#but fictional fantasies are fine because it’s not actually going to harm her

[area51-escapee]

YOU hate booktok books because you can’t conceptualize what a fantasy is and think these readers need therapy and professional help for enjoying dark topics in explicit material even though it takes exactly .2 seconds to understand the difference between something that is interesting and exciting in fiction and something that would be deeply unpleasant in real life. I hate booktok books because they all feel like overhyped copy and pastes of one another, the amount of bigotry that goes unchecked in these stories is astounding, and I also get tired of this attitude that if something isn’t 🔥spicy🔥 it’s boring and not worth reading. We are not the same.

[achaotichuman]

ACOTAR Fandom Rant

Trigger Warning- Discussions of sexual abuse.

I think some people forget that even if a book is in the fantasy genre, you cannot just say "it's fiction, so it doesn't matter" there still needs to be rules to the world. It cannot all be a free for all, there needs to be consistency. When you make a rule for the world, it needs to apply to everyone, your world needs to serve the story, not the other way around. Everything has to revolve around moving the plot forward, and part of this is how your society functions and treats certain experiences, including experiences like SA.

You can have books that stretch the boundaries of what is and what is not acceptable in your fantasy, but, it has to make sense within the world and you have to be consistent.

This goes for Rhysand, Nesta and Feyre. All of them were SAed by their captors of the time. Amarantha put Rhysand into a position where to avoid harm and gain even a little bit of autonomy he had to have sex with her. Rhysand put Feyre in a position where she was forced to do lewd acts for him and in front of people whilst (practically) naked, until she vomited. Cassian took advantage of Nesta being in a vulnerable position, knowing she had been using sex as a means to self-harm, to have borderline violent sex with her.

It's SA across the board, even though SJM cannot for the life of her admit that. Idk why she keeps writing about SA when she cannot at all, but she does. However, it's not right, and no one should be picking and choosing like she is within the series.

SJM is unable to create good world-building and handle these kinds of experiences with the delicacy and respect they deserve. And no one should be trying to do the same as she is, by attempting to say one character's SA was not valid when it was.

I'm not trying to comment on anyone in particular, but I wanted to comment on this idea as a whole. Because I think it does come down to people picking and choosing because of who their favourite characters are, which is fine and dandy, but the discussion is revolving around what actually happened in canon. And what happened in canon, is that Amarantha raped Rhysand for fifty years. Full-stop. There is no argument. Like there should be no argument for Feyre and for Nesta.

Amarantha had all the power over Rhysand. Like Rhysand had all the power over Feyre, and Cassian had all the power over Nesta.

In each situation, Rhysand, Feyre and Nesta had been forcibly removed from their homes, put in a place where they were locked up and emotionally and physically vulnerable, and all choice was stripped from them.

Amarantha had enslaved Rhysand. Rhysand had taken control of Feyre. Cassian was the equivalent of Nesta's prison guard.

Even though it is fiction. Fiction has the ability to explore these kinds of topics. They are very real, and have very real consequences.

Fiction can stretch boundaries, it can go well beyond what we consider morally right irl, but a good fictional writer will still implement rules and keep consistency with their writing.

There is no morality in fiction but there is a massive difference between a poorly written book and a really well-written book. And there is a difference between genuine discussion and commentary on media and invalidation of experiences, even when it comes to fictional characters, because as I mentioned above these are very very real situations and when it comes to big authors, what they write, can have a very real effect on people.

All this to say, Sarah.J.Maas is a horrible writer, she lacks any kind of consistency and cannot keep up with her own rules. But instead of picking and choosing, and invalidating one experience whilst upholding another, we can look at her writing as an example of how not to handle themes of SA when it comes to the victims in her books.

[roadhogsbigbelly]

she did NOT say that fictional csa is fine though, that’s the thing that everyone is very expressly telling you. and IM not defending ““people who jack off to fictional children”” either, where the fuck are you getting that, do you just say this shit to every trans woman you see? you can’t argue by putting shit in people’s mouths. the “standards” you are describing are the same standards that the people you’re smearing agree with. im not saying its all or nothing at all, you just can’t take anything we’re saying seriously

when you read "stopping being mean to sex freaks who like ageplay and incest shipping" why do you think that suddenly stops at loliporn or fictional csa when that's part of the package? do you think "ageplay and incest shipping" only applied to game and thrones fanfiction and mild "daddy" play? like of course those posts saying "don't be say you love sex freaks if you don't include ALL sex freaks" is also including fictional csa, like fucking cailou porn or whatever. because the posts those are response to are like "stop being mean about people with weird fetishes that make you uncomfortable! (except fictional csa fuck you you can die)" if she's not supporting fictional csa great, but why did she reblog the fucking post than?

and again the fact that i criticized her has nothing to do with her being a trans woman, that didn't even cross my mind, and i've criticized cis men, cis women, trans men, non binary people and people of all genders and sexuality that have been dismissive of concerns over this shit. i've criticized cis women on twitter for publicly posting their weird underaged boy rape fantaties and i got accused of "hating women's fantasies", i've also critcized other cis gay men for drawing actual "toddlercon" and got accused of being a "pick me" gay, and other variations of "stop criticizing grown adults for what they do in private even if they post in publicly actually oops"

i don't actually care what people do in the privacy of their own homes, but the only reason people on tumblr make posts about how "you should stop being mean to people about their age play, incest porn" is because most people don't actually keep it private actually, or else other people wouldn't be seeing it and complain about it. like if you go into someone's dms or a locked private space to "out them" for being into scooby doo or even some actually more harmful fantasy than that's still kind of gross and intruding and they shouldn't do that, but if said person is doing it in a PUBLIC FORUM than yeah they're not above criticism because it's their own "private fantasies" when it's clearly not.

(and before you take words out of my mouth i am not inherently against public displays of sexuality or even kink, i don't think a child seeing a man in a pup mask and harness is going to tramatize them, i think they'll be fine, and in general i think try to hide the fact "sex" like. exists from children does not nothing to deter grooming and kind of causes it in some cases. i've seen people insisting that people who don't lock their nsfw twitter accounts of adults have regular but explicit sex that they're are personally grooming children who might have to figure out porn exists, and i think that's an unhealthy attitude to have. my point is more that the entire argument that noone can criticize or have a negative opinion on "ageplay" or "incest kink" because "it only exists between two private consenting adults" is just. not true.)

[ellmaii]

I’d like to make something very clear. I do NOT have a problem with Byler. You might disagree and that’s fine but I think the ship is one sided attraction. That’s MY opinion.

My problem is with everyone who is trying to manipulate and twist events in the show to feed their own Byler fancies. It’s not only annoying and ignorant but sometimes harmful.

Tumblr is a place that seems to attract people who have difficulties in their personal lives. That doesn’t apply to everyone but for a lot of people it does.

-people throwing accusations of homophobia. I don’t need to explain this one, It doesn’t go amiss

-People being ebleist (not always intentionally). Eleven has disability. You can say she’s ‘just’ traumatised and uneducated but it’s clearly had a profound impact on many areas in life. Trauma itself can cause that. ‘A disability is any condition of the body or mind (impairment) that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do certain activities (activity limitation) and interact with the world around them (participation restrictions).’

-Disregarding and invalidating trauma and grief. “She lies to him because she doesn’t feel like she can be herself around him” “he can’t say he loves her because he actually loves Will” “she didn’t look happy when he confessed his feeling to her because she realised she didn’t love him like that” “Mike didn’t look happy when she said I love you too” Not everything is related directly to their relationships, Im sorry but it’s not. How people behave and respond to situations often goes deeper than what they’re actually arguing over that minute and these characters and their past go wayyy deeper than that. You can disagree but you don’t have to twist everything and anything to make it about Byler.

-No platforming. It’s dangerous. Don’t refuse to engage in a balanced debate because it crushes your Byler fantasies (same goes for Mileven). Sharing opinions and debating them is how we learn, but do them in a way that is respectful and sticks to facts. Not made up facts, if it’s not confirmed then ‘I think’ or ‘from my opinion’ are appropriate to use before sharing. Those are opinions, fell free to share opinions but don’t state them as fact.

-Open lack of compassion. Some of you love to criticise Eleven because she gets in the way of Byler. You can dislike her but at least try to understand her feelings and behaviour. Again, stop invalidating. She’s been severely abused and neglected her entire life, Im sorry if you find her “annoying” or “a bad girlfriend” but grow up

If you haven’t realised by now this post itself goes deeper than Byler and Mileven. It’s about respect. People like to use their fandoms as an escape and a coping strategy. Don’t call people homophobic for sharing an opposing opinion. How do you think child abuse victims or people with autism or learning difficulty or dealing with grief feel when coming across anti-Mileven post that invalidate Elevens issues or use them against her to further their own ideology. The lack of compassion and understanding then the refusal to educate themselves. All for what, to promote a freaking Tv show couple??

We grow attachments to fictional characters often because we can relate to them on a personal level. What you say about a fictional character can make someone feel bad about themselves. It can cause offence to people who love somebody who they think are similar to the fictional character.

We all have different opinions and fell free to share them, it’s how we learn and grow as people, but be considerate and educate yourselves first instead of spreading ignorance. And most importantly, STOP using these things for the purpose of promoting a freaking relationship between fictional characters. For example, saying El can’t understand romantic relationships and isn’t ready for one. If you believe that that’s fine and I respect it. However, it is completely irrelevant to Byler so don’t use it and point it out solely to feed your own fancies.

[bookishfeylin]

r.hys being forced into a “good guy that does bad things” role made him, as a character, so confusing and inconsistent. i feel like all the good things he does (which are few and far between) don’t fit his personality. or maybe it feels wrong because it feels performative? almost like his mask *is* the “good guy” role and he only wears it around feyre. it would’ve been more interesting to kick the f.eysand mate bond and fully lean into the “bad guy who sometimes does good things” role. i would love to hear your opinion on this, if it’s not something you’ve discussed before <3

Hello nonny!

I actually have a lot of thoughts about this. Rhysand definitely does read much more like a bad guy who occasionally does good things rather than the other way around, which is interesting because in ACOMAF Feyre begins to think she's the same as him when she's really... not. Feyre is very much a good guy who occasionally does bad things to survive, at least until ACOWAR and beyond where Rhysand's influence has her actually doing heinous things like displace millions of innocent people to punish her ex and lock up her sister. But again, she explicitly is encouraged to do those things and is deterred from criticizing those actions, even when she feels guilt and acknowledges how she may have harmed others, by Rhysand, and as I've said before it reeks of him grooming her to act like he does.

But at any rate, I definitely agree that Rhysand is the bad guy who does good things on occasion. Now, I am not going to name names, but many of the worst people in world history all throughout time have had a handful of people, or even a city or a country, they cared about or even loved. Does loving a handful of people mean that you're secretly a good person despite being a mass murderer or whatever? No. So I don't get why ACOMAF tries to make us think he is. It's ok! Rhysand is the bad guy! Commit to it! He molested Feyre for months while she was drunk and sexually assaulted her to "hide her paint smudges." He mind-rapes Feyre. He's killed an innumerable amount of people as Amarantha's right hand man. "He was just following orders" now where have I heard that excuse before in real life. hmmmmm He opts to employ a torturer to gain information rather than simply... read people's minds??? He refuses to enforce his "progressive" laws so bigotry runs unchecked in his court. He brings Morrigan's abusers into Velaris without checking with her first. He grooms his wife into being a carbon copy of him, influencing her to displace millions of innocents and lock up her sister. And his secrecy almost gets her killed in childbirth! Rhysand is a BAD PERSON who happens to occasionally do good things for the people he likes. And that is fine! Because it's fiction! If Sarah could just let this be a dark fantasy romance series instead of attempting to comment on real world issues like domestic violence please

[neechees]

Your review of that racist whitewashed Native American book is exactly why I have mixed feelings about the concept of the literary genre of historical fiction

That's fair. Personally I really like historical fiction & it's probably my favorite genre to read, but where I think I start disliking certain books in the genre is when people invented specific things & go WAY outside of actual historical events specifically for drama (which is what Rose Christo did with her shitty book) or maybe even to push an agenda.

Like, something like inventing minor characters to fill a specific role in the story (but don't actually majorly affect the historical events in the plot) but didn't exist in real life to me personally is fine. Creating scenes for the book that we don't 100% know happened (but maybe there's some small evidence or rumors it did) in real life & then maybe imagining how it MIGHT have went down if it did, I can roll with that. Adding some filler scenes like character interactions that show character development or just add interest where historically nothing major happened but the scenes themselves don't depict any major historical event (so the scene doesn't have any major bearing on the plot & doesnt change anything that happened historically), I'm fine with that too, because who's to say it definitely DIDN'T happen either? Or even things like if you have to suspend your belief a bit, where it probably wasn't historically plausible, but it's happening in this book.

But in books like Christo's, where almost every major historical event is changed completely down to the details, & the historical context for why those things happened are completely disregarded, & the necessary research to create an engaging historical fiction book is the quality equivalent to the effort of a middle schooler who hates history, & then the real historical figures' lives and personalities are barely included for the book at all or are even completely changed solely for the sake of drama, then like.... why are you even writing a historical fiction book?? Do you even like history?? At this point why not just write alternative historical fiction or historical fantasy or just straight up fantasy if you're going to completely change everything that actually happened in history?

& then obviously there's the "pushing an agenda" books, but that can be another can of worms as well. I don't really like the alternative historical fiction genre, but at least they have the guts to call it what it is, ALTERNATIVE history. Rose Christo's book diverted SO far away from the actual historical events that actually happened, she should have just called it alternative history but she didnt. & that's also where I think it can get harmful, because even if it IS called historical "fiction", there'll be people who become misinformed about some of the information there, like most people aren't going to know a majority of the Cree cultural & spiritual stuff mentioned in Christo's book was either completely made up or wrong the way I did. And I think part of the reason why so many people gave it such a high rating is because they don't know Canadian history that well, nevermind CREE history in Canada, nor do they know about Cree culture, so for all they know this was a pretty faithful retelling.

Obviously people are going to misinterpret books no matter what, and everyone should question what facts might be made up or misinformation in historical fiction or even just history books (I feel like that's a given, everyone should do that regardless), and it's not always the author's fault what people might misinterpret from what theyve written. But I can also see why you'd dislike Historical Fiction, & that's some of what I dislike about it too

[mallowstep]

Hii! Previous shipping discourse anon here after doing some Thinking(tm). I think the problem that people see in proshippers is not that it *is* dark or deals with sensitive topics, but that's its weirdly...fetish-y? Like, there's a specific breed of anti that I don't like that's that's kaeluc antis(basically, sworn bros v adopted bros)(because their entire argument is a bit sinophobic) but there are ppl who will go out of their way to make them adopted bros anyway so. You can Tell it's a fetish

Oh man I vaguely remember when we were talking about kaeluc on here. Still know Nothing about it but I remember it (for some reason) came up.

…or I read about it on another blog?

Whatever. More to the point.

I’m a strong defender of “it’s cool to like dark fiction just because you enjoy it.” I don’t think anyone needs a justification. We don’t demand people explain why they like watching action movies with blood and death, do we?

But also I know exactly what you mean. Like. Eurgh. I am way too tired to explain my very complex thoughts about human sexuality. But for one thing, adopted siblings falling in love is like. A really old trope. Do I like it? No. Is it a thing? For some reason! (S/o to Cassandra Claire for letting me accidentally read her weird incest fantasy books.) But okay, I think I can say…

There are people who write things purely for porn purposes. I try not to judge those too much, with a few exceptions, mostly what I referenced earlier.

Then there are people exploring themes etc. Which is like. That’s what I do. Actually it’s funny that you used that example because one of my fic ideas includes the line “Why do I want to call you my brother when we’re having sex?” (It’s a joke in context, but explaining that context is beyond the point.) So like yeah they are generally speaking fine in my book.

And then there’s the middle ground where things get murky. It’s clearly not someone just writing something for the purposes of getting off, but it’s also not a sincere exploration. It’s…yeah, it’s something else.

I’m too tired to really wrap this up. Lemme try anyway.

I think a lot of people…okay, this goes back in part to media literacy, but there’s also some current cultural factors here, but a lot of people struggle to separate their intrinsic disgust from actual risk. It’s like — there was a spider living in my bathroom for a while. It kind of terrified me at first but the spider is just chilling. The spider is not an actual harm to me.

And as an author, sometimes I just want to make people feel revulsed and disgusted. God knows I’m familiar enough with the feeling.

Okay I am literally falling asleep as I type. Hopefully this makes sense? I am so exhausted, it’s been a Rough Ass Week in ya boy.

Maybe like. In reference to my previous comment on Lolita, I want people to understand the disgust they feel in response is part of the stories. Stories are meant to be felt. Sometimes horror is part of the feeling.

Oh my god I cannot keep my eyes open why did I think this was a good idea.

I really don’t have a label in the discourse. I don’t care what I am labeled as, so as long as it doesn’t involve misinformation.

K that’s all for tonight but I’ll check my inbox for you in the morning nonnie

[impeccablebackside]

You think the Queens would use a more animalistic dildo like a dog or horse? Imagine them getting knotted

Do I have permission to be a bit of a furry, uwu? Is this a safe space?

Can y'all promise not to be too weird about this? I know it will be fine though.

Deal? Deal. Thanks for your patronage. *gives head pats*

To start off, there has been a fair bit of talk about toys / dildos / vibrators / strap-ons / other paraphernalia on this blog over the years, so I do ask that you read over some good posts about solo toy fun, toy usage during sex, pegging (which even got to be part of one of my fics), and / or pussy pumps if you are interested.

Along with those, someone has also asked about if anyone is a size queen, and I think those thoughts bridge any talk about toys and the topic of this ask pretty nicely. Expanding past ideas to include fairly specific kinks or adding some extra fetishism is all good in my opinion, and I will say that your ask is not an unwelcomed one at all anon. I like have new things to talk about.

As a bit of background, I will freely admit that I am a furry in a loose sense and have been for quite a while. Nothing to be ashamed of in my opinion. I do not really consider myself fully devoted at all, as I am much more of an interested outsider to that fandom than anything else. Regardless, the appreciation is always there. I mention this because I think anthropomorphic characters, not unlike those in Cats, are pretty damn hot. There is something spicy about having the conflation of animal qualities and human qualities together, and if someone were to think that is fucked up or questionable, I totally understand their opinion. It is not simply furries or fictional characters either that are worthy of interest or lust. I think cosplay and petplay, especially kittenplay (if that is not the most obvious thing on earth), is really quite hot. Slap some cat ears and a tail on any girl and they are automatically better (to me). Catgirls are the fucking hottest thing ever.

Anyway, all of that being said, bringing in animal shaped dildos does play into my professed enjoyment of anthro characters or cosplay(ish) ideas because it simply is adding another related thing to expand the fun and pleasure. It is completely removed from anything getting too animal-focused just to be clear. Dog and horse dildos, amongst other 'fantasy' creatures, do exist in the human world. Not just a little bit either, there are all kinds and sizes of fake cocks and pussies to explore alongside porn of such toys in action. While I think that is always going to ruffle some non-animal's feathers, I do not personally see the harm in it. Hell, if there were toys modelled to look like any of the queens, I would be definitely interested.

Importantly, I think the most pertinent thing to consider is size for the dildo, as I have seen (online) some really big toys that are simply comically large. Those are too extreme for me, so the answers for this ask will be about 'regular' sized toys modelled as closely to nature as possible (or maybe a bit smaller for the horse). I am not going to be naïve and think that whoever makes such 'fantasy' toys got some of the measurements and such out of thin air - there is a bit of grey-area fuckery (pun intended - not actual) to how they make realistic animal sex toys, and I am not going down that road.

Regardless, in terms of if any of the queens would even use dildos, it will always be a bit contentious to me just how human they are, and whether something like sex toys are even a thing in their world, but honestly life is too short to get hung up on specifics. There has been enough great thoughts about the usage of toys up to this point to even remotely stop now (not that I would).

Here it is by queen, so don ye feral (but not like that) apparel and get wild:

Vic does not dabble in toys very much, particularly with her mans. Together they are much too interested in the other to bring anything else into their sex, and they certainly do not need it. Toys come into play with infrequent solo masturbation when she really needs something more than just her paws, but even then the lifelessness is a bit of a mood killer. The point where it gets enjoyable to have toys for her is with Rumple. The calico brings out the playful and adventurous excitement in the white queen, and they will share toys either together or by using them on the other (I really need to make a fic about that anon - the ideas are there). Vic is sensitive down there, so usually Rumple knows to go slowly to avoid over-doing it.

On a particularly special day, Rumple will tell Vic to lay down on her back like she always does when they play around with toys, slowly introducing the white queen to new things as a surprise without showing her them first. This time, the dildo feels different shape-wise, but not too usual. Rumple is slowly fucking her with a dog dildo by hand, going deeper and harder as Vic warms to it. When the white queen moans more and more (and for more), the calico will ask if she is indeed ready for more. Unaware as to what exactly she means by that, Vic will agree. Sliding the dildo in and out of Vic's wet and pink pussy a few more times, Rumple will then be a bit overzealous when she gives it all to the other queen. Forcing the knotted end into Vic to a small extent, the white queen instantly cums hard with a loud scream after it pops into her. Stretching her very tight pussy more than she is used to, the white queen is in shambles as her legs flail wildly from the intrusion and rush of pleasure. After a fairly stern look down at the calico between her legs for surprising her a bit too much, Vic asks for it to come out because she is too blitzed for more and is finding it to be a touch uncomfortable. Without realizing that it will happen, as Rumple tries her best to carefully pull it out, Vic ends up cumming just as hard when it comes out, the knot popping out to the white queen pressing her legs together as another orgasm ruins her. She will be more cautious next time the smaller queen says she has something new to show her, but keeps it secret that the sensation of being filled and stretched a bit was rather thrilling. Anything more than this is a no though.

Rumple is into whatever she can get her paws on and fuck. Willing to try anything (at least once), she is keen to see what new toys feel like as she finds them. Similar to the more impassioned times when she fingered herself and got carried away with hand insertion, Rumple prefers to be alone when she uses a new dildo. With the dog toy, she works her way up to taking the knot, possibly slipping her fingers in with the thinner portion of the dildo to adjust to some stretch beforehand. When she is ready, she will stretch out her tight pussy that is begging for more and slide over the wide end. As with Vic, the sudden pressure makes her cum right away, and she groans to herself as the pleasure washes over her. Leaving it in for a few moments, she will feel around her pussy to appreciate how it fills her before slowly pulling it out. As the knot is slipping out, Rumple will cum again at the final stretch, rubbing at her throbbing clit.

Rumple would absolutely try a (smaller) horse dildo, but it would still end up being too big for her to do too much. Not that she would give up easily by any means though. Standing it up on the floor, and forcing her pussy against it as she squats, she will push her body in an attempt to take some of it. Once the flared head slides in and she bottoms out from just a fraction of its total length, she is convulsing at the pleasure shooting through her as she cums while barely being able to stand up to support herself. Slumping forward to free herself, she is careful to adjust her legs so that she does not stretch her tight heat more than she needs, with the dildo sliding out to undignified squeals from the queen.

Tanto, no matter how much others may tell her otherwise or of the potential pleasure that is out there, refuses to use toys or dildos. Aside from rare caveats with strap-ons, where someone is actually putting the effort in to fuck her, or times when she will hump pillows, or get off using water, she is purely a paws and mouth kind of queen. Plus, she does find the idea of animal shaped toys to be too much hedonism and hubris of whoever makes them to emulate nature. Also, the idea of pushing her body to take more than it was created for kills her interest very quickly.

Cass is not keen on the dog dildo. The shape and connotations just do not do it for her. Though, she will try out the horse dildo while it is mounted to a wall, fucking it like crazy while on all fours. Going hard and fast immediately, the way it fills her and stretches her walls slightly is dizzying. Reserving it for rare occasions, she gets immense pleasure from pushing (or meeting) her physical limits and fucking herself raw. Not only that, she gets so wet, with her creamy grool coating the dildo and running down her thighs as her perfect puffy pussy swells until she cannot take it anymore. One final push over the dildo after she cums makes her see stars from overstimulation, her body shaking at how much she is fucked out.

Bomba is the most purely 'normal' size queen in the junkyard. She loves being so completely filled up while in her lust, but would not go for more extreme sizing. Either way, she would try both of the mentioned dildos, enjoying how they differ and how they feel to her. Although, without someone else involved, it falls a bit flat and is not nearly as fulfilling (emphasis on filling) as when Tugger fucks her good or when she is DP'ed. For her the idea is greater than the result with toys.

For Deme, it is a no. Between experiences with two (or more) well endowed toms, she just does not see the appeal. Munk is big enough to get her off no problem any day anyway. Although, maybe if she was able to find a dildo that matches Macavity's (an animal of sorts) size and shape, she would be less coy. She would cum like crazy if it could hit all the spots in the same way as he once did. If it was possible, she would choose to roughly fuck herself with it when the cravings for him get too much too ignore. The results are huge and powerful squirts that quell any burning until the yearnings inevitably return.

Jenny could take either of them, and realistically any toy for that matter. A size queen in the more extreme sense of the term, she can stretch her pussy out more than any other queen. However, the desire is not really there. Something about knowing she could take big toys lessens the appeal. Though, she would be keen to feel what it would be like to take on both at same time, either with a DP or both in her gaped pussy.

Jelly, maybe surprisingly, would welcome a bit of stretch. She likes being fisted, so it is another thing to push her limits. Although, she would get the most out of it from a degradation mixed with pet play standpoint. Roleplaying as a Pollicle, she would get fucked with the dog dildo from behind by a partner while they lay on the dirty talk on how she is a bad girl. Jelly loves that type of shit, and the taking the knot makes her feel like such a dirty slut.

[queerstudiesnatural]

yes obviously twilight is ~problematic~ too. its depiction of the quileute tribe is racist, meyer's insistence on the drop-dead gorgeous vampires needing to have white skin is racist, and both jacob and edward fall in love with children. i'm not saying any of these are good messages, and in all honesty yes the racist part is irredeemable (the only saving grace is maybe the popularity of twilight bringing attention to largely ignored and abused indigenous communities, although it seems not to be the right kind of attention).

but vampires aren't real. the concept of imprinting isn't real. edward and jacob don't teach readers that falling in love with children is good because those situations are entirely unrealistic and fictional. robert pattinson isn't actually 104, no one is going to look at him and go oh yeah i'm gonna date century old men. it's fine. it's a vampire fantasy. and bella being weaker than edward and him feeling like he needs to protect her isn't due to her being a girl and him being a boy, it's due to her being human. when she becomes a vampire she's actually stronger than him and he's very happy to know and accept that.

overall, i think the "bad" messages in twilight are a lot easier to spot and therefore avoid.

harry potter however is a lot more sneaky about its misogyny and racism. there's so much going on that you barely notice it. and when you do it's framed as good and/or normal. hermione and ginny are not like other girls and make fun of whiny clingy glittery girly girls like lavender or fleur. girly girls are cringe. cho is crying about her dead boyfriend again?? how embarrassing. get over it already. dudley is mean but more importantly he's fat and that's why we hate him. the school is based in scotland but somehow there's only one scottish student, one irish student, no welsh students, and everyone else is english. ron says that house elves like being enslaved and since he's the one who's known the magical world all his life, harry (and therefore the reader) believes him. hermione doesn't know what she's talking about and is in fact hurting the elves by trying to free them. being free from slavery leads to bitterness and alcoholism. these elves just don't know what to do with their lives if they're not being slaves. goblins are actually a primitive and inferior race and it must be true because bill weasley says it.

characters in harry potter are always saying and doing things that are extremely harmful and downright mean and/or bigoted but it's all framed positively because it's the main characters doing it. the good guys can be bullies, as a treat. snape was a creep for pursuing lily against her wishes - duh, he was poor and his hair was greasy. but james potter was a stud for pursuing lily against her wishes because he was rich and handsome. these things are all internalised by the reader, especially if you grew up and read the books in the 2000s when we weren't as quick to dissect the underlying social messages in media. i internalised all of that myself. it took me years to deconstruct my internalised misogyny and cultural biases, and i'm not saying harry potter is responsible for all of them, but as someone who was obsessed with the series for years, it did influence my worldview a lot.

and i'll end it on this: jkr's transphobia didn't come out of nowhere and is deeply rooted in misogyny. she is deeply attached to the gender binary and to the idea that femininity is weakness and superficial, and that men and women are fundamentally at war against each other. people with penises must want to hurt poor defenceless women, and therefore any ~man pretending to be a woman~ is a spy seeking to infiltrate enemy lines to gain access to women and hurt them more easily. her paranoia stems from her conviction that women are weaker and that your assigned gender is your faction, in competition and battle against the other faction.

i'm gonna say it i genuinely believe that harry potter taught way more harmful messages to girls and young people than twilight ever did, and i'm being 100% serious like this is something i've thought about at length and have also experienced firsthand

[lutawolf]

I need to address this because it bothers me that much. I'm not going to call out anyone. I'm just going to give my opinion.

"If you see someone justifying THOSE shows that claim to be part of the BDSM community, I call BS. The BDSM community knows consent, they have to.... torture/kidnappings/etc. From my experience, most in that community are FIERCELY against SA" We'll give them credit for at least not using triggering words.

I am part of the kink community. If you doubt me. That's fine, that's your right. So, for those with an open mind here is some info on me. I joined the community when I was 19, my mentor is a mutual on here. To which people have seen her collaborate my story. I've been in a lifestyle D/s relationship for over 17 years. I'm not only into D/s but S&M.

Kinksters motto is absolutely Safe, Sane, And Consensual. As an SA myself, you bet your ass I'm against it. I am not against Kinnporsche, LITA, or others. Why? Because it's fucking fiction. It's art and I can recognize that. People have the right to express their feelings through art or live vicariously through art. You can not like it. That's fine but you don't get to dictate because you don't like something. Let me ask you, who is it harming? Don't tell me the queer community because this same type of art is shown in straight media all the time. If you are going to hold queer media to a higher standard, than you are part of the problem. You are perpetuating a system that would have us treated differently.

Now, it would be an issue if any of this was not recognized as problematic behavior. That's not what is going on here. We all know that we wouldn't want to meet Vegas in real life and what he did was fucked up. We all admit that Pai slides into unacceptable in real life. No one is denying the problems. In some cases we don't give a fuck and maybe some are living vicariously through art. In others maybe it's stimulating critical thinking skills in order for us to see the grey outside of black and white.

"They've dealt with the stereotypes of wanting to abduct some stranger to sexually torture them"

That's actually a kink dude. There are kinksters who are into role play of non-consent or abduction and even torture. I personally don't cause that isn't for me and wow would I flash back. However, I know individuals who have them. They don't hurt people. Some have a difficult time explaining why they have them and they feel guilty enough without someone saying they're a problem. True people of the community and allies don't put down other kinksters. Even if it's not our flavor, we strive to understand. BDSM isn't where you work out your problems but no one can deny that there is a psychological connection to what we do. I say bravo to the individuals who do this in the SAFEST, SANE, AND CONSENSUAL manner in which they can. Which is to live vicariously through fantasy.

"No, those individuals probably just enjoy fluffy handcuffs and think THAT'S kinky"

I know that I personally made comments about fluffy handcuffs and I'm sorry. I apologize to anyone offended by my comments. I was up in my feels because it felt this person was saying I wasn't community that I let it blind me. It's unacceptable to judge another kinkster. Light play is still kink. I know plenty of people who have fluffy handcuffs and a paddle. You are still kinkster and I'm truly sorry for being inconsiderate.

Okay, so there is my opinion. Take it or leave it.

[volperion-moved]

when you guilt trip people for saying no you’re creating a space where they feel unsafe saying no. if chat noir had been serious when he’d said ‘your friendship is the most important thing to me’ and not brought his feelings up to ladybug again this would be a whole nother story. instead he is constantly passive aggressive toward her. he feels sad he’s rejected, he feels sad he’s being left out/isn’t as important to her as the other heroes, etc. that’s fine but there’s a right and wrong way to share those feelings. adrien doesn’t share his feelings in a way that shows he wants help overcoming them. he does it in a way that is trying to make ladybug feel as miserable as he does so he can get some kind of vindication

and i totally get that when you’re 14 you might not exactly know how to express your feelings in a healthy way. and that having honest conversations about improving is hard, being confronted w/ the possibility that you’re responsible for some of your own shitty feelings is hard to deal with esp. when you feel wronged. but the problem isn’t that adrien acts this way it’s that the narrative barely criticises it and instead often rewards him for being the way he is. him bottling up his feelings is showing how ‘nice’/’perfect’ he is for not wanting to burden his friends. ladybug should have the emotional maturity he lacks and be able to see his passive aggression as a cry for help.

i am saying this as someone who used to have the mentality adrien does which is why i understand it as harmful and despise how it’s being promoted as a good thing by this show/fandom. i constantly struggled with feeling like people didn’t believe me or want to take me seriously when i talked about my mum’s abuse. people often gaslit me into thinking i was the problem and it was a struggle understanding both that i wasn’t, but i do also have responsibility for my own behaviour/feelings, i can’t just act like i’m beyond help bc of what i’ve been through.

hell yes it took me way longer to get to this point than 14. but adrien is a fictional character the thing holding him back is actually the writing, not his age. shows for kids often have young characters taking on big responsibilities that you wouldn’t trust a kid in real life with, because they’re meant to be power fantasies for the kids watching. & because adrien is a role model/power fantasy to the young audience we criticise him and how his behaviour is treated. is it clear when he’s in the wrong, and does he as a hero strive to do better, or is his behaviour excused? if you’re a kid in adrien’s situation of an abusive household, or if you’re someone dealing with someone who treats you the way chat noir treats ladybug, what messages are you going to internalise?

[tanadrin]

Dev Patel and the Green Knight

I finally got around to seeing The Green Knight. Overall, I enjoyed it--David Lowery does a good job capturing the essential weirdness of the tale, which is very much about taking a mundane circumstance (a Christmas feast) and suddenly catapulting the reader into a mythic otherworld through the intrusion of the alien and monstrous, and the fantastical costumes, dramatic lighting, and dissonant score all contribute very well to a sense of otherness that permeates the original story.

But I find it interesting--and, I'll admit, a little frustrating--that no modern film adaptation of medieval literature is really capable of taking the story it's adapting on its own merits. This isn't an objection to modifying the source text, or taking it in new, non-literal direction. I can think of plenty of adaptations of work that play with the source material in interesting ways, and are better for it. Even very faithful adaptations like Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings are inevitably going to alter the source based on the need to adapt it for the screen and the whims of the director. But when it comes to medieval classics, texts like Beowulf or Gawain and the Green Knight are always held at arm's length. An ironic layer is always interpolated into the original story, and even in modified form the story is never allowed to stand on its own.

Contrast, for instance, modern retellings of Arthurian legend; or Wagner's Nibelungenleid; or something like Neil Gaiman's book of Norse mythology. These are all adaptations of much older stories, all medieval; and the authors typically happy to let the stories operate on their own terms. In fact, that is often a selling point: dipping into these tales is a way of sampling an alien culture, one that is remote from us in time rather than space, and part of the sense of heightened drama is the understanding that these stories do not necessarily depict the world in the same way that modern realist prose does. They are fairy-stories, in the Tolkienian sense, and something not quite even like "high fantasy," which, although it is a genre which owes much to the mythic tradition, is usually *told* in the same manner as other realist fiction. And you could take these stories and re-cast them in a realist mold--that's definitely been done with Arthurian legend, either via anachronism or trying to place them in an era-appropriate historical context, and even that yields something quite like the original in tenor, even if the language used to relate the story is often very different.

Watching this movie, I was *strongly* reminded of Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf, in that this did not feel like an attempt to adapt Gawain and the Green Knight for the screen. It felt like an attempt to tell a story *about* Gawain and the Green Knight (the text), a story which does not stand on its own. You don't have to have read the text to understand the movie (although I think some directorial decisions would be a bit mystifying if you hadn't), but the movie definitely situates itself *as a response* to the text. Which is an odd choice! Actually, another good point of comparison is Spike Jonze's Adaptation. It started life as an adaptation of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief, but Charlie Kaufman sort of gave up writing that halfway through and wrote a movie about the difficulty he was having writing *that* movie, and the result is something very weird (and very good) that is full of metafictional elements that depend on the existence of this other work, in a way that a straight retelling of The Orchid Thief for the screen obviously would not. And while The Green Knight isn't that extreme, it is definitely playing on the structure of the medieval poem, and replying to it.

The core of the movie (as I understood it) is a tension between young Gawain's aspiration to knightliness, his ambition which is born at least in part from his mother's encouragement, and his own failure to live up to the heroic ideal of greatness. Not chivalric--this is a movie in which the ethos of chivalry makes not even the briefest of appearance, which is weird given that it's nominally an Arthurian romance, and that the chivalric ethos is extremely important to the original text. Instead we have a generic greatness being described, one which is associated with renown, with taking part in mythic events, and with achieving high rank and honor. In the service of seeing her son obtain all this, Gawain's mother seems to cast some kind of spell, whereupon the titular Green Knight appears at Arthur's Christmas-feast; and as in the poem, a game of beheadings is proffered. Gawain accepts the challenge, beheads the knight, and the knight rides away, promising he'll meet Gawain a year and a day hence at the Green Chapel. So far so straightforward. When Gawain sets off a year later to meet the knight, his mother gives him an enchanted belt to keep him safe from harm. Gawain goes on to have a couple of side-of-the-road adventures and mishaps, the kind of thing that's par for the course when you're telling an Arthurian romance, until he arrives at the house of a mysterious benefactor, just about a day away from the Chapel, who grants him hospitality until the day of his challenge.

Now, in the original story, this is where Gawain gets the magic belt, and it's hugely important: Gawain and his host promise to exchange anything they might receive at the end of each day, when the host has been out hunting all day and Gawain has been in the house recuperating from his travels. During this time, the host's wife repeatedly tries to seduce Gawain; and Gawain is trapped between the imperative not to sleep with his host's wife (a major violation of the rules of good chivalric conduct!) and the imperative not to offend the woman (also a violation of those rules). He succeeds, for the most part; he is forced at one point to give his host a kiss at the end of the day, since the wife kissed him; this is shown as him holding nothing back and acting in good faith on the vow he made to his host. When Gawain finally rebuffs the wife for good, she insists that, even if he won't sleep with her, he should at least take a magic belt she has woven that will keep him from harm. He does; but he does *not* give this to his host. When he finally goes to the Green Chapel, the Knight returns the original blow as promised--but only nicks Gawain lightly. He reveals himself to be none other than the host who was sheltering him; the nick was his reprimand for withholding that final gift, but because of his good conduct he is otherwise left unharmed. The whole thing was a test of sorts, one which Gawain passed. Despite flinching at first from the blow, and keeping the belt secret, he shows himself ultimately to be a man of good (albeit not perfect) conduct, and *that* is why he wins honor from the whole affair.

The movie takes this basic narrative and alters it in key places, completely changing the valence of the whole thing. First, Gawain gets the belt at the beginning of his quest, as mentioned; he loses it on the way, but when he reaches the castle, the wife of his host (who succeeds in seducing him with a handjob) presents it to him as if she had woven it herself. He does not actually engage in the game of exchanged with his host, who is *also* not the Green Knight. And we're treated to a monologue about the color green from the wife that feels beat for beat like it's been ripped off from someone's undergraduate essay about Gawain and the Green Knight, which is a little weird even in the context of the rest of the movie. Finally when Gawain reaches the chapel, the knight goes to return the blow--and Gawain completely chickens out and flees. We are then treated to an extended sequence of Gawain returning home; being feted as a hero; earning his knighthood (presumably by lying about what happened); succeeding Arthur as king; him abandoning his low-class beau once she bears him a son, and marrying a princess; going to war; his son dying in a war; and finally, as an old man, being trapped in his throne room as a besieging army breaks its way inside. Just before they do, he removes the magic belt from around his waist, his head fall off, and bam--we're shown this has been an Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge thing this whole time, and the Green Knight has not yet landed his blow.

Gawain finally takes off the belt, throws it aside, and tells the knight to go ahead--and the knight bends down and congratulates him. In context, the reading seems to be this: the belt is a talisman of Gawain's mother's influence, of external expectations for what kind of man he is. The Knight is Arthur or perhaps an agent of his, and the test in *this* case is whether Gawain can be his own person. All the events leading up to this point are perhaps a part of the original magic Gawain's mother cast, an effort to Lilith Weatherwax her kid to greatness by putting him into an epic story. Implicitly, then, the Gawain and the Green Knight we all know is the false version of the tale, the tale as Gawain's mother would have it told.

This is all very clever. But I'm afraid it's so clever it falls apart in the end. Because the structure of the original story that this depends on is dependent in turn on taking the whole notion of chivalric virtue seriously, which this movie plainly does not. Gawain is shown as irreverent and lustful and a bit of a party animal--lovable and good hearted fundamentally, but definitely not an Arthurian hero. That's fine, but that's a very modern sort of character, one that feels out of place in a movie that is trying very hard also to be tonally unmodern, firmly embedded in a mythic otherwhen of Arthurian legend. Moments of slice-of-life mundaneness, while charming, strain mightily against the epic tone the movie tries to take in other places, and strange events like a ghost seeking her lost head or immense giants striding the landscape. We are jostled: are we in the land of myth? Or are we in historical Britain? We cannot be in both!

And this is a movie that was definitely made by people who had read the original text; not just the original text, but also a great deal of criticism *about* the original text. The movie namechecks the theme of fivefold symmetry that's incredibly important to the structure of the poem; there's the aforementioned undergrad essay about colors about 3/4th of the way through; and there's the fact that the structure of the original plot (down to Morgan LeFay in disguise as an old woman in the host's castle) is present in altered form in every detail. But none of these details add up to much. There's a weird homoerotic kiss with the host that implies that in fact *he* wanted to sleep with Gawain, in addition to his wife; the ghost Gawain encounters early on tells him the Green Knight is in fact someone he knows (and therefore *can't* be the host; I think it's implied to be Arthur, like I said, but this is never quite confirmed), and while all these things *about* the original poem are shown, none of them ever get integrated thematically into the plot.

I think as a result, whatever Lowery was going for, the whole movie kind of falls apart in the end. And that's a pity, because somewhere in there is just a really weird, visually striking, really gripping, embellished-and-polished-for-modern-sensibilities-but-also-thematically-true-to-the-source retelling of Gawain and the Green Knight. And that would have been a much better movie! What are we to make of this, a movie that purports to be telling a story-behind-the-story, but one that leaves no room or context for the original? After all, Gawain in the end does *not* flee, does not return home a coward and a liar; presumably, he earns his honor, and can be honest about what happened. But if he is honest, none of the rest of what we have been shown makes a lick of sense, or has any point.

One feels a bit as if modern directors, when confronted with medieval texts being a bit weird, a bit alien in their worldview, instead of realizing that's actually something people like some of from time to time, feel like they have to construct an artificial bridge between the Middle Ages and the present day. But because it is invariably metafictional and self-referential, as if to say "don't worry, we know nobody REALLY wants to watch a bunch of boring medieval shit played straight," it comes off as cringing and ashamed of its source material. This isn't a plea for historicity! Gawain and the Green Knight is not history. But one does occasionally want to see an adaptation of one's favorite works without directors being ashamed of the text they are adapting! And since most people will not have read the original, I am rather confused about what the director intends for the audience to get out of all these references that are dependent on it, but don't stand on their own merits within the narrative of the movie itself.

The acting was good, the set design and costumes were terrific, I loved the slow and measured pacing and the weird score, and the design of the Knight himself, and the landscapes and almost everything else about the movie. So I don't think it's a waste of time, especially if you have read and enjoyed Gawain and the Green Knight, in the original or in translation. But it's definitely a pity to see a movie that was, well, *almost* great, but ended up merely OK.

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

So I watched 10.09 recently, and it has that part where Dean tells a story about him basically being almost roofied as a teen, but somehow it ends up framed as the funny joke and yet another proof that John "did what he could", and I kind of hate this? And it's the same episode in which MoC!Dean killed guys that kidnapped and tried to rape Claire, and you'd think writers would've addressed the parallels and acknowledge that Dean could've been triggered by this situation. 1/2

2/2 But in the end, it's never addressed, and the whole situation is framed as the proof that Dean is evil now. And I'm not even sure what I am trying to say, but with that being the show's approach back in s10, I'm not surprised about the finale anymore. Guess we should've known?

That’s an excellent angle to look at the issue because the Mark of Cain arc is a clear example of how people with different experiences will see the same thing in wildly different ways. There’s this phase of season 10 where everyone is like “oh no Dean is Getting Worse” and when you look at what Dean is doing... you actually go “...good for him”.

Let’s give Caesar what belongs to Caesar. It’s not “the writers” in this case, it’s Dabb. Plenty of other writers don’t fall into this John apologism thing. Just look at how the episode before Lebanon, written by Buckner and Ross Leming, says that sometimes John would temporarily kick Dean out because he was “pissed at him” despite Dean always taking his side to mantain the peace. It almost seems like a statement to sprinkle some salt given what Dabb does in Lebanon, you know? Maybe not, but there is a tension between “John was shitty” writers and “John did his best” writers.

In hindsight, we gave Dabb too much of the benefit of the doubt. We were like, weeell, that’s supposed to be way the characters perceive the truth, which is distorted by the trauma... But now it’s obvious that he truly believed in the John-did-his-best version. He brought him back and got Mary back with him. No matter what happened to the finale, the network didn’t print those pictures of John and Mary to hang on Sam’s wall. He never took Dean’s abuse seriously and it shows.

The “anedocte” of Dean getting drugged and “saved” by John from being raped is obviously there to parallel him with Claire. Which works! It’s so weird because it’s like. You are soooo close to getting the point. Younger Dean was assaulted just like this teenage girl is assaulted and Dean saves her... but apparently John yelling at those people is a good way of dealing with the issue, while murdering child traffickers is an overraction thus bad.

That’s the problem, isn’t it? That Dean’s murder spree is framed as an overreaction. Sam is like “tell me you had to do this! tell me it was you or them!” - the answer to which (by the narrative) is obviously no, it wasn’t self defense, he just killed them because he could. He just murdered those men for no reason except he felt like being murdery. And the audience is supposed to be like “oh no! Dean is murdery for no reason except for murderiness! That’s bad!”.

But it’s a power fantasy, isn’t it? Going on a murder spree on rapists and traffickers. I bet any people who’s been violated like that has fantasized of doing the exact thing Dean does here. Killing them all.

Dean had the physical strength and skill to kill them all, why shouldn’t he kill them? (I mean, in real life I’m against private justice because I’m a fan of the state of law, but the Supernatural universe obviously works on different principles than the state of law. Again, it’s a fictional narrative that plays out as a fantasy for the audience, so.)

So what was Dabb’s intention? I’m afraid it’s the worst one. “John Winchester’s not going to win any Number One Dad awards, you know? But, you know, damn if he wasn’t there when we needed him”. What the fuck, Dabb? It’s been established since season 1 that John WASN’T there when they needed him. Which... I’m afraid... leads us to the Cas-Claire plot in the episode. Cas has fucked off with Jimmy’s body leaving Claire on her own. Parallels how John wasn’t going to win wny Number One Dad awards. But! Cas is there when Claire Really Needs Him i.e. when she’s about to be raped by older men. Parallels how John was there when Dean Really Needed Him i.e. when he was about to be raped by older men.

I think the point is to say, Cas kinda sucked because he took Claire’s dad away but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Claire because he gets there in time to prevent her from being raped. Just like (ew) John kinda sucked as a father because hunting and stuff, but hey! He’s actually a good figure for Dean because he got there in time to prevent him from being raped.

It’s pretty yucky. Literally NOBODY wanted a parallel between Cas and John. But he made one. And he made one to absolve Cas from the guilt he carried for what he did to Claire (Claire’s mother is a mother so who fucking cares about her. She’s basically a Blurry Wife(TM), she’s only a tool for Claire’s arc, Cas apparently only cares about the harm he did the child, not the wife, for some reason.) and to absolve Cas from his guilt it absolves John too. Don’t worry, being a parent is hard. You often screw up. But you can *looks at smudged writing on hand* prevent the kid from being raped by predatory adults and everything’s fine now.

It’s not really important if the child suffered hunger or whatever, the only important thing is that they don’t get raped, because that’s bad, everything else is just a little detail.

All Dabb got with that scene was to paint Sam as extremely unsympathetic because he’s no longer a child, he’s a full adult now and still thinks of that episode at the CBGB as a funny story. That’s not a good look. It almost makes you think that the writer himself saw it as a funny story. Lol teenage boy biting more than he can chew. But then why the Claire parallel? The Claire scene onviously is not supposed to be anything but horrific. I'll give Dabb the benefit of the doubt on this specific thing.

It’s weird, yes, because Dabb wrote Dark Side of the Moon where he establishes that John was a bad husband/father even before tragedy hit the family. But apparently that’s the “not going to win any Number One Dad awards” part, I suppose? I guess he intended to write John as this flawed, ~complex~ figure who was imperfect but still brave and whatever blah blah did his best blah blah. I’m all for flawed complicated characters but a horrible father is a horrible father. A rose by any other name... parental abuse is still parental abuse even if the poor guy was complicated and traumatized and did what he thought he had to do to prepare his sons for a violent world.

Also, the story frames Dean’s escapade as a teenager being stupid. “You know what he got for that? Me whining about how much he embarrassed me. Me telling him that I hated him. But then he stopped and turned around looked at me and said, Son, you don’t like me? That’s fine. It’s not my job to be liked.” “It’s my job to raise you right.” This seems straight from a novel about teenagers doing something stupid that they’re too young to realize that their parents are right to be against them doing. But this isn’t just... a parent walking into a bar to stop their child to drink alcohol. Dean literally describes feeling sick from something that was inside the alcohol.

Sure, it makes sense that he’d lash out to John because of the shame and shock. But the scene is... off. Are we supposed to see this as a typical teenage mistake? Are we supposed to read it as something as horrific as what happened to Claire, literally sold into rape? Or, worse, are we supposed to see what happened to Claire as a teenage mistake, ah silly teenager, blindly trusting shady people, no wonder you end up in a situation where you’d get raped if a father figure didn’t sweep in and save you. I hope that wasn’t the intent.

To get back to Dean’s Mark-of-Cain violence, the writers clearly didn’t intend it to come from the Darkness up to a certain point. It was supposed to an arc about your own inner darkness (consider the Charlie episode, a couple episodes later). Then they came up with the idea of The(TM) Darkness, the suppressed cosmic feminine. While it caused a bit of dissonance in the subtext, it doesn’t really change Dean’s narrative, because his inner darkness is the trauma, and his trauma is inherebtly tied to the “feminine” i.e. the parts of him that don’t fit seamlessly into the scheme of toxic masculinity values. That the violence that comes from the Mark of Cain comes from Dean himself and that’s it, or is connected to the Darkness, it doesn’t change what it means for Dean. Dean and Amara have parallel histories, the feminine principle locked away, the trauma the anger stems from.

In 10x09 we’re still in the Before The (TM) Darkness era, before the suppressed cosmic feminine. The Mark of Cain arc is still about... well, Cain. But the shift is the signal that someone looked at Dean’s arc and said... you know what? “Lucifer gave me this curse so now I’m demonic and murdery” is meh. “Toxic masculinity suppresses the feminine and it creates trauma which rage and violence comes from” is more interesting. I don’t know whose idea it was, but it was a good idea, and surely the idea came from seeing how Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding.

Dean’s MoC narrative was unfolding in a certain way, in fact, because of a pretty simple reason. There’s a fundamental tension in Dean’s MoC arc. We want him to go murdery, but it’s also our main character, so we don’t want him to do really horrible things because he still needs to be relatable. The audience cannot hate him, so he must NOT do something entirely unforgivable. He still needs to be somewhat relatable, even when demonic or demonic-adjacent.

So he goes on a murder spree... but it’s rapists and child traffickers. He’s demon, but he kills a misogynistic dude that wanted his wife dead for cheating on him. He’s a demon, but beats up dudes that harass women. He does a slaughter, but they’re nazi. He’s off the deep end, but works a case of kidnapped and abused young women...

Speaking of which. 10x23, written by Jeremy Carver. Dean works a case where a girl was killed while dressed scantily and Dean makes some slut-shaming remarks, and we’re supposed to think “whoa Dean, that’s bad”. But later he confronts the girl’s father and what does he say?

I’m just doing my job, Mr. McKinley.

By suggesting my daughter was a slut?

I’ll admit that thought crossed my mind. Then I came here, and I smelled the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervade this home.

You shut your face right now.

And you know what? I don’t blame Rose anymore. No wonder she put on that skank outfit and went out there looking for validation, right into the arms of the monster that killed her.

Back then the episode was super controversial and everyone hated the case because of the apparent slut-shaming but I loved it! Because it’s not about the girl. It’s about Dean. Dean doesn’t think that a girl gets killed because she dresses in a miniskirt so it’s her fault. Dean is projecting on himself and he’s not actually victim blaming the girl, he’s victim blaming himself. And when he absolves the girl by putting the blame on the father... well, subtextually he’s absolving himself by putting the blame on his father. On the deceit and the beatings and the shame that pervaded his own home. He’s textually not ready to absolve himself, of course, he summons Death to ask him to kill him later, but subtextually he’s on the right path.

Rose McKinley basically did the same mistake Dean did at the CBGB when he trusted some older people who offered him drinks and the same mistake Claire did when she trusted a man who sold her for money because he offered him a place and stability. She trusted the wrong people (in this case, vampires, which adds the whole subtext of vampires and sexuality) who took advantage of her. Except Rose had no one to save her. (Her friend, Crystal, gets rescued by Dean, even if he causes the other hunter Rudy to die in the process.)

Carver’s writing is pretty brutal. The girl made that mistake because was abused at home, so she was desperate for validation and that desperation drove her into the wrong hands. (Rose even has a brother who blames himself for bringing her sister to her future murderers, destructive sibling relationship check.) It doesn’t actually even matter if Dean guessed right about Rose’s family situation, because what matters is what it tells us about Dean. He basically relates to a dead abused girl. Actually all through the season Dean is paralleled to “skanks” “sluts” and sex workers. Obviously this happens kinda all through the show, the whole “the business is based on absent fathers” thing happened much earlier in the story, so it’s not new. But s10 draws a picture of female suffering - abuse, manipulation and death. Season 10 was difficult to go through. In hindsight, it was probably on purpose because it was supposed to be darkest hour of the feminine. Summed with some good old fashioned misogyny, but hey.

The Carver era was wonky but Carver wanted to free the feminine. (I believe that Mary’s comeback, while written by Dabb because of the showrunner shift, was planned before the showrunner shift.) We thought the Dabb era wanted the same, with Mary choosing life and Amara being independent and so on, but it evidently wasn’t the case. Not a single woman arrives at end of the story. It’s hardly ~Bucklemming or ~the network or ~covid because it starts before the very end.

I’m not saying that dead sluts are more feminist than living women, but if the women die or disappear anyway (and they did) I’d rather have an exploration of trauma than nothing. And I definitely prefer a dead slut narrative that calls out parental abuse than a narrative where women live but abuse gets the you-did-your-best treatment.

Whoops! I digressed! But feel free to ask for any clarification or send me any observation or thought.

[amyisherenowitsokay]

Zagr for the ship ask 😤😤😤 every single one bitch

I cannot believe you have bombarded me like this. Appalled. Insulted. Astounded.

Please enjoy my entire analysis of my fictional totally canonical ship.

PRE-RELATIONSHIP

1. How did they first meet?

Dib, but also school.

2. What was their first impression of each other?

I think they're both initially incredibly dismissive of one another. Zim thinks the entire fate of the Armada's reputation lying on his shoulders, and Gaz really has too many personal problems even as a kid to deal with; neglectful Dad, overprotective, stupid brother, etc.

3. Did any of their friends or family want them to get together?

Okay so hear me out; I think Skoodge and Professor Membrane would be so obnoxious in the best way. And Gir, whenever his attention span lets him remember long enough to scream about it. But I think Membrane would be chipper about Gaz finding someone, even long before she admits she's even interested, and Skoodge would want Zim to be happy and is unconditionally supportive, especially when Zim is mopey whenever his advances are rebuffed.

4. Who felt romantic feelings first?

Honestly, I love a Zim simp, but I genuinely think it'd be Gaz. Zim is obviously a Defect capable of feeling a larger range of emotions than other Irkens, but he still didn't receive socialization that makes 'romantic rituals' in any way natural to him. So I think Gaz and him would buddy up platonically and casually, initially, until she realizes she likes his company a little too much and freaks out about it.

5. Did either of them try to resist their feelings?

Gaz does, 100%, and she's way more stubborn about it then Zim. I think Zim's denial is just that he doesn't "get" romance (see above) and what's going on with him, but once he understands he's fully down to bombard Gaz with affection, flirtations, and other over-the-top simp behavior until she stops pretending she's not gritting her teeth while fighting a blush.

6. If you had told one of them that the other would be their soulmate, what would they think?

Zim doesn't know what a soul is, but he does begin to understand the concept that they can be taken from human's in bargains. He becomes distracted by the topic. Bringing it up again later would have him largely dismissive.

Gaz would roll her eyes, and be extremely bitter about the idea that there is anyone 'made' for her. She's very independent, and I think someone with the sort of familial issues she does with no role model for a 'happy' family would be really resistant to being bound to someone in a way that would entitle them to her vulnerabilities. She'd be extremely resentful, dismissive, and irritable.

7. What would their lives be like if they had never met?

Really unfulfilled, listless. Without that companionship, they would never develop into people capable of meaningful relationships. I think both of them are very independent. Zim may claim he likes an audience, but there's an undeniable anxiety that he gets when faced with judgement. If it's anything but unwaveringly positive, he becomes delusional and creates a fantasy world in which everyone loves him, and the situation was just an initial misinterpretation. Gaz would have good friends, I think, but accepting Zim and his oddities and realizing she genuinely relates to someone who knows everything about her (via her brother + proximity + time) and is still here would mean a lot to her development.

GENERAL

1. Who initiated the relationship, and how did it go?

Zim, without a doubt. Gaz may like Zim first, but she's completely in denial about it and completely stubborn. Zim is oblivious, and also a big ass simp, so his persistence and patience eventually gets Gaz to let her guard down and accept that she has hormones, she has romantic inclinations, and apparently they've both decided Zim is it. Time to be a big girl and accept it.

2. Did they have an official first date? If so, what was it like?

Honestly, I don't think they're the 'date' type of couple. I am probably 100% projecting since my boyfriend and I did not have an official 'date' until like 6 months into our first relationship, where we paused, turned to each other and were like 'wait is this our first date?' because we're homebodies whose idea of fun is projects. I think Zim and Gaz would hang out regularly, but it wouldn't ever be like a formal 'we are going to Bloaty's/the movies/etc as a date,' but rather 'I am going here and you are coming with me so I guess we are going together' thing. Zim doesn't get the point of a date, because if a date is by definition doing an activity together, then aren't they perpetually on a date? And Gaz isn't really a 'let's go to dinner formally' kind of person. They hang out, they go places, but it's never really a 'thing.'

3. What was their first kiss like?

I firmly believes Gaz would have to walk Zim through every aspect of physical affectionate. Zim is really wary about it, but I do think there's an instinct towards good ol' copulation, as well as a longing for positive touch after so long getting his ass whooped in the Academy, that would make him frustrated trying to figure out what this desire is. I think their first kiss is Gaz explaining to Zim, after he asks her outright what else there is after tame stuff like cuddling and hand holding, and Gaz walks him through the concept, implications, and so on until he feels ready to bravely and firmly try it.

While that does sound pretty clinical, I think actually it'd be really emotional for both of them. Zim would be really overwhelmed by how much passion is in a kiss, and Gaz would be similarly overwhelmed since, going into the relationship, she probably never anticipated Zim being interested in anything sexual, so any physical affection he expresses interest in is a surprise to her.

4. Were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)?

I think Gaz probably would try out a few brief relationships, but never anything substantial or dramatic. Zim's never been in a relationship, so Gaz is his first everything. I do think they'd be each other's first sexual relationship, but I think Gaz would have most of her more minimal firsts with other people prior to Zim.

5. What’s their height difference? Age difference?

Zim older. I normally write Zim as the same height as Gaz, or only a little taller. Neither of them are tall. I do respect you 'short king' stans though.

6. What’s their relationship with each other’s families?

Dib hates Zim, firmly and completely, at the beginning of their relationship. It takes a lot of self-reflection, meaningful sibling discussions, and probably a few screaming matches that eventually get to the real root of the issue (Dib's ingrained fear that something would happen to Gaz, and that it'd his fault) before he came around. Zim is a big petty bitch and would gleefully antagonize him. They would never stop sniping at each other, but they'd begrudgingly (sort of) behave for Gaz. They would eventually become frenemies and bros, but they'd die and also kill each other before admitting any sort of cordiality.

Professor Membrane adores Zim, and treats him like the son he never had/always wanted, the one who wants to have long discussions about science and can keep up with the theoreticals. Gaz hates it.

The Base and Gaz are cool. They have an understanding borne from two sentient creatures who have found themselves in the position of trying to keep Zim from killing himself, killing other people, or from coming to (too much) harm. Gaz initially hates Gir, but eventually she figures out how to get him to chill out when it's important. Minimoose and her are also cool, but he creeps Gaz out a little.

7. Who takes the lead in social situations?

Zim thinks he does, but it's really just Gaz slapping her hand over his mouth before he can say something stupid, or translating whatever nonsense just came out of his mouth when he's done talking.

8. Who gets jealous easier?

Zim. Not even a question.

9. Who whispers inappropriate things in the other’s ear?

Zim. Also not even a question.

LOVE

1. Who said “I love you” first?

Gaz. Zim doesn't know what it means until she explains it. It takes him awhile to internalize it and reciprocate verbally, but Gaz is okay with that. He shows her how much he cares in other ways.

2. What are their primary love languages?

Without a doubt, Zim's is touch. Once he gets used to it, he's really greedy and possessive about proximity. Just having Gaz bump his arm is sometimes enough to set the worst of his nerves at ease.

Gaz's is acts of service. She's fine with Zim being physically clingy, but it means a lot to her how unflinching he is about protecting her, anticipating her needs, and remembering things.

3. Who uses cheesy pick-up lines?

Zim. Gaz hates them, but she tolerates it. Sometimes.

4. How often do they cuddle/engage in PDA?

Cuddling is very frequent. Zim will just sort of shift in behind Gaz if she's playing a game and cling, and she'll just keep doing what she's doing until she's eventually done and reciprocates. Explicit PDA never happens, but Zim is very clingy and physically will plant himself between Gaz and people who he's distrustful towards.

5. Who initiates kisses?

Gaz. I think Zim would cling to her like a barnacle at every opportunity, but Zim would likely usually defer to Gaz for escalating intimacy.

6. Who’s the big and little spoon?

Zim big spoon. PAK too uncomfortable to let him be the little spoon.

7. What are their favorite things to do together?

I think just being around each other while they do projects, game, etc. would be their favorite thing to do. Sharing in hobbies without feeling pressured to be entertaining, but still feeling like their presence is valued and wanted by the other.

8. Who’s better at comforting the other?

Being a people, and having more emotional competency, Gaz is better. Zim does his best though.

9. Who’s more protective?

Zim, if we're talking about quantity. Gaz, however, if we're talking about quality. Zim screams at chihuahuas for looking at Gaz, and also does protect her from genuine threats, but he overreacts frequently. Gaz, however, would know when Zim's out of his depth and would break the spine of anything that's a threat to him.

10. Do they prefer verbal or physical affection?

Physical, for both. Neither of them is really used to verbal affection, whether it be giving or receiving. It's a lot more natural to be demonstrative.

11. What are some songs that apply to their relationship, in-universe or otherwise?

Me, cackling as I copy and paste this link that I imagine is from their mutual perspectives:

https://open.spotify.com/track/4nlT0Ch4qpqoS8O1RsdzjH?si=d6d8e1e19a7d4dc7

12. What kind of nicknames do they call each other?

There's lots, and I'm sure most of them are inside jokes, but the tops are Zimmothy + Little Gaz.

13. Who remembers the little things?

It's hard to say. Zim would retain an encyclopedic knowledge of all things Gaz, and tries to spoil her and accommodate her at every opportunity, but Gaz never forgets to pack an extra umbrella and a raincoat.

DOMESTIC LIFE

1. If they get married, who proposes?

Zim.

2. What’s the wedding like? Who attends?

No one but their mutual 'families.' A very small, intimate ceremony. The reception though is massive, courtesy of Professor Membrane who has no idea how to separate his personal life with his public one.

3. How many kids do they have, if any? What are they like?

0 kiddos. Cannot product viable, compatible DNA to produce a spawn.

4. Do they have any pets?

Does Gir count?

5. Who’s the stricter parent?

If Gir is the child, Zim. Gaz will let him get away with murder, both because she can't be bothered to control him, and also because she thinks it's funny how mad Zim gets when she lets him go wild.

6. Who worries the most?

Between Gaz "apathetic is my middle name" Membrane and Invader "I have perpetual anxiety" Zim? No idea.

7. Who kills the bugs in the house?

Gir. He eats them long before anyone can find them. But both Gaz and Zim will point out any he misses.

8. How do they celebrate holidays?

Zim fucking hates Christmas, so him and Membrane get down in a bunker for it while Dib and Gaz spend some sibling time somewhere, drinking cocoa and video chatting with the respective morons. Other holidays, they basically go wherever Professor Membrane is in the world with Dib to have a 'family' holiday.

9. Who’s more likely to convince the other to come back to sleep in the morning?

Zim doesn't sleep, but he likes the resting and the peacefulness of getting to curl around Gaz in her sleep without her leaving. So him by default.

10. Who’s the better cook?

Zim has a 'kiss the chef' apron and everything.

11. Who likes to dance?

Neither of them, but Zim does 'victory dances' compulsively.

[saintprivateer]

I understand the ideas behind the zemenipearls post but can we not just have a nice fictional world? It’s not like the Kerch are made out to be a great nation of saintly people, it’s all fantasy for a reason. I won’t get started on their posts about my girl Nina and my dude Nikolai 😒

Okay... there’s a lot of ground to cover here so boot up cowhand I wrote a LOT

No matter how unlike-this-world a fantasy universe seems, it was still crafted by a real human who IS a part of this world. And humans put their own beliefs and experiences into their stories as the foundation for how ideal/ not-ideal they want the au to be. We use the environment around us as a stepping stone for our stories, and this DOUBLES if the author is saying “This World Is Not Like Ours At All”. The question authors answer of “What exactly is this au not like?” Rounds back to the place we are trying to distance ourselves from, because that is what this au is “not like.” And most often, authors craft these fantasy universes and bring the reader into a whole new world only to go back to a REAL theme of “This World Is Actually More Like Yours Than You Think.” Because that’s usually the entire point. We like fantasy because we want to see our nature mirrored in worlds unlike ours. We love that people can fly and cast spells, but we REALLY love when they’re as human as us in behavior/interests/ actions.

All that’s to say: you can’t actually write a racism-free world if you’ve never experienced a racism-free world. The ideals we want to portray will still be flawed and not 100% ideal, because the notion we have OF this ideal is fundamentally flawed. ESPECIALLY if we are still unlearning our own fallacies to these ideals. Grishaverse has anti-blackness threaded in the pages because there is anti-blackness on Earth and anti-black fallacies in the ideals Leigh Bardugo has internalized (like any other white person). If we can acknowledge the argument that meanings can be found in stories/art whether it was intended or not, then we have to acknowledge Leigh Bardugo wrote in her own prejudice or anti-black ideals into the grishaverse, whether intended or not. She wanted to write a story removed from the racism we know, and that in of itself isn’t a bad thing to imagine. But she still wrote tropes actively harmful to the minorities they represent.

“Why do you have to look for patterns that aren’t there and nitpick on characters? Why does everything have to be about race? Isn’t it enough that our heroes are TRYING to be good?”

When people say this, they usually mean “Why are you putting this in my face? We (the group not affected) were all doing fine until you decided to be grumpy about something, and I don’t want my ideals soiled by your criticisms.”

Imagine seeing the person who’s supposed to represent you and your identity be repeatedly trashed, ignored, dumbed down, dismissed, killed off, etc etc in canon and in the fandom, and when you finally get the courage to bring it up, the entirety of people not affected silence and threaten you for rocking their boat. You really can’t imagine how that actually feels unless you’ve felt it. When you write off the consistently abusive treatment of a community of people in a book as an inconvenient—and thus invalid— topic that “ruins” the characters or plots you want to root for, you’re acknowledging the privilege you have in being able to look the other way when these patterns have been brought to your attention.

There’s a lot you might not catch when you aren’t a part of the communities affected. If someone is gracious enough to extend their emotional and intellectual labor to point it out to you despite the all the gaslighting and harassment they face, the LEAST you can do is have an open mind and release the defenses and previous ideals you’ve cultivated for the characters you love. Black fans don’t owe it to you to spell it out, but they sometimes do! Despite how white fans treat them in return.

You said “it’s not like the Kerch are made out to be a nation of great saintly people.” Great! So we agree everyone should be praised and criticized accordingly? And when it’s pointed out that a character exhibits bigotry we can acknowledge that as a part of the environment they’ve lived in and thus a trait of themselves?

You can enjoy any universe or the characters that come with it in full capacity, and no one is asking you to discard stories entirely because of the mistakes. Nikolai meant and means a lot to me because of the ideals that I crafted in my head from 16 up. He’s a comfort character! He was my vision of a masc-presenting adventurer who got by with wit and charm and aesthetics. The people who love him see something of themselves in him, or someone they love. But he’s still a product of his environment. Just because I don’t want that to be true doesn’t make it untrue. Ravka is fantasy Russia but .*•*~more idealistic*.~*. This doesn’t take away the fact that the foundation is...still Russia. He’s still a privileged white king thats actively oppressing minorities in the story by upholding the kingship as it is, and if he continues the path he’s on, he’s not much better than his heritage. I love Nina to death but she’s still the jarhead kid in your algebra class ready to fight anyone who says her country merits basic criticism. The kingdom of Ravka would need to be entirely dismantled and recreated. Nikolai might seem more progressive than the kings before him, but he’s got a lot to be reprimanded for, and rebuilding can’t even start until he acknowledges and unlearns that. Which...he hasn’t, not fully, and there’s no written proof of him doing so as of now.

Before I made myself research more I got just as defensive of him and others. I’m sure I’ll get defensive over another story and have to relearn everything all over again. It’s a process and you have to check yourself all the time. But it’s a step towards the ideals we want to actually live in. If I want to imagine Nikolai a better man, I have to start from the scraps I’m given.

So yes!! You’re allowed to draw up your own themes and ideals from the stories and reimagine the characters to fit a narrative that makes your heart happy. But it won’t change the reality of the canon universe. Zemenipearls enjoyed the grishaverse so much she made a fan account for it, participates in fan-led events that celebrate the characters (and sometimes leads those events herself), commissions artists to make fanart, and has ongoing works that delve into the expansive universe that better represents her and what she wants for black characters in fantasy. And she STILL gets shit for imploring a conversation about what we all want to ignore away. Why would she put so much energy into this if she didn’t care or believe in this story too? If you also care about grishaverse that much, shouldn’t we be willing to uplift and reimagine by starting where the work needs it most?

Okay I’ve said a LOT SORRY HHHHH BUT TO WRAP UP: Ignoring a fictional character’s faults or repercussions is one thing, and I’m not about to waste energy on making people hold characters in a book accountable. We all see how people treat the Darkling.

But when you participate in or ignore the bullying and threatening that happens to REAL people, when people JUSTIFY that shit as if it merits denying a person their humanity, THATS the actual harm being done. (Not saying you’ve done that, but the mindset I’m seeing here is what feeds into that compliance.)

If we have the energy to protect and coddle our fictional white boys and let them burn the sandbox down, I KNOW we have energy to respect and protect black fans who have just as much say in how they see the story or how they reimagine it. If you have the energy to accept/tolerate the stuff alarkling fans promote, I KNOW you have the energy to put your pride away and acknowledge fallacies in your own ideals for characters. And regardless!!! of whether you “agree” with the criticisms or not, does that mean the person who spoke up about the issue deserves to be harassed?

I’m gonna ask the white ya majority reading this to be humble and open your hearts up to change the way you do for fictional edgy white dudes. Y’all have the SPIRIT but then it funnels into the WRONG IDEAS!!! PLEASE use your heads you’d be unstoppable if you used your privilege to amplify the ones who need amplifying. I promise Cardan BlackBerry and Alesksxxander Marigold aren’t gonna be disappointed in you 😔🙏

[advocaado]

Fiction does not exist in a vacuum and absolutely can and does affect reality.

HOWEVER

Before you pin on your thought police badge and march off to start attacking people on the internet for the media they consume and create, let’s take a minute to talk about nuance and identify some actual problematic trends in media which have real life consequences.

The big question you need to ask yourself before you decry a person or piece of media is: Is that person/piece of media promoting, validating, and normalizing trends or acts that hurt real people? Or is that person/piece of media exploring a dark theme in fiction/harmlessly indulging in a kink?

Below are some examples of cases where “problematic” content in fiction is a danger to real life people, and many where it isn’t. This will not be an exhaustive list. I don’t have endless amounts of time to sit here and talk about every problem in fictional media, and even if I did, I wouldn’t, because there are many more things I’d rather do with my time.

Disclaimer: No media is 100% problem free. No human is 100% problem free. Engaging with others online to discuss problems in media is totally fine. If you don’t like something, it’s your god given right to bitch about it. Bitch to your heart’s content. Just don’t be an absolute ass cloak about it.

Example 1: Huckleberry Finn

This book famously contains racism. Is this a problem? No, not really. Listen. This book is literally about how racism is bad. The message is to not be a racist piece of shit. That’s the takeaway. If you got any other message from this book you need to work on your reading comprehension. Books that teach lessons are good things and impact society in positive ways. This book does literally the opposite of normalizing, promoting, and validating racism. It’s taught in schools for this exact reason. It’s not sugarcoated and that’s exactly what makes it powerful.

Example 2: Fairy Tail

The famous complaint about this and other works by Hiro Mashima is that the women are overly sexualized. Over sexualization of women is a big problem in media across the globe, but particularly in the media that comes out of Japan. It’s a problem that absolutely does affect real women. More on that later. But is Mashima really the big perpetuater of the kind of gross male reader voyeurism that has such a fierce grip on the anime industry? Actually, no. Not really. Yes, almost all the female characters in Fairy Tail are hot and have big boobs in a way that appeals to men. However, the lens through which Mashima tells his stories is not voyeuristic. He doesn’t go out of his way to draw panty shots or sexualize female characters nonconsensually. 9 times out of 10 the women are sexy because they want to be and do it in a way that is empowering for them. There are occasional exceptions, but by and large Fairy Tail is not the big offender of female objectification in anime. Moreover, almost all its male characters are hot and have six packs and idol hair in a way that appeals to women. Everyone is hot. There is no deeper meaning here. Enjoy this series if you like to watch hot people having fun and going on adventures together.

Example 3: Goblin Slayer

Oh, boy, Goblin Slayer. Now here’s a can of worms. Many upon many have decried GS for its inclusion of rape scenes and mentions. The goblins in GS have no females of their own species so they must impregnate human women to continue their race. This sounds utterly awful and it is. But is this finally our shining example of a dark theme in fiction that is problematic in a way that is dangerous to real people? Sorry, but no. Firstly, the concept of a fantasy creature who needs to use humans to reproduce was not invented by Kumo Kagyu and is in fact common in folklore around the world. He didn’t make it up as a way to condone rape. Could he have? Sure. But that’s not the reality of the series. The assault by goblins on human women is not treated as a good thing by Kagyu. It is shocking and horrific and has big consequences within the narrative for both the goblins and their victims. It isn’t treated lightly and does not serve to normalize, validate, or promote rape in real life. The reader/viewer is meant to be disgusted by the goblins, and these scenes, which are few and brief, serve their intended purpose. Nobody is going out and assaulting women in real life because they thought it was cool when the goblins did it in GS.

Oh, but Goblin Slayer, I’m not done with you just yet. Because while it would be a huge stretch to label the inclusion of rape in the series a danger to real life people, there’s something else that you don’t need to stretch nearly so much to identify as such. Remember when I talked about the voyeuristic male gaze being a concerning trend in anime? Well, GS has that in spades. The normalization of sexually objectifying women in non sexual situations is very much present in the series. Describing in loving detail the chest size/shape of every female character often and with gusto is a big part of the light novels. Kagyu loves to describe what a girl’s boobs are doing while she’s sitting at a table eating or doing any other mundane thing for no reason other than to sexualize her for the reader. He made the intentional decision to make Sword Maiden, a rape victim, very overtly sexual for the male gaze without the character having any agency in it. Sword maiden isn’t trying to be sexy. She doesn’t own her sexuality. Hell, she’s blind. Being sexy doesn’t empower her. She’s just fap fodder for the male reader. These things normalize objectifying women and are part of a longtime trend in anime which have real world consequences for both women and men. The sexualization of nonconsenting women is a huge problem in Japan and very much promoted through their media. Anime and light novels continue to send and perpetuate the message that objectifying women is okay and natural for boys to do, and while Kagyu certainly isn’t the worst offender, he’s happily hopped aboard that trolly because he doesn’t see anything wrong with it. And he can’t, because it’s been SO normalized.

Example 4: The Birth of a Nation.

This movie, while entirely fictional, is straight up anti-black propaganda intentionally made to spread hate and fear of black people. Obviously this is incredibly problematic and harmful to real black people. This movie was designed to be that way. The message is very clear. It’s a movie meant to rally whites against blacks, and it did. Horrifically so. Typically media containing hateful messages is less overt about it today, but abusing stereotypes and caricatures of real groups of people and otherwise intentionally perpetuating harmful ideas through fiction is a shitty thing to do and should be wholeheartedly condemned. (Note the keyword “intentionally”. If an author does this out of ignorance, which is all too common, rather than condemn we should seek to educate. People are capable of learning and growing and canceling them for mistakes made in ignorance is every bit as shitty as the mistake they made in the first place.)

Example 5: Fanfiction and shipping

At last, we come to fan media. This is where “don’t like don’t read” becomes the golden rule. Indulging in a kink or exploring dark themes in fanfiction is harmless 99.9% of the time. Fanfiction simply doesn’t have the reach, and thereby the influence, that mainstream media has. If someone wants to write something really fucked up, that’s their choice and nobody is making you read it. Unless the author is outright condoning harming real people, it’s really not your business what they choose to write about. Furthermore, deciding to read fucked up fanfiction does NOT make you a bad person. As stated before, the human psyche is messy and the world is not squeaky clean or a safe place. People are drawn to dark things and there’s really nothing wrong with that so long as real people aren’t being harmed. If something makes you uncomfortable, don’t engage. Protect yourself. You’re not making the world a better place by harassing people online. You’re just being a jerk and honestly doing far more harm to real ass people than that 20 year old writer on AO3 who wanted to write a story about Sasuke having sex with Naruto’s son because of 10 years of repressed sexual impulses toward Naruto.

I could say more but I’m tired and ready to celebrate my Friday by getting drunk. Feel free to interact if you want, just do everyone a favor and don’t be a dick.

TLDR

Things that make you a bad person:

Murdering people

Sexually assaulting/harassing people

Having sex with children

Creating or indulging in porn of real minors

Harassing and sending death threats to real people over the fictional media they create and consume

Espousing, condoning, or perpetuating hate toward marginalized peoples

Espousing, condoning, or perpetuating hate toward anyone tbh

Using fiction as a vehicle to promote, validate, and normalize causing harm to real people

Generally being an ass cloak

Things that DON’T make you a bad person

Consuming media that contains problematic elements

Creating media that contains problematic elements so long as you aren’t promoting, validating, and normalizing harmful acts toward real people

Writing fanfiction

Reading fanfiction

Shipping whatever you goddamn want to ship