Opinionated

[thessalian]

"Opinions are like testicles: you kick them hard enough, doesn't matter how many you've got."
--Varric TethrasThis quote has come to mind a lot lately, as I've been lurking Tumblr the last ... what, couple of months? (Hi, fellow Tumblrs!) Tumblr's got the best bits of Livejournal (decent character limit, immediacy of picture posting rather than

Comments

[ainulindale]

Exactly this. (My phone won't let me reply to your comment, but I wanted to say that I've only ever seen you handle your opinions well on Tumblr. The wank I'm currently griping about is coming from people that I've absolutely no clue who they are or if they're even on LJ, too.) I'm learning that if you don't keep a perfectly neutral tone about everything, someone jumps you, and it doesn't take long before it's a Great Mongolian Clusterfuck. It's all that reblogging...then people go and bitch out the OP without even realizing how the original side of things developed...and the cycle of cyberbullying begins anew.

I slept on it, but I still kind of want to blow shit up. Dearest, darling Thedas...here I come.

[plutokitty]

It's funny, my friend and I were commenting on this just the other day. She's been reading a lot of Dragon Age confessions and says this happens all the time. And I see it a lot too. It's one thing to not "get" a pairing--that happens all the time--but like you say, acting revolted or bashing people for it seems just silly and making something clearly For Fun into Not Fun.

Hope you feel better soon! That's no fun, to be sick around the holidays.

[lunarwhirl]

Yeah, I've seen fans become not only rude, but downright ridiculous over pairings and characters. It's disturbing.

Ugh, you, too? I'm sorry you're sick. /hugs

[baronsamedi]

"Is it so important that everyone agree with them that they'll lash out at people who don't? Are they that insecure, that desperate for validation?"

For some folks, when they want a ship to be true (or false) and it seems to go against the canon (or at least, there is a total lack of evidence) then the way they can make it most true is convince "everyone" of it. For said people, yes someone disagreeing with them is threatening because it puts their should/must be true pairing in the the morass of other pairings, and that's not good enough because it should/must be true.

When you put those people in a room with people who think it would be neat/hot/interesting for two different people to be an item, then you get massively differing levels of emotional investment. There is some quizzical WTF. Put them in a room with people with the same investment with a different pairing, and, well...

It's kinda fascinating to watch them from somewhere very very far away.