Fangirling and Writer-Nerd Chaos

silm fans are really like "god i love the silm but you can really see how sexist tolkien was. anyway here's reason 3478283493 why this male character's awful actions are this female character's responsibility. why do we never talk about how much death and suffering she caused by pushing him to do what he did :(((("

One of the most tiresome groups of Rings of Power haters are the Peter Jackson fanatics, who seem to hate this show because it isn't produced by Peter Jackson and never seem to have a solid argument against it, just petty shit like this.

Your children's show unfortunately has the absolute wrong take on tackling fascism. Yeah the power of friendship angle is showing a dismal lack of understanding of Marxist theory or even intro-level Leninism. Yeah my only two interests are children's media and online leftist discourse so this is gonna be a problem.

This isn’t commonly known but one of the rings of hell is actually being in a fandom wherein the popular bloggers have the worst opinions known to man that everyone else parrots

One thing i've run up against when dealing with fandom and characters making less than ideal choices is that people seem to treat a character's decision being sympathetic, the decision being understandable, the decision being reasonable, and it being objectively the best solution for the situation, as synonymous. When those are 4 very different things.

i will say, the worst thing that happened in fandom was when shipping just became “i ship this bc it’s gonna be real” and not just “i ship this bc i think it’s a fun dynamic to explore idc what the writers are doing that’s not my business”

i recommend being a fan of 1 problematic piece of media at least once in your life

believe it or not, someone being a fan of a shitty series doesn't mean they agree with and/or approve of every little thing that is ever presented within this piece of media.

and no steven universe is not problematic media

no offense but everyone tagging this with like miraculous ladybug or some shit. miraculous is not fucking problematic either it's made for like 8 year olds. 😭 please learn to consume content meant for people your own age if you're gonna consider tv shows meant for literal children problematic in any sort of capacity lmao i do not care how annoying the fandoms are, some of the things people are tagging this with and going "omg yea THIS series is probably the most problematic thing i can think of!" and then it's the literal embodiment of this picture

see this post was a joke post but now i am taking away the word problematic from everyone and putting it on a high shelf forever. sorry! what if we all exploded

I think it’s really important to talk about how different people have different power fantasies.

For example:

I would argue a lot of fandom conflicts re: villains come from people being unable to see that their fantasies, which put them in control of a narrative (and all three of these are designed to give the author or reader control of the narrative in different ways) are someone else’s horror stories.

….this explains SO MUCH.

This breakdown works equally well for the Problematic Love Interest.

i hate finding things out about the writers of the fanfics i read

uhm no the fic about those teenagers fucking isnt silly anymore youre 28 years old

...Who do you think built AO3?

OP I have bad news for you about most professional writers, too

#op thinks bluey is written by a 5 year old

Saw a TikTok that said "don't ship [insert ship]! It's a PROSHIP!" and it's like. What does that mean. Even pretending the word is short for problematic like how. Is it incest, underage, abusive, etc you're not giving any information here. Also do you really think people who ship that don't already know there's something wrong with it. Absolute nothing burger post this generation is cooked

From The cult structure of the American anti which was a fascinating read and genuinely worth going through if you're in fannish spaces.

People know that the whole "don't portray [harmful action] because viewers might recreate it" thing is a rule for children's shows right? It's supposed to be shit like "don't show peppa pig playing with fire so we don't get sued if a kid watches it and burns their house down." Not like, fanfiction for adults.

prev i hope u dont mind me sharing ur tags bc yeah this is an interesting add on

PSA that has been given 100 times already but needs to be said again:

The reason you, gen Z queers, need to be kink positive isn't because you support those kinks. It is okay to be disgusted by them, actually.

The reason you need to support kinksters is because "these kinks are disgusting" is the framework the alt-right is using and will continue to use to outlaw you. They don't think you're any different from the guys at Pride in leather puppy suits. They think your ENTIRE EXISTENCE is sexual. They think you holding hands with someone of the same gender, or existing as a trans person at all, is the same as a straight couple playing tonsil hockey in public.

YOU ARE A FETISH TO THEM. That is all you will ever be to the alt-right. They will never see you as human. When they talk about "our children being exposed to sexual perversion" they don't mean BDSM like you think they do. They mean YOU.

The only way to preserve your own existence is to fight for the right of kink to exist, because the instant kink becomes taboo or outlawed again*, rest assured, the alt-right will become MUCH more transparent about just what they think about your existence.

When you harp on about disgusting kinks and how they need to be hidden or outlawed and how they're harmful and everyone who does them is (insert thing here), you are giving the alt-right the tools they will use to imprison you as soon as they have unchecked power to do so.

THAT is why kinksters have been part of the queer community, part of Pride, from the start. Because the only way to keep our community safe is by truly ensuring everyone has unlimited sexual autonomy so long as the activity is taking place between consenting adults. It's just like how abortion-related laws are the lynchpin for all manner of medical autonomy laws.

The queer community can't stand without kinksters and vice versa. Even if you yourself aren't a kinkster and find them disgusting, like it or not, that is just how it is.

*Sodomy was illegal in Texas until 2003 and the law is still on the books, just not allowed to be enforced thanks to Lawrence v Texas, which SCOTUS has said they have an interest in striking down

In general, "this thing is bad because it disgusts me" is reactionary thinking that the right uses to discriminate against literally everything. They will deliberately talk about the grossest possible things (or what they think is the grossest possible thing) in order to justify their bigotry.

The classic argument against being gay? Bringing up anal sex. A lot. In as graphic terms as possible. Just talking a lot about poop and anal prolapse and other viscerally disgusting things... and then using that as the reason why two men shouldn't hold hands in public. Because holding hands is actually signalling that you practice coprophagia, obviously.

(I am not exaggerating: spend any time listening to someone like Alex Jones talking about gay men, or reading anti-gay pamphlets from the 90s and early 2000s, and it's just nonstop discussions of poop and poop-related things)

One of the classic ways of othering immigrants? Talking about how disgusting their food is. Koreans eat rotten cabbage. Chinese people eat dogs. Fuck, there's a scene in It's A Wonderful Life where Mr. Potter is trying to flatter George Bailey and get him to give up the Building & Loan (while being extremely bigoted about the people George Bailey is helping), and he calls Italian immigrants "garlic-eaters." Because garlic is gross and smelly, obviously.

Women? Talk about how gross menstruation and vaginas are.

Trans people? Call a neovagina an "open wound" and wring your hands about how testosterone makes people smelly and hairy and ugly.

Unhoused people? Complain about how they're pissing and shitting in the street.

It is okay to not like stuff! It is okay to feel disgust! But I promise you that there is something you find totally normal that other people find gross. You cannot make disgust the basis of your morality system.

Both of these ppl are proship so the message of this post has v v v bad intent to me :^/

Hmm, how strange that people who don't support queer people being discriminated against in real life because of immature people moralizing their discomfort would ALSO not support censorship of fiction because immature people moralize their discomfort? WHO EVER COULD HAVE GUESSED THERE WOULD BE SUCH AN OVERLAP

"HOW could the pro-kink people also be pro-ship??!!"

Because the idea that something is harmful and immoral simply because it exists in the world somewhere where people, especially children, might accidentally stumble across it (and, by extension, think it's okay and then be lured into the clutches of a pedophile) is why Moms for Liberty keep trying to get books about queer people banned and Republicans keep trying to ban drag anywhere children could possibly see it.

"But I'm not talking about normal queer content, I'm talking about porn!"

It's literally all porn to them, my dudes. And Tango Makes Three is just as bad to them as 2 Girls 1 Cup. THAT'S THE POINT OF THE POST.

nonbunary-coco up there somehow misunderstanding the entire point of this post in ways I would never have thought possible

I love seeing people use the locked tomb tags as a place to declare a moral stance on bad shit like abuse/incest/various upsetting things. bestie, this is the locked tomb. you’re in the Various Upsetting Things fandom. you’ve read the books. “if you ship campal you’re disgusting” baby these kids play with corpses like legos and regularly sweat blood “we HAVE to talk about ianthe and corona’s terrible relationship” yeah let’s talk about how their codependency rocks and I think they should get grosser and weirder and worse “stop shipping pyrrha with the younger characters“ baby she fucked a corpse. I hope pyrrha puts her dick in literally everyone. grow up

I think about the writers who stopped writing because people went after them.

I think about the new reader who got scared off from commenting because they might say the wrong thing.

I think about the artist who was going to dip their toes in, but saw a blacklist posted and debated in the fandom they so recently were excited about.

I think about all the people who would be here with us, writing meta and squeeing and creating and lifting up creators. Who became ghosts, afraid that to speak up is to stick out your neck.

How many stories won't we get to read, how many pieces of art won't take our breath away, how many comments won't be put in notes or on stories that push us through our blocks... because anger and pettiness and jealousy and aggression are so common in fandoms that so many become ghosts before their time, and the ones who stick through it are still healing from their battle scars?

I mourn all the stories I will never see, all the friends I will never make, all the headcanons that will never bring stars to my eyes.

And I hope that all those who went quiet before they could speak will find a place to be safe, so that one day I may hear their voice.

this post is gonna talk about pro-shippers btw

So, i dont get why pro-shippers are bad? but i also dont get why they do it at the same time, so i would like to hear from both sides as to why they should do what they do, and/or why the other side is bad

i want to be educated and i will do my own research, but i want peoples opinions

thx! (please be RESPECTFUL to everyone responding)

Proship is the default stance fandom used to have--we didn't need a label because you were either normal or an asshole, and what we define as proship now used to be considered normal.

Essentially you abide by the principles of SALS ("ship and let ship") and YKINMKATO ("Your Kink Is Not My Kink And That's Okay" or "kinktomato").

Basically "we all ship what we like and stay in our own lanes and have nothing to do with the ships or kinks that distress us"

People who didn't abide by this were the ones involved in ship wars and were by and large regarded as raging assholes by everybody else.

Quite frankly if you look at the roots of anti behavior and how often they decry a ship that turns out to be the "rival" of their OTP, it becomes blatantly clear the anti movement is basically what happens when you mix ship wars with radfem and puritanical christian ideology.

Yes, I said radfem. There is a lot of anti-kink, anti-sex, anti-porn rhetoric in the anti movement, both things that are well known as things radfems (especially SWERFs) spout. Quite honestly they often literally word for word use the same arguments. You also see echoes of this in how they decry mlm ships as evil and corrupt and immoral while praising wlw ships that tick all the same boxes and wholesome and good.

I also brought up puritanical Christian thought--there is a heavy emphasis on "sin". They don't call it that but the concept is the same--if you have Impure Thoughts you'll be an Impure Person and Impure People are Evil. Also you must protect the children from the corrupting influence of Impure People. Again, they pretty much word for word make the argument Christian fundies do about thoughtcrime and sin.

They also seem to have a weird obsession with making everything about incest and/or pedophilia even when the work in question is entirely innocent.

When an anti sees something they don't like, the go-to response is telling people to kill themselves or threatening them.

When a proshipper sees something they don't like the go-to response is block the shit out of it to never see it again, then go on with their day.

At the end of the day if you're an anti, you want to eradicate everything that makes you even mildly uncomfortable without having to do any work to curate your experiences and you want to frame things that make you uncomfortable as immoral.

If you're proship, you just wanna be allowed to ship your silly little ships in peace and avoid the ships that make you uncomfortable.

A huge chunk of proshippers don't even ship anything problematic, or at least nothing majorly so. Lots are only into totally wholesome ships--they just don't think defaulting to death threats (and now terrorism) is the right response to seeing shit that upsets 'em.

Most of us are just Fandom Old And Tired and want the fighting to stop, people to learn how to filter and block stuff they don't want (I'd have killed for half the abilities we now have to curate what we see back when I was young and getting in fandom for the first time--and kids today don't even use 'em!!! Why!!!), and for children to stop seeking out 18+ content if they're just gonna scream at the creator when they find it.

I'll also mention that the abovementioned "you want to eradicate everything that makes you even mildly uncomfortable without having to do any work to curate your experiences and you want to frame things that make you uncomfortable as immoral" mindframe is also very conservative Christian -- there's this idea in Evangelical Fundie Christianity that if you "allow" sin to exist around you, then you are guilty-by-association, and God will blame you for not purifying your environment, etc. etc. This is why fundies don't abide by "Don't like abortions? don't have one" or "Don't like gay marriage? Don't get gay married." In a fundie world, it's their literal God-given mission in life to purify everything around them and make sure sin doesn't EXIST.

The weird anti tendency to hate-follow tags, go looking for anyone who does shipping wrong, and send them aggressive, violent threats of eradication are VERY fundie in nature -- "warriors of purity," etc.

Anyway. It sucks, so.