Do you know why people put '!' At the end of their au name?
For example like 'Merfolk! AU'
I like the enthusiasm if thats the purpose, but if not, why do some people do it?
it's not necessarily about the enthusiasm. the exclamation mark (sometimes referred to as the "bang" in fandom space) is basically to let people know that this is an AU / a specific version of the character.
since saying "this is an AU where Character is xyz" can be a bit too long, people just sort of came up with a shorter way to say "this is an AU". and that shorter way in question is by adding "!" after the AU's name.
like Vampire! Character A — assuming Character A is not a vampire in canon and this is an AU where Character A is a vampire. instead of saying "AU where Character A is a vampire", people just say "Vampire! Character A", and it can be understood that it means "this is an AU where Character A is a vampire".
good day! i know this has been asked a million times but what does proship actually mean? i keep confusing it with darkship 😭 im so sorry for asking this 🥹
I have answered this on my other blog here
❝ proship / proshippers = people who believe anyone can enjoy/consume fiction however they want, even if it’s about topics that are taboo, even if it’s topics they are uncomfortable with (they can just mute, block, filter out, not consume things about said topics), as long as no one in real life gets hurt (the point of fiction is that no one in real life gets hurt, so it’s already self-explanatory), so they are against harassment and censorship. ❞
darkship = ships that are taboo/problematic.
so proship =/= darkship. but people who consider themselves proship believe it's still wrong to harass or shame anybody who enjoys darkship. because at the end of the day, it's fiction.
Got strain brained from writing so I'll rest it by... ranting making educational posts for the young souls and the old souls that are also unaware of the not so new terms in fandom, which are misused abundantly.
I got back on Tumblr, Twitter and Fandom spaces in general after almost a decade, just to be faced with the following terms:
antishipping / proshipping.
I had no idea what those terms meant, but by only looking around and catching some hints, I understood (wrongly) that proshipping stood for 'problematic shipping', and I've seen a lot of people explaining it as exactly that, no further elaboration, done.
Previously I thought it meant professional shipping, which made as much sense to me as it makes to you, don't judge ok.
So I asked a friend who has been around fandom spaces for longer periods about it, and they kindly explained to me that the term is not actually meant as problematic shipping.
It is pro-ship as in "pro all ships."
In a sense of you being able to ship whatever you want, and you're not a bad person for shipping the fictional characters, much like like how being "pro-choice" means believing everyone has the right to safe abortions if they want to, not that they are in favor of problematic choices like, wtf.
Antishipping, however, means being against whatever that individual anti deems a problematic ship, and thinking that other people should also oppose it, as well as generally being in favor of censoring "problematic" content in fanfic. So they wrapped the original meaning to mean problematic shipping when that's not really what pro ship people mean when they say they're pro-ship.
You can be a proshipper and only ship the most basic, normal, vanilla, fluff things ever. It only means you won't go after other people who ship couples that you don't.
You see?
And instead of asking about it on tumblr or twitter, where a lot of people are being awful at explaining, and doing it oh so wrong, if you google it you find the actual origin and meaning of the terms.
Even the google AI, the damn gemini who sucks, got the term explanation right.
So, spreading misinformation is really a choice nowadays, as is being ignorant.
This also borders the subject of anime characters being minors, and it splashes in the selfshipping/yumeshipping area as well.
It seems to be a recurring theme in every single fandom space, that when you, — a person, a human being, flesh and bone, soul trapped in the mortal shell that you are — grow up and age, you can't ship yourself with the character you used to ship yourself with as a minor, because — shockingly — the character does not grow up with you, since it is a drawing, a bundle of words, a concept of your imagination, an amount of pixels, an amalgamation of the author's wildest fetishes, etc.
So, the moment you hit your eighteens you can no longer draw yourself, imagine yourself, ship yourself with that character.
"They are fifteen, they are minors." "It is immoral. It is criminal. It is unholy. It is problematic."
Right? So, this is the background I can provide you if you have never in your life opened twitter, tumblr or TikTok to stumble upon some of these fandom discourses and miss concepts.
And these are a few of the things going on and on and on, and of course I blocked the whole names, handlers, everything ffs it's the bare minimum, I cannot care less about the individuals here, I'm talking about the main thing.
This is, to the date, one of the biggest not-issue I've ever seen in the whole fandom aspect.
Dearest, and I will hold your hands as I tell you this, my sweet, sweet darling, you do not need to feel guilty about liking the PNG.
"But she is 70 years old and she likes this character that is depicted as being 14 years old!"
Baby. Sugar. My summertime sadness.
Look at me.
this, right here, is Jotaro Kujo. This, this man, this tall, large, broad shouldered man. This bricked motherfucker. This character that can be YOUR dad, is a minor.
And this other character here is ALSO a minor. Shiryu. And all the other damn saint seiyas or whatever the hell they are. Saori is a minor AS WELL.
So I ask you now:
Do they look like minors to you?
They do not, you can try and twist it as you may, but they do not look like children nor teenagers.
They also do not ACT, think or are portrayed as such — they act like damn adults, young adults on their 20s to say the least.
You are not being a terrible person for being attracted to these characters. (this is the paragraph you come back to if you don't understand why it's okay to ship fictional characters)
You are attracted to them because of their design, their physique, their background/history, their personality.
You are not attracted to them because they are said to be a fucking minor.
Can you see the difference? Can you understand such a complex concept? Can you wrap your head around it?
So go ahead and keep shipping yourself with that twink, with that BNHA buff shredded character, with JJK long lean annoying character and whatnot.
I promise you they won't be disgusted at you, and I say with confidence that this is because they do not exist, so they are not capable of being hurt, nor feeling anything.
That's the beauty of it, isn't it.
The beauty of fanfiction, fanart, fandom.
Fiction.
You can enjoy things.
You can also enjoy seeing the twinkatron that looks like he's 25 but is said to be 17 making out with the 600 years old gay ass bara.
You can ship the character that is 40yo with the other character that looks like he is 26yo but the author swears he is 17yo.
⚠️If you don't really get why, go back a few paragraphs and rewind, it's explained right up there.
You won't be sent to jail for that.
And you won't be deemed inferior, filthier or a predator because you enjoy such things with the fictional gay little dolls.
And, newsflash, there is no space for prudes and bullies and conservatives nor antis on fandom spaces.
Oh but I don't think it's right for people to like a character because they're adults and the character is not.
Get fucked.
Try and use that smooth brain of yours to think that the world does not, in fact, revolve around you and your opinions.
I'm giving you the small mercy of explaining the obvious thing that fiction is not reality and vice versa.
Why would you feel entitled to harass someone because you, dumbass, think they shouldn't be able to enjoy their comfort PNG?
Fandom is dying because of you and yours.
There is no crime being committed and no correlation with real life, you dense motherfucker.
You all sound like the satanic-panic people from the 90's big media telling parents that Yu-Gi-Oh, Dungeons and Dragons, Pokémon and Digimon are things that are used to worship the Devil and that they will make your children become satanists.
That's how dumb you sound when you try and forbid someone to enjoy a character kissing other character or even their fictional persona.
Like, damn, go find something real to worry about.
You're worried about predators on the internet?
Or are you worried because your online friend is liking that fictional anime couple you deem PROBLEMATIC?
So you really need to go after the real issue and act on it.
Log off twitter and tumblr and go research institutions that actively combat predatorial behavior online and offline, or that helps SA survivors perhaps, it's way better and way more effective than being some entitled moron that tries their best to rip off the little comfort some people find in their silly png dolls and harass them out of a fandom.
Or are you just doing this shit because you, little star, don't like when other people like different things?
Let me grab another spectrum of this for you, because I know people act and speak with malicious intent and love to twist and talk about things that have nothing to do with the subject.
And this will get worse as we go, so bear with me.
Look at this character. This is a dragon of hundreds and thousands of years. An adult, if you may.
Does it LOOK like this toddler is an adult?
Because I see people, mostly men sigh, justifying nsfw art of this big headed infant due to their age being over 500yo.
This character is, at BEST, a 6yo.
It is portrayed as one, it BEHAVES as one, it LOOKS LIKE A TODDLER.
So, here we go again, if you are attracted to /the character that is the representation of a toddler/ you oughta seek therapy, you may want to work this shit out and understand EXACTLY "what, in a 6yo, is making you want to do whatever you want to do with them."
Age in some medias, specifically anime and manga, is arbitrary.
It just is, there's nothing we can do about it.
So what matters, and I'm being crude, is the appearance of the character + how they behave + how they act and think.
Rebeca, from Cyberpunk Edgerunners, is an adult. She is short and lean, but she presents herself as an adult since the first episode. She is childish, bratty and crude as well, those are personality traits. Still an adult.
Shipping Anya, from SpyxFamily with Loid, for instance, should also make you go seek some checking and therapy to understand what, in this scenario, arouses you.
She is portrayed as an infant, thinks like an infant, looks like an infant and behaves like an infant. And he is, looks, thinks and behaves as an adult.
I'm being as didactical as I can so everyone can follow, but there's only so much I can do. I can't magically make you understand the most simple things if you're not willing.
People are in desperate need of depth understanding. Of text interpretation classes sometimes. Of... thinking. Really thinking.
You don't need to be Einstein to understand or think a little before talking about things you don't know, you just need to live the real life, research subjects, you need to know people outside of the internet, interact with your surroundings, with colleagues in school, college, workplace, the supermarket, with real people, live your life, gather knowledge and experience things.
It's not black and white as many, many people think it is.
It's very fucking gray, it's something worth debating OUTSIDE of the internet mostly, with the friends you have that are inside fandoms, the people that know how to discuss the nuances of character creation, artistic choices, and such.
Hell, I spent hours debating the reason behind characters looking like middle aged dads and then turning out to be sixteen years old because the author says so.
Culture, in Japan for instance, sometimes is a big reason behind their aesthetic choices. As is age of consent in the country behind the canon content.
There are even some debates here and there on the internet talking about these things, I may link them below, but I just wanted to rant and put in actual words that antis/prudes/entitled fans are really fucking stupid, and kids/teenagers are becoming more and more like that, not to mention they are becoming conservative?? therefore reflecting a reality that existed before they were even living in the ballsack of their parent.
Like, babes, you were supposed to be chill and smart, how the fuck did things get so backwards that teenagers are just straight up trying to purge kinks from Ao3, like?
And before you think, consider and decide to comment/ask anything rude, dumb or slightly out of context because you can't comprehend, interpretate or understand words put together in a text, remember that I am not above telling you to give your parents a smidge of happiness and end it all.
Fandom discourse: If they look like an adult and act like one then whatever arbitrary age placed by the author doesn't matter.
r/FanFiction | wowowowthrowaway44
r/CharacterRant | nihilnothings000
If people say that the arbitrary age does not matter then wouldn't that mean that the appearance of the drawing is all that matters in the end? In spite of this, people seem to be up-in-arms on drawings that already look non-suspect enough even though most people said that an arbitrarily placed age rating should not matter. They look like adults, sound like adults, and they act like adults so they are more less adults.
Though you might also say:
"There are teens who can pass off adults too so is this not trying to justify ephebophilia?"
Regarding that I suppose these are one of the rare moments where the statement "it's just a drawing applies". The main difference between IRL teens that pass off as adults and fictional ones are solely the fact that the latter aren't real. Fictional arbitrarily labelled teenagers aren't going to be affected by the comments made by horny teens and young adults regardless of sex/gender.
Think of it like this, when people are attracted to Zandaya's character in "Euphoria" (mentally sound) people are not attracted to the characters because they're teens but because the character that Zandaya (the legal adult) is playing is attractive. Apply this logic to fictional characters and it's more or less the same, most are attracted to the drawing that looks like an adult, not the arbitrarily place age by the author.
Since this debate tend to persist a lot in shounen targeted series I suppose there are additional reasons to make the characters attractive as possible:
• Attractive characters sell to get teens regardless of sex/gender to thirst over them as well and at this age most teenagers are pretty hormonal. Stories are in the end the most important but having an attractive looking character does help keep in increasing attachment.
• However, due to anime and manga being a medium with a periphery demographic it probably attracts those who're above teenagers like college students and young adults. They also have a larger spending power for merchandise, physical books, and DVDs considering that they have jobs at that point so it's best that the characters made don't look like literal kids to make it less iffy (some weirdos might not care but at least if the characters look like adults then it'd probably garner less side-eyes and looks of suspect)
• It also doesn't help that anime/manga characters tend to be drawn as age ambiguous as possible, with only wrinkles and sharpness of eyes (sometimes) being an indicator of them being older.
These debates wouldn't have happened if Japan could stop romanticizing high school and have them be set in college, but considering the target demographic being young teenagers we're gonna have a lot of settings be in HS than college.
I really hate how the ones who usually say that it's just a drawing are the ones trying to justify attraction to lolis which makes it difficult for this side to be talked about, nuance in the Internet truly is dead.
How I feel ranting about this, but then I remember dumbasses exist.
New to DC Comics? Want to get into them? Terrified and Overwhelmed by the Amount of New Terms? This is the List for you!
this is a long post and will be added to and edited as time goes on, this is a collection of common terms used in DC comics that might not always be given an explanation. happy reading!
Alien: multiple characters are aliens. this is defined as anyone who comes from a planet that is not earth. you get it.
Amazon: amazons are women from the island of Themyscira, also called Paradise Island. they are descended from the Greek Gods, and can be either born or made from clay. the most famous Amazon is Wonder Woman.
Atlanteans: people from the underwater nation of Atlantis. they are not humans, and the most widespread ability among Atlanteans is being able to breathe underwater. the most famous Atlantean is Aquaman
civvies: civilian clothing/anything that isn't a superhero costume
grappling gun: a grappling hook able to be shot from a handheld gun, mainly used by the Batfam.
Kryptonian: anyone from the planet Krypton. Krypton does not currently exist due to a planet-wide explosion, and Kryptonians are few and far between. the most famous Kryptonian is Superman.
Lantern/Lantern Corps: The lantern corps are essentially an intergalactic police force. There are many different lantern corps, differentiated by their colour and what emotion they use as fuel for their rings. the most famous lantern corps are the green lanterns, and their emotion is willpower.
legacy/a legacy character: any character that takes on a superhero title that originally belonged to another person. examples include Barry Allen and Wally West as the Flash, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and Damian Wayne as Robin.
metahuman: often shortened to meta, this refers to a human being who has developed some form of superpowers. examples include Wally West, Rose Wilson, and Duke Thomas. Metahumans can be born with their powers, or develop them later.
magic: magic exists within the DC universe. regular humans are able to wield and use magic - examples include John Constantine - but there is a subspecies of human known as Homo Magi that have a natural affinity for magic, the most famous of which being Zatanna Zatara.
Rogue/Rogue Gallery: a rogue is a loose term for any character that opposes a superhero, not necessarily a supervillain in their own right. examples of this include Harley Quinn. a rogue gallery is a collection of characters who oppose a single superhero or their team. for example, lex luthor is a member of Superman's rogue gallery.
I'm sure that I'm not the one to come up with this, but I want to talk about what I call:
Fandom Space
Not the best name for it, bc it overlaps with "fandom spaces," which is a totally separate thing.
For me, it means "the amount of content that can be derived from a fandom."
Basically, the more different varieties of fanfiction that can be written, the more "space" a fandom has. Likewise, the more space a fandom has, the more tropes that can fit within it.
How I explained it to my sister is:
The more "what if" questions you can reasonably ask, the more space there is.
For example, I think Naruto has more "space" than, say, BBC Merlin. Here's what mean:
Naruto:
What if Naruto was a genius?
What if he knew about Kurama from the start?
What if Naruto grew up with a proper caretaker?
What if Naruto knew about his parents?
What if Naruto was in ROOT?
What if Naruto was born in another village?
What if there was an OC from [insert other village]?
What if Kakashi was a good teacher?
What if....
The possibilities are endless.
Where as, for Merlin, I can think of less (of course, someone else might have more/better ones):
What if Merlin and Arthur switched places?
What if Mordred and Morgana were good?
What if Arthur knew about Merlin from the start?
What if Merlin was royalty?
Etcetera, etcetera...
But, basically, there are more possibilities for some fandoms than others, and it's usually related to how many plot holes and subplots the fandom has. It's also sometimes related to the world-building.
I use this to measure what fandom I want to read at any particular time. If I want to read a bunch of dissimilar fics, I'll pick something with more space. If I want to read some verse specific tropes or vibes, I'll pick something with less space.
This is just a concept I've thought of. I'd love to talk about it with everyone.
Do you have a character that you love so much that you just want to wrap them up on a blanket? This Terminology Thursday we’re learning all about “woobie”, which is the term for a beloved fannish character that you just want to cuddle.
The term is often described in conjunction with characters that are hard-working or endure difficult circumstances bravely, and the majority of characters perceived as woobies are white and male.
Some well-known examples of woobies are Rory Williams (Doctor Who), Bucky Barnes (MCU), Dean Winchester (Supernatural), and Damon Salvatore (The Vampire Diaries).
Check out which other characters are considered woobies over on our Fanlore page and let us know in the comments if we left off your favorite!
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We value every contribution to our shared fandom history. If you’re new to editing Fanlore or wikis in general, visit our New Visitor Portal to get started or ask us questions here!
You’ve heard of blorbo. You’ve heard of poor little meow meow. You’ve heard of skrunkly. You’ve heard of skrimblo. You’ve heard of spoingle. You’ve heard of glup shitto. You’ve heard of mipy. You’ve heard of eeby deeby. You’ve heard of horse plinko. Now get ready for the new term I’ve come up with that I can’t stop saying for some reason:
CRUNCHLY BUNCHLY
It’s a character that makes you just wanna put them in your mouth and chew them up aggressively like an extra delicious tortilla chip.
CW: talk of porn (the good and the bad), sex, and gender. Pretty graphic language and imagery. Sex repulsed aroace people BEWARE.
I would like to start this off by saying I am an aroace lesbian. What does that mean? Simply - I don’t want sex, nor romance, but if I did, I know where I’d find it. I love WOMEN. All women. Any women. I also really like yaoi, and I’ve seen some minimal discussion about specifically women who love yaoi or BL, and I’d like to add my two cents.
Several people online seem to take “lesbians liking yaoi” as just a natural reaction to the overall market of fiction. That is to say, there’s not a lot of options. There is a side to yuri which appeals to women, yes. But the way I see it, it’s either magical girl or slice of life, or, written by a man. And most of the stuff written by men is porn - bad porn. Thus it doesn’t appeal to women who actually like women.
In the same vein there is hetero stuff, which some lesbian/aroace yaoi enjoyers say doesn’t appeal to them because the majority of it has a male/female dynamic that is skewed. Oftentimes the woman is portrayed as weak or perhaps just isn’t a correct representation of the lesbian/aroace consumer. So why even bother?
Anecdotal, but I have had this experience too. I have a hard time getting into any kind of hetero ship because the women are often unrelatable or worse - just uninteresting. I don’t like men, so why would I care if it was just some faceless dame and her super hot husband? I don’t give a shit about him.
I’ve found that I enjoy a lot of hetero ships from demon slayer. Some may find this contradictory because there has been some commentary on the usefulness or intrigue around women in demon slayer. I think the demon slayer women are very interesting, story wise and appearance wise, and they fit very well with the men I ship them with. That is to say - men in demon slayer are simps for beautiful, strong, independent women - and I eat that shit up.
Most hetero stuff, however, is victimizing the women. Knowingly or unknowingly. It’s sad that if I want to get my rocks off to Mitsuri x Obanai, I have to scroll through like eight pages of the same inflation, big tits big ass no tummy, fart porn all sourced from the deepest dredges of Apocrypha. In fact, most of the time if you have the balls to like a fictional woman enough to want to see her getting respectfully banged, the cisgender heterosexual gooner men have already beaten you to the punch - and now you see her with her face in a smelly man’s ass. (All real examples by the way)
So it’s not to say I don’t like yuri, or hetero, it’s just that if I want to see women getting railed - I’m very particular. As I should be.
Yaoi, some people on the internet say, sets the men it’s focused around on equal footing. Instead of the woman being the damsel or a plain sexual object, the uke and seme are usually just two dudes. Not to say there aren’t power dynamics in yaoi - just to say that those power dynamics don’t hurt my pride as a woman. It doesn’t victimize a girl for somebody else’s sick kicks.
Yaoi, at least the kind I read, also can have an element of one man (the uke) usually being pretty soft or feminine. Why? Well that’s a pure reflection of how I (and other people) view sex. There is the giver and the receiver, the top and the bottom, the dom and the sub. Not that those lines don’t get crossed - they do, all the time. But as good ol’ Tevye says about Anatevka… TRADITION! (Sorry. It’s 3 AM)
The way I see it, it’s a way of having that traditional dynamic (pretty soft bottom and strong handsome top) without victimizing a woman. I do the same with yuri ships - I absolutely love love love a stone top with a pillow princess. And also - and I say this with no sense of shame - femboys are cute. Women are the superior form. Soz. So it’s awesome to see a man invoking his feminine side. It’s not like it makes him any less of a man. No matter how many times my mom peers at my drawings of Cloud Strife and says, “She’s pretty.” It doesn’t change the fact that he is him.
Gender is a fickle thing. It comes and it goes. I used to have a very conservative view of gender, and even sexuality. I was a “gold star lesbian”, and wanted nothing to do with men (still do, irl). You know what changed me? You’re gonna laugh. My Hero Academia. Oh, did I say you were gonna laugh? I meant cringe.
It’s not what you think. Bakudeku actually traumatized me - not the ship itself but one story I read on AO3 that I now understand for the masterpiece of terror and grossness it is. I would drop it but I don’t want to draw any undue attention to it.
What changed my mind on gender was actually Tomura. It didn’t even happen on purpose, l didn’t see him and go, “Oh he’s pretty, let’s dump a little more estrogen into him”. I shipped him with Dabi, paired them off as two dudes gettin it on, and I was loyal to my m/m ships. I ignored the ones tagged “Trans Tomura Shigaraki” because my brain refused to compute it. But then… I ran out of male fics. Well ran dry. I was getting anxious. I needed my shigadabi fix and how to get it?
Well. Can’t be that bad for Tomura to have a pussy.
… huh. He’s cute.
Oh no.
And that’s how it happened.
Just like that, my worldview shifted. Proud to say I’m a lot more open to gender and sexuality, now. It’s sometimes hard to admit that I used to have such rigid views. It’s a bit embarrassing - but I was also 13. My Hero just gave me the push I needed to grow up.
I’ll wrap it up now.
If you’re a lesbian or if you’re aroace and you like reading yaoi - don’t feel bad. Don’t even question it. Fiction is fiction, we’re here for such a short time you might as well enjoy the things you consume, whatever that may be. It doesn’t make you any less of who you are. It might mean that you’re just a feminist. Or it might mean you have some issues with your gender you need to hash out. Or maybe it means you just like hot guys. Who cares?
Some people argue why lesbians and aroace people like yaoi so much. There are many different answers. I’m not really concerned with them, anymore, now that I’ve found my own. What does concern me is the amount of people who I assume are outside of fandom circles… never having heard of women (lesbian or not) enjoying yaoi or BL. Several reddit comments asked, “There are lesbians who like that stuff? I’ve never seen one.”
Lemme tell you, these people are missing something awesome in life. Yaoi written by women is like fucking crack.
