#i don't mean to sound aggressive-

[sarasade]

One of the most generally useful things to come out of Hbomberguy's plagiarism video and Todd in the Shadows' similar video on misinformation is how they bring transparency to the internet phenomenon of "I made up a guy to get mad at".

Seriously, I've seen people make up a lot of stupid shit on the internet over the years and it's often just a manipulative attempt to paint a group of marginalized people in a bad light.

That's the TL;DR version of this post. 

ANYWAY here is the long version

Those videos are mostly about James Somerton's plagiarism of other queer people's work. However I'd like to talk about that 20-30% of Somerton's original writing- and oh boy. It's mostly about complaining about White Straight Women and misgendering well-known trans creators such as Rebecca Sugar and calling Becky Albertalli a straight woman while it's pretty common knowledge that she was forced to out herself as bi because she received so much harassment over "being a cishet woman who appropriates LGBT+ stories".

One thing that irks me especially is how in his Killing Stalking and Gay Shipping videos Somerton brings up how straight women/ teen girl shippers exploit gay men for their personal sexual fantasies. This gets brought up several times in his videos.

Being all up and arms about Somerton being a "White Cis Gay Who Hates Women and Queer People tm" is not that useful because the kind of rhetoric he's using is extremely common in fandom and LGBT+ spaces on Tumblr, TikTok and Twitter. We really don't need to bring Somerton's identity to this since he is in no way an unique example.

It's hypocritical to make this about an individual person when I've seen A TON of posts, tweets and videos where queer people talk about these Sinister Straight Women who are supposedly out there fetishizing and exploiting queer men. It's pretty clear to me that this is just an excuse to shit on women and queer people for having any sexual interests. At worst these comments are spreading misinformation about BL, a form of media that has been excessively studied by both Asian feminists and Asian queer women.

This all sounds really familiar and I think it's good that people are calling it out as what it is: misogyny and transphobia. I'd also point out the potentially racist motives behind being this hypervigilant about Asian media.

People can absolutely be misogynist regardless of gender or orientation. I really don't know why we need to create some kind of made up enemy to get mad at. I actually think it's almost sinister how "anti-fujoshi" people call Slash shippers and fujoshi misogynists or claim that they have internalised misogyny while being dismissive about women's interests and creative pursuits under Japanese obscenity laws, China's censorship, book bans in American schools and various other disadvances that are part of being a queer and/or female creator.

I think we shouldn't be naive about the bad faith actors who want to turn queer people against each other. For example Fujoshi.info mentions anti-gender (TERF, GC etc) movement using this kind of rhetoric as well.

Anyway if you want to read more:

- about the false info around BL fandom fujoshi.info

-There is the scholar Thomas Baudinette who studies gay media in Japan. Here is a podcast with him and the scholar Khursten Santos

-James Welker is a BL scholar as well. Here is a podcast interview about the new international BL article collection he edited.

-I've already talked about this Youtube channel by KrisPNatz and his great Killing Stalking video that actually engages with the themes of the manhwa

- There is also HR Coleman's thesis DO NOT FEED THE FETISHIZERS: BOYS LOVE FANS RESISTANCE AND CHALLENGE OF PERCEIVED REPUTATION where she interviews 36 BL fans and actually breaks down why fetishization has become such a huge talking point in the fandom discourse. Spoilers, it's mostly about young queer people and women being worried that they will get judged and pathologized for their interest in anything sexual.

-Great podcast about Danmei and censorship with Liang Ge

[omgkalyppso]

[Content ID: Art of characters from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. From left to right, in the foreground there is a My Unit / Byleth OC, two fankid OCs, and Claude von Riegan. They are seated on a mauve rug with colored patterns outdoors. The My Unit OC has one arm extended as if gesturing while talking. They are looking down towards the toddlers who are focused on an orange book. They are wearing brown pants, a dark yellow shirt, and at least one rose earring. The fankid OCs are fraternal twins dressed similarly, with cream shorts, and one wearing a yellow scarf and red tunic while the other has a red scarf and yellow tunic. The child in the red tunic has his hair tied in a braid with red ribbons and a few gold-colored clips on the side of his hair. Claude is wearing a yellow top with a white shirt underneath, his patterned green and gold belt, cream pants, his gold earring, and a gold ring on his left ring finger. His right hand holds his left elbow, and his left hand is held to cover a smile on his mouth as he too watches the children. In the background, there is an earthy cliff, atop which there is green grass with some white and yellow flowers, Claude's resting white wyvern, and the My Unit OC's brown-red wyvern who is stretching one wing. The sky is blue with some white clouds, and a body of blue water can be seen. /End ID]

Changing Fae's colors back and forth in basically every drawing. This time I referenced the sprite I made. (I'll put this below the cut too)

It's my first time drawing any of my fankids! (: The boys are Geralt <- (intentional spelling) and Nader -> (eldest). Fae and Claude have a total of 4 children, and in worldstates with Avery (my Shez OC), Fae also has a child with him, and in various au's they also have a parental relationship to my Hilda x Lorenz fankids.

Close-ups and without a background below the cut.

[arodeku]

"dnp play bg3" "deltarune playthrough when" "play ffXIV on the gaming channel" I hope they play a billion games they come to love and be deeply impacted by and that we never hear abt it forever and ever amen <3

[lillotte17]

..

[frankensteinmutual]

one of my housemates is so fucking sensitive it turns me into a person I do not like

[now-that-i-saw-you]

Viola Eade: would start a war for Todd, would commit war crimes for him

Todd: would kill for Viola, basically refers to her as his conscious

Y'all: I just don't get why Patrick Ness made them a couple they are so obviously platonic

[osaemu]

i actually have the worst resting bitch face. and personality too 😔

[stoportotouch]

facebook has of late been advertising to me an event called Secret Byrd. which is already a very evocative (and quite funny) name but it is also a staged performance of byrd's mass for four voices (one of my favourites for its vaguely passive-aggressive sounding gloria) set in the time of The Actual Byrd.

also, it comes with soup. soup and william byrd. the perfect combination of things, and by perfect i mean ?

[angelesse]

shin godzilla graphics for tumblr or rentry? (i keep requesting people for him omg,, i’m so hyperfixated at the moment it’s crazy)

preferably his second or third form pls!

✚ ⦂ im like so very unfamiliar with this media so im gonna have to decline politely , , so sorry

[echo-the-ghost]

do y’all have mutuals that like, you wanna send them a love letter that says “we are different, maybe too different to really be friends. but you are valid and incredible and amazing and I want you to be surrounded by all the things that make you happy in life and I hope that you continue to discover new wonderful things” but you’re too damn awkward and maybe that’s too weird anyway so you just mentally send them positive vibes

[blimbo-buddy]

Oh also going on about the california stuff, as much as I genuinely have the most mixed feelings about california, a part of me gets really worried that one day I'm gonna run into someone on here whose post bashing it has weirdly racist undertones towards latinos

[zeroducks-2]

It makes so much sense, yes! That is a very nuanced answer, and it makes me so happy I gave it a shot to ask you that question, and to read your answer, especially the “I honestly don't think there's one interpretation of a character who's 80+ year old and went through the hands of hundreds of writers” part. Which also, it saddens me at the same time that such thought is a rarity among comic fans.

Comic fans should be more flexible and take into consideration that what they read is just a speck of many different iterations of the same stories, the same characters, the same dynamics which get rewritten and reinterpreted so many times that it's a ship of theseus sort of thing at this point lol. I honestly don't think that Bob Kane would especially like modern Bruce and how the fans perceive him, but who knows maybe I'm wrong.

Like distort-opia said in the tags of my previous post, it wasn't DC's intention making Bruce so nuanced and complex but for better or worse it's what happened, and how we have this character that contains multitudes and needs to be looked at through varied lenses to make some semblance of sense of him. But that's actually a lot of fun! It's an aspect of Batman that I really enjoy to be honest.

But you feel free to ask me anything anon! 9 times out of 10 I can tell when a question is asked genuinely, and even if I don't I will always give the benefit of the doubt (unless it's insults, in which case I'll do my best not to kinkshame ;))

[realhbomax]

guys, guys, in all seriousness, please do not refer to be as they or any other pronouns please it makes me mad uncomfortable. i have nothing against pronouns or gender ofc but thats not mine so don't use it.

i get using they/them if you don't know someone's pronouns is okay but my pronouns are in my bio/pinned post, please check it.

please please please don't use they, she, it, etc on me. my pronouns are he/him and that's it.

[warmmilk-n-honey]

I always had a feeling these days while i watched and rewatched the Noah's Ark Circus musical when Baldroy just told Beast "I wish i could have met a girl like you in a bar, drinking something. Not like this." before killing her that made me want to choke Baldroy. I don't hate Baldroy, i wanna say before someone attacks me, i just find the line very fucking mysogynistic, and wanted to know if i was the only one. We all know Yana fucks up a lot with stuff.

Nah, I get you that line always rubbed me the wrong way, especially when you consider how Beast was treated by Sebastian, Seb even says something like "You're dressed in such a way that I wouldn't expect you to be upset." After he violates her boundaries, and starts literally feeling up her prosthetic! He basically says "Well you're dressed like such a whore you were basically asking for it 🙃" Like fuck off?!! Not to mention the ableism of touching her prosthetic and then acting like she's a bitch when she rightfully feels violated. I get he's a demon or whatever but he's meant to be playing a gentlemanly persona. I think the Bard comment wouldn't rub me the wrong way so much if Beast wasn't treated so misogynistically by the writing so consistently.

And I know people are gonna say "it was the victorian era and she's a lower class woman, of course she's treated like shit" Like c'mon let's be fucking for real here, we are not meant to see Sebastian or Bard's actions as morally dubious in these scenarios-(only when Seb sleeps with her are we supposed to see his demonic intentions) Yana consistently treats sexual harassment as like a funny quirky character trait, like it's some kind of silly fun thing-I mean just look at the Viscount of Druit (I swear attractive men get away with ANYTHING in kuro) Sebastian harassing her is treated more like he didn't understand a social cue than malicious.

Again it's not that Yana has morally grey characters or that she brings up dark themes it's the framing of those characters and themes that's the issue, we are clearly meant to see Beast as bitchy and over reacting to Seb harassing her, Bard's comment was just the cherry on top of how she was objectified. Sadly this kind of sexism is super common in anime and manga, so I can't even put it all on Yana, sexual harassment being used for "funny" character moments is by no means a kuro only problem.

Also I know the only reason Seb treated Beast that way was because she used a whip on Betty the fucking tiger!! Think about what he's teaching his son!! That treating women like shit is okay in service of cats?!

[mishkakagehishka]

Yeah, ok. Condemn the sin not the sinner, sure, but the way the purple blanket guy replied to the whole situation without even apologizing for the misuse of their tone? Who cares if you're the #1 tooootallyyy shy friend, do you think this is a better alternative?

Tbf i don't really hold it against them, like, i like to take advantage of these situations to say "hey, even if we're online on a silly website like this, you have to remember that a lot of folks are uncomfortable when you, as an internet stranger, approach them like you would a close friends with aggressive jokes and the like" bc it is a problem online, and i am one of those people who are incredibly uncomfortable with it. I, in fact, put "please don't call me sweetheart or other nicknames if we're not friends" in my pinned specifically bc an anon called me that once and it gave me the ick. Even a tone tag would have been a help bc i gen didn't know if it was a joke in that sense or someone trying to pick a fight (bc like let's face it you always have those weirdos in fandoms who will fight you for any reason)

But we're on tumblr, and i think the userbase is well known for being a bit socially awkward. I feel like i have to turn a blind eye to the occasional etiquette and social norm breaches because, well. But like it makes me so uncomfortable.

[goatmilksoda]

hello, i saw one of your posts about public libraries circulating. i hope this is not a weird question but how do you know if you have what it takes to work at a library? i’ve been wanting to apply but i’m scared of the rejection.

Honestly, it depends on the position. I saw the word "entry level" and was in high school and just sent in an application. I hate to say this, but to get anything you want in the world, you just have to throw your hat into the ring, or maybe many rings and just hope one works out. You can't be living in fear of rejection to the point you don't even try. At that point you're just rejecting yourself.

Read the job description, maybe get an understanding of whatever sorting system they use (most public libraries use Dewey, but it's my understanding universities and law libraries use different systems), consider if there are other organizations you might want to work for and apply there too for a fall-back, and you're pretty much set.