#I question your fucked up priorities about rape victims

[celtyradicalfem]

@ivycooper telling women they are “predatory as fuck” for questing your anti terf priorities on a post about rape victims is not feminism

Telling women who turned out to be CSA survivors that you wouldn’t want them around your daughter is ugly misogyny

Update: Coward blocked me after I told her for the second time I’m a CSA survivor after she accused me of being “predatory AF” because I questioned her priorities over the victim being affiliated with ‘terves’

I was gonna say before she blocked and ran:

“ I am focusing on the survivors (not "victims", ew).”

As a CSA survivor you just contributed stigma towards rape victims

I thought that this piece was actually really well-rounded. Especially since it addresses the terfiness of some of the ppl involved. The fact that his support for trans ppl will now probably be dragged into the whole business by ppl like Johnson is just...yeah.

Huge TW, obviously.

[c-is-for-circinate]

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about why P5R didn't quite land for you. I had the same reaction to it, but I've never quite been able to properly articulate why the last section fell so flat.

God okay so I've tried several times to answer this, and it seems like the answer is 'I still have way too many feelings, personally, to say this in anything less than thirty pages and fifteen hours of work', because Persona 5 the original is a game I loved a lot and care about a great deal. And most of the reasons I disliked Royal feel, in my head, like a list of ways it broke some of the things I liked best about P5--which means explaining them feels like I need to explain everything I loved about the original game, which is a book in itself, complete with referents to P3, P4, Jungian psychology, the Joseph Campbell mytharc, and fuck all even knows what. And that is too much.

But today I realized that I could instead describe it from an angle of, Persona 5 Strikers succeeds really well at doing the thing I think Royal was trying to do but failed at. And that I think I can talk about in a reasonable amount of wordspace, hopefully, behind this cut because I have at least one friend who hasn't played Royal yet.

Note for reblogs/comments: I HAVE NOT FINISHED STRIKERS YET. I got through the jail that pretended to be the final jail and have not yet gone into the obviously inevitable 'ohshit wait, you mean there's something more than simple human machinations behind all of this?' dungeon. (I got stuck on a really frustrating side quest, put the game down, and then dived into Hades to avoid throwing the Switch across the room for a while--and anyone around this blog lately knows how THAT'S been going.) Please no spoilers past Okinawa!

So, one of the many, many things I really appreciated about Persona 5 was its straightforward and unashamed attitude towards abusers and their acts of violence. Because, while yes P5 is a story about the use of power and control to make others suffer, it fundamentally isn't about those abusers themselves. It's about their victims, those that survive their crimes. And this shows up repeatedly over the course of the game.

We do not give a shit why Kamoshida wanted to beat and rape his students. We really don't. Kamoshida does not deserve our attention one moment longer than it takes to make him stop. Because, ultimately, that's the goal of P5, start to end. We don't know for sure if what we're doing is fair, if it's justice, if it's questionable. What we know is that people are being hurt, badly, actively, right now this second. What we know is that victims are suffering. What we know is that we, personally, us-the-protag and us the Phantom Thieves at large, are in danger. And in those circumstances, we don't care about the abuser's side any more. We don't. We don't have the space or time or capacity to care, because that is not the point.

The point is to help the weak. To save the people who need saving, right here and now. To give others the courage to stand up on their own behalf. We're not even out to change society, not really--that's a byproduct. We are reactions. We are triage. We are important.

There's something so empowering and validating about that as a theme, y'know? In a media landscape so full of "sympathetic villains", the idea that, you know, maybe sometimes you don't have to break yourself to show compassion that might possibly heal the bad guy--that sometimes you can just make the bad guy stop hurting people--feels both refreshing and satisfying. I really appreciate it as a message! I liked it a lot!

And yes, there's nuance to that theme, and the game is not without compassion. We save Futaba, because 'make the bad guy stop hurting people', in that case, means 'make this person stop hurting herself'. We give Sae a path forwards, help her fix her own heart. Yet it's worth pointing out that in both of those cases, while we were very glad to do those things, to save those people, we also went into both of those palaces for extremely practical reasons to begin with. We needed Futaba's help. We needed Sae's help. The fact that we chose to talk Sae into a change of heart rather than simply stealing her treasure, while ultimately a very good thing for her, was absolutely a practical choice predicated on the need for her palace to still exist to save our life. And yes, we wanted to save her, for Makoto's sake--yes, we wanted desperately to save Futaba. But Sae and Futaba let themselves be helped, too, and that doesn't change the overarching themes of the story itself.

Akechi (and to some extent Okumura) would not let himself be helped. Akechi's another interesting nuance to this theme, because of all our villains, we do learn the most about what drove him to the cruelties and crimes he's committed. He's at that intersection of victim and villain, and we want to help him, as a victim--but we also know that stopping him as a villain is more important. We'd like to save him from himself if we could, because we save people from their sources of trauma, it's what we do. We regret being unable to do so. But in the end, what matters to the story is not that Akechi refused to be saved--it's that Shido and Yaldabaoth need to be stopped, for the sakes of everyone else they're hurting now and may continue to hurt in the future.

The thing is, there's space and maybe even a need for a corollary discussion of those places where victim and villain intersect. It's an interesting, pertinent, and related topic. Strikers made an entire video game about it, a really good video game. It's centered in the idea that, yes, these people need to be stopped, and we will make stopping them our priority--but they're not going after us, and that gives us some space to sympathize. Even for Konoe, who specifically targets the Phantom Thieves--compare him to Shido, who actively destroyed the lives of both Joker and Futaba, who ordered Haru's father's death, who's the entire reason the team is still dealing with the trauma of Akechi's everything. Of course the game can be sympathetic to Konoe where it can't with Shido. There's enough distance to do that.

But right--Strikers is a separate game. It's a separate conversation. It's, "last time, we talked about that, so now let's take it one step further." And that's good writing. (It's something Persona has done before, too, also really well! Persona 3 is about terrible, occasionally-suicidal depression and grief. P4 is about how you can still be hurting and need some help and therapy even if things seem ok. Related ideas, but separate conversations that need to be separate in order to be respectful and do justice to either one. P5, as a follow-up to P4, is a conversation about how, ok, changing yourself is great and all, but sometimes the problem is other people so how do you deal with that? Again, still related! Still pertinent! Still alluded to in P4, with Adachi's whole thing--but it wasn't the time or place to base a quarter of the game around it.)

So one of Royal's biggest issues, to me, is that it tries to tack on this whole new angle for discussion onto a game that was originally about something else.

Adding Maruki's palace--adding it at the end, which by narrative laws suggests that it's the true point that everything else should be building up to--suddenly adds in about a hundred new dimensions at once. It wants us to engage with "what in this abuser/manipulator's life led him to act this way?" for basically the first time all game (we'll get to Akechi later). It wants us to engage with, "if the manipulator has a really good reason or good intentions, does that mean we should forgive them?" It requires us to reflect on, "what is the difference between control and cruelty?" It asks, "okay, but if people could be controlled into being happy, would that be okay?" (Which, based on the game so far, is actually a wild out-there hypothetical! Literally not a single thing we've seen in the game suggests that could ever happen. Even the people who think being controlled is safer and easier are miserable under it. Control that's able to lead to actual happiness is completely out of left field in the context of everything we've encountered all game so far.)

That's too much! We don't have time to unpack all that! We only have an eighth of the game left! Not to mention we are also being asked to bring back questions we put to bed much earlier in the game about the morality of our own actions, in a wholely unsatisfying way. Maruki attempts to justify his mass brainwashing because "it's the same as what you're doing", and we know it isn't, but the game didn't need Maruki calling it out in order for us to get that. We already faced that question when we started changing hearts, and again several times throughout the game, and again when we found our targets in Yaldabaoth's cells. The fact that we change hearts does not mean we think "changing hearts is fine and kind and should be done to everyone, actually." Changing hearts has been firmly established in this game as an act of violence, acceptable only because it prevents further systemic violence against innocents that we must prevent. The moral question has never once been about whether it's ok to change the hearts of the innocent, only about how far it's ethical to go against individuals who are actively hurting other people. Saying "you punched that guy to keep him from shooting a child, so punching people is good and I will save the world by punching everyone!" is confusing! and weird! and not actually at all helpful to the question of, how much violence is it acceptable to use to protect others! So presenting the question that way just falls really flat.

(And right, I love Strikers, because Strikers has time to unpack all that. Strikers can give us a main bad guy who wants to control the whole world for everybody's own good, because Strikers has earned that thematic climax. It has given us sympathetic bad guys who started out wanting to control the world to protect themselves and ended up going too far. It's given us Mariko Hyodo, who wanted to control the world to protect other people and went too far. It's given us a long-running thread about police, the desire to serve, and the abuse of power that can lead to. And since we are actively trying to care for the people whose hearts we're changing in Strikers, we can open the door to questions about using changes-of-heart and that level of control to make other people happy. We can even get a satisfying conclusion out of that discussion, because we have space to characterize the difference--Konoe thinks that changing peoples' hearts means confining them, but the Phantom Thieves think it means setting them free. We have seen enough sympathetic villains that we as an audience have had the space to figure out how we feel about that, and to understand the game's perspective of "stop them AND save them, if we can possibly do both." And that message STILL rests firmly on Persona 5's message of "it is Good to do what you have to do to stop an abuser so long as you don't catch innocent people in your crossfire.")

It's worth noting that the general problem of 'asking way too many new questions and then not answering them' also applies to how Royal treats its characters, too. P5 did have unanswered questions left at the end! The biggest one, and we all knew this, was Akechi, and what actually happened to him, and how we should feel about him, and how he felt about us. That was ripe for exploring in our bonus semester, and to Royal's credit they did in fact try to bring it up, but by god did they fuck up doing it.

Akechi's probable death in the boiler room was absolutely the biggest dangling mystery of the game. It was an off-screen apparent death of a key antagonist, so all of the narrative rules we know suggested that he might still be alive and would probably come back if the story went on for long enough. So when Royal brings him back on Christmas Eve, hey, great! Question answered. Except that the situation is immediately too good to be true, and immediately leads to another mystery, which leads to a flat suspicion that something must be wrong. We spend several hours of gameplay getting sly hints that, oooh, maybe he's not really alive after all, before it's finally confirmed by Maruki: yup, he really died, if we end the illusion we'll kill him too. Okay, at least we know now. Akechi is alive right now and he's going to be dead if we do this, and that doesn't make a ton of sense because every other undead person disappeared when the person who wished for them realized they were fake but at this point we'll take it. So we take down Maruki, and okay, Akechi really is dead! Probably! We're fairly sure! Aside from our lingering doubts!

And then we catch a glimpse of maybe-probably-could be him through the train window, and I just want to throw something, because come on.

Look, it is just a fact of storytelling: the more times you make an audience ask 'wait, is this character dead or aren't they?', the less they will care, until three or four reversals later you will be hard pressed to find anybody who gives a shit. Royal does this like four different times, and every iteration comes with even less certainty than the last. By the end, we somehow know even less than we did when we started! Did Akechi survive the boiler room to begin with and Maruki just didn't know? Or was Maruki lying to try and manipulate us further? Or was he actually dead and then his strength of will when Maruki's reality dissolved was enough to let him survive after all? Is that even actually him out the train window?

Where is he going! What is he doing! How did any of this happen! What is going on! We all had these questions about Akechi at the end of the original P5, and the kicker is that Royal pretends like it's going to answer them only to go LOL JK NO. It's frustrating and it's dissatisfying and it annoys me.

The one Akechi question that Royal doesn't even bother to ask, though, let alone leave ambiguous, is how does the protagonist feel about him? The entire emotional weight of the third semester rests on the protagonist caring about Akechi, Sumire, and Maruki. Maruki's the person we're supposed to sympathize with even as we try to stop him. Sumire's the person we're trying to save from herself. And Akechi is our bait--is, we are told, the one thing our protagonist wished for enough to actualize it in this world himself. Akechi's the final lure to accept Maruki's deal. Akechi's survival is meant to be tempting.

For firm Akechi fans, this probably worked out fine--the game wanted to insist that the protagonist cared for Akechi the same way the player did. For those of us who're a little more ambivalent, though (or for the many and valid people who hated him), this is a super sour note. Look, one of the Persona series' strengths is the way it lets players choose to put their time and emotional investment into an array of different characters, so the main story still has weight even if there's a couple you don't care about that much. It has always done this. The one exception, from P3 all the way through P4 to here and now, is Nanako Dojima, and by god she earned that distinction. I have never met a person who played Persona 4 who didn't love Nanako. Nanako is a neglected six-year-old child who is brave and strong enough to take care of herself and all of the housework but who still tries not to cry when her dad abandons her again and lights up like the sun when we spare her even the tiniest bit of time and attention. It is impossible not to care for Nanako. Goro Akechi is not Nanako.

And yet third semester Royal doesn't make sense if your protagonist doesn't feel linked to Akechi. The one question, out of all the brand new questions Royal throws out there, that it decides to answer all by itself--and it's how you as a player and your protagonist ought to feel about an extremely complex and controversial character. What the fuck, Royal. What the fuck.

In conclusion, I'll leave you with this. I played the original Persona 5 in March and April of 2017, as an American, a few months after the 2016 election and into the term of our then president. It felt painfully timely. A quick calendar google early on indicated that the game's 20XX was almost certainly 2016, and the closer our plot got to the in-game November leadup to an election destined to be dominated by a foul and charming man full of corruption and buoyed up by his own cult of personality, the more I wanted to laugh/cry. It felt timely. It felt important. It felt right.

I went through Royal (in LP form on youtube, not having a platform to play it on) in summer of 2020, with a hook full of face masks by my front door and protests about racial tension and local policing that occasionally turned into not-quite-riots close enough to hear at night if I opened the windows of my apartment. The parts of the game that I remembered felt as prescient and meaningful as ever, if not even more so. The new parts felt baffling. Every single evil in the game felt utterly, painfully real, from the opening moments of police brutality to the idea of a country led by a guy who probably would use his secret illegitimate teenage son as a magical assassin if the opportunity presented itself and he thought he could get away with it. Yaldabaoth as the cumulative despair of an entire population who just wanted somebody to take over and make things be okay--yes, yes, god, in summer of 2020? With streets full of people refusing to wear masks and streets full of people desperate for change? Of course. Of course that holy grail of safety should be enticing. Of course it should be terrifying.

And then Maruki. Maruki, who was just so far outside the scope of anything I could relate to the rest of the game or my own life. Because every single other villain in the rest of Persona is real. From the petty pandering principal to the human-trafficking mob boss. The corrupt politicians and the manmade god of cultural desire for stability. And this game was trying to tell me that the very biggest threat of all of them, the thing that was worse than the collective force of all society agreeing to let this happen because succumbing was easier than fighting back--that the very biggest threat of all was that the world could be taken over by some random nobody's misguided attempts to help?

No. Fuck no. I don't buy it. Because god, yes, I have seen the pain and damage done on a tiny and personal and very real level by the tight-fisted control of someone trying to help, it never looked like this. Not some ascended god of a bad therapist. All the threats to the world, and that's the one I'm supposed to take seriously? This one man is more of a threat than the fundamental human willingness to be controlled?

Sorry, but no. Not for me. Not in this game. Not in this real-life cyberpunk dystopian apocalypse.

[delusion-of-negation]

top 10 (ish) ridiculous or annoying FAQs:

(click at your own discretion)

1) "kids today rely on others to do everything"

ah yes, damn those participation trophies! if it wasn't for them my hands wouldn't be fucked, and I wouldn't need people to write for me. but seriously, stop reading boomer comics, and go outside to meet some actual young people.

2) "sus that a non-american says mom"

yeah, because it's clearly the superior version, and I'm not too patriotic to concede a defeat.

3) "sweaty, the victims of abuse by catholics are real people, stop appropriating their pain just because you want to hate catholics; plus teachers abuse people just as often anyway"

so firstly, I don't hate anybody. and secondly, regarding the fact that victims really do exist, [insert "of course I know him, he's me" meme here]; although I don't often talk much about the abuse I went through or what my religious beliefs are. but, more importantly, statements like "survivors are people" can be phrased like "some people are survivors", and when you're unable to act according to the latter (like when you don't even consider that somebody might be one) then you display a failure to recognise the former - you're projecting; a survivor can't be appropriating their own pain, but you can be appropriating it to silence one. and thirdly, teachers do abuse - the problem isn't and has never been purely religion, rather that abuse is often done by somebody in a position of trust, power, and familiarity; and that the lack of a global minimum enables totally legal abuse on top of the illegal stuff. people with access and respect have more opportunity to abuse than those without, and that goes for teachers too. but, once again, you can be appropriating the pain of survivors to deflect and silence people. please remember this before you say that shit.

4) "get help/therapy"

way ahead of you - years ahead of you. but it's not magic - people who say this often act as if you'll start behaving differently overnight. not only are some things simply beyond the ability of talking therapy to completely rectify, it also takes time and has to be selective. you've got to pick your priorities, and that's definitely not whatever ship or joke you're mad at me about today. therapy is a slow, arduous process that can't guarantee results - it isn't "anti-recovery" to recognise that, it's honesty. while I've been in therapy for a long time, it is not necessarily going to change whatever you don't like about me - whether that's because it can't, because my focus now is on more important or urgent things, or because I don't want to change that.

5a) "tell your family you ship incest, see how that goes; normal people find it disgusting"

actually, some know, and they're fine with it. in fact, one prefers sibling pairings in fiction to all other dynamics because, to paraphrase, "it's a deeper level of messed up co-dependence". so unfortunately for you, my remaining family (by which I mean those not dead or cut out of my life after abuse and so forth) actually are able to distinguish between fiction and reality. plus, my reasoning for caring if they find it gross or not pertains only to recommending books and such - their opinions do not dictate my tastes.

5b) "don't sexualise/appropriate incestuous abuse" and "I bet you enjoyed being raped" and other attempts to upset me over 5a

firstly, as I've already said here, survivors can't be appropriating ourselves. in addition, you're not owed people's history or trauma - it's not okay to require people's personal information, or else you'll send anon hate and accusations of appropriation. secondly, I'm not sexualising our abuse (not just because I write horror, and so a lot of my writing is intended to be creepy, not sexy); these stories aren't about us, they're not us at all. entire dynamics/people (fictional or otherwise) aren't all going to be applicable to us or identical to us, just because they have something in common with us; they're not us and they're not accountable to us. thirdly, the fact that people send this stuff (attempting to trigger people's trauma over ships) is so much more worrying to me than somebody making our communal imaginary friends kiss. you're trying to hurt people. and finally, to the "I bet you enjoyed it" crowd (if you're at all serious): do you think you'd enjoy being in a real zombie apocalypse, alone, afraid, and really at risk of being eaten alive? a fictional scenario does not feel remotely the same as a real one. this isn't rocket science - things that look like you aren't you; fiction isn't reality; don't send anon hate. (edit: comparable "just leave me alone, I'm not hurting anyone" sentiments for yandere stuff, and anything else you decide I'm naughty for.)

6) "you'll be sent off to do manual labour once your communist revolution happens"

while I don't know why people think that I'm a communist, a dictatorial regime probably isn't going to want me to do manual labour. they're more likely to just shoot me; I'm useless and a liability. call me crazy, but something tells me that "ah yes, we shall give ze deranged cripple ze power tools" isn't the communist position.

7a) "they/them can't be singular pronouns"

yes they can, and they're used as such in both shakespeare and the bible. but you don't have to say this - I'm also okay with he/him, so you could've just used those and chilled out. also, do I look like somebody who views the rules of grammar as fully immutable and imperative?

7b) "enbies/aros/pan/etc aren't valid"

do you really think that you're going to change any hearts or minds by putting that in my ask box or under my funny maymays? chill out, it's not worth the effort - you could be planning a party (in minecraft) and having fun instead. it isn't worth my time to rant at everybody who's saying something isn't valid, updating how I'm explaining it as my opinions grow and general discourse around it evolves; I'm just who I am, somebody else is who they are - why bicker in presumptuous ways about if that's enough? it ultimately is valid, in my opinion, but that isn't an invitation to keep demanding that I debate. (edit: old posts of mine probably don't phrase things incredibly, on this or anything... I tried.)

8) "what are your politics?"

my politics are informed first and foremost by the knowledge that I'm not cut out to be some kind of leader - I don't want to be the guy who tells everyone else what to do, I just offer what seem to me like valid criticisms of how we are doing things now, and general pointers on the values and ethics that I would prefer to move towards. things like individual freedom, taking the most pacifist route where possible, trying not to give excessive power to small groups of people (governments or corporations), helping those in need even when they're not palatable, and letting me suck loads of dicks. but please refrain from decreeing me something - there's not enough information in what I said, so you'll just be filling in the blanks with assumptions. (edit: workplace democracy seems cool to me; benefits are good; fair fines and taxes; and the "sperm makes you loopy" saga: 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

9) "you're a narcissist"

no, I don't meet the diagnostic criteria. joking on the internet that you're hot doesn't make a person a narcissist. the fact that I've chosen to keep my actual self-esteem issues to myself is not proof that they don't exist - you're just not entitled to that information about me. but it's also not narcissism to really like how you look. (edit: don't throw labels around carelessly too.)

10a) "kin list?"

the fabric of the universe, a zombie, dionysus, maned wolf/arctic fox hybrid, a comedian, big gay, big rock, ambiguously partial insincerity. (edit: kin list may or may not be incomplete.)

10b) "kin isn't valid/that's just being insane"

haven't we established that I'm deranged, and that sending stuff like this on anon is simply a waste of your precious time? besides, I do not care if it's invalid or insane - it's fun, I'm happy. (edit: see 7b for my opinion on sending me yet another ask with "that's invalid" in it; I'm not in the mood to discuss the nature of validity.)

bonus: "it gets better" and "trigger list?"

as I've said before, things just don't always get better for everyone - sometimes things can't be cured or even treated, sometimes they kill you; in some cases it could get better if not for a blockade or lack of time. the world is messy. it needs to be more normalised to reassure or comfort people without relying on saying that their issue will get better or be cured. it does suck to be this ill, but it also sucks to be made out to be a lazy pessimist, just because I have the audacity to not play along. and as for the trigger list, I don't like providing people with an easily accessed list of ways to hurt my feelings or harm me - upsetting me is supposed to be challenging, and thus rewarding. if you want a cheat sheet then you're out of luck, I'm afraid.

bonus #2: "FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, it doesn't need that s at the end!"

yeah, I know, I just enjoy chaos and disarray.

bonus #3 (edit): "what are your disabilities and how exactly are they incurable and/or deadly?"

again, I don't tell the internet everything about me, especially when it poses a risk, especially not as an easily accessible list for you to refer back to whenever you feel inclined to hurt my feelings. that is understandably a sore subject. (edit: that includes physical health issues btw.)

bonus #4 (edit): "so we shouldn't be critical?"

if it wasn't clear from my answer about politics or my post in general, you can have opinions about things, and you can voice that. it's just not realistic to exist at extremes: to think that you alone should dictate what exists in fiction, or to think that people shouldn't be expressing disdain or criticism of any calibur. say how you feel about things, that's fine, but it's also fine if people find that they don't value your input. plus we're all flawed, we can all be hypocritical from time to time, we all get bitchy, and we all make mistakes, or even knowingly fuck things up. that's important to keep in mind, whether we're talking about the one being criticised or the one doing the criticising - poor choices of words, imperfect tone, or contradictory ideas are inevitably going to happen occasionally.

congrats on reaching the end! if you have, at any point, said one of these to me, you owe a hug to your nearest loved one (once it's safe).

edit: might add more links/bonus points in the future when I think of things, but it's late now. (sorry for links where prior notes in the thread have my old url, that may get a tad confusing; also, not all links are my blog or my op, since it is to illustrate points/vibes, not to self-promo.)

[misterbitches]

i had the misfortune of finally watching/getting through what happened in whatever episode where he gets raped so im gonna talk about it and tag it cos that's what a bitch fuckin feels like, got it? i do what i want aint no limit bad ass bitch aint never been timid. woopsie realized i got the nicknames confused oh well lmao

it's just logistically and plot wise like there's literal plot holes in this and i'm taking the production and set-up into account along with the actual content and development. im an ARTIST OKAY im jk i mean i am and i am pretentious and terrible but look. i didnt get that degree and im not in a house worth of debt for nothing ok. it's called writing on tumblr about my grievances of shows that dont matter and do not respect me as a fat black american woman either so it is my fault yet here i am.

anyway it was worse than i imagined and their talk after (with chengren) was even worse. that's what i mean about making the lines their own (the actors) bc teng teng sounded like a straight up motherfucking moron and im like

bECAUSE IT'S HIM EVEN THO IM LIKE WHAT THE FUCK DID U JUST SAY U STUPID BITCH? but then it's like awwww and they also care about his wellbeing obviously??? but no? but it's like ok still teng teng said it even if it's stupid because he is a character and charles puts that forth. the people that fail the most to do that are xing si's family but that's not the actors fault because it's the literal material. you're like wait what but you just said...?

so i know they have no script editors i guess i think i find this season ACTUALLY fascinating because of just how egregious it is. i also went back and watched history: obsessed which i thought i liked because of their chemistry even though god the production....but i tried rewatching it and i was like wow this is worse than i remembered and the production issues were even worse because some of the music was SO LOUD AND BAD HOLY FUCK and their whole rship isssssss a sight to behold lmao

so man i guess it really is the power of anson/charles. which is good cos we love to see it...sort of but also a lot.

i honestly....because i've been able to pay attn more to the aftermath of the rape going back and putting it into more context and focusing (just barely lmao) is hm even worse. the inconsistencies are insane. it's not even just about the act but the writers have zero idea where they are going because they have no interest in exploring it. but the way in which it happens is like fascinating. yong jie literally thinks he owns xing si and it doesn't matter if he was kissing him or not or asked for a kiss on the lips (which dude what the fuck? i'll get to that) because he was plied with "extremely strong drinks" and his mom knew about it....which girl congrats you're an accomplice to the rape of your son by your other son?

but first of all...the kissing thing. in what fucking world would he (xing si) want that unless he thought he (yong jie) was someone else. i can't say their attraction is evident because we are being lead by this team to think so; they create this false sense of sensuality already so to me that signifies that they never intended for them to have a bond as brothers. it just feels cheap and fucking lazy (which it is.) even if he did, which doesn't make sense considering the context THEY CONSTRUCTED, it wouldn't matter because he was so fucking drunk which.... at that point nothing is fun, you feel sick, who wants sex like that? does he not have whiskey dick? did they have a condom? was it not painful for him considering? even if this was something to easily get over like was the dick good? it couldn't have been. and then, on top of that, there's the fact that you can change your mind or whatever but also that people do get aroused in these situations bc it is human nature (that's if they can literally get aroused which if the drinks were allegedly sooooo strong that nigga would be out so....again like even practically here it doesnt add up. have these people ever been drunk? if not, write what you know girl. cos sometimes it's like i think some of u r trying to be cool when u dont have 2 b lmao)

so yong jie coming on to him previously may be seen as like push-and-pull but here's the thing. right after it happens (the rape and it's rape so call it that you'll be okay) xing si gets up and goes home and is terrified and upset. he acts like what we have seen or even felt after a violation. he's scared, clutching his bag, it's like...you know...decently coming off as truly distressing (the actor isn't bad at all and i like that he's dark. i just massively hate this for him but hey at least he can show some chops.) like honestly man that fucking sucks and hurts to see. if we've been there we feel it. or part of it is realizing belatedly what happened. a lot of times that drop in your stomach is the worst.

but somehow for some reason, to which i cannot understand, the three of them begin to talk as if xing si pressured him? which maybe i missed something and that is possible—dont feel like going back to look—but that also made no sense. like what kind of false memory is this? why would he think he wasn't willing? and if he thought yong jie wasn't and that he pressured him how does he remember like...anything about the sex?!?!??!? besides waking up and being with him. like i guess he felt yong jie's MASSIVE DONG imprint but ??!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!??!? MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!!!!!

god then the logic of the top/bottom thing is like i said i wasnt going to get into it but it's actually really funny. this whole thing was hilarious. honestly because I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS. he could have totally raped him in that way but how did you get to this CONCLUSION FROM THAT??????? BY YOUR LOGIC THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS? IF HE IS THE BOTTOM AND PENETRATION IS THE ONLY FORM OF TRUE CONSUMMATION AND RAPE BECAUSE APPARENTLY, BASED ON ANATOMY, IF YOU HAVE A DICK IN UR BUTT UR A GIRL THEN HOW. DOES. THIS. MAKE. SENSE. AND THEN

AND THEN

AND THEN

AND THEN

this whole stupid conversation happens so we get to the conclusion that xing si violated him ok cool but that means that something is wrong. that is the CONCLUSION WE CAME TO A SECOND AGO?

also the other rapist is a villain and muren isn't in love with him so, once again, you're breaking the rules of your own world about acceptability which is why most of this is absolutely mind bogggglinG that iit's fuckign comical. like i actually when i can stomach it start laughing or my jaw is slack because it's so insulting as a viewer because there is like 0 logical followthrough.

because whatshisface barges in, kisses him in front of his friends without permission, then says whether you were willing or not which is hm. at that point how u gonna change that around but let's not bother with logic here. i am simply here to point out how this makes no sense according to the rules they set up even outside of the basic rule of life which is hm dont rape people maybe.

so now we know xing si was raped, they believe he was raped, he himself believes he was raped, and whatshisface literally says he doesn't care even if he was willing (he wasn't) so he admits to rape. i don't believe in the police and i hate them (BL industry needs the cops but dont get me down that road) but no one...thought to go?

because according to history 4 logic nothing matters so im sure if he went to the police you could handwave the homophobia since there's no actual context for anything besides their whimsy. but they dont want to do that because they aren't interested in an arc of growth; redemption isn't possible unless he is removed from the family but again no work on thinking this through or thinking about the victim's feelings. because gay sex? who fucking knows. supposedly progressive taiwanese writers of gay shit (like how supposedly progressive the world is. as in it is not and this behavior is the norm and bl perpetuates that) can't think of transformative justice?

and then they gave bad advice so we wont acknowledge that because teng teng doing anything wrong/stupid is frequent but hurts me and also that storyline is not real so i pretend they are not there outside of this post

so all of this is just straihgt up clownery now because it's fucking absurd like logically, practically, human-wise. the kissing thing is inconsequential but it was such a lazy cheap way out lmao cos they really wanted it to seem consensual but that's not how it works. on top of that their attraction makes no sense because whatshisface is just there. he is just there. he's nothing and no one so the sentiments are even more empty and on top of that he doesnt listen to a single request fucking obviously because the basis of their relationship is fucking rape so fucking listening and respecting his partner is not on his list of fucking priorities. he's literally so fucking annoying even without being a rapist it's like someone please beat his ass.

and then after all of that you want us to feel bad? with your horrible writing, poorly misplaced music, stupid costumes (those fucking SHOES THEY ARE HIDEOUS, AND MOST OF THIER CLOTHES DO NOT FIT IT'S LIKE WHY), questionable fucking editing. we're supposed to wnat them together? this sounds literally fucking crazy but bear with me lmao even with the rape they could at least have SOMETHING i mean like i cant believe im fucking saaying this. but like in addicted heroin which is fuckin tragic and awful at least there's a MODICUM of interest but honestly that show s a fucknig drag. idk they lookd good together? here we have 0. nothing. and it doesnt motivate. watching obsessed again i can see why i liked it in the beginning bc they have good chemistry but the acting and production adn like everything about it plus the rape-y vibes it's just too much. you need to pick one thing so if you're going to be a shit writer at least supplement it with something. this thing is nothing.

and even more nonsensical and what boggles my mind frankly out of all this is the mother's involvement and the father's final response. there are NO consequences? theyre all happy?

ok so lets go through this:

1. 2 boys grow up 2gether, one of the boys is fucking psycho, the mother knows but does nothing??????????????

2. one of the sons moves out so his father doesn't get a hint that's he's fucking gay. ok fine. he has 2 best friends, a job, an apt. he is fine.

3. aforementioned brother is obsessed with him for SOME REASON besides being crazy?

3.5 no one has done anything during him growing up to help him not be crazy?

4. mom says to husband who is their father also just in case we forget "im afraid he will lose his humanity"

4.5 again, do nothing. 0. just like oh man hes crazy. guess that's just our son ;)

4. who cares. plies him with alcohol purposefully to rape him. not even dubious (even though dubious is fucked and not okay or is just not. fucking real. these shows are contextless when they want to be or even movies or whatever so it's like largely not up to the task to understand complexity in human rships and then oversimplifies it constantly because that's what we do IRL. but people have fucking feelings you know and we realize when things don't feel good or right to us either very quickly after or having to process it. and once you're eyes are opened you may feel as something was fucking ripped away from you. for the modc couple this would be a very logical conclusion for the high schooler the thirty year old dated but again logic or feelings are up to their whimsy. no one cares bc everything can be counted as dubious so honestly it's a fucking stupid fucking topic like again why are we litigating what is and isnt consent when you could just like idk. read cues? consent? wait? not be a freak? like we all know what is proper human shit so even if we are watching this uncritically which u cant bc it's glaring and stupid it's just even more dumb) so it was honestly a rape plot like he literally planned it soooooooooo??!?!

5. aftermath of rape the victim is like literally fucking bereft and confused. and a rape victim. like that's what they are insinuating and what also he is to be clear.

6. boy tells him "idc if i raped u i luv u lmao"

7. mom ENCOURAGED THE BOY to get him drunk because her other son was too nice? she encouraged her adult son to rape her adult step-son (but her real son because she repeatedly says you are my son and the dad does too THEY GREW UP TOGETHER WHEN THE KID WAS IN AN IMPRESSIONABLE STATE) so THIS ALSO MAKES EVEN LESS MOTHERFUCKING SENSE

8. everyone finds out about his rape and he isnt mortified he's just concerned about himself being gay to his dad?????? except it's not really about his gayness bc now it's about his sudden love for his rapist brother? which? hm ok. understandable the dad is like wow i do not think i like this

9. dad knows all of it is fucked up, everyone does, knows the mother fucked up, knows he fucked up. doesnt like it because he is normal. so we know this is terrible? ok great so—

10. father says "i can't accept this...but i'm willing to give you my blessing" ok see here's the thing. when you write you have to think about the things you are putting on the page and what you have written previously. this quite literally made no sense how the fuck are you going to not accept them but give them your blessing? does this crew know what the fuck words are? i'm assuming they went to some sort of school to obtain jobs here bc there cannot be natural talent or experience. maybe most of them are rich. fuck i do not know but this also makes no sense. just the literal logic of it it's like fucking insane the whiplash.

10.5 apparently this father is also shitty. everyone here sucks and they are basically begging me to think xing si is a fucking idiot so i dont even want to look at him if he is an object he doesnt matter so now i want to kick him. thanks a lot you made the victim get absolutely fucking nothing

they KEEP PUSHING the brother thing it is so insane and it's liek GUYS WE GET IT WE UNDERSTAND THEYRE "RELATED" BUT NOT RELATED SO IT'S OK HE WAS "RAPED" BUT NOT RAPED but you're GOING BACK ON YOUR OWN RULES!!!!!!!!!! WE GET THAT THEY ARE BROTHERS!!! WE'RE OVER IT NOW BUT WHAT IS THIS WHEN WE ALREADY ESTABLISHED SOMETHING? I AM CONFUSION? they flip flop between my son, my brother my actual brother, and cannot fucking distinguish between love for your father and love for your romantic partner? so to me what i see is that the father wants to fuck the son. that's the conclusion i am garnering now considering nothing matters and his love for his "brother" is the same as his love for his dad lmao. they couldnt even do that in a way that made sense. like damn anybody can get anything. these ppl who are doing this have to be fucking rich and/or have connections.

also this guy sounds literally like a textbook abuser like he says constantly "im the best choice" is a rapist is awful holds capital (oh hees "saving" smh ur trapping her!!!!! RETIRE!!!!) also wears terrible shoes so i am like ur alllllllllLLLLL FUCKING CRAZY ur all literally crazy and then they are trying to set rules and boundaries in their fucking house like WHY ARE THEY LIVING TOGETHER EVEN? even tho oh my god they know he raped him and for some reason they are both allowing to live in the house but they dont want them to have sex??!?!?!??!??!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?! i get that this is their house but this is like at this point these ppl are writing anything and now whatshisface is acting like a 2 yr old again and we are supposed to find this cute? like it makes 0 sense why do u fucking care u literally encouraged ur son to rape him so they cant have consensual sex under your nose now and have to wait four years? this is coming from the son who couldnt wait until someone was sober enough to realize hes fucking psychotic and should be killed also the fact that they act like being 20 means u have no fucking brain like this kid is in med school supposedly how do we know like hes a liar and an idiot so. also wait do they mean undergrad? how are you in med school at 20? is he a genius? girl i dont care lmao i guess i missed that but it's not like it matters so whatever

even if we ignore the stupidity of the literal acts, the grossness of the content, the absolute inability to write coherently or even remotely in a way where we would even want to see them together which is like....u set it up at the beginning so he punches "the love his life's best friend" also holy fuck im sorry remember when he punches muren because xing si got too drunk. so i'm guessing whatshisface is that good of a bartender that he makes super strong drinks and gets xing si drunk but his alcohol is magical therefore it doesn't make him sick. his alcohol is the type that gets you drunk but somehow doesnt get to your liver even though that's how we get drunk but dont ask guys he's only in med school and a bartender so i think he knows best (seriously have the main writers had a day of fun in their lives? have they ever been drunk? are they toddlers? drunk babies could probably do better tho.) i get that he was also jealous but if this kid is SOOOOOO genius (he understands social cues lmao he has the cpacity to project onto his victim so im like miss me with the not understanding shit. go to a fucking therapist like seriously did no one care abt this kid? his mother thinks he's like almost a goddamn murderer. how is she not dead? how are they all not dead? how do any of them know how to drive with this type of brain?) then he would understand that they are very clearly friends since he watched them part in a very platonic way and since he apparently knows what love is cos he thinks....he can....make someone fall in love with him bc he loves them? again, i wouldnt know hes 20 and taiwanese and im 29 and black from AMERICA so im WESTERN* so you know. different life experiences i guess XD

even if we do mental gymnastics to get it to a place where they "had sex" and he didnt rape him there's 0 ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ties to the literal story they wrote and the rules they set up. i'm going ot assume they dont know wtf theyre doing and i know for a fact we all care more about their dumb show than they do but it's actually startling how piss poor this is it's like idek what to compare it to. the continuity is awful awful awful they needed a script supervisor majorly and they are making bank and are going to make fucking bank fof this shit. and itll just continue like that until IRL material changes and that's facilitated by these very same groups they choose to profit off of and exploit by propelling it into the mainstream and litigating homosexuality through capitalism. and i'm being specific with homosexuality. i dont want a GL market like at all and i know why we wouldnt have it either and that has everything to do with the nature of BL, capitalism, coercion, and the fanbase being young girls and women. i don't think in this day and age we can safely say all the fans are straight; i'm sure a majority but many women or people on the gender spectrum and sexuality spectrum also consume it. frankly, it's possible the women who write it could be or something too. i dont rly believe any1 is str8 lmao but im just saying it's not out of the realm of possibility. but it isnt about that at all. that's why we wont see "good" female characters (like well written) often that's why we won't see trans women or kathoeys or fat people or black asians in it. a lot of it is is a choice we participate in whatever. but holy fuck dude u could at least respect the audience's fucking intelligence. i'm talking about everything i think that is encapsulated in the project but it's even more jarring and worse because it's so insanely inconsistent and poorly done. like how we jump from one conclusion to another is wild to me. even their first "night together" and he wakes up im like girl....u no ur ass felt it. this nigga broke into his house and was like "im gonna have u" like it's getting weird

just make xing si suffer offscreen not us the stupidity is staggering, mind blowing, hilarious.

how wong kar wai, a straight man from HK (or at least married to a woman), or barry jenkins, a striahgt black man, write/do stories well about people they wouldnt knw about their experiences directly is....well thinking like using their brains and like knowing all types of people? the man who co-wrote moonlight is a hOMOSEXUAL, leslie cheung was fucking gay or queer (and he committed suicide and that's important also RIP homie) both are hailed as queer cinema like WKW wanted to do something else and invested time into it, changed the way he played around with structure, moved away from his crime oriented stuff. he THOUGHT about it and this film is about their reality. it's a harsh film, idk how i feel about it (but my fav movies of his are the crime ones or the messy ones where it's clear he didnt write a script lmao fallen angels is one of my fav movies its' abt assassins kinda) but i know it means something. and he didnt like what HK had previously wasnt enough. it is not the only cinema that should be shown since it's such a stark reality and depressing but it is a real depiction so we can have all sorts of stuff. no this isnt WKW level or moonlight level but i know for a fact these people think they are doing something because artists always do i say this as one and someone who is equally as useless. you're making a statement.

i also hate the westerner component of peoples analyses. first of all dont do cultural relativism. we can critique and respect. but second of all how are we going to keep saying "dont put western ideals on this" when that is what is happening anyway because that's part and parcel for soft power and capitalism. how about taiwan's history with the KMT? what about the regimes young people fought about? aided by US imperialism which permeates through society and affects material conditions, views, democracy, identity and that goes into culture and media. hm? what about that? is that reality too fucking western for people? that we are doing the same thing again now? is that okay to talk about or is that only on your time?

then there's the argument that this is just entertainment. yea no shit but the thing is if we r gonna talk about marginalized groups and watch bc of marginalized groups and then be expected to identify then i dont see why i cant put this in context. even if it wasnt fucking serious we'd still judge it. but it's so pompous and again like i wouldnt say EYE think it's art but it is "art" in the literal sense and no self respecting artist would ever go "man this means nothing." of course im not sure if they do respect themselves so hey but u cant just go oh man it's entertainment when it literally rests on the fact that HOMOS are MARGINALIZED. it literally rests on the fact that WOMEN ARE OBJECTS. you either want progress or you dont. i dont understand being so demanding but not beign specific in the demands and not trying to use your brain. if you dont want to use your brain don't. but if you are looking , engaging, and keep making these arguments or telling ppl it doesnt matter whilst complaining about how much others care is hypocritical at best, willfully obtuse at worst. both bad. :)

(also all this + another thing; it is insulting to have this like wedding happen based off of this stupid relationship when people fought so hard and had to push it. now they can use the material conditions to their advantage but it's so ridiculous. also because there is difficulty still in getting married in taiwan i'm honestly like....the boldness of the writers...)

[ratingtheframe]

Why Armie Hammer’s Scandal Is More Than Kink Shaming

The 34 year old actor has had numerous allegations thrown his way this past month, from cannibalism to an obsession with BDSM. But do these allegations go beyond a widely accepted community of kink lovers and venture into deeply rooted misogyny?

Warning: this article contains mentions of cannibalism and sexual assault. 

For those of you who aren’t aware of Armie Hammer’s presence on screen, you may be scratching your head and wondering what on earth people are talking about, seeing the cannibalism aspect to this all as face value without making the connection between Hammer’s past behaviours and current allegations. The actor who rose to prominence in Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher’s The Social Network (2013) playing both of the Winklevoss twins, has become quite the favourite amongst the film industry. His role Oliver in Luca Guadagnino’s Call me by your name (2017) has sent Twitter into a permanent frenzy as memes and daily adoration for Chalamet and Hammer’s on screen romance continue to thrive even 4 years after the film's release. As well as Call me your name, Hammer is known for roles in Sorry to Bother You (2018), Rebecca (2020), On the Basis of Sex (2018) and soon to be released, Death on The Nile (2021). He currently has another film due to be released and a Call me by your name sequel in development. Sounds as if he’s got a lot going for him and despite him not being the biggest star to be churned out of Hollywood today, the recognition is still there and with that, he’s still being paid. 

The Allegations

At the beginning of the year, an account emerged under the handle of @houseofeffie, that was created to expose some lurid and unpleasant communication between several women and Armie Hammer. Some of which he had relations with whilst married to his now ex wife Elizabeth Chambers. The nature of these dms are incredibly disturbing and worrying considering that Hammer not only has children but as an actor, spends a proportionate time around women.

These are just a few of the messages that were exposed that led the media to brandish Hammer as a “cannibal”:

Hammer:

 “You are the god damned standard I hold women to in terms of kink and enjoyment of fucking the[n]...”

“I need to drink your blood, why the distance?” “...thinking of holding your heart in my head and controlling when it beats”

“I am 100% a cannibal...I want to eat you....Fuck...that’s scary to admit..”

“I’ve cut the heart out of a living animal before and eaten it while still warm”

“You were the most intense and extreme version [that I’ve ever had]. Raping you on the floor with a knife against you. Everything else seemed boring”

“You [were] crying and screaming, me standing over you.  I felt like a god. I’ve never felt such power or intensity.”

“You just live to obey and be my slave”

“Would you come and be my property till you die? If I wanted to cut off one of your toes and keep it with me in my pocket so I always had a piece of you in my possession?”

“I want to see your brain, your blood, your organs, every part of you… I would definitely bite it...100%”

...O-kay. Lots to unpack here. First and fore mostly, I’d like to address the kink shaming element to all of this. I personally don’t see any harm in kinks, BDSM, pornography, as long as people are consenting and aren’t inflicting unsolicited pain upon people. Therefore, kink shaming and finding Hammer’s taste in sexual preferences isn’t what we are here to discuss. In fact when I first read the allegations, that wasn’t even my initially thought. CNN posted an article two days ago titled “Armie Hammer May Be Disturbed, But Is Shaming Him the Answer?” an opinion based article by Aaron Weaver that explores the allegations and believes Hammer shouldn’t be shamed for his kinks. But this begs the question whether Hammer was actually being shamed? I didn’t see much evidence for this seeing as people were mostly horrified by his taste in human flesh than anything else, a kink that is uncommon in the BDSM community and is only practiced by the most extreme. 

Kinks aside, the most worrying thing about the DMs above is the way in which he views women and their bodies. It’s clear to see that he might not have much respect for women seeing as he proudly states his willingness to cut them up and drink their blood. And funnily enough, the sexual objectification of women’s bodies for one's own sexual pleasure without considering their comfortability is classed as misogyny. A reddit user made an extremely good point on a thread about Hammer’s scandal stating:

“To me, the problem is not that he’s into rough sex, or that he has kinks some people find scary. It’s not about yucking his yum, so to speak. I’m more concerned that he may have ignored safe words and pushed his partners beyond their limits. I feel like the media is focusing so much on his kinks and sexuality as opposed to his ignoring of consent, which is a complete and utter inversion of priorities”

Past Relationships

Another example of Hammer disrespecting the boundaries of women and sexual pleasure would be his past girlfriend Paige Lorenze. Lorenze is a 23 year model and former professional skier who has shone a light on Hammer’s worrying behaviour and his involvement in BDSM activity. The sources of Lorenze’s allegations are highly unreliable, which is one of the most frustrating things about this entire charade. The BBC BRIEFLY covered the fact that Hammer dropped out of his latest film amid the allegations, without fully going into detail about the allegations or the abuse subjected towards his former partners. It just goes to show we’re rubbish at taking abuse seriously enough to the point where people are punished for their wrongdoings. Had a more reliable news source covered this story, then it’d make it more viable to the public. Even though this scandal is in its early days, that doesn’t necessarily mean it's unimportant or should be swept under the rug along with the hundreds of other scandals that Hollywood refuses to expose.

Only the Daily Mail, The Sun and Page Six seem to have gone in depth with the accusations, making the entire story rather murky for the reader. Anyhow, Paige Lorenze said to the Daily Mail that Hammer had carved an ‘A’ above her groin without her consent and licked it whilst it bled. He had also reportedly tied her up and hit her with paddles to fuel his BDSM obsession and sexual desires. Lorenze was quoted saying 'Any man who is fantasizing about crushing bones, eating them, having sex with female limp bodies is a danger to all women'. Hammer insisted to Lorenze that his behaviour was normal, and that there was an entire community of people that carried out the same things he did on her. This is partially correct seeing as the global sex play market is worth over $30 billion, with practices in such activities dating back to the mid 19th century. However, the one thing the BDSM community doesn’t condone is not giving consent, which is where the fine line is drawn in between Hammer’s sexual preferences and the BDSM community. His choice to carve that ‘A’ into Lorenze isn’t backed up by a wider community of people who enjoy a variety of sexual pleasure. Lorenze claims he also DMed nude photos of her being tied up to people without her consent, further perpetuating Hammer’s lack of respect towards people’s boundaries. This is a serious incident, that sees someone with more power (Hammer is 6’5 and Lorenze is 5’6 btw) assert their dominance and by doing so, degrades and harms someone else. We shouldn’t be kink shaming Hammer, but shaming him for thinking that this behaviour is acceptable.

Hammer’s previous relationships can also draw some light into his lack of respect for women. He and his wife Elizabeth Chambers divorced in July 2020 after a decade of marriage. Though it's unknown what triggered the separation, these recent allegations may have something to do with it. Furthermore, two other women have come forward to express their distaste towards Hammer and his questionable fantasies. Entrepreneur and ex-girlfriend of Armie Hammer, Courtney Vucekovich, told Page Six that Hammer wanted to “break [her] rib and barbecue it and eat it”. She also expressed how easy it was for Hammer to charm his way through into getting women, especially young women into doing what he wants through “active manipulation and making you feel like he’s never felt this way about anybody.” Lorenze was also subjected to similar retort after reporting that Hammer too wanted to barbecue one of her ribs because she “didn’t need it”. Writer Jessica Ciencen Henriquez took to twitter last summer after a lunch date with Hammer and expressed that she had blocked him on Instagram. She later went on to tweet this:

“If you are still questioning whether or not those Armie Hammer DMs are real (and they are) maybe you should start questioning why we live in a culture willing to give abusers the benefit of the doubt instead of victims”

Exactly my point here. There’s not much to this scandal other than the fact that several people were hurt and undermined and someone else caused it. Someone who is societally above everyone because of their race, class, status and gender, with a well connected and dominant family support system. 

His background and past 

Hammer comes from a very powerful and wealthy family. Hammer’s great grandfather, Armand Hammer, was the chief executive officer and president of the Occidental Petroleum company founded in 1920. Now if you’re wondering the exact scale of such a company that is still running today, they are the 4th largest oil and gas acquisition in the entire world worth over $100 billion. ONE HUNDRED, BILLION, DOLLARS. Not all actors in Hollywood can say that their great-grandfathers were worth that much, which gives me little hope in seeing Hammer be held accountable for what he’s done. He was also kicked out of UCLA after apparently not “being able to do it”.  Just another rich white male with enough power, malice and money to work his way around any struggle.

Now that we’ve established Hammer’s allegations, it’s worth looking back to see whether the signs of such behaviour were already prevalent in the numerous interviews he partook in over the years. Complex highlighted an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2017, where the host brought up Hammer’s obsession with knots, to which he laughed off and claimed that “knots make sense” that they are a “language” and referenced how man used knots before the wheel. Valid points but ones that are debunked in light of his interest in BDSM. during a 2013 interview with Playboy (appropriate) Hammer expressed that his “sexual appetites changed'' when he married his wife and that hair pulling used to be something he enjoyed but could no longer do now that he was married “even though he wanted to”. This is quite the backwards comment when we’re talking about respecting boundaries and it's clear to see it was only a matter of time before his desires could no longer be repressed.

Since this whole shit storm began to travel Hammer’s way, he has since dropped out of the film The Billion Dollar Spy, which would’ve seen him star alongside Jennifer Lopez. BBC News reported that this move was made as Hammer stated that “I cannot in good conscience now leave my children for four months to shoot a film in the Dominican Republic” following the ‘vicious’ online abuse he’s been subjected to. Hammer was again put in the firing line by Grand Cayman law enforcement for lying about a woman provocatively shown in a video was Miss Cayman of the Miss Cayman beauty pageant that’s held on the island. He and the woman were warned for their misconduct and had confirmed the matter is now closed. 

Final Thoughts

There are enough red flags in Hammer’s behaviour to open up a flag store, and I would go as far as to say that this isn’t the end of it. For someone who’s grown up having the majority of things they want, it's easy to want more beyond morality and despite the discomfort of others. Hammer’s move to drop out of his latest film was an attempt to lessen the blow of hate being turned towards him as opposed to the benefit of those he’s hurt. So far, him and his lawyer have denied all allegations and further action hasn’t been taken against the Hollywood star. He’s apologised for the DMs and brandished his actions a “foolish attempt at humour”. 

Wrapping his own behaviour up in humour is an attempt to detract from the severity of the behaviour itself, whilst excusing it, something he can get away with because of his status. 

Major media outlets haven’t done much in even attempting to expose this man’s behaviour and have left it up to unreliable sources to piece together the true persona of Armie Hammer. Though innocent until proven guilty, common sense is widely available to the general public meaning we should be delving into the past a little and comparing it to these allegations. Along with Hammer’s character, family and unnerving Instagram posts of cutting up meat and eating raw steak, there doesn’t seem to be much in the actor’s favour. 

All I would say is as a director, producer, writer or actor, would you feel comfortable in being associated with someone who believes they're a cannibal and marvels at the idea of drinking human blood? Or someone who goes as far to objectify women to the point where they become nothing but sexual fulfilment and pieces of meat? 

That’s all I’ll say and those who do feel comfortable doing such a thing means that Hammer may still have a career at the end of the day. One point to Hollywood, no points to political correctness and respecting women. 

[bigskydreaming]

Okay but for real, I really am going to go write something productive now but one last thing, cuz I just saw this hot take and I gotta say something:

“Pedophiles aren’t writing and reading underage fics. They’re more likely to be the ones cheerfully saying it’s problematic as a way to gain the trust of “woke” underage children.“

So I’m just gonna say this about this galaxy brain take and leave it right here and then I’m done with that for tonight:

1) Bryan Singer

2) That highly suggestive and innuendo-laden scene between underage Bobby Drake and adult Logan in X2.

3) The sheer volume of gay teens aka Bryan Singer’s preferred victim-pool, who have cited that scene as so hot, ideal, or even their fucking sexual awakening.

But pedophiles don’t write fiction and there’s never anything exploitative or influential about people writing pedophilic dynamics into fiction.

LOL. Right.

That’s self-serving BS, because fandom has created an environment that cares more about the comfort and feelings of people who WRITE about things like abuse, racism, rape, incest, etc, than they do about the comfort and feelings of people who are AFFECTED by these things.

And then they’ll happily cite ‘some people write these things to cope’ whether that ‘some people’ includes them or not, because they know perfectly well nobody’s going to put them on the spot and ask if they’re ‘some people’, because then that can just be spun as gatekeeping.

And so merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, everyone avoids confronting the fact that the problem has never been one of censorship, but one of priorities, and conflict of interest.

And the fact that you can’t care so much about rape and rape survivors and then turn around and knowingly and unapologetically create content that REQUIRES rape culture to flourish, and feeds off it. And so on and so forth.

The fact that sometimes its put up and shut up time, and the reason you all are so goddamn defensive about this is because you don’t want to face the fact that you’ve already MADE your priorities perfectly clear time and time again, every time you’ve chosen to leap to the defense of FICS by going on the attack against PEOPLE, most of whom are...again....the people directly affected by the content being fetishized for entertainment. 

The fact so many of you guys treat trigger warnings like liability waivers ie “listen, if you keep reading past this point its totally your fault, don’t blame me” instead of simply an effort to look out for readers and their mental and emotional well-being, the way you all like to CLAIM you use them for.

Listen, I’m All Cops Are Bad and have been for a loooooong fucking time. I don’t want to defund the police, I’m fully in the ABOLISH the police category.

Rub a couple brain cells together and maybe spark the realization that this kind of worldview is ABSOLUTELY AND COMPLETELY OPPOSITE the idea of the censorship you all trot out as the bogeyman.

It makes no sense, and if you took two seconds away from being defensive, you’d SEE that.

My entire thing....is the kind of society and community and culture that thrives WITHOUT EXTERNAL ENFORCEMENT.....because its members practice PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY.

So no, I don’t want to censor anybody, I don’t want to gatekeep anybody, I don’t want to go up to each and every person who writes fic I don’t personally like or agree with and demand they trot out their trauma or identity credentials to verify they’re allowed to write this content or what the fuck ever....

I literally just want people to ASK THEMSELVES:

“Do the things I do and prioritize in fandom actually match up with the things I claim to prioritize in general?”

And like, why the fuck would you have to give ME your answer when you don’t even know me and I don’t even know you?

You don’t.

Because its not about me. Its not about giving me an answer.

Its literally just about YOU and asking YOURSELF these kinds of questions.

And if you don’t like the answer you come up with?

The problem is not that you were bullied into confronting that. 

The problem is - and always HAS been - that you’re not comfortable with your fandom choices and actions and priorities unless you can pretend they’re something else entirely, or inconsequential, or just plain don’t matter.

[bamboo-muse]

TW: possible gore/violence and mention of narcotics abuse.

Lately the black lives matter tag has developed into a slew of different topics, one currently being the recent coup that just took place at the U.S. Capitol.

Now, I'm happy to say most of posts are discouragement from doom scrolling and reminding others to step back and take care of themselves in healthier methods

Unfortunately that is not all of them.

I snapped a screen shot of @enragedbees highly questionable metaphor before they blocked and deleted my comments, thus hiding my reblog.

This is a dangerous mindset to project onto a social media platform with minors and those who suffer with maintaining their health, mental health, and utilizing effective and safe coping mechanisms.

I asked them to edit or remove their post due to what they were advising people to do because they were encouraging using any means necessary to cope that which could ultimately result in suicide or death.

To summarize even fatal coping mechanisms such as self harm, drug use, and abuse of alcohol. They used a medical emergency as their metaphor such as a stroke and attempting to driving yourself to the hospital.

I will told them step by step what that accomplishes:

As someone who just passed her level 2 first aid course, I can guarantee you that you won't make it to the hospital.

Your analogy here is terrible.

You'll have weakness on one side of your body.

You'll veer/get bombarded by incoming traffic.

Your airway is closing up cuz that is a thing for stroke victims that most don't know about.

You're not breathing if you're not dead from the car crash.

You're now going into shock.

Your heart isn't beating from the not breathing- cardiac and respiratory distress

If you aren't dead from the car crash and if haven't quite died from any of that yet, the moment you turn your head after the car crash that has likely fucked your spine/neck your paralyzing/severing that you're dying in the car.

Or your car door has been ripped off as you didn't have the ability to close the door as you drove off, you've fallen out because you never clipped your seat belt because of the weakness on one side of your body, you're on your back, not breathing, closed airway, you've vomited -stroke victims vomit- you're choking on your own vomit, the car crash has left you with a ruptured spleen from floating ribs, liver damage/internal bleeding, you have broken legs and one of your arms has an exposed fracture with an arterial bleed.

Your shock has advanced to the point of cool, pale, and clammy skin, your body was diverging all blood flow to your brain and heart, but the shock has progressed too far and your body can no longer control or regulate itself.

On the list of priorities in large car pile up of now multiple injured or dying people the stroke patient is a code black and not going to be looked at.

What's suggested is you dial 911 and spout whatever you can while you can, not hanging up and do your best to lay on your side 3/4 prone to keep yourself from choking on your own fluids, or run to find someone who will call 911 for you before you lose consciousness and collapse from lack of oxygen.

So the answer really for your crisis is be informed, have a plan, and talk to people.

Don't take it all on yourself because you won't last long if you do.

Please use critical thinking when reading any coping or self help posts on this website.

Please reach out to any one or organization to talk to if you are suffering and your mental health state is altered or suffering.

The rhetoric used in @enragedbees post is dangerous and is going to get people hurt, or killed because it's encouraging them to self-medicate which can result in overdose and death. Others have called them out and they aren't changing or fixing their post. Please report their post.

Please, if you need someone to talk to message my inbox and I'll chat with you a while. If talking doesn't help, please try to eat something doesn't have to he huge -could be a slice of bread, a few tea spoons of peanut butter -any food you have. Drink water, small sips.

Practice deep and steady breathing to calm your heart rate.

In through your nose, out through your mouth.

You're not alone, the world is in this together.

Here is a website with a list of help lines.

http://worldhelplines.org/usa.html

If anyone knows of more or better ones please reblog and boost this post!

[fletchermarple]

[1] What is your opinion on life sentences and death sentences? Do you think it is humane for people kill other people BECAUSE they killed someone else? What is your opinion on prisons and the duration of jurys' sentences in general? Because, i mean, prisons are basically schools for criminals. And if someone is sentences to, say, 10 years, they will get out and will continue with their lives with more criminal skills and learned behavior

[2] so it would be easier to commit and get away with crimes (something 'light' but also something like rape or murder) while their victims are probably damaged psychologically or physically for life. Also, studies show how prison life and its isolation influences human's mind so they get out of it even more fucked up. This is not only inhumane but also benefits TO the criminals??

There are many interesting questions here, and I’ll try to answer them all briefly, although each one would merit a longer debate.

I don’t support the death penalty, simply because I don’t think anyone has the right to take someone else’s life, under any circumstance except self defense. I do understand why some support it and actively ask for it, especially in the face of some very heinous crimes, and I think they are allowed those feelings of rage. However, law and justice should be above emotional reactions, since they are meant to shape us into a better society.

On the other hand, I do support long prison sentences for violent crimes. I have a somewhat pessimistic view on the rehabilitation of criminals. Murderers and rapists with evident antisocial personality traits should be locked away for good. I’ve written here about several cases in which criminals out on parole have taken more victims. I live in a country with pretty lenient sentences for some awful crimes, and not only it’s unfair for the victims, but it also leads to a society that has no trust in the justice system and feels overly vulnerable.

Unfortunately, in most countries the prison system is not built in a way that encourages rehabilitation, and like you say, it can often just breed worse criminals. Ideally, inmates should be sorted according to their potential for rehabilitation. Some people end up in jail because they made terrible mistakes, or because their environment left them little option, and they can certainly choose a different path with the proper guidance. One case that comes to mind is that of actor Danny Trejo. He spent his youth in and out of jail because of drug and violence issues, and inside there he ended up finding the discipline and determination to create a better life for himself. But the whole system is messed up, because to keep them out of a life of a crime you need to provide a good environment once they are released, and with the stigma associated with ex convicts, many find it hard to find proper jobs.

The problem is there’s no real encouragement to create a better system because it’s not popular with the public. Most people would prefer criminals to stay behind bars forever and care little about them being treated humanely there, and with the need to have better education, health, etc., who’s going to make criminals a priority? Proper rehabilitation requires resources, dedication and a long time commitment; politicians usually are just thinking of how to win the next election so they don’t care about that. 

[sable-longclaw-blog]

Motherhood and Murder

Last night...

“When the sun lay hot over the fields we will rise. We will look up and praise for all the blue and gracious skies, for the Light will lead us home...” The song fell from unpainted, but smiling lips, a golden eye peering downward with an endearing smile. “You know...” she began softly, tracing her fingers over the soft flesh she looked up on. “My momma use to sing that to me all the time.” She laughed softly, smiling fondly. “Sing it now to my son.” She grinned broader, her gaze locked on that of a man upon her most prized possession; the steel table far beneath the ground in Westfall. 

[[ NSFW Below the cut. Torture, blood, psychopathic and sociopathic behaviors, Death, language ]]

A sudden pained scream filled the air as the killer twisted the crank one good time, attached to a slow drilling device jammed into the side of the man. “Rude!” she gasped out, putting a hand on her chest and turning the crank one more time. “I’m tryin’ to tell ya a fuckin’ story here, man, but you won’t shut the fuck up long enough to listen. S’all you can do anyway.. Ain’t like you can talk without ya fuckin’ tongue, Huh? Yeah.. That’s what I thought.” She glared then and gritted her teeth, releasing the device but allowing it to remain lodged. “Motherhood... Was .. -IS-.. It is not what I was expectin’ really. I expected my fuse to grow short, that I would hate it because of feelin’ fuckin’ tied down while my husband went out and made our coin, you know? We run our business together, but not much time for me to be in the office lately, so it all rests on his strong, handsome and capable shoulders.” she mused, continuing to speak as the man whimpered and bled. 

Sable’s shoulders lifted in a light shrug, “Buuut.. Come to find out. I actually really love that little being I created.” She smiled softly, wistful in its bliss. She soon propped her elbows on the table, waving her hands around as she talked, her expression of one in disbelief. “I know, right? S’hard to believe that these hands could nurture and love another, ain’t it, boy?” She chuckled softly, shaking her head as tears stung at her eyes. Having these sentimental moments with her victims was part of the ritual she didn’t even realize happened every single time she brought someone here. “But, ah... His name is Timothy Braenen. Got Timothy from the guy who’s watchin’ him outside. Timwei.. He saved my life when I almost died on fuckin’ Argus protectin’ this world, because I actually and finally gave a shit about it.” Her eyes widened and her lips turned downward in a ‘facial shrug’ as her shoulders rose and fell again slightly. “Braenen... Well, Braenen comes from a very important moment for me. One that, I...” she waved the knife she picked up in her hand around in a circle for a moment. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It was my first time. First time for everything. Love, sex, kiss.. kill.”

The man squirmed and writhed against his restraints, doing his best to scream in vain. “I killed Braenen. Was the first man I ever loved. First man I ever fucked.. First one I ever killed, baby. So you can see why that the name carries a great importance to me, hmn?” Another pleading squeal pierced the air, followed by more squirming and panting, desperate breath - the point of Sable’s knife dragging up and down his naked stomach. She didn’t let that deter her in the slightest. “My husband don’t know none of that. I’m sure if he did, he’d be furious and demand we change it. But.. what he don’t know won’t kill either of us.” She paused on that thought for a moment, sighing out. “No.. that’s all wrong. What he don’t know, won’t kill -me-.. Cause I’m sure if he knew just how deeply this shit went. I’d be the first on his goddamn hit list and then everyone else would follow. Which.. is another reason you gotta die, chunky boy. Along for the other reasons. .you know what they are.” She began counting on her fingers, holding her knife beneath her arm for a moment. “Liiiiike, raping and murdering all those young boys. And as you know.. -I- gotta baby boy, as I just informed you. Can’t have the fuckin’ scum that is you out and alive, continually escaping the system because they can’t find any proof of what you did. If only.. If -only- they would’ve thought to look beneath the floor boards of that shitshack you call a fuckin’ house. You kept their teeth, all of ‘em. One incisor per victim, right? Right. Well.. Like I said, man. Nothin’ personal.. yet. But I don’t ever want it to be personal. So fuckin’ thank me while you can, because if one of those boys had been -mine- This would be much, much slower.” 

With that, she jammed the knife down into his heart, releasing a deep sigh of ecstasy, nearly erotic in its fashion. “Mn... Can’t fuck my ol’ man... Guess this’ll have to do for now.” She stared then, watching him bleed out and the life leave his eyes. Slowly she collected just enough in a vial, putting it away in her usual lockbox that held the blood of all her victims, slowly placing it beneath her own floorboards when she was done. Another trophy, another need sated, another shit bag missed by the law off the streets, never to hurt another innocent again. This made her very happy, patting herself on the back for a job very well done.

Clean up was easy enough and completed in good time. Her gaze met with Timwei’s as she exited the broken down shack that served as a cover for what rest below. He looked as if he wanted and needed to say something to her, causing her lips to purse and question, “What?”

Tim’s nostrils flared as he carefully handed off his namesake to his mother. “You know what, Sable. Mace does not know about this. I did not learn of this until after you sent him out with that friend of his and found you here waiting. What have I always told you, little one? How have I told you that myself and Mollia lasted as long as we have. There are NO secrets between us. None.. Even if I do a most vile thing, she is to know, and she always trusts me because of this.” His eyes looked over the caramel skinned, blonde baby in her arms, then back up to her. “You have a son, Sable. A son -needs- his father. Do not let this.. this thing inside of you destroy that for him. And you! You need your husband, yes? Do you not love him, little one? I know what you went through to make sure you could be with him.. Please do not throw it away for this. Tell him.. Talk to him, as hard as it may be.”

Sable just dropped her head slightly, though her piercing gaze was upon Tim. She was on a high from her kill, and nothing would bring her down. A soft snort left her and a grin spread across her lips. “No,” she stated clearly. “I will not tell him, Tim. I -can’t- because THAT would definitely ruin all of this shit. I need to do this, and I swore I would try very hard to give it up. He needs to think I have. You don’t even KNOW how much he fuckin’ worries anyhow. I can barely fuckin’ breathe without him askin’ me if I’m alright. I love him for that, but I need this.. I need this so I don’t feel so damn suffocated by that, and the end game is the same as everyone else’s. I’m makin’ the fuckin’ world better by gettin’ rid of these assholes the system misses. Don’t you see that?” she questioned then. She truly believed what she spoke, and Tim could see it in her eyes and knew at this moment in time it would do no good to argue. 

He just sighed. “If you ever need me, Sable.. simply call as you have. I will be here.” He nodded then, raking his hands back over his dreaded locks. “Just.. keep yourself safe, and mindful of your priorities. Know that nothing is more important than your family. All of them. Your son, your husband, the people you work for now. Put them always above yourself, little one. That.. That is the only way this will ever work out, yes?”

Her head nodded, “I know, Tim.. I know. And trust me. They are -all- that matters to me. They really fuckin’ matter. I ain’t gonna throw that away. I promise.” Then she hugged him and he returned it, giving her a brotherly kiss on the top of her head.

“I will see you soon, little one. This I am sure.” He departed with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Sable was simply too high on cloud nine to notice it. Timwei was left with a dire choice, and one that would need a lot of thinking, and upon reaching his home back in Stranglethorn in the wee hours of the morning, he picked up an old communicator. He hoped that the only other in the world was still in the possession of the one he gave it to.

“Mace, brother. We need to talk....”

@macelongclaw

@fury-and-claws for vague mentions

[squalloscope]

HI. this is an edited version of something i wrote exactly one year ago, and this is a lyric video to a song that is important to me. they're sisters, friends, fraternal twins: international women’s day. the beauty salon downstairs offers a 50% discount on hair and make-up! instead, i would like the men in our lives to speak out more against injustice, to amplify the voices of women and non-binary folks. i'd like for the men in our lives to not only understand, but feel the rage that so many of us walk around with every day. once you open your eyes to all the ridiculous inequalities, the shit just comes streaming in and it doesn't stop, does it? there's that moment you realize that you grew up in this world scanning your perimeter and your brother didn’t, knowing that people who look like you fall victim to violence every single day. you learn how to hold your house keys in your pockets like small weapons, you've changed to the other side of the street because of men more times than you can count. you've felt unsafe in public spaces, you've had men laughing at that fact, you've had women nodding in solidarity. you become an adult to the soundtrack of your sisters recalling the times they were assaulted, raped, or plain scared for their lives. with every news story about a women who got killed by their partner, or a man she trusted, or a man she didn’t trust but who wouldn’t leave her alone, we ask ourselves if this could have been us. we lose track of how many times doctors didn't believe our pain, as if we didn’t know these bodies we live in. we watch groups of men signing laws for what we can or cannot do with our own bodies. we are not public property. we stopped counting the times we had to cross state lines or international borders to have the opportunity to get a safe abortion, often alone, and lonely, and vulnerable. the soundtrack of hush-hush stories of all the women who died trying to end pregnancies, who died in puddles of blood trying to take charge of their future. we grow up to the soundtrack of us not knowing how to speak about our bodies. the soundtrack of someone showing a picture of the correct anatomy of the clitoris in 2015 and it finally looks as mighty as we always suspected it to be, but we're baffled that we never knew. we grow up, hopefully, to the soundtrack of women laughing until they cry, of women crying until the noise turns into thunder, of women shaking with rage, and sadness, and joy, and all the emotions in between. we grow up, hopefully, seeing all those emotions in women on screens and billboards, along with the millions of ways we can look, and the millions of ways in which we take up space. we grow up, hopefully, with father figures and brothers and partners in romance, crime, or friendship who never tell us we can't do something just because we are women, who never excuse men's aggression with „boys will be boys“, who never judge other women's looks while we're listening in, who keep an eye on how much they earn in comparison to women doing the same job, who see our rights as human rights and human rights as their priority, who yell at this messed up world with us and know when to just shut up and let us speak when we tell our stories, who do the hard work of questioning the world's rules with us, who are present, who show up, who speak up, who have learned how to be soft and resilient and giving with us. i also hope we all grow up to the soundtrack of women singing, to the sight of women on stage, the undeniable presence of women and non-binary creators in every field where beauty and craziness and relevance is being made from scratch. yeah. guess what? we got a long way to go. fuck your beauty discounts. fuck your flowers. i want equal chances for all of us and that’s that.

[laundryandtaxes]

What's really messed up about all of this is that the person who opened the way for these rapist apologists to attack victims of rape has yet to apologize or self-criticize their wrong callous idealist opinions on how justice should work -- worse they continue to think they're right and victims of rape continue to be harassed and hounded by sobercommunist and his pals.

I mean I get the position that capital punishment is always bad and take no issue with someone holding that position necessarily so long as it is expressed in a careful way that doesn’t make women who want rapists dead out to be backwards or unenlightened or whatever. I think the posts in question failed to not make this position out to be the morally good response to being sexually assaulted that any good decent leftist ought to have and involved some finger wagging and name calling. That’s bad, the talking down to women who have the wrong feelings when it isn’t immediately relevant anyway. But that I could like, whatever, just see as an arrogant and condescending but not violent thing, just being rude to other women. Everybody has been arrogant about something before. That’s not necessarily a huge deal imo.

What is a huge deal is the expression of these ideas by a man with a long history of making deeply and openly violent comments to women, including, ironically enough, saying he hopes they get murdered even though saying the same about literal rapists is apparently so bad. That’s what’s sketchy here- a man with a history of violent misogyny and who has a habit of calling women slurs on the internet not only making any comment about this, but specifically using violently misogynist language to defend his right to do so, and THEN saying “Well do you want my friends to die just because they are racist???” This is in addition to his continued use of racist shit like calling Jewish women Nazi apologists for disagreeing with him, his continued use of false rape allegations by white women as anything that should be his white male concern or something anyone was ever talking about as opposed to just literal actual factual rapists, his weird obsession with ace bloggers who are often children and his use of violently misogynist and sometimes sexually violent language like “get fucked” with them and guess whether he picks girls to harass or boys- he picks girls because that’s who these kids are for the most part and also he hates women! The issue with him is that this combined with his way of expressing this to women is suspicious, and that he’s discusses not killing rapists as a matter of not killing “people in his life” that matter to him. Like if you just think capital punishment is bad, whatever, you express it condescendingly whatever even though it’s a bit of an asshole move, you express it condescendingly specifically pertaining to rapists and use violently misogynist language to do so? Hard line to be drawn with that as disgusting behavior. To be clear I think he has a weird psychosexual straight up obsession with being violent to women on the internet and wouldn’t doubt that this carries into his behavior offline- I’m not gonna guess at how that shows up but misogyny this intense has to, that much I know.

Ironically enough if he is so into this idea of reeducation it really would behoove him to start with himself- that wasn’t a joke on my part. Women have attempted to get him to st least not use misogynist slurs to harangue women he dislikes, in small cases from dumb ace micropolitics all the way up to women with actually nasty politics, because calling a woman a cunt when you could stick to criticizing her politics makes it clear which one of those two things is your priority. This is not hard to figure out and he has even bragged about not using racial slurs when he is upset with a black person. He refuses to do the same about watching his language because he hates and does not respect women, period. He is himself a case of a man with whom reeducation has literally already been attempted and failed.

[valhallansim]

Hey! So I'm on my way to becoming a hanzo main. I love him to death. But it's so disheartening because whenever I join a game and choose him my team are like... no >:[ and I get so much abuse it's even worse because I'm a girl and when I start trying to defend myself they either just stop talking altogether (like why tho I'm not scary?) or the insults just get worse. It's really turning me away from ranked :/ is it just a hanzo thing or a girl thing or both argh I'm so stressed. I just wana play

I’m so sorry to hear you are having to deal with these kinds of toxic arseholes. Sadly, I know exactly what it’s like to be called out for the characters I play or because of the fact that I’m a girl. So, because this is an issue that is very dear to my heart, I will respond to this with a wall of text. Beware!

Let me start off by saying this.

Never, ever, ever, ever let sexist behaviour stop you from enjoying the games you play.

Under no circumstances let them stop you from using the features of the game you want to use, just because you are of a certain gender or you sound a certain way. Keep playing. Keep your head high. It will get better eventually - if they keep hearing women, if they keep seeing women in their games - we will have a future in gaming where women are an unquestioned part of. Please, never stop doing what you love in gaming because of sexist behaviour. Sometimes, it will be hard when you encounter vile people that are determined to ruin your day - you are allowed to be upset, but do not let it stop you from enjoying the game.

You are allowed to play your game. There’s girls out there playing the game you are playing now. In a lot of cases, you paid good money to play the game you want to play. You are allowed to play it the way you want to, just like they do. Your gender does not make you worse.

About encountering sexismEven if it might feel like your reports do not make a difference: please, please report EVERY. SINGLE. ARSEHOLE. you come across and clearly state in the report that they are showcasing sexist behaviour if this is the case. I contacted Blizzard support a while ago because of a very vile player that threatened to find my IP address (which is impossible - Blizzard support ensured me), find my house and come there to rape, beat and ddos me. If people, be it in Overwatch or any other Blizzard game, are threatening you about harming you in real life, you are allowed to make a seperate report via the Support section on the Blizzard website. This will bring you in contact with a Game Master that you can correspond with and that will manually ban a player for you if necessary. The person from Blizzard Support that I had contact with was very adamant in letting me know that reports do help, and they do try their hardest to punish players for their behaviours.

So, with that out of the way: a lot of people will tell you to just mute and block the person that is being toxic towards you, but I do not think that solves the problem, at all - nor does it make you feel better. I will be honest and say that I have always gone against the person that insulted me for being a girl and turned it into a toxic back-and-forth of insults, often to the point of the person in question resulting to throwing the game because I was too quick to shot their toxic behaviour down with remarks. When people start insulting you for whatever reason, especially just because of sexist behaviour, I advise you to do one of 2 things:

1. If it makes you feel better, make a snide remark back, but do not make my mistakes and continue the conversation if it escalates. Because I know it can be very hard to come up with something witty the second something is happening, here is a tiny list of some of the things I have said to arseholes:

Sometimes they will mistake you for a so-called ‘squaker’, also known as a young boy that hasn’t grown into his adult voice yet (NOTE: there is absolutely nothing wrong with being young and playing games, however some people will be very hostile towards any young-sounding people). “Wow, shut the hell up, stupid kid.” to which I always respond, “Oh, you don’t know what an actual real life woman talking sounds like? Figures.”

“LOL you sound like one of those triggered feminists” > “I don’t know, the only one that seems pretty ‘triggered’ about there being a girl in-game is you” or “I thought that Reddit meme was declared unfunny months ago” or “Nice joke, did you find that one on the internet yourself?”

“Why do all girls play Mercy/Support/D.Va?” > “Why do all arseholes play [insert their character here]?”

“Girls can’t play” / “Oh, it’s a girl, we’re going to lose” / “No wonder we’re losing, we have a chick on the team” > “Oh, is that why we are losing? I mistook you for some guy that can’t play all along”

And the famous ones “Get back into the kitchen” / “Suck my dick” / “Make me a sandwich” > “Please let me know when you find some original insults” or “Nice. I think 2005 called and it wants it insult back”

What also often helps when all else fails is to just burst into obnoxious loud laughter, even if you don’t think it’s funny. It will make them feel ridiculed and have them shut up, even if it’s for a few seconds

However, never let the situation escalate to the point where you lose your focus on the game. After making a remark, drop the issue and report them. If they continue insulting, mute them - and tell your team you did so. “Alright, this guy is muted, let me know if he says something useful (like callouts, warnings, ult charge, et cetera)”. I know it’s very hard, and if you are anything like me, you will get very upset and angry (especially if you have been through this many times before), because it is not fair. It’s not fair that you have to justify being a girl, or choosing a type of hero just because some arsehole decided to comment on it. However, your wellbeing is a priority. If you need to turn off voice chat, if you need to leave the chat or disable it - do it.

2. Completely ignore them, but stay active in chat and voice. Act like they do not even exist. The second they start talking to you, making insults, trying to provoke you - either mute them, or just completely ignore them. Instead, try to still be active in voice chat and make helpful callouts, let people know there’s a flanking Genji, tell them about your ult progress, et cetera. Nothing is more infuriating to someone like that to be ignored and then still having their ‘victim’ enjoy the game.

Never hesitate to leave voice chat, team chat or match chat if you need to. Do not be scared to use this feature if you are bothered by what is happening. It can be a breath of fresh air to just play the game without having to worry about people commenting on you or on your performance.

About encountering hate for playing a certain characterIn the case of Quick Play and Arcade: simply said, fuck ‘em. QP and Arcade are there for you to have fun in and try out new heroes and strategies, to just relax with your favourite hero, and to have fun. If people start complaining about your choice of hero - mute, immediately. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose in QP or Arcade. You don’t need their help - you are there to have fun.

However, Competitive is about winning games. Even though I encourage you to play heroes you are comfortable with or you want to play, try to see what is fitting for your team and switch your hero if it is not working out. ‘Maining’ a hero is a good think, being a ‘onetrick’ is not! (meaning: if there is a main hero you are best with, that’s great - but if it’s the ONLY character you can play, that poses a problem for your team)

That does not mean you let yourself be bullied into switching a character, even in Competitive. As soon as things start going bad for your team, a lot of people will have the tendency to blame the ‘weak link’ of the team - aka the person they think is contributing the least, which is often the hero pick they do not agree with. Hanzo, Sombra, Widowmaker, and plenty of other heroes are good examples of that. However, just because people are playing the blame game and have decided that you, as a Hanzo, are not doing well, does not mean you immediately have to switch. In a lot of cases, you might not even be at ‘fault’ for your team not doing well. Try to keep a clear head and assess the situation to see if there’s something YOU can do to make a difference. Are you doing enough for your team? Are you getting kills? Are you staying alive well enough? Are you getting enough damage in? Are you not dying constantly?

If you are fond of playing a hero a lot of people deem ‘unfit’ or ‘not meta’ and you know some people are going to have an issue with it, just communicate. When starting a match, just say something in chat like: “hey guys! I am a Hanzo player, it’s the character I’m most comfortable with and I can do well with him. If it’s not working out, I will switch, don’t worry! I can play [characters you are able to play], as well.” In some cases, you might have to compromise and play a different hero. That’s okay! Competitive is about winning - but do not play heroes you are not comfortable with. My advice is to learn 1 or 2 heroes in every category - so at least 1-2 tanks, 1-2 supports and 1-2 DPS you are good with. When starting a match, just feel free to pick the hero you want to play and communicate with your team with what you guys need to get a good composition going.

Please do not be discouraged by people being rude. Ranked is very hard in that matter that people are very scared of losing their precious SR and do not want to lose. Therefore, toxicity is higher there. Partly, Blizzard is at fault here for not enforcing a stricter banning and reporting system, but if we are to believe what they are telling us, that is getting fixed, soon.

I myself am taking a break from Ranked play for the moment. I was close to hitting Grandmaster, but my own frustration plus toxicity has ruined the experience for me for the time being. Sometimes all you need is a step back for some perspective.

Please just have fun and try to focus on your own personal addittion to your team. Even if you lose, you will know you did well in the end and helped your team in the best way you could have.

I hope my giant rant can help you and others somewhat. Sorry if it comes across sort of rambly, but I have a lot of feelings about sexism in games, haha. You do you and play the game the way you want to! ♥

[surveysonfleek]

528.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 29

2701. What does 'equal' mean? that everyone’s deserving of the same rights. 2702. Do you believe in the phrase 'all men are created equal'? in theory yes, but not within our society. What about woman? unfortunately not. 2703. Have all persons been specifically 'created'? i guess? 2704. Are all persons exactly equal? i don’t think so. some are more skilled in certain areas than others etc.

2705. Or do they just have equal rights (in theory)? yes. 2706. Does art reflect society or does society reflect art? society reflects art more i think. 2707. Are you living under a little black raincloud or a ray of sunshine? neither. 2708. What do you wonder about? life. 2709. What is better..being single and free or being in love and responsible to another person? being in love and responsible. 2710. What vitamins do you take? none. 2711. In checkers..red or black? black. 2712. Is The Crow a great movie? i haven’t seen it. 2713. Do you wear all black frequently? not that often, but it’s happened. 2714. Do you ever call yourself a poet, artist, or musician? noooope. Has your writing been published, your art been hung in a gallery or your band been signed? my art has been hung before. Does it matter? not really. if i’m a creative my priority is just creating. it’s a bonus if it gets chosen to be displayed to the public. 2715. When insects get into your house, do you kill them or catch them and take them ouside or leave them alone and let them live with you? kill them. i don’t do insects dude. 2716. Name at least one person who's birthday is in: Jan.- yon Feb.- not sure Mar.- didier Apr.- ej, jerry, irene May- dwayne, dad June- mum July- bek Aug.- no one.. Sept- belle, meloy Oct- marie, cha Nov- dana, kristy, ahmad, sara, andrew, jason Dec- me, nat 2717. Which would you consider to be a worse criminal: a pedophile or a necrophile? pedophile. What if it was between a pedophile, a necrophile and a murderer? murderer. 2718. Do we start to die the day we are born or start to live the day we die? first one lol. 2719. Have you ever called your mom or dad a four letter word? sure, like the ‘best’. hahaha. 2720. Do you believe america should go to war with iraq? a bit of an old survey. 2721. Agree or disagree? (Bold is agree) “There is too much concern in courts for the rights of criminals.” “Abortion should be legal.” “The death penalty should be abolished.” “Marijuana should be legalized.” “It is important to have laws prohibiting homosexual relationships.” “The federal government should do more to control the sale of handguns.” “Racial discrimination is no longer a major problem in America.” “Wealthy people should pay a larger share of taxes than they do now.” “Colleges should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus.” “Same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status.” “Affirmative action in college admissions should be abolished.” “The activities of married women are best confined to the home and family.” “People should not obey laws which violate their personal values.” “Federal military spending should be increased.” “Realistically, an individual can do little to bring about changes in our society.”  Why did you agree or disagree to that last statement? i disagree because it really can only take one person to change things. 2722. Let's say that after you die you become a spirit and you join all the other spirits. Not all of them have lived. You are talking to some who have never lived about how you HAVE lived. One of the spirits who has never lived says they think they will travel to earth in a human body soon and live. They ask you what three things on Earth should I be sure not to miss? You say... 1. travel the world 2. fall in love 3. eat to your heart’s content. 2723. What kind of ass is the sexiest (flat, round, tight, hard, meaty, juicy, small, big, stacked, packed, petite, barely there, curvey, muscular, etc.)? i don’t really have a preference. if i see one i’ll know if i like it or not haha. 2724. Is there something beautiful and special about everyone? for the most part, yes. If yes is there something beautiful and special about Hitler? that’s why i said for the most part lol. How about Bin Laden? idk. What is it? apparently they found  bin laden’s laptop and saw that it had a ton of wallace and gromett videos on it looool. that’s pretty special. 2725. Have you ever moshed? hell no. If yes to what bands? If no then would you ever? i don’t think so. 2726. Do you like sushi? i love sushi. 2727. What mood are you in? pretty bored and tired. What does your mood depend on? if i’m working or not. What depends on your mood? work. 2728. wHAT IS faith? believing in someone/something. what is common sense? knowing the easiest way to do things. Do you have either or both of them? i think so. 2729. Is perfection or imperfection more beautiful? both if they’re separated.  2730. Would you think a person doing the following things has a healthy or unhealthy level of insanity? gives the finger while driving? depends what the other person did. tells their life story to people they just met? slight issues there. walks up to people and tried to convert them to a religion? unhealthy. says blah? depends how often. 2731. Do you think this is a great line of poetry: "Journey with me into the mind of a maniac. Doomed to be a killer since I came out the nutsac" Why or why not? lol it’s a bit of a mind fuck. 2732. Do you think that song lyrics are poems with music? sometimes. 2733. In cases of rape which do you think is more of a crime: a stranger rapes a girl OR a girl's boyfriend rapes her? both is just as bad. 2734. Did you know that in the USA it is considered to be LESS of a crime if a rapist knows the victim (because it is 'less of a crime' the rapist gets a less severe punishment)? Do you agree or disagree and why? i totally disagree. if the rapist knows the victim it puts the victim in a shitty position. if they’re someone with power and/or authority over them, the victim may find it harder to defend themselves from the rapist’s actions which can lead to emotional and psychological issues, like stockholm syndrome and shit. 2735. In the USA a few weeks ago a guy had beaten up and raped his girlfriend, for which he got 70 days of community service. He had been found guilty, got a year and a half of jail, BUT can you guess why his sentence was reduced to mere community service? . . . . . . . . He had a steady job. That's right. He was found less guilty, because he had a long-term steady job. How does this make you feel? that’s bullshit. i hope my country’s court of law isn’t that backwards. 2736. Does the character limit of notes or entries annoy you more? no. 2737. wHO'S YOUR FAVORITE WRESTLER? the rock. 2738. Have you ever been trapped in an elevator? no, thank god. 2739. What is more important, tact or honesty? it depends... in the workplace i’m all for tact. but for personal relationships, honesty. 2740. Do you have a mentor? Who? nope. 2741. If you like guys: would you rather have a 'bad' guy (motorcycles, smokes, drinks, etc) or a 'good' guy (family, domesticated, nice guy)? a good guy. Would you rather have a virgin or a more experienced guy? doesn’t matter. If you like girls: Would you rather have a virgin or a more experianced girl? would you rather have a 'bad' girl (motorcycles, smokes, drinks, etc) or a 'good' girl (family, domesticated, nice girl)? 2742. Do you feel nervous in crowds? sometimes, especially if i don’t have a clear path to walk through. 2743. Did you write a real entry today? no. What about? Was it your best writing? 2744. If you were making a 'best of' entry about your BEST entries ever what would be your top 5 best entries? lol. 2745. Do you like to play the lottery? i’ve played it once and lost. 2746. Guess what? what? 2747. Why did you choose to live one more day? i’m content with my life. 2748. What is the most beautiful myth you have ever read/heard? mermaids. 2749. Have you ever been stood up? nope. 2750. Finish the following sentences any way you want. It's always darkest before.. sunrise Never underestimate the power of.. money Don't bite the hand that.. feeds A miss is as good as a.. goal If you lie down with dogs, you.. bark Love all, trust.. no one The pen is mightier than.. a pencil An idle mind is.. free Where there is smoke, there's.. fire Happy is the bride who.. gets enough sleep Two is company, three's.. a crowd None are so blind as.. the meek You get out of something what you.. put in When the blind lead the blind.. idk Laugh and the whole world laughs with you. Cry and.. idk 2751. What's the most interesting assignment you ever had in school? making a diorama of the gold rush lol. it was fun. 2752. What's the most interesting thing you ever had to do for work? shuffle cards literally all day. 2753. Do you feel: insignificant? unable to evoke change? like one person can't change the world? like one life and one person's suffering doesn't mean very much? If you answered yes to any of those can you describe why in detail? omg cbf. 2754. Do you feel like you could contribute as much to society as ____ has? Albert Einstein: Abe Lincoln: Franz Kafka: Jesus Christ: 2755. Are you aware that your brain is the same size as Albert Einstein's brain? sure. Do you realize that you have the same number of hours in a day as Abraham Lincoln? sure.

Did you know that Franz Kafka wrote all of his amazing litterature during his lunchbreaks at work? Did you know that we are all made of matter and that you are made of the Same Thing that Jesus was made of? Do you still believe that you couldn't contribute as much to society as they did? If yes than WHY? 2756. Is your mind in the gutter? sometimes. 2757. What do you have to complain about? everythinggggg. 2758. Do you remember rock n' roll radio? nope. 2759. Is there such a thing as a food that you burn more calories from digesting than you actually absorb from it? no, i watched a video debunking the celery myth. 2760. Hey, if you've gotten this far than you and me go way back. We've been hanging out for a while now and I gotta know..do you like me? no, some of these questions are stupid. 2761. What are you doing, Dave? 2762. As far as love goes do you feel it is better to become complete before looking for someone or find someone who completes you? either is fine. it’s actually best not to look for love, and to just let it find you. 2763. What attracts you about the opposite sex (or same sex, or both sexes)? face. 2764. Do you need people or do you not need anyone? a bit of both. 2765. Is selfishness always bad? yeah, sometimes. Is selflessness always good? only if you’re bettering yourself as a person. 2766. Do you feel like your life is being controlled by a power structure? somewhat. 2767. Can you name three things in society that send the message that being completely yourself and that looking inside yourself and contemplating what's within is a good thing? no. 2768. Can you name three things in society that send the message that materialism and the accumulation of stuff is a good thing? no. 2769. What is more important, a picture or its frame? the picture. What is more important, spirituality or religion? spirituality. 2770. How many definitions can you come up with for the word 'fuck'? more than ten. 2771. Is it less offensive when a black person says Nigger than when a white person says it? yes, it’s less offensive. Why or why not? because black people have taken a derogatory word used against them back in the day and have made it into a ‘new’ meaning, which is totally fine for them to use but not for anyone else. 2772. Do you rationalize often? i guess. 2773. Do you believe that america is an imperialist nation? idk. 2774. Would you agree that: hot topic is the new abercrombie? pink is the new black: you are the new you? 2775. Do you have more internet or real life friends? real life friends. 2776. What IS the feeding of 5000? idk? 2777. What's an easy way to make money? working hard. 2778. What's your favorite slang word and what does it mean? lol idk. 2779. Are you uncomfortable? sometimes. 2780. Is anything definite besides death and taxes? life. 2781. Would you rather live fast and die young or live slow and die old? live slow die old lol. 2782. Can you name 4 people who have committed crimes against humanity? no, i ain’t no snitch. How do you think they live with themselves? idk. 2783. If you could imagine, pure fantasy, any God you could concieve, how would you want God to be? no thanks. 2784. do you think the smashing pumpkins have a strong christian theme? never really listened to them. 2785. Do you think this survey has a strong christian theme? more religious than anything. 2786. Fill in the blank for yourself" Give me ____ or give me death! life. 2787. Have you ever heard of the USA patriotism act? Apparently they have passed laws making torture legal. Also the FBI can sneak and peek into ANYONE'S home. They don't have to ask or even tell you they were there. This is already the law. So, whaddaya think? i’m glad i don’t live in the usa. 2788. The people in power step all over the average citizen, trying to secure all the power and money for themselves and leave us with no rights and under their control. They have the audacity to do this because they know that we will not lift a finger to stop them. Are they right? somewhat. 2789. The Free State Project is a plan in which 20,000 or more liberty-oriented people will move to a single state of the U.S. to secure there a free society. They will accomplish this by first reforming state law, opting out of federal mandates, and finally negotiating directly with the federal government for appropriate political autonomy. They want to be a community of freedom-loving individuals and families, and want to create a shining example of liberty for the rest of the nation and the world. What's your opinion? Could this work? Why or why not? tl:dr. 2790. Have you ever seen the Neverending Stroy? Remember when Bastian has to prove his worth by looking in that mirror where you see yourself the way you really are with no pretenses, rationalizations or mental lying? Could you stand yourself if you looked into that mirror? sure. 2791. What is soilent green? idk. 2792. What are you proud that you have never done? hard drugs. 2793. What things are hopeless? crackheads. 2794. What Are People For? idk. 2795. What book do you feel could change someone's life? idk, everyone has different tastes. 2796. Didja ever want to just walk up to the Bush administration and ask them, 'What the fuck?' no. 2797. How do you take your coffeee? two sugars and a dash of milk. 2798. Have you ever played: paintball? no. lazer tag? yes. which is better? laser tag, i’m never trying paintball lol. 2799. In what ways are you lucky? just everything i’ve had in my life so far. 2800. If Jesse Jackson wants reparations to be given to black people because he thinks that black people don't have equal opportunities in this country than why does he drive a Jaguar? idk dude.

[lockedupinalibrary]

SJM Fandom Podcasts – Week 3

First of all, thank you so much @aelin-and-feyre and for tagging me! I really enjoyed answering these questions!

So I tried recording this, but my accent bothered me too much so I’m just writing this down.

(Warning: there could be some spelling/grammatical errors in here that may be painful for your eyes to read. I’m sorry dear Eyes Of Whoever’s Taking The Time To Read This)

 Who is the best written villain?

Arobynn is a really interesting character. His evil acts are so much more complicated than those of other villains in the series. (Amarantha puts poison in drinks and tortures and abuses people; Hybern is a mass murderer– these are pretty basic evil things.)Arobynn’s actions are way more thought out and stretch over multiple books, what makes his actions so much more interesting to read.

Yes, Maeve is also super complex and soo well written, but that bitch just doesn’t deserve the title Best Written

Who do I hate the most?

Maeve. If someone doesn’t kill her soon I’m going to lose my mind. She’s FAKED A MATING BOND, RAPED at least 75% of her Cadre (these are supposed to be the persons she trusts the most, what the actual fuck is wrong with her??!!), and she has Aelin IN A COFFIN. A COFFIN!!

I hope she dies a slow, painful death.

Who do you love to hate?

I love hating Keir. I hate the guy, but I loved reading the scene where Rhysand hands him his ass and brakes his bones. (?something might be slightly wrong with me?) I also love hating him because his plans never work out the way he wants them to. You want to visit Velaris? Well, have fun being very very thirsty. He’s the most unsuccesfull villain in SJM’s book. I almost pity him. Almost.

Who is the most underrated villain?

Erawan 100%. I never really payed attention to him, because I was thinking something in the lines of “Mehh, Aelin’s gonna kill him soon enough” so well, I miiight have been underrating him.

What theories to you have for these villains in future books?

I’ve never really thought of this before. I hope Meave is killed by Fenrys though. Even though it’s not really mentioned that often in the books, I think he’s suffered the most of Maeve’s abuse.

Do you think they are misunderstood or completely evil?

I think all villains In SJM’s books are pure evil. But here’s my problem, in my eyes, Tamlin is not a villain: he still has some sense left of right and wrong, and in the moments he didn’t, he was mostly suffering from PTSD.  Don’t get me wrong, that is in NO WAY an excuse for the awful things he did to Feyre. This guy is bad and he did some seriously fucked up shit; he’s dominating, abusive and so so much more, but I feel like he’s a victim of the society he lives in and the events in the books. I think being dominating is an actual part of who he is, but I don’t think he could have grown to be so controlling as he is, if he weren’t High Lord. He acts a lot like a spoiled brat who’s never heard the word ‘no’ and needs to get his priorities in order, but I think he might have finally realized that at the end of ACOWAR UPDATE: I'm a monster I forgot what he did to Lucien omg why am I like this?! I really should have explained myself better: I HATE Tamin, but to me he's not a villain. He's an awfull person, but not the "I like seeing people suffer"-kind of villain? (I hope this makes sense? It's midnight and I have no clue where I'm going with this post) .

Different ways people interpret them in fanfiction

I have the brains of a goldfish so I literally can’t remember most titles of the most fanfics I read, so this list is going to be short af

Shadows and Darkness: One and the Same is a fic written by @azrielsiphons and it’s awesome. It features the King of Hybern, but that’s really all I can say without spoiling.

@writevswrong is writing this incredible Nessian fic. Some chapters take place in the Autumn Court and I’m so curious about the way she’s writing Eris at this point.

I’m tagging anyone who wants to participate! 

(there’s no time limit, so you can post it whenever you have the time :) )

[beforeiselfdestruct88-blog]

LGB no T.

I am so sick of this. The black community has worshipped dick and centered black men in everything since day 1. Now silly handmaidens and black men who 'identify' as black women want to speak over actual black women to prop themselves up. How dare you disrespect our existence and use patriarchy in a dress to make yourselves the focal point of female oppression. It's called SEXISM not genderism for a reason. Being female has been the sole basis of our abuse and you have the nerve to pretend all of that can be redirected to being about your "mentality". Get the hell outta here. You don't get to redefine things to suit your agenda. Now you're out here peddling the lie that "black trans women" face the highest level of violence. Bull fucking shit. Black women have experienced more violence than ANYONE ever, especially if we are dark skinned. Black people have been enslaved by other black people, whites, arabs and Natives, all of whom raped black women . Some even forced us to breed in astronomical numbers and take care of all the children regardless of color because all we were good for was production. Black women have suffered FGM, have been forced into marriages as children, our bodies have been placed in human zoos for people to gawk at our 'unusual' figures, our bodies have been used against our will to advance science. Present day black women carry those scars with us because trauma against our humanity for daring to exist while black and female is generational. Not only are we missing and trafficked at ridiculous rates but we are also raped, assaulted and killed under the radar. We have become the punchline for black 'entertainers' and black men everywhere from our skin tone to our character to our mannerisms to our genitalia to our diction. We get cervical cancer more than anyone but we better not say it because "not all women have a cervix." 😑 We are the poster children for everything wrong in society. When society talks about welfare queens and single motherhood, they're not thinking of 'trans' black women. When we get blamed for "destroying the black community with our feminism", they're not thinking of 'trans' black women. When society talks about black women being ugly and ghetto they're not thinking of 'trans' black women. When people approriate our culture and style to give themselves an edge, they're not taking it from 'trans' black women. Black women have attitude. Black women are fat. Black women are raising thugs. They're not talking about 'trans' black women. Day in and out, black women are society's scapegoat while all you care about is being able to use the bathroom you prefer and being able to date straight men without opposition. That is what we call a First World Problem. Your identity crisis and the elective surgeries you get to appease it do not take precedent over the global and never ending disrespect of black women. We didn't have to alter ourselves and go out of our way to be oppressed like you. Just by existing as is, the world has told us that is enough reason to take endless craps on us. Stop acting like black men haven't always found it ok to fight black women like men because our blackness allegedly discounts our womanhood. Stop acting like black men haven't embedded it in their mind that black women are not human but their mules to take care of them when life is hard, only to be discarded when they become successful. Stop acting like black girls aren't constantly robbed of our innocence with assault and dubbed 'fast' so our pain is overlooked and our fault. Stop acting like people haven't always called black women, men because we are the antithesis of white beauty standards. Stop acting like every woman doesn't get an ego boost on our backs. We are woman enough to be raped, trafficked, called bitches and hoes but too 'manly' to reap the finances, protection and reverence patriarchal society's claim to give women. Stop acting like black women are not abused physically, psychologically, emotionally and financially and haven't always been by white society, black society and everyone in between. Acting like you have it so hard when we have always been treated like an other just for being born. "The most disrespected and least protected person on the planet is the black woman." - Malcolm X He said black woman. Not black 'trans' woman. Cis privilege my ass. You think because you've been feeling for the last year what black women have been feeling since FOREVER, that you have it worse? You are only experiencing a sliver of what we get anyway. It's just that typical fragile masculinity you were born into that has you thinking you are the peak of oppression. You went your whole lives ignoring and/or capitalizing on the degradation of black women because your maleness allowed you to put it on the back burner. Your internal issues with gender did not negate the external privilege you received. But now that you 'identify' as one of us, we need to make you a priority or you slander us with poor reverse psychology. How narcissistic can you get? Womens rights are only worthy of attention when you are involved? "TERF" is not a thing btw. Stop using racism, sexism and homophobia to make yourself valid. You cannot compare white privilege, male privilege and straight privilege to this nonsense. Women have never had privilege. Or do you just wanna ignore the last thousands of years? You were born on the side of privilege and into the dominant oppressing class. Now you want access to a marginalized group with no questions and throw tantrums when we say no. It's almost like your male privilege conditioned you to force yourself onto women at any cost and taught you how to play victim when women don't fall for your shit. You want equal footing in womanhood but won't hesitate to remind us you "have it worse". You want to call lesbians bigots if they exclusively like women and vagina... because hey, how dare some women not want penis in any way, shape or form. Blasphemy! You have no concern for women in shelters fleeing abusive men. You invade their spaces and tell them to suck it up if they don't like your dick and masculine energy. You say nothing when born males use their advantages to dominate female sports. But you're the victim, right? I will say it again. It's called SEXISM, not genderism for a reason. You don't get to keep playing the "being born in the wrong body is not a privilege" card to ignore your advantages and complicity at our expense. Gender identity issues are low priority in comparison to everything else. Every day black women leave our homes, we are subjected to antiblackness and misogyny just for being ourselves. Doesn't matter how we dress or speak, it is hurled our way just for being in a female body via a black package. It will be a cold day in hell before those born male and their delusions get to define womanhood but those of us born female and our realities that came with it don't. Yes, we are the arbiters and gatekeepers of womanhood and it pisses you off there's nothing you can do about it except rally your naive liberal handmaidens and scream TERF. Interestingly enough, there are countless instances of 'trans women' raping, assaulting and killing women but not ONE woman has done that to you. Yet here you all come... into our spaces IRL and on the internet to force yourselves onto us. Why don't you go after the men who fuck you in private but don't want to publicly be seen with you and take your lives with the same gusto? Is it because you have no privilege over them and instead, it's easier to gang up on the 'weaker sex'? It's almost like you devalue women so much, you wanna speak over, redefine and attack us all while blaming our words for violence against you... well what do you know, patriarchy strikes again. We will not give into your demands. We don't negotiate with terrorists. (If misgendering you is 'violence', well propagating existent violence against us is indeed terrorism.) 😊

#blackfeminism #feminism #womanism #womenfirst #saynotopatriarchyinadress

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PWR BTTM Lose Touring Members and Opening Bands Amidst Sexual Assault Allegations

UPDATE 10/12 7:30 PST

Salty Artist - PWR BTTM’s management have now announced via twitter that they will no longer be representing the band. Jezebel has done an interview with a victim of Ben’s going by the pseudonym Jen where some details of the alleged assault are outlined. Their record label Polyvinyl are offering refunds for the groups album Pagent which was out today if you email their support at mailorder@polyvinylrecords.com. Hopscotch Music Fest has also taken the band off of this years’ lineup. iji, another opener for their May tour has also dropped off. You can read all of the mentioned statements and an excerpt from the jezebel interview below the read more.

10/12 11:00 AM PST

Yesterday, allegations against PWR BTTM’s Ben Hopkins surfaced on a private facebook group for the DIY punk scene in Chicago. The allegations included mention of sexual abuse, predatory behavior, and anti-Semitism. Today, touring members Cameron West and Nicholas Cummins have distanced themselves from the band, and T-Rextacy, Tancred, and Nnamdi Ogbonnaya – the opening bands for their upcoming tour – have dropped off. Their album release show that was scheduled for today has been canceled, and Bled Fest have dropped the band from their lineup. Chicago Venue Subterranean is also offering refunds to fans for PWR BTTM’s scheduled show there May 30th. You can read statements from PWR BTTM, Cameron West, Nicholas Cummins, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, T-Rextacty, and Bled Fest below. 

We will continue to update this post as more information comes to light.

STATEMENTS MENTIONED IN UPDATE

Salty Artist Management

“In light of allegations involving members of PWR BTTM, Salty Artist Management will no longer be working with the band. We do not take these kind of allegations lightly and our thoughts are with the victims and survivors of abuse who have been affected by this.

If you need someone to talk to, these organizations can provide information and support

National Sexual Assault Hotline (800) 656-4673

The Trevor Project (866) 488-7386

LGBT National Help Center (888) 843-4564

National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (212) 714-1141″

Jezebel Interview

““I just felt totally powerless in the situation, first due to physicality because they are so much bigger than me in size and also social status,” [Jen] told Jezebel. “I was trying to be okay with whatever was going on.”

Hopkins continued to send Jen nude photos after the assault. Jen said she didn’t initially process her experience with Hopkins as rape after being assaulted in high-school. “In high school I was blamed, told it was my fault, shouldn’t have gone to this place,” she told Jezebel. “I have a lot of that internalized, unfortunately.” A month later, she said, Hopkins assaulted her again. After talking about the experience with a few musicians and friends, Jen said she realized she was assaulted and, like Coredo-Kolin, gradually began to hear more stories about Hopkins’s predatory behavior.

In the duo’s statement, they wrote that the allegations “come as a surprise.” Early this year Hopkins’s bandmate Liv Bruce reached out to Jen after “hearing stories,” and she told Bruce “everything” about her assault. “Their response to me was, I don’t think Ben knows what they did, maybe you should reach out to them,” Jen said. “Then they never spoke out about it again and continued being in the band.”

“The statement that they made, I know for a fact, is an actual lie because I know they did know,” she said. “The statement they made is 100 percent false.””

Hopscotch Music Fest

“Each year, as we book and program artists, we do so with the intent of making Hopscotch Music Festival an inclusive, positive, and safe space for all members of our community. This week’s allegations against Ben Hopkins of PWR BTTM are ones that we do not take lightly. It is absolutely necessary to believe and support survivors of abuse, and to take steps toward holding abusers accountable. For these reasons, we have removed the band from our 2017 lineup.

We will be in contact with local LGBTQ+ and social justice organizations to address how to best raise awareness and funds for marginalized communities here in North Carolina. It is the primary goal of the festival organizers to ensure that everyone feels safe and free to be themselves.

Thank you for your continued support. Take care of each other.”

Iji said via Twitter

“Friends, iji band has decided to drop off the #PwrBttm tour in support of the people coming forward about the bands abusive behavior. In many ways this was an easy decision. Whats not easy is we are now trying to book a last minute DIY tour. Please get in touch if you have questions or if you would like to see iji in your town in July.”

STATEMENTS MENTIONED BEFORE UPDATE WAS MADE

PWR BTTM said via Twitter

“Hi everyone,

Ben and Liv here. We want to respond to some very serious allegations that have been made against Ben. The allegations come as a surprise, but we are trying to address them with openness and accountability. With respect to the image included with these allegations, Ben previously addressed this matter on their/the band’s Twitter in January (https://ibb.co/dsNRRQ).

Unfortunately we live in a culture which trivializes and normalizes violations of consent. There are people who have violated others’ consent and do not know. Ben has not been contacted by any survivor(s) of abuse. These allegations are shocking to us and we take them very seriously. Further, the alleged behavior is not representative of who Ben is and the manner in which they try to conduct themselves.

To address this matter head on, we have set up an email address through which a survivor or someone working directly with a survivor can discuss the allegations being expressed on social media: pwrbttm.ask@gmail.com We are currently looking for a mediator with the necessary qualifications. This will be the only person with access to the account. Ben does not have access to the account, for two reasons: 1) because we acknowledge that certain individuals will not feel comfortable establishing a direct communication link between themselves and Ben, and 2) to protect Ben in the event that a malicious party attempts to use the address for anything but its intended purpose.

Our primary goal here is to ensure that a survivor of abuse has a voice, that their story should be heard and that people who cross the line should be held accountable. What this means for the band, our album, our fans and our upcoming tours is, as of yet, unclear. Music is everything to us, but we feel strongly that this matter needs to be addressed first. Updates forthcoming.”

Cameron west said via Facebook post:

“Hi everyone. Today, like many PWR BTTM fans, I was shocked to discover that sexual assault allegations were levied against Ben Hopkins. From my understanding, these accusations were in fact levied via e-mail months ago, but were left unshared with other members of the band, including myself. In order to provide the highest possible respect to everyone who has come forward, I am hereby ending my tenure with the band as an arranger and touring musician.”

Nicholas Cummins said via Twitter

“I’ll say what I told Ben; while I will never dispose of them as a human, I fully believe all accusations that came up today. Regardless of their intent it’s clear that multiple people had their boundaries crossed. that’s incredibly unacceptable and needs to be acknowledged… I am deeply horrified by the thought of any role I may have played in doing harm to those people when playing with that band. All I can do is hope that the band does the right thing and pursues accountability in an honest and transparent way.”

Tancred said via Facebook

“Due to the allegations that have come to light over the past few days I will be removing myself from the upcoming PWR BTTM tour dates. Siding with any and all survivors is and should always be a priority.”

Nnamdi Ogbonnaya said via Facebook

“Hey y'all. I’ll no longer be opening up for PWR BTTM on this upcoming tour. It Fucking sucks for everyone involved and in light of the allegations I can’t comfortably continue. I hope that truth is found/admitted and I’m incredibly disappointed at this type of shit continuously happening. I love all of you. Also DO NOT message me on here anymore. Email me about this or anything else at nnamdi@sooperrecords.com”

T-Rextacy said via Twitter yesterday

“We wish we could say these allegations come as a complete surprise, but that is not the truth. Around the time we agreed to a July tour w PWR BTTM, someone came to us privately + warned us that they had these experiences w Ben. They asked us not to share them publicly. At the time we felt we should continue w the tour. We did not want to out the person who had had come to us in confidence. We feared that ducking out of a tour offer with no excuse would damage our professional relationships, many connected very personally to PWR BTTM. This in no way excuses us from culpability. We were scared and confused but we were also selfish. We made a mistake supporting this band. We put our career above the safety of fans who have trusted us and supported us and there’s no way for us to remedy that.”

They also clarified today:

“Hi folks. We wanted to state clearly and in our own words that we have decided to pull out of the PWR BTTM tour.”

Bled Fest said via Facebook

“Hi friends, Two days ago, our team was made aware of allegations of sexual assault by a member of the band PWR BTTM that were making their way around the internet. We appreciate everyone who respectfully made us aware of these allegations. After taking the needed time to discuss the situation with folks that we have a great working relationship with, we’ve made the decision to remove PWR BTTM from this year’s lineup. We do not have any tolerance for this kind of activity, and it’s important that we act in favor of any victims, whether we know them directly or not. One of the things that we’ve always taken pride in, but doubled down on this year, is creating a safe space for fans of all ages and walks of life, where they could enjoy themselves regardless of who they are. We don’t love the term “safe space” (just like we dislike the word “scene”), because it implies the opposite of some of the elements of danger and excitement that drew us to punk rock in the first place. However, we try very hard to make our little festival a safe place for folks of all walks of life. All races, genders, religions, sexes, preferences, and ages are welcome here. And importantly, in this case, all past victims of abuse of any type are welcome here, and are meant to feel comfortable inside our venue. We cannot control what happens in the world, but we can control who we feature on our stages, and the allegations against PWR BTTM are such that we cannot maintain that promise and allow them to remain on our stage. One of the new features of BLED FEST in 2017 that we announced last week is our Community Room, where we’ll host 4 discussion panels. One of which, entitled “Safe Spaces, Not Boring Spaces”, will tackle this exact issue in depth. We’d love to hear your voice and what you have to say. We’ll announce the panelists next week. Finally, we are going to actively try to fill the spot vacated by PWR BTTM’s removal, but it’s late in the game, and we can’t promise to have anything booked on such short notice. If we don’t, we’ll just move set times around (those announce May 16). We’re working to have news for you soon regarding the acts that were supporting PWR BTTM’s tour (Tancred and Nnamdi Ogbonnaya). We want them to know that they’re still welcome here, and that we were excited for their performances on the festival, independent of their involvement in any tour. We’re fans of both, and hope to have good news about them soon! If you have any questions about anything, I’m willing to discuss via email at nate@fusionshows.com. I have an incredibly busy weekend working with my wife’s dance recitals, so my responses may be delayed, but I will answer every message sent my way. Thank you for your support, your energy, and your passion. BLED FEST is a strange, special day each year, and this year will be no different. Take care of one another, and we’ll see you on May 27! Sincerely, Nate Dorough Fusion Shows P.S. Please give us a few hours to update all the artwork on our various sites.”