#also safeguarding is for adults too

[hestiasroom]

About six months after I stopped identifying as transgender, I waded into the discourse on Twitter. I began by following other “detransitioners” and expanded from there. When you speak as someone who is critical of sex-trait modification, you end up attracting all different kinds of people. 

You attract radical feminists, who have been railing against the concept of “gender identity” and discussing its impact on the rights of women for decades. 

You attract parents of trans-identifying children, who are desperately seeking answers regarding an intervention that is being pushed on people younger and younger. 

You attract concerned health care professionals, who see something dangerous happening within the medical system and want to correct it. 

You attract social conservatives, who want to maintain traditional values that have guided society for many years. 

You attract people whose values come from religion – also traditional, but with perhaps more of an emphasis on morality and spiritual well-being. 

You attract gay men and lesbian women, whose orientation is challenged by an ideology which posits that “homosexual” can mean attraction to both sexes (so long as the opposite sex has a special identity). 

And you attract what might be termed old-school transsexuals, who tend to frame sex-trait modification exclusively as a treatment for “gender dysphoria” and who are discontented with the mainstream trans rights movement.

(...and I certainly haven’t named every kind of person you may attract.)

Together, these people make up what social justice leftists have taken to calling the “anti-gender movement” (e.g., see Wikipedia for a biased explanation). They tend to give the impression that everyone in the “movement” has a common goal and common values. This simply isn’t true. Many of these people don’t even consider each other allies. Radical feminists often won’t work with social and religious conservatives due to conflicting opinions on abortion, for example.

I was fresh out of social justice culture when I joined Twitter and highly critical of what I’d just left behind – not just the ideology around transgenderism, but around leftist identity politics as a whole. I’d watched as people with certain “marginalized” identities were given credibility and authority, and bad faith actors weaponized those identities in order to gain power and abuse others. The result was a movement full of narcissistic leaders who could not be criticized, lest you be deemed a bad person and ex-communicated. (Note: I’ve observed the same dynamics in parts of the “anti-gender movement.”)

I was still calling myself a leftist at this time, though. I was simply a dissident leftist instead. To me, “left” was progressive (and therefore correct), and I still wanted to be seen as a “good” person. I didn’t want my friends to think I was “transphobic,” just that I had concerns that should be taken seriously. I also wanted to remain in touch with my friends who were still transitioned; I hoped that if they ever changed their minds one day, they could come to me.

If your goal is to reach the left on the topic of sex-trait modification, then using identity politics to your advantage might be a decent strategy. Because of this, I was quite willing to work with heterodox transsexuals early on. These are primarily people who were satisfied with their own “treatments,” but believed that medical professionals needed to re-adopt the restrictions that once existed, particularly for people under the age of 18. They also tended to emphasize “gender dysphoria” as a medical condition in need of treatment rather than the mainstream emphasis on “gender identity” as a natural human variation.

I believe this remains what is considered a “moderate�� view for most: that there is an exceedingly small number of people who truly need to have their sex traits chemically and surgically modified and who must live in the “gender role” of the opposite sex or else they will be forever miserable, and therefore all of the health risks outweigh the benefits.

This is now exactly as convincing to me as the idea that there is an exceedingly small number of people who truly need to have their legs amputated and live as disabled people or else they will be forever miserable, and therefore all of the health risks outweigh the benefits.

That is to say, it is no longer convincing to me at all.

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post during which, in part, I defended transsexuals in the movement. I described the concerns people had — “the very act of existing as an ‘out’ transsexual is seen as ‘promoting’ an unhealthy lifestyle” — with some reservations. I also argued that “detransitioning” isn’t accessible for every person and that “having transsexuals who openly condemn the mainstream trans rights movement is — I think — important.”

I no longer have reservations about those concerns (I now agree that being an “out” transsexual is promoting an unhealthy lifestyle), and I disagree with my former beliefs (I think “detransition” is often more accessible than people are willing to admit, and I don’t think it’s necessarily “important” to have transsexuals who openly condemn the mainstream trans rights movement).

Because this is a departure from things I’ve said in the past, I think it deserves a well-thought-out explanation.

I also want to acknowledge that there is no way to write this that will not be taken as condescending to “happy” transsexuals, in the same way that telling people who believe they have an incongruent gender identity that they are wrong will be taken as condescending, and in the same way that telling someone who is reliant on alcohol that they need to go to rehab will be taken as condescending.

My intention is not to force anyone to “detransition.” I have a right to my opinion about someone’s actions (in this case, their choice to medicalize and present themselves as the opposite sex). That is not the same thing as imposing on their behaviour. We all have free will.

My intention is also not to force anyone to disassociate themselves from individual transsexuals. My criticisms are primarily with medicalization and secondarily with how transsexuals try to justify it for themselves. I believe these people are victims of “gender medicine” as much as I am — not necessarily “bad” people, but people who are fundamentally self-harming.

My intention is twofold: to provide an opinion on a specific medical and psychosocial intervention and its effects, based on everything I have seen — not only in the past three years, but since I started “questioning my gender” fifteen years ago; and to explain why I have changed my mind about presenting “happy” transsexuals as role models just because they’re telling minors to wait.

You may have assumed that, after three years involved in the discourse and a lot of exposure to dissident transsexuals, I would have begun to accept that there were indeed people who truly benefited from the intervention. The opposite is true. The more I met, the less convinced I became. Many give the outward appearance of “successfully” living in an opposite-sex “gender role” while quietly having difficulties in their personal lives that have been caused or exacerbated by chemically and surgically altering their bodies and trying to live in an opposite-sex “gender role.”

But it wasn't only meeting transsexuals that changed my mind. It was also meeting detransitioners.

My personal story is very much one born of social influence. I was a tomboy my whole life (save for a feminine phase in my teens), but I did not have any distress around my gender when I was young. I was different from other girls, but I was also different from other children in general. Not like the girls, but not necessarily like the boys either.

When I stopped identifying as transgender, I very quickly stopped believing that anyone was “born in the wrong body,” but I did think it was possible that some people were benefiting from medicalization — perhaps some rare cases who have had persistent dysphoria their entire lives, as most of these “old school” transsexuals said they did. 

Then I started meeting detransitioners whose stories were literally the exact same… and who still realized the whole thing was bullshit. I also met people who had what could be termed childhood dysphoria but who were managing it without medicalizing.

And I just can’t ignore it anymore.

I have framed sex-trait modification as a coping mechanism for a long time. Medicalization does not “cure” one’s distress around being male or female in the same way that antidepressants don’t cure depression. It may alleviate distress, but if you can never stop medicalizing, the problem has not actually been resolved.

One of the traps of sex-trait modification, though, is that you often feel more distress the further into it you get. A TikTok video recently made rounds on Twitter of a man explaining exactly this: that every step he took in changing his body fed his desire to change more. (“Some things I have dysphoria about now that I never had before.”) At first, he only wanted his face to change, but the feeling of being “affirmed” spurred him on. He used to be okay with being androgynous, but now he wants to be able to “pass” seamlessly as a woman.

He frames this as having his experience “evolve” through the process when, if you take a step back, the treatment is clearly exacerbating his distress. First, he is convinced that he is not a man. Then, as he begins obscuring his biological sex (e.g., softening of skin, growing breast tissue, etc.), each step he takes that makes him look more “female” (to him) gives him a little thrill. Then the thrill wears off, he becomes more anxious and desperate regarding the traits giving away that he is male, and he starts looking for a new “embodiment goal.”

If that sounds a bit like an addiction, it’s because it is. He is psychologically reliant on being affirmed in his delusion that he is a woman. It’s masking something else for him. Whether it’s internalized homophobia, a paraphilic disorder, or something else entirely, I don’t know. But it is not healthy for him.

The transsexuals who boast that medicalization “worked” for them are, essentially, high-functioning addicts. They may have gotten lucky with surgery results; they may be holding regular employment; they may still have their families; their lives may not have fallen apart. But they are still psychologically reliant on being affirmed.

They’ll try to convince you they’re not, though. They may claim they don’t care what pronouns you use for them… then become upset or accuse you of being “disrespectful” when you use sex-based ones. They may acknowledge they aren’t actually the opposite sex… then continue to use the opposite-sex washroom.

Some seem to think that, if they say the right things, they will be entitled to special privileges. And other people are indeed falling for this! If someone says “use whatever pronouns you like,” they will often get their preferred pronouns. (“I respect her pronouns because she gave me a choice.” No, you got manipulated, and he knew exactly what he was doing.)

They often try to separate themselves out from other people who identify as “trans” by pointing out those who have clearly been socially influenced as “fake,” condemning over-the-top bad behaviour, and mocking people who don’t “pass.” This is all done to create the illusion that there are “real” transsexuals: the ones who were not influenced online, who behave appropriately, and who blend in seamlessly. (And by the way, mocking people who don’t “pass” often coerces them into medicalizing if they haven’t.)

Ultimately, they want to be coddled the same way TRAs expect to be coddled. They won’t insist that “trans women are women,” but they will insist that there are “true” transsexuals or that transition “works” for some people, and if you don’t agree with them, well, you’re transphobic — or at least an extremist of some kind. I mean, it’s a black-and-white take, isn’t it?

But “men can never be women” is also a black-and-white take.

Sometimes the truth isn’t “nuanced.” And sometimes it is very uncomfortable.

I don’t believe there are “real” transsexuals. I don’t even believe “gender dysphoria” is a legitimate condition anymore. Distress is merely a symptom with varying causes, none of which is “incongruence” between one’s sex and one’s identity, and none of which should be “treated” by helping someone dissociate from their body and denying reality.

What there are, are people who altered their bodies and decided it was worth the risks. I’m not saying they aren’t happy; I’m saying they aren’t healthy. Messing with your endocrine system and removing healthy body parts to assuage your troubled mind is objectively a bad idea. 

So what’s the draw here? Why are “happy” old-school transsexuals so invested in the “anti-gender movement”?

I don’t believe most of them are primarily interested in stopping harm from happening to others. Instead, I believe they’re scrambling to try and protect themselves. They don’t want to lose access to their addiction, whether it be exogenous hormones or their ability to quietly enter opposite-sex spaces, and the complete insanity of the mainstream trans rights movement has put that access under threat.

Most of them focus almost exclusively on criticizing pediatric sex-trait modification, because anyone with half a brain knows that chemically altering the sex traits of children, sterilizing them, and/or cutting off their healthy body parts in service of a psychiatric condition is entirely unethical. Restricting access until the age of 18 is the easiest position to take while still ensuring that medicalization will be available to them as adults.

This doesn’t make them good role models, though. How can they be? “Hey kids, transition was the right thing for me, I can’t live without it, but you have to wait until you’re 18.” Like telling kids not to do drugs while smoking crack.

“Do as I say, not as I do.”

Claiming that sex-trait modification “worked” for you is still proposing it as a viable option. It is still marketing for the gender industry. Telling children to wait until they’re 18 is not solving the problem. If these kids think there are “real” transsexuals, they will be convinced that they are one themselves. It is doing nothing for children, except maybe guaranteeing that they’ll show up at a Planned Parenthood looking for hormones on their 18th birthday — and some of the transsexuals in the movement quite openly have no problem with that. It doesn’t matter if the kid’s been brainwashed their entire childhood.

Indeed, many of my clashes with the purported “good ones” have been over the fact that I don’t believe sex-trait modification should be offered as a medical treatment at any age.

One seemed surprised when I got hostile with him after he told a detransitioned woman that there was nothing wrong with the fact that she’d gotten a testosterone prescription from Planned Parenthood after a single 30-minute phone call as an adult. (“I support detransitioners; I’m on your side.” If you’re in support of doing away with safeguarding for adults, we are not on the same side.)

Some have conceded that there appeared to be negligence in my case, but others have thrown the good old “take some personal responsibility” line at me when I said that what happened to me simply should not have happened. 

Perhaps unsurprising to many, a couple of these “reasonable” transsexuals have come off as manipulative narcissists after I got to know them privately.

And one more inconvenient fact to point out before moving on…

Most of these transsexuals are same-sex attracted. This inadvertently pushes the message to young gays and lesbians that medicalizing our gender non-conformity is “good” for some of us.

One of the strongest messages we have is that medicalization is often “transing the gay away.” How do we square that with putting mastectomized lesbians and castrated gay men up as examples of “real” transsexuals for whom medicalization “worked”?

We don’t. Absolutely not.

As someone recovering from medicalization, I have struggled to process while around people who are actively engaging in and singing the praises of the thing that irreversibly altered my life for the worse. It’s annoying, to say the least. For others, though, it’s dangerous.

Those who have acknowledged sex-trait modification as a coping mechanism and are trying to figure out how to disengage with it as much as possible are, essentially, addicts in recovery. Whether the addiction continues to affect them, and how much, differs from person to person. The detrans subreddit often has people saying that they’re “jealous” of those who continue to medicalize or that they’re constantly thinking about “re-transitioning” (in other words, relapsing).

By definition, “high-functioning” addicts are rather stable. They make medicalization look good, but it’s a false front. They give off the impression that everything is fine even though they don't have control over the addiction and are creating health issues for themselves. (This false front doesn’t only influence young people who think they are born in the wrong body, but also influences people in recovery. It’s tempting to plug yourself back into the Matrix rather than face reality.)

Contrarily, those newly in recovery are extremely unstable. They recognize they have a problem, their worlds have been pulled out from under them, and they are often trying to completely rebuild their lives from scratch. If they seem more erratic than high-functioning transsexuals, it’s because one of these groups is upheaving their lives to live in reality and restore their health, and the other is not. 

If a “transsexual” and a “detransitioner” held mirrors up to each other, we would both see ourselves.

Every “transsexual” is a potential “detransitioner.” Every “detransitioner” was once a “transsexual.”

I am done with the pretense that the “good ones” are separate and apart from everyone else who has undergone the same intervention. My story may not be your story, but your story is invariably the story of one of my friends.

I said at the beginning that I cannot tell anyone what to do. But if your question is actually “well, what would you have me do?” this is my answer: stop going by a name that traditionally invokes the opposite sex; stop requesting “preferred” pronouns; stop presenting yourself in a way that explicitly intends to deceive others about your sex; and stop telling people that sex-trait modification is “good.”

I have compassion for every person who has irreversibly altered their body and does not know how to move forward. Some people will continue to be mistaken for the opposite sex for the rest of their lives, and not every moment has to be a teaching moment. I don’t expect anyone to be “correcting” strangers every single time. I certainly don’t. 

My alternate answer, which I imagine people of all stripes will not like, is to stop being “out” and go stealth. You might not be living in reality, but you shouldn’t be influencing others to do the same.

I was originally willing to work with transsexuals because I thought it would be more convincing to the left. I thought if I could reference “reasonable” transsexuals who believed the same thing I did, that people might listen to my arguments. It turns out that identity politics doesn’t work that well for dissident transsexuals. They just get accused of being self-loathing instead of being taken seriously.

It didn’t matter that transsexuals agreed with me. I didn’t convince anyone to listen. I made compromises that both disturbed my recovery and alienated people who would have otherwise agreed with me, and I still ended up losing my existing friends.

Many moderates have decided that they must work with transsexuals on this matter for the same reason I did. They think it gives legitimacy to their arguments. Again, I recognize that this is a strategy some will continue to employ and that I will not be able to stop them from doing so.

The curse of being "moderate" is that you end up alienating both sides of the debate. The "moderate" orgs I've been involved with have a high turnover rate. It's not hard to figure out why. Trying to compromise with extremes is very stressful. Even people within the orgs can't agree on which compromises to make.

It's certainly not an enviable position to be in.

I'm solo from here on out.

My writing will always be free to read. If you’re interested in supporting me financially, please donate to my fundraiser, which will allow me to cover costs associated with my legal action: https://www.givesendgo.com/michellealleva. Thank you.

[cacaitos]

see for the thing ive observed abt the way the female-to-male predation types of portrayals happen to go, that imo for some reason use like extra stablished power dynamics to like. *justify themselves happening in the first place (like ex mothers that are yk. v straighforward menaces in a kid/teen's inmediacy), is that i will give fujimoto the acknowledgement of partially avoiding doing so by virtue of him not having much respect or shame for himself and his story analogues.

[saintsenara]

I mean I feel like every person on the planet would still be obsessing over schoolboy experiences and unable to hold a civil tongue as an adult if one of those experiences was some thug setting them up to get murdered by a werewolf and getting away with it scot-free! Sometimes I kinda feel like JKR went a tiny bit too hard in Snape’s Worst Memory.

an eminently reasonable point, anon - in response to this, on whether sirius and snape could work as a couple if james was still alive.

the werewolf incident and the bullying we see in snape's worst memory are pretty bonkers - and, while they're great for character work [snape seeing himself as a victim targeted for his obvious poverty by the posh and beloved, who the rest of the school will always side with, is a really key aspect of his radicalisation], and while the fact that the marauders basically get away with everything is crucial for the plot [since both james and sirius need that swaggering conviction that they're invincible for the idiotic secret keeper plan to work], they aren't helping dumbledore beat the "hogwarts is a safeguarding nightmare" allegations...

[the older i get, the more sympathy i have with the opposition to dumbledore as headmaster. i'm team lucius malfoy, i fear. cut that hippogriff's head off...]

but one thing i think is really interesting is that - despite the intensity of the bullying and the weakness of the school's response - snape's beef with sirius in adulthood is a petty obsession over schoolboy drama, rather than a visceral response to trauma that he can be forgiven for being unable to control.

snape and sirius interact by behaving like children. they squabble constantly, go out of their way to make little digs about each other both to each other's faces and behind each other's backs, act like shaking hands is going to kill them, remember everything the other has ever said and done, and so on...

their aim is evidently to "win" their interactions in the eyes of others, by forcing those others to side unequivocally with them - even the "sirius black showed he was capable of murder at the age of sixteen" point in prisoner of azkaban is fundamentally snape trying to get dumbledore to acknowledge that he's the best little boy in the room. unsuccessfully.

but they also both clearly enjoy this way of interacting - and i think it's always worth emphasising that, while i think snape does sincerely believe that sirius intended to kill him by sending him to the shack, he is never shown in canon to be afraid of him.

[even when sirius is threatening him with his wand during the occlumency discussion, snape is too busy reading him to care.]

and the very fact that they spend so much time being childish towards each other proves this. because it's very striking - especially in prisoner of azkaban - that snape is afraid of lupin.

and this fear manifests itself not in confrontation, but in avoidance. snape goes out of his way to never be alone with lupin, he makes his efforts to undermine him [setting the essay which outs him as a werewolf, reminding dumbledore that he thinks he's helping sirius enter the castle] when he is guaranteed to be indisposed, and - after lupin leaves his teaching job - we literally never see the two interact.

i think you can make, then, a pretty plausible case for the idea that snape focuses his trauma over nearly being eaten by a werewolf onto... the werewolf himself. snape certainly thinks lupin was in on the plan to lure him to the shack - and he evidently regards the adult lupin as someone who approaches the management of his lycanthropy recklessly, which massively endangers others.

[remember, we only have lupin's word for the claim that snape forces him to leave his job because of his rage over his lost order of merlin... and not because lupin's failure to take his wolfsbane might have killed any number of the children who live in the school he appears to have been hired at to teach without any safeguarding measures being put in place.]

[although - before i make snape sound like an ofsted hero - obviously the main reason he forces lupin out is because he thinks he conspired with dumbledore and harry to free the man who murdered his beloved lily, and lupin is the only one of those people who he can feasibly get revenge on.]

lupin also functions - i think - as the living person on whom snape can focus his fury over james. and, in particular, over the hagiographical way james is remembered - which harry draws attention to in order of the phoenix by pointing out that nobody but snape has ever told him that his father was anything less than wonderful. snape's loathing of james' postmortem reputation - which connects to a belief he has while at school that james is two-faced, obsessed with his public image, and nowhere near as charming in private as he likes to make himself seem before a crowd [which is, of course, the only reason he thinks james intervened before lupin could kill him] - seems to me to be the clearest way in which his trauma over being bullied and never receiving any acknowledgement of that fact manifests itself.

[after all, the fact that everyone is agreed that james was perfect and noble and clever and loyal and funny and brave and benignly cheeky must make him feel... pretty gaslit...]

lupin is the character who expresses this hagiographical view of james most explicitly - he is literally incapable of ever criticising him [i.e. him telling harry that snape thinks james was a bully because he was jealous that james was so talented and popular... instead of because he was a bully...], hence him becoming the focus of snape's lingering trauma over what the "perfect" james did to him.

in contrast, snape clearly regards sirius as more honest - by which i don't mean that he regards him as more admirable, but that he believes with sirius that what you see is what you get. as bizarre as it sounds, i think he actually rates sirius for his role in the werewolf trick, because the callous disregard for his life sirius displays is something which confirms snape's belief that he's a cruel, crude, murderous cunt who doesn't deserve an ounce of the praise he gets, and he's clearly pleased that sirius appears to agree with this assessment. james and lupin - both of whom he clearly thinks whitewash their roles in the scheme in order to seem heroic [james] and a poor innocent [lupin] - upset him much more because he knows they're awful, violent liars but nobody else can see it.

this is an extremely perverse way of respecting someone, but it is respecting someone nonetheless... and i do think, as i said in the ask which inspired this one, that this would set up a way for snape and sirius to grow beyond the schoolboy sniping in time, in a world where james and lily lived and snape and sirius weren't forced by their grief into a state of arrested development - perpetually twenty-one, each using his teenage relationship with the other as a way of self-soothing his agony by regressing to a dynamic they had when their lost loves were still alive...

[puppetwoman17]

!Reposted because i thought it was so good I wanted it on my main account😅!

I don’t think we talk enough about how Billy himself never got to choose.

Sure, he loves being a hero now, but when you get down to it, he couldn’t refuse. He was practically destined to wield that power, and if he wasn’t, he was too detrimental to just push aside.

A homeless boy( at least 7, at most 12) who is now responsible for safeguarding the nexus of magic from those who would do it harm. Who now also must aid and protect other wielders of magic and magical creatures.

I wonder how it must’ve felt for him. For the Wizard to tell him that he is tasked with the utmost level of protection despite never receiving such protection. For having to keep safe grown adults and deities with power when he himself had none of that. That jealousy and bitterness could consume just about anyone.

You can’t erase your beginnings as much as you can’t erase your past, and a part of him will always look at his position, his job, and his magic users, with something akin to hate. Because he will never be able to forget how that seven year old boy felt, being forced to protect those who never protected him. He will never forget the fear and confusion and hurt and panic. And sometimes he wonders what other magic users would say if they knew.

Despite all of that, the Captain is still here, still fighting. And I think that is one of the reasons I love this boy so much, and hate how mis-characterized he is sometimes.

[ella-error505]

“Queen Rhaenyra's sons, Jacaerys and Joffrey Velaryon, were eager to join the fight atop their dragons, Vermax and Tyraxes, but she forbade them to go. However, the queen could not deny the advantage that the terrifying Nhero, her fourteen-year-old daughter's mount, presented to her cause. The logic of the princess and her grandfather, Lord Corlys, did not ultimately fall on deaf ears. So, nine days after Staunton's message, Rhaenys Targaryen, the Queen Who Never Was, and her dragon, Meleys, the Red Queen, followed by Princess Maella in the back of The Cannibal, arrived above Rook's Rest to aid Lord Staunton.”

“When Sunfyre and Vhagar also appeared, the dragons fought a thousand feet above the ground. Meleys's jaws closed around Sunfyre's neck, Vhagar fell upon them, and The Cannibal clung to Vhagar's back, scratching fiercely. Some say Princess Maella wanted to reach her uncle Aemond. Inevitably all three dragons crashed. From the ashes, only Vhagar and Nhero rose again. Sunfyre had one wing half torn from his body, whilst his rider, King Aegon II, suffered several broken bones and severe burns. Rhaenys was found completely burned next to Meleys. Princess Maella seemed intact, but not her Nhero, which had been seriously injured in the fight. Prince Aemond and Vhagar rose in pursuit, but Nhero and his rider were faster, fleeing before they could react.”

“On the coasts near Driftmark, the princess got off her dragon and ordered him to go away from the Westerosi coast, an action that is considered to have been guided by the gods, since years later Nhero would prove to be the safeguard of the power of House Targaryen. Nothing like it was ever heard of again in the history of Westeros, for Nhero obeyed and abandoned his rider on the shore to fly to Essos and not be seen for the next few years of the war. Queen Rhaenyra, having received news of her daughter's fall in battle, was too relieved when she appeared on the shores of Dragonstone hidden in a fishing boat to feel sorry for the loss of one of the largest dragons in her cause for the throne.”

“On the last day of the year 131 a.c., a roar like no other shook the foundations of King's Landing, and a giant shadow loomed from the sea. Queen Maella, according to Mushroom's account, ran with such desperation to the main courtyard of the Red Keep that her beautiful shoes flew out of her feet along the way, leaving her maids to catch them in the midst of the chaos. There Nhero, The Cannibal, landed, fully recovered from his wounds, barely larger than when he was last seen, and with one last victorious roar, the beast under his snout like an affectionate puppy for his rider to cling to it. The queen cried uncontrollably as she clung to her long-gone dragon, and the beast sat there.”

“The morning of the first day of the year 132 a.c., Nhero and Queen Maella ascended the sky together in celebration of their reunion, and would never be separated again until the queen's death.”

“Nhero was one of five dragons to survive the Dance of the Dragons — and after his return in 132 a.c., he was the biggest of two that still controlled by the Targaryen's, along with the young Morning, belonging to the queen dear sister, Lady Rhaena Targaryen.”

— Quotes from Archmaester Gyldayn's narrative of the story of Queen Maella I and her dragon, Nhero, The Cannibal, the only adult dragon that survived the Dance of Dragons.

[thespianinthebackcorner]

The kraken special is such an interesting concept to me. By nature, it is a special that traps you in a single form, but at a much larger size than normal, giving you strength and a shield in return for not being able to shapeshift and having less mobility and stealth. In some ways, it's very similar to DJ Octavio's current condition, as he's unable to shift back into human form. The only difference is that the special is temporary.

I wonder if there's people who advocate for or against it, since being shift-locked is canonically a disability you can gain from some form of injury. (DJ Octavio is the proof there.) I wonder if there's inkfish who refuse to use it because they're scared of it malfunctioning and locking them in swim form forever. Inkfish who feel suffocated if they stay in one form too long, who can't use it because just the prospect scares them. It's definitely a controversial special- I can't see any equivalent to it in human society, something that temporarily gives you what's considered a disability while giving you extra benefits. There's also the fact that the Kraken Royale is fairly close in size to DJ Octavio, even bigger, which implies it's a good chunk larger than an adult inkfish. How does it work? Can it malfunction, or are their safeguards against that happening?

I don't know. It's interesting to me.

[snowcollector]

More than 300 million children across the globe are victims of online sexual exploitation and abuse each year, research suggests. In what is believed to be the first global estimate of the scale of the crisis, researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that 12.6% of the world’s children have been victims of nonconsensual talking, sharing and exposure to sexual images and video in the past year, equivalent to about 302 million young people. A similar proportion – 12.5% – had been subject to online solicitation, such as unwanted sexual talk that can include sexting, sexual questions and sexual act requests by adults or other youths. Offences can also take the form of “sextortion”, where predators demand money from victims to keep images private, and abuse of AI deepfake technology. The research suggested that the US is a particularly high-risk area. The university’s Childlight initiative – which aims to understand the prevalence of child abuse – includes a new global index, which found that one in nine men in the US (equivalent to almost 14 million) admitted online offending against children at some point. Surveys found 7% of British men, equivalent to 1.8 million, admitted the same. The research also found many men admitted they would seek to commit physical sexual offences against children if they thought it would be kept secret. The chief executive of Childlight, Paul Stanfield, said: “This is on a staggering scale that in the UK alone equates to forming a line of male offenders that could stretch all the way from Glasgow to London – or filling Wembley Stadium 20 times over. “Child abuse material is so prevalent that files are on average reported to watchdog and policing organisations once every second. “This is a global health pandemic that has remained hidden for far too long. It occurs in every country, it’s growing exponentially, and it requires a global response. “We need to act urgently and treat it as a public health issue that can be prevented. Children can’t wait.” Stephen Kavanagh, the executive director of Interpol, said traditional law enforcement approaches were struggling to keep up. “We must do much more together at a global level, including specialist investigator training, better data sharing and equipment to effectively fight this pandemic and the harm it inflicts on millions of young lives around the world,” he said. Grace Tame, a child sexual abuse survivor, who founded the Grace Tame Foundation, said a centralised global research database was essential to safeguarding children.

but sure child abuse isn't "normalized" at all

[radioactivewisdom]

Sex addiction and validation seeking on full display. Imagine endangering your children’s lives so that you can get some. Even if you never allow your glorified fuck buddy into the house, which is unlikely because women never hold their boundaries for “romance”YOUR own life is on the line which would still affect the children. I thought the love a mother experiences for her children is the most unconditional and like no other. Why are so many women still emotionally unfulfilled without a partnership based upon physicality, when they supposedly have something much more important?

The cognitive dissonance is INSANE. “Prioritize your children” while also admitting that there is no safe way to have another person you’re pursuing around them… The only conditioning that has taken place is the one between your brain and genitalia that makes it impossible for you to imagine life without a domestic partnership. Nuclear family or not, doesn’t change the dynamic that all “romantic” relationships seek to replicate.

The biggest threat to children’s well being and safety is a male with whom they have no biological relation. Even blood relatives pose a threat, but the further away from a family tree, the more risk. No motherly instinct to be found, children are routinely sacrificed so that emotionally stunted adults can get their fix of social validation. Even if you were a brain dead bimbo before giving birth, the moment your children arrived should have been a wake up call. You should want nothing more than to safeguard their innocence and be an example of self assuredness. Too bad the average “mama bear” can no longer spot danger when she’s blinded by physical attraction.

[laundryandtaxes]

When the whole thing is said and done, I hope that what comes out of the medical scandal of pediatric transition is an understanding not just of the fact that it's important not to let ideology guide practice such that real physicians tell outright lies, ideological abstractions, and/or functionally religious beliefs (that one may have been born in the wrong body, or that one may have the wrong variety of brain in their body, or that one could possibly be "harmed" by going through one's natural puberty in and of itself, etc) to patients who are literally too young to distinguish between lies and truth, but also an understanding that what happened here on the whole with the medical approach to gender dysphoria was a total abdication of duty to provide least invasive practices first, total refusal to provide justification for the practice of selling extreme body modification to people who are at least often obsessively convinced that something is wrong with their body when medicine doesn't do this regularly for any other patients with body distress, total failure of safeguarding practices in a patient group very likely to contain vulnerable and otherwise emotionally distressed patients, and most of all a refusal to even try to address the mental health concerns of a group of people that these physicians just decided on no basis (there are no large studies comparing overall outcomes with transition treated as an actual variable, wherein some people are given one treatment, others none, others another treatment, underlying this practice) were too ill to respond to all of the practices we have already accepted as approaches to psychological distress.

This is at the heart of why ROGD has so many people freaked out- sure, those people who show signs of extreme gender nonconformity in childhood, who grow more distressed than normal at the onset of puberty because it means a loss of the androgyny that protects so much of child gender nonconformity, who are likely to grow into crossdressing homosexual or bisexual adults, who are more likely than other people to struggle with obsessive and compulsive tendencies, who are more likely to struggle to connect with other people socially, I'm sure they require surgical and hormonal body modification in order to live happy and healthy lives, but I am quite sure that no such treatment is right for my sweet, outgoing, heterosexual daughter who until 6 months ago was never very gender nonconforming. People like her deserve extra safeguarding so that the only treatment medicine ever even attempted at scale for this psychological problem is reserved for the people who truly cannot be integrated into society any other way. It is really quite deeply offensive that, because very gender nonconforming people are less valued, we got none of the normal safeguarding or study or approach to treatment that people who approach doctors with broken bones or other physical problems receive. Of course there is always some very real chance that we just happened upon the "right" treatment, but for one thing we don't know that because we simply never tried anything less invasive the way one normally does in medicine (let alone actual comparative studies different potential treatment options) and for another it's currently being sold to people using ideological abstractions or functionally religious concepts that have no basis in reality like the concept of being born in the wrong body. Those are both problems no matter how long medicine is allowed to continue ignoring them, which by the way will not be forever. If medicine cannot reign itself in, if it cannot police itself, then the only actors left to reign it in are all much more susceptible to their own forms of ideological capture than medicine was, such as state legislatures, which is bad for everyone in the same way that state intervention in doctor/patient decisions is almost always bad for everyone.

[mariacallous]

A few weeks ago, a Google search for “deepfake nudes jennifer aniston” brought up at least seven high-up results that purported to have explicit, AI-generated images of the actress. Now they have vanished.

Google product manager Emma Higham says that new adjustments to how the company ranks results, which have been rolled out this year, have already cut exposure to fake explicit images by over 70 percent on searches seeking that content about a specific person. Where problematic results once may have appeared, Google’s algorithms are aiming to promote news articles and other nonexplicit content. The Aniston search now returns articles such as “How Taylor Swift's Deepfake AI Porn Represents a Threat” and other links like a Ohio attorney general warning about “deepfake celebrity-endorsement scams” that target consumers.

“With these changes, people can read about the impact deepfakes are having on society, rather than see pages with actual nonconsensual fake Images,” Higham wrote in a company blog post on Wednesday.

The ranking change follows a WIRED investigation this month that revealed that in recent years Google management rejected numerous ideas proposed by staff and outside experts to combat the growing problem of intimate portrayals of people spreading online without their permission.

While Google made it easier to request removal of unwanted explicit content, victims and their advocates have urged more proactive steps. But the company has tried to avoid becoming too much of a regulator of the internet or harm access to legitimate porn. At the time, a Google spokesperson said in response that multiple teams were working diligently to bolster safeguards against what it calls nonconsensual explicit imagery (NCEI).

The widening availability of AI image generators, including some with few restrictions on their use, has led to an uptick in NCEI, according to victims’ advocates. The tools have made it easy for just about anyone to create spoofed explicit images of any individual, whether that’s a middle school classmate or a mega-celebrity.

In March, a WIRED analysis found Google had received more than 13,000 demands to remove links to a dozen of the most popular websites hosting explicit deepfakes. Google removed results in around 82 percent of the cases.

As part of Google’s new crackdown, Higham says that the company will begin applying three of the measures to reduce discoverability of real but unwanted explicit images to those that are synthetic and unwanted. After Google honors a takedown request for a sexualized deepfake, it will then try to keep duplicates out of results. It will also filter explicit images from results in queries similar to those cited in the takedown request. And finally, websites subject to “a high volume” of successful takedown requests will face demotion in search results.

“These efforts are designed to give people added peace of mind, especially if they’re concerned about similar content about them popping up in the future,” Higham wrote.

Google has acknowledged that the measures don’t work perfectly, and former employees and victims’ advocates have said they could go much further. The search engine prominently warns people in the US looking for naked images of children that such content is unlawful. The warning’s effectiveness is unclear, but it’s a potential deterrent supported by advocates. Yet, despite laws against sharing NCEI, similar warnings don’t appear for searches seeking sexual deepfakes of adults. The Google spokesperson has confirmed that this will not change.

[walkthroughtheforest]

Lila's (and Tula's) grooming alarm is ringing. Is that too dark a thing to say? I guess being a teacher and attending so much safeguarding training means I can't switch off that part of my brain.

An adult taking a child off to one side and telling them they are special, and smarter than them and that they need them for a greater cause is and should be a cause for concern. It doesn't mean necessarily that there is something wrong, but it means there is something that needs to be shared and discussed with another trusted adult- just as Lila chose to do. An eye needs to be kept on the situation and the child needs to be protected from potential harm.

I have worked with particularly vulnerable children, so I've thought about these scenarios more than the average person, so maybe that's why it made me cry to see Lila do the exact right thing to keep herself safe. She knew she could trust her mum to believe her and take her seriously, and Tula believes her and questions and digs so gently without frightening her daughter. It's also important to note that she believes her even though they are talking about an adult and more importantly, someone who is part of their family and holds a position of authority.

I guess my reaction to the scenario took me by surprise, but also it's so important that we as a society, adults and children, learn how to recognise the signs of grooming, so I'm taking to opportunity to share my thoughts.

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 19 of Nona the Ninth

Very short, but probably the most horrifying part of this book so far (I don't want to speculate in detail about all of the things Nona did to herself to get free of the chairs), and even after sitting on this for like a month I still don't really understand what is happening here

For some reason I thought at first that she was somehow still in the classroom from before, but I see now that's not the case. This room she's in now seems to be part of a larger building, it's not clear if she actually left the building at all during this chapter, so possibly this could be part of the underground BOE complex that we saw earlier. She doesn't seem to recognize anything, but she's not really in a state to, I guess

I'm not sure why Camilla would have left her behind, or given her up to BOE? And this must be some other BOE wing if they think the sorts of safeguards they put in place here would actually stop her

I'm interested in where the first tantrum falls on the timeline, and what caused it. Based on what Nona has said so far, most of the time period during which she was "too young" to remember anything she also didn't have a lot of motor control, so it had to have been after that period, right? And what did the first tantrum remind Pyrrha of? I could understand if it said here that Pyrrha was just uneasy remembering the tantrum itself, but it specifically says that it's because the tantrum reminded Pyrrha of something else, and since this is Nona telling us about someone's unspoken thoughts I tend to believe it is correct

There's three people that Nona could possibly be, really, and that's Harrow, Gideon, and Alecto. Pyrrha has had some limited experience of Harrow and some extremely brief experience of Gideon in Harrow the Ninth, but I think the only thing that either of them did during that book that Pyrrha would be uneasy to remember was the soup scene and I kind of doubt that a barely-consciously-aware Nona would be able to do something that sophisticated, and I also get the feeling that Nona has never used necromancy for as long as she's been Nona - otherwise, I think they probably would have concluded that she was Harrow by now, and would not be entertaining the idea that she might be Gideon. But what if Nona's first tantrum actually reminded Pyrrha of something Alecto did way back 10,000 years ago? The other Lyctors did describer her as monstrous, and also like she didn't really know how to be a human. So it's looking more like Nona may actually be Alecto now. Or maybe she is just Alecto while having tantrums

I mean, I think the ability to hit something for long periods of time is also based on strength, it's not really a separate skill than hitting hard. Just in this case she does not seem to be experiencing pain or discomfort at all, so she just doesn't stop when her body hurts and just keeps going, it's basically the same principle as when people get flooded with adrenaline after like a car accident and are capable of doing things they shouldn't be able to do for a short period of time. If we want to believe that she really doesn't have the ability to hit the door any harder than normal, I think she would be hitting it for a much longer time than we see in this chapter

Of all of the adults that were involved in that sequence of events, I think Pash is actually the least at fault for everything that happened there. Well, Pash and maybe Camilla, to whatever extent Camilla is still a separate person than Palamedes, who is extremely at fault for everything, IMO

Also, the last time Nona was talking about Pash, she was saying how cool she was. I don't know if this is indicative of Nona somehow being a different person right now, or being multiple people, or what

Interesting that Nona doesn't seem to think of her body as being hers during this segment, I don't think she has said anything like that before in this book?

I do not know what "she opened her mouth to remember her teeth" means

That makes it sound like she is two people right now, or is being possessed by someone. But I don't know who in this situation would actually care if they were killing Harrow, or Nona, or Alecto - I don't think this wing of BOE actually cares much if any of those people dies, and it seems like they are in fact trying to kill whoever Nona is right now. So why would it make sense to say that to them? Or, since she is "talking to herself", are we meant to understand that there are three people here, and that the third person is telling Nona that she's killing Harrow by all the stuff she did to her body during this chapter?

[leornadodabvinci]

Hello! Do you have any other Grand Chase headcanons to share on this fine day? 👁️👁️

HI HELLO YES I DO OMGGG SORRY FOR THE LATE RESPONSE I DIDN’T OPEN TUMBLR FOR A BIT BUT I HAVE A DISCORD SERVER FOR KEEPING NOTES OF STUFF AND ONE CHANNEL IS JUST DEDICATED TO RANDOM HCS AND SO UM. I have a few (that would make sense without an elaborate explanation)👉👈 they’re mostly if not all elesis and sieghart though ahahah… ANYWYA

*takes a deep breath*

(Sorry if the terminologies aren’t right im just rambling skhdjsj) (also a lot of them are sieg and elesis aha…)

- Sieghart currently is built like a dancer, lithe and flexible, because of the extra innate godlike strength he got from being a highlander. He doesn’t have to exert as much strength as when he was just a mortal, or like the weight doesn’t affect him that much anymore? Plus, i hc that the highlanders’ style is more elegant and flow-y, compared to the brutishness of the sieghart family’s. When he was younger, around Elesis’ age, he was built more like her. Body builder, bigger muscle kinda look.

- Elesis, as she grows into her late 20’s receives sooooo many “you look just like Sieghart!” Or “you look just like your father!” Comments, but as she grows past 30 and 40, they die down. Because sieghart is stuck in his 30’s, and elscud died (? Disappeared?) in his 40’s.

- sieghart is a jack of all trades, master of none kinda guy.

- Dio and Sieghart have a strange way of being intimate. It isn’t really… intimacy. They don’t do pda, they do something more nothingburger and subtle that it feels more vulgar if you catch them doing it. Its like a game? But not really? Since they’re not trying to hide it either 😭 i don’t know how to describe it. Like the Chase could be in a meeting together and Sieghart/Dio is eating something and one of them goes “blech” and instead of eating the food, they try it from the other’s mouth and then is like “oh ew ur right omg” and then the chase woukd just stare at them.

- dio and sieg are truly, evenly matched in skill. Its a battle of attrition. Though probably sieg has the upper hand since he’s immortal?

- dio’s actually also playboy, just not in mortal sense. He takes up someone every 5 - 10 years, which i hc is the equivalent of changing gfs/bfs every couple of months in demon sense of time. He tries to mean well though, and doesn’t do one night stands.

- sieghart is a one night stand enthusiast. He’s a total flirt too.

- height hc: dio > sieg > zero > ley > grandiel > werner > (noticeable drop) > ryan > lire > jin > rufus > harpe > ronan > asin > lass > edel > rin > elesis > amy > (big drop here) > arme > lime > veigas

- Elesis is a doof and lowkey rich girl coded. “How much is an apple anyway? Like $10?”

- the Chase act more like childish, more their age (more carefree, unburdened, yknow young adults/teens) around Sieghart.

- lass and rufus have the same eye shape. They both take after their mother more.

- Grandiel finds Sieghart to be the best company. They both understand each other very well, and seamlessly fall into conversation no matter how long its been since they last met.

- that’s why when Sieghart found out who Kyle and Cindy was, it stung a little. But he understood, of course. He holds no grudge against Grandiel.

- Sieghart acts like a safeguard for the Chase. He doesn’t want any of them to go through any of this alone.

- Ley, Rin and Sieghart are besties. Wine date trio.

- Lime and Dio also unexpectedly get along well. They’re optimistic people. Two sides of the same coin.

- Rufus cares about Lass more than he thinks. When Lass gets sick, he most definitely appears and lingers around until he gets better.

Okaay i think thats itttt hehe :3 Thank you for this ask I definitely enjoyed it LOL

[thisloveforyourmom]

longform here but on rereading the lost hero camp jupiter is so. fucked up.

like don't get me wrong, i love new rome and the idea of it and how utopic it must seem to percy and the other young demigods, but there's a fundamental mismatch between camp half blood and new rome.

camp halfblood's problem is that there are no adults. being a demigod is very, very dangerous. we don't see many members of camp half blood surviving into adulthood or coming back as camp counselors. one of the oldest at the camp is luke, who's only college aged. and so what you get is a society of teenagers - of course there's a pecking order, because it's a society of teenagers. of course the rules are blatantly unfair, because it's teenagers making them and policing them. the only two adults who are in any way intimately familiar with the demigods are chiron and dionysus, neither of whom are mortal and understand the true struggle that's happening here.

and so yeah, you get this situation where it's not safe to be a greek demigod, and you probably won't live to adulthood. but it's not because they're not trying. it's because teenagers just aren't always capable of protecting and raising and safeguarding each other while trying to do the same for themselves.

the problem is that that environment is mirrored in new rome, where the legion is a protective force but also a very, very dangerous one. quests are dangerous. monsters are dangerous. even war games are dangerous - gwen would have died before percy had even slept one night at camp jupiter if not for the doors of death. they explicitly mention that the incident where the fifth cohort lost the eagle was "a massacre." except that while camp halfblood is this way because they don't know there is another way, camp jupiter is just....not. assuming a fourth of new rome - population around 300, according to hazel - is too old to fight and a fourth is what would reasonably be considered too young, you have a community of around 150 grown, capable adults, who grew up in the legion, who were trained to fight, and who have the perspective of age to see how barbaric it is that there are 200 teenagers being used as their front line.

but the thing is that new rome kind of quietly just....pushes that away. pushes that thought to the side. see, the thing is that camp jupiter isn't actually within the safe haven bounds of the pomerian line. they have the little tiber, but it's clearly not as powerful as, say, the camp half blood safe havens - it took percy using the river to stop the gorgons. but most of the legion can't use the pomerian line for protection because you have to be unarmed to enter it. they protect the pomerian line, not the other way around. in any other society, it would only make sense to take the 10 years spent serving in camp jupiter - the 10 years it is explicitly most dangerous to be a demigod - and shelter children during that time. if you come to new rome under 18, you should be housed. you should finish your education without worrying about which of your friends will die in the week between now and exams. you put your years of service into keeping that community alive after it's nourished you through the worst part of your adolescence. And you could probably halve the years of mandatory service if demigods weren't dying at 11 years old so often.

and the thing is, that's actually how camp half blood operates. The point of it IS to provide young demigods a safe place in the absence of adults who can meaningfully help them. It's dangerous to be there only because it's dangerous to be a demigod. Should Greek demigod adults maybe be taking more responsibility here? Yes. But camp half blood's resources aren't prioritized to them. Their purpose is to shelter teens, not adults who have passed the worst of it and can reasonably support themselves. They're not safe because the resources available are not adequate to ensure full safety. at camp jupiter, instead, the teenagers are removed from daily life and put on the front lines - why? because they're disposable. there are resources there, but they aren't for the teens. they can't be members of the community, because it's too dangerous to rely on them, to count on them, to absorb them fully, until you can be sure they're not gonna get killed. not to mention, you can keep them in the legion because they have nowhere else to go. where camp halfblood said "we can't guarantee your safety unless you stay, and we have things that need to be done," new rome only allows members to muster out of the legion if you've served ten full years. imagine how someone like nico would have been treated if he truly was a child of pluto. he wouldn't just be a runaway, he'd be a deserter - there'd be none of the 'showing up every now and then for a hot meal and vanishing' thing. he'd be gone for good. "you give us your life in exchange for the safety we can provide. if you leave you can't come back."

and that attitude, that the rule of law at camp jupiter reigns supreme and those who fail aren't worthy of staying, permeates into everything involved with the camp. camp half blood has satyrs who explicitly search for and protect demigods until they realize who they are, and it's implied the punishments for failing to do so are relatively severe. at the very least, they don't like sending out satyrs who've failed to try and protect more children. jason, leo, and piper meet annabeth for the first time because the camp knew there were demigods there and came for them to bring them somewhere safe.

but roman demigods as a whole are just built different, right? all of them find the wolf house and get prelim training with lupa and then end up in new rome. except...it's not all roman demigods. it's just all the demigods new rome knows about, and not even that, because hazel herself hasn't been to the wolf house. her cover story is that nico found her in new orleans and brought her personally to the camp. it's all the roman demigods who didn't die on the way down from the wolf house. it's all the roman demigods who didn't die trying to find it.

and yes, i know it's big stupid to try and apply adult rules to YA novels. of course the real reason for all of this is that it's more fun this way to a younger audience, and for that i have no complaints.

it's just fun to think about.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Spring 2023 Anime Overview: Oshi no Ko

Spoiler free premise: A doctor in a small town is a fan of a sixteen-year-old idol Ai Hoshino. But then Ai shows up with a secret pregnancy. Now he’s going to have to figure out how to deal with her secret and safeguard her from obsessive fans as he helps her give birth…

Spoiler for the entire first super long episode twist premise under the cut:

…that is, until the doctor is murdered by Ai’s stalker and reincarnates as Aqua, one of the twin children Ai gives birth to. The other twin, Ruby, is also a reincarnated soul. She was a former patient of the doctor’s, a twelve-year-old who was a huge fan of Ai before dying of terminal illness. Both twins are unaware of the other’s former identity, but they both enjoy their new lease on life and come to love Ai all the more.

All seems well (I mean well for the twins, that is, not for the viewer who has to grapple with all this bizarre and creepy premise) until the same stalker that murdered the doctor murders Ai herself. Aqua realizes his father/Ai’s secret lover must have leaked Ai’s location to the stalker on purpose. The problem is that Ai never told Aqua and Ruby who their father was. So Aqua vows to track down his father and kill the man for what he did to Ai, whatever the cost. After growing into a teenager, he gets more involved in the entertainment industry and begins his search for his mother’s true killer in earnest.

Yeah, that’s a lot isn’t it? And it probably doesn’t help when I tell you that before he becomes Aqua, the doctor basically admits he, an adult man, wouldn’t turn down a date from the sixteen year old Ai, prompting the nurse to call him a lolicon (because anime will always insist on using that phrase where they should say ‘pedophile/ephebophile'). Or that baby Aqua refuses to breastfeed with Ai, but his twelve-year-old-girl-in-a-past-life twin happily does so with a huge, lascivious grin. (There’s also a discussion where Aqua says ‘he’ll let it slide’ when he learns Ruby was a girl in her past life too, she’s like ‘wow so great I was born a girl so I can enjoy mama's/Ai's breasts” and he’s like “no it’s not okay actually” and you just have to sit back and realize this is a conversation you’re watching on TV. This is where your life has bought you. )

Why did you keep watching, you ask me when I say these things? Well, it was well-made and engrossing. The animation was great, the pace was snappy, and Ai was instantly endearing. Plus everyone was talking about it endlessly on a discord I belong to, and they said after the first episodes the weirdness of the reincarnation angle becomes less important, the horny baby antics go away, and it becomes more of a straightforward murder mystery and a intriguing exploration of the entertainment industry.

And that’s pretty much true. The show goes out of the way to handwave Aqua’s past life by saying going through puberty and infantile amnesia means he now doesn’t know where he starts and the other dude begins anymore, and he essentially feels like a teenager.

Where Oshi no Ko is truly compelling is it’s exploration of the predatory entertainment industry and the twisted misogyny and parasociality of idol fandom.

It makes some basic, but very needed, points. It points out that fans who freak out over 'their' idols having a relationship and blame them for it are gross, and the industry that puts them in a box is gross. This is very basic stuff, but still underdiscussed in anime. A lot of anime pretend all is well for an idol since the anime industry itself makes bank off idols. So it was satisfying to see to see a character scream ‘You all fall in love with idols, it's selfish to say idols can't fall in love! You take out all your anger on women because you don't have a girlfriend!" at the endless twitter comments saying it was "expected" that Ai was killed for ‘betraying’ her fans. It's also clear the author did a lot of research on the entertainment industry and has a lot to share. A lot of what he has to share is really interesting, and I appreciate that in his interviews he wanted to make sure Americans understand that Japanese actors and idols don’t have unions and it leaves them open to even more exploitation.

(Even the bizarre premise of the anime is nod to a gross “joke” idol fans make- a lot of 2channers apparently joke about wanting to “be reborn” as their favorite idol’s child whenever there’s a marriage announcement. However, it feels like the premise is rooted a lot in shock value...)

At the same time, Oshi no Ko doesn’t really go as hard as people act like it does. It’s not Perfect Blue, and it pulls its punches. It still goes for easy answers sometimes, and what’s worse, easy answers that lionize its obnoxious protagonist. Never is this more apparent that the cyberbullying arc.

First, let’s be clear- the cyberbullying arc focuses on a reality show actor, a girl named Akane, being driven to attempt suicide after a bunch of internet detractors harass her over something she did on the show (that the producers pressured her into doing in the first place). However, Aqua saves her at the last minute.

Hana Kimura lost her life in a very similar incident just a few months before this arc in the manga was published and the author’s spoken about it on record. Hana was a pro-wrestler who was on the reality show Terrace House, and what happened to her is the same thing in broad strokes, only she didn’t get a convenient rescue. But nobody bothered to contact Hana’s family about any of this, so Hana’s mother was blindsided when she heard about it, and claims some of the hate messages in the anime are identical to the ones Hana received in real life. She pleaded that "Because it raises important issues, I would like to support a work like Oshi no Ko.  However, I don't think it needs to be done in a way that makes people  who have actually been victimized on social media suffer when they see it.”.

Oshi no Ko fans, having just watched an arc about the serious consequences of internet harassment, were of course respectful to the grieving mother of a harassment victim- nah, they harassed Hana’s mom for criticizing the show. Another example of the incredible media literacy of anime fans.

All of that was already not a great look for the manga and show, and I think the kind thing to do would have been to contact the family before telling this story. But even if that wasn’t a thing, I didn’t like how this arc was handled. After Akane is saved by Aqua, he leaks her attempted suicide to the press. Though there’s a mention that this unethical, he’s never really taken to task or confronted with the fact this violation of her privacy could have led to another (potentially successful!) suicide attempt. Then he talks to the director, reminds him that Akane is a teenager and adults should protect children, the director has a change of heart. Aqua's given permission to release footage of the cast being friends, the harassment dies down and Akane immediately gets better offscreen, because that’s how trauma and depression works!

God, ‘depression is NBD! You recover quickly!’ is one of my biggest fiction pet peeves. Considering how despicable the producers were to Hana IRL, the whole storyline wrapping up like this wasn't just sloppy and lazy, it was insulting.

Rather than explore with the actual messy fallout this would realistically have for Akane, it just had Aqua get to be the edgy savior who was In the Right even though his actions were horrible and could have had catastrophic consequences. Also the ‘adults should protect kids’ moral felt weak when Hana and many other entertainers who hurt themselves after being mistreated by fans and the industry were adults. Did they not deserve to be protected?

And I guess it sums up a lot of my problems with the show. It's painstakingly researched and talks about interesting stuff (though sometimes one character has to become an exposition machine just so we don't miss ANY of the author's research, which can feel awkward). It has some interesting and complex main female characters … but 3/4s of them have some romantic connection to Aqua, which grates. It’s more honest about the idol industry than most anime, but also sometimes pulls its punches when it comes to exploring actual mental illness and industry abuse.

'Aqua is the smartest and all the girls are sooo into him’ gets pretty annoying. Two girls are already in love with him, and even without the really unnecessary ‘was a pedophile in a past life’ baggage, he barely has a personality. Aaaand there’s how we have to listen to him muse about whether he was in love with his mom. Aaaand there's the looming threat that the next girl to fall in love with him will be his sister, since she muses she was in love with the doctor in her past life.

Once sis mentioned that, I started wondering if I should even come back to season 2. Leaning towards ‘no’ right now (definitely not if the manga really does…that). I don’t regret watching ONK- it was interesting, well animated and produced, and the theme song is a certified bop- but it’s also not something I could ever recommend to anyone. It’s the most fraught show I’ve watched in a long time, and in the end, I’m not sure all of its weird parts add up to a satisfying, truly subversive story.  It’s a mess, but time will tell if it’s an intriguing enough mess for me to come back to.

[myfandomrealitea]

I'm so upset by antis sometimes. once i made a few mistakes with a minor as an adult:

acted inappropriately with them, i thought they could handle more than said they could, things they consented to at the time they were facetious about how 'comfortable' they were-- probably to set me up

now everyone labels me as a predator just because of that and the fiction i like. so much for 'forgive and forget', huh? :/ i hate child brats in Fandom so much they ruin it for everyone. i don't get mad if i see some kid get shit bc at this point i know they're lying or exaggerating claims to get out of trouble.

This is one of those scenarios where I really can't comment on anything except future safeguarding because "acting inappropriately with a minor because they consented" could literally mean anything and I'm not about to validate actions I do not actually know.

However, in the future, its best to adopt the practice of setting firm boundaries with minors. Very firm boundaries. Unfortunately the internet never forgets, no matter who forgives, especially when it comes to things like this.

While minors are absolutely welcome in fandom spaces and I refuse to participate in trying to segregate minors off and treat them like fragile little glass babies who can't know about murder and sex until they're 21, I also understand for the safety of both sides there needs to be a certain level of separation and firm boundaries in place.

For example, I refuse to have any private conversations with minors online. Any discussion I have with one must happen publicly so there is evidence and witnesses to the original texts, and evidence that can't be so easily manipulated.

(E.g; if someone edits a screenshot of a post I made, its all too easy to link to the existing, original post proving its fake.)

I don't roleplay with them or collaborate on fanfiction (again, this involves too much closed-off and private communication, unless its something public like a SFW round robin). If I'm in Discord servers I use the note box on their server profiles to mark who is a minor so I know what is and isn't appropriate to say or involve them in.

It really is better to be safe than be sorry. I can't control what a minor chooses to involve themselves in or expose themselves to but I can control how much I involve them in and expose them to.

I'd also fully recommend blocking anyone who attempts to contact you or interact with you in bad faith. Some people will simply weaponise anything they can against someone they disagree with.