#If your own sense moral purity gets in the way of doing the actual right thing

[detectivehole]

if youre american; you gotta go vote and you have to vote for whoever the democratic party ends up tossing your way, this time. it takes only moments of your day and slivers of your effort, it does not impede your ability to preform additional political actions, neither does it somehow lessen the impact of those actions

it is a necessary step this election to try and reduce harm- the election will proceed with or without you, and you will live with the consequences of it regardless of your participation; are you going to lie down and take it, or exercise all avenues available to you? i will not pretend your vote is anything but a drop in leaky bucket but its something, and its free and its easy. "i could never bring myself to vote for such a monster!" you are right, hes a monster, and an idiot, and ill feel miserable checking the box, but if the only legitimate reason not to vote that you can provide for me is your own moral repulsion im afraid thats just not good enough

compromising your sense of right and wrong to a limited capacity is necessary to be both politically active and impactful, as well as to just be a functional human being, because how you feel in the face of greater issues like this is, frankly, immaterial. action is the only language that matters at this moment. moral purity is a myth and your ability to maintain any semblance of it is a privilege

the only two choices here are voting or not voting; not voting, when you know conservatives will be lining the fuck up this election is, genuinely, rolling over and conceding their victory. if you find yourself asking, "how could things get any worse!?" i very earnestly urge you think about Trump; what hes said, what hes been saying recently, how his congregation feels about him, and how he and the republicans stacked and manipulated the other branches of the government during his presidency- and research how exactly it still effects us today

things could get worse. ill admit were in for a "worse" next four years regardless, honestly, but theres no biting the bullet of crappy futures. theres no "getting it over with" here. 330 million+ people domestically (not even considering the global implications) are counting on each other. you have to choose the Better Shitty Future

you gotta do it. you dont have to like it, you dont have to be happy, you dont have to tell anyone who you voted for or even that you did it at all. but you have to go vote, and you should encourage others to do the same

i definitely understand why you feel like you just can't. that you could never do anything that might be taken as actual support for such a spineless, shitty party and genocide-mongering, incompetent man. i had come to the exact same conclusion myself, initially. honestly i'm not sure anyone with a brain could think less of you for it. but i've Thought about it, like i'm encouraging you to Think about it, and it's just not a game of support, it's about making sure one of them loses. the system is broken, but you're still inside- you can't leave, and no one's coming to save you, so you have to play. make peace with it

[celestialtarot11]

Your thoughts of Libra rising women? I'm one of them. 💕

Libra Rising Women—

—Beautiful. She radiates an angelic energy, and may have wider rounder eyes. Not limited to, but can have softer features to the face and body. Often times itself their energy that radiates this purity and balance.

—Strong morals and traditions. She knows what her boundaries are when empowered and can have core values and principles. If she grew up in an unwelcoming environment, she will create her own morals and ideals apart from what she faced.

—She believes she upholds standards and it’s important to display this to her younger siblings or friends. She may try to be a role model, and this comes with a sense of pressure, especially if family held her to high standards.

—This is also where perfectionism comes in, because she may believe that in order to be liked and accepted she has to be perfect. Whether its through physicality, not displaying emotions or asking for help.

—As a Libra woman becomes empowered and finds herself she realizes it is within her right to express herself wholly. And nothing less. Those who run from her being vulnerable are truly afraid of themselves.

-Can have lots of opinions and ideas, separate from those around her. When she was younger she crafted a narrative that fit everyone else, because she was younger back then. She could have had people who diminished her personality. But now, she thinks for herself, and allows and accepts others ideas.

—May be afraid of intimacy and works on it. She may struggle with opening up, forming an attachment to those around her. She may prefer solitude as a way to maintain independence, which nothing is wrong with that. I believe these natives are working on finding a balance with relationships and with themselves.

—They do not want to get lost in a relationship and forget themselves.

—Home life, family matters may remain a secret with this native. She may not open up a lot about it, and it takes a lot of time. She can also have traditions she brings up in her friendships/relationship as a way to re-create a better childhood.

—It can be something she loved. Like celebrating thanksgiving and actually going all out and incorporating family. Putting in a lot of effort with cooking, preparing meals, and music!

—Wants a sense of security and stability within the home and tries to create that externally. It fan be why these natives are great at handling money/finances.

--These lovely women are amazing at speaking up for social reforms, advocacy, philosophy or therapy, because they want to make an active change in their communities! They see the best in others and with their work/skills they want to use that knowledge to help others.

—There is an innate need to be seen deeply by those around them and to share their beautiful inner world, but also comes the fear of it all.

—If you really push her buttons she can drop you like you never existed. She grew up in an environment where she had to turn off her emotions, so she knows when someone is trying to hurt her. She will choose herself over anyone at any moment, without needing to explain herself.

—Obtains pleasure and gives pleasure. She engages in an intimate dance with those around her, whether it’s through her flickering eyes, her warm arms embracing, and laughs bubbling in the air. She loves to have a meaningful time.

—Those around her fall for her charm, beauty, and grace. They may underestimate her intelligence, which makes it all the more better for her to surprise those who do.

[ceilidhtransing]

I see people saying “a vote for a third party isn't a vote for Trump, no matter how much you try to tell me it is” and while this statement makes sense from one perspective, it also sadly just misunderstands the material reality of politics.

If we're talking about voting purely as something that affects the moral tally of your individual heart, then yes, a vote for the Greens or whatever isn't morally equivalent to a vote for Trump. If the way you think about this is in terms of getting to the pearly gates and being asked “and did you always vote for the purest and most morally clean person?” then yes, a Green vote is not the same as having to say “actually I voted for Trump”.

But down here in the real world where voting isn't about maintaining your own personal sense of having a Morally Untarnished Heart but about, you know, real material consequences, a vote for a third party is functionally, if not morally, equivalent to a vote for Trump. You might not be voting for Trump but you are voting in a way that only makes it harder for the only candidate that has an actual chance in hell of beating Trump to win. There is no world in which that does not simply help Trump. You are splitting the anti-Trump vote and making it easier for him to win because that is how this voting system unfortunately works. Frankly, you may as well be voting for Trump.

“But my vote isn't an endorsement of Trump! It's an endorsement of the exact opposite values of Trump!” Yes, but again, this terrible first-past-the-post voting system does not produce “the average of all the values that people voted for”. Any votes that don't go towards the winner are wasted votes. And the winner, especially if that winner is Trump, will not care that you voted Green. They will govern just the same, and your voice will carry no weight at all electorally.

“Stop blaming people who vote third party for all the terrible things Republicans decide to do! Those things aren't my fault; I didn't vote for them.” There is a certain value to the argument “it's not my fault for voting third party; it's the Democrats' fault for not putting up a candidate I could vote for”. But this slightly falls apart when it comes to the people who have already decided they will always vote third party, regardless of how perfect a candidate the Democrats run, so this whole “it's the Democrats' job to convince me” is purely theoretical. And I too hate the way our society often defaults to blaming leftists for whatever the right does, as if leftists are the only ones with political agency and the right can never be held accountable for anything. But when leftists had an opportunity to prevent the right from doing something evil and they chose their own moral purity over an imperfect choice that would nevertheless have prevented some harm, then no, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to place some of the blame on those people.

US presidential elections hang on relatively tiny numbers of people in only a few crucial swing states. And because 132,476 people in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin decided to vote Green rather than Democrat in 2016, abortion is illegal in 13 states. That's less than 0.04% of the US population. Even margins that small matter. And no, those people didn't vote “against abortion”, but their failure to tactically unite behind the candidate who would have protected reproductive rights and who had a chance of actually winning directly led to the victory of the anti-abortion candidate. I'm sure all the people who now can't access abortion (ironically, none of whom lives in MI, PA or WI) are really glad that those people voted with their hearts rather than strategically. Votes have consequences, and things do change (for the worse, as well as for the better), much as some people like to harp on about how “nothing ever changes” and “your vote doesn't matter”.

“But why are you blaming those people? What about the people who actually voted Republican? Or the people who didn't vote at all?” Well, first off, this post is about third-party voting, not Republican voters or non-voters. But I do feel there is more ground to be gained by talking about the consequences of third-party voting than by discussing the others. Many Republican voters are essentially unreachable; they're not remotely progressive, so trying to convince them that they should be voting Democrat is mostly like talking to a brick wall. And non-voters are the people who didn't show up anyway; arguably they should have shown up, but they didn't. But third-party voters got involved, made sure they were registered to vote, got all the way to the voting booth, and then decided to vote not in the way that would defend at least some progressive values, but in the way that would only make it harder to beat the ultra-regressive candidate. There's an understanding that a lot of third-party voters are on the right side, they're just not making the right strategic decision, which is why so much more progressive energy gets put towards trying to convince e.g. Green voters than towards trying to convince people who aren't even remotely on our side to begin with.

“But both major candidates are agents of capital who will ultimately work for the continuation of the American empire. I'm voting for the benefit of the world, not just for the benefit of a few people in the US.” I'm not going to argue with you over that first sentence, because yes, you are correct. Both Democrats and Republicans ultimately support capitalism and both Democratic and Republican presidents have been responsible for some absolutely heinous crimes of US foreign and military policy. But as a non-American, the idea that voting in a way that makes it easier for Trump to win rather than uniting behind the person who might actually beat him - who is still flawed, but orders of magnitude better than him - is in some way liberatory to the rest of the world is just... what??? Do you not hear the people who are screaming “please stop the guy who's basically in favour of Putin annihilating Ukraine and endangering the rest of Central and Eastern Europe”? The people who are screaming “please stop the guy who seems like he just can't wait to drop nukes somewhere”? The people who are screaming “please stop the guy whose victory will only embolden the far right in our own countries and make it harder for us to beat them here”? Non-Americans are, by and large, not saying “ah yes, we are grateful that you chose moral purity rather than supporting one of the two capitalist candidates who will continue US imperialism”; we are screaming “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T LET TRUMP GET ELECTED; THIS WILL MAKE EVERYTHING WORSE FOR ALL OF US”. Your Green vote does not help the world right now. Please get behind the person who isn't a massive, immediate, almost unprecedented threat to everything we hold dear, and then we can fight for a better world together.

[our-trans-punk-experience]

What does it really mean to be a "Punk?"

I'm completely on board with the whole "beat the shit out of fascists and pigs" thing but I'm skeptical of any sort of subculture or group that celebrates values of any kind as "good" because I get pissy when confronted with concrete ideologies like Marxism. I'm scared that I'm going to end up getting into some kind of clique. I don't want to be in a clique where I get shat on for not having the morally approved opinion. If I can't have a controversial opinion without being silenced, then I don't want anything to do with "Punk."

I'm an Egoist. You're an anarchist, so, assuming you know who Max Stirner is, I'm pretty sure you know what that entails, but in case you don't, I put myself above all things. That's not to say that I'm a greedy bastard who wants to consume all the products ever, but that my own being and desires are the basis of my views on politics/society. I hate gender not merely because it oppresses all the poor minorities who need my help but because it gets in MY way, threatens MY life, and demands MY conformance to it. I want my damned life for myself. I want self-ownership. I see no legitimacy in the braindead wokeness of bougie college kids and chickenshit university profs. I want action in the here and now, not ineffectual Bookchinite/Leftcom/Marxist-Leninist meetings where we discuss how best to tickle the workers balls in the fallout of the USSR (which was an authoritarian shithole).

As a post-left anarchist (or preferably no-wing anarchist) I find myself skeptical of subcultures. "Oh, what's that? You don't like *band here?* Well you're automatically a poser/elitist/hipster/whatever." I understand that sometimes it's meant to pick out the actual posers by testing how thin your skin is, but it's really fucking annoying when people expect me to embody values like "don't do drugs" or "be vegan" because I refuse to define myself and my goals according to what other people deem morally correct.

I'm not really in a position to actually join a subculture at the moment because I'm a financially dependent minor, but I want you to give me an actual reason to join the punk subculture. Just so I can see if it's really worth it. What's in it for me, and how hard am I allowed to kick the balls of Nazi scum?

RIGHT!! Fuckin love it when i get asks like this

I'll split up my answer so I can get through all the points without rambling

Political Theory

SO punk does not have any one kind of coherent political ideology. Core political views are

anti-authoritarianism

non-conformist

abstractly leftist

fuck bigots of any description

you will not be bound to Marxism or any key thinkers beliefs. Your politics are your own and disagreement is encouraged as long as you arent being a dick. Of course you might find some punks that get pissy about ideological purity, but they aren't very punk, sooo fuck em. Bootlicking isn't punk, even/especially if the Boot is Lenin's.

Egoism

yeah egoist anarchism is just fine in the punk scene. as long as your "for my own ends" mentality doesnt end up tipping over into "I will go on a Shein haul twice a month bc I want new clothes and fuck anyone who tells me how damaging it is". You don't have to be a saint, just again, don't be a massive dick about it. You can look out for your own ends for sure. You will find that the punk scene often times talks about community, in the sense of solidarity and common goals (which you seem to share anyway), so as long as you can jibe with that you'll be fine

Non-conformity

Is the entire bloody point. If you're looking for a community that won't tell you that you have to look a certain way, or listen to 100 bands from the 70s to be accepted, the punk scene is built on nonconformity. not even just from society but within the scene. And even the big name bands from back in the day were screaming about the dangers of homogenising the punk scene, or letting it get commodified. Differences in opinion, style, music taste, ect are the whole fucking point and if someone tries to impose punk "rules" about that, then they don't get the scene.

"it's really fucking annoying when people expect me to embody values like "don't do drugs" or "be vegan""

i do drugs and am not vegan. you really don't need to worry. i really fear for the punk that says "don't do drugs". absolutist ideals should not be shoved on you.

"I'm not really in a position to actually join a subculture at the moment because I'm a financially dependent minor,"

Ok so while I get that possibly if you're financially dependent on people who would be able to mess up your life if you wore clothes they didn't approve of, and wouldn't buy you anything, it can seem difficult, but I want to just reassure you a bit. Punk is built off communities with financial difficulties, DIY, and more than just spiked collars. You don't have to be able to make it to basement shows or out to the city to be a punk. You can listen to the music (definitely listen to the music), get involved in politics, learn the history, watch movies, read books, DIY your own clothes and accessories, including smaller things like badges, patches or chains. The scene is the people as well as what we do.

how hard am I allowed to kick the balls of Nazi scum?

make them piss blood for weeks.

[silyabeeodess]

Twisted Wonderland Analysis: Rollo Flamme and Quasimodo Parallels

These thoughts hit me like a truck in the middle of the night yesterday and I've already talked about parallels with other TWST characters and Disney movie protagonists, so I'm going to spill them out in the cut below:

First, we need address a key difference between Rollo and Frollo: Rollo isn't actually a hypocrite like some people think. If there's one point that came up for the characters both in the game and in HoND, it's the idea of purity and how it can be distorted. Frollo saw himself as a pure being, a true follower of God that "saw corruption everywhere except within." He extended this warped view toward Quasimodo, constantly talking him down as a "deformed, ugly monster" that needed to be put in a place of subservience and repentance simply for existing--something that Quasimodo himself believed until he was able to interact with other people in order to mentally escape this abuse. Rollo's fits somewhere in-between: His sense of warped purity, in regards to magic, is his own doing. However, again, he isn't a hypocrite about it. A hypocrite is someone who commits acts against their supposed morality. In Frollo's case, he murders, ridicules, and lusts after others, going against the Word of God despite his so-called faith and always shifting the blame for his own sins onto other people. Rollo didn't commit any actual sin to begin with, and he didn't even have magic when his brother died--nor does he want it. He hates magic with a passion and sees powerful mages like Malleus as symbols for this hatred, yes, but those feelings also extend to himself even if he refuses to admit it. Frollo didn't hate himself: He thought he was always above others even when confronted by his own sin. As such, Rollo's backstory doesn't match Frollo's descent, but Quasi's beginning as a supposed "sinner by blood": Both are "monsters" in their own eyes.

To quote Idia during the battle on the belltower, "He doesn't even care that he's surrounded by fire lotuses. He just keeps blasting magic... (to Rollo) Aren't you just projecting? I think there's only one guy here you actually hate--yourself." Azul also backs this by saying, "It must have torn you up when your magic first manifested. You gained the very power that took your brother away, making you no different..." This is why Idia was able to connect with Rollo so strongly--not just as two people who lost loved ones, but people who also blame themselves for their deaths. Through their parallel, as well as the fact that Rollo was waiting in the belltower when the flowers took over the city--at the heart of all the destruction, right in what's metaphorically a burning fire waiting to consume everything... It's a clear sign of self-abuse/self-destruction. Rollo doesn't want magic to exist at all, including his own. While Rollo did use magic, he did so to ensure his plans succeeded likely with the intention of being the last man to fall. Quoting Rollo himself now as he was musing from the tower, "We will all be freed from that cold, dark despair (caused by magic)."

We don't really get enough interactions between Rollo and Yuu for a strong dissection on this, but I think this is also why he stresses Yuu's "purity" so much enough to talk to us about it directly. It's not like there's a shortage of non-magic users in TWST's world, but we're special to him because we come from a place completely devoid of magic: For him, it's like meeting an angelic messenger sent from Heaven. (Hint: Him telling us to "rest our tired wings."). As a result, Rollo comes to us for affirmation of his beliefs and when we don't give him that, he recoils. This follows Quasi's idealization of Esmeralda as an "angelic being." He saw her as a kind of salvation, a ray of "heaven's light," in a similar way to how Rollo sees Yuu. In the same pattern though, Esmeralda didn't give Quasi exactly what he wanted either, which partially led to him backsliding. In their case, Quasi expected romantic love as a kind of salvation when Esmeralda, not feeling the same, could only give him her friendship. This rejection made Quasi retreat back into his own head, stating "no face as hideous as his face was ever meant for heaven's light" once again. Even Rollo's rivalry with Malleus acts as an extension of this parallel, since Quasi had his own rivalry with Phoebus: Just like how Esmeralda ultimately chose Phoebus, Yuu is closest to, and of course sides with, Malleus.

On a smaller note, even Rollo's position during the battle is more fitting to Quasi than Frollo. In HoND, Quasi protected the belltower while Frollo stormed into it at the end of the film. In TWST, Rollo was protecting the belltower while the NRC students stormed in. It's just that the protagonist and antagonist positions have been flipped.

Speaking of the belltower, Rollo shares Quasi's connection to both it and Fleur City. The gargoyles adore him, explaining that "no matter the weather, he climbs this tall tower and polishes the Bell of Solice to a shine," and that "when [they] got wet and started growing moss, he scrubbed it off for [them.]" Rollo and Quasi were both caretakers for their belltowers and regarded them as sanctuaries. Rollo doesn't show any surprise either in that the gargoyles talk, which, yes, since he's a local he'd have a higher chance of knowing about their sentience more than our NRC boys; however, the way he talks to them in-turn is very natural--just like how Quasi talked to the gargoyles. Rollo didn't even seem to know that they were/consider that they would be in-danger, quote, "I cannot fathom why [Malleus] came to check on you." He might call them "rocks" too, but from his actions, it's clear that he does in-fact care. As for the city, while Quasi didn't initially get the chance to see it all himself personally, he did everything he could to understand it and the people who lived there in painstaking detail, even creating models of the individual villagers. Rollo shows that same love for his hometown, jumping from group to group and dropping tons of information as a guide to everything in it. He didn't have to do that for his plan to work: He easily could've distanced himself as the "busy president overseeing everything." It's just that, because he adores Fleur City, of course he's going to brag about it.

To recap, Rollo isn't a Frollo copy in the same way the others weren't copies of their respective villains. If anything, he's a version of Quasimodo had Quasi fully absorbed Frollo's brainwashing and abuse--someone who would've come to hate themselves and the world so much that they just wanted to see it end. Hopefully though, he'll take that invite by the gargoyles to talk through his issues and start truly seeing "heaven's light" now that he's finally gotten out of his own head a bit.

[thewayuarent]

Boston is the worst

And how we get into stupid game of compared morality that doesn’t actually exist

This moment got me thinking. A lot. Mostly something like “Sand, honey, are you okay?” but also about how it doesn’t make sense for Sand to say that. Like even Ray was like “Hmmm, babe, actually, no”.

And then I got it. It’s not about why Sand says it, it’s about why narrative implies it so often.

But why is it constantly implied by narrative that Boston is the worst? Not just bad, or shitty, but actually the worst of all of them? And I kind of feel that I got it. But first, let’s go through the whole list of Boston saying be gay do crimes and compare it to other characters. And yes, I know that all those situations and motivations were different. I understand that this is not the same situation playing out the same way every time.

1. Boston recorded Ray and Mew intimate moment.

So as Nick recorded Boston and Top and Top recorded Sand and Ray. And Drake’s character I forgot his name again did with Boston.

2. Boston shared it with Top.

So as Nick, Sand, Ray and Mew did with BostonTop tape and Mew did with TonDrake clip (I kind of get Ray a half-free pass in that cause in my opinion he was more a tool than active participant but I still remember him).

3. Boston manipulated Nick’s feelings for his own goals.

So as Mew did with Ray on several occasions, and Sand did with Ray that one time to hurt Top, and Mew did with Top and the whole using sex as a test thing. (Also Ray kind of tried it with Sand but Ray sucks at manipulation and failed miserably).

4. Boston slept with Top when Top was in a relationship with Mew.

So as Top probably (?) did with Boeing. And you know who also did this? Yep, Sand. With Ray. Who also was with Mew.

5. Boston chased Top against his will.

So as Ray constantly chased Sand since ep 2, and Top constantly did with Mew since they broke up. And Nick did with Boston at the Halloween party. And Atom now doing it with Boston.

(Honestly, the only normal reaction to that in my opinion was from Ton who was like fuck off to Nick and Atom. But it kinda worked for both Sand and Mew so good for them I guess?)

6. Boston took an advantage of Top on several occasions.

So as Ray with Mew - twice, Ray with Sand (seriously bro stop it) and Top with Mew (and yes, hugging your unconscious ex who can’t give his consent and who told you several times to fuck off is not okay, I’m sorry. Try to put yourself in Mew’s place - not cool)

7. Boston outed Ray’s personal information.

And so as Ray did to everyone in the bar, and Mew did with Top and Ton in the Halloween disaster party TM.

8. Boston gets violent with Nick.

And so as Sand and Top, and Mew with Ray, and Sand with Ray, and Ray with Boston, and Top and Ray, and Mew and Boston, and literally everyone to everyone except Nick who is apparently hippie.

9. We all know that Boston didn’t cheat on Nick, right? Their relationship was communicated pretty clear. But I’ve seen those takes so.

Yeah, Top and Ray both did it with Mew.

10. And don’t even let me start to talk about slutshaming and purity culture. Ton is constantly dragged down for his active sex life both by other characters (Mew, Cheum, Ray, Nick) and the audience.

And yeah, Top is the same, and Sand is the same, and they never told us about Ray but did you see that guy? He’s the same.

And what distinguishes Boston from others is that he actually always - since the very beginning of the show - owns his shit. He’s almost never remorseful (for now), because he knows who he is. Bitch and proud, I would say. And I believe that it’s actually the case - because it’s way easier to feel superior towards someone who’s not denying their wrongs.

And this is about characters, but also about the audience. Every week, whatever happens in the show, Boston gets his amount of hate. Ray was winning after episode 8, but somehow Boston was still there. Boston, who actually didn’t do anything since episode five. It’s nine episodes aired already, can we leave him alone, please?

Every character in this show does shitty stuff. And it doesn’t make any of them bad irredeemable people. It makes them complicated, and young, and stupid, but not evil. This is not the “who’s the worst” competition. But somehow, for whatever reason, Boston keeps winning it.

Because the audience kind of get used to it. Because he doesn’t look remorseful. And who cares that he was punished by narrative way more than once, right? That he is isolated from his friends group - the only friends he has, and we can see that it affects him. That he was betrayed by Nick who he trusted. That he was a victim on revenge porn not once, but twice. That he did his best to clarify his boundaries but still get the creepy stalker behavior both from Nick and now from Atom.

Why does he need to change his personality to get some level of understanding and compassion? Why is he’s the only one who doesn’t deserve it? Because he’s a slut. And a bitch. And a bad person. Because while we have Boston it’s so much easier to apologize whatever other character we want. Because while Bostons exist it’s way easier to compare ourselves with them and keep winning some moral high ground points.

Because instead of thinking about these characters as complicated and trying to understand the motivation behind their sometimes morally wrong and questionable behavior, it’s so much easier to brush it off saying “Well, at least they are not Boston”, right?

[lilac-hecox]

i don't tend to interact with fandom discourse (or fandom much these days really) but the RPF discourse, especially in regards to smosh, has always dumbfounded me?

after seeing the mess on smoshtwt i fear the culture in fandom and online in general has been very disjointed and a breeding ground for mass hate. RPF has been around since the very beginning of fandom culture; quite literally some of the top fics are RPF if i'm correct, and it is something that will happen regardless of a 'callout thread' on twt

the general rule of RPF has always been "keep it to the designated space", and most writers follow the "if the person i'm writing about states they are uncomfortable with it i'll stop". and hey, as someone who has had RPF written about me (yes it was sexual, and yes it's happened to me written by a friend and someone i don't know that well/only sees a persona of me!) i frankly do. Not. Care. it is totally okay if YOU care about it happening to you, or mention that X person doesn't like fanfic being written about them, but you cannot police other people's boundaries- the point i am making is that

1) not every person cares if smut is written about them. from personal experience i don't care, and from what smosh has done/said multiple times by making a shit ton of videos reading fic, creating their own (which is sometimes just as horny??) and stating we don't care, get kooky with it!!! from the times it's happened to me i laugh at it because i know that honestly the writer isn't seeing it as ME. the best way i can describe it is making a goofy mini cardboard cutout and making it act out the stories that make you giggle and kick your feet. smosh knows that even more so, given they are putting on a persona and choosing what we know about them, because none of us do know them personally!!

2.) people have a weird sense of self morality these days. i'm sure there is a real term for it but nowadays people especially online care about being an absolute angel, completely perfect, and making sure you know it. a ton of people who criticise RPF/dark content consume it unironically and enjoy it privately, even when they turn around and send the craziest death and doxxing threats over a writer. and even if you don't like that content and are trying to be an activist for victims or RPF subjects, it truly doesn't help anything; you're more likely actually sending genuine threats to a victim than helping one, and i don't think that celeb or content creator will see your tweet 'defending' and be like "thank god my hero!!", getting into those designated spaces which are usually tagged correctly and locked and spreading it to spaces that DON'T want to see that shit means YOU'RE the one spreading it to mainstream. there is a sort of high horse mentality that is unfortunately rampant

the final point when it comes to RPF is the reason why, and god help me, why is it bad?

that isn't me claiming it's morally or ethically or whatever right or wrong- people's argument for why it's wrong is because it's "gross", which then turns into "it's dehumanisation". that is a completely acceptable answer; however, i bring it up because i don't understand how writing platonic/fluff/non-smut is any less dehumanising than smut? i think dehumanisation is already a tricky word to use, but following the logic of: putting real people into scenarios, dialogue, relationships, personality and quirks you write is taking away from who they are as people = dehumanisation, then surely non-smut is just as bad? i've read plenty of RPF in which the people are in a very physically affectionate and emotionally involved relationship, stuff that if i read that written about me and my coworker i'd have the same reaction of "this isn't that accurate/this is kind of funny/maybe i don't want to see this but you do you"

truly, i believe the surge of RPF mass attacks is because of both purity culture and the weird relationships people have with morality. no, people do not have to like RPF, but when you choose to publicly pull content out from its designated spaces to then encourage hate on it, THEN you are the problem. it is only ever smut that is the problem, and i fear if the person you're writing about goes "you can write it, but don't show it to me" then why do some other random people on the internet who know as much as you about the person get to dictate their boundaries?

did NOT mean for this to get this long!! i've been in fandom spaces since it's creation and seeing the kind of spaces twt gives.. yikes, and i truly think when someone gets all this shit for it they deserve good messages

even as mostly a spommy/amangela lover, you're works are brilliant!! smosh has made some crazy ass content, and deserves some crazy ass fics to accompany it. perhaps in the future i shall dedicate a fic to you, as a sort of "I Survived Smoshtwt's Hate Campaign" badge lmfao

Honestly, very well said! And aw, thanks!

[grandwitchbird]

On Textual Ethics.

Texts have their own ‘ethics’. We can think of this as undergirding values and motivations that create a work’s approach to its subject/s and demands on its readers. It’s flavored by culture, the influences the writers themselves may not even be aware of, the priorities they very much are aware of, the very process of creating art etc… And it’s not about content or plot. You can tell a story about rebels against fascists and make it so ethically confused there may as well be no ethic.

I can’t emphasize enough that this is a matter of how/why a work is doing what it’s doing. It’s not about the surface level details like wether someone becomes god or fights god or gets crushed by their god. You also can’t just read an ethic into the text. It’s about defined values. Trying to read an ethic into a text that can’t support it is how you get tumblr’s idea that marvel movies are somehow anything other than ethically impoverished nonsense meant to farm Chinese theater dollars. To understand textual ethics, you have to know something about textual context: you have to historicize your reading and you have to be well-read in a given genre and you need to genuinely understand values systems. There’s some easy giveaways re: ethical weakness though.

Lord of the Rings is comfortingly conservative in its retreats from moral disturbance, and that makes it likable for most people. We can indulge in its attempts at romanticism because the text goes out of its way to avoid any real discussion of its values. Our romantic pastoral world is threatened by a suitably vague evil represented by, whoops technology and industry. Let’s not think about that too much because it might raise questions about why all our heroes are land owners and land inheritors. Except for the ever-loyal manservant straight out of a Victorian novel. Of course. The text does not want you to think about its implications. It could say something interesting if it did, but it’s not going anywhere with any of that. It wants only to comfort you by activating a false nostalgia for an innocently pastoral England that never existed. It can’t resist reduction as a result because it lacks defined values. It also ends with a complete resolution that escapes both the trouble of living and the material finality of death. This is a weak ethic. (I finally read Epic Pooh right after I drafted this and had a good laugh. Moorcock and I are in agreement. I’d like to cite him here even though I technically landed on the same thing he did in isolation. Go read Epic Pooh).

You can tell a story about cops that’s explicitly leftist and make it stronger for resisting reduction and preachiness. You can tell a story about systemically oppressed underdogs, ending with a revolution, and say absolutely nothing at all by getting muddled in your values and execution. You can write a children’s story that does have something meaningful to say about systems of oppression and make it about magical pirates. You can do anything. It’s how you do it that matters. Strong ethics resist retreat. They prod at our uncertainties and provide meaningful answers and are happy to make us uncomfortable in the process. They have defined values.

And yes conservative ‘ethics’ are weak. Inherently. Conservativism is a set of impulses towards retreat (from anxiety, from the self, from others, from change) into hierarchy, both practically and ideologically. It relies on your squeamishness about all the problems of being human. It seeks the false virtues of purity and innocence. It’s not a viable ethical framework. That’s why textually conservative stories avoid providing philosophically clear motives. They seek to subvert anxiety by simply retreating from it into nostalgia or hierarchy or by appeals to common sense. If they defined motives they’d have to define what they think ‘evil’ actually is. See? Retreat. There’s no answer but death in that retreat, and the text will find a way to run even from that. It’s a reflection of real world human weaknesses and the systems they engender and enable. Looking that reality in the eye and interrogating the line where weakness turns us into monsters would be the kind of project an ethically strong text might take on.

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Whenever I say that emotions are shitty liars and we should spend less time Validating them and more time exposing their calumny, people always want to make the distinction that feelings are always valid, only your reaction to the feelings can be judged. And the problem is that's true if you're arguing about "validity" as a moral category, which I am not because I don't give a shit about that.

And that's in some sense a privileged position that I have! Not in the sense of privilege as institutional power, but just like -- good fortune. I was raised in the Free To Be You and Me era, by hippies with advanced psychology degrees and Mr. Rogers. I already know that it's "valid" to experience negative emotions, in the sense of "normal and inevitable" and also in the sense of "thought crime is fake." I know some people were acculturated into an extremely different belief system that prioritized pure thoughts and a pure heart. That sucks -- people lied to you and it fucked you up a little, or maybe a lot. If that's where you're currently at, I get it, and probably what you do really still need is some version of Mr. Rogers coaching you nonjudgmentally through what to do with the mad that you feel. That's a little basic when it comes to emotional literacy, but if you never mastered the basics, you gotta start sometime!

However, I'm not talking about that because it's boring to me. What's fascinating to me is that emotions feel real even when they are "invalid" in the sense of "based on literally fuckall." Like, you know what makes me blinding angry? The self-checkout machine telling me nine times to scan an item I just scanned. I wanna put my fucking fist through the thing! I want to kill it.

Now, the reality is that there is nothing happening in those moments that truly justifies my emotional reaction. I don't react like that to actual human beings, even the ones who are trying to hurt me on purpose! Certainly a little piece of machinery making my checkout experience longer by maybe ten seconds is -- like, it's not even a thing! The proportional emotional reaction to that is basically nothing. And being angry with something that has no volition is ridiculous, but how often do most of us do it? We're angry at the traffic lights or the security questions on our bank app or the fucking weather. It's such an ordinary experience, we bond over how angry these random little inconveniences make us. And by the way, the people who value purity of heart most keenly do seem to displace extremely aggressive anger onto inconveniences at a disproportionately high rate, which is how you get high-vibes yoga moms or good church deacons screaming like a lunatic about some problem with their Instacart order.

So, like. Obviously something else is going on. I'm not angry at this machine for wasting my valuable ten seconds. Not really. I'm angry because so much of my life is spent interfacing with automated systems and I resent all the million little ways I feel unseen as a human being. I'm angry because I was raised by a culture that taught me the one and only realm of my life where I was allowed to have unquestionable authority over my own experience is when it's my turn to be The Customer, so it feels especially violating when I'm helpless within my Paying Customer Experience. And I'm angry because I usually do my grocery shopping on the way home from work, and I'm tired and hungry and my animal brain is feeling increasingly desperate about this threatening situation.

Those are emotions that are important, in the sense of needing to be validated and understood, but you can't even get to them until you you recognize that what feels enormously real right now -- that I hate this specific machine and long for the opportunity to break it -- is in fact false. The truth is, this doesn't matter, and I won't care about it five seconds after I walk out. The truth is, I wouldn't feel better if I broke the machine; it wouldn't solve any problem I have, and I'd just feel like a dumbass. The truth is, telling myself it's normal and healthy and valid to hate self-checkout machines obscures the actual powerful clarity I can achieve when I stop and think, what's the true thing that I can't focus on while I'm being angry about this fake thing? The emotion itself (I'm going to kill this fucking machine!) is a maladaptive response, even though I never actually act on it. The emotion itself is part of a set of lies I tell myself about my life and how I feel about it. It's not immoral, but it's an obstacle, the same way uncritically accepting any false thing is an obstacle to my ultimate goal, which is to live a life as unburdened by lies as possible.

[lipglossanon]

I hate when people say that aging up characters means you want to have sex with a minor cause ?? If that was really the case why would people age them up in the first place, I know this isn't the most 'youre a bad person for doing it' but it's probably the one that makes me want to scream

Howdy anon! 👋

I kinda waffled on this (as in I wasn’t sure if I was gonna answer lol) but you know what, fuck purity policing! 👏 👏 📣

The whole point of aging up a character is so that character isn’t underage. They’re literally going out of their way to not write/think of this character as underage and so to say it’s a problem to age them up is weird to me.

And like you said, why would they age them up if they were trying to write about sex with a minor? Make it make sense! 🙄

It’s a recent-ish trend cause back in the day, it wasn’t a problem. But now you have these weirdos that say a 19 year old can’t date a 21 year old, like what? Did they eat a lot of paint chips as a kid? Lmao

The people going out of their way to attack people for things like this is asinine; it also belittles the people who are affected by irl situations and traumas that they may have experienced. (But the ones attacking others don’t want to get in that convo; they also don’t want to work for actual victims or donate to a cause/charity. There’s no fun in that 🙄).

These people just force their own morals and ideas onto fictional characters and then when others write them in a way that doesn’t align with their mental image, they think it’s bad and gross and problematic, etc etc.

I’m kinda rambling all over the place here 🤣 but it just pisses me off immensely for dumbassses to run their mouth cause they don’t like what they see/read, and instead of being the mature adult they pretend to be, they decide to be a playground bully and start shit for no reason other than they dislike it.

And yes, I am speaking from experience on this platform lmao. I haven’t had it as bad as other writers but damn just let people have fun! Block if you don’t like them; don’t spread shitty lies and misinformation cause you’re jealous. Fucking hell, like god forbid any of us have a hobby and know how to differentiate fiction from reality 🤦‍♀️

Anywho, with all of my venting lol just know it’s them and not you anon. (And if you ever feel like what you’re taking in is effecting your mental health negatively, then put it down and reach out to a therapist or close family/friend; seek help if you need it!).

At the end of the day, we all have to live with our choices so just make sure you’re doing the right ones for yourself! 💜

[jackleg-penwright]

The idea that having any desire for someone who doesn't reciprocate 100% is predatory when it's NOT - wow that hits me hard.

I grew up in a very rigid "you have to police your every thought" subculture of Christianity (that probably included or even emphasized sexual thoughts, but as an ace it didn't even OCCUR to me to have sexual thoughts), which kind of also included a bunch of well-meaning (and probably some not-so-well-meaning ones, but I do my best to give people the benefit of the doubt as far as intentions) people telling you "you have to police your thoughts THIS WAY," and sometimes the rule they gave you contradicted each other.

To this day, I struggle (I suspect it's the scrupulosity if-I-break-rules-I-get-super-anxious form of OCD, that for me plays out to if-ANYONE-genuinely-believes-it's-a-rule-I'm-responsible-to-it) any time someone seems to genuinely believe that if someone has a certain kind of thought, it automatically means that they are actually THIS kind of evil person. In a Doctor Who forum on Facebook once, someone actually stated that if anyone gives a piece of fan art to a celebrity, it means that they are dangerously obsessive, and they have just handed that celebrity the evidence of that obsession that they need in order to get a restraining order - which they should get lest they be murdered. Because people who are fanatical (where we get the WORD "fan") about celebrities are obviously exactly the same morally as the ones who murder them.

Even though I argued back with this individual, pointing out that fan art is a perfectly normal act and fandom would pretty much collapse if it were forbidden, deep inside I was terrified because I had recently added a piece of fan art I had made of a celebrity to an online gift for their birthday. So I was terrified that that meant that everyone would assume I was going to murder that celebrity, because I had just proved that I was obsessed (as an autistic person, I have no way of knowing when someone else's assumption that wouldn't even occur to me are something just about everyone assumes, or are a total whack-job outlier - all I know for certain is that I cannot count on what makes sense to me to predict what "everyone else" "knows").

I had someone else on reddit tell me that, since I confessed that at fifteen, I had had a crush on a neighbor, knew what his car looked like (he was quite a bit older than I was), and when he moved got a small thrill out of looking for his car on his new street when my parents drove past it on our way somewhere else; it proved I was no different from a dangerous stalker, convinced that they had the right to own a vulnerable victim and follow them around, and when that obsession was not reciprocated, would eventually murder their target. He said something I heard as 'murderous stalkers also get a thrill, so I hope that you can see that you're no different.' And even though I thought he was probably wrong that forty-year-old me was going to murder a stranger (or at least was no different morally than someone who would) because when I was fifteen I liked knowing where my crush was (don't most fifteen year old girls have far more active and possibly perverse fantasies about their crushes than "I know where he is! If I was old enough to drive I could visit him and talk to him!") - it still caused me weeks of intense anxiety that maybe I AM evil because I was a fifteen year old girl with a crush.

But regardless of the anxiety I experience from people I HOPE are just idiots and not right, objectively speaking I am absolutely convinced that an individual's thoughts are between themselves and themselves, or themselves and whatever deity they may believe has the right to hold them accountable for them. And yet because in our culture, and it's not just within Christianity, this purity thing has become pretty significant, everywhere I look I see people judging the idea that if you have certain thoughts, you must be a certain kind of evil person. And while depending on your religion that might be relevant to your relationship with your deity, it's a terrible way to try to run the world.

MAYBE it's within the capabilities of your deity to know and judge the hearts of every single person (whether on the planet, or just who subscribes to their religion), to sift through every motive, every wound, every single thing in their background that might have led them to think this was normal, and sort out which thoughts come from self-serving motives and complete indifference or contempt for this other person, and which come from mis-information and propaganda, which come from deep wounds etc. If so, your deity is equipped to run the world and make final judgment on the thoughts and choices of every person within their jurisdiction.

But even if your deity IS so equipped, you are not. All we can judge is actions. And all we can really judge is, is the effect of those actions positive, or harmful. If the effects of those actions are harmful, we should do what we can to prevent them (without causing more harm to those we should be trying to protect from harm). If not, it's none of our fucking business. And someone's THOUGHTS are definitely not our fucking business.

It’s incredibly telling how the characters that are more wildly headcanoned to be ace, by allos as well as aces, are almost always the non conventionally attractive ones

Like yeah we’ll let this one be ace because we don’t want to bang them anyway.

This hot one though? With the gorgeous eyes and flowing hair? Couldn’t possibly be ace. No way in hell. Because then we’d feel guilty about wanting to bang them.

And yes, of course people can headcanon whatever they want, but after a certain point the “asexuality when convenient for them” of it all feels offensive.

And then when we headcanon a character as ace who is considered hot, people are so quick to jump in with the “ummm actually…”s because they don’t like it when you bring up the possibility of someone they’re attracted to being ace. It’s a headcanon. People have their own opinions. Shhhh.

Hot people can be asexual. People are not just asexual at your convenience. People are not just asexual because nobody wants them. Someone else finish this thought

[bionic-penis]

hey uhm.. I don't know how to tell you this.. but Sk8 has been spreading rumors about you being a groomer among other things on a few servers, mostly through voice chat when they've gotten him talking about artfight. so i was just wondering.. why are you sticking up for someone who spreads heinous rumors about you?

Hi. I has a question. Do you guys think that when someone says "proof" they mean "testimony"? Or are you all just willfully ignorant? Fuck if words alone were enough to condemn someone we'd all be in jail.

No but in all seriousness, this is one of three asks I came home to, all one right after the other (yeah.... that's not curious at all....). Two of which mentioned (alleged) grooming allegations against me. So I think I deserve a lil bit of a long response.

See, the thing is, even if Awodee was saying that about me, I would not change my stance. The fact of the matter is no actual evidence has been provided for the claims made against them. Not in the original journal made by CandyRotten, the subsequent asks sent to an (admittedly) mismanaged drama blog, nor in the asks that have been sent to me regarding the situation (save for the initial ask that just.... linked the "evidence" in the journal???). Even if Awodee DID do what people are claiming they did, you can't claim that someone did something without proof. It sets a horrible precedent and can make it more difficult to help and support victims in the future.

That's not even mentioning the doubts I have that these alleged rumours are even being spread. I have had zero contact with Awodee on any platform and even have them blocked here on Tumblr. The only way they'd know about me is if they found me before the block, or if someone else helped them get my info. Regarding Artfight, Awodee hasn't been active for a month so... yeah I doubt they'd be talking about me in accordance to Artfight (especially since my handle is different there than it is here). Whatever it is, I don't care. It wouldn't make sense considering spreading rumours about someone who is defending them would in turn make themself look worse.

This is all ignoring just how fucking internet-poisoned you have to be to come into a third party's inbox in order to bark at him for false rumours being spread with absolutely zero evidence.

This is the sixth ask out of eight that I've been sent regarding this situation and the fourth one in an inbox of six. All anonymous. All with various levels of aggression. One even posited that I knew Awodee. I haven't been answering those asks because I don't find it productive and because I thought that, given enough time, y'all would leave me the fuck alone. Clearly that is not happening since the first ask I answered was on September 10th meaning it's been almost a month. I'm hesitant to call it harassment but....

For a while it was fine and even a little funny. I would screenshot the ask, send it to a group chat, and me and my friends would take turns poking holes in the arguments presented. It's not funny anymore. The asks I have received have been manipulative, lacking in empathy, and antagonistic. One of the asks I received today even said that they thought it was "kinda hilarious" that I've been (allegedly) accused of being a groomer considering my defense of Awodee.... So you admit false grooming allegations are funny as long as you view the victim of said allegations as someone less than or opposed to you?

Below I've included a screenshot of said ask with full context and image description. Even with this, take it with a grain of salt as screenshots can be faked.

You guys want to stake claim to some kind of moral high ground, but you are so lacking in so many departments you've contradicted your own sense of moral purity. Because if Awodee WAS saying something like this about me, someone who had defended them, wouldn't that make me one of you guys? A victim? Someone who had fallen prey to Awodee's nasty, manipulative behaviour? But instead of compassion or sympathy you come into my inbox with the intention to make me feel bad for my choices. Then again, this isn't the first time I've seen victim-blaming behaviour pop up in this whole situation. Not only that but.... if they're so bad why are you hanging out with them?

But to answer your question: I'm "sticking up" for Awodee because I looked at the evidence, analysed the journal and subsequent asks sent, and came to the conclusion that the evidence was flawed, that the asks were simply testimony (or hearsay in other cases), and that there are other factors clearly at play. Again, even if they are spreading rumours about me I would not change my mind. Even if I hate someone that doesn't mean I can condemn them for something that that haven't been proven to do. That's irresponsible and, again, sets a bad precedent.

TLDR: You have no proof of any of the claims made in this ask, but you are also one of MANY anon's I have received asks from over an extensive period of time. I doubt these rumors are being spread, but even if they were my stance remains unchanged until actual evidence is provided. Also you all fucking suck for trying to turn this shit around on me when I would be the victim in this situation. Also you're bad at evidence.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

[majorshatterandhare]

I too have morals that do not align with most people around me, seemingly in a similar way to you. I think an “equal playing field” of morals makes sense for Brian because wtf is he and how does he fit into the world.

*I think* Brian can kill on MjE so long as he doesn’t think killing is immoral. However that would also mean that being a murderer wouldn’t make someone kill worthy. I think on MjE doing nothing is never worse than doing something immoral, because the Means justify the Ends; his means have to be moral on their own and whatever results is justified by his moral means. If his means are immoral he can’t do it, on MjE.

He was alone in space then he was alone in the sun then he was alone in space again. Give that man a companion!

(I wish I had the materials to make this. As in, I’m not great at drawing but realizing something in a 3D art format always feels more accessible to me and I wish I had the stuff to make that happen. Brian hung by the rose growing out of his body.)

Yes! I had the Brian Delivery Crimes idea! Because of stork scissors! I think part of him knows it wasn’t his fault but part of him is like “I’m a computer I shouldn’t been able to foresee an plan for this to go wrong. I literally get prophecies, I should’ve *actually* foreseen this” meanwhile he has absolutely zero control over the prophecies. And also like, I think he knows the facts but doesn’t *remember* being the doctor and that makes it a lot harder. Maybe he encountered that exact issue before but that’s not him anymore!

The fact that he will not die makes the hanging such a weird punishment. I read that the way the Hanged Man of the Rider-Waite deck is hanged was used in Italy for a bit and that they would continue to feed them until the died, however it seemed dubious. But Brian won’t die. He’ll just keep hanging. When is a life sentence over? If you never die the sentence is forever? People have the capacity to change. But also A) he’s a silicon computer robot, does he have the capacity to change (whether or not there is anything for him to change since he probably didn’t do anything wrong anyway) and B) if he cannot die is he even alive? If he’s not alive he cannot serve a life sentence.

His crime could’ve easily also been some sort of treason by way of not doing something which was immoral. That probably makes the most sense.

Also, the song The Ends and the Means by Robby Hecht has a Jesus-like character at the end. [lyric video link]

Those (Anglo-Saxon) beads would be perfect for this I think!

The idea that his heart is just in there, uncovered, and easily accessible in his chest… he’s gonna get an infection. I love the idea of the flowers growing directly around his heart, but putting a rose that climbs via its long prickles in your chest cavity, next to your precious meat heart (which is the only part of you thats you. Maybe. Probably. If any of you is you, that is) for god knows how long is not a very good idea. He must’ve been incredibly desperate not to be alone jesus christ.

(Something about not being able to feel god and not having disciples)

I did not think about the color popping in the environment but you’re right that it totally would. Also, while red roses coming out of a metal jesus man could be seen as symbolic of blood (which would be rad as fuck) white is often symbolic of purity, which Jesus is (if you dont consider the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which is considered heresy and in which Jesus murders multiple other kids) but Brian *is not*. Plus there’s presumably some amount of black oil in him which may get on the white roses, showing his fucking impurity *jesus christ im going insane*. While I think plenty of flowers may be unstained, I think the ones stained with the oil that is his bodily fluid mean something.

please consider: Galahad always carrying around rosary beads/prayer beads that carry the image of Merlin, The Hanged Man in the style of a saint or of a crucifix. Also he handmade the entire thing of beads btw.

[ghostdrew22]

Angel || Draco Malfoy

Requested: No. Pairing: post-war Draco Malfoy x fem!reader Warnings: Lots of angst in the beginning, mentions of self-harm/self-destructive behavior, mentions of blood, quite a few mentions of the devil, ptsd, just a lot of dark themes ig (let me know if i need to add another warning) Summary: You’ve always been an angel in Draco’s eyes and now, years after the war, he’s reminded why once again.

WORDS: 3440

I’ve been wanting to write about the ‘devil on the shoulder’ trope for a while and I felt like @anchoeritic‘s 3K WRITING CHALLENGE was the perfect opportunity though i think i lost the plot a bit at some point and this probably isn’t what you had in mind.

i had to do so much research for this, probably the most research i’ve ever done for a fic. It’s a lot heavier than I’d intended for it to be (i almost cried at certain points) but I still really love it.

anyway this fic is inspired by ‘Angel’ by FINNEAS (which is a great song that I recommend listening to) and i hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

~~~

Anger.

So much anger that he doesn’t know what to do with it. Red, hot, fury just begging to be unleashed.

He takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes. When he opens them again his fist collides with the wall. “Fuck!”

The miniature Mephistopheles that’s made home on his shoulder tells him to keep going, that this is the only rational response. Draco heeds the advice until his knuckles are bleeding and there’s a dent in the wall.

He lets out a frustrated sigh as he thinks about you returning in a few hours, then he punches the spot one last time out of frustration. Draco’s own love for destruction lies parallel to the myths surrounding Beelzebub, his own virtues bringing him to peril instead of an unseen force of evil. But it’s much easier to believe that the voice always telling him to do wrong, is not his own.

Maybe this is who he is, a fucked up kid with anger issues. Maybe this is all he’ll ever be, knuckles spotted in crimson and harmful thoughts being shoved down as to not raise alarm.

He feels violated by the mark on his arm. Sobs stacking up in his lungs at the very thought, but all he can express is anger- all he can understand is the resent that crawls beneath his skin and settles into his bones like calcium.

Was it his choice? No. Did it matter? No. Choice means nothing in a world run by circumstance. Intention holds no value when there’s no action to follow through. In another world, a better world perhaps, he would’ve had the right to choose and he hopes that he would’ve chosen the right side- the good side.

Forgiveness, they say, is often practiced by the strong willed. He’d tried to forgive, he really had, but Iblis had told him that it didn’t matter who he forgave because they’d still done this to him anyway- they’d still sold his soul to the Devil.

“Draco, when will you forgive me?” She pleads and he shrugs with a thin smile.

“I don’t know mother. I don’t know.”

“It’s been years.” He turns a steal glaze toward her.

“And yet I still can’t get the mark off.”

“What am I meant to do?”

“There’s nothing you can do. It’s too late to do the right thing.”

“What would the right thing have been back then? Huh?”

“The right thing to do would’ve been to protect me.”

“I did protect you. I took the Vow for you!” She yells as she stands out of her chair and points an accusatory finger toward him. He’s seen this scene so many times before that it’s permanently imprinted in his mind, but this time he’s not a scared teenager being scolded by his mother.

“I didn’t ask you to do that.” He stands as well, “I just asked you to save me. Why didn’t you save me?”

“What?” She’s taken aback,

“Summer before fifth. You told me that you’d had enough of him, you told me that we were going to leave and run away so that you could save me from him, from all of them.”

“So now you hate me because I couldn’t leave your bigoted father?”

“No, mother. I hate myself because you couldn’t leave my bigoted father.” He tucks his chair back into the table and pulls out his wand, “Thank you for dinner mother, it was lovely.”

Then he’s gone, and he doesn’t come back.

Draco had shut himself out from the world, hoping that his loathing would dissipate with time but it hadn’t. He still wakes up every morning with that tiny voice reminding him that he’s worthless, and he still believes it.

Why had he done it? Why had he allowed them to put the mark on his arm in the first place? Why had he put his own morals, his own principles, on the line to save a family who might not have done the same for him? Why had he allowed himself to succumb to the many ministrations of Diabolous, which dragged him further and further down the dark side?

Weakness. That’s the only answer he can conceive. Or maybe that’s the sound of Lucifer on his shoulder, consistently reminding him that he’s no match for the evil that resides deep within his soul. He can’t fight it, it’s who he is. He’s weak and he’s unholy. Bathed so often in sin that it’s sunk into his DNA. Does that even make sense?

Draco shakes his head and runs his hands down his face in an attempt to ground himself. But it doesn’t work, all he can see is red and all he can hear is his own conscience belittling him for continuously making the wrong choices. Why does he always make the wrong choices?

His throat so dry it feels as though he’s swallowed sand. His palms sweaty like he’s dipped them in oil. He paces around the room in a desperate effort to remember where you’d placed the box last time this happened. He can feel himself disconnecting from the world, feel himself sinking further and further into the dredges of his mind that torment him most.

That part of his brain that holds the memories, the shame, the anguish, is his biggest obstacle in recovery. It’s always on good days, days when… He blinks when he realizes that no fond memories come to mind. Does he even have good days? Or does this always happen, is this what’s become normal for him?

He catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and steps back in shock, completely forgetting about his mission to find the box. The man in front of him looks clean, taken care of. When had he become this man and stopped being the terrified teenager that never ate and wore bags beneath his eyelids like name tags.

There is muscle on his arms, taut beneath the dress shirt that he must’ve put on that morning before going to classes… or work? When had he earned the right to stop looking the way he felt? Which of his actions had merited his beauty returning, when the dark mark still lays clear beneath the dress shirt that he’s got on? There are hickeys along his chest- one, two, three, littered around his torso like a map to his heart- and he can only assume that they’d been left in the wake of your last meeting, because he can’t seem to piece together the memory of them being made.

You. Where are you? Why can’t he remember where you are or what you look like? Did you finally leave? Did you finally realise that he wasn’t worth any of the pain and anguish that he’d put you through? Had you ultimately decided that Draco and the dark mark could not be separated, both physically and mentally? Maybe he never managed to redeem himself in your eyes, and it hurt so much to lose you that he made himself forget.

Redemption, he’d searched far and wide for it. He’d spent the months after the war trying to find some spiritual cleanse for the ailment in his essence, had dabbled in every muggle religion he came across in hopes of finding something that would provide him freedom from guilt. The Bible, the Qur’an, the Gita, the Torah, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Tripitaka- none of the holy books he’d read had promised him enough solace to feel deserving of love from a higher entity. They had all just reminded him of the purity and innocence that muggles embodied, the same qualities he came so close to erasing.

Redemption wasn’t in the cards for him. If it had been a game of Poker, Draco would’ve been the first fold with the knowledge that he didn’t stand a chance against the better players at the table. Who were the better players? He didn’t really know, he just knew that he wasn’t one of them.

His eyes drift toward his reflection once more and he feels disgust crawl through his anatomy. Nausea, a familiar friend in times like these, making itself comfortable in the barrel of his gut. Why had he even eaten today anyway? Sustenance won’t fill the emptiness that’s making domicile in his chest, it won’t make him less of a habitat to repulsive regret and desolation.

He walks toward the dresser and picks up a pocket knife that’s sitting in-between some make up and a music box. Then like deja vu he can already feel the weapon pinching, digging beneath his skin as if it’s trying to excavate bone. He recalls blood pouring out, drowning his pale skin in spills of vermillion and carmine, and dropping to the floor. The floor, chalky tile with tiny chards of black glass engrained in it, something that he hadn’t come up with himself but liked anyway. Who had come up with that again?

Screams, familiar but unrecognizable, had filled his ears soon after. He remembers his arm being wrapped in a bandage, him being carried off the bathroom floor and taken to the Hogwarts infirmary, no, it was actually St Mungo’s. He remembers being treated and loud cries settling down into comforting whispers beside him. He remembers feather light touches being placed on his face and kisses settling onto the skin of his palm.

He remembers something good, but he doesn’t know what.

He remembers the injury, and knows that it didn’t work.

Draco takes a deep breath and puts the knife back down. Staring at his reflection once more he sees that the man standing before him is not the same child that had stepped into battle way back when. When was that? Months? Years? He can’t tell.

The box. The box will tell him. But he doesn’t know where it is, he doesn’t even know where he is anymore. This room is definitely not his Hogwarts dorm room, it’s not in Hogwarts at all, and it’s not his room in the Manor either. Where is he?

His eyes shoot up when he hears a door shutting, and soon after voices follow suit. The voices are coming toward him, in this strange room that he’s in, and Draco struggles to identify them. His dorm mates potentially? No, this clearly isn’t Hogwarts. Friends? His mother? You?

Then there’s a laugh, from a child, from two children, and suddenly none of it makes sense any more. He knows those voices, he knows those laughs, so well that they might as well be his own, but he can’t seem to attach faces or names to them.

A few of the voices drift off, further down the hall, and one gets louder as the door to the bedroom opens. Draco holds his breath as the person walks in, not knowing what to expect, and feels a confused sense of relief wash over him when he sees you standing there.

You laugh as you enter the room, “If you can get an outstanding in Transfiguration then we’ll get you whatever your heart desires.” You respond to your daughter as you recall how both you and Draco had struggled with the subject during your Hogwarts years.

You furrow your eyebrows at the state of your bedroom- documents scattered across the bed, clothes in tiny piles all over the floor, and a tiny dent in the wall beside the bathroom door. A sigh escapes your lips as you process the mess and prepare yourself for what’s about to come. You turn and your eyes land on your husband, and your heart breaks at the sight of him. He’d promised this morning that he’d be fine, it was the only reason that you’d left him alone, but clearly he wasn’t.

“Love? Are you okay?” You ask softly as you take the shoes off of your feet and close your bedroom door behind you. He tilts his head to the side momentarily in confusion, but then realisation flashes across his eyes and he takes quick strides toward you.

“Oof.” You breathe out when he pulls you into his chest and rests his forehead on your shoulder.

“Y/N.” He muffles into your shoulder and you feel your heart swell with love for him- this man who recognizes you instantly, even when the entire world is nothing more than a distant memory.

“Miss me?” You ask with a small laugh as you bring your hands up to wrap around him tightly. He mumbles an agreement and you smile, “I missed you too.”

“Bad day.” He whispers and you nod, rubbing his back in an effort to soothe him.

“I know baby, wanna talk about it?”

“No. Can’t remember.”

“Okay, that’s fine.” You pull him away from you and kiss his forehead with a warm smile, “We can just lie down for a while.”

He obliges as you pull him toward the bed and shuffle the papers off of it, climbing on after you and setting his head in your chest. You run your fingers through his hair and hum, trying to your best to make him feel calm and prevent another breakdown.

But your efforts are futile, within the hours that Draco had been alone he’d thought every terrible thought that he possibly could, Al-Shaitan had already tormented your husband through a series of painful misconceptions. Draco had never really subscribed to religion or faith but after the war he’d identified quite quickly with the concept of the Devil- confessing that he believed he had an evil conspirator sitting on his shoulder- and felt that his own soul deserved to be damned. You’d tried to rid him of that notion, many times, but it never worked, he was in too deep.

You tense up when you feel a cry escape his lips and his fingers tighten into the space of your torso. “I’m sorry.”

He feels terrible, terrible for ruining all of your hard work. All the effort you’d put into rebuilding him now disintegrating in the blink of an eye. But you’re here now, you’re going to fix him again, he knows it.

You try to level your breathing so that you don’t cry too, so that you don’t fall into this pit of despair with him, because Merlin knows that any pain Draco feels takes as rough a toll on you. You pull him off of you and sit up, bringing him to sit as well, so that you can look him in the eyes.

“Sorry for what Bub?”

“For being broken. I-“ He feels another sob rock through him and you pull him into your chest. “Please fix me Y/N.” He pleads, a whimper following suit.

His fingers are digging into you again, he’s clinging so tightly to you like you’ll disappear if he doesn’t stay close enough, and it hurts you to know that even after all these years he’s scared that you’ll leave.

“You’re not broken Draco, there’s nothing to fix.”

“But I’m- I’m-“  Cries start to escape rapidly and interrupt him. He can’t see clearly anymore as tears form in his waterline and obstruct his view of you. It hurts, everything just hurts.

“You’re not broken, my love.” You whisper as you cup his face, “You’re not evil, you’re not bad. You’re good. You’re my husband, I love you. Did you open the box?”

He shakes his head, “Couldn’t find it.”

“Okay, let me get i-“ You’re cut off by your bedroom door opening and your children marching in.

“Dad, you’ll never guess what happened at school today- Oh, is this a bad time?” Ariel, your daughter, stops in her tracks as she raises her eyebrows at you.

You shake your head and gesture for them to come in. “I think it just got a little much for him this year. Please get me the box, love.”

Ariel goes to the headboard and pulls out the aforementioned box from the first drawer, before her and Cael, your son, get comfortable on the bed beside you and Draco. But Draco doesn’t need it anymore, he can already sense himself coming back down to earth. He knows where he is- with you, in your house, with your children, in your bed. He’s home, he’s safe.

He takes the box anyway and begins to unload its contents in silence, the three of you observing him with admiration. It’s a small circular box that your children made a few years back after witnessing one of his episodes for the first time, containing momentos from the last 18 years of you and Draco’s lives together. Pictures, notes, a few school projects.

“Tell him about what happened at school today, it’ll probably make him laugh.” Cael encourages his older sister Ariel, and she does as told.

Draco pays a significant amount of attention to the story, piecing together facts that he’s slowly starting to understand and recognize as a part of his normal life. He intertwines his fingers with Cael’s as Ariel continues telling the story from her spot on your lap.

Love.

So much love that he doesn’t know what to do with it. Bursts of it just choking him out.

Draco remembers everything now. He remembers this house of yours, the one he’d bought straight out of Hogwarts and begged you to live in with him because “It’s nothing without you in it”. These children that you’d had 14 years ago, that’d he’d been so scared to raise because he thought they’d resent him, and that made everything in the world just seem brighter. This life that he modeled with you on the embers of his haunting past, this life that reminds him he’s good.

Before you, he would’ve been terrified to show any one his vulnerable side, especially his children, but you’d taught him that loving someone means loving all the good bits and the bad bits, all the happy moments and the sad moments. Now he knows that when days like this happen, when he gets so lost inside the mental maze of his own construction, the three of you will always be waiting to help him out.

Ariel finishes her story and Draco bellows out a laugh, feeling thankful to have you three around in his moments of weakness.

His three guardian angels- the only people who can always lead him away from the shadow in his mind and toward the luminescence that he carries within him. “All the good within us is split in the middle, half from you and half from mum, just as it should be. I hope you remember that we wouldn’t be who we are without you both.” Cael suddenly speaks up and you smile pridefully at him.

“They wouldn’t.” You add once he’s done and smile, “I couldn’t have done such a bad job without you.”

“Hey!” Ariel accuses and you all laugh.

“She’s right though, I am the one who taught you hexes at age 7.” Draco grins bashfully and you roll your eyes.

“And look at us now, acing Charms!”

“See love,” Draco turns to you, “There is a method to my madness.”

“Mhmm.” You hum with a small smile. “Go do your homework, dinner soon.”

“Yes, I’m making pizza tonight.” Draco adds as he kisses both of your children on their foreheads.

They excitedly hop off the bed and run out of the room. “I can’t belie-“

“Harry called.” Draco interrupts you and your eyes go wide at his statement but you nod for him to continue, “He wanted to know how I was doing, you know with it having been 18 years since the war and all. Offered to come spend the day with me and make sure I’d be alright while you were gone.”

“And you said no?” You raise your eyebrows and he shakes his head.

“No, I told him that I’d come by his office instead. Then when I was getting ready… I just started having flashbacks again, and my mark hurt. I felt horrible all of a sudden, like there was huge weight on my chest and this fog obscuring my vision.”

There are few things that Draco has faith in, but you, you he never runs short on trust for. You’re a constant in his life, a shoulder that he can always rely on when he needs it, and as he sits here and tells you about his day, he feels love for you hit him tenfold.

You, this beautiful, kind, ethereal being that has no place on earth. You, the one who’s managed to convince him that saints are real. You, who has given him your entire life, along with all the love that you have to offer. You, Y/N, the love of his life.

You.

An angel.

~~~

get added to my taglist

taglist: @dracoscene @dreaming-about-fanfictions @astoria-malfcy @gwlvr @wh0re4blaise @marrymetheonott @dracomalfoyposts  @realityblocked  @is-it-really-a-secret @louweasleymalfoy

[aspecpplarebeautiful]

Sorry if this is really disjointed. I think I might be acespec and I'm kind of scared, and I'm not sure how to make sense of it. I know that I'm arospec and have known for a while now, but I've generally enjoyed the thought of sex, enjoyed masturbation, and never really been repulsed by it. Thing is, outside from my partner, I find it hard and near impossible to even think of people in a sexual light. As in, if I weren't dating them, those thoughts would just never occur to me. (part 1 too long)

And it's funny because I remember some time last year, I found a bandori character drawn more fanservice-y and was pretty taken aback by it, and then discovered that the "cute attractive idol fanservice anime girls" allure was a huge part of what drew people into the fandom. It was just weird.. I think prior to that, it'd never even occurred to me that the fanservice played that big of a role and that people even thought of the characters sexually.. I think I'm the same way with people ((part 2)

I think I'm the same way with people where it just generally never occurred to me that they'd be viewed in a sexual light. I don't get people who "thirst" over celebrities or people who draw lewd art of characters they like because it feels difficult feeling that sort of attraction outside of my partner whom I've known for so long and whom I really connect with. It's like it just doesn't really click in to place otherwise. And here's where I think I might have some internalized acephobia (part 3

I think part of why I'm scared of leaning into the possibility of it is slightly because of religion. I think I tend to associate sex repulsion with religious abstinence and just generally the whole "sex is impure!! cultures that celebrate sex and sex positivity are therefore demonic which is why your culture has also been demonized!!" kind of vibe and always unfairly perceived ace people as condescending in that regard, the whole, "I love people for whom they are! For their hearts!- ((part 4))

"-I'm not a slut, unlike you!" kind of mentality, and I didn't want to be associated with or lumped in with that. I didn't like the idea of potentially labelling myself as acespec because the last thing I wanted was to be grouped in with that mentality. think that my disdain towards asexuality is really misplaced and that I'm conflating the emphasis on purity that religion has in regards to one's moral standing and stuff with actual asexual people, and I don't think that's right. ((part 5?))

I think sex positivity is so important and I hate the idea that somehow loving someone without sexual attraction makes you better and "purer" of a person, but I'm pretty sure most ace people don't even think that way and it's me wrongfully meshing the two together because of my own disgust towards the standards set for morality and purity by religion that I probably need to work through. This is such a mess and thank you for reading through my whole dilemma if you did. I really appreciate it (6)

And I think I'll probably have to sort through a lot of very ugly and messy feelings and bitterness towards all of those standards before I'm ready to maybe come to terms with all of this and to let my partner know. It's been such a mess. I'm so stressed over this and I feel like crap and brains are so useless at times. But thank you again for hearing me out. I guess any words and advice you might have might be really helpful right now. I'm not really sure whom else to go to ((7 - end))

My big advice would be to find acespec blogs to follow, or acespec people on social media. Especially seek out sex positive, sex favourable (that is acespec people who are favourable to having sex or doing sexual things), and gray-ace blogs/people. Two reasons I think this will help a lot. First is that it will help you see acespec people more as individuals and less as the stereotypes people tend to associate, and two it will help you get a better sense of the real acespec community. Which my personal experience is that it's not very sex negative.

Media can help too. There's memoirs, educational podcasts, youtubers, books, tv shows, fiction podcasts, etc.

Generally speaking people and opinions will vary, acespec people are a very diverse group, and we live in an sex-negative society and being acespec doesn't make you immune to that. But my experience is acting like you're purer/better for being less sexual aren't common attitudes that I see. And as said above, there are definitely a lot of sex positive acespecs out there.

The other thing I really want to say is that you do not have to adopt a label if you don't feel ready for it. If the idea of using a label is causing you a lot of stress, even if you feel it accurately describes you, it's OK to put it off for the time being. My advice would be to take this one day at a time, but focus on dealing with the internalized acephobia first. Once you feel better about that, the question of using it for yourself will probably be a lot less stressful and clearer. And should make talking to your partner about it easier too.

Of course it's up to you, and it if does feel right to use the label now and talk to your partner about it now, then that's probably the right path. But be aware you have options and there's no deadlines here. It's important to go at the pace that makes sense for you.

All the best, Anon! Good luck!