#especially ones that only really occur in online discourse

[borf-borfs]

i realised ppl have me blocked probably bc of when i used to get into arguments on like EVERY big post and i just wanna say i literally don’t give a fuck anymore … i was so online tho tbf so were the ppl i was arguing with. i hope they’ve moved on from their internet argument days too and we all have better things to do now peace and love …

[fordtato]

Gffan has done the following:

-Letting people comment transphobic stuff on his Server

-associating with a reddit mod whos known to be transphobic

-openly showing weird distaste for the Dipper being Trans headcanon (didn't he also say: "I hate the Dipper Trans Theory" to us once?)

He also believes there’s only 2 genders

Hello. So. I do not normally respond to anonymous discourse like this in my inbox as a rule (especially given this site's proclivity for seeing anon callouts weaponized against trans people and women and people of color), but I felt it was important to do this in this case, since I am publicly working on a project with ThatGFFan.

I have known GFFan for over a year now now (in an exclusively online capacity), and in that time, he has not only never misgendered me (a nonbinary trans person, someone outside the "2 genders" framework) but has also actively corrected people who have misgendered me. I have witnessed him speak against transphobia in the fandom and against transphobic content creators. The idea that he "believes there are only 2 genders" is inaccurate by every account I have of him.

As for other accusations in this ask, such as him "associating with a reddit mod who is known to be transphobic" I don't have any evidence for this presented to me, and even if I did, association in a public online space is not the same thing as sharing transphobic sentiment. There is room in any online space for a conversation about the optics of this kind of engagement, but if I had to apologize for every person I've ever engaged with civilly who I later learned was problematic in some way, I'd be here all day, and that would be an unproductive use of my time, and would not undo any harm done by that person.

Lastly, I hope ThatGFFan will not mind me saying this, but he is a young person (younger than you think, I assure you). If he has engaged with unsavory people in the past, or has indicated any kind of transphobic sentiment (neither of which I have any evidence of) it is my belief that we need to allow people to grow, especially when I have actively witnessed that growth firsthand. And in that case, I do think (and maybe I'm putting my faith in the wrong person here, so I hope this doesn't bite me one day), that he has made an active effort to learn how to do better, even if he makes mistakes in that process.

What you have done, anon, is entered my inbox with accusations against a person of color, half of which have no evidence behind them, and the other half that I personally know to be demonstrably false. Nobody who is a victim of this transphobia has come forward, at least that I saw, and if they did, that would be up to ThatGFFan to respond to - not me, a trans person unrelated and far-removed from whatever incident you are talking about (an incident that likely occurred when ThatGFFan was a minor, in any case).

I don't have a big platform. I am a small creator (much smaller than ThatGFFan), and a trans Palestinian person. Why am I being called upon to answer for a cis person's (alleged) missteps as they grow into an adult? Why am I being called upon to publicly shame and renounce a person who has shown me kindness and allyship? Is it so I can prove my dedication to the fight against transphobia? My entire blog, my entire body of work, my entire existence, has been an active fight against transphobia.

I mean, by God, all I can do is hope I'm doing the right thing here, but I vouch for him. Or I at least vouch that he is trying.

(p.s. I hope this goes without saying, but someone disliking a specific queer headcannon does not indicate one's political beliefs, and this is not going to be an accusation that I really engage with, because it sets a bad precedent. This is not a moral wrongdoing. This is an opinion you are suspicious of.)

[urlocallesbiab]

happy pride month, folks! here's some headcanons for the ways the agency trio (+ amanda) relate to the queer community

* farah — did turn to trans-run websites for functional advice, especially on medication (she always double-checks any information she receives, doctors included), and occasionally for surface-level validation (it calms her a bit), but in general never talked to anyone and didn’t even spend too much time reading personal stories. she's been focused on being "normal", on passing well and being stealth, and on achieving her career goals. doesn't like pride parades but not for internalized queerphobia reasons, it's just that they are too loud, too crowded, and make her anxious. it has never ever occurred to her that she can have two lgbt identities and be a lesbian on top of being trans. now she is like a stumbling mentally ill baby deer being led along by all her friends and loved ones.

* todd - knows who he is, experiences neither shame nor pride on the matter, doesn't give much of a fuck. he experimented and screwed around in college, made friends with other lgbt students and musicians, but ultimately was focused more on his music and band than on the queer community (and its issues and plights), even tho these two overlap somewhat (punks are gay, obv). since the amanda fuckening and the loss of his sense of self, he had cut himself off from any possible communities irl and online, including the queer one. currently is slowly making peace with being in love with his best friend. not the kind of guy to know identities outside of "lgbt + nb + ace" and be on top of discourse, is the kind of guy to take enough water and some cereal bars to pride.

* dirk — has a very uneven, sporadic knowledge of all things queer caused by spontaneous falling down wikia rabbitholes. knows what "abrosexual" and "genderflux" means, doesn't know that bears aren't only animals. has a vague idea of who he is (possibly kind of a guy but also not really, pretty sure he likes other guys, not very keen on sex), but changes hyperspecific labels every month because he can't settle.

* amanda — was on tumblr as a teen and young adult, has seen it All, including some pretty unhinged discourse. knows her way around. over the years has progressed to a "you can do whatever you want forever, idgf" worldview, is a chaos queer. genuinely lives by "acab" and "be gay do crimes", believes in abolition of just about everything.

[aronarchy]

[CW: transphobia]

Transmisogyny is misogyny, transphobia is patriarchy.

The only main difference is that trans people are more oppressed than cis women so while cis women have gotten relative progress from feminism trans people are often left behind by cis feminists, and “progressive” transphobes will even naturalize patriarchal gender roles and definitions and manufactured constrictions, specifically bringing them out or bringing them back when it comes to defending transphobia.

This dynamic is especially exacerbated by racism, colonialism, Orientalism; the cultural imperialist Western gaze targets racialized trans people and even cis women and queers to naturalize or essentialize the patriarchal oppression they experience, treating it as an arbitrary cultural quirk occurring because of happenstance which must and/or can only be preserved, rather than a historically contingent form of oppression with specific material causes and consequences which can and should be overthrown. The relativist authoritarian often chastises consistent anti-authoritarians for supposedly being racist, white-privileged, disseminating “Western” viewpoints, etc. (erasing the non-white/Western intersectionally marginalized people who are the most harmed by such discourse, of course), but don’t be fooled: they’re the ones leveraging structures and ideologies originating in Western imperialism (the notion that The East and The West are ontologically different in grand historical ways, that nothing “Western” can be related to anything “Eastern” and vice versa, that The East is static and unchanging and underdeveloped, that The East’s cultures, values, practices, etc. are mysterious, exotic, inscrutable by The West, and so on), and when we expose this we peel away their façade (an important step that they always struggle to prevent by any means possible). (I don’t just say this in a vague abstract online discourse way; these dynamics also pop up in day-to-day personal political contexts, often the mechanism of violence/abuse; they are behind a great deal of material oppression in the real world today and have left a great deal of trauma upon marginalized people.)

It doesn’t occur to relativist transphobes that if someone doesn’t consider themself a woman / man because they feel they aren’t allowed to identify as or be one because they don’t fit the cissexist standard of having to be able to give birth (and fulfill the hegemonically defined (subordinate) wife role) / impregnate (and fulfill the hegemonically defined husband (patriarch) role), then that might possibly be a result of internalized patriarchy/misogyny/(cis)sexism and not an ideal state, and their mental health and self-image might improve and they might be living lives more closely in alignment with their internal selves if some friend went up and told them it could be an option. This is liberal choice “feminism” but specifically a version targeting trans people and transphobic oppression under patriarchy.

If a (white) infertile cis woman / cis man vented about feeling like they’re a failed Other rather than a real woman or real man because they can’t give birth / impregnate and the society around them says Real Women / Men are people who can give birth / impregnate (respectively), would people like this say as readily that it’s true they really are an ungendered unwomanly / unmanly Other, despite their own desire to be a woman / man and feelings which align with that? Or likewise for other forms of gendered nonconformity among cis people. (Much less likely, I think.)

Would they say, “cis women without children” is a whole separate gender from “cis women with children,” a third gender after “cis women with children” and “cis men with children”? Then “cis men without children” as a fourth gender. What about married with children versus married without? Then split the above into eight. Some trans people do get married, either while closeted, as an attempt at conversion or punishment by family or society, while passing for their correct gender (if they have a gender from the binary), or with updated laws which have assimilated trans people more. Trans people can have children too, even if not in the same patriarchal way which secures intergenerational patrilineal inheritance. More gender-categories for them then? (It’s obvious where this leads: there are in fact as many ways to be women and men as there are women and men, and different gender roles and social gender locations are assigned or designated in a gradient or internally distinguished way for all gender differences or social role differences, but there are some general categories which could be broadly termed different “genders” which group together, and thus it would be irrational/illogical and arbitrary to exclude trans women from womanhood or trans men from manhood under such a linguistic system.)

The transphobic takes above prioritize what “society” says, what other (cis) people surrounding someone says about what gender is, what their gender must be, as if what they say matters so much in defining us (or even at all), and then also equates the viewpoint of oppressive surroundings with the viewpoint of the oppressed individual (as if the oppressed will always just bow down and accept their oppression). That is not how we define gender or determine what anyone’s gender is, because that literally goes against the whole point of transness in the first place, which is that we define our own identities, we say what our genders are, we don’t limit ourselves by a cissexist society which constrains people by setting rigid inaccurate definitions; the subversiveness, the contradiction with surrounding norms, is literally the point; it wouldn’t be transness if there were no preexisting cisness (top-down/nonconsensual gender assignments) to struggle against in the first place.

It’s especially nasty to imply that Western trans people identify as “really” the gender they feel they are because the West’s social definitions of gender uniquely recognize that women don’t have to be wives, childbearers, and mothers (for patriarchs) and men don’t have to be husbands (patriarchs) and property-owning child-investing patrilineage-obsessed reproductive futurists. That erases the fact that there’s rampant institutionalized socially prevalent patriarchy in the West too; many people do believe that still; the point is, no society, no culture is a monolith. But it’s very obvious why sweeping portrayals of white, Western PoVs highlight the “progressive” parts while sweeping portrayals of non-white/non-Western PoVs highlight the “regressive” parts (racism, Enlightenment teleology). (And yes, people oppressed by racism can also be racist themselves.)

That also implies that trans people and our feelings and desires are dependent on cis people and their choices. That none of us will think against the grain until cis people create the conditions which allow for it. This prioritizes cis feminism and cis women’s rights over that of trans people, telling us they’ll always come first, we’ll always need them (though they won’t ever need us), if they’re not class-conscious yet then there’s no scenario where we might be more class-conscious already, which erases how we’re actually pressured to know much more about feminism than them, to understand their issues and ours and to be able to argue perfectly for both our rights and theirs in order to be relatively tolerated. These notions are only legible because of cissexism.

Trans people whose gender includes one (or both) genders from the binary are only treated as not being “allowed” to be “properly” considered as people of that gender because of cissexism. This denial is a form of oppression and social subordination, not something neutral or good or just naturally occurring. It’s cruel and it’s wrong. Notice how such discussions about “difference” never say that, e.g., “cis men are Different(tm) from trans men because they occupy different social niches, and trans men are more manly than cis men, because cis men don't fit into our/the Paradigmatic Image of What A Man Is(tm) and we only begrudgingly acknowledge cis men as probably ‘men’ in some way because of their self-identification but that won’t alter how we fundamentally categorize ‘men’ and we couldn’t possibly put forth a cis man as Paradigmatic, Archetypal, or Representative because smh he’s cis not trans, we couldn’t do that, that doesn’t intuitively make sense, a Man(tm) is a trans man unless otherwise specified?” (or likewise for women). Which makes it clear that this is about a power imbalance, a hierarchy placing cis people above trans people of the same gender and prioritizing cis people, which pushes out trans people from equal recognition and epistemic authority. (And no, the “unless otherwise specified” is not good enough, it’s still implicit misgendering; it’s just a half-assed attempt to cover the problems with your ideology; we want more.)

There is a (very obvious) reason why, despite having very different contexts at times, all patriarchies share certain common characteristics (patrilineage; intergenerational private property/power transfer of some sort; socially-mandated, enforced, or disproportionately incentivized binary heterosexual marriage/the couple-form; child-ownership by the patriarch; rigid definitions of “woman” as childbearer and mother and “man” as the one who possesses/owns the children (and “girls” and “boys,” respectively, as future “women” and “men,” requiring coercive socialization/indoctrination); condemnation of autonomous deviation from the prescriptive binary definitions of gender (in desire, in self-regard, in private or public identification/claiming, in differences or alterations in aesthetics/appearance/biological sex characteristics or role performance); etc.). Of course it’s not just arbitrarily landing on that every single time. These are social structures which arose from a historical process during which children, women, and queers were domesticated or forcibly excluded (as colonialism is imposed through an initial conquest and then ongoing counterinsurgency), relatively stabilizing after the patriarchs won the battle.

There is no reason why “man” or “woman” (or male, female, wife, husband, mother, father, boy, girl, masculine, feminine, gender, sex, “two genders,” “third gender”) would be terms any more transhistorically relevant, self-evident, coherent, or applicable than “transgender,” “nonbinary,” “trans woman/man/girl/boy/female/male,” etc. (And for that matter, “transmasc(uline)” (and “transfem(inine)”) shouldn’t be treated as “safer” terms to slide in third-gendering of binary trans people to avoid using the words “trans man” or “trans woman”; there’s no reason why they would automatically be more accurate either.) The people who would be called “trans” here today have existed and will exist in every society, and there will always be trans people under any patriarchy, and some language that would apply (whether a word or set of words or phrase or set of phrases or way of describing) to denote people rejecting or not aligning with their birth-assigned gender, so long as gender is assigned at birth. There will always be resistance, at least somewhere, sometime, when there is oppression. You will never have 100% internalized acceptance of cissexism. It’s time that relativists recognized this.

[rainbowsky]

This will be my first weibo night as a turtle, and I'm just curious why there's so much distaste for the event and the site in general? I know there was the infamous one in 2020 and that it doesn't seem like ggdd will attend (or in some cases it seems like turtles don't want them to attend??? Not sure about that) but I'm curious as to why so much hostility exists for it?

Hi Anon,

Fake, fan fiction, CPN.

It's true that some fans hate Weibo and talk scathingly about it, just as people often talk scathingly about Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Think about all the reasons those sites are so hated, and you'll start to get an idea of why Weibo is hated. Then imagine if Facebook, Twitter or YouTube had a yearly awards gala where they flexed their influence and 'awarded' all the people that suffered from policies on their platforms, and think of all the reasons why people would scoff at it, and you'll get part of the way toward understanding why Weibo Night is often scoffed at.

These sites are extremely predatory. They monopolize all core human social interaction for profit. They capture all of our closest and most important personal and business relationships and then sell them back to us as a product. They gather all of our personal data and use it to further monitor and manipulate us, and they sell the data - and the information gleaned from its analysis - for further profit (otherwise known as 'surveillance capitalism').

All social media platforms profit from engagement (clicks, likes, comments, etc.). Studies have shown that by far the most intense, dedicated, enduring engagement occurs around negative topics. This is a huge part of why social media platforms are so 'conveniently' shitty at shutting down bad behavior and hateful discourse. It makes them a ton of money.

Weibo was one of the core reasons why 2/27 became such a big thing, and why GG was attacked mercilessly for months on end (and still is to this day). It's a big part of why both GG and DD suffer so much from online hate, slanderous rumors and anti behavior. Weibo enables this behavior just as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube do on their platforms.

Weibo is also closely monitored and regulated by the government, so censorship and public opinion manipulation have also been significant on the platform.

I think a lot of turtles hate Weibo Night, too, because of the whole 'divorce night' thing. It left a lot of turtles feeling bitter about Weibo and about Weibo night.

Like it or hate it, Weibo and Weibo night are necessary to GG and DD. As much as Weibo might contribute to cyberbullying problems and other negative situations, Weibo also facilitates every aspect of GG and DD's careers. It's a hub for fan engagement, it's a major platform for their endorsement activities, it's where GG and DD can keep their fans updated and informed, etc. etc.

My feelings toward Weibo are much more neutral than those of a lot of other fans. I see good and bad there, and Weibo is such a powerful force in GG and DD's careers that we have to learn to live with it anyway, so might as well try to get what we can out of it.

Weibo night is the only time of the year when we are all but guaranteed to see GG and DD on the same stage, so we can't pretend not to look forward to it, regardless of our feelings about the platform as a whole.

I think it's highly likely both will attend this one. Those kinds of events are really key to promoting a celebrity, and with projects coming out - especially from DD with his film releases coming up - of course they'll be there. I can't think of a single good reason why they wouldn't show up, and plenty of reasons why they would. They've always attended in the past, so it would be unprecedented for them to decline.

Their teams will want them there, the people promoting their projects will want them there. As two of the most popular stars in China, Sina/Weibo will DEFINITELY want them there.

Not showing up would give fuel for antis and for rumors, which would be a bad idea.

At least from a PR perspective - and GG and DD are both businesses in their own right - it makes sense for them to attend.

I guess we'll find out soon enough. 😊

[marylairre]

Hey I just wanted to let you know that adding the disclaimer to the poll wasn’t a call out or a personal attack or anything, what you said was valid I just didn’t want to be the cause of anyone potentially purchasing something that could be unsafe without making them aware, you know. I’d feel awful about it. Thank you for the info tho and tbh I’m kinda jealous. I would love to own a Muggan lol <3

Hey, no worries about it! I don't really look at anything online as a personal attack unless it is genuinely aggressive and aimed at me personally. Adding a disclaimer to a post that is yours originally is also completely fine, it is your post, do whatever you want with it ^^

Reason I removed my reblog/comment is because I don't want to get caught up in discourse, which might occur. It wouldn't be the first time and I pretty much broke my personal rule of don't be a know it all online in commenting, which I didn't much fancy. Personal choice, I wasn't mad at you, promise.

As for the mugs... I personally feel like the lead paint thing has kind of been blown out of proportion by the internet, almost like a meme. I understand the concern but as far as I am aware, the mugs are fine to use. From what I remember of the brief period I followed a study involving ceramics is that the lead of the paint when fired right gets absorbed by/baked into the clay and the glaze seals it off, basically. Only if you properly damage the glaze could you potentially inhale lead when drinking from it. And even then, that is a calculated risk with mass manufactured processes, as the amount of lead is so small you'll need to be really unlucky to get poisoning from it. Again, this is a mass manufactured set of mugs licensed by the BBC. I couldn't decipher the exact dates of release but most websites that list them are from 2013. Rules on lead paint use were already much stricter by then. I doubt the BBC would have gotten away with selling these en-masse if there was a genuine health risk involved. I've also never seen a report anywhere of anyone having suffered serious health consequences as a result of using one of these. If it had happened, we would likely have heard of such a thing by now. If there has been an incident I missed it and was unable to find anything on it, I wouldn't mind hearing it (genuinely).

Though, all that aside, I can more than understand people wanting to be careful with them, especially as awareness around these topics has grown over the years. To each their own. If it doesn't feel safe or you have doubts, just don't use them.

Anyway, if you want one even if just for decoration, some shops still sell them. I got mine from TheWhoShop when I visited them. They ship out, but don't have their entire catalogue online as it literally is too much to list. You could always shoot them a message if you're curious. Their response time is ridiculously fast on most days and the staff is very kind. I've been a happy customer of theirs for several years now.

[kunikloj]

Shout-out to my traumagenic hyposexuals.

(TWs in tags, but just in case: Sex mention, CSA mention, trauma mention, SA mention, mentions of hyposexual microaggressions)

Shout-out to all of us who get left out of conversations surrounding PTSD accommodation.

Shout-out to everyone who is told to manage their triggers despite rarely receiving warnings for sexual content.

Shout-out to anyone who is affected by random sexual content from accounts they don't follow appearing on their dash, especially those which tie into their specific traumatic experiences.

Shout-out to those of us who have been in therapy for our trauma for years, yet still get treated as though we aren't working hard enough to "grow out" of our difficulties surrounding sex.

Shout-out to those of us who have been on the road to recovery long enough that we know we won't ever be fully "cured."

Shout-out to people who have lost relationships and marriages due to being hyposexual.

Shout-out to everyone who has felt pain from microaggressive labels being incorrectly applied to them, such as "incel" or "virgin", and who still feel anger seeing those labels thrown at people who simply can't engage in sexual topics like everyone else. (And a double shout-out to anyone who recognizes how messed up it is to use "virgin" as an insult!)

Shout-out to all my hyposexual aces.

Shout-out to all hyposexuals who don't identify as ace because they feel left out of the community.

Shout-out to all hyposexuals who were told they weren't "really" ace because they weren't born that way, and by extension, are able to somehow rid themselves of their asexuality.

Shout-out to all hyposexuals who never had the luxury of knowing whether they were "truly" ace because their trauma occurred before puberty, and will never know the answer.

Shout-out to people who want to identify as ace but feel they don't count because they lost their sexuality after their trauma occurred.

Shout-out to hyposexual systems across the dissociative spectrum.

Shout-out to hyposexuals who are not systems, but still suffer from a dissociative disorder.

Shout-out to everyone who has to vet popular music, TV shows, and movies to avoid triggers.

Shout-out to anyone who forced themselves to be sexual in a relationship in hopes to "get over" their hyposexuality, but only suffered more for it.

Shout-out to every hyposexual over 30 who still feels doubted, belittled, and condescended by online discourse. (And everyone younger, of course!)

Shout-out to hyposexual survivors who understand that they are only one half of the survivor coin, and who do not judge hypersexuals for their experiences, yet are assumed to be judgmental regardless.

Shout-out to hyposexuals who truly want legalization, regulation, and protection for sex workers, but have to avoid those discussions for their own mental well-being.

Shout-out to hyposexuals who aren't at a place where they can even talk about it yet.

Shout-out to hyposexuals who are treated with pity, even if they feel like they aren't missing out on anything.

Shout-out to hyposexuals who feel rejected from queer spaces, and even progressive spaces in general, because they aren't given the space to be understood.

Shout-out to hyposexuals who need Pride, but can't go due to their triggers.

I could go on, but I think my message is clear:

I see you. I hear you. I love you. We are not alone, no matter how lonely it may feel. You will always belong in my eyes.

[96percentdone]

The problem with ao3 is less that it exists in the way it does (although there are reasons to criticize it), and more that it's basically the only media-dominated fanfiction site? Like. Does anyone actually use ffn anymore. Like. In real life. And wattpad exists and gets a lot of use, don't get me wrong, but wattpad is largely dominated by rpf, so it's not really where you go for like. Media fandom.

So you run into this issue of adults and children existing on the same website creating content for two different demographics, but all within the same space. Pointing out that Ao3 has a fairly robust tagging and filtering system doesn't entirely address the concern, which is that there's millions of different people with vastly different needs all congregated by necessity in one place. The centralization of the internet is not the fault of Ao3; this does not lie at their feet, but it is occurring here, and I don't think it's helpful to pretend that the tag system are enough of a solution. The core problem is bigger than that. Everyone has to be here, whether they like it or not, and so arguments about what it should and should not be, and what it should not support are inevitable.

And I know smug pro-ship types will say things like 'just make another archive' and there's like. Several problems with that. Running a website is fucking expensive, even if you're doing it for a niche community. And it's more difficult to support your fanfic hub (even if it doesn't involve paying for servers cause its hosted somewhere else) when your community is tiny. I'm sure MCU fans could get away with making like 7 different archives if they wanted to right now, but not so much for something like Re:Zero, which despite having a LOT of fans most of them are not fandom types. And fucking forget it if your fandom is just like 5 people tops. Even if you have the community support necessary, Moderation itself is often a shitshow especially in smaller spaces because if A doesn't like B its much more difficult to avoid them. And like...I know you guys know this stuff, because whenever someone TRIES making another fanfic archive you're always laughing at getting out the popcorn for when it crashes and burns for these reasons. Quit pretending this is a viable solution when you KNOW it isn't going to work.

This isn't to exonerate people on the other side. I don't think turning ao3 into this heavily regulated space is going to help anything at all, and in its own right will invite the problems from fandom past. The more regulations there are on something like this the more likely it's going to turn into a shitshow whether you have powerhungry moderators or entitled creators etc etc etc. Not to mention getting everyone to agree on what the rules are for something this large is just not feasible. You can say 'no CP', and I know you probably think as a rule that's intuitive and everyone understands what that means, but given the endless discourses constantly being had about if xyz ship is predatory that are had online on a daily basis BETWEEN PEOPLE WHO CALL THEMSELVES ANTIS EVEN, you'll find that's not actually the case. Unless everyone agrees on what exactly counts as 'CP' and how it applies in any given fandom on that website, enforcing that is a nightmare. It's not going to happen. Stop pretending this is going to happen.

There just. Isn't a good fix. Unless the internet becomes less....conglomerated. Which will take a lot more time and more systemic change than can be accomplished when arguing 'is the fanfic archive bad or good'

[ailuronymy]

Thoughts on the new discourse? Warrior cats naming conventions and rank names being straight up stolen from native American people? So many people seem to be... Straight up leaving the Fandom or changing all of their fan content and it feels very performative and, people not actually thinking critically and just being scared of getting "cancelled"? I feel like your opinions on these matters are very informed and well written so I wanted to ask given that this blog main theme is, well, warrior cat naming system and that seems to be the main issue of the new discourse.

This is probably going to get long, since there's sort of a lot to say about it in order to talk about this whole thing fairly and constructively, because from what I’ve seen there’s a lot of hyperbole happening, and panicking, and disavowing this series and fandom, and so on, like you say, and also some people genuinely trying to have complex meaningful conversations about racism in xenofiction, and also probably some bad faith actors in the mix--as well as some just... stupid actors. Kind of inevitably what happens when two equally bad platforms for having nuanced discussions--i.e., twitter and tumblr--run headlong into each other, in a fandom space with a majority demographic of basically kids and highly anxious, pretty online teens. I don’t mean that as a criticism of fans or their desire to be liked by peers and “correct” about opinions, it’s just the social landscape of Warriors and I think it’s worth pointing out from the start.  

If I’m totally honest with you, if not for this ask, I wouldn’t actually be commenting on it at all, because none of this is going to impact this blog or change how I run it in any way. But since you’ve asked and frankly I do feel some responsibility to try to disentangle things a little for everyone stressed and confused at the moment, because I know a lot of people look to this blog for guidance of all sorts, I’m going to talk about what I think has happened here, and how to navigate the situation in a reasonable way. 

Quick recap for anyone blissfully unaware: from what I understand, this post (migrated over from a presumably bigger twitter thread) has got a lot of people very worried about Warriors being a racist and appropriative series, and now are trying to figure out what ethically to do about this revelation. The thing I found most interesting about this screenshotted conversation is that it makes a lot of bold claims, but misses some pretty surprising details (in my opinion). If you do look critically at what is being said, here’s a few things to notice--crucially, there are two people talking. 

Person 1 says that a lot of animal fantasy fiction + xenofiction (fiction about non-human/”other” beings, such as animals) is frequently built upon stereotypes of First Nations and Indigenous people, and/or appropriates elements of Indigenous culture and tradition as basically set dressing for “strange” and “alien” races/species etc., and this is a racist, deeply othering, and inappropriate practice. This person is right. 

I’ve spent years researching in this field specifically, so I feel pretty confident in vouching (for whatever that’s worth) that this person is absolutely right in making this point. Not only is it frequently in animal fiction/xenofiction, but it’s insidious, which means often it’s hard to notice when it’s happening--unless you know what you’re looking for, or you are personally familiar with the details or tropes that are being appropriated. Because of the nature of racism, white and other non-First Nations people don’t always recognise this trend within texts--even texts they’re creating--but it’s important for us all, and especially white people, to be more aware, because it’s not actually First Nations’ people’s responsibility to be the sole critics of this tradition of theft and misuse. Appropriation by non-Indigenous people is in fact the problem, which means non-Indigenous people learning and changing is the solution. 

Person 1 offers Warriors as a popular example of a work that has this problem. Notably, this person hasn’t given an example of how Warriors is culpable (at least in this screenshot and I haven’t found the thread itself, because the screenshot is what’s causing this conversation), only that it’s an example of a work that has these problems. And once again, this person is correct. We’ll look at that more in a moment.

Person 2 (three tweets below the first) offers, by comparison, several more specious insights. Firstly, it’s really, really not the only time anyone’s ever talked about this, academically + creatively or in the Warriors fandom specifically, and so that reveals somewhat this person’s previous engagement in the space they’re talking into re: this topic. In other words, this person doesn’t know what has already been said or what is being talked about. Secondly, this person explicitly states that they “[don’t know] much about warrior cats specifically but from what I see it just screams appropriation,” which as a statement I think says something crucial re: the critical lens this person has applied + the amount of forethought and depth of analysis of their criticism of this particular series. 

I’m not saying that using twitter to talk about your personal feelings requires you to research everything you talk about before you shoot your mouth off. However, I personally don’t go into a conversation about a topic I don’t know anything about except a cursory glance to offer bold and scathing criticisms based on what it “just screams” to me. By their own admission, this person isn’t really offering good faith, thoughtful criticism of the series, in line with Person 1′s tweet. Instead, Person 2 is talking pretty condescendingly and emphatically about--as the kids say--the vibes they get from the series, and I’m afraid that just doesn’t hold up well in this court. 

So now that there’s Person 1 (i.e., very reasonable, important, interesting criticism) and Person 2 (i.e., impassioned but completely vibes-based opinion from someone who hasn’t read the books) separated, we can see there’s actually several things happening in this brief snapshot, and some of them aren’t super congruent with each other. 

Person 1 didn’t say “don’t read bad books,” or that you’re a bad person for being a fan of stories that are guilty of this. They suggested people should recognise the ways xenofiction uses Indigenous people and their culture inappropriately and often for profit. My understanding of this tweet is someone offering an insight that might not have occurred to many people, but that is valuable and important to consider going forward in how they view, engage with, and create xenofiction media.

Person 2 uses high modality, evocative language that appeals to the emotions. That’s not a criticism of this person: they’re allowed to talk in whatever tone they want, and to express their personal feelings and opinions. However, rhetorically, this person is using this specific language--consciously or subconsciously--to incense their audience--i.e., you. Are you feeling called to action? What action do you feel called to when you rea their words, despite the fact their claims are not based in their own actual analysis of or engagement with the text? It’s, by their own admission, not analysis at all. Everything they evoke is purely in the name of “not good” vibes. 

Earlier I mentioned that Person 1 is correct that Warriors is absolutely guilty of appropriation of First Nations and Indigenous people and culture. I also mentioned that they didn’t specify how. That’s because I think the most egregious example is in fact the tribe, which in many ways plays into the exact kind of stereotyping and appropriation of First Nations Americans that Person 1 mentions, and not the clans, contrary to Person 2′s suggestion. For instance, in addition to the very loaded name of “tribe”, there’s a lot of racist tropes present in how that group of cats is introduced and how the clan cats interact with them, as well as the more North American-inspired scenery of their home. It’s very blatant as far as racism in this series. 

When it comes to the clans themselves, though, I think it’s muddier and harder to draw clear distinctions of what is directly appropriative, what is coincidentally and superficially reminiscent, and what is not related at all. Part of this difficulty in drawing hard lines comes from the fact that, on a personal level, it actually doesn’t matter: if a First Nations person reads a story and feel it is appropriative or inappropriate, it’s not actually anyone’s place to “correct” them on their reading of the text. Our experiences are unique and informed by our perspectives and values, and no group of people are a monolith, which means within community, there will always be disagreement and differenting points of view. There is no one single truth or opinion, which means that First Nations people even in the same family might have very different feelings about the same text and very different perspectives on how respectful, or not, it might be. 

I’m saying this because something that gets said very often when conversations of racism and similar oppressive systems present/perpetuated in texts comes up, people frequently say: “listen to x voices.” It is excellent advice. However, the less pithy but equally valuable follow-up advice is: “listen to the voices of many people of x group, gather information and perspective, and then ultimately use your own judgement to make an informed opinion for yourself.” It means that you are responsible for you. The insight you can gain by listening to people who know topics and experiences far better than you do is truly invaluable, but if your approach to the world is simply to parrot the first voice, or loudest voice, or angriest voice you come across, you will not really learn anything or be able to develop your own understanding and you certainly won’t be making well-informed judgements. 

In other words, one incomplete tweet thread from two people who are each bringing quite different topics and modes of conversation (or perhaps gripes, in Person 2′s case) to the table is not really enough to go off re: making a decision to leave a fandom, in my opinion. In fact, I think in responding to anything difficult, complex, or problematic (which doesn’t mean what popular adage bandies it about to mean) by trying to distance yourself, or cleanse of it, will ultimately harm you and will not do you any good as a person. It is better, in my opinion, to enter into complex relationships with the world and media and other people in an informed, aware way and with a willingness to learn and sometimes to make mistakes and be wrong, rather than shy away from potential conflict or fear that interacting with a text will somehow taint you or define your morality in absolutes. 

So. Does Warriors have racist and appropriative elements, tropes, and issues in the series? Yes, of course it does, it’s a book-packaged series produced by corporation HarperCollins and written by a handful of white British women and their myriad ghostwriters. Racism is just one part of the picture. The books are frequently also ableist, sexist, and homophobic (or heteronormative, depending how you want to slice it, I guess), just to name some of the most evident problems. 

But does the presence of these issues mean it’s contaminated and shouldn’t be touched? Personally, I don’t think so. Given the nature of existing the world, it’s not possible to find perfect media that is free of any kind of bias, prejudice, or even just ideas or topics or concepts that are challenging or uncomfortable. I think it’s more meaningful to choose to engage with these elements, discuss them, criticise them, learn from them, and acknowledge also that imperfection is the ultimate destiny of all of us, especially creators.

I’m not saying that as a pass, like, “oh enjoy your media willy-nilly, nothing matters, do what you want, think about no-one else ever because we’re all flawed beings,” but rather that it’s important not to look away from the problems in the things we enjoy, rather than cut off all contact and enjoyment when we realise the problems. That doesn’t mean you have to only criticise and always be talking about how bad a thing you like is either, publicly admonishing yourself or the text, because that’s also not a constructive way to engage with media. 

As I said, there’s a lot to say here, and believe it or not, this is honestly the shortest version I could manage. There’s always more to say and plenty I haven’t talked about, but pretty much tl;dr: 

I don’t find Person 2′s commentary particularly compelling, personally, because I think it’s a little broad and a little specious in its conclusions and evidence, and I also suspect that this person is speaking more from their feelings than from a genuine desire to educate or meaningfully criticise, unlike Person 1. That’s not to say Warriors isn’t frequently racist and guilty of the issues Person 1 is discussing, because it is, but I don’t think this tweet thread is a great source of insight into the ongoing history of this problem in xenofiction, or Warriors specifically, on its own. I would recommend exploring further afield to learn more from a variety of sources and form your own opinions. I hope this helps. 

[anarmorofwords]

Hi! You're probably not going to like this ask, but before getting into it I'd just like to say that this isn't meant as Kamala hate or anything, and I don't really want to offend.

Having said that, wouldn't it make sense that we get to see how Kamala treated Anna after she came out? It's in all likelihood one of the things that's weighing on Anna the most.

Obviously Kamala had her valid reasons: her parents aren't as liberal as the Lightwoods, she believes (knows?) their love is conditional as she's adopted, she's not white and not being heterosexual could further any treatment she's suffered from being different... Her reasons have already been listed multiple times by multiple people. Kamala has the right to stay in the closet and fear coming out. And while that shouldn't be villianised, we can't forget that closeted people can harm those around them.

If Kamala had kept treating Anna like a good friend, rumour would've sparked, and even if it was denied, she'd have been harmed by merely associating with Anna. Especially with the life Anna began leading; she could have been labelled as one of Anna's 'conquests' by the Clave. That, as we've established, is detrimental for her safety.

But at the same time, it would create a breach between Anna and Kamala. And Anna had the right to be hurt by it and weary of it when Kamala said she wanted a relationship.

If we look at it from that perspective, Anna's actions (though inexcusable in how they treated Kamala --who was also at fault for not accepting a negative for four months) make sense. Kamala wasn't only a fling of a week*, but also the girl she lost her virginity with, who asked her to be her secret (until she married Charles, after which Anna's affections would be discarded), who hid her sexuality for two years and sat back while Anna suffered from homophobic commentary, and who now wants a relationship hidden from most of the people that know her.

Kamala shouldn't be forced to come out; but the harm that can do to the women she may engage with is reflective of what happens nowadays. I can mostly think of examples with gay men, so my apologies in advance. But how many women have seen their marriages ruined by their husband having affairs with men?

Creating characters that reflect a toxic part of the 'hidden' LGBT community shouldn't be seen as hating or villinifying. Thomas isn't out and he isn't labelled a villain by the narrative --because his actions don't harm anyone. The hate Alastair gets in-universe is because of his past as a bully, not because he's gay. Matthew's not fully out and he isn't villianised --like Thomas, because the decisions he makes to keep his sexuality hidden don't impact anyone negatively.

I'll even go as far as saying that not even the narrative villianises characters like Kamala and Charles. If it were, they'd be seen more like Grace in Chain of Gold. We'd see how Kamala's actions are affecting Anna's in more ways than anger (that in itself put the fandom against Anna), and the characters would note so. We wouldn't see scenes were Cordelia empathised with Charles, nor Matthew said he loved him.

Be it as it may, Kamala and Charles represent ugly parts of being closeted that can naturally occur when someone is in their position. LGBT people are human. Humans, when put into very difficult situations (and Charles risks his career; Kamala her safety), can make decisions that harm those around them. Consequently, the people they're harming have a right to feel, well, harmed in whatever range of ways --this goes mostly for Alastair, and very partly for Anna, whose treatment of Kamala was horrible.

Readers need to understand what is pushing these 'villianised' characters to harm (again, mostly for Alastair) the more prominent characters and go beyond how they are instantly depicted. Because these are complex characters based on complex real people influenced by very ugly realities we will move on from someday, but sadly not yet.

By the way, Charles and Kamala's situations aren't that similar beyond the closeted thing, but I crammed them together because of a post I saw you reblog.

Please understand I'm not justifying Charles's actions; that I understand the pain he's put Alastair through, and know that he shouldn't ever be near Alastair. Nor am I trying to justify Anna's actions nor hate on Kamala.

I'll just finish my pointless rant by adding that I do think cc has sensitivity readers. I think she asked a gay man to go through tec (I don't know if he still revised her other books, though), and know she asked POC's input when writing someone for their culture. I don't know much beyond that, but I doubt who revises her stuff is up to her. Wouldn't that be something the publisher is responsible for (honest question)?

*I've also noticed people using the argument that they didn't know each other long enough for Anna to harbour such ugly emotions towards Kamala, but Kamala also remembered Anna pretty deeply and is 'in love' with her. I just wanted to say that considering cc writes (fantastical) romance where someone can ask a woman they met two months ago marriage, stressing over time spaces doesn't make much sense. Just my take.

hi!!

alright, where do I start? probably would be best with stating that while I can analyse Kamala's situation with what I know/see/read about racism and discrimination and reasonably apply things I've read/heard from PoC to the discussion, as well as try to be as sensitive about it as possible, I'm still a white woman, so not a person that's best qualified to talk about this.

that being said - if someone wants to add something to this conversation, you're obviously more than welcome to, and if there's something in my answer that you don't agree with or find in some way insensitive or offensive - please don't hesitate to call me out on that.

back to your points though: (this turned into a whole ass essay, so under the cut)

I don't think Anna shouldn't be able to reminiscent on Kamala's behaviour/reaction to her coming out, or be hurt by it. what bothers me is the way CC talks about it - I can't remember the exact phrasing, but the post where she mentioned this suggested something along the lines of "you'll see how Kamala sided with the Clave and didn't defend Anna after her coming out", therefore putting the blame on Kamala and completely disregarding the fact that Kamala wasn't in position to do much at all. It suggest that their situation was "poor Anna being mistreated by Kamala". therefore I'm afraid Kamanna's main problem/conflict will remain to be portrayed as "Anna having to allow themselves to love again and forgive Kamala", while Anna's shortcomings - and Kamala's vulnerable position - are never discussed. I think it would be possible to acknowledge both Kamala's difficult situation and the possible hurt her behaviour caused Anna without being insensitive towards Kamala's character, but it would take a really skilled - and caring - author to do both of the perspectives justice. CC would have to find a balance between being aware of the racism/prejudice Kamala faced/ writing her with lots of awareness and empathy, and still allowing her to make mistakes and acknowledging them. As it is however, I'm under impression that she's just treating it as a plot device, a relationship drama.

I'd say no one expects characters of color to be written as flawless or never making mistakes, it's mostly the way these mistakes are written and what things these characters are judged/shamed/

And that's - at least in my understanding and opinion - where the problem is. it's that the narrative never even addresses Anna's faults, and portrays Kamala as the one that caused all - or most of - the pain, without ever even acknowledging her problems and background.

White characters in TLH make mistakes and fuck up - because they're human and they're absolutely allowed to - but the thing is, non-white characters aren't afforded that privilege. Anna's behaviour is never questioned - none of it, shaming Kamala for not being able to come out, dismissing her desire to be a mother, or any of the questionable things she did in ChoI. Same with Matthew, James, Thomas. Alastair and Kamala however? they're constantly viewed through their past mistakes, and forced to apologize for them over and over, forced to almost beg for forgiveness. Moreover, those past mistakes are used as a justification of all and any shitty behaviour the other characters exhibit towards them now, which is simply unfair and cruel. They're held to a much higher standard.

So I'd like to say that yes, Kamala was in the wrong to keep nagging Anna after numerous rejections, and she was in the wrong to not inform Anna about Charles prior to them having sex - but that doesn't give Anna a free pass to constantly mistreat Kamala. And let's be real, Anna isn't stupid - while at 17 she could be naive and uninformed, I can't imagine how after years of hanging out with the Downworlders and numerous affairs and being out and judged by the Clave she's still so ignorant about Kamala's situation. I definitely think she's allowed to be hurt, but to still not understand why Kamala did what she did? Anna isn't blaming her for not telling her about Charles earlier - which would be fair - but instead for refusing to engage in an outright romance with her. She's being ignorant - and consciously so, I think.

Overall, I think you're definitely right about how coming out - or staying closeted - can be messy and hurt people in the process, especially in unaccepting environments/time periods, and I've seen enough discourse online to know there will never be a verdict/stance on this that will satisfy everyone. I, for one, would really like to refrain from putting all the blame on a single person - but, at least the way I see it, CC is pointing fingers. maybe not directly, but she is. Kamala, Alastair and Charles have no friends or support systems, and the only people in the narrative that defend them are themselves (ok, Cordelia does defend Alastair from Charles, but not from shitty takes about him and his "sins"). Also, sorry, but I don't like how you say "hid her sexuality for two years and sat back while Anna experienced homophobic comments" - it sounds very much judgemental. Kamala had every right to do that? The fact that she slept with Anna doesn't means she owed her something, and certainly not coming out and most probably destroying her life, or even defending her at the - again - expense of her own reputation, or more possibly safety.

As for Charles - it's a different issue here, at least imo - I fear that it'll be implied that his refusing to come out will is his main "sin", and therefore not something he can be judged for, which ironically, will be villainizing, but mostly will mean his actual sins are dismissed. This is where the scene with Cordelia feeling a pang of sympathy for him comes into play, and it worries me. I've never hated Charles for not wanting to come out, but rather for, let's see - grooming Alastair, disregarding Alastair's needs and feelings, disrespecting his mother, being a sexist prick, being low-key far-right coded "make Shadowhunters great again" etc.

As for sensitivity readers - I'm no expert, so I don't think my input is worth much. From what I've gathered from multiple threads/discussions on twitter, tho it is probably consulted/approved by the publisher, many authors push for that - and authors less famous and "powerful" than her. I'm not a hater, but seeing fandoms' opinions on much of her rep, I think she could do better. Because if she does have sensitivity readers, then they don't seem to be doing a great job - maybe they're friends who don't wanna hurt her feelings? Or maybe she thinks a gay guy's feedback will be enough for any queer content - which, judging by the opinions I've seen from the fans, doesn't seem to be true.

Again, these are mostly my thoughts and I'm more than open to reading other opinions, because *sigh* I really don't know how to handle this.

Bottom line - I really really don't want to be hating on the characters in general, playing God in regards to judging the struggles of minorities, or even criticising the characters too harshly for being human, flawed etc. What my main issue is is how CC handles those complex and heavy topics.

I hope I make sense and this answer satisfies you somehow - I also hope someone better equipped to answer might wanna join this conversation.

* I desperately need a reread of TLH before I engage in any more conversations like this, but I didn't wanna leave you hanging. So yeah, I might be remembering things wrong. Again, let me know, I'm very much open to being corrected as well as to further discussion.

* I use she/her pronouns for Anna because that's what she uses in canon

[guiltyidealist]

op has me blocked but it’s an important post so I’m reposting the text

I see a lot of people saying they “would never date a transgender person” and accusing several well-meaning trans people (who are ill-equipped to explain why that’s transphobic) of perpetuating ideas born from rape culture.

since I’m sick of seeing the same conversations with all the same pitfalls, here’s why saying things like “I’d never date a trans person” is harmful and bigoted:

you can’t always tell who is and isn’t trans just by looking at them. we all know that “date” is used in the previous statement as shorthand for “be into/attracted to,” as in “I’m not into/attracted to any transgender people, even if they identify as a gender I’m capable of feeling attraction towards.” attraction (typically) relies on a combination of personality traits and visible physical features, and unless you live in a nudist colony, you won’t have any idea what someone’s genitals look like at first sight, much less which binary gender they were assigned at birth. but once again, you can’t tell someone’s gender (let alone “”biological sex””) just by looking at them. you might think that all trans people have some sort of “tell” or “giveaway”, like an adam’s apple or lack thereof, but that simply isn’t the case, ESPECIALLY when you take gender-reaffirming hormone treatments and surgeries into account. sorry, but you won’t be able to tell the difference between a trans person who passes in every way and a cis person who hasn’t altered their body. you think you know what our voices sound like, that our “true gender” is betrayed by the shape of our skull or the curves of our hips, but you don’t.

finding masculine women and feminine men less attractive than masculine men and feminine women isn’t the same thing as finding trans people less attractive than cis people. shockingly enough, there are a LOT of feminine cisgender men and masculine cisgender women. if you don’t find short hair attractive on women, that’s fine! same with long hair on men–that’s just part of an aesthetic preference. the problem lies with making the assumption that all trans women are “obviously too masculine” and all trans men are “obviously too feminine”. once again, you usually won’t be able to tell who’s trans on sight. many violent hate crimes against trans people only occur because someone *wasn’t* able to clock us on sight, only to find out we’re trans later and feel disgusted and ashamed for ever being attracted to us. it’s okay to find certain physical features that you associate with one extreme presentation or the other less attractive than others, as long as you’re well aware of how racism and colorism factor into “personal preferences” too.

just because you know the gender someone was assigned at birth doesn’t mean you know how sex with them would functionally work. now, this isn’t to say you’re ~morally obligated~ to have or even consider having sex with someone when you don’t want to. all I’m pointing out is that many people jump to the conclusion that all trans women have penises and all trans men have vaginas, when that’s just not true. many of us have had (or will at some point have) bottom surgery, which renders our genitalia virtually indistinguishable from “the real deal.” witty little clapbacks like “don’t expect me to suck your girldick” and “I don’t want your boypussy” are pretty common in discourse, but given that not all trans people keep the genitals we’re born with, they only serve as a reminder of how uneducated people are when it comes to our bodies.

trans people know better than anyone how traumatizing the threat of sexual assault can be. like many modern day cisgender sexual predators, transgender sexual predators tend to target vulnerable people in online spaces. as a trans person who was repeatedly sexually assaulted by another trans person, I can testify that it’s much easier for predators to privately win someone’s trust from a distance and get them alone in a socially acceptable manner rather than brazenly attempting an assault in full view of other people. the chances of a transgender sexual predator going into public bathrooms and attacking their victims in broad daylight are slim to none, especially given how many people are already trying to deny trans people human rights based on the unfounded fear that ALL trans people are “too dangerous” to be allowed in public bathrooms. but contrary to popular belief, we’re much more likely to be sexually assaulted ourselves, and usually by cisgender men. (you know, that one large demographic with an alarmingly high rate of turning out sexual predators.)

it costs $0.00 to stay in your lane. if you personally find some random trans person unattractive, cool! keep it to yourself. we don’t need “friendly reminders” that you’d never want to date or have sex with us; trust me, we know. it’s rare that I go a day without being reminded of how grotesque and repulsive my body is to cis people, there’s really no need to pour salt in the wound.

thanks for coming to my TED talk, don’t be an obtuse piece of shit in the replies.

[transgenderer]

i feel like cancel culture discourse is mostly terrible because it like, doesnt really refer to a single phenomonenon? i think theres basically three things called cancel culture, at three scales: community, vigilante, and celebrity.

community cancel culture occurs among (generally large and decentralized, like on tumblr or twitter) groups of peers. usually its about minor political minutiae, works through callout posts or rumor networks, and generally has social/emotional consequences (rather than material), relating to ostracization, facilitation of abuse, scrupulosity issues, harassment generally a whole host of mental health stuff.

i think this is pretty unambiguously bad, but is hard to avoid, because like, wanting to have communities defined by certain political inclinations is reasonable, and also there are genuinely unacceptable political positions in a community (like, if your group contains a lot of LGBT, nonwhite, jewish, disabled, etc people, its pretty understandable to want it to contain zero literal nazis), and also people will use whatever they can to try to acquire social power

vigilante cancel culture happens when a group of people (often the same groups mentioned before) find somebody online, who has a job unrelated to politics, and decides that because they disagree wit their politics, theyre going to try to ruin their life. this includes harassing them, or in worse cases, trying to get them fired from their job, etc. this is, imo, unambiguously terrible, and essentially just like, communally justified sadism. this is also easy to avoid. dont try to get people fired for their political views, dont harass people.

celebrity cancel culture is the most visible, and the most ambiguous. it takes multiple forms, but i think they form one large phemonemon. the first form is the MeToo movement. this is, in its purest form, i think very good. there are lots of (usually men) people in powerful positions who use this position to cause harm to people they have power over, by sexually harassing them or sexually assaulting them. moving away from a culture of silence about sexual harassment and assault is good.

however, i think this too has failure states. often singular allegations, from unreliable sources or with explicit logical issues in them get passed around and can ruin someones career. one of the most egregious examples of this is the whole mitski allegations, which are it seems totally unfounded. theres also the problem of vague allegations emergining out of rumor networks, causing massive damage to someone's life, and then when the smoke clears it turns out the allegations were fairly minor, if they existed at all. one case of this is nick robinson, who got fired from polygon based on a bunch of vague rumored allegations, only for the eventual reveal to be he...flirted poorly and awkwardly with someone else in the games industry.

the other form is political cancellation of celebrities. this is complicated by the vast spectrum of celebrity in the modern era. this can go from youtubers with a million subscribers to yknow, real actual celebrities who get put in movies. generally these campaigns basically dont touch "real" celebrities, but can have a fairly substantial effect on minor celebrities. theres a wide continuum of outcomes heres. often a minor celebrity wont have their career destroyed, but they will be ceaselessly harassed to the extent it destroys their mental health. theres also the weird case of political creators, who are often not so much cancelled as lose popularity if their political views change, or views that are incongruous with those perceived by their audience are revealed. i think this is the least objectionable case of this kind of political cancellation, which is not to say it cant cause problems, especially when its paired with harassment.

anyway uh. cancel culture. its probably bad "on average" (to the extent you can average out stuff like this, which you cant), but its complicated and subtle.

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

See, I was told if a character reminds a lot of people of their abusers, like Edward Cullen, then you should listen and think about what the narrative is saying. Look at most villain discourse and it's usually about white men like Loki or Kylo. And if a big trait of theirs is "manipulation", a word already with connotations of "abuser"? Then of course people will learn to see their abusers in them.

(I can't really tell if this ask is connected to the second one, but I think they aren't, so I'm going to just respond seperately, okay? Feel free to clarify yourself if needed.)

Alright, so.

There are actually quite a few characters who remind me of my abusers or remind me of specific experiences of abuse.

it's also always really notable to me that people pull out the "Edward Cullen/Kylo Ren/Loki /but that one shitty white dude!'" card every time this subject comes up, as if the people criticizing this shit aren't speaking in a much wider scope about characters who are female, POC, and/or LGBT, disabled, etc., as if the people who are fans of these kinds of characters aren't themselves often marginalized members of the community. Like, these popular white dudes (and their fans) are absolutely not the ones who get thrown under the bus the hardest, but people always seem to prop them up as a wholesale justification for this nonsense, always seem to sprinkle their names into conversations about totally different characters...and honestly? It's starting to really reek of bullshit to me. The more people pull that the more it feels like they are literally just utilizing them as convenient strawmen; a last resort/to save face/to claim a "not like other girls" badge.

Not that I think you intended any of this anon, I think you're talking about this because it's what you've absorbed from being aroun it, and you wanted to speak about that, so I get it. I don't blame you specifically for this problem.

(Also, Loki is now confirmed to be non-binary, he's not only ever male. He's a member of the LGBT community. But I digress... )

All that said I have a more important perspective to offer. Here's a connundrum for you:

Since my life and my trauma was directly impacted by being related to a terrifying violent serial criminal, how am I supposed to feel about the Hannibal fandom?

Should I be angry at them? Should I hate Hannibal/SOTL?

Should I assume that the Hannibal fandom condones the violence that occured in my family's life?

Have they personally transgressed against me in some way for enjoying and shipping Hannibal Lecter?

Do I now have the ultimate right to condemn and shame them?

The answer, anon, is no to all of the above.

Now, personally, I think Hannibal is a fun character, and he doesn't actually remind me of the monster in my life. They are very different individuals, one is very real and one is highly stylized fiction that resembles no real person that I can think of. But if I DID see a resemblance, I would have every right to that experience of the character. I would have every right to talk about it in my space.

But setting that aside, by the logic of the "rules" tumblr gave you above, my experience should definately count right? Somebody who is impacted by the most extreme form of violent criminal should count in the "who gets to dictate what this piece of fiction means" narrative, right?

The thing is, my experience of certain characters has NOTHING to do with other people's experience of a character. I absolutely have no right to demand anything of anybody, especially not to dictate to them what the right way to think and feel about art is.

My experience may be valuable, my voice may be valuable. I may have things to say that will feel relevant and compelling to others when I interperet a piece of fiction. But that is a vastly different thing than what tumblr/twitter means when they bring this up. Tumblr/twitter wants you to believe that there is a heirarchy on the truth when it comes to critical analysis, and that the most reactionary and bad-faith opinions deserve the loudest platform, and the most cowed obedience from others.

I fundamentally disagree.

Fictional characters, like Loki for example, can contain multitudes. Loki reminds me of my own experiences of abuse as the victim and not the abuser. That serial criminal I spoke about was my father. Loki's trauma stemming from the experience of having a "monster" as a father, of internalizing that horror? Of not being able to connect with his new emotionally abusive father, and the rest of his family? That was the first time I'd ever really seen something that fit my experience in that way.

But for someone else, Loki is going to remind them of their abuser. He's going to remind them of a toxic manipulator in their life.

And honestly, BOTH experiences are valid. BOTH experiences deserve a voice. But NEITHER of them wins anyone the right to be an domineering, controlling asshole to other people about it. NEITHER have the right to hurt and shame other people over it.

Art is fucking subjective, and it's time kids on social media actually fully absorbed that concept and what it means. It's time that they put down the ideological rhetoric for a while and just allowed themselves and other people to be fucking human.

If somebody who's literally related to a monster on par with someone like Hannibal can tell you that (the general you, not you specifically anon), then maybe it's time to re-evaluate your priorities, and time to assess just how beholden you feel to the emotionally toxic demands of strangers online.

[mctreeleth]

I found out last night that there are companies that just scan vintage dressmaking patterns and sell the scans. They just... do that. I floated the idea of posting the pattern to a shirt that I so heavily re-drafted for my PCOS-bloated belly that every line was different from the 35 year old pattern I started with, and people on instagram started sending me - me! - condescending DMs about how that is like, not okay uwu. And people are just out there doing it and not changing anything about the patterns and CHARGING PEOPLE MONEY for them!

It has been 24 hours and I am still livid. Not because they are doing it - most of these patterns are otherwise inaccessible; the pattern companies are not selling them anymore and finding them second-hand often comes down to luck. Scanning these patterns and making them accessible is what I want people to do, what I would like to do.

No, what makes me so angry is that these people have acquired access to knowledge, and decided to say fuck you to the original copyright, and then, instead of following that urge and putting them out there for the common good, put a price on that knowledge for profit. And while a couple of these sites are re-grading the patterns for a wider range of sizes than the originals - which okay, derivative works like this are arguably legally new works - some of the sites are just scanning patterns and selling the copies and like...

Challenging the idea that monopolies should be allowed to possess a copyright over creative knowledge is good! And questioning neo-liberal capitalism’s utilisation of Intellectual Property “rights” as a core component of post-Fordist hustle culture is basically my whole deal! But I have spent so long in the depths of discourse about the ethics of letting a friend borrow a pattern that you own that somehow it never even occurred to me that people were just... doing this. Straight up, zero qualms, scan a pattern and say it is yours now.

In my research, I butt up against people who publish patterns as their livelihood. They point out that, given the amount of time and expense that goes into writing and testing and marketing and all of the other things in the process of selling patterns, the amount they actually make often equates to less than minimum wage. And they think my research says they don’t deserve even that, when actually, my research is really about asking how we got to this point – what structures contributed to their decision to do this as a means of making money, and the effect that these structures and social ideas and historical factors have had on their ability to do so. I am firmly of the opinion that they are engaging in labour and they deserve compensation for it. I would rather we all be able to do it for the good of humanity while we live off of a UBI, but we are not there yet. In the meantime, this is the system we have.

My qualms about intellectual property are rooted primarily in the idea that, much like other forms of capital, its holder can profit off of it repeatedly and at the expense of others. That something can be sold many times while other things can only be sold once sets up an unequal playing field, and this is compounded when rights holders attempt to restrict what makers can do with the finite products created from that endlessly re-sellable knowledge. Even ignoring the structural factors that dictate what kinds of sale prices the two can get, there is no theoretical limit to the number of times a pattern, particularly a digital or print-on-demand one, can be sold, whereas each shirt or quilt can only be sold once. The idea is that the multiple sales offset the fact that the time required is higher and the sale price is lower for the pattern than the product, but this is based on, you know, the pattern seller having invested all that time and effort into designing and drafting and writing and testing and making and photographing and editing and all the other stuff it takes to get a pattern out there and selling. That stuff is why pattern designers are so very pro-copyright and IP. They need to sell the multiple copies to make it worthwhile. Saying “fuck you” to copyright is for people who aren’t trying to make money off of patterns.

Which is why the combo of disregarding the original copyright and selling patterns is, I think, so unpalatable to me. I have to couch my criticisms of Intellectual Property in reassurances that no, just because I think that these systems are bad does not mean I think you are a bad person for using them if you have to, emphasising that I am rejecting the idea of copyright not in order to take from them, or to profit at their expense, but instead as part of a shift towards a future where knowledge is free and accessible to all. The fact that someone could just bypass all of this, and go, no, that copyright is being disregarded because it stops me from profiting on something I have gained physical access to and want to make money off of, just took me so very very by surprise.

Like, don’t get me wrong, the original copyright holders have been bought out and bought out and bought out, and the big four pattern companies that comprise most of their scanned patterns are now owned by a single mega-corp; I am in no way concerned for them. But that I have to be so careful and polite and respectful towards every perspective meant that seeing someone go “my copyright now” is just infuriating. I work so so hard to push for a world where we share this kind of knowledge, where we have moved past the shitty paywalls of intellectual property. These people took the same stance as mine but instead of channeling the chutzpa required to post these patterns online into doing some good, they used it to profit for themselves. That is what I am furious about.

As for the shirt pattern? The one especially re-drafted for my body; the body with the waist that is 4 sizes bigger than the bust and hips? The shirt that hides incredibly well the fact that you are bloated to the size of someone 4-months pregnant? As soon as I get my sewing room unpacked again (my Mum is visiting for a bit) I am going to take tutorial photos and post it. For free, obviously.

[staghunters]

Might be hitting a wasps next over here but

So I’m gay and on tiktok, which of course meant that the algorithm put me on gay tiktok, but lately especially lesbian discourse tiktok and tbh I’m not sure what I’m supossed to think of what the kids are posting there.

For context: a lot of these takes and discourses are posted by minors or 18 year olds, regardless, peeps quiete a bit younger than me. I don’t mean to target them directly here, it is more an observation that I thought needed to be adressed.

In short, what I keep saying is young lesbians posting things about their expereince with lesbophobia or accusing someone of being lesbophobic. While lesbophobia does occur within the community, outside of tiktok I have yet to see some big signs of it (speaking from my own lesbian perspective).

One post I saw today blamed the disproportionate popularity of mlm ships as opposed to wlw ships on the demonization of lesbians, and shut someone down who said it could more probably be the fetishization of mlm by straight women by saying that they were a non-lesbian speaking over lesbian experiences.

Another said that the community demonizes lesbians by saying that our little corner is full of terfs. Terfs in lesbian spaces IS an issue, and it won’t go away by saying that others should not accuse the lesbian space of having those. We should rather be more actively supportive of trans people and especially trans women of colour if we want to keep the terfs at bay.

The last one I remember/want to adress is that of a lesbian who only dated other lesbians and not bi women because they don’t understand her issues. While I can understand the need for wanting a lesbian only space as opposed to a wlw one in regards to some issues, excluding bi women on that basis from your dating pool borders on a biphobic attitude. It sounds very much like the validation of bi people only if they are in a relationship with the same gender.

I do think the core of this issue is that a lot of these people seem very young on average, making it very likely that they only really got into touch with lgbtqia+ spaces online and during covid. Again, it is not a personal attack on those who made these kinds of videos without maliscious intent, but I would strongly recommend them to (figuratively) Go Outside and not make discourse into a victim olympics. Creating a division will only drive the community apart and make us all easier targets for harassment.

[quinttyz]

May I request a matchup? :0

When it comes to orientations, I think I'm bi– But leaning toward men. I also prefer he/him pronouns but present with a total amalgamate between masculine and feminine. Dunno if that last part would help, unless you have certains HCs for certain characters ^^'

As for my appearance! I'm relatively between short and medium, not the type to remember my exact height lol. My hair currently reaches my collarbone, and is a medium brown in its natural state, but right now the ends are dyed green(I dye my hair often)! I feel like I'm pretty pale, but not quite yet in a vampiric way– Also I have these slight freckles along my cheeks. My eyes are a brownish aaaand I wear glasses.

When it comes to personality... Hoo boy– I've been told I'm smart and am pretty social with people I know, but I'm terrible at doing things like getting out there and starting conversations, myself. That and, well, I can be totally airheaded at times: Not the best listener, either hyper-focused or hyper-unfocused, kind of terrible at getting the point on amany occasions.

If it's something or somebody I'm interested in, I tend to. Kind of get infatuated, ajcnekf. I'm usually very happy to get to know them, interact with them, and genuinely just enjoy being in their presence! I feel like I'm sometimes really doting, especially with people I'm close to– Like my sisters. I can't really go by without giving or recieving some sort of positive affirmation, and if not that a hug or some kind of loving touch, y'know y'know? It's not exactly the same with my friends, but I have no problem complimenting my people when they need it.

My interests pertain to like. So many things vjsncjf. My main hobbies include drawing but primarily creative writing, though,, y'know. I've a hundred million drafts that I'll likely never get to– Otherwise! I also like to read, pretty much anything from mystery to sci-fi to romance. I'm at least kind of active, given my sporadically-planned bike rides. Pacing until my feet literally hurt also seems to be a hobby of mine :')

I guess some extra facts about me would be, 1) my going to sleep terribly late, yet still being able to wake up at a decent hour with decent rest; 2) my crippling second-hand embarrassment; and 3) my tendency to straight-up ramble, both online and offline.

Sorry if everything is a bit longer than you signed up for! If you do choose to take this req, know I 100% appreciate it 🏵

I match you with Abigail! 💜

- Abigail is also bi but I headcanon she is leaning more towards girls! When she first saw you, she thinks you're really cool for combining feminine and masculine traits in one person. Definitely wants to hang out with u hehe

- dyed hair? DYED HAIR??? Sign her up lads!!! Abigail loves the look of your hair

ಡ ͜ ʖ ಡ the dyed tips is an idea that hasn't occurred to her yet so she'll definitely want to ask for advice on what color should she dye her tips with!

- omg your personality really matches what I headcanon Abigail as HAHAHA. She's smart and knows what she's doing. She can talk to people with ease but she has trouble starting conversations by herself! During discourses, her mind might just slip away and go on auto-pilot mode hajsushs

- Abigail wants to give positive affirmation to the people she's close with but doesn't know how to! She would at times, give them a hug but it would be so awkward omg. When she finally meets you, she learns so much from you! She's very thankful HAHA

- I headcanon that writing is Abigail's secret hobby hehe. She loves spinning tales especially mystery, horror, and fantasy. When you get close enough to her, she might ask you to read her stuff!! She only begs you not to share it with anyone else!

-ur extra facts...good god thats ABIGAIL RIGHT THERE. Abigail has some unconventional talents that also include burping on the spot LMAO its something that irritates Sebastian so she does it often around him

(Match-ups are open!)