To the Choices Fandom:
So April 4th was the one year anniversary of my blog. I’d originally joined Tumblr because I wanted to follow some blogs I’d been interested in , but I quickly got consumed into the Choices fandom. This was mainly cause (at the time) I didn’t know anyone IRL who played it, and I was so excited!
Here was a whole group of fans with whom I could scream about favorite series, theorize about plot points, and gush about love interests! And—for the most part—I’ve found that community. But recently, it seems that there’s just been a huge outpouring of hate towards each other, and I honestly don’t understand why.
Why do people drag others for choosing certain love interests as if it isn’t (for the large part) a matter of opinion?
Why do people seem to forget that it’s Pixelberry who decides to make a love interest the main one?
Why do people act like it’s okay to attack people for their LI instead of reserving their criticisms for the LI or PB themselves?
There’s so many homophobic and racist elements both within the fandom and within the books, and we shouldn’t stop calling those out when we see them. But can we please as a community stop hating each other for the various invalid reasons?
You can hate a LI, but you shouldn’t hate their fans. You can hate a book, but you shouldn’t hate its fans. And to be clear, poking fun at is NOT the same as cruel mockery. With PB’s blatant catering to the wlm demographic, venting your frustration can be good and even healthy.
But there is a line, and if you consider yourself to be a decent person, then you’d be decent enough to care about that line. You wouldn’t be out here trying to make people feel bad about things that they shouldn’t feel bad about (i.e. opinions).
Please note that hate is not the same as having an opinion. There’s a reason why here in the U.S. we have the freedom of speech yet hate speech is still illegal. And here’s your general reminder that while it’s possible to be prejudiced towards any group, straightphobia and reverse racism/sexism do not exist!
So to celebrate my anniversary, I’d like to ask the fandom to please be kinder to one another. Around the time when I first joined, there had been a post going around about creating a more positive environment within the fandom, and I’d like to bring back that sentiment (similar to this post).
We can debate. We can argue. We can get mad and sad and happy and confused. We can laugh and we can cry, we can fight and we can love, we can learn and we can care, and we can choose.
We could spread hate, but we could also be kind.
#ItsOurChoice
