#twitter rant

They're apparently 'new'. Like, started last year, new. Along with most of the people they interact with.

The thing about them, as evidenced by their complete dislike of FJ, is that they're actually NOT a complete dumbass. They genuinely ship BJ, list it as their #1 ship (over BY), and agree with our gripes about how BJ was handled...

Along with a bunch of other stuff. (Even their mutual in this screenshot is talking sense.)

That's why it boggles my mind how a person with seemingly this much sense, can still have such a dense take on such a casual comment.

But now, here's where my general gripe with new fans comes in...

'Canonically lesbians from ep1' WRONG

In the very beginning, people kept going back and forth on whether Beau was gay or bi. Because of the slightly odd way Marisha was playing her at the time. I still remember the confusion and the speculation that followed Beau's interaction with a male captain. (I'm blanking on which ep this was, if someone can help me out, that'd be great. I think the party was talking to some soldiers on the road. That's not the best hint but it's all I've got.) Later in the ep, when Beau and Jester were having 'girl talk', Beau asked Jester about the guy and asked her if she thought he was 'checking her out' or was 'into her'. People were very confused, myself included. She didn't seem to be asking because she was bothered by it. She seemed... intrigued? It was fucking weird.

Much later in the campaign, there was an episode of TM, where Marisha received a question about the fandom calling Beau a 'disaster lesbian'. And all Marisha said was, "Yeah, that seems accurate." And it was only UNTIL that moment, that we had gotten any kind of official confirmation that Beau was for sure gay, and not possibly bi. (It was a very lazy confirmation, but a confirmation nonetheless.)

As for Yasha, well, I addressed this in the retcon post. She was also not confirmed as even being into women UNTIL the wife reveal in ep46. FORTY-SIX! Even then, there were people saying, "ok, but she could still be bi." And for all intents and purposes, she could've been. At the time, she was still not really responding to Beau's advances, and she never gave any hints on where her general interests lied.

So, what the fuck are these people talking about? That BY were 'canonically lesbians' since episode 1? Where does it say that? Who told them that?

It's impossible for me to take new fans seriously on most of their talking points, because they weren't here while it was happening. They have NO CLUE about all the conversations, and speculation, and drama over this shit. These people have never watched TM either. They don't know about any additional information that was disseminated or gleaned from that show that clarified some things and added depth to others. (And now, unfortunately, they never will, because CR took down all of the episodes. With good reason of course, but still, it sucks. Unless someone had the sense to rip the episodes from YT, then all we have are the little snippets/clips on Tumblr and twitter.)

So these people's takes are very often warped. Filled with either misinformation or missing context or both. A lot of the in-fandom stuff are things that you'll never find on a wiki page, or YT highlight reels, or official 'recaps'. That's why when I find a person who was not in the fandom when all this stuff was going down, yet feels bold enough to start speaking on developments in the show or fandom drama, and pontificating over what's right and what's wrong, and policing how people should feel about certain things (i.e. BJ not going anywhere), it makes my blood boil.

This has happened in almost every fandom I've been in, but it was worse with this one. Especially when we had such a large influx of new people just before and after the hiatus. And it was obvious the BY's had gotten to them right out of the gate, because these people immediately boarded the BY train, while simultaneously boarding the BJ hatewagon. They were turned against us as soon as they showed up. That misinformation I mentioned, no doubt came from BY's. As we all know, BY's LOVE to misinform people.

They're the ones who are constantly making up stories about our fandom. About the kinds of people we are. About the kinds of lives we must be living. Claiming "If they're saying this, [insert idiotic assumption here]: "they've never been in a relationship before" or "they must be straight" or "they just hate gay women being sexual" or "they must be virgins". Then there's the two most prevalent ones: BJ's are biphobic, and BJ's are TERFs.

Again, I can't take these people seriously. I cannot stand them.

Last thing... there were at least two people in the replies (of the 'heteronormative' tweet) calling BY butchfemme. In what universe is BY butchfemme?