Éowyn didn’t give up her sword to become a healer or Faramir’s wife; she expanded and learned to take pride in additional things beyond war and glory. But Ithilien in the nascent fourth age still needs its princess-shieldmaiden, for there is brave work to be done, and healing a war-raveged land cannot be done with herbs alone.
Moreover, “healed” Éowyn is not some fundamentally different character who quenches her fire and suppresses her will. She is the same as she always was, and she becomes even more herself because she is not trammeled by expectation.
I haven't talked about it because my brain automatically defaulted to 'oh this person clearly has not been alive or in fandom for very long so I don't really care what they think' but I am still so confused as to what they thought they were doing with that post.
Do I understand being weirded out and not understanding RPF? Yeah, it is objectively weird. We are all aware of that, which is why we try to keep it in places the real people will not see it. It is called RPF for a reason. We are all aware it is fiction.
It is more strange, in my opinion, to go out of your way to screenshot posts you don't like and make a slideshow and then post that on a separate platform where it is more likely to reach the real people (even though I highly doubt Will or Mack have seen that post as they get tagged in so much bullshit and I doubt they're even fully managing their accounts by themselves).
If you don't like RPF? Fine, fair enough, to each their own. Just block and move on. To make a post about it 'spreading awareness' doesn't help anyone. It's just bullying, in my opinion.
RPF has existed for literal decades. Every single popular men's sport has RPF. Hockey has had RPF for decades. It's not just Will and Mack who are being shipped. Think about Crosby and (insert Geno, Ovi, or NateMac). Davo and Draisaitl. 1634. There are so many examples.
And, once again, we understand that Will and Mack are not together. That it's all made-up scenarios and that we don't actually know Will or Mack. They are strangers, which is why we keep our weird posting on the designated site for Weird People.
Because RPF has damaged real friendships before. We've seen it. Whether it be certain band ships or certain YouTuber ships, which is bad, and we don't want that. But I don't think I've ever seen shipping affect a sports friendship? Because, generally, high paid athletes are either aware and don't care and don't draw attention to it, or they're aware and play into it for the money and engagement.
It's not as big of a deal as those six hundred or so people on Instagram are making it out to be. RPF has existed for years and will continue to exist. You are not singlehandedly going to change that with a slideshow on Instagram.
Anyway, I'm so sorry to anyone who has been negatively affected by this or was shown in the post, but trust that your fellow Tumblr users are just as outraged. The best advice is to do the mature thing that they didn't do and block them on any platform you can. They're @/celebriniglaze and/or @/celebriniglazer.
I highly doubt her post is going to do much else aside from making us self-conscious and feel bad about ourselves, which is what she wants.
There's always going to be disagreements and different sides in fandom, and there will always be freaks (affectionate) like us in fandom.
Continue being freaky for your RPF ancestors and for the future RPFers (that hopefully understand fiction and boundaries. Some of the recent newbies have scared me but I'm not getting into that).
If you wanna chat or send an ask about any of this, then I'm around. Hope you're doing well, my fellow Tumblr freaks <3
Fandom normies don’t post screenshots of tumblr users’ rpf intended for only this platform where it can’t be easily found by the individuals said rpf is about to instagram and tag said subjects of the rpf challenge GO
So many girls out there finally learning boundaries, how to say no, choosing to invest in themselves instead of people pleasing - and be calling it their "villain era". I think it says a lot about the current state of society that we have to romanticize being seen as the villain in order to in some way embrace or validate ourselves in not being a doormat anymore. Because there's still a remnants of such behaviour being considered mean or taboo, when it is actually the healthiest to have.
Yes, there may be people that will antagonize you because you having standards means they can no longer take advantage or play games anymore. But that does not make you a villain for the world, it only makes you an antagonist in their story.
Your role in someone else's story does not define you.
