#the artist community in the fandom right now is just so wonderful and its a joy to be in

[insufferablemod]

i love art, its just so cool i think its amazing how artists inspire each other and make each other want to make more art

#the artist community in the fandom right now is just so wonderful and its a joy to be in #like im shy af online but even just the casual lil tags and occasional replies just make me really happy #yall r really cool #it makes it really fun and exiting to make art #also thank you everyone for the really sweet tags on my newest pic >:´) #i was a bit worried itd be one of those times where u spend way 2 much time on a thing only for it to get like 5 notes lmao #rambles

[booksandabeer]

Stucky, Fandom Longevity, and "Primacy Bias"

There’s this post that's been floating around the past few days about how the Stucky fandom in its heyday produced fic and art masterpieces like they were all collectively possessed by an unprecedented spirit of creative insanity. It’s a good, fun post and I agree with the person who wrote it. (not rb'ing because I didn't want to hijack their post with something that's only tangentially related).

It was indeed a magical time and the creative output in both quantity and quality in the two-year period following the release of CA:TWS is—with perhaps a few exceptions—unmatched by anything that I’ve seen before and since. However, going through the notes on that post, I noticed something that left me a little irritated and quite frankly sad since it is in congruence with, and to a certain extent the confirmation of something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

For one thing, there are so many people in the notes expressing sentiments along the lines of “it was such a wonderful time; I wish I could go back; I miss these fics; I want to read these fics again,” etc., etc., you get it. And it feels a little silly pointing this out, but…you can just do that? Almost all of these fics are still right there, waiting for you to be (re)read. Yes, a lot of people left the fandom after The Great Devastation of 2019, but their stories didn’t just disappear. It's not like there is now a big, black hole where the Steve/Bucky tag used to be on AO3. So, if you miss these fics and you want to revisit them—just do it. Chances are the authors will be delighted that people are still finding and enjoying their stories all these years later. And—since apparently this needs saying, too, judging from the notes on that post: A lot of people seem to be very concerned with losing ‘coolness points’ for openly admitting that they still miss the ship and often feel tempted to dip their toes back into the Stucky pool. I don’t know how to tell you this, but if someone tries to shame you for simply enjoying or missing something, they are an asshole. Not to mention that all this is happening on tumble.com—'coolness' doesn't exactly live here. And that is a good thing, to be clear. Fandom is not about being cool. It’s about being as enthusiastic, as silly, as absolutely fucking unhinged about the things you love as you want to be. So, stop caring what other people think and enjoy yourself.

The other thing is that there seems to be a pretty widespread misconception that the Stucky fandom hasn’t produced any good fanworks after 2016.

First, that is patently and demonstrably untrue. There is so much incredibly good fanfiction and fanart still out there. Not as much as back in the day, sure, but it still exists. And more is being posted every day! Even some of the OG Big Names are still around. One of the most beloved Stucky series that started all the way back in 2014 was updated as recently as December of last year. The artist, who I believe the op is referring to as creating ‘baroque’ paintings, posted their latest Stucky art not even two months ago.

Second, I find this “primacy bias” more than just a little insulting to the many hardworking and incredibly talented people who are still putting their blood, sweat, and tears into creating for this community. And it’s one thing if people who have long left the fandom believe or say something like this, but it’s frankly irritating when I see people who are still very much active—and therefore definitely should know better—feed into that same false myth. Yes, it sucks that the Stucky ship isn’t as big as it used to be, but that doesn't mean there isn't any 'fresh talent' to be found anymore. I’m also not saying we shouldn’t still celebrate and recommend older works—I do it all the time! And it sure as hell doesn't mean everyone has to reblog absolutely everything all the time, either. Your blog, your rules.

But maybe we should put a little more focus on the good things, on the creators and the community we have now, especially if we want that community to still exist in another ten years. I mean, imagine you’re a person who’s just gotten into the fandom (because yes, there are indeed still new people discovering Stucky all the time) and one of the first things you’re being told is “eh, nice that you're here, but you’re about 7 years late; the big party is already over.” Does that seem like a fun space to hang out in to you?

So. Let’s all—and I do not exclude myself from this because God knows, I love to complain—spend a little less time mourning the ‘good old days’ that are never coming back anyway, and instead focus our attention on enjoying and appreciating both the incredible treasure chest of an archive we have AND the wealth of high-quality art and fic that is still being created by this wonderful community every single day. With this in mind:

🥳🎊Happy Stucky Week 2023!!! 🎊🥳

*I want to make it very clear that this is a general thing that’s been on my mind lately and that I’m trying to work through here—probably not very coherently. I'm not trying to tell anybody 'how to do fandom' and I’m most definitely not vagueposting about any particular incident, person, or group in this fandom. This isn’t a callout post. It’s an I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this and I don’t know what else do with them post.

#stucky #stucky fanfic #fandom culture #i once again have no idea what to tag this #fanfiction forever #fanart forever

[piosplayhouse]

Niche fandom happenings to take your mind after whatever stuffs happening in your fandom:

So as you can probably deduce, the model horse collecting hobby is made up mostly of older people. The hobby has been well established since the dawn of the Internet and I've talked a few times about how it's difficult to find some older resources about it/its history because of how every other link you click on which used to lead to a hobbyist artist's angelfire blog now is just a dead link or worse, bought out by some ad company sitting on the URL. Up until recently, a huge portion of hobby talk still relied on now-defunct Yahoo groups; now most have moved to either forums like Model Horse Blab or private Facebook groups. Individually most of these are pretty decentralized, but since model collecting by nature is a hobby that requires a significant amount of financial interaction (buying, trading, selling, commissioning, etc.), there has to be some kind of centralized marketplace for people to pitch their goods to as many corners of the hobby as possible.

Enter Model Horse Sales Pages (MH$P), a, well, site where people can post sales pages for model horses and accessories. It's an old fashioned sales pages site from the 2000s with a somewhat shitty layout but unparalleled detailed search functions-- to order things from a seller, you'd have to personally email them to negotiate for their listing. Though this seems somewhat inconvenient to our modern senses used to one click payments and speedy delivery, MH$P is undoubtedly a pillar of the model horse community.

... So that's why people are scrambling as it's allegedly been hacked and taken down for the foreseeable future. Worrying about personal information aside, now fans are left to wonder: what's the alternative? Well, the first one is of course eBay, which many hobbyists already use. However, eBay is obviously less catered to model horse hobbyists and is therefore a bit harder to search if you're deep in the hobby and can't be assed to look through 4000 "plastic horse" titled listings to find the 2008 SR glossy xX Devilish Girlfriend++ Thoroughbred you want. MH$P occupied a specific niche for long time fans looking for grails.

So what are our alternatives for people in the hobby looking to buy from others in the hobby? Well, there's a few decentralized official dealers like Chelsea's Model Horses or Triple Mountain who you can consign older models to, but going through a middleman takes time and you have much less freedom in your personal listings. Alternatively, you could go grassroots and post listings in Facebook groups and on forums, but those have reaches limited to the members of those specific, often small, groups, and it can be hard to move stock that way. So now people are looking for a backup marketplace platform, both for the current situation and longtime health of the hobby. But imagine my surprise when I went on Model Horse Blab and saw people suggesting an alternative site kickstarted by

STAR STABLE ONLINE YOUTUBER DENIS/DENISE WISESTORM. Denis has been a controversial figure in the SSO fandom (though there's pretty much no uncontroversial ssotubers especially on ssoblr because clickbaiting and weird reactionary takes are like the bread and butter of that side of the fandom) who's been called out for having some alt-right homophobic views in the past, as well as for his abject and unproductive negativity towards improvements made on the game. He's a lps customizer and pretty prolific breyer collector, though, so his drive to create a model trading and selling platform makes sense at least. But still! Why him!!!!!!

#breyer #ssoblr

[jpceye]

The Facade of Iron Circus Comics and Spike Trotman

I feel like this needs to get some more traction on social media…

#comicsbrokeme trended recently, with comics creators and artists telling horror stories of extreme low wages, cruel bosses, and the constant struggle to make ends meet.

One company, and one person came up in an alarming amount of posts… Iron Circus Comics and its founder, Spike Trotman.

What Trotman has been accused of is not just run of the mill mismanagement or low wages, though they are infamous about underpaying and missing payment dates. They will actively and precisely bully, berate, and mentally destroy creators working under them. Trotman uses their clout as an internet famous comics publisher to keep people in line, and a recurring threat that if creators ever spoke out, Spike would sic their fans on them.

If you ever wondered why so many creators from Slipshine and Iron Circus up and vanished, THIS IS WHY. Several artists and creators have said that Spike Trotman sapped them of their desire to make comics.

This is downright sociopathic behavior to be sure. But then one starts digging into Spike Trotman’s past, and there’s a lot of skeletons in the closet. Squee Rat and Darth Versace were their previous handles on the internet. Squee Rat may sound familiar to people who have heard of the ‘Burned Furs’ movement.

Burned Furs was a puritanical, homophobic, transphobic offshoot of the furry fandom, founded by Spike Trotman, who also wrote the ‘Furry Manifesto’, which outlined their goals of getting rid of pornography, degeneracy, and expression of sexuality in the furry community. They distributed pamphlets at cons encouraging ‘degenerates’ to kill themselves.

A very inconvenient past to have when your brand is leftist and sex positive. Spike very much knows this, and they have tried to scrub all evidence of their past as Squee Rat from wikis and articles about Burned Furs.

Right now, Spike is hoping that this all dies down. In fact, they just had a big party for the success of the Lackadaisy cartoon pilot.

Especially ironic given that Spike once encouraged people to eat one meal a day to make ends meet in the comics industry.

What you can do is make sure this reaches the eyes and ears it needs. Find the dissenting voices against Spike and Iron Circus, and boost them as much as you can.

They shouldn’t be able to hide behind this facade and continue to hurt people.

#discrimination #transphobia #homophobia #spike trotman #spiketrotman #iron circus comics #squee rat #squeerat #ironcircus #lackadaisy #smut peddler #slipshine #ironspike #darth versace #overworked #comics #puritanical #burned furs #burnedfurs #webcomic #furry #charla trotman #lackadaisy cats #party

[inkabelledesigns]

I know I'm posting a day late here, but Happy Birthday Bendy! February 10th, 2024 marks the 7 year anniversary of when Bendy and the Ink Machine came out. And boy, has it been a wild ride. Normally I would reserve this for my Bendy sideblog, @angelofthepage , but I'm posting it here because this is where I started years ago, and I want some of those people who don't see that blog to have a chance to see this. Because you guys are a part of this story.

In about three months, seven years ago, I was in finals hell, working through my process book for my packaging design class in one of the dorm lounges while my roommate had taken the room for herself again. And the only thing keeping me sane was putting Can't Be Erased and Build Our Machine on loop as I worked. BATIM only had two chapters out, and I didn't know everything about it, but I was so intrigued by what its deal was. I took one look at Sammy Lawrence and I wanted to know everything about him. Something about this barely started game, the idea of your characters coming to life to kill you, it thrilled me, intrigued me. It was something I was really afraid of, being so attached to my characters and putting so much of my identity in my art. And while the story isn't really all that much about cartoons themselves being alive, it gave me something else that ended up changing my life.

Over that summer, I would become obsessed, and for the first time in years, I let myself be a fangirl again. And maybe one day I'll pull up the timeline and tell you how it all went down. But right now, after all the celebrating of yesterday, I just wanna take a moment to appreciate the last seven years. All the people I've met, all the friends I've made. All the experiences we've had together, big and small. Some have been incredibly close, and others have been people I still smile about whenever I see them on my feed, even if we're not all doing stuff in the same fandom anymore. There's some people I've fallen out of touch with that I likely won't ever see again that I miss. There's some I'll be lucky if I never see again. There's the official voice actors for Dark Revival, which I've had the pleasure of working with on community things here in the fandom. I regularly moderate their livestreams (or Lovestreams as we call them) where they sign prints and interact with us fans (and sometimes I'm tech support, once an ink machine technician, always an ink machine technician xD). I'm honored to call a lot of them my friends, we've had some truly wonderful conversations. I've spent a lot of time in a variety of servers, trying to uplift people and make for a positive fandom experience for everyone, fans old and new. Sometimes it lands me in interesting places, like helping out over on the Inky News channel. The host, Brandon, invited me over to guest star on his anniversary stream yesterday, and in the past I've been fortunate enough to showcase my art on two of his interviews, one with Dave Rivas and one with Adrienne Kress. Sometimes it lands me on fun projects, like working on a fan game, and for the first time it's not as a voice actor! I'm a writer. I've had my work uplifted in turn too, meeting people who value me for me and also cheer me on when I try new things (sometimes entirely new mediums like doll customizing). I got my first helpful constructive critique in this fandom, and it was something I ASKED for. That is a huge personal milestone! I have a really complex and twisty set of feelings about critique, and finally, I feel better, because someone helped me start to unravel that just by being themselves and being thoughtful. It's inspired me to want to be better in how I handle critique and problem solving with others.

I spent so much of my life putting my self worth in other people's hands. I thought I would never be good enough to have friends who didn't treat me like garbage. I thought I'd never be a good artist in any sense of the word either. But I was wrong. I've grown. I'm valued, I'm wanted. I don't have to hide parts of myself to be desirable. Sometimes being the silly, goofy, fangirl that is Kat is enough. My art is enough, my ideas are enough, my flavor is tasty, and I am a goddamn treat. And after so many years of not knowing that, I'm glad I finally do. And it's all because of the people. It wasn't ever that my flavor was bad, it's that I hadn't found people with a taste for it yet. Bendy's greatest gift was giving me a fresh start, a chance to meet new people, good people, and for that, I'm forever grateful. Even though things have changed, I'm glad I met each and every one of you, you all taught me something valuable along the way, and I think about those experiences we shared often.

I won't lie to you, I've been rather frustrated with Bendy lately. And I think a lot of it has to do with the games not truly having grown with me. At some point our paths deviated, and there are elements of what's come and what's coming that are getting away from what really enticed me about the very first entry, the things I valued most in it. But in some ways, analyzing that has led me to figure out what made that first game so special. It was human. It was a character focused game, and each of the characters, while vague, gave us just enough about themselves that we could feel for them, get invested, imagine, maybe even sympathize. Everyone is a tragedy, but they're all different flavors of tragedy. And it was seeing people explore that, seeing people write these characters in ways that were so human, that really built a connection. For some people, Bendy is another indie horror experience. For others, it's something to indulge in that hits hard on a personal level. In many ways, it attracts a lot of us who feel like misfits. It's many things. But to me, the magic was in the people. The people in this universe, and the people in its real world community.

It has solidified my belief that people should play with fiction however they want, no matter how far it deviates from the canon, no matter how weird it is. Go be interpretive, go tell your story, go be free to make what speaks to you! (All I ask is that you're thoughtful about tagging it so people can make smart choices about engaging with it.) All stories are worth telling. Even if no one gets into it, having told it makes a difference.

Whether you're someone who's been there from the beginning, or someone that's new to Bendy, I hope you're all having fun. Whether you've finished exploring the world or you've just begun, I hope you've found something valuable. Thank you, for coming along for the ride. Here's to many more fun experiences and stories, be they official or be they in the fandom. Happy Bendyversary!

#long post #bendy and the ink machine #batim #bendyversary #personal thoughts #bendy

[niishi]

Hi. So I saw your posts about the x reader stuff, and I'm sorry that your having your time on Tumblr ruined by a community you aren't apart of. I know the tag feature has been an issue with a lot of people in tons of different communities.

But I am genuinely curious, because shouldn't this be something your more mad at the Tumblr tag function or just Tumblr in general for? Like I checked the posts you showed in the video, and both seem to be tagged fairly normally, and neither seemed spammed with tags. So wouldn't it be more productive to submit reports to Tumblr about the lack of the tag function reflecting your blocked/muted tags and creators?

As someone from the x reader side, I can assure you that we aren't doing this stuff maliciously, and I know I can speak for a lot of people on here when I say that we just want everyone to enjoy their time on the site. But taking the anger out on the creator when the fault really is with the site's tagging feature itself doesn't really solve anything.

Especially since this is an issue much bigger than just fanfiction side, as I know many artists try their best to tag their art with phobias that may trigger people in a particular piece, and how the tagging system is now, it's not really able to help as effectively as it should.

But anyways, again I'm sorry this is having a negative impact on your time here. I really do hope they get this stuff sorted out soon. And I highly recommend that you submit a report to possibly further help the push for a better tagging system.

I hope you have a wonderful day. ❤

Since 2012 when I started using Tumblr, it's always had issues with how it's functioned and how the tagging system has functioned. That's why it's userbase came together as a whole to do a damn good job at making sure things were tagged properly so people wouldn't have these issues with the tagging system (that has never once been perfect since the beginning of Tumblr and most likely never will be.) I'm specifically mad at x reader writers because they are the ONLY people who do not tag properly.

Example: don't tag x reader stuff with main fandom tags. Like instead of tagging it [character name] AND [ character name x reader], tag it with JUST [Character name x reader] instead of tagging it with [show name] AND [Show name x reader] tag it with JUST [Show name x reader]

That way, when I mute "show/character name x reader", it will actually mute it. The I can properly avoid it. But when you tag it with all the main fandom tags as well, it gets unmuted and I can no longer avoid it.

Also x reader writers will tag it with EVERY main fandom tags. Not just the characters they've wrote about, but every single strawhat. So I'm seeing usopp x reader in the Luffy tag.

Truly, this is less of "Tumblr tag system not working" and moreso "people not using the tag system properly and ruining its purpose". If I tagged every single dog I saw with cat tags, it would show up in all the cat tags. So when people search cats, all they'll get is dogs. Not that they hate dogs, but it's NOT what they're looking for. And just because I want everyone to see dogs, doesn't mean I should force them to.

Tumblr doesn't use an AI to auto tag things and sort them properly. It uses it's userbase to do that. If it's userbase isn't using it right, it doesn't work.

I am 1000000% blaming x reader writers. Every single fandom has this issue. Ive seen multiple viral posts complaining about this NOT just from the one piece fandom. It's inconsiderate, and rude, and ruins many peoples tag pages, fyps, AND dashes.

It's not my responsibility to fix an issue I didn't create. All it would take is for this one group of people to stop accosting everyone and start using the tag system as it was intended. This is the first time in my 12yrs on this site where it's been an issue. And it's because none of these writers tag correctly. Simple as that. Tumblr can't stop "dog" from being sorted into the "cat" tag if everyone is tagging dogs as cats.

Also it's not an accident or simply forgetting. It's intentional. And it shouldn't be bc it ruins everyone else's experience.

#x reader #one piece x reader #zoro x reader #sanji x reader #luffy x reader #law x reader #shanks x reader #nami x reader #sorry im just tagging this improperly so it will go into the x reader tag and maybe yall will fix this issue #no one likes it #only ppl who want to see this stuff aren't bothered #everyone else literally is #i dont have any negative feelings towards this kind of writing #i have an issue with not being able to use my blog at all bc yall dont know how to tag #thanks for being nice and all anon #i appreciate it #but i am so beyond frustrated and done with this scenario #x reader writers just need to learn how to coexist with everyone else #like literally everyone else does #anon #anonymous ask #ask

[jakexneytiri]

I saw the unpleasant asks you got for talking about how wrong those "rp accounts" were acting. I'm sorry about that. I was one of the people who interacted with them and to be honest, I had a bad feeling from the start but I was like "Ok let's see what this is about" but soon enough they started to show very disrespectful behaviours towards me and other girls, stuff so icky I don't even wanna describe but it's out there to be seen anways, so I decided to stop interacting. I was like "maybe it's just my trust issues" but no. Thank u for your post because you validated my feelings and intuition and I realized that yes, unfortunately, many people online are so in so much need of love and attention that they don't care or don't even see that account was *beyond* just a "darker" version of Neteyam - I hated how cocky that person portrayed Teyam as, from the beginning, if I'm being honest. I just chose to not listen to my reason which was stupid lol. I wanted to post something like eywaite did (I think that's the username. I apologize if it's the wrong person. My memory sucks.) but I didn't wanna maybe be misunderstood by people n accidentally start any more chaos in a fandom that was once so wonderful n magical n now its just honestly a very heavy place to be in :( I might not agree with everyone here and that's completely normal, it's the human experience, and there might be many people here who do not agree with me on many things BUT all I want for this fandom is peace and unity, for us to become a nice community to be in, again, if possible. People have free will and it takes almost everyone to cooperate for that to happen. Anyways. Thank you again for standing up for the right thing. I hope you have a good day/night 🤍

it’s all good! i just think people need to use their judgement on a platform like this, especially since we didn’t/still don’t really know anything about the people behind the accounts. if your happiness is being dictated by conversing with a stranger pretending to be a fictional character, you need to go and find something that makes you happy irl. that shouldn’t be the case. rp is supposed to be between someone you know and trust. if you want to do it but don’t know someone personally, there’s a shit ton of bots out there! have at it!

i get people are trying to hold on to neteyam, but at what point will we look ourselves in the mirror and realise he’s not coming back. maybe in flashbacks but for real, when will we realise it’s time to move on.

and for the people complaining about the fandom not being “active”, it very much is. you’re just not looking in the right places if you think that’s the case. and if you’re concerned about the fandom dying, then be sure to reach out to your favourite writers/artists and just check in!! tell them how much you love ___ ! send them an inbox! keep the interactions going. if you simply like someone’s post and don’t interact with it, and then you wonder why that person doesn’t post as much anymore, you have your answer.

i hope you also have a good day/night ☀️🌙

#dani’s inbox 📥

[softlyspector]

yeah, I have to say - "fandom" on tumblr is really making it hard to feel good about writing (well — creating generally, but writing especially it feels like). I stopped writing reader fics last year because there was no engagement and it didn't take too long before I got asked if I would ever write again, but then when I did finally post a fic again, nothing.

People just don't understand or respect fic writers any more, and I am so tired of seeing so many mutuals and friends get burned out of writing when it's their safe place and escape, all because of how isolated yet demanding fandom feels anymore. It's utterly ridiculous.

Anyway, I hope things look up for you Becca, you deserve all the most wonderful things in the world 💜✨

Hi, Nym 💕 I think there's been a drastic change in fandom in the last couple of years. Like, maybe I'm wrong, but I think especially in the last few years, fandom in general has kind of been brought into the mainstream and normalized, which is good, no one should be ashamed of writing or reading fic, of making fan art, etc. But with it, I think some of the understanding of what it means to be apart of a community has gotten watered down or lost altogether. Like, you cannot consume and consume and consume and never give anything in return and be surprised when there's nothing and no one left.

Like, everything is commodified now, everything is for sale. So how much can something be wroth if it's free? If someone is doing all this labor for free, then it must not be very valuable right? Especially, with this content, influencer, mindset everyone seems to have.

And it's just...it's not even labor. I'm not sharing some job with you, I am sharing love!!! We love the same thing, so much that I wrote like a billion words about it!!! Don't you want to write a billion words about it too, can't we scream about it together??

I don't know if I'm making any sense, but it really does feel like artists, writers, creatives in general are being, well, used a lot of the time. We give our souls away, our hearts, and because its free, it isn't worth anything, it's not worth returning anything to.

#bec talks #theres also like a right way to talk about things now??? and there's something so soulless about that

[twilightguardian]

New review from Lilith Fairen where I really begin to wonder if she has reading comprehension so poor that I should feel guilty for being harsh to someone with a mental disability. The lack of fundamental comprehension is that bad.

Either that or she does this on purpose because like CanonSeeker, she thinks that "criticizing the critics" aka bullying, is a sane thing to do.

But of course Lilith doesn't comprehend the first thing about criticism because it has to come from some sort of intellectual place. But she doesn't do that. She's just hating because she hates Celtic Phoenix/Raymond, and not for anything that he's done, but because he's a fan of a show she dislikes: Madoka Magica. She is peak petty and childish.

Where as most so-called "capital C Critics" and "RWDE" are genuine fans of RWBY and look at it through this lens of being a fan, Lilith is not a fan of FRWBY. She doesn't understand the point of it, doesn't comprehend it. It's rather sad considering she's a writer and should know how writing works, and that it can involve editing. Someone who is more artistically inclined takes their criticism to an artistic level, but she doesn't understand this.

Anyway, by now it's clear that I'm not really responding to Lilith or any of her pathetic ilk because they're going to keep doing this no matter what. My goal isn't to communicate with those who have gouged out their ears in order to keep hating. My goal is to make sure anyone who talks about Fixing RWBY and becomes curious about it will see how Lilith and people like her twist things around to lie about a fan project done out of passion, telling people its done out of spite because people like her cannot stand it when people are more successful and popular than her. Especially if it's a man, doubly so a Madoka Magica fan.

You have an illness. You are mentally obligated to make yourself unhappy. Dislike FRWBY all you want, but no one is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to watch a fan video. Having gone through all the saved logs of your previous tumblr, I know for a fact that you have a visceral need to be unhappy. You can't help yourself. Seek therapy or at the very least unplug your internet. Go outside, breathe some fresh air. The internet has obviously not been good for you.

Mistral is canonically meant to be based on Asia. How dare the worldbuilding actually reflect that. No, it should be more Western or else you're fetishizing. Because erasing other cultures from existence for no reason is totally a logical route to take, right? Absolutely bonkers insane fucking logic. This woman is stupid or racist. Pick your poison.

Also keep in mind the only fandom Lilith regularly partakes in is still a Japanese anime. It's fundamentally Asian. All the characters are Japanese and they likely partake in Japanese culture. You write stories based on these characters I guess you're automatically "fetishizing" Asian culture. That is Lilith's twisted ass logic.

Lilith wouldn't know what a good reason was if it slapped her in the face and stole all of her possessions.

Plot isn't the only important thing to the story, and as a writer I'd HOPE that Lilith knows this, but unfortunately it seems not. That doesn't bode well for her story, which I've been struggling to get past the first twenty or so paragraphs.

Essentially what she's complaining about is the fact that characters take some time to actually be people. We get time for the characters to breathe, but more importantly for character relationships and dynamics to be established, enforced, reinforced and enhanced. But no, it's not plot, so it's not important. No wonder she likes the canon show, which neglects this. If she does this with Glints Saga as well, I can't see many people actually caring about the characters or the romance she's so interested in writing for in the first story. Then again, I'm sure she's perfectly fine with it if it's in something like Precure. Though she only seems to like a la mode.

Look at how the logic here doesn't follow. The girls are aided a little bit by their companions which means they aren't protagonists.

Apparently according to Lilith a protagonist is someone who doesn't get assistance from anyone ever, who doesn't interact with anyone. Effectively what Lilith wants is a mary sue protagonist, which canon RWBY never was nor will Fixing RWBY Team RWBY ever be. Plus the girls in canon get help from other characters all the time, and rarely do anything for themselves unless Jaune brings up an idea first and if they do it's after sitting around a whole lot and the only thing they manage to accomplish is getting a lot of things destroyed and people killed.

Raymond also hates the female protagonists so much that he makes them more active characters in their own story than canon. Because he hates them. Makes perfect sense.

Lilith once again showing she knows nothing about anything. Changing the location of a scene from a train station to a festival and expanding upon it isn't padding. Unless Lilith is actually a critic after all. She's using Fixing RWBY as a way to critique the canon show but hide it behind the guise of hating on a "critic" so she doesn't lose her friend group. Because heck knows she doesn't have friends anywhere else from the look of it.

She doesn't understand what padding is in a story. Padding is useless fluff that adds nothing to a story. If there are important character dynamics going on, and worldbuilding being shown through the setting, it's not padding. Simple as.

Raymond's writing of Madoka fanfiction has nothing to do with this. Lilith is trying to label Raymond a pedophile, I suppose, which is incredibly cunty behaviour. Salem is canonically 16 during the setting of The Lost Fables and yet her design makes her look like she'd fit in with the cast of Grease. Making a 16 year old actually LOOK like a 16 year old isn't gross, Lilith. Grow the fuck up, I implore you.

This is what happens when you only scroll through the video. Neo, Ruby, Yang, Weiss, Roman and Qrow are all framing devices. Neo just happened to be the first one, followed by Yang. But she wouldn't know that because she doesn't pay attention. Her goal, despite calling Fixing RWBY a "spitefic" is to act spiteful and to lie and be a massive bitch in service of defending a show that she barely cares about and likely wouldn't if it hadn't been for hearing through the grapevine that RWBY had a massive "hatedom".

Also really telling how obsessed Lilith is with the idea of subservience. I'd think she's projecting quite a bit. Just like how obsessed she is with complaining about Fixing's Shiloh or Roman. Raymond lives in her head rent free.

Ahh. So she does know that Neo isn't the only framing device used. Love that she implied that but then had to admit that's not true. It didn't even take her a full paragraph to admit she lied.

You can dislike the framing device all you want, but it's more engaging than what canon did. It also wasn't pointless, and her saying that it was doesn't make it true. The point of it was to show that these are stories that the girls know, possibly modified over the millennia, to show that these stories are all interconnected. These are fairy tales of Remnant, but also those fairy tales weren't the whole truth. Lilith can't comprehend anything unless it's directly spelled out to her, and she admits it by calling it confusing. If it requires her to rev up a braincell, it's too confusing. Just sit back and consume product, that's how you watch RWBY, this is bad because it makes you think!

She doesn't want to summarize the rest of it because it's actually good and that ruins her narrative lol

Yes, I repeat, a child didn't look like a child. It's like those really cheap 80's movies where a 14 year old is played by a 38 year old. Yes, I totally believe you're a high school student, sir.

It's apparently wrong to want Salem to look as old as Ruby was during volume 1. Because she looks like she's 30. She looks no different than she is now when you take off the special effects. She looked no different in age than when she had children, which is unfortunate.

lmao she's mad

Like what does she want? This isn't an AU or a full rewrite. It's a reconstruction project with the goal in mind to show how RWBY could be a lot better with a couple of little tweaks and changes. Like I said earlier, what Raymond is doing is essentially developmental editing. He's not the author so he's not going to do any major changes to the story. Ozpin still has a host at the end of the day. Vernal was still a little servant of Raven and died. These preserve the overall plot beats of the stories while being different, but there's nothing that fundamentally changes by design. That's on purpose.

There's a difference between hating or being frustrated with aspects of a show and hating the entire thing. Raymond falls into the former camp. He likes RWBY. Doesn't mean he can't have problems with it. That's too much for some people's little pea brains to understand and that's very unfortunate. It creates unnecessary division and toxicity in the fandom than there should or really needs to be.

Some people have this revulsion to others actually wanting to engage with their fandoms in ways those people don't like and have this sense of entitlement to the fandom and what goes on in them. It's a disturbing trend, especially with those that have a problem with discourse and critique. Some think that any kind of fandom engagement that isn't wholly, unquestioningly positive is automatically hate and that's disturbing.

It's really not. Raymond has only watched the first episode and he disliked it, though couldn't put his finger on why. This has nothing to do with that spinoff, and I have no idea why Lilith would think that. The episode was recontextualizing a bunch of fairy tales in Remnant's world that everyone would have known.

Raymond has said a few times that he doesn't want to touch Fairy Tales of Remnant because he has no interest in it at all, so there would be no sense for him to do it in episodes 6&7 of all things.

It's commendable that Lilith is trying very hard to use that dusty old thing in her head, but she's still got a ways to go. Her logic doesn't follow, the speculation that she has doesn't come from anywhere and has no follow through.

She loves repeating herself, doesn't she? Girl, this isn't twitter. Saying things over and over and over doesn't make it more true.

Just because you can't comprehend why something was done doesn't necessarily make it bad lol

Also can't say that I've really come across anyone except for Lilith who says it's disorienting, which leads me to the conclusion that until further evidence of someone who isn't an "anti-Critic" says the framing device was confusing, that it's said deliberately to have something to complain about, because otherwise, there would be nothing to complain about. She's already struggling so much with this review because she knows it wasn't that bad so she has to look for things. I am so happy that Lilith is so boringly predictable that I said hours before her 'review' came out that she was going to focus on Neo being the first in line for the framing of the story.

What's telling about it, Lilith? The point of words is to actually have meaning behind what is being said.

She says the emphasis isn't on Team RWBY, but they take up the majority of the transitions.

Neo to Young Yang, Adult Yang to Young Blake to Adult Blake, Young Weiss to Adult Weiss, Young Ruby to Adult Ruby to Teen Qrow to Adult Qrow then finally to Young Roman. So she's not even correct that Qrow ends the section. Neo and Roman bookend the segment, but the meat of the segment is taken up by Team RWBY+Q.

Now, could he have started with a member of Team RWBY? Sure, definitely. But if you look at the bolded names you'll notice a pattern.

1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6

The bookends get the first and last, but the middle portions get double focus. It balances out.

Only Ruby's weapon is damaged, but it's presumed to still be able to fight in gun form. She just cannot transform it into a scythe. He said nothing about Blake's weapon, Yang's weapon, Weiss' weapon or any other weapon. Not only are none of the other characters are impacted due to their weapons. Yang and Neo are injured. Blake, Weiss and even Ruby are still readying to fight.

Also really ironic she's so bent out of shape that she thinks FRWBY doesn't have the main characters do anything when canon doesn't allow them to do much, either. Why aren't you complaining about that, Lil? Could it be that she doesn't actually care? She just has such a hateboner for Raymond because he likes Madoka.

Raymond has never insisted that everything about RWBY is 'horrible and terrible'. It's heavily flawed, and frustratingly so. Raymond has consistently been the more positive person of his reaction friend group over the years, often saying he likes many things of the show. But Lilith doesn't know this because unlike me, who tried to understand Lilith before speaking about her, she's only seen his skits and videos specifically for Fixing RWBY. She knows nothing about him, and thinks nothing of trying to pin every terrible thing she can think of onto him, from pedophile to racist.

Lilith doesn't understand the concept of deep editing. Not anything beyond the basics of spelling, grammar and maybe attempting to change a few minor points around. Comparing the beginning to her older draft of Glints Saga: Papillon to her newer version, she doesn't do much significant to change it.

Don't get me wrong, it's BETTER than the older version, but that's not saying much. Lilith is too precious with her story to do something like what Raymond is doing: a developmental edit, a large edit that might change a lot of things but make the overall story better.

And Matrixdragon decided to chime in as well.

Yang is trying to stave off hypothermia with Neo. She can probably move, but it wouldn't be the best thing for her. But like I said above, Yang's weapons are not damaged.

I think this is actually a fair criticism, and one I've seen a little bit with other people. To each their own, really. It's not like RWBY didn't try and do the same thing with Volume 1 and the whole background NPCs, keeping the events isolated to a small group of important characters. What Raymond is doing here is cutting out background characters that don't need to be there and can be filled with other ones, ones that can lead to better character dynamics and interactions than if they were strangers. Some people are going to like that, and some people won't, and that's fine. It's certainly not unique to FRWBY and no one else complains when coincidences for story happen in any other franchise, though. So it's a little eyerolling when it's suddenly a problem because a fan did it for a fixit fic.

Do old ladies have a stereotype of being curious? Maria didn't wander into the middle of a battle zone during her first introduction in canon, either, so what's your point? The whole train was being attacked so it wouldn't matter where she'd go she'd still be in the middle of a battle zone. We know from context that she's a former huntress but it makes no sense otherwise why she'd wander in other than to have a contrivance that she's there, which makes the contrivance more noticeable. We don't even learn that she can still fight until late into the Atlas arc.

At least with Fixing RWBY's new introduction of Maria, she is shown off the bat to be a capable fighter and we know right away that she likely came to the area to help fight. That makes the contrivance more understandable as a reason why she'd be there. She's a character that got a lot of focus in canon even if she just walked past the camera because she has a highly unique character design, so it's not a secret she's going to be important, and some people even rightly pointed out she was likely a silver-eyed warrior due to how they framed the opening to the anime.

The characters don't trust Roman. Blake certainly doesn't. But they acknowledge he's in this with them for better or worse and now they're all stranded together, so there wouldn't be any point in lying to everyone.

Yang is not someone I would call 'mature' in canon. Being an angry little sourpuss when things don't go her way or someone challenges them is not what anyone would consider mature.

It's also not that Yang is unwilling to give Blake a chance, either. She hasn't completely forgiven Blake for what she'd done, and Yang is under no obligations to forgive her, either. Forgiving someone has nothing to do with maturity, and the fact that this seems to imply you think so is unsettling. It means that someone cannot have feelings about something traumatic that happened, and the more 'adult' thing to do would be to just get over it. Things like this don't resolve overnight. They take time, and before Yang and Blake can become a proper couple, they need to properly work things out, not sidestep the issue and pretend like nothing's wrong until there might be, then step on eggshells around each other, wondering if the other is mad at them for no reason.

I don't think Adam gave a shit about being detected. It's not like he was trying to ninja his way through the train car. It also wasn't just Cardin he had to deal with, but Qrow and Russel at the same time. I honestly don't remember whether Cardin was a competent fighter in canon, but we know he was at least tactical and not an idiot. So 'the likes of Cardin' only means someone thinks he's an incompetent fighter because he's a bully. But Cardin in Fixing isn't like Cardin in canon. He was more competent in the scenes where he fought and he likely became stronger during aftermath of Beacon.

The only ones being spiteful around here are you two. It's seriously pathetic.

#rwby #rwde #fixing rwby #frwby #lilith fairen #matrixdragon

[autismvampyre]

https://www.tumblr.com/autismvampyre/741462958593441792/hate-how-its-practically-impossible-to-find-anti?source=share

I saw this post and I couldn't agree more and Im asking anonymously cause I don't want to get judgement and stuff and I know this is going to sound a little dumb but I'm having a crisis about like. Whether or not I should support Taylor anymore like. Im going for the eras tour soon and I'm obviously really really excited but I've been seeing more and more anti swiftie media and it all really makes sense. Your blog was like the only anti swiftie one that didn't say all swifties deserve to die lol (at least from what I could find) but I just wanted to know if you have any advice on like letting go of the music in a way. I love her music, and one of the reasons I'm really scared to let go is that my childhood best friend and I share so many precious memories over her music and I don't want to disappoint her in a way by not listening anymore and her music helped me through really really hard times, which feels kind of dumb to say cause I'm 15, but like it's always really helped me and I don't know if I can or if I want to let go but at the same time I'm huge on ethics and a big part of my life has always been helping people and empathizing, and I just don't know if I want to support an artist who can't seem to publicly do that. Idk I was just wondering if you had advice? Thank you so much :)

P.s. feel free to ignore this ik it's loaded and not related to your blog entirely

hey! thanks for the ask. i wanted to respond to this before i forgot so this might be rushed but i hope i can still help.

i get your dilemma, i really do. i like her music a lot and one of the worst things about the anti swiftie community is how much it relies on the "her music sucks" card. its lazy and just personal taste, and i absolutely hate the puritanical idea that if you enjoy a single taylor song you are in some way morally lesser. people like what they like, and i think it's completely fine to enjoy her music because that isn't really an ethical concern

you can separate the art from the artist. its fine to do so. you shouldn't force yourself to stop listening to music you like unless you feel thats right for you. im very critical of taylor but i still occasionally listen to her music because there are a lot of memories attached to it and those memories are precious to me. art can make you feel so much, and you're not dumb for feeling comforted by it.

i dont think you have to let go of her music unless you want to. i believe the most important thing is to let go of the idea of taylor as a brand. people tend to get attached to her due to clever marketing; to a lot of people she's their friend and they feel very protective over her for that. taylor thrives off the parasocial relationship of her fandom which is financially beneficial to her. the most important thing to remember is that she is a billionaire with more money than you could ever imagine and it is impossible to get that rich without fucking over the poor. the image of taylor in the media is not real, she isn't the girl next door, she isn't your friend, she's an ultra rich celebrity who gets richer by pretending to be your buddy. once you've realized that, you're pretty much done

now, i definitely wouldn't recommend financially supporting her. if you're going to the eras tour don't go alone, be safe, wear earplugs(seriously this one is so important you dont want tinnitus believe me). i know there are a lot of different factors and ethics about the shows but as someone who a) hates live music cause im autistic and just end up overstimulated and b) was never in a financial situation where i could or even would buy eras tickets i feel very under qualified to tackle any of that so i'd recommend talking to someone else who knows about that.

to end, i'll just say piracy isn't theft if buying isn't owning snd there are guides out there so you can listen without paying her dime. sorry if this was incoherent, i am tired. have a good rest of your day/night/whatever time it is and please take care

#asks #nydias post #anti taylor swift #anti swifties #you can always send me another ask of message if you have more questions

[dumbassprotagonist]

It's me, fucker.

2/11/18

Please, if you are not Bethany, don't read this. Or do I actually don't care that much.

Hey its me; you. But 5 years ago. Yes, this is 13 year old little fetus Bethany DeVito. I guess I'll start by refreshing your memory about what life was like back in the day. The latest events:

-people are eating tide pods. Yup.

- you realized only a few days ago that you are not bi, but a pure, 100% gay

- you still have those round glasses

-your ceiling currently has the northern hemisphere mapped out on it in glowing starts. It's pretty sick

-You're a fUCKING NERD but what's new

-you haven't moved in with dad just yet, but the custody battle will probably start soon. Mom still has no idea

-You're sons' first birthdays are next month

-ereri is life

- you cut that mole off two nights ago. Yup, that one.

- you got this idea from and Dan and Phil video

-as you type this, you are sick and want to fucking die

- you currently want to be a chemical engineer

- kaileigh still likes you

-You're in advanced art (and drawing Danny Devito as a project)

-Depression, Anxiety, and possible bpd. But the list goes on

-watsky.

-honestly you can go fuck yourself sideways with a stapler because you really are a little shit

-i don't care what you say, I am kin with waluigi

And that's the extent to which I'm willing to shower you in nostalgia that you never asked for. But now, it's time for you to answer some questions:

-do you eat anything but ramen?

-have you ever had a girlfriend? Do you have one now? Probably not but can't blame me for trying

-What fandom are you obsessed with right now? I know there's at least one

-are you still in marching band?

-did you make any new friends? Tbh probably not but whatever

-have the furries infiltrated the lgbt community yet? They've been trying for a while

-What's the deal with transracialism?

-have you come out to your parents yet?

-What's your favorite color right now?

-if you could give 13 year old you any advice right now, what would it be?

-how did WWIII go? I have to assume Trump started it

- what are your plans for college? Right now you want to go to MIT, even though you know it will never happen.

- is kaileigh still your best friend? Low-key wondering if she's still alive

-are your eyebrows still poppin?

-is gary the lemom still a very sour man?

-What's your relationship with your mom and Madeline?

-do you consider yourself Christian?

-read any great books lately? Describe them

-are you still a little sadistic fuck?

-are you still on prozac? Do you still get fucked up dreams?

-are you mentally stable yet because it's starting to get on my nerves

- is there any new slang that didn't exist in 2018?

-do you know any other languages?

- what is the most advanced piece of technology right now?

-did you ever find out your iq?

-anything new discovered about space?

-who was your first kiss?

- kaileigh asks: "Who’s the most important influence on you currently?"

-What's your cringiest moment so far?

-are you still into mbti?

-have you improved at all as an artist?

-did that mole grow back?

-have you gotten any better at taking care of yourself?

-any new mental illnesses to add to the collection?

-how was the ending of attack on titan?

-have you lost your virginity yet? Come on you're 18 Jesus christ

- What was it like being a mellophone section leader?

-did you ever take up piano again?

-do you finally have boobs? Please say you have at least a B.

-has your life become even remotely satisfying in these past five years? Hopefully.

I can't come up with any more questions at the moment. Hope you have a moderately successful adult life. Don't to drugs, always use peotection, and never pull out anal beads like you're revving a lawnmower. Peace, my good bitch. 👌

[onewomancitadel]

I was thinking (as you do) about the radical disparity between 'what the text is saying' and the way people in fandom interpret something. I've seen some people put forward fallacies such as the majority position is probably correct anyway (not true for 'finished' canon, certainly) or softer approaches which are sort of like, well ultimately a text is transformed in interpretation, and whatever fandom is thinking is more relevant. The first part of that assertion is not something I disagree with at all (transformation of text at the point of interpretation) but the conclusions drawn there tend to be pretty absurd, because delineating that point of transformation... is the point.

But it's also sort of distressing from the perspective of like, how is your artistic idea supposed to be heard? Do you even have a right to be offended? If you're in fandom surrounded by people who believe one thing, what defense do you have for believing another? I think it is grossly ignorant to not respect the fact that no matter how justified your position is, if the majority believe a completely different thing from you (that even makes you feel a bit crazy), it can be pretty disillusioning. For me personally, I avoid many fandoms for this very reason. I think that a lot of people who find fandom unpleasant in general (who are interested in text/literature/media) probably find it unpleasant for these reasons as well because fandom ends up so inoculated in its own opinions and echo chambers where mainstream opinion rules which is sometimes honestly - well - very silly. Even in fandoms of media which ostensibly requires a closer reading, there is the presence of orthodox and unorthodox opinion sometimes and often entirely counter to the text. Maybe you might say this is just a product of anything bordering on institution, which fandom online does emulate to a degree, as opposed to community, and maybe you might go even further to say that there is a real purpose to orthodox and by virtue unorthodox opinions. I do kind of believe that, and if I didn't I probably wouldn't be posting.

The position that art is reflective if not revealing is arguably the more tenable one. This is why I find the idea that art/media/literature ought to be morally responsible and convey the correct ideas we want individuals to cultivate in society overly naïve, mostly because I don't think that's how people interact with art at all. But that it may reflect or reveal already present attitudes at the point of interpretation, irrespective of the intent of the original text, basically explains where such a gulf emerges. When it comes to interactivity with community like fandom proper or other platforms of discourse, when you're talking about the thing, you're also evolving or interrogating your own position about the text as well as what you're bringing to the table. I don't really want to bring in another topic whilst I'm in the middle of another one, but that is where I think so-called 'problematic' media really flourishes and justifies itself. That being said, my focus here is not on the politics of fandom, but the hegemony of fandom belief. Now, certainly you can say modern Internet platforms contribute to it, and I've written about that before: people repeat and regurgitate whatever opinion currently passes as the most coolest, and that happens more swiftly online. I've interacted with people who haven't even seen the relevant volumes of R/WBY I'm discussing putting forth a thesis about the show being bad or having done something else, obviously because of what someone else has already told them. Pretty dangerous if you ask me. Maybe just don't speak on stuff you don't have material understanding of?

At a certain point, you do start wondering if everybody believes Opinion A, maybe Opinion A is true after all. The reason why I don't think this is true is because many different people are interacting with the story for many different reasons, and really the more interesting idea (and the one I tend to return to) is, well, what can you identify as motivating factors for Opinion A when it seems countertextual? Then you start psychoanalysing people you really have no business psychonanalysing. The real thesis of this post is just to return to that idea of a reflective text. It's out of your control (and it's especially out of the storyteller's control) but the intention should never be to make sure everybody leaves with the right message. If it's reflecting or revealing it's already doing something right, I think. This is where things like fanservice, storytelling as an amusement park ride, etc. really falter because it does presume a concrete conclusion about 'what people want to see' and what they ought to take away from it, even if it's a rather banal conclusion. Particularly because it doesn't feel like fanservice to me. It's not enjoyable to me. The idea that there is a fan who can be made happy with little teasing scraps and nods - in the case of R/WBY - embarrassed lampshading and 'self-awareness' is so profoundly stupid.

But when you get disillusioned it can sometimes be helpful to remember that at that point of reflection/reveal, it has a lot less to do with the text than it does with the baggage people approach a story with. Now, that in itself can perhaps be disillusioning (though sometimes you do have to appreciate that people engaging with the unreal are not viewing it through the lense of reality, meaning their conclusions might be far-off from real opinions; everybody's a utilitarian until they're actually in a scenario testing their moral ethics - that's the intended farce of the trolley problem) but on the other hand, I think for someone trying to figure out what a story is doing, it's not a good reason to discard other peoples' opinions - I'd not suggest that - but it is, however, a good reason to not fall prey to majority belief.

Some stories are even interesting priming the audience for one thing to treat them with another, and sometimes, yeah, that point of departure is intended. So I don't think I would ever suggest that everybody by necessity is required to be on the right page (even if rewarding that is joyful), and I don't think a point of departure is a failure. That is a previous topic I have also written about where personal insult is taken away from the classic plot twist or the entire point of narrative change, which is not in itself a modern phenomenon at all, but maybe worsened, again, by online discourse.

I definitely don't intend this post to come across as patting myself on the back: I think I'm in a pretty fraught position as it is (when it comes to textual assertions with R/WBY), and really all I'm trying to do here is sort out my frustration with assertions put forth in other fandoms I've lurked in that 'the majority rules' - and there's some implication of this in the R/WBY fandom too. I think about these things because I'm very classically someone who thrives off of fandom as a hobby. When fandom is predicated upon something like community, and you want that interactivity with a text, how are you supposed to cultivate that if it's almost by design explicitly hostile to that? Even the debate guys of the R/WBY fandom all hold pretty interchangeable and indistinguishable opinions coming from fundamentally similar angles, so it's not like their culture of constant challenge and 'criticism' actually stokes anything textually meaningful, and they tend to love their orthodoxy just as much. But then it's not like hugboxes are particularly nice either. So in a way, I think the idea of 'fandom' is untenable in some sense: really you are trying to find interesting people who have interesting things to say, who will hear you out, and that tends to happen at a personal level. A lot of popular posts go around saying 'my fandom is me and my five friends'.

And yes, I was thinking about this idea because of those posts I wrote recently about the complete failure of understanding Cinder in the fandom/fanon reception of her, and whether anything I say in response to that is worth something substantially, or if that actually says something about her canon character I ought to consider. I think that, like I have gestured to with the popularity of the 'feral woman' archetype on Tumblr, or 'femme fatale' in other circles which goes back a long way in pop culture, it is truly a matter of reflection. Maybe there is something to learn there and maybe there isn't. But overall I do think this approach is much more stable when it comes to understanding why fandom tends to believe the things it does (and no, the silly shippers are not the only ones responsible: I would put the fault of this as squarely at the feet of the dispassionate nonshipper who argues about powerlevels of characters like it's a video game).

#stirring the pot

[iapetusneume]

A few Twitter thoughts

It took me awhile to figure out what the Twitter Fallout reminded me of, in some way. I was thinking about when Game of Thrones TV caught up to the books, and the huge reactions I was seeing to the drop in story quality. When Navona and I were talking about it, we were like "ah yes, the classic problem of catching up to the canon." See, we're both seasoned anime/manga nerds. We've seen this happen so many times. But so many people who were watching GoT were not familiar with this phenomenon. Seeing their first time reaction to this, as well as it on such a giant scale, was baffling at first.

Twitter's Fallout is watching a fan community dying, but on a massive scale. Its not just fandom, but there's a lot of fandom there.

I take delight in watching Eli Lily's stock crash because of trolls. I cackle with glee at Chiquita Banana and Nestlé doing damage control over people posting the true things they've done.

The security risks to people aren't great, though. Neither are people losing their jobs.

But my heart mostly goes out to fandom. I am 37, and I've seen this happen before. I remember when LiveJournal fell apart, and we scattered to the winds. Some people came to Tumblr with me. Some went to Twitter, and I quickly realized I couldn't juggle multiple apps. I couldn't do more than one fannish space at once. And, I've lost contact with a lot of people.

Some eventually found me. They sent me an ask because they had a different handle. And that was wonderful and exciting, and they're still here! We've been following each other in one way or another for over 15 years! But we have so many friends that are just... gone.

Fandoms change. I'm not active in that fandom, anymore. But there was still some of that sort of thing on LJ. People would move on, but you still followed each other. I originally followed almost everyone I do on Tumblr because of a fandom I dont really participate in anymore. And I'm so glad to still have my friends still here.

And then there was the whole thing where artists were run off of Tumblr because of the NSFW image policy.

There were a lot of things wrong about Twitter before Elon Musk bought it. But I can respect the fandom need to carve out a place in something existing. So many things aren't a perfect fit. Some sites are just going to be easier to use for some people than others. And, the biggest thing: where are your friends? Of course you'll be where your friends are.

Becoming unmoored is a terrible feeling, when you didn't choose it. I don't envy Twitter users right now. And mostly I'm mad at Elon Musk (and the people who sold Twitter) for allowing a manchild to destroy a company and so many communities with a temper tantrum.

[booklovertwilight]

☕️ thoughts on different fanfiction sites perhaps? (AO3 vs Wattpad vs ffnet vs whatever else there is lol)

Hi friend! Sorry for the late reply, one of my posts blew up and the notification avalanche scared me off the site for a few days.

So I've been writing fanfic for *checks watch* 13 years now. I've posted it on AO3, Wattpad, FanFiction.net, Reddit, DeviantArt, YouTube comments sections, and blogs I set up myself. I'mma cover the first three individually, and do the others as a sort of collective.

I started off writing on FFnet back in 2009, and even back then I was aggravated by how much work it takes to do something as simple as post a new chapter. The UI to search for and read fic is fine, I guess, but as a prolific writer (I posted over a dozen stories on that site), the fact that it takes like ten steps to post a chapter is just Bad™. Like you have to 1) open your author profile 2) go to the side column and expand the 'works' tab 3) go to 'manage works' 4) scroll through your entire list of fics to find the one you want to add a chapter to 5) click the chapters list 6) click the add chapter button .... etc etc AAAAAAA. I have not written anything on the site in years and I still remember this stupid process. Btw the menus still look & act like this. In fucking 2022.

Wattpad is much nicer in terms of user interface. In fact it's got an option to add cover art which will be displayed front and centre along with the title and summary in search results, which, as a writer/artist who draws his own covers for his fics anyway, I thought was great. Generally, the process of posting new works / new chapters to existing works is a lot more seamless here than, actually, any other site on this list. It's also got this neat feature where you can comment on a fic line-by-line, by highlighting the text, which is a lot more user-friendly than having to copy the text and paste it in quote marks into a comment. But the nice UI/UX can't make up for the fact that -- at least in 2014, which was when I briefly tried writing there -- Wattpad was a cesspool of the most annoying human beings to ever exist. I wanted to post my writing to a community that would give me interesting comments and useful feedback, not write incoherently-spelled rants about how I was taking the source material too seriously. I lasted on Wattpad about 5 months.

After I quit FFnet and Wattpad I went around posting fic to a bunch of random forums, none of which really worked well because they hadn't been designed for that purpose. Posting long-form stories (which is pretty much all I write) to either Reddit or DeviantArt is an absolute nightmare of comment-section-linking. And posting fic to my own blog requires I have some way to bring people to see it, which is remarkably difficult to pull off and requires a lot of work. And on top of all that, there's no community, really, so you get whatever bottom-of-the-barrel internet trolls think it would be funny to harass you.

AO3 is where I post my fic now (@booklovertwilight on there too, in case there's still anyone following me who doesn't know that), and for good reason. I've tried a lot of stuff (perhaps too much stuff) and it's all-around better than anything else available. Its UI isn't the best, but it's manageable. Its site design is pretty good. But crucially, the community on there is just wonderful. Part of this is the fact that the Death Note fandom in specific is just a lovely place to be (nowadays), but even when I've posted fic for larger or more militant fanbases (*cough cough* Sword Art Online), even the criticisms have been coherent and well-thought-out. I felt less like I was being ridiculed in a school cafeteria and more like I was being given a constructive critique by a fellow english major.

There's also the factor of legal recourse. I used to write long disclaimers at the top of my FFnet stories saying things like "I make no money off all this, all rights belong to [creator of canon], please don't sue me I'm broke". Everyone did. I absolutely love the dignity in being able to post fic without having to grovel to the copyright overlords, knowing some lawyer I pay for with my yearly donations is doing it for me. The community is what brought me to AO3, but the legal safety is what's gonna keep me here.

Hope that answered your question, friend! Thank you very much for the ask, this was a lot of fun to think and talk about <3

#asks #fanfiction sites #my thoughts

[baya-ni]

Renga Shouldn’t Be Canon (clickbait)

No but seriously, I hope that Renga doesn’t become canon, at least not in the way that I think a lot of people are hoping that it will. Personally, I’m not expecting anything close to a kiss and confession and that’s fine by me.

Queerbaiting is a problem in mainstream media, there’s no doubt about it, and many people both within and outside the queer community are right to feel wary about hoping for that kind of representation. Personally, I’m still caught by surprise every time a queer person or couple is depicted in a normalized and healthy way onscreen. And that just speaks to the appallingly poor representation queer people are so used to seeing.

But I think that fandom likes to throw the word “queerbaiting” around a bit haphazardly, much in the same way faux woke people throw around words like “gaslighting” and “cancel culture”. They’ve become buzz words to evoke immediate feelings of self-righteousness and to prey on person’s fear of appearing ignorant or bigoted.

Unfortunately, I worry that when the season inevitably ends without Renga’s “canonization”, people will unfairly label Sk8 as Queerbait. And I have many Feelings about this- mostly frustration.

But we’re only mid-season. I can only guess where the show is going to go and only make assumptions about fandom behavior based on personal experience, and there’s a high possibility I’ll be proven totally wrong so... take whatever I say with a grain of salt. But anyway, let’s get on with it.

Fundamentally, Sk8 isn’t shoujo, it’s not BL- it’s a sports anime. And while that doesn’t preclude a total absence of romance between its characters, ultimately those aren’t the kinds of relationships that sports anime concerns itself with. The most prominent relationships you’ll see will be more along the lines of Teammates and Rivals (there's also a third dynamic I'm calling Opponents which is Not the same as Rivals but the Opponents dynamic is less relevant to my point so I'll focus on just the first two).

However, it's not hard to see why romantic interpretations are so common among fans of sports anime. At their core, the basis of Teammate and Rival dynamics bear many similarities to that of a compelling romance. Both Teammate and Rival relationships are built upon two characters' mutual admiration and respect for one another, they involve characters learning from one another and being inspired to push themselves to be their best. There's a great deal of trust involved, as is vulnerability, communication, and empathy. In other words, all the essentials of any healthy relationship.

But context and genre are important. I think that a good romance is one that is unique to its characters specific personalities and needs, as well as is believable within the context of the setting and story. For an anime like Sk8, I would find an on-screen kiss strange and out of place (unless it was done for comedic effect which would be... bad).

I'm reminded of this quote from Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which is one of my all time favorite films:

"Do all lovers feel as though they are inventing something? I know the gestures. I imagined them all waiting for you."

And that basically sums up what I've described, albeit more poetically. Love is invention. Romantic gestures form a unique language between lovers. And if I may add, genre and narrative establish the basis for the emotional significance of these gestures.

In a genre like action/thriller, one of the most meaningful things a character can do is risk their safety or straight up sacrifice themselves for another, because bodily harm and physical risks drive the tension in these kinds of narratives. In the romance genre, confessions, physical intimacy, and grand romantic displays serve the same purpose. In something like sports anime, I argue that its gestures like physically accommodating for your teammate, supporting them when they feel dejected, and being motivated to train harder and be better for the sake of being allowed to stand beside them, that hold equivalent significance.

But this is all broadly speaking, and genre is just one element. Characters’ personalities, habits, insecurities, and trauma, as well as a story’s themes, further specify the kinds of gestures that hold the most meaning in a narrative.

Let’s look again at Portrait of a Lady on Fire, on my favorite scenes:

Portrait is interested in subverting the power imbalance inherent between the Artist and the Muse, the Voyeur and the Subject, the Looker and she who is Looked At. Heloise’s observations of Marianne hold great significance because of this theme; she disrupts the power imbalance by taking back agency as the Subject, demonstrating that she is just as capable of Looking at the Artist just as the Artist does at her. This is visually represented by the framing of the final shot. With the camera pulled back, we now see Marianne as Heloise has been seeing her, and she is now subject to being visually scrutinized in the same way that Heloise has been up to this point in the film.

This scene is so poignant because the romantic gesture it depicts ties heavily to the story’s themes, its characters’ personalities, and its existence is believable within its genre.

Now, let’s bring this all back to Sk8. In this show, what sort of gestures are given the most significance?

Skateboarding. Duh.

Basically, this line establishes that “basis for emotional significance” that I mentioned earlier, such that skating is the means by which characters and relationships are developed and the plot is driven forward, that any and everything related to skating potentially holds symbolic meaning.

And specifically, equating the act of skating to love then allows for more romantic interpretations of all kinds of scenes. Take for example, these parallel sets of shots from ep 1:

(I mean cmon look at his tiny blush, it’s fucking adorable) And:

In a show that equates skating to a “ritual of love”, these scenes can be realistically be interpreted as Langa and Reki falling in love with one another. Skating acts as both the catalyst for their relationship as well as later on being the means by which they express their feelings and develop their relationship.

Skating is their love language.

Ok, I’ll try to wrap this up since this post has gotten wayyy too long. But basically my point is that Renga is about as canon as this show could possibly make it within the confines of its genre and narrative. Romance in sports anime is different from romance in shoujo, but it’s romance all the same, in the same way that different people express love in different ways.

A kiss and confession is not the only means by which a ship can become canon. And I personally would much rather have this kind of carefully crafted symbolism than a kiss just randomly shoehorned in.

But I understand that in the face of centuries of censorship, cop-outs, and barely believable and forced heteronormativity, people want same-sex intimacy onscreen, unapologetic and normalized. I get that.

But in my opinion, Sk8 isn’t queerbait, and it shouldn’t be accused as such just because its characters won’t kiss onscreen. I think this show depicts a wonderful and loving relationship between two boys, that isn’t any less loving just because it doesn’t fit into conventional romantic tropes.

Edit: I did a followup post about Sk8 and its queer representation here, where I go more in depth into the ways that Sk8 represents queerness through beyond its implied homo-romantic relationships.

So yeah, I’d love to hear yalls thoughts :)

#this is gonna get me cancelled #i kno it to be true #but Some Bitches like to reduce romance to kissing and sex #which is the smoothest fucking brain take i have EVER heard #gay ppl invented romance #Good Romance #i don't make the rules #sk8 #sk8 the infinity #sk8 meta #renga kyan #langa hasegawa #renga

[scarlet--wiccan]

Hi I’m sorry to bother you, and I’m sorry if you’ve already answered this before, but I was wondering if people can still somewhat enjoy parts of WandaVision if they acknowledge and don’t excuse the problematic history surrounding the show and the its characters?

Look, I’m not the thought police. I can’t stop you from enjoying a tv show, and I’m not interested in trying to moralize about consuming ‘problematic’ media. I can only really tell you the same thing I’ve already said several times over-- if you understand the problems that the MCU Maximoffs represent, you should be unable to enjoy them or frankly anything about them. It’s not just the casting. It’s the development, the adapted material, and the conversations that have been had both within and without the industry. It’s also about the fact that intentional erasure of Romani history and the false conflation of the Roma population with lower-class white Europeans are real factors of structural racism.

Olsen is fully aware of these issues, as was Joss Whedon during the development of AoU, but she and several of her colleagues nevertheless continue to exploit pejorative language and racist imagery regarding her character. Much of the material that WandaVision draws on is material which references her identity and her family’s history, so the people making WV had to have known about those elements and made a conscious decision about how they wanted to address them-- and make no mistake, they did address them.

These are not actions that I am willing to make concessions for, and I am not willing to hold space for other people to do so, either. I cannot tolerate any form of engagement with the show that does not include a conversation about this, and that’s exactly what you’re doing any time you share fanart or gifs, or put up posters, or praise it uncritically on any platform.

Maybe if the last few months had gone differently for me, I would be taking a gentler stance right now, but they didn’t. Let me tell you what I’ve been going through.

Every industry person I’ve reached out to* during WV’s run has either brushed me aside, or else paid me lip service while refusing to have a public dialogue about the show’s racism or even change their behavior in loudly endorsing it. My LCS has not removed their promotional material for the show, even after I disclosed my identity and had a conversation about it in person. I’ve been sent hate speech and suicide bait on this blog several times in response to my writing. Meanwhile, twitter threads rife with hate speech and misinformation erupted around Roma actress Mihaela Dragan’s statements on the show, and similar responses followed Roma writer Jessica Reidy’s article about Roma women and witchcraft.

I’m taking a hard stance because it’s been made pretty clear that playing nice and making concessions won’t achieve anything. It has been proven to me, time and time again, that people who would otherwise be progressive and anti-racist will avert their eyes and feign ignorance when they hear the words “Roma” or “gypsy.”  You are all looking for chances to pretend we don’t exist. You are all looking for chances to ignore and enable antiromanyism, even in such an immaterial arena as Marvel fandom. I’m asking for the bare minimum, and I can’t even get that. So I say, no, sorry to ruin your fun. I'm sick of it.

I wish Teyonah Parris all the best moving forward and I hope she gets the opportunity to play Monica Rambeau in the lead role unburdened by misogynoir that she deserves. I hope that the child actors have safe and enjoyable careers moving forward and that they will be able to cleanly step away from this project, and the MCU's fandom, as they get older.

*This includes primarily fellow LGBT folks and fellow people of color. Since I’m in a bad mood, I’m going to name two people who I had one-on-one conversations with that amounted to nothing: Kevin Wada and Luciano Vecchio. If you’ve spent any time on this page, you’ll know that these are two artists who I admire deeply and have shown tremendous amounts of love and (financial) support in my time as a comics collector. This really stings, and I have had to honestly ask myself if I can continue to support either of them in good faith having been sent such a plain message that neither of them care about me or my community.

#mcu #wandavision #robintext