#as if people who never read (and I literally mean never even your strawman 'has never read a book in their life' illiterate cause uh. those

[ablednt]

I'm going to be real that anti-intellectualism as a term reads like reverse oppression to me as a disabled person.

Like as a term it fucking tells you nothing because intellect, the concept of intelligence, isn't under fucking attack aside from people rightfully pointing out its roots in eugenics. No one is Oppressed for being well educated and there's not even really any measurable social consequences one that basis in specific.

The only times it's used in a way that isn't just blatant ableism is when it's critiquing willful ignorance but at the same time the term like.... doesn't at all express that? Just say that bigots are intentionally restricting information that could change their politics because they benefit from that bigotry, just say willful ignorance, intellectualism isn't under fucking attack when people are routinely denied basic freedoms and human rights based on their lack of intelligence.

[frostyblustar]

First off: I absolutely LOVED „stray, the wolf will eat your head“!!

Second: PLEASE DO TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE DETAILS AND SYMBOLISM IN IT!!

Oh my god where do I even start with this fic?? I’m just gonna talk about random things that pop in my head as I scroll through (this is gonna be long)

The Path is literally called ‘dull’ ‘straight’ and ‘boring’ but also ‘safe’. This alludes to the Path being a metaphor for straightness.

Why is the forest filled with seemingly random objects/places-? They pertain to Nico’s identity, but also queerness can seem confusing.

The singular boot represents Nico’s initial loneliness. They come in pairs, and he has no Bianca or Percy at this time. He feels utterly alone, and feels alone in his own struggles and initial feelings about the forest.

Why is Bianca mentioned to have a more gray dress than white when she’s based on the Girl in White from The Path?… Because it would make her ‘The Girl in Gray’ but I don’t think anyone has catched on to that. Also she represents a sense of innocence before venturing into the world/experiencing a traumatic event, similar to The Girl in White from The Path.

The wolf will eat your head is essentially saying if you trust a wolf, you’re brainless. They take away your wits. There is also the scarecrow with no head in the flower field that is kind of a mockery of this.

Where is Bianca’s body?

Her bones are in the scarecrow in the flower feild. Since she serves as a strawman for a lot of people arguing against the forest. She was stuffed in there by one of those people long after her death. She is resentful of her lover who left her body to rot.

How did she die?

Dirt. A mudslide. Yeah the line ‘You make it sound like the dirt killed your family.’ is supposed to be irony, but since Bianca’s death is never mentioned it’s not really anything you’d catch onto, just background info.

The sword in the stone reference is just based on Nico’s love for stories, but he also gains a means of defending himself through it if needed. I believe this could mean he finds stories like these fuel his curiosity and give him wits to hold up on his own? But really it’s just a fun thing.

Dianthus and green carnations are the two flowers in the flower field. Dianthus mean ‘Flowers of the gods’ while green carnations represent homosexuality.

The powerlines between two poles represent Percy and Nico having a connection.

Piano and flute. The piano is supposed to represent Italian heritage while the flute is a symbol of nature. Also, I looked up ‘gay instruments’ and a lot of people think flute players are stereotypically gay so… Yeah…

Why does Percy wear blue? Well cause boy in blue cmon I CANNOT PASS THAT UP! Blue also represents a lot of things like freedom, open spaces like the sky, and a lot of the times sadness.

Who is Percy referring to when he says he knew someone who knew flowers well? Honestly, probably Calypso, but it’s 100% an ex he had to leave after being treated like shit for being bisexual. That’s all I had written out for that. If you don’t like Calypso, I also thought Jason might fit this ex role.

Spotted feathers, from what I found, represent a scattered mind (which is why they bother Nico specifically after Percy is talking) I also used removing them as a way of showing Nico rebelling against society/tradition.

A lot of the language used is supposed to be transferrable into a different context. Replacing the forest with homosexuality makes things super obvious. Honestly too much of the dialogue is supposed to be like that.

Anyways that’s all I got off the top of my head, thanks for reading. Ask any more questions if you want, start a thread even! I can definitely elaborate on even things I’ve already brought up if you want that.

The link to the fic I’ve been talking about by the way.

[alovelyburn]

Hello, I just wanted to say that I'm a leftist and even I think that

saying Berserk is misogynistic is stupid as hell. If

anything, it's the opposite. The easiest example

would have to be Caska. The story doesn't treat

her as incapable of taking care of herself or being

strong. It shows in great lengths how hard she has

worked to become a warrior, and how she tries

desperately to be respected in a male-dominated

field. Much like women in real-life who work in

male dominated fields. Considering that this story

came out in the late 80's and early 90's, it makes

sense to compare Caska to young women trying

to pursue a career at that time when women

(especially in Japan) had rigid expectations of

what they were expected to be. Then there's her

fight with Adon, and how she kicks his ass after he

poisoned her. He was a misogynistic character,

but he was portrayed as an idiot. The scene when

Griffith told her it was a woman's duty to lie with

men wasn't exactly portrayed in a positive light

either, and I'd argue that Judeau was annoyed by

it. She was clearly respected by the Hawks/

Falcons, with the exception of maybe Griffith. But

she's never portrayed as incapable. And when she

mentally regresses post-Eclipse, yes she loses her

agency, but I'd say it effectively portrays how the

trauma of the Eclipse effected her. A female

character can lose agency and be humiliated in a

story without it being misogynistic. The same way

the same can be done with a male character

without it being misandrist and emasculating.

I'm also a leftist and I don't care about your politics in the context of a media discussion.

I really don't even know what to say to this since it's once again responding to things I didn't say (that Berserk is misogynistic), while also making arguments that make me wince until my eyelids fuse.

Look, I don't think Miura or Berserk is particularly or notably misogynistic, particularly in the context of it being a 30+ year old Japanese story. The fact that you're lecturing me about this just proves you have no idea what you're talking about or what I think about anything because I'm always the one defending Berserk's rough edges because of cultural differences and time period differences.

That said, this doesn't mean it can't be criticized for, say, the way it overuses and eroticizes rape scenes, particularly from the mid-golden age through volumes in the early 20s. Even if I say I understand why it does that - namely that Young Animal is like a stroke book - I can still say it doesn't feel great. In a way the fact that Miura did want to do better than many mangaka in this area and strove to do so (and succeeded to some degree but not the degree to which I assume he wanted to) makes that kind of thing stand out more, at least to me. Because if I'm reading some hentai I expect to see that, but I don't necessarily expect to see it in a story that treats women and certain subjects with degree of gravitas.

The argument that people are saying women shouldn't suffer or fight is an egregious strawman because literally no one ever said that. What they are saying is that Casca's experiences, her abilities, her traumas, are as a generality, not treated with the same respect as the other characters' similar experiences, abilities or traumas are. I have no problem saying yes Casca is said to be extremely competent but that doesn't change the fact that one of her finest moments, defeating Adon, is portrayed as cute and funny instead of epic like Griffith or Guts's great moments are. It doesn't erase the difference between the way Guts' rape is portrayed and the way Casca's MANY SA experiences are portrayed. If you don't see that, that's you problem and there's not much I can do about it.

I wouldn't even be bothered that her mind collapsed if it were treated as tragic instead of kind of kooky and adorable. And before you say it is tragic, I'm not talking about Guts feeling upset about it, I'm talking about Casca herself being portrayed/depicted with gravitas instead of having her like trying to eat elves or follow butterflies around while making cute faces.

Frankly, I'm not even sure how much of this is really misogyny as such, because he didn't really treat Farnese (or Schierke) this way. He is on record as saying that he wrote Casca "not as a woman" but as "a character made up of a collection of (Miura's) own complexes and weaknesses,"so maybe he was just kicking himself around, I have no idea. I personally tend to think he just got better at writing women, but what do I know. (note: that is a link to a translation of a Miura interview snippet. You can find sourcing and explanations and often the original Japanese if you poke around that twitter).

We can criticize the things we love. I am a full on Berserk stan - I think it's a masterpiece, I think Miura was a gd genius, it's literally my favorite story, nevermind my favorite manga, but I'm still aware that it has flaws. As do all things.

[radfem-unity]

Hey, you didn't post my response! Probably because I detailed your hypocrisy and pointed out real criticisms. But I think it's important for women on radblr to see my response, so.

RESTATING ALL OF YOUR OPINIONS IN ALL CAPS DOES NOT MAKE THEM STRONGER OR MORE TRUE.

So you don't want all women to separate from men? Your separatist plan works *because* not everyone follows it? It sounds more like that points out a flaw in your logic than proves it to be a good plan.

No one said piv is the only way to produce, but egg+sperm is.  So, again, either some women separate and let the non-seperated women continue the human race and feminist cause, or all women separate and the species doesn't continue. Because no, there is not a readily available way for two females to reproduce.

Also I love how you just state "comparing women who date men to women who prioritize men in other ways is an illogical comparison" without any explanation. Separatism isn't just dating. Do you think women only ever prioritize their husbands? They don't defend their male friends or brothers? We can all stop dating men but we can keep them around as our chosen friends, teachers, doctors, etc? Because women are only ever harmed by men they date?

Yes, withholding sex and relationships HAS always been in radical feminism! Congrats, you've discovered some radical feminist theory! You'll find that there are multiple theories to be discussed, and not an actual rulebook step by step guide to female liberation.  Polilez was a huge part of the second wave as well, and got criticized for good reason. I'm very curious as to why you decide to draw a line in your separatism? Why do you not subscribe to or promote women separating fully, only partially? Why are relationships avoidable, but other connections with men aren't?

Human extinction is not liberating women. It's not even understanding or acknowledging the root of patriarchy in attempt to fix anything. It sounds more like a cop out to separate from men and don't worry about addressing or fixing the problem. Separatism is one proposed idea to liberate women, not some tried and true fact. And again, you aren't promoting full separatism, only not dating men.

No one thinks the road to liberation is coddling men.

I agree we need to fight for liberation. I just disagree with extinction being liberation. I don't see how simply not dating men will lead to our liberation, you have yet to explain. Are lesbians, febfems, and celibate straight women liberated? You think OSA relationships get in the way of female liberation. I think dividing radical feminists over dating men gets in the way of us having solidarity as radfems and progressing discussions.

"None of you have provided a good argument against it besides baseless claims we are the anonymous people in your inbox" is an easy strawman claim to make if you didn't read the message I sent where I listed 2 criticisms, neither of which were about mean messages. I never claimed that and you didn't try to address the criticisms I did list of 1) total female separatism being unsustainable or 2) tumblr radfems that claim to be separatist and promote it for others despite only separating from one (1) kind of relationships with men and calling that good enough.

Just because you don't date men doesn't mean that you are engaging in female separatism. Are you really surprised people are saying you're hypocritical?

I only mentioned not dating men to show I am not affected by dating or not dating men. You constantly trying to make it "us vs them" is not helping women, it's literally dividing them.

Lesbian Separatism is a thing, but you are conflating it with radical feminism. The main issue I think everyone here is having with this whole discourse is that you claim no one is making women stop dating men, which is true, but you and others are telling these women they aren't radfems at all, which means they should not be here on radblr discussing feminism and contributing to concepts and ideas of radical feminism, which is silly. All because you decided your half-baked version of separatism is integral to what makes a radfem.

So what happens when women separate from men? The human race wouldn't survive, we'd go extinct. If you really believe the only way for women to achieve liberation is by human extinction, you ought to add "efilist" to your bio and be more up front about it. Women have made leaps of progress over just the last 100 years with men here, and I'd like to see our species advance, not die off.

Do you do full separatism? You don't have male friends, male coworkers, don't read books by men or listen to their music, no male roommates, etc? Or do you just not date them and call that good enough?

Although separatism is a very interesting and worthwhile idea to discuss, it is not a synonym for radical feminism. It's a feminist theory, not feminism itself.

You seem to have some confusion on the word "radical." In "radical feminism" the word radical means "getting to the root of" not "extreme". To quote the famous radical feminist Shulamith Firestone (wrote The Dialectic of Sex, heard of it?) "The end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally." This cannot be achieved by more division and radical feminism actually blames our oppression on our "othering" by men.

And before I get called a bihet or a straightie or moid lover, I don't date men. I don't find it worth it. But I also see it's not the magic cure for ending female oppression.

SHOCK HORROR - WHAT WILL WOMEN DO WITHOUT MEN?!

I'm going to have to repeat the same things I've said a million times, aren't I?

NOBODY IS SAYING THAT EVERY WOMAN ON EARTH WILL DUMP MEN. WE ARE ASKING RADICAL ACTION FROM RADICAL FEMINISTS. WHICH IS NOT MANY WOMEN AT ALL.

PIV IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO REPRODUCE.

THE ENVIRONMENT COULD DO WITH LESS KIDS.

COMPARING AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A "RADICAL" FEMINIST AND A MALE SHE SPENDS HER LIFE WITH TO A LESBIAN OR FEBFEM OR CELIBATE WOMAN HAVING MALE COWORKERS IS AN ILLOGICAL COMPARISON.

DENYING MEN SEX/RELATIONSHIPS HAS ALWAYS BEEN IN THE FOUNDATION/TEXTS OF RADICAL FEMINISM. MORESO THAN ANY OTHER FORM OF SEPARATISM (LIKE THE ONES WE LEGIT CANNOT AVOID).

RADICAL FEMINISM CALLS FOR A RADICAL (USED AS AN ADJECTIVE!) RE-ORDERING OF SOCIETY IN WHICH MALE SUPREMACY IS ELIMINATED IN ALL SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONTEXTS. BECAUSE MALE SUPREMACY IS THE ROOT. GETTING "TO THE ROOT" IN THIS CASE REQUIRES SOME FUCKING BIG SHOVELS. RADICAL FEMINISM IS NOT FOR THE WEAK. "RADICAL" IS USED AS AN ADJECTIVE AS WELL AS A VERB IN RADFEM THEORY AND "RADICAL," AS AN ADJECTIVE IN RADICAL FEMINISM, IS THE ANTITHESIS TO OSA RELATIONSHIPS.

PATRIARCHY WILL NOT BE OVERTHROWN BY HAND-HOLDING AND KUMBAYA WITH MEN. "THE MASTER'S TOOLS WILL NEVER DISMANTLE THE MASTER'S HOUSE" - AUDRE LORDE.

THE SEX DIFFERENCES WILL ALWAYS EXIST, THEY JUST SHOULDN'T BE HIERARCHISED. BUT MEN WILL NOT ONE DAY MAGICALLY HAND OVER THE POWER - WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT. AND I CAN GUARANTEE YOU THAT LIVING CONVENTIONAL AF OSA-RELATIONSHIP LIVES GIVING THEM ALL THE SEX, LOVE AND CHILDREN THEY WANT AS SOME INEVITABLE REWARD DESPITE THEIR SEX RAPING, MURDERING AND ABUSING US IS NORMIE FEMINISM AT BEST. AT BEST.

RADICAL FEMINISM NEEDS TO ADAPT TO 2024 WITH NEW RADICAL ACTION AND A GROUP OF US BELIEVE OSA RELATIONSHIPS GET IN THE WAY OF "GETTING TO THE ROOT" AND RIPPING IT OUT. YOU CAN'T OVERTHROW WHAT YOU LOVE. THE "NOT ALL MEN" DISCUSSING AMONG THOSE WHO LOVE A MAN IS VERY ABUNDANT. DOES NOT LEAD TO FEMALE LIBERATION. PICK MEN OR PICK WOMEN. IF YOU PICK MEN THEN DROP THE "RADICAL". YOU'RE NOT OPPRESSED BY RADBLR LESBIANS.

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO DISAGREE W THE GROUP SAYING IT BUT NONE OF YOU HAVE PROVIDED A GOOD ARGUMENT AGAINST IT BESIDES BASELESS CLAIMS WE ARE THE ANONYMOUS PEOPLE IN UR INBOX AND ARE BEING TOO MEAN/RUDE OR WHATEVER.

If what you're saying is true and you don't partner up with men (by choice) then it's clear you have a passion for defending and protecting OSA women who date men. The bi/het solidarity in the face of evil lesbians is unsurprising. Betty Friedan and the lavender menace, anyone?

[olderthannetfic]

I'd love to hear your take on the whole "fiction affects reality" debate. Because from where I stand, it's evident that fiction affects reality: otherwise, we wouldn't say that representation matters. If I may be so bold to consider religious texts like the Bible a piece of fiction: people are still using it to justify real-life actions.

The most prominent example in news media is the relationship between violent games and real life violence, I think. I checked Google Scholar and a recent (2021) meta analysis on the causal relationship between violent video games and violent behavior showed "a significant and positive effect" which was reduced but maintained when controlled for already existing aggression levels, with a peak in early adolescence (age of 14). According to the research, earlier meta analyses showed similar results.

Now, there's a lot to say about publication bias etc, but even these examples don't make me believe that we should censor "problematic media", because a) there's always more than one influence on people's behavior, and b) it's a slippery slope because who decides what's "good" and what's "bad"?

At the same time, people who claim that fiction doesn't affect reality don't make sense to me and I'd much rather see a strong analysis presented for why "fiction affects reality" is a bad reason to want to censor certain types of media, than the false dichotomy that either you believe that fiction affects reality == censorship is good OR fiction doesn't affect reality.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

--

Your tone sounds genuine. Your content sounds like bait.

First of all, "fiction is not reality" is a rallying cry of people who think fandom karens should mind their own business.

It never meant that fiction has no effect on reality. It meant that fiction does not mind control people and does not have a 1:1 effect where readers do the bad action from a book they just read. It means that depiction of murder or pedophilia or whatever is not the same thing as literally committing a crime. Thought crimes are not real. Fantasies aren't inherently bad. Yadda yadda.

The only people arguing about "fiction does not affect reality" are shitty antis making a strawman of their opponents' arguments because their own intellectually flaccid scare tactics don't stand up to scrutiny.

Second of all, cite your sources.

Ten seconds on google scholar found me this:

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly: A Meta-analytic Review of Positive and Negative Effects of Violent Video Games by Christopher John Ferguson; Psychiatric Quarterly volume 78, pages 309–316 (2007)

The abstract includes the following:

Results indicated that publication bias was a problem for studies of both aggressive behavior and visuospatial cognition. Once corrected for publication bias, studies of video game violence provided no support for the hypothesis that violent video game playing is associated with higher aggression. However playing violent video games remained related to higher visuospatial cognition (r x = 0.36).

Publication bias isn't just a small factor here. It's a key factor.

--

Here's the thing, I can give you a very good argument of the type you asked for. It's as simple as alcohol.

Alcohol is physically bad for us. Some people drive drunk.

Do most people think all alcohol drinking should be banned as a consequence? No. Because the fact that some people overindulge or drink while pregnant or drunk drive like a fucking idiot is not the fault of the people who can drink responsibly.

However...

What's the point of such an argument when your starting premise is garbage? Video games don't cause violence. Fictional sex crimes don't cause actual sex crimes. Even bothering to explain why "responsible" consumption of Bad Media is okay like my alcohol example is opening the door to these idiotic starting premises.

I find it telling that you don't specify which google scholar results you were looking at.

--

Representation matters because that actually is an area where we've seen some demonstrable effects from fiction. When fiction reinforces stereotypes and conventional wisdom, it tends to strengthen how people already see the world. This is quite different from fiction depicting something taboo.

Fiction is plenty capable of reinforcing the idea that minorities are gang members or that women are hysterical and make false accusations. It is not capable of making people think bestiality is socially normal.

Representation also matters in proportion to how many eyeballs are on that media. We should hold big Disney movies to a high standard and Disney overall to a higher one still. We don't need to worry about each and every individual work having a specific type of rep, especially if those individual works are more niche.

[thejustmaiden]

So out of nowhere I was tagged and quoted by a SR shipper for a blog of mine posted in August of last year. Talk about throwback but, hey, gotta appreciate that level of snooping. 😉

Back in the day I actually used to encourage discourse amongst Inuyasha fans- both shippers and antis alike- but I've since realized that it's a lost cause. But for you, @feministmetalgreymon , I'll grant this exception. Just 'cause it's been a while so why the hell not. haha

I want to assure you, however, that nothing you say will ever convince me that Sesshomaru and Rin are meant to be together romantically or that the story intended it so. Nor will you find any validation here. You can ship them for all I care, but please for all that is good and holy while I have your attention try- I mean really try- to understand why it is so many of us Inuyasha fans are so against this pairing in the first place (newsflash: it's not about ship wars), and why we believe a romance between the two of them is completely and utterly out of character.

For those of you interested in reading this, the blog of mine in question that the above shipper mentions in their counter-argument is here for reference. It's titled "Jaken = Rin's Dad?" I'm going to try and keep this short, but I'm also making no such promises. After all, I'm not exactly known for my brevity. haha Now let's get crackin'!

Like you, feministmetalgreymon, did for your recent blog here where you took screenshots of mine to address certain parts, I will be doing the same and dissecting yours accordingly.

[Snippet 1]

I worked with kids for many years as a teacher, and many people in my family have too or still do. Two of them happen to be just over 5 feet which is quite short for the average adult woman living here. I've also worked alongside many a women of short stature, and never did I hear any of them complaining of issues with their students having difficulty differentiating them from their own peers just because they were short as well. I'm sorry but that's just ridiculous. Kids are quite smart and pick up on a lot more than you seem to give them credit for. Height is not the only characteristic they look at to determine who's an adult and who's not, and it's foolish to suggest otherwise. So unless you're a babysitter who's still in their teens and/or who has very childlike features or behavior then I'm afraid what you're getting at is total hogwash. This is just another example of how you shippers offer nothing of real substance to your reasoning, it's only ever cherry-picking or strawmanning from you guys. Stop deflecting from the real issues please, because this certainly isn't one and only winds up being a complete waste of time for all parties involved.

[Snippet 2]

Okay, calm down now. I wasn't insinuating that relationships between parents and children can't change over time in terms of how they get along. Of course that's possible, as all families experience their fair share of estrangement and abuse. What I was speaking about was in reference to the overall dynamic between the two. Because a bad mother or father can still be viewed as a parental figure to their child even if say they're not in said child's life anymore. Since Sesshomaru and Rin share a healthy bond- and just a friendly reminder that in my blog I even said that he doesn't have to necessarily be labeled her father but that a romantic relationship later would still be inappropriate- I didn't deem it necessary to address what you brought up. Plus, it kinda, umm, misses the point?? Please, let's stay on topic. And it's not captured in the screenshot, but stop acting like there isn't a small part of them that idolizes their parents at some point during childhood. Just like you mention later on how it's normal for kids to have innocent crushes on adults that they eventually grow out of? Well, guess what, the same concept applies here. Kids eventually learn that their parents are far from perfect and make mistakes too. Rin is so damn young in the OG series though that we never even get to see her reach that maturity level.

[Snippet 3]

LOL! Alright, okay, so the "unbreakable bond" bit you're mentioning was actually me quoting you sessrinners. Did you not catch that? I literally spelled it out. *sigh* The whole point I was making is that shippers like yourself make hypocritical and contradictory statements all.the.goddamn.time. One moment you guys claim that Sesshomaru and Rin were essentially strangers and meant very little to each other, only to say in the same breath a few seconds later that they were destined to be together and their bond is like no other. I agree, their bond is special, but why must that mean they're going to fall in love?

That is the root of the matter here. Too many animes/mangas have romanticized this older adult man & young girl growing up falling in love trope that it's become way too normalized and widely accepted across the world- and yes, in some cultures more than others. Sadly, you lack the awareness to recognize how this all works. You know how we know that? When we see that you shippers are so desensitized to sexualized images of girls in the media that you share posts like this one below which *subtly* imply a future romance although one half of that pairing is still just a child in the pic and then try and pass it off as cute. That's like super fucking problematic and it scares me that you can't see that (or deny you do). 🤢

After all that's said and done, Sesshomaru leaving Rin in the village with Kaede is to me the strongest indicator more than pretty much anything else he's done for Rin that proves he is her adoptive father. It's so funny to me how you somehow see the exact opposite though. 🤔 What I think is happening is that you got yourself on some squeaky clean ass shipper goggles fresh out of your little echo chamber. Because I hate to tell you, but what you're fantasizing is what you want to see and not what's actually there on screen or was written into the story. I'm strictly talking about Inuyasha and the manga of course. [For the TL; DR version skip to the last paragraph.]

Parents looking after their kids is what parents are supposed to do. A good parent will do anything to keep their child safe and ensure they are cared for, so what he did for her by leaving her there was in her best interests clearly. Besides, as a babysitter, you more than most people should understand that parents aren't always able to be there for their kids so sometimes others gotta step in to help. Haven't you heard of the saying, "it takes a village to raise a child?" Which in Rin's case is literally true! 😂 Sometimes kids are even sent off to stay with grandparents and that's who raises them instead. Or maybe they have to temporarily live with an aunt or uncle because their single parent's job requires they work out of town 4-5 days of the week so they're hardly home. But that doesn't mean that the parents care or love their kids any less, and it's foolish to assume that Sesshomaru must have thought very little of Rin simply due to the fact that he made the decision to leave her in the village. Come on, y'all are acting like he abandoned her there!!

It's just given the circumstances Sesshomaru finally came to learn that Rin traveling with him was no longer safe. I also like to think it's because he wished for her to live a more normal life and to learn how to fully trust humans again. Plus, continuing to travel with him as young as she was would have proven dangerous and unwise. Now for you to know all this and still manage to turn his past actions towards her while she was just a child into a romantic gesture is what boggles my mind. Regardless of how you look at it, from my perspective or your own, Sesshomaru is in the wrong. Either he's a father figure who impregnates his daughter at the young age of approximately 14. OR he's this man she used to travel with who maybe isn't a father to her but who nonetheless basically rapes her since kids her age can't consent to sex with an adult. Idk about you but it sounds to me like nobody here wins with either scenario we're given. In other words, you should be just as mad as we are. If only one side didn't choose to forsake their morals they know we both have in common for the sake of a ship. Welp. 🤷‍♀️

I agree, incest is disgusting but that's not the only problem we have with this pairing. A romantic bond forming between Sesshomaru and Rin would also constitute as grooming.

You realize that over the years he visited her in the village that he brought her gifts too and essentially watched her grow up right before his very eyes, right? I mean, I know you do, but I really shouldn't have to explain further why pursuing a romantic/sexual relationship with each other is plain and simple wrong. And before you say it's not because he didn't have any malintent, please understand that considering their history and power dynamic up to then that yes this is still considered grooming even if Rin supposedly "wanted it" or "made the first move." Whether you consider him her father or not, as the adult who took on a role resembling that of a caretaker in her early life- a critical developmental time for a child- Sesshomaru is obligated to turn down any advances by Rin and most definitely should not initiate any himself. As the first close adult figure she's had in her life since her parents died, it's unfathomable to imagine how Sesshomaru could go through with taking advantage of this young girl who was under his care and supervision since they met. To think he could be capable of betraying that trust sickens me to the core.

This. Now THIS is how a parent/guardian or a similar adult caretaker (babysitter, teacher, etc.) talks to a child. And, in turn, this is how some young children talk to adults. You'd be insane and delusional to deny it! We see it in our everyday lives, do we not? From where else do you think our stories draw most of their inspiration? Yes, obviously these fictional universes have aspects of fantasy that don't exist in the real world, but so how then do you suppose we're able to relate to them? The reason for that being is because these stories are written by people for people, so naturally there are going to be real life aspects embedded throughout. Sure, a little escapism doesn't hurt as we don't need to take everything so seriously, but ultimately we all need to recognize that the messages in the stories we tell matter. Most stories possess a combination of both light and dark themes, but when it specifically comes to the latter we gotta be careful with how we tackle this in children's media since kids are far more impressionable.

So if at the center of a story we have two of the main protagonists whose mom is basically their same age and to top it off she knew their dad when she was just a girl and who just so happened to help raise her, wouldn't you say that's beyond fucked up or at the very least so fucking weird? Like why would we think it's even remotely okay for our children to watch this garbage?? Really think about it. Try and be objective for once and think about how it would sound explaining this storyline to an outsider who's never watched IY or HNY. Well, antis have tried this before many times and we always get the same reaction: Ewww!

Like I said earlier, if you wanna ship it then fine, but 1) please stop seeking our approval or trying to change our minds - your ship wish came true didn't it, so why do you need us to validate it? 2) even though it's not canon, respect that we don't support this sequel portraying pedophilia in a positive light. It's harmful af to not only allow but glorify the continuation of sexualized images of young girls everywhere. And I shouldn't have to say this, but just because this trope is popular as you say does not make it right. Lolicon themes in the media have been an issue forever and it needs to stop. Yes, even some people in Japan or "the East" would agree. Shocker!

We're pissed off and rightfully so because Yashahime's TV rating is 14, not to mention it airs at the prime time kids in Japan watch TV after getting home from school. That's Towa and Setsuna's age, true, but if Rin being the mom when she's like only a year older than them (please don't argue w/ me about the math- antis have so far been right every time with it) is straight-up disgusting and not something we should be supporting or endorsing. Rin's a whole ass child!! Please don't start with the "but times were different then so her having kids at 15 is acceptable" argument either, because we've already debunked that and every other single excuse you guys throw at us. Besides, how or why would you expect young viewers to know these historical "facts" anyway, especially if as you suggest fiction doesn't affect reality so what does it matter? Yet here we are, arguing over a fictional show in real life almost a year and a half into the "Sesshomaru fucks?" sequel being announced. My ass, your ass, hell all our asses fiction doesn't affect reality!

Look, I do apologize if the tone of this blog came off as snippy or condescending at times. I do not wish you any ill will, it's just I'm not really sure what you expected to get out of all this besides maybe getting on my nerves perhaps. haha A lot of you shippers have been desperately scrambling to interact with us, lurking in our tags, jumping onto our posts screaming canon and getting so defensive even though you sought us out first. We've been sticking to our tags, so how about you stay in your lane too. By the way since we're on the topic, have you seen Twitter or Reddit?! SR shippers there are the actual worst and many Inuyasha fans (not just antis) have complained of not feeling welcomed to engage in fandom spaces anymore. Shippers swarm them and scare them off simply because fans don't like your ship and refuse to accept it. It's pathetic, really. No one should ever be bullied or harassed just because they don't like something you might. We're all fans of Inuyasha, aren't we? So let's act like it. Yashahime on the other hand, you guys are welcome to that pungent heap of trash. Fans have a right to criticize it too, but if you like it then good for you, so keep on liking it and don't mind us.

I'm almost done, but real quick back to Jaken! Let's not forget about how the official Yashahime website- which came out after my blog, mind you- described Jaken. This translation isn't the best one available but it's the only version a fellow anti friend could track down. They do recall a better one done by a native Japanese speaker who was also an anti, and that member confirmed that Jaken is indeed called Rin's babysitter. So you see, I was right in my interpretation. In the original post I did compare Jaken to a brother, but after talking to others (some comments can be found under said post) I did acknowledge that he's more of a reluctant babysitter who's not related. And if he's not at least a brother to Rin, then he's definitely not her father.

At the end of the day, the creator Rumiko Takahashi has the final word. Which is guess what? Hogosha. 💖 Probably should've just started out with that and saved us all the trouble, huh? Good day/night to you.

Papamaru bids you adieu now. 🤞

[in-tua-deep]

Ok I totally want to hear more about this survivors au/Delores is real! How do the siblings handle having this different version of Five? Five may be better adjusted but he still has to heard his family around like a bunch of stray cats. What happens when Hazel and Cha Cha show up? How do they find out that Vanya causes the apocalypse and how does Five handle that revelation?!

here is the thing, i think the survivors au has the potential to be HILARIOUS

no one knows how to handle a well-adjusted five, and this absolutely includes the commission

So you mentioned Hazel and Cha-Cha?? Five in this au was not nearly as absolutely feral as he is in the show bc he knows how to interact with people - he was raised by a competent adult and a weird best friend and they occasionally saw other survivors as well

please picture old Five hanging around the water cooler and chatting with Hazel

the other funny thing is that Five is competent passing - he is well adjusted emotionally but functionally?? Hazel is out there complaining about dental being cut and office parties and budgets and Five is there sipping his drink having never filed taxes in his life. Five doesn't know what the fuck a dental plan is, he was a child soldier and then lived in an apocalypse.

So please picture for me Hazel being like "okay I know corporate wants us to keep what we're being paid to ourselves but fuck that, workers unite, what do you get paid as a legend old timer?"

and five is like "you're getting paid? i get to not get tossed back into the apocalypse, I think"

"but what about expense forms? what about medical care?"

"I'm like 80% sure i'm being experimented on, actually." Five says nonchalantly, "Don't get me wrong, my idea of medical care is fucked by being a child soldier but I'm pretty sure regular people don't have electrodes attached to their heads every time they get a checkup. Could be wrong though! My ex-dad used to monitor my brainwaves while I slept so like, my idea of appropriate shit is fucked, you know?"

This is a Five who was raised by Rick, he is polite to his coworkers. If Dot asked him if he wanted to grab lunch, Five would have gone and grabbed lunch with her or politely said that he couldn't.

Cha Cha only ever talks to Five when she wants to talk shop, so they've had a couple of conversations about weapons but not much else tbh, Hazel just tends to be more personable

So when they're sent after Five, Hazel is much more hesitant to kill who he perceives as a "work friend" and also is definitely thinking about all the times Five casually revealed a way the commission was being highkey shady about him, such as the potential experimentation, no pay, working under duress etc. He's much more easily turned against the commission because he's even more primed to say "fuck the commission" than he is in canon

Hazel out here like "how did Five break his contract when Five wasn't even being paid? I kind of want to read it."

Hazel out here like "I would unionize if I didn't think the commission was anti-union enough to send literal assassins after me if I suggested it :/"

meanwhile with the siblings

Five just. talks over them a lot and makes so much sense that it's actually really hard to argue with him, and he's weirdly considerate of his family's obligations

Like Diego is like "i have to go see Patch" then Five is like "that's great I'm proud of you buddy, it would actually be really handy to have some law enforcement read into the situation if you think she's up to the task. that goes for everyone by the way! If y'all have people you trust, more bodies would be super helpful I think"

the entire family, collectively, who have like zero trusted social links: uhhhhhhhh

Diego, with this weird permission, probably?? Does? Awkwardly attempt to read Patch into the situation? Patch is, obviously, like "what the fuck, Diego" but probably goes with him to the mansion (????????) because she's concerned and then meets his fucking whacko family with their superpowers and suddenly everything is 100% more realistic

Five is just like "yes hello I'm aware I look like a child, i'm actually in my late 50s or early 60s (apocalypse time amiright) because of time travel stuff. Yes I am Five Hargreeves who went missing in like 2002 or whatever. anyway it's lovely to meet you, i'm so glad diego has someone he trusts, and considering my sibling's shifty looks when i told them to invite anyone they trusted this genuinely makes me concerned that Diego is the most socially well-adjusted of them."

"That cannot be possible." Patch says, like someone who has met Diego Hargreeves.

"You haven't met the rest." Five says sympathetically, "In our defense we were raised in isolation as child soldiers."

"That... explains so much." Is all Patch can say to that, "But you seem..."

"I'm adopted." Five waves away.

"We're ALL adopted." Diego grits out, very aggrieved by this and also not sure if he likes the fact that Patch seems friendly with Five, or at least is listening to him?

"I'm double adopted."

However! With the recruitment of Patch, herding Diego becomes like 90% easier.

Honestly the worst to herd are probably Luther and Allison? Luther because he's Number One and resents Five taking charge and also resents Five's casual dismissal of Reginald and also suspects that Five (or at least the commission) has something to do with Reginald's death?

Allison because she is torn between following Luther and helping him and helping Five but also calling Patrick and Claire at every possible moment while ALSO trying to repair her relationship with Vanya. She's flighty - she'd bail on a Five-apocalypse-assignment if Vanya mentioned being hungry or if Luther called or anything like that

Vanya likes to be included and, if asked, would probably drop as many current obligations as she can. Like she would probably cancel her teaching if Five genuinely and sincerely asked her for her help, which he does because he's 100% sure Dolores would manifest in front of him and smack him if he dared even imply someone without powers wouldn't be helpful

Vanya is like "I'm not sure if i'll be helpful - I don't have powers ):" and Patch is like "wtf are you talking about - my superpowers are Gun, Backup, and Reading Comprehension and i am like the most useful member of this team right now"

Vanya gets a confidence boost just from hanging out with Patch honestly, I think they should be friends

Klaus is thrilled to be included are you kidding?? He says he does it for money but he's just happy to be there and also as one of the most emotionally intelligent siblings he is mildly concerned about the fact that Five looks like he's about to cry and also emotes

Five also gives Klaus positive reinforcement, hugs, and Five absolutely weaponizes the I'm not mad, but I believe that you can do better and I'm going to give you more chances because I love you and fully believe that next time you'll be amazing way that Rick used on him.

I feel like Five ends up saying something along the lines of "I understand that x is really important, and we're definitely going to look into it. Is it something that needs to be addressed right now, or is it something that can wait until after April 1st? If it can wait, I can write it down here on this list so we don't forget. If it can't wait then we can figure out a time to address it and help you" a lot

Like Grace malfunctioning and potentially killing Reginald?

"We don't have to make this decision right now." Five says patiently, "Because Grace is a robot, we have some options. Living with a robot who is potentially malfunctioning and homicidal is dangerous, but Luther saying that means admitting that Reginald might have made a mistake or error with Grace's programming or upkeep. I haven't been here for a long time, but I remember Reginald being very precise. Regardless, this isn't a choice between permanently shutting her off or not. We can shut her down temporarily until we can fully address the issue. We can ask and see if there is a 'system reboot' option or some sort of system check that Grace can undergo. We can try find and hire an expert to take a look at her programming to find the issue."

Five gives this speech while like, organizing the weaponry in the house on a table very nonchalantly

Five out here making buzzer noises at his siblings arguments like "yeah no that's a false dichotomy and a strawman's argument, want to try again?"

(Look apocalypse nights were long and they had games that were literally about arguing pointless shit like ranking types of chairs or the best way to break out of a prison without powers and things could get heated)

"Who died and made you boss?" Luther demands.

"Uh, the world? Were you not listening?" Five asks, looking very purposefully confused.

It gets even MORE delightful when Five reads Rick into the situation because a) he promised and b) his siblings really have like, no connections jeeze

Rick fully believes that this is his son from the future, like Five introduced himself, but Five skipped out on a few key details. Such as being adopted.

So Rick spends a solid chunk of time just staring at Five, who looks basically nothing like him, trying to think like, who is his mother ???? if we save the world will Five stop existing? why would I name my child 'Five'? Does everyone have powers in the future? was there like... a radioactive apocalypse? would radiation give future humans superpowers? when did my life turn into a comic book? am i even allowed to ask these questions? will knowledge of the future fuck things up?

and then when Five comes back and is like "what is up everyone this is my dad Rick who will be joining us, he doesn't have any memories of me thanks to time travel but if anyone is mean to him i WILL kneecap them"

"Your DAD?"

Five does kidney punch Klaus for saying that Rick is a DILF but otherwise everyone just is like, warily looking at this Normal Dad Man in confusion because?? This is the dude who raised Five, who they watched take out like an entire commission team by himself yesterday? He looks so. Normal.

Rick is very confused and like, wonders if he's supposed to be the team mascot? But Five keeps involving him and asking his opinion and in return Rick enforces snack breaks and makes everyone sandwiches and has gentle talks with everyone

Every time Five notices someone about to blow he just lovingly makes sure that that person is alone in a room with Rick

Luther ends up crying on the sofa with Rick gently patting his back as Rick calmly states that Luther seems like he's put a lot of time and effort into his family and making his father proud and that since Reginald isn't here to say it, Rick will have to be the one to say that he's proud and that they've been dropped into a difficult and stressful situation - so soon after Reginald's death when they're still grieving! - and he's doing so well

Luther, experiencing unconditional positive paternal regard for the first time in his life: i don't know why i'm crying so much

honestly this is just a comedy of juggling the gang, having impromptu therapy sessions and discussions, investigating the apocalypse and the eye, leonard trying to meet vanya continuously and failing because she's constantly surrounding by family or rick/patch, the commission trying their best to bust up the dream team/isolate Vanya/kill or remove Five, while Hazel lives out his romcom dreams with Agnes and also says "fuck the commission"

[transcriptroopers]

This person's reply contributes nothing new or of value to the conversation and in fact repeatedly strawmans OP, but it's precisely because of these points that I'm choosing to respond to this banal novel of a reblog. They're very common points so hopefully someone else here will be able to use it as a learning exercise.

---

I see the propaganda's already ramping up for the next US election cycle. Under all the outrage here is what amounts to an argument of "only vote for the perfect candidate" which is just one step shy of the conclusion you're left to make on your own: why bother voting? It's clearly pointless.

This is the biggest strawman of the post, right off of the gate. OP says in the original post: "instead of wasting time scolding progressives (AGAIN) when we point out extremely valid criticisms of Genocide Joe, put that fucking energy toward canvassing for a new Dem/progressive candidate." The fact that you read any criticism of the DNC's favored candidate as an urge not to vote at all or an assertion that "voting is pointless" is all on you. That's the conclusion YOU made. Reading comp 101.

Furthermore, you respond to this post by scolding progressives for pointing out valid criticisms of a genocide-enabling colonizer, (what OP explicitly said not to do) but by calling it PROPAGANDA! As a disabled veteran I'm aghast at the idea that it should be considered propaganda to ask voters to weigh their options before picking a president. Unfuckingbelievable.

I appreciate why some people are single-issue voters, but frankly that's a luxury most of us actual americans can't afford. Especially when you're arguing we should die on any hill that plays directly into Republican hands.

That's how we'll get Trump again, just like we did in 2016.

I will address your misconception regarding "luxury" in a later reply but Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. Trump won via the electoral college. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Right, the guy already spouting clear and obvious neo-nazi rhetoric; the guy (and his cronies) who've effectively promised there won't be another election after them, who see warfare on anyone and everyone as in the cards. Any ground anyone gained in the past four years will all be destroyed under the new permanent Republican authoritarian theocracy.

the implication that Biden ISN'T "already" spouting clear and obvious neo-nazi rhetoric is minimization at best. Every election liberals say "if the Republicans win this time they'll install an authoritarian theocracy!!" more on this later.

In comparison, Biden has really never has been a noisy politician.

Losing my FUCKING mind. Biden was so war-hawkish in the 80's that even fucking Reagan told him to calm down. You are ignoring 50 years of this man's political history.

If I were to rate his weaknesses, the worst has got to be that he's achieved incredible cross-partisan victories in the US' polarized environment, but he's never thrown a parade about any of it. (Unlike the opposition, who do it even when they lost, even when it was actually a Dem-driven win.)

You... You can't name any other of Biden's weaknesses, huh? Notaone, huh?

I think it's not that you can't, (since his political career is very public) but I think because you know that acknowledging his past would mean potentially losing him voters, and at the end of the day that's your only goal. Not truth or a fair democracy. You are literally incapable of thinking about politics except in an us vs them mentality. You cannot even discuss politics without talking talking about incoherent "wins" and "the opposition" like this is a sportsball tournament. This is why you are not able to actually talk to leftists about politics so you have to talk down to them.

In four years, Biden's achieved important legislation for marginalized people, women, queer communities, and working-class folk.

-holding you by your shoulders- listen to me. Whatever little smoke and mirrors political illusions are going on right now that are somehow convincing you of otherwise, women, queer communities, and working class folks are not being helped by this government. They never have and never will be. Justice for the marginalized cannot come at the hands of an imperialist state, a settler-colonial entity that only exists to prop itself up even if it has to sacrifice its citizens. Occasionally throwing us marginalized folks a bone by graciously allowing to suffer less is a trick to keep us loyal. Our shitty tyrant boss keeps throwing us a pizza party and we keep buying it. "Stop caring about these other issues because we might get ours first." No. I won't.

Being a person of numerous marginalized identities, the fact that my life may (and that's a big may) be marginally improved as long as I keep a genocidal party in power is not acceptable to me under any conditions. If you are okay that others die so that you get yours, if you view that as harm reduction or progress, you are part of the problem.

Maybe you're only in one category, or several, or none, but that doesn't make those wins any less important for the many, many Americans he helped. And the complaint that since you weren't helped for one specific issue, that you'll freely disregard all the other people who were helped? That strikes me as having the flavor of a selfish Republican-style whine. For all that, fine, I concede this much: Biden will never be perfect -- just like every single goddamn president before him.

Because you can only see things in terms of Republicans versus Democrats, you may be unaware of what leftists see you as. We see you as complicit in settler-colonial culture. What you call "a selfish Republican-style whine," I see as standing up the implicit white supremacy in American culture. Aside from enabling a genocide, Biden's policies actively harm BIPOC. He has deported more people than Trump. He is okaying oil pipelines. He is allowing anti-Islamophobic legislature to pass. Any microscopic gains we have are dwarfed by his material policy, which is to uphold a white settler-colonial state. So, from my perspective, you are completely disregarding the many people who are not and will not be helped as long as you yourself benefit. It is only harm reduction to the privileged.

Voting isn't a marriage, it's a bus ride. Smart money says choose the bus that can get us closest to where we want to go. Getting halfway there is still always better than a bus that will carry us all straight into a living totalitarian hell.

We already live in a totalitarian hell, to say otherwise is to minimize our reality. To say "but it'll be worse under Trump!" minimizes reality. I think it's pretty apathetic to say "well we've only got two options and none of them are what we want" and to just accept that rather than do literally anything that might improve your situation, and then to fight and ridicule anyone who might suggest otherwise.

On top of all that, Biden is one guy. Like, literally ONE GUY. No president will ever be your messiah. Meanwhile, each american citizen has a mayor and local representatives, state-based representatives and senators, and Federal representatives and senators. And that's not counting the various cabinet members and advisors, at local, state, and Federal levels.

See, here, this is pretty much what the fascist does to the enemy. To the fascist, the enemy is simultaneously all powerful (a threat that must be eliminated) and completely ineffective (because our own guy is the best!!).

If Trump became president, hoo boy!! President is so important, it's such a big important role, we can't let him have it! Theoracy authoritarian incoming!!

But if Biden is president, well... :(:( president is One Guy, cannot Do It All, not fair to blame only him, he doesn't actually have much power actually...

This is why we call you guys fascist-lite.

The President of the United States is ~just one guy~ who could end the Palestinian Genocide with a single phone call, or at least put a ceasefire to it. We know this because he did exactly that in 2021. We see what you're doing when you pump a Republican president as apocalyptic but a Democrat president as helpless.

But perhaps OP missed the protests going on across the US (and the world). Or the many articles and opinion pieces and editorials pushing the US govt to make Israel end this genocide, and to broker a peace that isn't just another open-air prison. This isn't our first rodeo either, as a country. We marched and protested to get women the vote, to end segregation, to make abortion legal, to fund AIDs treatment, to enact marriage equality. On and on. This is the work we do, as members of a democracy.

This is classic ~shining city on a hill~ rhetoric and I'm not even going to bother.

Granted, such protests have to be on a massive scale to influence the president -- but the real influence will always be through our direct representatives, at local, state, and Federal levels. They answer to us, directly, as their constituents. They're the ones who repeat our voices until we're deafening, and to keep going until the President takes this bus in the direction we want.

Which is why OP is asking people to at least consider other options before doubling down on Biden. Reading comp 101.

I find it telling that you expect political parties to do the job of enforcing our various representatives and senators into providing some outcome. That says a lot about your actual position on being part of a democracy -- because what you said is pretty much the opposite. The ones who keep our representatives and senators doing their jobs to represent us is, and always has been, us. If you think democracy means you can just sign off and leave everything to others to handle, you're either a fool or a propagandist.

You don't understand what you've actually said here, because it's a very good point, but not the one you think you made.

You are right. The ones who keep the politicians doing their jobs is us. Which is why you, who continue spouting "voting blue no matter who," who has sworn to never withhold your vote no matter what line is crossed, have abandoned your power for change, and exchanged it for personal gain. You are currently, at this moment, enabling a genocide in not just one, but half a dozen countries around the world because you would rather fight for marginal gains in your immediate circle. "The ones who keep our representatives and senators doing their jobs to represent us is, and always has been, us." Yes. That is why so many people are so angry. You are representing apathy and selfishness and willingness to tolerate genocide as long as you and yours are taken care of. You and people like you who keep voting on the spineless liberal mindset that keeps this country chained because you don't believe in anything better.

(You're certainly parroting the arguments we heard from bots and propagandists in '16 and '20. The names may have changed, but functionally, you're still playing the same game.)

I'm so tired to see a "Bot Propaganda!1!!!" post in 2023. You dumbass. You fucking numpty.

The rest of us will stay in reality and make the best choice we can, and that's to choose our best bet for who'll keep this bus moving in the right direction. But that comes with the caveat that one person alone can't get that bus very far. Judging by age, wit, or looks are just a propagandist's smokescreen.

The "best choice you can" is not to lie down and die serving a political party that doesn't care about you and doesn't represent your interests. Your reality is that you live in a forgone conclusion of helplessness? That those who would be your comrades - if you only listened to us rather than demean us - are just "bots" specifically built to discredit you? And I'm supposed to be inspired by your lack of creativity, passion, or motivation? You are like an abused dog who has only ever had to crawl so as not to get hit. Try to fucking run.

Election after election, our most productive leaders have always been those with the clout, experience, and connections to get the bus a little closer to our goals. And even with all that, a president is just one guy. One person can't do it all, and definitely can't do it alone.

And this is it. This is where we inherently disagree on politics as they exist. The idea that you think any of our presidents have been "productive." I do not think that it is "purity culture" to be opposed to the imperialist. You have immense privilege to think of any presidential action in the last 200 years as "productive" just because of some minor concessions that benefit you. We are still killing and displacing Natives to this day, as we have for hundreds of years. We are still mass incarcerating Black people and have yet to even entertain the possibility of reparations for slavery. To this day we are teaching in schools that slavery wasn't so bad. Many Black Americans are themselves descendants of slave-owning presidents. We are still torturing and deporting Hispanic people and we're seeing a wave of islamophobia that has not been this bad since 2001. Under your Blue.

I genuinely do not think even one American president has been "productive" in the sense of globally benefiting humanity. None of your previous shining hill examples represented a president that did anything to improve those situations; it was all riots, all people. Fuck presidents; we got us gay marriage. We got women the right to vote. Which by the way honestly even saying it that way is ahistorical and told from a white lens. Wealthy white women earned the right to vote in 1920. Black women had to wait another five decades and do the work themselves because spineless liberals like you who only follow the party line allowed it to remain that way, because at least we were getting concessions in other regards!! But maybe it's kind of Republican for them to complain that they didn't get the right to vote since white women did, after all :/ :/ the bus is getting there u kno :/

But I just. I don't know what you're talking about. "Get the bus closer to our goals" you speak in nothing but half-baked analogies and ideological bullshit but this sounds like you actually think the US collectively has a goal and we're moving toward it. We've moved toward nothing but climate disaster, oligarchy, imperialism, and wholescale genocide denial. This bus is not going anywhere I want to go and you are not going to convince me that I want to go there by promising that all of the bad stuff that's already happening will only happen to the other guys (lie) as long as I vote for Your Guy.

For our democracy to work, it has always taken all of us doing our part to keep things going in the right direction. We speak up at town halls, write letters, make phone calls, or join protests, or all of the above. We're all on this bus together. Democracy has never been a spectator sport.

You are currently the worst kind of spectator - one who can't even read the whole post before shaming people for expressing discontent with their oppression. But every four years you press the blue button and see what happens, then four years later you press the blue button and see what happens. You're an active participant in genocide abroad and at home. I do not care about your boring analogies, your Marvel-esque soliloquys and clapbacks, and I don't care about guaranteeing myself fleeting comforts at home if it means abandoning everyone else in the world.

I know this is a big ask on the Reading Comprehension Website but I am begging people to move on from 2016 cheetoh man bad politics. I don't want to crawl and beg for scraps that might come for me and me alone if only I follow the master's whim. We want to live. We want to live.

i can't fucking believe it's literally a year out of the election, in the middle of a genocide that the whole world is watching, and I'm seeing democrats already scolding people (some of whom literally have family being killed in occupied Palestine) to vote for Biden.

are you fucking kidding me?

not only is he backing a genocide, perpetuating lies to justify this genocide, and directing domestic resources to repress people here objecting to said genocide (which should be enough already), he was also already unpopular before now, has barely done anything to counter the rising tide of Christian fascism you're all worried about, not to mention that he's old as shit and can barely get a sentence out

just from a purely logical, facts-based perspective, anyone trying to push Biden as a viable candidate right now not only doesn't care about the lives of Palestinians, but also actively wants marginalized people here to lose liberties. as far as I'm concerned, advocating for Biden is advocating for a second Trump term, because that man absolutely cannot win in the general election.

instead of wasting time scolding progressives (AGAIN) when we point out extremely valid criticisms of Genocide Joe, put that fucking energy toward canvassing for a new Dem/progressive candidate. we're a year out from the election. if you actually care about the lives of the marginalized not just internationally, but domestically as well, you have to put some fucking effort in instead of relying on the consistently-failing strategy of yelling at voters instead of demanding representatives do their fucking jobs and represent us.

[vergess]

First, rude, I'm not attacking you, and I agree with the general gist of not treating reality and fiction as equivalent. I just think you're getting very angry about something that wasn't in the post.

OP never says this is equivalent to sexual harassment, or that the manga is real life. She's saying that this isn't information the author owes you. Perhaps she meant more but I do think it's presumptuous to assume you know for sure what she meant. In my eye it's no different than assuming you know a person is evil because they consume "problematic" media: you're constructing a whole strawman based on incredibly tiny information on a person.

Even if she meant more, it's not like it's a binary subject. Can be anything from what you assume she meant to "I think the subject needs a bit of tact" (arguable) or just "I personally don't want it discussed on my blog" (also arguable). I think for 3 sentences on the internet someone can be given the benefit of the doubt. Especially considering she had the thoughtfulness to not reveal who wrote down those tags (not something someone on a moral crusade would have done).

I mean, it'll be unfair if YOU made a 3 sentence post and someone immediately assumed the worst possible take and blew up at you and made it a symptom of the whole internet.

1) It's not "rude" to respond to a faceless, nameless piece of shit making light of sexual harassment with negativity. You're the fucker that follows my blog, you should damned well know what to expect by now.

2) I am being far more polite than you fucking deserve, because I've taken the time to screenshot the OP and highlight just for you the part's where OP equates sexual harassment of real children to the fictional character. You know, since your reading comprehension is so fucking abyssmal.

Image: Screenshot of this post, highlighting the lines "comment on her underage trans' character's reproductive system" and "details of trans people's bodies" highlighted.

If your wretchedly ignorant piece of shit ass doesn't understand that publicly demanding the details of a trans child's genitalia and reproductive systems is sexual harassment then I don't know how to help you. You're at a level of ignorance that exceeds my patience to repair.

This bullshit treats the actual sexual harassment of real children as equivalent to asking a fictional character's fictional biology from the person who, godlike and omnipotent, literally controls that characters existence.

If one wants to argue that it's sexually harassing the creator of Ranma 1/2 to send in unprompted questions about implicitly sexual subjects (assuming the question was even unprompted or asked directly of the author), then sure. As a real fucking human being, Rumiko Takahashi can be subjected to sexual harassment. Her fictional characters cannot, and their ~bodies~ are not real.

The entire commentary of that post foundationally rests on the presumption that a fictional character and a real trans child are equivalent, and that asking an artist a question is therefore equivalent to sexual abuse of a child.

And you know who else wants us to believe that foundational assumption and begin harassing and attacking predominantly queer and non-white people for enjoying art?

Fucking antishippers with their wretched little child-raping death cult.

Maybe the OP isn't actively a member of said cult.

But OP certainly fucking does use their rhetoric and further their goals, so I don't care.

Stop. Equating. Sexual violence. Against children. To fucking. Comic books. You nasty little piece of shit.

3) If I made a ~3 sentence post~ that managed to so concisely delegitimize real victims of childhood sexual harassment and abuse by comparing real sexual harassment to fucking comic books, while also aggrandizing myself as the morally superior agent for doing so, while also managing to support the goals of a violent cult that has killed and raped multiple children, a cult which I know for a fact exists because I've literally discussed them before?

And then people got pissed at me for it?

I would fucking consider the impacts of my actions on other people.

In a shocking twist, this is in fact something I actually have had to do in life.

It's also clearly something your stupid ass lacks the capacity for.

4) Fuck you.

5) You get one more ask, just in case you'd like ~additional clarifications.~ After that, I will be blocking your cowardly grey-faced anonymous stupidity.

Stop wasting my time acting like comic books and the sexual harassment of children are equivalent things which can and should be discussed interchangeably, you fucking cretin.

[wolf-queer-discourse]

Adventures in Aphobia #3

My last two Adventures in Aphobia both took on similar flavors of eye-rolling at shameless, obvious bigotry to anyone willing to look or care. But today, I found a different type of aphobia, and I’m actually eager to talk about this one. Have a read of this first.

Look, the bar of respect for ace people is so low it’s all the way in hell, but I mean, to many people, especially allosexual people, they may look at this post and think, “No, this isn’t aphobia. The poster wasn’t blatantly cruel.” But what some fail to realize is that politeness can be the thinnest of veils over the ugliest of takes. Polite bigotry gaslights the victims into thinking they can’t be upset about this.

So what’s the deal with this post?

PARAGRAPH #1 starts off innocently enough, saying ace discourse wouldn’t exist if people recognized complex relationships to sex and relationships. Even taken on its own, I do not agree with this. Ace discourse ranges all the way from outright denial of asexual existence to the strong hatred for and exclusion of aces from the queer community. Nearly everyone recognizes people have complex relationships to sex...that...that doesn’t mean ace people won’t be discriminated against. In fact, it’s an argument aphobes use constantly to try and gaslight ace people into erasing themselves. Ace discourse comes from a lot of places, but at the end of the day, it all stems from people’s refusal to acknowledge ace people and their unique experiences. This poster absolutely does not get to say “IT’s CoMpLicAteD”, and expect ace people to just disappear. Honestly, it’d be better and more honest if they said “Lol, ace people should go fuck themselves and hop to the back of the line with everyone else.”

PARAGRAPH #2 and #3 are not very objectionable on their own. Everything said is true. Society has very complicated views on sex, and life happens to all people. The ugly part of this is that the poster is setting up an argument here in which they will hand wave ace people into the “everyone else” crowd and pretend as if we’re all just too similar and no labels should even exist.

This is literally what enby-phobes do. They say “Well, gender is COMPLICATED”, which is true, but then they say “So like...aren’t we all really nonbinary when we think about it? Why should enby people label themselves?” I swear we’ve all seen this. The poster is agender. This argument could easily be whipped in their face. Different forms of bigotry can share very clear overlaps, and it’s very important to acknowledge where these arguments come from and why they exist. It exists as a way to shut people up. It happens to bi people too! Every day, people come out as bi and someone tells them “pff, everyone thinks girls are hot. I had a crush on my best friend once, that doesn’t mean I’m not straight! All people are like this!” Let’s call out this erasure where we see it. It’s not the same thing, and if anyone saying stuff like this truly believes what they’re saying, maybe they’re the ones who need to reevaluate their own identity.

PARAGRAPH #4 dips its ugly toes straight into blatant aphobia, having the gall to call ace and aro people “obsessed” with pretending their relationships with sex and romance are wholly unique and different. Nah, fuck right off with that bullshit. The poster even goes on to say ace people have created entire new social classes. Uh...WHAT? Is there some secret ace society with a caste system living in the shadows?? What is this person talking about?? I suppose you can’t be a true bigot unless you have some vague grievance to weakly hand-gesture at that you couldn’t prove given 20 years to do so. For the love of my sanity, just say you hate ace people! It’s okay! (I mean, not actually, but Jesus Christ does it save us all some time). They also say things like “somehow excluded from”. Replace asexual people with nonbinary people and take a joyride through this section, because the arguments are scarily similar. What would it take for this poster to acknowledge ace and aro people have their own experiences? Seriously, what? What holds you back from doing this?

It’s also funny to note the actual lack of substance to this argument. The poster is not giving any specific examples or even bringing up what being ace and aro mean. Yes, there is a pretty noticeable difference between feeling sexual attraction and not feeling sexual attraction. How many “allo” people do you know that say they’ve NEVER experienced this? Come on. The poster reduces asexuality and aromanticism down to allo people’s, in their own words, hyper-specific contexts where they don’t want sex or love. At least the poster admits any circumstance that allo people are comparable to ace people are extremely specific. But for real, are we hinging a whole argument on a few very specific examples of allo people having some similarity to ace people?

“Nothing about your relationship to sex or love makes you more or less LGBT. If you are gay and don’t want to have sex, ever, you are still gay. “

Mini strawman alert for the idea any ace person thinks you’re less gay if you’re also ace. And bonus points for an aphobe who refuses to use the definition of asexuality: not experiencing sexual attraction, and instead goes for “don’t want to have sex”. For the last. Fucking. Time. Not wanting to have sex and being asexual are NOT the same. Don’t make me pour gasoline in my eyes every time I see this.

After this, the poster goes on a tangent, which by the tone, seems to think it's very inspiring, and says no matter how you want to have sex (including only certain days of the week), you’re still straight! It’s so fucking condescending and gross to talk ace people out of their own identity like this.

“EVERY person who is heterosexual is different in how they perform or experience.”

Oh. My. GOD. THEY DIDN’T EVEN SAY STRAIGHT. THEY SAID HETEROSEXUAL. WUGGYUEGYUG. God help me. Can one be both bisexual and heterosexual? No…? Okay. So then. How is one both asexual AND heterosexual? What single brain cell in this poster’s head was responsible for this Chad of a sentence? I—

*deep breath* 

So. It’s interesting how the poster says “perform or experience it”. Asexuality is an identity. It is not a performance, and it is not defined by your actions. A straight person not having sex does not become asexual. And sure...people with the same label can experience their sexuality differently, but...to a point, guys. You can’t experience your sexuality out of the DEFINITION of the label. Heterosexual: Sexual attraction to the opposite gender. Asexual: Sexual attraction to no one. If a “heterosexual” isn’t sexually attracted to anyone, they are by definition, not heterosexual. It takes insane mental gymnastics to make this argument, so A for flexibility, I guess? 

“Gayness, straightness, and bisexuality are not defined by HOW you do or don’t want sex or HOW you do or don’t want to date, it’s just defined by WHO you want to be with.”

The first part of the sentence is correct, but it also defeats this person’s entire argument. Ace people AGREE with this. Being asexual is not the act of not having sex!! It’s not experiencing sexual attraction! You can google this! The second part of the sentence is mostly correct, depending on your interpretation. The issue is in part with the words the poster used: gayness, straightness and bisexuality. These words are not all equivalents. Gay could refer to sexual and or romantic orientation. Thus an ace gay person. Straightness is not actually an equal word to gayness. This is because straight is an exclusive term for a normative sexuality (in society’s eyes) in terms of sexual and romantic attraction. Some ace people DO call themselves straight, though it’s inaccurate. Ace people can be heteroromantic, but because being straight is so exclusive, you need to be both sexually AND romantically attracted to only the opposite gender.

The post basically ends telling ace people they’re all actually straight and were just confused the whole time. Lovely. And an erasure of gay aces too! Believe it or not, gay ace people do not like having their ace identities erased. Who’d have guessed?

Honestly, if anything this post is just kind of sad. A sad reflection of what people believe and how they truly do not see their own bigotry. They believe they’re freeing ace people from an incorrect label. They’re the heroes.

They’ll say “it’s okay, you’re not asexual” as if they've like...lifted a burden off of ace people. Like, “Oh, you think I’m not asexual? Cool, cool. Glad you cleared that up for me!” It’s sad how aphobes think, some very genuinely, that asexuality is just some high school party that went off the rails, and we’re all just coming out of the drunken haze, ready to go home. Ready to all laugh about it later, tease one another about how wild and silly it all was. 

Having your identity erased like this is fucking horrible, and I hope people like this can take a look in the mirror and see themselves clearly. All ace and aro people have a right to their identity, whether gay, bi, heteroromantic or anything else. End of story.

[stahl-tier]

Good post OP. The mythical stereotypical "Neurotypical Person™️" doesn't even exist and random people who accidentally were insensitive about someone's neurodiversity out of cluelessness are not the reason neurodivergent people have it hard. The idea that only a neurotypical person could be the source of a neurodiverse person's hardships is also extremely dangerous - it puts neurodivergent people on a pedestal of immunity, and implies that they cannot do anything wrong.

It's systemic problems that causes the hardships of neurodivergent people. Public spaces and institutions that are hostile or unaccommodating are that way often by design, and a lot of the time it's a matter of money and arrogant management. A lot of these places are also hostile and unaccommodating to neurotypicals.

There's so many people who are perhaps truly neurotypical or just never were able to get a diagnosis and treatment for what is wrong with them, who mean well but aren't as educated on modern terminology and scientific research about every specific flavor of neurodivergency as a person who is afflicted by it. Acting like those people are somehow malignant/ableist just because they used a word that is no longer "in fashion" or didn't read your mind about your special needs.... is extremely counter-productive.

Side note about autism in particular: for me there is simply no point in pursuing a professional diagnosis at this point since it would not help me in any way and instead just cause me disadvantages when it comes to my job and such. But there is literally zero doubt that I have about my autism being a thing, and everyone who has ever interacted with me more than once knows it as well (even if many of those people just don't know to recognize the symptoms I display in my daily life as autistic traits).

There's no point in sugarcoating it, autism makes my life hard in every way possible. It makes zero difference if I'm interacting with a random stranger, a (presumably) neurotypical coworker, or an autistic friend. There will be misunderstandings and miscommunication and problems. But guess what, this also happens when neurotypical people interact. There's no clear-cut binary sytem of "good at communicating" and "bad at communicating". It's a matter of the current situation, the current stress levels/emotional state of everyone involved, and the willingness of both parties to solve conflicts.

In summary, I also wish people would stop the endless and pointless "us vs them" crusade because it doesn't help anyone, and it based on a very dumbed down strawman-ified version of real people.

A thing that bothers me about the neurodivergent vs. neurotypical discourse

Like, i can totally understand the need for someone to make fun of "neurotypicals". After all, the world has never been kind to neurodivergent people, who were often just objectified and treated as subjects to examine more than people, who were often not actually asked about stuff etc.

But still, reading about neurodivergent people making fun of neurotypical people when the pandemic hit - "How to care for a neurotypical in social isolation", "maybe they will FINALLY learn how to be happy about tiny things" etc. - make me cringe so bad it hurts. I mean, really, I understand the need to vent out the frustrations. But in the same time? They show the same lack of understanding as someone making mean jokes about neurodivergent people.

And overally, I hate the assumption that neurodivergent people are actually those who communicate and do things in the right way (instead of starting to think, like, maybe there really isn't one and only correct way to do things). Neurodivergent - especially autistic people - being convinced that they are the ones communicating clearly.

I understand the need to be seen, heard, and understood. But the solution is not to flip the discourse on its head. The solution is not to see a chunk of the population as a homogenious "other".

Also, a disclaimer: I am currently in the process of getting an autism diagnosis and even if it turns out that i am not autistic, my whole life I have been feeling different from my peers - so I am not speaking from a position of a random neurotypical who is just annoyed that someone made fun of them once.

Another also: by creating a notion that neurodivergents communicate correctly, you are excluding all neurodivergent people whose neurodivergence might manifest differently.

[serpenteve]

king of scars rant 💅🏽

cw: spoilers for king of scars

Honestly, I hated this book.

The Lore

I definitely hated how this book pretty much retconned the original trilogy and made it all but pointless. So Alina had to lose her powers because there are comic limits to Grisha power but Zoya can turn into a fucking dragon and become the avatar now?

The Shadow Fold had to be destroyed because it made Ravka weak but now it's open season on Ravka without the Fold holding their enemies back and every other week, there's some new assassination attempt from Shu Han or an open declaration of war from Fjerda or blackmailing debt-collectors from Kerch? How is Ravka still functioning, honestly?

Nikolai

I'm sorry, Nikolai, but this book actually made me low-key hate you. Like, the narrative wants so badly to prove me to me that he isn't like other imperialist monarchs! He....remembers people's names and fights alongside them!!!

Another character in this book (Isaak) spends the majority of his narrative idolizing Nikolai and trying to be like him and talking about how amazing he was to his family and then when he dies........Nikolai barely even gives a fuck? I got the sense this friendship was entirely one-sided.

Also, why is this marketed as a Nikolai duology and named after him when he's barely the main character and has to share the narration with 3 other characters---one of which is literally occupying the same locations as him? 🤨

Zoya

Oof, where to even begin with this one.

Listen, I would have been 100% on board with this book being entirely focused on Zoya. She's the real protagonist in my opinion so the fact that had to share the narrative with 3 other people (including one person who doesn't even influence the main plot and another who gets discarded by the end) was really bringing down the potential of her story.

Because there wasn't enough room for her character development, everything about her arc is completely rushed. Like, she can fire-bend and bee-bend in the span of 3 hours? WELL OKAY THEN. Oh, she can just turn into a fucking dragon now because she opened some random ass door in her mind? WELL OKAY THEN.

I hate hate hate it when female characters get accused of being Mary Sues but there's something to be said when we're jumping heads and everyone is just like "Wow, Zoya is so pretty, Zoya is so badass, Zoya is so cool" while not really having any real consequences for her flaw. Like, we all know Zoya can be bitchy and mean (and we love that about her 😌) but....she pretty much gets away it with and doesn't face any backlash for it. Add this to the fact that she becomes the Grisha avatar with very little training on her part and voila. The entire world of the Grishaverse bends its rules and reality around her in typical Sue fashion.

Nina

Girl, what was even the point of your story? I kept waiting and waiting and waiting, stupidly assuming that her story would somehow merge with the main one but it never came.

We learn that things are still shit for Grisha. The Shu are kidnapping them and making them into crazy supersoldiers and Fjerda are getting them addicted to some parem variant to create their own Grisha slave army from birth?

Why on earth would being a Grisha at the Little Palace be a choice in this world? It's either you become a soldier in the Second Army or....you get a fate worse than death. Wouldn't the atrocities committed against Grisha radicalize most Grisha anyway? Like, sign me the fuck up, I want to kick some ass against people trying to literally experiment on me???

Nina's necromancer powers were pretty badass though, not gonna lie 🙌🏽

Isaak

Isaak was honestly the best part of this whole dumpster book and then he gets killed for no reason. And Nikolai doesn't even give a fuck?

Why introduce this new character if we're just going to use and discard him? I kept wondering why we were getting palace updates from a new character instead of just using Genya or Tamar's perspective.

Also, the whole thing with princess Ehri was a bit racist to me? Like we have a Chinese-coded character being a deceptive backstabber (or front-stabber in this case lol) and nearly dies while giving off some serious dragon lady vibes. I get the sense she did die in the original draft and some editor was probably like "Hmm, well maybe we shouldn't have another dead POC" so she survives. At least she didn't speak in broken English like Botkin 🤷🏽‍♀️

The (Anti) Climax

This was easily the most anti-climactic ending to a Grishaverse book I've read. It's a shame because it has all the elements that could have made it badass? Like we've got saints with god-like powers but Zoya easily defeats Elizaveta by suddenly unlocking fire-bending, bee-bending, and transforming into a fucking dragon. I just can't take it seriously.

Elizaveta herself was too easily distracted as a villain. What the hell even happens to the saints when they die in this place? Do all their miracles that affect the rest of the world just disappear? Who knows. The book ends with Fjerda declaring war and a failed assassination attempt by a Shu Han princess.

Yuri & the Darkling

And finally this brings me whatever mess is going on with Yuri and the Darkling. I get the sense Leigh was super pissed with Darkling stans and created this weird strawman with Yuri's character. Honestly, I thought he was kinda funny because I'm sure even without real-world fans simping for the Darkling, there would certainly be people in the Grishaverse who would gravitate towards the Darkling and see him as a savior of sorts, especially with the world's Grisha being arguably worse after his death and the destruction of the Fold.

What bothered me was the bizarre preachiness of the other characters. Like Yuri literally only exists so that Zoya and Nikolai can take turns being like "Actually, Yuri aka Darklina stan placeholder, the Darkling was the VILLAIN of the series and you were just too stupid to see it, etc"

...Like, girl, we know he's the villain 🤦🏽‍♀️ If we're going to create a character just to preach to Darkling stans, then why does the entire plot revolve around trying to bring him back into the story? It's like Leigh has a weird love-hate relationship with the Darkling. She hates him and she hates his fan club but she still needs him because otherwise there's no magical plot conflict.

Fridge Logic

If there is no limit to Grisha power and you can just take however much you want from the heart at the making of the world, why the hell did Alina get punished for the amplifier nonsense in the original trilogy?

If the saint's powers are limited to the edges of the Fold, how are they able to manipulate stuff outside of it?

Juris claims when you properly possess an amplifier, you become a living amplifier in return. So is how the Darkling and Baghra became living amplifiers? Or is that just still some unexplained merzost nonsense from Illya Morozova?

What the hell even considered merzost now with all this retcon?

If the Darkling can possess Yuri and magically transform his features to be his own, then why did he need his own body?

And if he can change people's features by possessing them, why did Nikolai get to keep his?

Why did the obisbaya ritual fail in the first place?

Prose

The only positive is that the prose is like a million times better than the original trilogy, but considering how terrible the original is, I suppose that's not really saying much.

[thattimdrakeguy]

Look, I don't want this to sound bad or be misinterpreted, that's why I'm writing it to you, who are one of the few human beings in the fandom who take more than 5 seconds to think before speaking.

Look, I think I'm just sick of the timkon, I've never been one of those who ship but I just don't care, everyone can imagine what they want, it's just that in this case, it's just on another level.

I'm not homophobic or anything annoying like that, I was among the first to jump with excitement when the first Urban Legends request came out hinting at Tim's reveal.

It's just that I'm fed up, since it became official about Tim it seems that everyone only wanted it for their ships, it doesn't help that the timkon really is one of those ships maked because two characters are close so they should automatically be a couple.

The ship stems from Geoff Johns' TT era where none of the characters were particularly well written, I've seen people who literally only like that run because of the moments they assigned to the ship.

And the worst and what has bothered / surprised me the most at the time of writing this silly complaint, I really just cannot process that there are really people outraged and spitting billis at DC for not putting a ship that is not canon in any way in Titans , that simple, as if it were something real or elemental of both characters.

At the same level of those same people who want to make Kon homosexual from one issue to another just to stick him with Tim and throw the narrative sense in the trash, I don't know what to say anymore, thanks in advance.

Honestly, I'm right there with you.

I'm not sure I can say I'm sick of it. Cause really I'm sick of most of the fandom's stuff.

Because so much of the things are popular is just bandwagoning and that's it. Like I bet you, without finding whatever it is to jump on online, they would not still like it as much and may have a total different view even.

Some of the hills people die on are freaking crazy cause I read a lot of comics and they're often so off the mark it's honestly, so so honestly head scratching.

And I'm not saying this to be like, "yeah screw you TimKon stans", cause legitimately I'm not. People enjoying whatever is good as long as it's not morally wrong. Cause that just means people are enjoying themselves. Which is good in the end.

But boy, do I not get it from a fuller perspective. They were just suddenly best friends in a series without much good characterization. During Y.J. they got on better terms...but not really best friends.

Why...would they be? lol

Neither of them are into the same things. They're quite different. Barely shown just hanging out.

Kon was closer with Bart if I had to compare.

But ships and stans generally speaking. Always have insanely loud, insanely toxic people.

They lie, gaslight, bully, exaggerate, and go into denial about stuff to create this preferred image for whatever it is. Not limited to TimKon. Cause I mean in literally every fan base. In that way.

It's why I stopped being on as much. There's too much about stuff people don't know a lot about and won't let go of. And again I get it. But when you really care about them cause it's a comfort thing or that's just how your mind works, odds are you really won't like it.

I don't find the fun in lying to myself or pretending I find the same jokes funny time and time again.

Like, no, that's exhausting lol

Idgaf about some random dude with a strawman argument online tryna make me feel like a crap person.

"Oh so you prefer when Batman hits his kids huh??"

Like, uh, nah. lol

Just exhausted of fanon. Why do people forget there's a gray area? Sheesh. I'm not into stuff that comes from a janky source at best. I want to like actual content.

Anyways I find people that want Kon to be gay, as in loud ones not all of them, literally just want it for their ship. They don't actually care about the character/characters. They got obsessed with it so much that it's probably not healthy. I've yet to see someone that actually seems to genuinely like the character get so stressed about the ship.

Most of the ones that care about Kon aren't stressed about the ship being canon. Some ship it. But barely nuts about it. Some may want it. But they aren't acting as if they are canon and it's imperative.

That's my experience at the very least.

[thesaltofcarthage]

I finally get the anger about Thor: Ragnarok

I’ll admit it: I saw it the first time in the theatre and loved it, because it seemed funny and fresh. And it was absolutely what started me on the Thorki Spiral, which I hadn’t shipped before.

It was also where I really started to get emotionally invested in the MCU, and started plumbing more of the meta depths online, and understanding the character arcs beyond the plot arcs. And of course I’ve spent two years on this blue hellsite, enjoying the GIFs and the fics and the art.

But I didn’t actually rewatch the movie.

And last night I sat down to rewatch it, and... wow.

Wow, it is really not funny.

I recall reading a defense of Taika Waititi’s choices in this film, and how he is deconstructing colonialism and puncturing the White CisHet Male Hero myth, and I totally get all that. All the NZ/Aussie voices and aboriginal cultural influences are genuinely refreshing.

But I also recall reading Waititi’s casual dismissal of the Thor comic canon, and how he viewed Thor and Loki as “rich spoiled boys whining about their problems.” How he sees Loki as an “emo goth kid” who needs to grow up. How he deliberately ignored everything which had come before. And I recall reading about Hemsworth’s boredom with Noble Thor and how he longed to do more comedy.

The problem with Ragnarok is that Waititi views the protagonists as bad guys.

Bad Guys need to be punished. They need to lose.

I was intrigued by how Odin, by way of Hela, was framed as a conqueror, and how that part of history needed to be acknowledged and rejected. But: 1) Odin was already previously presented as a bad guy because of his shit parenting 2) the narrative re-rejects that point of view by redeeming him on the cliff in Norway just before his discorporation. Odin is never punished for his conquering rampages. He never has to acknowledge what he stole, or how he hurt people or entire cultures, or make reparations. He never has to admit what he did to Loki. He just gets to melt away and join Frigga.

In Waititi’s view, the White CisHet Male Heroes who think too much of themselves and need to be taken down a peg are... Thor and Loki. The title character and the canonically queer/pan/genderfluid outsider.

Yes, Thor and Loki are played by White CisHet Male actors. That does not make both characters White CisHet Males. (And let’s be clear: while there’s a lot of White CisHet Male Privilege going around which can certainly stand to be dismantled, “White CisHet Male” isn’t automatically equivalent to “evil jackass.” Thor’s identity as a White CisHet Male doesn’t mean that by definition the narrative has to break him.)

Loki was not a conqueror in the MCU — not the way Odin was. Loki’s “conquest” was canonically forced at the hand of the actual enemy, Thanos, who tortured and brainwashed him, and was controlling him via the Mind Stone.

Loki is not a colonizer. Loki is an outsider, an Other. He may present as White Cis Male, but he doesn’t have to, and he hasn’t always. There’s the wink from Jeff Goldblum and the implication that Loki was sleeping with him to “gain his favor,” but this is presented as more of a joke on Loki than anything else. And that’s what the entire narrative does: repeatedly make Loki the butt of the joke.

Poking fun at the people in power is a well-worn narrative device. Using humor to puncture legend, to remove power from people who claimed it illegitimately and at the expense of the less powerful, is a classic function of storytelling and should absolutely be celebrated.

Mocking Thor’s pompousness? Keeping him off-balance? Cutting his hair, having him whack himself in the head with Hulk’s sparring ball? Sure, why not. Because Thor is the hero. He is the center of the narrative. He is the one who has taken power and needs to learn to live without it to grow.

Except... that was the arc of the first Thor movie. Thor is not the arrogant shitheel he used to be. And Thor doesn’t grow or change in Ragnarok. There’s no character arc. He just... blithely sails on, pursuing what he thinks is right. Granted that what he claims to be pursuing is “saving the people of Asgard,” which is a noble and selfless goal, Thor personally doesn’t change. He’s as goofy and blustery in the post-credits stinger as he is in the pre-credits scene where he’s dangling in chains.

The only moment which can remotely be framed as “change and growth” is “Are you ‘Thor, God of Hammers’?” Which, again, could have been really powerful, as Thor learned that he didn’t need the literal mark of Odin’s approval (a measure of his “worthiness”) to channel his divine powers, but it ended up being an admittedly kick-ass action scene. And he’s never shown as being utterly helpless without Mjolnir; the hammer is an excellent weapon, but not his only one.

And Loki? Loki doesn’t have power, not in the narrative sense. Loki didn’t rampage over entire realms, not of his own volition. He did not steal or kidnap. Loki was never in line for the throne; that is, again, the entire plot of the first Thor movie. Loki has nothing to puncture. Attacking someone in power to even the scales is justice. Attacking the powerless is just bullying.

Which is what it felt like Waititi was doing, over and over: bullying Loki. Dr. Strange, who has been studying sorcery for what, 18 months? can outwit Loki, who has been a seidmadr trained by the seidkona Frigga for over a thousand years? Strange sends Loki into a portal where he is falling for half an hour?

When did Loki fall last? Off the Bifrost. When he was committing suicide. When he was captured by Thanos, who then tortured him for six months.

Oh yes, that’s something to make fun of. But Waititi wouldn’t know that, would he, because he made a point of ignoring the characters’ histories.

Thor being casual, callous, even rude, to the beloved brother he thought had died in his arms years ago? Thor putting an electrical torture device on his beloved brother, the man he defended to the entire Avengers, the man he refused to surrender to Midgardian authorities, and leaving him there to suffer? Thor mocking his beloved brother, telling him he needs to change and grow? Loki is the bloody god of chaos. How is Loki the character who hasn’t grown and changed?

But Waititi wouldn’t know any of their past interactions, because he made a point of ignoring the characters’ histories.

Waititi just saw the most superficial possible reading of these two characters and assumed that they were ripe for punishment — that they needed to be reduced. Which is what he did, proudly. So when the fandom reacts and complains that he’s disrespecting beloved characters, what he hears is that we’re defending White CisHet Male Privilege.

Waititi thinks he dismantled two copies of Obidiah Stane. The fandom saw him bludgeoning Bisexual Steve Rogers, Pre- and Post-Serum. You don’t pick on the little guy. You don’t reduce your hero.

Thor and Loki’s rich and complex history, even just in the MCU, is completely ignored. It’s reduced to the throwaway line of “You faked your death” (which is not what happened) and “I mourned you! I cried for you!” and Thor’s anger that Loki managed to survive. Not relief that Loki is still alive, but offense. And if the script had explored that more — “Why did you pretend to be dead? Why did you hide in Odin’s guise? Why didn’t you find a way to let me know what happened? If you were hiding as Odin, why didn’t you act as Odin?” — I would even have bought that. There is, in fact, a lot to unpack there. But that would have meant exploring everything that happened off-screen between the Thor movies. It would have meant studying that history, acknowledging it, and expanding on it. And Waititi saw Two Spoiled Rich Kids and had no interest.

The problem with Ragnarok is not the humor, or the outsider perspective from a Maori director. The problem is that the creator chose the wrong targets. I have learned in the past two years how many fans have come to identify with Loki the outsider, and Waititi deliberately chose to remain ignorant of that aspect of the character. He created two strawman versions of the characters and proceeded to tear them apart.

I am less hopeful now for Thor: Love and Thunder than I was. I don’t know how important Jane Foster’s storyline is in the comics, but if he ignored Thor and Loki, it’s not unreasonable to imagine he’d ignore Jane’s history too. I may have defended Waititi’s Ragnarok before. I won’t do so again.

[cats-moss-gays]

@terflies

You’ve been all over my posts so I’m just going to consolidate into this one. I’m tired of scrolling past your long and quite frankly boring responses. This post will be divided into sections. If you’re going to respond please say something interesting. However I doubt either of us will ever change the other’s mind. These are kind of like closing statements and I doubt I’ll make anymore major responses because I’m trying to stay focused on offline things.

1. Unanswered Questions

There are some questions and statements in my reblogs that you conveniently ignored.

Definition of a woman? You responded with some generic bs that very clearly isn’t an answer. I’ll be more specific, what should the dictionary definition be? Any ideas?

If I don’t feel like a woman am I allowed to identify as one? You said you weren’t going to humour this question but it is applicable to me and many other gc women. I definitely don’t have any internal feeling of womanhood, or any gender. Does this mean I have to be agender? Is the female gender label restricted to a certain feeling? Or is there absolutely nothing that women have in common?

What is the feeling of womanhood? You kind of answered this but I have a follow up question. You say the feeling of womanhood is enjoying being perceived as a woman. If I feel indifferent to this does it mean I’m not a woman? Additionally, many women feel uncomfortable with being perceived as a woman because of the misogyny associated with the label, does this make them men?

2. Inaccurate Statements and Lies

I don’t believe any “TRAs” define women by gender roles

You may not but there are many who do. It’s also important to point out how deeply ingrained gender roles are in society; you can’t stop them by just saying your choices exist in a vacuum. I’m sure you think I’m just making this up for fun, so here are some examples ;)  x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x

So this whole…thing is dishonest from the start. Gender does not replace sex.

In another post you said that laws should be based on gender instead of sex. So which is it, either gender isn’t replacing sex or it is. When feminists talk about sex based oppression they’re called terfs. When gay people say their attraction is based on sex they’re called transphobic. When people were saying that only females get cervical cancer, they were called violent transphobes. Gender is absolutely attempting to replace sex as the basis of legal protections, safe spaces, political movements, etc. Two of the top post on my blog are more extreme example of this. x - x

BONUS: You’re saying TERF rhetoric

3. The “Questions” Post

You seem very confused about how to define biological sex and to some extent I understand that but you have to stop playing dumb. There must be some way that doctors are able to identify the sex of a fetus before it’s even born in the vast majority of cases, right? And before you try to say I’m just ignoring the existence of intersex people or trying to deny science, I’ll point out that I have watched and read a lot of “sex is a spectrum” stuff. I understand that DSDs exist and that biology is complicated. Our disagreement is mostly not over the facts but over how to define them. I know that however I explain it you’ll pretend you don’t understand it, so instead I’ll just link you to some other sources that explain it more in depth. x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x

A third sex—and many creatures have more than two—does not necessarily mean a third gamete. Mostly this question is a childish distraction, but if you were to use a strict, gamete-based definition of sex the answer would be “none”.

So all infertile people are a third sex? To be female you have to be able to bear children? And you call me regressive, yikes. This can be debunked with the same sources from above but I wanted to feature it in my post because I want people to know that you think there’s a third sex.

I made a quick little chart to compare all the things gender has been compared to! The difference is that while many are socially defined, gender is socially constructed. If someone never interacted with other humans, they would still have a skin color, have or not have specific abilities, have a sexual orientation, and be male or female. They would not have an observable gender identity.

1 - You refuse to humor my questions about being a woman who doesn’t feel like one, however this is not in bad faith; I do want to know what you think. Many gc/radfems, including myself, and many women in general do not have a specific feeling of gender. This is especially true for gnc women, who often feel a disconnect from the feminine gender role and subsequently, the feminine gender. The solution is to realize that there are no standards to conform to to be a woman, no clothes or interests or feelings, just the biological reality one is born with.

2 - You say “the feeling of womanhood is enjoying being called a woman” but what does that mean? It’s circular reasoning, a fallacy called begging the question. How do you know you are a woman? If I gave up being a terf on tumblr, how would you advise that I identify if I don’t think I feel like a woman? My current plan was to just pick the mogai flag with the prettiest colors, but I’m thinking maybe there’s more to it than that...

3 - See my explanation above. Sex is comparable to race or disability or sexuality; gender is not.

4 - You say genders are social classes. If they are indeed social classes, they are unnecessary ones that reinforce oppression. They are undefinable when not based on biological sex or gender roles. The other example of classes I can think of is wealth. Wealth classes have obvious divisions, you can’t just identify into more money. Gender has nothing that is shared by every woman, man, or nonbinary, so you can just identify in and out of classes. Additionally, if there are like 100 genders, are there 100 classes? 

4. The “Biological” Sex Post

Gender does not replace sex

Then why are TRAs trying to say sexuality, legal protections, bathrooms, spaces, political movements, etc should be based on gender instead of sex? You keep contradicting yourself; you should talk to your fellow trans activists because many would disagree. Also see my response in part two.

A number of points here aren’t factually wrong but simple (*simply) irrelevant

So you would agree that biological sex is important and that it is relevant to many conversations? Then why were people getting mad about this?

Or this?

On to the specific examples. This post is long enough already and I’m not going to spoon feed basic biology to you because you’ll probably just ignore it. I referenced a variety of sources earlier. I’ll just reference Invisible Women since it’s an amazing book.

1. This first point is, appropriately enough, true in isolation; it just doesn’t support Paradox Institute’s argument. Listing it leads the audience to believe that truth is on their side, but PI do nothing at all to justify that.

So nothing here is true? They’re just lying? Here are their sources btw.

2. Generally irrelevant, but not entirely biologically accurate, either. It isn’t that ‘male’ and ‘female’ are categories intrinsic to nature that produce small, motile and large, immotile gametes respectively; ‘male’ and ‘female’ are labels we assign (generally, but not always) according to gamete size.

So it’s not relevant that one sex has the ability to carry children or menstruation or get an abortion? It’s not like there’s any issues women face specifically for that, right? So we assign the labels male and female to gametes. If you want to play semantics, sure, we created the words, but the gametes themselves already existed. Not really sure what you’re trying to say here other than disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing and moving some words around. Are you implying that the categorizations of gametes are subjective? Are you saying there’s a spectrum of gametes?? Are eggs just big sperm and sperm just small eggs??? Genuinely have no idea what the fuck you’re trying to prove here.

3. Whatever your opinion of evolutionary psychology, this does not preclude gender. (On the contrary, we ought to include gender in our understanding of cultural development with respect to sex.)

The only gender in history was gender roles, and both were tied to sex in most cases. Sex absolutely came before gender and is more integral to our existence. In any time before the last few decades, gender and sex were basically synonyms.

4. Entirely a straw argument. And, to the contrary, precision greater than two sex categories would be beneficial (i.e. specific sex characteristics, history, endocrinology etc.).

Obviously doctors don’t just diagnose based on sex, they factor in medical history and other traits. Precision is irrelevant because it still focuses on sex not gender. If it’s “entirely a straw argument” why did someone else reblog your response with this?

Speaking as a member of a medical family, the medical one fucking OFFENDS me.

Blood type HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GENDER. Or biological sex! Both are totally irrelevant! And medication dosage is determined by AGE and SIZE. A 25-year-old 160-pound person with a penis needs the exact same dose as a 25-year-old 160-pound person with a vagina. In fact, possibly LESS of a dose, if the person with a penis is 5’10” and the person with a vagina is 5’5”. (The taller person may be underweight.)

This is just. UGH. I could scream.

@prismatic-bell​ this is one of the funniest and dumbest replies I’ve ever gotten. First of all “member of a medical family” tf is that lmao. This reminds me of that post where the “medical worker” tra turned out to be a garbage collector guy. I have no idea why you brought up blood type when it is literally never mentioned in the original post. Strawman much? Fucking obviously blood type isn’t affected by sex, and you’re completely missing the point if you think gender has anything to do with this. Medication dosage is decided by age and size, yes, but also biological sex. This is like basic medical science, dumbass. Mandatory reading from Invisible Women as punishment for your stupidity crimes:

People called her a terf for this :)

5. How sports are best divided is a far broader question than this point implies. We could, for example, segregate sports by relevant physical attributes (as is already the case in some sports) rather than by sex or gender. This point also presupposes (but does not justify) that a woman having an advantage in women’s sports by dint of being trans is significantly greater than an advantage any woman might have by dint of her natural attributes (which, empirically, she does not) and hence would be unfair. That said, enforcement of “female” sports is already marred by racism and perisexism.

You agree sex and gender are different, yes? So then why should males be in female sports? You’re trying to distract me with that stuff about physical performance and whatever. Focus on the question at hand, should males be allowed into female sports? We cannot eradicate sex-segregated sports because female athletes will be even more systematically disadvantaged. If you were truly a feminist you’d understand that female sports are the result of the movement you claim to support. More Invisible Women facts plus some interesting info about the plough hypothesis:

6. Simply untrue. Excluding trans women from statistics about women on the basis that doing so would affect those statistics is arbitrary at best. Those statistics may change, but that does not mean they are unsuitable or inappropriate. The exclusion of any subset of women can be justified in exactly the same way.

Nope! Stop trying to use women of color and intersex women as justifications for why we should let men pretend to be women. You’ve seen the hundreds of receipts of trans women committing all sorts of male violence. Has anyone found anywhere near a comparable number of trans men doing similar things? They have not, even though if trans men were truly men they would be much more violent.

7. The majority of single-sex spaces are, functionally, just as much single-gender (owing to the traditional equivalence of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and to the majority of the population being cis. Trans people have been using spaces appropriate to their gender for decades, whereas concerns about them doing so are based on speculation and hypotheticals rather than fact. (Aided, as with a lot of bigotry, by bad and manipulated statistics.)

I’ve spoken about my opinions on the bathroom debate before. If a passing trans person uses the bathroom of their choice I don’t really care, but there have already been many examples of men making women uncomfortable in their bathrooms, or worse. Making all bathrooms gender neutral is by far the worst idea, but unfortunately that seems to be where we’re headed. More Invisible Women, just for fun:

8. This is the worst red herring, exploiting violent misogyny for the sake of argument. It is another straw argument, too, since—even ignoring trans-positive feminism in practice and assuming trans people act only in self-interest—trans people are concerned with addressing such injustice.

Sure, many trans people are supportive of feminism. But we can’t effectively dismantle the patriarchy if we can’t accurately describe the (sex-based) oppression involved. Women are routinely silenced when talking about our biology, even when there is no “transphobic” language involved. “Trans-positive feminism” also often reinforces misogyny by supporting sex work and porn, and by shutting down analysis of things like femininity and makeup because “some women like it.” See also from trans activists: misogyny racism homophobia + lesbophobia

9. Similar to (7) there is no consistent distinction between sex and gender across law. Even so, this is another red herring as it is possible to recognise both sex and gender in laws and policies. Some laws already do (at least functionally, if not explicitly).

You can deny it but the TRA train is leaving without you and they’ve been clear about their goals. As you’ve seen in this post, gender is intended to replace sex. Those who bring up sex-based issues are silenced as “terfs” who deserve the hatred thrown at them.

Sorry for making such a long post but I was on a roll so I just kept writing. I don’t expect @terflies​ to respond to all of this but I wanted an excuse to make some sort of masterpost that links to a lot of my other posts and can be used in the future. Online school is going pretty well and I’m trying to start some doing some hobbies that are better than tumblr blogging.

[itsclydebitches]

Is buying the new Harry Potter game supporting transphobes because I've been seeing a lot of that on twitter? Not playing it. Pirating is fine, but actually paying for it.

Hi, anon!

I’ve seen a lot of the same and had initially thought to post my thoughts on the issue… before I got a very angry ask condemning me for a post where I admitted that I thought the game looked great and was excited to play it. I can no longer link to that post because I deleted it: a late night, impulsive decision made in an effort to try and protect myself from further flaming. Thus, I considered ignoring this ask under the same justification… before realizing that it might not matter in the long run. The Harry Potter: Legacy trailer has been out for just a few days and already I have gotten that furious ask, been told off by a friend for mentioning the trailer, and was questioned (antagonistically) about why I had added a Harry Potter related book to my Goodreads list. They’re small and potentially coincidental anecdotes, but it feels as if any engagement with Harry Potter is slowly coming under scrutiny, not just the (supposed—more on that below) crime of purchasing the new game. Given that I will always engage with Harry Potter related media, if there’s any chance such subtle criticism will continue regardless of whether I make the “right” choice to boycott the game or not, I might as well explain my position. Especially for someone who asked politely! Thanks for that 💜. 

Which leads to the disclaimer: Any anon hate will be unceremoniously deleted. This is a complicated issue and I intend to write about it as such. I ask that any readers go into this post with good faith and a willingness to acknowledge that this situation isn’t as black and white as they may prefer it to be. If that’s not something you can emotionally handle—which is 100% fine. Some subjects we’re simply not inclined to debate—or if you’re just looking to get in a cheap shot, please hit the back button.

Right. Introduction done. Now here’s the tl;dr: saying things like “Buying this game is inherently selfish/transphobic” isn’t the hot take people want it to be. Is boycotting Legacy one (very small—we’ll get to that too) way of showing support for the trans community? Yes. Is buying the game proof that you’re a selfish transphobe?  No. This isn’t a bad SAT question. Legacy boycotters are to trans supporters as Legacy buyers are to  ___? The argument that someone is selfish for buying the game is basically that you are choosing a non-essential video game over the respect and lives of trans individuals, but the logic breaks down when we acknowledge that purchasing a game has no real life impact on a trans individual’s safety, support, etc.   

“But Clyde, you’re giving Rowling money. She is then using that money to support anti-trans organizations. Thus, you have actively put more harm into the world.” Have I? I’m not going to get into whether/how much/what kind of money Rowling is receiving from this project because the fact is we don’t know and we’ll likely never know. Suffice to say, she probably will get some portion of any $60/$70 purchase. The real question is whether those sales have any meaningful impact. Reputable information on Rowling’s net worth is hard to come by, but it seems to be somewhere between 600 million and 1 billion pounds. Or, to put it another way: a fuck ton. And money keeps rolling in from a franchise that is so, so much bigger than a single video game. It literally doesn’t matter how much money you might put in her pocket via Legacy because she’s already so goddamn rich she can do whatever she wants. If Rowling wants to give a million dollars to the heinous “charity” of her choice, she can. She will. You are not directly contributing to this horror because that money may as well already exist. Every person in the world could refuse to buy this game and she’d shrug, going about her disgusting life because it literally does not affect her in any meaningful way. You’re refusing to give the murderer a knife when they’re got direct access to a knife-making factory. Horrible as it is to hear, you can’t stop them from doing something horrific with that tool. 

For me, this is the straw argument of the Harry Potter world. Not straw as in strawman, but literally straws. Remember how everyone was talking about plastic straws, swore off them, and subsequently deemed anyone who still used one to be selfish people who didn’t care about the environment? It didn’t matter if you had a certified “good” reason for using one (disability) or a “selfish” reason (carrying straws everywhere on the off chance you wanted a drink is a pain in the ass)—you’re a horrible person who wants the planet to die. Same deal here. If you can swear off straws, great! Do what tiny bit of good you can. But if you can’t or even don’t want to give them up, the reality is that your “selfishness” doesn’t make a significant difference in the world. The amount of plastic corporations are pouring into the ocean makes your actions inconsequential. It’s not like voting where every small, individual act adds up to a significant total. This is your lack up against others’ staggering abundance. It’s not adding a few drops of water until you have a full bucket, it’s trying to un-flood the boat with a teaspoon while someone else is spraying it with the hose. Have you, on the most technical level, made a difference by moving that teaspoon of water out of the boat? Yes. Is it a difference that holds any meaning in regards to the desired outcome? Not really. Now apply all that to Rowling. She is so phenomenally wealthy—with additional wealth coming in every day—that your purchase of Legacy is a teaspoon of water in her ocean of funds. It’s inconsequential.

“But Clyde, buying this game would support her and supporting her sends the message that what she believes is okay.” Exact same argument as above. JKR’s fame is so astronomical that no video-game boycott could ever make a dent in it. For every 100 people who swear off her work there are another 1,000 who continue to engage with both her writing and the writing related to her world because she is that prominent. Harry Potter is one of the largest franchises of all time, second only to things like Pokémon and Star Wars. This isn’t some indie creator who you can ignore into silence. The reality is that Rowling is here to stay and we have to take far more substantial acts to counteract that influence. 

Even more importantly, buying the game is not evidence that you support her views and the black and white belief that it does is an easy distraction from those harder “How do we improve the lives of trans people?” questions. I started compiling a list of stories with problematic authors only to realize the number of incredibly popular texts with awful histories attached to them unnecessarily increased the length of an already long post. Everything from Game of Thrones to Dr. Seuss—if you love it, chances are one of the authors involved has a history of misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc. Which I don’t say as a way of excusing these authors, nor as a way to silence the justified and necessary call outs on their work. Rather, I bring this up to acknowledge that engaging with these stories cannot be concrete evidence for how you view the minority group in question. The reasons for consuming these stories are incalculable and at the end of the day no one needs a “correct” reason for that consumption (my teacher forced me to read the racist book, I only watched the homophobic TV show so I could call out how horrible it was, etc.) If fiction were an indicator of our real life beliefs we’d all be the most horrifying creatures imaginable. I may be severely uncomfortable with the queer baiting in Supernatural, but if a friend says they bought the DVD collection my response is not, “How dare you support those creators. You’re homophobic.” In the same way, someone purchasing Legacy should not generate the response, “How dare you support her. You’re transphobic.” There’s a miles’ worth of pitfalls in connecting the statements “You purchased a game based on the world created by a transphobic author” and “You yourself are transphobic.” 

So if buying Legacy does not add additional harm to the trans community from a financial perspective, and it doesn’t make a dent in Rowling’s platform, and playing a game is not evidence of your feelings towards the group the author hates… what are we left with? “But Clyde, it’s the principal of the thing. I don’t want to support a TERF” and that is an excellent argument. Your morals. Your ethics. What you can stomach having done or not done. But the “your” is incredibly important there. People need to understand that this is their own line in the sand and that if someone else’s line is different, that doesn’t mean they’re automatically a worse person than you. For example, I have made the choice not to eat at Chick-Fil-A. Not because I believe that me not giving them $3.75 for a sandwich will make a difference in their influence on the world, but because it makes a difference to me. It helps me sleep at night. So if not purchasing Legacy helps you sleep at night? That’s a fantastic reason not to buy it. But the flipside is that if someone else does purchase it that is not a reliable reflection of their morals, no more than I think my friends are homophobic for grabbing lunch at Chick-Fil-A now and then. Sometimes you just want a sandwich. 

“But Clyde, why would you want to buy it? Rowling is such a shit-stain I don’t understand how anyone can stomach supporting her—whether that support has an impact or not. Maybe someone eats at Chick-Fil-A because it’s close to them and they’re too busy to go elsewhere, or it’s all they can afford, or they don’t know how homophobic they are. There are lots of reasons to explain something like that. But you’re not ignorant to Rowling’s problem and there’s no scenario where you have to play this game, let alone spend money on it. So why?”

The reality is that I will likely be buying Legacy, second-hand if I can, but new if it comes to that, so I’ll give some of my personal answers here, in descending order of presumed selfishness:

5. Part of my work involves studying video games/Harry Potter and as a researcher of popular culture, my career depends on keeping up with major releases: good and bad. I often engage with stories I wholeheartedly disagree with for academic purposes, like Fifty Shades of Gray.

4. I find the “Just pirate it!” solution to be flawed. I’ve spent the last four months struggling to get my laptop fixed and I currently have no income to buy another if it were to suddenly develop a larger problem. I am not going to risk my $2,000 lifeline on an illegal download, no matter how safe and easy the Internet insists it is. 

3. We’ve been told that Rowling has not been involved in Legacy in any significant manner and I do want to support Portkey. No, not just financially because I know many others have insisted that everyone good has already been paid. Game companies still need to sell games. That’s why they exist. There’s a possibility that a company with just two mobile games under its belt will be in trouble if this completely flops. Is my purchase going to make or break things? No. Same reality as whether it will put new, influential money in Rowling’s pocket to do horrific things with. But I’d like to help a company that looks as if they put a lot of heart and energy into a game only to get hit with some real shit circumstances outside of their control. Even if they’re not impacted financially or career-wise… art is meant to be consumed. I know if I wrote a Harry Potter fic and everyone boycotted it because they want nothing to do with Rowling anymore, I’d be devastated. Sometimes, you can’t separate supporting the good people from supporting the bad. Not in a media landscape where thousands of people are involved in singular projects.

2. I’m invested in reclaiming excellent works created by horrible authors. That’s fandom! We don’t know much about Legacy yet—this is pure, unsubstantiated speculation—but this new story could be a step forward from Rowling’s books, giving us some of the respect for minority groups that she failed at. That’s the sort of work I want to promote because Harry Potter as a concept is great and I think it’s worth transforming it for our own needs and desires. The reality is that as long as Rowling is alive she’ll benefit from licensed material, but if that material can start taking her world in better directions? I want to support that too.

1. I literally just want to play it. That’s it. That’s my big justification. I think it looks phenomenal and I was itching to get my hands on it the second the trailer dropped. And you know what? I’m not in a good place right now to deny myself things I enjoy. I don’t need to tell anyone that 2020 has been an absolute horror show, but for me certain things have made it a horror show with a cherry on top. Not a lot gets me excited right now because we’re living in the worst fucking timeline, so when I find something that makes me feel positive emotions for a hot second I want to hang onto it. I have no desire to set aside that spark of happiness in a traumatic world because people on the Internet think it makes me selfish. Maybe it does, but I’m willing to let myself be a bit selfish right now. 

Which circles back to this issue of equating buying a game with active harm towards the trans community. It honestly worries me because this is a very, very easy way to avoid the harder, messier activism that will actually help the queer community. When someone says things like, “You’re choosing a stupid video game over trans lives” that activism is performative. Not only—as demonstrated above—is purchasing a game not a threat to trans lives or ignoring the game a way of protecting trans lives, it also gives people an incredibly easy out while still seeming ‘woke.’ Not all people. Maybe not even a significant portion of people, but enough people to be worrisome. “I’m not purchasing that game,” some people post and then that’s it. That’s all they do, yet they feel like they’ve done their duty when in fact they’ve made no active difference in the world. Are you donating to trans charities? Are you speaking up for your trans friends when someone accosts them? Are you circulating media by trans authors? Are you educating your family about trans issues? Are you listening to trans individuals and continually trying to educate yourself? These are the things that make a difference, not shaming others for buying a game.

All of this is not meant to be an argument that people shouldn’t be absolutely revolted by Rowling’s beliefs (they should) and that this revulsion can’t take the form of rejecting this game wholeheartedly. This isn’t even meant to be an argument that you shouldn’t encourage others to boycott because though the financial impact may be negligible, the emotional impact for you is very real. I 100% support anyone who wants to chuck this game into the trash and never talk about it again—for any reason. All this is meant to argue is that people shouldn’t judge others based on whether they purchase this game (with a side argument that we can’t limit our activism to that shaming). That’s their decision and this decision, significantly, does not add any real harm to the world. Your fellow Harry Potter fan is not the enemy here. We as a community should not be turning our visceral on one another. Turn it on Rowling. She’s the TERF, not the individual who, for whatever reason, decided they wanted to play the game only tangentially related to her.  

If Twitter and Tumblr are any indication, I can imagine the sort of responses this post may generate: “That’s a whole lot of talk to try and convince us you’re not a transphobe :/ ” For those of you who are determined to simply things to that extent, there’s nothing I can say that will change your mind. Please re-read the disclaimer and consider whether yelling at me over anon will benefit the trans community. For those of you who are still here, I do legitimately want us to think critically about the kinds of activism we’re engaging in, how performative it might be, whether it harms the community in any way, and (most significantly) whether it’s actually moving us towards a safe, respective world for trans people to live in. Personally, I don’t think telling Harry Potter fans that they’re transphobic for buying Legacy will generate any good in this world, for them or for the trans community. 

At the end of the day only you can decide whether you can stomach buying this game or not. Decide that for yourself, but make that decision knowing that there’s no wrong answer here.