#even if the creators of this specific thing were jewish and it's now just being used by jvp

[it-was-me-zion]

i definitely don't know everything about mikveot or the rules surrounding them but just off the top of my head the like, One Big Thing about a mikveh even before we had stable cities or dedicated buildings - when we were "people on the move" as JVP so disgustingly put it - is that the water can't be stagnant. which is why

ok i went to actually look up rules for the construction of a mikveh and what counts as one and y'all they have rules for "what if someone left wine jugs out to dry in the rainy season and water got in them can we put that water in the mikveh" and the answer includes a provision for "how do we tell if they actually left the jugs out to dry in the rainy season, this is israel it simply doesn't rain in the dry season so why did they do this in the rainy season and if they did put the jugs out to catch water that's drawn water so it's not allowed."

also "what happens if one of the workers (YEAH I'M TALKING ABOUT YOU YESHUA FUCK OFF) left their bucket in the mikveh and then the water was let in and some of the water got into the bucket what's up with the water in the bucket (YESHUA IF YOU JUST TOOK CARE OF YOUR EQUIPMENT LIKE WE'VE TOLD YOU A THOUSAND TIMES WE WOULDN'T BE IN THIS MESS-)"

anyways. a mikveh MUST be connected to a naturally occurring water source, and does not serve the function that the jvp clip seems to indicate (it is not about "connecting to the water" or even really about receiving blessings from the water itself). add in the fact that jvp is intensely disingenuous about pretty much every jewish tradition or event they've participated in over the past several months and i certainly don't blame the majority of jews from sneering at this shit.

now, something that comes up on the topic of accessibility and inclusivity - a big thing with mikvehs IS full immersion (a mikveh cannot be a mikveh if an adult person cannot fully submerge), which can be a problem as mentioned further up in the thread. it would probably be worth exploring another system for those that would like to participate - perhaps smaller tubs for those whose disabilities would make full submersion difficult, or a program that gives people access to portions of water from a mikveh or naturally occurring water (such as a spring, rainwater, etc) for them to engage in the mikveh in their home/private.

ok please explain why you all hate teacup mikveh so much

because the appeal of creative ritual seems pretty clear given mikvaot are some of the most inaccessible jewish spaces there are. i mean teacup mikveh specifically was created during the pandemic but even otherwise

unless it's for conversion, most mikvaot can't be accessed if you're read as a woman and unmarried (unless you lie), or if you have a visibly trans naked body. does that not describe most of jumblr?

[shizucheese]

So about that Dropout Tweet...

There's a common trend in influencer/ content creator apologies, where the person doing the apology will say they are sorry for the harm that they did, claim they are taking ownership of it and using the whole situation to become a better person, etc. etc. Usually in a way that makes it sound suspiciously like it was written by ChatGPT.

And then they'll go on to say something along the lines of "But we've been getting a lot of death threats guys, and that's bad!" As if the fact that they're getting death threats somehow absolves them of at least some of the guilt of whatever it is that made the apology necessary in the first place. As if it means they're the real victims here.

Apparently Dropout decided to just skip the "ChatGPT apology" part and jump straight to the "We're getting physcal and legal threats" part. Followed up with them once again saying they support Palestiniens and ending it with "We reject antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of bigotry, and welcome all to our platform who treat others with respect, empathy, and human dignity."

And they did it on Twitter, and only Twitter. You know, the website that's notoriously overrun by Nazis. Nothing on Tumblr or Instagram, where the original statement that sparked all of this (which has since been taken down) were posted.

@dropoutdottv, @samreich, this is not listening to the Jewish members of your community who are speaking out about antisemitism. This is reinforcing the antisemitism that those Jewish members of the community are speaking out about. Because what this Tweet does is paint everyone who spoke out against the antisemitism in your original post with the same brush as the people who were sending you threats.

Which, let me be clear, they should not have been doing and I wholeheartedly condemn.

But the actions of the people sending you threats of violence and threats of legal action do not invalidate the things being said by the people who haven't threatened you with anything worse than a boycott. I have literally seen people say "the fact that they got threats just proves they were right." Is that the outcome you were trying to achieve with this?

People who did bad things get death threats all the time; refer back to the beginning of this post. Does that make their critics wrong then, too? Or is it only now, when the accusation being made is that a nerdy comedy network beloved by people on the left did an antisemitism?

I honestly can't tell if you have no publicist helping you out with one, a bad publicist that needs to give you your money back, or an evil genius publicist that knew that if you made a post like this one, it would distract from the fact that you're being accused of antisemitism, maybe even act as a dog whistle to to paint anyone who accuses you of being antisemitic of being "Zionists" (meant in the derogatory way, where people claim they're only talking about people who uncritically support the Israeli government and their actions in Gaza, but then in practice will use it against anyone who believes Israel has the right to exist, including those who want a two state solution, whose hearts break for the people in Palestine, and call Netanyahu a fascist and probably want him gone more than even the people calling them "zionists" do). Maybe even make up for all of the subscriptions you're losing over this and even gain a few by catering to the antisemitic leftist crowd.

Is that really the kind of culture you want to cultivate? If not, then do better. Acknowledge the Jewish voices that are speaking out. Listen to them. And do it in a way that doesn't bring up any other marginalized group. Because like...fuck, man, I reject Islamophobia, and all forms of bigotry too. And I'm sorry you guys are receiving threats; that truly does suck and I hope everyone that works for you guys are staying safe.

But you're specifically being accused of antisemitism. Can you really not reject it all on its own without including other forms of bigotry in the same statement?

And do it on a platform that *isn't* run by an infamous antisemitic, and overrun by more antisemitics? (You can turn off comments and reblogs on Tumblr and comments on instagram, in the same way you disabled replies on your Tweet, you know.)

Here, I'll even write the statement for you: "Earlier this week, we made a statement regarding accusations that Dropout was platforming zionists. At the time, we made a statement focusing on our support of the Palestinian people. We stand by this statement. However, we have received feedback from several members of our community that some of the things that we said were inappropriate insensitive to the Jewish people. "Zionist" and "Zionism" mean different things to different people, ranging from "people who support the Israeli government's actions in Gaza" to "people who believe that Israel has a right to exist and the Jewish people have the right to self-determination." We had meant it in the context of the former definition, but we understand that many Jewish people identify with the later, including many people who are disgusted by the Israeli government's actions in Gaza, and we should have been more sensitive to this fact. Additionally, we would like to reiterate that, to our knowledge, nobody who has appeared on Dropout has openly stated support for the Israelie's actions in Gaza, and several of those accused have voiced their support for a free Palestine. We would like to take this moment to remind everyone that just because a person is Jewish, and may have ties to Israel, does not inherently mean they condone the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza, and to suggest otherwise is antisemitic. We at Dropout reject all forms of antisemitism and are committed to providing a safe space to everyone regardless of religion or ethnic background. We apologize if we made the Jewish members of our community feel like that was not the case."

See how easy that was? I feel something like this is the bear minimum, and if you had said the things in the last three paragraphs from the start, you could have avoided having to say everything in the first two paragraphs and the apology at the end.

That's...pretty much everything I have to say on the matter. To anyone reading this: Do not use other Jewish people to silence Jewish voices.

Do not use people of other marginalized groups to silence Jewish voices.

Just...maybe just listen to what we have to say without twisting our words and putting words in our mouths? Maybe?

Thanks for reading.

I'm so tired.

[princessg3rard]

monsters as representation?

oh my god oh my god yes !! an opportunity to yap about it like I didn’t get my matriculation in english for a yapping paper on it !!

so what I mean by that short phrase is more along the lines of “how monsters are used to represent capital o Others in media (and how creators use them to represent themselves/parts of themselves in the story)”. for example, for my matriculation project, I did a deep dive specifically on dracula, and how bram stoker used the relationship between van helsing and dracula (and dracula himself) as an allegory to his relationship with oscar wilde (long story short, wilde and stoker became “very close inseparable friends” during their years in uni, and dracula was published shortly after wilde’s trial for homosexuality).

queer-coding specifically for monsters/villains is so big to me. like there was 0 plot reasons for fritz and victor frankenstein to be living together and acting like a married couple (not to mention the monster being their shared child). and why are they queer-coded ?? because the monster needs to represent the anti-normal. if the hero is a representative for “normal society” (i.e white (but not immigrant), christian, cishet, etc etc), than the monster, by default, is everything the hero isn’t (i.e queer, immigrant, jewish (they were quite big on the jewish thing), nonconforming (could be by clothing, behaviour, or just as being a straight up monster), etc etc).

for a lot of “not normal” creators, the monsters were used to represent some “abnormal” part of themselves. if you get to pick and choose your monsters, why not make them like yourself ?? the world hates that part of your identity anyways, so why not let it shine (and do your best to make it sympathetic or understandable while you’re at it). maybe you can let the hero be captured, and the villain/monster gets to explain themself, and you can make them hate the heavily *insert societal deviation here* coded villain. or, you could go the stoker way, and outright vilify beyond redemption the HEAVILY heavily coded monster you created, to distance yourself from that “abnormal” part of you. maybe even make them part of a species which is an active threat and needs to be violently exterminated (yea he had… issues).

fuck anon, I could yap about this shit for DAYS. I could talk about how different adaptations lean into different kinds of “other” for the same story (easiest example: book dracula is heavily queercoded, while 1931 movie dracula is more immigrant coded (in big part thanks to bela lugosi, the actor who plays him, and who was and immigrant himself - and used his natural accent for the role)), or about the way that coding was used specifically during the “hays code” years, or about literally a million more subtopics of this.

I kinda wish I still had that paper fr I wrote so much in it and im very proud of the way I made my violently queerphobic teacher grade it a 95% :3 for now y’all have to deal with a less coherent but still incredibly excited yapping :)

but like… lmk !! are y’all interested in me informing like that ?? bc believe me, it’s very fun for me, but like… do y’all like that ?? :3

[barbod-blog-assignments]

Blog Post #1

To begin, I have found this class about black horror to be eye opening in more ways than I thought it would. In all honesty, I didn't acknowledge that "black horror" was a genre prior to this course. I knew about films like “Get Out”, but never really thought about how deep the genre truly goes, or how horror in terms of race can tell a story much more than just fear. Now I am able to connect how it reflects some real life horrors that black people face daily. 

As one of our first impressions, the message of “Get Out” definitely stood with me. I had previously watched it myself for entertainment, but with the new insight, rewatching it made so many of those aspects come to light that I had not caught the first time around. An example could be the microaggressions being thrown at the protagonist Chris throughout the movie. I found it to be one of those moments when all the other characters are trying to be really "woke" or progressive when really it comes off as condescending or creepy. The theme is evident through the unsettling environment that arises during something as simple as meeting his own girlfriend's parents. However, what really amazed me was how the movie is scary without relying on jump scares or gore. The horror here is something more psychologically founded, and something rooted in the real life racial dynamics, highlighting the harsh reality blacks are faced with sometimes.

Another work included so far in this course that got me thinking was "Wake" by Bree Newsome. I knew of Newsome through her activism, but wasn’t aware she had creative work in the genre of horror. "Wake" was more subtle and eerie in nature compared to “Get Out”, but felt powerful in its own way. I thought one of the great things about it was the way that it played with ancestral trauma and how spirits of the past haunted the present. This made me realize that black horror isn't all about dealing with racism in a current sense but more reminiscing about the history of slavery and oppression and how those things still linger today. I felt the supernatural elements in "Wake" were somehow a metaphor for how the past is always with us, especially for marginalized communities.

The material thus far has been filled with surprises, but something that really shocked me was learning more about the roots of black horror and how often it's tied to historical events and experiences. I had just assumed that horror in general was for entertainment, but now I realize how it can be a form of resistance and storytelling mainly by black creators. I find it amazing how it gives a voice to radiate fears and experiences that aren't always represented in mainstream media. Although it’s unfortunate that these fears and experiences exist to begin with, it is beneficial to at least be able to spread awareness through something as valuable as film.

While I personally have never experienced any of the works discussed specifically, I feel as though the entire idea behind being "othered" or out of place, similar to how Chris does in “Get Out”, is something most individuals can understand on some level. Although I am not of African American descent, this theme resonates with me due to my own Persian Jewish heritage and the creative depictions represented within this genre. These include themes of feeling left out or having some sort of traumatic history which lingers across generations that reminded me of my own cultural background. Growing up in a minority group with known persecution, I often feel the struggles of history on identity, whether it's through stories of survival or cultural expectations placed on me due to being targeted in many ways. This was predominantly true during my first years in America as an immigrant but still remains an issue today. Through a religious aspect, I believe politics significantly influences others' perception of my identity and even more nowadays due to the present condition of the world. The viewing of “Get Out” and “Wake” made me contemplate how horror, in its core, can be used to explain those sensations of disconnection and difference that I have been experiencing myself while navigating the reality of both Persian and Jewish identities. It's not the same, but the racial dynamics of black horror do run parallel in the sense that I am always aware I belong to a marginalized group and history is always a part of my present reality. These works have certainly exposed me to an entirely different genre, and it made me think more critically about what horror is, especially in relation to race and identity.

[rainofaugustsith]

Okay so that post about phylacteries.  I don’t know the OP, I don’t know their intentions, and if they’re pretending to be Jewish - please don’t pretend to be something you’re not. Full disclosure here for myself: have both Christian and Jewish heritage, was allowed to choose, went Reform, have gone back and forth on how I identify, have spent much of my adulthood immersed in Jewish organizations, but missed out on Hebrew school and a bat mitzvah (I’m on the fence about doing it as an adult). 

The premise of the post is that the term ‘phylactery’ that has a specific meaning in Dungeons & Dragons is a term appropriated from Judaism, referring to the small boxes of scripture that Jewish men wear on their arms and head while praying. The other premise was that this was deliberate anti-Semitism on the part of D&D to keep out Jewish players.  People were biting back saying that the OP was a fraud and that the term is Tefillin, and everybody knows that.  So, here’s the thing.  The item is referred to as Tefillin, and I have never heard anyone refer to it in any other way. You will mostly see Orthodox men wearing them to prayer, although that certainly isn’t exclusively an Orthodox action.  However, phylactery very much is another term for Tefillin that appears in respected Jewish reference material. Even if the word is now obsolete, that was not just pulled out of thin air.  http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/12125-phylacteries https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-oral-law-talmud-and-mishna And, the phylacteries in D&D are described in ways that make it clear that this is not necessarily an unconscious appropriation. The Phylactery of Faithfulness, for instance, is specifically described as a small box containing religious scripture affixed to a leather cord and tied about the head.  Like Tefillin.  Phylactery of Faithfulness:  This item is a small box containing religious scripture affixed to a leather cord and tied around the forehead. There is no mundane way to determine what function this religious item performs until it is worn. https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Phylactery_of_Faithfulness Dungeons & Dragons also appropriates Golems. Golems have a very strong history in Judaism. And they appear in some Jewish literature in the middle ages specifically as protectors and helpers. Not necessarily benign ones, but still.   https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-golem https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/golem Do I think these words and concepts were taken as deliberate anti-Semitism? No, actually. Do I think they were appropriated and used negatively and that some subconscious or covert anti-Semitism may have gone into it? Absolutely because people carry those stereotypes without even considering them. Does it make me uncomfortable to see a book mentioning a Golem with that exact terminology, or to see something that resembles Tefillin described as blood magic, which was what Jews were accused of in the Middle Ages? Yes.  Fantasy and science fiction creators have a very long history of appropriating, distorting and abusing customs, religious practices and cultures from non-Western, non-Christian populations.  This doesn’t just happen to Jews. But it does happen and it often helps perpetuate negative stereotypes.  I love Star Wars. But they’ve lifted so much it’s not funny. In Star Wars, the Sith are seen as being terrabad, to the point where in The Rise of Skywalker it’s forbidden to write or speak Sith. And then if you look back into the lore you find that the Sith were subjected to millennia of repeated acts of genocide, attacks on their home worlds and deliberate attempts to completely erase their culture. Would you like to know where the Common Sith alphabet comes from? Let me help you out with that.  You can’t even pretend this wasn’t taken from Hebrew because they didn’t even bother to change some of the sounds. Look at Zayin, He, Bet, Shin, and Dalet for example vs. the Sith letters that have similar sounds. 

The bottom line is that words that refer to Jewish religious objects have been appropriated by D&D and many other works of literature and film, and it’s not wrong to point it out, describe how it’s being used and raise objections to it. And it’s not drama for someone with Jewish heritage to feel uncomfortable about it. 

[tangledbea]

Hi. I enjoy TTS and other Disney shows and movies, but I’m also Jewish, and I know that Walt Disney was an Anti Semite. So I don’t know if supporting Disney and watching Disney shows is the right thing to do. I’m sure there are plenty of people who work at Disney who are not Anti Semites and I’m sue plenty of Jews work there too, but I can’t help but feel uncomfortable supporting and promoting Disney shows that come from a company associated with an Anti Semite and Mysogynist.

I know Walt Disney being anti-Semitic is a common belief, but from my research into things, he was not.

“There is zero hard evidence that Disney ever wrote or said anything anti-Semitic in private or public,” according to Douglas Brode, author of Multiculturalism and the Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney Entertainment. Brode told The Hollywood Reporter that Disney used more Jewish actors “than any other studio of Hollywood’s golden age, including those run by Jewish movie moguls.”

Gabler also revealed that Disney “frequently” made unpublicized donations to a variety of Jewish charities, including a Jewish orphanage, a Jewish old age home, Yeshiva College (precursor to Yeshiva University), and the American League for a Free Palestine. The League, better known as the Bergson Group, publicly supported the armed revolt against the British in Palestine by Menachem Begin’s Irgun Zvai Leumi. Disney was embracing not just Zionism, but its most militant wing.

From what I understand, the allegations got started because of his association with the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, or MPA for short. This group's primary focus was to prevent “Communist, Fascist, and other totalitarian-minded groups” from gaining a foothold in Hollywood. However, the MPA did have members who were anti-Semitic, and the cultural puritanism that is rampant on Tumblr now is not the first time that sentiment has been spread. People have often assumed that association with was the same as holding identical ideals.

Walt Disney was not the greatest human being to ever walk the planet - he was human, after all, and that includes the good and the bad - but in a lot of ways, he wasn't nearly as bad as nearly 100 years of publicity has made him out to be. He was certainly a rich white man with a lot of clout, and he didn't like being questioned, so that clout was sometimes misused, but he was hardly the devil.

Nowadays, the corporation itself is so much more questionable, in my mind, than the man himself was. They own far too much property and have far too much political influence for what is primarily a media enterprise. I adore and support the artists who create the works I like so much - Jews, women, LGBTQ+ individuals, POC, etc - and support their fight to make Disney a corporation that does not just accept, but embraces all these facets, and pays its workers with a living wage. It's not hard to find people who would tell you not to support them because of their recent history, rather than the questionable history and practices of the founder.

Whether or not you choose to continue to support Disney in any respect (and good luck weeding absolutely everything Disney owns out of your life, should you choose not to) is entirely up to you. I cannot tell you what to do or not do. But, unless you intend to do the same amount of research into literally everything else you consume in order to avoid any and all companies that have any questionable people, practices, or thoughts in their entire history, then I think you might by honing in on Disney just because of the spotlight. A spotlight, which I might remind you, wasn't even rightfully shone. In the recent walk-out related to "Don't Say Gay," Dana Terrace (creator of The Owl House) requested specifically that people pirate episodes of her show for a few weeks. Doing so, in her mind, supports the artists without supporting the company.

[thelunastusco]

So, disclaimer:

We're white-bodied, disabled, and trans masc. Jewish and Romani ancestry, but our recent family decided to become Christian and get rid of all the family history, lmao. :') We're a large adaptive + protogenic system with DID, mostly fictives, and we've been a system for over 30 years.

So that's where we're coming from when we address this post we came across. This is gonna get long, so screenshot and our thoughts under the read-more.

Transcript:

1. I am a system host and a fictive myself. I've existed for about 12 years at this point and I'm fully aware that fictives are people who are more than just our source characters. I am in no way blaming Hazbin fictives for their own existence, and I don't think they are inherently bad people. 2. I do agree that people, in general, systems or not, fictive-heavy or not, have a responsibility to avoid watching/reading stories that will harm them. You are right that if it were coming from a singlet, my specifically addressing systems would come across as condescending and unfair. I apologize for this, I didn't provide context in my kinfession so I don't blame anyone for being rubbed the wrong way by it. 3. Specifically, as a Jewish person the continued popularity of things like Hazbin, Hetalia, and Attack on Titan makes me feel upset and unsafe. Even though I've blacklisted the tags for Hazbin, seeing that the posts exist makes me frustrated and irritated. When you have a fictive from something, it becomes very difficult to ever completely stop talking about it, and then when you make friends, it makes them curious about your source material, and it makes it spread further and further. So even though I don't blame Hazbin fictives for existing, if it weren't for people watching Hazbin, they probably would have split as either a non-fictive alter or as a fictive from something else, and I wouldn't have to see yet another antisemitic cartoon become the current hot topic. To amend my original statement, I will say: Nobody at all should be watching Hazbin Hotel regardless of whether they're singlet or plural, kin or non-kin, etc. BUT people who split fictives easily should be especially careful to avoid it. The end. Sorry MPC for the drama.

... It's hard to know where to start, so we'll get the financial/material aspects out of the way, first.

Yes, Hazbin Hotel has issues. The creator has said things that aren't great, to put it mildly. There are definitely problematic aspects in the show itself. Some of the arguments brought against Vivz are asinine ("oh she wrote problematic characters and supports gross ships so she's terrible!" for example), but some seem to be valid, like her use of Vodou symbols, potentially antisemitic character designs, and seemingly anti-trans masc sentiments.

Now, we're not knowledgeable enough to address any of these things. (And some things, like the anti trans masc stuff, could be exaggerated or faked. It's hard to know just based on discord screenshots, since anyone can change their pfp and their nickname.) We have seen people who are take either side of the argument-- that it's fine, that it's not fine, etc. Minorities aren't a monolith. That's as far as we can speak on that.

What we do feel comfortable addressing is the idea that kin-prone or fictive-prone systems shouldn't watch canon sources that are (a) created by a problematic person, or (b) are problematic in nature.

We're reminded distinctly of the HP and JKR issue. Now, we read and watched HP growing up. We have fictives from there. We were massively upset when we realized how bigoted JKR is, and how many bigoted sentiments exist in HP itself. So, what do you do when something like that comes to light?

Don't engage with the source at all in any way, shape, or form, and distance yourself/ves from people who do.

If you already have engaged with the source in the past, stop, and don't engage with anything new.

Yo-ho-ho everything and/or only purchase secondhand, and if you want merch, only pick up merch from secondhand/fanmade sources that don't line the creator's pockets.

Any and all of these are valid responses, in our eyes. The goal isn't, to us, to never engage with problematic sources-- it's to avoid lining the pockets of bigoted creators who create sources that further their bigoted ideas.

Is this necessary with Vivz and HH/HB? That's up to you to decide. It definitely is, to us, with JKR and her works because she is flat-out a bigot, who is using the money she makes to fund hate groups. But Vivz? She's a bisexual Salvadoran-American, who employs queer folks to work on her massively queer-centric universe. That doesn't mean she's a good person or good boss, it doesn't mean she isn't doing shit wrong, but at the same time, we don't feel the same level of disgust over knowing people engage with HH/HB + buy merch for it.

If you do? Okay, then that's your choice, and we do support people not buying official merch and sailing the seas if they want to see the source without giving money to the creator.

But blanket-statements implying that people are causing intrinsic harm by watching HH at all and that people should feel bad if they do, because it's causing harm to vulnerable groups, (a) ignores people from those vulnerable groups who are okay with it or find value in it, which does matter, (b) ignores the real issue inherent in bigoted media/creators, which is them getting financial support, and (c) ignores the fact that people can in fact engage with a problematic source while understanding the aspects that are problematic, and having a full, healthy discussion about those aspects while also enjoying the "good parts" of the source.

Sometimes it's just not possible to engage with a media source legally without giving money to bigots, but that isn't the same as saying "no one should ever watch this or enjoy it at all, ever".

Hazbin is one of the first adult-oriented cartoons to feature an almost purely queer case of characters. (And the "token straight" is very kinky.) It is also a show that involves messy queers and situations that are serious, troubling, toxic, etc, which is something that is harder and harder to find in a social setting that is becoming increasingly sanitized/puritanical. On top of all that, the message it promotes-- that it's never too late, you still have time, you can still change and become better, and even shitty people don't deserve to be extrajudicially murdered-- is a fucking needed one.

Does that make up for the "bad parts"? Or the fact that Vivz might be an asshole? Idk, that's up to you. But unless we get proof that Vivz is funneling profits to organizations that want to kill minorities or trans people or something, we personally are gonna say it's at everyone's personal discretion. (And even then, if you wanna fly the jolly roger and see it anyways, that's your choice.)

Shifting focus away from "hey we should be aware of problematic elements in fiction and be able to discuss them" and "we should find ways to not support bigoted creators even if we continue to enjoy their works" to "this is wholly bad and if you even so much as look at it, you're doing something bad" is not a great thing for fandom, for media literacy as a whole, or for fictionkin/fictive communities.

Which brings us to the point of, you can say you don't blame HH fictives for existing, but the minute you follow that up with "when you have a fictive from something, it becomes very difficult to ever completely stop talking about it, and then when you make friends, it makes them curious about your source material, and it makes it spread further and further" ... you're putting the onus on fictionkin and fictives. You might not be blaming them for existing, but you're still blaming them for any further harm (perceived or actual) that comes from their existence. And that isn't okay.

We have HH fictives, and fictives who ended up with HH kintypes. Watching HH didn't harm us. As CSA and SA survivors, and queer + trans folks in general who are older and have a messy fucking life, it actually was comforting and helped us. A lot. We can still point to things that aren't great about the show, we can still side-eye the creator and line their pockets as little as possible, but we're not bad people for watching the show. We're not bad people for having those kin/fictive connections. And if our existence makes people curious about HH, that doesn't make us bad, either.

What would be bad is if we completely ignored any of the issues the show or creator has, and just cheerfully bounce along without addressing those issues. (If it comes up/is relevant-- you don't constantly have to lambast the fiction you enjoy to make sure people know that you know how ~problematic~ it is.)

It's not our responsibility to police people's fiction consumption habits. Again, using HP and JKR as an example, we can share why we won't purchase anything that benefits JKR and what she's said/done that is harmful. We still can't stop people from engaging with HP. If we can convince people to obtain the books/movies/games and enjoying without JKR profiting, and if we can educate people on why she sucks and about the bigoted aspects of HP, to us that's a win. The point isn't to keep people away from a media source, so much as it is to keep bigoted creators from profiting and to help people understand the bigoted angles.

Our responsibility begins and ends with making people aware of bigotry that is getting people harmed or killed. If people read or watch a "problematic" series because of our fictives or kintypes, we didn't fail. We weren't "irresponsible". If people watch a "problematic" series because of our fictives or kintypes and then goes on to whole-heartedly support the creator and gloss over all the troubling or bigoted aspects of the series, then we've failed. The consumption of the thing isn't the fucking problem.

And--

Regardless of context, it's still incredible nasty to say "well it's not your fault for existing, but your existence is promoting something harmful, and if you'd never existed at all then you wouldn't be causing more harm". It's not the fault of fictionkin or fictives for existing, end of sentence. No ifs, and, buts. Most people can't help what kintypes they have, most systems can't help what fictives they pick up. Full stop. Blaming them for something they can't help, and shouldn't be trying to police to begin with, is not okay.

If a series makes you feel unsafe, stop engaging with it. Explain to people why it makes you feel unsafe. Distance yourself/ves from people who continue to engage. These are all things that are your right to do. It is not your right to turn around and blame kinfolk or fictives for perpetuating harm (real or perceived) because oh, well someone might get curious about their source and go look at it. That is deeply unfair.

It also also incredibly bizarre to say that, were it not for your system engaging with the source, you-- the fictives from that source-- "probably would have split as either a non-fictive alter or as a fictive from something else". Maybe that's how it works for some systems, but (a) that makes no sense for fictionkin, and (b) does not work for all systems.

We, personally, don't "split" fictives at all. They simply show up because we engage with a source, and our brain goes "oh hey they'd be useful for something". Or, sometimes, "they remind us of ourselves or someone already here and oops we felt sympathy too hard and now they're here". So, sure, if we never watched or heard anything about HH, maybe we wouldn't have kintypes or fictives from there. (Hard to say, because we don't always even need to watch a source for this to happen.) But they wouldn't be here at all. Not as a non-fictive, not as a fictive from something else. They simply wouldn't exist.

(EDIT: Adding in that, also, for some systems... they get fictives before they're even aware of the fictive's source. Is it more rare? Maybe. But it happens. We ourselves have at least one fictive who had an appearance, voice, and full personality formed until we stumbled across his source years later. The source hadn't even existed when he arrived, lmao. What do you do when you get fictives before their source even exists here.)

And for us, in some cases-- not just HH, but other sources-- that would be a disaster. Some of our strongest, more reliable and helpful system members come from "problematic" sources. Our HP fictives kept us alive during our teen years. For some system members who are also fictionkin of "problematic" sources, their kinshifts kept them safe and stable when they otherwise wouldn't have been.

And you know what? For as much as we understand how a series can be upsetting and make people feel unsafe-- that's how we feel about South Park and South Park fans, lmao-- we'd rather have picked up a kintype or fictive from a potentially problematic source than have ended up dead or worse off mentally because we lacked someone who (in that timeframe or beyond) could have helped but didn't exist. And we extend that to other people. Including kintypes and fictives from sources we find terrible.

Furthermore, the sentiment that "even though I don't blame Hazbin fictives for existing, if ... they probably would have split as either a non-fictive alter or as a fictive from something else ... I wouldn't have to see yet another antisemitic cartoon become the current hot topic" is blame-and-shamey as fuck, and you won't change our minds on that. Even if we otherwise agreed about the potential harm of the series.

HH would have existed without fictionkin and without fictives. It would have, and has, become popular without them. It is not the fault of fictionkin and fictives. If you don't blame HH fictives for existing, then you can fucking end the sentence there. Adding a "but" or "except" onto the end of it is putting the blame on them.

And as a system that is 100% queer, seeing people boiling an overwhelmingly queer and kink-friendly show (with a key message of redemption and steep slant against corporal punishment, "from the evil to the strange") down to "icky cartoon that shouldn't exist" leaves one massively bitter taste in our mouth. Even if we didn't have HH fictionkin and fictives.

tl;dr,

You can discuss the harmful aspects of a series, or attitude of the creator, without demanding people never interact with the series at all and shaming kinfolks/fictives for the creation + popularity of the series.

"If you get fictives easily, don't get involved with this source media because it's problematic" has to be one of the most wild takes we've seen in a while.

Thoughts being put together, will expand more on this later.

[batsandbarrels]

This is generally a discourse free blog. I don’t tolerate that shit and I don’t care about what strangers on the internet think of me, my friends, or anything that I do.

But this shit about Knifetrick? It’s gone too far. People who are going around attacking Relaxxattack and accusing them of bl—d libel? Go fuck yourself.

Have fun with your imaginary woke points that you award to yourself every time you accuse people of bullshit like this. You seriously need to go touch some grass and get off Twitter and tumblr until you are capable of behaving like an actual human being.

It doesn’t matter if you thought it wouldn’t get any attention. You still did it and you still hurt someone. Your intent at the time does not matter.

I’m not here to debate whether or not what Relaxxattack wrote came off as bl—d libel. I personally haven’t read the fic and now I won’t get the chance. What I am talking about is the inexcusable behavior of the accusers.

“Well Jewish people were uncomfortable when they read it.” What Jewish people? And why didn’t they tell the author that it was uncomfortable instead of launching a public smear campaign? There were so many better ways to go about addressing any concerns you might have had but instead you send anon hate and attack the author publicly.

On top of this, there’s the whole thing about ‘breaking boundaries’. I’ve kept my mouth shut for a long time about this but I’m done.

Content creators are not different from any other celebrities. They are not your friends and you don’t need to ‘look out for them’ via enforcing ‘boundaries’.

If people could tag their content properly so it could be filtered out by people who don’t want to see it, then it wouldn’t be as much as an issue. Don’t want to see shipping content? Block the shipping tag! Don’t want to see gore? Block the gore tag! Don’t want to see a specific character? Block the character tag!

But because of how much harassment goes in in this fandom, people are not tagging things like they should. A03 is a mess. So is tumblr. People do not tag characters or sometimes even the fandom in fics to avoid being crucified for stuff that is normal in fandom.

Shipping is normal and anyone outside this fandom looking in is completely bewildered by the crazy Puritan reaction to even the hint of /R. Something about the demonization of romantic relationships in this fandom stinks of internalized homophobia.

Again, CCs are not your friends. If they’re old enough to be on the internet, they’re old enough to curate their own online experience just like everyone else. They’re not special.

[afledglings-guideto-witchcraft]

Aleister Crowley

And why he's a douche bag.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Antisemitism, sex magic, racism, sexism/misogyny and cultural appropriation.

Born Edward Alexander Crowley on October 12, 1875 he grew up to found Thelema (an esoteric and occult social or spiritual philosophy and new religious movement), he was also a poet, painter, novelist and mountaineer.

He was the creator of the Thoth Tarot, popularized sex magic, the "black arts" and popularized the spelling of Magick rather than Magic.

However what you might not have known is that Crowley was also an anti-semitic, an appropriator, a bigot, a misogynist, a racist and a sexist. He also spread misinformation and faked his own death. He even claimed to be a prophet that would lead human kind through the Aeon of Horus.

Crowley was a huge antsemetic and yet he appropriated the Kabbalah. The Kabbalah should only be practiced by Rabbis or Jewish people who know what they're doing, which Crowley was neither of.

Crowley's 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings is just an assortment of papers that he wrote that takes the teachings of the Kabbalah and bastardizes them into his own version of what they really are.

A misogynist and sexist, Crowley claimed to be a bisexual and while most bisexuals may have one preferance over another and this lines with how Crowley preferred women to men, he was extremely misogynistic to the women he dated and had sexual intercourse with.

He would say that women were 'morally inferior' and 'secondary social beings in terms of intellect and sensibility'. Some people believe that this behavior of women was because of his relationship with his mother but that should not have excused his behavior.

A racist, here are a few things that Crowley had to say about certain race groups.

About the Chinese: “One cannot fraternize with the Chinese of the lower classes; one must treat them with absolute contempt and callousness“ and "The Chinese does not respect the white man as the Indian does — for his possession of high moral qualities.“ 

About Mexicans: “Neither the coyotes nor the turkey-buzzards will touch a dead Mexican. His flesh has been too thoroughly impregnated with chillies and other pungent condiments.”

About Blacks:  “Where Islam and Christianity meet in open competition, as in some parts of Africa, it is found that only the lowest type of Negro, such as is accustomed to arrange matters with conscience by hanging a rag on a piece of stick, accepts Christianity”

About Indians:  “I am not fond of Benaglis at the best and he as the worst specimen of his race I have ever seen. He was fat and oily, with small piglike treacherous eyes.”

As you can see, Crowley was a huge douche bag, he was very opinionated on these specific topics and should not be supported even if he has been dead for 76 years. While he did live in another time period where racism was allowed and openky discussed as if they were discussing the weather, it is now the 21st century and that kind of behavior is no longer tolerated.

[keyofjetwolf]

We’re All Just Guys

Well it took the entire fucking season, but I FINALLY get the purpose for Henry Fondle: Sex Robot. And while the entire episode (and season, honestly) has been tremendous, that this ridiculous fucking punchline was the vehicle to deliver the overarching point with a solid knockout punch of meaning AND pathos? Absolutely floored. That BoJack Horseman can be (and often is) brilliant isn’t a surprise, but the ways is keeps proving it often are.

So “The Stopped Show”, a tale of accountability and responsibility and how we’re all just guys.

Each of our main characters closes out this season alone (sort of), in assorted stages of realizing the main themes, or completely failing to. I find Diane’s arc the hardest for me to make a decision on, which isn’t surprising, as I think in many ways, Diane’s the most complicated character in the show. She delivers, directly and succinctly, one of the major points of not just this season but the entire show, but how does it relate to her? I’M NOT COMPLETELY SURE. I think part of the problem with (and for) Diane is that she knows better. She’s the most insightful character, she has a fantastic head on her shoulders, but only for everyone else. She’s this fucked up little disaster prophet, her vision clear and her message concise, unable to ever apply her gifts to fix herself.

Diane is just as trapped as BoJack, but in a fun twist, is now lagging behind him in trying to do something about it. Nearly every single scene with Diane this season has been in this sad little room of her sad little apartment with all her sad little unpacked boxes, and no matter how much truth and wisdom she spits out, HERE SHE STILL IS, failing to correctly assemble IKEA furniture with names like Bȧcksleid. She already feels like shit for sleeping with Mr. Peanutbutter, so what does she do? THE SAME FUCKING THING. To which I groan and roll my eyes, while simultaneously being proud of her for directly and immediately setting him straight about not getting back together. Diane rides this constant line where she gets it but also doesn’t, which is so interesting to me in the level of additional frustration this makes me feel. BoJack is so self-absorbed you don’t really expect any better of him, which has the flip side of your expectations being so low that even the whiff of progress feels exceptional. Diane doesn’t come with any of that though, she knows better, you KNOW she knows better, and the consequence of this for the audience is that she winds up being more unlikeable than the guy who literally last episode nearly strangled his girlfriend and co-star in the middle of a paranoid drug-induced frenzy.

Which is fucked up! It’s intensely fucked up! And also, I think, the point! We expect more of Diane, and so feel more disappointed when she doesn’t deliver. Is that fair of us?

But there’s more here, as we pivot to the accountability portion of this episode/season. From the beginning of the show, it’s been incredibly upfront about how everything is unfair. We come back to this time and again. Privilege rules the day in the world of Hollywoo. Fame, money, charisma, gender, power. BoJack has been an asshole from pretty much the moment he set foot in the spotlight (possibly before?), and the only thing ever even attempting to hold him back has been the moments his guilt manages to scream loud enough to be heard over his internal narrative. Whatever he does, however he fucks up, he always stumbles back to his feet, and NEVER with any (broad scale) consequences. Meanwhile, here’s Diane, in her sad shitty apartment. Consequences haunt Diane, even if she’s the one doing the haunting. The crap things she’s done and the shitty choices she’s made cling to her.

There’s no fairness in that either, no justice. But Hollywoo (and the entire world around it) (and our world too oh yes) has that privilege carved into its bones, and Diane bears none of its marks. Her situation is very different from but parallel to Gina, who is just so fucked over, it keeps legitimately making me angry for her.

Gina, of course, brought none of this on herself. She made the mistake of caring about BoJack and trying to help him. OOPS YOU WERE A GENEROUS PERSON WITH AN OPEN HEART FUCK YOU LADY. For her trouble, Gina has been assaulted and traumatized, AND she is in very real danger of her career being over when it’s only just finally beginning. And she KNOWS THIS. That’s the part that I keep coming back to. All this should be an aberration, an anomaly, and while that may be true of the specifics, conceptually, it’s so commonplace that Gina already knows how it’s going to play. She’ll stop being Gina and become The Woman Nearly Strangled To Death By BoJack Horseman. Even if she’s able to keep working, this is what she’ll be asked about in every interview forever. Even if she convinced people to genuinely listen to her, BoJack would, at worst, get a slap on the wrist as he stumbles back to his feet. We know that, WE ALL KNOW THAT, because it happens all. the. fucking. time. Gina did nothing wrong, but this would still define her for the rest of her life, while for BoJack, it would maybe become a footnote on his Wikipedia page.

Nothing about that is FAIR. Nothing about it is JUST. Gina’s choices shouldn’t have to be “this becomes my entire life” or “swallow this down and pretend it never happened”. But it is, as it has been in perpetuity for the victims of the privileged.

So then what can we do about it? Well that’s really the question, isn’t it? This episode answers it in an assortment of ways (I think the entire SHOW is very much about this, really, but this episode is for sure coming with guns blazing), while also showing us why none of those answers can work. It’s funny and sad and awful and true, but also, ultimately, the most hopeful answer because it’s the only one you can actually affect: It’s you. It’s me. It’s each and every one of us, individually, making a choice to be better.

And believe it or not, we embody this with Henry Fondle: Sex Robot.

I thought the whole thing was so unbelievably stupid. Half the season, we’ve had this goddamn multi-dildo’d juvenile frat boy joke running around with its stupid ass Speak-and-Say voice, doing the same shtick over and over, and I’m like, “okay this is just the shit I have to put up with to get the clever stuff, I guess.” BUT THAT’S EXACTLY THE POINT I’M SITTING THERE LIVING THE ENTIRE GODDAMN POINT AND MISSING IT. Henry Fondle: Sex Robot is seventeen shades of overt horribleness, AND WE ALL JUST GIVE IT A PASS. It’s just the way it is, the way the world works, the price of doing business. When the whole time -- THE ENTIRE FUCKING TIME -- all it took was one person to say no. One person who could see the game we all are playing and was willing to give up everything to stop it.

Hilariously, Henry Fondle IS a metaphor, sort of, but of the saddest kind. He is literally a robot, he can’t possibly change. What’s more, media fervor will never affect him, fallout will never touch him, and the powerful will always rally around themselves to retain their power. It takes Todd, the head of the company, the creator of Henry Fondle, and the one person who would benefit most from the unending efforts of the rest of the world bending over backwards to avoid the truth, to put a stop to it. In doing so, he immediately returns to his old, homeless, destitute self, but doesn’t once hesitate or look back.

It’s Todd, and only Todd, that stops that madness, because while individual people are a problem, the world at large is too. Stefani makes a great point that Diane holds herself and everyone else to impossible standards and a little forgiveness and grace wouldn’t go amiss, but when Diane suggests they apply that philosophy to their clickbait gossipy shit on their website, it’s just

Which again, is beautifully cynical and depressing, but not untrue. Fostering a more forgiving culture isn’t in stopping websites from posting clickbaity takedown articles, it’s each person deciding not to take the clickbait. We can absolutely have a conversation about the people creating their world or the world creating its people, but when you boil it down, only one of those things can you yourself absolutely and directly change, and it’s not the entire world.

A THING DIANE GETS BUT SIMULTANEOUSLY ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT.

I can’t take myself away from this Diane thing, I know, but only because she’s the fucking CORE of each and every one of us struggling with this idea. She’s the simplicity of it and the complication all in one. Not BoJack, which is NOT where I thought we’d be when we started this journey. BoJack is more an action on the people around him at this point in the story, he IS the world you cannot change. He’s pointed to rehab, and off he goes -- or doesn’t! I don’t think it’s coincidence that we stay with Diane and watch her watching him.

Oh, Diane, indeed. As she tells her story of her friend Abby, who threw her over for the cool kids, who turned every confidence into a scar. Who Diane still helped anyway, because Abby needed her. Did Abby learn from that, did she get better? We don’t know; we stay with Diane and watch her watching Abby. Diane, who can so completely understand about personal responsibility while failing to recognize her own enabling for the shitty things that keep happening to her.

You can control yourself. That’s it. That’s the only playground with a guarantee.

Will BoJack go off to learn that? Will Diane stay and figure it out?

THAT’S WHAT NEXT SEASON IS FOR

Something I was toying with including in this, but ultimately decided against for a variety of reasons, was the contrast between BoJack’s take on personal responsibility independent of external response, and The Good Place’s argument that people need external support for personal growth. An idea I may not have even considered contrasting save that Doc’s talked before about these two Jewish creators with what are clearly very different philosophies, and basically, if she were ever able to manage a discussion between them on this, I’d love to be in the room. I’ll be very quiet and not get in the way, I promise.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Journey with Joseph: Solidarity amid Uncertainty

A church invited me to preach for them on the first Sunday after Christmas -- and because I knew this church is composed mainly of white cishet folks who are pretty centrist in their views but open to learning, I decided to focus my sermon on Joseph as an ally (or co-conspirator)! I imagine Joseph as a powerful role model for those who strive to be in solidarity with marginalized communities to which they do not belong and whose experiences they can never fully understand. Let me know what you think :D

For the sermon transcript, go to this google doc.

And for more on the concept of Joseph as a role model for allies of trans folk in particular, check out my podcast episode 32, "A Queer Nativity: God's transition; Mary's trans-gressive yes; and Joseph's trans-formation into an ally.”

_______

Sermon Excerpt: 

When I hear of Joseph’s plans to cut things off with Mary after she goes against his expectations, what jumps to my mind is the myriad of stories I have heard from queer friends about reactions to their coming out. I have some such stories myself: loved ones who respond to our hopeful joy, our vulnerable news, with tears, anger, dismay.  “I feel like I don’t even know you anymore!” “If you follow this path, you aren’t welcome in my life.”  There is often the same sense of betrayal that Joseph must have felt. “How could you do this to me?!” parents or partners will demand...as if we have decided to be gay or trans or bi just to spite them, just to hurt them.  But the good news of our queerness is no more about them than the good news of Mary’s pregnancy was about Joseph -- it was news she longed to share with Joseph, to delight in with him…..but he felt he couldn’t be part of it. He did not believe her when she said it was all brought about by God.   He assumed God’s will was for him to cut her out of his life, to leave her by herself. But of course, God’s will isn’t always what we, any of us, assume it is.

As Reverend Tim vividly preached on a few weeks ago, God sends an angel to visit Joseph wrapped in the soft darkness of dreams. This holy messenger tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because her baby was conceived -- queerly enough -- not with any man involved but through the Holy Spirit. Mary is the faithful young woman he had known her to be -- this transformation does not change that. Indeed, she is as faithful as any a human could be -- daring to say yes to God even if it meant disgrace in the eyes of the world. 

What makes Mary extraordinary is that she is immediately on board with God’s plan -- after just a couple clarifying questions, she immediately sees and understands what role God is asking her to play in God’s revolution, an unfolding that will lift up those who like her are poor and oppressed and pull down the rich and powerful to the same level as everyone else. 

What makes Joseph extraordinary, meanwhile, is that when he incorrectly assumes the will of God, he is open to changing his mind. 

...I can only imagine how awkward and anxious he felt when he approached Mary to ask her if she would still have him, after what he’d said to her in response to her coming out, her good news. He likely admitted he still didn’t really understand, that he still had a lot of questions, but that he’d like to try, if she could find it in her to forgive him.

And Mary, being truly very full of grace, does welcome him back into her life. And from that day onward, Joseph is as good a partner as anyone could ask for!  

When his little family needs shelter, he knocks on every door in Bethlehem and will not be turned away until a stable is finally offered for them to crash in. When Mary is in the throes of labor pains with no midwife to be found, I imagine that Joseph scrambles to gather water, and clean straw, and he kneels beside her, lets her squeeze his hand till it hurts as she gives birth to the Creator of the Universe. 

And then the shepherds come to worship -- worship! -- the newborn infant that Joseph wiped the blood and gunk away from!  They worship Jesus, and Joseph wonders what on earth he’s gotten himself into -- but whatever it is, he is ride or die now. He is not going anywhere….

...Except, of course, to the temple! We’ve made it back around to today’s reading at last. Joseph is, above all else, a good Jew -- and that matters; that must be emphasized, in our own time that is still rife and rotten with antisemitism, where hate crimes against Jewish communities have risen yet again this month.

Joseph was a good Jew, above just about anything else we could say to describe him; the parents of Jesus Christ obeyed God’s instructions for their people as laid out in the Torah, and for them that meant ritual washing and sacrifices. Note one interesting point, however, about the ritual washing -- here’s the part in the Gospel reading: “When the days of their ritual washing were fulfilled according to the torah of Moses, Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.”

“The days of their ritual washing,” plural. Mary’s and Joseph’s washing, together. The Torah of Moses, specifically Leviticus 12, requires only the one who gave birth to ritually wash themself. But Joseph joins Mary in this ritual. Why?

Perhaps it’s a show of solidarity with Mary -- a way for Joseph to show that whatever she underwent, he would go through too. When she goes through the pain of childbirth, he is there to ease her along, providing shelter and a hand to squeeze. When she goes through her ritual washing, he joins her, because her needs are his needs, her faith is his faith. ...

[this-is-a-podcast-fanblog]

hey so - this reply was written by me! I want to expand on this point a little past 280 characters

(when I say podcasts in this essay I’m specifically talking about fiction podcasts)

Podcasts are perhaps the only medium that has absolutely no gatekeeping. Writing books and stories requires help from big publishing houses - even if you self-publish, you’ll need a corporation like Amazon to provide the books for you. I actually have self-published before and I can *assure* you that gatekeeping is still present. TV shows and movies are also created by high-budget studios who re-hire the same famous actors to tell the same stories, except the white boy and girl who fall in love have slightly different lines. 

But podcasts? No barriers. No boundaries. You can get a $30 mic from Amazon, make a free podbean account, and start uploading episodes literally the same day. Sure, for a really high-quality production, you’ll need to invest more time and money, but it’s very doable. 

As such, almost anyone can get into podcasts. It doesn’t matter what you look like, because no one can even see your face. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a fancy degree from a good school. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a huge marketing budget, because if you’re smart with social media and create good content, you can get people to pay *you* for airtime on your show. 

Because the creator pool can be so diverse, it is. And the stories it tells are even more diverse! Want a Jewish gay man of unspecified race in a relationship with a Latinx scientist on the spectrum, who live in a town governed by two black women and populated by literally countless queer characters? You’ve got it! Want a story about a black nonbinary lady with depression who falls in love with an Asian man, who, bonus points, is also a well-written feminine gay man? You get that too! Want a crew of astronauts with women in leadership roles who are well rounded past being just a “strong female character”? Sure thing! A lesbian trucker searching for her wife, and actually having a healthy relationship that isn’t at all fetishized? Podcasts have that! You want shows that *actually* cast queer, trans, and non-white actors? Yes!!! Most popular podcasts do that!! Did you hear that - the *most popular* podcasts are created with diverse acting and creating bodies!!!!!!!

and here’s the part where I get personal. I’m a non-straight woman (I alternate between using the labels “bisexual” “queer” ���homoflexible” and sometimes, because it’s quick and I’m mostly attracted to women and straight people don’t understand microlabels, “gay”) with several mental illnesses, including depression. The first podcast I ever listened to was Welcome to Night Vale. When Cecil and Carlos became a couple I almost wept. I had never, ever, had good queer representation in a show, much less two well-written characters I actually felt invested in. When they actually got married, I wept. I lay in my bed and cried for half an hour. I had never thought I would see a healthy gay couple in a show, ever. 

And then I found even more shows - shows like the ones I mentioned above. I found female characters. I found QUEER FEMALE CHARACTERS that I related to! And I found characters with depression written REALISTICALLY! I have never felt so seen!

I have so much love for podcast creators. One of my favorite things about this community is the allyship. People like Fink and Cranor, or the McElroy’s, who understand how important queer representation is, and provide it in abundance. People who validate, protect, and encourage their fans. Podcast fans keep podcast productions growing through Patreon or crowdfunding, and in return podcast creators... well, they rip our hearts out with emotions and eat them in front of us. But we love that!!!!

And this is why I’m so scared of podcasts becoming “mainstream”. Big corporations creating podcasts have nothing to gain from us except listenership. They’ll be sponsored by other large corporations, not fans or indie productions buying airspace. They can be “safe” when it comes to representation, and they probably will be. In short, they don’t have to create art. They can just create okay, nice enough stories. 

Podcasts are revolutionary. Do you know how many times I’ve seen a movie and said “that was a bad movie”? A shit ton of times! Do you know how many times I’ve listened to a podcast and thought “this is a bad podcast”? Never!! (Not fiction, at least - a bunch of “politics and current events” podcasts that I’ve tried turn my stomach). Even if the audio quality isn’t great, it’s always clear that the creators genuinely care about what they are making and the stories they’re telling and they’re not! Just! Adding! Representation! To be woke!

I genuinely might be dead right now if podcasts hadn’t come into my life. Welcome to Night Vale in particular - it has helped me fall asleep on nights when my intrusive thoughts felt like they were tearing me apart. It introduced me to this amazing medium and all the people who are a part of it. I don’t want to see this thing I love so much turned into a profit machine by capitalism. So I’m really, really nervous about podcasts becoming mainstream. 

TL;DR because the podcasting medium has essentially no gatekeeping, it can be very diverse, and it is. This has led to a great fan-creator dynamic of mutual support and created many positive examples of representation. If big studios and corporations are able to produce podcasts on large budgets with little consequence for a bad or boring story, they might drive the art form in a direction that makes it harder for smaller studios or indie creators to get into.

Please share your thoughts about this and also please follow my twitter. 

[babbushka]

Please read the whole thing ❤️

Hey everyone, Zannah here. 

I’ve taken some time and stepped away from this platform after all the drama that happened a month or so ago, and in that time I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Thank you all so much, for your kindness and support in allowing me to unplug for a little while, I really needed that break just for my own sanity. I hope that in this time, you all have been doing as well as you can in this very stressful year. I’d like to take this brief moment and thank my most dear friends who have been my rock. This experience has shown me that good friends, truthful friends, are hard to come by. If you have them, please make sure they know how much you love them.

You know, I’ve been on this platform for just about ten years. For a few of those years, I’ve been here in the AD community, and I can honestly say I’ve never had a more negative experience in my life, from the actions that I’ve witnessed and experienced. I stayed away from people I didn’t like, I didn’t read fic I didn’t like, I avoided content and artwork that upset me, because I’m an adult. And foolishly I was expecting others to do the same, because as I always say, your internet experience is up to you to cultivate. You are responsible for no one else’s actions other than your own.

I’ve dealt with people coming into my inbox condemning me for the way I interpret fictional characters from day one. I’ve dealt with people calling me slurs and names, telling me to kill myself, telling me they were going to kill me themselves, that I deserve awful unspeakable things, for not agreeing with the way that they interpret a fictional character. Those were all easy to ignore, because they were always, always either about my Jewishness, or about the Jewishness of my characters, and I have no time for bigots, I just don’t.  

People got angry with me for having boundaries in not wanting to write certain things, or for not wanting to write them in the specific way that they wanted me to. People got angry with me for being frustrated, that time and time again I was being treating as some writing machine and not a person, by them not giving me the basic respect of checking the small list of tropes and themes I’m uncomfortable writing which I’ve made so accessible every time. Time and time again I became frustrated, being asked questions that I’ve made clear on so many occasions, that I was uncomfortable answering, or held negative opinions of.

And that was frustrating, because it was a level of entitlement I’d never seen before – people wanted my writing, but only if it satisfied their needs with little regard to my own feelings, and called me a bully when I didn’t comply. Still, it was just about the writing, and I could ignore that.

But then, strangers started getting angry with me because I had blocked them for whatever reason from seeing my content. Strangers got angry with me for standing up for myself when people tried to pull stunts in the inbox. When people asked me for advice or my opinion on a whole assortment of topics, they said I was being a bully because they didn’t like what I had to say. A difference of opinion is not a personal attack, but it seems as though many people haven’t grasped that concept. People said I was betraying others’ trust by answering anonymous asks on the internet, something that has exactly 0 risk or stakes in sending. People said I was a bitch when I tried to offer genuinely constructive and critical responses. People got angry that I blocked their IP address for sending me unwanted, anonymous, negative hot takes that I didn’t ask for, nor that I cared about. People said I never took accountability for anything, when in reality they just wanted me to change my mind about certain topics, and got angry when I held true to my convictions. 

I hope you can all imagine why I didn’t respond pleasantly. Like every content creator on this website and on any website, we don’t owe anyone anything. I don’t owe anyone anything. I don’t owe anyone writing, I don’t owe anyone answers, I don’t owe anyone attention or time. And something that I’ve learned most of all, is that I don’t owe people the pleasure of indulging in flame wars that get brought to my feet. I am not interested in wasting my time trying to defend myself and my good name, against people who have already made up their mind about me from a few misunderstandings, a single interaction, or a one-sided and angry perspective. I’m not interested in wasting my time over things that I know in my heart, aren’t true.

One thing people sometimes tell me, is that I was “rude to a perfectly genuine anon.” I would like to say this; there is absolutely no way for me to know the intention of any anon, other than the way the message comes across. And I’ll be the first to admit, often intention is misinterpreted! When that happens and the person reaches out, I always, every time, have apologized. And just as easy as it is for me to misinterpret someone’s genuine ask as rude or offensive, it is easy for my genuine responses to be interpreted as rude or clipped. Tone is difficult over the internet -- tone is difficult in text where these people are anonymous strangers and I have no idea who they are or with which intentions they’re coming from. 

That being said, people can still say hurtful things without the intention of doing so. People have said unintentionally hurtful things to me, and I now realize that I have said things which have been hurtful to others. Good intentions mean nothing, when real hurt and pain is caused. To those people, I would like to give a genuine and sincere apology. I hope, as all I can ever do is hope, that folks here know I never come from a place of malice. Moving forward, I will do my best to respond in ways that I hope will come across as respectful as possible, even when disagreeing. I believe the only legitimate form of apology is changed behavior, and I intend to make that change so that this space can be more inclusive and welcoming, as I have only ever wished it to be. 

Because, well, I like to think that we have made a welcoming and inclusive space, a space where we are able to respect one another’s boundaries. I am just one person, just a girl with a blog on the internet who has tried to forge a community of peers and friends. I am not a politician with a PR team approving my every post, there are no mods here to help me interact with you guys. I’m just a girl who writes fanfic and posts it on the internet. I write fanfic that makes me happy, that I’m proud of, for me, and I am happy to share it with you. Especially because through that fanfic, I’ve met incredible wonderful people, and I’m thankful for all of you.

Through having this blog, I’ve met people that I consider to be lifelong friends -- people that I plan on building a future with, and for that I’m forever grateful. I’ve met people who have become inspired to write their own fanfic or start their own blogs, and even when it’s a subject matter that’s not something I’m interested in or one that I personally don’t like, I have always, always been encouraging. Because this is a hobby, this is something people should be doing for fun, because they want to, and no other reason. So when I see claims that “I’ve forced people to quit writing��� or someone saying “I quit the fandom because of you”, I know that that’s simply not true. The only way you quit writing is by not writing anymore. It may feel better to blame someone for the reasons why, but no one can make you do anything except yourself. 

Similarly, I’ve seen people saying that I’ve “ruined their favorite character” and to that all I have to say is what I’ve always been saying; if you don’t like my writing, you don’t have to read it. If you don’t like my interpretation of characters, you don’t have to consume the content I put out. If you don’t like my opinions, you don’t have to follow me. People don’t “ruin characters” for anyone else, when you simply avoid the content you don’t like, and focus on (or make) the content you do like.

Have I been confused when someone shares my story with a tag that didn’t make sense and so I reached out to them privately to address the issue? Yes. 

Have I expressed my negative feelings about fics and the trends of fandom in the comfort and boundaries of my own blog, in posts that I remove when I felt that they no longer were worth keeping up? Yes.

Have I expressed my concerns regarding certain tropes, themes and kinks, opinions formed by my own firsthand experience with them, coupled with the potential damaging effects they may have on a young and impressionable audience like some of those in this fandom? Yes. 

I don’t deny any of these things, because I am not ashamed of any of these things. You don’t have to like it, but that does not make me a monster, nor does it make me a tormenter of this fandom as I have been called.

Tormenting people in fandom is making long scathing posts publicly blasting someone because you’re angry that they blocked you. Or making long public callout posts to warn others in the fandom of my many crimes – crimes which actually aren’t crimes at all – and whipping up a frenzy of frothing at the mouth hate. Or reblogging a post and hijacking it with long commentary about something that has nothing to do with you in an attempt to shame the original poster. Or getting screenshots of private conversations where someone is joking with a person who they once thought was a friend, that are taken out of context and framing them to fit a narrative you’re spinning against them. That’s torment.

This fandom has the most vicious and warped mob mentality that I have ever seen. I’ve seen it in the treatment of Adam and Joanne, I’ve seen it in the treatment of John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran. I’ve seen it in the treatment of other bloggers, and well, I can say I’ve seen it and experienced it myself. I worry for the future of the fandom, when this sort of behavior is rewarded and celebrated, because people are so quick to simply agree with someone’s impassioned anger instead of thinking critically for themselves.

However (and this is the ‘but’ of the whole post), I cannot make this post and make all these statements without saying that this community has also been a place of kindness and support and acceptance, and I’m genuinely touched by everyone who has ever gone out of their way to talk to me. I thought long and hard about deleting this blog. I thought about just packing up and leaving our corner of the web, or moving to other platforms. I even put out a little announcement on my ao3 that I was done, I was out of here. But it didn’t sit right with me. It didn’t feel right to abandon all the incredibly beautiful, talented, welcoming, supportive and kind people that had found some peace in this corner of the web. I was absolutely blown away by the sweet messages that were sent to my inbox, and my DMs, the posts that were circulated written by friends and strangers alike literally brought me to tears. 

I know that many people here do not like me, and want nothing to do with me, and that’s okay. I know that my content is not for everyone, my opinions are not going to be lined up with everyone else’s, that’s okay too. People have not liked me from the beginning lol, that’s nothing new to me. I have always said, that I would continue to write even if no one read my stuff, and that’s still true. You are in charge of your internet experience, follow the people and consume the content that makes you happy, and block out the things that don’t. 

If you are reading this and you are one of the kind people, one of the supportive and understanding people who are on my side, I cannot say thank you enough. The time I took away made me realize that there are much larger problems in the world than strangers on the internet having negative opinions about me, and that kindness will always be more powerful than hate. The community we have built together means more to me than the bullshit other people try and start.

So, all of this is to say, that I’m back.

Some things are going to be a little different around here; I’m very very sorry I know I said I would never do this but I’ve turned the anonymous function off for the time being just for the sake of my sanity, and I’ve updated my FAQ. Writing will no longer be posted directly to tumblr, but rather a redirect link from AO3 will be posted making all tag-list requests null and void.

But other things will remain the same. We’re still going to have sleepovers, I’m still going to accept prompts (but please give me some time before we get back to sinday, as I’m still in a little bit of unease about all of this). I’m still going to be talking about my personal AU, and I’m still going to be uploading fanart and gifs and memes and shitposts and answering your questions and giving you the love you all have shown to me over the years.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for giving me the time to say my peace. I know it’s a long post, but I’ve been sitting on these thoughts for quite some time, and I’m relieved to finally express them. Please know that my posting this isn’t intended to stir up anything, or cause any drama, or relive any pain. 

I just missed you all very dearly. I hope that we can move onward and upward together, a babbushka 2.0 of sorts. It’s an exciting time to be in this fandom, and I am looking forward to experiencing everything together.

I’m sending you all of my love. 

[divinaes-bookofsecrets]

Hello! May I please request a spirit guide reading, if you are accepting those at this time? My initials are NS, Sagittarius. Thank you in advance, and I hope you have a lovely day/evening.

HELLO , DEAR SAGITTARIUS ♐ 😘You travel with a great many Spiritual Guardians ; The one that's most important 😊 and most prominent is an enchanting witch goddess.

Her name is Wendolina‐Lynn aka Linà-Lynn but ýou may just call her WENDOLINA

Her sex: female

Her age: 44

Her lucky numbers: 4, 7, 19, 22, 300

Element: FIRE ELEMENT

Zodiac☆Symbol: ♈ Aries, ♌ Leo

(Her horoscope sign mixes with yours impeccably!!! She is your exact perfect match for friendship, even for a relationship in love 😍 but I do not, as a Shamanic Healer, suggest that you pursue any thing romantic with this highly mystical being )

PLANET THAT RULES HER: MARS , and THE SUN

Her Greatest Strength: Dynamic Energy, Motivation, Drive and Willpower, Passionate, Achiever, Enthusiasm

Her Weakness: Desire, Sex Drive,Temperamental

Magick Powers; Cleansing and Purification, Hexes and Banshment and Protection and Prosperity

Moon Phase: Full Moon, 🌙 🌔 🌖 🌛 Eclipse 🌑 Moon

SEASON; YULE

Her Energy is Tied To ACTION !

Time of Day: Noon

Direction: South

Tarot: Wands

Although Goddess Wendolina is eternally a Fire Sign 🔥 😍 She flows like 💧 Water She was born from her ancestors 🌟 in the 🌟 stars !! & She is currently 44 as of this year; She ages one year each and every decade! Lady Wendolina the ♈ Aries woman has been, by the Creator and Universe, molded for you. Ĺady Lina-Lynn iis not ýour typical witch, she's more of a witchesss! And her beauty knows no end. Your Witchess is dark looking if you choose to see her that way, but if you choose to see her fertile enlightening light 😉 ✨ you'll soon see how you are connected 😏 to this mystic enchanting goddess .

Here is she. 🍒🍀🌼🍇🐛🌷🦋🕸🕷🕸🌺🍂🍃

Lady Wendolina-Lynn , is an Aries Goddess of mystical ethereal feminist ♥ ✨ power. She believes in equality--- She thinks that men and women should be sharing more and have equal rights ✅ but of course this sounds a lot like Lilith story does it not🙄 well, there's a reason for that too. Lady Wendolina is actually one of Lilith daughters ! This explains how her down fall is her sex drive. Well, she's deffinitely an amazing Aries specimen isn't she?

Lilith gave her daughter Wendolina the Witchess all the glory, beauty, and powers to behold. She is, like Lilith, demonized 😈 by the men of Earth 🌎 ♥ and the Church.

Wendolina uses her witchy ways to look dark but subtle enough to still practice white magick with her powers. She is the most powerful ✨😈 demon spawn and we should all be proud she uses her powers for only good not evil ever 👏 she's such a sweet darling demonness spawn !!

She has two major looks that are her main makeup choices she (like above) dresses and does Lilith inspired makeup ---Then Wendolina-Lynn does space effect warpaint; representing the stars and the moon where she came from 🌟 🌙

Next ill explain the story of her Mother, Lilith, story as it ties into also the independent woman that your Spirit Guide is plus the independence she represents!

Lilith is an extremely controversial figure within Jewish folklore. Lilith's name is not included in the creation story of the Torah but she appears in several midrashic texts. Her symbolism, history and literature are debated among Jewish scholars, feminists and other intellectuals. There are multiple origin stories for Lilith but the most popular history told views Lilith as the first wife of Adam. According to the "first Eve" story Lilith was created by God from dust and placed to live in the garden with Adam until problems arose between Adam and Lilith when Adam tried to exercise dominance over Lilith. One story tells that Lilith refused to lay beneath Adam during sex. She believed they were created equal, both from the dust of the earth, thus she should not have to lay beneath him. After Adam disagreed, Lilith fled the Garden of Eden to gain her independence. Adam told God that Lilith had left and God sent three angels, Senoi, Sansenoi, and Sammangelof, to retrieve her. The three angels found Lilith in a cave bearing children but Lilith refused to come back to the garden. The angels told her they would kill 100 of her children every day for her disobedience. In revenge, she is said to rob children of life and is responsible for the deaths of still-born infants and crib deaths (SIDS). Male children are at risk of Lilith's wrath for 8 days after birth (until circumcision) and girls are at risk for 20 days. Although Lilith stole children's lives in the night, she agreed not to kill the children who had amulets of either of the three angels.

After the angels' departure, Lilith tried to return to the garden but upon her arrival she discovered that Adam already had another mate, Eve. Out of revenge, Lilith had sex with Adam while he was sleeping and "stole his seed." With his seed she bears 'lilium,' earth-bound demons to replace her children killed by the angels. Lilith is also said to be responsible for males' erotic dreams and night emissions. Another theory says that Lilith is impregnated, thus creating more demons by masturbation and erotic dreams.

🐉🌸ĹILITH AND WENDOLINA HAVE AN APPETITE FOR EARTH MEN🌸🐲

The open-ended nature of the Lilith symbol has allowed different groups to use her as a destructive female symbol or a symbol of female power. Many feminists see Lilith as not only the first woman but the first independent woman created. In the creation story she refuses to allow Adam to dominate her and flees the garden despite the consequences. In order to retain her freedom she must give up her children and in retaliation she steals the seed of Adam. In one account of this story, Lilith is said to "mount Adam" (click here for this version). This version of the story implies that Lilith sexually violated Adam; however, other stories portray Lilith as a demoness who kills children and takes advantage of men while they are sleeping. Jewish halakhic law forbids the spilling of a man's seed and Lilith takes advantage of this, during masturbation and erotic dreams, and uses it to replenish her own offspring.

Although Lilith is controversial some feminists have used her as a symbol of empowerment. For example, one Jewish feminist magazine is called Lilith labels itself as an "Independent Jewish Woman's Magazine." The publishers use Lilith as a title because they believe she is a symbol of independence. However, those who still think of her as a demoness could turn it around and once again label feminists as male bashers or men-haters. They see Lilith as wicked and vengeful towards men and children. With any symbol or icon used by feminists, especially within a religious context, there will be controversy and opposition. Whether or not the story of Lilith is accurate is not the main issue. The "first Eve" version of the story gives Lilith a role that many women can identify within Judaism and other religious traditions. She is an independent woman who challenges the oppressive system in which she is placed. Stealing the lives of children represents a certain madness that accompanies her solitude and exclusion. Despite Lilith's downfalls, she still remains a symbol of power simply by her survival and mysteriousness. She is open for interpretation and therefore allows women to reinterpret her symbolism and power within the tradition.

Picture Lilith's daughter the demoness 😈 spawn sort of like Mortisha Adams from the Adam's Family tv. Show. She's sweet, sultry, she could seduce you, and she's pale but deffinitely dark in a cheerful fun way !

Wendolina's mystical senses have brought her to you at this time to bring you a very important message ;

Here's your messages

Sagittarius predictions for May 17 - May 23

You may be lamenting that there don't seem to be any exciting new opportunities coming your way. You may feel bored and stuck in a rut, wishing that some unique proposition would be yours for the taking. Maybe there is something out there for you, but if you are stuck in a mindset where you are expecting something very specific, Sagittarius, you might not recognize a good thing that is different, even if you metaphorically trip over it. Be open to any chance that comes to you this week, even if it doesn't meet with your preordained idea of what can bring you the success you want. A positive change of circumstances is in the stars for you now, and this week, you may get a good glimpse of it. This could have to do with your home, your work, or your money - and may range from a change of residence to an increase in income or even an unexpected windfall. But this may not reach fruition this week - however, the tempting idea of it may come to you with the promise of fulfillment soon. This is a good time to seal deals, negotiate contracts, or ask for investors if you are in such a position. You should be brimming with energy and initiative right now.

-- Wendolina-Lynn aka Lina-Lynn

So watch out for your financial situation is about to change dramatically or you'll be moving residents please take this as a good thing that you've been waiting for this might just be the changes you need.

IF YOUR LOOKING FOR A GOOD SHAMAN , LOOK NO FURTHER: I AM HERE!!

All Spells..... $18 depending on what you wishing for or desiring as result

[starstuffandalotofcoffee]

Tumblr took that one piece of information about goblins being antisemitic caricatures in some specific historical context and has just been running with it for like 5 years now and indiscriminately applying it to any gross or creepy character. Preschool level literary and artistic analysis mixed with a desperate need to look woke i guess but still 🙄

Yeah...it goes so far beyond that though, and it’s not just limited to fantasy although as someone who consumes mostly fantasy/sci fi and whose Tumblr fandom presence is mainly in those circles that’s a big part of what I see. It’s like people unconsciously picked up on the concept that Jewish people are the ethnic group most targeted for hate crimes in the U.S., but are also are a small group with sufficient internal diversity such that experiences within the group can vary wildly so you often won’t get huge amounts of pushback, and went culturally-Christian buckwild.

Like, just off the top of my head: my mother has been an LOTR fan since the 70s. My sister stayed up to listen to Evermore when it dropped despite having work the next morning. I’m one of four kids and three of us play Dungeons & Dragons regularly, and both of the D&D games I’m in regularly are at least half Jewish. None of these things are in any way inherently antisemitic, in my opinion, and many, many Jewish people like them.

Also I’ve seen like 20 times more discourse about goblins or Ferengi or making a character with green skin than about, say, Shakespeare and specifically The Merchant of Venice, or (with the caveat that I haven’t seen it), The Umbrella Academy. [note: I enjoy a lot of Shakespeare, who was antisemitic in a time when Jews were literally banned from Britain; I refuse to watch the Umbrella Academy because come the fuck on]. It’s almost like the things these people cancel are things they already didn’t like, or things people they don’t like enjoy, and ‘problematic’ ironically becomes a way to justify being a really hateful person while simultaneously making it much harder to address real-world bigotry because of alert fatigue. (see also the recent ‘crypto-terf’ blocklist for an example of that whole fucked up way of being). (also with the major caveat that the complex relationship between Jews and whiteness aside I am personally someone who looks white, a lot of the white people wringing their hands over goblins ignore or even defend biological essentialism regarding a tendency towards violence, or noble savage stereotypes in sci fi and fantasy which is...interesting.)

Some of it is preschool level literary analysis and Woke Points, sure, but I think a lot of people are just too chickenshit to address that antisemitism in history didn’t look like veiled references to goblins. It looked like their own white European ancestors kicking mine out of various countries and launching violent genocidal attacks. Sure, modern-day antisemitism sometimes takes the form of dogwhistles, but also like, the synagogue I went to when I lived in the midwest was vandalized with swastikas on the eve of Rosh Hashana, as was my local train and park when I lived in NYC, and the kol nidre appeal I heard in 2019 referenced that the cost of a security guard, after Tree of Life, is a significant expense. A lot of white Christians have the luxury of looking away from the obvious stuff, and boy, do they luxuriate in it.

My slightly wild theory, and believe me, I’m very aware of the irony in this, also goes back to my general belief that a lot of people really want to seem smart and they think this involves uncovering conspiracies, or focusing on ‘insidious’ secret bigotry. Of course, this means that they outright ignore the stuff in front of their faces; it’s why people will talk about goblins and Ferengi but not actual antisemitism [sidebar: did you know the ‘The American people are not intellectual, to put it mildly’ line came from an interview in which someone claimed the Jewish people perpetuated a ‘counter-holocaust’ against Germany?], similar to how people will happily reblog posts about those White Bitch Karens and feel woke never caring that they were written by white men. When wokeness is a competition, you need to feel like you have extra insight when the uncomfortable fact is bigotry in all its forms is usually much more obvious and blatant and when you’re not the target and when the perpetuator is a creator you like, it takes some actual strength of character and effort not to look away, let alone to address it. It doesn’t take that strength of character and effort to regurgitate tired talking points in yet another flaccid call-out post.

[ameliarating]

I read through @pumpkinpaix‘s deeply thoughtful post about cultural appropriation and dismissal of Chinese cultural concerns (two related but distinct phenomena) in non-Chinese MDZS/CQL fan-spaces and should-be-obvious-but-painfully-is-not disclaimer: 

When it comes to these things, the voices that should be rising above the rest are the Chinese fans speaking out about what they’ve seen.

I’m only here because I feel I have what to say on this bit here: 

For context, we are referencing two connected instances: the conflict described in these two threads (here and here), and when @/jelenedra tweeted about giving Jewish practices to the Lans. Regarding the latter, we felt that it tread into the territory of cultural erasure, and that it came from a person who had already disrespected diaspora’s work and input.

Context

The Lans have their own religious and cultural practices, rooted both in the cultural history of China and the genre of xianxia. Superimposing a different religious practice onto the Lans amidst other researched, canonical or culturally accurate details felt as if something important of ours was being overwritten for another’s personal satisfaction. Because canon is so intrinsically tied to real cultural, historical, and religious practices, replacing those practices in a canon setting fic feels like erasure. While MDZS is a fantasy novel, the religious practices contained therein are not. This was uncomfortable for many of us, and we wanted to point it out and have it resolved amicably. We were hoping for a discussion or exchange as there are many parallels and points of relation between Chinese and Jewish cultures, but that did not turn out quite as expected.

What happened next felt like a long game of outrage telephone that resulted in a confusion of issues that deflected responsibility, distracted from the origin of the conflict, and swept our concern under the rug.

Specifically, we are concerned about how these two incidents are part of what we feel is a repeated, widespread pattern of the devaluing of Chinese fans’ work and concerns within this fandom. This recent round of discourse is just one of many instances where we have found ourselves in a position of feeling spoken over within a space that is nominally ours. Regardless of what the telephone game was actually about, the way it played out revealed something about how issues are prioritized.

(Big surprise, I’m going to talk about Jewish things and MDZS)

I haven’t read the fic in question, but I have certainly made many posts about Jewishness and the Lans, imagining certain traditional Jewish educational settings and modes of learning and argumentation as superimposed onto the Cloud Recesses. I’ve also written other posts, mostly for me and the three other people out there who would find it funny, imagining different sects as different Jewish sects - or at least, who they have most in common with.

Never was I imagining these characters or worlds to be actually Jewish, but, as people often do in fandom, I was playing around in the spaces, delighting in overlaps I found, out of a deep-seated wish that I could have anything like MDZS or so many of the other fantasy I loved with Jews.

I’m jealous. I’m so jealous. 

Here’s how I was relating to it: 

China is a country of billions with an immense media audience of its own, its own television, movies, books, comics, etc. The only Jewish equivalent could ever be Israel, very tiny, and while there is a lot of good Israeli television, books, etc out there, it doesn’t approach what’s available from China, and certainly none of it has broken through to be a fandom presence of its own, not even in Jewish only or Hebrew speaking spaces. And even when that happens, the creators don’t often draw on Jewish history and myth. (One example I can think of a show that does is Juda, a Jewish vampire show from Israel, but I know exactly one (1) person on tumblr who’s seen it.)

So I was treating MDZS the way I treat American media - as a playground. Since I can’t find Jewish stories, especially in fantasy, I’m going to play around with it in non-Jewish stories.

Here’s how I should have been relating to it:

There are so many people who, like me, have been hungry to find themselves and their stories and their magic in fandom spaces. They have a show that’s made it big. Is it fair to, even playing around in tumblr posts, set so much of that rich cultural context aside in order for me to find room for my own? 

In the U.S., at least, where I am, it’s not the same as doing the same thing with, say, The Lord of the Rings (where I wrote a fic making use of Jewish mourning practices and assigned them to the Beorians) or Harry Potter, because that’s taking a dominant culture which is all I usually ever see and make room for myself. 

In MDZS, especially in the English language fandom where the Chinese cultural context is never dominant and is often shouted over and overlooked, and where there just aren’t many other examples of media that made it big in the fandom, I am only making room for myself by shoving aside something else that barely has any room at all.

In many ways, I became the fan that frustrates me, that writes about Jewish characters celebrating Christmas, rather than the fan that I wanted to be, which gets excited about cultural overlap and similarities. I’m sorry and I apologize.

My first reaction was not to. My first reaction was to say it’s not the same. Because it isn’t the same. It’s never the same when minorities do things to each other. But even if that’s less destructive, in some ways it’s more painful, because that’s where we should be able to look to each other for solidarity. (Obviously this is in English language fandom - Chinese fans are not a minority in Chinese language fandoms!)

I do believe that there should be room to make silly posts about the Lans doing things that Jews do, because the Lans do do things that Jews do. When I made an edit where Lan Wangji was responding to Lan Qiren quoting in Hebrew from the Jewish prayerbook rather than the sect rule to distance from evil, I did that because he was saying the exact same thing. It was wonderful to me, that a Lan sect rule could be exactly the same as something I pray every morning.

That’s very different from when I wrote imagining the Lans as Jews which left no more room for the Lans as Chinese Buddhists. It’s those later things I apologize for and what I’ll be careful about in the future.

I do still want to return to something I said just above, however: “Because it isn’t the same. It’s never the same when minorities do things to each other.”

I worry, as I wrote in a separate post, about the tendency I see in anti-colonial, anti-imperialist spaces to look at Jewish practices and laws and culture and see it as an example of Western hegemony rather than as a survivor of it. Especially in a post that talks about the Chinese diaspora experience, where the very word diaspora was coined to describe the Jewish scattering across the globe and only much later was used for other cultures and peoples.

I don’t object to its now much more universal use as a word. It’s useful and it’s powerful and I believe it can be used to build solidarity. I do ask for, however, recognition that while Jews, especially in the West, might reproduce Western hegemony and use it against others, our own ethno-religious experiences bubbling up is not one of those reproductions.

In other words, when we erase, accidentally or purposefully, the Chinese cultural and religious contexts of characters in MDZS/CQL in our rush to write in Jewish cultural and religious contexts, we are doing harm as ourselves, not as representatives of Western/European/Christian hegemony. And in fact, what inspired us to write in our own contexts is that there are certain things (deference to elders, life carefully regulated by a series of laws about everything from interpersonal-ethical behavior to food habits to modes of speech, cultural horror regarding desecration of the dead, etc) we find in these stories that we don’t find in many Western stories that resonate with our own cultural background.

Which is not to erase the harm itself. I am sorry for it and I will do my best going forward to write about overlaps without erasing or replacing what is already there from the beginning and should remain so.