Hidden Fanboy

Average college student that leads a not so secret double life as a shipper. This is my multi-fandom blog that I made because IRL people cannot be trusted.

[tygermama]

every time I see more of the ‘ao3 is evil’ crap circulating I think, ‘well, tumblr is evil too and I don’t see you stop using it’

[madmaudlingoes]

You know, the more I think about this, the more I think the real complaint isn’t that AO3 hosts “evil” content, it’s that it doesn’t allow harassment/dogpiling of “evil” creators as easily as Tumblr. Abuse won’t remove or even re-tag a work except in a handful of very specific cases, but they will suspend or ban users for harassment, including filing repeated unfounded Abuse reports. Authors also have at least some ability to screen/block comments on works, and there’s no direct messaging system outside of commenting on works through which to pursue harassment. You can follow a creator but you can’t block them (much less encourage others to do the same). Tumblr, by contrast, generally ignores any abuse report that doesn’t involve the DMCA, and aggressive anons can and have driven bloggers off the site entirely. The fact that the same tactics are used by social justice bloggers and neo-Nazis (for instance) doesn’t matter – they’re the affordances of the site, by accident or design, and an entire fannish generation have gotten very used to performing their fannish (and moral) identity in this fashion. (I thinks it’s relevant that AO3 was designed by fandom’s LJ generation and in some respect mirrors the affordances of LJ circa 2010. Tumblr is a very different site and that, moreso than age differences, seems to be at the root of this – though of course age intersect with site experience in a non-trivial way.)

[fluffmugger]

ding ding ding ding.

Ao3 requires you to police your own consumption of content.  Ao3 won’t let you destroy someone’s online presence simply because you don’t like it.   Ao3 won’t let you impose your own morality on other without cause. If you have issues with this, and the fact that Ao3 requires you to have responsibility and agency,  then you seriously need to sit down and have a damned good long hard look at yourself.

[hiddenlacuna]

The question I usually fail to see being answered when people bitch about the content on AO3 is - so who gets to decide?

You? Me? A committee of my friends? Of yours? Of those who have the most kudos? Of those who have no interest in fandom, but want to protect other people from dangerous content, whatever it may be? Who gets that power, and how long will they have it?

Who are you comfortable with giving the power of regulating all the content? What happens in grey areas? What happens when something you like isn’t liked by the Decider? Is there an appeal? Who gets to make the arguments for and against something?

The world is complex and there are no easy answers.

[vulgarweed]

The impossibility of creating a censorship board that curates based on content is a great reason why those things don’t exist, and shouldn’t.

Certain people are screaming that AO3 is bad because it’s not a “safe space.” The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space - for writers. And it does a pretty good job of that. It was designed to be a place where writers are safe from arbitrary content rule changes, random and unwarned deletions, and abuse-report abuse (which is common on ff.net). The Four Big Warnings + CNTW system is beautiful in its fairness and simplicity.

Antis can’t take control of it. And because control-freakdom is at the heart of their “movement,” this drives them into frenzies. Good. It motivated me to dig a little deeper into my pocket to donate on the last drive. For all the pleasure AO3 has given me over the years, that’s money well spent.

[robb-greyjoy-deactivated2019082]

The real problem they have, though, is that AO3 was created to be a safe space - for writers. 

[rocket-sith]

Preach it loud and hard!

I’m a member of the LJ generation, and when I first came to Tumblr (grudgingly and out of desperation, I might add, since it tragically seems to be the only place to really connect with other fandom peeps) I was horrified at how people here had established this sort of fucked up bully culture, where nobody is responsible for monitoring their own consumption, and rather they expect everyone else to custom tailor content to the whims and desires of the Shrieking Banshee Masses. And woe be to the person who doesn’t bend and break! “I’m going to bully you while accusing you and your Big Mean Poopie Content of being the actual bully, so I can hopefully distract you and others from realizing I’m being a royal intrusive asshat who failed Astronomy 101 b/c I clearly believe the world revolves around me.”

The irony here is that this in itself is an abuse tactic - victim blaming with a side of gaslighting. Pot, meet kettle.

And it’s the exact same mentality that drives right-wing lunatics to kick up a fuss about the existence of icky cootie gay people in media because we need to “protect family values”, or who take to screeching at Starbucks because their particular religious symbolism isn’t portrayed on the winter holiday cups and OMG WAR ON CHRISTMAS, STARBUCKS STOP OPPRESSING ME BY NOT CATERING TO MY PERSONAL TASTE.

The mentality is one and the same - “Cater to ME ME ME or FACE MY DIVINE WRATH even if it means taking away other people’s freedom!” while hiding behind a flimsy-ass shield of faux righteous anger.  

And when these bozos find an environment or situation where they’re unable or not allowed to bully people into silence and submission, they stomp their feet and pitch a tantrum and claim that they’re the ones being oppressed. Identical shit, different pile, and it’s the exact same infantile, schoolyard rubbish no matter which side it’s coming from.

[kaciart]

This was a really interesting read. The last poster in particular but all of it.

[eye-of-orion]

I see a lot of posts going around talking about the need to be critical of fanfic, and how we gotta watch out for the messages we’re sending

Well, here’s one thing I’m gonna need us to be critical about:

Every statistic I’ve ever seen says fanfic authors are heavily female (or nb)

And Tumblr, which is a fairly US-centric cross-section of fandom, is filled with this discourse about fanfic writers who create pornography

I need us to stop and think about why we’ve decided that fictional sex is the most damaging thing anyone could ever find on the internet

I need us to think about the culture we live in, which encourages us to be sexually available (to straight men) but punishes us if we (sluts) enjoy it

Because here’s the thing: fanfic is not coming from a position of power and prestige in our society

It is a niche genre primarily written by women, for women, for free

And it is a place where many of us do find power in exploring our own sexuality (or asexuality)

Even when that exploration takes us to gritty, horrifying (or cathartic) places

I’m going to need us to think long and hard about why we’re prioritizing fictional characters over the needs of real women

And I’m going to need it to stop

[lucymonster]

Fandom purity wank is absolutely about control over women and women’s sexuality. There’s nothing ambiguous about it.

Just think about the hot-button issues in the fannish community, the topics that consistently and reliably get people worked up into a lather, the themes that provoke the nastiest conflicts and inspire the most dedicated resistance movements. Think about the fights that are most likely to spill out over their cyber boundaries and start affecting people in the real world - in public harassment at cons, in doxxing and ‘outing’ to family and employers, in malicious legal allegations.

It’s about sex. It’s always about sex. 

From the constant tantrums over ‘problematic’ shipping to the righteous doxxing of ‘pedophiles’ (which in current tumblr parlance means anyone who draws or writes canonically underage characters in romantic or erotic scenarios), fandom’s big efforts at moral reform always seem to revolve around restricting and controlling the sexual expression of the majority-women community. You won’t meet many people who stay up past their bedtime to scream at strangers on the internet about unethical portrayals of non-sexual violence - unless, of course, they suspect the women involved in its creation are getting off on it. You’ll struggle to find an anti blog dedicated to the insidious social ills of torture whump fic, or goopy hurt-comfort where all manner of human suffering is put on display for the viewer’s enjoyment. The purity crew dress up their agenda as a desire for collective self-improvement and raised moral standards, but they don’t seem too worried about aspects of public morality that don’t somehow tie back into sex. What they’re upset about is the same thing conservative minds have been upset about since basically the dawn of time - there are women out there in the world doing icky sex things without the permission of their communities.

And these people, these moral guardians, they’ve gotten really good at couching their fundamentalist views in progressive language. They don’t say ‘you’re to blame if you provoke men to rape’ - they say ‘your fic normalises sexual violence and contributes to rape culture’. They don’t say ‘women ought to be chaste’ - they say ‘your fantasies are socially harmful and you owe it to the world to be more self-critical’. The messages are the same and the desired outcomes are literally identical.

The core assumption underlying all of it - an assumption that I’m sure our puritan forebears would find deeply comforting - is that women’s sexual expression is a matter of public concern, and that women are directly responsible for upholding the moral standards of their communities by restricting themselves to a narrow repertoire of publicly controlled, socially condoned sexual outlets. Anything beyond that repertoire is a grave moral breach.

To anyone who’s reading this - and there’s always a few - thinking, “this is just deflection! [X hot-button topic] is really bad and harmful!’, I’d like to encourage you to sit back for just a moment and think about why it is, exactly, that you feel the best and most important place to wage your war against moral corruption is in one of the only pockets of popular media that women unequivocally control. Of all the spaces in the world where you could be fighting for your view of a better society, you’ve chosen a place where women come together to share the fantasies that mainstream culture refuses to let them indulge. Why?

[hddnfnby]

The parts with Kaneki and Arima this chapter could probably be one of the most emotionally beautiful ones of the whole series. It was sad, it was so so very sad, but the tone, the way we learn of Arima’s true feelings towards Kaneki, and the way the panels were drawn. everything just felt so sad and hopeful. 

That wiping off the black in the checkered board, it feels so much like a fresh start.

[coromoor]

The checkboard that has always occupied Kaneki’s inner mind has been wiped clean. This is such a beautiful panel

[hddnfnby]

All this fighting between the Pokemon Go teams is making me want to watch Pokemon 2000 the Movie

[ladymoonstache-deactivated20170]

“I’m glad I got to see you, Rei!”

[hddnfnby]

When life is screwing you so hard, but you still need to look fabulous...

[abessinier]

Stuff kids on tumblr better relearn

1. You are responsible for your own media experience. 

2. There is such a thing as a healthy level of avoidance towards topics that make you feel unwell or even (in a real-life clinical definition of the term) trigger you - but you are the one to actively take care of what you view.

3. Avoiding does not mean policing others.

4. You have no right to tell artists to censor themselves - you may criticize what others do, you may dislike it, that’s fine - but actively asking for censorship when you could easily unfollow or block a person just makes you look incompetent in your use of the internet.

5. Do not give people on tumblr or /any/ website the responsibility for your emotional well-being. Because these people do not even know you so no, you have no right to ask them to take care of you.

[hddnfnby]

I’ve always had a headcanon that Mutsuki has South Asian/Indian ancestry or parentage, and now in the latest chapter we see him wearing what looks like Indian clothes and shoes (during the panel with the cats, *creys*). I’m not sure tho, maybe someone can confirm this? Like, the clothes and shoes looking Indian/South Asian?

[ohfreckle]

Lol if u were around back innthe old days of trek slash u have to be old as dirt, what are u still doing here writing fanfiction, get a life.

So what, are you planning on becoming a boring old fart with no hobbies or interests? Without us “old people” you wouldn’t even know what fanfiction is. 

[thorvaenn]

hoooooly balls

no offence to young talents (and i use this word for a reason - young writers might surely have talent, but not experience) but i’d like to see anon enjoy a fandom where all the fic was produced strictly by 15 yr olds

and the irony of this being a reaction to a post/piece of history that clearly shows who are the people that kickstarted fandom as we know it today.. wow

[teaberryblue]

Okay wow.  

I think a lot of younger fans have no idea what fandom was like before the internet.  Sure, you probably hear stories, and not to make “I walked fifteen miles both ways uphill to read my fanfic and I LIKED IT” sort of statements, but y’all realize that if it weren’t for the people who had come before, fandom wouldn’t be here, not in the incarnation it is now, not something that belongs to and is created by fans who exercise a fair amount of freedom to remix and re-imagine and rebuild the worlds we love, right?

When you talk to older fans, you’re most often talking to women who might have been the only woman in the fan spaces they had access to, who traveled to conventions or found ways to exchange letters in the regular mail with other fans.  You’re talking to people who had to bring their fic to the copy shop and print it out and mail it, who risked printers refusing to print it, who risked things getting damaged or destroyed. 

You’re talking about people who fought to get their slashfic printed.  Actually fought, had shouting matches, received threats, had manuscripts destroyed in malice, because it wasn’t acceptable then, in so many ways. 

You’re talking to people who, when the internet was still in its primordial state, risked C&D letters from companies and creators who tried to protect their copyrights with the most iron of fists, who saw every fan creation as an assault.

Again, you’re talking to people who fought, who moved from web host to web host as the people hosting their servers were threatened with lawsuits.  

These are things that happened, and, what, you’re saying the people who lived and fought to make fandom what it is today, to make it a space where people can talk about and write and draw more or less anything they want and find other people who want it to didn’t live their lives valuably?

They gave you this.  They fought sexism and homophobia and draconian ideas about rights.  They traveled miles and spent their own money for this.  

I’m not yet an Old Fan, but I’m not a Young Fan either, and I’m so fucking grateful to every fan who came before me for creating the place where I can do the things I love and be myself and where my experiences in fandom are respected by my colleagues and the people I care about.

These are the people you should be asking to tell you all about their lives, to share their experiences; these are the people you should be learning from and absorbing as much as you can from if they’re generous enough to share.  These are the people who can give us hope that even though we’re still fighting a lot of things, like companies who’ve now realized our value trying to capitalize unfairly on the work of fan artists, like continued sexist and anti-queer attitudes prevail and how they reflect on people’s attitudes toward fanwork and its value.   If you’re telling someone to get a life, if you don’t think a life in and of fandom is valuable, you’ve fallen for those lies; you’re discounting not only their value, but your own value as a fan.  

Don’t let them do that.  

[dduane]

AS OLD AS DIRT AND PROUD OF IT.

[shadowmaat]

Imagine if you had to give up all fandom things at 22. No watching nerdy shows or movies, no reading SF&F, no writing fics or making fanart or browsing through it on the internet. Cash in or throw out all your toys, your merch, your Batman bedsheets and wookiee feet slippers. No nerdy t-shirts. Nothing. Delete soundtracks off your ipod. Get rid of that personally autgraphed pic of Leonard Nimoy that you stood in line for two hours to get. You’re over the age of 22 then you need to grow the hell up and get a life.

What a sad, pathetic, empty life that would be if you were forced to give up the things you love because you were deemed “too old.” And what a sad, pathetic, bitter little jerk you’d have to be to try and someone else what they are and aren’t allowed to like based on something as arbitrary as physical age.

If some of us are “too old,” some of you still need to grow the hell up.

[out-there-on-the-maroon]

Kind of a sidenote but who the hell would write for tv shows anymore, btw? 

Like the entire way you get a job writing for tv is by writing formatted fanfic, called a “spec script.” And there are few people under the age of 28 getting those jobs. 

Not to mention everyone directing, writing, producing, designing, and acting in franchises these days. Used to be they kept longtime fans out of that process, now it’s the norm to get a longtime fan to be in charge of a franchise reboot. 

Weird how men are often given a free pass to still enjoy the things they liked as kids, but women are urged to give up all their geek interests, and indeed their careers, to “grow up” and become mothers. Geeky adult men can make their passions a career, but apparently geeky adult women are “too old” to enjoy the things they love and need to “grow up.”

Fuck that noise. 

[ivyblossom]

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. 

What it looks like to me is a very traditional, rigid, and frankly misogynist construction of female adulthood, policed with scorn by young, fannish women. 

Lots of heterosexual men are dedicated sports fans. Fantasy football, casual hockey leagues, superbowl parties, a beer at the ball game, courtside seats. For some reason, no one accuses successful, middle-aged men who enjoy sports events of not having a life. Why is that?

This fannish stuff is apparently fine when we’re teenaged girls, or even young women in our early 20s and still in school, but once we’re properly adults, our young fannish peers inform us that we need to “get a life.” What’s this life we’re supposed to get? Why do our creative, passionate, harmless hobbies have no place in it? Why is female adulthood so limiting, and why are young women the ones insisting it be so?

All I can hear when I see this criticism flung by young fans at adult fans is this: “You’re a grown up, that thing I’m soon to become! You’re supposed to be dedicating your life to housekeeping, gardening, baking, pleasing your husband sexually, and raising your children. How very dare you give any of your energy to fandom?”

On one hand, it angers me that young, fannish women work so hard at maintaining these ridiculous double standards. On the other, I’m genuinely sorry for them that they think they’re about to turn into June Cleaver and have no choice in the matter.

[lillabaloo]

Hate to break it to you young'ns - but there are plenty of people on here who don’t come to their fandom experience until they’re older. It can be the perfect safe, private space for all ages. And because being active in a fandom now is fundamentally creative, I can’t see how it needs to be something that is ‘grown out of’? What age should artists give up painting? 40? 50? How about musicians? Thank god David Bowie didn’t retire gracefully into old age and death. He left us his transcendent Blackstar - howling and rebelling, irreverent, disturbing and creative as ever….. What about Martin Freeman? Is he too mature to act any longer? God I hope not. I’d rather watch that sassy little fucker than some spotty faced teen any day - and dear lord if the man isn’t growing hotter by the year. Maturity is glorious! Complex, deep, challenging and far, far more interesting to read about. It’s such a relief to be at this end of life where the possibilities are boundless, where life experience makes people sexy and intellect holds currency. Mature fic writers are my absolute heroes and we owe them nothing but admiration and respect.

[greenjudy]

Welcome to the hilarious mirror universe where teenagers yell “get off my lawn” at the geezers who grew the lawn in the first place.

Why are you so prejudiced against older fans, guys? For all you know, your favorite fic could’ve been written by a 40+ librarian in Skokie. 

[equalistmako]

someone: I love how welcoming and nice and non-toxic this fandom is~

me, sipping hard liquor from a “World’s Best Grandma” coffee mug: lmao give it time

[hddnfnby]

You know what we really need? The original Quinx Squad and Haise watching a gory horror film for movie night, and Haise casually and cheerfully saying, “this movie’s making me hungry”. Cue everyone looking at him with horrified expressions. 

Bonus: “Maman, you’re scaring me”

[soyeahso]

There are a couple of things about current shipping culture that confuse me.  

1. The focus on whether or not a pairing will become canon as a reason people should ship something or not.  Do you not understand what the “transformative” part of “transformative works” means?”

2. This idea that saying “I ship that” means “I think that, as presented in canon,this is a perfect, healthy relationship that everyone should model their relationship after.” 

Sometimes shipping something does mean that.  Sometimes shipping something means “Person A is a trash bag who doesn’t deserve person B but I would love to explore how Person A might grow to deserve Person B.” Sometimes it means “I want these characters to live together forever in a conflict free domestic AU.”  Sometimes it means “I want Person A to forever pine after Person B.  Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.”  And sometimes it just means you like their faces and want to see Person A and Person B bone in various configurations and universes. 

[mominmudville]

Listen to your parents, kids.

[handypolymath]

This really should be one of a handful of Public Service Announcements randomly and chronically inserted into one’s dash.

[ladymoonstache-deactivated20170]

Ishida really is a genius when it comes to character development.

All of his characters are realistic and have complex personalities. They have good sides but they also have flaws. They have people they love and people they want to protect. But they also have people they resent, people they are jealous of. Sometimes they hurt others without intending to and do things without realizing what the consequences of their actions might be. But they are also capable of consciously commiting brutal and horrifying acts of violence. They make mistakes. Some take responsibility for their actions, others don’t. All of them are driven by different emotions. Some are fighting for the sake of love, some only care about themselves and their own selfish goals, and others are willing to risk their own lives for the sake of something bigger.  

The characters of Tokyo Ghoul live in a fucked up world but, of course, that doesn’t excuse their actions. Ishida does a very good job at portraying this – he does not hesitate to show us the ugliest sides of human/ghoul nature and how the struggle to survive might bring out the worst in an individual. But despite his story being filled with violence, he always presents everything so carefully and never glorifies the destructive behaviours of his characters.

Ishida shows us all of this through the eyes of Ken Kaneki – a completely ordinary person that loses everything not because he was ‘special‘ or ‘chosen by fate‘ but because of an accident. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person. And what’s worse – life hadn’t been easy on him even before his humanity – the last thing keeping him together – was stripped away from him. After that it all went downhill. Losing contact with his closest friend and being forced to ‘cast aside his weaknesses’ in order to become strong enough to fit in this world was all it took Kaneki to completely lose his sanity and along with it – his desire to live. He really is the unfortunate protagonist of a tragedy.

The world Ishida created is unfair to some and full of cruelty but it’s also very beautiful. His characters can’t simply be described as ‘good’ and ‘evil’. There’s more to them than meets the eye.

I’m genuinely impressed by how good Ishida’s writing is!

[hddnfnby]

That moment when you realize it isn’t the Clowns that managed to infiltrate every major organization in the TG world, it was Furuta who did. lol.

[hddnfnby]

I almost forgot how emotional watching Haikyuu!! makes me. T.T

[hddnfnby]

Wouldn’t it be just the most fucking perfect parallel if Hinami and Kaneki gets to where Ayato and Arima are fighting just in time to witness Ayato say his last words, “I lov-”, before Arima finishes him off.

HAHAHAHH WHY DO I DO THIS TO MYSELF????

[hddnfnby]

For real though, I have high hopes for Hinami making out of this arc alive. I mean relatively speaking, of course. After all, this is still Tokyo Ghoul; high hopes mean 0.000001 more than usual in this context, and by usual I mean mostly in the negatives.

Hinami has always been associated with clovers, four-leafed clovers to be exact, and we all know what that certain plant/flower means. I mean, just think about all of the sticky situations Hinami has found herself in and made it out of thanks to the help of other characters (though the same can’t be said about those other characters, *cough* Ryoko-san *cough*, thus why I’m 100% preparing for Ayato’s funeral any week now).