#total fanwank

[kyonkyonson]

You know what? Fuck it...

CRIME IN PROGRESS: CIVIL UNREST

LOCATION: ARASAKA PLAZA

CALCULATING ROUTE...

SURVEY MODE:

TARGETS IDENTIFIED: CORPORATE SECURITY, ARASAKA, ARMORED DIVISION

CIVILIANS IDENTIFIED:

ADULT MALE: 1

ADULT FEMALE: 2

ADULT MA--

UNIDENTIFIED TARGET: 1

HEAVY CYBERNETIC AUGMENTATION DETECTED

CHANCE OF CYBER-PSYCHOSIS: 90%

ARREST MODE:

CALCULATING ASSAULT ROUTE...

ALERT. TARGET IDENTIFIED. APPROACHING AT HIGH VELOCITY

IMPACT IMMINENT. COLLISION WITH CIVILIAN IMMINENT.

CALCULATING INTERCEPT VECTOR...

CALCULATION COMPLETE.

CHANCE OF SUCCESSFUL INTERCEPTION: 95%

EQUIPPING: SPT32 GRAD...

INTERCEPTION SUCCESSFUL

INITIATING CLOSE-QUARTERS SUBROUTINE...

EQUIPPING: JKE-X2 KENSHIN...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"GET BACK, FUCKER!" The feral little woman screamed over blast after blast from the cannon gripped in her over-sized metal hands. The slugs pinged and plinked off her target; its outline staggered, stumbled, but it would always turn, and its red eyes would burn out of the shadows, and it would come closer, closer...

"I said STOP!" She roared, slamming back the slide and tilting the barrel up at the red eyes. She held her breath...

...then it was knocked out of her as a black mechanical arm slammed into her chest. She sailed backwards with empty hands, and landed painfully on a pile of rubble. She wheezed loudly, and did not move.

"STAY STILL, RUNT," a voice between grinding metal and electronic noise spat at her. The figure grabbed the shotgun with both hands. It bent inward, and the body snapped in two, unspent slugs spilling over the ruined ground. "I'LL DEAL WITH YOU NEXT."

It faced its other target. He had the face and body of a young man...and nothing else. All four of his limbs had been torn apart, reduced to scrap. Machinery poked through gashes in his skin, sparks flashed from his ruined eye. He lay in the wreckage of some mechanical exoskeleton, with large portions of it still stitched onto him. As the figure loomed closer, he could only thrash his head and grimace.

"ANY MORE SURPRISES, PUNK? ANOTHER SNIPER TO GIVE ME TROUBLE?" It placed a claw over the dent in its torso, the mark of a high-caliber round. "I DIDN'T THINK YOUR TYPE PLANNED THAT FAR AHEAD."

If the young man could spit, he would have.

"YOU KNOW," and the grating voice became almost wistful, "I HAVEN'T ENJOYED MYSELF THIS MUCH IN A LONG TIME. I SHOULD THANK YOU FOR THAT."

The young man curled what was left of his face into a sneer. "Whatever, choom..." he growled. "Like I...give a shit..."

The figure showed no expression. "SUIT YOURSELF. YOU WERE ALL GONNA DIE TONIGHT ANYWAY." It raised its right arm. A small tube slid out behind its wrist. The open end glowed yellow, and grew brighter and stronger. The young man closed his eyes, and lay his head back with a smile...

The figure jerked its head to the ceiling of the wrecked garden. It dashed backward, swung its glowing arm upward. A streak of light fired out, struck the ceiling, sent more debris tumbling to the ground.

But it had missed. With a whoosh of air, something crashed into the space were the figure had just stood. Dust kicked up and blocked it from sight. The three witnesses thought it was another shard of concrete or loose bar of steel.

Then, with a whirring of servos, it stood. A patch of light from one of the many holes in the roof cut through the swirling dust, and reflected off of gleaming silver. The little woman was only just regaining her senses and could not speak, even if she knew what she was seeing. The young man craned his head as high up as he could.

"...who the hell is that?"

"YOU." The figure ground out with a wrathful edge. "I THOUGHT I LEFT YOU FOR SPARE PARTS IN DELTA CITY."

"I was fixed. You should know what that's like." The newcomer's voice carried the same synthesized bite, but it was calmer, sterner.

More human.

"DOESN'T MATTER ANYWAY. OCP'S GOT NO AUTHORITY ON THIS COAST. YOU'RE NOT THE LAW HERE."

The newcomer's face was almost completed blocked by a steel visor. The downward curl of his exposed mouth was enough to convey his mood. "I'm not here on any corporate orders, Smasher."

"STILL TRYING TO PLAY GOOD COP, HUH? YOU HAVEN'T CHANGED, OLD MAN. SO WHAT'LL IT BE? 'DEAD OR ALIVE, YOU'RE COMING WITH ME'?"

The newcomer raised his right hand. The light from the street fell on the weapon he held: sleek, silver, heavily modified, potent. "'Alive'? Not this time..."

"SO IT'S PERSONAL, THEN?" The figure gave a harsh, metallic chuckle. "GOOD! MORE MEAT FOR THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE!"

The newcomer turned his head, saw the two laying behind him. The little woman was too shocked and stunned to react. The young man just stared from his wrecked body. He felt as if he could see through the thin black visor looking back at him, felt real eyes, caring eyes, watching him.

Then a corner of the newcomer's mouth tugged upward, into the smallest hint of a smile.

Before the young man could speak, the newcomer nodded and turned away. He stepped forward, whirring and clicking with each fluid step, put more space between the figure and the victims. Shockingly, the figure stepped back; when the newcomer leveled his weapon, pointed squarely at its chest, its red eyes flickered with apprehension. A low, synthetic growl issued from its voice box; a final warning.

The newcomer planted his feet, weapon at the ready. He accepted the challenge.

"Your move, creep."

*robocop activates sandevistan*

[anghraine]

It's always been intriguing to me that, even when Elizabeth hates Darcy and thinks he's genuinely a monstrous, predatory human being, she does not ever perceive him as sexually predatory. In fact, literally no one in the novel suggests or believes he is sexually dangerous at any point. There's not the slightest hint of that as a factor in the rumors surrounding him, even though eighteenth-century fiction writers very often linked masculine villainy to a possibility of sexual predation in the subtext or just text*. Austen herself does this over and over when it comes to the true villains of her novels.

Even as a supposed villain, though, Darcy is broadly understood to be predatory and callous towards men who are weaker than him in status, power, and personality—with no real hint of sexual threat about it at all (certainly none towards women). Darcy's "villainy" is overwhelmingly about abusing his socioeconomic power over other men, like Wickham and Bingley. This can have secondhand effects on women's lives, but as collateral damage. Nobody thinks he's targeting women.

In addition, Elizabeth's interpretations of Darcy in the first half of the book tend to involve associating him with relatively prestigious women by contrast to the men in his life (he's seen as extremely dissimilar from his male friends and, as a villain, from his father). So Elizabeth understands Darcy-as-villain not in terms of the popular, often very sexualized images of masculine villainy at the time, but in terms of rich women she personally despises like Caroline Bingley and Lady Catherine de Bourgh (and even Georgiana Darcy; Elizabeth assumes a lot about Georgiana in service of her hatred of Darcy before ever meeting her).

The only people in Elizabeth's own community who side with Darcy at this time are, interestingly, both women, and likely the highest-status unmarried women in her community: Charlotte Lucas and Jane Bennet. Both have some temperamental affinities with Darcy, and while it's not clear if he recognizes this, he quietly approves of them without even knowing they've been sticking up for him behind the scenes.

This concept of Darcy-as-villain is not just Elizabeth's, either. Darcy is never seen by anyone as a sexual threat no matter how "bad" he's supposed to be. No one is concerned about any danger he might pose to their daughters or sisters. Kitty is afraid of him, but because she's easily intimidated rather than any sense of actual peril. Even another man, Mr Bennet, seems genuinely surprised to discover late in the novel that Darcy experiences attraction to anything other than his own ego.

I was thinking about this because of how often the concept of Darcy as an anti-hero before Elizabeth "fixes him" seems caught up in a hypermasculine, sexually dangerous, bad boy image of him that even people who actively hate him in the novel never subscribe to or remotely imply. Wickham doesn't suggest anything of the kind, Elizabeth doesn't, the various gossips of Meryton don't, Mr Bennet and the Gardiners don't, nobody does. If anything, he's perceived as cold and sexless.

Wickham in particular defines Darcy's villainy in opposition to the patriarchal ideal his father represented. Wickham's version of their history works to link Darcy to Lady Anne, Lady Catherine (primarily), and Georgiana rather than any kind of masculine sexuality. This version of Darcy is a villain who colludes with unsympathetic high-status women to harm men of less power than themselves, but villain!Darcy poses no direct threat to women of any kind.

It's always seemed to me that there's a very strong tendency among fans and academics to frame Darcy as this ultra-gendered figure with some kind of sexual menace going on, textually or subtextually. He's so often understood entirely in terms of masculinity and sexual desire, with his flaws closely tied to both (whether those flaws are his real ones, exaggerated, or entirely manufactured). Yet that doesn't seem to be his vibe to other characters in the story. There's a level at which he does not register to other characters as highly masculine in his affiliations, highly sexual, or in general as at all unsafe** to be around, even when they think he's a monster. And I kind of feel like this makes the revelations of his actual decency all along and his full-on heroism later easier to accept in the end.

------------

*The incompetently awful villain(?) in Sanditon, for instance, imagines himself another Lovelace (a reference to the famous rapist-villain of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa). Evelina's sheltered education and lack of protectors makes her vulnerable to sexual exploitation in Frances Burney's Evelina, though she ultimately manages to avoid it. There's frequently an element of sexual predation in Gothic novels even of very different kinds (e.g. Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho and Matthew Lewis's The Monk both lean into this, in their wildly dissimilar styles). William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams, a book mostly about the destructive evils of class hierarchies and landowning classes specifically, depicts the mutual obsession of the genteel villain Falkland and working class hero Caleb in notoriously homoerotic terms (Godwin himself added a preface in 1832 saying, "Falkland was my Bluebeard, who had perpetrated atrocious crimes ... Caleb Williams was the wife"). This list could go on for a very long time.

**Darcy is also not usually perceived by other characters as a particularly sexual, highly masculine person in a safe way, either, even once his true character is known. Elizabeth emphasizes the resilience of Darcy's love for her more than the passionate intensity they both evidently feel; in the later book, she does sometimes makes assumptions about his true feelings or intentions based on his gender, but these assumptions are pretty much invariably shown to be wrong. In general the cast is completely oblivious to the attraction he does feel; even Charlotte, who wonders about something in that quarter, ends up doubting her own suspicions and wonders if he's just very absent-minded.

The novel emphasizes that he is physically attractive, but it goes to pains to distinguish this from Wickham's sex appeal or the charisma of a Bingley or Fitzwilliam. Mr Bennet (as mentioned above) seems to have assumed Darcy is functionally asexual, insofar as he has a concept of that. Most of the fandom-beloved moments in which Darcy is framed as highly sexual, or where he himself is sexualized for the audience, are very significantly changed in adaptation or just invented altogether for the adaptations they appear in. Darcy watching Elizabeth after his bath in the 1995 is invented for that version, him snapping at Elizabeth in their debates out of UST is a persistent change from his smiling banter with her in the book, the fencing to purge his feelings is invented, the pond swim/wet shirt is invented. In the 2005 P&P, the instant reaction to Elizabeth is invented, the hand flex of repressed passion is invented, the Netherfield Ball dance as anything but an exercise in mutual frustration is invented, the near-kiss after the proposal in invented, etc. And in those as well, he's never presented as sexually predatory, not even as a "villain."

[miraculouslumination]

I haven't kept up with the anime but having read Dungeon Meshi, the manga, I'm so surprised to see all the people shipping Laios and Kabru. I can see the appeal, and think it's a funny love-hate relationship! But I was on the train of Kabru and Mithrun, and thought that there would be at least some other people posting about their dynamic?

[italwayshadtobeyou]

If you're interested in technical aspects of making the show, then they have some worthwhile interviews with people fandom doesn't hear from much, like VFX supervisors, sound mixers, and occasionally one of the more memorable guest stars. That's the appeal for me, hearing from people who were actually involved in the episode being reviewed.

What Rob and Rich seemingly don't get is that the interviews should be more prominent than their own reviews. Their chatter might pass muster at a convention, where everyone knows they're just killing time while the tech teams make sure everything's a go for the main act. It does not, however, make them headliner material, especially without a room full of people who are already having the funnest day of their year. I dropped out of listening to the podcast because I spent about as much time forwarding through their bad jokes as I did listening to their interviewees.

It probably doesn't bother hellers, though, since they just make up what they want to hear anyway.

The thing with doing 'so and so consumes x media' content? Is that you have to consistently bring something to the table that is more interesting to your audience than them just revisiting the media themselves. It can be something like BTS insider information, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that big of a something. Just enthusiasm and surprise as a new viewer can do it. In-depth media critique can do it. Snark can do it in the right circumstances (though that doesn't really apply with a podcast you're selling to fans). Etc.

I haven't and am not going to listen to the Now & Then podcast, but from the people who've talked about trying it that I've seen, I get the impression Rob & Rich don't really understand that. Or they mistakenly think that listening to two middle-aged dudes who appeared in a bare handful of episodes yammer at each other is in and of itself a draw. Uh, guys? Tuning in for you specifically as opposed to deciding to see you at a convention they're already at are very different things.

I feel like they tried to bill the podcast as being an insider take, but they themselves aren't insider enough to do that so they're intermittently hosting some guests from cast and crew who were. Except they fill time between the guests with them doing a first time react to the show. Which could work ... except it sounds like they're doing it badly. They don't actually seem to like the show, but are trying to sell it to SPN fans who are, you know, fans. They frequently miss or fail to understand major moments, themes, and plot points. In short, they fail to make it consistently entertaining to the general audience they were presumably trying to pull. So most of the fans that actually love the show and were tuning in hoping to enjoy them watching it as a way of revisiting it? Have tuned back out. Which leaves who to give them money for continuing to do it? Oh, right, the weirdos who would happily throw money at studio janitor #5 or random non-speaking extra #207 if they told them D/C was real and canon. R2 haven't 'seen D/C is real, OMG!'. They've seen that they can continue to make money off having been on SPN without even bothering to rewatch the show and pretend to enjoy it! All they have to do is go down a checklist of 'D/C moments' and hint they can see how shippers would be into it and hellers will happily throw money at them. They'd already lost most of the fans who tuned in hoping they actually had interesting things to say, so why not?

All that is dumb enough, but Insisting this means that if Jensen rewatched the show he would totally [understand D/C was canon/make it canon] is an impressive level up in absolute batshit stupidity. Jensen isn't some rando who was in a handful of scenes in 10-20 episodes across 15 seasons, only trying to pretend he cares about the show for money. No he hasn't watched the entire show back over, but he's read every script, talked to the writers and directors, and every fucking thing (bar a few flashbacks/de-agings) Dean Winchester ever did on screen did it through Jensen acting out what he saw as Dean's motivations. Despite their constant self-delusion on this point, the GA and most of the fandom did not watch the show and think there was any kind of romance between those two characters. So insisting Jensen himself would entirely change his mind on who Dean was and what he felt despite his prominent role in determining exactly those things by watching the show back as a whole?

It's the same old fixated obsession with their own fanfic and denial of rationality that has lead them to make these same stupid predictions queerbaiting themselves over and over and over and over and over and over and over and ...

[tarisilmarwen]

1, 3, 6 for Teen Titans. :) Gimme the salty Tari takes!

1. the character everyone gets wrong

Red X. No one seems to understand that his identity wasn't the point. It didn't matter who was underneath the mask. He wasn't anyone. He wasn't supposed to be anyone. Not anyone significant or familiar anyways.

He was just a random ass kid who liked the thrill of the heist, decided on a whim to break into Titans Tower, and lucked into the biggest score of his career. He doesn't need any more deep backstory than that.

People always go the laziest stalest most boring route and make him Jason Todd anyway, despite how that would absolutely never work in the TT continuity.

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

It's a good thing we're limiting this to Tumblr because boooooooooy did I see some bullshit back in the day, lol.

Probably the worst bit of fanwank on Tumblr for the TT fandom is the mindless endless, "BBRae is abusive and toxic!!!!" whinging.

No they're not, they're friends whose personalities can sometimes clash very abrasively but when the chips are down they'd do anything for each other, it's fine if you don't like their dynamic but not every tiny bit of conflict or disagreement or not getting along between characters is automatically a toxic relationship.

Oh and there was also the time RobRae shippers tried to kickstart their own Zutara-esque, "We were supposed to be endgame the whole time guys, the creators totally said so, promise!" conspiracy.

And the time fandom tried to incorporate Teen Titans into the "Cartoon Network cancels superhero shows because too many girls watch them!" nonsense.

6. which ship fans are the most annoying?

[See aforementioned previous note about which shipper base tried to start a Zutara-esque "We were the original endgame!" conspiracy.]

It's a lot less now, now that they've essentially been subsumed and absorbed almost entirely by the DamiRae shipbase (and that's a rant for another day lololol) but the TT fandom was baby Tari's first shipwar and introduced me to so many ~*wonderful*~ concepts like:

Slutshaming the female rival is a totally valid argument, and not base misogyny at all.

Reducing the rival ship to its most surface level characteristics is okay when we do it.

Canon ships having any kind of relationship progress or development is "forced".

"Chemistry" means "the ship dynamic I like".

Wanting to pull someone out of their clearly-narratively-depicted self-destructive habits is bad actually.

Shipping fanon is a subversive act of rebellion and revolution against oppressive unfair norms. (AKA "Shipping is Social Justice Activism" before that was a thing.)

Fanon shippers are just naturally smarter and better than people who enjoy the canon romance as presented.

And many other highlights!

Yeah, I don't miss that drama and that's one of the reasons I don't want a revival or a Season Six, because then I'd have to deal with these idiots all over again.

Choose violence ask game.

[thenightling]

No, it's not about who he hooks up with or "wanting book accuracy"

For those still trying to insist that the only reason people are upset about the news about Jaskier in The Witcher is because of who he's going to be in a relationship with...

And then those that "just want the show to be faithful to the books and he was never revealed as bi in the books."

And the occasional "His name is DANDELION NOT JASKIER!" (That one's special... Especially since Jaskier is actually the untranslated original Polish name from the books... The more accurate translation is Buttercup, not Dandelion.)

Anyway for those trying to insist that it's totally not biphobia / homophobia allow me to quote some of the comments I had to remove tonight from a post in my Facebook group where we were discussing Jaskier from The Witcher. Some of this will be paraphrased to keep it from being too gross.

"I'm tired of all the f--g sh-t on TV."

"Why does everything have to be Gay?"

"More woke garbage trying to turn everyone gay."

"Gay people can say he's gay all they want. That won't make it canon." (err... In the show it is canon that he's bi. It's been confirmed by several people now, including the leaked auditions for thirty-eight-year-old Radovid that were of a scene between him and Jaskier.)

And this one that I managed to screen grab before deleting it and only screen grabbed because the person whose comment was directly the comment literally was saying how there's no homophobic response to the news.

None you say? None!!?? Okay. Then I guess all these people I just banned were having coffee and tea on the thread about Jaskier. (See attached list).

This is suspiciously like when my group got flooded with anti-trans comments the first time I posted "Trans men are men and trans women are women. " I don't think this was the result of sponsored ads. I think someone shared the thread on some place like Reddit.

When I tried to talk to the "HIS NAME IS DANDELION!" person to try to quietly correct them that Jaskier actually is the original Polish name they actually responded with "Lol ur Old!" Umm... Okay...

TL; DR These are NOT people who just want "book accuracy" with Netflix's The Witcher. These are people who came here to post bigoted comments about "gays" because they don't like that Netflix's version of Jaskier in The Witcher was confirmed as biseuxal or they think it's fanwank and don't realize it's been confirmed.

[butwhatifidothis]

Apparently the life goal of this R guy is to make every Edelgard fan look like scum by association by acting like a complete asshat wherever he goes. Nobody here leaves rude comments on That One Fic yet the literal moment you post a link to a fic you like this stalker goes there to "correct" the author as though he himself is totally not a fan of Cappys Wildly Incorrect Fanwank meta posts and fic.

That's what's gettin' me about this shit. He slams my ass for apparently "harassing" Cap'n about The Fic when I keep my critiques to this blog, discourage any and everyone from interacting with the fic via comments, never make any attempts to ever talk with Cap'n (and also tell others not to do that either), and give Cap'n the benefit of the doubt regarding the uhhh problematic aspects of his writing tendencies, but then he turns his merry ass around and bothers an author who has shit to do with anything. Damn near the second I say I like their fic, because he's about as subtle as an atom bomb.

And as far as I know, that's the only fic he did that shit with - which, oh so coincidentally, was the only one that focused on the BE. And was the only one to have Edelgard be written in an explicitly negative light (with the rest either not having/barely having Edelgard in it, or they as-of-now have nothing very negative regarding her). Because the second literally anyone at all says anything remotely mean to the poor little set of pixels that is Edelgard this dude froths at the mouth like a rabid dog and bites the head off whoever dared talk smack about his precious waifu.

And, it is either the case that he knew that he was bothering the author or the author was in fact bothered, because the comment he left isn't there anymore. Meaning either he deleted it once he got shit for it (from people who'd blocked him, meaning he is still dodging blocks) or the author did out of annoyance. Either way, wow, fuckin' shocker, it's almost like bein' given some unwanted, unprompted gospel about How Good Edelgard Is from some schmuck tryin' to """correct""" who they see as a poor misguided soul is annoying as fuck and extremely uncalled for. Especially for someone who makes it abundantly clear that they are not a fan of Edelgard and that their fic was not written for fans of Edelgard, in multiple blatant ways that can be seen before one even opens the fic itself.

He really is the encapsulation of everything bad about Edelgard's stanbase. He harasses people who don't like his waifu and then gets mad when people tell him he's being shitty, he constantly plays the victim when he gets called out for his shitty actions, he obsesses over debating people who have literally no interest in talking with him, he ban-evades constantly because he can't handle other people having boundaries and so crosses over them whenever he wants, and is just a self-important weirdo over a set of pixels that will literally never be real. Unlike the real living breathing people he constantly makes feel like shit. Just a dick all around

[bossarmadimon]

The hell is up with Clockmon? My bet is gonna be mind control.

Hel-LO trauma

oh so we're in full-on crossover mode I see

Splashmon? Okay, so not QUITE mind control.

OHNO NOT AKARI

(actually yas plz akari. I wanna see Cutemon again)

oh, it's the digimon masquerading as a girl (right?)

I bet that's not her actual beef with clockmon, either

The diva???

????

Clockmon has a turn-you-into-a-catgirl attack, apparently

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

oooooh, Aegiomon.

(sorry not sorry you're gonna have to suffer my thirsting now)

HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Digimon Gray Matter

Pages 67-75 of Chapter 8: Stroke of MidFright!

Start- Previous- Next

[anghraine]

Darcy's role in P&P would work for me anyway, but tbh it works for me 10x better because he halfway reverts back to form towards the end of the book.

[saint-cecilias]

more unsolicited Degrassi opinions no one cares about. while i never liked Ellie and Craig together and while i DO agree Ellie became a total ‘pick me’ chick behind Craig, i do think that a lot of fans kinda unfairly say that her crush on Craig ~ruined~ her character when i think that it made her almost too relatable to an uncomfortable degree. 

cause everyone knows what it’s like to develop feelings for someone who sees you as just a friend and the MORTIFYING ORDEAL of being KNOWN in that way did make Ellie more accessible as a character to me in those seasons. and lol listen......she wasn’t the only girl who became a ‘pick me’ behind Craig. 

i think the unrequitedness of it all is what makes people hate it MOST. cause while Ashley and Manny both lost their minds over Craig, they both ended up dating him and ending up breaking things off with him. they got to have him and release him (like a hot mess sadboy teen crush trout). Ellie never did. 

and as much as i loved Craig, Craig was no prize as a boyfriend. Ellie’s idealized version of Craig was much better than the real thing and if i was fanwanking i’d say that maaaaaaaaaybe Craig kept their relationship platonic cause it meant a lot to him and it was one of the FEW dynamics he ever had with a girl that he didn’t fuck up cause he was a slutty mcslut slut lol. 

i mean Ellie ended up having all the duties of a GF but none of the perks which sucks but i do think there’s something there to Craig never pursuing her in that way when he KNEW he could. 

anyways Ellie’s crush on Craig didn’t ruin her character for me. i didn’t love the ship and never thought they should be together. but Ellie repped all the ~smart and sensible girls~ falling for totally inappropriate guys and that shit was just as important to showcase as reckless driving and underage drinking and unprotected sex 

[labbydragon]

Oh man, a related memory to the last post.

One time my husband was scrolling Hulu or whatever and decided to put on that Shadowhunters show and said, "This looks like something you would like."

And I turned to him and laughed and I was like, "Oh I know exactly what this show is, and while I can totally see why you'd think that I'm afraid I have to explain to you some context."

And that was how I told my husband about the fanwank of old and he did not care one bit. We watched like the first episode but we didn't end up watching more.

[fantastic-nonsense]

So........Rey spends the entire movie attacking Kylo at every turn and nearly kills him on the Death Star and then just.....accepts a kiss from him at the end??? Lol what kinda bullshit are you trying to pull Abrams

[emperorren]

I think people "afraid" of the stigma are still quite young. Once you get past 22-23 you realize that everyone on here is mental and there is a certain thrill in pissing everyone off by saying you ship Reylo (or whatever Tumble deems "controversial") and acting like it's no big deal (because it is not). Also, perhaps they need new online circles.

And once you get past 30 you realize that you’ve turned into the very thing you thought you hated when you were 16, all your dreams and lovely ideals went up in smoke at some point during university, nobody cares about you or whatever you preach on a stupid site that will become prehistoric in ten years or something, you can no longer remember the url of that BNF you idolized during your previous fandom obsession, NOBODY FUCKING CARES ABOUT YOU, so you better enjoy the SHIT of what you’re actually in control of, even if it’s a simple “controversial” ship, lol.

Seriously, once you shed this insufferable high school mentality that everything you wear or say or do needs to be on point and perfectly reflective of your inner essence or the “person you want to be” or whatever, you start giving no fucks and it’s GREAT. I can’t think of anything more irrelevant than worrying about fandom morals. I hardly care about real life morals, go figure.

[him-e]

Since the gen audience (and the fanboys, and the antis...) think that Kylo is definitely evil now, it’s not possible he would ever be redeemed, do you think redemption would actually take them by surprise? Because to me redemption seems extremely obvious, but the presiding opinion in the fandom and in a lot of media seems to be the opposite. I’m wondering what the media reaction and fandom hot takes on redemption would be if/when it happens

I dunno but I bet all the mike zerohs out there will claim they had seen it coming from a thousand miles.

[bossarmadimon]

I mean, given how we were originally introduced to Revolmon/Deputymon with him dropping trou within like five minutes, that's a legitimate assumption

Deputymon: Send dudes.

Starmon: You mean nudes?

Deputymon: No, I’m in a shootout. I need more men.

[elfwreck]

Is ao3 going to be ok? Like in the long run? I just found it 3 years ago and I don’t want to lose it (or the contact it protects if I’m going to be honest)

Yes, AO3 will be okay.

AO3 was built to last.

AO3 has been through much, MUCH worse election drama than this year. So much worse.

(And that really doesn't cover the full scope of the screaming.)

Short summary, possibly with flaws: In 2015, the first contested election since 2011 (because people tended to leave before their terms were up), 6 people ran for 2 spots. The election itself had substantially more drama than this one. (Maybe not more posts/tweets about it, but more diverse, focused on multiple topics.)

After the election, due to Bizarre Internal Conflicts, the six existing board members all resigned at once, leaving the two total newbies stuck running the whole org. (There was a brief training/intro period overlap.) The two new members were stuck appointing the rest of the board and sorting out what you do when you went from "8 people, should be 9, run this place" to "2 people run this place."

Most people who use the archive never noticed. There was no noticeable blip in availability, support team, tag wrangling, or OTW project plans. Because what the board does, isn't crucial to the day-to-day management of the org.

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AO3 was built by people who had been through fandom_wank community on Livejournal, who had seen fandom_wank on JournalFen (after it got kicked off LJ), who saw corporate fanfic archives show up, get active, and then get shut down when they found a buyer for the software. Who'd seen Strikethrough and Boldthrough. Who'd seen individual-pairing fanfic archives vanish literally overnight because the two head mods got in a fight and one of them deleted the database and locked the other one out of the website.

AO3 wasn't just built on fandom squee and "we love fanfic so we will build an archive for everyone" but on "we have been through endless fanwank, arguments, hostile corporate takeovers of fan resources, accusations of immorality and outright crimes -- and we are gonna build an archive that not only can survive that, but assumes it's constantly going on in the background and sometimes it'll be foreground."

The OTW is a nonprofit so none of its projects can be sold to a venture-capitalist corporation no matter how much money it gets offered. If Microsoft wanted to buy AO3 and offered two billion dollars for it... THE OTW CAN'T SELL IT. Legally. Cannot. There are laws about how nonprofits work, and they don't allow that.

The OTW has a board and committees so that no one person has All The Power to take the AO3 ball and go home. The election process is clunky so that a swarm of evangelicals (which is what we were worried about at the time) or antis (which is what we're dealing with now) can't swoop in and take it over.

AO3 is doing just fine. The election is working as expected: One of the candidates is a very bad fit for the board, and people have noticed, and a whole lot of people are not voting for her.

Even if her supporters outnumber them (even if her amazingly quiet supporters outnumber the detractors)... she'd be one voice among 7 on the board. One vote out of 7. On the Board, which doesn't actually manage the make-AO3-work stuff.

I don't think she's an anti. I don't think she wants to censor anything. I think she wants clearer policies in a couple of places, and better public relations in others. I think her approach is flawed, and that she doesn't know how to explain herself clearly, and those are both reasons she shouldn't be on the board. But it wouldn't be a disaster if she were.

Because AO3 is built for resilience more than agility. It does not make changes quickly, but its "hold still and wait out the drama" abilities are matched by none.