Fandom Discourse - Tumblr Posts

I keep seeing the idea that meta for certain fandoms can be too old/out of date/unoriginal because everything has already been said before a million times, but like

So what?

This is fandom, a hobby that people engage in on the internet for fun, not a classroom. You don't have to have the most fresh and original take on a character/plot line/ship/whatever in order to post your meta or headcanon or fun little "what if?" drabble. So your idea has already been done before in a thousand different iterations, many of which might be more well written then yours?

Who cares! Write it anyway! Maybe someone else who is new to fandom, someone who has never seen that idea from other people, because it's so "out of date" that all the previous iterations are long buried in the murky depths of the relevant tumblr tags, will see your post and find it fresh and new and exciting. Maybe someone who never saw the idea before because they used to be more interested in a different aspect of canon until their tastes changed as they got older will see your idea, and it will be new and interesting to them.

Or maybe no one will find it completely new and totally original, but they'll be able to point out other pieces of meta with a similar take and then you get the benefit of reading other people's writing on the same topic that might help you clarify your own thoughts and feelings on this thing you love.

Stories, meta, headcanons - they don't have to be new to be new to you.

Children's Media, Genre Convention, and the Importance of Stating Your Critical Lens

I've been having thoughts about fandom and discourse lately after I recently saw both sides of a particular argument bemoaning the lack of engagement in literary critique or good faith argument by the other.

Because it occurs to me that there are many different types of media analysis, and we rarely state the specific lens we're applying at any given moment.

Which means that if I'm applying, say, a cultural studies framework (examining media within the context of the socio-cultural environment and people who made it) and someone else is applying a more formalist approach (judging the technical elements of media, like the sentence structure or pacing or use of genre devices)—we're both engaging in critique, but we are having two very different conversations. And we're likely to view each other's arguments as random, nonsensical, purposefully veering off the point, and as being made in deliberate bad faith.

And this becomes even more relevant when analyzing media with distinct genre conventions, because interpreting a work as a piece of genre media vs general media are another two separate analytical approaches.

In children's media, for example (shows, books, comics, etc., including a lot of YA), it is a convention of the genre that the adults in the story will be largely absent one way or another, because this is what allows the protagonists to be the main characters within the story. (Note: I'd say this applies more to fantasy/adventure types of stories than say, coming of age tales set within a modern setting)

If you're engaging with a show/story as a piece of children's adenture media—the absence of adult involvement in solving the world's problems probably isn't particularly worthy of comment because it's a given of the genre, and adult characters can be beloved mentors and supporters as they enable the children to succeed in their adventures.

But if you're engaging with it as a piece of general media—the passiveness/absence of adults, and their willingness to let children put themselves into danger, is more likely to be horrifying and deeply troubling, and the positive presentation of any adult becomes deeply dissonant against their willingness to let a child pick up a sword and go be the chosen one, for example.

No single framework for analysis is better than any others, but it's important to state the lens you're viewing a work from.

Because if Person A wants to talk about the adultification of children in the canon universe and what that says about our own society, and Person B wants to talk about the 'stepping up to my responsibilities arc' of one of those characters and how great and empowering it is—chances are they won't engage in the same conversation, even if they're talking about the same scenes and character beats.

And without understanding the lens a critique is being offered from, or stating their own, chances are high that both parties are going to walk away feeling like they haven't been engaged with in good faith.

Conservative groups - including people who label themselves as liberal or progressive or whatever else they think they are, even as they whole heartedly participate in efforts to censor and control the kind of things that other consenting adults can read/view/participate in/etc - will always try to find ways to make their demands seem reasonable every step of the way. Terminology matters, because accurate communication of the ideas that are actually being conveyed matters. In this case, the important pieces are:

CSAM explicitly involves harm to a child. By definition, it cannot be created without harming a child. By the time someone reaches the point of sharing it, they have already caused harm to a child. That's why it is already not allowed on ao3.

Ao3 hosts fictional content, which by definition is not causing harm in its creation - because it is fiction. Whether or not you personally agree with actions depicted in a fictional story does not make the story less fictional. Whether or not reading that story would make you personally uncomfortable does not make the story itself less fictional. The content does not cause harm just in the process of its creation. Comparing fictional depictions of underage characters engaging in sexual activity to actual CSAM is like comparing fictional depictions of violence or death to someone uploading a video of themselves stabbing another person to ao3. These are wildly different things.

Ao3 is also not making money off the content it hosts, and nor are its authors. It is an archive that survives primarily on donations, volunteer work, and the free work put in by a wildly diverse range of authors whose only barriers to uploading their work is access to an internet connection and an email to sign up to ao3 with. Therefore, arguments against any particular fictional content hosted on ao3 are claims that something which is harmless in its creation causes harm when it is accessible to other people - not forced on other people, just accessible. To do that, they have to focus on the idea that people can't properly curate their own reading experiences on ao3, and that it is the responsibility of ao3, an archive, to ensure that no one ever even accidentally has to see anything they might personally find icky or uncomfortable or unpleasant.

The issue with that last option is that once you accept that responsibility, the options for what might be icky or uncomfortable or unpleasant to any given rando from the internet start to get really broad.

I have been reading a bit on the OTW elections and the whole Tiffany G thing, but most of all, I've been reading comments from people supporting Tiffany saying that she just wants to clear AO3 from all the CP (child pornography) content and I don't know who needs to hear this but:

If someone comes to a predominantly QUEER space (like AO3) and tells you that censorship is necessary to eradicate CP... it's not actually CP they want to eradicate...

I've seen this type of discourse about Pride and about queer literature and queer movies and queer communities. It's a tried and true technique of the right and conservative movements.

First, they say there is a DANGER to the community through CP and they conflate the actual threat of CP in the community (we all know someone who thinks that writing a love story between two characters who are 16 is CP...), and make you believe that censorship is the only way to PROTECT THE CHILDREN. And since most people are (rightly) mind-bogled at having to explain that of course they don't support CP content, they bow down and accept the censorship for the greater good, without anyone actually trying to have a conversation about what qualifies as CP (which needs to, you know, actually involve real children and not fictional characters who are 17 and losing their virginity with their crush in a Mature-rated story about high school football and first love based on the author's own experience of losing their virginity at 17 to their crush in high school).

Then, they tell you that there are other forms of DISTURBING CONTENT, and what they really mean is porn that THEY find disturbing, for ex, (and I kid you not, I have seen comments like that) porn featuring disabled characters, which they consider to encourage the exploitation of vulnerable individuals, or BDSM porn (which supposedly encourages violence and lack of consent), or rough p*rn, or any kind of porn that isn't two (preferably white and skinny) able-bodied people doing it missionary style while lovingly gazing in each other's eyes. SO TO PROTECT VIEWERS, that needs to be banned as well.

And then, they tell you that even that sanitized version of porn is still porn and that people under 18 or under 21 or under whatever age they consider too young to view anything sexual regardless of the fact that not all countries have the same law about the age of maturity, should be free to surf the site without having to *gasp* filter out properly tagged works. So TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN, every explicit content is censored.

And then finally, when all that is left is a sanitized, white-washed, ableist, puritan type of content featuring General-Audience approved gay works of two nice men or two nice women holding hands and chastely kissing each other on the lips... Well guess what? :) CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE EXPOSED TO QUEER CONTENT SO WE NEED TO BAN THAT AS WELL, and since we've basically done purge after purge before and there are still a handful of people on the website, well surely they won't mind/care anymore, will they?

It's not just a slippery slope, it's something that has been done time and again, and that is why censorship on AO3 will never, never have a positive outcome.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

Tbh, I think interpreting your favorite fictional character(s) is one of those areas where you shouldn't feel guilty about building yourself an echo chamber. You're allowed to engage with fictional media as an escape, as something to feel good about. You're allowed to have your fictional story preferences and stick to them, when it comes to something you engage in as a hobby.

Yes, it can be good to step outside your comfort zone sometimes, to challenge yourself with new ideas and to engage in critical consumption of the media you watch or read. That doesn't mean you need to constantly engage with your faves in fandom spaces critically, too, though (beyond being polite to other fans and not demanding that they also adhere to your personal interpretations Or Else).

Fandom space is allowed to be a hobby that you engage with to be happy, rather than another sphere of faux activism that you engage with for progessive Good Person points even when it makes you miserable and drags you down.

Echo chambers are bad when they're all you ever engage with. They're fine, though, when you build them deliberately around spaces that are meant to be personal comfort spaces rather than political ones.

well i guess it's always good to make sure i'm not in an echo chamber when it comes to interpretations of my fave characte- *ventures outside my circle of mutuals* OH JESUS CHRIST WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE

As far as the audience goes, ao3 is also a space where people who enjoy reading whatever ridiculous kinky nonsense they want won't be constantly wondering when the next purity purge will kill 90% of their favorites list. It's a space where people who find comfort and community in darkfic - for reasons that are none of anyone else's business, as they often have to do with highly personal shit that you're not entitled to hear and examine before you deem someone else Acceptable for reading Those Things - don't have to worry that any day they could wake up and find that, once again, the stuff that speaks to them has been deemed gross and unnacceptable, and purged from the fanfiction site.

It's a space that acknowledges that the stories that speak to you might not be the stories that speak to someone else - but both of you can read and write the stories you want to see, without either of you being censored for it.

Things that you find unpleasant or damaging to read might be very important to someone else for reasons that have nothing to do with the things you find harmful about it.

And equally important: The stories that you find most important and comforting and meaningful to you? They might be unpleasant or boring or gross or harmful to read for someone else, for reasons you didn't even notice and aren't obligated to notice, just because someone else doesn't like those stories.

Just as the people who like the stories you find most gross and upsetting aren't obligated to engage with what you don't like about them, if those stories bring them comfort and meaning that they need.

But both of you get to read and write and post your stories, and even if there aren't great tags you can still choose to click out of a story you've started and move on to something else that better suits your taste, if you happened to click on the wrong one first.

no but how much audacity and sheer entitlement do you have to have to tell people they need to stop posting their darkfic and porn fic and any other fic you don’t like to ao3 so you can have a safe space when ao3 was literally created as a safe space for writers to post their content without fear of it being randomly wiped out by pro-censorship assholes with an agenda like what has happened to plenty of other fic archives before?

“but a lot of us see ao3 as a safe space to get away from that kind of nasty content” - lol you can see the middle of a busy interstate as a safe space all you want too but that doesn’t mean that you get to walk into the road and scream at all the cars going by that they’re the ones infringing on your safe space either

ao3 is not, has never been, and will never be a site meant for nothing but children’s stories. you can “see it” like that as much as you want but there’s a difference between fiction and reality and that view of what ao3 is like is as fictional as the stories posted on it.

Sometimes tumblr takes established academic terms for discussing social issues around systematic oppression and privilege, and strips all reasonable nuance and utility from those terms in order to use them as blunt force weapons in fandom wank.

Other times, tumblr seems to create its own nonsense terms, like 'female coded' male characters.

My biggest problem with that term is that it seems to almost always refer to badly written characters. Is it a problem that many female characters are still poorly written? That they are often relegated to secondary characters or passive narrative objects in someone else's story, that many female characters are written to lack agency even in their own narratives? Yes. Yes it is.

But the misogyny comes from the lack of well written stories about girls/women as compared to stories about boys/men, not when individuals dislike any given badly written character. Especially not when someone dislikes a badly written male character!

Trying to justify liking poorly written male characters on moral grounds by labeling them 'female coded' also implies that bad writing is an inherent trait of female characters. Which, I would argue, actually indicates a much more dismal view towards fictional women than someone who doesn't like a male character with a shoddy narrative that treats him more like a passive object than a person.

Characters are not real people, people are allowed to dislike a fictional character on the basis of bad writing, and for the love of god please stop conflating 'passive narrative object' with 'inherent trait of a female character'!

As much as I agree with anti-censorship conversations in fandom spaces, because fiction is not reality and censorship of art is nearly always a tool that is or will wind up being wielded by conservatives to suppress works by or depicting anyone that strays too far from "acceptable" conservative social norms, those arguements rarely get at the heart of why I think censorship of fanfiction, in particular, is such an extra ridiculous conversation.

Fanfiction is a hobby.

People who write fanfiction and engage with fandom spaces may be young, may be writing in a second language, may be very inexperienced writers, may be people who lack a lot of research and/or editing resources for their work, etc.

All of this adds up to a much greater likelihood in fandom spaces that you will come across: poorly written stories; awkwardly conveyed themes and flat, poorly written characters; all sorts of unfortunate words/themes/character choices/etc that might look, at a glance, like Bigotry; all of which were still written in good faith by decent people who simply aren't great writers.

All of this also dramatically increases the likelihood of encountering the type of stories that hurt and/or marginalized people write about their own experiences as a way of exploring scary/harmful/"bad" things - like rape fantasies, like messy reactions to abuse, like racism or misogyny or homophobia or any other bigotry - in a fictional setting where they have all the real world control to determine how those things play out on the page for the fictional characters.

Combine point #2 with point #1, and of course there are going to be plenty of fics that wind up making lots of people uncomfortable, but which are actually written by the very same young or hurt or marginalized people that fans of censorship claim they are trying to protect.

And it is absurd.

So many of the calls for censorship by fandom antis overlap heavily with respectability politics.

So many of the calls for censorship are effectively saying that unless you are a good writer with significant access to time and resources - including, oftentimes, access to marginalized people who are willing to put in significant editing/advising work on your behalf - that you shouldn't have the right to publically engage in amateur hobbyist writing spaces.

And the people who will be most hurt by the above will always be the most young and vulnerable and marginalized members of those hobbyist spaces.

And that's not something I can ever get behind.

I honestly kinda hate this movie because the damage its done to fandom discourse it's unleashed

In my experience anyone who doesn't like something in a show and makes AU fanfic gets this smug little meme

they don't want to communicate and open a dialogue, they want to sit down, lecture, and shoot people down and smugly congratulate themselves like they committed some act for the greater good.

I think thats whats modern fandom is now, lecturing everyone up and down and all around and high up on an ivory tower because "muh canon event". These people don't want to relate to anyone because they want to be "above it all"

There's no real dialogue anymore

A new video where I give an alternative perspective of the causes of Fandom Tourism and Gatekeeping and the alternative solutions

Amen.

Some people will get to literally say "I would like the plot and the ship dynamics to be the exact same JUST change the woman for a dude and that's perfect" 😭

i’m gay but i’m always gonna choose the well developed straight ship over the 2 bland and incompatible white dudes that have 500,000 fanfics written about them. you guys just hate women.

Same here 😩

Some side effects I hate are the authors changing the original script just to accommodate the incoherent requests of rabid "fans" whose noise could cancel out the swifties at an Eras tour concert (love y'all swifties ✨), thus ruining the entire plot of a story

AAAAND speaking of books here, the fact that supposedly mature books now have the reading level of a 6 y/o, just because they have to appeal to a mass-mainstream "fandom" that just pics up books for aesthetic and because it's "cool and edgy".

I know the genie is out of the bottle and you can't go back but dear GOD I hate the mainstreamification of fandom so much

I do NOT want authors or showrunners or actors to acknowledge us or talk about fanfic or fanart or fan theories! I do NOT want people asking questions of the canon creators and getting them answered (make up your own answers, like god intended!) I do NOT want companies making jokey advertisements aimed toward fandom!

I know that fandom was never entirely underground but like... I miss that fourth wall existing, you know?

Sometimes they create the *best* male characters, giving them a solid backstory, the right sprinkle of trauma that they need to overcome in the main arch, a well-rounded personality... just to pair them with the most random main chick that was never really THERE for them, does not understand their full depth, is actually pretty basic as a character, but is hot.

Some characters are supposed to stay single, even if you can clearly tell that they need someone by their side, because better to have no one than the wrong one.

the build up of jiara was literally so bad and i don’t want to even imagine what they are like in an actual relationship

Broke: Chilchuck Tims is child coded.

Woke: Chilchuck Tims isn't child coded, he's a middle-aged, divorced man with grown up children.

Bespoke: Chilchuck Tims cannot be accurately described as either "child coded" or "not child coded" because he is a deliberate commentary on the idea of "child coding" itself.

Chilchuck, and half-foots in Dungeon Meshi in general, are given significantly more neotenous proportions and appearances (e.g. larger heads and eyes, rounder faces) than the other races. This is not universal for depictions of hobbits / halflings in Tolkien / D&D inspired fantasy fiction. Compare Chilchuck relative to the "tallmen" (humans) in Dunmeshi to how small races are drawn in something like Legend of Vox Machina (many of those characters are gnomes but whatever) or in basically any official D&D art. It was an intentional artistic decision to make him look like that. This is reinforced when he's temporarily transformed into a tallman (human) and in addition to becoming much taller he gains features that make him look more visibly middle-aged (stubble, eye bags / wrinkles, a more oval face) that he doesn't have as a half-foot. See also Marcille's transformed form and supplemental drawings of what all of the main party would look like as other races. However they do NOT look indistinguishable from actual children as portrayed by Dunmeshi's artstyle and have distinguishing features e.g. larger ears.

Chilchuck is frequently mistaken for a child in-universe, or treated / perceived as one even by members of other races who know he's a half-foot, and he hates this. His infantilization and that of half-foots in general isn't just a running gag, it's a significant plot point and source of discrimination. Like when the party gets impersonated by shapeshifters copying everyone based on the others' memories of them, and most of the Chilchuck clones look and behave more childish than the real one, and they almost get away with it, even though his party should know better than to think of him as a kid.

The narrative consistently takes the position that the people infantilizing Chilchuck are wrong, and are being ignorant/racist.

Conclusion: Chilchuck is definitely not "child-coded" in the way that a 700 year old shapeshifter that looks and behaves indistinguishably from a little kid for contrived reasons. However, he is intentionally designed to make it seem plausible for people who know he's an adult to still not fully believe it and this can make the viewers fall for it too. Which I guess is "child-coding" in a sense. But the message the work is trying to send is very clearly "Don't decide that grown-ass adults are equivalent to children and treat them like children because they have physical characteristics that remind you of a child you dipshit."

While hobbits aren't real and Chilchuck's traits that get him mistaken for a child are exaggerated compared to the vast, vast majority of real people, infantilization of grown-ass adults due to ableism, racism, or just people being dumbasses who forget short people exist is a real issue, and if you start shit with people for shipping Divorced Dad Chilchuck Tims with other characters or whatever you are displaying the exact attitude that's being criticized.

personally, I think people are allowed to ship a “toxic ship” as long as it’s fictional and they can separate fiction from reality. shipping a fictional “problematic ship” doesn’t mean you’re “abuse apologist” in real life. the same way people who enjoy fictional villains are not “murderers” in real life.

it’s okay if you think this ship makes you uncomfortable and so you personally dislike it. what you can and should do is avoid their contents and refrain from interacting with people who do ship them. that mute and block buttons are your friends.

what you shouldn’t do, though, is harass people who ship them and brag about how they’re “red flags irl” and how you’re “morally superior” simply because of fictional characters.

I promise you, minding your own business and not caring about what ship strangers on the internet ship will make your fandom so much less toxic and a whole lot more enjoyable.

Is anyone gonna explain to people that ‘proship’ does not actually mean ‘problematic shipping’ or ‘problematic ship’ or are we just going to let this misinformation spread some more?

It means pro-shipping. The prefix pro, meaning ‘supporting.’ In favor of shipping.

It only became a defined position after anti-shippers who initially identified themselves as anti-a specific ship started harassing creators they didn’t like, doxxing them, and trying to get them fired from their irl jobs for shipping reasons around 2014-2016.

So people who had been in fandom for long enough to know where that kind of rhetoric leads (ffnet purges, LJ strikethru, as well as the direct harms caused by doxxing) observed this increasing trend of harassment and rallied to say ‘oh you lot are anti-shipping, as in opposed to certain ships? Well in that case, we are pro-shipping, because we follow the adage of ship and let ship.’

Before that point, it was just basic fandom etiquette to not bother people who ship stuff you don’t like, and to understand that if something squicks you out, it’s not the fault of the people who made it.

If someone says they are pro-ship, it means fuck all about what they actually enjoy in fiction.

It just means they’re opposed to harassing creators for making content that doesn’t cause tangible harm to real people. A better way to understand the ideological position is being anti-harassment and anti-censorship.

I have a lot of ships I find disgusting blacklisted so I don’t have to see them. But I am not interested in forcing people to comply with what I think is gross. That’s what it means.

Curate your online experience, and understand that your disgust response is not a defensible moral indicator or a justification to harass, deplatform, and dox fan writers.

Poor Henry Creel; the man's being pulled like the rope in a game of tug-of-war. Gay Henry bloggers vs straight/ambiguous sexuality Henry bloggers, and what do we get? Bitching and jumping to conclusions. If you're going to preach that your non-canon ship has nuance and is valid, then you don't get to have a knee-jerk reaction to OUR non-canon ship, especially not without considering the nuance in how we ship them(you know EXACTLY what I'm talking about). A lot of you call yourselves proship, but after recent debacles, it's not a label you deserve.

There's something so strange about how online fandom discourse has reached this point. I'll use the above interaction as a jumping off point because I've actually been meaning to talk about this for a while (I've already done so with my friends) and this makes it easier to have a frame of reference going forward.

So, for now, ignoring the underlying tones and approach of the asker, lets grapple with the question. Is it possible for two people with incredibly different takes on the exact same work of art to engage meaningfully about the art together? I wholeheartedly believe that is the case, provided both parties are willing to have that discussion. Coming into someone's critical space and shouting down at them to 'let people enjoy things', a phrase I thoroughly despise, certainly isn't going to open up that discussion. And to cover my bases, the inverse is true: entering a positive fandom space and calling everyone's taste trash isn't going to cultivate any meaningful conversations either. And I don't doubt that people know this, as I have personally had engaging conversations about media I personally dislike with people who do enjoy it; in most recent memory this is Murder Drones, but I won't get into the gritty details as to *why* I dislike the show here. A post for another time.

So clearly an inability to communicate isn't the issue. Rather, I believe the issue is the 'us vs them' mentality that has been fostered in fandoms since the very beginning. The issue has certainly exacerbated over the years, but let's not pretend like early fandom was a utopia. Fandom most notoriously has had shipping wars since forever, which originally were wholly fandom-contained. The larger public generally only knew about shipping wars either from personal experience within the fandom, or later as the fighting got so intense that real world consequences (or rumours of such) occurred. Now, however, fandom isn't content to remain within its own spaces. We've *moralized* fandom, linked our participation with media to whether we are good or bad people, decided what is acceptable and unacceptable to like on the larger scale. On some level there is something to be said about how one engages with media might say something about them, but this is largely on a case by case basis and in addition to other facts about someone. Someone who likes Harry Potter might not be transphobic, but with additional context (ie, subtly implying there are less 'worthy' trans people) it might say something about this person that they choose to engage with that media.

Back to fandom at large. So we've linked our worth as people to fandom, and now fandom has become something of a taboo topic similar to religion and politics. You only discuss these things with people already within your group, as others outside the group clearly are participating in blaspheme or some such. To criticize a work in any capacity is to attack the group, the individual, and thus conversation is dead on arrival. How do you have a conversation with someone so entrenched in their beliefs they refuse to ever engage in good faith with someone outside of them? Personally, I still have the energy to respond to even bad faith questions earnestly in the hopes that I could get at least one person to, if not change their mind, at least see another perspective. For others, however, it's easier and typically less draining mentally and emotionally to not engage. I don't blame Chai for his response in the least, as he gets these sorts of dead-end bad faith engagements very frequently.

It still depresses me, honestly. I quite like talking about art. I would love to have a frank and civil discussion with someone who wholly loves media I passionately despise, and vice versa, because I want to understand the perspectives of people who connect with things I cannot and those who don't connect with what touches me deeply. Unfortunately in the current fandom climate that is made difficult at best, impossible at worse, and I wish I had a solution. Maybe if we brought back book clubs that would fix things.

Be kind to each other. Approach your fellow human with a willingness to learn and understand. Incuriosity isn't a trait, it's a behavior.

Could you have a frank and normal discussion with someone who disagrees in absolutely anything you say about Helluva Boss S2's quality?

Because, yes, as surprising as it is, there are people who are actually enjoying the direction of the series currently and it's writing.

Bruv idk, you just seems to be so engulfed in your bubble that I don't think the idea of ppl enjoying HB S2 and being able to counter argument your points is even possible.

Not when you come out of the gate like that, I can't.

"yes i know having villains and/or morally grey characters in a story is important – nay, crucial — but I think this character is too *lists the qualities and traits of a villain/morally grey character* and anyone who likes this character should seek help immediately!!!"

I have a genuine question because I just want peoples thoughts on it, and I want to do it in a way that doesn’t start any arguments please: but I sometimes see people complaining about the p3do Mori stuff and I understand the emotional aspect but I don’t get some other things. Like I’m perfectly aware that some people may prefer to distance themselves or completely avoid such topics because it affects them more severely than other or they may have past trauma. Makes sense. But I never really saw the Mori and Dazai thing as a headcanon that people believe or hope to be true, rather as a thought of what might’ve happened or a theory. This is usually based on Mori’s very canonical behaviors regarding Yosano as a child, and how Elise was made in the image of a child. I personally don’t think that Mori did something like that to Dazai in canon, but the theory doesn’t really bother me much ig? With the BSD world being dark as a whole the grossness of the theory sadly kind of fits r despite being non canon or used in AUs and it’s not like I often see anyone fetishizing it, rather they treat it as the gross thing it is. I know the book and author Mori was based off of was not indicative of p3dopillia but the BSD character very clearly seems to be hinted at that. Especially the “I like the women in my life to be under 12” thing. People usually use “it’s played as a joke!” Or “why would Kouyo and Chuuya follow him then?” And I think people overlook the fact that anime is renowned for making light of things they probably shouldn’t (doesn’t mean the anime isn’t good though) and the fact that it’s a mafia and you can’t just STOP following the boss without threatening your very life. At least not in normal circumstances (Dazai is an exception). So yeah I was just wondering, do you guys think the Mori and Dazai theory is inherently morally wrong or do you just don’t see it as canon/you don’t like to talk about such disgusting topics?

I’m increasingly realizing that almost all of my opinions about fictional characters revolve around the version of them I have in my head.

Example: I like D*an W*nchester, but ONLY the version of him I have in my head, because canon D*an is basically the embodiment of toxic masculinity. The version in my head is able to learn from his mistakes and, y’know, emote and doesn’t treat everyone in his life like utter crap.

Counterexample: I hate T*ny St*rk, because the version of him in my head is a complete capitalist asshole with no character development. Now, I think that T*ny in canon probably has a deeper character than that, but that’s how he exists in my head.

So anyway I just think it’s interesting and important to realize that when I’m reading criticisms and opinions about characters I love or hate, that the characters others are talking about may not line up with the characters in my head.

Quick disclaimer: I haven’t paid any attention to canon Supernatural since like 2017, and I’ve forgotten most of what actually happens. So maybe D*an isn’t as bad as I remember but based on gifs and opinions I’ve seen, he’s pretty much an asshole.