oh god I’m done I’m fucking. I’m done I’m sick and I’m exhausted and I’m done
Nobody here supports real life pedophilia and abuse.
Antis support bullying creators for depicting it in fiction in ways they don’t approve of. They harbor bullies because they would have no power otherwise.
What are you – I assume an anti – missing in your life that you need so badly to feel righteous about the fiction you consume? Why do you need to feel you have power over people? Antis openly admit that they go after smaller creators because they know that smaller creators will “listen” to them – except that what they’re doing is intimidation and bullying, so what they really mean is that smaller creators are afraid of them.
And you know what? It worked. It fucking worked. Small creators are terrified. Multiple artists have been driven into depression and suicide attempts by harassment that came from antis. Creators who never hurt anyone had their careers ruined over false accusations of pedophilia over a cartoon drawing. Someone got fed needles. Three artists that I know of at conventions have had their merch and displays damaged by people calling them pedophiles or abuse apologists or whatthefuckever because of the completely safe for work art they were displaying.
You’re bullies. You’re fucking bullies and you need to feel powerful so you gang up on fandom creators, who are almost all already marginalized young people, so that you can feel like you’re doing something. But you’re not. You’re fucking not. You can tear down all the queer artists you want, it won’t make a single goddamn bit of difference. YOU ARE NOT HELPING ANYONE.
You’re not. Helping. Anyone.
But you did it, I guess. Artists are scared. People are scared. Small, queer creators are more scared to release content now than they were 5 years ago, because their own community will almost certainly tear them apart like wild dogs.
This is extremely true. Everyone that goes through abuse is different and has their mental health impacted differently, and your feelings on x are not necessarily correct for everyone despite being valid.
Different people can handle different things, and if you can’t handle/enjoy something, that does not mean that those who can and do have to cater to you beyond tagging things properly. This is especially important now that Tumblr has finally added the blacklisting feature. It is imperative that YOU take the initiative to make yourself feel comfortable and safe, because this is a SHARED SPACE.
my fave thing is when when women in fandom are like UGH BUT I CANT RELATE TO F/F PAIRINGS BC IM NOT A LESBIAN
funnily enough you’re not a gay man either yet here we are
this tea is fucking SCALDING
actually this tea is cold af because hmmmm I’ll tell you a secret
I’m a cishet woman, therefore I find *men* attractive, same as all cis*het* women
a *gay* man finds *men* attractive
therefore since I’m not a gay man but I like the same things a gay man likes I find it way easier to write fic about a dude who likes a dude because I can imagine *why* he’d be into a dude and with a bit of that thing named *empathy/trying to imagine how it feels to be your character* I can work out the rest and I can relate and also I suppose I’d imagine how things work in the bedroom since both me and my character like having men inside it
meanwhile I absolutely am not romantically or sexually attracted to women and therefore to me it’s a lot harder to write f/f unless it’s a ship I like or it’s canon and I have material to work on because I really *cannot relate* to the concept of finding women attractive *and* since fanfic is for *fun* and I’m not writing a book I am in no way shape or form obligated to write f/f fanfic just because it’s about women and I’m a woman, and I’d find it way harder to imagine why a lesbian would be into another woman physically (because I’m not one) (not because it’s WRONG obviously)
therefore sorry but a heterosexual woman, when *shipping things* or writing *fanfic* in which A is attracted to B will find m/m or f/m *always* more relatable than f/f. a bisexual man would most probably relate to a lesbian on that level more than *I* would, because a bisexual dude would definitely want to fuck women and I wouldn’t and he’d definitely know how to make love to one woman better than I could imagine since I doubt I’ll ever have the chance or the inclination
I mean, it’d be nice if y’all actually thought about fairly obvious things before *always* somehow making fun of *women in fandom* who in 95% of the time happen to be straight because of course it’s the only typology of woman that is *always* good to laugh at (except for bi women in m/f rships who then aren’t bi anymore), but what do I even ask out of this website? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
(ps: not wanting to fuck women doesn’t mean that you will NEVER want to write f/f or I wouldn’t have written the only literal explicit fic on ao3 for a canon ff ship in a show no one on tumblr ever heard of THANKFULLY because y’all would hate it, but putting it like this is really fucking dumb because you’re mixing up same-sex attraction with *the sex you’re actually attracted to* I mean ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ¯_(ツ)_/¯ )
hey shut up, your hetero opinion actually isn’t relevant here
So what about the opinion of a woman in a relationship with another woman? Relevant enough? Because hey, everything @janiedean said is true. But actually thinking about what she said would require you to examine your own motivations and biases, and that…well. You seem unwilling.
(Screeching about how I’m not queer enough, have internalised homophobia, or some other reason why my opinion is still not relevant in 3, 2, 1…)
Controversial Opinion™ but: it’s ok to like things that other people don’t like and it’s ok to let other people like things you don’t like.
Controversial Opinion™ but: if you don’t like something in fandom/fiction, the solution is to not pay attention to it and not read it and not look for content of it, and instead just go about your day as per usual.
Controversial Opinion but: this shit shouldn’t even be a controversial opinion….
Race. *sigh* I keep revisiting this ask, and each time I do I feel more and more like I don’t want to engage as there are so many landmines.
I didn’t get into fandom for landmines, and so I maneuver around them, and the reason I’m answering this at all is for those who are thinking about topics like these but are too afraid to respond for fear of the landmines.
I’m responding bc I feel like if sharing my perspective could make just one person feel better about this, then it’s worth the risk and worth my time and effort.
I’m up for Daniel being Black in the adaptation. His race isn’t mentioned specifically in the books, and we need diversity in an ocean of white Eurotrash fops! I don’t see any reason why not and Bryan cast the lead in American Gods as black so I’m hopeful to see some good changes in Anne’s work. What do you think?
^Here’s one person who wants to cast Daniel as POC/Black, and they seemed to be accentuating the positive. They want diversity. They compared him to the lead from American Gods being cast as black. I don’t watch that show so I don’t know if that character is the “butt of crazy jokes” or only has value being attached to another character, but it seems to me, at face value, that this Anon thinks that Daniel being cast as POC/Black is parallel with the lead of another series being cast as POC/Black, this Anon states that as being a good change.
I answered that Anon more in depth with some historical context, so you can look at that response, but basically, Anne is open to casting POC for VC characters. I’m open to it! I trust in whoever is running the adaptation to produce it in a tasteful and respectful way, and updating it to be inspiring and satisfying to a wider audience would be great, however that happens.
TL:DR; I think people do care about Daniel, and would love to see a character that they care about, like Daniel, be cast as a POC as a good thing. Daniel is not perfect (none of them are! Except Mojo) but he has many positive traits: he’s clever, resourceful, sassy, charismatic, capable of loving and being loved in return. I think people would love for the adaptation to show that those traits can absolutely be found in POC, too. We do need more positive representation like that.
Reminder that this is a fandom blog for entertainment and I am not here to make/agree/disagree with political statements that are potentially inflammatory. Not my focus. But I will address your points to some extent.
Speaking to the connotations of race, it’s interesting that people in the fandom want to make Daniel the black character
I haven’t seen an enormous amount of people in the fandom wanting this change, I think one blog is dedicated to it? I’ve mostly seen interest and support for casting a POC as Akasha, since that casting in movie!QOTD was pretty widely praised. I see people talking about considering casting other characters as POC, but I don’t see anyone other than Akasha as being the main character of interest for that.
One could criticize that choice as being bad, as it could imply that POC/Black women are villains, bc she was a villain in that movie. That’s not the message I took from that casting choice, but one could easily argue that that was a message being sent (and therefore, Bad representation, even though she was cast as a character in a position of power).
when for so many years, a goodly bulk of this fandom has only attributive Daniel as having any value to the story when he’s attached to Armand, or made him the butt of crazy jokes.
“for so many years” covers decades of time, these books have been around since 1976. Reflecting back to when I started in this in 1993 (which was already almost 20 yrs late), I can’t say that any character has escaped being the butt of crazy jokes in all this time, and with the nature of shipping, many of the characters seem to only have value when attached to other characters.
Re: shipping: it seems like ships are more prevalent in fanworks than fanworks portraying the characters on their own, and so it may give the impression that fandom “prefers the characters as part of a ship,” but personally, I think of shipping as the collision of 2 (or more) characters, to see how they’ll interact: in happiness, sadness, anger, all the different ways! Writing about a ship can allow a fanartist/writer/etc. to explore how each member of the ship will react in
actions/words/etc.
to the other’s actions/words/etc. So I can see how you might get the impression that “Daniel only has value as being attached to Armand,” but I think it’s more about how Daniel presents himself when he is with Armand, that’s what the fanworks are exploring.
Along those lines, however you interpret that ship, the bulk of Daniel’s post-IWTV “screentime” was in QOTD, with Armand, and after that, Daniel doesn’t get much action in canon until the more recent books (but even then, not as much as in QOTD). As the fandom does tend to ship Daniel with Armand, and plenty of it that I’ve seen (especially in fanart) is somewhat fluffy, again, I can see why you might get the impression that “he’s only valued when attached to Armand,” but really, I think Daniel/Armand shippers are fascinated with the dynamic of that ship. It’s rarely fluffy in canon. So some of them make fanworks for wish fulfillment, and that’s valid.
Personally, I don’t think Daniel’s only value to the story is when he’s attached to Armand, but again, he spends most of his time in canon with Armand, maybe that’s why the fandom doesn’t tend to write him on his own time separately.
Re: being the “butt of crazy jokes”: As a side note, when we joke about characters, that’s not to say that that’s always a negative act. Look, we’re currently dragging Lestat bc he said IN CANON that he loved being called a “slut,” which is really more of a layered commentary on shaming people for enjoying sex/intimacy, and he refuses to be shamed for it, he’ll turn around and take it as a compliment instead 😉
I’ve been in this fandom for over 20 years and I don’t think Daniel has gotten the worst treatment in those terms, it seems to me that there have been waves of love/interest/disdain/mockery of most of the main (and side) characters at different points in time, and from different groups of fans. So that may be your experience, and that’s absolutely valid, but I haven’t seen it that way. Of all the characters, I think Lestat probably gets the worst of being the butt of crazy jokes and he likes it bc bad attention is better than no attention.
It seems awfully suspicious to me that the “best’ character” to be cast as a POC is the one so many have considered the throw-away one. If that doesn’t speak volumes, I don’t know what does.
I’m sorry, but I have to disagree here, too. I wouldn’t say he’s a throw-away character for the whole fandom. There are Daniel RPers. As I’ve mentioned, it happens that he doesn’t have a lot of action in canon other than in books 1 (as just the interviewer, but it counts!) and 3, so the fandom does not have as much canon to work with as they do for other characters.
And again, re: the fandom choosing him as “the best character” to be cast as a POC, that seems to be Akasha, from what I’ve seen.
The reason I love Only Lovers Left Alive is it shows that a character (Adam) can be severely mentally ill, in this case depressed and suicidal, and still be seen as lovable and capable of being loved and loving in return without being “cured” of their mental illness, and that a mentally ill character can have other attributes aside from being mentally ill while still showing the impact being mentally ill has on his personality.
Adam from OLLA is an extremely important character to me you guys.
Similarly, I think people would love to see a character that they care about, like Daniel, be cast as a POC as being POC is often portrayed negatively in media. Fans of a POC being cast as Daniel would want (I’m paraphrasing from above):
to see
Daniel
showing that a character can be POC, in this case black, and still be seen as lovable and capable of being loved and loving in return, and that a POC character can have other attributes aside from being POC while still showing the impact being POC has on his personality.
Daniel Molloy from VC is an extremely important character to me you guys.
I don’t have a well-articulated way of putting this yet but so much anti rhetoric strikes me as deeeeeeply sexphobic?
Like….. sexual attraction isn’t inherently predatory. Arousal is a largely involuntary process with no moral implications. Getting aroused by weird, benign, even horrifying things is a normal part of being human, and if it’s not distressing to you or causing you to act in antisocial ways then it’s not even a little bit an issue.
The idea that being aroused by another human is inherently objectifying of that human is some straight-up 18th century Kant philosophy. It was predicated on a lot of ideas we now know aren’t really true, and are deeply sexist besides. And they’re still just as wrong and sexist now as they were then? Sexual arousal isn’t a prequel to violence, attraction isn’t objectification, can we please all just in general stop being so afraid of other people’s and our own sexual feelings and start figuring out how to be accepting and positive about them in a way that benefits everyone
So one of the things in VC is that these vampires are like sappy emotional goofballs and there’s a reoccurring theme of love transcending traditional boundaries. It’s also implied over and over that they experience love on a level that is unfathomable to us as MERE MORTALS because of their big magical vampire brains.
I do think their relationships in general can be looked at on an individual basis and their history dictates the sort of tone there—I think they’re all just super extra and will always refer to companions as lovers even when there are dramatic qualitative differences in their relationship dynamics—like for example Louis & Armand strike me as a more traditional couple model, vs. Marius & Daniel strike me more in a father/son way because Marius takes care of him. Though, it’s a little hard to speculate because we don’t see a lot of them together. But! In this world, with the love transcending boundaries blah blah, it doesn’t mean they aren’t lovers in this universe and this context, because you see the same with Louis & Claudia or Lestat & Gabrielle. And even though there are a lot of areas in the stories where sex is implied through symbolism and coding and whatever there isn’t literal sex, so when you take sex out of the equation it’s a little easier to apply these broader definitions of love to these pairs of characters. And you see it over and over again that they never just like someone, or have a crush on someone. They’re just constantly ~IN LOVE~ with each other and they’re all so obsessed with how beautiful everyone is lol.
But also re: blood/sex !!!
Something I noticed in VC fandom is that there’s sort of a spectrum of how literally people take the blood=sex thing, and when you also combine that with the spectrum of people’s sexuality and sex positivity I think we come up with some varying interpretations of these stories and characters. I’m not here to say that anyone else is wrong. This is a place where interpretation is key and it’s something so personal and that people feel so strongly about that I don’t think authorial intent often changes anyone’s minds. And having the freedom to interpret literature and art the way you want to is something that makes it enjoyable.
Again, I think we have to take individual characters or ships into consideration with some of these questions. Like, were they feeding intimately? Until Louis v.2.0 showed up I don’t think he was. Marius and Daniel feed on each other but Marius is always very generous with his blood with his lovers because he wants them to be strong and safe. I don’t think the vampires can share blood WITHOUT it being intimate but it’s important to decide what you think “intimate” means. Because bloodsharing can be compared to sex, which is intimate in its own way, but i also see it being akin to breastfeeding, and that’s super intimate too. We have ways of knowing that these two things are different versions of intimacy and obviously the vampires would, too. But then, again, there’s the idea that the way they love each other is so much bigger than just being about sex, and their definition of intimacy is something much more infinite than we can comprehend. It’s also worth acknowledging that when they share blood they’re literally opening up a stream of their own thoughts and emotions, which is something that we IRL only experience on an implied or symbolic level when we have intimate moments with real people in our lives. So their version of intimacy is a lot more complex due to the literal mechanics of what happens to them and also that they’re canonically just super emotionally intuitive.
But like, for me? I’m happy to play along and suspend my disbelief when I read VC and accept that I have a tiny pathetic human brain and that they’re experiencing something too profound for me to understand. I accept that they love each other on a deep level where it doesn’t matter if their relationship resembles a traditional couple vs a parent and child. That Louis can consider Claudia his lover or that Lestat can consider Gabrielle his lover because of the intimacy they share is a symbol to me that they are above petty human labels, because they are not human.
Every now and then I see discussions where the blood is reduced to sex on such a literal level and it strikes me as being really crude, and to me it does a huge disservice to one of the things I love the most about this series. And that’s, yknow, like I said, something that can vary to a degree between different people. I’m a very sex-positive person, but I’m also asexual. I don’t like reducing intimacy to meaning sex. So “lovers” to me doesn’t necessarily mean sex partners and it also doesn’t necessarily mean blood sharers, either. Like we know that Louis wouldn’t take blood from the others, which tells me he didn’t try it with Lestat or Armand pre-2000. That doesn’t mean he and Armand weren’t lovers. I think it often just means “I love this person, therefore they are my lover.”
You could take the ~just dudes being bros~ attitude to them or to any set of vampires living together if you really wanted to but I really think they’re such sappy motherfuckers that they wouldn’t spend so much time around each other if they weren’t in love, with or without blood to complicate it. I also think the overuse of the word lover is an expansion on romance and not a reduction of it, so in any case where a romantic pairing is ambiguous because of the language I think it’s always better to err on the side of them being in love.
Having said all that I will also say I’m super dying to know more about what goes on at Trinity Gate with Benji and Sybelle and we just DON’T HAVE ENOUGH INFORMATION TO KNOW. I’m curious to see if the coven/family-like nature of the household diffuses the intensity between them, especially if Louis is around to keep Armand occupied.
So! Anyway.
Kind of a hard question to answer because I think you have to take everyone on a case-by-case basis but I would definitely say that they all feel really big passionate feelings and don’t have casual crushes on each other. If they’re living together they’re probably in love with each other, in some ridiculous vampire way that doesn’t really make any sense to me.
Why the fuck do I talk so much when I answer asks idk but
TLDR I think companion and lover are often used interchangeably in VC because these vampires are clingy dramatic saps and that they have a really liberal definition of “lover” and apply it in ways that we don’t as real people in the real world.
Something I noticed in VC fandom is that there’s sort of a spectrum of how literally people take the blood=sex thing, and when you also combine that with the spectrum of people’s sexuality and sex positivity I think we come up with some varying interpretations of these stories and characters. I’m not here to say that anyone else is wrong. This is a place where interpretation is key and it’s something so personal and that people feel so strongly about that I don’t think authorial intent often changes anyone’s minds. And having the freedom to interpret literature and art the way you want to is something that makes it enjoyable.
…
But like, for me? I’m happy to play along and suspend my disbelief when I read VC and accept that I have a tiny pathetic human brain and that they’re experiencing something too profound for me to understand. I accept that they love each other on a deep level where it doesn’t matter if their relationship resembles a traditional couple vs a parent and child. That Louis can consider Claudia his lover or that Lestat can consider Gabrielle his lover because of the intimacy they share is a symbol to me that they are above petty human labels, because they are not human.
^Now, if anyone wants to define the vampires with human labels and definitions, that’s absolutely fine. You do you!
I’m going to stray slightly from Anon’s ask, and focus more on the larger aspect of categorizing/analyzing//judging/defining, bc looking for concrete differences between (A)“they are considered to be lovers” when (B) “they could be just friends,” and really, I think like all questions directed at clarifying VC ships/characters/plot/etc., it’s in the eye of the beholder/reader’s interpretation of the text and discussing it with others, if they choose to, like in sending an ask to me, @monstersinthecosmos, or anyone else.
On Analysis:
When Anne Rice said, “You’re interrogating the text from the wrong perspective!!! ;A; ” we all laughed. We still do, bc it sounded then, as it does now, at face value, like she’s a child stomping her feet and telling us we were judging her works objectivelyunfairly. That any negative or critical reviews could be labeled altogether as bullying, more or less.
…But really, over time, I’ve come to see this statement more as: “If you interrogate/criticize/analyze the text with a lens/rubric that the author was
(a)
not aware of, (b) not subscribed to, or (c.) was not a consideration during or preceding the time the work was written, you are very likely to find the text disappointing, and it will fail your judgment.” I think that Anne took it personally when fans were disappointed bc of this, but she steadfastly refused to accept guilt for disappointing them, and I admire her for sticking to her guns on that. There are fans who want her to include more POC, there are fans who insist that Lestat is straight, there are fans who want her to denounce all the VC and witch books bc they depict vampires and witches in a favorable light, etc. Since she cannot please everyone, she pleases her biggest fan only: herself.
I found a rubric for grading art (from thevirtualinstructor.com), probably for students in elementary or middle school, probably between 6-13 years old, I assume “S” means “student” and “T” means “teacher” but I can’t find the actual post about it, ANYWAY…
^So this is ONE example of a means of judging a work, and honestly, for a child, I’d say it’s sufficient. I would rearrange and add a lot more it to judge an adult, but it would depend on the adult. Maybe something like Effort, which might seem to only apply to children, would still be a factor for someone recovering from surgery or doing art as therapy.
ANYWAY, so if you reread @monstersinthecosmos‘s post there is so much to consider, especially re: the way we define “lover” and “companion” being very much in line with what I’ve added here, considering the rubric/lens from which we judge VC.
The questions then become:
Are you looking to be disappointed? Are you looking to be impressed? What do you need from a fictional work?
^And I think the answers to these will be different for everyone. In my experience, it’s been more enjoyable for me to take VC for what it is, and take pleasure in the acceptance, corrections, and/or manipulations (like AUs) of canon to fandom through fanworks and respectful discussion.
To my mind, when the word of the author is not even the authority, and there are unreliable narrators, no one’s opinion supercedes anyone else’s, no matter how hard they might try to push you to agree with them. Curate your experience with fandom and your own headcanons.
So as most of you know, I have a more personal connection to anti-shipping than most: for about two years, I was arguably the nastiest and most vicious anti in my fandom, so much so that I gained a certain level of infamy for it.
Starting to ship Reylo was a wakeup call the likes of which I’d never encountered before — not only did it cause me to examine my own past behavior and confront the extremely difficult revelation that I’d been the villain all along, but it also made me think about anti-shipping as a whole, and the things I wish I had understood when I was knee-deep in that mindset.
Things like:
1. People’s enjoyment of things that hurt you is not blithe mockery of your pain. It is not a personal slight. You are allowed to be hurt by something. You are not allowed to belittle, degrade, and shame others for interacting with it. You are not that important, and your pain is not a weapon.
2. The moment you commit yourself to a movement devoted to hatred, you have ceded the moral high ground. You have gone to the Dark Side. You are not fighting the good fight. You are an emotional terrorist actively attempting to break people down for disagreeing with you.
3. You also cede the right to be a victim. No one deserves to be suicide baited or doxxed, and neither do you. However, by aligning yourself with hatred, by actively harming others and laughing about it, you forfeit your right to be upset and morally outraged when you receive hate, when others comment in disagreement with your posts, when you are cast as a villain. You are not being bullied. You are receiving back just a taste of the pain you have caused others.
4. You. Are. Miserable. You really are. Happy, fulfilled people don’t marinate themselves in hatred. They don’t drink acid and spit it at others. You’re so desperate to avoid looking at yourself and so afraid of what you’ll see there that you’re directing all of that hatred outwards. You found a group of people who like something that makes you angry, and it’s so easy to attack them, to hurt them because you’ve convinced yourself that they’re “bad” somehow and they deserve it. But it’s not about them. It’s about you. It’s about all those dark things you hear at night. It’s the fear that you’re worthless. And it’s the high you get, the ego boost every time someone cheers you on for attacking the “bad” shippers. It’s the feeling that you’re so smart, you’re so popular, you’re so loved and you’re so, so right for everything you’re doing.
But those people aren’t there for you at night. They won’t be there when your world falls apart. All that’s left is you, and your misery, and the desperate need to make someone else hurt for it because you can’t handle it.
5. And most importantly: you’re wrong. You are wrong. Your thought process is wrong. Your behavior is wrong. Everything that you are doing as you torture and harm others and convince yourself that you’re morally justified IS. WRONG.
One day you’re going to realize that, and you’ll choke on it.
And if you did that a thousand times, it still wouldn’t be equal to all of the harm you caused.
And you can distract and deflect and justify all you want. In the end, all of those people who cheered you on will be gone. Your popularity will be gone. And all you’ll have is yourself, and every ounce of misery and self-hatred you tried and failed to run from, that you drilled into others, and the realization that even though you thought you were the hero of your fandom, in reality, you were the monster you were trying so hard to protect everyone from.
There are a couple of things about current shipping culture that confuse me.
1. The focus on whether or not a pairing will become canon as a reason people should ship something or not. Do you not understand what the “transformative” part of “transformative works” means?”
2. This idea that saying “I ship that” means “I think that, as presented in canon,this is a perfect, healthy relationship that everyone should model their relationship after.”
Sometimes shipping something does mean that. Sometimes shipping something means “Person A is a trash bag who doesn’t deserve person B but I would love to explore how Person A might grow to deserve Person B.” Sometimes it means “I want these characters to live together forever in a conflict free domestic AU.” Sometimes it means “I want Person A to forever pine after Person B. Nothing is beautiful and everything hurts.” And sometimes it just means you like their faces and want to see Person A and Person B bone in various configurations and universes.
Listen to your parents, kids.
This really should be one of a handful of Public Service Announcements randomly and chronically inserted into one’s dash.
Hell man sometimes it means “these two are TERRIBLE and I want to watch them burn like a catastrophic forest fire as a proxy for all the shit I don’t actually want in real life (like to light my own apartment on fire and scream) and then laugh at the destruction at the end.”
I-want-my-IWTV 
