#their dynamic is something that is underrepresented in fandom and i would really like to see more about their attitudes towards each other | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

berryhobii · 10 months

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Hey there :)

I came across you content some days ago and I fell in love with how you write. I have literally read everything you have posted and let me tell you, you don´t disappoint. Thank you for portraying us black girls in the fandom world and allowing us to feel involved in a world where it sometimes feels like we don´t have a voice, it really means the world and reading your work has genuinely made my weekend.

My favourite couple are Y/N and Jungkook from the Late for Work story, and if it´s not too much of a request, could you please write a drabble about them? I don´t have a specific subject in mind, I just like how you write about their dynamic and their personalities.

By the way, sorry if my english is not great, it isn´t my first language. Anyways, thank you so much and keep doing you, you are amazing <33333.

🤧🤧wow thank you so much for your incredibly kind words. And your English is amazing. Don’t ever apologize for that. You could have written it in your native language and I’d find a way to understand it and the words would still be just as special to me❤️I’m so glad you like my work and I’ll continue to do my best for you and every other underrepresented black/brown/dark skinned person out there!

Here’s the Drabble. It’s a Jealous!JK with some suggestive content and loads of compliments about reader/OC! Hope you enjoy!💜

Jungkook wasn’t a jealous person by heart.

He was always grateful for what he had so he never found reason to be envious of what others had. His parents raised him well and taught him the importance of humility and compassion. He never felt the need to be jealous.

Even when he met you. You were already spunky and free, expressing yourself how you saw fit. You didn’t let anyone tell what to do or how to feel and especially how to dress.

Jungkook loved your sense of style; you could be girly and colorful, posh and elegant, alternative and dark, and so many more. You weren’t limited to one thing. You tried different styles and if you liked it, you wore it and that was that.

Everyone stopped to stare at you whenever you walked, your natural charisma and glow too powerful for people to just pass you.

And Jungkook felt so much pride being able to hold your hand. You were all his and he was yours, the sparkling diamond on your hand speaking volumes.

So why the hell wasn’t it speaking to this store attendant who kept staring at your breasts as you tried to pick out a bracelet for your best friend’s baby shower. You had already purchased gifts for the baby but you also wanted to choose something special for your friend.

You were focused on staring at the choices in front of you, trying to decide which one would match her skin tone the best. Jungkook was only halfway listening, his eyes staring daggers at the attendant who was assisting you. Jungkook didn’t notice the guy ogling you at first, all of his attention on you and trying to help the best he could.

It wasn’t until he just so happened to look up and realize the man seemed a little unfocused that he noticed. Following the man’s eyesight, Jungkook found him to be staring at your cleavage that was pushing against your arm as you leaned over on the display case. Knowing you, you probably didn’t even realize you were doing it, too deep in thought over which one she’d like.

You could be a bit unaware at times, especially when you were with Jungkook. He always made you feel safe so you never felt the need to be too aware. He would protect you no matter what and you settled into that.

And you were so in love and obsessed with him that you never even noticed when someone else was flirting with you or ogling you. Jungkook was the only pair of eyes you felt and/or cared about. You were also used to people staring at you so you’ve learned to drown out the stares. It was easy enough to do.

Good thing you had Jungkook.

“I think pink gold is cute but white gold is more classy. What do you think, baby?” You glanced over to your husband who seemed to be staring off into space. He did that sometimes. You called it his Jungkookie sense like Spider-Man. You thought it was adorable.

He hummed, blinking before looking down at you and smiling. “I think white gold is perfect, princess.” He directed his focus to the attendant whose eyes were still admiring your bosom.

Ugh.

You smiled brightly at your husband before nodding and turning back to the attendant. “I’d like to see this one in white gold, please.”

“Of course, miss.” He smiled politely and moved to retrieve the bracelet from a cabinet away from both of you.

Jungkook relaxed for a moment. He hated that gross feeling that was building in his stomach. He was very secure in your relationship; never worrying about you cheating or flirting with other people. Not when you’d come home and suck his cock just because you missed him. You were obsessed with him and you made sure he knew it.

He did. He truly did. He just hated how this guy was staring at you when it was obvious you were taken. It just felt disrespectful. Couldn’t he try to be more subtle or just not look at taken women like you were some piece of meat?

He couldn’t relax long since the man came back with the jewelry.

“I love it! Don’t you think it’s so wonderful, baby?” You bounced on your toes, clapping cutely. The motion caused your breasts to bounce, Jungkook’s eyes cutting to the man who was smiling sleazily at you.

Jungkook could feel his anger bubbling up but he swallowed it down. He didn’t want to make a scene even though he really wanted to punch this guy in the face.

He gritted a smile. “I do. It’s beautiful. Your friend will love it.” He directed his attention back to the guy, reaching into his pocket to take out his card. “We’ll take it.” He ordered, slapping his black card on the counter. The man flinched, finally locking eyes with Jungkook’s menacing ones. He gulped, sweat slicking up his palms.

You made a noise of surprise. “Baby, what?“

“Do you want something too, princess? I’ll get you whatever you want.” He never broke eye contact with the man who was starting to turn pink under the heat of Jungkook’s gaze.

You blinked a few times before a knowing look formed on your face. You hid a smile behind your hand. Adorable.

Leaning over the display case again, you pointed at a ring. “That one. It’ll compliment my wedding ring nicely, don’t you think?”

“I do. Could you wrap them please? With a nice bow?” The devilish smile he sent towards the man was enough to send a shiver down his spine. While the smile looked polite on the outside, the attendant could feel the intensity that radiated off of the hunk of man.

The attendant ducked his head, meekly whimpering out a, “right away” before scampering off to retrieve the boxes and wrapping.

After paying, Jungkook led you out of the store, making sure to deliver a slap to your ass that he’s sure the attendant saw.

“You’re cute when you’re jealous, baby.” You teased once you two had gotten back in the car. Jungkook started the engine, pulling off with one hand on the wheel and the other on your thigh.

He scoffed. “I wasn’t jealous. I just don’t like when people stare at you too hard.” His grip tightened on your thigh making you bite your lip. Gosh, your husband was so sexy. And him jealous took his sexy meter from a 10,000 to a 10 Million.

“They can look all they want. You’re the only one who can touch.” Grasping his hand on your thigh, you moved it between your legs, his fingers coming in contact with a wet spot on your panties.

He almost swerved the car, groaning as he tried to stay focused on the road. “How long have you been wet?”

“Since you slammed that card down on the counter.” You unbuckled your seatbelt, leaning over the console to come closer to him. Your tongue darted out to lick a broad stripe up the side of his neck, teeth biting at a fading hickey. “Now why don’t you pull over so you can take what’s yours?”

A wolffish grin spread across his face. Reaching a hand down, he rubbed over the bulge in his pants.

“I’ll start with your mouth. Get over here and show me.”

And you did. The entire ride home.

#bts #bts smut #jungkook drabble #askberryhobii

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eddywoww · 1 year

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A truly underrepresented kink in any fandom is High Service Protocol and I feel like that would be really different for them because they have much more relaxed while still intense dynamic. I just feel like sweet little good baby Steve asking for permission to do anything even speak and really just be focused on serving Eddie would be very fun

Ooooooo see I DO like this. Would it just be at home or would it be with people around? I could see them going out for a night out or something and involving their rules, with some new special ones on top. ALSO this plus a housewife sort of kink??????

#asks #I could talk about housewife good boy steve forever ok

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yesterdayiwrote · 8 months

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1, 3, 12, 17, 22 for the ask game (feel free to not answer all if you don't want!)

the character everyone gets wrong

I think the obvious answer here for me is George, just because I think he has a deceptively complex character that people don't always pick up on or misunderstand? I think a lot of people see him as some kind of 1 dimensional 'posh boy' and actually I think there's a lot of light and shade in there. I think people are starting to write a lot more 'tortured' George which kind of touches on some of the nuances but yeah... I've seen a lot (and definitely written some too) where I'm like... This doesn't capture everything because there's SO many intriguing facets!

I also don't think I've ever read a Lewis characterisation that I love? I think people tend to... woobify him too much and he ends up nearly always being written as too passive and chill in fics?

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

Hmmm this is a tough one. I can’t think of any stand out terrible takes. I think tumblr (and all fandom) can be a bit black and white when it comes to discourse and fail to address the nuances at times. I think people are a bit reactionary when it comes to real life age gap discourse for example, especially considering how many people will ship something with a similar age gap, if that makes sense?

Oh! That one account who kept insisted MV was the biggest victim of online abuse in all of F1 was a WILD ride for certain!

12. the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

Idk that I particularly like anyone that's especially 'unpopular'? I guess loads of people hate George but tbh they're just wrong. I'm still not entirely sure why he seems to rile people more than others? Some people seem to think he's Satan and it's hilarious really, he's just an awkward guy who tries too hard?!

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

Im not sure that there's a specific type of fic I think is underrepresented? I like au probably more than canon and I'm a sucker for when the au is particularly mundane? So everyone's a student or they just... go to work like normal people? I've always sucked at writing them because normality doesn't give you a plot so you kind of need to come up with something meatier to tie it all together but I've read some great ones! Also for some unknown reason, I'm a sucker for single parent fics. The added dynamic of added well written child oc just always seems to hit right for some reason and I don't read much of it these days!

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

I feel like the galex bike accident story is severely underrated (as are loads of other parts of galex lore, as I found out when I did that poll) but can you imagine nowadays if an f3 driver had to take an f2 driver to hospital because he’d had a bike accident when they were hanging out outside of racing, the absolute feral online reaction everyone would have to that news? So many parts of that story are just the stuff of fanfic… so much of their canon friendship is the stuff of fanfics and yet….!

#I started these this morning and have been doing them during my quiet moments at work today 😂#ask game

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borkthemork · 2 years

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What is your least favorite fan theory or headcanon?

If I can consider my options, I'd say that my least favorite theory would be all the mutilation theories.

In fandom works, I am pretty okay with being able to portray the ideas of Sasha and Anne losing an eye or an arm, since you know, a lot of people are allowed to dive into more dark subjects to their heart's content.

However, with canon, that's a whole other ballgame. With canon, you've got to consider the narrative significance and what those scars would represent to the character. What would a second scar represent? With the og scar, it was the point of no return when it came to Anne and Sasha's reality and dynamic, so what would a second scar represent?

Same with Anne's losing arm theory. What narrative significance would it have for Anne to lose an arm? From the few discussion posts I've seen, people believe it could be lost due to Anne using too much of her powers, which makes sense.

Ultimately, though, I'm not really into these theories due to the many questions of how this would go. My poor brain would have to consider every narrative perspective, and I don't really see Matt and the writers doing this unless they truly have a reason for it or if their love of anime pulls through.

However, if fandom people do dive into this subject and want to explore something such as disabled living (which is vastly underrepresented) or the overall consequences of violence, I'm always down for that! I'm always down for something like Marcy navigating as a wheelchair user and the struggles, Anne trying to use a prosthetic arm, or Sasha's perspective of being blinded.

It seems pretty cool and is full of fandom potential to write and represent when done respectfully!

#asks #amphibia #Anonymous

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heroesmakingbadchoices · 2 years

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What if I said that I think part (not all, but part) of the reason mlm ships are so popular in fandom is just because of misogyny.

And I don’t really mean misogyny on the part of the fandom, I mean on the level of the writing.

We know women are still significantly underrepresented on and off-screen in Hollywood. Those two things go hand-in-hand. Less women behind the scenes working as writers, directors, producers, etc. leads to less nuanced portrayals of women on screen. It also means less women on screen overall. If you follow the link above, you’ll see that women accounted for only 36 percent of speaking characters in the top grossing films of 2020 in the U.S.

So what does that mean for storytelling? It means we’re constantly encountering stories where male characters get more screen time, more character development, more dialogue. They are formulated more roundly as people compared to their female counterparts, who may exist specifically to act as The Love Interest or the Strong Female Lead. With action movies in particular, it’s easy to pick up on an intentional gender imbalance amongst the lead cast. You have to have one (1) woman to roughly every four men but you don’t have to have much more than that. Ergo we end up with The Avengers, or The Justice League, or Kingsman, or The Fast and the Furious, or Transformers and on and on and on. Once you notice it, you can’t un-see it. It’s always acceptable to have more men than women but the moment there’s one more female lead than there is male, the film goes from having “broad appeal” to being for women in a way that is deemed not helpful for market returns.

But fandom primarily forms around these sorts of high-concept genre properties. Shipping is a part of fandom culture. So where does that leave us? With people constructing ships around the characters that they view to be most well-rounded, characters who have a dynamic and complex relationship, characters who the fandom has come to know really well. And those characters are so often the men. Hence why you don’t see a ton of huge wlw ships: there’s not enough pieces of fandom media that give two female characters the space and attention that male characters are so consistently afforded.

Why did Destiel dominate the SPN fandom? Because there is no female character in the entire series who comes close to be as well-developed or as consistently present as those two are. There’s no one, other than Sam, that Dean interacts with more or develops a more intense degree emotional intimacy with.

Why is Stucky so popular in the MCU fandom when Steve has other canon love interests? Neither Peggy nor Sharon gets to be as complicated as Steve or Bucky. All three Captain America movies are just about Steve *platonically* blowing up his entire life so he can make sure Bucky’s okay.

That’s not to say there’s not other nuances to this, like the percentage of fandom that identify as queer ourselves and gravitate towards relationships in media that reflect us. Or the outside fetishization of gay men by women in fandom. Both of which are worth thinking long and hard about.

But I do find it so interesting that the creators of these pieces of media are so consistently confused to find mlm ships to be more popular than the straight relationships explored in the canon itself and it goes: well! Maybe if you developed your female characters as thoroughly as you did their male counterparts! Maybe if they got to have the same level of relevance to the larger narrative rather than being relegated as a little bit more than a romantic subplot! Maybe if you put forth the same effort to creating a dynamic and complicated romance between your straight love interests as you do the platonic relationships between your male leads then people would actually care! Female characters are so often made into passive objects: something to be romantically pursued or achieved by the male lead. This makes reciprocity way less compelling, particularly for fans who are women.

But if the creatives behind these female characters fundamentally view women as less interesting to write about, then of course their portrayals of women will get that across. And of course fandom picks up on that and course-corrects to focus on characters who are consistently written well.

#fandom #shipping #destiel #stucky #mcu #spn #supernatural #marvel #dean winchester #castiel #steve rogers #bucky barnes

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lucemferto · 3 years

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WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT PH1LZA (or Why Philza is a Victim of Narrative Circumstance)

Heyo! Per request I am posting the script to my video of the same name here on tumblr. I must warn you that just reading the script will probably not give you the full experience, so I would encourage you to watch the video (linked above).

There might also still be a lot of grammatical errors in the text, because I don’t proofread.

Intro

LAST TIME ON LUCEM FERTO

Okay, so! I don’t want this to turn into a reaction channel OR a Dream SMP channel for that matter! [echo]

Well, I lied.

[Intro to “Luc is pretentious about the funny blockmen. Episode 2”]

I swear, I’m working on other stuff. It’s just that my dumb lizard brain has only capacity for one interest at a time!

So, something you might not know about me, is that I am on tumblr – who am I kidding, most of you will know me from tumblr. Before starting this whole YouTube thing, I thought that website died years ago – but as per usual reality proves me wrong. I’m also on Twitter and Reddit, but I get the most engagement on tumblr – by far! – and I need those sweet, sweet numbers for the serotonin!

Anyways, one of my favourite past-times on tumblr is to razz Philza Hardcore Minecraft – that’s his full name – for being a frankly awful father [clicking away] – wait, wait, no! Philza fans, this isn’t a hit piece on him, I promise! Please come back!

This is video is meant to be a companion piece to my previous video about Technoblade and the Doomsday event – you can tell by the shared nomenclature – so you should probably watch that one before you proceed. Unless you don’t want to, which is also perfectly understandable.

DISCLAIMER: This video is mostly about the character Philza plays on the Dream SMP. Whenever I talk about the content creator Philza, I will say so properly. Also, Spoiler Warning for Dream SMP Season 2.

… What is that? You’re wondering what the Dream SMP is? Well, if you had just watched the other video like I told you to do, you would know, because I explained it pretty well there. But in case you don’t know, here’s the cliff notes.

Dream SMP is the hottest New Media Series on Twitch right now! It has it all: gaslighting, child soldiers, Machiavellian political intrigue, Hamilton roleplay, desecration of the dead, shounen protagonists, SO! MUCH! AMNESIA! Filicide, furries, a red egg that’s definitely homophobic and teenagers inventing nuclear warfare. And it’s all done in Minecraft – yes, the funny block game where the only way to emote is to crouch.

And you say the perfect brief doesn’t exist!

Now, you might be wondering, why do I want to talk about this? Well, it’s because Content Creator Philza is one of least controversial internet personalities that I can think of. That man exudes pure comfort. So, it’s just very, very amusing to me that his character became one of the most controversial figures on the SMP, only outshone by Tommy and Technoblade.

And it’s not just amusing, it’s also extremely interesting! I want to dig deep to uncover and discuss the dynamics behind why that is. How did it come to this point? How did a man who appears genuinely so pleasant create a character that inspires so much discourse!

Now, if you watched that Technoblade video – like I told you to twice now! – you might know, that I am the resident character analyses hater of fandom! And that impression is false and slanderous! Don’t tell other people that I hate character analyses! I love them!

It’s just that, in the Dream SMP in particular, there is an abundance of character analyses! Every streamer has at least two very good essays written about them, exploring every possible angle to view their characters and backgrounds and everything. All I’m saying is: I don’t have anything to add on that front.

So, instead I want to pursue a different approach – something, that I feel is a bit underrepresented in the fandom! And I’m not just talking narrative analysis – that’s right, this episode we’re going even more pretentious! – I’m talking Transtextual Analysis!

Now, what is Transtextuality? Well, unfortunately it has very little to do with actual Trans people – #transrights, just in case that wasn’t obvious – but instead describes a mode of analysis with which to put – to quote French literary theorist Gérard Genette – “the text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts”.

Basically, you know how the L’Manburg War of Independence heavily quotes and borrows from the hit musical Hamilton? That’s transtextuality! A lot of the analyses surrounding how Tommy mirrors the Greek hero Theseus, who was invoked by Technoblade multiple times in the series, are already doing transtextual analysis! So, it’s really not something that’s new to the Dream SMP fandom.

But how does this apply to Philza and how he is looked at and judged by his parental skills? Well, there are multiple forms of transtextuality, two of which we will discuss today.

But before we continue, I gotta do that annoying YouTuber thing. I know these videos don’t look like much, but I spend a really long time making them. I work fulltime and I try my best to keep up, but sometimes I can’t. So please, like, subscribe, comment to give me some algorithm juice – I really need it – and most importantly share it! Share it with your friends, share it with your family – I’m sure Grandma is very interested in what I have to say about Philza Minecraft.

And I’m trying to be better! If I sound at all different for this video, it’s because I finally bought a new pop filter, so I can hit my plosives without it sounding like there’s a thunderstorm in my room. I hope it makes a difference; it was a very cheap pop filter, so maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it sounds worse – that would be bad!

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, CHILD NEGLEGT!

Intertextuality: Why is Dadza?

You know what’s really interesting about the Dream SMP – aside from, you know, most things about it? Very few of the characters have concrete, fleshed-out backstories – and that’s pretty weird! In no other medium or genre could you get away with something like that – at least for long-form storytelling!

So, how does Dream SMP get away with this? Well, it’s because every character on the Dream SMP is basically a self-insert – and I don’t mean that in the “This character is based on me”-kinda way, but in the “This character, for all intents and purposes, is me!”-way. This, like many things that are fascinating about the Dream SMP, is owed to the fact that this series didn’t start off as a continuous drama – it started off as a Let’s Play.

And while we can talk about how someone’s on-camera/on-mic persona is in some ways a character, it’s still miles off of being an actual, fully-realized, separate character in a storyline.

This is where Intertextuality comes in.

Intertextuality is a subset of Transtextuality. It describes how the hypertext, which is the text, you’re currently engaged with, uses another text, the hypotext, to supplement itself. The interconnection the hypertext establishes with the hypotext, through stuff like allusion for example, uh-hum [Hamilton], can colour how an audience interprets the hypertext. Basically, Hamilton and Theseus are the hypotexts; the Dream SMP is the hypertext.

So, what does this have to do with backstory? Simple: The backstories of the characters in the Dream SMP consist basically of nothing but intertextual references. Through intertextuality their content effectively substitutes their character’s backstory.

You can see it everywhere. Wilbur’s and Schlatt’s relationship and rivalry is hugely enriched, if you are aware of their shared history like SMPLive, for example – I think anyway. I haven’t watched SMPLive, because … there’s only so many hours in the day and I cannot keep up with the Dream SMP and catch up on SMPLive and live a healthy life – which I already don’t do, so…

BadBoyHalo’s and Skeppy’s relationship, which has become the crux of the Crimson-Storyline of Seasons 2 and 3, is hugely supplemented if you know that they’re also very close as streamers and in real life.

Another great example of intertextuality is basically Technoblade’s entire deal. If you just look at him completely within the text of the Dream SMP and try to transplant his entrance to any other medium: It would be extremely weird! Like, he’s just this guy that comes in in the middle of a very climatic arc, no build-up, no explanation what his deal is, and he’s treated like he has always been there. In any other medium that just wouldn’t work – at least not without a flashback or some sort of exposition!

But because of stuff like Minecraft Mondays, the Potato Wars, his Duel against Dream and SMPEarth, we understand that he is a Big Deal!

Anyways, to bring all of this back to Philza Minecraft: What kind of hypotext informs how the audience sees his character? Well, this is where I will have to talk about SBI.

SBI is an acronym that stand for State Bank of India, the 43rd largest bank in the world and…

It also stands for Sleepy Bois Incorporated. Sleepy Bois Incorporated is a loose assembly of content creators, consisting of Philza, Wilbur Soot, TommyInnit and Technoblade. It is most well-known for its very endearing family dynamic – a dynamic that is frequently acknowledged and played up by the creators involved. Tommy is the youngest brother, Wilbur and Techno are the two older brothers and Philza is of course the dad. And when I say, it’s played up, I really mean it! Wilbur seems to be especially enamoured with the idea and leaves no opportunity untaken to bring it up – which we will come back to.

And I’m not saying that they’re faking this and this is somehow an act. While I know none of these people personally, it appears to me, that this is genuinely how they interact – if a little exaggerated for the streaming experience. Even when they’re not consciously playing into the family dynamic, their interactions still very much lend themselves to that interpretation by the viewers.

Philza especially just radiates Dad-Friend energy – so much so that it has become a huge part of his brand identity – yay, I can bring that back (check out my Christmas video if you want to hear me ramble about that). The nickname Dadza stuck even before SBI was a thing.

So, even if we completely disregard SBI – which we shouldn’t for reasons I’ll get back to – Philza has cultivated an image of strong paternal guidance. He is, in my opinion completely deservedly, regarded very positively. He is highly respected and in turn seen as a voice of reason.

All of this would eventually inform the hypotext of the character Philza within Dream SMP.

Interlude: Before Dadza & November 16th

Okay, so now we have established that a) Dream SMP heavily hinges on intertextual readings by the audience to supplement character backstory and b) that Philza’s entire deal is that he’s the dad-friend – more specifically that he’s the dad of SBI (not the bank). I think you know where this is going.

So, yeah, ever since it was on the table that Philza could join the Dream SMP, it was immediately assumed that he would take on the paternal guardian role all these traumatized people on that server so desperately needed – and with good reason! Like I said before, the audience at this point was trained to take intertextual interpretations as basically canon or at the very least canon-adjacent.

I want to emphasize that this is most likely not done deliberately. I’m sure content creators Wilbur and Philza didn’t sit there and said: “Yes! We will rely entirely on the audience’s inclination to interpret our characters intertextually to define character Philza!”. Like, obviously that did not happen.

But it’s also important to remember that unlike with traditional media and the fanbases cultivated there, the separation between the Dream SMP and its audience is almost non-existent – and purposely so. The story events are streamed live, Chats are acknowledged in canon and even outside of livestreams creators are extremely involved with the fandom. So, the weight of fan-expectations is equally amplified and will more likely be incorporated into the writing process. Case in point:

[Wilbur “I miss Philza”/Philza about Wilbur]

During Wilbur’s villain arc, even before his official involvement, Philza became a prevalent point of discussion. The hope that he would be the one to snap Wilbur out of his downward spiral was not only wish-fulfilment on behalf of the fans; it also very much played off of the intertextual reading of the SBI-dynamic in relation to the Dream SMP.

Of course, this still doesn’t make Philza and Wilbur canonically blood-related – but it definitely used the “paternal”-dynamic of SBI to build-up tension and drama.

And that ultimately brings us to November 16th. The Grand Finale of Season 1 and Philza’s first canonical appearance on the SMP.

Now, for this I want to pull back from the transtextual analysis and talk about simply narrative analysis: What is Philza’s narrative purpose on November 16th?

Philza serves as the last threshold on Wilbur’s Villain’s Journey – to appropriate Vogler’s version of the monomyth for a minute here – he is what Vogler calls the “Threshold Guardian”. He is the last enemy the Hero faces before completing his quest – in this particular case Wilbur’s quest is to blow up L’Manberg. Multiple people have at this point tried to dissuade him from this course of action: Tommy, Quackity, Niki and others. So how come this Philza moment is not redundant in terms of dynamics compared to these prior scenes?

Well, it’s through our intertextual understanding of Wilbur’s and Phil’s relationship. Because Philza does not just occupy the role of the Threshold Guardian – he is also implicitly the Mentor. Before Phil there was no character in the storyline that held a higher position of moral authority than Wilbur – Dream and Schlatt, while at points more powerful in terms of actual authority, were never positioned by the narrative as Wilbur’s superiors in the same way as Wilbur was to Tommy, Tubbo or even Niki.

Before November 16th all challenges Wilbur faced were from people narratively subordinated to him. But that trend is broken with Phil. That is why he is the Threshold Guardian, why this confrontation is at the climax of Wilbur’s arc. Because Phil is the last thing tethering Wilbur to whatever morality he held before his villain arc; Phil is the last, moral obstacle Wilbur has to discard before gaining his reward.

And, just a quick sidenote, because I’ve seen it around the fandom a bunch: When I’m referring to Wilbur denouncing his morality, I’m using that in terms of narrative analysis. I’m mentioning it, because Wilbur’s character can very easily be read as mentally ill or neurodivergent and some people have – rightly! – pointed out that the excessive vilifying when talking about his character is … problematic, to say the least.

So, I just want to make clear, this isn’t a character analysis, I’m being purposely broad when talking about Wilbur and Phil.

In the end, Wilbur takes that final step and gets his “reward”: As his final request his mentor takes his life and vanquishes the evil – the dragon of Wilbur’s story slays the dragon of L’Manburg. It’s very Shakespearean in its tragedy – but beyond the larger theatrics it’s not really used to further characterize Phil – at least in the context of Season 1. There’s not a lot of focus on his characters internal conflict during November 16th.

Phil, like Techno, is very utilitarian in how content creator Wilbur writes him: He serves as a moment of hype; an obstacle Wilbur has to face; a participant in the tragic climax of Wilbur’s character and ultimately takes on his implicit and expected role of mentor and guiding figure to the rest of L’Manburg.

I think not a lot of people talk about how Philza does not join Technoblade during November 16th. He takes the side of L’Manburg – he fights against the withers and he joins Tommy, Tubbo and the others at the L’Mantree, thus framing him as loyal to the L’Manburg administration – even though Season 2 would make his loyalty to Techno central to his character. But more on that later.

What’s also important about November 16th is that this is the day when the general intertextual interpretation became canonized text.

[You’re my son!]

Wilbur is made Phil’s canonical, biological son. The intertextual interpretation of SBI as it pertains to these two characters on the SMP was completely reinforced by the narrative. Or to put it in Fandom terms: The headcanon became actual canon. At least when it came to Wilbur … but what about Philza’s “other” children?

Well, that leads to our second form of transtextual analysis:

Paratextuality: Is Dadza?

These titles are just getting better and better.

The Paratext is defined as all those things in a published work that accompany the text. It comes in two forms: One of them is the Peritext, which are non-diegetic elements directly surrounding the text – like chapter titles, author’s notes, and stuff like that. Translated to the medium of the Dream SMP, it would be stuff like this:

[Examples]

And, trust me, I could make a whole separate video about how people on the SMP use their peritext as a tool for storytelling – I’m looking at you, Ranboo – but that’s not what we will talk about in the context of Dadza.

Instead, we will focus on the second form of Paratext, the Epitext, which consists of all authorial and editorial discussions taking place outside of the text. That’s stuff like interviews, private letters or J. K. Rowling’s Twitter Account – you know, before she decided to become a full-time asshole.

[Wilbur: Transrights]

After Season 1 ended, Wilbur indulged pretty heavily in providing epitext for the Dream SMP, something he had not done prior to November 16th. His paratextual additions ranged from the playful, like assigning DnD alignments to various SMP members, to the extremely impactful, like the whole three lives system!

You probably think, you know where this is going. Wilbur provided some epitext about how Tommy and Techno either are or are not biologically related to him … and I have to be honest I thought that too. But then I began looking into the impenetrable web that is the SBI-canon on the Dream SMP and found this!

[Ghostbur explains family]

So, it wasn’t paratext, it was just straight text. Said in character, in canon, without any implication that we the viewers should question this. The text of the SBI family dynamic was explicitly linked to Dream SMP-exclusive lore, namely Fundy being Wilbur’s and Sally the Salmon’s son. This is as clear as Philza’s anguished declaration on November 16th in establishing the intertext as text. And because Wilbur also had a very heavy hand in the discussion of paratext around that time, it gave his character’s words even more “canonical” weight. Metatextually speaking, this very much read like the author giving exposition through his character – exposition that we should understand as reliable.

And, by the way, before I continue, I need to give a huge, huge shoutout to kateis-cakeis on tumblr, I hope I pronounced that right, who was just so quick in providing me with these crucial clips. Without him I would have looked for days because these people don’t archive their shit! And the Dream SMP Wiki was NO help, by the way! I love what you guys do, but stuff like this belongs in the Trivia section on characters’ pages!

Anyways, basically during the entirety of early Season 2 the SBI family dynamic was basically canon to the SMP. Sometimes it was only alluded implicitly, again letting the intertext fill out the rest.

[Philza clips]

But just as often it was just explicitly talked about – both in the text and in the paratext.

[Fundy clip/Wilbur “Twins” clip/Tommy clip]

So, I know what you’re thinking: “Why is this part called paratext, if the entire family tree is just textual”. Well, that last clip might give you a hint, as to what I will talk about. Notice how Tommy, one of the people most directly impacted by the canonization of SBI lore, is both unaware of and seems generally unenthused about it, to put it nicely? Well, that would soon turn out to be a much bigger deal than anyone could have imagined as he wasn’t the only one.

[Technoblade decanonizes SBI]

Yeah …

This happened on 20th of December. Regular viewers of this channel will remember that I put out a 90-second joke video, where I complain about this very development. And while I was mostly kidding around, the core idea is still true. The paratext provided by Technoblade and established text were in direct contradiction with one another – and that brought a lot of confusion into the fandom. Confusion, that would soon be followed by frustration.

Because Techno only decanonized himself as part of the SBI family dynamic – but what about Tommy and Tubbo, the latter of which was incorporated into the dynamic exclusively within the lore of the Dream SMP. Was this still canon or wasn’t it?

What followed was a muddled mess of contradictions, intertextual implications, text and paratext in conflict with each another. It was for the most part inscrutable to figure out how Tommy and Philza related to one another. I’ll spare you every comment made about this – mostly because I want to spare myself from looking for all of them.

In the end, the current status is that their familial relationship is … unclear. Philza said, again in paratext, that it’s ultimately up to the writers to decide, whether or not Tommy is his son … which, I personally think he and Tommy should be the ones to establish that, but I’ll come back to that later.

But why is all of this important anyway? Why would this ambiguity create such an uproar, such controversy – especially when it comes to Tommy’s character? What makes Tommy’s and Philza’s relationship such a target for discussion in the fandom?

Well … this is where we will have to talk about the storyline of Season 2.

Interlude II: Tommy’s Exile and Dadza in Season 2

Okay, Season 2. This is where the spoilers are, so I will just sneakily drop this again. It took me five seconds to google this gif and I will milk it for every penny it’s worth!

At the beginning of Season 2, Philza’s narrative role has not changed much from where Season 1 ended. He is in L’Manburg dispensing earthly wisdom, being a paternal figure to Fundy, Ghostbur and Tubbo, helping with the nation’s rebuilding efforts; just generally occupying the role of the mentor.

[clips]

And then came … the Exile. The Exile Arc took place between December 3rd and December 15th during Season 2 of the Dream SMP. It revolves around TommyInnit getting exiled from L’Manburg and slowly getting psychologically tortured and broken down by Dream. It’s a really great arc, at least in my opinion, that explores and deepens a lot of Tommy’s character relationships, whether that be Tommy and Dream, Tommy and Tubbo or Tommy and Ranboo. One relationship, however, is noticeably missing.

So, yeah, Philza spends basically the entirety of the exile doing pretty much nothing of consequence. And that’s not a problem specific to him – One big criticism I would levy against the Exile Arc is that a lot of characters are left spinning their wheels. Which is why we get zany stuff like El Rapids, Drywaters, Eret’s Knights of the Roundtable, Boomerville – anyone remember Boomerville, that was a thing for 5 seconds, wasn’t it? – basically a lot of storylines are started and then unceremoniously dropped. Now, I will talk more about this, when I make a video about Season 2 of the Dream SMP … in ten years, look forward to it.

In the case of Philza, this inaction was especially damning, because at this point it was still a considered canon that he was Tommy’s dad. So, the fans were left with a situation, where just a few weeks prior Philza was occupying a paternal role for Fundy and Ghostbur … but now, that his youngest son was in a very concerning predicament – to put it lightly – he was nowhere to be found.

So why is that?

Well, the most obvious answer is that Dream and Tommy didn’t write him into the storyline. We’ve seen that Tommy wasn’t particularly interested in exploring a familial relationship to Philza, at least at the time. And it would just not fit in with what Dream and Tommy tried to do with the Exile Arc: they wanted to tell the story of Tommy being isolated, completely under Dream’s mercy, slowly worn down and manipulated. If Philza had been constant presence for Tommy during that time, it would have definitely shifted the narrative focus. That doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have done that, it’s just a matter of fact that they didn’t.

This also reveals another truth about content creator Philza’s character work, that I think is extremely crucial: He takes what the writers give him. Outside of a few choice moments, he doesn’t seem particularly interested in expanding or even solidifying his character on the SMP.

What I’m saying is that he is very go-with-the-flow: Wilbur wants to enact a Shakespearean tragedy? Philza’s up for it. Fundy wants him as a parental figure and mentor? Philza’s here for him. Tommy, conversely, doesn’t want him as a paternal presence, even though it would make sense for Philza’s character, as it was established so far, to be there? Philza will oblige.

The reason I’m mentioning this is because, while Tommy and Dream were unwilling to utilise Philza in their storyline, someone else was more than happy to. Which leads us back, like it always does, to everyone’s favourite Porky Pig-kinnie in a crown: Technoblade.

Technoblade and Philza, from everything I’ve seen of them, seem to be very good friends – and they share a lot of history even outside SBI. So, it’s commendable that they would collaborate on a storyline together.

A consequence of that, however, is that Philza’s narrative purpose shifts completely with very little transition. His entire character changes from being the Mentor-figure of L’Manberg to being pretty much exclusively defined as Technoblade’s ally; his man on the inside. It is a very sharp turn from the end of Season 1. Their relationship is once again informed via intertext – this time the Antarctic Empire on SMPEarth serves as the hypotext – but there isn’t a huge effort made to smoothly integrate that aspect of Philza’s character into the larger narrative framing around him.

How much the narrative utilisation of Philza has shifted can be very easily observed through the Butcher Army event on December 16th, a story event that I like less and less the more I think about. Here Philza is used to show just how corrupt and violent Tubbo’s administration has becomes. He is no longer the respected mentor, he is now the stand-in for the oppressed populace, similar to Niki’s role in Season 1. On a narrative level, he is here to prove a point.

If you’ve seen my Technoblade video, you know how I feel about … just that entire storyline, so I will not reiterate too much on it. I just want to make clear that I’m not principally against this development – if they wanted to truly explore Tubbo going down a dark path and getting corrupted by power, so much so that he would even treat the person who effectively raised him like a prisoner, I would be extremely here for it, I cannot stress that enough.

The problem I have is that it’s just so sloppily done. It is not coherent with how these characters behaved and, more importantly, how they were narratively framed prior to the Butcher Army event. Fundy gets one token line about Phil being his Grandfather – a far cry from the very emotionally complex relationship they had established at the beginning of Season 2 – and Phil then callously disowns him.

The major problem simply is that we don’t see how Philza changes from Mentor-figure to embittered, oppressed citizen. And there was enough time to build to that. During the entirety of Tommy’s exile Tubbo was pretty much spinning his wheels and Quackity and Fundy were opening up plot cul-de-sacs that didn’t end up going anywhere. This is time they could have spent on developing their relationship to Philza and the dark path they were going down – but again, Season 2 video.

There is not much to say on Philza’s narrative purpose and framing beyond the Butcher Army event. He remains pretty much exclusively Techno’s consigliere with his role as Mentor to L’Manburg a distant memory. He has some cute character moments with Ranboo, because content creator Philza is just big dad-energy whether he wants to or not, and whenever he and Ghostbur share a scene suddenly the narrative remembers that there are people other than Technoblade that should exist in Philza’s inner world. But aside from that, Philza’s storyline in Season 2 remains … pretty definitive is the nicest way I can put it.

Most importantly his relationship with Tommy continues to be completely unexplored – whether by chance or choice – and that combined with ever vaguer paratext leaves “Dadza” in a very peculiar situation.

Conclusion: Is Dadza a Good Dadza?

So, the question to end all questions. The big, obnoxious text, that I will probably have put in the thumbnail – I haven’t made it yet, but I know myself. The honest answer is: I couldn’t tell you.

I have, in the past, been expounding the virtues of narrative analysis. That is because I feel that Narrative Analysis and Textual Analysis, like in this video, can provide certain tools that Character Analysis lacks. Often times I see people trying to get at a writing problem or query and getting frustrated because they’re not using the toolset, they need to figure out what they want to figure out.

But I’d be a hypocrite if I pretended like everything could be solved through the modes of analysis I prefer. And I think the Dadza-issue is exactly such a case.

I set out to explore why the Philza-Tommy-“Dadza”-relationship has become so controversial. It’s a combination of expectations build up through intertextual readings, that were partly canonized – something that is very common for the Dream SMP – conflicting pieces of paratext, which only serve to muddle the issue further and a text that is not only completely uninterested in actually exploring Tommy’s and Philza’s relationship – as it stands right now they might as well be strangers, narratively speaking – but also completely changes Philza’s narrative purpose as it relates to characters like Fundy or Tubbo about half-way through with little to no transition.

That is why I say, that Philza’s character is a victim of narrative circumstance. Because unwittingly, through all of these factors and decisions, there is not coherent reading of Philza that frames his parental skills in a particularly kind light.

The question of how we can judge Phil as a paternal figure ultimately falls within the purview of the character analysis – and that’s a very multifaceted issue, highly dependent on which POV you focus on and how you interpret the other characters in that POV’s periphery.

To put my cards on the table, I think that Philza is a very flawed father/father-figure – and I find that absolutely okay. Flaws are the spice of character building. He is not Cinderella’s Evil Stepmother – but he’s also definitely not Mufasa. If we were to read Philza as a paternal figure, then he would have made a lot of mistakes and decisions to the detriment of his “children” – least of all everything that happened on Doomsday.

But I also have sympathies for Philza fans who are tired of the Dad-Debate and would like to have his character judged independent from his relationship to Ghostbur, Fundy, Tubbo and Tommy.

Ultimately, to bring it all to a point, I’d like to end with saying, that I think that Philza, out of all the characters on the SMP, has the potential to be on of the most intriguing, multifaceted ones. There are all of these different patches of story, character moments and narrative and transtextual implications, that, if brought together, could create a beautiful tapestry of the character Philza.

You have his relationship with Techno, which holds the potential for so much emotional conflict and vulnerabilities, you have his time as mentor of L’Manburg, which is just criminally underused; the complex relationship between him and Ghostbur/Wilbur; and – for me, personally – most intriguingly this weird, almost uncomfortably distant non-relationship with Tommy. That last one is intriguing to me, because it contrasts just so much with our intertextual understanding of the characters and streaming personas – and it just holds the potential for so much conflict, so much drama, so much angst. Which I live for!

And, yes, I do believe that most of this is narrative happenstance, that this was largely not intended by Philza or really any of the writers. It’s just what happens when hybrid-roleplay-improv a long-running, livestreamed storyline in Minecraft.

But I want them to realize the potential they have on their hands, because it could – with barely any adjustments – turn Philza from a victim of narrative circumstance to a champion of it!

Outro

Thank you so much for watching this video. Usually, I don’t record outros this standard, but after this beast of a video I felt it necessary. I hope that whether you’re a Philza fan or a Philza critical or just completely uninvolved in the whole thing, there is at least a little entertainment you could get from this.

I want to take this opportunity to say that my next few videos will probably not be Dream SMP related – a sentence which undoubtedly lost me a bunch of subs – simply because I don’t want to burn out on it. I genuinely enjoy watching the SMP and being exhausted by it would be something I wouldn’t want to force on myself.

But who knows what will happen? The Karl Jacobs video was something I did spur of the moment because the idea just came to me – so I can’t guarantee that the next video won’t be a three-minute joke about Purpled or whatever.

Anyway, my concrete plans for future Dream SMP videos are essays on Season 1 and Season 2 as well as one for Tales from the SMP.

Before that I have a longer video in the works, which I’ve already teased a bunch, so I hope it will finally be finished sometime. And I also may be working on something … eboys-related? Maybe. I’m not making any promises!

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whitetrashjj · 3 years

Note

crying my eyes out at your MLA format essays cuz not every queer storyline in media has to be rooted in angst of coming out. i get some of the points you’re trying to make. i also don’t think the show is queerbaiting but jjpope had just as much “evidence” as jiara had. like please explain why jj was so keen on kiara liking john b just cuz she kissed him on the cheek and then went and kissed pope’s cheek?…. like in jj’s mind a cheek kiss means liking someone and he did that to pope. also there ARE shots of jj’s lingering gaze towards pope lets us not lie here lmao. i get that you’re sick of people calling u homophobic i dont think u are for not shipping jjpope i also dont think the show is queerbaiting at all but you go on about “storytelling povs” and “lack of critical thinking” when YOUR critical thinking is literally biased as hell 😭 u can ship jiara all u want but jj and kiara, ESPECIALLY KIARA, are both very much queer coded and if u gonna say they’re not bc of some cheesy sTorYtELLiNg bullshit that u probably learned from a youtube video then you’re just biased to your ship.

You know why I have to write those 'essays'? Cause I get asks like this that brush over a bunch of different topics and I want to make sure I not only address every part of it but also make sure I'm making my pov very clear so I don't have people misinterpreting what I say - even though they still do - or accuse me about random bitching without and reasons or justification. Anyway get ready to do some crying cause you are getting another essay.

I know not every queer storyline has to be rooted in the angst of coming out. I wish there were more that weren't. It's the reason I loved booksmart so much. It's one of the reasons I love Dare Me, because that show had sapphic leads and while their relationship was at the core of the show. It wasn't the fact that they were queer that was focused on. Oh god I could rant about Dare Me forever.

Now my point with JJ and Pope is that we don't get the impression that the boys are currently out as queer. JJ from the start was set up as a bit of a womaniser, a bit girl mad - it would have been very easy to make that gender neutral if he was bi, as I headcanon. With Pope it's the same, I personally view him as gay, but if he was bi/pan it would have been easy to show him like that as we see him attempting to flirt on two occasions. Now this isn't to say that in future seasons they can switch it up as if it was always canon, like they did with Clarke in the 100. My point however, isn't to say that JJ and Pope releasing their sexualities and feelings has to be filled with angst, the example I gave can very easily be played a bit cutely - even if they do address the internalised homophobia that I'm just sure would effect a character like JJ - but just that based on my experiences as a queer person and what I know to be experiences of others that it would realistically play out differently to how it would with a m/f couple. Even then when to comes to friends to lovers in general the removal of physical intimacy when that tension starts to build out of awkwardness is common, it doesn’t play out the same way that ships like JB and Sarah do in which they increase in physical intimacy.

I didn't bring jiara into this. I didn't go out comparing jjpope and their interactions to jiara, I was simply speaking to how jjpope's relationship was portrayed. In terms of 'evidence' I am more than aware the jiara wasn't written to be a developing romance, anything there was created by what the fans saw and choices made by the editors. But it is also a canon fact that at the very least JJ is attracted to Kie, that all the pogues 'kinda have a thing for her' and that he has 'tried' something with her. Even if the intention of those things wasn't to build to a relationship - they did happen and that's not up for interpretation. I'm not gonna bring up the 'did you tell JJ?' thing cause it still confuses the hell out of me.

The thing with the cheek kisses is that it's not the action in itself that made it a romantic thing. A handshake can build romantic tension when framed that way but that doesn't make every hand shake in that piece of media suddenly romantic, make sense? If you compare the two scenes we have the build up of Kie walking up to John B, a close up of a lingering cheek kiss, the pull back with lingering looks and then the reactions of others who have observed it and picked up on something. It frames it as a significant moment with slow beats. That's how you build romantic tension. With the JJPope one it just flows past it, JJ pulls back from the hug, a quick peck on the check and a 'love you too man' with a smirk and pat on the check. We don't even have a second of Pope's reaction to it. Do you see what I mean?

You can love that moment as a shipper. I mean it's a great moment that really highlights their dynamic. To you it's a dynamic that you see and think oh this would play out so well romanticly, it's a dynamic I see and think oh I love their friendship. Each of those are valid reactions. But it isn't a moment that has been intentionally framed to build romantic tension and suggest a budding relationship.

Darl, I swear to god if I was coming to you with my shipping bias' this would be a very different conversation. I know I will always have them and I will lean into them when I'm on vc with shes, theys and gays and we are getting lost in headcanons but I do my best take a step back when I talk about these things here because I've been in fandoms when you have two extremes and no one relents and it's awful, I don't want to create that space. And once again, I did not bring jiara into this. My original post was not a comparison to jiara.

I am very curious about your perspective on queer coding here. Because yes, JJ has chaotic bi energy and I will die on this hill. But I do not see how he has been queer coded. Other than people seeing a man being physically affectionate with another men and insist that can't be platonic. As with Kie I can see it more, not for a second do I believe that what went on with Kie and Sarah was straight. And I desperately want to see Maddie play Kie as pan to rep her own very underrepresented sexuality! And in terms of how she's written, stuff like being an astrology bitch and environmentalist scream queer to us, I do think it is important to note that the writers of the show being who they are would necessarily have the same impression of what a queer womans traits would be. In regards to that scene in ep 1 where they have the hot touron girl and then JJ, JB and Kie all perking up and doing the nod thing? I don't think anyone has a straight explanation for that.

The 'sTorYtELLiNg bullshit that u probably learned from a youtube video' comment made me laugh cause it reminds me of this guy I had a fight with on the weekend over Remus and Sirius being queer and he decided to undermine my argument by saying 'just because you read it on reddit doesn't make it true' which... yike. Any way, maybe you do but I don't have the tolerance to sit down and watch a youtube video on someone analysing a show. All my interpretations come from years of writing actual essays analysing elements and themes in media. As well as having a keen interest in direction and editing, so I pay a lot of attention to those things and you start to notice patterns. In terms of credentials I don't have any but I do think these 'essays' do an alright job of me not only explaining my interpretation but why. Because I'm not someone to just say things and expect that to just be accepted or think that is makes it true.

#obx #outer banks #JJ and pope #jiara #JJ maybank #kiara carrera #pope heyward #lara answers

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idreamtofmanderleyagain · 3 years

Text

Ace-spectrum discussion to follow. If you aren’t ace it’s ok if you want to discuss, just keep in mind where this convo is coming from.

This is basically just a stream of conciousness post about something that has been in the back of my mind. Interested to see how other aro/aces/demis/greys feel.

Sometimes posts go around saying something along the lines of this:

“Platonic/familial love is just as deep and important as romantic love, it’s frustrating that allo people put so much intense emphasis on romantic relaitonships, and I wish as an aro/ace person that people would stop trying to force everything to be romantic and shippy just because the characters care about each other!!!”

In a recent one, responders said things along the lines of “yeah I wish people stopped arguing that characters who are deeply devoted to each other is automatically romantic evidence in canon,” etc.

I’ve kind of always had a wierd relationship with this issue because I’m demi, I LOVE romantic storytelling, and several of the fictional romantic relationships that I’ve clocked as romantic are things that allosexual people have tried to argue are an should always only be Purely Platonic (tm) or any other kind of dynamic but romantic, usually with some particular bias or agenda behind why they would argue that.

And when I say argue, I mean sometimes shame other people for shipping or even “deluding themselves” into seeing canonic subtext.

Just as a fairly well-known example, I’ve always viewed Clara Oswald an the Twelfth Doctor as a romantic relationship, which is romantic within the canonical subtext but a surface “friendship” in the sense that they were hiding their feelings for the entirety of the on screen relationship. And when I emphasize canonical, I mean it. I believe they were canonically in romantic love and I think this was a very obvious aspect of the subtext. I believe that this bothered some people because there was a visible age difference, some people hated Clara, an for others this directly interfered with their ship preferences in canon, among other things. But I still believe it was there.

Now, if you’re ace and you feel represented by that relationship, there’s nothing wrong with personally viewing it at platonic. I think it has a lot of room in it to be many things for different people.

That said, a big part of the problem seemed to be personal bias combined with the fact that the romantic angle was handled with more subtlety. There wasn’t obvious sexualized antics (like with River) or YA-level romantic flirting and tropes (like with Rose). The relationship was much more focused on a deeper, complex and intense emotional connection. Like what appeals to me as a demisexual. And in fact I view the Doctor as a demisexual personally, which really is part of why the way their relationship played out on screen made so much sense to me as a romantic connection. This was what it looked like for a demisexual in love.

So all of that said, I’ve often felt underrepresented both by this particular conversation sometimes, and allosexuals forcing every romantic relationship to look one particular way, i.e. heavy sexual tension, flirting, kissing, literal dating, etc. from the point of the characters meeting.

Like, I’ve heard allo people force “why does it have to be romantic,” or “just because you thought they were gonna get together in the end doesn’t make it canon lol” or “intense emotions/devotion isn’t proof of romantic feelings!!!” frameworks onto the things that I’ve gotten invested in, or even interjected over the meta that I and others have generated for those things. So those phrases automatically kind of frustrate me, because while from aro/ace people I can understand feeling frustrated for their own reasons, those are often the same phrases used to shut me down, basically.

Furthermore, A lot of the characters who’ve I’ve found appealing in a “I’d like to see them in a romance” context are characters that a lot of allo people don’t view in a sexual/romantic context at all. Which is not a problem per se, but it’s an aspect of my experience as a demi person in fandom.

I want to make it clear that I don’t think aro/ace people are responsible for this problem. I think this is primarily allo people co-opting certain phrases to justify themselves for reasons that have nothing to do with aro/acre rep.

That said, I there’s something about these conversations that always makes me feel a little left out, or even erased. As a demisexual, my romantic/sexual feelings manifest from friendships and emotional connection on a platonic level. So sometimes intense onscreen friendships or other emotional connections are potential for romantic experiences in fiction that represent my own experience the most out of everything, and a lot of people (particularly allos) seem to get negative, mocking, or even hostile when I and others in my ship groups frame those relationships as romantic.

I’ve never connected this to my demi experience before this moment, because so many of my favorite ships have other aspects that people plant their flag in for argumentative justification. I like a lot of villain/heroine for example. But this framework is something that pops up a lot, and contributes to that feeling of un-acceptance and negativity from a whole different angle. And it’s making me aware that maybe my negative experiences shipping in fandom are connected to the demi experience in a very sublte way.

I don’t think my experience is any worse than somebody further on the other side of the aro/ace spectrum of course, it’s just something I’ve been feeling about this conversation that I haven’t known how to voice.

It’s wierd, because it’s the small stuff like this that makes me feel less connected as part of the aro/ace community, and it’s kind of why I don’t know where I even belong.

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fishyfod · 3 years

Text

Much as I love ships and shipping, the way it dominates most fandoms’s discussions can be off-putting. It’s not strictly bad this is the case, interest in discussing romantic love is a common denominator to many, and I definitely wonder how much underrepresented ships would’ve thrived were this not such a popular topic in fandom. It can, however, really get in the way of fandom discussion of other topics. For example, I really like delving deep into interpersonal relationships between characters, regardless of whether or not that relationship is romantic. It’s often difficult to find people on the fandom that share this interest as well, and whose interest in the relationship doesn’t boil down to “how would their ship dynamic work”.

You’re not bad for liking or having your main interest in a fandom be a ship. This isn’t something I feel comfortable “calling out” on the individual level, heck I’ve certainly been in this position. It’s a broad behavior I notice in many fandoms in general. Will this fixation on romance shift? Maybe, I don’t know. It’s something I feel is worth keeping in mind though.

#fandom #my posts

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mr-and-mr-diaz · 4 years

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About Judgment of Fanfiction & Fanworks

There’s something that I want to get off my chest for a while now. What follows is my opinion on a matter that I care about deeply and have ever since I discovered my first fanworks 10+ years ago. Feel free to disagree, but if it isn’t too much to ask, be civil.

I often hear complaints from fans of various fandoms saying that various characters are underrepresented in fanworks and fanfiction especially. They then go on to describe how these groups are underrepresented because we are neglecting them, don’t care about them, only want to see ___, etc etc.

I’m in so many fandoms where people from the outside think only one couple exists, only to join and realize that A. not only do many characters and couples exist, some of whom are bigger characters and are well loved, but B. Not always, but often, the couple that everyone is going nuts over isn’t even canon.

And then the judgement begins--”Why do you neglect everyone else??” “How come you only care about this??” “Why are you obsessed with this ship when [insert desirable thing here] exists?”

Why do fanworks exist?

Many fanworks are created to give the fan creator or audience the opportunity to just to sit in the head of a character and bask in their presence or to step into a world and escape for a while. But if you ask me, many fanworks are created to fill in gaps. You think there’s [insert moment] in character development that needs further exploring. You imagine the characters in a different time/place and what could happen. You disagree with the direction the writers have taken with a character or plot and have your own idea for how it could be better. And this is often where shipping fanworks come in, which I think we can largely agree makes up a GOOD-SIZED CHONK of fanworks.

Many fandoms will have a high concentration of fanfiction and fanworks for shipping. And no matter who is involved in the ship, across the board, the ships that are being written to death have this in common: The ship has incredibly delicious potential and may not yet exist in canon.

Now bear in mind, I have just described TWO very important criteria there:

The ship has incredibly delicious potential. Some potential relationships in media will go completely under the wire--no piles of fanworks, or a humble amount. This can be because a show isn’t hugely popular, or because the pairing itself doesn’t have that X factor. The X factor sometimes happens due to good writing, but more often happens because there is just the right chemistry between two actors. They become the couple (or potential couple) who every look between them sizzles, every comment is laden with potential meaning, every time they are in the same room, they just seem to enter each other’s orbit (either explosively or magically or both). DELICIOUS. Just like great ingredients inspire the chef to cook, a great chemistry and dynamic will inspire the fanfic author to write, and the GIF creators to capture each moment and the artists to depict, etc etc.

The couple doesn’t (yet) exist in canon. This one isn’t always the case, but it so often, it’s worth mentioning. In media, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that what brings emotional investment in a show/film/etc is the relationships between the characters. We love enemies to lovers, enemies to friends, friends to lovers, found family, friends to enemies--these are all examples of relationships that add depth and emotional investment in a show. If no one on screen cares about the loss of a character or a tough moment, then why would we? And if it looks like there are two characters who would GET IT ON SO VERY HOTLY IF ONLY THEY AND THE POWERS THAT BE COULD JUST SEE IT, YOU BETTER BELIEVE WE WILL NOTICE THAT TOO. A good slow build, we will say. Must be endgame, we will insist. How can no one else see it?? we will wonder. And all that wondering, all that obsessing is channeled into art. We cannot help but be obsessed with the WHAT IF. What if this couple finally gets together?? What if it happens like this? What if they share this great moment?? I will now write/draw/capture it!!

Which leads me to my main point:

The reason why other moments and/or characters aren’t as common in fic and fanworks isn’t always because people don’t love them enough, but because they love them just the way they are,

to the point where they don’t believe they need fixing or huge amounts of deeper exploration beyond what is already provided. Or the threads of their stories are largely complete and there is little space or need to fill in gaps. This is why, when the shipped couple finally DOES get together or the fandom gives up hope of it ever happening, the amount of fanworks dedicated to the ship will often drop as well. And there are no ships higher sought after in fandom than the unintentional LGBT ships which are far less likely to happen in mainstream media--If the potential of something has already got us gasping for it, imagine the fiery passion ignited when we aren’t sure if we’re gonna get it. ENTER FIERCE OBSESSION FROM STAGE LEFT.

Like with every other aspect of life, we will obsess over what we want to improve and what we don’t have far more than on what is already going well or within our grasp. So the next time you see a fandom spiraling obsessively around a single couple that wtf doesn’t even exist yet and look at all this other awesome stuff, seriously what is wrong with these people, take a step back. Odds are, there is love going around for other elements, and if you feel it is important to highlight these other moments, there is no one who would not thank you for it! But judging people for relentlessly chasing what they really want and might not yet have? Not necessary.

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booasaur · 5 years

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u know the zimbio poll got me feelin nostalgic about older ships (have i rly done the great migration so many times??) and of the rly popular f/f ships on US tv i don't think we've ever been treated so respectfully as with Shoot.. like yea it was angsty and harrowing, but so was the show. amy and sarah just be having that chemistry and we were like "they in love" and the writers were like "dang u right", and it was the 2 female leads!! and the writers/fandom got on so well.. miss them

I don’t share the same opinion on the ending as a lot of the fandom, but that aside, you know, I think you’re probably right. I JUST finished posting about subtext vs canon ships and what Shoot was at the start, that particular evolving connection between two central women, has been such a mainstay of f/f shipping. That it became canon and in a way that respected the characters and the show fulfilled something that we’d been waiting such a long time for.

Yeah, going through other ships, let’s see, I know Brittana had that joke and then became canon, but that wasn’t after years of developing an integral relationship. Lost Girl had a ship introduced at the start that became endgame but there wasn’t the same buildup and there was the on/off nature (and plus, it was Canadian). Also, it is kind of important to this discussion that they did start off as an intentional ship. That isn’t bad, at all, in fact, the opposite.

I remember this as a small debate a while back, endgame ships vs unplanned ships based on chemistry. People were like, I don’t really care that much about endgame ships, give me something where their dynamic is just so good and their chemistry so undeniable. But that was mostly because people were realizing the endgame ships were the same old white m/f ships that often paled (lol) in comparison to underrepresented subtext ships. There were substantial f/f fandoms built on exactly that, Swan Queen, Bering and Wells, Faberry, aside from the big ones of the ‘90s and ‘00s (and earlier...Blair/Jo, anyone?). And also Shoot, until, one day, the writers went there, and with care, not simply a one-off or fanservice, they made it a part of the main plot. That was so particularly satisfying in a way I’m not sure people who weren’t part of old school f/f shipping can understand. To feel as if it’ll never happen, to know it, to have experienced that again and again and again, knowing all the reasons why it won’t. And then it DID.

And to be clear, I know that Doccubus wasn’t actually supposed to be endgame, it was always canon but only later became endgame, which is also very cool in its own way. But the jump from never gonna happen subtext to canon is still--OH. Korra! Remember that feeling? That’s what I’m referring to, lol. Hmm. Pam and Tara on True Blood also? I didn’t watch but I remember my dash celebrating and it’d been quite unexpected. Funnily enough, Gail and Erica on The Last Man on Earth is one of the only cases I can remember where two first season characters get together later on. But Shoot’s treatment, until the end, did stand out.

As much as I love that feeling, much of it comes from the belief that a f/f ship can never happen, which is not a great feeling. Ideally, I would love to see more intentional endgame f/f ships, with thought and care behind them, of course.

#you coulda joined the ranks of immortality b&w #tsk tsk #replies #femslash related stuff #5 #root x shaw #Anonymous

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unwind-myself · 6 years

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self reccing!

My wife and writing partner tagged me to rec my five favorite fics that I’ve written myself, so here I am, doing that. I’m supposed to tag others, but I’m awkward. Go for it, if you like!

sad is the world when the wives are made to beg (Agents of SHIELD, Jemma/Daisy/Raina/Bobbi/Kara and then some, M, Mad Max: Fury Road AU)

Writing this story felt, more even than normal writing does, like pouring my soul out on the page. I started inspired by the movie and frustrated by (at least judging from the tags) a lack of “everyone is gay” in other Fury Road AUs I saw, and frustrated by a lack of Sapphic polyamory and hurt/comfort in fandom as a whole, and I really hope I managed to help fill the void in both of those categories with this story. It’s a fucked-up fairy tale and probably the story I’m most proud of as a whole.

Confidantes (True Blood, Nora/Jessica, T, canon divergence)

Anyone who knows my writing knows that my biggest solo project ever was rewriting the last two season of True Blood, a flawed but delightful show that has way too much of my heart but at its end went to complete crap. But of the 118 works and 176,382 words in the series, my favorite selection would probably have to be this scene, which was originally just a whim. I actually wrote this vignette before I even knew I was rewriting two seasons of television, so I really wasn’t sure if it would go anywhere or if I was just playing around with dynamics and dichotomies and my own Sapphic thirst. It wound up setting the tone for what became a driving relationship of the series, though, and I’m so glad I followed through on this whim.

I wanna love you through the night (Agents of SHIELD, Jemma/Daisy-who-was-Skye-then but also just... everyone, M, vampire AU slash kinky orgy)

This fic is exactly what it sounds like. In my long-neglected MCU vampire AU, Jemma is Natasha’s adopted little vampire sister and Natasha invites Jemma and Skye to an orgy at her mansion. Jemma and Skye meet various characters in sexy situations and eventually get dommed by Bobbi. It’s pure unadulterated foreplay (and some smut, too) and it’s largely self-indulgent kink, but I’d like to think there’s something for everybody in it.

disregard the details of this strange elusive world (MCU/Game of Thrones, Sif/Daenerys, M, canon divergence/merging)

We’ve written a few things where Sif goes from realm to realm and timeframe to timeframe happily having sex with women, my partner and I; one of the stories in the series is hers alone, but most of them are her as Sif and me as whoever else, coming up with elaborate justifications for something we just think would be nice. This one is the longest of the pieces, though, and probably the most elaborate, and I just really like how it turned out.

let me hear it echo off the walls (Agents of SHIELD, Jemma/Daisy, M, canon-adjacent nonsexual kink)

The Jemma/Daisy unadulterated kink series is one that I’ve been writing since season one, and writing partner has written most of it with me (true story, I started writing it before we were Together but we’d both caught feelings already and we definitely bounced ideas off of each other about it in a way that sounds like fanfiction by itself) but this is the last piece I wrote solo and it’s the one I wanted to mention right now since I already listed a different series’ filthy smut above. This one is set at the beginning of season two and features tender domme Daisy tying Jemma up and taking care of her in but with no sex because sometimes just being sweet together is all the needed intimacy. This one is almost more personal than the really explicit pieces in this series, honestly, but I really love it, especially since nonsexual kink is thoroughly underrepresented in fandom (and f/f nonsexual kink is almost nonexistent).

So that’s that! I’m really absurdly proud of all the things writing partner and I put out together (the fact that mallverse has been going for more than four years is insane, for example) but here’s some of my mostly-solo stuff that I have a lot of feelings about.

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freedom-of-fanfic · 7 years

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I need your help friend, the fandom is at stake: can you do a quick recap of why shipping isn't activism? And I don't mean just in terms of antis, but also the anti-backlash where people defend their ships by trying to prove they're actually progressive (which would still imply you need to prove your ship is not harmful before shipping it). Fans may have good intentions and mean no harm, but social justice is not achieved through fantasy.

what a good question. let me see if I can do this justice with a good answer.

Why Shipping is Not Activism

(edited on August 6th, 2018, 1 year after initial writing)

First off: let’s define ‘shipping’ as ‘desiring two characters to have romantic and/or sexual interactions and using social media or fanworks to share this desire with others.’ So: specifically looking at shipping as a social activity here, because I hope we can all agree that ‘shipping it’ - simply wishing for two characters to have some kind of interaction in your head - is not activism because it’s thoughts, which on their own nobody else knows about and thus can’t have an impact.

Shipping as activism is mainly talked about in the context of being ‘queer/LGBT representation’, and everything else is treated as secondary.* So I’ll be talking about this primarily from that POV.

Okay.

shipping is not activism because shipping doesn’t do two important things that activism does:

shipping does not generate or act as mainstream representation

shipping does not increase awareness or change social values

and that’s okay. Shipping doesn’t need to do these things because shipping takes place in a microcosm. Fandom is but a tiny, tiny fraction of internet and social activity as a whole. No matter how ‘progressive’ we collectively are, only in the rarest cases will we make a meaningful impact on society as a whole.

Shipping serves a different, but no less important purpose, which I’ll get into below.

That’s the short version. the long version is below.

Shipping is not activism because:

Shipping is a fandom-specific activity and fandom doesn’t make much of a social impact. We get talked about a lot by the creators because we’re the people most likely to have contact with them and provide feedback on their content; we have an impact on creators in that sense. But apart from coming to cons and talking on social media, when we get mainstream attention it’s almost always to talk about how weird we are. Also, we don’t cause social change. We can fan over something that already exists, but we can’t cause a show with better representation to be created.

Because of this:

Meaningful, mainstream representation of LGBT/queer relationships come from mainstream media, and fandom is not the main force acting on mainstream media productions. Remember when korrasami became canon in the last few minutes of the last episode of Korra because the creators knew about the shippers? Congratulations: you’re looking at an outlier that took a lot of very specific circumstances and luck to have happen. And most importantly: it wasn’t done to please the shippers. Shippers may have given them the idea, but it was done because canon korrasami would create visible bisexual/LGBT representation. It was possible because the show was only airing online, to a smaller audience, and because of the herculean efforts of LGBT/queer activists over the last century to get our collective visibility and acceptability as high as it is (and yes, we have a long way to go, but we’re miles past where we were even 10 years ago.)

Current fandom seems to carry the belief that if we just ship hard enough and loud enough, the creators of an ongoing mainstream media will reward us by making our favorite ship canon.** The reality is we rarely, if ever, make a meaningful impact on the direction that canon takes. We’re a small, small part of the consumer base - a loud one, but small! We’re often not the aimed-at demographic, either, so pleasing us is the last thing the execs trying to make a buck are thinking about. The material we’re fanning over is already old news to producers; short canons are usually already finished by the time we receive it, and longer ones are at least a season ahead in production time. (If we do make an impact, we won’t see it for at least a year or more.) Shows must meet decency standards, and LGBT/queer relationships are still seen as higher-rated than their cishet counterparts. Executives care about what will sell ad space or toys more than what fandom wants.

The fact of the matter is we have the cause and effect backwards.

Ships being ‘good representation’ is a function of increased mainstream media representation of marginalized identities, not the other way around. When media was entirely full of characters who were white cis men, we shipped white cis men. And as media slowly stops having nothing but white cis men, we’re … still shipping white cis men a lot, because there’s still a lot of them and there’s still a societal bias that tells us that white cis men are the most important/interesting people (and simultaneously, because they are unmarked, we can’t accidentally fall into stereotype pits while fanning them), but we’re shipping more and more non-white, non-cis, non-male characters too.

Real social activism leads to increased media representation - like the reclaiming of the word ‘queer’ in the late 80′s/early 90′s leading to a TV show called ‘Queer as Folk’ and featuring gay characters. And increased media representation leads to more marginalized characters for fandom to ship.

While transformative fandom does, to an extent, change things from canon to represent ourselves more - or just to suit our fancy! - canon always reigns supreme and is the most widespread version of the characters. Canon becoming more diverse will always have more of an effect on fandom than fandom being diverse/having diverse content will ever have on canon.

Besides:

The desire to see ships become canon is not primarily motivated by generating healthy representation of marginalized identities. Fans have been wanting their favorite ships to become canon since the Stone Ages. The Harry Potter fandom wars were all about what was most canon: Harry/Hermione, Hermione/Ron, or Harry/Ginny. Notably: Draco/Harry is not one of the pairings I list, because nobody thought there was the remotest chance that Draco/Harry would ever become canon. It’s only recently that LGBT/queer rep in particular has been making a meaningful appearance in mainstream media, and suddenly slash ships have entered the ‘will it be canon!?’ fray. And some mlm fans feel they have more ‘right’ to canon because mlm ships are LGBT/queer rep.

Here’s the thing: if this was really about representation, then we’d all be celebrating if any mlm pairing became canon. No matter which pairing is ‘more progressive’, any LGBT/queer canon representation is better than none. But (surprise!) it’s not; the ‘queer rep!’ battle cry is just an additional cannonball in the arsenal of ongoing ship wars.*** And I venture to say that most mlm shippers engaged in a ship war would rather see an unrelated het pairing become canon than their rival mlm ship.

And this is because:

Shipping is not, and never has been, primarily about creating healthy marginalized representation.

Don’t get me wrong: transformative fandom is heavily LGBT/queer/mentally ill/disabled/otherwise underrepresented, and we often create transformative fanworks that bring our identities into the story. That’s awesome self-fulfillment, and it can really bless and excite fellow fans who see fandom content that makes them feel more welcomed and recognized. However.

Generating marginalized representation isn’t the primary motive for shipping. We ship out of love. We see the dynamics between two characters and think ‘oh, that’s hot’ or ‘I’d like to see more of that’. We ship for fun. We ship because we think two characters would look good together. We ship because we imagine ourselves as one character and have a crush on the other. We ship things for many, many reasons, many I haven’t mentioned here, maybe as many reasons as there are people in fandom doing shippy things. And to that end, I’m sure that some people do decide what to ship purely because they believe it represents minority groups that need representation - but it would be too much to say that’s the main reason people ship things.

Shipping doesn’t need to be about creating healthy marginalized representation because:

Fiction is not reality; a person can ship the ‘right’ ships and still be a bigot IRL. and visa versa. Because we interact with fiction and reality in different ways, there are people who really love mlm ships but still think gay marriage is icky. On the other hand, a person can be the loudest activist for LGBT/queer causes in real life and only ship het ships in fandom, just because the dynamics of het ships pings their fancy more.

Shipping as activism preaches to the choir. Shipping being a fandom-specific activity, and many of us being oppressed ourselves, shipping the ‘right’ ship to increase awareness in the microcosm of fandom isn’t really accomplishing anything. Most of us are ourselves LGBT/queer, or friends with people who are LGBT/queer. Most of us are aware of how much pain the lack of representation in mainstream media brings on. And most of us are sensitive to the fact that we’re not the only oppressed person in fandom space and are willing to learn more about how we can help other oppressed people.

If I could sum up the problems of current fandom, it’s that we assume that nobody else is #woke (even though most of us are sufferers).

In that sense, shipping the ‘right’ ship doesn’t bring more awareness; it acts as a signal to others that you have awareness, and hopefully protects you from being erased or harassed as an ignorant asshole (’cishet’).

Most importantly:

Shipping isn’t activism, but it does something else great: it lets marginalized fans express and indulge themselves in any way that pleases them.

- fandom is hugely made of underrepresented minorities, so shipping is a way that we express ourselves and relate to one another - whether those ships are ‘progressive’ or not. So, so many of us deal with social stigma or harassment or hate in our real lives; we consume media to get away from that, and we indulge in fandom to get away from that.

Most of us are, just by existing and demanding space in the world, activists for the rights of the marginalized and oppressed.

I’ve had some people disagree with me on this, but I stand by it. many people in fandom have orientations/identities/nd/etc that politicize our existence. When we are ‘out’ - when we are visible - and vocally demanding recognition for our lives by being visible and refusing to compromise, we are activists by existence. And many of us are allies, taking political action on behalf of others. and many of us are both - marginalized this way, allies to people marginalized that way.

the actions we take as activists in the real world are the ones that matter - not fandom.

Fandom is a space for us to play with each other and connect over something fun and pleasant, and those fun and pleasant things don’t have to be activist things. We’re allowed to take a break.

The importance of activism and representation is to benefit the marginalized and oppressed, letting us be recognized and less stigmatized, and deconstructing the social and political structures that work against us leading fulfilling lives. When we use shipping the ‘right’ ship as a bludgeon to attack one another, we are literally defeating the purpose of our own causes. We’re stigmatizing each other for our fandom interests. And we’re certainly not deconstructing any social structures that harm us!

In conclusion: The way we can be most activist in transformative fandom is, no joke, to care more about the fact that almost everyone else here is marginalized too than that one another’s ships aren’t marginalized enough.

fandom is different from the way it used to be: it’s more visible, more mixed with non-fandom, and easier to access. certainly, it’s important to make clear where we’re addressing relationship stuff for fandom versus relationship stuff for real life. there’s value in taking steps to counteract the harm done by lack of education about sex, consent, and healthy relationships, particularly as LGBT+/queer people, or people who need access to & information about reproductive health care taking care of one another in a world that doesn’t care enough about us.

but educating each other doesn’t happen through a ship: it happens through open, friendly communication. shipping can open the door to communication, but it can’t substitute for straightforward honesty.

Let’s foster healthy interaction and honest communication wherever we can: by celebrating each other and our creative endeavors - instead of creatively locking us down with terror of getting erased or driven out of fandom by demanding everything be treated as a teaching opportunity.

be kind to one another.

(the rest of the world is not going to do it for us.)

–

*In talking about ships as representation we generally start with ‘this ship is queer/LGBT’ and then use all other axes of oppression to prove which ship is ‘more progressive’, i.e. - F1nnPoe and Ky1ux are both mlm, but F1nnPoe is more pure because it’s a black man and a Latino man as opposed to two white men. (Occasionally race will also be talked of as the primary point of value, depending on the fandom.)

**On a side note, this whole paragraph is also why it’s unlikely that fandom being ugly will ever cause a show to be cancelled or a pairing will get changed in canon because some fans were nastier than others. We’re like bugs with stingers: scary and painful but ultimately not that impactful (unless you’re allergic, I guess, but forget that part of the metaphor).

***This is part of where the ‘I have to prove my ship is wholesome/their ship is evil’ stuff comes from: ‘proving’ to creators that your ship is the ‘better’ queer representation because it either covers more marginalized bases or is ‘more pure’, making it less objectionable for mainstream representation. (the joke is that bigots don’t care how pure an LGBT/queer ship is: they’re gonna still think it’s awful because it’s LGBT/queer.)

PS - I don’t think this answer really addresses why arguing about purity of ships is a bad plan, but this is already so long that I’ll address that somewhere else I think.

#shipping is not activism #in defense of shipping #queer representation #this is an americentric post #in defense of freedom to fandom #*chanting* SHIP WAR SHIP WAR SHIP WAR

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graciecatfamilyband · 7 years

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I truly hate to put myself at risk of the label of “shit-starter”, but I couldn’t disagree more about the way forward- possibly because I think we have very different perceptions of what has occurred in the recent past. In general I prefer working things out via PM but this whole thing has been dragged out pretty publicly and I feel I must respond in-kind, especially since I don’t think I’m the only person feeling the way I do. And if other people get to put themselves and their thoughts out there like this, I do too.

It’s ironic to me, because on Sunday night I went to bed deliberately refraining from posting something I thought was innocuous but that I feared could be taken as inflammatory regarding an issue that was dying down. I awoke Monday to see that other people had no such hesitance, and some of them felt very comfortable directing their statements at me. I mention this because I am continually finding no benefit to staying silent except perhaps avoiding labels like attention-seeker or shit-starter (literally among my top 5 fears lol), but I am also finding that people will think what they will think, and I have very little control over it. I still feel some views are more welcome here than others, and that some people can behave far less charitably without any consequences while others have to crawl on the ground to make sure their statements aren’t taken the wrong way and then are still expected to apologize when people willfully twist them. When I point this out, I’m told that I can’t understand because I have only been a fan for 20 years, and that’s not long enough to understand people’s attachments and emotions and reactions. It feels like my behavior is something I’m held accountable for under a critical lens, while older fans cannot help themselves and should be given a pass. Older fans will be older fans, as it were, despite the vast majority of them being kind and affable people who don’t engage in this kind of pearl-clutching behavior when other people have different opinions. And when this dynamic finally makes me feel so bad that I speak up, thats suddenly the time for us all to unite, pretend no individuals bear responsibility or that everyone has engaged in the same behavior- and to create rules about what we can and can’t talk about! Which is frankly in my view what started everything in the first place- some headcanons being seen as outright offensive, off the table, inherently diminishing of our favorite pairing, or indicative of not being a real fan. To me this has never been about which headcanon is “right” or “best”- obviously all headcanons are valid!- but about which headcanons are allowed a voice. To me, “I don’t give a fuck” therefore misses the point (I hope very, very few people actually give a fuck); it becomes downright baffling when it is used to justify telling someone to STFU about their own headcanons or thoughts. This began far off Tumblr but has finally reached our shores and I know the bad feelings from elsewhere are one of the things that have poisoned and amped up this discussion beyond what seems (or is) reasonable. But that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the things that have occurred here that have in my view deliberately fanned those flames.

I am still raw, and hurting, as you see. That hurt is not the kind of thing I usually share publicly or even privately outside of my closest friends. Creating that post about how I was feeling was exceedingly difficult for me. But I was frustrated with the sense that I should suck up everything and be fine while other people get to play the victim, and genuinely shook by the idea that perhaps many, many people felt I was violating our norms of respectful fandom behavior in pretty drastic and mean-spirited ways. Yet other people who, in my view, have clearly been treated the same way and who did not make public posts have been left with nothing but the comfort of anons who also recognize shitty behavior when they see it. They’re left just as alone and unsupported as they were before because they didn’t want to appear to be calling anyone out. Where are their hugs? Heck, where are their apologies?

Shit got stirred, and I don’t particularly feel like swallowing it.

Of course no one should call out individual fics or fic writers during fandom discussions, and I believe our community largely does a good job of this. Not a perfect job, certainly a job that could be improved upon. Based on my personal observations, I think where we do struggle is in issues of word choice or squicks as much as anything related to anything socio-political (though obviously there is a real feeling about the latter being a major struggle at the moment). Major issues have come up in the past related to what baby names Han/Leia writers “should” or “should not” use or what canon they “should” or “should not” be writing in that have not been very empathetic in nature. I think for the most part people have been largely respectful on this issue though. I think the sense of tension has been related to real or perceived disagreement even when that disagreement has been polite, as disagreement is always uncomfortable for people by nature as a potential threat to harmony, and I think a very small number of few people have been very willing to fan those flames either within themselves or publicly, largely going off on interpretations and assumptions that are in fact wrong.

I take issue with the idea that no one can speak generally about fic because they must be talking about one of ten or twenty “current” writers, as there are far more people publishing Han/Leia stories at present than that, and a backlog of fic that is actively read and generally treasured (some of which admittedly ages better than others).

Unity is great but I don’t think my behavior is the problem and I don’t think those who have, in my view, made this discourse so toxic have made serious amends or see themselves as anything but victims. The current calls to banish certain kinds of discussion from fandom seem to me to be misguided; “apolitical” views really just mean the status quo- which is very much political. The reality is when you write any fic that goes against this grain (and I am expanding way beyond virginity discourse here), you do get pushback, and criticism, including from the same people who I’ve seen saying that we should never engage critically with a trope or a trend- yet who are very comfortable publicly saying that fics that involve certain real-life elements that are underrepresented in fic are “politicized” and “agenda”-filled! And how that’s off-putting thing to see in fandom!!! And people should just stick to telling stories without dragging that stuff into it! (And again I want to stress I’m expanding far beyond virginity discourse here.) Leia making one decision is “apolitical”; Leia making the opposite decision is “political,” regardless of how realistic that decision might be, and you’ll be publicly taken to task for that. I know you’d probably agree that’s wrong and I would too, but it’s the reality. To say we can’t talk about “the political” really means that we can’t talk about that environment in fandom in which certain views are actually uncommon or marginalized and people’s diverse reactions (some positive, some neutral, some vehemently opposed) to their being written in fic. It means we cant say, “it was so nice to see this done so incredibly differently or to see a character make this choice for once.” It means we can’t talk about why we prefer our own headcanons when they go against the status quo, or talk about our own controversial choices in stories- simply because no matter how respectful we are, someone who wrote a different story in which different choices were made might take it upon themselves to get hurt. That is… beyond frustrating to me.

I think it’s also worth noting that some of these same people seem all too happy to talk about the politics of pairing Rey with her kidnapper and torturer, or of Finn’s erasure from fandom, or of fetishistic portrayals of gay relationships, or of minor white male characters being more popular than leads of color and/or female leads. Real issues! That deserve discussion! I understand wanting Han and Leia to be sacred because they’re so special- they are incredibly special to me- but they aren’t inherently different from any other character or fandom issue.

At the end of the day, refraining from certain topics out of fear of being bullied and refraining from certain topics because engaging in them puts you at risk of being called a bully seem like the same thing to me. I really can’t see it another way, and believe me I’ve tried. I would rather see us united in our willingness to extend olive branches and engage with each other politely than in an agreement not to talk about certain subjects. The latter seems to me to be both superficial and incredibly unevenly applied. I intend to continue to conduct myself the way I have always done, which includes openness to respectful discussion. I love discussion, I’m here for discussion, including public discussion that remains within respectful bounds. This is a great way to connect with people I might not otherwise connect with, including with those who don’t have a tumblr for fear of how they might be treated here or for any other reasons. It’s a great way to exercise parts of my brain that I don’t get to use in other facets of my life. While I am not perfect and I do make mistakes, I don’t believe I have violated those bounds of respect in any of my recent discussions. Others may disagree, and they are free to disengage from me or my blog as they will. Those who don’t wish to see such discussions in general may unfollow me or blacklist the discourse tag (and I will do my best to tag)- or simply not read those posts. I will also never stop reading many different iterations of these characters rendered in many different colors and shades and choices, or encouraging authors to write what’s meaningful and true to them, or to just write, period- getting something, anything on the page is a huge victory for a new (heck, for any) writer, and one I would never seek to diminish.

I look forward to continuing to share fandom spaces with those of you who wish to share them with me in a courteous and kind way, and I promise to do my very best to extend the same to you. I am open to PMs about this but I am incredibly stressed out and also sick and may not be able to respond to them in a timely manner. The support that I have received has been truly appreciated.

#fandom drama #discourse I guess

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deathbycoldopen · 7 years

Text

*vitual hug for all my spn folks*

I've (obviously) eased off of my involvement in spn stuff lately, partly because irl stuff got in the way and then because I realized I wasn't too concerned about falling behind on the show so I didn't bother catching up again. But, I still love all of you in the fandom very deeply, and I'll never forget or dismiss the impact this show and this fandom has had on my life.

That said, I am incredibly disappointed with what I've heard about 12x21 and Eileen's death. I won't make judgements about the quality of an episode I haven't seen (the majority of reviews I've seen say it was exposition-heavy and plodding, both of which are hallmarks of buckleming but not necessarily deal breakers), nor can I comment on how Eileen’s death fits into the overall narrative of the season when I’ve only seen half of it. What I can say, though, is that character death to “”””””raise the stakes”””””” has been so overused in television today that I cannot imagine a situation where I would approve of killing off Eileen. The fact that Supernatural just killed off a dynamic, interesting female character who represents a facet of society that is even more rarely represented than the queer community, and on top of that did it in the first five minutes of the episode, makes me want to change my handle to “No more death by cold open” instead.

So on that note, I wanted to share a paper that I wrote only a few weeks ago that is (sadly) appropriate to this situation. The paper was a continuation of a discussion on the Bury Your Gays trope controversy that exploded last year, but I feel like the entire thing is pretty applicable to this situation as well.

Let Them Live: A Proposal by Hazel Howland

(read on google docs, or continue under the cut)

We Deserved Better

On April 21st, 2016, a single document began circulating the internet, among television fans and television creators alike. The seven-point document had a simple point: “We deserved better.” (Carbone, Hosko, Tass, & Mama, 2016)

The pledged, dubbed “The Lexa Pledge” on Twitter, was a direct response to the sudden rash of lesbian and bisexual female character deaths on television. The controversy began with the death of popular character Lexa on the CW’s The 100, an outcry centered around the TV trope called “Bury Your Gays,” and continued as more and more lesbian and bi female characters were killed over the course of just a few months. In such a tense standoff between fans and creators, the Lexa Pledge was written by several writers and producers of the Canadian TV Show Saving Hope, in an attempt to offer a solution to the Bury Your Gays controversy.

But just how viable is the solution offered by the pledge? The obvious option, that TV creators just don’t kill off LGBT characters, certainly lacks the nuance that the Lexa Pledge reaches for. Simply not killing off LGBT characters would mean that in an Anyone Can Die situation, suddenly all queer characters are magically immune- and while as a queer woman the thought of immortality is appealing to me, in practice it’s not the most exciting of narratives. It changes the stakes of the narrative from “anyone can die” to “anyone except this one character because they’re queer can die.” Not only that, it might also encourage television creators to limit the number of LGBT characters in their shows- which, given how underrepresented LGBT characters are (Stokes, Bradford, & Townsend, 2016), would be fairly detrimental to the queer community.

The Lexa Pledge itself proposes a much more deliberate approach to the problem. Of the seven promises included, two are concerned with the issue of representation above and beyond the Bury Your Gays trope; one acknowledges the need for informed consultants from the LGBT community itself; one even pledges to never mislead fans on social media. The broad yet detailed approach ticks off all the boxes of the controversy- and yet, in the year since the pledge was first written, it hasn’t had much success. One of the creators of the Lexa Pledge, Noelle Carbone, has even stated that “In retrospect perhaps it should’ve been a single more general statement pledging to do better. More people would’ve signed on to that version of the pledge.” (Liszewski, 2017). The text of the pledge was intentionally exhaustive, she went on to explain, which limited its appeal (Liszewski, 2017). It’s not hard to imagine that writers and producers not inclined towards the progressive would be hesitant to sign such an ideological and restrictive pledge.

The solution then needs to be something simple and general enough that it has wide appeal, perhaps not instead of the Lexa Pledge but in addition, something much more subtle that still results in fewer LGBT deaths. After all, queer women aren’t the only characters on TV who are dying in droves- Vox lists two hundred and forty-two character deaths in the 2015-’16 TV season alone (Franmke, Zarracina, & Frostenson, 2016). With this oversaturation of character death on television, death is no longer really an effective way to heighten the drama of any given show. In that case, it seems like the best course of action is to kill (or perhaps revive?) two birds with one stone: press creators to focus on avoiding character death in general. This will not only sidestep the Bury Your Gays issue, but it will also increase the emotional and financial impact of any given television show.

Don’t Kill Your Darlings

An oft-repeated piece of advice to aspiring writers is to “kill your darlings.” The phrase itself has been attributed to many different sources over the years (Wickman, 2016), but no matter the originator, it’s usually referring to favored sentences or word choices that are ultimately unnecessary to the text, that the budding writer needs to trim from their work. However, television writers and producers lately seem to be taking this advice far more literally, and killing off any fan-favorite character they want. The usual excuse is that death “raises the show’s dramatic stakes,” but for the most part, “You’re doing it for shock value, even if what you’re trying to convey is that everyone in this [fictional] world can die.” (VanDerWerff, 2016). Viewers become desensitized to the neverending barrage of death, especially when the character death isn’t particularly meaningful or well-done. “In isolation,” VanDerWerff (2016) writes, “a death that is adequate, though not particularly stirring, becomes harder to take when there’s a whole wave of mediocre deaths around the programming grid.”

Character death does tend to create a lot of much-needed buzz around TV programs, but the Bury Your Gays controversy proves that not all publicity is good publicity. The episode of The 100 that began the controversy, “Thirteen,” was rated a 5.7 on IMDB with wildly disparate ratings on either end of the scale- 60% of reviewers gave the episode a one out of ten, while 28% gave it a ten out of ten (IMDB, 2016). Meanwhile, the ratings for the show dropped by 14% the episode after Lexa’s death, and with a few exceptions has been lingering around one million viewers since then, only about half the number that watched the first season (Wikia, 2016). In fact, research has shown that “brands advertised in violent media content were remembered less often, evaluated less favorably, and less likely to be purchased than brands advertised in nonviolent, nonsexual media” (Lull & Bushman, 2015). Given that television is a business based on advertisement revenue, that finding should be particularly relevant to any TV writer, producer, or executive pushing for character death. Ultimately, they need to be asking themselves if the potential shock value is worth potentially alienating their fan base, crashing their ratings, and losing advertising revenue.

Getting There

We are living in the Golden Age of television, and the industry has changed rapidly and momentously in the past few years, thanks to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. With so much change comes opportunity for more- but in order to create a format where death isn’t stuffed into every episode of every TV show on air, both fans and writers need to put in some work.

It’s easy to forget with the structure of television, where episodes are written and filmed months before they’re aired with no time to change plots based on fan reactions. But the fact of the matter is, the viewers are the ones who have purchasing power in television. If the controversy and outcry is big enough, then fans can have a fundamental impact on the shows that we watch, from bringing a favorite character back to an entire show. In order to do that, however, the push for change has to be huge and constant. Fan outrage over Lexa’s death may have done considerable damage to The 100’s ratings, but the conversation about Bury Your Gays has long since petered out. Most of the articles and fan reactions covering the controversy are from spring of 2016, and yet lesbian/bi female characters are still dying. There might be still more as the TV season enters the home stretch, when most TV deaths tend to occur. The conversation about Bury Your Gays and character death in general has to continue in order for the medium to change, and so that falls on the fans to keep the momentum going.

It’s the job of the fans to educate TV executives and creators on what they’re doing wrong. It’s not enough to just quit any one show- they have to know why their numbers are suddenly dropping. In this day and age we have more access to creators through social media than ever, and so it’s our responsibility to utilize those platforms to our fullest advantage. Additionally, television is meant to elicit an emotional reaction from the audience, and the goal of any character death is to generate shock and buzz. That means that in order for any message to the executives to be successful, it has to be smart; it has to explain that this is the wrong emotional reaction, and causing them to lose viewership.

Of course, fan response can only make so much of an impact; the brunt of the labor is on those actually working in television. Readers, if any of you happen to be involved in the industry, this is for you. As we move into the end of the 2016-’17 season and you begin work on the next, we TV fans, both casual and devoted, straight and LGBT*, have a simple request: let them live. It doesn’t matter if the character you’re about to kill off is gay, straight, black, white, male, female, or none of the above- let them survive. When characters are dropping dead left and right, it’s no longer raising the stakes when yet another one bites the dust; all you get from that is another stale narrative.

There’s an infinite number of conflicts and narrative arcs that can develop characters other than grief and death. In fact, with the overwhelming number of shows chasing the Anyone Can Die format, it’s actually shocking and original when a show takes a different route. It might seem restrictive to ask you not to kill of your characters, stifling your creativity, but if the arc you’re developing has been used so frequently, it isn’t really creative. Your job is to think outside the box and create something dynamic and new, not just rehash the same plots over and over again.

Sometimes, character death is driven not by creative inspiration but by necessity, because an actor is leaving the show or some other mitigating circumstances. But in that case, character death only precludes that character ever returning to the show (in most cases- some shows are fantastical enough that coming back from the dead isn’t an impossible occurrence). Killing the character off in that case just means that options are now even more limited in the future. Furthermore, actors leaving for other roles or because their contract is up are often well-publicized- meaning that any shock value in killing them off is doubly nullified by predictability.

Of course death and grief are very powerful and important life-changing events; it’s not fair or reasonable to ask that they be left unexplored in television. In fact, some of the best episodes in television have been focused on the death of a loved one- personally, “The Body” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer comes to mind, but there are many, many more. However, there are many other potential storylines that have a similar resonance with real life, like childbirth, first love, trauma, and so on, that can develop a character just as thoroughly as grief. And the power of the death narrative is, by its nature, limited if it’s constantly used. One death is a person; a hundred is a statistic.

The Lexa Pledge was on the right track in its call to action. “We deserved better” and the seven pledges reminds all of us that the work to change the world of television. But more than the toxic Bury Your Gays trope, television has given us a vision of a violent world, where lives- especially women, especially people of color, especially the queer community- are expendable. We can’t just ask the industry to keep from killing queer women when others are considered just as expendable, and when death itself seems trite from overuse. Exploring options other than killing off a character not only avoids the pitfalls of the Bury Your Gays trope, but also brings something fresh and exciting to a medium dominated by death. It’s only a first step, of course. Even keeping characters alive and well has very little impact on the representation of minority groups on television. But at least, if the grim reapers of television can relax their scythes, the representatives that we do have won’t be dropping like flies, and that’s a start.

#LetThemLive

References

“Bury Your Gays”. (2010). TV Tropes. Retrieved from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BuryYourGays

Carbone, N., Hosko, S., Tass, G., & Mama, M. (2016). A pledge to the LGBTQ fandom. Retrieved from https://lgbtfansdeservebetter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/pledge2.1.3-originalsigned.pdf

Franmke, C., Zarracina, J., & Frostenson, S. (2016). All the TV character deaths of 2015-’16, in one chart. Vox. Retrieved from http://www.vox.com/a/tv-deaths-lgbt-diversity

IMDB. 2016. User ratings for “The 100” Thirteen (2016). Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4731502/ratings?ref_=tt_ov_rt

Liszewski, B. (2017). How Saving Hope lived up to the Lexa Pledge. The TV Junkies. Retrieved from http://www.thetvjunkies.com/saving-hope-live-up-to-lexa-pledge/

Lull, R., & Bushman, B. (2015). Do sex and violence sell? American Psychological Association Journal. Retrieved from http://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/45488561/Lull_and_Bushman_-_Do_Sex_and_Violence_Sell_PB2015.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1493153456&Signature=3Kh2mVnkiD3GYWNpXqv%2FWGzqiNo%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DDo_Sex_and_Violence_Sell_A_Meta-analytic.pdf

Stokes, Z., Bradford, R., & Townsend, M. (2016). Where we are on TV. Glaad. Retrieved from http://glaad.org/files/WWAT/WWAT_GLAAD_2016-2017.pdf

The 100 Wikia. (2016). Ratings. Retrieved from http://the100.wikia.com/wiki/Ratings

VanDerWerff, T. (2016). TV is killing off so many characters that death is losing its punch. Vox. Retrieved from http://www.vox.com/2016/6/1/11669730/tv-deaths-character-best

Wickman, F. (2013). Who really said you should “Kill your darlings.” Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/10/18/_kill_your_darlings_writing_advice_what_writer_really_said_to_murder_your.html

#thinky thoughts #12x21 #spn spoilers #spn #negativity for ts #wank for ts #before anyone asks #I haven't quit the show or anything #and even if I did I wouldn't start ranting about it all the time #because I feel like that isn't fair to current fans #but my blog will continue to be light on the spn content #at least for the foreseeable future #anyway #love you all

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