#radicalization by fandom | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astraltrickster · 2 years

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Periodic reminder that you are not immune to reactionary radicalization through fandom.

We all know the "jokes" about how old bronies either came out as queer or became fascists - except they're not really jokes, and a lot of the queer ones admit to having been in the pipeline before they came out (some in a way that implies they never totally got out of said pipeline and don't understand the gravity of it),

GamerGate was an entire right-wing reactionary movement that was - and this is not hyperbole - partially responsible for turning fascism into a "legitimate" position by the American Overton window, composed entirely of people who feared losing their fan spaces,

We've had terfs right here on tumblr dot com BRAGGING about how useful fandom is as a recruiting space,

TJLC was a big pipeline for acephobia on this hellsite in particular, when people argued that headcanoning Sherlock as ace was inherently homophobic because it was denying a TOTALLY GONNA BE CANON (while the creators were promising that it wasn't going to be canon) gay pairing, and puritanical, and just HAVING that headcanon was saying that people COULDN'T ship Johnlock, all in the interest of a "fake" sexuality and "pretending to be oppressed" and oh whoops there you went,

We see people who all but center their fandom activity and identities around figuring out which people in predominantly queer fandom spaces are SECRETLY PEDOPHILES AND GROOMERS, acting consciously or otherwise under the assumption that predominantly queer fandom spaces are just massively infested with them in a way that other spaces are not for SOME reason, who twist the definition of "pedophilia" in these spaces until it covers shipping a 17-year old fictional character with an 18-year old fictional character, or a 30-year old with a 45-year old, or including an autistic character in a ship, and drawing two 17-year old characters kissing constitutes "child porn", and who unironically say we should bring back the Hays Code and Censorship Is Good Actually And Our Problem Is We Don't Do It Enough and this often becomes a pipeline to "sex ed is child abuse; people shouldn't even know what sex is until they turn 18; you need my consent to wear certain outfits in public if I see them as sexually charged, and Pride SHOULD be an assimilationist sideshow for our corporate overlords family-friendly party with no sadness or anger or ESPECIALLY acknowledgement of sex allowed",

We've seen otherwise progressive people defend literal hate symbols in fanart when pushback against the above brand of reactionaries gets corrupted into zero-nuance "it's us vs. them so anything they don't like is Good",

Even outside of those examples some of the most vicious, unapologetic, blatant queerphobic abuse I've seen in recent years hasn't come from right-wingers but from LGBT+ people, dressing their deep, violent, seething hatred for queer people who aren't exactly like them in a thin veneer of progressive language, who have become so convinced that they're the main character of the fucking universe that they think writing or enjoying a queer story that doesn't resonate with them is more queerphobic than sending a queer person who writes or enjoys such a story countless rape and death threats and denying their identity,

We've seen these examples again and again and again, and we keep seeing it again and again and again, so I am once again on my knees BEGGING people to recognize that this is not Something That Happens To Other, BAD People, or Something That Happens To People In BAD Fandoms, or Something That Happens To People On The OTHER Side Of Perennial Drama; this is something that CAN happen to you.

These things are the result of the fact that fandom is, by nature, a place of heightened emotion and if you don't know what to look out for that is very exploitable; you need to know the methods people use to do this, simply Being In The Right Fandoms or Liking The Right Ships is not enough.

So, if you see someone trying to convince you that you have the ONLY valid approach to any specific character, or ship, or show, or whatever, that your ship is activism and your fanfics are praxis, and liking something else or liking the same thing differently is Only For Bad People, that is the single biggest red flag that YOU NEED TO RUN, THEY'RE TRYING TO SELL YOU SOMETHING THAT YOU DO NOT WANT

#fandom #radicalization by fandom #serious tag #keeping the property values down #<- aka my tag for 'i doubt this will circulate but i dont want people who will get involved in this shit on my blog'#though i wont be mad if it does circulate because people need to realize this

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steg5rr · 5 months

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Transgender-ideology in fandom culture

cw might be an incredibly incoherent niche rant idrc

I'm not sure if it's just me, but I can't be the only person who is somewhat involved in fandom elsewhere and noticing the eventual decline of tomboy-ish girls and masculine women be normalised.

I believe there's a certain pattern popping up among fandom spaces online perpetuating as the result of popularised terms such as 'T4T' (Transgender for transgender.)

Bear with me, but take 2 female characters who are romantically involved with each other. People on the left engrossed in fandom culture will start to interpret the more masculine of the two as trans-masc or the other way around (The more feminine individual progressively starts being labeled as trans-fem...)

It's disheartening seeing all the women I love from different media being interpreted with top surgery scars and being translated to either fit 'trans-masculine or trans-feminine' identities. Like... can women no longer be gnc anymore... Do we seriously need to start classifying them as men-adjacent..?

It's like we're winding the clock a couple decades back. People are questioning the authenticity of female homosexual relationships, just because there is no male present.

AND if you were to mildly express your dislike for a specific headcanon relating to gender identity, people would be quick to label you as a bigot or transphobe.. yawn..

#gender critical #lgb drop the t #terfism #terfblr #terfsafe #radical feminism #radblr #trans ideology #fandom culture #fandom problems

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crumblinggothicarchitecture · 26 days

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Hating JK Rowling is not a substitute for having a real personality, get a real hobby instead

The consistent hatred of JK Rowling on this website is so infuriating sometimes. I don't think her having an adverse opinion to your own is a good enough reason to hate her or anyone who still supports her.

She is not like some of these other artists who are literal child abusers and misogynists while still having supporters.

She literally just wants to continue to support and prioritize the female sex in feminist issues. I don't see anything wrong with that. I think it is anyone's prerogative to prioritize whatever demographic they want to prioritize within their own activism efforts. Expecting everyone to support every cause deemed a "good cause" is a ridiculous expectation.

#fuck jkr #i stand with jk rowling #anti jkr #jk rowling #harry potter #hp #hp fandom #transgender #trans #feminist #feminism #radblr #radical feminism #rad fem #radical feminist safe

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vexingwoman · 16 days

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Why is it I empathise more with male fictional characters, but when it comes to real people I empathise more with women?

I think maybe it’s to do with how characters are written.

And most of the characters in fiction that are my (male) favourites and I still consume media about, I first saw as a teenager (before I found radical feminism) and my autism latched onto and continues to. Even now I find it easier to latch onto male characters — which is really irritating. And like I said above, I think because of the way they’re all written. And maybe some unknown internalised misogyny? Or maybe even something deeper and unresolved?

Sorry this is a bit of a ramble and I’m not quite sure how to end this.

This post should articulate why you find it easier to empathize with male characters than female characters.

Essentially, this is a result of our androcentric society conditioning us to view men as the default. And because we view men as the default, we naturally and automatically attribute the actions and behaviors of male characters as consequences of their distinctive personalities, rather than consequences of them being male.

However, this is not a grace often extended to female characters. We are more inclined to attribute the actions and behaviors of female characters as consequences of them being female, rather than consequences of their distinctive personalities. Again, the linked post elaborates on this and gives more examples, but this is the most rampant example I’ve observed of this concept, which I’ve discussed before:

In general, fatherly characters are adored, while motherly characters are either overlooked or resented. Why? Because when a male character looks after children, he is compassionate, kind-hearted, protective, and selfless. But when a female character looks after children, she is merely fulfilling her gendered expectation. Basically, male characters are viewed as human first and male second, but female characters are viewed as female first and human second.

And as for why the concept of you empathizing more with male characters is reversed when applied to real people, this is most likely because the majority of male characters are not accurate representations of how real men conduct themselves. Rather, male characters are idealized, romanticized, and ultra-virtuous depictions of what men could hypothetically be like—but in reality most men are demonic scrotes.

And actually, it would not surprise me at all if most of the male characters you empathize with were written by female authors, and are thus (for lack of a better term) male-bodied characters with female personalities. I suspect that what is actually happening here, is that you are empathizing with female personalities, and the fact that those female personalities have been imposed onto male-bodied characters serves to filter out gender-stereotyping. It allows for you to appreciate female personalities authentically, without the dreaded element of having them be attributed to gendered stereotyping, and with the added neutrality with which we regard the personalities of male characters. If that makes sense.

#terfblr #radical feminism #terfsafe #radblr #gender critical #radical feminist safe #misogny #sexism #trans logic #gender abolition #whump community #whump #fandom #answered asks

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mugentakeda · 10 days

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Headcanoning transman Lu Ten so that him and Jiro can have a baby girl ❤️ Im obsessed with two characters having child even though I don't want any of my own 😭

yeah me and my hostage think its a great idea anon

#(JOKE)#im just like you anon i love kids and babies but i just want to be the epic lesbian uncle. Or something. i have a dog thats enough for me #and in all seriousness yes. trans pregnancy is so radical. we love you pregnancy headcanons #and girldads lu ten and jiro is REAL. it was written in the ancient scriptures.#when i decided that in his Lore that he would parentify himself and nurture azula for the first six months of her life. so freaking choice.#asks #dai li lu ten #<- TECHNICALLY.#i feel like this au is getting out of hand. scratches head #just remember that lu ten is the atla fandoms public domain oc and all of this lore is some shit i made up. in my head

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tiny-green-house · 12 hours

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women aren’t allowed to wear tshirts and jackets, or have short hair, or facial hair, or be kind of grimy. if they do, they aren’t women. much to think about!

#misogny #sexism #radblr #radical feminist safe #radical feminism #fandom culture #⬛️fandom culture: tv #terfsafe #terfblr

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jasontoddssuper · 6 months

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You guys STILL think it was 'ooc' for Ichigo to not join the Soul Society?You do know that SS is a military/cop state and that he's literally a punk right?????

#and i don't mean 'oooooh edgy boi' punk i mean he actively rebels against corruption and helps out people in need and hates authority #it's not him being quirky it's his life philosophy-yes he's goth too but that's about his aesthetic and interests #and he's not gonna give up his beliefs to date someone because again HE'S AN ACTUAL PUNK.you shouldn't take that away from him over a ship #the lack of radicalization in the bleach fandom is weird to my pastel punk ass.why can't y'all be more like the naruto fans with braincells #ichigo kurosaki #ichihime #orihime inoue #kazui kurosaki #rukia kuchiki #pro ichihime #pro orihime #pro ichigo kurosaki #pro kazui kurosaki #t4t ichihime #antiichiruki #anti soul society #bleach #💌#letters from summer

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doctorwhoisadhd · 2 months

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to be clear if you think 12 is a girl live ur truth and have fun and etc etc i just personally do not because he was kind of integral to me discovering that Actually, I Am Anything BUT A Girl, at which point i also basically stole my gender directly from him. But thats just me

#ari opinion hour #like fr. girl 12 truthers please remember that i am a blaseball fan.#you know. blaseball. the fandom that has a whole ass function on the wiki built specifically so that we could put as many radically #different interpretations of the same exact character on there as possible?#12 is like mulan to me. transmascs think hes transmasc and transfems think shes transfem <3 #12 girl truthers i am holding hands with u in the 12 Gender zone #12 will always be transmasc To Me

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revasserium · 10 months

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I'm being a rebel and requesting Ikesen Masamune and barefoot 💜

send me one and a character u__u

hurricane (prompt: barefoot)

masamune; 1,813; fluff and... that's it; @violettduchess is quite possibly one of the only ppl who can get me to write for a fandom that i had no plans in joining BUT HERE I AM FOLKS. here the fuCK i am.

he has always been a hurricane.

there are moments in a person’s life big enough for a single choice to put them on a completely different path, and then — there are those moments, much smaller moments, adding up to that one, bigger, monumental, life-changing moment. this is one of the latter.

the moon is heaven bright, swinging low in a full-bellied sky, and insomnia had plagued you till you’d come into the inner gardens for refuge. at least here, it felt like you were stuck between the pages of a waking dream. so… sleep-adjacent, right? right.

you swing your feet off the edge of the pristinely mopped wooden walkways, your sketchbook propped in your lap, a charcoal pencil gliding over the smooth, moon-bleached pages. you let your hand take the drawing where it wants, and these days, there’s only one place that your hand (and, subsequently the rest of your mind and body) seems to want to go.

masamune.

he appears as fish-tail flicks of your wrist bring him to life on the pages, each sketch fluid and overlapping with the next, almost like the depiction of dance — the crinkle at the edge of his eye, the curve of his hand as he rests it on the hilt of one of his blades, the strong, graceful slope of his shoulders and back, the crescent moon curve of his lips as he smiles, ever light, ever teasing, in your direction.

“ah… is that what i look like?”

his voice makes you jump, and even now after all this time, it sets your heart racing in your chest as you whirl around to find his nose inches from yours, that self-same smile hinged across his damnably gorgeous lips.

“w-wh — why aren’t you sleeping?” is your stumbling, cobbled together response to being jump-scared in the middle of his castle pagoda, but it’s the best you could come up with. he only leans back, chuckling, his arms tucked into the long thin sleeves of his kosode as he casts his eye up towards the full moon, his expression for once devoid if mischief or calculation. it’s strange, seeing him like this, so still and so quiet, and something about it makes you go still too, wondering if this is what its like to be caught in the eye of the storm, where the quiet is only ever momentary and destruction dances just beyond where your mind can reach.

“i could ask the same of you, kitten. so tell me… why aren’t you sleeping?” he grins as he joins you, propping one arm on a bent knee, watching as you gather yourself, palms pressing to the pages of your sketchbook.

“i… i couldn’t sleep.” you look down at your own knees, and it strikes you then that your feet are still bare. you can’t help glancing at masamune, and sure enough, his feet are bare too. no wonder i hadn’t heard him coming.

but something about this sets you off, the sight of his bare feet next to yours, and even though it shouldn’t be so tantalizing a thing — the flicker of bare flesh, the hint of skin unseen— you feel like one of those ancient victorian maidens, blushing at the sight of bare ankles.

you can’t help it; you start to laugh.

and masamune, sitting beside you, finds himself transfixed, held still by the sound of your laughter, pouring from you like rainwater from a stream. so clear and beautiful it sets his body arrack with shivers.

“what?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow, “is there something on my face?”

at this, you pause, stifling your giggles with a hand pressed to your lips, and you look at him. your eyes meet, and not for the first time, you feel yourself falling into them — into him. even like this, his one blue eye is something of a miracle, a thing of celestial majesty. it wasn’t until you’d met him that you’d realized what blue eyes look like up close — up close, they are the shattered light of a millions stars, fractured and reformed and singing through a universe of endless dark to end up here, shining out from him and landing on you, and god — he’s looking at you like all those million, billion years of starlight had traveled the expanse of every galaxy just to look at you.

just to see you like he does now.

“no… there isn’t,” you say, whisper, more like, reaching out a hand to trace your thumb over the lid of his closed eye. he doesn’t push you away. instead, he leans in closer.

“then, what’s so funny, kitten?”

you simply shake your head, trying to swallow down your belly-full of laughter, your mind showing you a strobe-quick flash-forward of you trying to explain the concept of foot kinks and websites that cater to such 500 years in the future before deciding — no. alas, tonight is not the night you try to educate one date masamune on the intricacies of body part kinks. though no doubt he’d take it in stride. no — that thought too, you tamp down before you’ve the mind to follow it down into a deep, dark rabbit hole from whence you might never recover or be recovered.

“tell me, please…” he grins, a grin that is simultaneously plea and pleasure, and in it, you can hear the knife-sharp promise of desire, “i’d like to know if something other than me has the power to make you laugh so much.”

“it’s just —” you bite your lips, fighting for the words, “we’re both barefoot.”

he blinks. and you can tell that whatever he was expecting the answer to be, this is clearly not it.

you track the flitter of emotions as they dance in quicksilver steps across the planes of his face — surprise, confusion, amusement, all painted porcelain perfect on the dark of his brows, the faint twitch of his lips. finally, he settles on a sorted of muted bemusement as he cocks his head at you.

“and… do people of your time tend to sleep with socks on?”

“no, it’s just…” you blush again, unable to help yourself.

“just what?” his voice is light, and he is still.

you swallow, hard,

“just… it’s weird — i mean — it’s not like i haven’t seen anyone else barefoot before just… this was — you’re just — and i —” you trip over your words in a hurry and end up tumbling through into incoherence so fast all you can do to styme the flood is to clamp your mouth shut and pray.

oh god please… tell me this is a bad dream.

but when you open your eyes, masamune is still there, watching you with that singular eye of his, expression inscrutable. and still, he doesn’t move.

“so…” and finally, finally, the stillness breaks — he cracks it open like an eggshell, stretching himself out as he leans back, propping himself up on his elbows, lengthening till he’s splayed out over the gleaming wooden boards of the walkway, his face bathed in ghostly moonlight.

“i’m not the first man you’ve seen barefoot, hm? that is a problem.”

your mouth drops open and for a moment, you gape at him wordless and fish-like, and he laughs as he turns to look at you.

“tell me his name — i’ll have his head in the morning,” he says, in a voice so casually serious that for a moment you think he might actually mean it.

“masamune!”

and then, he’s laughing too, a big, bright, uproarious thing that shakes his entire body like the foundations of the earth. it is deep and rich and lovely, warm and sweet as sun-kissed honey. you let yourself be swept up in his laughter, dropping into silent giggles, and then something louder, letting your shoulder bump into his, your bodies finally touching and then —

there’s a flurry of clothing, a shifting of weights. you find yourself pulled into him, tipping towards him like inevitability.

your sketchbook lays forgotten on the walkway next to you as masamune holds you close against his chest.

“ah… i really don’t like that…”

an entourage of tingles frissons through your body at his words.

“don’t like what?”

“the fact that you’ve seen someone else barefoot before. it bugs me.”

you peer up at him, lifting your head ever so slightly from his chest. he’s looking at you, and the sunrise-blue of his eyes are shadowed with something darker now, something decidedly less innocent than just the thought of bare feet.

“then… what will you do about it?” you ask, feeling the heat of his body, the solidness of him, the rightness of you between his arms.

“hm… are you teasing me, kitten?” his voice is gravel and earthquake and you’re emboldened by the sound, by the way his pupil dilates, the black hole at the center of every galaxy — gravity made solid, made real.

“yes,” you breathe, leaning up like a dare and he meets you gloriously, his lips hard and pressing and soft and pulling. there’s a fire unspooling at the base of your spine, stoked by the heat and truth of him, so close, too close — you break apart gasping. he grins, lynx-like and wolfish as he grazes his teeth along the column of your throat.

“good,” he says, sighing into your flesh as you arch up into him, your fingers curling into his hair as he flips the pair of you over. he pulls you beneath him and he is storm and thunder, he is rain and wonder — he is water to your desert skies, the sunlit days to all your moonless nights.

and as he makes to rend you into pleasure, into nothing more than ache and belonging, he pulls back with a bone-deep growl, a sliver of hesitation, of self-preservation.

“are… are you sure you want this?” that you want me? the echo is not lost on you.

and it’s not the first time he’s asked you the question, and you have a feeling that it wouldn’t be the last. but you reply as you had, once upon a time, in a distant, sun-drenched afternoon, when you’d been telling him about one of your favorite poems from your time.

you smile, tug him down for a kiss.

“yes,” you say, like you’d done on that long-ago afternoon, “i want you — i want this, masamune. because… I love you.”

“i will love you when you are a still day… i will love you when you are a hurricane.”

#ikemen sengoku #ikesen #ikemen series #date masamune #ikemen sengoku x reader #ikesen masamune #date masamune x reader #ikemen sengoku imagines #ikemen sengoku headcanons #ikesen imagines #ikesen headcanons #floofy floof floof #OKAY but the feeling of tagging a REAL HISTORICAL FIGURE LFMAO #vi i blame u for all the bullshit im about to rain on this damn fandom LOL i havent played these games in YEARS i tell u #is this IC? IDK WHO KNO WHO CARE lol #i hope u liked it u_u #ALL CREDIT WHRE CREDIT IS DUE that last line comes from clementine von radics #i love her poetry pls go read it; this one comes from her collection called 'mouthful of forevers' its SO GOOD GO READ IT #doNT tease me with humans as metaphors for natural disasters man i will fucking GOBBLE that shit up #i love it almost as much as i love sky/star/sun/moon/ocean/general astronomy anaologies

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astraltrickster · 3 months

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Basically my big annoyance with fiction vs. reality Discourse(TM) is how the internet is so fucking full of people who are, uh...really on extremes.

You say "hey, guys, it's a good idea to be responsible with the messages you put out there, it's really easy to perpetuate unjust biases even if you only hold them subconsciously" and another person will go "YEAH! We need to BAN HANNIBAL because they'll start to think that CANNIBALISM is GOOD, it's TOTALLY that easy to reverse a taboo like that, people are stupid monkey-see-monkey-do beasts and must only see wholesome goodness!"

To which you can say "bruh, no, it is NOT that simple, this is Video Games Cause Violence all over again, that's been disproven time and time again, I'm talking about shit like racism and sexism, not kicking puppies, what in the Christian fundamentalist bullshit IS that argument?" and whoops out of the woodwork crawls a swarm of people to say "YEAH! Propaganda isn't real, the US military funds movies and video games for fun, and it's totally not racist of me to bash every character with skin darker than a brown paper bag because I just find every single one super annoying for SOME reason, it's just FICTION, bro!"

Alternately, you'll get people who are so fucking DEFENSIVE from people who are on absolute ground level that they'll see your "hey, guys, it's a good idea to be responsible with the messages you put out there" post and immediately go "oh, so what, you think people are just so stupid that if they look at furry art they'll start going out and fucking animals? What, do you want to ban The Lion King next?"

Or someone will see your "bruh fiction isn't fucking reality, taboos as ingrained as 'don't eat people' are NOT that easy to break" post and go "OH so you think we should be airing Birth of a Nation every day for every person ever because it's ~just a movie~? Wanna have a family friendly readalong of Mein Kampf?"

You can never, ever, ever win by just addressing one side of the equation, and if you try to address both, you'll STILL get people swarming all over it thinking their take on how your villain school AU fanfic means you're an evil degenerate who wants to blow up a daycare with a death ray FOR REAL, or how Top Gun is a harmless family fun time with absolutely no propagandistic messages included or intended, absolutely fits into that framework.

And so it goes on and on and on forever.

#fandom #media #radicalization by fandom #keeping the property values down #serious tag

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