So, what’s new in the knitting community today Polecat? Well, I’m glad you asked because it’s these guys.
The fuck? You ask. Those sound like a couple of hustle culture, low level tech bros. Yes, yes they are. And they spent $80,000 on a knitting domain name thinking that they’re going to make millions.
Yes.
Really.
Do they knit? No.
Are they aware of Ravelry (the leading social media & marketplace site for knitters & crocheters)? Also, no.
Have they reached out to notable knitting pattern designers? Also, no.
Are they familiar with the culture of Local Yarn Stores? Also, no.
Does one of them at least have a 6 year old who learned to use a knitting loom? Yes!
Needless to say, Reddit&Twitter ripped them a new one. It has been very amusing.
………….
It’s two days later and I can find ZERO information on their blog about this project, except for the “knitting community response” post. I can, however, reconstruct from reddit and twitter how utterly and thoroughly they got eviscerated by the knitting community, and it’s a delight to watch.
I listened to bits of the podcast bc I honestly just kept waiting for them to say something meaningful instead of throwing out buzzwords like that replaced having an actual plan…and let me tell you the techbros have no plan and even less respect.
They consider their only real competition to be box stores, China, and grannies who have run a blog for 20 years.
And the Chinese are apparently disadvantaged because they don’t list things properly, they don’t knit, and they can’t do videos because no one wants to see Asians in videos. Customers only want to see “western people” in their opinion.
It’s implied the old ladies are in the same category as small businesses?
So there’s all this good in-between market space that they can take advantage of to do… well they’re gonna sell stuff apparently using Amazon. They clearly don’t know what yet, but they’re gonna have innovative stuff. At least a dozen products maybe more!
Their business model:
Also they didn’t want to go with fishing as their new business because it’s so simple with its lures and poles. No room for innovation there.
Would you be surprised they mentioned coming up with their ideas over drinks multiple times? Also they talked about it while on a road trip? They looked up the metrics on the word knitting and thought the market was reasonably in the 41k range. You know not too saturated or something?
Basically they’re setting this up as a demonstration of look how I made my money and if you follow my capitalist recipe for just fucking around and hoping other people are stupid enough to click links on google, you too can make boatloads of money! type thing. So they didn’t really think the knitters would find out about it this soon and dogpile on them for their bs, because if you listen to them they don’t care about knitting. Their podcast wasn’t for knitters. It was for other folk interested in get rich quick stuff. I think one of them said something like website names were the first NFTs as if that was a good thing.
They basically deserve every incensed remark at their little venture.
Techbros and their bullshit are a pox on society.
They picked literally the worst fucking community to try to infiltrate and it’s FUNNY AS SHIT. Like, what other hobbies have people FAKE THEIR OWN DEATHS?
there’s so much to tell about this subject that I might add more to some points on subsequent posts.
everything in the below post is from observation and reading about the experiences of others on web 2.0. please feel free to add anything you feel is necessary.
(socmed = social media in shorthand.)
What even is web 2.0?
Web 1.0: web model where dotcoms generated their own content and presented it to users for free, depending on advertisers for their income. ‘social media’ mostly made up of mailing lists and forums on these content-oriented sites. collapsed because ad revenue wasn’t sufficient to support site maintainance costs.
Web 2.0: web model where dotcoms create a free space for users to generate their own content, depending on advertisers for their income. these sites define social media today. likely to collapse because ad revenue still isn’t sufficient to support site maintainance costs (even after shucking the cost of paying content creators).
What makes Web 2.0 social media so much worse than web 1.0?
mostly: web 2.0 socmed exacerbates the pre-existing conflict of interest between users and site owners: site owners need ads. Users want to avoid ads.
With web 1.0, users were attracted by site-created content that had to appeal to them: users were the clients and advertisers were the sponsors. (Forum interaction was a side offering. sites dedicated to user interaction were small, scattered, and supported by banner ads.)
Web 2.0 socmed strips users of client status entirely; the content we generate (for free!) and our eyes/eyes we attract to the site are products the site owner sells to the actual site client: advertisers.
early web 2.0 social media sites (livejournal, myspace) used hybridization to pay site costs - users could buy paid accounts or extra blog perks. they also had privacy/limited-spread sharing functions and closed communities, which still ‘exist’ but with limited capabilities on current socmed sites. privacy, it seems, isn’t very profitable.
now web 2.0 is geared towards spreading content as far as possible - and further if you’ll choke up a little cash to grease the algorithms. ;)
–
Web 1.0 had its fair share of problems. Web 2.0 generated new ones:
following people instead of joining communities based on interests has negative emotional and social implications
social media sites benefit from knocking down privacy walls. Maximizing content spread and minimizing blocking/blacklisting capabilities benefits advertisers - the true clients of websites.
social media sites benefit from eroding online anonymity. they track user site interaction, searches, and more to precisely target their ads at your interests (unless you deliberately turn it off). tracking data can endanger anonymity and make doxxing easier.
social media sites benefit from conflict. Conflict generates user response much more effectively than harmony/peace. More user interaction means more eyes on ads, increasing ad space value.
social media sites are therefore deincentivized to address abuse reports, increase moderation, improve blacklisting tools, or offer privacy options. and there’s nothing you can do about it because
there’s nowhere different to go. it’s difficult to compete with existing social media sites as a startup. to draw social media users, a newcomer must offer something bigger, better, and equally free*, and offering any of this on startup capital is … unlikely, at best.
*‘I’d move if they just had privacy features!’ the joke is: any successful socmed site that starts with privacy features will have a hard time keeping them down the road under the present profit model. they will be forced to cater to their advertisers if they want to keep afloat.
–
how does the structure of web 2.0 socmed harm fandom?
in aggregate: it forces fandom[$], a diverse space where people go to indulge niche interests and specific tastes, into overexposure to outsiders and to one another, and exacerbates the situation by removing all semi-private interaction spaces, all moderation tools, all content-limiting tools, and all abuse protection.
The result is that fandom on web 2.0 - tumblr in particular - is overrun with widespread misinformation, black & white reasoning obliterating nuanced debates, mob rule and shame culture as substitutes for moderation features, fear of dissent and oversensitivity to disagreement, hatedoms and anti- communities, and large/expanding pockets of extremist echo chambers that have no reality check to protect those trapped inside.
to be more specific:
moderated communities were replaced by following unmoderated tags, directly leading to and encouraging the creation of hate spaces - ‘don’t tag your hate’ leads to negativity-specific tags that could themselves be followed, forming a foundation for anti- communities to develop from
no privacy, minimal blacklisting options, poor blocking tools, lack of oversight, lack of meaningful consequences for TOS violations = ‘fandom police’/vigilanteism (attempts to assert authority over others without actually having that authority) - some people react to the inability to get away from content that they hate by trying to force that content to stop existing entirely. without actual moderating authority, they accomplish this by social pressure, intimidation, and shame tactics.
the people-following structure of web 2.0 is fundamentally incompatible with web 2.0 reshare functions and search engines. content posted on a personal blog is rarely intended to stand alone because people who follow the blog presumably see all the blog’s content in an ongoing stream. but reshare functions and search results separate the content from the context in which is was presented, causing misunderstandings and strife. (for site owners, the strife is a feature, not a bug.)
following people instead of joining communities based on a shared interest creates social stress - following/unfollowing an individual has more social & emotional implications than joining/leaving interest communities
Unmoderated conflict is polarizing. Web 2.0 specializes in causing unmoderated conflict. - exacerbated by the depersonalizing effect of not being able to see or hear other users, conflict in the unmoderated spaces on web 2.0 social media quickly devolves into extremism and nastiness. web 2.0 socmed structure even eggs the conflict on: people are more likely to interact with content that makes them angry (’someone is wrong on the internet!’ effect), which shares the content with more users, which makes them angry, so they interact (and on, and on).
The extreme antagonism generated by web 2.0 socmed creates echo chambers - the aggregate effect of unmoderated conflict is that the most extreme and polarizing content gets spread around the most. polarizing content doesn’t tend to convince people to change their minds, but rather entrenches them further in their ideas and undermines the credit of opposing points of view. it also increases sensitivity to dissent and drives people closer to those who share their opinions, creating echo chambers of agreement.
reacting to content that enrages you increases the chances of encountering it again because algorithms - social media site algorithms are generally designed to bring users more of the content they interact with the most because they want more site interaction to happen. if you interact with posts that make you mad, you’ll get more recs related to content that makes you mad.
everyone has an opinion to share and everyone’s opinion has to be reshared: reactionary blogging as a group solidarity exercise. when something notable happens and everybody has to share their reaction on social media, the reaction itself becomes an emotional and social experience, sometimes overwhelming and damaging.
when the reaction is righteous anger that everyone can reaffirm in one another, it creates an addictive emotional high. one way to reproduce it? find more enraging content to be mad about (and web 2.0 is happy to bring it to you).
It’s easy to spread misinformation (and hard to correct it) - no modern social media site offers ways to edit content and have that edit affect all reshares. Corrections can only reach fractions of the original audience of a misleading viral post.
web 2.0 social media discourages leaving the site with new content notifications and by lacking tools that keep your ‘place’ on your dash, deincentivizing verification checks before resharing content.
web 2.0’s viral qualities + misinformation machine + rage as a social bonding experience = shame culture and fear of being ‘next’ (tumblr bonus: no time stamps and everything you post is eternal) - when offending content is spread virally, each individual reaction may have proportion to the original offense, but the combined response is overwhelming and punishing. many people feel the right to have their anger heard and felt by the offender, resulting in a dogpile effect. fear of inciting this kind of widespread negative reaction depresses creativity and the willingness to take risks with shared content or fanworks.
absolute democracy of information & misinformation plus too much available information leads to uncertainty of who/what is trustworthy and encourages equating feelings to facts - social media doesn’t give content increased spread and weight based on its truthfulness or the credibility of the OP. misinformation is as likely to spread as truth, and the sheer amount of available information - conflicting or not - on the web is overwhelming. when fact-checking, it’s hard to know who to trust, who is twisting the facts, or who is simply looking at the same fact from a different viewpoint. information moves so fast it’s hard to know what ‘fact’ will be debunked by new information tomorrow. People give up; they decide the truth is unknowable, or they go with what ‘feels’ right, out of sheer exhaustion.
information fatigue caused by web 2.0 makes black & white thinking look attractive - conflict and polarization and partisanship erodes communication to the point that opposing points of view no longer even use language the same way, much less can reach a compromise. the wildly different reference points for looking at the same issue makes it difficult to even know what the middle ground is. from an outside point of view this makes everyone on both sides seem untrustworthy and distances the objective truth from everyone even more.
it’s easy to radicalize people who are looking for someone or something to trust/are tired of being uncertain - information fatigue leads to people just wanting to be told what to think. who’s good and who’s bad? whose fault is this? and don’t worry - lots of people are ready to jump in and tell you what to think and who to blame.
everyone is only 2 seconds away from being doxxed: our anonymity on the net is paper-thin thanks to web 2.0 - before facebook encouraged using our real names and the gradual aggregation of most people to a few major socmed sites, anonymity was easier to maintain. now we have long internet histories with consistent usernames and sites that track everything we do to improve ad targeting. anyone with minimal hacking knowledge could doxx the large majority of socmed users.
and all it takes is one poorly-worded, virally spread tweet to send the whole of twitter after you with pitchforks.
[$]using the vld discourse survey as a reference, fandom is (probably) largely neurodivergent, largely queer/lesbian/gay/bi/pan/not straight, has many non-cis and/or afab members, and around 20% are abuse survivors/victims. fandom is a space we made for ourselves to cater to the interests we have in common with each other but mainstream society doesn’t often acknowledge.
I agree with this and I’d like to add another angle to consideration, and that is the conflation of private and public space.
I doubt Tumblr is the only one to do this but it’s the one I’m most familiar with. Here’s the thing: Tumblr is set up in such a way as to make it feel like your space. You can customize your blog style, make things feel nice and homey, fill your dash with the things you love. It feels like your room, your space, your place.
But it’s also a broadcast platform. Broadcast platform. Every post you make on Tumblr is being screamed out to the whole world, potentially, with no control or lockdown options available. Aside from a “post privately” option that is so broken as to be functionally nonexistent (things you post ‘privately’ aren’t even visible to you unless you know which hoops to jump through) everything is public, all the time.
Your blog feels like your space, your room, but at the same time it is also a public space with the “if you don’t want it out there you shouldn’t post it public on the internet” caveat applied. It’s hard to remember that when you feel like you’re minding your own business. “I have a right to post what I want on my own blog,” I’ve often grumbled, and I stand by that. But then your post is on everybody else’s dash, and that’s a problem because –
The dash/feed is even worse for the contradiction of a public and a private space. In one sense, it’s everybody else’s private spaces, their own personal rant grounds, but it’s being streamed into your space. When something disagreeable turns up in your dash it feels like an intrusion, a violation of your privacy. It’s not just a “see, disagree, move on,” it makes you mad. “Why is there untagged character hate on my feed?” I’ve fumed, in violation of all common sense.
Retags and reblogs exist in the same dual public/private space. If someone makes a post, that post is theirs, on their dash. But if someone else reblogs it, they can add tags and comments that, too, are on their own personal blogs. And yet at the same time the original poster can see the comments and retags. Once again the “I can post what I want on my own blog” comes into crossfire with “How dare you say that on my post?”
The moment you made it public it was no longer only your post. But it feels, again, like a violation.
Reasonable debate is almost impossible on a broadcast-only platform. Even if the two initial parties are able to set aside their emotions to talk reasonably, with every reblog the argument is exposed to a whole new set of people who all then have their own reactions. Discussion on tumblr is like two people trying to have a philosophical debate on opposite sides of a crowded room by megaphone; the people in the middle will swiftly start to get angry just at the noise.
Back in the __Journal days there wasn’t this conflation. Personal blogs were private and communities were public. There was a clear distinction which was which when you were posting it, with some nuance available – setting to public on a personal journal set a tone of “This is my space and my opinion, but I invite discussion” while setting to protected on a community signals “I wish to share this with others, but only those of my choosing.”
Remembering habits from the Journal days I’m usually, generally, pretty good at keeping a clear sense of what’s appropriate to post in a public space and what’s not. What I don’t want broadcast, I largely just don’t post, and say only to my friends in private. But.
But as shown by the examples above, even I’m not immune to the sense of outrage and intrusion when a public post is made in my private feed or a private reblog is make on my public post. And what of people who never had that past experience and have no mental schemas to keep the two apart at all? And as the march of web 2.0 socmed squeezes onwards, other forms of social communion get increasingly crowded out – that which I don’t say on my broadcast blog, I can be left feeling lonely and discontent as I find I have nowhere and no-one to express it to at all.
I would just like to share some perspective as a Black fen in fandom. I’ve been around since web 1.0 and made the transition like so many fen from less active platforms like Livejournal to sites like Tumblr. There is a clear breakdown in communication, even a sort of environment of fear where saying the “wrong thing” could result in what we used to more widely recognise was cyber-bullying. In the fandoms I have participated in, there is a clear enforcement of group-think where a certain number of the most widely followed bloggers in the fandom set the tone and determine the acceptable discourse to be agreed upon “or else.” Often this is wrapped up in shame tactics that depend on a very shallow bit of lip-service to social justice and it’s that latter point that make it all the more insidious.
See, OP theorised that much of fandom is made up of “largely neurodivergent, largely queer/lesbian/gay/bi/pan/not straight, has many non-cis and/or afab members, and around 20% are abuse survivors/victims” but one of the issues is that fandom remains a microcosm often reflecting wider social attitudes and mores. Too often, the fen who are deciding what the popular discourse/group-think for a fandom is are largely also white fen. Many of these, as I said, show themselves as all too willing to pay lip-service to social discourse as far as it serves the purpose of propping up their ships, favorite characters, or fandom discourse and keeping any detractors in line. When you’re a fan of colour in a fandom, unless the fandom happens to be very specific to your culture, the majority voice in your fandom are white fen (often women) who are quite eager to discuss the issue of privilege so long as the focus is on where they have less privilege (whether they are lgbt, neurodivergent, etc.).
My experience as a Black and queer woman in fandom has always been the same in each fandom. White fen in the web 2.0 appropriate tools that activists of colour have developed for a specific purposes in this age of social media and they have taken them and turned them into a means to strengthen their positions of hierarchical privilege in a fandom. So, a fandom becomes toxic, and what is blamed is “cancel culture” and “sjws” and the finger is pointed in such a way that it becomes easier for fandom to dismiss the concerns of fen of colour. As an example, try to bring up the issue of people suddenly insisting that an interracial ship shouldn’t happen because one of the few characters of colour on the show relates to the lead white character more like a “sibling” and it would feel like incest. Suddenly, then the issue of social justice discourse in fandom is divisive and the fens of colour trying to draw attention to the racial microaggression of always claiming that any interracial pairings seem more like siblings than romantic makes the fandom more toxic and, of course, it’s all the fault of the angry fens of colour who are to blame and why couldn’t we just keep silent and let them enjoy the show and why do we have to hate their ships, and so on.
The idea of fens organizing and using their influence is nothing new. Fens of colour are particularly creative when it comes to not only looking for existing representation in our fandoms but actively pushing for more and better representation. We were doing it long before the web 2.0 but now I’m seeing a trend of many of our tactics being taken and used for unrelated fandom wank and twisted into politics of shaming for the sake of enforcing group-think and then turning back around and invalidating legitimate issues raised by fen of colour by lumping any outspoken fen of colour in with the same group of antis and cyber-bullies who send death threats to people anonymously because: “Omg! You ship x and I ship a rival ship to x and I’ve come up with all the ways your ship is toxic and mine is the most woke because that makes my ship feel like the better one!” To be clear, cancelling began in the Black community as a way for us to organize in solidarity and enforce some kind of consequences for racial intolerance by drawing more attention to the issue as a community. It was a tool to force accountability and a means for us to use our collective voices to raise awareness, to fight for more and better representation, to use our power as consumers to boycott content that whitewashes us or portrays us offensively, to close ranks against the sort of racism online that people of colour have so long had to deal with on our own so that we can provide each other with a support network, etc. It wasn’t ever meant to be a tool for white fen to single a person out for cyber-bullying because “their fav is problematic.”
It’s very frustrating to see our discourse and our activism taken and turned against us because once more we’re being shut out of fandom spaces and it is so very insidious. I cannot properly be critical of certain content in fandom without coming up against accusations of being “one of those sjw antis who make fandoms toxic” or avoid the nervous knee jerk responses of fen who are afraid my criticism of certain issues means that I want to throw the baby out with the bathwater and I expect people to cancel the entire fandom and stop enjoying it so they defend everything about it dogmatically. It often feels as if there is no longer room for thoughtful critique or discussion in fandom. The fandom is either unproblematic or problematic and God forbid you’re the one to point out any issue because then you come under fire for trying to cancel a fandom and take it away from everyone, so people are quick to shut you down at any cost.
Sometimes a critique is just an invitation for thoughtful conversation. Sometimes it is an open ended question about how it could have been handled better. Sometimes it is a call to action because it needs to be handled better. As things are, between the blatant lip-service and abuses of social justice to reinforce certain group-think in fandom, the anxiety resulting from the new culture of shaming and cyber-bullying, the knee-jerk responses that often lead to fen defending things in fandom they should not be (including attitudes of racism because they fear acknowledging even that much will mean giving up their fandom for good) being a fen of colour in the web 2.0 age is too often an exercise in frustration and an experience of open hostility where you find yourself being subject to scapegoating, tone policing, and invalidation. If you’re not prepared to be quiet and nod along with the majority then you can expect a dissenting opinion or unpopular observation will single you out for harassment (either blatantly racist or thinly veiled) and accusations because an ability for discernment, for nuanced thinking has been all but abandoned but for some niche corners of social media and the rare individual who can swim against the current tides of fandom.
i know i don’t do discourse, but how ignorant and privileged are you that you think it’s okay to say you’re going to “jump off a bridge” because “op ships sheith” on a post about, get ready for it:
THE DAMAGE THAT GEORGE H.W. BUSH DID TO THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY
that is literally such inappropriate behavior, don’t even try to defend it.
I am literally begging people to learn how to participate in fandom through a lens other than shipping
People have been asking me questions about the aromantic fandom experience at the same time this post, which I have come to have a serious love-hate relationship with, started picking up a bunch of notes again, so let’s talk about the intention behind it, because people have interpreted my meaning a myriad of ways and most of them are wrong! (Even some of the “positive” ones!)
First off, I should mention that while the post is short and flippant, I wrote a lot more context in the original tags. This was, ironically, because I wanted to vent without having my words circulated and thus risking the ire of the people who do the sort of thing I was venting about. Which. I’ve been on tumblr since 2013 and should have thought more about the fact that hiding my commentary in the tags was no guarantee of that, but it’s whatever. I’ve lived with things like this before, and inevitably will live with them again. So anyways. Here’s the tags:
You will note, what I was saying basically boils down to “Shipping fictional characters together is totally fine and cool, and I understand that it’s meaningful to many people! But oh boy is it hard to exist in fandom as someone who doesn’t want to participate in it for my own reasons, because people like to interpret my content as shippy even when it’s not, and that makes me pretty uncomfortable because it really feels like something I shouldn’t have to accept as an inevitability”
Which. You know. There’s a lot of Death of the Author that happens on tumblr posts, and sometimes that’s a great thing for fandom – I’ve seen threads that go ridiculous, wonderful places due to other people’s commentary, and even had people add some to my own posts that I have LOVED (as well as derailed more than a few myself, if I’m being honest). I for sure know I can’t control everything that happens with my content, and I know that there are a lot of people who really like shipping. However. Let’s talk about the reason this particular “inevitability” in fandom makes me so uncomfortable. Because in the months since I’ve made this post, here’s some of the responses I’ve had to it:
People telling me I’m homophobic
People telling me I hate women and their interests
People telling me that if I have such a problem with the content that’s out there, I should stop being lazy and make my own
People assuming that I hate “transformative” fandom
People telling me I’m a gatekeeper
People making harsh assumptions about my sexuality, my gender identity, my involvement in fandom, my interests, etc
(Most uncomfortably: adult cis women writing entire essays on my post about the “fact” that I am a gatekeeping cishet man with no reason to be interested in queer or other transformative fic – I am not, and a very quick look at my bio would reveal that I am actually a queer trans guy, to whom queer/transformative fic is very, very important)
People using particularly abusive language to say all of the above
Now, for people who don’t know me all that well – I am not cishet, I am not particularly inclined to gatekeep anything, I love transformative fandom, I regularly engage in making content uniquely catered the parts of fandom I love, I regularly help others do the same by offering my services as a beta/idea sounding-board, and on and on. If you want tangible stats, have 28 published works on Ao3, for many, many different fandoms, and more in progress – a large number of which deal with adding queer headcanons to less-queer source material, including one story that’s 25k words and counting!
Obviously none of my “credentials” prove anything on their own, but what I’m trying to point out is that I’ve had a lot of harsh assumptions thrown at me just because I expressed that shipping is basically treated as a prerequisite to being involved in fandom, and that makes me pretty uncomfortable – I don’t want to participate in it myself, but I do want to be a part of the community that fandom offers. Frankly, I used to be a lot more involved in it, but I have drifted away from fandom a fair bit in recent years entirelybecause it’s so hard to be involved in it as someone who really doesn’t really want to see much shipping content, and definitelydoesn’t want my posts and meta to always get turned into other people’s shipping manifestos.
(Also, if you want real nightmares: I am also a cosplayer, and I have had people make uncomfortable shipping comments directly to me while in costume at cons – it’s not just a tumblr problem, nowhere is safe!)
I don’t have a perfect answer for how to make people like me comfortable without, as so many people have accused me of since making this post, “ruining others’ fun.” I get that people aren’t always going to check an OP’s or author’s blog or tags before adding their own commentary to a post. And that’s genuinely okay! I want people for whom shipping is a comfort and a fun thing to engage in to enjoy fandom, too. But I also want us to have more conversations about the fact that the assumption everyone wants to be involved in the shipping side of fandom isn’t just wrong, it’s actively draining for people like me with personal reasons for not wanting to be engaged with it. I want to be able to participate in fandom too, and so do other people like me, and we’re really, genuinely trying to be involved in all the ways you’re telling us to, and under the current model? It’s not working. I feel excluded, and get abusive comments fielded at me, and have people who won’t put in the minimum amount of effort to get to know me speculate that I’m the kind of person they actively want to exclude from their communities – even though I’m not! – proving that voicing discomfort with the current way fandom operates is enough to have people assume you don’t belong in it.
TL;DR – I made a vent post to talk about how people’s putting shipping on a pedestal makes me feel excluded from fandom. And hundreds of people, at the most conservative estimate, took that as a sign that I deserve to be excluded from their vision of fandom. Something is really wrong there, and I hope we can all have some productive conversations about how to fix it.
okay context cause ppl are confused the writer for the podcast (which I don’t get why theres a writer but anyway) is like the worst person ever and has said/written some fucked up shit. but also a lot of jarpad stans were pissed because she’s a Jarpad anti or has said some negative shit about him. so he came online to say this
Why did “be critical of your media” turn into “find all its flaws and hate it” why did people become allergic to FUN
Because people confuse “critical as in critical thinking” with “critical as in criticizing something,” so they think that “look for something bad, no matter how far-fetched” is what “being critical” means.
They also don’t realize that “literary criticism” means…
Okay. What literary criticism IS, is like taking a mechanical clock apart to see all the gears and learn how it fits together and approach your next clock with more knowledge of what makes it tick.
What they THINK literary criticism means is, you take the clock apart and beat all the pieces with a hammer, then scream at it because it doesn’t tick for you the way it used to.
OMG SOMEBODY PUT IT IN WORDS
It’s all well and good to use “be critical of what you consume” to mean “don’t follow things blindly and acknowledge their flaws” but this mindset fails to take into account that everything has flaws. An unproblematic fave is just a fave you haven’t looked at from all angles yet. If you go through life like this hoping to find something morally pure to consume you’re just going to be miserable.
For the record, if somebody accuses you of being heinous in whatever way because you write fiction they don’t like, or tag fiction in a way they don’t like, or ship fictional characters in a way they don’t like, you don’t have to rebut them. It’s tempting to, for sure—nobody enjoys unfairness—but you don’t have to. That is, obviously you don’t owe anything to whoever is accusing you, but far more importantly, nobody you need to take seriously is going to expect you to rebut shit.
You don’t have to respond to accusations that are stupid on their face.
Someone showing up in your inbox, or railing on your timeline, or ranting in your AO3 comments about these things is the internet equivalent of a stranger accosting you on the street and saying, “You son of a bitch, you’re wearing chartreuse. Prove to me you don’t paint innocent cows green in the night.” That is not a thing you need to defend yourself against unless somebody shows up at your house with a warrant, CCTV footage, and a really unhappy cow.
This holds true no matter what the fiction is about or what the tags are or what the relationship between the fictional characters happens to be like. Especially anything that’s going to come after a phrase like, “Yeah, mostly, but I draw the line at….”
I’m playing a game called “I wonder if this guy who calls everyone he doesn’t like a snowflake has ever seen himself in the mirror”, waiting for the results rn.
It’s really so funny. The people who say stuff like this usually have very little to no Japanese abilities and they also tend to not have any training, experience, knowledge, or learning in translation theory and how translations work, the restrictions, and etc. They are more often than not, just trying to find and use examples of any slight changes in a dub’s dialogue to push a (usually alt-right leaning, “anti-woke”) agenda. They view Japan as being some kind of apolitical wonderland that just…does not exist. They are the same people that will insist that the entirety of Japan is apolitical and that they are “anti-woke” and a-okay with everything.
The people who make videos or think pieces on this dub change are absolutely trying to push some made up agenda about “Western ideas and values corrupting anime” or something akin to that. They are always being made in bad faith. And it is honestly so funny that these fans are going for Tiger & Bunny, a series that makes a shit ton of social commentary (aka political commentary) on topics such as: capitalism, consumerism, objectifying the female body for viewership, domestic abuse, neglectful parenting (I love Kotetsu, but he has neglected Kaede and the series actually addresses that), discrimination (NEXT discrimination), homophobia and transphobia, and in this second season we have fatphobia being shut down too (both Nathan and Karina shush Ryan when he makes a fatphobic comment about Agnes’ weight gain).
There is more too: the series taking a strong stance against groping and stalking (not portraying these things as comedic and light hearted, etc.). All of these social stances are also political stances. They all overlap with each other.
In that scene with Ryan he is specifically talking about his internalized ideas on women and is realizing that those ideas are imbedded in sexist societal norms. He’s admitting that and coming to terms with that, so it fits completely with the situation and with the Japanese dialogue and context. T&B tackling sexism is also completely in-line with the series and the other issues they’ve tackled before too.
It’s also really funny because the core T&B fanbase loves that line, finds it both hilarious and endearing, and still finds the talk between Ryan and Karina to be touching and a great character development moment for the both of them. This is all I’ll likely say about the topic myself, because there isn’t anything more to add. I was actually pretty surprised that it took this long for the videos on the topic to really start popping off. Since T&B isn’t that popular outside of Japan, I was expecting it to go unnoticed. But those people probably check out like every dub of every anime to look for stuff like this, lol.
Over on MAL someone asked this about Kotetsu and Karina’s relationship:
“What is the ending of this couple? Tiger x Blue Rose”
It was in the Tiger & Bunny 2 forums. Everybody was basically like, “Nah, nothing will happen with it,” and everyone commented on how young Karina was when they first met and how old Kotetsu is. Their response was that Karina is no longer a school girl and Kotetsu is “not as old as he looks.”
I decided to leave a response and oh, boy. They are hella angry! They also totally zoomed in on Ryan (I mentioned how I liked the dynamic between them) and bash on his character in the response. But they didn’t mention anything in regards to me mentioning that in staff interviews it becomes clear that most of the T&B staff ship Kotetsu and Barnaby together.
Anyway, they seem super invested in Kotetsu and Karina as a pairing, but this is the wrong series and fandom for that. I definitely hit a sore spot (their response is very agressive in tone) in regards to their view of the series, but they asked about it, and the narrative just doesn’t seem to be going in that direction, so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This got even more wild!
Their response to my comment (in which I mentioned that the other anime he mentioned don’t matter, because we aren’t talking about them, and that T&B has a large fujoshi fanbase) :
I did originally think of mentioning the huge queer and lgbtqia+ fanbase, but this dude is giving off huge homophobe vibes, so I decided against that. I also laughed when they assumed I knew nothing of the anime industry, when they have all of one anime on their Plan to Watch list and no other anime listed (meanwhile, I’ve watched like 200+ anime over my 32 years of existence).
Also, they probably missed that T&B pays homage to *Western superhero* tropes and storylines, so bringing up other anime here *really* doesn’t matter.
One other person posted a comment in agreement with them, and they responded with:
First, T&B is an anime original series. The manga is labeled a seinen, but came after the anime. Second, the creators and staff have always been open about shipping Kotetsu and Barnaby and the fact that their relationship could be viewed romantically if they want.
Also, the vibes given off when they refer to a crush fading away as decieving the audience, has the same flavor as “nice guys” who slut shame the moment a woman states that they just want to remain friends - oof.
This one of those moments where it feels like this person and myself watched two completely different shows. Wow.
Either that, or they are just a troll, which could also be possible.
IT’S TEN FANFICS ON AO3 FOR A FANDOM THAT NOT EVEN ONE-SEVENTH OF THE POPULATION OF PLANET EARTH KNOWS EXISTS. IT ISN’T “NORMALIZING” ANYTHING, KAREN. STOP CLUTCHING YOUR PEARLS BEFORE YOU CHOKE YOURSELF
If you’re going after fanfic authors instead of Hollywood directors/bestselling authors, you aren’t worried about what’s being ‘normalized’.
asoiaf fandom really is like “i can accept arya stark being orphaned, homeless, traumatized, beaten, starved, and threatened with rape but i draw the line at her being pretty”
A piece of media: This is a complex story where no one is evil and no one is a saint. People are a reflection of their world, their life experiences and trauma. Morality depends on context from which you view the character. You are not supposed to find every character good or even likable. You can take sides and find real life parallels but the biggest point is to make you think and maybe recognize the flaws in yourself as well as the goodness in those you hate.
Tumblr: okay so THIS is the bad person and THIS is the good person. This is the oppressor and this is the oppressed. This is the abuser and this is their victim. If you like this EVIL character you are clearly the same as my asshole dad who reminds me of this character. Not taking a moralistic stance on a fictional story means you are amoral. Analysis is actually about figuring out who the bad-est person is so you can disavow them and who the good-est person is so you can root for them. The media you consume reflects your values and the characters you find interesting are clearly the ones who are exactly the same as you.
Megan Derr is the co-owner of Less Than Three Press, an indie LGBTQ publishing house–and she’s also their most prolific author. Before LT3’s founding, Megan posted her slash fiction on LiveJournal and Fictionpress, epicenters of older wank that unfortunately went unrecorded.
Over the years, Megan has been embroiled in several dramas, none of which impeded LT3’s growth. When juxtaposed with similar controversies, this lack of fallout becomes curious.
Was she just Not That Bad, comparatively? Did people not care? Or had Megan’s navigation of the drama de-escalate any chance at a larger blow up? We investigate.
Why does Megan matter?
As visible co-owner of a successful and award-winning LGBTQ press, Megan is officially a gatekeeper. Her personal opinions matter and her voice reflects on her business… theoretically. Of course, in the past Megan has implied she was a martyr for the community, working so hard for them, whilst neatly minimising that her profit also comes from that same community
Nonetheless, she has a direct hand in what gets published, which is her right as co-owner. LT3 proactively publishes trans, bi, ace, and other less-exposed areas of the queer spectrum.
While this is obviously wonderful in a lot of ways, LT3’s prominence in this particular publishing sphere becomes concerning when you realize that Megan Derr’s personal beliefs and ethics drive the majority of the publishing decisions, and thus, what representation is produced. Given her avowed dislike of #OwnVoices (which will be expanded upon further in this report) and her insistence that the subject of a genre is not the audience for that genre, the implications are troubling.
We posit that Megan skirts the line of actionable offences, but works to “poison the well” or create a toxic environment. This is more ephemeral than other infamous instances of wank, but it is a long-running pattern of behavior with real consequences for both individuals and the community as a whole.
Social media is primed for another explosion. The match was lit when the Bi Book Award finalists were announced and several Twitter users took umbrage with the two competing publishers of the year: Riptide Publishing and Less Than Three Press.
The current call out
Twitter user BrookieRayWrite reacted to the Bi Award announcement with a threaded post, which included screenshots of Megan’s past behaviour. They referenced two incidents: Megan’s dislike of #OwnVoices—a movement in publishing to uplift authentic minority experiences so that people could find content they felt connected to—and her blog post declaring M/M is for women.
However, this was not the first time someone tried to call out Megan. Heidi Belleau, an author LGBTQ romance, posted a comprehensive thread in 2016.
Yep. He called her crazy. In case you missed it, Heidi Belleau takes on this moniker to analyze its silencing and delegitimizing function. In short, Voinov is not only being ableist, he is actively working to create a hostile landscape to voices critical of Megan Derr.
Moments of Note
“No Gay Aces”
In an incident that went unrecorded, but that we witnessed at the time, an author published a book with a character who identified as “gay ace.” Incensed, Megan declared that there was no such thing. This conflict is worthy of note because its exemplifies Megan’s confidence in her own rightness and her refusal to ever back down from a position, a character trait that shines through in following events.
However, perhaps it also showcases Megan’s reaction when she knows she’s incorrect—as of now, the conflict seems to have been scrubbed from GoodReads. We hesitate to include unsupported facts, but feel it is important in Megan Derr’s case to establish her pattern of behavior, in order to examine her tactics and strategy.
“Rose Lemberg”
At the height of #OwnVoices, Megan was becoming increasingly irritated over what she interpreted as a movement to outlaw people writing outside of their identity. She replied to a Tweet by Rose Lemberg—
Apparently Megan needed a reaction, because she Tweeted at Rose twice.
Megan’s interpretation of “you are not doing us a favor,” as “don’t do this,” has the unfortunate implication that she believes writing outside of her identity is doing someone a favor.
When Rose removed themself from the conversation, Megan reacted thusly:
She steamrolls over Rose’s “no spoons” comment, a clear signal in the disabled community that further engagement would be literally damaging to the respondent. The fact that she ignores that signal is incredibly ableist—and if she’s ignorant about that, it just shows how unprepared she is to write disabled characters, thus proving Rose’s point.
After confronting Rose, and not getting the response she wanted, Megan unfollowed.
Megan apologized for misgendering Rose, and we do not believe she would intentionally misgender someone. However, it does illustrate her “shoot first” nature.
“M/M Is for Women”
Turnabout is fair play, in a sense, because Megan had her own opportunity to open a discussion and then immediately block responses to it.
Megan lobbed quite the cannonball across the community’s bow with this fascinating retort against white cis gay men, prompted by a gay man who had called out the M/M genre for its fetishism of its subjects. Out of all her altercations, this one may be the most ill-advised (in a PR sense). It is also one where she found her audience not only unreceptive, but actively accusatory.
Whatever her point may have been, Megan said M/M wasn’t for gay men. Yes, Yaoi, BL, and slash fic was, on the surface level, fueled initially by a female audience. Yes, they fall under different genre conventions than the works of EM Forster and other literary authors. But there’s something undeniably and offensively entitled about declaring ownership of a genre over the actual subject of that genre.
When Megan felt that people were ignoring her reasoning unfairly, she shut down comments.
Friend/Colleague Exodus
If one were to casually take note of the comings and goings of Megan’s friends and colleagues, they may notice a gradual change in the cast of characters. The common denominator of this situation, of course, is Megan. There is a track record of Megan and her sister, Sam, saying oddly misguided and downright offensive comments to their authors, usually trans authors, at which point the relationship is ended and the author quietly moves on.
Water off a duck’s back
People in Megan’s sphere have probably noted that, controversy after controversy, nothing sticks. Even after years of wanky drama all throughout M/M’s history, with the inevitable apologies and flounces from the authors and readers at the center of each crisis, Megan keeps on trucking. The question is, what makes her different?
Leaving the realm of screenshots and facts, there’s only theory to go on. For instance, maybe the conflicts Megan faces are small enough, and far enough apart, that no one can exactly put into words why they think she should be called out. Or perhaps the people who dislike her realize some hypocrisy would come with accusing her of something. (Those in glass houses, etc.)
From a more practical angle, she almost never apologizes. Typically, the subjects of wank quibble, apologize several times, and release statements. Megan usually just posts a few accusatory tweets and then moves on after blocking anyone who could possibly question her worldview.
As evidenced by the more recent wanks, there is generally tangible evidence of harm with multiple victims stepping forward to detail their abuse. However, this takes years and momentum for this to occur. We know that Megan has her share of victims as well, and we know that they have experienced mental and emotional harm that has had real impact on their ability to work. Yet if people were to inspect why they don’t like her, would they only find several blog posts and Tweets that are abrasive and tone-deaf?
Her Modus Operandi has always been to aggressively confront someone she disagrees with (ex. Rose Lemberg) and then flounce/block when she’s challenged. Mirroring that, when someone confronts or disagrees with her, she immediately shuts down discussion (ex. M/M is for Women blog post).
As the co-owner of LT3, she also partly controls the narrative of indie LGBTQ publishing. Her choices and attitude influence the community tone and acceptable in-group culture, and, arguably, add toxicity. However, to pin down specific instances (and therefore confront and address them), is incredibly difficult—which is possibly why every call out thus far has dwindled without fanfare.
In Summation
The overarching, and fascinating, truth about Megan is sometimes she makes sense. Unfortunately, she also says a lot of bullshit. This may come from a lack of ability to grasp nuance.
Does #OwnVoices put pressure on people to out their life circumstances for the sake of credibility? Probably, yes. But others feel confident in self-reporting, wanting their voices out there for others to hear them. Do people mispronounce white people’s names? Yes. But that doesn’t negate the racist undertones and microaggressions minorities face when people mock their names. These, among other situations, are odd hills Megan chooses to die on seemingly because she doesn’t want to understand them.
The current call out is in reaction to the Bi Awards. Certain authors have stepped forward to Tweet their protest of LT3’s nomination. They argue that Megan, as the owner of LT3, has promoted an environment that does harm to bi voices, and they feel it is inappropriate for her to be celebrated in this specific context.
The situation is still developing. From here, we can see only two branching paths. Either those running the Bi Awards rescind LT3’s nomination, or they do not.
But this event is dredging up old salt. As with any wank, one is left wondering what the conclusion should be; Exile? Apology? Loss of sales? What does a successful call out look like? Megan is a real person with a wife and a business that she has worked hard to develop. She publishes minority representation because she believes in that effort.
But her belief does not exculpate her.
She has managed to repeatedly dodge accountability. Whether this is through calculated tactics or a magical formula she managed to stumble upon doesn’t change the fact that she has actively contributed to making the community hostile to marginalized people. It doesn’t change the fact that her status as a major publisher among LGBTQIA online presses shields her, especially as those who would ordinarily call her out for bad behavior must hesitate and consider the economic ramifications of doing so.
Now, to guess what Megan might pull from this to deflect responding to the salient points? Probably that we mentioned her mom voted for Trump.
Just a note, but if you’re coming out and attacking people for sharing that one of the cast who actually saw the ending of Voltron said the leaks are fake. You are not “managing your own expectations”. You are asking other people to manage your expectations for you. Check your own damage, and let others celebrate the news that this was a troll all along.
stealing from Daenerys exhibition one of a thousand: why does your precious Queen Rhaenys need Dany’s titles? I thought Dany was an evil Nazi slaveowner imperialist for being the breaker of chains, the unburnt, and daughter of death/daughter of dragons LOL. Also why is there a literal Dany gifset in this mix of stolen gifs? Does Rhaenys look like a mix between Deepika and Emilia Clarke?
What makes me scream about Martell cultists and Rhaenys stans is that they claim that this irrelevant dead toddler who has no bearing on the story beyond Ned’s plot in AGOT would grow up to be the perfect, flawless kind of woke angel that Dany could never be, and yet they keep giving her Dany’s traits, titles, and plot points. If Ms. Rhaenys is truly the kind of Madonna that Dany could never amount to, why make Rhaenys a carbon copy of Dany with just a Deepika fancast slapped on? Why not give her original traits and qualities? Why not make her as “gentle and sweet” as Sansa, since they love Sansa and feminine soft power? Or as cunning underneath her beauty as Margeary? Why does she have to be like Dany? I thought she was far morally superior to Dany, after all?
This whole bs about Sansa month being purposefully created to be at the same time of Arya month (which was announced before Sansa month) made me remember how the last Sansa week they made was so full of Dany hate. Even when they’re supposedly celebrating their fave, they have to tear down other characters in the process, be it Arya or Dany. They had a day for “antagonists” (X,X) in which they had whole bunch of anti Dany metas, edits and shitposts. I expect we will see the same this year.
Highlighting a couple important points, because I feel like we all need the reminder sometimes:
it’s okay to not feel comfortable around certain content and create spaces for you. People can choose to engage, or not. That doesn’t make you the purity police. That makes you human. All humans have “edges”. There’s a line between actively searching people out to shame them, and going “well, actually, I’d like to create content without these elements for a bit”. The first is not okay, the second is.
Remember that boundaries are good. They’re healthy and keep us safe. Whether is is to do with places, people, characters, content or the many mediums it comes in, it is good to have boundaries. Know your limits and respect them.
Always keep in mind:
it’s okay to reserve fandom - Tumblr, Discord - as purely fun. You don’t have to engage in any activism or discourse. You have real life to deal with, and sometimes that’s hard enough. Block or unfollow people (including me, friend, I really won’t take it personally), permanently, temporarily, if you’re not in the correct headspace to deal with what they’re peddling at the moment.
Fandom is supposed to be fun. If you’re not enjoying something anymore, it is more than okay to put it down.
“I was not expecting [Anakin to slaughter younglings] when I read it for the first time in the script. You know that Anakin has to be a part of the killing of most of the Jedi. I guess that extends to the younglings, but I can’t imagine how little kids will react to that. But it’s necessary; it’s necessary to inform the extent to which Anakin is willing to follow his path. What I really kind of liked about it is that he’s emotionally aware of what he’s doing. He’s not just possessed all of a sudden. Even though you can see it in the eyes [that] he’s aware and he’s emotionally still conflicted, but has to find that resolve to realize the end result.”
- Hayden Christensen understanding Anakin/Vader better than half this fandom.
I guess I wouldn’t mind the Jedi having so many haters if people would just… stop saying they like the Jedi when they only like their aesthetic or a specific Jedi.
Seriously, at least on twitter, many people will say they love the Jedi, retweet fanarts, make funny jokes and memes about them, and then proceed to make the most hateful comment on their culture and lifestyle I’ve ever seen. It’s literally like “I love the Jedi I just wish they didn’t do any of the things that make them Jedi”, it’s annoying and misleads me all the time because I’ll follow someone that’s all “oh i love jedi” and then a few days later they start spouting a bunch of fanon/legends bullshit that misunderstand, and many times vilify, the Jedi and when someone comes with actual canonical sources about them instead of fanon and headcanons, the person simply… ignores!
As if having so few of us isn’t sad enough it’s also difficult to stay away from Jedi haters because they don’t say/know they aren’t really Jedi fans, they just like their lightsabers and Luke Skywalker while being completely disdainful of their culture and essence.
So first a clarification, this will be regarding US federal law because ao3 is hosted in the US and thus US law would apply to any legal cases. I am not well-versed in other countries’ laws so I am unsure if similar situations would be the same under those laws. I’m also going to be using federal law when I can because I do not have the patience nor time to look at the millions of different state and territory criminal codes that exist.
tw pedophilia, child abuse, sexual exploitation, rape, etc.
I wanted to do a piece on (you guessed it) what the title is about. Recently we’ve been seeing a lot of rhetoric arguing against the ability for nsfw fic to exist in fandoms originally marketed as kids shows (but also other fandoms).
First, I’ve seen accusations of pedophilia towards adults that do write such fic and then arguments saying “semantics” don’t help the situation. I think that first and foremost there should be the realization that “semantics” are how the world operates. The law operates in semantics, really petty semantics but semantics nonetheless, and in debate word choice and clarity are what matters most (I personally suck at debate so I hope this is clear).
[I’m going to get into the whole issue of morality v legality later dw]
Pedophilia, in criminal law, does not actually exist as a piece of law. Instead what is considered pedophilia falls into two main categories: sexual exploitation of minors and statutory rape. Federally, sexual exploitation of minors (18 U.S. Code § 2251 - Sexual exploitation of children), which includes child pornography, refers to visual depiction of minors in sexual situations (this is a vast oversimplification that works for this purpose) - I believe that state/territory criminal code is similar in the main points. To my understanding, it specifies visual depictions because those images/videos are permanent with the state of the internet today and can negatively impact that individual. Visual depictions show an individual’s face in a way that other media forms do not.
Criminal law is charged with protecting people who exist in the real world and can be negatively affected by something.
This is not to say that writing underage sex is not a bad thing (I do believe that it is) but to say that accusing someone of pedophilia/child pornography/etc. is not right and can have a negative impact for people’s irl lives.
If writing pedophilia/statutory rape was illegal (it is not), many forms of media (books, tv, movies) would be impacted (e.g. riverdale, easy a, secret life of the American teenager, gossip girl, euphoria, pretty little liars, 90210, one tree hill, Lolita, skins, prep, the twilight series, perks of being a wallflower, vampire academy, and many, many more). The crux of the matter is really: is it a visual depiction, and is it a real life person.
And now we get into the legality vsmorality bit. We’ve established that it’s not a crime, nor is it against ao3′s TOS.
Morality seems to be the case that most people are making regarding nsfw content of characters that were underage in their canon material.
The case here is a little more grey rather than black and white and I firmly believe that we can all go around in circles arguing about it because it is grey. You might think it’s immoral to write nsfw content (whether it’s smut, gore, etc.) of characters that were underage in their source material (though I ask you to realize that people age, fictional and not, and perspective change with it), but those are your morals. And while you can attempt to convince people otherwise, it is not right to force people to ascribe to your morality over something as trivial as fanworks. Other topics would definitely have me saying otherwise, but these are fanworks. They’re meant to be a way for people to explore themes and content in different ways
Here’s the other crux of the matter, characters are fictional. They can age. Their creators have aged and are exploring themes interesting and important to them through their content. You might not want to see nsfw content, and you don’t have to. Many creators don’t want their nsfw content viewed by people who don’t want to engage with it (for whatever reason) or underage people. And there are ways to not see that content, which people should employ.
[The internet is a place where this kind of content exists, has always existed, and should always be able to host because otherwise the implications for free speech, etc, are terrible - which I may tackle next.]
The moral and legal argument kind of sucks and I get it, I don’t want to see nsfw sexual content sometimes (for various reasons, and I did engage with it as a minor) and I take steps to ensure that I won’t (through blocking tags, filtering them, etc.) when I feel that way.
And one last thing, I am sorry to say that underage people have sex (the objective proof for that would be teenage pregnancy). It happens (because of a lot of different shit that’s a whole different topic) and its not bad. Consent is important and will always be sexy but the view that sex is always a bad thing comes from conservative voices (and other things i’m not particularly well-versed in so i won’t go further into). Sex is not bad. Sex is normal. And people should be free to explore it in whatever way they like (as long as it is legal, safe, and healthy).
[And in my opinion, fanworks can be a healthy(er) way to explore sex. As a minor, the sex ed I got was atrocious and fic actually taught me a lot. But by choosing to engage in that material (even just choosing to be able to view it), I knew what I was getting into. If you don’t wish to see it, block it, don’t look for it, and utilize filters.]
One of the things I found most upsetting about VLD and the fandom was the weird moral double standard they applied to Lotor. According to the VLD writers, Lotor had just gone too far to be redeemed and HAD to die a horrible death. Then in the final season they turn around a redeemed Haggar, who abused her son, tortured people, and committed multiple genocides. But she, according to the narrative, still had good in her despite being objectively worse than Lotor on every level.
Then there’s the fandom itself. Fuck. The tidal wave of hate began before the character even made his first on screen appearance. I remember a bunch of anti types screeching and whining about how you couldn’t separate Lotor from his previous incarnations, including Sincline. According to their logic, because Sincline was rapist and stalker, VLD Lotor was also a rapist and stalker. And if VLD was to redeem Lotor it would, by extension, redeem Sincline as well. They were the same character. Period. Expect,this logic again seemingly only applied to Lotor. No one was insisting we hate Coran because his GoLion counterpart was sexist. Or we that we hate most of the male GoLion pilots because they were 20 something year-old men who spent about half the series ogling a teenage girl. And, strangely, there were no posts tell us how we can’t like Zarkon or Haggar. Hmmm, funny that… These people were exclusively, and weirdly, obsessed with making sure no one liked VLD Lotor. And to this day I haven’t seen any of them post a coherent answer as to why.
Really, I could go on a lot of longer, but I think you get the picture at this point. It’s been something that has bothered me for awhile and wanted to get off my chest.
So, there has been a reckoning in wangxian/mdzs fandom since yesterday, when twitter fandom found out that popular author (AO3 user Shinocchi) was suspended from AO3. And it turns out it was because she was behind what seemed to be a cyberbullying campaign against other authors on AO3. Which she did on her own (well, and some of her followers. But mostly by herself). She created sockpuppet accounts (fake accounts), which she used to stalk and leave hateful comments, harass authors when their fics were becoming increasingly popular (more comments, kudos and bookmarks). She did this to drive these authors off of fandom. She is a STALKER, and she did severe emotional damage to others. Why? Because their fics were becoming too popular? Because she didn’t agree with wangxian characterization? Proof shows that the one thing all of these authors had in common was that their fics were becoming popular. As soon as this happened, they were attacked by multiple accounts
Geragrena, rikke, cafecliche and yiqie are only a few that have been mentioned that were her victims.
This came about thanks to AO3 user sweetlolixo, another popular mdzs author who was also targeted and harassed by Shino. She compiled pages of proof that all of the people leaving hateful comments on her fics were coming from ONE person. Don’t believe me? She created a thread here where she published a google document with everything that happened and all the proof, plus the response from AO3 that resulted in them banning Shinocchi.
And what was Shino’s response? She blamed “her sister,” then privated her twitter account. Today, she became public again and said she would take responsibility for all the people she hurt and apologize. However, people confronted her about her crappy apology and she ended up deactivating her account.
TLDR: AO3 author Shinocchi was removed from AO3 after another popular mdzs author, sweetlolixo, compiled evidence proving that Shino was a cyberbully who created fake accounts to harass and leave hateful comments on other fics, while pretending to be multiple people. So if you’re looking for her fics and find them deleted? This is why.
UPDATE: Found screencaps of Shinocchi’s apology from this morning, where she said she would take responsibility (well, she still blamed her “sister”) and apologize to everyone involved.
A little less than an hour later (I think?), she deactivated her account and flounced to her website (which is private), where she made a post saying that she’s leaving fandom and that she won’t apologize because nobody wants to hear it.
She made a post on her (private) website, where she basically doesn’t take any responsibility, and instead implies that most of the people dogpiling on her are “those who held grudges” against her, and that she won’t “admit to faults that aren’t hers.” So no apology from Shino to all those affected. Pretty different from what she posted this morning on twitter, isn’t it?
not to throw myself into discourse or anything but fandom went downhill the moment fans began holding up fandom content to mainstream content standards
Elaborate pls.
Shipping is no longer about “hey I think these characters have an interesting dynamic and I want to explore what they would be like together”, it’s “but it needs to be canon, it needs to be healthy, it needs to be representation”
Headcanons are no longer personal opinions but “you are wrong and always have been wrong”, “you are DIRECTLY going against canon with this and here’s a list of reasons why this is so!”
Do I even need to bring up the “fiction = reality” argument here that’s currently so prevalent in fandom circles that, sure, definitely has some truth in it when you’re considering a piece of mainstream media which is going to reach millions of people, but not so much when you’re applying it to a fanfiction with 100 views tops
There are certain things fans want to see in their mainstream content, and that’s okay! I do that too! Diversity is a necessity in media and it’s wonderful that the mainstream media is finally taking steps to rectify that, no matter how small. Fans can now openly communicate with content creators on social media and get them to confirm all manner of headcanons, and that’s good too!
Except some fans have run with this and started using it against fandom, and suddenly you’ve ended up with fans terrified to put forth their own content because it doesn’t fit into the requirements they’re requesting from the mainstream.
One of the best examples to illustrate this recent shift that I can think of is (oh god here we go I’m not even in this fandom) Reylo. If it were to become canon in the films? Sure, feel free to criticise the creators behind the decision all you want! However, exploring the potential such a relationship could have in a fanfiction no-one’s going to read exceptother people interested in the same idea doesn’t open it up to this same criticism.
tl;dr: through wanting to transform the canon, fans are forgetting how to transform the canon for themselves into their own fanworks and this is leading to fans criticising each other on the same level with which they criticise mainstream media without considering the history & small nature of fandom and the intention of fans in their production of content
I agree with what you’re saying, but I do want to point out that sometimes those fanfics with only 100 views end up getting more views and becoming mainstream media (namely, 50 shades of grey).
I agree with everything else you said - I don’t think that what’s mainstream should dictate what’s in fandom, but when stories get big (and just before becoming mainstream), should they still be excluded from criticism?
This is a good point, but allow me to use 50 Shades of Grey as an example since you’ve brought it up:
50 Shades of Grey, in its original form as Twilight fanfiction, was fanfiction written for fandom consumption and published in a fandom space.
EL James, in deciding to publish it, took that fanfiction out of the fandom space and opened it up to full public consumption.
And in turning that fanfic into a published novel, in removing it from its fandom space and placing it in a literature space, EL James shouldhave done her research, or at least sought out critical opinions which influenced the novel’s transition from a fanfic written entirely to amuse herself to a published work.
Does this mean we should be criticising fanfictions which gain popularity in fandom in case the authors decide to do as EL James did and publish it as an original work??
In my opinion, no.
Fanfictions published in fandom spaces are written freely, given freely. We have no way of judging whyan author felt the need to write their fanfics and fanfiction authors do not need to justify themselves even if they do (to use 50 Shades again) write fucked up dynamics in a romantic way, or haven’t done any research on a topic central to their work such as BDSM, etc. If, however, you choose to edit your fanfiction into an original work, it no longer exists in a fandom space and you should be aware of that.
Those popular fanfictions? Remain excluded from criticism because they still exist in a fandom space. If you find aspects of a popular fanfiction to be harmful or worthy of criticism in some way, there’s the back button, or even better, a blank word page to begin writing your own fanfic.
a pervasive and frankly borderline toxic issue in fandom these days is how popular headcanons are elevated to the status of being irrefutable canon and so insanely clung to and that when they are challenged, majority of fandom lose their damn minds and forget they was the ones to make the shit up in the first place
@agl03: There isn’t any new AoS project. I don’t know whether this is just wishful thinking on your part or you’re being a fanbaiting dickhead, but either way your claim is FALSE.
