#but also the fandom does need to evaluate how they see disabled people

[seeingteacupsindragons]

A Reference Post on What It’s Like to Skip a Grade so Y’all Stop Writing the Weirdest Nerd Characters Ever

All right. Let’s start from the beginning, I suppose.

How does this even happen?

I’m speaking here only from an American perspective, because I’m American. Although I did just look it up, and it appears Japan bans skipping a grade at all until the senior year of high school or the senior year of university. Probably for social conformity reasons. I don’t really know. But something to keep in mind, anime fandom. I know you’re following me.

Anyway, back to America (alas). Because the American school system is so decentralized, the requirements/handling of this probably varies from school district to school district so even people in different states might have different experiences. But I have met a grand total of two other people in person who have skipped a grade, and they both did it in different states, and there were actually a fair number of similarities in a lot of ways, so I have at least. A statistically meaningless test group to extrapolate from.

(And I guess my dad, who was briefly promoted a year in early elementary school as well until his Catholic school meant taking First Communion a year early and they punted him back down. We’re not going to factor that in here)

Because grade skipping is extremely rare, for reasons I'm about to get into.

In all three of our cases, the grade skipping did not come from the schools or teachers. They came from our parents.

See the thing is, public school districts…hate doing work. They are mostly not good or caring about their students. They don’t want to have to deal with anything complicated or exceptional. Kids who have disabilities have to be accommodated legally, and they’re still bad at it. Kids who are out-testing their classmates in every area have no legal protection because…uh…why would we have that; that’s absurd.

My school’s proposed solution was to send me a school legitimately five times as far from my home as the one I went to, an entirely unreasonable commute, for their “Advanced” classes. Because that was the district-approved system for this, not promoting kids up a year, and they did not want to have to come up with individualized solutions.

And so my parents fought with them for an entire year about how I needed to be promoted. I remember. Not a lot of this, because I was five (and six, I guess). I remember a lot of days spent in rooms with adults asking me lots of questions about all sorts of stuff. Evaluations on my “intelligence” and emotional maturity. Probably some kind of social worker or therapist or something.

And then they finally agreed to start me the next year in second grade instead of first and enrolled me that way.

My mother promptly told every parent of the "gifted" kids in her preschool classes to do anything but enroll them in my school district because the teachers proceeded to treat me as a built-in tutor for my classmates when I was also supposed to be getting an education.

Okay, but why?

Why did my parents fight for this so hard?

According to them (again, I don’t remember this much and the answer to this is not something I could have remembered), they saw the rate at which I was picking up new things plummet off a cliff. What’s also important here is that I have an older brother and my mother worked in early childhood education (preschool). So my parents knew what a normal development of child development and the rate at which they were supposed to learn things was. And they saw mine drop off suddenly and sharply for no reason.

And, look, my parents did a lot of things wrong, but they were always very protective of my and my brothers’ intellectual development.

They were legitimately scared that school was fucking up my ability to learn in irreparable ways. And…they probably weren’t wrong.

My parents didn’t fight about this for status. Or because they thought I should be recognized for being a bright kid. Or because they thought I could handle it. They were scared for their child. Not because they wanted a smart kid. Because the school was clearly inhibiting my growth as the person I was supposed to be.

But as far as my school district was concerned, it was easier to break someone’s legs to keep them from growing to be a tall poppy in the first place.

So that fixed the problem, right?

Honestly? I don’t think grade skipping is that useful a tactic.

The people I know who skipped a grade all were still put in solid blocks of honors and AP classes. Fundamentally, no system has a way to handle the actual issue, which is that we were picking things up too quickly for the system to accommodate. Skipping a grade might level out the difference for a moment, but if one person is still running faster than the others, they’re going to end up outpacing them again in short order. And they’re not going to keep getting promoted through school grades. Again, schools don’t really like doing this.

Some more catchall admin questions to address before getting into the experience of being promoted

Yes, they did test my emotional maturity when getting promoted, to ensure I could actually handle being a peer with people physiologically older than me. I guess I did well? It’s not just about test scores.

I’m pretty sure no teacher past like second grade or elementary school at the most was actually informed I skipped a grade. Because it just did not matter. Why would they be told this.

I don’t know if there was a record anywhere of this happening in the school files. Probably somewhere? But they fundamentally just. Enrolled me in the grade I was supposed to be in, and that was that. I have no idea how that side of things worked. Again, I was tiny and more concerned about DBZ.

No, I do not remember being emotionally invested in this happening or not. Again, I had DBZ and karate and swimming to care about.

Now then. Let’s get into more character-related stuff

So you’re smart, right? What’s your IQ?

I’ve no earthly idea. If they tested it at any point (unclear if they did), my parents kept that information on “need-to-know basis” and I did not need to know. My dad was tested as a kid and scored….uh. Highly. And became kind of an arrogant dick about it once he had a number. My parents refused to have any of their children IQ tested because they knew we would also test highly, and they were operating on the principle of "having children who are tolerable to be around."

And I don’t care, because IQ is a silly thing that means nothing in the real world anyway.

Quite frankly, this is all primary and secondary school shit and doesn’t matter much in the real world. But people keep writing about it wrong and it’s definitely something that impacted how I grew up, so here I am writing this absurdly long post.

You liked school, right?

Why are kids like this portrayed as invested in school? I’m pretty sure no one really likes things they find boring. School was boring.

I was in fifth grade being stuck off in a room during math class to read the middle school algebra textbooks instead. I read all during class and still got hundreds on tests. Homework was repetitive busywork. I drew and wrote in class and kept getting my art taken away from me or ripped during classes by teachers because I wasn’t paying attention. I kept getting tripped up on those things where we had to take turns reading aloud in class because I was about 20 pages ahead reading on my own.

No, I did not spend time studying. I didn’t need to. No, I didn’t spend time doing homework. Homework was the mind-killer. In college, I went out to dinner with my childhood best friend’s family and her parents asked me if there was anything my parents could have done to get me to turn in my homework because their younger daughter was having the same problem, and I sat there thinking about it for a couple minutes before saying, “No.”

I mean, there were some undiagnosed mental health conditions involved there, but. No.

School was not a challenge, and it was not interesting. I like learning. I like knowledge. I love reading and science and logic puzzles and overthinking things and analysis.

I did not especially enjoy school. I got my bachelor’s and bounced.

But…your teachers liked you?

Kind of split on the subject. Some liked me. Some hated me. Most were constantly frustrated because they knew I understood the material still wouldn’t put in the work to get a decent grade.

I remember correcting my 8th grade social studies teacher on a minor slip of tongue on like my first day of class and him giving me this very particular smile that meant he knew I was going to be That Kid, but he wasn’t upset about it.

Well, but you still did well in school, right?

Enhhhh.

I did well on tests.

But school is, alas, not all tests.

I got mostly Cs because I would never do or turn in my homework and aced the tests. I did best in classes that didn’t grade me on my notetaking, because I did not take notes at all. I didn’t study for my AP tests and still got all 3s and 4s. I was kept up all night before my ACT test and still got a 31. When I was in middle school, I was allowed into a program to allow me to take the ACT and SAT early. I outscored all the averages of college-bound seniors as an 11 and 12 year-old. I could’ve gone to college on those alone.

If it was a test, I did amazingly well because I knew the material and could answer test questions and never got nervous because I knew I’d be fine.

But oh my God, homework.

But what about my straight-laced school-focused nerd character?

Look, those people exist, but those people are not typically the type for whom all of that comes easily. The people I know who skipped a grade all had extremely large, loud personalities that had nothing to do with being a nerd. In fact, one of them got punted from the National Honor Society, because during the Induction Ceremony when everyone was dressed in nice suits and dresses, he pranced across the stage in a hoodie wearing a bright pink fox tail from the Ren Faire pinned to the back of his jeans. He was asked to write an apology letter. He refused. He was punted.

I mean, he was a very immature 15/16 year-old, but we were extremely good friends at the time (I…still thought his behavior was awful even at the time). “Smart” teenagers are…still, y’know, teenagers. I snuck 18+ BL manga home in my backpack to read instead of doing homework, and I was the “responsible” one of my friend group. I read all of Twilight in one Italian class and traded it for New Moon at lunch.

School didn’t take effort, I didn’t need to study, and I wouldn’t do homework. Plenty of time to develop other interests and skills and personality traits. I was basically obsessed with my own writing and drawing and reading and didn’t really give a damn about school.

Graduating early?

I could have done this in high school except that my dad did that and wouldn’t let me. I could have graduated a semester early in college except that my senior capstone was only offered in the spring semester. Anyway, it would have been even weirder to graduate high school as a 16yo instead of a barely 17yo. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one, even though I don’t know anyone who did both.

Your classmates, how did they react to this?

One of the reasons my parents wanted me promoted so early is so that it would “even out” as I got older and no one would remember/need to know.

This had mixed results. Obviously all my friends knew, because “how old are you turning this birthday” is like. A thing you tell your friends. So I got picked on a lot for being younger than everyone else. I still do. It’s a very sore spot for me.

In 6th grade, I got asked if it was true that I was only 10. I said no, because I had already had my birthday that school year and was 11. It was like May. But I was 11!

In 2nd grade, when it was all new and fresh, a classmate tried to tell me I would have to take first grade after I 12th grade in order to graduate. Uhh…what? I knew even at the time this was rock stupid because…a 17yo learning how to cut circles, or whatever it is you people do in 1st grade? Also, like, what was the point of skipping if I had to do it later? No sense at all.

People were less impressed and mostly kind of dicks about it if they had to know at all. I did not go out of my way to tell many people.

I did rock school games of “Never Have I Ever” though.

I wasn’t really friends with my classmates. The honors and AP kids in my school district were largely wealthy with like doctor parents or something who went to lower-level schools than I did and all knew each other and were kind of snobs. In middle school, we were divided into “Houses” (yes, really. In America.) and only one house in each grade had honors courses, so that was always mine (they claimed insistently that they were all intellectually equal. Only one house had honors classes. Come on.). My friends were almost never shuffled into it. We got yelled at for not wanting to sit at our “house” lunch table because we were supposed to “spend time with people we had things in common with.”

Yo, principal, I don’t want to sit with people who have the same teachers as me. My friends are over there and I want to talk about YuYu Hakusho and swap the notebooks we were co-writing stories in, not listen to people ask me if I was actually a boy and was I a lesbian, and btw would you like some gum hahaha prank.

So, you know, they reacted like asshats, and I didn’t get along with the “smart” kids in school, mostly.  They were mean to me and I didn’t have hobbies in common.

So the age thing…

Yeah, my friends made pretty much constant jokes about me being younger than them in a mostly harmless way that quickly grew grating anyway. I still get them. I was also the “responsible” “Mom” friend, so add that to the pile of weirdness.

When I was a college freshie and met another freshie in my Japanese class that had skipped a grade, he was so excited to meet someone else who had skipped a grade (same), and even more thrilled when he discovered his birthday was in January and mine was in March, making him finally older than someone in his grade.

There was a lot of heavy sighing on my part, but in good humor, because this guy got it.

I was a college sophomore before I was allowed to even check out a movie at the rental place in my college town (they required you to be 18). I didn’t have my 18th birthday until after spring break of my freshman/sophomore (by credits) year. Which meant my parents were trying to enforce a bedtime and curfew from 5.5 hours away (wonder why I went to school so far away, Mom). I barely scraped out of school old enough to drink to celebrate (I don’t drink anyway, but).

After graduation, it’s mostly a novelty and forgetting to adjust the years I was in school and graduated for other people my age. I have a baby face so people think I look younger than I am anyway. And am younger than people online tend to think I am on top of that. At one of my first jobs out of college, the youngest person on my team who was already there thought I was like 20 and was a little alarmed to discover I was born the same year he was, and in fact, since I was born in March and he was born in May, I was finally older than someone.

Not to mention the fact that I graduated before he did.

So it kind of leaves me a peer group with both people born my year, and people born the two years before me. Both as equals. Obviously at my age they’d be peers anyway, but going back to childhood still puts me in “yes, I remember this the same grade you do.”

It likely had some impact on the way I was expected and almost had to act older/more responsible/more mature than my friend group because I was attempting to make up for being older. It’s probably a lot of just my personality anyway, which apparently I needed to even get promoted.

But that sure as hell didn’t mean I tried in school.

How come you don't talk about this more?

I made a lot of my friends and even my mother very insecure by. You know, existing. As myself. Without really doing anything else. This was partially a grade-skipping thing, partially not. It really gets in people's craws when you're good at something they work hard at and you don't even care. It frustrates people to see someone younger than them do bounds better at something society "cares" about. And it's even worse when you're blithely doing it without even thinking.

It's probably where some of the age jokes came in. A kind of protective measure against being insecure standing next to me goofing off. It's probably why I hate them so much.

Look, I was younger than my friends and still got asked to tutor them in math. Do you think they didn't notice that? Do you think they didn't feel awful about themselves for needing that kind of teaching from me, or that my test scores in middle school beat theirs as seniors in high school.

Because they didn't like that, and I don't blame them. But it wasn't my fault, either.

It's not actually fun to make people you like and care about insecure about things they don't need to be insecure about just by literally being yourself in their presence. In fact, it feels pretty terrible.

So why would I have reminded everyone of this fact whenever I could?

Okay, that’s it for now. Let me know if I missed something or something doesn’t make sense!

[lochnessies]

ok here’s a dissection of a post an anon sent me the link to and bc i have the worst time management possible and i completely forgot i had it lol so sorry anon here you go ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

I am constantly thinking about how Edelgard just doesn’t seem designed to appeal to cishet men.

i hate to be the one to break this news to you op but just because a character doesn’t show skin like charlotte fire emblem doesn’t mean she isn’t designed to pander to men. she’s very much designed to pander to the (majority straight male) player base with her ‘uwu i only trust you professor omg did u see that rat? pls don’t look at my painting of you uwu’.

then there’s the whole edelgard c support in japanese where byleth makes reference to having come to her room for ‘yobi’ which is

there’s also the scene where byleth can make an unsolicited comment about edelgard’s breast size. which is… uhh… gross.

edelgard also has cipher cards that go from slightly fanserviceie to full on suggestive

and also her breast armor that my sister relentlessly mocked lol

and here’s a chart from the 3h subreddit about gender/sexually in regards to edelgard and edeleth. it’s extremely straight male. op might have just overlooked this since they probably don’t go on reddit and stay on tumblr (which unlike reddit is mostly female and has a high lgbt demographic).

Like the joke is that Bleagles is the Gay House, but everything about her feels deliberately non-hetero.

i don’t like where this is going…

She’s dressed in sharp outfits covering her upper body, with proportions that don’t seem exaggerated.

so women who cover up must be lgbt because straight women are naturally more revealing? oh y i k e s

Her poise and the way she effortlessly flourishes her axe exhibits an air of coolness. While titties out =/= character of no substance, Edelgard being dressed more modestly suggests that she wasn’t designed with male-centred fanservice in mind.

“titties don’t equal no substance but here’s my post on how she has more substance because she doesn’t show titties” ok

And she still looks absolutely stunning in her more modest attire (like seriously, I haven’t felt the need to return to cosplay in years but I want to do her academy look so bad). 

yes she does. amazing design 10/10. i have a feeling this is the only part i’m going to agree with

Edelgard is intense. She does not mince her words and she is constantly evaluating you. Though she tries, she has a difficult time understanding her peers initially. Early on, she talks about how she would sacrifice herself and others in the name of some greater good. She is terrible at communicating with her peers. She has to be seen as infallible. Her heart has been hardened for years and she assumes she has to stay that way. She also assumes everyone mourns the same way she does - which is why she (kind of insensitively) insists you move on when Jeralt dies. Because to her, grief has to be channeled towards action, or else you’ll get lost in it. This attitude is demonstrated time and time again as she presses on. It can make her come off as cold and unfeeling - but look closer, and she’s anything but.

don’t really have anything to say at this part. it is pretty on the nose though i would slightly disagree with that last sentence a bit. i wouldn’t say she’s as i feeling as hubert is but all of her talks of the war boil down to how she feels and never her victims.

Her story is ultimately about her realizing that to achieve her goals, she needs to let people in and allow herself to want things like cakes and tea parties and lazy days in peace. 

????? what ????? her goals include imperialism, ethnic and religious targeting. her story is about having a set of beliefs and mowing down anybody who stands in her way. that has nothing to do with tea, friends, and lazy days. also am i supposed to be sad that she has to get up everyday and work? i do that and i didn’t start a war and only throw a pity party for myself

The game leaves the player guessing as to how involved the Flame Emperor was in each Part I event, makes you feel hurt by her betrayal, and leaves you with a choice: do you follow the orders of the woman who tried to make you a god without your consent, or a young girl with questionable morals about to throw the world into upheaval?

this isn’t an ideal situation but i think i’m going to stick with the woman who tried to make me a god since i’m not selfish and i know it’s not only my desires and life at stake here. plus the green hair slaps ngl

Choosing her of your own volition (not for completionist reasons) requires the basic ability to sympathize with a woman’s pain. It also requires the player to read beyond her unwavering will and dubious methods to get a sense of how deep that pain goes and how the theme of humanity relates to her differently in each route.

i’m not going to touch this since @nilsh13 made a post on it that i’ll link here. i agree with everything he said so to repeat it would be redundant.

The player must be able to see a young woman’s desperate resolve to change the world so it stops exploiting people and ruining lives. They must be able to accept the fact that women can make the same morally wrong and ambivalent decisions that complicated male characters get to make all the time and still be the one to root for.

literally the same reason i love rhea lol her goddess experiments are dubious at best but her reasons are the same you mentioned. i would say that i like this quality in edelgard too if her ending, while bloody, actually ended in a good outcome for fodlan.

This is not unique to LGBT+ people, but this population is likely to understand why Edelgard feels so strongly about why she has to change the system. 

i understand wanting to change a system, i really do. like edelgard, i’m an opinionated bisexual woman (who’s also physically disabled) so yeah i get it. and change can be good but it can also be terrible. even if the church was the boogeyman edelgard treats it as she still replaces it with her own shit regime. so it’s the same circus just with a new conductor.

I don’t think “Edelgard gets undue criticism because she’s a woman” captures the full picture. An important aspect of her treatment by certain parts of the fandom is that she’s a radical woman.

or maybe she does some pretty fucked up shit and it goes unacknowledged in her own route. and yeah she’s radical but in all the worst ways.

Her hatred of the Church and the Crest system resonates way harder with people who have been hurt by institutions that are deeply engrained in our society. 

and what about people who have been hurt by systems where their ‘merit’ didn’t measure up and they were left behind? what about people from nations that experienced imperialism?

Siding with her means siding against the Church - which, while different from real world religious institutions, still invokes language about “sin” and “punishment.

yeah the ‘sins’ and ‘punishments’ are used in relation to attempted murders which i think everybody can agree is a bad thing that needs to be condemned.

Choosing Edelgard will likely hit different if homophobic and transphobic Christians used that rhetoric against you.

it has literally nothing to do with ‘sins’ and ‘punishments’ in regards to being gay or trans. that’s you projecting. especially since the church has 2 canon gay characters and two coded ones.

like i can understand why having a church condemn you can be uncomfortable but i’m begging you to please look at the context of what’s happening.

I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that the reason F/F Edeleth is the more popular iteration of that ship because most people who would choose to S-support Edelgard are LGBT+ themselves. This is not a revelation. To anyone in the community, it’s fairly obvious. 

i was talking to nilish and he said

so yeah… while there is definitely sapphic femleth shippers out there, there’s still a whole lot of weird fetishizing going on from straight men about edelgard.

Crimson Flower was my first route. I went into the game knowing absolutely nothing. I played it during the last week of 2020 and hoo boy was it cathartic. 

i can tell. this wasn’t supposed to be a dig but it came out that way and i’m not taking it out.

I felt like I was living out a gay revolution power fantasy, where I could truly change systems of oppression while fighting alongside a group of troubled students I’d shaped the lives of.

so a gay revolution power fantasy (cringe) goes hand in hand with imperialism and installing a dictatorship? also the war had nothing to do with sexuality.

Through your unwavering support, Edelgard learns that she needs to be human, that she must listen to her friends, and that she’s allowed to enjoy the world she’s creating.

edelgard gets to learn how to be human all while hunting those who don’t. and she doesn’t listen fo her friends. she doesn’t even trust them. she’s willing to talk to byleth but keep the people who’s been by her side for five years in the dark about everything. and yeah she gets to enjoy her new words since she’s on top. hate to be a commoner under her rule after she burned down my village in her war.

I love this character so much.

clearly. and i honestly don’t care if somebody likes her. i do as well even if my sometimes scathing words can make it seem otherwise.

It has been six months since I first played and I am still analyzing her,

me too. please help me escape i’m losing my mind

because there’s so much depth. Yet so many people fail to see that depth and dismiss her as evil,

i mean, she does some fucked up shit that goes beyond any of the less than desirable actions of the other main characters and does an extremely poor job in trying to make herself seem innocent. i personally don’t think she’s pure evil but i completely understand where the people who say she is are coming from.

because they never had the will to understand complicated women in the first place. 

that’s big talk from somebody who implies that a gay pope is comparable to homophobic and transphobic irl religions and that leads an oppressive regime all because she uses the vague terms of sin and punishments that you have to gay power fantasy your way out of

[mrsblackruby]

The Harassment of Billy Hargrove fans #3

I have taken screenshots to reference and prove the behavior I critic but I have gotten rid of all identifying content as to avoid further harassment. Please don’t go out looking to harass anyone. Let me know if I need to add any warnings. this is a somewhat serious, heavy, and layered discussion. We are talking about how humans connect to fiction there are bound to be complexities.

Tw// hyperbolically wishing death on a group of people, online harassment , racism, discussion of child abuse, abuse apologia

This situation inspired me to make all these posts. I want to show the fandom what happens when Billy fans defend ourselves/ call out harassment. This is the longest part of the harassment series. The post that started this whole thing will shock you lol. I ask for the creator to delete it but sadly it is still up.

Before we get into this there are a lot of grammar mistakes it was kinda a heated exchange at the time so please for give everyone involved for that lmao. There are multiple sides to every story this is mine. I’m not morally commending anyone for the post that they made. Honestly I’m a Billy fan I think a person can grow from a situation. If you find out who they are DO NOT HARASS them [report them instead]. I would also like to add this is a public conversation at the moment so I’m not leaking DM’s or crossing boundaries this is accessible to the public, but I still want to preface this for the protection of all parties involved. I went out of my way to block identities to curb harassment. I decided to still show screenshots because this behavior is not okay and I want the wider community to know why I found this hurtful as a Black Billy Hargrove fan. To some extent I also appreciate everyone involved for being able to have a conversation about the post.

So This is an actual post someone made on this HELL-SITE… i hope you understand why this might be a bit little fucked up for a Billy fan to see. You know? just a little bit… why does this have 13 likes🤦🏿‍♀️

In the screenshots above someone tried to point out why this behavior is not okay. I encourage you to please click on the image and see the hilarious response made by the author.

Someone once again tried to call out why this post is offensive to them as a Billy fan this time… pls refer to the image above to see the author’s response😂

Here’s when I join the conversation to defend the fellow Billy Stan💗 and I try to point out how the author failed to actually evaluate the two criticisms leveled at them.

The author of the post response to me and the other Billy fan but I decided to answer both questions in response… and with bad grammar and my reading disability I try to explain that they have every right to not like Billy. Why I like Billy/ why I think he can change. That you should always try and respect the real people who like a fictional character.

And Pretty Pls delete the post 🥺

After my response Someone else joins the conversation

I don’t know who this person without melanin thought they were to start talking shit about my mama but I let them know real fast that they had made the correct assumption. And that they should not be coming for my personhood because I like a fictional character.

They continue to come for my personhood because I like a fictional character. I try to explain that me being mad at online harassment is not the same as them being mad at me liking a fictional character. The reason they told me it’s not that deep is because in the note above that got cut off🤦🏿‍♀️ I told them me liking a fictional character was not that deep.

The author comes back and says “the Duffers say Billy is racist”. I try to say “yeah I got that but they failed at making it explicit in the show so it’s up to interpretation.”

Then I get told to shut the fuck up lmao🤣 🤣 so much

Which hey I really don’t mind doing as long as y’all stop disrespecting Billy fans periodt. I know it’s doesn’t seem like it but I really do know how to shut the fuck up😆.

Stand alone post: Me reading to much into the politics of Billy Hargrove/ Harringrove

THE 5 PART SERIES ON HARASSMENT:

#1 #2 #4 #5