#do not respond or @ me with disingenuous arguments on this either

[coldresolve]

yeah, nah, fuck it. im sharing this post and then i'm just gonna link to it whenever it becomes relevant.

every disagreement i have with yall always comes back to me phrasing things in a way that sounds mean. always, always. like duh, i dont try to sugarcoat how i see things, i have realized that, in fact i do it on purpose. why? well.

i come from a culture where it's often interpreted as deceitful and/or shallow to sandwich your point in with superficial courtesy. if you spend too much time packing your point in with whatever you think will make it easier to swallow, people will start to feel like you're infantalizing them, or straight up wasting their time. being direct and honest from the get-go is seen as a sign of respect - yes, even if what you're saying could easily be interpreted as rude. say what you think, say exactly how you feel, and we'll take it from there. that kinda thing.

when i say an opinion or criticise something on here, i am treating you, the reader, like someone who is smart enough to understand the gist of my argument without being bogged down by its delivery, mature enough to recognize the difference between criticism of your work (or general trends) and criticism of you as a person, and emotionally well-adjusted enough to not pin your self-worth on the negative opinions some random guy on the internet might have of something you do/create/like.

i am showing you respect by talking to you as if you are an adult who can deal with what i might have to say. if you're not, and you can't, i expect you to have the wherewithall to not engage with me. i could at the very least respect that. alternatively, you're also welcome to disagree with my points, obviously. i'm always up for a good discussion.

but you responding to criticism like mine with defensiveness, affront, or worse, the idea that you're now justified to go after the criticiser as a person, only comes across to me like immaturity, self-consciousness, self-importance, and in some cases - deliberate or not - obtusiveness. see how that cultural divide can go both ways?

we're probably not gonna find common ground here. i'm tired of being interpreted as aggressive all the time, but i have no intention of conforming to the american ideal of social courtesy, because it makes me feel shallow, disingenuous and fake. meanwhile, you're probably not gonna be able to hear me speak without shaking the knee-jerk feeling that i'm purposefully ignoring the sensitivity of others (because objectively, i am).

so do we chuck the whole thing up to different culturally determined approaches to communicating our ideas? can we keep a shred of respect and mutual understanding and leave it at that?

or are you gonna insist that i'm immoral/rude/aggressive/callous/antagonistic/attacking people/etc, for voicing my own opinions, in my own way, on my own blog - in which case i, in turn, will feel perfectly content to just consider you an inherently silly person?

as far as i can tell, it's one or the other.

(also please please recognize the difference between using culture as an excuse, and pointing out a very real cultural divide that influences both how i communicate and how you interpret how i communicate. my point is that we're gonna keep talking past each other unless we adress the fact that we approach communication with very different goals in mind, mine being effectiveness and honesty and yours being courtesy and social sensitivity. i am also not saying that either one of these is "the right way" to communicate. don't read shit into my takes that isn't there to begin with. thx)

[spaced0lphin]

My Fanfiction Crimes: WayfaringJedi

I run a SW focused sideblog, called wayfaringjedi, where I post art and fics and stuff.

Earlier this month, I found a list of “headcanons” about a Star Wars character, posted publicly, here on Tumblr. Looking to blow off some steam, I wrote a six thousand word narrative incorporating some of them. I credited/tagged the person who posted the list in the first place – I was hoping to make a fandom friend, and start a conversation. In my experience, that tends to be what happens when two enthusiastic creatives interact after one inspires the other.

For the past eight days, I have stayed silent as the grave on this issue, as one is supposed to when someone on the Internet decides to engage in behaviour like what this author has done.

I have been accused of plagiarism, ablism, and abuse. This author has publicly and on numerous occasions solicited their followers to bother me and attempt to disrupt my work. They are now engaging in malicious reporting, attempting to get my blogs flagged as Spam, and my accounts shadowbanned, or worse.

So, I am writing this. I find addressing all of this publicly to be an exercise in disappointment and exasperation; I had hoped for this incident to blow over and be nothing more than an embarrassing footnote in an otherwise enjoyable fandom experience. Yet, here I am, reduced to talking about this as if the complaints had any merit. However, at this juncture, I don’t want their voice as the only one dictating the narrative.

It all started when the author reblogged my original post sharing my work with them, essentially stating they felt I’d stolen from them. They explained they didn’t want to write in their story anymore, and threatened to stop writing in general, because of me. (I’m paraphrasing, the post was deleted.) My initial response was shock and dismay – no one had ever reacted in this way to me before, and the last thing I want to do is hurt anybody. As I’m quite a shy person and often seek to minimise myself, I apologised and deleted the work from Tumblr. The author blocked me without further comment.

I wasn’t able to get on Ao3, as I was out at the time, and busy. When I sat down at the computer several hours later, this author and their followers had run rampant with comments all over my work. Accusing me of being disingenuous, an “idea thief,” a plagiarist, and of being deliberately malicious and insulting by daring to have my work up.

My one and only statement was this thorough comment I left on my own work. (This version of my comment has the author’s username redacted, to protect them from any abuse.)

I enabled comment moderation to stop the arguments. I deleted most of the comments, particularly more inflammatory ones, and ones including mention of the author’s first name. I have acted to protect this person and I will continue to; their username will not be mentioned here, and all trace of them has been removed from my work as it remains on Ao3. It will certainly be possible to find out who this person is, but I will not assist in this, and ask that nobody name them, either.

Shortly after posting this comment, the author unblocked me on Tumblr and we had a brief, unproductive discussion. In it, I restated my points and confirmed that I would not be removing my work. The author expressed to me what I felt were unreasonable demands (to remove, or significantly alter the work by removing entire themes, etc) and whilst for the most part civil, their comments towards me descended into ad hominem (‘You’re not a nice person,’ etc.) once it became clear that I would not obey. Much noise was made about being neurodivergent – I am too, it’s a non-starter with me.

I explained in these messages that neither of us own the fictional character in question, nor do we own certain general themes and/or ideas, to which the author responded by calling me ‘cruel.’

They insisted I take personal responsibility and account for some 27 anonymous hate messages they claimed to have received. I asked for proof of them. 

Initially, the author refused to provide me with any, on account of my own refusal to delete my work for them first – a line of reasoning I couldn’t understand, personally, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

They then disappeared for about an hour or so, and came back with screenshots of some anonymous messages.

Firstly, no one should be bombarded with messages like that, and given that I only had 10 followers at the time of this incident, their existence is shocking to the point of inspiring awe.

For several reasons, mainly contextually based – I believe this author wrote and sent these anonymous messages to themself, to screenshot and use as “evidence” against me.

I certainly did not send them, and I’m sure if Tumblr’s admin side looks into the IP addresses these anonymous messages originate from, they will be the same as the author’s. I would, at this point, be willing to bet money on it.

I received some messages as well, and in response, I turned off anonymous messaging. Then, I received messages from what I believe is one of the author’s sockpuppets, complaining that I had turned off anonymous messages. I received multiple messages per day. Initially, I didn’t block this account – I was intent on giving this person no satisfaction whatsoever, not even a block.

These messages run the gamut from goofy Internet rage, to vaguely threatening:

I find it extremely difficult to believe that a random friend of this author would continue to be angry enough about this to message me multiple times a day for an entire week – I think it’s much more likely that this is the author themself. Given this, there are certain unusual turns of phrase that this account and at least one other uses in common. “Have the day you deserve.” That’s all over the place in the initial Ao3 bombardment. (I'm unconcerned with censoring the username for the following two comments as they belong to a sock.)

The saddest thing I have found about this entire debacle is that the messages I believe this author wrote to abuse themself with are so much more scathing than anything they wrote to me – their supposed enemy in all this. In fact, the things they’ve said betray an immense insecurity about themselves and their work that breaks my heart. They don’t deserve to feel this way about themselves or their work, and I think they are using this incident as a catalyst for validation of some kind. During the discussion with me, they put themselves down a lot, and it is my honest belief that this person feels so aggrieved because, somehow, they think they can’t do ‘better’ than what I wrote. To be clear, that is a nonsense fear. They are an incredibly strong writer with their own style and sense of direction very distinct from my own. Even with some similar themes, our stories would never be the same. 

One thing this author – or one of their sockpuppets – asked that I would like to answer is the question of whether or not I would ‘fight for it,’ were the situation reversed. The answer, friend or sockpuppet, is no. Other writers can, do, and have used my personal ideas, plots, and interpretations of characters freely in their own works, without asking. I have loved reading them. Illustrators have traced my drawings and my 3D models. Power to them. If someone else would like to write a story or make a mod with the same subject matter as any of mine, I would love to see and support it.

The author expressed to me insecurity about feeling that if they finished their story now, they would be accused of copying me. I assured them then, just as I do now, no reasonable person would think that, and if they did, I would be the first in line to tell this hypothetical gobshite where to stick it.

Further, they expressed interest in reporting my story to Ao3 administrators. I suggested if they really felt this way, they ought to. I requested they not delete the original post of theirs that I cited in my credit to them, so that the administrators could be fair to us both in reviewing all information in context, and comparing our works. The author explained they had already deleted it. I retain a full backup of the post, as well as my comments section in full before I made any deletions. I forwarded these to Ao3 myself in my initial report.

“Headcanons” have been put up by fan creators for other fan creators to build off of since time immemorial. It’s good to tag and credit where you found ideas – sharing is caring, and caring is fun. The crux of this author’s complaint seems to be that I didn’t ask them first. This is simply not how publicly posted ideas for fanfiction have worked in my twenty-odd years of writing it. Whilst I respect this person’s upset, I will not capitulate. My story is mine, I have interpreted these ideas in my own way, and I have stolen nothing.

The idea that a fanfiction author is attempting to take another to task with claims about intellectual property is a line of argument I find baffling, to say the least. 

As an interesting point of fact, I have been made aware of what this author has said in the body of one of their messages reporting me to Tumblr. In it, they claim to have been in contact with Ao3 site administrators, who have “already agreed to ban” me, on the basis of “evidence” they have sent in. Also, they claim to have law enforcement involved in this situation, as ‘what I am doing to them’ constitutes a “crime.” 

I can assure everyone that I have heard from no police, and my account is in good standing with Ao3. This author is attempting to strengthen their argument against me to Tumblr with fully disprovable lies, which at this point, seems to be a pattern.

Whether or not you personally agree with this author’s sentiment that I have violated some social norm, the fact remains that this escalatory, dishonest behaviour is unacceptable, and I will not negotiate with it. One only has to look briefly at my history of engaging with fandom on this site – whatever blog it happens to be from – to see that I am not the kind of person who behaves in the way this author is alleging. I have never in my life sent anonymous hate messages to anyone.

The author has explained to me that they have deleted their entire body of works related to this story that they were writing. They appear to want me to emotionally account in some way for this action, and I will not. This author’s actions and responses to this situation – every last one – are their own, and they alone are responsible for them.

Let me be clear in saying that when this is dealt with by administrators, it is likelier than not that this other author will fully lose their account due to their documented goofiness over this. I personally do not want that outcome for them. I want the same thing that I have wanted throughout this entire stupid mess; to write stories for fun, in peace, and share them with others.

I am very sure that the author will read this, or parts of it at least, as they have a fixation on me at the moment. I am sure they will have something to say about it.

I am not interested in hearing it, and I will not entertain one word of it. Everything I have said is true, I have documented it, I have saved it, and I have given it to whom it concerns.

At best, I have done absolutely nothing wrong. At worst, I have a genuinely different experience with fandom ethos. Either way, this entire business is utter nonsense.

[musclesandhammering]

Hey, here's my take /as/ a queer man. anyone, gay, straight, etc...can dress how every they want and how ever they feel expresses themself. to me it's a non issue, even if like, you think someone is being disingenuous, I don't think it's an issue and i find it more harmful to me and people like me to have this debate in the zeitgeist to begin with. more straight girls have argued with me about why xyz behaviors is problematic and i find it exhausting. It is more destigmatizing to not put barriers around fashion in the first place & focus on uplifting queer gnc men than tearing other people down.

This is from a couple months ago but I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to answer it until now (sorry).

I appreciate you for responding with your perspective. Like I said, I’m not a queer man (I’m a queer woman), so I really don’t like speaking about the experiences of queer men as a generalisation.

And I agree with you actually! Men (cishet or lgbt) should 1000% be able to wear whatever they want with zero comment from anyone! And if we were debating whether or not Harry Styles dressing in a gnc way was problematic in general, then that would be a pointless conversation. But that’s not the the issue.

My argument was that- while he’s valid a million times over for however he wants to dress or act or whatever- the media and mainstream pop culture fans are wrong for elevating him into this unprecedented progressive icon of masculinity because of the way he dresses. And Harry (imo) is wrong for allowing it and playing into it.

Listen, if Vanity Fair or Vogue (or whatever magazines it was idk I don’t read them lol) regularly gave cover photos and full page profiles and stuff to other gnc people praising them as sort of new age icons for their gnc-ness (specifically gnc openly gay men, or gnc poc, or gnc people who are not stereotypically young and fit and traditionally attractive), then them also giving Harry that treatment would not be sus at all…… but we all know they don’t have a history of doing that. And we all know that when Billy Porter (an older black gnc gay man) or Sam Smith (a plus size gnc genderqueer person) etc live their truth and dress in gnc ways, they do not get as much adoration and adulation and worship and excessive praise by mainstream pop culture media as Harry (again, a young white skinny traditionally attractive most likely cishet- or at the very least not openly queer- man) and the reactions from the general public are always far more mixed. And that’s definitely sus.

It’s almost like the societal establishment realised that newer generations are accepting and celebrating gnc-ness, and knew that they had to pander to that, so they decided to elevate a gnc person….. but because the societal establishment will always edge as close to the conservative status quo as possible, they picked the blandest, whitest, most basic male model type (again- young and fit and noncontroversially hot), who is as close to cishet as they can get (because he refuses to categorise himself as queer, has not shown any evidence of being queer, and thus allows folks with complex homophobia to assume he’s not) while also still allowing them to get half a queer rep point (because, hey, he doesn’t categorise himself… so he might be queer, right?) without having to earn it at all.

And if Harry is just completely Head Empty I’m Just Vibin In My Flower Skirt oblivious to this whole issue, then that’s fine I guess lol- let him vibe! But considering how he’s made it part of his brand to be an lgbt ally and how his fans attack anyone who says anything about this problematic conundrum by screaming that Harry is extremely socially aware and has supported the queer community more than anybody, How Dare You Accuse Him Of Anything!!!- …..Like, it’s either one or the other bro.

If Harry really does know that much about the lgbt community (enough to insert his opinions on in-community issues such as how he thinks gay characters being portrayed as sexual beings is wrong), then he HAS to know that it’s problematic for him to be accepting all these fat ass magazine cover checks and skyrocketing his personal brand with glowing profiles and grasping at more fame and positive recognition for himself via fashion choices, and generally just basking in the praise he’s getting for being a bOuNdArY bReAkInG hErO,.. that other minority gnc people with much less privilege than him have been struggling to receive for decades and STILL struggle to receive.

It’s not like it’s a capital offence or anything. I’m not saying he’s a complete and total worthless piece of shit……. It’s just grating.

[civildisorderstream]

We Lost Dee Snider

This past week or so, Paul Stanley of KISS (the most sellout band to exist, by their own admission even, but that's a different topic) put out a statement that was transphobic. It wasn't overtly so, but it was a statement designed to appear "reasonable" because it didn't use violent rhetoric and made an appeal at allowing for trans people to exist with caveats. That latter point is like Centrist porn; pleasing 'both sides' of an issue regardless of what the issue is, regardless of the merits of either side involved. There's a reason why that meme of "some murder?" exists but I digress.

After he put that statement out Dee Snider, who used to be something of an icon for being more hip on progressive politics than his peers, basically betrayed everything that made him beloved. He agreed with Stanley's statement, saying it was "reasonable," but also recontextualizing his own past in how he dressed and why he did so. Naturally, this upset people, and rightfully so. I took a different approach, uselessly attempting to respond to him on Twitter with a calm argument.

That argument being, Paul Stanley's statement is reliant on taking conservative talking points in good faith. Which they are never made in, it's always bad faith, it's also manipulation and propaganda. The crux of Stanley's statement was the children are being "forcibly trans'd," which isn't objectively true (and I will say here, telling children that trans people exist is not the same thing as forcing them into conversion; it that logic were true, informing children that thieves exist means you have made a child into a thief - see how that shit doesn't make sense alt-right assholes?). I urged Dee Snider to listen to trans people and read their accounts of how they learned about themselves, their journeys, their hardships, and because of social media being what it is, he probably didn't even see it. And hell if he did, there's always the high chance he didn't care.

What he did care enough about was to put out a statement, decrying the labeling he was starting to get for being transphobic. It would've been one thing if he made an honest mistake when talking about the issue in passing and wanted to make a statement to address it and make amends, but that's not what this was. Snider's statement was all about his ego. It was about him saying, "I'm not transphobic because I say so. Look at how I'm invited to this LGBTQ event!" That last point is disingenuous because the news of his betrayal hasn't quite gotten around yet, and having someone booked for an event doesn't get overturned in an instant. It takes time. Which hey, we will see how the LGBTQ community and its leaders respond to him and whether or not they invite him to future events (which is what matters).

But I still want to say what I want to say to Dee Snider: My dude, I am not trans myself, I consider myself an ally. Whether or not I am an ally is up to trans people to decide. I can aspire to it, but it's not for me to say. And it's not for YOU to say either. For any given social movement rooted in helping marginalized peoples, those peoples call the shots on what to do, when to do it, how to do it. When women pushed for the right to vote, it was up to them when and how to fight that fight. It wasn't up to men to tell them anything. When the Civil Rights Movement went down, black Americans were the ones to direct how it should be done and how everyone else could help them and each other (seeing as intersectionality is a huge part of movements). It's no different with fighting for trans rights. You and I Dee Snider, we don't tell trans people what to do. They point at the problem, they say what we can do to help about it, and then we act.

And I get that it'll be confusing sometimes, because trans people are not a hivemind. They're split on how to engage or disengage with particular problems or people who cause those problems. In that case, use your best judgment, but as long as you're following the direction of the people, you can rest a little easier that your claim to being an ally is safe. At the end of the day, it's about them, not you.

[goodluckdetective]

*sigh*

Gang, please cite your sources. There is some real info here (the babies report though I will say, unlike OP implies, babies and kids did die in the attack. However the beheaded rumors were untrue and racist). The top two posts might be real or fake, but I couldn’t find reports on either from any news source and that includes ones outside Western interests (I combed through Al Jazeera and if i find it, I’ll update this. I’m not debunking these OR confirming them. So don’t take this post as an argument either way.) However some of this stuff is debunked with like one Google search.

She was found dead just this morning. I can’t fault OP for not knowing this at the time of posting but they’re framing (she’s alive and totally safe) is disingenuous.

And while the mass rapes claim is false and racist, sexual assault did happen. While folks (rightfully) don’t trust the IDFs word, they released body cam footage of Hamas fighters that was watched by international news orgs. (And before someone says it, yes the fact the video was released by the IDF means it has obvious bias, however it’s ludicrous to say none happened). I think it’s fair to put this claim down as a mix of truth and false: the scale of which is unknown but claiming either extreme is false.

Now before anyone accuses me of supporting Israel War crimes let me be explicitly clear: I don’t. What the government of Israel is doing Palestinians is an atrocity, apartheid and covers multiple war crimes. I support Palestinian’s right to freedom.

However, I don’t have to lie to do that. Two things can be true at once: the government of Israel has done and continues to do horrific things to Palestinians and they have reacted violently to non-violent protest. They are currently killing the people of Palestinian indiscriminately (with mass punishment which is a war crime) and have in the past. That’s a fact. Also, Hamas appears to have killed people in-mass indiscriminately on October 7th. That also is a fact. Scale and firepower is obviously different, but both events are real.

And one fact among all that OP seemed to miss: Palestinians are not fucking Hamas. They’re people who need help right now. And when you make these posts trying to erase real atrocities by Hamas (which echoes a lot of antisemitic narratives that Jewish people are “liars” working in a “mass conspiracy”)and equating them to Palestinians you are literally making the same equillivance fucking Bibi is making.

Anyway, I’m a white American and thus I don’t want to speak about this more than a fact check because you really should listen to those this impacts (and if anyone has more information for me or something I got wrong in this post PLEASE let me know. I’m only responding to this because this seemed egregious and I couldn’t find someone who already fact checked it.). So here are some a link to a well accredited Charity providing medical care to those in Gaza, here’s a link on how to contact your reps if you’re an American and here’s a link to an upcoming protest to put pressure on the government to call for a ceasefire.

"noticing a lot of the propaganda about alleged atrocities committed by Palestinians in this attack being retracted lately while at the same time I've seen news of Palestinians providing reassurance and safe passage to frightened Israeli women and children it's real funny how that works"

[panticwritten]

re: iwilleatyourenglish’s response. that cyberphuck person you reblogged from clarified thats not what they ment. They proudly ID as an asshole and have a history of harassing ppl. their also a pedo and when called out for having an account dedicated to writing csa porn they described in graphic detail how they wanted to turn their critics into kids and SA them. its all on their blog rn. ur on the wrong side

I reblogged a post and left tags with my own experience and agreeing with BOTH people on the post (meanness is necessary, but some people take it too far. Like you, right now, for example). I’m not on any side, you’re yelling at people who do not care. There are not sides here, and if there were I’m not going to side with the person who either is okay with their followers stalking and wishing harm on others on her behalf or is just doing it herself behind the anon mask.

Bc I’m assuming that you ARE iwilleatyourenglish considering the self congratulatory anon conversations on your own blog. So, I’m going forward with that assumption. So long as you’re on anon, that’s gonna be who I’m taking to, since even if you aren’t you’re speaking on her behalf.

Cyberphuck (whose ao3 is actually pretty tame??) was very obviously not responding genuinely and was VERY OBVIOUSLY making fun of you to get a rise out of you. They shouldn’t have bothered since you immediately jumped to telling me to eat glass just because I disagreed with your take and didn’t need the extra prodding to get there. Seemed like you had that in the barrel ready for any response other than ‘I’m so sorry, you’re right, you reaching out with this overly condescending message really changed my mind that being a bitch isn’t good 😌’.

Also, you said it yourself that they proudly identify as an asshole. Did you expect them… not to respond like an asshole?

I want to reiterate that you have to not be paying attention or willfully not see it to think they were being genuine. Which makes you either not as much of a critical thinker as you think you are or you’re just being disingenuous. I’d put money on the latter, since it’s so much more convenient for your smear tactics to take their responses at face value.

Also, I thought tumblr collectively got past this argument a long time ago: people can write things without wanting those things to happen in real life. Writing about csa doesn’t make someone a pedo, and pretending it does dilutes the word and makes it easier for real pedophiles to make space online so literally shut the fuck up. It’s called fiction and the characters are not real. I write about and from the point of view of murderers and genocidal maniacs from time to time and, shockingly, do not want either of those things to happen in real life. Harassing writers because of their subject matter that has nothing to do with an argument that YOU manufactured makes YOU the asshole.

Please go outside and touch some grass, iwilleatyourenglish. You’re throwing a massive fit over a one line tag disagreeing with you, and you’re accusing people of shit that isn’t as big of a sin as you seem to think it is.

Any further anon asks on this topic will be deleted. People who genuinely wish harm on others and go after people just for reblogging a post are not welcome on this blog, especially if they’re too cowardly to say it off anon.

[drowningcomicart]

time to wrestle with the pigs i guess, because this has got to end right the fuck now

content warnings for this post include pedophilia mentions, abuse mentions, suicide/suicide baiting, and csa mentions, and to everyone not involved hi, this has been my life for almost a year, it’s a lot of bullshit so tread with caution i guess. (and no i’m not putting it under a read more because this is important.)

with that out of the way, i want to make it very explicitly clear that i’m not writing this post as an apology, nor am i going to ‘justify’ myself because there’s nothing to fucking justify. but i’m addressing it because we’ve officially hit november, and that means that for nine fucking months, i have heard every disingenuous opinion on this mess there is to hear, whether i wanted it or not. and i am tired, and i am done, but y’all wanna keep beating this horse, so here i am.

for those who are unaware, in february of this year someone in the fantroll circle--or at least the one i’m part of--was being unjustly harassed by some dumbass teenagers with a chip on their shoulders and nothing better to do. and because no one else was saying or doing anything, i made a post calling out the stupidity of bothering someone over an art style and if they were blown, they should just block and move on. i never mentioned the harasser’s usernames, not even in the tags. but i guess the ringleader’s guilty conscience took over, because they came crytyping at me in a dm to take the post down and how it wasn’t faaaaiiirrr. and when i gave no sympathy, saying i had not mentioned them by name and if they felt guilty, maybe they shouldn’t be a vicious asshole to people, magically they weren’t sad and anxious about how people would treat them (ha) anymore; they got mad. mad enough that they started a smear campaign against me under the guise of Protecting The Community and horribly twisting one of my characters into something he’s not so they could call me a pedophile.

he is a csa survivor. he has bad coping mechanisms for that trauma, and yes, it is dark. it is uhealthy and sad and tragic and awful. but it is still part of his story, and i am not going to shy away from telling it. and since that entire blog always had nsfw tagged, and unless tumblr was fucking around should not have been accessible to anyone under 18 in the first place, the abusive little shits who made it their personal goal to drive me out of the community, off of tumblr, and apparently hopefully into killing myself, should not have been able to see that content at all. unless they chose to, and again as mentioned above, it was definitely a choice. a choice born of spite and violence, because it was ONLY to have “dirt” on me when i called them on their shit behavior. because, i cannot stress this enough, it was never ever about pedophilia. it was about a power struggle. a made up stupid power struggle they felt the need to ‘win’ at any and all costs, including making a wildly serious accusation with no substance, altering screenshots to serve their purpose, and taking everything out of context to suit their narrative. and this is how it is for literally every single anti-based argument out there.

now we all know how i feel about the purity crusade happening on this dumpsterfire of a website, but in case you don’t THERE IS NO CASE WHATSOEVER IN WHICH DARKFIC IS THE SAME THING AS REAL LIFE CRIMES. if you disagree with that, please block me. please. literally right now. block me. block me and go away and i only pray you learn to separate fiction from reality and don’t turn into what these demons are. because i don’t care how much you disagree with someone, i don’t care how much you don’t like them, i do not care about any of it. your presence in those spaces is your choice. because despite what antis will have you believe, people writing and drawing this stuff always--and i will say always knowing you’re smart enough to not give me The One Exception as your airtight strawman to render every other argument invalid--tag it, keep it in adult-only spaces, and are responsible enough to know what ‘i understand and wish to continue’ buttons mean.

and so, knowing that fiction does not equal reality, and that the spaces these fictions are written in are inherently designed to make it so only people who say yes i wanna see it can access it, or hell even knowing basic fucking human decency, there is NO reason to suicide bait someone. ever. period. do not tell people to die you actual fucking monsters. people HAVE killed themselves. and if you’re okay with that, if you are really seriously willing to say someone deserved to die over fiction, block me. i don’t want to see anything from you until you find your humanity again. and yet here i am, again 9 months after the fact, and people are STILL messaging me about it. even my would be supporters, the ones who claim they’re only concerned for my reputation or whatever, are being disingenuous and victim blaming. all i have heard is “you should prove your innocence cos you’re making people uncomfortable otherwise”. it belies their stance on these things; that they secretly agree it’s ok to harass content creators so long as they can pretend to themselves it’s justified in some small way. that if someone doesn’t want to give their abusers--and internet harassment IS abuse do not @ me on this one--a platform, it’s the same as admitting they’re correct, no matter how absurd the lie. Yet they do nothing to show support for people being harassed because they’re too concerned with living in their comfortable bubble to make even the smallest effort to oust abusive jackasses from their own community, and then go on to bellyache that the fandom “isn’t what it used to be” and wonder “where everyone went”.

with any luck, they’re like me and they “went” to doctors and got medicated for the depression and anxiety this sort of shit exacerbates, and blocked all involved for their own sanity and because they don’t owe anyone shit. but more likely, from what i’ve seen? they’re dead. and if that makes you sick, if that makes you uncomfortable, it fucking should. people are fucking dead because of fictional characters, from a source that in and of itself deals with very upsetting and adult themes using child protagonists. regardless if they’re survivors of abuse themselves, or just like to explore anxieties and fears in the very VERY safe environment of fiction, where there are no real life consequences, it doesn’t matter. there’s no such thing as people who are “allowed” to write these subjects and people who are not. no one needs to put their life and vulnerabilities on the table for complete strangers to judge and deem worthy or unworthy of basic decency. to say otherwise is despicably transparent in their motives to exploit already vulnerable people for their personal entertainment or self gratification, and yet people fall for it every goddamned time.

i’m not going to make an argument that i’m not a pedophile because i shouldn’t have to. y’all should be able to use your fucking brains well enough to know that someone drawing fictional scenarios is not the same as a real adult abusing real children with very real world consequences. if it is personally upsetting to you, or makes you feel uncomfortable, or even triggers ptsd please for the love of god leave the blog.  why would you put yourself through that? why would you, if you are so against it, actively seek it out and harass people who make it? i would never call people outright liars about what does and does not trigger them. but it seems to me the only people who would behave in this way are either not as bothered as they have convinced themselves and everyone else they are, or they have some seriously bad coping mechanisms for their own trauma that are in no way the fault of the authors and artists at the receiving end of their vitriol. but as someone who was horribly abused, emotionally and psychologically, for the majority of my life, i know an abusive power trip when i see one.

if y’all have been supporting these people without thinking about it, i don’t want your apologies and shame, and likely no one else you’ve let get trampled with no help does either. but you have to do better. WE have to do better. even something as small as blocking people you know to be abusive jerks in the community can make a world of difference because they can’t have power if you don’t let them have a platform.

and as for the people in the community who started this mess, cos i know you still look up my posts in the tags--i’m not afraid of you. i’m not fucking going anywhere. i am here to enjoy my characters, enjoy my writing, enjoy making art and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. you are not going to silence me because you got mad that i called you out for being an abusive asshole. and anyone who listens to your bullshit deserves better than to be manipulated and frightened of you. fucking grow up and get some help, because lying about wanting to protect people by causing active harm to others is more morally bankrupt than any darkfic could ever be.

[treesofgreen]

So I expanded more about it in the actual essay (someone save me from the leviathan it's becoming) but. He didn't call Lucius a slut. He didn't use any other word reduced specifically to his fucking around. And like I said, if it was just about that, he would have just said slut. And I don't think he used seductress vs seducer because the feminine is more demeaning either. It's because they're two different things. A seducer is in power. Casanova, Don Juan. They take, and they leave, and (1)

I am so sorry it took me so long to respond to this, especially when I don't think there is much I can add - you've put a lot of my thoughts about that scene into words and laid it out very well.

Seductress is such a specific word, and a very unusual one to use if the writers (or Izzy) were going for pure homophobia or sex shaming. Like you say, he could have called him a slut, a whore, the f slur. He didn't even reach for ponce or namby-pamby, which lends more credence to the argument that those are meant to be class based insults.

At first glance it's easy to say oh, seductress is feminine, he's calling Lucius a girl because he's gay, it's homophobia. But you're so right about the connotations of "seductress" and what Izzy might have thought was going on.

It's when he realizes that's not what's happening, and that Lucius is fine and in control and actually the seductor that is now toying with him by flirting, by disingenuously offering to sketch him, that Izzy gets actually mad (and his response to being mad is to leave and have Lucius do much needed chores the next day, absolute irredeemable villain material for sure lol).

There's a lot of talk about Izzy telling on himself with the Oooh daddy daddy line and HE IS, but there's so much more than that going on there. Some of us have talked about the cycle of abuse that seems evident here (and again, this is not an excuse for Izzy's harmful behavior, it's a reason. Understanding is not the same as condoning). A lot of us read him as a sexual assault survivor, and someone who likely needed the protection of a "daddy" to keep him safer from other men than he would have been otherwise (I don't think it was Ed, I think Ed just kept him safe. I think someone like Hornigold was "daddy").

I think Izzy is upset about Ed, he's trying to get someone on the Revenge to do some damn work, he lets them finish, he's disturbed by what he thinks he sees and is projecting himself onto Lucius, and his worldview is shattered by the revelation that Lucius holds power and is unafraid, that people aren't going to hurt him if they find out - that everyone already knows. And he's fine with it and so are they! No one is getting hurt when the world is usually nothing but hurt.

More than anything Izzy feels like a man that's been owned all his life in one way or another, willingly and unwillingly, and didn't realize other people in his position might not be, even if just on magic fantasy funland ship. That he might not have to be. And that has to be terrifying.

[jraker4]

Again, you're being disingenuous. You literally think Israelis should just die. So this pretense you're putting up that there is some threshold after which Israel could respond and be justified, well, it's bullshit. But in any event: yeah. If guerilla fighters and terrorists infiltrate a previously peaceful protest and start attacking soldiers, those soldiers will eventually open fire. You're welcome to name me a nation on Earth that wouldn't, either currently or in the past. I'll wait. And your argument that 'oh gosh, Hamas is just bad at terrorism'...well! Funny you should say that! I actually agree. When it comes to 'resisting Israel', Hamas is really, really bad...at least, if their goals were actually the safety and dignity and self-determination of Palestinians. Then again, if you look at their sources of funding and weapons, and consider what political interests those groups have, things might come into sharper focus. But you just want Israelis to die. You've said so. As for not looking through all of your sources, I'll just take a moment to remind you: you're not fooling anyone. You routinely refuse to reply to all of the points raised, using a variety of excuses, several of which are contradictory. You can either do that, or you can insist on a comprehensive response to every point you make. You can't do both. Or at least, you can't do both and not continue to look ridiculous. The bad-faith behavior of the antisemite isn't unknown to me, bigot:) Of course you don't see a problem with the election-big asterisk, there-of Hamas. They share a common goal with you: the death of Jews. But, again, over here in the real world, when an enemy has openly sworn your destruction and killed many of your people is poised to take over a government right on your border, you inhibit it if you can. Israel can. Make sure to continue whining about it. I know it's upsetting when fewer Jews die, bigot.

As for your map, yeah, it's almost like starting wars and losing them repeatedly has consequences. Complete mystery, that.

[vividaway]

a juror from the AH v JD case speaks out

the juror asked to have his name not used for this report.

when the actress cried during her testimony the jury saw only "crocodile tears."

"It didn’t come across as believable," he said. "It seemed like she was able to flip the switch on her emotions. She would answer one question and she would be crying and two seconds later she would turn ice cold. It didn’t seem natural."

Depp, he said, "just seemed a little more real in terms of how he responded to questions."

"They had their husband-wife arguments. They were both yelling at each other. I don’t think that makes either of them right or wrong. That’s what you do when you get into an argument, I guess. But to rise to the level of what she was claiming, there wasn’t enough or any evidence that really supported what she was saying," he said.

Heard, the juror said, was considered the aggressor in the relationship by the majority of the jury. "If you have a battered wife or spouse situation, why would you buy the other person, the ‘aggressor,’ a knife? If you really wanted to help Johnny Depp get off drugs, why are you taking drugs around him?" he asked.

The juror said that photographs Heard took of her ex-husband also fell flat. Although the defense used them to show Depp’s decrepit state after a drug or alcohol binge, the juror said they failed to make an impact.

"If you mix alcohol and marijuana, that’s where you usually end up -- passed out," he said. "We discussed at length that a lot of the drugs she said he used, most of them were downers. And you usually don’t get violent on downers. You become a zombie, as those pictures show."

"Those were two different pictures. We couldn’t really tell which picture was real and which one was not," the juror told "GMA."

Also suspect were the photos that Heard’s team presented that purported to show bruising on the actress’ face.

The juror also said the defense failed Heard by telling them that the actress "never goes outside without make-up on," he said. "Yet she goes to file the restraining order without make-up on. And it just so happens her publicist is with her. Those things add up and starts to become hard to believe," he said.

The juror said the four-hour debate over the difference between a pledged donation and an actual donation ended up "a fiasco" for Heard.

The fact is, she didn’t give much of it away at all," the juror said. "It was disingenuous."

He blamed Heard’s legal team for giving her poor advice, such as looking directly at the jury when responding to questions. "All of us were very uncomfortable" at that, he said.

He also said her team "had sharp elbows versus being sharp."

"They would cut people off in cross because they wanted one specific answer without context. They were forcing people to just answer a very narrow question ... which was obvious," he said.

"She needs better advice," he said of Heard.

Publishing the 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post that defamed Depp was a poor choice, he said. "If she didn’t do any of this stuff with the op-eds, Johnny Depp could have helped her out in her career. They didn’t leave things on a nasty turn," when they divorced, he said. "It turned nasty after the op-ed."

'We only looked at the evidence'

The juror denied the jury was swayed by outside forces. He and "at least" three others did not have Twitter accounts.

"Some people said we were bribed. That’s not true. Social media did not impact us. We followed the evidence. We didn’t take into account anything outside [the courtroom]. We only looked at the evidence," he said. "They were very serious accusations and a lot of money involved. So we weren’t taking it lightly."

"None of us were really fans of either one of them," he said.

Asked whether he would go see a future movie starring Depp or Heard, the juror said it would depend on the movie.

"What they do in their personal lives doesn’t affect me whatsoever. Going to movies is entertainment. I go for the quality of the movie or the storyline," he said. "Not for the acting."

[itsclydebitches]

Is there a direction that CRWBY could go to make u say "fuck it, I'm done"? I'm still watching for fanfiction purposes and bc I'm in to deep to quit without feeling like i wasted my time, but if Cinder is redeemed, like full-on redeemed without her death (that's the only justifiable redemption for her imo), I'll likely tap out if it's not the end of the series.

Honestly, at this point probably not. If I've stuck around for plotlines I thoroughly disagreed with (Ozpin), the destruction of characters I enjoyed (Ironwood), while simultaneously redeeming others I have no interest in (Hazel), and including aspects that I found to be straight up offensive (Penny)... RWBY has already hit all the "Fuck it, I'm done" possibilities for me, generally speaking. It's more likely that rather than doing something specific that turns me off, RWBY may just wear me down over time. I'm still interested in watching it despite the problems now, but after two, three, even four more years of potential problems? Who can say.

I'd like to briefly comment on that "I'm in too deep to quit without feeling like I wasted my time" aspect though, simply because I'm seeing it pop up more and more. Fans, specifically fans who have expressed varying amounts of criticism, say something to that effect of not wanting to drop RWBY when they've already put in years of emotional investment, to which others, usually fans still greatly enjoying RWBY, respond, "That's just the sunk cost fallacy. At this point you're being illogical for not dropping it."

For any who may not be aware, the sunk cost fallacy is the tendency to avoid cutting one's losses once you've already invested something in an endeavor: time, money, emotion, etc. The argument is to avoid such biased thinking because you can't get that investment back and all you're doing is prolonging a lack of enjoyment. An easy example would be a movie you payed for. You realize twenty minutes in that you hate this film, but you can't get your ticket money back. Many people would employ the sunk cost fallacy by claiming they need to stick around because otherwise that money is "wasted." The counter argument is that the money is wasted either way, so better to leave the theater and spend that hour and forty minutes doing something you like. That's becoming the latest argument trend in the RWBY fandom: it doesn't matter how many years you spent investing in this show, they're lost, you clearly hate it now, so just drop it already. To do otherwise is philosophically foolish.

However, I've personally always found the sunk cost fallacy to be a weird thing to apply to media. Not because countering it is entirely without merit — we all should practice dropping things if we want to: books, movies, podcasts, whatever — but rather because there's so much to be gained from media outside of enjoying 100% of the time. For me, finishing things is a kind of enjoyment. I'm rather bad at it (lol), but that doesn't erase the fact that I have an intellectual itch to complete any series I fell in love with, particularly when I loved it for 3+ years. Managing that provides a different kind of enjoyment from the enjoyment of being totally happy with the show's writing, but it's an enjoyment nonetheless. If I'm critical of something, I like being able to say honestly that I completed it so that can't be used as a catch-all dismissal for why any arguments I make are unfounded. I enjoy seeing what missteps a show goes through so that I can try to avoid them in my own writing and, hopefully, I enjoy watching the show come back from them. I like keeping up with a community that I'm a part of, one where I chat with both friends and strangers specifically about RWBY. If I were to drop it, I'd also be dropping the connection I have with a lot of people. I likewise enjoy keeping up with the show for the creativity potential — "for fanfiction purposes," as you say, anon. I may not like how the show handled the Hound, but I like the Hound as a concept and now, having watched Volume 8, I can play with that idea in my own way. And none of this even touches on the enjoyment of details throughout an episode (or season) that I think is otherwise failing: a particularly cool idea, a nicely delivered exchange, animation that I find to be beautiful, spending time with characters whose original concepts I still enjoy, etc.

The critical side of the fandom has discussed extensively the non-critical side's tendency to view RWBY as perfect. It's not that many fans disagree on what problems RWBY has, but rather it's refusing to admit that there are any problems. This new desire to bring up the sunk cost fallacy feels like it's built on that, the idea that if you're not enjoying all of RWBY all the time then you need to cut it out of your life completely. There is no middle ground. You either adore it without reservation or you drop it and, as is so often said, leave the "real" fans alone. Stop ruining the community and all that because the expectation is that the community is allowed to be composed of praise and praise only. It's a familiar argument wrapped up in a very disingenuous sense of concern. When one fan insists that another should drop RWBY because they're just hurting themselves, they're acting like they really care about the others' well being when, in reality, they just want them gone. It's a trend that I'm coming to dislike because it tries to paint the fan as the logical, level-headed one who is only trying to get the critic to drop RWBY out of a sense of logical inevitability and, sometimes, even concern for this stranger's mental health... because there's definitely no other motivation there.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying, "Me too, anon." As of right now, I still feel like I'm in too deep to just drop RWBY. I'd rather see it through, for a number of different reasons, and all the "it's illogical/unhealthy to keep watching" arguments aren't going to dissuade me from that.

[kataraqui-archive]

Johnny Silverhand Meta

Why telling Johnny Silverhand he fucked up his friendship with V was cathartic as hell, more meta that no one asked for but I’m gonna go off anyway:

Obviously, spoilers ahead.

At the Pistis Sophia V and Johnny have arguably one of the deepest heart to hearts so far. Johnny reveals some of his history in the military, how a friend died to save him, how being used as a corporate tool radicalized him, and then gives V his friend’s dog tags as a symbol of his promise to sacrifice himself so V can live. It’s pretty emotional and made me feel like V and Johnny’s relationship had really grown over the course of the game.

Then Johnny asks for a favour, his last wish so to speak. To speak to Rogue and get revenge on Adam Smasher. He asks for control of V’s body so he can speak to Rogue and reiterates, multiple times, that this is ALL he’s going to do while in the driver’s seat. 

Instead, immediately and without hesitation, Johnny goes joyriding. He gets completely wasted, gets a tattoo, drinks some more, makes out with a stripper, gets into a brawl with the bouncers, then fingers the stripper in the car, crashes said car, and THEN goes to talk to Rogue after getting what information he could from the stripper. All of this he does with V’s body. He hands V back control, leaving V sick as a dog, beat up, tattooed, and with little memory of how they got in that state. 

Here’s where I get into my feelings as a player. I felt DEEPLY violated by this sequence of events and my inability to do anything about it. V’s getting piloted through sexual situations with a woman they don’t know. They’re getting tattooed. Yeah, in the world of Cyberpunk, that doesn’t have to be permanent, but it’s still all an enormous violation of V’s autonomy and what he consented to. It’s THEIR body. Beyond that, I thought V and Johnny were getting along, trusting each other, and the first moment V gave Johnny their unequivocal trust, Johnny lied. I felt betrayed. I was honestly so pissed I cried, in particular because Johnny brushed aside V’s (valid) arguments that this wasn’t what they’d agreed to and they could have done all that other stuff themselves without Johnny driving. The reality is: Johnny never intended to just speak to Rogue, he deliberately misled V so he could have one last hurrah with zero appreciation for how those actions would affect V. V who is already sick and dying because of the relic. No matter how you slice it, this is deeply fucked up behaviour.

It’s even more deeply fucked when you consider Johnny’s take on dolls. He’s openly disgusted by the way dolls are used as toys, the behavioural chip robbing them of autonomy/identity, and then their memories wiped so they don’t have to live with whatever depraved crap clients want to do with them. Then he goes and treats V exactly the way those behavioural chips treat dolls, and at first is completely unrepentant about it.

All throughout the story, Johnny reiterates how much he hates Arasaka for rewriting people’s identities. Even acknowledges that this is why he can’t stand the fact that, through the relic, he’s being made to do the same thing to V. What he does in Chippin’ In is hypocritical as fuck, but not the first time Johnny’s done something contrary to his general ethos. Though it’s not acknowledged in his memories because, as Alt points out, they were tinged with Johnny’s bias, the entire bombing of Arasaka tower was funded and backed by Militech; he hates corpos more than anything, but Johnny still accepted their backing when it served his interests.

When you follow that quest line to the point where you visit Johnny’s grave, we get to see a totally different side to Johnny. He seems humbled and distressed that, despite all he did in his lifetime, his body lies in an unmarked grave, an oil field where no one remembers it’s even there. I felt really bad for him in that moment, but I was still pissed. My V acknowledged that he would write ‘The Man Who Saved My Life’ on Johnny’s grave because, despite their falling out, Johnny is still trying to save him. There’s still a bond forged by sharing the same body and what they’ve been through. But when Johnny tries to sidestep by saying that, while he fucked up his relationships with everyone else, he’s glad he didn’t fuck up what he has with V, I wasn’t standing for that. I wasn’t going to let him play for sympathy over the unmarked grave to sweep his betrayal of V’s trust under the rug. I chose the ‘Nope, you fucked that up too,’ option. 

Honestly? One of the most cathartic moments in any game for me. Johnny doesn’t deny he fucked up either. He asks for a second chance, which my V agreed to give him, because even with all that fuckery they’re still close friends. 

I didn’t know this dialogue was what unlocked the secret ending, it just made sense given what had happened and how I felt V would respond. My partner played it differently though, which is how I came to realize that the dialogue you get with Kerry and Johnny is an indicator of your relationship. When Kerry asks ‘do you get along?’ my partner got the response, ‘Not lately, no.’ Whereas I got, ‘The kid loves me.’ That seems almost contradictory, given I’m the one who chose to go off on Johnny for his betrayal, and my partner let it lie, but looking at Johnny’s other close relationships and his general ethos in life, it painted a bigger picture. (Note: I don’t know for SURE that the ‘you fucked up’ line is required to get this, but from various playthroughs between my partner and I, and what I’ve found online since, it seems that this dialogue is the key.)

The only people Johnny considered close friends are all people we’ve seen in his memories, and in every single one he is butting heads with them in some way. Johnny knows he’s damaged the people closest to him. Acknowledges it not just over his own grave, but in various endings as well. I think it’s telling that the memories V experiences, the ones that stick out most in Johnny’s subconscious, all involve some kind of argument between he and Alt, Rogue or Kerry. I think the fact that they stood up to him mattered to him more than anything because they weren’t giving up on him. They weren’t going ‘Johnny’s beyond help.’ Johnny even asks why Denny never tried to fix him. He’s also disparaging of being a ‘yes, man’ in most quest lines, rebellious to a fault. I think V standing up to him in kind garners Johnny’s love and respect more than if V just accepts what Johnny did. Maybe Johnny sees that as disingenuous or even cowardly, but I think on a deeper level he sees it as a sign that V has given up on him too. That V can’t be bothered because he doesn’t believe Johnny can change. There’s also just something really moving to me when two people can express their anger or hurt to one another and still be friends after. 

Anyway, those are my thoughts on Johnny’s relationships and why the ‘you fucked up’ line was so important for both V and Johnny. I really love the way these characters are written, and this relationship in particular just felt really genuine in all it’s complicated glory.

Fin.

[balanceoflightanddark]

sighs

Where to begin oh where to begin?

I guess I will concede one point. He was right about Kylo Ren and Kuvira having their redemption arcs completely rushed and half-cooked. If you're going to do a redemption arc, either do it right, or not at all. Otherwise it'll be completely unearned.

But that's where the concessions end.

To start, he completely misrepresents Azula in the Spirit Temple. He insinuates that Azula attacked the spirit, when really it was the other way around after the spirit kept pushing her buttons. Second, he claimed that Azula rejected her redemption, even though the redemption the spirit offered was nothing but a lie AND wasn't even much of a redemption outside of groveling for forgiveness at Zuko's feet (which sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it?). Finally, he completely ignores that she chose to let go of her grudge against the Fire Warriors, which is a pretty big indicator that she's starting to change. Thus pushing herself in the right direction.

The biggest sticking point for me though is him saying that characters themselves shouldn't be realistic and should serve the narrative and themes first and foremost. Okay, that has to be the most boring high school lecture I've ever heard. Might as well bring out The Dead Poets Society Understanding Poetry chart.

Newsflash: there's a reason why characters are so damn important. And there's a reason why they resonate with so many people. They can teach important lessons, whether they be hero or villain. Yes they carry the themes, but if they don't feel human, then you might as well be reading the sparknotes version of the story cause it gets boring really fast. Characters are, by their design, supposed to connect with the audience. You're supposed to look at somebody like Azula and think, "yeah. She feels real." If they have to bend over backwards for the plot to happen, then there's a disconnection.

Characters matter. How we respond to characters matter. And while there is definitely something to be said about projecting too much into a character (trust me, I've been there), there's also the opposite extreme of disconnecting so much, you can say that "you can see her as a villain first, teenager second". Yes, that was an actual argument he made.

While he does say Azula could be redeemed, it feels like something to deflect criticism. A concession. After the whole video pinning the blame of her downfall almost exclusively on her (Ozai gets mentioned a grand total of TWO times, Ursa and the Fire Nation gets mentioned NONE), it feels disingenuous. And for an essay about how not everyone should be redeemed, he certainly didn't mentioned Long Feng or Ozai in the mix. You know, people who had more autonomy than Azula ever could.

And don't even get me started on him worshipping Zuko's ass again. You know you couldn't get away with "characters are just fiction, they're not real" when you start poking holes in Zuko and Iroh's redemption arcs.

It's clear to me that he didn't even bother connecting to Azula outside of the general themes of the story. To try and put himself in her shoes. And yet he stands there, thinking himself some kind of guru or writing expert. He speaks with such authority but ultimately feels like a detached professor.

Hello Future Me lacks media literacy when he talks about Azula. It's like a switch in his brain turns.

[lazaefair]

Sequence of events the way I perceived/remember them. I’m doing my best to be as honest as possible and to minimize self-defensiveness, but I’m only human. Trying anyway:

I join All & More.

Within the first few days, I either bring up something about fandom racism, or challenge something someone said that I felt played into cultural biases regarding Marwan/Joe and the conversation turns to fandom racism. I don’t remember which happened first.

Either way, over the next weeks, between other conversations I get into several arguments/discussions about fandom racism with a few different people, including goldheartedsky. One person blocks me, which is how I learn about Discord blocking, and I block them back.

Goldheartedsky in particular keeps making remarks that show a clear bias against Joe/Marwan on the same spectrum as the biases that other Top Joe Stans have demonstrated in the previous months. She’s by no means the only one, as there is a mix of Top Joe Stans, neutral (I thought at the time) parties, and then me and Ven. But goldheartedsky and I get into it a few times with varying degrees of civility. She demonstrates that she relies heavily on strawman fallacies, red herrings, disingenuous mischaracterizations, and outright lying as tactics.

At some point I realize that she has blocked me (I can’t tag her or add reactions to her posts) so I block her back, as everything she had been posting had been upsetting me anyway.

After that, I started blocking people who got to roughly the same threshold as she did - attempting to preserve my fandom experience and give my stress levels a break.

By the time the conversation in question happens, I’ve blocked a handful of people, and basically just ignore the “blocked messages” bars that replace their posts and act like they’re not there. This is what happens during The Conversation - there is at least one blocked person, maybe more, but I don’t know because they are blocked and all Discord shows you is “3 blocked messages” or however many messages have been replaced.

I also unfortunately was lackadaisical about tagging the people I was actually responding to, which would have muddied the flow of the conversation for anyone else who didn’t have the exact same people blocked that I did.

I never clicked on the “blocked messages” bars, the channel has since been deleted, and I haven’t looked at the screenshots being spread around, so I still have no idea what any of the blocked people said in that conversation.

As for the substance of the conversation - this isn’t an excuse for myself, but I was talking about the ethics of the presented issue the way I usually talk in ethics discussions, like a puzzle to be solved. I realize now that I should have...not done that. To the people I was actually talking to, I am genuinely sorry for the pain I caused by not being empathetic enough to the human/emotional side of the issue.

Some hours after the conversation peters out, a person I hadn’t blocked - but who was in the same loose friend group as the people I had blocked - comes into the channel and says that what I had said wasn’t appropriate.

I reach out to Ven to get a second opinion about it. She agrees, which is when I realize I fucked up.

While I am talking to Ven, one of the not-blocked people whom I’d actually been responding to in the conversation - who is Jewish - comes back in and basically clarifies what I’d intended to say on my behalf. (I did not ask them to do this, and I am grateful to them for doing it.)

Edit: I am aware that this person has just publicly disavowed their defense of me. I’m leaving in what I originally wrote, since I’m laying out the sequence of events and their post was part of the reason why I handled the situation the way I did at the time.

Ven advises me, and I agree, to leave it there, because this person has kindly already said what I would have said - and also because I reckoned that nothing I could have said would have actually satisfied the person who called me out, as they’d demonstrated consistent hostility toward me in all our interactions prior to this.

So I leave it there, the channel moves on, and I figure that’s that.

Fandom racism conversations continue, with multiple arguments happening in which the contingent of Top Joe Stans, including goldheartedsky, continue to deliberately use rude, insulting language and various fallacies in response to my and others’ requests to reconsider contributing to racist tropes about Marwan/Joe. In an argument about the content gap between types of stories and art produced between Joe and Nicky, one of them says outright that there is no content gap, citing the survey done by tog-resources in July.

I’d already been considering conducting a full survey of Joe/Nicky fic, but this spurs me on to actually do it. Ven and I start surveying, and publish our results in late February.

I won’t rehash that entire round of discourse here, but this is when the screenshots from A&M first appear and various people receive anons accusing me of being a TERF and antisemitic, etc. One of the anons contains enough circumstantial information for me to figure out that goldheartedsky is behind it, or at least part of it. This is my first indication that goldheartedsky was one of the blocked people in that conversation.

I decide to stay silent about the accusations because that seems like the high road to take, and because it feels like addressing them at all would lend credence to them.

The people throwing accusations around had either blocked me, or I had blocked them, so any words that I said about them wouldn’t have been taken in good faith anyway, especially after it got to bakedapplesauce.

Bakedapplesauce, who blocked me after receiving one of the longer anons, never contacted me to get my side of the story.

A while later, a third party contacts me to try to bring me and goldheartedsky together in a conversation to clear the air. I didn’t initiate this, but agreed to do it only if the third party acts as a go-between, 1) partly because I had just started a new job and was busy IRL so I didn’t think I could manage a conversation in real-time, but primarily 2) because then if screenshots of the conversation ever appeared in public, there could be no question as to who had done it. Goldheartedsky refuses this precaution, so I call it off.

So, that’s my side of the story. I don’t have screenshots because screenshots can be altered and taken out of context, and also because I just don’t do that shit. I regret that it’s gotten to this point, but since the February round of discourse, it always felt like there was no way for me to address the accusations without coming off as defensive or dismissive.

Also, until this round of discourse in June, no one had approached me about it in sincere concern. I’m only writing this post at all because this shit has now been splattered onto other people, including Jewish people who have to watch their generational pain be used as a shield and a derailing tactic to deflect from challenges to malicious, conscious racism. These anons only crop up when fandom tries to address racism, and only using hostile “gotcha” phrasing that makes clear they’re not actually concerned about antisemitism, they’re just trying to deflect. Well, they can try.

That being said, I do acknowledge and recognize that in that particular conversation, I was thoughtlessly callous about something that is gravely painful, and I should have known better. As I’ve said many times before, no one gets to declare by fiat that they’re “not a racist” because that’s not how cultural conditioning or implicit bias works, and it’s the same for antisemitism. I’m sincerely sorry for that and have been trying/will continue to try to do better.

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Censorship and Banning Books

As I mentioned in my last Rant Rave Review, as of last Monday, six books by Dr. Seuss are now officially out-of-print, and they are out of print due to supposedly racist, offensive, and/or stereotypical images. The company that owns the rights to these books is no longer publishing them and some websites are no longer selling them. People who do own the books, or who swooped into stores and bought them the day of the announcement, are now selling them for hundreds or thousands of dollars. So, what are we to make of all this?

Is Dr. Seuss Racist?

There are actually three questions here: is the man racist, are his books racist, and are those images racist? The answer to the first is, he kinda was, and then he got over it. During the war, he was openly against the Japanese, and in favor of the internment camps, then went to Japan during the occupation and realized, hey, maybe these are just people. Apparently, he wrote Horton Hears a Who in response to the US occupation and dedicated it to a Japanese friend. People can change, if you let them.

Okay, well, what about his books? This is an obvious "no". Race basically doesn't come up in Dr. Seuss stories, except "The Sneetches", which is actively against racism. Which, in some people's fevered imaginations, makes it racist. Yes, in some Olympic-level mental gymnastics, saying that whatever race you are isn't important, ie being against "racial essentialism" means that you are a racist. Such people think that the story doesn't address "structures of power" and "systemic oppression". This is true. It's instead a story about a sleazy businessman who goes in and preys on existing racial biases in order to make a buck, constantly telling people to think of their identities in terms of their outward appearance. You'd think the racial essentialists would appreciate the representation.

But I digress.

What about the images themselves? Are they racist? Not having seen all of them, I can't say for sure, but some are definitely cringy. Take the yellow skinned "Chinaman who eats with sticks" in And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. Though one could argue that the entire book uses only five colors: yellow, red, blue, and touches of purple and green, this man is the only human whose skin is colored at all. Later editions of this book have actually changed the image and text:

Honestly, I think this is fine. The meter still scans, and the image isn't straight-up removed. I mean, we could maybe discuss whether it's okay to alter an author's work, but he was alive when at least one of these these changes was made, so I think he allowed it.

Next we have some from If I Ran the Zoo, like this one, of some Asian dudes who "all wear their eyes at a slant":

I think, in this case, the text is the problem, but not the picture. Though some describe this image as "exotified", I think it's more just exaggerated, as are most of Dr. Seuss's characters. He doesn't do things half way. Aside from that, the picture is kind of cute and silly; nothing in it is derogatory or mean to the helpers. The text on the other hand... oof. Yeah, I would say this is a true example of something "offensive". I could see changing that (as long as the meter still scans!).

And then there are the fellows holding the tufted mazurka:

That's pretty bad. So bad that as a child, I don't think I actually registered that those were supposed to be humans, but rather other Seussian creatures. It doesn't help, again, that in his color pallet, people that would ordinarily be brown are now black-black, not unlike the most racist images of yesteryear. But the fact that their lips are left uncolored, I think, is what gets me. It's a little too close to black-face for comfort. Again, I think it would be okay to alter the image: color in their lips, change the shading. I know some people quibble with their costume, but some peoples do wear little amounts of clothing, so I don't think thats the issue here.

I can't speak to the other books, because I haven't seen those pictures, but I would say, yeah, some of the images and phrasing are problematic. I don't think that means the books are racist. Seuss isn't saying the Asian helpers or the African mazurka wranglers are less than the white child running the zoo. He is exotifying them to some degree, but the degree to which that is being done can, I believe, be fixed with very minor alterations.

Should the Books Be Banned?

Again, I think there are a couple questions here: are these books being banned, and should they be banned?

In our increasingly-willing-to-cancel culture, people like to talk about the difference between government censorship vs. corporate censorship, which is a valid topic. But when it comes to huge corporations like Amazon banning books from their website for hate speech or Ebay halting the ability of vendors to sell certain titles on their platform, to say "it’s a private corporation, so it's not censorship" is disingenuous. Maybe it doesn't violate the First Amendment, but it is censorship. A single bookstore refusing to sell a book, a single library refusing to carry a book, is censorship.

A single company that owns the rights to a book refusing to sell it is 100% censorship. I'm personally offended by the idea of any book being out-of-print in the day and age of print-on-demand, but I'm especially sickened when companies pull this nonsense. This is similar to foreign companies who refuse to publish novels, games, and videos in English copyright striking fanlations; they are not losing money, so why do they care?

In the case of the Seuss estate, or whoever owns the rights, all that they are doing is denying poor people access to books. That's right, if you can shell out $786 for a children's book, you can read these delightful stories. What's that? You're a single mom who works two jobs? Well, sucks to be you.

What's really vile is that people are saying, "It's only six books. You still have the others." First off, this is admitting that those six books are now censored and unavailable. Secondly, this is a stupid argument. It's like saying, "Well, the Nazi's didn't burn every book in Germany. There were plenty of others." What if I wanted to read the ones that were burned?

And that brings us to the question of whether or not those books ought to be banned. Heck, should they even be altered? Some of you might have balked at my saying I was fine with the images being changed; isn't that censorship? I think that would take it's own blog post, but here I'll just say that I don't think the changes I discussed would really alter the content, message, or meaning of the work. That being said, I don't think you have to change the images either.

That is, I think it's okay to publish, purchase, own, and read problematic material. As many commentators have pointed out, no child is going to be made into a racist by reading these books or seeing these images. Any racist or even iffy overtones are going to go right over their heads unless parents point them out. If, in the one in a million chance, your child actually notices anything wrong with the images, like "why is his skin yellow?" or something, then you can have a conversation about how sometimes, back in the day, people drew some not-so-nice pictures of Asian people and thought their skin should be painted as yellow, but we don't do that anymore, but this book was written a long time ago, etc etc. If they ask about what a Chinaman is, say it's an old word for a Chinese person, but you should never say it, because it can hurt people's feelings. Talk to your children; it isn't hard.

Should Any Books Be Banned

If you've been paying attention to what's been happening in book land lately, you'll know that Dr. Seuss's books are not the first to be put on the chopping block. Last year, Abigail Shrier's book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, was removed from Target due to requests of trans activists. It was returned after backlash. Now I think it might be banned again? Who can even keep up anymore. Similarly, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, by Ryan T. Anderson, has now been removed from Amazon for being "hate speech".

In the microcosm of the library world, I've had some people take issue with certain controversial books. When processing our new books, my part-timer picked up Irreversible Damage and asked, "Did someone request this?" as if we shouldn't have ordered it if they didn't. Both that book, and White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo, were face out in our new book area, since they were the newest books. The former was turned backwards or put spine out with the older books multiple time by patrons, the latter turned backwards once. During the election, I found books for and against Trump hidden behind other books.

My question for people who do this in the library, and for corporations who do essentially the same thing on a massive scale, is who exactly do you think you are helping? Do you think anyone's mind is going to be changed on Trump? Or transgenderism, or white fragility, just by reading a book?

If the answer is "no", then why bother banning or hiding them? If the answer is yes, then that means you think books have the power to change minds, but you want to deny that opportunity to people. Rather than debating ideas, or writing a better book, or showing people why they shouldn't think a certain way, people are increasingly trying to banish certain ideas entirely. How dare an author question X, Y, or Z idea? How dare people be allowed to have an opinion different from the one we say they should!

What's so frustrating about cancel culture and censorship is that people think they really are trying to do the right thing. What they don't realize is, the people they cancel also think they are doing the right thing.

Take Irreversible Damage: obviously, those that want it banned think that trans kids will be hurt by the ideas expressed in the book, that they will be denied hormones and surgeries and so forth. I'm sure Abigail Shrier believes that trans kids would be hurt by no one examining the idea of wether or not they should be given hormones and surgeries as minors. Both sides care about kids. Both sides are trying to figure out how to help people. If you think that Shrier is wrong and her book is dangerous, then write a more compelling argument explaining why she's wrong.

An example of the right way to go about this is with White Fragility, a book that some people see as problematic, if not racist against white people or black people or both. People have written books specifically refuting the ideas in the book. Others have compiled titles that handle race more tactfully and that can be read instead. And that's the thing; you can choose what to read. You can choose never to read a book deemed problematic, but you have no right to take that choice away from other people.

Where Do Libraries Fall Into All This?

That "right to read" is one of the pillars or librarianship. The reason libraries exist is so that all people, regardless of money, have equal access to books, movies, and other aspects of our shared culture. We librarians understand that books are important not just for education, but also entertainment and escape. Stories are how we as humans process ideas, and everyone has a right to expose themselves to ideas--even controversial or dangerous or flat out wrong ones. They have the right to examine different sides of an issue and form their own conclusions. To try and control what a person reads is to try and control what they think, and no government or corporation has that right.

Thus, libraries don't ban books, wether those books are literary classics, modern treatises on current events and ideologies, or silly picture books by Dr. Seuss.

So it was with some concern that I got an email saying that our county library district would be taking the six Seuss books in question out of circulation. The rationale was that, given that a single book was selling for hundreds or thousands of dollars, some sticky-fingered patrons might steal then from the shelves or "lose" them after checking them out.

Though this logic was sound, I still had misgivings, especially because of incidences of library censorship in the past. Yes, even libraries have not been immune to the scourge. During the Cold War, some libraries would keep books about communism behind the reference desk so that people would have to ask to read them in the library. Not only did this potentially help identify commies, it also discouraged people from reading the books.

Thus, when our new policy is to keep the Seuss books "at the desk" and only let them be read in the library, is that not censorship? Is this accidental censorship, or perhaps intended by the very cancel culturists who want all problematic books to be sent down the memory hole?

No, I don't think it is, because--despite what the very mob who’s in favor of all of this would have you believe--intention matters. Reasons matter. We are not trying to make the books harder to read; we're trying to keep the books from becoming impossible to read. By protecting the books from theft, we're ensuring that the poor as well as the rich can enjoy Dr. Seuss's stories. This, in my mind, is similar to chained up bibles: it looks bad, until you remember that books were rare and expensive, and illuminated manuscripts even more so. If someone steals a book, no one gets to read it, but if a book is under lock and key, some people still can.

Of course, everyone could, if companies would simply stop censoring books, if stores would stop banning them, and if well-intentioned but short-sighted activists would stop digitally burning them. But maybe that's too much to hope for at present. For now, we librarians will have the books safe and sound for when you want to read them. You have only to ask.

[mitigatedchaos]

As an example of my frustration with this user, he kicked off this discussion with,

okay, but what is up with the cautiously-expressing-skepticism-about-trans-identities-to-flagrantly-racist pipeline/progression/syndrome? is it a psychological reinforcement thing, when you’re getting (justifiably) torn apart by people on your “side” for bigotry, that you eventually flee into the arms of the only people who will have you, i.e., other bigots? is it a minority tendency that just gets amplified because of notable examples? does this progression of person-with-one-fucked-up-idea-fleeing-to-the-far-right replicate itself with other prejudices among theoretically centrist/center-left/left-ish people? am i just forgetting all the center-left homophobes who went full far-right during the gay marriage debate? i am truly perplexed by this, because it looks like empirical vindication of a flattering belief (all transphobes are secretly massive bigots in every other area of their ideology, too), but that makes me suspicious! reality is rarely so tidy.

And well. You'd have to be deliberately ignorant not to notice the massive shift between 2008-2013 and 2014-2023 in the overall distribution of behavior. For instance, in 2008, Microsoft, one of the most well-known corporations in the entire world, that makes the most prevalent desktop operating system in the world, would not have put some crackpot like Ibram Kendi, who proposed giving full veto power over all government policy to an unappointed (and presumably unelected) body of "race experts," on the login screens of Windows.

Conditions have changed. People are responding to the changing conditions. Among the changing conditions are attempts at "corrective" racial medical rationing, and arguments that there are "too many" of specific racial groups working at prestigious corporations, implicitly calling to lay people off purely on the basis of their race.

One way this makes it easier to support racism is that with "individualism" deemed "white supremacist," people may argue descriptive racist positions in order to argue that they are not benefiting unfairly and therefore should not be discriminated against or harmed.

Another way this makes it easier to support racism is that racists are now in a much better position to argue that in a homogeneous ethnostate, this "corrective" racist approach either would not happen, or would be more limited - either there would be fewer racial groups to do this on "behalf" of, or race would not be a power-source for corrupt political operatives to exploit.

Particularly,

God I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when people make statements this sweeping and this misleading. No, people on the right don’t cut you off for making racist jokes; they cut you off for being gay or kick you out for being trans, or accuse you of being a pedophile because you do drag. They get up on stage at CPAC and say people like you should be eliminated from public life. Are you seriously going to try to tell me with a straight face that ostracization 1) isn’t a tactic conservatives ever use and 2) that it isn’t equally if not more vicious? This is disingenuous to the point of being actively mendacious.

This happened after 'progressives' put "those who can become white must summon the courage to unbecome white and then to eliminate whiteness, 'the system, the way of life, the philosophy [producing] murderers," in The Lancet, a major medical journal.

"Eradicate transgenderism from public life" is just the same thing as "eliminate whiteness." Conservatives wouldn't normally come up with something like that themselves. (They come up with things like QAnon, which is not the same thing.) They observed 'progressives' put baiting eliminationist language in prestigious publications, saw that these 'progressives' got away with it, and then decided to do it themselves.

Both of them are the same thing, and both of them have the same problem. Aside from the fact that they're obviously intended to be hostile and that's why they choose to use such words, if all other means to remove "transgenderism" and "whiteness" fail, then these things are located in the respective bodies of those involved, are they not?

But the spread of this stuff is new, it was largely confined to obscure departments back in 2008. They said, "it's just a few college kids, what are you getting so bent out of shape over?" But Microsoft is not "just a few college kids." Neither are healthcare systems, nor are 'race conscious' farm aid programs.

Pretending that 'progressives' haven't changed their behavior since 2008 is, one might say, "disingenuous to the point of being actively mendacious."

one of the great and dubious gifts social media has given us is a truly infinite well of awful takes and even worse behavior by all sectors of society at all times

so might i suggest that if the political Other seems to be an endless parade of condescension and hostility and ostracism, and the political ingroup by contrast seems a model of rich diversity of opinion, you are probably pretty deep in confirmation bias.

especially if you don’t think conservatives do boycotts, ostracism, purity politics, or don’t frequently react with unbridled hostility to anyone they see as the outgroup.