¿Superhero Stuff?

the “fuck canon everything is made up do whatever you want forever” approach to fandom can be fun in small doses but i find that subscribing a little too hard to that attitude can lead to this belief that serious engagement with and analysis of a text is an act of no fun self-flagellation when that couldn’t be further from the truth. analysis is literally fun

even going “fuck canon” is more fun if you do the analysis. spite is a love letter and i have editorial comments

the way some people talk about jews makes it sound like they just discovered the concept of human culture. “they have a word for outsiders 😡” yes most people do

The idea of having a special word to describe outsiders is utterly alien to the average American. All these foreign cultures having all these exotic terms, just to refer to strangers and outlanders? It's so uncouth!

Those damn foreigners have a word for foreigners

Not “Only my reading of canon is correct” or “Interpretations are subjective and all valid” but a secret third thing, “More than one interpretation can be valid but there’s a reason your English teacher had you cite quotes and examples in your papers, you have to have a strong argument that your interpretation is actually supported by the text or it is just wrong and I’m fine with telling you it’s wrong, actually.”

If the text says the curtains are blue you can argue about what that means; but if you’re going to claim they’re actually yellow you’d better have a really good argument.

i know the curtains better than the author. thank you for coming to my ted talk

Fandom has such unresolved mommy/daddy issues about authors. If you apply a little reading comprehension skills to my original post you’ll see I didn’t say anything at all about the author. You guys always make “interpretation” about your beef with the author. You’re all obsessed with the author. This post is just about deciphering what is there in canon. Figuring out what is being communicated by the canon itself with all the words and images and basic formal elements that are there in canon. That’s all it’s about. It really doesn’t matter if the author intentionally put all those things there in a pattern that might support the idea that this one character’s queer. That’s not what this is about. What matters is if you can compellingly argue there’s a pattern of evidence there. Or not. Everyone is conspiring together to make me go insane still adding shit about authorial intent on my post.

my partner and i have become fixated on this stupid comment left by a conspiracy theorist on instagram and we can't stop saying it and i just know i'm gonna slip up and say it to a normal person

I'm gonna be super real, gang, the repeated assumptions in the replies that all of these people are autistic is uuuuh. I mean it's extremely inappropriate, if nothing else. and I'm also deeply concerned by the degree to which "autism" gets conflated with "academic expertise" on this website.

it’s interesting how upset some people have gotten over negative things like homophobia and fatphobia being present in my writing. unfortunately I’ve had a life where those have been huge, shaping factors, and I like to talk about it. I was deeply anorexic for a number of years, and have had friendships and familial relationships deteriorate because of my queerness. being able to say “hey, this exists and it really, really sucks, now watch the fatphobic person get punched by a dragon” is kinda just what works for me, personally. I have a lot of feelings with nowhere else to put them, so my writing is always going to cater to my own catharsis.

why is this post completely broken in every way imaginable

It’ll be almost impossible to find this post unless it wanders across your dash.

It wandered across mine. I shall help it travel forward.

this is not a place of honor

I've seen more than 1 person say smth like everyone knew marcia was looking for a 7th son and like. Untrue!! Everyone THOUGHT marcia was looking for a 7th son. She just happened to get lucky but tbh I think if she didn't get along with septimus she would not have offered him the apprenticeship. She wanted someone who was good at magyk and also who she could stand to be around. So really what I'm saying is she was looking for a 2nd marcia but that's not the point my POINT is that I think if she had had any real interactions with simon I think he'd have had a really good chance at being her apprentice