sadly, the water is full of discourse

[kindkit]

Today, I again dipped my toes into the waters of the wider Magnus Archives fandom, and then quickly pulled them out again and ran away.

Spoilers through the end of S4 only, under the cut.

I went on the official Discord twice, looking to see if there was any discussion of certain aspects of the newest episode. (Cannot mention these aspects until the public release tomorrow.)

The first time, I found a spirited discussion of Jon's moral state, at the center of which was a person who seemed to think (a) that Jon is selfish and terrible, and (b) that everyone else thinks Jon is an icon of moral purity. I mean, I don't doubt there are fans who think Jon is a perfect cinnamon roll, above reproach. But I do doubt that this opinion is widespread. Various people tried to reply with various shades of "Yes, Jon has done bad things, and he is not pure, but there are mitigating factors X, Y, and Z and he is not a moral monster." At which point, the "Jon is terrible" person would move the goalposts. Ugh.

Just now, I checked in again, and nearly the first comment I saw was to the effect of "We've only seen Martin interested in one person, namely Jon, so Martin might also be asexual! We can't assume that he's one of those icky gays!"

. . . okay, the word "icky" is my insertion, but it felt pretty strongly implied to me. It couldn't be said outright, as the Discord is intensively modded and that shit would not be allowed. But it's still pretty disheartening. (N.B.: Yeah, maybe Martin is asexual too. If that's someone's preferred interpretation, awesome! So long as it doesn't start drifting into "queer people who aren't asexual are Icky because they are having, or wanting to have, the Icky Gay Sex. It's only okay to be gay or bi if you never, ever do anything sexual." That's just homophobia in woke disguise, not unlike TERFism, which is transphobia that pretends to be feminism.)


So that was fun.

ETA: The Discord isn't always like that. Usually when I look, they're having perfectly nice discussions, and I'm just too shy to join in.

Comments

[cyprinella]

I do not know what was in the fannish water yesterday but boy was it fucking awful to dunk into after an extremely lovely afternoon with RQ Streams. I actually had to report shit on AO3 that was straight up threats.

[kindkit]

THREATS? WTF?

Was someone threatening RQ crew, or other fans, or . . . WTF? That's horrendous.

[cyprinella]

Other fans who are shipping and writing fic wrong. Someone dumped a Oscar/Reader that was full of the "stop fetishizing mlm you pedos" party line and ended with "and you die". It was tagged as fluff. So you know, maybe a bit of a stretch to read as a death threat but like, AO3 took it offline in under 60 minutes. Imogen had a run down on public

There was another one that was like 19 words long that got taken down on it's own very quickly.

[kindkit]

It's certainly as close to a death threat as any fandom ever needs to get.

Presumably all this is happening because the word "boyfriend" was spoken, stripping away the last imaginable bit of denial from homophobic fans. (I don't get why homophobes would even want to listen to TMA; it's had queer characters since S1, and identified queer characters in the main cast since whenever it was first mentioned that Tim was dating a man. Though the one good side has been watching Jonny's "fuck you" to said homophobes get clearer and clearer.)

ETA: Oops, you wrote "Oscar" and I read "Oliver" and thought it was Magnus. This kind of discourse in RQG is even more unexpected.

[cyprinella]

Yeah, there's a small but obnoxious segment that was very aghast when people were still writing Zolf doing a sex after Ben announced Zolf was ace who have seem slowly expanded to everyone who write m/m is fetishists and how dare they write these things about a real person (Oscar in this case which lol). They all have the same young, LGBT+ but don't you dare call us the Q-slur gasp, anti crusader profile. They're just as hateful about it in TMA but RQG is smaller and some of them were some of the first writers and hate that the "freaks" moved into their sandbox. I've got most of them blocked. AO3 really needs to implement that function but it would probably overwhelm the spaghetti.

[kindkit]

LGBT+ but don't you dare call us the Q-slur gasp

That's always a red flag to me. Even when it comes from gay men of a certain age who have personal traumatic associations with being called queer, I raise my eyebrows a bit (because the reclamation of "queer" has been happening for 20+ years). From anyone else, I assume that they're anti-trans and dislike the word "queer" precisely because it's inclusive.

after Ben announced Zolf was ace

Which isn't even text! Personally, I responded to Ben's "biromantic and asexual" with a certain wariness, because it struck me as, potentially, a way for a straight man to play a queer male character without having to worry about that character ever, ever, ever touching another guy's dick. I can't help noticing that precisely 0 characters in any Rusty Quill production have been described as heteroromantic but asexual. [rant heavily curtailed here]

Anyway, the leap from "this character is asexual" to "asexual can only mean sex-repulsed asexual" to "writing this character having sex is WRONG" to "you're all fetishists and pedophiles" is . . ugly. It really depresses me that this kind of thing has become so common. (And not only or even primarily, I should be clear, to do with asexual characters. This discourse grows up around any ship someone doesn't like. Which is every ship.)

Similar discourse is going around Twitter right now about Pride (no nudity! no scanty clothing! no kink! nothing with sexual overtones at all! how can we ask for respect if we don't behave respectably? think of the children at Pride OMG!!! it's EVIL to embarrass LGBT kids in front of their parents!). In a year when there aren't even going to be any Pride parades.

It's frustrating because I feel like both extremes (the "free speech, don't like don't read" brigade and the antis) are jointly killing any possibility of discussion about really important issues. Like, there are definitely some m/m fans who fetishize, although my sense is there's a lot less of that than there used to be. There are fans who are disrespectful about asexual characters and asexual representation. But somehow the discourse has shifted from "this is sometimes problematic, could we talk about it?" to "this is sometimes problematic, therefore we must kill it with fire!"

It occurs to me that attempts to find a clear morality in The Magnus Archives, to finally decide which characters are heroes and which are villains, is part of the same phenomenon. There's a strong desire, in some quarters, to reduce ethical complexities to simple lessons.

[cyprinella]

weirdly a bunch of the folks in the RQG morality contingent say they're trans. But there's also a lot of Republican gay dudes so I suppose you can't predict where conservatism will strike with complete confidence. I tend to look at it as a type of magical thinking where it runs sort of like "If we don't do X, the straights will respect us/not hurt us" and I think that's a hard fantasy to break in every sphere where you can sell someone out for protective coloring.

a way for a straight man to play a queer male character without having to worry about that character ever, ever, ever touching another guy's dick.

ME TOO. Like, interesting that that came out after there were a bunch of comments on TMA fandom's horniness. [Frysquint.gif]

At least we'll always have Alasdair who has completely embraced Lonely Eyes.

[kindkit]

On the subject of loveliness rather than awfulness: I started the VOD of the stream last night, and finished it this morning, and it was great (audio aside). Bryn is so huggy and sweet! I'm really hoping that "some RQ folks hang out and play silly games" becomes a regular thing and not just a once-a-year treat.

[cyprinella]

I had such a great time watching that, even with the discord call quality being extremely low. Bryn is a delight.