#when do we see female characters who are allowed to be more aggressive; yet we're never supposed to think poorly of them?

[ratstuckinamarble]

See what happened here is that you captured her creature energy too well so the drawing came alive for juust a bit to crumple the paper.

Every time Lagoona growls a part of my soul heals.

[nox-artemis]

One thing that never seems to change about my involvement in the fandom are the amount of entitled and obsessive fans that I deal with.

I met many friends through Berserk and some of us follow each other across different platforms; I also openly shared my social media accounts since I wrote fan fiction and do cosplay (less occasionally of recently). I love doing both because of the expression it allows me to relate to the characters I cherish, as well as allowing me to express my own sexuality.

For those of you who have been following me for years, you may recollect how when I cosplay, I've come across a hand full of fans who have said some... inappropriate stuff when I cosplay as Casca, stuff that clues you in with how they regard her character AND female cosplayers. Even when I was taking a hiatus from Tumblr I had weird guys sending me inappropriate stuff on IG, which to say the least has made me not want to share cosplay stuff as much anymore.

Sadly it seems my fanfiction work isn't much safer. The guy above has followed me across platforms and comes off very strongly, obsessively so. I'm very thankful that I limited my interaction with him early on when he followed me on IG. My friend - whose NSFW fan art he uses as his avatar - also had similar encounters with him and recounted how toxic and aggressive he is.

A few days ago I answered an anonymous headcanon question that, in all truthfulness, made me a bit uncomfortable. Yes, I write NSFW content but I don't really like hardcore/BDSM stuff, and I tried expressing that in my answer. I had a feeling it was the same guy, but in the off chance it wasn't, I answered (and I did want to write something more uplifting). Immediately the guy reblogged my answer and a few minutes later sent me SOME MORE raunchy headcanon stuff. I put two and two together and instead answered on private if he was the same person who sent that last anon... And the rest of the convo is above. I tried giving him the benefit of the doubt since he's been following me everywhere and I didn't want to immediately alienate him but... You can see how he reacted.

It's still kind of astonishing how there are so many (male) fans of Berserk who treat it has scripture and idolize Guts and yet have so much cognitive dissonance. A lot of these fans see me dressed as Casca and write NSFW content and think they can just go all out in order to play out some cringe fantasy of theirs with "real life Casca." Odd because Guts wouldn't treat Casca like that (and at his lowest point he deeply regretted treating her poorly). But as I've stated elsewhere, many fans just read Berserk for the clout and ego boost and not for the actual themes at hand. 🤷🏽‍♀️

I hope this guy doesn't treat anyone else like this. Again, I've met more awesome people through Berserk than awful but interactions like these over the years as drilled into my mind that just because we're both fans of the same media doesn't mean we hold the same values, view the work in the same way, or need to be friends.

Just be careful.

[cassiaratheslytherpuff]

Ok so I agree that we absolutely need more good and healthy platonic relationships in media. This post though, is making me feel things.

First off, dudes being scared to show affection for their friends because they don't want to be called gay is the result of homophobia; not the result of people wanting queer representation.

Second; there is SO LITTLE good and healthy queer representation that OF COURSE we latch onto what we have. Of course we wish and pray and hope that we'll get representation. Of course we make it up when there isn't any.

Third; one thing is when people latch onto real people and INSIST they're queer, when the person isn't out yet. That's a Bad Thing. This post isn't about that though. It's about fictional charachters, who can't be hurt by people speculating on their sexuality.

4. The post isn't even about romanticizing all platonic relationships. It's specifically about queer romance. It's shaming people who want more queer representation, and not people who ship f/m charachters who are in a platonic relationships

5. I feel like this post is shaming people who are hurt by queer-baiting. Or people who call it out when they see it. Because suddenly we're not calling out queer-baiting, we're ruining a m/m friendship.

6. Like YES ask for more platonic friendships between males. We need that, but don't pretend you're not getting it because of the gays. Ask creators of fiction, movies and shows for what you want to see more of. Write thrilling fanfic about best friends on an adventure.

7. Don't like - don't read! If you read/watch something about people who are canon best platonic friends, don't read fanfic where they're in love. Some people will think they are, or create their own stories where they are. And that's ok. You don't have to read it, or engage with it. We create our own experience.

8. We should absolutely be having conversations about healthy platonic relationships. This post though, doesn't do that (for me). This post doesn't go into WHY people will latch onto any potential queer rep(homophobia and hereronormativity). Or why we see so few healthy male friendships, or well developed female characters (lack of gender equality). It just shits on people for imagining a character is queer.

9. You can make this point without coming off as homophobic, but I have to say that as a queer woman this post feels like a punch in the face whenever I see it. I grew up watching movies and reading books where EVERY SINGLE queer character I came across was killed, committed suicide or died of AIDS. There were no happy endings for queer people (If they were allowed to exist at all). So yeah, I saw friendships and I started imagining, what if they're queer. What if I could have a relationship like that, instead of one where I end up dead before 30? What would it be like if they were dating?

Eventually I found fanfic, and no, we didn't write about the canon queer couples - because they were all fucking dead. So we wrote about the canon straight people. I read about Ron and Harry Potter being in love, because they hadn't died - and they obviously loved each other. And for the first time it was ok for me to be queer, because I could read about queer people getting happy endings.

10. We all have different needs. Someone desperately needs to see good and healthy relationships. Someone desperately needs queer representation. That we don't have enough of either isn't our fault. What IS our fault is trying to take away something that's important to someone else. If I aggressively scream about how Harry Potter is definitely bisexual and in love with Ron, and everyone who doesn't agree is a dick- then that's a Bad Thing. When people scream about how I'm a bad person for imagining a fictional character is in love with their best friend that's a Bad Thing.

Your experience isn't my experience, and that's ok. The problem isn't gay people "stealing" your rep. The problem is too little rep all around.

writer: this is one of my male characters! he cares about his guy friends and loves them deeply.

tumblr: oh! so he’s gay!

writer: uh…no, he’s attracted to women.

tumblr: ….so he’s bi!

writer: uhh…no…….he loves his guy friends but he’s not romantically/sexually attracted to them.

tumblr: ….so you’re homophobic.

writer: