#I know a lot of the fandom is over on twitter nowadays

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

I made it better

I'm assuming this is because of me getting annoyed at Azutara shippers in my other blog and calling them and Tyzula fans the "Azula fandom's equivalent of Zutara and Zukka" XD

Anyways *grabs a megaphone and gets on a soap-box*

As a bisexual woman that would go crazy with joy if Azula was gay/bi, and that ships her with Ty Lee and Mai, and even Toph and Suki every now and then, let me make one thing very clear here: Azula DOES have a confirmed canon sexuality, and it's straight. Heterosexual. Likes guys and only guys. The idea that ANY gay ship was CANON in ATLA, a show made in 2005 by a kid's Network, is ridiculous.

Azula explicitly stated that she has tried to flirt with boys before and it never worked out because they are scared of her. She was jealous that boys were paying attention to Ty Lee - and while fanfic writers, and even I, like to say stuff like "Oh, you don't like them getting too close to your gilfriend, Azula?" it's VERY CLEAR that the show was going for the classic "Why do they like her and not ME?" aka she wanted attention from GUYS. She wanted to hook up with Chan, and immediately went for "Let's conquer the world together!" after one kiss. Even the up-coming Azula comic has her dreaming of a guy trying to flirt with her and calling her pretty.

For fuck's sake, Grey Delisle already admiting to voicing the scene between Azula and Zuko as if Azula was trying to seduce her own brother. Meanwhile, even though she likes Tyzula now, when asked about the ship her first reaction was the same as the one every actor, writer and/or showrunner had to hearing about popular gay ships: "I did not see that coming."

It might seem surreal nowadays that the Network let the show get away with incest bait but gay characters were out of question, but that's what happened because, surprise surprise, homophobia was still going strong. Hell, it's still going strong TODAY.

Lots of Nickelodeon shows from the 90's and early/mid 2000's tried to get away with implying or flat out saying "This character is gay" and it ALWAYS resulted in banned episodes, some of which became lost media because the Network was just that desperate to bury any evidence of it to avoid controversy. Even characters that never had any love interests ever were assumed to be straight - not as in "treat them as being straight unless we say otherwise" but in "They are straight because that's the only thing allowed to exist in kid's media." There was no "otherwise" to be heard of. Fitting for years that followed the policy literally called "DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL."

THAT was the general sentiment around homosexuality at the time, especially on TV (KIDS TV, I remind you): pretend you don't know that's a thing.

Even The Legend Of Korra, that parts of the fandom still pretends did anything for gay representation, had the creators (the same who made ATLA) that they never even bothered to ask Nickelodeon if they could Korrasami happen, and thus kept the whole love triangle, with the girls fighting over a GUY, going. It wasn't until the very end that they had the guts to ask "Can we make them hold hands in the finale?" and Nick said "Sure, the final season will basically not be aired on TV anyways." Bryke even had to state ONLINE that "Yes, they are a couple." Only THEN, with the positive response from audiences, that neither the writers nor the Network had thought could ever gain any sympathy for the show, did they make Korra and Assami have an actual relationship in the Korra comics.

Do these guys sound like the type that would leave a character's sexuality up for debate or even try to write a gay couple into the show IN 2005, years before Korra was allowed to get away with a slight hint of gayness that to be explained on Twitter?

They didn't make Azula's attempts to win guys over fail to show she was a gay teen trying too hard to be something she was not, her envy that Ty Lee was getting a ton of attention from boys while she wasn't was meant to be taken as EXACTLY that, and no cutesy moment between her and her friends was meant to be taken as anything other just gals being pals.

We can, and should, point out that it is unfair that gay relationships were treated as "too adult" while straight romances weren't. We can change any character's sexuality in fanfics. We can ship whatever the hell we like. But claiming Azula was EVER meant to be seen as anything other than a 100% straight girl that just sucked at flirting and thus was struggling to get a boyfriend is just a flat out lie.

She's not bisexual. She's not a lesbian. Her sexuality was not "left up to debate" because THERE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE A DEBATE!

Again, I would love a bisexual Azula (provided that wasn't handled by people like Yang and Bryke, who see her as nothing more than an ableist stereotype), but let's not kid ourselves here.

Nickelodeon is not our "ally", they're a company that wants your money. Bryke, by their own admission, were not revolutionaries who pushed for gay representation and were ready to give up on the idea of same-sex relationship with no resistence if the Network told them "no, only straight romances allowed". Korra was no Steven Universe or even Adventure Time, it was basically Disney with it's 50th "first" gay character that gets five seconds of screentime. Azula's sexuality absolutely WAS confirmed and it is (sadly for me) heterosexual.

And to the people that claim to love headcanons for bisexual Azula, but still insist I should only ship her with women, or make her strongly prefer women, or only have had bad experiences with men and positive ones with women, otherwise she'll be "basically straight": your biphobia is showing, stop hating on bi women everytime they shatter your ilusion that we're just confused/in denial and will eventually realize we're actually lesbians.

#azula #azula is straight #*cries in bisexual annoyance*/frustration #homophobia #biphobia

[cardiamachina]

my god is this thing even on???

hello, you, who's still hanging around in this almost defunct page! sometimes i come around here after sighting a poem of mine out in the wild of twitter or facebook to see how my little poetry children are doing and i realize i never really expounded on where i went, which is my bad, lmao

well, to start, i am now a nurse in the intensive care unit! i looked back into my archives and realized that when i started writing poetry in this account, i was a NURSING STUDENT eleven years ago! life had expectedly lifed very hard, nursing as a baby nurse was hard, i took the icu course, and then we had that cursed thing happen 2020 ish. my brain chemistry changed a lot, and honestly so did the things i've been writing.

during the time i was away from this account, i was quite focused on long form fanfics. i wrote poetry here and there, but as you guys know with me, i write for people i love. i wrote space-related poetry for deancas, and wrote seventy years of sleep for stevebucky. which still blows my mind what kind of journey soft epilogue ended up embarking???? i leave and then i come back to all that - it was unreal, and thanks for that!

if you're wondering where i am nowadays, i'm kind of all over. i'm on twitter (@NikkaUrsula) and IG (@nikkaursula) for poetry stuff and my fandom twitter i'm gonna hide because i will simply embarrass myself lmao! yes, i am still writing poetry, and it's again about characters i love and people that make me feel things, so i guess i'm no different that where you found me eleven years ago.

i'll be in and out of this page cleaning some stuff up, and maybe updating the format so it's easier for you to read things when you find yourself wandering around my poetry tag. i may post some of my new stuff here too, if anyone's interested in all that.

before i go, i just want to say thanks for listening to what i have to say not only today, but yesterday, a month, a year, a decade ago. i have been writing for a long time, these little feelings that cocoon themselves into little words that escape me. they've traveled a long way to perch on your shoulder, my little monarch butterflies. now they're yours, too.

see you around,

nhixxie/nikka ursula

#seventy years of sleep #nikka ursula #poetry

[yonpote]

I need to know why and how you were anti-phannie from 2014-2016

alright here we go i get to talk about THIS shit now.

i was generally anti-rpf at that point, and honestly? i think it was for fair enough reasons as some people were a bit too eager about showing (general) youtubers stories they wrote about them sucking and fucking their friends. i think i was also pretty high and mighty about being a somewhat oldhead phannie tbh, like ugh do these gaming-channel-only people even know about dan being super edgy and offensive 🙄 and lowkey it was a lot of subtly misogynistic "i'm not like other girls" type shit like i was sooo much better than yall cuz i hadn't watched that video (yet.)

i was generally not into these sorts of fandoms to begin with. i wasnt on the superwhopotterlock side, i was on the homestuck/dangan ronpa/anime of the month side of tumblr, if that gives you an idea of what i was like lol. around 2014-15 i was very much in a community that is kinda similar to what you might see on twitter now, where if you had any interests in media that portrayed anything problematic, that means you are in full support of that problematic thing. if dan howell said something racist in 2010, it doesn't matter that he wasn't being racist in 2015 he's still racist and liking him makes you a racist etc. and of course, rpf is included in problematic topics. if you ship real people, even if said people say they don't mind it, you are a sick pervert and you should be in the loony bin for being so depraved. and if you write or read any fiction that has immoral acts, it means you support those acts in real life too and you are trying to normalize abuse and SA (yknow as if whitecishetpatriarchy hasnt normalized that enough) and you're a danger to children and you deserve to rot in prison (yknow as if a queer person writing stories about queer people hasnt heard that one before)

now here's the real kicker. in 2015-2017 i ran a game grumps fan blog where i did talk about shipping the grumps. "wait how were you anti-rpf if-" well have you ever heard of this thing called Lying? or perhaps even, Cognitive Dissonance? i HAD to run a separate blog for this interest, because if my friends knew i consumed slashfic about arin and danny they would stop being friends with me and think im this evil horrible monster etc. genuinely that was where my brain was at, and is a little bit the reason i decided to this day, to make my phannie accounts completely separate from my main accounts.

nowadays, none of my non-phannie friends actually give a fuck and i do occasionally talk about dnp being silly gay white boys w them! at this point i dont post about em on main just out of respect like "hey im sure you dont actually want to hear about british yaoi constantly regardless of our level of friendship so i'll keep it over here okay?"

also, yeah i grew out of thinking consuming media with deplorable acts makes me deplorable. my favorite tv show is hannibal. i know its shocking, but i dont actually support serial killer cannibals. i will say, i dont fuck with "pro/anti" language with regards to what is considered "problematic" or having that be an identity marker. i think that people are free to write fiction as they please so long as its all properly tagged for people who dont enjoy that kind of content to avoid. but i also think there can be and often are problems in the way these stories are written, and yeah if all the romance stories you read growing up involve some sort of force or danger, that CAN normalize this sort of action as inherent to romance stories/real life romance. but i think thats an issue with like, society at large, and it's not on an individual fic writer to be educating teens who read their dead dove fic despite the explicit rating and tags.

TL;DR: BASICALLY. I WAS A DUMBASS KNOW-IT-ALL BUT DW I GOT BETTER.

#myrambles #sorry for party yapping

[cyle]

you said that there is no inbalance between likes and reblogs, and that people made it up. how can you be so blind when it is so, so painfully obvious? this used to be a blogging site, but no one reblogs anymore, and most of the art/edits go unnoticed. and this is not just me, all of my content creator friends are experiencing the same thing, many of them even quit editing because no one even reblogs anymore, and the content never gets spread around. the only stuff that gets lots of reblogs nowadays are funny shitposts or tiktok/twitter screenshots. fandom gifsets only reach 2k+ if they are on the trending page. are you aware that this site is no longer the home of fandom, but the home of shitposts and leftovers from other apps? if likes AT LEAST showed up on dashboard like on twitter, it would do miracles to us. please consider making changes to the like button before you lose all your content creators.

i believe you must be referencing this and this?

first, i don't believe anyone "made it up". i know people (including other members of tumblr staff) are worried about this, and for good reason. but let's break this down a bit more.

your specific screenshot is a cumulative total over time, and reblogs repeat much more often than likes, since people can reblog many times and can only like once, so of course the further back you look, the more the ratio will be better for older posts. also, the interface back then didn't even separate the like count from the reblog count, so how would anyone in 2015 even know the ratio? probably by looking at their activity, but even then, if you're actually a popular blog, you're probably drowning in activity items and can't "see" the ratio.

i can almost guarantee you that if you were counting the ratio for the first 3 months of a post's life in 2015, and compared it to the first 3 months of a post's life now, you'd see very little divergence in the reblog-to-like ratio. i literally have access to see this ratio across the whole platform over time, it's part of my job, and i can't find strong evidence that the ratio has changed. i was really worried about this too!

the big caveat i'll concede is that for some individual blogs, the ratio may be different today than it was 7 years ago. if you're comparing tumblr in the universe of 2015 to tumblr in today's ecosystem, you're in for a hard comparison no matter what, because the world is not like it was in 2015. that's not altogether a bad thing. times change. we have to adapt with it. some blogs that were popular in 2015 simply aren't going to be as popular today; and likewise, some popular blogs today wouldn't have been popular in 2015.

also, "if likes AT LEAST showed up on dashboard like on twitter, it would do miracles to us" -- they do! it's called "Based on your likes", and you probably didn't realize you turned it off in your Dashboard Preferences, so you never see it. it's on by default for everyone, unless they turn it off. it's a really amazing discovery mechanism for many, many people on tumblr. that's part of what we've been trying to do to adapt the platform to any such changes in behavior over time.

regardless of whether or not the ratio is changing, though, i definitely agree with you that there's more for us to do to try to keep content creators around. making it clearer how content spreads around the platform is definitely one of those things. stay tuned, because there are lot of improvements in that regard that we've been working on. but they don't look the same as what we may have done in 2015 tumblr terms, they look closer to what other mainstream platforms do today.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

i keep telling myself to quit checking up on KM spaces cause there’s literally nothing but bickering and going out of the way to find things to be mad at but I keep ending up coming back 😓 it’s so hard, I still think about them a lot and I generally enjoy doing so! They make me happy to think about, genuinely. it’s been a force of habit for so long but the vibe with no new content (I try and avoid military updates but they waft into my view every so often and I’m glad they seem to be doing ok at least) is just so nasty it’s just like can’t everyone just relax and be happy knowing they’re together??? Obviously I am the problem here and I need to stop but it’s a struggle….do I need to just go completely cold turkey on bangtan? 😂 is that what you did when you took a long break? It’s not like I don’t have hobbies and a job and stuff, but for a long time they’ve occupied a special nice place where I just think of them and generally enjoy reading people’s thoughts about them, but over the past year especially w the solo stuff it’s just gotten kinda rancid

Hello, anon

I understand you completely. If something has become part of your daily routine, on top of other activities and interests, it's normal to get the urge to check up on it. Cold turkey might not help because it increases the chances of going back to it. I'm going through the same thing nowadays. I'm aware that right now, there's barely any point in keeping up with that part of my interests online. KM have enlisted and despite seeing some military updates, I'm not excitedly/anxiously looking forward to it. Like you, I think it's nice to see that they appear fine, but personally I could live without those updates as well. Consequently, I barely discuss it even on my blog, I don't find it necessary.

Most likely, the upcoming show will be the only relevant content that makes me still keep an eye on them right now and that's because the announcement might drop at any time. By not knowing exactly when, it's enough to keep at least a part of the fandom waiting and participating online. Not a bad strategy, but a frustrating one for us.

Likewise, by still checking up tumblr/twitter, I'm also exposing myself to daily fights, endless debates on relationship dynamics and so on. I find it pointless and I'd say a sign of boredom if this wasn't the modus operandi of the fandom anyway.

I made a vague comment recently, but it is terribly annoying having to read left and right troll anons baiting bloggers who then are bringing receipts to demonstrate that KM are close. Really? We're still doing that in 2024? People are talking in circles to demonstrate something that doesn't need more proving. Twitter is worse because they fight like idiots under the guise of defending. The knights in shining armour fighting for the princesses.

As to solo stans, I don't have an issue with the idea of only liking an artist and that's it. If only that would be the full definition. Anyone acting like not only a fanatic, but writing like some miserable 4chan user is someone I really can't stand. It's slowly becoming standard stan behavior and I see this in other fandoms as well, including those of western artists. It's nasty and embarassing.

When I took a break, I unfollowed almost all KM and JM focused accounts. The ones remaining I muted so I had to go to my following list and check each individually if I wanted to see what was up. My point was to not have any of that on my timeline. I think it worked for a while. Now I'm back to how it was before and I don't know how that happened. I should make some changes again.

#m thoughts #jikook #bts fandom #solo stans #fandom behavior

[olderthannetfic]

Hi! I love your blog! Thanks for doing what you do! I had a question about a03.

tl;dr Nowadays, I see essayists suggesting a03 turn into a social media-ish website. In the making of the a03, was it ever discussed to have the archive include social media mechanics (like group chats, PMs)? Where does this idea come from? Is there a history to it?

Long version: I wandered the Interwebs and spotted an essay critiquing a03. The essayist posited that fans would be better served if a03 had a "closed community" option, where only a select group of users could see a fic. This community would be able to socialize in a group chat or message board--it sounded like they wanted LJ back, or to reinvent Discord. This wish puzzled me, because a03 is an archive, not social media.

I understand wanting to keep a fic private, but ao3 already has functions for that: orphan the fic or Unrevealed/Anonymous Collections. Or, yanno, a fan could post their fic on a private Discord, or a password blocked Tumblr. Or email their friends. There are lots of options. When it was brought up that the essayist could use a03's code to make their own semi-private archive, the essayist responded that making an archive was too much work, and nobody would find their fic, ever (which is what I thought they wanted...?).

I'm puzzled why this essayist wanted a03 to be everything all at once. Isn't it enough that it protects our fic and stores our history? We can log in to other websites to talk to each other.

Thanks for reading this ask! It got way long, haha.

--

In the making of the a03, was it ever discussed to have the archive include social media mechanics

Constantly and persistently.

People were desperate for The Next Livejournal just as people a couple of years ago were desperate for The Next Tumblr.

Since LJ was the platform people were thinking in terms of, group chats weren't mentioned so much. I don't recall if PMs were, but LJ (and now DW) have fine gradations of privacy filters and also PMs, so that kind of thing was inherent to the premise.

From the beginning, astolat and other founders were very clear that AO3 was not going to be social media. Period.

--

The functionality that essay describes sounds like exactly what Dreamwidth is good for. In 2022, one could easily make a private com there for one's friends' fic. The sorting isn't as good as AO3, but if a com mod tags well and it's a smaller group of people and fic, it's still pretty convenient. The privacy controls are excellent.

In 2007, as OTW/AO3 was being proposed and discussed, not everyone was down with moving to DW or using it that way. Some people had beef with Denise, founder of DW, and some didn't think enough of fandom was moving there to make it suit their needs. Denise is great and they should get over it, but the latter problem is always an issue on any platform.

--

The biggest conceptual issue is between two camps:

LJ fandom and pre-LJ fandom.

Livejournal reigned supreme for most of a decade, just like Tumblr did. Also like Tumblr, tons of fans got into fanfic and related stuff during that time and took the platform and its specifics as How Fandom Works: the natural and eternal default. When platform change happened, people said "We can't go to X! It doesn't have basic feature Y!"...

And then everyone left for platform X and they were all alone.

The highly distinctive feature of LJ is that the fic posting and the social stuff happened in exactly the same space. I hated this. I loathed reading fic on LJ. To me, this was a newfangled and worse way of doing fandom. But if you got started on LJ, that's The Way Things Work.

Immediately prior to LJ and overlapping with that period was the era of fandom archives. I was very used to doing the socializing and serializing of fic on a mailing list, then posting finished works to an archive. The first posting was a little more polished, but it's not dissimilar to twitter threadfic now. You know it's hard to find later, so you clean that shit up and store it in the long-term storage, which is an archive.

The split model of twitter+AO3 or tumblr+AO3 or discord+AO3 is culturally very similar to mailing list+older archive or usenet+older archive.

Even the older archives that had a lot of social space often still had mailing lists and other offsite more ephemeral social spaces feeding into them. The LJ model was a departure from the norm. It was just a very influential and popular departure.

[mewsmagic]

Uh, gonna change some things??

Hey yall! So, I dedicated the last entire year to instagram almost exclusively and ngl that was exhausting, that platform is just too demanding nowadays and heck I need a break

Sooo I decided I'll be bringing my text posts to here or whatever other twitter alternative that has fandoms in it, since most of my text posting are ramblings about my hyperfixations yk?

It's just a lot easier and more worthwhile posting this stuff here rather than instagram where no one will read anything bc we don't open instagram for that LOL

Sooo yeah, just letting you guys know before I start fangirling outta nowhere LOL I hope yall won't mind me being more active over here!

In general I love tumblr's current atmosphere and there're some discussions going on here that are veeeryy interesting so I'm excited to start being more present here!!!

#mew rambles #twitterpocalypse #twitter alternative #instagram #fandom #genshin imapct #genshin #genshin fandom #pjsekai #prsk #honkai star rail #text post #social media is hell

[ishcliff]

@applepies-and-starlight OHHH yes, i was a huge persona fan back in the day!! i had a pretty popular fandom twitter for a while like 5 or 6 years ago that i ended up deleting that was dedicated to meta analysis and akihiko lovebombing. nowadays i don't really engage with anything from it, but i still love akihiko and persona 3.

my thoughts on the answer are basically just: i get what it was trying to do, but it didn't work very well.

i don't dislike it as much as some people do, but i don't really think it's a strong follow-up to persona 3. the conflict is cool, the backstory flashbacks rule, metis is a great character, but the pacing isn't very good and i don't really like how some of the characters are written.

also, the gameplay is just utter garbage. i think "artificial difficulty" is a bit of a buzz phrase that doesn't mean a lot... Except For The Answer. it's just annoying. most of the gameplay is just hours of grinding mindlessly. imagine if limbus company needed you to get through a mirror dungeon every other node in order to progress the story. it feels like that, except the story is contrived to over-explain the mechanics of the world. so it's not even that worth it LOL

i'm interested to see if the remake makes it better! but honestly, i consider it mostly just kinda skippable. if you're a worldbuilding fan, you just need to know that the MC is now a seal keeping a physical manifestation of the concept of yearning for death from ending the world, and there's no way to reverse it without potentially ending the world. that's basically it.

thanks for asking! i'm glad my years of hyperfixation on a single character is fun to read LOL

#asks #persona critical #persona 3 #i have a tattoo dedicated to akihiko #i could write him better than atlus ever could

[ookikufurikabutte]

quick question, do you consider sefi/kura to be a pr*ship? i keep seeing people call it a pr*ship but i don't really think that since there are a lot of fans, me included, that like the sane sephiroth timeline where sephiroth and cloud are just two softies in love. i'm not a pr*shipper but i get put off by fics or works that portray sefi/kura as toxic or sephiroth being cruel or evil to him, but i guess that's just personal taste? idk

i really don't think a ship being automatically "toxic" because it's the hero x the villain makes it automatically proship. that's one thing.

i literally have a gay oc pair that's sometimes put in a love triangle with the "villain" of the story. <- my last doodle i just posted btw.

i particularly just don't like sefi/kura for personal reasons, but also mainly because of their age gap. iirc sephiroth is like already in his 20s while cloud is 15 or 16 during parts of crisis core. i could be wrong about the ages, but as crisis core was my first ff7 game it just feels weird and offputting to me. this is also the same reason i put *not ship art* on my old comic of sephiroth and zack, because if i also recall zack is 16 at the beginning of CC, while sephiroth is again in his 20s & people started tagging my comic as seph/zack when i clearly drew him as his 16 y/o self too.

i don't break existing friendships i have over the ship because i know the ship has been around forever (and i am a grown ass man) but it's just not my cup of tea & never will be + my issues with it. i try to keep to myself + close friends in fandoms nowadays (especially with ff7 since i feel like too many people care about degrading either aerith or tifa and using zack's death to justify cloud's right to date either of them and i just gag. i hate straight people) but i don't like to get into these conversations because people are crazy & will screenshot anything to complain about ships & their right to be weird on twitter.

and i love sephiroth for his own character too, he's so cool and one of my favorite villains of all time. design wise, plot, everything. like yessir. but i just don't like him w/ cloud.

tldr; i would probably consider it, yes. but not because it's "toxic," but because of the age gap thing.

#zack responds tag #zack speaks a lot tag #hope this does not bring people out of the woodworks to yell at me but if it does (duck smoking cig and shaking head gif)

[nightytime]

ok so.

clown is allowing nsfw now and folks are losing their goddamn minds over it (esp on twitter, on both sides) and ngl it's kinda making not want to draw normal non-au wh art at all due to how big of a deal everyone's making it imo... like some ppl being like weird abt the 'way the posts was typed' and borderline babying him? (ofc that was only some, not all)

idk! i kinda wished clown didn't make this announcement mostly becuz it no matter what/how it was done was gonna cause a lot of flames... from ppl who think they know clown fr, the weirdos that were already disregarding boundaries, some that just hate nsfw period... etc idk!! i wish fandoms weren't this volatile about things but it seems fandom/communities nowadays are destined to be???? (that maybe my shitty memory at play or nostalgia or w/e but i dont remember this much stress back then?????)

so... i'm just gonna keep my doodle to myself for a bit till things cool down again (or clown makes another statement or something idk) which is a shame cuz i had some silly ideas for the lil switcharoo thing with an anxious barnaby reprimanding wally for not practicing good body mechanics...

and will I draw/post nsfw? probably still no? idk, i never wanted to draw that type of stuff for wh to begin with and ofc to respect clown. but idk for sure :shrug:

ANYWAY! i'm rambling now i'm just gonna draw other stuff and enjoy my weekend

#monabugtxt #like... man i think the separate tag is nice to have so ppl can block it but idk! its kinda a bummer ngl to see some much fightin about thi #also sorry to the folks that just followed recently for my wh art <:0(

[dearweirdme]

Jungkook's solo is releasing in 3 days and the atmosphere on twitter has become so damn toxic. Instead of talking about 3D people are comparing tae and jk's promos. Shippers are leaving their "ships" and esp leaving jk. Why? Is it because he got better promotions acc to them? Tae's promotional activity was mainly centred around sk and Japan. But he got to do so much there. His promo schedule has been my fav of all the members so far. Those dumb solos feeling sorry for him, can't they see how happy he's been through it all? Why do you want him to go to some mild US talkshow when he went to the ones he loves? Is promotion only acceptable when it's done in the US? Stop feeling sorry for him. He's very happy with what he's achieved, unlike those who see negativity in even the most wholesome things.

Then there are those shippers who expect tae or jk to behave a certain way. They want tkk to make each other's life completely about their partners. Jk's only sm account is on Tiktok, which nowadays looks more like a pr account. How should he have promoted tae's album there? And even if he did post that mandatory screenshot of layover, like the others, what would that have proven? Tae has literally been talking all this time about how jk helped him. If they were "broken up", would he have felt comfortable talking about him given that the break up was recent since they were pretty close till July end?

3D was announced only 3 days ago and instead of being happy for jk, people are choosing to be vile and ignorant. If they are that quick to jump ships, then good riddance. They weren't doing any good staying anyways.

Also, if anyone wants to stay sane, leave twitter for a few days, that place has become more toxic than a nuclear dump rn

Hi @likeoldlove!

There's a reason why I don't visit twitter much 🙈.

Fandom is a tough place to be in at times, especcially shipper fandom. There's so many different kinds of fans around. There are those that are in it for fun, there are those that are in it for the excitement, some just like the mystery of looking for clues, some just seek connection with the fandom, but a lot also just genuinely care for the guys. I understand the concern some have about Tae, and that mostly comes from an urge to protect him I think. I feel that urge too at times, only concerning different topics. The hard part of being a connected fan is that we know so little in general, so It's easy to be mistaken.

Fans can leave over this if they want, I think a lot of them will actually return real soon when something "Tkkry" happens. And, though they might feel some sort of support by us being here, I think for Tae and Jk Tkkrs aren't that big a part of their actual lives. They don't really need us here.

I loved Tae's promo as well. I think he felt very comfortable and happy through all of it. I hope he looks back at it a proud man. The hast is due to limited time I think. Jk's new single will be followed by Jimin's doc, which will be followed by Jk's album also... and after that well.. we might just not have much time left with them.

#taekook #fandom shenanigans

[lemonhemlock]

IMHO the shipping wars will continue as usual, no matter what happens on screen next season. Why? Because some people just can't accept that other people genuinely like a different ship and lash out using the usual arguments - accusations of self-inserting into the female character, liking incest, misogyny, etc. - things which are bound to get reactions from the opposite side and keep the conflict going. If anything, things have gotten a little bit worse since you "left", at least with Helaemond vs others, like most of the new Helaegon shippers have turned out to be just antis who've joined their Alysmond friends into constantly bashing them. It's also a bit funny considering that, in the beginning, most of the first Helaegons were also Helaemonds, but since then, the ship has been taken over by antis, which made it unpalatable, at least for me. I think though that you did receive some complaints about this new wave of Helaegon shippers just before you closed off your inbox for anons, if I remember correctly. Other than that, I guess there have been some Daemyra vs Alysmond conflicts, at least on Twitter from what I've seen, which involved the former piling on the latter simply because they disliked some theory or interpretation on the text. This is obviously unhinged behavior, but I still support the Daemyras doing this considering that Alysmonds and other green antis have done the exact thing, or worse actually, to fellow greens like Helaemonds so it's a bit hypocritical for them to complain when team black stans give them a taste of their own medicine. Sorry, this got a bit too long lmao, I guess you can take it as an update of how things stand when in comes to the shipping wars.

Hey there, anon, thanks for this very comprehensive recap on the state of the fandom. That's, um, a lot. 😅 I don't know what to say about the helaegon v helaemond thing - for me that is just beyond, bc I also remember people used to ship both with absolutely no issue a couple of months back. I, for one, also ship both + helaegond, so I really don't have any desire to engage with any of that, wow. 🤖

And that is the same advice I would give to anyone else - just stop bothering with the antis and do your own thing. As a general observation, I think that people get sucked into bickering way too often instead of just talking about the things they enjoy & making content for that. I get that, on some level, everyone feels the need to defend themselves when they encounter hate and nasty attitudes, so some level of that is perfectly understandable, but I don't think it's really worth it to let it take up the majority of your fandom experience. As someone who's literally been through hell & back these past months, I can promise you, it's not that serious. ☠️

There is something happening in fandoms of all kinds with the breakdown in communication and just general social norms and manners, where, upon encountering even a slightly different take from their own, people will start losing their shit and engaging in petty fights. They're just some ships, lol. None of these people are real! You can imagine scenarios in which even crackships can make sense. Fans are forming parasocial relationships with fictional characters nowadays - I've lost count of how many "MY Aemond would never do that" I used to see. Girl, what? I mean, it's fine as a joke, but then again you see them getting really belligerent with others, so you really have to question how much of it is truly horsing around and how much is just unhealthy investment and compensation for something else.

#and not just aemond lol people get really defensive with a whole host of characters like it's their own family members you're talking about #ask #anon #shipping wars #i don't really remember getting asks abt helaegon v helaemond before i closed off anon #but then again my brain is mush atm #anyway it's the dumbest fucking ship war i've ever heard of

[stormblessed95]

My Tumblr following is pretty quiet nowadays. Twitter is lively but also full of people fighting - shippers with other shippers; armys with blinks and other kpop stans; Elon Musk against Stephen King or any random person he can find. I prefer Tumblr but everyone seems to be on Twitter. Have you tried out any platforms apart from Tumblr and which one do you prefer?

I'm on twt too! I'm @/KM_Stormy95 there and I did actually out my main BTS twt account at the start of December too, so some of yall probably know that one if you caught it. I'm not quite as active on twt as I am on here and keep a lower profile. Lol I mainly use twt to keep up to date on BTS and the fandom and enjoy clips, moments and some thoughts and connections there too. I also mostly live in my DMs there too. Lol I use this platform to word vomit all my opinions and for some reason, yall all decided to join me here too anyway. I think both are good and valid for different things and reasons, so idk if I prefer one over the other or I just use them for different things and therefore don't have an opinion. I know a lot of people DO prefer one site. Just not me. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I do also have a book twt account and a bookstagram account and a website I publish my book reviews on that I generally will always keep seperate from here and that's a totally different thing. But only the 2 sites used for BTS and only the extra Instagram site also used solely for bookish posts/reviews.

[thealexchen]

If I have to be honest, Life is Strange True Colors fandom is the least toxic fandom of them all. Everyday, I keep seeing the same arguments from the LisSubreddit and Listwt, usually by the same group of people (whom I won't name - chances are, they might be on tumblr too and could be reading this too). Such as ship wars, which are the best endings, and let alone same insults everyday like "max flopfield" or listwt starting shit and being triggered over petty reasons or over nothing. But this is what happens when you're in the small fandom dedicating to Life is Strange, I know we're all desperate for new contents. So am I, but why use the same takes that'll cause unintentional or unnecessary drama for the sake of something new? I miss the old days when we're only writing fanfictions, drawing fanarts, or coming up with ADORKABLE headcanons :(

I get what you mean, and you’re right. The lack of new content means that old discussion (more like argument topics) get rehashed over and over. Social media like Twitter and Reddit tend to create their own echo chamber as the loudest voices drown out more nuanced takes and those people become too discouraged to continue (I unsubscribed from the LiS subreddit ages ago and I never go on Twitter). But nostalgia can be deceiving; the fanbase was more active in 2015 so there was more fanfiction and fanart, but on the flip side the ship wars were at their worst and LiS1 was the subject of awful online vitriol just because the protagonist was a teen girl. I still remember the downright nasty Pricefield vs. Amberprice ship wars in 2017 and the relentless hate (and racist reactions, but I won’t go there rn) that LiS2 got in 2018. Nowadays it’s like LiS2 never existed and it bums me out, even if my feelings on the game have soured since 2018.

But I’m gonna change the subject, because I was so interested in your wording “the true colors fandom,” because I think that’s a larger issue within LiS: the internal divisions within the series and the separate “mini fandoms” for each game. It’s sadly true that fans of LiS1 are rarely also fans of 2 because there’s so little overlap. This series has has a weird trajectory from the beginning, because it’s clear that LiS1 was always meant to be a small standalone story that achieved runaway success and spawned a prequel by another studio, and then DN suddenly had to figure out how to turn LiS into an anthology series. But the very specific, unique, and unprecedented (for its time) style and cultural impact that LiS1 had simply cannot be replicated twice. As it stands, the dead parents, queer characters, supernatural elements, and indie soundtrack simply aren’t enough to keep these games feeling cohesive and like they are set in the same universe. And as such, they never attract the same fans back to the next game. Not to mention the spin-off content has been kind of lukewarm: I stopped reading the comics and it seems like everyone does not want the TV adaptation to happen.

Adding onto this, discussions about TC fizzled out disappointingly fast because it’s a shorter game with a safer, more conventional plot. The characters and main ships are the least problematic than they’ve ever been, the game is almost squeaky clean with its political correctness, and the choices are never controversial. The thing is, that leaves almost no room for discussion. I think Alex’s parents had a lot of potential for their choices and how they affected their children, for example, but they’re barely in the game. TC kind of reminds me of Tell Me Why, actually: a very safe, careful, small game that was meaningful in the moment but one that people move on from quickly.

Anyway, thanks for sending this message, it’s nice to have a LiS-related ask again.

#anon #answered asks #lis #listc #lisbts #lis2 #life is strange #life is strange 2 #life is strange true colors #life is strange true colours #life is strange: true colors #life is strange before the storm #lis before the storm #pricefield #amberprice

[sweetescapeartist]

Gonna complain a lil bit.

Working multiple jobs is kinda rough. Having migraines makes it more difficult.

Having social anxiety sucks. Sometimes I have to write down what I want to say when I'm talking over the phone because my mind goes blank and I need a "script." Then I'm antisocial too so I just avoid ppl as much as I can.

I dont understand women. They want you to pursue them, then they get tired of it once you got them. Then they want you to give them space. Then they start chasing you. Like... this ain't tag. If I like you then I like you & want to see if it can work. Keep playing hard to get then end up married to a guy you don't like anymore while still thinking about me. I ain't ya man. Think about him. You wasted my time, so don't waste his.

I also hate that a lot of women like for men to be "toxic" & men like women to be "toxic" too nowadays. Its was even like that in a way when I was a teen. Now many of my classmates are living lives they regret. I guess I should count myself lucky being raised in a community of older people. I matured mentally quicker and that made me feel alone in school, but at the same time I knew what I wanted and stayed out of trouble. Even now I feel like I'm in my 40's when I'm in my mid 20's. That ecplains why I dont like hanging with people my age much and would rather hang eith people in their 40's & 50's or people older that are in their 80's +. Not to mention that older people have a lot of wisdom to share if you're willing to listen.

I have to be careful to not become like the haters in the DB fandom. What they do is irritating. There are people on twitter that I follow just as part of my strategy. But I don't like what they draw. Because they hate Krillin for no reason. But another part of my strategy is to change the perception of characters in the fandom by simply being accurate. Accuracy is a breath of fresh air in the fandom & its been proven for me that people want that. More people than I expected. So I gotta make sure my content remains consistent and keeps the cast in character as much as possible.

Ironically... VegeBul fans are the reason I barely like that couple now. I catch myself wanting to draw them then feel disgusted because I recall how many of them are so hateful towards everyone else. Not to mention extremely delusional. I even want to draw Vegeta sometimes, but I can't make myself do it because of most Vegeta fans. They just disgust me. And seeing art of VegeBul makes me roll my eyes involuntary. Thank you VegeBul & Vegeta fans for making me almost hate VegeBul & Vegeta. I'm currently at a strong dislike.

I feel like I let ppl down because I over work myself and make too many promises. No more promises this year unless I know I can fulfill them. Imma just do me.

[marshmallowprotection]

You know?... not too long ago I saw some posts on Twitter talking about Saeran in general. They were basically claiming that he was the worst written character in Mystic Messenger because of the fact that there were so many versions of him, as if the writers didn't know what to do with him and/or just rewrote the character to please a part of the fandom that wanted him as a possible partner and make profit as the only end even if it "ruined him". Concluding that, Unknown as the original Saeran was the best and the real one while the other Saeran/Ray from another story ruin his essence and they shouldn't exist. Fuck, look I love Unknown with everything for god sake but it saddens me to have read those posts not because they don't like the Saeran/Ray from another story, ok I respect that, it's their opinion, but what I don't like is that they say that loving more or just loving the other versions of Saeran is wrong and that's why Cheritz doesn't release more Unknown/SE Saeran content (I pray to heaven to see SE Saeran again in a title image or some DLC, I don't give up hope but I understand that bringing out romantic content with them is tricky and that's why most of the time Saeran or Ray appear nowadays for the romantic theme with MC. I for one don't mind if I don't get anything romantic out of it because I get it but like many others I enjoy Unknown's character and will take anything I get from him). I'm not saying they have to change their minds and like the character within Another Story but I would ask for respect for the people who do enjoy him there and the reasons why that is the case. I appreciate everyone but all the Saerans in the game, they are all amazing, you get to connect deeply with some of them, I may love one more than another but they are still amazing and deep in their own way. Seeing them, understanding them, the way they deal with situations, how they struggle and how they will move forward with a different perspective. I love them all for who they are and the message they each convey to the player.

I'm very grateful to have many Saeran and to see how they develop in different realities with or without MC. Saeran in general is a complex and deep character with so many layers to peel back to discover who he really is.

Anon, the best advice I can readily give you is to block people who post things that upset you. The block button is a handy dandy tool, not just when it comes to people who are genuinely malicious but in the case of people who just annoy you for whatever reason.

Fandom experiences are a lot better when it isn't spent feeling dread and shame over things that others don't like that you do. You're allowed to like a different thing from someone else and share how those things make you feel, but not everybody has to talk to you to agree/disagree. Literally, once you think in the realm of curating your time and energy to feel a better way for you, it's enjoyable to be in all of these spaces.

I love Saeran, too. I love Unknown, SE Saeran, Ray, Suit Saeran, VAE Ray/Saeran, and GE Saeran. The layers that compound Saeran Choi as a person are so compelling to me. I've loved him since 2016. I'm out writing stories focused on every facet and face because there's just so much to explore and be in awe of.

He's complicated! The amount of time it takes to study him and figure him out takes a long time, and media literacy goes far if you're trying to figure him out. You don't have to like him. Any of his parts. You can like a few and dislike others. You can enjoy all of him, too. You're not being forced to like a specific Saeran. Literally. Just go for the content you want and don't bash the other stuff. You don't have to like it, but don't be rude in spaces where the people who do like it are!

Seriously, we're on Earth for a short time. Don't spend most of it hating things if you can help it.

#mod kait #ask #anon