#I just fucking hate it when ppl treat others as lesser ppl just because of a complex emotional system

[chaosandwolves]

Also let me add on something

Telling someone that everything they do is just for attention and manipulation will make them lie to you cause what else can they do?

They demand your honesty but when you are honest you get punished and ridiculed

I lied, too.

I didn't even want to tell them in the first place but my friend made me (in good faith) and I was punished for my honesty and straight up told I did what I did to get my friends' attention (that they found out by accident, of course, didn't matter)

A lot of the therapy surrounding bpd is based on punishment which is insane (I will add that it's initially not designed like this, initially it's made to be able to understand your own emotions and why you do what you do but the way it's done in practice is often some sort of punishment and you're met with anger and annoyance and before you can even work on anything you're called manipulative and attention seeking)

Like I'm always annoyed when ppl treat me like a dumb child but this helplessness in these situations...

Cause how do you respond to this? Every other person would get angry and defensive...guess what... We did, too and the cycle started all over again

Again, I was lucky

I could get some things out of bpd, my psychiatrist didn't want me to be a permanent patient so sometimes they'd listen cause overall they could see that we had "healthy parts" in us (yes, that were the words and back then it was the best thing to hear)

I also very quickly figured out when and how to lie to make it seem that I was doing good progress

Oh and also... Dbt is fucking EXHAUSTING,

Like you have no idea. It's so taxing, so frustrating and all and EVERYONE would get angry from time to time (I firmly believe every single person should do some basic dbt cause understanding your own feelings and actions is a skill most ppl don't have)

But again

When you're diagnosed with bpd ppl will blame you for everything and every reaction is solely seen in context of bpd

Ppl with BPD have great qualities

The hyper sensibility and being able to read people easily is not seen as a bad thing within society but if you have bpd it's just manipulation while other ppl give whole classes on how to get people to do what you want them to do...

Also... Therapists are often doing the same?

Again, quit playing games with your patients and clients, they're not dumb petulant children

Figure out your honesty and a basis to work on and actual support can be provided and progress can be made

As a late diagnosed autist I will say one of the most damaging but transformative experiences I've ever had was being misdiagnosed with BPD.

Everyday my heart goes out to people with BPD.

The amount of stigma and silencing they face is astonishing and sickening.

I took DBT for years. Therapists use to turn me away because of my diagnosis.

I would be having full blown autistic meltdowns, crying for help literally - but because I was labeled as BPD ANY time I cried I was treated as manipulative and unstable.

As if the only reason I could be crying was if I was out to trick someone.

95% of the books out there with Borderline in the title are named shit like 'How to get away from a person with Borderline', 'How to stop walking on eggshells (with a person who has BPD)'

I was never allowed to feel true pain or panic or need.

That was 'attention seeking behavior', not me asking for help when a disability was literally inhibiting my ability to process emotions.

There were dozens of times where I had a full meltdown and was either threatened with institutionalization or told I was doing it for attention.

My failing relationships weren't due to a communication issue, or the inability to read social cues. No, because I was labeled borderline, my unstable relationships were my fault. Me beggong nuerotypicals to just be honest and blunt with what they meant was me pestering them for validation.

Borderline patients can't win.

And the funny thing is - I asked my therapist about autism. I told her I thought I was on the spectrum.

BPD is WILDLY misdiagnosed with those with autism and I had many clear signs.

Instead - she told me 'If you were autistic we wouldn't be able to have this conversation'. She made me go through a list of autistic traits made clearly for children, citing how I didn't fit each one.

And then she told me that me identifying with the autism community was the BPD making me search for identity to be accepted - and that I wasn't autistic, just desperate to fit in somewhere.

I didn't get diagnosed for another ten years. For ten years I avoided the autism community - feeling as if I were just a broken person who wanted to steal from people who 'really needed it'.

Because of my providers - I began to doubt my identity MORE, not less.

Ten years of thinking I was borderline and being emotionally neglected and demonized by a system meant to help me.

To this day, I still don't trust neurotypicals. Not fully.

I know I'm not borderline now - but my heart aches for them. Not for the usual stuff. But for the stigma. And the asshole doctors. And the dismissiveness and threatening and the idea of institutionalization hanging over their head.

I love Borderline people. I always will. I'm not Borderline but if you are I love you and I'm sorry.

You're not a bad person. You're not a therapists worst nightmare, you are a human with valid feelings and fears.

Borderline people I'm sorry.

[teenangstenthusiast]

i will forever always try to get people to read "adult" literature because closing yourself off to such a huge section of stories means missing out on so much amazing writing . (the whole argument is ridiculous because "adult" is not a genre just like "teen" or "children" isn't, it's literally just what audience it's intended for, i hate when people treat it as if this determine what the story is rather than like, what people usually read it)

but it feels impossible to say this online without ppl with hard-ons about their intellectual superiority going on about how adults should be EMBARASSED of what they read (in fact its WEIRD that they arent ASHAMED, they have to be either pedophilic creeps or just too dumb & vapid, i miss the old days when everyone was SMARTER and BETTER & these people used to be RIGHTFULLY bullied) thinking youre on their side

& any time i complain about these ppl i get accused of trying to say ADULT NOVELS SUCK & classic literature is ALL BAD & ppl should only read YA when thats so far from what im saying. i would never be angry with someone for saying ppl should branch out & read more than stories that are meant for younger people , but i do get angry when someone is being a fucking asshole about it to others & dismissing such a wide range of stories to all be meaningless & inherently lesser & worth shaming ppl for reading

[castielcommunism]

yeah i rly don’t think ppl give dean enough credit with the mary of it all in s12. the whole “oh this 40 year old man expects his mommy to make soup for him” type of take is boring like ok putting aside that maternal resurrection is an insane situation that would likely destroy one’s psyche, dean is also trying to unlearn so much…like yes the situation IS both funny and depressing, both for dean and mary (and sam to a lesser extent). but like you, i think deans reactions are a testament to the good parts of him, not the bad!

yeah like the expectations Dean puts on his mother ARE unreasonable don’t get me wrong but they’re deeply sympathetic. Like this is a parent who he has exclusively good memories of and has heard only good things about. She also doesn’t know Dean at all, which I think excites him. John was constantly disappointed in him and withheld his approval, and I think on some level Dean figured that if he could just be My Mom’s Oldest Son then he would finally have a parent who would properly love him and take care of him the way he needs. In some ways Dean is emotionally still a four year old because that was the point at which he lost his childhood and was treated like a resource by his father. I think Dean does want Mary to make him food and tell him everything will be okay and tuck him into bed. Not literally, but like emotionally those are the things he wants from her because they’re things he’s never had.

And in 12x22 when he watches her say that to his four year old self he realises he doesn’t actually want that because it’s a lie. They can’t reverse time or undo the damage in their family’s history, but they can start fresh and try again (which is exactly what he says to her).

And Sam wants those things to! Like he absolutely wants A Mom. But he doesn’t put all of his emotional expectations on Mary or like bare his soul to her immediately the way Dean does. Dean places all of his emotional baggage at her feet and demands she deal with it, so when she decides to leave he’s not only completely devastated by it, it also retraumatises him (my mom is leaving again) and confirms all his worst fears (once my parents know who I am they hate me). Which is, again, unreasonable and unfair to Mary, but it’s understandable. Sam doesn’t do any of that. He’s sad his mother is leaving but like he’s not going “oh my god my mom hates me and wants to leave me, specifically, because my lot in life is to be abandoned by people I love when I let them down” the way Dean does. Sam definitely feels a lot of resentment and anger towards Mary for making the demon deal, for not preparing him or their family for it, for dying and destroying their lives, but she never really fell from this high mantle for him. She’s just an utter and complete stranger that their father was obsessed with.

And obviously like Mary is not blameless in this. She did make a deal, and her actions did destroy her family. She had children with John and she does have a responsibility to them, even if they’re suddenly these grown adult men she doesn’t know. But the tragedy of it is that none of them are really at fault for what happened, or for Mary coming back, they just have to deal with these circumstances the best they can.

So yeah back to the original point of this ask, a very compelling part of s12 for me is watching Dean try really hard at making his relationship with Mary work. And like he’s kinda bad at it! He fucks up and they argue and he gets his feelings hurt but he still wants to try. We don’t really see him do that in the show with the other relationships he has, and it infuses a lot of much needed sympathy to his behaviour and just makes him overall a much more interesting character. I wish the other relationships he had with Sam and Cas had similar stakes, but this is supernatural etc etc.

[demonadelem]

CWilburrrrrrrr I missed you crimeboysssss tommy looks so comfortable around wilbuuuurrrr so safe ssosoososoo nananaaawwww I missedwhen lore didn't stress me the fuck out thanks you will ur wilbru wilbr I'm so fucking tired of ccs making fun of lore I get so fucking stressed that I'll get told to stop caring about the things I'm deeply invested about I get so fucking stressed that the extremely sensitive topics surrounding cdisc duo will not be treated with respect. I'm so sad that "they don't know about exile" is the excuse for characters to side with dream, NO FUCK YOU FOR NOT BELIEVING TOMMY HE SCREAMING AND YELLING ABOUT HOW SHITTY DREAM WAS JUST FUCKING BELIEVE HIM you see how he reacts you see as much as dream he is a stranger fucking damnnit just be fucking neutral for FUCKS SAKE I'm stressed that exausting discourse will find its way to my online space arguing like the sun is going to explode if you disagree with them I'm tired seeing people who only seem to watch dsmp for the sole purpose of proving or disproving their side in discourse I'm so fucking tired I miss when watching dsmp stream was easy, when I could just take what I was seeing on streams as canon as default. I miss when nobody when ppl didn't care about having netherite and built was they could with what they had in 20 minutes and then spent the next hour roleplaying around said shitty structure I miss when nobody carried anything important on them so i didn have to stress about when someone stole their shit when it lore was more funny and random and happy I miss when I liked ctechno when anarchy was silly stupid funny and clearly in the wrong I miss when other fandoms didn't hate this one i hate the gatekeeping I just want to exist in the same fandom space without being intrusive stop telling me that I need give more attention to lesser known mcyt because they deserve it more idk how I like what I like I don't know what to say about condi or ponk I think theyre cool and nice I try to draw them and it's silted and emotionless and I hate it and i throw it away I quit twitter I stayed off it for over a year it still falling through the cracks I miss L'manberg I love mcyt I love it so much it makes the happiest ive even been all quarantine i miss when looking forward to lore or something else was almost always paid off "soon" is cursed im in the pits mcyt dsmp still makes me so happy but the price of it all is getting to me

[xxstrawberrybunxx]

Yippie I love talking abt myself !!!!! :} I feel that the criteria is written more for an outside perspective on npd rather than someone who actually experiences it. This makes it very difficult to get people to believe I even have npd because it is a deeply internal disorder, and for everything that could be obvious to some (like arrogance or a lack of awareness of others) there's like a million combinations of possible symptoms buried underneath.

Ok so for the inflated ego and expecting special treatment thing, I don't think it would be obvious to most ppl that I do experience this symptom because I'm very good at masking it (well I mean I am now I sure as fuck didn't used to be), but I often just kind of subconsciously expect things to happen to me just because I exist, without me doing shit to get it, and when they obviously don't happen I get really hurt and upset cuz why isn't anybody acknowledging me and my clear superiority??? I'm literally perfect I've done everything right (hasn't done anything at all). This can be in reaction to declined "special favors" or people not giving me anything I ask for, it can be the weather not being what I expected it to be, it can be me being punished for something anyone else would logically also get punished for, it can be me not winning an award I'm not guaranteed to win. I think ppl would expect this to be because I was spoiled or something as a kid but really I was kind of ignored and singled out a lot lol. Me not getting "special favors" was, from my perspective, me not even being treated like a person at all. Just a little bit of perspective I guess.

Exaggerating achievements and lying- I don't do this super often (anymore) but when I do it's because I'm terrified of being seen as "lesser" because of something I haven't done, not only do I have to be equal to everyone else in this invisible social hierarchy I have to be BETTER at all times or else I feel I'm undeserving of any social status (which is another thing, obsession with a social status that doesn't even exist outside of my own brain). I also tend to over exaggerate my "worse" traits so that people can't expect anything from me so I can never disappoint anyone. Oh yeah, i def got an awful grade in that class!!! Don't look at my actual report card, if you do that you'll see that I was actually just average, and just average is basically failing anyway... (another note- I could be doing perfectly fine, execrating even, in a class and genuinely think I'm doing badly just because other people are directly getting praised for it and I'm not! If I'm not given praise I'm basically average, otherwise I'd be recognized for my superiority bla bla bla stfu /nay)

I feel like my primary experiences with npd is an obsession with social status, an obsession with being better than everyone else (and a refusal to do things that I know I'm not good at or participate in things I know others will be better at), an obsession with myself and a tendency to only be able to really perceive things as to how they relate to myself, constant masking and a tendency to meticulously build a social persona (or multiple social personas for different situations) instead of just being myself (to the point where "just being myself" is yet another mask and yet another persona), very intense RSD and fear of social rejection and criticism, feeling intense dysphoria and feeling like I'm a failure as a person when I'm feeling left out of something.

Some other things that I'm not sure are just npd things but feel like definitely are at least somewhat related are social exhaustion despite being extroverted (because I'm literally constantly checking myself and making sure everything I do is calculated in some way, without a real goal of why im doing it other than "so you can't be rejected!!! So you can't be told you're doing anything wrong"), any indication of someone losing interest in me leading to me absolutely convincing myself they hate me and have "finally seen who I really am" (not that I know what "who I really am" is, other than some gross, unlovable version of myself that doesn't even really exist outside of my brain).

It's a complex disorder with a lot of layers but people often forget that it's literally cluster b which is "the emotional" cluster, it's a very emotional disorder and it doesn't have as much to do with other people as ppl like to think it does (no, we don't seek out "victims" to abuse for emotional validation or whatever, though the occasional supply boost is nice (compliments + attention)). Tbh I actually think the supply thing makes me more vulnerable to being addicted to social media than it makes me a danger to "leaching off people irl" which is yet another less-looked-at symptom ig.

I'm very glad more people are open to talking to us about our experiences directly rather than just listening to the misinfo ppl spew abt our disorder :} it's a hard one to talk about but it shouldn't be.

a few questions for ppl with npd abt your disorder if thats ok <3

i think the criteria for npd is written in a very confusing way and more about fearmongering rather than actually helping someone identify when they have npd, so i’d like to respectfully ask for a bit of clarification. i spent a while believing ppl with npd are my enemy and i’d like to rectify my lack of knowledge on it.

Keep reading

[1apple-fox1]

card technology and how LDS basically owns the market on not only real solid vision systems but also cards

this is gonna be a wordy post and i apologize in advance. ok first off i just wanna say i am probably the only person who thinks about this shit but i find world stuff and the like interesting to think about. call me obsessed, idc, ive watched arc v 5 times and i just really wanna share this.

it is canon that standard did not start with the other summoning methods, that they are relatively new. we arent ever told what cards are made out of specifically- but considering past shows and their connection to spirits we can assume they arent just simply cards. EX- gx and the crystal beast cards being made from actual gems.

for arc v, id say its the ‘energy signature’ of a card. reiji is shown to have technology that is able to read energy and also tell what kind of energy it is. He also uses a machine to copy pendulum monster cards and they are similar to the originals but not exactly the same. so either the ‘energy’ is the monster spirit itself, or its the magic nonsense that allows it to summon said spirit. either way- a card is not simple to make in the universe.

so that begs the question- how did LDS manage to get the other summoning methods?

well its shown that LDS actually has dimension hopping technology, though it seems rough and unfinished, i have no doubt reiji tried to use it again after his initial teleport to academia. whether he went there physically or not idk, but i theorize he was able to capture or hone in on the cards of those dimensions and copy them the same way he copied yuyas pendulum monsters.

except the LDS fusion/xyz/synchro cards are all weaker than the originals because he probably had limited data.

for fusion its easy to back this up since, anyone from standard who uses fusion doesnt actually use a regular ‘polymerization’ card- because reiji wasnt able to copy it one for one... (your probably thinking- what about kachidoki? well ill get back to that)

Even other characters like yuya, yuzu, and reiji himself are shown to not actually be able to use ‘polymerization’ more than once. standard users who have fusion monsters rely on other methods such as deck themed fusion cards, monster effects, or in the case of reiji: contract cards

this extends to the other methods too but in more subtle ways. hokuto is only able to xyz summon after changing his monsters levels, yaiba can only synchro summon using effects that treat monsters like tuners (both him and gon only have one tuner in their decks at the start) you could also argue that the fact they are missing ‘rank up’ cards or any support magic cards for synchro monsters as another way in which standard made xyz/synchro are weaker.

so- where the fuck am i going with this? well LDS is shown to be the only thing with access to these other cards. its not clear, but it looks like using the method can take a toll on the users body and i do not know if thats a matter of energy needed to summon a monster and having to train ones body or what but-

these cards are not easy to make, and there are limited copies in stock.

other summoning method cards are expensive to buy in standard. why am i saying this? well one- yu show duel school is shown to not have access to any, shuzo himself says hes never used the cards, and its possible that its because he cant afford it. none of the other schools in the tournament use other summoning methods. that is except...

kachidoki and his school.

not only that, but they also have a regular ‘polymerization’ card. your probably thinking this is where all this falls apart. but think about it- ryozanpaku is shown to be probably the second most popular and highest grossing duel school. its not a stretch to think they PAID LDS a hefty sum of money for their own stock of cards. and what did LDS give them? their first copies of the ‘polymerization’ cards. they are weaker but relatively work the same- but most of the students still rely on it AND monster effects.

but if thats the case- if these cards cost so much and only LDS has access to them... not only do they now own that market, theyve basically created a huge gap and money cap for players of the game in standard. people arent gonna wanna go to a duel school that does not have the means to teach them these other methods of play. standard summoning becomes a laughing stock- no one can win with just standard summoning! duel schools start going out of business because they simply lack students. LDS and only a FEW other schools remain and all of them focus on those methods- not standard summoning...

LDS has complete and total control of the market.

of course arc v doesnt show us if anywhere else in the standard dimension has this tech but if we’ve seen anything from reira- its quite likely japan is the most advanced in this field, as weapons and cards seem to go hand in hand because of their innate power to destroy... ANYWAYS

what does this mean for the game in standard? well if things kept going how they were its quite possible the level of entry into the game becomes so high that you have to be born with privilege to even have a chance at grabbing a spot and not being immediately kicked out.

but something more interesting- and the real like theory part i guess is... when something becomes too expensive to get- ppl start making knock offs. people start making fake cards, some of them work on the duel disk- others do not, but the older the card the easier to copy and cheat the duel disk code. suddenly theres a bunch of copies of strong ishijimas cards, or even yusho’s cards. (thats how the bully managed to make an exact replica of strong ishijimas deck)

theres just a group of people now who just dont even use duel disk and just play on mats- denounce the new summoning method and actively hate what the game has become- but its still seen as lesser... and still other methods cannot be copied.

theres no real end to this theory beyond the fact that this shit is kinda messed up and mirrors shit in our world to an eerie point but like... uh i hope you enjoyed this? i like thinking of the game duel monsters in the world of arc v instead of the normal ass card game that it is irl so-- uh yeah pls tell me what you think about this and add on to it if you have something to share! sorry for the long post--

[none-gender-left-man]

I'm just gonna talk into the void for a minute. Reblog if you want I guess?

I find it so constricting the classism I've been steeped in my entire life in school and professional settings, the classism I'm still scrubbing out of my own conditioned standards. It's in the way I erased the southern lower class vernacular from my vocabulary for the longest time. The way I still subconsciously hide the parts of my voice that drawl or twang when trying to be taken seriously or respected, the way my mother's Texan and Oklahoman accent affected my own living in Iowa so I was othered by the Midwestern kids for sounding like my "hick" mom, which taught me to hide it early on even though that was part of who I was. I was raised by Texans and Oklahomans, so of course I always had that influence of accent without having yet stepped a foot in those states myself.

Then at 9 I was moved to Oklahoma and have flipped between here and Texas since geographically (I'm 23), I've spent most of my life in the Southern Great Plains, and before that I was raised by texomans in the Midwest for my barely recollected childhood. Yet, I've scrubbed it out of my identity because of the prevalent classism against the way I was raised to speak. Now I flip between different manners of speech for different contexts and situations without even thinking about it, which causes identity issues.

I just? Wish there wasn't so much tangible classism in the way people treat people from "Country" regions. From the deep south to southern Appalachia and the southern Great Plains. I don't have to scrub the culture I was initially raised in out of myself. I don't have to pretend to hate all country music. (I love the shit out of many forms of county western and American folk music and ppl can kiss my ass about it!)

I don't have to hide my drawl. I can participate in western stories and wild west history and this doesn't make me lesser. Tired of the mask of pretending to be a "normal" mid-upper class Midwesterner with a vague indistinct accent so people don't treat me like I'm stupid. I talk how I talk and if I drawl sometimes or use a weird phrase it's my business. If you shit on people for talking like a "hillbilly" or a "hick" then you're being fucking classist. These accents developed in lower class branches of families spanning from Appalachia all the way out west and far south. This is simply the way language evolves and nobody should feel stupid for having regional dialect or accent.

While we're here- yes I identify with my yeehaw background while also being a queer pagan leftist. Idk how to tell some of y'all that people exist diversely everywhere and regional or class stereotypes are never a great basis to run on in reality. There are people of all kinds defying the caricatures you have in your mind of what the south is.

There are MANY black country folks, I was close friends with a bisexual Mexican Ashkenazi Jew in school, knew a pair of Kiowa goth queer kids in school, went to school with the daughter of a Thai family living in rural Oklahoma. These are literally just a handful of anecdotal examples and I assure you the amount of non-white ppl in the US south is way higher than y'all realize.

I see and interact with several immigrant communities in Wichita Falls and Lawton where I spend most of my time. These places do not look like what some of you think. We are not doomed to be ignorant and racist by geography. These regions aren't some monolith and the "south" isn't as cishet or white as you think. Oklahoma is one of the most recently stolen pieces of indigenous land and some of y'all have the audacity to act like everyone from Oklahoma must be white cishet jingoist conservatives. A state COVERED in reservations.

People from any geographical location can be anybody they happen to be and you cannot project expectations onto them to erase their subconscious cultural expressions such as accent or vernacular no matter their background, nor should their geographical upbringing be a reason to assume they're "stupid" or bigoted.

Queering country western culture is literally the cure to the problems with country western culture, so stop shaming queer ppl who reclaim and want to engage with this part of ourselves.

The southern United States isn't as white as you think.

Shitting on southern accents and speech patterns is not only classist, but is often racist too (such as when directed at AAVE).

Disclaimer: I am white and this post is not made with intent to speak over or for POC on their concerns in this, though I addressed issues relevant to them here I cannot speak in depth beyond what I've learned in unpacking my own oppressive biases, this is in good faith and I am not only open to but encourage that people related to this issue who aren't white engage with the conversation and correct me if I have mispoken, as you are part of this too. POC have always been and always will be included in country western history, no matter how much media whitewashes the West.

[posi-pan]

honestly the other thing abt the new flag discourse is so many ppl r trying to speak for All pan ppl or Most pan ppl n its like? okay do u currently identify as pan? no? then dont speak for us, n even then you shouldnt be speaking for anyone but yourself if you are pan

but of course twt things supporting someone or using something made by someone problematic means that you 100% agree w everything theyve ever said which like. if u dislike mspec lesbians thats your choice but u rlly dont have to care what jasper supports if jasper isnt being a bigot. u dont like jasper? thats fine but use our actual flag bc if you fuck it up were gonna lose all the ground weve made to exclusionism

for me it's more annoying when exclusionists (who are really just queerphobes but don't get called that because they hate the ~lesser queers) think they get to speak for the community. like, they hate their own community and think their fellow queers are oppressing them by being different, that does not get to represent the community. fuck that. i don't care if someone is pan, if they're an exclusionist, they need to shut the fuck up. period.

we need to start treating exclusionism as it is, instead of acting like it's harmless arguments. it's fucking regurgitated terfism.

[toytulini]

I just feel like aphobia is constantly treated as a lesser, more minor concern than other things. Like it's still very acceptable on this site to just...ignore it. To not actually give a shit about it. Even on my last post i could feel myself internally dismissing it as a concern because i know its not something people care about, you can see it in the way i tack on things like violent and vicious and hateful aphobia bc i know to a lot of people, its not enough if its just someone laughing at us for being cringey, or making virgin jokes, or reblogging posts where the entire butt of the joke is either a young ace person being cringey and loudly ace OR literally a fucking troll blog run by an aphobe to make fun of us. We might get some ppl giving half a shit about it, when they cross that line from infantalizing us and mocking us for being weird and cringey, (largely still acceptable to the wider tumblr community) to straight up rape apologism or sexual harassment, that maybe crosses a line for some people.

Then again, depends how quippy they word it. Id say,

going onto ace headcanon posts by minors about their favorite characters and describing in graphic, extensive detail, how much that character FUCKS, they love [graphic description of sexual acts] and [more graphic description of sexual acts, sometimes including the most vulgar possible way to reference different genitals being acted upon], counts as sexual harassment. Just because its fandom related and hyperbolic doesnt make it suddenly acceptable, and yet.

Idk its just. Exhausting. The fact that its gotten to me, even, and the way i word things when i talk about it, is especially frustrating. The fact that when i bring up aphobes, i dont feel its sufficient to Just bring up aphobes, i feel the need to specify that im talking about the REALLY hateful ones, the ones that make posts about graphic violence they wish to enact upon us for. Existing. Not bringing up the ones that are just idk mocking us or whatever, because I know people dont care about us enough for that. Thats not a concern. Its really frustrating.

[juiceastronaut]

Okay so. I watched Q-force. And I have no idea what I think about it.

Imma just be rambling so I'll break down the characters and my likes/dislikes about them before giving my plot breakdown at the end. Only the main/prominent ones because I don't have time.

Steve Maryweather-Easily the best character out of them, with Deb being a close second. He could've very easily fallen into the trope of being someone who was incompetent but expected the world anyway, but he doesn't. He graduated top of his class, and despite his quirks is a genuinely competent team leader, and wants the best for his team. He wants to prove that he and his team are competent enough to get recognition, and has a genuine faith in the people around him. It was refreshing to see him hold his team in a genuine high regard, where a lot of times it's like "We're shit but lets do this thing now" He's a genuinely well-rounded character, and (and forgive me if this isn't the best way to frame this) it feels like being gay is an important part of his character, without encompassing the whole thing. I thought Benji and his relationship was super cute and I was sad when they broke up. I was afraid he was going to be, like a second but worse Twink with the stereotyping but gladly fell away from that.

Deb-I thought her and her wife were super cute (though I hate how the wife is designed ngl adjafkldajfd). I liked Debs character, but I feel like she had a lot of racial stereotyping that wouldn't be inherently obvious unless you were looking for them, her being the strong one, and also the "mama" type at the same time. No one treated her with disrespect, and her lesbianism seemed to be more authentic but I feel like there wasn't a lot of thought put into what these tropes were and why they were bad. Her being black and making her the mama type, as well as the big strong type could be read as tasteless. Again, I really liked her character but these were some things I noticed while watching.

Twink- You know, I didn't really like him at first, I thought he was the epitome of all the bad stereotyping (though I'm just glad him and Mary didn't get put into the same category). His humor isn't my taste, and it just kinda seemed like someone for half of his lines went "what twitter stan language can we put in here?" And sometimes it was a bit too random for my tastes. However! I do like that his drag was considered important and was an integral part to a lot of missions they went on, and not just "Ah look at that dumb gay trying to find reasons to dress in drag." His talents and expertise were both respected and, save for Buck (which his whole point was supposed to be offensive anyway) no one undermined Twink for his femininity. His back story is also kinda random but did play a role in the missions as well. Still, personally think he's the worst character. Plus, he's French so minus four-twenties amount of points.

Stat-You know, in a show where everyone was stating what letter they were every few seconds I was surprised that I had to look up that Stat was trans. I...liked her character for the most part, except the part where she was fucking a robot. Kinda weird ngl, outta left field, and with her being trans I wonder if her having that sort of relationship is problematic for her. Love her design tho, love me a hacker girl. She's also listed as "ambiguously gay" tho showed to have mostly girl love interests but, okay.

Buck-He's the straight guy, emotionally repressed haha and he's bigoted. Did think it was funny later on when he was more "accepting" but managed to be even more infuriating about it. Tied with Twink as worse character but you know they tried to do stuff with him.

Vee-Really liked me a boss lady, but kinda weird how they bait-and-switched us with her actually being a lesbian, then go "no she's straight tho" in regards to Karen. I thought her and Mary's relationship was cute, wish I saw more of it. But she did feel like a random plot device in later seasons, what with her disappearing and reappearing when it was plot relevant. (Tho she HOTOHOTHOTHOT bikini episode WOOOWEEEE)

....

Okay, so now the plot....which. it had one?

It felt like it was flip flopping back n forth about whether it wanted to take itself seriously or not, and it seemed to decide on serious more towards the end, but then it would have this random plot element that would be so out of left field it would pull me out of my suspension of disbelief. See the whole "Back cracking to unlock memories" plot point. This back and forth on whether it would be a comedy or not I think weakened both categories it tried to play into.

If I had to compare the show to anything it would probably be Futurama, but the thing with Futurma is, its set in the future, so you're suspension of disbelief is allowed to stretch a bit more because all the wacky quirky stuff can be attributed to future shenanigans. Q-force, to my knowledge, is set in the modern day, which makes the wacky stuff that much wacker, because it's set in our modern times, which you apply the rules of everyday life to.

A lot of the problems that I had with Q-Force is, in the attempt to write specifically about the "gay experience" revealed that the writers have really only had a very specific experience of interacting with gay ppl, what I call the "Urban Gay" experience.

The fact they're in West Hollywood, and all the things that were listed as "universal gay experiences" but were only things that you'd be exposed to if you were in the city. I think a flavor of "white gay" can be implemented here too, which Q force has exactly one black woman, who manages to be the only lesbian.

That coupled with the fact that, there's a difference between having Twink naturally being a drag queen, the whole team being gay to some degree, and the fact they interact with the gay community often without Drawing Attention to all of those things and self-congratulating itself on concluding it. Funnily enough, Q-Force had examples of doing this right and doing this right. Right way: In the second or third episode where Mary found that guy with the flash drive to the uranium in it and seduced him in the gay bar. Relevant that it was gay without overtly drawing attention to it. Wrong-Way: Having Pride go on while Girl Boss was trying to take over the world.

And, for the show that promoted itself as representing the gay experience, there were...two gay men, one lesbian, one trans person, one straight guy and...no bisexual people. Also no nonbinary people. Like of course it's unrealistic to include every single identity but you're one bisexual person who appeared for one episode and was promptly blown up. And also showed to be...more off than the other characters, what with the stealing of silverware and all. Just, bisexual people are already forgotten enough as it is and not including them in the show, but you include two gay men just kinda reads as tasteless to me (as a bisexual person, obviously).

Which makes it so weird that Stat was left "ambiguously gay" when she could've easily been bisexual (which still would be problematic because of the robot-fucking but at least you got the B in there somewhere in the main group)

Overall, it tried to market itself as the "be all end all" of what it was like to be gay, but ended up excluding the exact people that get excluded in real-life lgbt spaces. This combined with the indecision with what kind of show it wanted to be managed to make it fall short. If you arent the very specific type of gay person who lives in a city environment and doesn't fit the stereotypes showed you're not going to feel "seen" by the show.

Weirdly though, I didn't hate watching it, and I would probably watch another season if they managed to make one. The parts that did work, I think worked really well, and even the bad parts just read as tasteless, and not actively terrible. If they focused less on making "hey I'm gay" jokes every three seconds and just let each character be what they are I think the show would be stronger for it. And I think they'd find less problems overall if they did that too. In the mean time I'll just be here side-eyeing the whole thing.

Edit: I forgot to mention, and this is a problem a lot of adult TV shows fall into, that because they got the clear to show nudity/sex they felt like they *had* to show nudity and to a lesser extent sex every episode. So just that whole "Haha adult=sex obviously."

Oh! And this generally goes for the whole "shove it in your face" part, but a lot of the characters who are bigoted were shown to be. Very blatantly so. And not to say there isn't blatantly bigoted ppl of course they are but I don't think that's where you see a lot of bigotry nowadays. This was sort of touched on during the show but more of a jokey manner, but I think it would've been more realistic if we had more "girl with a gay best friend" kinda bigotry as opposed to the "I'm literally hurling slurs at you" bigotry, especially since they're in Cali.

[haleyjames]

Sierra has opened another town rp called phoenixrpg.

She has posted on the main, admitting that it’s her. Since then, she’s posted other asks about her time as admin/owner of wilmingtonroleplay. I’m making this post to talk about what she’s answered, and to warn people away from her manipulation tactics. I’m throwing this under a read more because there’s screenshots/it’s a little long lmao.

This was the first ask she answered about her “handling” of the group:

I’ve underlined what I first want to address. Allowing fc switches and poor diversity were the LEAST of what she did in Wilmington. What about all the  people she bullied? Her outright racism? Excluding others? Manipulating and gaslighting people? Getting all her minions to do her dirty work and send ppl anon hate? Facilitating and protecting catfishers? Admitting to the two things she does in this post is tactical. It’s admitting to SOME wrongdoing, but only things that barely even skim the surface of her behaviour. She’s taking ownership ONLY for the bare minimum to make it seem like she IS taking accountability for her overall actions and IS open to actually talking and addressing things. By this piss-poor answer, that’s not the case. She has A LOT more to answer for than this--as an admin AND as a person. 

The answer to the next ask is somehow even worse.

I had to highlight a huge chunk of it lmao. The anonymous person uses the word ABUSE in their message, and Sierra is still going on about other bullshit? The lesser stuff. Is racism “failed diversity?” Is that what we’re calling it? It wasn’t about how Sierra “handled situations”--it was about her bullying people, her gaslighting and manipulating people. Yeah, sure, that tied into her work as an admin, but?? What is this small list of her lesser crimes? “...as far as Wilmington was concerned, those were my downfalls with modding.” Yeah. That’s not the question the person posed to you. And maybe those were your failures as an admin on the technical side of things, but wow... this is NOTHING in comparison to everything she really did and how she really treated people.

“I... will always be very upfront and honest about what’s going down.” If the answer to this ask and the one before it are any indication, SHE WON’T. This is so very much DOWNPLAYED, it’s disgusting. Taking the slightest accountability for the smallest of things she did... and I mean, is it really? Is there any apology here? No. There’s some admittance, and then “no one’s word is gospel and time will tell”. Time has already told us what we need to know. Wilmington was open for how long? How long have I been doing this? How many pages do I have on my page that are filled with people’s experience with her and Emma and Kelly and Wilmington and what they’ve done?

It really astounds me that this is how she answered an ask that point-blank calls her behaviour abusive and unsafe. I don’t know why I’m surprised by now. But, anyway. If she wants to address these small things, let’s do it.

“Face switches that didn’t match up.” When literally four months ago you joined a group called charmingrp with an Inbar Lavi FC and then changed it to a Michelle Veintimilla FC without any sort of bio/name changes. 

“Failed avenues of diversity.” Also recently, when you continually showed how fucking racist you are.

“I have and always will be very upfront and honest about what’s going down.” Oh, like when you deleted Wilmington and hid for a few months until my blog got flagged and then suddenly reappeared in the rpc? Without addressing the racist or abusive behaviour at all that made you finally delete your group? Sure. 

Literally nothing has changed, if you ask me. Next message further proves this:

I didn’t highlight anything because it’s all BULLSHIT. Given your history with uh, what did you call it? “Failed avenues of diversity”--or the fact that Wilmington FINALLY closed after so long because you and Emma were finally called out on your racism--you’d think you would actually put in some EFFORT and try and show the world that you’re not. But you are. This stance is so incredibly lazy and irresponsible, and then with the added context of everything else that’s happened in the past? It only makes it even worse! Like!!!!!!! You talk about your failures as an admin in previous posts and then this is your answer?? This is so cheap and YUCK. What are you even doing as an admin then, huh??

This diversity rule she pulled out of her ass in the answer to the message isn’t even in the rules on the main??? There’s nothing about it AT ALL. See here:

Beth said it best, if I do say so:

Sierra is playing a Christina Milian OC and a Casey Deidrick OC. (NOTE: This is who Beth is referring to when she says ‘cooler hands’. The original ‘cooler hands’ is in reference to Sierra’s Chris Wood OC in Wilmington.) Christina is Cuban. The character’s name is DANIELLE TYLER, which is probably the whitest name I’ve ever seen before. I asked Beth about this (who is Cuban) and this is what she had to say:

Which, given everything, is the most reasonable and most unsurprising explanation. Again: it’s lazy and is just more proof of her being racist. 

I mean, GOD ashfjdlfl. This was after only THREE MESSAGES posted. Like. I don’t know what else to tell you. Things aren’t ever going to change. Already you can tell they haven’t. I really really caution people on staying away from this group, and this group of people. I’m sure there’ll be more to say as more gets posted and the group gets more exposure from the tags, but for now, this is all I’ve got. Sigh. Please stay safe out there everybody!!!! 

[lovelyjasmari]

One last thing

This is not a spoiler, moreso just an introspection on me as a Kairi fan, but I’ll tag it as such just in case. 

For those who know me, you know that there was a time, not very long ago, that I absolutely DISPISED  Kairi. I fully took pleasure in talking shit about her whenever I could and that shit peaked after finishing KH3. 

But in the middle of last year I began to have a change of heart. Partially because I was writing her in one of my fics and I was trying to get into her headspace and I came to the realization that she’s actually a very interesting character and has so much potential and one thing I hate is wasted potential. 

Wasted potential is basically canon Kairi to a T. 

And finally, Melody of Memory has made me realize, more than ever, that I never actually hated Kairi at all. What I really hated was how Sora was treated all throughout KH3 (and DDD and 0.2 to a lesser extent). I was rooting for him in the last hours of the game to finally prove himself, obtain the Power of Waking and manage to survive the Keyblade War in one piece. 

And then Kairi got kidnapped again and Master Xehanort killed her. At that moment, I knew how this was going to go down and it made me seethe. 

It made me seethe how Young Xehanort, who hijacked Sora’s Mark of Mastery in the first fucking place and then gloated how “abusing” the PoW would make Sora disappear was right all along. It made me seethe how Yen Sid would likely never be held accountable for not explaining the consequences of such a power to him and would likely write it off as Sora being reckless and stupid like he usually is and most would accept that. And he’d never be held accountable for sending Kairi to be trained by Merlin when he isn’t a keyblade wielder and Lea was already an experienced fighter. Indirectly causing this whole mess in the first place.

AND IT MADE ME FUCKING SEETHE how after everything Sora has done over several fucking games, this is what happens to him. He was treated like crap for a good portion of the game by both the villains AND his companions for something that wasn’t even his fault and the one chance he had to prove himself, he ultimately fails because he still disappears. He is punished for forces beyond anyone’s control, punished for being forced into a situation he is not prepared for and is punished for wanting to save someone he cares about.

All of which I readily blamed on Kairi. And as someone who has been on the other side, I can say with some authority that, for a lot of ppl who still hate Kairi, this is one of their reasons.

More than a year later now, I see that Kairi was never to blame for the terrible writing she has suffered. At this point I’d say it’s deliberate if I didn’t know better. But I have come to love Kairi, I will continue to root for her and at this point there is absolutely nothing Nomura could do or write that would change that fact. 

This is going to be a tremendously arrogant thing to say, but I feel that at this point I could write Kairi better than him. 

[firelxdykatara]

How do you not let the repeated anon hate get to you? I’m just a “viewer” and I can start getting anxiety from read it. There’s no way I could handle being in your position. It’s pretty commendable. (Not to say you’re any lesser if it DOES get to you of course, I feel like that’d be perfectly normal)

I wanna say first off that, like you said, if anon hate does get to you and you can’t handle it/turn off anon or asks completely/etc, that is normal and ok and you’re not weak for it or anything. No one should have to deal with anon hate and choosing not to allow it is 100% valid and understandable.

As to how I personally deal, honestly, a lot of it is because I’m so fucking stubborn, I know for a fact I’m right at all times (this may be a bit hyperbolic, but anon hate has never convinced me to change my mind about anything shipwise EVER), and I am a creature fueled by spite. One of the easiest ways to get me to ship something is to hate the people who ship it for stupid reasons. Or even to just hate the ship itself for stupid reasons. Or the characters involved--I went into The Umbrella Academy stanning Allison and Diego and Five and being pretty neutral on everyone else, but thinking Luthison was cute. Then in comes the fandom calling luthison disgusting and the shippers incest supporting freaks and all the scads of Luther hate that were blaming him for his own trauma and making light of his trauma responses while letting Vanya (and Five, and the others, but it was especially prominent in Luther v Vanya discourse) off the hook for slitting her own sister’s throat and I was like ‘you know what? Luther just became my favorite and I hope Luthison is endgame’.

I did one Jiangtara fic and was idly considering expanding on it maybe, and then people dogpiled on me over a perfectly innocuous post insisting a character with no set age was An Adult and I was a pedophile for enjoying the potential of this ship, and now I’m in the process of outlining an entire one-shot series and Jiangtara has become my second-favorite Katara ship.

I’m fueled by spite and righteous anger over the way some people in toxic corners of various fanbases will treat real, living, breathing people over their opinions on fictional fucking characters, and I find this provides me with something of a buffer--anon hate does little but convince me that I’m right, and I should say it, and I should keep saying it so that anyone with similar opinions who’s scared to voice them because of the way these assholes act will at least know they aren’t alone and maybe can help keep them from being browbeaten into submission by a bunch of jerks who never learned to separate fiction from reality.

That said, sometimes it does get to me. I’ve gotten panic attacks over some of the things people have sent me. (The worst have been ones I would never publish. I’m not giving a platform to rape and death threats, ever.) At that point, I will start just deleting hate rather than responding, and will probably walk away, or ask for nice things (like I did the other day, and thank you to everyone who sent me prompts and headcanons, I have some sitting here that I will dive into, I’ve just been feeling very low energy the last couple days), and there’s always been anons being nice and sending me love that make keeping anon on worth it.

I do also try to make sure I tag everything so ppl who follow me can blacklist my anon hate and salt tags (’anon hate party’ and ‘salt for ts’) but sometimes when things get bad I just start responding and forget to tag, so never feel bad if you need to unfollow me for a while until things settle down. I know just witnessing it can be exhausting as fuck.

[kingofthewilderwest]

"#just because you have a bias about certain socioeconomic groups which tend to listen to country doesn't mean" // Yup. I tend to side-eye folks who are like "I like all kinds of music except country and [Insert a genre of music usually associated with Black creators like rap and hip hop]" You're not slick, ppl. I know what you're saying.

^^^^^^^^^ You hit the nail on the head.

It’s racial bias. It’s socioeconomic bias. It’s bias against people groups who have less respect and say in society.

From my tags on this post:

#don’t get me started on a long rant of the progressive side of country music and what’s been progressive FOR DECADES#from times near its BEGINNInGS#through the modern age#just because you have a bias about certain socioeconomic groups which tend to listen to country doesn’t mean#that that’s actually what the genre is or who the artists are#I could go for a LONNNNG time about this#a LONG time#some of the best protest songs I know of today’s current political situation#are country#or have like ya’ll forgotten about the folk revival#of the 1960s#or…#gahghfnfddhgnghfngh#I AM GAY AND I LISTEN TO COUNTRY#NYEH!!!!

Now. I understand disinterest in a genre because it’s not your aesthetic, but when people express their feelings for country, R&B, hip-hop, etc. …the dialogue isn’t casual “It’s not my thing.” The dialogue is a hateful, passionate retaliation.

Other genres aren’t treated like this. It’s normalized and encouraged to hate on country and rap. These genres are systematically treated with less respect and that disrespect culturally arose because these genres are associated with less-respected demographics. 

(Country music is associated with people of low socioeconomic status, for people who aren’t explicitly aware.)

Anecdotally: I’ve caught something interesting about anti-country music sentiment. Many people tell me they can’t stand the “twang.” Half the time, I’ve noticed that their internalized definition of “twang” isn’t the vocal technique; it’s that they can’t stand the presence of a Southern accent. And hooboy does that have TONS of sociocultural bias issues. As a linguist, I’ve read endless sociolinguistic studies about how Southern dialects are treated as “lesser,” and how speakers of the dialect are automatically judged to be less intelligent, etc. It’s not good, folks.

Sometimes, to help friends get out of their anti-country mindset, I’ve “tricked” them into liking country. See, genres like bluegrass grew closely out of Scots-Irish folk music. Often, we’re playing the same tunes on both sides of the Atlantic. So I play a few instrumentals, my friend goes, “Oh! I love Celtic music

The biases against those demographics color how people view the music. There’s endless things that can be said about hip-hop bias, holy shit. I won’t focus on that today because I don’t believe I am qualified to be a spokesman. Someone who understands that genre better, and other genres associated with the African-American community, and is African-American, would be a better human to listen to than me. I defer to their knowledge and experience. It’s hella important to understand what bias has been reflected against those genres.

But there’s just as much bias against country music, against another demographic. And I’ve found it wild how it gets treated on places like tumblr, which wants to stand up for underprivileged groups, but somewhat inaccurately associates country music as “anti-gay conservative evil white person music” rather than music of people historically of lower socioeconomic status.

Yes, some of the demographic that listens to country music or plays country music are bad apples. But like… thinking the music is JUST THAT is a huge disservice to what country actually is and who the music artists actually are.

The history of country music is one giant collaborative melting pot of people from many different cultural backgrounds. Broad West African influence. Mexican influence. Italian influence. German influence. Scots-Irish influence. Cherokee influence. More. Early record labels like OKEH foolishly separated “hillbilly music” (presumably white folk music) from “rhythm and blues” (presumably Black folk music) without understanding the constant racial, demographic, regional, and cultural cross-pollination that occurred between the musicians from country music’s origins. And while there ARE certain issues in country music’s past and present, and we can’t let those issues go forgotten, that’s far from the whole story. We shouldn’t romanticize issues, but we should acknowledge that this music genre has given us major strides too.

Country music is the banjo, brought from Africa, combined with the mandolin, brought from Italy, combined with the fiddle, brought from Ireland, combined with the guitar and the dobro and the accordion and the upright bass and the electric guitar and the electric bass and whatever instruments you want to put in there.

Country music is African-American musicians like DeFord Bailey, the first radio star ever introduced on the Grand Ole Opry (THE most revered country music hub out there), blues harmonica performer, playing to crowds decades before segregation was de-legalized. He toured with white Opry musicians who treated him as one of their own. It’s soul music genre pioneer Ray Charles producing a studio album entirely dedicated to country music hits like “Hey Good Lookin’” from Hank Williams. It’s country star Charley Pride, who despite the racism against him in the 1960s rose to fame and made audiences fall in love with his beautiful voice. It’s the African-American musicians who inspired many commercial country stars, like Arnold Shultz influencing Bill Monroe and the railroad workers inspiring Jimmie Rodgers.

Country music is stars like Johnny Rodriguez and Rick Treviño, singing country music in Spanish, and using obvious Latin flavors in the genre.

Country music is filled with badass women like the ladies who STARTED THE GENRE ROLLING IN THE FIRST PLACE, Sara Carter and Mother Maybelle Carter (whose guitar style is hugely influential to this day) and Maybelle’s daughters Helen, June, and Anita; the first female music manager in the music industry, Louise Scruggs; songwriters like Felice Bryant and Loretta Lynn; the most awarded female artist in Grammy history Alison Krauss; and powerhouses like Dolly Parton who stepped out of an over-controlling entertainer’s shadow to become a badass in all things like supporting the LGBTQ community, contributing to pro-transgender films ahead of their time, and starring in sex worker positive productions like “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”

Country music is filled with activism. Johnny Cash showed a heart for those forgotten by society. He toured many times in prisons. Cash especially was an activist for Native American rights. He toured with Native American songwriters so audiences could hear their own words (I’ve been trying to find names but I’m having difficulties re-finding that information, so my apologies for not giving names of those who deserve to be mentioned). Cash released albums dedicated to exposing past and present injustices against the Native American people. He went on tours specifically to Native American reservations. 

And it’s not just Johnny Cash!

Country music is many stars from the Grand Ole Opry banding together to release AIDS benefit albums - big names like Alison Krauss, Willie Nelson, Marty Stuart, aurgh I’m too lazy to write them all, PEOPLE.

Country music is Earl Scruggs and his sons playing at the Vietnam War Protests.

Country music is tied in with the fucking folk revival of the 1960s, which was deep in left-wing activism and the Civil Rights Movement. Folk singers sang traditional Appalachian and English ballads alongside their own compositions, topical pieces protesting the current political situation. You can call one artist “folk” or “Americana” and another one “country,” but the influences were intermingling, and it’s why we have Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie and Joan Baez and John Denver and Pete Seeger owning a banjo that says, “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”

Dammit, I have a full BOOK that discusses country music and political ties. 

There’s another book out there, which I haven’t read, that discusses the relationship between country music and the queer community, and how bias against country music is NOT as reflective of the listening demographic as we stereotype. I’ll take the word of one reviewer who said:

[Nadine Hubbs] explores country music lyrics, presenting a great deal of evidence suggesting that working class America is not inherently homophobic, but that as middle class cultural taste has changed to include formal acceptance of homosexuality, this process has included pinning homophobic ideas on the working class.

Country music is lyrics like this 1975 controversial song “The Pill”:

You wined me and dined meWhen I was your girlPromised if I’d be your wifeYou’d show me the worldBut all I’ve seen of this old worldIs a bed and a doctor billI’m tearing down your brooder house‘Cause now I’ve got the pillAll these years I’ve stayed at homeWhile you had all your funAnd every year that’s gone byAnother baby’s comeThere’s a-gonna be some changes madeRight here on nursery hillYou’ve set this chicken your last time‘Cause now I’ve got the pill

Country music is lyrics like this 2013 song that feels as relevant than ever:

If crooks are in charge, should we let them pick our pockets?If we don’t want trouble, should we not try to stop it?We could just sink into the quicksand slavery we’re born inBut fighting endless wars for greedy liars is getting pretty boringThey think they got us trained, so we’ll think we’re living freeIf we got time and money for junk food and TVBut it’s plain honest people never stand a chance of winning electionsThey just let us pick which liars take our rights away for our own protectionThe corporate propaganda paralyzes us with fearDestroying our ability to trustFear keeps us fighting with each other over scrapsStarving to death in the dustOrganized religion really helps you submitBut the meek are inheriting the short end of the stickFear surrounds compassion like a layer of moldAnd weakens our defenses so we’re too weak to be boldLife could be heaven, but this corrupted systemTakes away our rights, expects us not to miss themThe middle class is shrinking while the lower class growsIf we don’t wake up soon, we’ll have no class left to lose

Country music is Christians themselves criticizing the hypocritical Evangelical culture in the USA for the bullshit hatefulness stewing inside it:

Every house has got a Bible and a loaded gunWe got preachers and politicians‘Round here it’s kinda hard to tell which oneIs gonna do more talkin’ with a crooked tongue

And as that one post I just reblogged shows, there’s MANY queer country musicians out there producing explicitly pro-LGBTQ+ music.

I’m brushing over so much. I’m sorry for the simplification that goes with me doing such a pass-by overview. I’m sorry I’m focusing more on history than the present (I know more about the 1920s-1960s eras, so I’m talking from my strong suit). I hope the information is at least strong enough to get my point across.

There are definitely listeners and artists in country music who are uber-conservative white hateful Christians. Yes. I know why country music gets associated with that. But.

Country music is not ABOUT this uber-conservative white hateful Christian side. The genre is not “polluted”. It is a thousand voices from a thousand perspectives of people from many backgrounds and beliefs. And many of those thousand voices are old traditional songs that came from Black communities, or were composed by Mexican-Americans, or were performed by folk artists as part of a protest for equal rights. 

(Note: I’m *NOT* saying all Christians are bad or that different political angles don’t have merits. I’m Christian myself! And you don’t know my political party. I’m just trying to get the point across that country music isn’t ENTRENCHED in one questionable demographic.)

You don’t have to like country music. It doesn’t have to be your aesthetic. But if you find it fun to get in on society’s popular country hate roasting… please rethink this. The reason country music has been hated from its roots is because it’s associated with the socioeconomically disadvantaged.

I’m with you 100%, Ashley. When someone says they like all genres “except country music and rap,” I get a little leery. I used to be one of those people when I was younger. I had to learn to grow past those biases. But once I did, I realized there was so much I was hating on that I didn’t understand. Now, I hope I can help people overcome their own biases, such as ones they don’t realize they’ve had - for things like music.

Hi ya’lls. I’m queer and I love country.

P.S. If anyone has anything to add or correct, please feel free to add on! I’m doing my best but I do not know everything and would be happy to learn more, too!

[findsomeoneelse]

       This might be a very angsty thing to say but I kind of legit hate my dad. He complains all the time that my brother (who i think probably has depression or something rn) and I don’t help him around the house but 1) when we do he’s a huge asshole, literally calls me retarded all the time bc he’ll verbally tell me like 10 things in a row to do and my ADD ass can’t remember it like that and he often  threatens me as well (and there have been incidents with physical violence between him and me). 2) gives us the most useless and asinine tasks i.e. vacuuming a BRICK PATIO or WASHING ROCKS. 3) will ask us when it’s convenient for HIM, my brother and I are 20 and 21 and have either a job or school and for a while I was doing both. 4) he is NEVER satisfied no matter how much we do. 

        And concerning the physical violence shit I have so much pent up feelings about it. As far as I know he’s never come after my brother like that. He may have hit my mom before but I’m not sure. I just know that once they got into a bad argument or something bc he was being really loud bc of a football game and then suddenly my mom was crying (she doesn’t cry a lot) grabbed us kids and went to our grandma’s. He’s also kicked every dog we’ve ever had, literally drop kicked one through a small tree bc it chewed the blinds and then left him outside to run away while he took off to who knows where to sulk. But my point is he has NEVER treated my brother the way he has treated me and it shows. My brother gets away with avoiding so much work and a fuck-ton of lying. My dad almost never invades his space or commandeers his stuff. I’ve almost failed several big school projects in the past bc he’d randomly decide to punish me or that his stupid yard work was more important and that it was my fault for not accounting for his random chores. 

         I literally keep a bug-out bag in my car and a knife by my bed bc of him. I spent my entire junior and senior years of high school with a stomach ache every single day and horrible insomnia from anxiety bc if he wasn’t threatening me with violence he was talking about kicking me out of the house for no real reason. His response to my worsening mental health was to make jokes or just ignore me when I managed to finally muster up the determination to say something. If my mom hadn’t taken action and helped me get help I’d most likely be dead now. I’m still trying to rebuild my self esteem that he destroyed. Then years after I was on medication (that he was opposed to and mocked, my mom was the only one on top of that) and doing better he had the fucking audacity to ask me about how I was doing. Me being like 16 yrs old I lacked the vocab to say that I feel that he forfeited the right to ask me those things so I just shrugged it off.

          He insults and mocks every friend I have in some way shape or form. He also once told me that some older friends I was extremely close to at the time would eventually get tired of hanging out with an annoying little kid so I should get used to them not being around bc they would leave me. I mean he was right about that, and they were pretty toxic for me but that was really fucked up and I’ll never forget it.

          I finally have a good romantic relationship now, with a boy surprisingly, and he’s so sweet to me. Every time he tells me anything remotely kind I almost fucking cry bc I immediately assume he’s lying or somehow delusional. We had our first sort of disagreement, it wasn’t even that big a deal he had just made a few jokes that had upset me, but I was so terrified to bring it up and was so ready for a fight that when he simply apologized for his behavior and promised to correct it I immediately broke down in tears of relief. I’m so terrified for him to meet my dad bc I don’t want him to belittle and invalidate us, or try and take away all our privacy in a weird attempt at policing my sexuality (he has tried something like this in the past with my brother). I’m also so scared my boyfriend will just assume my dad is a normal nice guy and that I’m crazy, bc my dad is good at appearances. We’re well-off but honestly the only reason my brother and I ever see any of that money is bc of our mom, she handles the finances (and p much everything else around here). 

        That’s another thing I hate is that bc I turned out okay everyone assumes he must be a good parent. I had to work so fucking hard to become who I am now DESPITE him NOT because of him. I had to work so hard to become a kinder person, and learn to motivate, comfort, advocate, take care of myself. I’m an intelligent person (at least i’ve been told I am) bc I work to teach myself, both in school and life. I had to learn all my emotional intelligence and social skills myself. I’m working to make my life good and full of the love I never felt from him and to a slightly lesser extent my mom. I’m still working at it. Which is why I’m just as afraid that he’ll be accepting of my relationship and be “proud” or whatever. Thinking he raised a confident and smart daughter. That he has any right to be a voyeur to my happiness or take any credit for it.  

      I work hard so work through so many issues he caused in me on my own. I work so hard to keep myself from sabotaging my current relationship bc I feel unworthy or like it will just vanish. I still can’t fully grasp that this boy could genuinely like me and feel like I’m worthy of his time and effort bc of how stupid and ugly my dad has made me feel my entire life. I have so many things I want to tell my SO but in the moment feel like I physically cannot get the words out for fear of looking stupid when he finally leaves me. I still have so many walls up with him and I really don’t want to but I can’t get them down bc I’m so fucking scared despite all the evidence he’s given me that he cares about me and just wants to know me. It’s honestly incredible how just having someone like him has changed me for the better. He makes me feel smart and capable, like I can have the life I want. He doesn’t see any of the shit my dad seems to see in me and hate. Like fuck the fact that I only seemed to need one stable and loving relationship in my life to succeed really says something I think. 

       I hate feeling like I can’t talk to my own parents, well mostly my mom, but they really make it impossible. My dad bc you never know what will piss him off or if he even gives a shit and my mom bc she will probably tell him whatever you tell her. I have other adults, my aunt (my mom’s older sister) and uncle (tho he’s a newer addition to the family, they married last year.) but I’m so scared to talk to them in case they slip up and let stuff slip to my parents. My aunt also just doesn’t Get a lot of things like mental illness so she can invalidate ppl and be mean. She does encourage me a lot tho, more than my parents EVER have. 

      My SO doesn’t have much of an idea of my relationship w my family other than it seems strained and we barely talk despite all living together. He sometimes half-jokingly tells me I should spend more time with them or make an effort too, and I don’t tell him that I’m not the one who fucked that up for us. I try not to talk about any of this with him yet, and I honestly don’t know when a good time is or how to go about it. He’s gotten little hints here and there before I change the subject. He has a relatively big family that he regularly spends time with, so I don’t know if he’d understand all this. His dad is a little similar to mine in the sense that he always seems to have weird projects around the house that he drags them into but it doesn’t seem like he’s violent. I honestly don’t know what to say about the physical abuse. I’m so scared of how he’ll react. I’m scared he’ll brush it off, I’m scared he’ll get super concerned or angry for me. I just don’t want it to change how he sees me. People seem to get the impression that I’m confident and that I don’t take shit, and it makes me feel so embarrassed that I let myself be pushed around by my dad.

      If anyone actually reads this post and has suggestions for talking to an SO about this stuff (especially in the case of an abuser being good at manipulation/gas lighting) let me know any suggestions you have. I thought by this point in this rant I’d have some sort of clarity but I don’t really. My dad has been slightly better the last year or so, since we moved to a new house that’s bigger and we’re on opposite sides of it. After one of his worst outbursts (at the beginning of my senior year) I gave him a book about male abuse in an attempt at confrontation but I doubt he read it. He’s been better but I can’t let go of all these feelings. Older people tell me that eventually I’ll forgive him and move on but I honestly don’t want to. I don’t want him to just get away with treating us like garbage. Maybe that makes me petty and childish but I am barely 20 so. It be like that. Might make a separate post about my brother might not. I love him but dudes got issues rn.

[planitiautopia]

vibecheck me if u wish - my various stances and rules of engagement r under the cut, and also my short intro👇🏻

a very short intro:

hi. call me cerber. i’m a homoflexible genderqueer guy, i’m perisex transsexual; my pronouns are he/they and sometimes i use xe/xem/xers (or xirs)/xemself

few hills i’m standing on as of rn:

destigmatize being ill

you can criticize the medical institution without bashing the ill who rely heavily on the few accommodations it provides

addicts are also disabled ppl

hate trans ppl? fix ur heart or die trying idgaf

strong solidarity with intersex, gnc, detrans, and retrans ppl, and ppl w/ other marginalized variations of gender expressions, experiences and/or sexing histories; anyone who challenges the white-centric dyadic-binary cis-heteronormativity is my sibling and comrade, especially if they aren’t universally accepted in larger Queer spaces

demedicalize transness and intersexness

fuck exclusionism and respectability politics; Queer liberation is only possible with the liberation of all bodies, expressions and lifestyles

i personally use term ‘transsexual’ to celebrate my trans body; i don’t really care much about the other definitions of this term and how other trans ppl might be using it

identity labels are tools. not laws, not science, not the holy bible of queerness; foucalt got this one straight on point fr

oppression is systemic and intersectional; intersectional theory’s framework is based on nuance; it is Not strictly-unilateral (“oppressor vs oppressed”), Not universally applicable/replicable (“cis men oppress cis women => trans men oppress women, cis and/or trans”), Not arithmetical (“marginalized by X but privileged by Y, thus -1 + 1 = 0 on the oppression scale”), and definitely Not interpersonal (“X group’s member(s) in my community treated me like shit, therefore they as a group oppress me as a group”)

note that i’m Not saying ‘We Are All Oppressed’ or ‘we’re all oppressing each other equally’. many groups are multiply-marginalized. yet, many individuals are oppressed by larger structures that do not explicitly target their groups (ex.: many intersex, detrans, and gnc people are heavily targeted and oppressed by cissexism and transphobia on top of dealing with their own specific discrimination, even tho they’re not necessarily trans; another ex.: many perfectly healthy fat people are targeted by rampant ableism because their bodies are different; and so on). these voices do matter in conversations about oppression bc they help us to see how tightly interconnected all the mistreatments that we face are; shutting these voices down will immediately affect multiply-marginalized people

other marginalized people are not your enemy, the oppressive system is; statistics are nuanced and these nuances are literally pointed out in every single properly done survey; just bc one group has been documented to have lesser % number on a scale of Dealing with A Specific Thing DOESN’T mean that they’re a.) Immune to The Thing and Aren’t Affected by The Thing individually, thus Are Privileged and b.) Benefit from The Thing and must be A Threat to the other groups; saying otherwise is fucking ridiculous! and especially so when percentage are like 1.5-3% and the survey is limited to US only, fucking c’mon y’all

lateral aggression is unfortunately a real thing and we all have to do better

language is inherently flawed, biased, and limited; it cannot be relied on entirely when discussing thins like morality, the “validity” of identities, etc. oh, and it’s also completely fucking useless for doing respectability politics shit

thought crimes aren’t real; fiction isn’t reality; video games don’t cause violence, publicly wearing kink gear isn’t sexual harassment of “the public”, playing DnD won’t make u a satanist; y’all are very gullible and fall for reactionary fear-mongering, i’m sorry

yes, that includes shipping and whatnot

kink is awesome and good; kinksters are our allies, inclusive and explicitly Queer kink communities are our backbones and shelters. we’re all perverts, keep Pride weird and kinky

sex work is work; decriminalize sex work; swerfism doesn’t do shit for sex workers, unions do

unionize. organize. collaborate. don’t be a fed. amen

ACAB and filthy fucking racists; Disarm and Never Talk To Cops; and fuck prisons; forced labor is slavery; carceral torture, SA, medical neglect, etc. are human right violations, not a part of a prison sentence

decriminalize homelessness; housing, free healthcare and universal income are basic human rights; uplift the poor, outlaw the rich or at least tax ‘em into human decency

also, fuck borders; fuck occupations, fuck genocides, fuck assimilation; No One Is Illegal; Land Back; Black Lives Matter; Free Palestine;

USSR genuinely sucked, actually! tho soviet propaganda still works to this day, soviet censorship is over - read some history of post-soviet countries, learn about the corruption and the abuse of authority, the political prosecutions, the pogroms and the rampant antisemitism, the occupations and literal mass murders, pre-war nazi collaborationism, etc etc etc. usamericans, please stop doing the “the enemy of my enemy is my bestie” thing cuz stalin isn’t your leftist commie daddy lmfao, he was a tyrant. USSR was a tyranny.

and some general psa:

english isn’t my 1st or even 2nd language! i’m also dyslexic and very aware that there might be miscommunications on my side

this blog isn’t screenreader-friendly but please do describe anything u want and just @ me so i can update it

i reclaim slurs heavily and don’t wish to be censored. don’t tag my posts with ‘q-slur’ and such

do ask me to tag general triggers, especially if a post is tagged as ‘#ask to tag’!

can’t guarantee trigger warnings; reminding me to tag things is very appreciated

i will tag my tone on request; i’ll appreciate if you do the same but it’s purely optional on ur part. i’m usually sincere but feel free to ask if it’s unclear

don’t tone-police me if i’m speaking in general terms about topics that upset me and please, please don’t immediately assume genuine hostility when i’m simply not agreeing with ur take or not being overly cautious/apologetic when i’m speaking to u; tho i try to watch my manners, i don’t do eggshelling and it’s a really fucking weird thing to ask of someone

ignore me if u don’t like me! it’s normal and fine, even good for you! block me if u need to!

do tell me if i’m neglecting nuances when discussing intersectional oppression; tho i don’t claim to be always right or to know everything, there are many experiences that i haven’t personally been through and might even never thought of!

i’m ok with criticism and having my ideas challenged, and i truly do appreciate the effort to educate me

that said, there are many experiences i’ve been through and i won’t tolerate invalidation

i also won’t tolerate hateful, provocative, and abusive behavior; i refuse to argue for the sake of arguing and will block ppl who don’t listen, twist my words and/or make arguments in bad faith

everything stated here is but a small part of what i believe in and care about irl; my views may change over time; i don’t personally endorse every single user i reblog from; if u need to know for sure - ask me directly

i don’t owe anyone my personal information; you don’t know me and it’s ok! if there’s no disclaimer, assume that i’m speaking from my personal experience

congrats, u made it to the end! thank you and stay inquisitive <3

last edit: 21/08/24