#i genuinely cannot fucking understand these people

[sir-adamus]

apparently the 'Copperschlong was right' crowd see his speech prioritising the technology over the thousands of lives at risk to be a fair and reasonable position

like

what the fuck

[eurydicees]

re what they are saying about fiyero on twitter - gosh there is too much stuff. they talk about how uninteresting he is, how his presence has no effect on the leads, how he shouldn’t be elphaba’s endgame and doesnt deserve to be, how they want to delete him from the plot (somewhere along those line), how they want to block anyone making any fiyeraba or fiyero tweets or content and much, much, MUCH more like i genuinely do not understand the obsession?

i of course get not liking him, thats normal about any character lol but the way they just cannot shut up about how they dislike him is so….. like really no one is challenging your gelphie content 😭 we really are not interested to challenge your ship. you really dont need to focus on this guy 24/7 but ig you do you i hope they remain sane amidst all the apparent misery lol

well. you know. disappointed by not surprised. a partial fiyero ted talk under the cut. sorry.

it's like. it's just so frustrating to write him off as uninteresting and as having no effect on either elphaba (or glinda). like guys why is the media literacy not happening right now. also how the fuck would you delete him from the plot???? guys his plan is literally how elphaba escapes dorothy. he's the one who saves her from the gale force, TWICE. he literally sacrifices himself for her escape and its his sacrifice that makes her spiral into "wickedness" during no good deed.

also, fiyero is elphaba's endgame in part because he does what glinda cannot bring herself to do. WHICH IS SO VITAL TO THE ENDING. fiyero is the one who makes all of the sacrifices for elphaba that glinda refused, and he both pays the price for it and reaps the reward of it.

glinda and elphaba have a profound effect on each other, obviously, but it's not like fiyero is left unchanged by elphaba. i dont get where this idea that fiyero and elphaba have no dynamic because like??? that's just not true?????

fiyero goes from refusing to confront the difficulties of life to choosing the more difficult path for the sake of morality and loyalty and love because of elphaba (which is also really interesting given how he's, like, kind of a casualty of war in the book more than he is an actual rebel....mostly fiyero's book to musical adapation is #Rough but that's a cool parallel i hadn't noticed before).

glinda begins to see the flaws in the wizard's society, but she actively chooses to be a part of the system anyway. and she regrets it. that's the whole thing abt thank goodness!!!

fiyero, on the other hand, begins to see the flaws in this society and he chooses elphaba--and the life of rebellion that she's chosen--over everything that glinda admits to being unable to resist.

and GOD. guys that's so interesting. HES SO INTERESTING!!! how are you not interested by all of this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wicked is such a cool study on morality and what the "right" thing to do in such a world is, and what it means to make the decision to do the right thing vs the comfortable thing. fiyero chooses to follow elphaba and he pays the price, but he also doesn't regret it. glinda chooses the "safe" option--but in the end, even if she chooses good then, she's entirely alone in it all.

and that's SO INTERESTING!!!!!!!!! god. whatever. twitter just doesn't get him like you and me get him, anon.

just. it's totally fine to dislike him! i'm not refuting people's right to dislike him. the nature of fictional characters is that sometimes people will dislike them. like that's fine.

but being incapable of shutting up about how much you hate a character just...it stops being "harmlessly disliking a fictional character" and starts being "you are insufferable to talk to." like sorry you're so miserable about fiyeraba but i'm gonna be over here just having fun because that's what fandom is supposed to be about :)

(also, just a major issue with breaking this movie up into two films released a year apart is that any movie-only fans just don't get the point of fiyero's character. it's kind of devastating. ik not all of the people saying that stuff are movie-only but man. the people who are...im BEGGING you to give him a chance in part 2. literally BEGGING you. fiyero is such a good character. he has so many good moments. let the green girl go lives in my head rent free and if they cut that i'll riot.)

tldr; fiyero is SO neat and twitter is just full of cowards.

[birdy-babe]

Blitzøs entire life spent being unwanted. So he adapted, and learned how to be something needed, something to be used.

Which is why I think he firmly believes he is being used by Stolas. He simply cannot fathom a different reality, one in which he is wanted for once in his life.

[the-moogle-of-your-nightmares]

FUCKING GOOD POST. THANK YOU.

addendum: 'not caring about [group's] hurt feelings' does not mean '[group] is open season to hurt, and is owed no support, compassion, or understanding for pain that they feel, nor preventing or alleviating that pain.'

it means people do not have the right to hold themselves hostage against you being treated the way you, as a person, have the right to be treated.

a cishet parent might feel deep, genuine confusion and grief over their child coming out as trans. a white woman might feel deep, genuine distress, hurt, and fear over being told she's being racist. an estranged parent might feel like they're being murdered by their child setting boundaries or going no-contact. a partner might become suicidal over being broken up with.

all of these people have hurt feelings, and you do not owe it to them to spare those feelings by letting them walk all over you. you do not owe it to them to feel guilt if you don't, and you should be supported in that. you are allowed to slam the car door on that motherfucker's hand if they try to use it to keep you from escaping or locking them out until help arrives. that is what 'not caring about hurt feelings' means.

and guess what? guess the fuck what? people from privileged groups are not the only ones who do this. they're just more likely to have the direct support of larger systems to get away with it. it is in fact an INFAMOUS thing for queer abusers to use potentially facing harsher consequences than non-queers, or the idea that their victims are traitors making the community look bad if they tell anyone, or the idea that it's queerphobic to criticize or have boundaries against them to begin with, as a shield to get away with it.

i cannot describe to you the utter fucking dread i feel whenever a queer person behaves in a predatory way toward me or the people around me, unless they are in one of a few very specific groups who are in my experience near universally fair game. (holy shit the way people treat allegations toward transmascs, jesus fucking christ, not even beginning to mention QPOC.) and this is because i KNOW people will instantly swarm out of the woodwork to defend the queer abuser/predator tooth and nail, with every single last trick and line in the book to discredit, gaslight, and silence victims, and ultimately publicly tear them to little wet shreds as a queerphobe. this has happened over and over and over and over again with multiple demographics, just in my own experience.

and it's made me feel guilty for exposing my own abuse at the hands of people who are in those fair-game demographics people will happily hunt for sport. i've been abused by misogynistic, fuck-you-got-mine transmascs who blatantly saw me as a woman the moment they were in the same room as me after having medically transitioned themselves, and who leaned into being disgusting pieces of shit toward women and people they perceived as such to validate their own genders. they fell square in the middle of SO many nasty stereotypes about transmascs and i fucking hate that that is hanging over the story of my abuse when i tell it.

(funnily enough: they were both big fans of the attitude talked about above. 🙃)

anyway yeah, the conversation absolutely doesn't end there--for one thing, people like to try to make up excuses for why they're the ones whose rights as a person are being violated by not being allowed to haul someone's arm into the car door to crush it. but it has to start there. and you should be awfully leery of anyone who tries to position a group of people's hands as acceptable to crush in a car door at any time someone happens to feel like it.

genuine question: why is it so hard for people to shift their language from "i hate cishets" to "i hate queerphobes".

same amount of syllables. and then you don't have to sit there and go "well DUH we don't mean 'all' cishets we don't mean the GOOD ones." like you don't have to add an asterisk, here. just say what you mean. like forreal, just... say what you. mean. if you have to CLARIFY that you don't mean a certain part of that group then why are you saying it to begin with? why are you over complicating it and skirting around it like you're scared of making your own point?

are you really that attached to the conflict between queerphobic cishet people and queers that you have to reinforce it from your own side? are you really that attached to needing to hate something that you take it out on people who haven't hurt you. i've been hurt by many, many women- would you excuse me for saying i hate all women because of that? of course not. women can also be abusive, but that doesn't give me the right to hate womanhood.

it is so easy to shift the verbiage and have it actually mean what you say. unless you truly do mean that you hate the concept of cis heterosexuality, then i don't know what to tell you, but we don't do that here in the queer community. we don't hate people for their gender and sexuality. this is not the place for you if you want to shit on people for their identities.

[bixels]

I'm not explaining why re-imagining characters as POC is not the same as white-washing, here of all places should fucking understand.

[astranauticus]

this isnt the kind of stuff i'd usually post but im fuckin losing my mind. ive been watching through the bilibili livestream vods of like this arknights lore creator reading through and commentating on like the game stories and right now im watching the vod from his main story chapter 11 stream and his reaction to logos' sprite reveal is so fucking funny i had to clip it. man is really having a crisis on stream

[mikakuna]

my problem is that i always end up emotionally invested in the angry abuse victim character-- the character who is always the "wrong" kind of victim. the one who lashes out and is violent, a complete juxtaposition to their sunshine/lawful good counterparts in the media.

i end up resonating too hard with these characters that i always end up on the shitty side of the fandom where people will see you as a bad person for enjoying representation of an angry victim.

[qu0rky]

What i despise the most about her character and the way she’s written (which was also pointed out by Danny Motta in his most recent reaction, though with much more comedic ire) is that she does the same thing over and over again, without seemingly learning anything.

She felt so hurt by her dad not knowing what she’s into now, and instead clinging on to the past (which was his biggest crime with her tbh), but does she give a single fuck about Stolas’ life before he had her? I never saw her make an effort to bond with him unless it was something SHE was already into. If she had, she’d understand why Stolas cares so much about Blitz. I don’t think she ever even realized just how miserable Stolas was whenever she was with her mom on the weekends.

Loona’s speech to her in Seeing Stars should’ve been the end of this arc. Of her teenage rebellion. Of her unreasonable anger towards her father. Because Loona put it perfectly, dads fuck up, but they’re trying, at least it’s very clear that Blitz and Stolas are. And they’re not just fathers, they’re multidimensional people, with hobbies and aspirations and relationships. She seemed to understand that speech. And yet now it’s like that bit of development never happened between them. Could she not have confided in Loona again?

And now that she’s susceptible to her mother and uncle’s manipulation, this could only get worse. I genuinely cannot handle seeing Stolas treated like shit by other people AGAIN. He’s had enough!! Let him heal.

As much as i can understand where Via is coming from, and her feelings are valid, she doesn’t see her dad as a living person outside of just being her father. And that isn’t right. It’s especially not right seeing just how many people feel absolutely no empathy for him.

“She was just a child having to endure all that!!” Okay, and how old was Stolas when he had to marry an abusive girl and have a kid of his own, exactly? At least he gave Via a chance to have a good childhood, he didn’t have one. He didn’t have anything except for his duties to carry out.

And while it’s heartbreaking that Via sees herself as an obligation, that’s literally what she was supposed to be. Though that doesn’t mean that was how he saw her. She was what saved him, what made him endure all the abuse, what kept him going.

But sometimes that’s not enough, he had NO ONE to confide in and couldn’t put his frustrations on his own kid (because he’s a good father, despite what some of you would like to believe, clearly you didn’t grow up with a parent trying to guilt you by traumadumping when you can barely understand it), so he also NEEDED the pills.

The thing is, i also had that mentality towards my mom for dealing with depression UNTIL i started experiencing it myself. Because it’s so hard to realize that your parents are also human beings, since they’re supposed to protect you, they’re supposed to have everything figured out, to be the shoulder you cry on.

But if i see another dumbass claim that he CHOSE to leave and made the wrong decision in Mastermind, i need you out of this fandom. The whole point of that was that he had no choice, was he supposed to throw away the man he fell in love with, his first friend, his first time that wasn’t for procreation, and the one who liberated him? Stolas is allowed to care for more than one person, and he deserves to be loved romantically by someone.

You’re being too harsh on Stolas because for whatever reason you hate an abuse victim finally having a say in how to live for once in their lives, adding on top of that the weird, underlying homophobia in some of your criticisms for him.

Also i have a bad taste in my mouth from Via only seemingly hating Stolas, despite having SEEN how shitty Stella is. Sure, she doesn’t know the full extent of the abuse, but she’s heard the yelling, she’s seen the throwing, the ridiculing, the insensitivity. And most likely that woman neglected Via as much as possible, because she also didn’t choose to have her, but unlike Stolas she didn’t give a fuck to take responsibility regardless. (Reminding you of the “You get up” comment from Loo Loo Land). This was all happening before the cheating, so that’s not an excuse for her behavior (not that the cheating was, but at least Via would have been able to reason with her reaction to it).

It’s a complicated situation and it’s so shitty to put all the blame on Stolas, he tried so much for his family, but it was never going to be enough, because he’s gay. I’m glad he got out of that marriage.

Honestly, had i been given all those responsibilities at his age in a loveless marriage, i would’ve gone insane. I wouldn’t have been kind to my child, the cause of my shit life. But he never saw her as a weight on his shoulders, he has so much love for Via.

[spitblaze]

hey look we understand that trump is measurably worse than biden, we know, we're aware, so can you stop fucking talking down to us like we're petulant children and not adults who are fucking horrified that our 'best option' is still the guy who's giving israel carte blanche on its genocidal rampage

[hypermascbishounen]

There's a deep irony in Berserk being so admired by people who really really hate what Berserk is about on an emotional level, but especially when writers want to take influence from it. Because Berserk is very strong thematically, and someone who can't acknowledge subtext is going to whiff on emulating anything good.

[akuma-tenshi]

i've been saying this i've been saying it i've been saying game three was the worst game and its assassination of ganji's character (and annie and aesop's as well) is a fucking problem but you didn't listen why didn't you fucking listen i'm going to fucking bite someone

[northern-passage]

i've been thinking a lot about the word "representation" and what it means and how it's changed over the last few years, particularly when it comes to the writing/publishing landscape but also in movies and tv shows… and i really don't like it anymore. to be clear, of course i think it's important to have diversity in your work, i'm not saying i hate the concept of representation. but i do really dislike the way it's used now, and i really just hate the word itself

in a broader sense it's just become a marketing tool. i'm not impressed by any publisher or author who just describes their book by listing all of the minorities/identities the characters represent as if that should be enough. it feels very gross, very exploitative and disingenuous. it also really bothers me because it's always marginalized identities- which i understand Why, but it feels very othering to me (and again. Very exploitative as an advertisement). you would never list out "cishet able-bodied white man" as a character description to pat yourself on the back over. so why do it to everyone else? why insinuate that one is the "default" and the other one is "special"? (and when i say this i'm mainly talking about advertisements/marketing. i understand why people would specify about characters in descriptions with the plot, but i don't like to see an ad that's just "this book has gay people!" with nothing else)

which then leads me to my other point, which is that a lot of people treat "representation" as if it's "too hard." like "oh i don't know enough to write about that, i don't have that experience, etc" which is a fair way to feel! however… it's weird that people only say this about writing trans characters or characters of color. i'm writing a story right now with a character who is really into motorcycles. i personally do not know that much about motorcycles, so i researched what parts are what & what different kinds of models there are & what basic bike care looks like. i guarantee Most people will have to google something at some point in their writing process. so what's the problem? it also, again, feels very othering when authors treat certain groups of people as "impossible" to write, "too hard" to understand. they are just.. people. you write them as a person. and then you figure out the rest later.

and i think part of the refusal or fear to write something outside of your experience is because of the way representation is treated as So Special. these characters are So Special that they aren't allowed to be anything other than "representation." they're Not allowed to be characters with complex emotions and interesting motivations, they have to just be Trans or Gay or Disabled or whatever. they're not allowed to be people. which means, at the end of the day, we loop right back around to where we were at the start….

there is bad representation. there are depictions of certain marginalized people that are harmful and that are damaging, i'm not trying to minimize that or argue against it at all, in fact we should all be mindful of that while writing and reading. but i also think it's possible to swing too far in the opposite direction as well and put certain groups of people on a pedestal and not allow them to do anything at all but be Perfect Representation, if that makes sense.

[variousqueerthings]

@mauvecardigans every once in awhile it's good and healthy to get the sheer indignant feeling out at cobra kai, I think it's like a purification process -- if there's one thing every fan I've seen on tumblr have in common, regardless of which characters we stan, it's a knowledge that the show has fucked with them in some way, and that fanfic and fanart and meta that incorporates original movie themes is fixing it

(and then we collectively clown-makeup our way through s6)

(clown hand in clown hand)

[fadewalking]

Bellara lowkey pissing me off with all this feeling guilty bs

[bad-at-metaphors]

truly honestly from the bottom of my heart believe anyone who voted red is genuinely unfit for society. I know that's the majority of Americans. I know this is not helpful. how the fuck can you think for a moment long enough to take the time to vote on it that the piece of shit would be better for you and everyone else than any other option.

[clannfearrunt]

A slightly edited writeup stitched together from discord ramblings, about Rill vs his adoptive families. Lol. It’s long

Fathom and Mariana are an international and interracial couple, and they’re the same morph*. There are actual layers of bigotry they’ve faced while trying to get married. However, they are also very much pampered kids from generationally wealthy families. They do consider themselves very socially progressive, but this is true only relative to their immediate social circles. They have this Image of themselves as Good People and don’t have the self-awareness to recognize and unlearn the bigotry they do very much still hold, mainly towards other species. This has been a constant source of headache for Rill, who has to live with them and interact with their families.

(*Fish have a system of distinct “morphs” in addition to sex that informs the gender politics of their various cultures. The two morphs are referred to as drakes and hens in this language. I swear I will get into details on a different post. The particular ways the intersection of sex and morph is handled varies a lot by culture, but across most of them people are expected to be attracted to the opposite sex and morph. Relationships between the same morph can face more scrutiny than same sex ones in many places, as morphs are much easier to determine than sex at a glance.)

The big concession the couple made in order to gain their family’s approval was that they wouldn’t have biological children. So of course they went to adopt. But. The reaction of the extended family towards Fathom and Mariana's adoption of Rill, an Inkling, was mostly confusion. Like, most of them didn't exactly disapprove, but were definitely like, "? what the fuck?? why".

Rill himself consistently gets the impression that they chose to adopt him to reinforce their image of being Good Progressive People. When he was younger he definitely got paraded around at social events and occasionally ended up on gossip publications, and he only recently managed to weasel out of ending up on his parents’ social media posts all of the time. He’s a goddamn publicity stunt. It’s sickening. Unlike what Rill believes, it’s not an intentional Thing on his parents’ minds though. It’s definitely there, but it’s subconscious. Anyways.

The Nykur family initially reacted to Rill with an air of condescending curiosity; their view of Inklings is very colored by longstanding stereotypes of them being simple, frivolous, and lazy, and they had met very few Inklings in person to remotely challenge this view. They've warmed up quite a bit to Rill as he quickly adapted and showed himself to be a bright, well-spoken young man. They mildly pity him for not being able to speak their mother tongue (it is physiologically very difficult for Inklings), but he can respond in either an extremely restrictive selection of words he can manage to pronounce, Peixe (a more globally common Fish Language), or in writing, which is just absolutely phenomenal from an Inkling wowww way to go boy! Even now that they’ve grown to mostly like him, though, Rill consistently gets the vibe of being treated more like a talking animal than a family member, let alone a person.

Mariana's family, the Poecilias, were a little bit more familiar with Inklings, as her country’s warm and humid climate allowed a thriving minority population of Inkfish to establish itself there in the past century or so. They were expecting a boisterous, flamboyantly outgoing boy as per local stereotypes but have been pleasantly surprised by Rill's more reserved and shy demeanor. Some of them might like him a little more than they do Mariana lol, she's definitely the problem child of the family. They don't visit this side of the family as much due to the slightly strained relation Mariana has with them, but they do tell her to bring Rill when she does. Rill... doesn’t dislike them as vehemently as he does the Nykurs, but he finds them very draining to deal with regardless. He’s mostly kind of wearily disinterested in them for now.

The extended Nykur family has been more overtly shit towards Rill. Wether it’s because they’re “more” bigoted towards Inklings or if it’s just that they’ve had more opportunities to show themselves he doesn’t know, but it doesn’t really matter. They seem to be under the mistaken impression that the reason Inklings have a hard time with a bulk of their language is because it falls outside of their range of hearing, and they’ve said some heinous shit in earshot. Rill doesn’t... really know what the best course of action is for him here, so he’s been just been quietly seething. When he visits them he mostly just tries his best to stick close to his parents or Nobils, the butler, and not end up alone with the rest of the family. In all fairness I don’t think most of them would intentionally hurt him, but Rill doesn’t really want to find out.

TO Fathom’s credit also I do think he has told off his family over the really overt shit. He's not malicious, he's just clueless (if occasionally dangerously so), and there is a threshold where it's obvious enough that he's gonna know it's Getting Bad. And he does, technically, actually like his son. So Fathom will intervene, but most of the time it's not like. Serious/stern enough. It's very "hey let's not talk politics at the dinner table"-core... You know that vibe of "ohh don't get so mad at your horrifically racist/queerphobic/insert bigotry here uncle it's thanksgiving dinnerrrr let's not ruin thanksgiving dinner 🥺”. Rill gets a lot of this. He hates Fathom so much. Defend him or don’t, make up your goddamn mind.

Rill is genuinely terrified that if he acts out too much he'd just be unceremoniously disowned. It's much less of a hassle for his "family" to distance themselves from him than it would have been if he was their biological child, or even at least the same species. If this happens he has literally no one else to turn to for support. This fear is a central force shaping his Behaviors. I do think it's a significant bit less likely than he's convinced himself it is? Like, his parents are probably not actually going to drop him like a hot potato the moment he even slightly talks back at them. He's not wrong that they could, and on some level it's not impossible that they would, but it is more unlikely than he's convinced himself it is. With a lot of things I have to have this preface of like. Yes Rill's fears are very much rooted in reality. But he's also very much prone to paranoia and blowing up the risk factors of some things. Important to remember both things are true.

Nobils, the butler, is definitely the main thing keeping Rill from imploding prior to meeting Thresher. When Rill was adopted, he saw The Situation and quickly stepped up as his actual main caretaker. Unlike his employers, Nobils was firmly aware of the gaps in his knowledge regarding Inklings and how to care for them, and worked very hard to fill those gaps and give Rill the best physical and emotional care possible. Rill was at one point extremely close to him, as he was the only safe adult in his life. Nobils also helped raise Fathom, so his failure to be a good father to Rill has been a source of deep sadness and frustration. Unlike an actual parent/child relationship, he's very limited in his ability to confront Fathom, since he's his employer.

Nobils cares deeply for Rill, and sees him as something fairly close to a grandchild. His biggest regret was reminding Rill that he was a well compensated employee in a bid to reassure him that he wasn't being a burden to him. This would have been fine for someone like Fathom, but Rill took it very poorly. He’s retreated into himself since then. Rill puts up an awkward pretense of professionalism between them now that Nobils can clearly see hurts him very deeply... But he recognizes he has no idea how to repair his trust, and has resigned himself to supporting Rill as best as he can while respecting this distance.

Rill does still love Nobils deeply, but he's been trying very hard not to. The realization that Nobils is a servant, doing a job came way after he had grown heavily emotionally reliant on him. It was devastating and embarrassing. Rill wasn't quite old enough or idk. Stable enough? to process that "Nobils is here because it is his job" and "Nobils genuinely loves and cares about him" can be true at the same time. Nowadays this is kind of stewing in the back of his mind but he's too stubborn/scared/mysterious set of emotions to allow himself to admit that it's true. There's a complex and deep well of bitterness and longing. He's never going to forgive Nobils for... being an employee? But if he ever quits he'll never forgive him for that either. He's starved for affection, as much as he'll never admit it, and he's infinitely bitter that any he receives from Nobils is irreversibly tainted in his eyes by their financial ties. Rill is also Not Acknowledging how old this guy is. We are not going to think about the passage of time and mortality or anything. Don't worry about it. Nobils will live forever 👍 It’s his job. He’s very good at his job. He would never leave him.

Nobils is so relieved to see Rill finally hanging out with someone his age he seems to actually like (Thresher). Even if he appears to also be imploding about it. This is an improvement. Can we get this boy a support structure! Can anyone help his boy. Please