My little blog of wonders

Din: No you don’t understand. I never set out to be Mand’alor. I only wanted to save my child from Moff Gideon.

Mandalorians: He took on one of most dangerous Imperials in single combat to protect his family! Praise the Mand’alor!

Din: Wait, let me explain. The child was a foundling under my care...

Mandalorians: He treats the foundling as his own flesh and blood! All praise!

Din: No! listen! He was threatening my Child with the darksaber, so I took out my pure beskar spear...

A quick summary for anyone who hasn’t been following: Last week, Seb was pictured with a women. Many assumed this was his girlfriend but this has not been confirmed. Fans began combing through her life and social media to find something incriminating. I feel like this is important, that the hatred came first, and the reason came after. They found a photo of the girl, from 2 years ago. I will include it for transparency (she is on the left): she is at an ‘Asian night’ party/club night, wearing a kimono. 

It’s insensitive to use culture as a costume, and to lump all the diverse and distinct Asian cultures together into one party theme, decorated with pound shop Chinese lanterns. It is cultural appropriation. A number of Asian people were understandably upset by this photo and her actions. 

But let me be very clear: These are not his actions. He was not at the party, he did not wear the kimono, he did not post or like the photo, he did not endorse, condone or defend the actions in any way. We have never seen them together before, so presumably this is 2 years before they met. He does not follow her or the friend that posted it 2 years ago on Instagram. There is no reasonable expectation that he ever would have seen this photo. He almost certainly did not know it existed.

He cannot apologise or seek redemption for someone else actions. He cannot set a precedent where he is responsible for everything everyone who comes within 20ft of him did, years before they even met. It is completely insane to expect him to do a full background check on everyone he makes out with, or to expect him and all his acquaintances to be ideologically pure, not be ignorant about anything and never make a mistake.

Some people seemed to realise that he cannot be held responsible for other people’s actions, so they invented something to pin blame on him: he defended her! I searched high and low for his statement defending her. He did not make one. Instead, he allegedly blocked a handful of people who spammed his comments with demands for apologies. At least one of these blocks has been outed as photoshop. If the others are real, we don’t know if it was him or his PR team. We don’t know if their innocent public comment alerting him to an issue was accompanied by vile death threats in his DM’s. Regardless, he is within his rights to protect his mental health by blocking people who harass him about something that is, frankly, none of his business. Blocking is not defending her.

I often hear: cancel culture is not real, it’s simply facing the consequences of your actions. So lets do an experiment where we outline the actions and consequences. If you were involved in the vile hashtags and threats made against him, ask yourself: Are these reasonable, proportional and deserved? Do I have the authority to distribute these consequences? Am I making the world a better place - or a worse one? Is my moral high ground getting a little shaky? 

Action: 

Kissed a girl who wore a kimono 2 years before they met. Allegedly (!!) blocked a few people who harassed him about it despite it being nothing to do with him.

Consequences:

Doxxed, pictures of his apartment and his address leaked online. He will almost certainly have to move from his HOME.

Intense death threats and suicide baiting, including #RIPSebastianStan trending, which his family may have seen and actually thought he had died, photoshopped articles and memorial pictures that say he died

Actual danger to his physical safety through the release of his home address

Emails sent to his newly signed agency and employers to get him FIRED

Severe damage to his reputation including news articles with his name and ‘racist post’ in the title, that do not make it clear it was not his post!!

Most likely a severe hit to his mental health, which he has said before he struggles with, particularly from all the KILL YOUR SELF CLOWN messages

If he was with the girl - well, I doubt he is now, so the possible destruction of his relationship, instead of her getting a chance to learn, educate herself, grow and be better.

Normally I stay far away from fandom drama. I’m not here for celebs or gossip, I’m here for fictional people in fictional universes with fictional lives. I like fictional, because it rarely lets me down and when it does, I ignore it or write my own version.

FICTION is great.

But this? This is not fiction. This is not a game or an TV show or an AU fanfic gone wild. These are not harmless heart-eye gifs or gushy letters you send to your fav. These are behaviors negatively affecting someone’s real life, someone’s mental health and well being, which people are gleefully tearing to shreds.

This is sheer lunacy. This is disgusting. This is bullshit.

OP‘s summary covers all the finer points, so I will just add this. In this specific situation, there is not one single reason he should have responded. I know that bothers some people, but that is PR 101 - if he responds to every message, he sets a precedent that encourages people to keep trying to get his attention because they believe he might do it again.

That is a business decision. And as much as you may want to believe he owes you something, he does not. Full stop. No PR pro worth their salt would ever let him respond or put out a statement about something like this. Ever. If they did, they should be fired.

Truth is, I didn’t join this fandom because I liked Sebastian Stan and in fact I’ve seen very little of his work beyond the MCU walls. I’m here purely for my love of Bucky Barnes, and am grateful to Sebastian for bringing him to life.

And selfishly, that’s another reason this infuriates me.

Because now, he’ll step away from fandom. He‘ll stop sharing snippets on social channels. He’ll stop attending cons. He‘ll stop popping over to say hello to fans at red carpet events or doing random interviews on IG or sharing Bucky head canons because what incentive is there to sharing himself with people if this is the result?

I certainly hope all those “fans” are pleased with themselves. Based on this feral behavior, I can only assume this is the outcome they wanted. Congrats to them for destroying this for everyone else. You got your wish.

Tumblr has allowed filtered tags for a while, but now they offer filtered post content too.

So you can filter out posts with certain words or phrases in the text even if no one tagged it, which is fantastic. I started using it yesterday and it’s already helped me avoid 5 different posts that wouldn’t have been caught by the filtered tags.

Go to “Account,” then “Settings,” and it will be in the Filtering section right under “Filtered Tags”

I can’t stop laughing because…

Developers: *Make a  realistic game*

Fans:

If you see a police car or a cop with a speaker looking thing on it, FUCKING RUN. It's known as an LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), a device that, when activated, can permanently damage your hearing and cause serious harm. If you're too close, you'll be left in a lot of pain and squirming on the ground permanently deaf. Ear plugs do not work. Unless you have one of those shooting range headphones, you do not stand a chance against them. Again, if you see them pull up, RUN. This is what they look like.

Solomon’s Shield is the name of the app