#This is about people thinking its fine to use the r-slur just because they're a high functioning autistic

[bunnieswithknives]

The moment you start throwing around a slur as a genuine insult you are no longer reclaiming it. Reclaiming a word involves referring to yourself with it in a positive manner, using it to spread community and trying to remove the feelings of shame around it. If you are using it as an insult you are not fucking reclaiming it, you are just using a slur.

[imqueerandadeer]

Okay it's time again for rants and personal stories no one fucking asked for. Todays topic: How fucking rampant and normalized ableism is, with comments from @pansgoobernonsense as usual.

Really long post ahead guys you've been warned.

The reason it has been featured in the last post and now this one is because it's also ND and Asian and I wanted to get other peoples experiences with ableism.

It also said that I can interview it for practice because journalism sounds cool to me and I might want to be a journalist.

Anyways obligatory disclaimer/reminder. I don't speak for all mentally disabled people because we are not a monolith!! For example I am great at masking my ADHD and Autism (I'll get into that with more context later) and it's somthing I've picked up subconsciously. Other people with my same conditions may not be good at masking.

Also this post will mostly center around mental disabilities, specifically ADHD and autism because thats what we have and know most about. Neither me nor my friend are physically disabled (to my knowledge) so I won't speak much on it because It's not my place.

Alright with that out of the way lets add some context.

Hi, if you don't know me or haven't seen my blog before (most of you probably have though in some shape or form) I'm Ollie or Cupid. I have ADHD, self diagnosed (and peer diagnosed) autism, and possible dyscalculia. Theres also a millon other things I'm suspicious about having but I won't get into those.

Lets start with this, imagine (or don't idc) that your back in *gasp* middle school. Terrifying. Now since this is tumblr I'm gonna assume most of you have autism and/or ADHD so y'all most likely know what it's like to be in middle school and be ND. But still I wanted to talk about my experiences with ableism in school.

Okay I've noticed that the difference of how I get treated because I mask and those that can't mask for whatever reason is wildly different. I have instructional support which is technically special ed and no one has ever called me "Sped" or the R-slur. Versus the the kids who visibly have support needs and their disabilities are present. They get called those things all the fucking time.

The hypocrisy of it all is what really gets me. Kids at my school will really stand there and call these other kids dehumanizing things while I stand there as a person with ADHD and autism having to akwardly laugh it off and pretend it doesn't effect me. Yes of course I tell them off but it doesn't work, because they have been taught that what they're saying is fine and people who have higher support needs are not human, which is wrong and ablesist.

Thats not even their fault really it's what they were taught. Although if they weren't taught it and they know It's wrong but still do it then it's their fault

It genuinely got so bad that me and my friends wrote a letter to the office telling them about the ablesist language at our school, I don't think the letters ever got sent but yeah it was that bad.

On another note I don't think my schools very wheelchair accessible at all, although I wouldn't know really because I don't use a wheelchair.

Now heres @pansgoobernonsense experiences woth ableism as a whole, while mine were mostly about school its are more personal

"My personal experiences with ableism are mostly from my parents, and since I have not one but two neurodevelopmental disorders I’ve experienced it a lot. The most notable of these experiences come from my parents reaction to my autism.

A notable example was the time I was crying because I didn’t want to go to a party (I had had a panic attack at another similar party at the same place with similar people) and my dad had said I didn’t need to go but my mom made me.

I tried to explain (through tears) that I didn’t want to go and my dad angrily called me “autistic”. I’ve also been told to just “act normal” in social situations (despite the textbook definition of autism being essentially “I can’t act normal in social situations”). My parents have also neglected to tell me about my diagnosis for basically my entire life.

I was diagnosed when I was 2-3 and only found out this year. The reason behind this decision was “if I knew I’d tell everyone and use it as a get out of jail free card”.

They seem to treat my diagnosis as a label rather than an actual disability. It makes sense, since historically mental disabilities haven’t been treated the same as physical disabilities, but it’s still an awful experience."

While my experiences with things like this haven't been as severe as Nicks experiences I do have some of my own.

One time I was talking to my mother and she said that they suspected I had ADHD but didn't get me tested until I was 12 because she didn't want me on meds that early, which yes is a semi fair point but still why would you keep your suspicions a secret until I startes to notice and suspect it myself. That seems so weird to me and it could have saved me a lot if trouble if she had just told me.

Anyways thats it, sorry if it's not cohesive or coherent it's 1:00 am for me, I need to sleep

[nerdyfangirlingbooks]

I feel like I've seen a lot of people on tiktok criticising Yuki Tsunoda and his apology for saying the r word, claiming that "he knew how to use it of course he knew what it meant" and like ???

English is my first language. I grew up using that word, in the same way I grew up hearing people call something "gay" if it was bad. I still hear the r word somewhat regularly. Like two weeks ago at work someone talked about "getting fucking r*****ed" and they just meant getting really drunk.

Until a couple of years ago I had no idea that it was a slur for autistic people. I only found out because I am on english speaking, fairly progressive, fairly neurodivergent sides of the internet. Before then, I still knew it was a rude way to call someone stupid, and if I had been asked to use it in a sentence I could've. Still didn't know its origins or what it actually means though. And again, I am a native english speaker.

Yes, he said a word he shouldn't have. Yes, the FIA did the right thing in fining him. But no, I don't think it's fair to be calling him a liar when he says he didn't know what it means just because he used it "in context". Because yeah sure he thought he knew what it meant, and that definition lends itself to being used in exactly the same way as its actual meaning, but that doesn't mean he knew it's used as a slur.

Tldr, give people the benefit of the doubt. If someone does a bad thing but apologises and claims they didn't know when they're told it was bad, believe them until they do it again. One mistake does not make a terrible person. Go outside and touch some grass, maybe it'll give you some more perspective on life

[edelweissacermacrophyllum]

Honour

Judges 1:1-2:5, Proverbs 11:9-18, John 4: 1-26

Whenever I go back to my parents' churches of their youth, I'm bored out of my mind by the sermons because they tend to pick a topic and then go all over the place looking for verses that support whatever point they're trying to prove. A young, hip, young adult hype church in Vancouver did this too, so the problem isn't unique. In fact, it is so not unique that there is a name for it: Eisegesis or reading a theme into something. In contrast, exegesis is reading a theme out of something. And the book that inevitably fell prey to this wanton cherry picking was Proverbs.

I have barely focused at all on Proverbs because many of the proverbs appear to be common knowledge, assigning metaphorical consequences to clearly moral or amoral actions, or just make no sense to me at all. I have a very hard time not skimming them. But today one caught my eye.

Proverbs 11:16 A kindhearted woman gains honour, but ruthless men gain only wealth.

There is an incredible juxtaposition here between women and men, honour and wealth, kindness and ruthlessness. Honour is usually talked about in warrior cultures, poorly defined, and abused to manipulate vulnerable men. It seems to be a combination of morality, prowess in battle, and completion of tasks set to you by some authority figure.

And with this proverb, it says that all that you need for it is a kind heart. Granted, this could just be saying that honour is different for men and women, but it compares the kindhearted woman with a ruthless man who posesses, presumably, prowess in battle and loyalty.

In the beginning chapter of Judges, the Israelites still have to deal with some Canaanites, and find themselves attacking a city. They find some guy leaving and ask for its vulnerabilities in exchange for keeping him safe. He complies and they take the city. Did they threaten him? Did he act poorly? Did he act honourably? Did the Israelites act honourably? My thesis answer is that honour is a stupid word and we should stop using it. This happens sometimes. The r slur used to be fine, a medical term with a specific (sort of) meaning that didn't carry any baggage. It changed. Honour is the same now. It has been abused, tortured, and twisted by every villain with an army to control.

And yet, it is still useful as a word and can be redeemed, by assigning it to a kindhearted person. I loved the thesis of 'Everything, Everywhere, All at Once' that it takes more strength, courage, and honour to be kind and gentle in this world than it takes to be violent. If we could decouple honour culture from warrior culture, maybe it would be worth something.

Actually, as I write this, I realize that there are huge chunks of the world that (according to some sociological theories) operate on honour/shame cultures without violence having anything to do with it. I don't know much about these cultures, but I think that in them honour is still used by patriarchal structures to justify injustice, oppression, and the heirarchy itself.

Also, it's notable both the dismissive tone in which wealth is spoken of and its placement as the opposite of honour. This is further evidence, cherry picked of course, that rich people go to hell. But also that they have no honour.

Maybe the definition of honour is to fight for those who cannot fight, be kind to those who haven't seen kindness, and to give money to poor people. It might be the downward mobility of Jesus or the deliberate giving up of power for no greater cause than to raise others up. There would be no honour in fighting weak people on the orders of a strong one then. But I quibble over semantics. It would be nice to have good and evil well defined though. I will solve that question in the next paragraph.

[tricky-pockets]

it was not subtle, nothing in this show is subtle

I'm rewatching Ouran and episode 9 (A Challenge from Lobelia Girls' Academy) is hittin' a LOT different after coming out as transmasc.

(The show's premise is summarized at the end of this post.)*

In episode 9, a group of girls from Lobelia Girls' Academy, visiting for a school event, confront the host club:

"Men are just lowly life forms who don't care about anything other than perpetuating their testosterone-laden image."

We get some expository dialogue:

"St. Lobelia Academy! It is truly a woman's world there! The Zuka Club is a group of strong young maidens who consider women to be superior in every way."

And we're told that they see romantic relationships between women as superior too. There's a shot of their leader, Benio, in a romantic setting with some ladies and rocking a mustache:

They clock Haruhi and proceed to make a huge fuss. They constantly refer to her as a "maiden", and they grab her and exclaim over how smooth her skin is:

They think it's a disgrace that Haruhi is in the host club:

"And to think they're dragging this sweet young girl down with them."

Note: they have never met Haruhi before. Haruhi is kind, but it's a hell of a stretch to say she's sweet.

Without consulting Haruhi, the girls decide:

"Now that we know what's going on, we can't allow this maiden to stay here! We'll prepare her paperwork and have her transferred to Lobelia at once. And we'll welcome her into the Zuka Club!"

Before swanning off, Benio tosses out what seems to be a... racial slur? ?? at one of the boys, referencing the fact that he's half-French.

OKAY. Pausing the recap. This show isn't super explicit about queer shit, nor is it without its faults in that department. But. Haruhi being some flavor of genderqueer is a reading well-supported by the text. She's comfortable in her role as a host and was fine with being perceived as a boy even before then. She uses masculine pronouns when in boymode. Like, it's not outrageous to see some transmasculinity in this story. (It also wouldn't be outrageous to see some nb drag king in this story or to read her as agender.)

And BOY HOWDY, the Lobelia girls are Doing R/adfem Shit. (And yeah, they're cartoonishly exaggerated, but that's the tone of the whole show, come on now.) They spot someone they perceive as female who's presenting as a boy, instantly infantilize her, and grope her because they feel entitled to the parts of her body they see as feminine. They don't accept her relationship to masculinity as it is and try to pressure her to give it up and be a butch lesbian instead.

And, uh. It's played in an exaggerated style, but that's some real shit that actually happens to people.

(to be continued)

*background: a host club is a place where the clientele pay to hang out with handsome men who will entertain and flirt with them. The premise of the anime is a high school host club. Our protagonist, Haruhi, becomes indebted to the club and is taken on as a host. In the first episode, it's revealed that Haruhi isactually female - but she expresses complete indifference as to her gender and/or presentation. She sticks around because it might be fun and the other club members keep her sex a secret. The show's tone is: light-hearted self-aware parody of cheesy high-school anime that's often indistinguishable from cheesy high-school anime.

[noodlenoises]

I put this on Twitter, but since Twitter's in its death throes, I'm gonna go ahead and give it a shot here!

If you know me, you know that I love gaming. But as a casual player who has been trying to get into ranked matches more often, I have discovered a certain breed of gamer that makes the game objectively worse and more toxic.

I present to you: the ✨sweaty gamer boi ✨. You can recognize this kind of gamer by some or all of the following behaviors:

1. Bad sportsmanship: The sweaty gamer boi likes to punch down at a team they're absolutely destroying. I'm not talking regular trash talking, which is fine and par for the course. I'm talking getting real personal and mean with it.

Bonus points if they use the r slur, which they most definitely will.

2. Nothing's ever their fault: They never take the blame for the game going wrong, even if they blatantly fucked up. They'll often insist on a strategy that they claim is foolproof, and when it doesn't go their way, they blame the rest of the time for not executing the plan well enough. Even if it's an objectively terrible plan.

3. Needlessly mean to teammates: They will mock and humiliate teammates for disagreeing with them, even if it's about something totally innocuous and unrelated to the rated match like just making small talk about sports teams. It's a casual kind of mean that shows that their default setting is just to treat people poorly.

4. Casual sexism: Big shocker this showed up, eh?

They unsubtly make crude sexual innuendos, lots of references to their penis and how they masturbated recently, and laugh about it with the other men in the group the moment they hear a woman's voice. They seem to think we women don't notice or can't read between the lines, but we always do and it's always uncomfortable. These are grown ass men, y'all.

5. Casual racism: They act like mean girls whenever someone with a non-American or non-European accent joins voice and make mocking small talk with them so the group can laugh at and ostracize them because they can't help but act like children and mock anyone who doesn't fit their narrow worldview.

6. You can never leave: They mock their teammates for having to leave the group, especially if the group is on a win streak. Usually insult the leaving person's performance and say they can do or get better. For whatever reason, these guys take you having your own life outside of the game very personally.

I once joined a group where one guy had to leave because his dog was acting strange and he was concerned. Rest of the group proceeded to mock him after he left, for having the audacity to...be worried about his beloved pet.

7. They're always right: They mock you for disagreeing with them and will never admit when they're wrong. If it turns out that they were wrong, they'll still never admit to it; they'll usually just change the subject or bully the group into not bringing it up too much.

8. Center of the universe: They expect the team's entire objective to revolve around them, regardless of their role, the game, or the match they're playing. For example, a dps expecting healers to pocket them the whole game instead of the tank or literally anyone else because they're confident they'll dominate. They usually don't.

9. Palpable discomfort: The rest of the group is audibly uncomfortable and maybe even straight up scared of this one person, so the group turns into a crowd of incels braiding each other's ass hairs and stroking this one guys' ego by eagerly agreeing with him and being his yes men whenever he bullies another player. The rest of the group stays silent out of a fear of being mocked and/or kicked.

10. Ego: They will frequently compliment themselves and their own play style, but rarely, if ever, anyone else's. They are always the reason for the groups' success, but never the reason for its failures.

In conclusion: Video games are supposed to be fun. But I genuinely wonder if men like this even know how to have fun, or if their fun comes in the form of bullying other players, rather than the gameplay itself.

I see these kinds of gamer boys leading groups often, and they always complain that no one ever communicates. If the above points sound at all like you, please note: People don't talk in the groups you run with randoms because you make them feel uncomfortable, anxious, and unwelcome. You have managed to turn something that is supposed to be enjoyable into a sweaty, tense game where there is no room for making mistakes and learning from them. Your unkindness gives gaming a bad rap, and whether you really are an awesome badass player or not, the game would be better off without you.

[rantingcrocodile]

Tbh you're being pretty dramatic.

im bisexual myself and its so horribly obvious that we arent oppressed. My muslim parents think bi people are just straight people who are confused. My cousins and friends don't give a shit about bi people because we can just date the opposite sex.

Arabian countries hang and behead gay people, not bi people. Homophobic countries arrest, fine, and beat gay people, not bi people. A bi person won't be killed in an alleyway for being bi. Nor would we be beat up by a gang of people because we're bisexual. Nobody threatens us because we're bisexual. We don't get kicked out of our homes and we don't get bullied into suicide by our classmates. We won't get fired for being bi and we are allowed to join the army. We won't have food, garbage, and rocks thrown at our heads after being called slurs—and we don't even have any slurs. We can get married to someone we love. We can date or kiss someone we love. Nobody says bi as an insult. Nobody says bi like they say h*mo or l*sbo. We aren't sent to conversion therapy to be turned straight.

Nobody hates us, that's a good thing. You should be happy that nobody hates us instead of trying to convince other people that we are hated.

We're fine. Stop trying to play victim here. Bi people arent treated like shit. The people who are really suffering here is gay men and lesbians. All of the mental health stuff shouldn't mean much, because men have higher suicide rates than women and are more likely to get mental disorders, but that doesn't mean they're oppressed, are they? And besides, people typically come out as bi AFTER they get abused or raped, so those things didn't happen to them because of their sexuality.

You saying biphobia so much sounds like christianophobia, misandry, or heterophobia. Why? Because like those three examples, bi people arent oppressed, and there is no need for a word to talk about our non-existent oppression. That word is empty and is starting to get sickening.

It genuinely depresses me that there are bisexuals who write out long paragraphs like this and genuinely don't see the biphobia that they're literally describing while pretending that biphobia doesn't exist.

This is how bad biphobia is and just how much internalised biphobia is.

For those that don't believe me, I'll go step-by-step through this mess.

Tbh you're being pretty dramatic.

I'm really not, you're just used to seeing bisexuals who are doormats and won't stand up for themselves.

im bisexual myself and its so horribly obvious that we arent oppressed.

You're about to be up for a rude awakening, then.

My muslim parents think bi people are just straight people who are confused.

Huh. I wonder how bisexuals who are taught that bisexuality isn't "real" and it's just "confusion" will end up affecting bisexual people mentally?

It's almost like straight people oppress and want to erase everything that isn't heterosexuality, and that damages bisexual people.

I wonder where your internalised biphobia has come from? Right, the people in your life that have clearly spent time telling you that you're "basically a confused straight who can just closet yourself."

Yet you unironically sit there and think that isn't a sign of oppression, right in that first sentence?

My cousins and friends don't give a shit about bi people because we can just date the opposite sex.

"Bisexuals don't matter because we should closet ourselves and pretend to be straight and that clearly isn't another incredibly obvious sign of oppression and harm towards us."

Arabian countries hang and behead gay people, not bi people.

Arabian countries hang and behead people who are attracted to the same sex. Are you seriously going to start pretending that a same-sex couple caught having sex are somehow exempt from being murdered if they say, "Wait a second, we're bisexual!" because no, that isn't how that works.

Homophobic countries arrest, fine, and beat gay people, not bi people.

Please re-read the above to save me repeating myself.

A bi person won't be killed in an alleyway for being bi.

Are you sure about that?

Nor would we be beat up by a gang of people because we're bisexual.

Are you absolutely sure?

Nobody threatens us because we're bisexual.

You only think that because you think "bisexuals just have to pretend to be straight and then that's fine" like that clearly isn't an indication that there's oppression going on.

If we weren't "threatened" and abused for being bisexual, then there would be no fear in coming out, straight people would accept us and we would be able to be in the relationships with the people we love freely, but you're arguing against that and pretending that it's somehow "fine."

We don't get kicked out of our homes

Yes, we do.

and we don't get bullied into suicide by our classmates.

What.

We won't get fired for being bi

You really don't think so?

and we are allowed to join the army.

Seriously?

We won't have food, garbage, and rocks thrown at our heads after being called slurs—and we don't even have any slurs.

I didn't realise that "not having slurs" because of deliberate erasure and invisibility was somehow being "privileged."

The violence out there is real, even if you haven't seen it or experienced it.

We can get married to someone we love. We can date or kiss someone we love.

So you're arguing that the lesbians and gay men living in countries where same-sex marriage is now legal are no longer oppressed?

You're also pretending that there isn't a full range of bisexuals out there, like the bisexuals who are only really interested in the same sex or the bisexuals who don't want relationships. Oppression isn't based on who you're in a relationship with. It's based on straight people wanting everyone to be straight.

Nobody says bi as an insult. Nobody says bi like they say h*mo or l*sbo.

That's meaningless, because that isn't all that homophobia is, and biphobia exists in different ways. Pretending that biphobia isn't real doesn't help anyone.

Like the fact that you think it's somehow "fine" that we're seen as "confused straights." Or the people that treat us like we're predators, whores, that we "ask for" rape and sexual assault because of our sexuality, that we don't have real human emotions, that we can't make real human connections, that we're cheaters, that we're more likely to be criminals because we don't care for others, that we're sociopathic, that we're attention seekers, etc etc etc.

We aren't sent to conversion therapy to be turned straight.

4% of gay and bisexual men in Canada disagree with you, for one.

Nobody hates us, that's a good thing.

You have to be joking, especially when you sent this kind of ask, seeing the statistics and abuse that happens on this blog, where even online in this safe space that are women who will hide or deny being bisexual to escape from harassment.

You should be happy that nobody hates us instead of trying to convince other people that we are hated.

I would love to believe that others don't hate us, but that's simply not true.

We're fine. Stop trying to play victim here. Bi people arent treated like shit.

I'd love to live in that world.

The people who are really suffering here is gay men and lesbians.

"How dare you talk about breast cancer when ovarian cancer exists?!"

All of the mental health stuff shouldn't mean much, because men have higher suicide rates than women and are more likely to get mental disorders, but that doesn't mean they're oppressed, are they?

That isn't even remotely the same. Men have higher suicide rates than women, but women have more suicide attempts because even when wanting to kill themselves, female socialisation has women worrying about who will find them and who will clean up their bodies.

Pretending that "bisexuals want to kill themselves because of their sexuality and the biphobia that comes with that" is somehow comparable to men is just obscene.

And besides, people typically come out as bi AFTER they get abused or raped, so those things didn't happen to them because of their sexuality.

Pretending that that's the truth out of nowhere to discredit bisexuals is downright evil. Like it suddenly doesn't matter that so many bisexual rape victims exist because you've told yourself, for no reason, that we must all somehow have been in the closet, so it somehow doesn't matter.

I was sexually assaulted by a "friend" and her boyfriend after coming out as bisexual and trusting her with that. I felt safe, we drank, and I was assaulted while they put a webcam on, and you have no idea how traumatic that was. I have no idea if there's video of my sexual assault online somewhere. It was 100% because I was bisexual, because they thought that I'd be "up for a threesome" and that it was fine to do all of that to me because bisexuals somehow give consent purely by being bisexual.

That ignorance and evil should make you feel ashamed.

You saying biphobia so much sounds like christianophobia, misandry, or heterophobia.

Bisexuals are oppressed by straight people for not being straight, and you think we're comparable groups? Is that how stupid you are as an individual?

Why? Because like those three examples, bi people arent oppressed, and there is no need for a word to talk about our non-existent oppression.

I can only say that I'm grateful at least that I have more basic common sense and decency than some ignorant, disgusting person such as yourself.

That word is empty and is starting to get sickening.

This ask is exactly why I talk about and prioritise bisexuals, particularly bisexual women, because of just how fucked up and callous systemic biphobia is, and how much it encourages bisexuals to hate and belittle other bisexuals if we dare talk about our experiences and our oppression.

You're so far into the "bisexuals can't be oppressed!" that you parrot homophobes.

How are gay men and lesbians oppressed if they can just be celibate and tell everyone that they're straight, hmm?

No? Forcing a sexuality-based minority into the closet clearly is damaging and shows just how oppressed they are? But somehow, it's different for bisexuals?

Maybe think about how the invisibility of bisexuality means that when people talk about the LGB, it's gay men first, lesbians thrown to the back and bisexuals only allowed to speak if it makes up the numbers.

Maybe think about how, even online and in a so-called feminist space, there are constant sneers about "bihets" and witch-hunts against lesbians who other women are somehow convinced are "secret bis" to discredit them, and even examples of so-called feminists jumping onto gay men talking about how there are gay male predators in their community for absolutely no reason to accuse bisexual men of being the "real" predators instead.

Maybe think about how your entire, biphobic and unhinged rant is balanced on the blatantly biphobic and ignorant, "bisexuals are just half-straight-half-gay" and a denial that our sexuality is a unique and discrete sexuality on its own.

Maybe think about how, even as a bisexual, you don't even understand what bisexuality really is, and then tell me that we're somehow not oppressed.

You literally don't know that bisexuality isn't "really being straight," forgetting that bisexuals are just people who can be attracted to and love both sexes, with a huge variety of individual ways to express that bisexuality, and think that it isn't oppression to demand we're silent and pretend not to exist. Then scoff at the bisexuals that try to do that, who end up being part of the higher addiction statistics, who have lower self-esteem, who are more likely to be domestically abused and raped.

Maybe think about who taught you to hate yourself and the rest of us so much that you think that all of this doesn't matter.

You won't ever change my mind on this because I know that I'm right.

I might be in the minority, but the future will bear me out.

If being confronted with the truth is too much for you, crawl back to the parts of Tumblr that hate you and continue to hope that they decide that you're a "good bisexual." Make sure you parrot all the right things and stay on edge by not stepping a foot wrong. Feel accepted while throwing other bisexuals under the bus, and just pray that they don't eventually turn on you, too.

When you do wake up, either I'll be here or someone else like me will be here, and then remember to have the courage to apologise and make amends for the harm that you're perpetuating against fellow bisexuals.

Until then, you can block me and avoid my blog entirely.

[pixeljade]

i just finished my reread of homestuck

and i have thoughts

putting them under a readmore bc many of you wont gaf and thats fine

so first of all, it was SIGNIFICANTLY less shitty than i remember, both in terms of quality and "problematic" shit. Dont get me wrong they use the R-slur a fair amount in the early stuff, and portrayals later on get a bit insensitive, but *almost* all of it seems either A) From the era where People Just Talked Like That (Lets be real, virtually everyone said the R-slur back then, it sucks, but it was that common) or B) fairly self-aware. The only real exception which was exactly as gross as i remember was Damara, but thats literally just like, three pages she shows up on.

moving on from all that though, story-wise its INCREDIBLY solid! The only plotholes I can think of are Jade's granddad's appearance in the session early on (which can actually be explained if you just think about the portals under the elevator in the frog ruins and Time Shenanigans), and Gamzee's various appearances post-scratch (He seems to have the capacity for time shenanigans AND immortality which is just weird since hes not even god tier).

as for the characters, WOW. They're exactly as endearing and wonderful as the first time i read the story!! You know i remember thinking i would be a Harley-Egbert in this world (tho NO thats not why im named Jade), but after rereading it, i think im almost definitely a Strider-Lalonde, possibly somewhere in the Roxy-Dave range. I've got issues aplenty, deep deep irony poisoning, and I *constantly* say inappropriate / uncomfortable shit and then overpsychoanalyze myself in a rant about it. proof, this stupid fuckin paragraph here.

But Vriska, oh MAN. I can now absolutely say Vriska--Is the BEST character in this fucking story, if only by virtue of her complexity!!! She's absolutely not a *great* person, but she's not remotely evil, either. She sits in the grey area, but at various points, can believably flirt with both evilness and righteousness. Ultimately she's a character driven by her own desire to be loved, but sometimes that desire to be loved steps over into a desire to be feared. She's utterly fascinating, and I'm right to have defended her, even if she is ALSO a huge 8itch!!! Nobody should strive to be like her, but also, everyone should strive to write characters like her. ALSO, she absolutely DOES get something of a redemption arc in-story, across multiple versions of herself. She ends up actually being the key to bringing down their enemies by the end, and the story makes no bones about that. But, simultaneously, her mistakes are deudly in ways that can't be underestimated.

Also, the formatting is FAR more brilliant than i gave it credit for back then. Not only do you have the animation and playable segments, but you have branching paths, split paths, characters at some points changing the very site presentation, and then finally using a password-system to do the retcon (which is outright brilliance)! Truly its the best example of Scott McCloud's infinite canvas....so far, at least.

Now onto the disappointing bits, or parts that weren't BAD, but i feel could have been improved. First of all, the game mechanics are ALL OVER THE FUCKIN PLACE. Dont get me wrong, some of them are outright compelling (Shooting thru a window to get to another window in outside-story-space??? fuckin cool) but others are convoluted (Like John's retcon powers, which somehow change all of current reality, but not ghost bubbles?), and others still are just now-obvious deus ex machinas (Like all the time loop shit, "Oh this idea was spawned by taling to someone who brought it from after the idea was implemented" is basically just "Because i said so" with extra steps). This is fun in some ways like i said, but by the end it feels somewhat cheap, and makes the ending kinda predictable.

The humor too is something that i feel could be improved. Its almost TOO running-gag-y for its own good by the end. Like, okay, I get that this story was *about* online friendships and that IS how online friendships (esp at the time) spoke, but eventually the running gags feel like they derail a lot of the actual interesting character development. I dont need to see Hussie bring up the Sock Ruse Was A Distaction comic for the billionth time while Roxy is finally reuniting with someone she thought was dead. It almost feels like it waters down all these characters into catchphrase machines, but the catchphrases are shared amongst them.

Anyways I think thats all my thoughts for now. I'm really glad i reread this, I'd been wanting to for a while, and it gave me a LOT of great (and a few not-so-great) ideas for my own comics i'm making now. If you haven't read it since it came out, i strongly recommend giving it another go, and if you havent, give it a first try! The best way to experience is the homestuck unofficial collection, which is what i did, it keeps almost everything exactly as it was before flash died!

[lyssafreyguy]

hi it's not the middle of the night anymore. okay so. what I mean is that conceptualizing all this as "the q***r community and the lgbt community (separate)" or making the argument "okay well if you don't like being called q***r then you're not a apart of the q***r community and that's fine" etc brings forth this like. othering. of lgbt people who're just enforcing their boundaries on not wanting to be called a literal slur by anyone let alone strangers on and offline and/or bringing up the fact that the q slur is a slur at all because erasing its history as a slur is detrimental in ways that I'm not necessarily smart enough to specify? but have enough common sense to know that erasing history is fucked and awful. it also creates this sort of "bad" lgbts vs "good" lgbts over something that's such a kindergarten concept and shouldn't even be this huge controversial debate in the first place.

and, again, the only people who're "q***r" and can therefore reclaim that specific slur are lgbt people. like that's not a debate. what are you truly saying when you talk about "the q***r community and the lgbt community (separate)" as if they're separate concepts? what do you think other people think when you do this? have you thought about what kind of space you're creating around you by doing this? if they're truly separate things how do you quantify "q***r vs just lgbt"? let's say that you do and can answer that question without just replicating how we use the lgbt acronym- can you also give an answer to that question without risking the inclusion of the very same people who we've established (and fought and continue to fight to establish) aren't actually one of us because of our community's history of our oppressors addressing us as if they are/we're one of them? am I making sense?

not to mention the people i've seen on here who will talk about "the q***r community" like it's a separate thing from the lgbt community when other people tell them to not call them a literal fucking slur. completely ignoring the fact that you can only be "q***r" if you're lgbt.

i don't know if i'm making sense here but SOMEONE has to get what i mean and be able to back me up on this