#and the fact politicians are using 'we don't want to be called bigots' to justify their inaction is utterly disgusting

[heloflor]

You know, considering how many posts I recently made about Movie Peach and how negative they are, there’s something I feel the need to clarify since I wouldn’t be surprised if people had some assumptions and I don’t want words I didn’t say being put into my mouth (Tl;Dr at the end):

As a completely original character, fully detached from everything other than the movie, I have no issues with Movie Peach. She’s badass in a fun way, spunky, has a few cute faces, and I especially appreciate how despite being a strong female character stereotype she’s very supportive of Mario and builds him up rather than putting him down, it makes her likeable and their relationship very cute.

And yes, this is the way I perceived her from the get-go, but only mentioned it in my movie reaction post made all the way back when said movie came out, hence needing to say it again now. To quote that post: “Least favorite character is DK. It could’ve been Peach but my issues with her stem from how different she is from her games counterpart. If you take her movie character as a brand-new character rather than a game adaptation, she’s actually pretty great as a guide and strong mentor.” And while there are things in this post I now disagree with, this part remains my current opinion.

So yeah, as an original character, she’s pretty great...but that’s also the issue.

Movie Peach is not an original character. She’s supposed to be an adaptation of a pre-existing character who already has her own personality. And as an adaptation, Movie Peach fails at every level. Not only that, but several dialogues keep hyping her up in a way that comes off as Illuminations looking down on Games Peach, you know, the character their own Peach is supposed to be an adaptation of.

That’s why I take such issue with Movie Peach. It’s not the character itself, it’s how bad of an adaptation she is. And if I did my job correctly, every single time I talk negatively of her in my posts, it’s about her as an adaptation specifically. The only instance of me being an ass for no reason is in my table comparison post where I call her a dumbass, which I point out in the tags to be me throwing shade and not something I actually believe.

Now I also want to say that I hate Movie Peach for what she represents and the consequences of her existence on Peach’s character and her perception by the public, so to keep it short I’m going with bullet points:

It annoys me a lot that a multi-million dollars company couldn’t be bothered to adapt her character properly, especially since they apparently closely worked with Nintendo and the concept art very much show them who Peach is as a person (the one where she’s encouraging Mario to fight DK reminds me of the 86 Anime where she keeps having Mario fight her battles while powerless to defend herself; also it’s funny how in the art of Games Peach reacting to Movie Peach it’s obvious the artist had no idea what personality Movie Peach has). The fact she’s a favorite character of mine doesn’t help and makes me feel robbed from seeing a beloved character on the big screen for the first time. And obviously them low-key insulting her by hyping up Movie Peach makes it worse.

Even before getting into the fandom I knew that Peach isn’t the most well-liked character, with many gamers especially finding her bland and boring. This was already sad on its own, but now those same people are praising a character who’s completely different from her for being “so much better” or “finally giving her a personality”. It sucks. Games Peach deserves better than that.

With those things in mind I don’t think I need to explain why the fact this characterization is possibly bleeding out into the games is something I dread. Now I can live with a cover art change, but if they change her actual character I’m going to scream. Especially if they only do it to Peach and no other character. And yes I know some people also pointed out a possible direction change for her voice but 1. for some reason I don’t really care, possibly because she’s been through quite a lot of voice-actors already 2. we only clearly hear her voice in the Showtime trailer during the Kung-Fu part so maybe her voice will differ depending on the costume, it is a stageplay after all, and 3. the Wonder short with Bowser has her let out four noises, one of which has a different tone while the other three keep her usual high octave, so I’m not sure if they truly intend on changing her voice. Haven’t played Wonder yet tho so I can’t speak to all her other voicelines.

Hopefully this will be my last post about this outside of answering asks and reblogs as I’m always open to discussions/debates. I don’t like bringing negativity and especially not drama to my blog but, considering the extensive rant I made about this, it only feels right to make sure people don’t misinterpret where my issues come from, since I can absolutely understand people seeing my posts and concluding that I hate Movie Peach for who she is rather than what she represents.

Now, instead of being negative about Movie Peach I’d rather focus on being positive about Games Peach, mostly through the fics I’m working on.

Tl;Dr: Movie Peach would be genuinely great as an original character but alas she was put inside the skin of someone with a completely different personality from hers. And it's very hard to look past this given the consequences of Movie Peach's existence on how people percieve Peach as a whole now on top of a possible change in her games character.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Sara Higdon

Published: Apr 8, 2023

We have seen an uptick in violent incidents from the “Trans” activist community. Kellie-Jay Keen was attacked by a mob in New Zealand, Billboard Chris was assaulted at a protest in Vancouver, Alex Stein had hot coffee poured on him in San Francisco, and most recently also in San Francisco, at San Francisco State University Riley Gaines was assaulted and essentially kidnaped by protestors.

This is on top of the number of state capitals that have been stormed in protest of trans related legislation. However, when I see these protests I am noticing that most of the activists don't appear to be trans themselves. They are using the Trans community as a vehicle to push their ideology with zero regard for the backlash that it brings upon actual trans people.

In the video of Riley Gaines' attack, it only appears that one in ten may have identified as such. We can tell this because progressive transgender people don’t try to fit in or blend in, they want you to know they are “trans.” Historically the “T” in LGBT stood for Transsexual. Which was used for those whose goal it is to “pass” and assimilate into society and not bring attention to the fact that we are the opposite sex as we present.

Progressives have been able to change the meaning of the “T”, to commandeer a community that just wants to live their lives in peace, to force their ideology on the world.

Around 2013, the “T” was changed to mean “Transgender.” With the change came a shift from the binary into the world of queer theory. Transexuals live in a binary world, they have gender dysphoria and take the steps to blend into the world as the opposite sex. Transgender is an “umbrella” term that ushered in the notion of non-binary and postmodern theory into an otherwise binary world. The postmodern aspect allowed progressives to then co-opt the “trans” moniker. They can now self-identify into an “oppressed” community, so that officials are afraid to do anything against it, for fear of being called bigots. 

Progressives tried to do the same thing with Black Lives Matter (BLM) in the summer of 2020. The issue was that this required convincing the black population to buy into their ideology and do their bidding. When you see the riot videos, a large portion of the assailants were white Antifa members. At the time, they were able to use the fight against Critical Race Theory (CRT) as their recruitment tool. They claimed it was “just teaching history.” The world woke up to their lies, and they had to go a different route; ushering in the push for Queer Theory. 

Queer theory and CRT are two sides of the same coin. Both are based in  postmodern neomarxist ideology and follow the same tenets. When the “Q” community was able to make “trans/non-binary” something that you can self-ID into, they were able to do the work themselves that they couldn’t convince the black community to do.

Progressives are able to push their ideology through violence, which then gets justified by politicians and mainstream media on the left. With headlines like "Anti-Lia Thomas activist escorted by police amid protest at SFSU," They have somehow convinced these people that it's ok for a male to hit a female as long as that male identifies as a woman, and blame the victim of the assault. They will continue with this strategy until it is no longer working, then they will move on to the next “oppressed minority” to destroy their standing in society.

Further proof that progressives don’t care about the “trans'' community is that they try to silence anyone that doesn't follow their ideology. I have had Antifa try to shut down three events I have taken part in. The last one was a few weeks ago in Pennsylvania. The venue that Chloe Cole (a detransitioner) and I (a transexual woman) were supposed to speak at got accidentally leaked the day prior, and immediately the hotel got phone calls and the local police said they didn’t have the manpower to be able to protect us if they showed up. The venue canceled, but thankfully a church 30 mins away stepped up and hosted with no issues.

Finally, everyone has the right to free speech, whether you disagree with that speech or not. Violence is never justified because you dislike what a person is saying. The only reason a person resorts to violence is because they have no meaningful counter argument.

I happen to agree with Riley Gaines on a lot of issues, and the areas we disagree, are areas where we can work together to come up with reasonable solutions. Violence shuts down the ability to create meaningful change, and only creates division. Prior to the progressive infiltration of the trans community, there were 1.4 million trans people in the United States. Demonizing this entire group because of the actions of the Marxist colonizers is playing into their hands. Those who physically assault others need to be charged. All of those who kidnapped Riley Gaines should be expelled and charged as well. Violence in the name of trans rights should never be tolerated—yet it is advocated for by the progressive left.

==

This is precisely the reason the canard "words are violence" was created. What it means is, I don't like what you have to say, so I'm entitled to physically assault you, and then we're even. Because your words and my violence are the same.

Personally, I'm not a fan of Sara's use of the word "progressive." I prefer the term "illiberal left."

It's not "progressive" to rehabilitate 1950s stereotypes as "gender identity," or invert MLK Jr's dream of a colorblind society into one that's color-conscious color-obsessed, or medicalize gay kids "straight," or deny both biology and evolution, or lie about the health impacts of obesity, or teaching people they're oppressed and everything is out to get you, or they're oppressors and the world is set up to benefit them at everyone else's expense, or reinstituting segregation, or manipulating words to try and engineer thought, or destroying people's lives for failing to conform to the sensibilities of the ruling class. It's mind-bogglingly regressive.

And it sure isn't "progressive" to abandon the most reliably disadvantaged people - those in abject poverty - in order to conduct identity politics which mostly benefit privileged elites, while looking down on their former base: the working class.

[thelonesomequeen]

I love that anon’s comment on how his privilege has shaped the design of ASP and how he defends it because no one but a man in his position would ever think presenting both sides would be the way to go. He’s also stepped away from his explanation and no longer mentions the topic (DACA/ dreamers) that originally sparked the idea for ASP. He said he didn’t know what something was and was met with a barrage of info (like dude, go to Wikipedia). Basically, he was looking for a definition not Republican talking points and yet that’s what he gave us. While I agree with everyone questioning as to why they don’t have experts, I do also have to agree with Chris that at the end of the day these are the people who are in office making laws. It doesn’t matter if every expert says wear a mask, the governor or Texas makes the laws for that state. But why not have a video from a subject matter expert or at least a short vetted definition/ key facts and then viewers can watch *opinion* videos from opposing politicians and vote accordingly. I’d love to know what Chris’ actual political stances are. In order to create this website he’s gotta be more center than he lets on no matter how many tweets for Maya Wiley he send out.

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I don’t think the main point of ASP is about if it has traction in DC. It’s more about getting young people engaged with politics and getting them voting. They are now working with schools etc to enact and discuss.

Also would like to ask that media/DC anon why do politicians do the interviews if there is zero interest.

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Nothing about Chris's behavior regarding ASP suggests that he'd be open to feedback. He gets very defensive when someone even brings up the potential challenges he may face because of it. He did during so the TIME chat. He said they weren't interviewing some random radio hosts but actual elected officials (to justify the inclusion of climate change deniers and racists etc). He also called another article criticizing the website a detractor during that Esquire interview last year.

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At least the way Mark describes ASP makes a little bit sense to me. He says he wants the politicans to say what they truly feel unfiltered so that constituents know exactly where they stand on issues. And then vote bigoted/ignorant politicans out accordingly. But Chris goes on about wanting to stem disinformation that permeates on social media websites, and I don't see how they're doing that. Chris has some lofty ideas for the site but clearly the execution has fallen short somewhere.

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ASP is a great tax right off if nothing els. I feel like thats the main benifit it brings to mark & chris. & good pr

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It feels like these days, for a lot of people, discussing politics is the go to topic when people want to sound intelligent. But do they truly care about the people whose lives get burnt from politicians' decisions? Do they feel a sense of justice for those people? I could be wrong but sometimes it feels like it's Chris' case because of the way he goes about ASP. It feels naïve and from the perspective of someone from a privileged background who never truly left his comfort zone.

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Chris also really showed his privilege (imo) during the Time chat when he said he never thought about politics when he was a kid. That's because he never needed to because nothing directly affected him. Imagine being the child of undocumented migrants or minimum wage workers. Or a queer kid or rape victim or a girl who needs an abortion... Chris could afford not to think about politics. So he approached ASP with his limited worldview when it needed to be more inclusive and intersectional.

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Your example of what ASP should be is spot on. When he first brought it up, he said it was a "Schoolhouse Rock" of sorts and it is nothing of the kind. There's no direct educational aspect there. What we do know now is that Americans severely lack basic Civics Education. That is the big missing piece. You can't make informed decisions about what the politicians say if you don't understand the issue or policy at hand.

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The recent lean in of ASP on Close Up and Bridge as education partners tells me that as Mark & Chris start to pull away from the public facing part of it, they'll head more into that space. And when needed, they'll trot Chris out to get some traction/views, because we know based on comments on ASP posts it's his fans paying attention. Making this something for schools & colleges might help them to get funding that isn't their own pockets.

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Doing a big mega post to share your thoughts as I don’t have much more to add to the topic without it sounding redundant🦎

[himbeaux-on-ice]

(You don't have to respond to this) I just wanted to say I agree 100% with you. I think fans of any sport, fans of tv/movie actors & actresses, and any other celebrity fall into this trap of believing that every famous person is our friend. Like they tend not to care about unless it for publicity and even if they do actually care about important issues, they cant or wont speak up due to the chance of being outcasted. And on the fans side we do get way to invasive into celebrity private lives

I think there are plenty of famous people who do a lot of good work for marginalized communities and do show up as allies in meaningful, genuine ways, and we shouldn’t assume that all shows of activism are purely performative! But in general I agree with you here.

We need to remember that the NHL in particular is a notably conservative-cultured sports league in just about all aspects (including conservative as in “unwilling to try new things” lol). Just as importantly we need to remember that, as with any celebrity, the versions of these players we are talking about and being fans about are not real. They are by and large characters that are crafted (with varying degrees of finesse lol) by PR teams and managers and media, and beneath all that is a flawed human person who is capable of all the same mistakes and harms as any of us. They are fallible.

In engaging with them as characters, we are going to project a lot of our own values and beliefs into the blank spots of what we don’t know about them, which is a natural human thing to do. And that isn’t inherently harmful. I think we all want to believe that most people hold the same moral codes as we do until proven otherwise. But especially in a league where many players lean conservative, it’s important not to conflate that projection with somehow “knowing” that they’re “one of the good ones” without them every actually making that clear. You are setting yourself up for heartbreak that way.

I think it’s okay to be an enthusiastic fan of players as long as you on some level recognize the difference between the persona and the person. It’s similar to how a lot of RPF fandom operates on the premise of like, discussing a slightly alternate universe where we politely remove the players wives and families (who are typically not celebrities or public figures and thus did not consent to be involved in these narratives) from the picture in order to write about romances between the public characters of the players, with the implicit understanding that most of do not us believe what we’re writing is real in a conspiracy theory sense. The particular type of fandom we do here is a peculiar kind of multi-layered thing, where we both focus primarily in our works and discussions on those fictionalized personas, while also trying to hold the real people behind them to account to improve the fucked-up culture of this sport. Those two things have to be held in tension, with nuance and a constant need to make judgement calls.

Like, a good example of this two-layers fandom approach is how when I talk about/cheer on Ovi, I’m talking about the character that he is in hockey culture and the hockey narrative and in fanon, not the actual man who is married with children and gets chummy with dictators. I don’t actually think that Ovechkin and Bäckström are in love or that he’s even a person I would get along with or find tolerable in real life. I’m engaging with a character. I engage with pretty much all other NHL-ers the same.

With Ovi and the whole Putin+Trump thing, I don’t find it as necessary for me to personally address or consider as, say, Jamie Benn’s transphobia, because I don’t think the fact of whether I personally (via absolutely no financial support at all) enjoy the persona of a famous Russian hockey player is anywhere NEAR an influential factor in the power those dictators hold. We’re at like six degrees of separation at that point. My five posts a week from watching a pirated Caps stream are such a drop in the bucket in Ovi’s influence and Putin’s that it doesn’t even matter at all whether I do it or not. Putin will continue to be a dictator regardless of whether or not I post gifsets of this hockey player.

But I also recognize that there are times and situations when dealing just with the fictionalization of a player isn’t enough, when it is necessary to step back and make commentary and critique about the flawed human person underneath because they are in a position of visibility and power, and their actions have great influence.

Setting that Ovi example aside, I think there’s an important, nuanced difference when it comes to players who are unapologetically and unreformedly racist, homophobic, transphobic, violent, etc. Because those players are harming people, directly. I’m not talking about players who just support awful politicians, I’m talking about those who explicitly express harmful, bigoted personal opinions from their own platforms or enact direct harm on others personally. When they do this, they are making people less safe, they are making this sport less safe for fans and for other athletes. This cannot be separated from the fame and praise given to their fictionalized personas, because continuing to laud and support and cheer for them directly enables their ability to be in a position of power and influence where they can personally harm people, with actions or with words.

So again, it is important to understand that the version of your favourite player you engage with in the act of most fandom is not a real person, but a character. It is also important to make principled judgement calls, based on your own moral code, as to when is the point at which you can no longer justify promoting and/or financially supporting that character because it means feeding into the influence and ability to commit harms of the real person behind it all. You need to know where the lines between it all are, and where you personally draw a line in the sand you won’t cross. Making the hockey community safer and more welcoming should always be your first priority, because getting to not prioritize that and instead “focus on just having fun” is a privilege only afforded to those who are already safe here.

Support those figures in the league and the sport who choose to use their massively influential platform in this league to go to bat for marginalized people, because you’re right, there is a risk of backlash that comes with that choice, and we (as in the broader many-faceted community of hockey fans) should try to positively reward and reinforce them taking that risk if we want to see more of it! It’s an important part of making this sport something that everyone (except bigots and abusers) can be a part of.

But yeah, it isn’t healthy to pretend that you have a knowing personal relationship with these famous people, or to put responsibility/trust for your emotional well-being into their hands when they don’t even know they’ve been given it. Parasocial relationships like that can really fuck you up if you get sucked too deep into them. Understand that you don’t know these people, and be prepared in advance to make some difficult choices if you don’t like it when they show you who they really are.

(And feel free to grieve privately about the outlet or fun thing or favourite character you lose if you decide you cannot support them anymore. That feeling of betrayal is real for you, and it is okay to feel it and work through it as long as you understand that it might not always be appropriate to focus on doing so publicly (an example of it being inappropriate to focus publicly on your feelings would be a white fan lamenting how sad it is for you personally that your fav turned out to be racist).)

Take care, anon. 💜