#just looked at some terf blogs. hateful

[better-in-pencil]

so tumblr just recommend a terf post to me, supposedly ‘based on my likes!’…. tumblr please tell me what the hell I liked, so I can unfucking like it.

Anyways while we’re here, a reminder, transphobes/terfs/radfems you are not welcome on my blog please fuck off

[euniexenoblade]

since we're talking about call outs lately, i've been called out many times, most of which are made from lies and sometimes by altering screenshots, but the most effective call out i ever got was like, in early 2015 there was a tumblr user everyone knew was a terf, but she would say "actually i support trans women" this was before crypto terfs were as talked about so the language wasn't really there to say "hey this person is a crypto terf." but yeah some people put posts of this woman on my dash and i made a random post on my blog "why do yall reblog her shes a terf" and of course she searches her own name daily, found my post, and replied to it that me calling her a terf was racist. that was it. no other interaction. but she went on all night talking about me being racist and just making things up as she went "oh i bet she says the n word all the time irl" kind of shit that had, like no basis? But her follower base took it 100% and i literally had thousands of anons telling me to kill myself, trying to goad me into being racist (didnt work), and the most concerning thing was i got hundreds of anons being like "what was the point of doing hrt if you still look like that, you should kill yourself." It was like, violent and overwhelming. and on top of it I'd get random young teenager trans people who followed her and bought into her bioessentialism showing up in my messages being like "you give trans people a bad name" "you're why transphobia exists" etc etc it was fucking crazy.

but i lost like, no followers because everyone around me understood, this woman was a terf. this all set up the real one though.

later in the year a teenage "communist" trans girl made some snarky comment about me being racist on a post of mine blowing up. i ignored her cuz like, who cares it's just some random teenager. but i guess people were looking for a reason to hate me cuz that blew up, lots of people just took that at face value no need to investigate. when someone finally did send the girl an ask being like "hey how is she racist" she replied "I dont remember but I know she is" and even more people just took this as 100%. the thing is, i do remember her being one of those "you make trans people look bad" terf following young trans people, it's not that she didn't remember, it's that she didnt want to admit she followed a terf and she believed a terf just saying shit. I lost like 3/4s of my followers, i had a lot of people i thought were my friends just stop talking to me, and going forward every time i got a call out there would usually be a line of like "also she's racist, everyone already knows this" all cuz this girl needed to make a snarky comment cuz she just loves terfs.

the thing about the "i dont remember" bit is it made some weird game of telephone. "I dont remember" became "oh she's racist, i think she says the n word" which became "she called black bloggers the n word" like people just made shit up about me and connected it to this call out. and when id be like this isnt true id be met with a "this is just known, youre a known racist" and it's like, to this day i will still find people be like "hey good on you for growing as a person and not doing that any more" and its like I NEVER DID IT TO BEGIN WITH

[romancerepulsed]

maybe this is a "hot take," but it's something i genuinely believe is true. aphobes can broadly be sorted into 3 categories: the uninformed, the bigot, and the bully. there is overlap between all 3, and i'm sure there are some people out there who are aphobic in a fun new way that i can't possibly conceive of yet, but i think these categories are fairly accurate and helpful for an aspec to recognize.

the uninformed aphobe is what it sounds like– they either don't know anything about the aspectrum or they've been fed false information about it. this is the only type of aphobe that is ever worth engaging with, and only to politely correct them and point them towards resources that would help them broaden their understanding. i'll be completely honest though: you'd be pretty damn lucky if you managed to actually singlehandedly change their mind. if they're not receptive to your corrections, simply move on. it's not worth the headache. you at least gave them something to think about.

the bigot, in contrast, is absolutely never worth engaging with. the bigoted aphobe is aphobic simply because aspec people are queer and they hate queer people. terfs famously used (and still continue to use) aphobic rhetoric as a sort of gateway drug for transphobia. the people who will argue that aspec folks aren't queer are often the same people who despise us because they associate us with queerness.

the third aphobe is actually the most common on this website, i think, and they're the reason i'm making this post. the aphobic bully may know full well the fundamentals of the aspectrum, but they will simplify and misrepresent it on purpose in an attempt to make aspec people look bad. aspec people have long been "acceptable targets" of bullying on this site for a reason that is fairly obvious to me but one i haven't seen anyone else point out: aspec people are largely neurodivergent. it's really no coincidence that ace discourse and cringe culture peaked at around the same time– they were one in the same, and the treatment aspec and autistic people received were (and still are) damn near identical. portraying aspec people as cringey teenagers who watched too many cartoons and are just too socially awkward for anyone to love them or whatever... it's a sentiment thats existed for years and years now. it took me a while to realize it, but this is why so many "tumblr funnymen" and other assorted popular blogs were/are aphobes too– they've got egos the size of china but they know they can't get away with blatantly picking on autistic people. so they'll hide behind a guise of aspec exclusionism, something that's unfortunately viewed as a real and valid ideology for someone to have. even aside from the thinly veiled ableism, bullies are always coming from a place of insecurity and projecting it onto other people. i've found that a lot of the most vicious aphobes are people who are struggling romantically or sexually. you can see them post about it, you can see even in the most recent discourse so many of these people are deeply stressed and hurt from whatever romantic or sexual struggles they're facing. to them, someone being unconcerned with those sorts of things is almost offensive because it means so much to them. they read it as a challenge to their own allo identity. so, why not take out that frustration on the aspecs?

it goes without saying that the bully isn't worth engaging with, either. they want to rile you up because it makes them feel better about themselves. don't give them that satisfaction.

[industrations]

one thing about your art which makes me uncomfortable is you make remus conventionally attractive. the fandom all agree remus lupin is a wet noodle of a man but actually no artist draws him that and it's getting weird. make him unattractive and he can be loved by sirius. he doesn't need to be that tall and buff like why do you always make him so tall to draw him next to sirius. is it because you're aware of the fact sirius is canonically tall? if so it's baffling indi, you just had the surgery but if you have some time you'd want to read it - www.tumblr.com/carlav-blogs/741256502359228416/i-hate-joining-the-fandom-discourse-because-i?source=share - and look deep inside of yourself and think again about your art. i know you can't publish it but i gotcha. good luck /gen

Hello!

I have been thinking about responding to this at all but it seems like i have a lot to say, so here goes.

Due to contrary belief i draw for myself. I draw for me because i enjoy it and it makes me happy. And if it makes others happy then thats a lovely bonus. I draw because i love the bit of magic and creative freedom of being able to put that on paper.

What i don’t do is draw for other people to give me validation or to give them satisfaction. What’s getting weird is that you are so upset over characters that are written by a terf. Someone that is extremely harmful. Characters that DO NOT EXIST.

I’m sick of this endless debate of "oh but CANONICALLY sirius was taller" who the fuck cares. In the movies remus had like a whole head on sirius.

You know whats the one wonderful thing about this fandom? Every single artists and writers version of these characters. They take them and make them their own. I love the way i can read 10 wolfstar fics and all ten of them are wildly different versions of them. They fall in love with each other unconditionally and i with them.

I’ve been told I’m not valid, that i don’t deserve to exist, that i should have DIED in surgery. There is really vile and hateful people in this fandom but you know what. I’m not here for you, my art isn’t for you it’s for ME.

I would like to say I resent this fandom but it’s brought me so much joy as well. I’ve met some of the most talented and wonderful people. I met my very best friend because of this fandom. I traveled places to see people i love because of dead gay wizards. I have found a place that is so wonderfully accepting. A queer community that I will never have in real life. The amount of freedom and expression is something that drew me in and will make me stay.

I hope you get the day you deserve, and I will continue my life where I live it for me and no one else <3

[but-a-humble-hellsite-user]

I created this blog for one purpose - civil arguments against radfems and/or TERFs (I've seen some people belonging to those groups use one, some use the other, and some use both).

It is my strongly-held belief that the online/Tumblr trans movement fails at discourse in several ways, most notably telling radfems/TERFs to kill themselves wherever they pop up. (Technically speaking, Tumblr users do this with everyone they deem problematic, but that certainly doesn't make it acceptable.) This helps no one, and fosters animosity everywhere, as well as normalizing this sort of extremely bad behavior.

I have a few other problems with the mainstream trans movement. If you've read this far, I hope it's clear that I am not a TERF/radfem, but seek to argue with them civilly instead of by saying "kys terf (look how strong my argument is 😎)"

I will try my best to be as civil as possible on this blog. However, I am a human being, prone to irrationality and bad behavior just like everyone else. If I fuck up and say something unacceptable, please do tell me.

That said, you will never see death/rape/anything-of-that-sort threats coming from me. Fun fact: it is staggeringly easy to not wish for people's deaths on the internet!* Just remember that's a person you're talking to and ask yourself "Do I really want to be this hateful and rude because someone said something I don't like?"

As of this post being written, I don't block people. I can't see this policy changing unless someone committed some extremely egregious offense** against me that merited it.

There are no DNIs on this blog and you'll probably never find any. That said, if you bring racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny***, homophobia****, or similar sentiment onto this blog, I will tell you to fuck off because that is very much not welcome here.

Lastly, I am trans. (I will probably never state more about myself than that.) I will acknowledge this. This means that, yes, I may find myself biased in some respects, and I will try to keep that in mind.

*Oh yeah, I will sometimes probably be sarcastic, mildly angry, etc. on this blog. As stated, I am a human being, so please tell me if I say something fucked up. However, apart from that, this is a blog that is civil, but certainly not one where I will never use humor, anger, memes, or normal internet user stuff. I have emotions.

**No, that is not equivalent to "someone said something I don't like". To me, "egregious offense" means "you put racist comments on all my posts" or "you sent death threats in my inbox" or similar.

***I mean actual misogyny. I most certainly don't deny that trans women face misogyny in unique ways, but there is nuance here and I am not about to go around claiming that any criticism of mainstream trans movements is misogyny. "Trans women are disgusting and should be killed" is (trans)misogyny, just like "women are disgusting and should be killed" is misogyny. "A lot of online trans spaces seem to be encouraging bad behavior" is not.

****Same with homophobia. "Gay people should go to hell" is homophobia. "Online queer culture sometimes promotes entitlement and here's why I think that" is not.

[olderthannetfic]

Re: discourse about using outliers / the worst examples of a group to justify generalizations-- this is also a problem with the femslash wank asks

I'm one of those filthy f/f folks who actually does want to see more femslash relative to mascslash, but I'm not anti-fujo or a terf or telling ppl to change their own tastes. I'm proship / SALS and kinkmato and I think fujoshi are great; I appreciate their massive contribution to fandom culture including AO3's existence itself

But some ppl seem like they just hate f/f fandoms generally and want a reason to bitch about us? and I've felt super demoralized by it whenever I read your blog lately

Like the complaints about f/f being too wholesome and fluffy and that this is somehow bad?? tumblr is C O V E R E D with cutesey fluffy bubbly m/m art using That Artstyle we all know and nobody complains about it. But when sapphic art is like this suddenly its cause we're boring sexless puritans who dont know what pussy should look like? The huge amount of kinky weird depraved f/f thats out there gets totally erased and the wholesome stuff gets scapegoated as a symbol of regressiveness.

Or the constant lecturing to "JuSt CrEaTe It YoUrSeLf" as if nobody who says they want more f/f would actually be making it??? How do you KNOW they're not making it? Are you stalking the tumblr of every ao3 f/f author to make sure they never expressed the opinion you hate , and vice versa??

Yeah a few awful ppl have been super obnoxious, terfy, or puritanical bullies with how they talk about this topic. But when you constantly bring those people up to demonize talking about it at all it feels like you're creating a taboo around it because you want those annoying lesbian feminists to shut the fuck up. Cause how dare we, right? How dare we express desire for something in a way that reminds you patriarchy exists.

You won't even let us express that we're bitter or sad about feeling like a minority even amongst other queer women. You won't let us express simple jealousy without interpreting that jealousy in the most terfy antiship bad faith way possible!

I won't defend those who actually harass ppl or moralize over ships. I won't defend anti-fujos. But when you constantly lump me in with those people just because I looked at AO3 stats and went "Hmmm, it would be cool if this was more balanced :/" or whatever it feels like you just don't want me to say anything at all

--

Is this about me personally? Yes, I agree that topics that are repetitive start to feel like an attack.

But with regards to AO3 stats, this is my pet peeve, as you probably know if you read here often, and I'm unlikely to stop being angry about it.

AO3 is extremely unusual in the history of fandom for being a very big, very multifandom site that is not m/m-specific but where m/m outnumbers other things. There have been large-ish slash archives before. There have been and still are other large, multifandom archives, from FFN and Wattpad, which are in AO3's weight class, to medium size ones like MediaMiner. The spaces that aren't m/m-specific generally have f/m vastly outnumbering m/m. They also make it harder to get stats than AO3 does.

I don't have an issue with people looking at overall fandom stats and complaining that f/f has the short end of the stick when it comes to fanfic broadly. I do object to people pulling only AO3 stats and going "The one anomalous clubhouse that looks like this is the problem" and pointing at m/m.

It's the same problem you point out, just in another direction. After being told "Okay, but the amount of m/m..." constantly for years, people are fed up and never want to hear it again. Even if it's phrased nicely. Even if the person saying it is also hurting.

[jellybeanium124]

Do you legitimately think men don't harass women in bathrooms? Like genuinely? Cause I can tell you right now, my middle and high school had shared bathrooms and the boys absolutely fucking harassed the girls all the fucking time.

To make fun of them when they heard period product wrappers and to make sex jokes.

I'd love to live in your world where people avoid eye contact in bathrooms 100% of the time, but alas, some of us live in the real world.

You not having a shitty experience with a predator or an abuser doesn't mean others have never experiences such.

I'm sorry that happened to you and I am aware this thing happens sometimes.

on an unrelated note, trans women are women. they aren't men. and they are much, much more likely (MUCH MORE!!!!!!!) to be assaulted than do the assaulting.

on a third unrelated note, you can go into whatever bathroom you want because there are no bathroom police. I (cis woman) have gone into multi-stalled men's bathrooms multiple times and nothing happened. I did not cross dress in order to do it. I didn't have to! because there are no bathroom police. I especially did not have to go thru the mega-hassle of getting T or doing any other sort of medical transition. I walked in there, boobs boobing, hair long, no make-up, and did my business and left. crazy how you can just like, walk thru doorways, huh. that's always the thing that gets me about your arguments. you can go into whatever bathroom you want, and so can everyone else, and the only thing stopping you are societal rules we impose on ourselves. there is no potty police. no bathroom brigade. no privy vigilantes. no can commanders. no facility fighters.

on a fourth unrelated note (brought to you by innuendo studios), you are falling for the conservative framework where bad things either happen, or they don't. school shootings happen or they don't. people either die from preventable illnesses or they don't. sexual assaults either happen or they don't. therefore there's no point to doing anything about it because you can't regulate evil. or, really, you can't regulate all evil. there is no world where every single assault, shooting, death from preventable illness, or whatever doesn't happen. you are leaving absolutely no room for scale. if one woman gets assaulted in the bathroom, then assaults happen and we all need to fear the penis!!!! when that's just not the world we live in. penises are not evil contraptions of the devil constantly trying to penetrate you. most people, regardless of gender, do not give a shit about you. most people mind their own damn business. nobody is out to get you. men are not constantly thinking about preying on you. they're probably thinking about football. or work. or music. or their kids. or shopping they need to do. or about their blorbos. or about plans this saturday they're looking forward to. or a million billion things that have absolutely nothing to do with you, some stranger they will never see again.

I'm not saying we should all go walk down strange dark alleyways at night hugging the wall but like... I am really genuinely sorry if you spend all your time afraid and angry. I've perused terf blogs on occasion. all y'all are afraid and angry all the time. and sure, that's just a tumblr blog. idk what you do offline. but anyways, you don't have to be afraid and angry all the time. you shouldn't be in a community that constantly affirms your worst fears in order to keep you afraid and angry. terfs prey on hurt, confused, scared women and tell them "yes, all men are evil!" and "yes, you are valuable just for being a woman!" and suck them into this ideology of hate (ironically this sentence is also a borrowed observation from the alt-right playbook, and maybe the fact that your movement does the same thing to you as the alt-right does to vulnerable, hurt, confused, and scared cishet white men should be a red flag but idk).

maybe that just sounds patronizing. but I mean it. you really don't have to be afraid and angry all the time.

but if you send me any more asks especially if they're nastier you're getting blocked.

[homocidalpotat]

Intro post under the cut! (because it's quite long and I don't want it to take up my entire blog)

Please read it though, I sorted it out so it's very simple to read :3

Basic introduction

The rest of this post is probably on the boring side, mostly personal stuff, and it's all grammatically correct (I think...).

URL stuff: I'm Homocidalpotat (Jokingly. I won't be killing anyone... probably. And, apparently, I am a human not a potato?! What a scam...). Currently on the search for EVERY potato blog!

Name: Call me Jasper, my chosen name, it gives me so much euphoria

Pronouns: They/them mostly but I'm happy with it/its, he/him and zey/zem

MBTI: INTJ

Basic DNI: Terfs, radfems, vent blogs, pedophiles, trans/homophobes, horny blogs, general haters, etc

Link to a list of the whole lotta them!!

Other blogs/side blogs/accounts

Please do have a look/follow at these!!!! <3

Note about some things I do not want to see on my blog

I won't post anything discriminatory on this blog. It upsets me and other people that might see it. I'm talking racism, homophobia, aphobia, sexism, terfs, nazis, all the horrible things and people that spread hate. I don't want it. Anyone in their right mind does not want it. Don't send me asks/DMs, or tag me in anything with that content. And please, for somebody's sake, correctly tag content like this. If you are posting about your hate for anything, tag it with 'anti-' before it or something along the lines of that. my

Note about me being a minor

Donations/gofundmes

I am a minor, so don't tag or show me anything that might not be appropriate. Literally anything NSFW. Anything 18+.

Please don't harass me (with spam, in my DMs/askbox, about ANYTHING)

As I'm a minor with no money I can't donate to any funds for any of the wars or any other things like that. However, I am very happy to reblog posts with funds etc, because that is something I can do to raise awareness and prompt other people to help financially (if they can). I might not reblog donation posts if there are triggering subjects on it. Please don't send me asks for donations/help, here is why I have said this

Credits

My header image is a screenshot I took of Tears of the Kingdom :) and I made my profile picture. Credit to @magicalboything for making the divider in this post. Thank you!

I am on the asexual spectrum. I am also genderqueer, so I don't mind what terminology or pronouns you use on me but I prefer more neutral ones. Thanks!!! I'm not sure how to label my sexuality, but I'm very much queer and very much in love with my partner, Erin- @names-confuse-me (they are very nice, you should say hi). Sometimes I use unlabeled for my gender and romantic orientation. Or just queer. I'm queer and I'm here, pretty much.

Gender identity, romantic/sexual orientation and a note about my interaction with genderqueer people

I will always respect your pronouns and identity and I am a safe person to speak to about this (and most other things). If I don't know your pronouns I will use they/them until I find out. I have also been known to use more gendered nicknames (eg. dude, man, girl, etc) but if you don't feel comfortable with one or more of those names, just shout :3 I don't want to make people feel upset. If I do use these more gendered terms, I mean it in a gender-neutral way more often than not.

Note about my Mental Health

I am officially diagnosed with autism, and I might have OCD. My parents think I have ADHD as well... But in short I am neurodivergent, so would really appreciate a safe environment for me, if you can provide it!

I also have vivid hallucinations, panic attacks, I self harm, etc. I have a vent blog so I won't mention it here, and I always use trigger warnings. So... I guess DNI if you aren't comfortable with that.

I am not as mentally stable as you may think from a first glance. I am not doing well. This means I might spend weeks offline or days clinically online. It also means that I might be a bit sensitive or fragile but I don't think I have had many major incidents online.

Here is a post I made about my boundaries for people coming to vent to me: link

Here is a post listing my triggers: link

Note about my content

Sometimes I might post something rash, rude or wrong without realising. Please call me out on this sort of thing, and I'd really appreciate it if you do so calmly. I am neurodivergent, which might excuse me for posting something like that, but it won't justify it.

I make a lot of typos.

Everything I say is gender neutral (e.g. dude, bro, girlie) but I will always use your preferred pronouns and be as affirming for you as possible. It's also all platonic (unless you're Erin).

Pretty much entirely SFW. I don't often reblog things that are NSFW (depending on your definition of NSFW, I might never have), but if I think something is even slightly inappropriate or triggering, I will tag it <3

My tags, that I will try to use:

Original posts: jasper did a thing

Reblogs: jasper saw a thing

Conversational reblogs: jasper is doing the speech

Asks: jasper spreads their limited wisdom

Being romantic with my partner: channel simp

Interests, fandoms and ships

Stuff I like: Nature (yes! all of it... except most molluscs), music, being whimsical, understanding the world around me, being gay (and doing crimes), making other people feel happy, my dog and two rabbits, being creative, dinosaurs, geology, going exploring anywhere, big long walks, my partner, i-will-add-to-this-list-when-i-can-think-of-stuff

My ships include, but are NOT limited to, Ineffable Spouses (Good Omens), Sidlink (TOTK/BOTW), Johnlock (BBC Sherlock) and BlackBonnet (OFMD), Lumity (TOH), Raeda (TOH), a bunch of other TOH ships, etc

Media I might post about (or media that I like. I don't always see some of these) includes, but are not limited to, Legend of Zelda (specifically TOTK, BOTW and Skyward Sword), Good Omens, Our Flag Means Death, Jurassic Park/World, the Hunger Games and the Owl House, the Lord of the Rings, Gravity Falls, She-Ra, Brooklyn 99, the Good Place, Heartstopper, Doctor Who, What We Do In The Shadows,

I don't always post a huge amount of some of these fandoms/ships/medias, so if you plan on following me for them, maybe just have a snoop around my account for a bit first. You might find that I hardly ever interact with the content. Maybe if you prompt me to I will.

On this blog you can expect posts/reblogs about the fandoms in, memes, shitposts, the (very occasional) vent post, and just a friendly face to chat to. I love asks! I'm always happy to receive one (PLEASE send me asks I'm lonely).

Mutuals

Side blogs of my mutuals that I am listing to help get them more interactions: @a-poetic-apollo-kid (role-play blog for their OC, Asher, based on the Percy Jackson franchise), @the-forgotten-apollo-kid (role-play blog for Lee Fletcher, Percy Jackson franchise), @all-time-alt-country-singer (role-play blog for Naomi Solace, Percy Jackson franchise), @cabin7-chaos (ask blog for Apollo's cabin from the Percy Jackson franchise)

I will add your username to a Google Sheets, where I list whether or not I can tag you in certain things. If you haven't checked it out already, please respond to this post, mutuals! It's purely for your benefit! I will try and update the document every time I get a new mutual but I don't always remember.

I hope I can add some more amazing tumblrinas to that list! The community here is delightful <33

[aromanticannibal]

my favorite things i see in dnis (/s)

"basic dni criteria" that doesn't exist. what is the basic dni criteria.

"i don't like you" girl then you have to block me im not gonna guess

"you like irredeemable media" what constitutes irredeemable media. bonus if they do give examples and one or more is a kids' show.

pornbots (who can absolutely read your post. totally /s)

"chronically online" i fear you can't interact with yourself anymore

"anti-harassment dni" please just say proshipper because this looks like you saying you are pro-harassment

"freaks dni" WHAT CONSTITUTES A FREAK. similar for creep, weirdo and other such terms

"people who don't put this very personal information in their bio" can range from race to name to pronouns to mental illnesses to triggers to

"under 13 and over 15" girl

"cringe" WHAT CONSTITUTES CRINGE

"dni if you post about my triggers which i am going to list and describe in detail" for your own safety PLEASE don't

violent threats to anyone who fits your dni, bonus points if you're telling "freaks" to go kys. WHO IS FREAKS. WHO ARE YOU SUICIDE BAITING.

specific ass terms that no one who isn't into that discourse can know and that aren't explained, even vaguely. yes google exists. however i am bothering to read your fuckass dni for your sake so be nice to me.

terrible custom font that makes it impossible to read the dni, bonus if the entire bio or pinned post is normal EXCEPT the dni. do you want me to read it or no.

on that note: carrds that lag, "read my dni!" (link to dni isn't functional), dni is in an undescribed image, censored words that makes things unreadable/inaccessible to ppl with screenreaders

very cute and aesthetic pinned/carrd which contains words such as "kill yourself if you're like this" and other such threats

"exclusionists dni" followed by "bi lesbians/lesboys/he/him lesbians/think cishet aro/aces are lgbt+"

dnis that are extremely long and include every single one of your political opinions. I do not need to know this. additionally, dnis that instead of being lists are long ass paragraphs.

threats of violence in case the dni is ignored (i don't know how to tell you that but some people just Reblog Posts without checking the person's blog. also, don't threaten people)

"men dni" "masc dni" "fem-aligned dni" just say you hate multigender people. alternatively just say you drink the terf kool-aid

[writing-for-life]

Nuance in (The Sandman) Fandom

Send me asks about everything Sandman-related!

I thought a lot over the past few days, partly prompted by discourse on here, partly due to a couple of “interesting” asks and messages I received (the type you don’t answer). I *think* they might have been prompted by engaging in discourse on topics like anti-blackness/racism, misogyny/sexism, TERF characters etc in The Sandman.

Fandoms are always getting super sensitive if someone shines a critical lens on their favourite works, authors and characters. So to make this clear (in case it isn’t already obvious from my brain-rot blog):

I love The Sandman. I love Neil Gaiman. I have an extremely soft spot for Dream (and Desire btw, who deserves a lot more character analysis than just being summed up as “villainous, sexy bitch”. One day, perhaps ;)).

I can read The Sandman and just get lost in the story, even after decades and many rereads. 

But I can also view it through a critical lens—these things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Not critical enough or too critical?

As fans, we can get trapped in certain thinking patterns, like:

“My blorbo can do no wrong”-syndrome 

“Characters with flaws are inherently problematic and imply authorial endorsement of those actions” 

“Characterisation and problematic subtext are one and the same” (aka overanalysing and looking for problems where there are none is the death of every story, but failing to see problematic patterns where they are clearly visible is a problem, too).

Don't say anything bad about my favourite character

I think this doesn’t need much further exploration. It’s not my personal way of looking at stories through permanently rose-tinted glasses (I always feel it stalls my experience, but my experience is not everyone else's). Some people prefer that type of escapism, and I’m good with that (although the downside is of course that by not willing to engage with issues, we can unwillingly perpetuate them). Live and let live, ship and let sail. But please, for the love of god: Don’t insult people via their inboxes or messages just because their opinions and preferences don’t align with yours. I’m not going to sugarcoat it or phrase it “nicely”: It’s infantile (and a form of bullying btw), end of.

How can you even like a character who's so horrible? And that author must be equally horrible, too

We have to separate flawed characters, even those who are written to be really problematic, from real-life endorsement of these actions. 

Author, narrator and character are three fundamentally different things, and don’t overlap as much as some people seem to think. 

We can write vile, despicable characters to make a point (for me, Thessaly was always a prime example for this, and I explained why here). We probably hate them as we write them. I don’t know what else to say, but this facet of writing seems to get more and more lost on people, and it’s a worry. Crying for sanitised characterisation is one step away from censorship. We explore what is problematic about people and humanity through story. That’s how we process and learn. It’s nothing new, but it becomes impossible if we can’t write flawed and even disgusting characters. 

Face value…

Since I’m mostly in The Sandman fandom, I often read that its ending is hopeless, and that’s supposedly the entire message. 

It is agonisingly sad, yes. But is it truly hopeless? I personally see it as quite the opposite, but of course that’s my opinion, coloured by my life experiences.

I also get that show-only fans often haven’t read the comics, or at least not the whole arc. And as such, their outlook from what they’ve seen so far (and choose to focus on) has to be different by default. I also understand that many people are quite new to the comics, even if they have read them in their entirety. I’ve sat with them for 30 years, and I still find new things on every reread (and I read it more times than anyone should 🙈), and I still don’t feel like I’ve understood it all. Perhaps because I still haven’t fully understood myself (and it’s unlikely I ever will). If there’s one thing The Sandman isn’t, it’s one-dimensional and easy to grasp in its whole depth.

I just wrote a ginormous meta on it, if you’re interested, it’s here:

Subtext, (not so) glorious subtext

This is where it gets complicated:

We shouldn’t mix up characterisation and story subtext. Overanalysing every line to death will always make us find something that’s “problematic”, when it really isn’t in the wider context of the story.

Zooming in is NOT always a good thing. Sometimes, we actually need to zoom out. 

But subtext *can be* (accidentally) problematic. Even in stories we love. And none of this negates what I previously wrote.

Stories have real-life implications of sorts, and we need to be able to talk about it. That’s where those slightly flabbergasting, hostile inbox messages come in, and I want to expand on that "topic of contention" a bit:

Neil himself confirmed that the Endless basically warp reality, and that this is why, after Dream’s failed relationship with Nada, many black women in his vicinity suffer terrible fates (Ruby and Carla in particular). And that this spell is only broken when he dies, and that it is the reason why Gwen doesn’t suffer the same fate. And said Gwen then gets used as a plot device to basically absolve Hob (who canonically really is a problematic character, whether show-only fans like it or not) from his slaver past. Once again, very clearly: No one is making this up. Neil confirmed it (for the comics, and that was over 20 years ago. It remains to be seen if his stance has changed as we move into that arc in the TV show).

I don't think it is correct to imply that Dream as a character is racist (I've read that, too) because he logically can’t be. He holds *all* the collective unconscious. He is also, strictly speaking, not white. He is everything and nothing, and he shows up in many different ethnicities throughout the whole arc, depending on who looks at him. But Neil played with a subtext here (reality warping due to a bad relationship which then affects everyone with similar physical traits) that will read very differently to a black person than it reads to a white person, and we have to understand why that is an *extremely* slippery slope.

Plus, we are supposed to see Hob, who *was* a racist at some point (you can’t not be if you’re a slave-trader—it’s impossible by default) as redeemed. And yes, he *does* regret deeply, good for him (and if I were saying this aloud, you would hear the sarcasm in my voice, because it is indeed all about him. We are to sympathise/empathise with him and his character growth while there isn’t much mention of the people he maltreated). But also: it was a black woman who basically forgave him (with dialogue that personally makes me cringe). And that black woman who offers forgiveness is not truly a black woman—she is a character written by a white man. And as much as author and character are not the same (see above), there is an inherent sensitivity in that power imbalance that we can't brush under the carpet.

I don’t think Neil is racist. Probably quite the opposite, and I can even see that his intentions were good from a storytelling point of view. BUT intention and impact are two fundamentally different things, and telling the story this way (comic version) betrays blindspots only white people have. Just like women have blindspots when they tell stories about men, and men have blindspots when they tell stories about women (and there are a few of those in The Sandman, too). And and and…

As storytellers, we can’t always speak from lived experience. It’s impossible. And that also means we occasionally make mistakes that look bad in hindsight, even if our intentions were good.

I guess the proof is in the pudding: What do we do when people who *have* that lived experience tell us it looks bad? If they inform us why it is hurtful, plays into old stereotypes etc?

Are we willing to listen and yield (both are the foundations of allyship btw), or are we insisting that our viewpoint as someone *without* lived experience is right? That lived experience extends to all lived experiences (sex/gender, sexual orientation, age...), and from all we’ve heard from Neil so far, it seems important to him to rewrite what he sees differently today. Whether they’ll always get it right for the show—we’ll see. At the moment, it looks a lot better than in the comics, and certain issues are already being handled with a lot more sensitivity, but a few problems remain.

Pushing back on criticism that comes from people with lived experience is problematic—I’d encourage us to think about what it looks like if a white majority in the fandom is basically saying that the opinions of POC are essentially “overreactions” (and yes, that happened).

It’s complicated. The Sandman was written in a different time, and I think we have to distinguish between things that weren’t really problematic at the time but have aged poorly (again, Thessaly springs to mind, and I have lived experience as a queer person during that time, so I can see it in context while at the same time acknowledging that I would make changes to bring it to the present day), and things that were always a problem due to blindspots. They were a problem in 1990, and if they don’t get changed, they are still a problem today.

This fandom is generally so much more open and nicer than others I know. But that doesn’t mean it’s infallible, because it’s full of humans. 

Nuance is sorely needed, in both story interpretation and interaction between said humans.

[euniexenoblade]

If you're here about people calling me intersexist or what ever:

The tl;dr it's bullshit, spun by a bunch of transmisogynists who tried to kick up a harassment campaign against me, but most people saw through it as the bullshit it is.

But, anyways.

It started off with this post, where while high I made a dumb post about how a group of tme trans people who still align in some way with womanhood had been calling themselves "afab trans women," which is incredibly transmisogynistic because 1) afab people saying they identify as trans women implies that trans women are not women and 2) "afab trans women" is a concept terfs made up in the 2010s to mock trans women. The point was never about intersex people specifically, it was about people not understanding that "trans woman" is a specific term with specific meanings, and by them trying to use it it implies they see trans women as transmisogynistic concepts and not as a type of woman.

Whether you agree with me, whatever, I don't fucking care. Just block me and go away. But, the blogger status-quo-hater found my post and went on a rant. When I first saw it I had intended to ignore it, but I checked out its blog and found it interacting with someone who has previously intentionally misgendered me and I just decided I didn't need that shit - so I blocked it. Naturally it noticed cuz it was refreshing my blog every second waiting for a reply, and when it found I blocked it, it once again went on a weird rant about me hating intersex people and deleting comments (at the time, the only comment I deleted implied I was a man) from intersex people trying to "calmly" explain things to me (nope, i hadn't even had that many comments yet).

This launched into a bunch of people suddenly reblogging it's addition and saying some weird fucking shit. Insults, misgendering comments, I even got a couple of weird Christian comments ("may god have mercy on their soul" die). So I started using the ability to hide reblogs on my OP of these people and blocking them, and as it kept going it just go too hard to keep track of and decided that, fuck it! If these are the people status-quo-hater attracts, I'll block everyone that reblogs it's additions. And, I tried to do that but again, it got way too difficult, so getting tired of being misgendered and insulted, I turned the reblogs off.

Since then my inbox exploded with suicide bait, hatemail, dumb shit trying to bait me into saying dumb shit (examples), and my posts started getting spammed with comments that 1) were harassing me. no they were not "calm explanations," they were aggressive harassment that at times misgendered me (not all but enough) or 2) a series of people were spamming my posts, one person posting the same comment ten times, which was fucking annoying. So I was deleting comments by this point, and as I went I just started deleting any comment saying negative shit cuz, again, these people run in the same groups and the most "calm dialogue" doesn't look like such when you're being harassed by a bunch of dumbasses.

Tumblr user dabwax left some fucked up comment on my post. I deleted it and blocked her. So she made a post where she intentionally misgendered me. After someone informed her she was misgendering me, she acknowledged it but blamed it on me (for blocking her, she had been on my blog to screencap me) and refused to edit the post to reflect my correct pronouns. Genderstarbucks added onto her post and subsequently took part in misgendering me - a person I never blocked and never had an excuse to misgender me. The difference between genderstackbucks and dabwax though, is that genderstarbucks at least changed the incorrect pronouns after being told (even though the post still took part in me getting harassed). Then, status-quo-hate, a person who's bio literally says

Proceeds to reblog posts calling me "they" instead of my stated pronouns of "it."

I'm not going to keep this up, it's fucking tiring. Instead, I'm going to say that these people are transmisogynistic. This is clearly a disagreement over terminology and at most should have just been us blocking each other, instead both status-quo-hater and dabwax intentionally lied about me, misgendered me, and did everything they could to motivate people to harass me (especially dabwax).

At the end of the day, this is a mostly failed transmisogynistic hate campaign. And, really the only reason it failed is cuz other trans women stepped in to help take the heat off of me (and cuz I started to ignore them).

To close this out, here's a collection of hatemail I received:

So yeah. Fuck off.

[kinffirmations]

Welcome to Kinffirmations! Feeling down about kin related stuff? You’ve come to the right place, my friend!

Kinffirmations is a blog dedicated to helping people in the alterhuman/otherkin community! Between us mods, we can provide you with some comfort and positivity, or maybe another form of request to help you explore your connection with your kintype! But that’s not all, we are also a very welcome place to other communities as well, and you can feel free to submit stuff related to them too!

Our list includes (but not limited to):

Alterhumans (fictionkins, otherkins, therians, etc.)

IRLs

Systems

Copinglinks

Age regressors

Pet regressors

Selfshippers

Furries

LGBTQ+

People with comfort characters

And pretty much anything not on our DNI! (Our DNI is at the end of the post!) You can even be someone just looking for some life advice and we can try our best to help!

You can also just come here to share your stories, thoughts, or just chat with us through the asks! Wanna share a kin memory? Go right ahead! Just feel like infodumping to us? Go for it! Maybe you wanna talk about your fictional other? Hell yeah, we love all these things!

We can do stim/mood boards etc.! Just check what the mods offer before requesting, especially if you ask for a specific mod!

Our signoffs will be in the tags with our correlated emojis! (For example, this is being written by Mod Doe 💘!)

And now… Meet the Mods!

Mod Doe (💘)

Mod Pocket (☕️)

Mod Vanny (🐇)

All we ask is you to respect our boundaries and DNIs. Any hate will be ignored, deleted, and blocked, as we handle things maturely here and will not be giving haters the reactions they desire. This is a safe space and hate will not be on our blog!

DNI: Basic DNI (racist, homophobic, ableist, etc.), terfs, pedos/MAPs, zoos, proshippers/comshippers/darkshippers, strictly NSFW blogs, anti-kin, anti-age/pet regressor, if you sexualize agere/petre, anti-therian, anti-furry, pro-cringe culture (ie calling people who aren’t doing anything harmful but existing cringe), endogenic systems, xenosatanism (if you’re unsure what it is, it is in no way connected to satanism or religion in general, careful if you research it), you don’t respect people’s religions/beliefs, or you’re bigoted in general.

[velvetvexations]

sometimes I feel like the people who say that TERFs secretly view trans people as their true genders just... don't ever read through terf blogs.

like yeah, there definitely are some who intentionally weaponise misogyny against trans women and treat them as "the women of women", as some transradfem put it. but the majority are just like most people who have fallen into cults or high control groups - they buy the bullshit! they listen to all the Smart Feminists who tell them that trans women are perverted/violent men and trans men are confused girls and They Believe That. radfems target teenagers for a reason; it's a lot easier to manipulate them into swallowing the Men Are Inherently Evil pill, and THAT makes it easier to groom them into transphobia.

so many terf blogs are FULL of posts calling for violence on men/"males", including cis men who aren't trans women. especially nonwhite men or disabled men (notice the uptick of anti-arab racism specifically targeted at palestinian men since last October). I saw once a violently ableist post about an autistic cis man where the TERF OP went off about how "r*tards like this should be killed or at least sterilised and banned from breeding". I reported this post to tumblr, and of course was told it didn't violate community guidelines. and that's just one example, but there are literally so many posts from terfs calling for violence and murder upon men, including male children who are in their care, that I just can't fathom these people are actually looking at what terfs and radfems actually say. many of them DO genuinely hate men, it's not just a cover for transphobia. ignoring this material reality is just a convenient excuse for trans radfems to keep up the TIRF schtick.

you tell transradfems TERFs categorize cis men and trans women the exact same but they'll inevitably just say "androphobia doesn't exist and implying it might is literally the worst most transphobic crime you can possibly commit so akshully them hating cis men is 100% wholly separate issue"

[menlove]

as a card carrying terf I don’t think trans ppl are disgusting and neither does any radfem i’ve ever met, vast majority of us dgaf about trans people specifically; we want single-sex spaces to exist and btw trans people need those single-sex spaces too. trans women deserve to have spaces for Just trans women and cis women deserve spaces with Just cis women etc etc. i highly recommend doing some actual research into radical feminism instead of repeating the "theyre all conservatives who hate gnc people and find trans people disgustinf and want to kill them" that is simply not true lmao. you may be surprised a what you learn! sincerely a gnc lesbian and proud radfem

I have in fact done much research into radical feminism babe! trust me I have spent hours in yalls spaces! and you simply cannot speak for every single terf just as I can't speak for every trans person. you can't say "come on NO ONE IS SAYING-" just like I can't say that either. do you know every terf? have you seen every blog? have you been a trans person (particularly a trans woman) on the internet trying to just exist in peace? no? then you don't get to say "no terf is SAYING-" because yes, a lot of you are!

"no terf thinks trans people are disgusting" cool so when I was 19 and hadn't touched testosterone a day in my life and had she/they in my bio one of you coming into my ask going "I can tell by looking at you that you'll never be a woman lmfao" bc I'm latine w a shitton of body hair and non-eurocentric features, THAT was out of love for ✨women✨.

when yall (not you specifically but your group you associate with) get on twitter and pick apart the selfies women post telling them they're ugly and following it up by saying you KNOW they're "men" and it turns out 9/10 you've just harassed a cis woman who just doesn't meet eurocentric beauty standards, that's so totally cool and awesome and out of love for cis women and a want for separate spaces right?

when yall go into trans people's asks and tell us to kill ourselves, call us pedophiles, call us rapists, call us ugly... that shit just doesn't happen, right? and yes I'm Aware yall get death and rape threats too. you shouldn't, it's gross on both sides, but really it's not proving your point here.

it's fucking infuriating. you're infuriating. because radical feminism could be something worthwhile (and funnily enough I've met a lot of older ex radfem lesbians who have veered away from it bc of how fucking vitrolic yall are towards trans people). but instead, it is steeped and inseparable from the mire of hatred and disgust that you parrot. you don't give a single shit about women, whatever sex.

I'm an assigned female at birth lesbian who has only ever slept with other people with vaginas (consensually anyway). I can't tell you the amount of hate I've gotten from yall. just for being trans. even though I meet your definition of being a woman and being a lesbian. it doesn't matter because your hatred for people you deem as degenerate outweighs actually fucking advocating for feminism.

I'm not even going to argue with you on how useless single sex spaces actually are bc despite their best attempts there's always going to be problems (namely: fun fact cis women can be awful too AND how the fuck are you going to check and enforce this rule? what is your end goal?).

but what I AM going to say is no, sorry, that's NOT what a lot of you think. that's what YOU think. that's why YOU'RE a terf. but actually fucking look at the people around you. go on a trans person's blog or twitter who's receiving harassment and fucking try and tell me it's to promote "uwu safe spaces" like.... be fucking serious with me right now lmfao

you're not conservatives! but you are a bunch of fucking assholes who care more about harassing trans people than building a feminism that might actually have teeth. if you're using those teeth to attack a group more vulnerable than you, you're just an aggressor.

tldr you don't speak for all of them, go fuck yourself, etc

[big-mean-trans-dyke]

26y/o transfem butch Dom

This is a blog focused on hard, dark kink, and I'll make an effort to tag some things but that might not always be super consistent, so enjoy at your peril. Minors are NOT WELCOME, if you are under 18, DNI. No age in bio may lead to a block.

Big kinks are - 

Transfem Supremacy

Terfbreaking

Noncon

Humiliation

Rimming

Watersports

There may be the odd bit of FTM misgendering content, which I'll try very hard to always tag 'ftm misgendering', if that's not your cuppa.

Not really too many limits, I'll probably keep it tame(-ish) on here and maybe make an alt for darker/nastier stuff if I feel the need. Any kind of transfem sub or MTF misgendering isn't really my thing, though if any of you TERFs wanna send me some I'll be more than happy to jerk off imagining you screaming it while I plow your ass.

Feel free to dm, though I may or may not respond depending how I'm feeling - I'm not actively looking for a sub or anything, so probably best not to open with that. TERF's, if you wanna talk to someone who doesn't pretend to respect you for a while, come say hi!

Ask box is open for TERF shit, just know that I'll rub my balls all over it, jerk off knowing how much you hate me and how little I care, and then probably post it for other people to do the same. It's also, of course, open for worship and stuff, but I'll only respond if I have something public to say about it~

[ursaius]

🌲🐻About Me🐻🌲

🐻Howdy hey, my name is Ursaius(Ursa if you wanna get casual) I'm a 20 year old idiot from the United states(I'm from the south if you wanna get specific with it, but i live in the Midwest right now) I am a white transmasc Nonbinary butch lesbian. I'm not here to argue the validity of queer identities if you start with me I'll run you in circles while I laugh and troll you, I grew up in the deep South your not gonna say anything to me that I haven't already been told. I'm also 2 inches tall (5'4) and I have evil in my heart(I'm a Capricorn sun, Libra moon, and, Capricorn rising)

🌲I am butch4all, AND I'm currently seeing someone :)))

🐻 I'm not gonna say that I'm disabled as I'm not diagnosed with anything except anxiety and depression that I got diagnosed with when I was 13. There is however something wrong with me mentally in many different and fun(sarcastic) ways. So I just ask you please be patient with me and have some compassion if it appears I'm freaking out and live blogging an episode. Feel free to arm chair diagnose me everyone always does and I love a good guess. And I don't have proper health insurance so a diagnosis is out of the question for the time being.

🌲🐻 about my blog🐻🌲

🌲 I'm a huge nerd and overall dork. I have a wide variety of interest including but not limited to: Cooking, DND, The locked tomb, Interview with a vampire, what we do in the shadows, Pokemon, raggedy ann and Andy, Dungeon Meshi, Moomin valley, studio Ghibli, Bears(the animal sorry gaymen I stand with y'all in solidarity tho), cows, any animal with antlers, especially moose i love moose, Fish, lizards, SNAKES(BALL PYTHONS SPECIFICALLY), bugs, CRABS, other crustaceans, the ocean, ghost and other paranormal stuff, Fantasy stuff, renfairs, rodeos, poetry, writing, nature(if that wasn't obvious), witchcraft, Greek mythology, Celtic mythology, the fae, probably a bunch of other stuff I'll add later

🐻 I'm into a lot of different music my favorite genres are folk, bluegrass, goth, showtime, ragtime, swing, and cunty pop music 😌 I love you forever and ever Kesha. Some of my favorite bands and artists are the bridge city sinners, charming disasters, Florence and the machine, amigo the devil, Mitski, Fiona apple, Holy locust, the oh hellos, Ayesha erotica(just her music), Kim Petras(again just like her music), the aforementioned Kesha, will wood, Hozier, Tyler the Creator, Willow Smith, caravan Palace, and a lot more.

🌲 I post about a lot of nonsense usually what's ever on my mind and I reblog shit that makes me laugh and I feel like sharing with the class. I post art I do sometimes when I feel like it, I'm probably gonna try to get the confidence to post some of my poetry, and short stories, probably DND stuff, and Cooking and recipes so TW for anyone that can't handle looking at food and stuff idk block me probably I know some people with ED have a hard time with it I don't mind. Um I'll talk about anything really I'm a big yapper. I'm also a silly guy that likes to show my face so I post selfies a lot ummmm. Idk what else to say cause I don't really know what I might do later 😕 I'm not very consistent with stuff I post.

My tags are

Selfies or pictures of me- #ursaius irl

Answering ask- #chattering

Replying to questions or people bothering me- #responding

Talking into the void- #yapping

Claudia catfishing BS- #sweethartfemme is catfish, #claudia is a catfish,

DMS and ASK ARE OPEN

I like talking to people feel free to DM me about anything

I have two side blogs and two side blogs only

@ursaiusminor this is where I reblog silly stuff I don't think fits my blog

And one where I'm unabashedly horny but you gotta dm me for it's

🖕DO NOT INTERACT 🖕

If you support any of the fucking genocides going on in this fucking world Free Palestine, free the Congo, and free Sudan. If you're a Terf fuck you, pathetic losers. If you are racist, pedophile, proship, zoophile, ableist, bigoted, or hateful in anyway you disgust me. Cishet men you can stay but you are on thin ice behave.

I want this to be a safe space for me if you ruin it I will deal with you firing squad style