#anyway from one pretentious and exhausted grad student to a multitude of people in the fandom who have accurate things to say that get

[shorthaltsjester]

once again, begging, BEGGING everyone in the cr fandom to stop making posts critiquing how the fandom is being weird about one cast member by saying "if it was x, the fandom would love this/hate this even more." it turns out the cr fandom contains Multitudes of weird ass people and just because you haven't seen those reactions (or, even funnier if you are making claims about what the fandom does/does not do to other cast members, were not in the fandom during c1/c2) does not mean they do not exist. like there are certainly different social dynamics and injustices at play in some of the reactions the audience has to cast members, but almost always it is less a case of misogyny/queerphobia and more a case of people forgetting that storytelling is about understanding choices you would not yourself make and watching characters develop through conflict/struggle.

like, you can have the most salient point to make in the world about how shitty the reaction of the fandom to a certain cast member's (not their character, but the cast member as a person) choices but you immediately undo that if you make a claim like "if liam did this, the fandom would love it." perhaps the part of the fandom you are in, but certainly not the fandom that wanted to persecute him for having vax choose keyelth over gilmore, certainly not the fandom that consistently manufactured actual dislike between him and marisha throughout campaign 2 because of character choices.

likewise you might be absolutely right in criticizing the choices of the character that one of the cast members is playing, but if then in turn you say, "if this was a female cast member, everyone would hate it." my brother in christ, You are already the person who hates that character choice and it Wasn't a female cast member, so what is the truth? unless you have the statistics on the opinions every person who engages with the cr fandom has, truly just. you can make your point without appealing to a sense of misogyny/queerphobia/favouritism or whatever that you have no actual grounds for believing exists except for the fact that misogyny in general exists.

this isn't to say that things like misogyny don't influence how people react to things, all of our opinions are mediated through the social and material conditions in which we live. obviously, misogyny exists. however, truly, truly, the bigger problem in the cr fandom (at least on twitter/tumblr, idk about reddit and that is a choice I've intentionally made) is the consistent expectation that the cast adheres to what so many fans call 'comfort media' and a requirement that one's own opinions be validated by what the majority of the fandom believes (which aside from the obvious, is also an absurd expectation because trying to gauge the 'majority' of the cr fandom would be truly so much data). the cast have made it explicit many times that they value things like high stakes and big risks in their storytelling, and sometimes that means stupid character choices, character deaths, or interparty conflict. so much of the fandom has decided to engage with cr regardless of this and then gets upset when the liveplay of a ttrpg built around conflict contains conflict. similarly, people who claim to enjoy this conflict then get pissed off when other people in the fandom disagree with them and give away the ghost that what they want is validation by arguing that it is somehow problematic for the other side to have their opinions. it is much easier to blame any lack of satisfaction on how, actually, your section of the fandom has the right opinion and, actually, if everyone else wasn't queerphobic/misogynistic then they would see the proverbial light.

anyway, this is just me ranting out of both literal and metaphorical exhaustion with the "persuasive" (heavy quotes) tactics that some people in this fandom use. please look up some tips on like, how to avoid logical fallacies or formal critical thinking or just like. state your opinions and say you dislike the other options without thinking you need to provide some (often blatantly and horribly incorrect) rationale for how you're right. accept the pretentious bastard within yourself and stop seeking validation for your opinions in the fandom around you, your opinions are already correct if you assume them to be.

#yes this is about the recent ashton shit #yes ashton is a bastard. yes much of the fandom hates what he did. another bunch of the fandom Loves what he did. #i promise if liam had done it the same would be true it would just be different parts of the fandom #likewise if say laura had done something like that it might be opposite parts of the fandom than the opinions on tals choice as ashton #but the fandom would very much still feature both opinions heavily #anyway from one pretentious and exhausted grad student to a multitude of people in the fandom who have accurate things to say that get #undone by their false generalized claims about the fandom. you can just say something is fucked up/fantastic without having to address at #all the people who disagree #critical role #on fandom #my post