#not tagging the topic because I'm not here to argue with the fandom

[das-a-kirby-blog]

alright, this goes out to you guys. just gonna build off of this post

(THIS IS ALL JUST MY OPINION, NOT FACT!)

soooo I think the reason there are so many contrasting headcanons is not only because of the open interpretations the games leave, but because of what kinds of kirby media people are introduced to at first. you got the main games, the anime, the mangas, the light novels, etc. which. wow that's a lot of material you can build on. AND CONSIDERING THE AMOUT OF LORE EACH OF THESE TOPICS ARE COOKING???? DAWG WH

and I GUESS I can understand why some hcs are so bizarre in other people's eyes. but the way this fandom handles those different headcanons is...a lil bad.

YES I KNOW THIS ISN'T SPECIFIC TO THE KIRBY FANDOM, but the whole reason why I'm making this is to at least understand why people take it so close to heart.

and. not calling anyone out. but I do see quite a lot of posts with people (critiquing? complaining?) about how popular headcanons "ruin" the fandom (and this goes with ships too, but I'll get into that later) and all I gotta ask is

does it really??? does it really ruin the fandom?

I'm just gonna say. no. it doesn't.

you are focusing on a small percentage out of...oh idk...AN ENTIRE FANBASE? at LEAST open up a little and find a new circle if it is bothering you that much. or better yet. BLOCK! filter out tags!

with the amout of differing kirby medias, please understand that there will be headcanons that will oppose yours and that's okay! just don't be a jerk about it!

--

NOW. with the ships. specifically metadede. gonna try to put my overwhelming bias aside for this one I promise.

though metadede is the most popular ship in the fandom, it still comes with it's critics. and some are. actually valid! such as their relationship doesn't immediately have to be romantic. it can be seen as platonic! and I can understand why people feel that way.

but things get sour when people immediately try to crap on it because in their eyes, and correct me if I'm wrong here, metadede overshadows every other ship in the fandom. you hardly get to hear about their rarepair because of how metadede is everywhere.

if you take a step back and really look. there is a reason it is so popular. because of the LARGE amounts of media they have together. in the games. in the mangas. in smash. in official art. I mean if you wanna count the anime go ahead.

what I'm trying to say here is that compared to any other character interactions, meta knight and dedede are definitely up there for the most interaction in the franchise. and I'm not trying to downplay any rarepairs or other ships with a smaller fanbase.

BUT DON'T BLAME THE SHIPPERS! they are only doing the same as anyone else, they are going off of what they are given by canon and simply building off of that.

though, because I am a metadede shipper myself, you can take this segment with a grain of salt.

---

in conclusion...people can have their different takes. and that's okay! having different opinions is what builds this fandom and draws the attention of so many. but please! do not take any of these takes personal!

If there is a point in here you would like to argue against or build on, feel free to do so. I'm open to any other views.

#ask to tag #rant #again sorry for complaining

[cosmicjoke]

Just adding this on, but this isn't an attempt on my part or an encouragement to harass these people, though I'm sure everyone reading this already knows that. Just a means of letting others know who's behind at least some of the harassment lately.

Alright, well, here comes the call-out post that I promised anon. Have fun with it, I guess. It's about to get long, folks. A group of @tsuki-no-ura followers, who's been obviously vague posting about me for months at this point, specifically targeting every topic I discuss on my blog by making counterarguments to it on their blog, even though I never directed any of my analysis posts or anything else at them, nor has anything I've ever written been in direct response to anything they've written, is certainly behind at least some of the harassment. And other than the times I've tried having conversations with tsuki in the past, when I used to follow them, and wanted to discuss their posts with them, which almost always went ignored, I haven't at all addressed them or made reference to them, either implied or specifically, in any of my analysis posts. I only made reference to them a few weeks back when I found out that they'd essentially said my defense of Levi's violence was tantamount to Nazism, which I wasn't going to let stand. That's the only time I've ever directly referenced them. And yet, every time I make an analysis post, a counterargument to it magically appears on their blog the same day or a few days later, something that was brought to my attention by a mutual of mine. I had no idea until a couple weeks ago that this was happening, because I stopped following them more than a year ago, and only just recently blocked them. But they're obviously stalking me. And, inevitably, every time they do this, a slew of anon hate messages get sent, both to me and various other blogs that I follow, or that follow me. This isn't a coincidence:

@clearavenuelover, @66honeybadgers, and I'm sure various other of their groupies, are the ones almost assuredly largely behind the anonymous attacks on Levi blogs over the last, several months. They start out with their passive-aggressive bullshit, and eventually, of course, it turns to outright hostility, because that's just who these people are. @clearavenuelover purposefully tagged me in one of tsuki's posts, and so obviously they're aware of their followers harassing other Levi fan blogs. This is the link to the post they tagged me and other Levi fan blogs in: https://www.tumblr.com/tsuki-no-ura/739123803956854784/okay-so-here-i-come-with-my-discourse-causing

And yet more evidence that these people all congregate in the same circles and circle-jerk each other over how they think they're "winning" some non-existent contest against me and other Levi fan blogs.

And look who liked this answer as soon as it was put up:

And here @66honeybadgers is again, name-dropping tsuki-no-ura while they continue to harass me:

And this is clearly the same douche-bag that asked me a few weeks back if I considered myself a "Levi expert", and has now, over the last two days, continued to harass me for daring to express my opinion about Levi on my own blog, dropping the "friendly" act and showing their outright hostility:

This is clear harassment from a very specific corner of the fandom, mainly, surprise, surprise, eruri shippers, or even just Erwin stans who want to make everything about him, and get angry at anyone who dares to express any different view from the ones they hold, to the point of actively seeking out and stalking our blogs, hate reading our posts, going into our inboxs and sending us anonymous hate messages, trying to cram their opinions down our throats and then getting upset when we don't listen or accept their views. And then they want to go around acting like they're all the victims. What a joke these people are. Anyway, I just thought I should make this post so that actual Levi fan blogs can know to avoid and block these assholes. I can't say if they're behind ALL of the harassment, but they're certainly behind some of it, and it's good to expose them because they're cowards, and once they've been exposed, they won't have the fucking balls to continue.

#call out post #harassment #anon hate #anon asks #you asked for it #so now you're gonna get it #have fun with your new-found fame #anon discourse #discourse #anon harassment #fandom discourse

[noctvrnal9999]

Got a private message asking me to comment on the whole Neil stream thing so I guess here goes. Excuse my thoughts, they are never coherent.

What I liked about the stream is not what Neil said, but what he didn't say. I'm not big on watching streams, his or anyone's, but I watched some and I noticed Neil is very very careful when discussing Astarion. If anyone is aware how deranged the fandom can get - it's definitely him. I saw him dance around the topic multiple times either in streams or in clips I've seen all over the internet. I highly respect him for that because unlike someone (cough cough) he's not telling people what to think or what narrative they should take for any reason. A true professional unlike someone (cough cough).

So while he addressed operatic vs theatrical and there's no arguing that he delivered it wonderfully, what we really have is Larian saying "yeah, AA is still same Astarion, just with his most awful traits amplified" and then we have Neil saying "oh yeah, the mask is off". And that's... extremely important. I said this in tags before - what Neil doesn't say, to me, is important as well. He doesn't tell that Spawn is maskless just as AA, he just... skips over it, emphasizing that AA is the complete mask-off version of Astarion. I'm not going to cling to this because this is just something I immediately noticed and might not have been intentional on Neil's part, but... I don't know, I personally think it was done for a reason.

Anyway.

But this is what I've been saying too. Astarion is a bad person from the very beginning. I got people insult me over this take, I got told I'm a horrible garbage person for this take. But I stand by it. And even without personal interpretation you have proof of that within the game. You have a very good-aligned character (Karlach) and Astarion is at the opposite end of that spectrum. Every other companion (sans Minthara) fall somewhere between the two.

What Ascension allows Astarion is not only to live his life fear-free - it allows him to be himself. As Spawn he's constantly acting. To either get protection or simply not to turn into a mind-flayer. And Tav can take the route of trying to convince him to be better and he starts aligning his views to Tav along the road but he's still the same person. Just going to say this - nobody changes this drastically in just couple of months without pretending (which is presumed timeline for entire BG3). And people don't immediately get all better from major mental trauma in 6 months only (just sayin').

Point I'm trying to get at is this - to me Neil confirmed what I have been saying all along - Spawn is coping and still lying. Because he has no choice but to adapt. Maybe he's not lashing out or yelling, but seeing the epilogue he came off to me as grieving for things he will never have.

And then we have Ascended - a fully unleashed Astarion, who's confident and not apologetic for being himself.

That is true Astarion.

Astarion who isn't guilt-tripped or chastised into needing to change, Astarion who does not need to listen to people telling him how he's awful, Astarion who can do as he pleases without needing to explain himself to either his master or houlier-than-thou Tav.

Astarion who he was always meant to be.

Because he's a vampire. There's a reason why vampires in every single media piece are portrayed as evil. As a Spawn he's evil, as a Vampire Lord he's just doing what vampires do best - gain power and exploit that power for his own benefit. He's not just some cute boytoy with fangs, he's a vampire and he will never not be a vampire in BG3 (you can headcanon whatever you want in what happens after but that's not relevant here).

Ascended Astarion is true Astarion not because it's one of the routes we can take and headcanon that way, but because he's a vampire, and as Vampire Lord he's his own man at last, not needing to rely on anyone or to be defended by anyone. He has power now, to be whoever he wants and be true to himself while he does it. Without the fear of judgement, without the fear of being discarded if he's "too much" or not "good enough".

And with Tav at his side - he has everything he ever wanted: vampiric power that has never been witnessed before and a beloved who vowed themselves to be by his side forever, giving him ultimate assurance that there's someone there for him and will be there for eternity.

#ascended astarion #my adhd is making every single post i make kinda jumbled but listen #i actually make good points imo it just takes me a bit to get there

[sempercredens]

Post about fannicalcascade part 2 because sigh.

Here's a link to my first post from the middle of December about them where I go over their takes on the s3 finale and their take that the love between Hannigram is unrequited from Will's side. At this point I also immediately want to say that I don't necessarily disagree with that they have a different opinion on the season finale, I just found it very poorly argued and gave counterarguments.

Not a lot of new talking points came up but that isn't the point of this post now. In the first one, I already broached the topic of their behaviour in the ending paragraphs because I found some of it very odd. For example, that they were sending anons to bigger Hannibal/Hannigram blogs in a clear attempt to bait them into discourse, how they claim not to be anti-Hannigram but tag their posts as such, and how I personally perceive the undertone of their posts as very condescending towards shippers.

This post here is basically just about expanding on that.

Disclaimer though: this is a silly internet ship war on a large irrelevant website, with no real world implications about anyone's morals. While I'm gonna say straight out that I find them annoying (and I will get into the reasons in the following), they have done no actual moral wrongs. Don't go insult or harass them (or the other two people running the blog. If you absolutely must seek them out, stay polite or get eaten. That includes refraining from using ableist language (e.g. calling them "delusional" or something). Thanks!

List of contents:

1. Shipping goggles 2. Cherrypicking 3. How they talk about Hannigram shippers and handle criticism 3.5. Middle school-isms 4. Arguments (or lack thereof) 5. General conclusion 6. "Fandom critique"

Let's get into it:

1. Shipping goggles

The fannibalcascade blog has stated in their introductory post already that they want to view the s3 finale without shipper goggles. So far, so good. However in this post they reveal the existence of a sideblog they have. It's been edited out by now and I'm unlucky not to be able to provide that evidence but said sideblog was revealed to be @/lecterlure. lecterlure has also been participating in replying to other blogger's responses to baiting anons, basically giving the typical fannibalcascade takes. As a benefit of the doubt I will also say however that according to themself the fannibalcascade blog is run by three people and lecterlure could be either of them. It adds up timewise for me since the first content on the lecterlure blog is from the beginning of January.

I'm bringing up lecterlure in the context of shipping goggles because as of me writing this there are just over 60 posts on the lecterlure blog which focuses on the book and Hopkins film version of the Hannibal canon. Half of the posts on that blog are unambiguously about Clannibal. (Yes, I counted.)

Nothing wrong with Clannibal, of course! You do you. The reason I'm pointing it out is just because it seems that the Hannigram faction is not the only one with shipping goggles. Considering they claim that they ship "neither", I just find that very untransparent.

EDIT: in the notes of this post lecterlure said that she is one of the three but NOT the one mainly running the fannibalcascade blog. My assumption that the two are the same people is therefore null and they are to be regarded as two people! She is only little involved in the blog's postings, merely sharing theories with thel and reading over the posts. Nevertheless, I'll bring her up again in some points since she is associated with the fc blog and whether that is her intention or not her interactions do reflect back on the fannibalcascade blog.

2. Cherrypicking

When they were called out for cherrypicking metas, they replied they didn't. The metas they've reblogged are from bonearenaofmyskull and mendelsohnben respectively. Said metas had been posted in the years 2015 and 2016. You'd have to do some digging to find them to reblog them straight from the ops.

Not to mention that there is a huge amount of Hannibal meta posts around when you search the tag for it. So to claim that out of those many, many meta posts, you organically found metas from over 8 years ago that apparently agree with your viewpoint - the view point of a minority in the fandom - does not come across to me as very believable. You've got to have searched for those.

3. How they talk about Hannigram shippers and handle criticism

Most of the criticism they received for their bahaviour around sending anons, cherrypicking, and reblogging ship posts to exercise "fandom critique" was, admittedly worded quite harshly and I don't endorse that. That said, it's not entirely unfounded.

There is two posts I'd like to highlight for this point. In this one they refer to the people who criticise them on anon as "pathetic teenagers" or "teenage conspirators" with "delusional takes". The "delusional" take being that fannibalcascade is behind the anons that people have received. While I can't 100% make the claim that fannibalcascade is in fact behind those anons - and I don't actually think they are behind all of them - I find it suspicious how the anon activity coincides with the activity of the fannibalcascade blog and how you can find the lecterlure account participating in the notes. The only other clue I can offer is how this anon highlighted the blog name in red, which is a very fannibalcascade thing to do since they like to highlight things in red in their posts.

The other post I want to highlight in this regard is this one where they mock shippers for thinking that getting validation from a bigger blog means they're right, and "How naive does one have to be to rely on someone else to stand for their points?" Which is rich coming from someone who reblogs the (old) metas of other bigger blogs to validate their own point, and are incapable of forming their own meta since their original meta posts are basically just repetitions of those they've reblogged. This is, for example, is just repeating this one by bonearenaofmyskull, but cherrypicked, reblogged only hours earlier.

In this same second post, they also point out how contradictory the statements of Hannigram shippers are, as if that was some big "gotcha". It's very likely that the people they mean here are, well, different people with different view points about the same thing. This is only a "gotcha" if it was the same person.

So my point here is: I find their handling of criticism and stance on shippers condescending, devaluing and not indicative of someone who's interested in a discussion on equal footing.

3.5. Middle school-isms

This is only a minor point but I wanted to point out how very middle schoolish their "arguments" sometimes are. They act all innocent when called out about adding their "shippers are delusional" takes to joke posts, the anon thing, and their down-talking tone. Examples: [x] [x]. Especially the whole thing about "my blog, my opinion" and "So I can't share my opinions now?" are such lackluster takes at this point. You're talking like a boomer who gets called out for a misogynistic take on Cpt. Marvel, like come on now, do better.

Also since I'm assuming they're the person behind this ask (linked above already)

I'm perplexed at this appeal to authority. "I'm older than you, therefore I'm right". Again: come on now, is that really the take here? This is some kindergarten level of arguing. By that logic every Hannigram shipper older than them would actually be right. As crimsondinnerparty correctly says: that's not how it works.

That's the post I saw that made me "wow, that's cringe, I'm gonna write this big ass post".

4. Arguments (or lack thereof)

As alluded to above, they barely make points of their own that aren't noticeable inspired by the metas they've reblogged from other people before. Nothing wrong with reblogging posts you agree with, per sé, but that is very much not the same thing as leading a discussion with someone. On this post they proudly announce "Here I debunked another theory" when they've had no input on the post that was originally made by youweresoafraid with an actual worthwhile addition from bonearena. You didn't debunk anything. You just reblogged a post.

I find that case worth mentioning because some anon went to crimsondinnerparty's inbox to say that "Fannibalcascade also debunked the sailing thing" when evidently, fannibalcascade didn't add anything to it.

Another post that stuck out to me in terms of leading an argument was this one about whether or not Will is a murderer.

The answer:

For a blog that promises deep metas and values the nuance of the show, I personally find this a very shallow take. If this is the promised deep meta and nuance, then I'm sorry but good night.

Not to constantly bring her up but bonearena also expressed frustration with how fannibalcascade is only capable of circular arguing [x] and their lack of evidence to support their claims. Despite fannibalcascade (or rather lecterlure in the notes) constantly crying for proof themself.

Taken from this post's notes.

Edit again: While, as noted, lecterlure is not the same person as fannibalcascade, my argument remains that the members of the blog don't actually provide evidence of their own but constantly demand it from others.

So general conclusion to this point:

I personally think that fannibalcascade is just pretty annoying. Really, what else is new here on the interwebs? There's annoying people, wow, big revelation. They're not capable of properly debating and I don't think that they even want a proper debate. I find their approach to opening a debate insufferable, especially when they go "oh, I'm just asking questions? What's wrong with asking questions? Can't I have an opinion anymore? If you've got proof, why don't you bring it up? Oh, that means, you don't have any after all. Checkmate." entirely childish. People don't wanna talk to you because nothing you've said or done indicates a genuine openness for a debate on eye-level. The sheer audacity of calling themself "the only logical person available in the fandom now" - assuming that anon is them, even if not my point is still supported by their other posts - absolutely flabbergasts me. It's this condescending tone, the implied sneering of "you're all illiterate but I've eaten wisdom with spoons and I'm your logical saviour" that absolutely rubs me the wrong way.

That their blog also focuses entirely on the s3 finale is another thing I find very counterproductive to any genuine debate because the s3 finale is their only reference for anything. The majority of their meta posts (reblogged and original) focus only on Will pushing Hannibal and himself off the cliff. That is the only thing that is ever "debated" on the blog, and especially in regards to the whole "does Will love Hannibal back?" question is an extremely narrow frame of reference.

The entire "debate" they want to introduce is also entirely pointless as, as I said, focuses on the s3 finale and whatever could possibly happen in s4. The reason I find this a pointless debate is because s4 doesn't exist and every meta or theory or what have you is only fanfiction. We're all getting upset here over each other's fanfiction, like jfc. For all we know the fall transported them into some anime Isekai world.

"Fandom critique"

According to their tagging system, fannibalcascade is also motivated by offering critique to the fandom. Which I'm not against in the slightest conceptually. Personally, I think there are many things that can be criticised about fandom, any fandom. Just to give examples, two problems I see within fandoms is 1) the lowkey misogyny is fandoms dominated by m/m pairings or 2) the everpresent problem of people reposting other people's fanworks without permission. I think tackling such issues could actually improve a fandom.

What doesn't improve a fandom is telling shippers that they're delusional teenagers for shipping the main characters of a show that is explicitly centered around their relationship. Even while making their silly little posts, Hannigram shippers are entirely aware that in a real life context that relationship would of course be toxic and terrible. The reason it's such a big ship stems largely from an actual acknowledgement of the show's nuances. It's precisely those nuances and their engaging character dynamics that make them such a compelling ship.

Here's the point where I want to acknowledge all the beautiful metas people (who ship Hannigram) have actually written. You can find something about everything in the show. You can find meta about the religious symbolisms. Meta about the character's clothing styles and what they represent in which scenes. Meta about the most inconspicuous things in the background. Meta about shot compositions. It's there.

So why limit yourself to the last three minutes of 39 episodes worth of television? Like c'mon, step up your meta game.

Coming back to the point of fandom critique, both sides are just fighting windmills. We're already biased in our approachs, we're not going to change each other's minds like this. So why not employ some standard internet/tumblr etiquette and leave people be? What people ship is not a value judgment of their irl morals.

So again, I want to clarify:

I don't think fannibalcascade is a bad, immoral person. Despite all the things I've listed in this post, I don't hate them. I don't want to encourage any harassment against them. I don't mind at all that they're presumably partial towards Clannibal. Couldn't care less, really. They're allowed to dislike Hannigram. Couldn't care less. I'd even say it's a valid take, just badly argued.

Genuinely, this is very much just about how I find it annoying to see their takes (or their takes being repeated by people who agree with them) interrupt my peaceful scrolling through Hannigram posts. And I hereby challenge them to write posts about the things they like (about the show, about the books or the Hopkins films, doesn't matter to me).

#fannibalcascade #hannibal nbc #hannibal meta #hannigram #hannibal lecter #will graham #this took longer than expected because i spent a lot of time counting things and doing maths #*sigh* the beauty of meta #i'm love media analysis and I can be trusted with images of this show #genuinely “it's a valid take just badly argued” is the thesis statement I have about them #so let that be your tl:dr ig

[rainbowsky]

Hi RBS, can you tell us more about the weibo supertopic thing?

It's not the first time Yibo tag his supertopic, right?

As a turtle is it better to not subscribe to it?

I'm super confused.

Hi Anon,

Here's my opinion on that.

You don't need to know anything about the solo supertopics. They aren't relevant to our fandom, because they are solo spaces. We should stay in our own lane - as should solos, but good luck with that.

(Hi all you motos who've been writing me 👋🏻 just a reminder that my posts are for turtle eyes only, not yours - stay in your own lane! I don't go to your spaces and nag you, even though half of your posts are anti-turtle hate. Mind your own business).

So in my opinion Turtles shouldn't be involving themselves with the solo supertopics, although some do in a misguided belief that doing so boosts GG and DD as individuals. Not really, all you're doing is boosting solo engagement numbers. Some percentage of the 'active solo fan' numbers reflects turtles who are actively involving themselves in the solo supertopics.

If you're a turtle, stick to the turtle supertopics, boost GG and DD's endorsement and project social media accounts, boost their individual accounts, stay away from solo spaces.

That includes GG and DD's official fan clubs, that includes their individual supertopics.

A lot of turtles don't realize it (and a lot of solos misunderstand this too and say false and misleading things about it), but BOTH their individual supertopics AND their official fan clubs are run entirely by solos, and are meant for solos.

I will frequently hear solo fans try to frame GG and DD's official fan clubs as being directly connected to them or their studios. False. Under the new rules in China celebrities have to designate an official fan club and they have to take responsibility for 'directing' their fans, but that does not mean they have direct involvement with those fan clubs.

Similarly, I'll frequently hear motos bragging about how turtles are 'banned' from posting in DD's supertopic, as though that means anything at all. LOL. OF COURSE CP topics are banned from solo run spaces. That shouldn't surprise anyone. Of course solos are going to ban big-name turtles from those spaces (which, as I said before, are run entirely by solos).

Although that doesn't really stop turtles from being involved with those supertopics if they want to. I am a high level member of both solo supertopics*, and I'm not 'banned', because solos don't know I'm a turtle (I also don't engage in those supertopics at all anymore, so it's irrelevant, just saying there's no way that turtles can ever truly be banned completely).

*I used to check in to both GG and DD's solo supertopics, but I stopped when I fully realized that these have nothing to do with GG and DD, they're just solo fan spaces.

Point being - we should all stay in our own lane. Part of staying in our own lane is supporting turtle spaces and avoiding solo spaces.

That's my opinion.

As for DD's cat post, solos have their fan interpretations of it. We should leave them to that, just as they should leave us to our own CPN. Stay in your own lane. BLOCK AND IGNORE. Do not argue with them over their own fan theories. There's no point, and it would be hypocritical if we want them to stop doing that to us.

What they say and think is really irrelevant to us unless they bring it into our spaces to harass us.

#supertopics #solos belong to moling su sect #ask

[piosplayhouse]

Do you know why so many people hc Shen Yuan as trans/genderqueer? Some posts in the svsss tag seem to allude to canon instances that inspire the idea, but I've read the 4 volumes twice trying to find clues to what people are talking about to no avail. Is it just a popular fanon thing? Not against people reading it that way, just wondering if I'm missing something.

Hi! I actually got a very similar question a while back but responded to it kind of poorly since I had a lot going on irl so I'll try again with some stuff I said before:

Ultimately it is just popular fanon and lots of subtextual reading- I don't think anyone could fully say gendersomething sqq is 100% intended and canonical, but there definitely are some instances that people tend to point to to support this hc:

Even beyond positioning himself as the “woman” (literary role) in his relationship with the skinner and dream demon arcs etc., sqq repeatedly compares himself and his experiences to women in a very frank way– I believe this is most obvious by his comparison of his pain to period cramps, but there’s also the significance of the Skinner mission featuring a demon which is described as an originally male demon that wears female skins but yearns for another male skin (Shen Qingqiu’s). You could argue this is just a reflection of transphobia in the story but I do think it’s interesting to note that this is sqq’s first mission, and comes during a period of time that he still clearly believes himself to be a man (Shen Yuan) wearing another’s skin (original Shen Qingqiu’s). And of course he continues to project his own feelings onto the female characters around him, which you could argue is due to his literary role becoming that of a female love interest’s, but a point that I find particularly interesting is that he also compares himself to Binghe’s mother completely unprovoked, something that easily (maybe even more easily bc lets be real why the fuck did he say 'Binghe if i was pregnant with you I would never abort you' there are so many other things you could say that arent th) could’ve been substituted for a male comparison for him using Confucian values of the teacher/student relationship relating to that of a father and son. Instead, he becomes the mother. He's a strange little Freudian specimen to be honest. Speaking of which if you would like to read a much more in depth analysis of topics including this with textual evidence I do have to recommend tshirt3000's Freudian reading of Scum Villain which can be found as a pdf here:

I hope this makes a little bit of sense! Tldr yes it's mostly just fandom but so much about scum villain is about gender and toxic masculinity and what does it really mean to be a man in a genre where your masculinity is a tool to attain power for your desperate search for unattainable reciprocated love in a hopeless world where you are promised only shallow sexual comfort to appease horny viewers that would discard you as soon as you begin to feel emotions other than rage. If Shen Yuan was a horse he would be a gelding because the castration mellows their temperament just so

#long post #long posts #svsss meta #svsss spoilers #trans shen yuan #trans sqq

[averageuser2018]

*Sighs* this is probably the last I'm going to address this since I don't want my blog to turn into an anti page, but here we go.

For those who don't ship Namor and Shuri, that's fine since I can understand why people don't ship them. What isn't fine is purposely infiltrating tags instead of using the anti tags, antagonizing others, and then running back and painting Nashuri shippers as bullies.

Like I said in a previous post, just because a paring may not be sensible or realistic in the source material doesn't mean that people can't have their own interpretations. The best way to resolve this is by simply blocking these tags since simply arguing with shippers isn't going to solve anything.

I also like to point out that most of the antis I've seen are shuriri shippers. As a ship, I'm pretty neutral when it comes to this paring, I may not ship it personally, but I also have nothing against it. I also noticed the lack of content for this ship because:

1. They've barely interacted in the film.

2. Not many fans make content for Shuriri.

Maybe instead of putting energy into hating a (non canon) ship, it's best to make content for a ship you actually like.

There's also some generalizations or assumptions when it comes to nashuri shippers. I don't know who thought this, but we're not all white or are reylo shippers, lol. Nor are we automatically anti black.

The only valid arguments I can understand is how some fans feel the need to defend Namor by blame shifting onto other characters. Nakia killing a servant was only to protect Shuri. She knew nothing about Talakons and whether or not they were dangerous, so she reacted not only to protect Shuri, but what we can presume was also out of fear.

Queen Romanda just wanted her daughter back, she even tried to get Shuri back by speaking to Namor himself, yet he refused. Queen Romanda did make the decision to sacrifice herself, but I don't think that should be downplayed when Namor is the one who put the people of Wakanda in that situation. You can like a character and simultaneously acknowledge their faults. Namor isn't real and he doesn't need fans to defend him.

I may be getting a little off topic, but the point I'm trying to make is, just because you dislike something doesn't mean that everyone else should or is going to hate it. That's just how fandom spaces are in general. There are plenty of ships I dislike but I don't go out of my way to villainize or antagonize their shippers.

#nashuri #shuri x namor #namor x shuri #seaprincess #shuramor #namuri

[tleeaves]

Gush about your favourite TSC characters and ships! It's a free-for-all.

This is an incredibly sweet opportunity and now I'm sitting here trying to figure out who and what I want to talk about first. It's probably no secret or surprise that most of my favourites of anything in TSC come from the TLH series. See, with such open-ended gushing opportunities as this, actually, there are sooo many characters I want to talk about. I'm beginning to fear everyone's going to regret you calling this a free-for-all.

James Herondale is by far my favourite TSC character in existence, and I think about him and have talked about him (elsewhere, before I had any Tumblr blogs) the most. If you've read some of my longer fanfics at all, this likely hasn't come as a shock to you, but I love the guy, which is probably why I'm a little weird when it comes to others' posts about him (maybe Jane Austen was onto something when she said that if I loved someone less, I'd be able to talk about them more). We all come away from reading books with different takes on characters, and that's a perfectly normal phenomenon. Because I feel so deeply about James, I tend to dance around the topic of him unless I do agree with someone else's analysis or I have something substantial to say, and even then I tend to curb myself because I don't want to sound like a raving lunatic... and now I realise how long that sentence was. (I'm already a raving lunatic, aren't I?) Anyhow, this is an opportunity to gush, and gush I will (very extensively).

See, I've seen it going around the fandom that people dislike the characterisation of James or the way he was presented in earlier short stories pre-TLH publications and then post when some might argue he was a completely different person. Honourable mention to my fellow countryman, musician, and fanauthor, @faithfromanewperspective, who has some fascinating posts discussing the neurodivergence of the TLH cast, which help further explain their personalities and some of their characterisation across their written existence (seriously, go check out some of Silver's analysis posts, they're such wonderful and interesting reads). Similar to Silver, I like to observe the essentially four different Jameses that exist across the timeline of James Herondale's written existence.

We have the James from the Shadowhunter Academy era, James in The Midnight Heir set several months before the events of The Last Hours, and then, of course, who we have during TLH pre- and post-bracelet influence. I once embarked on a research rabbit warren when I hit a rough patch in fanfic writing where I was trying to decide how best to write James post-bracelet while still remaining as canon-compliant as possible, while also filling in the gaps I and other fans have been frustrated with in James' evolution, all before Chain of Thorns was released. I reread all the stories that involved James and constructed an approximate timeline where I explored the ways his personality was presented at various points. From there, I tried to make sense of him by connecting, essentially, these four Jameses.

James holds a number of insecurities and burdens that pretty much sealed the deal for me when I was reading about him the first time around (don't ask me to count how many times I've read about him overall). Similar to when I discussed the topic of Jem Carstairs and chronic illness (see here), I connected to James Herondale through the avenue of chronic conditions. Other content creators like to interpret characters through lenses of mental illness or disorders, for instance, which definitely have a wealth of analysis and discussion to offer. My go-to instead, I suppose, is chronic illness and relationship dynamics, and how that affects a person's character. I may have talked in part about this before somewhere on here, but I'm too lazy to comb through the James Herondale tag that exists on my fandom blog (@streettealee, where I'll also be reposting this ramble). Anyway, burdens and insecurities.

Goatface Herondale

The academy days were especially rough for many characters, but here I'm talking about James (obviously). He was around the age of 13 when he attended the Shadowhunter Academy (a year, give or take a bit, before Grace would ask him to retrieve her bracelet and wear it, and a little closer in time to when he went to Cirenworth and had scalding fever). We see that he was a rather shy kid, generally self-conscious as one tends to be when reaching teenage years especially, and also quite insecure.

He has a close relationship with his parents and also his sister. We know he's very protective of Lucie, and they were playmates, which naturally lends itself to bonding and frequent squabbles (take it from me, an eldest child with a younger sister born right as I became a toddler -- we were each other's only friends in many respects and we got into a lot of fights, yet I would do anything for my sister, even take ownership for her mistakes just because I didn't want her to suffer the consequences). The nature of his relationship with Lucie is something that does not change as the series progresses (it would have been interesting to see her reaction to him in TMH though). As for his parents: James is what my friends and I in primary school would have mockingly called "The Golden Child" (and not for his eyes, mind you), because he's not simply a mama's boy or father's boy. James is the dreaded combination of both, in which he is always trying to do right by them in some way, shape, or form, without much particular favour for one over the other. It wouldn't surprise me if Lucie was ever bitter about him being the oldest and something of a goody-two-shoes, or if James regarded it the other way with Lucie always getting away with everything because she's younger and so innocent-seeming (she definitely play-acted her way out of things as a child).

As has been examined by others already, James carries the burden of his parents' love (we'll get to more of this in the next section). Not only is he the miracle child of a Shadowhunter and a warlock, never seen before, he is also affected by the trauma Tessa carries as an outsider within the Enclave, and the concern she and Will have for him that borders on overbearing. We see in his academy era that he will not say goodbye to his father because he knows he cannot bear it and does not want to be seen as weak. We also see that he refuses to go home and or do anything that would reflect badly on his mother, because she is already alienated for being a warlock in Shadowhunter society. Furthermore, James is resentful of his father particularly at this time, because James is constantly being compared to him (again, we'll come back to this). He wishes Will Herondale were less than perfect so that James would be allowed to be who he is: less than perfect, a Nephilim child with demon blood.

As a kid, it can be difficult growing up in an environment where you are from two cultures, and everyone around you is constantly trying to get you to pick which you most are between them, instead of unifying them both as elements of your identity (this is from my personal experience). James has been an odd Shadowhunter for most of his life, up until the point at the academy where his warlock powers (thanks to Belial, yay) suddenly manifest. From that point on, where it is seen that some magical capability is possible, James is caught between two worlds. It was bad enough for him to have strange yellow-gold eyes ("Goatface Herondale") which he tried to hide by wearing his glasses more often than necessary, he then had to contend with a more noticeable, alienating feature of his demonic heritage, which drove away even the mundanes he had previously been befriending (outsiders to a particular majority tend to flock together, up to a certain point, as demonstrated).

So, there's that aspect of his shadow powers. When I read about James, I drew connections also with the earlier mentioned chronic illness view. His demonic heritage is not a condition, but his experience of their manifestation in uncontrollable and traumatising episodes of shadow magic are what I would call one. As if he were not insecure enough about not being extroverted enough to break out of his loneliness and enter social circles he's always skirted at the edges of, he is afflicted by a condition that betrays his body and will. This loss of control is difficult for anyone. It's easy to feel helpless, even after a diagnosis of something, because it is incurable and or unpredictable in nature. Self-loathing lends itself to those left vulnerable by such a violent change in their body's nature and their identity. There is a lot to be said about the labels given to us and the ones we assume. To James, this is just another way he is less than perfect, less than his father, a weakness to his mother and family, no longer on totally common ground with his sister, different from his peers, and his ability to tamp down this part of him and appear as some semblance of "normal" for Nephilim becomes tied with his self-esteem.

As a quick side note: it is my theory that James feels like an outsider among Downworld circles and that is why he has always been rather awkward around them. We see he does fine in The Devil Tavern when he gradually makes a second home of it, but there are other instances, such as a brief moment that lives rent-free in my head where, at his introduction in Chain of Gold, he walks past a vampire and avoids eye contact because "[unless Downworlders broke the law, it was none of his business what they did]" (I'm paraphrasing there) and I think there's been a bit of shame instilled in him. James is not wholly a Downworlder, and he is not wholly Nephilim, and because he was raised as a Shadowhunter and alienated anytime he was not quite resembling one, he does his best to try and follow Shadowhunter values and norms and further avoids some aspects of Downworld in some contexts, like when he's just come off a patrol.

Of course, good things come to James too at this time: Matthew finally manages to befriend him, and the two are both insecure people who find security in each other. He also leaves the Shadowhunter Academy, and Matthew declares he and James are going to be parabatai and must therefore stick together, which for James would feel pretty damn good -- not only because Matthew wants to share such a special connection with him, considering his demonic heritage and the inherent angelic ties the parabatai ceremony holds, but also because his father places a lot of stress on parabatai as one of the greatest forms of love that exists (again, we come to that burden of love idea) and so James, I believe, would find this an opportunity to live up to the expectations his parents hold.

AND ANOTHER SIDE NOTE: I THINK IT IS BRILLIANT THAT TLH IS BASED ON GREAT EXPECTATIONS I MEAN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD THE ENTIRE TLH CAST IS SADDLED WITH ALL THESE THINGS EXPECTED OF THEM FOR VARIOUS REASONS, I COULD GO ON ABOUT THIS FOREVER AND THE CONNECTIONS THEY HAVE TO THE ORIGINAL NOVEL BY DICKENS.

All that is to say: this first sort of version of James that we see is shy, insecure, sweet, generally well-intentioned, clever (he's funny and I didn't get time to try and go back to the book to pick up all the instances where he says something amusing, keep off), and reaches this first turning point of burden -- the burden of love and expectations, and of his heritage and abilities/condition. All of this has already brewed into a hero complex (it does not quite rival Cordelia's, but it's up there -- James really likes to handle things himself and on his own, and now it's got me thinking about Batman... anyway).

Helen of Troy

This boy had shining golden eyes, like a crystal glass filled brimful with crisp white wine and held up to catch the light of a blazing sun. If his skin was luminous, his eyes were radiant. Magnus could not imagine these eyes as tender. The boy was very, very lovely, but this was a beauty like that Helen of Troy might have had once, disaster written in every line. The light of his beauty made Magnus think of cities burning.

The Midnight Heir is perhaps the most contentious piece written about James, and I would like to point several things out before we proceed: Cassandra Clare wrote this (as well as Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy) with co-authors who, as far as I know, were not as heavily involved in TLH. Furthermore, this is from Magnus Bane's perspective, and he is known to dramatise just as much as the TLH cast themselves like to drape their lives in drama. Now, going forward...

This occurred before TLH and I have my practical writer theories as to why James wound up so different in TLH compared to TMH. Clare changed her mind about the story's trajectory, about who the main characters would be, what the romances would look like, who she wanted James Herondale to be. And this is where I have to admit, Clare as a writer -- like any other -- is flawed and has a history of inconsistencies. As frustrating as it can be, it happens, and so there is obviously the issue of "well who is the REAL James Herondale? What/who is canon?"

This brings me to my exercise in interpreting James: the different Jameses that exist and my way of uniting them all so that they do indeed make one coherent character who can have the mildness of his academy era, the wild intensity of his midnight era, and have all that remain consistent with who he is by The Last Hours (during and post bracelet).

As you may have gathered from the Goatface Herondale topic above, James' turning point at the academy was just the start of the disasters he was written for--disaster written in every line--which leads up to TMH or his Helen of Troy period. There are some interpretations that his wild and unruly behaviour was simply as it was presented to us: heartbreak taken to the extreme "because he's a Herondale and they love only but once blah blah bullshit blah" and heightened by the cursed bracelet he was wearing at the time (there is textual evidence he had it on him, and we are told Grace merely sent a letter that made him despair and things were quickly made up after). Then, such as done by Silver, there is the interpretation that James may be bipolar or have some other disorder in which he experiences manic episodes, which lead to the vast, seemingly inexhaustible energy he had that night in TMH where we first meet him as he's grown older and the complete mood swing that almost resembles an entire change in character (also look to the dialogue of his parents who say he never used to be like this, he was always so studious, so good, very mild and well-behaved, kept his parabatai in line and shared private jokes). This is where I would have really liked to know Lucie's view, because as his sister, she is more than likely to share a view that is different from the adults gathered (Magnus, Tessa, Will, and Jem), and I almost think she would say he's being dramatic and she doesn't know what got into him except he's still treating her all the same and then she'd just roll her eyes (I'm not saying she wouldn't be concerned, but just that she'd easily disguise it as a mockery of her brother doing dumb shit).

There is also something to be said about masking and "the Mask" that James dons. However, I do not know enough about this to comment much on it. I direct you once again to @faithfromanewperspective who I know has covered this topic in more detail. What I have to add around it (as someone with some form of undiagnosed neurodivergence, but leaning toward ADHD and C-PTSD (I do not yet have the funds or ability to seek professional opinions)) is that this is plausible, and yet not my first thought when I'm considering the totality of James and how we can unite the different stages of his timeline. I say this because I experience bursts and lulls of certain behaviours, and so far I do not have anything concrete to attribute it to, and it may sound stupid, but I have found (in my experience) that sometimes we lose our inhibitions as a result of extreme emotions in difficult circumstances. Who I am when I am at home is different to who I am in the classroom and different again to who I am when I've been drinking alcohol and who I am when I'm wandering the streets of a city late at night (always with friends, notably, because I don't feel safe enough to wander alone at night as a woman). Sometimes, I do not even need a drink in me to loosen up certain aspects of my mentality, but a few hours of sleep deprivation (sort of a lie, I'm almost always sleep deprived and it's yet another chronic issue I'm working on since it affects other areas of my health). I believe I am a product of my environment in many ways. And so is James.

There is some merit to the original idea that James has been ensconced in such profound love his whole life, that when his love life goes wrong and is not at all like the beautiful fairytale he resents his parents for having and pushing on him, it destroys him inside. Admittedly, I'd say this would have greater impact and would be a much more compelling narrative if the bracelet was not cursed and James was allowed to break the dumb Herondale myth of loving once (furthering that alienation but ultimately providing him liberation). But even with the bracelet: James believes himself in love, believes he is damned because he is demonic and nothing good can ever become of him or anything he wants in life, he is going to always get the short end of the stick because the expectations placed on him are too great, and he has received a devastating letter as a hormonal teenager with access to an entire city to terrorise and alcoholic drinks to consume. I'd say it's not far-fetched to assume he was just incredibly drunk and heartbroken that night, and was simply embracing the drama that teenagers lean toward.

It is, though, the sheer cruelness that James demonstrates in front of Magnus that pokes a hole in this framework. The James we knew previously, and even the James we see in TLH, is not who you would call cruel. So where did this come from? Was it his resentment against Downworld rising to the surface, an extension of his insecurities raging inside him? Rebelliousness against his parents? If he embraces chaos and cruelty and vice, can he convince himself he is merely being who he was always meant to be, as someone who is part demon? (Sound familiar to anyone? *cough* Jace Herondale *cough*) Was he as drunk as Magnus thought he was? Was James, in reality, experiencing some sort of manic high where he could be wickedly precise with a gun and still be entirely out of his typical character?

I have no definite answer, except that I urge you to reflect inward. Have we not all at least once experienced a time where we "have not acted ourselves"? Where, for one reason or another, we shed our usual attitudes and embraced a different side of ourselves that only seems out of character because others around us do not know us as we know ourselves? I know I have. I know I can be cruel and nasty when I let go of care, and that a part of me believes sometimes that it is my truest nature because of what some people drilled into me for many impressionable years. That sometimes it is a form of self-harm, because I can still feel empathy and I know what I am doing is hurting someone else, and it hurts me too because I am so aware of it and the whole vicious mental cycle goes on. I know that if I simply stay up long enough at night, I indulge in reckless behaviours and say whatever comes to my mind with little to no filter. I know that I can have periods of energy fueled by recklessness, by some social interactions, by many other factors, and can lead to be attempting to perform feats I typically would not.

James trying to make love to a lamppost and a dog and what have you? That I could attribute to drinking or sleep deprivation. It could just as easily be something else, but I will stand by the fact that this is not out of the ordinary when one is in an extraordinary sort of mental state. I also believe Clare's intentions when writing that was more for humour than anything.

Returning to my earlier point, I do believe James might have been cruel in TMH because he simply could be, because he is unloveable (in his mind), demonic, and for that period of time, dreadfully tired of how hard he had to try to be someone everyone believed he was not. And perhaps because this rebellion, this reckless behaviour, as chaotic as it appears, is actually his form of taking control over his life and his image. If he acts the part of a wild, half-warlock, if he embraces wickedness, he is in control of that and no comments or misfortune that might be attributed to it are as bad in his mind. To him, under the curse, Grace is perfect and he's just Ken James, barely a Herondale. This night in TMH that catches glimpse of his character as of late is actually just the snowball effect of his insecurities that we already saw in the academy.

So, how does that connect to the Jameses of TLH?

Barely a Herondale

Let's revisit my favourite topics of chronic illness and control. We see by TMH, and with context provided in Chain of Gold, that James had begun to master his shadow abilities, so that they became actual abilities and not just a condition that he was struggling with. In a way, I see it as a remission. James has developed this precious view of control because of this, I would argue, and we see him grapple with control and his insecurities in TLH more. When we open the series with Chain of Gold and we see James enter the shadow realm against his will in the middle of a fight, there is a deep sense of body betrayal, I find when reading. I feel for James when his friends go "I thought that had stopped happening/all that rubbish was over" and he goes "me too". I cannot count the times in my life when I genuinely thought my health troubles were over, that the rollercoaster was only going up, just to have a horrible shock when suddenly my body gives out on me and I am plunged for months into chronic pain and illness all over again for usually unclear reasons. I have no cure, just as James doesn't. We simply have methods of managing our respective conditions, if that makes sense. It is a constant fight for control over ourselves. There have been times where I will not tell a single person that my symptoms of something have come back, simply because I am exhausted and I already know the drill of management techniques I'll have to employ myself.

James reaches for his knife, for the pain to bring him back. He contacts Jem because he's worried and has no idea what's going on or why it happened. I am so, so obsessed with this. I can't stress enough how much I relate to his whole shadow dilemma from a perspective of chronic illness. I am shaking you, reader. Please understand. I don't care how flawed this guy is or the fact that Clare might not have intended this interpretation, this is my form of projection like everyone else has theirs and it is so comforting to me, as someone who also struggles to feel in control of my own body, who exerts control over other things in other ways just to cope.

This is one line of consistency I draw from Goatface to Helen of Troy to the James of TLH. Now, moving on...

We see that in TMH that Will and Tessa have been trying to get through to James for ages to try and coax out of him what his problems are and why he is acting out. I discussed this once with an old writing partner, how when the Herondales learned of the Carstairs coming to London to save their reputation and required their help, that Will and Tessa likely approached James and demanded he be on his best behaviour so that they can help the Carstairs. For if the Herondales tried to help while James himself was out ruining his reputation, then the Carstairs would surely be doomed.

And so, we have the image of The Perfect Gentleman™ developed over the next few months ready for the arrival of Sona, Cordelia, and Alastair Carstairs in London. This coincides with the fact that over the summer (after the winter period when he had his wild streak and the spring when he would have been getting his heart and act together) he did not go to Idris to see Grace for the first time in years and the bracelet's hold on him was weakening significantly, which I believe, would mean less of the heightened hurt and insecurity surrounding the topic of love for at least a little while, because he would simply care about Grace (in a romantic sense) less. Who knows? Perhaps becoming the model gentleman was his form of revenge against Tatiana and others, because if he conforms and commits heavily to Shadowhunter society and the rules of propriety, then he cannot be faulted for his heritage so easily by that point. Plus, this is much easier to follow when he thinks he has total control over his shadow abilities at that point in time. For about six months, he can simply put it out of his mind (and get extra weird about interacting with Downworld and how he feels about it. This also brings me to a side tangent about how I think his interest in the occult is the little demon/magic intrigue he allows himself in private where only his friends are likely to be aware of the books he keeps. He says, if I recall correctly, at some point that he finds it fascinating what mundanes think of magic and how close or far they are from it sometimes, and I propose there's like this secret third thing to it about how he likes looking at magic and demonology from the perspective of a third party -- someone who is not Nephilim or of Downworlder origin, because it is the closest kinship he might find).

Also, let's not forget how much people in real life, let alone characters, can change over a period of time, much less several months to a year. I truly do not think his character is as inconsistent between books as it is made out to be. I think the real issue is that Clare left out elements of context that would have helped when characterising James and his journey, hashing out who he is and who he is not. I think another blog brought it up once, how TLH should have been multiple books and not just a trilogy. I agree, I think the dense character work would have benefitted from being more spaced out, particularly when exploring the bracelet in regard to James. Because the James after Chain of Gold especially feels rather like a blank slate that Cordelia is usually projecting upon. Which is valid. I have another theory about this, where the reason James was suddenly the It Guy at social gatherings was because he had "cleaned up his act" in the recent year and the bracelet meant that he was a blank canvas for the girls of the Enclave to project their desires onto. Perhaps it's an allosexual thing, but I know of myself and many others who tend to form crushes on people we know next to nothing about simply because they're beautiful and we make things up in our head based on what little knowledge we have, and the gaps are filled to suit. In Chain of Gold, it felt very purposeful, and the changes between James while wearing the bracelet as opposed to without was much more noticeable.

Genuinely, I think Clare dropped the ball once she got to Chain of Iron, and then dropped even further when writing Chain of Thorns. But still, for the sake of outlining the consistencies of James' character rather than the flaws, we'll ignore my personal frustration with those books and continue on.

We still see his insecurities manifest in various ways throughout TLH. Before we get to that, I'd like to point out that James remains clever throughout this series, always introverted even if he knows how to navigate social situations better now, forever a bookworm, loyal, but no longer so much of a people-pleaser as he seems much more prepared to be an adversary in any given situation as well as embrace rebellion, which I think gets overlooked a lot (do you see how quickly he goes "lock up your daughters and your greenhouses, James Herondale is on the loose and has a penchant for property damage etc." after getting in trouble in Chiswick? I swear, this guy had my heart in a chokehold). LIKE. CAN YOU NOT SEE IT? The way he is still the same guy we saw in TMH? His personality did not change so drastically that he is someone else -- it's still him! He's still there! He's just evolved over the months! And here we are, this is one such place where his insecurities are still pronounced, but in such a way where he tries to own it, to control it, once again.

And in spite of all the Herondale traits James definitely carries, he is still not the typical Herondale like Will and Jace or even some of the others we've seen. James is also Tessa and her trauma and Jem and his teachings and his father and his legacy, and he is influenced by disaster (hello? He was thirteen when he saw another dead kid? Got diagnosed with Greater-demon-for-a-grandfather? Has been brainwashed since fourteen?).

Remember how ready he was to believe he was a murderer? That's his insecurity and history talking. These horrible nightmares he's been having too. James tried so hard to be a hero, and yet he believes he inevitably ends up being someone against the heroes. He is surprised when Cordelia says he's the leader of the group because that's not how he sees himself. And this is what I find so fascinating about James. There's how other people see him, and many people see him differently, and then there's how he sees himself. (I will note that I find the idea of the Merry Thieves having any sort of leader laughable. I truly feel that's not how their group dynamic works. It felt like an excuse for Cordelia to fawn over him (as you do when you have a crush on someone) and have that weird shoe-horned on-the-nose moment where James goes to comfort Thomas and waves the others over when Barbara dies).

Most of what I have to talk about admittedly deals more with Chain of Gold, simply because kind of got lost between Chain of Iron and Chain of Thorns. He's still there, and I still see the strings of his personality, I think Clare just let some of his key character issues fade into the background. Also, I still only read Chain of Thorns once. I haven't been motivated to pick that one back up.

One thing I do like about Chain of Thorns though is that James was allowed to be the bad guy, even if it was via being a puppet for Belial. There was something almost cathartic about him crowning himself King of England. He didn't save the day; Cordelia did. James was merely fulfilling a prophecy he had made for himself.

Also, we don't get to see much of James without the bracelet. I think he's still trying to figure out who he is now that the curse is gone, then after Belial is gone and so are the main aspects of his warlock abilities. James has to redefine himself beyond many of the securities he held (so fucking mad that the "technically I did only love once because it was always Cordelia under the curse 🤪" happened because it would have made more sense for James to also break through that insecurity, but whatever).

In conclusion... um, this guy's just neat? I think he's beyond interesting. People who say he's boring and blank, I hear you, I just can't say I totally agree with you. He's my favourite character. I'll make all the excuses. I just wrote this to try and defeat the idea that his personality is inconsistent because I think it can be argued that it actually is not when you consider, well, all of the above. Anyway, I spent almost the whole day writing this. Whoops.

My other favourite characters are Matthew Fairchild, Cordelia Carstairs, Jem Carstairs, Magnus Bane, and Ragnor Fell. Love them all so much. I love a great many characters but these ones most of all.

Ships? Look, as much as I will criticise it and absolutely agree with other critiques of them, I love Jordelia. I project on and relate to both characters, what do you want from me. Also, I keep saying I have no faith in TWP and that I will not be actively seeking it out but... I do like Kit and Ty. Sue me. The drama is so delicious. For ages though, I've been wanting an equally juicy lesbian ship, I feel like the ones we have just... aren't it. You know? I think there was a missed opportunity in making Cordelia bisexual and a girl crush for Grace. OH BUT I ALSO LOVE GRACE AND LUCIE. SHUT UP, SHUT UP, I LOVE THEM. THEIR DYNAMIC COULD HAVE BEEN BRILLIANT.

Anyway, The End. That was a very long gush.

#james herondale #the last hours #tlh #tales from the shadowhunter academy #the midnight heir #tmh #herondale #character analysis #I have now thoroughly exposed myself and the amount of brainrot I experience over james herondale #a character who many share many complaints about #and complicated views #WARNING: very long post #this was an oddly healing exercise #I should ramble endlessly about things I love more often

[ruthlesslistener]

Tbh I'm really not sure if you are a hot-head or just don't always understand that not everyone is arguing with you when they present ideas that don't align with your headcanons. I also hate how you and your followers use the whole "No reading compression" in response to that sometimes. Like dude, some people are just sharing their own perspectives? On what maye have happened in Canon? Maybe its you and your cronies that dont have proper reading compression because damm, not everyone is out to fight you over stuff. Explanations are not arguments.

I really wish you were kinder to them because you sound like a passive aggressive bully at times alongside your followers and friends. (And since you love to think this way, no it's not in relation to the Ghost and vessel discussion since that's the easiest way you can hide behind. I just hate the way you acted and responded to some of your asks when it was clear that some were just trying to explain stuff. And how your followers are... comforting you? Even though its you who is in the wrong?)

? Anon I don't think that I outright argue with people unless it's clear that they're being outright aggressive, though that could be because yes, I am a legitimate hothead (though I do my best to keep my temper in check). And I am blunt as fuck. And I am also very very bad at reading tone, including my own. And also a way that I like to respond to ideas that are different from my own is by explaining how I see things or what I enjoy from it, because that makes it easiest to compare and contrast them. I genuinely don't mind people having different interpretations from me, but a lot of the times they just don't mesh with me for personal reasons, so I explain how my pov differs so that both of us are on equal footing. I'm not arguing or debating, I'm trying to clarify

I also thought I was pretty clear that some of my takes are extremely opinionated and were not necessarily valid because of it. If not, I apologize. But I am very opinionated, and yes that does influence my views on things, and no that doesn't mean I am always right. But also fandom is a hobby for a reason, and if I don't get enjoyment out of something, I will say it. That doesn't mean its bad, it's just that I don't really care for it and dont want to engage with it because it doesn't bring me any joy. I mean, I fucking hate caramel and will say it with vigor but that doesn't mean that I think that caramel is actually bad or awful or that people who like it are wrong for enjoying it. I just happen to really fucking hate it and say it loudly so that nobody gives me caramel when I wanted chocolate. That's pretty much how I view 99% of fandom takes different than my own- if I see it in the tags when browsing, I just scroll past it, but if someone brings it into my inbox then I'm going to explain why I don't like it so that they know it's a preference and don't do it again. I really don't mean to be hostile here

Most of the 'no reading comprehension' thing that I got pissy at that I can think of was when people would say something to me in response to what I said that completely missed the point of what I said entirely, in which case I got irritated at the misinterpretations because it was clear that what they had gotten from my discussion was not what I was actually saying. They could be valid in some cases, but that doesn't really matter when they're arguing something that was never a point in the conversation to begin with. I also tend to go to people I know for secondhand interpretations of things because- and this is very important- I am autistic as fuck and come from a background where a lot of what I would say would be taken with offense so that a fight could be started. So I tend to approach topics that I can't get a read on by debating them, to try to mitigate the damage before it happens. I don't take offense to them at all, I actually did enjoy the explanations that people had, but I countered with my own feelings on the matter because I wanted people to know my own pov in turn and how I thought of things differently than them. I'm very sorry if that seemed argumentative or passive-aggressive, because I genuinely did not mean it that way. I actually really enjoy debating different takes! That's what my favorite thing to do with friends is! But sometimes other takes just don't mesh with me and I want to explain why that is so that people don't think I'm bashing them. Sorry if that came off as arguing because it really wasn't on my end

(I'm also not sure what you mean by 'hide behind the adult Ghost discussion'- that's the first discourse I've had in my inbox in a very, very long time, so that's why I tend to default to it being the problem. I'm not hiding behind it I just assume that a lot of the asks I get arguing about vessel age originate from that discussion bc that was the last point of contention. Unless there's some other thing going on that I'm not aware of...?)

Anyways I'm sorry that I come off that way but keep in mind that I am also very autistic and a.) might come off as rude or argumentative when I'm actually just talking normally and b.) like to counter people's explanations with my own bc I actually do genuinely enjoy comparing and contrasting headcanons. I genuinely don't try to come off as passive-aggressive (unless its on purpose, in which case I will make it very obvious), I am just very opinionated and very, very blunt. I'll try to add more tone-context descriptors to my replies in the future to counter this, but please do know that I'm genuinely not judging anyone for having different headcanons than I am, I just know what I like and what I don't and am very straightforward about it. This is a hobby for me, so if there's something I don't like or don't have fun talking about, I'll say it directly

#anon #reply #the only things i can think of with 'no reading comprehension' were other posts sparked by the ghost discourse #where people missed my point entirely or completely misread my tone and i got very irritated because of it #also yeah i will admit that i am a hothead but i really am being sincere when i say that im not trying to argue with people most of the tim #im just saying what i think about it

[abcd-em]

Talk Shop Tuesday: because you are a marketing girlie, eye would love your thoughts on the idea of fanfic marketability as it relates to popularity/traction. It’s one of those things that’s rarely ever gets put into words (except to be derogatory) and is undersold as a part of what makes a fic “take off” I’ve known plenty of fantastically written fics that never get their time to shine just as I’ve know abjectly terribly written things become the most kudos and recommended fic ever.

How much of marketing are /you/ thinking of, if you’re thinking of it at all, when it comes to publishing a fic?

(And bonus: what’s the reason you think your underrated WIPs aren’t doing as well as the others?)

As the second person to ask me that, of course I can!!!!!

Fandom, as with any other community on the Internet, goes through trends of what they like to see and how they like to read. I'd argue that it's impossible to truly predict when a fic will 'take off' bc of this but there's definitely things you can assume.

The marketability of a fic rarely stops me from writing what i want (obviously there are exceptions), but its something i keep in mind when planning to ensure theres little hooks here or there. There's things that I know in the back of my mind, that I know almost for certain (for my writing and what's I've observed at least):

- kid fics will do well (or more low stakes, domestic fics)

- fast paced [blank] to lovers will do well vs. A slower burn (I could say this has smt to do with fear of fic abandonment and maybe attention span)

- MCD will not (at least in mcu petermj)

- platonic or character driven stuff can be a mixed bag

- etc.

Your fandom, your tropes, the bare bones of your fic (not the actual words just the vibes/direction) can definitely have an impact on reach and inevitable audience size - not forgetting that HOW ur fandom interacts with content should be considered. Example:

My Insomniac fics didn't get many hits bc it's a smaller audience (though i tend to find more of those hits also equal comments). From that, My Peter/Harry centric fic got more engagement and interaction VS. My peter/MJ centric fic - I knew this would happen when I was writing it BECAUSE the main thing talked about after the release of the second game was Parksborn. (Understandable I was also consumed by the brainrot)

Not to get SEO about it but tags and summary are also going to impact these things. Themes and tropes all have their own popularity innit. Your tags are there to give an overview (AND WARNING!!!) about the contents of your fic. Boiling all your plans down to the right tags will help it appear to the right people that WANT that kind of story, and exclude it from others. Your summary will also help with that (and from my experience main characters & romantic hook/tease is what gets most attention). This is probably where I consider marketability the most tbh and why I struggle so much with summaries bc why am I thinking of work when I'm writing fic???

But tags and summary definitely impacted Forever: there's a big tilt towards 'sadder' tags bc I want to be transparent about the topic. And the summary is very focused on Peter and Gwen (which is why I added the little line about MJ and Peter at the end).

The focus on Peter and Gwen also impacted the divorce AU. I didn't anticipate that fic getting as much traction as it did, but It wasn't until chapter 8 or something that it really began to take off.

Also. As with anything on the Internet. There's the 'right time, right place' effect where something just CLICKS, the perfect storm of a few small things that gets swept up to huge numbers and its difficult to pinpoint a single one.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: creating content for the sole purpose of marketability will make it less fun and kill your joy

Talk shop tuesday

#em answers #talk shop tuesday #there's probably more i could say but ive had a nap and woke up less evil so

[elvenbeard]

I read your post about headcanons about Kerry's sexuality, and I totally agree with what you said about headcanons not taking away from representation, but I'm curious what your view are on mods that change a character's sexuality so anyone can romance them? I know there is, or at least used to be, quite a bit of debate around that. You don't have to answer if you don't want to, I'd hate to start any discourse drama on your blog. I'm just curious because I'm not even sure where I stand on the matter, and have been back and forth on it for a long time.

It's all good nonny! I have been asking myself that lately tbh, and I know I've been back and forth on it myself, too.

In this moment in time, I am completely indifferent on the existence of mods that do stuff like that. I don't condone or like them, but I'm not gonna do anything about them either. I know years ago in the Dragon Age fandom there was huge discourse and drama around a mod that made Dorian (canonically gay, his whole character arc revolves around that fact, just in case you're not into that series) available to be romanced by a female Inquisitor. And back then I was absolutely livid. Dorian was (and still is) one of my fave characters in the DA universe. And honestly, I couldn't even tell you now if anything ever came off of that whole drama (but I doubt it, cause it rarely does) - that's how pointless Internet drama really is. In the worst case, the person who made that mod got driven out of fandom entirely and now has negative associations with the queer community as a whole.

Do I think that mods that change a queer character's canon orientation are amazing? No, not really, and most of the time, especially in Dorian's case, they make no sense at all for the characters' arcs. I personally would never wanna play them and I'd also rather not know why some people make them.

(I'm completely biased here btw, because I do not feel as negatively about mods that change a canonically straight character's orientation to something queer. Simply because I'm queer and greedy for more representation, because there cannot be enough XD Does that make me a hypocrite to some people? Maybe, but honestly, I don't really care. And as I said in my post, and as you mentioned, even the "straight mods" do not take away from any queer representation that canonically exists.)

The thing is, me and others screaming and yelling about "straight mods" (or "bi mods" for characters that are explicitly gay/lesbian) is not gonna change a thing, mods like that are always gonna exist. Content I don't agree with is always something I can come across at random, and I keep finding new things that make me go "nope!" regularly. And even if I'm not screaming and yelling, and instead try to be reasonable, talk objectively with the mod makers as for xyz reasons their mod is not good in my eyes... I'm too old for that shit XD I'd rather use my energy and limited time to make a lot of gay stuff featuring my favourite queer blorbos instead of arguing with strangers why a straight!Dorian or bi!Judy or straight/bi!whoever mod is bad. Fandom should be a hobby, not activism, and you can go about fighting homophobia in a lot better ways than arguing about who certain pixel people would like to bone or not.

I wish there were - or maybe there are and I haven't figured it out yet - ways to filter stuff I don't wanna see on Nexus for example like there are on tumblr, ao3, any other social media site with a good tagging system and means to block tags or phrases or users. Curating your own experience and finding people who share your interests is so important and has really improved my time in fandom a lot over the last years. And it's good to have friends you can rant to about stupid things that upset you in private, definitely XD

So, on that note, ship whoever you wanna ship in this context, but tag it so that people who don't wanna see it can avoid it and don't get mad. Also sorry this got long and slightly off topic, I'm a chronic rambler.

(also, if anything's unclear, feel free to reach out again! sometimes I don't express myself as well as I think I do XD)

#answered asks #anonymous #I don't know how to tag this uuuuhhhhh #fandom stuff

[whatever-you-can-give-me]

Genuine question: why does disagreeing (without being all ‘u r wrong’, but simply just saying ‘cool! Here is my take on this’) with how others see a character get you immediately labled a ‘transphobe’? Or just labled as anything really. Like. Fandom space is for having fun, fandom space is a place of many different & wonderful headcanons & new ways of seeing things! Yet ‘headcanon’ is still not ‘canon’, and can be disagreed with. Hell, you can very well disagree with some of the stuff canon does! It doesn’t make it less canon of course, it just makes your experience with it more palatable to you.

So when a person says ‘here is my blorbo! I imagine him as trans and like viewing related content!’ and you say ‘awesome take, i bet there are a lot of interesting things you can do with this if you explore this more! I personally like thinking of this character & looking at content of him as biologically male, as described in canon!’ shouldn’t the answer be ‘wow! Two cakes! So cool!’ instead of ‘u r just a bigoted transphobe, the only right way to see him is as [insert specific gender identity] or literally as anything BUT what u see him as, because canon mentioned these select things that pertain to said character taking on masculine and feminine traits specifically from a narrative standpoint’ ??

I’m seriously just so lost. Just because someone doesn’t like seeing a certain character a certain way, (without disrespecting other interpretations,) it suddenly catapults them into being an awful person??? huh??

Of course it also works the other way, and with many other things, which is just as weird, which is exactly the point of my question here.. bros, the world... 💔 (m so sorry this is so long ong. i tend to ramble. pls don't answer if u don't have the time, have a good one <3)

oh man this is. first of all i'm not sure if this is in reference to some specific post or tag or if it's just because i've been very opinionated recently. but i do love to talk, so you're in luck.

also i'm not. sure if this is bait? i'm going to answer under the assumption that it isn't because it's. honestly a pretty good summary of a very real issue not with fandom exclusively but more so the internet as a whole. if anyone else has gotten this exact ask copy-pasted in their askbox let me know in the replies. (sorry if this is 100% genuine op, there's just a Lot Of Bait on this topic going around at all times forever and it's. june. so.)

objective disclaimer: don't. insult or accuse people of things. because of the art they make?? especially not fanwork for free for fun??? have you seen the state of the world right now? Now Is Not The Time To Be Arguing About Trans Headcanons. i'm answering this because i have a lot of thoughts on the nature of fandom, not because i think knee-jerk anger at anyone is helpful right now. if you're big mad, write to your senators or donate to the trevor project.

anyway.

basically: it's twitter's fault. [not just twitter, but twitter is The example of this] the algorithms of most websites, especially social media websites, prioritize arguments and things that are generally clickbaity because if you're spending a lot of time arguing, you have your eyeballs pointed at the site for longer and therefore you see more ads and therefore the advertisers and therefore the app makes more money. therefore the kinds of "you're disagreeing me therefore you must be bigoted against my opinions" kind of kneejerk discourse gets a lot of clicks and very mainstreamed. this is an issue the entire internet has, and also politics. it's twitter's fault. i hate it here.

in the specific circumstance you're describing. it's a few things, a lot of it being. gestures at the current state of the world. there's a lot of genuine anger towards genuine injustice boiling inside of a lot of people, and it's getting thrown at the nearest target because systematic change is difficult and slow, and sometimes it feels good to give someone a hard time for a tiny microcosm of something you're angry about because you can't wrestle god or throw a brick at a politician.

a lot of us in fandom are queer and scared. it doesn't justify hurting other queer people over different interpretations of a media property, but that is often why it happens. can't stop current events? yell at someone you feel is putting art in the world that Isn't Queer Enough (don't fucking do that, yall. there is room in the world for a lot of art. and just because it's not Visibly Queer or Queer In The Way You Are doesn't make it less valid as art. certainly don't accuse people of bigotries about it.) or that they feel like their space is being encroached upon by an outsider (no one has to tell you their list of marginalized identities to have their art allowed past the threshold of Queer Enough! don't fucking do that either, yall! you sound like cops!)

there's also the fact that people tend to put themselves in their art and interpretations. so seeing "i don't view this character this way" can feel like "i don't think You are valid". it's important to recognize when you're taking something Personally when it Isn't Personal. you're allowed to have your Big Feelings about particular art or interpretations. god knows i do! but the artist probably has Big Feelings about their art too, and while you may not understand them, that should be respected.

and this "seeing yourself (or not seeing yourself and it hurts) in art" goes both ways. a lot of the same body types often gets headcanoned as trans, because it's a very easy in for Baby's First Trans Headcanon, and as far as human sexual dimorphism goes, there are some patterns. but, say, what if a skinny, short, baby-faced cis man wants to see art of babyfaced cis men, without feeling within the queer community the kind of scrutiny he experiences outside of it, the assumption that his masculinity must be different, that obviously someone who looks like that is a trans man. what if a six foot tall cis woman sees the way that big, tall women in media are so often headcanoned as trans, more often than shorter, thinner women, and feels othered by it? wanting to represent themselves in art does not become somehow less valid because of their gender identities. that's ludicrous.

but people are angry and scared, and people put themselves in their art, and people get angry when they feel like their space is being encroached on, and they lash out. it's not fair, and i hate how common it's become, but i see how it happened.

honestly, i've thought about this specific issue a lot, so thank you for possibly-baiting me, anon. this is such a. it's such a bubble issue, but it's a microcosm of a very widespread problem of outrage merchants and Doing Things Correctly and What Is Allowed To Be Queer.

it's all allowed. all of it. even the stuff you hate. even the stuff that's Too CisHet. there are so many bigger problems than fanwork right now.

#this doesn't even get into the issue of like. standardization of Correct Representation. which is a whole other can of worms #again. not an important convo when the world is Like This Right Now #but basically. people can be queer in ways you can't visually identify. that does not make them less queer. #that goes for art and real people. #i know this is probably bait but i had fun writing it. i have a lot of thoughts on this topic thank you anon

[basiliskinmybed]

hi, you don’t need to post a response to this. just read it at least please. sorry this is long, i’m not going to send you hate or a bunch of angry messages like you might be getting, i just want to share my opinion with you. i thought it was interesting that you mentioned KBS (the fanfic, not sure if the author wants it in this conversation or not so i’m abbreviating the name). the cultish behavior that harry disapproved of in the story also included spreading negativity about the work of authors who really didn’t ask for it in a community that also did not really ask for it. i think that is where people were upset with you, because it opened a conversation of mocking what other people like under the guise of criticism/personal preferences. sort of similar to the people sharing hate in that story’s discord server under the guise of trolling or that it’s okay because they are just opinions. i know this wasn’t your intention, and i’m very sure you just meant your original post as a little bit of fun to talk about something that has been sitting on your mind for some time. these are just your opinions and you can have them, but i think it was just the way that you went about it which irritated people. although not your intention, it did come across a bit mean-spirited and inconsiderate, and it did seem like you shaded something that is very well-liked in this little fandom. this will draw criticism towards yourself and your opinion just from the very nature of the conversation as it is quite negative to discuss things you dislike, and tagging the main ship tags opens that dialogue to many who likely don’t want to see that. many people here seem to have come from fandoms where drama was non-stop over silly things like this, just topics that spiral out of control until people’s feelings get hurt and nasty things get said that aren’t necessary. it’s actually really stupid and very juvenile but unfortunately that’s what it is, and i think that’s why people didn’t want you to start a conversation like that so publicly.. it invites people to spread negativity about things that others find enjoyable and people argue about it. especially leading up to tom’s birthday which is supposed to be a fun time in the fandom, full of amazing creative content from everyone.. a conversation like this circling might make people insecure over what they planned to post. so sorry again about this being so long, you might completely disagree with me and that’s okay. i just wanted to explain to you without it needing to be public necessarily or make you feel like you’re being ganged up on. i really hope you don’t let this situation heavily affect your view on the fandom or the ship itself, i know it’s selfish of me to wish but you might find some that do agree with your opinions, meaning that it’s not like everyone hates you (and unfortunately, there is no community that is forever positive without arguments). i hope you have a nice rest of your week and that this situation doesn’t give you further anxieties or troubles <3 take care!

Hi. So, about KBS, if i recall it correctly, that discord service in the story was talking shit behind the auhors' back and harry, they were talking about how pathetic he's, i remember how that made him frustrated and sad. i didn't do that, there was nothing against anyone. not everyone may like my attitude in the original post, but i didn't intend to do harm or wasn't even serious while making it. however, they attacked me, called me slurs, sended many anon hates. that's why i thought my situation was similar to the story, because i'm overwhelmed by the pressure like him. someone even said, '"...and the author has more talent in their little finger than you will ever have in your sad little life, going by all the insecurity, bitterness, and discourtesy that you're spewing here." don't you think they took it too far for no reason? for nothing? and now they're gonna say i'm playing the victim like it's all my fault and deserve all of it. lovely. i'm human too, if they only thought it as much as they think "what would author feel?" just because i said their work is not for me. thank you for being kind though, i appreciate that and see your points. and lastly, i don't think there's a single thing in this world that would make me hate tomarrymort, let alone for something petty like this. :)

[sevenhundred721]

!! If you see me liking your art but not reblogging, it is in my queue !!

You might wanna read this before you follow/scroll through my blog. It's basically just an 'about me' and some content warnings. That said, it's a rambling wall of text because I kinda lost the plot, so there's a tl;dr at the end. Don't really care if you read this, I'm not the boss of you. Follow if you want.

Also, check out my art tag. There's not much in there, but I'd still appreciate some eyes on it. For now, I just use #my art

Just hit me I don't have a pinned post and my bio is a quote let's fix that. I'm white, I'm an adult, I'm a high-school dropout. Call me whatever you want, my name means very little to me. That said, my friends call me oil, and the most recent enemies I've had (rude teenagers in driver's ed) called me Cowboy Girl. I am not a girl. This is unrelated to why these people were my enemies. I think it's really funny, so call me by it if you'd like. I really only care about how I'm gendered irl, don't sweat my pronouns too hard on here. I'm not gonna mind if you don't use the right ones (he/him), and if a situation arises where somebody gets them wrong or uses different pronouns for comedic effect, don't worry about correcting them. I will do that if I see fit. And if it's not something I can see or respond to, then what I don't know can't hurt me, idgaf.

I like posting art, but it's pretty sporadic, so it's not really worth following for. I appreciate reblogs when I do post it, though. Art requests are always open, but I usually don't get around to doing them, i just hope they'll inspire me to draw something fun. I guess technically, this is a personal blog. The only fandom I have a recent history of interacting with people in, beyond just looking at/reblogging posts from, is transformers, and I'm still more of a lurker than anything. If you see me talking about/reblogging things from smth you have interest in, my dms and ask box are open. I enjoy idle chatter.

I'd prefer minors don't follow me, but I don't mind interactions from minors on my sfw posts. I just sometimes post/reblog things that are nsfw. That being said, the most you'll see in that department on this blog is just some conventional softcore fetish content and artistic nudity. I sometimes forget to tag gore, blood, and needles when I reblog them, and I do enjoy horror media, so if you are sensitive to that stuff, while I do try to tag it, I can be forgetful sometimes so my blog may not be a safe place for you.

If I reblog or post something and it has any kind of bigoted dogwhistles or is just generally misinformed, shoot me an ask or DM so I can delete it. I refuse to knowingly enable bigotry on my blog, and if I post something bigoted, it is out of ignorance. I'm not going to delete any post I make just because some stranger on the internet tells me to take it down, but I will genuinely consider what you say to me and I will take it as a queue to read more on the topic in order to investigate the stance I took. Don't try to do petty discourse with me. This is mostly about queer microlabel shit or powerscaling leftist ideology. It's sometimes interesting to think about, and I have opinions on that stuff, but ultimately, arguing about it does literally nothing for anyone except waste time that could be spent doing anything else. The sentiments are better expressed in opinion piece essays instead of bad faith arguments with strangers. I'm open to criticism, and I enjoy talking to people who don't share my opinions sometimes, but please show some decorum.

Tl;dr: white, American, he/him, adult. Some nsfw content sometimes. Might rb horror content (including blood/gore/medical equipment), in the past, I have forgotten to trigger tag it, and I may make that mistake again. Open to dms/asks, please tell me if a post I've made/rb'ed has offended you, and I'll look into it. Art requests open, but I probably won't do them.

[skadren]

I keep seeing a bunch of live and let go, boundaries are personal and not moral stances posts about writing and i largely agree ppl should be able to explore what they want in fic but also. Is there a way to balance or talk about "hi um white author so you kinda reinvented racism/blood eugenics and unilaterally present sex work as inherently degrading and etc etc etc for Shipping Angst Drama fodder, when the text is like. None of that" in fandom or even just in like. A server community. Maybe I'm a bit sensitive bc i feel constructed/projected misery is kind of tacky to begin with and i wouldn't do it with a complete stranger but idk my guy. I don't want to alienate myself but it's weird to go completely uncritical here

i think there are a couple items you need to check off the list before you can go "yes talking to internet stranger #37461239 about a highly sensitive topic is a good idea"

is it tagged appropriately? if it's tagged trust me the writer knows. they have probably gotten way more unsolicited feedback than they would really like

is the portrayal you're concerned about reinforcing an unhealthy or discriminatory predominant social narrative? if it is and you think the writer is genuinely unaware, then yeah, it might be worth bringing up. the emphasis here is on predominant please i am begging on my hands and knees

will this result in a productive conversation? if the intent behind this is to get people to reconsider, it isn't helping anyone if you know it will just lead to them doubling down and doing it even worse. at that point you're only making a performative statement to validate your own stance

if it really is bothering you that much, is there a compelling reason why you can't just block and move on? it isn't your responsibility nor is it feasible to fix how a fandom is doing things, especially if it's a group of people you don't really know. your own mental health always comes first, and a bit of salty venting in private with your friends never hurts anyone

if it IS a friend or acquaintance who is doing this and you think they would be open to discussing it with nuance, then you can probably bring it up. if that person has a basic level of consideration and respect for you it tends to go well, but i've also seen people double down because they already know there's something wrong with their attitudes but get mad at you for wanting them to change, and then it creates a whole ton of drama and people get hurt and it's not pretty. so. ymmv

ultimately, someone's views on racism or sex work or whatever is reflective of a broader social norm, and fandom is not the best space to try to fix that through confrontation-- it's usually someone's "safe space" where they want to retreat from the world, not come face-to-face with any sort of personal reckonings. do i think it's a mark of privilege that some people have the luxury of ignoring these issues when they "just want to have fun"? yes, but again, this is about being able to have productive discussion, not about what's "fair". unfortunately.

my two cents: if you're in a server community or some other space that makes you uncomfortable there's really nothing wrong with going "hey, we have fundamentally different standards when it comes to [x], and i don't think i want to be here" and moving on. the best way to challenge these things is quite literally to make your own food. there's a much better chance of the people you're worried about coming across it and realizing they like it than magically being able to argue them down with well-placed logic and reasonable points or whatever

EDIT: OH ALSO IM STUPID if you mean talking about it in general. not naming writer names but trends in the fandom. yes absolutely-- not in a public space like social media but definitely find a group of people who you trust who you can talk about these things with!! it is good and healthy. just make sure it isn't just a discord server open to the public or smth tho so you personally know and trust everyone who can see it (and you don't accidentally shit talk someone who is in that space lmao)

#skadren rambles #long post #tldr; fandom is allowed to be your safe space too and you dont need to cater to anyone. or fix them. or whatever #it's less that 'people writing these things is okay' and more #starting drama is never a good look and it shits on your mental health and the internet is not a good place for nuanced discussions anyways #if you're planning to take on a whole community you will NOT be able to win i promise

[gascon-en-exil]

One takeaway from the recent drama is that edelstans imo know that they're harassing, concern trolling and sealioning. They know that they're spewing racist, ableist, and pro-imperialistic rhetoric, and they especially know that no one is going to like them and will attack and call them out for it, but they're willing to go that far because to semi-quote a song from an (in)famous nu metal band, "they did it all for the waifu." It's almost cultish honestly.

I don't know the reference, but then I'm not musically-inclined.

The instigator of this latest incident appears to be new to Tumblr and thus not familiar with how this platform works with regard to tagging and such - although that leads to the observation that they've apparently created a blog here for the sole purpose of arguing with people, which is of course going to come off as incredibly rude. The equivalent would be someone going onto their public Discord server, screenshotting their most insulting and inflammatory remarks, and posting them here to be mocked...which I recall actually happened once, and certain parties were predictably not happy about it. The foundational essence of any system of etiquette is that just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.

I believe it's all ultimately water under the bridge though. The fandom is moving on courtesy of Engage, and individual fans have moved on to other games and other projects - I'm pretty deep into Octopath Traveler II myself at the moment. The more Edelstans resort to harassment and sea lioning because someone said a mean (or even indifferent) thing about their fave, the more the reputation of Three Houses is going to suffer in the long run as people come to associate the game with Edelwank more than anything else. Engage may have prompted tier list arguments and long treatises on why the developers are (still) nasty perverts and the interminable debates over which games are worse than others, but at least all of those topics are much less likely to become as relentlessly personal as so much of the discourse that came out of the Fódlan games.

#Fire Emblem #Fandom discourse