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pyr0cue · 4 months ago

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Feel free to answer privately if you'd like- i know the Longlegs discussion is getting a bit muddled up in the notes and i'm actually really interested in people's takes on the film, especially when they bring up things i'd never consider, like Longlegs being a bit of a touchy subject when it comes to being potentially transgender, or just repeated (typically negative) stereotypes in horror in general. i find this type of stuff really fascinating!

(i apologize if i get a little lengthy in this lol)

while i don't particularly see Longlegs as trans, with the idea of Buffalo Bill being in a lot of peoples heads as a reference for Longlegs can definitely nudge them in that direction, and ill never fault anyone on their interpretation on a character in a film, it's kinda what makes films art to begin with. tho i also think (personally) that it may be a bit unfair to a character who, throughout the movie, is not a Buffalo Bill character other than the fact that Bill and Longlegs are both murderers. Bill is regarded as feminine because of who he kills and why he does it, where as Longlegs is sort of guided more towards the 'epitome of evil', to the point where Longlegs isn't even killing anyone directly, because its simply his influence with Ruth, the orbs, and the dolls. the through-lines are surely there, especially in terms of the ambiguity of gender, the cliches, and the harmful stereotypes associated with them. i'm just under the impression that the more you pick at it, the more the similarities kinda dissolve- but that's just me!

not to get long winded and annoying but i perceived Longlegs as not a human at all, but a rendition of the "Beast" itself, with Ruth being the other, forming the triangle that Longlegs seemed to be obsessed with, or less satanically accurate (i guess?? im no where close to religious so hoo boy if im wrong consider me a silly goose) , maybe a portrayal of the Antichrist itself. Longlegs is unnerving to look at and listen to because its desperately trying to be something that it perceives as 'beautiful,' when in actuality, is horrifying, like a 'demon' would present itself (if we want to pretend we know what a demon would do, but its fiction, so wooooo!) there is of course issues that are going to spike up with that- the 'feminine' presentation can set off alarm bells for a demographic that's already viewed in an (unfair, of course) 'evil' sense. but i think that unfortunately makes things more interesting- Longlegs can be perceived as anything, but at the end of the day, is evil, nearly on a cosmic level because we truly dont know what the hell Longlegs even is.

i super apologize for this being long and probably obnoxious but i personally love having discussions when it comes to interpretations of films, ESPECIALLY horror. Longlegs is bringing up a lot of different ideas and concepts for things that i havent seen in quite a while and i think thats really neat.

thank you again for humoring this ask! :) one thing i will fight you on is saw 5 being picked over saw 6, how dare you! the shotgun carousel was a masterpiece!

You are all good!! I also love discussing film and don’t mind long asks at all!! In fact this made my day!!! I just didn’t want to answer rude anons lol) I…also just typed a giant response so I’m sorry for not knowing how to be concise

I actually love your analysis! It’s a lot of things I hadn’t really considered! I think my personal gripe with the movie is that I just don’t find satanic motivations in film scary, I was so much more frightened and intrigued when longlegs was just a killer with an odd obsession with the 14th, when he was untraceable by his own power and not ‘the devil.’ Longlegs wanted you to be scared of both longlegs (the killer) and supernatural aspects, and I just lost all fear of the killer when he started being all ‘hail satan,’ it immediately made the character and their motivation entirely uninteresting and overdone. I spend a lot of time watching bad horror movies just to see if the reviews were wrong (sometimes horror gems were so poorly received and written off), and maybe I’ve just seen more horror about the devil than other people and I’m too jaded about it to find longlegs refreshing or new :/

I do love the idea of longlegs not being human and I can totally see that in the film, it could recontextualize the scene where he smashes his face and his nose falls off as an inhumanity rather than like…hey look at how bad plastic surgery is, which is what it came off as to me at first!! I love that line of thought actually!!

I like the idea that longlegs is portrayed as someone who lacks a gender is less with interpretations like yours which are so fun and interesting to examine is there’s JUST as much, if not more room for bad faith interpretations about trans people. I think my gut reaction of ‘oh no this is about a trans coded killer,’ comes from, both the actor confirming they were portraying a character who doesn’t follow traditional gender roles, and also the social climate rn that is SO violent towards trans people. While I love the idea of a killer who embodies evil, I just think a lot of people are going to walk away with the image of another ‘androgynous’ devil worshipping child killer in their heads, which I think was a dangerous choice on Oz and Cage’s parts. I wish they’d gone in a different direction to show inhumanity, maybe make the killers limbs unnaturally long, get rid of the lipstick and make his lips barely visible, instead of big cheeks have bulging eyes. There’s so many directions they could’ve gone that would’ve led me to immediately think “inhuman” and not “trans stereotype,” on my first watch, but I definitely think there’s a lot of room for interpretation and I loveee the idea of longlegs potentially being infected or changed internally/externally due to close contact with evil and the devil, it’s something to think about!

Ok forgive me for yapping about things you didn’t even mention because my other issue with the film was that it dedicated like 5 whole mins to explain, in depth, exactly how the dolls and Lee’s mom work with longlegs. Like. Ok I can give them the devil worshipping, I wish they’d been more creative but that’s not the ultimate sin, I just WISH they’d let me decide how that supernatural element worked for myself, I don’t want you to explain it to me. Same with Lee’s psychic abilities: you just dedicated a pretty creepy scene to showing that Lee could perceive things others can’t, I don’t then need you to tell me ‼️she’s psychic‼️‼️don’t forget‼️just in case you forgot in the last 2 mins ‼️ our main character is a psychic. This is a movie that held my hand because they were so obsessed with what they wrote that it ruined the horror of the unknown, at least for me. But on the other hand, there’s so many plot holes and issues with the story that don’t really fit in the ‘crime horror’ genre. Idk, this movie left a lot of contradictory thoughts in my brain and I think a lot of why I didn’t like was that I’ve just seen so many better horror movies that do all the things this movie does and more. I don’t think it’s bad but…it didn’t live up to the hype. Whoever was in charge of marketing for this movie needs the biggest raise possible lol

(Ok look the traps in saw 6 are so much better but I love Hoffman and Strahms dynamic in 5 they’re so silly goofy…glass coffin…but ur so right shotgun carousel is one of the best traps in the entire franchise)

#I typed this out at work (slow day) so sorry if it’s rambled #THANK YOU FOR UR ASK THO OMG #I loveee talking film and horror and I never get to do it irl this is so fun #ask #longlegs

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youremyheaven · 6 months ago

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I agree, and yes both of my parents are hoarders lol and that was a bit of a nightmare since we already had a teeny tiny house, I shared a room with both of my sisters and we had no room to even walk on the floor lmaoo, but hey I like that we were close. Whenever I feel bad I always remember that in a tribal setting we would've been doing golden lol- close knit, very safe since if something happened to any of us we're literally right next to each other.

I'll say my Naks but it might expose me lmao because I talk about stuff on here too, but that's okay. I'm not trying to be too secretive. I'm Jyeshta Sun, Rohini Moon. I do have Mars in Uttarabhadrapada which is interesting.

My upbringing was kinda weird, kinda beautiful in some ways but by modern standards it was rough- I have a hard time saying it was bad because I know I was loved in a lot of ways too and that's more than some people can ask for. Just abusive shenanigans, but abuse can be weird because abuse isn't always as simple as someone just being terrible- like it's never okay but I mean, the same person who abuses you can also be the person who throws you birthday parties and makes them super magical and genuinely loves you. My mum in particular had a rough life herself, at 6 years old she immigrated to Australia and not long after was put into a children's home run by nuns because her mum was deemed unfit or something. She's Bharani Moon of course.

I went a bit wild when I was around 14 because I wanted to do anything I could to escape from home, so I would hang around a lot of strange men and drug people since they're aaalways out- after school, 2am, 12pm; there's always a group of a few of them around the area just messing around. So I could simply sneak out and go hang out with them lol. I guess I craved the adventure too, but most of all I just didn't want to go home. Even though we were not well off, we lived in a very wealthy area so I didn't relate to most of the kids around, I think that's part of why I gravitated towards the 'junkies'. They understood rougher conditions a bit better.

I ended up getting taken advantage of a few times which made me veer away from that scene for good, stop smoking weed, etc. but I was still looking for some way to get away from home.

I ended up in a relationship with a 30 year old man when I was 15, I stopped going to school much and started living with him. It was ghetto lol...

My mum passed away, so my sisters and I had to move states to be taken in by a relative. I was about to be 18 by that point so I had a choice on whether or not to come, but I was like bruh I'm not having my little sisters in a different state to me, that's madness- so I came along. Our relative was really strict and religious. She's lowkey rich but not the kindest person. She told me that I had to either get a job or study, or I'm not allowed to live there. I tried working and stuff but everything was just too fresh, I couldn't do much without crying :') so I was a dumb dumb and I decided maybe if I became a *dancer*, I could make money fast so that I could move out. I didn't end up doing it, I realised I'm too shy and sensitive for that kinda thing- I got on the stage for like a minute and had to get off because it was so spooky. The eyes of all the men, yikes.

Anyway, I got kicked out for the dancing thing and just in general being scandalous (by a religious rich lady's standards lol- bless her), and that's how I became homeless since I was in a new state and had nowhere to go that I knew- but it was for the best!!! I got taken in by a refuge, and they were so kind to me. I got so attached to the workers, they cared for us and treated us with such kindness.

Eventually I got a place on my own within the system. Then I met my partner & moved in with him to be freed from my ghetto life (jk I kinda love my life).

Sorry if this is very erratic, I'm never sure how to tell the story in a clear cut concise manner. I feel like it's going to take me a lifetime to sort out how I feel about a lot of things, but at the end of the day I'm not sure it even matters.

Just gotta keep making art, keep learning and loving, life is good- and people are strange, lol 💓💓

sorry for the delayyyyyed response but thank you so much for taking the time to tell me about your life's journey 🥺💛 you've lived a very tumultuous life and I'm glad you're in a more stable place now, it makes me hopeful about my own journey<3, so tysm <3

May your mom's soul rest in eternal peace 💛

"Just abusive shenanigans, but abuse can be weird because abuse isn't always as simple as someone just being terrible- like it's never okay but I mean, the same person who abuses you can also be the person who throws you birthday parties and makes them super magical and genuinely loves you."

this is the most Lunar thing ever

but also I will say as someone who has been in multiple abusive situations with very "loving" people, it can be very confusing to wrap your head around why someone can be so sweet, loving and kind one minute and tear you apart over nothing and yk...be aBusiVe the next minute. the truth is nobody irl acts like a textbook villain, the people who are capable of immense cruelty are the regular seeming people all around us. it took me so long to cut off toxic people because i always tried to justify it with "oh but they're also sooo kind and generous...." yada yada yada but its unhealthy to be around someone who is unpredictable.

My toxic ex bestie would imply I'm a whore today and then bring me muffins she baked at home tomorrow, if someone praised me in front of her, she'd stop talking to me for the rest of the day, sometimes she'd skip classes the next day and switch off her phone and i'd feel sick to my stomach with anxiety over her unpredictable behaviour and then she'd bring me earrings she bought for me??? and take me out to lunch?? crazy times but i think a lot of abusive people kind of overcompensate for their meanness with loving actions. they feel guilty so they overdo it and then the cycle continues. i've always felt bad about labelling certain experiences as "toxic" bc like you said i feel like it could be worse or that it wasn't so bad but at the end of the day "loving abuse" is still abuse.

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chuuyanakaahara · 1 year ago

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more of a general fandom pet peeve than a bsd-specific one, but it comes up a lot in the bsd fandom:

People who complain about “feminizing chuuya” when the “feminine” thing in question is him showing any emotion other than anger. Always makes me go “that’s not the progressive take you think it is”

Also if you take it a step further and wonder for 5 seconds why it’s considered progressive when you draw Yosano or Kouyou in a suit but it’s considered bad or “too feminizing” to draw chuuya in a dress. Because that’s starting to sound like the problem isn’t the fact that we’re departing from the character’s canon gender presentation but rather… something else. I’m not sure why making a female character more stereotypically masculine is cool with everyone but making a male character more stereotypically feminine is seen as some fandom sin.

I don’t even vibe with overly-feminine chuuya, I just don’t get the outrage some people seem to have towards it. Most of the fandom has forgot the concept of “it’s not for me, but it’s not morally wrong either”

i think a lot of it comes from fandom's general refusal to acknowledge that they are steeped in misogyny.

i love bungou stray dogs, don't get me wrong - but it's also sexist as hell. there is not a single arc about a female character that does not either get initiated by a male character, surrounds a male character, or is impacted by a male character. i think that @kyouka-supremacy has a lot of good posts on the matter, and i think it's a good time for everyone to acknowledge that.

but back to the main point - i think that it's typically seen as more "acceptable" to make a female character more masculine rather than a male character more feminine is because there's a lot of biases that people have without realizing it, and the notion of a male character in a dress - scandalous. that's cross-dressing. that's got something political behind it. that's steeped in things that "don't belong in fandom".

i know i'm getting a little off topic, so i'm sorry, but - yeah, that's my unarticulated thoughts on the matter. this isn't super concise and i'm sorry about that, but in general to put it out there.

#for real though - i really think you should read up on some of those posts by that user i tagged (sorry about the tag also)#again sorry this is like. incredibly not answering the ask #cherri.txt

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gunkreads · 1 year ago

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Ehhh.... debating making a big post about Oppenheimer here (I'm gonna). Seeing a lot of sentiment against the movie that I don't want to engage with. I watched it last night, which is super weird for me since I 1: don't really watch movies, 2: almost NEVER go to theaters, and 3: wasn't super really stoked about the movie in the first place.

It being a big-budget Nolan movie, I was going to be disappointed if I walked away thinking it was anything less than "good", and I wasn't disappointed. It's got a nice dense story structure while staying both complex and concise, it's pretty visually striking, it's paced very well (especially for a 3 hour movie), its actors all do a very good job convincing you that they're famous for a reason, and I now know the locations of each and every hair follicle on Cillian Murphy's face.

On the other hand, it pulled off the perversely beautiful feat previously reserved for directors like Michael Bay and Guy Ritchie of inverting the relative horniness of sex scenes and explosions. The sex scenes have, yknow, the appropriate amount of narrative weight, but they're just downright weird in ways that feel jarringly unintentional compared to the rest of the movie. The explosions, on the other hand, are downright fetishistic. It's a movie about the biggest bomb. It'd be weird if they weren't.

Lots of discourse going around about the topics the movie doesn't address--specifically the effect on the lives of the bomb victims. To this I say "yeah". It was a narrative decision to basically ignore the victims in favor of the titular character's perspective, and I believe the movie does suffer slightly for it. It definitely brings the moral values of the narrative into question. However, the complaint seems to boil down to "the movie didn't focus on what it should've focused on", which is a complaint you could go crazy making. The movie isn't a documentary. If it were, this decision would be really, really bad.

But it's not a documentary; it's a mythologization of history. Cillian Murphy's Oppenheimer isn't a person who does and says things; he's an archetypal representation of the effects of the things he does and says. It's about him. Does that mean you lose a huge amount of perspective, to the extent that the most important groups in the real-life story are spurned? Yes. Does it mean you get a narrower, more detailed focus on the main character? Yes.

Does it mean the movie calls him a good guy? Absolutely fucking not. The second thought I had leaving the theater (after coming to terms with how in love I am with Cillian Murphy) was "I don't like the way that man treats his wife!" And that's just one of his many "mistakes" that the movie tactfully blames squarely on Oppenheimer himself. He's really not presented as "the good guy all along". The narrative is very, very aware of how inexcusable "getting caught up in the moment" of designing a weapon of mass destruction is.

Probably the most interesting theme of the movie was the interplay between science, politics, and poetry, the way each is the same as the other, and the role charisma plays in all three. Fictionalized-Oppenheimer is simultaneously a scientist and a politician, which makes him a poet by necessity. I don't really know of a way to discuss this without going into pages and pages of description of the way the medium of film works, so just suffice it to say that all the media involved in a movie are pushing the interrelation between these three concepts.

Also, Matt Damon is always fucking fantastic. Sorry for being basic.

#oppenheimer #movies #departure from your irregularly scheduled programming but this movie was well made

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hehimdykesrock · 1 year ago

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Hi. I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit on your reasoning for encouraging the “Bi/Mspec Lesbian” label? I’m not a fan of the label but at least want to try to see where you’re coming from??

Bc as a lesbian who previously identified as bisexual, I honestly find the “Bi Lesbian” label invalidating to both identities. For context, I identified as Bi for quite a while bc I had been told that Lesbians don’t include nonbinary people or trans women. Which is not true!!!

Mspec sapphic people already have the terms Bi and Pan (and Queer, Sapphic, etc.)- Lesbian is the ONLY one that doesn’t include men. Adding it to the Bi label just caters to the fear of not being ‘gay enough’ that society drills into mspec sapphics. Bi women/enbys are still queer. A feminine gender preference can be described just as easily with the term Sapphic. The “Bi Lesbian” term just reinforces the harmful idea that Lesbians ‘jUsT hAvEn’T mEt ThE rIgHt GuY yEt’.

A personal anecdote: in the past few years, I have begun to actively avoid telling men I’m not close to that I’m a Lesbian. Because they frequently want to take it as a challenge. To “convert” me. The “mspec lesbian” idea actively puts Lesbians in danger by just repackaging conservative ideologies under the veil of being *progressive*. (Invalidating the validity of sapphic identities/relationships, and that ‘ALL women are attracted to men/can be converted’. I have also seen mspec lesbians say Lesbians are terfs as a justification for the new label- while the justifications themselves sound transphobic??? The jist of it usually is- ‘Lesbians are transphobic. The identity is defined by not being attracted to men- So why can they like trans women but can’t like binary trans men! Even though I totally believe that trans women are women and trans men are men!!!’)

Sorry this is long and repetitive. I wanted to try to put as much of my reasoning as I could. While I can empathize with why the bi lesbian label was created (bc I identified as Bi for a very long time + thus became heavily aware of biphobia within the LGBTQIA+ community. Even from Lesbians.)- it ultimately implies that Bisexuality isn’t considered “gay enough” and unintentionally perpetuates the idea that Lesbians can be converted into liking men.

My first thought is this sounds like some radfem Gold Star Lesbian bullshit lol. And yeah this is super long and repetitive, so I'm not gonna worry too much about the quality/conciseness of my response. Guess ill try to just take it peice by piece. I usually don't entertain shit like this but I'm bored today so let's try it.

Why do you find someone else having a different experince than you invalidating? Have you considered that this may be a personal insecurity more so than the responsibility of the people who's identities you're uncomfortable with?

The bisexual label has bever been exclusive of trans/nonbinary people, and the misconception that it is is itself transphobia in action. You say you changed your mind about that label after learning that it isn't exclusive of trans people, congratulations. That doesn't mean that everyone else using the bisexual label just hasn't come to that conclusion yet.

Lesbian has historically included bisexuals and etc. It's never been exclusive, but there have always been exclusive people in every queer community.

Do you think there is any true distinction between bisexual history and gay/lesbian history? Why can't we share words? Why are we all obsessed with being unique? Why does it matter so much if we overlap? Isn't that the point of community? To share and to be different and have overlap, to take joy in each other's experiences? Why are you so intent on defining exactly who can be what? Is the point of queerness not to acknowledge our inate and complex humanity, to say "I am unquauntifiable"? It is to me. But maybe that's philosophical, in which case my practical down-to-earth questions are: who gets to make the rules about who gets to be what, who is going to enforce these rules, and what tool of violence are you granting them to do so? Is it you? Is it the government? Is it an organized elected council of queer elders? Are the freaks who don't follow the rules exiled, shunned, imprisoned?

As for these other words we "already have" like sapphic, have you considered that we "already have" lesbian? Lesbian has historically been a word for women(etc) who are attracted to women(etc). Why did we need to make new words to separate each other? Why did we need sapphic when we already had lesbian? I don't feel that making and using new words is wrong and I support anyone who wants to use these labels, I'm just demonstrating that the logic behind that point of yours is identical when flipped. Lesbian has always been here for people like me, it was the only word we had for a long while, so who are you to rewrite its history?

Your personal experience of queerness is not universal. Words mean slightly different things to everyone, that's how languages and humans work. And that's a good thing. That's the point of all this!

The kind of people who harass and assault lesbians don't care about this shit. Are you seriously trying to blame a whole group of queers for ... queers being harassed and assaulted? The straight cis guys who are chasing and trying to "convert" lesbians already don't think of women and lesbians as people. They're not gonna sit there and debate the finer points of someone's identity before they decide if they want to assault them.

The bigots don't care about our labels. They don't even respect whether someone is actually queer or is just someone they perceive as queer. Outside online discourse like this, a faggot is a faggot is a faggot.

I do not have any patience for anyone who believes certain types of queers make the rest of us look bad. Like seriously why are we still doing this? Also you personally right now with this ask have just repackaged dangerous conservative ideologies under the veil of being *progressive*! This is some seriously puritan stuff you've said here! You say it yourself that you have been a victim of being sexually pursued against your will and that you take certain precautions in life to prevent that from happening, and then you turn right around and blame a whole demographic of people *with that exact experience* for bringing that experience onto themselves *and onto you*! What!

Literally nobody is saying all women have the ability to be attracted to men. I have literally never seen or said that apart from this very ask right here. I guess it could happen, someone could be saying that somewhere, but in that situation I'm gonna call them a misogynistic ass and consider them to not be speaking for all lesbians everywhere. And I don't think it's too much to ask that others use the same level of critical thinking skills in that situation.

And as for the people you have seen saying "all lesbians are terfs" those people are lesbophobic. Those are lesbophobes. I don't know what else you want me to say about that, I don't really see how some people being lesbophobic should impact whether or not a whole bunch of other people are morally correct (?) in using the word lesbian.

Ask rating:

4/10 for nonsense and contradiction

#beau answers #i was probably ruder than i needed to be but ya got me riled up #bi lesbian #bi lesboy #bisexaul #queer community #queer label #lesbian #queer discussions #also just realizing i totally glossed over their whole inclusion of the mspec lesbian label but i think its safe to say my feelings about b #bi lesbians carries over to my feelings about mspec lesbians #also also sorry i used the word “women(etc)” i am high and not thinking well #also also also realizing my own response is also a 4/10 for nonsense lmaooooo

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spookyserenades · 10 months ago

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I’m not much of a commenter (which is super hypocritical since receiving comments is my kryptonite lol), but I just felt like I needed to. I cannot describe how much I enjoy your work; I’m absolutely floored by the sheer word counts you dash out so consistently. Nothing ever feels choppy, and the scenes flow nicely into each other! Your funny moments are funny, your sad ones are crushing, and everything else in between is iconic.

I guess I was wondering just how you manage to stay so consistent? I write chapters that usually range between 13-17k myself, but I can’t seem to stick with a consistent updating schedule. How often do you write? Do you sit down daily and write just a little, or do you sit down occasionally but manage a few k each time?

Also, I cannot stress this enough how natural everyone’s relationship in Trouvaille is. I feel like it’s realistic that none of the boys would be immediately too keen with the mc but that they also wouldn’t stay distant forever? It felt special being able to gradually read about their developments, and I feel like once the mc gets with more of the boys eventually, it’ll be so rewarding? Idk, but I just cannot wait. The latest chapter ending scene with Jin has me so on edge; I can sense the angst from here—

Regardless, (and sorry for my rambling) I love your work!

—M

Hellooo love! I'm so happy to hear from you, thank you fro reading Trouvaille and sending me some love, I'm glad to have you here 🥺💕

Thank you for your sincere compliments, too 😭❤️ I haven't had someone mention the length of the chapters in a while-- they're big bois!! The last two chapters have been a bit shorter, but sometimes you say all that you need to without necessarily hitting the original wc estimate. I'm so happy to hear that the flow is smooth, and that you're enjoying the humorous moments (loveeee sneaking in things my mom have said before, her one-liners kill!) and I'm eeeeee you're too sweet thank you thank you 😭💕

As for consistency! I love this question, because I might have pulled the wool over your eyes. I started writing Trouvaille summer of 2022, and wrote up to Chapter 6 before I ever began posting on Tumblr. Between July 2022 - July 2023 I had chapters on "reserve" so really I'd just edit them before posting them.... Now, not so much the case. I write each chapter (since 8) each month, which admittedly can be a bit stressful, but it honestly forces me to write consistently and constantly. I think that can be a potentially good thing for writers who struggle to actually put pen to paper, having a "deadline" monthly, but every writer is different!

Additionally, I'm not the best person to ask about writing schedules,,, unfortunately I am a procrastinator so OFTEN I binge-write for hours on end. I recommend setting aside an hour or two a day to write if time allows you to do so, rather than type nonstop for 8 hours the day before an update LMAO!! I definitely want to become the writer that does bit by bit every day to cut down on the stress. I also want to say that once I stopped pressuring myself to make EVERY update 20k+words, things flowed a little more easily. It's better to have a shorter update that's concise and has everything you want to say, rather than bulking it up with filler.

Thank you so so much for loving all of the character's relationships so far, too 🥺 I know slow burn isn't for everyone, but it always felt more natural for me to write the hybrids as slow-to-trust, considering the world they live in in Trouvaille. I agree with you, when everyone starts to grow closer and closer over time, the sweet moments will seem even sweeter after all of the angst and growing 💕

Thank you again for reading, M, and I'm sending you so much love (and energy to keep on writing!!)

#trouvaille #m #asks #dana's thoughts

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fyrerainy · 10 months ago

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typos and stuff!! will be pretty in-depth, sorry in advance lmao

@strawbubbysugar hi!! ily!! Here's some stuff I've found. This is gonna seem super rude and if you want me to stop, I'll stop!!

[keep in mind, I'm not an expert, though I have read through a textbook on how to write, edit, and get published. Feel free to discard as much of this criticism as you wish /gen]

When editing a manuscript, the experts say to try and cut 10% of your word count, so be sure to keep that in mind. Anything in your book that you feel icky about, or wasn't worded or written in the best way, needs to be addressed. The first draft was about what you wanted. The final copy will be about what the readers want.

Chapter 1

The key to hooking a reader in is to start with a bang. You want to draw their attention from the first sentence. At the moment, "Busy. Busy busy busy, always so busy," isn't seeming like the optimal use of your first paragraph. It's not making me feel intrigued, or making me want to read more. A chunk of this chapter (or the whole thing) may need to be rewritten.

This sentence is confusing me, it's not very concise. Maybe something like "This place was designed to mimic the unfinished amusement park, which proudly reached several floors above its head," would make it easier on the brain.

moment's

Unsure if 'loaded' is the right word here. Perhaps uploaded would work better?

Also, you can probably get rid of "it was advanced", as it's not needed here.

I'm feeling like this sentence doesn't make a lot of sense. In a nutshell, it's basically "An AI, now holding onto a toddler." It would work better if you exchanged 'a' with 'the', 'and' with 'was'.

Also, "now with one hand holding onto the seam etc" needs to be changed to "holding onto the labelled seam of a toddler's pants with one hand"

I believe this sentence is contradicting itself as you'd just told me that it didn't have straining core muscles, but then said it was straining. You may need to add a sentence or two about how its gears were grinding, and/or its legs shaking to keep it in place.

Also, "...attempt to not drop either child" needs to be "....attempt not to drop either child".

You may want to change the second "calculated" to "found" so you don't repeat words.

It's not a ball pit anymore bubby X3c

This needs to be changed. Either the first sentence needs to be "it caught the little one with time to spare" or "catching the little one with time to spare, the fluid etc etc". If you choose the second option, you'd have to edit the rest of the sentence to avoid it running on.

"The" needs to be lowercase, and ITS needs to be IT'S

Since we've switched focus from Hello to the kids then back, you may want to establish that this is Hello we're referencing when we say 'it'. Maybe, "The robot gently patted"...?

Also, if you want to be super professional and fancy, you could remove one of those question marks. You don't have to tho!

Wrong its! Its (without an apostrophe) is the possessive form of it, so it means “belonging to it.” “The cat ate its food.” It's (with an apostrophe) is a contraction (shortened form) of it is or it has. “It's almost Christmas.”

You repeated the word down twice, maybe change one of them?

Dialogue needs to be in a separate line from the rest of the paragraph.

again, if you want to be fancy you could remove one of these

It needs to be '...with its face "-Hello Lolly!"' bc the '-' needs to be on both sides

The "but only for a moment" could be removed to make the sentence flow more easily.

Aaaaand dialouge needs to be in a seperate line.

*error buzzer noise* wrong its!

Not sure what the "at least" is doing there. Feels like it doesn't fit

from "both children seemed" to "opposite directions" doesn't make sense. Try something like "...end result- they both had a toy and a piece of candy. They ran off in opposite directions."

Again, we're switching focus, so we may want to re-establish that it's the robot we're paying attention to at the end there.

it's a foam pit, silly!

foam, not ball

wrong its!

remember we're not using he/him for Hello yet 🤫

lowercase pronoun after dialouge

not balls! foam! X3

Along doesn't seem quite right. Around, maybe?

New line for dialouge!

"A mischievous grin wormed its"

Needs another gap in between the last two paragraphs

For conciseness, consider "Lukas was, at this point, sticking out his..."

For conciseness, 'for it' could be removed.

Put off from purchasing

pathfind is probably not the right word to use here. Maybe just use find?

that's what it was here for - to play! (new line after this)

golden rule! new line for dialouge! (also the 'it' after luukaass needs to be lowercased)

for conciseness, you could remove "in any bit of it's coding"

the needs to be lowercase

it's not not peaked, it's peeked!

Clarify this is Hello we're talking about with the warning signs

it pronounssss

There's so much more editing to be done (including in this chapter) but this process of screenshotting etc is taking up spoons. Perhaps you could allow me editing access to the manuscript so I can highlight the changes to be made? Or do them for you, if you prefer? /nf

I'm tired QwQ

#oh gosh oh gosh #is this too much???#tell me if its too much #im not trying to be rude i prommy #i just want the best for your book!#i know some self-publishing places #or are you looking to go to a publisher?#so(u)l project #so(u)l rewrite

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glaivenoct · 2 years ago

Note

would dragon au be nyxnoct?

if so how do you think introducing nyx to nocts dragon would go? or would noct help the kingsglaive as a dragon rider?

[Previous Dragon AU ask]

ngl any AU I ever indulge in Ever is automatically destined to be NyxNoct lmao. My NyxNoct goggles have been on since 2017 and they're defos not coming off now.

Hmm honestly the thought of Noct helping as a dragon rider is so fun and epic to think about. I think it'd be super helpful in those instances where the glaives get overwhelmed by some sort of wild Nif weapon - like Diamond Weapon. Where the glaives had to retreat in that instance, having Noct's dragon to counter it would be such an advantage for them.

I think that would also bring up some decent conflict between Noct and Regis, because say it's something that's brought up by Drautos and Noct wants to do it. Regis would be against it. It's too dangerous. It doesn't matter how much they've trained or how familiar Noct's become with some of the glaives and their tactics as a result. Regis won't allow it, and Noct's pissed about it. But maybe there's an instance where Noct doesn't listen anyway, ends up diving into the heat of a battle with his dragon and ends up saving a lot of lives. Nyx being one of them.

Ok ok I'm kinda getting ahead of myself on this, I nearly skipped the whole introduction part there lmao. But I mean... I feel like this lame? But I want it to be through training, because I've always held on to the idea that glaives helped a lot with Noct's magic training. And I kinda want Noct's dragon to pick up on Nyx's flirting. And the glances/shared looks between them. And, tbh, I want Noct's dragon and Nyx to kinda have this funny love-hate relationship. If that means sometimes Nyx gets thwacked on the back of the head or tripped by a tail so he looks A Little Less Cool in front of Noct, so be it.

Dragon is v protective of his Prince ok? What did you expect? Jk jk sorta, it's not really That Deep. I do like to think once the dragon pal gets the idea that Noct likes Nyx back, it'll ease up. But for now it's funny to think about the dragon messing with Nyx. Crowe thinks it's hilarious, and FYI Noct's dragon adores Crowe. Crowe is the dragon's Fire Pal In Crime.

((Another cute little thing to imagine: say Noct wants to admit to Nyx that he likes him and wants to grab dinner or something. He's ranting to his dragon about the whole dilemma/crisis. Now he's the one that's getting thwacked on the back of the head with a tail because Get It Together Kid. Noct's also gonna get pushed forward into Nyx by his dragon's tail and he's Not gonna appreciate it. Meanwhile the dragon will think it's amusing.))

Sigh. It feels like I'm going off on tangents here, but Hear Me Out - I know it's kinda been established having dragons is this Caelum Thing. But there's part of me that wants to mix Galahd into that. Somewhere way in the past history of dragons there's a connection with dragons and Galahd. Maybe back then, when dragons were an abundant thing, they originally came from Galahd. I don't know, my brain isn't quite clear enough to come up with something more coherent or concise. But I like the idea of there being some sort of Galahd connection with Dragons in general.

Gosshh this got so rambly and long, I'm sorry lol. BUT circling back to the dragonrider thing. That would so be what they call Noct, too. The Dragon Rider. That's so cool to me. And I really, really love the thought of the glaives being forced into retreat out in the field. Nyx, being the big dumb Hero that he is, puts himself in a position where he saves someone but Will Not Make It himself. I want there to be that moment where there's some big, humongous mechanical daemon coming straight for him; He closes his eyes and just waits for it because he knows This Is It, This is How He Dies. Just make it quick. And then right at the last second, in the nick of time, there's that fierce and mighty dragon ROAR. There's the wave of FIRE barreling right into the mechanical daemon and throwing it off course.

Granted, Nyx is so damn flabbergasted and just "What the hell do you think you're doing!" Noct's not supposed to be here and if the King finds out it's going to be someone's head.

But Noct doesn't have time for that because "Get the others and get out of here, we've got you covered!"

"Noct -"

"Just TRUST ME! Get out of here!"

And then Noct and his dragon kick ass. The End.

Jk not the end, there would be so much fallout from that stunt probably, but I think I've over rambled on this one ^^; TLDR: Mix NyxNoct into the dragon AU? IT'S A BIG FAT YES FOR ME. If you've made it to the end here I thank you for your time and attention <3

#should i give a prince a dragon or should i give a prince a dragon #fic asks #nyxnoct asks #nyxnoct and dragons all day any day

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nothorses · 2 years ago

Text

Hey, I mean, it's been a year- I'm happy to reflect and re-evaluate.

I spent about a month doing research for this post- ranging from internet searches (of all kinds) to interviews (which I posted separately here and here), and the dilemma I ran into was essentially:

Like you noticed, most Baeddel blogs have been taken down. There are actually quite a lot of Baeddel-originated posts left over, but the problem is that they tend to be quippy one-liners that don't spell things out super clearly, and tend to exist more as part of a larger contextual understanding- or are intentionally phrased in such a way as to appear inoffensive at first glance. The other problem is that the other posts are mostly just vague bigotry, without explaining the internal logic.

And the third problem is that enough of these beliefs are accepted at face value today that a lot of folks would see "this is normal" instead of thinking about the underlying reasoning.

So the challenge I was facing was, essentially, the fear that citing sources that didn't spell themselves out would net me backlash from people who needed handholding through it. Which I consider pretty valid, considering the harassment campaign I was dealing with at the time.

The closest thing to a solution I could come up with was to use sources that did spell those beliefs out more explicitly- which did tend to be critical, but which were also consistent enough with each other's claims that I felt there was validity to them- and to encourage people to then look further into compilations of firsthand sources that would make the larger picture clear. (Like these ones: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] which I also linked in the OP.)

In regards to MYC specifically: Her blog has been deleted. There was no possibility of tracking down firsthand sources for everything, and similar to the issues I had with Baeddel posts overall, her posts tended to be quippy one-liners that sounded good on first read and made up a larger picture. My solution to that was similar; lots of secondhand accounts that were more concise/succinct and in keeping with each other, a couple of relevant posts/words from her, plus a link to a relevant tag on her blog that had been archived.

The TERF post was included for this quote:

"And then you have the earliest mtf theorists on tumblr like radtransfem and ciscritical-not-cisphobic – drawn to radical/lesbian feminism – around whom the baeddel group coalesced and their ideology developed, i.e. “radical transfeminism.”"

As it was also discussing MYC and her ideology. Again, regrettable to use shitty people as a source; also happens to be a connection other people have made. And the fact that radical feminists themselves connect Baeddelism to radical feminism does seem significant here.

That said, I could absolutely have included a disclaimer on that, and I didn't. I should have done that. I'm sorry.

I can also recognize where some of these claims come off as transmisogynistic stereotyping; the worst of these are claims that individuals have made in their own posts, which I linked for entirely different reasons.

I don't think MYC was "grooming" cis men, and I have never claimed that. What I did say was that the idea that cis men are "potential trans women" also lead to the belief that trans men are "irredeemable"; we had womanhood handed to us, and we rejected it, and that makes us Worse. This isn't an uncommon idea, and MYC was far from the first person to bring it up; it's extremely common for cis women to feel we've "abandoned womanhood" and try to punish us for it. But it's part of the way she and others view trans men, and that's relevant.

The unfortunate reality of criticizing trans people on the internet is that inevitably, transphobes will hop on board for all the wrong reasons and turn it into a reason to harass trans people. They'll add their bigoted bullshit to the conversation, and then you have to scramble to distance yourself from them while onlookers start to draw conclusions about your Real Intentions. Again, I could have done this better in my post; I'm sorry I didn't.

The "turn me into a girl" site was included because I remember looking into it at the time and feeling it was in line with the claims from the paired post that also linked it, but on second look, I can absolutely see that it's pretty genuine and wholesome. I also had mistakenly interpreted that post to mean that the site was created by MYC & co., but again, I jumped to that conclusion and I can see now that it isn't true. (Honestly I'm not sure why- my guess would be the context I found that link in, but what that was or if it existed is a mystery to me now.) That's my bad- I should have looked more closely.

And like... you got me, I'm not a historian. I'm also not a journalist. I do genuinely apologize for failing to look more closely at that source, and for failing to properly contextualize others. I do genuinely appreciate that you took the time to look through those sources, and I appreciate the feedback from a historical documentation standpoint.

I also don't think it's fair to call the whole thing bullshit, considering the arguments you're using show that you also failed to read and/or comprehend... honestly, a good majority of the post.

You ask why any of this matters, and funnily enough, there's a whole section dedicated to answering that question in the post: "Why It Matters".

You ask where the source texts are, but you literally quoted the answer:

“Baeddelism” was only one name for a set of beliefs that existed long before the specific term did, and hasn’t gone anywhere since the original Baeddel movement died down." So where are the source texts for this ideology? Where is the Baeddel manifesto? Influential and thus potentially dangerous ideologies have books written and published expounding them, where are the baeddel books?

The "Baeddel" clique was a group of people who shared certain beliefs that had already been popularized (hence the inclusion of MYC, who is known for popularizing a lot of the foundational beliefs). They centralized and amplified those ideas amongst themselves, they gave themselves a name, and then the abuse they enacted turned people off from them and they quietly disbanded. But those people and ideas didn't go away.

The point of this post is not to say "look out of anyone calling themselves a Baeddel"- though people absolutely should. The point is to talk about the ways in which radical feminism has influenced the trans community as a whole, using Baeddelism is a microcosm and example.

You say that radical feminism is inherently incompatible with any kind of trans acceptance, and I agree with you!

I said it in the OP, but Baeddelism was never really about Empowering/Protecting Trans Women or whatever; it was about empowering a specific group of white, "fully transitioned" (or trying to be), binary trans women. The ideology actively hurt trans women. The movement fell because they aggressively defended someone who raped a transfemme.

Baeddels tried to make radical feminism work for trans women, and it fucking didn't. The trans community still tries to make radical feminism work for us; it still fucking doesn't!

Radical feminism believes that womanhood is biological and that misogyny is The Root Of Oppression because of ~biological woman factors~. "Trans-inclusive" radical feminism follows the same tenants, but they drop the bits that make it logically incoherent when trans people are included; worst is the "gender is a choice so you should choose to be a woman" version, but the more popular versions insist that your real gender is always present in you and shapes your life from the beginning (true for some trans people, but not a universal experience).

It doesn't hold up, but like, you're asking for texts and books and manifestos from a loose ideology developed by some would-be academics on the internet. You're saying that this can't exist if it doesn't have formal academic writings, but the point is that this is less of a coherent ideology, and more of an interaction between radical feminism's influence on the queer community as a whole, plain old bigotry, and crab-in-a-bucket mentality. It doesn't need to follow solid internal logic; it just needs to sound good in a 100k note tumblr post & empower some abusive people to keep abusing.

I'm not comparing this to TERFism ("TIRF" isn't even my word). It's not a coherent movement on the scale of radical feminism. I'm outlining a set of common beliefs that already existed and continue to exist, and how they briefly came together even more potently to prove their inevitable harm to others.

I'm asking people to recognize that those ideas still exist, to point them out and talk about them, and to try to prevent that harm from occurring again- either in a Baeddelism 2.0, or just in the way these ideas more passively influence the queer community and trans theory.

Let's Talk About Bæddels: A Comprehensive Retrospective

(This post on Medium)

(@thequeer-quill's video reading)

Disclaimer

This post is not claiming that trans women do not suffer, or do not suffer as much as other groups of trans people. It is not claiming that all trans women are Baeddels (or adjacent), nor is it claiming that trans women oppress anyone else.

Transmisogyny is real, and requires much more acknowledgement than it currently receives. The trans community is very much capable of transmisogyny, and often does enact or enable it; likewise, trans people also often enact and enable transphobia against other parts of the trans community.

If you take only one thing from the following, take this:

We all need to work on being better allies to each other. None of us can gain anything without the rest of us.

Setting the Stage for Baeddelism

We can’t talk about Baeddelism without talking about Tumblr user @monetizeyourcat (“Cat”), and the ideology she popularized on the website in the early 2010’s.

Cat was a loud voice with a huge blog in the early days of Tumblr. Most of her popular content was humor-based, but she also championed an ideology that synthesized certain aspects of feminism, transfeminism, and communist ideals. Cat’s ideology is better explained here, and can be further explored here, but this is the foundation:

Manhood is inherently oppressive, and cannot exist outside the context of oppression.

Gender can be, to some extent, a choice.

Because of the above, one’s gender is an ethical choice with ethical consequences.

Being a man is, therefore, ethically harmful and wrong; particularly if you are giving up womanhood in order to be a man.

Being a woman is, therefore, ethically correct; particularly if you are giving up manhood in order to be a woman.

You may recognize some of the ideas here as a version of Radical Feminism: namely, the idea that manhood/men are inherently oppressive, and that womanhood/women are inherently victims.

All Cat had to do was map Radical Feminism onto the trans community. If manhood is Bad, and men are Bad, then trans men who reject womanhood in favor of becoming men are Bad. If womanhood is Good, and women are Good, then trans women who reject manhood in favor of womanhood are The Best. Which, of course, would also explain why society hates them more than any other trans person (something taken for granted by Cat and many others at the time).

This foundation was built upwards into a more complicated system of beliefs: cis men were viewed as “potential trans women”, people who did not yet know whether they were trans, had not made that choice, and could, conceivably, still choose to be women. As such, cis men were often seen as “better” than trans men. Trans men were encouraged to detransition, men in general were encouraged to reject their manhood in favor of womanhood, and “sissification” became a hallmark “joke” that the community forming around Cat latched onto.

The “gender is a choice” part of this ideology is a bit hard for most trans people to swallow, and Cat herself did not entirely ascribe to the idea that gender was always a choice. Still, even if men were intrinsically and inherently men, and even if they couldn’t simply choose not to be men the way she had, the idea remained that the so-called “ethical consequences” of being a man, and the harm this did to The Collective, vastly outweighed the personal harm suffered by “remaining” or “becoming” a woman. It was, in short, more ethical to suffer dysphoria in pursuit of womanhood than it was to accept one’s manhood.

It’s unclear whether Cat ever identified as a Baeddel, and she certainly didn’t begin the movement herself. She was definitely close to it, though, and many attest that her ideology constituted the building blocks of the Baeddelism movement.

Establishing an Ideology

The first post on Baeddelism was by Tumblr user @unobject, on October 2nd, 2013, and liked by @lezzyharpy, also one of the original Baeddels:

(Credit to @AcesArosandEnbies)

This post first provided the name and defining ideology of the Baeddel movement. The conclusion drawn from the post was, essentially, that because the root of the word “bad” was “baeddel”, and because “baeddel” referred to intersex people and “womanish men”, this old English slur was proof that transmisogyny was the worst form of bigotry; and even, perhaps, the root of all bigotry. (It’s worth noting that this etymology is likely inaccurate and ahistorical, along with problematic in several other ways.)

While @unobject was the first person to make this connection, @autogynephile (“Eve”) eventually became, in essence, the figurehead of the movement. Of the other Baeddels, some of them were explicitly aware and supportive of the ideology behind Baeddelism, some of them were young or newly-out trans women seduced by the personalities involved, and some of them were tangential enough to the movement that they didn’t really even know what it was. Baeddelism was a sort of trend, for a time, and many participants wore the name without entirely knowing what it meant.

It’s important to acknowledge that as much as there were dedicated members of Baeddelism, and as much as there was a unified ideology behind it, there were also individual Baeddels who did not understand- let alone support- the ideology.

That said…

The Belief System

Baeddels essentially built upon the foundation of @monetizeyourcat’s ideology that had been gaining traction on Tumblr in the years prior, with some additions that ultimately defined their movement:

Transmisogyny is the form of oppression from which all (or most) other forms of oppression stem.

Privilege is granted on the basis of assigned sex. (“AFAB” or “Assigned Female at Birth” vs. “AMAB” or “Assigned Male at Birth”)

These fundamentals of Baeddelism were essentially a rebranded form of Radical Feminism, much like Cat’s ideology. In particular, they drew from the Radical Feminist idea that misogyny was the “primary” form of oppression; that which all other oppression stemmed from. Baeddels only tweaked this idea to replace “misogyny” with “transmisogyny”, which led to the rest of the conclusions Baeddels drew:

Men are inherently oppressors, and women are inherently oppressed.

Trans women are inherently victims.

Because only AMAB people can experience transmisogyny, they are inherently more oppressed than AFAB people.

“AFAB Privilege”: The idea that within the queer and/or trans community, AFAB people receive unique privilege and positions of power that AMAB people do not.

There is no “transphobia” separate from “transmisogyny”. All transphobia stems from transmisogyny first, and transphobia as it impacts non-transfeminine trans people is incidental at most.

It’s important to note that these ideas were not all as universal as the first two, and different individual Baeddels held them to different extents.

Trans Lesbian Separatism

… was what the movement was ultimately defined by, as the logical conclusion of their other beliefs (much like Lesbian Separatism was the logical conclusion of Radical Feminist beliefs).

Baeddels believed that only trans women can understand, or be truly safe for, other trans women; therefore, contact with anyone who was not a trans woman was deemed “dangerous” and highly discouraged.

Trans Men

… also played an important role in Baeddel ideology, and the resulting treatment of trans men is what is often remembered today. Baeddels generally believed the following, either explicitly or implictly:

Trans men are not oppressed, nor marginalized at all.

Trans men do not experience transmisogyny.

Trans men do not experience misogyny, even prior to transition.

Trans men have access to male privilege.

Trans men have an easier time passing, and frequently go “stealth”; thus benefiting from male privilege as well as cis privilege.

Trans men are often (or always) misogynistic and transmisogynistic, and are not held accountable for this.

Trans men actively “choose” manhood even when presented with the “option” of womanhood.

Trans men oppress cis women.

Trans women enacting violence on trans men is “punching up” at oppressors, and therefore not only permitted, but encouraged.

Trans men become aggressive and violent when they go on testosterone HRT.

Nonbinary People

… are often overlooked when summarizing Baeddelism, but Baeddels did have plenty to say about them. Baeddel ideology relied on the idea that privilege was granted on the bases of assigned sex, and nonbinary people’s genders were thus treated as irrelevent; they essentially did not believe nonbinary people truly existed.

CAFAB nonbinary people are either trans men attempting to invade women’s spaces, or cis women pretending to be trans.

CAMAB nonbinary people are actually just trans women who haven’t accepted it yet. They must transition, or they are transmisogynistic.

Intersex People

Intersex experiences, and intersex history, were often co-opted and erased by Baeddelism. This was often more a byproduct of their beliefs than an overtly-stated idea, but most notably, the term “Baeddel” itself is likely more applicable- if not exclusively applicable- to intersex people, rather than trans women. Making their reclamation of it as a “transmisogynistic slur”, or their claim that the word’s existence means that “transmisogyny is the root of all oppression”, incredibly ignorant- if not actively harmful misinformation.

Notably, Baeddels also believed that intersex people- being “more androgynous” (a harmful misonception)- were able to pass more easily as the opposite assigned sex, and that intersex people even within transfemme spaces had “intersex privilege”. Some even believed, and openly claimed, that intersex people were “hermaphroditic”; a slur against intersex people, and typically implying that the individual has both sets of reproductive systems simultaneously.

Trans Women

… did not receive universally positive treatment, either. Baeddelism was very much a cult-like group built around the firmly-held conviction that they were absolutely correct, and that anyone who disagreed with them was The Enemy. Trans women who disagreed with them were generally seen as brainwashed and self-hating, and trans women who did agree with them were expected to subjugate themselves to the ringleaders of the movement.

Within Baeddel circles, trans women were most frequently victimized by the abusers allowed to run rampant because “trans women do not, and cannot, harm anyone else.” - Including, apparently, each other.

“They were also bad shitty abusive people in general. “… a bunch of them passed around a pile of smear campaigns and false rumors about virtually any trans woman that they had a even the slightest animosity for. Including the victim of the kinkster rapist. They’ve done other fucked stuff, like chased two twoc off this site for trying to make a zine, but yeah. That’s like, just some of it. I’m not up for going over the messy details of the whole shitparade “Full disclosure, I made a lot of excuses for these sacks of crap, even while they were out there spreading false crap about me […] I wasn’t aware of the worst shit they were doing until much much later." - @punlich

Inside the Movement

Though individual Baeddels often existed in vastly different social circles from each other- particularly offline- those who lived through the movement highlight commonalities in their experiences.

One interviewee recounts the manipulation present in their initial involvement with the movement:

“It came to me at a point where I was very quick to weaponize anything anyone told me about their experiences, because I was always a fighter. I’ve been an activist for a long time, you know, and when these trans women would come to me with their experiences I would believe them. I wanted to. But the way they acted didn’t add up when compared to what they were saying. I felt really lonely there, and stupid all the time. I felt like I was being a bad trans person.” […] “Online they were more willing to say things that were, for lack of a better word, stupid. They would say things that lacked any kind of logical sense. But in person, they would go into this kind of toxic femininity- this weaponization of weakness. And I think that’s because online they were often in these echochambers, but in person they had to rely on much more subtle manipulation.” - Vera

It seems at points that the environment created within this movement- and the social circles that composed it- was almost cult-like in nature and in need for control.

“It was very isolating. I didn’t see my friends for a while, I was kind of just living with them, cooking and cleaning for them, starving myself, and slowly growing crazy. I was just being consumed by this weird academia and theory that had no basis, because everything was online and Tumblr-based.” - Vera

When Bæddels Took Them: An interview and reflection on the Bæddelism movement

Perhaps most chilling, however, are the patterns in their attitudes toward sexual assault. One interviewer recounts being subject to sexual assault, and upon posting about their experience to a Facebook group, being met with hostility from Baeddels present in the group- who quickly used their social influence to have them banned from some of their only support systems at the time.

“I ended up with pretty much no one to talk to about the experience at a time when I was already really, really struggling, and it’s one of several factors that led to me dropping out. “The Baeddel who got me banned also messaged me directly at some point during all of this, and I tried to get her to understand the pain she was causing me. She basically laughed it off and said it was my fault. She seemed to find a lot of joy in how much it hurt me, and blocked me soon after.” - Anonymous

Another recounts sexual consent violations from a friend-turned-Baeddel:

“[My ex-friend] had previously been fetish-mining me for her mommy kink. I was freshly estranged from my own mum, and she stepped in to be like, “I’m your new mum now,” and would pester me to call her “mum” in Welsh- as at that point she was going by a Welsh name. I played along, but it transpired that she was basically using that to get off, and she had a thing for infantilising transmascs and being this mum/mom figure.” - Luke

And yet another interviewee discusses verbal sexual harassment during interactions with another Baeddel:

“I had one [Baeddel] directly tell me that I’m beneath her as a trans man, and that I should “Shut my smelly cooch up” and only use my voice to uplift trans women. I was a minor at the time. “She then sicced her followers on me, and they bombarded me with messages telling me I’d “never be a real man”, that I needed to “sit on the side and allow them to have the spotlight”, and even telling me to kill myself- because I was inherently toxic to them. I was 16 years old, pre everything, and I couldn’t even pass at the time. They didn’t seem to care that I was a minor, or a newly hatched egg.” - Anonymous

Brushes with Bæddels: Recalling the Bæddel movement

While Baeddel ideology itself does not explicitly condone or excuse sexual assault, it’s striking how common these stories are; especially considering how small in numbers actual Baeddels were.

It was, in fact, this exact problem that would eventually cause the movement to dissolve.

The Downfall of Baeddelism

Sometime between the group’s formation in 2013 and their downfall near the end of 2014, @autogynephile (also “Eve”), the defacto “ringleader” of the Baeddel movement, began what Baeddels referred to as a “transbian safehouse”.

This was apparently intended as a place for unhoused trans woman lesbians and trans women who, in general, had sworn off contact with men; the ultimate goal of the lesbian separatist ideology at the core of the Baeddel movement. It was thus also referred to as a “commune” by some, and as a “cult” by others.

One occupant of the “safehouse”- Elle- later posted to Tumblr that they had been raped by Eve during their stay, and detailed their experiences.

The Baeddels, rather than believing the victim and ousting the rapist from their movement, chose to close ranks around Eve.

Various reasons were given for this:

The victim must be lying

The victim- and anyone who believed them- was simply transmisogynistic.

Anyone who disagrees with the Baeddels is an Enemy Of The Movement, a “carceral thinker”, and a danger to trans women as a whole.

Trans women are incapable of sexually abusing anyone.

“Standing with Eve” was the ultimate sign of loyalty to the movement, and thus a mark of pride and honor.

It was okay to keep being a Baeddel no matter what, because Rape Accusations Should Be A Personal Matter.

(You can read more about Eve’s own denial of these events here and here.)

Years later, even people involved in the initial group have spoken out against the movement and actions of those involved:

(@lezzyharpy was one of the original Baeddels, and one of the first people to like the first “Baeddel” post by @unobject).

This was not the only instance of abuse by people associated with Baeddelism.

Elle posted their statement on August 4th, 2014; between that time and September of the same year, another user by the name of Quinn posted about her own experiences with abuse at the hands of @monetizeyourcat. Cat’s roommates in Seattle posted about their experiences with Cat shortly after Quinn did. Both parties alleged that Cat had been a manipulative and abusive roommate, friend, and partner.

Cat first attempted to argue the accusations, then later admitted that they were true and left the site. Her blog still contains her parting message. It has been pointed out that this is not necessarily an action taken in good faith and desire for growth.

The reception of her abuse allegations followed a similar pattern to Eve’s: people who ascribed to her ideology, Baeddels included, believed that Cat was not and could not have been abusive, as a trans woman. Others ignored warnings about her past and potential future actions, citing transmisogyny as the reason she must have been accused at all.

It has also been pointed out that Cat’s ideology (and, relatedly, Baeddel ideology) was extremely conducive to abuse- if not entirely constructed in order to allow abuse.

Why It Matters, and Why Baeddelism Never Really Fell

Baeddelism itself has seen multiple attempts at resurgences by various individuals, including documented experiences with self-proclaimed Baeddels as recently as 2018- well after the movement first “fell” in 2014.

Most proponents of “Baeddelism 2.0”, a revival of the original movement, argue that the abuse that occurred within the original movement was either completely fabricated by detractors (sound familiar?) or, at minimum, not actually inherent to the ideology.

And, of course, there are some original Baeddels still active on Tumblr today.

Baeddelism never actually went away.

“Baeddelism” was only one name for a set of beliefs that existed long before the specific term did, and hasn’t gone anywhere since the original Baeddel movement died down.

What the Baeddels did was put a name to the ideology @monetizeyourcat was cultivating before them, and what Cat did was popularize, centralize, and justify a way of thinking that had existed before she ever made her blog.

This ideology has since been referred to, loosely, as “TIRF-ism”: Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminism.

It is rare that anyone actually refers to themselves as a “TIRF”, and there is no real centralized TIRF movement; rather, a loose collection of radical feminist beliefs circulates various transgender spaces. The validity of these beliefs is generally taken for granted: of course (trans) women are The Most Oppressed People; of course (trans) women are Inherently and Unequivocally Victims In All Situations; of course (trans) men are Inherently Oppressors; of course (trans) men are Dangerous and Evil… and so on.

Like Radical Feminism, and subsequently Trans-Exlcusive Radical Feminism (TERF-ism), those ideas are fundamentally dangerous.

The defining tenants of radical feminism are that misogyny is the root of all oppression, and that rather than misogyny being an issue of power and control on a society-wide level, it is instead, or also, a matter of oppression and privilege on an individual level: men are always oppressors, and women are always victims.

These beliefs fundamentally exclude and erase the experiences of other marginalized people.

Namely, people of color and indigenous people, who’s experiences with and concepts of gender do not fall within the strict and rigid lines that white, western, colonialist people’s do.

Radical feminism is not a redeemable ideology. It cannot be reshaped into something good. It is fundamentally broken, and the movements born from it- lesbian separatism, political lesbianism, TERF-ism, TIRF-ism, and Baeddelism- are proof enough of that. They each promote only surface-level variations of what is fundamentally cult-like thinking: only the in-group can be victimized. Only the in-group is safe; the out-group is inherently and universally dangerous. Only the in-group understands you. All members of the in-group are, fundamentally, incapable of abuse.

We cannot allow these ideas to be perpetuated within or without the trans community.

Learn the Signs & Prevent the Harm

Here’s what we can do to prevent this from happening again:

Learn what Baeddel ideology and TIRFism look like, even detached from the name.

Learn what radical feminism looks like, even detached from the name. Even from people who claim to oppose radical feminism.

Act on dogwhistles. Call them what they are.

Do not allow people to downplay the harm all forms of Radical Feminism have caused. Remind each other that Radical Feminism is not a redeemable ideology, and seek out other branches of feminism instead.

Remember the harm that has been caused. Remember that it will be caused again if these things are allowed to go unchecked.

Listen to and uplift marginalized people. Allow them to speak to their own experiences, identify their own needs, and name their own oppression.

Remember who the real oppressors are, and do not pit marginalized people against each other. The people perpetuating and benefiting from transphobia are cis people- and more specifically, cis people in power.

Build solidarity with other marginalized people. One group of trans people cannot gain liberation without liberating all trans people, and one group of trans people cannot be targeted without the rest of us suffering as well.

Remember that there is no group or identity incapable of enacting abuse, violence, harassment, or other harm against another. Victimhood should not be determined based solely on an individual’s identity.

Remember that there are no acceptable targets for violence, cruelty, harassment, and abuse.

Red Flags to watch out for:

Using, or interacting with people who use, “Baeddel” as any form of self-description.

Downplaying the harm original Baeddels did: calling them “misled”, their actions “mistakes”, etc. without acknowledging the specific issues.

Obfuscating, ignoring, or erasing the abuse and rape allegations against members of the Baeddel movement.

Obfuscating, ignoring, or erasing the harm done to other transfemmes by Baeddels.

Dismissing, erasing, punishing/ostracizing, disavowing, or treating with suspicion transfeminine people who do not agree with Baeddel or radfem ideology. Insisting all or most transfemmes agree with Baeddel or radfem ideas.

Claiming TERFs only target, harm, or have ill will for trans women/transfemmes. Using “TWERF” or “TWEF” instead of “TERF”.

Claiming transmasculine people should not have any say in conversations about misogyny, transphobia, and/or TERFs.

Talking about “AFAB Privilege”, or otherwise implying that AFAB people share any qualities aside from being assigned female at birth.

Referring to trans people by AGAB, TME/TMA distinction, or even transfemme/transmasc frequently or exclusively; actively erasing or not allowing room for nonbinary and intersex experiences that do not fall within those binaries.

Implying men- cis or trans- would be better if they were made into women instead.

Implying attraction to men, or being a man, is somehow a “curse” or a “burden”, or otherwise unfortunate.

Implying a fear of men, including trauma-induced phobias, should never be healed from or sought treatment for. Implying men, cis or trans, cannot also experience trauma around men.

Treating trans men or transmasculine people as “acceptable targets” in any way; for harassment, for abuse, for misgendering, for inducing dysphoria, etc.

Implying transmasc dysphoria is “toxic masculinity”

Characterizing transmascs as hysterical, whiny, delusional, crazy, or otherwise using feminine stereotypes.

Implying it is femininity, specifically, that is targeted by the patriarchy; that feminine people are targeted more than masculine people, etc.

Using “listen to transfemmes” to silence other groups of trans people, and otherwise implying transfemmes are a monolith who happen to agree with you.

In general: espousing the ideas, fundamental or otherwise, that defined the Baeddel movement. (including TIRF and radical feminist ideology)

This list is not comprehensive, nor is any one thing on this list 100% certain to indicate that someone is a Baeddel- or if they are, that they are necessarily dangerous. It’s important to keep in mind how many people are groomed into this movement and abused within it; some of those who espouse Baeddel rhetoric may themselves be victimized by others.

But until we recognize these ideas for what they are and where they’ve come from, history can only repeat itself.

Educate Yourself and Others

It would take a long, long time and a lot more space to detail all of the damage done, the people hurt, and the dangers of continuing to allow these ideas to be perpetuated. Instead, I have compiled some resources and references.

I urge you to check these out, bookmark them for later, or whatever else works for you! (They’re also all much, much shorter reads than this has been.)

@baeddel-txt and @rejectedbaeddeldiscourse, two blogs dedicated to documenting various posts and beliefs held by original Baeddels.

Another blog’s tag for Baeddel history.

Baeddel.net, another archive of Baeddelism.

@AcesArosEnbies thread, and @gothmyths thread, on Baeddelism.

@quinndolyn’s recount of Baeddelism.

My own post on the origins of the Baeddel movement.

My own post including posts from Baeddels (and others) as recently as 2018.

An archive of assorted Baeddel posts.

#baeddelism

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asrisartarena · 7 years ago

Note

What would happen if one of the egos went missing? (I'm guessing the reaction would change depending on who is the one who goes missing?) (Also, I don't mean certainly permanently missing where everyone is already grieving. More like no one's seen them in a worryingly long while) - Kata (one fic and one drabble later I've ran out of buffer so here I go torturing your inbox again)

Oooh that’s interesting! This might be long, so get ready for that!!

Robbie

PANIC. SO MUCH PANIC.

He’s the baby of the family he can’t be out there alone wHERE IS HE.

[Marlin voice] HaVe yOU SeEN oUR brOthER?????

Anti is glitch teleporting all over the place and panicking like crazy trying to find his brother.

Marvin is just as panicked and using his magic to try and locate Robbie.

Jackie’s searching the skies while Chase, Schneep, and JJ stay home in case Robbie somehow makes his way back there.

Turns out Robbie just went out for a walk and lost track of time, and when he gets back home everyone practically overwhelms him with hugs and affection and make him promise to never wander alone like that again.

Anti

No one’s really super worried bc it’s Anti and they know he can take care of himself just fine, but Robbie’s very anxious.

He doesn’t like his big brother being gone for so long and he’d be nervously fidgeting a lot and making worried whining noises until either Anti came back or someone found him.

Eventually Robbie’s worrying gets to everyone and someone (usually Marvin) tells Robbie that they’ll look for Anti if it’ll make him feel better, which it does.

It turns out Anti was out doing God knows what and being a little shit out in the world, and Marvin practically drags him back home by his ear, scolding him for worrying his little brother like that.

Marvin

When Marvin’s gone for a worryingly long time, that usually means he’s either holed up in his room hyperfocusing on a new spell, or he went somewhere else to practice magic and lost track of time.

Jackie would be the one worrying the most next to Robbie, and while everyone else would try and contact Marvin via texting or calling him, Jackie would search everywhere he thinks Marvin could be, and would not stop until he found him and knew he was okay.

Marvin, once found, would be fussed over a lot by Jackie, and Robbie would cling to him for the next few hours.

Once or twice they’ve found Marvin passed out in the middle of the forest while practicing a big spell bc he overworked himself, and it’s why Jackie always worries so much when Marvin’s gone for longer than he usually is.

Jackie

He’s a superhero, so he’s bound to be gone for long periods of time.

When he doesn’t come home at night, though, that’s when everyone starts to worry.

Especially Marvin, bc oh God what if Jackie’s injured, or worse?

Marvin being a natural worrywart and also being the Mom Friend doesn’t help his anxiety about the situation, either.

Everyone’s kind of worried, but nowhere near as much as Marvin.

He will search high and low and will not rest until he knows where Jackie is and that he’s okay.

He gives him lots of kisses when he finds him, and Jackie’s just “Babe I’m fine don’t worry so much about me I’m okay” and Marvin’s like “Fuck you I’ll worry as much as I damn please” and Jackie just rolls his eyes and laughs.

Schneep

I imagine Schneep to be a very punctual person who’s never really late for anything unless he’s very deep in his work, so when he’s gone longer than he says he will be, everyone’s concerned.

They’d try and contact him, and when he doesn’t respond, they get even more concerned.

They figure he’s just caught up at work and can’t get to his phone, but that doesn’t stop everyone from worrying until he eventually answers them.

Chase

Everyone’s second quickest to start worrying about Chase if he’s gone for a long while due to…past experiences.

More often than not, he’s only ever gone for a long time if he’s having a really bad depressive episode, and they worry greatly what he might do if on his own for too long.

So they go out and search for him, and they usually find him standing near a lake or in the middle of the forest or near a bridge, blank eyed and like he’s in a trance.

Whoever finds him just gently grabs him by the shoulders and talks softly to him as they guide him back to the house.

Jameson

I think with Jameson, since he’s mute, the egos lose track of him more often than they’d like to admit.

I also like to think Jameson is a tad forgetful, so half the time he’ll forget to tell the egos he’s going off to do something, and later on he’ll find them freaking over where he is, and he always feels bad about it.

Anti’s joked about putting a bell on him like you would a cat so they could keep track of him easier, and it always results in Jameson glaring at him while the others either groaned or laughed.

Angus

I honestly think the egos would be the least worried about Angus if he was gone for an exceedingly long time, since he usually disappears out of contact for weeks and months on end due to being out in the wilderness and all that.

He usually does say when he’ll get back into contact with the others, and he’s one to keep his word, so like with Schneep, when he doesn’t contact the egos around when he says he will, they worry.

Especially Anti, since Angus is his closest and oldest friend.

Angus just ended up losing track of time and getting way into nature, so after that, Anti had Marvin enchant Angus’s phone so that he could call/text the egos whenever, no matter how bad the reception is.

Shawn

If he’s hyperfocusing really hard on his work, he’ll forget to contact the other egos for up to a couple weeks, which always makes them worry.

Especially Jameson, since Shawn is his best friend.

Jameson will be extremely antsy and fidgety and frantically sign to the other egos that they should check up on Shawn and see if he’s okay, which they comply to, and they have found Shawn passed out at his work bench with dark circles and very messy clothes and hair more often than they could count.

This has also resulted in Jameson visiting Shawn more often and making sure he’s actually taking care of himself. Marvin does too, but Jameson does it the most.

#Someone help these boys they're all such huge messes #Also I'm sorry if this isn't super concise??#I just hope it makes sense hdghdf #robbie the zombie #antisepticeye #marvin the magnificent #jackieboy man #dr schneeplestein #chase brody #jameson jackson #angus the survival hunter #shawn flynn #Anonymous #Kata #Asri's answers #Asri's HCs #Asri posts

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technoskittles · 6 years ago

Text

“Adora is one of the First Ones” Theory

Okay this is a tad later than I meant to make this post but I got busy (finals week is upon us and I am....dying).

But here it is: my “Adora is one of the First Ones” theory

There’s been a lot of speculation on what exactly Adora is (including one really interesting theory that she’s not even human) and personally, I think she’s one of the First Ones.

Disclaimer: I don’t think she’s over 1000 years old. That’d be kind of cool, but would involve a lot of time travel nonsense that I doubt Noelle and the rest of the She-Ra crew want to make that convoluted

(I’m looking at you Fairy Tail)

But I do have reasons that I believe she is a descendant/part of the group of people that the rest of Etheria calls the “First Ones”.

We’ll start off with something simple. During Adora’s interactions with Razz, one thing in particular stood out to me: their conversation about the stars.

Notice here how Adora is the first one to point out and name the stars. Quickly following, Razz mentions how her and Mara (the previous She-Ra from 1000 years ago) used to look at the stars together, but that they’ve disappeared.

I’ll go ahead and add a disclaimer that this one is based on a lot of loose theorizing and assumptions because we’re not actually sure how long the stars have been missing or whether or not the rest of the Etherians are even familiar with stars. For this theory, I’m going to go ahead and assume that the stars have been gone quite awhile - for a thousand years in fact. The rest of the Etherians likely don’t even know what stars are, hence Adora’s slight confusion upon being able to recognize them at all.

Clearly, Razz is able to identify them because she’s clearly over a thousand years old (as evidenced by the fact that she was alive during Mara’s time and was familiar with her enough that they would often hang out it seems). Razz is this sort of connection between the mysterious past and present-time. However, Adora, not only someone who is young and been sheltered by the Horde all of her life, knows about stars.

Granted, this one has some leeway in the sense that you can argue that maybe Etherians, even if they don’t have stars in their sky currently, may have some sort of written history or text on stars somewhere. A completely plausible argument, except that this comes next:

Adora’s seen the stars. She remembers them. She just can’t place how or where. Probably because she was too young to remember them. We’ll get back to this just a little more later, but first, a bit more on a possible theory of when and how the stars disappeared.

So as we all know, Mara, in a brash decision, stranded Etheria in the closed-off dimension of Despandos about a thousand years ago (as told by Light Hope).

Notice how all the stars disappeared around Etheria? (Please ignore the single star in the third screenshot I did my best to capture this screenshots as fast as possible lol.) A direct result of Mara stranding them in Despandos. This is also what resulted in her breaking the She-Ra line (as you can see from the screenshot above). It’s also safe to assume that large planet is Etheria (which will come up in just a minute).

But first, let’s move on to something else real quick: Adora can read the First Ones’ writing. As far as we’re aware, no one else can. Because, as Glimmer states:

No one has spoken that language in a thousand years (approx. the time that the First Ones supposedly “vanished” and also around the time Mara stranded Etheria in Despandos). There might have been some people who’ve attempted to translate the language surely, but it’s not a language that is commonly used or known. Certainly no random person can read this dead language.

Now, one of the arguments that could easily be made is that Adora magically learned how to read the language once she made her connection with the Sword of Protection, which would just be the easy way out (and not applicable at all to this theory).

But where else would Adora have learned a language that’s been dead for over a thousand years?

Maybe in a place where it’s still commonly used.

Which....we’ll get to in a minute (gotta keep that suspenseful build-up haha).

For now, let’s move on to another point.

This one has to deal with the planet itself. Glimmer and Bow mention at the beginning that Etheria was settled by a civilization that they call the “First Ones” over a thousand years ago before the “suddenly vanished”. Supposedly without a trace. The only thing left behind were the ruins filled with what they call “First Ones’ tech”.

Entrapta even theorizes (correctly) that the entire planet is made up of First Ones’ tech. However, during Adora’s conversation with Light Hope, it’s revealed that it’s not quite “tech” but more of a “life force”. (Not in exact words but that’s kind of the gist that I was getting.)

The princesses are connected to their runestones which stabilizes the planet so-to-speak. Disrupting the runestones throws the planet into chaos and as we saw in Glimmer’s case, if a princess’s connection to their runestones is disrupted, it affects them personally as well.

But Glimmer isn’t the only one we’ve seen whose connection to her runestone become disrupted.

It’s important to note here that while Glimmer’s disruption was caused by power from another runestone (Shadow Weaver and the Black Garnet), She-Ra’s was caused directly by First Ones’ tech.

Another important thing to note is that when the robot was screaming or, as Entrapta endearly put it “trying to talk”, She-Ra was the only one noticeably affected by this.

This leads me to believe that Adora has some sort of special connection with First Ones’ tech that the other princesses (or anyone for that matter) do not. What exactly that connection is is a little harder to pin down and I admittedly don’t have a solid answer to it, but I think it’s an interesting thing to consider regardless.

For my last point, we’re going to also briefly consider the original 80s cartoon in relation to the Netflix reboot.

Both iterations of this universe start with Adora being taken in by the Horde when she was very young. In the original, she was specifically kidnapped by Hordak from her original dimension to be raised into a Horde soldier.

However, in the reboot, Shadow Weaver states that she found Adora as an orphan and took her in.

What isn’t mentioned is how or where Shadow Weaver came across Adora. That part of her history is still a mystery - both to us and Adora herself. Given what we know of the Horde and Shadow Weaver however, it’s a safe assumption that Shadow Weaver didn’t just “find” Adora.

Now, this might be me getting nitpicky, but also notice how Shadow Weaver says she found Adora as a child, not a baby like she was in the original. This could mean that Adora was young enough to not remember much of her actual past, but still older than an infant (and even if she did remember where she was from, we’re all now well aware that SW has the capability to erase memories).

So what does this mean?

Glad ya asked because the moment is finally here:

Adora is from another dimension where the “First Ones” still exist. In fact, she’s part of the group of settlers who travels the universe settling on uninhabited planets.

As Light Hope mentions, the First Ones are a group of settlers who journeyed to Etheria to settle there.

Explorers.

Translation: They traveled from place-to-place. From the wording here, they were probably nomadic. Of course, there are groups who completely stay together and explore different uninhabited places to settle, using up the resources before moving on (like the Native Americans).

However, some nomadic peoples would settle in an area before a newer generation would set off to settle another place, leaving behind the people who’d originally settled that location (think Moana...except I don’t have screencaps for that).

The First Ones probably settled a bunch of different planets, Etheria included, leaving behind a group of people in one settlement to go and explore more places to start up a settlement there.

So....what does that have to do with Adora?

Adora was a part of one of the settlements on a different planet. Let’s list how and why:

-She remembers the stars. Personally. But where would she have seen stars when she currently lives in a dimension where they don’t exist?

Perhaps when she was younger.

Shortly after her conversation with Mara, Adora seems to have a series of flashbacks of a world with different scenery, including something that should seem familiar.

The Crystal Castle, before it became a ruin, complete with a sky full of stars

The stranding of Etheria

A portal that’s in a very...familiar field

And it all ends with what looks like a window looking out onto a landscape, the planet of Etheria in sight and a baby giggling.

Baby Adora giggling.

-Adora can read First Ones’ writing when no one else can.

This could probably be because, once again, she grew up in a place and a society where it’s still commonly known and used. As a child, it’s something she would’ve grown up learning to read. And after being transported to a dimension where it’s been out of use for a thousand years, it’s odd that she somehow knows a dead language....unless it’s something she’s encountered before.

So, tl;dr Adora is a part of one of what might be many colonies of First Ones settlers and is from another planet in another dimension where she was born and raised, learned the language, was able to see stars, and has a special connection to the technology from being around it firsthand (rather than being an indirect descendant over the period of a thousand years) but was somehow taken by the Horde to Etheria that’s stranded in the empty dimension of Despandos.

#she ra #adora #first ones #spop #she ra and the princesses of power #whew!#that was a mouthful #long post #sorry it got lengthy #I tried to keep it as concise as possible #I also know this isn't a super elaborate theory #and as most theories go probably has a lot of holes #but this is what I'm sticking to until I'm proven wrong

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