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2ndblogg · 3 years

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Listen if you, (usually a straight girl,) are overly obsessed with who tops and bottoms in a mlm relationship and think top/bottom=dominant/submissive=male/female you have far different problems than some person online writing a character as vers.

Also, "he's gay but he wouldn't touch another man's dick or suck it or gay shit like that"???

You're not morally superior for fetishizing queer men online, your views can still be (and lbr, are!) based on homophobic stereotypes.

Stop

- viewing mlm relationship as inherently only sexual

- thinking a mlm relationship has an inherent power dynamic to it or enforces heteronormative genderroles or that every gay man has to be into bdsm

- seeing top/bottom as personality traits. Sex is sex at the end of the day and you're not turning into an insecure crying cliche teenage girl worried about being pretty for her bf bc you bottomed

- seeing top/bottom as physical traits. You don't skip gym too often and now you have to bottom. You don't have to have a big dick to top. A nice ass can be had and be appreciated by everybody regardless of what they like in bed

- thinking it's a 'competition'. You don't need to 'feminize' one character so the other can be 'masculine'. Two men can be in a relationship. Maybe reflect on why you feel personally offended when 'the top' has an insecure moment or 'the bottom' makes a decision without needing 'the top' to tell him what to do. And why you think these are male/female traits. (And like, unless they're a shitty person, no top or dom is gonna freak out bc their partner is better than them at some hobby or skill. Let me repeat: that's not a 'Dom' trait, that's a shitty person trait)

- thinking there's two groups of gay men, top and bottom, and they're all exactly the same

- thinking of the lgbt+ community to only exist for woke points and for you to fetishize! We're real ppl and your fellow fans!

- thinking bottom=man light and top=gay light. Stop viewing being gay as bad/weak/etc

- thinking a work by a straight woman for straight women is the Holy Grail of LGBT representation. Like what you like in fiction but don't confused it with reality? Don't call ppl homophobic for not liking it or finding it unrealistic??? You're not some gay rights activist or hero bc you were fetishizing gay men online and talked over actual gay ppl!

All of this of course also applies (even more so!) to real people. Everybody has their own boundaries when it comes to real ppl, but no matter what: you do not have any right to or any idea about their sexlife! Again, maybe examine why you think there's sth sexual/kinky to every single one of their (public!) interactions. Why you read 'submissiveness' into absolutely everything one person does or says. Why you're so obsessed with assigning 'male traits' and 'female traits', and ignoring everything that doesn't fit, to these rl men to the point of them becoming one dimensional caricatures. Why you're so freaking offended by 'the bottom' being adressed with male terms and 'the top' not being taller. Why you think there's always set male+female roles and behaviors in a relationship, gay or straight. Why you think 'the bottom's only worth as a human being/partner starts and ends with them being pretty. Why you think bottoming is degrading. Why you think "gay and tops" means "would fuck girls/you"...I could go on

(I understand that a lot of you have never been in a relationship, but do you also have no siblings or friends??? Even nodding/agreeing is apparently now submissive/female behavior.)

YOU DON'T HAVE ANY IDEA ABOUT OR RIGHT TO THE SEXLIFE OF REAL PEOPLE!

PUBLIC INTERACTIONS BETWEEN QUEER MEN ARE NOT INHERENTLY SEXUAL AND KINKY!

QUEER MEN ARE NOT INHERENTLY SEXUAL AND KINKY!

QUEER MEN ARE MORE THAN CLICHES AND CARICATURES!

#mdzs #bjyx #wang yibo #lwj #lan wangji #yes obviously there's normal ppl too. if this doesn't concern you just move on #bc if you're bothered by me calling this behavior out but not by it happening...dude #`it's my kink` it's the homophobia and (internalized) misogyny #if you've managed to avoid ppl like this...pls invite me to your magical safe haven

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2ndblogg · 3 years

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Wanted this for Thursday, but I won't have time tomorrow, so...

#noooooooooooo #.... i love it #dragon age: inquisition #dorian pavus

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2ndblogg · 3 years

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[this is a vent abt top/bottom discourse & sexualization of idols bc i have no idea where else to air out my feelings]

i started stanning wyb and xz before watching cql because a bunch of bts videos popped up in my youtube recommended after i finished watching the donghua, and shortly after i started looking into their relationship because their chemistry and friendship felt so genuine and playful. after a moment, i started feeling like there was more to their relationship than friendship after i started stanning uniq and realized how differently wyb acted with xz compared to his group members.

so i decided to look into the shipper fandom because it seemed widespread enough and i wanted to feel like i wasn’t only just seeing things.

honestly, it’s mostly been fun. the candies are cute and xz and wyb have such endearing personalities individually which makes it easy to love them both separately and together.

one of my few issues is the fucking t/b discourse. first of all, finding out there are three ship names for each of those configurations was just… weird? i’d never thought about them in a sexual context so the fact that millions of fans were implicitly voicing their opinions of their sex lives depending on which super topic they joined was just… kind of uncomfortable, for me personally? the meaning behind bjyx is so sweet though and perfectly encapsulates their relationship, but it just feels a little icky knowing that it also means wyb tops. which is probably why i’m partial to yizhan bc it’s just neutral. (although bjyx does tend to be the catch-all in english-speaking fandom.)

either way, i can mostly ignore the implications of the ship names and just continue to follow them without thinking about it. except i’m also on twitter? and holy shit? they sexualize the ever-living hell out of them?

okay, i think i should probably preface this by saying that i don’t have anything against rpf. i do understand how it squicks people out and why they wouldn’t want to participate in it—i even used to feel that way. but now i feel like when people write rpf, they’re implicitly saying they know all of it is fantasy and it in no way reflects how the real people they’re writing about are in real life. so when i’m talking about sexualization, it’s not about whatever nsfw works are floating around on ao3.

but the sexualization! of literally every single interaction! of everything they say! in interviews! genuinely frustrates me because people are just projecting their fantasies onto them without making the distinction that none of it is true.

Keep reading

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2ndblogg · 3 years

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No you can’t claim MXTX is deconstructing tropes, when she then fully embraces these tropes... Nor can you play the ‘different culture’ card. because a) in China people don’t practice consent is the dumbest possible take you could have - and don’t go ‘nobody is saying that’, I’ve seen it - and b) fandom cultures are incredibly influenced by one another, and nothing had a bigger influence on how these straight women view and approach gay characters and people.

#mxtx critical #mdzs

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2ndblogg · 3 years

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Hey! Just read your hot take on novel!wangxian and I absolutely agree. I'm gonna have to say here that I believe it boils down to the fetishization of homosexual men in a lot of the fandom culture that surrounds mlm shipping, as you said it's a space for a lot of women to experiment with their desires and whatnot, but I think therein lies the breaking points between reading novel!wangxian as a good, healthy relationship vs. reading it as a very flawed and toxic one. As an LGBT person, reading the way the author dealt with their relationship made me extremely uncomfortable, it just really feels like something that is written by someone who is more invested in using her queer characters for satisfying her and her reader's own pleasure than a well-built, strong relationship between two characters. Not to take away from the novel in some other aspects, I believe that novel!wwx is a much better, much more nuanced character than what he is in cql, but when it comes to wangxian, I think the intentions are very different for each of them. To each their own, I guess, but I do find it very troubling that some people in the fandom have a really hard time admitting that novel wangxian is not even remotely healthy.

Absolutely.

And can I just say how glad it makes me to see that not everyone is praising this book for it’s lgbt representation...

But I guess that’s also why I just occasionally feel the need to scream my frustrations into the void or try to make sense of the novel.

And why I try to be understanding and accepting of people’s opinion of the novel and not take it ‘personally’ (in the sense of sitting there thinking “holy shit this is how they view ME, this is what they think of ME” etc).

I was in fandoms back when they were really a place dominated by straight (homophobic) women and realism or lgbt representation wasn’t on anyone’s mind (and the occasional dude butting in to say that’s not how sex works or bottoming is experienced was ignored or told to get out). I experienced this change to fandoms being more of a lgbt space, of people becoming aware that media can shape your views of groups of people, of people becoming aware of their fetishizing of fictional gays vs. their prejudice against real life lgbt people etc.

And tbh MXTX just writes like one of those, she writes wangxian like everyone wrote their gay relationships around 2005 and earlier; clear power imbalance, clear roles and attributes that are divided into ‘manly’ and ‘feminine’, certain physical attributes (like the female self insert character aka the bottom being pretty and slight and weaker and shorter), men/the penetrating partner can’t really be raped so anything the woman/bottom tries isn’t really ‘bad’, the male love interest is forceful and self centered but ONLY because he’s so in love and since he’s emotionally stunted he has to express that through sex, men/tops NEED sex and it’s rude/mean to deny them that, the girl/bottom isn’t THAT horny or in charge of their own sexuality but wants to please their partner and what they really get out of it is the emotional aspect, decisions need to be made for them because the dude/top just knows better, the girl/bottom is childish and flirty and the guy/top suffers through it until he finally snaps and shows the girl/bottom who'sboss etc etc. (honestly homophobia and misogyny is so tightly knit in this kind of fiction, if it wasn’t so frustrating it would be very interesting).

Tbh I disagree with novel!wwx being more nuanced (despite a lot of ppl whose opinions I really respect also feeling this way), because I simply cannot seperate him from the wangxian relationship. All I see are tropes and stereotypes applied to make him ‘work’ in the context of the wangxian relationship instead of an actual personality...

To me, in CQL WWX is clearly the main character and you love his interactions with LWJ and want more of them and value them, wheras in the novel most of the time WWX plays second fiddle even when a scene should technically be about him and LWJ’s presence is incredibly suffocating, because he’s always being controlling or at the very least influencing WWX.

I also don’t feel like WWX has much of a character arc/growth. We’re essentially told he had one but the only thing that really actually changes is him hating himself a bit more and letting LWJ smash..., and I guess: he’s less independent than ever, he’s more isolated that ever...

I’ve called novel!wangxian a relationship between an abuser and his victim, because you can find evidence of that in the text. Not because I think the author wanted to portray an unhealthy gay relationship. Like you said, she was fetishizing and wrote for a similar crowd. But to me that ‘realization’ helped...I still don’t see how people can call it a masterpiece but I can at least understand hyping something you like up...

And like, badly written gay relationship or not; gay/straight,man/women, I see how people can find it hot. Exploring your sexuality through fictional characters isn’t necessarily a strictly straight girl phenomena. I probably have read fic that was exactly like this, I can’t judge anyone for it. But no one prints out the last PWP they read and goes, “this is ideal lgbt representation and nothing will ever be this good, the fact that it includes rape makes it so realistic” like????

(Is that part or an effect of the woke and purety culture? you can’t say ‘i like this book but it has flaws’ or ‘i’ve enjoyed this but it’s not up the feminism or lgbt acceptance that i preach/live’ so you have to pretend it’s flawless?)

And like, I do think novel!wangxian is a nightmare when it comes to lgbt representation and I do believe this is largely due to a cishet woman writing about gay men and fetishizing them (the fact that a lot of peoples arguments why novel!wangxian ‘is better’ boils down to ‘there’s kissing and sex’ is also pretty telling). And I am frightend and worried by some peoples response to it.

But is it really fair to see it as just that? It’s a problem sure, but that same thing happens in straight media (which I am admittedly not well versed in). Stephanie Meyer didn’t set out to write Edward Cullen to be a creep and non of the teenage girls that went crazy over him viewed it as such...Reylo fans (aside from some of them proclaiming Finn to be the real villain and saying it’s racist and misogynistic to not find Kylo Ren hot) found a way to view him threatening her as romantic and sexy, Loki fans that didn’t ship him with Thor usually fell into the camp of “he would be a perfect boyfriend” or “what if this OFC was his slave and he raped her everyday <3″... like ignoring/glorifying/romanticizing behaviours or exploring what kinks you might have through the safety of fictional characters and fictional settings isn’t JUST happening when it comes to ‘the gays’...

And not just specifically in fandom spaces either, a lot of ‘romantic’ movies include inappropriate touching, the boy/guy knowing better than the girl what she wants etc. And I absolutely do believe that that’s something that normalized these things for a lot of young girls and guys (I don’t want to get into this too much, I’ve really seen a change in the past few years, but before that it was pretty common for young boys to believe they need to keep pursuing and pressuring a girl that has said no, girls truly thought boys could die of blue balls, girls thought it was their duty as good girlfriends to let their boyfriends fuck them even when they weren’t in the mood, that they couldn’t talk about what they want in bed or what they don’t find enjoyable because ‘sex is for boys and girls get a relationship in exchange’ etc.).

And in much the same way movies have only relatively recently begun being called out for that, it’s also still pretty recently that they’re being called out for having their one queer coded character be a pedophile and a murder or whatever...Like, society as a whole becoming aware of these issues.

But do authors that publish their work with a specific target audience in mind have a responsibility to think about the effect it might have on them? (And I can already hear loud screams of ‘no way, it’s not your fault if your audience isn’t smart enough to understand that this bad thing is bad’, but I actually do believe in a way they do. That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t write whatever you want, just maybe take a look at HOW you bring your point across. (We do KNOW people are influenced by what propaganda they’re consistantly fed. I mean, you wouldn’t write a pro-drugs childrens book...) )

What if the author isn’t aware of their bias and prejudices? Or their target audience isn’t their actual audience?

And do we, society and media, judge female and male authors differently when it comes to romance and sex in fiction? (The answer is yes btw) But also, where do we draw the line at calling something ‘badly written’ and calling it toxic? Can it be both? As I’ve said before, a lot of people claim that only the physical intimacy scenes of novel!wangxian are bad, because they’re badly written and OOC, some say the book as amazingly written and only the wangxian relationship is bad because the author doesn’t know how to write gay men. In my ‘hot take’ I essentially said that’s not necessarily bad writing so much as it’s simply an (okay, unintentional) toxic relationship. And would this relationship still come across as toxic (or badly written, whichever you want) if we didn’t know the author to be a cishet woman? Or if a gay man had written it? (my personal, eloquent answer for this is: yes, but differently.)

Which was really all just a rambly way to get to my point of: it’s not just fetishizing of gay men, it’s also the homophobia and self-inserting in a safe situation.

You can literally replace WWX in the novel with a female character and it wouldn’t change a thing. The author takes such an effort into building up this power imbalance in every aspect of their life that if WWX were a heroine nothing would change in this (sexist/ancient society) setting.

(And clearly this is something that appeals to people if you look at the amount of female!WWX fics...)

Not even the sex scenes. There are maybe two allusions in all of them combined that WWX might also have a dick but like, you can’t be sure and it sure as hell doesn’t need stimulation.

(and again, that could be written as a kink...but it’s just not.)

CQL is a gay love story. MDZS at it’s core is none of that.

But I also very much agree with your ‘to each their own’, like here I am criticizing and trying to find explanations and whatever, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why someone might like (or write) a book like this, I vastly prefer CQL!wangxian but people have their own reasons for not doing so.

The ‘problem’ really only lies in, as you said, people not being able to accept that it’s not a healthy relationship. Or claiming it to be perfect lgbt rep.

And because my brain can’t shut up today:

I also can’t stop thinking that the way some people ‘glorify’ the book as due to their age and ‘inexperience’.

When I was a pretty young kid and got into fanfiction, there was nothing but completely OOC!whump to be found in the first two fandoms I was in. And I loved it. It was YEARS later that I thought I might like to read something with the characters being...in character. What I’m trying to say, in different stages and phases of your life you might enjoy different things, for different reasons...and obviously, in that moment, you won’t think about ‘what appeals to me here/should this appeal to me/etc’.

I don’t mean inexperience as ‘sexual inexperience’ here, though of course that could be part of it, but also like, inexperience with this genre (is this the first book like this you read, or did you just read 50 in a row that all had the same unhealthy vibes?), with lgbt people and issues (do you know any lgbt people or is your only image of them either the cute boy you can’t have and don’t want to see with another girl or grown men in full kink gear in front of children during CSD? and also: do you think ‘i like this’ and that’s the end of it or do you notice how many people idolize this objectively unhealthy relationship and won’t allow critique on it...)

I...just wanted to say thanks really.

I just can’t stop rambling apparently and I know I mostly just repeated what you said or what I already said but in longer... I just really do feel very strongly about novel!wangxian and the perception of them and have actually at times felt very personally...worried/affected, by people’s acceptance and love of them and I just... have to try and make sense of it...

#i'll be honest rambling like this is very therapeutic and I'm glad some of you read the last one and send asks and agreed #and it's why i'll (try to) put this in the tags too...i like discussions but seeing ppl NOT going 'it's true love/perfect rep' love that #mdzs #mdzs meta #mxtx critical #i guess

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2ndblogg · 4 years

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Todays hot take (before I forget about this blog for another 3 months):

CQL is a love story and MDZS is about an abuser finding his victim.

No hear me out:

LWJ makes it clear from the second we meet him that he doesn't care about what WWX wants and that he thinks he knows better. Which is a theme throughout the entire book.

Also immediately clear is that WWX is an unreliable narrator and that the public's opinion (on pretty much everyone) tends to be wrong. We're then immediately treated to WWX misinterpreting everything LWJ does and says because of his high opinion of him, as well as his reputation.

LWJs actions (towards WWX) absolutely never line up with the image of the good,kind person WWX has of him.

The other thing that becomes clear throughout the book are WWX's extensive (self-esteem) issues.

Whatever your views on LWJ fantasizing about raping a child or the 'sex' scenes in general are, the common theme in them is

A) WWX feeling like he's the most horrible person on the planet (for giving LWJ blue balls) and that he deserves punishment for it

And

B) WWX wanting to take a more active, participating role (instead of just having things happen to him)

Which

C)every version of LWJ shuts down

(either by raping him, by simply expressing disinterest or -very memorably for me- that time he misunderstood WWX wanting to bottom from the top as him wanting to top and his entire reaction just read as "yeah I claim to love you and waited for you for 13 years but I'm sure as hell not gonna try anything in the bedroom that you want that might not align with my desires. There's not gonna be any discussion about it, you either behave in the ways I want and expect you too and adhere to my kinks or I'm outta here". Compare that to WWX feeling the need to bargain by offering his body, when he realizes he doesn't want to be hit during sex, despite real!LWJ not even having expressed interest in it yet.)

(of course there's also just LWJ in general being shown to be a very selfish lover, aside from not caring about consent or bodily autonomy, his attitude also seems to be "me first, you second/you'll learn to enjoy it". Which aligns perfectly with WWX's self esteem issues and his wish to please LWJ and could simply be a kink...but it's not written as such. It's written as LWJ knowingly taking advantage of and benefitting from WWX's trauma.

There's no one else for LWJ because, aside from WWX being his childhood obsession, there's no one else he could control and behave towards this way. His feelings (even when they don't yet include wanting to hurt and punish WWX using sex, though apparently that started early on) are shown to be of ownership and possession.

- which doesn't mean I'm saying you can't enjoy that or find it hot. My firm believe is that what appeals to a lot of straight girls and women about mlm sex/stories is that it allows them to safely explore their own sexualities, wishes and desires (without the baggage of real life issues) and that's fine

(but do maybe reconsider loudly wishing someone would treat you like this and/or making fanart of LWJ as a grown adult while WWX looks like a 12year old. I understand what appeals to you isn't pedophilia but strong/weak... but there are better ways) -

There's a point to be made here, about how the author had to make WWX 'weak' and LWJ 'strong', both physically and mentally, to fit into (her homophobic AND misogynistic) stereotypes, but not today...))

Anyway, this is also why I don't understand when people (who aren't obsessed with the book) go "wangxian are so in love, only the sex scenes/physical intimacy scenes are so OOC", like nah bruh, you're just not reading the pure, fluffy, healthy, true love, soulmate story you think you are.

(Or the author wants you to think you are)

#which does not make it or your enjoyment of it inheriantly bad!#mdzs #mdzs meta #wangxian #lwj #lan wangji #ik i don't touch much on 'then what does wwx get out of it'...or how (in a very different way) he also has a 'consent isn't real' attitude #but trust me i am aware of it #my problem with media like this is really more how people perceive it?#like idk who needs to hear this today but guy being unable to deal with his crush and dealing with it by biting and non consensual kissing #doesn't magically become okay/romantic because you view lwj as autistic #or cute and relatable because gay #nor is dreaming about raping your first crush this 'common gay experience'

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