Wheels up in 30

Non-replica chandeliers

Hungary (Garnier based)

Norway/Greece (Garnier based)

Poland (Garnier based) 

Las Vegas (Garnier/drop hybrid)

Royal Albert Hall (drop shaped)

Restaged Tour (drop shaped, with and without garlands)

Estonia (drop shaped)

Kristianstad, Sweden (drop shaped)

Czech Republic (long drop shape, with leaves and masks)

Romania (drop shaped, with lyres)

Finland/Sweden (leafy metal contruction)

remake of a very very old christine drawing that still gets clicks on my redbubble (hidden under the readmore, as usual, because im embarrased for 2015 me) 🌟

Sam Pauly is Native American and just because she’s white passing doesn’t negate the fact that she’s NOT WHITE.

If you want a dark-skinned Howard, say that. If you want a black or Indian or East Asian or Pacific Islander Howard, say that (which I agree with! more diversity in Six is always better!)

I also realize that this post got long. So heads up, long post.

I’m sure most of us know @retarded-peplum. If you do, you know how horrible they’ve been. And oh yeah, trigger warning for their blog by the way. You’ll understand that as this goes on.

If you don’t, then I’m glad you don’t being perfectly honest. Obviously, their user can trigger people, I’ve talked to people who are uncomfortable with the username alone. But basically, they’ve been horrible to the Six fandom. They’ve insulted the ships and aus and even the cast too. Some of those insults don’t even make sense?

And yes, I know this post will probably get scoffs and laughs because maybe their blog is just a gag and joke, I’m anxious about that being perfectly honest. But to me their blog is legitimately upsetting and triggering and I know people who feel the exact same way. And maybe a lot of you are simply ignoring them and laughing at me for being this mad over a blog meant to make people mad.

But I think they’ve made us all uncomfortable. Their user alone is enough to trigger people. They’ve insulted the fandom itself when all we’re trying to do is enjoy ourselves and be happy in this community we’ve created. Trust me, I’ve been uncomfortable too. I saw their posts on the ships and began to doubt them and started to lose enjoyment in them before I snapped myself out of it. Sometimes I still find myself doubting the ships and I hate it. So thank you Peplum for that problem. (And seriously? You say the ships are horrible and proceed to write smut that was, surprise, also very uncomfortable for people to see for one of said ships.)

And hey, Peplum if you’re reading this. You called us all sensitive. We are not sensitive. You are the one making posts that are rude and uncomfortable. All we are doing is trying to make you stop.

This might sound like a Karen or something, but I just want to point out that when I politely gave them an ask that ended with “please stop antagonizing us,” they said I was triggered when I said absolutely nothing remotely screaming or raging (as much as you can through words anyways).

I am definitely not saying go over to their blog and scream and rage at them. Although I wouldn’t discourage maybe giving them a mature ask that would prove them to be immature when they respond saying “you’re triggered”........

What I’m saying is block them. Ignore them and move on. All their blog is doing is trying to piss us off and make us mad. It’s for their enjoyment and laughter. Hell, they’re probably laughing at this post right now. And maybe you could even report them while you’re doing it.

One thing I haven’t seen discussed as much though is how much of fandom in general is shaped by neurodivergent people.

I mean, you have autistic and ADHD people with special interests or hyperfixations collecting information and writing detailed meta, connecting very strongly with characters and fandoms. I would not be surprised if the percentage of autistics in fandom communities was significantly higher than in the general public.

And that’s not even getting into other types of neurodivergencies and how they influence fandom culture.

Back when I started being in fandom, a couple decades ago, I’d argue that damn near every single person in fandom was autistic or ADHD.  You’d only join fandom if you were obsessive and were chill with doing things that weren’t socially acceptable.  (Because being a fan absolutely was not socially acceptable at the time!  We went to ridiculous amounts of effort to hide that we were fans!)

And fandom culture was absolutely shaped by this.  The standard behaviors in fandom were those of happy autistics.  That’s how you were expected to act.  You remember “squeeing”?  The visual image of it is generally someone so happy and excited they can’t physically contain it so they make a high-pitched noise and flap their hands and - a squee is literally just a happy stim. And so many fans at the time did happy stims that we gave it a special fandom name!  So even if a neurotypical person happened to stumble in, they’d learn that the “social norm” in a fandom space is basically just “act autistic/ADHD” and assimilate.

But then… fandom got mainstreamed.  It became socially acceptable.  And then the neurotypicals started showing up in large numbers.  And instead of assimilating like they did before, when they were the minority, now that there were a lot of them they started going “what the heck is this! why are people here acting so weird!  this is embarrassing!”

…and then we got cringe culture within fandom.

No one says “squee” anymore not because fans don’t squee anymore - happy stims don’t just go away - but because the neurotypicals showed up and told us “squee” is a cringy word and concept.  Which they had ALWAYS told us out in public, but we used to have fandom as an insular autistic/ADHD-dominated space where we were safe and free to be ourselves.

You know how everybody talks about how cringy and embarrassing 2012 tumblr was?  Dude.  We were literally just acting like happy autistics, because that’s what we were.  It’s just that - like you always have - you think autistic/ADHD behavior is cringy and embarrassing.

This isn’t new.  “Cringe culture” isn’t new.  It’s just a new euphemism for the exact same ableism that’s always existed, with the only difference that now it’s coming from inside fandom.

All those posts saying “if these people were bullied more they wouldn’t act like this”?  They’re not just bizarrely tasteless jokes.  They’re because the people making those posts were bullies.  Are bullies.  Fandom used to be where the sort of people who were victims of peer abuse went - where we went to be safe from bullies and be openly ourselves - but now the bullies are in here with us.