#cw fandom discourse

[wishing-stones]

Hihihi i saw your reblog about calcium cat recently and... thank you for that! It was eye opening and confirmed some suspicions i had... and im sorry you dont have to post this ask if you dont want to, i just didnt know where else to go. I don't use tumblr often, very sorry if i am bothering you!

So, i used to be a big fan of calcium cat's, and when i learned from your reblog that she's not someone i want to associate myself with, i remembered that she and topazshadowwolf (someone who wrote some Dadmare and Soriel fics that I liked, i think they're well known in the community but im not sure?) were affiliated with one another, and topazshadowwolf has these two posts on their blog that arent outright queerphobic like calcium cat's posts. i wanted to see what your thoughts were on it as a second opinion because i dont want to judge them too hard, but i also got an icky feeling from these posts that i can't really explain. I dont want to cause trouble for them if they don't deserve it which is why i wanted to ask your opinion on it. And im on anon in case if it really is that bad...

https://www.tumblr.com/topazshadowwolf/738317097192603648/anon-i-am-not-going-to-reply-to-that-ask-i-dont?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/topazshadowwolf/738292724279672832/i-didnt-want-to-say-this-but-its-been-bugging?source=share

Uhmm yeah thats about it. Sorry, you probably dont get asks like this that much, i really just didnt know what to do and didnt see anyone talking about it and thought i was going crazy, i wanted to ask someone. I am a queer person myself and i just felt like these posts were really off but idk why :(((

Sorry this took a bit to get to Anon, I legitimately had no idea who this person was. Also had to grapple with the fact that I'm apparently a big enough figurehead here to ask about discourse? Willlddd to me. I'm not used to this LOL.

Discourse under the cut

The first thing that strikes me as off is the fact that Cal commented on the ask linked in the first post you provided. Don't like that. Openly associating with someone who has been outed as an immensely bigoted trans/homophobe is.... not a good look.

However, in regards to that ask, I agree with some of what they were saying. School is a time to play at discovery, because you rarely remain who you were as a child. It's not a definitive thing. You can be adamant that you're one way in school, and once you leave it an broaden your horizons, you discover that you're another way. This ranges anything from sexualities, gender expression, to religion and belief systems. People grow and change.

As an aside, I don't agree that NM wouldn't support them if they claimed to be different from how they are as adults and wouldn't support them. No context given, but I assume the boys don't remember being adults. This means their growing experiences will be fundamentally different than they were as former adults because they are going through their childhood/adolescence in a wildly different way than they did underground. So constricting them to such a narrow scope seems... disingenuous at best.

Seems a might bit narrow-minded, but I wouldn't go screaming "transphobia" yet. Don't like the "if you feel like I disrespected you, leave" though. The correct response is to ask what you did that made someone feel that way.

Worthy of a side-eye, but unless someone presents solid proof (as with Cal's very damning twitter likes, yuck), bad vibes shouldn't be enough to try to cancel someone. I try to give the benefit of the doubt. I sincerely hope my general faith here is not misplaced.

#k answers #cw fandom discourse #legit don't know this person but tl;dr don't go damning someone based on vibes #even if they feel preeettyyy wonky #at the end of the day it's your dash and your social media experience tho #tailor it however you need it to be tailored

[danzafila]

seriously, the stans make it so fucking hard to enjoy her character

because I do! I genuinely like her and think she's one of the most fascinating and complex characters in the whole game that I'd looove to dig into more! but... I feel like I'm afraid to talk at all about her with anyone bc 1) I'm worried about certain aggressive fans finding the discussion and deeming my interpretations Wrong and tf unacceptable and worth harassing me over. but 2) (and primarily) because it feels so hard to find other El fans (to talk about/enjoy her with) that I feel like I can trust to... just be fucking normal and not be incredibly toxic, basically lmao

like, you've got to basically vet every new fan you come across??? because so many of her fans will happily just level such vile misogyny and abelism and shit at anyone they disagree with (and at characters they see as in competition with her popularity. tho--while still not great--that's obviously a much milder concern than the active real world harassment they engage in). and literally stalk and harass people over a fucking video game character! it's exhausting to have to weed out whether people are normal and capable of engaging with and enjoying a character non-toxically without spewing vitriol at people they disagree with

but even worse, so many at first glance seemingly nice and normal fans who don't actively engage in the harassment themselves turn out to be biiiig fans of the known harassers and are, at the very least, turning a blind eye to their blatant harassment but far too often are quietly actively encouraging and applauding the harassment too

#making my own post bc it felt like i was just gunking up the notes on that post i'd reblogged w/ specific fandom wank #hmm how to tag this so people who want to can avoid fandom wank/discourse without putting it in a tag trolls actively watch... #cw fandom wank #cw fandom discourse #??? #sto parlando #3h talking tag #it's so disappointing whenever i see someone posting cool stuff/takes so go check out their blog & see they follow known/blatant harassers #edeltag

[cartoonscientist]

you guys, we made it!! the classical horror fandom officially has enough of an online presence that people who spend too much time on the internet have declared the dracula and frankenstein novels degenerate media. that’s the sign of a big name fandom.

#shitpost #cw fandom discourse

[amarithegreat42]

Watching fandom discourse not wanting to get involved cause I'd get ripped to shreds by either side: 🧍🏿‍♀️

#cw fandom discourse #stranger things

[theslowesthnery]

you know fandom's been infested by normies when someone's "what's the craziest, wackiest, most insane crack ship you've ever heard of??" post's answers are full of characters from the same show/series who have some sort of canon relationship with each other and/or semi-constant interactions

#fandom discourse cw

[regicidal-optimism]

You've been reblogging more stuff about female characters getting ignored by fandoms recently and I would be really curious to hear your full views on the topic.

The thing is that... look. I get it. Many fandoms do not have very many women in their canon, many of those women are treated pretty poorly by the canon or aren't given as much depth as their male peers, and if you're at all picky the pickings are kind of slim (I would love to be a fan of c!Niki, if I were able to watch six-hour vods, which I am not). It is not wrong that most works with large fandoms are really, really sexist, and the problem is not just in the fanbase!

But come the fuck on. It is not an accident that the DSMP and the MCU and BNHA, all of which are vast-majority male and the female characters are treated terribly, are megafandoms, and Revolutionary Girl Utena is eligible for yuletide. It is not wrong that if you want to see more female-character-focused fanwork you should go to Sailor Moon and not The Untamed, but it is also kind of missing the point to say that and not look at the difference in size between those fandoms. People can say "it's because the male characters are so often more interesting and have more meaningful interactions," and like, sometimes that's even true, I will be the first to tell you that quackbur has more to it than tinarose, but please compare the Clint/Coulson tag to the Utena/Anthy tag and look me in the eye and tell me that's the only thing driving the trend. With a straight face.

And even more there's a thing where— so, I was a mod in the @ao3topshipsbracket bracket. And femslash ships, once they were in the bracket, did really well. Like, absurdly well, like 80% of the f/f ships entered got to the top 16, and the last one was against blackbonnet which was never gonna lose in round 1. You might notice something about that number, though, which is that there were only five of them entered total, because people love to vote for femslash but they absolutely will not write it. And they won't say anything about it either! I was watching the activity feed the entire tournament, and I can tell you, for all of the "let's go lesbians" that populated our notes, nobody would say anything that was actually about the specific characters who made up their ship. I learned a lot about Naruto fandom, modding that bracket; I still know nothing about CW Supergirl, because the only thing anyone would say about it is "it has women in it". Because women are interchangeable. Because women are avatars of Being A Good Feminist. Because clicking a button is easy, and actually thinking about any specific woman and her traits and her internality is hard.

The thing is that guilt over misogyny does not actually fix misogyny. It gets you a lot of people who vote for women in polls, and who say "he's like a woman to me" about their male faves but notably don't have any canonically female characters they talk about, and who say that the only thing they care about in a fic is if it has women in it but will not ever actually say anything about any specific woman, and who never shut up about yuri but apparently yuri is everything and anything except women who have feelings about one another.

I'm tired! I'm very tired. I want people to actually give a shit about specific women and their specific traits, which do not begin and end with "woman". And, also, to stop treating women exclusively as the wingmen, advice-givers, mom figures, and accessories of men.

#grace dot text #ask #fandom misogyny #discourse cw #creative reading

[correlance]

#anti hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel critical #hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel discourse #tw: discourse #cw: discourse #tw: fandom discourse #cw: fandom discourse #i am not anti huskerdust but some shippers and fans are woobifying both characters and i hate it #the only good person in the hotel is charlie but even she has issues

[antimony-medusa]

on Consequences in minecraft streaming

Okay so one of the real common things that I've been seeing lately is an increasingly passionate call for certain characters to experience Consequences (and the rest of the post always makes it clear that they mean a specific type of definatively negative repercussions) for their actions during QSMP events. And aside from the absolute deja vu of having seen these same calls when DSMP was airing, and how that turned out (sorry, the syndicate did not all have a meeting where they apologized for their sins while tommy told them they were horrible people), I'm not 100% sure if that's going to happen or pan out in the exact way that I think people are aiming for and expecting will happen.

I keep seeing a lot of people saying that it would be bad writing if people don't get "consequences" for their actions, and what they're specifically asking for is punishment and for people to realize what they're doing was wrong. BBH is supposed to repent for furniture thefts and torturing the people keeping him from his kid. Phil is supposed to realize that actually he's good at PVP and apologize for saying that his team has been suffering in purgatory. Tubbo is supposed to fill in his tubhole and only do things other people ask him to do.

But like, so much of the time, what we're seeing is these streamers being interested in writing morally grey characters, just some little guys who make bad decisions, and the thing about characters being morally grey is that they don't always have a come to jesus moment and become morally pure. Sometimes they just keep being morally grey. Sometimes they get worse on purpose.

Maybe BBH never decides that torturing that guy was bad, because he wanted to get his FUCKING KID back. Like, I seriously think you have to be prepared for that character arc to never end in Bad going "that was wrong to do", and maybe his cubito will still be happy. Phil is a dude with anxiety who's been sure that his kids are going to die from the moment he got to purgatory, streaming at 1-4 in the morning while other teams break into their base, even if bolas goes insane and scrapes out a win I think it's way more likely that that team is gonna go "what a wild fluke that's the power of gas masks" and not have a moment where they go "it was unfair of us to assume that we were underpowered, I guess everybody else was the underdogs! Our bad." Tubbo is tubbo, he's already building a new create thing, he is not going to apologize for leaving marks on the landscape with mod packs.

Like, the streamers are interested in making human characters, making interesting decisions, not communicating moral lessons to their fanbases. Bad is operating within a Taken film, not a sermon. Quackity wants his cubito to be pathetic, gay, and out for revenge, not to communicate the importance of forgiveness to those who hurt you. Tubbo's victory condition is having a nice date with Fred, full stop, does not care who he has to run over to get there.

Absolutely I think there are people intentionally doing corruption/villany arcs on the server, and they probably intend for that to lead places. There will be Consequences, as in, things will happen. Cellbit is doing cannibalsm on purpose, and not as a teaching moment about how good cannibalism is for your social bonds. But like, maybe that leads to him being thrown out of his family and not trusted because of his sins, OR maybe it leads to him murdering his way through a federation complex, facing down a bloody cucurucho, and going "you made me into you and I hate this" and eating him. Narrative consequences does not always mean punishment and a return to moral purity. Sometimes people just do bad things, and then repercussions happen, but they don't necessarily "see the error of their ways". The specific call for like— retribution and repentance as the consequences people are going for— for punishment— if a character has done something bad they don't "deserve" good things to happen to them and it's bad writing for that to happen— I just don't think that those are the stories the creators are necessarily interested in telling.

And secondly, what people are often asking for is character conflict— they want people to be socially excluded by characters they feel have been wronged, and learn the error of their ways that way until they apologize sufficiently. Phil is gonna hate BBH or Tubbo is going to hate Roier or something once they return from Purgatory. People want their cubitos to have beef with each other.

But the thing is, on a meta level, I don't doubt that the entire admin team and streaming team on QSMP is just screamingly aware that this fandom cannot be trusted with conflict. The election was just part of it, but I made it through the election, and Purgatory has been so much more unpleasant— and I am not just talking about twitter. This website, tumblr, has been full of people fighting each other for their teams. And I am not just saying "red team fans have been bad", because boy have I been staring in horrified awe at the takes that some red team people have been putting forward (what on EARTH do you mean BBH deserves to have his kid die, touch grass immediately), but if I step outside of red team circles, everyone is talking about how red team people are horrible hypocrites who win too much and only deserve to suffer (I saw this posting the day that blue had back to back wins, so it isn't even tied to how well red is doing). The quality of the discourse has been increasingly unpleasant, and this has been taking place in streamer's chats, on twitter, in discords, and here on tumblr.

Every QSMP streamer is increasingly aware that having conflict with another streamer is basically sending a wave of negativity their way, and setting off bombs in the fandom at the same time. And they're all friends with each other! Sometimes they decide that the story beat they're going for is worth it and just tell each other to stay off twitter, but like, you have got to be prepared that maybe they will just be friends again. And that might be weaker writing, for people to keep forgiving each other, but that is an unfortunate aspect of the technical aspects of this medium and this fandom. Maybe the creators would be more willing to have character conflict if they didn't know that that meant the person they were mad at in-game would get death threats on social media.

Like no fucking wonder Phil apologized for getting mad at Wil within the same stream and before Wil said sorry to him. This is why the French have given up on revolution arcs, you know it's why the women are all very careful to get along with people. All of those creators know the cost of making anyone into a villain, and I'm just saying maybe get prepared that we won't have inner-party conflict. Maybe they'll decide it's worth it for a fun story moment! Maybe they won't. Maybe don't get 100% married to the idea that the only good writing possible moving forward is for people to be thrown out of the community and then repent for their sins.

#qsmp #fandom meta #discourse #negativity #this is also just screamingly culturally christian of you but that lies beyond the scope of this post #cw cannibalism

[thecruellestmonth]

Batfam™ posts are like

What are the BATFAM™'s favorite drinks?

Dick: sparkling hibiscus nectar infused with pistachio honey (bubbly and sweet just like him 💙) served in a World's Best Big Brother mug that was chipped in a hilarious incident when all three of his beloved siblings got into a wacky swordfight and sunshine big bro Dick had to make peace between them because he's a loving mother hen

Jason: vodka mixed with Earl Grey tea—in Crime Alley, street rats only ever drink alcohol because they're uneducated and miserable, but Jason also drinks tea because he's now elevated above his lowly origins (how quaint! He's Not Like The Other Poors) and to symbolize how much he LOVES his rich family

Tim: COFFEE!! brewed from a special blend of extra caffeinated Arabica beans, mixed with hazelnut non-dairy creamer (lactose hurts him just like everything and everyone in his life 😔) and one sugar cube for every hug he's ever gotten from his parents in his entire life (none) and also his tears

Damian: lemonade colored pink with Tim's blood (now Tim is dying of blood loss and it's all evil Damian's fault! how dare Damian be so cruel to Tim in this terrible scenario that I made up in my own head)

Babs:

Cass: water

Steph: water (with a bendy straw lol she's such a character)

Duke: water

#Batkids #Stephanie Brown #Cassandra Cain #Damian Wayne #Duke Thomas #Barbara Gordon #fanon vs canon #anti Batfamily #anti Batfam #Tim Drake #Dick Grayson #Jason Todd #anti Batboys #fandom discourse cw #negativity cw #Like sometimes I wonder why include characters that you are just completely disinterested in. #This blog here is like mostly Jason Todd lol. Not saying that I don't have my own faves and biases. #Even though I don't always personally enjoy WFA--I gotta give it props for not making the Batfamily revolve around the Four Batboys. #I just dislike the forced made-up 'Batboys quartet'. Dick is the only one with a bond with the other three. #Cass and Duke really bonded when they were with the Outsiders. #Jason has a fun dynamic with Duke. #Babs is the best parental figure in Cass' life. Steph is the best menace ever to Bruce and she can read him to filth. #Whatever these are my tags and I'll rant if I want to.

[deardarlingdevil]

People getting angry over that Raphael romance petition because Wyll isn't getting his much deserved screentime is this fucking tweet in a nutshell

#bg3 #raphael #bg3 discourse #bg3 fandom critical #bg3 critical #cw: fandom drama

[mywitchcultblr]

🚨 Scam alert 🚨

The antis vs pro ship bullshit is going too far with NOW SOMEONE TRIED TO SCAM PEOPLE just to own proship or whatever and prove a point

Listen... You are taking this god damn bullshit too damn far! Why are you literally going to commit fraud over shipping and discourse?! Forget about pros vs antis whatever, you are planning to commit fraud and taking random people's money wtf

Also that person have Tumblr account as well and she seemed to be friends with a serial harasser: aster-disasters who trolling and harassing on pro ao3 post or whatever i remember someone sending me DM about it but i don't remember details because it happened some time ago... Holy fuck...

Imagine you plan to do fake commission or whatever, taking people's money + lying about your situation because you are so deep in online BS... Oh my fuckin' god some gen z are fucked beyond help...

Don't commit fraud over shipcourse!

Look if anyone with those account names babykn1fe or slime whatever asking for donation/offering commission project. Don't trust! 🚨

That person is on TikTok as well with the same name as Tumblr

Edit: Correcting pronouns + Wtf that twitter account saying "Good luck, have fun!!" To someone who's going to scam people online out of their money

It's like saying to Bernie Madoff:

"Oh! Bernie! You wanted to steal 70 billion dollars from people? Good luck! Have fun old boy!"

#shipping #shipping discourse #Twitter #antis #proship #proship vs antis #proship vs anti cw #discourse cw #fraud #scam #fandom #donation scam #boost #boosting #discourse #commission scam

[starseverance]

I've been stepping back from tumblr for a while because shipcourse makes me get angry and I don't like being angry, but honestly...

The fact is that antis often create proshippers* by treating neutrals negatively. I can't count the amount of people I know of whose neutral stance didn't last long because antis pressured them to state opinions or spread rumours about them.

I would ask "how hard is it to leave people who don't want to be involved in shipcourse alone?" but I already know that certain groups of people find that very hard indeed. Certain groups of people put their personal need to make themselves feel morally superior by harming those that they deem "bad" before everything else, and that includes the boundaries and needs of others.

When neutrals are harassed by antis, policed by antis, and continually pestered to pick a side, they won't pick the side that made them feel like they had to choose. These are nuanced issues and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but more and more people are adopting the proship label because antis are harassing them whether they use it or not.

Antishippers talk the big talk about people being manipulated into becoming proship, but unsurprisingly, a lot of people prefer to be around people who don't make being in favour of harassment over fiction a core part of their online identity.

I may not be neutral, but shoutout to the people who are, because they have to put up with much of the same crap that proshippers do. People have the right to not take a side, to have criticisms of both viewpoints, to keep their opinions private, and to enjoy their fandoms without the fighting. Or at least I think they do.

*And for anyone who is confused or conflicted about what proship means: I would advise you to use the definition given by people who use the label, instead of people who hate people who use the label.

#discourse #sev's thoughts #shipcourse #i am aware that this will serve as a magnet for unsavoury people looking to twist my words and stuff #but I can't not say this #proship #fandom wank #proshipper #proshippers please interact #cw shipcourse #cw discourse

[theslowesthnery]

gently staples this thread to the forehead of the people going "ew why would you ship mohg with miquella when you could make an OC/self-insert to ship with him instead"

the answer, you'll find, is shockingly simple: because that doesn't interest me. because that does literally nothing for me. because i'd rather piss in my own eye than ship a canon character with my OC (or self-insert). i promise you, if i had any interest in that, i would do it without needing to be told, but i don't so i won't. you're asking a person who likes chocolate cake why they're not eating banana cake instead as if those two are even remotely the same

#elden ring for blacklist #fandom discourse cw #shipping discourse cw #canonxoc

[murky-tannin]

Never seen a fandom so in love with saying "delulu" until the qsmp fandom. Guys please take a step back and think about if that is a term you want to be throwing around💀 Tubbo who used this term more then any other qsmp streamer realized it was wrong and is trying to stop using it, you can too

#qsmp #not like. PISSED because I doubt anyone is doing it maliciously #but we don't need to encourage it either #cw ableism #qsmp discourse #fandom neg #no your favorite streamer shouldn't be saying it either

[dappersautismcreature]

people on twt irk me so much and i wish i was talkin abt this in better circumstances but like O___O

the qsmp is hugely abt grief, especially the beginning, when like 3 eggs died within a few weeks, and then when bobbyy died even more so. death literally haunts this server.

im so grateful for it coming along because it allowed me to process my own very recent grief (our system has a qslime introject that deals with that grief) so it just grinds my gears when people use that grief to justify CHILD MURDER,, when child death is what caused that grief in the first place.

qslime was perpetuating a cycle, of violence, thats not a good thing

when a young person dies there is a lot of anger that comes with that grief, trust me, I know, so claiming that inflicting that pain on another person is fine? eurgh

responsibility for your actions people. like fuck dude!

anyways i just want to remind people, as ive been doing on twt for the past hour, that qslime tried to murder dapper very intently, as well as bobby and i think ramon? and has not shown to qbad that he has changed totally, or healed totally. all things considered i think qbad (at least on the island) has been very kind to him, giving him stuff and telling him he can always stop by and hang out. why should he lie to sunny.

#aaaaa #anyways #qsmp #twitter neg #discourse #fandom neg #q!slime #q!badboyhalo #cw child death

[antimony-medusa]

So what kind of a dad is q!Phil anyways?

So, Phil getting Tallulah and Chayanne to wear armour and learn how to fight. Also Bad doing this with Dapper, and the Brazilians trying to do this with Richas, and the french with Pomme, but when it gets discussed, it's mostly focusing on Phil because of the contrast of Wilbur not wanting his kids to have to fight. There's some really fun discussion that comes up with that!

And the interesting thing is that when we're trying to pull up other cultural touchpoints to compare phil-and-fighting-and-the-kids to, a lot of the other characters have very specific vibes, so to speak. I was in a discussion the other day where someone compared Phil in this with the dad in Supernatural, and him getting his sons to follow him on hunts. Cause he's a dad training his kids to fight, right? From a very young age? However, I don't think this is a perfect comparison, and I wanted to share the one that comes to mind for me, despite the fact that it deals with some pretty dark topics. This whole post deals with some dark topics, you might want to check the tags, just so you know.

Anyways, I never watched Supernatural, so I didn't do much more than think emoji in the moment when this comparison came up. But I checked in with friends who have watched it, and I think Phil QSMP and John Winchester Supernatural are acting from some pretty different places. John Supernatural is teaching his kids to fight because they have a duty and a lineage and have to help save the world, but at the same time there's this tragedy there that implies that he's so focused on his duty as a hunter that he's not seeing that maybe you don't need the kids for that. They could start when they were older—or maybe they could not start this! He essentially conscripts them into a battle that shapes the course of their lives, as little warriors, and they never have a choice in it. And he's not above using them as bait, because they're warriors, right? The battle is so important? They want to be involved, they want this (of course they want this, you're their dad, and they believe you that this is important). He's a true believer.

Whereas Phil is faced with a world that actively and constantly wants to kill his kids, and he's trying to train them to defend themselves. He's trying to say that there's danger out there, you take care of yourself, I'm going to put myself on the line for you, but if I fail, if I'm not there, you won't be defenseless if it comes down to it. I have had my beef with fics that take on this topic, in fact, because I've seen people write Phil as using his kids as bait to get to the codes or forgetting his kids in his code battle, and that's not how I interpret the character motivattion and actions. For me, the way I see it, Phil is always thinking of how best to defend the eggs, and everything else is in service to this. He's a man with anxiety on an island that wants to kill his kids, not a warrior in an epic battle.

Does this mean that the eggs are gonna grow up and go to therapy about their childhood full of danger? Hell yeah they wll. This is not an ideal childhood. But— and this is the crucial thing— they're going to grow up. Same with Dapper, same with Richas, same with Pomme— living your life under constant need to teleport out to safety is bad, objectively, but when the alternative is living in the moment until you die, I think the teleporting out is better, actually.

And the comparison that comes to mind for me, because of my personal experience, is not examples in media of parents training their kids to fight, but examples in media or in real life of parents dealing with serious and or terminal illness in kids. Cause that's what my family did. And boy is there resonance there.

I don't know of any parent of a kid with cancer who likes putting their kid through treatment. Chemotherapy sucks, radiation sucks, surgery sucks, immunotherapy sucks, none of this is good. I have seen this tear up parents (and siblings) inside. But it's better than letting their kids DIE, isn't it? And before you say well, obviously everyone is on the same page when it comes to things like chemotherapy, I have *seen* people go out there and post at cancer families about how they can't believe they're putting poison in their children's bodies when they should just eat better, etc. (This take reminds me strongly of the "she shoudln't wear armour cause she shouldn't have to fight" take about Tallulah.) Serious illness in kids forces you into terrible situations, but the only saving grace is that they're better than the alternative, you hope.

The only thing that makes me go ehhhhh maybe with Phil and the Mr Supernatural is him letting Chayanne fight, but Chayanne is a kid being hunted whose sister (also being hunted) is disabled, and this happens whether or not Chayanne is involved, and he wants to try and defend her so bad. I don't think saying "let her die if necessary, don't intervene" is going to be a conversation that ends up with less trauma, if you know what I mean. That is simply a situation that has no real win conditions out of it. At least this way he feels like he has some control? (Note: this is a bad situation, there's no getting around it.)

QSMP is so often a story about forces beyond our control trying to destroy us, and while Supernatural and its ilk also has that tone, within Supernatural there's at least a population that doesn't have to be part of the battle, so opting into the battle becomes on some level a choice, and involving children in that is also a choice, one that you can hold up to the standards of allowing children to have a childhood and go "is this ethical". On Quesadilla island, there's literally no opting out of this fight. There are malevolent forces that are directly trying to destroy you, destroy your children, and the question of allowing children to have a childhood has been effectively taken out of your hands. You simply have to do the best with the situation you have, and have a birthday party while keeping the armour on. And this reminds me much more strongly of situations like childhood cancer, than it does of cases in media of people concripting their children into battle.

In both cases children are trying to fight malevolent entities that want them dead, as pushed to fight by their parents, but boy, at least to me, the tone is pretty different. I think the question of "is it self defense or did you choose to be here" is pretty important.

#cw child death #cw cancer #cw childhood cancer #cw child abuse #discourse #qsmp #philza #fandom meta #bad dad phil discussion