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melis-writes · 1 year

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Fanfic Disclaimer: If you don't like it, please don't read it.

After writing and working fanfics continuously now on a daily basis for almost two years now, unfortunately it seems like making this post now is sadly unavoidable. 🫤 I feel the need to finally mention the disclaimer I'm putting on all my fics/work now due to a constant pattern of anon hate, insults, de*th threats and unwanted "constructive" criticism on my work.

I can't stress enough: if you don't like a fanfic for any reason whatsoever, you don't have to read it! You really don't. Nobody's making you read anything you don't want to and you're not a bad guy if you put it down the first paragraph in or five chapters in. Another thing you don't need to do at all whatsoever is send hate comments/asks, or tell fic authors they're writing is shit and their fic is too. Unwarranted, rude and hateful comments only make you look like the awful person, not someone with a "different opinion". 😕

This exact kind of disgusting behavior is a huge cause of why many fanfic authors delete all of their works, stop posting, and stop writing. I ignored it for some time myself but seeing that it's clearly going to continue periodically and not stop, I'm addressing it all in this post.

From the past almost 2 years since I've been writing Moth to Flame, I've been repeatedly a target of this behavior/bullying up to the point where it's evolved to anon hate/blogs that I've blocked changing locations to send me asks, sending me and my fics hate while making new blogs to interact with me, actively reading my fics and writing hate comments on them, and interacting with my blog while continuing to send me hate over a fanfic. 😶 What it's evolved to is downright ridiculous and insane and I am no longer entertaining it in any way, shape or form whether it comes on AO3 comment sections or here.

I'm not going anywhere. I'm never going to stop writing fics or my original work. Writing is my hobby, my passion, one of my favourite things to do and this hasn't changed for 16 years and it never will. I'm not going to delete my fics/works for anyone or anything and that includes anon hate and every nasty message inbetween. I'm here to stay, and nobody is obligated to read my fics or even interact with my blog so please, if you don't like me, my writing and anything regarding it from the style to the characters' personalities and down to the plot, unfollow me. Block me. Please don't interact with me in any way if you don't like me/my writing for whatever reason.

My welcome onto Tumblr after beginning to post the first few chapters of Moth to Flame was anon hate and nasty messages. Because of a fanfic, I've been told to "stop writing it because it discourages other fanfic authors" due to Moth to Flame's soaring popularity, that I have "ego problems" from accepting and being grateful for feedback and compliments, that I "think I'm better than every other fanfic writer" because I'm confident and comfortable with my writing style and skill and refuse to insult myself or downplay my own talent in some way, that I have a monopoly on Michael Corleone x Reader fics and that I supposedly think "nobody else can write good Michael Corleone x Reader fics". ??? None of these are remotely true at all. ☹️

Since then, I've had growing suspicions this kind of bullying and behaviour was coming exclusively from The Godfather fandom and unfortunately, I was right. 🫤 Being in many fandoms for long periods of time on and on for years, The Godfather fandom is the first fandom I've ever been in where I've seen blogs group up and gang up on other blogs to send anon hate/make nasty posts about them, have someone tell me to k*ll myself over a fanfic, encourage other blogs/users to individually send hate (over anything, ships, headcanons, etc.), make new blogs to send hate and to follow/stalk from and so much more disgusting, awful behavior.

It got all the more concerning when I had friends and mutuals telling me they're distancing themselves from The Godfather fandom and choosing to have nothing to do with it or follow anyone from it. I've had beloved mutuals and friends deactivate their blogs over witnessing this behaviour in the fandom. 💔

Over a fanfic, I've had anon hate telling me I'm a misogynist/hate women because Moth to Flame is based in the late 1940s/1950s, that Victoria has "too many children", that there's "too much smut" in a SMUT fic, that Victoria "isn't shy enough" (just to name a few) and users telling me how I should write my own fanfic and my portray my own characters differently because they don't like how the plot went or how the character acted. These are no longer bits of "constructive" criticism, but condescending insults coming from individuals who clearly don't like my fics or my writing, but refuse to stop reading them, refuse to stop interacting with me and continue to send more anon asks and anon AO3 comments.

I believe that one of the many great things about second person perspectives in writing/fanfics is that you get to step into a new world and experience the plot with or as the character. This doesn't mean the character is going to be 100% like you and it's not my intention or wish to do that or change my characters entirely so someone likes them better either.

I'm all for difference of opinion and love the unique ways my readers enjoy my works and react to them. 🥰 I've received many intriguing comments/feedback on my fics where readers were shocked by a plot twist or didn't expect a character to behave a certain way, even that to them the characters weren't good people, etc, or have asked questions about why something happened the way it did or why a character is the way they are. I've always been happy to answer and been more than okay with welcoming all opinions and comments on my fic so as long as they are kind.

I'm not accepting any type of comments/submissions/asks of the sort received containing "constructive criticism" of any kind over a fanfic, telling me how to write/portray my characters, telling me to alter/change the plot, etc.

I'm very happy to block, report, rinse and repeat whether it be here or on AO3. I've met some amazing people from The Godfather fandom on here and made the best of friends with many, but to ignore the toxicity here is to ignore the obvious. This isn't okay. Please for the love of God, read fanfiction you enjoy and interact with blogs you enjoy, not the opposite.

I will always love and welcome thoughtful and kind comments/feedback on my fics but I'm not going to stop writing my fics, I'm not going to change my characters or alter the plots because someone doesn't like them.

To my beloved readers, followers and mutuals who love and support my writing and fics: thank you. ❤️ I'm forever and always grateful for every bit of your appreciation and feedback. Thank you so much for everything. I can't wait to write more fics and share my writing with you guys!

If you don't like it, please don't read it and please don't send hate over it to any fanfic writers and to their fics.

#sigh.#melly talks

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dteamain · 7 months

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i haven't always agreed with you on most things but you're right. i've always leaned more to the dnf side of things but lately a lot of them have been so intense it's scary. i don't know for sure dnf are dating because i don't know them, i don't think they're not for sure, there's signs so i just think of it as 'probably but not sure'. except if i say that i think people would turn on me. the thing is i don't ship. i don't care. but now i'm worried of saying the wrong thing.

it’s never been about people having to agree with me i literally don’t care it’s not about people following me either like if my content doesn’t spark joy great move on I get it. I have been nothing but understanding with people anytime I have had an issue with someone publicly I have reached out personally to deal with it and made it very clear that I don’t care if our opinions are different even if I just get laughed at

Exhibit A:

what baffles me is that because I am up front about my thoughts and opinions all of a sudden I’m not allowed to reblog someone’s dnf art or posts saying omg I love dream like that’s all I want I never ever ever actively engaged with someone in a negative way unless they brought me into it first I leave everyone alone the second I realize they no longer like me but they all get to sit on their private twitters and mock me and my friends to 200 of their closest tumblr followers and they get to be down right mean to people who simply mind their business and I get to find this all out because people who I thought were at least on good terms with me are liking this shit and being complacent in it and its exhausting when really all I want to do is enjoy dteam.

This fandom will always be toxic as long as people are being fake and untruthful on their main blogs well putting their true thoughts and feelings and lowkey bullying people on their side blogs and privates like its fucking normal.

and for some reason lots of people think I should just shut up and take this treatment rather than speak up about this shitty behaviour.

my friendship is not conditioned to who you ship or who you main and it never will be and I will always be upset when someone won’t extend the same branch to me.

#anon #i used to think some people in this fandom were like terrible people because of the shit people were in my dms saying about them #then I interacted with them and realized their just normal ass people with different opinions and I realized I was part of the problem #and I immediately fixed that #some people are perfectly fine standing their watching people be treated unfairly and mean

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ninjapotatohead · 1 year

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it’s funny some of you people still think that just because some section of idiotic sonic fans sent death threats to Pontac and act stupid to your folk that it makes it ok for some of your people in your community to do the same when honestly it’s clearly not ok nowadays to actual sane people in and outside of the community looking inside. (also yes some people do get reprimanded for that behaviour nowadays especially on my discord and and other mutual servers/twitters since they’re run by actual sane people despite what your cesspool of tumblr posts say) criticisms are fine against the stories and people write but the fact you lump people who’s criticize some of your community’s people are "bootlickers" when I know the normie fans hardly don’t interact with him same with me it’s just when we just see piles and piles of posts of writers of not just Ian but other writers as well it shows how fall this small section of a community has fallen.

Honestly the reason why a most sonic communities don’t take all too well to your group nowadays is because they’re sick and disgusted by you lot is that recent posts and vids have shown that all of y’all are so desperate for some people to agree with you you still accept a self proclaimed "cub fetisher" by still talking to him afterwards (also another one of the reasons why his Twitter was in the cutting shop he was pushing it with his disturbing posts and is just a bad person in general especially with recent multiple death threat posts that I can still see on his tumblr) which honestly just shows all you in a horrid light and also why is the constant posting about this topic and yelling into the void about how the community is wrong for enjoying different recent writers and insulting them almost daily which is extremely unhealthy no matter how "vindicated" you feel you all are.

Doesn’t help that even people on sonic tumblr who don’t post weekly about such things are noticing and calling out the behaviour when people like drop-ship-colony past posts are saying that the behaviour like threats to a human beings life wasn’t "that big of a deal" in the sonic community when it fucking absolutely is in real life and I’m other "healthy sane fanbases" and is absolutely disgusting human behaviour in general no matter how much shit y’all had to deal with with other stupid sides of the community that doesn’t mean your community isn’t exempt from criticism T H A T ‘ S NOT H O W T H E R E A L W O R L D W O R K S no matter if it’s on the internet with you folk hiding behind their screens it can be dangerous it always has consequences and how you’ve reacted to it has also been shown to even people on tumblr which is why there’s more people on even on this app noticing it and posting about the behaviour even more so now likely in the future. In the end people aren’t taking you seriously in the majority of the fandom not because their "boot lickers" hardly but because recent actions just show your small group is made up of nothing but FILLED with posts of writers not just Ian basically insulting them and threatening them and is basically a life style filled with bitterness and that’s just a fact just looking and your catalogues of past posts that’s why people even on here recently are tired of y’all your community no longer has any standing in the community due to all these factors not just in and now I’ve decided with my friends advice to just block you group of few since that’s why communities have just ignore/block you all on tumblr especially on my mutual’s discord. better to just let your community just be filled in your own bitterness and be ignored since people in the main fanbase have recently have as well farewell.

Nice copypasta, bruv. Could use some punctuation, though.

#spud's inbox #sonic community nonsense

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unladielike · 1 year

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Disclaimer: I'm only posting about this because someone has been block evading and stalking my blog to pick fights instead of talking things out with me, which I've been told by a friend classifies as harassment and a form of cyberbullying, especially when I did not respond to him/interact with him beyond a now deleted vent, so I'm just gonna talk about this and hopefully never have to address it again... because this shit is very tiring and I have been putting up with it for days on end now, especially while it had been my birthday at some point.

I just wanna say that if you ever feel like I had officially wronged you in the past, I don't mind apologizing for it, but to continue slandering me for my past wrongs on a public platform instead of privately venting to a friend or talking to me about it is not the way to go.

Of course, I won't deny that I wasn't always the best partner, but I've been here on this hellsite for at least 8 years or longer now, so it's not like I can recall every instance where I dropped threads, not follow through in interacting with past mutuals, or even hurt someone without personally knowing.

Granted, I get people disliking me happens to be an inevitable part of life, but blocking me should really be the end of it. Seriously, if I have not once bothered you or harassed you first, that does not give you the grounds to repeatedly stalk me, vague about me, or argue/debate with me in the replies of a confession blog (especially when you have me hard-blocked).

It's also very disingenuous to claim I'm still the same person that I was years ago, so if needed, I will defend myself, but I think many of my mutuals who have been here since the inception of this blog can personally vouch for the fact I do practice what I preach and know that I now ship with only two people at best and have moved past the point of caring about giving my OC more romantic ships without the proper substance, development, or build up.

It should also be noted that I constantly bring up I have autism if only because it affects how I communicate with others/how I get my points across and to pretend it doesn't would be a huge disservice on my part, as it does affect my social skills, both online and offline. That, however, does not mean I'm using it as an excuse but as an explanation, because too often, I have experienced neurotypical folks being ableist towards me and holding me up to neurotypical standards (ie: thinking I would be able to get hints if they somehow enforce the silent treatment) and unlike many others, I don't have the luxury of acting like I don't have it, because it's a permanent part of who I am that I can't completely mask no matter how hard I might try to do so.

Of course, that doesn't mean I'll refuse to be held accountable for my actions, but at the same time, I won't hesitate to speak out against ableism, point out how I have a different perspective on things due to me being neurodivergent, or defend myself if I feel like I'm being unfairly treated.

TLDR, though? Just talk to me or vent about me privately. Like, I honestly believe I'm a reasonable enough person, so if you tell me I did something to hurt you, then I will listen and apologize, but continuing to obsess over me/hold a grudge against me/misconstrue my points when I haven't been mutuals with you in years like some creepy, butt-hurt ex is not the behaviour of an adult. It's the behaviour of a child who can't let things go.

And believe me, I get being salty, but vaguing about someone more than twice in a row on tumblr is genuinely not a healthy outlet. Of course, it would be one thing if Tumblr was a site where you can set your blog to private like Twitter, but anything you post can be seen by the general public, so at the end of the day, you're achieving nothing by typing out misinformed clapbacks but make yourself look like an ass.

Also, be careful when using the phrase, 'Don't use your autism as an excuse', because depending on the context, it can come across as mansplaining or an ableist, thought-terminating cliché at best.

#negativity tw #negative tw #║▌ ⧼ ⸢ ʚɞ ⸣︳p̲u̲b̲l̲i̲c̲ ̲s̲e̲r̲v̲i̲c̲e̲ ̲a̲n̲n̲o̲u̲n̲c̲e̲m̲e̲n̲t̲. ⧽ ― THIS SHOULD COME WITH SUBTITLES IN REAL LIFE.#⸾ ❖︎ ⸾ ( OUT OF ) ⤹ •• 𝕗𝕒𝕟𝕗𝕚𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟.#[ i've already finished reporting this person ]#[ but i'm honestly not sure if tumblr staff will even follow through with terminating his blog ]#[ REGARDLESS this was not something i enjoyed typing up ]#[ but it has to be said because he has been harassing me non-stop ]#[ and i even have screenshots to prove it ]#[ either way i just want to remind you that all that i will listen if you have any grievances against me ]#[ BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD... please talk to me like an actual adult ]

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with-my-murder-flute · 4 years

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Hi everybody, thanks for the asks letting me know I made the top of @yusuftiddies’ list of Homophobes in TOG Fandom, you can stop sending them now.

So.

I can make mistakes and fuck up and own that. I am serious about listening to marginalized people. But... in this case, while @yusufstiddies generally describes factual events that happened and factual posts that exist, I have to say that I can’t actually apologize for the things I’m called out for because I don’t think they’re homophobic. The things he criticizes me for are things that come from a lot of personal experience as a queer bisexual cis woman, as well as a lot of reflection, research, and study. I believe in them really strongly and stand by them.

I’m really sorry if this makes TOG fandom too hostile, because it is not my intention to make this place so unpleasant that anyone feels driven out. I understand if my stance means people no longer want to follow me/read my stuff/participate in projects I’m involved with (though I’d rather hand off the Research Hub to someone else than see it go down with me). I’m posting this so people can know where they stand before they decide whether to keep interacting with my blog, or “deplatform” me as @yusufstiddies recommends.

I would recommend, for anyone who doesn’t want to see my posts, using Tumblr’s new post content filtering feature. If you type a username (like star-anise or with-my-murder-flute) into it, Tumblr will hide all posts featuring that specific string of characters, and therefore any post or reblog of mine.

To address the accusations against me:

I am an anti-anti: Yes. I’ve reblogged posts of mine about this before. I care passionately about preventing child abuse, but I think there are better ways to prevent child abuse in fandom (like concrete harassment policies so predatory behaviour can be reported and stopped early, and education about digital consent and healthy relationships) than attacking people who write “bad ships,” not least because the first people it hurts are abuse survivors trying to work through their trauma, and because the research says you cannot actually tell who’s a sexual predator based on what they write about. Fiction affects reality, but not on a 1:1 basis. My mainblog, @star-anise, has a really extensive archive of my writing on the subject.

I said cishet men aren’t more privileged than gay men: Kinda. What I actually did was question whether Every Single Cishet Man benefits from more privilege than Every Single Gay Man. If a man is cishet but gets beaten up because people perceive him as gay, he’s not exactly feeling the warm toasty glow of heterosexual privilege in that moment. Oppression is complicated and there are times when someone’s lack of privilege on one axis is way less important than someone else’s lack of privilege on another axis.

The post above also includes me reblogging someone else’s addition about how straight men can be included in the queer movement: I’m queer. @yusufstiddies has made it very clear that he isn’t comfortable with the word “queer” and doesn’t like it. Therefore I think it’s understandable that he might not understand that the queer community sees ourselves as a coalition of people dedicated to dismantling the structures of sex and gender that oppress us, not a demographic of people whose gender identities or sexual orientations can be neatly mapped. However, I would say that doesn’t make queer theory inherently homophobic.

There are also some related points @yusufstiddies didn’t level at me specifically, but I would like to address:

The constant focus on the unsafeness of cishet people:

I’m not cishet. I’m a bisexual woman who’s dated women. Sixth-light is a queer woman married to a woman. This is not an issue of non-LGBTQ+ people blundering their way into something they don’t experience the daily consequences of. This is an issue of people from WITHIN the LGBTQ+ community who sincerely disagree with @yusufstiddies about the pressures we experience and how best to deal with them. I think that even if @yusufstiddies were to filter his fiction input to only LGBT-written work about LGBT experiences, or even only trans-written work about trans people, he would still find a lot of things he finds upsetting or transphobic, because sexual and gender identities are really diverse and not everything will suit one person.

The contention that saying “’Queer is a slur’ is TERF propaganda” is transmisogyny because it dilutes the definition of “TERF”:

People who point out the phrase is TERF propaganda are not calling every person who says it a TERF, and we are not trying to argue that telling a queer person that queer is a slur is inherently equal to the kind of damage a TERF does when she attacks a trans woman out of transphobia. Queer people being able to use the word “queer” does not have the same importance as trans women being able to live, work, and survive in public. Rather, we are literally saying, “This is a thing TERFs say when they take a break from attacking trans women and try to recruit new members to their group, so it’s in our best interests to not give it too wide a currency.”

Some people have experienced the word “queer” used as a hateful word hurled against them and don’t want to hear it ever again. I get that. It happens. Where I grew up, “gay” was a synonym for “shitty” and it took me a lot of years out of high school before the word “gay” wouldn’t shoot my blood pressure through the roof. I actually do understand that and think that’s valid (and again, support using post content filtering for that word).

One of the things I do at @star-anise is argue with young people who are headed into full-on transmisogynistic TERF territory, and work at reeling them back and deradicalizing them. I use a tag called “weedwhacking” so my followers can filter out the sometimes lengthy back-and-forths we get going.

Something I’ve learned, interacting with so many TERFs and proto-TERFs, is that one way they frequently get recruited into harassing trans people was through discourse around the word “queer”. For one, it encouraged them to want to distance themselves from any perception of LGBT people as “weird” or “not normal”, which led to seeing trans people as “weird” and “not normal” and therefore not good members of the “gay pride” community. For two, repeating “queer is a slur” predictably causes a lot of queer people to react in a defensive manner, so by teaching young or new people to say it, TERFs can set them up to feel alienated from the larger LGBTQ+ community and more open to TERF propaganda.

The next issue isn’t mentioned in the original callout post, but I think it’s key to this entire issue:

@yusufstiddies has made several posts about what cishet people should and shouldn’t write. For example, cishets shouldn’t write Nicky experiencing internalized homophobia. Another is a detailed post of things cishets shouldn’t write about trans people, including which sexual positions only trans people are allowed to write. I would imagine that part of his frustration with fandom has been the lack of traction those posts have gotten. I know I very deliberately didn’t reblog them.

That isn’t because I don’t agree that the things he complains about are rarely handled well by cishet authors. I agree that there’s a lot of bad fic out there that contributes to negative stereotypes against LGBTQ+ people and is basically a microaggression to read.

I have two very deeply-seated reasons for my position:

LGBTQ+ identities are different from many other political identities because most people are not born identifiably LGBTQ+. It’s something we have to figure out about ourselves. And one really important way that we do that is using the safety of fiction to explore what an experience would be like, sometimes years before we ever admit that we fit the identity we’ve written about. So banning cishet authors from writing something is really likely to harm closeted and questioning LGBTQ+ people. It will lengthen the amount of time questioning people take before finding the identity that really fits them, and force closeted people to be even more closeted.

There’s a lot of undeniably shitty stuff in fandom. However, I fundamentally believe that trying to target the people creating it and forcing them to stop doesn’t work very well, and has the serious byproduct of killing the creativity and enthusiasm of the rest of fandom and resulting in less of the actual thing you like being produced. I think that it is infinitely more productive to focus on improving the ratio of good stuff in fandom than trying to snuff out every bad thing.

Like I said: I understand if this means former followers, mutuals, or friends no longer want to interact with me. I’ll be saddened, but I’ve obviously chosen this path and can deal with the consequences.

I wish this could have worked out differently.

#my stuff #the old guard

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annetteblog · 3 years

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I got a very long ask and wrote even longer reply, and now Tumblr for some reason doesn't want to publish it through asks. So I'm making a separate post, because what else can I do? 😀 I hope Anon wouldn't mind

Hi!

Thank you for such a long ask! I really enjoy replying those, although it may take some time to actually write whatever I have on my mind 🙂 However, I feel like for every question that you posed, it's possible to write its own big reply or even an essay, so this piece of mine probably won’t give them justice (but I’ll try my best.)

As usual, one big IMO.

1) Ethics, “gueer coding” and discussions

I believe I’ve already partly touched this subject here. Shortly, I think that everything the boys did (and still do) had its own purpose. They decided to put these "undertones" (or whatever one may call them) in their art. They made some statements with a very small room for interpretation. And it didn't happen once or twice. More like, it's been a consistent behaviour throughout years.

I don't buy this excuse some fans write - "oh, he just didn't know about this/didn't understand how it looked like/didn't..." So apparently, JK wasn't able to figure out shit about Troye, didn't give a damn about his GCF, didn't think how his tattoo looked like; JM didn't realize to what conclusions could lead his quite bold words about 4am or waking up and seeing JK; both of them didn't have second thoughts about the Black Swan dance; Bang PD is just a CEO who pays zero attention to BTS in general and KM actions in particular (which sometimes actually backlash, e.g. that stop gay fanservice thing after the Seoul concerts), because he clearly just doesn't care AT ALL; whatever PR service they have in BH is just asleep all the time... Etc etc etc, you got the idea

Well, if one wants to perceive JM, JK and BigHit as a group of complete morons with no brains, this "oh, they just didn't know" explanation may work. But if all of them were idiots, how would BTS become the biggest group on a planet? They are smart enough, deal with this.

And YET. KM still do what they do. It's their choice, so apparently they have their motives. You wrote it yourself too - "Jikook and BH put out all that stuff for a reason."

Keeping this in mind, I truly think it's fair to discuss queer undertones or KM's bond. It's meant to be discussed and speculated. They made it public, and they continue to make it public (and quite obvious, to be honest). Why? Well, I guess they want us to speculate.

From here comes the second point

2) Art and its interpretations

In general, I believe that any good art should allow various interpretations. That's what a good piece of art is supposed to do - provoke a thought. As well as it's quite customary to analyze and (sometimes) overanalyze art. Thousands of universities worldwide have programs which are focused on fine art, literature, theater, music, film, etc.

And why is it okay to write about Avengers or Madonna or whatever weird art you're able to find in the closest Contemporary museum (like a banana taped to a wall), but not okay to interpret BTS' songs and/or performances? Again, I strongly believe that art is meant to be discussed. Especially as cool as theirs 🙂

Actually, some popular fandom theories turned out to be true here. Since Spring Day release on Feb 2017, fans speculated about its connection to the Sewol ferry tragedy based on the song's lyrics, MV and choreo. We got this confirmation like when, December 2020? But before it was also just an interpretation.

Coming back to KM. Combining these with the idea that JM/JK/BH clearly know what they're doing and how it may look like, I don't see a problem in having various interpretation of their art. Including queer ones.

3) Escapism

Isn't all art targeted to escaping in a sense? We want to take a break from reality and/or mundane life or just gain some new experience. In this sense what's the radical difference between staring at pictures or sculptures in a museum, watching a movie, reading a book or scrolling through Tumblr reading BTS/KM centric posts? All of these are means to escape and entertain ourselves.

As for this "if they are a queer couple, is it okay to derive pleasure and 'what a beautiful love story' feelings from two members of systematically oppressed minority?" - and you would prefer doing what - ignoring them? pretending that they don't exist? 🙃 In case if they are a queer couple, I guess showing support and benevolence is even more important. Exactly because, as you mentioned, they are a part of the oppressed minority. And the hatred is/would be definitely in place.

4) Fanfiction

Oh my, what a controversial theme these days.

Firstly, some forget it was not invented in the 21st century. Even slash fanfiction (cough Star cough Trek). As for incorporating real people, it's been a part of literature for like what.. always? There are millions of different writings about emperors, nobles, military figures, lives of saints, etc. And it's not like personal opinion of people in question bothered those, who write or wrote about them. I clearly remember a scene in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, where Alexander I [Russian emperor 1801-25] after losing a battle against Napoleon, hits a birch tree with his sword while crying hard and just being kinda hysterical. Would real Alexander be satisfied with such image if he read the book? Idk 😄

About having "the right to comment on such [different from your own] experience". I suppose, if authors wrote only about what they had experienced, our literature would be 95% poorer than it is. How can one write books in historic settings if they didn't live there? How do books about future and space travel exist, if we live in 2021? Is it needed to be a part of mafia to write about mafia? What about other cultures? Should an American author write only about American people and American lifestyle or it's fine to have characters from other countries?

Writing is not about experiencing something and then making a fanfic or a book, it's more about research and compassion. If you have reliable info on your theme and are able to look at the world using different lenses, why not?

I don't perceive fanfiction as a worldwide evil. Sure, there are creepy examples as well as authors, who write fetishizing weird shit. But it doesn't mean that all fanfiction=bad and all slash fanfiction=objectification of male homosexuality. Fanfiction is just one form of fiction, it can be good or bad based on how it's written. But the label itself doesn't define anything, as well as reading it should not be a reason to accusations.

5) Jikook, shipping and politics

I'm among those, who perceive pretty much everything as a part of politics. We all exist within some political conventions and have certain political laws over our heads. And yes, it includes art. Even if an artist says something like "oh, I decided to stay away from politics, my work is beyond it". The decision to stay away from politics is also political, because apparently there was something within the political structure what made this artist say that and forced them to make this distinction between them and some institutional conventions.

And that makes me believe that shipping/supporting KM is also political. But I don't think it's necessarily bad? Basically, you decided to support potentially queer people from a country, which doesn't really approve LGBTQ+. It puts you in the opposition towards a particular government. You made a choice. You could google some SK stuff, read all that you mentioned in the beginning of your ask, and say something like "oh, that's not okay there? well, fair enough, I guess their government knows better"🤠 and forget that this KM thing even exists. But apparently you didn't

Imo, is it politics? Yes

Is it bad that it's politics? Well, no? 🙃

P.S. I hope I was clear enough with my ideas. Thank you again for the thought provoking ask, and I hope I'll hear from you again 🙂

And honestly, I don't think that you're problematic in any way :)

#annetteasks #jikook #kookmin #long post #jeon jungkook #park jimin #jimin #jungkook

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talenlee · 3 years

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The Johnlock Conspiracy Conspiracy

First of all this is going to be building off a point first cast into relief for me by Sarah Z’s video on The Johnlock Conspiracy. She is both directly connected with the experience of this space and did the research into the actual history of the people involved, a sort of on-the-spot observer recounting her experiences ethnographically. If you want a longer form deep dive on what The Johnlock Conspiracy is, check out that video. I will be providing a quick summary.

I’m also going to talk about fanagement, which I wrote about last year, which is about the way that fan engagement was seen as being a thing that corporate entities could deliberately engage for commercial ends. Fanagement isn’t necessarily an inherently evil or corrupting thing, but it’s something to know about as something that exists, and knowing it exists can colour your relationship to the media created in response to fanagement.

There’s this idea of ‘The Johnlock conspiracy.’

In the agonisingly mediocre BBC mystery drama Sherlock that ran from who cares to also who cares, starring in the loosest sense of the word Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (a man ‘renowned’ for this, The Office and the Hobbit trilogy, on a scale of poisonous influence to actual outright evil), as a modern day re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson that has some interesting ideas that it absolutely does not use well, mysteries that are not interesting and a relationship tension that was making itself up as it went along. Much ink has been spilled about how this series is not very good, and that’s good, because it’s a very expensively made bad series that banks on the reliable draw of the same fistful of boring privilege.

Part of what made it popular, sort of, was the tension of the relationship between John and Sherlock. See, they were both men, you see, and what if they kissed.

Now, tumblr is, by volume, mostly connections to other parts of tumblr. If you make something popular, it becomes amplified and exploded and brought to the attention of others and curated into lists. Content that gets shared is the very sinew of what Tumblr is, which means that doing things people share around is a strange form of primacy on the site. Making content is powerful, heady, druglike. Commanding curation where you determine what does and does not get shared is even moreso. It is a space for an audience that is engaged deeply with the concept of being engaged, and in this space, fandom happened.

There’s not a lot of Sherlock. There were big gaps between the seasons. When a season came out, it did not explain itself or deliver on its promise at all. It is, as I’ve said, bad. But it was well made and used actors you’d heard of and was treated as being prestigious and so, when the show came out, and because people liked the idea of what it could be, fandom struck on a conspiracy:

What if this terrible show is secretly great?

And I understand the impulse. It’s heart to a lot of fandom. I can’t possibly have spent this time and energy on something I don’t like, it must be that the thing I like is secretly this thing I really like. And so scaffolding comes out to buttress the idea. We’re not taught that fandom is right – we’re taught that fandom is something that justifies itself by being right. If you have a story in your heart about a Dark Fuckprince and his soft bean injured Watson, that story is real and right, and doesn’t need the official endorsement of the BBC to be good.

Without that armour of love, though, instead the fandom turned into this endless oroborous of hostility centered around three people, who seem to just be total dickheads, great job you. This resulted in the blossoming of what was known as ‘the Johnlock Conspiracy,’ where through thousands of pages of well intentioned fumes, these fans huffed themselves into believing that Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis were secretly building up to exactly what they wanted, and they were the smartest people ever for noticing it. The lack of payoff of their beliefs and the active hostility Moffat had to their ideas and positions in person, that was all part of the conspiracy.

Oh, by the way, that idea – conspiracy – is when you have an unfalsifiable conjecture. If you can’t prove it false, no matter what, that’s when you’re dealing with a conspiracy theory.

The dramatic conclusion to all this was the series ended, their conspiracy was wrong, they theorycrafted themselves a few more months of content, and then most people let it drop.

But what if I told you there was a conspiracy?

Because there was. It just wasn’t the conspiracy they thought.

See, a conspiracy is a real thing: it’s a secret plan to do something harmful. And the BBC, since they published the work that Matt Hill described in Torchwoods Trans-Transmedia: Media Tie-Ins and Brand Fanagement, worked with the parameters of their experiment aggressively.

The idea, as I outlined in my article about Fanagement was that making the program so it could engage fans directly, and give fans feelings of creative ownership over the work would drive viewership and the kinds of engagement they liked (like, paying for things). Fanagement sought to make media ‘gifable’ – low saturation backgrounds with cuts of under a second so you could break a scene apart easily and conveniently. It wanted to make fan media easy to make, and to minimise hard declarative statements.

The lessons learned from this paper included things like ship teasing as a deliberate task – and I do mean teasing, with the idea that you had to do it in deniable and ambiguous ways. Making things definite wouldn’t get you as much fan engagement as keeping things ambiguous, because fans would make an inference based on what you show them, talk about it, then other fans would watch it again to make sure they could argue with you about it.

A mystery show like Sherlock was perfect for this kind of treatment. Treating the series as if there was some really deep, thoughtful question at the heart of it meant that there was always a reason to keep from ‘revealing’ the secret of the story, to string the audience along, like they’d believe or tolerate it, if it was all in service of a clever explanation. You get it, right? After all, we gave you all the clues.

The toxic fandom of Sherlock did not form as much as it was fostered.

A lesson from this experience, a lesson easily escaping notice, is that it’s not that ‘fandoms are all the same.’ They really aren’t. They are wildly varying in the terms of their problems and those problems root causes. What they tend to have in common is dynamics, but those dynamics are expressed in a lot of different ways. It’s not that ‘fandoms’ naturally become toxic and awful. There are fandoms that are generally, quite nice, and they tend to be that way because of the values of the central movers and shakers and the conscious willingness of people who perceive themselves as part of the fandom as taking care of it. The dynamic is the same – you have common nexuses of community that people interact with – and the kind of behaviour that’s acceptable and reasonable is filtered through them. If the idea of asking people to modify their behaviour or respect people’s boundaries is seen as unreasonable, then you can get a toxic space.

Also, as I talk about ‘toxic fandoms,’ understand toxicity is relative. There is, after all, a very real, very unironic Hitler Fandom, and they are probably one of the worst fandoms out there. Being a mean lawyer on the internet is bad, and I’ve no doubt the fandom curators known now as the Powerpuff Girls absolutely wrecked some teenagers’ lives – like, there are definitely people with, I am not joking or being hyperbolic, some PTSD triggers about (say) Tumblr or whatnot, based on the kind of social force these people were leveraging.

And then remember that holding that lever at the high end, right at the top with the most power over it was a company that made TV shows that was trying to make sure you watched their shows.

Also: The tools for doing this are available to all the companies that read the paper.

My advice? Exhort and uplift queer creators. Be positive about it, not negative. Don’t make your time about attacking other people’s dark fuckprince. Bring what you like to life, and bring that life into the light. Share and love each other, rather than find reasons to be mad at one another for how you’re all playing with toys a corporation wants you to treat with respect and only play properly. And as always, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept – so make sure your fandom circles aren’t putting up with some Powerpuff Girls.

Originally posted on my Blog.

#Sherlock #Johnlock #Fanagement #Conspiracy

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bisluthq · 3 years

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Honestly, I think the ONLY reason hardcore hetlor truthering is because of the hardcore gaylorism that exists. Pretty much the only other sub-fandom group that exists that is THIS invested in proving their fave is secretly gay and hid a gay relationship for years and also THIS well known on different corners of the internet (because hardcore gaylorism and kaylorism has become insanely popular the past years) are Larries and within Harry’s fandom there’s also a group of super loud Antis that constantly fight them and go hardcore against them. With Taylor, gaylorism is often much more than just believing in Kaylor, it also extends to believing in other wlw relationships AND believing many of her straight relationships were fake, including Toe. We also see the same opposite reaction as with Larries and Antis, except in this case people that Anti it go against EVERYTHING Gaylors believe, which is why they seem so against even the smallest mention that Taylor could be fruity- they immediately assume that if you believe that, you also believe Taylor broke up with Karlie in 2019, isn’t really dating Joe, etc. And by extension, that’s why they ride SO hard for Taylor being straight. Of course that doesn’t automatically make it okay, but it is a very “logical” anti-reaction (as in, it makes sense that’s what happened) because of course there’s always two opposite sides with this stuff so of course hardcore hetlor truthers exist ever since hardcore gaylor truthers exist (which really didn’t exist before folklore tbh, before that everyone was just a Kaylor who sometimes believed in Swiftgron and sometimes not). Anyway this is a LOT longer than it could’ve been because I ramble a lot lmao but yeah hardcore hetlorism really only exists since the Vogue interview (because in their minds she then confirmed she was straight and they feel the need to defend that) and since *hardcore* gaylorism became really popular, as a reaction to that movement. So in short, hetlorism is in my experience barely about Taylor herself: it’s much more about going against gaylors because they see that entire group as inherently invasive and offensive because they generalise the most extreme behaviour seen in said group (which is wrong obviously).

Yeah idk it’s still just weird to me because I get being a Kaylor anti but I struggle with the Gaylor anti’ing, even where it’s blatantly not true lol like with the “they broke up in 2019 Karlie’s the Celia to Tay’s Evelyn” you know? Like that’s not really a conspiracy it’s just… untrue. And it seems weird to me to invest your time in anti’ing that because it’s very… difficult to do idk. You can debunk wacky Kaylor shit (or any other wlw ship or tbh late stage Haylor and shit) as much as you want because you feel that it’s fucking stupid and it’s a slippery slope to believing other cracked out shit but if some people like to believe a fanfic like who fucking cares?

I also think you’re wrong about when Hetlor truthers were born, they were around in 2014-2015 too and they weren’t like… Kay konspiracy antis at that point, because Kaylor legit were besties who hung out a bunch and Taylor did like gay shit on Tumblr a lot, like that was happening. They were bothered by and pressed by the speculation around Taylor’s sexuality.

Which again is just so weird to me because Taylor herself has like… continuously encouraged it. I don’t think the likes ~mean anything but it’s not bizarre to me that people saw her liking shit that was like “I can make the straight girls gay for the weekend” and were like 👀 especially since she was publicly single at the time and mostly surrounded by women.

Anti crack ships as much as you want, but if you wind up hetty truthering you’re fucking out of line and… need to calm down.

#nat talks swiftdom

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angerissue · 4 years

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Anonymous asked… What is your take on Bruce Banner's love interest? Whether we’re mutuals or not, feel free to ask me about Bruce!

Oh, this is a good question, and something I haven’t discussed in months. Thanks for asking it!

This version of Bruce is hopelessly in love with Betty Ross. He’ll always love her, even if they’re miles apart, and both of them have moved on and dismissed the hopes of seeing each other again. Even if Bruce were to meet someone else, his feelings for her would remain in perpetuity.

I’ve written some headcanons with someone (she's no longer on tumblr, sadly) where Bruce and Betty met in a library during their university years, and the whole dynamic was very much a friends-to-romance one. Their earlier interactions were essentially the "study buddies" kind, and I imagine it was the combination of their shared work and interests, and the comfortability in talking about that stuff, that snowballed into other conversations and ultimately, a romantic relationship. And it continued up until Bruce's accident.

This pairing has always been very special to me because, unlike the others, Betty was the first person to see a far more vulnerable side of Bruce. Bruce has always been an extremely closed-off and reticent person; he hates revealing too much about himself because he feels this information could be abused somehow; that somebody would take issue with what he was telling them, just like how Brian would react vehemently whenever he watched educational children’s television shows, or played with certain toys. Betty was the first person that Bruce felt comfortable enough to open up to, in multiple manners. Not only would he discuss Brian with her (granted, sometimes he didn’t say much, but even dropping a few tiny mentions of Brian was huge for him), but he also felt like he could simply be himself around her. He didn’t need to keep his guard up around Betty like he did around other people. He was still sky, awkward, and nerdy around Betty, but he could voice his opinions more confidently in her presence. And the adaptation I've been writing with; she’s a slightly more modern version of the character — soft and gentle, but she has a temper of her own and a tangible boldness in certain situations, and it can be a subtle juxtaposition to Bruce’s own personality at times. It’s quite lovely.

There are other aspects of the relationship, here and there, that I also love. In "The Incredible Hulk" (2008), Betty could swear that she saw some aspect of Bruce in the Hulk, and Bruce refused to accept such a possibility at first, because he believed the Hulk was a sentient and autonomous being — a belief that had grown over the years, predominantly because of his immense guilt and an unconscious desire to reduce his sense of culpability. If the Hulk somehow wasn’t him, its destructive actions were no longer entirely his fault. But after the Chitauri invasion, at which point he was able to remember his actions as the Hulk, and self-assess his behaviour in that state, Bruce realized she was correct about everything. If it wasn’t for Betty and the statement she made, he may not have fully accepted the Hulk as a part of himself — as himself, and he would’ve been stuck in denial for years. Lots of his development can be attributed to Betty, even if they aren’t in touch anymore.

Not only this, but Bruce met Betty during a time where he hadn’t experienced all his hardships with Ross. He was nowhere near as world-weary, and while he didn’t trust people much back then, either, it was better than his tendencies nowadays. In that sense, Betty is one of his last few connections to the past, and a time when he was more hopeful and innocent.

But while Bruce can control his condition now, he hasn’t reconnected with Betty. She's been in the dark ever since the Harlem incident, save for glimpses of him on the news here and there.

Bruce does want to see Betty again. He would love to see her. But he’s made some personal discoveries related to his condition that convinced him he’s not a good fit for her, or anyone in general. He doesn’t see himself as completely human anymore, which has become even more of a tangible sentiment ever since his transformations became a typical and even daily occurrence. As a result, there are some philosophical quandaries that prevent him from resuming a romantic relationship with her, or with anyone else. Given his current development trajectory, he would be the Hulk almost constantly in later verses. It’s not an ideal scenario to create a potential relationship from — especially with Betty, because he’s unable to meet some of her needs when he's the Hulk. Additionally, he cannot guarantee Betty’s safety with Ross still around, because he doesn’t know if Ross is still looking for a way to capture him. He suspects there were times in the past when Ross backed off temporarily, like after the Chitauri invasion, because capturing the Hulk at that time would have caused a huge public outcry, but nowadays, he’s unsure where Ross’ intentions lie. He's unwilling to take the risk.

All this being said, Bruce doesn’t expect Betty to remain loyal to him, or vice versa, because he understands the necessity of moving on and not dwelling on the past. It would be melancholic if Bruce discovered that Betty had met someone new, yes (this was certainly the case with Leonard Samson), but ultimately, he would be happy for her, and he’d tell himself that his own feelings don’t matter if it means she’s content and safe. Of course, there is always the possibility that Banner could reach out with letters, or another kind of communication channel. And it's possible that if Ross was gone and the world was more settled, he would meet her in-person, even if he didn't intend to restart a romantic relationship. At that point, there’s nothing stopping them from sharing their work and collaborating professionally, too. This kind of interaction could eventually become the norm. But I don’t really see their relationship shifting to a romantic one again.

So I suppose in the end, I don’t see their relationship as having a cliché happy ending, in the sense that they end up together, are happily married, and are living in their own little cottage somewhere. I see it as a mature progression from young love, to a failed effort to make things work in a terrible situation, and then an acceptance of knowing, while their situation has improved, it’s still not going to work out. And they both have the courage to run with things and make the best of it. Betty would be understanding of Bruce’s situation, as she’s always been, and in concurrence, Bruce would be happy as well, because he knows Betty can have a romantic relationship with someone who completely presents as human. They can still work together too, which is a callback to how their relationship first began in the library. And it continues to build on all the trust and confidence they initially showed each other, and continued to show each other, over the years.

So it’s very bittersweet.

I’m also going to mention the pairing of Bruce and Natasha, because I need to assert that I do enjoy this ship! As a matter of fact, it’s something I’ve enjoyed for years and years. I was one of the wierdos who was shipping them soon after the release of The Avengers, earlier than most to the point where the tag was completely blank. I guess for me, there was something unique about their dynamic in The Avengers that stood out from Bruce’s other interactions. Natasha was ordered to approach the doctor in Kolkata, and at that point, she had seen the Hulk's capabilities in-person during her involvement in the Culver University incident. Her distrust of Bruce and his alter ego was justified, especially given her personal experiences with everything, and while it may (or may not) have lessened over the course of the film, Natasha clearly came to respect Bruce at the very least, and she understood the benefits of not only putting his intellect to good use, but the Hulk itself. During the final battle, Bruce had come on his own volition and was fully prepared to transform, but she still made the active effort to tell him the Hulk was valuable. Given her past experiences with the Hulk, this meant a lot coming from her. And it's clear this wasn't just a "tactical" choice on her part; if she didn't say anything, the outcome wouldn't have been any different. This was a nice way to end the film and create a foundation for their future development between them. If their relationship continued to open up, I could certainly see them developing feelings for each other.

But the next film... Eugh. I was gravely disappointed by the sudden schoolgirl-crush syndrome that Natasha was demonstrating, which was unrealistic in itself (I'll explain my reasoning in a bit), and the total handwaving of everything that led up to it, which ultimately did nothing but break Natasha’s character and make it difficult for most of the audience to accept what was happening. Because... What initially made Natasha go from having a reluctant admiration for him, to downright falling for him? We did not see the process, or the catalysts. They had jumped from Point A to Point Y, and we saw nothing of the points in between. So the whole thing immediately fell apart for me.

A common argument I see in defense of Natasha’s behaviour is, simply put, she’s in love, so it’s natural for her to act a little kooky. However, love doesn’t have the effect of completely negating deeply-ingrained character aspects, especially fundamental traits. And Natasha has many traits that are the complete antithesis of how she was behaving in that movie. It’s the same as seeing Christopher Nolan's Bruce Wayne, a normally close-mouthed and subtle character, gushing, nudging up to, and grinning like a little boy around Rachel Dawes. It doesn’t make sense... So why is it suddenly acceptable for Natasha?

In that sense, I could also presume that Natasha’s behaviour was Joss Whedon’s misogynistic projection of how he, himself, believes a woman in love should behave. There’s a real possibility, given how Natasha was characterized in earlier MCU films, versus how she was acting in this movie, that Whedon threw out her characterization in favour of playing out a fantasy; a stereotype. And unluckily for him, that stereotype (as the word itself implies) does not fit all people or characters. So it was noticeable, and not in a good way.

And honestly... I’m disappointed that this disaster has caused so many people to discount the ship as a whole, even though that film was simply one poor adaptation of it. People also tend to dismiss the pairing because they believe Bruce and Natasha are too different. But they both have trust issues. They both have experiences where they’ve been used for other peoples’ goals. Natasha has seen a very vulnerable and intimate side of Bruce that most people never have (that look he gave her before he transformed on the helicarrier, honestly, was completely unlike the self-composure he obsessively tried to convey in all their prior interactions)... And frankly, I'm sick of hearing about the “age gap” between them, because my aunt and uncle were twelve years apart, and they were happily married for decades. Not to mention, Bruce and Natasha have been through countless hardships, and they probably have a lot more common ground than many people with an “age gap”.

So if things were properly written? That would have been phenomenal, I think. The potential was certainly there in the first movie; it’s just a shame those foundations were ignored and not directly built on.

But that’s enough salt from me!

As for this Bruce in particular... I can see him having a relationship with Natasha in the earlier part of his timeline, before the Sokovia incident occurred. There would've been a lot of opportunities for their relationship to develop, especially because Bruce wasn't just working with the Avengers; he joined S.H.I.E.L.D. and was working on the same helicarrier as Natasha for around a year, too. He would've avoided her a lot, but I can easily see Natasha approaching him eventually, or them running into each other and trying to reconcile. Especially once Bruce remembers everything that happened during the helicarrier incident, and how scared Natasha was. He had offered Natasha a brief apology during the Chitauri invasion, but after those memories were dredged up, it would suddenly become insufficient.

But during or after the Sokovia incident, I doubt they would start a relationship with each other. This is simply because Natasha caused Bruce a lot of turmoil around this time, and afterwards. She betrayed his trust during the Sokovia battle by forcing him to transform, which also worsened an issue that Bruce was currently having with his condition. Her support of the Sokovia Accords didn't help either, because Bruce was vehemently against them from the very beginning, having seen Ross’ wish to exploit the Hulk’s abilities, and he feared this would continue on a much greater scale if the Accords were ratified, with hundreds (if not thousands) of identified superhumans now vulnerable. I hesitate to say Bruce will never trust Natasha again, but while he could probably reach a tentative comfortability around her, a romantic relationship might be asking too much. There’s simply too much negative history between them, a lot of which entails broken trust. And once Bruce’s trust in someone is broken, well, it’s monumentally difficult to restore.

#( answered. )#( headcanon. )#anonymous #bruce banner #thanks again!

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mcrmadness · 3 years

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I’m feeling... weird. I’m not exactly sure how or what but I crave for something I can’t name but am also feeling tired and energetic. Maybe it’s again something to do with arts, I am not entirely sure.

Totally unrelated but: I have also noticed that because of my touch-repulsion and because I’m a sex-repulsed aroace, NOTP’s and also fanfiction nowadays make me really, really uncomfortable. I don’t read fanfiction anymore and for some reason it feels really really weird for me to see people associating one person with multiple different pairings. When I start shipping something, I no longer can ship them with anyone else than each other so seeing NOTP content anywhere almost makes me sick. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying people are not allowed to do so, of course they are; I’m just thinking aloud here what seeing NOTP content means for ME. I usually just skip it but sometimes I cannot and there’s not always ways to do so. E.g. I cannot filter ship names on Tumblr because with some fandoms people don’t use ship names at all. Or if it’s not on Tumblr, there’s just no way to avoid the content because there’s no way to make personal spoilers for myself.

The touch repulsion also is very much present when people start talking about touching celebrities or how they want to hug them or something like that, or if they see a photo of a ship and say how they want to swap with one of them. And like... I just cannot relate? I’m often wondering that if I met a celebrity in real life, how could I express to them that “yeah you’re my idol but still don’t touch me pls”, for example when you see people taking photos with their idols and they might simply just have their hand around the fan’s shoulders, I don’t know if I could handle even that. And by that I don’t meant “omg they touched my shoulder!!! 8D” but for me it would be a negative experience.

Me being aroace also affects the way I fangirl a lot. I cannot comprehend certain emojis, hearts, comments, words and things people say about celebrities. Or pretty much of anyone who they don’t know personally. I see these a lot but especially on Discord servers and a bit on Tumblr too and I always have to scroll past those because I don’t understand how a person can feel something like that towards a person they don’t even know! Again, do whatever you want to do if it makes you happy, I’m still just trying to express how I feel about it and not trying to invalidate anyone’s feelings or behaviour. It’s just something that I cannot relate to, not even through empathy - normally I’m able to imagine feelings and things I normally don’t feel if I just use empathy, but anything that has anything to do with attraction (other than aesthetic), I cannot understand those even with empathy. And it’s extremely weird for me. The same way as I cannot use empathy to understand why some people feel that they are men, and why some feel that they are women, because I am neither. I can relate to many nonbinary experiences, but not to cis nor trans men’s nor women’s experiences, because that’s just something beyond my own. I can also imagine dysphoria but I don’t have it myself, but if I do try to imagine being in a male body (I’m afab), it feels wrong so I know I’m nonbinary.

Sometimes it’s super weird to be in the fandom world as an aroace. Celebrity crushes? Never had one. Maybe a few aesthetic ones but nothing more than that. I have even written in my diary, when I was 14, that I don’t understand “how people can like celebrities like that” since I saw it happening a lot already back then. Back then I thought it was just the age since we were teenagers and those were adults - disgusting! But then I grew up myself and I’m 29 now. And I still can’t understand what happens there.

But I think this is also interesting because if you think of it like this, I can actually understand demisexual and demiromantic people a lot better than regular allos. I am still very much aroace, but it just makes so much sense to me that people would develop feelings AFTER a very strong bond, and you just can never have a strong bond like that to a celebrity if you don’t know them in real life (for other reasons than them being a celebrity), so of course people who have major allo-type crushes on celebrities make absolutely no sense to me.

So yeah, just wondering random things again meanwhile trying to figure out what the fuck it is again my brain is wanting me to do.

#mcrmadness' random stuff #aromantic #asexual #aroace

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indigopurple · 4 years

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Basically a review of OP episode 503 ig

Currently rewatching post-war arc (in the dub so I don't have any screenshots for u guys sry) and theres a few things id like to point out.

During a conversation Dadan once had with Garp, they were talking about Roger. Garp said that even if they were facing powerful enemies, he would never run away because he wouldnt dare leaving his comrads behind; it wasnt an option for him. Obviously we see this in Ace. But ALSO, isnt this what he did with Katakuri? It was a little different cuz of the setting mostly, but he separated himself from his crew to fight off katakuri, and lied to them about being okay so they didn't worry (he was already getting his ass kicked by then, so he just made that stupid smile and told them not to worry (or smth like that, I can remember the exact line) (that smile was so gross and fake cuz he fucking sucks at lying). Also he said roger destroyed a buncha soldiers cuz they mouthed off his men. That's what Ace tried to do but instead he died. :(

"The pain he went through just made him hold on tighter to the ones he loved" -Garp, about Roger. "Despite his flaws and his bad reputation, his crew still trusted him completely." -also Garp, about Roger. These both sound a lot like Luffy AND Ace.

When Dogra got home and told everyone about Sabo's ship being shit down and him dying (which we all know didnt happen, thank fuck), (by the way the absolutely lost looks on Ace's and Luffy's faces with the sudden silence hurt like a bitch), Luffy started crying and said "WE SHOULDNT'A LET HIM GO, IT'S ALL OUR FAULT". Which fucking says something about him (thinking of episodes 913-915 when he goes fucking berserk, but before that he learns that Kaido probably killed Tama and he says "I should've escorted them..!" (*ugly cries*)). Ace also reacted pretty similarly-- "Sabo...why didn't we go back into town and bring him back here?! We're so stupid!" And he gets mad and asks where he could find the bastard that killed him (obviously not getting a good answer since it was a fucking celestial dragon ugh). That is what Luffy does, in present time. He results to anger first, not sadness. Not sure when he learned to do that but I'm 99 percent sure it was from Ace. Also the blaming himself thing? High chance thats ALSO from Ace. Who else would teach him that self hating behaviour?!

Dadan pins Ace down to stop him from going after the Celestial Dragon to calm him down, telling him he cant do anything, he's not big or strong enough to do anything and he'll be killed as soon as he tries anything, especially since it was the whole country -the whole WORLD- that killed Sabo. He can't do anything. And then they tied him to a tree outside to let him cool off. Oh yeah then he also told luffy to stop crying like a little girl or else he'll- (and he didn't finish the sentence). ...Ok maybe thats why luffy started being more angry than sad.

This is where things get a little more :( . Ace reads the letter Sabo sent them before he died. As he reads, he walks to the end of the forest, to a cliff overlooking the ocean. And starts fucking bawling (btw the voice actor who had Ace's childhood part did not do a very good job, no where near as in character and real as Coleen Clickenberg did with all of Luffy's crying scenes. She was spot on.) ...do you see where im going with that? He isolated himself before letting himself feel sad. It was all rage and then calm beforehand. Y-you see where im going with that. Dont make me say it.

"How's Luffy doing, is he any better?" "Well...he hasnt been eating much, but he still eats twice as much as we do". Oh look, That's what happened after Ace died too. There's a behavioral pattern that hasnt gone away. Not sure why it wouldve tho.

Luffy is mopeing, lying on the ground in a similar setting ace was at when he cried. Hes thinking about some of the things Sabo said, like how theyre gonna sail the seas together, and he clenches his hands into tight, shaking fists. After Ace shows up and hits him, and talking abt some other stuff I don't feel like relaying, Luffy tightens his grip on the straw hat and tells ace, whimpering, he wants to get stronger (and stronger, and stronger, and stronger and stronger and....) And he wants to be the strongest in the world. "And then, I'll protect everyone. I won't lose anyone I care about". He gets stronger mainly to protect the people he loves. And then he asks ace to promise he won't die. To which he hits Luffy again and tells him he should be more worried about himself dying first. And then the famous line that hurts like a bitch- "I'm NEVER going to DIE!" And then this hopeful music comes on (fucking damnit funimation, u gotta do this? Really??) Also he says he wont die as long as he has a wussy little brother to protect. ...FUCK. Ok, the fist clenching is a thing he does all the fucking time, usually when he gets mad. This was different because he wasnt mad, he was sad. He clenched his fist because thinking about it hurt. Which, huh, sounds a lot like his whole episode after waking up from his 2 week coma on the polar tang. To try and stop the mental pain of those horrendous memories, he resulted to physically pain. He hurt himself. So, He clenches his fists in times like these to fight off the mental pain and the urge to cause himself physical pain. Guys, our boy is bad at emotions, help him. ....ok this paragraph is longer than I anticipated so ill dumb down the rest of it ig. Next part, him asking ace to promise he wont die. The music, the body language, the over change in mood- this comforts him. He stopped hiding his face and silently sobbing after ace said this. OH YEAH! didn't he tell jinbe not to die when they parted ways in Totto Land? And then, hes missing still in Wano and we see Luffy is worried....but convinced Jinbe will show up. Again, this comforts him. Hes nervous cuz someone KOFF KOFF ACE broke that promise once. But jinbe is his crew mate so he trusts him, thank god.

"-But whoever did it, they must be opposed to freedom." The whole freedom thing? That runs through Luffy's blood and spirit.His brothers fought for it, his dad is the man who strives to give everyone freedom basically, and Luffy himself has seen enough of the OPPOSITE of freedom to be so, so much more than just against it. Hence why he of course was so eager to free the slaves in Sabaody, the kids in punk hazard, the toys in dressrosa, the country of Wano from Kaido's tyrany. The apple doesnt fall far from the tree huh.

I dont think Luffy would remember his promise with Shanks if it werent for his brothers putting feul to his dream. It was a stupid bet at first; he just wanted to beat Shanks, right then. But after meeting Sabo and Ace, he found the opposite of freedom and human rights. And then he wanted, REALLY wanted, to become the free-est man in the world; the pirate king.

Last one i promise ok? This one is less connected to whats going on in the episode at this point, but something I noticed (its so obvious everyone has seen this ok) was when luffy cries, his posture is always open. He doesn't curl in on himself like many people would do (I know I would, lol). He doesnt hug himself, protect himself. He's just, opened up to whoever is watching, literally. This has a little more to do with something I haven't talked about much in this post yet; his self-destruction issues. I said he tried to hurt himself when he felt mental pain, which is definitely similar. But he cries and doesnt try to protect or comfort himself, like he doesn't have that programmed into his mind. Reminder that he only wants to live because of his dream, and if he doesnt have his dream, he wants to die. (Whoa.). Ok, so no self preservation mechanism at all rlly. Hes basically ride or die. So, when things hurt so much that he cries, he has no hope left. He just kinda...dies inside. So this was mildly different after sabo died. Yes we saw him just standing there, sobbing. But the next day he's still crying, and instead he's laying on the ground. I saw that and the voice in the back of my head told me he wanted to be a part of that lifeless dirt beneath him. Then, Ace walked over. And his words made him feel the hope that I told you about earlier, and he sat up into a sitting position. And HUGGED HIS LEGS TO HIS CHEST. There's some self preservation! Some hope! Some will to exist, to live! Something we saw none of as he sat in front of his brothers corpse, shutting down. He sat there, open to his enemies, incapable of protecting himself. Practically anyone couldve killed him right then and there. I think he mightve liked that, at that moment. Like thank god he has that stupidly good luck cuz if he didn't I swear someone couldve thrown and axe or FUCKING ANYTHING AT THAT MOMENT and hed be dead becuase he never physically or mentally prepared himself. On purpose.

Our poor boy needs some fucking attention and therapists. (Insert my rant post about how jinbe is on the crew primarily for anger management and therapy, not just being a helmsman.) Ugh, smh ugly cries

Aaaaand thats about the end of the episode. Theres so many little tics and peesonality traits that you notive thru this episode, and I only noticed them cuz im rewatching this part of the show for like the third time. I don't react as much as the first time of course but some things are definitely sadder after knowing what's going on and what will happen later on.

Moral of the story (post)? I think luffy is almost equally as alike -if not, more similar to roger as ace is. Also, high key genuinely think Luffy met like NO ONE but Garp before he met Shanks and his crew. What the fuck was his first like 5 years of being alive like? (He wantd to be a pirate cuz Garp didnt want that. Rebellious baby asshole. And then shanks made things worse, in a good way for luffy. And then ace and sabo made that worse thing worse for a good reason. Luffy lives...for those influences. And that is fucking it. Why.

Oh thanks tumblr for moving my picture to the bottom of the post u fucking idiot

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nomadicbeard · 5 years

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Hi! I saw on one of your posts you said that you used to be a stucky shipper. I actually started off as a stony shipper but then absolutely fell in love with stucky but I like both . I was just wondering what made you "jump ship" on stucky lol. Sorry if this comes across as annoying or anything im just curious!

Hey! As you can see a couple of people have asked me this over the last couple of weeks and I’m really lazy and haven’t got around to responding yet, but the people deserve an answer so here we go. Before we start a quick disclaimer: I’ll only be talking about the ships themselves, not the communities or any of the discourse surrounding them. This is not a ship-bashing of any kind and please do not take it as such, it’s just my own personal experience surrounding these characters and these relationships.

Buckle your seatbelts kids, this is a long one.

I first got into Marvel c. 2015. I’m European so I’d never really watched any marvel movies before that, I watched Age of Ultron on a plane and remember being vaguely aware the Steve/Tony was a thing (what is pretty interesting is that to this day I have no clue where that knowledge came from) but was mostly just excited by the superhero stuff. I then got home and watched The Winter Soldier and fell in love. I love the Winter Soldier, it’s probably still one of my favourite marvel movies (it got kicked out of its top spot by Black Panther last year unfortunately) and to me no other marvel movie could hold a torch to it at the time. So I came onto tumblr, searched up The Winter Soldier and was just inundated with Stucky stuff, as expected. I rolled with it, got invested just from constant exposure (it was also around the height of the Stucky ship) and as far as I was concerned, that was that. I was super into Stucky for almost six months and was pretty much your average shipper, I didn’t understand stevetony, loved Steve Rogers, was close to creating a Stucky sideblog wit some ridiculous pun as my username, I was gone over this ship.

Then one day, I sat down and read the man on the bridge by boopboop on ao3. You’ve almost definitely heard of it, but it was the most popular fic in the Steve/Bucky tag on ao3 at the time (for some reason I had just never got around to reading it until then, it was long and I didn’t have the stamina I have now). It was your pretty standard Stucky fic, Steve gets Bucky back, they have to deal with his trauma which results in Steve and Bucky declaring their long lost love for each other etc. etc. What was different about this fic, was that it was all told from Tony’s point of view, and since Steve and Tony were on the same team at that point, their dynamic was a huge part of the fic. And I found myself falling completely in love with Steve and Tony’s dynamic. I went back to the fic for this post (and god it is a good fic) and pulled up the first couple of chapters and instantly just found so many instances of that dynamic

(grade A stevetony arguing over each other’s safety with a side of flirting from Tony)

(Idk why but the image of Steve and Tony not going to sleep, but rather staying up and brewing coffee together was such a vivid one when I first read this fic, I still remember it to this day. )

(Tony picking Steve flowers while trying to desperately play off that he didn’t aka. Tony caring while trying desperately not to care)

(Everyone knowing that Steve would definitely come to Tony, apart from Tony himself.)

Now obviously, this is a stucky fic and I went into it knowing this, but I found when Steve and Bucky finally got together I felt honestly a bit bored, a bit cheated. I had no idea why at the time. I remember very clearly x-ing out of the fic at the end and feeling really uneasy, I came onto tumblr, went straight back into the Stucky tag and all was well.

When I next went back onto ao3, I started out with a couple of oneshots in the Stucky tag, but for some reason it wasn’t working for me anymore. I remember sitting there, a little bored, not at all invested in this relationship and just missing something. I figured I was probably missing Tony’s presence in the fic and so filtered in Tony Stark’s character tag. I read a few of those and all was well but I realised the same thing was happening as had happened in man on the bridge, the moment that Steve and Bucky got together, the fic lost something for me. Desperate at this point, and a little annoyed at myself I conducted an experiment and went into the Steve/Tony tag on Ao3 and as they say, the rest is history. If you go onto older posts on my main blog there’s a pretty drastic, almost overnight shift c. January 2016. I have to admit, I expected Civil War to be a conversion so I enjoyed stevetony without consequence for five months, while still labelling myself as a Stucky shipper because I expected to be pulled back to Stucky after civil war, the reality was that somehow I came out of civil war shipping stevetony harder than ever before. From there, I spent two years reading my way through the stevetony tag on ao3 and finally set up this blog in 2018, with a really obscure reference as my username and it’s been stevetony til I die ever since.

I just couldn’t read Stucky anymore. That’s what I mean when I say on this blog that stevetony has ruined me for every other ship, because it has. Steve and Tony’s firecracker dynamic pulled me away from what was fast on its way to becoming my favourite ship in 2015, all because they had a bit of banter on the side in a fic. It’s kind of depressing really, the sort of hold that Steve and Tony’s dynamic has over me,

It’s strange you say you fell in love with Stucky, I fell absolutely out of love with it. I have thought a lot about how I ended up falling into stevetony and why I was so drawn to them instead of Stucky in the first place and I think it all comes down the the story itself. To me, Steve and Bucky’s relationship carries much more weight as a friendship, I still have no doubt that Bucky is one of if not the most important person in Steve’s life, but having that be a lifelong friendship is way more powerful and impactful to me, (especially since what I know I misconstrued to be Steve’s obsession with Bucky is actually Steve’s obsession over the past. I’m not saying Bucky isn’t dear to Steve and he does want to obviously rescue him, but looking back on it there’s more to Steve’s obsession with Bucky than just love, it’s a fear of change and it’s him desperately trying to hold onto a past that’s gone.)

Conversely, I feel like adding a romantic element to Steve and Tony’s relationship enriches the story being told, if you look at something like civil war (either MCU or 616 tbh) in the context of Tony being desperately in love with Steve, it makes a lot more sense, especially with things like The Confession in 616 or the stuff brought up in that strange conversation in the conference room in the MCU. There’s lines from Steve like “I’m home/you gave me a home” or even straight up “he loved you” and his tormented behaviour throughout infinity war and endgame that just really makes you wonder, not to mention lines from others like “you two still gazing into each other’s eyes/sounds like both of you got into bed with the wrong people” and they did have to share a bed at Clint’s farm after all lol. The tragedy of their story is heightened if you look at it through the context of them being absolutely in love with each other, just never having actually got around to telling it to each other’s faces. This tragedy is heavily implied in The Oath/The Confession in 616 when they confess their deepest darkest secrets to the other’s comatose/dead bodies, and apparently it’s always been that they love the other person. Actually you could easily introduce a romantic element by making relatively few changes to the MCU, but that’s a post for another time (I have a long and comprehensive list in my notes app on how little you actually need to change to make that happen, it’s literally the matter of a few lines of dialogue and one major story change at the end of IM3, an interesting thought exercise to say the least).

Finally, there’s a quote that came up on my dash the day I made that fateful venture into the ao3 stevetony tag, “your soulmate isn’t someone who comes peacefully into your life. It is someone who makes you question things, changed your reality, somebody that marks a before and after in your life. It is not the human being everyone idealized, but an ordinary person, who managed to revolutionize your world in a second” to this day, it resonates so strongly with me about stevetony. It’s everything I love about this ship just compressed into a quote.

So yeah it was basically a bunch of happy coincidences, but thank god it happened. As a writer, stevetony has taught me so much about character and dynamic, stuff that is honestly invaluable. When you have long fics that basically detail the day by day life of Steve and Tony post-civil war in rural Italy and consists of them sleeping, crying and working through their repressed feelings (looking at you @silkspectred ), it is the characters and their unique dynamic that drive the entirety of the story. Steve and Tony, in the hands of a compelling writer, can keep me hooked over a frankly embarrassing number of words. I still have a bit of a special place for Stucky in my heart really, it did start me out in marvel after all and it was one of my first ever ships, but your first love is only so good until you meet your true love, not to get all sappy but stevetony has completely destroyed my ability to ship anything else. I might get a bit flirtatious with some other ships, like sambucky (I still love Bucky, and I love Sam!), or the riverdale ships (beronica and jarchie or bust), or even the game of thrones crack ships (daensa til the day we die), but I’ll always come back to stevetony.

So yeah this escalated into a far longer post than I intended to make but I’ve never really spelled out on this blog how or why I ended up jumping Stucky to Stony when I know it’s usually the other way around. I guess it just comes down to stevetony catching me out when I least expected it, and never having let go of me since.

#and WORD #jesus this is a long post #stony #stony meta #stevetony #what i should be doing: maths. what i'm actually doing: crying about stevetony. it's an average day #ask #answered #anon #idk whether to tag it as stucky or anti stucky tbh #i'm going with neither and pray i don't get shouted at #steve rogers #tony stark #superhusbands #long post

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madokasoratsugu · 5 years

Note

Lucette and Delora for the Character Thing? ovo?

give me a character and i’ll break them down:

aw hell yea, two boss ass female charas B))

Lucette

How I feel about this character

i don’t play a lot of otome games (surprisingly lol) but i was very pleasantly surprised by her and her huge personality. it’s pretty incredible how she grows in not just one, but all five routes, and all in different ways. Lucette is amazing and valid and she deserves so much !! and she got it all !!

GOOD FOR HER.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

ok UH the top guy is obvs Fritz (and Varg) LMAO// but i also ship her with the other four LIs, Annice and Emelaigne, not in ranked order.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

oh…is it cheating if i say Fritz/Lucette again HAHAH//

hm i guess Mythros/Lucette ? id love to have seen them interact more. i can never see them together romantically (just because i think they’d be Bad for each other bc past trauma w Hildyr), but imo they’d have a very neat friendship as advisor and queen + magic teacher and student !

My unpopular opinion about this character

idk if this is an unpopular opinion but Lucette is #valid for all her behaviours, even those in prologue.

ive ranted about this on twitter A Ton, but Lucette was someone brought up to be feared and taught that the world would never forgive weakness, and no one showed her kindness even when she was no longer that person (aka when she was first cursed and forgotten). Lucette had no reason to believe in kindness because the world did not give her one. no one is obligated to be kind to a world that hates them - in fact, hating it in return is only a human response.

she chose kindness and love in the end, and i think that speaks more about Lucette than anything negative anyone in canon has said about her. Lucette chose to be kind to a world that did nothing to deserve it. the world was cruel to her at a time when she needed it to be kind the most (eg her mother’s “death”, her being cursed), and the fact that she turned around and said “this is wrong, i was wrong, and this will change starting with me”, and only ever blaming herself for everything once she finds out about Hildyr is ridiculously, painfully, kind.

so i stand by her attitude lmao. i understand the townspeople, but fuck them lol. on this tangent: this is also why i love Fritz, because he was the only one to really understand this about Lucette and never demand/urge her to be nicer. all he did was believe in her, and that’s all we fucking want, right. to be believed in. fuck. im getting EMO in this chillis tonite.

other than this i don’t really think i have any unpopular opinions about Lucette :”))

(the other love interests tho. lmao. i have Controversial thoughts and here’s one: they would all make lowkey bad bfs and they got a lot of issues they need to work out w Lucette before they can really progress as a couple. the LIs need A Lot of help with their issues and its pretty nice that the game usually concludes with everyone having a support system to help them through it :”)) )

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

i wish her witch heritage had been brought up more ! people’s perceptions of her were obviously coloured because of it, and i thought it’d have been super interesting to see how and why some of the LIs’ views on her were shaped by the fact that she was Hildyr’s daughter - and how those views changed once they truly got to know (and/or love) her. its understandable why none of the LIs brought it up for their own reasons + it would have heavily detracted from the game’s plot and suspense, but i kinda wish we’d had a scene with each LI and Lucette talking about it.

—

Delora

How I feel about this character

funny enough, Delora is one of those charas that i actually disliked/distrusted at first but then slowly grew to love as the game progressed. i love how her relationship w Lucette and the LIs was explored in the diff routes, and i want to see her interact with Lucette more in the fandisk !!

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Parfait !!! theyre the ultimate lesbian couple. goth/pastel aesthetics on point, ride or die babes; literally met in a war and decided ok, this is the love of my life that im gonna run a tavern with now ! i love them sm.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

hmm…maybe Delora/Rumpel. i actually think that Rumpel and Delora can get along pretty darn well once he recovers his memories and becomes more grounded. also just bc i dont think there’s anyone else in canon in her age group that she’d get a chance to make friends with ajksskfd…..

My unpopular opinion about this character

ok hm might get flack for this but: Delora was totally in the wrong for cursing Lucette but especially for leaving her in the streets without shelter or food for god knows how long.

the curse in general: it’s a classic case of good guy doing a bad thing to resolve a dire situation, but i do think that Delora took it too far - esp with leaving Lucette in an abandoned alleyway.

ofc it’s implied that Karma and Waltz were patrolling the streets to just to find her the night she was cursed, but just imagine what could have happened to Lucette if they weren’t lucky enough to find her on the first night - or if they’d found her after the men had caught her. i just think traumatising a girl isnt the best way to teach her the power of friendship and kindness.

i think Dice/mice miiight have mentioned on their tumblr that Delora was keeping an eye on Lucette the whole day/night when she was first cursed, but then that’s just cruel on another level - standing by while the townsfolk refuse to help i can understand, but letting these men attempt to rob her and chase after her when Lucette is utterly terrified and knows that she has no one to turn to ? kind of a dick move.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

this one is a little meta but: i wish Dice/mice hadn’t shut down the idea that Delora and Parfait are lesbians ! i mean im used to roasting canon in the oven and carving it for the juicy bits so i dont really care, but it kinda stings to have fanon lgbt headcanons shut down officially by the creators lol….

#polar-stars #inquiries #long post #cindphenon spoilers

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koreaboosworld69 · 5 years

Text

Forever Yours - Chapter 1

Authors Notes:

Hi!! This is my first time publishing something on Tumblr (like my fanfiction) so I'm not really sure how all of it works just now but I'm sure I'll figure it out, so if I get anything wrong tell me.

The fandom for this story is NCT.

The main ship for this story is JohnTen.

A basic summary of this story would be: Ten and Johnny broke 2 years ago but neither of them felt the relationship never quite finished. Given the chance, would they do it all again?

''Will you let me hold you? Will you let me keep you?''

This was the question Ten asked his boyfriend Johnny as they were curled up together in bed enjoying their shared smiles, touches and company.

Today marked the day of their 3rd year anniversary since they started dating and Johnny had decided to surprise Ten on this special night by taking him to all the sights they had went to on their first date.

Everything was the same. The beach they had went to with its golden sand and glittering waves. The bench at the park they sat on together where they watched the sun go down and the sky turn from a soft yellow, to a hot pink, to a dark shade of red. The same bench where Johnny had plucked up enough courage to hold Ten's hand and smile at him 3 years ago, their first true connection in this relationship. The restaurant they had went to at the end of the day, where there were no awkward silences as they had filled every gap with anything and everything they could talk about and where it first clicked for them both 3 years ago that maybe... just maybe they're falling head over heels in love for each other.

Johnny snuggled into Ten's arms.

''Of course I will. I'm forever yours, remember?''

Ten kissed Johnny's forehead.

''I love you, Johnny Seo.''

Johnny stared at his boyfriend.

''I'd go to the end of the world for you, you know that?''

I love you too and I'd never leave you. You're everything to me Ten, everything.''

Tears, ones of happiness, rolled down Ten's cheeks at his boyfriend's words but he wasn't given an opportunity to clean them up as Johnny had latched his lips onto Ten's at that moment. The two shared a passionate, intimate kiss, full of love.'

Ten sighed and looked down with a forlorn expression on his face, if only that promise was true.

'I'm forever yours, remember?'

'Bullshit', Ten thought as he mopped up the coffee shop floor.

It had been 2 years since that promise was broken, since Johnny had broken up with Ten.

At first, Ten was heartbroken and couldn't move, couldn't be bothered to go anywhere. All that consumed his thoughts were 'what ifs'. What if Ten hadn't been so angry when he saw Johnny with another guy that day, what if Ten hadn't ignored Johnny out of anger for finding out that Johnny had mixed his coloured and white clothes that day, what if Ten had cooked a different meal for Johnny at dinner that day.

He flickered through his mind's archive of the 3 year relationship in great detail, analysing every moment the two of them spent together, every interaction, every movement, every touch. Any irregularity in Johnny's behaviour where he didn't seem to smile as much or be as loving to him Ten blamed on himself and blamed it for making the relationship grow apart. It didn't matter whether the reason for Johnny's mood change was him or not, in Ten's mind it contributed to the breakup.

Majority of the time it wasn't Ten that cause Johnny to come home angry, it was work related, especially his boss.

Ten didn't care though, at that point he'd give anything to turn back the clock and make everything better. To always have Johnny smiling and happy. To make sure there was never a day when Johnny was feeling down. To have every day where they both just loved each other to their fullest extent, physically and emotionally, and have the perfect relationship.

Then, they wouldn't have broken up...they'd still be together in each other's arms where they belonged.

At least, that's what Ten wanted to believe.

As time passed on Ten's dream of his fantasy slowly extinguished, like a sparkler burning out in his heart.

Eventually he gave up on his fantasy coming true altogether slowly started to realise that no matter what he did, he couldn't salvage the relationship. That flame of love could be rebirthed no more.

The entire relationship had already gone beyond the breaking point, what Johnny did to him was the final straw.

Ten forced himself not to think of his boyfriend's horrendous actions which ultimately caused to two to fall apart and decided to use that energy into cleaning up the shop.

All those events lead up to the present day.

Ten now worked in a coffee shop at the corner of the road of where he lived. He made enough to get by and managed to make some really good friends over there.

Ten and Johnny's relationship had developed at Ten's home town and the two used to own a flat together. The flat was legally owned and signed in Johnny's name however so when the two decided to split up Johnny took the flat's lease with him and Ten was forced to look for another flat (he didn't want to go back to living with his parents, not right now).

It wasn't as spacious as the one he used to live in but it was big enough, close enough to home and work and he made enough money to keep himself.

Sometimes Ten would drive up to the park or the beach and just sit there. Breathing in and out, just reminiscing about the times he had with Johnny in those places. Those places that held so much memories but it all felt like a lifetime away.

After Ten found out Johnny moved, he contemplated moving too but in the end he couldn't. It was home to him, the place where he'd grown up and he wasn't like Johnny, he couldn't move away from meaningful places so easily. He actually cared for his memories and kept them alive and wouldn't spontaneously leave without saying a word to anyone.

Today Ten was cleaning the shop with the first friend he'd ever made at his workplace, Yuta.

Yuta was very straight-forward, sassy and often liked to cut to the chase yet in times of need he surprisingly gave the best advice.

Yuta had been friends with Ten for a year and a half now, since the very first day Ten worked here. The two had gotten on extremely well together but they knew they'd never go past being friends, there was nothing else there in their relationship.

Yuta had known about the breakup for a few months and now Yuta saw that look on Ten's face, that look where his eyes are looking at you but there's no glimmer in them. They're lifeless, too focused on something else deep inside of him and many lines get etched onto Ten's face as the further he stays into that state the more his face scrunches up with emotions.

This was the look Ten got when he thought about his ex boyfriend.

Yuta sighed internally and looked at his friend, worried. He knew it had been 2 years since Ten's breakup with this boyfriend of his but Yuta didn't even know the name of the man who made Ten feel this way. Who made the whole world disappear for Ten and be the cause for all of his sadness, all his rage...but most of his happiness? Who was this man?

The most he managed to weasel out of Ten was that he was tall, dark skinned and had these milky brown eyes. 'yeah, like that really narrows it down.' Yuta thought.

Ten said that it was because he was irrelevant that he didn't bother telling Yuta his name or anything more about his appearance yet Yuta knew that was false.

He knew that deep down a part of Ten lingered for this boyfriend, wanted to spend a moment more with him, wanted to love him for longer.

Was Yuta going to say anything though?

No, no he wasn't.

Sure he was brash but that didn't mean he didn't know the difference of when and when not to say certain things to people.

''Ten?'' Yuta waded into conversation carefully like as if he was face to face with a giant creature that would bite his face off if he made any wrong moves.

''You alright?''

''Yeah, I'm fine.'' Ten responded back with a smile.

They both knew it was forced.

''Oh good.'' Yuta said.

''It's just that you've been cleaning that same spot for 5 minutes now so...''

''Oh.'' Ten hadn't even noticed, he'd been too busy thinking about... him.

Ten quickly shook his head side to side and tried to empty all thoughts about Johnny and focus back on his job.

He muttered a quick 'sorry thanks' to his friend before returning his attention fully back to cleaning once again.

''Well, I have something that'll take your mind off that boyfriend of yours.'' Yuta smiled, and started walking towards Ten.

''What?!'' Ten yelled.

''I swear I'm not thinking about my ex boyfriend i broke up with two years ago. I thought we already established I hated him. Also honestly it's fine Yuta I don't need your hel-'' Ten started, speaking fast, not taking any breaths between his sentences.

Yuta put a finger on Ten's lips to shush him.

''Save me the drabble, we both know when you have 'the look' on your face you're thinking about him.'' Yuta said.

''Anyways, what I wanted to tell you was that I've set you up on a surprise date on Saturday to that fancy restaurant a couple blocks away. Dress nice and don't be late, mystery is in the air after all." Yuta said with a wink.

''W-Who's the person I'm going with?''

''At least tell me that Yuta, c'mon you're my friend.''

''For meeee.'' Ten said with puppy dog eyes, if it would take any means necessary to coax a name out of his friend, Ten was prepared.

Yuta mimicked the action of zipping up his lips and throwing away the key.

''Nope. You're getting nothing from me.

You'll just have to find out yourself on Saturday.''

With that, Yuta skipped away with a happy smile on his face, proud of his accomplishment whilst Ten looked like he'd received word he was dying.

Which, in a metaphorical sense, he was.

'Oh god a blind date organised by Yuta.' Ten thought.

'This should be fun.'

Authors Notes:

Ooh who's the mystery date~

I hope you all enjoyed reading this and even if you didn't tell me! Criticism really helps me as a beginner writer and hopefully there are a few people out there who liked it ^-^

The next chapter should be coming shortly and I apologise for any grammatical errors and stuff, ya boi decided to post this late at night but hopefully its still good sksks

Thanks for reading!

#nct #johnny nct #nct 127 #nct u #nct wayv #wayv ten #nct imagines #ten nct #foreveryours #story #storytelling #kpop #johnten #nctjohnten

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leta-the-strange · 5 years

Text

My troubled relationship with the FB community.

Okay, here goes. As ridiculous as it sounds (because in reality, it is ridiculous) I have taken a rather lengthy break from my writing – both here, on A03 and Fanfiction.net for my health. I have a few significant health problems and for as long as I can remember, writing is one of the few escapes I have – one of my true joys. Now, I’m by no means one of the ‘greats’ in any of the fandoms I’ve written in. I’m always in awe of the talent of some of the writers that I have been lucky enough to read and although I’m not at their level, I’ve been so excited to have the opportunity to have these platforms to share the stories I’ve poured my heart into and so mindblown and grateful to have people not only read them but take the time to leave feedback or thanks.

My love for Leta Lestrange began way back in the very first film when we knew very little about her. But I was starry-eyed from the get-go. A woman of colour main character? She quickly turned into my new inspiration and I was lucky enough to be one of the first Leta Lestrange-centred writers and blogs and meet some other great creatives and like-minded fans in the then tiny Leta loving community. I started developing my first multi-chapter story and (as daunting as it was considering the incredible talent in the stories I had read) started uploading the first chapters to share. A few people started reading my stories and left encouragement, advice and comments that absolutely made my day and I would feel so driven and inspired to keeping going and looked forward to spending my evenings putting together new chapters. My heart would skip each time I got an email saying that someone had left a comment, a review, kudos or notes.

I was quite naïve in not knowing much about ‘ship’ and ‘fandom wars’ and when I found out that was a…thing, I did my best to stick to safe, neutral content, staying out of the confrontational tags, not engaging in the fandom too much – only to share things I created or liked (what all this is supposed to be about). Unfortunately, no matter how well I did that foreign, poisonous part of the fandom I was naïve enough to believe I could easily avoid by minding my business found its way into my life and quickly consumed something I loved.

PLEASE understand that this post isn’t about the characters. This is about real people. As a young girl of colour, yes there have absolutely been moments where I feel sick at some of the racist undertones in a large majority of the fandom’s depiction of Leta – I am happy to put my feelings on this in a more eloquent fashion in a separate post but again, the purpose of my first post back is about real people.

There are people in this fandom, quite a lot of people actually who all belong to one particular community, who not only are lucky enough to have the free time to create and share the things they love on the internet but also apparently have enough spare time to actively go seeking out posts, stories, works, etc that are centred on fictional characters and relationships that they don’t like (to put it lightly) for the sole purpose of abusing, bullying and degrading the creators to the delight of their followers that have little more than mic-drop gifs, ‘oh snap’s, and ‘#preach’ to contribute.

This behaviour is disgusting, appalling, unacceptable and harmful.

And of course, not ALL people from this particular, I don’t know the word…’shipping group’ do this (so many are kind, talented and supportive) but enough have that I feel like even if I eventually came to like this pairing, I would never, ever feel safe engaging in that community myself.

I have characters I like, characters I love, ones that I am impartial to and ones I don’t like much. That’s the great thing about fictional characters. However, I have never felt the urge (or had the time or energy) to obsessively track the tags of ships and characters that I don’t like to leave hateful comments designed to make the creators feel unsafe and unwanted in a community in which they are just as entitled to be involved in than anyone else.

This obsessive, abusive behaviour destroyed my love for writing. One of the few things that drew me out of depression when I was unable to physically do much else activity-wise gave me intense anxiety and as much as I still received beautiful comments, I panicked when I received notification that someone had messaged me.

My story has been called disgusting, dumb, awful, gross etc. I have been called deluded (apparently for not following a canon ship), a crazy dumb bitch, illiterate – just off the top of my head. I found a thread last year that encouraged people to upload new Fantastic Beasts content to A03 asap to get my story off the first page when I would upload a new chapter. I was torn to shreds on both fanfiction websites after the second film came out and told that I hadn’t seen the movies (I had started my story well before the second film so I had to fill in the gaps which were quite a few). It seemed so pathetic and laughable at the start, I would just make sure I could monitor my reviews and would delete or not answer the abuse I received.

Eventually though, it become too overwhelming and I found it too difficult to continue – my inspiration was gone and I was emotionally drained. A few times I actually became pale, shaky and vomited from the relentlessness of it. I tried to claw back the thrill and love writing gave me by practicing getting back on the saddle by doing prompts on Tumblr while I was in hospital battling one of my illnesses. I thought it might be nice to take requests from people – a gentle re-entry into my beloved hobby and reconnecting with other fans. I did a piece on Theseus and Leta that I had overwhelming support for. I actually cried when more than a couple people left beautiful messages in regard to my Theseus dying/Leta surviving prompt. A few people left me Newt/Leta related prompts. I got around to completing a first kiss request that earned me an anon informing me that my writing was trash, made them gag in their mouth and I should seriously reconsider inflicting my unwanted pieces on a fandom that doesn’t want them and to keep my shit out of the tag.

I have seen blogs disappear from it and stories, posts and artwork removed. I was scrolling through Instagram and someone (quite notorious for this behaviour across all platforms) simply comment ‘ew #newtinaforever’ on a beautiful Leta fanvid that would have taken such a long time to put together. Surprisingly, the comments I got that were simply ‘ew’, ‘gross’, etc were more hurtful than the torrents of abuse sometimes.

Just a few days ago, someone posted something absolutely non-confrontational and innocent about them personally liking Newt/Leta because they found it cute which of course opened the floodgates for abuse and I read a comment relating to people who don’t personally ship the ‘canon’ ship (this sounds so ridiculous now that I’m typing it) as deluded and needed to check into a mental ward. This is quite personal but I am someone who has an illness that is accompanied by psychotic symptoms and I have spent periods of time in a psychiatric hospital (and will likely need to during my lifetime) for my own wellbeing. I felt physically nauseous by this. I feel anxious now disclosing this as I know this will give more ammunition to the people who have not yet been blocked by me and enjoy taunting me but I want people to understand the weight of their childish, uneducated, ignorant outbursts.

Because of my experience, PLEASE understand that when I say ‘unhinged’ I am not meaning it as a slur, it is coming from a place of serious concern. I think there are people in this fandom that are becoming quite dangerously confused between reality and fantasy. These characters ARE NOT REAL. If I can get through years of one my favourite characters being constantly hated on, written by fans as an abuser, rapist, you name it while far more ‘bad/problematic’ (white) females are adored and shipped with various characters quite harmoniously, and not resort to commenting, abusing or harassing people than you can get through your fave not being someone else’s fave. If your favourite pairing is canon, why are you so insecure about people liking other pairings? In Harry Potter, the most popular fan-favourite ships are non-canon and don’t cause any harm.

If someone writes on THEIR OWN BLOG that they personally don’t follow a certain ship, or they find a character bland or boring, or don’t agree with a casting, or don’t see chemistry between certain actors or like a pairing that differs from your own, JUST KEEP SCROLLING (and certainly don’t go on a witch-hunt by tracking down posts, blogs and stories you know you won’t like).

These are not real people. There is absolutely 0 reasons to be offended by someone saying that they find a certain character or pairing bland (which I haven’t done before). Of course you can disagree but if you are enraged, or offended, or feel inclined to personally attack or threaten A REAL PERSON over their preferences in something make-believe, than please, I implore you for your own mental wellbeing, to seriously assess if this level of emotional attachment to made-up characters is healthy.

I am planning on getting back into my story in time. I would love to get through the prompts and (nice) messages in my inbox now that I’m feeling a little more secure mentally and physically. I do thank all the beautiful people who have taken the time to request things, leave notes and such – I’m only back for them and feel confident that I can work through the toxicity and superiority complexes in this fandom with their support. I will do my best from now on to call out and check people when I see them mistreating others and to have more respect for myself and my work and not tolerate this any longer. I may respond and share some of the less pleasant messages I’ve received if I believe my responses can be helpful to others but there are some that require no response or audience.

I feel very content in the knowledge that I can see a story, visual, video, etc, involving a fandom, character or pairing that I don’t necessarily like and still appreciate the time and effort the person put in and find enjoyment in it too. If you still feel incapable of controlling yourself around people who are not a carbon copy of yourself, please just save yourself the distress by just blocking me instead of wasting valuable time and energy finding new ways to abuse me. I am not a harmful person, I am not an abusive person. I encourage you in your journey to hopefully become the same and if you need to remove yourself from temptation than I applaud that decision no matter how much I cannot personally relate.

To anyone who has read my stories or sent me prompts, thank your for your patience and encouragement. I look forward to being able to get back into a community I have found such joy in.

#fantastic beasts #fantastic beasts and where to find them #fantastic beasts the crimes of grindelwald #leta lestrange #newt scamander #cant get much worse #so i may as well dump this 'shit' in your tag too #prompt

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