#but we ALSO do them a disservice when we try to use them as like

[brazenautomaton]

...those are not the only accessible sources? the reports on the scandal are public, you can read them.

from here:

Issues of ethnicity related to child sexual exploitation have been discussed in other reports, including the Home Affairs Select Committee report, and the report of the Children’s Commissioner. Within the Council, we found no evidence of children’s social care staff being influenced by concerns about the ethnic origins of suspected perpetrators when dealing with individual child protection cases, including CSE. In the broader organisational context, however, there was a widespread perception that messages conveyed by some senior people in the Council and also the Police, were to 'downplay' the ethnic dimensions of CSE. Unsurprisingly, frontline staff appeared to be confused as to what they were supposed to say and do and what would be interpreted as 'racist'. From a political perspective, the approach of avoiding public discussion of the issues was ill judged.

Several people interviewed expressed the general view that ethnic considerations had influenced the policy response of the Council and the Police, rather than in individual cases. One example was given by the Risky Business project Manager (1997- 2012) who reported that she was told not to refer to the ethnic origins of perpetrators when carrying out training. Other staff in children’s social care said that when writing reports on CSE cases, they were advised by their managers to be cautious about referring to the ethnicity of the perpetrators.

the individual people reporting crimes were not failing to report because the criminals were Pakistani, but the actual government structure was making it clear to its members Not To Talk About It. according to the investigation of that structure itself.

also, it goes on to describe how another aggravating factor was the (clearly race-focused) desire to address this only through the local Pakistani Muslim community leaders and not through, like, law enforcement. this is a Very Bad Idea for numerous reasons, because those guys have even more reasons to want to cover up the crimes!

this report has extremely confusing formatting (it's interspersed with quotes that are not separated off nearly enough) but also agrees that the racial dimension was a major factor with the Rotherham council, people were afraid of being branded racist, things had to go through ethnically Pakistani members instead of normal law enforcement channels, and law enforcement was diverted for fear of seeming racist:

“We’d be at [community] meetings talking about community issues. When there we discussed targeting taxi drivers and the Pakistani heritage community in relation to CSE, we were even discussing particular families we had concerns about. These members would push back. Neither believed the extent of the problem that we were trying to communicate… They were saying to us ‘it will cause a lot of community tension if they are targeted specifically’… We wanted their support…” A police officer

like come on you put an emdash between the quote and the attribution

Rotherham’s suppression of these uncomfortable issues and its fear of being branded racist has done a disservice to the Pakistani heritage community as well as the wider community. It has prevented discussion and effective action to tackle the problem. This has allowed perpetrators to remain at large, has let victims down, and perversely, has allowed the far right to try and exploit the situation. These may have been unintended consequences but the impact remains the same and reaches into the present day.

these aren't random nazis, this is the independent inquiry report into the Rotherham Council and its followup commissioned by the Secretary of State. the idea that fear of appearing racist was a major factor here is not a fringe thing only being spoken of by nazis, it's pretty goddamn confirmed by the people who did the actual investigating

The Council’s culture is unhealthy: bullying, sexism, suppression and misplaced ‘political correctness��� have cemented its failures. The Council is currently incapable of tackling its weaknesses, without a sustained intervention.

this isn't a fringe thing

Interviews with staff and Members of RMBC highlighted a pervading culture of sexism, bullying and silencing debate. The issue of race is contentious, with staff and Members lacking the confidence to tackle difficult issues for fear of being seen as racist or upsetting community cohesion. By failing to take action against the Pakistani heritage male perpetrators of CSE in the borough, the Council has inadvertently fuelled the far right and allowed racial tensions to grow. It has done a great disservice to the Pakistani heritage community and the good people of Rotherham as a result

this is pretty fucking major. people who are clearly progressive themselves and oppose racism, after doing an in-depth investigation, going "yeah these people did in fact let a child abuse gang go uncontested for decades due to the fear of appearing racist."

Regarding Rotherham, since it's come up again...

If I had a daughter, and a group of men doused her in petrol and threatened to set her on fire, then what would matter to me is making sure that never happened again.

This is what is moral and right. Children are small and weak. Stopping such a thing is what a parent owes their child.

If that requires changing the ideology of the entire country, then my life's work must be changing the ideology of the entire country. This is simply the work that has been entrusted to me. Whether it succeeds or not, I must attempt it.

There are people right now asking others to refrain from criticism in order to protect the reputation of the Labour government.

My contempt for such people is off the charts. But I can now see the empty space. Many of them are morally underdeveloped. What it means is that they consider Labour their tribe, and they are obediently protecting the tribe.

[bumblingbabooshka]

One of the best Voyager scenes to indicate Tuvok & Neelix's dynamic and how I think Tuvok is just as if not more 'annoying'(positive) than Neelix is when Neelix pours Tuvok a fresh squeezed glass of a fruit juice blend and Tuvok's like (paraphrased) "I don't want to drink this." and Neelix is like "Can you please try it?" and Tuvok's like "I don't want to, you're really bad at this sort of thing. It's going to taste bad." and Neelix says that Ensign XYZ said she LOVED it, she even had a second glass! And Tuvok says Ensign XYZ could drink poison without a second thought and Neelix is like "Tuvok could you please just TRY it? Just try a little SIP of it PLEASE??" and Tuvok sighs and rolls his eyes and sniffs it before taking a sip and it turns out he loves it. Turns out it tasted good actually. And then after all that Neelix tries to talk to him over eggs (which he's again cooking fresh for him) and Tuvok tells him he doesn't wanna hear "the life history of his breakfast." Absolutely insufferable this man I would have burned his eggs on PURPOSE!!!!

[pepprs]

mission failed we’ll get em next time 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[shanastoryteller]

i'm going to move on from supernatural posting, i swear to god, but first i'm going to talk about ep 9x07 bad boys

the episode itself is fine and good (i mean it's another example of dean having a support network while sam can't have anyone and dean keeping secrets while when sam does it it's the worst betrayal ever but that's not what this is about and sometimes i think about what this show did two earnest, loving traumatized characters by turning them into the most tragic versions of themselves and - ok, this really isn't what this post is about)

but fandom interpretation of this episode actually drives me up a wall because it does a disservice to literally every character

one, john did not leave them without enough money for food. dean gambled it and lost it. there's nothing in canon to say that john was taking longer than expected, that they were running out of money, none of that. dean gambled food money and lost it and then tried to steal to make up for it. he was 16 when this happened and it was a bad decision but i don't think he should be at all vilified for this. he made a dumb mistake and then tried to fix it with another dumb mistake. john was right to be mad and sam was also right to tell him that he shouldn't beat himself up about it. just like with shtriga - yeah, dean was climbing the walls stuck in that hotel room. but you know who else was stuck in that hotel room? sam. and he didn't get a break to go play at the arcade. again, i'm not blaming dean here, he shouldn't have been stuck taking care of his brother that young and he was a kid and john leaving his his children behind while hunting a child eater, whether he was using them for bait or not, is crazy. but dean stealing food wasn't about john's neglect and all the sacrifices dean had to make for sam. it was about him trying to fix his fuck up

two, and this is the one that really gets me, dean didn't go back with john because he had to take care of sam

listen. listen to me. i am speaking from experience when i say this

parentified siblings are still, first and foremost, siblings. especially with only 4 years between them. the show shameless i think did an absolutely excellent job with this and is why i love the first few seasons of it so much. fiona is without a doubt parentified, she is raising those kids, but she's also clearly their sister not their mother

i know later seasons dean and fandom like to make it seem like dean literally raised sam and john was just a background figure but like. that's not realistic, and frankly doesn't even make sense

the reason dean leaves sonny and goes with john isn't because he feels like he has to keep him sam safe. it's isn't because he feels like he has to raise him. it's because he loves him

you are reducing dean to the most pathetic woe is me archetype with this interpretation and ridding him of all his rich loyalty and care and love to saddle him instead with comparatively flat duty. dean is more than sam's caretaker. he's his brother

there's also no reason for dean to feel this way. he just massively fucked up in taking care of sam - that's why he's with sonny in the first place. john has alternate people to take care of sam when he can't do it himself, as he has just proven, and while i don't think we should turn a couple teenage mistakes into making dean incapable, dean absolutely would - and did! he carries every fuck up regarding sam with him! so right now he's really, really low when it comes to his own estimation to take care of sam and leaving sonny because of that doesn't make any sense

but he looks at his brother and is reminded how much he missed him and loves him and realizes staying means he loses his brother. the good and the bad. so he goes, because he loves sam more than anything else

this is also why sam leaving for stanford cuts him so deep. that's why this moment is a parallel to that rather than being unrelated. stanford isn't about sam leaving dean even though he has a duty to care of him, because he doesn't. dean's 22 and at this point is always hunting with their father so there's no reason for sam to believe his presence is necessary for either john or dean's safety

no, dean's mad because he chose his love for his brother over a normal life and sam didn't

(sam didn't want to choose at all but this isn't about him)

anyway. dean fucks up sometimes and john sucks but not quite in the ways fandom thinks and dean loves his brother past reason or sense

[tavina-writes]

okay I think we're coming this from cross purposes because I never said that romance novels don't have other subsidiary themes. In fact, here are my original tags:

#like I need to say that romance novels are not inherently a lesser form of media#nor is like#the lack of ability to interrogate it for gender roles/class/whatever else a knock *against* it#this is just like the naruto fandom trying to say it's “plot holes” for Kishimoto to not have like#explained the economic system of all the countries he has in his universe to the same detail of ASOIAF#like#in the story for 12 year olds?????#this is how I feel about people who go “MDZS society is CLEARLY sexist!!! They disdain Girl Heirs!”#pals we have like all of (2) alive women at the end of this book their names are Mianmian and Little Mianmian#“MDZS society was super classist” we meet no non-gentry people as actually significant characters#JGY doesn't count he became the chief cultivator and his whole deal is being related to JGS and what he deserves AS THE SON OF JGS#anyway#none of this post makes any sense anymore I'm just tired

What this post is commenting on is the stunning regularity where I see other meta posts in this fandom that attempt to comment on aspects of MDZS society or culture or gender roles in ways that we cannot actually apply as true because either the book very much did not say that or the book said several contradictory things about that or the OP has applied a bunch of base assumptions that the book never specified to extrapolate a bunch more stuff that are textually not supported to defend their particular blorbo's various actions as totally justified because the book said [404 error not found].

For example: if we're going to say "MDZS society is deeply classist!" and then interrogate the novel for its commentary on classism and society, we're going to need to define what the actual classes in MDZS are. So a couple questions (see if anyone can answer these with text support from the novel):

what are the various social classes in MDZS and how is power distributed among them? How is the population distributed among them?

what does the criminal justice system look like in MDZS society overall, and who oversees it?

How does taxation and governance work in MDZS? Who is in charge of the government and who collects taxes? What are they used for?

How does gender intermesh with class in MDZS? How are gender roles distributed among the different social classes and are there differences between upper and lower class residents of this universe?

Are there regional differences in attitudes or areas where a person might move from one social strata to another? Can people move from one social class to another? If they do, what mechanisms do they use to do so?

What are the general attitudes towards servitude? How do people become servants? Is this in an inherited role in society?

Like, you yourself say "obviously there are vast swathes of society we know basically nothing about, especially the non-cultivator parts." I'm talking about the genre of post where people make lots and lots of claims about the specifics of both the cultivator and non-cultivator parts with no proof from the book about any of those claims, or discover that there's contradictory information and go "OMG! MXTX is bad at writing because [a thing that is not relevant to the story and requires several genre changes] is not explained IN DEPTH!" not that class doesn't matter to the characters in the book.

I'm not exactly sure how I want to phrase this yet, but I think a lot of the utterly weird takes I see sometimes float by me on our cursed blue hellsite (esp when it comes to mdzscql fandom) is coming from a refusal to meet the genre where it's at.

Like, why are we trying to interrogate classism in MDZS society, MDZS is a romance, the societal worldbuilding is just enough to support some general big ideas and the provide context for the romance. We can't get ANY kind of read on general classim/sexism/anything else from. this source material. if you think you can get granular when your sample size of characters from various social and gender strata are so small and we don't know how the vast majority of people in here live you are making stuff up.

Like, meet the story where it's at: it's a romance novel.

[rottmnt-residuum]

Hi, I've read the Residuum comic, and I think the characterization of the boys is really good. I was wondering if you have any tips on how to write them? Especially Mikey, please.

I'd actually recommend re-watching the show with one character in mind. All my notes on the turtles come from doing separate re-watches for each of them. The key is to ONLY watch the character you are focusing on.

In the end, you'll probably be happier with your own personal interpretation. As we are with ours lol

TL;DR

Massive post under the cut

To preface: we'll be contrasting (this Mikey) against the fandoms version of Mikey, as our interpretation is very different. Don't worry if you prefer the fandom version, there's nothing… wrong per se with writing him this way. We just find him flat and uninteresting. (Main author: not me, I just hate him, lol).

Every reader or fan comes into a story with their own biases and experiences. A ton of our view of Mikey is based on how our siblings acted. We see Mikey as the young sibling that got preferential treatment from the whole family, simply due to being the youngest, but is now aging out of the privilege. Which all youngest siblings do at some point or another.

The fandoms version of Mikey is empathetic, naive, vulnerable, co-dependent and quite often a door mat who cries at the drop of a hat. And as much as the fandom like to say that people love him… when this particular character archetype is in other media, they seem to attract the most criticism. Mable pines, Bolin from Korra, people rag on Aang all the fucking time, and Steven Universe is a whole other bag. These characters don't deserve it, and yet it happens anyway.

To flatten Mikey to simply 'the baby' is a disservice. We don't see or write Mikey as the fandom “baby” version (cinnamon roll uwu). Part of this comes from having multiple siblings, so we interpret the times when Mikey does the puppy dog eyes as typical younger sibling bullshit, mostly by the way that the other turtles rarely react to it, if at all.

The other turtles traits can also get projected onto Mikey. Mikey being the fandom therapist is in the same category as this. He isn't a therapist, he's a psychology nerd who likes to psychoanalyze people and meddle in their relationships. (Donnie and Shelldons relationship, Splinter and Draxums...) he's not trying to resolve your emotional issues. Of the turtles, the character that cares the most about people's feelings is Raph. And Leo is more of a consoler than Mikey ever is. It flattens all the turtle's characterizations when you start doing this because you are ripping out parts that are integral to another characters' complexity.

Co-author has told me that they've seen people become confused when going into the show after only reading fan fiction or coming from the movie. They see his characterization as inconsistent and become upset when their view of him is contradicted. This also happens when a fandomized version of him becomes the primary characterization that they use. Sometimes when this disconnect happens (or if they just don't like the character), Mikey characterization is swung in the complete opposite direction.

They make him manipulative and abusive, or someone who is hyper violent and avoids being held accountable for anything. This is an uncharitable interpretation of him and can come off as pretty racist depending on the circumstances. (like if someone considers the turtles black or not)

Every version of Mikey is a shithead (affectionate), even this one. Especially this one, really. When Mikey not doing the "baby schtick" hes mean. If you pay attention to what he's saying, and just not his tone of voice, he's consistently saying pretty mean or condescending stuff. (You could take this as simply naïveté, but he still says mean shit pretty often regardless)

The times he does say genuinely nice stuff the turtles don't exactly expect it from him, at least, in the early season. And while he is mean, and seems to find saying mean things to be funny, Mikey isn't cruel. Nor will he ever be.

This shit-headery behavior is found in both 2003 and 18 Mikey. They have a degree of social intelligence that lets them use it to annoy people into doing what they want. 18 just has the advantage of being baby faced and having better tonal control. He's good at using people's perception of him to get what he wants.

Let Mikey have his problematic traits, but don't overexaggerate them. He doesn't revel in fooling people. He loves doing character bits, and the baby faced one just happens to be one of them. However, to infantilize or to deem him incompetent is to piss him off, he wants to be viewed as a competent part of the team and competent as an individual. He's not insecure about being young, he just doesn't want to be treated like he can't do anything.

Mikey above all is an optimistic character, he sees the brighter side quite often and is conscious of the harm his actions have on people. Mostly after the fact, but he consistently attempts to rectify the harm he has personally done to peoples lives. (Todd, Bullhop, Draxum). Food and shelter seems to be a thing that he considers to be a right. He doesn't cross a boundary twice once he learns of it, and he never pushes people too far (if he likes you, that is. if he doesn't know you or doesn't like you, he doesn't give a singular shit. But that is standard to most people.). He doesn't care about people's stuff, though. He breaks things all the time.

Mikey understands boundaries, but he doesn't automatically recognize them. He needs them to verbalized or for there to be a very obvious reaction to the boundary being crossed (unfortunately, for Todd and Donnie). Sometimes people mess up (esp. younger people), and it can take a while for teens to learn where boundary is, but he fully respects the boundaries he does know about. He doesn't act petulant when he's told about boundary, he apologizes, accepts it, and moves on. He doesn't dwell.

Mikey doesn't hold on to distressing emotions. He bounces between emotions quickly, but isn't effected in the long run. One thing Iv'e seen people often conflate is the difference between sensitive and vulnerable. Mikey is sensitive, but I have never seen him vulnerable to others. To be sensitive is to be easily influenced by the current situation. To be vulnerable is to hold that influence for a long time. Characters can have one, both, or neither of these traits. But Mikey is not vulnerable. It is the difference between compressing memory foam and a piece of metal until they deform. One will pop back, the other does not.

Those who are vulnerable but not sensitive will take longer to effect, but once you do, they will hold on to that emotion for a very long time. The vulnerable, are grudge holders. (leo). But like I've said, Mikey bounces back. What a character does has an effect on his emotions, but it doesn't make a lasting impression.

Forgiveness is another thing people like to push on him. It is not that Mikey forgives people easily, it's just that he doesn't hold grudges. He neither forgives nor forgets, but he does not ruminate. He's generally affable, first impressions seem to be a big part of how he views people. He is idealistic, and doesn't assume people are unchanging and/or evil, but he's not a mark.

Mikey isn't so much as naive or overly trusting… it's just that he's inexperienced. He doesn't get fooled by anyone in the series except meat sweats, and that's because Meatsweats is on Todd drugs. Mikey just didn't notice when he started faking. He's not… actually all that aware of people's emotional states, passively. He has to tune in to notice things like that.

Mikey isn't someone who really tries to regulate others emotions, either. The fandom like to make Mikey afraid of his brothers fighting and others being upset, but Mikey doesn't actually care. The most distressed we ever see him in a fight is in the movie, and he's not SCARED, he's just concerned (and then alarmed once it turned physical). If anything, outside extenuating circumstances (like the movie), Mikey actually seems to find their fights annoying.

(Mikey actually seems to have a pretty short fuse, but his bounciness doesn't really let it linger very long, lmao)

(One pet peeve of fandom Mikey is the constant crying, crying at fights, crying at insults, crying for no reason all the time. Sure, he tears up when he gets emotional, but when Mikey is genuinely crying It's when he's desperate, like when he's hungry, or when he's trying to save Leo from certain doom. Same thing, really.)

Mikey respects no one (we love him for this). He admires people, he admires his family: April, the turtles, his dad, Lou Jitsu. He admires Rupert Swaggert, but he respects none of them. No one is sacrosanct to the Mikey.

Above all, the way we write characters is to give them a past that informs how they act now. We view Mikey and the other turtles as teenagers that were kids, and that will be adults. Yes they all have “problematic” traits, but 1) good characters need flaws, and controversial traits are one of the best to use, and 2) they're teenagers, don't expect adult behaviors from them, also don't expect them to be kids. They're minors, not toddlers.

This is getting as long enough as it is, so we'll stop here, but this is a very broad overview of how we characterize him. There's a lot we didn't cover here, but if we even started on hobbies, or the real minutia of his quirks and ticks, or even how he feels about other specific characters... we'd be here all day. So I hope this is good enough lol

If there was something you wanted to know in particular, you'll need to get specific. Feel free to ask again ahahh

[the-main-daine]

Life Series Render Designs:

With a new life series upon us, I've dusted off my tablet to try my hand at solidifying how I draw each of the 18 lifers.

I'm going to post them in bursts of 3, with notes if there are any notes.

Today, we have Bdubs, BigB, and Cleo!

Bdubs!

Human Design. (Not all of them will be!)

I wanted to capture the essence of Bdubs being just a li'l guy.

Rounded shoulders, rounded face, rounded body shape; BDubs is friend-shaped.

His expressiveness is one of the most fun parts of the character, and since I drew him first, he's why all of these have three expressions in addition to the full body.

I know bandages aren't part of his skins, but I feel like they fit the vibe.

BigB!

Also a human design!

Tall, broad-shouldered, and handsome.

VERY tired eyes, in my head BigB has seen some Things(tm) that are starting to weigh on him, hence the blood splatter on his skin.

He also always seems both so sweet and easy to sympathize with, and also so sarcastic and so good at sowing doubt with just tone of voice, I'd be doing him a disservice not to include both of those in his facial expressions.

His hair was super fun to draw. I DO not know if I'm interpreting that neckline right.

I need to draw Creaking BigB once I'm done with this set.

Cleo!

A Zombie, obviously. (Though I will need to draw the zombie apocalypse survivor at least once.)

Her mad, scary rage when she throws caution to the wind is honestly some of my favorite stuff to watch in the Life Series.

As the winner of Real Life, she gets a crown! And Jupiter, to honor her win.

This design is so colorful, and so bright, but I couldn't resist adding a few extra things like the yellowing eyes and teeth.

I am definitely a fan of 'Big Cleo' designs. She has too much of a belly laugh not to draw her larger than life.

[clementineofmine]

I'm sitting here rewatching Tua S3 for reasons, and one interesting thing I picked up is that the entire season is really just each of the Umbrellas struggling to define and searching for family in their own way. Here's me laying down some thoughts for y'all:

Luther - For him, family has always been about the team. That's part of the reason he's so drawn to the Sparrows, bc at first they seem to have the cohesiveness that the Umbrellas lacked. Remember, Luther was the last one left at the Academy, then Reginald sent him to the moon alone. So of course seeing a "functional" team is going to be compelling for him, and he desperately wants to be part of it. And then he and Sloane quickly fall in love and for the first time in his entire life, someone wants him for him. It's intoxicating and utterly consuming NRE that is more powerful than anything he's ever felt.

Diego and Lila - For these two, it's about figuring out how to be a family. Both together, but also a little bit with the other Umbrellas. Diego looking out for Allison and Klaus and Lila and Five coming to a truce are part of this - more about Lila and Five in a sec.

Allison - In her mind, her family is Claire and Ray. This one is obvious, but I also think that the writers did us a disservice by not letting us into Allison's perspective. If you think about it, it's completely normal for a parent to put their child above all. While I don't defend her actions, her motivation could have been more compelling and it would have strengthened her character. But sadly she's the character on the show that is most "othered" (which is bad for many reasons)

Klaus - he really dug deep into individual relationships w family, starting with Five (e2 and 5 Five and Klaus bonding are still some of the best bits of the season imo), Diego, Reginald, Sparrow Ben, and then Luther in the afterlife.

Five - Five remains a pragmatist. His bar for family is very low - success for him means the Umbrellas being alive, no matter what the personal cost or sacrifice to him or to some extent others. It is somewhat depressingly delightful to see how he makes his peace with the end of the world as the season progresses. Before that, however, I'd like to meander back to e3 and 4 where Lila convinces him to electrocute himself and then they go on the Commission mission. Both of the actors do a fine job here bouncing back and forth between witty banter and genuine emotion and I love it. It's a quick and subtle piece of dialogue when Five explains how he saved Lila from the Handler. The undertone is that they were both abused by that woman in a similar way - ultimately, she developed and kept them both as pawns in her own game. And I think Five, starting in S2E10 and fleshed out through S3, develops genuine empathy for and eventually acceptance of Lila as family, as one of them, because of this shared experience.

Viktor - Like Viktor in all seasons, he continues to feel out of place with the Umbrellas and compensates by over-prioritizing his relationships with others. Don't get me wrong, I do empathize with him that he lost real love with Sissy and Halan, but I also think Allison was 100% valid to call him out on his lying in E6, and it was on point to verbalize how the constant focus on Viktors pain minimizes her (and everyone else's) experience. (Edit to add: Viktor finally seems to get the message on this, after being called out by Allison, then subsequently both Sparrow Ben and Five, and spends the last few episodes trying to make amends. Real character development here and I like to see it)

Reginald - Well, his overarching motivation since S1 has always been bringing back his dead wife, so I won't belabor that, but also it's interesting to see how he interacted with Klaus particularly - esp in E7 when he sobers up it seems he is experimenting with remembering his role as a father. Now we don't get a ton about his internal motivation here, but you can tell there is some mild curiosity, if not affection, for Klaus, despite the fact that he ultimately is cool with sacrificing him.

Some of these are more obvious than others, but when you tie them all together, the idea that they are all desperately looking for family and the blind spots that that creates for them, some of the messiness of S3 starts to make a bit more sense.

[sabertoothwalrus]

hi !! just curious because i was looking at your adventure time episode guide and i love hearing other peoples adventure time takes !! how come you don't like finn's characterisation in together again?

I've talked about it before here and here!

But also I'm gonna say more and share some art I did in 2021 for a rewrite comic that I never got around to doing

So again to reiterate: Adventure Time is usually VERY good at making it feel like time passes, even when you're not watching. It's something about what they don't show that tells you everything you need to know.

Together Again did not do this.

It really really felt like they were avoiding showing Finn as an adult, as if they wanted to leave his post-show life ambiguous. Which, now that Fionna and Cake has shown us literally that, it makes Together Again feel even more wrong?? Like. imagine you have to pick a moment from your life that represents You™ the most. Together Again said that Finn, after living his whole life and dying as an old man, feels most represented by how he was at 17. I do not buy this. I am 25, and I cannot fathom identifying by my 17 year old self. I was a completely different person then, I was still cooking. I can imagine most people feel the same. And ok, so maybe Finn DOES for some reason feel stuck at 17? Explain to me why!! What needed to happen to him that made him feel that way?

And before you just say "it's because Jake died," there's still too much that was left out. How old was Finn when Jake died? What was Finn like, at that point? What else had they accomplished? What was he doing at the time that was on the forefront of his mind? Where/with who did they spend most of their time? Where were they living after the treehouse got destroyed?

It was like,,, it was like the story Together Again actually wanted to tell was about Finn's grief, and how poorly he copes, and how too much of his identity is tied to Having Jake, and how he struggles to move on. But that's not the story we got. I honestly think-- as interesting as it was-- everything with New Death and Tiffany and Lich just did a disservice to the focus, which was Finn trying to get over Jake.

I think Together Again should have gone like this:

Finn and Jake had always planned that whoever died first would wait in the dead world for the other to die so the two of them could reincarnate. Jake dies first. Jake would be able to "watch over" Finn as he lives the rest of his life, so Jake wouldn't miss Finn as much as vice versa, since he'd feel like he's still there with him. Eventually, Finn dies.

Finn's appearance would change with his emotional state. I thought it'd be interesting to show different phases of his life through the stages of grief.

There'd be a room where they could watch Finn's memories. Finn would walk Jake through the events of his life. We SEE exactly how Finn dealt with grief, with heartbreak, with love, with friends, with community. All the good and all the bad.

By the end of it, Finn is quiet. "Jake... when we reincarnate, will we.. lose all of this?" "Well, do you remember anything from any of your other past lives?" "No.. But that's the point. I don't want to forget you." Finn, despite their promise, despite Jake waiting for him all this time, declines reincarnating. He doesn't want to move on, because that would mean forgetting everything. He wants to say with Jake!! He JUST got Jake back!!

“What if— in the future— what if they forget about us? What if they don’t know about all the stuff we did?” We see Ooo in its current state. It’s changed, but it’s clearly been affected by the two of them. Every person they’ve saved, every civilization they helped build, every hero they’ve inspired. They’ve left their touch everywhere. “They’ll know,” Jake says with certainty. “We’ll know.” We see the future, with Shermy and Beth. We see the Finn Sword, and BMO with all their old belongings. Everything stays, but it still changes. Will happen, happening, happened. These have always been the themes of the show. They reincarnate, together.

[ohara-n-brown]

Hey everyone,

'The New ThoughtCrime' is an anti-trans community detransitioner essay

Just wanted to give a heads up to the FTM community on here that a user named @mewthoughtcrime is trying to repost the 'New ThoughtCrime' think piece from 2017 - tagging it with this such as 'trans man', 'nonbinary' and 'transandrophobia'.

However this blog fails to mention that the main author of said piece is a lesbian who considers herself a detransitioner. While there is nothing at all wrong with that -

the problem more comes from the fact that said author also believes the trans community is a cult.

This quote comes from the author's interview with Genspec - an organization that pretends to be trans supportive, while also believing trans kids are a myth, trans men are just confused teen girls, and pushing the book Irreversible Damage.

The author also believe in the idea of 'cotton-cieling' - a terf dog whistle that implies trans women intend to force lesbians to sleep with 'males who identify as lesbians'.

The think piece is NOT at all about trans men or transandrophobia.

It's about detransitioning from a woman who believes the trans community engages in 'thought reform' - in a way akin to cults.

The piece reads largely inspired by 'Irreversible Damage' - an anti-FTM shred-piece. This is basically J.K Rowling ideology.

They're in their right to repost whatever they want, especially if that piece of writing specifically spoke to them and other detransitioning folk.

However I do think it's incredibly disingenuous and sneaky to not include this information - or the true nature and intention of the work - in the Tumblr post, as the original author was very clear in stating so.

To post such a piece without tagging the detrans community is a disservice to them and a deliberate choice towards us.

The piece is not at all about transandrophobia - the OP is simply mistagging it to target particular groups - mainly, actively transitioning FTM who are looking for community.

This isn't to say you can't read and enjoy the piece, or connect to it. You absolutely can, it's about someones valid personal experience (well - some parts.) that's eloquently written.

What I do not support however is posting such material, purposely and vaguely mistagging it, while not explaining the contents, the context, and the intent of the author clearly.

I believe readers should always be informed about the source and intention of the writers of the information they received.

People should be allowed to make informed choices about what they read and involve themselves in - whether that be trans politics, or reading think pieces online.

That's why I am making this post.

'The New ThoughtCrime' is an Anti-Trans Community think-piece that targets trans men and lesbians by supporting TERF ideology.

Read with that information in mind. With the situation going on now with staff, I think it's important to be on high alert for indoctrination or misleading literature like this.

By all means, read if you like. I was just not at all impressed with the lack of transparency from @mewthoughtcrime when it comes to detailing the actual contents and source of that information.

It's one thing to call the trans community a cult - before turning around and releasing anonymous faceless think-pieces that you spread around without sources or actively informing others of its contents, in order to purposely get a demographic of people who do not wish to interact with you to unwillingly engage in your rhetoric.

As a essay that calls for 'transparency in the trans community' we can first start by lending some transparency to THIS essay.

Stay safe and stay informed y'all ✌🏾

[sankta-wraith]

So I’ve just learned that people are saying that the fact that Daemon wasn’t there while Rhaenyra was giving birth to Visenya means that he wasn’t there when Aegon and Viserys were born either.

This is just baffling to me because the first half of episode 10 was absolutely full of proof that he actually was there for both.

When Jace asks where Daemon is, he seems angry that he isn’t with Rhaenyra. If Daemon hadn’t been present with Aegon and Viserys, then Jace would presumably be used to him not being with Rhaenyra while she’s in labor. But that’s not what we see. What we see is Jace being pissed that Daemon is not there. Now I’m sure that there will be people who say “Oh he just expects Daemon to be there since he’s Rhaenyra’s husband” but Rhaenyra’s first husband, Laenor, wasn’t at Joffrey’s birth and probably (although this isn’t confirmed) wasn’t at Jace or Luke’s birth either, so Jace wouldn’t expect Daemon to be there unless he had been there in the past.

Rhaenyra also seems to expect him to be there, seeing as she literally calls out for him. If there’s one thing we know about Rhaenyra, it’s that she’s proud. If she doesn’t think her husband will be with her while she gives birth, then she’s not going to scream for him for all the castle to hear. But she does. At this point she’s lived in Dragonstone for 6 years, so she probably knows that her screams will echo through the whole castle. The fact that she calls out for Daemon, even though she knows that literally everyone in the castle will hear her, means that she expects him to heed her call, and expectation she would not have if he hadn’t been with her for their previous children.

Even the Small Council seems a bit surprised that he’s not with Rhaenyra. Every time she screams, they kinda look at him like they think he’s about to leave and go to her. Obviously most of them would not have been on Dragonstone when Aegon and Viserys were born, but they still seem to have heard rumors about Daemon staying with Rhaenyra, because they clearly expect him to react in some way. Remember, in HotD/GoT its pretty uncommon for the father have anything to do with the birth, much less be there, so the fact that they seem to expect it from Daemon suggests his presence at Aegon and Viserys' births.

Obviously, Daemon is not present for Visenya's birth (my analysis of that is here) but using that to say that he's a bad father and husband, and then trying to justify it by saying that he wasn't there when his sons were born (when all evidence points to the contrary,) is doing his character a disservice. I'm not saying that him leaving Rhaenyra alone while she was in labor was the right thing to do, but I think people need to remember that the circumstances during which Visenya was born are extremely different from the circumstances when Aegon and Viserys are born. Stop inventing things to demonize Daemon. We get enough of that from Ryan Condal.

[thatswhatsushesaid]

re: my tags about jgy and qin su in my reblog of that "does your blorbo have ptsd" tumblr poll, can we revisit that excruciating conversation in the jinlintai treasure room in cql? because one of my least favourite reads on jgy's expression and body language here is that he's being "creepy." and to be clear, i'm not trying to say you're wrong to draw those inferences here, because his behaviour is deeply, deeply unsettling, and i also find this scene hard to watch and to read in the novel. but i think if that's where your examination of him begins and ends here, you're doing yourself--and zhu zanjin's exquisite performance--a disservice.

so the 'creepy' bit is preceded by what jgy says to qin su while she has her back turned, and i find his words heartbreakingly sincere and very reflective of a man who has spent his life forced to feel shame and embarrassment over his mother, who he loves dearly and who he watched suffer right up until the moment of her death:

there are a few more very poignant lines in there about his mother and the depth of his gratitude to qin su (these show up in the novel, too), but i think the above encapsulates the same message. then the atmosphere shifts, and so does jgy's expression when he talks about jin rusong and how his death would have been inevitable--essential, even. this is also where i most often see him described as acting like a creep, and i have two separate responses to this that i don't really have the time to get into right now, but which have both doylist and watsonian components to them so 👀 you can probably make some guesses about what my arguments would be. if there's enough interest, i might come back to this later and put together a separate post about it, idk. anyway, i'm not going to get into the 'is he a creep' argument here because tl;dr no, i don't think he is, and also--

i find jgy's expressions here to be more indicative of a man who is, shall we say, Not His Best Self At The Moment �� rather than a man who is intentionally trying to make a wife who, by her own admission, he has treated very well for the entirety of their marriage, uncomfortable. his attention isn't even on qin su or the hell that she is experiencing right now--because he is re-experiencing his own hell. because he, too, is traumatized by this knowledge! he's just had a decade and change to develop some deeply unhealthy coping mechanisms and masking techniques to hide it.

at this point qin su whips around and slaps him, which i know everyone likes to gif and fistbump and holler about in a positive way, but given there is no one in this scene who isn't enduring profound trauma in this moment, i, uh. you know. won't be doing that. i will focus on his face journey in the expressions that follow because they are just so

dissociating

dissociating

dissociating

/executive function switch is flipped in his superbly wrinkly brain, and then "qin su :) we still have so many guests to attend at the discussion conference :)"

a-yao? sir?? hello??? also i do not have the quote from the novel directly in front of me, but iirc he says something very similar here to what he does in the novel, which i'll have to paraphrase: that this revelation is only bothering qin su so much because she is actively thinking about it! it's only thoughts, you see! just don't think about it! haven't they actually been very happy all this time, while only one of them had to live with this knowledge and could not share it with anyone?

to which i can only respond with abject, horrified shock because, like. have you, jin guangyao? been happy and unperturbed by this devastating knowledge? because i think the answer is a pretty definitive no.

anyway i just wanted to quickly keymash my thoughts on this before they fled my brain completely but tl;dr yes, while jgy would not use this language to describe himself, he's absolutely got ptsd specifically around his marriage to his own half-sister, and their son.

---

this post has been added to my dreamwidth meta archive here: https://thatswhatsushewrote.dreamwidth.org/10607.html

[demonic0angel]

Celestial Bodies AU (6/?)

(Part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 7. Also on AO3)

Robin moved to attack the other people within the Cathedral. They were quickly chased off into a portal and when he whirled around, his heart lurched into his throat as he watched Nightwing fight against the Joker.

Well, it was more of a one-sided smack down, but it was still pretty bad.

Nightwing was going to kill him!

Robin moved to intercept him, opening his lips to call out, when something soft brushed against his mouth.

Robin froze. He paused, feeling as though a hand was covering his mouth and arms were hugging him.

No, not hugging him.

They were holding him back.

Robin took this moment to watch Nightwing’s back as he swung his fist at the Joker’s face over and over again.

Then he turned to the metahuman that was still putting up the shield.

He tilted his head and a million possibilities flew through his mind as he figured out what to do.

The feeling of being hugged (held down, restrained, kept back) was still there, but the feeling was gentle, like a plea.

Robin had always been loyal.

(And all Robins loved the stars and the sky.)

And so Robin didn’t move.

Robin stayed behind and watched as Nightwing beat the Joker to a pulp. He was beaten so badly that his face was unrecognizable and he was twitching and silent, blood gushing from wounds as Nightwing screamed and raged.

Robin did not watch, only keeping an eye on the metahuman with the shield.

He looked over as Nightwing’s eyes flickered red and he knew it was the influence of a star on him that made him continue to pound the Joker’s face like a meat tenderizer to a steak, rather than stop and catch his breath.

Robin looked up and out the window, where Gotham’s cloudy skies circled the city.

Did the stars wish for this?

He wondered if the stars were going to make him turn to the dark side, and then he thought of the stars and their glowing kindness, and came to the conclusion that this was obviously a one time thing.

The stars were not evil. They did not deliberately wish for pain and suffering for others. They were neutral forces who loved and cared for their Robins and the Earth and it was a disservice to think they would stoop so low as to hurt their Robins to accomplish whatever goal they could’ve had.

They clearly hated the Joker just as much as the Robins did for what he did to Jason.

They could barely do anything by themselves.

It was only normal that they used Nightwing’s hand to deal out Justice.

After mentally justifying the stars’ actions, Robin clenched his fists and closed his eyes, turning away from the scene where Nightwing was beating the Joker to death, for their sake and for Jason’s sake. The sound of a hard fist meeting skin continued to echo in his ears until it stopped.

When Nightwing’s screams turned into whimpers and pitiful sobbing, and the sound of fighting halted, Robin opened his eyes and approached him.

“Nightwing.”

He touched his arm and watched as a dazed realization crossed over Nightwing’s tear streaked face.

Guiltily, Robin reached over and hugged him, trying to warm them both up with their shared body heat. He despised how he cowardly stayed behind until Nightwing finished the deed and started crying, but this was the best decision he could make.

The Joker needed to die.

“… Tim? You’re alive?”

Robin nodded once and then looked back down at the cooling corpse of the Joker.

“We have to hurry. I bet Batman is already looking for you! We have to hurry and hide the body.”

Nightwing seemed to move on autopilot as Robin guided him through hiding the Joker’s dead body. It was almost disturbing how efficiently they worked together to hide it, but by the end, Robin didn’t care anymore.

He was more worried about Nightwing, who looked dazed and distracted.

They poured a dissolving agent over the bloodstains and Robin mopped up the bubbling mess with his destroyed cape before throwing it away. Nightwing was so out of it, that Robin handled the rest, efficiently putting away the evidence like nothing had ever happened. When he came back, Nightwing was sitting in the pews.

The metahuman with the shielding ability was tied up and unconscious on the floor.

Batman and their associates were probably going to storm inside soon.

Noticing Nightwing’s blank stare at him, Robin gave him a small smile.

“I’m really alive, I promise.”

Robin approached Nightwing and then crawled into his arms and sat there, squirming and trying to find a comfortable position.

It took a moment for Nightwing’s brain to reboot but he looked down curiously as Robin tried to hug him.

“… what’s up, Timmy?” He asked.

“Code names,” he said sternly.

Nightwing just stared at him emptily. Robin gave him a small, careful smile. He suddenly felt inexplicably nervous and wanted to explain himself.

“You’re freaking out. Physical touch can bring a person out of dissociation,” then he paused and added hurriedly, “and if you’re hugging me, we can convince B that you found me without the Joker and I was able to calm you down. We’ll say that you chased off the Joker and I held you back, so if we hug, it looks more convincing and—“

Nightwing huffed a laugh and then wrapped an arm securely around Robin.

“Thanks, Tim,” Nightwing murmured, burying his nose in his hair.

Robin was silent, but eventually, he whispered back, “No problem.”

Nightwing held him closely.

Then he said, “I actually killed him.”

“And I hid the body,” Robin replied immediately. “We share the blame, so don’t beat yourself up.”

However, Nightwing’s breaths came out fast again and he was sounding hysterical.

“H-He won. The Joker won! I killed him and I let him win and—“

“Nightwing!”

He startled and looked at Robin as his breath hitched in sobs. Guilt immediately grabbed at Robin’s chest and constricted his lungs.

“I’m sorry,” Robin said. “I should’ve stopped you and did it myself. At least then— maybe I can make Jason proud.”

“Tim, no! It’s my fault— I should’ve been on Earth so I could’ve been there while Ja— I should’ve been there! And now that I’ve killed the Joker… this is my fault. I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t have been here at all. I thought you were dead and…”

Robin felt touched and even more ashamed of himself.

Nightwing was tearing himself apart over this, while Robin had stood back to watch him kill someone. He had killed the Joker not only for the people in their lives, but also for Tim. It had been Robin who had made Nightwing take a life.

For a moment, Robin acknowledged the apathy within him about the stolen life of a man and when his mark burned with a silent warning from his star at his self-deprecating thoughts, he inhaled a breath of air and exhaled.

Robin had not taken on the mantle because he was kind like Jason. He did not take on the mantle because he was brave like Dick.

He had taken the mantle because it had been what Batman needed and it had been rejected by Dick.

(Although he himself felt selfish for being Robin, he also felt like if he ever voiced this, his star would probably make him trip over a rock.)

“Nightwing, it’s okay. You did us all a service by taking care of the blight in our lives. By getting rid of the Joker, you helped me, and Jason, and Barbara, and everyone else in Gotham too.”

“B-But I lost… I lost by killing him! The Joker won!” Nightwing whimpered.

“We didn’t lose, Nightwing,” Robin sighed.

How was he supposed to comfort a distraught hero again?

“But we did! I killed him! That means that I lost—“

Robin groaned and turned within his hug to hold his face. Nightwing shut up as Robin aggressively squished his face, looking into his eyes.

“Don’t you get it? We may have lost the battle, but we won the war. The Joker may have won this one time, but what about who else is winning? The citizens of Gotham are winning. The world is winning. Barbara is winning.”

Robin’s voice softened as he moved his hands down to squeeze Nightwing’s shoulder, trying to convey sincerity and seriousness to him. “Jason is winning. And so is his star.”

Nightwing swallowed and looked down at his hands, once bloodied but now cleaned up.

Robin stared at him. “I think that’s why the stars helped us.”

Nightwing looked up. “What?”

“The cluster was helping us. They wanted the Joker to die. That’s why they didn’t stop you, only me. Because the Joker killed one of their siblings too.” He paused and tilted his head. “Couldn’t you tell?”

Nightwing paused. “Are you saying that my star made me kill the Joker?”

Robin looked at him with pity. “They didn’t make you do anything. They just released some of your inhibitions. And maybe your star was the one who made you angrier than normal, but they didn’t make you do anything.”

Like all gods, a being above mortals could not truly be blamed for a human’s actions.

Their existence may have had some influence on humans, but they could not be blamed.

Nightwing clenched his eyes shut and then held his left hand (the one with his star’s mark, Robin realized) to his chest, curling up. He started crying again and Robin bit his lip, guiltily hugging him again.

“I’m sorry. But I don’t blame you. No one is going to blame you, okay? You’re okay, Nightwing. I promise. You’re still a hero. You’re my hero.”

Nightwing sniffed and then whispered, “What about Batman?”

“I’ll take care of it. Just trust me.”

Nightwing nodded, eyes closed as tears fell from his face again and Robin held him close once more. He idly thought about how nice it was to hug someone and for one brief, delusional moment, he wondered if Jason had a comforting touch as well.

Oh well. He probably wouldn’t ever get to feel it.

(Somewhere in the universe, the Cluster started laughing.)

The door opened and Batman, Huntress, and Spoiler strode through, looking panicked. However they calmed down once they saw the two sitting in the pews. Spoiler immediately took hold of the still unconscious and tied up metahuman and took him outside. The other two approached them.

Batman looked around, inspecting everything. His eyes trained on the floor for a second longer than necessary, but Robin knew it was futile. He had cleaned everything expertly.

Batman’s gaze snapped to Nightwing, who was still wrapped around Robin like a tearful octopus, but he addressed Robin in the next sentence.

“Where’s the Joker?” Batman asked and Robin met his white eyes steadily. It almost sent a shiver down his spine, but the warmth of his mark comforted him.

Spoiler came back and through the mask, he could sense her worried and concerned gaze on him.

It gave him an extra boost as he responded calmly.

“I got here on my own after I escaped Killer Croc. When I got here, Nightwing was beating up the Joker but I was able to stop him. After that, he had… a bit of a panic attack and while I calmed him down, the Joker was able to escape.” Robin looked down, fidgeting with his gloves. “I’m sorry. I let him get away.”

His insides writhed and burned from lying to Batman, but Robin needed to save Gotham, and Nightwing was essential to that. If the Batman arrested Nightwing or drove him away, there would be no telling what could happen to the city without Nightwing’s soaring presence.

“… is the Joker dead?”

“I believe not,” Robin said. “The Joker is like a cockroach. He’ll survive anything we can throw at him. He was able to get away, and there was Warp here too, so there’s a high chance that was how he was able to escape.”

Nightwing whimpered and clutched at him.

Robin met Spoiler’s and Huntress’ sympathetic gazes and explained softly, “He’s really freaked out. He… he thought I died, right?”

Spoiler nodded but tried to cheer everyone up. “But it’s okay! At least you’re alright!”

The Batman remained silent.

Robin looked at him with big, wide eyes. “Batman…? I’m sorry that I let the Joker go. I just— I guess I forgot about Warp because I was worrying too much about Nightwing.”

There was another moment of silence.

Huntress elbowed Batman, who flinched before immediately bending down to Robin’s level.

“… it’s okay. Are you alright, Robin?”

Robin looked into Batman’s eyes and then looked down at his hands, clean from any traces of blood. Nightwing clutched him tighter.

He nodded.

Batman looked down at his waist then. He paused stiffly. “Where’s your utility belt?”

Robin replied naturally, “I lost it when I was fighting against Killer Croc. That’s why my uniform is all torn up too.”

Huntress and Spoiler both glared at Batman, who finally moved from his statuesque position. Inwardly, Tim breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that he and Nightwing got away.

Batman patted his shoulder awkwardly and then said, “Let’s go home.”

Robin looked up, a little surprised before he quickly nodded.

He pulled Nightwing along and the two of them followed the others. Spoiler immediately strode over to his side, looking him over herself.

“How are you, Boy Wonder?” She asked.

Robin smiled wanely.

Honestly, he felt better than expected. His mind, however, was racing compared to his casual appearance.

He wondered what she would say if he knew that he had helped Nightwing kill a man. He wondered if she would react badly, maybe even slapping him across the face for letting a man die. He wondered if she would tell Batman and then he would be back to regular old Tim, but disgraced and rejected.

His mark burned on his side.

He rubbed at the mark with a hand as he smiled.

“… I’ll be okay,” he said.

After all, he had the stars on his side.

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Gaslight gatekeep girlboss Tim Drake, let’s go!!!

I don’t really know the Huntress that well, so this’ll probably be the last time you’ll ever see her…

I read the comics and the interview where one of the authors said that if the comic was able to end like how they wanted to, the Joker would’ve died and someone named Rancor would’ve been the new Joker.

I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t happen lmao. I would not know how to move the story forward bc 1) idk who tf Rancor is, 2) I don’t even know DC that well, I only know the Batfamily 😭, 3) this story is about the Robins, idk anybody else

Anyways,,, yes! Ding Dong, the Joker’s dead!

The stars did influence their decisions a lot, bc in their eyes, the Joker also took away Jazz so they hate him.

This fic was originally going to be wayyyy darker with more emotional manipulation and gaslighting from Tim but I was like,,, no. Although I love me some dark fluff, I don’t think you guys the readers would appreciate too much of it, so I toned it down. However, I did want to include a lot of my hcs on Tim. To me, he’s very selfless and soldierly, but also very calculating and easy to go rogue.

Does Batman suspect something? Yes. Is he going to find out? Nah. Will anybody else know? If they become a Robin, yeah. Otherwise? Nope.

Next up, Stephanie!! (It’ll come sooner or later, but I’m busy with school rn)

[nayatarot777]

PSA For Those Who Don’t Understand That Shit Ain’t Always Sweet Out Here In This Spiritual/Tarot World

I’m not one of these “love and light” tarot readers/spiritualists. You’re going to hear shit about yourselves in my readings that you don’t like, if that’s what Spirit wants to come out. Idgaf if it’s based on personal topics, relationships, work, health in any aspect - a lot of us self-sabotage. A lot of us are in situations with people and environments due to our own doing (partially). I’m not the reader that’s going to enable your perpetual victim complex and tell you what you want to hear to protect your ego from seeing a side to yourself that you don’t like. I’m not one of those readers who help you to lack accountability over what you allow into your own life despite having the option to do better. Of course I’ll try to put it in a delicate way where I can, but if a difficult pill to swallow is presented in a reading, I’m going to point it out.

I’ll point out your control issues that I see (no matter how much you try to hide or deny them). I’ll point out where you’re betraying yourself, where you’re disrespecting yourself, and where you’re disrespecting another. If you want to focus on love and light, then by all means - do that. But that’s the reason why so many of you are still unstable and imbalanced with no idea of how to balance and ground yourself. You think any of us could exist without darkness and negativity (which isn’t always evil and “bad”)? You think that you can exist only paying attention to the good parts of you without the bad? Go ahead and see how that turns out for you.

So many of you wonder why your intuition is thwarted and why you feel like you can’t connect to your higher self or the spiritual world without a “middleman” (such as myself). It’s because you’re not ready for that. Because you’re not ready to explore darkness within yourself in order to clear out a lot of the bs that’s clouding your vision. Why do you think that so many people who are great intuitives go through some of the darkest manifestations of life itself? Major abuse, betrayal, childhood wounds, just complete chaos - and they STILL come out to be some of the strongest and well-balanced people you’ll ever meet. They’re people who are strong enough to transmute darkness into light. You’re not going to do that by ignoring shit that you don’t like. And the darkness is terrifying. Exploring space, the deep sea, or any type of unknown is terrifying. But what would society look like if not one of us decided to do that? Where would we be as a human race if people with courage didn’t venture into those spaces and bring back a bunch of knowledge for us to expand our consciousness with? We all owe doing that for ourselves. Not doing so is self-betrayal and stagnation.

Intuition is represented by the moon. Does the moon emit light? No. Mother Luna is a dark entity and she lives in the darkness - which is the core of everything. And if you’re a woman/a feminine, you’re doing yourself even more of a disservice. Because darkness is pure, feminine energy. We come from our mother’s dark ass wombs. This entire universe began as a dark ass body of space-and-time before it formed physical planetary bodies and light sources. Reject yourselves all you want, but you can’t complain that you’re out of whack energetically if you choose to do so. Or when what you’re manifesting doesn’t come through (which also stems from the darkness btw). Don’t reject the darkness but expect to be able to use it when it benefits you. Sounds like shit that masculines have done to the feminine for centuries, huh? And so many feminines are doing that same exact shit to themselves. It’s sad.

We’ve seen entire groups of people with weak egos follow the same path of rejecting darkness/femininity and we see how difficult they are as people to co-exist with: ignorant men who have egos as big as the sun because they don’t want to face the hidden sides of themselves - that often times houses some ugly traits because of what they’ve allowed to fester in the dark corners of their psyche. Ignorant, male-centred religious people who identify so much with their religion that they only want to focus on the light, happy parts of their religion while ignoring how much harm that same religion can cause to others (especially feminines/women). Thats just to name a few. If you walk around with this idea that you’re nothing but “love and light” then just know that you’re another ignorant person in this world who is no doubt ignoring very real and human negative effects that you have on yourself and/or others - no doubt. And the darkness doesn’t always have negative effects (obviously) but it will when it’s suppressed and therefore forced to come out in uncontrolled, unconscious ways. If that’s what you want to do, then I’m not the reader for you.

[whereserpentswalk]

See, misogyny inherently operates under the idea that women are weak, childlike, and incompetent, and thus need protecting by men and society. It basically frames it so that the idea of women's being men's equals is seen as being dangerous for women. And a lot of this carries over to how transmascs and afab enbies are treated.

While transfemmes and amab enbies are seen as being dangerous perverted men, it's way more common for afab trans people to be seen as confused women being put in a dangerous position by nebulous outside forces.

If a trans woman is seen as something dangerous and powerful hiding as something weak, and thus she's seen as a threat, a trans man is seen as something innocent that can't fend for itself being place in the dangerous position of something powerful and competent, and thus he's seen as a victim. It's a disturbing and distorted type of sympathy. Transandrophobia hurts as much as transmisogyny, but transandrophobia is unique in that it's much more common for the transphobes doing it to see their bigotry as a form of protection and love.

(Also, sorry if transmascs and afab enbies (and transfemmes and amab enbies) are being lumped together. Transpobes deal in agab, not gender identity, so when talking about how transphobia works, we kind of have to split it that way. I say this as a transneutral enby who doesn't even tell strangers online my agab.)

So we end up in this very weird position where people treat misgendering afab trans people as something they're doing to help them. It's done by terfs of course, but it's also done by the type of person who says "women and nonbinary people" who basically treats afab trans people as women with different pronouns. There's this aura people have when talking to or about afab trans people where it feels like they'd consider not treating them like a woman to be a disservice to them. I've even seen a lot of transmascs fall into this trap themselves, especially with modern "feminism" often treating femininity as a group that must be maintained as fought for as opposed to a harmful social construct. So many young afab trans people end up being pushed into either trying to make their identity something that doesn't offend binary femininity, or feel a need to completely detach themselves from womanhood by suffering the worst of male gender expectations.

If you find yourself misgendering (and that goes deeper than just which pronouns you use) afab trans people and thinking it's to help them, take this as your sign to stop.

If your an afab trans person, please remember that you can be loved and protected without being treated like a girl. You can be cute and pretty without being a girl. You can be emotionally vulnerable and given affection without being a girl. Your achievements can be celebrated without you being a girl. You can have community without being a girl. And you don't need to be treated like a child to be protected, you don't need to be misgendered to have community. Anyone who will only be able to love you by seeing you as something you're not doesn't deserve you.

Also, if you're a woman (normal or cisgender) reading this, you also don't need to put up with being seen as weak or incompetent to be protected. Your accomplishments aren't just women's accomplishments, they're your accomplishments. You should not have to buy your safety by painting yourself as lesser.

[ashbeneviento]

Hey so ✨rant time✨ about the village fandom (again, sorry y’all)

This post will contain dark themes so TW:R*pe, Dubious consent, kinks such as somno under the ***

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It’s totally fine to not be into CNC, or related kinks such as somno or DC. It’s totally fine to not want to read about them either! HOWEVER

What is not fine is to pretend that properly tagged fics are out there to get you. You see the tag, you move on. You aren’t exposed to it unless you CLICK. TO. READ. THEM. It’s not fine to proclaim that we are doing a disservice to the characters by writing them in such ways. It’s also not a disservice to actual victims to enjoy, or even write about said themes. Most of the people who write these fics, if not all, are victims themselves. Most of the people who enjoy reading these fics are also victims. I am one of those people! It is not only a healthy outlet for me, it’s also just.. normal? To have these kinks. (Also sometimes the story includes it purely for plot purposes and isn’t always the main theme for the story)

Keep in mind that these are villains who torture and canonically murder innocent people. They are mutants, creatures, monsters..that alone is “taboo” if you find them attractive. They aren’t sunshine and rainbows, y’all. They are going to do dark, villainous things because they are dark and villainous. I enjoy the soft, fluffy and sweet HC’s too. And when I want to read those I purposely search for those tags. You have tools to work around your triggers. Tag blocking, muted words, filtered searches that will take you to your destination. If you happen to see tags that you don’t vibe with, it is your responsibility to scroll. What we aren’t going to do is try and dictate what “safe media” is because that leads down a very slippery slope of censorship.

And I get it! I used to feel the same way. This isn’t me being like “the real world doesn’t have trigger warnings” because it absolutely does. What matters is what you do with them, though. You cannot prepare yourself for them happening out of your control, no…and it sucks when media doesn’t properly inform you of its content, but it’s your responsibility to practice online safety as well. Tags are a great example of putting it into practice.

It’s just kinda off to be surprised that a fandom for a horror game that includes really evil characters.. writes them as evil? We all experience our traumas differently and there’s no right or wrong way unless you are purposefully hurting others. Hopefully this doesn’t come across as mean but I genuinely hope my message gets through.

Thank you and good time zone to you all