#clowns are supposed to entertain you not the other way around hon lol like i don't have time for it.

[dynamics-of-an-asteroid]

Hey. Found you through Elementary reblogs and wanted to say thank you for being so blatantly pro-villains in general, pro-Jamie x Sherlock in particular, and against anti-villain discourse. I never fully made the switch to Tumblr, but I've been attacked on and off on other social media these past few years and internalised a lot of crap that I believe comes from here. Scrolling back your archive this week has been incredibly healing. Feels like I can breathe again. Thank you.

I’ll put this under a cut cause it got a little long.

Listen, the greatest flex you can do to people whose entire self-worth and identity is dependent upon receiving the attention and validation they can’t get outside of the online personas they’ve specifically crafted to imitate the type of power and control they wish they had in their real life? Is to deprive them of the ego boost they get projecting their feelings of insecurity, unhappiness, and resentment on to others by being a constant reminder of the peace of mind they can’t have simply through enjoying what you like and being comfortable about it.

Cause nine times out of ten the discourse that follows is not actually about whatever moral crusade it’s dressing itself up to be. It’s about those people having a platform to signal to others that they’re the right kind of person with the right kind of opinions by creating the dichotomy that you’re not. In return, they gain a massive following, endless amounts of notes, messages, hits, views, and whatever else is considered currency on social media these days for it. That, in turn, causes them to do anything to hold on to that positive feeling regardless of how many lines it can, and often does, cross.

And unsurprisingly, the culture of this website encourages that behavior cause a lot of people here have the same stories. They don’t have a lot of friends (let alone access to communities of people marginalized in the ways they are), they come from environments where being themselves is discouraged or even dangerous, they have zero support systems or tools in real life to help them figure things out in a healthy way, etc. So they just feed off each other’s narratives and keep themselves trapped in this microcosm where the politics of online fandom spaces becomes the be-all-end-all in forming their ideas and views about the world, which in turn is how they come to define themselves.

I mean, I hope they have fun trying to reconcile the self-loathing they feel when they’re left alone with their thoughts at night with their newfound addiction to discourse allowing them to pretend they’re beloved by strangers on the internet for who they are. But no one should be subjected to their frustrations about wanting to feel less worthless by being attacked over what’s honestly non-issues a majority of the time. Very rarely is it ever serious enough to warrant the kind of reaction that happens daily over incredibly subjective opinions that “as long as you admit” to will spare you the drama when it absolutely won’t.

So you might as well spend your free time, your headspace, your creativity, your mental health doing what you love cause it’s not your job to make those people happy or satisfy their demands. 

You don’t have to tack on a billion disclaimers about what you do and don’t condone, or submit your understanding of morality before you do anything. You don’t have to apologize or put yourself down (even jokingly) for what you like. You don’t have to remind people that you know what happened in the source material. You don’t have to center all your fannish activities on constantly criticizing what you like and operating under the terms of those criticisms all the time. You don’t have offer any personal details up for justification about why you like something. And you certainly don’t have to continue this trend of telling your generation and the one behind you (especially women) that if you like ABC you’re gonna grow up to be XYZ, since fiction is influenced by reality and vice versa but you’re too stupid to know how, so those enlightened few are gonna teach you their own biases to pass on how to not fall in to that “trap”.

I certainly don’t do it now, but in the past even I’ve dipped in to pacifying the wankers (cause that’s really what most of this is; we just dressed up old fashioned “wank” , put a bow tie on it, and called it “discourse” for some reason) in the hopes that I’ll be free to enjoy stuff without having people down my throat. I can tell you it changes nothing cause like I’ve said before - the ultimate goal for how to interact with villains in a way that everyone can agree on is “don’t”. If that’s the case, why bother? Might as well slap that flower crown on your favorite villain and have fun, you know?

At the end of the day, the only person you have to answer to is yourself. You know what you’re about, and again, owning that person without the approval of others? Is such a powerful and freeing force, and gonna be way more healing than my blog in the long run, I promise. I know it’s easier said than done, but keep trying to detox whatever poison you’ve been speared with by understanding what your relationship - however deep or not deep it is - to that character, ship, etc. and go from there. It’s a lot easier than letting others tell you what they think is happening there, and then having to go on defense when they inevitably get it wrong cause they don’t know shit.

Good luck and feel free to talk to me at any time 

♥

#clowns are supposed to entertain you not the other way around hon lol like i don't have time for it. #i'll just tell them to get some hot butter rolls and sit down somewhere ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #long post