This is true, this is real, this is Straight Edge

Let me be perfectly clear: if you send hateful messages, death threats, or wish harm on another human being because they dared to have an opinion contrary to your own on the BuckyNat ship, or any other ship, whether on lj, Tumblr, or any other platform, your behavior is cruel and unacceptable. YOU are everything that is wrong with fandom. I don't care what your excuse is. "Cool motive. Still an asshole."

Captain America would be ashamed of you.

On an unrelated note, girljanitor of Tumblr's medievalpoc has recently been exposed as a crackah ass crackah. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a big deal -- one doesn't have to be non-white to run an art blog comprised of shoddy research -- but girljanitor has explicitly presented herself as a POC for some time and used that cred to cry "racist!" at anyone who criticized her blog or challenged her statements (and calling someone a racist on Tumblr is the equivalent of lobbing a grenade into a town hall meeting). Notably, she's guilty of pulling more-oppressed-than-thou rank on actual POC, ethnic and religious minorities, and shouting them down.

For anyone who's suffering from wank burnout, I highly recommend the Historically Accurate Steve blog, run by my flistie/first-rate human being, theladyscribe! Get lost for hours in fascinating posts about the world that created Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes (and their creators, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby).

Also over on little-details, there's a great post about the possible family background of Natalia Alianovna Romanova, aka the Black Widow. A must-read if you're like me and you get geeky about Russian patronymics.

...Well, fuck.

I wish there was more that I could say or do about this, but unfortunately I, along with the rest of fandom, am powerless to help these poor fanfic writers sentenced to prison for promoting "homosexuality, gore, and violence". I have always been against the mainstreaming of fandom, mostly out of fear of nightmare scenarios like this one.

I just started cackling like a hyena when I came across this on someone's ff.net profile:

Outside of fanfic, God is the most important thing in my life...

I'm sorry, I'm a godless atheist with no respect for religion, but it seems to me that if you believe in God, shouldn't God be, like, WAY above fanfic in the list of important things in your life? Fuck! Priorities, y'all!

A thread about fetuses (surprisingly enough, not abortion-related) got fairly wanky on FFA, and a nonny added something to the discussion that actually made my jaw drop.



How can you say, even in jest (and apparently she's not joking), that a medical professional should be more willing to sterilize you because you're black? I'm all for people getting sterilized if that's what they want, but to sincerely believe that an OBGYN should look at you and see, not a patient, but a black person, and that they should be eager to sterilize you because of that, is beyond disturbing. I'm not exactly a SJW, god knows I'm not, but y'all are aware that ethnic minorities and other "undesirables" have a long history of being forcibly sterilized or having their children taken by the states in which they live, right? And to imply that you expect that sort of treatment is... jesus fucking christ.

1. Fishing-for-compliments. "Omigod, this fanfic is so bad, I'm sorry, I shouldn't even be posting this!" If you say something like that about your own work, you know what? I'm gonna believe you. Yeah, your fanfic probably sucks and you should probably have kept it to yourself.

2. M/M sex scenes where one half of the slash pairing thinks to himself how, at last, he can be as rough as he wants to be because his sex partner is a big tough man and not some fragile woman. Um, have you ever had sex with a woman? Women are not china dolls. If you fuck a woman vigorously, her leg will not pop off or something. And a penis isn't a battering ram, for fuck's sake.

3. "Blown pupils". Has any turn of phrase ever metatastized across fandom so quickly and so widely?

This is a self-indulgent post in which I will bitch and complain about stuff in Sharon Kay Penman's historical fiction that I don't like.

Sharon Kay Penman writes primarily about the Plantagenet dynasty of medieval England, and she is often hailed as Our Lord and Savior of historical fiction. This despite the fact that her writing is very stitled and "samey". By "samey", I mean the tendency some writers have that all their characters kind of talk alike and have the same tics and stock expressions. You know those Migratory Slash Fandom writers who flit from fandom to fandom, fitting the new hot slash pairing of the week into their favorite tropes like a square peg into a round hole, so that their Arthur/Eames is indistinguishable from Stiles/Derek and Stiles/Derek is indistinguishable from their Bond/Q? Well, Penman does something like that, except she gets paid for it. I like to say that she can only write about four characters, and they are Overly Noble Knight, Spitfire Heroine, Bad Boy, and Good Wife. For instance, King John, Prince Davydd, William de Braose, and Geoffrey of Anjou are all Bad Boys. Ranulf's wife, Joan of Wales, Matilda of Boulogne, and Marguerite of France are all Good Wives. And so on.

Penman also is the master of the "As You Know, Bob..." moment, when one character turns into a dumbass so another character can patiently explain something to him that she should by all rights now already. This is also called infodumping, and it needs to be killed with fire.

Example, from Here Be Dragons:

"I'm not going back," Llywelyn said, at once capturing their undivided attention.
"You both know the history of my House, know how my uncles Davydd and Rhodri cheated my father and my other uncles out of their rightful share of my grandfather's inheritance. They carved Gwynedd up between them as if it were a meat pie, forced my father, Owain Fawr's firstborn, into exile, brought about his death whilst I was still in my cradle. His blood is on their hands and they've yet to answer for it. I think it time they did."

He is telling this to his BEST FRIENDS Rhys and Ednyved. Why the fuck do they need to be told this? They grew up with Llywelyn. It's not like they're gonna say 'Holy shit man, what do you mean you're a prince and your uncles are nogoodniks who deserve to die? I had no idea. Tell me more.' Llywelyn's only known them since they were small enough to be bathed together.

Here's another one, from When Christ and His Saints Slept:

"I'll tell you what I know," Stephen said reluctantly. "Your father and others were hunting in the New Forest with his brother the king. William Rufus was shot by mischance -- took an arrow in the chest -- and died there in the woods. He had no sons, which meant his crown would be claimed by one of his brothers. Robert was the firstborn, but he was on his way back from the Holy Land, and your father... well, he was luckier, for he was within riding distance of Winchester, where the royal treasury was kept. He headed for Winchester at a gallop, and by sunset he was calling himself England's king. As you know, Robert eventually challenged him, and ended his days confined to the great keep of Cardiff Castle in South Wales. More than that, I cannot say. No man can."

Stephen here is talking to his cousin Ranulf (Penman's OC illegitimate son of Henry I) who has grown up at court and knows his dad. So why the fuck does he need the whole ugly saga repeated like Stephen is reading aloud a page from a history book? It ain't like Ranulf has been living in a hole in the ground all his life. And I think Ranulf probably knows already that his uncle Robert was a Crusader prince, as that was kind of a Big Fucking Deal back in the day.

If you're gonna infodump, try to do so in a way that doesn't come across as A) repeating something out of a history book, B) telling a character something they already know, and C) failing to advance the plot or develop the characters in any way, shape, or form. I mean, if Stephen HAS to tell Ranulf this story, how does his telling reflect Stephen's feelings about it? Is Stephen trying to get Ranulf to think a certain way about his father? We don't know, because Penman doesn't put any personality into this scene. It's just there. Stephen and Ranulf are just talking heads.

While I'm at it, here's something that's bothered me since I first read When Christ..., which is ostensibly the story of the civil war between the empress Maude and her cousin Stephen for the throne of England: Why are Maude and Stephen guest-stars in their own book? It's like Penman wanted to write a book, but didn't actually find Maude and Stephen all that interesting. You get barely any personality from Stephen, so there's no sense of tragedy about him, and Maude is sort of halfway between an Overly Noble Lady and a shrew. I mean, this is a conflict for the ages, a human drama on an epic scale, and Penman fast-forwards through the book to get to Maude's more interesting son, the future Henry II. Half the good stuff happens off-screen. And instead of giving Maude and Stephen page time, Penman invents a fictional half-Welsh brother for Maude, Ranulf, so he can go adventuring in Wales and Find Himself, because that's what I bought a book about The Anarchy for.

I may be back later with more Penman rants. I got a lot to bitch about when it comes to this author.

Already saw someone displaying their limited knowledge of media history when they complained that Avengers seemed like a rip-off of Doctor Who. Doctor Fucking Who of all things. And I'm like:

NO LET ME SCHOOL YOU ON THE HISTORY OF THE AVENGERS, HO.

But I managed to restrain myself. The first person to suggest that Hawkeye is a "rip-off" of Katniss from the fucking Hunger Games series will not be so lucky.

So on fail_fandomanon, the most recent post is well into 4000+ comments, and as FFA posts are closed at 5000 comments on ffa, this means everyone is twiddling their thumbs waiting for a new post to go up. So I toss out a thread to try to pass the time.



Yes, that's my OP, and *that's* some assclown who's mama must've been frightened by Waylon Jennings driving a pickup truck when she was carrying him/her.



Because of course it's mandatory to comment on an anonymous thread on ffa, and because I didn't make it Non-American Accessible, I'm an imperialist troll. Good to know!



I would just like to say at this point, that in my time in fandom I've seen some vile things. I've seen people turn on their so-called best friends. I've seen plagiarists. I've seen self-hating female misogynists. I've seen people telling other fans to go kill themselves. I've seen BNFs threatening to sue minors for talking about how another BNF is a known plagiarist. I've seen hypocrites who talk down to black people and then make tumblrs to educate whitey on how not to be racist (change starts at home, fuckers). I've seen and heard it all, s'what I'm saying. And hell, I ain't a perfect person. I'm not even sure I'm a good person. But hell, I laughed this shit off. This is minor leagues, y'all. And just look at this shit! THIS IS FUCKING FUNNY!



I would also like to mention that on this same ffa post, there's a thread with a pack of comments that asks the nonnies about their *personal finances*. Now, I ain't your mama. I guess it's up to you to decide whether or not you want to share your personal financial information with strangers over the internet, even anon. It just tickles me that MY thread is the wanky one, and not the one asking folks about their finances. Maybe because that one gives people a chance to talk about their favorite subject: themselves.

An updated collection of tweets and quotes from my favoritist sex-and-food-obsessed porn star, James Deen. I think he's hilarious and plus, he refuses to do porn scenes that he finds too "rapey". What's not to love? Uh, I guess this should go without saying, but as he's a porn star, his website and Twitter are in no way safe for work. Head's up, y'all.

( Read more... )

As a bonus, I discovered this list of common triggers while making a list of everything I will warn for in my fanfics. This list, from the Kyriarchy and Priviledge 101 blog, includes such things as "snakes", "insects", and "slimy things" alongside common triggers such as suicide and rape. I have to say, I think it's sad how the word 'trigger' has become synonymous with squick.

So today I scared the hell out of myself reading the 'sagas' of Amy Player aka a lot of other names and the Final Fantasy 7 cult house. My time in fandom has generally been a lot of fun, but over the years you will encounter crazies.

In my mind, there's like two kinds of crazy. There's 'sad crazy', like those women who think they're married to Snape on the Astral Plane. Crazy, yes, but they're probably not a threat to anyone but themselves. Then there's CRAY-CRAY. This second group are the sort of people who, a few hundred years ago, would've been living in a cave and yammering to saints and angels only they could see. But because we live in the age of internet, video games, and anime, the CRAY-CRAY amongst us can instead go online and not only proclaim to 'really' be Sephiroth or faeries or whatever, but find others willing to enable their delusions.

A note on real selves vs. imaginary selves: If you sincerely believe yourself to be a video game character, or some kind of animal, or a Hobbit, or whatever, then go ahead and believe that. That's your right. I reserve the right to think you are stupid and deluded.

What happened with Amy Player and his cronies, and the FF7 cult, is that these fucktards set out not only to live out their delusions, but to draw other people into their psychedelic fantasy worlds, use them for whatever they were worth, then disgard them when no longer useful. This behavior is straight up psychopathic and narcissistic. What's sick is that they prey on the most vulnerable people they can find -- people who feel "strange", lonesome, and rejected, people who have a difficult family life, people who are naive and inexperienced (Amy Player likes to manipulate teenage minors), people who find the real world disappointing and long for something magical in their lives.

Just look at how Maya, a person who barely escaped being a victim of the FF7 cult, describes herself:

I'm easily intimidated.
I'm nervous.
I have low self-esteem.

Somewhere, a psychopath is salivating over that description. That's EXACTLY the kind of person they can get their hooks into. And like most psychopaths (another notorious fandom figure, Usagi Kou, comes to mind) they're brilliant at finding willing victims. They're crazy, not stupid.

Jen would court people by telling them how "special" they were, inviting them to join her "family". Amy Player is a talented con artist who can convince people that his outrageous lies are the truth, skipping town and moving onto new victims whenever caught.

One thing I noticed about almost all the testimonies from escapees of the FF7 cult is that when they first moved into the cult's house, they would go along with whatever Jen (the leader) wanted, because they "wanted to be a good guest". When Jen hit them up for money, they'd go along with it, and before you know it, they're working for the cult, doing everything Jen wants, buying her whatever she wants. Jen becomes more and more controlling, listening in on their phone conversations, reading their journals, monitoring their internet use, etc. This sort of controlling behavior is very common in abusive boyfriends/husbands, too. It's a means of seperating you from your support group -- your friends and family -- and making YOU dependant on THEM.

One unfortunate part of dealing with these people is that some of them are very good at not appearing insane at first. The thing is, sooner or later the mask will slip, and you will see the CRAY-CRAY underneath. I met a girl through a friend who, at first, seemed very intense but otherwise very friendly and funny. The first couple of times I met her, I really liked her. But then one day, out of nowhere, she started telling me, "You know, people think I'm a freak because I'm sexually attracted to serial killers, but I can't help it!" That is one of the only times I have ever stopped, looked at someone, and thought, Danger! Danger!

But Mipp! I hear you cry. You're being SO MEAN to these poor CRAY-CRAY people! They can't help it!

My perspective is like so, when it comes to abusers, flakes, liars, unreconstructed alcoholics and addicts, and yes, the CRAY-CRAY:

Some people are broken.
That is unfortunate.
It is not my job to fix them.

Straight up, end of story. It is not worth spending my time, energy, effort, money, or precious years of my life to try to fix your CRAY-CRAY.

So please, please take care who you associate yourself with, online and offline. I'm not saying be afraid, and I'm not blaming the victim, I just want y'all to be safe, healthy... and sane.