#yet i see all those posts here and reddit and etc about how great it would be if we could also inflate their kudos numbers <3 <3 <3

[teh-nos]

tbh i enjoy watching the 'kudos ratio' drop on my multichapter fics as there is no way i could maths it out in my head and it gives me a reason those ones plummet after the first the days that isn't "everyone hated this apart from some initial readers who left pity-kudos for me." same with the "single kudos per chapter once you're a few chapters in" thing - i know that just happens on multichapters so i don't fret about it.

[nikethestatue]

I'm thinking of leaving this fandom too. Honestly, I truly loved and enjoyed meeting fellow Elriels. One of the kindest and brilliant people I've met online. I've been in this fandom for years now, even before acosf came out. But I can't deal with the general acotar fandom now, and sadly, no matter how much I loved all the Elriel/Feysand contents, and friends here, it's not enough anymore.

I didn't signed up for this. I didn't signed up for the constant bullying, name calling, slut shaming, misogyny, victim blaming, pitting women against each other and etc., I didn't know the fandom will turn out like this, like a true hell for someone who only wanted a break from real life. I'd like to blame acosf because most of the misogynistic take started after it was released.

I didn't signed up for all the dumb takes. Honestly now? I felt SO ashamed of being part of this fandom. I was friends with someone on the other fandom when some people from acotar fandom started making fun of the characters from the other fandom and they started comparing unprovoked. It was so embarrassing that even though I am not mutuals with those people, I still ended up telling my friend I'm not in this fandom anymore.

I didn't signed up for idiocracy or delusions. No, all the takes that gets crazier everyday? No matter how much I convinced myself that it was funny and time will come when they'll be proven wrong and would leave this fandom (because most of them hate what sjm writes/loves. They hate Feysand, they hate the IC, they hate everyone but the two characters) it's not working anymore. It felt like "wow, really, I'm in the same fandom of people who actually think (or better yet not using their minds over a simple fun series) like this?" I hate to be categorized with these people.

I didn't signed up to lowkey get called stupid because apparently I don't have a degree on literature, fashion, or whatever. I hate how I saw a woman in this fandom dragging women down because they have "big job and helps to fight misogyny, what are you doing? I'm above you." when she's the most misogynistic person everyone ever met.

The arguments are repetitive, most posts are the same or just being aggressive. I'm actually just staying on tumblr for the fanfics and theories now but like what I said, the negative side of this fandom wins, and it's so so toxic for me.

Acotar fandom are full of misogynistic people (not all, but most) and they are even proud of it. You will see it on every tiktok, Instagram, Reddit, fb and Twitter posts (especially if it's about Feyre, Elain, Mor, N&C), you'd see the horrible comments against women characters and downplay their nasty behavior as "its just fiction" well yes, but considering how they act like this? What more in real life?

You can't have a decent argument here or have the chance to clear your name because the next thing you know everyone will post you on their Instagram Stories or blog with all their thousands of followers to see and they'll proceed to shun out an entire group.

Oh let me say that even acotar Reddit isn't a safe space for everyone. Not unless you stan Tamlin, Lucien, Eris or Azriel. There are people from Facebook who also infiltrates the elriel group and made fun of us on the comments. This fandom is a shitshow.

And yes, since I'm already in this, I hate how someone would literally badmouth elriels to ARTISTS. Who'd tell horrible things to the point where artists refuse to take comms or draws the ship. I was so baffled when I learned this from a friend. Like really? How petty can people be in this fandom?

It never felt safe anymore. And our feelings? Invalid. Only some group of people in this fandom has a say.

It's like suddenly after acosf, we're suddenly invaded by 5 years old who thinks being a gIrlboSs is cute.

And sadly maybe this is like my goodbye letter to this fandom. (Not to Feysand & Elriel, but I'll just connect when acotar 5 is released) It was such a great ride at first, but suddenly became cancer.

I don't have the heart to actually post this on my blog. I stopped answering anons because I'm slowly distancing myself.

I hope to have another pre acosf days, or better days where acotar readers doesn't compare traumas, wanted a woman character to suffer/punished, doesn't put value on women based on their womb, people who thinks they are above everyone and have to hate on female characters in general.

Ps: when acotar 5 drops, I'll never ever think twice on visiting acotar fandom again (but would never say bye to my friends)

I honestly admire you and the other OGs for staying here for so long. I know what you all went through silently in this fandom, and I admire the strength and class on how you all handled it.

That's all, thanks for reading this. (I'll surely miss sending you anon asks about acotar stuffs lol, I love your response everytime)

Oh Anon. Yes. To all of this.

It's a sad anon, not gonna like, it was hard to read it, because it's so very true.

It's been eye-opening, being in this fandom, as someone who kind of older and been around the block a few times. I thought that something's changed. That women talking about women's changed. That women thinking about women's changed. That we've been fighting the same battles. That we were kind of past appearances, hobbies, inclinations, abilities, and we were going to be accepting and kind towards other women. Nope. Not so much.

That's been the most shocking thing for me to witness in these past few years. The intense cruelty that women are willing to subject other women to...over a book. Over a character. It's weird. And if you are not in it, you wouldn't actually believe it. But it's true.

I think it's the anonymity of online existence that allows people to be like that. Or maybe it's like the Salem Witch trials--young girls being cruel to others only to be heard. Accusing and acting out for attention. Maybe things haven't changed all that much.

I will stay because I have to see this thing through. I think the next ACOTAR book will be announced sooner than we think.

But after it's done, after Elain's book is done, I'll be off faster than a prom dress.

(if you feel comfortable, tell me who you are, so if I don't see you, I know you left)

Hugs. Be in a place that's good for you and your soul and your psyche.

[littlesapphicraccoonguy]

I already reblogged this but i don’t think i showed my appreciation enough, whenever i got the notification that you mentioned me in this i sat right up in my bed and shouted “YIPPEE!!!” Like a fucking child 😭

It genuinely means so much to be mentioned AND complimented in a post from one of my favorite artists on this app, like im giggling and kicking my feet rn

This might just be the best fandom I’ve ever been in, I can’t even begin to express how much i love being part of it, EVERYONE is so amazing, and creative, and talented, and talented, did i mention that everyone is talented? I was so worried that this would be another toxic fandom since i’ve seen how saw fans on reddit are…yikes…but the saw fandom on Tumblr is literally amazing.

A few more things i like about this fandom is how chill everyone is? Like if someone has a rarepair there really aren’t any(or at least that many) people who are like “Nooo thats so DUMB! They would be AWFUL TOGETHER! You’re so WEIRD!” Like in some other fandoms i’ve been in. And the fanfiction and fanart? Dont even get me STARTEDDDD. I’m blown away almost every time i read pretty much any saw fanfic, SOME OF YALL GOTTA BECOME ACTUAL AUTHORS 😭 and everyone’s fanart is just amazing, perfect, i love seeing how everyone draws and interprets the characters, i love seeing people make fanart or fanfiction for ships they like, i love seeing people just have fun, i love seeing everyone’s headcanons, i love how intense and serious some fanfics or fanart can be and how silly others can be(/pos, im one of the fanartists who just draws silly things too) and the fan edits are also amazing, i have like over 100 saved on Pinterest(if you guessed that they’re mostly of Amanda, Jill, and Hoffman you would be right). It’s awesome crying over the beautifully made heartbreaking angsty fan edits, and then immediately feeling better after watching an edit of Hoffman with the caption to it being “I’m gonna impregnate this man 🤭” both are amazing and make me very emotional for opposite reasons. Another thing i’d like to mention is all the analyses on the characters and ships, like it’s always amazing to see someone make an entire essay on why they like a certain ship, or why they like a certain character, or about an au they have, or why they have a certain headcanon, etc. i find great joy in just reading them for hours, seeing someone be that damn passionate about something gives me the biggest dopamine boost ever.

I really want to emphasize how much i love seeing rarepairs on here, like seriously. OP was right when they said that the three people who will screech with joy when they see you make something related to a rarepair they like really is worth it. There’s just something so wonderful about seeing someone make a da vinci level masterpiece of a ship they really like(whether that be rarepairs or the more popular ships) I haven’t even seen anyone on here yet who is negative about it, like i was so sure i would see people say “Omg those characters have hardly interacted and they hate eachother!” But when someone doesn’t agree with a rarepair or just any ship they’re usually so chill about it??(at least from what i’ve seen) In most other fandoms i’ve been in, rarepairs are highly judged and shit, so i would just draw my fanart of it and not post it at all no matter how much i wanted to post it. And also I’ve always been worried that my interpretations of a ship(like even a popular one) will be judged. But in this fandom, i don’t ever worry about that! I feel confident in posting a stupid drawing of Adam and Zepp smooching despite how if it was any other fandom i’ve been in, i’d get DRAGGED for shipping characters like them together.

Seriously, i love almost everything about this fandom(my main issue is still with the fandom on reddit…ew), i love making dumb posts and silly fanart for it, seeing all of you in the fandom make fanart, fanfiction, edits, analyses, headcanons, etc. gives me so much motivation. all of you are fantastic people, i love all of you so much, keep being awesome <33

Heyyyy. I wanted to spread some positivity so. Reblog with your fav depictions of saw characters ships ideas etc-

My favourite depiction of Lawrence goes to my dear friend @medicalmalpracticeapologist . She made me like scary Larry. He has that authentic middle aged pathetic divorced guy charm

@gurokatt writes the best Hoffman i've witnessed in fanfiction. He has that distinct "what the hell is even going on in his head" vibe. Also their saw characters as furries drawings make me really happy

@quinngefail made me really appreciate Adam more. Initially i didn't see much in his character but now he's one of my favs. The art and in depths analysis is top notch

Notable mentions!! @littlesapphicraccoonguy for contributing to my rarepair delusions and making amazing cute drawings, please go check them out

Thanks @mandycore420 for introducing me to tappdon and for the amazing edits, i think im rewatching the Ayesha erotica edit of hoffman once every two days or so

@rarilee33 has a galaxy brain switcharoo au where they swap Larry and Cecilia, i think about it constantly

@jennilah 's werepire au is the straw that broke the camels back and made me like coffinshipping

Lastly thanks @clearmarinaa for introducing me to the fandom in the first place. I couldn't be more greatfull

I love you all guys, being in this fandom really brings me joy, with soso many talanted people around. Im honoured to be here

[porcelaintoybox23]

I think the funniest thing about fe3h is how much people hate these characters. The game has some serious writing issues, but even ignoring that, I still don’t understand the rage a lot of people have. I like Edelgard and Dimitri even though I side with El’s philosophy. I dislike Rhea the most but don’t hate her, she’s just fucking nuts. People will literally compare Edelgard to hitler, which is very inaccurate and also doing way too much. Seriously, the holocaust isn’t a light comparison to make toward anything. Be accurate at least. It’s not even a tumblr problem it’s everywhere, youtube, Reddit, etc. No side is totally right or wrong, but people will jump through hoops to bash/support someone.

Edelgard did some morally dubious things and better writing would’ve had someone call her out. Like I understand why, but the people she has around her are seriously messed up, though I understand that she has to play the field. People think that El should be able to enact continent wide change without war, but peaceful means have rarely worked throughout history. Maybe it could’ve been nice for the three house leaders to join up and strong arm Rhea into retiring and takedown TWSITD, but that’s a writing flaw. Like slavery didn’t end peacefully. Also, TWSITD has nukes. I don’t think El had that much power over them, clearly. A real discussion on Remire village would have been a great support.

Dimitri is a mass murderer who killed indiscriminately. Like everyone is, but I really didn’t want to kill those thieves. Still love him, but he was creeping me out. The blue lions are my babies the way the black eagles are, but it’s weird that Dimitri is okay with a lie being told to the populace. Sothis hasn’t been doing anything for like a millennia. That whole convo pre Enbarr was so bad. El could have been forthcoming with something, anything. Dimitri just seemed to be on the opposite side because.

The church is shady and built on multiple lies. Rhea has gone through some serious stuff but she has done and enabled a lot of harm. I understand her grief, but I don’t think it warrants a fake religion, upholding or at least not stopping the crest system, being able to execute people instead of the local rulers doing it, child soldiers, experimentation with the end goal of replacing the person with Sothis, and revising history. I don’t think Rhea is evil, she just doesn’t change anything? Or really just upholds crappy systems instead of grieving.

Edelgard is an imperialist, it’s the 12th century

I don’t know what hate has been thrown toward Dimitri, but the boy has schizophrenia and psychology doesn’t exist.

Haven’t played verdant wind yet, but I think “it’s the 12th century” is still a pretty good catch all excuse.

I admit bias here, I have nothing good to say about Rhea. Woman is creepy. I do like Cyril, Flayn, and Seteth though.

If these characters were perfect, there would be no story. They all have flaws and make mistakes. Each have a valid perspective, well maybe not Rhea

The only characters I can see people justifiably hating are Sylvain and Ingrid. A sexist, womanizing creep, whose depth doesn’t negate that, and a racist. (Okay, that’s just pure bias) Ingrid was really justifying genocide and basically called Dedue, “one of the good black people”

At the end of the day, this game is great for discussion, but these characters aren’t real. Like some heated debate is fun, but a lot of you seem to take this personally.

Edit: if you are replying to this post arguing for something, I do not care. None of these characters are uwu babies and it’s fine to disagree. That is the point of this post. I don’t care if you hate Edelgard and want Rhea to curb stomp you, or vice-versa, just stop insulting each other and making weird arguments.

[kindsoulbuddy]

I just have to say, I’m not new to the internet.

But…the internet continues to disappoint me. There I am, I find wholesome content or whatever.

But people on the internet keep trying to ruin everything.

I’ve been watching Squirmy and Grubs videos for a while and I’ve been learning more about Shane and his writing career, his condition. Also his wife Hannah, etc…

….I go to look up more information about them and I see so many videos/reddit posts/Quora posts pop up, claiming that Hannah and Shane have to be faking their relationship.

That Hannah simply can’t be attracted to him, that she’s got other guys on the roster or whatever and/or she’s just in it for the money. Or she’s disgusting because she has a weird fetish. Or just how “something is off”.

My brothers in Christ…

Why is it so hard to imagine that an interabled relationship is real? They literally happen all the time everyday every where.

What has Hannah ever done to make you think she’s just in it for the $$$ and isn’t attracted to Shane? Oh I know, she committed the crime of being beautiful.

If you’ve ever watched Shane, he’s a really funny and interesting dude who has written books and accomplished quite a lot. But he committed the crime of being disabled I guess.

Please stop 🛑 collaborate 🤔 and listen 👂 to people who are disabled and in interabled relationships. People like Shane and Hannah are putting out information for you for free, trying to educate you and honestly they do it in an entertaining way. They don’t have to.

Honestly the main point here is to stop assuming what disabled people want or need and try to listen to those who choose to talk about it.

If you are skeptical or uncomfortable with some of this, I suggest making yourself familiar with spokespeople like Squirmy and Grubs, and checking out the resources they put out into the public.

I also suggest watching Molly Burke’s channel, a Blind woman who has been traveling the world spreading her message about the Blind community.

I’ve learned so much from her. I learned that I assumed a lot that I shouldn’t have assumed. And that’s the point of resources like these. You don’t know what you don’t know.

There’s a lot off innocent assumptions people make but the thing I’ve noticed about certain people that talk about their disabilities…they generally have a good amount of patience and kindness to people who don’t understand yet.

If you feel bad for what you said or did, try to do better and move on, don’t beat yourself up or anything. Just do better.

I just feel like, if you’re going to take the time to go on Reddit or Quora or Youtube and debunk people’s relationships, whom you don’t know and spread assumptions…take that time instead to put away your phone and go touch some grass.

But…before you put the phone away…

great video to start with:

[urupotter]

So while I've said before that I don't like the HP subreddit, I still frequent it because occasionally I read something insightful. This is one such case, where I read a reading of Lupin that I'd never seen before in response to a comment of mine analyzing the shrieking shack confrontation between Snape, Remus, Sirius and the golden trio, where I mentioned that Lupin was a gaslighter so I wanted to share. It was created by reddit user u/UsuallySiSometimesNo and is posted here with his permission. We had a little conversation in the comments. Read it under the cut

UsuallySiSometimesNo: That struck a cord with me, too. I didn't think about that on a conscious level before, but when I read it, it felt instantly true.

Honestly, I think the strongest examples of Lupin gaslighting are actually done to himself. The biggest, character-defining example, I think, is that after finding friendship with James, Sirius, and Peter, he becomes so desperate not to be ostracized from them (due to his issues of self-worth and his personal brand of impostor syndrome) that he deliberately and routinely feeds himself false narratives about their behavior until he can no longer tell fact from fiction, even as he's experiencing it.

Their relentless bullying of Snape? A childhood rivalry.

Their casual bullying of other students? Kids being young and stupid.

Their clear disinterest verging on contempt for Peter, someone less fortunate and vulnerable with whom they're supposed to be good friends? Just mates being mates.

Even actions taken against Lupin, himself, are revised in his memory to be 'no big deal', because he desperately needs that to be true. Let's pretend for a moment that Snape indisputably deserved to be slaughtered by a werewolf the night Sirius told him how to get past the Whomping Willow. Sirius did not send Snape to be killed by any old werewolf. What happened that night was that Sirius - one of Remus' best friends, if not his actual best friend - attempted to use Remus' curse/illness against someone (which is a big enough betrayal on it's own) without ever telling Remus that when he woke up in the morning (covered in blood and in the presence of a shredded corpse) it would be to find that he had committed the act he was most petrified he might one day commit. In setting Snape up to be killed by Lupin, Sirius, at the very least, risked Lupin's sanity, and, at the very most, risked Lupin being sentenced to death.

Now, I understand that Sirius wasn't thinking about all of that when he did what he did, and I, as a someone removed from the situation (and armed with the additional character/situational knowledge granted to a reader) can even understand why Sirius' own trauma led him to grant such a blind death sentence to Snape (which I think is related to a point you made elsewhere, u/Adventure_Time_Snail, about Sirius' "violence towards those who trigger his fundamental fear of wizard fascists" because of his abusive upbringing). But Lupin's perspective is not one of an unbiased observer. And once James found out what was happening and pulled Snape back before it was too late (which, I would think, was more to save Lupin than to save Snape) and once Remus awoke the next to day to discover everything that transpired the night before, I find it hard to believe there wasn't at least some conversation about the true gravity of the situation. And yet, even all these years later, Lupin doesn't bat an eye when Sirius not only doesn't display shame when the event is mentioned in POA, but offers something akin to regret, NOT at the fact that his actions could have gotten Lupin killed, but that that they DIDN'T get Snape killed: "It served him right...", he sneered. etc. etc.

I think the obvious question here, is 'Even disregarding what Sirius did to Snape - how can Lupin be okay with the knowledge that Sirius has no regret, at all, for what he did to him, even now that they're adults?' Well, we're not in Lupin's point of view in the books, which means we can't hear his internal monologue, but I think a satisfactory answer to the question is that he's done a substantial amount of internal gymnastics in order to get to a point where he doesn't see this as a big deal, or even as something that he has a right to be upset about.... just like a gaslighter does to their victim.

Again, because we're not in Lupin's POV, we can't point to the exact instances that such internal gaslighting took place, but, based on what we do observe from Harry's POV (and based on external knowledge of gaslighting as a true-to-life concept) I wouldn't be surprised if Lupin so desperately needs everything to be okay that he derides himself for feeling bad or betrayed, that he calls himself stupid for thinking terrible things that have happened to him are a big deal, that he wars with himself about how people who are his friends and who are so good to him and who are better friends than he thinks he deserves could possibly do something to harm him/others, and that he beats down whatever emotions and senses and gut feelings he has that tells him something his friends have done might be very wrong. What we see in the books is a man who makes excuses for his friends and harbors a warped perception of reality in much the same way victims of gaslighting do, and he seems to exploit his own insecurities in order to instill doubt in his own experiences in much the same way perpetrators of gaslighting do.

I can't help but think that, by the time Lupin tells Harry that Snape harbors a particularly strong hatred for James because James was a better Quidditch player, Lupin has become so adept at gaslighting himself that he actually believes it.

tl;dr: One of Lupin's defining characteristics is that he gaslights himself out of a desperate need to be liked by others, since he has a difficult time liking himself and seems to believe all of his relationships are incredibly fragile.

Urupotter:

This is a fascinating reading on Lupin that I've never seen. I don't read him the same way, in that I think Lupin actually does know that what he's doing is wrong, he just doesn't have the moral courage to act on his conscience. (I view him as the anti Snape, great conscience, but abysmal moral courage, while Snape had unbelievable moral courage but a shitty conscience. Their arcs are about growing their moral courage and their conscience respectively) Realizing that his negligence almost got Harry killed is what triggers his arc, concluding when he goes back to Tonks and Teddy after running away, taking responsibility for his actions for the first time.

But this reading is so interesting that I'll have to reflect on it. Do you mind if I post it on my Harry Potter tumblr blog? I'll credit you of course, I would just like to discuss it with my followers. Of course if you don't want to I won't.

UsuallySiSometimesNo:

Honestly, I think the lack of in-depth conversation about Remus Lupin (at least compared to fan favorites Sirius Black and Severus Snape) is a missed opportunity and a shame. Don't get me wrong, I can discuss Sirius and Snape until blue in the face, but Lupin's arc is just as powerful in an understated (and often underestimated) way. The muddy, oversimplified truth is, without the fatal-flaw decision making of all four Marauders throughout their lives, the series of events proceeding the first chapter of the first book don't happen, and the story we all know and love never comes to be.

And speaking of sparking a discussion about Lupin...

I think Lupin actually does know that what he's doing is wrong, he just doesn't have the moral courage to act on his conscience.

You know what? I agree. And that's what makes him so interesting, I think. He is constantly and dependably full to bursting with internal conflict. When his friends are wrong/do something wrong/say something wrong, he can and does immediately identify the situation as wrong. When he does something wrong, or when he does nothing in the face of something wrong, in that moment I believe he knows the full weight of the situation. Like you said, he has a strong conscience, as well as a deeper, perhaps more nuanced understanding of right and wrong than do, for example, James and Sirius. Now, Lupin needs his friends. They're not just people to hang out with, they're a lifeline for him. He's not going to engage in conflict with them if there is even the slightest chance that he might lose them (for a variety of reasons, he lacks, as you said, the moral courage to do so). But he's also a generally decent human being, and with a strong conscience comes the capacity for sincere guilt and remorse. So, not only will he not confront his friends, he needs it to be okay that he doesn't confront them. And it's at that point that I think the self gaslighting is triggered.

But Lupin is intelligent and nobody's fool, so the gaslighting creates only a thin layer of ice over the problem. Just enough of a cover that he can live with the things he would otherwise deeply regret. I do think he believes the alternative reality he makes for himself to be accurate as long as it isn't really challenged. Crack the ice, though, and we see him express remorse and reveal an underlying awareness of past and present truths. But then the moment is over, and the war between the uncomfortably and full weight of the truth and his need for the companionship of his friends returns, and then the gaslighting begins again, allowing him an easier return to his closest friends (and eventually his closest friend, singular, after the others have been taken from him as was his fear all along) without conflict and with minimal strain on his conscience.

Once Sirius, the last of his original chosen family is gone - truly gone, as opposed to 'located elsewhere' as he was when in prison - following OOtP, suddenly Lupin's arc takes off at a greater speed than at any point prior. He's now literally lost all of the people he'd been terrified of figuratively losing. Although there are still people and things he cares about, he isn't as dependent on any of them as he was on those foundational friendships, and the finality of their absence allows him to finally grow beyond his stifling cycle of reality shifting, confront the truths of his reality and his circumstances, and, as you said, finally take responsibility by returning to Tonks and Teddy - a decision that, ultimately, triggers his death (I don't mean to imply that it was a bad decision or that it's the sole cause of his death, but Rowling has said that being 'out of practice' contributed to his loss at the Battle of Hogwarts, which makes for a fantastic tragedy).

I don't mean to overstate the importance of this theory or imply that it's always present when he's on-stage, and, as with anyone, many other elements, of course, factor into his actions/words/motives. But I think it's a fascinating potential component of his character all the same. If you have more thoughts on this, I love to hear them - and I look forward to reading the discussion on your blog!

So what do you think? Is this a valid reading of Lupin? I'd say it is, but I'm interested in reading my followers thoughts!

[kaiasky]

@lirulin responding here.

as a preface, i'm approaching this less from an angle of 'here's what i miss from reddit' but more abstractly, I'm interested in how choices about the way a website works affect user behavior and the types of interactions that happen there. if you were designing ur own social media what choices would you make, etc. I've had a tumblr account for like 10 yrs and this website is my home. but i think its fun to compare

You are right about misinfo but there is a fundamental misunderstanding happening here. Tumblr is not and should not be a place you go for facts. Its a place you go for opinions and you should assume any "facts" are false until you independently verify them. Its old internet rules. We exist more as a circulating archive than an encyclopedia.

There are, in fact, a great many posts with misinformation that are funny and popular because of that fact that would have been nuked from orbit on other moderated formats. Is there a risk of gullible/naieve/uninformed people falling for things? Yes. But the tradeoff is we get really unexpected masterpieces that cant exist elsewhere.

yeah this is what i was kinda getting at with "ofc u can't simply add them in a vacuum." there are tradeoffs if u try and Combat Misinformation or try to be the world's breaking news site. it's probably good that tumblr doesn't try to be that

that said, i think "assume all facts are false" is simply not a thing people do here. there are currently-circulating posts that are completely wrong in every aspect with 10k+ reblogs. i have corrected them, and yet the vast majority of those blogs believed it and passed that incorrect information onto their followers.

obviously this isn't important but i AM booty-blasted about it on a personal level and i have better tools to correct people on other sites.

again, trade-offs.

Also our tags are not rankings, theyre a way to find things on your own blog again. Ranking posts by how many people have seen them is not a guarantee of quality and would severely compromise how we structure and curate our own blogs.

yeah the second point about tags was mostly thinking about global tags i.e. the ones on an original post that decide where it's visible in sitewide tag search and followed tags. I guess a better way to phrase it would have been: i think tags are great for blog organization and terrible for sitewide organization.

in-blog tags are a whole other mess but it's worth noting they're not even as good as something like blogger or wordpress where you can see a list of all tags along with the number of posts in that tag (and that's even assuming per-blog tags work properly which for about 3 yrs they were entirely broken and i think they're still partially broken. alas)

ofc u can't/shouldn't talk in tags on traditional blogs or whatever so again. trade-offs.

tumblr posts instance with every reblog meaning that they are not easily deleted. They need a sort function more than they need a ranking because how and what we sort is otherwise not indexed or mandated by the tumblr format. Its not a bug, that process, its a web 1.0 feature.

ig my thought is that tags are (theoretically) great for blog organization, they also got adopted as a way to organize/sort tumblr-as-a-whole, and they suck at that. (which is fine--tumblr is always gonna be best if you follow people, not try and browse tags)

but like. compare a small subreddit to a niche interest here, and i think its much easier to nerd out about something on the forum/reddit/discord/usenet model.

oddly Facebook's groups are a really good implementation of interest-based sorting on a primarily person-based platform.

(though again spare us the insufferable leftbook mod drama. trade offs.)

Instead of thinking of tags as subreddits, think of each blog as its own curated subreddit with its own sorting and tagging system. Thats closer to how this site is actually structured.

I think the subreddit analogy is particularly bad actually. u don't follow a topic here, u follow people. and that's great i truly love my mutuals and i enjoy getting a fuller picture of them and their life. if u only talk to someone about ur unicycling hobby on reddit u don't get to say "oh my god congrats on graduating".

but the cost of this is that there's no way to actually find discussion on particularly niche communities.

two things reddit does well that tumblr sucks at:

misinfo. if a post is wrong it either gets downvoted, or the top comment usually ends up being a correction of the misinfo. it's not perfect, but compare to tumblr where the correction will only ever reach a small portion of people who see the post

tags being specific. on tumblr many posts will be tagged incorrectly and fill up the tags. For instance "#196 campfire" is filled with memes because it's a good way to get eyes on your post, and if a post gets notes it becomes highly ranked in all of its tags (the first 10 or 5 or whatever, anyways). vs on reddit if you crosspost a meme to a place it isn't relevant, ppl can remove/downvote it

Ofc u can't simply add them in a vacuum. u add some way to make corrections better, people are going to use it to be dicks. if u add a way to vote to remove tags (without reporting the whole post) people are going to fight over what tags mean what.

but they are like. features that have been longstanding issues(?) with tumblr for ages

[starfast]

So you want to write an autistic character

So I watched the trailer for Sia’s movie just to see if it really was that bad. Spoiler alert: Yes it is. It made me feel like Sia was making fun of me for two and a half minutes. But it also made me really fucking angry because there’s not autism representation to begin with, and most of what we do have isn’t really that great, which is what drove me to make this post. I don’t have many followers so even if like 3 people see this, then at least that’s 3 people who have seen this.  

What would I like to see less of

Literally incapable of detecting sarcasm: “Wait,” you say, “But Starfast, there are autistic people out there who are like this!” Sure, there might be, but for me personally detecting sarcasm is a lot less difficult than literally every autistic character has made it out to be. Yes, there are times where it goes right over my head but those times are usually when there’s not enough context for me to figure out whether the person is being sarcastic or not. Some of us actually are able to tell when you’re being sarcastic, it usually depends on context.

The “Sheldon Cooper”:  Autism is really diverse and yet I feel like 99% of autistic characters are basically all just carbon copies of Sheldon Cooper from BBT. They’re maybe overly formal, blunt, or have a hard time picking up social cues. And while these are all things that are commonly associated with autism (although this type of character rarely shows any major downsides to having autism, more on that later), like I said earlier, autism is different for everyone. Not all of us are going to feel represented by this type of character. Honestly I don’t even relate to a lot of autistic characters because they just keep reusing the same autistic stock characters and that’s really disheartening to me. It’s almost like they’re not making autistic characters for autistic people.

The Burden: This probably doesn’t need to be explained that much but it was the one thing that really pissed me off about S**’s movie. In the trailer, I really got the very distinct impression that the older sister saw Music as a burden. Her life was just oh so difficult because she had this autistic sister. No one wants to be thought of that way. And idk if you neurotypicals know this but autistic people have feelings and we hear it loud and clear when you say these kinds of things and it hurts. 

Using autism as a punchline: I think it’s fine to have an autistic character to provide comic relief, BUT! if your comic relief involves laughing at an autistic character’s very autistic behaviour then you’re doing it wrong. This kind of goes back to my first point- the reason why I hate seeing the “incapable of detecting sarcasm” character is because it’s almost exclusively played for laughs. Please stop making fun of us. 

What would I like to see more of

Diversity: I feel like this doesn’t really need much explaining. Autism can affect anyone regardless of age, race, gender, sexuality, etc. And yet most autistic characters I’ve encountered are straight white guys. Let’s see more girls, more POCs, more LGBT+ who are autistic. 

Obvious drawbacks/struggles: When I talked about the Sheldon Cooper-type character I mentioned that this type of character doesn’t really seem to face many challenges that are directly related to autism. What I mean by this is that sometimes they’ll maybe just miss the odd social cue and it’s kinda embarrassing but it rarely gets worse than that. An autistic character is going to face challenges that a neurotypical won’t ever have to deal with and if you don’t acknowledge that then you’re not really properly portraying an autistic character. Show more autistic characters struggling to make friends, having meltdowns or experiencing sensory overload, having a hard time articulating themselves. The list goes on, honestly. 

Actually saying it: Have you ever seen it where there’s a certain character and a bunch of people go “hey, that character seems like they could be [insert literally any minority] and then the creator goes “Oh, yeah that’s totally what I intended!” I personally don’t really like this, because it feels kind of disingenuous. If you’re going to write an autistic character, it would be nice to have that brought up within the story. Autism isn’t a dirty word, you’re allowed to say it. The only exception I can think of would be if you’re writing a historical fiction or some other setting where autism hasn’t been recognized but most examples I can think of don’t fall into that category whoop there it is. 

Literally just anything that isn’t a stereotype. This seems to be setting the bar pretty low, but it still needs to be said. Autism looks different for everyone and just because someone doesn’t fit the mold for a stereotypical autistic person doesn’t mean they’re not autistic. No one wants to be represented by a stereotype. 

“I’m not autistic but I want to write an autistic character. Can I do that?” 

I can’t speak for the entire autistic community when I answer this but my opinion is yes, it’s ok provided that you’re being respectful and doing research beyond reading symptoms off of WebMD. That being said, here’s my final advice: 

Listen and talk to autistic people: If you’re not listening to the group you’re trying to represent then you’re not doing a good job. There are lots of people here out there who would be willing to answer your questions or be a sensitivity reader. There’s a lot of people here on tumblr who are willing to answer your questions (you can even ask me, but I’m just one person and I don’t have all the answers. I’d recommend talking to multiple people). 

Autism Speaks is not your friend: There’s been a lot of talk about why this organization sucks, but it mostly boils down to trying to end autism and not actually helping us. So make sure you’re steering clear of them while you’re doing your research. 

Reddit and Quora are actually great resources: Reason being is that these kinds of sites will give you lots of first hand information about being autistic, and that’s the best kind of information to have, usually. Most sites will just list symptoms, but the right reddit/quora thread will provide more insight about how these symptoms affect their daily life. Additionally, you’ll have multiple people offering their own views and since autism is so different for everyone it’s good to have more than one person’s opinion (psst... this tip works for writing other minority characters too!) 

[mybg3notebook]

Loving your analyses of Astarion's behaviour and character so far! It has really reaffirmed in my eyes just how much of a bastard he really is. (I say that fondly, of course.) Do you have any thoughts on why the general reaction on tumblr has leaned so much towards woobifying him? After looking at his actual (explicit and implicit) morals in game it seems quite odd that some people are reading him as an edgy soft boi who just needs a hug from the right person to fix him.

Hello!

Thank you very much! I really enjoy seeing chars in a deep way. It makes me change my opinion on them, sometimes. That's why I like to do these analysis, even though it's a lot of work for a person who doesn't speak English as a native.

Lol, please, I won't be offended. Astarion is a bastard in the whole sense of the word, lol.

However, I find Astarion an interesting evil (evil neutral imo) char to explore the narration of “abuser who found a greater abuser”, with all the topics I talked about in those posts. I would feel a bit disappointed if Larian suddenly changes him into a man who always had a gold heart (because for that, you need to give hints, even in EA, and none of that has been seen so far).

An example of how this is done is with Shadowheart, she is evil and she supports a lot of cruelty that Astarion does too, but we got meta-knowledge (and not so much meta when we see her heavily drunk after killing the tieflings) that gives us enough reasons to believe she has some heart in her, despite Shar and her teachings. I do not support the idea of “she is a softie”, because she is not, but she doesn't have the same level of cruelty nor revels in murder so much as Astarion does. They represent different degrees of evilness. What plays in her favour is her face, which gives the idea of more softness than she truly has; the same happens with Astarion. Lae'Zel is less cruel than Astarion in general, with more logical reasons to be so because her brainwashed culture made her to be more pragmatic than a taster of cruelty, and yet, she receives a lot of more hate in the fandom... and it is clear to me why: she is not “beautiful” in the traditional white euro-centric standard sense.

And this is my point to answer your question (remember all this is personal opinion): I think there are many reasons why people woobify Astarion (not only in tumblr, but also in Reddit or in Larian Forums, it's a big part of the EA fandom).

First and foremost, I believe it's his appearance. If he were a bugbear or a goblin, few in this fandom would give a thought about his abuse, his pain, Cazador, etc. They would focus on his “bastard” side and leave it at that (again, Lae'Zel has this treatment). I want to make clear that I'm not questioning people's taste, everyone can like whatever they want to. I'm saying that, for me, there it proof enough to sustain this idea that Astarion is woobified because he is beautiful: when you read that a lot of people in this fandom never had an interest in Larian's previous games, or isometric rpgs, or even turn-based combat games (there are some people who are giving feedback against the game being a turned-based combat one! It's the nonsense because it's basically Larian's style), but they bought bg3 because they saw Astarion, even though they knew nothing about him.... All this, clearly, shows to me that a lot of people approached this game for only one char, for only his design (a big amount of them say it explicitly), and it is not far-fetched to know that people justify more easily beautiful villains than ugly ones. We can explore a lot of examples of this in many fandoms. People can love villains because they have real complex reasons to be so (like Loghain in DAO), but they also can like whimsical villains just because they are “hot”. I feel this is Astarion's case, he is a “beautiful villain” who apparently has always been evil. His reasons for his whimsical evilness is more like “it's always been in his nature”. Unless the family part has a different role in his backstory (mirror option) and it's not a mere line for a player to play a “good aligned” Astarion when picked as Origin. I don't like to read much about it in that scene because the game still doesn't have companion Tags; those options in the mirror can be there just for the player to pick, flavoured with each origin, but not necessarily the three of them are canon. This will be seen once we have the companion tags activated as it happened in DOS2.

What we can say for sure is that Larian knew what they were doing when they picked Astarion's design; they choose a dangerous white guy with white hair and evil alignment: an archetype that catches a lot of people in many fandoms.

Part of his woobyfication process has a deep root there, in my opinion. Again, if he were a bugbear, a goblin, a githyanki, a monster-humanoid... we would not have 90% of the EA fandom collapsed with his image, or Larian focused on him to the point that after 4 patches he had new scenes, lines, corrections, and development, while Wyll is still there, sitting in the bench of “the less developed chars” (with around 2k less lines than the rest of the chars, and his personal quest bugged since the first day). Yes, I don't like the preference on one single companion when I am seeing the “future Beast” (from DOS2) in Wyll.

Second, he is a vampire. Vampires are a great element in any fantasy narrative. You know you will have a lot of fans behind a vampire char. Not by chance Vampire The Masquerade is one, if not the most important product of White Wolf, which keeps still giving them a lot of profit despite being decades old. Vampires are always a good element of personal horror, of lack of control of your own body, and also an allegory of abuse, power, and rape. This concept of “being a monster without control” that they embody helps a bit more for the woobification.

Third, people tend to mix a lot headcanon with what a character gives us as canon. We can have a long useless discussion about which is more worthy: canon or headcanon, or about why one should or should not respect canon, but putting all that discussion aside, and considering the previous two points, I see that a small part of his woobyfication comes from the fact that people love denial and self-projection instead of analysing of what they are given (and let's be honest, we know in tumblr, reddit and others social networks, people lack of reading comprehension skills, which makes analysis all about self projection without a real effort in understanding the character's perspective. It's all about the player unilateral perspective. How can you analyse a char you didn’t play with or explored in all its paths? ).

So if their beautiful character is behaving in a way they don't want to, they start considering him “random” (I read this so much that confuses me, because Astarion has clear patterns for everyone who wants to see them, like the rest of the companions. He is not random, he follows pretty well all what I listed here, that list helps you to predict what he will disapprove or approve) so they end up filling this apparent “randomness” with headcanons and self-projections. Don't get me wrong, I don't despise headcanons, I love them, I have a lot of them and create with them. But I also like honest analysis and separate what I want from what I get from a company (to correctly give them feedback, otherwise I will be giving them my headcanons).

If you don't want an aspect of a given char, and you want to deny it, it's perfectly fine. Do it, it's your entertainment, but be honest with the fandom about it, acknowledge this is a personal denial you enjoy. And mainly, don't use headcanons and self-projections to attack the rest of the chars you don't like in their own tags. We know how aggressive some people in this fandom are, and it's a bit frustrating to see aggression without the slightest effort in understanding the character they hate.

There is also something sad to say, related to self-projection, that contributes to Astarion's woobyfication too: a lot of players are survivors of abuse who connect with him from trauma, and I can understand if denying his past is a way to help them to release any kind of pain or need for vengeance against their abusers. It's a natural and totally understandable projection. The woobyfication, then, ends up in an intense self-projection where they give to the char something that they needed because their own trauma.

This is why I would like Larian to give us other survivor chars that people can project onto, whose stories are really about survivors of abuse who were not evil in the beginning. Because I feel a lot of people approached Astarion as a narration of a “victim who will become a victimiser” or as a “bad behaved victim”, instead of what I think it's shown: an abuser who found a greater abuser (and his story is about punishment of the abuser and the concept of justice in a world which has none), so trauma survivors will end up with disappointment if they think Astarion is something similar to the representation of what they experienced. Plus, vampirism is never good to use as allegories of abusers/victims because the relationship Sire/Childe is too sick and twisted. So, again, this is a mere opinion from all what I've been reading since the game came out.

I hope Larian sticks to the narration they seem to follow with Astarion: an abuser who found a greater one, and now wants to become the next Cazador, and this woobifycation doesn't change the real potential of a dark deep story that I believe they want to give us: not every char is redeemable, and sometimes evilness is capricious. We had chars like these in bg1 and bg2 after all. 

[agrarianradfem]

hi, this is random but what do you like to read? I'm in a rut, so was wondering if u have recs or current reading list or tbr or smth? I rmbr u saying that u read 3 hrs a day? :)

Hi!! I do read a lot! Mostly nonfiction, romance, and a little bit of fantasy and contemporary/literary fiction. I’m currently reading The Hellion’s Waltz, the third in Olivia Waite’s Feminine Pursuits series (all three are ff historical romances set in England - Hellion’s Waltz isn’t out yet but I have an advanced copy). I would absolutely recommend the first, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics if that sounds interesting.  In general, here are some of my favorite books: Nonfiction:  - Sweetness and Power by Sydney Mintz: A history of sugar, colonialism, and power dynamics in its production and consumption. Is rather academic but it is readable and slim. - Who Cooked the Last Supper?: This book is always recommended among radfems with great reason - women need to learn that the male way of thinking is wrong in so many ways, and that women have been making vital contributions to humanity that have been misattributed (purposefully and incidentally because of patriarchy) to men.  - Milk by Kurlansky: This is the history of milk. It includes a wrong fact about the history of cheese (Kurlansky misattributes it to a man as part of Myth of Man the Hunter - see Who Cooked the Last Supper? to learn more about misattributions. Cheese was absolutely developed by women who were at home caring for children). But otherwise it’s a great and very readable history of one of humanity’s most important foods.  - In The Shadow of Slavery: All about how enslaved Africans brought their foods and food traditions to the Americas and how food was a key part of resistance. Great information about things like rice cultivation in South Carolina and food as resistance in Brazil.  - Invisible Women by Criado-Perez. Excellent book on the ways in which failing to sex disaggregate data (aka not separating out data on women vs men instead of lumping it all together) fails women, from car design to snow clearing plans. Great as an audiobook.  - Fran Lebowitz Reader: This audiobook is amazing.  - In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. He brings his humor to Australia and you’ll want to purchase plane tickets immediately. (Can’t wait for Australia and NZ to open to vaccinated travelers!) I also love Thunderbolt Kid, At Home, and The Body by him.  - The Emperor of All Maladies: This is a history of cancer and its treatment. This is a tome, but is absolutely fascinating.  Romance:  - A Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics: Really a lovely novel about female empowerment (like the real kind: standing up for oneself in the face of male efforts to hinder women, women becoming the best patrons and confidants for each other, etc) - Ravishing the Heiress: This is a straight romance, and one not the best intro to the genre for lesbians who don’t read any straight romance. But for fans of the genre (or even just romantic subplots in books and fanfiction) this is a masterclass example of a marriage of convenience and slow burn romance.  - Devil in Winter and Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas. For those who loved Bridgerton, these are amazing. DinW is one of the most beloved historical romances of all time, and Marrying Winterborne is from her newest series and that book is becoming beloved as well. 

Fantasy: - When Women Were Warriors: This is a story told in three parts (it’s not three books, you have to read all three parts to complete the story) set in pseudo-medieval England about a matriarchal, matrilineal society where lesbianism is common. Great for fans of fantasy who don’t need magic, creatures, or space travel, etc.   - All the books written by Tamora Pierce. Her books are mostly YA/Middle Grade but they have excellent pacing, plots, and character development. My favorites are the Alanna books and the Immortals series. These are great if you’re someone who likes shorter books where for attention purposes or just for a fast read. I reread these all the time - Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs: TW sexual assault at the 1/3 point in the series (and for basically every book in the sister Alpha and Omega series). This is Urban Fantasy for all the fans of werewolves, vampires, fae, fairy tales, wendigos, and all the other scary legendary creatures. Features a great female lead, a straight romantic subplot, inter-species alliances and wars, fighting for good, and is set in the Pacific Northwest. There’s a billion of these books (read in order) so you’ll have plenty to keep you reading if you like the first.  - Daughter of the Forest: TW graphic sexual assault. This is a famous retelling of The Six Swans story. Straight romantic subplot. This book is constantly recommended as one of the best retelling stories and I agree. I would recommend reading rather than listening to an audiobook of this one because there’s no reason to read the assault scene - just get to it and skip a few pages and resume. I fully believe that if this book was written now it wouldn’t have the descriptions, but it is important to the plot.  Contemporary/Literary Fiction:  - Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters: TW for abusive relationship and prostitution. This story of the underground of London at the turn of the century is a lesbian classic for a reason. Happy ending! Great exploration of the time.  - Bastard Out of Carolina: TW graphic sexual assault of a child. This book is a really hard read about the ways in which women pick men over their own daughters, religion oppresses women, poverty is worse for women than men, women are expected to be quiet and just suffer their burdens. I read this for the first time in a Women’s Writing course in college and it made me bawl my eyes out. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.  - The Well of Loneliness: I love sad books and this is no exception. Sad lesbian at the turn of the century. Historically important book.  - Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver: This ecofiction book is not the usually recommended book by her. This takes inspiration from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and interweaves three stories of women, life and death, and the health of the environment.  I use goodreads and Kirkus reviews to find books all the time. If any one of these sounds interesting, put it into goodreads and you’ll be able to find other books by the author, books similar to it, and lists that contain the book (for instance, if you look up prodigal summer it’s probably on an ecofiction list and you can find a ton of ecofiction books that way!). Kirkus is amazing for finding new and upcoming books. The online reviews are free (I think - my mom is a paid subscriber to the magazine). For nonfiction I also look through Washington Independent Review of Books.  Another underrated way to find books is Facebook and Reddit! If there’s a genre you really like, then find a facebook group for it. This is a great way to find what others love, new releases, and you can save posts (underutilized thing fb does) and have something to scroll through the next time you are looking for a book. Reddit has a bunch of subreddits for different genres. Many of the large genre groups run books clubs (fantasy runs a bunch of structured book clubs, romance runs buddy reads, etc.).  Hopefully this gives you some place to start!

[lightns881]

DTeam Tumblr Demographics Survey Results (Part 2):

What does DTeamblr look like, what does it have to do with MCYT history, and why does it look like a rainbow?

I’ll make an educated guess here and say y'all enjoyed my last post (totally unrelated to the way I gained almost 50 followers overnight). Anyhow, thank you so much for the overwhelming support! I’m so glad a lot of you felt you could relate to my deep-dive into the leading personality type on DTeam Tumblr. It took me so many hours to write and research, and as a math major and honors student, it’s no easy feat, so I’m so grateful for the attention it got!

Today we’re discussing the general demographics of DTeam Tumblr and why they might look the way they do. Number 8 will blow your mind! So make sure to keep reading and hit that little grey heart and arrow at the bottom if you like it, so more people get to see it! Thanks for your support! Now, let’s jump straight into the post!

Your Daily Dose of Data

From the 449 responses we received, these are some pie charts displaying the gender, age, and sexuality of all respondents.

Image Description: Female (52.8%), Non-Binary (37.4%), Male (9.8%)

Image Description: 16-17 (37%), 13-15 (31.4%), 18 and over (29.4%), 12 and under (2.2%)

Image Description: Bisexual/Pansexual (54.1%), Homosexual (16%), Asexual (14.7%), Other (7.8%), Heterosexual (7.3%)

Mmhm, delicious! Y'all ready to dig into these stats? Because I don’t know about you, but they certainly don’t strike me as what the general population looks like!

Welcome to Tumblr, the Only Community Where Straight Men are the Minority

So these statistics certainly didn’t take me by surprise. Mostly because the DNF Shipper Survey I took some time ago revealed a similar trend. Not to mention, Tumblr is probably the QUEEREST internet community on the planet. 

Funny enough, the survey revealed a shocking number of ZERO heterosexual males respondents. I’ll say it louder for the people in the back. ZERO straight males were recorded out of 449 respondents for this survey!

Now, this isn’t surprising for the Tumblr community by itself, but I can say I’m somewhat surprised in terms of the MCYT Tumblr community. (Obviously, the survey specified DTeam Tumblr, but there is a big overlap between both communities, so I will be using them interchengably when it seems relevant.)

Let’s break this down. The survey reveals the largest age population is 16-17, though it’s not by a great margin in comparison to 13-15 and 18 and older, which doesn’t surprise me either. Some of the major critics of the DTeam Fandom and other MCYT Fandoms love to claim the fanbase’s majority age range lies with children and pre-teens. While it’s an undeniable fact children are drawn to Minecraft, it’s also a misconception to paint it as solely a community for younger viewers.

In the MCYT Tumblr and DTeam Tumblr communities, specifically, we see this is not the case. Only 1/3 of the respondents of this survey are under the age of 16 (you could attribute part of it to the fact younger people might be less inclined to participate in this survey, but it is still a notable difference). I can’t say these age ranges are similar in other parts of the community like DTeam Twitter, Tik Tok, or Reddit, but if I had to make a guess, I’d say Tumblr lies toward the older of the bunch, with Reddit being the oldest and Tik Tok being the youngest (I do hope to perform this survey on some of the other communities, so please stay until the end if you want to help with that).

One of the likely explanations to why the ages for DTeam Tumblr look this way is the fact a big chunk of the community has likely been watching MCYT for a long time (even with breaks in between). I, myself, used to watch channels like PopularMMOs, Aphmau, and PrestonPlayz as a kid, and I presume many of you are familiar with them as well. With the resurgence of MCYT in the past year, it likely drew a lot of the older viewers in addition to the new ones.

But enough about age. What I really want to highlight on this post is the attraction of queer individuals to DTeam Tumblr and MCYT as a whole.

Why is the current MCYT Fandom so queer in comparison to the previous generations?

This is a huge open-ended question and considering I can only capture so much of the DTeam and MCYT community, the rest of this post should be taken solely as a theoretical analysis as opposed to fact.

With that out of the way, let’s start by discussing the shift MCYT has undergone over the years (I promise this will circle back to the question of queerness in the MCYT fandom, but we need some background before we can come up with a decent theory).

When Minecraft was first released, it proved to be a monumental change in the gaming industry. This simple little indie game took the world by storm. It was so vastly different from what the general population generally viewed gaming as (first-person shooters, story-driven games, action games, etc.) Not to mention, it didn’t exactly solely appeal to only a small margin of gamers, those being white cis males.

The gaming industry has notoriously been known in the past for its heteronormative community and general prejudice toward minorities. Though it has gone through a significant change over the decades, we certainly can’t say it’s fully gone.

Yet for whatever reason, the recent MCYT has taken the interest of so many queer people in comparison to other gaming YouTube communities. Why? Why are queer people so drawn to this community? And, more precisely, why does it feel so different than the old MCYT? Lastly, how does this relate to the conclusion about the leading personalities of this fandom we made in the last post?

The Niche Communities of MCYT Over the Years

MCYT has always been a huge, over-saturated genre of YouTube with content appealing to a variety of audiences. It’s dominated gaming content for years, and I think we can all safely say it’s never been bigger than it is today.

So why is it that just now it feels like the queerness of the fandom is popping off? Why now as opposed to say five years ago when MCYT was at another one of it’s strongest stages?

It seems like the community has made a tremendous shift in relation to breaking gender norms and LGBTQ+ subjects, not only in the fans but within the creators themselves. Was flirting and calling a pretty-boy streamer pet names as normal in the past as it is today? Were straight gamer guys putting on dresses and a full-face of make-up as supported back then? Were “marriages” and “pregnancies” within Minecraft boys an everyday occurrence like they are now? How is it that MCYT has dominated a Twitch dating show where flirting with the gay host and among straight contestants themselves is just another bit of entertainment? Where is this all coming from?

Recently, I watched a 2 hour documentary depicting all of the stages of Minecraft YouTube and how it has changed over the years. If you haven’t seen it and you have some time to spare, I HIGHLY recommend it! It’s very informative, and it honestly gave me such a strong sense of nostalgia that makes me choke up every time I think about it. I’ll link it below.

The documentary does a great job at exploring the different niche communities that dominated MCYT since it first took off. Some of such communities include the basic Let’s Players, the team-based Let’s Play channels like How2Minecraft, the roleplay story-centric ones like Aphmau and Samgladiator, the tutorial, building and technical side like Mumbo and Grian, the PVP-centric Bedwars or Hypixel channels, the Machinima community, the comedy side like ExplosiveTNT, the parody music videos, and so many more. All of the mentioned communities have dominated Minecraft at one point or another, many of them still having a rippling effect and/or a loyal community today. All of these communities have certain aspects that define them, some of which parallel the current overtaking content in the present.

How can we compare MyStreet to the Dream SMP?

Taking Aphmau as an example, her MyStreet series had a TREMENDOUS success a few years ago, racking in millions of views and bringing in a lot of money that eventually allowed her to hire voice actors and increase the production of mentioned episodes. The roleplay series was so successful it ran for six seasons!

Now, let’s compare that to the Dream SMP. It seems like a big comparison to be making considering they appear so different at first glance. For once, Aphmau is just one channel whose audience caters toward girls and younger people who enjoy romance. The series is set-up in an episodic-format that resembles more of a TV series than actual Minecraft videos.

Meanwhile, the Dream SMP is a collection of content creators with a mix of improvised storylines and the occasional regular video that resembles more of a Let’s Play series than a RP series.

You could say the only true comparisons to draw out of these two are the popularity they had/have and the profit they brought to their respective creators. 

However, there’s two other key similarities that you’ll find not only within these two specific examples, but many other channels and communities as well. Story and characters.

MyStreet’s story aspect is fairly obvious seeing as it’s a episodic series that focuses on a fictional story. The Dream SMP’s story aspect isn’t as clear, but it’s evident there is a story playing out in the foreground and background, whether intentional or unintentional, or improvised or not.

Character is where some of you might start to question me. It’s obvious MyStreet has characters. I mean, it is a fictional story, after all. But the Dream SMP? Light, they’re obviously people!

Well, my answer to that is yes and no--sort of. The Dream SMP’s story heavily relies on roleplay, bits as you might call them. Events that aren’t necessarily planned out as a fictional plot like the typical MyStreet episode is, but they aren’t exactly real. Schlatt is obviously not a villain in real life, he just likes to impersonate as one for the narrative. Wilbur isn’t crazy, but it’s a way to spice up the heroic story surrounding Tommy and him.

It’s video-game improv. Except the actors behind the content just so happen to be real people playing off the personalities and “brands” they have obtained. 

Brands. It all boils down to this. In the entertainment business, without a clear vision of your project and a clear way to brand what your consumer intakes, your project will likely not find a lot of success.

There’s a reason why Tommy plays off his loudness, using an overexaggerated laugh that although may not be completely fake, it is likely not the laugh he uses everyday. Or why BadBoyHalo is this supposed innocent muffin who doesn’t understand the crafting table meme and other references that are fairly easy to google and find the meaning of. Or why Sapnap is this chaotic being who loves starting pet wars and we love to paint as an arsonist in the Dream SMP. While all of these personality traits may be a part of their true selves, they’re played up for the camera--for the story. They act as the personas that define their characters in the narrative.

They have a clear brand and vision that appeals to the audience and makes them tune in on the daily to see how they all come together. It’s like roleplaying a more extreme version of yourself, one that brings home the money.

Story and characters run across every entertainment outlet. They define their brand. Aphmau has her characters and series. Hermitcraft has a set of memorable personalities and episodic videos that formulate its own story that is less like a narrative and more of a history of the server. ExplodingTNT has his recurring cast and comedic sketches. Most of these niche communities have a form of story and character defining them. It’s how they achieve a clear sense of branding and cater to a specific audience.

Queer Theory in MCYT

Having said all that, why does the MCYT of today draw in so many queer viewers?

Let’s think about this. In my last post, I ended by mentioning DTeam Tumblr is a sort of safe haven for INFP and INxx types who might be placed in the “other” category by society. INFPs, specially, are predisposed for escapism--one common form of it being fiction and entertainment. Not to mention, INFPs are feeling types who, as introverts, seek a personable connection. It’s why it’s so easy for them to obsess over book characters or fall in love with content creators.

Now, let’s imagine a whole community of LGBTQ+ INFP and INxx types. Actually, scratch that, we don’t even have to imagine it.

It’s what our community looks like today.

And why are so many so drawn to the DTeam and Dream SMP of all things? It’s a personable storyline that essentially forms a direct tie to the viewer. Unlike pre-recorded fictional TV series you tune into on your device, the Dream SMP is a whole load of chaos that blurs the lines between reality and fiction where fans can directly connect to creators and get to know them as people through a storyline that features sub-textual queer themes and non-conforming behaviors.

The MCYT content creator community of today is more non-conforming than ever before, and knowing this whole fact, knowing that many of them might place themselves in the “other” category or at the very least aren’t afraid to break the norms and be seen in that light, is a comfort in itself for LGBTQ+ INFP types. Once again, it’s a safe space that helps you escape from the troubles of real life, one you relate to.

Okay. So although this does answer why the fans look like they do, what about the creators themselves? Are we really supposed to believe this all came through naturally? That a bunch of straight guys suddenly decided wearing dresses was something they wanted to do?

I don’t mean to sound cynical here, and I’m in no way trying to insinuate creators have solely some sort of corrupt ulterior motive. Things are never as simple as they look. However, the truth is, a part of it lies on the attention it’s gotten.

I’ve talked a lot about DreamNotFound and the way Dream uses it as a marketing ploy. I stand by my point. However, he’s not the only one who does this in the MCYT community. Why did Finn suddenly go from wearing a dress to cross-dressing as a girl for a whole week? Why are so many creators suddenly deciding wearing dresses is fun? Why does every freaking straight MCYT actively want to flirt with George nowadays?

Let’s just let Techno’s favorite word answer this for us: clout.

It gets attention from one of the largest historically underserved minority community in the entertainment business. We might not be able to see gay flirting in every Netflix TV show or guys not minding dresses and getting fake marriages, but you are certainly going to get at least one of those in every Dream SMP stream and video you tune into. It gets attention. It brings home the money. And do I blame them? Not really.

Interestingly enough, there’s a lot of analytical posts on the MCYT Tumblr community that discuss the dangers of these tactics and why gay jokes and the way queer subtext is treated by MCYT creators is harmful. Despite this, it still attracts such a huge community of queers. So why exactly would queer people actively watch something that’s offensive or harmful to us?

I have a lot more to say about this topic and the morality behind Dream’s tactics, but I’m out of breath for today, so I’ll talk about it in my next post. What better way to start the conversation about the DNF and Karlnap questions of the survey than a good ol’ discussion on the morality of queerbaiting and the likes?

If you got this far, I’d appreciate it if you liked and reblogged this post if you enjoyed it and/or learned something new! Also, important news, I would really like to perform a similar study on the DTeam Twitter Community to measure the differences in demographics across platforms. I would REALLY appreciate it if you guys could go like, retweet and share the link I posted on my Twitter about it (tweet will be linked in the reblog below) so it reaches more of the DTeam Twitter community!

However, if you filled out the survey yourself here or you associate more with DTeam Tumblr than DTeam Twitter please DO NOT fill out the survey again! I’m trying to make sure it reaches the audience that mains on Twitter, but I need a little help with that since I don’t have as big of an influence on Twitter than on here for obvious reasons.

Anyhow, thank you so much for all your support! I really appreciate y’all and make sure to hit the follow if you want to lookout for the next demographics post! <3

(Pssst, I’m releasing a MCYT DNF superpower AU longfic next month... You should totally go check out the post on that if you’re interested in it...)

[rickriordanfandam]

opinions on riordanverse ; my edition

a lot of people have been doing this so i decided why not right. probably gna lose some followers or smth but anyways. pls respect my opinions! if u disagree, thats fine, but please be polite. unless any of my opinions strikes u as morally wrong then pls point it out to me respectfully. thanks!

- i actually liked drew. im so sorry to everyone who hates her but full offence, why. think about it this way ok, first of all drew became hc because silena died. silena was the traitor, the one who betrayed chb, yet after she died campers celebrated her as a hero? and then drew suddenly has to replace her and live up to idk that legacy she left behind,, when all of a sudden this girl named piper swoops in and takes her place. idk abt u but i wld be salty abt that too. not only that, but as an asian, the chances of drew having faced racism/bullying as a child is pretty high (she studies at brooklyn academy). which means that when she finds out shes a demigod, and arrives at chb where most of the campers are white (this is an assumption btw), she’d obviously be scared of being bullied for her skin color right?? so the first thing she wld do before the campers get to bully her is to bully them before they can do so. (sentence structure here is wack i apologize) ofc this might not even have happened, drew could have had a perfect childhood && was a b1tch for no reason, BUT EVEN THEN HER ROLE AS A BULLY WAS PRETTY VITAL BECAUSE THAT FURTHER SHOWED THE CONTRAST BETWEEN HER AND PIPER,, HIGHLIGHTING PIPER AS A HERO//GOOD CHARACTER,, AND THEREFORE MAKING READERS LIKE PIPER MORE. anyway stop hating on drew please. ALSO WHY IS THIS SO LONGA SDFJHG

- jason isnt bland, the fandom just kinda erased his backstory (thanks to @pjohoo-memes for the phrasing lol)

- reynabeth wouldnt have lasted/would have broken up several times. idk i just see them as two extremely powerful characters who have firm opinions and will definitely clash at some point. in a platonic relationship,, i can see them as really good friends but as lovers? idk i just think theyll break up

- PIPABETH

- i dont really like jercy,, i see them as better friends than lovers. also idt jason and percy were that close..?

- the dam and not my type jokes are srsly cringey and were never funny. ik that seems hypocritical since my username literally makes use of the dam joke but honestly i dont actually like the joke. its not funny to me and has never been funny

- the seven were not best friends. they definitely argued,, and honestly probably werent as close as the fandom makes them seem. like ure dumped with 6 other people, out of which u only know a few. my introverted ass would have jumped off the argo 2 quicker than leo valdez could bomb camp jupiter up. also leo was a dick to frank. so what if frank is bigger sized?? thats not a valid reason to tease him

- the fandom needs to stop hating on octavian while worshipping luke. if u hate luke and u say u hate octavian too, then okay. but if u tell me ure a luke stan but u despise octavian?? imma disagree w u. luke was worse than octavian im sorry. first of all, octavian being a dick was kinda justified. hes been after the praetor position for so long, and everyone keeps saying to “wait for jason” when suddenly this dude, whos a son of NEPTUNE (neptune wasnt liked much by romans), and the camp decides to make him praetor?? dude i would be pissed off big time. and then afterwards, he finds out that greek demigods are real and the dude they made praetor is greek. AND THEN GREEK DEMIGODS COME TO CJ AND ONE OF THEM BOMB IT UP?? octavian has been told all his life that greeks are scum and this dude called leo valdez attacks cj. sure it was an accident, but did octavian know that? no. so it was honestly justified that he was such a salty prick im just saying. also some of yall be hating on octavian for cutting a teddy bear open and thats the funniest shit ive ever heard i swear 

- luke didnt go to elysium

- travis and connor stoll r way too underrated. the two have been head counselors of the hermes cabin since luke was revealed as a traitor, can u imagine the stress? luke, the person they probably looked up to as a brother, betrayed them. and they didnt even have time to process this when they were  thrown the roles of being hcs. that would have been so stressful and i would probably have broken down if i were them. the stoll brothers taking turns to wake up at ungodly hours because a new camper is crying and homesick and terrified, the stoll brothers having to comfort and take care of new campers, having to deal with the amount of people in that cramped space because not enough campers are being claimed fast enough. having to resolve issues between campers in the hermes cabin all the time. the stolls arent just comedic relief, and we need to stop treating them as such

- tratie shldve been canon idc idc

- demigods of the demeter cabin arent talked about enough and i love the fact that meg was demeters kid. like she isnt the child of one of the big three yet shes so powerful.

- we need to hype clarisse up more her character arc was phucking amazing 

- rachel is overhated. sis found out greek gods exist and regularly come down to earth to fuck around and went “ok cool”. queen shit behavior methinks

- the floor 19 crew of mcga is srsly underrated. like do u even remember halfborn gunderson, mallory keen, tj, etc??? bc i feel like we only remember samirah, magnus, alex, and sometimes blitz and hearthstone

- sadie (tkc) was kinda annoying at first. i like her more now tho but i rmb not liking her for a phat while

- tkc and mcga need more love

- carter kane and jason grace arent boring. theyre just really sweet boys who are too good for this world and yes yes yes 

- hazel and frank (especially frank) need to be hyped up more. i hardly ever see anything about them. also yall seem to forget that frank was literally made praetor and that even hecate admired hazel and was willing to fight beside her because of how powerful she was

- frazels age gap is kinda sketch but i still think theyre really cute

- nico definitely had trauma from going to tartarus on his own

- GROVER IS PERCYS BEST FRIEND

- annabeth isnt smarter than leo but neither is leo smarter than annabeth. ive seen a lot of discussions about who is smarter and heres my hot take on it: neither. theyre equally smart, just in different ways. leos a genius mathematically speaking. he has no issues solving math problems meant for people much, much older than him. annabeth on the otherhand, is great at strategies etc. she can make an army of 1000 more powerful than the enemy, even if theyre outnumbered. so in my opinion, both are equally as smart//u cant compare their intelligence, because their talents lie in two different areas.

- while i do agree rick riordan isnt a god and that hes bound to make mistakes,, AND that hes given us a lot of representation,, if the representation offends the people its sposed to represent, then theres a problem. im talking about piper as a poc and wearing feathers in her hair. im not a poc, so i cant speak for them on whether or not its wrong, because i dont know either. HOWEVER, i have seen multiple posts BY pocs talking about how they didnt really like rick’s representation of piper, and thats an issue. pocs have been and are still oppressed and discriminated against by many. as a white cis man, we cant really blame him for not knowing (tho he could have done a research,, asked some pocs,, idk), but by representing pocs in that manner, hes influencing impressionable kids/teens into thinking “oh pocs wear feathers in their hair all the time” etc, which isnt true. the pjo/hoo series is extremely successful, and kids who read the books will probably start forming inaccurate opinions on pocs. the amount of fan art that depicts piper with feathers in her hair dont help either. “but rick said so in the books, so its canon” yeah well rick isnt a god and he can get some things wrong at times. im not saying we should cancel him, im saying we should start educating ourselves and not spread false info like pocs wearing feathers in their hair all the time. also that snake song shit where she sang Summertime was just- yeah. bc heres the thing you can be racist, and still include minorities, but portray them in a racist way. And even then, ignorance isn't a thing to admire. Getting those facts wrong still has a major impact. It continues to perpetuate racist stereotypes.

“ With the feather thing, I looked it up myself; it takes less than five minutes to figure out that Cherokees don't braid feathers into their hair. I didn't grow up in the country where my parents are from. I have many other first/second generation American friends who have also been through that, with a bit of a disconnect from their culture. But something that most of us have in common is that when we didn't know something, and when our parents weren't that big of a help, we looked it up. We sought out resources online and through other people from our culture to be able to connect more with where we came from. Some of that took a Google search. So I find it hard to believe that Piper, a girl who Rick's trying to portray as someone who is attempting to connect with her culture and is totally against racist stereotypes, wouldn't know that eagle feathers aren't supposed to be braided into your hair casually. She may be disconnected from her culture, but she's also shown to want to connect back to it. Piper wouldn't be casually braiding feathers into her hair while also telling off people for being racist. It makes no sense.” - reddit thread (down below) 

for those of yall who wanna know more please please read this, it has a lot of things i wanna add in here : https://www.reddit.com/r/camphalfblood/comments/gy3gl2/piper_mcleans_portrayal_is_innacurate/ 

as well as https://finding-my-culture.tumblr.com/post/189422373260/maxie-ratties-and-cattie-finding-my-culture 

i will be posting screenshots of these in future posts so if ure viewing this on ig and u dont have tumblr,, dont worry 

- the fact that most of the strong female characters in the series refuse to be “girly”, and ngl i dont really like that. just because ure girly doesnt mean u cant be strong. 

- piper would have been a great way for him to start making the strong characters act girlier, but instead he went with the “I’m not like other girls” trope which is quite obnoxious to hear constantly, and I don’t think it’s necessarily great for younger girls to read that idea growing up.  the closest we've ever had to a strong female character who was also into "girly" things was Silena. when I was younger I admired Piper's "I'm not like other girls" thing, but then I got older and realized that the whole mentality of "not like other girls" is super obnoxious, and a little bit toxic

i have a heck load more that i cant rmb rn but yeah feel free to add more 

[rnegitsune]

Ok so I thought I'd put together some horror stories from my time as a babymetal fan bc of how drastic the shift in the fandom has been the past year or so. For context I got into babymetal in like june of 2014 (all 3 girls were still underage at the time, I was 22; when I first got into them I thought I would be considered an older fan lmao the naivete, the innocence of new fan me wow I know now I'm not at all in the older half of the fandom esp considering I was born the same decade as su and moa), and I made this blog in I think may of 2015.

I've had people say I should compile men being gross into a post and I just couldn't do that out of fear for my own mental health but this will be pretty close. These are all my experiences with this fandom over the years; I'm definitely missing some but what I do remember should do well to cover most of how this fandom used to be vs now. It's gonna be a lot and tw for men being gross about minors.

Back in my first year or so of this blog I on multiple occasions got dms from men asking to be friends. At the time my bio only said my name and my pronouns. I've always been cautious of dms so I'd ask their age and every single one was considerably older than me. I wouldn't usually answer after that bc no thanks but they would generally try to continue convos til I blocked. The only one I still had was this one

After I put my age in my bio, which was 23 at the time, I never got a dm like that again; take from that what you will. But if you're young please be wary of this hell fandom even now. And if you're an older fan and esp an older male fan reading this, don't dm people trying to be friends. I was over 18 and it still creeped me out to no end.

One of my real first men in this fandom are disgusting moments was a blog back in like 2015 or 2016 who I had some contact with due to common interests; he was a huge yui stan and made bm content. He was like 28 or 29 at the time and I eventually noticed he would tag idols, mostly kpop girls, by their body parts (legs, butt, etc) which is disgusting enough as it is but then I saw him do the same for literal minors, like tzuyu from twice. I messaged him asking what the hell he was doing objectifying women but also actual children and he blocked me lmao. He later unblocked me to let me know that's just how he tagged things and it was my fault he had anxiety and then he blocked me again.

Back before the tumblr purge this fandom was repulsive to a degree I cannot even begin to describe. Someone would reblog something from me, I'd go to their blog and it would be underage jpop idols and japanese p*rn all the way down. I even stumbled upon a man editing underage su into p*rn gifs. Obviously no proof of that but I did go find my initial reaction to it

The number of times I'd get a follow from someone then go to their blog and it would be as mentioned above or their bio would be the most misogynistic trash I'd ever read was staggering. I genuinely considered giving up and deleting this blog so many times bc i felt oberwhelmed and outnumbered by these gross old dudes; and so the fact that this fandom has evolved into a bunch of chaotic wlw?? Amazing, I could cry.

Fun phenomenon of women running bm blogs was men sending messages asking if we liked babymetal. No joke. I think this happened to me two or three times but I spoke w other female creators at the time and it had happened to them as well. My entire blog is babymetal, and yet???

He said the weird guy idk bc he sent some random ass messages vaguely insulting me and when I responded coldly, he acted confused so I said you're some guy idk, hence the above message starting as such. Also that pic and the one up above that has my current pfp bc I just took those screenshots. Like I said I typically blocked weird dms but I guess these passed me by so I still had the messages.

Most people know the sub reddit is the worst and don't need me to tell you but it's a hellscape and I highly recommend avoiding it. A short list of things I've had to see as a result of going there: men discussing at length kano and momoko's appearances and how they look in costume vs in normal clothes. Men discussing at length the hope that the girls would marry men who aren't Japanese, a thread that was from when all 3 girls were underage. They aren't gonna marry you dude they're really not.

The insulting of billie Eilish, a 17 year old at the time, was horrible too. Su and moa got to meet her, something they were extremely excited for, and they posted a pic; the comments were disgusting as you can imagine. The yui rumors were terrible too, fatshaming, slutshaming etc all based on nothing. Some man saying the rumors about yui leaving bc, no joke this was a real rumor, she "got too fat" couldn't be true bc "look at saya." Saya being a barely 18 yo back up dancer who covered the third spot after yui left but before the avengers. Not to mention the upskirt shots from when they were minors, the constant editing of their faces onto explicit photoshoots etc. I remember being a new fan looking for a su pic on google and being horrified at the fact that one of the top suggested results after her name was “bikini;” she was 16 at the time. Also, the uptick in massively creepy posts and messages sent to bm blogs as each girl, but esp moa and yui, approached 18 was disgusting.

Now for some personal nonsense. A big reason why I haven't touched my youtube channel in months is bc I got tired of dealing with the men of this fandom. I poke fun at metal and get told I deserve to die. I say ped*philes and creepy men are gross and get a swarm of middle aged men cursing at me. Had a guy cry about how men are shamed for liking bm and then he turned around and said some gross shit about wlw. Had a guy call me racist for liking a band he also likes (and despite him having no way of knowing my own race) and tell me the babymetal fandom doesn't need my kpop feminist bullshit, which is honestly a great description and I thought about putting it in my yt about lmao. Had a middle aged man unironically say he'd never seen a man be creepy towards bm but fans su and moa's ages calling them hot was creepy. The disillusionment....the level of unawareness is astounding. If you want to see screenshots of some of these comments they are fairly recent in my don't mind me tag; I don't want to see them anymore tho bc they're infuriating so I'm not going to look at them to post here.

Essentially I haven't looked at my channel since may bc men are exhausting and rude and refuse to examine the fandoms they're a part of no matter what. They're told by a woman of the fandom that she's had bad experiences personally and they all start crying about how it's either a lie bc they haven't seen it or unimportant. I did stop reading comments in may and I will never read another one again probably as a result of this shit. Trash men being trash are not worth my time and I refuse to give them anymore of it. I do plan on making more videos tho and let my ~feminist kpop bullshit~ live in their minds rent free.

I will also continue to make fun of metal and the creepy men in this fandom bc it's important and I'm a spiteful asshole who likes disrupting these dudes perfect bubble of a fandom. It genuinely brings me so much joy seeing all the new fans recently (which sidenote if you got into them recently I am kinda curious as to how you found them; I've gotten tons of new followers and considering how inactive they are rn I'm curious). People sending messages about how they finally feel like they belong or that they have a safe space....like I don't even know what to say and I never feel like my responses fully convey how genuinely wonderful that is and how thrilled I am that this is where we're at now and I have had at least some part in it. As this post shows, my experiences have been negative for the most part so the shift recently is such a relief I cannot even begin to explain my gratitude.

So to anyone who read all of this and hasn't disintegrated from the male bullshit, thank you. Keep being yourself and fighting for your place in this fandom, esp if you're a young woman; keep making fun of the creeps and keep making wlw memes!! Babymetal's music is in such a huge way meant for girls and to see more and more finding their way to this previously hellish beyond belief fandom is incredible.

[mercuryonparklane]

I just saw someone comment on a TikTok that the two women who host the Chatty Broads podcast have acted like they may have some negative tea on Taylor. I remember seeing that Liz is friends with them and was on that podcast once a long time ago (and, if I remember correctly (it’s been a while since I listened to it), she was very interested in one of their stories about a very confusing romantic friendship one of them had with another woman) .

So, I looked around a bit and one of the women (although I think it is the other one who is closer to Liz) posted this on her IG stories around May 3rd or 4th of this year:

Taylor and Liz seem to be on fairly good terms or Liz at least seems to be okay with Taylor, these days, but she may have felt wronged by something that went down, considering that she supposedly told fans that ran into her around Nashville that she would be on the next tour, which would have been the Red tour, up until close to the time the album was released and that Reddit comment about how Liz’s friends allegedly told that person not to ask her about Taylor and she said she was fired for getting out of control.

Back in May, though, Liz did a podcast interview where she basically admitted that she was partially at fault for whatever happened back then. Of course, she didn’t mention Taylor by name, but insinuated it was Taylor who sat her down and basically told her it was time to move on. I get the feeling that maybe Liz wasn’t exactly ready yet, but Taylor kind of pushed her out and Liz didn’t expect that, so I do think there may have been some bad blood there for a while. I also still think there is a chance that there was something more going on between them that may have added to some of the issue. Liz said she was partying a bit too much and wasn’t in a great place at the time. She said she was unsure about what to do and was kind of torn between staying in Taylor’s band and moving on to her own solo career, so it seems Taylor made the decision for her in the end. Again, I personally think there might have been something more there too, but I think at this point they are both mostly over it (and even if there wasn’t anything more than friendship, there still may have been bitter feelings about it on Liz’s part).

So is Liz one of the people that Bekah knows who was “100% screwed over” by Taylor? Possibly. Then again, she is only getting Liz’s perspective. She probably has way more insight into the situation than any of us do and can’t really get into it because she’d probably get sued. The whole bit about Bekah knowing people who worked closely with Taylor basically making it seem like Taylor isn’t a nice person could just be her own perspective and probably only based on things she’s heard about and not from any interactions with Taylor herself.

Liz and Taylor seemed really close for a while and Liz still seems to be okay with Taylor. She does seem to avoid talking about Taylor in interviews, but she has posted nice things on sm in recent years. Of course, she could just be playing it safe there (I think her posts about Taylor have been pretty genuine lately, though, especially the comment on that random IG post of Taylor’s Tiny Desk concert and her post about “the 1”). They may have had a falling out (platonic or otherwise), but that was so long ago.

Maybe Bekah knows some other people who worked for Taylor with stories of their own OR maybe Liz is just publicly playing nice when it comes to Taylor. “Bad Blood” might be about more than one person (Katy P., but also maybe Liz and/or Grant). Grant did post this in July 2014:

I can’t find the original post, but the “band-aids” caption months before “Bad Blood” would be released is interesting. I think the rumor is that Taylor fired (or at least did not rehire) him and Caitlin (I mean, I like her, but there wasn’t any fiddle on 1989 anyway) around this time. Maybe “Bad Blood” is about more than one situation… I mean there was this from Charity at that time too:

See my posts here and here about what Charity recently said in a podcast.

Anyway, I do think they were all close friends (maybe more in the case of Tayliz) and they may have been a bit blindsided when Taylor dropped them. Unfortunately, I don’t think Taylor is in the business to keep people on her team just to maintain a friendship. And that’s fine. Like people cut ties all the time in business, even when they really do care about a person, but I can understand them being upset about it too (and rightfully so because we really don’t know the true dynamic between them and Taylor). I also don’t think everything has always been totally Taylor’s decision either, but this post is getting long, so I’m not going to get too deep in those thought rn.

Anyway, whatever Bekah knows, I wouldn’t be surprised if it has something to do with Liz and if all you hear about a person is from one of your friends venting about them, then you may not end up with the best opinion of that person. I think there seemed to be a lot of good moments with Taylor and Liz (and Grant and Charity and Caitlin, etc.), but I think Taylor might have had a hard time separating personal and business relationships early in her career and she’s gotten better at keeping a healthy distance between herself and her employees since.

[itsclydebitches]

Why do you think so many can't see that RWBY's writing isn't that good? I get why people enjoy the show despite it's poor writing. I'm not talking about that. I mean people who really do think it's such a well put together show that is only getting better and better.

I honestly think a lot of it comes down to how you watch the show. I’ve spoken extensively about how many fans tend to re-write RWBY’s scripts as they watch, overlaying scenes with their preferred interpretation, filling in that gap with a headcanon, assuming that this random detail is a pointed allusion/reference/symbol/etc. and then just... ignoring the rest. Everything that doesn’t fit into the concept of “RWBY is a fantastically written show” is either changed, justified, or if you can’t manage either, ignored. This is particularly easy to do if you’re a younger viewer, simply because you may not have engaged with and thought critically about enough similar shows to spot where RWBY is faltering. After all, a Hershey bar is the absolute best chocolate ever and will remain the best chocolate ever up until you get the chance to try, say, a Belgian chocolate from a skilled chocolatier. It’s all a matter of comparative reference. It’s also just easier to get emotionally caught up in the characters you adore when you’re a kid, pre-teen, or teenager. I say this not as a means of dismissing everyone who fits those ages, or to make claims that everyone supporting the show must be younger, but simply because that used to be me and I have experience with that exact phenomenon. I can clearly remember being ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, even eighteen years old, absolutely immersed in my favorite media and defending them with a passion as only a young fangirl can. I didn’t yet have the experience or the education to spot a lot of those problems for myself and the few times they were pointed out, I recoiled at the mere idea of someone saying my favorite thing was bad. I didn’t yet have the emotional maturity to separate a critique of something I loved from that love itself, so any attack on the story felt like an attack on my taste, my intelligence, even my identity. And a lot of that was pre-social media era. So now, combine that emotion, that passion, and that limited experience with a fandom who is able to get buddy-buddy with the creators. RT very much presents themselves as friends of the fans, whether that’s responding to someone’s tweet, referencing theories in Q&As, or giving explanatory rundowns on reddit. Now, in 2021, a critique of a show can feel both like an attack on the fan and an attack on the creators, people who are no longer just a face on the back of a book cover, or a celebrity you saw interviewed on TV once, but someone you “know.” How dare you say this doesn’t make sense when the explanation I personally made up is so well done? How dare you criticize the show I’m so emotionally attached to? How dare you say anything that implies the writers I feel like I’m pseudo-social media friends with aren’t geniuses? All of which is wrapped up in not recognizing that the knee-jerk response “How dare...” is a problem all its own. 

Obviously this quick, meandering response doesn’t even begin to touch on all the reasons why someone might defend the writing, or even do anything to prove that it’s actually bad (always a subjective opinion). But I’d say the fans’ relationship with the crew, limited experience with well written media doing similar things that RWBY is attempting, limited experience with analysis/how to test the cohesion of a story, and the sheer importance that RWBY as a franchise holds for many people all probably play a part. Interestingly though, for some RWBY has reached a point where even that instinctual desire to defend the show isn’t enough. This is the first volume I’ve seen where a significant number of fans are going, “I used to defend the show, but now...” That reaction is likely due both to the declining quality and the fact that these problems are now extending to fan favorites. Volume 6, when I got off the “RWBY is great” bandwagon, didn’t have as large an impact because the fandom as a whole didn’t care for Ozpin, so the writing problems connected to him were reframed as deserving for an “evil” character. But now, in Volume 8  — particularly the finale  — the favorite MCs are getting done dirty too, so even die-hard fans are pausing and entering the “I hope this volume was just a fluke” stage. It’s easy to come up with those explanations/ignore various problems when the characters you’re emotionally attached to are soaking up all the good parts of the volume. But with the bees still not confirmed, Penny dead, Watts dead, Jaune getting attention again, Maria forgotten, Yang taken out in one hit, etc... anyone whose interest relates on any of those aspects (and others) is suddenly wary post-episode 14. The stuff that we’ve said for years is a problem is now, suddenly, a problem for the parts of the show bigger chunks of the fandom are here for and that gets people to pay attention. 

[theelliottsmiths]

Could you please liveblog the making of Amerika?

Yes

I'm anticipating complaining about the penis zip guy already

Did you know that for a long time as a child I thought the English version was the real version? Cause I did

The bit where they're putting the paint on their faces is weirdly cute even though Richard looks kind of silly

Flake grow out your long hair pleaseee just like. A cute little bob again. I would listen to him talk for hours honestly I like the way he pronounced the words and his tone language doesn't matter

You can always tell by how he holds his face vs his eyes when he's joking "that's what this song is for: to sneak ourselves into their hearts" i feel like they have done that pretty well. For some reason it seems like most of the American fans are from the Midwest but maybe that's just coincidence

Rammstein saying they have no message except "Fleisch, Fleisch" or "ja" or "ich will" I forgot this entire thing is ceaseless dunking and sarcasm

i like the sounds he makes like the. There's a name for them what is it. The noises you make between words for emphasis etc? Those

"America was so fucking annoying we felt the need to call them out on it"

Oli talks a little like he's trying not to yawn. Them saying the war was on while they were in the practice room is strange considering how long the various wars had been going on just from like a born in the late 90s living in 2020 perspective

Ah yes you really were. So subtle. It's very. Clever many double meanings

"sehr gut, Till". :).

The sehnsucht thing tickles me so much he starts off by saying yes it's better to leave things up for interpretation and naturally my brain assumes he means the well thought out probably not true but poetic stuff, right, and then he goes on to say Americans thought sehnsucht was chainsaw and I cannot

The knife also is good.

In a way Amerika as a video is a precursor Ausländer and I like seeing how it compares because its

AS I WAS TYPING THAT OLI SAID THE WORD AUSLÄNDER

Oli does not seem happy to have his words captured At All

I wonder how many people did the Deutschland thing and went straight to saying it's racist without thinking through the reasons behind what they were doing (at least in part criticising American racism) I'm pretty sure l've seen someone complain about it somewhere like it was serious, I think on Reddit around the time the Ausländer Making of came out? Which is why I bring it up

"we wanted to make it clear that it wasn't a love song so these lyrics are perfect" Till: literally just saying this is not a love song

I would like to see them perform a cheer in proper cheerleader costumes instead of the uncomfy stickman Deutschland dance that makes me cringe my skeleton right out of my skin in 2021 please

The juxtaposition of Richards pro-america comments and flakes sarky comments about how nice the urinals are is so reminiscent of that post that's like America where freedom is the choice between thirty kinds of bread that you can't afford to buy

I was going to make a Regan's grave joke but I do prefer to keep that one for Margaret Thatchers grave

I like schneiders hair at this length

Schneiders capacity to oscillate so wildly between being a vacant dumbass and saying intelligent and thought out things is ceaselessly amazing

Saying it's hard because "it's like a punk concert for them" Jörn my guy my dude almost all of them were in punk bands I just checked and this was 2004 Feeling b only broke up in the 90s do you literally just mean Oli (I do not remember if there was any punk going on in the Inchtabokatables) or

Schneider is making it look so easy was he truly just so -_- about feeling b that he can be completely calm in the face drumming that fast? Cause we know usually his fast drumming involves screaming faces and or actual screaming I swear he does and it's just not hearable under the music sidenote he sings along sometimes and if he does it out loud I NEED to hear it

Richard when it's slowed down looks uh. Looks like he's eh. Hm. Is that the real reason people are so into guitarists?

I don't know which part of the sentence Glasses Paul says in that louder voice (schossen? Is he saying that/shot?) but I do like it if I knew more German I would take on way more Rammstein things as echoes you have no idea how much time I spend saying es reicht wenn hier so 'nen fleischfarbenen Draht lang legst which If that's wrong it's exactly what I was told he said so please correct it but it's not my fault unless you consider it my fault for not knowing enough German in which case it is my fault

But anyway yes hes Talking like its a museum tour and in his little glasses and shirt and everything he is totally playing the part of unhinged historian which is the best kind of historian honestly if you're going to be academic in nature you might as well be fucking mental

I want to know what vibes his speech gives off in German because to me he in English and German seems very theatrical in the way he talks? Including how much he rolls his rs it's very... Showy? But maybe not actually?

I forget how many videos Jörn has shot with them honestly

What do you do with this ash sand once your finished with? Some of them had kids I'd have taken it home and pretended it was real moon dust or something

They really go for it when they decide to do something like this and it really is admirable. It's rare they'll half-ass something and even when if feels like their director has they don't themselves

Richard looks very handsome in his space suit before they hang him up

Pretti

He looks like a marionette now nevermind

THIS FUCKER

I just. Do. Not. Enjoy this man I'm sorry to you and the mullet man I'm sure he's great but for fucks SAKE man he

TILL LITERALLY SAYS DONALD SUTHERLAND POINTS TO HIS DICK AND MIMES ZIPPING YOU KNOW WHAT HE'S FUCKING TALKING ABOUT SO WHY DO YOU LOOK SO CONFUSED

YOU TOLD HIM THE STORY YOU KNOW WHY HES SAYING DONALD SUTHERLAND AND POINTING TO HIS PENIS WHY ARE YOU SO GORMLESS

Look. I have nothing against Americans individually B is American Nick is American i love them dearly i know also other Americans a lot of you guys are Americans and I love you lots but here's the thing why are Americans like this

If it's not in English the brain turns off even if the context is obvious it's like when English people see Welsh/English signs and are so anti-welsh that they don't acknowledge that they're also in English and get angry that they don't know where they are

The sweetest little face though!

Softest boy ever besides Rosenrot Till

Till gets bored of the guy and decides to tell a story about a dick it's very him

This is the hair I think of when I think of Till this is the quintessential till haircut no?

God I do dislike this man

Tills voice is so so high here I adore him so completely it's so soft and high and the song is Not

If you're trying to learn how to say L sounds like a German I feel like richard is the easiest one to copy? Unless they're all weirdos and no other German says L sounds like that. Him and flake.

Flakes smile is more cheerful than Paul's there I said it

I know it's not foreshadowing but Jörn foreshadowing Ausländer

Richard talking about America's tendancy to exaggerate is really interesting since that's something the community as a whole seems to agree is a personality trait of his. They didn't fight, they almost broke up. He hates touring and yet he loves touring. Is that why he likes it there or is living there why he's like that?

Can you casually buy ten litres of orange juice? The boys are busy they cannot confirm and Google does not understand what I'm asking

Yeah Richard and Till, get closer

Knife

Schneiders handprint

I forgot about "there was a rumour in the DDR that America didn't exist" what is it with Germany and conspiracies about places not existing I'm there are tears in my eyes I genuinely I never watch this one flake is so fucking funny

Till talking pictures of the others

It's better than I give it credit for in my memory is there anything they've made that is in not a single way entertaining? I feel like no

Thank you for asking for this one it was every fun actually