#i don’t feel like dealing with the political discourse

[alaskan-wallflower]

i really hope tratt dont make an episode about the isr3@l genocide. i dont think i could be a fan anymore. it's too delicate for jokes and i know they would NOT treat it with any respect, or they'd just use the episode to be zionistic. free palestine

yeah. i wouldn’t like that much either. it would be in poor taste.

also like…not to get political but why censor israel and not palestine as well? it doesn’t make much sense to me. if you’re gonna censor one you should at least censor the other as well, pro israel or free palestine.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Editor’s note: This hypothetically open letter was originally posted by its anonymous author on Medium and was rapidly removed as “hate speech.” We found it to be a refreshing dose of honesty, a charming and relatable open letter from one parent to other parents (not to the child, obviously!) about dealing with a challenging and dangerous moment in raising children, especially “weird” adolescents who search for their identities harder than others and risk making life-damaging mistakes in a way never before possible. We are reposting it here on New Discourses with the permission of the author.

--

By: Donna M.

Published: Mar 5, 2021

My dear, sweet, son,

I’ve got to break it to you: you’re not trans, you’re just weird.

This seems like a cruel thing to point out right now. Clearly, you are struggling and feeling pretty awful about things. I can see that you are in a rough patch, and one of the first rules of parenting is to not pile on. The world is pretty heavy on your shoulders. You’re fifteen. There’s a pandemic going on. But here I come anyway. I’m about to throw more on you.

When you were two ­– a happy, chubby, little tyke in pull-ups, you watched the world with wary eyes behind the thumb in your mouth. You leapt with joy in the rhythm of the toddle music classes. You chattered and shared stories about your stuffed animals. You loved your little sister. Enjoyed cookies and finger painting. That was all pretty normal.

But you also started to count to one thousand on our walks. And you started to call out the store names as we drove around. And you preferred reading books rather than playing with the other two-year-olds at preschool. And you hated sitting in the circle when instructed. And you hated the feel of blue jeans. And you threw big tantrums when you lost any kind of game. In other words, you started to show signs that you were… weird.

The grandparents were the first to notice. They said gentle things like “You oughta keep an eye on that one,” and sent us links to Wall Street Journal articles about child prodigies. And then the other parents in the play groups started to comment; “He’s pretty intense, huh?” And the teachers were on to it pretty quickly. They started to use fancy terms like “asynchronous development.”

By third grade, we realized you were different, but we still didn’t realize you were weird. Truthfully, we’re used to people like you. Our family is full of engineers, artists, musicians, computer programmers, and a lot of “free-thinkers.” Family gatherings always have chess, political debates, and quartets around the piano. That’s just us.

And besides, you had a small but solid group of friends. There was Pokémon, then Minecraft, then Magic, then Dungeons and Dragons, then Catan. You were never in the center of things, but you weren’t alone.

But then, in middle school, things started to change. By 7th grade, school finally started to require some effort, and it turned out you were pretty disorganized. People kept calling you smart, but the teachers were annoyed at your humor, and frustrated that you wouldn’t or couldn’t follow the guidelines for assignments. Classmates didn’t appreciate your frank (if accurate) descriptions of their efforts. I’ll admit, we got pretty frustrated with you, too.

And then puberty arrived, with its triple curse of acne, braces, and bizarre growth. The girls appeared to have it all together (I know they don’t, but they do appear that way). And the popular boys seemed to know exactly what to do. They can talk sports to each other, they brag about their romantic exploits. They never get in trouble for stupid reasons like forgetting an assignment three times in a row. Your anxiety started to kick in, and it seemed like you got smaller. And some of your guy friends moved on.

So you drifted over to the weird-o crowd. Well — I’m not sure what you call yourselves, but that’s what we would have called you back when I was in school. At different schools these are the geeks, or the theater kids, the math team kids, or the artsy-fartsy kids. This used to be where the gay kids ended up, but I think they’re more dispersed now. You get some kids whose parents are going through some rough times. Some girls with anorexia. A few boys who are edgy and angry. Kids with a great sense of humor and big hearts.

And some of these kids are really passionate. Just full of righteous anger about the injustices of the world. And some of them are dramatic. And truthfully, that looks pretty attractive to you. Because you share some of that confusion and anger about the world. And though you may not be sure what you think or what you feel, you are certain you don’t want to be on the bad side. You certainly aren’t like those popular boys with their suave charm and dominating manners. You’re not like them at all.

You’re actually more like those vibrant girls who can speak for hours about their ideas. Well, you would be if you could find the words to speak. And there is something so fascinating about those girls, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. You’d never think about talking to those girls anyway, because that’d be weird. Because you are weird. You’ve never been good at chit-chat, or eye contact. Or girls. And besides, you wouldn’t want them to get the wrong impression. You understand that your peers are starting to date, but you really don’t see the point. Sex is still gross and weird to you. It’s better to just call yourself “asexual” or “pansexual.” It’s like a get-out-of-jail-free card that helps you avoid the whole mess. And your group of friends tell you that you are super cool and brave for being able to say that about yourself.

But you’ve fallen into a funk. Anyone can see that. But computer games help. And there’s always trying to beat the speed record for that one game you’re kinda good at. And that one guy on reddit always has good tricks. And the people on that message board seem to get your humor.

So when one of them posts a meme about trans rights, it makes sense that you’d check it out. You’re curious! You’re a free thinker! You’re not like the normies. And the web quiz hits home. You do feel discomfort with your body. You don’t like sports. You do wonder what it would be like to be a girl. You’ve always felt like something was different about you.

You’re right. There is something different about you.

But you’re not trans, you’re just weird.

So we’re right here for you. We’ll always be here for you. But those online folks who urge you to “crack your trans egg” and rush to hormones and surgeries don’t know you at all. They don’t know that gifted kids and ADHD kids and Autism kids and Asperger’s kids are slower to develop emotionally and sexually. They don’t know that sexuality takes time and experience to figure out, and that the majority of trans teens seeking medical treatment haven’t even masturbated or kissed someone yet. They don’t know that 80% of trans children end up becoming comfortable with their birth sex if you just give them time. They don’t know that there are increasing numbers of desisting and de-transitioning people in their twenties. They don’t realize that hormones permanently stunt your growth, decrease your IQ, and can cause sterility. They don’t know that these hormones are prescribed off-label and there’s no research on the long-term outcomes. They don’t even know that the most recent research shows that short-term outcomes are clearly worse.

They don’t realize that you’re weird. But I do. You’re weird, kiddo. You’ll figure that out in a year or two. But that’s okay. We are all weird. And I love you anyway. You’re going to be just fine.

==

You always hear stories and justifications like, "she never liked wearing a dress," or "he always hated having his hair cut." This is post-hoc confirmation bias. Not only does this confirm everything critics say about this being a movement based on gross stereotypes, but they always leave out things like, "she refused to eat anything yellow," and "he was obsessed with elevator and crossing buttons and would cry if he wasn't the one to light it up."

It's okay to be weird.

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

02/06/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; New Events calendar; A Safe Space Ship Event; Watch Parties; Reminders; Cast & Crew Sightings; Clowning; OLD SPICE!; Stats!; Market Research?; Articles; Personal Update; Love Notes; Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika

== New Events Calendar from SaveOFMDCrew! ==

More events happening throughout the week! Tumblr Post

Tomorrow is Cosplay Day! Show off your cosplay and OFMD-Inspired outfits with the hashtags: #WearFineThingsWell!

= New Upcoming Event: A Safe Space Ship! =

Sunday, February 11th - Star of India in San Diego, CA! Museum Hrs: 10 am - 5 PM 1/2 Price Tickets!

== Watch Parties ==

Today's WWDITS watch party went great!

Lots of people had fun pointing out our lovely characters from the show (Mads, Taika, Rhys)

It actually went so well the SaveOFMDCrew twitter got banned! It's back though! If you can, please be sure to follow their backup account in case it happens again.

== Reminders! ==

Muppet Treasure Island - Feb 7th 2024 4PM EST, 1PM PST, 9 PM GMT

Watch Party Hashtags:

#MuppetPirates

#AdoptOurCrew

#SaveOFMD

== Cast & Crew Sightings ==

This was technically the 5th, but I don't think the excitement happened mostly today so I'm gonna throw it in! So Chaos Dad popped his head out yesterday just long enough to like Samba's BTS post on twitter and then also Samba and Rhys' little exchange.

And of course that triggered clowning since anytime Chaos Dad pops in we don our clown shoes. Thank you to @merryfinches for catching some of the discourse!

== Old Spice! ==

Well well well, we're back to polite menacing brands until they respond to us!

Looks like another Astroglide is starting up, the Crew is out there matching deodorants to characters. Thanks to @brainfugk for calling it out!

== Stats! Stats! Stats! ==

So close fam! Let's keep pushing that UK viewership if you have the time/spoons!

= Market Research Campaign about OFMD Potentially Going On? =

There's some speculation around the market research company YouGov potentially conducting research on OFMD. There's a big thread. Why is this important? Well this company works with streamers to measure viewership data, and if OFMD is in there...and someone's interested, that could be a good sign.

Some folks signed up, and if you're interested in doing so too, you can here.

== Articles ==

Some fun articles tonight, including Hard Drive again!

Joke Article: HBO Max Unveils Ominous New “Don’t Get Too Attached” Category

Our Flag Means Death and 9 Other Best TV Shows and Movies About Pirates

Our Flags Means Death fans get TV licence just to watch pirate show

== Personal Update ==

Some of you have heard, I got the COVID so I may be in and out over the next several days, I'm still trying to make sure I get to recaps though so don't worry! I'll let you know if I can't. Remember to mask up if you can and stay hydrated out there luvs!

== Love Notes ==

Alright lovelies. We've run out of Rhys videos for a few days so you're back to me being irritatingly loving at you! I saw this today on The Latest Kate's instagram and it reminded me of a few things I wanted to say. My brain is a bit covid-fogged so apologies if it's a bit wibbly wobbly.

We all struggle with so many little and big things in our lives. Whether it's mental health, self esteem, a physical ailment, love, lonliness, self-identity, family, friends, world conflicts, or anything, I could go on and on.

I know sometimes it feels like you are pushing so hard and you start making so much progress-- and then something, big or little stalls everything and you feel like you're having to start from scratch again.

I just want to send you a gentle reminder that progress isn't always linear. Just because you have lost momentum doesn't mean you've lost your progress. Every single situation is a learning opportunity and every time you run into a new hurdle, you learn from the last one.

You are wonderfully intelligent, kind, precious, complex people and no matter what you're dealing with, no matter how small or how big, you are moving forward and making headway bits at a time. Remember to be kind to yourself and don't beat yourself up for bad days.

We are so proud of you lovelies, remember that.

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

Tonight's gifs are courtesy of the glorious, brilliant, talented, ever-enabling @celluloidbroomcloset from her post over here.

Ok, Good Afternoon, Good Evening and Goodnight all! <3

[utilitycaster]

Pls ignore if the spectre of ruminating on old god-diskhorse is far too obnoxious but it's rather a jump-off point for a more general question; an issue brought up pushing back against the most obnoxious "vanguard is right eradicate those tyrant gods rq stole vax hate that bitch" ppl, aside from other things like just being deeply myopic even just from an in-universe perspective, but on a wholler narrative level requires completely ignoring or discarding campaign 1 and 2's theses and genuine connections. Largely i think these ppl's takes are more interested in self-validation than concerned with what they're actually saying when they want these things to be true (which they aren't, Matt and cast and plot progression from the peak of those discourses have made that clear), but now here's my wondering: what would it say if c3 were to be these things? By what metrics do you judge a sequel installment should it, in the pursuit of its own story, undermine or contradict the earnest, complete, already told story that preceded it and was built upon?

Hi anon,

This is a good question, and necessarily one with a subjective answer, so I hope I at least explain my thought process below! Also: this does have some spoilers for a Midst episode in Season 3 (which aired a few weeks ago). I mention this because it's a really useful example for me but this wasn't a question about Midst so you might not be expecting me to talk about it.

Firstly, I agree with you that a lot of the people who want this want the story to validate their personal beliefs. Some want it to validate political/philosophical beliefs, which is a complicated thing: on the one hand, I very much don’t want to watch a show that’s like “hey slavery is neat-o!” and doubt such a show would have much merit. On the other hand, when we’re dealing with much more complicated issues like religion, which simultaneously exists as a tool of oppression; an aspect of identity that makes one a target of oppression; a source of meaning and comfort; and a source of justification of terrible practices all in one; I think it’s extremely valuable to be exposed to a multitude of perspectives and to not just endlessly look for those that validate one’s own experiences.

Others just want the story to validate their feelings about the happenings within the narrative, which is on the one hand usually less close-minded, but on the other hand, kind of stupid. You are permitted to dislike that Vax died. I disagree, but you can feel however you want (indeed, you don’t need my, or anyone’s permission to dislike that Vax died). The story saying “The Raven Queen isn’t perfect” or even “The Raven Queen is Bad” isn’t necessary for you to have those feelings; and the Raven Queen being slaughtered isn’t per se necessary for Vax to come back (which I think would be cheap and stupid, but like, if that’s what you want you could just have him come back.) You don’t need to story to tell you that your response to the story is good, so this is ultimately a case of “why are you even doing this."

I also suspect there’s just some degree of subversion for subversion’s sake (or change for change's sake) people who were into the idea of killing the gods just to flip C1 and C2 on their respective heads. The thing is, subversion for the sole purpose of subversion has always been the province of the dull. There’s a reason why culturally we treat M. Night Shyamalan as a joke and it’s because “THERE’S A TWIST” without a strong and compelling build-up to said twist nearly always is, as the post I recently reblogged said, something that only hits hard if you’re stupid.

What I need from a story to be good is internal consistency and a strong execution. I am frequently surprised, in a very positive way, by stories that are so well-executed that they sell me on a premise with which I was less than enamored. If you’d told me that I’d feel sad about FCG’s sacrifice or extremely in favor of Phineas and Jonas’s romantic relationship during early C3 or, frankly, even the minute before I listened to Trustfall, respectively, I would have said “huh, really?” But both of these events were thoughtfully built to a point where they felt like meaningful and interesting choices for the story to take, even if that was not apparent to me earlier on.

So: the metric I’d use to judge a god-killing C3 is the same as that of any long-running story. I think there is a universe in which Campaign 3 could have made the demise of the gods a good and compelling story. But that work simply has not been done. The atrocities of the Vanguard, Weave Mind, and the Dwendalian Empire under Ludinus Da’leth; the callousness shown towards all Exandrians and Ruidians by the Vanguard and Kreviris Imperium; and most importantly the fact that there haven’t been new reveals of terrible things done by the gods and the story has instead striven to paint them as more fragile and complicated than what we’ve seen in past means that a sudden twist would, well, be cheap and only hit hard if you’re stupid. You can contradict a past story in an installment (or the earlier work in a long-running series) in a way that is not undermining if you are able to tie it together and show new information that was not available earlier! But that’s the key: it needs to be clear that the earlier works were showing a specific perspective (already a very tall order given the protagonist-only POV of D&D campaigns) or that the situation has drastically changed. If you fail to do this, then as you said, it’s undermining and it’s poorly done and a bad story.

I think that last point is also really important in thinking through the fandom response. I mentioned that I can be sold on a premise that didn’t win me over initially if the execution is strong. I think some people, and especially those gunning for a “The Gods are All Bad” story are so terrified of not being validated or of being wrong in their predictions or of criticism from other fans that they can no longer enjoy a story or comment meaningfully upon it. To which I say skill issue. I am thrilled and even grateful that, as previously mentioned, FCG had an arc that deepened their character and addressed my earlier criticism such that I could enjoy episode 91 as much as I did. I was mildly spoiled on the potential of Jonas and Phineas getting together and was, to be honest, slightly dreading it as I’d always preferred a platonic interpretation of their relationship, and then the scene in which it happened (and everything since) has been so deftly handled that I’m fully on board.

I am a far better analyst and critic of fiction than a creator of it, and I’m open about this. I am constantly surprised in ways both positive and negative by how other people tell stories, and that’s why I come back to them. I want the story to be so good that it expands my horizons and comfort zone and shows me something new. I find little joy in a story validating who I already am and what I already think. I want the story to make a better argument for what it has to say than I can make against it. If this is a competition between the story and me, I am rooting for the story to win over me and in doing so, win me over; and I am disappointed when it doesn’t.

I am also a physicist, and, famously within our understanding of physics, pretty much anything can happen; it’s all just a matter of probabilities. And so it’s hard for me to say “there’s no way this could ever be done well.” It’s very easy, however, for me to say “the eye of the needle one must thread to do this well is a micron in diameter and constantly moving.” I think it’s possible to turn the concept of a god-slaying Campaign 3 into a story that, rather than clumsily ignoring or discarding C1 and C2’s theses, transforms them and puts them in a new and unexpected light. But the narrative dexterity check required for that has always been high, and only gets higher as the actual Campaign 3 story continues along its current path.

[aeraspais]

Hi !! Hope i’m not bothering you or anything (i’m the one who made the post about Gerrard in s8, just in case btw) i just wanted to tell you thank you for the exchange we had about it !! I really appreciated reading your perspective on it, it was really interesting, and i also wanted to thank you especially !! It’s becoming rarer and rarer, in fandom space (and more generally on social media), to have respectful and open conversations with contradictory and/or different opinions on something, and that’s why I tend to avoid interacting with some discourses or people because it can quickly become the usual “i’m right, you’re wrong, i don’t care” deaf dialogue. Which I personally find very annoying and senseless. So I’m really glad to have had the opportunity to exchange with you, since it was none of that, and you did thank me for that as well — so, i not only wanted to return the favor, but I also wanted you to know that I have a lot of consideration and appreciation for people like you. So thank you, i liked it a lot !!

Also, I’m taking the opportunity to mention that the opinions you voiced here on Buck were very interesting and i agree with them !! You said that some people forget that Buck is now also marginalized because of his sexuality and it’s new for him, he never had to deal with the kind of discriminations that are inherently linked to his identity — i couldn’t agree more !! And i’m glad you brought it up because it’s a very important and interesting aspect of his current situation !! Anyway, that’s all i wanted to say !! Hope you have a great day/night ✨

Oh no, you’re not bothering me at all — thank you so much for this message, it was such a kind thing to do! I know your feelings all too well. I’ve had way too many sour experiences voicing my opinions in this fandom that whenever I do have a pleasant exchange with someone new, I'm very compelled to leave a compliment or two. Like you, I’m terrified of inadvertently kickstarting discourse, and at least on Twitter, I’ve been in the center of a couple bad faith attacks from 911 fans who took my tweets directed at my friends out-of-context to slander me, when they could’ve just looked the other way. So if I ever voice a public disagreement, I will try my best to be polite and respectful to the other party. ❤️

But on to your second point: an anon also pointed out that for many fans they have already been treating Buck like a canonically bisexual character so season seven didn’t really tilt the axis either, and I think this is why (however harshly this might sound) I strive to separate my fanon believes from my canon analysis because it’s too easy to let what you’ve read on AO3 dictate how you treat the text. Before I write out my thoughts, I always take a few different things into consideration: what did this episode say that they haven’t before, what is a new for this character, and how can this be tied into their behavior now. For Buck, it’s literally his sexuality. Then I consider any complications. The easy route would be focusing solely on the racial dynamics at play. It’s the most obvious, but it didn't explain why Gerrard had so much beef with Buck since we also know from his first appearance Gerrard still treated Eli with respect, despite taking Chimney under his wing in “Chimney Begins.” It also, however unintentional, says some ugly things about institutionalized homophobia — that it doesn’t as much matter if the character or the person it’s directed at is white. But both things help characterize Buck’s reaction and later confusion over his motivations. Losing it also makes Buck out to be more violent than the show’s intentions, because I think the aim for it to be a concerning escalation based on prior history (here’s to hoping they bring up the 704 tackle), not something remarkably out-of-character just to drive the plot.

Anyway this got away from me when it’s not even 7 AM. It could’ve been worse, though. I could’ve had my morning coffee, then we’d be here all day/night!

[xx-southside-xx]

I think the thing that people overlook the most when discussing headcanon “discourse” for characters like Hobie Brown is that, yes, he doesn’t like labels and feeding into the expectations others have of him but him being punk isn’t some cute aesthetic choice or something that just makes him funnily contrarian. Him being punk will naturally (like with real life punks & radicals) affect everything he does.

When we’re talking music headcanons and y’all are stressing that he’d like songs from varying genres I agree, but then y’all will list pop artists that as a punk Hobie would in no way support. They’re capitalists through and through, a lot of them only deal in performative (and as such selective) activism, appropriate black culture, and their feminism’s surface level as fuck on top of being black (& other poc) exclusionary.

Sure you can say that Hobie would pirate the music of artists who he personally doesn’t like the politics of (and correct me if I’m wrong because I’m not really punk) but he’d likely dislike these artists so much that he wouldn’t want to bother listening to them at all; he would be fundamentally going against himself if he did.

I don’t know, I just wanted to share my two cents. I just feel like sometimes y’all go in circles when it comes to Hobie disliking labels and predictability and it comes at the expense of him being a very loud and very punk character (even if narratively his views are supposed to provide a form of comedic relief).

And, yes, I’m predominately bashing the insistence that Hobie would be a swiftie in any way shape or form

[nsfwitchy2]

Some friendly reminders in these dark times

Everything kinda looks like it’s going to hell in a hand basket rn so I wanna take a moment to tell you:

It’s ok if you can’t keep up

It’s ok if you’re out here filtering tags left and right for your sanity

It’s ok if you don’t have the money to donate to people’s gofundme’s or to charity’s or to fundraisers or to political campaigns

It’s ok if you’re logging off for a while because you just can’t deal with this anymore

You don’t have to keep up with it all. You don’t have to know about every disaster and discourse and major awful thing that’s happening at all times. Frankly - you shouldn’t. Humans are not hardwired to have a constant and steady stream of bad news spoon fed to us. Our brains aren’t made to cope with that.

If you’re feeling hopeless and useless and miserable - take a break. Please, take a break. Do some MAJOR tag filtration, log off for a while. Go for a walk. Pet a dog. Smell some flowers. Take a moment to appreciate the good and the beauty around you, before you suffocate yourself with negativity and bad news.

And before some of you go, “Ok but I still wanna help? How can I help?”

Good question!!! The answer to that is to just… do what you can. Try out some volunteer work - local shelters and soup kitchens would probably love a helping hand! Give some money to the homeless person on the street corner, maybe stop and have a chat with them. I’m sure it gets lonely out there. Go pick up trash in your neighborhood or your local park.

Can’t do any of that? That’s fine!! Start at home! Help out around the house, check in and see if there’s anything you can help your neighbors with. Check out Wren - it’s a website that lets you go through and figure out ways to cut your carbon footprint!

And fuck man, if at the end of the day all you can do is just… do something nice for somebody, than do something nice for somebody. Hold the door for someone. Pick up something somebody dropped. Offer to help someone carry their things. In a world that encourages cruelty, that wants us to be mean and hateful - sometimes just being kind is the best activism out there.

But you don’t have to save the world. You - person reading this, whoever you are - the burden of saving the world does not fall squarely and solely on your shoulders. Do not let the internet convince you it does. At the end of the day - making the world a better place is a group effort. Every battle needs soldiers, yes - but please don’t forget it also needs nurses. It needs people who stay home and keep things running. Not everybody has to be a soldier. Sometimes all you can do is just stay at home and keep things running - and that’s ok too.

But you can’t help anyone or do anything if you’re making yourself miserable and convincing yourself that’s activism. The best way to make the world a better place is to start with yourself. Make sure before you take care of others, you take care of yourself first.

[theraddestfemalive]

Y’know what? Fuck it. I’m going to say this

I don’t think any non-gc or tra lib gives a fuck about what im about to say, even considering that im going to tag the cr fandom.

I’m only adding one radfem tag because this post is centered around another topic.

i feel like ever since the trans population has tripled, it hasn’t been the same. Before any of you cucks think im talking about the idea of being trans, im also talking about the community behind it. Their ideas within the concept of it.

the concept of being ‘transgender’ was built on the foundation of sexist stereotypes; although the origins had a different purpose in ancient societies (varying ofcourse), it was ultimately used as a weapon to oppress women in the modern times, the goal was to make a person ‘feel’ like a male or female and now trillions of micro labels and gender identities are used to describe people who feel slightly above the normal and they’re treated as if they’re some kind of clothes that you put on instead of an identity.

Because of this, most people don’t even know what a woman or a lesbian is. They try to replace the definition of something that was exclusive to one sex to cater to the whims of men.

Ever since last year, most my friends that weren’t into that shit now identify as trans and I saw a dramatic shift in their personality. Most if not all of them were autistic women that did not conform of societal standards of what a ‘woman’ is. Some people may argue it’s because of how lightly a transgender identity is perceived. But on my end, I think it also has to do with the lack of representation of quirky female characters in media.

likely I would’ve fit into one of those micro labels or some shit like that but I was lucky enough to discover characters and things that I aligned with so I didn’t have to deal with shitty gender dysphoria (alongside with my very obvious mental issues and me being neurodivergent myself)

When I look at the older cookie run art (2016-2021), or even from eastern countries (eastern countries aren’t really politically correct) I could truly see the characters in the scene. There is passion behind it. The artists are either older or they know what they’re doing. And it doesn’t seem like an overload

when I see newer cookie run ‘fanart’ esp when there’s a lot of people within the western community, I don’t see a lot of what the characters truly are. All I see is their interpretation of what their character would look like if it was an unoriginal copy of a 14 year old gendie’s oc. Alongside with that, they add a thousand headcanons and sexualities, making the character unrecognizable. And if that wasn’t the cherry on top, they’re so obsessed with lgbtq and race stuff (no im not a bigot, don’t even try to fucking label me as one im a bisexual woc ) that’s all what they talk about besides stupid discourse topics. Oh, and also changing a dough color is ‘racist’ (they’re fucking COOKIES. Their dough color was based off of their ingredients and complimentary colors, even the devs had to explain and yet the western community still bitches about it like whiny 5 year olds. They come in all colors, not just fucking skintones.)

I think the characters and ships of the community would be much more likable for me if it wasn’t infiltrated by the discourse gang.

I think instead of giving drugs and cosmetic surgery to children, we should get deeper into the psychology of why there’s a lot of trans people on the rise. Don’t you think it’s weird that it has to be an ‘urgency’ to get surgery or children will kts? Maybe instead of thinking it as a life or death situation, think of how most of these people are mentally ill compared to the other lgbtq demographics.

I probably sound like a fucking dick here and im going to get a lot of hateful notes and messages, but honestly.. idgaf

Before you water this down to ‘trans people bad’ im just highlighting the problems of their community and its immense effect on teens my age (13-15 age range im not telling you) before dickriding the movement, I think *again* we should get deeper into the psychology of these people, thank you for reading.

maybe one or two people know who i am because of the image i will show below, who cares lol

i will block if I receive any threats :)))

[bengiyo]

Be My Favorite Ep 11 Stray Thoughts

Last week, we all fell into intense brain rot over the ace!Kawi discourse, and did not appreciate Aou in those shorts enough or the fact that Max FUCKS. We suspect that Pisaeng may or may not have time traveled. Kawi is dealing with some of his own intimacy issues. It feels like they had their first time at the end of the episode. Also, Pear is not happy with her mom for abandoning them, Pisaeng’s mom pulled a complete reversal to support him, and Kawi reflected on his dad urging him to live his life for himself.

It’s like they knew I still was skeptical of Pisaeng’s mom, Daow, so they have her working out her issues with Pear’s dad, Phong.

I’m glad that Pear found a way to give herself peace about her mom.

I like Pear reading a poem over these scenes. The bed kissing was pretty decent.

Okay, the morning after scene was really sweet. I liked that.

I’m not sure how I feel about the flashback to a conversation we weren’t part off with the magic guy. I don’t mind the show laying out its core thesis about being present in your life and focusing on the things you can control explicitly for the audience, but it felt a bit weird. I feel like I need to brace for high-impact drama now.

Everyone has graduated, but what did Not do after getting wrecked so hard?

Domestic montages, my beloved.

I’m encouraged that these two stayed together for years, and maintained friendships with the characters we liked.

Sponge baths, my beloathed.

This timeline is too enjoyable, and Kawi doesn’t seem to have a job. They’re going to take this timeline from us. What happened to Kawi’s music aspirations?

Oh, never mind. Seems like Kawi is still involved in music.

Is Kawi about to get sick and die and then force Pisaeng to travel back to the past (Samurai Jack)?

Okay, but this actually just got super heavy. This show has not been soft about its support for gay political issues, and medical care is one of the big concerns queer people face without family and domestic protections. Some of my actual work is helping couples circumvent these blocks.

I am genuinely invested in this terminal medical condition plotline.

Oh ho! So he does go back to the past (Samurai Jack) and now we return to the day of the amusement park, now with double the time travel shenanigans!

Okay, high-key I love this. I haven’t been this stressed by the thematic implications within a BL in a really long time. We had the magic man imply that we can’t alter our destinies, but we can fix our mistakes. Kawi wasn’t destined to win the lottery, and it feels like they’re saying he wasn’t destined to save his dad either. Pisaeng is convinced that he is the reason that Kawi got sick and is facing death in the future even a Max insists that it couldn’t be his fault. Now he’s gone back to the past and altered the happy timeline we saw completely. Now he and Kawi will both face each other as time travelers trying to fix what they believe to be their mistakes in the finale. I’m so excited because we all felt that they went into that bed scene without clearing something, and now we have to face it.

[sith-shenanigans]

Introduction and Masterpost

Hello! I’m Io (with an i, not an L), they/them, enthusiast of evil space wizards and other assorted terrible people everywhere. This is primarily a SWTOR blog, but I post about other fandoms occasionally, and have recently fallen down a terrible hyperfixation hole about Fallen London. I write longfic, on a somewhat inconsistent schedule; chronic illness makes it difficult to put out chapters consistently.

I don’t have a DNI, but I block bigots and anyone whose posts I’d prefer not to see. I don’t do shipping discourse, and I don’t necessarily care what you ship, but see the previous sentence; if it makes me uncomfortable, and there are definitely things that make me profoundly uncomfortable out there, I’ll probably block you. (This has much more to do with tone than content—I have triggers, I’m all for people experiencing unpleasant things in safe ways, but the moment it feels like they’re being written as good and sweet and normal I’m going to nope on out of there as fast as I can. For my own mental health, and because the alternative is me biting someone’s head off.)

For my own part, I often write about dark subjects (especially in regards to my SWTOR OCs), and this blog may contain untagged discussion of fictional slavery, speciesism, systemic child abuse, state violence, toxic and abusive relationships, and similar topics. Mentions of sexual assault are generally tagged as “sexual assault cw.” I try to tag discussion of parental or school-based child abuse as “child abuse cw,” as well as in-depth descriptions of it in general, but I can’t 100% guarantee it. I try to remember to tag what friends ask me to tag, but if we don’t know each other well, I may not be able to manage it.

For neurodivergence reasons, I find it extremely difficult to describe images most of the time, but I’m trying to include alt text on screenshots of tags more consistently, and I’m attempting to tag my own posts with undescribed images as “undescribed.” (This includes most of my Fallen London posting, because there’s just enough formatting to poke me in the “cannot easily transcribe visuals to text” issue.)

Liminality/Discontent (SWTOR):

Liminality Main Cast:

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Discontent Main Cast:

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Sunlight (SWTOR):

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Other/Miscellaneous (SWTOR):

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Fallen London:

Amias Arling, the Calescent Inquisitive. Heart’s Desire. A former freelance detective with a few unfortunate soft spots, who came to the Neath for a case and ended up framed for something their target did. Extremely clever and extremely driven, but embodies the maxim that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Practically allergic to the direct route, unless it seems like no one would ever expect it. And even then, they’d rather take a convoluted way around.

SWTOR:

Liminality/Discontent, a sometimes-AU SWTOR novelization in multiple parts. Has a heavy focus on the implications that the game didn’t go into, the politics of the galaxy, and the pressure the protagonists go through.

like a moth to you, sunlight, a collaboration with my sibling @azems-familiar. Not very much is written on it, because collaboration is hard even when both people involved aren’t chronically ill (and our hyperfixations are largely elsewhere right now), but we love our terrible children anyway.

Liminality/Discontent:

The Dead Star; The Ruin, a prologue of a sort. As yet unpublished. Also works as a standalone work.

Anamnesis, a KOTOR novelization with a certain amount of playing with the format. A tragedy, if a bittersweet one, and a case study in why villains with good motivations are still villains. On hiatus.

Liminality, my pride and joy and occasional mortal enemy. The first and primary of two SWTOR base game novelizations, covering the Sith Inquisitor, Smuggler, Sith Warrior, and Jedi Consular storylines. It deals heavily with loss and family—the latter both by blood and by choice, and sometimes unexpectedly uncovered. It’s also about history, about the boundaries between past and future and life and death—and the things that survive when someone is gone. The galaxy is full of dangerous secrets, and cycles that seem inexorable; in the end, though, what matters most are the choices you make and why.

Discontent, the fic I will someday definitely write. Covers the Jedi Knight, Imperial Agent, Bounty Hunter, and Republic Trooper. It’s about war, mostly, and cleaning up other people’s messes. Nobody gets to step off a battlefield as the same person who walked onto it, if they make it off at all, but there are reasons to keep trying—even if only some of them are good ones. And somebody has to be the one to chase down the conspiracies in the dark.

Sacrifice, as yet not even started, which will cover the portion of the game running from the end of the class stories to Ziost. There’s a fourth fic for the Alliance era, tentatively titled Conviction, but there’s less in my head about how that one’s going to go.

Sunlight:

still my heart is heavy (with the hate of some other man’s beliefs), about spies and loyalty and people making slightly better decisions than they could have. Written primarily by @azems-familiar, who Illami belongs to. (I helped write Ardun.)

Other/Miscellaneous (SWTOR):

your last serving daughter, a collaboration with @reconstructionlegacy. Our silly little AU about Empire and the people who wish they didn’t live in it. Also infrequently updated due to the trials of life and coauthorship.

Fallen London:

None, yet, but it will happen. I can feel it.

The organizational banners used can be found here.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

I won't pretend to totally understand what's going on with sm (other than that they seem to have shat the bed), but in terms of how hybe had tried to buy them earlier and how it's often accused of trying to be a monopoly, do you think there's a point where hybe could get too big in a way that's detrimental to the rest of the industry? Ik they're not literally a monopoly and that there are much smaller companies than hybe, sm, yg, and jyp (hybe is also small compared to the rest of the music industry) but do you think there's any truth in the anger at how big of a chunk of the kpop industry hybe controls or is it just jealousy at them outgrowing the original big 3?

***

I feel like you answer your own question within your ask… because if we think about it: as of January 26, 2024, HYBE’s market cap is ~55% more than the rest of the Big 4 combined. HYBE is itself a hub of ‘mid-sized k-pop companies’, one of which is BigHit, which drives roughly half of their topline. Meaning, the primary driver behind HYBE outperforming and dwarfing the better capitalized and more prestigious competition, is BTS.

It’s simply a fact that HYBE is the biggest company and BTS is the reason why. Like, it’s so obvious there’s no tactful way to highlight it. And it’s a fact it pisses off a lot of people here.

If you ever get into a conversation with a typical k-pop stan, before long, unprompted, they will tell you HYBE has no really, talented idols and that whatever prestige or talent the company has in vocals or dance, was technically bought by acquiring Pledis. It’s not particularly a big deal, just something funny I first noticed in k-pop discourse about 2 years ago, once the idea of HYBE, and Seventeen as a HYBE group, started settling in with k-pop stans.

The average k-pop stan doesn’t really know how to think about HYBE in general, because HYBE is structured nothing like the rest of the Big 4, from its ethos down to its operating mechanics, and so the points of reference k-pop stans have in the Big 3, don’t always apply to HYBE, in my opinion.

Anyway, yeah there’s this weird resentment that often manifests in the misplaced superiority complex you see in some stans of Big 3 groups. In a sense, I don’t blame them. It’s the nature of this industry for there to be a hierarchy. It’s sport after all. But like I’ve said, the politics this space creates is highly toxic, the tribalism is entrenched and the primary thing k-pop stans do in fandom is stoke unending feuds, and shit talk other groups and idols. Some groups are acceptable targets for everyone to dunk on. BTS from debut was designated as one such group, but from the jump it was clear they weren’t going to settle for anything less than the top spot. BTS wasn’t supposed to be the group, to breakout. They didn’t have k-pop approved vocals cred, they didn’t have the typical idol visuals, their rapline never went on Show Me The Money, so how could they be legit?

BTS was a group that did things their own way from the start and that by default pissed off a lot of people. Most of those people are still here. And because people are predictable, some of that latent dislike of BTS bleeds into everything connected with BTS and so, HYBE.

And, not to keep wacking this horse corpse, but I want to point out yet one more obvious thing.

When people talk about Big 3 privilege, something they’re talking about is the latent buy-in those three companies: SM, JYP, and YG will always enjoy in this space. Groups from those companies will always enjoy support from a sizeable army of company stans. SM entertainment has the most, followed by YG, then JYP. This is why Big 3 stans are the people who set the temperature for what dominates the chatter in k-pop. K-pop stans will always tune in to groups and releases from Big 3 companies and are generally pre-disposed to always giving their stuff a chance on the assumption their idols are more talented.

The size of those company stans dwarf the stans of smaller companies like Cube, KQ, Pledis, and until some years ago, BigHit Entertainment. Except for BTS and ARMYs, none of these companies have company stans big enough to rival Big 3 fandoms, and so the cache of these companies are seen as inferior to Big 3 agencies. And as HYBE is simply a collection of mid-sized companies (who on their own couldn’t stand a chance compared to the Big3), examples include: Pledis, Source Music, KOZ, Be:LIFT, ADOR, then the groups from HYBE are implicitly seen as less talented than their Big3 peers. Plus they get the additional ddaeng for being linked to BTS, specifically.

All of that felt very silly to type out but it’s what I’ve observed. Watching the logical conclusions of this political dynamic in k-pop fandoms play out in real time during the SM-HYBE-Kakao drama (1st season) was super fascinating lol. It confirmed practically everything I think about k-pop stans and BTS.

[aronarchy]

[CW: transphobia]

Transmisogyny is misogyny, transphobia is patriarchy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[hsvh-hp]

Hi! Thanks for all the responses -- I hadn't realized how many chapters I'd gotten through since your last round until I saw the emails lmao

I was wondering, in regards to this:

And omg, I totally feel you on being a trans person in the HP fandom. It's very weird how my tumblr dash is set up. I have mutuals still from old fandoms who are queer, and I feel so ostracized from them at times when they toe the line of 'anybody in the HP fandom supports JKR, you're a bad person if you're still engaging with it'. I'll spare you the essay on why I disagree with that, but oddly the safest place I feel on the internet as a trans person is in the HP fandom. Which is weird at face value, I suppose, given what JKR is doing, but we really are separate from her. I've yet to see substantial evidence that fandom, which is infamous for generating zero revenue, is floating trans peoples' demise. It's just a thought crime, I guess.

if you would, perhaps, not spare me the essay? lol

I feel the same sort of ostracization which is especially frustrating when I am in such "thought crimes are fake!" circles, and I'm interested in your perspective, if you want to give it!

Sure, I’ll offer my perspective on it! This is probably best broken down into bullet points:

1. JKR was already a billionaire before she came out as a TERF.

There is nothing in the world that will change this status. Even if every single person currently engaging with her various IPs immediately dropped them, JKR would still have a billion plus dollars to drop on anti-trans movements and whatever. A billion dollars is immensely difficult to picture. The easiest way is to think like this: if you make $50,000 a year, the equivalent of her dropping $75,000 the other day is you spending $3.75. How often do you spend 0.0075% of your income and give it any thought? JKR’s wealth is not directly tied to ‘levels of fandom engagement’.

Which leads to…

2. Boycotts don’t work.

Sorry. They don’t. Not against someone this politically powerful. If they did, the flood of people out of the HP fandom in 2020 would have had a measurable effect. What did have a measurable effect? People not going to watch the Fantastic Beast movies (because they were hot trash lmao). Not giving JKR any more money works in the sense that it cripples her future projects, but it has zero effect on what’s already in her purse.

Also, think of boycotts this way: wasn’t it hilarious watching conservatives try to boycott the Barbie movie, Nike, Bud Light, and whatever else they’ve systematically locked on to? But so then why do progressives/the left/whoever think it’s going to work the other way? Like with Hogwarts Legacy? Just don’t interact with the media, dude. And if you do, pirate it.

3. Fandom is not mainstream. I have never seen any data to substantiate that participating in a fandom directly correlates to dollars for the IP. Copyright literally prevents that from happening. To bring up to popular saying, “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism”, fandom exists outside of capitalism—for me, at least, as a fan fiction writer. This is a hobby to me. I have never seen a red cent for any of the hours of work I’ve put into my fics.

And I can probably guarantee that no one has stumbled upon Harry Potter through me, lol. They didn’t read one of my fics and go, ‘you know, I should check out what source material this is coming from’. Harry Potter is so well-known that there’s no way they came in blind.

Also, the TERF discourse is very much an online thing. I work retail irl and I’ve had conversations with customers who’ll say “you know, I really don’t get all this hubbub against trans people” but are too boomer to be anything more than tangentially aware that Harry Potter is a Thing. Like, ‘oh yeah, my kids read those books when they were coming out, but I never bothered’. One of my employees bought a set of the HP books because they were on a wicked deal at Costco, and when we were discussing it I told her that while I still enjoyed HP, I wasn’t comfortable giving JKR more money because she’s extremely transphobic and donates a lot of money to anti-trans causes. My employee was horrified and said that had she known that, she wouldn’t have bought the books. Lots of people just don’t know!

Which takes me to…

4. This type of online activism isn’t effective.

I’m talking specifically about being anti-Harry Potter or anti-JKR. Falling into those two categories does not automatically make you pro-trans. This was pretty blatantly obvious back when the books were being burned for promoting witchcraft. As far as fighting for trans peoples’ rights, screaming until you’re blue in the face about how anybody who engages with Harry Potter is a traitor and JKR BAD is wasting time better spent doing something productive - something that could actually benefit trans people rather than…I don’t know…virtue signalling that their blog or twitter account is a safe space?

5. I personally do not feel welcomed or vouched for by these people.

Listen, I’m going to break myself down into all my stupid little categories. I’m trans. Autistic. Intersex. Aromantic. Asexual. Basically, all the things that people love to try and cast out of the queer community, whether that means they’re trying to split LGBTQIA+ at the T or Q.

The anti-Harry Potter stuff, as far as attacking the fandom, feels like the latest strain of purity politics to me. As I’ve laid out above, abandoning HP will not right the wrongs of JKR in any measurable or tangible way. Boycotts don’t work. Fandom does not feed JKR’s coffers, and destroying the fandom will not cripple her. There are trans people inside the HP fandom, and what of us? Are we traitors? Are we not ‘really’ trans, because obviously we don’t care about the current political climate? Are we just confused and need to be enlightened as to what harm we’re doing? Where have I heard this rhetoric before?

One small thing, tangentially related:

6. I don’t care what JKR says about how engaging with Harry Potter tells her about who her ‘supporters’ are.

Seriously? She’s a lying dirtbag, and I’m just supposed to take her word on this? This is the one thing she just so happens to be right about?

When she started spouting TERF shit, I was really saddened by the writers who, upon leaving the fandom, also deleted their works in protest. Seeing as the majority of the HP fandom is queer, I’m sure that JKR was very pleased with the amount of queer media erasure that occurred. Why did we do that for her?

7. I believe JKR actually seethes and malds over the prospect of her fandom being queer and producing queer content.

As a writer, there’s a special kind of pain that comes from someone not quite interpreting your work the way you would have wanted them to. What do you think JKR’s first reaction was when she first learned about the Harry/Draco ship? The Draco/Hermione ship? If she didn’t live in a stone castle, I bet she would’ve punched a hole in the wall.

So, yeah. Transing and gaying all of her characters is a pretty nice way to get to her in a way that she can’t legally or financially retaliate. Every time she screams ‘WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?!’ at the queer people in her fandom, a trans person’s crops are watered.

8. The HP setting is very welcoming to trans people.

Potions exist that can change your body. Enough said.

That the Harry Potter books never really says anything specifically about trans people (NOTE: obviously JKR’s prejudices even back then showed through, but this isn’t about that) leaves the question on the table. Obviously trans people exist in the Harry Potter setting, because they exist everywhere. So, how did they never get any page time?

Well, who says they didn’t? In a setting where potions exist to change your body, trans people are just…people. I don’t even think that they would have a marginalized identity because gender dysphoria would be something very easily treated. Think of it like someone who takes medication for blood pressure. They need the medication, it’s life-saving, and while there isn’t a magical pill to ‘cure’ high blood pressure, it can be managed. The magical world revels in being strange. Why would being trans, while being considered strange here in the ‘Muggle’ world, be anything other than normal there? Why can’t it be?

And then there are Metamorphmagi. People who can literally change themselves at will! If that isn’t a trans person’s dream, I don’t know what is. I would personally love the option of being the biggest, hairiest dude with a dick so big an erection would make me black out, and then ultra femme and delicate the next.

Last on this point, Harry never notes anyone specifically trans in the text (NOTE: touching on things like the physical descriptions of Rita Skeeter and Marge Dursley, JKR tends to do the ugly=bad person thing. Although she describes Rita and Marge as mannish in appearance, they aren’t trans characters. They’re women that JKR wants to frame as bad people. Like I said above, this is JKR’s prejudice showing through). If Harry never notes anyone as specifically trans, that probably means that it’s impossible to tell at face value. The same as blood pressure medication, to return to that analogy. How do you know someone is on them? They tell you. You see the pill bottle and happen to know what that medication is for. They complain about side effects. They complain about the symptoms that led them going to the doctor in the first place.

9. Queer HP fandom content can potentially be how a Harry Potter fan realizes that they’re queer (or that queer people are just regular folks).

Hey, the first one happened to me!

If someone comes into the Harry Potter fandom unaware of JKR’s politics - maybe they were gifted the books for their birthday or happened to catch the movies on TV - it’s good actually that this person doesn’t fall right into an echo chamber of JKR’s politics. I’ll be happily here to correct her record in a way that isn’t shaming or policing them.

Anyway, I think that’s everything lol. To summarize:

- The HP Fandom is a neutral setting. Engaging with it doesn’t help JKR, and not engaging with it doesn’t help trans people. Just don’t spend money on official HP merch.

- If you want to be a pro-trans activist or trans political ally, please just ignore JKR and put all your focus on the real world.

- There are trans people in the HP fandom who are left feeling awkward and uncomfortable due to virtue signalling.

- Generating queer HP content is good, actually.

[buddiebitch]

Ngl I was trying to stay out of the discourse with T*mmy bc genuinely I don’t mind him, like in the I don’t really care about him way, but there’s something about people paying hundreds of dollars for L*u to talk about T*mmy and BuckT*mmy just feels like,,, so so weird.

It’s one thing to like pay for a convention where the actors are or to show up on their lives ((that are free)) vs paying them personally money to talk about the ship you like. But honestly I just wish that the fandom would stop bringing actors into shipping politics overall.

Idk it just feels so so weird for people to do. I wish people would just interact with fandom in a normal way and stop paying money to actors to talk about it and accepting it as canon, like obviously he’s going to say what you want to hear bc you are giving him money to…

Anyway sorry for the rant. Your post about it was the first I saw about the cameo price and I’m just glad I’m not the only one who finds it strange

facts anon

it’s so weird to me, like first of all he’s a nepo baby and he clearly isn’t struggling to get roles, so why does he need to charge so much for cameos anyways? (come on man your dad was literally the incredible hulk AND billy from adventure time and you need to do cameos to make money?)

also, totally agree on the second part. i love when actors ship their characters, i think it’s fun to know how they were playing the characters and what they think about them, but it’s strange to ask them about ships as if they have any say in where the ship might go. (weird to pay him for his opinions when the writers could write anything and negate everything he said, same deal with how many interviewers ask about buddie, i get wanting to know how they feel about it but their answers really don’t mean much for the show)

anyways the weirdest part to me is how he went on there to try and downplay/defend tommy’s past actions in the show. SO weird since he really didn’t need to do that, like we watched the show, his actions towards chimney and hen were written to make us dislike him, if the character is supposedly redeemed now then we’ll see that in the show (i’d still like an onscreen apology). no need for you as an actor to try and tell us how to feel about that, the character isn’t you, no need to defend his actions, he’s just a fictional character that you play.

[bonebabbles]

imo the concept of nightheart? good. the execution? arc isn’t over yet but… bleh. i think Nightheart/Sunbeam is annoying - that’s not even his fault, it’s the writers fault. i wish they let pairings build up a bit more in the recent arcs instead of “male cat meets female cat! instant love!” & I wish he stayed in ShadowClan because I’m tired of Protagonist Clan TM fhahdhsd. I think Nightheart hate is from ppl who don’t understand what having neglectful parents feels like and/or not liking NightSun. big agree on it being a pink flag

transmasc nightheart headcanons though? *chefs kiss*

ABSOLUTELY fair. Like I 100% agree there's valid reasons to dislike him, his romance, or the metatextual problematic elements of his arc (namely Sparkpelt's mishanding. She really has gotten a dirty deal).

It's more that there's a specific type of Nightheart Hater who is like... frothing at the mouth at the mention of him. With every release of the books. And then their hatred of him overpowers what's really interesting about the arc, which is its political tension

The same sorts of people who like, praise Frostpaw and say it should only be Frostpaw as a POV, but then write 10k words about Nightheart without ever mentioning Frost's plot once. Like... god. Reading the same discourse every 6 months gets so tiring to me

Which is why it's not a RED flag it's a pink one, y'know? Yes yes, the time knife/WC misogynistic writing, we've all seen it, what about it this time.

As for the transmasc headcanons I'm actually a lot more partial to Orange Nightheart ones. I love it when he gets annoyed. Make that man look like Firestar Dark Mode. Turn him orange in the sun. You are morally required to get as much orange on him as possible. Hit his ass with a paintball gun if you must.

[alaskan-wallflower]

i’m so done with this shit. i don’t want to get political but

why do people (namely in the sp community) insist on censoring israel and not palestine? like here’s the deal. i support the free palestine movements. i acknowledge everything that is going on in palestine

but you also have to acknowledge october 7th. you have to acknowledge what went down in its entirety. yes. i support free palestine. but here’s how it’s gonna be for me. if you wanna talk to me about not wanting matt and trey to make an episode revolving around israel and palestine, you either censor one or censor neither. i would be saying the same exact thing if people were censoring palestine and not israel. i don’t care if you ‘don’t want the pro israel people to find my post’, i don’t want either side to find my posts. i’m not fully educated on the issue and i don’t feel like getting into political discourse.

so that’s my rule. if you wanna send an ask in, you either censor both of you censor none. and yes. i get that this doesn’t directly affect me since i don’t belong to either religious/ethnic group. but it does affect people of those groups when you turn an entire group into what you view those involved in the war is. it may not affect me but it affects others. and i don’t stand with that. i don’t care which side you take in this conflict but i am not into the discourse that’s been going on in my inbox. i’m not fucking dealing with it. if it has the potential to hurt someone it’s not going on my blog and it will be deleted. i don’t care.

anyway. end of story. either censor both or neither. up to you. or don’t engage at all.