So i was looking for new codywan fanfiction as i usually do when i come across this post and my brain just, yes.
I love to think it was just inevitable and not really conscious. Like they don't fucking realize because why would they?
One day Cody and some of the ghost company are giving the tour to the new batch of shinies, explaining how things work, the rules, cleaning shifts, where everything is, etc.
They arrive to the bridge where the General is waiting for them with the kindest smile. This is the rutine everytime they get a new batch, Obi-Wan presents himself formally without the kaminoans presense sucking up any friendly encounter and Cody doesn't have to deal with his sad tooka eyes when the shinies are too terrified of him otherwise.
The commander is about to present them to their new general when his comm lights up showing Rex incoming transmition. He looks up to his generals comm also lightning up, they share a concerned look before answering at hte same time.
"Master! thanks the forse-" "CODY WE NEED KRIFFING REINFORCEMENTS" "Re-... calm d..wn! it's.. -ot that bad!-" "SKYW...KER JUST-... XPLODED TH-.. SHIP-"
While the shinies jump on diverse levels of startle, the veterans share an exasperated-concerned look. They had just set off cordinates to Coruscant. Obi-Wan sighs.
"It seems like we'll need to end the tour a little earlier than expected general." Cody takes of his helmet resigned and ignoring the transmitions shouting at eachother.
"Indeed commander. Guess i'll be waiting for you to join us at the war office" Obi-wan signs to Waxer and Boil to follow him.
Cody sighs and lean over to kiss his general when he passes him.
"I'll grab you a cup of tea on my way" Obi-Wan smiles fondly and returns the kiss.
" Thank you dear" He respondes and exits the bridge not realizing that one, his not being followed, two, the deafening silence he just left behind and three, the gaping group of shinies. In his defense, Cody doesn't realize either. He just smiles smitten until the doors close behind his beloved and the commander mask falls in again.
"You heard the general, change the coordinates to... is there a problem?" Rex who is still on is the first to come out of it.
this is going to sound simplistic + i promise you it's not: stop following people whose entire schtick is being cruel or fighting with others online. even if the ppl deserve it! even if it's not a ~problematic~ cruelty! even if you agree with all of that blog's opinions!
it's one thing if someone snaps back when provoked or posts the occasional "get a load of this guy". nobody needs to play up respectability for people who haven't given them respect in return. but if someone's online identity centers around being needlessly mean for laughs + they're constantly seeking out socially acceptable, easy targets for petty cruelty, that's a red flag. there's a huge difference between not taking shit/cracking a joke + mocking others as your several-hours-a-day hobby.
especially if, when they are inevitably in the wrong + mocking someone mercilessly to their 50k followers over something petty goes south (shocking!), they become extremely defensive or block everyone or play the victim or dismiss it as "well, how was i supposed to know they were autistic? i'm autistic + i don't meow in public" or whatever.
this isn't a "well i knew all along" post bcuz nobody should be shamed for being in the dark about something like this but many of the popular bloggers who have later been exposed for serious harassment or abuse should not have shocked us. if someone's blog is 90% shit like "you should light yourself on fire because you watch x anime" or "look at this so-called lesbian bitch + her ugly fucking boyfriend at a kink convention- it's giving drowned rats", should it really shock you that they are also being cruel or abusive in less internet-acceptable ways? if they've already shown you that they get a such a thrill out of being vicious that they do it daily + are regularly rewarded with thousands of followers?
you. yes you, person with rejection sensitive dysphoria. this message is for you. your friends DON'T hate you. they aren't mad at you. they aren't talking behind your back or wished to cut their friendship with you. they love you and treasure you and they are good people who wouldn't hurt you like that! ok, that's all. have a nice day.
you're grabbing lunch with a nice man and he gives you that strange grimace-smile that's popular right now; an almost sardonic "twist" of his mouth while he looks literally down on you. it looks like he practiced the move as he leans back, arms folded. he just finished reciting the details of NFTs to you and explaining Oppenheimer even though he only watched a youtube about it and hasn't actually seen it. you are at the bottom of your wine glass.
you ask the man across from you if he has siblings, desperately looking for a topic. literally anything else.
he says i don't like small talk. and then he smiles again, watching you.
a few years ago, you probably would have said you're above celebrity gossip, but honestly, you've been kind of enjoying the dumb shit of it these days. with the rest of the earth burning, there's something familiar and banal about dragging ariana grande through the mud. you think about jeanette mccurdy, who has often times gently warned the world she's not as nice as she appears. you liked i'm glad my mom died but it made you cry a lot.
he doesn't like small talk, figure out something to say.
you want to talk about responsibility, and how ariana grande is only like 6 days older than you are - which means she just turned 30 and still dresses and acts like a 13 year old, but like sexy. there's something in there about the whole thing - about insecurity, and never growing up, and being sexualized from a young age.
people have been saying that gay people are groomers. like, that's something that's come back into the public. you have even said yourself that it's just ... easier to date men sometimes. you would identify as whatever the opposite of "heteroflexible" is, but here you are again, across from a man. you like every woman, and 3 people on tv. and not this guy. but you're trying. your mother is worried about you. she thinks it's not okay you're single. and honestly this guy was better before you met, back when you were just texting.
wait, shit. are you doing the same thing as ariana grande? are you looking for male validation in order to appease some internalized promise of heteronormativity? do you conform to the idea that your happiness must result in heterosexuality? do you believe that you can resolve your internal loneliness by being accepted into the patriarchy? is there a reason dating men is easier? why are you so scared of fucking it up with women? why don't you reach out to more of them? you have a good sense of humor and a big ol' brain, you could have done a better job at online dating.
also. jesus christ. why can't you just get a drink with somebody without your internal feminism meter pinging. although - in your favor (and judgement aside) in the case of your ariana grande deposition: you have been in enough therapy you probably wouldn't date anyone who had just broken up with their wife of many years (and who has a young child). you'd be like - maybe take some personal time before you begin this journey. like, grande has been on broadway, you'd think she would have heard of the plot of hamlet.
he leans forward and taps two fingers to the table. "i'm not, like an andrew tate guy," he's saying, "but i do think partnership is about two people knowing their place. i like order."
you knew it was going to be hard. being non-straight in any particular way is like, always hard. these days you kind of like answering the question what's your sexuality? with a shrug and a smile - it's fine - is your most common response. like they asked you how your life is going and not to reveal your identity. you like not being straight. you like kissing girls. some days you know you're into men, and sometimes you're sitting across from a man, and you're thinking about the power of compulsory heterosexuality. are you into men, or are you just into the safety that comes from being seen with them? after all, everyone knows you're failing in life unless you have a husband. it almost feels like a gradebook - people see "straight married" as being "all A's", and anything else even vaguely noncompliant as being ... like you dropped out of the school system. you cannot just ignore years of that kind of conditioning, of course you like attention from men.
"so let's talk boundaries." he orders more wine for you, gesturing with one hand like he's rousing an orchestra. sir, this is a fucking chain restaurant. "I am not gonna date someone who still has male friends. also, i don't care about your little friends, i care about me. whatever stupid girls night things - those are lower priority. if i want you there, you're there."
he wasn't like this over text, right? you wouldn't have been even in the building if he was like this. you squint at him. in another version of yourself, you'd be running. you'd just get up and go. that's what happens on the internet - people get annoyed, and they just leave. you are locked in place, almost frozen. you need to go to the bathroom and text someone to call you so you have an excuse, like it's rude to just-leave. like he already kind of owns you. rudeness implies a power paradigm, though. see, even your social anxiety allows the patriarchy to get to you.
you take a sip of the new glass of wine. maybe this will be a funny story. maybe you can write about it on your blog. maybe you can meet ariana grande and ask her if she just maybe needs to take some time to sit and think about her happiness and how she measures her own success.
is this settling down? is this all that's left in your dating pool? just accepting that someone will eventually love you, and you have to stop being picky about who "makes" you a wife?
One of the most generally useful things to come out of Hbomberguy's plagiarism video and Todd in the Shadows' similar video on misinformation is how they bring transparency to the internet phenomenon of "I made up a guy to get mad at".
Seriously, I've seen people make up a lot of stupid shit on the internet over the years and it's often just a manipulative attempt to paint a group of marginalized people in a bad light.
That's the TL;DR version of this post.
ANYWAY here is the long version
Those videos are mostly about James Somerton's plagiarism of other queer people's work. However I'd like to talk about that 20-30% of Somerton's original writing- and oh boy. It's mostly about complaining about White Straight Women and misgendering well-known trans creators such as Rebecca Sugar and calling Becky Albertalli a straight woman while it's pretty common knowledge that she was forced to out herself as bi because she received so much harassment over "being a cishet woman who appropriates LGBT+ stories".
One thing that irks me especially is how in his Killing Stalking and Gay Shipping videos Somerton brings up how straight women/ teen girl shippers exploit gay men for their personal sexual fantasies. This gets brought up several times in his videos.
Being all up and arms about Somerton being a "White Cis Gay Who Hates Women and Queer People tm" is not that useful because the kind of rhetoric he's using is extremely common in fandom and LGBT+ spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. We really don't need to bring Somerton's identity to this since he is in no way an unique example.
It's hypocritical to make this about an individual person when I've seen A TON of posts, tweets and videos where queer people talk about these Sinister Straight Women who are supposedly out there fetishizing and exploiting queer men. It's pretty clear to me that this is just an excuse to shit on women and queer people for having any sexual interests. At worst these comments are spreading misinformation about BL, a form of media that has been excessively studied by both Asian feminists and Asian queer women.
This all sounds really familiar and I think it's good that people are calling it out as what it is: misogyny and transphobia. I'd also point out the potentially racist motives behind being this hypervigilant about Asian media.
People can absolutely be misogynist regardless of gender or orientation. I really don't know why we need to create some kind of made up enemy to get mad at. I actually think it's almost sinister how "anti-fujoshi" people call Slash shippers and fujoshi misogynists or claim that they have internalised misogyny while being dismissive about women's interests and creative pursuits under Japanese obscenity laws, China's censorship, book bans in American schools and various other disadvances that are part of being a queer and/or female creator.
I think we shouldn't be naive about the bad faith actors who want to turn queer people against each other. For example Fujoshi.info mentions anti-gender (TERF, GC etc) movement using this kind of rhetoric as well.
Anyway if you want to read more:
- about the false info around BL fandom fujoshi.info
-There is the scholar Thomas Baudinette who studies gay media in Japan. Here is a podcast with him and the scholar Khursten Santos
-James Welker is a BL scholar as well. Here is a podcast interview about the new international BL article collection he edited.
-I've already talked about this Youtube channel by KrisPNatz and his great Killing Stalking video that actually engages with the themes of the manhwa
- There is also HR Coleman's thesis DO NOT FEED THE FETISHIZERS: BOYS LOVE FANS RESISTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF PERCEIVED REPUTATION where she interviews 36 BL fans and actually breaks down why fetishization has become such a huge talking point in the fandom discourse. Spoilers, it's mostly about young queer people and women being worried that they will get judged and pathologized for their interest in anything sexual.
-Great podcast about Danmei and censorship with Liang Ge
thinking about the... potential clawthorne woodcarving mentorship.
+ bonus cuz also thinking abt how if hunter ever met dell's palisman and got reminded of flapjack, he'd probably feel bad abt making that association cuz he knows what it's like to be seen only as someone's different version (even though the bird wouldn't mind much so lol)
hi :) TL:DR please stop posting mcyt content in the #minecraft and the #mineblr tags.
long explanation under the cut
#minecraft and #mineblr are for minecraft content. this is anything from modded, to builds, to OCs, to art. it's about the game at its core.
if you post about minecraft content creation, please do not post in these tags. please. you have your own selection of tags to post in — mcyt i believe is an umbrella category for all minecraft content creation, and sub tags, like creator names and actual SMPs exist also.
they are, at the end of the day, two different fandoms with different sub-fandoms, and mcyt is bigger and louder and (sorry) more annoying. if you're a twitter/reddit refugee and genuinely didn't know this, fair! please just cut the tags out. if you just don't care about it and want more reach you're a dick, and if it's something you've forgotten about then please start doing it again <3
i realise it's maybe hypocritical of me to put this in your tags btw but it's you guys i'm talking to. so.
this is what drove me and many other people out of mineblr and y'know. it's got to the point where minecraft is no longer an umbrella tag, but a completely different fandom, and i'd appreciate if people would treat it as such!
and then there's the even deeper rabbit hole of the fact that some mcyt content is. eh. uncomfortable. and there's people who post shipping content in mcyt and you guys get annoyed! because it's completely different content! and it's the same thing here — we don't care about mcyt because it's not relevant.
keep them separate, please. and if you're posting to minecraft because it's a big tag with more exposure then your brain has been fried by twitter and you sound insufferable
Rex would like a refund on his ARCs. Or a nap. Either is fine.
Just imagine for the second one that Rex is on an official holo call or something XD
Help me get back into sketching through some of these polyam/platonic pose prompts :3 (I'm still slowly doing these, they help powering through this little artistic crisis I'm suffering rn)