#i'm a clear supremacist

[juliamccartney]

ok i know i have many non-austrian followers and i want to talk about this briefly — there was an antisemitic attack on the Jewish area of the Central Cemetery in Vienna (setting fire and swastika graffiti) and while these acts would be gruesome *anywhere* i think that regarding the history of jewish communities in austria it's especially horrendous that it happened here. and i feel like not enough people are aware of how bad things are in general

[marcusrobertobaq]

That's...

U got a point.

Once again thinking about the fact that Elijah's pool is red instead of the usual blue, and although it might absolutely be because he's a billionaire living in a designer house, I love to think it has something to do with blood. Something about not wanting the androids he lives with feeling like they're swimming in thirium. Because whenever I see it, it always reminds me of a pool full of human blood for a split second ; so why wouldn't it be the same for them ?

[sirfrogsworth]

I do not fucking care what kind of home life Elon Musk went through. Are you aware of the millions of lives that he is actively ruining? He could be going to therapy about it but instead he is choosing to actively continue the things that he’s doing and the life he is currently living. I have a brother who went through zero trauma with absolutely adoring doting parents and he still turned out to be a child molesting incel white supremacist because that’s what he chose over and over again to dedicate his life to. Are you going to tell me to be all sad for him now that he fucked up his own life diddling kids? You want to feel bad for him? Go fuck yourself. Stop downplaying the harm that people are choosing to participate in.

I am disabled and housebound.

I will die without Social Security and Medicare.

I am aware of the stakes.

My brother had the same parents as me. Best parents anyone could hope for. Loving and supportive. They made great sacrifices to help us.

His wife was abused as a child. It caused her to be paranoid, untrusting, and she was extremely manipulative as a defense mechanism. She slowly brainwashed and corrupted my brother. She abused him. Then he abused and neglected myself and our loving parents.

It seems you were traumatized as well. And now your trauma is fueling your anger toward me. You used it to say hurtful things and you used your trauma to justify hurting me.

It's trauma all the way down.

I understand some of the anger you have toward your brother. Watching someone who won the parental lottery turn into an abuser was heartbreaking. I can't imagine how hard that must be for you. But shitty parents are not the only path to being an awful person. Indoctrination and radicalization are very prevalent forces. Especially with the Jordan Petersons and Andrew Tates of the world. Your brother most likely did not just turn into what he is. There could be trauma you are unaware of. Or he could have just been sucked in by nefarious influences that offered him something he desperately wanted and then they used that to instill bigotry.

"Clean your room and hate women."

"Do sit ups and eat healthy then man up and assert your dominance."

I don't think I can fix my brother. He's too far gone. And it sounds like yours should be in prison if he isn't already. But it was important to me that I understood how my brother got to the place where he could abuse me and my parents. It helped me process my own trauma. I am not saying you need to do the same. I'm just telling you it helped me.

I am still very angry and I still struggle with my trauma. I will probably never forgive him. I hold him fully responsible for the choices he made despite his abusive situation. I am not excusing any behavior just because I feel empathy.

Understanding how bad people become bad people helps me. I also think it helps our society identify what we need to fix in order to help prevent more Elons from manifesting. It's clear that trauma is a huge factor. Poverty, poor education, indoctrination seem like huge variables too. Access to mental healthcare seems vital.

The nature vs. nurture debate has been going on for a long time. Science seems to think they are both factors. Good parents raise bad kids. Bad parents raise good kids. That's true. But there are more factors beyond that and genetic predisposition is rare.

Elon was abused. But he also grew up in apartheid South Africa. His entire environment was based on dehumanizing Black folks. Then he went straight from there to hanging with shitty white tech bros. His bad behavior was probably praised and encouraged and his peers saw it as a good thing.

Could he have overcome his trauma and influences? I don't know. The people who have managed it usually struggle with it their entire lives. They need therapy. They need a good support system. They need to be vigilant in their decision-making. Making good choices is not always easy. And expecting everyone to have that willpower is unrealistic.

If you think I am downplaying harm, I'm going to strongly disagree. What I am hoping to do is figure out a way to prevent future harm. I want traumatized people to have the resources to safely process what happened to them so it is easier for them to make good choices. And I'd really like to prevent trauma from happening in the first place.

But I still very much want the rich and powerful who make awful choices to face consequences.

The empathy I have felt toward Elon and Trump equates to a few flashes here and there. It is minuscule compared to what I feel for my trans friends, migrants, and the people facing war and genocide.

This is a fucked up situation. Most of us have never faced this intensity of fascism so close to home. It's confusing and angering and it is hard to process.

I get why you are angry with me.

And I get why that other person felt dehumanizing was necessary.

This is all novel and expecting people to automatically know the best way to deal with it is also unrealistic. People were pretty hard on that person. But I empathize with them as well. This is fucking scary. And fighting the instinct to just view people as evil entities is hard. I struggle with it too. I have to remind myself that Elon is a very human dipshit. And perhaps those flashes of empathy help me do that.

Just know I want all of us to get through this.

[niniane17]

I realize that anti Got Season 8 posting in late 2024 is a bit boomerish, but screw that it's my blog and there's no law stating that I can't post about That Series again.

I've stumbled across an old anti-Daenerys post written by a Sansa fan some months after the show ended and...oh my God. I had nearly forgotten just how batshit crazy those takes are.

Dany is a colonialist. Dany is a white supremacist. If you like her you are both. Martin is just pretending to write her as a hero, in the end he will reveal she was evil all along and freeing slaves was a secret code for enslaving people. Valyria is evil and the Targaryens are evil. Westeros is simultaneously the ancient Americas and Medieval Europe. Essos is Europe but also the Oppressed Middle East.

Sansa is the true anti colonialist hero. Sansa is the true opprossed woman. If you don't support her you are an oppressor and possibly a rapist yourself. The North is good and the Starks are good. When Arya sails West of Westeros sporting the North's banner, she is not partaking in colonialism, in fact, she will be the anti Christopher Columbus. How do we know that? Because she's a Stark, the Starks are good...

It's maddening. No wonder Daenerys fans are driven into a frenzy. It's not irrationality, it's just natural frustration at constantly being held to double standards and fighting some crazy takes.

Now, treating a fantasy tv show fandom as anti-colonial activism is bad enough, but it's clear to me that at least some of these takes are motivated by the fact they see Sansa as the underdog, mistreated by both the characters and sometimes even the narrative.

And here's where things get weird.

I've said many times that I didn't become a full Dany fan until she was heavily mistreated by the narrative, and I'm definitely not alone in this. Back in the day, many people who previously didn't care one bit for Daenerys suddenly ended up defending her or even stanning her.

Like, of course if somebody wants to root for the underdog, the first thing to do is rooting for the actual underdog. Season 8's underdog was Daenerys. Everyone and everything was deadly set against her from the moment she arrived in Winterfell. They constantly disrespected her, undercut her efforts, killed off or villainized her allies, snobbed her non-traditional upbringing, conspired behind her back. And all the while they always asked asked asked for more, nothing she was giving was enough.

In contrast, the Starks' and the North's actions were constantly justified or presented as good, even betrayal (which is a very huge deal in Westeros) or, in one instance, outright racism by the Northern people -this time fully intended by the production, rather than an unintentional outcome of some poor behind-the-scene choices.

At the end, Season 8's Starks were absolute gods who could do no wrong and were always in the right no matter what they did -except their bastard son, who was contaminated by the evil people's blood and has to symbolically kill that part of himself forever.

Well, guess what, people didn't like that. But the newfound Dany fans were perfectly consistent: they wanted the underdog to win, to overcome her hurdles, internal or external, and be happy at the end. If the underdog is Dany, well, then it's time for Dany to win.

It's Sansa stans that see everything in terms of How This Affects My Fave and are willing to bend over the narrative to get what they want. They are perfectly happy with a biased narrative and double standards, they just want it to be biased towards Sansa, and everything is fair game to them, including real life politics and vocabulary, with some hilarious results. For example: Sansa as the voice of the Oppressed Minorities is...a take, to say the least. Her world doesn't even have a prejudice against red hair, as it would have in real life.

And guess what else, this kind of Protagonist-Centered Morality is very similar to the one used by real life colonizers, especially in their "explorations". Not that it matters because this isn't a post-colonial story and it never will be. It's a story about a messed up Fantasy Medieval/Early Renassaince World with Dragons, heavily influenced by various periods of European history. The only vaguely post-colonial element are maybe the zombies-as-slaves metaphor, and I think it's more due to the fact that Martin was probably inspired by old horror Movies pre-dating the Romero ones. And who is liberating slaves in his story, again?

Anyway. 2019-2020 was a really weird time to be a Dany fan, and in hindsight it was crazy how much shit there was around a fantasy series with dragons. Surely five years later people are a little more normal, right? Right?

[v-risalab]

I watched "The Man with 1000 Kids" documentary on netflix, and it's staunch refusal to engage with the white supremacist core of the issue is frankly astounding.

This Dutch guy went around the world donating sperm under different names, and the documentary followed mostly families from the netherlands that recieved sperm from him.

These families picked this man out of everyone else because of his blonde hair and blue eyes, paying thousands of dollars to have kids with those traits. Because yes, apparently you can shop for the whitest man when you need sperm.

This guy's nickname was Viking. He uploaded youtube videos about how white privilege is not real and how traditional living is superior in every way. His partners in crime did this in Kenya with him in order to, and i'm quoting, "bleach africa". This had 0 attention drawn to it.

White supremacy permeated every minute of this documentary, how clear was that this guy was obsessed with racial purity and wanted to spread his aryan genes though the world. And how clear it also was that the families had the exact same interests in keeping the purity of their genes.

The documentary mumbled something about the guy wanting to have a legacy through his youtube channel, and ended claiming it all ended well because he got forbidden from donating more sperm and all the affected families are now a big happy family. This was said while showing images of the children playing together in some playground in the netherlands, of course all white.

At first I could not believe not a single minute was given to discuss what was actually going on. But then I thought that if these families had to confront his real motivations, they would also have to confront how fucked shopping for the whitest kid is. And that would never happen of course, after all this was just one bad guy and not a symptom of a fucked up system and set of values.

If anything, it is a great look into the lengths the families, the mass donor, and the documentary creators will go to avoid any sort of introspection or challenge to their violently racist beliefs. But it all ended well, right?

[genderkoolaid]

More directly, predstregon was banned for making posts calling for the CEO to "die a violent death" (exaggerated). The CEO made it clear it will ban anyone making death threats against the tumblr staff.

^ I mean. I'm not even a big fan of wishing death upon people, but this is not a death threat. It's not encouraging violence against someone. You could argue otherwise but that's both a weak argument on it's own imo and especially so when you consider the amount of self-identified nazis and white supremacists that are allowed to run free on this site.

[average-mako-enjoyer]

Okay, I honestly have to talk about this because this post doesn't give me peace.

I can't reblog it because OP blocked me (for good reason, I'm sure), but I saw it and now I have to talk about it because I found it fascinating.

So this is a reference to the ME3(!) scene that happens after Tuchanka(!!), where Joker and Garrus participate in the joke battle, telling mildly racist jokes about Humans and Turians.

One of the jokes is about Joker himself:

"Why does the Alliance hire pilots with Brittle-Bone Disease?" and the punchline is: "So their marines can beat someone in hand-to-hand drills."

Another is about how to tell when a turian is out of ammo. And the answer is: "He switches to the stick up his ass as a backup weapon."

Personally, I don't think this is a shining example of a failure to criticize racism. In fact, I think it's quite the opposite. Their bonding activity here isn't about being racist, it's about making fun of militant racism among friends. They're literally joking about racist stereotypes here.

Joker: What do you call it when a turian gets killed by a horrible spiky monster? Garrus: Friendly fire. Come on, that one goes back to Shanxi. Joker: Eh, you gotta respect the classics.

I think it's pretty obvious what this dialog is really about, but okay, I could be wrong.

It's like the "you missed the point by idolizing them" meme, but in reverse, I think.

Every single culture in Mass Effect is depicted as xenophobic. The Asari, despite being galactic mediators, have a huge superiority complex. The Turians are a militant empire that believes in striking first and talking later. The Hanar believe that they are the enlightened ones, and they have a subservient intelligent species that they use for their purposes. Salarians believe they can perform inhumane experiments on members of intelligent species because... well, because they can and no one can really stop them. Every Volus we meet thinks they are superior to everyone else. Every Batarian... shall I even talk about the Batarians and how pathetic the excuse is to exclude them from the Council alliance when planets like Illium exist and thrive? How about Krogans?

Everyone here is racist. Everyone. That's the point. You can and should examine how you feel about that.

There isn't a nation on this good old planet Earth that is any different. There's something very animalistic about it, right? We are sort of born with xenophobic attitudes (don't trust people outside your group), and we have to actively unlearn this reaction to people and things we consider dangerous. That's why the portrayal of xenophobia in fiction is so important. It allows us to safely examine these prejudices and unlearn these behaviors. It's not Mass Effect's fault that you see this very clear message as enabling.

Again, it's not the game's fault, it's the fandom's fault. They vilify the Virmire survivor for standing up to this Shepard's decision. But I have to agree that instead of giving us 10 mildly interesting companions in ME2, the game probably should have explored the fuckery of Shepard joining Cerberus and the whole resurrection business much, much further. Still, the VS is right, and the fandom chooses to ignore it.

Let's talk about Ashley first.

Is she really racist? Because she literally goes ballistic when accused of supporting the human supremacist group. She is very, very polite to every alien companion in ME1. She also immediately becomes protective of Tali because of the way she's been treated, and it's pretty easy to tell from her dialogue that she can relate to Tali's experience (Williams' curse, huh?).

Humanity is the dog in the story she tells Shepard, and she's also right in her assessment of the Council and their willingness to help Shepard's cause. Her distrust of aliens is also a very reasonable thing. She's the officer on the super-secret military starship, she knows the protocol, and she should question Shepard's decision to allow aliens near the ship's critical systems. It's literally her job, and if Shepard doesn't want to sabotage their mission, they should be grateful that Ash is keeping them in check. That's what officers do. She's also right about this, because Tali does end up stealing the super-secret information from the Normandy.

So… is Ashley really racist? My answer is no. She doesn't need this thing to be part of her character arc, and it's not part of it at all. Ashley's story is about her family's legacy, about the prejudice and hardship she faced at every step of her career. She treated Tali like a little sister in 1, and she treats her the same way in 3.

Now Garrus.

Yes. He's racist. He was raised that way. Turians really believe in their superiority, and he acts and thinks accordingly. And you know what? You're supposed to be uncomfortable with that. You're supposed to see how fucked up his behavior and his views are. You're not supposed to root for him and his actions on Citadel and with Saleon and later on Omega.

You're supposed to see him for what he is: a broken, lost, traumatized person who can only see the world in black and white. And the most interesting and beautiful thing is that he knows that. He knows his flaws, and he tells them to Shepard, and depending on who your Shepard is as a person, they can reflect on that and see that about Garrus, and they can help him, or they can ignore it, they can actively enable it, they can be so stupid and so caught up in their own shit that they don't even understand it. Shepard's romance with him is supposed to be a little toxic, a little unsettling because of the power dynamics and because it starts when they are both extremely vulnerable. It's not supposed to be cutesy. They're both fucked up.

And there's a real interest in exploring how fucked up that is, how fucked up he is. Him joking with Joker and Wrex is an example. Him finally apologizing to Tali for his previous behavior is another. Him supporting Shepard when they decide to sabotage the cure is also an amazing example.

Again, you're supposed to be uncomfortable with that. Garrus talks to Shepard about the calculus of war. If siding with the Salarians gives the Palaven a fighting chance, he can live with that, and you know what? This is GOOD writing. It's very realistic, and it's something that feels like Garrus.

We're talking about a galactic war that no Council species has won in any of the previous cycles. Everyone is grasping at straws. The Krogan are literally going, "Reverse the genophage or we won't help you." It's everybody's Hail Mary.

In times of crisis, everyone becomes more xenophobic. That's literally what's happening in the world right now. The economic crisis makes people more conservative and more focused on short-term goals. Can we really blame Garrus for remaining xenophobic in such an environment? Is this a time for him to reflect on his biases?

Or would it have been better if Shepard had said, "Stop being racist, Garrus," and he had just stopped? Is that how character development works? We can literally see him letting go of some of his prejudices, but it's a long, long process, and the galactic war is not the best time for it, if I'm being honest.

This is where I agree with this post 100%, because this is a problem for this fandom. People are infantilizing Garrus and being incredibly misogynistic towards Ashley. But these games are begging you to question Garrus' behavior, and I don't think it's the fault of the games or the writers that the fandom just ignores all the not-so-subtle messages and makes posts about how Garrus hasn't really done anything wrong, and posts about how Ashley is racist, and posts about how the narrative isn't interested in exploring how troubling Garrus' racism is, and how this series fails to critique racism at all.

Phew. I'm done.

Honestly, if I were the OP and hadn't blocked me yet, I would have done so by now. I really don't want to be an ass to them, so I won't tag them or anything, but I found this post so interesting that I couldn't help myself. Hope you found it interesting as well. Pls don't send anything nasty to the OP or alert them of this post, I don't want to ruin their day or anything. I'm just doing my reading comprehension duty here.

[deaddee-anime-brownfanlady]

I hope these rat-fuckers' so-called Pro / Free Palestine "ActiviSTS" are really happy with themselves for allowing a White supremacist convicted criminal rapist wannabe dictator to take Office again.

I swear these radicalized brainwashed extremists idiots have truly showcased that they have never gave a single fuck about Palestinians or Gazans lives one bit when they refuse to vote against Fascism and refuse to vote against a racist man that has made it clear on multiple occasions that he don't GIVE A FUCK about Black and Brown people.

Especially those within the Middle East,

I swear a good portion of these performative fake "ACtiVists" for Palestine and Gaza probably couldn't even point on a damn map of where Gaza or Palestine or Rafah even was before the October 7th attack and now they wanna act like they know everything there's is on the regions when I'm sure before they didn't cared at all.

These so-called supposed " ActiviSTS " have treated this horrible and terrible war / conflict as nothing more than a trendy fandom hobby to make themselves feel morally superior or as a way to showcase and let out their internalized deep seeded antisemitic hateful bullshit run wild as well as shit on taken hostages and tearing down posters of innocent kids and toddler's that were also taken hostages.

The whole entire movement has been lost it way a long while ago and has become nothing more than a morally bankrupt laughing stock of a movement that hasn't accomplished anything meaningful, except for making it possible for Trump to ethnically cleanse the entire region and Fuck shit up even more for the people they claimed to support and care about.

Not only have they shown how full of absolute dogshit they really are in terms of their so-called "activism", but also they've have shown how they also don't give a Fuck about the Black and Brown people also immigrants and LGBTQ people here in America being Fucked over due to Trump asinine heinous evil administration actions that is currently fucking up everything by the minute. All because they refuse to vote for an intelligent, competent Black woman and would rather have a literally rapist felon in charge of the country.

So honestly, FUCK these phony fake-ass cosplay activists brain-dead radicalized people.

[saintsenara]

what do you think about lucius and narcissa's marriage? are they a good match? do they fuck? do they love each other or are they only united by blood purity and their love for draco? they fascinate me

thank you very much for the ask, anon!

lucius and narcissa are absolutely a good match - and they clearly absolutely fuck. they are also clearly united predominately by their shared social values - their commitment to blood-supremacy [and i'm always amused by the tendency for fanon portrayals of narcissa to portray her as a less ardent blood-supremacist than lucius, when she's the one calling hermione "scum" in the middle of a shop...] and their commitment to the maintenance of the class system which governs the wizarding world [and the social conventions which underpin it] chief among them.

indeed, i think this interest in conformity to the expectations of the class system is the main thing lucius and narcissa have in common, and it's one of the most compelling routes into have a good look at the two of them as a couple.

narcissa is the most conventional of her sisters, and this is evidently connected to how flagrantly bellatrix and andromeda defy the norms they were raised to adhere to - andromeda by choosing to marry a muggleborn man on her own terms, bellatrix by spending the majority of her time in the exclusively male space of voldemort's inner circle.

lucius is also someone who is incredibly conventional. it's clear throughout canon that his insistence that he was under the imperius curse during the first war - rather than, like his brother- and sister-in-law, refusing to denounce voldemort - was because he didn't want to lose the comfortable, socially-prominent life he had by virtue of his name, wealth, and blood status, and voldemort goes to great lengths throughout half-blood prince and deathly hallows to punish him for this by specifically attacking the maintenance of social norms which lucius values so highly [by squatting in the malfoys' home, refusing to behave like a guest, and humiliating his host before his peers; by constantly emasculating lucius; by treating his son and heir as expendable; and so on].

and lucius and narcissa's turn against voldemort - as much as it's connected to their love for draco [and as much as they do seem to be sincerely good parents] - is also connected to their growing realisation that, if voldemort wins, they will be made pariahs, and will never again enjoy the life at the top of the pile they've had for so long.

and i find that such a compelling thread binding them together. they're immoral and venal and cruel... but, damn, they're a team.

[kaija-rayne-author]

The elves 'needed a win' in Dragon Age Veilguard, huh?

Obligatory 'I'm not an asshole' disclaimer. Feel free to jump to the cut if you've read it.

Something came to my attention. I need to make it crystal clear that I utterly love the diversity in DAV. It's fantastic. I'm also a heavily left leaning, non-binary, queer as fuck reviewer, editor, and author.

I was on media blackout while I played DAV. Please be safe and take care of yourselves. Arguing with incels and white supremacists is completely pointless. They sea lion worse than an actual sea lion. Your mental health is important.

Though, every single time the anti-queer brigade comes out for a new DA game, I sit there thinking 'have you bozos ever played any DA game, like, ever?' My guess is nope.

Note. None of my writing on DA, but especially DAV, is edited. This is just my off the cuff writing. I don't have the time, energy, or heart to edit them properly.

Grab a drink of preference, walk the dog, then find a comfy spot, this is gonna be a long one.

I'm referring to a quote of John Epler's. Creative Director for DAV at BioWare in this Polygon article.

"elven historian Bellara Lutare and Grey Warden Davrin, come from Dalish clans themselves and even though they’re a little shaken about confronting their gods, they’re not conflicted about doing so. In fact, among Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain’s lackeys and puppets, there’s not a single elf to be found. Epler said that it’s vindication for the Dalish — which is nice to see considering how they’ve been portrayed in past games."

Okay. Let’s think about this first part. Epler says it's vindication for the elves and how they've been treated in previous games. You know? Ever since I read that article, confusion has just run around in my head. How? How can absolutely anything that happened in DAV be considered as ‘vindication of the elves’?

Firstly, I'm not sure if vindication is the best word for the concept he's going for. Vindication means to Justify, Confirm, Substantiate, or Avenge. I can't honestly see how any of the events in DAV do even one of those things for the elves.

You know what it really is? It's not anything good, regardless of which transitive verb you use. It's just bad writing. Like absolutely awful, pretty deeply racist, terrible writing.

You’re trying to actually have me believe that within the entire race of elves, city elves, Dalish, veil-jumpers, enslaved elves (who we conveniently don’t see at all in DAV, even though we spend time in Tevinter… the capital of enslaved elves…) there aren’t some who would follow Elgar’nan and/or Ghilan’nain? At least for a little while? The enslaved elves wouldn’t follow their old gods if they promised to free them? Really?

More realistically, there would be a schism within the elves. Some would follow the returned gods, some would deny them, and some would be like fuck this, I have halla to feed or floors to scrub.

Having the gods return would be a world shaking event on every front. Not just in the Disney villain mustache twirling way, like in DAV. But also culturally, religiously, anthropologically.

Every single elf in the entire elven race is ‘good’? There aren’t any who are power hungry? (Raises an eyebrow at Zathrian DAO.) No power hungry, not exactly ‘good’ elves, huh? Riiiiiight.

Would some, maybe even most, change their minds once they realized what Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain really were? Of course, there would be some. But there would be just as many who might stick with their gods.  For so many reasons. Revenge, greed, desire for power, unwavering fanatical faith... I could keep listing reasons for a while. That's just, realistically, how intellectual beings behave. There wouldn’t be any elves on that entire continent that wouldn’t throw their fists up in victory, and shout, ‘Yes! Finally! Let’s squash Tevinter first, then Orlais.’?

Really? Isn’t that kinda reducing the existence of elves to the same old fashioned child ‘not to be seen or heard’ thing? It’s infantalizing an entire race.

That’s both so naïve it’s sad and so disrespectful of the elves as intellectual beings with free will.

And how would most elves even know that the two returned gods were, y’know, returned? Much less that they’re actually mustache twirling bad guys a la Disney? (I could personally think of a few ways, but they weren’t shown or even mentioned that I saw in game.)

THEDAS is depicted as a fantasy medieval-esque world. Communication is depicted by courier and letters. The travel time alone would mean that most elves wouldn’t have a clue about even the return of the gods, much less their character. There’s nothing shown in the games that I can recall that covers this.

It’s unrealistic that even Bellara and Davrin know they’re evil until a few story quests in, leading to the second act. They just automatically know? How?

It’s already firmly established in Dragon Age Lore that the elves will willingly, some even happily, leave behind everything to serve an ancient Elvhen God. Even one with dirt, blood, mistrust, and disgust directed at him for millennia.

In the end pages of DAI, it’s clearly shown that elves leave their current circumstances to go serve Solas. Fen’harel, The Dread Wolf, The elven trickster god. The most utterly despised God of all of them has an extremely large following of elves. (Who we don’t see anything of in DAV, convenient, no?)

And we have a retcon from our dearly talented /s John Epler on that from /theplaydragonage reddit group. Paraphrased, Solas decided to work alone because he hated being a leader. He didn’t care about the elves. Somewhere between DAI and DAV the elves sworn to Solas sparkle glitter farted poof into the ether’

You know? That’s just so uneducated on how intellectual beings work that I’m not going to dignify it with a response.

And there are so many quotes from Solas about truly caring about the elves in Inquisition and supplementary materials that it's an utterly ridiculous Solas-hater thing to say.

So, why in all the worlds wouldn’t elves want to serve Elgar’nan, All-Father, the Eldest of the Sun, He Who Overthrew His Father, The Father of Retribution? He represents promise before acceptance. The power before the price. The moment of choice that precedes justice or vengeance, rise or fall.

Why wouldn’t they want to follow Ghilan’nain? Mother of the halla and Goddess of Navigation. The price and acceptance of purpose, and the becoming that allows no return. Betrayal and devotion are as equals to her.

Many, many elves throughout the history of the Dragon Age franchise have been depicted as extremely faithful to their gods, especially amongst the Dalish.

They stoned Solas and drove him away when Solas tried to tell the truth about them to at least one Dalish clan. It’s why Solas isn't particularly fond of the Dalish. If you stoned me for trying to tell you the truth of a thing, I doubt I'd like you very much either.

It really just feels like self-insertionism on Epler's part. Or poorly thought out ideas suitable to a first draft that any decent editor would've suggested get scrapped. Or maybe a bad case of CYA (cover your ass). I honestly have no idea whether Epler is faithful to any religion, agnostic, or atheist, nor do I care, it isn't anyone's business but his.

But the writing and actions surrounding both Bellara and Davrin, as well as the elves in general, feel like a modern atheist trying to self-insert their belief structure onto a fictional group of people it just would never fit for. Or that someone doesn’t actually know the Lore very well. (Yes, I’m aware how long Epler has been with BioWare. DAV, interviews, and AMAs absolutely prove he doesn’t know the Lore. And doesn’t seem to care? I’ll never understand that. Nor does he understand the people of THEDAS. Or maybe even people in general? Writing well demands at least some understanding of how people work.)

I can't for a second believe that absolutely none of the elves, a people who have been enslaved, abused, tortured, and used for thousands of years, wouldn't willingly and very even possibly happily, follow beings who are, in fact, their Legendary Gods. Beings that in elven cultures are still venerated. Beings whose bad actions have been forgotten. It just doesn't make sense to say there wouldn't be.

“Still, though, why haven’t any Dalish elves decided to join forces with their gods? As Epler put it, the gods simply don’t care about them.”

No. You know what saying there’s no elves in the entourages of either Elgar’nan or Ghilan’nain really does? It doesn’t provide vindication. Nor even surcease, which might be a better word. All it does is infantalize and remove agency from an entire race of people. From all elves.

And that somehow means the elves don’t care about the gods? That’s, uh, not how that works?

Agency, in writing, means that characters make decisions and it affects the plot (good!) or that the plot pushes your characters around, (bad).

Agency is whether the character happens to the plot, (good!). Or if the plot happens to the character (bad).

It’s honestly the essence, in some ways, of ‘choices matter’.

There is a severe dearth of good agency in DAV. Sad as that makes me.

So let’s talk about faith amongst the elves, generally, and the Dalish, in particular. Because following a god requires faith.

Saying 'there's no elves in the group of 'lackeys and puppets' following Elgar’nan and Ghilan’nain is like saying that die-hard Catholics wouldn't follow a proven return of their savior, Jesus or even the father, god. Or insert any other cultures' living/dying gods return. Illogical, kinda offensive if you happen to be religious, and honestly? Foolish.

For many elves, their faith would be something they cling to. It would be hope in the darkness of abuse.

It’s kinda rude to say it’s a win for the elves to ignore their ancestral faith when it’s often, likely, the only thing they have left.

Honestly? It’s pretty offensive. THEDAS, elves, their rampaging elven gods, none of that is real. But there are plenty of abused minorities on Earth that they modelled the elves from. I didn’t grow up within the cultures, and I’m of Mohawk, Mikmaq, Irish Romani, mixed European, and (previously enslaved) African descent. Some things were passed down, regardless.

It's both my personal experience and proven in cultural anthropology that abused peoples will often cling to anything colonizers leave them that the people value. It’s the only way to maintain culture.

It’s why the residential schools took our hair first. Many native cultures don’t cut hair for numerous reasons. Then came the theft of language. My grandparents on both sides were kidnapped and taken to residential schools. The last one closed in 1996. I was a sophomore in university. This isn’t ancient history. And while, yes, Dragon Age is fake, people with similar experiences or backgrounds in the real world are hurt by crap we see in fiction every day. This is just a particularly egregious example of it.

History lives on in those still bleeding. No, if you’re of any abused minority, you’ll know what I’m talking about. We hang on to anything we can, because it’s all we have left.

So how and why would the Theodosian elves be any different? Because the gods don’t care? That’s some ridiculous authorium handwavium right there.

I could buy either Bellara or Davrin as being atheist or agnostic (more likely Bellara IMHO) but not both.

But as far as artistic depictions go? Regardless of anything anyone may say, they're shown as elves who are both pretty faithful. Here's why. They both wear Vallaslin.

It's pretty well laid out in the Lore (which we already know they ignored or retconned into insensibility in DAV and OMG in the interviews and recent AMA!) that the application of the Vallaslin (which translates to blood writing) is a sacred right of passage only offered to Dalish youths around the age of eighteen who will be staying with their people.

Regardless of the meaning of the Vallaslin in the past, they’re considered sacred by modern Theodosian elves.

They aren't just cool decorations. They're not make-up they can just wash off. They indicate which of the nine gods that particular elf has sworn themselves to in Dalish culture. (Technically eight, because Solas, The Dread Wolf, God of Rebellion and Trickery, never claimed or designed Vallaslin. Because he never owned slaves that is ever indicated anywhere.)

And only the Dalish use them. The specific design each Dalish elf wears is indicative of which elven god they both feel drawn to and wish to work to emmulate in their life. Making them even less likely to be worn casually.

The Lore is clear that application of the Vallaslin is ritual. It’s sacred. It would likely take multiple days to tattoo them into someone’s face. It would be excruciatingly painful. The face is one of the most painful places to get inked. I’ve got ink. It’s not comfortable even in ‘easy to tattoo’ places. On the face? Ouch!

Vallaslin would never have been given to Davrin. Davrin’s story shows some of his past, and in his heart, he always knew he wouldn’t be staying. His mentor Eldrin said something along the lines of ‘he knew/felt Davrin wouldn’t stay with the clan’. In the kind of social structure that’s been described for the Dalish, a youth’s mentor would absolutely be consulted on whether they were ready for Vallaslin. So why, for all the halla’s in THEDAS, would Davrin have Vallaslin? He wouldn’t. They’re marks of clan belonging, of pride, of faith in their gods and the Dalish way of life. Davrin just wouldn’t have them unless he deeply believed in serving Ghilan’nain. Which would mean being a Dalish wayfinder and halla keeper. Not a Grey Warden. 

While it’s cute given his backstory that Davrin wears the Mother of Halla’s marks. He just wouldn’t have them, no matter how sexy he looks with them.

If we handwave all that though… oh, the missed opportunity to have any Dalish wearing Vallaslin as a traitor to Rook’s cause, by wearing the blood writing of the God/Goddess they’re fighting? I was just waiting for the Vallaslin to actually mean something. For the gods to control, puppet-like, those wearing their blood writing? The missed angst, character development opportunities, and just… gah.

I don’t know if I’ll ever stop grieving what DAV could’ve been.

So if Bellara is more into science and questioning things, I could see her more as an atheist. So why does she wear Dirthaman’s Vallaslin? She’s not even technically Dalish that is ever truly shown in game. Dalish have a clan that is usually pretty important to them. Lore states there aren’t many, if any, Dalish who brave Arlathan because of slave-hunters. Where is Bellara’s clan? The veil-jumpers don’t count as a Dalish clan regardless of the window-dressing. They haven’t even been around that long according to some of Bellara’s lines. Okay, so if Bellara is actually Dalish from somewhere? I could see a scientist type having Dirthamen’s Vallaslin. But where in all the mysteries did she get them? Why would she have them? Given the why’s listed above, she just wouldn’t, no matter how beautiful she looks in them.

I mean, in a lot of ways, someone getting their Vallaslin would be sort of similar to anything sacred that is deemed ritual that dedicated a person to a faith/god-dess/religion.

So a quote from the Polygon article states, “instead of being accidentally (or purposely!) killed off by the player character, the Dalish elves in The Veilguard get to righteously rally against the mages that they once called gods and reclaim part of their history.”

Er… call me mistaken but wouldn’t that be sort of like destroying part of their history? Y’know, with destroying parts of Arlathan, banishing Anaris, and outright killing two of their venerated gods? Even if those gods weren’t as advertised? (A lot like this damned game tbh.)

Epler. “I love that the Dalish in this game, by and large, are saying, No, we were lied to. We were the first victims of these gods. We’re going to fight back,” Epler said. “And they really get a sense to kind of rise up in this game and start establishing themselves in this way that in the future I can’t wait to go back to, but in this game gives them a sense of a win. They get a victory in how they respond to the threat of the gods in this game.”

Future? What future? Given the events in DAV, there isn’t even a statistically relevant breeding population (in the scientific sense) of elves left!

In the Lore, the blight is a death sentence, one way or another. Between the Venatori’s favourite blood bags being enslaved elves, the gods using them as sacrifices, and the entirety of southern THEDAS being overwhelmed with blight, just how many elves does Epler think might possibly be left?

This is what I mean about DAV having bad planning, lack of Lore adhesion, poor attention to detail, and just crappy writing. Nothing. Makes. Sense.

Completely pushing aside pretty much everything I’ve just talked about… can someone please explain how most of the elves on the entire continent of THEDAS dying from the blight… y’know, the Dalish, named after the Dales, in southern THEDAS, which were quite clearly overrun by blight and not-fucking-darkspawn in the codices… y’know, the Dalish, on the wide open Dales, in land ships/Aravel, and with herds of Halla, children, and elders to care for… how is all of them being dead or blighted a win? The only potential ‘win’ for any of them is for Bellara/Davrin, who aren’t even technically Dalish by the ways of the Dalish in the Lore. And depending on player choice, its possibly a win only for one of them?

Bellara, in speaking about the gods, sounds like the worst sort of uneducated twit. And she's supposed to be smart? The thing with smart characters? You have to actually show them being smart.

I just can’t see how one or two ‘Dalish’ being kinda creepily uncaring of their venerated gods coming back to reality and being on the team to kill them… is in any way ‘a win’.

The racism in DAV is woven all throughout. And it seems it's baked right into the core of BioWare.

[wee-chlo]

I'm rereading Harry Potter and it's baffling how people just... pretend Snape was a completely different person than who he actually was?

Granted, Alan Rickman's Snape and Book Snape are two genuinely different people, to the point that I think Movie Snape would be mildly disgusted by Book Snape. Movie Snape came off more as someone who was angry and spiteful to a select few for reasons that ranged from Understandable to Irrationally Petty, but generally very grim and stern, with a good heart beneath it all. Book Snape is a piece of shit.

Movie Snape doesn't have the same cruelty as Book Snape: his targeting of anyone other than Harry is framed in a more slapstick way and his teaching isn't neary as abusive. Neville being terrified of him doesn't have the same implicit showcasing of Snape being abusive but rather Snape being stern and unforgiving while Neville is meek and needs positive reinforcement to flourish.

Movie Snape is stoic, deadpan. I saw a clip of Rickman on YouTube and either he, a commenter, or both noted that a touchstone of Rickman's performance for Snape was that he didn't raise his voice. Not so in the books, where Snape's described several times loosing his temper and screaming, even shrieking. Snape is terrifyingly volatile in the books, in contrast to the movies where even at his most furious, most emotional, he remains in control of himself.

Book Snape is, unambiguously, just a bad person. Not just a bad teacher, a bad PERSON. He is a small, bitter, petty bully who shouldn't be anywhere near children, and honestly Dumbledore letting him near children is probably more of an indictment of Dumbledore's character than the fact that he used to be a wizard supremacist.

And to be clear, while teenage Snape isn't AS bad as adult Snape by virtue of being a teenager... he was also just Not Good. He ran around with Wizard Nazis. Lily called him out on that, on the fact that he was clearly ready and rearing to join Voldemort, that he used Dark Magic on other students alongside his death eater buddies, etc.

James and Co were little shits who teased and picked on students. But Remus and Sirius made a point that Snape and James had a uniquely, mutually hostile relationship. Remus and Sirius state directly that ultimately, one of the primary reasons James targeted Snape was because Snape was "up to his eyeballs in the Dark Arts and James hated the Dark Arts".

I've seen people use the fact that James never apologized to Snape as an indictment of James' character but like... when and why would he have apologized?

Genuinely, I think if Snape had made a good faith effort to be a better person BEFORE the death of the Potters, James may have apologized. But Snape at the time of James' death was a literal wizard nazi and honestly? I can't see him feeling terribly bad about bullying him, or at least not feeling obliged to apologize. And even if he had, how would he have done so? Send an owl to wizard nazi HQ?

But I think the thing that made me bristle the most about the books was the gaslighting that happened in book 6.

Remus is... going through it in that book, fair enough, but when Harry is talking to him about his suspicious, he gently accuses Harry of "inheriting James' and Sirius' prejudice" and being "determined to hate [Snape]". Like.... I'm sorry, but did Remus get hit in the head? Are we supposed to just casually forget EVERYTHING SNAPE HAS SAID AND DONE TO HARRY IN THE LAST FIVE BOOKS?!

If anyone came into it with an inherited prejudice and a determination to hate, it was Snape.

Justice for Book 6 Harry, everyone's treating him like he's bonkers but he's right.

[shoutydwarf]

Veilguard ending spoilers

It's so hard for me to talk about how I feel about Solas because on one hand, there's great potential in his arc, but on the other, bioware has completely butchered that in such a profound way that I don't care to look past the hiccups to enjoy him.

First, he's race locked. This really doesn't help to contest the idea that he's a supremacist. If it was truly a time crunch issue where they added it so late they couldn't add the other races, but knew at the time what Solas was and what he meant to the plot - why, on gods green fucking earth, was it included at all? Because they spend the whole next game trying really hard to convince you he's not just an ages old racist stuck in his ways, only to not just have race locked him but to hide his most egregious act, of which he committed against a certain race he's known to be racist towards.

You'll be hard pressed to catch a certain type of solavellan, which encompasses the majority of them, even saying the word titan. The part that baffles me is you'll also be hard pressed to hear SOLAS HIMSELF saying it in game. If I'm recalling correctly, I only heard him say it one singular time outside of the mural memories. At the very end of the game.

There is zero acknowledgement on his part of what he did, at least not in any meaningful way. The orb that the evanuris made their foci out of that Solas says is an elven artifact? Titan heart. The dagger he made? Titan blood. The empire of Arlathan? Founded on the blood and genocide of titans. And I mean that in the most literal sense that I can. All of their godly powers that they used to create their empire was pulled from the well of titan souls they locked within the Golden City.

It's fucking poetic at this point. They silenced the titans so good and well that it seems not even Solas remembers what his glorious kingdom of old cost. It's even funnier if you stand in front of him as a Cadash or a dwarf!Rook.

This man they're trying SO HARD to beat into you around every corner that he's so so sad, he's so so full of regret and sorrow, he's so depressed and anguished over his deeds, not once acknowledges in a way that matters that what he and the evanuris did to the titans was wrong. And if he doesn't feel remorse over that in any way that's loud enough for him to talk about it as he does the veil, how the fuck am I supposed to believe he's sorry for all the other things?

Weekes has admitted to literally, somehow, casually forgetting dwarves don't dream when they were writing the scene of the Haven dream with Solas and the Inquisitor. Add this to how many lines dwarf!rook has of comparing things to dreams, casting necromancy spells etc and it becomes pretty clear that they never intended to afford this genocided race lore reveal the gravity it needed. They just needed it as a minor plot device in a greater elven narrative that completely, utterly, 100% unravels the message they're desperate to send with Solas. They really said to solavellans don't worry, kittens, he committed a really heinous, unforgivable act that he's not taking any strides to repair but we're not going to have him talk about it at all so you can continue ignoring it and scrolling tiktok during Harding's questline. And yall said okay ❤️ yay ❤️.

And no, you can't argue that his goal was always to tear down the Veil to restore immortality/magic to the elves AND wake up the titans. Because those are two separate things, and one of those things he never once said he was doing. He doesn't need the titans awake to take down the Veil and restore Arlathan. In fact, he very much needs them to stay tranquil, otherwise he'd finally get the ass whooping he fucking deserves when my dwarves not only attack his unguarded kneecaps with hammers but start chucking rocks at him and booing loudly.

This is why he's irredeemable for me. This is why I wanted an ending where I can kill him, not because I hate him as a concept or even as a character, but because his writing is such a fucking joke. And putting him into a sock and banging him against the counter is the only valid response to such a cosmic fumble because it's the only option that matches its freak in being so ridiculous. It's bad writing, it's weak, cheap, lazy, and directly crumbles the entire foundation.

While the ending of having him spend eternity soothing the dreams of the titans is excellent in form, because although it doesn't show him taking accountability it does show him taking steps to repair the damage he did to them, I don't ever get to establish, as a dwarf Rook or even just as a player, that THAT is why I want him to do this. Nobody says, "Make this right by earning the forgiveness of your first victim." Instead, for Solas, it's like, "well, since I have to go there anyway, I might as well. I guess. Whatever."

All this while they're in that AMA saying shit like "two groups are more affected than any other by the evanuris - the elves and (wait for it) Tevinter."

A fucking joke, I tell you.

[pluckyredhead]

Character Profile: Gregorio de la Vega and Hugh Dawkins (Extraño and Tasmanian Devil)

I was thinking that it's been too long since I've done a character profile, and then I realized that I don't think I've ever posted about DC's CANONICALLY MARRIED, HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT DILFS, a.k.a. Wizard Daddy and his furry husband. I'm so sorry. I've failed you all.

ANYWAY MEET GREGORIO AND HUGH:

Gregorio (on the right) is the first out superhero in comics, ever, from before the Comics Code even allowed gay characters. Hugh is DC's third gay superhero (Pied Piper came out a year before him) and the first canonically queer member of the Justice League. See? Historically significant!

CONTENT WARNING: Homophobia, racial stereotypes, attempted suicide, HIV/AIDS, and some particularly gory fridging (Hugh got better).

Gregorio de la Vega first appeared in Millennium #2. Now, they never actually use the word "gay" in the eight issue Millennium miniseries, but, well...

No, seriously, despite the fact that they never use words like "gay" or "homosexual" in the pages of the comic itself, the art and dialogue make Gregorio's sexuality very clear - and in case that wasn't enough, the editors do use the word "gay" in the letter columns.

Millennium was an event in which the Guardians and the Zamarons identified a group of diverse humans to be "the vanguard of human evolution" and gave them all superpowers. Gregorio is hanging out in a cantina in Peru when they show up to give him the news:

He's calling himself a fruit do you get it??? Honestly I love him so much. He's so extra.

I want to emphasize again how groundbreaking Gregorio is. Like, yes, obviously he is a raging stereotype and arguably a problematic one. But this was 1988. The Comics Code Authority would not be updated to permit queer characters until the following year (probably because of Gregorio, in large part). The fact that he existed at all, and not cloaked in layers upon layers of subtext, was a huge step forward. No, he's not perfect, but when you're the only canonically queer superhero in mainstream comics, that's an impossible ask.

Anyway. Gregorio's not super into the idea of being a main character at first, but after a self-loathing suicide attempt (Wally saves him), he decides fuck it, why not be a superhero, and joins the team that will become the New Guardians. He's granted his superpowers, which are generic magic ones, and takes the codename Extraño.

Unfortunately, in the spinoff series that followed Millennium, New Guardians, things get...uh...kind of rough. By which I mean that a) the original writer left, b) the new writer dialed Gregorio's gay stereotyping waaay back in favor of, um, Latino stereotyping instead (he stops calling everyone "honey" and starts calling them "amigo"), and c) the team is attacked by the Hemo-Goblin, an HIV-positive white supremacist vampire. Yes, really. It's fucking awful.

The Hemo-Goblin scratches Gregorio and bites Jet, a Black woman on the team. They both subsequently test positive for HIV. There are many letters from fans pointing out that it's nearly impossible to contract HIV that way, but the editors insisted that actually it was totally plausible, and then implied that probably Gregorio already had HIV because he was gay (even though he had tested negative earlier in the book). Then Jet dies. Again: it's fucking awful.

New Guardians was canceled soon after that and Gregorio pretty much disappeared. By the 2000s, he was viewed as basically an embarrassment, if anyone even remembered him at all: so stereotypical, so flamboyant, so offensive, so cringe. In the Love Is Love anthology, everyone's least favorite human Dan DiDio wrote a story where he claimed that Extraño died of AIDS back in the 80s, which...literally wasn't true??? The publisher of the goddamn company and even he assumed that the Cringey Stereotype must have died the Stereotypical Death.

And then in 2016, Gregorio got a makeover, courtesy of Steve Orlando and Fernando Blanco:

HELLO.

Yeah, so Gregorio is a silver fox now who hangs out with Apollo and Midnighter, does wizard shit, and lives in Lima with his husband and their adopted daughter. SO LET'S TALK ABOUT THAT HUSBAND:

Could you tell he's Australian???

Hugh Dawkins, a.k.a. Tasmanian Devil (no relation to the Looney Tunes character except that they are both owned by WB and, obviously, Tasmanian) actually first appeared in the Super Friends tie-in comics to the cartoon of the same name, in 1977, as part of a plotline where the Justice League teamed up with a bunch of international superheroes.

As you can see above, Hugh, like the other international superheroes, is a massive stereotype. He's also a were-Tasmanian devil who can grow really big, like many Australians. (Even though he's been around for 50 years, there are very few panels of Hugh in human form, but if you need to know for reasons of all the fanfic I hope you are about to write: he's blond.)

In the late 80s, Hugh and the other international superheroes from this story were incorporated into the main DCU as a team called the Global Guardians. They became occasional supporting characters to the various Justice League International books, and some of them joined various Justice League branches. Others had random cameos here and there, and in a 1992 issue of Justice League Quarterly, Hugh's random cameo involved casually mentioning that he is gay:

Again, this is a big deal. It's only 1992, meaning the only canonically queer superheroes in mainstream comics are Extraño (1988), Pied Piper (1991), and Northstar (1992). And this is a Justice League book. AND IT'S 1992. When Hugh talks about things being hateful for gays, he's likely referring to the virulent homophobia in Tasmania at the time (homosexuality wouldn't be decriminalized there for another five years).

Which means it was also a big deal that Hugh went on to join the European branch of the Justice League shortly after this, making him the first canonically queer member of any branch of the League. Of course, his sexuality was never mentioned during the year and a half he was on the team...or in any comic...until 2006. And then it was a vaguely homophobic joke involving Hal Jordan. But still!

(There is a panel that I SWEAR exists from the JLI era of Hugh describing a total bullshit version of his origin which granted him "the power of 106 Tasmanian devils!" which I cannot for the life of me find but was the first thing that made me fall in love with this character. If you stumble across it, please let me know what issue number it is?)

Hugh then had the misfortune of next appearing...sort of...in the infamously awful Cry for Justice in 2009. I say sort of because it's revealed that the villain, Prometheus, has skinned him and turned him into a rug. So we only see his skin. The late 2000s were really, really rough, guys.

However, a year later he appeared in the Starman/Congorilla special and he was totally fine? Don't ask me how. Gorillas were involved. The issue ended with the possibility of him and Starman (the Mikaal Tomas version) hooking up, but then the New 52 happened, so that never came to anything.

...BUT WHO CARES, BECAUSE NOW HE'S MARRIED TO GREGORIO AND THEY HAVE A DAUGHTER AND THEY ARE IN LOVE.

The nickname! The clutching! I'm dying.

Did I mention the canon threesome with John Constantine?

HUGH LOVES HIS RIDICULOUS HUSBAND SO MUCH. Tragically the JLQ only showed up in these two stories but all the baby queer superheroes in the DCU call Gregorio "Tio" and it makes me want to weep. HE WAS ALL ALONE IN 1988 AND NOW HE HAS A FAMILY. I AM VERKLEMPT. 😭😭😭

Unfortunately Gregorio and Hugh are pretty much relegated to occasionally appearing in Pride specials these days, but maybe if we all wish really hard, DC will let Steve Orlando or Andrew Wheeler write a miniseries about how they met and fell in love. I think Nick Robles should draw it.

ANYWAY I LOVE THESE HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT HUSBANDS, THE END.

[vexwerewolf]

hey, I saw a post reblogged around hating the whole idea of no kink at pride and wanted to understand why that was, but noticed the comments were turned off, so I'm asking here. for reference I dont know very much about the subject and had the general idea that pride should be an all ages space, BUT (the but is very important) since I dont have much knowledge on the subject and can see you are very opinionated around it, id like to know why that is your stance from, well, someone who actually holds that stance.

No pressure to answer I simply want to understand why others hold this stance, the potential history behind it and if I am looking at things the wrong way, a chance to change my opinion

I hope all of this comes across correctly because im not trying to start internet discourse, just learn and have a well rounded understanding of a subject before taking a more solid stance

CW: discussion of sex, homophobia, kink, common anti-kink lies

Okay so if you're not read up on queer history, you have to understand that "deviant," "indecent" or "degenerate" sexuality is an accusation that's been used to repress queer people for pretty much as long as the concept has existed. It has often extended so far as to encompass any form of sex that isn't missionary cishet boning for the purpose of procreation, but it has always and by definition encompassed any and all ways that queer people have sex.

Now, I want to be clear that the LGBTQ+ community is not entirely about sex. Our community touches love, passion, art, gaming, basically every sphere of human experience, but it also includes sex. A lot of queer people like to have sex! Queer people, however, are judged for having and enjoying sex in a way that straight people simply aren't.

It's important to note that the concept of "degeneracy" is a vital component to white supremacist repression of queer people, because it inserts the necessary moral proposition that allows sex between two consenting adults to be labelled as harmful. As cynical as I am about the general public, it's actually pretty difficult to convince the average person that gay sex is something the government needs to repress in and of itself; any argument to this effect needs to come packaged with an additional, vaguely credible concern about social corrosion.

This is much easier to do with kinksters, because kinksters are weirder-looking than shirt-and-slacks queers (who, to be clear, are equally valid). But it's still difficult to make the average member of the public balk, because they'll say "well that sure is freaky but so long as they're doing it in private, who gives a shit?" So long as the people you're trying to stir up hate against aren't doing anything illegal, the average member of the public is gonna think you're the weird one for digging into other peoples' private sex lives.

Thus, the easiest avenue of attack is Pride, where it isn't in private. But it's a fucking deceitful canard. Straight people never have to answer for public displays of their sexuality, which are often far more gratuitous than some dude walking around in a pup mask.

[conceptofjoy]

I am sideeying anon so hard Huh. Like. Okay I personally don't really get what you mean by the raceplay stuff but I'm not about to insinuate that you're?? Being racist?? That's what anon is saying right??? That sounds like that's what they're implying

Anyway uhh. Sorry about. Gestures. The bomb. I like your analysis posts a lot even if I don't understand them sometimes. Keep cooking

im just kind of flabbergasted. i thought i made it Pretty Clear that i was not Pro Racist Caricatures…? by mentioning which racist caricature was being used, that does not mean i Believe Them…..? how does one go about reading history articles, and come away with the take that the person describing racism is racist themselves?

anyway 8) i can explain the race play thing…

after the start of european colonialism, to justify slavery, rape, theft, etc etc, colonists made up various caricatures to dehumanize black people. they're generally split by male and female kinds, you might know the mammy, a middle aged often fat black woman who is very matronly. not a negative trait by itself, but it comes with the loaded history of black women forced to have children only to have their infants taken away so they can breastfeed slave owners' children. idk if ur american, but if you remember that aunt jemima controversy after the blm upswing in 2020? yep. minstrel caricatures are so baked into american media, it perpetuates itself in an ouroborean way and homestuck's especially not exempt from this. race play explanation below cut >

there's a particular caricature of " the buck", a sexually ravenous black man who loves to rape white women in his free time. if the old film "birth of a nation" rings any bells... a more contemporary instance is the BBC <yk that acronym. long story short, a lot of rich conservative couples get their rocks off to seeing their wife get fucked by a spry and often times muscular black man. because caricatures are formed to dehumanize minorities, this one diminishes the black man to the role of cattle. a buck, a bull. at the end of the day, the white man is his owner, so any controlled instance of "giving up power" doesn't Actually mean anything. a black man can play that role to taste a hint of power as much as he wants, but black masculinity holds no genuine fucking power in society.

what's interesting applying this to equius and gamzee, is that gamzee IS higher up on the caste system. hussie's application of the caricature of "powerful and violent black masculinity" means it is incredibly superficial. it then comes off as a white supremacist using the veneer of this caricature to uplift his own violent image. EXACTLY like white rappers using black aesthetics to then seem more vicious and more masculine. you can see post malone in real time dropping it to further a career in country music because he knows it's taken him as far as it can go. again, black masculinity holds no power. it's his whiteness that makes him capable of making that switch. the caricature is a performance. because alternia is a violent society, white supremacists can milk this performance as much as they want.

the race play aspect was probably intentionally added by hussie, but NOT gamzee being white. the addition of the buck caricature was also not satirical either. back to how i said racist american media perpetuates itself, you don't have to be a white supremacist to do racist shit.

[iamnmbr3]

Great answers! I do love the idea of Sirius as DADA teacher!

Here's another one for you: rank these characters from worst to best for the post of Minister of Magic

Albus Dumbledore

Lucius Malfoy

Sirius Black (again cause I love him and I read a fic about this once)

Minerva McGonagall

Barty Crouch Sr.

oh god. these clowns would all be such terrible minsters of magic. why are you doing this to me? ok fine. here goes.

Lucius Malfoy: I think because movie!Lucius was sort of toned down and defanged fandom sometimes forget what a nasty piece of work book!Lucius was before he had his downfall and got all sad and pathetic. Fanon!Lucius often gets turned into kind of a joke but book!Lucius was out there torturing muggles for fun by night while he had the ear of the Minister by day and was, seemingly, extremely adept at subtly spreading his pureblood supremacist agenda in government. (Honestly, better at it than Tom because unlike Tom he actually cared). Also in book 4 it's very clear that if he had gotten hold of Hermione - a fourteen year old child - on the World Cup grounds he would've attacked her without hesitation (been eager for it, in fact). Yeah he wasn't down with Voldemort's whole thing but that was more because of the effect it had on him personally. with Voldemort out of the picture he was top dog and he was doing just fine. All this to say, as Minister the policies he enacts are...not good to say the least. He'd be out there building a violent pureblood supremacist dictatorship in a heartbeat.

Albus Dumbledore: Albus says he can't be trusted with the power of being Minister and honestly...I believe him. He'd still play the same messed up manipulation games he plays in canon but on a much larger scale (while simultaneously feeling bad about it and telling himself it's for the greater good). He does some truly epic mental gymnastics to convince himself he needs to make himself dictator for life and then things spiral because obviously anyone who resists him is evil right? Right? Of course! The alternative is that he is wrong and he doesn't want to think about that. Also, he doesn't seem that bothered by house elf slavery and his ideas for getting nonhuman magical creatures on his side in canon seemed to involve asking nicely but not actually granting them rights. So I'm not super optimistic on that front. So yeah. This just turns into the whole of wizarding Britain getting gaslit and thrown into insane situations by a madman who seems so wholesome and lovable and yet... Also. Given how poorly organized the Order is I think it's safe to say that all other flaws aside, the man does not have a gift for management.

Barty Crouch Sr.: Listen. He ALSO sucks. Very clearly ok with slavery, not a fan of due process, and allowed Aurors to torture confessions out of suspects. His only saving grace is that he does love rules so he'd probably eventually step down and wouldn't make as many potentially damaging changes as Dumbledore.

Minerva McGonagall: Her no nonsense attitude ensures that any meeting she runs actually accomplishes things. She's smart. She's sane. She's stable. She doesn't care about ending slavery or changing the status quo, but she's a lot better than most of the options. She's not especially creative or good at political games though which often hampers her ability to carry out objectives and prevent bad actors (i.e. Lucius and his faction) from getting their way.

Sirius Black: What does the man who hates authority do when he finds himself in a position of ultimate authority? I don't know but I'd love to read about it! Sirius is actually pretty shrewd (contrary to fanon) and I think he'd actually turn out to be a natural at handling politics (much as he might hate it). He also understands traditional pureblood society (he is a Black after all) but he doesn't idolize it (he hates being a Black) which would allow him to understand and work with multiple factions. Additionally he can be forceful and authoritative. He's impatient, often biased and unfair, sometimes quite cruel, can be temperamental, and again, has 0 problem with slavery. So like. He's not good per say, but he's actually better than some of the others. (At least with him meetings are never dull because if he gets bored enough he just turns into a dog and eats the agenda).