#genuine critique of other white people and calling for them to do better. it just feels like a guise to shut down actual conversation

[hamliet]

Hazbin Hotel Has Better Theology Than Most Modern "Christian" Stories

As a Christian who was raised in a fundie cult and escaped to now have a far healthier and vital faith, I genuinely really like this show. The songs are bops. The characters are well crafted and interesting, and likable too. The art design is bizarre but appealing.

And, as a theology nerd who studied theology as part leaving said cult and also has since gotten papers published in theology, I'm actually fairly impressed by the show's handling of theology.

No, I'm not expecting the story to preach or even like, be explicitly Christian in a lot of ways. But it's taking a lot of the really beautiful aspects of Christian theology and re-contextualizing them in a way designed to provoke thought: by juxtaposing them with the antithesis of what you would think, by making demons heroes. In my opinion, this makes the beauty shine brighter.

Yeah, yeah, it's designed to be offensive and obscene in a lot of ways. Yet, it's never (thus far) mean-spirited. On the contrary, it seems to have a big, beating heart at its core that is perhaps best embodied by Charlie Morningstar, its protagonist and the daughter of Lucifer and Lilith.

Critique of the Church, with Caveats

The story works best with an interpretation that heaven isn't actually heaven or God (who has been conspicuously absent), but instead as a critique of the church. Specifically, the evangelical American church, and specifically, white evangelicals. (Same as She-Ra's premise, actually).

God's absence therefore makes sense, because while Christians do believe God is present as a living reality among us, we also can't like, see him physically now. So, God being not even mentioned in HH makes it seem more like a mortal reality rather than an immortal one. Honestly I kinda hope God doesn't appear in the story, not only because I think it could cross some lines (which is admittedly personal), but also because I don't see that the story really needs it.

Adam in particular reminds me of every "theobro" on Twitter (I'm not calling it what you want me to, El*n). Basically a dudebro coopting his supposed salvation to flex in an often misogynistic way, who doesn't realize that he has absolutely no love in him and therefore is actually a worse human being than everyone he condemns on the regular.

(Which is kind of why I'm expecting Adam to wake up in hell next season...)

Think red hats. And Mark Driscoll. And, I have a list of pastors. Sigh. They advocate for how "simple" Christianity is, except they themselves make it ridiculously complicated and don't even examine what they suppose is "simple" if it requires them to take the planks out of their own eyes. "Shallow" is a better description of what they actually preach.

But what sends people to hell or heaven anyways?

Eschatology and Atonement Theory

Hazbin Hotel combines a lot of theories, throwing not only the idea of a physical hell (albeit mixed with Dante's idea of what hell is the Inferno, but to be fair a lot of the church has adopted that idea too) but the idea of annihilation, which HH calls "extermination."

See, in Christianity, there's a lot of debate about hell. Like, since 2000 years ago. The reason is because a lot of Bible verses seem to indicate hell, but others indicate the eventual redemption and salvation of absolutely everything in the universe, so you have Christian universalism tracing itself back just as long. But, setting aside universalism, people who do believe in hell tend to fall into one of two camps:

Physical hell, aka suffering for eternity, or annihilation: the idea that souls that aren't saved end up annihilated, or snuffed from existence. HH combines both of them, wherein everyone lives in hell but then every so often heaven "exterminates" a certain number of sinners.

And then you also have Catholic purgatory, which is also adapted in HH in that... for most Christians, physical hell doesn't offer the ability to redeem yourself. Chance over, you're dead. But, Catholic Christianity, which draws on ideas of praying for the dead, has the idea that people can improve themselves or be prayed out of it and into heaven. This seems to be somewhat similar to the idea of Charlie's hotel, in that sinners can improve, redeem themselves, and rise to heaven.

And, I mean, it's already kinda worked. Sir Pentious acted out Jesus' words: Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).

But anyways, the branch of theology that deals with the afterlife is eschatology. And Hazbin Hotel takes on a related form of theology as well, a type of theology I've only seen covered in stories once before (The House in Fata Morgana): atonement theory.

Atonement theory is something I remember well from my theology 101 class, as in I remember sitting with a friend and her turning to me and being like, "okay, so we know Jesus' death and resurrection give us eternal life, but we have no idea how or why?" To which the answer was "basically, yeah."

Most of the white, American evangelical church is very "penal substitutionary atonement," but the reality is that this theory has only been popular for the past few hundred years. It's also, imo, somewhat scripturally unsound. But there are a lot of other theories, and sometimes the theories overlap. Here's a fairly decent summary. (I'm in general a believer in Christus Victor.)

So how does atonement theory tie into Hazbin Hotel? Well, essentially the scene where Charlie and Vaggie are debating with Emily, Sera, Adam, Lute, and others in heaven is them going over various atonement theories and realizing that they actually know nothing at all. How does one get to heaven? How is one saved? They don't know.

Sera criticizing Emily for asking questions was also very relatable, and I feel for Sera. She's genuinely scared but the truth will set you free, Sera. John 8:32. Anyways, the point is like... the angels are an organized religion, an evangelical church, that preaches about simplicity but mistakes shallowness for simplicity and discourages depth and discovery.

Anyways, the whole crux of theological study and atonement theories is that they should promote humility. We don't know for certain on this side of the curtain. That's okay. So what do we have to guide us?

Love. After all, God is love (1 John 4:8).

Charlie is Jesus

"Why would you endanger your immortal life for these sinners?" 

Adam, the absolute worst, says the above to Charlie in the finale.

I mean... look. That's literally the premise of Christianity. That the immortal son of God comes down to earth, lives with sinners, loves us, and dies to save us. However that happens. Charlie even responds:

"They're my family!"

In other words, she loves them. Yeah, sure, they're destined for extermination, but they are going to be exterminated over her dead body.

In a lot of branches of Christianity, and even in some creeds--though I'm going to give into my pet peeves here and state that it is NOT Scriptural and relies on the faulty assumption that God is bound by time, when I think God exists outside of it--state that Jesus descended into hell after his death and took all the souls of people who were saved prior to his coming to earth to heaven. Again, I think that's small-minded at best. But, the idea that Charlie is working among them to bring them to heaven is pretty reminiscent of this idea. And I don't hate it lol.

Charlie sees worth inherent in everyone, and no matter what they've done, thinks there's a future for them. Honestly we need people like her on this earth.

Angel Dust

Angel Dust is clearly my favorite character. Bite back your shock, I know (I have a type). But his name is also a fascinating multi-layered pun.

Angel is clearly foreshadowing his endgame. Let's be real, we all know Angel is ending up as an angel. And "angeldust" is of course a name for PCP, and considering Angel's drug habits, yeah.

But, dust also has another meaning to it. See, when Adam was created in Genesis 2:7, the words in Hebrew are "apar min ha'adamah," which is translated literally as "dust of the ground." So the dust is what creates Adam, literally "ground."

In other words, I very much expect Angel Dust to end up being foiled with Adam even more so. Adam might be the first man, but Angel is the first sinner working towards redemption. And let's be real, for all Angel's flaws, he's already a better person than Adam. And if there's any hope for Adam (not that I particularly care if there is but) it'd be through realizing that he and Angel aren't actually different after all. Conversely (and not necessarily mutually exclusively), Angel might serve as a more symbolic "adam" in that he becomes the person all sinners look to for hope. Which, y'know, since "the last Adam" is also a Scriptural term for Jesus...

And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45).

I fully expect Angel's arc, alongside Charlie's, to bring life and redemption for everyone around them. Maybe, maybe even the dramatic "all" of Colossians 1:20 (which means, literally, all, everything, everywhere, in the entire universe).

Closing Thoughts

But honestly, regardless of how the story ends--besides that it will presumably end happily because HH is at its core feel-good despite being profane--season one at least has got good theology. Why? Because it's digging into the questions that theology is concerned with. It's digging into the ideas of human nature, of what it means to be a good person, of what it means to redeem oneself, of affirming how precious each individual human soul is.

It doesn't offer cheap answers, and it specifically calls out the white American evangelical church for how it purports to be simple but actually just confuses people and punishes them for things they can't help, that creates more stumbling blocks than it does shine a light. And it does it in a way that is scandalous. Offensive to many religious people.

But, y'know, Jesus was pretty scandalous too.

So I really love the story so far because it emphasizes what I find so beautiful about my religion, and criticizes the parts that have also hurt me. I don't think it's remotely aiming to be a Christian allegory or anything like that, and I don't at all think anyone has to be religious to enjoy it or gain the core message of it, but I do think that it's doing a hell of a lot more good in the world message-wise than most evangelical movies of the past 30 years.

[sunnist4rs]

Blare White is super misogynistic… he also supports trump. You know the anti abortion, pro rape guy. I think you may be defining who you love/idolize and what you say you think based on who entertains you the most on social media/YouTube and your personal connections rather than really getting into WHY each view is right or wrong factually/ethically, and aiming to be consistent. To be clear I myself am a radfem and (within that) critical of gender ideology I am not trying to convince you to not criticize gender ideology or to not criticize specific trans identified people. Yes: some people Blaire white and that kind of guy opposes are also fucked up people who do harm. But the enemy of an enemy does not alone make a friend and I encourage you to look with a more critical eye at anyone aligned right wing and against women, whether they are novelties or famous on YouTube or whatever else or not

Among other things remember Blaire white is just a man who calls self woman but hates the other men who call themselves women. His critique of them is typically either copied (without him really understanding) from feminist women, or at other times basically rooted in him saying those other trans women are ugly or don’t pass or haven’t done [insert random shit] “Blaire” thinks makes him a real woman and these other trans women into pretenders. It’s just an egotistical man getting attention and money off of this while still claiming he’s a woman and doing so for sexist (“I pass as feminine so that makes me a woman” = sexist) reasons. This issue that is actually impacting women and girls (a category that doesn’t include him)

Thanks for sending me this ask (and being so civil about it). Before I joined the radfem community (and when I wrote my bio) I was pretty conservative but the more evidence of woman’s oppression I’ve seen, the more leftist I’ve become. This has left me feeling kind of lost because the people like Blair White who I used to turn to for comfort on bad days and to hear what I thought were reasonable political opinions no longer click with me. I don’t resonate with her (I’m gonna use she/her even though I’m he’s a dude because I do have that personal attachment right now so it just feels right) beliefs anymore but distancing myself from her feels wrong because she’s been a part of my life for a while, y’know.

I don’t watch YouTube much so I haven’t seen one of her videos since I became a radfem. But, I do remember how my old community used to act so Ik if I did watch another video of hers I’d be disgusted and disappointed by her behaviour (I almost want to avoid watching her at all so that I can keep pretending I align with her side- also I’m aware this is pretty parasocial, I’ll work on that). While I’ve become more aware of this I’ve continued to defend and preach how good her content is as a way of pretending I do still like her to myself. I knew I was doing this but I didn’t really think about it until now.

I’m pretty good at thinking critically about the media I consume, it’s just something I’ve always done when discovering something new to enjoy. But I think Ive developed a blind spot for people I previously loved as while I agreed with them in the past. Now however, me promoting their ideology is hypocritical at best. I’ve been practicing separatism (that’s not the word I want to use Ik it) more and more in my daily life. I now realise the next step I need to take is starting to distance myself from these people as they’re making me into someone I don’t want to be (hypocrites are one of my biggest red flags).

Thanks again for the ask as it’s genuinely helped me uncover a therapeutic break through lol. Whether or not that was your intent it’s definitely gonna help me be a better feminist and improve my life so thanks.

[gaykarstaagforever]

St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

I've always heard nothing but bad things about this movie, how it is a self-indulgent soap opera about awful 1980s people who never pay for their gross behavior. Everyone says the only good thing about it is the John Parr theme song, which is barely in it. And that wasn't even written for it, it was a triumphant pop-rock anthem written to celebrate a kickass wheelchair athlete.

Which is painfully obvious. Then John Parr just worked the name of the movie into it and shrugged. And everyone loves it. But not the movie, which was financially successful because it had members of the smooth and sexy Brat Pack in it, but critics and studio heads hated it then, and many people hate it now.

I, on the other hand, genuinely really liked it.

For all his many shortcomings, Joel Schumacher knew how to put a good movie together in 1985, and he did here. Technically speaking, it's fine. Artistically shot, well paced, the performances are all high-energy and affecting, and even the screenplay is solid, minus a few lazy strolls into trashy melodrama and plot contrivance. But the characters are well-constructed as unique individual people, the occasional jokes are funny, and everything for the most part feels real and earned and insightful.

So why do people hate it? The simple answer is the same one Joel Schumacher apparently got from reluctant studio heads: these people are fucking awful. They're stupid and selfish and cruel, and when that inevitably blows up in their faces, they pout and whine and throw temper tantrums and beg for money. They're well-off white kids from Washington DC who just graduated from Georgetown, and instead of taking advantage of that, most of them are drug-addled mopes for whom the entire world being open to them is STILL not enough.

And I agree with this character critique. These people suck. The whole movie is them ruining the lives of everyone around them with their bad behavior. I have known people like this, and I don't anymore, because they are frustrating and destructive and what they do puts an unfair burden on everyone else.

...But the movie knows this, and that is, in fact, sort of the whole point? Sure, they don't end up dead or in jail, so maybe they don't get the full brunt of what is coming to them. But they're also all 22 years old. Speaking now as a 42 yo man, people who are 22 are stupid baby-things who ruin everything they touch and will absolutely hate who they were in 10 years. That's called growing up, and the entire point of the movie is to show a small part of that process. They DO learn. They DO grow. Not a lot, but a little. And that's how it is, and was, if you were 22 in 1985.

I don't understand why anyone would hate this. You can hate them, if you want. They're detestable. But a lot of privileged people in their 20s are. And while that doesn't absolve them of their shitty behavior, it's kind of unreasonable to not expect this shit from these kinds of people. They are products of where they come from, and now as legal adults, they have to work through that themselves and come out the other side as better people. It's a gross, stupid, weird, terrible process, and the movie shows a glossy, sappy Hollywood version of that.

And it's not bad, for what it is. I don't know if I'd put it on a Top Movies list or even ever watch it again, but it does what it does well. I even kind of fell in love with these big dumb idiots by the end, because as they learn lessons, they become better people. Or at least, differently bad people. But they are still in the middle of that process. I'm not hostile to it or them, or the movie, about it. I don't know why anyone would be.

It IS a movie from 1985, so it has a lot of "movie from 1985" problems. Sexism, treating stalking as a cutesy sitcom plot with a resolution that rewards the stalker, some SA stuff played for laughs, not quite knowing what to do with the women characters that isn't them constantly talking about the male characters, some awkward stuff about one character maybe being gay that seems like it could get interesting, but then the movie remembers it's 1985 and reveals he is super-straight actually, whew! But, honestly, for this era, it is very mild in this regard. I kept expecting it to go dark and problematic and it mostly doesn't (aside from the goofball "I kind of like being stalked" nonsense). For a movie from 1985, it is very watchable and only mildly offensive to 2024 sensibilities. That alone is a rarity, and a big mark in its favor.

Plus it is fun as a fictionalized snapshot of what wealthy white young adults in Washington DC were up to in 1985. Lots of people in their early 20s smoking like chimneys and desperate to get married immediately to people they barely know. Kind of wild.

Also, while these people all have bachelor's degrees, the ease with which they lose and get new high-paying jobs, seemingly without their degrees even being taken into account, is a shocking vision from the past. Sure, some of this is just unrealistic Hollywood guff. But not all of it. They really would just hire you for the modern equivalent of $1500 a week back then, because you seemed cool and your friend called and said yeah, you totally are.

Computers were only starting to be a thing back then. No one could verify anything, no one kept records of anything, and every job a machine does now was something 4 people needed to do in 1985. What a time.

And these idiots STILL whine and moan and never appreciate it! While doing cheap and plentiful cocaine. Ah, the 80s!

...Also, Young Rob Lowe.

Jesus.

...Also, Jules's insane ugly pink neon gay-ass apartment. That I want to spend the rest of my life in.

I'm not just doing a slur. It being designed by her gay designer neighbor is plot-relevant a couple of times.

Also, this poster...

The bar they hang out at is called St. Elmo's Bar. The St. Elmo's Fire thing (the real phenomenon) is from one scene where a character uses it as a metaphor to make another character feel better about how screwed-up their lives are. Arguably he was inspired to do this because they go to that bar a lot, but the connection isn't firmer than that.

The bar is not called St. Elmo's Fire, is my point. So the heat this summer would be at St. Elmo's Bar, not St. Elmo's Fire. Which isn't a place.

This is a poster for the movie! Did they not watch it first? Yes it matters!

And here, finally, because I have to:

HA HA! I GOT YOU! THIS IS THE DAVID FOSTER LOVE THEME!

...Which is way more prominent in the movie, and is honestly way more its actual theme. You will note how it fits the movie tonally a lot better than that driving synth-rock song about a cool guy in a wheelchair.

[mueritos]

Hey. Idk if this is me growing up or just being disillusioned with inter celebs etc. Im a 23 yr old trans man so I grew up and was inspired by chella on the YouTube community. But now I just…don’t like chella man anymore. I feel like…he became an industry plant? Over the pandemic asking fans for money to send to him directly to help others and not showing where the money was going exactly incident as well as just becoming older I noticed he seemed to almost want to become the next Keith haring or basquiat? He almost…now seems very fake? He takes deals with brands to be representation but doesn’t do much to call out certain brands for their faults etc.

Idk anymore

I give Chella credit in that he was one of the few transmen that I looked up while I was young, especially with him being BIPOC. Showing him to my family helped them understand me. But that's where the inspiration kinda stops, because it was painful to be surrounded by years-in-transition trans men online when I was absolutely nowhere I wanted to be. That was a me problem tho. But I also didn't know much about his whole donation incident.

Ig heres what I have to say. It's not great to view other people as your justification of your morals. We don't know how people have had to live or how they live now, we don't know what decisions they have to make, and we dont know what kind of fears or goals they have. Chella is allowed to do whatever he wants with his art or his modelling career, just like how I genuinely believe anyone else in the world is capable of making the right decisions for themselves (even if we dont like those decisions!). Im not really concerned with figuring out if hes an industry plant or a "class traitor" (lol) or even if he's "fake". To be honest, I'm all for BIPOC folks getting their $. Does that mean I enjoy seeing wealthy BIPOC folk perpetuate classism and racism? No. Just cuz someone is succeeding for themselves doesn't mean people cant critique them. I guess what Im saying is I see waaay too many people online take the things they enjoy and the people they follow as projections of their morals: "no! stop [Insert celebrity name] you're being problematic and its makes us fans look bad!" Like....Okay lmfao. People are grown adults and are going to make decisions for themselves. Just because you might enjoy a celebrity does not mean your morals are based on how good of a person they are.

and youre allowed to not like the same things anymore just like how people are allowed to change, for better or for worse. I think within online communities there is way too much pressure on "looking" like a good person versus actually being one...because sometimes BEING a good person makes you look absolutely vile in terms of online spaces/communities love of isolating, removing, and deleting "problematic" (and vulnerable) people from their spaces with no trial, discussion, or attempt at conflict mediation. Yea yea I do think people have every right to be criticized just as they have every right to make whatever decision they want, but what Im trying to get at is to really stop viewing anyone with a platform as someone you can other once they dont meet your standards. This is not the same as denouncing or critiquing someone for really egregious behavior (white supremacy, harrassment, bullying, interpersonal violence). Once you kinda start living by your own morals without needing other people's actions/behaviors to justify/define them, you learn to focus on building connections rather than destroying them.

again, this is a much nuanced topic and you prolly werent expecting me to go into this. but ive grown over the years and have engaged in some nasty and vile mob mentality behavior that i just dont vibe with anymore. im not really the kind of person now to speculate online or publicly what other people are doing or should be doing or whether theyre problematic or not. I don't really care about Chella man or most celebrities rn. People r just gonna be people, and I will always have empathy for those of marginalized identities. Free will, autonomy, and self determination goes both ways, but so does accountability, transformative justice, and reconciliation.

but also like kill ur idols lol

[booklovingturtle]

Season 2 Thoughts (SPOILERS)

I’ll be breaking this down based on characters/ships so I wanna know if y’all have similar opinions or not!!! I want to hear different perspectives since I feel like we’re headed in a million different directions.

*Disclaimer these are my opinions on the show as an adaptation. Please disagree with me that's fine I want to hear other people's takes!

Part A: The Darkling, Alina, Mal, Malina

Darkling: Ben Barnes did fabulous of course. I have almost nothing negative to say about his character or his ending. My biggest critique was that they rushed to get him dead to the point where we wasted the potential of a bigger, power struggle within Ravka between the grisha/humans. Similar to the first season I wish that there was less of a romantic undertone to his motivation in regards to Alina. He’s a more compelling villain if he’s truly just power-hungry and driven mad by his own desire. I wish that his moment of peace wasn’t the case with her, but instead had something to do with his actual motivation for saving and protecting Grisha

Alina: Jessie is a phenomenal actress. Every single emotion felt so genuine. Similar to the books, I was kind of annoyed with Alina’s inability to make actual decisions. In the books, I felt like she only ever acted when she quite literally was backed into a corner, and it was pretty much the same way in season 1 & most of 2. I’m super upset that we never got white hair Alina honestly that was such a bad decision, not story wise, but fandom wise. I’m not sure how I feel about this new direction that we’re taking it. One of the plot points in the books was whether or not Alina would answer the call to darkness. This entire season I was annoyed with how selfish she was being with Mal. so many people died, because she didn’t wanna kill him which I understand but then she continues to be selfish by using the dark magic thing to bring him back and so in my opinion, my girl was always listening to that dark call, but maybe that was their intention! All I know is that if Alina does become antagonistic (even if it’s just for a limited time), Jessie will play her just as a effortlessly as she did in the past. LOVE JESSIE. Alina’s character arc was still something that was kind of being pushed onto her versus something that she was actively choosing. I’m most interested to hear other peoples opinions about her character specifically.

Mal: I actually really like the changes they made to Mal. I truly don’t remember the book version of him at all. Not his lore or connection to Alina or his tracking secret power  or anything. I like that he’s taking on the Sturmhond name. That was a very natural next step for his character arc.

Malina: I still like them better in the show than the books. Unfortunately for the most part Mal/Alina have no motivation in this season outside of each other. Which honestly wouldn’t be that big of a deal if they weren’t trying to push the idea that Alina was also a benevolent, reluctant chosen one. Even though I ship them, I’m actually really glad that they will be separated moving forward. I hope that we get to explore them as individuals. The characters should get to find motivations outside of each other that are genuine, and not for the sake of plot convenience.

[nostalgic-films]

@ttdougi replied to your post “@ttdougi replied to your post “I'm sorry but if...”:

I do think you are right in saying the the issue is being blown out of proportion. But part of the problem is that people are digging up her old tweets. She sent hate and rallied her fans against another actress causing her to lose her job (It doesn't matter if the said actress is an ahole or not), for a person/actress with a platform, she does do this shit a lot without knowing the consequences and how it may affect other peoples lives.

She actively condones hate and bullying other people whose opinion varies with hers and sents her fans after them. Just check her twitter. She overall comes of as an unpleasent person who thinks her opinions, values and job is above others. We do not people like that in real life. Why do you think people will take that shit from an actress. And no she does need media training. This is her job. She should know better. She is not a child. A normal person who shits on the company they work for will get fired before they can blink if they start shit yalking in a public platform. Life is not fair. And we shouldnt coddle her just because she is a latina and an actress. Brie larson didnt do half the shit rachel did and was criticised for her lack of class. This is their job. They are not entitled to come shit on something other people like and expect everyone to sit quiet and shut up because its an opinion. I do not want to start an argument. I was just stating my opinion. I think we should just respectfully agree to disagree. 😅

(​responding to all these responses in one post for simplicity)

digging up old tweets? crazy because that's not how all this started. idk how old these tweets are or what the context was or how old she was at the time (she's young now idk how young she was for those old tweets). but bringing up old tweets to validate a hate train is so reductive. if you don't like her film critique because that's really what this whole thing is about, that's fine. I'm not just gonna "check her twitter" to dig up some old tweets. so unless she actively said "hey yall this actor is being problematic go tell them something" i don't see what the point of this comment is. We're talking about people judging her character from the clips that went viral on tiktok. Or at least that's what my original post was about.

2. again media training for what? her tame comments about Snow White 1937 or her old tweets (which were irrelvant to the conversation until people wanted another reason to hate her)? disney is very protective of their brand and they very likely gave her or okayed her talking points that both she AND gal gadot repeated. it's one thing if you don't like her film hot takes, but if they make the gen. pop. respond with misogyny then that's a problem with the audience.

3. please point to me where she shit on any company she worked for? talking negatively about an old movie is not malicious.

4. idk why you brought up her latinidad. was never brought up in my post but ok. (i could have because along side every comment calling her a bitch or a cunt, there's comments about her not being white enough to be snow white too. but I assumed most people would see that's a stupid disgusting comment not worth talking about) i'm not "coddling" her, I'm speaking against thinly veiled misogyny in the name of defending an old disney movie. if she genuinely did something harmful to warrant this hatred, i'd not have a strong opinion. but this started because of a disney movie.

I don't mind continuing a disagreement if we're civil about it. I do it all the time. But you're free to say your piece and go.

[boonoonoonus]

This is no shade to OP, who I adore. Please note that now, its merely adding onto the very important points they made!

Increasingly, I'm seeing that the reason why people can't critique or specifically engage in critique with the Targaryen's and Valyria is because most people have been socialised into colonial white supremacist thinking and/or have delusions of grandeur inserting themselves into positions of power within the text.

What hooks calls the 'White Supremacist, Capitalist Patriarchy' - a system that underpins what we call the West. I think what hooks is speaking of can be seen in fandom when people write Pro-Targaryen and Targrayen restoration fanfic. The world is oriented to support and favour white supremacist capitalist patriarchy its the basis of all social ills at the moment. In fandom I would argue that the ability to slide by and ignore the atrocities of colonialism, slavery and rape that is a key part of Valyrian culture and history is evidence of commitment to that belief. Now, people always say its not that deep, however fantasy and sci fi has had a long tradition of exploring the here and now with an 'objective distnace to see whats up with the world at the moment. GRRM is critical in text of Valyrians, does he still favour Daemon, yes but he's an old white american man most of them are disappointing in one way or another. His bad taste in favourite characters does not prevent him not likening dragons to nukes and saying that these people ain't shit! The idea that fictional Aryans are supposedly the good people despite their adherance to gross violations of humanity is the most incorrect interpretation of the source material, its not up for debate. The issue is that alot of white Western people do not want to confront that they have been fed propaganda that has seeped into everything they consume and that they may be victims of a society that despises the underclass and that they aren't part of this blood sucking bourgeois but instead are the proletariat. Which is a better position for them than me whose a black person and historically the position of my people has been living means of labour, alongside the likes of horses.

When Said spoke of the optics of Orientalism and Fanon spoke of the psychosis of Whiteness they were speaking of a particular interaction non-othered people had with power and the ability to exert power. Audiences who can't critique the Targaryen's and Valyria are people unable to see the issue in their (Valyria's) actions fundamentally. They may say 'oh slavery is bad' but will later jokingly or mockingly say 'well maybe some people deserve it' and 'well I like to root for the bad guy'

Now, I'm all for rooting for the villain but slavery? Colonialism?

Partially, we're also experiencing what Bauldrillard coined as the Simulation/Simulacra because people genuinely see the acts of Targaryen's as liberatory and feminist and forget the original copy, they've obscured and corrupted the true images of the likes of Visenya and Rhaenys because of how they feel about Daenerys and Rhaenyra. There's also the element of obscuring the racial and gendered aspects of religion (in our world). The OP touched on this when they spoke of the Catholic Church being the Church for most of history. Most dont know that Peter was the first pope, or the methods employed by the apostles to spread Christianity, the knowledge most hold about religions tends to be very very modern and context dependent and alot of that is due to evangelicals in the US content and Anglicans in the UK context but I digress. Commitment to creating this idea around good feminist liberatory Targaryens is currently synonymous with a very virulent form of liberalism that sees equality and freedom in let's just all be friends and understand that we're all struggling together. Now hotd fandom is not the source of modern social ills but it marks a poignant spot in media literacy and trends and highlights the ability for propaganda to assume the language of liberation and sell that you as an audience. The use of the word feminist is an example, as is misogynist and they're used divorced of their context and academic understanding which is important. The matrices of power exist and they dominate all that we do.

Because people don't know key parts of history they fill it in with what makes sense in their limited scope of the world and recreate a world that suits what they think is right instead of engaing in the messiness and complexities of reality. They see a world where the medieval church wasn't the only thing holding Europe together and the source of much innovation in science and medicine but instead this fake world in which the modern science driven atheism they think is stearing modernity and change currently, is whats best for Westeros and the medieval peeps. (Its not, Capitalist propaganda and brain drain has you guys thinking innovation is occurring in the west when it's morally bankrupt and people have been remaking the wheel and selling it to you unabashed. See Uber not being profitable and remaking the taxi model as proof)

I'm a scholar of colonialism, negrophilia and non-normative bodies saying that with my chest. The Seven has its issues that is an in text fact, but they are specifically against Slavery and Incest and this was the key reason it was so widely adopted and are farrrrrrr better than the Catholic Church was at the time and yet every damn day is filled with you worshipping aryans without critical thinking. Thinking the gods of the people who held slaves in pits to power nukes are good people? Allah please send the flood!

Christianity can be a disease (see here the churches role in politics in Jamaica and rampant homophobia and human rights violations) and in many ways is a parallel to The Fourteen Flames worship but atleast we can readily admit that Christianity is fucked up for its role in colonialism and understand that syncretism has helped somewhat but it will always carry that stain. As will Islam and Hinduism, no religion is perfect and yet we cannot critique the fourteen flames? Valyria must get a pass? (I studied the history of Christianity, Islam and Hinduism in the context of empire and colonialism so I'm only commenting on them. I can speak on other religions and won't).

No condemnation, no idea that they need to get the fuck out Westeros? That the volcanic eruption was actually a good thing? That sometimes slave owners need to be dragged through the streets? Jesus wept! Blood in my eye!

No wonder the fat man won't finish the books you man don't READ, no common sense just shipping and uwu face. Also, the importance of that is because an inability to think critically as alot of you show is ripe for exploitation in an increasingly hostile and right wing, conservative world we're entering. People like to think media is a neutral zone, that of course its not infiltrated by corporate and government powers but if that was the case the US military wouldn't be helping fund and supply marvel movies to increase army recruitment. We wouldn't be inundated with TV shows like succession that glorify and humanise a type of capitalistic hell hole, or Severance, which is so absurdist it hides the true horrors of corporate industry life. The way any medieval drama frames the monarchy is a cause for concern, especially for me who currently lives in a country in which the monarchy's ability to use the house of Lords as an extension of their power and as a weapon of empire in order to ignore democracy is a threat to everyone in the country. These people are no one's friends, they're not good people, colonisers in any framing are bad people they need to be stomped out and I do mean by any means. Targaryens should have been killed, taken out the equation, as any other people who would weild nukes, practise subjugation and slavery and rape should be. Lastly, the framing of religion as other is blatantly a problem in a world which has been committing religious persecution left and right for thousands of years. Your ideas that support the eradication of the faith sound alot more like US policy in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine than it does the Liberal open minded politic you think it is. Religious persecution is the basis to many many genocides past and present as well as the dehumanisation associated with certain religions, regions, and people at this moment. We should all be critical of any media that implies that this is the case and doubly when that comes to a reprehensible place like Valyria. But what the fuck do I know I'm just a Black person on the Internet.

Is there anything support the populat interpretation that old valriya and valryians in general are more feminist, and progressive than the rest in Asoiaf?

Anon, thank you! I've been wanting to address this for awhile, so I'm going to actually answer this really fully, with as many receipts as I can provide (this ended up being more of an essay than I intended, but hopefully it helps)

I think there's in fact plenty of evidence to suggest that Valyria and the Valyrians in general were anything but progressive. Valyria was an expansive empire with a robust slave trade that practiced incest based on the idea of blood supremacy/blood purity. All of these things are absolutely antithetical to progressivism. There is no way any empire practicing slavery can ever be called progressive. Now, the Targaryens of Dragonstone have since given up the practice of slavery, but they certainly still believe in the supremacy of Valyrian blood.

And I'll see the argument, well what's wrong with believing your blood is special if your blood really is special and magic? Which is just-- if anyone catches themselves thinking this, and you sincerely believe that GRRM intended to create a magically superior master race of hot blondes who deserve to rule over all other backwards races by virtue of their superior breeding which is reinforced through brother-sister incest, and you've convinced yourself this represents progressive values, then you might want to step away from the computer for a bit and do a bit of self reflection.

And remember-- what is special about this special blood? It gives the bearers the ability to wield sentient weapons of mass destruction. It's also likely, according to the most popular theories, the result of blood magic involving human sacrifice. So there is a terrible price to pay for this so-called supremacy. Would any of us line up to be sacrificed to the Fourteen Flames so that the Valyrians can have nukes?

And if you are tempted by the idea that a woman who rides a dragon must inherently have some sort of power-- that is true. A woman who rides a dragon is more powerful than a woman who does not ride a dragon, and in some cases, more powerful than a man who does not ride a dragon, but that does not make her more powerful than a man who also rides a dragon. Dragonriding remained a carefully guarded privilege, and Targaryen women who might otherwise become dragonriders were routinely denied the privilege (despite the oft repeated "you cannot steal a dragon," when Saera Targaryen attempted to claim a dragon from the dragonpit, she was thrown into a cell for the attempted "theft,"words used by Jaehaerys). The dragonkeepers were established explicitly to keep anyone, even those of Targaryen blood, from taking them without permission. Any "liberation" that she has achieved is an illusion. What she has gained is the ability to enact violence upon others who are less privileged, and this ability does not save her from being the victim of gender based violence herself.

Politically speaking, it is also true that Valyria was a "freehold," in that they did not have a hereditary monarchy, but instead had a political structure akin to Ancient Athens (which was itself democratic, but not at all progressive or feminist). Landholding citizens could vote on laws and on temporary leaders, Archons. Were any of the lords freeholder women? We don't know. If we take Volantis as an example, the free city that seems to consider itself the successor to Valyria, the party of merchants, the elephants, had several female leaders three hundred years ago, but the party of the aristocracy, the tigers, the party made up of Valyrian Old Blood nobility, has never had a female leader. Lys, the other free city, is known for it's pleasure houses, which mainly employ women kidnapped into sexual slavery (as well as some young men). It is ruled by a group of magisters, who are chosen from among the wealthiest and noblest men in the city, not women. There does not seem to be a tradition of female leadership among Valyrians, and that's reflected by Aegon I himself, who becomes king, rather than his older sister-wife, Visenya. And although there have been girls named heir, temporarily, among the pre-Dance Targaryens, none were named heir above a trueborn brother aside from Rhaenyra, a choice that sparked a civil war. In this sense, the Targaryens are no different from the rest of Westeros.

As for feminism or sexual liberation, there's just no evidence to support it. We know that polygamy was not common, but it was also not entirely unheard of, but incest, to keep the bloodlines "pure," was common. Incest and polygamy are certainly sexual taboos, both in the real world and in Westeros, that the Valyrians violated, but the violation of sexual taboos is not automatically sexually liberated or feminist. Polygamy, when it is exclusively practiced by men and polyandry is forbidden (and we have no examples of Valyrian women taking multiple husbands, outside of fanfic), is often abusive to young women. Incest leads to an erosion of family relationships and abusive grooming situations are inevitable. King Jaehaerys' daughters are an excellent case study, and the stories of Saera and Viserra are particularly heartbreaking. Both women were punished severely for "sexual liberation," Viserra for getting drunk and slipping into her brother Baelon's bed at age fifteen, in an attempt to avoid an unwanted marriage to an old man. She was not punished because she was sister attempting to sleep with a brother, but because she was the wrong sister. Her mother, the queen had already chosen another sister for Baelon, and believed her own teenage daughter was seducing her brother for nefarious reasons. As a sister, Viserra should have been able to look to her brother for protection, but as the product of an incestuous family, Viserra could only conceive of that protection in terms of giving herself over to him sexually.

Beyond that, sexual slavery was also common in ancient Valyria, a practice that persisted in Lys and Volantis, with women (and young men) trafficked from other conquered and raided nations. Any culture that is built on a foundation of slavery and which considers sexual slavery to be normal and permissible, is a culture of normalized rape. Not feminist, not progressive.

I think we get the picture! so where did this idea that Valyrians are more progressive come from? I think there are two reasons. One, the fandom has a bit of a tendency to imagine Valyrians and their traditions in opposition to Westerosi Sevenism, and if Sevenism is fantasy Catholicism, and the fantasy Catholics also hate the Valyrian ways, they must hate them because those annoying uptight religious freaks just hate everything fun and cool, right? They hate revealing clothing, hate pornographic tapestries, hate sex outside of marriage, hate bastards. So being on Sevenism's shit-list must be a mark of honor, a sign of progressive values? But it's such a surface level reading, and a real misunderstanding of the medieval Catholic church, and a conflating of that church with the later Puritan values that many of us in the Anglosphere associate with being "devout." For most of European history, the Catholic church was simply The Church, and the church was, ironically, where you would find the material actions which most closely align with modern progressive values. The church cared for lepers, provided educations for women, took care of orphans, and fed the poor. In GRRM's world, which is admittedly more secular than the actual medieval world, Sevenism nevertheless has basically the same function, feeding the poor instead of, you know, enslaving them.

Finally, I blame the shows. While Valyrians weren't a progressive culture, Daenerys Targaryen herself held relatively progressive individual values by a medieval metric. She is a slavery abolitionist, she elevates women within her ranks, and she takes control of her own sexuality (after breaking free from her Targaryen brother). But Daenerys wasn't raised as a Targaryen. She grew up an orphan in exile, hearing stories of her illustrious ancestors from her brother, who of the two did absorb a bit of that culture, and is not coincidentally, fucked up, abusive, and misogynistic. He feels a sexual ownership over his sister, arranges a marriage for her, and even after her marriage, feels entitled to make decisions on her behalf. It is only after breaking away from Viserys that Dany comes into her own values. Having once been a mere object without agency of her own, she determines to save others from that fate and becomes an abolitionist. But because Game of Thrones gave viewers very little exposure to Targaryens aside from Daenerys, House Targaryen, in the eyes of most show watchers, is most closely associated with Dany and her freedom-fighter values. And as for Rhaenyra in House of the Dragon, being a female heir does not make her feminist or progressive, although it is tempting to view her that way when she is juxtaposed against Aegon II. Her "sexual liberation" was a lesson given to her by her uncle Daemon, a man who had an express interest in "liberating" her so that she would sleep with him, it was not a value she was raised with. In fact, she was very nearly disinherited for it, and was forced into a marriage with a gay man as a result of said "liberation." She had no interest in changing succession laws to allow absolute primogeniture, no interest in changing laws or norms around bastardy despite having bastards; she simply viewed herself as an exception. Rhaenyra's entire justification for her claim is not the desire to uplift women, bring peace and stability to Westeros, or even to keep her brother off the throne, it is simply that she believes she deserves it because her father is the king and he told her she could have it, despite all tradition and norms, and in spite of the near certain succession crisis it will cause. Whether she is right or wrong, absolutism is not progressive.

And let me just say, none of this means that you can't enjoy the Valyrians or think that they're fun or be a fan of house Targaryen. This insistence that Targaryens are the progressive, feminist (read: morally good) house seems by connected to the need of some fans to make their favorite characters unproblematic. If the Valyrians are "bad," does that make you a bad person for enjoying them? Of course not. But let's stop the moral grandstanding about the "feminist" and "progressive" Valyrians in a series that is an analogue for medieval feudalism. Neither of those things can exist under the systems in place in Westeros, nor could they have existed in the slavery based empire of conquest that was old Valyria.

[vitos-ordination-song]

I’m going to do other things now but. Here’s my final thoughts. They said that The Wire s4 was tragedy porn, voyeuristicly presenting the audience with misery so they can feel good about bearing witness to it. They also try to frame the show as so liberal that the only conclusion it can come up with is after-school programs, and that otherwise it’s acting as if all we can do is throw our hands up at the brutality of American life.

But what they’ve missed is that the show IS critical of the capitalist system. They must not have done research, because David Simon has said as much. And maybe the issue is just that they don’t think that shows up enough in the series. However, they don’t engage with the text and frequently get details wrong, so I think it’s more likely that they didn’t rewatch it, or only rewatched a couple episodes. I think that they originally saw it as young liberals and liked it, and are now trying to overcompensate by castigating it and thus their ignorant past selves, or something like that. But they’re remembering it through skewed lenses. Even if you think the show is too pro-cop or too liberal, many of their takes were simply factually incorrect. For instance, they say that the show is pro-Democrat and that voting blue is framed as the only solution. I don’t even need to explain to anyone who paid attention to the show why that’s wrong. And the NUMBER ONE solution that is ABSOLUTELY CLEARLY COMMUNICATED by the show and David Simon himself is ending the drug war. Call it reformist, it is still an actual policy that would make America a better place! The fact that they never even bring it up, and instead say s3 was a metaphor for the Iraq war, is incredible. And given that money, corruption, and economic disparity are the driving force of every single plot line, I also don’t think the anti-capitalist leanings are deniable. David Simon has even said that the Greek is meant to be the representation of omnipotent/omnipresent capitalism. Matt and Felix complain about the show being too obvious but they apparently missed this.

Let’s go back to season 4’s tragedy porn. Well, if all these themes and social critiques are the point of the show, season 4 is actually VITAL to the story. Viewers aren’t supposed to sit there being titillated by Mike, Randy, and Duquan’s stories—they’re supposed to want to do something about it! Is there something inherently explorative about depicting real-world situations people end up in? They said it Duquan’s story was “too sad.” Do you know what’s actually too sad? The fact that millions of children around the world are in similar situations. I’m not saying the show is perfect, there’s a hundred things I could say to criticize it. But to act like characters as well crafted and believable as Michael and Duquan are just there for liberals to stroke themselves to? I don’t buy it. They have too much dignity, too much agency despite their circumstances! They’re not only victims. Even Duquan still chooses where he ends up. The show just explores the sick circumstances which leads the characters to their fate—it does an amazing job of balancing individual and society’s interplay. But somehow while saying that the s4 storyline is just tragedy porn, they ALSO claim that the show doesn’t do enough to establish the many, primarily economic reasons kids end up being chewed up by the system. THAT’S THE ENTIRE POINT OF THE SEASON.

Frankly, the reason I love The Wire more than any other American drama is that it goes there. It depicts people from all walks of life, even those whose stories are rarely told. I may sound prudish or moralistic but genuinely: I’ve had enough of the protagonists from the kinds of shows they like. I enjoyed what I’ve seen of The Sopranos, it’s not like I thought Deadwood was bad, and I haven’t finished either so I’m not qualified to talk on them. But I’m tired of “[almost always white] man is evil and ambitious, let’s explore his psychology” stories. I can like them in movie form (There Will Be Blood), I can appreciate them when they’re well executed, but god they’re so overdone. We have a million of the fucking guys. We have only one of Mike, Dukie, Randy, and Namond. That’s why The Wire is superior to me.

Even tho I spent a lot of the night mad, I’m actually glad I watched that video. I’ve never articulated my thoughts on The Wire as much as I did tonight, fueled by pure rage. I’ve still only seen a few interesting takes on The Wire, but I suppose this was one of them for how bafflingly wrong it was. In my attempt to describe how, I came up with the above and many other thoughts. I also spit out a whole verbal essay on the portrayal of cops on the show earlier, as well as its journalistic realism vs. TV genre tropes and conventions. But anyway, I can understand why ppl don’t like certain things about The Wire, even if they don’t bother me, but this video was just ridiculous.

[phoebified]

very long post ahead about the whole chiyo stuff WRT (with regard to) posts i keep seeing that reference me that are starting to really really wear me out. put in the readmore after i finished the post because it got really long, so please forgive the frustrated start to the post, but also please go into this knowing that what i'm seeing is starting to really tire me out and frustrate me, and i don't exactly feel like people are taking this seriously or attempting to be as fair and considerate to me as i am trying to be to everyone else on this topic. it's really wearing me down. continue ahead (or don't) as needed

EDIT: i realize i am being hypocritical when asking people not to vague me while talking vaguely about posts i've seen, but i'm doing this because i have seen the things i mention here so commonly, more so than i have actually seen east asian people giving their opinion on this topic. which is kind of astonishing to me. i think it would take way too long for me to go through and find each post i reference and directly respond to it, and i don't want to do that on posts that are already being vague about me, so i will be vague and indirect right now to clear up all the confusions i can think to clear up in one go. i hope this is acceptable.

okay i kind of don't feel like explaining myself anymore because i feel like i have thoroughly and very fairly explained my points on chiyo, and i am also, contrary to popular belief, not the only east asian person who has brought up the points i have about chiyo relying on stereotypes as a character?? i don't know why i keep seeing people saying they've only seen two or three east asian people talking about this, or why i see people acting like there have been east asian people who have 100% disagreed with me or something. NTM that if they've only seen "two people" talking about this subject, if they would just go to my blog, since they're already talking about me, they would see plenty of other insight from other east asian people. i had one disagreement with someone, and then we cleared it up, because the wording on a post wasn't the best and we both became confused, which ended up being a mistake on both our parts, and we cleared it up and both agreed, if not in different ways, that chiyo was unintentionally not very good representation, if not with variations on why we thought she wasn't great rep. that's fine, again, i've said no one has to agree with me totally, and i've said before many times i'm just pointing out what i've noticed, not passing final judgement or anything like that. i've also said i don't speak for all japanese people. i've also stated i want people who agree with what i've said to think on it as well, and also have stated that it's good exercise to also think about what some alternative solutions are.

but i'm starting to get baffled because i'm, like, the third east asian person i've seen who has outright said "hey yeah she's very much a stereotype". i'm not saying we're right based on majority, but the amount of posts i've seen directly vaguing me and my opinion and then saying "but i can't say for sure i'm not a POC" are starting to make me feel very frustrated -- especially the posts that keep saying "don't just listen to this one person, get multiple opinions". especially considering that they seem to imply that the people who are sharing what i've said and expanding on some of the points i've made are somehow blindly following what i've said. i understand that in small online communities like this, blindly following an opinion because you want to be a good ally can be a problem, but i can earnestly say that i do not think that's an issue here! especially considering that i keep encouraging people to think about why they agree with me first. so consistently seeing posts encouraging everyone to take my opinion with a grain of salt, when KNOWING that they are talking about MY opinion, as if i have not already encouraged the people engaging with me to think about these points first, feels very targeted and frustrating, and it's sort of making me regret ever saying anything in the first place.

i do not know anyone who has expanded on/shared my viewpoint who has tried to drown out other people's opinions, or blindly agreed with me, as i've had many talks to clear up confusion with many people in the last several weeks. however, i HAVE seen white people dissuading other white people from "only parroting" my, SPECIFICALLY MY opinion. which is frustrating, because i am being vagued, however unintentionally, as "the only person getting their opinion spread", and i've seen multiple posts saying this. i've also seen a few other posts that also have vagued me straight up just disagreeing with me in very flippant, discrediting ways -- and so far they've only come from white people. i'm not trying to imply racism, but i am begging for people to please have a care with how they respond and react to me when i'm trying to discuss (unintentional) racism in a constructive manner. also, i have seen several other east asian people chiming in with their own posts and replies giving their two cents, separate from mine, with additions that i have forgotten to add in my posts and posts i've added on to. i appreciate their expanding on my points! i wish more people would see the points they've made, too, so they can have a better grasp on why i take issue with the things i've taken issue on. this is making me wonder how many of these posts are actually saying "get multiple opinions" to be fair WRT opinion, because shockingly, i have not seen ANYONE making posts like this actually sharing the opinions of the other east asian people i have seen -- or even my opinion. i've only seen them say "don't believe everything immediately". i hope you can imagine how frustrating and hypocritical this seems to me. considering the whole thing is "get multiple opinions, share everyone's opinion equally, don't just reblog anything", i do not understand why this is not actually happening. to be quite honest, the posts i've seen in this vein have not read to me as posts that are attempting to encourage hearing out all people of color. to me, it feels like people are just trying to stop this discussion altogether. this might be me misinterpreting, but please try to see it from my point of view.

i would also like to say that i have YET to see another east asian person flat out disagree with me! so i am very confused on what some of these posts are talking about. we have had discussions and wording disagreements/discussions on nitpicks that i can understand and see the merit in, but none of us have flat out disagreed with one another as far as i can tell. if anything, i've seen them say "i agree that she's not good representation in this area, but i don't think it's on purpose or for money." or, "i agree for the most part, but i think she could pass as just a decora girl, and i don't think her name is a big issue as it's well picked." the first one was a misunderstanding that became cleared up, because my wording wasn't very good -- again, i do not think chiyo's design is INTENTIONALLY racist -- and the second point is one i absolutely see the merit of and have shared on my blog. however, i have noticed that my opinion (which i have very purposefully tried to leave open in a way that shows that while i take issue with chiyo's design, it is not the end of the world, and it's just something i want to point out) and the posts and replies by other east asians i've seen that are saying what i've been saying, which is that chiyo is bad representation of a japanese girl that relies on very tired and overused stereotypes, have NOT been shared on the blogs where people have said not to only share my opinion. i know i just said this in the last paragraph, but i want to emphasize it, because it is confusing to me and very frustrating. i do not understand the purpose of saying "get multiple opinions" if there are not actually multiple opinions being shared. when posts like this come from blogs of people who are not actually contributing anything to the discussion, or boosting all the voices of east asians like they say everyone should be doing, then i have to wonder why they were made in the first place. it certainly does not feel like they're made out of a desire to genuinely boost the voices of POC, or they would... do that.

also... please, i am begging you, if you are a white person, please, please, PLEASE do not assume that the overlap between specific groups of east asian people and specific issues that are pointed out with chiyo as a japanese character that has fallen into many japanese stereotypes are going to be immediately apparent to non japanese east asian people. there is overlap with how our communities and culture are treated! that does not mean a person who is not japanese but is east asian will immediately be able to understand what i am talking about WRT to her appearance and the stereotypes i see just because we are both east asian. usually, the reason east asian people get the same treatement is BECAUSE of racism, or because people who aren't us frequently confuse us with one another. it is not because we are actually from similar cultures, and each of our cultures have very specific ways with which they are viewed, and we all have our specific stereotypes that have been made up about our cultures.

please do not assume other people even from asia are going to have the same viewpoint as east asians. i know i certainly could not personally tell you anything about the struggles of central or south asians, and i don't know what southeast asians go through personally. i do not have any PERSONAL insight on the stereotypes a chinese character might have about them beyond ones i can recognize as being similar to the stereotypes of my cultures, which is to say ones that i can understand comparatively, and their origin from western cultures. this isn't to say i can't understand the issues of my fellow asian people, not at all, but it is saying that our experiences are all going to be vastly different from one another. someone from west asia or northern asia or southern asia are not going to have my experiences, and i will not have theirs. asia is huge. i'm not saying we can't go to bat for one another, or even that east asians can't share opinions on east asian characters derived from a different culture, i'm just saying that i am not only speaking as an east asian person, but as someone who is japanese. i did not start criticizing chiyo's design from an east asian standpoint. i started from a japanese standpoint. it's just that i have used "east asian" broadly, as there are frequently overlaps in how our cultures are treated by people who are not us when said people are making characters based on our cultures. i hope this makes sense.

please do not assume that people of color are going to innately understand one another's experiences. and please, please, please... please understand that POC stands for "people of color" or "person of color". this is not meant to be a roast or anything, or a judge of anyone, trust me! i see this on tumblr all the time -- like, ALL of it, so don't feel bad, because i just assume people don't know or haven't thought about this or english is just hard, but please stop using POC as an adjective. i have seen it used this way quite a bit so far, and it's very alarming. the term "people of color" was invented to circumvent people using negative terms for us. using POC as an adjective in front of people, characters, etc... it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

finally, i understand where many of these posts are coming from. i also want white people to hear all of the opinions of the other east asian people in the fandom! i also do not want white people to only repeat what i say, i want them to consider my argument on the topic and why i say what i say. i fully encourage east asian people to join me in the discussion if they want to, or to stay out of it if they wish, and i want white people to boost their voices as much as my opinion has been shared. i want nothing more than for my fellow east asian people to feel comfortable sharing their opinions, and i hope they feel comfortable hearing mine in return. but in return, i also want my opinion to be genuinely considered and shared ALONGSIDE the opinions of the other east asian people who have been discussing this. i have done my best to respond to, discuss, clear up confusion with, and share the other points i have seen about this topic on my blog. this should make it very easy to see where the discussion on the topic has gone since it has begun. this should make it easy to actually share some of the opinions other east asian people have given so far, be they reblogs, misunderstandings that have been communicated through, standalone posts, or replies to posts made.

i understand the worry that white people will simply follow blindly. i have made careful effort to be as fair as i can be and to encourage people to think my points through with me rather than just parrot me. i encourage people to not jump to conclusions. however, i am very tired of being touted as "the only one getting my opinion shared" when i am trying to have actual conversation about why i believe what i believe, and am trying to share every other east asian opinion i have found, and to explain why my opinion differs from theirs if we disagree on something. if white people following unthinkingly has become such a big issue, i don't see why the posts i've reblogged that is discussion between or has points from other east asian people are not being shared more.

and frankly, i'm very tired of being vagued about. many of the posts i've seen made about my opinion or the people who share posts i've weighed in on say things like "no disrespect but" or "it's not up to me but" and then proceed to have a very flippant and uncaring tone, or weighs in after saying they can't really say anything one way or the other. this may seem like not a big deal, but i put a lot of effort into making my opinions easily understandable to people who have not had my experience in life, and it really frustrates me that so many of the posts i've seen that have directly vagued me with specific details have been so... well, frankly disrespectful, and that so many have taken my arguments out of context, or misconstrued them. i feel like nobody is really hearing what i'm saying. i understand that some of the posts that reference me or what i've said aren't necessarily about me, and are more... disagreement with... i guess other white people sharing said opinion, but please don't forget a person of color, a japanese person, has made those points first, and with careful consideration so as to not step on anyone's toes, even when i feel that mine are being stepped on. i request that if you disagree with the conversations i've started, you feel free to weigh in, then. but i also request that people please not continually make posts about me that i end up finding randomly when i'm just trying to browse through SSO content. it's really upsetting, frankly! i don't like being vagued, it makes me feel paranoid, and i've tried to make the conversation as open as possible and respond to people directly and politely, so if you feel free to talk about my opinion/what i've said and then say "well it's not a vague", please just consider talking directly to me.

originally my gripes with chiyo were just supposed to be gripes i shared with my mutuals and people i respect on SSOblr, so i hope you can imagine how jarring it is, as a rather small SSO blog, to suddenly see posts talking about me in vague terms, or misconstruing my points. i am trying very hard to be fair in the execution of this conversation, i want people to feel free to communicate with me in an open way. i don't mind explaining my points or what i think is wrong with the design so far, but please do not vague me any more. it's very upsetting to me. i hope you can understand.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

[inndelibles]

While I fully agree that we should be able to critique media we like and it's not fair to attack others for doing so, I'm genuinely baffled by the first two points. I don't say that as a slight or attack, I just really don't understand, because this is how I see it.

On Terry: I took a look at his step 4 just because it's been a while since I've seen it and I don't see how it's sexualized at all. Nothing about his design draws attention to any particular body part and he's not in lewd clothes or a suggestive pose. Calling it sexualized just seems inaccurate. What is accurate is saying that he doesn't look super duper masculine.

Yes he has narrower shoulders and wider hips, but that's just... how some people look? I feel like it just implies he didn't have surgery to make his body appear more masculine, which lots of trans men also choose to do. And that shouldn't make their transness any less valid. Yes, some trans men might be self-conscious about it, but others might not be, and even for those who are, they may not have access to resources to give them the look that they want. Should we just not acknowledge that those people exist? Should we just never portray trans men that don't look completely like cis men? That feels pretty dangerous to me. I actually think it's awesome that Terry's design is the way that it is; it represents a real group of trans people that exist, and shows that (general you) your identity as a trans man is valid even if you don't want to/can't use resources to make yourself look like a cis man.

Not to mention plenty of cis men look like that too. Narrow shoulders and wide hips are not exclusive to women, nor are wide shoulders and narrower hips exclusive to men. In the same way that gender is a spectrum, the way that our bodies present biological sex (which is also not as black and white as XX vs XY) is a spectrum. Terry's body type in step 4 could easily be that of a cis man, just a cis man whose body doesn't look super traditionally masculine.

On Baxter's Parents: I assume Baxter is the LI being referenced here. Not only is the white supremacy (which yes, I do agree is there) actively portrayed as a bad thing, but Baxter's character wouldn't make much sense without it. The reason he is the way that he is comes from the fact that he is a queer man from a bigoted family, and he realized he didn't want to be like them after becoming friends with other queer and poc kids in the neighborhood and seeing how awesome they are – basically seeing how wrong and horrible his family is. He actively decides to be better than them by not following in their footsteps and choosing to accept people the way they are. Remember the whole "they would hate me if I wasn't their biological son" thing? He's fully aware that he is a person his parents would hate because of his queerness and willingness to interact with those who are """below""" him, and they only reason they don't hate him is that "oh he's our offspring, there must be reasons he is the way he is. We'll extend grace to him because deep down he's really like us and just doesn't know what he's doing."

Without the explicit bigotry of his parents, Baxter is just... a guy that cut off all contact with his family because they were strict, I guess? And his whole issue with not believing he's worthy of relationships because "he has nothing to offer" is no longer because of his family's wealth and seeing middle and lower class families as "lesser," so what would be the cause of it? I don't know if I'm making sense but his story feels way less impactful and doesn't even make sense in some ways unless it's made clear that his family is awful and bigoted, especially now having the context of the characters of OLNF.

Now, I will say that I understand not loving the white supremacy in a game that's meant to be comforting and accepting, but it's presence in this game is so small, and again, it's condemned, not portrayed as neutral or even positively. Not to mention it's in a dlc, so people who just play the free version wouldn't encounter it at all.

Anyways this went on for way longer than I meant it to. I hope I'm not coming across as aggressive, because that's not my intention. I do agree that acknowledging criticism is very important. I guess I just wanted to give my perspective because I don't see how these points specifically are actually things that should be criticized.

Ya know, as someone who has been in this fandom for nearly 2-3 years, I have seen so many people jump at other people for being critical of OL when there are very obvious fuck ups that the game devs should have taken time to correct instead of letting it stay and fester.

For example:

Terry's step 4 design in general and how grossly sexualized it is when he's a trans man

The inclusion of white supremacy through one of the LI's parents

Cliff never having a set enthicity and therefore letting people decide what race Cove should be so they dont have to worry about confronting their feelings on dating a mixed man

I can go on and on about this, but you can enjoy a game and criticize aspects of it that wasn’t handled well. You should, at the very least, be neutral on when people criticize those aspects because each criticism is an improvement that the devs can take forward to their next games

[writingwithcolor]

I'm writing an AU of a movie that takes place in the 1880s USA, where a travelling white character and a Jewish character are waylaid by Native Americans, who they befriend. Probably because it was written by and about PoC (Jews) the scene actually avoids the stuff on your Native American Masterpost, but I'd still like to do better than a movie made in the 1980's, and I feel weird cutting them from the plot entirely. I have a Jewish woman reading it for that, but are there any things you (1/1)

2/2 1880s western movie ask--are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s? I do plan to base them on a real tribe (Ute, probably) and have proper housing/clothes and so forth, but right now I'm just trying to avoid or subvert awful cowboy movie tropes. Any ideas?

White and Jewish Men, Native American interactions in 1880s

I am vaguely concerned with how you only cite one of our posts about Native Americans, that was not written by a Native person, and do not cite any of the posts relating to this time period, or any posts relating to representation in media. 

Sidenote: if you want us to give accurate reflections of the media you’re discussing, please tell us the NAME. I cannot go look up this movie based off this description to give you an idea of what my issues are with this scene, and must instead trust that the representation is good based off your judgement. I cannot make my own judgement. This is a problem. Especially since your whole question boils down to “this scene is good but not great and I want it to be great. How can I do that?”

Your baseline for “good” could very well be my baseline for “terrible hack job”. I can’t give you the proper education required for you to be able to accurately evaluate the media you’re watching for racist stereotypes if you don’t tell me what you’re even working with.

When you’re writing fanfic where the media is directly relevant to the question, please tell us the name of the media. We will not judge your tastes. We need this information in order to properly help you.

Moving on.

I bring up my concern for you citing that one—exceptionally old—post because it is lacking in many of the tropes that don’t exist in the media critique field but exist in the real world. This is an issue I have run into countless times on WWC (hence further concern you did not cite any other posts) and have spoken about at length. 

People look at the media critique world exclusively, assume it is a complete evaluation of how Native Americans are seen in society, and as a result end up ignoring some really toxic stereotypes and then come to the inbox with “these characters aren’t abc trope, so they’re fine, but I want to rubber stamp them anyway. Anything wrong here?”. The answer is pretty much always yes. 

Issue one: “Waylaid” by Native Americans

This wording is extremely loaded for one reason: Native American people are seen as tricksters, liars, and predators. This is the #1 trope that shows up in the real world that does not show up in media critique. It’s also the trope I have talked about the most when it comes to media representation, so you not knowing the trope is a sign you haven’t read the entirety of the Native tag—which is in the FAQ as something we would really prefer you did before coming at us to answer questions. It avoids us having to re-explain ourselves.

Now, hostility is honestly to be expected for the time period the movie is set in. This is in the beginnings (or ramping up) of residential schools in America* and Canada, we have generations upon generations of stolen or killed children, reserves being allocated perhaps hundreds of miles from sacred sites, and various wars with Plains and Southwest peoples are in full force (Wounded Knee would have happened in 1890, in December, and the Dakoa’s mass execution would have been in 1862. Those are just the big-name wars. There absolutely were others). 

*America covers up its residential schools abuse extremely thoroughly, so if you try to research them in the American context you will come up empty. Please research Canada’s schools and apply the same abuse to America, as Canada has had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about residential schools and therefore is more (but not completely) transparent about the abuse that happened. Please note that America’s history with residential schools is longer than Canada’s history. There is an extremely large trigger warning for mass child death when you do this research.

But just because the hostility is expected does not mean that this hostility would be treated well in the movie. Especially when you consider the sheer amount of tension between any Native actors and white actors, for how Sacheen Littlefeather had just been nearly beaten up by white actors at the 1973 Academy Awards for mentioning Wounded Knee, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act had only been passed two years prior in 1978. 

These Native actors would not have had the ability to truly consent to how they were shown, and this power dynamic has to be in your mind when you watch this scene over. I don’t care that the writers were from a discriminated-against background. This does not always result in being respectful, and I’ve also spoken about this power imbalance at length (primarily in the cowboy tag).

Documentaries and history specials made in the 2010s (with some degree of academic muster) will still fall into wording that harkens Indigenous people to wolves and settlers as frightened prey animals getting picked off by the mean animalistic Natives. This is not neutral, or good. This is perpetuating the myth that the settlers were helpless, just doing their own thing completely unobtrusively, and then the evil territorial Native Americans didn’t want to share.

To paraphrase Batman: if I had a week I couldn’t explain all the reasons that’s wrong.

How were these characters waylaid by the Native population? Because that answer—which I cannot get because you did not name the media—will determine how good the framing is. But based on the time period this movie was made alone, I do not trust it was done respectfully.

Issue 2: “Befriending”

I mentioned this was in an intense period of residential schools and land wars all in that area. The Ute themselves had just been massacred by Mormons in the Grass Valley Massacre in 1865, with ten men and an unknown number of women and children killed thanks to a case of assumed association with a war chief (Antonga Black Hawk) currently at war with Utah. The Paiute had been massacred in 1866. Over 100 Timpanogo men had been killed, with an unknown number of women and children enslaved by Brigham Young in Salt Lake City in 1850, with many of the enslaved people dying in captivity (those numbers were not tracked, but I would assume at least two hundred were enslaved— that’s simply assuming one woman/wife and one child for every man, and the numbers could have very well been higher if any war-widows and their children were in the group, not to mention families with multiple children). This is after an unknown group of Indigenous people had been killed by Governor Brigham Young the year prior, to “permanently stop cattle theft�� from settlers. 

The number of Native Americans killed in Utah in the 1800s—just the number of dead counted (since women and children weren’t counted)—in massacres not tied to war (because there was at least one war) is over 130. The actual number of random murders is much higher; between the uncounted deaths and how the Governor had issued orders to “deal with” the problem of cattle theft permanently. I doubt you would have been tried or convicted if you murdered Indigenous peoples on “your” land. This is why it’s called state sanctioned genocide.

This is not counting the Black Hawk War in Utah (1865-1872), which the Ute were absolutely a part of (the wiki articles I read were contradictory if Antonga Black Hawk was Ute or Timpanogo, but the Ute were part of it). The first official massacre tied to the war—the Bear River Massacre, ordered by the US Military—places the death count of just that singular massacre at over five hundred Shoshone, including elders, women, and children. It would not be unreasonable to assume that the number of Indigenous people killed in Utah from 1850, onward, is over a thousand, perhaps two or three.

Pardon me for not reading beyond that point to list more massacres and simply ballparking a number; the source will be linked for you to get an accurate number of dead.

So how did they befriend the Native population? Let alone see them as fully human considering the racism of the time period? Natives were absolutely not seen as fully human so long as they were tied to their culture, and assimilation equalling some sliver of respect was already a stick being waved around as a threat. This lack of humanity continues to the present day.

I’m not saying friendship is impossible. I am saying the sheer levels of mistrust that would exist between random wandering groups of white/pale men and Indigenous communities wouldn’t exactly make that friendship easy. Having the scene end be a genuine friendship feels ignorant and hollow and flattening of ongoing genocide, because settlers lied about their intentions and then lined you up for slauther (that’s how the Timpanogo were killed and enslaved).

Utah had already done most of its mass killing by this point. The era of trusting them was over. There was an active open hunting season, and the acceptable targets were the Indigenous populations of Utah.

(sources for the numbers: 

List of Indian Massacres in North America Black Hawk War (1865-1872))

Issue 3: “Proper housing/clothes and so forth”

Do you mean Western style settlements and jeans? If yes, congratulations you have written a reservation which means the land-ripped-away wounds are going to be fresh, painful, and sore.

You do not codify what you mean by “proper”, and proper is another one of those deeply loaded colonial words that can mean “like a white man” or “appropriate for their tribe.” For the time period, it would be the former. Without specifying which direction you’re going for, I have no idea what you’re imagining. And without the name of the media, I don’t know what the basis of this is.

The reservation history of this time period seems to maybe have some wiggle room; there were two reservations allocated for the Ute at this time, one made in 1861 and another made in 1882 (they were combined into the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in 1886). This is all at the surface level of a google and wikipedia search, so I have no idea how many lived in the bush and how many lived on the reserve. 

There were certainly land defenders trying to tell Utah the land did not belong to them, so holdouts that avoided getting rounded up were certainly possible. But these holdouts would be far, far more hostile to anyone non-Native.

The Ute seemed to be some degree of lucky in that the reserve is on some of their ancestral territory, but any loss of land that large is going to leave huge scars. 

It should be noted that reserves would mean the traditional clothing and housing would likely be forbidden, because assimilation logic was in full force and absolutely vicious at this time. 

It’s a large reserve, so the possibility exists they could have accidentally ended up within the borders of it. I’m not sure how hostile the state government was for rounding up all the Ute, so I don’t know if there would have been pockets of them hiding out. In present day, half of the Ute tribe lives on the reserve, but this wasn’t necessarily true historically—it could have been a much higher percentage in either direction.

It’s up to you if you want to make them be reservation-bound or not. Regardless, the above mentioned genocide would have been pretty fresh, the land theft in negotiations or already having happened, and generally, the Ute would be well on their way to every assimilation attempt made from either residential schools, missionaries, and/or the forced settlement and pre-fab homes.

To Answer Your Question

I don’t want another flattened, sanitized portrayal of genocide.

Look at the number of dead above, the amount of land lost above, the amount of executive orders above. And try to tell me that these people would be anything less than completely and totally devastated. Beyond traumatized. Beyond broken hearted. Absolutely grief stricken with almost no soul left.

Their religion would have been illegal. Their children would have been stolen. Their land was taken away. A saying about post-apocalyptic fiction is how settler-based it is, because Indigenous people have already lived through their own apocalypse.

It would have all just happened at the time period this story is set in. All of the grief you feel now at the environment changing so drastically that you aren’t sure how you’ll survive? Take that, magnify it by an exponential amount because it happened, and you have the mindset of these Native characters.

This is not a topic to tread lightly. This is not a topic to read one masterpost and treat it as a golden rule when there is too much history buried in unmarked, overfull graves of school grounds and cities and battlefields. I doubt the movie you’re using is good representation if it doesn’t even hint at the amount of trauma these Native characters would have been through in thirty years.

A single generation, and the life that they had spent millennia living was gone. Despite massive losses of life trying to fight to preserve their culture and land.

Learn some history. That’s all I can tell you. Learn it, process it, and look outside of checklists. Look outside of media. 

And let us have our grief.

~ Mod Lesya

On Question Framing

Please allow me the opportunity to comment on “are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s?” That strikes me as the same type of question as asking what color food I’d like for lunch. I don’t see how the cultural backgrounds of characters I have literally no other information about is supposed to make me want anything in particular about them. I don’t know anything about their personalities or if they have anything in common.

Compare the following questions:

“Are there things you’d like to see in a movie where two American women, one from a Nordic background and one Jewish, are interacting?” I struggle to see how our backgrounds are going to yield any further inspiration. It certainly doesn’t tell you that we’re both queer and cling to each other’s support in a scary world; it doesn’t tell you that we uplift each other through mental illness; it doesn’t go into our 30 years of endless bizarre inside jokes related to everything from mustelids to bad subtitles.

Because: “white”, “Jewish”, and “Native American” aren’t personality words. You can ask me what kind of interaction I’d like to see from a high-strung overachieving woman and a happy-go-lucky Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I’ll tell you I’d want fluffy f/f romance. Someone else might want conflict ultimately resolving in friendship. A third person might want them slowly getting on each other’s nerves more and more until one becomes a supervillain and the other must thwart her. But the same question about a cultural demographic? That told me nothing about the people involved.

Also, the first time I meet a new person from a very different culture, it might take weeks before discussion of our specific cultural differences comes up. As a consequence, my first deep conversations with a Costa Rican American gentile friend were not about Costa Rica or my Jewishness but about things we had in common: classical music and coping with breakups--which are obviously conversations I could have had if we were both Jewish, both Costa Rican gentiles, or both something else. So in other words, I’m having trouble seeing how knowing so little about these characters is supposed to give me something to want to see on the page.

Thank you for understanding.

(And yes, I agree with Lesya, what’s with this trend of people trying to explain their fandom in a roundabout way instead of mentioning it by name? It makes it harder to give meaningful help….)

--Shira

[you-can-be-what-you-want-to-be]

Are you proship?

Ok I hope this doesn’t sound pretentious but I don’t really like the term proship.

There are certainly a lot of ships I don’t like. I barely ship to start with bc I’m aro so most ships I’m like they’re qpr or friends and I can’t do anything with incest.

But I don’t think we should hurt real life people over fictional characters. And I’m not crazy about real life fiction (note: I’m talking about real people not played personas where they forgot to change their name for the character. Like I’m not going to get mad at someone for rpf about the character John Malkovich from the movie being John Malkovich as played by John Malkovich or Jonathan sims as played by Jonny sims) but I think at worst the person it’s about could sue them for defamation or something like that. 

And I don’t trust people to say what’s good or not for the same reason I’m against the death penalty. There are genuinely stories out there that are bad, and there are genuinely vile people who might deserve to die. But the question isn’t what they deserve, the question is who makes the call? Who deserves that power and can be trusted by it? My mom thinks anything with gay people is depraved. I’ve seen people say that mentioning racism exists in a work is racist. I’ve seen people who miss the point of fight club as satire and think it’s about how cool fighting is and not a critique of capitalism and toxic masculinity. If people have the power to censor things that actually have bad things, how can I trust their judgement of bad is the same as my own? How can I trust all stories that talk about taboo real life relevant struggles and issues won’t be erased? How do I know it’s not people like my mother making that choice? They’re trying to ban books from schools all over the country right now, it isn’t that different, it’s just the person who’s controlling what’s banned. And I don’t think it’ll ever be anyone but allocishet white conservatives who in the big real life world, will be in control of that.

And a lot of those stories about “depraved” things are good and amazing and make life better! If I had read Lolita when I was like fifteen there’s a lot of bad stuff I could’ve avoided. Stories about complex morality make you question yourself and your situation. “Am I in that situation” or “am I treating people like that.” It wasn’t until I listened to welcome to nightvale that I realized that gay people are just people and started moving away from the way I had been raised. We NEED fiction about taboo subjects, and we NEED for it to be nuanced so people can learn from it.

I don’t want to get into a lot, but if I had seen depictions of horrible things happening from sympathetic characters my life would’ve been a lot better. It would’ve been easier to go “oh this is bad even if I sometimes get treated good or care about the person doing this. It’s bad behavior even if the he is incredibly nice and giving in every other aspect but this abuse.” Because some people are and in some ways and good in others! One of the most amazing giving people I know who’s almost gone bankrupt from how much he helps others was shitty. He was neglectful and propitiated emotional incest and said horrible things like that women were happier when they couldn’t vote and are all crazy, ugly, or trans, which was the biggest abomination he could think of.

And I was in that situation with that man for years, because he would wake up at 2am to answer a call and take an hour drive to scare off rapists. Shouldn’t have brought his two 14 year old kids but he was reliable for that kind of stuff. He would invite homeless people over to stay the night and would sleep on the couch so they had the bed. He would walk miles just to help someone with a flat tire.

And if I had something that said “abusers can love you and be the kindest person you ever met”, something most people call glorification? I could’ve gotten out 8 years earlier. So we need these stories, it’s hardly their fault that people can’t delve into what a story means, can’t see things like Lolita as more than a romance. Sometimes abusers are people you like and that’s important, because you need to be able to click that and leave anyway.

So while I don’t like the term proship, I am absolutely against censoring fiction, no matter what it’s about.

[crossguild]

quick thots on how to actually create a safe space for poc from a leadership position, keplace week, and racism in the wolf 359 fandom

1. white people need to get educated about racism and racist microaggressions and shut them down WITHOUT PROMPTING when they see it. not wait for poc to speak up, not wait for someone to call it out first, not ignore it and hope no one noticed-- we did, and we see the silence as complicity. we see when they point out homophobia and transphobia and ableism and just ignore racism because it doesn't affect them personally.

2. they need to not immediately get defensive when it's pointed out, IF anyone even speaks up about it. the moment they do, they've lost trust and any opportunity for a good-faith learning opportunity even if they walk it back later. we don't care how good their intentions are, their actions have already demonstrated that they'll defend whiteness and white supremacy as a kneejerk reaction, and take any gentle critique of their implicit biases as a personal attack. there's no walking that back.

3. writing 'poc are welcome', 'this is a safe space for poc', 'racism will not be tolerated' is 100% meaningless when they're actively alienating all the poc in their space. i've been in spaces where white people unfailingly change the topic from race to lgbt headcanons, nd headcanons, and literally any other kind of hc or discussion instead of learning, building, and engaging on any conversation about race just because they don't feel totally comfortable in it. they refuse to shut down racism or racist microaggressions, and that directly contradicts any 'racism is not tolerated here' rule.

4. white fans will infantilize and fetishize characters of color to an egregious degree. some of the worst perpetrators are people who claim to be "fans" of the character when what they're actually doing is projecting stereotypes and/or their own experiences onto a character who has nothing in common with them. poc are constantly forced to empathize with, learn about and relate to white people who have nothing in common with us; we recognize it when they refuse to do the same.

5. if all of the mods and leadership in a space are white, that's a huge red flag. if they can't find poc in their community willing to take on a leadership role, or if they do and that person is used as a token, is not supported when they actually bring up and act on racism, they've been abjectly failed.

6. we see white people forcing identities that THEY relate to onto characters of color and getting really fucking mad when anyone disagrees or has a different interpretation, in ways that they don't do with any white characters or any other kind of identity. i've never seen white people get viscerally angry or uncomfortable at the implication that lovelace is dominican instead of costa rican the way they do at the idea that she might be bi, but that's also because they don't care enough about lovelace to think about her culture and identity beyond what they can project on her. again, fully transparent.

7. zero out of the 7 sign-ups for keplace week in the server are straight (and this isn't including people who didn't sign up but still plan to participate), five are woc, all are interested in a (platonic OR otherwise) dynamic between kepler and lovelace because the infantilizing, entitled and reductive ways lovelace is treated when portrayed by white people in this fandom has basically made us sick of minkowski/lovelace, which is a ship i & most of us DO like but which i trust none but my mutuals of color to write.

8. their assumptions about how qpoc engage with and perceive them as characters and as a dynamic are racist and irrelevant to me, but it would be a lot less obvious if they learned to keep it in private platforms instead of indulging in this pathological need to display their ignorance in public. lots of people in my server aren't interested in the ship! most of them go 'don't get it, but there's plenty of other stuff for us to engage in that we actually enjoy!' or 'i never thought about it before, but i'm willing to listen' instead of immediately doing the pettiest and most obnoxious thing they can think of.

9. podcast fandoms are notoriously racist, as are all fandoms, and to create a space that's genuinely comfortable and engaging for a diverse group of fans is a constant, ongoing and active choice that everyone has to engage in. if you aren't making that choice every day, you are perpetuating the racism and alienation. the difference is stark in who feels comfortable contributing and the kinds of conversations we can have, and at the very least i'm glad i have this space and friends to share it with.

10. this is a server i made in response to seeing a larger wolf 359 server, and the way they refuse to engage on race and make excuse after excuse as to why that's okay yet still trying to claim allyship to poc. there were multiple, gentle attempts to address it, all brushed off or aggressively shut down, and i'm a happier person for not being a part of it! white "allies", once again, proving themselves to be a joke. but we've been saying that for years.

11. you know. we weren't gonna be very public about this event from the outset, but after seeing this aggressive and obtuse reaction (to the point of leaving the server) from some white members, we decided to be a little more public and enthusiastic about it! the fact that white fans reacted with passive-aggression and pettiness was expected, and entertaining every step of the way, since we honestly never expected better.

12. i don't expect this to reach the people who are the most egregious about it, nor do i expect it to percolate or change anything even if it does, but that's not why i wrote this. i wrote this 'cause i know there's lots of wolf 359 fans of color, and i've rarely seen these issues addressed in this tiny-ass fandom. i don't speak for everyone, but i do speak for myself, and either way i've found my community! i hope everyone else is able to do the same.

[antiterf]

So I’m posting my genuine thought process here so that way people get a good context. If it sucks then I have ADHD and you’re going to have to deal with it.

Me, watching a new wave of transandrophobia discourse come up: Why are people saying that trans men don't oppress trans women? (Genuine)

"The experiences are too different to compare"

But trans men oppress trans women on the basis of being men and women. Why would that be disagreed with? Gender is odd with us, and shouldn’t be taken as black and white, but I don’t think it’s this odd. It’s probably because if you’re specifying an oppressed group of men (bi men, disabled men, etc) as holding privilege over another gender, it comes as a different form from that specific group.

So how did we reach this point where trans men are holding a specific form of transmisogyny where others are saying it? Does it exist? If it does then how and where did it come from? Why does transmisogyny keep getting a red underline it’s a word damn it WAIT I CAN ADD IT TO DICTIONARY SUCK IT WINDOWS.

And why do trans men and other trans masc people have an adverse reaction to being told this? I found myself checking recently if these calls for unity are ever coming from trans women, and I’m sure some agree with them, but it always seems to stem from other trans mascs. It reminds me of when other white people are rallying to me saying that we should set race aside. It sounds fine on the surface, racial differences shouldn’t make anyone feel less welcome in a space, but what was really happening was ignoring the issues of an oppressed group and silencing them for speaking out. While my fellow trans men may not intend to do that, or be doing the same exact thing, I’m still very wary.

Maybe it’s just another instance of people not knowing how privilege and oppression works. That not everyone experiences the same exact thing but that there is a pattern of one group treated better than the other when it’s averaged across the population.

Trans mascs are using transandrophobia, and I have definitely seen instances of some saying that trans women are the ones who are silencing us over our own experiences. Thats not the case from what I’ve seen. Trans women have an issue when we say to “stop focusing so much on them!” and try to act as if people cannot care about more than one thing. It’s like we think there’s one spotlight and we need to push the other group out to get into it, but that’s not how it works. Trans women have hypervisibility and saying that they hold power over our invisibility with it is incredibly harmful. I can understand that it’s frustrating when we look up anything regarding transgender rights or media and it’s mostly if not all trans women because we are looking for something that relates to us, but that is not the intent or fault of trans women.

And when it comes to us talking about our experiences without that and someone says that it’s taking attention away from trans women, yeah, that’s probably wrong, but we need to be able to differentiate that.

Overall when trans men and women separate to talk about our experiences, it does not end well and we commonly end up complaining about one another. This is not beneficial to either of us but we do it because it’s much easier to do that than to acknowledge the transphobic society we live in. Being trans will make you distrust a lot more people, because someone can become your enemy the second you mention your gender identity when they were your friend a second ago.

There is without a doubt transmisogyny within transmasc circles and as a trans man I still find myself there because I want to have a sense of community. It’s hard to tell that when there is critique if the intention is pure or not.

I’ve had plenty of experience being told that I can’t reclaim the t slur even though I’ve been called it for being trans since it’s only used against trans women, and I see myself reclaiming it anyway because before it was used in self-hatred and reclaiming it has improved my internalized transphobia and mental health. I’ve been told to delete my anti terf blog because I don’t experience transmisogyny and that terfs don’t target me, when that’s a lie. So maybe when people say that trans masc people have privilege over trans fems, that’s what we think of. We think of our experiences where people forget that transmisogyny will always include transphobia, and that transphobia effects all of us regardless of gender identity or agab. And instead of continuing to fight the outside transphobia, the oppression we are facing in the first place, we end up arguing who is truly facing that.

The fact that many people treat transmisogyny as just “transphobia towards trans women” is not helping either.

So trans men do oppress trans women, but on the basis that men oppress women. Trans men have an issue with transmisogyny but there is still the issue where trans men have their experiences with transphobia down played.

---- End Process ----

And I don’t like spending my time on this because after interacting with terfs A Lot I know that this benefits them more than anything. I know that they will say that us trans men are being abused by trans women and held hostage because of our agab and other bullshit. But maybe this long fucking mess of a post will get critique or others to expand their way of thinking a bit.

[smolstarthief]

Persona 5/Persona 5 Strikers: Pro-Police or Anti-Police?

Hoo boy... So this honestly has been a LONG time coming on my end because I have seen so much of that debate on social media (Twitter namely) and I can see the points of BOTH sides but there have been moments where it just got out of hand... Especially whenever people tried to put in a more grey/nuanced take only to be slammed and taken out of context. Even repeatedly mentioning the interrogation at the beginning of P5 which, I will admit has gotten tiresome. At least for me, I do still feel for Joker and I wished the game acknowledged his trauma more but there's a thing called, "beating a dead horse" and this is one along with "Haru says ACAB" in Strikers (which was done THREE TIMES in the same arc and it got annoying fast, like shut up already! We get it!). So, let's dive in a little bit:

MAJOR SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!!!

Persona 5/Persona 5 Royal

Now let me just say I know! Police in Japan are just as bad if not worse than the West and I STILL hate the idea of Makoto wanting to become a cop for such naive reasons (especially with what happened to Sae, her own sister!)... But there are at least some of form of nuances sometimes and by that I mean, I can see what they were trying to do? I do agree that P5/P5S backpedaled SEVERELY by deciding to sweep issues under the rug after addressing them and not continuing from such. In fact I feel like it could have been a hell of a lot better. But P5 did something different compared to previous games and addresses the issues DIRECTLY right at the beginning of said game! It was tense and horrifying, but needed. Of course... They then sweep it under the rug and act like nothing traumatic happened to our protag which is NOT a good look at all and I'm still pissed off about it. In the main game's case, it's portrayed as more black and white with only a SMALL amount of nuance like that cop that was trying to help Futaba when she went out by herself and got lost (which people ignore entirely by the way). So I CAN see where people got the "anti-police" message from... But that's only the tip of the iceberg as it's ACTUALLY more about Systematic Corruption, not exactly or JUST police corruption. Namely in politics with Shido and the Conspiracy (which is apparently still somewhat around in Strikers until Owada's downfall) controlling everything all the way to law enforcement. The force had been basically under his payroll (including the corrupt SIU Director before his death) whether by force or not (mostly not in this case though). Now honestly, the police depicted there are undoubtedly rotten to the core save for a VERY SMALL handful (the cop that was trying to help Futaba which, again, gets ignored by several). Look at the interrogators who ruthlessly beat and drug a minor without any second thought or remorse for example. But again, the black and white narrative the game kept unwittingly doing ended up being to its detriment in a way. I'm not defending those assholes AT ALL! They deserved every punishment given to them! But for a game that goes on about grey morality... It doesn't quite deliver on that. Still though, it does emphasize that it's more of the fault of the whole corrupt system, not just one part of it. There needs to be change and reform which is what our MCs were trying to do in a way (more like inspiring change but still). In the end, it's all about the following:

Corruption and abuse of power.

Again the police depicted in this game were incompetent at best, corrupt at worse with very few silver linings. But it's not just them but rather the one person responsible for the whole mess. Who had them under his payroll? Who controlled them and by extension all of Tokyo? Who was willing to dispose of anyone who "outlives their usefulness" or is perceived as a threat to what he wants (including his own family)?

SHIDO AND BY EXTENSION THE CONSPIRACY

Bottom line: They are definitely a problem but it's not just them.

"But, Joker and his trauma?"

I definitely understand that and still do. I fully believe he has and still has trauma with the police. Easy! But... I do feel like people go too far with it sometimes. It's hard to explain but there have been moments where people either use it as a justification/argument against someone trying to provide a more nuanced view of things or... Dare I say, depict him like a "uwu soft traumatized boi." Like I said, it's hard to explain on my end so feel free to ignore it. Everyone deals with trauma differently so there is STRONG chance that I'm overanalyzing it. I just remember moments where I just feel a little, I guess annoyed? I'm not sure exactly but final thing: I understand what he went through and I can't imagine how long it would take to recover but I hope he DOES overcome it.

"Sae? Akechi?"

Yep, even though their jobs are different, they are by and large members of law enforcement no matter how you spin it. Both were broken in a way. Akechi is pretty easy to explain with how Shido negatively impacted his life but not much about Sae, who dealt with sexism/misogyny at her workplace along with the trauma of her father's (also a cop) death. She no doubt had some idealism only to be hit with the fact that she's gonna have to use underhanded/downright illegal tactics to get by and even rise up the ranks. She, therefore ended up (well, nearly) corrupted herself before coming to her senses. That's honestly one of the BIGGEST REASONS why I felt like Makoto joining the force to become a police commissioner isn't a good, even a downright naïve, idea. I honestly would have been somewhat fine with it if it weren't for that fact among other things. Regardless of her willpower, it will go south fast.

Now... Onto Strikers!

Persona 5 Strikers

Since the game came out and I started playing it, I still feel like the system is still beyond saving, especially when attempting to do it from the inside. But I don't mind the added nuances that P5 didn't do much of. It's still continuing the critiques, just shows more of what does happen within said system and even has an ACTUAL officer (Zenkichi) say, "Yeah, my job sucks, everyone's corrupt, there are much better ways to do things and make a change but not this. I'm only staying because I have a daughter to take care of and it's all I know. I'm no different from them." Was it all handled well? I wouldn't say "yes" (Joker's trauma is BARELY addressed at all of course) but a little better than what P5's narrative did which only addressed the issues but not exactly follow up on them. Now to be fair... In the system, regardless of where you live, any one within it who remotely tries to do something or speak against it either lose their jobs or even go "missing" irl. Those have happened and it's more proof that yeah, it's rotten to the core. There's no denying it but regardless, that's NOT what the game is about at all. At least that's what I feel about it as it's only PART of the narrative. I think Zenkichi puts it best here:

Speaking of Zenkichi... Oh boy... Now I definitely understand some of the criticisms with him but honestly, he was the best written (PT) character I've ever encountered! He was honestly the perfect representation of those that genuinely want to help and do good, only to be held back by an extremely harsh reality. It was already hinted at with Sae but here? It 100 percent confirms just how harsh and even cutthroat it can be if it could break someone's idealism so badly. Even Kaburagi of all people thinks the same thing Zenkichi said:

Then there's his past and it's a tragic one! But let's look more at the decisions he ended up making:

While it was no doubt done to protect his daughter, he ended making a selfish decision along with a selfless one (which was brilliant!) with not only allowing the cover up of his wife's death and denying justice for her, but also ruining an innocent person and their family's lives.

It's horrible, but also... There's a grey area/nuance as with the rest of his character. It was both understandable, but also wrong as he, as Akane's Shadow puts it:

He sacrificed his values, his morals, all for the sake of having a peace of mind. Speaking of Akane, she's also an interesting case in a way that she more or less perfectly represents the more "black and white" views on justice in general. Namely the more toxic/biased kind. Her reasons are also understandable but she was also acting selfishly by only focusing on how SHE was effected by Aoi's death and not even considering those that were also grieving her death and/or that people grieve/handle grief differently than her. But back on topic.

Her own views and beliefs that law enforcement basically SHOULD be dismantled (mostly out of said childish bias and black & white views) and it's framed as WRONG and it's very much correct on that. Chaos and order are two sides of the same coin, one can't exist without the other. When I say ACAB, I'm calling for reform, defund, have the corrupt held accountable for EVERYTHING and even face jail time for their crimes! Defund the police, have the ones that arrest, harm, and even murder out of bias (race, gender, etc.), lose their badges/jobs and locked up, make improvements! It's saying that there IS still corruption out there and there's no denying it. But fully eliminating the law in general will just lead to more problems. Now granted, she's young and clearly doesn't fully understand why those views are ultimately wrong but still... It was a very interesting subject to tackle and I feel like they handled it well.

Now back to Zenkichi, he was at first in denial about his decisions ultimately being the wrong ones too and even tries to justify it. Of course, his Shadow said otherwise and that was when he finally admitted that he really did act no different from the criminals he despised. But it also doesn't mean he can't redeem himself and that's what ultimately leads to his new resolve:

That right there along with everything else! There's the nuance! And ultimately despite some hiccups, Strikers handled the grey morality and nuance beautifully! Especially regarding law enforcement! Dare I say, even better than the base game! It continues the critiques with no problem but also showing different sides and areas of it! There is good and evil, but what about in-between? What about the more greyer area? It still says that there IS corruption, sometimes even beyond saving but... Sometimes a small silver lining is hidden somewhere.

Now, the ultimate question:

Is P5 & P5S (namely the latter) Pro-Police or Anti-Police?

Personally, my answer is this: Neither.

Why? What theme do they both have in common?

JUSTICE

Someone puts it best on Twitter that the games are more pro-justice and I fully agree!

P5/P5S gives the idea about following your OWN justice, your OWN moral code and rules, paving your OWN path and not let others dictate it! That's what the MCs ultimately start to learn in both games. Therefore it's pro-justice. Again, do I agree that the system is beyond saving? Yeah. Do I at least acknowledge and understand what the narratives are trying to say and nuances regardless even if I don't agree with some writing decisions (ex: Makoto wanting to become a commissioner despite everything)? Also yes. But at the same time, don't judge a book by its cover for other people (not just law enforcement and politics mind you). Especially some that genuinely DO want to help at best. That there is nuance and greyness, just have to look closely. Some of the MCs are still TERRIBLY written and executed (even annoying) but the message was still somewhat there.

Final Thoughts

Now I fully understand how you all feel of course! I still believe in ACAB and even I agree that maybe I'm one to talk and have a lot more to learn about the world... This is just my own attempt at putting my own two cents in. If you disagree, that's fine! This is just what I've felt should be at least talked about more often. And I tried to phrase it as best as I can without coming off as insensitive or ignorant and if I did, I sincerely apologize for that! I'm not trying to say, come off as a "bootlicker" or any of the sort. I'm just trying show discuss more of the grey areas and nuances that are, more often than not, constantly overlooked. How one interprets both games is ultimately up to them. You, the player. And this is my own interpretation. Simple as that. I hope you all have a good day/afternoon/evening!