#also if we're on the subject of microaggressions.

[bancaishi]

didn't want to put this rant in the tags of that last post but honestly i feel like a lot of people hate toshiro disproportionately compared to what he actually did in-story. and if we're being real it's most likely because of racism

[timkontheunsure]

Blitz's solo career?

Ok so is there an actual reason that Blitz thinks all Goetias are 'all the fuckin' same", and that "royal demons don't give a shit about guys like us"?

Fizz doesn't have this opinion, even after working with Mammon...

I assumed it was just growing up in a racist system, and having a lifetime of it rule class not caring being reinforced. But what if it's that plus, something that Fizz didn't go through. Something after the Circus but before Loo Loo Land?

Something that affected him enough to be in his bad trip years after. Someone that offered him a career if he slept with them?

We know he has trauma of being on stage, and ends up in a panic attack when he's forced onto one. Nearly saying when he's last performance was. "Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit! I-I... I can't do this. No, not again. I-I haven't performed since--"

When the crowd laugh he lights up.

And at the end of the episode, when they've got back Via all safe, the book and Loona's mostly forgives him; Blitz is still upset at his 'acting career' going up in flames.

Everyone else is happy to watch the fireworks and he's still grumpy, about a bit part on a very bad human sitcom. There's no career here. So what making him feel bad?

Blitz doesn't trust Mammon from when they're teenagers, but it's not quite "you royal fucks think you can do this EVERY TIME, like you can just play with our feelings because we're smaller and not as IMPORTANT!"

This looks like a trauma trigger about a royal discarding him for both sex and a job. It is directed at Stolas, but also every Goetia. Like it's not all about what happening here.

Why does he look angry at Stolas laughing at his jokes? He loves Stolas doing that, so who pretended to laugh at them?

Blitz says all royal are the same, after a very long list of things showing he notices when Stolas cares for him as a person. And Fizz tries sarcasm saying...

Which gets the biggest eyeroll of 'even Blitz can't be that thick'. So why does Blitz think that make it more fake?

Then Fizz says "They can't all be the same if some have taste, and some wanna fuck you." By inference any royal that wants to sleep with Blitz is one of bad ones.

And this is the point where he wants to stop talking about his sexlife, and change the subject after being it up in the first place...

They do a lot of foreshadowing in this show to what if this really isn't about Stolas, but past experiences being put onto him.

A royal that he liked, thought liked him back, and screwed over his job when he got tired of him.

If so Blitz might have a bit more to work through than denial, and getting Stolas to unlearn racist behaviours and microaggressions.

Still thinking they'll get there but might be being set up for season 3.

[the-eldritch-it-gay]

Get to know me game!

I was tagged by @tododeku-or-bust! Thank you 💖. I will no obligation tag @omgkalyppso @cheshirepirouette @ahasiw-okitowin @razrogue & anyone who would like to join!

1. Are you named after anyone?

I have a couple names. My birthname I believe I was named after someone on my mother's side of the family, but I'm not certain. As for my actual names, if it counts, Salamatullah is a theophoric name, so it bears the name of God (Allah) :)

2. When was the last time you cried?

The other day, I was certain everyone I loved was dead and that I was about to die (I was not, no one had died. give it up for psychosis)

3. Do you have kids?

No, but I've been mistaken for being a parent since I was like 16 lmao

4. What sports do you play/have you played?

Before my health was Bad(tm), I played a lot of sports in my youth. My favorite was figure skating, though I also played hockey, basketball, volleyball, baseball, archery, etc. through various community programs. I also was a founding member of my high schools cheerleading team, before the transphobia caused me to leave it. And I did horseback riding through a special olympics kinda program.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Sometimes. Not as often as people I know.

6. What is the first thing you notice about people?

Very little. Genuinely can't think of a specific, I'm very bad with faces and people in general 😂. I think I usually notice piercings or tattoos, maybe just because I have piercings and tattoos so I like seeing other people with em.

7. What's your eye color?

Brown!

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Man... I love both.

9. Any talents?

Talent always feels like a strong word. I suppose art is something I'm talented at. And since I've started beading people have said I'm talented with that. I'd like to think I retain some programming talent and technical writing talent from university.

10. Where were you born?

United States, in Minnesota specifically

11. What are your hobbies?

I do a lot of crafts: knitting, embroidery, sewing, beading. Like mentioned I draw, I also write. I like to read. I play video games. I like writing analysis essays about media.

12. Do you have any pets?

Yes! My old man. He's a little guy and gonna be 14. He's my beloved elderly puppy.

13. How tall are you?

5'9.5 I believe. I get measured pretty regularly since I'm always at the doctor.

14. Favorite subject in school?

In high school, math was my favorite because it was the only one I was good at. In university, linguistics was my favorite but that was quite soured by the fact that academia and linguists in general tend to be horrifically racist and classist and colonialist and I experienced countless of microaggressions every day. (be wary of any yt linguist, self-identified or otherwise)

15. Dream job?

Might seem weird but I would like to be a custodian, but only if we're talking dream where I can also dream up a custodial job that accommodates my disabilities, doesn't treat me as subhuman, and pays enough to life comfortably. I like cleaning, I like doing repetitive tasks, I like that its work that doesn't require me to talk with many people, I can just put on music and chill. It's a perfect autism job. But I don't think I could take the way (white) people treated me when I was cleaning for them.

[tavina-writes]

Reblogging this to say that I feel very heartened by the support I've seen on this post, and Peridot's post (which is much more articulate than this one) about why the post (since been deleted) that I wrote this in reaction to was just. So appallingly in bad taste. By no means do I think people should go over and tell them that anymore given that I think they figured out that it made a lot of people angry. I wrote the original post up there with the thought that "oh maybe like three of my mutuals will like it!" so it was made in anger for venting and wasn't super articulate about anything at all. And I think there's a place for that, but given that more people have seen this than I thought, I feel that it might be better to be more articulate (if also more wordy) about this.

This whole thing has brought up a lot of irl memories into my fandom space, where like, I've been musing a lot on the nature of how my identity is intrinsically tied to my past and my culture, in ways that cannot be erased or even avoided by masking. Even online, these things bleed through.

I think we often think of online spaces as places where we can truly be anonymous, or share just as much as we want to about ourselves. But I think the events of this past week has reminded me that while I can share as much or as little about my brickspace life as I want online, that doesn't mean that I am not impacted by the racism and other microaggressions that come with being a second generation Chinese-American woman. I can no more take off my skin online than I can in person, it's just that people are far more likely to make split second judgments about who I am in person based on how I look.

There have been many instances of microaggressions over the course of my life, both large and small, and I won't delve into them here because ultimately this is a fandom blog where I come to have fun and talk about fictional characters on the internet. But I think every POC I've met and spoken to for any length of time has had those moments, large and small, of being discriminated against, of being insulted for being their identity, for being asked weird intrusive questions about their past or their cultural practices, of being made to feel afraid of existing in a space because of their heritage.

I've also seen a lot of solidarity from other POC in the notes of both this post and Peridot's, noting their own experiences with racism both irl and online, and while it makes me feel less alone in the knowledge that other people have shared my experiences and understand what it's like, it's also heartbreaking to know that truly, none of us are exempt from this. So often, we are divided and conquered by being told that we "have it better than [x]" or we're "not as oppressed as [x]" or that "[x] has it better than [we] do." Ultimately, racism is not special. To have survived it is neither a badge of honor or a source of shame, just something that I hope one day other people will not have to experience, as perhaps, people who came before me wished for my generation.

On the subject of names -- my family is both radical and traditional. Traditional in the sense that I share the same generational stem as all of my paternal first, second, and third cousins. Radical in the sense that my parents chose very ambitious, far reaching names for their daughters. I've always felt that my given name is beautiful. It means 'to narrate infinite breadth,' given in the hopes that I would witness an infinite number of things, and that I would encompass all of them. When matched with my childhood nickname, which means 'pure, unmixed, and unsullied,' it explains the hope that I would be able to see and encompass an infinite number of experiences while retaining who I am at my core.

There is so much ambition and beauty to my given name that the years I've spent being bullied for it has been especially...ironic, I suppose. In some ways. In other ways, it's just really sad. It's neither the worst nor the least terrible thing that has happened to me in the line of racist remarks, made both by my peers and by adults and teachers that I've had the pleasure of being in a classroom with, but it's one that's remained with me. I have a legal English middle name that I could use for ease of access, but I want people to feel uncomfortable with my parent's language and all of their hopes for me on their tongues whenever they want to speak to me, as English has never been able to sit entirely comfortably in their mouths. Even after decades.

I would never presume to tell another POC to not adopt an English name. Sometimes it fits with your journey. Sometimes it's safer for you to do that. Sometimes at your local Starbucks you just want to be something spelled right and said right for once. I understand. I've done that. I guess I'm writing this to tell us that we are not alone. I am not alone. If anything good has come of this experience and these posts it is that we know we are not alone, because there are many of us, and we are still here in this fandom and others together.

Do we really gotta do the psa where we tell people that assigning English names to Chinese characters is racist again :/ like is that really a PSA that I am typing with my own goddamn fingers in 2023.

Like, this is actually a thing that East Asians go through in the west where our own names are deemed too difficult or different to say or use properly so we get assigned or be forced to pick an English one for other people's convenience. Being made fun of for having a different sounding name was a MAJOR part of my classmates bullying tactics through pre-k to 12th grade. Like that's a pretty standard thing to have been bullied for in a racially targeted manner for pretty much every Asian friend I know??? Names and food are the big ones????

I thought that as a fandom given the amount of time mdzs has been this would no longer be a thing???? Also lmao the literal irony of having to block people in the notes of that post with "end otw racism" as their profile photos like hello congrats YOU are the problem here.

I KNOW it's meant to be "funny" or whatever but that thing is in such poor fucking taste. It's not remotely funny.

[leam1983]

Vampires in Broad Daylight

Having finished Interview with the Vampire with Walter, we found ourselves discussing the subject matter while under the covers. I was already snuggled up against him last night, eyes closed, but with my mind still fully active. He did as he usually does in these moments, and followed along while his pinched airways made him snore every other sentence. You could've sworn we were both asleep, but Walt's slight gestures when he raised a point, or his raising and lowering eyebrows, would've betrayed that we were in the midst of an interesting bit of discourse.

Back when Neil Jordan gave it his shot, all the Straights ever saw involved pretty monsters doing monstrous things to each other. Jordan's treatment buried the gay subtext under moral quandaries and enough sentiment to make even Herman Hesse's ghost tell Rice to tone it down. Now we've got a version vetoed by Christopher Rice himself, and the gay subtext isn't sub anymore. Louis de Pointe du Lac and Lestat de Lioncourt are gay. That's the series' beginning thesis. That reframes a few things interestingly - and posits that before being the "Brat Prince", Lestat was - and likely still is - a toxic individual to be around.

Walter started telling me about one of his earlier trysts, before he knew to embrace his own nature and to pursue love out of the perception that he deserved it. There was this guy, or so he tells me, who was the very picture of success. Clean-cut, fit, dressed to the nines in a way that made Sartoriophiles like Walter sweat bullets, cultured, pleasant to be around - and supposedly a living god in the bedsheets. Walter hung out with him for a few years, in the seventies. He rode the best cars, booked the best restaurants, and made Walt feel like someone finally appreciated him.

Then the microaggressions started. Tiny comments on Walter's weight, on his choice of tailoring, on the Marketing firm he was working in as a junior associate, at the time. On the food he ate, on how he snored in bed. On how he never had enough stamina to finish, when he took the lead. On how Walt was, and is, the type to roll over and fall asleep after sex. The truth is the guy didn't want to bare his soul or listen to Walter after doing the deed, he wanted to talk about himself. After doing exactly that for eight hours prior.

Walter didn't exist under this particular ex's wing. He merely survived. Walter ended up killing him - professionally - by exposing just how bloated our buddy's Expenses account was.

"Vampires exist," Walter told me. "They're the walking beacons, torches in the gloom of a Christmas afterparty. They've got more life than you or I combined - and everything is endlessly and forever about them."

His other hand rounded his gut and gently raised my head up. He had this precise look I keep falling for - a mixture of tiredness and boundless love; like we're not partners on equal footing for a minute or two, but I'm also existing as someone he also has avuncular fondness for; in parallel to the love that pulls us together.

I'm both his lover and the son he's never had.

"For every ounce of me you took over the past five years," he tells me, "you've given me a pound of your own. Your care, your attention, your time and your kindness - and you're always here, Grem. You listen, and you inspire me to keep doing the same. It feels like this jackoff sapped years out of me, and you make me feel twenty years younger."

I'm fighting to stay awake. "Even when we disagree on things?"

He smiled. "Especially when we disagree on things. We're constructive towards one another, and we're never so angry that we can't go back to one another, if you've noticed. We rephrase, reframe and apologize if need be... We work. We're not feeding off of one another, we're..."

He briefly lets me go to bring his hands together in a steeple. "We're feeding one another, instead," he says. "Not like parasites, though."

"We try and be symbiotic," I mumble. Walter repeats the word, mulls it over, I feel him nodding. He grunts in assent and his breaths start to deepen.

I wake up a few hours later. It's the middle of the night, I've rolled over on my side and Walt and I are spooning. I feel his head move slightly on the pillow, between his intakes and exhales. He's hugged me close without being too tight.

I remember Claudia's line about Lestat and Louis' breaths synching, when they share a coffin. Walt's pulse matches mine beat-for-beat. His exhales faintly smell of his Saturday evening pipe, like rythmic caresses on the nape of my neck.

You've got vampires who fizzle out after sapping the life-force out of everything they touch. Inconstant lovers who see themselves as a gift from God when they're more of an Infernal punishment. Maybe some vampires are like Walt and I, then: we give each other strength and I'm filled with the notion that the count of our years doesn't matter.

If I only get ten, maybe twenty good years with him, then these will be our Forever. Within the limits of that span of time, we'll effectively feel timeless.

[angeloncewas]

no pressure to answer this any time soon (bc god knows we've had enough bad vibes today) but how you you deal with claims such as some of the ones in the anons shown here? i find it hard to just brush away serious things like claims of anti-blackness even when i know the information those claims are based on is faulty. how do you go about not feeling like a horrible person when you see stuff like that?

Well, to be honest, I don't really have to. I very rarely see stuff like that on my dash, since the only blog I follow that isn't at least an ex-mcyt fan is a random SPN-enjoyer whose vibes I liked. I've also only gotten 3 hate anons ever - all of which were mediocre at best (two that were accusing me of defending Dream in a situation where I was criticizing him so they held no weight, and that bs one about wishing apologists a good day lol) so those claims never really get on my radar.

(It actually makes me feel a little guilty at times; so many kind and wonderful people in this community have had to deal with an overwhelming amount of hate in their inbox or directed toward them, whereas I get off scot-free. This sounds weird, but it doesn't feel fair. I hope the people involved with that blog are doing okay - I'm very sorry that they had to deal with that, especially as mostly-outsiders.)

As for the claims themselves though, I kind of just have a lot of confidence in my own knowledge and judgement. There was a period of my life where I got sucked into a BaB/exclusionist community, and because of that I think I know better than most people how perceived harm can bring a group of people together in their hatred and spread like wildfire. I commend people for standing up for what they believe in - apathy is the enemy - but I also am not swayed by misinformation when I know for a fact that it is such. There is a possibility that some DSMP members are racist - in the same way there is a possibility that any creator is a horrible person. As consumers, our job is to remain critical and vigilant (which is why I'll never agree with the notion that crit-posting is pointless, though I do understand that it can be nitpicky at times), but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy content based on our good judgement.

This might sound a bit egotistical, but I know that I'm a good person. I do as much activist work in my offline life as I can and I'm hoping to do a lot more as we re-acclimate to things (in terms of COVID). I work to stay politically informed and stand up against acts of bigotry (or microaggression) that are oftentimes very easy to just let slide for the sake of everyone getting along. And as someone who has had many hopeless days, I do my best to keep others from feeling that way through whatever means I can. Some random anonymous person online is not going to be able to detract from everything I've worked on and for with their poorly-researched claims about some internet dude I'm currently into. I understand that this is easier said than done, and you shouldn't feel bad if those claims do get to you (that means you care, and that's important), but I want to remind you that we are often smarter than we give yourselves credit for. You have good judgement. You are (presumably) aware of the situation. You're not brushing it away, you're refuting it with evidence (by learning what actually happened and the details of each situation, etc etc).

It's a difficult part of being in this community, for sure, but all we can really do is combat the bullshit and keep going. It sucks to know that so many people have so many misconceptions about us and the people whose content we're supporting, but their failure to look into the full scope of the situation doesn't make you a bad person and their perspective on the subject isn't the end-all be-all. Trust yourself.

[gay-yuuri]

This!!!! If not made _for_ LGBT viewers, at the very least it was made WITH them in mind. Like, the show has literally had zero chill from day one in showing us the world of yoi is a better place (men and women alike losing their shit over Victor's wink in ep 1, nobody ever going "well that's weird" on y&v's relationship, no "but we're both guys" or other microaggressions, etc) so honestly it's just delightful that they also covered Victor in explicit gay symbolism/made a shout-out to RL gay ppl

thats exactly how i feel! a lot of people dismiss the show to have been made purely for fujoshi (i will admit it's important to be critical about this), but looking at our big gay romance, yoi did such a great job handling this subject matter. there's a reason so many fans are lgbt. regardless, i'd say us gays claimed yoi as ours ❤💛💚💙💜