#im not tagging anti for this either because tumblrs still doing that thing where anti ends up in the reg tags anyways

[isdalinarhot]

on the state of kholin haterism on tumblr

this is gonna be a long one, so bear with me.

one thing i think that has changed in the tumblr fandom in the three years that ive been in it is that the culture in 2021 was ALSO at a largely anti-Kholin sentiment, but there were two key differences.

the first is that most people making critiques of such characters would use the tag #kholin critical, which was useful either if you were sensitive to criticism of one of the kholins for whatever reason AND if you wanted to read analysis of some of their faults by many different users under one tag.

the second is that said kholin critical criticisms were... less stupid? like a lot of it was talking about reddit fandom hypocrisy where dalinar was held up as righteous and badass and could do no wrong even though he had tons of personal and political faults that other characters (largely people who WERENT extremely powerful nobles) were demonized for. also a lot of stuff like "adolin is kaladins friend now but i dont think just categorizing it as simple enemies to besties is fair because adolin WAS being overtly racist to kaladin at the beginning there". a lot of discussion about how the Kholins treat darkeyes and characters of lower dahns where the bigotry there was being downplayed by fans in favor of the characters being painted both by fandom and in the universe of the books as Always Right All The Time. stuff like that.

that's not to say the whole kholin crit tag was all, like, stuff that isnt bullshit. people have been dunking on elhokar for being a whiny failking since the beginning of time. but the vibes were a lot different.

kholin critical kind of fell out of favor as a hashtag because most of us realized hey on a doylist level either the things we're criticizing the kholins for are purposeful character flaws that make for richer, more realistic, more engaging characters; or they're oversights from the moderate liberal Sanderson, in which case, why are we complaining about Dalinar doing this, when we should be complaining about Sanderson doing this. so this whole thing is stupid. and also by then the atmosphere on tumblr was way different, this was by and large the Moash Website and while people were haters about characters they did not put the hate in character tags so people largely avoided each others haterism. and there was peace for like a year and a half, i guess.

things are way different now. for context. i track the #dalinar kholin tag. so whenever my dash is dead im checking my tracked tags, and thus i see every original post about dalinar that someone decided to tag #dalinar kholin. and boy howdy, things have devolved. this used to be a chill experience for me, i'd see first time readers go OH MY GOD HE DID WHAT?????? during oathbringer and "[some philosophical shit dalinar said]" -brandon sanderson. follow for more inspiring book quotes" about three times a day, fanart once every couple weeks or so, stuff like that. but now a solid 75% of the posts in dalinars tag are like. hate. not literary criticism, but hate. sometimes about justified things, sometimes about unjustified things, but still, extremely negative.

in a bubble, that's fine. god knows ive been a hater on my blog before and ill be a hater on my blog again. and its not even like im opposed to reading well thought out criticism of my faves on any level because, like, dalinar is kind of a rat bastard! but like. listen. you don't put character hate in that character's tag. you don't do that. the people who are checking a character's tag are fans of that character and fandom is for fun. being a hater directly reaching out to the lovers for comment is rude as hell.

also a lot of the things people dislike about dalinar tie back to his neglectful fatherhood and his alcoholism which is, like, a thing i understand people would have strong negative feelings towards him for having because Neglectful Alcoholic Dad is like one of the top 10 kinds of abusive dads out there so lots of people have very visceral very personal experiences related to that. but when posting about this in any form whatsoever it feels like im having to go back to Treating Addicts Like Human Beings 101. like i feel like ive made a billion posts to the tune of "okay kids, you can do bad things while drunk and you are still responsible and you can also get drunk at inopportune times and you are still responsible, but the act of being addicted to alcohol does not make a character ontologically evil". and like thats. um. a personal thing but also oh my goodness.

i dont really have a conclusion to this. im just thinking goddamn its bleak out here right now.

[xythlia]

something else ive noticed every few months when tumblr does this will they won't they shut down thing is it always, always makes all these fresh posts pop up about how you just absolutely have to spend money on this site and need to stop being openly critical of the way this place is run & that's just not true. you can love tumblr as a platform but also remain vocal about the numerous failures of its staff

a vast majority of this site isn't so staunchly anti-monitization for no reason. over the last year alone the censorship by staff of trans individuals on this site is at a point where u can't say it's not rooted in bigotry. why are a majority of only trans people being told their posts are inherently nsfw when it's just... them literally posting the way everyone else does? staff has whipped out never used before content moderation tools for the sole goal of nuking anyone who ever says hey this is weird as fuck in regards to that behavior/the people on staff who are just blatant terfs & freaks.

you can't go scorched earth on people and just expect them to go oh but we'll still buy the silly billy crab badge <3. not to mention it's in poor taste to rip jokes made by others on this site, turn them into profit makers, and then offer absolutely no credit to the person who's shit they're using to generate revenue.

it's been years that people have been asking them to address the issue of nazis running rampant on here. that's literally never been addressed even though they've shown they do have the tools to address that in at least some capacity, they just have zero interest in doing so.

they'd rather use those tools to suppress tags for palestinian support then go oopsie woopsie the site did a lil fucky wucky. you cannot do that shit again and again and again & just expect people to fall for it over and over. staff thinks very little of their userbase if that wasn't already clear, they think we're stupid. there's people on here who've talked before about how tumblr did similar shit when the protests in ferguson were happening years ago, they terminated blogs belonging to black activists & then started that absolute bullshit line about russian psyop accounts. there were no fuckin psyops they were blatantly going after black activists.

I mean jesus christ you cannot expect people to kiss your ass & throw their money at your website when it has a mind boggling track record of piss poor treatment towards its users and an unbelievable preference for shielding people who are fucking vile and hateful freaks. sure a lot of that stuff occurred not under the people who own tumblr now, but clearly they inherited the playbook from those who owned this site previously because they just do the same shit then are so flabbergasted when we all can't stand them & are not exactly shy in showing how much we dislike them.

two things can be true at once you can absolutely be fond of this site but you can also go hey a lot of the shit you're pulling here is beyond weird and hostile towards certain parts of the userbase only... why the fuck is that? for a lot of people it's about withholding monetary support until things like that are addressed, which they haven't been so sorry im not going to be lining up to buy fucking premium and whatever stupid little vanity badge from the people who do nothing when non white people & trans people get harassed and have their safety threatened because staff is either too pussy to do anything or at worst actively involved in that behavior so they pretend they don't see.

I think they'd have an easier time of implementing monetized features if they didn't treat users like dogshit & blatantly treat us all like we're fucking idiots but hey what do I know

[hello-yue-here]

For the ask game:

tyzula

zukka

and that’s all I can think of now.

NOW WERE COOKIN

tyzula

i like it. i do. i think that if its well written and actually acknowledges how problematic azula and ty lees friendship was in the show and actively works to overcome that and grow from that then i enjoy it. but if its just written as a toxic ship or doesnt address all the shitty things azula did then its a no from me. i dont like toxic ships and in canon their friendship is INCREDIBLY toxic and while i love azula, in order for me to like a fic with azula in it and shes being portrayed as a “good guy” then youve gotta acknowledge what she did to make her evil in the first place. i hate when people gloss over the fact that she was an imperialist and was super manipulative towards people who were supposed to be her friends. in canon she was a horrible person and yes she was abused and yes she was just a kid and yes she did not deserve to be abused but that doesnt change the fact that she was still not a good person. i feel like theres a good amount of tyzula content out there that does an incredible job of addressing this and making sure they craft a good redemption arc for azula and depicts the relationship in a healthy way. other than that ive never had any issues with tyzula shippers and i do say that i ship them myself. ive hardly heard about any drama among peoppe who say tyzula is their otp and ship it hardcore (i have heard some toxic stuff tho so it isnt perfect but its also very rare for that kinda stuff to pop up on my dash) so at least from my understanding its a good fanbase a majority of the time. on a much more positive note i really enjoy their dynamic. i like how azula can be rough around the edges and very regal and proper and still bitchy and then ty lee is there to be bubbly and creative and bring joy into azulas life. i think they balance each other out well and in canon we can see very clearly how much they admire each other (despite the toxicity in canon). azula wishes she were more like ty lee and ty lee thinks azula is amazing and gorgeous. i think theyre a good pairing when done correctly.

zukka.

MY LOVES. i adore zukka. i think they have so many parallels in canon such as being over shadowed by their prodigy younger sisters, their insecurities, their profficiency in weaponry, their anxiety about following in their fathers footsteps (in diff ways obviously). i think their personalities mesh well together. dramatic dickhead zuko. genius snarky bastard sokka. i love them. and the content we get from zukka creators is SO GOOD. the art the fics everything. i love it so much. i personally relate very much to zuko in the sense that he has lots of anger and is dramatic and i relate to sokka a lot too in the semse that im sarcastic and smart and hide my emotions a lot and sometimes feel second best to my friends. i see myself in both of them and when i see them together being happy it makes me feel happy.

zukka fans on the other hand. there are good zukka fans out there. there are wonderful funny amazing zukka fans out there. but holy fuck the number of zukkas out there who conpletely fetishize the ship and strip away all of their character traits so they can make them into a weak little baby boy zuko and a suave macho man sokka (which btw are both racist characatures. if you havent seen all the poc on this app who have called these characterizations out then please please please reevaluate how ur interacting w zukka because not only is it so out of characfer for both of them. it is literally racist). and while there are so many good fics and fanarts for zukka, there is an OVERWHELMINGS number of racist, transphobic, biphobic, homophobic, and all around problematic content everywhere. and some fans are so toxic that it makes me rlly dislike being a zukka sometimes. i will always love the ship but sometimes i feel a little embarassed to be associated with it. i know that i do my best to stay far away from the toxic fans but it gets so frustrating sometimes. i know not every zukka is like this, literally all of my zukka mutuals are wonderful and amazing. but the amount of toxic fans is turning so many people off of the ship and causing people who genuinely enjoyed it to be turned off by it and its giving the good zukkas a bad name. im very upset by the reputation zukka fans have gained on this website from the toxic fans who antagonize other ships (primarily zks. i love zk. just because zks ship zuko with katara doesnt mean that its awful. toxic zukkas plz leave zks alone. so many of them are so nice. i know theres always toxic fans in every fandom and for every ship but like,,, its just so much easier to stay in ur own lane yk?). with that being said i love zukka as a ship but the fans have made it hard for many people to enjoy so sometimes its frustrating. but i love zukka. i think they are a wonderful ship and they are my favorite one in atla.

[aroaceacacia]

hi gen time for the annual me explaining something since im seeing ppl in your asks not knowing. scutes is a name for a group of friends that formed from the very first hermitblr discord server back in 2018. this was even before evil xisuma fanclub which was the first *big* one. eventually scutes just became a private group of friends not related to hermitcraft. that's it. uhf- underrated hermit fanclub- was a separate public server made a bit later on, of which about half the mods were also in the scutes server.

back then many of us were against shipping, including myself, but everyone who was has either left a long time ago, is now neutral on it, or a shipper themselves.

after the events i described in this ask: <https://aroaceacacia.tumblr.com/post/660177626185580544/heyo-just-read-through-your-whole-2019-tag-and> , the people who left hermitzine's original organizing committee mostly being in the scutes discord server, and me complaining about what happened in what was again, a private chat with friends, several of miles' friends started publicly saying awful crap about us as a group. at that time a good chunk of people weren't even active in the hermitcraft fandom and of those who were most of them had nothing to do with this. their main thing was accusing us of "fandom policing" due to a few of us who were anti-ship at the time also having that same mindset about drawing the hermits doing drugs, which for some reason was a thing a lot of other anti-ship people were really into doing at the time. they also spread a lot of blatant lies, most prominent one being that we excused x's transphobia at the time because we didn't openly hate on him. (in actuality we were some of the first to publicly confront him about it both in the chat live of that stream while it was happening and afterwards on twitter, so no clue where they were coming from on that)

pretty much until the incident with cleo when they all finally left tumblr, this continued on and off. it did mostly just take place in various discords after the initial wave of them making tumblr posts, but it was still really bad at times. there were many specific incidents that i won't get in to because i wasn't at the center of them and it may bring up a lot of bad things for those who were. they're not my stories to tell.

i'll also mention two more things. miles did try to apologize to me early on in all this, before any of this escalated and was just a dumb argument over how to run a zine. i refused to accept his apology because i saw it as insincere when he had refused any of the compromises on how the zine should be run. second is that once the harassment on tumblr started i asked for advice on what to do in joe's patreon discord. joe was one of the people who responded, and at the time his response was pretty much just questioning why it was a problem and not really understanding the power structure of decentralized fandom. miles caught wind of this somehow and tried to get me to tell joe that what i had said wasn't true. something that i obviously refused to do.

i don't care about miles anymore, don't go trying to confront him about any of this or anything please. ive since gotten back into therapy (i wasnt at the time this all happened which def did not help the situation) and this is in the past. but a lot of other people have wounds that are still in the process of healing from this and would rather it not be talked about, especially by people who weren't involved in it, which is why there's been little to no public documentation of it.

- Aviva

thank you for the clarification aviva - you didn't have to do this, but I appreciate it. I'll try and make sure that this ask stays as the last time you'll need to talk about this. I hope you and everyone else involved are doing better now.

anons please be respectful of aviva & all other parties involved and lets leave it be

[orionsangel86]

Following the release of the pilot of that bloody Winchester prequel yesterday, a lot of people have been excitedly posting interviews and articles on it and starting up the meta and spec again. I thought I'd be able to avoid seeing it on here but this is the SPN website so clearly that was a bad assumption.

Thing is, I genuinely believed I was okay. This year has been SO GOOD for me for healing the wounds that SPN carved into me. With OFMD, WWDITS, The Sandman, IWTV, and now Good Omens 2 news I have been happily existing in a little joy filled bubble everytime I come on Tumblr.

I just scrolled past a post which had screenshots of an article from Robbie Thompson on the Winchesters. I thought I'd read it out of curiosity. I shouldn't have.

It brought everything back. Talk of the Winchester brothers and how "theres no Dean if there aint no Sam" and how they arent changing a damn thing about SPN canon, and how we will find out where Dean is, with the writer speculating he's telling the story from heaven...

I don't know why, but it hurt.

It was like something had decided to prod really hard at the old SPN scars, the ones that never really healed right to begin with, and are still jagged and tender even after 7 months of solid healing thanks to only consuming media that actually respects me as a person.

I haven't felt that kind of pain since Jared Padalecki last opened the hole in his face to spew bullshit about how the finale from Hell was so perfect and right for the brothers *gags*.

It wasnt even a bad article, but it acknowledged things I had tried to erase from my head. God. Im so fucked up. That horrible show fucked me up so much. I wanted to just shut down tumblr and mentally check myself out for a bit and put on the Dreamcast on spotify or something, but I had to get this off my chest, even if people read this and think im fucking moronic for caring so much and wasting energy on this stupid show and why do I care right?

7 fucking years I devoted to that horseshit show. 7 fucking years I held it in my heart and adored it even though the whole time it clawed and carved at me and hated me because I wasnt the audience it wanted.

One little article and I feel like ive been triggered even though that word should be far too strong for something as stupid as getting emotional over a TV show. Im having a minor breakdown in my living room at 10pm on a Wednesday night in 2022 over fucking SPN.

I dont even know why im openly admitting this on the spn website when I know its gonna subject me to hate and a whole mass loss of followers but I had to get this out. I had to write it down. Its so difficult to express how this show makes me feel. I dont wanna be the one you all roll your eyes at and call a negative anti but I also don't understand how everyone else seems to have slipped so easily back into old habits.

I wanna scream at everyone not to be fooled. But I dont wanna stamp on other peoples joy either. So I guess I gotta remove myself from the equation here. Fool me once etc etc.

Im gonna have to unfollow some long term mutuals, especially those that arent tagging content. If you correctly tag every winchester related post and reblog then at least my filters will block them, but if they slip through im gonna have to unfollow. I cant be having 10pm meltdowns over SPN at this point in my life. Not when there is so much good stuff out there to be focusing on instead.

[just-antithings]

for webcomic anon-

you can make an 'original work' on ao3: images need hosting somewhere else (that allows explicit, offensive content) and you'd need to learn a bit html to make sure the images display well on mobile (and desktop if they're too wide for it too); good moderation tools and comment sections; unless you plagiarize or harass people it won't be taken down and you won't be suspended and no one can report you for anything antis would. don't link to commercial sites or write about money, donations or payment, but you can tell people where to support you and link to a page (on tumblr, twitter, carrd, linktree, etc...) with links to commercial sites (preferably in the notes of each chapter).

I got pdf zines on itch.io: it allows nsfw; a single product page is set to a 10 files limit (unless you request to lift it (and 20 products limit unless requested to lift that)) and you can set the price to "pay what you want" (and the percentage itch.io gets can be set to 0) according to the faq. comment sections are per product, not per file.

you could go to patreon and make posts set to free or a paying tier but their stance on nsfw isn't clear imo and the tag system is a pain; there is a minimum percentage for it. the comment section might be bare ime.

if you want it to feel more like a webcomic even if it's on download only you could make the pages html files with minimal coding skills (you can get them on w3scools.com).

you could also code a neocities.org site (requires more html skills (and css skills for efficiency) but it's less hassle for readers who would need to download files (and depending on the code, into the exact same folder; also easier to correct or change things when it's in one website as opposed to files people will have to re-download and replace)); it allows for sexually explicit and offensive materials according to the terms. you can pay monthly for a domain (p sure the options are cheap, research the providers); if you want a comment section I think you'd need to find a way to add-on disqus comment sections or something like that (price may vary).

you could also try dreamwidth.org (I think you'd need to host images somewhere else because of size limits (adult content terms may vary)): set posts to +18 if needed, with good moderation tools. this post has finr's general experience with the site with regards to offensive material and some other anecdotal cases with a way to ask for more information (with a confidential option).

I won't recommend ko-fi because they don't allow nsfw, and not gumroad either because while it does allow nsfw their ceo blew a gasket on twitter (look for screenshots of deleted tweets) after an artist revealed they quit for being asked to make nfts. (pretty sure you won't bother making a google site or post to reddit and I wouldn't either.)

[ao3 is a non-profit so no nfts; itch.io's stance on nfts is that they're a scam; patreon is doing surveys with its creators so unclear; no substantial search results for 'neocities nft' on google or twitter, ditto 'dreamwidth nft', I think they won't make or promote them.]

there are probably more options to look for (digital shops, blogs, site hosting...): do your own research on all of the options' tos and business practices; look for tutorials and instructions made about the ones that suit your needs for a general overview on what they're like to use.

promotion still needed, but I think if you make clear that's it +18 and not detail those aspects antis would miss you entirely if you don't post suggestive/explicit content on social media. remember to content warn on the platform the webcomic is on (turn on 'I'm 18' permissions if available and tag 'adult content' or '+18' if not).

good luck <3

here you go anon!

[toaster-hair]

i try my BEST not to let fandom get in my way of how i view ships bc i always see ships in a non canonical way. so if you want you can fold a ship into whatever way you want whether its aus, fix it fics, or whatever. i especially try not to let the popularity of a ship get in the way of how much i like a ship, im very fond of rarepairs and crackships but i dont consider myself someone who cant bring themselves to like popular ships or even brags about liking.. ANYTHING that isnt mainstream

but there comes a POINT where when ALL of the content you see for a character youre fond of is ABOUT A SINGLE SHIP that you start hating the ship and maybe even the other character involved. it hurts even more when its a ship you fell out of love with.

yes, im talking soudam AGAIN bc kazuichi has rotted my brain so badly that i feel like i cant even go a single day without thinking of him, AND I BARELY EVEN INTERACT W/ THE DR FANDOM ANYMORE. one of my ocs was just a genderbent au i made of him that looked distinct enough i just took it and ran. thats how bad it is. (tbh i do just like the color pink and... sharp.. teeth.. so thats probably why. hes pathetic too which just makes it x2 as good)

look, i dont think that ppl who ship soudam are inherently bad ppl. i dont really care about what ppl ship as long as theyre 1) not shipping real ppl and 2) not shoving it in other peoples faces. and i dont see any soudam shippers directly doing that. i was a soudam shipper, and honestly, i can see why ppl ship it. its an interesting dynamic.

bbbutt.. i dont ship it!  i personally dont care for it anymore, or even just general dr stuff. i should probably get into dr stuff more sense i feel like other than skullgirls and cookie run, im a bit lost when it comes to fandoms nowadays. but i still really like kazuichi and, by extension, sonia and their ship sounia. so every now and then i look for content abt them whether its for comfort or horniness, or just bc i want to. and a big theme i see is soudam. everywhere. its not unbareable especially on a site like tumblr where i can block certain tags and words. but even with that blocking, soudam can still clog it up meaning its harder for me to find content i like.

its even worse when some of that content is intentionally made to spam tags. an example would be what happened on instagram a while back, im not sure if that many other people noticed it, where ppl would spam dr ship tags with things such as “hey ur ship sucks xoxo”, feet, and in the worst case scenario, gore and self harm.

its even worse (take a sip everytime i say that) when you bring in stuff like antis and proshippers which, IS A CAN OF WORMS I DO NOT WANT TO GO INTO. i dont use either label, i hate antis but i really fucking hate proshippers. which is why i dont like ppl labeling all sounia shippers as proshippers because.. no. no i am not. you cant dictate what side someone is on in a silly shipping war based of a single thing they like. i know damn well there are sounia shippers who are proship, anti, somewhere in the middle, and the same can be said abt soudam shippers. which is why i hate how soudam shippers are seen as morally good and sounia shippers are seen as gross. i just wanna see some pathetic lil guy try and fail to woo a girl, i dont wanna argue about what ship is superior. neither are illegal, so they are both equal.  

in conclusion; there are and will be a lot of soudam shippers. i dont care. i just want to be left alone, but soudam is hard to ignore. dont try to call any soudam shippers poopyheads, lets all just try to be nice and respect one another. sorry if this seems like a hate rant, because it is. i am frustrated. didnt mean for this to become an 8 paragraph essay, but thats just what happened. 

[sp-ud]

I posted 54,074 times in 2021

12139 posts created (22%)

41935 posts reblogged (78%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 3.5 posts.

I added 17,941 tags in 2021

#spud liveblogs - 4533 posts

#asks - 4285 posts

#spud rambles - 3975 posts

#q - 1974 posts

#queue tag ig - 1010 posts

#spud originals - 572 posts

#critical - 466 posts

#dream smp - 449 posts

#spud school rambles - 371 posts

#ranboo - 306 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#this fandoms ableism 🤝 this fandoms weirdass obsession with making everything a family dynamic: c!slime i am so sorry u deserve so much be

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

Yo what’s penis smp?? I’m confused

the best tldr i can give is:

mcyt-neg person makes a post mocking how mcyt posts sound, making a joke about penisunavaliable and shittyfartbaby69 and an electric chair execution scene.

mcytblr (or more accurately, dsmpblr but the op just said mcytblr) finds the post and start going along with it. ironically. making posts self/twt mocking how we sound talking about the dsmp.

slowly more and more people start talking about this. and next thing you know there's way more that c!penis and c!shitty. and there's actual designs. and there's some semblance of a plot. its still very self/twt mocking, talking about c!-apolgists, c!-antis, shipping, talk of theortical ccs and their boundaries.

and then it starts slipping into a less ironic thing. all within a few hours. basically think of it as a nonsensical improv rp dsmpblr is doing where we rp as extreme fans of a rp smp that isnt real either.

2415 notes • Posted 2021-05-20 07:24:15 GMT

#4

all "kristen is death on the dsmp" aus/theories become so much funnier where you imagine her in her mc skin instead of any of the really cool designs fanartists give her.

like. oh my god, its her, the god of death.

3415 notes • Posted 2021-05-14 19:19:06 GMT

#3

shiny hunting but in minecraft (i think you can also ‘shiny hunt’ the brown panda, maybe)

3854 notes • Posted 2021-01-01 20:15:38 GMT

#2

/rp /dsmp

i just fucking realized. at least part of the reason tubbo doesnt hold the execution against techno is likely because techno was the only one who was actively trying to do something to avoid execution.

despite the fact techno was the one pulled the trigger, we also saw him do more to try and stop the execution than literally anyone else.

quackity made some comments about it being a bad idea to schlatt but nothing more.

wilbur actively wasnt helping other than false assurances and telling tommy not to intervene.

tommy wanted to step in but was stopped by wilbur.

but techno? techno spent a solid minute or two trying to stall. to get tubbo out of there. techno was clearly just as confused as tubbo when schlatt called him up to the stand. techno literally apologized to tubbo and did his best to make it quick, especially with a weapon he wasnt sure the effectiveness of.

4257 notes • Posted 2021-08-03 22:34:00 GMT

#1

the new snapshot (21w07a) changed how ores look.

im kinda glad they’re no longer the same thing recolored but like... damn... thats gonna take a bit to get used to.

36787 notes • Posted 2021-02-17 17:47:18 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[where-all-the-time-went]

gah, screw it

[ID: A tumblr post from me, reading, “now is probably the time to write my 500-word essay on the politics of revolution of the daleks that gets 30 notes and is never seen again, which i return to in a month to find a lot of typos, otherwise no one will see it, isn’t it,,, “but i haven’t seen jack robertson’s first episode,,,”. End ID.] answer: yes, it is. but im gonna take a while to write this and look up a summary of arachnids in the uk (which i dont wanna watch because i heard its Not Good and you dont have to watch every episode of doctor who to be a fan, ok?) i sometimes talk about politics on tumblr, but rarely do i make political posts--mainly because, as my sidebar bio says, i’m a teenager. i don’t really have a degree in politics, and as much as i have been trying to read up on political stuff, its kinda hard when i dont have access to a college professor to guide me along. still, some things about this episode stood out to me, especially because it’s stuff i’ve noticed in a lot of media. i’m not even sure where i stand politically, but i absolutely love media commentary, and i have so many thoughts i feel like i never get to put out there when im watching movies and tv. obviously, spoilers under the cut (and it probably won’t actually be 500 words. probably.) i’m also gonna assume you’ve seen this episode, because i don’t wanna recap it. if you haven’t, go watch it! tbh, it’s well worth it (my favorite chibs era episode, just ahead of the haunting of villa diodati and demons of the punjab)

Now, um, obviously this episode is political. It’s the in-your-face without down-your-throat type of political we know and love. Still, media can be a direct allegory that wouldn’t bother the average viewer while still having politics that are good, bad, or somewhere in the middle (I mean this extremely subjectively). First, I’d like to address the elephant in the room:

While a Doctor Who festive special would normally film in the summer, this time the episode was filmed well ahead in winter 2019, over a year before it was due to be broadcast in a bid to include it within filming for series 12 (which aired from January to March) and give cast a longer break.

- The Radio Times

I’ve noticed some people pointing out that the episode references the protests that happened this summer. Honestly, I’d love it if that was the intention behind the episode, because then maybe Chris Chibnall’s team really does have a TARDIS, and we can all just time travel out of this mess.

[ID: An image from “Revolution of the Daleks.” A very sleek Dalek stands in front of police who have riot shields. The air is foggy, possibly gaseous. End ID.] However, the protests from this summer and the episode itself do not exist inside a bubble. Police brutality did not come into existence this summer, and it did not end with the autumn equinox. The episode, while featuring a small-scale protest that was eerily reminiscent of the large BLM protests this year, chooses to focus instead on one of the roots of the issue: somehow, capitalism.

I can’t say how purposeful the anti-capitalist messaging in the episode was. Obviously, Jack Robertson is meant to be an American capitalist caricature. Not to mention, Doctor Who is a family-friendly show: you can’t get too overt with what can be considered “radical” coding. Nonetheless, the episode tackles the connection between policing and money, and thus inherently comments on capitalism. 

The Dalek itself only exists to support the police force because Prime Minister Patterson knows that the idea of security will appeal to her constituency. Simultaneously, it could not exist if Robertson didn’t know just how profitable it would be. As they preach security, they create chaos. More importantly, the security they preach is one that bases itself on profit--similar to the weapons of the policeforce, and the prison industrial complex. As a result, the “security” inevitably fails.

[ID: Prime Minister Patterson, in a red coat, listens to Jack Robertson and Leo, in dark neutral-toned clothes both. They stand in front of a brick wall as they discuss the new Dalek plans. End ID.] Unfortunately, while the show presents a clear stance against money in policing, there is never any direct call to action. The political allegory may be straightforward and obvious, but the solution at the end is just to end the Daleks, and watch as Robertson announces his run for President (which, by the way, is very reminiscent of Trump, who does exist in-universe, so that’s weird). Regardless of all that, why am I even talking about this? Well, on the one hand, I love talking about these sorts of things. On the other hand, this post has started to sound like nothing but a rant with some pictures. Earlier, I said that this was something I noticed in a lot of media. For instance, I think of “The Boys,” with its obvious anti-capitalist and anti-military industrial complex messaging. At the same time, the show offers no solutions. Both are afraid of the obvious solution to capitalism: replacing it. To be clear, I say this as a person who is unsure about capitalism. I don’t know where I stand. Like I said, I’m a teenager. However, these shows can’t seem to make a decision either, when they're made by big companies with big budgets and professional adults. Politics in popular media tends to fit perfectly with the popular politics of the time, given that media must do so in order to make profit. Hence, similar to the media we consume, so many individuals seem to recognize that there’s something off with the hand money has in politics, and war, and security, yet no one seems to look for solutions.  Personally, I love talking about politics in the media, and analyzing media in general, because it’s the best way for me to communicate my internal thoughts. Meanwhile, I don’t even know my own internal thoughts. This post’s very existence is ironic. I had said in a very awful post that I wanted to write this when the tag was still trending, because I, in part, want someone else to do the thinking for me. I want people to see this and go, “well, okay, here’s where you’re wrong,” or, “here’s what we do about it.” Do I then have a responsibility to know what I’m talking about? Is the discourse all that matters? Does the media as a whole have to propel revolutionary ideas to get them into the social conscience, or can it just open up discussion?  There is, of course, irony in shows that could only exist in a capitalist world degrading aspects of that system. But no one, not even me, is exempt from the fact that these ideas do not exist in a bubble. The show’s protests look eerily familiar because, as this summer has proven, those protests are profitable (see literally every ad from companies that own sweatshops talking about how much they care about races they don’t represent in their board of directors). At the same time, I exist in that capitalist world, and my opinions have been formed via the capitalist media I was raised with. tl;dr: i know literally nothing. im sure of literally nothing. help, someone tell me about the politics of doctor who. wow, this was a really sad tl;dr, i normally make a shitty joke here. um, uh, EXTERMINATE

[l0chn3ss]

l0chn3ss update

I feel like the last time I ever really active on tumblr was in the year 2016, so i want to address my absence between 2017-2020. Part of it is because I feel like I owe it to my friends and mutuals who I just basically left on read and another part is because I’ve always treated this blog as a personal blog that documents my life and my growth. I put off writing this for a long time but now that I have a huge paper due, now is definitely the time.

You are welcome to skip but I will address a few hard hitting questions I feel should be answered, especially since I feel like I departed like an anti-hero of a bad tv show.

Where I am currently: I am in grad school to obtain a master’s in library and information science. I have a full time job at different middle school libraries, though I work from home now. I also tutor kids on the side to pay for my tuition because I basically make minimum wage. Quarantine messed with my head at first, but now I’m feeling much better and I’m trying to reconnect with friends and close a lot of loose ends.

TLDR: I took an extended break because tumblr mobile sucks and my laptop needed serious repairs. I made a huge migration away from social media in 2018. I prioritized my education and in-person connections, which fell to shit because of my fandom involvement in the past. I did not like the direction of the main fandom I participated in and knew that many of the people I once respected did not respect me in return/ Us versus them mentality. I recognized that I treated my life on tumblr too seriously and took petty drama personally. I am sporadically on tumblr now because I genuinely enjoy the social connection and because I still like running fandom events.

Yes, you can reblog this. I’d love for this narrative to be heard.

Long version: To preface this, this post is being written to give myself closure and because I really am procrastinating on my final big paper of this semester. I’ll be tackling on the points in the tldr in a longer narrative that will appear to be in an expository fashion, which I recognize will be a source of contention, but my intentions are to throw it onto the table so that I can be freed. I can let it go and move on. I’m no longer a 20 years old who cared too much of what other people think and will think; I think differing perspectives are important and I want to give myself a chance to say my piece. That and I recognize that I lost the audience that I once had, so I doubt this will be an issue at all. It’s been 4 or what ever years, let’s just not.

Back in 2015-2016 there was a huge back and forth between three groups of people in the SE fandom. The reason why I’m not listing out the name is because I don’t want this to show up in the tags. I’d say that the three groups could be seen as quite literally the soma shippers (mostly white, demi sexual girls), lgbt centric bloggers (very kid or star oriented, very fed up with soma), and the people who were deemed as alright to soma shippers (c r ona, ste inm arie, jac k im centric people). There was a constant (and understandable) tension between the first two groups while the third was like the weird cousin that everyone in the social circles liked because they sprinkled in soma for the masses. Don’t argue with me on this-- this was literally how the fandom was in 2015 and you know it.

The main issue was that one group felt that they were being inclusive towards identities and sexualities while the other felt that they were not. I remember that one of the arguments was that soma WAS an LGBT ship because people headcanonned the members to be demisexual. However, the other side of the argument was that it wasn’t good representation of a gay pairing. Now that we can look back at this 5 years later, I have two things to say: 1, I now very much understand why the argument broke out because of how heated the topic is, and I do believe that I lean more towards the “other side” now that I’m not wearing rose tinted glasses, but 2, I need to make it clear that demi people are lgbt, but a headcanon is not fact and ship diversity was the main question at hand, not the ship itself. This argument lasted for weeks, destroyed my friendships, and no matter what I felt I did in the moment (which was to mend the fandom), it was taken as an insult.

(Side note: Somethings that I remember was being in someone’s DM’s to encourage them to participate in the large fandom events more, but once they twisted my intentions and rallied their friends, I became their enemy. I also became the mods’ enemy but then again, when was I not? I was made fun of for saying “queergender,” a term that is now currently being widely used, quite openly by someone I wanted desperately to be friends with. I was outwardly mocked by popular users who only apologized behind closed doors but didn’t bother to clear things up with their followers. Adults who were in their 30s quite literally attacked a 19 year old. It was in that moment that I realized I would never become friends with either side, and not because I didn’t want to.)

I bring this up because as I begun to stop writing soma fics, I also begun to see and understand why people moved away from it. It wasn’t the ship itself, it was the culture surrounding it. However, on tumblr we have the ability to connect intensely with the content we produce. Therefore, the ship itself began to be connected with the shippers and their attitudes towards outside pairings-- that attitude being tied into elitism.

I say this with every ounce of love I can because I once had the exact same mannerism. When you become so tied into one pairing to the point where other ships appear to threaten the existence of it and you react negatively towards it, you become rancid. The popular tag “everything is soma” takes a very dark turn. Even if readers consume another pairing’s work, they will be obliged to say “I ship soma more BUT that was cute.” They will read an entirely different topic and wonder why soma wasn’t inserted into it in the background. They will reject pairings that separate the two as if breaking them up is sin and an insult.

The only reason why I stopped writing my soma fics in 2016 was because I saw a real need to fill in the gaps of other pairings. I took what people were saying to heart and I wanted to change my ways and my perceptions. I saw the animosity of the ship culture and rejected it. I wanted to use what little influence I had to make the fandom just a bit more accepting. In 2016, I don’t think the fandom was ready for it. In 2017, they still weren’t ready for it. In 2020, I see hope, but I wonder sometimes if it’s masqueraded pity because of previous treatment.

In the middle of it all, I went from being the soma angst master to becoming the weird person everyone once knew. I was the friend that people excluded from group chats and I just “wasn’t the same.” Cliques grew extremely large in power in 2017 and exclusion hurt like a bitch.

The straw that broke the camel’s back and completely shut me down was in 2017 when I was graduating as a bachelor. There was a fandom event that I decided to go all in to. For context, there used to be a huge debate on how many times a person should enter in an event, but in my mind, the more exposure the better. My graduation and the event took place at the exact same time, which was cool, but what hurt me was what happened after.

I was lucky enough to be accepted into field school (when you travel to do outdoor excavating) for my major. I’m an anthropologist-- it was an honor. I didn’t plan in advance for it, and if anything, I thought that I would be committed completely to the events and my 5 or what ever entries at the time. I’ve always prided myself in communicating with others, so I made sure to let my partners in the event know what was going on. I was so excited to be going on my first ever excavation and no one at the time said anything otherwise, in fact, they all seemed incredibly supportive. 

What I didn’t know was that I would be called out by name in the event feedback response by one person who felt that I didn’t take the event seriously enough and that I should’ve prioritized my time accordingly. Two of the mods let me know because it referred to me directly, though the name of the submitter was not included. It was not only a slap in the face, but a dumbfound moment that reminded me that wow, fandom content really is someone’s life out there. My enforced silence because of lack of internet in the woods actually upset someone and made them believe that I wronged them, because I put my real life ambitions first before a fandom event.

It was then when I woke up and I remember very clearly thinking to myself: I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to treat my fandom life seriously. I want to participate in fandom for fun, not out of duty. I don’t want to prioritize this life because in the end, if I am hated for putting my work and education first, then I don’t want it.

(For context, I suspect that it was the same person who made a 200 note call out on me during the fandom tension. I respected this person immensely, but I also treated them like the flawed person I believe everyone is. I’m sure because of this, I’m pretty much trash in their eyes, which is totally fine. They have really cute cats so they can’t be all too bad. Don’t look into it too deeply.)

Once my month long field school was up, I was already used to not being on the internet or any of my social media accounts. I didn’t play my mobile games for a month. I didn’t read the news for a month. It was like going cold turkey on the internet, which reshaped my habits entirely. The only time that I had online within that time span was during the weekend, but I spent my time working on my projects and catching up with friends instead of being on apps.

I was also completely fed up with tumblr’s mobile app at the time, so one by one, I deleted my apps. Good bye to tumblr, snapchat, what little I used of instagram, twitter, everything. The only thing I kept was facebook, which was because it is the main platform that I use to message my boyfriend. That meant that any friends I retained from the fandom (who I still contact now) were also friends who had the chance to add me on facebook.

This was the cause of my 2 or 3 year hiatus on tumblr, and therefore the fandom. I occasionally checked back every 6 months to do a few fandom events, but I have several unopened messages and notifications that I haven’t been able to get to. I open my instagram for a few days once a year, and I only go onto twitter if my friends tell me (through facebook) that they dm’d me a post there.

When I left my online persona behind, I quickly strengthened my in person connections. New drama that erupted every other day became replaced with starbucks and boba runs. Reality TV shows replaced fanfiction. Text messages replaced the tumblr activity feed (which still doesn’t work on mobile BTW). I study at cafes unironically with friends instead of typing alone in my room. Overall, it opened my world considerably.

I still like making fun of myself and I try not to take myself seriously. I still make self depreciative memes to send to friends but then double up with kermit heart pics. I’m still a plot bunny, I still write my fics, I still watch my anime, I still play video games, I still sleep at 4am, I still take my depression medication, I still love potatoes, I still use my voice for people who can’t find theirs yet. But I think I’m in a much healthier mindset now, even if I still make stupid shifty posts calling out bad behavior.

Nowadays, I’m working on my Master’s degree in secret. My parents don’t know about it because my mom doesn’t like that I want to go out and do unladylike things like getting an education. I tutor kiddos and I’m really good with younger children, but I’m not going to do anything with kids because I just don’t want to. Instead, I want to work at an archive or a museum to bring my library interests and my anthropology background together. If I had my dream job, I would be a marine archaeologist; however I love my boyfriend of 8 years whom you probably all remember and I really came to terms with my grandeur dreams. I’m extremely happy with living in a small town with loved ones now, and I don’t need to move somewhere far away from my parents to be content. It’s a huge realization.

From 2018 to 2020 I got into actual drama in person while I was job hunting. Adult people suck and honestly it’s kind of embarrassing how ill equipped some people are. Even so, I currently work in middle schools as a media assistant. One of those realms is the library, and honestly it’s like fulfilling a prophecy. As much as I love the social aspect, public schools are an absolute train wreck.

I’m going to wrap this up now. This post is meant to help me close the past and move forward because the fandom culture feels different now. Things from several years ago don’t need to resurface. I want to enjoy my life fully, and fandom life is one of those aspects that I truly did enjoy. I’m going to keep using my voice and act like a fool, but I’m also not going to be losing sleep because of this. People are going to talk about you no matter what, whether positively or negatively, and it’s important to not take it personally.

Idk, go enjoy yourselves. Do things for yourself. It’s more fun that way.

[midsvmmars]

anyway i miss writing so heres a big mess of a list of plots i want to do like and i’ll hit you up!!

first things first i only really rp on discord cuz the new tumblr dash annoys me and i usually prefer mumus cuz i love the peak drama of intertwining drama and not doing just ships but friendships, enemies, etc and i suck at talking in tumblr ims so if u wanna just message me on discord im anti chad michael murray#2297 but if ur too shy to message first i’ll still message u on here then we can exchange discords ❤️

this is rlly gonna be a rambly mess but i play any kind of gender identity and any kind of pairing but also pls dont just use me for playing males or have certain ships be fetishy it makes me v uncomf

like i said above im rlly big on mumus and prefer them and because of that i also love going based on chemistry like ofc plot things ahead of time but i like still leaving enough open to see where it goes naturally and be surprised by ships/friendships/rivalries etc

i love playing oc’s or canon characters and when it comes to canon charas i love doing either mumus without one universe or even a mumu just of any random canon charas (ive never been in a multifandom rp but kinda like that i guess) and i think thats rlly fun cuz seeing random pairings from characters from universes you’d never expect is so fun so if you’d be down to do smth like that !!

here’s my pinterest any characters, ships, universes, etc are what im most likely willing to play (but theres so much more) and my main oc’s are there so look at this if anything catches ur eye or u want to get to know some of my character types  OKAY SO U CANT LINK TO SHOW IN THE TAGS BUT MY PINTEREST IS MELLIESGRANT THE PFP IS CHER FROM CLUELESS

okay now more some plot types im looking for!!

i’m really into anything horror (a mumu of horror characters from any movie/show/book/game/etc pls), dark academia, supernatural, mystery, southern gothic, etc, BUT on the flip side i’d also be down to do just a mumu of like people in a small town or college or smth

pretty much my two passions and main vibes for rp also are: horror or 00s teen drama

i love supernatural stuff but im a big sucker for vampires and their lore so i’d love smth inspired by the worlds of vampire the masquerade, true blood, salems lot, from dusk till dawn, or buffy

more horror ideas: silent hill or until dawn type plots?? PLEASE

also a veronica mars type plot?? outcast private investigator and someone they hate having to work together to solve a crime for someone they both cared about and serving enemies to lovers yes please

a stranger things inspired mumu?? yes please

also here’s my tag for wanted ships so you can see types of ships i like or if you want to rp any of these or smth inspired by them!! OKAY LIKE I SAID ABOVE U CANT TAG THINGS BUT THE TAG IS WANTED-SHIPS SORRY

HOUSE OF ANUBIS INSPIRED MUMU PLS

my main fandoms/canon characters i play ig is snicketverse, cartoons, horror, and comics ig?? also teen dramas?? IDK LOOK THROUGH MY PINTEREST I LINKED EARLIER FOR THE SPECIFICS but im always open to more too hehe

so like i said this was a mess idk if any of this made sense but if youre reading this rn and somehow it did make sense and u wanted to do one of these things like this and i’ll hit you up!! ty!!

[star-anise]

do you have any sources on the claims you made? im always willing to change my stance if you have legitimate backing for it haha

So first, I’m sorry for blowing up at you the way that I did. I’m not proud that I reacted in such a kneejerk, aggressive fashion. Thank you for being open to hearing what I have to say. I’m sorry for mistaking you for a TERF, and I’m sorry my response has caused other people to direct their own hostility towards you.

So, here’s the thing. “You can’t call bi women femmes” is pretty intrinsically a radfem thing to say, and I am deeply opposed to letting radfems tell me what to do. I’m trying to write this during a weekend packed with childcare and work. I’ll try to hit all the high notes.

The one thing I am having trouble finding is the longass post I talked about in my reply, that was a history of butch/femme relationships in lesbian bars, which had frequent biphobic asides and talked about “the lesbophobic myth of the bi-rejecting lesbian”; the friend who reblogged it without reading it thoroughly has deleted it, and I can’t find it on any of the tags she remembers looking at around that time. If anyone can find it, I’ll put up a link.

As far as possible, I’m linking to really widely accessible sources, because you shouldn’t intrinsically trust a random post on Tumblr as secret privileged knowledge. People have talked about this at length in reputable publications that your local library either has, or can get through interlibrary loan; you can look up any of the people here, read their work, and decide for yourself. This is a narrative of perspectives, and while I obviously have a perspective, many people disagree with me. At the end of the day, the only reason I need for calling bi women femmes is that You Are Not The Boss Of Me. There is no centralized authority on LGBT+ word usage, nor do I think there should be. Hopefully this post will give you a better sense of what the arguments are, and how to evaluate peoples’ claims in the future.

I looked up “butch” and “femme” with my library’s subscription to the Oxford English Dictionary because that’s where you find the most evidence of etymology and early use, and found:

“Femme” is the French word for “woman”.  It’s been a loanword in English for about 200 years, and in the late 19th century in America it was just a slangy word for “women”, as in, “There were lots of femmes there for the boys to dance with”

“Butch” has been used in American English to mean a tough, masculine man since the late 19th century; in the 1930s and 1940s it came to apply to a short masculine haircut, and shortly thereafter, a woman who wore such a haircut. It’s still used as a nickname for masculine cis guys–my godfather’s name is Martin, but his family calls him Butch. By the 1960s in Britain, “butch” was slang for the penetrating partner of a pair of gay men.

Butch/femme as a dichotomy for women arose specifically in the American lesbian bar scene around, enh, about the 1940s, to enh, about the 1960s. Closet-keys has a pretty extensive butch/femme history reader. This scene was predominantly working-class women, and many spaces in it were predominantly for women of colour. This was a time when “lesbian” literally meant anyone who identified as a woman, and who was sexually or romantically interested in other women. A lot of the women in these spaces were closeted in the rest of their lives, and outside of their safe spaces, they had to dress normatively, were financially dependent on husbands, etc. Both modern lesbians, and modern bisexual women, can see themselves represented in this historical period.

These spaces cross-pollinated heavily with ball culture and drag culture, and were largely about working-class POC creating spaces where they could explore different gender expressions, gender as a construct and a performance, and engage in a variety of relationships. Butch/femme was a binary, but it worked as well as most binaries to do with sex and gender do, which is to say, it broke down a lot, despite the best efforts of people to enforce it. It became used by people of many different genders and orientations whose common denominator was the need for safety and discretion. “Butch” and “femme” were words with meanings, not owners.

Lesbianism as distinct from bisexuality comes from the second wave of feminism, which began in, enh, the 1960s, until about, enh, maybe the 1980s, maybe never by the way Tumblr is going. “Radical” feminism means not just that this is a new and more exciting form of feminism compared to the early 20th century suffrage movement; as one self-identified radfem professor of mine liked to tell us every single lecture, it shares an etymology with the word “root”, meaning that sex discrimination is at the root of all oppression.

Radical feminism blossomed among college-educated women, which also meant, predominantly white, middle- or upper-class women whose first sexual encounters with women happened at elite all-girls schools or universities. Most of these women broke open the field of “women’s studies” and the leading lights of radical feminism often achieved careers as prominent scholars and tenured professors.

Radical feminism established itself as counter to “The Patriarchy”, and one of the things many early radfems believed was, all men were the enemy. All men perpetuated patriarchy and were damaging to women. So the logical decision was for women to withdraw from men in all manner and circumstances–financially, legally, politically, socially, and sexually. “Political lesbianism” wasn’t united by its sexual desire for women; many of its members were asexual, or heterosexual women who decided to live celibate lives. This was because associating with men in any form was essentially aiding and abetting the enemy.

Look, I’ll just literally quote Wikipedia quoting an influential early lesbian separatist/radical feminist commune: “The Furies recommended that Lesbian Separatists relate “only (with) women who cut their ties to male privilege” and suggest that “as long as women still benefit from heterosexuality, receive its privileges and security, they will at some point have to betray their sisters, especially Lesbian sisters who do not receive those benefits”“

This cross-pollinated with the average experience of WLW undergraduates, who were attending school at a time when women weren’t expected to have academic careers; college for women was primarily seen as a place to meet eligible men to eventually marry. So there were definitely women who had relationships with other women, but then, partly due to the pressure of economic reality and heteronormativity, married men. This led to the phrase LUG, or “lesbian until graduation”, which is the kind of thing that still got flung at me in the 00s as an openly bisexual undergrad. Calling someone a LUG was basically an invitation to fight.

The assumption was that women who marry men when they’re 22, or women who don’t stay in the feminist academic sphere, end up betraying their ideals and failing to have solidarity with their sisters. Which seriously erases the many contributions of bi, het, and ace women to feminism and queer liberation. For one, I want to point to Brenda Howard, the bisexual woman who worked to turn Pride from the spontaneous riots in 1969 to the nationwide organized protests and parades that began in 1970 and continue to this day. She spent the majority of her life to a male partner, but that didn’t diminish her contribution to the LGBT+ community.

Lesbian separatists, and radical feminists, hated Butch/Femme terminology. They felt it was a replication of unnecessarily heteronormative ideals. Butch/femme existed in an LGBT+ context, where gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people understood themselves to have more in common with each other than with, say, cis feminists who just hated men more than they loved women. 

The other main stream of feminist thought at the time was Liberal Feminism, which was like, “What if we can change society without totally rejecting men?” and had prominent figures like Gloria Steinem, who ran Ms magazine. Even today, you’ll hear radfems railing against “libfems” and I’m like, my good women, liberal feminism got replaced thirty years ago. Please update your internal schema of “the enemy”

Lesbian separatism was… plagued by infighting. To maintain a “woman-only” space, they had to kick out trans women (thus, TERFs), women who slept with men (thus, biphobia), women who enjoyed kinky sex or pornography or engaged in sex work (thus, SWERFS) and they really struggled to raise their male children in a way that was… um… anti-oppressive. (I’m biased; I know people who were raised in lesbian separatist communes and did not have great childhoods.) At the same time, they had other members they very much wanted to keep, even though their behaviour deviated from the expected program, so you ended up with spectacles like Andrea Dworkin self-identifying as a lesbian despite being deeply in love with and married to a self-identified gay man for twenty years, despite beng famous for the theory that no woman could ever have consensual sex with a man, because all she could ever do was acquiesce to her own rape.

There’s a reason radical feminism stopped being a major part of the public discourse, and also a reason why it survives today: While its proponents became increasingly obsolete, they were respected scholars and tenured university professors. This meant people like Camille Paglia and Mary Daly, despite their transphobia and racism, were considered important people to read and guaranteed jobs educating young people who had probably just moved into a space where they could meet other LGBT people for the very first time. So a lot of modern LGBT people (including me) were educated by radical feminist professors or assigned radical feminist books to read in class.

The person I want to point to as a great exemplar is Alison Bechdel, a white woman who discovered she was a lesbian in college, was educated in the second-wave feminist tradition, but also identified as a butch and made art about the butch/femme dichotomy’s persistence and fluidity. You can see part of that tension in her comic; she knows the official lesbian establishment frowns on butch/femme divisions, but it’s relevant to her lived experience.

What actually replaced radical feminism was not liberal feminism, but intersectional feminism and the “Third Wave”. Black radical feminists, like Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, pointed out that many white radical feminists were ignoring race as a possible cause of oppression, and failing to notice how their experiences differed from Black womens’. Which led to a proliferation of feminists talking about other oppressions they faced: Disabled feminists, Latina feminists, queer feminists, working-class feminists. It became clear that even if you eliminated the gender binary from society, there was still a lot of bad shit that you had to unlearn–and also, a lot of oppression that still happened in lesbian separatist spaces.

I’ve talked before about how working in women-only second-wave spaces really destroyed my faith in them and reinforced my belief in intersectional feminism

Meanwhile, back in the broader queer community, “queer” stuck as a label because how people identified was really fluid. Part of it is that you learn by experience, and sometimes the only way to know if something works for you is to try it out, and part of it is that, as society changed, a lot more people became able to take on new identities without as much fear. So for example, you have people like Pat Califia, who identified as a lesbian in the 70s and 80s, found far more in common with gay leather daddies than sex-negative lesbians, and these days identifies as a bisexual trans man.

Another reason radical feminists hate the word “queer”, by the way, is queer theory, which wants to go beyond the concept of men oppressing women, or straights oppressing gays, but to question this entire system we’ve built, of sex, and gender, and orientation. It talks about “queering” things to mean “to deviate from heteronormativity” more than “to be homosexual”. A man who is married to a woman, who stays at home and raises their children while she works, is viewed as “queer” inasmuch as he deviates from heteronormativity, and is discriminated against for it.

So, I love queer theory, but I will agree that it can be infuriating to hear somebody say that as a single (cis het) man he is “queer” in the same way being a trans lesbian of colour is “queer”, and get very upset and precious about being told they’re not actually the same thing. I think that actually, “queer as a slur” originated as the kind of thing you want to scream when listening to too much academic bloviating, like, “This is a slur! Don’t reclaim it if it didn’t originally apply to you! It’s like poor white people trying to call themselves the n-word!” so you should make sure you are speaking about a group actually discriminated against before calling them “queer”. On the other hand, queer theory is where the theory of “toxic masculinity” came from and we realized that we don’t have to eliminate all men from the universe to reduce gender violence; if we actually pay attention to the pressures that make men so shitty, we can reduce or reverse-engineer them and encourage them to be better, less sexist, men.

But since radfems and queer theorists are basically mortal enemies in academia, radical feminists quite welcomed the “queer as a slur” phenomenon as a way to silence and exclude people they wanted silenced and excluded, because frankly until that came along they’ve been losing the culture wars.

This is kind of bad news for lesbians who just want to float off to a happy land of only loving women and not getting sexually harrassed by men. As it turns out, you can’t just turn on your lesbianism and opt out of living in society. Society will follow you wherever you go. If you want to end men saying gross things to lesbians, you can’t just defend lesbianism as meaning “don’t hit on me”; you have to end men saying gross things to all women, including bi and other queer women.  And if you do want a lesbian-only space, you either have to accept that you will have to exclude and discriminate against some people, including members of your community whose identities or partners change in the future, or accept that the cost of not being a TERF and a biphobe is putting up with people in your space whose desires don’t always resemble yours.

Good god, this got extensive and I’ve been writing for two hours.

So here’s the other thing.

My girlfriend is a femme bi woman. She’s married to a man.

She’s also married to two women.

And dating a man.

And dating me (a woman).

When you throw monogamy out the window, it becomes EVEN MORE obvious that “being married to a man” does not exclude a woman from participation in the queer community as a queer woman, a woman whose presentation is relevant in WLW contexts. Like, this woman is in more relationships with women at the moment than some lesbians on this site have been in for their entire lives.

You can start out with really clear-cut ideas about “THIS is what my life is gonna be like” but then your best friend’s sexual orientation changes, or your lover starts to transition, and things in real life are so much messier than they look when you’re planning your future. It’s easy to be cruel, exclusionary, or dismissive to people you don’t know; it’s a lot harder when it’s people you have real relationships with.

And my married-to-a-man girlfriend? Uses “butch” and “femme” for reasons very relevant to her queerness and often fairly unique to femme bi women, like, “I was out with my husband and looking pretty femme, so I guess they didn’t clock me as a queer” or “I was the least butch person there, so they didn’t expect me to be the only one who uses power tools.” Being a femme bi woman is a lot about invisibility, which is worth talking about as a queer experience instead of being assumed to exclude us from the queer community.

[lesbian-octoling]

Hey guys, Xeno drama ((you know, about the banner and hate and whatnot)) below the cut if you don’t wanna see it!!! 

@mrkamabo--co Hello! I don’t know if you’re ever going to see this, but. It’s here.

First of all, yes, it’s me! lesbian-octoling, rhi-draws-things, whatever you wanna call me. I’m making this because I’ve heard through a friend of mine that I trust that you are a relatively good person, and while I don’t agree with everything you’ve done, I figured i might as well try to clear things up between us.

First off-

I’m sorry.

This is a 100% genuine, formal apology. I am sorry your medical issues are acting up, I understand completely. I had and almost identical use (albeit with chemical imbalances making me throw up, instead of breathing/heart issues, but both caused by stress), so I get it.

I’m not here to stress you further. In fact, I’m here to try and resolve the issue. I don’t want you to feel the way you do, and I don’t want to start more drama. I should know, i’ve been receiving nasty shit for a while. If you don’t want to read this- that’s okay! Don’t stress yourself, dude.

I just feel like this is important, because we never actually talked- and lack of communication often leads to violence.

But there are a few thing I wanted to address- first and foremost, the ‘xeno free zone’ banner, and the tags.

#‘you’re a coward cuz u wanna draw them with t^ddy’#i don’t do that in the first place lmao#and if you’re going to say:#'its actually scientifically accurate!’#nope it really isn’t #why?#why would squids/octopi evolve to have digigrades/muzzles/claws on their hands?#why would they look like goats with their eyes and muzzles?#they would have flat fish face!#have squid/octo hat heads!#like the third stage in their canon evolution!#exaggerate that if you want scientifically accurate squidlings/octolings/inklings!#otherwise.. yall just makin them into furries tbh#note: i have a surplus of fursonas#k peace

Ah, I hope you don’t mind me going off a bit, but I did want to say things!!!

Muzzles: Inkling beaks, IRL, are very long! they just look flat because.. well, squids are long! But if you put that into something shaped like a human head, they need a bit more room to stretch out.

Claws: they’re not actually claws, they’re hooks! Just like real deep-sea squids have hooks made of chitin that can retract back into their tentacles, which is why i made them like that. As you can see when they go back into heir squid forms, their arms and legs ARE just evolved tentacles!

Here’s a cool example of the hooks, as compared to some of my squid hands:

‘goat noses’: This is because… it’s not a nose! A real squid breathes through it’s siphon, which is one, large hole. That’s why their nose is like that- it’s not two nostrils, it’s one hole, but flattened down so it’s not just a big ol’ hole in their face. If it was, things might get into it, like dirt or bugs or.. i dunno.

Digigrades: admittedly, this is just because it’s fun, and theres no reason they shouldn’t. Any other similarities to cats is just… coincidental, really, as cats and squids have a lot of similarities (liking the sun, chasing lights, etc).

Eyes: Actually, this was a mistake. When i FIRST started getting into splatoon i was like ‘wait squids have horizontal pupils right’ and only found out later that no.. that’s octopi! But oh well, it was a bit late, eh? live and learn.

I’m not saying its fully scientifically accurate- hell, course it’s not! But its more biologically accurate than having them being made of ink. Mostly, I just think it’s fun, cus I’m a budding biologist and I think it’s cool to explore these concepts.

Ok! Thats all I gotta say. I just wanted a chance to explain myself, s’all! As for the banner itself… while it may have been joking in nature, I do think it was a bit rude. Kinda like swinging a bat at a hornet’s nest, yeah..? Like you said- “but yknow tumblr be tumblr, and i honestly expected This™”… you gotta watch out what you say sometimes. You could’ve made it more obvious that you were joking- putting ‘XENO FREE ZONE’ with bit red X’s and ‘feel free to reblog :)’ just has.. a very mean tone to it, and it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, regardless of your intentions. It really didn’t sound like a joke, to a lot of people, including me.

Though, maybe, we’re all just a bit wary- I’ve been receiving asks telling me to- quite literally- kill myself, multiple times, over this. I also know several friends who have gotten the same messages (a few of which don't even draw xeno, but simply because they are my friends). I think me (and other xeno artists, though I cannot speak for them) have a right to be wary, when we’re so used to being bashed. A lot of people are scared, and it doesn’t make what some people said right, I’m just… telling you why that massive backlash happened.

And by ‘massive backlash’…. if I’m being honest- and I don’t mean to make it sound trivial- a lot of the responses to those posts weren’t truly mean. Some people sent a clown meme, a lot of people responded with ‘why are you hating us, were just having fun’. A few were pretty mean, yes, but I could count them on one hand. These were light hearted in nature, and nothing like some of the truly nasty things that could’ve been said. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve received in my inbox…

I think a lot of this could’ve been avoided if your post right after had simply been an apology. Instead of playing the victim card, simply say ‘ah, that last post was a joke- i sincerely apologize, and I might’ve worded it poorly’. That’s it. And it could have been avoided if you said, in the tags ‘this is a joke post don't take it seriously’. But instead, you went on the criticize xeno aspects. Not saying you’re wrong, but pointing out why so many people took it the wrong way.

But.. the main thing I wanted to address was this post.

I.. can’t say I’m in the right, but I can’t say you are, either. I probably shouldn’t have made that post- but it was meant more as an off-hand joke. I didn’t mention you at all, as I didn’t want anyone to hate on you. It’s more of a running joke for my blog of ‘sexy tartar’, which is why it was funny enough that I brought it up.

#can’t feel safe#when i put an opinion out there#its easy.. to ignore a post yknow…? It’s also easy not to make a joke like that. Again- maybe you intended it as a joke, but it’s like one of those shitty april fools pranks where you tell somebody something bad happened. We got scared. Doesn’t make it right of us, but it doesn’t make it right of you, either.

But the ONLY thing I’m truly angry about- if you saying that ‘you, a minor, don’t feel safe because you’re being shat on by an adult’. The reason this makes me mad is because… I’m 18. Barely. And you’re 17. I’m… not even a full year older than you. I’m still in high school. The way you worded it made it sound like i’m a 32 year old getting off on sending hate to a 13 year old- and that’s not even close to the case. That is not cool, dude.

Anyway. Sorry about that, though I hope you can see why I’m.. unhappy with the wording. I’m trying to solve things here, not make them worse, ha…

And.. yes, I did block you. But not so you wouldn’t find out. You can still see my blog; i know this. I blocked you because I’ve been getting hate anons for the past few weeks, and I can’t be too careful with who I block. I’m tired of people telling me im ‘ruining the fandom’, so I tend to block at leisure, or when I have suspicion. And a big ‘ANTI XENO’ banner is reasonable suspicion, yes…?

Again, I apologize for that post, but i was not doing to to spite you, just because I found it funny. I didn’t contribute to the spreading of hate to you in any way- I am very anti-hate messaging, and very pro ‘block and ignore if you don’t like them’. Which is.. what I was trying to do, but I didn’t want to leave us on that sour note. I did not encourage anyone to ridicule you on your post, or send you any sort of messages and asks.The only people I complained to were my girlfriend and a select few close friends, who i KNOW would not participate in any sort of hate spreading.

I’m not asking you to be friends with me. I’m simply trying to clear off any misconceptions- I’m fully welcome to hearing what you have to say back. But…

All in all, I think the gist of what im trying to say is that we all made mistakes, and we should both own up to them. I’m very sorry about your heart condition- I sincerely, 100% hope you get better. And I’m hoping that by talking it out, we can clear things up and not let it stew..? I know that sometimes these things tend to eat at me until I fix them, and that is all I’m trying to do.

I’ve unblocked you for as long as it takes for us to resolve this issue, if you would like to move to DMs, or to discord. Either works. Or.. don’t respond at all, if you don’t want.

Have a nice night, and I hope you feel better!

[smoliboops]

so i woke up this morning (so apologies if i sound a bit off or groggy in this haha) but i awoke to a lot of posts discussing about “drama” and speciffically first saw @turquoisemagpie​ ‘s geniuinely curious post about the community’s status.

i’ll start off by saying 1) im also genuinely curious about all this. i care about this community and ive been in the tumblr one specifically for 4 years now, and this seems to be the first anomaly ive seen in my time here that hasn’t been one off but “underlying”.

2) im human, lol. i’ll be honest, ive never gotten involved with stuff like this (the only one i think would barely count was when the community was debating over anti’s portrayal back in december 2017). this is just what i think in as objective and analytical of a way i can place it, and it’s not wrong nor right. just my own thoughts. (also note, i have two exams tomorrow, so i  probs wont be on here afterwards anyway cos i need to study else i die lol, but i just wanted to chime in like anyone else would)

ok first point- the drama is not shallow enough to solely revolved around the intro outro changing.

it is not the issue itself; rather it is the situation, or window that is giving us a bigger picture in the new, wierd mood that the community has been in for a while. 

im human, but personally, in the large amount of time ive spent everyday scrolling thru the tag i have not legitamentely seen a post saying “oh i dont like that jack isnt doing the intro anymore im unsubscribing.” it doesnt seem logical to me that someone who dedicates themselves enough to the channel that they are a active member of the tumbtlr community, to throw all that away just for an intro.

what i have seen instead are 2 things:

1) usually when i scroll thru the tag and see a current hot topic, i try to scroll back up til i find the post that probably originally started it all. this, along with the first type ive seen in the tag, are people saying that “some people are unsubscribing cos of outro...how can they do that..they have to understand change is normal...people act like children sometimes...i cant believe it those people are not part of the community they should just leave...etc

2)the people i have seen saying “ah man i miss the intro and outro....i miss them it feels a little weird without them...i hope they dont go away forever i’d miss it”..etc

number 2 does not match with the people number 1 are talking about. unless i am wrong (i am human so if you have actually seen this on tumblr send me a link to the person’s blog or post) the people missing the outros have never said they would leave the community. Simply expressing a sentiment for something that has always been the norm that is now changing, that’s all it is for most people.

BUT, the misunderstanding/missalignment i see between 1 and 2, is that people in 2 is either being generalized/misslabeled/or lumped by others as the “leaving the community” group. and this can even apply to number 1, where some who genuine simplly want to say “the outro might be gone, but it’s ok to change” are grouped into the others saying “leave the community you kids dont belong here” and this is the window into the main problem i think in the community.

jack is changing. this is the happiest ive seen him be in 4 years and you have no idea how happy i am for him that he is choosing to take care of himself more and finding/discovering what he truly wants for himself, his style of commentary, the channel, and the community. 

No one wants to get in the way of that. not 1, not 2, no one here wants to legit do that because we all so so deeply care about him. he brought us so much happiness, friendships, friggin several couples proposed in front of him over the years cause he indirectly helped them find love. we care about jack so much, that as a community we’re trying our best to give him the best atmosphere to change. but it’s a big community, so of course people have different ways of doing so.

we love him fiercely, so we either protect fiercely or we speak up fiercely. and then the whole tag is on fire. you’re on fire. you try pouring comforting pics on it oh no that was gasoline help-

people want to help jack and the channel/community through feedback; if something is felt to be wrong by a person, they’d want to let the captain know that something’s amiss and how/why it is and if they can fix it.

people want to help jack and the channel/community by protecting/managing it; if we dont want to sink the ship, we have to keep up and remember the duties as a member what we should be doing so that if we see a hurricane coming, we can deal with it the best without getting the ship damaged.

both are good, you can’t have one without the other. without proper management the ship will sink, but if there’s a solution outside of protocol it should be considered. if the new idea/solution/feedback is faulty enough that it would put us at even greater peril, the rules serve as a guide of judgement in doing what’s best for the ship.

no one side is right on its own. if there’s no way of feedback or communication to the captain, or anarchy is assumed among the members and the captain is overthrown, the ship will sink.

cooperation is key. nothing is black and white, its gray and our relationship with jack is a conversation. 

agree or disagree, we need to not dismiss one in favor of ourself, we need to listen, be open, and use other’s ideas (whether good or bad, evil or rightous, selfish or selfless, or just plain neutral) in forming our own and vice versa, creating a cycle of healthy conversation rather than attacking or defending blindly. 

and as well, the captain has had years of hard work, dedication, knowledge, and experience to get to his position. and ultimately it is Jack who is the one to decide how to run this ship. there can be members whose feedback is unjustified, or even hate-filled. there can be members who feel a one particular way is the right one over all else . but Jack is the one who chooses what to take into himself and the channel. does he think this feedback is valid? he’s open to taking it into consideration. does he disagree with it? that’s ok too, he still decides what he’ll take from it, good or bad, and move on.

experiencing things, toxic or healthy, we as individuals have the power to choose what to take in, not take in, and how we proceed with the information we take in. the actions of others have no rule over you, you rule over yourself. you choose what to take in and how. if we restrain ourselves/others, or protect ourselves/others, from this, then that right to choose is taken away before we even get a chance to choose. we just become isolated and very very, very alone.

tl;dr: TALK, FOR THE LOVE OF ANALOGIES AND GOD AND EVERYONE, JUST TALK CIVILLY AND NORMALLY WITH EACH OTHER. WE’RE ADULTS. JACK IS AN ADULT. CONVERSATE. NO ONE IS PROBLEMATIC AND NO ONE IS UNPROBLEMATIC. WE’RE ALL HUMAN, WE’RE ALL GRAY. WE ALL LOVE JACK WE ALL LOVE THIS COMMUNITY AND WE’RE ALL SO VERY GRAY AND SO SO SO COMPLEX AND HUMAN. SO PLEASE, P L E A S E

why dont you just talk to each other....

[tumblunni]

Directator episode dub vs sub comparison! For no particular reason! Except i lov he!

First off we have the big obvious fact that his movie is clearly based on Journey To The West and the dub episode title still says that and their costumes are all clearly that, yet they still try and remove all references to it. Wtf! So yeah just a big overall change is that in the sub everyone is directly saying the name of the thing and Directator doesnt give everyone weird bootleg names. (And leaves nate as nate for some reason???)

There's also a bit of a voice change with all the new characters. Dub Directator has kind of a deep husky stereotypical western 'intellectual savant director' voice, while in japanese its not really anything special and just a similar goofy mildly nasally voice as most dorky villains get in the series. Think sub maddiman but younger and more hyperactive than cutesy, i guess? Or to picture it in dub form imagine a sort of coke bottle glasses cliche librarian stereotype + Screaming Very Loudly. So yeah both his voices are cute but i like the dub one better for how its a bit more specific to a hollywood character, and also a voice you dont tend to hear that often in a villainous role. And then the assistant yokai trio had a surprisingly big change! In the dub they have adorable squeaky komasan-esque mascot voices which fits their :3 faces but contrasts hilariously with how humanoid they are. In the sub they have the exact opposite and have very deep ordinary human voices that are hilarious being delivered while looking so cutesy! Theres also a bit more variation between them in the sub, one of them is just a norml deep voiced dude, one sounds shrill and screechy and one sounds ullllltra deep and perpetually grumpy. Yknow despite always smiling and all. The identical looking yokai in a dress during one of the later scenes also has a different voice here, so it seems she was meant to be a fourth assistant rather than one of them in costume.

Directator says a lot of Gratuitous English Words, all the bits of him yelling ACTIONNN and CUT CUT CUT were still there in japanese. So i suppose maybe he would be categorized as a Merican Yokai if he ever became playable?

Theres some dumb weird sexism in the Sudden Son Goku High School Au section in the sub. The various annoying students are all the same except the girls. In japanese their lines were "ohhhh nooo we cant carry all this stuff because we're girls, blablabla we have internalized sexism and think you boys are soooo much stronger" And then nate and whisper whine about how 'girls are always like that', always shirking work and being spoilt and lazy and reliant on men to do everything. Its dumb.

The bit where one of the annoying students embarasses nate by saying there's a hole in the back of his shorts is actually identical i.e there still is not any hole in the shorts and everyone acts like there is. Thats so odd! A similar continuity error in an earlier episode was actually the dub editing out a shot of underwear but nope they didnt do it again. The only dub edits at all in this episode seem to be translating text on the signs and stuff.

The inexplicable badass grandpa who is always everywhere being badass is surprisingly different in japanese! In the dub he's called the producer of Directator's compny, which is awesome and hilarious cos it seems totally in character for him to be off having random adventures with yokai offscreen and constantly defeating them at their own game. In the sub it doesnt have that element of accidental continuity with his first appearance defeating sproink, because instead he is...the journey to the west historical consultant!! Apparantly Directator hired a human to fact check this human story and he just ended up picking the worst possible candidate who enjoys trolling the fuck out of everyone. This gramps going 'yeah looks fine' to all this nonsense has a whole new context, and it also seems to imply Directator is more incompetant rather than intentionally changing the story. Either way though its still hilarious and this grandpa is the goddamn best!

And thats all the major changes, most of the rest is just a stray funny line being only in the dub or only in the sub. I'll try and screencap those later when i rewatch them on a bigger screen

Personally my opinion is that the voice changes in the dub ended up making the characters even more endearing, and most of the added jokes gave me a great laugh cos they referenced specific american filmmakers and stuff. But the japanese version has the advantage of not being this confusing inconsistant dumb attempt to censor the mythology it was based on. And their version of the grandpa gag made slightly more sense because of it. Though him being inexplicably the even more directory director bossman in the dub adds even more to his legend of badassery!

Also Directator as a name is a good pun but it feels like a bit of a bad change cos it doesnt have anything in common with his japanese name except also being related to movies. His sub name is Mister Movien which was like..its already english yo...?? And i just feel like 'hey he is mister something, this is his actual name' is a different vibe to 'The Directator With A Capital The'. Also its easier to search tags on tumblr for mister movien, for some reason directator gets you results for everything individually containing director and dictator also. Like wtf tumblr did you implement an anti punning filter??

ALSO more evidence for my theory that Directator is related to Hoaxy Coaxy: everyone wakes up at home after the film is over and thinks it was a dream, so that totally seems like Directator's powers work the same as Hoaxy Coaxy's. Also both of their sub names are two words both beginning with M. (Moso monmon and mister movien)

Anyway in summaary i am weirdly addicted to this random goofy hollywood dude who only had 1 and a half episodes and never returned. When u get so little screentime youre damn right im gonna keep rewatching it til i die!! HES JUST SO CUTE DAMMIT

[theshapeshifter100]

Guess What? I’m Not a Robot Ch42

Summary: Jericho and Android Allies talk, and Paul actually gets annoyed.

Chapter warnings: mentions of being shot, some strong language

Word Count: 1,588

11PM Monday 15th November 2038

The small space didn’t actually have that many chairs. Allison didn’t give a damn and sat down in one, while the rest of the humans either felt too awkward or just decided not to bother.

“Okay, er,” for once Alex sounded a little unsure. “Megan has a lot of the numbers written down, and is usually our note taker. Megan, are you...” Alex trailed off as they realised that Megan had already made herself comfortable. She sat propped against the wall using her knees as a table. Her sling was tucked against her chest and she scribbled out a title with her right hand. “... Are you good to go?”

Megan clicked the pen a couple of times and nodded, sending a thumbs up to the group around the pen. All without looking up.

Alex looked at Paul for a second, who nodded and shrugged. This wasn’t exactly surprising.

“Ooookay,” Alex turned back to the main group. “What would you like to start with?”

“We’ve been out of the loop for a few days,” Markus admitted, “can you tell us about the outside world?”

“Yeah, President Warren’s been hiding behind Congress as they try and figure things out. Not much has happened yet, although there has been word of an anti android protest being planned in Washington next week.”

“We’re so crashing it,” Allison smirked.

“Do you have the numbers for that?” Markus asked, concerned. “Connor told me there was only a few of you.”

“Megan, numbers?” Alex prompted, and Megan complied, staring resolutely at her pad of paper.

“Several thousand people responded to the anti android post across the country, which isn’t that many really if we compare to the total US population. Currently Android Allies has three chapters. Detroit has ten, California has ninety and thirty in Alabama. We’ve gathered some in the Phoenix and general Arizona area, but no official count yet. There’s some international support from Europe, but they have so far been silent.”

“So, not enough to crash a protest,” Markus summarised.

“We can counter protest,” Ivy suggested. “We just need to get it online and spread the word.”

“And you think that’ll work?” North asked, part curious, part incredulous.

“Never know until we try,” Alex responded. “Plus, we usually get good turnouts from random people walking by.”

“This protest wouldn’t happen to be scheduled for when we’re supposed to send an emissary to the White House?” Markus asked.

“No idea, when are you going?”

“In a few days time.”

“Okay, the protest isn’t until next week. Guess that isn’t public knowledge.”

“Apparently not,” Markus shifted for a second. “I was hoping to ask about a potential partnership between our two groups. I hadn’t expected you to all be, so young.”

“If it helps, Julia isn’t in school anymore.”

“Noted,” Markus filed that away.

“I don’t know,” Julia carefully opposed. “My uncle’s a Detroit Police Captain, it might reflect badly on him.”

“Nothing is set in stone,” Markus assured. “That’s what this meeting is for.”

They all continued to talk, and Megan continued to take notes. After some debate, it was decided that Alex would be the more public face of Android Allies, as they could handle attention better. Everyone else was welcome at Jericho and to fill in if need be. Megan would continue her role as note taker, even if it wasn’t entirely necessary, it was good for both sides to have a copy of events.

“Paul,” Markus came to him. “How would you feel being a go between with our two groups?”

Paul froze in place and Megan glanced at him. He wasn’t happy, in fact, he looked close to panicking.

“Ride the shitstorm,” she mumbled, intending for only Paul to hear. With her pen she began to tap a steady rhythm and Paul began to calm down. None of this had gone unmissed by North and Connor, both of whom were looking at Paul and Megan. Connor had an expression of confusion initially before it cleared, and North looked suspicious.

“I, I suppose that makes sense,” Paul unfroze. “I am the only android in the Detroit chapter and would I be correct in assuming that everyone downstairs would be more comfortable with an android?”

“You would be,” Markus agreed.

“I see, then I should accept.”

“We’re not forcing you,” Josh added. “If you really don’t want to do it, then that’s fine.”

“No, it makes sense for me to do it.”

“Very well,” Markus logged that away faster than Megan could write it. “I think this concludes most of what I wanted to talk about with you today.”

“Cool!” Allison stood up. “Anything else you need from us?”

“I would like to speak with Paul alone,” Markus stated, and Paul instantly looked at Megan, who had frozen for a split second before continuing to pack up. Without a word he held out his hand to help her up, and she took it.

“Thanks,” she murmured, still not looking at the other assembled androids.

“You okay with that Paul?” Alex asked, not sure if Paul had been paying attention.

“Yes, I was just helping the injured to their feet.”

“My legs work just fine,” Megan muttered.

“Then why did you accept my help?”

Megan mock scowled at him, both understanding that other side was messing around. “I’ll see you outside you big goof.”

“Don’t wait up,” Paul said, pausing at a soft squeal emanating from Alex. “Do you have to ship right now?”

“I ship all the time,” Alex had their hands clasped together in glee. “Anyway, let’s wait outside guys,” Alex waved everyone out and closed the door behind them. They all took seats at various heights on the stairs, Megan being closest to the door.

Inside North turned to Paul.

“So, what is your deal with these humans?” she asked.

“Deal?” Paul was confused. “There’s no deal.”

“Then why do you stay with them?”

“What North means,” Markus interrupted. “Is that you’re clearly a deviant, and have no reason to tie yourself to humans, but you still do.”

“And you want to know why,” Paul finished, falling into thought. “It is difficult to explain,” it wasn’t really, but he wasn’t sure if he could properly put it into words.

“Please try,” Markus prompted.

“I’m only really here because of Megan. We, understand each other, support each other. She needs me, and I need her.”

North didn’t look convinced. “What’s she got on you?”

“That I’m scared of dogs,” Paul smirked to make it clear that was a joke.

“So, you stay together out of mutual respect and need?” Markus tried to sum up.

“More or less. I’ll admit it is a little one sided, but Megan is the reason I’m a deviant.”

“What did she do to you?” North asked.

“It’s more what she nearly did to herself. After a period of decent mental health she began to spiral rapidly and turned to self harm. I panicked and stopped her, afraid that she might take her own life.”

“You still don’t owe her anything,” North retorted. “If anything, she owes you!”

Paul was started to get annoyed by her. “Did you see that her left arm was in a sling?”

“Yes, what does that-?”

“That’s from a gunshot wound at point blank range. Originally meant for me,” Paul was glaring at North now. “She took a bullet for me, and you can be damn sure that I would do the same.”

North was out of retorts now, and stepped back.

“I think that sums everything I wanted to ask you,” Markus admitted. “Except for one thing. How would you feel about coming to live with Jericho? With us?”

The question threw Paul for a second, even though it was a fairly logical one. He was an android in Detroit, makes sense for him to be here, and he could communicate with Android Allies remotely. Despite the logic, he felt an emotional response. A strong, negative one; one that almost hurt.

“I, I don’t think so,” Paul shook his head. “Thank you for the offer, but I don’t that would work for me.”

“She’s not forcing you to stay, is she?” North asked, and Paul’s face darkened.

“Megan has never made me do anything,” he growled.

“That’s enough,” Markus stepped in before things got out of hand. “Thank you Paul. Would you mind sending in Megan? I’d like to talk to her too.”

“Fine,” Paul turned and left, simmering with anger.

He let the door fall shut behind him and joined Android Allies on the stairs. Megan was the first over to sit next to him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, and Paul shook his head. “How about talking through the emotion?”

“I know what I’m feeling,” Paul snapped, and instantly regretted it, Megan was trying to help. “Sorry. North just pisses me off.”

“That’s impressive,” Megan smirked.

“Markus wants to talk to you. Just you,” he added when Alex started to stand up.

“Me? Why?” Megan asked, more than a little apprehensive at the idea.

“I forgot to ask,” Paul sighed. “Head in. I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?” she asked, and when Paul nodded she stood up. She walked hesitantly towards the door, and took a step back as Josh, North and Connor exited. She didn’t pay them any thought, and thankfully they left the door ajar.

“Come in,” Markus prompted, and Megan nudged the door open wide enough for her to slip in, and shut it behind her.

So, basically, Paul has to convince the Jericho crew that he and Megan are cool and there's nothing dodgy going on. And Megan's being anti social. I saw a post on tumblr about introverted characters remaining that way because it's not a thing to 'overcome', and my mind immediately went to the bit where she was getting ready to make notes!

You might be able to tell, but I'm not a big fan of North. I appreciate that you need someone to advocate the violent option and her backstory puts her in the perfect position for it. I just hate the forced romance between her and Markus. At best it's forced, at worst (aka when you go completely pacifist) it's completely out of left field and makes no sense. I understand that having multiple romance options was too much for the development team to handle, but surely there could have been an option for Markus to not be romantically involved with North? Sorry, it drives me up the wall... Other Options Flowchart

(Paul) Decline Markus's offer

(Paul) Be serious to North's probing. Be annoyed.

(Paul) Remain calm. Start shouting

Tags! @nightmarejim @septicart-appreciation