#I'm not saying there's anything inherently morally wrong with people who are those things irl

[enobariasdistrict2]

so i googled rachel gatina's fate and.. fuck that? my girl deserves so much more

[violet-moonstone]

once more defending my love, book!elphaba thropp

reading reviews of wicked and im seeing people say they hate book elphaba because she's "unlikable"

so many people love the feel good vibes of the musical while not seeing that they sound exactly like people who would have shunned elphaba at shiz for not being pleasant enough and making them feel unsettled instead of putting them at ease

I'm saying this because I find that people are often much more charitable towards fictional characters than real people -- and people IRL who have Elphaba's severe, unwavering personality and unwillingness to conform often face the same social stigma she did, no green skin required. Like yes, Elphaba was an outcast because she had green skin, but I don't think the green skin is the point of the novel. I think her being green is a visual manifestation of being so at odds with what you're "supposed" to be that people demonize you for it. Book Elphaba is queer and hinted to be intersex. I read her as neurodivergent, so this all tracks to me, and considering that other forms of oppression and stigmatization are very important themes in the narrative, I think the green-ness simply emphasizes to the other ways in which she's marginalized.

Trying not to go into the Wicked rant that I tend to do every few months but I feel it coming on

I'm all here for critiques of the novel, because it certainly has flaws, and I understand why people don't enjoy it -- but there is something funny to me about people wanting a narrative about looking beneath the surface to find true value but hating the version of that story that requires the most compassion to appreciate. Like the musical is fun and well-made but it does not require any effort to like musical Elphaba because she's conventionally attractive woman who's feisty and kinda quirky...oh and she's also green. And her being green matters more to the other characters than to us. We don't care that she's green (because we already know it would be wrong to judge her based on that) and the musical gives us no other reasons to judge her, so we don't really have to process any complex emotions.

(Sidenote, I think if book Elphaba were still green but more conventionally attractive, bubbly, and less political, she would not have been as much of an outcast -- at least not in her later adolescence. Her green-ness could have been a novelty or spectacle that she used to her advantage if she made up for it by being more palatable in other ways. Of course, she would never do this, because that's simply not Elphaba. She could never twist herself to be anything other than who she is, even out of social self-preservation.)

Book Elphaba is so much more prickly and unpleasant --and hell, so was I at the height of my social ineptitude and feeling like there was something so so wrong with me (because why for the love of God couldn't I just fit in and act the way the cool kids my age did).

Her unpleasantness and seriousness and insistence on talking about important things that make people uncomfortable are her green-ness imo. Those are the things that affect how we as the reader experience her, and we must experience her strangeness as well.

And while I understand that if the moral of the story is essentially "don't judge a book by its cover" then yes, you can tell a thematically sound story about a girl who is actually pretty cool but just happens to be green and talk about how she's ostracized simply because she looks different. That's a perfectly fine story -- but I think it can go much further -- because it's not only wrong to marginalize people who look different, it's also wrong to marginalize those who are internally different. Difference is persecuted whether its visual or behavioural.

Even if Elphaba weren't green, there are inherent aspects of who she is that prevent her from conforming to the ideal, both in her world and ours. And I think valuing her with all of those things in mind is a lot more rewarding than simply liking her despite the fact that she's green.

Anyway I love Elphaba Thropp and I don't think her being more palatable would have made the story better — it simply would have made it more popular, and I think on that at least, fans of both the book and musical should be able to agree is not an inherently better thing.

...

OK one last point, I saw someone saw they prefer the musical because it has more "girl power" meanwhile the book feels "obviously written by a man" and I just...dear god what a surface level take

Yes Gregory Maguire is a man (oh, the horror!), but he wrote the women in Wicked as people, without hand wringing about if they're likeable or pleasant enough. They are flawed and raw and not just there to make the audience feel warm and fuzzy. He writes about sexuality without making women feel like sexual objects -- I suspect because he also writes about the sexuality of his male characters (the women aren't just in the story to turn us on) and he himself is gay, so there may be less male-gaze going on than with a lot of men who write fantasy. Yes, characters are described in sexual ways, but this happens regardless of gender.

[s-exy-sapphillean]

Not trying to start an argument or anything so please don’t take it that way.

I think you have a flawed idea of what is being depicted with Andrew’s medication. It is a whole thing with Andrew’s character that he has been failed by the medical/justice/foster system. That is a very real thing that happens. Just because Nora made some things up to illustrate what she was trying to depict doesn’t make the thing she’s depicting any less real.

He is canonically bipolar. His medicine or he himself are implied to be misdiagnosed. Again something that happens irl. It is an ongoing thematic thing for Andrew to be misrepresented and misunderstood. With his family and the foxes it’s seeing him as a monster. For the medical system it’s seeing him as psychotic rather than him being bipolar with cptsd.

It’s not inherently demonization to depict real flaws in the system in especially not when we see Andrew getting help from people in that same system. (Bee) I’m just saying that the book itself shows both good and bad working in the same system. It’s morally gray I. A way that you seem to dismiss and frame as a black and white issue.

The point im trying to make is that nobody is trying to say that we should look at aftg uncritically rather that we should, but it’s also important to not dismiss what Nora is trying to get across with the information displayed just because the way she went about given us the information is not the pinnacle of moral purity.

(Idk I’m sorry for leaving this rambling mess in your ask box but I think this is a really interesting idea you posed and wanted to offer an alternative view point. No hate or anything i actually really like your account :D )

You see, the thing is that you just addressed a whole lot of complaints that i did not voice.

Of course nora's intentions were to write about the medical system and mental health treatment failing andrew. And there's nothing wrong with that specifically because those are very real issues people with mental illness experience, it's literally something i have experienced. The thing with that however, and what the actual issue is, is that you can't just go "well it's meant to comment on real issues" when beyond the surface level there is nothing real about what is presented and anything based in reality is overshadowed by the amount of shit that's made up.

Because it is abundantly clear both by how it is written and by how nora has talked about andrew's mental illness that she did not care to research actual experiences instead of just going with what she thought she already knew/what she assumed.

You can not both have "well it's okay to make stuff up, it's just supposed to illustrate something not be about the real thing" and "andrew is canonically bipolar" simultaneously. If you are going to use real disorders you better do them justice. Our disabilities and mental illness don't exist to be used as plot devices.

Andrew is not written like he is bipolar (and let's remember that it is nora who calls him bipolar, not what he has been misdiagnosed as in universe). His mania literally only comes from his medication and it is emphasized repeatedly when he gets around to getting sober that he does not experience this mania naturally off his meds. That is not how bipolar works. It's also not how being wrongfully medicated for "being psychotic" works.

Hi, i'm someone who takes antipsychotics. I am also someone who has been affected by how much antipsychotic meds have been fearmongered (needing antipsychotic meds when everywhere you look they get depicted as something that fundamentally changes you as a person is scary as fuck & keeps people hesitant about taking medication that will vastly improve their life). And yeah being falsely put on antipsychotics can be devastating but there are no meds that will turn you into a violent manic who experiences constant forced amusement, even if they're falsely prescribed to you. What antipsychotics generally do (besides bad physical side effects) when falsely prescribed is make you feel loopy and tired, suppress sensations like hunger, raise anxiety, cause emotional numbness, make it difficult to think and make you feel nauseous (not in the way andrew does because he only feels sick when they wear off). I have seen people who were falsely put on pretty high doses describe it as feeling trapped in their own mind, and the sedative effects have been blamed for deaths in misuse cases involving older patients. Ironically if andrew was actually bipolar, some antipsychotics could help him because they do have mood stabilizing effects.

Additionally the way his medication is essentially described like a state prescribed ecstasy dose. Yes there is plenty of medication that can be addicting and yes going off them can be rough and dangerous but it's written as if he has a severe drug addiction (describing him as high, the way his "withdrawal" manifests, the process of him being taken off the meds being almost treated like he's getting an addiction treated). And it is, in my opinion, incredibly fucking harmful to depict medication like that. She did not have to do all that to write about a misdiagnosis and wrong medication because that's not how that works when that stuff actually happens.

The ableism andrew faces in universe is not at all what i take issue with. Yes the use of slurs and the way other characters demonize him is uncomfortable as fuck but that is in universe and in character ableism, and believe it or not, i can tell the difference between that and ableist writing.

I understand that nora wanted to write about another part of the system failing andrew, and that just like all the other shit andrew has been through she used issues that exist irl, that real people go through. I don't think nora contributed to deliberate malicious demonization. But you cannot convince me she actually put in any proper research, effort and care into writing him as bipolar (if that was even actually what she had in mind when writing him and not just what she decided to label him when people asked). And that is something i consider careless ableism.

Misrepresenting real mental illness that you explicitly named IS ableist. Misrepresenting how psychiatric medication works IS ableist and harmful. Mentally ill people being subjected to medical abuse, misdiagnosis and malpractice IS a very real issue and that rly just makes making shit up as you go instead of representing the actual real horrors of those experiences even worse.

Either make up the whole thing and don't throw around the names of real disorders or put in the effort to do what you chose to use as a plot device actual justice.

I don't think that's too much to ask as a person who is affected by how much misrepresentation of real disorders there already is, and I don't think it's a reach to say not caring enough to do it better is ableist.

(i am generally an intense person and topics like this in particular make me get heated. I do not care to police my own tone but that does not mean i have anything against u personally or against u trying to talk about this further)

[damnfandomproblems]

758838699545001984

I'm the one they're responding to. This'll be the last ask I send on this topic cause I don't want it to turn into a heated argument.

First Paragraph: Yes, I'm aware there's a difference, I wasn't saying there wasn't. I was just saying a lot of antis oversimplify it, thinking writing it= endorsement even though there's a variety of reasons someone might write 'problematic' things, as I tried to illustrate with my personal experience. Regarding "because it’s more convenient to argue every anti is against any bad thing being depicted ever", antis want censorship, they don't want bad things depicted, that's the definition from what I hear of fandom veterans. And I'm not saying they're against everything, it's mostly sex related things in my experience, they're terrifyingly desensitized to fictional violence and often cause real harm to living humans even though willfully hurting people is wrong irl, so it should, by their own arguments, be wrong in fiction, but they're... rather obsessed with and narrow-mindedly focused on the sex related crimes in fiction.

Second Paragraph: Video games. Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, Manhunt, Fallout. Games where you can kill anyone you want without consequence (as long as they're not an important npc) and/or reward you for killing story related enemies. They glorify violence, make you feel so cool and badass for mowing your enemies down. That's why there was a big debate, that I still see sometimes, on whether or not video games cause real life violence. School shootings in America were sometimes blamed on the shooter playing a violent game. Murder is quite clearly portrayed positively in a lot of video games, and those are also stories. For shows, Game of Thrones, Hannibal, South Park, Simpsons. They depict a lot of dark things positively; murder, incest, cannibalism, minors doing sexual things, abuse. In my experience people used to be concerned that watching these shows, especially cartoons, would "rot your brain" because they didn't have a moral message and characters rarely got punished for their crimes. Plenty of shows glorify violence, or at least don't portray it negatively. I don't know what stories you're looking at if you are looking at any, but the majority romanticize murder/ect.

Third Paragraph: I'm not ignoring anything. I'm aware self-defense is a thing and I personally think it's okay if killing your attacker is the only way to save your own life, there's nothing inherently wrong with the desire to live. But I consider murder to have negative connotations, for example, someone planned and killed someone else because the second person got the promotion the first one wanted. That's not okay in real life, but antis don't often have a problem with it in fiction.

Fourth and Fifth Paragraphs: John Wick is romanticized though. You're supposed to root for him. He's still murdering people which is still wrong irl regardless of his motivations and his enemies' crimes. It's still bad and "justified retaliation" isn't a thing in the context. It's still as bad as murdering innocents. Again, it's still murder and not comparable to self-defense. He's just as much a murderer as the mobsters are. Murder is murder regardless of context. Someone who only murders rapists is as bad as someone who only murders college students. Ever hear the saying two wrongs don't make a right? The fact you genuinely can't see that and think it's amazing and acceptable is concerning. I'm honestly afraid you might hurt someone irl and you kinda seem like a person who wants others to suffer for the rest of their lives if you personally deem their crime "unjustifiable".

Last paragraph: Playing devil's advocate here. Drunk people can't consent. What if two people get drunk and then have sex? It's rape, but both of them are both the victim and the perpetrator. Who would you punish? Both of them? Because they shouldn't have gotten drunk? In this case I'd say it's better to let both go. I'm not saying it's justifiable, but it is excusable. Better to let both go than try to figure out who to charge and how. Incest...let's say a parent forced two siblings to do it. It's still incest, but the blame should be on the parent. And some places allow cousins to marry which is incest. Maybe you should try to change those laws instead of going after fiction. Pedos: not every pedo is a child molester. There is a difference. Imo I think that pedos' that are no contact and are trying to get help should be allowed to get help. Child molesters on the other hand, should be punished, but not by death, and if the victim wants to someday forgive them, that's their prerogative, not yours or mine. Also, what's morally acceptable/legal/the right thing differs from time period and culture. Slavery used to be okay, incest used to be okay in medieval times (many royals were inbred), ancient Spartan men would sleep with little boys. I'm not condoning these irl. But are you going to try to ban history books? Historical accounts? Classic literature and mythology (incest, rape, beastiality, which the gods and sometimes humans were never punished for)? Fairy tales (Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty was raped and she married her rapist)? Going to ban Disney for being based on those same "problematic" fairy tales?

Again, I don't condone these in real life. In fiction? Write/draw what you want, ship what you want, thirst for whatever character you want (yes, even if it's Sakura from Cardcaptor Sakura and the person is 40 or it's a pokemon). If I real living being isn't being hurt, I don't care. And if you do genuinely care, then why only target fanfics/fanart? If this really concerns you so much, then try to ban the stuff I mentioned, not just fanworks. And what about a personal account of rape written by the rapist? Do you think that should be burned, or should we read it in hopes of understanding rapists in order to prevent more victims? Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they don't have a purpose. And once again, the examples I listed last paragraph often have the crime justified and/or rewarded. You claim to care about this stuff but only go after fan made things and not the "offical" works taught in schools, sold for money, rewritten and shared around the world, ect. What does that really say about you?

"I never thought I’d have to explain this but here we are."

My perception of you is not the perception you have of yourself. I think you need to reflect on some things.

Posting as a response to a previous ask.

[mothicality]

alright discourse time i guess, i got some questions about radqueers, transids, stuff like that and would like to have a discussion about it

i'm trying to understand both sides so everyone's allowed to reply, including folks we'd usually avoid or have blocked on our main

we currently don't have any opinions on any of this stuff, not even neutrality, do not label us as pro- anti- or -neutral anything, i am here to learn. we do have a few opinions though i guess they're up for discussion if desired (does not mean i will change my mind).

warnings for the post: discusses paraphilias, noncon, abuse, mental illness, harmful topics, etc. just all the stuff really, and probably applies to reblogs/replies as well.

opinions and questions under the cut since warnings apply

paraphilias are not inherently bad to have and no one is a bad person just for having them, but being pro-contact or acting on noncon ones are (i.e. pedophiles, zoophiles, etc.)

wanting to be mentally ill/have trauma/have it worse is not morally wrong and is often a symptom of mental illness/trauma, it's unhealthy definitely but one's not a bad person for it.

fiction does effect reality, but there should still be spaces for morally wrong, disgusting, and harmful concepts in fiction (with proper labelling and warnings of course). enjoying such concepts does not mean endorsement or enjoyment of it irl.

you cannot have DID or OSDD-1 without childhood trauma, but you can experience yourself/selves as several. i don't care if that's plurality, but i generally see it as such because it's easiest.

you can't and shouldn't try to force recovery. people should have a right to not recover if that's really what they want, and you don't get to decide what recovery looks like for someone else. you can and should distance yourself from people who are harmful to you, including antirecovery folks if that applies, but they shouldnt Have to change if they arent ready to. recovery is good and should generally be desired, but not forced.

alright, that's it for the opinions i have. up for discussion but unlikely to change. now for questions, and i'd really like as many viewpoints on this as possible

why are MUDs bad? i'm anti-psych so think all diagnoses are made up and the ways they're made up is kinda bullshit and largely harmful. we Do need to categorise mental stuff like diagnoses do, there are just better ways to do it. but, all diagnoses are largely bullshit and psychs are shit at diagnosing, so self diagnosis is valid and i don't see why making up disorders isn't

why is trace bad? i'm really bad at comprehending race topics but i wanna try

why is trans-disabilities, mental illnesses, transtrauma, that stuff, bad? i get why misinformation is bad and that many transx people are very misinformed about the disorders, but they aren't always misinformed and they aren't trying to cause harm (usually, therr are ofc exceptions)

i get why things like transn*zi and such are bad- but i take that as "if you want to have an opinion, i'm gonna treat you like you have that opinion, and n*zis get blocked on sight"

i think that's it, for now at least. i'm very open to discussing all radqueer and related topics, i want to understand why people use those labels and do those things and why people say they're harmful and bad, i'm here to learn and discuss

[st5lker]

im pretty sure people are already calling this post "reactionary" so let me clarify some things:

believe it or not i am a transfem. i have been speaking from the beginning of this stupid debate about how centering conversations of transmisogyny almost exclusively around the concerns of a handful of people online with a few thousand followers on a dead website complaining, while doing no irl activism or work against legislative bigotry (transmisogyny or otherwise) is wasting time, yours and ours, against transmisogyny and racism that has a tangible effect on people's lives. i guarantee none of you had this much energy during the 2020 blm protests. i guarantee none of you are standing in at state senate hearings until you're dragged out to defend gender affirming care.

I know you all would have worshipped truefaggot's cartoonishly racist ass if he was still on this website.

this post is NOT saying that this topic is completely divorced from transmisogyny or that it has no place in the conversation. literally two days ago i posted about how trans lesbians get treated worse than tme people or even trans people who arent attracted to women when it comes to sex and thats directly bc of transmisogyny and people subconsciously seeing us as men. i AGREE with that.

what this post is actually saying is that debates about whether or not x fetish is okay or weird or normal or should never be made fun of, should never start and end with transmisogyny. because be real for a second now. do you think trans women are the only ones with these fetishes? the only ones on the planet? you really think that someone saying vore or schoolgirl outfits or animalgirlboob urls are weird in reaction to nobody on their own blog is a thinly veiled attack on all trans women? you dont think that maybe these debates can be separated and still intetwine. that its possible to acknowledge trans women get treated worse for their sexuality without saying that anything besides publicly posting "i love furry vore and everyone who posts about it is so hecking valid" is actually an instant checkbox that makes you a "vile transmisogynist".

its also saying that all of those listed debates are fucking pointless because there will never be an objectively "correct" take on an inherently subjective subject. you think your trauma justifies your consumption of something, other people are fueled by that same trauma to think it's unjustifiable. its a neverending debate. the entire point of this rant is that if you TRULY are confident youre healthy, that youre not hurting anybody, then you should be able to be like "i don't care what you think bc i know me, my friends know me, my partner knows me," and just keep fucking exploring your kinks. my entire point is that if you're trying to make it into an objective moral stance that's a sign that you are in fact not secure in your own sexuality and you acknowledge that your opinion of your own sexuality is possible to be swayed by other people's opinions.

and for the love of god this post is not saying theres anything wrong with any fetishes or that everyone should make fun of peoples fetishes. this post is specifically taking a non stance because the point isnt what fetishes you have its about how you react to other people's opinions of them.

before im called a puritan who just doesnt Get it. believe it or not i have fetishes. i consume porn real and drawn. i am genuinely hypersexual. and no my fetishes dont end with armpit sniffing that's just what I talk about publicly because I'm a private person and i don't see reason to talk about them all. i hear people even friends of mine call my interests weird without knowing and I don't take it as some "reactionary" hate speech because im secure enough in my own mind and sexuality to know that there will Always be people with "ick" reactions the majority of which just come from it being something they dont understand, and that's not going to change or affect my own ability to explore my sexuality in private. and trying to get on some soapbox about how everyone who makes fun of my fetishes is An Enemy Of All Leftism is just fucking pointless and stupid and does nothing and gets us nowhere.

if this post doesn't apply to you then its... not fucking about you?? feel free to ignore it. sorry everyone caught up in the Popular Discourse thinks everything posted on the internet is a direct vague about them but just because you don't see people acting like this doesn't mean it's not happening

im just gonna post this rant because i am so tired and angry i hate everyone on this website with such an intense passion.