#tss fandom crit

[prodigal-explorer]

y’all: the sanders sides fandom isn’t aro/aphobic! 🥺

also y’all:

-“you know, the sides are probably all aroace because they’re not really human so they don’t really understand attraction on a human level and are incapable of feeling it because they’re not human.”

-“guys i’m writing an asexual/aromantic side and he’s so sad and tragic and lonely and he just wants a lover so bad but it was just written in the stars that he’ll never have one and it’s so angsty!”

-“patton is asexual because he’s so pure he would never have sex!”

-“remus is aromantic because all he cares about is sex and he doesn’t want to deal with real feelings.”

-“obviously logan is aroace because he doesn’t have feelings!”

(just to clarify i do NOT agree with any of these quotations these are examples of things i’ve seen that i heavily heavily DISAGREE with and if you agree with any of them you and me are not going to get along whatsoever.)

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #tss #sanders sides fandom #ts sides #sanders sides fandom critical #tss fandom crit #prodigal tss #arophobia #aphobia #asexual #aromantic #aroace

[softestvirgil]

Have any experience with petty people in the fandom? Not naming any names but I've heard stories about people bringing up minor things from years ago. Luckily none of it has effected me directly.

Oh, I do. The biggest example that comes to mind is when I changed my opinion on Janus after ‘Putting Others First’ came out. I used to post some anti-Janus stuff, I don’t remember ever being too extreme about it but I just didn’t like him very much at the time as I felt like I didn’t have a reason to up until that episode came out. When I posted that my opinion on Janus had changed, I got so many angry messages accusing me of being a hypocrite. I was a child just having fun with a show when I posted half of what I posted when I first got into this fandom, so it's wild to think back on the idea that people held what I used to feel about a fictional character against me. Insane behaviour.

#ts crit #ts critical #sanders sides critical #sanders sides crit #fander crit #ts fandom crit #tss crit

[moldy-lemons]

the fucking inside out 2 trailer has brought out the fanders everybody take cover !!!

#i’m so prepared to be annoyed for so long #how did i not realize before how obnoxious the people in this fandom were #ts criticism #thomas sanders critical #ts critical #thomas sanders crit #tss salt #tss crit #tss slander

[rosesradio]

ts crit & the battle of the allegations that all crit is bullying, written and narrated by: a person that is sometimes a little hater, but is now legitimately concerned.

(a post discussing the nature & sources of crit & fan concerns, not contributing to crit)

friendly reminder that, with all the stuff happening in the sanders sides fandom with updates and crit and everything, it is perfectly okay to post ts crit. no one is being a mean, big bad wolf for doing so. the two types of crit i’ve seen are actually very reasonable and important:

1.) crit of the lack of honesty regarding when the next ep will be coming out (though this has since been announced, at least within a bracket). not the time it’s taking--although there have been jokes--but the lack of honesty. crit of thomas’s defensive reaction to when fans asked for a tss update. crit of other weird & bad social media & business practices (i.e. the patreon from ex-patreons, more “adult” posts that are seen by the (assumed) pre-teens in his audience, etc.)

2.) crit of the creators thomas & team continue to endorse, such as jkr and butch hartman. a lack of addressing any of the controversy and continuing to put things like hp in his brand makes fans (like myself) uncomfortable. it’s perfectly reasonable to want a statement of some kind on it, especially considering his lgbtq+-friendly brand.

if you don’t want to see crit against a creator you really like, that’s fine. no one’s making you look at it. but to pretend that all crit is bullying is lumping legitimate fan concerns with essentially hate mail.

to say “thomas is an asshole and the show sucks” would be mean and uncalled for (and also untrue).

to say “thomas should be more clear on what age range of audience he wants, so that way kids aren’t seeing things they shouldn’t” or “thomas should address somewhere on his sorting video that he doesn’t support jkr’s views & maybe donate to a trans charity with some of the ad revenue” is legitimate criticism and not at all bullying. if you think that it is bullying, you probably need to get off the internet and form any kind of relationship and, i dunno, grow as a person.

#i'm not going to tag crit bc i'm explaining crit not contributing to it (like i usually do) but lmk if i need to #this felt like writing a college paper lmao why did i have to edit so much and it's still not concise #anyways if you try to disagree and say i'm being a bully you are literally proving my point right #thomas sanders #sanders sides #fandom discourse #ugh can't believe i tagged that #tw harry potter #okay i think that's it

[subtlereferencetomyinterests]

personally i dont think logan should “go feral” i think he should open up about his emotions and let his friends help him figure out his Obvious rejection sensitivity and anger issues like they’ve been encouraging him to seek support for since two years ago. but maybe thats just me. 

#ts logan #tss #sanders sides #logangst #romans kind of bitchy sometimes but pat and virg are. Nothing but supportive of this emotionally repressed teacher man #hill i will die on #and this is coming from me!! and i love feral violent men!! #but only when it is narratively earned #fandom crit #like a tiny bit

[arcticommune]

-

#i'm scrolling through leverage character tags #and yeah dsmpblr has some tagging issues #but holy FUCK we are so much better then every fandom ever #like at least it isn't... socially acceptable (i'm don't love that word choice) to maintag character crit? #like it does HAPPEN but we all agree that its Bad #and now i'm rembering that other fandoms dont generally have crit TAGS #at all! #they just post whatever they want abt the characters in the main tags! #and it just happens! #asldkjflaskjfd b/c i really went from sanders sides->dsmp #and tss has the 'unsympathetic' taggint system #that gets used a lot #so i forgot that it wasn't Widespread

[misnomera]

On racial stereotyping of the Haans in TMA...

Right so as someone who is ethnically Chinese I have NO FUCKING clue how I didn’t notice this more distinctly in my initial binge of tma (going too fast and not paying closer attention to character names and descriptions, probably) but the Haan family storyline is, all horror elements aside, pretty fucked up in terms of racial representation re: stereotyping. This got long as hell, but please please please take a moment to read through if you’ve got time for it. thanks.

To start off, the Haans are one of the few characters in tma with an explicitly specified race and ethnicity—Chinese—and pretty much the only explicitly Chinese characters in tma, other than the mostly unimportant librarian (Zhang Xiaoling) from Beijing. But like, Haan isn’t even a properly Chinese surname, at least not in the way that it’s spelled in canon (it should be Han, one a. A quick google search tells me that Haan as a surname has...Dutch origins??).

Of course, that could be chalked up to shoddy anglicization processes within family histories, which certainly isn’t uncommon with immigrant families, so I’m not going to dwell on names too much (although I also find it interesting that John Haan’s name is so specifically and weirdly anglicized that he changed his own surname?? Hun Yung to John Haan is a very big leap of a name change and frankly not very believable. ANYWAY, this is not that important. I don’t expect Jonny, a white Englishman, to come up with perfectly unquestionable non-Cho-Chang-like Chinese names, though it certainly would be nice. Moving on).

What really bothers me about the Haans is how they almost exclusively and explicitly play into negative Chinese immigrant stereotypes. I don’t even feel like I need to say it because it’s like...it’s literally Right There, folks. John Haan (in ep 72) owns and operates a sketchy takeout restaurant. They’re all avatars of the Flesh—and John Haan is Specifically horrific and terrifying because he cooked his wife’s human meat and fed it to his unknowing customers. Does that remind you of any stereotypes which accuse Chinese people of consuming societally unacceptable and ethically questionable things like dog/cat/bat meat (which, if it’s not already crystal fucking clear, we don’t. do that.), which in turn characterize us as horrible unfeeling monsters? John Haan’s characterization feeds (haha, badum tss) directly into this harmful stereotype that have caused very real pain for Chinese people and East Asians in general. 

And Jonny does nothing to address that from within his writing (and not out of it either). And, speaking on a more meta level, Jonny could’ve easily had these flesh avatars be individuals of any race (like, what’s Jared Hopworth’s ethnicity? Do we know? No? Well then). Conversely, he could’ve easily, easily had a Chinese person be an avatar of any other entity. So why did he have to chose specifically the Flesh?

(This is a rhetorical question. You know why. Racial stereotyping and invoking a fear of the other in an attempt to enhance horror, babey~)

On Tom Haan’s side, Jonny seems weirdly intent on having other characters repeatedly comment on his accent (or rather, lack thereof) in relation to his race. Think about how, in ep 30 (killing floor), the fact that Tom Haan had spoken a line to the statement giver in “perfect English” was an emphasized beat in that statement, and a beat that was supposed to be “chilling” and meant to signify to us that something was, quote-unquote, “not right” with Tom Haan. Implicitly, that’s saying that it was unexpected, not “normal”, and in this case even eerie, for someone who looks Chinese to have spoken in fluid, unbroken English. Mind you, the line itself was perfectly scary on its own (“you cannot stop the slaughter by closing the door”), so why did Jonny feel the need to note the accent in which it was spoken in? Why did Jonny HAVE to have that statement giver note, that he initially “wasn’t even sure how much English [Haan] spoke”? 

This happens again in episode 72 with a Chinese man (and again, his ethnicity is Explicitly Noted) who we assume is also Tom Haan. This one is rather ironically funny and kind of painfully self aware, because the statement giver expresses surprise at Haan’s “crisp RP accent” and then immediately “felt bad about making the assumption that he couldn’t speak English,” and subsequently admitted that thought was “low-key racist.” Like, from a writing perspective, this entire passage is roundabout, pointless, and says absolutely nothing helpful to enhance the horror genre experience for listeners (instead it just sounded like some sort of half-assed excuse so Jonny or other listeners could say “look! We’ve addressed the racism!” You didn’t. It just made me vaguely uncomfortable). And again, having other people comment on our accents/lack thereof while assuming we are foreign is a Very Real microaggression that east asians face on the daily. If Jonny needed some filler sentences for pacing he could’ve written about Literally anything else. So why point out, yet again, that the crazy murderous man was foreign and Chinese? 

At this point, you might say, right, but yknow, it was just that the statement givers were kind of racist! It happens! Yeah sure, ok, that’s a passable in-universe explanation for descriptions of Tom Haan (though not John Haan, mind you), but the statement givers are fake made up people, and statement’s still written by Jonny, who absolutely has all the power to write overt discrimination out of his stories. And he does! Think about just how many minor (and major!!) characters are so, so carefully written as completely aracial, and do not have their ethnicity implicated at all in whatever horrors they may or may not be committing. Think about how many lgbtq+ characters have given statements, and have been in statements, without having faced direct forms of discrimination, or portrayed as embodying blatant stereotypes in their stories (though lgbtq+ rep in tma certainly has their own issues that I won’t go into here). Jonny can clearly write characters this way, and he can do it well. So why, why, am I being constantly, repeatedly reminded in-text of the fact that the Haans are East Asian, that they’re from China, that they’re Chinese immigrants, that they’re second-generation British Chinese or whatever the fuck, and that they’re also horrifying conduits for blood, gore, and general fucked-up-ness? It’s absolutely not something that is Needed for the stories to be an effective piece of horror; the only thing it does is perpetuate incredibly harmful and hurtful stereotypes.

And listen, I love tma to bits. It’s taken over my blog. I’ve really loved my interactions with the fandom. And I am consistently blown away by Jonny’s writing and how well he’s able to weave foreshadowing and plot into an incredibly complex collection of stories. But I absolutely Cannot stop thinking about the Haans because it’s just. It’s such a blatant display of racial stereotyping in writing. And I’ve certainly seen a few voices talking about it here and there, and I don’t know if I’m just not looking in the right places, but it certainly feels like something that is just straight up not on the radar for a lot of tma fans. And I’m disappointed about that. 

Just, I don’t know. Take a look at those episodes again and do some of your own thinking about why these characters had to be specifically Chinese (answer: they didn’t.). And in general, PLEASE for the love of god turn a critical eye on character portrayals and descriptions whenever they are assigned specific races/ethnicities (Some examples that come to mind are Jude Perry, Annabelle Cane, and Diego Molina), because similar issues, to an extent, extend beyond the Haans, though I haven’t covered them here. 

You shouldn’t need a POC to do point out these problems for you when they’re so glaringly There. But for those of you who really didn’t know, hope this was informative in some way. I’m tired, man. If some of the only significant Chinese characters you write are violent cannibalistic men with a perverted relationship with meat, just don’t do it. Please don’t do it. 

EDIT: Since the making of this post Jonny has acknowledged and apologized for these portrayals on his twitter and in the Rusty Quill Operations Update, which went up September 2020. A long time coming, but better late than never. This of course doesn’t necessarily negate the harm done by Jonny’s writing, and doesn’t make me much less angry about it, but is appreciated nonetheless. For more on this topic there’s a lot of productive discussions happening in my “#tma crit” tag and in the notes of this post

#tma #the magnus archives #magnuspod #tma 30 #tma 72 #tma crit #racism #sinophobia #racist stereotyping #tw cannibalism #tw violence #long post #tom haan #john haan

[cryptspren-moved]

when it comes to criticisms abt fandoms (ts sides & percy jackson mainly) i * do * tag both but usually when theyre untagged itʼs bc something needs to be said & needs to be seen by more people (e.g r*ckʼs racism or tss fandomʼs toxicity) so ppl are aware of ** what needs to change **

* ʼtss critʼ refers to crit abt the series itself; ʼtssf critʼ refers to crit abt the fandom

ʼrr critʼ refers to crit abt rick riordan himself; ʼpjf critʼ refers to the fandom *

-

** this refers more to fandom with the tss toxicity as well as fandom racism when it comes to percy jackson (bc we cant change rick riordanʼs fuckups but we can change the narrative the fandom portrays) **

#🚀🔊 #rr #ts sides #rick riordan #sanders sides

[prodigal-explorer]

fun fact about sanders sides: it’s actually okay to be a patton hater, and that doesn’t make you a raging asshole or an idiot who doesn’t understand the source material! as long as you don’t like senselessly shove it in people’s faces or go wild in patton lovers’ askboxes, be as much of a hater as you want! write fanfics where he’s a villain! write analysis posts on all the awful things he does and gets away with!

being a patton hater doesn’t make you less of a sanders sides fan than people who don’t hate patton. it just means you don’t like a fictional character. don’t let people be horrible to you just because you find flaws with their favorite character.

idk what it is about patton specifically that cause people to go INSANE whenever people express the idea that maybe he isn’t perfect and he deserves a bit of criticism for the things he does? like nobody’s expecting him to be perfect but saying his flaws and mistakes out loud and expressing how they negatively affect the other sides is not a crime. so maybe think before sending death threats in a patton hater’s ask box! maybe just block and move on. maybe just write your own post about how patton is your innocent uwu baby instead of infecting other people’s posts with that. cuz not everyone wants to be guilt tripped to hell and back just because they dislike the most popular (next to virgil prolly) and loved and infantilized character in the series.

tldr: you’re allowed to hate patton sanders. you’re not a bad person if you hate patton sanders. and if this post makes you mad, go outside and touch the green stuff for a while.

(AND ALSO THIS APPLIES TO ALL THE OTHER SIDES TOO! it’s just that fans of the other sides aren’t constantly awful to me!! so yeah!!)

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #tss #sanders sides fandom #patton sanders #tss fandom crit #sanders sides fandom critical #tss patton #patton tss

[prodigal-explorer]

fun fact: just because patton is multi-faceted and complex does not mean that he is immune to criticism! he can be "trying his best" and "a good person deep down" while still being a bit of an asshole to the other sides consistently. he can be "a complicated character with too much pressure on him" while still being needlessly two-faced, patronizing, and manipulative towards the others. it's not "demonizing" patton to bring these things to light. it's pointing out his obvious flaws which SHOULD be addressed because he's a boring and horribly written character without them. patton stans try so hard to erase his flaws or try to excuse them when his flaws are the most interesting thing about him and it's such a shame.

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #tss #sanders sides fandom #patton sanders #sanders sides fandom crit #tss fandom crit #prodigal tss

[prodigal-explorer]

cant send this on anon. sad! anyways i think the point of pattons arc is to accept that the others have importance. learning to not bottle up his feelings was the first step to fixing a larger issue about himself, that being that he tries to put all responsibility of himself. and that manifests in a lot of ways, including not respecting the others and their roles.

but then you get to the end of pof, and after janus resigns to being wrong about everything, patton says that they both know that's not true. that to me signifies that something shifted in him after pof. thats him directly recognizing that janus was right. that selfishness was the right choice, that janus is important. and this is a direct consequence of janus pointing out his flaws to him (when he turns back into a human he admits that he doesn't know what hes doing and he cant pretend that he does anymore. which is a direct response to when he resolves to make sure thomas isnt a bad person in svs)

does that mean he's good at it? no. not at all. but i do think hes trying. given that hes already had a major breakdown in a video i cant see the same happening for the finale but he should definitely take time to acknowledge the others roles. maybe he can talk logan/orange down and tell him that the rage he feels is justified and important to thomas? something like that. i would love it if remus got a chance to be involved but i have the bad feeling hes gonna be the designated one dimensional comedic relief. which i kinda get why but also come the fuck on. anyways thats my two cents idk

i completely agree with you homie!!!

i also appreciate the nuance in this take cuz so many people fly to my askbox and try to tell me that patton is some innocent baby and that he should never be criticized ever because "he's trying!" and that's not what you did you actually spoke like with intelligence which was so fucking awesome to read. /g

i absolutely agree with everything you said. this is patton's arc. his arc isn't "i'm too nice and i need to stop being too nice" HELL NO that's not his arc whatsoever and there is no indication of that being his arc even though people constantly pretend that's his arc. NO. his arc is that he needs to learn that he is not the end-all-be-all of thomas' mind, and that he is not always the most important voice in the conversation. though he doesn't have overstated hubris, how highly he thinks of himself and how lowly he thinks of the others is blatantly obvious through his actions, and he's slowly getting better at, like, NOT doing that and it's really good change to see! he still has a...long...long...LONG way to go, but at least he's going somewhere. i just wish people would acknowledge this super interesting journey instead of watering patton down and being super fucking annoying whenever i try to critique him the tiniest bit.

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #tss #roman sanders #sanders sides fandom #virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #remus sanders #janus sanders #sanders sides analysis #sanders sides fandom critical #tss fandom crit

[prodigal-explorer]

i hate how the sanders sides fandom has basically been conditioned to apologize for critiquing any side ever (ESPECIALLY PATTON). like they’re not allowed to criticize a side or the series whatsoever without adding “oh this is just a joke tho!” or otherwise acting like it’s not a serious and genuine and valid opinion.

like this fandom acts like it’s the most pure and innocent thing ever but it’s really not 😭 stifling criticism and making people out to be stupid or heartless whenever they have something even vaguely negative to say about anything is just kinda fucked up imo.

tldr: sanders sides fandom needs to get better at letting people be haters and analyzers and critics.

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #tss #sanders sides fandom #tss fandom crit #prodigal tss

[prodigal-explorer]

literally roman in the sanders sides fandom

he’s always reduced to the big strong manly man who saves the others from danger

when he has so much story and trauma and interesting personality that is just shoved under the rug

it’s such a shame because roman is such a cool and unique character!

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #tss #roman sanders #sanders sides fandom #tss fandom crit #tss roman #roman tss

[prodigal-explorer]

i think i just made someone mad and got blocked 😭 like we were bonding over whump yesterday and i make one lighthearted post critiquing thomas and bam

i s2g this fandom is something else

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #tss #sanders sides fandom #tss fandom crit #sanders sides fandom critical

[prodigal-explorer]

RESULTS!!! sanders sides controversial opinions poll

alright guys this is what you were waiting for! i am so grateful that this little poll i made ended up getting over 630 responses? that's insane! thank you all so much for helping me with this project, i loved researching this fandom that i love so much! without further ado, here are the results!!

(also for the interesting opinions, i don't agree with all of them, they're just opinions that i thought brought up something cool that i hadn't considered before!)

the canva link in case the photos aren't working: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFxdNIQW6s/XXMtxyz_icwgEp2cdgGBLQ/edit?utm_content=DAFxdNIQW6s&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

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part two is being reblogged below!! and i am in the process of tagging people who said they wanted to be.

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #tss #roman sanders #virgil sanders #sanders sides fandom #remus sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #sanders sides poll #opinions #sanders sides opinions #sanders sides headcanons #tss critical #ts critical #ts criticism #ts crit #sanders sides fanfiction

[prodigal-explorer]

i was honestly surprised by thomas' placements of the sides in the inside out video

not exactly unpleasantly surprised but there was an opportunity missed and that was:

making patton joy.

i get that thomas probably felt like he had to make roman joy because roman doesn't really fit well anywhere else but patton and joy have so many parallels. toxic positivity, overly controlling mindset, things that roman just doesn't really have? i feel like joy doesn't fit roman at all, and if he was to have an inside out character, it would probably be either disgust or anger, though i would not trade logan and janus' placements for anything LMAO

idk it's just unfortunate because i think patton as joy makes way way way more sense than roman as joy and i would rather have roman be somewhere he doesn't quite fit (which- he does not fit joy at all anyway?) than to miss the opportunity for that parallel between patton and joy.

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #tss #roman sanders #sanders sides fandom #virgil sanders #remus sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #sanders sides crit #tss crit #sanders sides critical #tss critical