#sometimes we forget that people exist in bigger fandoms that actually have fic reading habits like this

[mantisgodsdomain]

Apparently there's a fic reading challenge thing this year, but after doing a quick skim of the goals... we don't think we'll be touching it with a ten-foot stick. Some of these goals put a VERY bad taste in our mouth. The idea of a "diversity checklist" isn't supposed to be... literal, we don't think? No? We're remembering that one quote about "listening to people of color being like eating your vegetables for white activists" and we're feeling like it may actually have been understating whatever the hell is going on here.

#we speak #also really funny to be seeing shit like “read fic from a fandom with under 250 works”. buddy we're WRITING for one of those #but also like. “read a fic where the main character is BIPOC”. “read a fic where the main character is neurodivergent" #“read a fic that passes the bechdel test”. #like we get the INTENT we guess but we're not in the target audience AT ALL #and a whole fuckin lot of the goals here are very romance focused up against us a guy who deliberately filters out ships #we're also really concerned that “passes the bechdel test” is a bar for fic but also we know The Scene here #and “passing the mako mori test”. is indeed a difficult one to find in a lot of fandoms #as someone who tends to like female characters we notice this. A Fucking Lot #we are so insanely picky with fic bc even with ao3's tagging system we need to slog through dozens of fics to find one good one #and a lot of the time we. REALLY don't have the patience for fic that doesn't have decent depictions for the gals #you have no clue how much zel da fic especially we drop for being Really Fucking Weird About Gender (in a bad way) #sometimes we forget that people exist in bigger fandoms that actually have fic reading habits like this #we feel like we're in another dimension. what do you mean you guys live like this #also what. does “deals heavily (and healthily) with a mental illness” mean. you guys arent just reading this to eat ur vegetables right? #...right??? #anyways reading through things like “read fics with all the major LGBTQIA2 identities” is giving us hives #if you read our fic then we beg of you read it because it sounds like it has a nice plot not just like. because Some Guy is ace or intersex #please. gender identity should NOT be that much of a priority. read through and flag on the weird gender shit and go “oh thats queer!” #or “oh thats like me” or “oh (whatever)” but please. there are so many things here more relevant than shit like sexuality. #we need to go read through our fics and make sure we dont have any overly modern lingo in there #if you want to know about a characters sexuality or gender identity figure it out yourself from. fuck we dont know. psychic beams. #though we rationally know the reason that things in modern queer spaces are so often Like This its still poison to our brain #and we want nothing to do with it #negative chatter