#tragedy stan blogging

[chamerionwrites]

In full seriousness I think it’s valid to dislike a story for all kinds of reasons, including “it’s just not my jam.” Where I get deeply irritable is when people say “XYZ is a bad story (often with the implied or explicit corollary “and anyone who writes or enjoys such a story is bad”) because it asks me to care about and/or show interest in understanding characters I find annoying/unpleasant/weak/otherwise flawed, and/or generally makes me uncomfortable.”

This is because I unironically believe that pathological unwillingness to sit with discomfort is (1) the death of empathy and curiosity, (2) an extremely powerful tool for oppression, and (3) a serious societal problem especially in societies that benefit from said oppression.

[chamerionwrites]

“There's plenty of reason that empty-headed kitsch fits neatly in the authoritarian worldview. It's storytelling that imitates the gestures of emotion without actually engaging with real feeling. The Hallmark movie steers clear of the real passion or deeper emotion that tends to be the engine driving more artful fiction. Characters who have real feelings, after all, can prompt empathetic reactions in the audience, and empathy for others is the greatest single threat to the authoritarian mindset. And so schmaltz walks through the paces of 'love' without touching on any of the messy but compelling realities of it.”

Hallmark Movie tropes where a woman visits her rural hometown and fall in love with a random camo wearing musclebound white man because of the power of Christmas, and then leaves her successful city job, and cuck boyfriend to be said man's submissive wife is conservative and possibly even white nationalist propaganda.

In this essay I will...

[christensen]

I'm so pissed off, i just saw someone on twitter calling out Snow fangirls and naming people stanning characters like him ("hot" but evil) "the anakin effect" as if liking anakin has been a mainstream phenomenon for longer than a month.

[pleuvoire]

oh FUCK that triviallytrue asshole

[queenvhagar]

Did you see George’s blog post? I’m glad he’s speaking out against it. He sold the rights to his book just for Ryan to insult him and think he could do it better

I love that he's speaking the truth! He SHOULD be shutting down the "Green propaganda" bullshit and calling out bad writing when he sees it!

My favorite tidbits:

"Queen Helaena, a sweet and gentle soul, is much beloved by the smallfolk of King's Landing. Rhaenyra was not..."

- directly calling out that dumbass riot plotline where the smallfolk adore Rhaenyra and Meleys for starving, terrorizing, and murdering them en masse and throw fish at Alicent and Helaena

- subtle shade at Rhaenyra not being called a queen in the histories

"And there are larger, more toxic butterflies to come, if HOUSE OF THE DRAGON goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for season 3 and 4..."

- saying if you keep making dumb changes that undermine the story, characters, and world you WILL have nothing but a meaningless empty mess

And he is 100% right that removing Maelor was a mistake that minimizes the story and the tragedy of the Greens (and he knows it's intentional that the writers actively try to diminish Team Green and prop up Team Black).

HOTD hardcore stans can cope. We do in fact have the authority on the actual story and confirmation from the author that HOTD is a lesser quality adaptation of a good story at this point because of its nonsensical changes.

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

Bless you for creating this blog, because I need to VENT

(obligatory not all Zutarians who want to enjoy their fics and arts in peace. you guys are cool and chill.)

Isn't it so interesting transparent and sad that every Zutarian critical analysis about "making the show better" is just about making Aang suffer more, and Zuko look good?

Katara should have kept her burn scars, because Aang needed to understand the consequences of his actions!

Right. Because immediately apologising, and becoming so guilty he doesn't fire bend for 2 seasons doesn't show remorse.

Aang should have given up his attachment to Katara to become a fully realised Avatar, otherwise he doesn't sacrifice anything! That would have been narratively satisfying!

Right. Because LOSING HIS ENTIRE CULTURE AND EVERYONE HE EVER LOVED isn't a "sacrifice". Which he will never get back. He'll have to live with the tragedy of being the last Airbender forever.

It's SO interesting how Zuko literally gets everything he wanted- locking up Ozai forever, getting a new father figure in Iroh, becoming Firelord, being with the woman he loves, finding his mother, even finding a new sister who adores him. His ONE tragedy is Azula, and even then she's hopefully on a journey of redemption.

But somehow that's not the "perfect ending" for Zuko. Nope, the only narratively satisfying ending is if Katara falls over to suck Zuko's dick.

So Zuko doesn't sacrifice anything permanently, and he literally gets everything he ever wanted. Aang will never get back what he lost, but apparently he has to give up Katara too. Funny how that works. Can you make your seething resentment any more obvious?

It's also amazing to me that so called Katara stans NEVER think about how KATARA would feel if Aang lost his romantic attachment to her. Girl hugged him several times, kissed him on the cheek and lips, blushed around him, threatened to murder Zuko if he hurt Aang...she was not subtle. But apparently no one cares about Katara's feelings.

Also, how GUILTY would Katara feel if Aang had to sacrifice his romantic attachment to become the Avatar? Do you think she'd be happy he had to sacrifice love for duty? Which BEST FRIEND would be okay with this situation? Even Sokka and Toph would be outraged.

If my best friend and fellow genocide survivor had to sacrifice his romantic attachment for duty, I'd be so mad I would murder Ozai myself. Yes, even if I didn't love him back, because HE'S MY BEST FRIEND. Nobody would even be able to find the body.

Katara and Zuko should have gotten together, that would have fully represented the themes of balance and redemption in the show!

FFS THERE IS A RELATIONSHIP THAT REPRESENTS THESE THEMES! IT'S ZUKAANG! SORRY YOU WERE TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND THE SHOW!

Sorry, Sokka. Your relationship with Suki is toxic, because she's from the Earth Nation. You need to break up immediately. Better go find a nice firebender to have children with! Zukka anyone??

Did they miss the part when Uncle Iroh said, "Understanding others, the other elements, and the other nations will help you become whole."

Or the Guru when he said, " Even the separation of the four elements is an illusion. If you open your mind, you will see that all the elements are one. Four parts of the same whole. "

AKA "balance" is when we learn from all 4 elements and grow as a person!!! It's got nothing to do with love!

BECAUSE PEOPLE CAN'T BE REDUCED TO THEIR ELEMENTS! THAT'S THE THEME OF THE SHOW!

Sorry, Katara. You represent water, and Zuko represents fire, so you have to marry each other for "balance". It's in the rules. How convenient.

Even though Aang is ALSO a fire bender, so marrying him would also represent "balance". But he doesn't count because he's not hot and sexy like Zuko with his anime hair.

sidenote - Aang is so hot. With his muscles , grey eyes, and his off-shoulder fit? Divine. Zutarians who think Aang isn't sexy have no taste.

sorry for the extremely long rant. I just couldn't take Zutarians and their "atla-critical" analysis anymore. It's the self-righteousness that gets me.

They can't just say, I love Zutara together because I like their dynamic. Instead they have to write long metas justifying why their ship is the "only one that strenghens the themes of the show" and Kataang / Maiko "weakens the narrative" and other bs.

thanks for this space, this was cathartic.

You're welcome, anon 💖

[autistic-ben-tennyson]

as someone who relates a lot to both Anakin and Padme because i grew in a stressfully abusive enviroment (not being allowed to express too honest emotions and fear, having to mask my neurodivergent tendencies, not being able to raise my voice ever or cry or be angry, etcetc) and i was a "gifted kid", and on top of that i'm queer. So for a lot of my teenhood i "attached" *badly* to anything that would remotely give me comfort, mostly objects but also people and friends, it's been quite healing to read your analysis about how "attachments" are presented in SW and how the fandom tends to twists attachments as something toxic and selfish, it's understandable when people don't like him but when everyone runs to say he was evil just for getting attached or feeling "too strongly" about something is quite hurtful

victims should be accountable for the things they do wrong, and anakin outright did so many many horrible bad things, but it's cathartic for me bc he shows how victims of abuse and trauma aren't and can't be perfect, and they react in ways that are inherently affected by the enviroment that shaped them, and in the end, anakin had one of the most famous and iconic returns ever, so it's really important to me, and your analysis are great

Thanks anon. I had a period over a couple months where I was very hardcore pro Jedi/anti anakin which in retrospect was really just to fit in with what was popular on tumblr since all the big SW blogs like Kanansdume/antianakin or GFFA are Jedi apologists. I regret a lot of my past behavior and how I treated some Anakin fans. A lot of Jedi stans like to paint anyone who likes Anakin as a right wing dudebro and it doesn’t help that there are a few people who are that way such as caripr94 or Otnesse. Yet their side isn’t much better. There’s a lot of ableism, victim blaming, and queerphobia rebranded to sound progressive. For all their pseudo-wokeness, a lot of them sound like conservatives when they put the blame entirely on Anakin for his fall and refuse to acknowledge systematic and psychological issues he had because they’d have to accept that the Jedi were flawed and not perfect.

Fandom in general has become a lot more puritanical and moralistic. People insist that you can’t show any sympathy or depth for villains, possibly as an overreaction towards movies like Maleficent or Cruella as well as the rise of Trump, hence why everyone felt Big Jack Horner was refreshing and propping up TOH as the anti SU for killing Belos. The SW fandom is no different. Antianakin has a whole pinned post ranting about not just Anakin but Padme, Ahsoka, Kallus and Crosshair too. People insist you must view Anakin as an allegory for a white boy radicalized by 4chan and Jordan Peterson but one could argue he’s closer to those in the global south who live in poverty and oppression as well as queer people who have to hide their relationships or risk being rejected by their communities.

SW isn’t even close to my top fandom or favorite media but I do post about it if it relates to stuff I do like more like anime or Ben 10. It’s easy to write off a character as just born evil which removes the tragedy knowing that he was a good person at one point and dehumanizing villains allows people to reject the idea that they could become that way. I like a lot of characters who are flawed or abrasive because of trauma or abuse they suffered such as Shinji and Asuka from NGE, Hodaka from WWY, Raven from TT or Homura from PMMM. Anakin/Vader is an interesting character who has been dumbed down to just a “fascist MAGA manchild” by some when, for all my criticism of him, is not what Lucas wrote. As a side note, knowing that all 4 OT Vader actors have passed away is sad. RIP Sebastian Shaw, Bob Anderson, David Prowse and James Earl Jones. May the force be with you all.

[linkspooky]

ON MADELYNE PRYOR

Shout out to all the comic book stans who follow my blog.

So X-Men 97 inspired me to do a re-read of X-Men from the beginning. My previous read of X-Men jumped all over the place, it was basically X-Men up to Dark Phoenix and then I jumped all the way to the 2000s to 2010s. In my current read I just got to Inferno and holy fuck mom, I never thought I'd like an X-Men arc more than Dark Phoenix but here we are.

This is an entirely personal opinion which I'm not as good at expressing because I prefer over-intellectualizing my feelings, but Inferno is the only other comic book arc to make me feel the way that Judas Cotract did in how tightly and perfectly written as a tragedy it is especially for the female at its center.

Are there any women in all of fiction more doomed by the narrative than Terra Markov and Madelyne Pryor?

I mean I've written about Judas Contract before but what makes that arc so special to me is how it's about a character, a victim, a girl named Terra who by all rights should have been saved by the heroes, but not only fails every step of the way but at every point in her life really. Terra is someone how manifests her victimhood in completely unsympathetic ways but the fact that she basically had no chance in life makes her sympathetic nonetheless.

This comes from the decision that Perez and Wolfram made right from the start to kill her off and never offer her any redemption, which while incredibly callous on the author's part just makes the tragedy even stronger. That's what tragedy is, it's meat to reflect the cruelty and unfairness of life, it's kind of like reality bleeding into fiction.

George’s strength was he also understood the characters 100 percent as I did so there was never any question. He knew. We had talked enough about the characters to know we were exactly on the same page with them. So I said, “Everyone keeps complaining that we’re like the X-Men” and the X-Men had just gotten Kitty Pryde. I said, “Why don’t we really screw around with them completely?” — this is the fans — “…and make them think we’re stealing Kitty Pryde only she’s gonna be bad from Day One.” You always had characters pop up, certainly at Marvel, who were bad that get redeemed. But this character would never get redeemed. She was insane. In fact, she was the catalyst for everything. She wasn’t working for Deathstroke. He was working for her in many ways and she was leading him because she’s crazy. She’s a total psychopath… and she’d be 15. 

Terra's a total psychopath and she's fifteen and that's the tragedy. Was there really any other way that Terra could have turned out? A girl who has been abandoned, who was given incredible powers but no love, support, or nurturing and clearly doesn't have a home or any stability in her life if she's working as a mercenary at that young. A girl who thinks herself a villain and a player in the game but is clearly being manipulated by a fifty plus year old man who is smarter, more mature, and a serial user and abuser of people.

Terra's not just the villain, she's the protagonist of the tragedy walking through the play unknowing that her every single decision will lead to her inevitable end.

Judas Cotract and Inferno are two arcs that most evoke the feel of the Tower in Tarot to me. The Tower is just, ruin and destruction, a complete loss of control, the realization that everything you thought was wrong and in fact the world doesn't care much about what you think. It's a reminder that life isn't even cruel, it's nothing, it's random.

However, first you have to build up the tower before you start pulling the jenga blocks out one by one. Terra spends several arcs with the Teen Titans showing disturbing unchildlike behavior, but one of the so-called Heroes even notice that there's something wrong. When she does get close to blowing her cover, a violent incident where she nearly badly hurts Beast Boy after he comes onto her way too hard which is an understandable reaction as a victim of SA that gets brushed under the rug too.

It makes the heroes look worse as well. If they were heroes dedicated to saving people at all costs shouldn't they have noticed the trouble of someone right next to them? Yet, they all kind of collectively remain oblivious the same way that most victims in real life especially of Terra's kind of trauma are left to suffer in silence. Not to say the Teen Titans are bad, they are kids, and therefore it makes sense they don't have the emotional maturity to notice - it just makes them look more human.

So to summarize my point above what makes Judas Contract is a good tragedy and why Inferno makes me feel the same way narrows down to two reasons.

Madelyne and Terra are both doomed by the narrative, there was no saving them right from the beginning.

However, the fact that the heroes failed to save them reflects poorly on them.

Finally, Madelyne Pryor.

Oh Madelyne the world did you so dirty. I'm partially to blame because I skipped right to the 2000s in my first read, but before this point I'd known nothing about Madelyne other than that she was a clone of Jean Grey who died.

My first impressions of her when she was introduced shortly after Dark Phoenix weren't all that great either. Chris Claremont writes good female characters, that's not really a hot take. I'm sure you've heard of Storm, Rogue, Mystique, Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost etc.

However, I've noticed there are like two tiers of female characters he tends to write. There are the first stringers which are your storms, your rogues, these are characters who are meant to be independent and have arcs. Then there are the second stringers who are just meat to serve a role in the story. This isn't a criticism on the way Claremont writes women, I mean all stories have major and minor characters.

Madelyne Pryor was never meant to be a main character. There wasn't anything about her character that I disliked per se, she is independent, she seemed to have a life outside of Cyclops, she tries really hard to separate herself from the image of Jean Grey. However, she was clearly written to give Cyclops a wife and child in the aftermath of Jean's death and a reason to retire.

While the editorial mandate that made Claremont pull Cyclops out of his happy ending so he could rejoin a team with the original five x-men for the sake of nostalgia sucks, it is also the best thing to happen to Madelyne's character.

Madelyne before that point was a perfectly functional character for her role but she wasn't all that dynamic, she liked planes, she didn't like Jean's ghost hanging over her, she's pretty spunky and headstrong but she was at most a good supporting character but that's all she was. Claremont just decided to double down on that, Scott actually treats his wife like she exists to do nothing but support him and his emotional issues. Madelyne gives all the support that she can give and then Scott just up and leaves anyway. The woman who only existed to be a love interest to give Scott a happy ending, now has no other reason to exist without the man she's supposed to love and her happy ending turns to ash in her mouth.

This is the same feeling I was talking about with Terra, this is a person who was basically failed at every step of the way. A person who has no family. no support, it's almost worse in this case because Madelyne thought she did only for that person to toss her aside.

There's no saving Madelyne, and the fact that Scott didn't save her, that he didn't both trying until he was too late makes him the villain.

If anything Inferno is better than Judas Contract at dragging the heroes down to their lowest points, because The Teen Titans failing to save Terra is understandable because of how young they are but there's no excusing Scott's actions. Madelyne may run around in a skimpy outfit calling herself the goblin queen but the villain of this story is named Scott Summers. He had a responsibility and obligation towards Madelyne to save her and he failed, and it makes him a bad hero and an even worse person.

One of the key components of a tragedy is also agency. Agency is basically the freedom a character has to choose and how much their choices matter in the grand scheme of things and impact their narratives.

Tragedies are often defined by how little agency the characters are shown to have, and how limited their range of choices are. One of the biggest themes of tragedy is fate and inevitability at all. For example one of my favorite tragedies antigone is about a girl with very little power in the ancient greek city of Thebes who still makes a choice to give her brother a proper burial even though she knows she'll be executed for it.

Dark Phoenix is all about agency. Jean Grey is dealing with three different forces trying to take her mind, her agency. There's the corrupting influence of Phoenix, there's the Hellfire Club who wants to make her into a puppet, and then there's Charles Xavier who wants to put a lid on her tremendous powers. Everyone trying to take agency away from Jean eventually leads her to snap and try to take all of that agency back by embracing godhood because who has more agency, more control than a god? Even Jean's act of killing herself at the end was reclaiming her agency, it's her choice to die as a human rather than be executed, or to lose herself to the phoenix.

What breaks Madelyne is not Scott leaving her. Which made me like her character a lot, like the moment Scott left Madelyne was shown just how stubborn and determined she was. Madelyne stood out as the only normal human amongst the x-men who still held her own like Moira did (i guess Moira is a mutant now but I'm still in the 80s so w/e).

What breaks her is the revelation that she never had any agency in her life to begin with. Scott was always meant to fall in love with her, he was always meant to leave her, because she was nothing more than a womb for Sinister's breeding project. Once again it's masterful how Scott looks equally as villainous as Sinister in this scenario in how neither of them regards Madelyne as a person, just an object to project their desires upon.

(Honestly Jean Grey doesn't come out looking all that great either considering how little sympathy she has for Madelyne because she just sees her as an obstacle to getting back together with Scott. If anyone Jean should sympathize with Madelyne the most because they've both been toyed with cosmic forces out of their control, but I guess it goes to show how selfish and destructive Jean and Scott's love for each can be).

Is there any sequence more tragic in all of comics than this series of panels?

The symbolism in these panels too and how it relates to the themes of agency with Madelyne's character. Madelyne was a free and self-driven woman (or at least she thought she was) living out her dream of being a pilot which to her the ability to fly her wings represents her freedom and indepedence. The only thing she thought that could make her happier was Scott, but in the end not only did Scott take her wings away, he took away her everything and gave it to someone else.

"Time to lose those wings, Maddie. You can't really fly, anyway. You're not special like us."

If there's any words to express the inherent tragedy of Maddie's character is this, she's a person who thought she was free to fly, that she was real, that her life mattered only to have all that taken away from her. Maddie like Terra thinks she has agency that she's making decisions but she had no real choices from the beginning.

That's also a good way to express what makes tragedies hit as hard as they do. Tragedies slap you with the realization that you're not special. The hero is not a hero, they don't have plot armor, they're not immune to consequences, they're human and just like all humans they fail.

Even the act that Madelyne thinks is reclaiming her agency by gaining power as the Goblin Queen is in fact, not her choice. She doesn't choose to sell her soul, she's tricked into doing it by a rebellious demon that wants to kick Illyana out and reclaim limbo for himself. In Madelyne's one act of trying to steal back her power and freedom she is still just a pawn in another person's scheme.

There's also Madelyne going through literal hell itself to reclaim her son, only to make the decision to sacrifice him along with several other infants which seems to make her usympathetic but ironically makes her more sympathetic to me.

There's the obvious reference to Medea there. If all the parallels aren't obvious enough already, Jason and the Argonauts gets namedropped during the arc.

One of my favorite things about Medea the tragedy by Euripedes is that Medea is not just a girlboss who gets revenge on Jason and then walks away. Straightforward revenge narratives are bad because revenge is... bad actually. The decision to inflict more pain and suffering in the world doesn't break the chain of suffering.

Medea kills her children to show that Jason is not entirely in the wrong, and Medea is not entirely in the right. They are two human beings who's relationship is blowing up in the worst way possible. I mean Jason himself does have some points in the play, he's making a political marriage to save both of them, the only reason he's exiling Medea is because Medea made loud death threats at Jason's new bride. It's not just the heartbreak of being abandoned that drives Medea, it's her pride, the whole play started because Medea didn't want to settle for being a side chick.

Medea wants revenge against Jason but she doesn't take her revenge on Jason, she takes revenge on everyone around him for the purpose of making him feel as alone and lost as he did her. She'll kill her own children, even if it kills her to do so, just to spite him a little more.

Which leads to one of my favorite scenes in all of fiction, Medea holding the knife over her own child's throat, bargaining with herself trying to convince herself to do something she objectively knows is wrong.

MEDEA I’ve made up my mind, my friends. I’ll do it—kill my children now, without delay, and flee this land. I must not hesitate. That would hand them over to someone else to be slaughtered by a hand less loving.                                      No matter what, the children have to die. Since that’s the case, then I, who gave them life,                                will kill them. Arm yourself for this, my heart. Why do I put off doing this dreadful act, since it must be done? Come, pick up the sword, wretched hand of mine. Pick up the sword, move to where your life of misery begins. Don’t play the coward. Don’t remember now how much you love them, how you gave them life. For this short day forget they are your children                          and mourn them later. Although you kill them, still you loved them. As a woman, I’m so sad.     

Why would Madelyne after going through all that trouble to find her son, instead choose to give him to the fire? It's because for a person who was given so little choice over her own life, the choice to self-destruct is still a choice. The choice to destroy something with your own hands rather than let it be destroyed for someone else is still a choice.

That would hand them over to someone else to be slaughtered by a hand less loving.                                      No matter what, the children have to die. Since that’s the case, then I, who gave them life,                                will kill them.

I think I may like Madelyne more than Jean at this point?

The same way I like Terra more than Raven. They're very similiar characters, but it takes possession by Trigon to get Raven to attack the titans. Terra just tries to kill them by her own free will. She's willing to bury herself if it gives her one last chance at burying the titans to too. Madelyne on the other hand is willing to walk barefoot into hell, if it means she can drag Scott and the X-Men with her. Jean does things under the influence of the Phoenix, but she chose to die as a human being at the end of Dark Phoenix. Madelyne however made the opposite choice, throwing all her humanity away she gave herself wholly and unreservedly to the fire.

Also damn, x-men 97 did this arc so dirty by speedrunning through it in one episode. This is also one of the most well set-up arcs in the X-Men comics with so many threads like X-Factor, X-Men and New Mutants all coming together. It really deserved its own season not like 2 episodes, and then Madelyne dying halfway through this season.

[weirdoldmanhoho]

Arakawa pulls this trick at least twice where she introduces a character in a certain light and intentionally leads the audience to view them a certain way, only to pull the curtain back later.

We are intentionally introduced to Hohenheim through the viewpoint of Ed, who doesn't know the truth about his father and made his own assumptions on who Hohenheim was as a person. We see Hohenheim as cold-hearted, uncaring of his family, leaving because he's abandoning him. This means that when Father starts getting introduced we EASILY believe Hoho could be the big bad of the series. It's only LATER that we get to see the actual truth of things - that Hoho loved his family dearly even if he didn't know how to express it and wasn't good at showing it and that he left specifically to protect them because he discovered Father's plan to destroy Amestris and also to hopefully find a way to grow old with them.

I think the problem is - Arakawa is SO GOOD at selling those initial characterizations that it fools the audience even after she reveals the truth. I see it happen with both Hoho and Roy, who people STILL think is actually an immature womanizer.

I very much read Hohenheim as someone incredibly socially awkward. Part of the reason he struggles to show Ed and Al love while he's around is because he genuinely feels like a monster and is racked with guilt, part of it is that he's terrified of watching them grow so fast while he doesn't age like you said, but I think part of it is that Hohenheim is just not.....a very emotionally open person.

But we DO see moments of him showing it in his own way. He builds a swingset for them. Don't know if you read the manga, but there's an incredibly touching scene where Ed is mean to Al as a child because he's jealous of Al taking his mom's attention away, and Hohenheim uses a bucket of water to illustrate how much Trisha loves Ed. It's incredibly endearing and a great example of Hohenheim being a really GOOD dad when he was there.

Hohenheim isn't a terrible father - he just had to leave his family too soon and tragedy struck when he left and unfortunately because Ed and Al didn't know the truth, they were left feeling unloved and abandoned.

But to see him get compared to actual cruel fathers is SUCH an unfair reading of his character.

03 Hohenheim is absolutely garbage stink man though

give me your hottest FMA takes (hottest fma fandom takes also accepted)

let’s not start fights but I’m bored and curious :)

[halfblood-princes-crown]

As an ex marauders fan. The Severus snape fans were the only people I ever had nice interactions with other hp universe fans

& the lily evans whorsping made me really uncomfy they all mass commented on Severus fans edits calling him creepy for loving her but the way they are about her low-key scared me/ was actually creepy. I don’t think I’ll ever interact with another blog that posts about anything hp related unless it says anti-marauders. The characters don’t really annoy me but the people in that fandom are out of touch in a harmful way as opposed to a fun escapism way

I definitely hear you, anon.

I assure you that you aren't the only one who feels this way. I've gotten asks like this before and Im sure a lot of other Snape blogs have as well.

Honestly, the marauder fandom was my first interaction with the hp fandom in general, and it was more of the fans that threw me off than the characters. Ive loved Snape since I was in 4th grade and let me tell you...I had never felt so outcast in my life 😭 it was deranged. I was so glad (and surprised) to have found the Snapedom (I haven't said that in so long 😩)

I think I've talked about the Lily community before but, in my opinion, they only praise her like that because of James. I put MONEY on it that they'd hate her if she would have ended up with Severus, or they'd ignore her if she'd chosen neither of them. Honestly, look at what the wolfstar community does with her character...a tragedy.

But yea, the Snape community is welcoming whether you like the marauders or not. You come in peace, it stays peaceful. I love it 💚

(And a lot of the Snape community likes the marauders as well. In fact, a lot of Snape fans like the marauders more than actual marauders stans, but that's a whole conversation for another day🤣)

[chamerionwrites]

This for the record is why*, to me, genre descriptions such as "cozy fantasy" "cozy mystery" or even "cozy horror" (?????) are an anti-recommendation that make me all but physically shudder and run screaming in the opposite direction.** It’s not that soothing/fluffy/formulaic/low-stakes/"escapist" fiction is inherently evil or that anyone who enjoys it is some kind of fascist-in-waiting (a point which the linked essay makes). It’s because the uncritical elevation of ""cozy"" art as the best and most moral kind does have a lot of conservative authoritarian undertones, and unfortunately a considerable chunk of people who describe fiction as cozy (see also "hopepunk") ARE engaging in that sort of moralizing as opposed to just using the word as a morally-neutral descriptor.

*also because the way in which people deploy "cozy" as a genre descriptor frequently smells very strongly of twee faux-progressive "idk why but cottagecore is for girls and dark academia is for boys" gender essentialism.

**The STRENGTH of this reaction is, self-admittedly, probably because I have personal baggage in this area.

[daemon-in-my-head]

The only reason I wanted to play Durge was because of that dialogue with the temple door I saw, specifically how Durge can be an obnoxious sibling and literally say Daddy Bhaal said its my turn gtfo Orin (I'm paraphrasing) but as an older sister, this line just resonated with me.

Fast forward a couple months and I have a blog somehow kinda just filled with Durgetash brainrot, multiple fics about these two fucks, lord knows how many WIPs in Procreate or PS and my brother introduces me as reformed Gortash stan. Idk if I'm insulted that this implies my Astarion simpling was bad or because my actual irl family (or at least one part of it) knows how down bad I am for a fictional villain and racoon man. He's met Gortash a while back, he's heavily judging me now, but even he enjoys some Gortass (yes of course I showed him.)

Listen atp my irl friends are praying I'll drop BG3 and regain a normal personality. Last weekend when a friend called me he literally opened by saying "I hope I'm not disturbing you while playing BG3". But I'm so sorry. Their little tragedy captivated me.

(Also I'm actually living my life over here. Grown as a fucking person thanks to my emotional support gremlins wtf)

[amazing-spider-man-book-club]

Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962)

Published: August 1962

Containing: "Spider-Man!", "There are Martians Among Us!", "Man in The Mummy Case!", "The Bell-Ringer!"

Introducing: Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Ben Parker, May Parker, Flash Thompson, Liz Allen (unnamed), Mr. Warren (unnamed), Crusher Hogan, Sally Avril (unnamed), Seymour O'Reilly (unnamed), Maxie Shiffman (unnamed), The Burgler, Officer Baxter Bigelow (unnamed)

Synopsis: Peter Parker, social outcast, becomes vindictive and egotistical following being bitten by a radioactive spider and gaining spider-like abilities. After a brief stint in show business, his Uncle Ben is murdered by a burgler that Peter did nothing to stop earlier.

Read alongside us here:

@frankendykes-monster : One thing I don't want to do with this blog is discuss the in's and out's of how we got here because I feel like that'd be boring to most people beyond some anecdotals, but as we continue farther along the "behind the scenes" of The Amazing Spider-Man will become harder to ignore. That said:

Amazing Fantasy #15 is the only comic named "Amazing Fantasy". The series started out as Amazing Adventures, and was a typical Marvel horror/science fiction series being headlined by a Jack Kirby story followed by multiple stories by any number of freelancers (Dick Ayers, Don Heck, Larry Lieber, Joe Sinnott, etc.). With #7 the series is renamed as Amazing Adult Fantasy and becomes a 100% Steve Ditko showcase, but Spider-Man marks an intended shift towards replacing the line with superheroes; August 1962 is also the month where Ant-Man becomes the main feature in Tales to Astonish and Thor is introduced in Journey into Mystery. Truly, the "Marvel Age" of comics was upon us.

As a two-part story that only takes up 12 pages, "Spider-Man!" gets an incredible amount of work done. It's arguably the most superfluous issue of the entire Ditko/Lee run to return to if only because unlike so many other superheroes, Spider-Man's origin is a very "don't fix what isn't broken". Fans of Spider-Man (2002) or Spectacular Spider-Man especially will notice that's there not much here that they aren't already aware of, though most of the characters introduced here play no important role for the duration of the run, and will only be retroactively made more important by future creative talent down the line.

One thing that will become apparent throughout the run, however, is that this "source text" incarnation of Peter is a vindictive jackass starting out. In this issue we see proclamations that the rest of the world can walk off a cliff, and his disinterest in stopping the burgler is nothing more than an expression of that attitude. Being nice costs nothing, but being rude and egotistical doesn't either (or does it...considering your family member might be murdered later on...)

Stan Lee's narration seems prophetic in retrospect given that his aggrandizing prose makes it out that Spider-Man is nothing more than completely destined to become one of the biggest characters in pop culture. The juxtaposition of it with the slouching demurred pose of Peter on the title page and the context which it finds itself at the story's end just highlights that something big is on the way.

Amazing Fantasy #15, despite the text note that Lee provides at the end of the issue, would be the final one published as it was cancelled to make room in Marvel's distribution line up for a revival of Two-Gun Kid three months later. Several Spider-Man stories that were already done would end up on the shelf until The Amazing Spider-Man #1 is published. It heightens the tragedy of this story in a way that makes it compliment the twist-ending pulp horror that Ditko's output entirely consisted of. In this issue alone, Peter's fame going to his head and it biting him in the ass isn't out of place compared to anything that would have happened in Tales From The Crypt a decade earlier.

I have to wonder how much of this issue is a rush job because the early Spider-Man stories we will be discussing over the next several weeks are not the highlight of Ditko's career to out it nicely. There's not a lot of room for large panels that have a nice balance of negative space like what one would expect from Ditko in the early 1960's. Spider-Man's original costume was meant to be black (blue serving as a highlight) and the spider symbol on his back being blue. Didn't stick. For contrast take a look at the title page for two of the other stories in this issue.

@duel1971 : A good amount of ground ground gets covered in this relatively short origin story. We see Peter as a wallflower, a masked wrestler, an inventor, and most importantly as a loving son. These are all facets of the gem that is Peter Parker. He comes across as a relatable everyman because the details of his civilian life are filled in with care. Our first look at peter at home establishes there is a core of love in his home life, that he feels safe there away from the world that doesn’t fully understand him. Peter doesn’t quite transform into a superhero in Amazing Fantasy #15, but we learn the things that drive him: love for his family, and anger that it has been broken.

[riza-hawks-eye]

We were bemoaning how quiet things had been in the arcane fandom just a few months ago.

And yet just this morning alone I've seen someone liken Jinx to Hìtler and a Mylo stan blog unironically declare that the act 1 explosion was powder's fault while missing the whole point of Powder's entire arc being a tragedy.

Come thru with the bad takes arcane fandom. ❤️

[tavina-writes]

Xiyao for the ship meme?

Wolffy!!! :D

Xiyao: Oh man. Perhaps the saltiest of my answers.

Disclaimer: I like both of these characters very much and in theory I ship all three legs of the 3zun collective as well as 3zun.

Unfortunately, in practice this is a

Don’t Ship It

Why don’t you ship it?

This is entirely a situation where if I weren't interacting with the fandom I would still happily be shipping this leg of the 3zun disaster polycule. But I'm primarily a Nie Bros stan blog and like NHS every time I see a bad Da-ge take I have the urge to start biting and most of the people I've blocked for having bad NMJ takes are Xiyao mains who insist that he Wasn't Important and Actively Destructive to the UWU of Xiyao who Understand Each Other Perfectly and Ne'er Would've Had Issues if the BIG MEAN ASSHOLE didn't exist, so now I'm just like 'well I can't exactly say I ship this when I've blocked like 50% of the other people who ship it can I?'

What would have made you like it?

Not having a tumblr account. <- sad but true, my goodfeels about Xiyao as a ship have become a casualty to the hellsite.

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

I actually really adore their dynamic. I think they were deeply important to each other, and fundamentally at odds because of social status and life outlook differences in much the same way all legs of the 3zun tripod were and there's something really lovely about that tragedy that defies easy solutions and I'd really love to write about this in more depth someday!

Thanks for the ask!

Ship It/Don't Ship It Ask Game

[elitehanitje]

Everyone has the right to express their opinions, but I find it irritating AF when they do so condescendingly. Some people seem to have something negative to say every time they post. While they are entitled to their opinions, I've decided to mute them to avoid seeing their comments. I don't appreciate their constant negativity on every post (especially against AEW all the time).

People are creating GIFs of their favorite wrestlers to share with others and reblog them. We're sharing happiness! I'm on Twitter too, but of course, I block all of those toxic stans.

I've noticed that some dudes enjoy posting negative comments about Eddie Kingston, Willow Nightingale, Deonna Purrazzo, and JD Drake, criticizing their weight and suggesting that only wrestlers with a body like Hulk Hogan/Sable are athletes. I'm willing to bet that all of them could outrun everyone while these so-called fans struggle to catch their breath after lifting themselves off the toilet.

They also disguised their opinion by starting as "sympathetic" and then talked about a wrestler's finisher by saying things like, "I'm sorry, I know the wrestler has faced a lot of tragedy, but I think his finisher is stupid, and it's surprising that people still buy into it in the 21st century, let alone believe in it." And then added, "The finisher is weak and unrealistic. It couldn't possibly kill or even injure a human being, so it's not believable."

Hello, fella - do you wish to see a wrestler kill other wrestlers in the ring? Like a genuine murder? After reading the comment, I got the impression that they believe something is only valuable if it causes harm in real life.

Pro Wrestling is entertainment with characters who have unusual abilities like cursing, spewing black goo, and Peacock Power. Sadly, some fans take it too seriously and want to see harm done. This is NOT pure boxing, MMA/mixed martial arts competition, fellas. It is a form of sports + entertainment that involves predetermined outcomes, storytelling, and various character tropes. I don't understand why some fans dislike fun and wish the wrestlers to get hurt on purpose.

I seriously don't care if they said it on their own blogs. I care when people write long rants about a company they dislike on reblogs. It's not your post! Leave it! Also, asking others about how much they hate AEW to some AEW fans is pointless. The reason why they are doing it is because nobody is interacting with them. So they submit (anonymous) questions to bait the Tumblr fans.

"Oh - so you only want positive comments instead of criticism?" Uhhh, YES. I want good vibes on my blog. Also, DEATH THREATS to minority groups is not a criticism, you miscreants.

Nonetheless, I accept criticism about the companies or pro wrestling: the most valid criticism is the toxic environment behind the scenes. I will block these toxic stans who defend rapists whenever they defend sexual harassment, assault, rape, or even murder within the wrestling community.

Some people on social media believe that wrestlers deserve to die for having a finishing move they dislike or how "woke" the posts are. I saw some of the profiles of these "fans" - Yikes, big nope. What is it with those fans defending questionable individuals?

Please keep in mind that it is not okay to criticize someone for identifying as gender fluid or to deny someone the title of an athlete because they don't fit your personal physical preferences or even sexual preferences. If you hate AEW, it's your choice. Just stop invading our space and spout hate for the show you don't even watch. Let's block each other so we don't have to see each other.

I'm not saying people shouldn't reblog and say that they hate some of the characters - that's how fandom works sometimes, but holy shet, fellas. When those haters just hate for the sake of hate, it's time to avoid them.