#99% of this discourse is out of fucking control

[unhingedmarvelandclassicwhobuff]

Since we're now in the time period of WandaVision's fourth anniversary, I'm gonna go on a rant about how much I hated the experience of watching it as it was being released

As I've mentioned before, starting in mid-2019 I started to become worried that Marvel would try to go the comic route and twist Wanda into a villain. It got so bad that I had nightmares about it. So you can imagine how nervous I was knowing that she was getting a show where Vision was apparently alive again.

While for the first few episodes I was able to appreciate how good the sitcom recreations were, it was incredibly frustrating to be getting a Wanda show where she's acting absolutely nothing like herself.

I still remember the first time my heart dropped and I thought "Fuck. They're doing it." was at the end of episode 2 when time rewinds. The moment is edited to make it look like Wanda did it intentionally (though retroactively there's no way that's possible), and that was the start of a downward spiral of me thinking Marvel was seriously doing what I was scared they were doing.

I'm still more than a little amazed that Marvel had so little faith in the audience that after just three episodes they slammed on the brakes and painstakingly spelled out exactly what questions the audience should be asking. That feels like a studio-mandated choice.

Another big moment that made my blood run cold was the very end of episode 4, because again, the scene where Wanda throws Monica out is framed like she knows exactly what's going on and doesn't care. And then Monica saying "it's all Wanda" at the end... Let's just say four years ago today was a pretty bad day for me.

Episode 5 was the worst of it for me. Not only was that the episode where they hammer in just how torturous the mind control is, but it's also the episode where Wanda herself is at her absolute worst, as we've gone over in painstaking detail. To this day my most hated scene in WandaVision is the confrontation outside the Hex. It's just there to make the audience think Wanda is fully in control and couldn't care less about what she's doing. I don't care how well-executed the scene is, to even insinuate that Wanda would ever intentionally hurt innocents is enough to send me into a blind rage.

And just to cap it all off, the Fake Pietro reveal at the end made my heart sink for another reason entirely. 99% of the discourse I saw online during those weeks was little more than people theorizing/hoping that the show would be a plot device to introduce mutants or the Fantastic Four or the X-Men or a dozen other fucking things that have nothing to do with Wanda. So while for basically everyone else Evan Peters showing up was a massive vindication, for me it was confirmation that this show really didn't care about Wanda and was mainly focused on setting up future projects. At the time I distinctly remember coming to the conclusion after episode 5 that the main function of the show was to cement Wanda as a villain so she could be used as one in a later movie.

Things didn't get much better in episode 6. Vision wandering around and seeing all the frozen people in unending agony again made me want to vomit, because at that point I still thought Wanda knew about it and didn't care. The scene where he "wakes up Agnes" just solidified that for me. Wanda saying she didn't know how she did any of this didn't help much, as I immediately figured she was lying through her teeth. Granted I wasn't paying a ton of attention to her mannerisms or body language during that scene that prove otherwise. Wanda expanding the Hex was another nightmare-come-alive moment for me, because I sincerely thought it meant she was fully aware of how to control it and what it did.

Episode 7 wasn't any better either. It upset me greatly to see Wanda casually note right at the start that she knew she had created the Hex, and I think by this point I had sort of dejectedly accepted that the woman I loved was dead and an amoral monster who had no problem with casual torture had taken her place.

Even Agatha showing up didn't make me perk up, because I immediately thought she was just another creation of the Hex for Wanda to use as a scapegoat.

So as I think you can tell, this show's misdirection worked hook line and sinker on me, and I hate it for that, because it was baiting me into thinking my literal worst nightmare was coming true right before my eyes.

I went into episode 8 with a numb acceptance that this show had murdered Wanda for the sake of using her as a big bad later on. So you can imagine the gigantic whiplash I got when it ended up being a respectful, tear-jerking depiction of her that suddenly removed the veil and revealed she truly didn't know what was going on at all.

The finale was equally heartwrenching for me, choppiness and all. It was... more than a little upsetting to see the people of Westview confront Wanda with what had been happening and to see her just as confused and horrified as I was, and by the end of that scene I was crying right along with her. I shouldn't have to reiterate how much I love what little interactions Wanda gets with her family before the Hex collapses.

Seeing how many people online had the exact opposite reaction to me, where they were loving the show until episode 8, just made me feel like the only person who truly cared about Wanda.

So, TLDR, on initial release I was HATING WandaVision for 80% of its duration, and it only won me over in the final two episodes by showing me that the creators truly did understand Wanda. I still don't consider it to be worthy of her glory, but those last two episodes are pretty much the closest the MCU will likely ever come to having a good showing of Wanda as the hero she truly is.

[hollow-keys]

Diana and Clark for the character bingo (bc you said they were on your mind)

I mean, they were on my mind but I have the attention span of a *remembers goldfish can actually remember things for months* me.

Anyway, on it boss 🫡

Clark

People in the 30's were so right to get attached to him I really love him. I relate to his feeling of alienation and his self consciousness a lot which has led to some. Projecting. A lot of people are wrong about him (by virtue of being so popular) but not enough to tick the everyone is wrong about them box.

Of course there's the "Superman should be dark" Zack Synder crowd and whatever the fuck Injustice is but there's also people who make him too clean and perfect or overemphasise his niceness IMO. My view of him probably comes from reading older comics (especially golden age) where he's a bit rougher and I like that side of him. Like his original tagline was "Champion of the Oppressed" he forced a war profiteer to enlist to teach him a lesson, he trapped a mining company owner (and his party guests) in a mine so he would make his mines safer, he tore down a slum to force the government to rebuild it with better materials all within his first few issues in Action Comics. And this characterization wasn't entirely in those early issues, like later on in DC presents #28 where he fucking. Gives Mongul (unfortunate name)* a brain hemorrhage (it was the only way he could think of to defeat him). Or in The Death of Superman where he kills Doomsday without umming and ahhing over whether or not it's sentient. He's like Diana in that he won't kill most of the time and tries to understand others but he's not a hardline "no kill" guy.

*Elaborating on that but giving a character who is both a villain and has yellowy coloured skin a name that's one letter off of a real Asian ethnicity is uhh... unfortunate ignorance at best and purposefully racist at worst. Mongul. Mongol. They're not even pronounced differently.

*Abrupt segue* Anyway, back to Superman. His meaner and more overtly leftist side frequently gets watered down so he gets characterised as a "hug it out" liberal. I won't say this is a mischaracterisation because there's no one Superman, but it's not my fave.

There's also a lot of discourse about who the real guy is. Is he Kal, Clark or Superman? So you get the shitty take in Kill Bill that calls Clark Kent his critique of humanity (what?) or the Byrne take where Kal doesn't matter.

In my view, he's all of it. He grew up an anomaly, worried he could crush his peers without a thought, constantly having to control himself. Of course he's clumsy because he's spending so much time reigning in 99% of his power, he doesn't have brainspace to think about minutiae. Of course he's anxious because one wrong move could kill somebody. When he's Superman a lot of his brainspace gets freed up because he doesn't have to hide so he's more confident. His heritage does matter because all immigrants, or even descendants of them like me, feel a connection with their heritage, and for someone who never got to know it in the way he should have, he feels a longing for it.

He idealises Krypton and is forced to recon with the flawed reality of it later when he talks to Kara about what it was actually like, which I found a bit relatable because I would idealise Ireland as a child and only really took the rose coloured glasses off later on (which sounds stupid but I was a child and it was really easy to feel like Ireland would be more of a home for me when I didn't fit in in England and my Irish mother accepted me. I extrapolated).

None of it is fake, which is out of line with golden age Clark being non-confrontational and making himself small as part of his disguise, but I don't treat any era as gospel. So yeah, I have a lot of autistic feelings about him.

Umm. I didn't intend for this to be so long I just got rambling about various Clark thoughts that have been buried somewhere in my head for a while.

Diana

She may not be your fave of all time but she's still going in the blorbo by proxy category because you're a fan. On to my actual thoughts about her.

A lot of my feelings about her are mired in my thoughts on her treatment as the only female member of the trinity and how the amazons are treated/written in general rather than solely being about her because in a lot of ways she's symbolic of DC's treatment of women.

WRT the trinity, she's the only member without a secondary title (she used to have Sensation Comics a long time ago) and her potentially much more interesting dynamic with Clark is shoved aside in favour if Clark + Batman. The trinity really feels like it's BATMAN!!! Superman also! and uh *checks smudged handwriting* Wobner Woman.

WRT her she's frequently sexualised, almost always written by privileged men, her supporting characters get nothing (the first non-Diana wonderfam related ongoing was Wonder Girl in 2021 and only lasted 7 issues), her lore gets retconned with much less hastle than Batman or Superman's and her series numbering keeps getting rebooted*

*This may seem like a petty complaint but I've noticed that characters who get rebooted numbering are often ones who while popular enough to get consistent ongoings, don't get a lot of faith from DC so they use the new number 1's as a gimmick to garner interest.

But to focus solely on her as a character, I feel similarly to you about liking her in a chill way. She feels less relatable to me than Clark but she's very cool still. I like her optimism, her strong sense of justice, general badassery and also that she's willing to cross that line and kill under certain circumstances. Her diplomatic bent really makes her unique among heroes too.

I need to read more of her absolutely.

---

But yeah, the reason I was thinking about them was because I was (and am) annoyed that Clark and Bruce are pushed as the dynamic when Clark and Diana make much more sense.

They're both outsiders (in different ways) with incredible power who base their justice around harm reduction and have a sense of optimism about the world and the ability to do better. Both make a point of being compassionate, considerate and diplomatic. Bruce's justice is rooted in his trauma and a desire to protect others from experiencing that and he's more pessimistic. He's not particularly considerate or good at communicating, he can be quite self centered and he's obscenely wealthy, which I think would put him at odds with Clark and his values. (Yeah, yeah, Bruce donates to charity but he's still a billionaire so it's clearly not enough, and while Clark may not be straight up commie, I do think he'd agree that being a billionaire is too much).

The reason Bruce and Clark are pushed so much is because they're DC's most famous characters but Diana isn't too far behind and she makes more sense as Clark's closest friend on the League but DC hates women and loves Batman so it's Batman and Superman: World's Finest forever and ever.

Thanks for asking!

[emblemxeno]

Sorry if this sounds silly but do you think 3h discourse has given you some sort of trauma? Like I mean this 100% genuinely. I feel like it's kinda fucked up my head with how angry I get about it. And with how upset it makes you I wouldn't be shocked if it's affected you deeply. Again I mean literally no malice, I'm 99% sure I've got trauma from 3h discourse so I'm not judging. With how heinous people can get about it and how often people feel like they're being put on the defensive... even if it's just a game the hurt people feel from how malicious some get is real I think. I mean... stalking, constant attacks on your person, it's not a stretch imo. Sorry if I'm overstepping.

My first instinct is always "trauma from internet discourse? lol no." but honestly? Honestly?

Probably.

And it sucks because I go through this rigamarole where I go back and forth between "I'm too angry and impulsive to talk about 3H discourse anymore" and "Well it's my blog so I shouldn't have to censor myself for terrible people."

But sometimes it legit seems out of my control, and it's embarrassing to be a part of and to feel. Some of these people are legit either directly terrible or insidiously terrible, not just in how they handle conversations but what they do to others and what they do to the space. And no one with any significance or influence has the balls to put the kibosh on it because god forbid someone dislikes 3H or its fans. It's shitty behavior, and I feel like I get gaslit everytime I see someone make a post on here, twitter, reddit, anywhere about how "stop being mean to 3H, it's characters and its fans :/" or "yeah 3H has its flaws but it's still good!" as if this kind of discourse isn't one sided and furthered by fans who act like the victim.

Reminds me of what Beyonce says in her song, Heated: Whole lotta playing victim and the villain at the same time.

So yeah, I prob do have trauma from it.

[beautifulhigh]

I have a question for you that I really hope you'll answer. But if you think it might start discourse you'd rather avoid, I understand if you ignore this.

So I love both OG and LS and I follow a bunch of popular blogs in both fandoms. but so many of those folks watch only one of the two shows and are pretty rude about the other one, by insulting cast members and making fun of even the popular well-received storylines. often they don't tag such posts in any particular way so there's no way to filter those out. I sent a few of them asks requesting if they'd tag such posts. Some agreed to but they haven't actually done it. I've seen you interact in a pretty friendly way with some of those accounts and I'm wondering, how do you do it? Everyone always says to unfollow but I genuinely don't want to miss out on the other posts these ppl share. I enjoy those other posts. It's just these particular posts that diss the shows that I want to avoid but can't. I've tried ignoring it, I've tried laughing it off, but I don't think I'm very good at managing my emotions because I always still end up feeling low and negative when I see such posts. How do you manage to interact with people with opinions you clearly don't share? I'd really appreciate any tips. I really don't want to withdraw from these two fandoms but I don't know how to remain while also maintaining a healthy emotional state.

Firstly, I'm sorry this has happened to you. I really am. And I want to stress that this reply is 100% around my experience and the way I have curated my fandom experience, and YMMV. I hope that it doesn't vary too much but this is how I deal with it. I'm going to tag a few people in this, people who I have on my dash, purely to illustrate the diversity and how you can approach things.

I'm also going to pre-empt things and say that if you read a line and you get mad at me for that one line, I want you to do two things. Firstly, I want you to go outside and touch grass. Secondly, I want you to maybe read the full thing and engage some level of critical thinking before you start yelling at me that I'm being inconsiderate because you have a grass allergy so how DARE I tell you to go touch grass?

Also, because I want this to have a bit of a reach and I know people do curate their dashes, I'm going to be a bit sneaky with how I refer to things to actively circumvent any filters. Should make sense what I'm actually referring to but if you're not sure then please ask.

Step one

Curate your experience. I mean this. One of the few joys of this hellsite is that you are in control over your dash. You can't control who people on your dash reblog but you can start with who is on your dash. If you don't want to block anyone then you can filter by blog names and install add ons like Tumblr Savior.

Step two

Remember why you're on this hellsite in the first place. Chances are it's for fandom purposes. And, given the premise of your ask, I'm going to focus on the TV element of it. So you're here because you like one or both of the weewoo shows and you want to share thoughts and ideas and reblogs of gif sets of people who are WAY too pretty to just be out there like normal people. And because we're hardwired that way, we want to seek connections with people. So we follow blogs and we talk to people and we have our mutuals and we message then and chat with them and we develop relationships with them because we all watch the same TV show.

But – and this is the point that I think a lot of fandom forgets. It's a fucking TV show. That's it. A silly little show which is 99% designed for entertainment and distraction. I am not ignoring the fact that there will be parts of both shows which have impact above and beyond the show, but Ryan Murphy et al did not set out to make shows with the primary goals of changing people's lives.

It is a TV show. It isn't actually life or death. So the first thing you need to ask yourself I have represented in a nice little flow chart with ALT text:

Negative and hateful ideas

Yes, it's a TV show. But that doesn't stop shitty people saying shitty things. I love that both OG and LS have a diverse cast. I love that both of them explore difficult issues such as addiction and a sense of self-worth. I love that both of them have characters who are tragedy magnets and are both dealing with an entire back story of guilt and grief and a sense of failure and so we are rooting for them to find the self-worth that we know they deserve. Is this Evan? Tyler Kennedy? Both of them? Maybe Eduado, or Carlos? Both captains have their tragedy stories.

But what I'm talking about here is people making comments that are, no matter your views or stances, way out of line. Be them about the characters or the actors, you know exactly the kind that I mean. Commenting on the ethnicity, gender, sexuality of characters/actors. Making statements about race or religion. The Big Stuff that most of us know is way out of line.

So if someone is hating on "Buddy" because one of them is of Latinex descent? Screw you, step on a Lego. If you're hating on "Tarlus" because both of the actors are queer? You can fuck right off now. If you dislike Hen's storylines because she's a proud, queer black woman? Sit on a spike. If you want Paul to shut up and go away because he's trans? Walk off a short pier.

If you wish Owen had less seggsy and screen time? You'll find friends in both camps! But that's about the character and the storytelling.

A good rule of thumb is: can it be changed? If no, don't be a bitch about it. Oliver can't change his birthmark, Alisha can't change her skin colour, Rafael can't change his sexuality, Brian can't change his gender identity.

But they could write "Buddy" as queer. They could write Owen not drooling over some woman. And so we are going to have and express opinions over this.

We know where those lines are and those are the ones we have to draw. We have to shut down those voices and make it clear that they are not welcome because a) we need to make sure there are more safe spaces than there aren't, and b) we need to send the message that this kind of hate isn't OK.

Now where fandom seems to have an issue is where it comes to different opinions. This is because we equate what we like with who we are, and for many people fandom is a part of their identity as a person. There are so many reasons for this – good and otherwise. You see yourself represented in the show, the characters. The storylines resonate with you. It got you through the worst time in your life. You met amazing people because of it. Fandom is a good thing, it truly is, and it exists BECAUSE people take shows and characters and storylines to heart.

So if you come at the fandom then it feels like you're under attack. But you're not. Have another flow chart, also with alt text.

And I'm going to tag my wonderful friend @capseycartwright in this because she hates LS with a passion. I would go so far as to say it's probably visceral? Still follow her, still love her, and I still read her "Buddy" fics because she's an amazing writer. And the reason for this is because there isn't a single comment she makes about LS that is personal or hateful or spiteful. She just doesn't like it.

Now even if she did make a post saying "anyone who watches LS is dumb" I'll still follow her. Because if I follow my flow chart, even though I would call her a friend and maybe say I know her? She's not someone I'm related to and I don't have to deal with her on the day to day. Also she's not saying "Jen is dumb for liking LS". Even if she was, still not related so whatevs.

I'm also going to tag @paperstorm who isn't an OG fan, doesn't watch it at all, isn't at all shy in expressing her opinions on anything. If OG stuff crosses her dash she doesn’t engage. [Edited to clarify]

Now when @capseycartwright makes a post about LS, one of two things happen. Most of the time I just keep on scrolling. She's expressing her opinion about a show she doesn't watch, doesn't like, and has picked up on something that she's commenting on. She's not saying anything awful that would be picked up on the first flow chart so why do I care? I'm not going to get her to change her mind and honestly? It doesn't matter if she does or she doesn't.

I may comment – like I did on her wedding post – if I feel I can offer something to help explain something. She posted about "Tarlus" not cancelling the wedding so, as someone who has watched the episodes and had the information, I pointed out that they were absolutely going to do that but even the grieving widow was all for them having it go ahead.

The trick here is to be respectful. If I come at her with "well ACTUALLY" then it's not going to work. I just dropped in, said my bit, then left. People are still going to think the wedding shouldn't have happened - hell, there's people in the LS fandom who feel like that.

Could it have been written differently? Yes. So opinions get to be had and respected so long as they're respectful, as per the first flow chart.

We can debate if they should have gotten married in the episode. I'm not debating their right to get married.

When @paperstorm responds to an OG ask about something, same principle. Is she being hateful? No. Can I add anything to help explain/clarify? If yes, do it then move on. [Edited for clarity]

Be the change etc etc

If I wanted to start a fight, I could drop into the tags "OMG Buddy/Tarlus is awful and the characters deserve so much better". And people who have made fandom a huge part of who they are will take that a lot more to heart than people who haven't. Only you know where you fall on that spectrum.

Most people are not going to change their minds. I'm not going to be able to convince @capseycartwright that Tarlus are endgame and get her signed up to the "Peaches and Cherries" crew. I'm not going to convince @paperstorm that the OG crew are a wonderful example of how the love of your found family can help you rebuild and find strength with your blood family. And neither of them are going to convince me to bail on the other show!

Fandom doesn't recruit through arguments. Fandom recruits through gif sets and fics and metas and all of the good stuff that comes out of enjoying a show. Fandom grows through people sharing their love of a show and the characters involved in it. It doesn't recruit and it doesn't grow through arguments.

So if people are saying stuff you don't agree with, so long as they are not hurting anyone? Let them. Why are you ruining your peace and your enjoyment yelling into the wind? If you don't follow them and you're only coming across them because they are tagging their hate so it shows in the tags, then realise they're doing it to get the reaction from you. I'm not letting that petty win so I will keep on scrolling. And if it's on my dash? Well then I will just check that they've not decided to indulge in some -ism statements, and then I will keep on scrolling.

Because fandom is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be uplifting. And there is enough shit out there in the world right now without yucking someone else's yum. Even if you don't understand it. (I don't understand how anyone can eat mushrooms, but I'm not running around a restaurant knocking them off people's plates.)

We like different things. We like what others dislike. And there are so many ways for you to find room and balance those things in your life if you want to. If they don't want to then that's their issue, not yours. Think about the friends you have IRL – do you share every single interest with them? Some of my closest friends are huge Drag Race fans, but not once have I had an issue with them discussing it in our group chat or making plans which exclude me for them to go and see shows.

I don't care that @capseycartwright is a huge Buddy fan. She loves them, it brings her joy, and so I love that for her. I love that she has something in this world which brings her enjoyment, even if I don't share it.

I don't care that @paperstorm doesn't like OG, and I'm pretty certain she doesn't care that I do.

What I do care about is whether it matters in the grand scheme of things. And honestly? More of fandom doesn't matter in the Big Picture than does. It matters when we use it to do great things. It matters when it helps people feel seen and heard and represented. It doesn't matter when your ship isn't canon/gets married.

tl;dr – if people are being deliberately shitty then the block button is your friend. Otherwise, why does it matter if someone has a different opinion to you?

I know this has gotten stupid long, but I wanted to do it justice because you seem to be struggling with it. And if you ever want to talk to me off anon then please do.

[teaveetamer]

I am not an expert in American culture but if the goal is to protect children , shoul'nt they do something more useful like regulating guns ? I keep seeing new about little kids accidentally killing a family member because someone gave them a gun

The short answer is: it's not actually about protecting kids.

The long answer is: children are a useful tool in political discourse because they are uniquely vulnerable and completely unable to advocate for themselves. Either they're too young (<12ish) or society refuses to take them seriously if they try (12-17ish).

There are no children's rights groups run by children advocating for themselves, for example, like there are gay rights groups, trans rights groups, advocacy groups for people with disabilities, etc. AKA, there are no children who will push back on harmful policies aimed at children.

Children aren't going to be able to tell you what is actually best for them. Nor should they have to. Adults need to make those decisions for them 99% of the time.

"Think of the children" preys on the inherent ambiguity and fear a lot of good parents feel ("am I doing this right? What if I'm wrong?"), and can justify bad parent's horrible, potentially abusive decisions ("I was just doing what I thought was best! No parent is perfect!").

This means you can essentially do whatever you want as long as you trojan horse it in as "protecting the children". There will be some pushback, but there are enough people with fear and insecurity that your pushback will be small enough to overcome (and if it isn't, just proclaim the people trying to stop you as child abusers or pedos). But the people pushing these efforts don't actually care about children. They care about power, control, and political capital.

And you'll notice... when minors are actually old enough to tell you what they want, the political discourse will start infantalizing them to get them back to the "they can't tell you what's actually best for them" stage. Teenagers get treated the same as 4 month old babies.

Look at the recent shit about trans healthcare in the US. Often times the trans youth accessing these services are teenagers, 13 and older. But whenever you hear the fundies talking about it, they'll opine about 3 and 4 year olds getting abused and manipulated into wanting top surgery. To be clear - no one is doing that.

For reference, 15 is the age at which we allow minors to operate two ton death machines (cars) supervised in the US, and 16 is the age we let them operate them unsupervised. If you're a farm kid you can be legally driving tractors even younger than that. You'd think if you were old enough to do that then you'd be old enough to decide if you feel more comfortable with she/her, he/him, or they/them pronouns, but the people who want to exploit your vulnerability for political capital will always treat you like you're barely out of the womb.

That's why we're having endless legal battles over trans kids' access to health care, which impacts ~300,000 kids in the country (0.4% of the American child population, probably even less since MANY trans kids do not access gender affirming care and their transitions are primarily social in nature), but no one wants to touch the obvious gun toting elephant in the room. Which affects 73,000,000 children in the country and has quite literally surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death for minors. Because guns get their own little advocacy group to protect them, but children? Fuck 'em.

[truculentbitch]

i'm gonna continue to treat ppl equally unless they do something i think is actively harmful.

hasn’t mar done this multiple times to newer blogs just because she doesn’t fuck with what they post on their own blogs 😭 mar doesn’t like something someone said about dream? SEND IN THE HOUNDS! it’s a bit ridic at this point

can you be more specific? this is the 2nd ask about other situations and i haven't gotten an answer. who are the blogs you're referring to?

if you think someone is disagreeable towards other ppl, as in she actively disagrees on the dash, what level of responsibility do you think i have to control or comment on that? is mar specifically asking their anons to harass ppl? if other ppl in this space aren't responsible for the things their nons say (which i don't think they should be), what's different about mar's behaviour that makes her responsible?

these are honest questions - i'd really like to know how ppl think about interactions, discourse, and disagreements on crit.

i've been called a bully before bc i've disagreed with blogs publicly and i won't agree with that (99% of the time). i've disagreed with hata and guugy and moon and non-dteam blogs on the dash and never been accused of bullying them. is that bc they're assumed to have a similar or (more accurately wrt guuhata) larger reach than me? is it bc they're well-established? is the criticism situational rather than related to my own behaviour?

i have bullied ppl off crit and i'll admit to that without shame. i had no problem bullying critcon out of this space bc i refuse to allow a racist, transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic fucking moron who was recommending and posting positively about ppl like neo-nazi white supremacist nick fuentes to hold any space here. if they wanted to stick around tho, there's nothing i can do about it.

i don't necessarily agree with the bloodsport aspect of crit but it exists and it's the danger of things like having anon asks on and talking about controversial topics. that's not any one persons' fault

[janiedean]

what are your thoughts on the claim by antis (the people who I have seen reblog the post happen to be fi**Xrey shippers) that reylo being canon is racism winning or that kylo ren getting focus is racism etc or say the trio is finn/rey/poe even though that poe was intended to die in tfa

in order:

'reylo being canon is racism’ is ridiculous because if it wasn’t obvious from tfa it was obvious from tlj and like........ it’s not like they could cast a nonwhite kylo since he’s supposed to be the son of two white people and if rey was nonwhite people would scream that it’s racist for other reasons, and on top of that finn and rey never were written as love interests from the get-go and it’s obvious

also considering that finn a) had rose who was a canon love interest that was scrapped bc people bitched about it [asian], b) went nowhere with jannah who was the obvious rose replacement just cooler either [black], c) didn’t have the mlm romance with poe with whom he had more chemistry than anyone else anyway [oscar is latino] if I had to go for their reasoning then it’s kind of racist that the black main lead had no actual canon love story RESOLUTION with none of his THREE possible love interests all of which were not white, but nah, it’s racism just if he doesn’t end up with the only main white woman his age? ... I mean, sorry but this is not progressive whatsoever and I’m dying on that hill *shrug*

also reylo is a ship between an abuse victim who did a lot of bad shit and someone who sees the good in them in which the abuse victim turns their life around eventually so miss me with ‘racism winning’, it would have been ‘you can do good things with your life still’ winning if he survived but whatever

‘kylo ren getting focused on is racism’ the dark side has been more popular than the light side han excluded since sw was a thing and at the end of it ben solo was the objectively best written character in this trilogy (saying this as someone whose fave was poe), I’m sooooo surprised! also he’s the main dark side person, if they don’t focus on him who are they gonna focus on? *shrug*

re poe: if I was in the shoes of these people I’d be here protesting about that disgusting retcon space drug trader storyline GIVEN TO THE LATINO CHARACTER GOING AGAINST COMICS CANON because that was pretty fucking offensive. also, poe was not killed in tfa and it was a decision taken before they shot the movie because oscar was like ‘do I really have to die again in the first fifteen minutes’ while in talks for the role so the fact that he was supposed to die means absolutely shit because making him live was not a decision they made at the last minute, so miss me with the poe should have died discourse. however as someone who’d have appreciated good trio stuff in tros, they completely fucked up 80% of that starting with the retconned storyline and not giving finn a proper character arc so like... idk if people want to discuss racism in this sequels maybe they should talk about how the trio part of the movie fucked over both finn and poe as characters, about how tros sidelined the other nonwhite actresses and fucked over rose, while jannah could have been cool but oh hey ‘some stormtroopers feel the force and leave others don’t’ nice calvinism there, and zoe... I mean she didn’t even take the mask off but okay sure that was absolutely progressive? also lando was back but he was there for five minutes??? I mean.... sorry but considering that tros treated like shit all the nonwhite characters who could have had a storyline all on their own instead of revolving around a bad copypaste of troj made to retcon tlj never mind the disrespect to the actors (I can’t forgive them for making oscar play that fucking drug backstory when poe was a character who was NOT supposed to be a latino stereotype in the goddamned established canon, and kelly marie tran... let’s not even touch the fucking disrespect of her being in that movie for ONE MINUTE AND A HALF), I think that the problem isn’t reylo smooching or kylo ren/ben solo existing. poe/finn/rose/jannah/zoe/lando could have had decent storylines on their own..... and the only one who sort of had one was poe and it included that dumbass retconned backstory so if people want to cry about rey and kylo locking lips when they had been told since the trailer from tlj instead of pointing out that this movie’s plot/treatment of nonwhite actors was atrocious then... well. sorry but it’s typical anti armchair activism IF worrying about SW is even activism. miss me with that shit either. and whether poe should have been part of the new trio or no is completely irrelevant given this background. like, they had a lot of nonwhite characters, they could have done really good/nice things with them, they didn’t, but sure, the problem is ben solo’s existence and that he and rey kissed when tlj made it blatantly obvious they would. k.

*shrug*

[whitehotharlots]

The point is control

Whenever we think or talk about censorship, we usually conceptualize it as certain types of speech being somehow disallowed: maybe (rarely) it's made formally illegal by the government, maybe it's banned in certain venues, maybe the FCC will fine you if you broadcast it, maybe your boss will fire you if she learns of it, maybe your friends will stop talking to you if they see what you've written, etc. etc. 

This understanding engenders a lot of mostly worthless discussion precisely because it's so broad. Pedants--usually arguing in favor of banning a certain work or idea--will often argue that speech protections only apply to direct, government bans. These bans, when they exist, are fairly narrow and apply only to those rare speech acts in which other people are put in danger by speech (yelling the N-word in a crowded theater, for example). This pedantry isn't correct even within its own terms, however, because plenty of people get in trouble for making threats. The FBI has an entire entrapment program dedicated to getting mentally ill muslims and rednecks to post stuff like "Death 2 the Super bowl!!" on twitter, arresting them, and the doing a press conference about how they heroically saved the world from terrorism. 

Another, more recent pedant's trend is claiming that, actually, you do have freedom of speech; you just don't have freedom from the consequences of speech. This logic is eerily dictatorial and ignores the entire purpose of speech protections. Like, even in the history's most repressive regimes, people still technically had freedom of speech but not from consequences. Those leftist kids who the nazis beheaded for speaking out against the war were, by this logic, merely being held accountable. 

The two conceptualizations of censorship I described above are, 99% of the time, deployed by people who are arguing in favor of a certain act of censorship but trying to exempt themselves from the moral implications of doing so. Censorship is rad when they get to do it, but they realize such a solipsism seems kinda icky so they need to explain how, actually, they're not censoring anybody, what they're doing is an act of righteous silencing that's a totally different matter. Maybe they associate censorship with groups they don't like, such as nazis or religious zealots. Maybe they have a vague dedication toward Enlightenment principles and don't want to be regarded as incurious dullards. Most typically, they're just afraid of the axe slicing both ways, and they want to make sure that the precedent they're establishing for others will not be applied to themselves.

Anyone who engages with this honestly for more than a few minutes will realize that censorship is much more complicated, especially in regards to its informal and social dimensions. We can all agree that society simply would not function if everyone said whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. You might think your boss is a moron or your wife's dress doesn't look flattering, but you realize that such tidbits are probably best kept to yourself. 

Again, this is a two-way proposition that everyone is seeking to balance. Do you really want people to verbalize every time they dislike or disagree with you? I sure as hell don't. And so, as part of a social compact, we learn to self-censor. Sometimes this is to the detriment of ourselves and our communities. Most often, however, it's just a price we have to pay in order to keep things from collapsing. 

But as systems, large and small, grow increasingly more insane and untenable, so do the comportment standards of speech. The disconnect between America's reality and the image Americans have of themselves has never been more plainly obvious, and so striving for situational equanimity is no longer good enough. We can't just pretend cops aren't racist and the economy isn't run by venal retards or that the government places any value on the life of its citizens. There's too much evidence that contradicts all that, and the evidence is too omnipresent. There's too many damn internet videos, and only so many of them can be cast as Russian disinformation. So, sadly, we must abandon our old ways of communicating and embrace instead systems that are even more unstable, repressive, and insane than the ones that were previously in place.

Until very, very recently, nuance and big-picture, balanced thinking were considered signs of seriousness, if not intelligence. Such considerations were always exploited by shitheads to obfuscate things that otherwise would have seemed much less ambiguous, yes, but this fact alone does not mitigate the potential value of such an approach to understanding the world--especially since the stuff that's been offered up to replace it is, by every worthwhile metric, even worse.

So let's not pretend I'm Malcolm Gladwell or some similarly slimy asshole seeking to "both sides" a clearcut moral issue. Let's pretend I am me. Flash back to about a year ago, when there was real, widespread, and sustained support for police reform. Remember that? Seems like forever ago, man, but it was just last year... anyhow, now, remember what happened? Direct, issues-focused attempts to reform policing were knocked down. Blotted out. Instead, we were told two things: 1) we had to repeat the slogan ABOLISH THE POLICE, and 2) we had to say it was actually very good and beautiful and nonviolent and valid when rioters burned down poor neighborhoods.

Now, in a relatively healthy discourse, it might have been possible for someone to say something like "while I agree that American policing is heavily violent and racist and requires substantial reforms, I worry that taking such an absolutist point of demanding abolition and cheering on the destruction of city blocks will be a political non-starter." This statement would have been, in retrospect, 100000000% correct. But could you have said it, in any worthwhile manner? If you had said something along those lines, what would the fallout had been? Would you have lost friends? Your job? Would you have suffered something more minor, like getting yelled at, told your opinion did not matter? Would your acquaintances still now--a year later, after their political project has failed beyond all dispute--would they still defame you in "whisper networks," never quite articulating your verbal sins but nonetheless informing others that you are a dangerous and bad person because one time you tried to tell them how utterly fucking self-destructive they were being? It is undeniably clear that last year's most-elevated voices were demanding not reform but catharsis. I hope they really had fun watching those immigrant-owned bodegas burn down, because that’s it, that will forever be remembered as the most palpable and consequential aspect of their shitty, selfish movement. We ain't reforming shit. Instead, we gave everyone who's already in power a blank check to fortify that power to a degree you and I cannot fully fathom.

But, oh, these people knew what they were doing. They were good little boys and girls. They have been rewarded with near-total control of the national discourse, and they are all either too guilt-ridden or too stupid to realize how badly they played into the hands of the structures they were supposedly trying to upend.

And so left-liberalism is now controlled by people whose worldview is equal parts superficial and incoherent. This was the only possible outcome that would have let the system continue to sustain itself in light of such immense evidence of its unsustainability without resulting in reform, so that's what has happened.

But... okay, let's take a step back. Let's focus on what I wanted to talk about when I started this.

I came across a post today from a young man who claimed that his high school English department head had been removed from his position and had his tenure revoked for refusing to remove three books from classrooms. This was, of course, fallout from the ongoing debate about Critical Race Theory. Two of those books were Marjane Satropi's Persepolis and, oh boy, The Diary of Anne Frank. Fuck. Jesus christ, fuck.

Now, here's the thing... When Persepolis was named, I assumed the bannors were anti-CRT. The graphic novel does not deal with racism all that much, at least not as its discussed contemporarily, but it centers an Iranian girl protagonist and maybe that upset Republican types. But Anne Frank? I'm sorry, but the most likely censors there are liberal identiarians who believe that teaching her diary amounts to centering the suffering of a white woman instead of talking about the One Real Racism, which must always be understood in an American context. The super woke cult group Black Hammer made waves recently with their #FuckAnneFrank campaign... you'd be hard pressed to find anyone associated with the GOP taking a firm stance against the diary since, oh, about 1975 or so.

So which side was it? That doesn't matter. What matters is, I cannot find out.

Now, pro-CRT people always accuse anti-CRT people of not knowing what CRT is, and then after making such accusations they always define CRT in a way that absolutely is not what CRT is. Pro-CRTers default to "they don't want  students to read about slavery or racism." This is absolutely not true, and absolutely not what actual CRT concerns itself with. Slavery and racism have been mainstays of American history curriucla since before I was born. Even people who barely paid attention in school would admit this, if there were any more desire for honesty in our discourse. 

My high school history teacher was a southern "lost causer" who took the south's side in the Civil War but nonetheless provided us with the most descriptive and unapologetic understandings of slavery's brutalities I had heard up until that point. He also unambiguously referred to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshmia and Nagasaki as "genocidal." Why? Because most people's politics are idiosyncratic, and because you cannot genuinely infer a person to believe one thing based on their opinion of another, tangentially related thing. The totality of human understanding used to be something open-minded people prided themselves on being aware of, believe it or not...

This is the problem with CRT. This is is the motivation behind the majority of people who wish to ban it. It’s not because they are necessarily racist themselves. It’s because they recognize, correctly, that the now-ascendant frames for understanding social issues boils everything down to a superficial patina that denies not only the realities of the systems they seek to upend but the very humanity of the people who exist within them. There is no humanity without depth and nuance and complexities and contradictions. When you argue otherwise, people will get mad and fight back. 

And this is the most bitter irony of this idiotic debate: it was never about not wanting to teach the sinful or embarrassing parts of our history. That was a different debate, one that was settled and won long ago. It is instead an immense, embarrassing overreach on behalf of people who have bullied their way to complete dominance of their spheres of influence within media and academe assuming they could do the same to everyone else. Some of its purveyors may have convinced themselves that getting students to admit complicity in privilege will prevent police shootings, sure. But I know these people. I’ve spoken to them at length. I’ve read their work. The vast, vast majority of them aren’t that stupid. The point is to exert control. The point is to make sure they stay in charge and that nothing changes. The point is failure. 

[bthump]

I am curious why you don't like het pairings across the board since I ship both het and same sex pairings . I understand LGBTQ+ peoples' desire to see themselves represented in media , but I think that when it comes to fandom people tend to fetish same sex pairings especially mlm pairings and bashing female characters that get in the way of their ship.

I’ve done my fair share of navel gazing about why I hate 99.9% of het in media since I was a teen and I could write a long list of reasons that probably influence my preferences, like gender essentialism, the vast vast vast majority of creators being men influencing how they write women + het relationships in ways that offend me, the fact that it’s the default and my interests are often influenced by spite, the rote way it’s usually written, i hate 99% of the tropes that are usually associated with it, the fact that irl I have 0 interest in engaging in a hetero relationship myself and therefore can’t relate...

but yeah ultimately I don’t know or care or think it matters lol, the vast majority of het ships just do not spark joy for me.

And now, The Discourse, which I would love to put under a cut but apparently that’s just not in the cards right now, thanks tumblr.

please don’t reblog I guess?

I just like, disagree with the rest of your ask lol, sorry. And I know this is a very standard take in fandom so I’ll try to explain why I disagree. I appreciate you asking politely Anon and I’m hoping this doesn’t come across as too annoyed or anything - like I’m annoyed by the discourse in general lol, not by you specifically.

In my experience in online fandom the most female character bashing I’ve seen, and the most vicious, has come from fans of rival het ships, and regardless I don’t particularly consider “bashing” fictional characters to be much of an issue. The problem is when people do so in offensive ways (eg “she’s a slut” or w/e lol), and then the issue is people believing and saying offensive shit, not people hating fictional characters, and the focus should be on general awareness of what misogyny (among other oppressions) is and how to avoid perpetuating it in all areas of life, and not on declaring groups of fans problematic depending on which fictional characters they do or don’t like.

And sure, some majority m/m fans do bash female characters, and some do it in offensive ways, but I don’t think it’s at a rate higher than other het fans, or even f/f fans in the few fandoms with rival f/f ships ime, so it bugs me that people act like it’s an m/m fangirl thing.

I also think fandom discourse wildly misuses the term “fetishizing.” Fetishizing, in yk oppressor/oppressed contexts, means to reduce someone down to a single aspect of their being in a way that dehumanizes them. And like 99% of fanfic does the opposite, shipping is all about being invested in and exploring characters as people (or trying to, bc lbr it’s amateur fiction and writing fully fleshed out 3 dimensional people is a skill that amateurs can’t necessarily be expected to have perfected, which is a big reason discourse focusing so hard on problematic fanfiction is a waste of time lol). Someone who isn’t a gay/bi man getting turned on by imagining 2 dudes fucking and writing a story about it isn’t automatically fetishizatizing gay men, even if it’s a straight woman doing it, even if it’s 2k words of sex written to turn readers on.

Fetishization doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with sex - it can, but it can also be sexless. For instance, a gay character showing up in one episode of a sitcom to make limp wrist jokes, or a gay character showing up in one episode of a drama to die of aids and make you sad, is fetishization. Conversely a pwp about say Guts and Griffith fucking after a battle or something is almost guaranteed to have more care and consideration for the emotions involved and characterization, because the people who are inclined to write that are already invested in the characters as characters rather than generic gay stereotypes.

Fic writers can write offensive/homophobic/fetishizing things just like anyone else can (and having het ships as well as gay ships doesn’t make someone less likely to write homophobic things either), but the way fandom discourse reduces everything to wide generalities is less than useless imo, the key is to address actual specific behaviours, like the aformentioned “I hate X female character” vs “X female character is a slut who doesn’t deserve Y.” The former is a non-issue, the latter is a symptom of ingrained misogynistic attitudes.

Anyway ultimately I think fanfic is like, the least useful thing for media oriented discourse and activism to focus on for various reasons including the lack of reach and impact fic has, the lack of systemic quality control, the fact that fic writers aren’t pros and aren’t getting paid, the fact that fic writers aren’t pros and shouldn’t be expected to have the talent required to convey difficult subjects in completely inoffensive ways even if their personal politics are beyond reproach - because it does take straight up writing skill as well as understanding, the fact that fic writers have no industry power or influence, the fact that the vast majority of fic writers are marginalized in some way themselves (and misogyny against real women should always take precedence over misogyny against fictional women), the fact that many are just teenagers, etc

tl;dr I don’t think women preferring to ship m/m is inherently problematic, and I don’t think the current state of online discourse is equipped to even address the cases when it can be problematic lol because nuance is virtually impossible in unmoderated spaces where reblogging/tweeting divorces something from context and twitter posts and tumblr asks have a character limit and vague non-specific hot takes always get more clout and notes than carefully considered nuanced discussions and essays - and amateur unpublished writing is so unimpactful in the grand scheme of things that it barely matters anyway.

[angelmichelangelo]

idk if this is discourse or something you dont want to get into but are garrett and shane still friends??

short answer: 99% sure they’re not. and i’m saying 99% because i obviously can’t be entirely sure because. i don’t know these people irl lol but in my head im like 100% sure they’re definitely not on speaking terms right now, and haven’t been in a loooong while.

long answer? and boy, it’s a long answer: i think garrett removed himself from shane’s circle (with the exception of andrew ofc) long before the drama kicked off. i don’t really recall because i didn’t watch them at the time but i do remember seeing garrett kinda.. disappear from videos around the whole j* era .

i think garrett made a choice when he thought about who he was hanging around with and whether he needed those people in his life. considering andrew was working for shane at the time still, i imagine it would have been hard? i guess? to just be like “yeah i don’t wanna hang out anymore except you andrew but you’re here like most days anyway”

which obviously in the end when needed, andrew took off too and both garrett and andrew created their own empire without shane lmao.

looking back, i don’t think shane even liked garrett that much. as much of an “empath” that he says he is (it gives me such bad second hand embarrassment to even write that lol) he really didn’t give a fuck about garrett. and people would and probably still do, argue that that’s just their level of friendship! lightly bullying your friend but knowing the bondries as to not ever really hurt their feelings.

but shane always pushed that boundary. he was downright cruel to garrett in some instances. and it’s not just the “harry potter is lame” jokes that garrett actually mentioned kinda suck, which they do! but garrett was treated like the comic relief in the group, because in shane’s little bubble he wanted everyone to be what he wanted to be.

you had shane: the hero of the story.

ryland: the sassy back talking witty one (though ryland has the personality and the wit of a broom so that didn’t really work did it)

andrew: the sweet, middle ground, quiet one.

morgan: the clutz thats hastag relatable

and then you have: garrett. the idiot fool who bumbles around, making a scene wherever he goes and is practically babysat by everyone else.

one thing that fucking IRKS me about this is that if you watch garrett’s videos, you know he’s goofy, funny, an insanely fun person. but he’s far from being an idiot. shane couldn’t have someone else besides himself (in his own mind) being funny AND clever (again, in his own mind) so he belittled him and acted like he was a burden to have to lumber around all the time, rather than just a silly, goofy friend that would joke around a lot.

one part of a video was when they were at an airport (i think they were going to Texas) and andrew and garrett are goofing off as they put benjamin in the bag and ryland literally goes “we’re all waiting, garrett,” with this.. snarky, shameful tone. AS IF THEY HAVENT ALL EMBARRESED EACH OTHER IN PUBLIC BEFORE like UGH the whole fucking bunny video makes my blood boil i can’t even get into it it makes me too mad lmao.

so i think garrett definitely decided at some point that he didn’t want to take that kind of abuse anymore, and i definitely think andrew saw it as well - because andrew and garrett were friends way before shane came along, so to me, i feel like andrews priorities always were always with garrett, and if garrett were to leave, i think andrew knew he’d leave to, job or no job, he cared more about his friends than money and fame (looking at you shane ryland and morgan)

shane doesn’t care about his friends or his “loved ones” or any of the people around him. he cares about money and fame and numbers and attention, even if it’s the negative kind. he’d joke that he KNEW he was treating garrett like shit and he’d use that as fuel to keep going, because he knew it drew more people in. plus, i feel like shane knew how popular garrett was getting. his channel exploded and he started making videos and people LOVED him. rightly so lol. nearly half the comments were about garrett; something he said and did, and rather than be excited for his “friend” shane took his anger out on him, almost, and again this is just my opinion, but in a way.. to control garrett.

i think it’s only human to think certain things, and i wonder if garrett had any worries that all his growing success and attention was because of shane and not because of himself. i wonder if maybe, deep down, he had some kind of fear that if he left, his subs would leave too. but obviously, he took the plunge, and everyone stayed and shane’s channel went up in flames lmao

garrett is one of those youtubers i think is very genuine. whilst everyone wears a certain mask online, which is fine, i feel like garrett’s is very thinly veiled. what you see is what you get with him, and the fact that his personality was used as an emotional punching bag by people he trusted and cared about, is really awful.

and i don’t fault him for sticking around shane. we’ve all witnessed toxic friendship/relationships, and im sure a lot of people understand how HARD it is to just get up and walk away. i think garrett tried his best to help shane and make him a better person, but i think it reached his limit, and he had a talk with andrew and they made the mutual desicion to move on without the rest of them.

AND THEYRE KILLING IT TOGETHER!!! i mean, fuck morgan for trying to shift blame on them for leaving, and fuck shane for obvious reasons and fuck ryland for no other reason that i hate him with an inch of my soul GOD he’s so fucking boring to look at. where’s the flavour???

i personally do not think that the nature of their friendship is something garrett is ever going to casually mention or make a sit down video about. i think the only information we’ll get is from shane’s pov either rather snarkily through rylands podcast or if shane ever attempts to come back to youtube, he might just mention them in passing OR they’ll all eventually all break the mutual on social media and that’ll be that. i feel like shane is the kind of person that won’t outright say anything on his own channel to hurt andrew or garrett because he’ll still want to keep up his uwu soft boy personality, but my god i can practically hear the fucking snide comments they’ll make on the podcast that don’t outright namedrop them, but they’ll probably make comments about “fake friends” or some shit like that, and all the brainless shane stans will use that as an excuse to be leave nasty comments on garrett and andrew’s stuff like they already do. so i guess we’ll just have to wait and see and know that hopefully andrew and garrett are prepared for any hate they’ll no doubt be receiving once shane tries to force his way back into the circle again.

so yeah, that’s my long answer lol. i don’t know if there was a discussion between them all but i have a feeling garrett just went away and kinda faded them out, and obviously im guessing there were conversations with andrew and shane since technically he worked for him, but yeah, there’s no way they’re all good friends behind the scenes. and im so fucking fine with that because andrew and garrett were 100% the reason i used to watch shane’s videos, and i’m glad they removed themselves from such a toxic environment where they went off and found success together without needing money or fame or any drama attached.

[groundramon]

I don’t really know how to word this without immediately knowing that tumblr could accuse me of a fuckton of different buzzwords, but I’m going to try to anyways - and hopefully if any hyper-woke people find me, they’ll tell me how I should better word myself in the future instead of immediately calling me an abuse apologist or some shit.

But anyways, here’s a hot take - people of minority groups can be abusers.  Sometimes, they can abuse people for their minority status.  Sometimes, people lie about sexual assault.  Sometimes, people use their mental health or identity or race or whatever as an excuse for being a despicable human being.  How do I know?  Because I’ve had it happen to me, over and over and over.

I am: a trans, LGBT+, mentally disabled + ill, DFAB person.  I am also: a white, able-bodied fuckboy who lives in California, one of the most progressive states in the country, even in its conservative areas.  I am on both sides of the spectrum, and the times when I see minority statuses being abused are usually from the groups that I’m a minority of.

For example, I was harassed (and arguably sexually abused, however because I couldn’t find those comments that could’ve made him face legal consequences for all he’s done, I struggle to say that this is the case - additionally, I was never his target, just my art) by an autistic man online when I was younger.  It’s the reason why I can’t interact with the HT/TY/D fandom and why I won’t be seeing the third movie (keep in mind this happened right before the second movie, and I went to see that one because it legitimately interested me - this one seems heterosexual AND reminds me of my abuser’s dragon OC, which he guilt tripped me into drawing for him as his form of porn).  He ruined an entire franchise for me because he harassed me so badly.  He guilt tripped me in about how hard it was being autistic (and threw in some comments about how teens think they have it “so hard with their anxiety and depression” when “they really have no idea”, to a teenager struggling with identifying anxiety and depression - i didn’t believe that bullcrap but I did fall for his autism sob story) and convinced me to do art trades with him which were just redraws of my own stuff, and he’d repeatedly spam me and yell at me and guilt trip me to finish his work if I so much as read his note without responding.  He drained my motivation for DeviantArt along with my love of a franchise.  This man was also a serial harasser/spammer, he did this to MANY people, including other minors.  I wasn’t a specific target - honestly, I think I was pretty low on his priority list, considering he only tried to come back a few times.  The kicker?  I’m pretty sure I’m autistic, even though I had no idea back then.  At least, I sure do have a lot of symptoms of autism now that I look back.

Not good enough for you?  Okay.  How about the fact that a relative of mine tried to convince my aunt that she (my aunt, not the relative) was sexually abused by my paternal grandfather as a child, sending my aunt into a mental breakdown because she couldn’t remember anything like that and had no idea?  My aunt is the weak link in our family, she’s adopted and felt othered for it, and lived away from the rest of our family for a long time.  She recently started getting involved and just happened to be attacked by a known financial and mental abuser in our extended family right when she started getting back involved.  I’m thankful that my dad and my uncles were able to help her get a better picture of her father.  Keep in mind that I don’t have a positive image of my paternal grandfather, because he smoked and gave my dad + uncle health problems due to it - and I personally consider that an accidental form of child abuse, in a way.  But he was NOT a fucking incestual pedophile.  It infuriated me to hear that, despite never meeting him, and having a negative overall impression of him.

How about another?  My step-step-grandmother (long story) has accused my deceased uncle of being a money-hungry monster and stealing all of her rightful money after his father/her husband died.  We’re in a court case to get the inheritance we deserve from her now, but she only ever brought this up AFTER he passed away.  When informed about his dead, she bitched about how he made her loose money, and how she was struggling despite using up all of my mom’s inheritance (from her step-father AND her mother).  Because you know, that’s what you do when someone dies.  My uncle was the only uncle on my mom’s side to make it to my birthdays, his family gave my mom and I a place to stay when we ended up stranded down south due to a bad head injury my dad got (also long story) and we didn’t have time to make it back home and we didn’t want to just leave my dad there.  My uncle was probably the nicest, kindest family member I had.  His funeral was the first funeral I went to, and there were TONS of people.  He was a Christian man who lived by true Christian values, and plenty of people testified this at his funeral.  People I’d never even met before.  This old woman accused him of stealing her money (where did it go?? his wife is fucking broke now that he’s gone!), never caring enough to visit her, ect.  This old woman, who never even responded to my birthday invitations let alone came, who never made any attempt to make a mutual outreach to us.  She expected us to do all the work, and when we decided it wasn’t worth her ignoring and rejecting, we stopped.  And then she accused us of abandoning her.  This is an old woman, but she’s still an evil person - or an evil person who is now just a shell of evil, unable to even remember a time when she didn’t believe these lies that she told herself.

And don’t get me started on how this applies to ace discourse.  Heaven forbid I compare the ace/aro experience to another LGBT experience!  It’s only okay if I compare it to the straight experience (which i do btw, because i KNOW we benefit from homophobia unless we’re also sga) even though it has 99% more in common with the LGBP experience than the straight experience.  This isn’t an inclusionist vs exclusionist thing - this is just COMPARISONS.  It’s like saying murkrow looks like a crow - like yeah, no shit sherlock!! doesn’t mean murkrow is just the same as a real life fucking crow!!!  And god, haven forbid you talk about real aphobia and how it affects real aspec people.  Immediately every allo in the area will jump on you about how that’s just misogyny and rape culture and blah blah blah.  Then what about when it happens to men?  What about when it happens to nonbinary people?  What about when it has literally nothing to do with gender or being forced to have sex, and is just a constant feeling of being othered and excluded?  Forgotten and not believed?  Constantly doubted that your experience is real?  And then to be told that the very bigotry you suffered was just a part of a bigger issue, instead of specifically about a part of your identity....bullshit.  There IS overlap in certain social issues.  Race affects how homophobia and transphobia affects a person deeply.  Same with misogyny and race.  So of course there’s overlap.  But to say that aphobia doesn’t exist, I’m sorry - I don’t say this lightly, but that’s unconscious gaslighting. (there is no better term than that - believe me, I looked.  My point is that I don’t believe it’s intentional, but LGBP people, trans or not - you NEED to stop doing this.  You ARE unconciously gaslighting aces and aros.  This is not anecdotal, there are statistics and you refuse to believe them, despite pointing at just as credible statistics to prove your own points.  You say we can’t use anecdotal evidence, but then go on to use it yourself.  Intentional or not, you need to quit it.)

I really don’t want to talk about how race and this stuff intertwine because I really don’t have any experience with that as a white person.  All I know is that groups of POC can be bigoted towards other groups of POC, and they can even be bigoted towards people of their own race.

Which leads me to the most important part of this post: The fact that minorities can abuse majority groups, even if its on the basis of their minority group, does NOT mean that minority groups are not oppressed.

Just because a few women lie about being raped, doesn’t mean that all women who say they were raped are lying.  Just because an autistic person abused me, doesn’t mean that all autistic/mentally disabled people and mentally ill people are scary.  Just because aphobia is real doesn’t mean that non-SGA aces and aros don’t benefit from homophobia to a certain degree.  Just because homophobia kills doesn’t mean that aphobia isn’t just as real.  Just because the LGBT community has a habit of gaslighting victims of aphobia doesn’t mean that the LGBT community oppresses the aspec community.  Just because POC can discriminate against or even hold systemic power over another POC doesn’t mean that they aren’t both oppressed by white people.

Abuse is not oppression.  Oppression is a repeated, prolonged offense of cruel and unjust control.  None of my anecdotals “prove” that oppression for these groups isn’t real.  Because I’m part of these groups, and it’s my opinion that it IS real.  But my anecdotals are also still valid.  It is not problematic to point out when someone uses their minority status to abuse and manipulate others.  It is not problematic to call bigoted, cruel mentally disabled people problematic for being manipulative and abusive.  Their disability is not an excuse.  Their identity is not an excuse.  Their experience may be a reason, but not an excuse.  But neither is your experience.  Let people talk about their individual experiences AND the wider issues of oppression as a whole.  They don’t have to be opposite faces of the same coin, and it’s sad that we act like they do.

[mercuryismygenius]

Book Review: ‘How Bad Writing Destroyed the World’

How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis by Adam Weiner

Despite the subtitle, Weiner only focuses explicitly on Rand in two chapters, the Introduction and the final chapter. The rest of the book is dedicated to the publication and social fallout of an 1863 Russian novel, What Is to Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

What Is to Be Done? is probably one of the most influential novels we have never heard of.

(Putin preening around shirtless on a fucking horse makes so much more sense to me now.)

First, a few caveats: One, this book is a literary analysis. Yes, it gets political, but Weiner is a literature professor, and the book focuses on Russian writers, including Dostoevsky and Nabokov.

Two, there is no glossary of terms and people. I often found myself looking back through previous chapters trying to remember who was who and why it mattered.

Nonetheless, any effort is worth it for the discussion of the power of literature and ideas (in this case, a damaging power). Turns out, Ayn Rand is the modern heir of Chernyshevsky’s legacy, for, “with the exception of Rand’s substitution of capitalism for socialism, her objectivism is precisely the same as Chernyshevsky’s rational egoism” (200).

How Bad Writing Destroyed the World moves chronologically, actually starting with Dostoevsky, his early style, and his experiences with the Petrashevsky Circle, a group Lenin has cited as the progenitor of Russian socialist movements (31). Specifically, Dostoevsky met Nikolai Speshnev, a radical revolutionary who was “rationally calculating, philosophically enlightened, politically uncompromising, and prepared for action” (31-32)---and identified by Weiner as “a possible historical prototype for [Chernyshevsky’s] uncompromising revolutionary superman, the ‘rigorist’ Rakhmetov” (36).

As I said, this book is a literary analysis.

Weiner touches base with Dostoevsky in several other chapters, but in Chapter 2, “‘The most atrocious work of Russian literature’,” he summarizes What Is to Be Done? The chapter heading comes from the reaction of a contemporary critic---a reaction that seemed to be the general consensus at the time, except for the fanatics who latched onto the book as a bible. For some background, here is the Wikipedia entry on What Is to Be Done?, although Weiner is more thorough. He organizes his summary around four Platonic dreams the character Vera Pavlovna has, which represent her ascending Socialist enlightenment. Yet, despite the diametrically opposed positions of socialism and capitalism, in Chernyshevsky we can see Rand quite clearly.

For example, in What is to Be Done? Vera Pavlovna, in her quest for both independence and Socialism, forms a collective of seamstresses---a working girl sorority, so to speak---and “because the interest of each seamstress coincides with the interests of the collective, the business is successful” (45). Naturally, when fans tried to replicate these collectives, their businesses failed, because reality is complex and generally full of humans.

Too bad Objectivists don’t know this history. In Weiner’s Introduction, he cites an excerpt from Alan Greenspan’s testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in which Greenspan admits “’I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms’” (13). No kidding.

Another parallel is how much characters talk, philosophize, navel-gaze, and generally congratulate themselves on their rationality and selfishness, both of which lead to ‘correct’ political views. Weiner notes that Chernyshevsky’s characters 

attach ‘great importance’ to rejecting certain desires as false and fantastical while retaining others as authentic, because Chernyshevsky’s rational egoism requires people to act on their desires, but only those desires that are underwritten by logic, and only that logic which leads to socialism (51).

Change Socialism to Capitalism, and it’s Atlas Shrugged. More to the point, “the essential core of both Chernyshevsky’s and Rand’s thought is not socialism or capitalism but the tyrannical will to control humanity and shape its destiny” (9).

Basically, Weiner successfully makes his case about Ayn Rand and Nikolai Chernyshevsky---in only three chapters (the Introduction, Chapter 2, and Chapter 8).

Not that the rest of the book is filler. As stated above, Weiner touches base with Dostoevsky, outlining his attempts to counter Chernyshevsky via deconstruction, and later he cites Nabokov’s scathing, parodical dismantling of both Chernyshevsky and Dostoevsky.

Additionally, Weiner traces the revolutionary activities of Russian socialists, the most significant being Sergei Nechaev, a terrorist and conman, whose basic philosophy was none other than Chernyshevsky’s Rakhmetov, “who lives solely for the success of the revolutionary cause” (99). Of course, a man like Nechaev could never be content merely imitating a prototype, and had to publish his own writings. “The Catechism of a Revolutionary” is probably Nechaev’s most well-known work, and in it he outlines his revolutionary ideal [summarized by Weiner]: 

He has cut himself off from the civil order, from the world of education, from the sciences, from conventional morality, from all human society. His only passion is hatred of the existing order and the only science he practices is the merciless science of destruction (109). 

Weiner also notes that the work “reeks with the revolutionary methodology of Nikolai Speshnev: infiltration, conspiracy, and blackmail” (99).

Not only do these chapters discussing “revolutionary” development in Russia evoke current Russian practices, but also much of contemporary political discourse in general, with Weiner noting that “the tyrannical urge in Lenin to shout down any opposition by means of generalization, simplification, or whatever device he deems expedient results in the heaping up of insults and slogans in place of logic” (164).

Sound familiar?

The thread connecting these late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian socialists to mid-to-late-twentieth- and early twenty-first-century American capitalism is Ayn Rand.

Which is not to dismiss or ignore all the other factors of U.S. sociopolitical dynamics, but Rand has had an inordinate influence on the Right in the U.S., and Weiner traces a continuous ideology.

And yes, living up to his subtitle, Weiner gives a few revealing tidbits about Rand and her worldview.

Her admiration for a serial killer, for one. “Infatuation” is the word Weiner uses, and the serial killer was William Edward Hickman, on trial in 1928, “soon after Rand’s arrival in the United States.”

Rand was so taken by Hickman’s story that she used him as the prototype for the hero of a novel she never wrote that she wanted to call The Little Street. In her notebooks, Rand wrote with loathing about the “mob” that had formed around Hickman and reasoned that the public outcry was a reaction to his “daring challenge to society.” Hickman was “one of these rare, free, clear spirits” whom the mob cannot control. She valued his “remorselessness,” “strength,” “his calm, superior, indifferent, disdainful countenance,” and “his immense, explicit egoism” (196-7)

All of Weiner’s citations come from The Journals of Ayn Rand, and there is no indication whatsoever that she ever had a change of heart.

On a brief sidenote (and for disclosure purposes), I have only ever been able to get through one of Rand’s books, Anthem, which is more of a novella. It’s certainly not a tome like Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. As a surface read, it’s not that bad, belonging to the same basic dystopias of Orwell’s 1984, or Zamyatin’s We. In Anthem, the future is run by a government that’s basically the bastard child of socialism and communism combined, and citizens are as much a hive mind as humans can possibly be, using the pronoun “we” instead of “I.” One man escapes all this. 

We and 1984 are each far superior both in social commentary and in style.

When I first read Anthem, I thought it was twice as long as it needed to be. Narratively speaking, it is---the protagonist regains his sense of individuality halfway through, reclaiming the word “I” and thus the concept of individuality. Rand just keeps going though. Because the protagonist needs to find the sacred and forbidden word “ego.” Which is Latin for “I.” Hence the ending seeming redundant to me when I initially read it. “Ego” as the base for “egoism,” however, adds another level to Anthem, and its length makes sense. 

Rand does not care about the individual. She cares about the bully. Having a sense of self (“I”) is not enough. One’s sense of self must be predicated on having one’s boot on someone else’s neck (egoism). So yeah, simply using the word “I” to refer to himself after an upbringing in a collective doesn’t suffice. The protagonist only arrives when he finds his Ego.

Thanks for the literary insight, William Edward Hickman. Of course, “not one word did Rand write about the actual victim of Hickman’s crime, Marion Parker [the 12-yr-old for whose murder Hickman was specifically on trial]” (197).

Weiner further dissects Rand’s hypocrisy, her “tone deafness” (196), her inability to adhere to her own dictate to “check your premises,” and an attitude that at best can be described as myopic. Specious and delusional might also apply. Essentially, Rand’s approach is to begin with her desired conclusion and contort her premises to match---the exact opposite of what she claimed to value: rationality. 

Weiner briefly touches on a particularly emblematic example: the Prometheus myth. Most of us know this one. The gods controlled fire, Prometheus stole it, gave it to mortals, and Zeus punished Prometheus by binding Prometheus to a rock and having an eagle tear out his liver each day.

However, in Atlas Shrugged, 

the Promethean Galt climbed a mountain in order to discover “the fountain of youth,” which he intended to bring down to men [Rand 178]. Instead, “after centuries of being torn by vultures in payment for having brought to men the fire of the gods, he broke his chains and he withdrew his fire---until the day when men withdraw their vultures” [Rand 517]. Rand amusingly substitutes a collectivist vulture for the standard eagle in her version of the myth of Prometheus (207).

Rand’s version of the myth is either an intentional manipulation, or incompetent literary understanding. She removes all context, snatches the idea of the unfairly-punished-for-doing-something-beneficial character, and arranges her players according to who she wants her audience to label the hero, and who the villain. 

This is just bad writing---it’s advertisement writing---propaganda writing. It’s telling the audience what to think. But as Rand intends Atlas Shrugged as a piece of propaganda, we’ll forego assessing her narrative abilities.

That still leaves the philosophical problems. First, the notion that the fire naturally belonged to Prometheus. It didn’t. He didn’t create it, invent it, develop it, or even assemble it---he stole it. We love him for it---he’s our cultural hero---but in the face of Rand’s twisted telling, we must acknowledge that it is not “his fire.”

Second, as an analogy, the Prometheus myth fails Rand’s purposes because the parts don’t align. Here’s the story again: The gods (those in power) controlled fire, Prometheus (the outlier/equalizer/anti-1%) stole it, gave it to mortals (society at large), and Zeus (chief of the ‘people who count’/ the 1%) punished Prometheus by binding Prometheus to a rock and having an eagle (Zeus’s symbol) tear out his liver each day. 

Mortals don’t punish Prometheus, Zeus does. Those in power hated that someone leveled the playing field, even a tad; thus, Rand’s designated heroes are the Zeus’s, withholding their benedictions until mortals properly worship them. She doesn’t have a Prometheus figure in her works---she can’t---because Prometheus, who acted selflessly, is antithetical to Objectivism.

Checking one’s premises includes analyzing analogies to make sure said analogy applies to the situation. But Rand, and her followers, have a tenuous grasp on actual logic and rationality. Her followers do, however, have a habit of similar distortions, i.e. mangling the point.

On a final note, Weiner discusses fan interactions with Rand’s works, much as he did with What is to Be Done? And this is another reason I recommend this book. We---especially us bibliophiles and story-lovers, those of us with positive fandom experiences, and those of us working in books or movies or any storytelling medium---we often wax philosophic on the power of stories. The pen being mightier and all that. 

We talk less about detrimental effects. We try when it comes to hate speech (and defining what hate speech is); it might come up with the Twilight series, or its derivative, Fifty Shades of Grey. I mean, what do these stories say about relationship goals, and is that really why people read them? But actually acknowledging that stories can be more than stories, and that textual analysis is a skill many haven’t developed to a usable degree---that’s not a favored topic.

(I have many many many thoughts on this; suffice it for now to merely point out that textual analysis is not the same thing as reading for fun, though you can do both (even to the same story).)

But how far, really, can bad books inculcate harmful ideas into a cultural subconscious? According to Weiner,

In an essay entitled “The Psycho-Epistemology of Art” Rand boasts that many fans of The Fountainhead had reported to her that they had resolved dilemmas in their own lives by asking, “What would Roark do in this situation?”--whereupon “faster than their mind could identify the proper application of all the complex principles involved, the image of Roark gave them the answer.” This is the precise method of brainwashing through idolatry that I have been describing in this book: it works by switching off critical thinking in order to facilitate identification with an idol. In another essay on the nature of fiction Rand argues that a rational person reads a novel in order to find there “an image in whose likeness he will reshape the world and himself. Art gives him that image; it gives him the experience of seeing the full, immediate, concrete reality of his distant goals” [Rand, “Art and Sense of Life”]. This is precisely how a human being yields up his volition, hollows out his personality, and allows himself to become a “Manchurian Candidate,” triggered to perform whatever action is required. Roark is a terrorist who blows up a huge building in New York City, so a reader who asks, “What would Roark do?” and then allows Roark’s image to guide his actions might do just about anything (199-200).

The idea that art exists only on the sociopolitical level is hardly unique to Rand. In Dostoevsky’s early career, he had butted heads with the critic Belinksy about the nature and purpose of art (as does every society). Dostoevsky claimed that art=art and that it required no agenda; “the one thing that Belinsky demanded of artists, however, was the pursuit of political and social ideas of a particular tendency” (28). In the Soviet Union, art was for the State---to exult and exonerate its “particular tendencies.” 

To define art as having a singular purpose limits expression---limits thought and diversity of voices---and thus acts as a form of censorship. It’s the defining characteristic of propaganda, which, by limiting the function of art, petrifies its purpose, and limits the number of interpretations to ONE. Art, however, exists on multiple levels---the political, the personal, the communal; as unfettered expressions of the imagination, or as observations of the real world. And there are multiple ways to interact with art. Meanings may not be absolutely infinite, but they are varied and often fluid. 

The degree to which Rand’s followers clung to the “distant goals” of her fictions as irrefutable reality came to disastrous conclusion---one foreseeable by critics of Rand---in the financial crisis heralded by Alan Greenspan. A crap economy is not the only danger, however.

. . . Greenspan’s ignorance, dogmatism, and hubris blinded him to material proofs that invalidated his worldview. That is what you would expect from an ideologue. But now let us imagine a sociopath’s encounter with objectivism, which tells him that his relentless, amoral pursuit of material or political gain is the very thing that makes him better than the people he tramples to get to the top. Presumably such a reader of Ayn Rand’s novel does not probe deeply into this philosophy. He does not wince at Rand’s stylistic lapses. Nor does he perform “due diligence” on the ideas presented. He plunders what he needs from them and goes back to work with the pleasant new belief that his rapaciousness has solid intellectual and even moral foundations. To some this justification of greed must be irresistible (17-8).

The idea of “due diligence” is most striking. Skills such as reading comprehension and information literacy have a reputation as belonging to stuffy librarians or pedantic snobs. But the inability to distinguish between the subjective and the objective is dangerous. Its benign form is flame wars. In its more insidious form, as Weiner aptly shows with Ayn Rand, a story can be wielded as an instrument of destabilization, or just generic oppression. Because I’m pretty sure some of those sociopaths are in power right now, consulting Rand wherever they’re not cherry-picking Bible verses.

I used the phrase “on a final note” rather a long ways up there. And then I just kept going, which is really what this book does. As focused as it is on a few specific Russian writers of a specific era and Ayn Rand’s probably-unintentional debt to them, it makes you think. It made me think. On literature, on history, on politics and social movements, on propaganda, and very much on the necessity of information literacy (because I don’t believe in banning books).

I just hope that if somehow he comes out with a second edition, he includes a damn glossary.

[un-pearable]

@iratusmus

i am both very petty and interested in sharing, ty for asking! i promise this is the most fandom wank-y i will ever be (i have SO many opinions on this now that im not actively involved after like. two years of being so. so my apologies this is a Lot)

l*nked *niverse is a zelda fancomic with the premise of all the different versions of link meeting, a concept that has both been done multiple times and is incredibly predictable given the state of. everything about entertainment rn. this is just one example that got particularly popular, bc the artist is talented as hell and the character dynamics as they introduced them are very fun! intriguing possibilities for storytelling, distinct enough characterizations that were still as accurate to each link's respective canon as it could be, etc. so it understandably has a pretty big following and a crap ton of fic, as the comic updates pretty slowly (given it is completely draw written and everything by a single artist)

so it has a very robust and active fandom! this fandom is largely centered on a single very large discord server. while a lot of this server is very positive, and a fun environment for developing head canons, entire AUs, long running stories, etc. this is also where a lot of predictable fandom problems come in:

a) in a series that has a lot of canon (the comic itself + 9 separate main characters, each with their own game or games and supporting casts) that few people actually engage with (most are relatively hard to find, most fans are younger and have only played one or two, etc), polarization over specific characters is RIFE. thus, discourse out the wazoo

b) splintering off into smaller more specialized servers to even have a chance of interacting one-on-one ended up being more and more necessary as the series blew up after it started posting on insta.

c) insulated, centralized communities encourages a lot of BNF mindset, with small groups of individuals "controlling" attitudes about characters, tropes, relationships, etc. mods understandably have a lot of control. they also set the rules for the server, and this leads to the biggest conflict, largely over shipping and "abuse of mod power"

as the server grew, people got pissed easily, and started rival servers to "solve" these issues. the main server was fucking huge, discourse was common, and niche interpersonal conflicts blew up quickly. during the middle of a decently sized hiatus, three or so big artists got pissed at the mods for some reason, and started their own

this is the server (fluctuating around 200-300 people big, compared to the main’s thousands) I ended up moderating on mainly bc I was friends with one of the lesser mods and one of the only people to actually apply, and i did so bc: only one of these original founders actually knew how to mod! one was chronically inactive, another was incredibly easily offended and extremely aggressive in most interactions. even between moderators. pretty early on they recruited some others to help, and they did 99% of moderating. the next biggest issue with this well meaning mess (most of the members had been invested with the series for longer and really wanted to see it succeed now that the main had been so overfilled) was the ruleset.

LU is a series about 9 of the same person. the creator has a staunch anti-shipping policy with her characters. this is completely understandable! most people were fine with this, and anyone who wasn't ditched for another different-links-meet au. theres like seven million now its whatever. in the case of this particular spin off server, the main issue arose with ravio and shadow link

ravio is a character in link between worlds who is explicitly link's counterpart in another dimension. not the same person, but his narrative counterpart, and plays a large role in the story as one of link's main companions for the game. so people ship them. a lot.

does ravio count as a link? is shipping him with his link (legend) count as violating her rule (given he HAS appeared in the comic, though without a redesign)? this link ALSO has a love interest in a different game, so there is an extremely popular ot3 for all three of them.

shadow link is from the four swords manga and is explicitly the evil version of that link. this link also splits into four people. its complicated. people ship shadow with the purple link (vio) bc vio goes undercover as evil for a bit to trick him.

does shadow count as a link? is it ethical to ship literal parts of the same person? (does this matter? does he show up? was the multiple parts of that link even canon in the comic at that time? no. we just love to fight and also there were more than a few homophobic people in the fandom.)

the original server had no rules about shipping beyond not between the main 9 and no explicit sexual content. this new server decided to die not only on the hill of no shipping at all but in their rules, which only got posted after they shared the link everywhere and got people to join, said polyamory was both illegal and immoral.

this is what said aggressive mod was extremely fucking vocal about. none of the lesser mods (anyone who wasn't an original founder) had agreed to this! none of the lesser mods had any control over this! they eventually repealed those rules after immense backlash. they would continue to implement random, arbitrary rules, until the lesser mods wised up and got more agency given they were basically running the entire server. the server's entire life was a cycle of the lesser mods ensuring day to day things went well, and then a founder mod picking fights, and then the lesser mods being abandoned for another month to pick up the pieces. I had to talk someone three times my age down from a permanent ban for someone sarcastically saying "yes mom" in response to a (needlessly aggressive) correction on what channel they should be in

the members themselves were extremely nice!! 99% of people involved were delightful and the filter of being a step removed from the main server meant you got fewer bots and trolls, and more and more people were genuinely invested in both canon accuracy (as much as you can get with this kind of thing) and encouraging a welcoming environment for new creators. it was a fucking nightmare to moderate. multiple times upper mods threatened to delete the server without telling anyone. multiple times they quit without notice, then reappeared to fuck stuff up behind the scenes

when all the poly and shipping stuff went down, bc the upper mods were all extremely close friends, they immediately shut down any criticism and refused to compromise. every single negative comment was treated the exact same way.

i thankfully ditched for sonic fandom right before the bomb finally went off, but the moderation team was already so much of a revolving door literally no one was surprised when it collapsed. lower mods finally stood up to the upper mods, upper mod got pissed, miscommunication on all sides, and the server was unceremoniously deleted. the people who were actually involved in the community started a new one, i started reading archie, and here i am with strong opinions and mutuals left over from a fandom who only ever shows up on my dash now in callout posts and long-suffering fandom veterans (… of the like 4 years it’s existed) exhaustedly explaining why so much of the current fanfic characterization is ridiculously flanderized.

anyway. this is very long winded and whiny. it’s a fine fandom. it thinks it’s much bigger than it is. it rehashes the same discourse every few weeks and desperately needs to chill. half the cast is routinely demonized in a roulette wheel of nonsense discourse. it’s also where i first started getting involved in internet fandom and doing art. i still love and respect tons of my old friends from it but jesus was it an Environment.

i treat all my interests like the repressed middle schooler i was - desperately hiding them and cringing whenever someone even insinuates they know i enjoy it while shamefully consuming content about it constantly in private - for about a month before i make a sharp 180 and become The most obnoxious about the subject and tell every single person in my life about it incessantly. this cycle repeats every single time

[5pinbowler]

answer all of them!!!!💕🥰🌸💕

this is cruel but im up for the challenge

1: the list varies too often to try and figure them all out 2. Obama 3. i do not have any books close enough to do  this 4. food or being able to walk again 5. “its like one of those live laugh love posters but like dark and twisty” 6. with 7. idk, nothing i do really qualifies as a talent i think 8. this one is dumb 9. no 10. literally while im writing this 11. no 12. yes, who didnt as a kid 13. atheist 14. under normal circumstances, walking somewhere 15. behind  16. Queen 17. fuck if i know 18. sometimes, but not hugely 19. something about me thats not easily found by people i know, i wanted to keep this secret 20. weakness; my brain, strength; my brain 21. Lucy Hale 22. no 23. either internalize it or i just rant later to someone else now 24. no 25. video chatting, dont call me 26. meh 27. nails on a chalkboard, rain 28. how would my 2020 had gone if i didnt get sick 29. not really, and yes 30. right, my couch, left also the couch 31. sour patch kids 32. too vague and nothing really stands out 33. west coast best coast 34. Charli XCX 35. finding good food 36. making something to perceived by others 37. i believe luck is an element you cant control, but you can put yourself into situations to get lucky 38. cool, its night time 39. 12:46am as of this question 40. dont drive yet 41. oryx and crake probably cover to cover 42. yes 43. yes 44. without remorse 45. injury? pulled a muscle in my back, that fucked everything 46. maybe as a child? 47. getting my damn leg working again and then being healthier overall 48. straight 49. yes 50. meh 51. yes 52. cancer 53. yes lol i do both saving and spending money 54. timmies 55. both have their merits 56. no 57. 2 58. no 59. hospital 60. my pink sweater that im wearing 61. yes 62. quokka 63. my wit and humour 64. theres a few scattered across canada 65. thats too much work 66. whole lotta english/european 67. probably watching a movie 68. morningstar 69. yea? 70. yes 71.  save the dog, i can find a new job 72. a) no, already spent like a year with cancer and loads of people didnt know b) enjoy them how i want to c) maybe closer to but i dont think so 73. trust 74. theres a few probably thatll do it, depending on the day 75. 1278 76. chemistry 77. gel with me 78. yes 79. summer 2019 i decided to drink a lot more water 80. 9 81. “i told you i was sick” 82.  Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia; the irony of it being the fear of long words makes me happy 83. the band Heart 84. idk theres a few i know but i dont remember them at the moment 85. Discourse is dead by Architects 86. Red 87. a default one, a sunrise/sunset over a dark forest with an illuminated tent 88. just one person? any anti masker here being stupid 89. “are you okay?” lol 90. leave the room?  91. teleportation 92. cant say any 30 minute period stands out? 93. elementary school 94. music celebrity? probably charli xcx idk 95. australia 96. no 97. dont think so 98. yes 99. be nice, dont be stupid, consider other peoples opinions and experiences, learn to shut up

done! this was a pain in the ass but i enjoyed it, lets not do it again. if you want the questions its the most recently reblogged one AFTER this post

[elevanetheirin]

Queue the hate anon’s and reblogs.

Ok, here’s how I see the Chantry explosion in Kirkwall, at least the first time I played DA2. Keep in mind that I went pro mage and was SOOOO pissed at the beginning of DA:I because it appeared that “the Inquisition of Old” was actually all about oppressing mages again and I was like WTF all that work and now you’re saying the mages SHOULD be hunted and shit?

Anyway. The rando blood mages in Kirkwall aside from Decimus are predominantly from a specific rogue order or wackos. Meaning 99% of the mages who are SUPPOSED to be in Kirkwall are just your typical mage. 

Meredith and the Templar order were already out of order and extreme on their treatment of mages even before the Deep Roads expedition, the idol and further in just brought it all to a head. Even if the Chantry rejected Alrik’s idea, they continued to allow Alrik to be a Templar in a city with a Knight-Commander who despised mages. If you side with Meredith she will tell you the story of her sister and how her sister accidentally set their house on fire or something and killed her family, therefore ALL mages are a threat even if they don’t know it. A common belief in Thedas. Karas is out looking for the Starkhaven mages and he wants to kill them because they DARED to attempt to leave. Even though HE doesn’t know about Decimus. There are Templars through out Meredith’s command who are deciding that anyone who is kind to a mage should be put to death. The whole city is freaking insane and on top of that you have the mages Leliana says are a rogue off shoot of one of the fraternities .

Meanwhile you have Grand Cleric Elthina, who isn’t just in charge of Kirkwall but as the codex states is in charge of a region/district as a Grand Cleric and is just under the Divine in chain of command. She’s doing NOTHING. Absolutely nothing to help ease the tension with the mages and the Templars. She’s standing around waiting for the Maker to decide, but she’s supposed to be the Maker’s supposed chosen and speaks for the Maker. So her choice is to let Meredith go too far, which she admits she’s too harsh, but that Orsino isn’t helping matters with his vocal-ness.

In Kirkwall, Anders/Justice is right. There is no compromise. We spent like 6 years in Kirkwall waiting for someone to step in and do SOMETHING. Meredith has now gone from a let the Templars do what ever they like to mages because it’s what they deserve to ruling the entire city and being even MORE insane since the idol was added to her sword. 

When Anders blew up the Chantry, I am not going to lie, I fucking Cheered. Yes, people died, but you know what? People were dying all over Kirkwall because of the treatment of the mages and ANYONE they knew or loved. Refugees in Darktown were starving while the Chantry and the city did nothing but continue to harbor hate and discourse between the refuges and the citizens of Kirkwall. 6 years in and you’re still called a Dog Lord. The Templar Order was shit in Kirkwall, the person who was supposed to be in control of the Templar Order based on Chantry rule (Elthina) was doing fuck all and the mages were all being punished. In Act 3 if you listen in the Gallows, Templars and Tranquil talk about how Meredith has called to Val Royeaux for the Right of Annulment. LONG before Anders blew up the Chantry. She was already planning to Annul the Circle because of things mages OUTSIDE the Chantry were doing. She wasn’t even worried about punishing the Templars for their attempt to oust her, other than firing them but the mages, the mages had to die.

The whole while Elthina is refusing to act, she’s refusing to even contact the Divine and tell her the truth. Elthina asks you to LIE to Leliana so there won’t be an exalted march, but she doesn’t tell you to mention that Meredith is at fault. Even in DAI Cassandra states that while there were issues in Kirkwall the Knight-Commander’s actions brought it to a head. 

So fucking yes I agree with Anders. All the rest of Thedas aside, Kirkwall was a fucked up city with fucked up rulers and fucked up Chantry personnel. It’s a damn shame that people within the city died, but let’s be honest, why were those lives so much more important than the lives of the Mages in the Circle? Children are there too, and Mage refugees within the Circle from at least 2 other Circles. If someone had DONE something it would be a different story but NOTHING was being done. The deaths of those didn’t out weigh the deaths that were coming even if Anders hadn’t blown up the Chantry. Meredith had already...called..for..the..right of annulment. The Chantry explosions was an excuse to move ahead without waiting for the approval of Val Royueax the fact that she chooses to annul the circle even if you kill Anders, and even if you side with her only proves she was looking for a reason to do so and the Templars all go along with it until she wants to kill the Champion, not because she wants to kill MAGES but because she wants to kill ONE SINGLE PERSON named Hawke. (Cullen refuses to kill the mages if you side with the Templars but only once he issues the command to NOT kill the mages to the Templars stand down. Not a single other Templar questions the murder of innocent mages simply because the Knight-Commander says they should)

That’s all...

again...queue the hate  

*note even though I just played I can’t remember exactly how many years from the time you get to Kirkwall until the end of the game, 6yrs was an estimation I do not need it to be corrected. Thank you*

[the-melting-world]

This is exactly why I generally feel deadened by discourse on this stuff. I don’t know who needs to hear this but 99 percent of the diversity content that is made is made for white audiences. poc characters are designed with the intention of making white ppl feel good, feel comfortable, feel whatever. It’s because that’s the largest, richest demographic. So it’s naturally the target demographic and who they are trying to sell/cater to. Young white women to be exact. For years I’ve written serialized fantasy-romance fiction on small, but sustainable platforms where they pretty much tell you this to your face. Like ‘heyyy, we really love your stuff. Really it’s amazing. Rah rah diversity. But the bottom line is, This is who we’re trying to sell to. So if you can nip and tuck this and that to make it more palatable for them… We’ll actually consider sponsoring/generating more hype for your content!’

This is also why poc are often designed with unnaturally colored hair and eyes. It’s dare I say why there are No afro-coded characters in the arcana – a game that’s supposedly the most diverse in the app store. And why many poc characters can be interpreted as racially ambiguous. It’s why we see the same narratives/tropes show up again and again for poc depending on the group. It’s why whenever you read or watch something created by a poc or own voices, the poc characters are usually portrayed Vastly Different than something made by a white company. You can Feel the Difference. And if that difference makes you uncomfortable or you simply experience a feeling of disconnection or awkwardness, Honey it’s because poc voices, lives, experiences are Not Normalized yet. It’s because poc characters are almost never made with who they originate from in mind. They are made to attract white audiences and make money. 

And this is also why it’s so fucking humiliating and demoralizing when nix hydra makes announcements promising that they will hire more poc staff. Like bitch please. As if own voice creators are like this endangered species that are so hard to get a hold of. Motherfucker Look At Us we’re out here. Educated and professional. Grinding. Writing, producing, drawing creating on these tiny ass platforms. Trying to get in the door when we can, but that shit is barred to those that can’t make them the money they want or we have to jump a million hoops and water down our content for them to pay attention to us.

But I also want to point out that own voice creators are not just out here on our own. We are collaborating with incredible non BIPOC creators who Actually Listen To What The Fuck We Have To Say. Who strive to be sensitive to the material and the group they are representing. These companies/institutions/larger platforms do not want to let any of us in unless they can control the way we tell our stories. Because if they did, that would actually mean that they have to hold themselves accountable for how they treat their poc characters. And how they make their non-white audiences feel. Not make their decisions based on profit of the target demographic. 

Anyway I’m done. Just support own voice creators and the programs/creators we respect. Don’t expect shit from nix hydra. Keep your expectations low and don’t be surprised when the people they want to profit off of have the most sway over how fucked up the narratives become.

Time has long since passed for them to get sensitivity readers and learning how to write POC. I keep banging this drum but the fact I know they block people who have valid criticisms of them speaks volumes.

If they truly took those concerns to heart when it started coming up, there wouldn't even be questions about them having either of those things.

RIGHT???? I didn’t know they blocked people for doing stuff like that. I think the fact that they abandoned the tumblr fandom really hammers that home, though. They don’t support tumblr fan artists anymore and all of their posts are copy pasted from Instagram and Twitter. When was the last time they held an AMA fr.

I just want a nice dating sim that I can read without my own trauma being resurfaced every damn time. Just a little PSA to non BIPOC people looking to give their characters a tragic backstory: don’t use slavery or anything slavery adjacent. Please. Your story will be fine without it. There are so many other ways your character can suffer without going through bondage. 

Muriel became such an important character to me because I related a lot to his backstory. It makes me super protective when it comes to how such a narrative is handled. It sucks to see such a serious topic bastardized for the sake of sex appeal and trauma porn.