Being a fandom hater is one of the worst things you can do to your brain. I’m swearing off of rage.
Even if you don’t post about the things you dislike, the ships or characters or fanon trends, even if you just complain about them with your friends it HURTS YOU. Because one day you’ll be on the other end of it. You’ll like a fanon trend, you’ll see a post hating on your ship, and if you’ve trained yourself to see people who interpret characters in ways that you don’t or ship characters you can’t see together as wrong or stupid or lesser, now YOU’RE at the business end of your own sword. Worse, if your friends act the same way. You might start thinking they’d stop talking to you if they knew, like enjoying something that isn’t “approved” by the circle of peers is a sin that you will be cast out for committing.
And even if you don’t feel that way, who’s to say your friends don’t? Who’s to say there aren’t people in your circle ashamed of the things they like because they fear YOU won’t think they’re complex enough, or they stray too far from canon?
We all have the things we dislike. But it helps NO ONE to dwell on that negativity. If you see a lot of content for a ship you don’t like? Make content for a ship you DO! Instead of trying to balance the scales by taking away, balance them by CREATING, and don’t tear other people down to bring yourself up.
And that’s not even touching on the fact that people can like multiple headcanons. Multiple interpretations of a character, multiple ships, have multiple theories before even getting into people who write AUs! AUs that exist for the purpose of exploring alternate character dynamics, interpretations, and possibilities! People can like both complicated takes and simple ones! Things supported by canon and things they just play with for fun! Because that’s what fandom is for. FUN.
I won’t shame people for having fun anymore. Not even in the privacy of my own mind, because it’s just setting up landmines for me and the people I care about to step on later. To every person who enjoys fanon and popular interpretations and ships things with no canon basis YOU ARE SO BRAVE. You are having fun. You are not doing anything “wrong.”
There is no situation in which you liking a headcanon, a theory, or a character is hurting another real life human being. There are MANY situations in which expressing how much you DISLIKE a headcanon, theory, or character, DOES hurt other real life human beings. If you want to change your fandom, do so from a place of love for your favorite characters, excitement over your favorite tropes, joy over your favorite interpretations. The second you start being destructive instead of constructive, you have begun to weaken this collaborative space.
We are all playing with toys. The only wrong way to play with toys is to yank them out of other people’s hands.
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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i think one of the reasons glass onion is so fun is that it just... loves the audience back.
so many popular movies and shows these days thrive on a sort of bitter engagement with their fans - where the fans are dismissed as being stupid, annoying, and needlessly angry. we are constantly positioned as being less intelligent as the writers.
so much of "spoiler-free" movie-making relies on writers getting away with one twist in their work, regardless of if that twist was earned. the work doesn't actually have any rewatch value or interesting writing - because they think "good writing" is about "pulling one over" on the audience. they don't focus on making interesting characters or storylines or good endings - they focus on fooling you. glass onion, meanwhile, has faith that the audience has figured the ending out, and that we'll watch anyway, because we love the characters.
so many adaptions of older works... kind of seem to hate the original work. they're done without passion. they're done almost as if checking off a box. so many of them openly mock the audience for enjoying the original, almost directly telling us that we are fools for ever having loved something.
but glass onion. loves the audience. it knows that many of the people watching are mystery-lovers. it is an homage that feels love towards the original works it references. it knows we also love those works; and instead of trying to disparage those works, it allows us to celebrate them.
one of my favorite things about it - and maybe why i found it so satisfying - is that this movie isn't trying to tell you it's the smartest, bestest, most-clever detective story. instead, it asks itself what is satisfying and exciting for the audience? and actually gives us that payoff. it's bright, colorful, and fucking fun.
just... more of this please. i'm very bored of nihilism and grittiness and "shock value" writing. put the love back in. let us love unironically. have your work say i love you too. thank you for sharing this story.
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Triple Identity Crisis
Danny had a problem. If it was a big one, he couldn't tell yet but he was partially sure Clockwork was at fault for this. Or at least he wanted to blame his ghostly godparent who most likely just wanted to cause some chaos for entertainment with the pretext of helping Danny. Which was a very likely reason for why Danny had a problem right now.
As it was the former Fenton now Fenton-Wayne boy was pacing his room in the Manor trying to think what is next step should be, because as it was his 'new' family –Did new still apply if he was living with them for a little more than a year now? – knew him under three different Identities now. And to top it all off they were not aware that the three identities were all pretty much connected as one.
For one. His family, knew him as Danny, the space obsessed kid, who became a meta because of his ectobiology science obsessed parents and his teenager recklessness. A kid that was actually a genius if you gave him enough time for school and could make you anything out of a ancients be damed toaster. That was the Danny they mainly knew. The Kid they took in, let in on the family business and then chose, to the happiness of Alfred and dismay of some of his 'new' siblings, normal life over vigilante life.
Then they knew Phantom. A dead ghost hero that was helping the Justice League and Young Justice to help them deal with the aftermath of the huge fallout caused by the GIW, Guys in White or rather Ghost Investigation Ward. And while Danny didn't know he had apparently worked with nearly his entire family and that time he knew it now. Which was awkward because he had pretty much pestered one of his elder brothers about his condition until Red Hood, aka Jason, let Phantom help him. Ancient, things might get awkward if that secret is lifted. He had done a lot of things Batman, Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, Orphan and Robin had scowled him for. Thankfully they only thought of him as a dead teen hero and didn't know what a Halfa was. So they didn't make the connection, and he had yet to meet Signal, aka Duke as Phantom.
Now came the third identity, which totally did not happen by his choice. After all officially he hadn't accepted the throne yet and would only get it once he was dead dead not half dead. To bad ancient texts don't care about formalities. So when trouble hit the fan really hard the Justice League Dark had the bright Idea of getting some other worldly help. Which in other words was summoning the Ghost King. Oh boy, was it fun to learn that way that Danny could get summoned against his will. Clockwork did not give him that warning when he told him about the future of his afterlife. But best of all? Oh he doesn't get summoned as Phantom which would have made things maybe a bit easier, oh no. Life wasn't easy. He got someone's in some as a super weird black-green mass of a formless eltrich body with sharp teeth, claws and glowing green eyes with no pupils or irises. Hell Danny even scared himself when he saw his own reflection in a window and he didn't have a single idea how to change his form.
Let it be known that Danny acted then on purpose like he didn't know a single person in that room he had been summoned in right out of his bed and that he wasn't staring at his adoptive father like he needed help who interpreted his stare as the ghost king sizing him up. And Danny knows this because Dick had a good laugh about that at the dinner table with the rest of his siblings.
Now a smart person would probably come clean to his family and explain to them the three identities they knew him under and how they are connected.
To bad Danny wasn't 'smart' when it came to things like that. No in his panic and newfound awkwardness of the situation of what he had done on separate occasions with his identity as Phantom AND Ghost King, he decided to keep acting like he didn't knew them personally like the truely does. Really how hard could that be? Besides he liked the way his family treated him now. He didn't want to get treated differently because he was half dead, or a Ghost King. He liked that his family was treating him as plain old Danny who had an obsession with space and was their quirkily little brother with powers.
So that gave him even more incentive to keep the act up. Even if it was hard at times, especially if he got summoned out of nowhere. It would be easier if he could get a hang of the duplication power. He even had played with the thought of getting one of his ghost rogues to help but his family was perceptive. Maybe not perceptive enough to realise that all three identities were one and the same person but they would notice if Danny acted just slightly different or if Phantom was more of then usually. But somehow he still managed to keep it up.
But it was the hard way that he learned, Danny was bad at doing the 'talking' and realized that maybe Jazz was right and he was going to slip up one day causing huge misunderstandings like right now.
He stared down at Batman and Nightwing in his Ghost King form. Red Hood had his guns pulled on him, Wonder Woman and Superman looked like they where going to try to pull back Batman any second now while Nightwing, maybe at first was going to try to calm down the bat but Danny was pretty sure the eldest bat kid was now fiercely glaring at him too. He was also pretty sure the only reason he didn't see Red Robin or Robin threaten him too was because their super friends were somehow holding them back. For their own or his safety he doesn't know at the moment.
Because apparently the Bats did not fear fighting otherworldly beings to protect one of their own.
"What did you just say about Danny Fentons death?!" Batman grunted out and Danny just knew his adoptive father was glaring at him. Ancients Danny cursed his brain to mouth filter right now. As he had the collective hero scene before him staring at his Ghost King form. Would this be a good or bad moment to come completely clean or maybe he should find some kind of philosophical bullshit of 'All things death belong to him'....
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can we talk about the details in challengers though bc yes the churro scene but patrick hooking a foot under the stool next to him so art will sit closer to him. patrick swiping through all the girls but taking a minute to swipe the guy on the app. the beds pushed together. the mirroring action of art spitting his gum in tashi's hand now and in patrick's hand then. everything, just everything.
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