#I’ve been through a lot worse than some ‘mean words’ (read: misrepresenting people like me to my queer community) or a shitty reblog.

[trans-androgyne]

Telling people to kill themselves (or is it detransition?) for a criticism of a book are we. What a normal take, aren’t you such a good person. For context I had pointed out the ways Serano almost exclusively brings up transmasc & genderqueer people to be critical or wrong about them.

One for the blocklist. Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays.

[volturialice]

since you’re the resident (and I hope to god the only) safe haven expert, would you say it’s worse than, equal to, or better than fifty shades -❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤

hello rainbow heart anon! i’ve been pondering this question all 1,600 miles and two days between colorado and virginia (thank you for entertaining me)

so ok. there are a lot of different metrics by which we can judge fics/stories. we can judge them based on plot, or writing mechanics, or how Problematic they are or aren’t, or overall literary merit. I’m gonna do a couple of these things, but let’s aim to decide based on “overall literary merit,” a phrase which it is physically painful to apply to either of these works but oh well

1) problematic-ness

first of all, a HUGE note about Problematic-ness: I do not often find this a useful way to judge stories, because all stories have to have some kind of conflict and also art can be as Problematic as it wants and still be good art. but in the case of e.l. james I will make the fattest fucking exception oh my god

and in terms of Problematic-ness, Safe Haven is WAY worse than 50 shades. many more articulate and knowledgeable people than me have written about how 50 shades a) does not depict actual BDSM, and b) misrepresents BDSM as some gross deviant thing that only a “twisted degenerate who has suffered horrific abuse” archetype could possibly be into. BUT however much 50 shades is grossly inaccurate in its depiction of BDSM, at least 50 shades admits that the relationship between christian and ana is “fucked up.” like at least there’s a token acknowledgement of “this is not a normal or appropriate way to treat your romantic partner” in there a few times.

whereas in SH, the same violent, abusive, controlling and manipulative tendencies are never acknowledged. they’re there (edward fantasizing about literally beating bella because he’s angry that she witnessed a murder, anyone?) but they’re never talked about—just handwaved away as “this is how regular guys in love think and behave.” which, um, no, erika. no the fuck it isn’t.

SH!bella is also a 19-year-old orphan with absolutely no support system, whereas at least ana (21) has friends, family, and a bachelor’s degree. all SH!bella has is obscene wealth, a cello, and a creepy plantation in (I’m still laughing about this) metairie. she has no one to look at her situation and go “dump him” the way ana’s friends could and did in 50 shades.

winner: 50 shades

2) writing

in order to be published, 50 shades had to pass through an editor. not a good editor, but it was still given a basic once-over for stuff like grammar and spelling, which makes it automatically better than SH. I’m not exaggerating when I say I have barely scratched the surface on this blog of just how bad the grammar et al is in SH. the paragraph-long run-on sentences, the bizarre random capitalizations, the constant abuse of ellipses, the utter lack of commas...it’s bad. when I think about how it was written by an adult TV professional with english as her first language, I kind of despair for the human race.

the original 50 Shades fic, Master of the Universe, is also riddled with errors but still not as bad as SH. I’m guessing this is because MotU came second? afaik Safe Haven was erika’s first foray into writing fic and boy does it show

and finally, the lack of every third word being “fuck” makes a huge fucking difference lmao. it’s also a POV thing—ana may be insufferable, but she’s far, FAR less insufferable than erika’s attempt at writing from a man’s perspective (the constant No-Homo-ing, anyone?) in fact, it would probably be more accurate to compare SH to Grey, but I haven’t read that. (does christian get a dicksona? important question I never want the answer to)

winner: 50 shades

3) you know what, let’s cut to the chase here

I could do a bunch more categories and talk about how 50 shades, while bad, is still better than SH, but I’m realizing it’s probably faster if I make the (much shorter) list of ways Safe Haven is better than 50 shades.

ways in which Safe Haven is better than 50 Shades: 

the pacing/length - the 50 shades trilogy is something like 500k words, and was originally published as two incredibly dragging, meandering fics in which it was incredibly clear erika had no idea where the story was going. SH, by comparison, is less than 60k words and, for all its faults, has clear rising/falling action and a climax, with most of the filler-y parts frontloaded to the beginning rather than disrupting the action (such as it is lol.)

the unintentional comedy - the unintentional comedy is way better in SH. the grammatically worse, “this is totally what men sound like” writing makes SH entertaining on a language level as well as a story level, and the plot beats—bella is abducted by a cross-dressing kidnapper we never hear about again! emmett digs through bella’s trash!—are more balls-to-the-wall ridiculous than anything in 50 shades.

and that’s it

in every other possible category, 50 shades edges out Safe Haven. including in (sigh) overall literary merit. at least 50 shades had something (however stupid) to say about its characters and their relationship, as opposed to Safe Haven’s “bella hot, edward mean, edward like bella, sexy sexy”

[imaginebeatles]

Hi ! I discovered your work with the short story "secret" - which really made me reflect on quite a lots of things about genders , and after with "true to you" , which also opened my mind on quite a lot of subject I never thought of ... The last story I read of your and chut-je-dors's writing is "ten minutes " (I thought I'd cry, I can't wait for next chapters) , and once more, you come up with the quite uncommon subject of sex workers (✌1)

cont. (idk if strip teaser is considered as a sex job ? I didn’t found other boxes to put both those jobs into ) , and both those stories really fight against prejudices, the fact that those persons are humans with rights, and that you can’t judge people’s work or life choices. It’s not very common (at least to me ) to meet (through your writing ) someone that open mind and comfortable with those subjects, is there anything that made you realise all of this or maybe your education ?  (✌2)

I absolutely love this question!! Thank you so much for asking it! Buckle up, this might be a long answer. 

If anyone’s interested in the issue of sex work, I love watching YouTube videos on a bunch of different political and philosophical issues and I would definitely recommend watching this video (x). It’s long but worth it. 

I think part of it is the fact that I’m Dutch (prostitution is legalized here) and grew up in quite an open-minded and progressive family. Subjects like sex work (I’m gonna count stripping as “sex work” here to make things simpler, but whether people define it as sex work differs from person to person, even among strippers themselves, so please forgive me if you don’t agree) weren’t taboo in my family and are often topics of discussion in our politics, so it’s something that people tend to have quite informed but different opinions on. Of course, stereotypes and prejudices exist here as well and in recent years, the whole debate around it has grown again with religious people being mainly against it, because they see sex work as inherently immoral. 

However, because religion doesn’t play as big of a role in Dutch politics as it does in the US for example, most of the debate around prostitution specifically (not counting stripping) is more about human trafficking and the role of women in society. Some people may be against prostitution because of the human (sex) trafficking that is a (small!) part of it, and because they believe that prostitution and sex work is dehumanizing towards women. So the debate is much more about the negative consequences of sex work than the inherent moral value of sex work (the religious group who is against it just on that basis is relatively small). 

Having been interested in politics and philosophical issues for most of my life, I gave this issue a lot of thought and actually did quite a bit of research on this, listening to different voices, especially those of the women and men (!) who are sex workers themselves, as well as people who have done research on this issue and are specialized in it. This very much included what I learned during my studies at university, because I learned a lot about how debates and politics works and was introduced to a lot of feminist thought as well as philosophies on capitalism and markets, which also includes sex work. At university, I also met people who did or used to do (or people who have friends who did) different kinds of sex work, so that way I learned about their motivations and why they wanted to do it, as well as what it was actually like (something you don’t often find information on that easily!). Knowing people who did it, made me more aware that they really are just people like you and me. You can’t know who is a sex worker just by looking at them on the street, and usually they are very smart and diverse of different ages, races, sexualities, and with different reasons for doing! Lots of students like doing sex work, because of the hours and the pay, or just because they genuinely like the work. 

For me, sex work was never immoral because you sell your body for “sex”. I don’t see a difference between selling your body for that or for any other kind of job, and I’ve always been very “do what you want to do and don’t care what other people think! If you want to make money doing sex work, go do it, i don’t care!.” (if you’re gonna say sex work is immoral because selling your body for sex is exploitation, I think you have to also agree that any work for money is exploitation and I would kinda agree on that at least, but then we’re dealing with the issue of capitalism and not sex work). 

As I learned more about it, this didn’t change for me. I don’t think sex work is inherently dehumanizing towards women or men, but just a job just like any other (these businesses are very strict in how clients treat the workers and the worker, be they a prostitute or a stripper, has all the power during the exchange and gets to decide what they do, when, with whom and how, and they often curate their own clients and because people know each other, words about bad clients travel fast!). The way sex work is portrayed, especially in movies, is very different from reality, and sex work itself includes a lot of other forms of labour, such as emotional labour. I learned about people with mental issues who have problems making connections with other people who prefer seeing prostitutes who know how to deal with those issues for sex instead of a partner, or people trying to find out about their sexuality, or what they like and don’t like sexually, or just people who feel like having sex but don’t want a relationship or a hookup! I learned about women looking for sex with prostitutes and who also like going to strip shows (and getting those service from men and women). 

On top of that, because prostitution is legalized in The Netherlands, there are a lot of rules that must be followed. These don’t often work and I’m still critical about the Dutch system in relation to protecting sex workers, but it’s better than when it’s completely criminalized, which would not only make work itself much more terrible and dangerous, but would also make sex trafficking even more difficult to fight. Businesses have worker agreements and back-up checks are done often to tackle human (sex) trafficking. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing and criminalization would only make it worse for everyone. For me, we have to protect sex workers (both women and men! people always forget about the men doing sex work) and make sure no one is being made to do any kind of work that is not safe for them for too little money that they do not want to do. That is exploitation (and can flow into actual slavery) and is wrong no matter what the job is. 

But yeah, the debate around sex work is a lot… mature (?)… here than it may be in other countries like the US, so you have more open-minded people and debates around the issue. I care a lot about issues like this and about human rights and fighting injustice and am all for protecting sex workers and decriminalizing it completely, so I like pushing boundaries in fics to help this a bit. Chut agrees with me on (most, if not all, of) this too, and when we started to write Ten Minutes, we decided to actually actively tackle these prejudices and give a (hopefully) less stereotypical portrayal of it. 

The same goes for other topics in my fics, like gender. For my studies I do a lot of research on queer studies and feminism and I find it all incredibly interesting and very important issues to tackle! I want to understand people and their experiences and find it important that there is more awareness and understanding. Although I’m not trans myself, I really wanted to write “Secret” when someone requested a mclennon fic where either one of them was trans, because I wanted to learn more about it myself and hopefully help both trans people by giving them this story (I know from experience how great it is to recognize yourself in stories and how much that can mean to you) and those who were less familiar with it or didn’t know much about it by talking about it so openly in a fic. 

Again, I did a lot of research on the experiences of trans people (especially trans boys, considering that’s where I was going for) on the internet and did my best. It was nerve-wrecking to post, because I really didn’t want to insult anyone by misrepresenting them, but I still get comments on that fic from people who love it exactly because they recognize themselves in it. That makes “Secret” my favourite fic I’ve written. 

So yeah, I think it’s mainly my liberal, progressive environment, as well as my own curiosity in political and philosophical issues, and my studies at university.  I’m so glad to hear that these fics changed your mind on certain issues, or at least had you looking at them in different ways. It’s what I want to do with my fics aside from just having fun and writing about stuff that interests me :) 

[thelegendofclarke]

I'm a jonsa fan, but she straight up nailed you, unfortunately. Just own up to it. You claimed something that was clearly a lie and they've pulled receipts on you that shows it was a lie. Honestly, the more jonsa fans that behave like lunatics about daenerys and call her crazy shit, the worse jonsa fans look. We all need to chill out.

Nailed me on WHAT? And own up to WHAT?? And WHAT tf do those so called “receipts” show, exactly?!?

Did you happen to miss the part where she said, “ETA: oh wait i DIDN’T actually send her those links that I SPECIFICALLY SAID I SENT HER but she’s still a terrible person who I hate sooo…” (x)

And no, I didn’t want to get involved. I was TRYING to take a step back from wank and a step back from fandom in general (both for fandom related reasons and for personal reasons, many of which I told this person but would rather not publicly get into detail about). A fact that I told this person MULTIPLE TIMES, and yet they STILL continued to bring up wank to me and drag me into it and demand I insert myself into conversations and situations that made me uncomfortable, which I refused to do as is my right. You can count on one hand the number of times I have actually TALKED about D on my blog. I don’t like the conversation that surrounds her, it is unpleasant, unproductive and (CLEARLY) toxic af. I don’t know why I have the ~responsibility~ to talk about things I have never talked about in the first place or what ~accountability~ I have for things I have never fucking talked about. And I NEVER said there wasn’t toxicity or issues in the fandom when we talked and on the NUMEROUS occasions where they continued to try to show me wank when I specifically said I was trying to AVOID WANK and had it Blacklisted, TS-ed, blocked, and filtered all I possibly could. They were forcing things on me that I was not seeing BY DESIGN for my own personal reasons which I explained to them on more than one occasion. Me saying “I didn’t fucking see this” isn’t me saying “that didn’t happen,” CLEARLY it happened given that they showed it to me. They are just completely misrepresenting what occurred here.

(Oh and not to mention that the times that I DID get involved or try to do something, they were deemed “not good enough“ or “not supportive enough” or “not specific enough.” Remember the Love Train thing I tried to do to be supportive after the whole Campfire Fuckplot bullshit? Yeah, apparently that was me just trying to “bury them in wank.” Like, I cannot even EXPLAIN to y’all how draining and degrading and fucking depressing it is to have people CONSTANTLY nitpicking your every goddamn move and word trying to find some kind of insidious intent and make everything you do or say a personal insult to them. To CONSTANTLY have people hinting at or vague blogging about or a lot of times just down right telling you what a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad person and friend you are. To be CONSTANTLY accused of using people for popularity, of being fake, of lying, of gaslighting. And all this coming from people who are supposed to be your “friends,” it’s NEVER ENDING and it’s just awful to be around tbqh.)

(And it’s REALLY CUTE and SUPER CONVENIENT that the part about “oh wait lol I DIDN’T ACTUALLY SEND HER THOSE OR SHOW HER ANYTHING!!!” didn’t make it into the original call out post. Nooo no no, that call out post is just about how I’m a lying bitch who no one wants to be friends with because I’m fucking shady, and that’s what is making the rounds and that is what people are believing.)

Or how that part about me “reblogging with a rebuttal” is a FLAT OUT FUCKING LIE, given this is the post and the version of the post I reblogged…

Or how my url is NO WHERE in the notes of the 2 year old post she posted a screenshot of that is somehow supposed to prove my ~insidious knowledge~ of something…

A post which I do not remember seeing… I very well might have; but like I said, it has been 2 years, and it’s not a time I particularly care to look back on or think about. (I was also being placed on meds for the first time due to the personal/mental health issues I referenced at that point and my doctor was trying to figure out which dosages I needed so I was out of it A LOT.) Nor does this post refer Hitler at any point, which is supposedly what I am being a “fucking liar” about having never seen.

Or how those DM screenshots (of our private conversation from over a year ago) don’t say a fucking WORD about Hitler…

Or how she left out the original part of the Twitter thread where I specifically stated that it is the “D is Hitler” argument that I’ve never seen. (and for the last time: NO, I HAVE NEVER SEEN ANYONE IN FANDOM SAY THAT!)

And left out the ENTIRE rest of the twitter thread/conversation in question (which does not say ANYTHING about albinism). And in which I did NOT say that I have never seen anyone comparing D or the Targs to other things like Nazis, nor deny that there are any problems with this fandom being toxic (because, i mean, lol CLEARLY there fucking are)…

(**this is where the tweet in the photo above would go but I’m not putting it in again because that would be redundant**)

(Links to this whole twitter exchange for anyone who wants them: x, x, x, x)

Or how this person is accusing me of just caring about ~popularity~ and wanting to maintain my “BNF-ness” and gain “popularity points;” an issue THEY are fixated on (and have brought up and accused me and other people of in multiple times in multiple conversations) not me (x, x)…

Or where they have straight up admitted to keeping tabs on me (or hate scrolling i think is the term the ~youths~ are using nowadays) on twitter even though we do not follow each other on twitter (or on here), and we are not on speaking terms and haven’t been for some time, and they have stated they wanted to curate me out of their fandom experience (x)…

Or where this person is bringing up private and very personal shit (that I told them in confidence because I thought they were my friend and that I could trust them) because they hate me (x)…

**Backhandedly referencing the fucking terrible depression I was going through at the time where I couldn’t even get out of bed in the morning. A fact that I, again, told her in confidence because she was supposed to be my friend and I trusted her.

(Also, this wasn’t the worst few months of MY fandom life. My fandom life doesn’t revolve about YOU or the things YOU care about, believe it or not. I’d have to sit down and think about when the worst time of my fandom life was. There are a few points in time that are strong contenders. But I gotta say… right now is NOT PARTICULARLY FUCKING FUN.)

AND bringing up personal things that happened between us which have nothing to do with what they are accusing me of or the situation at hand…

And for the fucking record: yes, our friendship crumbling DOES stick out in my mind. There are several events and things said that I remember VERY CLEARLY which happened over a number of months. I have NO DESIRE to get into all of that, I personally don’t like airing my dirty laundry for everyone to see or broadcasting my personal issues with someone like it’s one of those fucking Jerry Springer talk shows… But given the fact that the last text this person sent me was about 5 months ago on October 10, 2018 (yes, I have “receipts.” but no, I am not posting them. I, for one, don’t like violating the trust people had in my or their privacy by posting stuff from our private conversations) over a YEAR after this wank happened in September 2017, the dissolution of our friendship has very little to do with THIS.

Or how that was a call out post made up completely of misrepresentations and flat out lies, yet ironically has the goddamn NERVE to call ME a “fucking liar.” And that it was full of false information that she “stands by” and is not only LEAVING UP to let it continue to spread through out the fandom, but also NOT CHANGING OR CORRECTING the part where SHE FUCKING LIED. And how now I am having people like YOU who didn’t even read the post or look at anything she said (which is nothing) calling me a fucking liar too.

Or about how all of this (whatever ~this~ is or whatever tf they were trying to prove) probably has nothing to do with the incident in question in the first place. No, this is more about their person feelings on ME and the shit that went down between us and whatever ~sins~ they feel I have committed against them. And that I didn’t let them boss me around and do what they told me to do and fall in line or CONTINUE to let them use me as their fandom punching bag and take out all their fandom frustrations (that had nothing to do with me and that I could do nothing about) out on me. And that they are using this as an excuse to lash out at me and come after me with bullshit that ISN’T EVEN TRUE. They are straight up, flat out using LIES to call ME a liar… I don’t fucking like this, I don’t want to “Go” or “Do This.” In fact, I fucking hate this; it makes me feel icky and I just want it to be over. But I am NOT going to just not stand up for myself. Of course THIS isn’t the shit that will get spread around or that people will see or believe, but I’m not going to let myself just take it lying down.

DON’T call me a lunatic, DON’T demand I take responsibility for shit I didn’t do and didn’t say, DON’T call me a fucking liar, and DON’T come into my ask with this crap again.

Hate me all you want, you clearly aren’t the first and I’m sure you won’t be the last… but DO NOT SPREAD LIES ABOUT ME.

[drawsshits-inactive]

I’m not ready to be back yet but I needed to write a few things down here, if anything, just to organize my personal thoughts.

or aka

I’ve Been Having a Dragon Age Fandom Identity Crisis Because of the Recent Wank

So, I’ve been in actively participating in the Dragon Age Fandom for a bit over two year now, I believe, and I’ve changed my stances on a lot of things as I progressed through the game, but for the most part, I’ve always been pretty sure and firm about where I stood in the fandom and what I believed about mages and templars.

But the most recent wank had me feeling... uneasily unseated. I suddenly felt like I didn’t belong in the place where I thought I did.

Did I really support the mages and the mage rebellion? Was I just fooling myself into thinking that I did? Do I actually really support the Chantry? Did I really think that templars had it worse than the mages? Did I even really like Anders at all?

Which was frankly ridiculous, if you look at it. I mean, I have spent hundreds, if not over thousands, of hours drawings Anders. I wouldn’t have done that if I had really did not support Anders and his actions. Looking back a day or so now, I can say that there was a dissoance between what I felt, and what I thought, what I thought.. was my own thoughts anyway. So over the weekend, I decided to reaffirm my love by replaying Dragon Age 2 and romancing anders all over again. 

(I didn’t know what Gascard was Quentin’s student? The things you learn when you replay Dragon Age 2 for the 10th time...)

With some distance between what was being said on Tumblr (and what people from Tumblr were saying), I’ve had some time to come to terms with what I had been saying and what I felt, and let anger-anxiety shaking stop:

The Wank was putting words in my mouth; who said whats, just bad writing, and just plain old misinterpretation of what was being written down, as well as, deliberate mischaracterization by angry people.

Anyways, I mean, they kept saying that things I said were “Templar Positive”, if so many people were saying it, it must be true, right?

No, it’s not. I don’t really know where they got that idea from, or why acknowledging that feeding people drugs without telling them the full ramification of the said drug was wrong, meant that I was somehow saying everything Templars did was right.

Which wasn’t what I was saying at all. At All.

I don’t think that’s what anyone was saying, guys.

Also some things that were said by some people just... weren’t true in canon. I’m as pro-mage as they come but I have to disagree if you deliberately twist canon to make your point. (No, I don’t mean headcanons, I mean people deliberately misrepresenting canon facts that are not up for interpretation.)

Example, that post about templar vs mage route in closing the Breach Post and saying it didn’t make sense to go to templars.

I used to be able to enjoy posts like that because hey, we all understood that it was only a joke and it was funny but not actually true, right?

Wrong. Apparently some people actually think that Templars absolutely cannot help in closing the Breach, despite that both mages and templars are valid choices in closing the Breach. Like just flat out ignore the game. To make their point.

Seriously guys, they both work and they’re both fair choices in the game. It sucks that that choice is tied into supporting rebellion, which is why I’ll always go with mages. but just looking at how their abilities affect the breach, they. both. work.

Anyways, just because I don’t agree with a few points like that in your argument, that doesn’t mean you get to mischaracterize me as pro-templar or pro-chantry. That’s not how it works.

THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS IN CANON THAT YOU CAN USE TO MAKE PRO-ANDERS POINTS YOU GUYS, LIKE SO MANY. You don’t need to be making stuff up and then get angry at people that disagree with your imaginary points.

Which is why I started calling it Dank Wank instead of whatever whatever discourse.

*points to hundreds of pro-mage posts I made before*

A lot of characters that I think I should stand with Anders and understand his perspective, don’t really stand with Anders. And by ‘a lot of character’, I mean literally every character in Dragon Age.

It’s the same with Templars. I’m not saying mages should stand with Templars. I’m saying Templars should stand with mages.

Templars, as a group of people that has been systematically lied to about a great many things, by the Chantry, and had their mental and physical health seriously compromised by the Chantry, should understand the plight of mages.

It’d still be great if a mage character could acknowledge a Templar character, only because I’m a sucker for those kinds of stories. But only if there are also, like, 400 Templar characters empathizing with mages.

It’s just a general feeling of those people are wrong, and I wish they’d see differently.

With that said, there seems to be a fundamental dissonance on what solidarity means.

FYI, I’m ESL and there is a good possibility that I’ve been using the word wrong all this time. It’s happened to me before.

So I went ahead and looked up the definition to make sure, and then read some articles on different groups having solidarity with each other.

And I’m like 98% positive that we are not using solidarity the same way.

If all the things about ‘made to suffer’ and ‘born to suffer’ were true, it’d probably be good grounds on why Fenris shouldn’t have solidarity with Anders. After all, no one is born a slave, no one has some biological imperative that makes someone a slave, at least in Dragon Age. Fenris can and have stopped being a slave. Mages can’t help be mages.

Seriously, Isabela was a slaver at one point in her life. If she can have a relationship and sex with Fenris, so can Anders.

LET FENRIS AND ANDERS HAVE SEX

Biological imperative or not, injustices are still carried out by the society, anyway, and it is social values that give those biological differences their meaning. Everything... is arbitrary.

Seriously, stop making me think of all those Foucault lectures from college, I hate it.

On an unrelated note, I finally managed to grab that part in the game that said mages were whipped.

But also look how soft and pretty Anders looks here

[violetsystems]

#personal

When people wonder how long I’ve spent being ignored down here like everybody else it’s nothing compared to how long I’ve held the same job.  Truly one of the things I’ve been most successful with in proving consistency has been my work ethic.  It helps that it returns financial compensation and benefits not that any of that impresses anyone these days.  I say that work is work a lot and leave it at that.  It is important to note I work in an extremely liberal environment.  I don’t mind being inclusive in fact I think it’s more rewarding in the long run.  You expect that respecting people’s right to be will create an atmosphere that encourages you to do the same.  This is the Utopian vision of liberal America that always has it’s heart in the right place but fumbles upon execution.  Mainly because accepting people in America seems to be largely an egocentric experience.  We the people.  Wait who are we all again really?  It’s true I don’t really feel much in line with extreme politics on either side these days.  I spent years soul searching after making dance music on how to do something more important.  I volunteered for a Korean American Festival for three years back in 2011 through 2013.  That imploded in such a Tarantino-esque way like everything else in my life.  People come together and power struggles emerge out of the vacuum.   Around 2013 I worked with a collective of mostly women from my school in a project called Collective Cleaners.  It was a project about cleaning and the value of human labor.  I learned how to weave rags from old bedsheets.  We did a year long show at Jane Addams Hull House at UIC.  I could go on and on right.   But it seems like I’m telling a joke about my life with no actual punchline.  Like I’m mockumentary in the flesh.  Here I am still out here ambiguous proving myself to some phantom army.  And here I am still not good enough for America staring it in the face.  After all this my life is still a fucking joke to people in the worst and most hurtful way.  It becomes exhausting to remind people you have acted on solutions to these modern problems.  Nobody cares about me and what I do about it year after year.  Trust me I get that part by now.  That’s what it seemed like for awhile.  And then I had the painful realization that the work never stops.  And it seems like I’m all alone doing all the work.  To be truthful a lot of the work and expectations follow me around after I leave my day job.  On my lunch break I had to break up a fight between a white christian woman and a fake monk on Michigan before it happened.  The woman came running down the street making a sign of the cross with her fingers.  I stepped in front of her and calmly asked her what the fuck she was doing.  She ran away in opposite direction.  Where’s my comic book Marvel?  

For all the things I’ve done I’m still just as mistrusted and questionable in the eyes of the social elite.  I’m never quite good enough.  Never quite valid enough to prove I’m just as just viable as a closet misogynist with a six figure salary.  I’ve been questionable for years only to realize that nobody has any answers for me on how to be otherwise without being me.  Other than me.  And so in the end only I really know how successful this has all been.  And only I know when it’s appropriate to stay the course or give up entirely.  I haven’t given up.  That’s self confidence talking.  And sometimes you have to lead yourself forward towards some sort of progress through the hazy chaos.  I spent an entire year answering political calls and surveys out of guilt.  Mostly due to what I would hear from my peers about the intrinsic value of being politically aware and woke in the arts.  When it comes to American politics I do participate at bare minimum in voting.  One robocall asked my political leanings.  I said left.  “So I’ll mark you down as progressive.”  I didn’t know how I felt about it at the time.  Progressive in Illinois is a strange beast.  We elected a billionaire for Governor and a lawyer for Mayor.  At surface level that sounds horrible and I guess the more you dig into Chicago and Illinois politics you’d find the same shit.  You need money in America to have a say in politics regardless of how many free speech arguments you win on the Internet.  You can of course vote and it would be remiss to say I haven’t seen progress in that.  As of January we have recreational Marijuana and abortion legal across the state.  I have seen the drug war up close and personal.  It sounds like I’m a vice news reporter.  I’ve probably nudged up against them too in the field but they pretend I don’t exist.  Maybe that’s a parable of the drug war and the media industrial complex.  Maybe shit was lame.  All I know is through a series of miracles in the democratic process smoking weed in Chicago isn’t as dangerous to your personal freedom as it used to be.  Making friends in public still is.  Welcome to snitchville.  Whereas New York is up close but never personal Chicago is your best friend and your arch enemy at the same time.  Progressive politics signifies that things move on, evolve and change.  I’ve read enough news feeds to understand the Governor made whatever possible by crossing the aisles.  Which can be read as compromise.  That’s government.  I’m a private citizen in America.  Or so one would think.  There’s endless commentary about how people like me don’t do enough.  Americans love to talk all day about privacy and talk can be cheap.  Facing the realities of a growing surveillance state that likes to masquerade as the land of the free is troubling.  So can facing the reality your favorite punk rock festival is using public space for profit in under served neighborhoods.  I’m more concerned about white dad rock masquerading as punk.  But insecure men would rather lash out at the me too movement than rock the boat.  You pick your battles right?  Generally when I’ve been the one to stand up to things it’s been about not moving backwards in terms of progressive beliefs.  I believe in a woman’s right to choose.  I got targeted on the street all summer because of it by Christians who thought it was ok to bring it to my face.  I didn’t get a medal and I sure as fuck didn’t really get a pat on the back.  I still have my secret support systems but I don’t have the luxury any more of hiding from who I am and what I believe.  I often stand by myself and what I believe and suffer for it.  Or worse it gets hijacked, misunderstood, and misrepresented by someone’s interpretation of what I’m trying to say.  And I sit here every Saturday morning wondering if I’ve made any progress in being happy at all.  

After failing so much in everything you get a little tired of falling for the same old tricks.  The personal is the most political you can be and I have years of resistance to draw from.  Nobody ever wants me to be me even after all the passionate posts on the internet about what I believe.  It goes nowhere.  There are people who do understand and people I trust.  But the reality in America is that is few and far between in public space.  The propaganda that we’re all free is largely based on some huge stipulations.  Money is one of them.  I work for a non profit.  You can do the math.  It feels like everything that the Left wanted me to be based on critique is largely ignored unless I have my wallet out.  And even then I’ve been happier being less liberal with my money in places where it isn’t respected.  I guess I could run away to Hong Kong and start over.  The irony of that is pretty funny right now.  I haven’t talked to that side of the family in a while since I’ve been off Facebook.  I haven’t left the country since I came back from China, Korea and Japan by myself since the first summit between Moon Jae-in and the other guy.  I don’t know that I feel very safe leaving the country.  I don’t feel very safe leaving my house these days.  So do I shrivel up and waste away hoping somebody will save me.  What have I done to deserve all this I’m not sure.  I’ve spent over three years clocking in hundreds of miles running around desolate and abandoned areas of Chicago.  What am I really afraid of at this point?  Dying alone and forgotten?  I feel dead inside already every day.  I have no hope any of this will change no matter how much we sit and argue about it.  Nobody does anything.  Nobody is out there with me other than the people close to my heart.  Nobody invites me to a special club other than me at my kitchen table on a Saturday morning.  For all the good I’ve done I’m still the first person to scapegoat as ‘problematic’ after all these years.  And I can’t even profit off it on the internet?  That’s a joke.  If listening to all these criticisms and taking them to heart got me where I am why do we still pay so much attention to Dave Chapelle’s career and for profit opinion?  I’m invisible.  Just like all the victims out there who are invalidated when somebody says they’re over reacting to sexual abuse and harassment.  I think America has enough problems that nobody wants to confront without us having an opinion about any other country’s sovereign dirty laundry.  And this is where I think we can all learn a little something about progress.  I got to where I am by believing in myself and resisting people’s judgements of who I am.  I got there by challenging my own perspective and growing into my own by putting my ideas into practice.  It hasn’t been easy.  It has been largely thankless and a complete mind fuck.  But I haven’t been alone as much as it seems.  People use so many words and get nowhere.  And then people learn how to communicate without ever opening their mouth.  People can say they love you all day long.  I’m always going to be out here showing you just how much it means to me regardless of who sees it and how they feel about it.  In that I err on the side of consistency.  If that makes me a loser I’m happy with the results.  <3 Tim

[hawkate]

i'm heavily disabled and i'm fine with cassandra's storyline

Hey, there!

As I said in a previous ask, I’m not disabled, so it’s not for me to say if it is or isn’t ableist, but I’ve asked my wifey @disabledravenreyes about this and this is what she told me (under a read more bc it’s long lol):

Disclaimer: Chloe wants to stress that different interpretations can be valid, so this in no way negates your point of view, and also how she’s disabled and not chronically ill, like Cassandra is.

“Was she always terminally ill, or did you originally meet her as an abled woman? A lot of shows will introduce an abled character, get the audience to invest in them as an abled person (which makes it easy for viewers to see them as actual fully formed people, rather than a walking tragedy), then decide to exploit the ~tragedy of disability or chronic illness to spice things up with a little angst. Then, when they feel they've milked that for all the drama they can, the character will either be written out, sidelined, or (most often) magically cured and the whole thing is forgotten about except for the occasional reference. 

That, in and of itself, is a very prevalent and harmful ableist trope that has real world consequences for disabled and chronically ill people, and it manages to both misrepresent us while also stealing our stories and giving them (the parts that are convenient anyway) to abled actors playing characters that spend most of their time abled. Sometimes chronically ill or disabled people will find something identify with in these characters because it's some of the only representation we've got, or maybe there's one or two more realistic scenes that resonated with them, but overall, not good rep. 

On top of that, you've got these new magical powers that came from her "incurable" tumour. There are certain situations where superpowers coming from chronic illnesses or disability can be done right, in an empowering way, but a) it's complicated and delicate and abled people are always fucking it up (I'm looking at you, Veronica Roth), and b) this isn't that. I mean first of all they didn't even have the decency to keep her chronically ill, so the powers aren't linked to and fuelled by her status/identity as a chronically ill woman—that just becomes a conveniently dramatic/interesting way to have brought them about. 

Chronically ill and disabled people don't get compensated for our illnesses/disabilities. We don't get rewarded for gritting our teeth and bearing through the hard stuff. We don't get cured at the last minute, once it's the right moment for the plot or we've personally developed enough. That's another big ableist trope: using disability or chronic illness as a kind of trial for the characters, which—once they've learned the appropriate lesson or shown enough strength or whatever—is lifted and they are made "whole" and abled again. Cassandra herself isn't just made "whole", she even gets rewarded for her struggle with new and improved powers. 

Also, if she wasn't originally abled it's even worse, because it's a more obvious statement on how much better and stronger and more useful and more worthy we chronically ill/disabled people would be if they could just "cure" us. Tbh the idea of a "curing" us (which essentially means wiping disabled and chronically ill people out—just not through death) is so intrenched in society and the way it's traditionally portrayed us that it's almost always going to be ableist in fiction, and abled writers should really just stop going there. 

 Now, as you pointed out, it is possible to interpret things differently, and that person has a right to their interpretation, but it's certainly not the only valid one, and I would agree with you that it's got some ableist stuff going on underneath. Also keep in mind that I haven't seen the show so I don't know all the details (though tbh I don't think details would change too much in this case), and that I am disabled but not chronically ill. While we do fall under the same general umbrella of marginalization and deal with a lot of the same tropes, there are some nuances and experiences specific to both groups. For whatever my opinion means though, I've gotta agree with you. Sounds ableist.”

I don’t think I’d have been able to explain it as beautifully and eloquently as Chloe has, so I’m leaving her words here because I wholeheartedly agree with her in this matter.

Thank you so much for taking your time and energy to explain this to me, Chloe! You are always so patient :) I love you