#drifting discourse

[qwainte]

People are so weird about Halsin and other characters, I hate fandom sometimes.

[lord-squiggletits]

In the last salty asks post I unintentionally went on a tangent in the notes about how JRO wrote religious characters which is like actually something I want to bring up on its own so like

Is it just me or does JRO have some real misses when it comes to writing religious characters? Not like every religious character is badly written or evil, but like... several of the ones that are fall into really bad or unflattering/shallow stereotypes? It's hard to put my finger exactly on why I feel that way bc he does write some actually good religious characters (aka Cyclonus).

For example, characters like the Functionist Council and Star Saber are fine to me because I'm like. Well Functionism being religious in origin makes sense, it's an interesting interplay of how religion influences the state/how the state leverages religion to bend the populace to its own whims. Religious bad guys =/= all religious people bad. Star Saber is just some random zealot that wasn't meant to be that deep at all, and eh the Inquisition-type religious zealot can be cool even if it's just the vibes of it.

But then there's stuff like... Tyrest being a normal, rational, not particularly religious guy until he gets shot with a bullet that gives him brain damage, causing him to start ranting about Cyberutopia and thinking God is personally talking to him in his brain...? Like, idk, was it really the best idea for an antagonist to go "he is evil because he got brain damaged against his will w/o even knowing what really happened to him and also because he's brain damaged he's now literally delusional and became a religious (and genocidal) maniac." It comes off as really bad taste/not thinking the implications through as far as how it reflects on religious people (bc the whole "religious people are literally delusional and stupid to think that their gods could possibly exist" thing is tired and offensive). Not to mention kind of ableist w/ the whole "oh he became evil bc he got shot in the brain and now there's literally something wrong with his mind."

(Doesn't help that the MTMTE logbooks revealed that the original idea for Tyrest was to have his killswitch be about trying to identify and execute all of the criminals/"guilty people" on Cybertron, basically an extension of his role as Chief Justice which makes so much more sense and is way more interesting and compelling???? Certainly better than (gets brain damaged) "Ah I'm now going to genocide all cold constructs because God told me to")

And then Drift with spectralism which...which... basically the extent of that whole religion is the name of a single festival (the Lost Light festival the eponymous ship was named after), and some stuff about face/body paint and colors having spiritual symbolism, then the Guiding Hand/Primus stuff that's also shared with Primalism. But then you have Drift who's the main representative of this religion basically being written as a phony who doesn't even believe in the shit coming out of his mouth. Or if his beliefs are sincere, the way he acts is basically just "oooooh, I sense unclean vibes and read into the energy of the universe" which is played for laughs or mocked by the other characters most of the time. And Drift's character is written so inconsistently (and the general religious worldbuilding so one-dimensional) that it's hard to tell if Drift is supposed to be read as some kooky fake hippie type or if he's genuinely a representation of Spectralism in general. Like, idk, the best JRO could come up for for building a religion was "they wear certain colors and patterns on them and vaguely talk about sensing energy from the universe?" It literally feels like baby's first fictional religion or like, religion as understood by a non-religious/atheist person who sees religion as nothing more than an aesthetic or some quirky rituals.

I'm not saying the story had to be about religion or have religion be brought up in every conversation, it's just...... the way he wrote/did worldbuilding for it comes off as as very "non-religious person who doesn't have any particular understanding of religion/why people are religious tries to write what they think religion is about" and most of the time it's kinda cringe.

[crownedwille]

I've come to the conclusion that loving young royals doesn't mean I can't be critical about it, maybe especially bc I love the show so much I have such strong feelings about it, good and bad and I can love parts of canon and agree with it and appreciate it but I don't have to love it all. I have accepted that it's okay if I don't accept the ending and I don't have to force myself to support it. It's okay to not agree with all of canon and it's okay to not side with all of the creators' intentions/views. Loving a show doesn't mean you have to take everything the writers say on face value and that's the only version that is allowed to exist. Canon isn't everything and fandom is about curating your own experience that makes you happy and not miserable. You don't have to dismiss canon in every aspect and ignore it entirely, that's certainly not what I want but there is a fine line between being canon respectful, allowing some parts to exist and sometimes, yes, you just have to say "fuck canon" and move on for your own sanity and wellbeing

[nostalgia-tblr]

Woooo, I just wrote 200 words of the Sifki Sequel Fic! \o/

[jodjuya]

i use it/its and it makes me much more euphoric than any other pronouns, it doesn't feel dehumanising to me at all. if you'd like to ask any questions to understand it/its better I'd be happy to answer them

Thank you for reaching out with this kind offer. I do want to understand it better, but I currently don't know what questions to ask. I'll think about it and get back to you. ❤️

I think the main thing I'm struggling to reconcile is that just because some people don't feel like it's a dehumanising pronoun, that doesn't mean it stops being one?

That is a good question, actually! How do you reconcile your euphoria with the historical/contemporary usage of "it" as an intentionally dehumanising pronoun, used to convey hatred and contempt? (Eg by white-supremacists & transphobes)

Like, a whole bunch of the feedback I've received for my bullshit has been along the lines of "your stance against it is the same as the stance transphobes take against 'they/them' pronouns! See how dumb you sound?"

When, like, the remedy for that is to accept the usage of a pronoun that those shitcunts very explicitly use as a hateful derogatory slur??

That seems like a pretty incoherent stance to take. "You're a bad person if you use the same type of argument that those assholes use, but you're also a bad person if you don't use the word that those assholes love using as part of their being-a-giant-asshole schtick!"

Like, ...what???

------

This is a pretty bad question, but I can't think of how to distil it down to a better one: how/why does it not feel dehumanising to you, to use an object's pronoun rather than a person's pronoun?

I don't know the linguists' lingo for talking about these concepts so I can only do it very badly, but, like, I have the felt-sense of an utterly irreconcilable split betwixt [things] and [people]. [things] are not, and cannot be, [people]; and vice versa.

The edge-case exceptions being death: when a person becomes a corpse, transforming from [person] to [thing]; and gestation/infancy: when an embryo gradually transitions from [thing] to [person] over the second to forth trimesters.

(And, I guess, robots, wherein we project personhood onto them once they reach some close-enough level of complexity that the felt-sense of our perception of them tips from [thing?] to [person?] ??)

But you are not a corpse, robot, or embryo; so why do you feel affinity for the pronoun used for things?

Also, what is your gender? Why does 'it' feel more appropriate for you than the traditionally indeterminate pronoun 'they'? (Or one of the many neo-pronoun options out there?)

[mossflower]

loki season two has me screaming crying throwing up trying not to get dragged back into the mcu trenches

[unnonexistence]

i love the pacific rim setting because it's ostensibly the real world, so you can make all the real world references you want, but also, obviously everything changed in august 2013 when the first kaiju hit. the timelines diverged. so AFTER 2013 you can just kind of do whatever

[teamfortresstwo]

I know it’s just a side effect of the show being so overwhelmingly sex negative but . Alastor just . Isn’t ? Repulsed maybe, but his outlook on sex as a whole is shown to be quite positive in my opinion . He never looks down at Angel for his job, and assuming Mimzy is a flapper like she’s dressed, he’s even shown to be friends with other sex workers . Furthermore, when solicited for sex or otherwise flirted with, he offers little more than a polite rejection at worst and actively encouraging it (in the comic, though that is no longer canon) at best .

He’s never looked down at someone for experiencing sexual urges . Yet so much content depicts him as doing that soley because of his asexuality . And the fact that this is out of character means that there is a reason for depicting him as such . And in my opinion, it is due to the puritanical belief that sex somehow makes you a worse or less valuable person manifesting itself in a big part of the fandom . Yeah 👍

[oozeandgoo-art]

warmup and cooldown drawings from yesterday

[charlemane]

if i'm being completely honest? i think it's kinda unlikely that force-femming Philip Marlowe would fix him. but at this point... it's worth a shot

[dwtdog]

I'm not watching the stream I feel like I missed some lore somewhere, what happened with boomer??

hello anons after doing a little research i have found that i have either a) been misinformed or b) this is more of an overall vibes thing. tbh the main reason i get weird vibes is bc of this video boomer posted BUT after watching it he doesn't really mention drm or dtm at all lol, its actually just a pretty general discussion of burn out and changing his content

outside of that i think i remember ppl saying he talked a lot about being bitter over the dsm.p ending and whatnot, but again i think it was probably just twitter stans overreacting as they tend to do lol. uhm and judging by the fact that sap still seems chill with him. i think the overall judgement by me and other was unjust idk they've probably just drifted apart a bit

sorry if i gave yall boomer rsd my bad 😭

[death-rebirth-senshi]

God Frozen came out in 2013 it's really 10 years old. Nothing has made me feel aged quite like this. First legitimate "No, retro disney movies are like the Little Mermaid or Aladdin...Frozen and Tangled are still kind of new right?"

[avephelis]

okay so. keeping this short because shit sucks and i hate when serious accusations are turned into discourse. but yeah not happy with dream's response or actions and hope everyone else is doing alright (especially victims).

also not gonna make any big impulse decision on my involvement in the mcyt community as a whole. need some time. just gonna touch and go for a bit i think.

and it's very valid to take a break or disengage. and if you were a fan that doesn't make you a bad person. i stand by that there are good things in this fandom, especially good people. i'm inevitably expecting people to use this as a "gotcha" (which is. extremely disrespectful), but regardless i hope everyone takes care <3.

[iamanartichoke]

So, is anyone on TikTok? I’ve gotten sucked back into it but I have no friends lmao. I am @artichokie883 over there - so, yeah. 

[willowscasual]

it feels really nice to be able to open twitter, scroll for five seconds, see the discourse is still rampant, close twitter, and go to literally any other app instead

[marshmellowtea]

one last thought before i log off possibly forever given how melodramatic i feel but like. it is kind of frustrating to see people constantly write off the pro/anti ship thing as frivolous fandom discourse like yeah i wish it was frivolous fandom discourse but when one side is proudly sending suicide and death threats and advocating for censorship in a time where queer people have to fight for the right to talk about our goddamn identities then like,, idk! maybe it’s worth a little more concern!