#*kicks at hornet’s nest*

[lycandrophile]

you're gonna detransition in 10 years.

so i get a whole decade of living happily in the body i’m creating for myself now, and then i get to go through the process of metamorphosis and rediscover the joy of chasing gender euphoria all over again? i’ll take it!

i know people like you only see detransitioners as rhetorical tools to use against trans people, but the truth is that detransition is just another kind of transition. why would i be any more afraid of that one than i am of the one i’m in right now? if i was afraid of transitioning, of taking matters into my own hands when the body i have doesn’t feel like home anymore, i wouldn’t have transitioned in the first place. i’m where i am because i truly love this process, because it brings joy into my life, not because i fear it. being human means a life of constant change; none of us are the same people we were ten years ago. i for one won’t run from that change — i intend to greet the person i’m becoming with open arms, however different they might be from who i am now, and i’m sure that whoever they are, they wouldn’t want me to make my life miserable now just so theirs might be a little bit easier.

one of the greatest joys in life is that all of us are capable of change, and capable of enacting that change upon ourselves. i’ve been lucky enough to remold and remake myself once and, should i find myself faced with the opportunity to do so again, i’ll embrace that as the gift it is. there is no greater honor than to be reborn by your own hand.

[mccoyquialisms]

wait, there’s for real, serious discourse about the bad kids killing the rat grinders? people realize they’re watching a show based on the “burn towns, get money, slaughter our enemies to save the day” game, right?

[sweetums0kitty]

Dear Universal Studios, please replace Harry Potter world with Barbieland. Please and thank you!

Or like I wish there was a cool big budget Gotham world.

[valehour]

I swear to god if I read one more "Messmer/Marika did nothing wrong" post I'm gonna fucking lose it.

Guys, Gals, Nonbinary Pals etc.

Be fucking serious.

it's somewhat obvious that Marika's people's oppression, and the subsequent domination of the social order was inspired by christianity's oppression and then rise to power within the roman empire- going on to be the dominant religious order which, in turn, persecutes religious minorities. Like. that's only just subtext by tooth and nail. It does not at all justify either religious regime's atrocities. It is Exceedingly obvious the game expects you to understand that, to quote Leda "They [the hornsent] were never saints, they were just on the losing side of a war". this line, alongside the black knight helmet, and the crusade insignia Expects us to understand that maybe the whole "Marika ordering a crusade to genocide a people in the name of revenge" is wrong, actually.

As for Messmer, he is indeed a victim of Marika, like most of the demigods. it's just that he's also (arguably Firstly) a willing collaborator in these atrocities, he's not an innocent uwu snake sadboy.

If we are forced to compel a singular unnuanced 1 dimensional archetype onto Messmer, the game expects us to understand that it's "Demon King". he's doing Authurian Romance Villain shit as filtered through the lens of dark fantasy. it's not a coincidence that most of the information about him comes from other people about how much he's personally destroyed their lives. He lives in a castle called the "Shadow Keep" for god's sake, his soldiers torment the people and we, adventuring wanderers and followers of grace/Miquella fight and defeat him, which, were this a traditional story ultimately lets us access Enir-ilim and fix things. That were this a tradiitonal story, then defeating the "Demon King" sets the land back to right by enshrining the True, Good King (or god, such as Miquella is, in this case).

The fact it doesn't is the complication to this otherwise simple story- the fact that Messmer is also a victim of Marika's pursuit of revenge is important nuance, and adds to the tragedy of this story- simply killing The Bad Guy In Charge doesn't fundamentally fix things. It's that complication that makes them so deeply fixating as people. But there is a mountain of difference between "I find Messmer's tragedy Sympathetic and Compelling (and thus want to fuck him)" and "Messmer did nothing wrong". You do not get the title "The Impaler" by being innocent.

you are, in fact, allowed to be horny for the snakeboi or for Marika without actively ignoring the realities of their casual brutality. Actively making a pair of complicated, messy, tragic characters into something simple and easily digestible for maximising fuckability is not a sign of like, actually liking them. Love your genocidal warmongers as they brutally murder civilians or like, admit you don't actually like them, you like the flanderised imaginary version of them- an attraction no more substantive than the kind of R34 art that gives Ranni tits and hips broad enough to change her aspect ratio, instead of her cool weird fucked up doll body. You Cowards.

[nerfpuncher]

[slumbering-shadows]

shout out to the watcher tumblr team for being so fucking funny like Shane just made himself public enemy number one and instead of trying to do any sort of damage control they're helping us tape the "kick me" sign to his back sjsbdjbdjd

[griddleharkbrainrot]

I love making polls of my otps vs. Spirk because 10,000 star trek fans will rise out of the grave and kick my ass then fall into a coma until the next poll rolls around

[froschli96]

As an asexual Good Omens fan

There's something I've noticed in this fandom that makes me really uncomfortable, and that is the way that Crowley and Aziraphale's possible asexuality is constantly being connected to and justified by them being not human.

I just honestly really hate that, because implying that asexuality is something that somehow "logically" follows from characters being nonhuman is ... not great. Like, I hate having to be the one to point this out, but asexuality is, in fact, very much a human attribute.

And unfortunately, most of the time when I come across this take, it doesn't feel like someone seeing themselves in the characters and relating to their experience, but rather an othering, this kind of otherwordly pure non-sexualness, where people put these characters above such trivial things like sexuality.

I am not asexual because I am somehow confounded by this oh so complicated human concept of sexuality, or because I don't ever think or care about sexuality at all (a lot of thinking was unfortunately involved actually before I finally came to a conclusion about my identity) it is just a fact of who I am, as a human being, it’s a part of my human experience.

And let's be honest, attributing asexuality to nonhuman characters is not the hot new take a lot of people seem to think it is — this trope has been around for ages. And it hasn't done a great deal to normalize asexuality. In fact I'd argue it's perpetuated an othering of ace people, but you take what you can get, really. (This is not to say that it is in any way wrong to identify with these kinds of characters, I definitely do, too! It's just sad that the topic of discussion is always about how "human" someone can be considered when they don't feel sexual or romantic attraction)

To be honest, I don't actually see A&C being asexual as canon — as a lot of people seemingly do — just because the author kind of suggested it in a tweet where he basically conflates "asexual" and "sexless" (for the record, this is not a dig at Neil, I just think the implications were kind of unfortunate, even if it might not have been intentional, which makes it all the more frustrating that a lot of fans just ran with it). And yeah, going around calling people aphobic for seeing the Ineffable Husbands as gay rep or any other identity, when they’re oh so obviously canonically ace, is honestly kind of insane.

I get that it might feel nice and tempting to be able to "claim" these characters and this relationship and being able to tell other fans off whose headcanons on their sexuality differ from your own because it is hard to come by any kind of representation when you're ace and there's finally a creator who's not only not contemptuous towards but even supportive of fans reading his characters as queer. And if you feel represented by A&C as it is then all the more power to you. But the thing is, it doesn't matter what kind of justifications there are or what canon might or might not say (bc when has that ever mattered in fandom spaces) or what the creator says, you cannot convert people to your opinion about a character, and you're going to have a bad time if you spend your time in fandom trying to do that.

And really, I am just wondering why we necessarily even need an explanation or justification for them possibly being asexual. Why does it have to be that all angels and demons are asexual by virtue of being nonhuman, and so A&C have to be too? why can't that just be an aspect of them that is completely unrelated to them not being human? Could these characters maybe not simply identify as asexual, not because they're nonhuman, but in spite of it? (btw, in the same vein it is equally stupid to argue that A&C can't be ace because they have "gone native", which is also an argument I've come across)

Honestly, I'm not even asking anyone to fundamentally change how they see these characters here — if you think they must be asexual solely because they're angels and have no concept of human sexuality, then whatever, I can't stop you and I don’t want to police anyone's headcanons bc as I said that's stupid and a waste of time. What I am asking you is that you maybe reflect a little bit on why exactly it is that humanity and sexuality are somehow so intrinsically linked in your mind to the point where you automatically use it as a way to distinguish between human and nonhuman characters.

Anyways.

Tldr: please stop equating asexuality with non-humanness thank you and good day.

[gffa]

Every time I have seen a post tagged "I know I'm kicking a hornet's nest with this one", it has turned out to be the most timid, milquetoast take I've ever seen and the notes are just full of people saying they agree. If you're going to kick a hornet's nest actually kick a hornet's nest, you cowards. Tell me Reylo is good actually or something at least.

[luckthebard]

A portion of people on here seem completely unable to interpret Imogen as having any flaws, and I can’t tell if it’s a Women Must Always Be Good And Pure Or They’re Evil So She Must Be Good thing, a 3rd campaign hat trick of Being Weird About Laura’s Characters thing, a Queer Women Can’t Be Wrong Actually thing, or some awful combination of all three.

[aturnoftheearth]

and if i said it’s the 5th of the month again .

[ugly-anarchist]

"Yeah sure transmisogynists want you to stop existing and vilify intersex women the exact same way they do trans women, but you're afab so you're exempt from experiencing transmisogyny and also you're an oppressor who actively benefits from transmisogyny."

[snapcracklepop-myjoints]

I've been seeing this a lot lately, but a little while ago I mentioned something to do with disability in a discord and someone asked me if I was a "spoonie". Not if I was disabled, but a spoonie. I need y’all to fucking get it into ur heads that disabled is not a dirty word. You can use the term spoonie for yourself all you want, but the second you start imposing it on other people and generally using it in place of the word "disabled", its just another woo-woo euphemism that seeks to soften and make comfortable the vocabulary and concept of disability.

Like at a certain point it becomes clear that a lot of people now are using “spoonie” in the same damn way as “differently abled” or "handicapable". The origin and intent of the term become moot within that usage because what it serves to do is invoke disability euphemistically, obfuscating and softening it in service of compulsory normative able-bodymindedness.

If you want to use that term for yourself, fine. Have fun. It doesn't have these same connotations when its used as a self identifier rather than as a replacement for the word "disabled". But stop applying it to others in place of "disabled" I’m so fucking serious.

[shrugsinchinese]

Never heard of her

[viv-hollande]

Ok, so this is a post that I should have made sooner. I've been somewhat out of the loop with regards to current events and the state of discourse on this website courtesy of a pretty serious depressive episode from which I am only just now recovering. As I have emerged from this state I have been pushed towards a conclusion about this website and the state of discussion around the ongoing Israel-Gaza War that I had thus far avoided due in part to my barely possessing the energy to keep myself alive and due in part to my denial that the conclusion could be true. But that denial can no longer hold.

It has become openly apparent that the pro-Palestinian camp on this website has become popularly infused with a degree of blatant, aggressive antisemitism that I, in my naivety thought impossible in the days just after October 7. I am trying to avoid turning this into a mea culpa because that would be unproductive and feel self-serving, but I do feel an obligation to admit that I disregarded prescient warnings from Jewish users whose warnings I dismissed as over-blowing a problem that I felt was real, but more limited in scope than they made out.

I'm neither an idiot nor am I ignorant. I am well aware of the long history of antisemitism in leftist politics and in the Palestinian Liberation movement. Back at the beginning of this crisis I was prepared to see the occasional instance of antisemites using the inevitable, overwhelming Israeli retaliation as an excuse to air their hateful politics. I was prepared to see both the well-meaning but ignorant and the malicious alike sharing tweets from antisemitic pro-Palestine accounts, spreading and normalizing low-grade, subtle antisemitism. Make no mistake, this should have been condemned. Antisemitism, like all bigotries, has no 'safe' level. There is no background level of antisemitism that society should just accept as normal. But I was more focused on the inevitable cacophony of suffering that Israel would almost certainly begin meting out, and so I failed to act.

The fatal blow to my denial was the increasing prevalence of the use of quotation marks around the word "Israel" and "Israeli". The first few times I saw this, I didn't really understand what it meant. Still laboring under the belief that antisemitism was a manageable problem on the left, I was certain that most of the users on this site, well-intentioned, goodhearted, critically thinking people that they were, would have recognized and called out even disguised antisemitism before it took over a good 20-40% of all posts about the conflict. I was a damn naive fool. For those, like past me, who have not cottoned on to the meaning of the quotation marks, they have become a way to express the denial of the legitimacy or even existence of, individually or all together, the State of Israel, the Israeli people, or the right of either Jews or Israelis to identify as Israelis.

CONGRATULATIONS TUMBLR! You have successfully revived from depths of 4chan neo-Nazi boards the (((fucking echoes))).

Are you serious? Are you fuckers for real? This, right here, encapsulates the pitch-black absurdity of this whole situation and why I remained in denial for so long. Never, in a million years, would I imagine that the proudly pro-Social Justice, anti-fascist, 100% Certified SAFE-SPACE(tm) website would end up using the same language as the goddamn Nazis on 4chan. I thought this website was smarter than that. But noooo, it turns out that I was a damn naive fool.

This was where the post was originally going to end. I say my piece, hope to change a few minds, and commit myself to actually fighting antisemitism instead of sitting back and dismissing the problem. But I figure, while I'm here and while I still have the driving forces of anger and guilt pushing me along, I may as well put pen to paper and spew forth my other thoughts on the ongoing crisis. I am thus compiling a much longer post detailing my thoughts on some aspects of the current situation. [EDITED ~1:25 AM GMT, 5 Dec 2023: add link to finished post] That post will definitely be long, probably be angry, possibly wrong on some aspect of fact, and will absolutely be pretentious, preachy, self-righteous and hubristic to a positively Hellenistic degree. Brief, non-comprehensive summary so you can decide whether or not get mad at me ahead of time;

Israel does apartheid, or near enough for government work.

Israel is definitely conducting a campaign of forced displacement, possibly amounting to ethnic cleansing, but I remain unconvinced of the claim of genocide.

Hamas may or may not be a anti-colonialist revolutionary group, but it definitely is an antisemitic terrorist organization with genocidal aspirations and actively supporting them is morally indefensible. Yes, this includes the Al-Qassam Brigades.

Anti-colonial and other revolutionary movements do in fact have fundamental moral obligations and suffering oppression does not give you carte blanche to do terrorism, even when an oppressor attempts to render peaceful opposition impossible. There is a middle ground between peaceful marching and 850+ dead civilians; aim for that.

The left is just as prone to unhinged conspiracism as the right.

Verify your sources, for fuck's sake.

Use nuance. It won't kill you.

There's more, but it's a little difficult to summarize an unfinished post. If you want to argue with any of these points, go ahead, just keep in mind that a longer, more comprehensive post is in the works that might have the answer to your argument/complaint/insult/intellectual disagreement. If that post isn't up by midnight GMT on Friday, assume I forgot about it and argue away. In conclusion, antisemitism is bad, apartheid is also bad, Tumblr is a hellsite (derogatory), "From the river to the sea" is, in fact, antisemitic, seriously, stop saying it, take Jews seriously when they warn you about antisemitism instead of writing them off like a damn naive fool, and last but not least, free Palestine.

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

today's thoughts before passing out: the demon blood plot reading as a metaphoric fear of miscegenation, a result of classic Western tropes told through a Horror framework.

demon blood is a boundary crossing substance, invasive and transformative. Sam violated in the crib functions on one level as a rape metaphor, but its done so through demonic blood coming in to dilute his human blood. the violation then, comes in as a literal theft of identity. his body becomes the literal battleground between two forces - the domestic world of his family vs. the invading, monstrous outsider. Azazel snatches and preys on civilised children from the crib as a means of recruiting them to his tribe army, literally corrupting them on a bodily level, claiming them from their blood families as his own. and the more demon blood Sam drinks, the less 'human' he becomes (the less of his family's blood in him). Dean's anger over Ruby also ties into Sam's sexual relationship with her, of which the blood drinking is a component. the blood drinking is especially transgressive because it echoes deep-rooted settler colonial anxieties, expressed through the language of pop culture - fears over losing one's blood, family, and identity to a savage Other.

(4.04)

(4.21)

what got me started on this line of thinking was a recent rewatch of John Ford's The Searchers (1956), a movie so ingrained in the modern American cultural mythos that nearly every first year cinema studies course makes it required viewing lmao. it's a subversive Western, concerned with exploring the porous boundary dividing white settler communities from Native American communities, the defining line between the 'civilised'/'uncivilised', the colonial subject and the savage. it was released during an era when America was grappling with undoing laws around racial segregation, and reflects those anxieties through classic American mythology.

so. Sam is a modern interpretation of Martin and Debbie from that movie, and Dean is a modern variant on its leading anti-hero, Ethan Edwards (rather John is our initial Ethan figure, but we spend most of the show with Dean, who takes on his mantle). just to emphasise the connection between the show and this movie - Star Wars heavily references it, and Kripke's always been explicit about this show's two leads as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. well, i'd argue this show definitely owes more to The Searchers than Star Wars does!

Martin is Ethan's adoptive nephew of partial Cherokee descent, made an outsider to his family, by his uncle, at the film's outset due to his blood. he joins his uncle on his revenge mission after a Comanche tribe destroys their home and steals his adoptive sister - Debbie. this mission becomes his coming-of-age journey into rugged frontier manhood, as much as it is his path towards integration into white, 'civilised' society.

the protagonist of the film is Ethan, a soldier who gets consumed by his seven year long, bloody, vengeance-fuelled quest to recover his niece. when he finds Debbie, however, to his dismay he discovers she's no longer the 'pure' innocent he remembers. upon finding out that she's married to the tribe's chief - he literally disowns her as his blood kin, and at one point, even tries to kill her. Martin becomes the one to save her from his uncle's shot and the one to convince her to return home. he later convinces Ethan to recommit to rescuing her, and he ends up doing so.

(15.17 - Sam over s4 functions as a Debbie figure, but Jack also takes up her role. Dean disowns him as Ethan disowns his niece)

over the movie, we see Ethan descend into ever increasing violence and 'wildness', grown closer to his enemy after years spent on the frontier, hunting them down. Martin gets to go home, his civilising mission completed as he marries into a white family. Ethan though, stands at the threshold in the iconic concluding shot below. he's been transformed by frontier violence to the point he no longer belongs to the domestic, civilised world. he wanders back out into the desert, alone.

(1.14)

anyways. Supernatural owes so much of its dna to the classic Western, and to this movie in particular. what The Searchers was to collective white American anxieties over desegregation in the late 50s, this show was to collective white American anxieties over multiculturalism at the new millenium, in the wake of 9/11. Sam's demon blood is a critical defining line between him and his brother, as Martin's mixed race status is the defining line between him and his uncle. 'monstrosity' on this show metaphorically stands in for savagery; one brother gets thrown out onto the frontier, a journey towards 'taming' his own nature. and another brother drifts further and further away from civilised society the longer he spends fighting at the frontier, protecting civilisation from its monsters. 'blood don't end with family' comes to a screeching halt when it addresses the prospect of monstrosity. what is demon blood standing in for on this show? what does a monster represent, truly? who gets to step over the threshold into civilised society, and what is the price of that acceptance?