#and like to me that wasn't enough to go wank on tumblr about so i just like ignored his ass

[thatdesklamp]

OK I JUST WANNA SAY HOW IN LOVE I AM WITH YOUR WRITING LIKE IT GENUINELY MAKES ME FEEL EMOTIONS I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD FEEL AND MY HEART FEELS SO FULL AND LIKE ITS GONNA BURST OUT OF MY CHEST AND IM ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH YOUR WRITING STYLE AND THE WAY YOU DESCRIBE THE CHARACTERS WITH SO MUCH DETAIL AND HOW YOURE SO REALISTIC WITH THEIR EMOTIONS AND HOW THAT AFFECTS THEM. IM ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH THE SLOWBURN AND EVERY CHAPTER MAKES ME WANNA DANCE AROUND OR CURL UP IN MY BED AND CRY MYSELF TO SLEEP. I CANT EVEN FIND THE WORDS TO EXPLAIN HOW IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I FEEL NOSTALGIC EVEN THOUGH NONE OF THIS HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME AND OMG ALL THE LITTLE DETAILS YOU ADD LIKE THE MUSCLE THAT TWITCHES IN HIS CHEEK AND THE LITTLE SCAR ON HIS JAW AND THE WAY YOU DESCRIBE LOVE AND I LOVE YOU. READING THIS FIC MAKE ME LOVE YOU LIKE IM SO DEADASS I CANT EVEN LIE ABOUT IT LIKE I AM IN LOVE WITH YOU. But yeah please enjoy my burst of emotions I genuinely do not know what to feel and that means you’re doing something right👍 feel free to ignore all the bs I just wrote all you need to get from that is that I love you and you’re writing style. I would absolutely love to get some tips from you for writing if that’s possible I’ve always wanted to make a little fanfic just for myself but every time I start writing it just sounds like a two year old found their moms computer💀💀💀 anyways I love you❤️❤️❤️

AHHHH

THANK YOU!! All of the things you're complimenting are things that I genuinely try really hard to do, so it's so so nice to hear that it's coming across well. And the little details too! I'm often so worried that it's not detailled enough, yk--like, there isn't enough 'background' information about them both, and so I wouldn't be able to make the characters feel as 'real' as they should be.

I'm also glad that you like the slowburn, becasue baby so do I and we're in for a long one! Lolol. But this fic has turned strangely into a character study of them both, which wasn't really intended; but writing this has somehow given me an insight into both of their characters, more helpfully Gojo's. Although I always say that I feel IW Gojo is quite significantly different to jjk canon Gojo--mainly because canon Gojo is lonely lonely lonely, and IW has his 'person'--but I think I still try to work at it, you know? So yeah. Nice nice nice!!

Writing tips—I’ve given some in this reply here but I’m going to do a whole writing advice post in more detail directly after this one (here it is, since I’ve had the request a few times now, counting both ao3 and tumblr, lol. Most are just tips I’ve stolen from other people across the years that I’ve found actually work, over all the billions of other wank writing advice things you get. But, honestly, the only piece of advice you ever really need is JUST WRITE!!! PRACTISE!!! YOU WILL GET BETTER, I PROMISE!!!

Everyone's sounds a bit rubbish when they get started (dear lord, mine did), but if you keep on writing and keep on enjoying it I promise you will get better. It's very flattering that you asked, though, and I'll post something proper too.

Thank you for the lovely words (and the declaration of love--very flattering) <3

#intrinsic warmth #I should start putting a tag for ask answers #uhh what should it be smth funny

[something-or-somethingelse]

I've always just been waiting to grow up. As if when I get older I will be more mature and feel different, yet I feel the same. And I dislike it. I know I am falling behind my peers in my social development, yet there isn't anything I feel I can do. I've never felt any love other than platonic for my family and pets. And I have more or less resigned myself to never finding it. Sometimes I think it would be nice to fall in love, have a husband, and make enough money to adopt teenagers and give them a good home life and education long enough to send them to college. But I don't like babies, and probably wouldn't like having any kind of kid, even teenagers when I would be old enough. And also if I do find love, if my first love damages me, it will be permanent, and unless I later met someone else who slowly helped me get past it and learn to love again, I would never trust anybody that closely again. I an quite certain I have autism and I want to tell my parents and visit a therapist (not to get an official diagnosis because it will justify discrimination against me) but to find out for cerain (Just not on my medical history) and to see if I can fix myself or something. But I worry that they would just dismiss me, and say I'm coming up with it as an excuse, because that is what my doubts say to me. That I am just acting lazy and should be doing so much better. Even though I got all 92+ grades on my last 9 weeks, I procrastinated a lot and didn't fully try my best on everything. I've had suicidal ideation before. I first had it in 7th grade and it made me really scared, but I kept it secret from my parents, stayed up at night writing my Spanish essays, and no longer worried when I wasn't about to fail Spanish 3. Not a day goes by when I think about driving off the highway Bridge near my school, but I know that while it would remove my problems it would also get rid of my joys in life, calculators, computer games, etc. And it would really suck for the few minutes it would take my car to sink and me to drown. Unless I was knocked unconscious, but that's really unlikely. The only time I've ever passed out was during the end of the Texas winter storm. I wasn't eating or drinking enough and an ice cream truck was going to come to our neighborhood so my mom and I went on a walk around out neighborhood before going to the truck. And while waiting in line I began to feel faint and blacked out. I woke up at most a few seconds after with my mom holding me by my shirt to keep me from smashing my head on the curb. A different person soon then grabbed my head so I wouldn't hit it, so my mom could let go. I had some water and ice cream and felt better and walked home where I then had more water and food.

!NSFW AHEAD! Feel free to stop here

Around 2020 when I had first figured out how to / that wanking (pardon my british) was something that felt good that I could do. I would do it alot, for obvious reasons. And a few months later I worried that I had become a sex addict. I hadn't I was just being a prude. But that is sort of how I act. I keep different parts of my personality and knowledge separate and I get uncomfortable when they mix. Like anything besides furries and horny. Or furries and school. Really I just am a prude / not liking seeing anybody naked or people seeing me naked. Except when I am horny while wanking (pardon my british). It was being horny that brought back my ability to daydream about most things. When I was really young, like kindergarten, I would lay in my bed and daydream about things during my nap time. But at some point I forgot how. It probably has to do with my Aphantasia ( while I have self diagnosed myself I do fit the criteria. I don't see anything I just think of concepts. Like I can't see an apple when I imagine it, but I can tell you about my internal concept of an apple.) Or likely autism. Wow looking at this, you can really write alot in one Tumblr post. Goodnight.

Post Scipt: that is what P.S. stands for, also if a person can't remember their dreams do they actually dream. There's no proof. At least with a tree in a forest there is still damage and a log left behind.

Post Post Script: cars 2 is a fun movie that expands the universe in New and interesting ways.

Post Post Post Script: I really wish I could keep using the samsung neural net keyboard beta I had on my old S9, it knew me so well. Unfortunately the app is locked to a specific version of android on the S9 hardware, and I don't know enough about android to circumvent it. The best I could do was try ADB and that didn't work.

#self doubt #autism #personal rant

[stubbornjerk]

Why people keep telling you to block them if you support Pholo (Penumbra Edition)

Or: why jitterbug-juno really deactivated

I love when people categorize this as fandom wank. Really makes you feel like you’re putting the onus on either side of the conversation.

I’m making this post not because I want to stir up spoiled milk, but because I want it out there that this wasn’t a purity culture war.

The TL;DR version of this is that fans of color tried to tell Rab (prev. jitterbug-juno) not to post her Omegaverse (or A/B/O) fic. And instead of taking the L, she posted it on Ao3 and deactivated.

But, if you want context, well, buckle in. CW for mentions of racism and transphobia.

What did jitterbug-juno do?

Before I get into this I do want it out there that I will not be linking Rab’s fic, but I will show you this screenshot of the summary of it.

[ID: It is a screenshot of a fic, “As You Are” by Pholo.

Summary: Peter can hide his scent glands behind cologne; makeup; concealer pads. He can quash his heats with suppressants. He can divert the urge to nest and fawn.

But he can’t feign another gender’s subvocals. He lacks the anatomical capacity. Mag taught him to distract from his silence with fast, flashy words. For longer heists he relies on social convention. Traumatic mutism is uncommon, but remarked upon by enough war vets and soap operas to be widely recognized. Peter’s marks assume he’s been harmed long before they assume he’s a closeted omega. It would take quite the backwater brute to ask why he doesn’t murmur or chuff or growl.

On the 'Blanche there are the usual furtive glances. Juno makes clear to Peter that should he ever want “to talk about what happened,” he’ll be there to listen. The gesture annoys Peter more than comforts him.

‘Nothing happened,’ he wants to scream. ‘There’s nothing to talk about!’

There are 14 comments, 85 kudos, and 11 bookmarks /end]

You decide what you’re doing with that information, but honestly, I’d rather you don’t give it anymore engagement than it deserves.

There was a period earlier this June (yes, even though it’s only the 10th, at time of writing) when Rab was posting snippets of the aforementioned fic on her blog and tagging it appropriately, putting it in the attention of pretty much the entire Penumbra fandom.

What’s Omegaverse or a/b/o and why is everyone so against Rab for it

If you know what Omegaverse is, I don’t have to tell you why it’s controversial. If you don’t know what Omegaverse is, well, Fanlore said it best:

a kink trope wherein some or all people have defined biological roles based on a hierarchical system, with the terms originating from animal behaviour research. There may be werewolf, knotting, or other animalistic elements involved, or the characters may be otherwise purely human.

The term is generally written with slashes (a/b/o). Many fans, particularly ones from Australia and New Zealand, are uncomfortable seeing the term without slashes because it is also an Australian slur for aboriginal people.

I won’t get into the history or the heaps and tons of other discourses (mostly about fictional male pregnancy, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, etc.)  that go on within that. We’re here specifically on Rab v. Penumbra fans of color and we’re staying there.

Anyone who’s been in Penumbra enough to realize that everyone draws the Junoverse characters in a certain way knows that a) Juno is black, b) Nureyev is Asian, and c) as a fan you have to be aware of what you’re subjecting or saying about either of them because of the political repercussions that come with it.

And despite that, Rab proceeded to write Peter Nureyev, a gender nonconforming gay Asian male character that is widely headcanon’d as trans, into a fic using a kink trope that relies heavily on animal behavior.

Unlike most people new to fandom, Rab is aware of what Omegaverse is and is very much white. She is (and if she isn’t, should be) aware of the racist undertones that writing him in would get.

I couldn’t get a screenshot of what snippets Rab was sending out into the ether, seeing as a majority of my friends would rather not have seen any at all (I have all of the usual tags blocked so I wouldn’t have seen it either way), but needless to say, Rab got attention for it. Both positive and negative.

Anne (@hopeless-eccentric) even posted a satirical fic, in the odds that Rab was just writing this thing to be “the first” to write Omegaverse fic in the Penumbra tags.

But, I’m assuming more than one fan of color came into Rab’s inbox and messaged her about it, but someone I know (who would like to remain anonymous) was gracious enough to take a screenshot before he sent his in and let me use it for this post:

[ID: A message to jitterbug-juno about to be sent by a sender whose name is censored with a black bar. His messages says:

“as someone who is a person of color i think the nature of the fic you are writing right now is extremely racist and attributing animal characteristics to lgbt people of color is not at all appropriate, especially when you are someone who is white. i have to ask you to not publish this fic and to reflect as to why you would want to write this in the first place, these tropes are extremely harmful and”

There are 33 characters left to write into the message. /end]

I can’t speak for whoever else sent asks about the fic she was writing. If anyone was actually not-so-gentle with her, well, minorities don’t really owe it to you to be gentle about what they can tell is bigotry-tinged behavior.

But, the message was clear: this is different from your garden variety, lily white straight male character m/m kink fantasy. This is an actual queer Asian character that a lot of queer Asian people feel attached do. Do not post the fic.

What happened next: the beginning of the end

The next morning, I woke up to most of my friends being frustrated by this post on Rab’s account:

[ID: Dated 5 June, a post by jitterbug-juno:

“Gonna leave the fandom for a while. Wishing you all well.”

The tags say the following: not sure if i’ll be back, thank you so much to everybody who’s read my fics, and who’s sent asks or engaged with my art or any of that, you’re amazing and I’m sending love /end]

That... was not what fans of color wanted, but it was definitely an action they took. Some celebrated, as they were very much wary of Rab for having caused much of the same category of drama in fandoms like Voltron: Legendary Defenders and Warrior Cats. This also meant that she was probably not going to post the fic either.

Some, myself included, were relatively pissed, as they’d wanted even just the measly bit of accountability. An apology or an acknowledgement of having been called out in private and that they’ll take time to consider why. But instead we got Rab leaving in the face of fans of color telling her not to post her Omegaverse fic.

Well. The next day...

[ID: Dated 6 June. A post by jitterbug-juno titled, “Well... that was short-lived”

“I gave the situation a lot of thought yesterday. The reaction to my omegaverse previews made me figure I should leave the fandom. It seemed like the safest option.

But you know what?

Hell.

I don’t want to leave. The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space.

Thank you to everyone who sent messages yesterday. I shouldn’t have made that post about leaving. It was really reactionary. I’m okay and I appreciate your support so much.

(bolded on the post) To those who are angry and uncomfortable with me: Please block me. If you’re going to talk about this fic on Tumblr and Twitter– and this may sound odd– PLEASE NAME ME as Jitterbug-juno or Pholo. Don’t vague me. That way people who don’t want to see this discourse can add my name to their block lists.“ /end]

That certainly was short-lived, she wasn’t kidding.

This got a lot of outrage. Again, the fic is up on Ao3 and she has not taken it down. A lot of POC were pissed and I didn’t see a single fan of color actively support what she was doing, at least, not in my friend group. Everyone started making those posts to block them if you liked the fic or Rab’s content in general, in accordance to what Rab wanted.

Perseus (@mraudiodrama) noticed/pointed out that Rab deleted the part where she said she spoke to several POC about releasing her fic, as well as the part where she said she refused to be chased out of the fandom. This was an incredibly pointed detail to edit out, according to some.

[ID: A screenshot of jitterbug-juno's last post taken 11:00PM. Much of it is the same except the following bolded words are removed: "The fic discusses the tropes of omegaverse and I spoke to several POC on Twitter, and I’m going to post it with plenty of tags so people can avoid it if they wish. I’m not going to be chased out of this space." /end]

That same day, Rab deleted her blog. I actually caught this one on tape, believe it or not.

[ID: A screen recording taken at 12:01 PM of someone scrolling down jitterbug-juno's account. The posts and asks about Omegaverse and her post about leaving and coming back are conspicuously absent. /end]

Initially, I thought she deleted all mentions of it. I wanted to see firsthand if the rumors about her deleting portions of it were true. If she added things where she was saying that she wanted to write it because she was autistic and wanted Nureyev to be autistic too, regardless of the numerous QPOC telling her not to do it.

Instead, it turned out, she deleted her blog.

And now, we're here. The fic is still up. Her blog is down. Rab's public Twitter account @nataclinn is quiet about this. Her @cushfuddled Twitter account is on private after her run-in with the Warrior Cats fandom, according to a friend. And her Tumblr @cushfuddled account has nothing but memes.

Again, I didn't make this post to stir up drama. I wasn't even obsessively making this post as a call-out because she isn't in the fandom anymore. I just want it out there that this isn't a purity culture thing that got out of hand in a fandom as niche as Penumbra. This was a case of someone being called out and failing to acknowledge it before running away. And I want all that out of the way before I say:

If you are on Rab's side of this debacle, I, a queer person of color, want nothing to do with you either.

#the penumbra fandom #jitterbug-juno #pholo #racism #white drama #im not tagging this as fandom drama or fandom wank because that erases the fact #that this was legitimate criticism of a white person #the penumbra podcast #junoverse #i put it in a readmore so its not gonna clog up much #but if anyone doesnt want me to tag this w the fandom tags i'll remove it #once again though this is the furthest thing from anti/proship discourse

[star-anise]

Jumping off from the "prog het" post, I would solicit your opinion: I've been involved in fandoms where if a ship wasn't "gay" enough, it was written off, with the consequence of usually completely erasing bi characters/bi fans and their experiences as well as actively alienating straight fans. It also tends to be an age thing, with older fans embracing bi characters, or characters of any sexuality, and younger fans being upset if something isn't "gay" enough, (cont)

(cont) and then charmingly telling older fans they don’t belong in fan spaces and should go pay their taxes; especially cute if it’s for a fandom the older fans actually grew up with. Did the concept of “prog het” merely swing the other way, where only “sufficiently gay” content is “valid?” I also often see a lot of the same bad actors involved in “anti” wank. 

I did not observe that one happening in the wild, but can venture a few guesses.

My training in mental health taught me to focus on the process, not the content. Which is to say: To look at patterns of whether people are impulsive or thoughtful, tolerant or judgmental, empathetic or merciless, balanced or polarized. To see if they’re able to build identities and relationships that slowly change as they learn and grow, or if those identities alternate between extreme rigidity and absolute breakdown. That’s far, far more important than what they’re concerned about.

Because yeah, if someone has the tendency to hold a really strict dogmatic belief, and to judge people on how well they conform to that ideal, and to flip out and cut ties with anyone who begins to question them, they are way more likely to just switch dogmatic beliefs, than to learn how to be okay with ambiguity and not-knowing and people who aren’t on the same page. When they’re presented with unequivocal proof that their old set of ideas doesn’t work, they can just jump to, “Okay, this OTHER set of extremely rigid beliefs will be Much Better!”

Partly because distress tolerance and comfort with ambiguity and telling people what you want and need and are okay with, without being aggressive or abusive, are all really complicated skills that need to be modelled for you; they’re incredibly hard for someone who doesn’t have them to just intuit them out of thin air, and then deal with the really painful process of practicing and fine-tuning them enough to make them useful in day-to-day life.

And age is partly to do with it. These are skills that humans aren’t really equipped to start mastering until we’re teenagers, and they don’t really solidify for most people until their early-to-mid twenties. So it is in fact REALLY NORMAL for teenagers to go through periods of being super rigid and extreme, and to flip back and forth between different positions and concerns as part of their development, and not to have developed the ability to predict other peoples’ reactions or future consequences enough to understand the effect they’re having on other people.. The best thing for them is honestly contact with grounded adults who can say, “Huh, that’s an interesting opinion. I’m not sure I agree with all of it, but I’d be interested to hear how you got there,” and, “I don’t care how problematic she is, you can’t be viciously mean to your friend.”

Which, you know, in a PERFECT WORLD, they would have. They’d have teachers and professors and mentors and group norms and, who knows, website moderators, to help the discussion from getting too overwrought and out of hand. But on the Wild West that is Tumblr, that does not happen, and every mood swing and black-and-white mindset gets amplified to an incredible degree.

So yeah, I 100% believe that a lot of the people who fed into “prog het” before this have just 180′d themselves into a different faction of the fandom purity police.

#staranise original #tumblr purity culture #tumblr anti culture #fandom police #purity brigade #shadowyuki

[formulatrash]

i understand you're just trying to explain why there wasn't anything wrong with what lando said and so people dont need to 'overreact' but that's my whole point that the people who are being labelled as 'overreacting' are the ones who are just trying to defend themselves from the barrage of abuse they received for just simply saying that they didnt think landos joke was appropriate (which is a valid opinion even if it's not mine) 2/2

As someone who gets like 40-50 emails a day with various violent fantasies about killing me because I said something about batteries being ‘quite good’ or whatever I obviously don’t think online abuse is ok. People shouldn’t do it. Sending crappy asks or whatever is snide and no one needs to be using that energy when we’re all having a hard enough time as it is right now. 

People do overreact. Both to things that happen that wind them up and to things they then read in reaction to those. The entire, screeching devolution of politics and conversation can be brought down to the moment when anyone starts going in hot and certain because hell, it feels so good to just know sometimes, doesn’t it? The posts just spill out because damn, it’s not even about this thing it’s about twenty seven different other things and like, it’s ok. We all have Heated Tumblr Moments and again, provided no one’s being racist or whatever that’s ok we’ll move on once the dust settles.

People have a tendency to make declarative statements that automatically descend into slanging matches and then go “that’s just my opinion though” as a shield on here just as much as they do any other social network and indeed, the media. It’s how we’ve learned discourse over years of Nietzschean bullcrap-spraying and man, I am as guilty of it as the next person even if I’ve spent a few years trying to work on myself.

But having a huge drama going everyone needs to stop being dramatic!!! is actually just prolonging the drama and also trading in those joyful, hammer-swinging certainties that got us here in the first place.

Like just fuck it be chill everyone. Have a wank or a cup of tea or a nap and go make something about something you like rather than worrying about people you don’t. 

It’s a difficult time and we’re all one second from scratching out our own eyeballs so let’s not turn this into a preaching opportunity from anyone. I have definitely got into more than my fair share of drama - I cannot, for whatever reason, stop beefing with Andrew van de Burgt. I just cannot stop myself. I will not be stopped. It harms my career daily but here I am, unable to stop. I know the feeling. 

But like. Let’s all just stop it now or whatever. Make some gifs. Eat eggs (or don’t, if you’re also in a country where they’ve been unvailable in any form for the past month) and let’s all ... idk. Let’s all make a lockdown issue of F1blr magazine or something. We’ll have the Ferrari vs Lando feature, with opposing opinions and a timeline of events. The Williams Bantxiety Report. The Red Bull talent scout on whose younger brother is best, Arthur or Luca. The advertised but ultimately cancelled before printing Carlos Sainz Jr poster pull-out section.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Hey Lizzy I want to apologize. I really respect you, but unfortunately in the past that lead to me thinking you could be asked about any SPN opinion and were obligated to answer, no matter if it was wanky or not your ballpark, because you 'obviously knew everything'. That wasn't cool of me. You being a smart person who chooses to share your insights doesn't mean we're entitled to your time and I'm sorry. I hope fandom starts remembering we're all just people soon and you get the chance to relax.

Thank you, sincerely. 

At least for me, though, it’s not been a problem… I have a very quiet inbox compared to some friends here, and I barely get wanky stuff. And so I’m happy to answer a lot of things, basically anything non-wanky, and serious questions about the wanky stuff rather than just people coming to spew their misery at me. Which I rarely get, tbh, since I often don’t answer it, or also I think because I consistently avoid the initial post-episode rush when everyone’s most panicked and urgently needs to yell about everything, I’m more under the radar as a panic response blog because in the 18 hours between the episode and me returning to my dash, people get it out their systems. :P 

I think the problem with anons, though, is waaay more with a mob mentality that once someone is answering a lot of asks they beget more asks either tangential or just because they seem like a blog that answers a lot of asks quickly and efficiently (I think “efficiently” is another reason I don’t get a lot of anons :P), and often the anons start to get very impatient just to ask, rather than to check and see if it’s been asked before. Which is no one individual person’s problem but an issue with the entire system they’re just not helping with. I’m glad people are starting to check themselves because a volley of anons, meant well or not, is a great way to exhaust a blogger and get them defensive or despairing or just feeling like they have no time left to do the stuff they actually enjoy about fandom. (At which point I have wished I COULD take some of that burden off since I have a bunch of free time while I’m in exile from my kingdom or whatever this is) But the emotional burden is waaay worse for others so I absolutely can’t complain about getting the few odd anons. 

Like… I didn’t mind answering 2 asks about where the longing retcon came from in the same week because they were fairly widely spaced, but if I made that post with a link to the tag that would explain everything, and then got 3 anons demanding to know and then there were 5 more by the time i was done answering one, my inbox would feel way worse than it currently does, and as a bonus, answering one would still leave 7 people feeling like I never answered them even when answering stuff that’s literally their question - by not giving their specific ask the attention it feels like they’ve been ignored. 

If you give someone a little while and they still haven’t answered or explained, and there’s no easy to find explanation on their blog, then yeah it’s fine to ask just about anything about their content. Going away and remembering to come back and ask also will clarify to the asker if they actually care enough to do it >.> I have asked one (1) anon question to a meta blog in the entire time I’ve been on tumblr because it was something they kept alluding to and I could not for the life of me find the reason why they did and their tag didn’t have an explanation, just more allusions to it and it was such a specific thing I didn’t know any other blog that would care about it. And I asked after seeing them allude to it about 3 times so I was getting desperate but didn’t want to look silly so I asked on anon :P Anything else I cared enough to ask, I just snooped their blog and saw what else they had to say about the subject, or if it was a fresh hot subject, scrolled my dash and inevitably found someone else talking about it. Or just asked a friend if they knew what was up.

Anyways, anon, I’m glad you’re questioning how asks affect people, and I hope more people at least take some time to remember that this isn’t an instant question and answer service all the meta writers automatically opt into, because people are getting hurt and burned out, but you don’t have to worry about me specifically :) 

I’m still happy to answer most messages. At the moment most of the unanswered stuff I have is actually stuff I just don’t have a clue how to answer except the anons were sharing some idea with me and I’m a terrible person, but I don’t know how to do one line replies where I don’t engage with it beyond like “cool” and “you do you” rather than actually wanky stuff :P Other people here are much better at that than me >.> Maybe I should clear some of that out of my inbox right now tbh. It’s mostly stuff that arrived in the middle of busy inbox days and I just put off answering in favour of stuff that was real questions… THAT’s the burden that weighs me down, not the wank :P 

I really hope that others are starting to at least think about the specific emotional burden they’re asking people for when they bring wank to their inboxes though, because it’s great you’ve started to think about it but as I said it’s a systematic problem of people not thinking about the blogger behind the inbox, and fandoms are wanky places. Choosing not to answer and spread the negativity, or to reply and try and smooth it down a bit, are the only options we have for managing things and I don’t think anyone starts writing meta thinking oh goodie I can’t wait to be responsible for the mood of the fandom. While accidentally putting ourselves in the place of seeming like we know what’s going on. It’s completely unmanageable and I’m looking at it as someone whose entire adolescence was spent as a top of the ladder moderator on a fairly large forum, but it’s completely untranslatable experience. Every single one of us is just another random person in fandom and we ALL have to be responsible for our own behaviour and how we affect others. And even among people you care about or bloggers you admire, you can hurt them just by having a bad day or asking too many anon questions or whatever. 

Anyway I’m gratified you’d send this, and please don’t be scared to send more anons, just read your audience :P If someone seems stressed, try another inbox.

#Asks #fandom problems #wank for ts #also it goes without saying maybe but I always love asks which are nudges to write meta on something

[acciotomriddle]

You know, I caught myself thinking that I wish Deathly Hallows was never released, if only this constant wank on Snape and Dumbledore wouldn't have happened. It's fucking ridiculous. Snape wasn't a nice guy, but also wasn't An Absolute Evil Ever. Dumbledore was shady AF, but he also wasn't the absolute evil people are painting him as. I'm just tired of that, and it resulted in me resenting DH.

The thing is, when DH first came out people loved the thing with Severus, thinking it was a brilliant twist. People adored him, he was featured in so many fanfics, and fans acknowledged his nastiness while still respecting his potential and his good points

It’s only tumblr that has that toxic mindset where Severus has become a scapegoat for hate. Like yes, he was cruel to his students and there’s no excusing that, but doing bad stuff doesn’t cancel out your good deeds (and vice versa). Severus is literally a grey character so he isn’t all good and he isn’t all bad, but tumblr folk can’t seem to wrap their heads around that. Like sure, call him out for not being kind to students, but there’s no need to make up shit about how he was an obsessive stalker who never did anything good ever (plus the people who go one further and claim the Marauders were entirely innocent and young Severus deserved to be bullied)

There’s valid reasons to dislike Severus, and valid reasons to like him. I don’t get why people struggle to say “Yeah, Severus was good in the end which I appreciate because he helped  stop Voldemort, but also I can’t forgive him for bullying students.” Like that’s literally all there is to it

And don’t get me started on Dumbledore. The shit people make up about him is even worse than  Severus, like claiming he should have known everything and that he manipulated every single character for his own gain, and that he somehow had incredible foresight into the future and how dare he not use that ability to prevent character’s deaths

Like, Dumbledore is smart and powerful but it isn’t a god. He was literally trying to stop a Dark Lord killing everyone and taking over, and yeah he made some shady decisions, but he made those decisions considering them the lesser of the two evils. In war there’s sometimes no choice but for bad things to happen, and Dumbledore was just trying to limit the badness 

Literally all the arguments against Dumbledore would backfire. People are quick to criticise him but never offer any solutions of their own (because they know there’s no other option that would work.)

Anyway, you’ve set me off on a rant lol. I understand your resentment of DH, but I personally blame the toxic tumblr community that spreads hate and runs by people spreading lies until enough people have convinced themselves it’s the truth

#severus snape #albus dumbledore

[janiedean]

can you elaborate on the theon is bi discourse? I wasn't in asoiaf fandom then and i am intrigued.

oh my god guys buckle up that was a wild ride

sooooo, it started in I think 2014 I think and then it came back in tides at least until 2015 and there were some residual wank moments later but like it was one year of people being obsessed about it on and off I wanted to die inside

basically someone makes a post about how theon is absolutely and 100% canonically bisexual and if you think different you’re wrong, at which someone else replied ‘but where do you see this in canon I mean it’s a headcanon in canon he’s heterosexual’. which is a fair point I mean I also headcanon him as bi but it’s a headcanon, not canon.

my god.

IT BLEW UP. it was DAYS/weeks of people posting stuff on the tag either being passive aggressive or downright aggressive like HE’S BI AND I WILL FIGHT YOU ON IT and IF YOU DON’T THINK HE’S X THEN YOU’RE WRONG among which there were some gems like people saying they needed him to be bi because there were no lgbt pov characters in asoiaf (????), at which I made one of my two contributions to that discourse (one was a long-ass post about how theon being bi was utterly irrelevant to his sl so what the fuck were we discussing even) which was ‘okay and jon connington isn’t gay according to you’ to which I got people who were like ‘YOU CAN’T SERIOUSLY IMPLY THAT WE HAVE TO BE CONTENT WITH JONC AS THE ONLY POV REP’ and I was like ‘no but you could give a fuck about the rep you have even if it’s not your fave’ (lol I’m 90% of the jonc fanfic on ao3 where he’s not a side character at this point but never mjnd)

anyway, it died down after I made the long-ass post but then IT CAME BACK WITH A VENGEANCE AND IT CAME BACK WITH THE EXTRA ADDENDUM because now not only he was bi, he also was autistic and possibly poc (okay…) and THERE WERE ENDLESS DISCUSSIONS ON THAT TOO including

someone who said that he was a *theonkin* ie they literally thought they **were** him or so they said and their argument was ‘I’m autistic and I’m him so he’s autistic it’s canon’ ???

someone who never mind going into a ridic discussion over asha having epilepsy according to them because there aren’t disabled characters who do good rep in asoiaf (??? BRAN TYRION JAIME DORAN ????) (also sweetrobin wasn’t okay because he was bad rep) or in literature in general (I guess they never read dostoevsky or a greek tragedy), at some point they were having a conversation with two other people about how the greyjoys were pocs and the immortal ‘well asha is described as having a crooked nose in the books which is not an aryan person’s wet dream so she has to be poc so the greyjoys are poc’ which IMMEDIATELY made me block the people involved in it because casual neonazism made by people who want to look progressive is not my shit

meanwhile S5 had just finished and there was a bunch of theon/sansa content around and some of those people were complaining about t/s people being *fake fans* because they jumped on the bandwagon during the finale (???) and subtly shaming them (??), and then ‘but why don’t people write theon with the characters I ship him with’, WHICH..

turned into ANOTHER t/hramsay discourse bc it was basically like why do ppl do disgusting t/hramsay art when they could be drawing theon/jeyne or theon/other people BUT there was the extra because some ppl complained that ‘people spammed the tag with t/hrobb fics’

which was obviously a dig at yours truly who at that point had tried to not interact with that shit at all but was also the one person being that active in the t/hrobb tag back in the day

and I was already getting pissed off but like then someone shows up with the THEON TAG BINGO in which haters, people justifying torture and people thinking theon deserved ramsay were equated with people drawing the disgusting t/hramsay art AND with people ‘posting seventeen t/hrobb fics in the tag at once’

(spoilers: I spent the next three days reposting seventeen t/hrobb fics I had on tumblr on ao3 out of pure total spite it’s been enough time that I can admit it freely)

anyway at that point a bunch of people were Done TM and I made the umpteenth PLEASE STOP THIS MESS CHILDREN post (I’ve done at least five in this entire nonsensical saga) and finally it sort of died down also because a bunch of those people noped off to other fandoms and the usual old timers remained

obviously throughout this entire thing there was the usual theon hate on the tag but I mean that went unsaid

and tldr it was basically two years on and off of HE’S BI NO HE’S HETERO NO HE’S WHITE NO HE’S POC WHAT DOES POC MEAN WE JUST DON’T KNOW, HE’S AUTISTIC NO HE’S NOT and what was especially grating was that a lot of people obviously meant it as in ‘I like this character BECAUSE HE’S BI AND POC AND WHATEVER’, not as in ‘I have a headcanon and that’s it’, and honest like if you’d like your favorite character less if he was straight white and a cismale when it’s canon that he is I think we have a problem.

anyway I’m not making names bc a lot of people left/changed urls and who even gives a fuck anymore, but that was the theon is bi discourse and I’m so not ever doing that again, like I’m 90% sure that it went on this long because it wasn’t shut down at the beginning and like, no.

only positive thing that happened: at some point I was fed up, I had a fed up anon who went like ‘I decided that theon is a magical sparkly unicorn and that’s the only true headcanon and the best ever’ (yo @magicalsparklyunicorntheon they even made a blog about it) and I actually wrote two fucking fics based on that premise because why the hell not at that point, and yeah that was like the crowning achievement of two years of that shitty headcanon discourse but is2g just thinking about it makes me go like darth vader in the middle of a desert.

and this, kids, was the story of the theon is bi saga/discourse from the 2014-2016 years, it’s been fun but also fucking not

#jskghsldkgl #ch: theon greyjoy #theon greyjoy for ts #spoilers: obv i don't begrudge anyone headcanons but it's headcanons just keep them separated from canon thanks #bisexualgreyjoys #ask post #my precious son

[sovinly]

It wasn't supposed to be insulting! Ah, I'm on mobile so I couldn't see the about page! I just thought maybe you were straight and using the term 'queer', I would've unfollowed. Sorry if that came off as aggressive :

Ah, I’m glad to hear you didn’t mean it that way! I don’t use it, but I hear mobile’s a pain in the ass, so I can definitely believe that! And it’s definitely your prerogative to unfollow someone if you feel that way.

But, I mean this in the nicest way possible, it was heart-pounding to see someone (possibly aggressively? possibly kindly? possibly wank-forbodingly?) asking me to justify my existence. Especially when one of my more recent reblogs is about being bi, and my blog description asks people to use they/them or she/her.

And, look, I get it. It is exhausting to exist in a world where you have constantly be waiting for a blow, always tensed to expect one even when people seem nice or friendly.

It’s just... also exhausting to see that people - presumably from your group - are asking you to justify your existence when you’re so loudly, vocally queer (or disabled, or neurodivergent, or an abuse survivor, or dealing with trauma, or taken-to-be-female, or other things I don’t have personal experience with). It’s exhausting to know that someone’s always ready to presume the worst, or to presume that you’re not queer enough, or “deluded” into coming down on one side of a community-issue when you’ve put careful thought into developing your opinions.

It was distressing, because I know how often that proceeds wank and anon-hate and witchhunts, and those are things I am terrified of. Even though I knew that it was proooobably just exactly what you were saying. And I am sure your intentions were good ones.

But here’s the thing: I’m queer. I use the word queer. I really dislike the movement to not use the word queer. When I thought I was straight and cis, of course I felt awkward about whether or not I should or could use that word. But here’s the thing: I grew up in a world where “queer studies” was a new but academically-sanctioned field, run by queer people! Where “queer literature” is a section I can find in bookstores and beam, because I grew up in a state that’s so red my senator accidentally sent me a letter promising to do the opposite of the thing I called about because his office assumed that anyone calling or writing in would be against anything “liberal.” Where “queer theory” is a lens of study that I hold dear to my heart, and that has let me explain (to a class of mostly straight/cis people), why it’s important to write about the experiences of being queer, without always being told that I’m a special-snowflake millennial.

Most of my (short but important) queer history tag is reblogs talking about the use of the word ‘queer’ and the AIDs crisis - that’s the queer community I grew up in and came into. That’s where my understanding of queerness comes from, and the morphology of queerness, for me, is built into the bones of an epidemic, on graves and ashes and the broken and elided lines of subtext from even earlier.

I want straight people to use the word queer, because queer people have reclaimed it fiercely. I want queer to be so saturated in the language that it’s a victory cried from a thousand throats, power that was taken from us restored, that it can’t cling to the associations of negativity the way so many words have hatred-of-disability or hatred-of-femaleness baked into them.

And if you don’t feel that way, that’s still okay! If you’re still figuring it out, that’s okay! You are still totally welcome to unfollow if that makes you uncomfortable, and I don’t track who does/doesn’t unfollow me, so I won’t ever know! You make tumblr a good experience for you.

But I am going to keep advocating for the word queer, unashamedly and unabashedly. Because I am here, I am queer, and I feel like I owe it to the people who came before me (the people I could have been, the people who I never got to know, and all I have are the works and words they left behind) to keep shouting that until it finishes chipping away the sharp edges that other people aim at me.

#replies #sovin the socially awkward #long post #long and very out of hand #but i have a lot of feelings about #queer history #i have sobbed my way through history books and stories and art installations and have been stripped raw by knowing what happened to the gen #and i care so deeply about this #i hope this didn't come off too harshly #i am just very passionate about it #Anonymous

[zmediaoutlet]

Thank you for the reply to that post and sorry if I made you feel like an asshole, that wasn't the aim at all! I'm glad we're good. As for hurt/comfort and catharsis... I mean, yes, I think that's exactly the function it serves. One of the things that I find super interesting about fan fic as a literary mode is the sort of unashamed emotional functionality of it? Things like the ability to search AO3 by tags, or blogs like SPN Storyfinders where you ask for a certain thing and people make (1/2)

suggestions, both of which permit you to narrow down to just exactly the right sort of fic that you’re looking for. That’s not to say that lots of fic isn’t acting in the same way as other literary modes or genres, like e.g. people might read and write horror fic for exactly the same reasons and in the same way that they’d interact with horror in the form of novels or TV, but there are also definitely areas of difference. (2/3)

For instance the porn content of fan fic is obviously higher than mainstream literature and I think there’s a really clear analogy between PWP and hurt/comfort in that they’re both about satisfying sort of iddy emotional-physical needs. (3/3 and sorry for the multi-asks, blame Tumblr!!)

The function of fanfiction is really interesting, you’re right. I think there’s probably a few schools of thought there, but if I had to run it down in a list-like format, I’d say that there’s a few different modes of creation happening:

1) Emotional/Id-fic, as you say–fic that’s looking to explore a very specific kind of emotion, for cathartic purposes both on the writer and readers’ parts.

2) Writing to write–and by that I mean, to explore character/tell a story as a thing in itself, absent the need for catharsis.

(There are probably lots more, but if we keep to very broad categories, that’s what occurs to me.)

On the first category, I think you’re absolutely right that PWP/porn and h/c and heavy angst and candyfloss-fluff all perform roughly the same function–they’re pinging some deep emotional/physical need. H/C is emotion-porn, as much as PWP is properly porn, or a long angst-fic is sadness porn. Now, personally, I think there’s nothing wrong with porn. Generally, porn is defined as something that lacks substance–but hell, who needs substance all the time. Not every meal can be whole-wheat bread and brussels sprouts; sometimes you need a taco and a chocolate bar. Sometimes you might just need a fic where Sam plays with puppies. Fair enough.

On the second category, I guess I’d call that a more–literary approach, for lack of a better term. As an example I’d use a fic by one of our classic authors in fandom: astolat’s SPN/HP crossover, Old Country. Just looking at the text, not knowing her mind while writing it, I’d call this a more ‘literary’ approach because it seems that the fic’s primary function is to explore an idea: what would it be, if Sam and Dean went to Hogwarts? Certainly there are what could be considered ‘cathartic’ moments in the vein of the first category–there is sex, and there’s a bit of dark!Sam, and Dean is saved from Hell. All things that take place in catharsis!fic, and yet it doesn’t feel like one of those.

The difference, I think, between the two types is how the writer (and reader) emotionally engage with the text. In type the first, the emotional goal is the main one. To get the reader (or writer) off, whether that be physically via a wank or emotionally via a cry or a squee or whatever. In the second, the more literary mode of writing is the goal–which, I’d say, is convincing the reader of the argument the text proposes, whether that’s a romance or a horror story or an adventure, or whatever.

This is really the place where fic diverges from traditional writing, I think. Fic tends to assume that the reader is already convinced. The tag says Wincest Hurt/Comfort, and so the reader enters with that mindset and doesn’t care about the realism of two brothers hooking up, or why they would, or why one would let the other baby him, or whatever–all of that is assumed by the tag. A traditionally published piece that featured homosexual incest, in which one brother has had a leg blown off and the other takes care of him (sexily), would have to put in a lot of work to make the reader first buy the conceit, and then build the argument that such a thing could work, and by painstaking logic force the reader to believe that Sam and Dean Winchester were in love. (Unless it were badly written, but that ought to go without saying.)

Personally, as a reader (and writer), most of the time I prefer the type the second. Maybe it’s the academic training that got beaten into my head, maybe it’s because I’m a snob–who knows. I enjoy the more complex, difficult characterizations and plots that tend to come with the ‘literary’ mode, as opposed to the sometimes more facile/simplistic characterizations that tend to come with catharsis!fic. (Note, I’m not saying that it’s simplistic all the time–it’s just a tendency.) I’m also not going to pretend like I only go for lit!fic–after watching Civil War, I definitely went on a round of reading all kinds of Tony-positive!fic, which often turned into Steve-negative!fic, just because I was so annoyed at how the characterization of Cap went. But I also wouldn’t ever say that those fics were good or canon-based, because the characterizations were so simplistic (Tony good! Steve mean!) as to be preposterous. Still–it gave a kind of catharsis.

The ‘problem’ with catharsis!fic, from a lit!fic point of view, is that in pursuing one emotional goal so steadily, all of the nuance tends to drop away. If as a Dean!girl I think that Sam was cruel to go to Stanford, then I might write a fic where Sam is a perfectly horrid shit as a teenager, and Poor Sainted Dean is basically abused and sidelined by him and still cries bitter tears when Sam walks out. If as a Sam!girl I think Dean was too harsh during the demon blood years, then I might write a fic where Dean was nothing but cruel during that whole time, and Poor Sainted Sam really never had a choice but to fall into Ruby’s embracing arms. And hell, I’m free to do either. But both of those ignore the nuance of both situations–it may have been cruel of Sam to leave, but he deserves his own life/Dean was harsh sometimes, but he also flat-out offered to help Sam with it any way he could–and by failing to take the characters’ multidimensionality into account, I’d say that they’re badly characterized, and I’m disappointed after reading them. Yet–someone who specifically craves the catharsis engendered by either of those situations would really enjoy those fics, and recommend them as good.

And so here, as always, we fall into the trap of what analyzing the characters means to the individual. Do we analyze clear-eyed and logically? How can we tell? If Dean is my favorite character, am I capable of seeing his flaws, and not reacting poorly when other characters engage with him in a negative way? Well, who’s to say. And who’s to say that it matters? If you’re engaging with fic in a purely emotional/cathartic way as a Dean!girl, then it may not matter to you that Sam is being demonized because your cathartic needs are being met. 

It’s really impossible to see, from the outside (and even from the inside), what the biases are, and whether they’re affecting the analysis/writing. And, therefore, it’s nearly impossible to self-identify: am I writing pure catharsis!fic? Am I writing ‘logical’ fic? Am I engaging with it as canon or as fanon? If we could clear up these sorts of things, we’d probably have a much less fractious time here on tumblr. (And, for me, I’d have a much easier time finding fic to read.)

So… there’s an essay, haha.

#the-megalosaurus #meta #writing #fanfic #fandom