#can be explored. so neither interpretation is inherently wrong

[uni-seahorse-572]

i think when it comes to fiction there's an important distinction to be made between approaching with in-world logic and out-world logic. and out-world logic is all well and good, because you can examine the text from a different angle and explore some of the issues that it doesn't address, and sometimes the nitpicky stuff is genuinely fun and silly!! except most of the time you can't use out-world logic on every aspect of the story because then it stops making any sense. and sometimes i think fandom needs a better grasp of this concept

[elipheleh]

The truth is every queer person has the right to come out on their own terms, and on their own timeline. They also have the right to choose not to come out at all. The forced conformity of the closet can not be answered with the forced conformity in coming out of it.

-Alex, Red White & Royal Blue (2023)

i want to talk about this quote. full disclosure, it’s because i keep seeing some really frustrating takes (some of which veer into queerphobia) and i am getting a bit annoyed with people and rather than directly addressing it with them & appear to be picking a fight im going to make an analysis post in my space. (tbf. its mostly on twitter and i have a priv account so that limits me)

disclaimer; this is my interpretation, im not saying its the only interpretation just something to consider. i am queer & cognitively disabled - don’t assume malice and dont be cruel. i will ignore and block freely.

tl;dr/very simplified summary: it doesn’t mean “dont ever speculate about other people’s sexuality” but rather that ‘coming out’ in the way society understands it shouldn’t be a necessity for queer people to exist openly as queer. full context under the cut & self-exploration questions at the end.

so lets start with the context. alex is talking at a point in time when the world has read their emails and so knows both are queer (bi & gay, specifically), but neither alex/the white house or henry/the palace have commented. so more simply - alex and henry are known to be queer, but have not come out. alex uses the speech to come out as bi, and as being in love with henry. he also uses it to imply that he & henry should have the right to choose not to do this formal coming out alex is doing.

—

okay. lets get into the quote analysis.

The truth is every queer person has the right to come out on their own terms, and on their own timeline.

reasonably self explanatory. each queer person gets to decide their own timing for coming out, and the way that they want to address their sexuality.

They also have the right to choose not to come out at all.

this is where problems with interpretation have started to appear. fundamentally yes, this means people are allowed to not be openly queer/‘out’ if that is what their decision is. but it also means that they can be visibly queer - for example being in a visibly queer relationship; signalling with their aesthetic (e.g. someone being butch, someone who wears only ‘girl’ clothes despite that being at odds to their assigned gender); casually posting about queer things on social media etc - without addressing their own sexuality to others.

it does not mean that you should assume everyone is straight until they explicitly tell you otherwise. and quite frankly insisting that it does mean that is veering into homo-/bi-/queer-phobia because you are insinuating that being not-straight is a negative thing.

The forced conformity of the closet can not be answered with the forced conformity in coming out of it.

some people seem to be interpreting this as ‘you shouldnt force people out of the closet’ and i don’t think thats quite to the nuance of what it means. yes, i do think that is part of it - in much the same way as the previous sentence - but it is not really the whole of it. in my opinion this is actually addressing - at least to some degree - the concept of ‘we should assume people are straight until they explicitly say otherwise’.

the ‘forced conformity of coming out’ addresses the idea that to be “out” you have to follow these steps; that you have to make a public statement that ‘this is my sexuality and i am [queer/bi/gay/pan/ace/etc]’. you are conforming to this precedent of “how to come out” that countless queer people have followed. there’s nothing inherently wrong with doing so, but actually there are different ways to be queer - and even being “out” as queer - that don’t involve following that playbook.

here’s a hypothetical to demonstrate my point. two men, who have never dated any women, live together & spend basically all their time together over 5-10 years. they holiday with each other’s family, they’re always together at events (e.g. weddings of non-mutual friends), but they’ve never told you/the public that they’re queer and/or dating each other. at what point does one start to assume they’re together? and does the answer change if its a man & a woman rather than two men? if a man & a woman did that, people would assume pretty early on they’re probably dating. but yet when it’s two men suddenly it’s invasive to speculate. this is where this concept of the forced conformity of coming out comes in - along with the veering into homophobia i referenced earlier - why must they say the words “i am gay” for it to then be ‘okay’ to consider that they’re together? (the homophobia comes into play because if you think being gay is morally neutral (which it is) then you shouldn’t have any issue with the speculation about people being together regardless of their genders.) the idea that straight is the default is where this forced conformity starts to really kick in.

—

i guess the main things i want people to ask themselves are these (and i have been asking myself these questions, there is no judgement or censure just self examination):

1. do you think people can be openly queer publicly without explicitly sharing that they are queer? (by this i mean in an announcement or in casual conversation. can you be openly queer without ever addressing it explicitly?)

2. if you do, why do you think that talking about the possibility someone is queer is something that should be hushed up? is it because there is an internalised concept that being queer is something abnormal and/or negative? if it was a straight couple would you feel the same way?

3. what does “coming out” mean to you? why does it mean that, what have you internalised to get to that conclusion & is it something that always works or are there other ways to be openly queer (or ‘out’ if you prefer)?

4. is it possible that there are queer people living openly and happily as themselves without explicitly addressing their sexuality to the wider world, who don’t want to address it publicly? does this make them closeted or ‘less’ queer to you? if so, what makes you think that?

[saintsenara]

In A Year In Every Ten Harry is gay right?

Is it your personal interpretation/head canon that Harry is bi or gay (or something else)?

yes.

and no.

now look... i've read the "here's definitive proof that [character] is [sexuality]" posts, and i've found some of them - usually the ones which are tongue-in-cheek to some degree - pretty entertaining.

but every single one is nonetheless wrong... because fictional characters - especially fictional characters being written in fanfiction - are not definitively anything.

they are tools to enable a narrative. and - as a result - they are inherently malleable. they do things and say things and go to places and so on - even if such actions would be illogical not only in real life, but in the canon material - because the story requires them to.

and the relationships they form - romantic, sexual, or otherwise - happen because the story demands it as well.

i say a lot that i think not being willing to multi-ship is a skill issue. i think the same about "he would never say that" takes. and i think the same about insisting on a set interpretation of a character's sexuality. this - like everything else - is flexible based on what a story needs. any character can be anything if an author simply has enough nerve.

which is to say, yes, in one year in every ten harry's gay. but this isn't because this is how i see him in canon, or how i always see him within an m/m pairing, or even how i always see him in tomarrymort.

it's because it's what worked best for a story which has as a key theme the idea that harry:

spent his teenage years convincing himself that the reason he was fighting voldemort was so he could have a specific future [marrying ginny, living in godric's hollow, being an auror] after he was dead made a series of rushed post-war decisions in pursuit of that life - marrying ginny included - without ever thinking about whether they were what he actually wanted realised that instead of voldemort's death being an ending, followed by nothing but the blissful oblivion of happy-ever-after, he had a century of life stretching out before him, in the course of which he might want to develop as a person beyond who he was at eighteen realised that interrogating his increasing feeling that he loves ginny, but his love for her is neither sexual nor romantic, is but one way of starting that process decided to ignore this impulse and pretend things were fine and that his fairytale ending was, indeed, a fairytale couldn't pretend anymore

in another story, he might have sat down and realised that he was bi and wanted to explore that, or that he was straight but his relationship with ginny was nonetheless failing, or that he didn't want to be with anyone regardless of gender. but in this one, him realising that he's gay - and that he'll be happier if he stops pretending otherwise and is honest [even if that honestly is messy and complicated and raw, while his performance of happy-ever-after was neat and easy] - worked better.

[rayclubs]

Am I correct in saying that you don't like nb pyro, trans scout, and gender-fluid spy mainly because they're not creative? Like you wanna see people almost "not state the obvious"?

Slightly unrelated lmao when you said you thought that trans scout was transphobic I was totally like, "Oh yeah I think he'd totally have some internalized transphobia." So, what do you think about the mercs and that? If they do/don't & how they deal with internalized transphobia/homophobia or gender dysphoria in general?

Sorry if any of that came off as rude, I didn't mean for it to.

No, creativity isn't the issue here at all.

To be clear, I don't think that any character interpretation having any gender or sexuality is inherently creative, just how in real life being LGBTQ+ is not a trend but a state of being. The creativity in character creation or analysis comes from exploring how their gender and/or sexuality relates to and is a part of their life experiences, relationships, values, personality, culture, self-expression, and other defining aspects of their existence.

My issue with nonbinary Pyro, transgender Scout, and genderfluid Spy is that of redundancy, or worse - insidious bigoted rhetoric. Hateful, malicious people have spent years reimagining the diversity of queer experience into a collection of easily-strawmanned "tropes" and delusions, and the media took them and ran with them for almost as long as it existed en masse. Scout by design is what a prejudiced mind imagines a trans man to be, Spy's genderfluidity is assumed because he doesn't fit a centuries-old patriarchal understanding of masculinity, and - the worst offense for me, personally - in my close, regional, almost familial culture nonbinary people are still seen as obscure non-human creatures, such as Pyro is occasionally implied to be.

It's... understandable, really. Plenty of trans guys relate to Scout, I know genderfluid people who see themselves in Spy, and enough nonbinary people have told me how much Pyro means to them for me to learn to keep my voice down when I talk about this. I'm not asking people to stop making these interpretations, I'm only asking you to please consider where they come from, and to broaden your horizons with other, more varying, more meaningful ideas besides.

Now, as for your other, more loaded question - I will not be making TF2 transphobia headcanons, because I do not want to and would not be comfortable doing it. I know you meant neither offense nor harm by asking, and none is taken, but that's a firm "no", and now I have to clarify why because I want anyone misinterpreting my stance here.

I live in a place where same-sex marriage is still illegal. Transgender people have no legal rights in this country, and I have found myself wondering "Is this the part where I get hate-crimed?" much more often than I would wish even upon my worst enemies. So, no, I'm not one of those who think you can never ever put bigotry in your stories and headcanons because something-something gay people can have stories that aren't tragedies. Because fuck me, some of us are still living those tragedies, and many people have it way worse than me in the year of bloody 2023, so - I'm getting off track. The point is, you can put anything in your stories. You can have your characters deal with internalized or systematized bigotry, and I think that's perfectly fine, whichever way you may want to do it.

The reason I'm not doing it is ONLY because I myself, personally, don't want to. Not because it is rude, or immoral, or wrong, or "problematic" (I hate this word), or children might read it, or it's bad representation, or any such bullshit argument. It's just me, and I'm very tired, and I hope nobody sends me any negativity over this, but I've kinda braced myself already so go ahead anyway. Cheers!

[charcoal-zone]

Rant ahead about the controversy of Eggman's characterization in Frontiers.

I have noticed that the Sonic community, or more specifically the Eggman fan community, are pretty split down the middle in terms of how Eggman is characterized in Frontiers. This isn't aimed at one person specifically, just points I've seen brought up by multiple people.

I'm not trying to say that people are wrong for disliking Eggman being written with a more sentimental side. But there's this idea that people are pushing that writing Eggman with a sentimental side is inherently wrong in itself, and will go as far as to say that people who enjoy this characterization of Eggman "ignore his true character and don't like him for what he is."

I find this absurd for several reasons. First of all, throughout the many pieces of media that Sonic and the gang have appeared in, different writers have taken different approaches to their characters. The characters are pretty simple at their core. It's up to the writers to take their simple concepts and build onto them. Different people are gonna have different ideas about what that character should be, and sometimes other writers might borrow their ideas. And, as the Sonic Twitter said, "Everything is canon" so technically speaking, none of the characterizations in any comic, game, or film has been "incorrect."

Secondly, people always want to know more. They always want to see more. Dr. Eggman is a pretty mysterious character in a lot of ways. The series never really answers where he came from or why he is the way he is. Some people would say "he's just a dick" but others might say "he must have had a tragedy in his past" which, usually, when a character has a tragic past, they're gonna have a vulnerable side. So most people who believe Eggman's selfishness comes from trauma are gonna believe that there's a hidden side to him. As I said before, his past has never really been explained in the series (at least in the games.) So there's a lot of room for imagination not only for fans, but for writers. And some writers might want to explore this idea. When an official media comes out that points to Eggman having a more vulnerable/sentimental side to him, of course those people who interpreted him that way are going to be happy. Yes, nothing in the game canon has ever stated that Eggman could have a tragic past or a vulnerable side, but nothing about Eggman's past has ever been stated in the first place. People will fill in the gaps and they're not wrong about that.

People also just tend to like villains they can relate to. If there's something about Eggman that they relate to, they're gonna be all over that shit.

I just think neither idea, either "Eggman will never care about anything other than himself" or "Eggman can learn to care for something else besides himself as long as it supports him and everything he does" should be treated as inherently correct or incorrect. Someone believing the latter does not mean they don't understand Eggman as a character, they've just come to a different conclusion about him based on what we DON'T know about him. It also doesn't mean they want Eggman to be a weaker villain. Personally, I don't think it would weaken him at all or take away from his villainy.

TL:DR Stop acting like your take on Eggman is the only correct one and saying the people who like his characterization in Frontiers are wrong or not true fans of the character. It's really gatekeepy. Everything is canon and people are gonna have different ideas about what he should be.

[owlsinathens]

Commented on AO3, but wanted to reblog here too for Greysnow Week.

First, I have to say that I have no idea whatsoever about this being a trend in the general fandom. I hardly ever read stuff where Theon isn't one of the main focuses, and then I almost exclusively read Greysnow, so I can only speak for that, and obviously only really for myself. That said, even within Greysnow, Theon is my priority, my number one. I love Jon with all my heart, and the difference isn't huge, but if I could only save one it would always be Theon (sorry Jon).

I'm in the camp Theon could have been an arse to Jon, it's one of my headcanons. But that in itself is again such a limited view at the whole topic, so I'll try to explain my stance.

It starts with that I don't think "bullying" is the right term for what I have in mind. I see bullying as something way worse than what I headcanon going on between those two pre-GoT/ASoIaF. Bullying sucks. I was a fat kid who is now a fat adult and I was mercilessly bullied all my life. This is not what I have in mind for Greysnow at all. I'm missing the right word in English, and even in my native language (German). There is a term in my dialect - jemanden auf die Schaufel nehmen - which literally translates to "to pick someone up with a shovel", and that at least somewhat conveys what I mean, but it's not really translatable. But it's more in the direction of teasing than actual bullying.

Theon, in my perception, is a jokester. He has all the makings to be the class clown, not in a ridiculous way, but the funny, charismatic one. These days he would have a blog not unlike Perez Hilton, would maybe give scathing but hilarious Golden Globe speeches, or write SNL skits. It's the circumstances of his upbringing that hindered him from becoming that.

On the other hand, there's Jon. Who (again, in my personal perception) is way too quick to take offense at any perceived or real slight, because he thinks so little of his own status he tends to project that onto everyone around him. He's serious, and brooding, and in that a polar opposite to Theon, who tries to tackle shit with a carefree, light-hearted attitude, like some sort of armour.

In my headcanons, they both give as good as they get – only Jon isn't aware of it. He thinks himself morally superior, but he's constantly hanging around like a dark cloud (I once described him from Theon POV as an ink blot spoiling a colourful painting), only waiting for Theon to make a crude joke so he can justifiedly say Greyjoy is an ass. And if Theon doesn't, Jon feels slighted once again because Theon is ignoring him. Oh dear.

As for Theon - how could he not tease Jon? (Again, HEADcanon of mine) He's giving him more than enough ammunition. I don't headcanon it as malicious, or evil, or designed to make Jon jump off the Broken Tower, or anything even close. (But I do think that inherently Theon does think Jon beneath him, status-wise. As does almost everyone else, it's societal.) It depends on which story I'm writing. It ranges from Theon teasing Jon to get his attention, to Jon just being an easy target for internal comedian Theon, up to A Sitting Duck where Theon lashes out to relieve his own pain, and many more. Although to be absolutely honest, the sitting duck one isn't a scenario I headcanon often, it was mostly born out of frustration with the discussions at that point and people being so vehement that Theon could never have "bullied" Jon in canon and writing it in fic is wrong. I don't like being told what I can and cannot do in fic.

As for canon... in my view, canon supports neither headcanon. The space is blank, wide open to fill with one's own interpretion and headcanons. Exploring headcanons in fic is never wrong. What I personally think is wrong is insisting one's headcanons are canon and demanding/wanting others to adher to that. There could be endless interesting discussions about opposing views and headcanons (from which more Theon fics could be born*), but this stops the moment one "side" believes to themselves to be in the right and thus superior over others' opinions. Fandom is supposed to be a community, not a fractured trench zone.

*There was a discussion sometime lately where interesting points were brought up, and now I have a fic in the work (Greysnow, what else) where Theon, at one point when they were kids, made a joke about Jon that was meant to be some sort of try to be friends - and Jon perceives it as a slight, from then on taking every small thing Theon utters in bad faith and going around telling everything how much of an ass Greyjoy is. Thus he creates a self-fulfilling prophecy - Theon doesn't understand why, becoming the ass to Jon that Jon has construed him to be, while Jon is becoming the "bully". Is that canon? Nope. Is it fun? Drowned fuck, yeah!

Thank you for your meta and the addition to Greysnow Week – I fear I went a bit on a tangent at one point, maybe because that's what the Theon fandom feels to me these days (trenches). A part of me still hopes we could come out of our trenches and realize that it's not about being right or wrong, just about a character we all love, in our own ways.

There’s a trend in fandom to write Theon bullying Jon and even other Stark kids on occasion. How accurate is that in terms of book canon? Where does this portrayal come from and what role does it tend to play in stories?

Book Canon

Because Jon leaves for the Wall so soon into the books, there isn’t much in the way of interaction between Jon and Theon, but there’s enough. In GoT Bran 1, Jon calls Theon an ass behind his back after he kicks a severed head. A little while later, the two of them have a perfectly civil exchange about the mother wolf. After the adults insist the wolf pups are likely to die, Theon quips how the albino is likely to die fastest. Jon responds by glaring and insisting it won’t because it belongs to him. In Jon 1, Theon ignores Jon on his bench as he walks by on the way to the high table, something Jon says is nothing new. And that’s it in terms of their on-page interactions.

After they leave Winterfell, they think of each other only occasionally. In SoS Jon 5 when Jon learns about his brother’s deaths and the sack of Winterfell he thinks that he never liked Theon, but he wouldn’t do that. In the next Jon chapter, he draws comfort during the battle for Castle Black from a quip Theon once made and admits that Theon was the better hunter.

Theon, meanwhile, describes Jon as sullen boy, quick to sense a slight, jealous of Theon’s status yet accorded more honor by the household in CoK Theon 1. In Theon 6, he considers joining the Night’s Watch, recalling that it was honorable enough for Jon Snow. In DwD Prince of Winterfell, he reminisces about sparring with Jon and Robb in the yard and soaking in the godswood pools after. In A Ghost in Winterfell, he thinks about how Jon will take his head in a heartbeat in an amused, suicidal ideation sort of way.

All told, Theon and Jon don’t like each other (Jon actually says it out right), and they both express jealousy over what they see is the other’s better treatment. Jon thinks Theon’s an ass (accurate) and Theon thinks Jon’s a sullen, prickly bastard (also accurate), yet they both respect each other and have fond memories. Neither one has any memories of Theon bullying Jon. By contrast, Jeyne bullying Arya is portrayed on the page and recalled later by both parties.

So, if there is no canonical evidence for Theon bullying Jon, where did the idea come from and why does it keep cropping up?

Where Did It Come From

Show-verse Theon is absolutely a bully. The show runners wrote brand new scenes and modified ones from the book to showcase Theon being a bully who is antagonistic to the Starks in general and Jon in particular. Take, for example, the wolf adoption scene which is altered so that Theon snaps at Robb for daring to give him an order and then insists that Jon take the runt of the litter. There’s a later scene where Theon goes out of his way to taunt Osha after she’s been taken prisoner. Show-verse Theon is a far bigger asshole than book-verse Theon and way more comfortable mouthing off to the Starks.

As it stands, book-verse Theon is a complicated and uncomfortable character. He’s an ass, the type of guy to kick a severed head at an execution. His sense of humor is dark and irreverent, even if only a fraction of it actually leaves his mouth. In his memories, he admits to deliberately trying to wind up Benfred Tallhart and Roose Bolton at various points. Where most POV characters are either monogamous or chaste, Theon is a horny as heck and treats women as disposable sex-objects. He tells himself it’s better to be seen as cruel than weak and repeatedly advices Robb towards violence. And all of that is before all the terrible things he does after taking Winterfell. For a certain segment of fans, it makes sense to project this awful behavior backwards so he was always a bad person who did bad things, like bullying.

The fanon echo chamber is also a contributing factor. There is a lot of canon to read through and, if you read enough fic, it’s easy enough to confuse it with other people’s head canons.

Where It Crops Up

Theon is rarely the focus of those stories which feature him as a bully. There are a large number of stories where Theon bullying Jon or, indeed, any of the Stark kids, and otherwise being generally unpleasant is just background radiation in a story about life in Winterfell or the Starks being awesome. Often times, bully Theon will serve as device for making other characters not normally in Winterfell like ward OCs or canon Stark antagonists more likable by contrast. In stories where the Starks are somehow winning at the game of thrones, Theon’s earlier bullying will serve as justification for a rather nasty comeuppance even though the taking of Winterfell never occurred.

In stories where Theon being a bully is the focus, the bullying is usually in the service of Jon’s character. A character being bullied builds automatic sympathy points with readers. Theon bullying Jon thus make Jon a more sympathetic character and justifies his angst. This is especially important in stories where his canonical excuses for angst, namely his bastard underdog status and Catelyn’s emotional abuse, are downplayed or removed entirely. In a modern high school AU or similar, Jon needs a bully like Theon or his character just doesn’t work.

And then there’s the undeniable spice of enemies to lovers tropes. Bully, or at least asshole rival, Theon will crop up quite a bit in Jon/Theon fic. Sometimes the plot will be Theon bullying Jon to get his attention and burn off some sexual tension. In other cases, it will be about Jon learning to see through Theon’s bravado bullshit to his tender heart bellow. Either way, the story must start with Jon hating Theon so the ending emotional payoff is that much better. Then there’s the darker fic where Theon’s bullying is a prelude to either a bdsm thing or an outright abusive romance.

There is nothing inherently wrong about writing Theon as a bully. Fanfiction is all about taking a story and making it your own, actual canon be damned. They way fandom has seemingly collectively chosen to interpret Jon and Theon’s relationship is an interesting trend.

Comment on AO3

[nozomijoestar]

Some words on KumiRei since I’m in another Hibike renaissance and can give time to how I feel I don’t agree 100% with any major camps on how its perceived in the anime though I do consider it romantic 

First off I believe KumiRei is not only romantic as a WLW, but both characters are aware of this romantic nature they don’t show anyone else, they are not in full denial nor are they just friends- instead its a complex weave of the two, and they act accordingly

Neither do I believe either is heterosexual but rather Bisexual (Reina) and questioning Lesbian (Kumiko)

I’m drawing from deeply personal experience on it which is part of why I think this way regarding them so in saying that I think the issue is people are too used to formulas when viewing media, if A is seen as true then it must lead to B then C and maybe D and so on, but while I’ve been guilty of the same I think that’s a limiting way to view/engage with art, love doesn’t have to follow the old They confess, Everything is fine in the end, They get married, They have babies etc. path

There’s nothing wrong with liking that concept but when you fixate on holding something to a rigid standard of expectations, then you’re missing other perspectives and bigger pictures, you’re kinda locking yourself away from accepting life is made of lives not just your own, experiences not just your own, and how you choose to deal with those lives and yours (See only the tree, miss the forest and so on)

Hibike! is a show dedicated to human interpretation and expression in all of its characters and their intricate relationships so applying formulas to it to me is inherently missing the point to paint it as something its not trying to be (and reading it as strictly heterosexual is ignorance of an lgbt perspective)

All of that out the way and being said, every Kumiko and Reina interaction is a progression of romance that has the complication of being between two girls in a contemporary setting; every word, every silence, every touch or look is framed as openness for two people who’s entire foundation is struggling to find a place among humanity and peers and even initially toward each other, they have a defined separation between how they see themselves as together, as one, with a completeness they show others only in shades, so that every gesture they make as people with others has consideration they practiced and established first between each other, they are the genesis for a measure of each other’s overall humanity

Kumiko shoots higher because she sees Reina live it; Reina humbles her pride for empathy because she saw Kumiko try it, the list goes on and has been said by many- Kumiko is Kumiko near Reina and Reina is Reina near Kumiko, no gimmicks no tricks no hung up reservations on trust like there is with others, they simply are together and that is so hard to achieve, to be understood

People get caught up on Reina’s unreciprocated (thank god jsdifsj Edit: i rewatched the scene where Kumiko tells Reina she's rooting for her after learning Taki's wife died and I love the sentiment but that's still fuckin gross and I'd really like the entire Taki crush situation squashed completely in S3 whatever form it takes- I get they're teenagers so they don't know better and that kinda thing does happen (I know from personal experience even) but it's still wrong) feelings for Taki-sensei as they do the Shūichi + Kumiko situation then think that means KyoAni has no concept of homosexuality for not depicting the expected formula cishet couples (and Yuri as an exploitative genre) depict rather than remember that for now and for most including myself lgbt relationships are not part of the accepted normal and so can't be compared nor should they be expected to integrate in the exact same way to be valid- and Kumiko and Reina themselves seem to operate on knowing this which lends them an air of sadness to a degree because they can't (for Kumiko and her CompHet/Side that dislikes upsetting people which I feel lead her to accept then leave Shūichi's romantic interest even more so because in the end being in love with him isn't who she is and walking away there is growth on her part) be their entire selves and act in more intimate ways on their homosexuality than they already are

They know their closeness is special to them, their attraction is special, they know it's not how they treat other friends, and they know by how they keep treating each other that it's a level of romance especially in the way they say This is a confession of love not just in having said such a thing, they're not in denial enough to stop being as they are together but they are struggling to reconcile and build on how they see their other relationships which includes the men in their life and social expectation given their lgbt sides in their identities, not just because the series treats them as people but because they're teenagers (I feel like people forget they're kids all the time), and no teenager ever has all of themselves sorted out at their age even more than most adults, teens should be allowed to safely explore what the hell the world and other people mean for them to discover themselves and that's what I think is happening

When I was their age I didn't consciously realize my best friend was the love of my life since we were 11 in my eyes because of denial and fear to act on it or take a chance on my intensity being reciprocated, instead I loved her more than I loved myself while still having crushes and being in love with other girls all the time- even as she and I had what I felt was the same level of intimacy, love, and openness, we even entertained the idea of growing up to live together and it was only as an adult that I finally looked back and saw what she told me she already knew about me being in love

Reina and Kumiko canonically mull over the idea that they'd be separated as time goes on, and I think the observation shouldn't be When will they be a couple but rather They're too scared of going all the way as a couple for life to pull the rug from under them, they are for now in love and guarding it, preserving it with the last bit of distance they possess in themselves, and the question is when will they be comfortable enough to not need that fear

Human relationships are complicated and multilayered and can never be fully defined by set order and if the show accepts that then it's how I want to see it

[agent-cupcake]

Hey AC! I love your blog and was wondering if I could get your opinion on something. I've seen some people complaining that Ingrid and Hilda are treated by the fandom, with Ingrid stans saying that Hilda is also racist towards Almyrans (which, granted, she is) but doesn't get nearly as much hate about it as Ingrid does. But personally I feel like their attitudes and the way they react towards Dedue/Cyril are wildly different and Hilda generally seems less hateful/irrational about it. Thoughts?

This is... kind of a touchy topic... I like it though! It’s worth discussing, especially since I feel like it’s broke criticism to simply deflect blame onto a character in order to prop up another.  Full and obvious disclosure: I very much dislike Ingrid and very much love Hilda. That said, I don’t think it’s fair to compare them for the sake of which is worse. I fall into the trap of character criticism through comparison far too often and it's not really valid unless you can fully explore each character in their own right beforehand. Which is why, while writing this, I came to the conclusion that the ways these two characters are interpreted and the reason people view their racist tendencies differently has far more to do with the characters themselves than their actual beliefs.

From first impressions to subsequent playthroughs, this is pretty much how I feel about Ingrid: she brings up her hatred of the Duscur people and Dedue unprompted and uncontested several times at the very beginning of the game, putting it front and center to her character. This is important, it sets a foundational component for how I could come to view her. According to her introduction, she is honorable and respectful, a model lady knight trope. But, as mentioned, she's really racist. Literally standing around thinking about how awful it is that Dimitri would trust a man of Duscur because they are all bad people. Yikes. And nobody calls her on it. Again, this is very important for perception. People judge Sylvain for his bad behavior in a much more harsh way than they do Ingrid for her vitriolic loathing for another classmate who we have seen as nothing but respectful. It's weird. And then, despite the fact that her close friend Sylvain was able to reason out that it’s not possible for the Duscur people to be at fault for the Tragedy, despite the fact that the prince of the country she supposedly hopes to serve with unwavering respect and loyalty has made it clear that he does not believe that Dedue or Duscar are responsible for the Tragedy, and despite the fact that Dimitri, her close friend and the one most affected by the Tragedy (seriously, she lost a guy she might have married and he lost his best friend, mother, and watched his father be killed in front of his eyes) continuously insists that neither Dedue nor Duscur are at fault, she loudly and openly believes that the ensuing massacre of Duscur was deserved and Dedue is inherently culpable simply because of his race. Her motivations for this hatred feel even more cheap considering her dogged hero worship for Glenn was born out of the fact that she was promised to him, making the fact that she’d use his death as reason enough for the destruction of countless innocent lives even more unsympathetic in my eyes. I mean, seriously, she was around 13 and he was older than her, how close could they have truly been? Dimitri says they were in love, but she was a child. Abandoning my modern sensibilities about age of consent or whatever, kids at that age don't have the emotional or mental capability. Maybe this is just nitpicking, but I have a very hard time caring about that relationship. But, if her actual justification is because of what happened to Faerghus as a result of the Tragedy and feels duty-bound as a knight to find justice through the systematic destruction of the Duscur people, then it just circles back to confusion considering the future leader of said country doesn't hold Duscur or Dedue responsible. The importance of perception comes in because despite these paper thin excuses and her seemingly willfully ignorant hatred, she is never challenged on her racist beliefs. The reason she seems to change her mind about Dedue and consider that maybe excusing a genocide is wrong stems from guilt that Dedue continuously comes to her aid in battle at the potential cost of his own life. I can understand, to a certain extent, why she might feel the way she does. But, again, I have such a hard time with any justification when nobody that she's close to is even nearly as hateful as her, there is plenty of evidence (evidence that the people close to her have found!) to provide a very reasonable counterclaim to Duscur's guilt, and that none of that even matters when it would require her to openly contradict the prince of her country to make the claim that Dedue was in any way complicit in the Tragedy. Which would be fine if she wasn't established as the model Lady Knight archetype, which also brings us into Ingrid's moral high horse. Admittedly, I hate the Lady Knight trope. I have a significant bias against these types of characters. However, I really do think that this moral crusade is where she lost me completely. Without even a shred of empathy or self awareness, she lectures Sylvain about his shitty behavior even though their circumstances are at least somewhat similar and he has his reasons (bad ones, maybe, but ones worth understanding if she actually cares about him), she lectures Felix about not being interested in knightly endeavors (an aspect of his character that is born of the trauma she has appropriated), and she lectures Claude about behavior that is befitting of a man in his position. Not because she cares about the girls Sylvain is hurting, not because she thinks there are any grave stakes from Felix choosing to do his own thing, and not because she knows that Claude's behavior affects his ability to lead, but because she doesn't like these behaviors and thinks they should be fixed. Yet, at the same time, she believes Dedue deserved to lose his family, country, and culture based on his birth and nobody ever does anything to morally correct her, it is something she eventually is forced to acknowledge on her own. It's frustrating, infuriating even, that the game lets her get away with being so grossly hypocritical. And, all the while, she is being painted as sympathetic. Again, I have a hard time feeling sympathy for her about Glenn, and I certainty don't feel sympathetic towards her issues about marriage because there's never any actual tension there. Of course she won't be forced to marry, she's a Lady Knight. Beyond being unsympathetic, I also find her massively unlikable. Awful design, poor voice direction, food-loving-as-a-personality-trait, the fact that she's written as one of those stock "feminist" characters who hate makeup and girly things until it benefits them, and constantly butting in on other characters to give her opinion without taking any criticism herself are all aspects that I just personally dislike. Ultimately, Ingrid being racist is only a symptom of the many reasons her character is one of my least favorites. Most of these points can be countered by someone who doesn't take issue with the things that annoy me and to point out that Ingrid DOES get over her racist beliefs. It's not fair to say that she doesn't change but, for me, the damage was already done by the time she became tolerable so I still have a hard time appreciating her. My assumption would be that there are a lot of other people who feel similarly to me regarding their dislike of Ingrid so they focus on one easy character flaw, her being racist at the beginning of the game, as a reason to validate their dislike of her overall.

On the other hand, Hilda's racism isn't a main trait of her character. It's related to her overarching character flaws, but she doesn't bring it up unprompted and can actually be pretty much missed without the Cyrill supports. Like you said, Hilda does seem less hateful and irrational, it doesn't take willful malice and an active rejection of reason for Hilda to dislike the Almyrans, they pose a genuine and provable threat to her family and territory, seemingly senselessly testing the borders and throwing away lives for the sake of conquest. To be clear, her "you're not like those OTHER Almyrans" schtick is legitimately nasty. Her behavior is gross and condescending and it really underscores the fact that Hilda is ignorant, lazy, inconsiderate, and incredibly comfortable in her privilege. She accepts what she's been told at face value because she's too lazy to look into it further. Cyrill does tell her she's stupid to think that way, though. Which is satisfying because Hilda in those supports is insufferable, it really highlights the worst aspects of her character, dismissive, manipulative, and very selfish. However, for me, she's also very likeable. I'm not interested in going over my opinions on her like I did with Ingrid as I don’t feel it’s as important to my point but a few reasons I really like her is because I think Hilda has a fantastic design, cute supports, amazing voice work, and is secretly sweet in a way that absolutely tickles my fancy. I am sure many people do not agree with me, which is fine. Additionally, just as Ingrid grows out of her racist beliefs, so does Hilda. They both end the game as more tolerant and caring people. Still, for the same reason a person could argue that Ingrid is actually great and I'm being unfair, they could argue that Hilda is terrible and I'm too biased. That's fair and true..... but I think the fact that Hilda is more generally appealing in conjunction with the less obvious nature of her racist attitude makes people less likely to dismiss her as a racist in the same way they do Ingrid. Unless they dislike Hilda, in which case, it’s all fair game.

Anyyyways, a main takeaway from this is that I highly doubt people are truly arguing on the individual basis of who's more racist, but that they're engaging in the age old waifu war. As with many characters in this game, it's easier to argue moral superiority when you can't quite articulate what you like or don't like about a character. Or, even worse, when you're arguing opinion. Even now, as is clear by reading this, I am arguing my opinion of why I don't like Ingrid. Not because she's racist, but because of the character traits and writing choices that make her unlikable to me. I like Hilda because, flaws and all, I find her to be compelling and enjoyable. From the people that I know, at least, that is basically how the Ingrid stans v Hilda racism argument is structured, even if they dress it up in different language.

By the by Hilda never talks about how the Almyrans deserve to be wiped out. I think that probably sours a lot of people's opinions of Ingrid no matter what happened afterward but that’s fine we can just pretend that didn’t happen

[lookbluesoup]

I’ve seen a lot of talk about anti anti culture lately and an emphasis on canceling people who write stories where bad things happen (i.e., rape, molestation, abuse). I’m really interested in facilitating a positive, open space here on my blog. So sharing my personal opinion about this at all is something I thought about for a while, and my hope is that it offers a helpful perspective as well as solidarity to people who use fiction the same way as me.

It’s not directed at anyone in particular or any event in particular. The tl;dr version is – people should always have a choice, they should be allowed to read or choose not to read, they should be allowed to write and share or choose not to write or share. Taking that choice away from people ultimately hurts survivors by making topics taboo and forcing everyone to fit a specific moral narrative for their pain or experiences to be valid.

Trigger Warnings: Rape, abuse, cancel culture, child molestation, depression, suicide, dogmatic religion, homophobia

1. These things DO happen in real life, and yes, they are harmful, and yes, reading about them can be triggering. Fully, completely acknowledge all of these things and have experienced my share of it firsthand.

2. People should be allowed to know before they get invested in a story whether triggers might be present so that they can choose to avoid it if they want to. It is their choice, and responsibility to decide not to read something that is appropriately tagged. (And please, please tag appropriately!)

3. Being interested in reading about dark subjects does not make a person evil. Somewhere between 31-57 percent of women admit to having rape fantasies. (x) That does not mean women want to be raped in real life. It does not mean that half the population of women are perverted degenerates. Reading fiction, like indulging in our fantasies, is a safe place to explore and enjoy sensations, dramas, and experiences we still don’t want in real life.

In less touchy examples - I love reading about gladiator arena battles! I love playing apocalyptic games where monsters jump out of the dark and scare the shit out of me! I do not want gladiator rings or to live in an apocalypse in real life! That doesn’t mean my interest in these stories or games condones them in real life. It doesn’t mean I think it was right that Rome irl forced slaves to fight to the death for entertainment.

4. I grew up in an environment without grey areas. The dogmatic Bible-beating hatemongering kind. Someone was good and did everything right according to my beliefs and worldview, or someone was bad and a direct threat to me. If I did something wrong, I had to punish myself physically and emotionally to make up for not being perfect. I was taught to despise myself. My parents believed there was only one correct way to view any situation - their way. I was petrified of punishment and learned that it wasn’t even worth trying to do better or accommodate someone else’s experiences because I would never measure up and would be condemned for doing something that wasn’t perfect. That is immensely, cripplingly harmful to an individual and to society. Cancel culture does the same thing. It excommunicates people who aren’t pure and allows others to get by with abuse because they are ‘teaching’ or an ‘authority on morality’ – and guess what? Nobody is pure. We are all human, we all make mistakes, and we are all learning. None of us have moral authority.

We cannot build a healthy, inclusive society if we are unsafe. We cannot be safe if we are not allowed to first admit that we ALL make mistakes and have prejudices that we can improve on. So we need to be kind and nonjudgmental whenever we have the chance to be. And we have to accept and respect that what’s fun or helpful or healing for us might be the opposite for someone else, or vice versa. Which is okay if we are respectful of each other’s boundaries and don’t try to force a way of being onto someone else without their consent.

5. With regard to writing, this means that people need to be allowed to explore difficult, even painful topics if they wish to. Even for fun. Even if someone else might not want or need to explore those same topics. That doesn’t make either person inherently evil or wrong. It just means we all have different needs and wants and diversity is normal. 

As a serious example, as someone who was molested by a teenage neighbor as a child, I can guarantee you that the fact these topics were considered so disgusting and taboo by society made it very difficult for me to cope. It was not my fault, and I’ve healed from it, but when it happened I didn’t even understand what was going on, and the guilt and self-blame that followed me for years afterward were almost crippling. So yes – what happened to me in real life was wrong, inexcusable behavior. But censorship did not protect me. First it made me ignorant and vulnerable to manipulation, and then it made me feel dirty, disgusting, and isolated. 

What I needed was a safe avenue to talk about it and the thoughts and sensations it stirred up, in order to heal. I needed to know it was okay to have automatic thoughts – they were a result of fear and trauma or even just being human, not a moral failing on my part. I needed to actually talk about and explore what I had felt openly, and how that related to the rest of my life, before I could move past it and have a healthy view of intimate acts that weren’t soaked in guilt and self-loathing.

I read a book after that happened, set in ancient Rome, where pederasty took place. And the victim was allowed to admit that he’d enjoyed some of what had happened to him while enslaved, and was then assured that even though he didn’t hate everything that he experienced, it didn’t make him to blame, nor his abuser right, and those thoughts/feelings did not define him or his morality. That has been immensely healing to me – but this ‘grey’ exploration of a topic is not compatible with mainstream cancel culture.

Or alternatively, I watched the series 13 Reasons Why. I hated it. It felt like nothing but shock value entertainment and not a respectful management of topics like suicide that were very, VERY real to me. Except for someone else I knew who had also struggled with suicidal thoughts and impulses, 13 Reasons Why was immensely validating. They were glad that a series showed such graphic representation of these events in a way that couldn’t be ignored or brushed over. What had been hurtful to me, was empowering to them.

I believe it is not mine, or anyone else’s place, to decide that a piece of media should be across the board banned because of what it might do. Because while some of us share traumas, we still each have different experiences, needs, and healing processes.

Such strict censorship allows for only victims who meet a certain “standard” to receive care and healing. The rest are left to suffer or are even punished further.

All of us have gone through life with vastly different levels of privilege, opportunity, expectations, etc, which leads to vastly different interpretations of the world, none of which are 100% correct or true.

6. Cancel culture hurts LGBTQ+ rights. I’m neither straight or cis, and I might never have learned that if I hadn’t been able to build friendships outside of my social circle who allowed me to integrate and ask questions without being obligated to agree with them. Where I grew up, there was immense prejudice against gay people. My cousin was disowned and disinherited for coming out. I was sheltered from anyone who might argue for gay rights, and discouraged from looking at or being curious of the deep south’s version of ‘problematic.’ That’s what I was taught – to be uncomfortable toward, judgmental, and condemning. If I had been on tumblr during those years and gotten ‘cancelled’ I would have been even more suspicious and condemning of Others, and even more determined that my way was the only right one. I specifically avoided tumblr social circles because I ‘knew’ they hated ‘people like me.’ It’s not exclusive. This trend where people become even more convinced to pick an opposing side because the Other person is being hateful is one of the first things they teach you in social psychology. 

The kind of intolerance that goes with mobbing people for saying anything they consider problematic at all is the same cruelty that makes me unable to tell my parents I identify as agender or pan. It’s what gets women stoned to death and gays beheaded. It’s not moral. 

What changed my point of view was friendships. One of my friends came out as gay and my world turned upside down because here was someone that didn’t match any of the stereotypes I’d been taught to fear. He wasn’t hateful or condemning of me, he was one of the most thoughtful and peaceful people I knew. That is what started to change things for me, and made it safe for me to explore other ways of thinking and interpretations of scripture. Because I cared about him more than I needed to be right.

7. Nobody is obligated to interact with someone who is being violent or hateful to them. You’re not even obligated to interact with someone you disagree with, if the topic is too painful or you simply don’t want to talk about it. Keep yourselves safe. But within the world of writing, live and let live. If someone posts a story you don’t like, and they’ve tagged it appropriately, please, please consider that your experience is not universal. You have the choice not to read that story. Someone else might need to read it. Let them, and don’t shame them for it. 

[bookshelfmonkey]

I'm so glad my ask helped :)

I think you (and other people who commented) are absolutely right in pointing out that I was wrong in seeing the revolution as inherently doomed. I think I was looking at it and judging Silver's actions from a broader historical perspective that the characters lacked. Just because we as an audience know that there never was this big revolution led by these fictional pirates, doesn't mean that the characters know that. I see now that the revolution hypothetically could have succeeded, and it was Silver's actions that put the final nail in the coffin.

In many ways, I think the tragedy of this show is that its characters are almost always single-mindedly driven towards one thing, to an unhealthy extent, and those they care about rarely share their goals. Flint and Madi were willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the success of their revolution, whereas Silver was willing to sacrifice anything and everything to ensure the survival of those he cared about. Neither of those attitudes are healthy, and I think that's how I can take even a slightly positive attitude towards Flint's ending. It's not about accepting that oppression must continue, it's about learning when you've sacrificed too much of yourself, and all that your continued investment will ensure is your own destruction (tbh my own experiences of autistic burnout may be heavily influencing this). I'm not saying that that's the best, or even a good interpretation of it, but it's what I tell myself so I'm not always sad about Flint. As for Silver and Madi, their life goals and priorities are irreconcilable. I don't think either of them communicated much about this, but what puts the blame on Silver is that he's the one who saw fit to act on her behalf. The few things he did out of love were the things that hurt the ones he loved the most. It's a selfish and impulsive kind of love that leads to him sacrificing their goals on their behalf, but I don't think we can argue that it wasn't love at all.

Also, a broader, moderately more positive interpretation of the ending as a whole could be a "lose the battle, win the war" type thing. Madi & Flint's revolution doesn't succeed, but we know, in hindsight, that slavery did end and, in many other important ways, the world has become more accepting and inclusive. The ending with Max more or less in charge of Nassau shows that progress has been made, even if it wasn't as much progress as anyone was aiming for. In times like today, when many forms of bigotry seem to be on the rise (I see a lot of this as a trans person in the UK atm), it's easy to be discouraged or even to dispair over the way progress seems to be heading backwards and we're not making the levels of progress that we might be hoping for, but, if we keep fighting and keep exploring every possible avenue, progress will be made slowly. Madi and Flint didn't bring about a revolution, but the fight against colonialism continued, Max gained a level of control over Nassau, and I think we can safely assume that Madi lived to fight another day,

I wanted to share a little of my perspective on John Silver. I am by no means a Silver stan and honestly, I didn’t really care for him either way (hate him or love him) in my first watch. Through my second (I’m now on both a third and fourth watch simultaneously, it’s complicated) watch, my feelings towards him changed somewhat. He’s still not one of my favourite characters, and by no means does he even compare to Flint in my mind, but I really think painting him as entirely bad is an oversimplification of his character.

Black Sails is, at its core, a show about incredibly complicated characters, all of whom have been through hell, and who are coping with their trauma in different ways. We never get Silver’s backstory which, to be fair, I was also mad about, but we do get hints at it. We know that he started off as a member of a merchant crew, and not a high ranking one which, at the very least, implies that he was not from a privileged background and likely never had any stable employment or family support (those who did were rarely enlisted into these merchant crews). The interpretation of the few bits of insight we do get into his childhood that I favour the most are the ones that suggest that him stating that all his backstory taught him was that the world was a place of unspeakable horrors (or something similar, I can’t remember or find the exact quote) is true—that so much of what we see him do is an effort to distance himself as much as possible from some trauma that he cannot bring himself to think about or disclose to anyone, first by doing everything he can to remain as independent as possible, then by making himself as necessary as possible. He cannot reveal what has happened for fear that speaking of it will make it more real, and possibly even bring its effects back into his life. It sure as hell isn’t a healthy coping mechanism and it definitely hurts those around him, but the same is true for so many of the other characters. Flint, in season one, kills Gates to continue his war against civilisation, one that hasn’t even started, because Gates calls him out on his recklessness (and was right, the battle that Flint killed Gates in the hopes of continuing ended with the Walrus wrecked and the crew decimated and stranded), but, in that moment, the audience feels for Flint, even though we don’t yet know why he’s so dedicated to doing what he’s doing, because, even as he’s killing possibly one of the most “good” characters, we feel sorry for him.

Silver’s backstory is one rooted in loneliness and pain. He starts with being unable to trust anyone then, as he starts to bond with the crew, they start to die off alarmingly quickly. Even in season two, he becomes important to the crew and vice versa, and this process is accelerated by the loss of his leg. I think this acceleration is also worth noting, as it puts him in a place of dependence before he would have been comfortable to do so, before he has learned that he can be vulnerable with someone and they won’t necessarily immediately hurt him. His refusal to allow his leg to heal properly and to let people help him stems from this wariness of vulnerability. Sure, it’s not a healthy attitude, and it does hurt other people, but, especially given the general attitudes towards disability at the time, I can at least understand it. In the eyes of his society, and, therefore, in the eyes of John Silver, disability = vulnerability = weakness = letting others hurt you, so he becomes consumed by the goal of making sure he seems as strong as possible. There’s also a heavy dose of toxic masculinity mixed in here, but, again, as I see it, it’s an understandable (if not excusable) result of what he’s experienced so far. The only physically disabled character we see before Silver is Randall, who is nearly kicked off the crew and then killed (without being able to raise any kind of alarm or defend himself), which certainly isn’t a comfortable frame of reference for someone who has also now lost their leg.

Moving on to Silver’s position in the revolution, I think a lot of my interpretation of his role comes from knowing that Madi & Flint’s mission cannot succeed. Black Sails is, in many ways, quite intricately and accurately tied into the historical context of the time and, the fact is, that the golden age of piracy ended, slavery continued, the empire won out (at least for the next few centuries), and the prejudices that they were trying to fight continued.  By the historical context that is set in stone, Flint and Madi’s revolution could not have succeeded and, honestly, Black Sails shows this. Their ideas were good, as were their tactics, but they had no widespread support. Any support for Nassau had to come at the cost of the end of the revolution, and they had none of the numbers, weapons, money, ships, land, public support, or really anything that would have let them succeed. It’s a good fight, and that’s what hurts the most, because we as the audience want them to succeed but know that, historically, and even within the context of the show, they cannot. Silver sees this, and it definitely isn’t a good look being the only major character in that trio resisting this revolution, but he knows, as we must also know, that it is doomed to fail. He is not stopping it because he doesn’t care for the cause, he is stopping it because he knows that the sooner he stops it, the less likely it is that he will lose someone he cares about, has he has already done with countless members of the crew. He knows in stopping it that he will probably lose Madi, but he does it anyway, because he sees that, whether she lives, dies for nothing, or dies and becomes a martyr, the revolution will fail, and all that will be different is that she and countless others will have died. Again, this level of pragmatism does not look good on him, but between the dreams of Flint and Madi and the sacrifices they will make to try to attain the unattainable, it is incredibly necessary.

Honestly, I can’t fully argue this case without your knowledge of the last part of 4.10. It isn’t a tragedy; it isn’t just filled with a sense that it was all for nothing. At the bare minimum, there are some very cool Max moments. Please, even if you have to skip through all the Silver scenes, watch to the end.

Sorry for the essay :)

posting bc I'm very honored that you chose to write this in response to my unhinged ranting!

I don't have the spoons for a proper response and this deserves one so I will hopefully be able to write something coherent in response sometime soon. I didn't want to just leave this hanging!

[lachryphage]

my bnha ships are decidedly Wholesome™ so I’ve found it refreshing to join the Gorillaz fandom and explore 2doc, an inherently “problematic” ship. but this contrast highlights the issues I have with the concept of “wholesomeness” and the reduction of characters and ships to the extremes of Pure~ uwu Unproblematic Fluff or Worst Vile Abuse If You Like This You Should Be Executed.

while I don’t believe that fiction and reality have a direct cause-and-effect relationship, I see similar attitudes increasingly applied to real life situations and I find this deeply concerning. healthy relationships are not devoid of conflict, unhealthy relationships aren’t always abusive, and even the best of people often carry heavy baggage that can negatively impact their interpersonal relationships.

in bnha I primarily ship erasermight (and secondarily, erasermic, or the rare, coveted, allerasermic). although this ship is not devoid of drama, it’s generally accepted that it’s an Unproblematic ship by all but the most zealous of Purity Police. but the pro-ship community surrounding erasermight approaches it in a fundamentally different way than antis would.

while there is plenty of fluff, I would say that the vast majority of the content we produce for erasermight is an exploration of the unhealthy aspects of the characters. both Aizawa and Yagi have been through absolute hell, and their experiences have marred them with flaws fundamental to their characters. these flaws have the potential to fuck up any relationship between the two, and often the way we depict them directly explores this. it’s a wholesome ship because it is two genuinely good people -- who genuinely care for one another -- trying to understand their mutual love. but we do not shy away from delving into what antis consider “abusive” behavior. (anyone up for some impulsive, impromptu, non-negotiated bdsm that goes too far?)

personally, I prefer the realism brought through acknowledging characters’ gray areas but I do of course believe you can like pure, sugar-sweet, tooth-rotting fluff without necessarily being an anti. I’ve just found that in the extremity of this rising issue, it’s that content and only that content that’s considered acceptable.

and thus, we find ourselves now at 2doc.

the Gorillaz fandom is predominantly zealous antis; it’s a radically different climate than the type of fandom I’ve grown accustomed to in my happy little corner of bnha. the most popular ship is the subject of much of this controversy because of the undeniable abuse that Murdoc enacts upon 2D. generally, fans either wholly condemn 2doc, or insist that it’s only acceptable if Murdoc undergoes some kind of therapy during which he learns to become a Good Person capable of a Healthy Loving Relationship with 2D.

whether you want their relationship to (eventually) be “wholesome” or not, I strongly believe that this is a disservice to the complexity of both characters.

whether or not Murdoc is a Good person is highly debatable, and a discussion of that particular topic necessitates a deep exploration of ethics and what it means to be a good person. and as much as we might want such a thing to be simple -- for our own understanding of ourselves and the world at large -- it isn’t simple. but that’s a discussion for a different time. whatever you believe, “canon” (also a highly debatable subject in the context of Gorillaz) depicts Murdoc as both decidedly vile and unexpectedly, genuinely caring. 

I’d like to clarify that I’m not against “out of character” depictions -- I take issue with there being only a few “acceptable” ways to depict a character. and in Murdoc’s case, he must either be condemned as irredeemably evil, or reformable into a fully Good person. this results in the complete reduction of his character and everything that makes him compelling.

both the Unproblematic depictions of 2doc and the complete condemnation of 2doc similarly reduce 2D -- he becomes the Good to Murdoc’s Evil.

2D is considerably nicer than Murdoc. he’s pretty(?) and charming and doesn’t seem to do anything with malice or even bad intentions. Murdoc takes advantage of his trusting, clueless nature. but 2D is still very much a complex character with decidedly shitty behaviors with the potential to contribute unhealthy dynamics to 2doc. 

outside the predominant attitudes of the Gorillaz fandom, people enjoy unhealthy, often depraved depictions of 2doc, pushing the abuses between them to the extremes. in these depictions I have found more acknowledgement of these characters’ complexities, so I do prefer them to the Unproblematic brand, but ultimately they also fail to satisfy my personal preference for realism (I know, I’m really quite boring, don’t @ me!!!).

it is with this context that I’d like to return to the concept of wholesomeness and how I categorized erasermight as a “wholesome” ship:

“it is two genuinely good people -- who genuinely care for one another -- trying to understand they’re mutual love.”

in my opinion, 2doc can’t be defined as wholesome, at least not entirely. I think there is real potential for moments of wholesomeness to occur between them, and to me that’s where the ship becomes the most rewarding. 

I have never seen someone claim 2D is a bad person, and while I wouldn’t say Murdoc is a Good person, he has undeniable potential for good. and so the first “criteria” of wholesomeness is neither fulfilled nor denied -- it’s a gray area, something you could push one way or another depending on your inclination. do they genuinely care for each other? of course, you can interpret characters how ever you please, but I think there is plenty of canon evidence that they do genuinely care for one another. so finally… do they have mutual love? perhaps that is the ultimate ambiguity: love, yet another human concept that necessitates deep interrogation to answer -- if it is answerable at all. but that’s a discussion for another time.

if you haven’t noticed yet, the deeper we go, the more questions we find, the more complex things get, the wider these gray areas become… the more obvious it is that 2doc is neither entirely devoid of “wholesomeness” nor unsalvageably abusive. that’s what makes it interesting. that’s what makes it real. that’s what makes it worth exploring, that’s what allows us to investigate potential real-life relationship dynamics, what allows us to recontextualize and better understand our own experiences. it’s what makes it -- in my humble opinion -- beautiful. 

I strongly believe in the power of fiction to help us understand our world and the people who populate it. of course fiction doesn’t have a congruent cause-and-effect relationship with reality, actually, I’d argue it goes the other way. fiction is a mirror in which we can see the current state of our society -- its ideals, fears, hopes… and similarly we can see our own personal lives.

my fear is that the growing push for purity in fiction is the symptom of people desperate to reduce their own realities into extremes. that perhaps, in their own lives, these people categorize everyone as either an Abuser or a Victim, that all actions are Right or Wrong, that hurting people is a preventable, evil action rather than an inevitability of being alive… but, of course, that is a different discussion for a different time.

[reylo-musings]

Vessels of the Force

I know I’ve been quiet, but I do want to speak candidly. 

I take great issue with the implications of our characters’ connection to the Force in The Rise of Skywalker. Am I a Ben Solo stan who is still salty that my boy faded into nothingness without a hint of respect for his character growth? Yeah, yeah I am. But more so than that, I am a person trying to navigate a world that seems to be trying to trip me up at every turn and I’m desperate to cultivate some kind of personal guide for that journey of mine. Star Wars, and the idea of the Force, up until this disaster of a film, were large parts of that guide. Now, it feels as hollow and cheap as a dollar store chocolate easter bunny. 

Something that I saw as complex and rich in meaning, teeming with so many glimmering facets to explore and understand and containing the strength to hold up under whatever pressures the world would throw at it - a true diamond in the rough - turned out to be nothing more than a large sugar crystal. Sure it had a bit of sparkle and it was sweet for a bit, but under the heat and pressure of the world, it melted and burned to ash because it wasn’t strong enough on its own and no one was paying close enough attention to care for it. 

But, to continue speaking candidly, I couldn't care less about this disaster of a film, and the poor light it is shining on my beautiful Force diamond. For me, it’s the literal embodiment of “Canon? What canon?” and I couldn’t be more pleased with that choice for myself. 

If I were to pinpoint my exact issue with the film and its interpretation of the Force, it would be centered around the idea of living beings as mines of the Force and not vessels of the Force. Rey’s line “I just transferred a bit of life. Force Energy from me to him” is not the inherent issue. This concept of Force transference is good even, but the further implication that going “all in” and transferring your entire stock of Force Energy to something else necessitates that you just vanish from existence. #BenSoloDeservedBetter

As beings in the universe, we are not Force mines to be exploited and emptied. Our value does not diminish over time as parts of the Force are chipped away from us, either to be willingly given or forcibly taken. We are not an ore mine that will eventually unearth its last ounce of value and then just exist as an empty hole for the rest of eternity. We are living vessels of life, and that life is ever changing inside us. Some days we will feel that the world is demanding so much of that life and we will constantly give it out and feel we are getting nothing in return. Other days, we will feel so full of life that it seems we will burst from it, but the vessel will amazingly always accommodate more. 

Our value is not tied to the quantity or quality of the vessel’s contents, rather our value is constant. No matter how much the energy inside us may feel depleted or heavy or sick, our worth will always be the same. 

A large issue with the idea that our worth is tied to a finite amount of energy inside us is that all acts of selflessness, where energy is freely given, are actually acts of martyrdom. Rey transferring Force Energy from her to a wounded creature is no longer about providing an act of service to a life in need, it’s about choosing to chip away at her own life force in a way that, if done enough times, would actually be her demise. A system that is based on a unsustainable minable energy breeds selfishness and fear, where a user will hesitate to help others out of fear that their last value will be striped away and they will vanish. 

The Force is not meant to be seen as a landfill of energy. As life passes from one being to the next, that energy is renewed, not left to rot and decay. The Force lesson from TLJ highlighted this in such a perfect way. 

Luke Skywalker : What do you see? Rey : The island. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence. Luke Skywalker : And between it all? Rey : Balance and energy. A force. Luke Skywalker : And inside you? Rey : Inside me, that same force.

Sometimes, the Force is like trail mix. All of the parts of it were cultivated together to provide energy and to feed you, but there’s almost always a part that you don’t like as much as the rest. Maybe it's the raisins you don’t like. Maybe you’re just straight up allergic to peanuts (and probably shouldn’t eat the rest, cause like, peanut dust…but try to stick with my analogy here). Maybe the texture of cashews has always just weirded you out slightly. The reality is, if everyone on earth felt exactly the same about trail mix, there would never be a part of it you wouldn’t like. Manufacturers would see that everyone on earth hated raisins and would stop putting them in their trail mixes, but of course some people love raisins, and think they’re the best part of the whole mix. 

Are they wrong for loving raisins? No. 

Are you wrong for hating raisins? Also no. 

Not everyone has to love and eat the trail mix the same way to gain energy from it. A trail mix is a trail “mix” because of its variety. It requires that there be separate and individual pieces brought together to work with one another towards a common goal (the goal of tastiness and hiking energy!). No part is more “right” or “wrong” or “special” than any other part. The Force is not one kind of energy. It contains varied facets that reflect different colors depending on the angle of the light you’re holding it up to. To you, the raisins could be your dark side; the slightly bitter and uncomfortable feeling that gets stuck in the back of your teeth. Or maybe the m&ms are your dark side; the indulgent feeling that has just the right coating of saltiness to be satisfying and motivate you to keep going in the 100 degree heat. Neither is “right” or “wrong”, you just use those energies in unique ways to yourself and your experience. 

Say you’re out on the trail with your partner, and you’ve each got one snack box of trail mix. You hate raisins and they hate cashews. You could probably survive the hike just by picking through the contents of your own box and leaving all the things you don’t want at the bottom, and your partner could do the same. But now it’s getting late in the afternoon, and your box is empty of all the things you want and you’re running out of energy. So you offer your near empty snack box of unwanted raisins to your partner, and they give you their unwanted cashews. Now you each have more energy to complete the hike, and your snack boxes are empty and ready to be refilled with new yummy life-giving foods. 

As soon as your snack boxes were emptied - the contents having been taken and used by those who desired them most - the box did not cease to be useful, but rather is ready to be filled once again. As vessels, cycling through and giving away the life inside us is not a sacrifice, rather a necessary progression to prepare for new life-giving energy. 

There is a distinction to clarify on the idea of beings as vessels of the Force. The reality is that not everything is meant to be kept in a vessel. Vessels are intended for the binary cycle of cultivation and implementation of energies and substances. Vessels are not intended for storage and containment of other living things. A child with the best intentions, who finds a wounded bird in the woods and places it in a closed box for safekeeping, will always end up with a dead bird. A vessel is not intended to sustain a separate living being inside it, as that being requires its own interaction with various energies to survive. Vessels are also not meant as containment units. A fire cannot be saved in a vessel and used later. The fire will use up and exhaust all the energy inside the vessel, and then eventually it will exhaust itself as well. This is where the territory of “beings living inside other beings” doesn’t hold up. 

“Kill me, and my spirit will pass into you”

No. Just. No. 

Can energy be transferred? Sure. If you pour a glass of water into an already half-filled hydro flask, now you have a hydro flask that is filled with more water. But the individual molecules from the glass of water are no different from the ones that were already inside the bottle. They all mix together and are just “water”. Even if the water you poured in was nasty old moldy water, it’s still just a collection of molecules that contain energy. Nothing is binding all the “old” water molecules together in one part of the bottle. There isn’t anything that is binding just those pieces of water to the inside of the vessel permanently. If the user wants to be rid of that energy, it can be transferred back to the universe and renewed an infinite number of times. A being cannot be contained and continue to live within another living vessel, it just doesn’t work that way. 

So how does this all relate to the guide I’m hoping to cultivate for my insane life? It’s about finding a better understanding of my Depression. It’s about welcoming good energy when I feel others sending it my way. It’s about recognizing that in moments I feel empty, my value is not lessened because my energy is depleted. It’s about knowing that even if I feel I only contain one last ounce of energy, if I give it to someone else who needs it more, it will not be my demise. It’s about knowing that energy can be found, transferred, and renewed inside me from every source in the universe. Conversely, that also means that every source has the ability to take away that energy from me, and teaches me to be mindful of the parts of my life that needlessly deplete that energy. It’s about understanding that if energy was given to a source that didn’t appreciate it, that transference was not a was not a waste of my time. All energy given away will be renewed in the universe and I will be ready to accept new energy into myself.  

To me, yes, “The Force” is real. Some days the Force is God. Some days it is the heat from the sun and the wind in the trees and the song of the rainfall. And some days, it is just the breath in my lungs and the beat of my heart. What that energy is for you may be something completely different, but find that energy and let it propel you throughout this crazy journey we call life. 

[bunnymcbunnister]

SPN Season 15 Spoiler Sheet, update 11/18

Some updates including an ep 7 description, some guesses on the writer/director for 12, and some vague filming info for 11. I feel unsure about Misha’s status in eps 9-11, so if anyone knows differently, let me know. Might have to wait for episode descriptions on that. Also, I added in some guesses on airdates based on this post, but they are not for certain. And no photos for 6 yet, but they will likely post 30 seconds after I post this. 

DISCLAIMER: This is gathered info from various sources. This is not confirmed information. Stuff in this WILL be wrong. Don’t take this too seriously. This is for fun. 

General Info (oldest to newest)

There is hope to wrap up some Wayward Daughters storylines in the back half of the season

They are adding a whole extra day to filming to do the final scene. They will film the final scene last.  (Implies logistics- lots of returning people?)

Brad Bucker used the word “romance” when asked about Sam and Dean’s arcs. Did not specify who. 

In an interview, Kripe indicated that the series ending would have “peace” for Sam and Dean

Not much new at the TCA’s, but it was said it is “unlikely” Jeffery Dean Morgan will be back since his last appearance was such a good end note. There were some jokes about a Castiel spin off. Hell, I’d watch. 

There will be a special tribute ep, not clear if its one of the 20 or additional

Misha will be in 15 out of 20 episodes this season

According to Dabb, Sam and Dean are going to start to lose people who, in past seasons, we would’ve never lost — and lose them in a very real way. Our guys are going to realize there’s a certain finality, and some of the things they’ve relied on to get through the day — people, talents, things like that — they are no longer going to be able to roll out. And that’s going to throw them for a loop

Also according to Dabb, Jack is still in the empty and “he’s not coming back in the near future”

Cas’ deal with the Empty may come up later in the season. 

Dabb intimated that Chuck was inherently responsible for killing Mary when asked how the boys would respond to Jack. 

Adam Rose, who played Aaron Bass from the golem episode vauge-tweeted about working a show with two badass leads. Could be Supernatural, but I think the timing is off- he indicated he was filming late Friday night. 

Dabb compared Chuck and John Winchester, claiming that Dean would have to break free of “conditioning.” Also, for Jack “there have been cosmic forces fighting for his attention since he was in the womb — and that will continue. As much as this season is about Sam and Dean finding agency, it’s also about Castiel finding agency, and it’s about Jack finding agency. As always, death is never the end. It’s just part of the journey and that’s certainly true with Jack.” 

Per Variety: At the outset of the season, the “Supernatural” foursome of Dean, Sam, Castiel and Jack are split up, but Dabb notes they won’t be for long because “ultimately this is a found family, and they have deep emotional bonds” that make up the most important part of the show.

Sam’s wound from the equalizer gives his powers/an advantage of some kind (per TVGuide)

Jack will be a critical part of the ending of the show

The cage/Adam is looking like it will be coming up for midseason

Shaving People, Punting Things: https://youtu.be/azTwku2uosA

The shaving promo, punting things promo shows glimpses or Lucifer!Sam and MOC!Dean, as well as bearded Dean in tactical equipment. Recent interviews by Dabb seem to indicate that these are glimpses into other universes, a la Apocalypse World, and other endings from Sam and Dean. 

According to the MarySue and other interviews, Sam’s bullet hole will give him a connection and insight to god- like a tin can telephone string.

In the cage, Micheal and Adam have formed a working relationship (MarySue)

Dean and Amara’s connection will be explored

There will be a bunker themed episode (MarySue)

According to Misha (Cinablend) Dean and Cas will have discord up to ep 8- which is the mid-season finale. 

At a convention, Jake Abel was asked to share two lies about Adam’s return and a truth. The said 1. Adam is not upset about hell 2. Adam kills someone 3. Adam bring someone back. I am assuming its the bring someone back (Micheal?)

In one of his cookbook interviews, Misha used the word “we” several times when talking about the final scene of Supernatural. He said that would be the last scene they shoot. It seemed to imply that he was in the scene, but that could be open to interpretation. 

The finale will air on Monday May 18th. The show will move to Mondays when it comes back on March 16th. It’s gotta come back either than that and go on a mini break or something, because that is not enough Mondays. 

Episode 15x06

Title: Golden Time

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: OUT OF DIFFICULTIES GROW MIRACLES – Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) are visited by an old friend. Castiel (Misha Collins) investigates the disappearance of a local teen. John Showalter directed the episode written by Meredith Glynn (#1506). Original Airdate 11/21/2019.

Written by: Meredith Glynn

Director: Showalter

Filming Dates:  9/16-9/25

Airdate: 11/21

Photos: https://ew.com/tv/supernatural-season-15-episodic-photos/

Promo: https://youtu.be/xAD_k5l1AdA

Sneak Peak:

Castiel? Yes Jack? No

Guest stars: 

Other Spoilers/info:

Misha tweeted from set in costume, so Cas. 

Misha also tweeted a pic in blood spatter with two bullet holes in his shirt

At least Jensen and Jared filmed in Rowena’s apartment 

This will be a witch episode- Witches will invade Rowena’s apartment looking for books. They are very powerful. Dean gets thrown into a wall and Sam uses magic to stop them (from TVGuide)

Looks like Eileen in the promo!

 Episode 15x07

Title: Last Call

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: CLOSING TIME – Dean (Jensen Ackles) goes off on his own to take on a case. Meanwhile, Castiel (Misha Collins) has an idea of how he can help Sam (Jared Padalecki) track down God. Amyn Kaderali directed the episode written by Jeremy Adams (#1507). Original Airdate 12/5/2019.

Written by: Jeremy Adams

Director: Amyn Kaderali

Filming Dates:  9/26- 10/7

Airdate: Dec 5th

Photos: 

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? Yes Jack ? 

Guest stars: 

Other Spoilers/info :

Misha posted from set in new shoes- very shiny with well tailored pants. (The next day he posted in full Cas costume, so are the shoes a one off? Another outfit with new shoes?). 

Misha and Jensen made a video from set. I feel like if Jared was around he would have been in it since it was about money raised?  Maybe a Dean Cas scene?

There will be a battle scene in this that Jensen mentioned he was looking forward to and we would enjoy. 

After NJ Con, it appeared that Jensen returned to work, Jared and Misha stayed an extra day and then Misha went home. Misha only did about 2 days of filming. 

Jensen and Christian filmed at a bar called Swazey’s. This was the fight scene Jensen was referring to. 

At some point, Sam might be shirtless or we can see part of his chest- Jared had his anti-possession tattoo at the weekend convention.

Per TVGuide, Leo and Dean will have a wild night out in an effort for Dean to recapture his mojo. Dean will become the lead of a band called Dean and the Impalas, which is made up of Supernatural crew. 

Osric Chau popped over to set, but he is filming on Legends of Tomorrow in the same studio. Sebastin Roche also indicated he would come by, he is filming on Batgirl. Unfortunately, neither Kevin or Balthazar will appear in this one. 

 Episode 15x08

Title: Our Father Who Aren’t in Heaven

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: 

Written by: Buckleming

Director: Speight

Filming Dates:  10/8- 10/18 (no filming 10/14 for Canadian Thanksgiving)

Airdate: 12/12 (?)

Photos: 

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? yes Jack ? 

Guest stars: Jake Abel, Shoshannah Stern

Other Spoilers/info:

Jake Abel posted a script with the caption “hell hath no fury like a brother scorned”

Shoshannah Stern was spotted on set- Eileen!

This will be the midseason finale

At BurCon, Misha mentioned Dean is still acting like “a dick” in the ep they were filming- which is this one. 

 Episode 15x09

Title: 

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: 

Written by: Berens

Director: Singer

Filming Dates:  10/21-10/30

Airdate: 1/16?? 

Photos: 

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? I can’t tell but maybe not Jack ? maybe

Guest stars: Rob Benedict, Kim Rhodes, Jim Beaver

Other Spoilers/info:

Midseason premier episode

Misha was at home for the first week of filming, and I think the second. I don’t think he is in this. 

Alex and Rob were hanging out- Chuck and JACK?

Kim Rhodes posted in front of the SPN set and with her trailer- Jody looks very likely. She also had dyed hair and she has been rockin the grey for the past few Jody eps. Maybe a flashback/AU?

Jim Beaver posted from set- Bobby!

Jensen shared that in this episode, Dean will pray to Cas to “confess” why he has been treating Cas the way he has. Misha confirmed this in another interview and said tears would be shed- not sure who is doing the crying (besides me). 

Episode 15x10

Title: 

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: 

Written by: Dabb

Director: Showalter

Filming Dates:  10/31- 11/12 (No filming for Veterans/Armistice Day)

Airdate: 1/23 ??

Photos: 

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? Jack ? 

Guest stars: 

Other Spoilers/info :

Misha texted some local fans from set in costume about an WA election, but after the convention was promoting his cookbook all over the place. I think he filmed 2 days, max. 

The story will be about Sam and Dean as heroes from the good and bad side (from MarySue)

At DCCon, Jensen shared that  this a bit of a wacky episode- Sam and Dean lose their abilities to fight, Dean gets cavities and Sam gets a cold. Jensen later seemed to refer to this ep when talking to TVGuide- mentioning the Impala will get a flat. 

Episode 15x11

Title: 

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: 

Written by: Davy Perez AND Meredith Glynn 

Director: Beeson

Filming Dates:  11/13-11/22 

Airdate: 1/30??

Photos: 

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? Jack ? 

Guest stars: 

Other Spoilers/info:

Misha and Jensen made a video for a fan that I think was filmed during the first day of shooting? Not for sure. So maybe Cas?? I’d love the king of social media to post publicly in costume to know for sure. 

Megan Fitzgerald (writer/showrunner’s assistant) and Emma Peterson (production office) were very excited about something in the dailies for this ep. 

They filmed at a church and a park in Surry according to YRShoots. 

 Episode 15x12

Title: 

OFFICIAL SYNOPSIS: 

Written by: Bobo AND Glynn

Director: Speight

Filming Dates:  

Airdate:  2/26??

Photos: 

Promo:

Sneak Peak:

Castiel ? Jack ? 

Guest stars: 

Other Spoilers/info:

[imaginative-spirit]

This is kinda random but I’ve been so curious.. What do you think of people who say that s/c is abusive? Not just ship wise, but about their dynamic in general. I don’t think I have seen a lengthy explanation of it (hence this question, but only if you want to answer!)

Hmm, interesting question! Here comes a lengthy explanation ;D

Well... It’s complicated. On one hand, their canon dynamic is pretty obviously unhealthy. Manipulation, mind-control and murder are hardly a good foundation for a relationship. I don’t think you’ll find that many sefikura shippers denying that, either. But the thing is... they’re enemies. Of course they’re not going to be nice to each other! And as an enemies to lovers ship, that baggage is part of the charm. Consequently, there are plenty of shippers who portray it as a very toxic relationship, because they find that type of dynamic interesting and enjoy exploring it, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

But on the other hand... not every sefikura shipper portrays their dynamic that way. After the remake there’s definitely been an upswing of darker content for them, but looking back there’s plenty of content on the more wholesome, fluffy side as well. You can explore potential redemption arcs (not far-fetched since the canon narrative already sets Sephiroth up as somewhat sympathetic), or what-if scenarios where they never ended up enemies to begin with (not far-fetched either considering, well, everything about pre-Nibelheim Sephiroth)... People are drawn to the ship for very different reasons.

Personally, I disagree with the notion of deeming ships (particularly ones that aren’t even canon) to be inherently abusive, because we haven’t seen these two in an actual relationship. We haven’t seen the circumstances that would lead them up to that point. If sefikura were to become a thing in canon (in a way that isn’t just ship-tease that is), maybe their relationship would be as unhealthy as it was while they were enemies. Maybe it’d happen only after a shit-ton of character development. Maybe it’d take a fundamental altering of the timeline for them to end up together. And in fan content, all of that is possible. All those versions of the ship can exist simultaneously, fundamentally different but not mutually exclusive. Like I said, different people, different reasons for enjoying it, and some people might enjoy all of these things! (I like plenty of different kinds of sefikura myself, tho I admit the very dark stuff sometimes isn’t for me)

However, I find people who dumb down it down to “sefikura is abusive and the people who ship it are terrible” to be, uhhhh... extremely annoying and you can tell they’ve never actually interacted with someone who ships it, because in my experience sefikura shippers are easily the nicest, most chill part of the ffvii fandom, lol. Everyone else is busy starting ship wars and talking shit about other ships but sefikura shippers just... don’t care. It’s probably pretty hard to start shit with us because if someone tells us that sefikura is horrible our reaction tends to just be “yeah. so what?” lmao

I’m not saying that people aren’t allowed to think it is inherently abusive, because that’s a perfectly valid way to view the ship that I’m sure some of the shippers would agree with as well, even though I personally don’t. What I can’t stand is when people make shippers out to be terrible people for enjoying an unhealthy dynamic in fiction. Seeing a person do that only proves to me that they have no understanding of nuance, context, or the appeal of exploring darker topics in fiction. It’s incredibly egocentric and shows an absolute lack of understanding that not everyone views fiction with the same mindset.

My conclusion is this:

Liking sefikura for the darker, more toxic sides of the ship = valid

Liking sefikura but choosing to explore it through a healthier lense = valid

Liking sefikura and being able to enjoy various different interpretations of it = EXTREMELY valid

Personally finding sefikura uncomfortable because of the more toxic sides of the ship and thus avoiding content for the ship = valid

Personally finding sefikura uncomfortable because of the more toxic sides of the ship and using this as an excuse to demonize those who ship it = NOT valid in the slightest, kindly fuck off

That being said, I’m gonna go off on a little tangent here. I’m incredibly tired of people referring to Sephiroth as Cloud’s abuser without acknowledging that Sephiroth is, himself, an abuse victim who’s acting out because he’s in pain and never got the help he so clearly needed. Maybe it’s just my Sephiroth bias showing its teeth again but it really, really bothers me when people make him out to be completely irredeemable and horrible when all I see when I look at him is someone who’s hurting. I’m also tired of people infantilizing Cloud and removing his agency, making him out to be completely pure and innocent when he’s also very much a human disaster who’s done bad things in the past... but let’s not go further into this, lol.

The point is, and this is all personal opinion here, that making the sefikura dynamic out to be nothing but an abuser and his victim, with no possibility of ever being anything else, really takes away everything that makes the ship interesting for me. I feel like it gives neither Cloud nor Sephiroth the nuance that I think they deserve. And with that being said, it really irks me when people assume that sefikura shippers “romanticize abuse”, when... that’s not what anyone is doing. People are either exploring a toxic fictional dynamic and treating it as such, which isn’t romanticizing all, or they’re finding a way to portray that dynamic healthily, which means it can’t be considered abusive, because they’ve reinterpreted it.

Basically, the only thing I want to tell these people is... maybe talk to a few sefikura shippers before making horrible assumptions about what they’re like? :)))

I could go on and on about this but I think I’ll stop now because it’s a topic that’s on my mind a lot and I have way too many thoughts about it, lmao

[c-is-for-circinate]

A while ago you mentioned really hating the Persona 4 protagonist as Yu Narukami (from the crossover games and possibly the animation) but liking him as Souji Seta (from the manga, I think?), which is also the name you seem to use most regularly. If you don't mind, could you explain the difference and why you prefer one over the other?

FUCK YES I CAN

(there are Persona people on my dash, that’s so fucking exciting, I have many things to say about these video games and the fandom is small)

Okay so I have lots of thoughts and feelings about the protags from Personas 3, 4, and 5 in general, and about the various versions of them that show up in various media.  It has to do with names and gender and how the very specific conventions of being the silent protag of a JRPG translate into creating character, and I could ramble about this forever, so it’s going behind a cut.

Step one: all Persona Wild Card protagonists are genderqueer and neurodivergent.  Period.

A persona is, theoretically in game lore, a reflection of your soul–specifically, a reflection of the part of you that you choose to show the world, because it’s strong and powerful and keeps all the weak parts of you safe behind it.  In early Persona games, every PC had a couple of different masks they could switch between, and that makes sense, but starting in P3 our party members each get one mask that eventually evolves into another one, and we-the-protag get more than a hundred.

We switch between masks constantly, at the drop of a hat.  We learn to level these personas up, we figure out how to be these other people, by watching and learning to understand our friends.  And there is something intensely queer about the fact that the masks we put on, with no pause or hesitation, can be male, can be female, can be both, can be neither.  Sure, it’s possible to argue that the protag has any certain specific gender identity underneath/behind those masks, but then we’re heading straight towards a complicated discussion about what it means to pass as one gender, vs what it means to model yourself after individuals of one gender while passing or identifying s another, vs what it means to model your actions after a theoretical version of yourself that has a different gender than your own, and like, let us be honest, just having to get that deep into the weeds on that discussion is pretty inherently queer to begin with.

Add to that the essential nature of who Persona protags are as people, based on their reality as video game characters, and we get someone who really does not fit a ‘straight cis neurotypical’ frame.  The entire scheduling system in Persona just speaks to every single part of my brain that understands executive dysfunction.  You do exactly one thing per unit time.  You can wander around town forever, but as soon as you stop to talk to another person, that’s it, that is your One Thing, that is all of the spoons you have for this time period, you can maybe do another thing later.  This really hit home in Persona 5, where your protagonist has a goddamn talking service cat without whom he can’t remember how to start any task up to and including going to bed (and people bitched about Morgana so hard, but also #RELATABLE oh my god), but it’s there in 3 and 4 as well if you look.  The P4 protag does favors for every single person in town.  The P4 protag stands out in the rain fishing for hours.  The P4 protag can accidentally spend an entire afternoon petting cats.  The P4 protag tries to make tomorrow’s lunch and has to think for a while over whether to add soy sauce or sugar.

So: the video games give us these characters who are intended to be hollow so that we can fill them with our own self-projections (and maybe I am self-projecting here, why not, everybody else gets to do it), but that very hollowness is also a shape, do you see what I mean?  You can extrapolate a person based on assuming the dialogue options the protagonists get are actual things that run through their minds, based on what choices are even available for them to make.  You can ask questions about what it means to be so hollow in the first place, what it takes to be the sort of person who can switch masks in the blink of an eye when everybody else around you makes do with all of one.  It’s really interesting to ask those questions.

Step two: the naming of Persona protags is complicated, and is as much a fandom question as it is a canon question.

In general, persona protags starting with P3 have gotten two names: one in the official manga that starts coming out right around the same time as the video game, and one in later animes and tie-in games.  What this means, at least in Western fandom (I don’t know a ton about Japan-only fandom!) is that for the first year or more of having a protag, the only name we have for them is the manga name, and so that’s the name 99% of fandom jumps on in those first several months.

When we explore and extrapolate and do all of that extremely transformative fandom work, looking at the empty spaces around a protag and figuring out who he has to be to fill them (or she, the P3 FEMC is all of this dialed up to a hundred), we at least start doing that work under the manga name.  To me–and, in my experience, to most of fandom, whether they think about it or not–the name has relatively little to do with the manga itself.  It’s the name fandom had to hand when they first played the game and began to figure this person out.  It’s the name for thousands of different interpretations that can fit inside the shell of a person the video game gives us.

I find that transformative labor, and those thousand different interpretations, wildly fascinating.  I enjoy doing it myself.  I like seeing what other people come up with.  Figuring out how to fill the outline of a person who can be anyone (figuring out the difference between Minato Arisato, and Souji Seta, and Akira Kurusu, and learning who they are as individuals by picking out their contrasting spaces) is one of my favorite things about Persona.

The characters from the tie-in animes, then–and from P4 games like Arena and Dancing All Night, which are as much visual novel as video game, where the MC has an extremely distinct personal voice–each present one version of that infinitely-variable character.  They’re a single interpretation.  They’re a specific interpretation, separate from the many open options of the game itself, they just happen to come with a specific name.

Makoto Yuki, from the P3 anime, is a very different person than the character I played when I played P3, and they’re both very different than the person I write when I write Minato Arisato, the human I extrapolate when I look at all of canon and put my analysis goggles on.  Now, I happen to love the P3 movies, and their interpretation of Makoto Yuki, who is a giant ball of severe depression and whom I consider an excellent exploration of the game’s themes of despair and mortality, but I love them like a really, really good fanfic.  They don’t trump the ‘canon’ of the game for me; they’re an outgrowth of it.  Likewise, I don’t know Ren Amamiya particularly well, but he’s a quiet guy with an inner well of sheer rage that really works for me in what I’ve seen of him.  Not my Akira, but a cool dude.

In general, when I’m talking about Persona protags, I use the anime or tie-in game name to refer to the specific version of that character written in that game or anime, and the manga name to refer to that earlier, slightly hollow character of infinite possibilities and fandom interpretations.  Which leads us to Souji and Yu.

Step 3: Yu Narukami is a fucking jackass

I think the big thing for me about Yu Narukami, the specific interpretation of P4 Protagonist as seen in the anime and tie-in games, is that he isn’t genderqueer or neurodivergent.  Yu Narukami is perhaps the straightest character in all of Persona with the possible exception of Junpei Iori.  

I don’t actually hate him in the anime all that much, but thinking about Arena-Yu…he’s a dude.  He’s a fucking bro.  He screws around with Yosuke over the suggestion of dirty magazines and he’s vaguely uncomfortable about Kanji.  It’s been a while since I went through any game LP’s, but I remember the attitude Yu took towards his friends and Labrys, and it was authoritative.  Certain.  Of course Labrys can overcome her past, now that she has us here to be friends.  Yukiko isn’t talking like I expect Yukiko to talk, so of course something is wrong with her.

Yu Narukami, as presented in the Arena games (and I’m pretty sure P4DAN, though it’s been even longer since I’ve seen that) is an In Charge kind of guy who Knows What’s Best for people, and doesn’t particularly need to listen to what they have to say to do it.  He shows no sign of ever having molded himself around someone else; he does not present himself as a man (as a boy) who would or even could switch up who he is at a moment’s notice, because he doesn’t seem to be somebody who ever thinks there’s anything wrong with exactly who he is in the first place.  Yu Narukami never had a shadow because he just thinks he’s Exactly That Cool all the way down.  He pops the collar on his polo shirt not because he doesn’t know any better, but because he is actually that guy and always was.

Needless to say, that is not my Seta Souji, who spends hours petting cats, and rarely speaks up to bring order (let alone authority) to his rambunctious bickering friends in any discussion.  It’s an interpretation, sure–and it’s even an interesting one!–but he is not a guy I particularly like.

So how do those two people, Yu and Souji, even fit together at all?

And this is where we go from me having opinions on various actual versions of characters as-written, and start diving into themes, theories, and mythological parallels.  There is a way to tell the story where it all makes sense, where Souji (and even the Yu of the anime, who’s got more shades of asshole than my typical headcanon but still sits far closer to my personal version of the protag than any of the douchebro versions of Yu in the sequel games) ties into later-Yu and it’s a graceful, interesting, thematic choice.

I don’t think it was intentional on the part of the writers.  But it does work.  And here’s how.

Step 4: I go on a digression about persona protags and sacrifice

I have spent way too much time thinking about themes and parallels between Personas 3, 4, and 5 (someday I’ll watch some decent LPs of 1 and 2, but today is not yet that day, so we’ll stick to the Wild Card trilogy for now).  One of the things that I love is the way each protag interacts with the big major theme thing of their game, losing it and gaining it and sacrificing it only to gain it yet again, and it happens in all three games.

In P3, the thing at the center of the game is life, in contrast to mortality.  You’re in a car crash at age 6, your parents die, you carry Death Himself in the space behind your heart, you spend all game struggling to survive and also trying to figure out why you even care to bother.  At the end you die so your friends can live, but also you’re not, quite, entirely dead–you are asleep, and at the end of all the world you’ll wake up and still be there, just you and Aigis and Elizabeth at the end of all things, alive and mortal.  In P5 it’s freedom, and you start the game in chains, flash forward and flash back, breaking bonds and forging them right up to the point where you turn yourself into the police, only to eventually be found innocent of even the original crime that bound you to begin with.  There are metaphors and angles to the whole thing, the way becoming Satanael is in its own way both a defiance of Yaldabaoth in front of you and a surrender, complying with the will of every furious desperate angry follower-believer-worshipper in the Tokyo streets, but what we care about most right now is how this shows up in Persona 4, where our thing is identity.

The Persona 4 protagonist, whoever he is, shows up in this small town with no identity at all.  He had a life where people knew him, but the people in this small town don’t even have rumor and hearsay about dead parents or criminal charges to go on.  And sure, every protagonist starts out on a train to a new town, but the P4 protagonist goes even farther than that.  You show up in Inaba, and one of the very first things that happens to you, something that doesn’t happen to any Persona protag in any game I’ve ever seen, is that you lose your persona.

The starting persona in P4 is Izanagi.  Based on the fact that Adachi’s persona is Izanagi, too, based on the fact that Izanami is the one who granted you access to the TV world and presumably a working persona to begin with, based on every theme and implication in the game–Izanami gives you your starting persona.  She chooses who you are.  She declares that you’re ‘hope’, and maybe you had some qualities that suited you for that role to begin with, but anyone you’ve ever been is gone now in service to your part in Izanami’s play.

One of the things I really liked in the P4 anime was the protag’s terror of being alone and empty.  Now, I enjoy my Souji Seta as someone who’s a little bit hollow and empty–not in a bad way, but like a clear glass that can be filled with anything, and takes on the color and nature of whatever it holds–but right, in a story whose main theme is identity and accepting yourself, being infinitely transformable is both ideal and terrifying.  If the P4 protag can be anyone, how can he be someone?  In the end, the only identity that’s really his and not copied from one of his social links is the one that Izanami gave him.  His final persona, Izanagi-no-Okami, has more to do with her than anything that comes from inside him.

Loss and gain, sacrifice and victory–the P4 protag goes back to his old life, sacrificing the person he’s created for himself here in Inaba to reclaim the person he theoretically used to be.  Depending on how you read the ending, he gives up his infinite adaptability in order to fill himself with a final persona that is chosen for him, sacrificing his innate capacity to be anyone (which is in its own right a key characteristic of his self) in exchange for becoming someone, specifically a someone who was chosen for him.

(This is more my interpretation than anything I’d consider strictly canon, but–in my head, the P3 protag achieves that final moment of apotheosis, and the god-binding power that comes with it, from the sacrifice of his own life and also the fact that after Death lived in his heart for ten years straight he’s explicitly no longer entirely human to begin with.  The P5 protag achieves it by sacrificing his own individual freedom to the collective belief and prayers of literal hordes of desperate people, which we know is full of power because that’s how cognition works.  The P4 protag, I have always suspected just a little, gets it from the actual Izanagi–because if the actual Izanami is the source of all of this trouble, the actual Izanagi must exist too, and to trap a god you must be a god, in some small way.  Our protag is given the tools of power to seal Izanami away, and in return he must become a tool of that power.)

There are a lot of ways to interpret the themes and echoes and actual events of P4 vs P4 Golden vs P3 and P5, and this isn’t necessarily Objective Truth, but this is very much where my head goes when I think about Souji Seta and Yu Narukami.  Souji is the empty, unflappable chameleon boy who spends his time becoming whoever the people around him need him to be, whether that’s a silent confidant or a valiant hero.  Yu is the bold, self-assured young man who has discovered or decided exactly who he is, and knows deep in his heart that he never has to hide or change for anyone, ever again.

Step 5: Yu is a dick because Izanagi is a dick, and okay, fine, I kind of love it that way

All of Persona 4 is about retelling the myth of Izanagi and Izanami, and changing the ending.

This is true for P3 and P5 too, of course.  In P3 you walk into Tartarus with everyone you love already at your back, and you set them free to do their own thing (they make their own moves in battle, you don’t turn back to check on them, you trust them to follow or not follow on your own and every member in your team makes their greatest moments of personal growth without you there), but eventually one of you has to stay behind so the other can leave–so you fix Orpheus’s mistake, you stay in the underworld yourself so Eurydice and everyone else you love in the world can go home and live.  In P5 you tell Satanael’s story backwards and forwards, the rise and the fall and the rise again; you start at the very bottom of your own pit (you start as the God of Control’s very own chosen one and don’t even know it), and eventually you climb so high that you’re the one who gets to cast God down into perdition instead.  Start with one tale, end with another.

The story of Izanagi and Izanami is: once upon a time, through no fault of her own, Izanami was sent to the underworld, and Izanagi loved her so well he ventured down after her.  But she was changed down there, her own darkness grown gross and rotten, and though she tried to hide her ugly parts Izanagi did see them.  And then he didn’t love her any more; he fled, and trapped her there in darkness forever, to protect the whole world from her flaws, and never ever looked at his own.

You spend all of Persona 4 doing exactly the opposite: venturing down into another world to find people trapped there, and facing their ugliness, and embracing them and drawing them up into the light anyway.  Namatame is Izanagi-who-dooms-them, though his intentions are good (Izanami died giving birth to Izanagi’s child in the first place).  Adachi is Izanagi-corrupted, claimed and twisted by the darkness of the underworld and his own power, with no mercy in him.  But the P4 protag gets to play the Izanagi of compassion, who tried to save his wife in the first place–and we get to fix it.  We get to save people.  We get to save everyone.

Until we get to Izanami herself, because Izanami can’t be saved.  This all gets way more complicated in Golden when we add in Marie, but in the end, we’ve still got our protag standing in front of the goddess Izanami, sealing her away with Izanagi’s power for the sake of everyone else in the world, because she’s too dark and corrupted to bring back out into the light after all.

It’s really interesting coming at all of this from a Western perspective, because I…can’t actually tell if, playing through P4, we’re meant to like Izanagi?  Are we meant to be on his side in the end?  Are we meant to feel like we’re on this whole quest serving penance for his ancient mythological fuck-up?  Are we meant to think that Yu Narukami, who’s embraced Izanagi in all his pride and self-righteousness as his own inner self, is the good guy?

Because yes, Izanami was trying to destroy the world.  And yes, we saved it by trapping her, just like Izanagi did in ancient myth.  But the Yu Narukami I see in the sequel games is so very much the guy who thinks he gets to decide who’s good enough to get saved and who isn’t.  Labrys deserves to be saved, and because he’s decided to be her friend now, she will be, just like that, because of course he has that power.

By the time Arena happens, Yu has embraced and accepted Izanagi as his true self, flaws and all.  (Let me not forget to point out the sister-complex kingpin title, for the man whose persona is a god that married his own sister.  Let us literally never discuss Nanako as Izanami, because that gets really uncomfortable so fucking quick.)

And Izanagi is a dick.  Which means that Yu isn’t, can’t be the quiet, gentle person I see when I try to extrapolate a most-probable Souji out of P4 canon alone.  Yu is an asshole because that’s the person he’s chosen to be, the identity he’s claimed to replace the one he sacrificed, and I am on reflection kind of into that.

But also he’s still a dick, and therefore I kind of hate him for it.

[wykedtrolls]

a dissertation nobody asked for, ft. my dysphoric trans ass (on the subject of truscum, cisgender medicine, and stupid assholes)

BOY HOWDY DID THIS GET LONG

I know that nobody asked for this post, and definitely nobody needed it, but you know what? Fuck it. You’re getting this post anyway.

Very recently someone in the community outed himself (himself, because I’m aware that he uses he/him pronouns and am not a piece of shit who will misgender someone under guise of offering anonymity. Cough cough.) as a transmedicalist. A truscum, if you will, because we all know that they mean the same thing and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is a bitchcoward and a bigot.

Very disappointing, yes, considering the amount of transgender people* I know exist in this community, myself included. Disappointing, frightening, and rage-inducing. Particularly because this revelation followed an encounter said truscum had with a close friend of mine. Which I admit might make me a little biased but shhh. Neither me nor my friend(s) started this. The contents of that conversation had between the truscum and my bro should have been handled privately like an adult but- hey, since we’re putting all this shit out there now, guess I get to put in my two cents! Awesome!

And because we apparently like to bring science into shit, let’s get a lil scientific up in this bitch.

*Note: transgender from here on will be used to refer to as the umbrella of non-cis gender identities just for context and ease of reference. And also because that’s what it is, fuck off.

So, guys. Let’s talk about dysphoria.

PART 1. SEMANTICS

Dysphoria. Most of you have heard of it, particularly those among us (both within and outside of the fantroll community) who happen to be transgender.

But what does it actually mean? Let’s look a little closer. Dysphoria, as defined by Merriam-Webster:

dysphoria (noun)

dys·​pho·​ria | \ dis-ˈfȯr-ē-ə  \

Definition of dysphoria

: a state of feeling very unhappy, uneasy, or dissatisfied

— see GENDER DYSPHORIA

But this is just semantics. Let’s look at it, and gender oriented dysphoria in particular from a mental health perspective-

“Gender dysphoria is the feeling of discomfort or distress that might accompany a difference between gender identity, sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics. This type of distress doesn't affect everyone who is transgender.

Gender dysphoria is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a manual published by the American Psychiatric Association to diagnose mental conditions. Gender dysphoria is a diagnosis that is given to individuals who are experiencing discomfort or distress due to the difference between gender identity, sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics.”

This is from the Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit academic medical center based in Rochester, Minnesota, lauded as the best hospital in the nation for 2018-2019 by the U.S News and World Report. Do with that information what you will, but most would consider the Mayo Clinic (while not a good replacement for proper doctor’s visits and medical treatment) a pretty credible health resource.

But we’ll come back to this.

For now, let’s look at another definition. That of the word ‘opinion.’

PART 2: FACTS VS. OPINIONS VS. BELIEFS VS. PREJUDICE

opinion (noun)

opin·​ion | \ ə-ˈpin-yən  \

Definition of opinion

1a : a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter

We asked them for their opinions about the new stadium.

b : APPROVAL, ESTEEM

I have no great opinion of his work.

2a : belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge

a person of rigid opinions

Opinions are inherently biased. It may be influenced by facts, but opinions in and of themselves are not fact. To borrow and paraphrase from Fowler, H. Ramsey. The Little, Brown Handbook. Boston: Little, Brown, 1986.:

When forming personal convictions, we often interpret factual evidence through the filter of our values, feelings, tastes, and past experiences. Hence, most statements we make in speaking and writing are assertions of fact, opinion, belief, or prejudice. The usefulness and acceptability of an assertion can be improved or diminished by the nature of the assertion, depending on which of the following categories it falls into:

A fact is verifiable. [Determinable by] ...researching the evidence. This may involve numbers, dates, testimony, etc. (Ex.: "World War II ended in 1945.") The truth of the fact is beyond argument if one can assume that measuring devices or records or memories are correct. Facts provide crucial support for the assertion of an argument. However, facts by themselves are worthless unless we put them in context, draw conclusions, and, thus, give them meaning.

An opinion is a judgment based on facts, an honest attempt to draw a reasonable conclusion from factual evidence. [Opinions are] potentially changeable--depending on how the evidence is interpreted. By themselves, opinions have little power to convince. You must always let your reader know what your evidence is and how it led you to arrive at your opinion.

Unlike an opinion, a belief is a conviction based on cultural or personal faith, morality, or values. Statements such as "Capital punishment is legalized murder" are often called "opinions" because they express viewpoints, but they are not based on facts or other evidence. They cannot be disproved or even contested in a rational or logical manner. Since beliefs are inarguable, they cannot serve as the thesis of a formal argument. (Emotional appeals can, of course, be useful if you happen to know that your audience shares those beliefs.)

Y’all get what I’m getting at, right?

Oh, but one more thing I’d like to add- And I think this one is important.

“Another kind of assertion that has no place in serious argumentation is prejudice, a half-baked opinion based on insufficient or unexamined evidence. (Ex.: "Women are bad drivers.") Unlike a belief, a prejudice is testable: it can be contested and disproved on the basis of facts. We often form prejudices or accept them from others--family, friends, the media, etc.--without questioning their meaning or testing their truth. At best, prejudices are careless oversimplifications. At worst, they reflect a narrow-minded view of the world. Most of all, they are not likely to win the confidence or agreement of your readers.”

We’ve all encountered our fair share of these sorts of prejudices, disguised as “opinions.” Because isn’t that a much sweeter word for what it is? It’s not bigotry to delegitimize the experiences of other transgender people, it’s just an opinion. Like which is the best ice cream flavour, or something equally harmless.

But when your opinion involves the dehumanization, invalidation, exclusion and harm of other people… Well, that’s not so harmless, is it?

Racism is prejudice influenced by opinions and beliefs. Transphobia is prejudice influenced by opinions and beliefs. They are not fact, they are not based in rational thinking, and in many cases they cannot be argued because these prejudices are willingly cultivated and held.

‘But, Eli!’ I know at least one truscum who may or may not be reading this might cry, ‘It’s a scientifically proven fact that transgender people need to have dysphoria to be trans!’

To which I say fuck you, this is why that isn’t true.

Let’s go back to the definition of gender dysphoria, shall we?

“Gender dysphoria is the feeling of discomfort or distress that might accompany a difference between gender identity, sex assigned at birth or sex-related physical characteristics. This type of distress doesn't affect everyone who is transgender.”

MIGHT accompany a difference between those things, and DOESN’T affect everyone who is transgender. Interesting take coming from a scientific source, right? It’s almost like transmedicalist/truscum thinking is based off prejudice, rather than opinion; much less fact.

Especially considering dysphoria wasn’t even a word we (we meaning transgender people) chose for ourselves in the first place. It was picked by the American Psychiatric Association’s board of trustees to replace the term “Gender Identity Disorder” (GID)

Disorder. A sickness. Because Western medicine, practiced primarily by cisgender people (be they medical experts or not) has never been kind to transgender people. The word doesn’t mean what transmedicalists or truscum think it does. It doesn’t make you more valid than our fellow trans siblings just because the perceptions held by you or others of what your body and gender are worth make you miserable.

Wanna read up a little more on this? Check out these links: 

THIS IS WHAT I WISH PEOPLE WHO IDENTIFY AS ‘TRUSCUM’ WOULD TRY TO UNDERSTAND. 

Not All Transgender People Have Dysphoria – And Here Are 6 Reasons Why That Matters 

Transgender People, Gender Identity and Gender Expression

PART 3: THE COMMUNITY (™)

If you’re dysphoric, my heart goes out to you. I’m dysphoric too. Dysphoric enough to transition despite the medical costs- because I was tired of feeling trapped in other people’s perceptions of me. But you know what? I love that there are transgender people who don’t feel defined by this persistent sensation of wrongness.

You shouldn’t be defined by that. Even dysphoric trans people know (or should, for the sake of their health) that your unhappiness isn’t the only thing that makes you transgender. In fact, in the least unhealthy cases, it’s only the smallest fraction of the gender experience. Being transgender and exploring your gender identity consist of a broad spectrum of emotions. The fact that some of us (US. WE are a community, and have to treat each other as such) get to snip that little fraction out of the spectrum is beautiful.

We’re made stronger by how different we all are, not weaker.

PART 4: IN CLOSING

Whether you’re dysphoric or not, whether you identify with a gender binary or not, you are worthy of celebration and validation and love. All of us have it rough- frankly speaking, cisgender people as a whole barely tolerate us even when our identities do follow the narrative most commonly accept us. It’s not our place to judge, or shun, or invalidate one another.

And as both a personal goodbye and a TL;DR to truscum who like to treat gender identity like a competition, like something you get to gatekeep and police, fuck you. Our identities are ours to decide, our experiences to forge, and if that happens to not include transitioning or dysphoria, no matter what your reasons are that doesn’t make you less valid.

Fuck you, for painting your bigotry as an opinion. Fuck you for hurting the feelings of other transgender people. And fuck you for making posts trying to paint yourself as anything other than an asshole so full of internalized transphobia and misery that you can’t look past it to respect other people and act like that’s only your opinion UWU

Anyway, trans rights.