[ SECRET POST #6336 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6336 ⌋

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


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03.
[DND, LOTR, Nope, The Thrilling Adventure Hour]



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05.
[Erma]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 39 secrets from Secret Submission Post #906.
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.

Comments

[fscom]

04. https://i.imgur.com/mKpzBKm.png

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, but both of those things were, at their core, things made by cishet men for cishet men. The massive female fanbase that happens to have sprung up around them is not, in fact, the target demographic for CRPGs. No matter what said female fanbase, or the "go woke go broke" gamerbro contingent, may believe.

[(Anonymous)]

Wasn't the story lead for the first three Dragon Age games a gay man?

[feotakahari]

Actual Dragon Age ad: “Lust, violence, betrayal. Dragon Age: Origins. Rated M for Mature.” Not even a mention of the genre.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I think it'd be more accurate to say the toxicity OP worries about is in "fandoms that think the work is actually trying to be progressive".

[(Anonymous)]

BG3 was absolutely not made for cishet men, lmao.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, David Gaider did famously tell a self-identified straight male gamer complaining about Dragon Age 2 not pandering to him that "The romances in the game are not for 'the straight male gamer'. They're for everyone." which in 2011 was quite a big deal.

[(Anonymous)]

Is this about Astarion's "canon" sexuality? Because I have seen some shit takes about that, lemme tell you.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Astarion's sexuality discourse wasn't actually one of the things on my mind when I made the secret, but sure, add that one to the list.

[(Anonymous)]

I... slightly agree in that I think sometimes fandoms for media by queer creators and women have higher standards, and these can be unreasonable/unfair. I've definitely seen situations where the same fans who give a mistake a pass in a story by a guy suddenly take it as a big deal in a story by a woman. I feel the way you've summarized it here doesn't really explain why that is though and blames the entire thing on progressive/queer/female-leaning fandoms existing... I also agree with the reply saying DA is a bit of a strange example.

[(Anonymous)]

I do think that people apply higher standards to media that's not by and for white cishet men.

But like... I think OP is doing that too: they're almost certainly ignoring loads of awful, insane, toxic discourse in all of the fandoms that are by and for dudebros. Like, come on, do we really believe that it's plausible to say that dudebro video game fandoms aren't full of some of the most insane and evil behavior of any fandoms known to human beings? That doesn't pass the sniff test. OP is just ignoring all of that, presumably because it's not being carried out by the people they hang out with online.

[feotakahari]

I hear the Fallout fandom is pretty bad, and I’ve seen vague but alarming things from the Halo fandom.

[(Anonymous)]

ayrt

Yeah, I feel similar. I have fandoms that skew both ways and both have their toxic sides (and I found the DA example strange because there is a "cishet guy" part of the fandom with their own community dramas). What you said in your reply is kinda what I was trying to get at in my comment, white cishet guy media or fandoms are not better, or free of drama, even if the particular types of drama can be different. And as far as double standards go, I see them in this secret too.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think it passes the sniff test to say that fandom bullshit is evil.

Go outside, ffs.

[(Anonymous)]

This is such a dangerous way of thinking, and a literal right wing tactic, even if you don't mean it that way: claiming that there are certain places where evil just cannot exist because they're not serious enough, and to call anything evil in those places is to show yourself as an oversensitive snowflake (even if you couch it in leftist phrases like "go outside" and "touch grass.") There are literal Nazis in fandom who are extremely open about being literal Nazis! It's not even rare. And even in "leftist" fandom, threatening murder and suicide baiting has become semi-normalised and has been successful. How is that not evil? What is your definition of evil if it excludes murder and Naziism?

[(Anonymous)]

Fandom bullshit isn't evil, but there's evil bullshit in fandom.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps I didn’t express myself as well as I could have. I don’t mean to claim the dudebros don't have terrible opinions, quite the opposite. When they feel like the canon is pandering to them, they’re going to be really shitty about anything that anyone they perceive as "woke". The progressive side then makes their own spaces, and I guess since we have a real enemy in the fandom, it’s less common to turn on each other by debating which adult characters are "minor-coded" or whether putting sexy clothes on a video game character constitutes as abuse.

tl;dr: dudebros are easier to avoid than leftist infighting.

[(Anonymous)]

Pretty confident this is a terrible opinion

[nanslice]

idk, I'm in Warhammer 40k fandom and BG3 fandom has been a breath of fresh air, lol. Like, I know it sucks, I know there are shitty takes everywhere, but the shitty takes in BG3 are very different from the shitty takes in WH.

[(Anonymous)]

Could it be that you're just not seeing the shitty things cishet men are saying? Because as someone who's been in some dude-mostly online fanbases, hoooooo boooooooooy are they not fun to be around en-masse. Much like women-mostly fandom I always have to curate my online spaces but instead of avoiding toxic inter-personal(or headcanon fights) insanity I'm having to avoid alt-right bullshit 90% of the time.

Both are bad in their own ways mind you, but it's not better when it's men being shit.

[(Anonymous)]

+1, I'm in superhero comics fandom. You can easily avoid the majority of the dudebros to the point that it feels like a bunch of different fandoms about the same thing. But they are there and they are part of the fandom and they definitely influence it.

[(Anonymous)]

I know nothing about Dragon Age but I feel like what you're saying is just real life applied to fandom. If you have two similar tv shows/musicians/athletes/organizations/whatever and one is trying to be inclusive or an ally or something, and the other isn't, the one who will get more sh*t from the people who want inclusion is the one who is trying. The second they are not inclusive enough, they are attacked because the expectations are higher. It's not fair or right but it is how it is.

[(Anonymous)]

+100000

I wish this weren't true, but in my experience it is absolutely the case.

[(Anonymous)]

Sadly, things made by cishet men that do try to be progressive and get leftist fanbases are also more easily forgiven when they're not perfect than things by women and LGBTQ people. Avatar and Legend of Korra (cishet male creators) get their criticisms and sometimes vitriol, but it's nothing compared to Steven Universe (nonbinary creator who identified as female when the show began). It's especially apparent in the way fans talk about and interact with the creators themselves.

[(Anonymous)]

You ever wonder why it is that it tends to be women who've been treated like shit that start identifying as nonbinary? Like, I've never seen a woman who's been treated well suddenly go nonbinary; it's only women whose womanhood has caused them pain.