#but also it’s willfully ignorant of how fucked up society is

[aveil-moved]

something really bothering me is that people on tiktok are arguing about whether poor people should be “allowed” to have children (kinda feels like eugenics but okay) but they’re completely missing the glaring problem that people with full time jobs can’t afford to live. period. and if they’re not ALLOWED to have children by your standards then society cannot effectively continue. society. cannot. continue.

like you’re so close babe. you’re so close to realizing that maybe nobody should be poor. but instead you have your head so far up your ass it’s shocking

[crobones]

what if there was a fic from louis' perspective about pining over Daniel

and Louis realizing he cared for young and interesting Daniel just as much as he now "cares for" old man Daniel. Grampire Daniel is the best of both worlds but it's pining because he's convinced Daniel takes to vampirism so well because can experience independence again and be a free spirit, and really Louis almost convinces himself that he's just jealous of Daniel's second chance at reconnecting with his family. Because Daniel could talk with his exes or his daughters as a result of vampirism going public and the Daniel he knows could have been a great husband and father if the two of them had just never met and Daniel didn't get his brain broken by several days of constant mind manipulation and trauma. Louis knows he's just trying to make excuses for having been obsessed with a mortal, passing it off as "he's interesting" and some part of Louis is convinced that he doesn't know how to be independent and he should learn from Daniel.

Louis distracts himself by immersing himself fully into vampire society and making allies and killing those that try to kill him first and really he doesn't have to take on the responsibility of fending off vampires going after Daniel because Armand is also there in the shadows but Louis almost feels responsible for what's happening to Daniel. for both having been turned out of spite, and becoming a target, and really Louis just cares about Daniel's safety! that's all!

it's no matter that his thoughts turn to Daniel constantly, or to Daniel's happiness, or his old man hands, or the lovely curls that are even more lovely now that they're silver and grey, or his extremely attractive carefree confidence, or his colour shifting eyes that were always so expressive but now even more so, or his tongue that's always cracking wise but now is always licking at or playing with his fangs mindlessly like he doesn't know how sexy it is.

he also realizes that he's better at maintaining a telepathic conversation during his occasional hook-up with Lestat because either Lestat never realizes it now, or he simply ignores it and enjoys what Louis gives him, willfully ignorant to the lengthy conversations Louis has had with Daniel in flagrant delicto when Daniel just calls him out of the blue sometimes (curious that Daniel's timing has caused this happen more than a few times.) Daniel definitely doesn't know, because that would be embarrassing and how could he explain it away? how can Louis explain that he's orgasmed with the sound of Daniel's rough laughter filling his mind at some joke that probably wasn't even that funny, but don't worry Louis is sure there's no connection there.

Louis' fine. He's fine.

When Daniel finds out all that Louis is doing by killing other vampires that set out to hurt his boy, of course Louis will play it off as feeling responsible for it all - for every bad thing that has happened to Daniel but Daniel just laughs at him and Louis' a bit hurt but Daniel explains that they'll never know if '73 really broke his brain because it's in the past and they're here now and maybe Louis should get over himself, just a little bit. Daniel made his own decisions, ruined his own marriages, was estranged from his own daughters for nearly a decade because of his own fuck ups. Louis shouldn't blame himself for everything, because Daniel doesn't blame Louis at all. Daniel appreciates the apology, but wishes Louis didn't make himself the sin-barer. Daniel says he wouldn't be his friend if he blamed Louis for any of it.

Louis' relief is followed closely by a hollow ache in his chest and really all he's ever wanted was a friend, so why did it hurt when Daniel said it? Vampires become obsessive over everything, surely he's just being protective of his only friend. The friend that cares about what Louis wants and not just what he thinks he needs, or what he could take from Louis. Daniel is a fantastic friend. Friend. Fuck.

[winns-stuff]

LO RANT (MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING):

Okay my rant for today is going to go into somewhat of a triggering topic which is abuse and normally I try to just be very vague about the more heavier things on Lore Olympus when ranting about them just so I don’t have to say the actual words or acts or anything but unfortunately for this rant it’s going to really be hammering into the more abusive side of Hades because this sort of situation between the fans have really been irking me badly.

I absolutely hate it when fans try and say that Hades is not abusive and all of his behaviors are just justified and excused because of all of the things he’s been through. The main argument I’ve seen with this topic is that he’s not an abuser because he’s never abused Persephone or Minthe or any of the women he’s been in a relationship with and honestly this sort of mindset is so incredibly flawed and sort of ignorant in the nicest way possible since abuse comes in many different forms believe me I know. You can be verbally abused, emotionally abused, sexually abused, and more it’s not only domestic violence and I just wish more fans would be aware of that and not just count domestic violence as a valid type of abuse (which granted I completely get and in no way am I saying that it shouldn’t be something that’s a form of abuse that shouldn’t be validated).

That way of thinking just makes no sense at all, if abuse only mattered in intimate relationships then abusive parents, teachers, counselors, etc wouldn’t be considered or validated at all. Just because he doesn’t hit women does not make his actions any less abusive, we’re talking about the man who constantly talks down on and willfully uses violence on those who cannot fight back. He has no problem exploiting his own citizens and cutting off their resources and transportation between realms at the drop of a penny and he definitely does not care about the well being of those who have to work for him. He’s an abusive asshole and his actions are absolutely heinous and incredibly distasteful.

Honestly this just makes me ask the question of why, why is Rachel even putting these elements in her story anyways if she’s not going to address it or try to explore these disgusting aspects of our very society. I’m sorry y’all but I do not believe that she doesn’t believe in half of the things she writes about, normally if someone does not agree with problematic elements in their story they’ll make it a point to try and point out its flaws or at the very least show people that “hey, please do not glorify xyz” you know? Like there’s evidence of the creator actively going against the things that they don’t agree with yet Rachel has never come out to say anything. She doesn’t address any of these problematic choices in her own story and instead of actually doing things with them she just keeps them in the story for no fucking reason. The nymphs (who are the lower class might I add and also make up the uncomfortable fantasy racism) should not be sexualized and used as objects for male pleasure. The satyrs and other non gods that live amongst Olympus and the Underworld should not be shown to be in hostile situations by their bosses for literally no other reason other than a few laughs. Persephone should not be sexualized by Rachel every other fucking panel, can we please talk about that soon because it’s getting fairly obvious that Rachel is just using Persephone only to be ogled at and heavily sexualized. The age gap never should’ve happened because again Rachel herself makes it a damn point to remind everyone that Lore Olympus is literally just a “cute” minor x adult fanfic, the whole thing reminds me of lolis and how people defend that shit by saying that they’re adults. And even more stuff but that would be about 400,000 words long at this point.

Anyways, I just want to end this by saying I’m not terribly angry at fans I’m just disappointed and honestly kind of annoyed I wish they would actually reread the things that they’re supporting and defending and actually start to think about what the comic is saying instead of just blindly going along with it. Another point is I do not believe Rachel is the best person and I’d love it if we could finally hold her accountable because I’m sorry but if she genuinely sees no problem with half of this stuff and she’s spreading it around in her award winning 4 million reader comic while there’s an entire fucking community trying to tell her how absolutely harmful and shitty the content is (that she keeps ignoring for a fucking reason might I add) I don’t find myself having much hope that she’s not a bad person, and maybe I am wrong although I genuinely don’t think I am because normally with good people you don’t have to keep wandering and convincing yourself that they’re good since they do that for you by their actions and how she’s been carrying herself these past years have not shown me otherwise.

Edit: With this rant though I do not want to incite any harassment or bullying Rachel’s way because that’s nowhere at all where I was trying to get when I said she needs to be held accountable. Harassment and cyber bullying is genuine asshole behavior and something I really don’t tolerate and besides there’s better ways to hold Rachel accountable that doesn’t require that kind of stuff.

[kakoiphonousangie]

My thoughts on LB6 (Arc 1)

My personal thoughts on Lostbelt 6 so far as I have been timegated and am so fucking hyped to see it come to fruition. I just wanted to collect my thoughts on it in a post. Apologies for lack of images I am doing this at 2AM and I need to get my feelings down.

From start to finish, I have been *very* into fucking world building, to the point where it is its only surpassed by its amazing character arcs! But regardless, I think the writers made a really good intro to suck you in first that makes you excited to be along for the ride.

The very first meeting you get of Fairy Britain is of rapscallion exiles who don’t have anything left to lose and are practically cockroaches of society. Even so they try their best to live out the rest of their lives, even if they cut it short themselves with the introduction of a human. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a metaphor for all of Fairy Britain: a peaceful land eventually doomed to fail but with the introduction of one human cascades into an even worse fate filled with pain and suffering. 

I also love how differing area’s have differing politics on humans and what to do with them. Camelot and Salisbury seem intent to control humans, even if Salisbury’s leader thinks differently. (Hell, the disconnect is so much that I’m almost suspicious.) Norwich and Sheffield practically have fairies and humans side by side, although both of which is primarily motivated by an oncoming disaster. And then Gloucester is willfully feigning ignorance with neutrality, knowing that the only thing that matters is commerce. If you’re human, you’re a slave. A pet. A comrade in arms. A bargaining chip. And someone sticking through a disaster together with people.

Plus the introductions of various faeries make the world so much more lively. Especially the river fairies who lure people in with their wishes. That one in particular was really cool and made for a really good comedy bit.

And then the characters. GOD the characters. Every single main character has made a lasting impression on me, whether it be cool or immense, but intended, hatred. I especially love Castoria being fated to be this great hero but is the equivalent of throwing molotov cocktails at people. Also, at some point I noticed I didn’t know why Castoria was in the Amnesia Forest. Hm. I wonder if this is related to the crippling imposter syndrome she has over the entire Child of Prophecy thing and that it seemed like she let her entire hometown die. Sure would be bad if she tried to drown herself in amnesia so she could go back to being a regular hick! Regardless I will hype her up as much as possible and will kill everyone else in the room if they don’t cheer.

Anyways, moving on from Castoria, this is also very clearly supposed to be Mash’s time to shine and it fucking *shows*. Taking her away from Ritsuka and giving her own role to develop is so cool to see. Her absence is tangible, especially since she’s Ritsuka’s rock and they literally cannot keep themself in check without her as a support. Regardless, putting her with the scum of the earth (who aren’t true scum, just a little misguided and don’t know how to act) and making her still defend them at all costs is so good. She *is* a hero, a knight, Galahad’s very own Tam Lin to shield all that comes the way. It’s so satisfying to see her build herself back up and have something to stand for as Mash and not Chadea’s Demi-servant. (Also, I very much appreciate the buffs. Especially the np gain so i can fucking loop her np.)

And the fucking meetup with her and Ritsuka is SO FUCKING HYPE. Ritsuka, willing their command seals back (probably by sacrificing their of life force just to defy fate, i don’t think letting them know that was a thing they could do was a good idea) to triple boost a Lord Camelot is just. Fucking Incredible. Also giving THEM a monolouge not influenced by the player hit me so fucking hard because for once Ritsuka doesn’t feel like an insert MC. They’re a fully fledged maniac of their own and above everything they want to save their beloved Mash and the rest of Britain. (Granted, they never were just an insert, especially during lostbelt arc, but this takes it to a new level) And it makes it hurt all the more when Mash is taken away to Morgan. But also not to a point where the other Tam Lin know about her, at least Tristan. Very fascinating to me. Still satisfying to watch the hope drain from Guda’s eyes as their sanity plummets.

On the account of Oberon, I like him but sadly don’t have much to say about him expect REALLY loving his art and the writers making great stuff with his humor. Regardless, I like that he tries to care for Guda in his own way. Same thing with Muramasa, but with the added part of liking his like. Strict Grandpa relationship with the cast, with a soft spot for Artoria.

Comedy is also been top notch. From being owned by Artoria (which she seems a *wee* bit too excited by) to buying the Child of Prophecy (30% Chance), the writers hit home with nearly everyone. Plus, it helps a lot with getting some relief, especially after heavy hitters like the fall of Sheffield due to the Black Barrel and the loss of Tristan. 

All and all, this is by far my favorite chapter by a mile. I returned from a long ass hiatus just to sink my teeth into this and by god it delivered. Glad, I came back. And, while i was mainly trying to save for someone else later… I couldn’t help myself bringing home someone who I’m told is very good!

Till our next meeting, King of the Lostbelt! I hope you’re as good as people tell!

[gaykey]

there's no way kibum is that out of touch with reality not to know an entire genocide and boycott is happening it's literally everywhere you couldn't avoid it even if you wanted to unless you live under a rock or sth just choosing to be willfully ignorant he fr is on his own in this one and it's always surprising bc he's expected to be more in touch and informed about this stuff since he's fluent in english and all yet seems to be the one who fucks up the most

yeah, none of these idols should be unaware.

but yeah, considering how kibum is, and how he's always in the know of what's going on in regards to like, wider society - he should deeeeefinitely be aware.

i'd like to see if he does say anything. i hear fans are letting him know via bubble

but like? not holding my breath also? what could he say really.

short of saying he's not affiliated with them, which would be false idk.

i keep giving him chances and he's throwing them back in my face lmaoooooo

[touyasdoll]

Hot take. Endeavor is a product of Hero society just like hawks and other pro heroes. He has immense pressure out on him by society to be as good and reach all might. Also he was extremely enabled by someone literally selling his wife to him. On top of that I also feel like there’s no way All Might had no idea what was going on in that household. He was allowed to do all these thing and become worse and worse because no one stopped him. Not justifying what he did to his wife and kid, but I like to think that he’s as much of a tragedy of hero society as some of the other characters. Even now when his crimes came to light no one has cared! The only one making him take responsibility are himself and his kids. 🔱

first of all. make your own dinner tonight <3

second of all. no.

Nobody forced Enji Todoroki to become a hero. He did that of his own volition. Nobody forced him to literally purchase his wife. Nobody forced him to have a kid with her. That was all him and him alone. His big idea to have a child who could do what he knew he couldn’t. Which is shitty in and of itself.

No one forced him to abuse and traumatize his wife and kids. He made that decision by himself too. Consciously. Day in and day out. Over and over and over again. No one physically pulled him away from his eldest son when he was no longer useful to him. He abandoned him and willfully ignored him instead of offering his son—who was obviously suffering—the support that he needed.

He locked his wife away. Left his remaining two kids with a nanny. Didn’t allow them to interact with his perfect child. Fucked said perfect child up royally with his abuse and neglect.

Did he do all of this in the name of becoming number one? Yes. Was it worth it? I don’t think he thinks so anymore. In that way, yes. I think he’s another tragedy of hero society, but he is not a victim. He ushered in the tragedy for his own selfish gains. Those who he hurt are the victims of hero society. Endeavor is an abuser.

Hero society is fucked up in a lot of ways. But Endeavor had plenty of choices to make and he constantly made the wrong ones. I understand he’s trying to atone for that now, but he won’t even call his son by his actual name and to me that’s incredibly telling. He’s still Dabi to him when everyone else has immediately reverted to calling him Touya, because they recognize him as their family. As a person. I think Endeavor is sorry, sure, but I don’t think that he has accepted what he did to Touya and I think that’s why he won’t use his name. I think it’s one last defense in order to keep the weight of that responsibility off of himself, which thank GOD Shouto has decided to shoulder the burden of, because I think if anyone can save Touya, it’s him.

But no. Endeavor sucks. Maybe his redemption arc will redeem him, but it hasn’t in my eyes. He’s not a victim. He makes victims. He can cry about that now, but that does very little to change the harm that he’s caused. A lot needs to be done for him to truly atone for his bullshit.

I understand that the pressure to want to be number one drove him to this and in that, I can see how hero society contributed to his

[rjalker]

And we should talk about the fact that a lot of aspecs don't fly under the radar at all too, since exclusionists have literally no idea what they're talking about when they accuse us of all magically being "straight passing".

What these people refuse to grasp is that there are two parts to being straight / straight passing:

Visible attraction to the Opposite™ sex

Disgust at idea of attraction to the Same™ sex

You have to actually, visibly fit both those criteria for straight people to assume you're One Of Them™.

If you don't, they're going to know there's something Queer about you.

If you're perceived as a girl, and show disgust towards the idea of dating a boy (when you're past the age of puberty supposedly dumping all those Lovey Dovey hormones into your body), straight people are going to immediately become suspicious and assume you're a lesbian, even if you also don't show interest in dating girls. You've already comitted the cardinal sin by not being interested in boys, and for amisics, that's the same thing as liking girls.

If you're perceived as a boy, and show disgust towards the idea of dating a girl, straight people are gonna assume you're gay, even if you don't show any interest in dating boys. Straight people don't care if you have zero interest in dating girls or boys, simply the fact that you don't want to date a girl means you're gay in their minds, and they're going to treat you accordingly.

Queermisics literally loathe the LACK of the Right Kind of Attraction just as much as they hate the "wrong" kind of attraction.

To straight people, if you're a "girl" and you don't like boys, then you're automatically considered a lesbian, and if you're a "boy" and you don't like girls, you're automatically considered gay.

And they're going to treat you just as badly as they do anyone who doesn't line up perfectly with their idea of straight.

Exclusionists love to pretend that the only thing that makes you straight-passing is a lack of interest in the "same" sex, while purposefully, maliciously ignoring every force in society that actively punishes you for not having that attraction.

Gay people are not just hated for being attracted to the "same" sex, they're hated for NOT being attracted to the RIGHT sex.

And if you're mspec, then they just fucking throw all the rules out the window and hate you no matter what!

And sure, some aspecs pretend to be straight and fake attraction to the "right" sex, but so do a Queer people of any other sexuality. But for exclusionists, what is commonly accepted as a traumatic, terrible ordeal is suddenly just perfectly normal and not harmful at all when it comes to aspecs. Exclusionists will bemoan the gay men and lesbians who forced themselves into relationships they didn't want in order to stay safe, but turn around and throw this same ordeal into aspec people's faces like it's something that's enjoyable and somehow a source of privilege.

And then purposefully ignore the testimony of aspecs who didn't try to mask their sexuality at all, and had their lack of the "right" kind of attraction turned into an assumption that they must feel the "wrong" kind of attraction.

Because to straight people, not being attracted to the "right" sex IS literally just as bad as being attracted to the wrong one. But exclusionists have always refused to deal with this fact, because it would require not treating other Queer people like absolute shit for them to blame all their problems on.

Amatanormativity and heteronormativity are violently enforced and harm everyone, and exclusionists pretending otherwise is never going to change that fact.

All they do is show how willfully ignorant they are when they insist that aspecs have straight-passing privilege when they don't even understand how that privilege is bestowed and revoked in the first place.

I really wish people would stop saying that aro and ace folks have it easy by flying under the radar.

Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that aces and aros don't actually fly completely under the radar, that we suffer from aphobia and are routinely beaten over the head with amatonormativity and made to feel less than or broken.

Flying under the radar isn't as brilliant as y'all like to think it is. Because flying under the radar means going unseen. It means feeling alone in a crowded room because you don't think there is a single other person like you. It's never being acknowledged because people forget you fucking exist. Its being made to doubt you're own mind because surely if this was a thing that people felt, then there would be someone, anyone, who also felt something even remotely similar to what you do. Which is why I'm out here being obnoxious as fuck about my sexuality, waving my flags, wearing my pins, writing ace/aro characters.

Because growing up I would have given everything for just one damn person to see me. Given it all again to see just one other person like me.

Flying under the radar is a double edged sword.

And I'm sick of other queer folks treating it as if its not.

[bellamygateoldblog]

girls gotta start acknowledging that no they wouldn't feel better and more 'feminine' when they shave if the social structure to MAKE them feel like that wasn't already in place. girls gotta start thinking critically about WHY they 'feel better' when they wear makeup and shave and get surgery and inject shit into their faces to dissolve whatever else. it's not a choice. you can still do it whilst acknowledging that these things don't exist in a vaccum and they're patriarchal ideas ingrained into both ourselves and society and doing them anyway doesn't make us bad people because its literally not our fault and it's really fucking hard to unlearn and undo and being honest and NOT willfully ignorant and faux feminist abt it is gonna help other girls way more than whatever the fuck we're doing now. NO plastic surgery shouldn't be fucking normal. beauty standards should not be so engraved in public consciousness and all-consuming to the point people feel unworthy if they aren't meeting the standards of beauty. NO women don't "HAVE" to shave, no one is forcing their hands BUT the social pressure to concede and shame around it is really powerful and makes us anyways. Like this is driving me fucking crazy. The blind fucking feminism of being like 'ugh if a woman wants to wear makeup she can you're taking her autonomy!!!!!! it's abt CHOICE!!!!!! I ALWAYS feel better when I shave and that's just MY preference so I do it' like how about acc taking a single second to think abt what ur saying and realise that you feel better about wearing makeup and shaving because that's what's expected of you and by doing so you're fitting nicely into the mould society made for us all to fit into and no women are BuLLyInG you or jUdGiNg yOuR pReFeReNcEs or being misogynistic somehow for 'not respecting feminine women' we're all fucking brainwashed and trying to just support other women in ways that aren't just encouraging them to hide and distort themselves like saying you don't need plastic surgery baby you're fine as you are is now seen as being like OH SO YOURE AGAINST WOMEN MAKING THEIR OWN CHOICES TO PERMANENTLY ALTER HER FACE IN PURSUIT OF BEAUTY STANDARDS THAT ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE EVERY DECADE? SHAME ON U. Instead of being like yea get that potentially harmful procedure to feel better abt urself idk...I prefer for women to take steps to love themselves in their OWN skin they already have and steer them away from living under the oppressive weight of social expectations and I still shave and I still wear makeup sometimes and I still like to look nice and dress up but I'm also trying to unlearn the NEED to do this to feel worthy and talk to other women about the reality too and not just sit back and watch all of this get normalised and accepted from ppl being like its 'none of my business' because YES thats true but also arent yall fucking sad thay this is the reality plaguing your fellow women? Dont u just wanna be something a little different and tell her her natural nose is fucking gorgeous (bc it is) and its all very complex and I prefer being honest about why I do what I do and not just pretending and trying to gaslight myself I to thinking this is my choice and that I would still choose to shave my entire body of my own accord if I didn't have someone whispering in my ear constantly that if I don't im not a real woman or I'm unclean etc etc ???????????? i love and empathise x100 my fellow women but some of yall so fucking irritating and give me genuine headaches. Get real queens xoxo

[angeloncewas]

okay but you’re so right about this fandom and the weaponizing their minority status

like, yes poc creators have a hard time and they deal with a lot of shit, but the way to help them is not bringing other creators down. it’s to support poc creators! and support poc creators because they’re good at creating and they make good content!

my least favorite thing people do is go on twitter, and list poc streamers solely by their minority status, it feels like you should only watch a streamer because of the boxes you can tick off for them and that’s so fucked up. i would absolutely hate if I were a cc and someone said “oh watch her she’s a queer woc” like I have nothing else to offer? bro at least talk about my content a little bit?

also not to mention manatreed is definitely going to be either dream, another well known cc, or one of Dream’s very close friends, so it’s not like he randomly picked someone and went “even though you never made any content, you’re a white guy so I’m gonna add you onto the dsmp!” like, can we use our brains? or any critical thinking?

Sorry for this rant btw, but you’re just so right and it always pisses me off how people treat minorities in the first place. i know a lot of people on twitter is doing it with good intentions but it’s weirdly dehumanizing to act like you should only add people to dsmp based on their skin color or something

This was my original point, and I actually have a post in my drafts somewhere about it because it's been on my mind for a while.

I am Asian. Being Asian is inherent to who "Angel" is and while I didn't really accept that for a long time, I am very much in tune with my culture at this point. And yet this hyperfocus on identity that Twitter has developed still drives me mad. This notion that someone is definitely inherently more knowledgeable on a topic purely because of their skin color; that you should support someone purely on the basis that they're [x] - it's always bothered me.

And I understand wanting to lessen the inequality, I really do. It's why people who need money often include what minority groups they're a part of - it's a way of saying "society is working against me and thus I would appreciate your support to combat that." I don't think it's wrong necessarily and I'm definitely softer on it than I used to be. But it still does bother me for all the reasons you stated.

Reducing me to your perception of who I am feels gross even when it's my minority status. Racists are also fixated on the fact that I'm Asian because it's the "other" part of me; I should be allowed to be whoever I am, all things included. (I'm using myself here as an example because I don't wanna drag other people in or use examples I can't directly speak for - but y'know, Tina should be allowed to be Tina and not just Asian woman. Sniff should be allowed to be Sniff and not just nonbinary. They're worth watching for what they do, not just because you want to stick it to society.)

And the way it goes is so wild to me too. I mean, look at how they treat Hannah. I understand that discrimination due to race and gender are two incredibly different things, but you're willfully ignorant if you're gonna pretend that Hannah hasn't had to combat a whole lot of shit to get where she is - including pretty recent on-stream harassment from another cc who turned out to be a total creep. Gaming is a white male dominated industry and Hannah - though white - is a woman. That's something to consider. But they don't give a shit because they don't like her and she won't fold.

(And the framing... they're acting like Dream saw Manatreed and said "you sir, are white. welcome to the SMP." like if you think that poorly of him then I think you're spending your time wrong.)

No worries for the rant - I agree with you. It does feel dehumanizing and I don't know why they're so invested in it. Like, I guess I kind of get why - they really flock to their community due to bigots - but I've faced my fair share of racism and I would rather no one - not even people doing it to hype me up - start with the fact that I'm a woc.

[iamanartichoke]

Thoughts on the trial verdict. 

Cut for tw domestic abuse, tw domestic violence, tw gaslighting, tw johnny depp & amber heard trial, tw truly offensive length, tw gratuitous gif usage, not for reblog. 

(Note: This is not tagged with either Johnny or Amber's names bc I don't want this post to show up in those tags, so I'm sorry if you have them blocked and this made it past your filters. You can block off-topic: johnny depp trial thoughts instead, to hide the post.

(Note: I started writing this last Wednesday, a couple of hours after the verdict, but it just ... well. I don't really know what happened here, I just had a lot of feelings, I guess. I don't even want to post it anymore, tbh, bc it's almost a week later and it's probably nonsensical and who cares, really, I doubt anyone is going to read this anyway bc it's like 10k words - but, well, I'm literally only posting it bc it's written and wtf else am I going to do with it?)

Warning: this is really fucking long.

The verdict is in, with Johnny Depp having won his uphill legal battle. I believe he won all three counts, was awarded $10 million in damages (or maybe 8, I can't remember now), and Amber was awarded $2 million in punitive damages. Case closed, literally. Justice for Johnny Depp achieved.

... But to me, it feels kind of hollow.

Don't get me wrong - I am very happy with this result. I think this is vindication for Johnny and I hope he finds peace and healing as he moves forward with his life. It's just that this trial has gotten so much bigger than all of that, and - in the last few days of closing and verdict watch, especially - I have been so disappointed in this world, in this culture. To be honest, after the travesty that has been the last several years, I didn't think I could possibly be any more cynical about our society or that I could be surprised anymore about ... I don't know, anything, really, but specifically how willfully ignorant a lot of people are. This past week has proven you can always be more cynical and more surprised.

So I can't be happy or even satisfied with the verdict without also being cognizant of not only Amber Heard's supporters crying foul but also the mainstream media framing this as a loss for women, for abuse survivors. And just being immensely - I don't know, troubled, I guess? about it. And there are quite a few reasons why, but I just need to talk about the biggest ones. Right off the bat, it troubles me how gross it is that, despite having proven his case in a fair trial (and it was absolutely fair, anyone who doesn't think so either didn't watch it or didn't understand it), the media would rather continue to peddle the narrative that Johnny is an abuser and that this is some huge step backwards for feminism than to actually admit that, hey, men can be victims too, and also women lie. Not all women; probably not even most women - but, some women. Having a vagina doesn't preclude someone from being a lying liar who lies, and this cultural narrative of "believe all women" simply bc they are women is so fucking harmful and, yeah, gross.

(Please forgive my obnoxious faux-academic formatting of the remainder of this post, bc it just got too big for me to try to maintain a consistent point [I was confusing myself], so this was for my own sake but also hopefully easier readability.)

I. What This Really Says About #MeToo (And Why It's Uncomfortable).

A lot of people are upset bc they feel (and the media is perpetuating the idea, but I'll talk about that later) that this is a huge step backward for #MeToo. This is an example of women not being believed, and we're supposed to believe all women. Now women will have a harder time being believed, men will feel vindicated in their misogyny, what's wrong with this fucking world, etc. etc. And, I mean, the fact is that this argument isn't wrong. It is a blow to #MeToo. Women will have a harder time being believed. Men do feel vindicated in their misogyny.

But that's not because of Johnny, it's because of Amber. And that's what people can't seem to wrap their heads around.

Ia. #MeToo as a Movement.

#MeToo was an idea that became a movement that was founded on giving abuse survivors a voice. It was supposed to empower people to speak up and say, this happened to me too. That's literally what it means. It was strength in numbers, several voices in unison, fighting back against a culture that blamed women for their own abuse ("Well, what were you wearing?" "Why didn't you just leave him?" etc) and made it notoriously difficult for victims to get justice, especially for sexual abuse. Rapists are rarely convicted. Women are interrogated about their behavior, as if wearing a short skirt or drinking too much or even just walking home alone at night meant they deserved to have been raped or assaulted because "Well, what did you expect?" Women weren't (aren't) believed, and it needed to change. Needs to change; it's a constant battle.

And I'm saying women, specifically, here bc it's just a fact, statistically, that women are usually the victims and men are usually the perpetrators.

Ib. Mostly Women Victims = Only Women Victims [citation needed]

But, somewhere along the line, the point of the movement became muddled. "Stop blaming women for being abused; stop siding with abusers; start taking this seriously" became "believe women when they say they're abused, no matter what," and completely excluded men as victims from the conversation.

I'm not saying all women do this, obviously, but I am saying that there are a lot of women who define feminism not as equality but as superiority. They think in absolutes - statistically, men are more often perpetrators of abuse so therefore when there's abuse, the man is always the abuser is their mindset. It comes from having such a deep resentment of the patriarchy and male privilege that it's as if these women want to hold every individual man who exists personally responsible for the oppression of women.

(Note - I'm kind of uncomfortable painting this entire subset of women with the "terf/radfem" brush, bc I don't believe most of them are, so I'm referring to them as UberFeminists, bc it's my post and I do what I want.)

I don't necessarily think that every woman who thinks this way is automatically a radfem/terf, but rather, I think that a lot of women have this anti-men mindset by default, even if they never follow it into actively-radfem ideology. They may not even realize they have this mindset - until something like this trial comes along and here they are, either siding with Amber or, if they accept she's lying, are still quick to point out how Johnny is "just as bad" bc despite his being the victim, they still want to blame him for something due to his maleness. So they attack his addictions, or his foul language, or his age. (None of which are things to be proud of, but none of which make him an abuser, either.)

My point is, a movement like #MeToo, which is meant to be empowering, can very quickly become toxic when it attracts UberFeminists and they claim it for themselves and treat the movement like a safe space for only their voices. When men who are also victims try to speak up and say, me too, there's this overwhelming response of no. Get the fuck out of our safe space. Let women have this. You're not a victim like we are victims, we can't overpower you. And even if you are a victim, your maleness still gives you privilege. This movement is not for you. Society already gives you a voice, stop trying to speak over ours. It's like the equivalent of building a clubhouse and slapping a big old NO BOYS ALLOWED sign over the doorway.

And that's the heart of the issue, this is what leads us back to where we are now with Johnny and Amber. That NO BOYS ALLOWED sign was a self-inflicted blow to #MeToo; it changed the narrative from "believe survivors" to "believe women" and effectively contributed to the toxic masculinity in this society that says men aren't "real men" if they show emotion, or don't adhere to traditionally masculine gender roles. In addition to men can't be emotional, men must be tough, men must be domineering, etc, denying male victims a voice adds men must own their privilege, regardless of their abuse; real men aren't victims, even if she hits and slaps him, she's not actually a threat, it's not really abuse to the clusterfuck that is toxic masculinity.

"You didn't get punched, you got hit ... I did not fucking deck you, I was fucking hitting you. You're fine. I did not hurt you ... I'm not sitting here bitching about it. You're a fucking baby" (Amber Heard).

Ic. #MeToo Made Its Own Bed Here.

Again, to clarify, I'm not trying to demean #MeToo, either as a concept or as a catalyst for change. I know many women support it without also supporting the toxic masculinity, and it has helped a lot of women with their trauma, even if it's just made them feel less alone. But this is why I feel like people are uncomfortable with criticizing the movement - bc it feels like criticizing the people whom it has helped, and that's not what I'm trying to do.

I think that the movement, however, disintegrated into something inherently harmful, and in doing so, began undermining its own credibility. UberFeminists adopting it and subsequently establishing a narrative of "believe all women, no questions asked" and excluding men from the movement set the stage for Amber - and for women abusers in general - to weaponize it and use it to accuse her ex-husband of abuse while never expecting to actually have to prove it. "I'm a woman, that's my proof" has been the one consistent thread throughout all of her accusations for the last six or eight years. The public, at large, was asked to take her at her word that Johnny was an abuser and the public, so inundated with "believe all women" was like, *nods* seems legit. Johnny's word meant absolutely nothing. Just like she knew it wouldn't.

"Tell the world, Johnny, tell them, Johnny Depp — I, Johnny Depp, a man, I’m a victim too of domestic violence” and see how many people believe or side with you" (Amber Heard).

Well, he did tell the world, and he brought the receipts, and when Amber got on the stand and said, "I'm a woman, that's my proof," the court said, "Okay but what else have you got," and Amber was like, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , and the court judged accordingly.* The result? #MeToo's "believe all women" narrative collapsed, and the same type of people who fucked it up in the first place responded by blaming Johnny for its implosion. It's not his fault he was abused, and it's not his fault that what should have remained a movement giving all victims a voice was co-opted by women who came along with their NO BOYS ALLOWED sign and drowned out the very voices - those of victims - they claimed to want to empower.

(*I am massively oversimplifying the trial so much here it's not even funny.)

"It is imperative that people stop viewing this trial through the lens of the #MeToo movement and the supposed reversal of its progress. As Gaby Hinsliff says, “a justice system [is] founded on the principle of believing the evidence, even where that sometimes leads in uncomfortable directions ... All women really ask of men – and, arguably, vice versa – is the chance to be heard without prejudice.” Heard was. The jury gave up six weeks of their lives to painstakingly go through the evidence in detail. It indicated that Heard was not telling the truth. This should not create a challenge for the #MeToo movement, if it cares about the truth, and not condoning the egregious defamation of an innocent person, who happens to be a man." (Source.)

A sidenote that I agree with but am not going to go into (bc this is long enough already) was posted by this article:

"Never mind the fact that Heard has never presented compelling evidence to prove her claims, we���re supposed to accept her version of events by virtue of her genitalia ... [#MeToo] has exposed something deeply troubling at the heart of our media and larger society – the infantilization of women. To assert that a woman is not capable of defamation, malice, or lying, is to ask us to deny the reality of human nature. It actually reeks of a deep lack of respect for women and all of the complexity they have to offer. Women are, as feminists rightly claim, capable of anything that a man can do. This encompasses, of course, the good and the bad. The notion that we must take a woman’s word before being presented with evidence has been one of the most detrimental effects on our society ... Depp may have prevailed in his defamation suit, but how many other men have Amber Heards at home who attempt to ruin their lives based on hearsay and never get the opportunity to defend themselves?"

II. "But He Said There Wasn't Any Letter. He Said I Was Going Out of My Mind." - (Gaslight, 1944)

One of the most appalling things about this entire case, and probably one of the things I latched onto the most, was how much gaslighting there was, and how much gaslighting there continues to be, on so many levels. Since this post is mostly just about the public's reaction to the verdict, I won't get into how I feel about the gaslighting in the actual relationship, except to say that it was genuinely triggering to me to discover not only how often Johnny's addiction struggles were used against him (for example, Amber claiming Johnny was drunk when he wasn't, that he was abusive during "blackouts" and so he didn't remember, things like that) but also just the blatant manipulation of so many events.

Mostly, I think listening to the audio recordings was really eye-opening. I'll address this more later bc it's not really something I talk about on here, but I have been in an abusive relationship and I have been gaslit, both in that relationship and in general, and I know what it feels like to be made to feel like you can't trust your own perception of how things played out, or that the truth means nothing, and how going around in circles with someone who is gaslighting you can feel like - well, it genuinely does make you feel crazy. The audio recordings reminded me a lot of that.

IIa. "You Keep Using That Word. I Don't Think It Means What You Think It Means."

When Amber and Johnny's divorce was finalized, Amber was awarded $7 million, which she immediately announced she would be donating to charity. After the divorce, she repeated this a lot - that she "wanted nothing," that she had donated her entire divorce settlement to charity - half to the CHLA and half to the ACLU. However, during the trial, it came out that she never actually donated any of the money, she just said she did. So then she changed her story to say, well, I pledged it, and I was going to honor that pledge, but then Johnny sued me.

Camille Vasquez established that the entire settlement had been paid to Amber a year before the lawsuit was filed, and Amber had yet to donate any of it to the charities, so she had the money. And there's this weird back-and-forth in which Amber sits there and insists that she has donated it, because she uses pledged and donated interchangeably, and even after Camille says something like, I don't use them interchangeably; again, have you donated your divorce settlement to charity as of today? Amber just doesn't back down from insisting that she donated the money bc, to her, saying she would do it is the same thing as actually doing it.

Camille's reaction after asking, yet again, have you donated the money, and Amber answering, yet again, yes, I pledged it:

^^ I normally wouldn't make gifs of a regular person (which Camille is, despite her being in the spotlight right now), but her expression here - the pure exasperation - just couldn't be captured in screengrabs and speaks to how frustrating it is to go around in circles with someone who not only won't back down from a lie, but makes you feel like you're the one who's wrong.

To me, the "pledged vs. donated" thing says a lot. It's an example, in real time, of how Amber continues to talk in circles and assert things that either are just not true, or are only true in the sense that she personally defines truth (but are not actually true). Even when confronted with evidence, she will not back down. It's so telling to me that if this is what she acts like on the stand, under oath, then imagine (or don't imagine, just listen to some of the audio recordings) how much she lies, bends the truth, or blatantly gaslights Johnny (and others around her/them).

And as I said earlier, according to people's comments online, this is what made a lot of people start doubting her credibility. Bc she was so blatantly asserting her own version of the truth, and it made a lot of people be like, well, how much of what else she's said is her version of the truth (if not outright lies)? What's going on here?

Looking at it from this perspective, it makes sense that the most die-hard Amber supporters' arguments hinge on misrepresenting the truth.

IIb. Something Something Last Two Braincells.

Earlier I mentioned the UberFeminists who have more or less taken possession of the #MeToo movement and made it a space that excludes men. Now these UberFeminists are the ones who are most ardently supporting Amber. From what I'm seeing, there are two groups of people supporting Amber:

Group A, said UberFeminists (along with actual radfems/terfs) who hate men so much that they'd rather align themselves with a narcissistic liar than admit a man can be a victim of domestic violence, and

Group B, people who aren't so much invested in believing Amber as much as they are in not believing Johnny. They're brushing the whole thing off with "Both of them are just as bad as each other" and not only do they openly admit they haven't watched (and therefore don't actually know anything about) the trial but also act like those of us who are watching are the problem. "It's none of our business," "There are more important things going on," "I'm not interested in watching two people fight over money they don't need," etc

Of course, there is

Group C, people who genuinely give zero fucks, are not invested either way, or don't even know this is a thing that's going on, which, whatever, I'm certainly not saying anyone is obligated to care or show interest in anything they don't want to. I have no reaction to the zero-fucks crowd, ie no emotion, ie it isn't bothering me. (I kinda envy it, tbh.) My issue is with the first two groups (and by extension the mainstream media).

Anyway, so being a Johnny supporter arguing (either actively, or just by virtue of position) with Groups A and B feels a lot like gaslighting, too. Because Group A (and to a lesser extent, Group B) is full of people cherry-picking and twisting what's been shown in court to create "alternative facts," basically, so they can feel justified in supporting Amber. And when you argue, they say: you're misinformed, lol where'd you hear that, TikTok? do your own research, etc. (And when you say, I watched the entire trial, here's my evidence, here's where xyz was proven a lie, etc, they're like, lol well I didn't waste my time watching this trial, go touch grass like - you literally cannot win. Which can also make you feel crazy - being told you're misinformed, and then having your counterargument dismissed as they belittle you ... for being informed.)

Either they twist the facts to support their preferred narrative bc they are stupid, or bc they genuinely hate men - it doesn't really matter which one it is, the point is that this really gets under my skin bc I've had enough of the "alternate facts" brigade. It's made me feel like I'm losing my mind for well over two years and it continues to make me feel like I'm losing my mind bc this isn't a disagreement of opinion, it's having an objective fact exist and I'm looking at it like, oh okay, so that's a thing, and the other person is looking at it like, I do not acknowledge this as a thing, sorry, nope.

Or, to put it more clearly, it's like I and another person are looking at a big orange basketball and I'm saying, hmm, yeah, looks pretty orange to me, bounces, definitely a basketball, and the other person is like, are you stupid, clearly this is a watermelon, and it's like - how do you even respond? Like, that's exactly what it feels like to me.

So on the one hand, you have Those People, and then on the other hand, you've got the Group B "it's none of our business" people. And I don't think interactions with them feel quite like gaslighting, but rather, they make one more cognizant of gaslighting happening? I don't know if that makes sense, but the easiest way I can think of to elaborate is to address how the mainstream media - publications I have respected - is openly siding with Amber. Headlines about how the internet is "turning on" Amber Heard, how the only people siding with Johnny Depp are alt-right q-anoners (which, believe me, is not a group I want to be associated with even a little), and how big a step backward this is for #MeToo. (Nevermind how damaging these headlines are to victims who are men - their voices don't matter, obvs.)

That's egrigious enough, but they support these statements by straight up saying that people on Johnny's side need to stop getting their information from TikTok soundbytes and Youtube clips. The media is doing exactly what Group A is doing - supporting Amber bc she's a woman and trying to discredit valid arguments against her by accusing the arguer of not knowing what they're talking about.

One article writes, "in the face of an internet eager to pin everything on Heard, it’s important to remind ourselves of the facts — not the TikTok narratives."

I just - this statement is literally not what's happening. It is, in fact, projection. The portion of the internet who is "pinning everything" on Amber is the portion that watched the trial. Who saw the facts and evidence being presented, in real time, and came to their own conclusions. And the media's response is basically, "no, you didn't, but maybe you saw so many TikToks that you think you did. You should stop doing that and get informed of the facts. Read my article."

I mean ... that feels like textbook gaslighting to me. And Group A may be using these same gaslighting tactics as they dig deeper into Amber's trench, but Group B is full of the people who fall for this shit. Either they lack the critical thinking skills to see through it, or they're just too intellectually lazy to challenge it; they fall for the gaslighting because they are content with being told what to believe, bc the media's narrative aligns with their own biases. And when you point out that hey, maybe it's not as clear-cut as the media wants you to believe? they hit you back with, "it's none of our business anyway."

And it's like, well, actually it is our business bc a) the legal system in the United States should be transparent and accessible to the public, and I don't think "we shouldn't be privy to what happens in the courts" is quite the flex you think it is, and b) the implications of this case have a far greater reach than just being Johnny and Amber's personal business.

But no. Group B is latching onto the idea that Johnny's supporters are the misinformed ones so that they can continue to stick their fingers in their ears like la la la, I support women, I will not intellectually confront the idea that men can be victims too, leave Britney Amber alone!

Which is a disappointing thing to watch, certainly, but probably the most disappointing part about it is how many left-aligned people seem to be in Group B, including my personal friends. People who a year ago were speaking out against, like, anti-vaxxers/anti-science dumbfucks are now thoroughly enmeshed in this anti-facts narrative pushed by the media.

So it just ... not only does it make me question people I thought I knew really well - question their intellect, at the very least, but also question their deeply-rooted biases - but it also makes me question media that I previously, as I said, respected.

IIc. "They're Really More Like Guidelines." - the Mainstream Media re: the Rules of Ethical Journalism.

"Proving that corporate media is lazy and stupid ... the Los Angeles Times ... reported a Jason Momoa joke meme as real news. 'At one point, actor Jason Momoa, star of ‘Aquaman,’ testified via live video in support [of] his co-star Heard,' he wrote ... the problem is that Momoa did not testify at the trial. Winton would have known this if he actually watched the proceeding ... Instead, Winton got his news about the trial from TikTok and social media where this meme was making the rounds ... Lawyers who attended the trial in the gallery to report on jury reactions ... hardly ever saw any mainstream news media in the courtroom. Yet Big Media wanted to be the ones guiding the narrative of the trial." (Source.)

(Note - when I first started writing this, the day of the verdict, most of this stuff was just beginning to come out. Since then, tons more media coverage has been and continues to be published, peddling this false narrative, and Amber's own lawyer has gone around to multiple news shows to spew more misinformation about how unfair the trial was. Here's a small sampling of this trash fire.)

What the #MeToo movement has become over the years set the stage for the media to openly support it by taking Amber at her word that she's a survivor of abuse. By doing so, they have been complicit in perpetuating the "believe all women" narrative and portraying Amber as this brave survivor, at the expense of Johnny Depp's reputation, career, and character (not to mention mental health). This trial was six weeks of evidence to the contrary, and millions of people watched it. And instead of owning their error, the media wants to double-down and call Johnny's supporters misinformed, and turn this verdict into an attack on #MeToo. They'd rather stick to the (extremely harmful) narrative that men can't be victims by calling this verdict an injustice for women.

This is them saving face instead of admitting that a) they might have fucked up and helped ruin a man's life, or b) their journalism has been flawed this entire time, as none of them ever dug hard enough for the truth. They didn't examine Amber's "mountain of evidence" to find out if any of it held any weight. They hopped on the story without doing the homework. Now they don't want to eat crow, so instead, they are trying to control the fallout, and when Johnny's supporters disagree with it (hey, that's not what happened and here's the evidence), the media responds with, whatever, stop getting your information from TikTok you fucking misogynist. Projection at its finest.

One publication, I think maybe the NYT but I can't remember off-hand, wrote an article about how trials shouldn't be aired like this. I followed a twitter link and didn't save it, so I have no idea how to find it again, but it stuck with me bc I think it was the first time I remember seeing (or paying attention to) evidence of this, like, smear campaign against the airing of the trial and the fact that people were watching it for themselves.

It definitely bothered me at the time, though. The tone was very much, like - hey, wait a second, you're not supposed to be watching things like this, you're supposed to believe what we tell you to believe bc we know better, we have the facts. You're fucking up the script and it needs to stop.

And I thought

waitwhat.gif (Tumblr only allows 10 images per post; actual gif spared indignity of being part of this essay.)

- only to find that the "it's none of our business" -ers were (are) eating it up. (Edit: I copy/pasted the wrong part of this post here, and now I don't remember what my original point was with this, besides just generally being appalling. My bad.)

Anyway, after seeing that article, I started to pay attention to what the mainstream media was saying, and in the wake of the verdict, it's just gotten even worse. Over and over - these are the facts. Stop getting your news from TikTok. Read a real news source. Believe Amber, the woman. Perpetuate the myth that men cannot be abuse victims. #MeToo. Even if Amber did some bad things, Johnny's just as toxic. There's no such thing as a perfect victim - stop vilifying Amber for not being perfect. Also Johnny is obviously a lying, toxic abuser bc he's not perfect (he does drugs! He's an addict/alcoholic with a foul mouth! He's a(n older) man!). Round and round we go and it's just fucking exhausting and frustrating.

(Note - Johnny is not even in the neighborhood of perfect, I'm not saying I think he's some innocent angel in all of this, I'm just saying he's human and very flawed but more importantly there's a blatant double-standard here and in general re: "perfect victims" that needs to be acknowledged.)

And it's not like the media gives a shit about #MeToo or victims of abuse. They're not taking this stance here bc they genuinely feel like (or care that) Amber has been wronged. They're taking this stance bc media needs consumers to stay afloat, and people aren't going to consume their brand of shitty journalism (ie, pay money to be fed a version of a pre-determined narrative) if they can go directly to the source instead and come to their own conclusions. So they (the media) are doing everything they can to undermine the credibility of the source.

And like I said before - it's a gross manipulation tactic, if not outright gaslighting, but I could be disgusted by it without feeling emotionally harmed by it until I realized that my friends were falling for it. Friends I've respected and commiserated with and just plain like, as people. Friends whose judgements I've always trusted, whose intellect felt on par with my own, whose beliefs aligned with mine (which, I am not saying everyone has to agree with me about everything ever in order to be my friend, but they do have to agree with me - and with decent human beings - when it comes to things like not being homophobic, racist, sexist [snort], etc).

But now these friends are suddenly looking at this basketball and saying, looks like a watermelon to me. And I'm like, but earlier we both looked at a tennis ball and agreed it was a tennis ball, and that the pomegranate was a pomegranate, I thought we were on the same page? and they reply, well, the pomegranate wasn't a fucking wife-beater.

I may have lost my point somewhere, but basically, the media is contributing to the gaslighting that seemingly has permeated every layer of this case, from the actual relationship itself to how the public responds to the verdict. And with the media, it adds this weird layer, this feeling of being gaslit by proxy in addition to being gaslit by the anti-facters - and it's an uncomfortable feeling, yknow, it's hard to sit with the cognizance of this kind of manipulation and willful ignorance in the wake of what should be a victory - for equality, for male victims of abuse, for survivors. (It also feels like a blow in the wake of four years of Trump and his cult undermining and discrediting the media as they pranced down the yellow brick road to fascism, but I'm not even going to get started on that.)

And I'm just - could people just, like, stop lying about absolutely everything? Stop fucking lying. Stop misrepresenting shit. Stop trying to shove a gray world into your narrow-minded black-and-white box so you can feel more comfortable marinating in your own ignorant biases.

IId. The "Perfect Victim"

As I addressed that Johnny is not perfect, by any stretch of the imagination, I want to expand on that by referencing this study (which is a fascinating read) re: the credibility of victim testimony in this case, bc it explains - far better than I ever could - that Johnny's foul language and drug/alcohol problems (which Amber's defense and, by extension, her supporters - leaned on most heavily to paint the picture of him as a toxic abuser) do not inherently mean he is violent or abusive:

"Of approximately 70,000 text messages exchanged between Mr. Depp and numerous others during his marriage with Ms. Heard, the defendant selected one as evidence that Mr. Depp threatened her. In this message sent to a friend, Mr. Depp wrote, "..." Nonetheless, this message was never sent to Ms. Heard, nor was it meant to be seen by her. Apart from the testimony of Ms. Heard, there is no evidence that Mr. Depp had either seriously threatened or intended to commit serious violence against her."

*I omitted the text itself bc it's gross and genuinely appalling to me, but you can easily find it in the study linked, or just online.

Furthermore,

"Although Mr. Depp’s drug and alcohol abuse is consistently documented and therefore this risk factor should be assessed as definitively present, it is noteworthy that beyond Ms. Heard’s allegations, there is no indication of Mr. Depp being confrontational, aggressive, or violent while intoxicated, with any of his previous partners or other persons, in other public or private settings, or during other times in his life. His substance abuse did not seem sufficient to impair his capacity for work, he has no drug-related criminal record, and he has no history of driving under the influence. Moreover, the couple regularly recorded conversations as part of their relationship therapy. Ms. Heard explained “ . . . they were also a tool to remind Johnny of what he would do when using drugs and alcohol because he would not remember or would deny what he did or said.” However, in the evidence provided, there is no recording that shows Mr. Depp intoxicated, nor committing abuse or exhibiting violent behavior that escalated while intoxicated. In this regard, I consider this risk factor ambiguous. Drug and alcohol abuse is confirmed, but it is totally unclear that it triggers violence in Mr. Depp’s case."

Note the gaslighting, though - that Amber accuses Johnny of "not remembering" things he supposedly did bc he was "blacked out," with no supporting evidence that that was ever the case. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.

(Btw, this study was posted in 2021 - after the UK trial, but before this one, so these conclusions were reached when the public still largely believed Johnny was the abuser, which is maybe irrelevent but I think adds that extra little layer of credibility, in that the author of the study wasn't being biased or influenced by any pro-Johnny press.)

III. Here's the Real Tea, Sis; Or, Why I Care.

The media would have the public believe that the trial was unfair, that this is a huge setback for victims everywhere, that this is silencing countless voices and will prevent people from coming forward in the future.

As I said earlier, there's truth in that, but it's not bc of Johnny. But the media would also have the public believe that Johnny's supporters are misogynists, or right-wingers, or just rabid Johnny Depp fangirls. And again, that's not even remotely close to the truth.

Here's where I'm coming from. I wasn't even a Johnny Depp fan before this trial. (I'm not sure I'd even consider myself one now, tbh. Just a sympathizer.) I'm probably more of a Jack Sparrow fan than a Johnny fan, and I'm not even that big of a Jack Sparrow fan. I enjoyed a few of Johnny's other movies and just generally viewed him as one of the better actors in Hollywood, but I don't really consider that being a fan. I knew absolutely nothing about this case. I'd heard things here and there about Johnny vs. Amber over the years (I remember the finger incident being talked about a lot a couple of years ago, I think), I thought that we probably weren't getting the whole story bc Johnny had never seemed like an abuser, but maybe he was though, and I never thought about it more deeply than that.

What caught my attention: I was killing time at work, and I started watching some of the testimony of Dr. Dawn Hughes, one of Amber's witnesses (specifically, the psychiatrist who diagnosed her with PTSD), and after watching her being cross-examined for several minutes, I remember thinking, what the fuck kind of psychiatrist is this? Not only were her diagnostic methods being called into question (she didn't understand the assignment), but she was contradicting herself, making sweeping generalizations that rang false, and just generally coming off as not a credible witness.

"Dr Hughes spends over 20 minutes of direct examination testimony describing various forms of domestic violence. EVERY example she gives uses he/him as the source of abuse and she/her as the target of abuse. She also makes excuses for women who exhibit behaviors that could be called abusive. Her excuses expose a belief that if women yell at, hit, etc their male partner it’s because he’s mean to her. To extrapolate from Dr Hughes’ DV description below, if women are abusive it’s because a man made her do it, and if a man is abusive it’s because he’s bad." (Source.)

(^^ The above source is a good, thorough breakdown of how Hughes was biased against Johnny bc she doesn't believe women are ever perpetrators of violence without provocation, which - among other things - undermines her credibility as an "expert witness" for Amber.)

Anyway, this was about three weeks into the trial, and my interest was piqued, so I started watching more attentively. The more interested I got, the more invested I got. I went back and watched as much as I could from those first three weeks, and then I listened to the audio recordings, and I read the witness statements and most of the testimony from the UK trial, and it all just culminated in this feeling of holy shit, this is fucked up on so many levels.

In other words, everything I know about this case, I have learned in the last 3-4 weeks - but, I learned it thoroughly. And I'm not unique - there are so many people, on Reddit, on Youtube, even on tumblr, who have said they got invested in pretty much the same way. They didn't know much, if anything, about the case, they started watching bc it was on, and as the evidence kept stacking up against Amber, they got hooked. There were lawyers live-streaming eight hours a day, watching the trial and offering commentary. One lawyer, live-streaming daily, would have literally 125-150 thousand viewers on her stream, many of them chatting, interacting, asking questions.

There were lawyers sitting in the gallery, watching everything first-hand. Hours-long "recap" videos of people examining and talking about the evidence from that day's court session. Among Johnny's supporters, there is a metric fuckton of people (myself included) who have invested hours, days, the full six weeks into this trial, and it's so fucking insulting to have that reduced to "stop getting your information from TikToks, you're so misinformed."

Also among Johnny's supporters are tons and tons of abuse survivors. Survivors of domestic abuse, sexual abuse, gaslighting. Again, myself included.

It's not really something I talk about on tumblr, bc I just don't feel the need to and it was a long time ago (and also I have repressed a lot of it so I wouldn't really even know how to talk about it if I wanted to, but I digress), but for context - I was in an abusive relationship for over two years. I was nineteen/twenty, and didn't know anything about anything. The abuse was mostly emotional, occasionally physical (but not severely so). A ton of gaslighting. People around me telling me it "wasn't that bad," "everyone fights," when I expressed wanting to leave the relationship. I remember feeling off-kilter all the time, knowing something was seriously fucked up but not truly recognizing the emotional abuse and gaslighting for what it was. So I assumed it was a me problem, instead, that I was horrible in some way for being so miserable. Eventually I got out but even to this day, once in a blue moon, my mom will bring up that guy and mention it's a shame it didn't work out (like maybe she'll find a picture or something that reminds her, it's not as random as it sounds), and I'll say something like, that relationship was toxic and abusive and I hope I never see him again in this life, and she'll kind of shrug a little, like, well, if that's how you see it I won't argue with you. And, I mean, I don't even know what to do with that, except to say that even to this day, even posting this right now, I feel like, maybe that is just how I see it, maybe it wasn't abusive at all, maybe it was just a me problem. So.

But even outside of that relationship, I've been gaslit. I have had my kindness taken advantage of. I have had lies told about me. I have struggled with addiction and I have mental health issues. I know how it feels, and I have some idea of how Johnny feels, and how it all fucks a person up, and I considered that alongside the evidence and landed where I have.

Again, I'm not unique in this. This Reddit thread, for example, is full of people talking about their experiences and their backgrounds - liberals, women, poc, queer people, survivors, male survivors, etc. These are the people supporting Johnny. And I feel like brushing us off and undermining us and gaslighting us in order to side with Amber, solely because she's a woman, does far more damage to domestic violence awareness than Johnny's win ever could.

And that's ... pretty much how I'm feeling. Happy for the verdict, but hollow as well. Disappointed and sad. Frustrated. Recognizing the victory but feeling like it's already tarnished by the toxic people who want to take it away.

So, yeah.

Me @ me, posting this:

Some disclaimers:

This was written literally as just a vent - or, at least, it started out that way, but as I said at the top, I started this on the afternoon of the verdict and I'm finishing it almost an entire week later. What started as a vent became just a space for me to really work out, for my own mental clarity, why all of this bothers me so much and why it matters. I don't expect anyone to be swayed in either direction by this; I don't expect anyone will even read it, tbh, bc it's just offensively long. I'm just explaining why this even exists. Basically, this shit is/was living rent-free in my head and it needs to be evicted.

This is all my opinion and my reaction; take it with a grain of salt. As mentioned, the formatting with headers, etc was just my way of keeping the post sensical for me, as I was writing it. I realize it's probably obnoxious, so, sorry.

I didn't provide links to Amber's quotes taken from audio recordings bc they're all over YouTube and I couldn't find either transcripts or vids that were cut down to just the portion I was quoting.

Between the day I started this and the day I finished it, tumblr introduced its "turn off reblogs" feature, which is super convenient. I don't want this reblogged bc a) I don't think it's particularly well-written, and b) I shared more personal details about myself that I didn't really intend to, and I'd just rather not have any of this floating around in the tumblrsphere.

[ofcowardiceandkings]

I've seen you reference story implications in the sequel to BOTW a few times but I can't find an explanation and I'm still not sure what you mean 😖

not to worry being a vague mess is one of my fortés lol

im gonna get mad english-class serious a second because i need it to explain my shit hold on to yer horses lads this is gonna get long and over the top im SO SORRY in advance ..........

what i generally mean is if we take every interaction in BotW as if it had actually happened, not in the details minutiae sense like if you felt like Link would be nice to Bozai or want to spin kick him in the head way, but if Nintendo included an interaction or lore then it happened at some point or was learned way (the correct answer is spin kick though), then Link would know a LOT of very personal thoughts and feelings from a LOT of people.

to be fair, most of said people have passed away by this point in the story BUT more to the point Zelda is still very much alive and is also in some kind of tenuous contact with Link throughout the course of the game via Spooky Voice On The Winds just for good measure

regardless of what opinion you come away with of Link's own emotions - original Japanese text adventure log and player point-of-contact poker-face not withstanding - it is 100% canonical that Zelda had a thing for Link before the Calamity after they got to actually interacting and understanding each other. even if you wanna side-eye the construction of the story told by "Captured Memories" to be at LEAST a little romantically orientated (which in my opinion is a dubious stance to take given how typical storytelling structure works), what Kass has to say about the whole thing is explicitly textual, if only through secondhand information (although i will say a court poet seems like a sound bet in terms of reading people and especially if the person youre reading is a teenager with no concept of not wearing her heart on her sleeve and Small Emotions). trying to ignore ALL of that and - to be honest - what the latest batch of writing team has been doing since Skyward Sword isnt so much "reading the subtext/story wrong" as it is willfully ignoring it lol

not that im saying thats a bad thing, i also ignore chunks or details of stories i dislike because "fuck that im having fun" but i can also acknowledge that whatever im ignoring did in fact happen even if i think its stupid ... anyway

and the only reason i think this is a train of thought less-travelled is purely due to how HUGE BotW is, theres a LOT of stuff .. like i hang out with friends mostly playing BotW on twitch every day and we all learn things constantly. if you dont go hard for the lore and story you miss it, thats the nature of storytelling in the way BotW went about it

like i said, it's kind of dependent on what content is to be taken as having ACTUALLY happened. the only thing that isnt up for debate is that he regained all of the main-game memories since that's how you get the "true"/full ending. but did Link really read those diaries, did he really have that chat with Kass in Rito Village, is The Champion's Ballad lore going to be carried over,, that sort of thing. in my opinion? yes, because more solidly Nintendo included it for a reason no matter of what percentage of players found it, but in an off-shoot opinion if i was trying to regain my lost memories i'd give ANYTHING a chance of getting them back even if it meant the awkwardness of reading my long-gone friends diaries 🤷‍♂️

basically, what i mean when i have a meltdown over "the plot implications of BotW on BotW2" is im extremely curious to see how Nintendo handle 1) Zelda's established feelings towards Link (assuming they still exist, which i think we have reason to believe they do) and 2) Link quite possibly KNOWING about it. oh and them not existing in an extremely rigid class-driven society anymore.

i dunno about you - or the writing team for that matter - but if i was made aware that a pretty and smart person who i used to be around a lot had a thing for me i would be going out of my MIND lmfao

while their dynamic in past games has been quite developed or had romantic overtones before, BotW is by FAR the most complex understanding of them with the most information given to the player about how their characters grow from more than one angle. like having known each other for some time, general depictions of them existing around each other, visible emoting around the others' circumstances .. these things have happened before but not in such a huge combination. oh AND an abject change in their relationship after having come to some kind of understanding, which is definitely new, let alone that understanding happening OFF SCREEN.

i'll stop now before i actually write a full essay, but lets just say this is even more uncharted territory than Skyward Sword's obvious love story and the "oh and then he was king of hyrule :)" at the end of the original, because like ... its a sequel ... after the fact ..... unresolved

........ yeah

[kineticpenguin]

I want to be angry at people for being stupid, willfully ignorant, closing themselves off and diving headlong into conspiracy theories, but... y’know, when you get right down to it? The state of news media is pretty much worse than ever before. I’m not trying to shit on journalists or the profession of journalism, but when it comes to news outlets, your choices are as varied as much as they suck.

Cable news: At the best of times, struggling to stay relevant and profitable in the Internet age, unable to resist sensationalism, because it sells. At the worst of times, outright lying to viewers because infotainment opinion type shows are both a draw and retain viewers; it’s why Tucker Carlson still has a job.

Local news: Dead or dying because of the Internet, being gutted by vulture capitalists, or bought out by a national conglomerate with an agenda like Sinclair. Letting professional photographers and videographers go because these days any asshole with a phone can record and they’re out of money. A vital part of society being removed or turned into outright cancer.

Big newspapers: The heavyweights like the New York Times and Washington Post are still producing decent work, but sold out their editorial boards because rich assholes with bad opinions generate clicks and they, too, are struggling to stay afloat in a world with social media.

Radio: Outside of NPR the far right seized this decades ago. Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones et al. NPR has also shifted right as a decrease in funding has forced it to seek new sponsors.

Social media: literally any fucking asshole who can present themselves in the right way can say whatever they want and become a star. Dan Bongino is one of, if not the most influential voice on Facebook and he’s just some NYPD cop-turned-Fed with an MBA and delusions of grandeur. Almost any legitimate reporting is done by amateurs who show up with a camera. There’s also the breadtube ecosystem if you’re into pointless backbiting. 

Youtube/Podcasts: See social media.

And of course you’ve got comedians like Trevor Noah, Stephen Colbert and John Oliver, but there’s a reason Jon Stewart was always like don’t get your news from us. They’re liberal comedians, their job is to make fun of how stupid things are, not actually provide anything more useful than a sensible chuckle.

America is in such an insanely dangerous place right now. Not because some dictator has a stranglehold on media, but because we are constantly bombarded with junk data, desperately trying to filter it out for anything that makes sense. And as a species, we are predisposed to believe and share information that makes us angry. Anyone who understands that has an edge. “Truthiness” is still very much a thing, it didn’t die with the Bush administration.

The five most terrifying words in the English language are: “yeah, that sounds about right”

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: this post is part of the Recommended Reading series here on Can’t You Read; an ongoing and evolving feature that combines an easy to swipe info-graphic, a short journal, and a link to an important related discussion I’d like to share with readers.

A Culture of Predation Can’t Stop Fascist Pig Violence

In the wake of the frankly surprising (but extremely welcome) guilty verdicts in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, I’ve tried very hard to reign in my cynicism. After all, the conviction of a cop for murder “in the line of duty,” let alone a white cop who murdered an African American man with an impoverished background, is about as common as a goddamn unicorn fart, and on that account alone the verdict is worth commemorating, if not necessarily celebrating. 

While it would be unspeakably obtuse to suggest that the verdict represented some sort of positive justice, it’s also undeniable that many feel this moment may indeed be a starting point; a chance to at least begin to imagine what a positive justice for African Americans might look like. In particular numerous observers have pointed to the very public crumbling of the proverbial “blue wall” of silence, the fact that Chauvin’s fellow police officers passionately testified against him with the whole world watching, as a positive omen for the future of police reform.

Unfortunately I (and many other observers) have doubts about this position. I don’t mean to be a downer, but the truth is that nobody, not even immunized murderpigs and their commanders, can justify the horrifying video of Chauvin mindlessly executing George Floyd over the course of nine and a half minutes. Faced with the choice of openly embracing their own “little Eichmanns” in front of an outraged public, the Blue Meanies decided that ultimately it wasn’t worth protecting a fuck up like Derek Chauvin. The cost, both to his fellow thug cops, and the profession of policing as a whole, would simply have been too damn high to justify the reward. 

The sad and horrifying truth here is that if Derek Chauvin had simply shot George Floyd, instead of casually kneeling on his neck for almost ten minutes, he’d probably be a free man today; just like so many cracker murderpigs before him. Furthermore, even this smallest of concessions probably wouldn’t have happened without months of nationwide protests conducted under a state of constant assault by violent, openly rioting police officers. That last reality is certainly not lost on fascists and neoliberal authoritarians; why else do you think reactionary lawmakers are rushing to pass legislation that criminalizes mass protest against racialized police violence? 

Still, you can’t blame folks for hoping; hope can be a good thing if it gives you the strength and courage to continue a seemingly impossible fight for actual justice. Perhaps some long day from now we will look back on this moment and say “and the conviction of Derek Chauvin was the point when the wave ultimately broke, and the tide of cracker police violence finally rolled back” - even if it’s clear that these convictions, by themselves, do not have the power to enact the change we so desperately need. 

Where I can and will find fault however, is with those deluded and disingenuous souls who have used this moment to once again champion the doomed cause of police reform; blithely ignorant or willfully oblivious to the fact that police reforms already failed to prevent the murder of George Floyd, and so many others like him. The bald truth is that the current establishment movement towards police reform is about maintaining the power and funding of the very same violent uniformed thugs who’re murdering poor people on behalf of the capitalist state in the first place; that’s why nobody is talking about removing qualified immunity for police officers, and that’s why even some cops themselves are coming around to the idea of reform at this late a date. In many ways, the real importance of the movement to “Defund the Police” is that the mere threat of taking away the sweet filthy ducats that pay murderpig salaries has already shifted the carceral establishment’s position towards bargaining; albeit, in bad faith.

The road to neofeudalist hell is paved with dark intentions however, and what establishment reformers, even and perhaps especially those who’re prepared to acknowledge the fundamentally racialized aspects of police violence, aren’t prepared to discuss in the open is the nature and purpose of policing itself in a capitalist society. There is no public examination of why it is that we keep hiring folks who turn out to be violent white supremacists to be police; and there certainly will be no discussion about the ways class relationships intersect with race through the designed function of racialized policing.

Despite the pro-police propaganda you’ve been fed all your life to suggest otherwise, the vast majority of what police actually do in America is to protect the wealth, property, and feelings of affluent white people and the corporations they own. Far from solving major crimes and preventing violence, modern policing in the Pig Empire revolves around nuisance violations, so-called broken windows policing, and other methods of harassing poor people for minor infractions of the law; remember, the police encounter that lead to the murder of George Floyd started over the purchase of cigarettes and a dodgy twenty dollar bill. The reason murderpigs can get away with violently assaulting protestors and journalists who threaten the established order is because that is precisely what they’re being paid to do, and indeed what their predecessors before them have always been paid to do.

On the surface, this class and capitalism analysis may appear to create a tension with the narrative that white supremacy and racism are also driving the crisis of police violence, but that’s really just about the same old establishment spin. As I’ve discussed in numerous prior essays, you simply cannot separate capitalism from white supremacy, or even racism, because bigoted ideas are propagated and spread for the specific purpose of marking out certain marginalized groups for exploitation and highly-lucrative (for some) repression.

Do you want to know what systemic racism in policing really looks like? It looks like hiring murderpigs to repress the poor, knowing full well that due to centuries of slavery and exploitation, the nonwhite and particularly African American population will be vastly overrepresented in the targeted communities. It looks like a supposedly colorblind war on drugs, the ongoing use of demonstratively racist stop and frisk practices, and expanded powers for your community’s “gang squad” in pretty much any neighborhood that just happens to be predominantly Black. It looks like literally profiting from these practices in ways that are sometimes extremely brazen and obvious, but sometimes hidden from everyday sight; even if they’re hardly much of a secret. The fact that the police are ultimately enforcers for the capitalist ruling class, also makes them enforcers of the white supremacist order that capitalism is so dependent upon in our society; there is no contradiction involved here.

Look; you don’t get rid of fascist murderpigs and white supremacists in law enforcement by throwing more money at nazi cops. Joe Biden can summon up all the pretty words he likes, but you can’t address the racialized nature of police violence without fundamentally altering either the racialized nature of inequality in American life, or the very purpose of policing in our society; and he’s sure as shit not talking about doing any of that at all. Thus, no matter how surprised and hopeful I am after the Chauvin guilty verdicts, that sense of positivity is ultimately tempered by the realization that “nothing will fundamentally change” - and that includes cracker thug pigs executing unarmed Black men on camera.

Although they might finally be better than openly fascist Republicans, the Democrats still don’t have answers to the problem of racialized police violence because ultimately, they don’t have answers to the crisis of capitalism itself. It’s not a question of reform or changing the law; murder is already illegal, even if you’re a white cop. Inequality, and the security force violence necessary to maintain it, is a festering sore inside the American body politic, and there are indeed consequences for essentially ignoring a crisis now so obvious and enraging to the public at large. 

What kind of consequences? Well, let’s ask researcher and professor Temitope Oriola who provides one terrifying answer in the public journal, The Conversation:

“The United States is at Risk of an Armed Anti-Police Insurgency“ by  Temitope Oriola

Or, you know, we could just abolish the murderpigs first; your call really - but don’t expect Palooka Joe to be much help, either way.

- nina illingworth

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog

Updates available on Instagram, Mastodon and Facebook. Podcast at “No Fugazi” on Soundcloud.

Inquiries and requests to speak to the manager @ASNinaWrites

Chat with fellow readers online at Anarcho Nina Writes on Discord!

“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”

[chibimyumi]

Forgive me for being ignorant, but I’ve always been scared about asking this question because it’s 2020 and I should be aware by now- but what does trans mean? If you’re a trans-boy does that make you a boy that’s transitioning to a girl? Or a girl that’s transitioning to a boy? Every time I look it up I seem to be getting a different answer. And how does sexuality fit in? I hope I’m not being offensive... I just never learned and haven’t had the courage to ask anyone until now.

Dear Anon,

Please don’t worry, people are not BORN with knowledge. It is something other people might benefit from remembering too ^^ I can tell you ask the question in good faith, and I am flattered that you thought that I could give you trustworthy information.

The question you have is a very simple and yet complicated question, so PLEASE FORGIVE ME FOR SIMPLIFYING THINGS DOWN LIKE THIS.

1. What are gender, sexuality and sex?

Let us first look at this question using a pizza. Dough is one thing, cheese is another, and so is tomato. Together they make up a pizza. But what makes the dough ‘dough’,  has nothing to do with the cheese.

Cheese NOT on a pizza is still cheese, and the fact that it is cheese is likewise NOT determined by whether the tomato is there or not. All these things are “individual things” that are the “ingredients that make up a pizza”.

This may seem bullshit talk, but this just serves as a metaphor to understand how different things exist on their own, but are indispensable in making up another ‘combination’. (Smart-asses out there, don’t pretend to be smart by being willfully obtuse or pedantic for now, please.)

Now let us look at gender, sexuality and sex, wherein gender is the dough, sexuality the tomato, and sex the cheese.

In humans too, gender, sexuality and sex are three different ‘key ingredients’ that shape the basis of who we are (the margarita pizza. Only later we add the toppings like olives, meat, or pineapples (which are kinks! Not for everyone, but much beloved by its lovers.))

In a human too, just like dough, tomato and cheese, ‘gender’, ‘sexuality’ and ‘sex’ exist separately, and do NOT determine the ‘nature’ of the others.

Step 1. There are 3 primary questions to ask.

Q1a: What is your gender? Who do you identify as? Do you identify as man, woman, otherwise, or different genders depending on the day?

Q1b: What type of person are you interested in romantically and/or sexually? Men? Women? Both? All genders that exist? Or are you not romantically/sexually interested at all? (There are too many different sexualities, so I shall leave it at this for now.)

Q1c: What ‘sex’, or with what primary genitals were you born with? Upon birth, doctors see our genitals and label ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ on us depending on what genitals they see. Some children are born with ‘intersexed’ characteristics. And depending on the doctor again, someone is then labeled ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ again. (This too is a topic for another time.)

Step 2. In order to understand what ‘transgender’ is, let us look at Q2. “Combine the answers from Q1a and Q1c. Do you identify as the ‘sex’ your doctors assigned to you at birth?

Hypothesis: Let’s say you were born with a vagina, and your doctor therefore assigned you to be ‘a girl’. Are you comfortable with being a girl/woman, and do you feel that correctly reflects your identity too?

Yes. ➡You are probably ‘cis-gender‘.

No. ➡ This is a VERY broad thing here, but most crudely, if you feel like being labeled ‘girl’ because you were born with a vagina does not reflect who you really are, and you identify as ‘man’, ‘something else’ or ‘also something else’, you are probably ‘trans-gender’.

Bonus: If you identify as ‘otherwise’ or specifically as ‘neither man or woman’, this is usually called ‘non-binary’. If you feel like you are sometimes one gender, and sometimes another, that is usually called ‘gender-fluid’. “Non-binary” and “gender-fluids” are two of the many options that fall under the umbrella of ‘transgender’ too.

2. Simulation through ‘Black Butler’

I have selected Nina Hopkins as our first example because she is one of the few character from whom we know their gender identity, AND have one clear established gender she is romantically/sexually interested in.

Q1a: Honestly... Nina can’t shut up about how proud she is to be a woman.

Q1b: Given how antagonistic she is towards men and how she fondles women... she probably likes women.

Q1c: For metaphor’s sake we shall assume she was born with a vagina. So her birth was probably announced with the words “it’s a baby girl!”

GENDER: Nina is proud to be a woman, and seemingly happy to be assigned as such. Therefore she is a cis-gender woman (or cis-woman).

SEXUALITY: Who someone is sexually/romantically interested in is by NO means determined by your sex or gender. So Nina’s sexuality is an altogether separate category. The only part that has SOME role is ‘gender’, but ONLY in the ‘name’ that someone gets. Namely: Nina identifies as ‘woman’. Nina likes ‘women’. A woman who likes women is ‘a lesbian’. Hence, Nina is a cis-gender lesbian.

PIZZA: The pizza identity of Nina is probably a pissaladière. Caramelised onions, anchovies, garlic and olives? Strong flavour to the point of choking, not for everyone, but VERY beloved by its lovers.

Now let us look at Grell, a character who is surrounded by many controversies, even though she is arguably one of the least gender ambiguous characters in the Kuroverse XD. Unlike for Nina, questions Q1a to c can easily be filled in without too much hypothesising.

Q1a: Grell has said multiple times in the manga that she identifies as woman.

Q1b: Grell likes MOSTLY men with potentially some rare exceptions (Madam Red???).

Q1c: Grell was born with a penis and assigned to be ‘male at birth’.

GENDER: We see that Grell was ‘assigned male at birth’, but is uncomfortable identifying and living as a man. Rather, she constantly calls and presents herself as a woman. Hence, Grell is a transgender woman. (Dear Anon. Yes, we call somebody by their ‘preferred gender’, not their ‘originally assigned gender’. Let’s just say that Grell for example would never let anybody call her a ‘trans-man’. The thing of coming out as transgender is partially to ‘break away from your ‘assigned’ gender and living as your ‘discovered true gender’.)

SEXUALITY: We don’t know for certain whether Grell was romantically interested in Madam Red, but we do know for sure that she is 99% of the time interested in men. Grell identifies as woman. A woman who likes MOSTLY men, but maybe very occasionally other genders, is probably bisexual or pansexual. Hence, Grell is a trans-gender bi-/pansexual woman.

PIZZA: Grell’s pizza identity is indisputably PIZZA HAWAII. Fight me. Endless controversies and debates about FUCKING PINEAPPLES!! Not for everyone either, but people who love this pizza will defend it TO THEIR GRAVES!

Sebastian.... is a whole different can of worms, cockroaches and tarantula spiders... BUT SINCE I HAVE OPENED IT BEFORE ANYWAY, LET’S OPEN THIS AGAIN!

In this post I have touched upon how we cannot be sure Sebastian is ‘male’, much less assume he has a gender to begin with. But there are no characters in this series that are confirmed to be neither man or woman, let us use Sebastian just to add to our simulation test here.

Q1a: Sebastian has said that “he is nothing, but can become anyone.”

Q1b: N.A.

Q1c: The genitals he was born with was probably ‘black goop miasma’, but in his current human form he probably concocted a penis.

GENDER: Eerm... he is ‘masculine presenting’, FOR NOW... but as Sebas has also said that “he is nothing and can be anyone”, and can take the shape of even a table... I’d say it’d be unreasonable to assume he identifies as a gender we know of. Gender, after all, is a purely human construct. (Click here for more details on gender and human society.) Hence, IF according to human standards, then Sebas would be non-binary and/or gender-fluid. As discussed above, these two fall under the ‘transgender’ umbrella.

SEXUALITY: So far in the series we have only met 1. humans, towards whom he has not shown any romantic or sexual interest (and as humans are cattle to Sebastian, this is very understandable), and 2. reapers, towards whom Sebas has also not shown any romantic/sexual interest (and since all these reapers are actively after his blood, that is quite logical too.) 

“What about Ciel???” Short answer: LOL. Click here and here for the full answer.

“What about Beast?” Short answer: Nope. Click here for the full answer.

PIZZA: The pizza identity of Sebas is CLEARLY a quattro formaggi. Someone as cheesy as him can only be a quattro formaggi.

Welp... I guess that’s the most schematically simplified version I can give on gender, sexuality and sex for now... I hope this helps?

For more, please use this masterpost on gender in Kuroshitsuji.

BONUS ROUND!!

What is YOUR Pizza identity? Let me know which pizza you are and why (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧🍕

[coolabed-films]

who are your favorite Community character(s)? ships? episodes? feel free to use this as an excuse to talk about anything Community-related that you want to talk about!

thank you so much for this ask but you don't know what you've done,,, the community brainrot I have is truly unmatched I could ramble about it for hours hdkfkg

My favourite characters have got to be the golden trio of Troy/Annie/Abed (with Troy being my favourite if I had to choose) and I really do think a huge reason for that is the sense of family and comfort they all have with each other. Like obviously I LOVE Jeff and Britta (I am a proud member of the Britta Perry Deserves Better Society) but their age and experience makes them very selfish and nihilistic in comparison to the really sweet optimism trobedison all have. And god TROY!! like what if I was a socially isolated neurodiverse college student who uses film/TV to understand and cope with reality and you joined a Spanish study group with me where we became best friends and you gave me all the love and affection I could ever dream of 😳😳 ahaha jk... unless?? I love Abed and Annie because of the Projection but Troy is like the best friend I wish I had!! I am willfully ignoring geothermal escapism rn please and thank u 😌

Also I always have to s/o to Shirley because I am also a proud member of the Shirley Barnes Deserves Better Society and if I don't give her the respect she deserves who will! Narratively she absolutely got fucked over (Repilot what's ur address I just wanna talk) but she still manages to be a great character despite that. Yvette is so good in the role comedically and emotionally and it makes her a really fun character to watch despite the fact that she's bogged down by the fact that she's conventionally quite boring (a conservative Christian housewife). The fact that we actually get some Shirley development is one of the best parts of season 5 imo (again not including Repilot H*rm*n pick up the phone).

With shipping I'm pretty chill with most pairings because the show really does make it so almost any relationship could happen and it would fit- like I will die on the lesbiannie hill but abedison and even troy/annie (do they have a ship name?) are very cute and I'd have been chill if they got together on the show. Also one-sided Annie/Frankie and Brittannie >>>

I mean I even have a soft spot for Deanjeff which is def not something I'd have said the first time I watched lol. The only ships I'm not a fan of are j/a and pierce/anyone for very obvious reasons.

The pairings I actively ship though are (to the surprise of no one!) jeffbritta and trobed. It has all been said before but Troy and Abed literally complete each other and they are the greatest and most tragic lovestory of all time!! God! Honestly I feel similarly about Jeffbritta- they make each other better, you know? They truly understand each other on a level the other members of the group cannot and the penultimate episode of season five showcases it so well. It's such a small scene but when they agree to get married it's really one of my favourites because it's so small but so perfectly them. They're also bi solidarity so 💆‍♀️

There's a great fic called Introduction to Federal Investigation by Scioscribe and dare I say it,,,, Britta/ATF guy rights.

For everyone's sake I will not be going into detailed explanations of why I love them but some (definitely not all lol) of my favourite episodes are:

Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas (the medium switch! the use of genre to explore a character in the way only community can! the christmas pterodactyl!)

Intermediate Documentary Filmaking/Documentary Filmmaking: Redux (some of the funniest episodes- LeVar Burton, Jeff Winger's Dumb Gay Dad, the "to meet different people" bit, Jeff as the dean, all simply *chef's kiss*)

Studies in Modern Movement (trobedison. kiss from a rose. jesus loves marijuana. yes ❤️)

Queer Studies and Advanced Waxing (Community exploring the dean's sexuality shouldn't make me as feral as it does. and yet!! Gay dean is great, I love the karate kid b plot, and they actually Made Points about the way hets treat gay rep. I adore this episode)

I'm sorry this was so long lmfao 😭 I would do a readmore option but I'm on mobile and have absolutely no clue how. Thank you for the ask!! <3

[santaclausdeadindian]

Sorry for doing it this way, I think OP deleted their post or blocked me like a mature, balanced person would, so I have to tag you in

@mr-laugh

Oh boy, lot to unpack here.

So you didn’t even know there were that many subgenres of fantasy, one of the most popular classifications of fiction on the planet... And you think you know enough to tell ANYBODY what classic fantasy is?

And where exactly I attempted to do that, huh?

If you don’t even know the most common subgenres of this vast pool of fiction, why are you jumping into this discussion? You just admitted you don’t know anything!

There is no discussion, there is a stupid ass post. Don't flatter yourself, you don't know jack shit.

Me not knowing what exactly are the precize subgenres of a genre of literature, which, btw, are completely arbitrary and for your information, sword&magic is a legitimate category, has absolutely nothing to do with what that post you were so keen on agreeing with above. It was you who said pretty much any classic fantasy is like that: some poorly written, self-indulgent and borderline racist.

Did ya read the link, buddy? Howard talked about knowing what burning black man smelled like. He was quite approving of these things! And the books are pretty racist, it’s not hard to see, unless you ain’t looking.

Yes, I started reading and by the end of the first paragraph I was convinced he was ahorribly racist man. And? Still doesn't change the fact, that for my 12 year old self, there was nothing racist about it. I definetly wasn't looking for it, that much you got right. If I'd read it again, I'm sure I'd catch on to it now, that I know what kind of asshole he was. So the implied racism would be there. You got a point for that.

Rugged individualism? It always amuses me how that argument always pops out of the mouths of guys who are aping what they’ve heard their buddies say. If ten thousand mouths shout “rugged individualism”, how individualistic are they?

Then you should amuse yourself by looking up why this thing crops up as of late. It's coming from certain, supremely racist yet unaware of it publications that claim ridiculous shit like "rugged individualism" is a hallmark of white supremacy, among other, equally laughable things, like punctuality. It's a joke.

Again, I will give Howard to you, if someone that racist writes a black man saving the hero of the story, I bet there was something else still there to make it wrong.

Conan’s not some avatar of rugged individualism.

Uhm, yeah, he pretty much all that.

He’s as unreal and unrealistic as the dragons are,

It's called fantasy for a reason, buddy.

but more dangerous because White Men model their ideas of reality on Big Man Heroes like him;

Glad you are totally not racist, yo!!! It's such a relief that White Men are the only ones with this terrible behavior of looking up to larger than life, mythic superpeople and nobody else. Imagine what it would be like, if we would have some asshole from say, hindu indian literature massacering demons called Rakshassas, by the tens of thousands, or some bullshit japanese warlord would snatch out arrows from the air, or a chienese bodyguard would mow down hundreds of barbaric huns without dropping a sweat, or some middle eastern hero would fight literal gods and their magical beasts in some quest for eternal life.

it's a poison that weakens us, distracting us from actually trying to solve the world’s issues, or banding together to deal with shit.

This is what you just said. It's up to the white man, to get their shit together, be not racist and solve the world's problems, because those poor other people's just can't do it. If we would just not be oh, so racist, then China would surely stop with the genocides they are doing now, or blowing more than half the greenhouse emissions into the athmosphere, the muslims would stop throwing their gays from rooftops or ramming trucks into crowds and would just start treating women as equals, India's massive rape problem would be gone, subsaharan African would be magically bereft of the host of atrocities committed there on a daily, yeah, you sure have that nonracism down, buddy!

A rugged individualist would be smart enough to realize that even the most individualistic person needs others; no man’s an island, and a loner is easier to kill.

Individualism doesn't mean at all what you think it means, it's a cluster of widely differeing philosophies that puts the individual ahead of the group or state, it's ranging from anarchism to liberalism and is also has nothing to do with my point.

Central Europe?  What, Germany?  Because let me tell you, historically they are SUPER concerned about race!

Germany traditionally considered western european, central europe would be the people stuck between them and the russians, to put it very loosely. We are equally nonplussed by the self-flagellating white guilt complex and the woe me victim complex of the west. We did none of the shit those meanie white people did to the nonwhites and suffered everyting any poc ever did and then some. We don't give a shit about your color, we care about what culture you are from and if you respect our values.

I’m an American from a former Confederate state; trust me, race is everything.  It always is.

No it really isn't. How old are you? Asking without condescension, genuinly curious, because if you are in your low twenties at most, it's understandable why you think like this.

See that hike? Do you know what happened at that time that made virtually all american media suddenly go all in with racism?

Occupy Wall Street, that's what. It's a brilliant way to sow victimhood and hate and desperation amongst the people who have one common enemy, the powers that be, the banking sector, the politicians, the megacorporations.

Can't really blame you if you are in your early 20's at most, you grew up with this bullshit hammered into you. If you are older, step out of your echochamber please!

If you actually believe, that mankind doesn't progress naturally towards a more accepting society purely on the merit of there being more good people than bad and sharing a similar living with all the hardships in life, seeing that our prejudices inherited by our parents are baseless, that's how we progress, not virtue signalling courses and regressive policies. I was raised as any other kid, I had a deep resentment towards the neighbouring nations, I said vile, racist shit against people who I actually share a lot of genes with, of which fact I was in deep denial about, and then as I gradually got exposed more and more actual people of these groups, I started to realize I was wrong and everybody should be judged by their individual merits. It works throughout the generations, my grandma was thought songs about Hitler and how all jews are evil in school, she legit thought all black people at least in Africa are cannibals and shit, my mother stillsays shit that would get her cancelled in the USA, and I will probably have a mixed race kid as we stand now.

This whole racism is an eternal problem is laughable and disingenuous and I am actually sorry for you that you feel like that.

Moving on. As for Dany, the “noble white girl sold to scary dark foreign man” is a very popular trope, especially in exploitation films, which Martin draws on much more heavily than most authors do.

No, he fucking doesn't. I already wrote a bunch of examples from the books you seeminly ignore willfully. First of all, she is sold to those olive skinned savages by a white man, who is a terrible, increadibly evil man. He want's to fuck the then 11-12 ish Dany so bad, she picks his slave most resembling her and rapes her repeatedly, "until the madness pass." He also maimes children and traines them as disposable slave spies by the hundreds. There is no boundaries colour here, GRRM prtrays all kinds of people as reprehensible, evil and disgusting. Just like you can find plenty of examples to the opposite.

What is he drawing from your exploitation movies exactly? He writes about the human anture, he writes about the human heart at war with itself, that's his central philosophy of writing.

ASOFAI is basically just a porn movie with complicated feudal politics obscuring it, which is probably why it worked so well as an HBO series (up until the last two seasons or so.)

There is no gratuitous sex scene in the books, the rapes are described as rapes, they are horrible, they are very shortly described and usually just alluded to.

The people commiting them are not put into generous lights and one of the single most harrowing stories hidden behind the grand happenings of the plot is a girl named Jeyne Poole, whose suffering although never shown, is very much pointed out, along with the hypocrisy of the people who only fight to try and save her, because they think her a different person.

Honestly, if you actually read the books and they came of to you as porn, you might want to do some soulsearching.Btw, the HBO series was a terrible adaptation, it immedietly started to go further and further from the books with every passing season and the showmakers made it very clear to everybody, that they didn't understand the very much pacifist and humanist themes of Martin. And neither did you.

We also get no indication Essos will eat it when Winter comes; hell, they seem to not know Winter exists, given the way people act, even though that is also unrealistic and weird.  Essos was just super badly designed, and Dany is a terribly boring character.

to be continued