#but do not make it into a real life political discourse | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pawberri · 6 months ago

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The key problem with "proship vs anti" discourse is that the most extreme versions of each side, the ones who actually bother to identify with these labels, accepted each others worst takes as arguments they had to debate. "Fiction =/= reality" is, in practice, an absurdly reductionist, anti-intellectual, thought-terminating-cliche that dictates we can learn nothing about a person via art and that their fiction reflects no political or moral messaging worthy of critique. In response to this, the "puriteens" who are too young to possibly hope to articulate their discomfort, to untangle their position from what is often real trauma experienced online, simply argue "yes, fiction influences and reflects reality in a 1 to 1 capacity." They, and people who want to use the groundwork they laid to make bad-faith callouts, make bad arguments about how the action of engaging in problematic fiction is on equal ground to real life abuse, or is a clear indicator of interest in real life abuse. Both of these arguments are terrible, but each side seems to radicalize the other further and further into their own brands of anti-intellectual reactionary belief. "Proshippers" become libertarian absolutists about free speech and view all transgression as righteous and alternative and therefore leftist. They gain a reactionary nostalgia for the past, desiring a time when people didn't seem to care about the implications of art. "Antis" become authoritarian and hypervigilant for signs of moral decay, at their worst, willing to align themselves with government bodies that offer carceral solutions to the debate. They are willing to use harassment as a tool of punishment, which then leads to false accusations and a fear of openness that puts people at risk of being triggered via obfuscation. (That said, proshippers also take part in plenty of harassment.)

I will say that I believe both of these movements are equally sensitive to co-opting by right-wing forces. We see the authoritarian tendencies of anti culture in harassment campaigns and even the way Republican law makers co-opt "grooming." The proship/fic crowd has such extreme nostalgia for the past that I often see people align themselves with the cultures of 4chan or other happily right-wing websites. They so heavily reject the idea that a drawn sexual depiction of a child could reflect any desire that they are disinterested in analyzing what the motivation behind the depiction is. i.e If we track the history of lolicon in Japan we do find that is, yes, countercultural, but that counter culture is right wing, very misogynistic, and defensive of patriarchial Japanese culture as it is and was including its culture around rape and abuse. Plenty of fictional content works as radicalization material, and radicalization material needs to be ambiguous. There is a valid reason to be hesitant to trust people who consume this content, even if I do not believe most of them will ever be dangerous towards children. The mere presence of sexuality is not enough to make a movement left wing. This kind of thing can again be seen in right-wing libertarian movements in the US. (And even leftist movements can be bigoted and even "pro-pedophilia" or otherwise disinterested in social reform around abuse.)

Is all content with elements of age-play this way? No. But to me, that is why kink media deserves to be treated as art and analyzed, critiqued, treated seriously. It doesn't have to do anything to anyone to be worthy of a moral critique. Said moral critique just doesn't warrant harassment and cruelty and reactionary exaggerations of the person consuming said content.

Anyway, what's my point in saying all this? I don't know. I'm just begging you to tag your God damn content with specific tags instead of random and nebulous shit like "dead dove" or "dark content", and also begging you to stop harassing people who do tag their content so I don't have to guess what "dead dove" and "dark content" mean. No one will erase incest kink fics or people who feel sickened by the idea of them off this earth because we aren't god, but we could at least all be responsible about tagging, flagging, and age-gating our stuff.

#csa tw #long post #proship anti tw

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couldeatthatgirlforlunch · 3 months ago

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OMG I have an idea

What if a villain hit reader with a love potion and the Yandere JL has to deal with reader being obsessed with one of them until it wears off🙏🙏😭(I LITERALLY LOVE YOUR YAN JL WORKDGHBJB)

A Day in Life: Love Pollen

Synopsis: A day in your life where you get hit with love pollen, get kidnapped, and are rescued by the Justice League.

Pairing: Yandere!Justice League X Assistant!Gn!Reader

Tw: 18+; PDA; Dry humping; Kinda public sex bc they're in a deserted island’s beach, so it's basically out in the open but no one’s around; Dubcon/noncon bc, you know, love-and-kinda-sex pollen; Also maybe drugging bc of that; Writer is the Justice League's weakness; Hal Jordan is a little shit; Needles; English is not my 1st language.

Word count: 2,1k

Requested? Yes.

Extra notes: I imagine the League’s marketing will have a hard time after this little stunt, I mean, there's no way no one caught that on camera

General masterlist | A Day in Life - Series masterlist

The Legion of Doom had a plan. They invaded a political event in Metropolis, with the presence of the Justice League as the president’s security team, the League being the target. First, Poison Ivy release pollen throughout the whole city, as a distraction, making people hallucinate that they were in love with one another. Crazy in love. It would be okay, if her experiment didn't cause chaos. All over the streets, some people were having sex out in the open, some were fighting and killing because of jealousy and cheating, some were committing robberies to give their “loved ones”. It was pure chaos and only the quick reflexes, powers and gadgets from the League spared the team from getting hit.

Half the team went to deal with the distraction, saving and restraining people, giving them the antidote, etc. The other half, took care of the villains. After a few hours, the Legion of Doom was taken down and the city’s security and health workers took over the job, the chaos being a lot easier to contain since they were spreading the antidote through the air, it would take at least an hour to spread it throughout the whole city, and then the ones who somehow weren't able to breath it, but mostly, just the mess left behind was the real issue.

You were standing with the rest of the crew on the event, watching the League and the politicians discoursing for the press and TV. When the mayhem started, for the first few seconds, you got startled and froze. Looking between the League, the scared crowd, and the villains invading the place. Suddenly, you breathed some thick smoke and your eyes shot to the heroes, silently urging them to do something, when your eyes locked on Green Lantern’s, the pollen’s effect kicked in. You got dizzy, something snapped, and then everything changed.

Wait, when did Green Lantern's jaw got so sharp? And his muscles so defined? Oh, and he was so big and tall. Did he do something to his hair? Wow, his ring is glowing now and he's flying. He's so cool and powerful. A true hero. Shit, he's coming in my direction. Hehe, he's using a construct to lift me and my coworkers to a safer place as if it was nothing. Imagine flying with him every day. How does he look without the mask? Ugh, must be perfect, if his jaw and lips were anything to go by. I can't even see the color of his eyes! And- and please stop looking me in the eyes and touching my shoulders and asking me if I'm okay, of course I am, I'm with you. No. Nooo. Come back here! Let the others deal with the bad guys, I'm right hereee! Nooooo!

You were depressed and deflated the whole time your soulmate was away. A journalist team from outside the city arrived at some point and you were able to watch the fight — Normally, Lois Lane would do the transmission, but she's too busy making out with her cameraman, she was in the crowd too. —. You started crying watching your lover fighting with Sinestro. When he won, and everything was fine, was when you finally calmed down and just started anxiously waiting while ignoring your colleagues strange antics, one of them even hitting on you. Didn't she know you and Green Lantern were in love?

When the League was back, the paramedics were starting to give the crew the antidote, you were next in line, however, as soon as you saw the heroes, you broke into a sprint.

— Green! — You yelled, catching everyone off guard. Even more so when you jumped and hooked your legs around the brunette’s waist, your arms around his neck, and kissed him passionately.

Hal was so shocked that it took him two seconds to reciprocate the kiss, ignoring completely the gasps from his friends. You moaned against his lips, mumbling a jumbled mess of “I love you”, “I missed you”, “was so worried”, “so glad you're back”.

Someone groaned.

— Batman, just give them that damn antidote before I lose it. — Batman grunted and Hal struggled but managed to separate your faces for a moment. You tried to push your face towards his again, but he grabbed your jaw. You kept forcing your face against his hand and whining. It was really cute, and your willingness and the previous sensation of your lips ignited something in his belly, yet, he looked to the side just in time to see Batman preparing the needle, the rest of the League sulking on the side and glaring at him.

His mind worked rapidly, ignoring the texture of your soft lips pampering kisses against the skin of his hand. When he felt the tip of your tongue, he made a decision.

A bad one.

— Yeah. I don't think so. — Green Lantern conjured several chain constructs, chaining the League's arms and ankles to the ground. It wouldn't hold off the ones like Superman and Wonder Woman who were strong enough to break it, and Martian Manhunter who could just invade his mind or use his intangibility, Flash was also pretty capable of taking him on, but Hal was smart and sagacious. Still holding you, he made a rocket construct around you both and took off.

Really, a terrible idea.

Superman and Wonder Woman, in a cry of rage, broke the chains. Diana unsheathed her sword, her feet not even touching the ground anymore, flying, ready to go after the traitor. Martian passed through the construct, while Superman went to break Batman and Aquaman free, Flash vibrated fast to rearrange his particles and also escaped.

— We need a plan. — Batman’s voice stopped the amazon warrior from going in a hunt for blood. He was already stressing over what the marketing team could do to fix this.

— A plan? We can defeat the enemy and retreat my darling if we go now! — Wonder Woman barked.

— Green Lantern is impulsive. If we go now we can destroy the whole state and hurt (Y/N) in the process. He won't give them up easily.

— Batman's right. — Superman agreeds. — Flash, follow them and see where they’re going. — The speedster nodded and took off.

Barry shook his head, cursing his idiot best friend the whole way.

Between the whole team, Hal was clearly the only one who would be okay with you falsely loving them. The rest wanted something more genuine for you. Some of them would settle for you not loving them as much as they loved you, some wanted you to feel exactly the same amount of what they felt. Hal still loved you just like them, but he always had that certain level of insecurity that craved to be better than anyone, to impress, making everything a competition, and the sensation of being the only one to have you could certainly cloud his judgment and accept your love, even if fake. He just thought he could compensate by treating you the right way, and not just using that opportunity to do whatever he wanted with you, just because he could and you wouldn't complain. He could make this about you both, and not just about him.

Either way, every one of them (thought) they deserved their fair chance at winning you over.

— Manhunter, can you still read his mind and tell what he is thinking? — Manhunter nodded and his eyes started glowing, there was a second of silence before he spoke.

— It's getting weaker as he gets more distant. It's purely impulsive thinking. Green Lantern isn't considering the consequences and means no harm against Earth or us. — Batman nodds.

— That's a shame. I mean harm. — Wonder Woman mutters, Batman glared and Superman side-eyed her. Batman turned his communication on.

— Flash, tell us when they stop moving.

— If he touches them, I will personally kill him. — Aquaman darkly states. Superman took a step in his direction, facing him head on.

— No, you won't. — The two stared at one another intently, until Batman broke the silence.

— Focus. We don't have time for this. — The dark knight stated.

— We need to be collected and work as a team to act smoothly on our plan. — Martian reminds them. Wonder Woman steps down again and sheats her sword. They all form a circle and start planning.

The sky was never this blue and the sand never this warm and soft. Even with the warmth of the sun being so intense, you were laying on a palm tree's shadow, and the air was flowing just fine. What was actually making you sweat was the dry humping you and your soulmate were doing.

You don't remember ever getting so aroused in your whole life, and can't remember ever desiring someone so much. You could kill someone if they dared to try and steal him away from you.

Hal felt you carding your fingers through his hair and pull slightly, giving him shiver, and he squeezed the flesh of your hips. You moaned against his lips at a particularly stronger wave of pleasure. The clothes were a curse, stopping you from feeling the real him, so you desperately started clawing at his clothes. Green Lantern breathily chuckled.

— Relax, hot stuff, we have time… — He whispers with a smirk. The man held your hands and laid them on the ground, above your head. You just moaned, more needy, and pushed your hips against his, eliciting a hiss from his red and swollen lips.

His hands started unbottoning your shirt and freeing the fabric out of your pants. You kept your hands were they were and watched, eyes wide open, when he descended kisses from the middle of your chest, going south, only pausing at your waistband.

As much as you wanted to feel his mouth more, seeing him so covered and not being able to properly touch him was making you restless, so you sat up, surprising him, and started pulling up the fabric at the back of his neck. Hal chuckled and shook his head, humoring your needs. He helped you take it off, then pushed your own shirt down your arms, until it was off.

You paused, admiring his adonis body. Your heart raced and eyes watered, never having seen something so perfect your whole life. Even his scars were beautiful. His chest hair and happy trail looked really soft and somehow he looked even more muscled, strong and beautiful. You wonder why you rejected him before.

Hal Jordan basked in your amazed gaze, loving to show off, especially while doing nothing. He frowned weakly, and gave a reassuring grin when you pouted, slumped and frowned.

— What's this, sweetheart? I thought you were enjoying this. — To lift your mood, he started running his hands up and down your sides.

— I wanted to see your face… — Hal remained silent for a few seconds. They would tell you their identities eventually, and that fact kept being brought up on reunions. They all knew at some point, you would have to know, to really start a relationship, yet, Batman, and his paranoia, kept them all from telling you. Sometimes, it felt like a sabotage, but mostly, it made sense, since the guy had a bunch of kids, who could be in danger if the information somehow got leaked, still, you couldn't trust to let them in, if they didn't let you in. That was the only reason you didn't trust them, of course.

Also, a face was not a name. Hal wasn't famous, so how bad could it be? Especially if it would turn you on so much, and when you looked so damn cute. His own lust was also influencing his critical thinking, which was already second place to his impulsiveness.

Hal bit his lower lip and brought his face closer to yours, a few centimeters away from having your noses touching.

— Okay… Take it off… — You let out a happy squeal and reached up with both hands. Your heart pounded with anticipation, making you go slower to savor the intimacy even more. Hal closed his eyes when he felt the gentle tug, against his wishes to watch your eagerness and your lip biting in anticipation. His heart was also pounding.

You saw his right eye closed and his thick eyebrow, when suddenly, a loud noise rang out, scaring the shit out of you and prompting Hal to fix the mask again, get up and assess for danger.

He finally fell to his senses and realized something.

He just took the worst decisions ever.

Everything happened too fast. Flash was on your side, holding a needle to your arm, and Green Lantern was being thrown around by a red and blue blur. Only the feminine rageful scream gave you the hint to who it was.

You got up, ready to die for your soulmate, when the antidote kicked in.

You threw up.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 29 days ago

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Dirty words are politically potent

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

Making up words is a perfectly cromulent passtime, and while most of the words we coin disappear as soon as they fall from our lips, every now and again, you find a word that fits so nice and kentucky in the public discourse that it acquires a life of its own:

http://meaningofliff.free.fr/definition.php3?word=Kentucky

I've been trying to increase the salience of digital human rights in the public imagination for a quarter of a century, starting with the campaign to get people to appreciate that the internet matters, and that tech policy isn't just the delusion that the governance of spaces where sad nerds argue about Star Trek is somehow relevant to human thriving:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

Now, eventually people figured out that a) the internet mattered and, b) it was going dreadfully wrong. So my job changed again, from "how the internet is governed matters" to "you can't fix the internet with wishful thinking," for example, when people said we could solve its problems by banning general purpose computers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

Or by banning working cryptography:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

Or by redesigning web browsers to treat their owners as threats:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

Or by using bots to filter every public utterance to ensure that they don't infringe copyright:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-internet-now-we-fight-back

Or by forcing platforms to surveil and police their users' speech (aka "getting rid of Section 230"):

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

Along the way, many of us have coined words in a bid to encapsulate the abstract, technical ideas at the core of these arguments. This isn't a vanity project! Creating a common vocabulary is a necessary precondition for having the substantive, vital debates we'll need to tackle the real, thorny issues raised by digital systems. So there's "free software," "open source," "filternet," "chat control," "back doors," and my own contributions, like "adversarial interoperability":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Or "Competitive Compatibility" ("comcom"), a less-intimidatingly technical term for the same thing:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/competitive-compatibility-year-review

These have all found their own niches, but nearly all of them are just that: niche. Some don't even rise to "niche": they're shibboleths, insider terms that confuse and intimidate normies and distract from the real fights with semantic ones, like whether it's "FOSS" or "FLOSS" or something else entirely:

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-the-difference-between-foss-and-floss

But every now and again, you get a word that just kills. That brings me to "enshittification," a word I coined in 2022:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

"Enshittification" took root in my hindbrain, rolling around and around, agglomerating lots of different thoughts and critiques I'd been making for years, crystallizing them into a coherent thesis:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

This kind of spontaneous crystallization is the dividend of doing lots of work in public, trying to take every half-formed thought and pin it down in public writing, something I've been doing for decades:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

After those first couple articles, "enshittification" raced around the internet. There's two reasons for this: first, "enshittification" is a naughty word that's fun to say. Journalists love getting to put "shit" in their copy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/crosswords/linguistics-word-of-the-year.html

Radio journalists love to tweak the FCC with cheekily bleeped syllables in slightly dirty compound words:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/enshitification

And nothing enlivens an academic's day like getting to use a word like "enshittification" in a journal article (doubtless this also amuses the editors, peer-reviewers, copyeditors, typesetters, etc):

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=enshittification&btnG=&oq=ensh

That was where I started, too! The first time I used "enshittification" was in a throwaway bad-tempered rant about the decay of Tripadvisor into utter uselessness, which drew a small chorus of appreciative chuckles about the word:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1550457808222552065

The word rattled around my mind for five months before attaching itself to my detailed theory of platform decay. But it was that detailed critique, coupled with a minor license to swear, that gave "enshittification" a life of its own. How do I know that the theory was as important as the swearing? Because the small wave of amusement that followed my first use of "enshittification" petered out in less than a day. It was only when I added the theory that the word took hold.

Likewise: how do I know that the theory needed to be blended with swearing to break out of the esoteric realm of tech policy debates (which the public had roundly ignored for more than two decades)? Well, because I spent two decades writing about this stuff without making anything like the dents that appeared once I added an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable to that critique.

Adding "enshittification" to the critique got me more column inches, a longer hearing, a more vibrant debate, than anything else I'd tried. First, Wired availed itself of the Creative Commons license on my second long-form article on the subject and reprinted it as a 4,200-word feature. I've been writing for Wired for more than thirty years and this is by far the longest thing I've published with them – a big, roomy, discursive piece that was run verbatim, with every one of my cherished darlings unmurdered.

That gave the word – and the whole critique, with all its spiky corners – a global airing, leading to more pickup and discussion. Eventually, the American Dialect Society named it their "Word of the Year" (and their "Tech Word of the Year"):

https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

"Enshittification" turns out to be catnip for language nerds:

https://becauselanguage.com/90-enpoopification/#transcript-60

I've been dragged into (good natured) fights over the German, Spanish, French and Italian translations for the term. When I taped an NPR show before a live audience with ASL interpretation, I got to watch a Deaf fan politely inform the interpreter that she didn't need to finger-spell "enshittification," because it had already been given an ASL sign by the US Deaf community:

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/go-fact-yourself/ep-158-aida-rodriguez-cory-doctorow/

I gave a speech about enshittification in Berlin and published the transcript:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

Which prompted the rock-ribbed Financial Times to get in touch with me and publish the speech – again, nearly verbatim – as a whopping 6,400 word feature in their weekend magazine:

https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

Though they could have had it for free (just as Wired had), they insisted on paying me (very well, as it happens!), as did De Zeit:

https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2024-03/plattformen-facebook-google-internet-cory-doctorow

This was the start of the rise of enshittification. The word is spreading farther than ever, in ways that I have nothing to do with, along with the critique I hung on it. In other words, the bit of string that tech policy wonks have been pushing on for a quarter of a century is actually starting to move, and it's actually accelerating.

Despite this (or more likely because of it), there's a growing chorus of "concerned" people who say they like the critique but fret that it is being held back because you can't use it "at church or when talking to K-12 students" (my favorite variant: "I couldn't say this at a NATO conference"). I leave it up to you whether you use the word with your K-12 students, NATO generals, or fellow parishoners (though I assure you that all three groups are conversant with the dirty little word at the root of my coinage). If you don't want to use "enshittification," you can coin your own word – or just use one of the dozens of words that failed to gain public attention over the past 25 years (might I suggest "platform decay?").

What's so funny about all this pearl-clutching is that it comes from people who universally profess to have the intestinal fortitude to hear the word "enshittification" without experiencing psychological trauma, but worry that other people might not be so strong-minded. They continue to say this even as the most conservative officials in the most staid of exalted forums use the word without a hint of embarrassment, much less apology:

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/chairman-of-irish-social-media-regulator-says-europe-should-not-be-seduced-by-mario-draghis-claims/a526530600.html

I mean, I'm giving a speech on enshittification next month at a conference where I'm opening for the Secretary General of the United Nations:

https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme

After spending half my life trying to get stuff like this into the discourse, I've developed some hard-won, informed views on how ideas succeed:

First: the minor obscenity is a feature, not a bug. The marriage of something long and serious to something short and funny is a happy one that makes both the word and the ideas better off than they'd be on their own. As Lenny Bruce wrote in his canonical work in the subject, the aptly named How to Talk Dirty and Influence People:

I want to help you if you have a dirty-word problem. There are none, and I'll spell it out logically to you.

Here is a toilet. Specifically-that's all we're concerned with, specifics-if I can tell you a dirty toilet joke, we must have a dirty toilet. That's what we're all talking about, a toilet. If we take this toilet and boil it and it's clean, I can never tell you specifically a dirty toilet joke about this toilet. I can tell you a dirty toilet joke in the Milner Hotel, or something like that, but this toilet is a clean toilet now. Obscenity is a human manifestation. This toilet has no central nervous system, no level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it's impossible. If it could be obscene, it could be cranky, it could be a Communist toilet, a traitorous toilet. It can do none of these things. This is a dirty toilet here.

Nobody can offend you by telling a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it's trite; you've heard it many, many times.

https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/lenny-bruce/how-to-talk-dirty-and-influence-people/9780306825309/

Second: the fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something that is bad," without bothering to learn – or apply – the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of "enshittification" is worse than a self-limiting move – it would be a self-inflicted wound. As I said in that Berlin speech:

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für englische Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

Finally: "coinage" is both more – and less – than thinking of the word. After the American Dialect Society gave honors to "enshittification," a few people slid into my mentions with citations to "enshittification" that preceded my usage. I find this completely unsurprising, because English is such a slippery and playful tongue, because English speakers love to swear, and because infixing is such a fun way to swear (e.g. "unfuckingbelievable"). But of course, I hadn't encountered any of those other usages before I came up with the word independently, nor had any of those other usages spread appreciably beyond the speaker (it appears that each of the handful of predecessors to my usage represents an act of independent coinage).

If "coinage" was just a matter of thinking up the word, you could write a small python script that infixed the word "shit" into every syllable of every word in the OED, publish the resulting text file, and declare priority over all subsequent inventive swearers.

On the one hand, coinage takes place when the coiner a) independently invents a word; and b) creates the context for that word that causes it to escape from the coiner's immediate milieu and into the wider world.

But on the other hand – and far more importantly – the fact that a successful coinage requires popular uptake by people unknown to the coiner means that the coiner only ever plays a small role in the coinage. Yes, there would be no popularization without the coinage – but there would also be no coinage without the popularization. Words belong to groups of speakers, not individuals. Language is a cultural phenomenon, not an individual one.

Which is rather the point, isn't it? After a quarter of a century of being part of a community that fought tirelessly to get a serious and widespread consideration of tech policy underway, we're closer than ever, thanks, in part, to "enshittification." If someone else independently used that word before me, if some people use the word loosely, if the word makes some people uncomfortable, that's fine, provided that the word is doing what I want it to do, what I've devoted my life to doing.

The point of coining words isn't the pilkunnussija's obsession with precise usage, nor the petty glory of being known as a coiner, nor ensuring that NATO generals' virgin ears are protected from the word "shit" – a word that, incidentally, is also the root of "science":

https://www.arrantpedantry.com/2019/01/24/science-and-shit/

Isn't language fun?

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system

#pluralistic #language #enshittification #obscenity #linguistics #pearl-clutching #lenny bruce

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stormsbourne · 11 months ago

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alright listen

I know we're all having an evaluation of how eagerly we believe people who present with even the slightest air of authority and frankly good! we all need to be less credulous of people on the internet who tell lies.

but I think there are also other lessons to learn from james somerton. namely about his raging and blatant misogyny, which I've often seen similar forms of in fandom and on this specific site. to paraphrase bombs himself in the ctrl alt del video, if you see shitty behavior within your sphere, it's important to recognize it and try to fix it instead of rejecting it and asserting that no REAL members of the ingroup are like that. and nerds have a misogyny problem. including tumblr. so let's reckon with it.

do you append "white" or "straight" to your comments about women even when those things have little to do with the topic being discussed, just to make your comments seem more legit? (and no, m/m shipping discourse does not give you a ticket to say it's all straight women -- it's fictional characters, james.) do you often theorize about how (hurriedly appended "straight/white/cis") women are responsible for a problem in fandom, nay, all problems in fandom? have you made up a guy based on a single post that annoyed you and extrapolated to say that all (appended signifier to make it ok) women in fandom are like that? do you see women as uniquely fetishizing, uniquely stupid about politics or social issues, uniquely annoying to talk to? do you assume when there's an issue, even a real one and not the fake ones james made up, that a woman is probably at the root of it?

all of this still applies to you if you're a woman. it also applies if you're gay or a person of color or trans. being an oppressed group doesn't mean you are immune from sexism, and sexism is still rampant in everyday life for pretty much everyone.

your shipping and fandom discourse isn't immune from this. no, I'm not talking about how not enough people like yuri. I'm talking about how women who like "bad" ships like r*ylo or whatever are seen as open targets for harassment. how women who are into "bad/problematic" fandoms are seen as idiots and enablers who deserve what they get. how there's an attitude that women who like shitty bad porn must think it's good, must be too stupid to know better, and must need to be handheld and taught about good, acceptable fiction. I've already talked a lot about tumblr's complete refusal to admit that fujoshi wasn't a term coined by delicate japanese mlm to complain about evil women (and I wonder if james contributed to that idiotic concept), but the way I've seen people assert that women into m/m must be straight, must be stupid, must be lying about their identities, must be hurting gay men in real life in addition to wanting some anime boys to kiss ...

I've seen how some of you people talk about amb*r h*ard, is all I'm saying, and I've seen what you've tried to do to dozens of female creatives that, for some reason, you've decided deserve to be taken down or taught a lesson. I've seen the descriptions you use. shrieking, bitchy, whiny, uppity, shrewish, karen (don't get me started on how karen has been turned into an easy excuse for misogyny). you're not bystanders to what james did and is doing, you're a part of it. sure, you might not have the nazi fetish, but you've said things about women that put somerton to shame.

just a thing to keep in mind while the plagiarism discourse is ongoing. somerton is a shithead for many reasons but this is one that's important to remember because I think people often treat misogyny like a lesser crime, a smaller concern, and it's not. just think of what laws are passing and what views popular movements have of women and then, for one moment, consider that maybe your reflexive need to blame women or pick them apart might have been influenced by the Society In Which We Live.

#james somerton #hbomberguy

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redjademilktea · 6 months ago

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Last night's episode of 4 Sided Dive was absolutely wonderful in terms of the amount of insight and perspective we got. Not only the Crown Keepers interlude, but also for campaign 3's themes as a whole.

Specifically what fascinated me though, was the incredible analogy Aimee drew between the Ruidian culture and colonial influence on indigenous/colonized spaces in real life (around the 1h32m mark for reference). It was amazing question to ask and I'll love Aimee endlessly for it because it touches on am interesting parallel between the discourse surrounding the Exandiran gods and what they thematically can represent to us as an audience.

Before I dive into my thoughts, I want to preface this by saying this is my specific perspective as a queer woman of color and daughter of a refugee. While my year-5-in-a-PhD-program brain may just be over analyzing this too much, what Aimee brought up just deeply resonated with me in a way that I don't really see talked about in discussions around the themes of campaign 3. Additionally, the ideas I'll be talking about borrow heavily from Christine Taitano DeLisle's Placental Politics: CHamoru Women, White Womanhood, and Indigeneity under U.S. Colonialism in Guam (2023). Its an incredible piece on indigenous knowledge production and political action that importantly looks to decenter colonial perspectives and history (and more importantly recenter indigenous histories, knowledge, and perspectives in a way that allows us to dislodge the idea that colonialism is something that is immutable and inevitable.)

To quickly summarize Aimee's point/follow up question, she pointed out that the way Ruidians have engaged with, repurposed, and were resentful towards Exandrian cultures mirrors some of the real life experiences of colonized/marginalized communities in relation to colonialism. It was such a powerful comparison to make because in a lot of ways, the struggle of the Ruidian people over the course of the campaign along with the looming question about the gods and whether or not to save them is (intentional or not) deeply resonant with the idea of colonialism and the ways it is deeply ingrained in the even mundane aspects of our life.

In a lot of ways, the Exandrian pantheon can be seen as a colonial force. One that came in and displaced a preexisting order of things and entrenched itself in the new way of being it established. Ashton and Laudna have repeatedly pointed this out throughout the campaign. There was life and existence before the gods. The gods are merely a different mode of being, not the only and inevitable mode of being. Life, society, and being can and did exist without them.

And its important to recognize that aspect of the gods, because it helps us understand their motivations that much better. Aabria in her description of what Opal saw in the Spider Queen as she tried to take Opal as her champion was poignant. Opal did not see an omniscient, unknowable entity. She saw a woman. A woman who was frustrated, angry, and most importantly frightened. They keep Predathos chained away not to protect life on Exandria nor because they feel a moral obligation to do so. They are doing so because they are afraid. Their mortality is at stake. And, as Aabria keenly pointed out, their pride is as well. Every action, every move is out of self preservation. An attempt to save themselves because Predathos demonstrate that not even the gods are a permanent thing.

You'll find (as Anne Stoler writes about frequently) that colonial systems are much the same. They are vehemently intent on self preservation. Any action they undertake and any narrative they create about themselves is solely done to preserve the way things are currently. And that includes narratives that the way things are currently is somehow inevitable. That things were always coming to this moment. Often, this is done at the expense of framing other modes of being as somehow antithetical to the way things are now. That it needs to be this way. And that this way is right and forever.

To me, its important to recognize these parallels. While Ruidians may engage with, adapt, and innovate off of Exandrian ideas, culture, and art, it is only because - as Aimee aptly phrased it - Exandrian culture as a direct result of the gods actions has "sucked all the air out" everything. What is there to engage with, if not the looming orb in the sky that has shaped every aspect of their existence?

It really brings the campaign-wide question of "should we save the gods?" into new light, at least in my opinion. Because its suddenly not about "saving the gods in a morally righteous act to preserve all life." It becomes a layered and complicated network of issues that makes the answer to that question incredibly difficult to answer. Is preserving the status quo because its how things operate now worth it at the expense of the suffering of others? What would saving the gods and the Ruidians look like? Is it even possible to save both? What changes to how things operate would be a result of that? How would those changes be handled?

I bring this up because there is a tendency in some discourse that I've seen to frame questioning the validity of saving the gods as inherently the "wrong" choice to make. When instead, when you see the cast struggling over the question, its because the answer is not straight forward. The gods are not necessary for life. They never were. They just are necessary for life the way things are now. And the question of what disrupting that means is such a fascinating one to engage with.

#4sd #4 sided dive #critical role #cr #Bells Hells #look im probably thinking way too hard about everything #but aabria and aimee were so amazing to listen to last night #and brought in such amazing insight!!

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artbyblastweave · 2 years ago

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Recently a post has been doing the rounds about military propaganda in the latest COD, yea yeah, sky’s blue, fork in kitchen, et al et al. This got me thinking about the shooters I actually play, and one thing that strikes me about the multiplayer shooters I play is that a lot of them dodge that same major discourse bullet by expressly grounding themselves in amorality and Kafka-esque dysfunction- a structural fingerwag towards their own content, acting as a paradoxical green-light to enjoy the game with no sense of moral injury. And there’s a big example of one that didn’t do this that kinda winds up with egg on its face as a result.

To start with, I’m thinking about Team Fortress 2. The original Team Fortress, inasmuch as it’s possible for a game where you shoot each other with real firearms to be apolitical, was fairly apolitical. The soldiers had no markers of identity beyond their arbitrary team affiliation; the fighting was over no discernable real-life resource or point of political tension; the environments were decontextualized labs and facilities. It was platonic violence.

Team Fortress 2 rolls around. Now that the general novelty of a 3d multiplayer class shooter has eroded, development stalls out on the following aesthetic problem; you can’t have semi-realistic militaristic character models rocket-jumping themselves across the map in the early 2000s. The cartoonishness is too dissonant when you’ve got similar semi-realistic militaristic characters in much more “grounded” games. Eventually they resolve this by taking the other tack, leaning into the cartoonishness, crafting character models so completely bombastic and over the top that no action taken in gameplay, no matter how absurd, will ever feel dissonant. This philosophy extends into the map design; the environments are farcical. Military instillations built mere yards from each other, with paper-thin pretenses of being civilian facilities despite the constant gun battles occurring inside. It’s self parody. And when the game extends to the point of having lore and worldbuilding, the idiocy becomes diegetic. This is a conflict fought on the behalf of idiots, by idiots, over idiot-goals, in spaces designed by idiots. It’s completely amoral, but it’s also contained amorality, since the fighting doesn’t spill out of these Helleresque Designated Pointless Fight Zones- and that leaves the mercs sympathetic enough that you can play them as protagonists in stories that take place “off-the-clock” without a ton of tonal dissonance. I can’t stress enough that the TF2 protagonists are amoral PMCs who work for callous megacorps. In a vacuum, this is not a well-regarded Kind Of Guy around here. There is some implementation of this broad concept that would invite a shitload of discourse that I’ve never seen materialize!

A lot of hero-or-character-based multiplayer games do this, abandoning any pretense of player heroism or productivity in the conceit in a way that shields them from a lot of moral and logical criticisms. Apex Legends and Monday Night Combat are explicitly in-universe bloodsports. Atlas Reactor and Rogue Company are cyberpunk corp-on-corp warfare. Dirty Bomb is about loosely affiliated mercenaries picking over the remains of an evacuated city. I think that Valorant is PMCs in a resource war (Not completely sure on this one.) The never-released Battlecry was expressly tied to actual nation-states, an alternate history where great powers fight wars via singularly-powerful champions instead of via traditional warfare. And in Battleborn the PCs were a hastily-assembled coalition of smaller hastily-assembled coalitions, which means that it makes perfect sense that any combination of these people might be fighting alongside or against each other, at any given time.

Here we see commonalities. Amoral participants. Larger governing bodies delineating clear fight zones centered on specific, if deliberately silly or petty, goals. Most crucially, PCs that are very loosely affiliated with each other, such that you’d see them in different configurations, fight to fight, day to day, as they’re contracted or shuffled around by the powers that be.

You know a game that doesn’t do any of this? Overwatch.

Overwatch gets 80% of the way to being a superhero universe; it falls short primarily because Blizzard chose not to explicitly market it as such, but it’s got everything short of the purposeful brand designation- powered heroes, super science, codenames, Faceless Hydraesque terrorist groups with shadowy, powered enforcers. There are specific allegiances implied by this; specific policy and interpersonal goals implied by this that aren’t really reflected in six-on-six grudge matches in a smattering of inexplicably depopulated civilian environments. There are roughly half-a-dozen villains associated with Talon, four or five independent villainous mercenaries, and everyone else is a would-be superhero. Why is most of the core roster of the world’s premier superhero team performing some kind of terror attack in London? Why is a woman who murdered a civil rights leader trying to stop them, with the help of two avowed anti-Omnic mercenaries and three Omnics? Why did a cryogenics researcher weaponize her tech and come along for the ride? Why are a dozen envoys from tech conglomerates, grassroots movements, and paramilitary defense forces throwing down over a Gazebo in a charming Greek resort? Fuck if I know. Fuck if the writers know!

So, to round it out, I think that there’s a structural difficulty for multiplayer shooters to stand for something, or advance a philosophy, or whatever. The smart ones embrace this by shielding themselves in ablative nihilism, preemptively deflecting criticism by painting the gameplay as hollow and barbaric, but fun! But Overwatch- Overwatch 2′s tagline is “Get back in the fight.” What Fight? Why? Against Who? Call Of Duty might be a horrific mouthpiece for militarism and imperialism, but when it valorizes the military, it’s at least picking a side! Overwatch is just so strange to me because it’s somehow got the worst of both worlds- it uses these heroic, aspirational language and visuals to hype up a gameplay loop that’s ultimately the exact same kind of cynical, aimless abattoir as the games that are smart enough to explicitly be about amoral paid killers!

#thoughts #meta #I don't think any of this is new #but it occurred to me #video games #media analysis #team fortress 2 #tf2

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silhouetteonpaper · 5 months ago

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DERIVED FROM POWER | CH. 1

Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5

Summary: Y/N is frustrated with the life being a political figure’s daughter brings. That’s when she’s forced to meet a group of heroes that give her the worst news possible: she’s far from normal. But what will happen when Y/N can’t be the perfect girl her parents taught her to be?

A/N: This is my first fic, so please bear with me as I’m still figuring things out! Any constructive feedback is welcome! This first chapter is a lot of introduction, I promise there’s even better stuff coming. I’m planning for this to have at least 10 chapters, if not more. I hope you enjoy :)

WC: 3451

Warnings: Drinking, gun use, fighting, mean parents

CHAPTER ONE

The girl sighed as the green silk dress draped down past her legs to the floor. Another new article of clothing she delicately placed herself in, now turning back and forth in the mirror to see how it fell on her body. She liked this dress more than some of the others she’d worn. It had a nice v-cut neck, giving her collarbone some emphasis. The straps were thin to let her shoulders shine, too. And it complimented her figure well, leaving the girl dreading the news articles about her ‘scandalous attire’ she predicted would appear soon enough. Still, all the girl cared about was the fact she felt confident in it, so in the moment she tried to ignore her rising fears.

Tonight is yet another party the girl’s parents decided to attend, wanting to keep up their appearance as senators for the United States. As their daughter, the girl was expected to follow them to every trip, public statement, gathering, and of course party. She hated every single one, the feeling of everyone’s eyes drilling into her causing anxiety. She never liked the spotlight, let alone the political discourse that followed her everywhere. Even at her young age, she was expected to have an opinion and be able to articulate her surrounding thoughts. But she never was as into politics as her parents were.

A soft knock landed on the bedroom door, the young girl’s attention quickly being stolen from the mirror. “Y/N, your parents are headed to the car. They said they’re leaving in five minutes.” A woman who appeared in the doorway spoke. She was shorter, and had straight brown hair and brown eyes. She wore a kind smile with her form fitting gray pencil skirt and matching blazer. Y/N immediately smiled at her and nodded, hiding the frustration she felt toward her parents. Only they would force her to come to a party, and send the house manager to communicate the departure in their stead.

Brianne, the house manager and the woman in the doorway, was more like a maternal figure to Y/N than her own mother. Brianne was in charge of keeping household tasks on schedule, and organizing everything surrounding it. The maids, chef, everyone, all looked to Brianne for direction on when to do their jobs and how. Because Y/N’s parents were constantly working, the young girl often found herself in Brianne’s hands. She didn’t mind it too much, yet always longed for a true parental relationship with her real parents. Yet they cared more about politics than their own child.

Brianne closed the bedroom door soon after relaying her message. Luckily, Y/N was nearly ready. She had blow dried and curled her Y/C/H hair earlier, forcing her natural hair pattern to cower under the heat styling. Her parents always told her she looked prettier when she heat styled her hair, so ever since their first comment on it she kept doing it. It was a habit now- Y/N never let her natural hair show anymore.

She had put on some simple makeup, just to highlight and brighten her features but not too much to make her look too old. Y/N’s parents constantly reminded her that youth gets you far in any industry, to which they were usually met with an eye-roll or unimpressed expression.

Y/N took a moment in the mirror to look herself in the eyes. Being in the public eye meant she had to be a perfect daughter, teenager, and person. But there was one thing the young girl was hiding that she’d never told a single soul about. She had this strange ability, she could move things with her eyes. She could bring objects to her, or push them away, no matter how heavy they were.

But, she didn’t often get to use her special skill, as she didn’t want her parents to find out. Occasionally she’d grab a book from a shelf across the room, holding out her hand as it slid off the shelf and flew in the air towards her. Or, she’d throw the clothes from her floor onto the bed with one simple gaze from her eyes. She knew it wasn’t normal, so she kept the secret with her for all 18 years of her life.

Eventually, Y/N strutted out front of the house in her black high heels, the low light of the moon and front driveway lights illuminating the path to the car. The family’s house was a large contemporary-colonial style house, with lots of windows and pillars. They resided in New York, far enough away from the white house to have some privacy, but close enough that they could easily travel there for work.

The Rolls Royce SUV sat in the driveway, engine running. The driver exited the car to open the door for Y/N, her expression turning cold as she met her parents' judging faces inside. The door closed behind her and Y/N buckled her seatbelt, sitting in the opposite facing seat to both her parents. Her mom looked at her up and down, not trying to hide the tinge of disgust.

“Who let you buy that?” She commented on the dress, staring directly at its low neckline. Y/N looked down at her lap for a moment, watching her words to prevent her tone from ruining the night.

“Brianne took me shopping. You told me I can’t wear the same dress twice, so I got this one for tonight.” Y/N answered quietly. She knew her mom probably wouldn’t love the low cut, but Y/N liked it and Brianne told her how good it looked, so it felt right. The dresses her mom picked out always made Y/N feel like she was either a little kid, or a full grown adult. But Y/N was finally 18, and her excitement to make decisions like these stemmed into the purchases on her parent’s credit cards.

“Next time, get something less revealing. I don’t need to see pictures of your chest in tomorrow's newspaper. It’ll have to do for tonight though. Maybe Stark will have an extra jacket you can cover up with…” Her mom went on. Y/N rolled her eyes to herself, knowing at the party her parents would be too busy socializing to care about some stupid jacket. Y/N’s ears perked at hearing the name Stark, though. These parties were often political figures and their friends gathering, so the girl was intrigued to hear a name unrelated to politics.

The name Stark was familiar, and Y/N’s memory quickly jogged. “We’re going to Tony Stark’s house for a party? Why’re we invited?” She questioned her parents. She knew a bit about the billionaires franchise, and that her parents were friendly with him, but was unsure what business her senator parents had at a rich man's night of fun. Her mom scoffed, exchanging a glance with her father.

“Stark funds part of our campaign, and in return we offer him some… benefits.” Her mom said carefully. Y/N knew that in return for his support, her parents helped him weave some laws and watchful government eyes. It was further proof how devious those involved in politics could truly be, but Y/N already lacked trust in her parents.

The car drove down some winding roads, following the edge of the hill they lived on that overlooked the city. The night was beautiful, a dark navy sky full of stars holding up the bright moon, matching the glowing city lights down below that never ceased to burn. Y/N enjoyed looking up to the sky, watching the quiet world that sat above her. It was a nice break from her own life as she could float with the stars for only a moment.

Soon enough, the SUV pulled into a long driveway that curved in a loop out front of a large modern mansion. Y/N was impressed, seeing a house even larger than theirs. She was always curious as to why people needed all this space, she never felt a use for it. But her parents and Stark both had money to spend, so she presumed that was reason enough.

The driver opened the doors for the family and they headed up towards the large front doors. Inside, music could be heard playing in the foyer where a crowd of people socialized. The ceiling was tall, a second floor balcony overlooking the area around a large hanging chandelier. Floor to ceiling windows covered the farthest wall, standing behind a DJ booth and a bar area.

An older man with brown hair greeted the family, immediately going to hug Y/N’s mom and dad. “Laura! Paul! Welcome!” His attention was turned to the young girl in the stunning green dress as soon as he pulled away from the hug. “And here she is, Y/N Y/L/N, you’ve grown up since I last saw you!” He spoke, pulling Y/N into a side hug.. Y/N smiled as best as she could, making sure to keep eye contact with an expression that was reading properly. But she couldn’t quite remember him, or how he knew her.

“Tony, the inside looks amazing!” Laura beamed, admiring the interior of the house. After only a moment, Tony was walking away with her parents as he promised to show them a new renovation he did. Y/N was left alone in the foyer, the crowd now seeming a lot louder in the absence of the only two people she knew at the party. As great as it was to see Tony Stark, it wasn’t as great to be at another party alone, Y/N thought. She weighed her options, and ultimately decided to head for the bar.

Although at parties she was usually on her best behavior, Y/N knew this house was full of rich celebrities and individuals alike who didn’t care about rules. She wasn’t 21, but had drank with her friends before without her parents' knowledge. A few drinks wouldn’t hurt, and she knew no one would care- as long as her parents didn’t see. But Laura and Paul weren’t in sight, and the many bottles of alcohol were calling Y/N’s name.

She sat at one of the bar stools, adjusting her green dress to sit comfortably. A redhead turned to face the young girl, only looking up to make eye contact once Y/N spoke. “One shot of vodka, please, and a martini.” She ordered. The redhead raised her eyebrow, but nodded and prepared the drinks. She slid over a shot glass of the clear liquid, Y/N immediately taking it and downing it no problem. The woman behind the bar smiled, impressed, as she placed the martini down in the empty shot glass’s stead.

“Not a big party person?” The redhead asked. Y/N laughed, shaking her head and taking a small sip of the martini.

“Not really. I go to so many, they get old fast.” She spoke, careful not to overshare. She had some sense of comfort at this party, knowing everyone here was famous or known in some way. Most of them probably didn’t care about politics, let alone a senator's daughter. Y/N could be an average girl here. The redhead laughed, leaning against the counter behind her and crossing her arms.

“I get it. I’m always down for a party in celebration of something, like this one.” The redhead told her. Y/N nodded, understanding that feeling.

“What’re we celebrating tonight?” She asked. Before the redhead could answer, a whizzing sound could be heard. Within seconds, a large boom shook the house, leaving Y/N with wide eyes as the crowd screamed and scattered.

“Get down!” The redhead told the young girl, helping her move behind the bar quickly. She pulled her down, the two of them ducking below the counter as the sounds of more small explosions and gunshots rang through the house. “I’m Natasha, by the way.” The redhead spoke, peeking up every few seconds to gauge the situation.

“I- I’m Y/N.” The girl responded, too terrified to even formally introduce her full name. She preferred just her first name anyway, less formalities, but for now that didn’t matter as her name could be splayed on a grave if she didn’t focus. Her heart was racing as Natasha and her continued to hide behind the bar, debris from the chaos occasionally flying over.

Screams echoed through the house, the sound of heels and dress shoes crunching broken glass and debris as people ran filled the large rooms. Y/N’s eyes remained wide, her breath hitching when Natasha pulled out a gun and began to shoot over the counter. ‘Who is this woman?’ Y/N thought, now seeing the bartender become some kind of security personnel.

The gun firing died down for a moment, and Natasha bent back down to Y/N’s level. “We need to go, I need you to follow me.” She spoke, trying to meet Y/N’s eyes that began to dissociate into the floor. She was panicking, her own mind making her feel like her death would come at any moment. “Y/N Y/L/N.” Natasha spoke firmly, putting a hand on the girl's arm.

Y/N’s eyes finally rose, now processing Natasha’s words. She realized Natasha had used her full name, somehow knowing it, but quickly brushed it off as the chaos continued. She nodded, and slowly stood with the redhead as they waited for the right moment to move from behind cover. They darted across the foyer, over broken glass and fallen drywall. A few stray bullets zoomed behind them, just missing the pair.

The girl’s jaw dropped in shock as she noticed there were a few bodies trapped underneath heavy beams that had fallen from the ceiling. After making sure Natasha wasn’t looking towards her, she flicked her eyes from the beam to the floor in front of her, pulling it toward her so it lifted off the body. As they began to leave the foyer, Y/N couldn’t do much more than that without holding up the redhead and alerting her of the ability she possessed, so for now she hoped it would be enough to save a life.

Natasha kept her gun propped upwards as she led the girl down one of the hallways. It was silent, almost too silent. Y/N tried to keep her panicked breathing quiet as she watched Natasha guiding the way.

As they turned a corner, Natasha stopped in her tracks, holding out her arm to prevent Y/N from walking even one step more. Less than a second later, a large explosion erupted in the hallway in front of them, just over a yard away. Y/N shielded her eyes, a few pieces of rubble flying at her with a sharp sting as they grazed her skin. Her eyes watered at the pain, but she remained focused as the adrenaline pumped through her.

Natasha immediately continued to run, soon opening a door that led outside. Down a dimly lit path stood a black van. Y/N’s heart dropped, was this woman trying to kidnap Y/N, or save her? At this point, the girl wasn’t sure- but running back inside didn’t sound too appealing. There were a few times when people attempted to harm the senators and their family, but it was usually easily avoided with the help of their personal security team. This time though, her family’s security team was nowhere in sight.

Speaking of family, Y/N soon realized her parents were caught up in the same attack. “My parents, I have to go find them,” Y/N spoke, her voice weak and full of worry. In the glow of the moon, Natasha could see the girl's eyes watering, her eyebrows caving in with fear. And her arm slowly dripped with blood, but it didn’t seem to bother her too much.

“Don’t worry about them, I promise they’re safe. We have to move, now.” Natasha spoke calmly, yet firmly. Y/N’s mind raced with a million more questions. How did Natasha know her parents were safe? Where were they? Where was Natasha taking her? But there was no time to ask as the redhead quickly sped toward the van.

Y/N could see the dark figures of a few other people getting in the van and already sitting inside. As they approached, Natasha opened the back doors and gestured for Y/N to step inside. She could see a few faces in the near dark, all staring directly at her. “Look, if you’re going to kidnap me at least just tell me. I can’t take any more surprises tonight.” Y/N begged, exhaling deeply as her eyes teared up. Natasha laughed, a few people inside the van adding a chuckle. Y/N looked at them, slightly appalled.

“We aren’t kidnapping you, your parents set this up. We’re saving you from getting kidnapped.” Natasha explained, slightly entertained. Y/N looked from her to the other passengers back and forth quickly, now more confused than ever.

“What?-” She began. There was no time to finish, as the sound of gunshots grew louder. Y/N quickly moved to step in the van, knowing it was her only shot at avoiding a bullet wound tonight. One of the passengers in the van reached out an arm to help her up, offering the seat next to him as everyone inside made room. Natasha quickly jumped inside after, closing the van doors with haste. The car sped off, making everyone lean to the side a bit as gravity pulled them.

The gunshots grew quieter, silence taking over the van as Tony’s house became smaller. Now that the immediate threat of getting shot wasn’t weighing over the girl, she looked around. She could see Natasha, and a few more men. A soft glow of technology came from the driver's seat of the car, lighting the man at the wheel’s face. It was Tony, manning the van. He wasn’t even touching the wheel now, as the car seemed to drive itself with a complex looking computer setup.

Natasha turned a small overhead light on, the back of the vehicle now being lit well enough for Y/N to make out the people sitting with her. A guy with dusty brown hair and a bow hooked over his shoulder, a larger guy with long blonde hair and a hammer of some kind, and a sandy haired guy sitting beside Y/N.

“Can I patch that up?” Natasha pointed to Y/N’s bleeding arm, the girl’s eyebrows raising as she finally noticed her injury. She nodded, Natasha switching places with the sandy haired guy so she could easily clean up the wound. As she wiped off the blood and cleaned the source of it, leaving Y/N wincing, she was able to take a closer look at the sandy haired character. Her expression twisted in confusion when she noticed his familiar face.

“I know you… how do I know you?” She asked him. He laughed, looking to the other passengers to exchange a glance. Natasha nodded at him, beginning to wrap gauze around Y/N’s arm. She looked around in frustration, annoyed that they all knew something she didn’t. Suddenly, it clicked. She recalled the man's face and where she saw him last. The man waited for her to say it, his eyebrows raised as he saw she connected the dots. “You’re my family’s security guard—Johnson…but you look slightly different?” She realized.

The man was definitely the security guard, but he wasn’t wearing sunglasses or a black tux. He also somehow looked more youthful, like his position as a security personnel involved a disguise. The man laughed. “I am… or was. Undercover.” He told her. She lifted an eyebrow, unsure what he meant by that. “I’m an agent for SHIELD. But more importantly, an Avenger. I’m Steve Rogers, this is Clint Barton, Thor, and you probably met Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff. Your parents needed extra security and we were put on the job.”

Y/N’s jaw dropped slightly. She knew about the Avengers. Their names often swirled government meetings or secret gatherings full of hushed voices. They were a hot topic in the political world, but even more incredibly, they were superheroes. “My parents are working with a bunch of superheroes? What did they need extra security for?” Y/N questioned. They were average senators, what could they possibly need a group of superheroes for?

Steve hesitated, looking at the group for a moment before continuing. “You.”

#marvel #fanfic #marvel fanfic series #the avengers #natasha romanoff #tony stark #natasha romanoff x reader #derivedfrompowerseries #mcu

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thegeorgiatennantblog · 3 months ago

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*Clanking pots and pans together *

I have a message for all the tin hatters and misogynists in the Tumblr fandom.

28th August, The Year of Our Nerd 2024

To Whom It May Concern

It has been precisely one year and one month to the fact that I first came across this malady that has been plaguing our fandom. Other fandoms have been more or less unfortunate in this regard. What started as a lighthearted joke has now turned into a toxic, vile, festering wound. For a long time I either ignored these blogs and their opinions or very politely tried to dismiss them. For an even longer time I was made to feel that I was in the wrong. After all we live in a free society and all of us believe int he idea of freedom of speech, freedom to hold whatever views and beliefs, and freedom to express those views and beliefs. But the very same citizens of these free society's in today's world are also facing a dilemma: how far does this right go? Is it unconditional? Is it absolute? Or does it qualify to some form of check or some form of necessary derogation under exceptional circumstances? When do those circumstances arise?

Most of us have come to an understanding in regard to the question, though all of us may not agree to it: it is understood that where your right to exercise your freedom offends and restricts my right to do or causes in any way for me or anyone else to feel endangered, then that is where we draw the line.

Reading @do-angels-dream-of-starry-seas 's post today I have come to the conclusion that the time has come to draw that line. It is a question on where we stand as a fandom if we let such bigotry and such hate prevail any longer.

I want to let everyone know where I stand. I have nothing against fanfiction. I have nothing against RPF. People have been creating RPF since time immemorial. If not for RPF a large amount of literature, film, music and other forms of art would not exist. Shakespear's Histories are essentially RPF, Hamilton is RPF, Netflix's The Crown is RPF, Le Morte d'Arthur is RPF, Baz Luhrman's Elvis is RPF and so is Andrew Dominic's Blonde. You may like some of it, you might dislike some of it. You might even be vehemently against some of it. But that's all it is at the end of the day; fiction. It doesn't hurt anyone. The real problem arises when people start becoming unbale to differentiate between fiction and reality. And that's no better than thinking that just cz someone played a serial killer in a movie means they're evil irl too.

It becomes suffocating for others to exist in these spaces when the delusion that the RFP is real transcends to take an even worse shape namely hating the real people involved in said person's life. How could you justify hating on their real life partners just so you can satisfy your delusional belief that these men are actually in love with each other.

Maybe it springs from a need to justify our lives in terms of conspiracy theories in this growing pandemic of untruths and fake news. Maybe it springs from some deep rooted internalized misogyny. Who can say?

Before I move on I want to highlight some problems with the wntire tinhatter discourse.

The existence of a PR. I want to clarify this here and now. PR works for important, famous, insanely rich people whose global fame makes their identity a part of the public domain so much that their entire image needs to be curated to meet certain requirements. PR works for Taylor Swift and Leonardo DiCaprio and Barak Obama. Who is does NOT work for are people who are only locally well known, live reasonably ordinary lifestyles, and have a painfully insignificant following outside their own cultural context.

The idea that one picture or a five second video can tell the truth about someone's entire personal life. It cannot. It never will. Body language is not even a science. Body language is misleading. Facial expressions are misleading. I am writing this right now with the most bland expression on my face. People around me think I'm writing an email. My internal emotions right now are another story. Moreover no one owes anyone any sort of information on their personal life, their love life, their mood, their life choices or whatever. Their lives are not public property. Please respect that.

The women are the villains. This blatant misogyny has become intolerable as the days go by considering most of these posts are written by women themselves. The whole controlling wife, poor meek guy trope is so fckng infuriating. When did we wake up to a world where women hold the reigns and an adult white upper middle class male cannot tell her that he wants a divorce. I thought this only happened to unprivileged women in third world countries who cannot file a divorce bcs then she will be left penniless and socially disgraced. The women baby trapped them. Of course they feel responsibility for the kids now. Child birth is the second most painful experience after being burnt to death. No woman does it for the pleasure of it nor for some strategic benefit that it will serve her. And giving birth to not just one but many. And then raising them. That's not easy! Secondly, having children is a mutual decision and process. If only women could make babies, we'd get rid of men for good lol! (this is a joke plz don't @ me) If someone decides to have children with someone, and we're not talking just one accidental pregnancy or sth... we're talking several kids over the years.... then they probably have that level of attachment, love and commitment to their partner. It's just common sense.

Absolute cynicism. Anything Georgia and Anna do is met with cynicism and their words are deliberately twisted to mean the opposite. While D and M will be applauded for speaking up for a cause, when G and A do the same, they are shouted down as pretentious or that PR made them do it. When D and M show affection towards each other that's all real and true but when G and A show affection to their partners it fake and a PR stunt. Moreover, the way they interact with their partners is also completely misunderstood. Anna is more private and subtle about her gestures of praise and affection. But from what she does show publicly we know that she absolutely adores her partner and her kids. Georgia on the other hand has her own way. She teases, makes jokes, pokes fun at him, but she's also literally the woman that is being ultra-horny for him on Twitter and Instagram in front of everyone else. And I think that comes from the fact that they were friends first and lovers second and they have maintained that playful friendly relationship with each other. Still, she is accused of never being appreciative, being cringey, possessive, creepy and always bringing him down. Oh, and we never talk about how Michael next to never promotes Davis's achievements. In fact, no one else I know does it. Literally the only person is Georgia jumping up and down going "This is my partner! Have you seen them! Have you seen how awesome they are! I love them!" Not just that, these tinhatters have such double standards that while D's neurodivergent traits are being praised, G takes the rap for it. She's a careless mum, an unworthy partner; none of her professional achievements matter. She is fighting her dyslexia and neurodivergence to achieve something but the tinhatters will make ableist remarks to bring her down. But they don't just stop there. They accuse her of abuse, rape and cyber harassment. Pray that she doesn't find out because accusing someone of that can get you behind the bars hon!

I know that none of this is going to disappear over night. We fight the fight every day and we hope that tumblr goes back to being the safe space it once was. But till then, it is important that we stay strong and stay together. I have had people come into my ds with links and other stuff that made me want to jump off a cliff. I have been subjected to some horrendous lies, all in a bid to 'convert' me. Sadly that's not happening babes.

So I just want these tinhatters to know that if you're here, then we're here too. And no matter how much of this toxic bile you keep spewing we'll keep washing it away. And that @dtmsrpfcringe and @goodomenswarning don't have to do it alone. If you wanna go at them then come at me bitches!

And I'm not scared to call y'all out @ingravinoveritas @letscoffeebreak @nightgoodomens

@invisibleicewands @climb-dtennant-like-a-tree @thetardisisbluandroseistoo and others but mainly you guys cz you're the ring leaders. Go on block me if you want to I don't care! Or better, send me some of those creepy asks you guys send Tori. At least it would take the burden off her!

Oh and, before I go, @dtmsrpfcringe you're a champ and we love you and we stand with you!!!

Yours Sincerely,

Meena. x

curator of TheGeorgiaTennantBlog

#why don't you pick on someone your own size #waiting for the day when the rpf tinhatters get their heads out of their a$$#georgia tennant #anna lundberg #michael sheen #david tennant #rpf #the damned rpf discourse #tinhatters #good omens #staged #bbc staged #sheenbergants #the tennants #sorry for the rant guys but i really had a lot bottled up

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max1461 · 6 months ago

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My first encounter with the broad concept of "people who want to live in the woods" came in the form of seeing people, online and in media, actually living in the woods, in one capacity or another.

As a teenager I watched Ray Mears' Bushcraft. It's a really good show that I would strongly recommend to just about anyone. Ray Mears (who in fact popularized the term "bushcraft") is a British wilderness survival/outdoorsmanship expert, and in Bushcraft he travels around the world, meeting with people who still practice some form of traditional subsistence-off-the-land, and documenting their knowledge and techniques. He shows traditional bushcraft in the Amazon, among aboriginal Australians, etc., and talks to the people who practice it about their way of life.

This show had a pretty big impact on me as a young person. I was already avidly interested in nature and the outdoors, and I had been intrigued by the concept of "wilderness survival" since watching Survivorman as a kid. There was something very appealing about the idea of placing oneself in nature with as few barriers as possible; getting to experience the natural world not just in a removed, "sightseeing" way, but in a real, engaged and "tactile" way. But what Mears presented added an additional layer of appeal: "wilderness survival" not as a chaotic fray to stay alive, but as a body of skills, refined over the centuries, which can be taught and learned. A mature art, something sophisticated and deep, in which one can become a practitioner. Something, in other words, a lot like mathematics, which I already knew that I liked, and a lot like language, which I had just recently become aware I was fascinated by. This inspired in me a much more lasting and serious interest in bushcraft. I began reading about it more seriously, and practicing as much of it as I could (not very much) in my parents' back yard.

I still count "becoming truly proficient in bushcraft" as one of my life goals, although I am not anywhere near that point yet.

A further point stressed by Ray Mears was that these traditional bushcraft techniques are a dying art. As people's lifestyles change, they are not getting passed on, and soon they may be lost. I want to stress here (because I'm on tumblr, where Big Ideas and Grand Narratives rule) that I have no desire to chastise people for living a different lifestyle than their grandparents! That's fine! I do not believe that, I don't know, the children of bushcraft experts should be forced by government decree to live in the woods or whatever. I have to make this clear, because "what should we force people to do by government decree?" seems often to be the only level at which tumblr discoursers are willing to think. What I am claiming is that this loss of knowledge is sad, it is unfortunate, and being that I and others (including most principally many of the practitioners) would not like to see these arts die out, it would be nice if they continued to be taught and learned and thereby passed on into posterity.

There need not be some kind of Decree! Maybe people just do some kind of outreach, as Mears himself did, and get more people interested in these things. Maybe, if you're an Amazonian guy or an aboriginal Australian guy, you do that outreach in a community-internal way, because your desire is principally to increase interest community-internally. I don't know; my whole point here is that I'm not really trying to get into the political dimension of this. That's not where my interests lie. Other than expressing a general sentiment that "bushcraft is cool and readers of my blog should think it's cool", I don't have any particular agenda here.

Anyway, this is the sum total of the context in which "people going out and doing shit in the woods" existed for me until just a few years ago. Then I came into the internet discoursosphere, around 2020, and I realized two things very quickly:

everyone was debating the relative merits of living in the woods

no one seemed to have any interest in or experience with anything even passingly related to living in the woods on a practical level, either first- or second-hand.

It was all, all this purely abstract, "theory"-based, grand narrativizing politico-philosophical debate. Nobody gave a shit about friction fire-lighting or shelter construction at an object level. Nobody gave a fucking shit!

This is a microcosm, and in fact not just a microcosm but perhaps the type case, of why I hate the discourse. The discourse is insistent on taking everything real in the world, everything that is (permit me to get a bit philosophical myself) vibrant and living and actual, and turning it into this dreary, sterile, empty word game. Are the Marxists the True Leftists or are the Anprims the True Leftists? Which one is it? I don't know and I don't care. Why is our interest in being in nature mediated by meaningless word game abstractions? Why must our interest in science or history be reduced to meaningless word game abstractions (shape rotator/wordcel discourse)? Why must our interest in, say, video games be reduced to meaningless word game abstractions (any of the thousand video game discourses)? Etc. etc.

It's actively, fucking, toxic to the idea of just being a person in the world. Everything you do has to be some symbol in a bullshit fucking symbol game. Worse, everything everybody else does becomes to you a symbol in a symbol game, even if they aren't playing.

I am dedicated to an alternate project. I want to be in the world and I want to be in it with others. In fact, I am so dedicated to this, that I can appreciate the reality of others' lived experience and actions even in spite of the symbol games they might be playing, even if I think these symbol games might be a little bit bullshit. This is a plainly virtuous way to be. This is the way I was raised to interact with people; it is parablized in various different ways, we're told (among other things) "everyone has a story", and "everyone is valuable in their own way", and so on. And these things may seem trite but they are true, they are obviously fucking true and many people in "discourse" have forgotten.

There are some anarchists who are really into urban community gardening. They're into it for various reasons. Some feel that it gives them autonomy over and knowledge of their own food in a way that buying things at the grocery store does not. That's fair, and kinda cool. If you're into that I support you. Some of them think that the whole economy could be replaced with urban community gardens. That's a bit silly. But I will come to these "silly" anarchists' defense every single time without question, because, fuck, they're doing something. I mean they're fucking doing something, ya know? They see meaning in this thing, and they're doing it, and that's cool! I would rather go to the overly idealistic anarchist community garden than the just-the-right-tendency Marxist reading group or whatever the fuck every single time.

Buncha "got lost in the world of symbols and forgot what they signify" mfers on this world wide web of ours istg.

#will probably delete later #this is too personal and pissy #but I'll put it out there for a moment and see what people think #wtf am I coming to dumping my guts on the internet like this I should certainly shut the fuck up

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yuurei20 · 1 year ago

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Concerning the Vil-Epel drama: I'm from a Scandinavian country and even here we have dialects. I haven't heard them myself, but my mom has and she says they are literally impossible to understand and you need a translator to speak with them. And it's not a bad thing- we don't say those people are less than or anything of the sort- it's just like holy cow we cannot understand anything they're saying, how are we supposed to communicate like this (especially when they understand us since our dialect is the 'base' dialect). If anything, it's funny because of how a dialect can make the same language not understandable, and also disappointing/frustrating that we can't talk to them because we literally don't know what they're saying. So to me it seems like part of the reason Vil wants Epel to not speak in his dialect is simply so people can understand him better and so people can actually communicate with him. We've seen in the Harveston event (if I remember correctly) that the others have no clue what Epel says before they jump the gap, and they need to ask his grandma to translate. That's an example of how if he didn't remove his dialect people would not know what he's saying. I don't think it has anything to do with negative connotations towards the dialect (I bet Vil would encourage it if they were in a situation where it would be beneficial/welcoming), but rather Vil trying to teach Epel that it's not about hiding your dialect/culture, it's about being considerate to those around you to have them understand you (like how you pointed out his granny changed to polite speech when talking to the NRC boys). Don't you think even granny would have at some point taught Epel that? (Although not in the same manner or extremity as Vil).

There seems to be some discourse going on of which I was not aware!

Thank you so much for your perspective!! It is very interesting and informative and wonderful to know!

Yes, it does seem strange that maybe no one warned Epel about interacting with people outside the village, but maybe they did!

This gets into conjecture because we have nothing in-game to confirm either way, but it might be possible that they just assumed he would pick it up through personal experience, or he just wasn't able to make the connection between their warnings and what real-world experience would be like.

Marja herself has no problem with adapting to the time/place/occasion, but as Epel is still a child with limited exposure to people from other cultures, we are watching him experience this learning process in real time!

In a way, Epel's experience at NRC could maybe be interpreted as Vil encouraging him to be more like his grandmother :> Epel was likely aware that the older people in the village adapt their speech patterns when necessary, but maybe never made the connection about exactly why?

He knew it was polite, but when early-Epel shows up at NRC, he is already in fighting mode: he has no interest in being polite, which he might have seen as making concessions and, thus, a weakness.

Bullied his whole childhood for his appearance he decides he is going to set the record straight from day one at NRC so that people know not to mess with him, and then Vil comes in.

It seems like it all connects to Epel's arc as he learns that you can be conscientious of time/place/occasion (like his grandmother), but still be proud of your heritage and strong (like his grandmother).

And you can be beautiful (like Vil), but still be strong (like Vil).

(Because Vil is Vil his wording has a lot to do with the importance of beauty, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like Vil is just trying to prepare Epel for life in a society.)

There is an ongoing theme with Epel that we see in Book 5 and Halloween where he gets jealous of people who can do things that he can't, so he doubles down that he is right and they are wrong in order to make himself feel better about his shortcomings.

That might also tie in to his frustration with Vil's restriction of his dialect!

He has more difficulty expressing himself without it, so rather than do what Vil is trying to get him to do and work on it, by Book 5 he is still doubling down and insisting that Vil is the problem, not himself, despite how he was raised watching everyone around him do exactly what it is that Vil is saying he needs to do.

I really appreciate everyone's introspection!! The more you think about it, the more interesting Epel, his family, his relationship with Vil and his circumstances become! :> He is living through his own, personal coming-of-age story before our eyes!

#Epel Felmier #twisted wonderland #anon #Marja Felmier #Vil Schoenheit

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marengogo · 4 months ago

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Rambling in INFJese - Part 10: Queerful In South Korea

SGMB and RPWP focused playlist

[Music is a very big part of my life and I’m MOSTLY INCAPABLE of writing without music, so I just thought I'd share what I am listening to while writing this]

🐺 — 🐺 — 🐺—

Gurls, Bois and Enbies … Hellooooooooooo 📢 Yes, I’m finally, officially, back from my travels.

Am I feeling relaxed and refreshed?

NO.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m more tired than when I left 😬. You see, there was more excitement than I thought, or even budgeted for, but, lowkey highkey I knew it was going to turn out like that, so, it was what it was and it was unforgettable 😊💜.

Now, on to the topic of today!

As the title kinda spoils, I would like to bring forth the topic of queerness in present day Korea, touching upon specific sub-subjects within this main-theme, which you will discover as you keep reading.

In order to provide more context and understanding, I’ll have to bring up a bit of Geography, a tad of Politics and a lot of History, and let me make this clear, even though I have been out of politics for quite some time I used to be very invested in world politics … I am presently indeed somewhat annoyed, because there seems to be a lot of misinformation that has been going around with regards to what it might mean to be gay/queer person in South Korea, in the big year of 2024, which is why I’d also like to encourage us to be proactive and do some research, on our own, with the available resources that are out there. I know it sounds heavy, but I promise I’ll try and make it as least cumbersome, and as much relatable to what might concern all Queer people, and JK and JM of course, as possible ✌🏾.

Let’s start with some Geography.

Asia … is a big ass continent. Because it is so big, amongst the people who make these kind of decisions, it was decided that this continent would have to be divided into 5 regions: Central, East, South, Southeast and West. The regions we are going to be concerned with are East and Southeast also known as ASEAN. The East has a total of 8 countries, out of which we are going to focus on 4 being; China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, while the Southeast has a total of 11, out of which we are only going to concentrate on 1, being Thailand … aaand that was all for Geography; painless right?

Great. So now it is time for some of History. We are now going to be talking about the history of the BL genre and the Queer art genre within two particular cultures; Eastern and Western.

BL, otherwise known as Boy’s Love, is a genre that was born in Japan in the 1970s. To properly discuss the world of BL it would take way too many blogs, so I’m afraid I won’t delve too deep into it, but in order to proceed with our discourse I need for everyone to at least understand the substantial difference between, for example, a series like The Eight Sense and Heartstopper. The first is a BL and the other is a Queer Coming-of-Age Drama. These two series are the I most point out very positive outcome of a lot of struggle and progress within both the BL and Queer art genre through the years.

The East and BLs - BL was created by women to be consumed by other women in Japan. It had nothing to do with creating content for gay/queer people, and this is very fundamental for everyone to understand. The thing is that it doesn’t matter where in the world you are, if you are or were a girl/woman you know the struggles are real. Different parts of the world deal with this frustration in different ways, and Japan and eventually the other 4 Asian countries I listed above found this to be one of them. The BL genre is basically having two men in a forbidden relationship, driven by mad passion, and who would always choose each other over the rest of the world. Star crossed-lovers where one of them would always be the Seme/Top or male-male and the other the Uke/Bottom or female-male. At the core of it all, BL was intended to be escapism, which eventually turned into fetishism and now can be all the above and something else entirely; evolution aye?

Mainly Asian women perhaps used BL to feel like their opinions and emotions could matter, in an environment where like also many other countries in Africa men are the ones that have the last say, or just any say at all. So they fulfilled their fantasy of being heard, and having power, while at the same time having the “strongest/most ideal” of men fall desperately in love with this male version of themselves. It is obviously much more complex than my two line sentence explanation, but for now, kindly keep this image in your mind.

Moving on!

The West and Queer Art - The queer genre in the West for the longest time was almost always a guaranteed tragedy. Interestingly enough, even though the first movie that mentioned homosexuality was in the 1960, the beginning of Queer culture in movies was, also for the West, in the 1970s. I can’t tell you the amount of books and films I have read and seen in my day says the woman in her thirties LOL and, despite the heart-wrenching looming tragedy, I would still enjoy finding comfort during those few chapters/scenes when the couple/pairing was happy, even though I knew for a fact that either one of them or both would die, or be eternally separated, or some other kind of tragedy.

The funny thing is that I would just accept it, because why not? Is not like my reality showed any different. It wasn’t like I was aware of happy and successful queer people around me, so why would I expect to read or watch anything else? Also I am a nasty ass angsty person so really I have no excuse.

… are y’all following me thus far?

Now, let’s take a bit of a leap into the 2000s where money-makers finally clocked in on the fact that there is mad-money that can be made with BL in the East and Queerness in the West. In the East we start adopting fanservice within boybands and Asian-Dramas, we start printing thousands of BL mangas, and producing as many animes to match. In the West we keep having the token queer comedian appear on every show as well as making movies of historic queer figures who have impacted the world somehow, so that the queers can feel represented, even though all the actors are for the most part straight, because at this point in time, even though we acknowledge that Queer people exist, coming out is still very meh.

As the 2000s progress and we enter the 2010s thanks to actual progress within some western countries, the interweb and social media it becomes increasingly easier for an Eastern Fujoshi/Fudanshi/Fujin (Bl lover girl/boy/enby) to find themselves in say the UK, which has areas that breathe queerness and queer history and for a Western Queer to find themselves in say Japan where they can easily buy a manga about “queers” in happy relationship or, somewhere in South Korea, can easily see two very attractive boys/girls from a random kpop band openly kiss.

And then, in the midst of this “cultural” exchange, and awakening, something happens.

The Eastern Fujoshi/Fudanshi/Fujin realise that there are actual real queer people in the world sounds stupid, but believe me, it is not. That queer people are not just characters in a book, or anime, and that in fact there really are people in the world who are for example of the same sex and truly wanna be together and, if gay, for example, can also be both very masculine and still want to be together. At the same time the Western Queer realise that they actually can be happy, and that they deserves a happy ending, because some of this BLs aren’t half as bad and they sometimes make valid points and then you find out that actual queer people are now also writing BLs so things start to make some sense.

As I mentioned, society was also changing, Queer people in the West started gaining a few rights, such as being able to get married in America and some European countries, and as a consequence, in the following decade, we now have series and movies that have Queer protagonist, with happy endings to boot! In the East, things are either not moving at all or moving a bit differently, or kinda slowly, but still it is movement. Within the countries that are moving differently, talking about Queerness is still heavy but has finally become something that they “don’t mind” just talking about and the gay neighbour is actually seen as the gay neighbour, whether they will talk to them is debatable, but at least they are recognised as such and not absurdly explained away or their existence ignored.

Now back to geography. The reason why I mentioned those 5 countries (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand) is because at some point in the 2010s they were the main producers, and consumers, of BL within the Asian continent, and yes, while still being hella homophobic and, but let’s be real for a second, queer people have been around since the beginning of time, so even though BL was made and intended for women, our Queer Eastern Siblings would find a way to secretly also consume BL, being the closest thing to reading about a queer relationship, so added to the westerner consumption as well, it is no surprise that these 5 countries suddenly had a boom, despite having been being homophobic.

Hence, it can be said that these 5 countries were on the same wavelength in the early 2010s, but what about now? With the considerable change in behaviour and thought with regards to Queer people in these countries in the early 2020s where do these 5 countries stand with regards to their Queer people and politics? Well, China has now banned BLs entirely, and I will not delve into their further lack of queer rights. Taiwan and Thailand have legalised Queer marriage. Then there is Japan which is making progress towards trying to legalise Queer marriage with to my greatest joy a successful ruling that happened this year in March related to same-sex unions … so, what about South Korea?

Well … SK is so close 🥹 … Yet so far 😫

It’s like they are taking 4 steps forward and 3 steps backwards, constantly. They are well far from China-levels which is a fucking relief I tell you! but they are dragging their feet to be at Japan-levels (and Japan is very close to Thailand and Taiwan Queer status currently). Yet, it is not as negative as it seems, or as some people try to portray it. You look around social media and they depict SK as if it were China. SK is currently facing a situation where it notices that things are changing and change is scary y’all. Resistance is the usual reaction to change, and the older generations, mainly those led by the Christian groups are not really where is at. SK’s youth and older liberal generations hold the answer to the Queer Korea questions.

So what exactly makes SK look hopeful? Well, time to get back to some History again 😘

The first Queer organisation in SK was formed in 1993 by 3 gay men and 3 lesbian women. The following year the 6 separated into 2 groups and formed the first gay organisation and the first lesbian one respectively. In 1997 we have the first demonstration for gay and lesbian rights, which then lead into 2000, the year of the first Pride Parade, which is one of the events of the very first Seol Queer Culture Festival Daegu Queer Culture Festival will be created in 2009, do keep this in mind … but another major event happened in the year 2000.

Y’all know that saying X walked so that Y could run? Well Hong Seok Cheon was basically forced to walk so that Queer Korean could learn how to properly train to run.

Though Seok-cheon is presently back to being somewhat popular again, his coming out was pretty traumatic. His career as comedian/actor started in 1994 and he was quite popular which landed him a good number of acting roles, and a lot of placements in comedy shows, as well as a kids show. In 2000 he was asked about his sexuality and he had no qualms in replying that he was gay. The show editors decided to cut out that part but a journalist gotta love them 🙃 got a hold of the footage and forced him to “elaborate”. Upon confirming, Seok-cheon lost all his jobs and was shunned verbally abused, discrimination and the lot, oh yes … by his own country.

Not surprisingly, given that nobody in his own country wanted to interact with him, he at first thought of moving to the US to start afresh, but then decided against it. Seok-cheon decided to stay and prove to everyone in his country that he could make it and be successful again. And that he did. In 2002 he opened the first of what now is a high end chain of 9 restaurants in Itaewon. 2004 he joined the Democratic Labor Party and was selected by Time magazine as the Asian Hero of that year and in the following years Seok-cheon will keep racking up achievements 🎶🎵Did you see my bag? Did you see my bag? 🎶🎵 Namean?! (I’m not gonna list them all but you should definitely look him up and learn a bit about him, if you are interested).

But how does that connect to today? In 2008 he started his own talk show Coming Out and though there was a bit of resistance at the beginning as expected, the youth came in force and he started gaining audiences and boom! He was back on TV and slowly he’d get also a few cameos on prominent media, such as the Netflix drama Itaewon Class. Now let’s leave the lime-light for a second and let's look at the military 😬. It is vitally important that people understand that being gay is not illegal in any of the 5 countries we’ve been talking about yes, even China, but the public opinion and beliefs of each country greatly influence how their queer communities are thought of and treated.

Now, SK Military has become pretty infamous within the queer community for conducting witch-hunts in order to find out and humiliate gay soldiers, so much so that organisations such as Amnesty eventually had to step in. That being said, let's be real real real for a second. Though it is appalling what they have done to the queer soldiers, the SK military was also very famous for hazing, assaulting, causing cadets regardless of sexuality to want to unalive themselves and what more. All of the aforementioned, which put SK’s military on the map in a not so positive light globally, added to the increase in suicides, made the government address the situation, and they eventually came up with solutions such as the buddy system, which was first implemented in 2003. But, back to the gays. The most popular witch-hunt happened in 2017 where two soldiers amongst others were outed, but these particular two were found guilty of having sex off-base, during off hours.

In 2022 this conviction was overturned, the soldiers were no longer guilty and it is now no longer illegal, for queer soldiers, to have sex off-base during off-hours. You know what else happened in 2022? SK aired their first Queer reality shows, one being To Me(a)rry Queer and and the other being His Man. In 2023, His Man 2 will give us our first successful real-life queer couple, who are our beloved couple Junseong and Seongho (together known as Junseongho). They are the first queer couple to ever appear on Dazed magazine and we are all familiar with Dazed, it is not the front page like our boys get, but we all know how big of a deal this is, right?

You know what else happened in 2023? Remember that Daegu Queer Culture Festival I was talking about? The Mayor of Daegu (big Christian sympathiser) tried to stop this festival which includes the Parade and many other events, even though the Court ruled it was okay for the Festival to be carried out. The Mayor gathered other supporters and pulled up to the group, but the Daegu Police protected the Festival and removed the mayor and his “friends” from the premises. This was big and made news worldwide.

In fact, Daegu’s Queer Culture Festival is the second largest one in the country, after Seoul’s. This is mainly possible because the Local Authorities (such as the police) are quite independent in belief from their present Mayor and the Christian factions. In contrast, for example, Busan’s Queer Culture Festival had a two year run but was then cancelled in 2019. Unfortunately, in Busan, The Mayor, the Local Authorities and the Christian factions are buddy-buddies making it much harder to get protection and permissions, aaaaaand things like that, kids, is why it is super important to vote for your local administration as well.

Even though these are all very important stepping stones, SK is nowhere close to being the UK, obviously. The LGBTQ community still has to get all their core rights being legalised, and queer people can still be subject to random ass attacks, such as the singer Holland had in 2022, which, by the way, also still occasionally does happen in the UK and everywhere else in the Queer World. Which is a general minority reality I’m afraid.

Furthermore, it is still illegal to have sex on base, which the country maintains that they are upholding because they are trying to prevent possible sexual assaults not too mad about this tbh, which is a valid concern, but most importantly they now know that the world is watching and why is that important? Because, for example, even though they are now separated, one of the boys from the Me(a)rry Queer couples enlisted around the same time with JK & JM and from his posts and photo-booth pictures that other soldiers posted of him, he seems to be making friends and to be comfy as comfy as you can get while serving, kinda like Joonie and most likely JM & JK

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Not quite the attitude of someone fearing a witch-hunt, right? But then again, there isn’t much to hunt when you are already out, it is afterall illegal to hunt people and the world is now aware; is there? …

Now back to the general people of SK. According to a survey conducted in 2023 last year, 56% of South Koreans still oppose same-sex marriage (in comparison with only 26% of Japanese). 56% is not bad but then 72% don’t want queer people in their neighbourhoods and workplace, though 81% think that it is not right to terminate people because of their sexual orientation 4 steps ➡️3 steps ⬅️… … … Basically it’s okay to be queer here as in SK, but not here-here, perhaps over there like a queer only neighbourhood or something which at the moment is the Itaewon district.

So yes, 2024 Queer SK is still struggling though they are not going to be overtly nasty about it, because the world is watching. I mean, don’t get me wrong, progress is progress and we love to see that, it is actually amazing, but there still needs to be a general environment where LGBTQ rights in SK need to be recognised and for queer Koreans to not be discriminated against in their social/work/family life. It is also great that Queer media is trying to transition more and more from only BL to actual Queer Drama, for example I am really looking forward to watching Love In The Big City which btw also stars Kim Go Eun.

There is still work to be done, but I think Jung Cueri, a lesbian woman who helps with the Seoul Queer Culture Festival, says it best (here is the full article https://www.dw.com/en/why-are-south-koreans-less-welcoming-of-lgbtq-neighbors/a-68698268 ):

“I think the attitudes of younger generations of Koreans are getting better," she said, pointing out that young LGBTQ+ individuals "tend to come out sooner to their families, in their workplaces and schools than my generation because they are more aware of their sexuality through social media and exposure to various discussions that are more tolerant of LGBTQ+ people." And the cultural festival can help to be a catalyst to change further, she believes. "It will get better," she said. "And that is why the organizers and everyone else involved in the festival are working so hard; they know that Korean society will get better, and they want to contribute to that.

From where I stand it seems Hopeful, Queerful, if you may.

So, Fighting!, Queer South Korea!

Always respectfully yours,

Marengo.

#Rambling in INFJese #Queer SK #Hopeful Queer Struggle #Instagram

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lilietsblog · 1 month ago

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just want to contribute a little something to the anti discourse

so for a while now, arguments in favor of making whatever you want have felt kinda incomplete to me. I mean arguing from the principle of "it doesn't actually harm people while harassment definitely does" is fully valid and very true but that's not all there is to it

what does art do? what is good about art? what IS art?

art is a form of thinking

When you create or perceive art, when you engage with art in any way whatsoever, you are inevitably thinking about what is depicted in it. Your brain is making connections. You are gaining new associations. From conscious philosophizing to subconscious info gathering, you get Thoughts about it.

So this is the question then, people who want to ban every icky topic that makes you upset: do you want people to stop thinking about it? Do you want people to not think about sexual assault? Racism? Abusive relationships? Most of the time people encounter the concept of these things, said out loud and defined as such, in art. In real life you can have an abusive relationship for your entire life and have no clue that's what it is. People who do not experience Nasty Shit are almost exclusively taught how to sympathize with people who do by art. (Their friends and family who experience it are frequently too busy trying to survive said nasty shit to do an educational dance for them)

This is why conservative/oppressive political forces dislike art. It's for the same reason they push back on science that doesn't support their narrative: they don't want people getting ideas. They don't want their children to think anything more than what they tell them! That's why they demand everything "icky" be censored and combed out in the name of thinking about children: you wouldn't want your child to have an opinion on a scary, difficult and complicated topic that you didn't teach them, would you?

This is why the nasty icky art that upsets you so much not only deserves to exist, but needs to. "Don't even think about it" is not a workable harm prevention strategy. Imagine an architect about to build a bridge: if you tell them "don't even THINK about the bridge collapsing", would them actually NOT THINKING about it make the bridge more or less likely to collapse? We are all architects of our own behavior. And we all need to spend some time pondering over notebooks full of calculations of what to do so the bridge stands.

You might ask then, why fiction? Why porn? Why not serious philosophical tomes and psychology textbooks? Why disrespect the serious and important topics so? Why should people play with them?

Well, first, because play is essential to mental wellbeing. We all need to unwind and relax, and for most people philosophical tomes and psychology textbooks are just not something they can fit into their limited rest & relaxation time, not without sacrificing more than they gain in terms of ability to control their mood and behavior. People need to play, and if there's a way to get shit done while playing, well, that's just a productivity hack right there.

Second, more importantly, humans learn best through play. Bat the concept around, try it on like a hat, draw a smiley face on it, then erase it and draw a frowny one instead. Let it permeate your imagination, spread itself around through it, infiltrate your thought patterns. THEN you will remember it. Then you have the material basis to have serious thinky thoughts about it. Basis for comparison. Material for contemplation. Memories of engagement.

And yes, this includes being sexual with it! Sexual thoughts are not actually so sacred, special and separate that they would be importantly different from other sorts of voluntary play. If that's how people want to engage with the material, if that's the toy room their brain conjures most easily, well there's straight up just, nothing wrong with that, is the thing. From the point of view of education and serious thinky thoughts it's just a tumbler you put the thing in to be vibrated and tossed around.

Now, a crucial word here is voluntary. A classroom environment is a whole different beast, that warrants a whole separate discussion. Hopefully nobody out there is proposing to make it mandatory for middle schoolers to read abusive incest pornfic in class out loud; I sure as hell haven't heard this idea from "proshippers". In fact, privacy and comprehensive safeguards to make sure people ONLY engage with what they want are pretty key values to the abusive incest pornfic community.

Do people write abusive incest pornfic in order to make other people think deeply about it and engage with the concept? I mean, not always, and I would venture to guess it's not usually the primary motivation, though I'd guess it's A motivation for more people than you'd imagine offhand. But here's the thing: the fact the primary motivation is different is exactly what creates so much engagement and propagates the thinky thoughts. Few people like to think upsetting thoughts for their own sake on their own free time. Making it play is how you get it out to a wide audience (and what I mean by it, let's just say, the topic as a whole); and yes, abusive incest pornfics don't usually have that wide an audience. What audience they do have benefits from them, though. (Shoutout to Lolita, which did and does have a pretty damn wide audience, and is an abusive incest pornfic if you don't squint too closely at definitions and authorial intent)

And if someone's reference pool is so shallow they don't pick up on the "bad" part where things are bad, well... honestly, the fic community is their best chance to mend this gap in education. Because people who are into writing about bad things often love to not spare any detail in rendering how bad they are. People have figured out they are in a cult from researching how to write about a cult for a fic before.

The purpose of art is play, and the effect of art is thinking.

Thank you for your time.

#the anti discourse #i want to tag this 'art' but that tag contains actual drawn images on my blog #oops #writing #drawing #hopefully this helps with organization lol

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ride-thedragon · 7 months ago

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Nettles, Rhaenyra, Laena, Mysaria, and the Prize that is DAEMON TARGARYEN

Now, I'm not going to sit here and police shipping. I'm also not going to act as though better writers and thinkers long before me haven't talked about the same phenomenon of centring men in women's narratives as a way to value the women. However, as a person in this fandom, I do want to apply this thought to the shipping discourse of Daemon Targaryen because it has become exhausted.

We treat this man as though he's the prize to gain when these women are in relationships with him. In the sense that when Daemon picks these women to have a relationship with they gain a value and devalue the women he leaves behind. We see this with him going:

from Rhea and Mysaria to Laena.

He finally has a Valyrian bride who matches his spirit and can give him Valyrian children. They get along and are of equal standing.

From Laena to Rhaenyra.

He moves on, finds real happiness, finds his true family, becomes the Targaryen he was destined to be with his Targaryen bride at his side, and their Targaryen children with his real family

From Rhaenyra to Mysaria .

Rhaenyra became mournful and wasn't as she once was. Him and Mysaria just have this connection, and Rhaenyra approves.

From Rhaenyra and Mysaria to Nettles.

Daemon finally found someone he could look past himself for. The singers say they end up together. He does all of this and leaves the Rhaenyra to her death because Nettles left. He's finally ready to settle down and grow old. She saved him.

All of this is an overgeneralised hyperbole of conversations I've seen, but they always centre Daemon choosing these women to be in a relationship with as their biggest accomplishment in the narrative. Him at their side is the biggest deal, and when he leaves them, they are discarded and replaced by his new love interest.

The issue with this

Prioritising a man, this man, as the main factor in these relationships, discredit the women who exist outside of him and make it seem as though he's the only thing that adds value to them. The language being used, in short, dismisses their personhood and equates them to something he can own, discard and replace at whim, and he alone adds value to them. It's icky language especially with his game card.

Lady Rhea: wasn't even her choice. She hated him and refused to give him an heir to inherit Runestone. In the show, she makes sure he returns and kills her by insulting his sexual prowess.

Mysaria: is complicit and involved in his worst action but always ensures she pulls herself up with it. Being his courtesan made her wealthy, almost made her his wife. Then she's complicit in blood and cheese and gets herself promoted to the Lady of Whispers to the Queen, eventually putting an end to him.

Laena: CLAIMED THE LARGEST DRAGON IN THE WORLD AS A TEEN. Is quite literally the mother of the girls that survived the Dance. Her blood inherits her house's seat.

Rhaenyra: Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Had men avenge her death, and her son sat on the iron throne after her.

Nettles: created the religion that forged the most dangerous tribe in the Vale of Arryn. Claimed a wild dragon and committed alleged treason and escaped.

I'm not saying Daemon isn't important. I'm not saying he doesn't play a part. I'm saying that when we have these conversations about him and these women and the progression of his relationships with them, I hope we can reach a place where the idea that he leaves them isn't a jab or joke against one woman for the sake of the one he chooses. It's getting strange.

Women don't lose value because of a man. Ever.

This also applies to Baela and her adaptation in the show. She isn't uninteresting because she isn't a tomboy or like Daemon. They make her a political girl in the show and like Laena. That's not a loss. She's modelled after Rhaenys as well. She's just reflective of the women in her life. I'm sure she'll have a relationship to Daemon as well, but she's the Ward of Driftmark. That's quite interesting. We also have tomboys like Alysanne and Sabitha, so we aren't in a deficit by any means.

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intogenshin · 2 months ago

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time to talk about kaveh hate

Everyone's allowed to dislike characters and criticize the writing around them, but we also should ideally remember genshin impact is a game that takes a lot of its inspiration from real life cultures and we have to be careful not to accidentally direct those negative feelings towards the cultural elements portrayed by these characters.

We share the same fandom spaces with the people whose cultures are used, none of us would feel comfortable if a part of our personal or collective identity were to be belittled simply because we disapprove of a character. More importantly, by virtue of these elements belonging to a culture, they are subject to take a political tone (everything in life is political at the end of the day) and we might unknowingly participate in certain discourses if we're not careful.

Kaveh is a character inspired by Iranian culture, it is apparent by his design. I think everyone understands that if one were to belittle or make fun of these aesthetic elements it can be misunderstood as belittling and making fun of the real life culture that inspired them.

Nobody does that, because the connection is very obvious, but then there's more subtle elements that deserve equal respect. Such as: his characterization, which you might like or dislike, it's up to you, but criticism should avoid condescending shit like this

Kaveh's conception of good and evil and how he approaches them with his actions might have been easily inspired by the philosophy of Zoroastrian beliefs. The very concept of this duality influenced the abrahamic religions that we tend to be more familiar with (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) but unlike those, in Zoroastrianism the point is to be able to choose.

Zoroastrianism teaches a life based on (1) the avoidance of evil, through rigorous discrimination between good and evil, and (2) the service of wisdom through the cherishing of seven ideals. These latter are personified as seven immortal, beneficent spirits: Ahura Mazdāhimself, conceived as the creative ‘holy’ spirit; Sublime Truth; Virtuous Power; Good Purpose/Mind; Beneficent Piety; Wholeness/Health and, finally, Immortality. Evil originates neither from God nor from his creatures, but from a wholly other source, personified as Angra Mainyu, the ‘Hostile Spirit’, whose existence is ritually and doctrinally rejected as being pretended and parasitic. Real existence is solely the domain of Ahura Mazdāand his creation; Angra Mainyu and his demons are actually states of negativity, denial or, as the religion puts it, ‘the Lie’.

The motto of the religion, "good thoughts, good words, good deeds", and is placed at the center of the faith.

The core beliefs of Zoroastrianism lie in the choice that humans must make in the dualistic struggle between good and evil. This is because human beings have free will and must choose who they will follow: Ahura Mazda, or his nemesis, the evil spirit Angra Mainyu (also known as Ahriman).

We can observe how this concept plays into Kaveh's character in the way he always chooses to do right by others (even when it's detrimental for himself) which is the core of Zoroastrian philosophy. Kaveh deliberately chooses to put good in the world with good thoughts, good words and good deeds.

This is a respectful and admirable trait to exercise in Zoroastrianism. Belittling it as being a "blind judgment" based on what "a small mind can conceive" might be your opinion in isolation, but in the context of this game which is heavily inspired by actual cultures and portrays this inspiration through its characters can redirect that negativity towards the culture itself.

And things like misunderstanding the choice Kaveh makes in Parade of Providence to spare the world of the suffering that Sachin's research would eventually cause again, even if it meant he had to resign the inheritance he rightfully had earned, for censorship that you consider disturbing might as well prevent you from truly understanding the narrative of story itself.

If you disagree with this kind of philosophy, it can easily be expressed in respectful manners, nobody's forcing anyone to agree with the worldview represented by Kaveh and other characters offer their own arguments against it. Just don't be a dick about it.

More context on Zoroastrianism:

Before Iran suffered through a process of forced acculturation, its own religion was Zoroastrianism. It remains today an element of cultural pride, national identity and a form of political resistance, given how people who still practice it continue to be persecuted for it.

Hoyo might not have meant to make a politically charged statement when they involved Zoroastrian elements into the world building of their game, but the religion is so important in terms of national identity that just by being portrayed it becomes meaningful, especially for Iranian players who value its incorporation.

How do you think it looks when you belittle aspects of Kaveh's character that can be associated with this very religion?

#haino #cytham #kaveh

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