Peaches

of course, as a POC myself, this is a tale as old as time. predominantly white communities in fandom are quick to come to the defense of their friends so long as they continue to validate them while performatively espousing positivity and inclusion, arguing the most extensively for "fandom etiquette" without genuine follow-up. and if your community shelters racists, then one can reasonably assume that they are willing to tolerate racists. and if you are willing to tolerate racists to be your friend and your community, then YOU are a racist.

it's no small wonder then, why multiple POC and queer people have not felt particularly welcome in the server, especially as attempts to speak up about it usually lead to back-pedaling and attempts to discredit them by making them look angry and unhinged. passive-aggression is especially rampant, bearing just enough deniable plausibility that direct confrontation will only lead to backpedaling and an evasion of accountability.

3.) recently, fanmade analytics came out comparing the ratio of different types of fics on ao3 regarding the rogue trader fandom and unsurprisingly found that most of them were about the female-romanceable, ostensibly straight, white male character heinrix. the individual who performed the analytics urged fans to consider broadening their horizons and paying the other characters some mind, as they noticed that a similar phenomenon occurs in the bg3 fandom with astarion. this was not necessarily an indictment of anyone in particular, but rather pointing out a multi-fandom preference towards white, male characters amongst fans. i suppose heinclub got really pressed about this (and i even heard some implications that jae and idira aren't treated unfairly by the fandom because of their race and gender, which is so blatantly untrue because all you really need to do is open up the subreddit for 0.2 seconds and be met with an enormous amount of vitriol regarding them--and also yrliet, to boot) because i kept hearing a lot of backlash around the analytics floating around the grapevine, and i just find it curious that this post--which contains no outright, incendiary commentary about the community or even anything about forcing people to write anything in particular--provoked such a defensive response

something something about a hit dog hollering...

4.) and just in general, i'd just like to note that for a community that places such fervent emphasis on fandom positivity, the fandom is not exempt from its fair share of bullying. it's almost as if heinclub believes that the only real form of bullying exists in the form of vagueposts and heinous comments on ao3, and that things like continuous and intentional acts of exclusion are just...what? sunshine and daisies? i assume they just think we're too stupid to notice

of course, you're free not to believe me about any of this. this has just been my personal experience with the server, but i'm only just now finally sharing my thoughts because i've had adequate time for reflection and also don't particularly care to return to making fan content for this piece of media--at least, not in the near future