Been doing a lot of readings about media analysis and social interaction lately and I'm curious if anyone else thinks there's a difference between being a fan of something and being In the Fandom. To me, being in the fandom necessitates some sort of dissatisfaction with the work that leads to a desire for peer interaction and transformative content. And by sense of dissatisfaction, I don't mean that you don't like the work obviously. Dissatisfaction can be as minor as thinking what if this character was explored more, or I wonder what life on this planet is like, etc. It's just anything in the source material doesn't fully satisfy you that leads you to want to join the fandom. But if the source completely satisfies you and you don't feel any desire to transform it in any way, that just makes you a fan. so like in my opinion if all you want to do is talk canon, then you're a fan of the work but aren't really "in the fandom" per say

sorry to drag you out of the replies @megapocalypse but I totally second this. imo basing fandom off of a framework of dissatisfaction rather than mutual appreciation of the source material sounds.. not fun at all?* like there are a lot of things I read/watch offline and talk about with friends or spend lots of time thinking about in my own time, many of which I don't even consider myself a fan of, much less in those works' fandoms. and I'm rarely 100% satisfied by them - in fact, if we're looking at being in fandom through that lens, some of what I consider the worst things I've ever read/watched are things I'm in fandom for, because I've written analysis, explored ways it could have been different, etc. and I would never consider that the case lol.

of course, transformative work is a huge part of fandom! you can disagree with an authors decisions or just wish you could explore some aspect of a story or character that didn't fit into the canon material, and fandom is perfect for all that. but I guess I just don't see that as being the CORE of fandom. imo, fandom is the community itself, the interaction and engagement with others regarding the source content. whether that's writing/reading fanfic that wildly changes the story or meta analysis that follows canon to an obsessive level, it's all fandom if you're involving yourself in the wider community of fans.

*I recognize that op didn't mean dissatisfaction as in dislike, and maybe this is just getting into semantics, but in my view that idea of dissatisfaction as a desire to explore would not exist in the first place if I didn't enjoy/like the source material. so when I say I think the "framework" of fandom is based on the latter rather than the former, I'm talking about the feelings that inspire someone to cross that boundary between casual fan and someone invested in fandom, not necessarily that both feelings can't ever coexist.

(copies from replies) Yeah [the phrasing of "dissatisfaction"] was on me, someone in the rbs explained much better than me what I was thinking by comparing it to eating a burger (American diaspora win). Like in the essence of a burger and fries could be a satisfying meal that would leave you with no hunger left while just fries would leave you lacking that satisfaction. So I just thought a word that means not fully satisfied -> dissatisfied

I really did not intend for it to be negative in any way honestly. If I were to continue the metaphor I guess it would be like if you ate some fries and were like wow those fries were perfect! But they didn't fully satisfy my hunger. In fact, they made me really hungry for a burger, so I'll make a burger that would complement my enjoyment of these fries. But the burger is fan content and the fries are canon or something you know

I'm gonna put myself fully on the side of Fandom being about social engagement.

Because if we don't do that, we cut out all fandoms that aren't about media, and that just seems like an error. Probably the biggest fandoms in the world are sports and music fandoms, y'know? And those are massively based around shared social connections between multiple fans.

Now, I may still be misunderstanding what OP was talking about, but it sounded to me like the criterion being offered had to do with the original Thing being inspirational in the sense of people wanting to make more of That Thing for themselves (whether through writing or drawing or what have you).

But that's not really how fandoms for sports and such work. (And before anyone says it, RPF fic represents a TINY minority of those fandoms.) Those fandoms are formed around the social connections of people who want to enjoy a thing together, and I think it would be stretching the definition OP offers to a breaking point to say that discussing strategies/talking about games after the fact/etc falls into the same category as transformative works.

I will confess to not know much about how sportsball works, but I would argue that people who are fans of things like sports Are indeed inspired to create more of that experience for themselves-- the difference is that since sports is an industry in perpetuity, there's no real need to produce work in the way that media fandoms do. If you're a fan of the Dodgers, you can see them play basically forever until people stop watching baseball. However, if you're specifically a fan of the retired player Bobson Dugnutt or something like that, then there's no in perpetuity canon experience you can fuel your fannish desires with. But instead, you could make a fantasy league with him or collect his old merchandise or draw fanart or frame baseball cards or play him in FIFA or write a fic about him having wild sex with you or whatever. Social engagement is the biggest part, of course, but that doesn't mean there's no desire for more from the source either-- it's just assuaged already by the nature of the industry.

You can also look at the desires of sports fans from the point of view of someone like Ann Pegoraro specifically investigating online activities, who notes that what many sports fans crave is interaction with their idols. You can also see this in bandoms as well-- the "canon extended" content you could say people want to see is anything outside of games or albums or whatnot. They want more information about the source (players biographical information), like people in say an anime fandom also want more information about their source (world building).

This sort of connects to another theory about otaku by some academic I forget the name of which argues that the driving force for otaku is to create a database of knowledge about the canon in their head, contributing to a grand narrative understanding which they can then draw from to create their own smaller narratives divulged from the whole, except here the compilation of the database is more emphasized and doesn't always lead into the smaller fan-created narrative (at least publicly, who knows what kind of fics middle aged dads are writing in their heads about their team winning the next Superbowl or whatever)

Spreading awareness on here: this 2ha big bang event has a mod that's expressed Zionist views, please be wary if you were thinking of participating

Plain link here

Some more stuff?

Plain link again

Seems to be a very contentious situation but I will say that they apparently released an "apology" that was mostly just a few paragraphs of insults towards someone else who called them out? I don't personally have a dog in this fight, and they seem to be relatively harmless in the grand scheme of things (Israel and Palestine can coexist but Israel has to stop now views) but I have to say this reaction isn't really helping them..?

Form your own opinion for yourself on whether or not you feel comfortable participating of course, but I will say this rings kind of hollow for me personally because I was aware of this person for a long time because they've been a hot topic in adjacent fandoms for a While. Like I don't know how I feel about them positioning this as a one time instance when it seems multiple people have had bad experiences of trying to approach them in good faith and them not engaging with that repeatedly, over the course of many months.

Ftr, I believe what people had the most issue with is that they're a strong Standing Together supporter (had the org in their dn until yesterday), which is a liberal Israeli organization that's been in a few spats with BDS and other Palestinian organizations for operating within Israel rather than against it. Like their goal is reconstruction of the government rather than dismantlement of the state, which can rub people wrongly.

I know many Jewish people and Israelis who've moved out now that believe that it's not really possible to have a real progressive movement with change while a state exists as everything within it depends on the occupation of the other, but it's a nuanced subject and many other people believe any progress is for the best as solidarity should be prioritized right now for realistic change as opposed to a pursuance of a future ideal goal. Complex situation, but I think everyone deserves to have at least some of the information to make an informed decision whether they feel comfortable supporting or not. Ymmv and whatnot. Feel free to add your own opinions and I can add information to the post if you want

The girls and I were talking about metal gear and scum villain parallels as I made this so I feel like I need to enlighten everyone to the context: so this is a redraw of this panel from a PlayStation magazine comic by this guy who had like a genuine weird psychosexual obsession with Raiden from metal gear 2.

Male gamers *really* hated Raiden because he was, as you can see, rather sexually ambiguous for their game about big military men and guns and war and stuff (which was actually about gay sex. But I digress). But the funny thing is Kojima made Raiden specifically to appeal to a female audience, who wanted a younger and prettier protag than solid snake. Of course since girls like a little twink, this choice would make male gamers really mad because they were kind of attracted to Raiden which would make them kind of gay. Which is also funny because everyone knows the character who is Really for the gays was always snake. This artist shipped him with Dante devil may cry which goes hard btw. I really hope this guy went into drawing yaoi full time after psm ended

But anyway that outrage led to this weird fanon feminization of raiden that's like the cherry on top because in the games he's like. The most heterosexual main character. He has a wife and son whereas snake has his bff of like 30 years who he lived with and raised a daughter with, otacon.

So anyway that's all to say. Binghe is Raiden Mobei Jun is Snake

Do you think MLPs will ever look like horses again?

With love and respect, those aren't even really human faced horses. I love human faced horses. I love centaurs, I love silenoi, I love these monstrosities

I don't know how to describe mlp g5. I watched the movie and it was cute, but I just couldn't get around to the designs. They look like vaguely horse-flavored cocomelon, to me

To completely forward facing eyes, the ears kinda-but-not-really on the side of their heads, the wide dog-like mouths, the tiny muzzle, almost like and afterthought. And the necks. The necks are definitely human shaped, sticking straight up and connecting at the base of the skull like only a human neck does.

I know it's low-hanging fruits, and I don't blame anyone who likes them, but they just do not appeal to me.

MY THESIS for this is that the Main source of the uncannyness in the designs is the tiny nose and detached mouth, which is caused in part due to how it you look at the silhouettes and shapes of each character's face, you can see natural places where it looks like there should be a muzzle. then on the actual designs it turns out that's actually the outline of the cheek and the mouth and nose are in the middle of nowhere!

Here's my like 5 second shitty paint over where I changed nothing about the designs except the mouth and nose positions and shapes:

With the exception of a few gag shots, typically the early MLP gen 4 formula for success was to keep the ponies' muzzles in a 3/4 position unless necessary for them to be facing forward, and to keep the mouth connected to the nose in these shots. I think that's shown pretty well in this pic from the fim movie, which is imo a genuinely impressive and beautiful movie

What's crazy is that the increasing number of weird detached expressions were one of the main critiques of the later seasons of gen 4 and used as evidence of their declining animation quality:

So it is sort of weird that they just went full tilt into that for every character all the time for g5. Tbh my theory is that because the artists in gen 4 were like legit horse girls referencing the older MLP gens (which, though stylized, were still fairly horse-like) and probably some real horses in the stylization process. But now that gen 4 was such a success, the style of gen 5 isn't being inspired by real horses anymore, it's being inspired by gen 4. So it's like stylization inbreeding LOL.

Based on some interviews with Lauren Faust and tweets from Imalou, one of the g5 character designers, it also feels like g4's mantra was more "what if these horse characters were given human traits", while g5's is more similar to "what if these human characters had horse traits". Imalou said they were given a pretty vague description for each of the g5 characters and were kind of just told to go ham with it (eg. Instruction for designing Pipp was just like "1920s flapper girl" and that was pretty much it). So human characteristics -> horse design. Whereas Faust had the character designs already from previous generations and had her own headcanons of what they would be like, so the process went from horse design -> adding characteristics that fit that vision.

yeah that's exactly what i was saying

(suddenly serious) what i was saying was that Dungeon Meshi has some really well-written characters that also have flaws. half the cast constantly gives Laios shit for being socially awkward, Laios forgets about the basics of human decency a couple of times when interacting with Izutsumi, the funny late-story villain squad are 80% convicted criminals, basically every character is a bit racist in some way, and, yes, Marcille, everyone's favorite silly little disaster lesbian, gets the "ick" about Tall-men portraying the characters in her favorite romance novel because she thinks they're too ugly and pouts about the idea of Falin (her dear beloved Falin) wearing clothes that she would be happy and comfortable wearing because "that stuff is for men"

i feel really silly talking about this but a weird thing that happened for me when the Dungeon Meshi anime took off and the fandom really exploded was seeing how weirdly cutesified a lot of fan depictions of the characters was. the "canon versus fanon" of it all, if you will. a week or so ago there was a bonus comic drawn by Ryoko Kui that got spread around Twitter about a What If situation in which Laios got eaten instead of Falin, and people were shocked about the idea of the party basically immediately giving up on the idea of saving Laios, including at least one "why does the writer think she knows so much" joke (i'm hoping it was a joke), which really baffled me because it just made sense to me that the party initially wasn't all that close to Laios (besides Falin, obviously). the relationship of the main cast is something that grows over the series. please read that carefully: the main cast does care for one another, they care for Laios, it's just that it's something that is developed over the course of the manga... and even that idea was too much for some fans

i'm probably going to sound really snobby, but i think there's a lot of people who are more fans of the fanart than the actual series...

i was mainly being silly when i was like "yeah let Marcille be weird about gender" but i was also kind of serious because it kind of is a prominent part of her character. it speaks to the world she lives in, what she values and finds important, and if you think about it, it actually speaks a lot to the subtext around her and Falin: Marcille hates "gross things," Marcille hates being uncomfortable, Marcille thinks women should be girly, and men should be masculine, and yet she willingly journeys down into a gross dungeon and eats weird monsters in order to save Falin, a woman who likes bugs, fucking around in the dirt, and pants. what do you think that implies about Marcille?

i appreciate writers that don't smooth all the rough edges off their characters. in Kui's case, we all know she's put massive amounts of thought into the world Dungeon Meshi takes place in, and the views of her character reflect all these thoughts. i don't think Marcille being "conservative" is an accident- i would go so far as to say that i don't think the "contradiction" of Marcille's love of Falin is an accident. i think this is all the sign of good writing, and i think it's a diservice to the writer to try and make these characters more "palatable" (and fit all the corny "found family" memes lol)

[discourse] in defiance of the author’s wishes (re: mxtx fandom)

Context

on March 17, 2018, mxtx posted:

“As long as you don't split or reverse the top/bottom positions of the main couple, I won't mind what you ship. I myself have a lot of fun shipping couples in mainstream shows, and isn't reading all about finding joy? You can imagine freely or ship whoever you like, just don't break up or reverse the top/bottom positions of the main couple.”

(I realise that the 不拆不逆 “no splitting or reversing” rule might be implicit within the entire Chinese danmei fandom, so i do not wish to single mxtx out. for example, i know that Chinese 2ha fans also go around policing people who ship, say, chu wanning with shi mei — so this isn’t just a mxtx thing. although i do not know if other danmei authors have explicitly stated “no splitting or reversing” since i have not been a part of other danmei fandoms.)

Nevertheless, “no splitting or reversing” became the constitution in Chinese mxtx fandom. Fans parade around with the slogan “拆逆死“ which means “kill yourself if you split or reverse”. Since the pronunciation of 拆逆死 (chai-ni-si) sounds like “chinese”, some fans on the Chinese internet have been putting “chinese” in their bios to mean “kill yourself if you split or reverse”.

From now on I will be referring to split/reverse ships as cult ships, as Chinese fans like to call them.

There are two main consequences of the “no splitting or reversing” rule (on the Chinese internet):

However, not everyone agrees with the practice of “don’t step out of your land” — this includes people from both sides of the debate. Some official shippers believe that cult shippers should not have any land to begin with, and purposefully leave the cult ship tag unblocked so they can police cult shippers at every opportunity. Some cult shippers believe that because their ship involves the individual characters, originate from the novel written by the author, they are in the right to use the individual character tags, the novel tag, and the author tag, and that people who dislike their ship should just use the block function. 

-

Moral Arguments

There are two main types of moral arguments that Chinese official shippers make.

1. If you split the official ship, you condone cheating behaviour and that makes you a bad person.

The first argument is too trivial so I will leave the refutation as an exercise for the reader to do at home /j

2. You are not respecting the author's wishes and that makes you a bad person.

The author has wished many different things. For example:

Screenshot 1 translation: I strictly forbid any crowdfunding or fundraising related to me, my works, or my characters, regardless of the purpose, whether it be for celebration, group buying, rankings, charity, or any other named activities.

Screenshot 2 translation: Once again, I emphasize: No new social media pages related to my works are allowed, nor organizing readers in a roundabout way, whether it be for celebrations, group buying, rankings, charity, or any other named activities. Please also refrain from flamboyantly organizing any collective birthday events.

Screenshot 3 translation: I've repeated many things many times and do not wish to repeat myself. Could everyone please just listen to my words occasionally.

(A brief aside before I address the second argument, something I used to say when debating Chinese fans: “I don’t think people who violate the author's wishes mean any disrespect. I don’t think they’re shipping or hosting charity events or birthday parties out of spite, but rather, it just so happens that the author prohibits a ship they enjoy or an event they organise. Just because I cult ship, for example, doesn’t mean I hate the author.” And they would respond: “if you really liked the author, you wouldn’t go against her wishes. You do not deserve to like the author. You are a mxtx anti.” And I would say, “I like my mom a lot, but I won’t listen to everything she says, simply because I don’t think everything she says is right. Plus, I don’t think the world can simply be explained by like vs. dislike. Also, Xie Lian said this: [For instance, if you admire or like someone, you won't always treat them well, no matter what happens.]” But then the most hilarious thing happened, in the revised version, a rebuttal for that scene was added:

【”For instance, if you admire or like someone, it doesn't mean you will always treat them well, regardless of what happens."

"Why not?" San Lang questioned. "If that's not possible, it only shows that this so-called 'liking' isn't anything significant."

Xie Lian shifted the conversation, asking, "Then... does it mean that aside from liking someone, the only other option is to dislike them? Are these the only two attitudes one can choose from?"

San Lang chuckled and retorted, "Why not? Right is right, wrong is wrong. To love is to love, to hate is to hate. Why can't things be clear and straightforward?”】

… ah.)

To address the second argument for real, i believe that producers retain no moral authority over the methods by which consumers engage with their products. for instance, i believe that choosing not to follow the official “twist, lick, and dunk” method when eating oreos does not constitute disrespect towards the oreo brand. Or to use another analogy, suppose a farmer selling apples insist that you peel the apples before eating them. I believe that it does not make you a bad person if you choose to eat the apples unpeeled, despite the farmer being the one who watered and harvested the apples from their trees.

I am thinking of potential counterarguments, and the strongest one I came up with is: “but products like oreos and apples are fundamentally different from intellectual property.” And I think the main issue here is that, to employ economics terminology, the content of novels like tgcf is a non-rivalrous good (not the novels themselves but the abstract content), which means that my consumption of it does not reduce availability to others. In other words, unlike Oreos or apples wherein after I purchase them, the specific items I bought are no longer physically in the hands of the vendor; after encountering characters like Shen Qingqiu, Shen Qingqiu still exists abstractly in MXTX’s head. This gives the illusion of ownership on the author’s part. I want to be very careful here because I think it’s easy to equivocate between different uses of the word “ownership”. I am not arguing that the author fails to retain ownership in negation of all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the creative process, i.e. their copyright. Instead, I am contending that, just as I paid for my Oreos and apples, upon my purchasing of the Seven Seas version, the paperback Chinese version, and the revised uncensored version of TGCF on JJWXC, the author does not own the ways by which I choose to engage with these fictional entities. Once a work is made public, its ontology becomes independent of the author’s intent, and in all its readers’ heads exist distinct versions of the characters, in effect making them belong to all of us.

(There. As a bonus I have also resolved the issue of not being “chinese” enough. Ah, is this a bad place to make a communism joke?)

Addressing the legal side of things

In 2022 I wrote to the legal team at AO3, and here is their response:

Regarding the “moral rights”, that’s actually a thing. Upon receiving lots of spam from 12-yr-old readers that “you are breaking the law”, I did a quick Baidu search (China’s Google) concerning the legality of splitting/reversing ships. Surprisingly, the search results yield “yes, it’s illegal”, and hence the 12-yr-olds' confidence. But that is akin to getting a cancer diagnosis from searching symptoms on Google. So I dug deeper. 

After reading tens of published papers and court cases, here are the key takeaways of what I found:

And that is for China only^ if you live outside of China, you are under another country's jurisdiction.

-

Closing remarks

I am addressing this issue because it has impacted me and my friends in many ways. "kill yourself if you split/reverse the official ship" is probably the least of our concerns, mainly because it is such a popular phrase that we've become desensitized to it. @/Eleven receives private messages on Lofter on a weekly basis of people wishing her entire family to get murdered. A hualian main friend of mine has been posted to Weibo for following me; and I had to pull a Shi Qingxuan with "hey let's not be friends anymore if being associated with me is gonna get you cancelled".

mxtx has been through a lot and i understand where she's coming from. and maybe, the people who identify as "kill yourself if you split/reverse the official ship" don't truly mean it -- maybe they're just expressing their love for the official ship.

Recently i've been seeing the sentiments I used to only witness in Chinese fandom surface on Twitter and sometimes I worry that western mxtx fandom is going to turn into Chinese mxtx fandom, with the in-group/out-group mentality -- you're either with us or against us. At the end of the day, I do like mxtx, I admire her tenacity and I think she's a brilliant author, I love her works and the characters in them. I simply do not want to be backed into the corner of "anti" due to not following every order she gives.

祝墨香和她的粉丝们平安。

🍉🇵🇸 eSims for Gaza masterpost 🇵🇸🍉

Which eSims are currently being called for?

As of March 6th:

More eSims are urgently needed—the team has less than a day’s supply in their inbox right now. eSim plans being called for are:

If you sent an eSim more than two weeks ago and it hasn’t yet been activated, reply to the email you initially sent the team.

Be sure you're looking at the original post, as this will be continually updated. Any new instructions about replying to emails for specific types of unactivated plans will also appear here.

Check the notes of blackpearlblasts's eSim post, as well as fairuzfan's 'esim' tag, for referral and discount codes.

How do I purchase an eSim?

If you cannot download an app or manage an eSim yourself, send funds to Crips for eSims for Gaza (Visa; Mastercard; Paypal; AmEx; Canadian e-transfer), or to me (venmo @gothhabiba; paypal.me/Najia; cash app $NajiaK, with note “esims” or similar; check the notes of this post for updates on what I've purchased.)

You can purchase an eSim yourself using a mobile phone app, or on a desktop computer (with the exception of Simly, which does not have a desktop site). See this screenreader-accessible guide to purchasing an eSim through each of the five services that the Connecting Humanity team is calling for (Simly, Nomad, Mogo, Holafly, and Airalo).

Send a screenshot of the plan's QR code to [email protected]. Be sure to include the app used, the word "esim," the type of plan (when an app has more than one, aka "regional Middle East" versus "Palestine"), and the amount of data or time on the plan, in the subject line or body of your email.

Message me if you have any questions or if you need help purchasing an eSim through one of these apps.

If you’re going to be purchasing many eSims at once, see Jane Shi’s list of tips.

Which app should I use?

Try to buy an eSim from one of the apps that the team is currently calling for (see above).

If the team is calling for multiple apps:

How much data should I purchase?

Mirna el-Helbawi has been told that large families may all rely on the same plan for data (by setting up a hotspot). Some recipients of eSim plans may also be using them to upload video.

For those reasons I would recommend getting the largest plan you can afford for plans which cannot be topped up: namely, Simly "Middle East" plans, and Holafly plans (they say you can top them up, but I haven't heard of anyone who has gotten it to work yet).

For all other plans, get a relatively small amount of data (1-3 GB, a 3-day plan, etc.), and top up the plan with more data once it is activated. Go into the app’s settings and make sure low-data notifications are on, because a 1-GB eSIM can expire very quickly.

Is there anything else I need to do?

Check back regularly to see if the plan has been activated. Once it's been activated, check once a day to see if data is still being used, and how close the eSim is to running out of data or to expiring; make sure your notifications are on.

If the eSim hasn't been activated after three weeks or so, reply to the original email that you sent to Gaza eSims containing the QR code for that plan.

If you purchased the eSim through an app which has a policy of starting the countdown to auto-expiry a certain amount of time after the purchase of the eSim, rather than only upon activation (Nomad does this), then also reply to your original e-mail once you're within a few days of this date. If you're within 12 hours of that date, contact customer service and ask for a credit (not a refund) and use it to purchase and send another eSim.

How can I tell if my plan has been activated? How do I top up a plan?

The Connecting Humanity team recommends keeping your sims topped up once they have been activated.

See this guide on how to tell if your plan has been activated, how to top up plans, and (for Nomad) how to tell when the auto-expiry will start. Keep topping up the eSim for as long as the data usage keeps ticking up. This keeps a person or family connected for longer, without the Connecting Humanity team having to go through another process of installing a new eSim.

If the data usage hasn't changed in a week or so, allow the plan to expire and purchase another one.

What if I can't afford a larger plan, or don't have time or money to keep topping up an eSim?

I have set up a pool of funds out of which to buy and top up eSims, which you can contribute to by sending funds to my venmo (@gothhabiba), PayPal (paypal.me/Najia), or cash app ($NajiaK) (with note “esims” or similar). Check the notes of this post for updates on what I've purchased, which plans are active, and how much data they've used.

Crips for eSims for Gaza also has a donation pool to purchase esims, but I don't know about their practices regarding topping them up.

What if my eSim has not been activated, even after I replied to my email?

Make sure that the QR code you sent was a clear screenshot, and not a photo of a screen; and that you didn’t install the eSim on your own phone by scanning the QR code or clicking “install automatically."

Possible reasons for an eSim not having been activated include: it was given to a journalist as a back-up in case the plan they had activated expired or ran out of data; there was an error during installation or activation and the eSim could no longer be used; the eSim was installed, but not activated, and then Israeli bombings destroyed the phone, or forced someone to leave it behind.

An eSim that was sent but couldn’t be used is still part of an important effort and learning curve. Errors in installation, for example, are happening less often than they were in the beginning of the project.

Why should I purchase an eSim? Is there any proof that they work?

Israel is imposing near-constant communications blackouts on Gaza. The majority of the news that you are seeing come from Gaza is coming from people who are connected via eSim.

eSims also connect people to news. People are able to videochat with their family for the first time in months, to learn that their family members are still alive, to see their newborn children for the first time, and more, thanks to eSims.

Some of this sharing of news saves lives, as people have been able to flee or avoid areas under bombardment, or learn that they are on evacuation lists.

Why are different plans called for at different times?

Different eSims work in different areas of the Gaza Strip (and Egypt, where many refugees currently are). The team tries to keep a stockpile of each type of sim on hand.

Is there anything else I can do to help?

There is an urgent need for more eSims. Print out these foldable brochures to inform people about the initiative and distribute them at protests, cafes and restaurants, &c. Also feel free to make your own brochures using the wording from this post.

The Connecting Humanity team is very busy connecting people to eSims and don't often have time to answer questions. Check a few of Mirna El Helbawi's most recent tweets and see if anyone has commented with any questions that you can answer with the information in this post.

Exposing SVSSS Fanon: 24/∞

APHRODISIAC-PRODUCING PLANTS ARE AN EVER-PRESENT DANGER IN THE WORLD OF PIDW

One of the most common tropes that I have ever seen all across SVSSS fanfiction is the use of aphrodisiac-releasing plants, or "fuck-or-die" plants, as a plot device in order to get two characters together. Surprisingly enough, however, there is not a single mention of such plants existing in PIDW.

Oh interesting!! I had been lead to believe by an older meta post that 1.) fuck-or-die was decently common in YY and 2.) those poisons usually didn't have aphrodisiac effects, so I've been assuming for at least a year that there's a fair amount of FoD plants/poisons in PIDW but fewer aphrodisiacs, but ofc there's bound to be variation within the genre.

Anyways, I'm more interested in how the eng fandom became so fixated on this! two possible reasons as to the prevalence of sex plants in the fandom that you didn't already address:

is the general perception that "wife plots" are primarily cheap plots, full of equally cheap plot devices. At the speed with which Airplane was writing and introducing new love interests or romantic conflicts, there's some logic to him recycling trope-y reasons for the new woman to fall for LBH-- political marriages and saving maidens from [insert new monster here] come to mind as likely contenders for Airplane to have used and reused. Similarly, since the world of PIDW/SVSS seems to have, if not historically accurate sexual morals, then genre-typical ones, I can imagine there's a need for a plot justification for premarital sex. To have a greater variety than Bingge just deflowering every new conquest on the marriage bed

The second reason is that, at least in fandom perception, Xin Mo is kind of a fuck or die. Now, not getting into all the ways in which Xin Mo's mechanics are misinterpreted (if you ever want to do a post on that I would love to see it--), and I'm not sure how much if any of this is canon accurate, but in the fandom I think there's a chain of logic that goes Bingge uses dual cultivation help to maintain control over Xin Mo -> Bingmei had a serious/dangerous qi deviation from Xin Mo multiples times -> Bingge has to have sex or he'll qi deviate. It's to the point where a lot of bing(ge)yuan fics imply that the only reason LBH still has the harem is Xin Mo. Added together, this created the idea that many of LBH's wives were acquired because LBH overtaked himself and had to fuck the next warm body he could find, and then couldn't just leave the woman deflowered and unmarried. AKA, that Bingge has his own built-in fuck or die mechanic, which is then extrapolated out to say that fuck-or-die mechanics as a whole must be a common part of PIDW's storytelling, and therefore, its world.

Ultimately, I do think that the prevalence of fuck-or-die and sex pollen in fics is, as you said, mostly because they're popular and enduring fanfiction tropes in general, but I think the questions as to why it became seen as canon has many compounding factors.

To be fair I certainly haven’t read all that many YY novels (and since I favor more detailed worldbuilding, I’m selective), but I mainly wanted to point out that it’s not purely porn-novel genre and the intent is more emotional satisfaction (which does include sexual satisfaction)— so the way a fuck-or-die mechanic is used might be different than would be used in a PWP fic or pure erotica in general, prevalence aside in that case.

But yeah, I really struggled whether to sort this neutral or unsupported tbh, because technically there’s no reason it couldn’t have happened, so I just went with “SY didn’t comment on it so it probably wouldn’t be a situation where there’s a fuck-or-die plant every few steps” since that’s something I’ve seen— the existence itself is ambiguous due to the lack of mention, but SY loves complaining so I feel like he’d have at least made one complaint about it.

The point about wife plots is a really good thing that i didn’t note in my original post too! That’s probably another contributing factor. As for Xin Mo… well, I’ll just say that the post about Xin Mo & it’s connection or lack thereof to sexuality/lust is one that’s in the works.

There’s also a general question about fuck-or-die mechanics in PIDW/SVSSS which is interesting because the Without-a-Cure scenario is fuck-or-die on a technicality, which in my opinion is a little different than a pure fuck-or-die poison, which I think is usually having a known solution.

But yeah! This is a good addition!

I don't really have anything to contribute to this in terms of actual canon but as a guy who really likes horticulture I can say that aphrodisiac plants are a very real subject of TONS of scientific studies and folklore; obviously not fuck or die in real life but like you could technically argue that our real world right now is filled with ever present aphrodisiac plants and be completely correct.

Here's an article I found on some traditional Chinese aphrodisiac plants if anyone's interested, it's possibly a bit shady (in that it's not like. Hyperscientific I feel but it's also in a pretty niche medical field so that could tie into it) but it gives a good overview of some fun stuff:

I really like this diagram of how each plant works it's really science diagrams that look like shit posts core

My personal favorite is horny goat weed which I think people should really look into bc. Sheep Binghe of course.

Here's a scientific collection and review of various studies compiled on a wide sample of different rumored aphrodisiacs, with brief info on the sample populations/species, the measured effects, and a reference to the original study if you want to verify any info:

In conclusion: is the belief that all these plants make you horny pseudoscience? Perhaps! But would Airplane know that? Probably not!!

edit; not an aphrodisiac, but this feels like a great place to plug everyone's favorite newly discovered plant Amorphophallus yaoi, which conveniently is a corpse flower. Can someone write this into a fic as some sort of plot device I'm begging

Examining SVSSS Canon: 2/∞

THE PRE-CANON TIMELINE

This post will attempt to provide an answer to several questions, including the ages of some of the current peak lords, as well as a rough timeline of events in the extras relative to the current day. A simple, bullet-point timeline will be at the end of this post, with relevant quotes and analysis above.

The timeline of SVSSS isn't particularly easy to piece together, and many fans are unsure of things such as the ages of certain characters, or how long the current generation of peak lords has been in power. As a matter of fact, it seems like even Airplane himself doesn't have a set timeline in mind for the events of PIDW pre-LBH:

It would be easy enough to take this quote and call the timeline a mystery-- however, there are a surprising amount of clues in the text, enough to at least put together a decent idea of when things happened and how old certain characters are, depending on which theories and interpretations one ascribes to.

so many punchlines in this fandom boil down to "haha airplane shitty author" and i feel like it's important to remember that SQH was writing pure porn because it literally paid his rent and mister NEET third son of wealthy family-Shen Yuan actually had no business criticising him for it as harshly as he did, especially considering that, you know, nobody was forcing him to read PIDW. obviously SQH had no way of knowing that his little fictional world would come to life - he wrote tragic backstories because, again, it paid his rent. in the end SY literally got to marry his ultimate blorbo and still dares complain??

idk i'm just feeling emotional over airplane today :')

"It’s just that he really, truly loved this story he’d written." (airplane extras)

For clarity since some people are discussing in the notes: the good tragic backstories - like Qi-Ge and Xiao Jiu - did not pay the rent. The super ridiculous how-many-parents-has-Binghe-lost-now nonesense tragedies for wives backstories did.

But yeah, ultimately, if you read SY's POV and go "Well this silver spoon sucker must be absolutely right about the quality this poor person can produce based entirely off what they're doing just to scrape by must be accurate" ...you're classist and I worry about how you view irl people who put out less than their best because it's all that they have the time and energy for while struggling to stay housed.

SY's narration does the equivalent of a jerk pointing at a fast food worker struggling to carry the jerk's giant order of junk food and saying "you must be a terrible cook, I'm so glad I'm better than you" while said fast food worker seethes because they do, in fact, have a culinary degree but the economy means they can't get a job at a better restaurant. And also because minimum wage fast food employees are still skilled workers no matter what richer people think.

I agree with the root of this but I do think it's missing some nuance in Shen Yuan's specific unique brand of haterism and why he caught Airplane's interest so much. PIDW was pretty widely panned by all of its readership, as we know from the Airplane extras:

PIDW was regarded as objectively bad writing, even by Airplane himself, and regularly attracted vitriol even harsher than what Peerless Cucumber would write. Shen Yuan wasn't a notable hater in that he was the most vitriolic, though his criticisms were definitely numerous and harsh, but because he specifically was a hater WHILE undeniably loving PIDW:

Shen Yuan's haterism stems from the fact that he, against all odds, genuinely believes Airplane is at his core a good writer with good ideas. His frustration comes from the multilayered issue that from his POV, Airplane is choosing to be a bad writer. Of course, we as the readers know that he didn't have much of a choice because unfortunately artistic merit doesn't always pay, but Shen Yuan never actually interacted with Airplane in their first lives, so he is admittedly working on incomplete information there. This is expressed in his typical tsundere way, but it comes across plainly in his hyper fixation on the setting and characters of PIDW, the parts he deems untainted by the later spiraling into constant porn without plot. In essence, he's not mad because he ordered fast food from a fast food worker and is complaining about the quality, he's mad because he knows the fast food worker has a culinary degree and could be working at a 5 star restaurant yet is making fast food regardless.

this is a really good point! but, he still didn't even consider that there might be a deeper cause for airplane's "shitty writing" than greed - which is different than "selling out" so you can afford to live. so, at least part of his criticism came from a place of extreme privilege. i don't have the books on hand right now but does it say anywhere that SY liked *the writing*? wasn't he mostly into the worldbuilding (and binghe ofc)? idk both SY and airplane had their reasons but if i was a struggling writer and some rich asshole criticised my work that they are CHOOSING to read despite "hating" it i would be furious lol. like it would be one thing if PIDW was a published book that he paid for but idk hating on an online novel that was mostly (? correct me if i'm wrong) available for free kind of makes me think more of someone writing intense hatred about like... fanfiction. (yes i know that he paid for bonus chapters but iirc that was just a fraction of the entirety of PIDW)

but i guess that's where the whole "you can you up no can no bb" thing comes in i guess, getting put into pidw was the retribution he got for being such a hater lol.

bottom line: i think that the statements "SY's assumption that Airplane wrote shitty stories out of greed comes from a place of privilege" and "SY was frustrated because he knew Airplane had it in him to write something really good" can and should coexist! my original post was mainly me expressing my frustration not at SY himself but at people who write/joke about airplane being a shitty writer, blindly trusting SY's opinion; he lacks insight into airplane's life but we don't, and I think it's important to acknowledge that his writing suffered because of his circumstances, not because of laziness or lack of talent. i could have expressed myself better but i really didn't expect this to get so much attention D:

Ahh no don't worry no one's mad at you!! I'm just so cumplane pilled at this point I've memorized and dissected every time they've talked to each other like they're specimens on my lab table

What you consider "writing" is kind of up in the air I suppose-- he does critique Airplane's word choices and phrasing a lot (usually when it comes to his r/menwritingwomen prowess), but he does say:

So there's an acknowledgement that Airplane is skilled in setting up complex plot points and foreshadowing, just that he never follows through with solving them (which is explicitly why Shen Yuan keeps reading). PIDW was published on a subscription model (which is common for web novels), so actually Shen Yuan didn't just pay for a full published book (which it's also suggested he might have since at one point he mentions PIDW having like 50 volumes, though it's unknown whether this is hyperbole/a figure of speech or if he actually did buy paper copies of the whole book), but paid basically every single day for every single chapter published, probably as soon as Airplane posted them:

Backed up in Airplane's narration:

Now however much of Peerless Cucumber's money Airplane actually saw is up in the air depending on his contract and platform, etc, but from a consumer perspective webnovel subscriptions tend to be fairly expensive so considering how many chapters PIDW had I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibility that he genuinely did pay Airplane's rent at some point

Just gonna jump in here. While I don't have the citations on hand that you guys do, one thing that doesn't really come up in the community that I've noticed (and mind you I don't actively interact a lot, but I've been around) is that the community as a whole picks and chooses how and when they see Shen Yuan's unreliable narrator position. The fact that the guy actively changes his opinions about how things should be done and what specific even details were as the story goes on gets glossed over as unreliable writing instead of possibly being a genuine side effect of Shen Yuan being away from the source material for years on end.

It means that as the story goes on, his critiques, which already started sharp and frustrated, get turned into a sharpened edge of 'I remember it that way so it must be this way always' when it might not be strictly true because it's not as though he can check anymore.

Because of this, Shang Qinghua, who has by this point been here not only decades longer than this guy and thus had to rebuild his opinions on a lot of things, gets the brunt of Shen Yuan's filtered view. Also, and I think that just about everyone forgets this, but Shang Qinghua mentions once that PIDW wasn't his only story, but that the other one didn't sell well enough to continue writing that way, and we can assume that one played out all the parts of his writing that frustrated Shen Yuan to no end but that Shen Yuan, being fixated on PIDW, didn't even think to check if this guy wrote other stuff. There's also no sign he's ever asked Shang Qinghua if he wrote anything after transmigration either.

All of this to say that Shen Yuan might be furious at Shang Qinghua for not writing better when he knows he can, but it's never crossed his overprivileged mind to ask if he had another example either because PIDW was the only story that mattered to him.

So, not contradicting either of you guys here at all, as I agree with a lot of your points, but I thought I'd float a bit more into the discussion for you to think about.

Respectfully pushing back on this a little bit because for as much as Shen Yuan can be called an "unreliable narrator" in his lacking EQ, it's certainly not in his PIDW quoting considering he demonstrates hyperspecific knowledge of minute plot points, much to even Airplane's surprise; he either binge read or reread the entirety of PIDW 20 days before his death, as discussed in @/svsss-fanon-exposed 's post here , so his memory of it would be very sharp. Considering he would remember the full layout of the holy mausoleum towards the end of the story, a whole 10 years into transmigration, I think it's safe to say he's the most reliable source on PIDW canon (just not his own relationships canon). The majority of things that he's wrong about are things that he just changed and didn't realize he changed bc he thinks no one care shen yuan qingqiu

Though Airplane mentions writing a few stories yet only hitting it big when he publishes PIDW, we don't get too many details on what/where he was writing-- it's possible that he didn't publish his other works, that he was going under different pseudonyms, that he published PIDW on a different platform, etc etc. Ig it's just a bit weird to me to ask "why didn't sy ask airplane if he published anything else?" because as PC he and Airplane never interacted at all; Airplane only remembers him because he was going down the rabbit hole of PC's profile for the first time literally minutes before he died. PIDW was INCREDIBLY popular and probably had thousands of fans, I don't really think there was anything at all to suggest to readers who didn't know him personally that Airplane was struggling just from his one novel which he again, was literally posting new chapters nearly every day.

I said in another post that sy's experience is kind of like when you see an artist with a great art style, interesting OCS, and solid fundamentals, and then you subscribe to their patreon and they just post overwatch porn every day; this part of the scenario is kind of like if the only blizzard game you knew existed was overwatch, and you bought overwatch 2 because you really liked the characters but just ended up being like. Well this is dogshit and the most disappointing thing I've ever played. Would you really go and say well I'd better go see if Blizzard made other good games, or would you just say damn Blizzard is a greedy cash grabbing company that ruins all its properties with over monetization and overwatch 1 was just a fluke and go back to only playing overwatch 1 because you already bought it and are already an S tier player

so many punchlines in this fandom boil down to "haha airplane shitty author" and i feel like it's important to remember that SQH was writing pure porn because it literally paid his rent and mister NEET third son of wealthy family-Shen Yuan actually had no business criticising him for it as harshly as he did, especially considering that, you know, nobody was forcing him to read PIDW. obviously SQH had no way of knowing that his little fictional world would come to life - he wrote tragic backstories because, again, it paid his rent. in the end SY literally got to marry his ultimate blorbo and still dares complain??

idk i'm just feeling emotional over airplane today :')

"It’s just that he really, truly loved this story he’d written." (airplane extras)

For clarity since some people are discussing in the notes: the good tragic backstories - like Qi-Ge and Xiao Jiu - did not pay the rent. The super ridiculous how-many-parents-has-Binghe-lost-now nonesense tragedies for wives backstories did.

But yeah, ultimately, if you read SY's POV and go "Well this silver spoon sucker must be absolutely right about the quality this poor person can produce based entirely off what they're doing just to scrape by must be accurate" ...you're classist and I worry about how you view irl people who put out less than their best because it's all that they have the time and energy for while struggling to stay housed.

SY's narration does the equivalent of a jerk pointing at a fast food worker struggling to carry the jerk's giant order of junk food and saying "you must be a terrible cook, I'm so glad I'm better than you" while said fast food worker seethes because they do, in fact, have a culinary degree but the economy means they can't get a job at a better restaurant. And also because minimum wage fast food employees are still skilled workers no matter what richer people think.

I agree with the root of this but I do think it's missing some nuance in Shen Yuan's specific unique brand of haterism and why he caught Airplane's interest so much. PIDW was pretty widely panned by all of its readership, as we know from the Airplane extras:

PIDW was regarded as objectively bad writing, even by Airplane himself, and regularly attracted vitriol even harsher than what Peerless Cucumber would write. Shen Yuan wasn't a notable hater in that he was the most vitriolic, though his criticisms were definitely numerous and harsh, but because he specifically was a hater WHILE undeniably loving PIDW:

Shen Yuan's haterism stems from the fact that he, against all odds, genuinely believes Airplane is at his core a good writer with good ideas. His frustration comes from the multilayered issue that from his POV, Airplane is choosing to be a bad writer. Of course, we as the readers know that he didn't have much of a choice because unfortunately artistic merit doesn't always pay, but Shen Yuan never actually interacted with Airplane in their first lives, so he is admittedly working on incomplete information there. This is expressed in his typical tsundere way, but it comes across plainly in his hyper fixation on the setting and characters of PIDW, the parts he deems untainted by the later spiraling into constant porn without plot. In essence, he's not mad because he ordered fast food from a fast food worker and is complaining about the quality, he's mad because he knows the fast food worker has a culinary degree and could be working at a 5 star restaurant yet is making fast food regardless.

this is a really good point! but, he still didn't even consider that there might be a deeper cause for airplane's "shitty writing" than greed - which is different than "selling out" so you can afford to live. so, at least part of his criticism came from a place of extreme privilege. i don't have the books on hand right now but does it say anywhere that SY liked *the writing*? wasn't he mostly into the worldbuilding (and binghe ofc)? idk both SY and airplane had their reasons but if i was a struggling writer and some rich asshole criticised my work that they are CHOOSING to read despite "hating" it i would be furious lol. like it would be one thing if PIDW was a published book that he paid for but idk hating on an online novel that was mostly (? correct me if i'm wrong) available for free kind of makes me think more of someone writing intense hatred about like... fanfiction. (yes i know that he paid for bonus chapters but iirc that was just a fraction of the entirety of PIDW)

but i guess that's where the whole "you can you up no can no bb" thing comes in i guess, getting put into pidw was the retribution he got for being such a hater lol.

bottom line: i think that the statements "SY's assumption that Airplane wrote shitty stories out of greed comes from a place of privilege" and "SY was frustrated because he knew Airplane had it in him to write something really good" can and should coexist! my original post was mainly me expressing my frustration not at SY himself but at people who write/joke about airplane being a shitty writer, blindly trusting SY's opinion; he lacks insight into airplane's life but we don't, and I think it's important to acknowledge that his writing suffered because of his circumstances, not because of laziness or lack of talent. i could have expressed myself better but i really didn't expect this to get so much attention D:

Ahh no don't worry no one's mad at you!! I'm just so cumplane pilled at this point I've memorized and dissected every time they've talked to each other like they're specimens on my lab table

What you consider "writing" is kind of up in the air I suppose-- he does critique Airplane's word choices and phrasing a lot (usually when it comes to his r/menwritingwomen prowess), but he does say:

So there's an acknowledgement that Airplane is skilled in setting up complex plot points and foreshadowing, just that he never follows through with solving them (which is explicitly why Shen Yuan keeps reading). PIDW was published on a subscription model (which is common for web novels), so actually Shen Yuan didn't just pay for a full published book (which it's also suggested he might have since at one point he mentions PIDW having like 50 volumes, though it's unknown whether this is hyperbole/a figure of speech or if he actually did buy paper copies of the whole book), but paid basically every single day for every single chapter published, probably as soon as Airplane posted them:

Backed up in Airplane's narration:

Now however much of Peerless Cucumber's money Airplane actually saw is up in the air depending on his contract and platform, etc, but from a consumer perspective webnovel subscriptions tend to be fairly expensive so considering how many chapters PIDW had I don't think it would be out of the realm of possibility that he genuinely did pay Airplane's rent at some point

so many punchlines in this fandom boil down to "haha airplane shitty author" and i feel like it's important to remember that SQH was writing pure porn because it literally paid his rent and mister NEET third son of wealthy family-Shen Yuan actually had no business criticising him for it as harshly as he did, especially considering that, you know, nobody was forcing him to read PIDW. obviously SQH had no way of knowing that his little fictional world would come to life - he wrote tragic backstories because, again, it paid his rent. in the end SY literally got to marry his ultimate blorbo and still dares complain??

idk i'm just feeling emotional over airplane today :')

"It’s just that he really, truly loved this story he’d written." (airplane extras)

For clarity since some people are discussing in the notes: the good tragic backstories - like Qi-Ge and Xiao Jiu - did not pay the rent. The super ridiculous how-many-parents-has-Binghe-lost-now nonesense tragedies for wives backstories did.

But yeah, ultimately, if you read SY's POV and go "Well this silver spoon sucker must be absolutely right about the quality this poor person can produce based entirely off what they're doing just to scrape by must be accurate" ...you're classist and I worry about how you view irl people who put out less than their best because it's all that they have the time and energy for while struggling to stay housed.

SY's narration does the equivalent of a jerk pointing at a fast food worker struggling to carry the jerk's giant order of junk food and saying "you must be a terrible cook, I'm so glad I'm better than you" while said fast food worker seethes because they do, in fact, have a culinary degree but the economy means they can't get a job at a better restaurant. And also because minimum wage fast food employees are still skilled workers no matter what richer people think.

I agree with the root of this but I do think it's missing some nuance in Shen Yuan's specific unique brand of haterism and why he caught Airplane's interest so much. PIDW was pretty widely panned by all of its readership, as we know from the Airplane extras:

PIDW was regarded as objectively bad writing, even by Airplane himself, and regularly attracted vitriol even harsher than what Peerless Cucumber would write. Shen Yuan wasn't a notable hater in that he was the most vitriolic, though his criticisms were definitely numerous and harsh, but because he specifically was a hater WHILE undeniably loving PIDW:

Shen Yuan's haterism stems from the fact that he, against all odds, genuinely believes Airplane is at his core a good writer with good ideas. His frustration comes from the multilayered issue that from his POV, Airplane is choosing to be a bad writer. Of course, we as the readers know that he didn't have much of a choice because unfortunately artistic merit doesn't always pay, but Shen Yuan never actually interacted with Airplane in their first lives, so he is admittedly working on incomplete information there. This is expressed in his typical tsundere way, but it comes across plainly in his hyper fixation on the setting and characters of PIDW, the parts he deems untainted by the later spiraling into constant porn without plot. In essence, he's not mad because he ordered fast food from a fast food worker and is complaining about the quality, he's mad because he knows the fast food worker has a culinary degree and could be working at a 5 star restaurant yet is making fast food regardless.

"aces make everything wholesome" false and malicious erasure of my beautiful ace friends who give me new and unusual kinks every other day with their content

Is...

Is this post supposed to imply that those of us who are asexual and DON'T have unusual kinks (or worse, don't consider ourselves kinky at all) ARE wholesome?

Genuine question. I've seen this post around a lot and every single time, I've had to bite back the urge to make this comment.

I am not a wholesome pure uwu child for being a sex-averse, romance-averse aroace who, for various reasons, would not touch the kink scene with a ten foot pole. I am an ADULT with BOUNDARIES and being told that those boundaries make me a cute innocent little baby is actually super fucking dehumanizing.

Your ace friends might be cool kinky freaks who are the appropriate kind of transgressive to keep their allo friends from getting bored of them, and that's great for them, but those of us who aren't that deserve respect too.

I’m a sex-averse kink-repulsed aroace and I would like to apologize to OP, I don’t know what that person was smoking

Big fucking yikes

Aces with new and unusual kinks are a fundamental pillar of our community (and the smut/ fanfic community; seriously, some of the best kink fic is by asexual writers)

Folks, don’t be like that self-proclaimed prude. Please don’t. You’re not helping anyone by being sex-negative or kink-negative.

Being supportive of people who enjoy sex and kink shouldn’t hinge on whether you yourself like those things – sex-positivity and kink-positivity are a must in today’s social climate with conservatives on the rise

And before someone starts arguing with me: check this blog! I have repeatedly posted about being severely traumatised by kink, being repulsed and triggered by kink, and throughout I have always maintained that supporting the kink community is a must. And that I’m averse to having sex is also all over this blog.

Ahh it's no trouble to me! I fully understand where the annoyance is coming from; a lot of other people have commented less argumentative but similar statements critiquing the idea of wholesomeness equating to no sex-- this is entirely true and an important nuance that must also be acknowledged to dismantle widespread sex-negativity. In the end, "wholesomeness" is a buzzword that doesn't have any concrete merit in media analysis anyway.

My statement was specifically targeted towards one interpretation of the phrase used to shut a specific group of asexuals down-- made after someone apologized for reading tentacle kink fic while being acespec on the free response on one of my polls-- but the inaccuracies of the phrase are, of course, multilayered and exclusionary to other subsections of the community as well. This post went more viral than I could've ever expected and I imagine it must be pretty frustrating to see it go around your circles when you don't relate to it, but sometimes all you should really do is recognize when something isn't for you and ignore it I guess.

Be furious.

Be absolutely enraged.

@a-captions-blog

[Image descriptions: White text on black squares that says, ‘The Gazan children who never reached their first birthday.’ The word ‘first’ is in red. The names follow.

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Exposing SVSSS Fanon: 16/∞

LUO BINGHE HAS A "STEREOTYPICALLY MASCULINE" APPEARANCE

In fanworks, Luo Binghe is often portrayed as particularly muscular and buff, broad-shouldered, often with tanned skin and sharply-defined features-- all traits that are considered to be stereotypically masculine in the west.

All of this directly contradicts his canonical description.

I'm gonna be real I don't really agree with that unfortunately.. tgcf discourse on body shape comes up like every week it's honestly insane; most prevalent to this discussion ig though is how there's a very divided opinion within the western fandom at least regarding how the manhua art seems to be top/bottomifying Hualian more and more with every update. It's gotten to the point where people are making moral judgements saying people are or aren't fetishists based on whether they think xl is broad or thin, which is extremely horrible and in a bit of realness I do urge everyone to please be aware of how the way they discuss body types and thinness may seem to their fellow fans who have body insecurities and are drawing based on their own experiences.

Mdzs fans luckily haven't had discourse quite that bad in years afaik but there is arguably a lot of over masculinizing / feminizing that's very popular in fan content. While mxy!wwx has a noticeable height difference with lwj, original body wwx and lwj have a height and build diff pretty comparable to bingqiu's, but it is kind of 50/50 if you'll actually see that in fan depictions I'd say. This being a prominent wangxian discussion even in "official" capacities is emphasized in cql's infamous little editing conundrums, where xiao zhan (wwx) was so much taller than wang yibo (lwj) in real life that they gave wang yibo insane platform boots and made him stand on boxes to look taller in character hahaha. Which I guess draws in a discussion on how much of these stereotypes are generated by fans or by media, like a chicken and the egg scenario

Exposing SVSSS Fanon: 16/∞

LUO BINGHE HAS A "STEREOTYPICALLY MASCULINE" APPEARANCE

In fanworks, Luo Binghe is often portrayed as particularly muscular and buff, broad-shouldered, often with tanned skin and sharply-defined features-- all traits that are considered to be stereotypically masculine in the west.

All of this directly contradicts his canonical description.

Off topic but btw the other day the top 100 list of yumejoshi (female gamers who self ship with characters) favorite characters was released and the number one pick for most attractive? Rika (♀️) from Pokemon! Happy New Yuri indeed 2024 year of masc girls topping male dominated lists

But anyway something I haven't seen mentioned much in the tags is that I think the way sqq describes binghe as the hottest most ideal man, dreamy, etc. somewhat supercedes the actual physical character descriptions in constructing your headspace Binghe™. As in, I think the strongest impression that you're left with about Binghe when you finish svsss is that he's hotter than you could ever imagine and therefore with designs people fill in the gaps with what they personally find attractive which is uh. Judging by the amount of lactation fics and art in this fandom overwhelmingly big boobs

Obviously western beauty standards factor into this on a broader scale as well, but I just always think about how many people talk about how they struggle to draw lan wangji because wwx constantly talks about how hot he is and they feel like they can't physically depict him as sexy as he is in the book-- that's multiplied like 10 times over in sv because sqq is a specimen