source material but the fandom itself and gathering clout within it, so that the source material basically only exists to them as a tool for scoring points in increasingly arcane fandom disputes

and very often you get the same person doing 2 and sometimes even all 3 of these, and that's where the trouble really starts

[seddair]

-

[temporarytemporal]

cling to me

I know I said I was going to distance myself from this piece of media because of all of its terrible connections, but these two characters seem to have taken root in a permanent place in my heart, and I can't let them go.

Anyway, here's some character design notes below the cut for the one person out there who's obsessed with these characters as much as me.

Early DSMP: the era of childhood innocence

Bandanas: They sport each other’s bandana’s (they’re hidden in the design for every era). I love character designs with complementary colors (and I love how red and green are also cranboo’s colors)

Disks: Early on, cat and mellohi represent the peaceful moments ctommy shared with his favorite people, but they went on to be a symbol of victory and independence from the people who have hurt him.

Flowers: Ctubbo collects flowers and tries to memorize the meanings and symbolism tied to each type of flower. He also collects them for his bees.

L’manberg: the era where children became soldiers

Horns: Ctubbo’s horns start to grow in here.

Pogtopia: the era of an exile and a secretary of state / spy

You can tell I joined the fandom at the end of this era because I don’t have many notes here or for the l’manberg era.

Exile: the era of an exile once again and and a president too young

Hair: Ctommy’s hair starts to grow longer as he neglects taking care of himself.

Clothes: Ctommy’s clothes are tattered; one shoe is destroyed and he took to wearing cw-lbur’s (f-ck ccw-lbur btw!!) trench coat.

Bandages: Ctubbo’s wrapped in bandages from his recently earned firework burns. He’s gone blind in his right eye, and he’s missing the ring and pinkie finger on his right hand.

Compasses: They share their matching ‘your tommy’ and ‘your tubbo’ compasses

Hog Hunt: the era where one sought to kill the blood god while the other sought refuge there

Stolen goods: Ctommy’s has his antarctic empire outfit plus all the goods he stole from ctechno like the turtle helmet, golden apples, and the axe of peace.

Bedrock: Ctommy wears his counterpart piece matching techno’s from his ear.

Prosthetic: Ctommy’s right foot had to be amputated after he loses it to frostbite in the trek to cemeraldduo’s cabin. Ctechno gives him a simple prosthetic.

Disc Finale: the era of mended relationships and a final stand

Headband: Ctommy begins to wear a devil headband to fit in more, as he’s one of the few humans on the server. The devil horns were chosen to resemble ceryn’s real ones.

Patchwork: Ctommy learns to sew, and he fixes his tattered clothes from exile.

Post Revival:

Devil horns: Ctommy’s devil horns (plus a tail) become real after revival, and he gets a white streak in his hair.

Prime cross: The bad things that have happened to them both that they survived strengthen ctommy’s faith in prime, whereas they weaken ctubbo’s faith.

Sweater: Ctommy makes himself a sweater from friend’s wool.

Mechanical inventions: Ctubbo pursues his passion for engineering more as he makes mechanical bee drones and studies nuclear physics. He also makes himself prosthetic fingers, and he upgrades ctommy’s prosthetic foot.

Marriage ring: Ctubbo marries cranboo platonically and wears the ring on his horn. He also founds snowchester so he can have a place to protect his loved ones and raise his son. He grows out his hair to avoid eye contact for cranboo and to cover his scars.

Body type: Ctubbo gets chubbier and gains some muscle as he gets a bit happier in life.

Post DSMP:

The prison break and everything after it never happened. These are my OCs, and I make the rules because every actor/writer who played a part in their creation either abandoned them or turned out to be a terrible person. Cbenchtrio live happily ever after and begin their journey of healing while cdream rots in prison forever.

[disdaidal]

Not a specific but rather generic confession I am a selfish media consumer and have no interest in being morally pure so I consume everything even if urged not to. My enjoyment of media comes first thus I played games such as Heavy Rain, Detroit Become Human, Hogwarts Legacy, TloU2. I also still enjoy countless movies with cancelled actors in it such as American Beauty, Ferris Bueller's Day Off. 🫠 In short maybe my confession is that I very gladly separate art from the artist based on my highly personal and often selfish selective morals. This is not well accepted among all fandoms I'm in so I never express my opinion or engage in discourse. I have a very "live and let live" mindset, as long as you don't actively hurt others

I know exactly what you mean and it's honestly liberating.

[quasi-normalcy]

Things that I SWEAR I'm not making up about the Star Trek franchise:

A shifty alien bartender, his brother, and his nephew were what happened at Roswell

There are three mutually contradictory canonical explanations for what exists at the centre of the Galaxy, none of which are "A fuck-off gigantic black hole"

Two of these things are, respectively, God and the Devil

(The crew got along well enough with the Devil, but Spock had to blow-up God with a torpedo)

One of the most compelling and sympathetic characters in the franchise is a hologram of Professor Moriarty who gained enough self-awareness to realise that he didn't need to be evil just because he was written that way

If you fly too fast, you turn into a salamander

(Said salamanders are actually the inevitable endpoint of human evolution)

The universe is balanced on the back of a giant koala (why is it smiling? What does it know!?)

There have been three separate groups of Space Nazis (not just aliens with a fascist government; literal Nazis with armbands and swastikas)

There are also: two (2) cowboy planets, two (2) planets that are just post-apocalyptic versions of Cold War-era Earth, one (1) planet ruled by Chicago mobsters from the 1920s, and one (1) version of Earth where the Roman Empire never fell

The Roman planet has its own Jesus

There is an anthropological law governing parallel planetary development that holds that planets are likely to recapitulate eras from Earth history

Because of the intervention of an ancient race of ur-humanoids, most sentient races in the galaxy look like human actors with rubber prostheses glued to their foreheads

There are so many planets centred around sex and hedonism that people in the fandom use the term "Roddenberry Sex Planet" to describe them

Jack the Ripper was an alien ghost

Amelia Earhart was abducted by aliens

If you have a high ESP score, you turn into a god when you try to fly outside of the Galaxy

The major antagonists are: Space Vikings/Samurai, Space Romans (not the Romans mentioned earlier), Space Fascists (not any of the nazi groups mentioned earlier), the Space British Empire (ruled by goo people), and Space Bees (except you'll turn into one if they sting you)

Klingons have two dicks

Borg assimilation can be catalyzed by eating car batteries

[oraclefreak]

I think we, DPS fans, don't talk about Charlie during the school's tribute to Neil enough.

He's not singing.

Meeks, Pitts and Knox are singing, letting all their feelings out.

Cameron is singing a little calmer. You can see the sadness in him though.

Todd is stuttering words, not even singing—but he's trying.

Charlie does not sing.

I'm sorry for the picture's quality.

At first I thought he didn't sing because he was angry at Neil for leaving all of them; the Dead Poets, Keating and his dreams of becoming an actor. We saw at the beginning of the film how Charlie tried to convince Neil to speak up to his parents. I think he really wanted Neil to be happy, and he knew he wouldn't be if he stayed silent and pursued being a doctor because of his father.

During Neil and Mr. Keating's talk in the office, Neil mentioned Charlie: "We are not a rich family like Charlie's" (quoted by memory). Charlie tried to make Neil pursue acting when they had different social backgrounds; Charlie could go against his parents and not ruin everything. But Neil was an only child from a family that was mantained by his father and no one else... and not particularly wealthy either.

Even if they had those differences, they didn't separate them. And both of them were boys with dreams they couldn't follow easily. Charlie was more rebellious (especially when it came to school's authorities). Neil was more of the type to go with whatever people wanted. Charlie was more risk-taking. Neil's risk in the whole movie was participating in the play (yes, the club wasn't a Neil risk; it was all of the poets').

Charlie was really proud of Neil for finally following his dreams.

"He's good. He's really good."

Sounds familiar?

"I was good. I was really good."

This parallel makes sense to me, especially if we analyze the very first scene of Charlie and Neil in the movie. As I said, Charlie wanted Neil to speak up to his father. And when he did and it all broke apart; Neil said words Charlie had said about him during the play.

Obviously, Charlie disliked Neil's dad. We can be sure about that, definitely.

The school's tribute to Neil was either Mr. Perry's idea or he gave the permission to do it. The authorities thought of Neil's death as the institution's problem. Keating was suspicious from the beginning because of his unconventional teaching methods (plus Mr. Perry thought Keating told Neil to keep his place in the performance, which he did—but he made it look like it was a real problem... 1950s, let's go).

Charlie didn't think this event of singing words of grief and so on was for Neil. Neil didn't die to be missed. Neil died because he would miss out on what he wanted to do. But that reasoning didn't even come across the authorities' heads.

I think of Charlie as a person who has an internal philosophy, a reasoning that most people wouldn't think of. So, when every single one of his friends are singing because they miss Neil; Charlie does not sing because this is a way to pay respects to Mr. Perry for losing his son. A way to say the authorities are right. A way to say "Neil... poor boy." Neil was miserable because he wasn't free. And his only way to be free was... not living.

I believe this "Charlie wasn't singing" thing can be interpreted in many, many ways. I probably overanalyzed it because 6 years of DPS make someone go insane eventually. What I do think is clear is that Neil and Charlie's friendship was very obvious from the start. And yes, the not singing thing is something to observe and think about... but their whole friendship isn't very talked about in the fandom! And I had the idea to write about not only the movie's scenes that have both of them, but also how I perceive it (hence why I would describe this post as a theory rather than facts).

I would love to see other people's takes on this subject too !!

[theinfinitedivides]

wi papa look a thing there for me. awa.

prefacing this with a PSA that i'm going to try and keep short but basically regardless of anything i say here let me make it known that i do believe he should apologize. whether or not he's still actively saying that word in 2024 it is something he's used in the past even if he isn't performing said play anymore/saying things like that so flippantly. granted if he does apologize there's always going to be a section of fandom that's like 'he only apologized bc he got caught' yes?????????? that's what always happens????????? lbr you're not going to get on IG and announce you killed your ex two decades ago and you'll be turning yourself in when there's an entire true crime community in the depths of the internet who will dig up the cold case + the suspiciously convenient alibi anyway without you lifting a finger. politicians who get called out for blackface in college do not go around telling people they did blackface in college. celebrities who were homophobic on this hellsite in high school back in the early 10s before they realized they were gay are not going to let you know what their handle was. this is how the world works.

that being said i must confess i caught wind of the stirrings of this a bit early bc during the clusterfuck that was the Jam vs Zamasian RPF poll (i did not go in the notes. rancid ass shit) someone had taken a screenshot of a reblog made as a 'gotcha' to Zamasian voters by implying that they were anti-Black for voting for a ship featuring an actor that said the n-word in a play he hasn't performed for several decades since, with a short taped example that the general public was not going to know how to find unless they were on a mission. i poked around, saw a couple hints here and there that implied that the clip actually existed, marked that down for future ref and went about my business. disappointing? sure. run of the mill especially among people his age in the industry from that time period who are perceived to benefit from white privilege? absolutely. the former bird identified app dragging all of this back into the light (including the interview with Chris Rock. which i have not seen though there's no way it was within the last few years for AMC to still hire Eric if they had seen it. correct me if i'm wrong pls) is unexpected but tracks for the fandom on there.

generally i don't believe in cancelling someone for things they said or did more than ten years ago if they are no longer the same person they were back then. i don't believe Jacob or Assad or any one of the staff of color who may have been working behind the scenes would have agreed to continue interacting with Eric if he had the same attitude as he did when he first wrote and performed the play. i don't believe his Black comedian niece would continue to talk about him and share photos with him if he was calling her or the Black side of her family the n-word. i am willing to give the 'Eric Bogosian n-word' reply tweet he reportedly made before deleting it shortly after the brief benefit of the doubt bc it was 1. supposedly under someone else's tweet talking about the play incident and 2. i cannot count how many times i have accidently commented/almost posted something on here or YouTube or Reddit or ao3 bc i was on mobile and once the keyboard's open the app/browser flips the fuck out and puts the search bar and the comment box too close together. now if his ass shows up and shows out and stands ten toes down while he's currently on time-out or doesn't address any of this we're dealing with a different story. if more examples of him acting like this come out i'll drop him faster than you can call the election it will be that serious.

anyway for now i'm choosing to keep an eye on this while acknowledging that us Black folks do have the right to be upset and pissed as fuck. we deal with enough racism/microaggressions in fandom spaces as it is we definitely don't need new ones, and we don't need them from the past career choice of the main cast of a show a lot of us enjoy. amen