#(how to say you're projecting onto a fictional character without saying you're projecting onto a fictional character)

[jesncin]

Hi! I'm sorry if this an inappropriate question to ask, but I was wondering if you had any advice on how to accurately portray characters of color? I'm White and my creative fiction includes a lot of diverse characters, and I don't want to just ignore how their races impact their stories but at the same time being a racial/ethnic minority isn't something I've personally experienced and I don't know how to walk the line between good representation and some White dude telling stories that aren't his place to tell. Do you have any advice on how to accurately present characters of color without appropriating?

Luckily I have time today so I'll give my 2 cents! For one: there is no such thing as "accurate" portrayals of POC. Our experiences aren't a monolith. Something personal I would write and pull from my lived experience might not be relatable to, say, another queer Indonesian. And characters I write that are outside of my identity (Black, disabled, etc.) are inevitably going to be less authentic compared to someone of those identities tackling those characters. That's just something to make peace with- we can only do the best we can with the perspective we have.

With that: the usual platitudes are "do your research" and "listen to POC", I dislike both of these sayings! I get what they mean, but I don't love the insinuation of "doing research and listening" as a means of personal creative benefit. So instead I encourage different mindsets:

Instead of "do your research" (where identities can be treated as subjects to be learned and not people) I prefer "expand your perspective". Art is so cool because it's self expression. Stories are awesome because it's a shortcut to a person's deepest feelings. They get you fascinated and invested in a life so unlike your own. I can't stand "I only read queer books" people because it's an admission that they refuse to engage with identities they can't relate or project onto. There are so many important stories out there outside of your bubble. Get into the habit of earnestly learning about perspectives outside of your own. And not with the mindset of "this'll make me a better writer if I consume the identity and can become them" but with the mindset of getting to learn about a new friend. I think people take "stay in your lane" too literally sometimes where they focus so much on writing about their own experiences that they miss out on empathizing with other people.

Instead of "listen to POC" (I hate this one. Because our opinions aren't a monolith, it essentializes all of us to being media critic savvy experts, and white people tend to cherry pick the POC opinions they like instead of looking at the wider conversation) I prefer "improve your media criticism skills, and supplement with different perspectives". Not only should you "expand your perspective" as my last point said, but you should also be critical of things you read and learn! Learning about how ableism, racism, classism, etc. operates in life helps inform your opinion of how an identity was portrayed in a story. Recognize that earnest, and well intended attempts at representation can still be flawed or performative (the amount of times I'm told "I'm sure they weren't intending to be racist" like I truly believe the writer is a mustache twirling racist villain is too much). It's important to be opinionated! Do the work to find different perspectives to inform your own.

Lastly, don't ask for labor from marginalized people haha. I know that's what you're doing now (and this always happens to me whenever I voice a critical opinion of race representation) but I happen to have time (I'm still waiting on my editors to get back to me, such is the life of publishing). Most people don't, and are exhausted with explaining themselves. I don't bother my other marginalized friends whenever I write perspectives outside of my own. I do as much of the work reading articles, history, criticism, art etc. first. Especially if it's going to be a published work, then find Authenticity Readers and pay them for their labor. Avoid asking general, easy to google answers y'know? A lot of people have done the work writing thought pieces in their own time about a variety of perspectives.

[aitadjcrazytimes]

It's been a good run

But it's time to bring this to a close!

The saga is over, C, T and I are all together. T and I are in the swing of it, C approves as much as it is possible for him to approve of anything, everyone knows about the blog and is chill.

C is back at his rightful place of walking his sister down the aisle.

I'm getting everything I want, and we're all free to make each other miserable until the day we die.

I'm not going to be updating this blog anymore! Nobody else involved with the situation will be submitting any more AITA posts either, because they are either not on tumblr or agreed it would be annoying.

I will say that there is some stuff on here that I've alluded to that isn't necessarily 100% in the spirit of things, so I've included some stuff below the cut for the folks who have caught onto that. I would not suggest reading it if you like how all of this played out and want to keep it that way. I know that's incredibly vague, but I'm not sure how to phrase it without making it weird?

Thank you all for listening and talking to me over the past few days! That's where I'm leaving it!

...

...

...

...Is everyone who wants to keep believing in the disaster polycule gone? Yes? OK!

So, this was fake. I made up the whole thing. TK and C and T and everyone else are fictional characters. Did I lie? Yes. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

Q: All of it? Even the og AITA post? The followup AITA post? The screenshots?

A: All of it.

Q: Wh... Why did you do this...?

A: Well, first this all started as a Red vs Blue fanfic for the ship Chexer (Church/Tex/Tucker)-

It started as a fanfic for Chexer. However, I was already working on a different fanfic for RVB that was totalling about 15k words at this point (+ at least 90k to go), and I knew I would never have the time or energy to write this one. I thought: yknow. this would be really funny as an aita post.

Q: It was a fanfic of a Halo fanfic series.

A: Yep!

So, I submitted Tucker's perspective. I did not expect for it to get more than maybe 100 notes at most. I totally thought someone would call it out right away.

The funny part is, if I'd dedicated all this energy to a fic instead of this blog, I'd probably have about 15-20 thousand words of fic already, but whatever, can't ruin my personal day!

Also, I wanted to see how many people would figure it out/how long it would take for it to become too obvious that this was a fandom thing. I was dropping names and RvB lore since the beginning. A few people did figure it out, and I DMed them in private to let them know.

Q: But why make the blog then?

A: Because I love to lie and be a nuisance to the general populace! <3

It was always my intent to wait until Carolina's perspective got posted (i am honestly still shocked i got away with "Carey/Georgia/West Virginia/Alabama/Miss Louisiana 1988"), let it simmer for about a day, then come clean. Which is what I'm doing now!

The reason I'm coming clean now instead of dragging it out is because I don't want anyone to feel stupid or like they got duped. You're not stupid! You were a part of this story! This was, as one anon said, a creative writing project. It was a collaboration! Thank you so much for helping me!

That said, I'm sorry to anyone that finds this disappointing! I had a blast doing this, but I will not be doing it again. I have gotten my fill. I have had my taste of being an influencer, and now I can go on with my life without ever feeling like I need to start a youtube channel.

Q: How did you keep up with a consistent timeline?

A: I didn't, especially at first. But in my time as a liar who lies about things, I have found that usually people are willing to believe you when you say "yeah, i lied about that".

Q: Wait, what about the thing with your kid?

A: Yeah, I fucked up on this one. In the other fic I was/am writing, Tucker was around 33. So, when I was saying what Junior's age was, I subtracted it from 33 and got 18. It wasn't until I was showing my partner the blog and they said "Wait, he had his kid at 13??????" that I realized I had fucked up. Oops!

Q: Was it really ALL fake?

A: For the most part. I will say that I did actually drop chocolate cake all over my tits that one time and had to shower by myself like a fucking loser. That one was true. I did also get my nails done for the first time ever, which did actually affect my typing. And I am in a band (but so is Tucker, canonically)! There are a few other things as well, but I don't want to list all of them.

Q: DID you ever read homestuck?

A: Nope. And I never will.

Even the title, though I will say that the title I came up with was "Leonard "Alpha Bitch" Church's Decidedly Not Lo-Fi Beats to Get Nasty and Get Clean To: The Movie"

Q: So there was never a combination sex/bathtime playlist?

A: Maybe! But perhaps more accurately: the combination sex/bathtime playlist was inside of you all along. You can make it. There are only three songs on there that are canon to the lore of this blog. Those are No Children by The Mountain Goats, Take It Out On Me by Thousand Foot Krutch, and one unknown song from the album Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV by Coheed and Cambria (Yep, the call was coming from inside the house, I gave Church my music taste). I had intended this to be Wake Up, but it's out of my hands now. The rest is yours to fill in.

Q: What's your main blog, so I can follow you?

A: Hi, this is aitadjcrazytimes. You're not getting that.

Q: Your AO3 handle?

A: Nope, not that either.

You will never find me. And that's the way I want it. You will see me in every blog. Every new follower. Every stranger you meet on the street. You will look into your discord kitten's eyes, and you will absently wonder if he was the one behind aitadjcrazytimes. And you will never know for certain.

Q: But-

A: Let me live on in your memory. The only person who knows both who I am and the fact that I did this is my partner, who is not into RvB or commonly on tumblr. I am not a RvB blog. I am not a writing blog. I am a nobody on the fringes of tumblr society who's been here long enough to know how to remain in the shadows.

And, even if you do manage to find me, against all odds:

No one will ever believe you.

I am closing my askbox. I am also closing my messages. If you have anything to say to Tucker or Me (tumblr user aitadjcrazytimes), you are welcome to do so in the replies or reblogs, but you will not be receiving an answer. I'll keep this blog up for anyone that wants to go through after the fact and do a deep dive or what have you.

Thanks to everyone who made this into the wild ride it was! Live long and get fucked or whatever! Xoxo <3

[lemonhemlock]

THANK YOU I AGREE WITH YOUR AEMOND POST 1 MILLION %. Some of the replies are so frustrating, all you were doing is discussing the writers' decisions this season regarding Aemond, and how simplistic it would be for Aemond's motivations to betray Aegon to be based on the brothel scene. You put into words everything wrong with Aemond's arc this season and I tremendously agree! I feel that the writers are flip-flopping with Aemond and Aegon's relationship, first they were enemies as children, then Aemond lost his eye and they seemed to be on the same page, then AEGON'S SON WAS VICIOUSLY BRUTALLY MURDERED AND AEMOND IS (besides showing no character evolution driven remorse to speak of) BACK TO HATING AEGON AGAIN?! THAT'S HIS BROTHER. HIS NEPHEW. HIS SISTER'S KID. Aemond had zero fucks to give!

The fandom's reaction to Aemond has been so embarrassing! Why is he not held accountable for ANYTHING. EVER. I defended Aemond all through S1 and will always defend him from TB but HE'S A GROWN MAN NOW. He just doesn't show empathy for Aegon after Jahaerys' death, your brother is grieving and he swears Aegon is his King and he's his hitman and he will always serve his ass. IF THEY HAVE AEMOND MURDER AEGON BECAUSE HE TEASED HIM IN A BROTHEL WHAT EVEN IS THIS. Really bad writing. Really cringe too.

So don't worry there are some of us who whole heartedly agree with you and don't coddle Aemond a grown man, with the same standards season after season and hold him accountable for the sin of hoping he grows as a character even if he is heading for a darker turn.

thank you so much, anon, for this unexpected reply, as i'm hanging out at the airport with not much to do 😅

yeah, i think that, ON PAPER, aemond turning on his brother as a result of years of bullying is believable, sure, BUT. the bullying truly needs to be horrific to explain away the urge to commit basically three of the most grievous crimes in westeros: kingslaying, kinslaying and usurpation. like. no one takes those things lightly. and, i'm sorry, but teasing just doesn't cut it. i think that a lot of people may be kind of projecting their own personal grievances with school bullies onto aemond, which is natural to an extent, but they have to step back a little and realise that being rude or hurtful to someone just doesn't, in any way, merit a reaction so disproportionate that it amounts to soul-drenching crimes

in that regard, last season i was 100% on aemond's side as well, because, well, MUTILATION might warrant such an escalation in violence. compared to all that pent-up anger aemond felt for luke, the aegond rivalry is just not really well done. it COULD have been, but, without having seen ep 4, it feels very milquetoast and, most of all, unearned.

honestly, i think gwen emphasized really well the fact that we're in a fandom obsessed with their headcanons and brainrot, to the extent that it becomes difficult to separate the backstory one has created for some character with what has actually appeared on screen. what we've seen so far has only been mockery, and i get that, when you're a kid, it's very difficult to go through, but we are talking about murdering your sibling here. i mean, no, i don't think "it makes perfect sense". ALSO. pointing that out doesn't mean you're invalidating the trauma of bullying victims, let us please separate people's real experiences from fictional experiences, which 1. are fake and 2. can be improperly presented in media, which is what we are critiquing in the first place

on a final note, i have had people on my post clinging to this idea that, just because the writers had aemond say (in the most bored tone in existence) that he regrets "the business with luke" (or however the hell he phrases it) means that the writers want to communicate to us that he feels sorry over jaehaerys. please. they must either be aliens that are just now learning about human emotion OR they want to relay that aemond isn't really all that bothered fundamentally. his reaction is basically the stoned out version of this gif!

but, anyway, as dumb as aemond's reasons are or aren't, what ultimately brings the whole rivalry down is that they really didn't invest in creating any dramatic tension between these two. think of the scene at storm's end, it's the literal version of "you could have cut the tension in the room with a knife" and it's only a few minutes long. so it can be done. they just don't care OR, because of this stupid trend of reducing the number of episodes in a season, aegond was just one of those things that hit the cutting room floor. so we can all blame capitalism for rook's rest. 😅

[kazvha]

SIMP

Summary: You're simping for a video game character and Rin gets grumpy.

Notes: This has been sitting in my drafts for so long😩 I thought of Leon Kennedy while writing this, but you can of course replace him with another character🤷🏾‍♀️

"That one liner was terrible!" You're laughing excitedly as you try to catch your breath. "Honestly, how is he so funny without even trying... I love him." You swat away the imaginary tears in the corner of your eye.

Rin and you are having your game night as usual tonight, and for the past few hours you've have been playing the new popular horror game that came out.

You bought the game right away when it released, because you knew that Rin absolutely loves the genre.

The game is projected on the tv in the living room. You two are sitting comfortably on the couch, eating snacks while taking turns in playing the game. Right now it was your turn. Rin really, really wants to enjoy the game with you, but you make it hard for him. Literally every second, you stop walking to look at the character of your favor and Rin notices out of the corner of his eye, that in every cutscene, your eyes don't leave the character's figure.

And now you're even falling back onto the couch as you are kicking feet and hiding you face behind your hands! "He looks so good!!! Rin, babe, did you see his moves? Ab. so. lu. te. ly. Breathtaking!" You've been grinning nonstop like an idiot for ten minutes straight and your cheeks start hurting.

That's when you notice that Rin hasn't said anything for a while now. Worried you glance over to him. "Rin? Is everything ok?"

Rin just gives you a glare and turns his head away. He's obviously annoyed, but you couldn't guess about what.

"Love, talk to me? Please?"

His head turns so quickly to you, it's a wonder his neck didn't break. "Can't you play the game correctly? It's starting to get boring."

Suddenly, it dawned on you. "Rin, could it be that you're... jealous?" You don't even hide the smug grin that's creeping onto your face. "Aww you're so cute!"

You tackle the poor guy into a crushing hug. "I love Leon, but you know that he's only a fictional character right? You are my true love, Rin." You grasp Rin's hand and place it over your heart. His gaze doesn't leave yours. He sees the sincerity in your eyes which leaves him with no choice, but to believe you.

"How can you even like such a lukewarm character..." He places his hand over yours.

"If I had to pick between you two, I would immediately choose you!" You show him your sweetest smile, and Rin's eyes softened, before you dramatically say "I'm not abandoning my husbandos though." Rin just sighed tiredly. He'll never understand fictional men's appeal, but as long as they make you happy he'll try to support you.

Rin flicked your forehead. "Now give me the controller, I'll show you how to play the game correctly, simp."

[dduane]

Diane, I am wondering something about writing and you are very wise and very kind.

For context, I've been seeing a therapist for a few months and just saw a psychiatrist Sunday night and they both used the phrase "dissociative daydreaming". It started when I was about 13 and I'm 28 now and it is getting in the way of my life. I'll be having a one-on-one conversation with someone alone in a quiet room and completely miss a few seconds of what they say, and I zone out a lot when eating at restaurants and it creeps people out. The psychiatrist says we are going to work on getting this under control in the next couple months.

The thing is, I like writing fiction and I do a lot of my imagining while I'm in this "zoned out" state. You know, that being a major part of dissociative daydreaming. So I'm wondering, sorry for assuming (assuming makes an ass out of you and me), but if you do not also dissociative daydream, or any other fiction writers here do, how do you think about your stories? Do you just sit down at your desk and say to yourself "I shall write a story now" without leaving your unoccupied body staring at a wall?

First of all: my apologies for having taken so long to get to this... my ask box is so piled up with overdue stuff right now. (sigh) And thanks for the nice words. I don't know about the "wise", and sometimes I screw up the "kind", but I do what I can with what I've got.

Anyway, re: "Do you just sit down at your desk and say to yourself 'I shall write a story now' without leaving your unoccupied body staring at a wall?"

...Yeah, pretty much. Here's how the story-building process usually goes for me.

First I outline. (As detailed here.) The outlining is for me the equivalent of drawing a blueprint, or doing the measure-twice work that comes before taking a saw to the materials you're going to use to build a bookshelf. For this part of the process, as I assemble the underlying framework of the story, I've found it vital to be as completely present, alert and aware as possible. This is where the order of physical action gets laid out, errors of reasoning get caught, blind alleys get erased from the blueprint, useless character transactions get identified and thrown away, and hunches / incomplete ideas get incorporated.

While assembling the outline, if I find my concentration drifting or somehow compromised, I stop work as quickly as possible and put it aside until I can find time to deal with it when I won't be distracted by other stuff. Much experience has taught me that if I get sloppy about this, I may well wind up being really annoyed about it later on... secondary to having missed something vital about character interactions, or screwed up some important sequence of physical action. The writing time lost in fixing careless errors of this kind infuriates me... so I take my time with the outlining.

It's after the framework of the story is in place that the vaguing-out stages of both writing and thinking about the writing come into play. Over many years I've found that the shower, in the morning, is one of the best places for this. Usually when I'm in active writing mode on a project, the first thing I'll do after waking up (while still in bed) will be to look over the writing done the previous day, and—if there's need—check the outline to see what I was planning to do next. Then I hit the showers.

That's where the ideas really start to flow while I'm unfocused: scene descriptions and action sequences in particular. I don't know what it is, but running water really seems to do it for me. (One time I was up at this place for a writing trip, and plotted about six novels one after the other, over a week. Those tubes in the picture dump a liter of hot water per second onto your head. Very, very effective for me.)

...I'm also absolutely horrified to have to admit that one of the very best places for me to be in order to have dialogue arrive is at the kitchen sink, doing dishes. Possibly because there are few other situations in my day to day life where I more desperately want to have my mind be somewhere else. Anywhere else. (But also: running water again...)

In between these two modes of composition lies a hybrid "full-spectrum" writing mode in which I can switch pretty much seamlessly from total immersion in the scene presently unfolding to a more analytical examination of what's going on: a constant realtime adjustment of format issues, timing, pacing, and a lot of other things. When in this mode I can vague out when necessary, inventing new stuff as needed or refining material that was already there, and then snap back into the mode where I'm keeping an eye on paragraph lengths or whether there are too many em-dashes popping up. :)

...Anyway, that''s how it goes for me. The usual caveat applies here: other people's (entirely successful!) processes will not necessarily look anything like this. ...Meanwhile, I absolutely wish you good results in your upcoming brainwork, and the better management of your own process.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/729095437558169600/what-are-people-who-hate-murder-gore-death-and?source=share

It is a really good question, what people who are supposedly so upset by murder, gore, rape, abuse, etc. are doing in fandoms for media full of them, and yet it happens constantly. Before House of the Dragon brought a bunch of normal fans back to the fandom last year, the ASOIAF/Game of Thrones fandom on Tumblr was like 90% antis. The fandom for the 2022 Interview with the Vampire show is also chock-full of them even though the show itself seems to be doing all it can to scare off that type of person. My friend recently got into Gotham and says the fandom is full of people with lengthy DNIs including "DNI proshippers" and their favorite characters are all people who do morally reprehensible things like murder that the show still expects you to sympathize with. I really do not get it. I see how in an otherwise "lighter" (idk how to put this, but without archive-warning-style upsetting content) show, fans can twist themselves into pretzels to pretend some character they like who did a bad thing didn't actually do that bad thing. I understand how that kind of one-off cognitive dissonance works. But when the whole show is full of characters like that and you're constantly watching them do the things you insist are immoral to like? It's not even a case of having different tastes for fanworks vs. original fiction; I like shows like that, but I'm generally not a fan of rape or abuse in fanfiction since I prefer escapist romance in fic, but I'm up for whatever in original fiction. But I don't think there's anything *wrong* with wanting to read fanfic that has non-con or abuse, and I fully understand why people enjoy that stuff. But these anti people think it's wrong to like that content, in any fiction, in any form, and act like they are traumatized by it wherever they go. And yet.... these are their fandoms. How???

--

They're attracted to dark stuff and/or to very intense canons.

They cannot handle this interest and project their fears onto others.

[screambirdscreaming]

I used to like saying "gender is a social construct," but I stopped saying that because people didn't tend to react well - they thought that I was saying gender wasn't real, or didn't matter, or could be safely ignored without consequences. Which has always baffled me a bit as an interpretation, honestly, because many things are social constructs - like money, school, and the police - and they certainly have profound effects on your life whether or not you believe in them. And they sure don't go away if you ignore them.

Anyway. What I've taken to saying instead is, "gender is a cultural practice." This gives more of a sense of respect for the significance gender holds to many people. And it also opens the door to another couple layers of analysis.

Gender is cultural. It is not globally or historically homogeneous. It shifts over time, develops differently in different communities, and can be influenced by cross-cultural contact. Like many, many aspects of culture, the current status of gender is dramatically influenced by colonialism. Colonial gender norms are shaped by the hierarchical structure of imperialist society, and enforced onto colonized cultures as part of the project of imperial cultural hedgemony.

Gender is practiced. What constitutes a gender includes affects and behaviors, jobs or areas of work, skillsets, clothing, collective and individual practices of gender affiliation and affirmation. Any or all of these things, in any combination, depending on the gender, the culture, and the practitioner.

Gender encompasses shared cultural archetypes. These can include specific figures - gods and goddesses, mythic or fictional characters, etc - or they can be more abstract or general. The Wise Woman, Robin Hood, the Dyke, the Working Man, the Plucky Heroine, the Effete Gay Man, etc etc. The range of archetypes does not circumscribe a given gender, that is, they're not all there is to gender. But they provide frameworks and reference points by which people relate to gender. They may be guides for ways to inhabit or practice a gender. They may be stereotypes through which the gendered behavior of others is viewed.

Gender as a framework can be changed. Because it is created collectively, by shared acknowledgement and enforcement by members of society. Various movements have made significant shifts in how gender is structured at various times and places. The impact of these shifts has been widely variable - for example, depending on what city I'm in, even within my (fairly culturally homogeneous) home country, the way I am gendered and reacted to changes dramatically. Looping back to point one, we often speak of gender in very broad terms that obscure significant variability which exists on many scales.

Gender is structured recursively. This can be seen in the archetypes mentioned above, which range from extremely general (say, the Mother) to highly specific (the PTA Soccer Mom). Even people who claim to acknowledge only two genders will have many concepts of gendered-ways-of-being within each of them, which they may view and react to VERY differently.

Gender is experienced as an external cultural force. It cannot be opted out of, any more than living in a society can be opted out of. Regardless of the internal experience of gender, the external experience is also present. Operating within the shared cultural understanding of gender, one can aim to express a certain practice of gender - to make legible to other people how it is you interface with gender. This is always somewhat of a two-way process of communication. Other people may or may not perceive what you're going for - and they may or may not respect it. They may try to bring your expressed gender into alignment with a gender they know, or they might parcel you off into your own little box.

Gender is normative. Within the structure of the "cultural mainstream," there are allowable ways to practice gender. Any gendered behavior is considered relative to these standards. What behavior is allowed, rewarded, punished, or shunned is determined relative to what is gender normative for your perceived gender. Failure to have a clearly perceivable gender is also, generally, punished. So is having a perceivable gender which is in itself not normative.

Gender is taught by a combination of narratives, punishments, and encouragements. This teaching process is directed most strongly towards children but continues throughout adulthood. Practice of normatively-gendered behaviors and alignment with 'appropriate' archetypes is affirmed, encouraged, and rewarded. Likewise 'other'- gendered behavior and affinity to archetypes is scolded, punished, or shunned. This teaching process is inherently coercive, as social acceptance/rejection is a powerful force. However it can't be likened to programming, everyone experiences and reacts to it differently. Also, this process teaches the cultural roles and practices of both (normative) genders, even as it attempts to force conformity to only one.

Gender regulates access to certain levers of social power. This one is complicated by the fact that access to levers of social power is also affected by *many* other things, most notably race, class, and citizenship. I am not going to attempt to describe this in any general terms, I'm not equipped for that. I'll give a few examples to explain what I'm talking about though. (1) In a social situation, a man is able to imply authority, which is implicitly backed by his ability to intimidate by yelling, looming, or threatening physical violence. How much authority he is perceived to have in response to this display is a function of his race and class. It is also modified by how strongly he appears to conform to a masculine ideal. Whether or not he will receive social backlash for this behavior (as a separate consideration to how effective it will be) is again a function of race/class/other forms of social standing. (2) In a social situation, a woman is able to invoke moral judgment, and attempt to modify the behavior of others by shame. The strength of her perceived moral authority depends not just on her conformity to ideal womanhood, but especially on if she can invoke certain archetypes - such as an Innocent, a Mother, or better yet a Grandmother. Whether her moral authority is considered a relevant consideration to influence the behavior of others (vs whether she will be belittled or ignored) strongly depends on her relative social standing to those she is addressing, on basis of gender/race/class/other.

[Again, these examples are *not* meant to be exhaustive, nor to pass judgment on employing any social power in any situation. Only to illustrate what "gendered access to social power" might mean. And to illustrate that types of power are not uniform and may play out according to complex factors.]

Gender is not based in physical traits, but physical traits are ascribed gendered value. Earlier, I described gender as practiced, citing almost entirely things a person can do or change. And I firmly believe this is the core of gender as it exists culturally - and not just aspirationally. After the moment when a gender is "assigned" based on infant physical characteristics, they are raised into that gender regardless of the physical traits they go on to develop (in most circumstances, and unless/until they denounce that gender.) The range of physical traits like height, facial shape, body hair, ability to put on muscle mass - is distributed so that there is complete overlap between the range of possible traits for people assigned male and people assigned female. Much is made of slight trends in things that are "more common" for one binary sex or the other, but it's statistically quite minor once you get over selection bias. However, these traits are ascribed gendered connotations, often extremely strongly so. As such, the experience of presented and perceived gender is strongly effected by physical traits. The practice of gender therefore naturally expands to include modification of physical traits. Meanwhile, the social movements to change how gender is constructed can include pushing to decrease or change the gendered association of physical traits - although this does not seem to consistently be a priority.

Gender roles are related to the hypothetical ability to bear children, but more obliquely than is often claimed. It is popular to say that the types of work considered feminine derive from things it is possible to do while pregnant or tending small children. However, research on the broader span of human history does not hold this up. It may be true of the cultures that gave immediate rise to the colonial gender roles we are familiar with - secondary to the fact that childcare was designated as women's work. (Which it does not have to be, even a nursing infant doesn't need to be with the person who feeds it 24 hours a day.) More directly, gender roles have been influenced by structures of social control aiming for reproductive control. In the direct precursors of colonial society, attempts to track paternal lineage led to extreme degrees of social control over women, which we still see reflected in normative gender today. Many struggles for women's liberation have attempted to push back these forms of social control. It is my firm opinion that any attempt to re-emphasize childbearing as a touchstone of womanhood is frankly sick. We are at a time where solidarity in struggle for gender liberation, and for reproductive rights, is crucial. We need to cast off shackles of control in both fights. Trying to tie childbearing back to womanhood hobbles both fights and demeans us all.

Gender is baked deeply enough into our culture that it is unlikely to ever go away. Many people feel strongly about the practice of gender, in one way or another, and would not want it to. However we have the power to change how gender is structured and enforced. We can push open the doors of what is allowable, and reduce the pain of social punishment and isolation. We can dismantle another of the tools of colonial hedgemony and social control. We can change the culture!

[utilitycaster]

Whoaaaa holy shit something just snapped into place reading you mention the concept of creating a shape of negative space bc i've been thinking so long abt the "unspoken things/quiet part" of characters. I've often had this feeling that fandom will go a million and nine yards to red string board an ocean of depth for their favorite blorbo over.... what comes down to what's technically extrapolating based off of xyz canon, but said canon will be like "this character fidgets once, half his dialogue is quoting an in-universe play he tries to recreate (by ruining ppl's lives), and he doesn't understand why someone wouldn't want to be called a monster, therefore he is AUTISTIC and that drives his logic," or "this character has xyz vague background and is TRAUMATIZED because of WAR" inventing an entire character and it's like. Oh boy. This might be a matter of not being invested enough in these characters to TRY and delve so "deep" but I keep thinking that none of this is actually. written or feels purposeful in the context of How Storytelling Works/the Narrative to MAKE me invest or think that it's worth doing so. I always wonder how many people are trying so hard to project a better story onto something without understanding that the story actually needs to BE THERE and ADDRESSED, even subtly, and token moments aren't enough. But then that gets me thinking about how Thereness needs to exist for something to be subtle but written as opposed to Conspiracy off loose projection.

I was kinda thinking abt Laudna and how to use her as an example, because she's one of those characters for whom like, yeah I as a person totally understand the cycle of being upbeat and normal and everything and then having a random spiral of Bad Upstairs before being normal again, but narratively how do you portray that and why does everyone do it so much better than her. With equal screentime, everyone feels like they have so much more meat to their motivations and psychology despite some being significantly less fraught backstory wise. What's happening here because things just feel like they come out of nowhere with her with "oh so that matters all of a sudden?"

Hi anon,

Yes to all of this! With regards to your first paragraph - I feel that a lot too. It's a tricky situation because I think it's completely valid to project things onto characters and imagine them to have specific qualities that either you have or simply that you wish to see in fiction. It only becomes difficult in a fandom sphere when people insist that this is a fully evidence-based endeavor and not a personal interpretation (especially because a lot of that evidence is, as you say, either very much open to interpretation, or else totally spurious. The number of times I've had to shoo people off my posts for talking extensively about how an immensely self-absorbed character who never thinks about others unless forced to clearly has ADHD...but I digress). And as for the conspiracy element, especially when works aren't as good - absolutely. If you haven't read this, which I reblogged a few weeks ago (has Good Omens 2 spoilers) I highly recommend you do because what you're saying resonates a lot with OP's post, both in terms of our need as fans to project or find similarities with characters, and the fact that when people are disappointed by a work sometimes they try to create a better one, but instead of just writing fanfiction and calling it fanfiction they go full conspiracy theorist and assume there's some secret twist, and fall so hard into that all-crumbs-no-schnitzel (to borrow a metaphor from that post) fanon echo chamber they forget it is, in fact, only fanon.

Which brings us to Laudna. Before I go deeper I want to cover three things. First: for me at least, this criticism comes because I know Marisha is capable of doing this negative space work. It didn't come up much with Keyleth since we kind of knew her whole deal very early (which, to be clear, is valid; not every character needs this), but it's present with both Beau (her relationship to her father is masterfully done; the hallmark of good negative space work is that when the reveal comes you say oh of course) and to a lesser extent Patia, who, like all the Calamity characters, conveys a story much greater than the one that unfolds over a single night. Second: I think part of why a number of us in the fandom are so frustrated is that we have been doing that work of generously interpreting Laudna since the beginning, but nothing ever sticks, so it's becoming less and less worth the effort.

I'd have to go back through my archives pretty extensively, but early on, the going expectation for Laudna was that she would explore the idea of being one of the bystanders in a larger story as someone killed simply because of a passing resemblance to someone the Briarwoods wished to send a message to; that we'd get insight into Whitestone during the occupation from someone who wasn't freed by Vox Machina but rather killed, indirectly, because of them. However, not only have we not gotten that, but she also was chosen for being special: Delilah chose her as a vessel because of her inherent sorcery. So then it was perhaps about that tension between finding power in her sorcery vs. warlock levels - Pâté seemed like a clear setup for Pact of the Chain, after all - but then Marisha admitted she had no intention of taking that third warlock level, and always just planned to play Laudna as exclusively leveling in sorcerer, until FCG attacked. And meanwhile, there's no exploration of those sorcery powers, either.

Speaking only for myself, I've been interrogating "hey, why is her backstory that she was chased out of everywhere but for the most part everyone is mostly fine with her?" and "in 30 years she did nothing about Delilah? Really?" for quite some time. There's a number of questions that are not just unanswered, but lack the hints that this negative space work would provide. And to be clear there are ways to explain those things! This meta does a good job of talking through why she may have been chased out, and I've floated, in the past, that even Delilah's unwelcome presence was better than the absolute silence of being truly alone. But the work to support these fandom theories, again, is not really being done at the table, and moreover, even if it starts being done...it's episode 70. It should have come up in some capacity.

Marisha said (to be clear, somewhat jokingly) in the 2022 ComicCon panel that "Yeah. I don't want to think anymore. I'm tired," re: Laudna but the thing is...honestly, in my opinion? A character with Laudna's premise requires far more work than Beau or Keyleth to do well. Not only is she tied into one of the most famous events and entwined with one of the most famous villains of Campaign 1, but she's got 50 years of backstory! Beau and Keyleth are in their early 20s! (I could make a whole other post about this but character intelligence does not equal how hard they are to play; Imogen is an immensely tough concept that Laura's doing a good job with and she's lower INT than Laudna. I'd rather play a wizard than a character like Grog any day of the week because I genuinely believe that the acting burden for making a character like Grog sympathetic and believable without going into cheap mockery and parody is immense).

Going back to that statement, it really does feel as though every 4-Sided Dive episode or panel, when Marisha talks about Laudna, it's always just that she was envisioned as being over her trauma, and the premise was always just "make that creepy girl from her nightmare". And even then: it's fine if she'd done that - simply made a creepy character who was here to be creepy and cheerfully macabre - but through gameplay it's become clear that Laudna is not over that trauma (her arrested development being one of many options), and has acquired new traumas to boot, and for that matter never was really over it given that she displays intensely but they come up so inconsistently that there's never any follow-through. I agree with you completely that the idea of her often seeming fine and happy and then having spirals is believable and true to life, but one does need to actually follow through on the spirals - I think a lot of us finally threw up our hands when Laudna's believable, well-played, and justifiable anger and resentment after being thrown across the world away from half the party, essentially pushed into a fight that isn't her own, being betrayed by Bor'Dor, and feeling Delilah's return melted away without resolution. If you want to make a character who's over their trauma and go-with-the-flow, I feel as though step 1 is to not have an eternal reminder of one's trauma permanently stuck in one's head. "Warlock who dislikes their patron" is actually a premise that requires quite a lot of thinking and effort, and we are consistently not seeing it.

I think what's most telling is that the defense of Laudna for the weird freakout this past episode is both vehement, and in conflict with itself. Is Marisha just making a joke (that didn't really land with anyone at the table nor much of the fandom, and was taken at least semi-seriously by both)? Or is it actually great and good that Laudna is incredibly traumatized and clingy and we should all hope she becomes even more clingy and codependent? When even the people who are shielding Laudna from even a whisper of criticism can't agree what Marisha's doing, it's pretty dire, especially when that criticism is "this character feels directionless and incoherent."

So getting back to negative space: It's my hunch that there just...wasn't a lot of clarity to Laudna's motivations, and the questions in her backstory weren't answered. She's creepy and she's kooky, Sun Tree corpse, Delilah in her head, met Imogen two years ago, was friends with a little girl at some point (which we only know from 4-Sided Dive, which is, to be clear, bad that it's never come up in-game). We don't know how she feels about her sorcery powers other than a vague enjoyment of their creepiness...but she also sees them as a way out from Delilah...but she also barely engages with Delilah and hasn't done anything to get rid of her. We have no sense of how she got to "the worst thing that's happened to me already happened" because while it's completely fair to play her as feeling that way 30 years later, I highly doubt she felt that way as she cut herself down from the Sun Tree. So as a result, it's hard to pick a direction because that foundation is lacking.

The thing about that negative space is that to do it well, you really need to know what you're trying to convey. Which is also why, as you say, characters with much simpler backstories are fine; Fearne was basically hanging out at her grandmother's place until EXU and her parents left when she was very young; she is curious about her parents and loves her grandmother and is a chaotic fey entity who was sent into the Material Plane with the Weave Lens, and mostly she just wants to explore and have fun and hang out with her friends. Ashley just needs to...play Fearne like that, which she does with aplomb. The complex setup for Laudna demands a huge number of answers in the backstory, and my guess is that Marisha does not have them. I think the problem isn't with the acting (in fact, I'm fairly confident it isn't, because, again, I know from past characters Marisha can do this); it's that Laudna's concept prioritized the aesthetic, mechanics, and facts of the backstory, and didn't adequately fill in her beliefs and motivations, so she's just flailing. I also suspect from the most recent 4-Sided Dive and the most recent SDCC panel that Marisha is specifically looking for interparty conflict, and to be clear that's valid...but again, to do that believably and well, Laudna's philosophy and motivations and characterization need to be much more clearly established than they are.

[skz-streamer]

Round 3

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 ⋆˚🐾˖°

Paring: Lee Know x fem!reader

Genre: Fluff, hurt/comfort, crack

a/n: fully written chapter! have fun w it :)

please read responsibly, and remember that this work is fiction and meant strictly for imaginative fun. the idols used in fics are more accurately face claims and personality outlines for imaginary characters, and should not be interpreted as factual representations of existing people

Masterlist

𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 ⋆˚🐾˖°

You meet Chan at the desk area in fount of the doors and introduce yourself, trying to make a decent first impression. The two of you talk for a little while he explains your hotel situation before saying he had to go but that he hoped to hear back from you soon! You smile and walk through the big doors, entering the stadium and looking for your seat as the crowds are separated by team.

People who were hoping EKG would win were blue and people rooting for SKZ were seated in the red arena. You walk through the seats hoping to find your seat next to Aecha, gladly she waves for you and you sit next to her.

You two talk about random stuff until the game starts and all the members of SKZ are projected on the big screen. you quickly turn your head as the crowd starts cheering wildly.... and you see him. Lee Minho, the Captain of the team.

"Goshhh he really is hot, better in person than all those photos you sent online" you whisper to Aecha. she giggles before replying back.

You can tell Aecha is checking all of them out as the rest of the team walks onto the stage. All of them are equally attractive, even though you only searched up photos of Minho the other members were literally just as captivating.

Soon the game starts as the announcers call out all the character selections. You pay close attention to seeing how they work strategically as a team together to win the first and following rounds. When it comes down to the final round you see that SKZ are in the lead, but with the slip of a hand somewhere in the team they lose their momentum and the other team overtakes them. Your side of the crowd sighs as SKZ loses the competition but you're happy that you at least got to see them play.

You take out your phone texting Chan that you would humbly like to decline his offer because even though you would love to game professionally you feel as if- you stop typing as the stage lights turn on once more. You expect some kind of speech from the other team but no. Instead Felix walks out on stage and officially sentences his resignation from the team, talking about the wonderful memories he's made. The whole crown starts sobbing around you, you start tearing up too as his heartfelt speech really shows all the grit and determination that the team has gone through over the years.

Without a doubt, you delete what you were previously texting to chan.

"Hey! when do I start?"

Taglist: @eee5533@mixtape-racha@weedforthoughtz@ren0325@felixvsp@painstakingly-juno@herarcadewasteland@dabiscrustyfeet@kai-lee08@sungiesoonie@slvtty4channiee@revelaffee @staygirl86 @chlodavids@jinnie-ret@bbygrlhannie@rebecca-johnson-28@tinyelfperson@minhos4thkitty@liknws@aaasia111@sleepyleeji@skzhoe@leonswifesstuff@yamaguchiwestad@nappynapnaps@yangbbokari@kpopmenace143@buckys-pillow , @seo--changbin@kai-jilee@jihanniee @hannie-bee @hyunbae-35@turtledove824@hannahhbahng@gaysontheprince@p0eticjust1c3@minleeeknow@bunchofroses07@splat00z

send an ask/go to taglist section on my page or just comment to be added!!!

[sparkling-pink-lemonade]

I've been curious to look into Springtrap and Deliah, as I've seen some of the art of it and really liked the style, and hadn't previously heard of it. All I knew was that the relation between the two title characters was suspiciously close, and I was down to see more.

So when I see a video called "The DISGUSTING Truth About Springtrap and Deliah", I just think "oh good, an anti, now I know I'm gonna get all the juicy, hardly censored, invasive details". And I was so fucking right. Not only do I get a summary of the comic so detailed, that I honestly don't even need to read it for myself, but I get to see the drama around it in one sitting.

I just wanna rant about the stupidity of the video~

The creator of the video just keeps going and going about how abusive and creepy springtrap is, and how that would be fine if it was portrayed as a bad thing, rather than trying to "guilt trip" the audience into feeling bad for springtrap. Like honey, honey noo. That's the fucking point. This may be surprising, but even the most horrific people are still fucking people. They aren't one dimensional, mustache twirling villains. Plus, don't forget that unreliable narrator is a thing that is commonly used in storytelling. Not to mention, you want the comic to show how the relationship is bad, and springtrap needs to get far far away from deliah? Why the fuck then do you think the light/good ending features springtrap leaving her life for good, and trying to figure his shit out without her?

Also, when getting into the "dark truth about the author", it's fucking hilarious to see this warning not once, but twice. The second time, censoring the word "proship" with a zero. I get that "demonetization" is a thing, but if you had even half an ounce of respect or maturity for the topic you're approaching, monetization shouldn't matter, and you'd use the full and correct spelling of the subjects you are warning about, rather than using L33T SP34K to censor yourself.

Continuing, between these warnings the youtuber goes "the creator really liked to draw them and roleplay them in romantic and sexual relationships that were extremely violent and often non-consensual in nature. Yeah, absolutely disgusting".

That's like, just your opinion man.

"And cause I know there's gonna be at least one person that's gonna say something like 'oh but it's fictional, they're just characters, it doesn't hurt anyone,' first of all shut up. It's still weird and I don't like you."

Why? Afraid of a decent argument? You just gave two opinions and one opinion was directed at your opponent, rather than backing your claim of why this is disgusting. And anyone who uses weird as an insult needs to grow up.

"Second of all, [proceeds to describe how the author was manipulative towards friends, and used their fame to pressure others into doing erp, while showing a screenshot of someone claiming the creator would threaten to self harm for attention] And if you think THAT'S okay by any means, shut up, I double don't like you."

Holy shit man, first, correlation =/= causation. Just cause the creator was extremely mentally ill, and wrongfully hurt people due to their insecurities (everyone is sooo supportive of being there for the mentally ill, until they actually start showing symptoms that aren't pretty), doesn't mean that the depiction of fictional characters in taboo fantasies causes an inherent harm or encouragement of toxic behavior.

Seriously, if you think the author didn't know these negative traits were so wrong, and desperately wanted, yet feared, being held accountable for their actions, feeling trapped by their own issues, why the hell do you think they projected onto springtrap so hard, only for the good ending to have them lose their first and only friend in order to open up the door to accountability and self improvement? The creator was fucking 16 at the time! A time where more often than not, many teens suffering from mental illness find their issues taking a sudden nosedive in severity, drowning in the deep end, desperately searching for any coping mechanism. Being able to show that level of self awareness and desire to improve while navigating their darker thoughts with art is amazing. Even if they were far from perfect and were a terrible friend at the time, it's still something for a 16 year old.

So get over your fucking high horse and stop justifying your disgust towards dark fiction with your thinly veiled ableism.

Also youtuber really said they'd be heavily censoring the more nsfw screenshots, but they are hardly censored, only blurring half the words that could refer to erogenous body parts, while keeping the others in. Plus the blurring is a weak gaussian blur, so you can still easily read the words that are blurred. It's a pathetic attempt to play the better, pure role-model, while putting in 0 effort to what you claim.

funny at the end that they ask proshippers not to interact, watch their videos, and respect their boundaries

like damn, you sure couldn't respect the fact that sharing 7 year old private sexual dms of someone who was 16 definitely violates several boundaries

anyway that is all, time to remove this from my watch history so youtube doesn't recommend me more of their shit

[variousqueerthings]

8 11 32 PLEASE!

HELLOOOOO AND THANK YOUUUUUU! also I remembered how much I overthink when looking at these whoops

8. Describe your gender without using any words traditionally related to gender: You know the opening to the Mr Bean series? Mr Bean gets beamed down onto earth and then it's implied that everyone Mr Bean does after that is literally because of being an alien, but it's never actually confirmed in the text? that but like. with a much more extensive wardrobe

11. Favorite (or just one you love) piece of LGBT media?: WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO ME???? I'm gonna give u three out of Many that are perfect. and I'm going to connect them to a Theme (I'VE CONNECTED THE DOTS). the thing is that these movies are movies that have at some point held me gently and guided me into a greater understanding of the queer community and history generally, as well as my own feeling of place within this community

My Beautiful Laundrette: This is one of my personal seminal queer movies, I watched it as a young'un/baby queer and it's just. Oh. such softness amidst the violence of the times, and the thing is that the softness is something that saves the main characters from the violence, both as potential perpetrators and victims (and how those can be blurred concepts to begin with). the core of it is two men who come back together amidst the height of neo-nazi anti-immigration 80s England, one of whom is Pakistani British and the other a white skinhead. And they open a laundrette together. This movie is sweet, I promise! it also features one of the subtly hottest moments to me in film history, in which one of them licks the others' neck in public while being watched on one side by Pakistani family members and on the other by white racists but it's angled so none of them see it!

City of Lost Souls: Listen, Rosa Von Praunheim's documentation of trans people (and generally queer people) is so so important for our community and you should check him out, but this film in particular is such a wild fucking ride that is hard to explain. a bunch of queer artists in 80s Berlin (and this movie was made in the 80s so you get some real footage of that great big wall) just like... fuck around? share intense elder wisdom? connect? sing! (oh yeah, it's kind of a musical, a trashy punky musical). This is some of the real deep magic of queer connection. there's an iconic moment in this film (there are several) in which a trans woman picks up a one-night stand and explains to him that she's trans and he's like. "eh no idea what all of that means, but you're saying you're a woman right? great!" and it's just Fine

Desire Lines: listen this movie... I'm almost hesitant to recommend it, because I feel so personally affected by it and it's a one-of-a-kind (so far) insight into transmasculine gay culture that is just. deeply precious and not understood by a lot of even the wider queer community. myself and every transmasc person I know who's seen it have felt somewhat transcendent about it, the way you do the first time you see yourself as (positively) visible in this way, it's almost too much. it's a documentary at heart, but quite experimental in elements of its structure, with parts of it being a fictional telling of a middle-aged iranian trans man who works in an archive and is told of the history of trans men's inclusion in gay bathhouses, lou sullivan, and personal testimonies from gay transmasc people. sometimes you don't notice how deprived you've been until something gives you real oxygen

Hon. mentions: Joyland, Great Freedom, Die Beautiful my personal favourite queer films of 2023, still have me by the throat!!!

32. Do you do arts and crafts? Post a pic of a project you've done: okay I will share a picture of something, but I need to go take a picture when I have a sec. It's not complete, but I've started a little zine that's just a big collection of euphemisms and ways of talking about queerness and it's such a fascinating, fun project that's made me think more expansively about how queerness gets talked about, whether it's in the past or present (or potential futures), within and without the community, as modern, or bigoted, or outdated, or fun, or out-of-the-box, or specific, etc. -- it's very far from done, but I can give a sense of just how many words/phrases/concepts I've picked up + imagery I want to include + the construction of the zine itself, which has a few little secrets to it

[yallemagne]

I feel the thing with Mrs Westenra is that she's that specific brand of entitled old lady that keeps harming those around her with her own beliefs while having her own fragility used as an excuse. Its like someone punching a friend "for their own good" and then going "pwease dwont hurt me im so delicate n frwagile :("

She works well as a character as in she's basically another way societal expectations and lack of communication are a cog in Dracula's machinations, but on my personal opinion she's really frustrating. (Hehe my rambling got a lil long sorry abt that)

Yes, what pains me so much this that Mrs. Westenra is such a real person. I have suffered such real people in my life, some I love dearly, some I love out of obligation, and it is painful to see what Lucy is going through, to see her be punished again and again by her mother's willful neglect, and she cannot even muster the will to be angry with her. Lucy has been stripped of any ability to speak out against her mother, even in her most private of musings, because her mother is so highly prioritized over herself. Lucy's suffering must always be kept out of view, and she never has the self-preservation to just snap and say "no, I am a human being".

Mrs. Westenra's a cog in the machine of the plot. She was written this way purposefully. No matter how much damage she causes, you're meant to feel bad for her, because if you don't, you might demand to know why Bram hasn't just killed her already. The reason is that he never even intended for his readers to feel this resentment. Her behaviour is not meant to be taken seriously because she's a poor old woman who just doesn't know any better. She's allowed and expected to be ignorant, and if not her, there would be some other person, a maid unknowingly throwing out the blooms.

But it hurts so much more for it to be your own mother who hurts you. Your feelings don't matter to her except as an extension of her own. She finds the flowers that you love, and ignoring the clear signs of your contentment with the flowers, she projects her negative feelings onto you and throws them out. Then, self-gratulatory as ever, she brags to your doctors that she knows better than them when she can't even recognize how close you are to death. She has willfully abandoned you because your sickness stresses her, and she would rather leave you without a goodbye than face you like an adult and admit she is dying. And worse than that, she doesn't pull away enough to make room for the people who are actively trying to save you, no, she still intercedes, making their jobs harder and your life worse, and no one dares to correct her in any meaningful way because if she knew she wasn't perfect, it would kill her.

I'm not so naïve as to say that because I have such deep-rooted trauma surrounding personalities like this that I am sooo smart and right to take such issue with this fictional character. It is a bit of an overreaction. But you could say my feelings towards this entire novel are an overreaction. I know other people have probably experienced this behaviour, and their reactions to it aren't mine. There are most definitely people who have suffered this kind of neglect but their impulse is instead to forgive and defend Mrs. Westenra, and I cannot deny someone that.

But I hurt so deeply for Lucy. I recognize Mrs. Westenra's hurting but I cannot place it above Lucy's. I value Lucy so much more, and I don't feel a lick of guilt about it.

[marcodiazisatransgirl]

this is a response to a post made by a troll a while ago. they decided to call me mentally unwell when I finally snapped at their harassment. If you go back in my blog, you'll be able to find the original post.

Hey so I actually have no idea if this person is still on tumblr, I just wanted to address their points because I'm petty and don't want to leave them with the last word. I vaguely remember there being some sort of drama around this but can't remember specifics. If this sort of discourse upsets you, I'm sorry to bring negativity back to your dash.

Also if you're OP and in a bad place, just don't read this. Fucking block me, pal.

First, Breastforce claimed that their entire interest in this started from Marco in a dress from St. O's. The person asking about Marco in a dress was trying to bait Adam into saying something about the theory.

I addressed this in the original reply. Breastforce is a trans woman who identified with something she saw as potentially trans coded. It was what made her first notice things in star versus. Noticing something insignificant then connecting it to other things is how fan theories are formed. People who are intelligent notice things and make connections to other things. Like how one might notice that ships dip below the horizon instead of disappearing into dots, then use that to extrapolate that the Earth is round.

And yes, they wanted him to address the fan theory, in the same way you baited Daron Nefcy without actually telling her what you were asking about.

Most people who repeat the theory do it because of the dress, not the "dysphoria" (which is actually body dysmorphic, involving obsessive focus on a perceived flaw in appearance.)

Actually, since you weren't around when the theory was big, you have no idea why most people liked the theory. A lot of people joined because of the dress, others joined because Marco didn't like to see her body in the mirror, wore a towel in a traditionally feminine way, prefers to pee sitting down (something that is difficult and messy, I'm told), freaked out when she started to grow facial hair, started using feminine pronouns in certain situations, kept dressing as turdina when she didn't have to, etc. etc. etc. I've actrually already told you this in another post, here, but you ignored that.

I know that you're not going to believe any of this. It's upsetting to see you misgender anything

You can't misgender a fictional character. Literally you can't. There might be problematic and transphobic aspects of continuing on your way claiming a character is cis when they are confirmed not to be, but that's being transphobic, not misgendering. (I'm not accusing you of doing this just to clear that up)

especially when I've been misgendered so many times in the last 6 years.

I don't care. You don't get to use your own experiences to bully others for existing. Instead of projecting your shit onto others on the internet take some accountability, babes. You disliking something because of your own shit doesn't give you the right to harass people. Your options were block the tag and move on or harass and bully people obsessively for weeks. You chose to be a bad person.

Also your comments about my physical state don't help, making a joke out of it is cruel which is how I interpreted it.

I actually have no idea what you're talking about here. Sorry I upset you unknowingly (actually I don't give a shit about you or how you feel as we've established), but how you interpret my words is firmly your own problem. I have already addressed that I neither know, nor care about your physical state. Trying to emotionally manipulate me into feeling sorry for you is immature and petty, and I stand by that.

And being transphobic is another jump to conclusion that doesn't make either of us look.good. I'm not transphobic. I'm transgender and have had years of reflection on iit. Calling me transphobic is like a punch in the gut.

Good. As I've previously highlighted your behavior here is abso-fucking-lutely transphobic. You are being transphobic. You being transgender does not excuse you from being transphobic. Hope this helps. Since you spent weeks bullying my friends, I don't actually care about your feelings.

As far as Daron, all she said was that she always intended Marco to be the type of guy who wasn't hung up on doing some things that are typically feminine without any concerns for his masculinity. It seems from an experience she had when she was young with her best friend who was male. When I asked her if Marco was going to grow up and be a good male role model, she said yes. Twice she did.

Cool? Characters change in the making? Characters are up for interpretation? Ever heard of death of the author? Also what sort of question is "will marco grow p to be a good male rolemodel?" what was she going to respond? "No, actually, she's going to grow up to kill people and be a terrible parent." You asked her a childish question and she gave you a stock response. That means nothing?

Also, and here's the kicker - if Daron Nefcy came up to me tomorrow and said to me "Marco is a cis male" I would say to her "I don't care" and keep headcanoning her as trans, harming no one in doing so. She's trans because I say she is. She's trans because there is a lot of contextual clues that means she can be interpreted as trans very easily. Fuck she's probably my most heavily subtextually trans, trans headcanon. Some characters I headcanon as trans just because of vibes. I don't go into Marco Diaz main tags saying that Marco is trans and everyone is transphobic for having a different interpretation of her character. That would be stupid, hurtful, mean, wrong, nasty... exactly what you did.

I have come to the conclusion that you really haven't been around queer fandom long. The thing is, we don't get stories like this. We don't get to see main characters in disney shows turn out to be trans. We don't get to see ourselves in fiction at all until quite recently, certainly more recently than this fandom originated. Often, the only way we can have trans characters in the things we love is through piecing together subtext clues, often put in by creators throwing us a bone, or being queer themselves and unable to express anything more than tidbits. It's how we function, how we've always funtioned, and being so aggressively and vehemently against that is transphobic. If that's something that upsets you, than you need to educate yourself on queer theory and queer fandom spaces. I recommend starting with Jessie Gender or Philosophytube on youtube.

I won't deny I love the character a lot. I won't deny that some of the crew liked that some people saw themselves in Marco. But even if you look at the storyboard that everyone points to, it was a doll of a persona Marco already distanced himself from except for a royalty payment of $650. It was a capitalist business deal and nothing more. That's all the merch was ever about. A way to give Marco spending money during adventures. It wasn't about some secret "he's going as a she" behind everyone's back. It was all about the money. If Marco really cared about it on the level you theorize, he wouldn't have taken money out of the profits and would have done it in the best interests of the girls.

That's your point of view. You say it was about money and only money, but you can't tell me Marco wasn't emotional when she gave it up. You can't tell me that my icon isn't Marco showing real attachment and emotion towards the Princess Turdina persona. And when she finally gave that persona up, when she felt guilty about "lying", why did that come back after? Why wasn't that the last we saw of Turdina?

It's up to interpretation, which is something you have willfully ignored the whole way along. You might come back with the argument Marco likes drag, and she's just a feminine boy. But that's just one interpretation.

In conclusion I see this is misgendering. While it is a fictional character, some of the ways you've interacted with me have also been along the same lines, about me being transphobic and making light of my physical problems which is hitting below the belt.

No, it's not. It's the only way that queers could see themselves in fiction for years. Also you're projecting the rest. I didn't even know you were trans or had a disability until you brought it up.

At the end of the day, you never addressed my points: feminine men in western cartoons are a dime a dozen, trans women are nearly non-existent. We are harming no one by enjoying a theory that does have evidence to back it up. You, meanwhile, harassed and attacked people for weeks. Not just theorists like me, but people who were just posting fanart. Then, when people got fed up with you, you turned around and announced that I had mental problems.

I hope in the time since this initial drama you've grown up a bit. I hope I'm writing to a ghostblog, the owner of which is vaguely embarrassed about their actions. I hope you've found other characters to relate to, and that you've learned a bit about queer fandom. I hope you have found a canonically cis female character to interpret as a trans guy. I hope you've found real queer rep, since it's become more available. I hope you're doing well, and that you're no longer an internet bully.

Also I'm Australian, mate, swearing is part of my culture.

[lvl100hummuswarrior]

DNI/BYF/BOUNDARIES

DNI

Racists/Zionists/TERFS/Homophobes/Transphobes/Ableists, pretty self explanatory. Fuck off.

Pedos/Zoos, also self explanatory.

Adults who interact innappropriately with minors online. Please be careful about what you're sharing and saying, I will not tolerate anybody who makes this place unsafe.

Proshippers/Dead Dove/Noncon/Dubcon/Lolicon/Shotacon, I don't want to engage with this kind of stuff on my comfort blog, please leave me alone.

S//imoline shippers, what are you even doing here. Simon would not do that and I hate you. Any other ships along similar lines apply too.

People who don't know how to write about Simon without including him getting bricks thrown at him, or thrown into a cement grinder, or getting hit by a steam roller, or whatever other variety of creepypasta violence you're disguising as meaningful character explanation. I think it is important to discuss more serious topics in fiction and to make fun of Simon, but I am very uncomfortable with it devolving into a romanticization. This extends to other characters, of course, but you guys are really good at talking about how you’d leave Simon in a hot car specifically. It would be funny if it did not scare me.

BYF

I enjoy making headcanons where I project my own experiences onto other characters. If I say something like "Simon would absolutely be Jewish/have OCD" or "Betty 100% has eczema/is nonbinary" or whatever, understand that I am relating to these characters, not tokenizing them! I believe all headcanons and interpretations of these characters are valid, these are just my own :]

If themes regarding depression, OCD, codependency, etc. upset you for any reason, please blacklist the #emo tag! I find a lot of catharsis in processing my own feelings through these characters, and enjoy writing about it. Despite this, this blog is also very much about how people who experience these things are deserving of love and healing, and if you’d rather just see that then you are welcome to blacklist said tag.

BOUNDARIES

Mutuals are welcome to DM me, or ask for my Discord! Making friends is one of my favorite parts of blogging, I promise I don't bite!

I will not interact with or follow minors, beyond answering asks and comments.

I block quite liberally, sometimes for reasons outside of my DNI.

You are more than welcome to take inspiration from my work, but please credit me if you're doing anything heavily inspired, and don't include anything NSFW/fetish related!

[anomymoussoapbar]

hey, I saw one of your posts and your account and said you wanted to learn more about proship, right? (Sorry I can be a lil overthinker at times) I can explain my own causes if that can help you learn another perspective. THIS IS GONNA BE LONG SO PLEASE BE PATIENT.

First off, I am mostly a darkshipper! darkshippers ship the illegal stuff, like incest and you know all that. I am myself a darkshipper mostly. I ship things like "stalker x victim", "yand3re", "obsessive dynamics" and all that stuff similar. I DONT ship the illegal incest/ age gaps but Instead I prefer to go with the illegal toxic dynamics!

Now as to WHY I am a darkshipper and why I use this KIND OF FICTION to 'cope' comes from a past experience of mine. Not gonna go into detail, but I used to be very obsessive and have unhealthy attachments! They weren't good at all! I even had harmful intrusive thoughts because I would get jealous and live In a constant fantasy of "yandere wannabe" (Lol- I was 11 at that time ok💀) Which almost led me to end up harming others irl! (Hopefully I never did) and Now, I am out of that phase, I went to therapy for a while but then my mom got me outta there for idk why, which is why after i finished therapy, I wanted to manage my same intruisve thoughts and urges as much as i could! which is what led me to discover proshipping! (Or darkshipping specifically)

I project myself onto my dynamics and characters, so i can relieve myself when im feeling stressed or have a strong urge to go back to that horrible phase of my life and not care about anything else (to be short, i am impulsive. Also, ive also tried things like writing and drawing but they dont help as much)

Shipping these kind of fucked up dynamics GENIUNELY GENIUNELY helped me figure out the severity of it and gave me more control and the common sense to not do those things irl. Since I am now taking out the intrusive and impulsiveness outta me in fiction and not real life, I am not harming anyone! Nor do I truly wish to. My preteen years were f'ed up but I am better now and darkshipping has helped me through that. I don't condone abuse nor toxicity irl, and I NEVER WILL, since I am now aware of how grave the situations are if you take it out of fiction and put it in a real life setting.

The main reason for darkshipping is to relieve myself in fiction without worry I am harming others (because it's fiction) whlist knowing the severity of the ships if they were in in real life. As a proshipper (someone who's anti-harassment and supports problematic media, pairings, or are laid-back about it), most of us go by this saying: "ship and let ship". Also, we KNOW fiction AFFECTS reality, it can and it will, but not on a 1:1 scale (meaning it only affects reality when the shipper doesn't have the common sense to differentiate the two or if it's a kid, who's brain hasn't developed yet)

I WILL always keep my ships in fiction, and I am no longer feeling as impulsive as I did all those years ago, because darkshipping for some reason helped me figure out a way, which was projecting onto characters as well as exploring dark dynamics for fun!

Each Proshippers/darkshippers/comshipper's stories are a reason for who they are now. We don't go around and go committing those things we ship irl because it's very wrong to do so. As someone who almost attempted horrible things irl at such young age like 11, I myself now have the common sense and the control within myself now that I'm a little more grown up. Now i am older, I know have the care and healthy attachment to keep friendships and hang out with others, be more self-controlling and of course, more understanding of myself and others.

PLEASE PLEASE take care of yourself, if anything bothers you distance yourself from it, drink plenty of water and go for a walk or do your fav hobby, anything when you're feeling a little down ❤️ I'm GLAD I could talk to someone about this! So sorry if it was very long but I hoped this helped with your perspective. You're loved and you're very amazing, I love your account, and I'm willing to share more some other time. Bye👋

Hello :*)

Thank you so much for sharing your reasoning. I love how you found yourself a healthy way to vent out feelings and express them in ways that you can realize how realistically would be harmful. Interesting how darkshipping is actually quite common now that you defined it.

Killers/stalkers/kidnappers x victims are a common trope people love and the complexity of it is something I see everywhere. Even self proclaimed antis use these tropes as well. I never really thought about it until now LOL.

Also, thank you so much for the ask, you are very kind. I am sorry I took so long to get to you 🌸💕 and for the other askers as well. I will get to you all soon. I love you all and the support I have received in this blog.

Explanation for inactivity under cut

I have begun my studies again, and have focused SO much on them I have been neglecting my tumblr. Specifically this one. Trust me when I say this is NOT bait. I promise.

-Soapy

[ot3]

I actually think the orv webtoon pretty much fails as an adaptation. In the novel you're meant to identify with kdj and relate to him heavily, it's even written in first person for this: it's not "he did smth", it's "I did" ("You did"). This works right into the ending which wouldn't hit half as hard without it. And in the webtoon he's only a character. A protagonist. There's no identifying with him like this. The way he's drawn there doesn't help either...

i would definitely have to agree that the orv webtoon just absolutely does not have the same feel the webnovel does, and that it's much harder to get in kim dokja's head. but i would have to agree in that it fundamentally fails as an adaptation.

for starters, i think the idea that you can't identify with/project onto a character unless the narrative is actively holding your hand in doing that is a pretty baseless claim to make. there is quite literally nothing that could stop a person from looking at any kind of fictional character and saying 'wow hes literally me for real' no matter how much distance the narrative puts between you and them. it may take a little bit more active desire from The Girl Reading This but I don't think it's nearly as much of a stretch as you're making it out to be, especially as the story progresses and we get to the arcs that serve to make kim dokja feel a little more believably 3 dimensional than he does in his early epic isekai protagsweep cringe behavior.

also, even if what you were describing was true for every webtoon reader - that kim dokja is just A Protagonist, and not as much of a vessel for projection - i think that's genuinely an adaptation of orv that has a lot of merit and a very interesting meta-relationship to the source material. when you consider the webtoon's publishing schedule, webtoon readers are going to be operating on a timeline much closer to that of KDJ reading the original wos updates. He essentially is yoo joonghyuk to everyone who has begun reading it now, a sort of impossibly resilient protagonist they could choose to lean on for the better part of the next decade. and i think that's super interesting. kim dokja has never been more yoo joonghyuk than he is in the orv webtoon. that's not a bad adaptation at all! that is in fact very interesting to me!

the thing about adaptations that's really tricky is that it is 1. physically impossible to 'accurately' adapt a story from one medium into another. the medium is so intrinsic to storytelling that by necessity things are lost, changed, and gained in switching from one to another. and 2. considering the wide range of opinions people have about a source there really is no consensus about which exact things about a text have to be 1:1 translated in order for an adaptation to be 'faithful'. im very far behind on the webtoon but everything i have seen so far i think has done the best job it can translating it into a comic.....

.... except for the art style

i really do not like the way this person draws people, yeah. the same face is so rampant that it's genuinely difficult for some people to tell the characters apart. it's got super uninspired character design which i think is a crying shame that does a lot of these characters a huge disservice. i wish they had picked something less generic looking. but in many ways, generic looking exteriority fits orv. i can aaaalmost appreciate it from that angle, and im sure it's helping orv gain traction with the kind of people who regularly read webtoons (i am not one of these people) but. yeah. i find the way sleepy c draws people to be pretty ugly, if we're being honest.