#whether that be because of the people in that fandom or the canon media itself

[mostlyihyperfixate]

idk who needs to hear this, but as your resident older-fandom-lady I'm gonna tell you: if you don't enjoy your fandom anymore, move on.

I had somebody apologize to me the other day for no longer being that interested in Ace Attorney, and, like, there's just no reason for that! To borrow a meme from yesteryear, if it doesn't spark joy, get rid of it!!

And I don't mean this in the "quit policing" way--although that's important. I just mean if it doesn't make you happy, don't do it anymore. You are not obligated to finish that fanfic you started if it's a struggle to get through. You are not obligated to reblog fanart anymore if the direction of your canon media has disappointed you in some way. You are not obligated to continue producing for or interacting with a canon media that for whatever reason doesn't interest you anymore.

(And the same is true in reverse: Don't make someone feel obligated to keep doing something in your fandom if they're not enjoying themselves anymore. Let them explore new things.)

(Obviously, if you receive money in some way for producing stuff in your fandom, that's a different can of worms.)

Yeah, you might stop getting the same amount of traffic. You might not get the notes or the likes or the reblogs or the kudos or whatever that you've been getting. And if that's an important consideration to you, then take that into account. But I can tell you from experience that it can burn you out, putting that at the forefront of your priorities.

The friends you have made through a fandom, the ones that are really your friends? They're going to stick around. I have one internet friend that I made because of a shared interest in Naruto about twenty years ago now. We often don't share the same fandom nowadays (we're both into Ace Attorney, as it turns out, but that was completely random that we discovered we were both playing it simultaneously), but we still talk to each other daily, still send each other gift packages a couple of times a year, still chat with one another about the interests we don't share. The friends you've made through that fandom that are truly your friends aren't going to care that you've moved on because they're your friends, not the fandom's.

Maybe you'll grow back into your fandom. Maybe you just need a few weeks, a few months, a few years, and you'll come back. It's also okay just to take a break. But do that if you need to do it.

Life's not particularly fun or easy for anyone. Fandom should be a hobby, not a job; something to distract you for a little while from the pressures of reality, not something that adds to your daily grind.

Please just try to enjoy yourselves when it comes to your fandom, younglings. Don't make yourself miserable over it. Life already goes out of its way to make you miserable. Fandom should be fun.

[springtrappd]

You said in one post that the author of Solar Lunacy is ableist. Could you explain how they're being problematic? I know almost nothing about them or the story itself, so I wouldn't know if they've said or done anything sus. Also, thank you for actually criticizing the Daycare Attendant stans, almost nobody in this site does that.

thank you for asking! it's rare to see, you're right, but it's also rare that people are willing to actually engage with that critical posting, so -- again, thank you! as for your question: oh boy, can i!

first: the basics. dissociation is a psychological response to overwhelming stress wherein the brain... disassociates from itself, placing a barrier between itself and the harsh reality. the most famous dissociative disorder is dissociative identity disorder (DID), known formerly as multiple personality disorder (MPD) or split personality. did occurs when someone without a fully-formed identity (read: a child) undergoes such severe stress that the 'brain' dissociates from its identity itself, creating alternate identities (personalities) to deal with the things they can't. these alternate identities work together to form a system. it's way more complicated than that and you can read more on it here and here but that's the bare minimum for the ignorant in the audience. we all caught up? good! moving on.

now, the question of whether or not the daycare attendant is a system is a touchy one. i've seen multiple different stances on the matter, seen a lot of arguments, and typed (and deleted) several hundreds of words about it, and the answer that i've come to is that, for the sake of this argument, whether the dca is a system in canon doesn't matter. what matters is how bamsara treats them. how do they handle the characters, how do they frame the switches in personality, the confusion, all the parallels to real-world symptoms -- how do they expect the viewer to feel, what do they pull from the cultural lexicon, yadda yadda. does bamsara -- regardless of their intentions -- depict the dca as a system, and if so, how do they handle it?

the answer is that they depict the dca as experiencing altered identity states, switching (and even blurring) between identities, and even repeatedly acknowledges them as a plural entity.

and it is these behaviours, specifically, that are used to make the dca scary. bamsara's daycare attendant is scary because they experience altered identity states. because they blur identities. because they are a plural entity. because they display the textbook symptoms and behaviours of a disorder most commonly caused by childhood sexual abuse. and it is the fear that this is inspires that makes them (but especially moon & eclipse) sexy.

now, one can argue that this is simply in line with existing horror media, and they would be correct: most pop culture depictions of dissociative disorders are extremely ableist, and have real-world consequences! but what makes it really, really shitty is that... i don't want to think about this stuff. i don't come to fandom to be reminded that people are terrified of what they don't understand, and that that very very often includes the mentally ill. i don't want to be reminded that there are people who don't believe dissociative disorders exist at all. i don't want to reminded that they -- the sick, the survivors, the unlucky 140 million -- are spoken of in the same way as monsters. i don't come here for harsh realities. but solar lunacy is the most kudos'd fnaf fic on ao3, and we all have to live with that.

if you liked solar lunacy or bamsara's content or... whatever, i don't particularly care. i'm not mad about people thinking evil alters are sexy, or engaging with horror content that says shitty things about systems -- it's your life, live it how you please (and i've got a vanny icon so who am i to judge lmao). sometimes the things that make us happy are kinda shitty, and that's okay! our views are shaped by the society we live in, and there is no society on earth that is kind to the mentally ill -- there's no way to undo that, to stop that from influencing you in some capacity. but... all i ask is for you to think about this stuff, and try to educate yourself on the topic. there's nothing wrong with making a mistake, or having flaws -- but there's something wrong with making a space that feels unsafe, that reflects some of the more uncomfortable aspects of our society, that unintentionally hurts people. it's just up to you if that something is something you care about.

i hope that answers your question, anon (and anyone else who's curious). take care, mate!

(edit 13/01/2023: due to some technical difficulties on tumblr's end, the notes aren't quite showing up properly, so here's the link to bamsara's reblog chain if you can't find it.)

[kaizenproductions]

Natsu does NOT have any previous experience with romantic love

This is the (better) Tumblr version of my post from Twitter. Given the format of this website, I'll add some details to what's already written.

Before starting with this, I want to clarify that the motivation to write this post has little to do with nalu itself (it will be mentioned to highlight a point though). Having previous romantic partners DOESN'T really make any ship invalid. You'll find the actual reason behind this essay under the cut below.

This is about how Natsu, as a character, is never presented or seen by others as someone who has experience with love and such idea is never hinted or implied anywhere in the canon material. This lack of experience explains why Lucy thinks he has no interest in it.

As we will see later, Lucy isn't the only one who thinks like this... Let's get started.

Year 2024. Why writing all this? Some weeks ago I was involved in a discussion about whether Natsu was being OOC during a filler (non canon) scene of the anime where he snaps at Lucy in a way he never does with any of his friends in canon material. The discussion led to this...

I didn't want to assume that this person was taking Lisanna as some kind of first love. At the end it turned out that was exactly what was happening. The proof? The most platonic reunion ever... with Happy reacting the same way as Natsu and comedy being included. It is important to highlight that Mashima never makes two people between whom there have been romantic feelings reunite like this, with comedy references in between that downplays the seriousness of the moment to some extent. While this post is about Natsu and his feelings, I could also mention Lisanna's reaction to this, something that proves that there wasn't even a one sided love: after noticing this Natsu is the same one from her real dimension, she doesn't start crying because of him but because of her siblings.

Let's ignore the part where this dude started calling me and some other users "retards" because that speaks volumes for itself about his lack of real arguments. After all, he has been fighting for at least 4 years with teens over power scaling, a topic he may seem to be knowledgeable about but actually isn't so much, plus he has been banned from at least one Discord server because of his r4pe threats. It seems this individual was so obsessed with that specific thing that he said Zeref did it to Mavis and that's how August was made... That also speaks volumes about his media literacy and the fact that even if it's true that he did read the manga so many times as he claimed during this discussion, he has serious problems with reading as a normal person. When it comes to the topic of this post, the problem is that he has some influence within the fandom, at least on Twitter, so whatever he says is something that many of his followers will start repeating.

What does Mashima do when Lisanna finally comes back to her original home and she gets a proper reunion with everyone?

After the initial shock from seeing Edo Lisanna in Earthland and the big reveal, this is how Natsu reacts.

This isn't a reunion that suggests that Lisanna is special compared to everyone else in the guild, and particulary to those who grew around Natsu. Also, we can't say Mashima just doesn't know how to write such scene properly... because he's written it at least once (in Rave).

The emotion you can feel in this scene, the way ONLY both lovers are on the spotlight and the rest of their friends are in the background until the end... Well, the difference is so obvious that it's ridiculous to say more. Given how well Mashima handles the emotional dimension of his characters in his mangas, the possibility that he didn't know how to depict two lovers who got separated from each for some time due to circumstances beyond their control is off the table.

Also, notice how the end of the Edolas arc depicts this.

The difference with her reunion with Natsu and the others is so obvious that there's no need to say more.

We can also discard Lisanna as a former love interest because there's no akwardness between them once she's back to the guild. They can be seen playing together and briefly interacting from time to time, so it's not like they're avoiding each other.

Is it implied somewhere that they had something beyond friendship? Not in any kind of canon material. Every time Lisanna is mentioned in regards to Natsu she's presented as a close childhood friend. We have, for example, her profile from one of the first chapters where she's back home and the information of the official magazine that was released 10 years ago.

But what if they simply stopped loving each other due to being separated, as a fellow nalu shipper told me on Discord? Making characters fall out of love is something that Mashima also references (see Macao pic a bit below). It also goes against what we saw regarding Erza and Jellal, who still had romantic feelings for each other despite their antagonistic positions for many years, or against the whole Zeref and Mavis thing. In other Mashima mangas we have more couples like this. Elsie and Justice still loved each other despite being sworn enemies, and Let still loved Julia (and vice versa) when he discovered she was alive, a kinda similar scenario to Natsu and Lisanna if they had been lovers. Given that Natsu and Lisanna weren't even enemies to each other at any point and they were only separated for two years, we can't say they had something canonically and they simply got over it with no actual reference to it.

There was a very good moment to reference past feelings in 100YQ: when Touka includes Lisanna in the group of women "around Natsu".

Instead of offering us a comment like "it's not like that anymore", Lisanna just says something that implies they're not that close. After all, Natsu is hanging out with his team most of the time since it was established.

What's the reason this fandom has been so many years discussing about this friendship? Because the first anime adaptation goes beyond that friendship and the manga omake where both of them take care of Happy's egg, something Lisanna decides to help with because she loves animals and she felt Natsu wouldn't do it properly. The first season includes several fillers that pave the way for a love triangle, presenting Lisanna as a girl who is VERY interested in marrying Natsu when they're adults. In addition, Happy is presented as their son, something that totally goes against the source material. Even if Natsu is the one who saw Happy be born and was living with him since then, Happy is never considered as his son and is always called a nakama/companion/friend.

This long thread has everything that A-1 and Satelight added in regards to Natsu and Lisanna. As we can see in the info provided in one of the first tweets, Mashima let them "edit" the story the way they wanted to and it's mentioned explicitely by both him and Ishihara (the director) that Ishihara is responsible for those additions, not Mashima. We also can't say the additions were something Mashima asked for because he couldn't include everything he wanted in his manga for some reason. This is supported by the fact that Lisanna is never presented in the manga as any kind of romantic interest after she comes back.

There's also this tweet from 2012 where Mashima replied to someone asking him whether he was involved in the story of the anime. His answer is no.

It's also important to say that these fillers aren't canon: they're not referenced in the source material (the starry key arc was, even if Mashima wasn't involved in the writing), they're not referenced in the anime itself after Lisanna comes back and they have no impact in the events of the story during and after Edolas.

Currently, thanks to Mashima's Twitter Spaces, we know two things: he revived Lisanna because some people in the anime staff liked her (Ishihara is one of them for sure), which explains why she's not very relevant and is always tied to her siblings, and he once considered to include a love triangle between Natsu, Lucy and Lisanna after Edolas, but he liked Natsu and Lucy's dynamic by then enough to not introduce such storyline. He also said Lisanna was "だめ" in regards to that triangle that never came to be, implying that she would have been the one that doesn't get the boy in that scenario.

So is Lisanna our supposed former love interest? As far as the canon material goes, no. Was she close to Natsu? Yes. Is she dear to him? Yes, just like everyone in his family, the guild, is (I can't believe I'm writing this in fking 2024). Now, what if there was someone else? The assumption that characters may have dated another (unnamed) character offscreen isn't totally crazy. After all we saw how Juvia dated Bora, even if it was a narrative tool to show that not even dates would make Juvia stop being depressed. However, we can't say there was someone else as more than a headcanon unless it's implied or mentioned somewhere explicitely. We know Macao was married but got divorced thanks to the official magazine, for example.

When it comes to Natsu, nothing is ever mentioned.

100YQ, the official FT sequel, has several pannels that go against the whole idea of Natsu being experienced with romantic love. As I mentioned at the beginning, even others from the guild, and especifically Macao in this pannel, who knows Natsu since he was a kid, have a hard time believing he's interested in love.

This part of the story includes a very interesting pannel that also debunks the whole idea that Natsu felt more than frienship for Lisanna before she was transported to Edolas.

Why would Lisanna's brother react like this over such comment if Natsu and his sister had romantic feelings in the past? Easy: because those feelings never existed.

Even Lisanna is a bit surprised when Touka expresses her interest in him.

Previous romantic experience would also mean that Natsu's relationship with Lucy would be more advanced than it is as of now, not to mention this recent scene.

Natsu is still quite dense with romance, even when it doesn't involve him, and while he talks about his and Lucy's kids they still have a long way to go due to his total inexperience in this area as of now. Someone with past love experiences wouldn't be like this. I could say more about this but this isn't the post for it so...

Conclussion: the first season of the anime did a lot of damage that resulted in many years of discussions, fights, misogyny towards both Lucy and Lisanna. There was no childhood or teen love, no jealousy from Lisanna when she saw how close Natsu and Lucy were as a team and nothing suggests that Lisanna was more than a friend in canon material. Claiming the opposite at this point of the story is useless.

[imakatperson22]

I’m back with more thoughts:

(It’s long but I put a lot of effort into it so please read!):

I’m seeing a lot of concern for buddie’s canon potential from a network/business standpoint. People are worried it will be too much of a gamble for the network to go all in on buddie. Let’s break that gamble down:

(This is considering the sole factor of network strategy and not whether the actors are willing to do it or if the writer’s choose to go down that road. For the sake of argument, let’s say everyone is on board except network execs.)

Let’s start by looking at the environment of the television industry. Back in ye olden days, at the dawn of modern fandom, queer ships were not ever expected to be canon. Those who shipped them had this understanding and shipping largely remained a thought experiment or creative inspiration. It was always JUST FOR FUN because there were no meaningful consequences to it. In this era, it probably would’ve been a bad bet to introduce a queer love story because we hadn’t reached a place in society where it was not only tolerated but rooted for by a meaningful amount of a show’s audience.

Today is an entirely different ball game. Today queer people have gained enough power in society and proven they will consume media involving queer romance enough to make it profitable to include these plots. Today, we as a community have enough allies who also have a desire to see our stories told. Coupled with internet fanfiction and social media platforms, we now have the opportunity to engage in a pseudo dialogue with those who produce content. Now, shipping and fandoms have reached a point where our voices and our opinions do actually have weight to them. Now, we have the opportunity to affect change to a piece of media. We have somewhat of a say. There are now consequences to our actions.

It’s a risk, yes, to get the two (until recently, presumably heterosexual) main macho male leads together because of homophobia. But this show already has a lesbian couple. The viewers who will leave if buddie gets together because “the writer’s turned them gay” are probably not the same fans who are tuning in every week without fail to watch their favorite characters. They’re more likely casual viewers. They come and go, drifting in and out because it’s something to put on in the background or because the rescues are interesting. So yes, it’s quite possible viewers abandon the show due to buddie canon, but these fans were likely not a solid, dependable group in the first place.

On the other hand, it IS also a gamble to NOT make Buddie canon. This is the (flag)ship (flagship ship?) of the show. Not every loyal viewer ships them, but probably most do, and they do so strongly. If they shut the door on Buddie becoming canon, this will absolutely alienate a hefty chunk of the shows viewers as well. If they don’t walk the line close enough on the “will they, won’t they”, these fans will get frustrated with the lack of payoff and leave. Gone are the days where fandoms stay satisfied if the show tosses them a crumb, a wink in their direction, for their ship because now the option for more is on the table. We know the network knows what we want. We know they see us asking for it. Ignoring it in and of itself is a decision. Competition is stiff and if you decide not to capitalize on fans’ desire for queer romance, they have other options. If they choose to not make buddie canon, many of these viewers will also abandon the show. The difference is this group is the one who’s coming back every week for their love of the characters. This group is the one generating the hype on social media and flooding the internet with fan edits. This group also attracts viewers.

So. Here we are. Two decisions. Both will cost fans. How many fans? Who knows. But only one will also attract them. And that’s the thing. Keeping the status quo isn’t going to generate hype around the show. Only one decision will bring new viewers in. How many people have we seen online say “I’ve never watched this show before, but now that I’ve heard about it, I’m curious.” How many of you reading this came to this show for that reason? We’ve already seen this happen with the bisexual Buck storyline. The ratings for that episode are the highest in the season. The internet is abuzz about it.

Another unique position the show finds itself in is that all the groundwork for a Buddie storyline has already been laid. They could easily avoid falling into the trap of shameless bad fan service because the ball is already tee’d up. They just need to knock it out of the park.

I firmly believe that making buddie canon, if the story is told with skill and care, is the right bet. I believe that not making buddie canon is a greater risk to the show’s revenue. From a business standpoint, buddie canon is the better choice. Whether or not the network execs choose to do so remains to be seen, but I have hope.

If you’re still here, thank you for reading. Here’s a cookie as your reward 🍪.

[thatonefandomjumper]

If you were able to make Valdangelo canon how would you write them ?

Very good question.

The thing is, Valdangelo is a relationship that I feel had so so much potential due to how the characters were individually written, but at the same time, I really don't trust that Riordan would have done them justice just on account of how Heroes of Olympus was written as a whole. To really make their relationship satisfying, I'd probobly need to make some substantial rewrites to the series as a itself.

But for simplicity sake, let's say we're keeping all big plot points and beats the same with the only difference being that Valdangelo is endgame.

House of Hades would be the most logical place for the two of them to shine, considering Nico was, uh, quite occupied during Mark of Athena. Leo is canonically very spooked by Nico's mere existence on the ship and Nico prefers to keep to himself most times. Not only that, but the two places they each spend the most time is not only the most isolated parts of the ship but also, sort of the furthest away from each other (Crows nest and Engine room).

Not only that, but these two are so bad at normal human interactions that the only way they could genuinely start to open up to each other and find that they are oh so eerily similar is for some outside factor to push for it to happen.

Whatever that is, and no matter how it happens, the biggest thing the two of them need is just a conversation. Genuinely, I think that's all that is needed for something to happen. Something romantic? Not necessarily, but hoo-boy if they opened up to each other in one way or another things would never be the same.

There will always be a terrifying thought of "Oh god, you see right though me and I see myself in you. This is awful I must stay away or I might learn something about myself that I don't want too." But at the same time, no one else will ever get it. To hate yourself so much. To feel alone all the time. To be unworthy of love and broken beyond repair.

So as much as they want to stay away, they inevitable meet again. Possibly in the night, when they are alone, because they would not want anyone around for this.

I am a dynamic girly at the end of the day, so when I ship characters I rarely actually think about the getting together part or anything that relates to that, but were they to get together at this point, it would be in a sort of fucked up self-discovery way where both of them adamantly agree to keep it a secret. They do not want anyone to find out ever that they kiss when they are on the verge of breakdowns.

But evolving from that (And after Nico's outing and Leo's stay in Ogygia, probobly with platonic Caleo or at least Leo feeling obligated to save her out of guilt for not being able to be with her) they become each others confidants. They both dislike showing true weakness, especially of the emotional kind so having someone who just gets it is not only new but terrifying. Whether that be the deaths of their family members or both of their serious cases of internalized homophobia, the other will understand.

People notice, of course, but Nico and Leo avoid each other in public to such a comical degree that it makes it almost more obvious that something is going on. They deflect like crazy when their relationship is brought up and most back off out of respect, but Piper and Percy are the two who speculate the most...

As the journey passes, little things start happening. Leo tells Nico to eat once in a while. Nico forces Leo to take a proper nap. Things the others either don't know they struggle with or aren't thinking about because there ae more important things going on. And slowly, the two start... improving? It was never the intention because they don't see themselves worthy of healing, but the other wants them to get better, and they don't want to lose the one relationship that let's them be wholly vulnerable. It's strange, but it feels good.

Now, I have always hated how angry Nico was at Leo for dying in canon because it makes zero sense in my opinion, but that's a whole 'nother conversation. But this time around, Nico would feel every right to be furious, because let's be real, Leo's secretive ass would not tell him this. There is a line to his emotional openness and telling his sort-of-dating-for-convenience-boyfriend about the fact he's actively planning his own suicide, despite the fact he's planning to bounce back from it is just a step too far. He knows it's selfish. But he just can't.

And it's in the time they're apart that they truly understand just how much they'd started leaning on each other in the time they were together. The bad habits they broke coming back and the longjng to see the other growing stronger. They both sort of hate it. Nico joins Jason and Piper in their search while Leo is trying his best to get back to camp.

No matter how the reunion would go, I like to think that Nico would have spilled the beans about their relationship to the others at that point, so Leo, who had been psyching himself up to swoop Nico into his arms and declare their love to the camp doesn't exactly get that. But what he does get is tears, angry, possibly unfair words, and reconciliation. Their back with each other, and this time, they won't screw it up.

Valdangelo is a story of healing. Of two broken people building each other back up. No matter what direction I'd go with actually making the relationship happen, they will always represent the mortifying ordeal of being known.

Anyway, they are actually impossible and there is something very wrong with them. Thank you for the ask and here's a drawing:

Also, I wrote a Valdangelo fic way back in 2021 where a similar scenario played out if you are interested:

[bibibbon]

I feel like fan discussion regarding MHA has become so boring for the past months/year or so, at least around some social media platforms (I don’t check Twitter). Criticism is the most interesting thing about MHA discussion right now.

It’s hard to have fun theorizing or speculating about the plot because the story is incredibly shallow and plot points only happen to move the story along. For other series you might think more about the deeper meaning of the story themes and symbolisms and give multiple interpretations of the same scene, but for MHA not only do they poorly attempt to spell out the plot for you but they also have too much plot convenience so that whenever somebody asks “Why did X happen in the story?” there’s no deeper reason behind it besides “Horikoshi just wanted to write it that way regardless of whether it made sense or not.”

And because Horikoshi just pulls shit out of nowhere for any reason, it ruins speculation when anything stupid can happen for any reason. It’s gotten to the point where I know readers are dreading the idea of something stupid out of nowhere happening just because the plot wills it. Some readers despise the idea of Deku ending the series Quirkless so they’re waiting in anticipation for the next chapters not because they are hyped but because they are afraid of what the author is doing to their own series. MHA is just so mid.

As someone who has been in quite a few fandoms and has seen their mangas end there's usually huge uproars and widespread criticism of the story because thats kind of what people move onto. I guess what I mean is that by the lack of content and ability to theorise what would happen fans in general move to looking back over at the story and maybe nitpicking details that the mangaka hasn't addressed. Also don't get me started on the endings because it seems like every time a mangaka ends their manga they will get criticism one way or another. Take for example the attack on titan ending that got so much backlash that isayama literally had to modify the ending by adding half a chapter and that didn't even stop some people from whining. Personally I really enjoyed the aot ending and I have almost no criticism for aot in general.

To me MHAs quite different because we can tell it's rushed and the plot points are somewhat predictable. In all honesty MHA fanfiction can sometimes be better than canon itself which says a lot in my opinion.

I have been on the MHA critical tag since December/November of last year so Iam not surprised to see more posts on that tag since the mangas writing has taken a turn for the worse due to various different factors.

In the end I practically agree with all that you said anon.

[slenderboo]

putting in my two cents as an aroace hazbin fan to the whole alastor shipping debate (adding a cut below because this got long-)

before I start, it's important to remind everyone:

alastor is canonically ace and (semi)canonically aro, and that should be respected the same way we'd respect angel dust's identity as a gay man, or vaggie's as a sapphic woman.

"ace" and "aro", while also functioning as labels unto themselves, are umbrella terms for a lottt of identities. Some of which do include the ability to experience sexual and romantic attraction, in different ways and at different levels (demi, cupio, lith/lithro, grey, aro-and aceflux, the list goes on).

So, given all that, is it possible to interpret alastor as experiencing some level of romantic attraction, or sexual attraction? Of course, identities like the ones I listed above are just as valid as any other acespec and arospec identity.

So, what's the issue then? Right now, a lot of fans are using the breadth of aspec identities and experiences as a shield, to excuse them shipping him like they would an allosexual/alloromantic character.

Just to make it clear, that in itself is erasure. And I know that's a strong statement, and that there being such a broad aroace experience adds nuance to any statement you can make on that, but we have to acknowledge as a fandom that there are objectively wrong ways to handle aspec characters, both in the way we discuss them and in the way we portray them in fan works.

And before anyone says it, saying "alastor isn't real" or "fanon content won't change his canon sexuality" doesn't work when real life aspec people can't even look in a tag of a character that's supposed to represent them without seeing their identity erased. It's the way I feel attempting to engage with a lot of hazbin content, and I know a lot of my fellow aspec hazbin fans are feeling it as well.

So, what's the solution to all this? That's unfortunately kinda complicated. Everyone has a different opinion on what constitutes as erasure, what is good rep, how much benefit of the doubt we should give people, et cetera, and so everyone's solutions look different. In a way there also isn't a way to solve it, since aroace erasure is so normalized in fandom culture (not just the hazbin fandom; fandom culture as a whole) that there will always be a significant portion of fans who will ignore, erase, or otherwise deny alastor's or any other aroace character's sexuality.

So, to put my two cents on it:

My philosophy is that if you're going to ship alastor (or any aspec character for that matter), it's best to have an identity in mind for him to use as reference. For example, I think of alastor as sex-repulsed aroace, and I write him with that in mind. Whatever you pick can be a steadfast headcanon, an identity tailored to the story you want to tell, or one you want to explore in your fanwork, whether for fun or to educate yourself on it better.

What's better is that you don't even need to mention the sexuality itself in the work! Show don't tell is a great writing tool, and for alastor specifically, who canonically isn't aware of his sexuality, it works perfectly. Just simply creating with it in mind, asking yourself, "how would someone with [insert identity] experience this?" and going from there, makes a world of difference.

Just in terms of good fanfic etiquette, I'd also make sure to include it in the tags if you're posting it on ao3, just to make sure your readers know what's up and to help with filtering (I personally don't read any alastor ship fics that don't include the asexual or aromantic tag at this point). Bada bing bada boom, that's representation right there!

Since Alastor is one of very, very few ace characters in mainstream media, and even less aro characters in media period, us as a fandom creating good representation with him is really important, especially in terms of the breadth of aspec identities. We don't get much representation, so claiming he's definitively one label or another isn't productive, and hurts the community in the long run. Fanfiction is first and foremost an exploration of canon, so why not play around with what "aro" and "ace" can look like for him?

Case and point, I've seen some incredible ship fics that headcanon him as demisexual and/or demiromantic, and do a great job representing those identities. I've also seen some really good fics that portray him as sex-repulsed, and others that portray him as sex-neutral or positive. All of that is great, and again, even if it isn't directly mentioned: adding subtext, putting it in the tags, and even simply writing the fic with the sexuality in mind does wonders.

Me personally, I headcanon Alastor with the same identity as me; sex- and romance-repulsed aroace, but open to queerplatonic relationships. That doesn't mean fics that interpret him with a different aspec identity are less valid, or are interpreting him wrong. All of it is valid representation.

And that's not even getting into queerplatonic relationships, which is what I put Alastor into for my own headcanons (queerplatonic radioapple fic when). For that, please do your own research, but remember that queerplatonic relationships tend to look different for every couple. They can be poly, include kissing and physical intimacy, or look just like what most people would consider a regular friendship or regular romance.

So, can you ship aroace characters? Sure you can, as long as it isn't at the expense of their sexuality, or more accurately, the representation their sexuality gives to a historically underrepresented group.

That's pretty much it from me, please remember to support aspec fanartists and fanfic writers, and happy (early) aromantic spectrum awareness week for all my fellow arospecs!!

[genericpuff]

Genuinely curious as to if you asked permission to use Rachel’s characters and she said yes or if you just decided Lore Olympus is popular enough to make a fan comic of and are hoping you don’t receive a cease and desist? Can anyone create a remake comic of original content and just change what you don’t like about it and it’s considered legal if you say the characters belong to the original creator? There is plenty of disappointing media out there that could be remade. I understand you cannot use their characters for profit so is just posting it ok?

Yes, anyone can, because it's called fanfiction lmao Obviously in my case the term "fan" is being used loosely here as at this point it's more like "foe"fiction LMAO but the same principles apply. Unless I try to claim LO is my own creation or make a profit off Rekindled, I should be in the clear. If legal action was taken against me then it would set a precedent against all forms of fanfiction, rewrite, redraw, etc. content around LO which are all essentially doing the same thing Rekindled is doing. I think people tend to view Rekindled as somewhat of an "exception" that's vulnerable to legal action because it's an actual weekly comic put into practice in the same playing field as LO (though they're on massively different bases obviously LOL), but there's not much more separating it from the LO redraw accounts or even the genuine fan accounts that have learned how to draw in Rachel's style (and use it to make their own LO self-inserts and whatnot). I had the time and resources and experience to do what I do through Rekindled, but every redraw, rewrite, fanfiction, etc. account are making the exact same statement I am, whether intentionally or not - "I do/don't like the canon, but/so here's what I think it would be like if it went like this".

There is definitely plenty of media out there that could be remade, and a lot of them are by the fanfiction writers out there who are filling that niche within their respective fandoms. LO is the one I want to do because it's the one that interests me and compels me the most to rewrite.

Not to mention, it's already a bold statement in and of itself to say that I'm "using Rachel's characters", a statement that likely wouldn't hold up in court LMAO Her "characters" are literally just stylized self-insert versions of public domain figures. She did not write The Hymn to Demeter. She did not create Hades, or Persephone, or Hecate, or any of the other characters she writes about. She does not own an entire religion or its deities. The only thing that she really "owns" is the licensing rights to the name "Lore Olympus", and while the style of LO is very unique and identifiable, you can't trademark/copyright a style because that uproots the entire foundation of what art is (ironically no one has had an original idea SINCE the Greeks, we all just learn and adapt our styles based on other artists that we get inspired by and learn from).

Shit, there are series completely unrelated to LO that get harassed or otherwise warned that they could cross into "legal territory" with LO just because they're Greek myth comics. Punderworld, Theia Mania, H x P Ficlets, all of these are comics that also tackle the H x P myth, and while they aren't attempting to do the same thing as Rekindled (as they exist on their own terms) it's really disappointing when I see people talk about these comics purely through the scope of Lore Olympus as if LO invented Greek myth. If WT/Rachel tried to pull rank over the story's "characters", they'd be picking a fight with every other Greek myth comic, book, movie, etc. and they oughta know that's not a fight they're gonna win lol

So everything beyond LO's branding is, in and of itself, fanfiction. Rekindled is just another level deeper by being fanfiction of a fanfiction. As long as I'm not profiting off Lore Olympus' namesake or distributing my work with the misconception that I created LO, it's legally fine. Morally, I'm sure it doesn't exactly make me a saint to do it, it definitely took a lot of hubris for me to say "yeah I don't like how you wrote your story enough that I felt the need to rewrite it completely" and I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking doing so is icky. There are certain lines I won't cross - I don't use the general LO hashtags because my content is very critical and my work isn't really for the fans, I don't encourage anyone to "show Rachel" what I do here because none of what I do here is obligated to be seen by her (and I know it wouldn't be in her best interest to see it anyways, she's literally said that she doesn't like criticism so why tf would I wanna show her a comic that exists to criticize her work lol), and I'm not planning on posting it to Webtoons because that's Rachel's territory. I don't want to overstep both in the legal sense and in the moral one. I think it's more than enough for me to just post my stuff here for the people who are seeking it, and not profit off it or directly affiliate it with LO/Rachel beyond crediting.

All that said, in a moral and legal sense, what I'm doing is literally the basis of fanfiction, and I wouldn't be going to such lengths and spending this much time every week putting out episodes every week if I never cared about LO and how it made us all feel, even if some of us don't love it as much as we used to.

[pinkrelish]

I wonder if it’s canon that’s how he views girls and relationships, I haven’t read the book but I saw your brief statement on it. Kinda ruins my view on him a little bit but I know it’s not really his fault due to how he’s treated :\

disregarding googled blanket statements, the author has been asked directly on social media if this book is canon-canon since she was a writer for S4 and thus sat around a table when they created eddie's character, but she's never responded, to my knowledge. i wouldn't be surprised if it was an implied "yes," but the team is avoiding saying that as to not ruffle the fandom's feathers by giving concrete canon this late after the show, and going against popular fanon.

and even if it does turn out to be true-canon, there's inconsistencies, plot holes, and retcons within the show itself, so.

but to talk more on your actual disappointment—once a creator or artist releases something, it belongs to the community. it doesn't matter what eddie's motives are towards relationships if you don't want them to matter. furthermore, he's only 18 in the book, 20 in the show, maybe he does enjoy flings over commitment in his youth, or has a genuine disinterest in relationships, but then he changes. or maybe you prefer virgin!eddie, of which there are plenty of stories out there. or there's a concept you want to write of your own. canon, fanon, he's whatever your preferences are for a fictional man. want him to woo you and be sweet? it's out there. it can be your canon. want him to learn to be romantic while still abiding by him having one night stands in the past because he finally learned that he craves to be loved, and he's not getting it from a girl sucking him off in a dirty dive bar bathroom? i bet there's several long fics along that plot to get lost in. want the book-canon, but it's set later in life and explores his fear of rejection and trauma surrounding being vulnerable? well, you're in the right place.

in summary, it's just one person's interpretation of a character that had several people writing for him, and one person who flipped their world upside down when he played him on screen. there are discrepancies even within the script and how JQ portrayed him, inserting a lot of goofiness, sweetness, and snark into a personality that was skeleton outlined on paper. this has fueled an entire spectrum of "eddie's" people have written on here, and they're all correct to the person who wrote them and those who wanted to read them.

idk, be like eddie and don't care about authority lmao. don't let one person's writing dictate whether or not he disappoints you, gives you the ick. your sweet man is still out there, written by people who can craft the exact story you want.

[soullessjack]

listen i get your frustration about how people treat jack, i hate when people reducd him down to just a destiel baby too. but as an autistic person myself, i really disagree with you calling people that like baby jack ableist. he's canonically 4 years old and had to have his childhood basically stripped away from him due to how dangerous it was. i don't think people enjoying the thought of him getting to have that chance at a happy childhood is as cruel and evil as you seem to think.

hi, I’m actually going to answer this differently than I did at first, because I feel like I missed the point and spent way too much time on the canon logistics of “giving Jack a childhood that he chose to skip and is never shown to want,” or that he’s actually pretty obviously portrayed as a teenager in the show, or that his character fundamentally revolves around autonomy & the struggle to have it, and not enough on the actual ableism. I’m also going to be a lot meaner this time, sorry.

honestly, you don’t get my frustrations. you don’t get that this isn’t some petty fandom drama about “muh fav being misunderstood” or “grr this content bad.” you don’t get my frustration if you think that’s all there is to any of this. this is something with an actual bearing on reality and the entire topic of representation in general, which you’d get if you took your head out of your ass and looked around for once. autistic people are still immensely underrepresented and misrepresented in most mainstream media. we are still seen and treated as circus animals, as punchlines, as lesser humans if not subhumans, and we have to face that alongside navigating a world that is wholly and systemically unnavigable to us. fiction and fandoms are an escape for many people, but especially marginalized people who long for community and representation.

the autistic community has a pretty long history of resonating with nonhuman characters in fiction over time, from robots to aliens to monsters in horror movies. because whether it’s their mannerisms or specific struggles or even narrative experiences, they resonate with us. jack resonates with us. he’s important to us as autistic people—and namely, as autistic adults who very rarely see ourselves represented in ways that don’t depict us as gross man-children, infantilized precious beans or emotionless geniuses. in fact, the very notion that autistic people are inherently childlike or mentally children directly leads into our sole representation being children, and even more into the treatment of us as “precious small beans.” does that ring any fucking bells to you yet?

jack might not have been intentionally written with autism or representation on mind, but this fandom literally builds itself up on coding and unintentional implications. he was also confirmed to be autistic anyways, so anyone still whining should just grow the fuck up about it. also, ironically, most accidentally autistic characters end up being the best kind lmao. but these discussions? these analyses by autistic fans —and even just fans who actually care about his complexities — only exist within our own little circles, and the idea of baby!jack is very much the fandom’s steadfastly going mainstream version of him—so much so that people are convinced it’s actually canon, they die on that hill like it’s some obligation to uphold. and any viewing of his canon character with nuance or complexity, or even his basic personality, is left to gather dust. it stops becoming people having fun when it’s over-saturating and supersedes actual canon. it stops becoming people having fun when it’s actually fucking harmful.

it’s frustrating as a general fan, but downright upsetting as an autistic fan who sees themself in him and has to witness every fucking day — in a community that prides itself on being a big found family no less — the infantilization of traits I and other autistic people express, and the stubborn justification of him being “actually a toddler” with even more autistic traits. There are literal scraps of canon adult Jack content to engage with; of any semi-intelligent thoughts on him to indulge in.

what you don’t get (or you refuse to get) that there is a direct correlation between all of this, the way jack is treated (ie ‘reduced to a destiel baby’) and the ableist infantilization surrounding his character. as in, this content directly feeds into his treatment, which then feeds back into the content made of him, which then feeds back again into his treatment in a horrible and exhausting cycle.

what you don’t get is that constantly regurgitating content where the baseline is jack being actively stripped of his identity and autonomy for the sake of becoming an accessory to Destiel/Sastiel/the Domestic Winchester Family is inherently rooted in layers of deep ableist rhetoric, and you can perpetuate all of that even without any intent for it. I’m not a fucking moron, and I’m not the big bad guy you’re talking to me like. I don’t think anyone who enjoys baby!jack is inherently “cruel” or “evil,” or turning jack into a baby while thinking “this’ll stick one to those retards,” and twirling their moustache, okay? and it’s really so funny to me that you’re trying to point the finger back at me. at least you tried.

what you don’t get is that whenever autistic fans voice our perspective on baby!jack, we’re fucking ignored. we’re fed the same rotten slop over and over and over again. “But we want him to be happy!” “But it’s an AU, it’s not canon!” “But he actually is a baby because XYZ!” “But, but!” Buts are not an argument, they’re the thing you still haven’t found a way to pull your heads out of. maybe the lack of oxygen from so many people in one small dark space is why you’re so fucking stubborn to understand this.

you wanna know what is cruel? being told that you are doing something hurtful, something harmful and something that painfully reflects real life struggles a real community goes through, and shrugging it off. being aware of the value something brings to someone else, and stripping it away simply because it doesn’t matter to you personally. finding another But or a corner-cut to excuse yourself from blame. you didn’t have the decency to listen when general fans said “hey this is kind of annoying can we treat him like an actual person,” and you don’t even have the decency to concede when autistic people are saying this is a deeply wrong thing to do.

if you have to ignore an entire community’s voice to feel better about the content you’re making that directly hurts them, if you don’t personally think it’s harmful or even real because autistic struggles are never real, then I am well within reason to assume you’re not a good person. it’s one thing to do something wrong because you’re uninformed, and it’s another thing entirely to continue to do that when you’ve been informed, and simply decided that it wasn’t worth changing or stopping.

believe me, as an autistic person I am well used to being isolated, to not being anyone’s priority in this capitalistic circle of hell. I am ready to expect my struggles and existence to be tokenized for somebody else to feel good, or squeeze money from. Im used to seeing movies portray my experience as some Manic Pixie Star-seed or creepy overgrown child. I know the world doesn’t care about me. But I don’t think I’m asking too much for this, the big found family fandom that’s been shown to care so much about every other problem, to care about me. To listen when it’s hurting me, or uplift something I care about.

I don’t think I’m asking for anything less than this family to actually treat me like I am part of it. But can you even do that?

[rxttenfish]

Asking because I’m extremely curious about this, how did MonProm’s writing get different over time? I remember you saying that the lore and characters feel different, and that it's missing sincere character interactions, too. I know almost nothing about the lore and I’ve only seen a few people mention the characters, so I’d be interested in a rundown of what aspects you think got worse in the series

I wouldn’t mind a very long response since I’m not that active in the fandom, I need to catch up on what happened

sorry for taking so long to answer this! i kinda waffled on it for a long bit, mainly because i started doubting myself again, and whether or not this was me simply overreacting or being tinted by nostalgia or simply being extremely picky and choosy in what i like (the last of which is true, i seldom get into fandoms at all for this reason and stay away from most popular media, but i wasn't sure if it applied here). i've posted about it already, but i'm in the middle of a psychotic episode where i can't feel a lot of pleasure to begin with + most things i do experience ending up solidly in the "very bad" category, so as you can imagine, i really didn't want to mislead and check that i was actually in objective reality.

as it is, this is also when a lot more screenshots started to be posted in the monster prom tag, and that helped me bridge the gap back into returning to the games themselves and feel like i was making a more accurate judgement. if you're one of those people who have been posting screenshots, i sincerely thank you, and i appreciated seeing you in the tag greatly.

for those not in the know — i've been in the monster prom fandom since it first released, prior to even the first additional ending to be added (the "Punch the sun" ending, and i recall the minor fandom drama that happened at that time due to it). my impression of monster prom is very much influenced by this, as what got me into the first game was the fact that the characters genuinely seemed to care for each other and were friends with each other (not merely tolerating each other's presences nor dressing it up, they sincerely thought of each other as friends and were open about that fact), on top of the wide variety of small details and statements that, if taken at face value, could create compounding complexity in the lives of each and every character and had wider implications for their lives.

no, they were not necessarily explored nor even necessarily "real", with so many conflicting events and statements, but i liked this too, because it meant a wider flexibility in what you could imagine, helping to create a more tailored experience for everyone who thought about these characters. this was what i liked about the early fandom too. what was baseline "canon" was so vague and minimal that you could have wildly different interpretations of the same characters' histories and relationships with each other. you would have radically different perspectives on what the world itself looked like, what it was like, that there wasn't really any wrong answers so long as their personalities remained the same. this is where you got the old headcanon of polly and liam being childhood friends who knew each other as humans, or that the world of monster prom was post-apocalypse where humanity itself had gone extinct or only existed in tiny pockets, or my personal headcanon that both monster and human society existed right next to each other and had minimal crossover for petty cultural reasons. this was also prior zoe-as-ro, and there were wildly different interpretations of zoe's personality, with most going for a far more disquieting creepy-cute than the deep nerd we got.

this is why you get stuff like the timeloop theory, where everyone is repeating the same weeks leading up to prom over and over, and are perhaps vaguely aware of it but broadly unconcerned. this is also why it felt like the joke that, the characters were still in high school but were all fully legal adults with most in their 20's, best landed, because it was absurd and strange and didn't quite make sense, but the world itself was inherently absurd and semi-malleable to begin with. realistically, i felt like everyone understood it was making fun of the trope of having adults play teenagers in american sitcoms and wildly casting outside the age range, but for more in-universe explanations it wasn't any different from the way that you would have a large, dramatic ending in which everything changed, but then you'd restart and everyone would be right back at the beginning with nothing different, or even having conflicting events in the same run. it was a dream-logic that fit with the tropes and, thus, diagetically made sense.

to be clear, i don't mind canon having a set, well, canon on which it refers back to itself. i don't mind expanding that or including more things which are set in stone. but there was a perceivable shift in how the games handled this over time, becoming a lot more... bitter, it felt, towards all of these different branching ideas and concepts that, yeah, the people making them knew wouldn't necessarily be "canon" because "canon" already liked to contradict itself so much. most people weren't even sold on any one idea, and there was a much greater sense of enjoying and appreciating all the varying ideas people would come up with even if you personally didn't share them. making the characters be out of character was the real crime, because then it didn't diagetically make sense in the same way, didn't wholly fit.

(again, this is not to say fanon didn't happen and characters weren't smoothed down into a simplified personality that fit these varying fan-interpretations instead of the game itself. certainly damien love/lust was just as bad as it had ever been, and everyone loved to mangle his character into a more stereotypical "bad boy with a heart of hold" all the time. but it certainly felt less set-in-stone about it than it does now, with any deviation from the norm being considered strange and odd and even broadly shunned from the wider fandom.)

all of this is setup for establishing what the writing, lore, and characters felt like in the earlier days. the characters were the strongest part, with their relationships to each other being equally as important. the lore played it fast and loose and was far less interested in setting anything in concrete because that wasn't the important part. the lore wasn't the important part, which was what made it all the more intoxicating to think about, all the more fun to play with.

montrip is easily the biggest offender when it comes to setting everything in all-or-nothing terms and demanding absolutism from the world. broadly i blame the hitchhiker conversations for the worst of it, but i think ultimately the way they handled the entire premise of the game is where this problem stems from. it's not really an exploration in the same sense that you might explore the first game, discovering different perspectives and different people with different relationships to each other. it's an exploration in the sense of a sequel that over-explains the monster, that takes the most boring option out of all those that were possible and floating around and settles on something that was blatant, obvious, typically rejected not because of how novel it is but how trite and par for the course it is in the rest of the genre.

yeah, okay. humans know nothing about monsters and there's a "monster dimension" that exists separately from the human dimension. there's no crossover between the two of them. of course there's a big grand-scale fight between the eldritch powers that zoe used to be a part of, from which not only are slayers the main organization against them, but also the merkingdom has some horse in this race too. it's an urge to make things so universal in explaining them, in revealing connecting threads which unite everything that's ever happened in here, that makes the worldbuilding and lore immediately much more boring than it ever was before.

and it didn't have to be this way! nothing in the first game contradicts any of this too explicitly (see the above, the first game loves to contradict itself), and i would even be happy if this was basically canon but never stated or confirmed to be the big overarching everything going on underneath it all. i believe you should probably know these things about any world that you create and have them in the back of your mind. the difference is that you can know these things and keep them in mind, even focusing on things where its very relevant, and still not reveal them. this is why you have lore bibles, after all. every horror writer knows exactly how their monster works and the full underlying reason for everything that happens, but that doesn't mean the audience will see it or possess this same information too, and leaving it intentionally obscure will make far better stories.

which, this is bad enough, but it wouldn't be the breaking point for me if this was all there was.

but the worst thing of all has to be the slow decay of the very same characters that sold me on this world, this lore, this game in the first place. monster prom is nothing without the characters in it. it's a dating sim, it has nothing but characters to get you to play, and liking these characters are the entire reason anyone would pick up monster prom in the first place.

and the first game pulls this off extremely well. it's all in the tagline: be your worst self. they are, indeed, all terrible people. yes, even that character that you just thought of right now. they all have points in the game where they commit atrocities, where they kill or hurt people, where they do inexcusable things that could not be ignored in a more serious setting.

but that's the point. i think there's something very powerful in creating a character who not only do you love and love their personality and the way they interact with the world, but who also are inapologetically terrible, and to have the humor and the charisma be so good that you don't get bogged down in the "this is awful". likewise, it never feels the urge to really go out of its way to justify what's going on. this is not to say theres no discussion of if someone "deserved it", but usually there's still the sense that the joke is on them, that this is still an extreme reaction specifically for comedy and not necessarily something that can be justified. you can have damien set leonard on fire and have it feel earned, without prompting the needed reaction of what it's actually like to watch someone burn to death.

this is what sets the prank masterz ending apart from the rest of the game, and really establishes it as the first real "bad ending". because nothing that you do or happens in the prank masterz ending is any different from anything else that happens in any other run. you summon evil beings from other dimensions as a throwaway gag on how visiting one location raises your stats. you kill other people and damn them to terrible fates. you watch as body horror happens. the only difference is that, in the prank masterz ending, the laugh track doesn't play.

the rest of the game and the writing echoes this philosophy, this careful interplay of tropes that keeps everything tongue in cheek and yet sincere enough to make sure emotional beats still land when they're needed. the characters feel true to themselves and their own emotions, even when the world is extreme and excessive, when everything else runs on comedy logic.

this is also what i noticed failing first as time went on.

like i said, fanon has always existed and there's always been very specific ideas as to what characters are like in the same way fanon always flattens down characters into the same tropes over and over. scott is stupid and innocent and doesn't know what sex is. damien is violent and hot and too cool for anyone else. miranda is the idiot girl character. repeat over and over and over until you get sick of it.

but it's been an issue as time has crept on that canon has started to approach fanon and began to merge with it. now, scott is so innocent that he can't even curse. polly starts being mean to her friends and saying things that would be very hurtful to hear. the merkingdom isn't really super evil and fucked up, it's just miranda that's like that. they become simpler, easier to digest, streamlined for social media posts and mass-sharing. they become less and less subversions of existing tropes and moreso just another example of them, something else to add to the collection, not their own individual stories.

even further from this, what more complex traits they had are now stated and not shown. polly is stated to be smart and clever in a way that her party girl persona doesn't imply and to be sincerely rather down to earth with the people she cares about, but we seldom ever see this anymore unless its the game specifically trying to make a point about it, in which case it won't let her do anything that implies cleverness and moreso will just outline it in the narration. vera is stated to care for people in a very genuine and heartfelt way, but seldom will get a chance to do so, and every opportunity for her to do so to their faces is missed while she will just outright state it later. it does not feel consistent, it does not feel like any of these are intended reads of their actions. it feels like the devs have something they want to do but no idea on how to actually do so. and forget it if you want these traits to manifest in small ways that show up in unrelated moments and scenes.

the dialogue becomes harder and harder to tell between each speaker, if you are just looking at what's said and not at the pictures attached to it. the characters' distinct voices have been eroded away, so that they speak more and more like each other, relaying the same terms and ideas in the same words. perspective becomes a suggestion, instead of a must.

this is something that started back in monster camp too, as all of the endings in that game felt ultimately the same as every other ending. it's very hard to place or define the full reason why, why there feels like there's no emotional stakes nor investment, why everything feels moreso like selecting different coats of paint and trying to find all the different ending pictures rather than being interested in exploring the characters as characters.

stranger yet, the series that started with the tagline of "be your worst self" has experienced a kind of... softening, for lack of a better word? what i mentioned about being able to handle the balance between terrible people who do terrible things and the light tone of the game starts to change, as abruptly the same characters who were down with violent murder in the first game start to lose their nerve, acting more and more on more typical morality. it's one of those things that feels like it's starting to damage the tone, as abruptly it's not as absurd as it used to be, demands less suspension of disbelief which could buffer and support the rest of the setting on it. there's even a part in one of the endings in montrip which involves current-polly and current-scott looking back on their monprom selves and reacting in horror at how violent and careless their pranks are, in a way that fundamentally felt like it was undercutting and disparaging all the things that felt fun and made monprom what it was.

which is odd, really, because more and more i feel like the characters in these games like each other less and less. the friendships and genuine enjoyment of each others company that brought me to this game in the first place has gone. now they don't mention each other as much, don't care for each other's feelings and reactions as much, aren't as willing to support each other. they are more and more found on their own, relied on their own, seem to seek out contact and interaction with their own friends less and less. it feels like they're all separating out into their own worlds, but also feels like they wouldn't willingly want to interact with each other if they weren't already forced together by some other outside contrivance.

if anything, i'd compare it to every other dating sim out there, where you, the player, are the most important person in these characters' lives, and they only feel ambivalent or antagonistic towards every other character. which, again, is not why i picked up monster prom or why i liked it so much in the first place.

and it's because of this that it feels like the current state of the series has to focus on its increasingly weak worldbuilding and lore, trying to form a more serious foundation without character relationships being so tightly bound together, without the characters themselves being more developed and rich, without an aspect of absurd humor to rely on.

more and more i've noticed monprom has to rely on referencing other series to make itself funny and create humor, which, again, it's always done. it was just easier to ignore back then, if you didn't know what was being referenced, because there was always more going on in the exact same scene to bolster it and give context clues as to the setup and punchline at play. it feels like the current games are much more dependent on you knowing pop culture references in order to have any fun with it, and i'm someone who, again, is very picky in what i like or what i'll seek out. i'm not interested in a stream of references about other things that i would much rather be doing than playing through a game that feels like it hates that i like it at all, when i could, again, just be engaging with the thing that takes itself seriously and knows what it wants.

[octolingplush]

being aroace in fandom spaces is kinda hard, actually.

(a note before i continue: this is based mainly on my experience in the Genshin Impact fandom.. on places that aren’t Tumblr. of course, fandom is diverse, and if you experienced any of this.. yeahhhh…)

for a lot of fandoms, the main grip people have on the media produced is around the characters, rather than the world.

people will see themselves in these fictional people, placing them in situations and making up little ideas on things not really shared.

and with queer people, that leads to a lot of headcanons of being, well, queer.

and eventually, fandom will lead to pairings. people will put two characters together, whether it be on personality, appearance, story, or a myriad of other things.

and when a ship gets popular, mainstream even, people are very quick to defend it.

how does this relate to being aroace? because people will defend their favorites against anything that might suggest the person is against their pairing.

in a few fandoms, i’ve seen people call aroace an excuse to not ship people. that’s right: some people in fandom see aroace headcanons a way to call them wrong. characters being called aroace will have angry fans raving on about how you’re “erasing rep” or comparing you to people who put characters in straight pairings (which is another thing itself). i’ve seen people, allo people, call popular characters aroace so others won’t get mad for not liking a rarepair. a character could blatantly say (or their story could say), they don’t make close relationships, and people would twist that away from the aromantic and asexual spectrum (aromantic specifically). and that doesn’t even touch on how a lot of allo fandom-goers don’t even acknowledge identities such as aplatonic—ones that seem strange or even alien to them.

and that doesn’t even include canon a-spec characters. or characters where asexual/aromantic is a commonly accepted headcanon.

allos that ship these characters will, without fail, say that “asexual and aromantic is a spectrum!”. now, i’m not saying it’s not true, because it is. but that point isn’t being thought about, especially in the way these relationships are portrayed. ace-spec and aro-spec relationships (based on the experiences of others i’ve seen, here and elsewhere) are inherently different than two allo people. being aro/ace (or aspec in general, really) makes you different. how the individual aligns with romance/sex/love in general is different, but the difference is something that a lot of allo people don’t seem to recognize.

anyway i’m just mad my identity is often seen as an “excuse” to allo people

(note 2: if you can guess which genshin ship i’m talking about you get a virtual high five)

(note 3: this is going up on valentine’s day [in my time at least lmao] specifically because i feel like it’s important to take note of this while going through fandom. maybe next time you can spot it and point out how harmful it is :p)

[antianakin]

@theneutralmime

I think everybody has certain things where they prefer the fanon/headcanon version and certain things where they prefer canon. I know I do.

For example, I like to headcanon that, in a scenario where Anakin turns back earlier and he and Obi-Wan are both still alive but Order 66 still happened, that Obi-Wan would not and could not remain friends with him. He might forgive him, but that forgiveness would look more like choosing to let go of his own anger and do what he could to help Anakin let go of the darkness for the sake of the galaxy. In canon, we see Obi-Wan seem pretty happy to stand next to Anakin as a ghost, with the implication that he's decided bygones are bygones and he's just happy to have his brother back or whatever. But that doesn't work for me, so my headcanon is that the only reason he can do that is because they're both dead and still semi part of the Force at that point, so there are things Obi-Wan can let go of in death that he couldn't have done in life.

A LOT of my favorite ships are ships that don't exist in canon because I don't LIKE the ships that exist in canon, and I prefer to allow my faves to find happiness with characters I like better.

But I also prefer the way Lucas's canon handles the Jedi, their culture, their teachings, their position within the narrative, etc. I tend to HATE the way fandom treats the Jedi, I hate their headcanons about the Jedi being "dogmatic" or "old-fashioned", I hate the headcanons about their relationships with the clones most of the time because so often it treats the Jedi either like abusers or like children.

And there are some canon ships I absolutely ADORE and never want to change anything about them ever.

So I don't think it's inherently a bad thing for people to prefer their own headcanons or a popular fanon over canon. It's not even inherently bad for fanon to become so popular that people might not realize it's fanon sometimes. What gets frustrating is when people act like it's canon and get rude at people who don't adhere to a particular fanon/headcanon in their own interpretations, whether they prefer their OWN headcanon or canon itself. You see this primarily in the debate over the Jedi and the way this idea of the prequels being about how the Jedi were corrupt was always the intended message, and people are just SO attached to this that even when they're shown multiple quotes from Lucas himself saying otherwise, they'll refuse to believe it or they'll just dismiss Lucas's intentions and decide that their interpretation means more than the author's actual narrative. And like, if the only way someone is capable of enjoying Star Wars is to view the Jedi as abusive monsters, then fine, whatever, that's their deal. But it should be recognized AS A HEADCANON, as a personal interpretation of the media, and NOT peddled as the intended narrative of the story when it's so easy to find examples of the author saying otherwise.

Headcanons and fanon can be SO MUCH FUN, there's so many that I've seen people come up with that I have adored, I've come up with a lot of my own that I still really like and have fun playing with from time to time. But headcanons being fun doesn't make them canon. It never has.

[mecachrome]

Hi I would love to hear about the elaborate secret wag au you hinted at in the pastries post if youre up to talking about it. I think I need it injected directly into my veins I love it so much

ok note to self i have to stop calling things elaborate when in reality i mean that i think about them really hard before i fall asleep and then promptly forget anything interesting afterward. but of course i'd love to discuss this very vague universe some more!! :')

honestly this is all an extremely self-indulgent exercise because i'm just a huge sucker for the combined secret relationship + famous/non-famous trope, and i will always read/write it for any ship iteration that presents itself! like there is nothing i love more than understated displays of devotion, especially when it plays into the 4th wall socmed fuckery space of one half being famous and having an otherwise large social profile and the other being very lowkey and resisting any publicity about themselves... in that vein i can't tell whether the concept is super cringe & embarrassing (well i can & i know it is, but the question is whether that is enough to Stop Me!!!) because obviously lando dating some Boring Dude requires a er... certain suspension of disbelief (also sorry for any unintentional disrespect to maxf), but what is fandom for if not making stupid shit up <3

anyway the secretwag concept also developed from two things, 1) how much i enjoy & endorse oscar's private-not-secret relationship philosophy + 2) lando's extreme loyalty to & dependence on all of his childhood relationships, so the idea kind of took root as "what if oscar→lando what lily→oscar (and also kind of what maxf→lando)" but just with more of lando's friendgroup dynamix & his streamer identity folded into the mix. the origins of their rship are what remain the most ambiguous & handwavey 2 me but in short they'd somehow meet when they were younger (maybe oscar is the same age as lando, maybe lando stayed in school longer, maybe oscar moved to the uk earlier and they met during their karting days... idk!!!) except then because of finances oscar decides to go into engineering and gives up on motorsport pretty early on.

(tbh i always struggle with justifying non-driverness in canon divergence fic because i'm like WELL REALISTICALLY oscar would just go into another professional racing category if f1 weren't feasible, BUT ignoring that) i think oscar would objectively be a super adjusted engineering student and would thrive academically / not stew in self-pity about giving up racing, so i really like this idea of like... sure, oscar is One Of The Lads, but unlike most people in lando's life who revolve around his work somehow or otherwise reflect his level of celebrity—drivers, the quadrant team, d-grade influencers & djs & social media personalities—oscar is just... Oscar. he's the smartest person lando knows and his love language is quality time and lando is the one usually doing acts of service for all his friends but oscar always wordlessly & unquestionably reciprocates that for him (lando annoying oscar into giving him a massage every night and oscar conceding immediately like ok... jon who❤️) and while lando has to go out of his way to navigate/manage the emotions of those around him and feels indebted to all his friendships he's never had to do that for oscar because oscar is the steadiest part of his life. and then obviously at some point when they're young dumb & drunk they get fucked up about it and start dating on the dl

(waves hands) anyway IDK but i'm just stuck on the image of like lando at 19 starting his first season of f1 and being raw and uncertain of himself and constantly catastrophizing about the future and trying to build out his brand and prove himself, and even like maxf is racing full-time that year, but at least he has oscar who's away at uni (in slightly aged up verse) and shows up at his place every weekend to ground him... like oscar never sugarcoats anything OR doubts himself OR needs lando to be any less open about his irrational fears so lando is like damnnn your cringefail earnestness and clear-eyed perspective of reality has kind of bewitched me *momentarily healed* etc. ft. domestic bants & the birth of master baker oscarpastry when covid hits and everything goes virtual & they quarantine together... lando starts streaming regularly and there's just this random dude in the background of half his streams and chat is like "???" every time like. Who is that + Why is he australian + Why is he cooking you dinner at 1am. his only social media profile is a private ig page with 50 followers.

+ after grad they keep living together and oscar becomes a wfh developer and i imagine him being very financially steady and self-sufficient but also like... deeply LAZY, so he has 0 ambition or intention to chase anything more demanding and is happy to just do his boring software job + be lando's househusband after hours LOL. like bringing lando pastries at quadrant shoots (ty chel 4 this image) between dull code reviews & expertly ducking away from the landolog camera & letting lando drive them around in his stupid gimmick cars and just generally toeing the line perfectly of being invested in lando's success and caring as deeply about motorsport as he does and even kicking his ass in iracing sometimes because he's kept up with sim racing but also keeping his ego in check and not making him engage in the world/politics/circus of f1 more than he has the capacity for on their off-weekends *__* finally lando is like babe i need to go commit tax fraud in monaco and oscar is just like ❤️ ok ❤️ we can move out tomorrow ❤️ and they find a tiny flat that's deeply overpriced but it's Them and it works. oscar plans his days off so he can go to half the races but nobody ever even notices him because the photographers don't know he exists.... except for maxv who lives in their building and met oscar once and was immediately like I Respect You #fellowsimracer so now whenever he sees oscar they get caught up in a conversation for like 30 minutes about random nerd shit and lando is very discombobulated about it every time. on the other hand maxf has been trying to be chill about lando of all people having been in a healthy committed relationship for the past 6-ish years so he frequently gets into trouble for making bad jokes about their sex life on stream that everyone thinks is them being homophobic etc. etc. ANYWAY YOU GET THE GIST OF IT!!!

[mystycalypso]

...Wtf is wtrb youtube?

I don't mean the show itself I mean the fandom. The theories.

I got recommended a video bringing up a continuity error and I was genuinely curious.

You wanna know what the "error" was, tumblr?

"The games and books take place in the 90s! But Trinity (who he doesn't mention by name, just calls her "one of the main characters") has a phone! This must be an error!"

...

*INHALE*

The worst part?

Everyone in the comments is treating this as theory fodder.

INCLUDING "this is actually about Nicky's kid, so it's Nicky Jr." As well as "They aged everyone down two years, so Nicky is 11"

W H A T ? ! N O ? !

A. Nicky Jr??? No??? Stop just- I'm not even justifying that with a rant.

B. Just wrong! They're in Ravenbrooks Middle school. Now you could argue, "but 11 years old is middle school" however, Maritza and Ivan still seem to be younger than Nicky (Enzo, Trinity and Nicky are the same grade and Maritza is still Enzo's younger sister) now, if he is the MINIMUM age/grade for middle school, why is she there? Exactly. Theory debunked.

In general, that video's theory and 90% of the comments can be explained so easily like- guys- it's not difficult. Tiny build literally just decided to bump this series forward in time. Why? Who cares!

Also, to call this an error makes it seem like ONLY Trinity has a phone, but like- the realtor has one, Maritza has one, etc. Also

MARITZA USES GEN Z SLANG GUYS

This is as bad as the people who look at- Nicky's eye colour change and are like- still calling it an animation error? Like guys- animation errors like this don't go on for a whole episode and teasers.

Just- how does the youtube side of this fandom stretch so hard for nothing then shut down the actual theory fodder? I don't understand

Kaydin looked at the comments more than I had the strength to, so they're gonna rant about it too <3

(Live footage of me entering discord dms with Kaydin when this came up [the autism makes it painful to hear people be so wrong about the hyperfixation])

(Live footage of Kaydin reading the comments [this is a transition])

Operating under the assumption that everything is canon to a singular timeline restricts the creativity of the Dynamic Pixels team as well. It's very clear they're very passionate about their franchise, despite its very obvious mechanical problems. It's very story-driven, whether one likes it or not, so timeline shifts aren't a concern of mine because they don't affect the story. Planting a story in a certain period can lead to some interesting plot points due to what is 'canon' to real life (ie., Theodore being a mechanical genius in his prime between (presumably) the 70s and 90s), but just because it's important in other media like the books do NOT mean it's important to the show. The games could have been set in 2145 for all I care and still had its current aesthetic. I would have been a *little* confused, but it would have been obvious in that instance that the time didn't matter. The story did. Hyperfixating on details like the type of phone or slang being out of place in a media you don't actually know the time period of for certain is ignorant at best and misinformative at worst. Because we do have those details included in the show, though, proves that we can assume it's at a point that we have cell phones as well as the term 'sus' being used by 11-13-year-olds. As in, it's taking place in the modern day, based on the details we have.

In fact, Theodore's technological prowess hasn't even been *mentioned* as of Season 1's release, we just know his house if fucking crazy.

[galaxygolfergirl]

I'm kind of worried about you guys

Recently I've been revisiting the Frozen franchise after taking somewhat of a sabbatical from it for the longest time, rewatching the movies and shorts, and I am currently going through the Frozen 2 documentary. This was mainly for nostalgia, but I wanted to try and understand the franchise from a more critical, technical perspective, and I've come to some insights that I think are worth sharing.

I already voiced my opinions on the frozen fandom in another post, especially in regards to helsa, but since I've been revisiting the old stomping grounds and reading recent posts, it's been concerning to me the level of emotional distress people were having over the treatment of Hans's character.

Now, from what I've gathered from the "text" itself (the movies and shorts, and the frozen heart novel), and from the documentary, I don't really get the sense that the writers and producers at Walt Disney animation have this vendetta against a single character. I don't think it's that deep. Despite the fact that our corner of the fandom believes that the character of Hans has potential, I can assume that the creative team doesn't really consider him to be anything more than a typical Disney villain.

Now I can't really say anything about the potential "hints" at his future redemption or a possible relationship with Elsa, but from what I understand what goes into the creative process during production, I don't think there is a guiding decree that declares that all Disney merchandising material have these hints. Most likely it is an accumulation of random chance and personal decisions down the production pipeline that have nothing to do with orders from the chain of command.

As much as it was exciting to me to read into stuff like this when I was younger, like the Hans and Elsa dolls getting paired together, for example, I think the logic still stands that currently his character is meant to be perceived negatively. And I don't think that's meant as a personal slight against our side of the fandom, that's just what the text says and what the general audience currently accepts.

I don't know if the creative team or Jennifer Lee has seen all of our posts or discussions, I don't know how they personally feel, but as a writer and an artist I feel that the vocal angry callout posts, fandom infighting, and actual petitions to get people fired over how a story should be written, ones that they might have seen, are especially harmful to the creative process. It's not up to fans how a story should be written, and as much as fans may not agree with certain creative decisions, it is ultimately up to the creators themselves whether they take that input or not.

Like I've said, PLEASE DON'T TAKE THIS STUFF SO SERIOUSLY! It's two PG animated musicals that are marketed to little girls! There's a frozen-themed waffle maker! Canon doesn't mean shit! You can play with these ideas and adapt them through other means! Just because it doesn't have the Disney logo slapped on it or has professional CGI animation doesn't mean that your fan fiction or fan art is any less valid or cheapened. And listen, I understand having these feelings; I was disappointed when Hans wasn't in Frozen 2, I was disappointed about how the movie ended, or that Helsa probably wasn't going to become a thing, but eventually I grew to understand that that wasn't up to me. We are not entitled to make the creators do what we want.

We have to have a sense of emotional maturity and media literacy here, not just for this little microcosm of fandom, but for investing in all media in general. There is so much more that goes into the creative production pipeline. It takes a team full of people, hundreds, thousands, that make stories like this work. Scouring the internet for story crumbs and hints and theories is only going to frustrate you more and taking that frustration out on the creative team online isn't going to make your case or help anything. If anything, you're only coming across as kind of intimidating and aggressive, and creators don't really react well to that.

Now listen: I am not trying to police how anyone reacts to a piece of media, I'm not trying to come across as somebody on any sort of moral high ground. I only encourage those who have been disappointed and frustrated to put things into a larger perspective. This is a Disney animated film series marketed at little girls. If they want to bring his character back, that would be great! If they don't, who needs 'em? Please just enjoy what you are able to do with these characters and this story. You certainly don't need validation from the house of mouse.