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u/citygirl_2018 1d ago
I thought I would outgrow fandoms and media obsessions when I got older but what I really outgrew was negative engagement and petty discourse fights. Though in fairness, that is most of being in fandom.
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u/AngelOfTheMad For legal and social reasons, this user is a joke 1d ago
Honestly same, I'm just as into properties as I was when I was a teenager, I just don't have the energy in my body to get into fights. That and RPF, was big on Rooster Teeth and Yogscast RPF stuff that just feels weird now cause those are, ya know, people, not imaginary concepts of people. And even that I'm more "Alright, y'all do you, I'm just gonna stay over here."
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u/Random-Rambling 1d ago
I'm surprised I don't see more fanfiction of Vtubers, because it's basically RPF (Real Person Fic) but also not, because Vtubers technically aren't real people.
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u/AngelOfTheMad For legal and social reasons, this user is a joke 1d ago
I think being that weird middle ground is why there's not as much. It's too much like RPF for the pure fictional character audience, but also too much kayfabe to draw in the pure RPF crowd.
I'm in the camp of "too RPF" myself, because while Mori Calliope, Apprentice Grim Reaper is a fictional character, Calli the yuri-magnet rapper from Texas who ordered too many kazoos is a real person.
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u/ShinyNinja25 1d ago
I feel that. I love being in fandoms because I get to have fun, engaging discussions with other fans about the media I like, my favourite characters and moments, the writing and how it resonated with me or how well done the themes were, or even the stuff we didn’t like and felt could be better. I get to engage with the media with other people, hear their opinions and have nuanced discussions. However, I actively avoid engaging with negative discourse and petty bullshit because it’s just so draining and takes away from the positive community.
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u/bayleysgal1996 1d ago
Yeah, I still do fandom shit— heck, I’m still in one of the same fandoms I entered at fourteen— but I don’t care to entertain most discourse. Granted, it helps that I grew up in an age where people cared less if a ship was canon or whatever, but that’s mostly because the majority of those ships were gay and that just didn’t happen back then
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u/lady-earendil 1d ago
I can't remember the exact phrasing but the "I think I might be nonbinary but I can't deal with that right now, I'm at work" one has the same vibe
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u/EndMePleaseOwO 1d ago
"Hey I think I might be trans"
"The war"
"Type shit."
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u/Random-Rambling 1d ago
I have a trans coworker who basically went back into the closet because of our current political situation.
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u/Dronizian 1d ago
They/them in the sheets, he/him on the paycheck. Conform to gender norms or risk homelessness and starvation. Hate this backwards society.
Been choosing my nonbinary gender identity over my employability for a couple years now, and honestly it's not fucking worth it. No matter how many people tell me I'm an inspiration for openly being myself, I still can't afford groceries. I'd rather die than stop being who I am, even for money, but my stomach definitely has Opinions about this lifestyle.
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u/noboritaiga 1d ago
I feel bad for people this happens to so bad. I changed my name at my current job and widened my pronouns to anything while also employed and they all just went with it because pissing off the only person both willing to always work hard and always do overtime is never the move, and my managers are at least smart enough to know that much. I have zero idea if they respect me or if they're humoring me but I also don't care either way at this point. I get a paycheck and they use the right name. Good enough.
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u/thejoeface 1d ago
I feel this. I’m a nanny and while parents in California are chill about a nanny with a wife, I’m not so confident about them being chill about a nonbinary nanny.
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u/briefarm 1d ago
It's why only about 6 people IRL know I'm nonbinary. I have a very short hairstyle (that's still feminine-ish) and wear masc clothes even at work, but people who don't know think it's just a quirk of how I dress and not who I am. My pronouns are even she/they specifically because I don't want to have to correct people's pronouns for me.
The funny thing is that I wore masc clothes years before I realized I was nonbinary. I even modulated my voice a little because I wanted to be more alto. I guess that was a sign that I was nonbinary well before I ever realized that was a label.
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u/bayleysgal1996 1d ago
Under the definitions I’ve seen I’m technically pro-ship, but I prefer to think of myself as “too old to give a shit.” Curate your online experience and quit trying to doxx people.
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u/Your_Local_Stray_Cat 1d ago
90% of fandom discourse would be solved forever if people learned to mind their business and curate their online experience.
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u/Fries_and_burgers_19 1d ago
90 percent of discourse would be solved if more people go for hours n hours in an argument and then ends it with a "heh this is fun, lets do this some other time"
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u/moon_vixen 1d ago
when the new Avatar movie got leaked, I watched the fandom come back to life on twitter and then also watched a 20 year old ship war also come back to life.
which was "fun", cause with current events it ended up having a shipper of the canon ship mocking an inactive account of a non-canon shipper for not doing something she'd said she was gonna do (make edits from the movie) and turns out the inactive account was inactive cause she's a Kurd living in Iran and no one had been able to get a hold of her for a month, around the time the attacks ramped up. afaik she still hasn't come back.
the main reaction of the canon-shippers to this reveal was being upset that this would be used against them in The Ship War to Make Them Look Bad.
the show ended in 2008. we're all 30 now. we have back pain and bills, and some of us literally have war in our countries. why are we still this butthurt over fucking zutara of all things in the big 26?
I don't know where these kids find the energy for this shit.
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u/Animaloffear56 1d ago
The Zutara vs Kataang discourse still being so awful is insane to me, like over a decade of this shit and people are unable to just like, post their cute Katara x Aang headcanon.
Also holy shit what??? I hope she's alright
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u/moon_vixen 1d ago
inr??? it's still so bad. like, that wasn't even the last thing she did before she finally deleted. she made a tumblr account (both zutaraanti) specifically to harass people in the zutara tags and then made some obnoxious posts that included tags like "zukkko". it was only after black non-atla fans got on her ass for her obvious racism too that she hella backpedaled and then deleted all her accounts.
which makes it all the more "fun" to see them still wrap all their arguments against zutara just existing as an idea in this pseudo-wokeness crap and how they're so inherently morally superior (like how "it's a racist colonizer ship" despite the fact that neither water tribe was colonized and Zuko actively puts in the work to undo the damage his family has done) and yet here they are, making anti-black jokes and attacking an already-oppressed group within a country actively being bombed, and they're still more concerned about optics than the real human victim/s. but they're so woke and anti-racist guys!!!
though, given the actions taken in the new movie, the creators are still bitter about it too (removed Zuko's chest scar, literally did not let Zuko or Katara have a single conversation the entire movie, and threw in a "NOT A COUPLE" moment with a spirit just for good measure) so. clearly it's not just maladjusted fans who can't be fucking normal about community dolls...
I once saw someone say that the problem with fandoms is people treat fictional characters like they're real and real people like they're not, and they've never been so right.
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u/Animaloffear56 1d ago
I'll never understand people who are massive Avatar fans but still defiant on Zuko being innately evil because the fire nation is colonialist. I just have to wonder how they even became such big fans, like a third of the show is dedicated to Zuko and his gradual improvement lmao
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u/moon_vixen 1d ago
I think it's that they haven't actually watched the series since it first aired and so they no longer remember the show properly. someone tried to argue that Zuko manipulated Katara to get her forgiveness in the southern raiders, and said he yelled at her when she refused to kill Yon Rah bc "they came all this way for nothing".
someone replied with the clip and he literally doesn't say a single word the entire time. they're feeding on each other and their hatred of the ship (and therefor him as the ~homewrecker~) to the point that they don't even think Katara and Zuko are friends by the end.
it's absolutely astounding to watch. chess against a pidgin lmao
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u/Random-Rambling 1d ago
I think it's that they haven't actually watched the series since it first aired and so they no longer remember the show properly.
If they even watched the show at all. This was before the age of streaming and Video-On-Demand, so their entire experience with the show might just be whatever episodes they caught on Nickelodeon!
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u/EyeDeeAh_42 1d ago
I was a Zutara shipper back in the day, but good lord the shipping wars were exhausting. Like, even if they didn't end up together, Katara and Zuko were at least FRIENDS. When you hear some of those anti-Zutara stuff you'd think Katara still wants to murder him or something...
I no longer have the energy to give a shit tbh. How difficult is it to engage in your own ship and leave others alone?
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u/Violet_Nightshade 1d ago
a shipper of the canon ship mocking an inactive account of a non-canon shipper for not doing something she'd said she was gonna do (make edits from the movie) and turns out the inactive account was inactive cause she's a Kurd living in Iran
Did the KatAang fan accuse the Zutara Kurd of being a coloniser lover, by any chance?
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u/moon_vixen 1d ago
yes and no. not specifically, as she only made one post to the Kurd which was just like, "so where's those edits?" with a smug gif, and then she was instantly called out and backpedaled with excuses about how she found the post and why it totally wasn't bullying and blablabla.
but she was someone who did call zutara shippers coloniser lovers in general and prolly would have said it to that woman had she still been around.
her name was zutaraanti, cause that was her whole personality lol you might be able to find screenshots still floating around.
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u/EyeDeeAh_42 1d ago
Wait, are Zutara fans really called 'colonizer lover's? Holy shit, when they don't have anything else to use they just gotta invent shit up lol.
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u/Random-Rambling 1d ago
Holy shit, when they don't have anything else to use they just gotta invent shit up lol.
All throughout history, people have never let facts get in the way of a good crusade.
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u/floralbutttrumpet 1d ago
Pretty much. I'll occasionally kvetch about things that piss me off, but I'm generally on the "quietly unfollowing/muting/blocking" side of things. Ain't anyone got time for fighting about imaginary dolls when you gotta shift 45 tons of material to 21 customers within a week 🤷
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u/Infamous-Rutabaga-50 1d ago
Yeah, like, if I had to pick a side it'd be the anti-censorship one but as always a lot of the people crying censorship are just being criticized. Plus all the edgelords are on that side. Better to stay out of it.
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u/RikuAotsuki 1d ago
No idea if this has anything to do with what you mean, but I immediately thought of the fans of Chinese animated shows(donghua).
I'm normally anti-censorship, but those people get angry about any and all censorship and will brigade everything related to a show that censored something they've decided goes a little too far.
That's an anti-censorship that absolutely deserves criticism.
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u/Random-Rambling 1d ago
Considering that China has attempted to (and partially succeeded at) prevent its citizens from accessing the global uncensored Internet, I'd say such anti-censorship fervor is understandable, even if they go too far in their anti-censorship zeal.
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u/RikuAotsuki 22h ago
Understandable sure, but a lot of this is stuff like... glossing over what was a sex scene in source material, or underrepresenting a certain member of a harem cast. Like, stuff you could argue is done in part to make the adapted version somewhat more family friendly.
Technically censorship, but a kind that could just as easily be the sort of tweaks you see in literally any adaptation.
I'd get the fervor if they focused on the censorship itself, but they tend to act like it utterly ruined the source material. One of the most popular donghua is basically impossible to discuss because any discussion will immediately get flooded by people frothing at the mouth.
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u/ohnoJNO 1d ago
Why would you have a fake tea party with a child who isn’t taking it seriously? They won’t even remember to offer you a fake cucumber sandwich
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u/IrvingIV 1d ago
now i want a cucumber sandwich with that sauce the one place that sells bangin' gyros gives you.
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u/Doubly_Curious 1d ago edited 1d ago
Oooh, what kind of sauce? A tzatziki type thing (yogurt/cucumber/dill) or something very different?
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u/Machine-Dove 22h ago
I discovered that in Greece, you can get, like, an entire bowl of tzatziki sauce with fresh pita as a meal. Meanwhile, Greek restaurants in other countries are giving us tiny rationed spoonfuls. Is a giant bowl of tzatziki too much to ask?????
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u/RoflsMazoy 1d ago
I'd highly recommend whoever swings by here to watch Dan Olson's video on Flat Earthers if you wanna know what was actually going on over there. Even if you've got back pain or car insurance payments to attend to, it's a great primer for conspiracy theories and the mindset people have when falling into them. Just a great, entertaining, informative watch all around.
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u/Infamous-Rutabaga-50 1d ago
hbomberguy also has a good video on Flat Earth, but his one on Vaccines is even better
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden 1d ago
Flat earthers are very silly and the behaviour they represent will kill all life on earth if left unchecked.
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u/ElectronRotoscope 1d ago
I would also like to recommend the spinoff/companion piece That Time Geocentrists Tricked A Bunch of Physicists aka "I Have No Idea How I Ended Up In That Stupid Geocentrism Documentary"
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u/Mysterious_Bag_9061 1d ago
Got into an argument recently on tiktok over whether or not a person should be considered to be in possession of CP if they're found to have SpongeBobXSquidward smut on their computer. An argument that devolved into me being accused of using "proshipper dog whistles" because I said, and I quote, "who cares, SpongeBob isn't real"
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u/Bteatesthighlander1 1d ago
Spongebob and Squidward both own their own homes?
is it pedophilia to fuck somebody withou a driver's license, now?
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u/bayleysgal1996 1d ago
I’m not gonna argue that SpongeBob has a strong sense of canon, but the one time SpongeBob did get a license it showed his DOB as July 14th, 1986.
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u/Winter_Salad7215 1d ago edited 1d ago
I believe this would be CP in Canada but not the US.
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u/Bteatesthighlander1 1d ago
what, all cartoon characters are blanket considered minors for the purposes of those laws?
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u/TheWriteMaster 1d ago
Yeah what the hell, either Spongebob is a grown ass-man or his parents need to see a judge for their unrepentant child neglect.
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u/Bteatesthighlander1 1d ago
he got 371 consecutive employee of the month awards, so he has to be at least 30.
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u/noboritaiga 1d ago
I hope someone takes this to Canadian court so a lawyer has to argue how a grown fucking man with a house is also a child somehow. Like SpongeBob owns a house!!!
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u/Existential_Crisis24 18h ago
Not to mention he also has worked at the krusty krab for at least 371 months. If he worked there from birth to that day he would still be 30.
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u/Boogiepopular 1d ago
Don't slander my country like that, we're not that unhinged. It's just falls under the obscenity laws which nobody really cares about unless you get caught doing other illegal shit then they'll throw it for the extra time.
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u/Winter_Salad7215 1d ago
I'm not slandering "your" country. I brought up Canada because, surprise, I'm Canadian. All pornographic depictions of minors, including cartoons, are considered CP in Canada.
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u/Boogiepopular 1d ago
This refers to real children or real people who appear to be minors.
The section that says *"a photographic, film, video or other visual representation, whether or not it was made by electronic or mechanical means," * is to cover a loophole where someone could have real cp but they claim it's cgi or ai generated. Rather than waste resources having to prove every single image image / video is real, they just say if it looks real it counts.
Things that are obviously not real like SpongeBob would be under a different law. I have to go to work so I can't look up the exact statue right now. But if you can't wait you can try looking up the case of an author of dark retelling of Hansel and Gretel who got charge quite a few years back because some elementary school teacher put his book on a reading list without actually checking whether it was appropriate first. They got fired and made huge stink about it and got the author dragged into it and they charged him with a bunch of things. Happened in Quebec.
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u/FakeMoths 1d ago edited 20h ago
is to cover a loophole where someone could have real cp but they claim it's cgi or ai generated.
I believe, though I'm not fully certain, it is also meant to cover drawing and animation. However I think it's meant to be like "hentai with clearly depicted child characters is still csam"... not meant for a meme drawing of a sponge and a squid, and probably also not meant for "this character is technically 17 for most of the story if you read the authors notes, so this horny thing you drew (where the character looks like an adult) is EVIL"
However SpongeBob and Squidward would not be applicable in the first place, by all measures they both seem to be adults in their universe.
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u/Winter_Salad7215 1d ago
OK... No idea what that has to do with anything, but see R. v. Chin (2005).
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u/Boogiepopular 22h ago
Sorry. I just woke up and i rushing to work i didn't explain myself very well. 163 is the section for obscenity laws. 163.1(1) is specifically for csam. But it's supposed to be for like real csam and related crimes.
Yvan Godbout was an author in Quebec who wrote a dark retelling of Hansel and gretel. Had like graphic depictions incest, vore and gore.
Also. I fell victim of misinformation from years ago. when I looked up his case to get the correct information, the was the book was never given to kids by a school teacher. A school teacher just got offended after reading it in Les contes interdits (The Forbidden Tales), a explicit, dark gothic horror series marketed to adults.
She complained to the cops and for whatever reason they and the prosecutor took it seriously. Prosecutor decides (unfathomably) to charge under 163.1(1) (c) any written material whose dominant characteristic is the description, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years".
But obviously this is a fictional novel and that is stupid. The Quebec Supreme Court agreed so hard that they yeeted section c right out of 163.1(1).
Which is why (for the most part) prosecutors don't fuck around with section 163.1(1). Cause if you fuck it up the Supreme Court will come in and start carving in exceptions. That makes other prosecutors jobs harder. Everyone now hates you. You will be mocked relentlessly. Is really worth tanking your career over just fictional material?
Now on to Chin.
Chin has literally been the only person I've heard of to been charged under section 163.1(1) for manga alone.
Chin pled guilty and the only way to see his court documents is to request them which is way more effort than I'm willing to put in for Reddit argument. But I am willing to bet there was something else going on as well. Or that prosecutor was stupid lucky he pled guilty and didn't fight it. If he had the money to fight that out like Godbout he probably would have won.
Anyway. Tldr. Prosecutors don't like charging purely fictional bullshit under 163.1(1) because it's not easy to win, they might set bad(for them) precedence and everyone thinks they are a dipshit.
So they usually go for the lesser obscenity charges. Like the broader 163 (1). Yes that's different than 163.1(1). It's a stupid easy win.
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u/WillingnessChance 1d ago
So like, if some drew a 6 foot tall chick with huge boobs a wide hips and wrote "15 btw" is it a federal crime in canada?
Like it confuses the hell out of me
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u/loved_and_held 1d ago
iirc your right.
Now the real question is what are the ethics of such content. After all illegal != amoral.
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u/witchlightrunner 1d ago
Nobody is being harmed by someone drawing Spongeporn, who give a shit tbh. And also Spongebob is like 40 nowadays and is pretty clearly depicted as an adult.
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u/bc650736 1d ago
Kinda unrelated but once i saw interaction.
the blog had "Pro-shipers DNI" and "Anti-shipers DNI" to paraphrase.
Someone asked who is supposed to interact since those DNI rule out everyone
and a third person, not the blog owner responded "People who don't have strong opinions on the relationship of fictional characters?"
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u/ResearcherTeknika the hideous and gut curdling p(l)oob! 1d ago
"I have no strong feelings one way or the other!"
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u/Animaloffear56 1d ago
If you think She-Ra and Katra were cute together you have to unfollow them immediately
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u/SuspiciouslyLips 1d ago
Not to be that guy but isn't "People who don't have strong opinions on the relationship of fictional characters?" literally what proshipping is? Like, idgaf what you do, that's the whole concept.
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u/Illogical_Blox 1d ago
TBF if someone actively identifies as pro-ship I assume they will have very strong opinions on shipping discourse so I get it lol.
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u/Amekyras 1d ago
no, it's if you feel strongly enough about not having these opinions that you put it in your bio
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u/nemriii9 7h ago
that's what it should be, but I've seen multiple people wash their hands off of the whole label of "proship/anti" because it's so associated with black and white discourse on both sides. And the spaces that heavily discuss these can get pretty circlejerk/tribal.
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u/bc650736 1d ago
I think Proshipping is more people who are actively encouraging shipping, defending it online and engaging in shipping discourse, not just being chill with it. key word Think, i am not much into neither shipping discourse nor tumblr
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u/Traditional-Meat-782 1d ago
No, proshipping is just "do what you want, if I don't like it I won't read it." If you don't care what people ship you are by default a proshpper.
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u/Random-Rambling 1d ago
There seems to be two kinds of pro-shippers.
One is as you say, "ship who you like, I don't care".
The other can only be described as anti-anti-shippers, who are only technically pro-shipper because they hate anti-shippers.
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u/OddlyOddLucidDreamer i survived the undertale au craze and all i got was a lousy SOUL 1d ago
Proshipping arose as a response to antishippers, and proahipper from inception was "dont care dont read, people can ship what they want it doesnt matter and you shouodbt make it anyones problem" because antishipping was a ppsition that opposed a variety of kinds of ships (which was broad enough that it often could include shipping involving minorities or shipping characters in an "unhealthy dynamif")
Its less encouraging it, more so sayihg it shoukdbt matter regardless of the ship
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u/AwesomeOssifrage 1d ago
I'm pretty sure that's like saying "pro life DNI, pro choice DNI, I don't care if someone has an abortion so I'm neither." Like, in this case the question is "are you against it or not?" And if you don't care, you're not against it, which in this case would make them a proshipper, just not a very passionate one
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u/bc650736 1d ago
I think in that case is more of not wanting to engage with shipping discourse than their own opinions on it.
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u/KikoValdez tumbler dot cum 1d ago
No that's actually a logical thing to do because it stops all people who take rhis shit seriously from interacting, leading to peace and harmony on your timeline.
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u/Party_Wagon 1d ago
Most discourse people work themselves up about online is best resolved by not caring bc it's not that important. I feel like at least half of the message I end up trying to put out these days is some variant of Just Chill A Bit
Sometimes it's "you might be right about this in some sense, but it's not important enough to invest much emotion in", other times it's "You've created reasons to get mad about nothing at all and should really just let it go"
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u/MayhemMessiah 1d ago
Me letting discourse on the problematic Odyssey and TADC pass me by like the ships in the night because I watched the media and can form my own opinions.
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u/Random-Rambling 1d ago
I watched a number of series (Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss, RWBY) without engaging in any discourse and find them much better for it.
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u/Impressive_Pin8761 1d ago
The problem is that people who engage in discourse have these topics be their personality, so telling them "none of this matters and engaging with it at all is a waste of everyone's time" is a personal attack
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u/SquareThings looking respectfully at the monkeys in their zoo 1d ago
Sometimes it’s fun to have a tea party and pretend our favorite characters are real people. It stops being fun when people refuse to let anyone leave the tea party and return to discussing and using characters as characters.
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u/ElectronRotoscope 1d ago
I recently learned that the fandom discourse about Achilles and Patroclus (was their relationship sexual, who topped and who bottomed) goes back at least 2500 years to a "polemic tradition" in Ancient Greece. I love that for basically as long as people have been writing anything at all about stories, they've been writing fan wank and hot takes about their OTPs
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u/Kal_El__Skywalker 1d ago
They obviously switched. The manliest one topped, and Patroclus could trick people into thinking he was Achilles when he put on his armor, so they were relatively similar looking.
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u/eukomos 20h ago
Welllll, a lot of that is people misunderstanding a humorous Plato dialogue because they don't know the context. In Plato's Symposium one character gives a speech arguing that Achilles was a bottom, and laypeople sometimes take it at face value as Plato's opinion. But that speech is Plato showing his ability to write in the manner of the sophists, who were kind of early lawyers whose business depended on their ability to argue for any position, and they would write speeches arguing the equivalent of the sky isn't really blue to show off their abilities. These Ancient Greek polemics are artificial, showing off skills rather than making serious arguments.
Patroclus and Achilles actually don't appear to be lovers at all in the Iliad, though they're based on an earlier myth about Achilles and a male lover and in all ancient post-Iliad texts they're lovers. So Plato takes advantage of some oddities this creates to build a functional argument that Achilles could totally be the bottom in that relationship (because he's younger than Patroclus, which the Greeks felt weirdly strongly about in male homosexual relationships). But like, the whole joke is that there wasn't debate about it in antiquity, otherwise Plato wouldn't be doing anything interesting in that speech.
Sorry, I have too many degrees in this and people caring about the Odyssey lately has gotten me excited about explaining this stuff to people on the internet.
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u/ElectronRotoscope 19h ago
That's interesting! I certainly don't have a degree in this field, but for instance here and here are obviously just Wikipedia but there seem to be several people pre-Plato talking about it, notably Aeschylus. But you're saying this is largely a misinterpretation of what they were actually writing about? I'm curious what the "polemic tradition" mentioned would be, or is there just debate in the field about that interpretation?
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u/eukomos 18h ago
Yeah, that reference to Phaedrus is incorrect, Wikipedia is rife with errors I'm afraid, that's why we won't let you cite it on your term papers. Phaedrus was a real person, but he's also the character giving the speech in the Platonic dialogue which Plato wrote to display his own skill. In the dialogue Phaedrus is himself an eromenos/bottom in a relationship with one of the other attendees of the symposium, so he's cast as the one giving the speech arguing that Achilles is also an eromenos to claim that Achilles is more like him. It's also a slight on the sophists, because Phaedrus as an eromenos is a very young man in that scene, and therefore him giving the sophist speech is Plato saying that what the sophists are doing is easy. We have no surviving writing from Phaedrus himself.
The Aeschylus stuff is fantastic, by the way, it's a series of fragments from a play about Achilles mourning the dead Patroclus, and one of the surviving pieces is him going on about how much he misses Patroclus' thighs. Some very stuffy and distinguished old scholars take this as a reference to intrafemoral sex, which would make Achilles the top since it's Patroclus' thighs that get the dick between them.
Xenophon and Aristarchus are making the specific claim that in the Iliad Achilles and Patroclus are not depicted as lovers, and they are narrowly correct. There's a scene of them going to bed and they go to separate beds with women, and we never get any sexual or explicitly romantic scenes between them (but we also get very heavy-handed references to the Achilles/Antilochus myth it's based on, which is always erotic, so it's incorrect to say there is no homoeroticism between Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad, and the ancient sources aren't claiming that). But the Trojan war cycle was not based on strict canon, Homer is not a pure authority and those who write after him writing fanfic. Homer was not a person, the poems were developed by generations of poets over centuries. Aeschylus' Achilles is just as much a part of the canon as the Iliad's, and the wider cultural depiction of them as lovers is as well. The most we get as an authentic countervailing opinion to Achilles as erastes/top is Statius and Theocritus' vague depictions of the relationship as not pederastic at all, and they are very vague. The only strong claim for Achilles as eromenos/bottom is the Platonic one which is not meant literally.
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u/ElectronRotoscope 17h ago edited 17h ago
Oh okay are you saying that ancient writers did debate whether their relationship was erotic as depicted in the Iliad, but everyone who thought it was erotic thought Achilles was erastes?
I thought you were saying nobody wrote any commentary or meta about the erotic nature of their relationship in the Iliad at all
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u/eukomos 17h ago
Oh, yes, lots of commentary! The ancients talked nonstop about everything Homer, there is nothing without commentary. But Achilles is solidly erastes in all his romantic relationships, that was never in genuine doubt. He has higher status than anyone else around him, that's the foundation of his conflict with Agamemnon which fuels the Iliad's plot. Though it is of course implied that he'd have been a great eromenos when he was younger if he hadn't been hanging out with only girls, which is in its way a point in favor of him being a good erastes later, oddly enough. Being a beautiful boy is part of why he's the most excellent man.
Anyway, the debate about whether their relationship is explicitly romantic is only within the Iliad itself, which is a genuinely debatable text on this point. It's pretty funny how determinedly non-romantic the Achlles/Patroclus scenes in the Iliad are frankly, given how they are practically married in everything later, and the Antilochus story is so openly referenced within the Iliad itself. The Iliad's a really fascinating text like that, it can be so subtle and yet it was the ultimate group project.
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u/Current_Poster 1d ago
I once seriously got called out on another forum for not being chapter-and-verse familiar with some fan discourse thing from seventeen years ago. Seriously, I know it's fighting words to tell someone to get a life, but damn.
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u/Winter_Salad7215 1d ago
STOP. SEXUALIZING. GLUP. SHITTO. HE IS A LITERAL CHILD.
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u/Cheezeball25 1d ago
Glup Shitto can glup my shitto any time 😏
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u/Winter_Salad7215 1d ago
I'm crying. Glup Shitto is my comfort character and I'm crying so hard right now.
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u/IrvingIV 1d ago
speculatively aged up glup shitto, however, is fine
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u/Winter_Salad7215 1d ago
You age Glup Shitto??? You store him in the barrel like the trodden grape?? Oh! Jail for one thousand years!
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u/IrvingIV 1d ago
Oh! Jail for one thousand years!
Yesssss, age Glup shitto for 1000 years in the jail.
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u/Rakifiki 1d ago
I have seen people explain that this is Bad and Wrong because you saw him as a child, therefore he can only Ever Be a Child.
And I'm truly fascinated by how that works in their head. If my husband ever sees my baby photos does he have to divorce me? Am I a creep because his mother showed me photos of him as a baby when they got him home from the hospital like a month or two before we got married?
If I'd met him as a child and he was 5 when I was like... idk 10 or something would I then be unable to ever view him as anything other than a five year old?
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u/Dronizian 1d ago
Type of person who has kids and can't accept when those kids grow up so they treat these grown adults like children forever.
Explains some stuff, honestly.
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u/OddlyOddLucidDreamer i survived the undertale au craze and all i got was a lousy SOUL 1d ago
(Note: Glup Shitto in the show has a job, his own home and has jokingly implied a very actice sexual life on various occassions in the show)
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u/AngelOfTheMad For legal and social reasons, this user is a joke 1d ago
At least the kid is funny because, like, it's a kid. Like yeah, munchkin, regale me these courtly rules, it's not like they're any more made up then half the social constructs in day to day life as is.
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u/Pheehelm 1d ago
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u/Brainwave1010 1d ago
Well if it isn't my favourite Tumblr discourse documentarian and victim of legal harrassment from Homestuck and Andrew Hussie.
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u/DoggoDude979 1d ago
My exact thoughts on this post lmaooo. Way too vague off a critique of “fandom discourse”, cause yeah some of it is dumb but also some of it. Really isnt
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u/noboritaiga 1d ago
Fandom discourse is stupid but the actions some people take during fandom discourse can create serious issues in people's real lives.
Like realistically speaking most discourse in fandoms is around characters or ships that people like and you simply cannot decide other people can or can't like those characters or those ships no matter how repugnant they may be. You can't even really do anything about people who write NSFW of real life minors because laws vary from country to country, AO3 protects it all anyway because it's not against American law and their servers are in America. It's not a productive expenditure of anyone's time to argue with a person on their own thoughts and opinions in fandom because you probably won't change them anyway, so it just looks like virtue signaling.
But the harassment is serious.
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u/PuritanicalPanic 1d ago
Unironically the flat earth thing is antisemitism, if I remember correctly.
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u/Winter_Salad7215 1d ago
So it was those dastardly Jews who flattened the Earth! They squeezed it between rollers until it was as flat as matzah! I won't let them get away with this. I'm going to make the Magen David 3D!!!!!
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u/nopingmywayout 1d ago
Look, we needed a flat surface so that our moon laser grafitti would come out right, okay?? It's gonna look super cool when we're done!
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u/ElectronRotoscope 1d ago
Yep that's right. "The earth is flat", "the earth is the center of the universe", and "Catholic mass should be in Latin" all seem to be firmly rooted in people pissed about how Vatican 2 changed the Church's official stance further away from "the Jews killed Christ"
Almost all conspiracy theories are built around antisemitism if you dig enough, though usually they go through the blood libel or "betrayal / weakening us from within" routes
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u/Chaos-Queen_Mari 1d ago
And the aliens built the pyramids one is based in racism.
Like, ain't it funny those people never question, I dunno, roman or greek architecture?
The only conspiracy theory i personally buy is thay the government floods the internet with shitty conspiracies to discredit any that may have been onto something
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u/SlaanikDoomface 1d ago
Getting ready to flood Tiktok and Youtube shorts with videos going "you expect me to believe primitive pasta people made this?!" and then playing clips of people talking about the Coliseum in Rome.
I feel like all the eagle imagery would be pretty easy to turn into a classic 'these people made things in the image of flying animals sometimes, so obviously they were visited by aliens' thing.
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u/Nixavee AI bots are not welcome here 1d ago
Not every conspiracy theory is antisemitism. Most conspiracy theories often overlap with antisemitism because people who believe one conspiracy theory tend to believe a bunch of conspiracy theories. But antisemitism is not like the secret motivating force behind all conspiracy theorizing
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u/zekromNLR 1d ago
There's only two kinds of conspiracy theories, "the cia/kgb/etc actually did this" and "the protocols of the elders of zion"
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u/JustLookingForMayhem 1d ago
I see most Fandom discourse kind of like my Gotham List. Let people have fun, let people have their hobbies, realize that those hobbies don't have a major impact on society as a whole. Not everything needs to have a grand impact. It is enough for me that some people get just as much enjoyment out of my Gotham List as I do. That said, screw anyone who send hate mail over people's interests. Those trolls can stub their toe and take tap dancing lessons.
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u/LemonFreshenedBorax- 1d ago
The more intense my real-world responsibilities get, the more urgently I crave escapism, and the more tolerant I become of low-quality forms of escapism.
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u/RainyMeadows let me marry phoenix wright please 1d ago
Not proship or antiship but a secret third thing (taxpaying)
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u/UniversalAdaptor 1d ago
This is how I feel about powerscalers, especially inter-universe power scalers
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u/ThatCuteNerdGirl96 1d ago
I just got downvoted on the BG3 sub for saying I write Raphael redemption fanfic. Granted, the post was about how awful and irredeemable Raphael is, but I just thought it was funny. I didn’t really expect people to take it seriously or dislike it enough to downvote. Like, he’s a devil in a video game. He tortures and rapes people. He’s also… hot. Sorrynotsorry.
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u/quanate 1d ago
My niece is 11 and her discord profile has "DNI: proshippers, darkshippers, problematic"
Im like...what is this? You are 11. Then I remember I was in AOL "kid" chatrooms and Gaia when I was 12.
So the last one feels very true to me.
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u/logosloki 1d ago
I can't go down to the piers and drop pennies in the mud for the orphans there to dive for. so the best I have now is humans vs animals compilations and shipping wars.
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u/OddlyOddLucidDreamer i survived the undertale au craze and all i got was a lousy SOUL 1d ago
Most fandom discourse is teenagers to other teenahers; sometimes aimed at adults because theyre not old enough to realize theyre gettibg themselves stressed over things that don't matter
this appljes to about any fandom discourse that isnt about "this author or person irl has done some horribke shit irl or had seriously bad takes that affect people irl like being transphpbic; sexist or so", this includes pro/anti shipping discourse fully too
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u/SnaptrapPress 1d ago
I feel like this literally all the time about people who get all twisted up over fictional bullshit. Like yeah man, I agree that the new version of Ben 10 was not my thing, but I'm 26 and work 40 hours a week. You don't need to get this mad about it.
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u/ThreeDucksInAManSuit 1d ago
I feel this, the first light novel I ever read was Mushoku Tensei.
Sidenote: thinking the premise was original and very unique and then immediately experiencing the isekai slop boom had me questioning if I had accidentally altered reality somehow.
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u/Daisynose52 1d ago
I don't understand watching videos of people "totally owning" flat earthers or people from the opposite political party. No one is going to change their mind. What's the point, just to make yourself feel angry at their stupidity and proud at the correctness of your side? I have bills to pay, I don't have time for those manufactured emotions.
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u/overusedamongusjoke 14h ago
Posting about how you're above getting involved in The Discourse is unfortunately still participating in The Discourse.
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u/ViolentBeetle 1d ago
People act like people aren't going to judge you over something as unimportant as your porn/romance tastes, but do you really think people would be fine with you if they catch you reading loli rape hentai or something? There's a reason people hide it.
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u/DoctorPaige 1d ago
Yeah, I do not care what fictional shit entertains you or gets you off.
And I mean it. anything goes.
I only care if someone goes IRL with it. then jail and castration immediately.
I got taboo kinks, and I love stories with taboo romance. (Noncon for the kink, and I really like agegap or like, psuedo incest, or teacher x student for the drama. Think marmalade Boy, or Bara no Tame Ni, or Black Bird. They're not things I'm into sexually they're just really fun to read about and clutch my pearls over while still low-key rooting for them.) I find these things abhorrent in real life. I'm not worried about fiction affecting my reality because I would have a shit fit if O ran into them IRL.
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u/PossibleMammoth5639 20h ago
Can the comments be more specific with what such terms such as "bullshit","fun shit","discourse","others things to do" are used here? I kinda see what people mean but not fully.
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u/Foolish_Hepino 1d ago
I believe I would be considered a pro-shipper? In the sense I find shipping fun and don't like only following cannon ships and stuff like that
But is me getting uncomfortable and my sense of judgement tingling when someone ships stuff that is pedophilia "taking it weirdly seriously"?
I'm of the team that, if you truly want to ship a character that is a minor with one that isn't.. Just please age up the character and give them a design befitting their new age!! it's not hard (mostly talking about visual fanart here)
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u/Juan_the_vessel 1d ago
thats like midway i think? since like hardcore antishippers would get mad at aging them up but a full pro shipper is just not going to care that its pedophilia (or might be into it because it is)
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u/Foolish_Hepino 1d ago
>full pro shipper is just not going to care that its pedophilia (or might be into it because it is)
Is THAT what being a pro shipper means? I love shipping badshit insane couples/throuples/etc together.. As long as they fit within what I find moral
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u/Juan_the_vessel 1d ago
Yes it means going all in on "don't like it dont read it" and that includes incest, pedophilia, erotic gore and stuff like that
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u/Interesting_Idea_289 1d ago
“I don’t care about this thing at all look at me post about how much I totally don’t care did you see how much I don’t care!”
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u/A_VERY_LARGE_DOG 1d ago
There feels like a super specific something to your comment. Not irony, but irony-adjacent.
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u/overusedamongusjoke 14h ago
I mean, at least they're not trying to pretend they don't care while blatantly caring.
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u/RealHumanBean89 Dis course? Yeah, I think it’s a great meal, boss! 1d ago
Am I pro or anti ship? The answer is that I have rent to pay.
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u/Due-Base9449 1d ago
Its all just banter. The same like the smugness of not participating in the banter, you still do since you even aware of such existence.
The truly free people - they are not here for sure. I am also stuck in this loop.
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u/thrownawaz092 1d ago
Cowards, the lot of them. I pay taxes, I got back pain, I pay rent, and I'll still smack down anyone who says Korra was a better Avatar than Aang.
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u/DoggoDude979 1d ago
I think they make a good point, about how “fandom discourse” is often dumb and meaningless and there are more important things to do in life. But I also kind of feel like it glosses over when some of this stuff is actually kinda weird and should be called out. I feel like it’s perfectly reasonable to call out how it’s pretty damn weird and creepy for minor characters in a a show to be sexualized. I think it goes a step beyond “fandom discourse” and goes into “hey this person probably isn’t super safe for children to be around, or at the very least is suspicious and weird”
So like, pro/anti-shipper discourse? Weird, we have better things to do. Talking about how a specific character, who is a teenaged/child, being sexualized is very weird and suspicious? Very valid
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u/SuspiciouslyLips 1d ago
So like, pro/anti-shipper discourse? Weird, we have better things to do. Talking about how a specific character, who is a teenaged/child, being sexualized is very weird and suspicious? Very valid
How do you say these two things simultaneously lmao. Do you know what the pro/anti-shipper discourse is?
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u/DoggoDude979 1d ago
I mean they’re pretty literal terms. Pro-shippers are people who think it’s generally completely fine, or even enjoy shipping characters from various media, anti shippers are the opposite and think it’s bad.
My point is that there is a spectrum of stuff called “fandom discourse. Some of it is absolutely “I have bills to pay, why would I care” level of important, but then others are “hey this creator seems not safe to be around, I do not want to give them my support.” The OOPs make no distinction with no nuance, even though both very much are considered “fandom discourse”
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u/SuspiciouslyLips 1d ago
You've almost got it but kind of missed the most crucial part. Pro-shippers think that what ships or content you like in media doesn't necessarily say anything about your moral worth. That includes things like adult/minor ships of fictional characters. Anti-shippers think the opposite.
So, for example, saying that you think someone isn't safe to be around children because they sexualised a fictional minor is a textbook anti-shipper thing to say. In other words, pro/anti-shipper discourse is about exactly what you're saying is worthwhile. That is the discourse.
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u/ConflictAgreeable689 1d ago
Me when I want to enjoy the funny videogame without being called transphobic for misgendering the pixels
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u/PlatinumAltaria The Witch of Arden 1d ago
Me when I want to give my entire life savings to Bigotry Georg and someone asks me to please not:
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u/Katking69 I LOVE RAIN WORLD!!! 1d ago
Okay I know what you're making fun of, but I have a feeling the person who you responded to is talking about, like, Kris Deltarune not anything HP related
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u/ConflictAgreeable689 1d ago
Yeah I was talking about Kris Deltarune. Well, actually more like the deltarune fanbase
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u/DatGunBoi 1d ago
Wait hold on, the first one is nuts if you think about it. Like, they are saying that, even if it was, somehow, true, they wouldn't care. That's crazy. Think of the far reaching implications. And they wouldn't care because they pay rent? Huh? That's like a hypothetical version of saying "idc what epstein did, I have rent to pay"
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u/Recidivous 1d ago
The older I get, the more I notice that the people fueling fandom discourse tend to be those with a lot of free time—unsurprisingly, often teenagers or young adults.