#which is honestly just as compelling i think

[certifiablyinsanez]

Mammon is great ace representation: an essay on aphobia in the Hellaverse fandom

I’m seeing a lot of people be mad about Mammon having a thing for Leviathan. And I’m going to need the fandom to step back and examine these issues, because they are 100% rooted in aphobia. I have been out as an oriented aroace person for over 10 years if you want to doubt my credentials, rather than listen to my analysis, lived experience and reflect.

So. Tell me Hellaverse fandom; why, when it comes to Alastor, who is a character who very clearly has zero interest in others, it is always a chorus of people saying “aces can have sex”, “aces can enjoy sex”, “it’s not harmful to the ace community to use Alastor for shipping material, he isn’t real and asexuality and aromanticism is a huge spectrum”, “Aroace people can still date and have sex”?

But when it comes to Mammon, he is “bad asexual representation”, he “clearly experiences sexual attraction”, “he can’t be demisexual”, etc.

No genuinely, why is this? I want you to examine this, think on it from a place of neutral examination and come to your own conclusions. Because this is a worrisome double standard. This can for starters, be an instance of fat phobia. Because out of the two of them, Alastor is thin, and therefore closer to the beauty standard, which is hysterical considering that Alastor canonically has horrible hygiene, and I don’t think I know a single person who thinks that stank ass body and breath is attractive. Mammon, as seen from the slovenly way he eats, can potentially be assumed to have poor hygiene as well, but it has a very different connotation because of his weight. [Research the connection between thin privilege and body odor/hygiene. It’s very real].

I can spend a lot of time and energy going into the shipping dynamics between the shows, as well as how Alastor is a more “shippable” character in comparison to Mammon, but I honestly don’t find this as interesting or as compelling as to what I’m about to say next.

Because aphobia in the real world is still very alive and well today. In my 10+ years of being in the ace community, I have genuinely spent a lot of emotional energy, time, knowledge, experience, and compassion, just fighting for the right to even be acknowledged as queer. I have vivid memories from when I was first out of the closet at the age of 16, telling ace people across apps and forums that they were valid, that they weren’t broken, that they were deserving of love, respect, and a place in the queer community. I was telling people, younger, my age, and older that they shouldn’t kill themselves, that they had worth beyond what they could do in the bedroom for others. I had to convince people that they didn’t owe anyone sex, and that they were in fact being sexually abused by their partners. I was on the phone with people in tears. I spent HOURS of my life in these DMs at an age where I was a suffering, mentally ill queer child that was also being victimized by aphobia. Still to this day people think the “A” stands for ally. And still to this day people have discord about our community as a whole. I have had to sit and watch as people went from loudly proclaiming with their whole chest that asexual people didn’t exist, or at the very least weren’t queer. Then years went by and it became less and less okay to say things like that, because asexual people finally had fought long enough and had supported each other enough that we discovered our voices and began to use them. So people were finally facing the consequences of saying bigoted shit.

And now that they can’t say that asexuals aren’t queer, they moved on to another group. Demisexuals. Demisexuals by far have it roughest, because while there are many micro labels in our community to explain our diverse range of experiences, demisexual is probably the most well known one. And every handful of months or so I have to use my voice once again to stand up for my people, because an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us, and people on the internet have made it clear that they have no qualms of attacking us. The asexual and aromantic community have made extremely valuable contributions to the queer community that are entirely overlooked because we are not valued in it.

And this is why I have been an outspoken proponent of my displeasure over Alastor being a character that is the most shipped with others, and my disdain for the fanbase has grown even wider after Mammons appearance in Mastermind. It is a painful reminder of all the discrimination I’ve faced over the years, that my community still goes through. Because people are contrarians. Alastor is canonically asexual, and other aspects of his character are reflective of aromanticism as well. Well, the fanbase doesn’t like this so much. If you genuinely pay attention, you’ll notice this is a trend with a lot of other aroace characters. My favorite example is Peridot from Steven Universe, a canonical aroace character. In the show, Peridot goes through a lot of unlearning and growth. The scene where she tries to fuse with Garnet has massive implications for a few reasons. Because one, she is genuine in her desire to understand Garnet, and fusion better. And two, fusion while forbidden on Homeworld, is commonplace and normal in the Crystal Gems. As a Crystal Gem, she feels this is what is now expected of her. This is a major experience in the aspec community, as living in a cis heteronormative society means that sex, marriage and children are all things expected of each individual, which is dangerous and harmful ideology to everyone, asexual/aromantic people as well. Peridot couldn’t go through with the fusion, but that didn’t stop the fandom salivating, and foaming at the mouth over a potential Lapis/Peridot fusion. People were genuinely mad at Rebecca Sugar for never making that pairing canon, when they had absolutely no right to behave the way they did. Let’s not forget how the fans also misgendered Rebecca Sugar constantly. It was absolutely bigoted.

This is happening with Alastor. Fans feel entitled to ship him with whomever, an entitlement that is not seen with other characters. When people ship Vaggie with Angel, there is backlash, and for good reason. Because people understand that despite the fact that Vivienne Medrano said people can ship whatever, shipping a gay man with a woman and a gay woman with a man is…gross. It is wrong, it is disrespectful of their identities, and is forcing heteronormativity onto characters that are strict in their sexualities. Most people are able to recognize the thinly veiled homophobia. But Alastor does not receive the same treatment, and in fact receives the opposite treatment. I don’t know what I could say to convince you that the aroace coded character in a show being the #1 most shipped is thinly veiled aphobia the same way Vaggie x Angel is thinly veiled homophobia.

Now what does that have to do with Mammon? Mammon seems to not be aroace coded like Alastor, and for some reason, that has thoroughly pissed people off. Because Mammon is not the “acceptable” caricature of an asexual person. Most allosexual (non-asexual and/or aromantic people) view being asexual as being synonymous with being aromantic, which shows a painful lack of understanding and at times respect for the diversity of our community. Alastor fits this category, so he’s an “acceptable asexual”, while also essentially being a toy for shippers. But Mammon, with his clear attraction to Leviathan, is a “bastardization” of the asexual image. When we aren’t being viewed as broken, we’re often being viewed as chaste, virginal, and innocent with attachments to infantilization. But Mammon, with his aggressive and even icky approach to flirting with Leviathan, is seen as a subversion of this, which for people who don’t understand our community, hate. And these people are blaming Vivienne for having “terrible ace rep” when in actuality, having multiple ace characters having very little in common is actually fantastic rep. Because there are many labels in our community that Mammon can fit into as an asexual. To me, he looks like a sex-positive, high libido, demisexual. He’s known Leviathan for thousands of years, of course it makes sense that he would be into her, but not into anyone else which would explain why his “posse” are just female robots. This could also be because of his classism, but I genuinely think that he’s just demisexual. And you already know how people feel about demisexuals.

If you’ve read this far and have genuinely set aside your biases and personal feelings like I requested in the beginning, I appreciate that. Because from my own lived experience, the double standard between Alastor and Mammon doesn’t annoy me; it frightens me.

Because what the fandom is actually saying when they do these things is this:

“We see you as a homogenous group. Your voices go in one ear and out the other. If you don’t conform to our values and standards, we won’t give you the respect or recognition you deserve. If you don’t conform to my view of your group, you lose my “allyship”. We do not see your identity as a sexuality in its own right, but rather a literary device we can play with. I do not care to learn more about your community, your culture, or your struggles. I barely (if at all) acknowledge you as your own sexual minority and marginalized group. I barely acknowledge (if at all) that you are queer at all. I do not care about your feelings about societal biases that I might carry, I don’t care about how you’ve lived it, because it takes away my fun and fantasies. Because I devalue your group as a whole, your voices mean little. Your narrative is mine to do with as I please.”

I really hope you can see my perspective and understand the sincere place this comes from. Thanks for reading.

[olderthannetfic]

I'm in a couple anime fandoms, mostly from series I started when I was a kid and was a part of the target age range (but not necessarily demographic bc many are shonen and I'm a woman), and I've recently started re-reading and rewatching some series I thought I really understood. Turns out I had a lot of the characters wrong and so does a lot of the fandom to this day. I was vaguely aware of the Yashahime "controversy" with Sesshomaru and Rin and just thought it was funny how many people found issue with what was obviously endgame (Let's be real, the only purpose for Rin's character was Sesshomaru's character development. There's not much else to her 🤷🏽‍♀️), especially because of the many people saying Sesshomaru was so mature and was like her father, which I partially thought, too. I'm about 20 chapters from the end, and he's so petty, vindictive, and childish from beginning to end! He wasn't parenting anyone and had no reason to initially pursue Inuyasha besides spite, entitelment, and arrogance lol. Did we all think that a stoic personality is the same as maturity as kids?!

Then watching and reading Naruto again made me realize a lot of the fanbase is really odd about Sasuke as a character. I also thought he was whiny, dramatic, and overemotional as a kid, but now he's definitely one of the most compelling parts of the story for me. He's just a traumatized kid with an avoidant attachment style and insecurity complex who's scared of getting close to people because he doesn't want to be hurt again while constantly mourning his entire clan. That and Naruto takes place in a feudalist-based world with a daimyo wherein clans are integral to society individual identity, but Sasuke's prevented from being a socially "good son" in avenging his clan's honor because blind nationalism is good or something 🤷🏽‍♀️, despite the narrative allowing other characters like Shikamaru to get revenge. Very cynical and a bit too realistic for me in that aspect. Honestly, pretty glad I never picked up on any of that as a kid, or it'd be too depressing.

So yeah. I've been pretty surprised from these re-reads and rewatches. No idea what comes next, maybe Sailor Moon or Fushigi Yuugi. Has anyone else experienced something similar when revisiting stuff from their childhoods?

--

Did we all think that a stoic personality is the same as maturity as kids?!

Yes.

[tls12lessthan3]

feel free to ignore this but ive dealt with similar struggles of finding fanfic that isnt ooc when it comes to dokja and joonghyuk, which is a shame because i find their canon relationship so compelling. do you have any recs?

ok i don't have a ton of recommendations because like i said i find most of their fic boring at best and repulsive at worst so i don't bother to comb through it often. also i am first and foremost a yoohankimer so i mainly consume that content. that being said im honoured you trust my taste and i'll offer you what i can from my bookmarks

where there's smoke is a fun fantasy au where yoo joonghyuk and kim dokja are thrust together in a comedic quest to take revenge on the wicked witch han sooyoung. made me giggle a lot

i am the dreadful need (and the devotee) is technically a yoohankim fic but its mostly a joonghyuk character study with special attention paid to his relationship with kim dokja. i thought it captured him well

no rainbow, it’s raining skulls is by one of my dear mutuals and while it is only starting out and kim dokja hasn't interacted much with yoo joonghyuk yet its got a really fun premise and i can't wait to see how their relationship develops

world's end rhapsody a classic. post epilogue fic that i always enjoy

I Will Find You Under The Joseon Moon ongoing au where instead of the kaizenix arc kim dokja and yoo joonghyuk are thrust into Korea's past and have to find each other - without their memories. honestly i was debating on whether to include this one because its not usually my type of fic but i really loved some of the prose and i think they do a good job of selling the premise to me

none of these are very romance centric ;-; cause thats just not what i read very often but they all have joongdok in them so. hopefully you find them pretty alright

[aparticularbandit]

been fighting the realization for a while because i wanted them in a different order but yeah.

haruhi invades hope's peak needs to come before the disappearance rewrite.

-sighs-

[erros429]

we as a society need to talk about how most of yall will only care about queer love if there’s a white person involved. not that this doesn’t extend to cishet couples too because of course it does. but there are far too many white queer people that think they’re exempt from racism just because they’re from a marginalized group and that’s a conversation that needs to be had!!!

[ineed-to-sleep]

I wanted to say, bc I saw someone mention Geralt as an example of a predetermined character in an rpg that works, that yeah, I fully agree it can work! But in Geralt's case, for example, he's a well established character who's fully written before you start the game. He has his own traits, his flaws and shortcomings, history, relationships, etc. He's just as well written as any other character in the story, and the only things you have power over are his choices and a bit of his fighting style(sometimes his hair as well), but everything is made to fit with who this character is as established before the game even starts. Think of the origin characters in Baldur's Gate 3, it's the same thing- they're not customizable, they're established before you even start, and the only control you have is over their journey. None of these are ever meant to be a blank slate, and they're written as such.

With this Phyre character it's like they're trying so so hard to tread the line between "this is a character that stands on their own" and "this is a blank slate you can fully customize". What you end up with is a very "meh" sort of character, who's not one or the other, without enough wiggle room to make your own story however you want and not enough to get attached to them as they are. We get attached to Geralt bc he's a fully written character in the game, you just control his actions. The problem with Phyre is that they're neither a fully written character nor fully yours to write.

[4esthetic-dissonance]

I'm working on a fic and was like 'how in the hell do you make LINGUANG JUN the least bit redeemable?'. I mean, /Linguang jun/ who tossed a developmentally four year old Mobei Jun to a pack of humans? The kid could have died. And then I saw a translation of the extras. It describes lgj as mbj's 'young uncle', says that he 'wasn't that much older than him (mbj)'. And I just- its a hell of a lot different, a Scar type tossing his nephew to the proverbial wolves than it is for a maybe dumb, maybe petty, maybe developmentally five or six year old to shove their annoying technically-nephew-who-in-age-and-context-is-more-like-a-brother-than-lgj's-actual-brother into a situation that the text implies was more frightening than actually /dangerous/. And that- well I can work with that.

[kacievvbbbb]

ive never read nor watched jjk (tho i agree 100% on mha), based solely on the angry rants from my obsessed partner, i think youre probably 100% right

oh Thank you anon! I mean it feels wrong to recommend it because of how frustrating the lack of plot line continuations can get but I definitely still this it's a good and enjoyable story and it's worth a try, if you're up for it!

With MHA I have never actually felt like a timeskip would benefit a story more. Like maybe this is just me but I really feel like they should have been in their third year when the final war went down. It would just make more narrative sense in my opinion why the grown superheroes were so okay with letting these first years lead the charge (yes I know obviously that story wise they were always going to have to be the ones and yes it was a dire situation but still. it makes sense why they would have no choice but to let midoriya fighting but everyone else? with previously established feelings on this? just feels weird) also like it was too late to introduce any second years or other third years and so that just makes it even weirder why they arent fighting. I dont know just having them be third years would have made more sense to me but maybe that's just me.

[genshinlesbian]

Y’all don’t even understand I love Neuvillette sooo so much

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

thinking about fallout 4 against my will

[moe-broey]

ALSO LIKE???????? IN MY MIND I NEVER THOUGHT ALFONSE WAS LIKE. That fucking popular??????????? LIKE....... one thing I've always liked about my online space specifically is how niche it feels and to me. Loving Alfonse so much so dearly felt like. SUCH a niche thing. Like there are one million Fire Emblem characters from main series games who are vastly more popular who have insane fanbases just on their own. To me Alfonse being in top 20 or top 10 always felt like he was an underdog. To me Alfonse has always felt like Just Some Guy and I love him for that. I have ALWAYS been of the belief his ass is NOT getting a Brave alt EVER. You can dream but he's just some guy. A FEH OC. Yeah the Main Fucking Character FEH OC but like. Idk somehow he just felt like. Like liking him and posting about him and drawing him all this fucking time it has always felt like he's an underdog. Guy you have to look at twice to really start thinking about him. And once you start Thinking about him oh dude it is SO fucking over for you (and who knows maybe that's exactly how he won)

[beneaththebloodylake]

i really cant buy the headcanon that phoenix and edgeworth were romantically interested in each other as kids or that they were in love for the 15 or so years they didnt see each other, like it just doesnt make any sense or work at all. but i dont think this actually contradicts the way i think some of those scenes in the anime felt a bit romance coded, or like viewing phoenixs becoming a lawyer for edgeworth as like a romantic gesture? like it wasnt actually motivated by romantic feelings at all but the actual motivations and everything that happens ends up contributing towards a romantic storyline? (from a shipping perpesctive that is obviously)

[coolspacequips]

I gotta give black sails it's flowers for having multiple bisexual poly relationships, mmf AND ffm at that lol

The first was such a delightful and unexpected twist that really puts a new light onto the entire thesis of the show, and then the second was literally one of my fav dynamics in the entire series, they were my favs and all got together??? Usually this only happens in indulgent fic, but not this time!!

(also something high-key funny (in a sad way) that it kinda starts as 'I'm so co-dependant I need you to hold my hand while I hook up with someone else that I was dubiously cheating on u with 🥺' and then they became a power throuple)

[humlase]

If I got a nickel for every time I didn't like a universally well liked queer character for kissing someone without consent, I'd have two nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird it happened twice.

[blujayonthewing]

I'm really glad elyss came several years before melliwyk, because mel's alignment shift from chaotic neutral to chaotic good sometimes feels a little embarrassing in an 'I can't keep my own feelings to myself for the sake of committing to the bit' sort of way, but the counterpoint to that is that elyss, steadfastly true neutral, just simply Does Not Care about anyone other than her own loved ones or anything outside her own immediate interest no matter how much I sometimes wish she would

[relmint]

Heyoo! I just want to ask ya something. Wukong was a souless/bad guy in the book? Or he had feelings too? Sorry if this spunds really ignorant, i'm new here and i still haven't read the book

Wukong was never a souless bad guy. He can be very violent but that's only when demons and gods would spite him. If someone hits him, he hits them back harder. He has a tendency to retaliate brutality but there are times he can be merciful too. It really depends on the situation and how wronged he feels. Of course, he has feelings as well! He loves his monkeys and Huagoshan and if anyone messes with them he'll make sure to smash anyone into meat patties! Sun Wukong is a very complex character with his own goals as well. He's not just some "haha chaos impulsive monkey". He's far more calculated than people give him credit for. There's a reason he's called the "intelligent stone monkey."