#i still think they are women i also think they are still white and still think they have some masculine invincibility to criticism

[eldritchmochi]

there are a LOT of non-white cultures who refer to people not literally related to them with familial terms; a lot of the time its a sign of respect andor camaraderie. the older Filipina women at the store i worked at years ago were "the aunties" collectively, because yes they were older women and thats respectful in their and my culture, but also they acted like aunties, making sure the younger staff were fed and lovingly scolding us for not dressing for the weather, etc.

also like, using familial terms for people is *very* common in old guard queerness. i grew up in a queer family and have a distinct memory of a third grade "draw your family" project including my "uncles" (moms best friend and his boyfriend) as well as my "aunt" (my mom and step dad's girlfriend). this would have been 2001. this was the language i grew up with because this is the language that was safe. if i, a third grader, had mentioned that my uncle was gay, or that my parents were in a triad with another woman, cps would have been called and me and my younger sibling would have been removed from the house for "safety". however, they were still family and still deserved, in my young mind, to be included in my project

i had a coworker at my last job who used similar subtle, guarded language to talk about her partners, plural. she used "husband" and "partner" as well as "he" and "they" fairly interchangeably, which in modern queerness, isnt necessarily A Big Deal, but having grown up with this language use, and using it myself for my relationships, it was not hard to pick up that she was talking about multiple people. she was in her mid 40s and has been active in queer and poly communities her entire adult life, since the early 2000s

my girlfriend's boyfriend has a daughter. with strangers, i refer to her as my neice, because she is a young child and the three of them live in a more conservative part of the state, and the last thing i want is cps called. if anyone asks, i am her step mom's family, because this is the language of safety. it has pretty much always been used in queer relationships, and it is still very much used in non monogamous circles, because it is the language of safety

further, its the language of closeness, of care and respect. the people i use familial words for fondly, with a singular exception, are not people related to me. theyre people who are my family because ive chosen them to be my family, and i use "family" and familial words because.... there arent other, commonly understood words for the kind of depth of relationship i have with these people. like yeah i can use qpp for my wife, who i married to legally designate them as family, but like, i dont want to have to also endlessly explain the term. i could use it for my girlfriend also, but again .. id have to explain. i could go thru the long link of the why i call my sibling my sibling (moms ex girlfriend's kid, who i kept in the divorce), but i could just. call them my sibling

queerness is built on queering "normal" relationships, and using familial words has been the standard since forever, for many many reasons. its still a standard used for many folks, for many many reasons, in and out of queer relationships. if you think its weird and icky, perhaps go touch grass

Every now and then some discourse pops up around a queer ship consisting of a pair of fictional characters who are not blood related, but refer to themselves as "brothers" or "sisters," or are in some way, according to the fandom, "sibling-coded."

Every time I see that discourse, all I can think about are the very real queer men I once knew, who, before their deaths, lived their lives posing as "stepbrothers." The only way to avoid suspicion for being two older unmarried men living together in a rural conservative area was to pretend they were from the same family, even though the truth was that they were lovers.

They were never out in life. Their relationship was a strict secret to nearly everyone. They never knew that I knew, and sometimes it fucks me up inside that they never got to come out to me. It fucks me up that they had to hide behind a fake "brotherly" relationship for their own safety. It fucks me up to look at a gravestone that reads "beloved brother" and know what it really means, and what it could have said if they'd lived under different circumstances.

In another world, they could have been husbands, but they never had the opportunity. The world will remember them as brothers, because, even in death, that is what was safest.

The freedom to declare queer love openly is something that not everyone has. And I think more people could stand to remember that.

[xiaq]

Favorite fantasy series: The Folk of the Air. I do NOT understand the hate this series gets on booktok/IG. The world-building is immaculate, the politics are juicy, the writing is engaging, and the romance is a slow burn that’s secondary to the plot and character development. I will read anything that Holly Black writes.

Favorite sci/fi series: The Murderbot Diaries. These are quick, quippy, and satisfying reads. I would die for Murderbot.

Favorite romance series: Not sure if they count as a series since they’re all standalones in the same universe, but Ali Hazelwood’s books ft. Women in STEM having unrealistic romances gets an A+ from me. If you need easy beach reads with happy endings, go for one of these (Also, the first book started as Star Wars fic; neat!).

Favorite graphic novel series: I’ve been following the Heartstopper webcomic for years, but I finally purchased/ re-read the print books this year. If you want sweet, nostalgic writing with diverse queer representation and whimsical art, Heartstopper is for you. If you want a historical/educational story, I highly recommend the Marchseries, which is an autobiographical view of the civil rights movement by John Lewis. 

Favorite historical romance: I know I’m not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover, but I put off reading A Lady for a Duke despite rave reviews because I simply did not vibe with the cover. This was a terrible choice. I read this book in one euphoric sitting and then re-read it two additional times this year. The banter! The pining! The drama! 

Favorite fantasy: A Taste of Gold and Iron and its follow-up short novella Tadek and the Princess. These books may have changed my brain chemistry. I loved this world and its characters and the novella made me cry like a baby.

Favorite science fiction: The Martian. I’d read this before but I re-read it on a work trip and fell in love all over again. Such an excellent science-y sci/fi book that nonetheless feels very approachable and fun.

Favorite non-fiction: They Were Her Property is the driest book I read this year but the content was fascinating (and horrifying). If you want to interrogate your perception of white women’s role in slavery (and, to a lesser degree, the role of Christianity therin) — take your time, and be ready to adjust your worldview—especially if you think Gone with the Wind was an accurate portrayal of the south. How to Survive a Plague, on the other hand, is less dry—you can tell a journalist wrote it—but it’s very detailed. It’s rare that I don’t finish a book in one or two sittings, but this took me over a month. If you’ve ever wondered about the social history of the AIDS epidemic and how a diagnosis went from a quick death sentence to an easily manageable condition (and how hard grassroots movements had to work to get some fucking help to make that happen), this is for you.

Favorite comic: Infidel. Damn. The art. The narrative. So short but so impactful. This is horror, so be mindful.

Favorite graphic novel: This is a tossup between If You’ll Have Me, a sugary-sweet sapphic romance, and The Prince and the Dressmaker which is an equally adorable story about expressing ones true self regardless of social expectations.

Favorite WTF: Butcher and Blackbird and Bride. I’m still not sure how I feel about B&B but it was certainly an interesting way to spend two hours. Bride is on the list purely because reading the word “knot” on a print page instead of an AO3 tab felt illegal.

Favorite feel-good/comedy: Monstrous Regiment. I’ve read this book so many times and, after the election, I read it again. I doubt any other book will surpass what has become an emotional support story for me.

Favorite YA: Cemetery Boys (Magic! Mystery! Queerness!) She Drives me Crazy(Athletics! Misunderstandings! Enemies to lovers! Queerness!), and A Little Bit Country (Country music! Thinly veiled Dolly Parton references! Queerness!) (Hm. Seems to be a theme here).

Favorite Sports Romance: Icebreaker (the Graziadei one, not the Hannah Grace one). You know how a lot of hockey books (my own included) can be light on the actual hockey? Not the case with Icebreaker. The character development was lovely, but the hockey was divine. Graziadei clearly knows and loves the sport.

Favorite historical fiction: What the Wind Knows (Mystery! Time Traveling! Love! Ireland!) and Kindred (Mystery! Time Traveling! Love! The Antebellum South!).

Favorite Space Odyssey: Gideon + Nona the Ninth. I had to make a special category because neither sci/fi nor fantasy feels appropriate for this yet incomplete series which is as rollicking good fun as it is completely confounding. I still have no idea what’s happening but I can’t wait to read the next one.

Favorite pleasant surprise: A Court of Mist and Fury. I waited so long to read the ACOTAR series because I got such conflicting reports from folks. I took the advice of a reader I trust and powered through the first book. ACOMAF was worth the contextualizing journey. I loved it. I’m still working through the rest of the series but this book was an unexpected joy.

Least favorite book: Lol, no. We don’t play that game here.

[nothorses]

Seeing a lot of the discoursy stuff you've been reblogging has made me think about how awful i was in high school.

I was a cis girl back then and i used to fake being on my period to get out of doing stuff and to make the boys i was friends with buy me chocolates and candies i liked. I could do that because. I was a cis (white) woman and i went to a tiny school where my autism made me more popular instead of less.

Eventually i learned NOT to manipulate people to get my way but like. Cis (white) women are given a social power by the very patriarchy that oppresses them that i think gets overlooked and forgotten. And i think from what i've seen and heard from my transmasc friends that sort of thing gets weaponized against them in a whole variety of ways.

Thanks for what you do.

Hey, I appreciate where you're coming from, and I honestly don't think you need to worry about it that much. Like, it's good to reflect on your actions & intentions, whether that's the kind of person you want to be, how that makes you feel now, and the different choices you'd like to make going forward... and also, idk, I think it's important to factor in the actual scope of your impact & what you can really do with that information now.

I wasn't there, but from what you've said, it sounds like what you actually did was pretty minimal & harmless overall. I did and said and believed some not-great things in high school, too. It's alright. That's part of being a high schooler! I still do and say and probably believe some things I have/will regret, and I'm still learning. That's part of being alive.

It sounds like you're more regretful of the beliefs your actions were stemming from anyway (which is definitely an assumption, and I could totally be wrong!) but like, you don't need my permission to forgive yourself for any of it. Everyone starts somewhere. I'm glad some of the things I've said have resonated & been able to help you on that journey, and I hope you're able to focus on the excitement of learning over the guilt of not having known before.

[tainbocuailnge]

thinking about the terrible victoria arc and how it could be less terrible. taking chapter 14 as premise & reverse engineering how to better get to that emotional payoff (namely the babel squad finally getting closure for theresa's death and babel's downfall & the fate of the sarkaz being severed) without throwing the base concepts of the other chapters out completely i think for starters the entirety of chapter 9 should just be an event instead. so much of the dublinn plotline was in an event already (what the firelight casts) and ever since ch9 most of "the dublinn plotline" has just been eblana ominously hovering in the distance, its just bloating things with no meaningful contributions. that does mean taking horn and bagpipe out too, much as I like them, but I think they can shine better when they're not competing with so many other white women for empty screentime anyway.

then you want the victoria arc proper to have you meet the self salvation corps asap after sneaking into the city and the core tension is going to be between siege and her gang as face of the nobility even if they individually might not agree with that label, the self salvation corps as representative of the common people of londinium who may hate the nobles but still have their own unsustainable british nationalism to work through, and rhodes island as altruistic outsiders whose reasons for getting involved don't actually have to do with victoria itself. clovisia was obviously supposed to be an amiya expy before she got forgotten almost immediately after her debut, but keeping the focus on these three groups would ideally also get some use out of that.

I said in a post i made after i read ch11 that it really isn't hard to see what siege's gang and the steam knight are supposed to represent, the symbol of victoria's honor and glory was betrayed by the greed of its nobles and its rightful heir is running a street gang, if you want to save victoria you have to decide what kind of "victoria" is worth saving to you. so in the victoria arc that doesn't suck these three parties are gonna have to actually talk about and contend with their inevitably clashing images and visions of victoria, and steam knight is gonna have to be a mandatory boss.

I also feel like manfred was fought too early for how much backstory weight he has to the babel gang and how long he sticks around after that. as if in ch10 they straight up didn't know yet that victoria arc was gonna end in being about babel, which might genuinely have been the case. so in the better victoria arc im making up in my head his bossfight is gonna get pushed back a few chapters.

like i'm thinking first victoria chapter you fight steam knight, it starts with meeting the self salvation corps and has you quickly throw everything on that gamble of getting siege the sword because both the glasgow gang and the corps buy enough into the idea of a past glorious victoria that can be brought back to try that only to have to face the decrepit husk of that glorious past in order to get it. siege can be passive in this one still, because her doing basically nothing is going to last only one chapter here instead of two and a half and it's going to serve a point.

so now you have the sword but both the gang and the corps are quite shaken about how they obtained it, and in the second chapter tensions between the three factions begin to rise when the obvious ideological disagreements about where to go next become impossible to postpone. you fight damazti here because the cluster is gonna be an awesome plot device for pushing mutual distrust and paranoia. honestly I don't even remember what the deal with damazti cluster was or what it was supposed to contribute so in the better victoria arc they do something about that too probably. and siege is forced to form actual opinions and say them out loud, and they're going to differ from what the rest of the glasgow gang is saying.

then by the third chapter you're able to sort out that internal conflict enough to finally muster the forces to fight manfred, this is probably where you get siege actually forming the exemplars and stuff, showing leadership and ideals and all that. i think allerdale can eat shit and so can the npc members of siege's gang so I'm cutting them out, we're putting all the focus on forcing these royal fake street punks from siege's posse and plain londinium factory workers from the self salvation corps to find common ideological ground. i like delphine though delphine can stay. there was a scene in one of these chapters with siege and amiya talking about their responsibility as figureheads that i liked (because it almost did something with siege) that i think would fit here, and it's an obvious chance to do something with clovisia too. like this is a good point to talk about more abstract ideas of leadership and turning people into figureheads and the way people will turn to a single person to save them, to start making it a bit more about theresa too. so here you get rhodes trying not to drag their feet because it's the part where it starts actually getting personal for them, materially because several members have a history with manfred but conceptually because there's an incoming shift of focus

defeating manfred marks rhodes island having to admit that they're very much in it for theresa and the sarkaz and their own personal history rather than just altruism towards "victoria", vague as that concept has become these past few chapters, so you get a somewhat more natural shift into the sanguinarch and the feranmut skeleton and finally theresa because we can sensibly compare the ideal and reality of the glorious war-torn homeland between victoria and kazdel, and the more abstract throughline of where the border between honoring the past and being dragged down by it lies. logistically the manfred fight would probably be in order to get out of the city and investigate the vampire shit so he'd serve as a kind of border between this being about victoria/londinium and this being about something beyond that in that way too.

and ch13 and 14 is when things finally started picking up so I don't think they actually need all that much tweaking beyond making it consistent with the things changed in the stuff before it. and probably cutting out some more characters. because the worst part really is that the focus was just all over the fucking place so just keeping the cast more manageable would do a lot. i think that teacher woman was interesting enough to be allowed to stay and that guy who killed himself in front of the sanguinarch was fun he can stay too. but i feel like the nightingale plotline might have to go.

[lycanloc]

You guys actually make me kind of fucking sick.

Obviously not directed at OP but at the voters. This is the first post I've seen from them.

TL;DR it's fucking disgusting how some of y'all will forgive a neo-nazi that has actively spread hate in-person but not someone who limits it to only words. I will block you if you say something stupid in regards to this.

Let me start out by saying this; I am heavily against JK Rowling's stance on Jewish people, people of color, and trans people. The Holocaust did indeed happen, do proper research on cultures you're unfamiliar with (especially if you putting them into a story), trans men are men, trans women are women, sex and gender are different.

With that out of the way... what the fuck is this?

Taking from one of the comment reblogs, but going off of percentages... more of you would forgive a Neo-Nazi, someone who actively believed Hitler, the man who actively tried killing all Jews, gays, and trans people, and also believed in "the master race" was right?

This might be controversial, so I understand if you disagree with it, but I genuinely believe Neo-Nazis are WORSE than JK Rowling. JK Rowling has, in all honesty, only talked about her views on Twitter, the worse being the Imane Khelief situation, which... only caused cyberbulling. Still really fucking bad, don't get me wrong, especially since she refuses to listen to what anyone says.

But Neo-Nazis literally try to enact what Hitler wanted. They actively go out and protest, trying to preach Nazism. Just looking up images, one result talks about them preaching anti-semitism, homophobia, and white supremacy in front of DISNEY WORLD in Orlando. In front of LITERAL CHILDREN.

I can not FATHOM how you could forgive someone willing to expose children and even literally babies to sheer hatred but not someone who limits their hatred to tweets. This is absolutely fucking revolting.

And reread the second poll. This isn't some "edgy phase" from middle school, where people like to make the "funny communism haha" type of jokes. No, it explicitly says "a nazi phase in their adult life." Someone who is grown and mature enough to know EXACTLY what they're doing and preaching.

Either some of you are lying straight out of your fucking ass, or some of you are just plain fucking stupid. If you either believe JK did nothing wrong, think JK denying the Holocaust, using racist stereotypes, or outright calling trans people a danger is good, or you would just... straight up forgive a neo-nazi no questions asked, then fuck you. I hope you get what you deserve.

And note; I block quite freely. So if you say something just outright fucking stupid, like "JK is actually based for that" or something, I am not giving you the time of day. Go fuck yourself.

IF and ONLY IF she apologized genuinely, donated a large sum of money to appropriate charities, and showed genuine and sincere efforts to remedy and repair her behavior: would you forgive JK Rowling?

[lynnaredfield3383]

Part 3 - Bakugo's Ex. Swearing. Fem reader.

Bakugo is sure you will take him back after he broke it off a year ago. Shoto is sure he can win your heart. The competition is exhausting. Who will you choose?

You took a deep breath opening your office door and groaned internally. On your desk were two vases of roses. The left vase held orange and green roses, while the right vase held red and white roses.

For the last three weeks, there hadn't been a day when the florist didn't come to your agency. You usually sent the flowers home with someone, but now you were done.

You grabbed your phone as Denki slipped into your office. He sat on the couch waiting for you to get off the phone.

"Hello?" Shoto answered.

"Hey, I'm sorry to bother you on patrol, but can you please stop sending flowers?"

"What would you prefer I send?"

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"I'm going to keep sending you gifts. If you don't want flowers, I can buy you jewelry, plushies, or shoes. Fuyumi says women love shoes."

You were speechless as you tried to process what was going on. Denki sensing trouble grabbed the phone from you.

"Hey dude...Oh, well, she loves selfies. Especially v-cut shots. Later."

"Denki!!! Not helpful!"

You grabbed your phone back as Denki laughed, falling back on your couch.

"Not helpful, but hilarious!"

You rolled your eyes at his immaturity, pulling up Shoto's contact when a text came through. You opened it and nearly died.

The photo was Shoto in his uniform, but the top was up and a perfect view of his abs and v-cut filled the screen.

"Holy shit. Denki, I'm going to murder you."

"What. Why? Wait, did he send one already?!"

"What do you think?"

Denki was at your side in seconds, wearing a serious expression.

"Damn. I'm gonna have to get his training regimen. Mine is not..."

You put your hand over his mouth to shut him up.

"C'mon. We gotta get to our patrol. Intel says the next drop is tonight, and I can't deal with this until later."

Bakugo's phone buzzed while he was filling out paperwork.

Sparky: Better up ur game.

Bakugo: ??

Sparky: Roki's off 💐. V-cut pics.

Bakugo: Idiot

Bakugo scrolled through his most recent gym pics. Ones he'd held back from sending since you two had broken up. Now, in competition with Icyhot, he would send at least two a day.

Standing, he looked out the window on the city below. Hands shoved deep in his pockets, he leaned his head against the glass. So many nights like this, you'd made time to check in on him. Massage his scalp or bring him a homemade meal. Had it really been a year.

"Damn, I miss you," Bakugo whispered to his empty office.

....

When your patrol finally ended, you pulled your phone out to see multiple messages from Bakugo and Shoto.

As of right now, you had enough pictures from the two of them to start a calendar.

Sighing, you left your agency and started the walk home. You knew you had to choose to end whatever this competition was.

You believed in second chances, but you also believed there was a reason for everything.

Shoto checked his phone again, wondering if you liked the pictures he sent. Truth was Shoto had liked you long before your drunk request to bring you to his place.

It was obvious you still cared for Bakugo. Even so, Shoto felt hopeful from the way you looked at him. It wasn't as intense as the way you used to look at Bakugo, but he was sure you liked him.

You were staring at your bedroom ceiling when you heard tap, tap, tap on your balcony door. The curtains were closed, so you stood up and peeked through them.

What was he doing here? And on your balcony at 2am.

"Shit..."

Looks like you were going to have to decide sooner rather than later.

@nerdsciencetheories

[desmon1995]

The dichotomy of Fox and Luther

I think one of the weirdest things about the Warriors that even other pieces of media don't really contrast much is the unspoken compare and contrast between Fox and Luther that pops up ever so often in my head.

In the original movie, Fox actually sees Luther murder Cyrus and she basically blacks it from her mind to the point that Luther would have shot her if Cleon wouldn't have stepped in.

Within the concept album, the two are the only ones that make references to video games.

Fox introduces herself as not only the youngest, but makes a reference to the 1970s console the Magnavox and the video game The Odyssey which was one of the first RPGs.

What I really do like about this is that it just reinforces how much of a teenager Fox is but also foreshadows the immense growth that she's going to go through since most 1970s RPGs were very much create your own story types.

(ironically enough the Warriors themselves basically act as one gigantic RPG party and in Japanese RPGs it's pretty common for at least one character to die or sacrifice themselves)

Luther on the other hand predominantly talks about the 1980s video game Pac-Man where he views himself as the title character and the marginalized women he's assaulting as the ghost that need to be terminated by him.

Pac-Man as a character is characterized by his gluttony and the goal of the game is to severely cripple the ghost so that they can become devoured by him.

Ironically enough, Pac-Man is actually pretty fragile and after to hits he's done very much like Luther after everything is said and done.

Another more interesting aspect is that both Fox and Luther are based around mythological / biblical figures.

Europeans largely regarded Foxes as nuisances and within their own stories typically presented them as swindlers and more often than not as a stand-in for minorities (which is why many foxes were brutally hunted for sport).

However, indigenous Americans such as the Blackfoot tribe saw the Fox as a Creator deity that while something of a trickster, often did so to teach people lessons about the world and was said to be the embodiment of the Sun itself.

Fox is more or less all of the above because she is a marginalized woman, pretty coy at first, but ultimately ends up growing to be a guiding light for the rest of her crew to follow as she soaks in most of the lessons that Cyrus and a lot of her older peers have bestowed upon her.

Luther is obviously based around lucifer, but what many people don't know is that Lucifer is actually a Greek god specifically he's the god of the Dawn and his original role was to bring the day into night and vice versa.

It's why he's associated with light, but Europeans deemed that any figures and beans that were not a part of their theology either had to be eradicated or repurposed to fit into their very disjointed understanding of how the world works.

As such, Lucifer was merged with the the the Greek god pan (which was goat like) and that's how we have the horned goatman figure we know today.

In other words, Lucifer was colonized and turned into all things evil but eventually Europeans started to see him as some weird misunderstood necessary evil and started to embrace him and whoopify him.

I don't think I need to tell you how this relates to white supremacy because after the last election we all know that society has grown to not only tolerate but also reaffirm bigotry and White fragility.

The idea is that Luther exists because society allows them to end when confronted with what he does often makes excuses for why this is just the way things are or they just turn around and blame other factions of society.

Luther was always a character that was meant to be a product of his society and in a weird roundabout way he still is that in the concept album but is more horrifyingly real.

It's also interesting how their demise is also treated completely differently.

Fox dies a horrific death by being ran over by the station train right after she fended off her crew from Captain Victor,

Her death is the thing that allows the Warriors to escape and is meditated on not only in the same train home but during the finale.

Luther's death is off screen so he doesn't even really get to go out with the blaze like the shooting star that he thinks that he is.

I know that there are a few people that really wanted to see him get it good, but I almost feel like not giving him what he wanted is a much more satisfying conclusion

[wormwoodandhoney]

quarter 4 book favorites- really not a ton this time! In the order that I read them:

The Phoenix Keeper by SA MacLean- A rule-following introverted zookeeper, in charge of the magical zoo's phoenix, must team up with the beautiful but annoying griffin keeper to save the zoo.

Lucy Undying by Kiersten White- I can't believe I didn't make an edit for this one- I still might. Here's the pitch: Lucy Westenra, Dracula's most famous victim, tells her story through journal entries, therapist notes, and more as in the 21st century, another young woman inherits a house with a history. And it's very gay.

Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang- Oof, okay. You know how books always say "magic has a cost"? This is one of the only books I've read that thoroughly and painfully examines this (and, of course, becomes a biting commentary on capitalism and colonialism). Brutal and honest.

Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy- a romantasy about an impulsive sorcerer who accidentally gets magically bound to his uptight rival, and the journey they go on to get separated.

We Solve Murders by Richard Osman- A very fun mystery novel about a woman and her father-in-law who, you guessed it, solve some murders.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman- I don't usually love books like this- it has some tropes that don't interest me, it's also very literary fiction. But there was something in this book that deeply touched me, and I think many people will take something different from this. It's about a young woman who has grown up captive along with thirty-nine other women who are held prisoners by guards for unknown reasons. The novel follows our protagonist as the women escape. But beware- there are no answers.

[dykedvonte]

I think depictions of Anya being cruel to Curly or drawing out his suffering are artful and chilling but completely miss the point of the story and her character.

I'm not saying she doesn't deserve to have that "I told you so" moment with him but not in something callous or cold. Even if that is how it happened, she'd immediately feel guilty cause at that point she's not tormenting her tormenter or even the person truly at fault. She's doing something cathartic, similar to how Jimmy likely hits Curly to release rage he can't against the rest of the crew. She'd see herself as no different when she'd come back from the moment and see Curly cowering at her. She wants someone to take responsibility but how does being cruel to the defenseless help? Why would she want the power Jimmy has over her over Curly?

The idea of her extending someone else's pain is just so against the struggles she already faces and how she can't even bring herself to cause someone pain even to help them. Her very desire is to release herself from her own suffering and I doubt she'd even fine some sort of guilty release in being cruel to another.

[averlym]

fairest of the fair

[butch-bakugo]

Its not a shock to me that most "transandrophobia doesn't exist" people are trans women, mostly white trans women. They have a very specific image of what a trans man looks like and it's only two categories: the hyper fem, tits out, make up, twink trans man who doesn't pass nor try to and the hyper masculine, bearded, t'd up, all the surgeries, big buff trans man who you could never clock. They genuinely think every "transandrophobia truther" is lieing about not getting privileges they don't fucking have.

They genuinely believe every trans man passes and therefore we get male privilege and they get backed up by trans men who do pass and think a cis man making rape jokes with them and asking about their lift set is male privilege. Lemme shatter the illusion because as much as you like to scream about some wide spread privilege that doesn't exist, most trans people, in general, do not pass. This is especially true for trans men due to the hyperfocus society puts on feminine features. I have never met a fully passing trans man and I've met over a hundred personally irl. never. I know they exist but the fact y'all think we, en masse, get male privilege is factually just fucking wrong.

Trans men are not more acceptable or palatable to transphobes. Trans men are not more likely to pass. Trans men in mass do not get male privilege by virtue of our lack of passing and our medical history. Most trans men are still affected by the gender pay gap and thus can not afford surgeries.

You do not acknowledge the existence of non-passing trans men, only uphold the voices of trans men who pass and have the money for surgeries (a small percentage) then wonder why trans men laugh in your face when you make claims about male privilege we do not experience.

We are more likely to be conversionally raped than you. We are more like to be forcibly detransioned than you. We are more likely to experience domestic violence than you. We are more likely to experience hate crimes than you.

Trans men's hyper visibility in online spaces dose not transfer to real life visibility. You are more likely to see white cis gay men and white trans women in any media or ever mentioned than even white cis lesbians or white trans men. Your rhetoric is the origin of the "theyfab" myth. Our issues are invisible to you cause you do not care about other trans people besides yourself and other transfems. Everyone and their trans mother knows about transmysogny and the issues you personally face yet you expect trans men to be silent about their issues and feel like they should be silent because they are men. Trans men are more likely to experience litterally all forms of violence over trans women in every single avenue of violence that exists; religious, sexual, domestic, familial, etc. We are more likely to be stopped and abused before we socially transtion than anyone else due to hyper vigilance of society over afabs. You can scream all you'd like about how we only bring up our sex/the gender we are often raised as when it's convenient but you always ignore those often traumatizing experiences when it's convenient for you.

Many Transmascs and trans men had a traumatizing upbringing because society views us as "bad women" and " bad women" get treated so much worse and by many more angles than "bad men" specifically because we were forcibly assigned as women. You take advantage of a lack of nuance in the community by trying to group us with cis men specifically because you group yourself with cis women. News flash, neither of us and our experiences should be grouped with ANY cis group because we do not have cisgendered experiences.

I seriously think you think you are the most oppressed group in the trans community and you are not, not by a long shot. You are not the most oppressed group in the transgender community and that's a statistical fact. The most oppressed group, by far, are two spirits and cultural genders by virtue of them being inherently indigenous and indigenous people being the most oppressed race of people in the community regardless of the location they are indigenous to.

You are literally taking advantage of the things that were drilled into transmascs at a young age to be seen and not heard and to be quiet and let others talk, that they are lesser than everyone. Everyday there's a new story in the community of a cis man or a trans woman getting a trans man/masc pregnant to hurt them or force them off t or to detransion, this is not a fucking accident. You are not men, no one ever said you were, but you sure love to silence them like they do.

I'm not quiet, you do not intimately know our issues the same way we do not intimately know yours, You don't get to tell us what we do and don't experience and the fact you'd rather cry wolf and suspiciously call us "bitches" than hear us out, tells me everything i need to know. That alt right to trans woman pipeline you said you escaped? Yeah, you didn't. Ur just an alt right trans woman, Try Again.

[canichangemyblogname]

“What’s especially great about [m/m relationships] for the [mainstream] audience— especially [the] female audience— is that, because the relationship [] only features men, no woman has to confront social taboos around women’s bodies and sexualities. No woman has to have her heart broken. No woman has to risk anything. This genre of story allows them to avoid the reminder that current gender and sexual social values are designed for the benefit of men at the expense of women’s comfort, pleasure, and safety. For the straight [female] audience, it’s just two hot guys. It’s like making two Ken dolls kiss on screen. They can enjoy it without thinking about their body or dissatisfaction. This genre allows [] women to engage [] with the socially taboo [or] ‘obscene’ without rethinking how they construct their bodies and actions to conform to current gender and sexual social values. Some [even] go[] so far as to place themselves into the fantasy, like an M/F/M reader-insert or self-insert themselves as one half of the m/m relationship. In both cases, they are inserting a woman into a relationship that would otherwise be deliberately absent a woman."

…

“[T]ropes— from ‘there’s only one bed’ to ‘we’re forced together, but fall in love anyway’— are responses to the sex-negativity and purity culture norms forced upon gender and sexual minorities. They provide a workaround for these norms but never a direct challenge. … We still have stringent rules around who can touch whom and under what circumstances. Our romantic fantasy tropes reflect this. So, a trope like ‘there’s only one bed’ provides the characters with a justification for their intimacy without directly challenging why it is taboo. … [T]ropes [essentially] ‘tame’ [] characters into [an additional] set of social boxes. Fan fiction tropes often add another set of social conventions to existing social conventions [] to filter [relationships] through a [heteronormative] lens.”

—Excerpts from The Fanfiction-ation of MLM Romances: The Use of Tropes in RW&RB

Let us not pretend like the explicit lack of women in fan works and the explicit lack of fem-slash isn’t related to the early foundations of the fan work community, and *why* slash near-exclusively features (white) men in non-canon relationships. Queerness is still taboo + it’s easier to not face the fact women’s sexualities are marginalized, especially when women— their bodies, their sexualities, and their art— come under far greater scrutiny and surveillance in our panopticon, and there is still a lot of media that cannot do something as simple as pass the Bechdel Test.

And I do think this societal discomfort with certain bodies and certain groups of people’s sexualities explains why fanon/slash is also predominantly white.

Imagine arguing that your own personal erotic fantasy of a marginalized group, through a medium that exists only— and could only exist— explicitly because of that marginalized group’s invisibility, is “better than” good-faith representation of and visibility of said marginalized group. Fucking Wild. And then imagine doing everything in your power to malign that representation because you can’t jerk off to it the same as your fantasies.

[kouhaiofcolor]

I really miss the natural hair community & watching natural hair content generally. That was so good for Black Women; we were thriving at it, too. And as rapidly as it rose to popularity, it’s crazy how dead the whole concept is now. I think it had more to do w all the division created over routines around maintenance than anything else. Everybody was entirely too pushy w trying to make what worked for them personally a staple for taking care of textured hair in general — & that shit walked so that colorism, featurism, texturism & misogynoir could run. Now the same ppl who was riding the wave a few years ago & swearing by all these products, brands, sponsors, wash day & styling methods have put natural hair away as a concept entirely.

Also, why the hell did we waste all that energy prefacing everything w, “Stop doing this and do these things for your hair to grow to tailbone length overnight🤡” — just to go right back to weave and perms? All that researching for what? All the dedication to disproving antiblack/misogynoir notions about Black hair for what? All the redefining of protective styles for what? All the trying to unlearn the belief structures around the colonization of Black hair for what? What did we teach ourselves fr? How did we make things any easier for Black Women and little Black girls? It’s tragic af. The Natural Hair Community/Movement is dead, it seems like. I don’t think we fought hard enough to prevent what happened to it honestly :\

[awkward-but-nice]

obnoxious disney adults are hating on rachel zegler, because she said that they... *checks notes* added other aspects to snow white that doesn't revolve around falling in love and getting saved by the prince...

[eliotquillon]

just finished the rwrb movie and although i really enjoyed it (and was kicking my feet giggling the whole time) i do have a couple of major criticisms, some of which i think aren’t really the movie’s fault because they had to fit a whole book into 2 hours, but some of which left me kind of disappointed:

-i feel slightly icky that bea and nora got their screentime SIGNIFICANTLY reduced even after june got cut entirely (which i was upset about, but did understand). i loved zahra and adored her on screen but i do think it’s very odd that she is pretty much the only major female character in this movie since bea was nonexistent and nora got permanently spirited away to pez’s bed or something sometime during the second act

-it felt like a lot of the internal conflict in alex and henry’s relationship was very unbalanced and henry heavy - alex’s neurodivergence was erased, his bi epiphany was barely even an epiphany, and him not being explicitly kicked off the campaign after ellen finds out about him and henry essentially killed his whole subplot about realising he doesn’t need to have everything achieved at thirty and deciding he wants to apply to law school instead. which wouldn’t have been terrible but on the flipside it felt weird that we didn’t see very much of henry’s family considering how much they affect and shape his fear of being outed and his feeling of being in a glass cage - e.g bea’s treatment by the media during her active addiction (which was entirely erased), the extent of the tension between him and philip. felt like henry’s pov scenes were a super wasted opportunity for that and we were mostly just being Told about all of these things

-i am not actually that mad about oscar and ellen still being together lol but i felt like in the scene with oscar smoking the cigar on the balcony they were kinda building up to there being significant strain in his and ellen’s relationship that just wasn’t explored. especially since it’s clear oscar would never be able to be president because he’s not a natural born citizen + the sacrifice of his career for ellen’s is so much bigger now that he’s first gentleman in this version

-pacing in general was a bit off but the worst offender was the fact that there was a complete time skip between the alex henry confrontation/reconciliation and the outing. so much of the tension and desperation from that outing scene comes from the fact that the risk of it happening was slowly increasing throughout the book and it felt almost inevitable (the elevator cctv being leaked, henry having to fake date june) and honestly making it so abrupt weirdly reduced a lot of its impact for me

-similarly i actually completely understand why the richards plot / rafael luna plot was cut (i suspect republican election interference hits a bit too close to home after 2020) but my god was miguel a lame fucking villain and him being queer and hispanic erased a lot of the original commentary about racism and homophobia that the richards plot lent itself to. like in general this movie was a lot lighter than the book which is fine! but for a movie where the main subplot is a presidential election So Much of the political themes were heavily neutered or cut to the point that it seemed like the pressure on henry and alex’s relationship was disproportionately coming from henry’s side when in the book it was more balanced

again on the whole i really really loved this movie and i knew going in that certain changed were going to be made. and i hope more movies get made like it! these r just my Thots and i may change my mind when i rewatch it with my friend tomorrow

[ignorantsanonymous]