#bc i am a grown adult who would like to talk about fictional characters getting some hole asexually

[glitchdollmemoria]

tempted to make one of those yourfaveis blogs for sex favorable ace headcanons bc i think it would be fun. what do the people decree

#and for the record it would be an 18+ blog bc it would talk a bit more abt sex than im comfortable having minors looking at #bc i am a grown adult who would like to talk about fictional characters getting some hole asexually #sex favorable #sex favorable asexual #asexual #aspec #acespec

[bylertruther]

no cause the last anón is so right. I scrapped a 50k byler fic because I actually got worried people might call me weird or a freak like they do others. I was on twitter when the whole fiasco went down and it pissed me off but if you even tried to speak there were so many accounts saying you were “speaking over minors” and calling you a predator/pedophile. So many of my moots deactivated bc of the hate- they eventually started attacking people for their ages alone saying it was weird that 20 year olds theorized and talked about byler. Literally word for word “you’re a freak if you’re 20 and read byler fics. Why are you fantasizing about two little 14 year old boys making out” if they would take a step back and think that maybe people are so interested in this relationship is bc they see their younger selves in these two characters then maybe they wouldn’t say such stupid shit. Anyway sorry for ranting I just have been fuming since that whole thing happened. I just wish they would take a step back and stop and think about why they see a kiss between two boys written and immediately shout creep.

oh no, anon! i'm so sorry to hear about your fic & your experience. i hope you feel comfortable enough to post it one day, if you still want to. 🥺 and don't ever apologize for expressing yourself!

not to be a cunt, but i am a cunt, so, ahem. from the bottom of my heart... fuck them kids. 🫶 i literally do not give a single shit about any of the ""discourse"" they inflict on us all. "speaking over minors" why are you even speaking to begin with, huh? 🤨 why are you buzzing into an adult's space and picking a fight when a) literally no one fucking asked you to, and b) you're just going to cry "waaaaah but i'm a minorrr :(" as if you're somehow the victim in this situation after they dare to defend themselves against your serious and unsupported allegations? be normal or piss the fuck off and do your homework.

and why do people take them seriously? disregarding the fact that anyone of any age can be a shipper & the awful homophobia laced in such rhetoric...

this is the internet. no one owes you shit & the wild web will never, ever cater to you. you need to curate your own space and protect yourself. this is, like.. basic shit. like, bare-fucking-bones basic shit. it's not anyone else's responsibility but your own. they taught me that in school, my parents told me that, and also i have a functioning brain that can come to that conclusion, too. people need to stop pretending like what these people are asking for—which is your silence and your shame—is reasonable. it's not. content gets tagged, there are multiple extensions to blacklist any tags you don't like, some of it gets put behind a privacy wall, block buttons exist, many websites have filtering options, and so on and so forth. there are multiple measures people can take to both find things and avoid them. and a lot of the time, content is something you have to seek out yourself. so, if you don't like it, why did you click on it? why spend any time on it when you could've just backspaced? how is your ineptitude anyone else's problem?

also, people need to stop throwing the words pedophilia, pedophile, and predator around. you're being an insensitive jackass when you do that. someone writing about two fictional characters is not abusive scum of the fucking earth. you're watering those acts down and showcasing your ignorance for the world to see when you throw their names around carelessly. a child predator does awful, sinister, repulsive things to real life people who did not deserve that. someone writing a first kiss or practice kissing fic is not anywhere near that and i'm tired of people pretending like this is an okay thing to say or even think. just shut the fuck up and stop saying those words if you don't actually understand the gravity of what they mean.

another thing: a lot of these people aren't just kids. grown folk fall for the same shitty rhetoric, too. it's all just groupthink and herd mentality. no one wants to get attacked so they just repeat the same shit without thinking about it beyond "protecting" themselves (which is senseless as well because conditional acceptance is not true acceptance, but i digress). this fandom would be in a much better place if people were willing to stand their ground and defend their friends when this stuff happens. it gets worse and worse if you just turn a blind eye to it and fall in line. we're all waking up and finally seeing the consequences of that now.

of course, this doesn't really apply to when you're getting attacked by hundreds of people. that's... just shitty and hard and demoralizing. i'm not victim-blaming, because no one wants to be on the receiving end of that and i know that you can't control what others do.

my argument is that it gets to that point because the fandom as a whole just lets it slide by never holding the right people accountable for their actions. they allow the needless bullying to happen. they allow the rhetoric to get crazier and crazier. they allow people to get fucking crucified for shit that isn't even remotely inappropriate. they reblog posts they don't believe in because they don't want to be the odd one out and get accused of something by someone with more followers than them. it's just... we, as a whole, need to support each other more and put our foot down when shit like that starts happening.

it isn't normal. it isn't okay. it hasn't ever been okay.

like... i KNOW that you KNOW that it isn't weird for them to kiss, for people to want them to kiss, or for people to make them kiss in their creations. i KNOW that you KNOW that it isn't weird for anyone of any age to enjoy a love story of any kind. we know these things. some of us just pretend like we don't online for whatever fucking reason. and i don't get it! i don't get why they would do that and willingly allow this place to become worse for it. you don't get anything good out of that.

also, a lot of those people are being trolls. they get a kick out of attacking people as a group, because that's the only time they feel brave and the only way they get attention in life. they don't think before they say things, because they don't see you as a human being—you're just pixels on a greasy screen. they use catchy social justice lingo to make what they're saying sound like something you should support, but at the end of the day, they're literally just gussying up the same right-wing shit we've been subjected to for ages. it's regressive rhetoric that's clear to see once you've allowed yourself to see it.

like, i agree with you. i do. you're absolutely, undoubtedly right in what you say, but... i just can't bring myself to argue that, because it's in response to what was a senseless attack to begin with. and we shouldn't need to defend ourselves and our communities against what isn't true.

homophobia, bullying, and trolling are irrational, illogical pursuits and i can't stand the idea of treating them with any ounce of seriousness in this context. to apologize would be to accept their absurdity and validate their accusations—accusations we know in our heart of hearts to be incorrect and baseless. and i won't ever do that! i won't give them that satisfaction and i wish others wouldn't either.

they keep doing this, because they haven't met any opposition yet, because we keep acting like we have any reason at all to feel shame for wanting stories about people like us, about something as basic and universal as love and connection. they don't care about our reasons. they don't care about our defense of ourselves. it's not ever about us. this is their cry for attention, good or bad, at our expense and they need to be starved out already.

like.. this is just unsustainable. it's mind-boggling and i remember kicking and screaming about it months ago in what felt like an empty room. and look at where we are now! we're already at the point where you can't win in any kind of way no matter what you do. you can't age them up, you can't leave them as they are, you can't ship them if you're older than eighteen, you can't write AUs, you can't write canon compliance, you can't write canon divergence, you can't make them kiss, you can't make them anything more than friends but you also can't make them not-friends, etc etc. we've officially been shoved into the "fuck it, we ball" stage, because this is a pissy fandom and you are never going to please everyone so you may as well just do whatever the fuck you want.

i sound soooooooo unbearably preachy in this response lol, but like... literally... all we have is each other! we all love byler and we're all here to have fun and find like-minded people. we can't keep acting like this in-fighting lunacy is reasonable and just a difference of opinion, or like it's based in any kind of sense at all. we know that it's okay to ship byler at any age. we know that it's okay to have fun and enjoy ourselves. these people want to make us feel bad. they want to silence us. why let them and give them that satisfaction? why is what they want more important than us and our happiness? i hate the idea of anyone ever feeling any kind of shame or fear over something as innocent as this. i hate the idea of them winning by getting into any of our heads like that. i just hate it.

now, this last bit is specifically for you, anon, but it goes for everyone else, too: please, please, please, i am holding your hand in both of mine and begging you to not let anyone take away the things that you love and bring you joy or your wonderful creations that you've put so much of yourself into. i promise you that there will always be people who will see you, understand you, and cherish what you have to offer, and they are the ones that matter most (after you of course hehe). we all have to find our people and just go crazy together and block out everything else. that's the only way to get through this without getting burnt out. 💛💙

#sorry for the mushy preachy response but you broke my heart anon! and i got mad! and also sad! #i'm tired of pretending like that shit is normal or okay or reasonable WHEN IT JUST FUCKING ISN'T! #KNOW NO SHAME MY BROTHERS IN BYLER KNOW NO SHAME 📣📣📣📣 #sigh. anyway. #asks #byler #long post

[therealsehinton]

if you ship tim and sylvia (19 and 16/17) than you don't get to fucking talk about age gaps or ageing charecters up. No matter what a 16 or 17 yr old shouldn't be dating a 19 yr old.

On the other hand people who are 20/23 who have know each other since they were 16/19 is fine, that's normal. If they liked each other since they were young and waited until it was fine, or if they only started liking each other when they were adults! As long as everyone is able to consent the relationship is fine

I am at the point in my tumblr career where bashing what people ship is simply ridiculous considering I APPARENTLY ship one of the most problematic relationships in the fandom. But we have to realize any/all of our ships are questionable for any reason. Johnny and Pony are questionable because 16/14 except Johnny thinks Pony is 13 years old canonically so 😭. Apparently aging up steveboy 14/17 is problematic bc that means “we saw chemistry there in the first place,” which isn’t true, we just think pony always had a crush on him and it’d be interesting character work to try to discover how that could possibly fit in some distant future. And then there’s Tally, where they beat tf out of each other and slash expensive tires for sillies even tho they’re all poor. And now there’s all these heterosexual shippings, in which my biggest qualm is that we’re being run by the heterosexuals. But I do acknowledge that claiming Tim is too “grown” for Johnny and then shipping him with a girl who most likely would be around his age is strange. ONLY if you’re trying to make other people feel bad for it. Like I don’t see how we can’t realize we all ship crack shipping, these are all rare pairs other than Jally probably. So like we ALL have to pull a few canon strings to make it make sense that these characters would even talk to each other much less make out. It’s not a big deal unless you’re using fictional people to live out your own weird fantasies. I can acknowledge there’s plenty strange steveboy and dallyboy fanfic. But I’ve seen strange EVERYTHING fanfic. People are weirdos and some aren’t. It’s THAT simple. Not everything has to be a thinkpiece to incite drama. Why would you want clout from a fandom that only has 4 people active at all times?

#se hinton #The outsiders #johnny cade #dallas winston #steveboy #chylvia #jally #tally #sodapop curtis

[friendofthecrows]

I NEED to know abt the niche animes u were obsessed with PLEASE

Ok be patient bc my wifi is struggling BUT here:

(a lot of them aren't really THAT niche but still, you cannot find much fandom activity these days T-T I do take the opportunity to introduce them to anyone.)

I really like this specific like tone of anime if you get what I'm saying? And it would be easier to give you a list of examples than to explain so:

Monochrome factor. Okay so it does have some *questionable* aspects (there is one episode that is EITHER an interesting look into dysphoria OR transphobic, hard to tell. Also one of the main ships is...well I politely ignore that bc I always wipe it from my mind until I'm watching it and am like "oh right they paired this kid up with a whole grown adult. Forgot about that.") Anyways basically it's a somewhat campy shonen-ai mystery from 2008. Has a weirdly good plot (more towards the end, the start of it has a sort of formulaic plot that is clearly just a framework for the comedy, which is top-notch btw). There are these shadow monsters made from the darkness in people's hearts or whatever standard anime stuff but it gets a lot darker from there. And YES there is a beach episode and YES there is found family and possibly the best redemption arc in all of fiction and look, I was in a very emotional place the first time I watched it but it sure got me. It's objectively not a great show. Poorly written. 11/10 would recommend. Please watch this I need people to talk about it with.

Trickster (my beloved) this crosses into debatably popular territory idk, there are 53 fics on AO3. It's like a high school detective club with sci-fi and supernatural elements, which is always a banger. The MC is a suicidal immortal, so tw for that as well as pretty vivid explorations of trauma. It crosses into (or rather has bought an entire vacation home in) "cringe" levels of emo angst but it's good. It has. the BEST ending which I can't say bc spoilers. But it makes me smile just thinking about it. The main villain, 20 Faces (my beloved) (I will respectfully avoid using his name unless you've gotten to that point in the show) reminds me of the song "Year of the Cat" by Al Stewart but gay (it's the VIBES), which has the unfortunate effect of causing an Al Stewart song to be unironically one of my favorites of all time. One time I asked my mom "how many masks do you think 20 Faces has" and she just stared at me like I was an idiot, at which point I realized.

Descendants of Darkness: okay this one is PURE cringe. It's a shonen ai from 2000 and you can tell. It's also one of those supernatural mysteries I crave though, and I promise the writing gets better as it goes on. The first couple of episodes were so bad I almost didn't watch the rest, which ended up being good (or maybe everything seems good compared to the first ep, idk) I really liked the villain (fucked up unethical doctor, but only when it comes to the necromancy. with his other patients he's perfectly fine), he said so much absolutely fascinating "I would dissect this man" (me about him, though ALSO him to the other characters now that I think of it) sort of stuff as soon as we meet him so then I had to watch the whole thing. I watched it last summer and you could quiz me on what happens and I wouldn't remember. I certainly remember when [spoilers] though bc I wanted to throw my laptop across the room (did not) but it was all a ruse anyways, so it was alright. They did a very stereotypical edgy backstory for one of the MCs but they managed to pull it off so I'll give them points for that. Would recommend but only for those who can handle cringe. Like if you unironically liked Velocipastor, then give this a try.

Mouryou no Hako: This one is a more recent discovery so I'm less obsessed with it, but it's good. Writing-wise better than at least 2 on this list (Trickster was really good actually). If you're the type to be easily confused by sort of surreal, psychological shows with a semi-convoluted plot and enough left unsaid that if you aren't paying attention you won't have any idea what's going on, this is not for you (my dad was a constant stream of "i don't get it"'s and questions). If you plan to spend at least half an hour per day with a singular focus on the screen, it's good.

Two girls become friends, one gets pushed in the way of a train, and mysteries ensue. Also, there's like parts of people shoved in boxes and cult stuff so if that's triggering you probably don't want to watch it. (Did you know there's a text per block limit bc I didn't! lol so now we've left the numbered list)

Since this post has clearly gotten so long SPEED RUN through a bunch more in this niche or adjacent ones that are admittedly more mainstream but I'm also obsessed with: trigun, un-go, tasogare otome x amnesia (manga, haven't watched the anime), karneval, hyouka, ghost hunt, psychic detective yakumo, and there's one more that I keep thinking of and then forgetting that I know I love but cannot for the life of me remember the name, so I'll leave it here.

Sorry the post got so long! I will take any opportunity possible to ramble about these!

#long post #anime #anime rec list #thanks for the ask!

[lillupon]

So, I've got a very long rant/opinion here and Idk really know how to say this without coming off kinda bad but I'm gonna say it anyways. I agree with the fact that the seventeen tag has been kinda dry lately on most fanfic places, but it's really only in the smut area. It's the sane way with other groups too I feel like. All of the nice little innocent tags are boomin to this day and thats completely fine. I think the smut tag is dry tho bc lately I feel like a few social issues (like sexualizing people and disrespecting them and their identity) have crossed over into kpop and have been ?blown out of proportion? Lately there's been a rampage of people who like to say that writing smut about someone is disgusting and is dehumanizing because people want to assume that it would make the idols uncomfortable which could equate to some morality issues on how you are reducing someone only to their body without their consent and a bunch of stuff like that. It kind of pisses me off bc this is fiction. About grown adults. Clamping down on horny people who simp over hot asian men isn't going to solve the issues we face in real life. I think a shit ton is wrong with the world we currently live in, and deciding to come after something that isn't even real bothers me. Like what does that actually accomplish. But yeah, I think thats a reason why smut has been dying down. I mean, on youtube almost every video about unpopular opinions, or things they dont like about kpop will include something about shipping idols in fanfics. And then everyone in the comment section will talk about how its all fine and dandy in moderation, but once people start writing smut it's crossing the idols personal boundaries. It's something I've been seeing a lot more often and I think people who are interested in writing smut are being turned away from it bc we've gotten to a point where people are being called disgusting for having fantasies.

Hi Anon, thank you for sending in this Ask. 

I want to preface this by saying: when I write or talk about Mingyu and Wonwoo fucking on my blog, it is a fantasy. I am not speculating about what the real Mingyu and Wonwoo might be like in bed. I am imagining the versions of Mingyu and Wonwoo that I have created in my head, that exist only in my stories. None of it is real. I understand that this can be a blurry boundary for some people. But for me, the separation between fantasy and reality is well-defined. Now, on to your Ask!

You’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. You’ve also touched on many of the issues I have been struggling with myself as of late. It’s difficult to argue about morals since everyone has a different set of values, as well as different comfort levels. Some people think real person fiction (RPF) is a gross invasion of privacy. Others are fine with it. And others don’t care one way or another. There is no single answer; I can only offer my answer. Which means, of course, people are welcome to disagree with it, or parts of it. 

In this essay (LOL But forreal: this is an essay), I will be sharing my experience in the k-pop fanfic community from 2014 to present, the etiquette I personally abide by as a reader and writer of RPF, as well as my stance on RPF in general.

I started reading and posting fanfics back in 2014/2015 on a website called AsianFanfics (AFF). Obviously, no one on that site had a problem with RPF, since AFF is a platform made specifically for sharing stories about Asian celebrities. For many years, I read and enjoyed RPF with zero guilt. I scribbled away by myself in my own corner of fandom and curated my own content. I didn’t interact much with other fans, readers, or writers. I didn’t have a Twitter, and I only used tumblr to reblog memes. As a result, I’ve been able to avoid a lot of anti-shipping discourse, as well as purity and cancel culture. I had no idea there were so many negative opinions about RPF. It wasn’t until I became active on the subreddit r/Fanfiction last year that I learned about all the discourse surrounding RPF. 

This newfound ‘awareness’ does make me feel guilty at times—but only because after mulling this over, I still don’t think this is something to feel guilty about.

Here’s what I remember, first and foremost, when I create and consume RPF: fanfics and my favourite ships are fictional, and fiction is fantasy. This is basic etiquette when it comes to RPF, and most people in the k-pop fandom understand this. Delusional fans exist, of course, but they are not representative of the entire k-pop community. 

Another point of etiquette is to keep fanfics within fandom spaces. I would never push my fics into celebrities’ faces, or go around claiming that my fanfics are accurate representations of a k-idol’s life or personality, in any way, shape, or form. I would also discourage directing ship-related questions to official accounts, or bringing them up during fansigns or other face-to-face interactions; I believe that in these instances, shipping does have the potential to strain real-life relationships.

So with basic etiquette out of the way, let me share my approach to RPF in general.

As much as we like to think we know our favourite celebrities, we really don’t. All we see is their public persona. And this public persona is intentionally controlled, managed, and curated by a team of people: directors, tabloids, editors, makeup artists, publicists, etc. How “real” are these celebrities? We are so distanced from them that they may as well be fictional.

I draw from the public persona that idols project, and I work them into my own writing. But at the end of the day, these personalities are my own interpretation. My interpretation is probably nothing like an idol’s actual personality. I just use the “public persona/character” that idols portray as inspiration for my own stories, which are set in wildly different universes.

More than anything, I think of k-pop idols as “actors” in my fic. You know how when you write an original novel, you scroll through Google images, looking for the perfect person to portray your original character? RPF is literally that, except you might build upon pre-existing dynamics and personalities.

When it comes to explicit fanfiction, two main concerns are prevalent: one of consent, and one of sexualisation.

If we argue against explicit RPF due to lack of consent, we should be willing to apply the same lens to all explicit works. How do we know that the creator of a movie, book, series, etc., is okay with us using their characters in our stories, explicit or not? We don’t. Perhaps some creators encourage fanfiction, but don’t want their lovingly crafted characters engaging in sexual acts or experiencing trauma. We just don’t know. I feel this line is even more blurred when we talk about characters from movies or TV series.

Let’s take Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, as portrayed by Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan, from the Captain America movies as an example. I am willing to bet that when people consume and create explicit fanfiction about Steve and Bucky, they are imagining Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan in their heads. I doubt many people are imagining the 2D cartoon versions of Steve and Bucky, even though they’re technically the exact same characters. Why? Well, it could be because movies are more readily and easily consumed than comics, and so people are unfamiliar with comic book Steve and Bucky. But it might also be because fans find Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan attractive. Is this really any different from RPF, where fic authors make up everything about a celebrity’s life?  

When readers and writers of fanfic talk about how hot Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes is, those comments are about Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan’s bodies. When reading explicit stories, fans are going to picture Chris and Sebastian’s bodies in their head, doing sexual things. Can we say, “Well, it’s not really you, Chris/Sebastian”, when in a way, it is?

The reality is, people are going to thirst over celebrities, regardless of whether or not explicit fanfiction exists. They’re going to post thirst tweets on Twitter. They’re going to talk to friends and strangers online about how hot [insert celebrity name here] is. They’re going to fantasize about dating and having sex with their favourite celebrity. Or, as it is in my case, they’re going to make up stories in their heads about their favourite idols dating and banging each other. People are going to do all of this without ‘getting consent’ from the celebrity. Cracking down upon and shaming writers of RPF isn’t going to change any of that.

To be honest, I’m not sure why people think it is disgusting to imagine sexual scenarios about real people. It is okay and normal to have these kinds of fantasies. I suppose the alternative is to fantasise about having sex with cartoon characters instead? It’s a very binary way of thinking to say that if you imagine/write real people in explicit scenarios, you are immediately sexualising, dehumanising, or objectifying them. There is more to dehumanisation than writing smut about our favourite celebrities. For one thing, you can love someone and appreciate all parts of them, and still want to fuck their brains out. And generally, fanfics come from a place of love—love that is not only sexual in nature.

Is it the sharing aspect inherent to fanfiction? The possibility that a celebrity might stumble upon explicit works about them? The chances are very low, I think, of the k-pop idols I enjoy writing about coming across my English fics. But I also believe in curating your own content, and that applies to celebrities too. Perhaps a celebrity should not go searching for fanfics about themselves. And of course, people should not show celebrities their fanfics, unless invited.

Another argument I hear against (explicit) RPF is, “How would you feel if someone wrote fanfiction about you?” First off, I don’t like this argument because there’s a difference between someone who decides to be a public figure versus someone who decides to remain a regular private citizen. Celebrities should and do know what they’re getting into when they choose their occupation. (This is not to say, “They are celebrities; sexualise them all you want because that’s what they signed up for.” Here, I am only acknowledging that people might have sexual fantasies about celebrities they are attracted to. Presumably, celebrities are cognizant of this.)  

If someone (whose existence I am not even aware of, mind you) decides they want to write explicit fanfiction of me in some tiny corner of the Internet, I wouldn’t care so long as: (1) they don’t shove it into my face, and (2) they don’t harass me and ask invasive questions about my personal life and relationships. It’s not hurting me or negatively affecting my life, so it wouldn’t even register as a blip on my radar. When fanfiction remains within its appropriate spaces, it is largely harmless. 

Now, if a k-pop idol were to ask their fans to stop writing fanfiction about them, would I? Yes, I would. However, I can’t imagine that happening. Judging by the number of ‘sexy’ concepts, fanservice moments, and variety shows such as ‘We Got Married’, I am certain that k-pop idols realise they are the stars of many fantasies—some of which are explicit in nature. Considering the prevalence of shipping in the k-pop industry, I would argue that shipping is subtly encouraged.

It’s sad that so many talented writers are shamed out of fandom, or feel that k-pop cannot be the medium through which they tell their stories, or explore their sexuality, or cope with trauma, or simply have fun. Professional works and Hollywood love their RPF—readers and writers of fanfics should be able to, as well. 

As you said Anon, “clamping down on horny people who simp over hot asian men isn't going to solve the issues we face in real life” (this is a lovely sentence, by the way). The kind of person who dehumanises another and reduces them to a sexual object will do so some other way, if not via fanfiction. I don’t think the issue of fetishisation can be fixed simply by telling people not to write explicit RPF. In my experience, people who read and write RPF are more respectful and thoughtful about these things than the general public. We’ve all seen the general public say highly sexual things about celebrities in the media and to their faces, or tag celebrities in their thirst tweets. Are these things less invasive than fanfiction? Personally, I don’t think so. And in my opinion, there are more pressing and damaging issues in stan culture than fanfic.

In conclusion, I don’t think there is anything wrong with creating and consuming RPF, both explicit and non-explicit so long as we:

Remember we are writing fiction

Keep RPF within its appropriate space, and

Do not harass celebrities about their personal lives and relationships

RPF is not for everyone. There may be people who enjoy RPF, but draw the line at explicit stories. This is fine. Everyone has their own personal preferences. What is not fine, however, is attacking people for creating things you don’t like. I’m not sure what kind of moral crusade people are on and what they hope to achieve by shaming writers of RPF, explicit or otherwise. Ultimately, fic authors are writing a fantasy. It’s not real; no one is being hurt. I think it’s important for people to curate their own content, and AO3 makes it very easy to filter out explicit works and unwanted tags. 

Maybe this is me trying to justify my own participation in explicit RPF—I don’t know. What I do know is that I love k-pop, and fandom is an important part of my media and entertainment experience. I adore the k-pop idols I write about, and I just want to imagine them being happy and getting lots of love and orgasms. Let a bitch be horny, goddamn… 

Some bonus fun facts!

At the time I am writing this, on AO3:

26.2% of Stray Kids fanfics are rated M or E

26.3% of Seventeen fanfics are rated M or E

29.0% of Merlin fanfics are rated M or E

34.9% of Captain America (Movies) fanfics are rated M or E

40.1% of BTS fanfics are rated M or E ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Coincidentally, I saw this post on Reddit this morning: Can we have a RPF positivity post?

#asks #my writing #fic & fandom #I keep coming back to fiddle and add things to this answer #but I think I've said all I wanted to now...

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

Hey, I'm really sorry but I don't really understand all this anti discourse??? What's wrong with not wanting to see pedophilia romanticized in fiction? Like I understand it's fiction and not real, but I guess for me it's just super weird why anyone would want to read that sort of thing. Also personally I won't watch game of thrones, nor will I read it, because I'm super not okay with graphic depictions of rape. I didn't even know it had pedophilia or incest so I'm glad I never got into it. =/

Imagine you’re in high school, if you’re not already.  You have a significant other of your preferred gender.  You’ve been dating for a year or so. You’re in the same grade, but you’re older than they are.  You’re 18 years old.  They are 17 years old.  You’re only actually 3 months apart in age and you only just turned 18.  

Antis are the people who would see “18yo dating 17yo” and immediately start calling the 18yo a predator.  I have seen them call a late-20s character dating an early-20s character pedophilia, because of the age gap, which is nonsensical.  I can only imagine the names they would call me, who turned 19 days after first kissing my girlfriend, who was 2 years and a couple months younger than me and so who was only 16 for the first few months we dated, even though we were only a grade apart.  (we’re now married, fwiw, and have been happily together nearly 15 years)

Antis see adults writing teenaged characters bc they enjoy a canon with teenage characters and get invested in their romantic relationships and ship them because they’re cute together, and call those adults pedophiles.  For writing fic that is, essentially, the same as 99% of young adult novels.  Which are almost all written by adults.

Antis say that the act of looking at teenagers having an interesting dynamic or potential dynamic and wanting to explore that in a context where those teenagers HAVE GROWN UP AND ARE ADULTS and maybe writing smut of adult characters who are in canon underage?  Is pedophilia and child pornography. Stories about characters that happen to have been children at one point but are - this is the important part - NOT children in these fics.

And, ultimately, antis are calling fictional stories about fictional characters “child pornography” and anyone who has concerns about purity policing and censorship as “pedophiles” or “pedophile apologists” and are diluting the meaning of these concepts when ACTUAL LITERAL CHILD PORN AND PEDOPHILES EXIST and what they are doing is doing absolutely nothing to combat it.

They’re not angry about people “romanticizing” pedophilia, because 95% of the time even fictionally that’s not what’s happening.  They’re angry because they’ve come up with this idea of what “acceptable” fic is, and they don’t like that people disagree with them.  You can tell it’s not actually about that, because you don’t see them trying to get Game of Thrones pulled from libraries, even though it includes incest and sexual assault and a 14 year old girl being married to and impregnated by a grown man (and all this in the very first book).  You don’t see them calling GRRM a pedophile.

At the end of the day, it is fiction.  It is fictional.  No one is asking you to like it, least of all me, but it is NOT. REAL.  These are not real people and they are not in real situations.  They talk a big game about how fanfiction and shipping will “normalize” these things, but fandom is actually a LOT smaller than it feels, and most fics don’t get more than a few thousand hits at the MOST.  And if you just mass ban anything that includes sexual assault or child abuse, you’re going to probably ban the tiny fraction of fandom that is actually really into that, sure, but you’re also going to ban fics dealing with canonical backstory and trauma.  you’re going to ban fics grappling with dark themes and condemning the things that happen to the characters.  You’re going to ban people trying to heal, or even just trying to have a discussion about it.

We know this because it’s happened before in fandom, look into the LiveJournal strikeout if you want to know more about it.  Look into the various ff.net crackdowns.  When it comes down to it, if I look at 17yo character and a 23yo character and say “I want to ship them during this canon without changing their ages”, there is no minor being taken advantage of.  If someone uses my fic to “convince” a teen that it’s okay to date them in their 20s?  That’s on them.  they are abusers and if it hadn’t been fic it would’ve been music, or movies, or history, or god only knows what.  You don’t get to let abusers off the hook just because they MAYBE could use someone’s fanfic as one of their methods of abuse.  There’s… sorry, there’s just a LOT of issues with anti culture.  I’m not pro pedophilia or anything, I am just anti whatever the fucking hell antis are doing.

I’ve been through that kind of black and white all or nothing purity culture bullshit before.  It was called evangelical christianity, and it was (in my case, because of this purity culture shit) deeply abusive and fucked me up royally!  I refuse to let myself be put through that again just to please some fuckos on the internet.

#fandom purity culture #honestly anon if you don't get it now idk what to tell you #but you will not sway me on this matter #anonymous #audience with the gods

[oftenderweapons]

hi! i just started reading your series particularly the storyline around namjoon x vixen and i’m really enjoying their dynamic so far bc it’s also what i’m personally interested in. but that being said i felt that it was necessary to mention that the book lolita specifically (which i saw was mentioned a couple times in their canon) shouldn’t be taken lightly as it’s been skewed from the authors intent by our society and has had ramifications that were still seeing today namely pedophilia. i’m not sending this ask to make u feel bad i only sincerely mean to educate as i recently learned about it too :// a friend of mine showed me ‘the lolita podcast’ which is on spotify and i was mortified to learn about the true depth of the book so yeah. while i personally am into certain kinks and am totally fine with other people having their own, i thought i would just warn abt that book in particular and how it’s unfortunately been misinterpreted by so many for so long

Thank you for making this clarification. Apparently I thought that the subtext was clear to everyone and I thought that I had transposed Vixen's character well enough to let everyone understand that she reads Lolita for what it is: a book that denounces disgusting, despicable behaviour and that every person that is involved in DDLG content and dynamics should read in order to understand the darkest, most dangerous sides of such topic. I am glad we can face this controversy.

If anyone would like, under the cut there is an in-depth analysis.

TRIGGER WARNING: discussion of controversial themes of Lolita, namely sexualisation of minors and pedophilia.

What is Lolita

Lolita is a novel written by Vladimir Nabokov, one of the most important authors of the 21st century.

The content

Basically, within the fiction of the novel, the book turns into the diary/defense of a criminal, who is undergoing trial as a pedophile after he became physically attracted to his step-daughter — who is a minor — and proceeded with running away with her after her mother's death, in an attempt to marry the girl. It is set in the USA during the mid-20th century. The man and his underage step-daughter explicitly get involved in sexual intercourse within the book. Through the book the man offers several excuses to pedophilia, even explicitly saying that it was the girl tempting him.

My statement on the book and its relevance within Namjoons' Love Talk

As a person who has read Lolita and has studied specifically the power dynamics in that book, I do not condone IN ANY WAY the sexualisation of minors, or ingaging in sexual acts with them, may them be consenting or not. Just so that we're clear.

I don't think that reading or studying Lolita means that one condones pedophilia, and a person like Vixen has surely read that book specifically because she thinks it's an important part of her culture that she needs to be aware of, just like one person would read books about the Holocaust to be aware of tragedies of the past and make sure that they do not repeat themselves. Lolita is not romanticised or idealised by Vixen. She is very aware of the content of the book. She read it because you need to know the good parts and the bad parts of your culture: knowing the bad parts allows you to know the risks and dangers of it and helps you stay away from acts and behaviours you do not condone.

Personally, I want to clear things up. Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian intellectual, reader and writer. It means he had a Russian perception of the role of literature, which is that of openly dealing with injustice and denounce acts that weren't all that uncommon back then. Lolita is a book that shows how despicable and how deprecable the mind of an abuser is. It was written to disgust people and to raise awareness against pedophilia, to improve regulations (the author openly names American States where at the time you could legally marry a minor. Nabokov wanted those states to be shamed! And many publishers didn't publish his book because they were afraid of political repercussions! They were afraid to show that their Patriotic, Free, Enlightened Country, aka America, The Land Of The Free, allowed and condoned such disgusting behaviour).

I am solidly aware of how much pedophilia and DDLG dynamics have often been brought in the same conversation.

I am glad this blog can be educational, after all. The important subtext here is that Vixen is an adult woman. And Namjoon is aware of that. Vixen thrives in her maturity and her wits and knowledge and confidence, which are traits of an adult woman. Namjoon knows that his partner is a grown up adult. The connotations of DDLG here are based exclusively on the power exchange between the characters, where one occupies an empowered, educational, caring space, while the other occupies a vulnerable, less empowered space. However, Vixen occupies this space with the maturity and the sexuality of a grown woman. And if I'm not mistaken, there are a few scenes in which she shows that although Namjoon is pretending to teach her something, he and she are both aware that she doesn't need such lesson. She simply feels like she needs a kind of guidance, and the first figure of guidance we meet in our lives are parenting figures, therefore the "daddy kink".

Now, regarding owning several translations of the same book: Vixen has lived abroad. And when you live abroad and you like reading, your key to the country is reading in their language. Vixen is a polyglot. She was brought up speaking three languages. Lolita is an interesting book for a polyglot because Nabokov himself was a polyglot. In my mind I can really see Vixen buying a text she knows — because she has read it carefully without any sort of lightness of heart — and reading it in her non-first languages once she goes abroad. I can see her reading it and confronting the different words that were used, the weight that every translator gave to the different statements and crimes that Humbert Humbert — the protagonist — has committed.

Now, the similarities between Vixen and Lolita begin and end in one thing. They are brats.

When Namjoon asks her about the books and the movie posters, Vixen says "are you asking me if I have a daddy kink or if I like owning multiple versions of the same book", and the reference to the daddy kink is her joking about the public perception of the book; still, this does not mean that that is her perception of the book. I do understand that her using irony as a coping machanism could be misinterpreted, but this doesn't affect her awareness on the themes of the book.

Vixen is moody, mercurial, playful once she gets into subspace — she toys around things like a girl, but she does so with the awareness of a grown woman; she decides to act childlike, coquettish and playful. She fools around like any of us do, and Namjoon likes the idea of conquering her, reassured by the fact that he has a grown woman in front of him, who has all the tools to tell him that she is not interested in starting a scene or behaving sexually in a specific moment. When she is in a bratty mood, she teases and provokes but never really follows through with her taunts. She needs Namjoon — her figure of guidance and responsibility — to actualise her empty threats. That is all she has in commons with Lolita. What is important is that they are two consenting adults, incredibly aware of how dangerous their games could be if they were even a bit less morally and culturally aware or even slightly less prepared.

I hope this gave you all you needed to know, nonnie. If you — or any of my readers — would like to discuss more about the issue, my DMs are open.

Honestly, I was waiting for this conversation to happen. I have been writing Namjoon and Vixen discussing the topic in one of the pieces but unfortunately that prompt hasn't been selected yet. As soon as I'm done with my exam, I will release a specific piece to explain Vixen's relationship with the text since it's part of the character's back story and her past with with her first boyfriend.

Thank you for bringing up the issue.

#anna vents #ask:anon #introducing vixen

[sugarandspice-games]

I guess this is becoming a trend... I’m popping in before the actual intro to clarify-- if the text is in italic, it is me (Sugar) talking and regular is Spice. Alright? Cool. And so--

So, one night I’m going through youtube and I come upon this one shitposty video about some random anime that I’ve never even heard of. After doing some research, I discover that it’s actually based on a dating sim that I’ve also never heard of. As a joke I was like “Hey Sugar wanna watch this as a joke, it might be funny” and so we did. And uhm. Well.

Today we’re gonna be reviewing Brothers Conflict, aka Sweet Home Alabama 2: Electric Anime Boogaloo aka the anime that ruined our lives. [Again, disclaimer: neither Sugar nor I condone incest and/or pedophilia, two themes which are uh, very rampant in this anime which is why I cannot recommend it in good faith. It’s not good, don’t get me wrong. I can’t really say that I liked it even if watching it and ragging on it was kind of enjoyable, and I did get attached to some of the characters because that’s the kind of idiot I am. Also, we’re not shirking our duties to write I swear please don’t kill me--] Anyway, an obligatory SPOILER WARNING though this probably isn’t going in the main tag bc I do not want the fans to publicly stone me. Why are we reviewing this? Bc we need to talk about it somewhere. Though I say review lightly bc this... is really more of a critique.

ALSO we only watched the anime, idk if things are different in the game. There is no full english translation for the games and most of the LP channels have been copyright striked, so please don’t come at us for not knowing anything. I also know that otome games and dating sims don’t tend to translate well to anime, and I will be addressing this later.

So, dear god, where do I begin.

Where do we begin indeed? How about the fact that her name is Ema and I had to google to remember the heroine’s name? Also, she is seventeen.

Our plot, or well... what you COULD call a plot, I guess, if you REALLY wanted to give this anime that much credit, focuses on the aforementioned seventeen year old Hinata Ema, who has an absent father who apparently FOUND THE TIME TO FALL IN LOVE AND GET MARRIED BUT NEVER HAS A SECOND TO SPARE FOR HIS ONLY CHILD, RINTARO I SWEAR TO GOD I AM TAKING CUSTODY OF YOUR CHILD. HAND HER OVER-- Anyway. He’s getting married to a woman who has 13 sons (jesus christ ma’am have you ever heard of a condom?) and he decides to move her in with them because... I guess he has less braincells than I have balls, which is to say, zero. Hi, I’m trans.

So, Ema moves in with them... along with her talking grey squirrel, Juli. Juli is... interesting and by interesting, I mean-- ABSOLUTELY PUZZLING. He, apparently, has seen the majority of Ema’s life from babyhood to teenagerhood and can talk but is only understood by Ema (who he calls Chii) and Louis, the eighth son in the Asahina family. It is never explained why, or how Chii came across him or how in an episode, a single episode, he becomes human because why the hell not, I guess??? (Also, he is pretty. YES. I said it. Fight me.) [Quick Spice intervention, this squirrel can talk to people, transform into a human, enter dreams, and live way longer than a squirrel should since the average lifespan of a squirrel is like 6 years in the wild. Juli is apparently a god as none of this is EVER explained.]

And when she meets the Asahina family, it’s pretty much immediately chaos because these heterosexual (I guess? They look like a bunch of twinks to me but there goes anime trying to convince me that straight people are real and not a lie made up by Trump) men have NEVER and I mean NEVER known a woman in their entire lives, since they seem to want to bang their stepsister immediately. And most of them are GROWN ASS ADULTS. Only three of them are actually minors (though Iori is 18 and only one year older so I guess??? It’s okay??? But still weird) and one of them is a 13 year old who looks and acts like he’s 8.

Oh, and did I mention that out of these boys, only the adult triplets and the abusive asshole 16 year old get any kind of characterization AND character development? I mean, Subaru gets an “arc” if you can call it that, but really, they don’t give him much... personality. You could replace him with a cardboard cutout and it’d be the same. I feel bad for him (but not really because dude you are 20 and she is your sister, what the fuck--)

But if there’s anything good about this anime, it is the characters themselves. Several of the boys have redeeming qualities and interesting personalities and quirks, as well as interesting relationships and dynamics with each other. Yes, some of them are lacking in the plotline department while others may have decent plotlines and lack personality, and then some of them are just given absolutely nothing (COUGH Masaomi COUGH Ukyo COUGHCOUGHCOUGH Iori, and by the way, what the fuck is that game plotline bc I read the wiki since I wanted to know more about him. We don’t have time to unpack the mento illness luv. But you’re telling me they had all this meat to work with and they threw it in the trash and gave him nothing? What the hell?) And if anything, I feel as if the characters themselves are crippled by the plotline. If given a different story, perhaps, they may have room to shine, because a lot of them are compelling if not lovable (though some may not be... lovable. COUGHFuuto, at least not for me.) If you want to see our review on the characters, we’ll put out another post.

Iori... Iori has a hell of a plot in the game, according to the Wiki but I can’t blame the writers for not exploring all of it because whoa. It is dark and not in a good way. But back to the subject at hand... I agree with Spice. I do/did like quite a lot of the characters... provided the entire romantic plot is taken away but we will go into more of why the plot is problematic below. All I can really add is: There is a baby in this dumpster and canon has been taken out back to be shot like a lame horse.

This brings me to a point in which I would like to pause the character discussion and bring up a glaring flaw with this anime in general (aside from the... plot. Look, I’m not a huge fan of weird stepsibling stuff but I think that if you want to do something like that, there are ways to do it and ways not to do it. This was the way not to do it, which I’m getting to). The biggest thing that made this anime so uncomfortable was the imbalance of power dynamics. Why is the protagonist 17 when most of the love interests are 18 and older, and I mean much, much older? And she’s not any 17 year old... she’s a lonely, neglected girl who is starved for the love of a family. This makes her easily manipulated by the brothers, who clearly desire her for less than wholesome reasons, and that makes it skeevy. I’m not sure why there’s such a fetishization of nonconsent in media, as if it’s fine for as many men to lust after female protagonists as the writer desires BUT the woman can’t want a single one of them in return. It’s creepy, and quite frankly, I am very much over it. I also get that the age thing is probably a product of the protagonist of a teenager oriented dating sim not translating well to an anime (because really, all otome game MCs are meant to be a neat little pair of shoes for the player to imagine themselves in), but why are we fetishizing a teenager being groomed by adults anyway? Especially adults who have this much power over her to begin with? The power dynamics bring this plot from “Oh, this might be kinda trashy but it could be entertaining” to “This is extremely creepy and rapey and kind of a dumpster fire.”

This is also true. If we were to take age into consideration, Fuuto, Yusuke, and Iori would be the three candidates left for Chii. This is taking out the youngest as well, who is... thirteen, I think? But anyway, (I know I am probably going to get some hate for this but go for it), I am into stories that explore the stepsibling thing and it can make a good narrative-- but before everyone gets uppity: There is a line between FICTION and REALITY and I do not condone real life incest but a story is a story and there are ways to frame it that make it clear that it is not a romantic thing, or acceptable. This anime does not do that in it’s dynamics because some of the brothers do start off in that very firm caregiving, family role and it is a sharp turn into romance that makes you go, “?” or in Fuuto case, a blending that does lean into fetishization.

All in all I think the plot maybe could have been okay? I’m not saying it isn’t problematic, because we all know it is, who are we kidding? But I don’t think it’s wrong per se to explore family dynamics with romance and to understand where the line should be drawn, and maybe exploring the definition of family itself. I have seen fanfictions with similar tropes ask those questions and explore the concept beautifully without romanticizing or fetishizing incest and unhealthy power dynamics. It could have been good, and I get that perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree by expecting mature themes in an anime based on an otome game, but it also could have been a lot less... creepy (I have used that word so much that it looks wrong now) even if it wasn’t the greatest thing ever. But again, what was I expecting? I watched this whole thing as a joke and ended up attached to the characters like a fool... That tends to be a trend here, and this is why we are so salty all the time. So anyway, stay tuned for our review of the characters! We may not cover all of them since some of them don’t really get anything, but we’ll cover what we found interesting.

#spice talks #sugar speaks #anime and game reviews #sweet home alabama: the anime #not putting this in main tag

[yeah-how-about-nope]

I just read the Hot Take(tm) “If a fictional character is real enough to you for you to care enough to write/read about them, that makes them real enough that writing/reading Bad Stuff happening to them is the same as you supporting that Thing happening IRL to a Real Actual Human Being” with my own two eyes.

And it’s just so endlessly wild to me to approach fiction like this?

Because here is the thing:

The same characters are often hurt in the source material, too. Afaik the source material of the fandom where the name anti comes from has teenagers and young adults fighting, losing limbs, losing loved ones, stuff like that. Does that mean the creators of this source material want these things to happen to actual teenagers, too?

Or (judging from their earlier work) do they think it would be Super Fun to actually encourage parental neglect of a RL 14yo girl with mental health issues? Or the abuse of her brother that burned off a third of his face? But then again, the boy is Bad himself because he doesn’t care about what happens to the kids his age he pursues and wants to hand over to his brutal father just to get his approval. What kind of person does one have to be to be able to empathize enough with someone like this to write about him? And the fear and hurt he causes the main characters? Does that mean the creators support RL teenagers pursuing, threatening and hurting other kids to make themselves feel better? Isn’t it wrong that in the end he gets to be forgiven for all that? 

Or imagine this: A creator enjoying putting an 11yo into mortal danger. Writing about a kid who lives in an abusive household but whenever they’re at school, they can’t feel safe, either. Because someone is out to murder them. Awful things keep happening to this kid again and again and again, they’re bullied by one teacher, not told important information by another who’s willing to sacrifice them even (and we’re tricked into liking that one!), supernatural beings show up at some point that try to suck out that kid’s soul and terrify them to the bone, and people that kid cares about get kidnapped, hurt, some of them even die.

And in all these stories the grown-up authors even managed to squish in scenes where teenagers kiss! That means they thought about the sex-lives of these kids!

Who needs a story about such things?

Who needs someone who writes about that?

What kind of person even wants to write about that?

Wouldn’t it be a better story if all characters were friends from the start instead? Just meeting up at the local coffee tea shop, hanging out, having a good time, with no one getting hurt?

Or is it okay for Bad Things to happen as long as it’s traditionally published work that made it into mainstream media, and only not okay if it’s fanfiction?

But what if the emotional fallout of Bad Things, the character growth of a redemption arc of someone who Really Majorly Fucked Up or simply exploring Objectively Awful Things From A Safe Distance are what gets me hooked to a piece of media in the first place?

Am I not allowed to produce this kind of media myself?

Is the person who produces or actively engages with this kind of media a worse person than the one who only passively consumes it?

If I write something Bad that gets published and becomes mainstream, will the wank move on from me and target my fandom instead bc they explore things I merely hinted or they consider fitting to the groundwork I did more thoroughly than I did? Or will it move on because I’m not an easy target anymore?

How does the OP of the post that inspired this one here engage with media in their every-day life? Iirc they’re a writer, too. Do they only write about characters they regard as friends to them? Are they aware that other people don’t necessarily have the same kind of relationship to fictional characters?

Do most/all antis think someone liking a character means they wish they were real or that they feel for them as they would feel for a friend?

I have so many questions (and am so majorly concerned for OP).

inb4 “but OP was talking about child pr0n”: I have yet to see a single anti argument like this actually being solely about untagged fanfic with explicit sex scenes between children/young teenagers and adults that are portrayed as 100% healthy and something to aspire to by grown-up authors who don’t make clear they’re aware what they did there. That’s never what it’s really about and you know it.

#anti shipping #anti discourse #fandom discourse #media criticism #fandom meta #own

[heartbxnd-blog]

@mercenaryrocket has sent: 4. What are some things you are tired of seeing in the RPing community? / 11. Have you ever received anon hate?

Lets get some NaCl-y on Munday a Thursday night!         [Not Accepting]

Read more bc of the length!

4. What are some things you are tired of seeing in the RPing community?

// Oh boy okay so...

Senselless violence bc PsYcHo UWU EdGyNeSS my muse likes to hurt others bc uwu: IDK man, I am not saying violence is the problem here- violence if used correctly can be a nice compliment to a muse. However, I am so tired of muses just taking these actions- out of nowhere- man it is difficult to explain it. But to me personally- these extra edgy all about that violence muses, don’t quite fit in well with the pokemon setting??? AGAIN I am not saying that violence is the problem here- just look at my Lance (which I SERIOUSLY hope this isn’t what people get while reading my take on him), but I feel like I would appreciate more if violence actually complimented the character- instead of it being like ‘Look at my muse attacking other ppl bc uwu’ to me it just makes them look flat and childish.

OH YES UH- full grown adult muses, behaving and acting just like children: ??? Yeah it- it doesn’t sit well....

I’m tired of people failing to understand that muse and mun are two complete different things: I HOPE THAT EVERYONE WHO FOLLOWS ME, IS WELL AWARE THAT I AM NOT MORTY/LANCE/ETC. this is why I really try to distance myself as much as possible from muses I rp, I don’t want to self insert into them.

It is 2019, why do people still think that muses difficult to ship with = THE MOST DEVELOPPED AND WELL WRITTEN CHARACTER IN THE COMMUNITY: Calm down dude, chill- take ur coolaid juice fam. Full kudos and my love as well as support for muns who aren’t keen on it, who don’t want that- etc. But don’t come shitting on my fun, for thinking that somehow my muse lacks development because I like to ship my muses with other people’s??? What kind of assinide logic is this???

‘u CaN’t PiCk tHaT fC fOr Ur MuSe BC...’: Dude it is a fictional character... That’s their blog....Being made for Rp fun, ain’t nobody got time to appease to your wepwesentation campaign(tm). I guess you can fucking arrest me then Tumblr police.

Also I’m really tired of these “callouts” that could have been solved by simply talking/some kind of communication had happened: Sorry but those screenshots of Discord DMs taken out of context only serves to prove how low some people are willing to go. Honestly, this only instigates mob mentality and bullying.

I guess these are the biggest ones??? That came to my mind??

11. Have you ever received anon hate?      

// Oh yeah!! A few times!!! Luckily they didn’t last much, and were just people being really dumb.

From being called a racist and toxic person, because I refused to tag my posts in my mother language after an anon came to me like ‘Yeah when I see languages IDK it triggers my anxiety uwu’. Imagine if I were writing some arabic dialect or japanese- wouldn’t that be funny?

To the less harmful ‘You’re transphobic for writing genderbend Aus’ in my sideblog... Dedicated to it- that I rarely if ever bring it up...And the person had to likely dig through my blog to find a link to it in the first placr....

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It is like some jokes just write by themselves...

#would you like some salt in your tea? #ooc / #long post #mercenaryrocket #thank you for the ask! #Simone out here forcing me to open the gates of saltiness

[bartsugsy]

I just wanna say, I'm so happy you're embracing your feelings towards Rebecca. It's just reached a whole other level of ridiculous now heh 😂😂😭😭.

this was probably the wrong (right?) time to send this message because i’ve been yelling about this theory all evening and….

i have some more Thoughts

ok, i think i sort of accidentally went back to trying to really fathom out her character again, but it always feels pointless, because i don’t know how we’re supposed to take her. i don’t know ultimately where her story should be or where it should be going. as far as i can tell, she’s there to further along robert’s story. that’s it. and that makes me annoyed because as much as i sort of just utterly despise her, why do i want to watch a female character help build up a male character without the writers even bothering to even try to make her character work in any kind of sensible way, or fleshed out, or even the slightest bit consistent? she’s so sloppily written and… you can sort of figure things out about her, but nothing that makes me understand why she is someone i would root for? 

like. i just want to know what the writers think of her. are we supposed to really be that invested in her? and if so, why haven’t they tried harder to make that happen by making her seem like more of a real multi-faceted character? as opposed to someone who, until literally two days ago, has never made a decision that someone else didn’t influence.

i just don’t really know where they can take her? because now she seems to have realised how shitty robert treats her and i enjoyed her earlier this week, tearing a strip off of him and rejecting him because she deserved to have a scene like that, but…

idk i’ve spent a lot of time talking about her with people today and thinking through her very thinly constructed character and it feels like they’ve started to do a 180 - they’ve had her take a stand against robert, they’ve had her stand fast in this one decision that she’s made by herself, against what other people have told her (yes with the prompting from vic, but she’s stood by it, so i’m sort of giving it to her anyway, baby steps etc). is that the extent of her character arc? where else can she go from here?

rebecca spent years - 5? years? 6? - idolising robert. She thought she was in love with him and she thought that she was the only one who knew him. She thought she was his aaron, essentially - the one person in her family who knew he was the sort of person who would cheat on chrissie, who was allowed to see all of him. i think she thought that she was more special to him than chrissie, and in that, didn’t actually ever see the real him at all.

earlier today i accidentally rewatched the first rob/rebecca kiss - the one that happened the day before ssw, rob’s inexplicable way to prove to himself that he wasn’t going to cheat on aaron that still makes literally no sense to me and almost annoys me more than The Incident because of it, but is saved only by the fact that it had less than zero effect on the story. the things that that scene - and the scene before it - did establish were: robert treats rebecca like shit and rebecca doesn’t really seem to notice. she just lets his words and tone mostly roll off her, still presses forwards and tries to see if he’ll give into her. she doesn’t stop or give up at that scene either. he strings her along just enough that she can just sort of blankly ignore the shit he says to her otherwise, especially when she brings aaron up.

and i think she must be jealous of aaron. it’s the only way her story works, in all honesty. for her to think that she was always something special to robert and to slowly be forced, over the course of the months of her returning to the village, to understand that the person she spent years she was to robert is in fact aaron dingle.

that and she must think of robert in a slightly delusional way - she puts him on a pedastal, ignores a lot of the bad things about him in favour of the good, because he really does treat her like shit. he’s occassionally genuinely nice to her, cares about her just enough, but largely treats her like a play thing - someone he can use to get his own way. he has so little regard for her feelings and she makes it so easy for him, lets him treat her that way, that he just continues, has really no respect for her (as little respect for her as i imagine she has for herself).

but despite every shitty thing he’s ever done to her, still she wants him. even after they’ve ostensibly drawn a line under things, she still makes promises to him, still tries to help him, still tries to stay in his life and bribes him to help her and… for all that i think she spent so many years convinced she was the person who knew him best, i think she blithely ignores so much of him in favour of this idea of who she thinks he is in her head.

this is literally the only way i can make sense of her continued responses to him, alongside both his behaviour to her on show and his canonical behaviour to her previously.

(i’m not really sure what to say about the first abortion anymore, because it 100% seems like something robert would do and i always stood by that, but in the light of her talking quite calmly about it to chrissie and saying it was the right thing to do, i sort of wonder if maybe rebecca was just throwing it in robert’s face for shock value, if she didn’t put up quite the fight that was originally implied, if it seemed a lot more of a joint decision? or maybe it wasn’t, but rebecca still recognises retroactively that it was the right thing to do? she certainly doesn’t seem to blame robert for it or any trauma she’s suffered relating to it when speaking to chrissie? which makes me think that she was trying to hurt robert and blame it on him, more than anything else?

idk, i feel vaguely uncomfortable about this line of thinking, hilariously enough, because i always want to make sure i’m holding robert as accountable as possible to his numerous fuck ups, but i think canonically speaking this is no longer as big of a fuck up as we once were led to believe it was. and at least that makes a damn slight more sense that she’d still continue loving him, wanting him in that same blind way as she does when arrives in emmerdale. no much more sense, but some.)

ANYWAY BACK TO THE TOPIC AT HAND

so i think rebecca is in love with this idea of robert that she has in her head, and there are ways you can parallel that with aaron and his relationship with robert during the affair

the difference comes from the second thing we know about rebecca, which is that she’s very easily led - and has shown very little agency at any point during her time on the show. where aaron would fight back against robert, rebecca never has - until recently.

we see him time and time again openly manipulate her. i won’t go into detail because i’ve done it already. one or twice.

(me: rebecca is such a boring character. also me: writes literal dissertations on her PICK A SIDE LO smh)

(me: liked rebecca before the Incident. also me: now writes thousands of words on why her character doesn’t work HYPOCRACY EVERYWHERE)

(me: knows that the character i thought rebecca white was was someone who despite everything, would ultimately do the right thing by the people she cares about and was largely better than giving into drunk, awful robert’s ridiculous seduction and had mad respect for her when she initially walked away, but also knew that she could potentially be at the mercy of Plot. also me: has been dealing with that and having to realign my every notion on who rebecca white is ever since because i am an obvious slave to canon and if she honestly didn’t do anything wrong that night, why the hell did she try to walk away in the first place)

(me: apparently has never held robert sugden to the same standard. also me: loves him anyway bc at least when he’s doing terrible things the show either invests in redeeming him or acknowledges that his actions are terrible. it took a long time for me to even like his character the first time i watched it but i got there and that time and backstory and the fact that it was so in character makes it easier to sympathise with than rebecca the walking plot device. still think he acted worse of the two of them that night, but as always, that’s just my take on it. but at least he’s shown remorse. she’s done nothing but imply she’s as big a victim as aaron in all of this. which. no.)

A N Y W A Y

She has the least amount of agency of any fictional character I’ve ever scene, has never been able to make a decision for herself that wasn’t somehow influenced by someone else… until this week.

Rebecca decides once and for all to keep the baby. Again, yes, Vic had to prompt her to take that step, but she’s still learning, she’s not used to being a grown adult person but she can totally take care of a living breathing child. 

she also, to my first point, has finally stopped buying robert’s bullshit. maybe it’s something about being pregnant and contemplating motherhood and one of his comments was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, but she’s been outright wary of him, completely unwilling to be around him, in a way she never was before. 

so…. there we have it. character development, such that it is. is it satisfying? sort of….? but not really? there’s still not much else to her, is the thing. and where else does she have left to go? she’s found a spec of agency, she’s realised that her feelings of love weren’t for the actual flesh and blood robert sugden, but the version of him she has in her head.

she’s on a mission to get aaron to see the same (not aware that aaron knows far worse things about robert), despite her determination just one day before that she didn’t want to get involved. 

but… again, where can this storyline develop that’s satisfying not only for robert and aaron but rebecca too? 

it’s my firm belief that actually the most interesting direction to take her in would be to take her character development to the extreme - have her go out for revenge. become a character that grows from having no agency to taking every single drop of agency for herself and getting her own back at the man who she held in her heart for years, but turned around and crushed it

(around the time she realised that not even a baby would make him want to be with her)

everyone around her thinks she’s keeping the baby because she thinks it’ll win robert back. but if she’s keeping the baby for her and wants robert out of her hair for good, or wants to teach robert a lesson, or wants to take revenge because robert is eventually interested in the baby and still has basically no concern for her…

to be honest, with the way she was able to still look at robert, to let every horrible comment he’s said to her go and still want to be with him, still actively try to be with him despite being turned down repeatedly, it actually feels like a more believable direction for her character to take than anything else. because… that blind desperation has to come from somewhere. out and out villainise her - they’ve built seven months worth of backstory as to how and why she could be pushed to the extremes and it would make her a hell of a lot more interesting. hell, it would be better constructed as a dive into soap villainy than chrissie’s turn ever really was (which was ok, but extreme and pretty out of odds with the character we’d seen from her before - i really don’t mind though because i fucking loved her scheming overdramatic ass). plus, rebecca deserves to be able to put robert through some pain 

(obviously not ultimately really hurt him in any way but, you know, still)

idk, it’s just. a more enjoyable concept. it would fit her character magnificantly, when all is said and done. she’s been so meek, so easily manipulated for such a long time, has made near on every decision around robert, that giving her this opportunity to really do a 180 and take is to a soapy extreme would be amazing.

will they do this? i’m assuming not? if we’re supposed to like rebecca???? and i still don’t really know if we are or not. 

what could they do instead? a lot of things that are less interesting, probably. and less satisfying for all of the characters involved. like. i guess she’ll just plod along, hating robert but staying firm in her decision?

or maybe she’ll start liking robert again which would make no sense but i guess the plot means that everyone forgives everyone else on a soap in one way or another eventually, but when ‘not liking robert’ is actually a genuine part of her character development… idk, is that satisfying? is that a good thing for her character? because i don’t feel like it is and i don’t feel like she should like robert again. he doesn’t deserve it from her. and i don’t have any interest in watching him make it up to her.

i don’t know. it’s 2am now and i want to sleep. i feel like maybe i’d be able to start comfortably theorising about her if i knew whether or not we were supposed to like her character. i do know that… there are a couple of ways they could take this storyline that would be ok with me, but this is literally the only way i could think of that would help save rebecca’s character and still make sense -

- but i just don’t think, regardless of what we’re supposed to feel, they really care about her enough to worry if she makes sense or not, so. she could really go in any damn direction (and i’ll be here once more, scrambling to make sense of an illogical character all over again)

(see, this is why i know i should actually just give up)

#THIS IS PROBABLY NICER TO REBECCA THAN IT IS TO ROBERT IN SOME WAYS TBH #and it's as objective as i can get which isn't much but it's something #it's still coming from the place of someone who ships robron so u know #casual unapologetic bias and all that #emmerdale meta #ed #answering anons #also i need you all to know that this answer is just over 2.5k words long #and i'm posting it at 2am so no one is gonna read it #so many excellent life choices have been made on this day #i dont even want to try and spell check it ur all on ur own

[amorremanet]

Arthur/moody, lucius/moody, lupin/snape?

the brutally honest ship opinions game

Arthur/Moody: ……okay, like, I have basically no positive feelings about Alastor Moody — I mean, I feel the same need to defend him from JKR’s ableist garbage that accidentally got me in too deep with Lockhart, but we are still talking about a guy who supports using Dementors on people and apparently dngaf about what someone’s done, just send ‘em all to fucking Azkaban (GOF ch. 30, the flashback of Moody we see in the first Pensieve scene)

who thinks that the best present you could give to a kid who’s lost his parents and just watched a classmate be murdered…… is going over a photo of the First War Order and telling him about how all of them died horribly and he doesn’t ever stop to think that this might not be the best idea (OOTP)

and who is legitimately less sensitive to other people’s needs and less dismissive of people who aren’t his exact model of “useful” than a literal fucking Death Eater one of the biggest points where Barty Crouch Jr. drops character in GOF is when he takes Neville to his office and gives him a pro-Herbology pep-talk, and goes, “so, hey, Longbottom, Professor Sprout said you’re super-good at this subject, why not pursue it,” because based on the actual canon about him? The real Alastor Moody would never do something like that.

Like, he might have the moment he has with Harry and Hermione, where he goes, “so, hey, both of you could be gr10 aurors if you wanted, you should think about it” because that, from Moody, would be a compliment, and Harry and Hermione more closely fit his own ideas of usefulness, but not so much the Neville moment)

—but seriously, do you hate him or something? Why else would you even dream of shipping him with Arthur Weasley? (okay, fine, I acquiesce that there is enough of a canonical basis for some people to roll with here, and I myself have made ships out of far less…… but seriously, why would you ship anybody with Arthur Weasley. Like…… wow, rude.)

Lucius/Moody: again, I’m not on the Alastor Moody fan-train or anything, but why would you even do this. Nobody deserves to be shipped with Lucius Malfoy, like? He’s not even an entertaining villain, he’s just pathetic. He’s a sad, pathetic fantasy-fascist who gets his kicks by bullying twelve-year-olds and torturing muggles who can’t defend themselves. He’s a complete waste of character space and forcing anyone to be in a ship with him is just unfathomably cruel

Lupin/Snape: meh, whatever. Like, it’s not my thing, but… *shrugs* meh?

Like, idk what you’re looking for here, nonny, but I’m guessing, based on the other two ships, that you’re looking for me to get cranky and ship-bashy and figured that Snu//pin was a good way to get there, since there are a lot of legitimate Problems with this ship in the text

But the thing is, I’m just under 900 years old (at least in fandom terms), and I remember the days back before HBP came out, when Snu//pin was the second-most popular Remus ship (after Wolfstar, to the surprise of no one), and was, in fact, so popular that it had its own private archive and got black-listed from most rarepair comms because it, “wasn’t really rare, just less popular than D//rarry, Wolfstar, Ro//mione, Dra//mione, H//inny, and J//ily”

—I mean, there was a short stretch before OOTP where I tried to make myself like it because there was a BNF whose art I loved, and she shipped Snu//pin, so I felt like I had to be missing something obvious and cool and because I was, like, twelve, I tried to make myself ship the thing. That didn’t work and I eventually just moved on, but one thing that I recall about the Snu//pin fandom that appears to still be more or less true, based on everything I’ve seen of the present-day Snu//pin fandom?

Is that they came out about the same as the Wolfstar fandom, in terms of how many shippers ignored or made excuses for #Problematic things about the ship vs. how many shippers work those things into the overall fabric of how they ship the thing, how many shippers LIKE the ship because of those Problematic parts and having the opportunity to explore them in fiction, how many shippers actively dive head-first into exploring those parts of the ships because that’s where they find the most engaging character interactions or whatever they’re into, etc.

For examples of what I mean when I say #Problematic things about the ships:

the fact that all three of them are self-loathing [human or werewolf] disasters who are often passively suicidal and either prone to acting out on those feelings (Sirius and Severus), or prone to repressing those feelings until they explode all over some innocent bystanders (Remus)

the fact that all three of them have suffered horrific abuse in their pasts — whether from their parents or other sources — and find ways to take it out on other people (Severus on his students, Sirius on Severus and Kreacher, and Remus on almost anyone who tries to get close to him, even as he makes it seem like he isn’t doing that)

Severus outing Remus as a werewolf because he’s upset and felt like punishing someone else for it, thereby leading to Remus tendering his resignation

the fact that Sirius assuming Remus had to be the spy would’ve been at least partially based on anti-werewolf prejudices, and Sirius still clearly had at least some of those prejudices on his own, because even if Peter totally manipulated them in his favor, there had to be something there for Peter to manipulate in the first place, so???

the fact that Remus doesn’t help shit anything, in any situation ever, with his habit of trying to weasel out of any Emotionally Difficult™ conversations and his tendency to mentally spin most situations so that everyone is going to leave him in the end anyway so it’s acceptable to shut down, close himself off, and pull stunts that more or less come down to, “totally up and bailing on everyone,” which is understandable, given his backstory, but dude, that doesn’t make it okay or helpful??

basically, “literally anything about the characters as individuals, or in terms of their interactions with each other — both past and present — that could potentially cause problems for either/both/any/all of them and potentially make the relationship unhealthy (or unhealthier than it already was, in the cases of Snu//pin and Snack because…… oh boy, let’s not even act like either of those — or any ship with Sev in it, for that matter — is ever going to be ‘healthy’ by any definition)”

So, like? Is Snupin #Problematic? Yes, definitely. Are some of its shippers prone to ship it in #Problematic ways? Oh, yes, absolutely (Hell, the BNF whose art I used to like even flat-out said things like, “Sirius would never be able to be there for Remus like Snape could” and… um? Even granted that this was pre-OOTP: ummm???)

But on the whole, Snu//pin shippers aren’t actually any worse about totally ignoring and/or excusing these elements of their ship than Wolfstar shippers are (and, actually, they might be doing better than a LOT of the present-day Wolfstar fandom, since I usually don’t see any more recently made Snu//pin that doesn’t grapple with at least some of the #Problematic elements of it — they don’t always do it well, but at least they’re trying, which counts for a lot, to me, because most people don’t even try — while most Wolfstar these days flat-out ignores all the #Problematic elements of Sirius and Remus as characters, and of their relationship, in the name of what often amounts to borderline-OOC caricatured fanon nonsense, so…)

(……Look, I love Wolfstar, and I have for longer than some people on this website have been alive. But I don’t love a lot of Wolfstar shippers, which has been the case since the beginning of my Wolfstar shipping

stayed the case when HBP came out and I was all, “Hey, guys? I don’t like this BS Remus/Tonks thing either, but can we NOT erase bisexuals or treat Tonks like garbage when we’re talking about it, it’s not her fault that Molly Weasley is a meddling nosy garbage buttinski who thinks it’s her job to play matchmaker to fully-grown adults who didn’t ask and don’t want her input,”

and is still the case as I’m over here, all like, “ugh, man, at least we used to have SOME people in this fandom who enjoyed reading Wolfstar angst, now it seems like nobody cares about anything unless it’s all fluff, all the time, with absolutely no room for anything else because god forbid you ever want to write about LGBTQ characters whose lives aren’t 5,000% perfect, that obviously must mean that you’re a gross fetishistic cishet and not, for example, a neurodivergent, mentally ill lesbian survivor who feels left out by the trend towards forcing every LGBTQ person to act like we’re happy, all the time, and to act like we’re only interested in fictional LGBTQ people who are perfectly 5,000% happy all the time

“and to decry any and all depictions of LGBTQ people being UNhappy as gross fetishistic straight people garbage even when they were actually created by and for LGBTQ people, only to be misappropriated by straight people, as if there’s no way you could possibly be LGBTQ and NOT feel ~used and maligned~ by depictions of LGBTQ people that are less than 5,000% perfectly happy, even when they are being created by other LGBTQ people, yeah? ……but yeah, no, clearly: the fact that I like angst obviously means that I am a straight person because no ~real~ LGBTQ person ever has any need for those ~gross negative feelings~ or fictional outlets for them, never mind how many LGBTQ people get excluded from our narratives and spaces by this bullshit bc lmao who cares amiright. ://”)

—anyway, my motto has been and remains, “It isn’t a question of WHAT you ship, it’s a question of HOW you ship it,” so hey. Snu//pin is not my thing (it’s not even as non-shippingly interesting to me as Sirius/Severus is, because I love how much those two hate each other while unwittingly being perfect foils for each other), but I don’t actually have any desire to ship-bash it and most Snu//pin shippers are okay with me because unless they’re actually doing anything that’s harmful to anyone else, it’s not my business what they ship

That said: “Snu//pin” is still one of the worst portmanteau ship names ever and it still sounds like a deadly virus or something, but *shrugs* Whatever, it’s not the shippers’ faults that their ship members’ names don’t smush up all that nicely

#memes for ts #ask box tag #mine: replies #mine: asks #mine: hp #harry potter for ts #character disliking for ts #ship disliking for ts #mine: fandom blah blah blah #lgbtq stuff #(under the read more… it. um. kinda came up while talking about snu//pin and wolfstar. …sorry? :/) #opinions for ts #wank for ts #(probably??? like not intentionally but the answer for the snu//pin one kinda goes there so) #nonny