Most of us know it when we see it, but I figure any discussion about fandom antis and how to respond to them would benefit from having a solid answer to “what even is an anti, anyway?” Laying out the exact characteristics that distinguish anti wank from every other kind of wank also helps clarify what, exactly, is going on here, why it’s appalling, and also why it’s appealing to those who engage in it.
I’m going to define it as a behavior rather than a particular type of person. The anti movement is:
1. A form of intra-community aggression within fandom, that 2. Seeks, as its primary goal, to designate out-groups who are fair game for social brutality, by 3. Categorically declaring certain forms of fan engagement (ships, characters, fic genres, fanart styles, video game mods…) to be intrinsically morally wrong and in need of stamping out, regardless of how or why one engages with them, and 4. Justifies this by claiming a causal relationship between the targeted activities and some form of (usually SJ-flavored) real-world harm that they allegedly promote.
The order is important, because it goes from most to least essential. 1 is fundamental context, 2 is ultimate purpose, 3 is the mechanism used to accomplish that purpose, 4 is the justification for using that mechanism.
Antis are not people who dislike something and write meta about it, Antis are literally bullies that will doxx you because you like their notp
Yes this. There is a HUGE difference between someone who just doesn’t ship something or who has a NOTP, and an anti.
Someone who doesn’t ship something or someone who has a NOTP will scroll past things, maybe blacklist those tags or go to stricter lengths if the content in question makes them rlly uncomfy. BTW, that is what you SHOULD be doing if you aren’t down with a ship.
Antis will literally go into the tags of the ship, find specific users, send them anons with death threats, racial slurs, and suicide baits, and then complain about how they are seeing the ship all over their “recommended” (which, btw, when you fucking SEARCH SOMETHING or use the tag, it’s going to show up because tumblr thinks you want more of it).
Tl;Dr- Antis are NOT the same as non-shippers/ people with NOTPs.
“
Someone who doesn’t ship something or someone who has a NOTP will scroll
past things, maybe blacklist those tags or go to stricter lengths if
the content in question makes them rlly uncomfy. BTW, that is what you
SHOULD be doing if you aren’t down with a ship.”
That distinction can become another version of “ignore the bullies and they’ll go away” though.
If someone’s posting something that is blatantly racist (like, say, a line in a movie “translated” into fake ebonics, which actually did happen), I’m going to say something. If that makes me an anti then…
Except that isn’t what we are talking about here. At all. I’m talking about like- here’s an example.
I don’t ship Kylux. The reason being that Hux bears a physical and behavioral resemblance to someone who abused me in the past. It is not a ship that I personally enjoy, nor one that I want to really see on my dash.
So I avoid the tag. If there are certain things that make me super uncomfortable, and there are, I blacklist the tags. I avoid those tags in fanfiction. I am someone with a NOTP/ a non-shipper. An anti in my situation would purposefully find people who ship Kylux and send them anon hate. Or would spread rumors that those who ship Kylux are actual Nazis. Or would claim to hate Kylux because they think Kylux is a Nazi ship and then go into anon and call a Jewish Kylux shipper a k*ke (a thing that has happened to me and other shippers in the context of another ship).
Call out racism and BS. I will ALWAYS call it out when I see my fellow shippers doing it and when I see antis doing it, because it is wrong no matter who does it. But none of what I said above was ”ignore the bullies and they will go away”. it was “maybe you shouldn’t be sending slurs and death threats to people just because they ship something you don’t like.” The original post explains antis in a lot more detail if ur interested.
Okay gotcha. I just feel like I’d rather risk being labeled an anti than scroll past something hurtful because it was related to a ship, even if it was tangentially.
I understand how you feel about Kylux as my opinion and attitude toward it is very similar.
I legit served a man at my last job who was fully covered in nazi symbols and shit. He was a proud actual real life nazi getting icecream in a family theme park and when he left I voiced my disgust to my coworkers on how security even let him in the gate wearing all of that. And you know what that bitch said? “Well some people are offended by your rainbow flag and you are allowed to wear it so he can too”. It’s not the fucking same. Don’t fucking compare the two
Nazis’ entire mission is to exterminate anyone who’s not exactly like them. It’s in no way comparable to “some people are offended”.
me: “I’d like to visibly exist without fear”
them: “I want to literally kill these people so that they stop existing”
centrists: “I don’t see the difference”
Oh wow I guess my addition to this post got spread a lot. I just wanted to add in another piece of important information. I live in Orlando. The location of the Pulse night club shooting. I was wearing a rainbow pin on my uniform because 49 people in my community died in a hate crime. I will never forgive anyone who tells me that my rainbow pins are the same as a swastika
So I saw a post a few days ago. The gist of it basically was that tumblr culture is fucked because people simply aren’t allowed to sympathize with villains anymore. “Remember all the Loki sympathy?” The post asks. “Whatever happened to that?” So I’ve been thinking two things about said post, both of which are, tbh, a bit contradictory. That’s why I’m venting mostly is just because I wonder if opening this up for discussion might help me reconcile my thoughts a bit.
Content Warning for Mentions of Fascist Ideologies, Anti-Blackness in fandom and Orientalism
I still think what I said applies to Ward fans too.
Consider two people who identify as “Ward fans”. I’m going to call them Person A and Person B.
Person A is a fan of Grant Ward. They like how the character is a subversion of the “pretty bad boy with a heart of gold” stereotype and love the creepiness of how he was written and acted. They don’t condone Ward’s actions (though they might be a bit annoyed about that question if asked it since they get it a lot) or those of Hydra. They write Skyeward fic that is visceral and disturbing with content warnings applied to it. The fic itself certainly isn’t for everyone and reading it is similar to watching a psychological horror movie. They are a Grant Ward fan and a Skyeward shipper.
Person B is a fan of Grant Ward. They think the character is a pretty bad boy with a heart of gold. They condone Ward’s actions, ship Skyeward, and go out of their way to harass people who write anti-Skyeward posts. They don’t think Hydra was written to be a Nazi organization and like to say so to Jewish bloggers who haven’t already blocked them. They write schmoopy Skyeward fic (and may or may not tag). They are a Grant Ward fan and a Skyeward shipper.
Both these people are the same on paper: Grant Ward fans, Skyeward fans. They also might reblog similar fanart and fandom related in-jokes. For this reason, it might be kind of hard to tell them apart at first glace and I understand why someone else with different boundaries/needs than I have would want to stay the fuck away from both. But I, personally, feel safe around people like Person A while I don’t feel safe around people like Person B. That’s because there’s a difference in how they approach people who don’t like what they like and they aren’t downplaying/defending something that Jewish writers were writing as a stand-in for Nazis.
I have a few longtime mutuals like Person A (idk if they’re Ward fans
but they are fans of Rumlow and Kilgrave). I also know people who are
like Person B (message me if you think you don’t know who I’m talking
about and want to block). I just blacklist all the mutuals’ Hydra-related content, which is tagged and easy to do.
But someone who thinks that being a fan of something is enough to suss out of the political beliefs of that person will end up attacking both types of fan, and I think that’s unfortunate.
Off topic but Loki actually was racist toward humans but he was toward frost giants. He wanted to genocide all of them in the first Thor movie.
It’s the final battle, and urged on by Finn the Stormtroopers have rebelled (because that storyline *needs* to happen) and Poe’s shepherding them to safety like the warm, caring person he actually is.
But there’s a weapon, because there’s always a weapon in SW movies, and Supreme Leader Ren is about to use it. And so Finn and Rey have to take him down together, in an actually well choreographed fight with the Knights of Ren in an actual set that doesn’t look like the staging for bad experimental opera.
By the end, Finn has Kylo Ren at his mercy. And then it happens: Kylo cries – he begs Finn to understand that he never had a choice, that he didn’t mean to turn into this monster. And Finn, who has a soft heart inside of him despite all he’s been through, is taken in by it. He turns his back on Kylo for one second.
And then Kylo strikes, because of course he does. Only Rey’s been fooled once and she won’t be fooled twice – she won’t let the man she loves pay for making the same mistake she did. She intercepts Kylo’s blow and turns it back on him and Kylo Ren is killed at last, impaled on the light saber he used to kill his own father. And so we have a fitting end to the anti-redemption arc Kylo Ren started in The Force Awakens and continued, despite all its faults, in The Last Jedi.
And the force ghosts of Leia and Luke watch and smile as Finn and Rey walk off into their happy ending together.
LMAO. This would be the most generic thing JJ could do. And it would shit all over the Skywalker/Solo bloodlines (and it would render the OT pointless as there’s no joy in seeing anything the original trio accomplished because we’ll know their bloodline ends in tragedy). BTW, in response to your reply to me about Bruce/Selina, yes, Reylo is like Bruce/Selina. The enemies to lovers trope. Saying it’s like Bruce/Joker is idiotic as The Joker has zero conflict. Remember all those intimate convos between Batman and Joker where they gaze into each other’s eyes and plead with each other to switch sides? No, you don’t. Because it never happened. Remember all those articles post TDK about what great sexual tension Batman and Joker had? No. Yet even Vanity Fair wrote an article about Reylo’s intense chemistry. In addition to Bruce/Selina, Reylo is also a lot like Vegeta/Bulma from the Dragon Ball franchise. Oh, and I never said Nolan came up with BatCat. He’s just the first one to handle it that way and give them that sort of happily ever after despite all the terrible things Selina does to him. Clearly Kylo triggers you in some way that makes you fail to understand that he’s a fictional character and not a real person who can harm you in any way. And thank God you’re not a storyteller, you actually think the best friends to lovers trope that FinnRey would represent would be good for Star Wars. Best friends to lovers is the most generic, cliche, overused trope in Hollywood history. In total, I just find people like you to be sad. You want safe, generic, conservative storytelling. And it’s like you’ve never even seen the original trilogy. The 2nd movie in the OT ends with Vader cutting off his own son’s hand, making it seem like he’ll never redeem himself. Even Obi Wan tells Luke that Vader is lost to the dark side. Yet Vader does redeem himself because that is the point of Star Wars. A point you missed because you’re clearly not a real Star Wars fan. Let me guess, you didn’t even care about Star Wars till you watched TFA a few years back. Yeah. Blocked.
PS: And thinking Luke and Leia would be happy about their bloodline ending that way…. my god, it’s like you don’t even understand the franchise on even the most basic levels. Oh, and John and Daisy themselves root for Ben’s redemption. John in particular is a huge Kylo fan. He’s even said he hopes Kylo redeems himself and that Kylo is his favorite character. He’s even constantly taking pictures of himself with Kylo merchandise he owns. According to your logic, that means John loves a nazi.
Dude, I don’t know who you think I am, but we’ve never had a conversation about anything before and definitely not Batman, a subject about which I have literally no opinions.
Also I actually am a professional story teller and have been for more than two decades.
Oh, and I’m in my late forties, btw. I fell in love with the original trilogy after I saw them in the cinema when they first came out. I daresay I’ve seen them more times than you have.
All that aside, can I just say that hijacking someone else’s post in order to be extremely rude to them, then saying ‘blocked’ as if you’re the one who’s been offended AND THEN FORGETTING TO ACTUALLY BLOCK THEM is by far the funniest thing any of the many Reylos who’ve hopped onto my posts unasked has yet done.
A++ would recommend
interracial couple: *exists*
the joker in your mentions: ”this is safe generic conservative storytelling”
Yes, precisely. Plus I forgot to mention how much I love it when goyim lecture me on who I’m allowed to call a Nazi analog.
Abrams said that he saw the FO as a neo-Nazi analog. People can deny it all they want but that doesn’t mean he didn’t say it. That also doesn’t mean that it’s a knock on Boyega (or anyone else’s) morality to like an FO character. If so, I’d be worried about all those little kids with Darth Vader helmets running around. The Terran Empire in Star Trek Discovery is a fascism/Trumpist populism analog too and Empress Georgiou is still a beloved character. People are complicated and that’s why I wrote what I did about not assigning real world political beliefs to people solely based on the characters they like.
This is someone absolutely unwilling to like actually think critically about why Finn turns against the First Order and keeps saying that it doesn’t make sense, that Finn should do x instead, that killing should come natural to him. That it’s “bad writing” to have Finn “decide to be good for no reason”.
The very fact that this person CONTINUOUSLY insists that it doesn’t make sense for Finn to be good/decide to be good is like… beyond infuriating to me. I want to be all nice and help nudge people in the direction of good analysis and whatnot, but this purposeful crap is a hard limit for me.
Like this person isn’t even actually seeing Finn as Finn. Never have, never will. They’re not interested in like… trying to approach the character differently. They keep trying to talk about such an important character that they have no interest in actually analyzing responsibly and man… I’m uninterested in that kind of hardheaded nonsense.
Anyone who believes that the village on Jakku was “harboring a terrorist” is beyond reason. The argument that the villagers were threatening the FO because they tried to defend themselves is pure fascist apologia.
To think that JJ Abrams wrote that scene, where a Nazi parallel invades a village of people who belonged to a religion they wanted to eradicate, disarmed the ones who fought back, and slaughtered them, including the children, with any intention of making the FO look like the victims, is absolutely stomach-churning. As is the notion that Finn should have stayed loyal to the FO and not fought back himself.
And we’re supposed to completely divorce attitudes like this from reality? George Lucas wrote allegories – Nixon, Vietnam, Bush. Abrams wrote allegories that were clearly more directly about the Nazis, down to a nearly shot-for-shot reference to Triumph of the Will that was supposed to be horrifying. And yet here we are, fans are more horrified by Finn not following the FO.
In Kevin Passmore’s relatively interesting Fascism: A Very Short Introduction he sets an important scene.
The opening session of the last Reichstag took place in the Kroll Opera House, situated on the Tiergarten in central Berlin, for the Reichstag building had been destroyed by fire a few weeks previously. Inside the hall a huge swastika flag hung behind the platform occupied by the cabinet and president of the Reichstag. To get to the hall, deputies had to run the gauntlet of insolent swastikawearing youths massed on the wide square in front, who called them ‘Centrist pigs’ or ‘Marxist sows’. Communist deputies had been imprisoned because of the Party’s alleged involvement in burning down the Reichstag building. A few socialists were also incarcerated, and another was arrested on entering the building. Nazi stormtroopers lined up behind the socialists and blocked the exits.
this is his description of the context in which the enabling pass was act. The dissenters in the vote were told they would be hung later that day by this same crowd of stormtroopers. By the time the definitive moment was present, the paramilitary was already built and the vote was not a free vote at all. This is why violent opposition to far right paramilitaries and fascists like the traditional workers party is so crucial while they are in their infancy. If you wait, its too late.
I hate that dude. I hate his music. It’s white, banal, and his whole shtick is so puerile and repetitive. He’s racist, sexist, ableist, and a fucking inept boring piece of shit that his whole “career” relies on shock factor and nothing else. He has nothing else. Ugly white rich kid who was given everything as a kid but acts tortured and misunderstood for money
That whole article is… painful to read, but Jesus this part??
Fun fact, Evan Rachel Wood was only 19 years old when Manson and she got together, and he was 36.
I’m friends with one of Manson’s exs from before he got famous and she says that he doesn’t talk to anyone from before that time anymore, not even people who were his best friends, because he thinks they’re beneath him now.
Disney please give us just 2 hours of Chewbacca fucking slaughtering first order stormtroopers bc they killed his puppy instead of the Han Solo movie
Chewbacca wasn’t even that angry in TLJ like he busted Luke’s door in and??? That was it??? He got more pissed at some porgs than he did at the space neo nazis. @rian johnson you’re a liar and a fucker
There’s no fucking point in being anti Nazi if you’re not going to support Jewish, rromani, or black people. Quit using “punch nazis” as your new slogan if you ignore the people that Nazis want dead
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