Art by Lin Sun

This image hurts my brain more than the original debate ever did. Brains are dumb.

@alpha-team-deploy

The concept of relative color can be infuriating.

I like fantasy for the escapism but by escapism I mean reading about people who's problems are worse and weirder than mine.

Did I make you smile for once? ( •᷄⌓•᷅ )

 It’s a bit different from my usual content, I wanted to give you a break :’)

The planets, aligned.

the sickest thing ive ever seen

do u like the colour of the planets?

Just as a reference, these two posts are written by fanfiction loving gay cis men, who have a lot of great first-hand knowledge of the kinds of sex that two people with penises have! They are (used to be?) really well known, but I know a lot of younger folks may be writing fic and have never come across them! Minotaur A well known classic, incredibly informative website with tons of information. Rather dated at this point with regards to the cultural descriptions, but the mechanics are spot on! Gay Sex is All Wrong in Fanfic More recently written (2014), and addresses a lot of misconceptions that tend to pop up in mlm fic written by afab people!

Enjoy!

Rest In Peace, Minotaur. (He passed away over a decade ago.) he taught many fandomgoers so much via his website, & I’m glad to know his site is still an available resource (even if the terminology is no longer up to date.)

You know, this isn’t the thing that fucks me up the most about BL/“yaoi”/fujoshi discourse, but it’s high up there so I’m going to say it.

It took me my whole lifetime to accept the fact that I’m a feminine guy. Every time I was laughed at for being girly, nonviolent, called a sissy, bitch, or worse, it hurt like hell. And when I realized I was attracted to boys, that was when I started to question whether I was a real man. It felt like a stab to the gut.

I was there, little teenage me, reading BL, because I couldn’t connect with anything else I knew of. Straight romance didn’t do anything for me. I watched Brokeback Mountain and liked it, but I couldn’t relate to almost any part of it. Gei Comi (“bara”) wasn’t my taste back then — I wanted to see boys who looked a bit like me, not big hunky adults with facial hair! So I fell back to BL.

And you people on here complain about “straight girls squeeing and saying ‘my sinful gay babies!!!’” — guess what, I was around when you actually DID see fangirls say this type of thing. I was there consuming BL and slash by the truckful, ignoring the occasional homophobic comments from the author/uploader. I saw all the hate every other corner of fandom threw at BL fans, and you know what.

None of that hate was because they had homophobic attitudes.

It was purely because “yaoi is for stupid girls”, and they were “ruining the source material with their dirty gay hands”.

If girls touched anything that was “meant for boys”, including male characters themselves, it was “dirtied”, “ruined”. (Sounds familiar?)

And the boys who liked BL? Who preferred a romantic manga about androgynous guys slowly falling in love, with cherry blossoms being swept by the wind in the background, rather than just watching gay porn featuring masculine men? We weren’t “real men”.

If you thought there isn’t a fuckton of toxic masculinity in the gay male community, boy do I have news for you. Feminine, camp, flamboyant men, they all “made gays look bad”. Because of us, cishet people wouldn’t accept gay men as “real men”, so there were attempts to exclude us to protect the reputation of the unoffensive, masculine macho gays.

Obviously, it didn’t work, but damn if it didn’t make me and guys like me feel horrible that even other gay guys hated us.

It took me a long time to accept myself. Little mid-to-late-teens me, with light hypogonadism that stunted my growth and made me look very feminine. Before I started taking hormones per my endocrinologist’s advice, I barely had appetite to eat decently. I only lost my baby cheeks and started gaining muscle mass a year or so into hormone treatment.

Me, still flaming gay.

As I grew up, came out, and made queer friends, I became less and less dependent on BL for self-esteem and entertainment. But BL fans were slowly being more accepted in animanga fandom (or at least, people made peace with the fact that we weren’t going anywhere). Same for slash shippers in western fandoms. I was so happy to see all the M/M content. I was so happy to see a space where girls could share their passion (including erotica) and support each other.

When they learned that a gay guy liked the same things as them, they were ecstatic. They never shamed me for sharing their “girly” interests. I had serious conversations with them when they said insensitive or ignorant things, but it was becoming less and less necessary to do so. Fans were becoming progressively more conscious of queer issues.

And now.

Now,

Good fucking lord.

It’s so transparent. You feel so self-righteous expressing hate for women (plenty of whom are queer, but yeah, straight women too!) having interests, and god forbid, sometimes sexual interests (gasp!).

You dress it up as “concern for MLM” in the hopes that people will sympathize with your campaign to shame and harass women, men and gender non-conforming folk for daring to like content “not meant for them”, just like 2ch and 4chan dudebros in the mid-2000’s.

It makes me sick to the stomach.

Don’t pretend this is about homophobia. You don’t go after the exact same content if it’s made by “real men” featuring masculine macho “real men”.

You’ve heard of seme/uke tropes? Get ready for aggressive tops and “bottom bitches”! “Fetishizing Asian men”? Well, good thing that gay dudes have rice queens, and on the other end of the spectrum, “no fats, femmes or asians”. Transphobic themes? Some men consider “sh*male” or “tr*nny” to be porn categories! But neither anti-fujoshi nor transphobic gay men will talk about trans men — they’re “not real men”, after all, just “straight women invading gay spaces”.

And let’s not get into the rape, abuse, incest, racism, sexism, violence, and plethora of other problematic things that cis gay men portray in gei comi, original fic and fanfic — it puts dark BL and fic written by anyone else to shame.

But it’s okay, because it’s “real men” creating and consuming it, right?

Look, I get it. You want to seem like you’re doing good and fighting for queer men. I’ll hazard you even were fujoshi/fudanshi before and are ashamed of how you acted back then.

But all that you’re doing is misusing terms of a language you don’t know, from a culture you’re not part of and fandoms you don’t participate in, speaking over gay men and Asian fans, othering Asian people, and fostering an environment in which harassment of innocent fans is encouraged and marginalized people are used as scapegoats.

I feel for the trans guys, who go to fandoms to escape the hate and transphobia from the world, only to be misgendered and send hateful messages in the spaces they wanted to have fun in. Who are already accused of “faking it”, of not being “real men”, by bigots in the real world, and now have to face the same horrible things in fandom.

I feel for the queer girls, some of whom may not even be attracted to men, but to whom BL and/or slash means a lot. Who often don’t even have female characters to relate to, much less queer female characters, or simply can’t relate to them very well for a variety of complex reasons. They seek refuge in fandom, only to be misoriented, called “cishet”, having their identity erased to push an agenda.

And I feel for the straight, cis girls, who put genuine effort into educating themselves on queer issues, for whom fandom was a welcoming space where they could finally share their interests and be themselves, be allowed to have sexual interests… and now are being called perverts, deviants, and being told that they taint everything they touch.

And as much as it pisses me off to be called “basically a cishet girl”, it doesn’t get to me. At present, I’m secure in the knowledge that I am a real man, despite being gay, despite being feminine, despite liking BL. I am comfortable with myself and my identity.

But little teenage me would have been devastated.

Hey, anti-fujoshi? I don’t need your faux-activism. Kindly take your misogyny, efemmiphobia, transphobia and identity politics and leave us alone. Or —OR! Listen to the people you’re supposedly trying to protect.

Sincerely,

a gay, Asian, fem, queer as fuck fudanshi.

hello new followers

[time stamp: 2 Feb 2021]

I haven’t been on tumblr too much for quite a while for a variety of reasons, and I can’t promise that’s going to change (I’m … very ADHD …) I hope that my blog gives you some food for thought.

That said, I want to reiterate a couple of my blogging principles for your consideration:

First and foremost, I use the word ‘anti’ all over this blog - both in old posts and new. When I first started this blog in 2016, its meaning was understood by my audience. However, the meaning of ‘anti’ has become murky and controversial over the years, so let me define it here:

‘Anti’ is short for ‘anti-shipper’ or ‘anti-[ship]’.

Anti-shippers are people in (mainly English-speaking) fandoms who:

 Crucially, they enforce their demands via:

Antis named themselves ‘antis’ back in 2015-2016. They don’t like the label so much now (though they still frequently use it) because of their violent reputation.

This blog is heavily focused on what anti-shipping is, why anti-shippers exist and act the way they do, and the damage anti-shipping does to online fandom communities via thoughtful, reasoned analysis of anti-shipping rhetoric and sociology. The goal is to honestly look past the surfeit of anti-shipping violence and understand why its arguments and methodology have genuine appeal to many fandomgoers without judging those fandomgoers.

There are certainly anti-shippers who spout violent rhetoric because they’re remorselessly abusive, but I doubt that the majority of anti-shippers fit that description.

On the contrary: I believe there are sociological reasons anti-shipper communities are so prevalent in fandom today, and I believe people become anti-shippers for valid, personal reasons. For instance, I believe that the structure of modern social media has fundamentally changed the structure of fandom and how fans communicate. It’s harder to avoid content you don’t want to see, for instance. Has this encouraged the growth of anti-ship communities? I believe it’s a likely factor - one of many.

There is also plenty of evidence that anti-shipping communities tend to be insular and internally abusive. Members are expected to ‘cut off’ anyone who does not share their views on how fandom should conduct itself, and members who leave the community are demeaned, smeared, and targeted for harassment. This makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone who became involved in anti-shipping to escape it.

Furthermore: English-speaking (particularly American) fandom is heavily influenced by the same underlying societal factors that have brought us right-wing-based rising authoritarianism / anti-progressive bigotry / open white patriarchal supremacy today: things like white fascism (which started in the USA), Manifest Destiny, European/American Imperialism, Christian Fundamentalism / Puritanism, the post-Vietnam antigovernmental white supremacist movement, the AIDS genocide/crisis, backlash to the Civil Rights Movement, and backlash against gay and trans rights.

Although most of fandom - including anti-shippers - are themselves targets of right-wing hatred, Puritanical / Imperial / racist / anti-queer / misogynist / transphobic arguments frequently make up the basic elements of the rhetoric anti-shippers use to justify their violent abuse of shippers.

Many of these puritanical/imperial/racist/misogynist/anti-queer/transphobic talking points were dressed up in progressive language before anti-shippers started employing them by faux-progressive groups such as TERFs/SWERFs/radfem enablers, truscum, and exclusionists.

Anti-shippers are not typically aware of this, and may fall anywhere in their conscious desire to gatekeep marginalized communities for real people. (And pro-shippers such as myself are not immune to using right-wing arguments, either.*)

Because of all these factors, I believe it is crucial to understand anti-shipping rather than simply dismiss it anti communities as weird fandom phenomena made up entirely of bullies and jerks. I also believe it’s crucial to understand not only anti-ship rhetoric, but also to identify its origins.

The haters aren’t going away, and we aren’t going to shame them into stopping. But if we understand and dismantle their arguments, we can limit their influence more effectively and - most importantly - maybe provide an escape rope out of an abusive anti-ship community for those who need one.

Thanks for being here.

Continuar a ler

Tarzan concept art by John Watkiss

i can not stress how important it is that we maintain tumblr’s reputation as the birthplace of overbearing SJWs because if the right wing “my free speech is being threatened by twitter’s terms of service” crowd ever finds out about what a fucking lawless wasteland this website actually is and decide to take advantage we will never get rid of them

keep being weird where redditors can see you and repost screenshots making fun of you. the balance of our ecosystem needs it. godspeed

Alex Jones tried to make a blog here once, but we weirded him out so much he deactivated

ocarina of time but link is very sleepy because he just woke up from a 7 year nap and also he and sheik are both trans

a summary of the consequences of my life because I read percy jackson

1. I steal my older brother’s PJO books, read them, and download Pinterest on my Kindle to get my first taste of fandom 

2. I spend a lot of time online, secretly, and am exposed–for the first time–to the fact that it’s weird that I share a room and bed with my dad and am not allowed anywhere else 

3. My dad brings me to a corn field and tells me obama is the anti-christ who’s been sent by god to end the world, as foretold by the bible. I believe this and cry when he’s elected because i don’t want to die 

4. I begin googling and discover that my situation is not great. I begin a careful attempt to ~distance~ myself from my father by sleeping anywhere else through any means possible. Eventually, I’m allowed to sleep in my own room

5. Now that I’ve been exposed to the real world and the fact that I’ve been groomed, I’m not ~obedient~ anymore and my dad Dips(™) to find a new kid. We lose our house and have to move to government housing in a new city 

6. Eventually my parents divorce because of this. My dad moves to a horse ranch. I visit him on the horse ranch, think it’s cool, and invite my friends over for a sleepover. I have my first gay kiss with a girl in a tent. The next day my father tries to ~kill~ me on the horse ranch(™) with a golf cart

7.My dad disappears from the face of the earth. He forgets his phone is connected to the family iMac. We know all about the crimes he is committing. He fakes a heart attack in a Wal-Mart at some point, idk

8. The FBI is onto his life of crime. He flees to Romania to escape them and lives with a millionaire Romanian woman. She’s suspicious of him after a while. She hires a private investigator and unearths his life of lies and crime. He flees to Alaska. He gets a roommate in Alaska. The roommate goes to federal prison. We never hear from my father again. He is, perhaps, dead.

9. It’s revealed to us that my grandmother is also involved. She’s been smuggling drugs from the hospital. She also goes to federal prison. Also apparently my older brother and I aren’t related. This was another scam from my father

Understandable response

uhhhh hh hh hhh

Me reading from point 2 to point 3:

AAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAA

I am obsessed with this.

So because parkour is such a ridiculously male dominated sport, the "correct technique" for a lot of these movements that you're taught when you become an instructor plays to a male body's strengths: upper body strength, higher center of gravity, etc.

She demolishes this course by moving in ways that make sense for her body. She doesn't muscle her way up to her over a wall, she just throws a leg up over the wall. She doesn't use upper body strength to do the salmon ladder, she uses her hips!!! And it's fucking incredible.

So many girls and young women walk away from parkour because every movement caters to the strengths of men, because doing what makes sense for their bodies is seen as "bad technique" to be trained away.

If pre-transition me had seen this I would have cried tears of joy.

it bugs me how many lesbians have issues with trans women. like, we're supposed to love women. what's next, you gonna start hating short people too? fuck off.

AND TRANS GUYS. "ooohhhhh they're betraying womanhood" no, they're men. jfc not everything is a personal attack some people are just guys.

reblog this version too actually

Visual development for Soul by Camilo Castro