why are we here?

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

Our relationship dynamics are not a substitute for romance and they're not inherently devoid of aspects a creator might be uncomfortable with being shown (like physical intimacy and flirting)

We can tell when a ship is written as queerplatonic in this soulless way where someone's trying to get around a creator boundary they don't actually have to follow* or around a character's aroacespec identity. They come across as conformative and allo-coded because queerplatonic as a term is used to mean 'a romantic dynamic where they aren't actually together or where there's no actual attraction'

*a creator boundary cannot and should not dictate what a community member does outside of their field of view, and it shouldn't encourage them to expand their field of view beyond what's reasonable in order to police their community - you are a person, you have free will! You can even block that creator in advance on your fan accounts!

Queerplatonic relationships are queer and so non-normative. They bend and defy the rules of what's typical and expected. They are broad and devoid of expectations unless you want to create them. They're things like touch or affection because you just want to know that person better; to learn how they'd react and to exist with them. They're things like telling each other things nobody else will know because you've committed yourselves to being there without the expectation for anything but the same in return. They're being able to place each building block that forms your dynamic and take it away on your own terms as a collective

They are not your get out of jail free card when it comes to creator boundaries - you already have that card and it's your human freedom!!

I hate how so many people go straight to Queer Platonic Relationships as an alternative for romantic shipping. They're so commonly misinterpreted as romance but like toootally not. Which, every QPR is different, but that misrepresents the entire idea of a QPR.

weaponisation? flame gets weaponized constantly by both others(ash, civilians, parrot) and himself. learning to be a better person? flames got that already in trying to be kinder(except the fandom erases ts constantly and makes him "mean to everyone except loved ones"). neurodivergent wemmbu? autistic flamefrags with combat as a special interest and struggles to read the room.

tbh flamefrags is such a well written and cool character and while he doesnt have the most interesting plot or acting he does have peak character writing that often gets ignored or it gets mistaken for the classic "youre the only one i care about and im actually a huge dick to everyone outside of the few people i love" you often see in a lot of manhuas and stuff.

he is trying to be a nicer person outside of his social circle(eg, he still saw godofwar as a teacher and doesnt kill people willy-nilly anymore, he tries his best to understand his and other's feelings without just dismissing it anymore) and so much of imperial fire's characters are very similar.

There’s this idea that we see where creators think thar material about them/their characters is FOR them, and so they lay down rules about how things should be depicted (like you would on a gift for you) and they go into the comments to fight with people who put their tag on things they don’t like, etc. All these things that we see happening.

But they’re missing the point that— and I am not the first person to say this— things tagged with their character name are not there for them to see it, they’re there for other fans of the character to see it. I don’t post into the murderbot tag for the edification of Martha Wells, I post it for other murderbot fans. If Martha Wells showed up in my comments on an established fandom space I’m liable to panic-block and scramble for the exit.

And so these creators come in and say “this isn’t a good gift for me, don’t do this”, but that’s an essential misreading of the situation, and the thing is it’s kind of a presumptuous misreading of the situation when you’re monetizing your character. As my friend TD pointed out today, “don’t draw nsfw of my OC” is a perfectly normal thing to do within a peer to peer fandom context, but you are no longer interacting peer to peer when you have monetized your OC and are distributing them to as broad an audience as possible. You are the creator of a marketed figure. If you try to keep dictating people’s behaviour, that is how you become Anne Rice, which is never something you want to be.

But these creators are walking into spaces and saying that *everything tagged with their character name* is a gift for them and just like, no. If you keyword search your name on the entire internet you’re gonna overhear a lot of conversations that were not meant for you, and acting like it is even possible to make The Entire Internet safe for a public figure to look at is not a workable exercise.

Creators should not be walking into spaces where people are talking about their characters unless they’re ready to see a lot of things that were never made with them as the target audience. Make a fan art channel im your discord and let people bring things to you, but don’t walk onto the site where people’s favourite holidays to celebrate with characters include kinktober and whumptober and goreuary, where people explore their trauma through the lens of their favourite characters, where people experiment with different art styles and body type depictions of characters, where things that fall under the “fluff” umbrella include making characters into toddlers and making them so sad so they can have a hug, and expect that everything is going to be made with your comfort in mind. That’s just not how the fandom emotion works.

Okay so I am seeing a lot of this in my notes. And while I do agree that I should not be sending NSFW links in Philza Minecraft's twitch chat or into the fanart channel of his discord— do not put it in the creator's space— and while I agree that there are certain classes of work that should be being tagged in a way where anyone can avoid the content if they want to anyways— nsfw, gore or work containing common triggers, contentious character depictions— I do want to gently ask if you are going to keep up with all the social posting of the creator of every character you ever want to include in art or fic and make sure to tag it to hide it from them if you ever want to depict a character as neurodivergent, or lgbtq, or genderbent, or overweight, to use some famous boundaries people have tried to establish, every time you post on Tumblr or on Ao3.

Not to be a filthy liberal on main but "this thing makes me uncomfortable therefore it's morally wrong" is conservative logic. That's how people justify homophobia, transphobia, racism, whatever. And being queer or supportive of queer people does not magically make you immune to conservative logic. You are not owed comfort, things are going to make you uncomfortable and you have to be able to ask yourself "is this harming anyone?" And if the answer is no then you just go "ew, gross" and block wherever it's necessary and move on. And no, again, making you uncomfortable is not harming you.

A young woman is imprisoned in a castle by a monstrously formed prince. The servants of the castle hope for them to fall in love, and when the spell is broken they assume their prayers have been answered. They are all surprised, but nonetheless pleased, when it is revealed to them that the young woman and prince are the truest of friends, and nothing more.

They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen, a woman who is incapable of loving. She is unmarried, she has no consorts, and she wishes for no partner. She is the wretched queen, the heartless queen. She must hate her daughter, for her daughter is beautiful, and women are incapable of liking another woman who’s prettier than themselves. It must be for this reason that the princess was sent away, not for how she was attacked by a man in the woods. They say the kingdom is ruled by an evil queen because she cannot love. The queen loves her daughter, and that is enough for them both.

There lives a prince who is forced to choose a bride at the ball. He meets many beautiful women, but find none which he loves. He spies one in a gorgeous gown and wonder in her eyes, and he dances with her all night long. The kingdom is sure he has found his bride. When the clock strikes midnight he tells her how he will never love a woman, or a man, in the way he is expected to. The beautiful woman smiles and tells him she expects nothing from him. The next morning the prince and the beautiful woman are missing, having run off together to see the world. They leave their shoes behind in their haste.