fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3255 ]

[ SECRET POST #3255 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3255 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Paul Walker, Fast and Furious movies]

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03.

[Inuyasha]

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04.

[Z Nation]

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05.

[Hugh Dancy (and Claire Danes)]

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06.

[Jessica Jones]

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07.

[The Oatmeal]

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08.

[Star Wars: The Old Republic]

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09.

[Harry Potter]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 020 secrets from Secret Submission Post #465.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Rant about whatever, fandom related or not.

And there is more drama in the Tumblr Tolkien fandom. In the past days two different people have made posts kink shaming, telling people what they aren't allowed to find hot, telling people that basically unless they say "this character is evil" every other sentence they are woobifying them, and telling people how to write ships (woobifying exists, but that is not it).

Thankfully, there has been some pushback. The first person actually flounced after they got negative responses. The second person hasn't responded to the responses. But I ended up making a really personal post that brought up stuff for me and now I'm just angry and frustrated. People just need to shut up and let people enjoy fandom the way they want.

Links?

Second post is here: http://daughteroferynlasgalen.tumblr.com/post/134410636109/more-psa-that-dub-con-and-non-con-fics-are

The first person deleted their entire journal, so all I have is a link to my responses to their post: http://dragonofmordor.tumblr.com/post/134371036692/my-this-blog-is-abandoned-dragonofmordor

Oh, I'd only seen the drama on the Bagginshield side of it all... Interesting how drama like this always comes in waves...

Re: Rant thread

philstar22 - 2015-12-03 01:17 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Rant thread

elaminator - 2015-12-03 01:50 (UTC) - Expand

I'm seeing a lot more 'ship shaming' lately in fandom in general. Even a year ago I didn't run into it that much; it's odd.

Frankly, there are some ships I absolutely loathe, but I just don't post about them. (Or visit the tags, or reply to posts, etc.)

I think it would've been fine for you to ignore the wank completely, but I understand wanting to have your say. Hopefully no one sends you any hate over this. (It so isn't worth it.)

Pretty much. This wasn't even ship shaming, though. This was "only ship this ship the way I want you to" and "only interpret this character the way I want you to."

I actually wasn't going to comment on that one, but then they were getting a lot of positive feedback. So I tried to post a rational argument without expressing the real anger I felt at it. That second post, though, my response to that was pretty angry and personal because I felt like they were actually judging rape victims for their coping mechanisms.

This was "only ship this ship the way I want you to" and "only interpret this character the way I want you to."

People like that don't even deserve a response, but again, I do understand why you would want to say your piece. That's a ridiculous reaction to this whole situation. If you don't like the way people write the ship and interpret the characters and dynamics then you shouldn't read it. Ordering people to not do this or that is only going to piss them off, it isn't going to change their mind. (And they shouldn't have to, if we're talking about something as simple as this.)

Ha, my post below does just that, oops!

But in my defense! What I'm talking about and what I can't stand is when some people defend tricky ambiguous relationships or characters by morally white-washing them into being pure sweetness and light. I'm ALL FOR enjoying gross and creepy things, and I think there's nothing wrong with being like, I enjoy this BECAUSE it's gross and creepy, and I have my owns reasons for doing so, and y'all can fuck right off thinking I condone that behavior or relationship in real life.

But dear GOD, do I cringe when people say they're fans of whatever gross and creepy thing, and then characterize it as lovely and wonderful, and ohh, that manipulative bastard is only doing what's he's doing out of looove. What kind of delusional fuckery...

And still, I don't say anything to them, because that would be petty and dumb. And funny because here I am with *this group* of people side-eyeing the fuck out of me for liking Creepy Thing X because it's creepy, while I'm side-eyeing the people who like Creepy Thing X because they think it's not creepy. The only way you can remain ~untainted~ is if you don't like Creepy Thing X, but..... the heart wants what it wants and has its reasons which Reason cannot know. You know? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Rant thread

philstar22 - 2015-12-03 06:13 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Rant thread

(Anonymous) - 2015-12-04 04:15 (UTC) - Expand

"telling people that basically unless they say "this character is evil" every other sentence they are woobifying them"

I just had a conversation about this with a former fandom friend.

I said I find that trend ridiculous and based just on thinking the worst of other people (because, really, just because someone doesn't say anything doesn't mean they aren't aware), but they keep insisting that it is really necessary and important for people to admit that their favorites were problematic every time those characters come up.

I gave up after a while.
I'm in fandom to have fun, not to follow specific rules on the right way to be fannish.

I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that most femslashing is done for SJ brownie points. Honestly, I'm beginning to suspect it isn't actually a widespread thing so much as an anti-SJW boogey(wo)man. I've been writing, reading, and shipping femslash since I first got into fandom over a decade ago, and I've never come across any f/f fic (or other fanworks, for that matter) that seemed to be made with that sort of thing in mind.

How would that even work? How do you know that a fic was written for brownie points? Every time I see people complaining about it, all I can imagine is something like this:

Jane and Sif gazed deeply into each other's eyes.

"I am tired of seeing women oppressed by the patriarchal norms that dominate society. Let us crush the patriarchy together," said Sif.

"Okay," said Jane. They took off their clothes and began to have non-heteronormative lesbian sex. Thor and Darcy walked into the room and saw them going at it.

"May we join your fun sexy antics?" Thor asked.

"Only Darcy," Jane said, removing her mouth from Sif’s genitalia. "No icky man-cooties allowed!"

"Hooray!" said Darcy. She ripped off her clothes and pounced on Jane and Sif, creating a feminist threesome of female empowerment.

Thor cried male tears.

...and I don't think anyone writes serious, non-parodic fic that's like this. Or do they? Is this a phenomenon that's confined to the stupider parts of tumblr, and that's why I don't see it?

IDGI.

LOL

I have to admit that this made me laugh, but I can sort of see where people are coming from.

If you go on AO3, hit the f/f tab, and sort by kudos, you're going to find that pretty much all the top fics are m/m slash fics that have a small femslash pairing tagged because it gets a few sentences of mention in a novel-length fic. From what I've seen, a lot of times this femslash pairing really does not need to be included, and I feel like the author is just doing it so they don't seem like they're demonizing the female characters or something.

In fact, this is such a problem that someone actually made a post showing people HOW to remove m/m and m/f fics when searching for purely femslash fics: http://mariannevibritannia.tumblr.com/post/101396459369/hey-ive-seen-some-people-complain-that-its-hard.

I definitely think a lot of women definitely do enjoy femslash or certain pairings wouldn't get the amount of art and fic they do, but I definitely feel like there are people who include f/f in their predominately m/m fics as a form of lip service.

Thanks so much for that link. I am so tired of looking for something and finding out that it is just a mention in one of the juggernaut pairing's fics. (I should have thought about trying that trick / search but never did.)

I'm not disagreeing, but I also don't know how relevant that is if you're talking about femslash fandom. If we're talking about femslash fandom, we should be talking about the fics that are just femslash.

It's true that there are m/m fics that include nominal femslash content. And it's true that those fics are much more popular than femslash fics - m/m is ridiculously, ridiculously more popular numerically than femslash, on ao3 and elsewhere in fandom.

But it seems really unfair to say that femslash fandoms only exist for brownie points, on the basis of things that people are doing in m/m fics. That seems really fucking backwards.

god i hate that. it makes it so hard to find my femslash pairing in their own story.

i try the removing the m/m pairing form the sorting but it doesn't always work right. drives me bonkers.

Re: "Brownie points" femslash.

(Anonymous) - 2015-12-03 03:28 (UTC) - Expand

idk if it's for brownie points, i always saw this more as the default "everyone must be paired off" with a side of "all the men are in m/m so by default the token female characters get shipped together as f/f to tie it all up nice and neat".

Definitely lipservice, but not intentionally for brownie points...although i do wish people wouldn't tag side character ships in AO3, filtering through is so annoying.

Well, I think when people are talking about this tendency they're more referring to how people act on their blogs and whatnot. I've seen a lot of people over the years who'll list a bunch of f/f ships in their favorite pairings or bring up f/f pairings in the tags of general fandom posts or whatever, but when it comes to actually posting or creating fanworks for those pairings they're instead exclusively about the white cock.

"Oooh I love Isabela/Merrill they're my fav DA pair!" *blogs exclusively Handers*

I've also definitely seen fics where I felt that the f/f pairing was thrown in as a conveniently sj-approved way of getting icky wominz away from the main slash ship, or fics where it seemed that the author was really REALLY trying to show how progressive they were.

Well, for the sake of those who genuinely like f/f, can you please stop? Because when people are shitting on f/f, they don't really do so in a way that makes the kind of distinction that you make here.

DA

(Anonymous) - 2015-12-03 03:46 (UTC) - Expand

Re: DA

(Anonymous) - 2015-12-03 03:47 (UTC) - Expand

I think it's usually a combination of fans actually liking the pairings, but also being so pleased with themselves for having this "progressive" taste that it shows in the way they talk about it and tag their fics/art. It's not that they're doing it just for brownie points, but they're using their interest in order to get brownie points.

Goddammit ordinatuer. Stop making me have to hibernate you all the time.

Look I agree that the people saying that "being ANY WEIGHT is totally healthy and has no issues" is obnoxious and incorrect and then shaming other people is hypocritical (like the cartoon linked above)

But the people who mock anyone who isn't skinny as "lol fatties/hamplanets" and go out of their way to be dicks to anyone they think is fat and remind them that they're disgusting or whatever are equally as obnoxious. They're not helping anything only adding to people's defensiveness. Antagonizing people and outright bullying them to get them to listen to you does not work.

That's just it. You're making the problem worse by bullying and harassing people and giving them reason to see you as being against them.

Yea, I'm firmly in the 'your body is your business and I'm going to treat you like everybody else' camp.

(I don't feel comfortable mocking anyone for their appearance, fat or otherwise, because I find it cruel and immature.)

I hate it when there's some sort of rift in a fandom, say, A vs. B. A is the more popular stance and B is pretty uncommon, and I'm on the B side....and the few other people also on the B side like B for really stupid or spurious reasons.

For example, I'm on the fringes of a fandom in which (apparently) the vast majority of fans really dislikes Character A, who's morally grey. I love Character A because he's morally grey, but the most vocal pro-A fans write long essays in his defense, and they are all about how wonderful and good he is, and he's so well-meaning, etc. Like, NO. No, he isn't, and that's the WHOLE POINT GODDAMMIT, quit writing all this shamefully naive bullshit that only makes the anti-A contingent think we're fucking idiots.

But you can't very well say, "Hey, please stop liking what I like for the wrong reasons," so derp.

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