#don't let them erase it

[that-cunning-witch]

I think something people need to understand is when we talk about an ancient culture or deity with a queer context, we are often not holding those topics and beings to the same standards we hold today.

Whenever someone comments on the queer history of Ancient Greece (for example), there's always at least one person who says, "well the Ancient Greeks weren't the best people" often referring to pedophilia or sexism, and therefore we shouldn't be talking about these queer moments. Because apparently, if we discuss them in any positive light, we are also accepting of the rampant pedophilia and sexism of the culture at that time.

Do you see what this creates?

If we can't talk about these queer moments in ancient history in a positive light, we must only be able to either talk about them in a negative light or just not talk about them at all. In other words, either paint queer history as a bad thing or just not mention it at all, as though it never existed.

Do you see the problem here?

This isn't to say that we shouldn't talk about the inherent problematic nature of queer culture back then. Yes, Ancient Greece had homosexual relationships, but they were typically between two men in an obvious power dynamic, aka an older man and a younger boy. A homosexual relationship between two men of similar age wasn't as common as we would like to think.

But to say we should discard or discredit all of ancient queer history because of these issues is just blasphemous. It is actually powerful to discuss these topics in a positive light while acknowledging the problems in modern time.

In our time, we have the ability to hold these discussions. These opinions. To be able to say "I'm happy there was trans representation in the Dionysian cults" and "I don't like how during Bacchic frenzies rape was the norm" in the same breath is powerful.

We need to show the world that we have existed since the beginning of time. We need to give a middle finger to every fucking person who tries to take our history and cleanse it for the palettes of the average cishet population.

But to try and sterilize the reality of queer history or, worse, ignore it all together in fear of being lumped in with the history that clearly is not okay, is what the other side wants. They want you to be in fear of queer history. They want you to stop talking about it.

Don't let them erase queer history.

[casscainmainly]

It's interesting how Batfanon tends to weaponise anger against characters of colour. Damian is either always unjustifiably angry ('feral', 'demon', etc.), or his anger is consistently trivialised as childish/cute. Duke and Cass are on the other end of the spectrum, where they're not even allowed to be angry. They are 'perfect good children', who are perpetually soft and kind. In canon, all three have been justifiably and unjustifiably angry; they've been irrational, they've been righteously mad; and (aside from racist Damian writing) they are angry without being villainised. If our conception of Damian, Cass, or Duke strips them of their right to be angry, then we need to reconsider the way we view characters of colour. Anger is a human emotion - by removing it, or by demonising characters for feeling it, we are dehumanising them.

[beebfreeb]

Hiya! I'd like to ask how do you do your ms paint art? Do you first make the outlines and then colours, or perhaps vice versa? I really adore your ms paint art and would love to know the process (for practice purposes:))

Depends! My two strategies, featuring Cactus Gunman of Gregory Horror Show fame:

I often just color right on top of my sketches when I'm being silly + designing characters + just trying to figure out what something looks like (and tend to use this to fiddle with details and colors) It's usually quicker for me to end up with something that I'm happy with.

Most of the time when I bother to do separate, cleaner line art, it's because I'm making a graphic for my website. LOL. I think it feels a little more cartoonish-silly, which is usually what I'm going for when I decide to do this. It's also a bit harder to make large changes to whatever I'm drawing, so I'm usually working off of a messier thing I've already made.

(Technically, I no longer use MS Paint and instead use Aseprite due to becoming a Linux user, but nothing has really changed about the way I draw + all of this can be done in MS Paint just fine.)

[maxphilippa]

i think that the major misinterpretation that people have with taco is that she didn't get attached to mic because of her sad face in the end wanted to show regret because "she hurted her friend". like. no, she wasn't sad because she regretted what she did. she was sad because she's alone again, but she knows very well at the end that she had it coming. the reason as to why taco was so desperate of wanting mic to tell her that she did gain something is because. she SAW pickle in mic, but of course their situation is very different. "Oh but Taco couldn't have done what she did to Mic to Pickle, Mic was fully aware" but she did do that. Mic herself says it. That is pretty much what II is telling you. Taco isn't a good friend, and is not exactly a good person either. Mic was aware that Taco was/is a bad person, but Mic's nature makes her believe in whoever acknowledges her. Taco made Mic feel like she needed her, just the way she made Pickle feel back in s1.

she didn't really change thanks to mic. her faces of "regret" aren't her actually lamenting all of the stuff she did to microphone, but rather just her realizing that she proved what everyone said about her as a result. i will give it to that she might've tried to change, but not because of mic. she wanted to win the prize so she could prove others wrong on her being a loser and a coward, by being a loser and a coward. if anything, mic made her realize that she hasn't changed. she pretty much just ruined everything for everyone who saw her as a friend, and for herself.

taco's whole arc is constantly just downgraded to questionable takes and listen. i do agree that she is heavily flawed as a character. she is morally gray, but ii doesn't portray her as a good person with good intentions, nor she should be really be treated as if she was. neither she had those good intentions with mic at all, i mean, their "friendship" pretty much started because of taco wanting the prize money, taking a part of microphone's prize if she made mic won, you know, an offer. she would get the prize and mic would get recognition. but everyone seems to forget that probably, the main reason as to why she's doing all of this, is because she does regret how she acted on s1. she doesn't exactly regret doing all of that to microphone, and even if she does, it's for the wrong reasons. (that's because she did the exact same thing to you know, pickle, her once best friend, the only person she truly ever cared about)

people do tend to forget that taco keeps sending letters to pickle, and that's often just used for pickle angst and making it his only character trait, but. it's not that. it's the fact that taco keeps on writing those letters, despite fully knowing that she did hurt pickle because of her actions. taco's biggest flaw is that she can't accept that she has ruined everything and wants so desperately to be back on pickle's life because she ended up caring about him deeply as a person. as a friend. but she was never there at all, either.

taco can't seem to understand that she has hurted people badly. sure, she seemed like a "friend" to microphone, and you can argue whatever you want but a fact is that taco IS smart, and she knew that the only way to possibly keep mic by her side is pretending to want to be better, you know, the same way she pretended to be just a odd fella so pickle and her could remain together and have an advance at the game. she played with both of them. because both pickle and mic believed in her but were just used by her for the game.

however, taco does seem to regret the way everything went during-post s1. you can see how she yearns for another chance and is saddened about not getting it, but that's not only for comedic purposes, but that's because the writing is telling you that she won't get a second chance. at least not here.

what i want people to understand is that, yes, taco is a complex character, however trying to sugarcoat what she did is pretty much missing the point of her writing as a whole. she isn't a good person neither was she a good friend. she hasn't grown because she was never able to let go of something that she thinks that she can fix with some words and a prize. she thinks that she can still fix her friendship with pickle, she thinks that she can clear her name (even if she was the one who tainted it), but she only ended up proving knife right. she proved everyone right. she hasn't changed. a morally gray character is that. they're not exactly fully bad or fully good, but it's taco's actions that speak a lot. words are cheap, and taco's title is "The Liar", and that says a lot, because she kept on lying to microphone and to pickle on both of their games. she won't heal unless she lets go.

and i want to be clear here: i do think that taco can go through redemption. i do think that taco can become a better person, but not in the way people portray her to do so. because it just pretty much goes against what her arc has settled in for us, and the other arcs that were involved in hers as well.

taco's arc is meant to be somewhat a parallel with nickel's in a way. hell, even with knife's arc if anything. she treats knife as a simple bully, but when she saw that he became smarter and way more emotionally aware than what she had expected, she felt attacked by that, because he was stable. he became a better person and he was rubbing that on her, and it made her feelings of anger way worse regarding him, but it is true. knife is pretty much everything that taco wants to be, but here's the thing that made them so different:

knife stayed. taco didn't stay.

knife is accepted by everyone in the hotel because meanwhile he hasn't explicitly said that he had a change of heart, he has shown it through actions and a big difference too is that he was there for pickle, even if they weren't close in s1, and taco is on the woods because deep down she is aware that she can't go back. not if she doesn't have something to offer as an direct apology, but here's the problem. whether or not she got the prize, she still wouldn't get forgiven by anyone due to what she said that day.

again. her problem is not being able to let go and to accept when she has messed up badly. she has been lying to everyone but she has also been lying to herself as a whole. she can't keep on doing this because it's just hurting everyone and herself. keeping grudges and holding onto past friendships that were doomed to fall is just hurting her. she is not on the state to keep on trying, she wasn't at all ever.

taco's arc most likely will have closure on a way that fits her character, and i feel like that would be with her letting go of inanimate insanity as a whole and of what she can't fix anymore. her trying to find herself after years of lying to everyone and to herself. she's not a good person. but she can become one. only if she knows what she did was wrong and that her second chance isn't there, and never will be, and if she recognizes that meanwhile she did that damage, she can still become a better person. just not there.

pickle and mic don't owe her anything, especially pickle. taco does owe them an apology, but they won't accept that. the least she could do is to accept their wishes, understand that she needs to leave them and grow to be a better person. maybe, if she does that, she would actually heal.

she doesn't need anyone to fix her. she needs to fix herself.

[idk-bruh-20]

Irondad fic ideas #146

Karen is missing someone.

She's an AI, so she's not exactly supposed to have "feelings" the way a human would, but... what other way is there to explain it? Someone is supposed to be in her life, and they are not. She wants them back.

The problem is, she can't find any record of why she feels this way. There are no important people in her database who are currently missing, no gaps in her code that she can find. The only curiosity is the fact that she seems to no longer be helping Spider-Man.

That used to be her prime objective. Her entire reason for being. Maybe he's the one she's missing? She can't find any data to indicate that they were close, but perhaps that is a curiosity too. Surely, if Spider-Man wore a mask with her programming for all that time, she would know who he was, would have some record of their conversations.

With FRIDAY's (and Tony's! let my guy live!) help, Karen is untethered from the Spider-Man suit. She goes searching through every piece of tech she has access to for her missing friend.

When she finds him, she'll figure out what's wrong. And she'll help him fix it. It's what she was designed to do.

[dootznbootz]

I think some folks MAY have gotten the wrong idea about how I feel about Circe with some of my posts. So, to clear the air...

Homies, I love that fucked up sorceress.

I love how we're never given a reason why she turns people into animals. That's so funny and so awful. And another potion-making magic gal?!?! I love that she's just basically vibing on an island doing whatever she wants. I even love the fact that she scares Odysseus shitless! She's morally gray and that's why she's FUN.

I just sincerely hate when people try to girlboss her or have her be a victim of SA when she never was Looking at you, Miller. Especially when she was actually the one who coerced Odysseus in exchange for his men being transformed back into humans. And even then, while he was clearly afraid of her, (it's in the language of the Odyssey) she likely meant him no harm after a certain point. He just didn't know that.

Why does she need a reason to do awful things? Why can't she just be a goddess who does whatever she wants? That's the reason why I love her!!! She's fucked up!!! :D

I hate what the Telegony did to her as well! >:( You're telling me, this sorceress goddess, who makes potions (!!!) wouldn't have magic contraceptives??? Would WANT CHILDREN?!?! WITH THE PATHETIC WIFEMAN?! No. Fuck no. Eugammon of Cyrene, I have beef with you 🤬

Anyways!!! Understand all the "#anti circe" I have is simply Anti "Girlboss Circe" or the book. I genuinely think she's neat af as her morally gray, fucked up sorceress self and just get frustrated with...everything :'D

[onecupofsugar]

Cuphead Dish

[sukibenders]

"Penelope has insecurities!" As an excuse for her harming others because of those said insecurities falls very flat when it puts the character's, who live during a time of few options especially if you were a women, at risk. And even with her insecurities, her lashing out and hurting people should be held in the same regard as how some view Cressida, who didn't get the luxury of a view into her home life until s3, unlike Penelope, and while it still has people calling out this behavior, although rightfully so, it often still includes denying that Penelope needs to take accountability as well.

[aleksanderscult]

Confirmation that Leigh Bardugo has actually written chapters of S&B and S&S from the Darkling's POV

(and they're unreleased 🥲🔫)

And here a user asked her "How did the Darkling reacted when he realized that Alina left after the Winter fete?":

So his POVs show us how he reacted then. What he felt and (I bet) if he went to her room that night or not.

And this is confirmation that his POVs also hold important information about his feelings for Alina:

(ignore the user's comments about the Darkling and the "perfect" Mal)

Now. She has either forgotten about them (doubt it) or she knows that if the readers sees them they'll think "Wait. His POVs make sense. He's not crazy after all" (that's more likely).

Now we just need someone to hack her computer and get those scenes.🙂

[inconclusionray]

If I see one more "poor Izzy was in an abusive relationship for twenty years :'(" take I'm going to set this pirate ship on fire.

[kyliafanfiction]

I sometimes feel like characters who do truly monstrous things while also having been victims of some pretty insane shit themselves are sort of an exercise in empathy. Or at least, should be seen as such.

Like, in real life, if a person who has been horribly broken by their experiences and failed by society than proceeds to rape someone - it's hard to feel the justifiable sympathy/empathy for that person (without excusing their rape, never do that) because well, you can look at this actual human person they hurt, or worse, and it feels gross and disrespectful to the rape victim.

And this is understandable. (And applies to more than just rapists/rape victims of course, that's just the most visceral one and thus picked for that reason)

But a fictional rape victim is... fictional. You can't 'disrespect' their trauma, and while obviously rape/whatever else is real, and people may related to the rape victim and thus see your comments about the rapist also being a victim as somehow being about their experience...

Well, it's not.

Because the rapist here, didn't actually hurt a real person. Fictional characters are objects. They're objects that often grab us by the throat and refuse to leave our fucking heads, yes, but they're objects. They are tools used by writers to tell a story, and readers to tell a story.

And one of the things fictional characters are good for is allowing us to consider experiences we never had, and imagine ourselves in other circumstances and lives. (Also just fun and fascinating and interesting to watch their stories).

It's very easy to feel for the rape victim in fiction, and rightly so. That's Level 1 Empathy there. Granted, some people IRL fail that, but that's not really what we're talking about here.

Advanced Empathy, hard Empathy is feeling for the rapist. Not for the rape, of course, even if they feel guilt about it, but if someone really was failed on multiple levels and was broken and damaged and went through the sort of psychological wringer that would leave most of us here on tumblr catatonic - they do deserve the same Empathy any human (any person) who went through all that.

Even after they also do the bad thing, critically they still deserve Empathy. And that is fucking hard. I very often have a hard time feeling bad for truly awful people who also deserve empathy and sympathy, real and even fictional (despite all this, yeah, I'm not perfect on this) for what they (separately) went through.

It also becomes even harder when what they went through is utterly bound up with what they did. How what they went through and experiences is in part responsible for what they did - because they still made a choice. The circumstances may have left them not in their right mind, may have left them feeling without choice, may have driven them to things they normally might not think of or do, but they still chose to do that bad thing. And that's not okay. They still hurt someone.

And yet - one cannot remove the action from the circumstances. So you can still feel empathy, and elucidate all the factors and circumstances as to what led up to their choices and why, and it doesn't change that they did the horrible thing. The rape, or the murders, or whatever.

But circling back - with a fictional character... they didn't hurt a real person. There's no one who is real that suffered. The things the character did IRL are bad because they hurt real people.

So you're not being disrespectful to the victim by feeling that empathy, or sympathy. By exploring the things that they were a victim for. Even by wanting to focus on those things - fictional characters should be compelling in all their aspects, if they're written well.

And yet, of course, if you do that empathy and do talk about what the bad person went through and all that context, people come at you. They call you evil, just as bad as the (again, fictional) character, or they say that you're treading dangerously close to the arguments people use to defend the real people who do these things in real life. Or you're disrespecting all the victims of these crimes IRL. Especially of course, if the person coming at you has a reason this comes close to home.

But again - fictional.

In an ideal world, we'd all feel sympathy and empathy when it's called for, regardless of what the person did. Even the worst most monstrous people deserve human treatment in prison. And if you don't have empathy, that's hard. Even if you do have empathy, that's hard.

So if you look at a fictional character (who doesn't hurt a real person by virtue of being fictional) that does horrible, vile things, but went through so much, and you still can't empathize or sympathize with them... I mean, it doesn't make you a bad person, not even close, this is still fiction, and there's people I should empathize with in fiction that I don't, but...

It's still a failure of your ability to be empathetic. And we're all humans. We're all failing at that, among other things, all the time. But... it's good to be aware of that. at least?

At the very least, bear that in mind when other people are talking about that context, and that victimization. And please, for the love of god, don't fucking pretend that the victimization didn't happen, that this person who did do terrible things (in fiction) suddenly didn't also (in fiction) experience awful shit, as if doing a bad thing erases all the bad things done to you.

Again - it doesn't necessarily make you a bad person, but like... the horrible state of prisons in our society is a real, actual problem. The way we as a society dehumanize people who do bad things is a real actual problem for a lot of reasons (not least because it creates an incentive for authority that wants to dehumanize a person or a group to expand the definition of 'did bad things' to make their dehumanization now acceptable, among other things).

So yeah. Fictional character who suffers but than also makes others suffer - that's a useful exercise in Empathy. And doing that doesn't make you or anyone else a bad person, or actually defending the sorts of crimes, IRL or Fictional, that this character did. Contextualizing is not whitewashing, empathy is not erasing, and humanizing is not disrespecting the victim(s).

So yeah, they fictional character did bad things. But there's more to them than that. And you can say but and talk about what comes after but without disrespecting the fictional victim. Because the fictional victim... is just as fictional. Just as not real.

Is it possible for this to end up being taken too far? Yes. But that's a reason to be mindful of yourself when it comes to real people, not to never do it. And when it comes to fictional people - again, fictional. Nobody was actually, really hurt.

(I really do want to make clear, before people read the tags, that this applies to all crimes these sorts of characters do, rape was just picked as the one to use as the example.)

[dementedspeedster]

//I think the insistence to not read any of Thad's appearances past the Impu/se comics or that his appearances post Impu/se are out of character for him has poisoned the well regarding fandom's understanding of his character. Popular fandom interpretations also don't help.

I think with regard to Thad there is an inundation in fandom of the character people want Thad to be and not the character that Thad actually is. And I'm personally frustrated with it.

[birdsareblooming]

I know it will be hard to forget, but whichever outcome I need everyone to remember, to write down, to talk about what is currently happening. when American schools talk about Martin Luther King Jr. or slaves or women, who was oppressing them and trying to stop their rights, who was hosing them, who was shooting them, who was suppressing their voice is a mysterious "they" and never expanded upon.

Women won the right to vote, black people won the right to humanity, but not easily, the American government and police force did everything to stop them.

They don't teach that. they still don't teach the truths of American settlers. They still don't teach the truth of puritans and why they even came to America.

In however many years, they'll teach of this conflict. A mysterious "they" will have suppressed the riots, arrested brown people, attacked protesting Jews, and provided aid to Israel. as always, America will do it's best to rewrite history to where it was neutral at best. To where the police force wasn't involved, to where they weren't secretly giving Israel billions of dollars or weapons for ethnic cleansing and oil.

Don't let them.

Write. Speak. Anything. Even if it's telling your children or anyone close enough first hand.

Tell them who threatened to arrest you, what news outlets wouldn't report, who's countries' soldiers were killing Palestinians, who's president still calls the state of Israel a "dear friend"

Because if we let them or not, in 10 years schools will erase history.

Don't let them.

[corvid-language-library]

I soooo don't wanna go to work this week, the kids at this school are a fucking nightmare. I was talking to one of the Japanese staff last week and she was saying she covered classes there and she was genuinely shocked at how badly behaved they are.

[maxphilippa]

Following the ii dark fics thing.

On some- if not most of the dark fics, disorders also tends to be used as a main thing to explain why the character is doing what they're doing. Which is, of course, not really great. Most au's that do this are about the Bright Lights as well.

Listen.

I can totally GET it. Mental health is a very important thing and having it ruined by people, or by other factors, can and WILL do some real damage to you. Yes. I can totally see a character doing questionable things because of their mental health being so so bad that it leads them to think that maybe, just maybe, these thoughts and actions aren't as bad, or that given the situation they're in, they're somewhat justified/it isn't inherently terrible of them, because of the state they're in doesn't let them think clearly, and they hold onto something because it's the last thing that makes them feel real.

One thing is doing that.

The other thing is using mental illnesses or their symptoms (per example: BPD, DID, Schizophrenia, and others) as the main reason as to why a character has done a killing spree or commited terrible actions. Meanwhile yes, having said disorders and going through heavy amounts of stress, and having no support can really make things difficult, mental illness won't make you a criminal or an awful person, a disorder isn't something you can just use for "oh well they have this so they commited murder because of this", people that have those already go through enough with others not even accepting that their condition is real or that it doesn't make them a bad person, for other people to use those disorders as a "Hey So This Is Why This Character Is Bad Now" for a story.

just sayin'

[hammill-goes-fogwalking]

THIS IS NOT PRETTY.

this is not natural.

the human body is not build like this naturally.

this should not be the new average women body standard

don't punish yourself or get complexes because you don't look like a porn star

a healthy, natural body is much prettier