#like i believe in my morals and the big discourse whatever that shit was i stand w my opinion

[kisakunt]

this is gonna shock everyone including me but reading posts and dms on here from when i was manic as fuck and i may have been in the wrong about some things 😭

[cogaytes]

i know it's not directed at me, but my conversation starter is that i personally find fandom as a place for anyone and everyone. i think my genuine confusion for the discourse is that the age limit to use ao3 is 13, and that most of these works in question are properly tagged as well. (if they aren't then that's an entirely different conversation.)

oh and also that teenagers have sex?

if you don't wanna see it that's never a huge problem! of course you should stay within your comfort zone and avoid things that make you feel uncomfortable (especially if you're on the younger age of the spectrum of minors on these websites!)

but arguing that smut shouldn't exist is something i've never truly understood. Sexuality is something that people (yes that includes young people) can and should explore if they want to. Writing and consuming it in fandom is a way for many older teenagers and young adults to do that in a safe and healthy way.

Especially when it is those things like rape and non-con stuff--shouldn't we be relieved that instead of causing harm to others, people are just using their creativity to write about it?

Tumblr has always been the Gay People Site™, and to me and my expression of both my gender and sexuality, sex is a huge part of that. People have sex! Teenagers have sex! Some people even like to read and write about it!

Unfortunately for a lot of people, their self expression is not socially accepted as the norm, and they can--and may already have--faced disgust and discrimination for their private interests. Sites like Archive of our Own and Tumblr were made for the freedom of self expression and exploring personal interests in an anonymous way, especially those that may be considered taboo.

Will you find me reading incest fics? Probably not, that's not my cup of tea. But I won't complain either, because I know that it may be that for the author and some other people. As long as a fic is properly tagged, I personally do not have issue with content as long as it does not cause mental or physical harm to other (real world) people.

These are fictional characters, and I truly believe that censoring authors and artists just because what they're creating is considered problematic or even just openly disobeys what is widely accepted as the norm is silly and reductive of what we've been fighting for for decades. Humans are sexual beings with sexual minds, and in our modern age we use our thoughts to write whatever we feel like. Sometimes that happens to be sex!

It may be uncomfortable, and may not be for you, but the existence of fanfiction as a whole can open up more understanding for people who are looking for connection, not just connection that you yourself deem "acceptable."

Sex is not something that's impure nor dirty, it is inherently human. It's personal and intimate, but it is not wrong.

this ask is mostly applied to what i've found in kotlc as a fandom, but my inbox is open anytime if you (or anyone who may read this) wants me to expand more on fandom spaces as a whole. i have more thoughts on real world people and a lot of other topics, but i tried to keep it to just what applied to keeper. (trying not to write an entire essay in yours haha.)

i'm aware that i may have a more lenient view on this than most as well, so i'd love to hear your thoughts <3

yeah no i agree basically with all of this! it's something i've been really grappling with over the last few years (especially recently as a ship i really find uncomfortable has become big in some of my circles of mutuals, which has been interesting to see how i thought about it when it was first a thing 3ish years ago and how my reactions have changed now). i think as i grew up i just stopped almost. caring about what other people make? like i just. filter shit out on ao3 and on tumblr and scroll past shit i don't want to see. i unfollow or block if it really becomes an issue.

but personally i just really don't like the idea of any art being given a moral value, even when it portrays topics we really don't want to think about or might feel uncomfortable with. like, my parents wouldn't let me read the hunger games until i was a certain age because the mass child death etc were just so fucking horrifying that they didn't want me exposed to it. and even reading it as an adult i'm like. okay. holy fuck. but that doesn't mean it's immoral or gross or disgusting just because it portrays fucked up things as fiction. and it definitely doesn't say anything about the author that she wrote it.

you don't have to read smut if you're not comfortable with it! you're allowed to be made uncomfortable by sex! but as long as it's properly warned for so you can avoid it, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowed to exist.

[imptwins]

Why making any concessions to puritan rhetoric is a bad idea

(note for the uninitiated: 'anti' is short for 'anti-shipper', 'anti-ship', or 'anti-fan'; in this context it refers to people who get very vocally militant about opposing dark kinks/problematic ships in media, especially creative fandom spaces. Proship is simply the opposite, people who vocally believe people should be free to make/indulge in whatever as long as a line is drawn between fiction and reality.)

(note 2: this was written for cohost, i cbf rewording it lol)

I very often see people - both websites and individuals - making a concession to the people who come up to them yelling about problematic kinks and guilt by association and 'why didn't you block this person' blah blah blah. It's happened with a few BNFs (big-name fans) in the UTDR scene lately, I've seen it from artists I respect, from friends, hell I used to be in this camp myself. And, of course, it happened to this website about a year back, and the conversation has come up again recently due yet another tumblr exodus.

It makes sense. The most common stuff that antis go after is stuff very few people are into: lolisho/cub, ferals, heavy gore, heavy noncon. It's niche, the real-world applications are unquestionably vile, it's very easy to just say 'I also find this icky regardless of whether I really believe that all people into it are secret criminals, so, I'll just block the people who they say are bad and move on.' I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen someone respond to proship/antiship discourse with "I'm an adult with a job." Going to bat for this content is high risk, low reward. You're not going to make friends, you're going to lose them. YOU WILL LOSE SUBSCRIBER, etc. As a result of all this it's very easy to assume that anyone defending it must be into it.

But I'm not. I'm a writer who often deals with darker subjects, but most of the first-on-the-list anti stuff, I'm not into at all. I'm not into ferals or gore period, noncon I like purely as character exploration, lolisho I can enjoy from the perspective of what I call 'trauma repair.' There's probably a proper term for it. But the tl;dr is I've never been actively aroused by any of these things, not in fantasy and especially not otherwise. Whenever I write them, it's just fascination or character analysis. Whenever I have a 'this character can be any age you want' fic, in my head, they're 18+. Writing noncon is a weird challenge for me because I'm constantly battling with the alternate ending in my head where the victim breaks free, beats the shit out of their captor, etc. This isn't me trying to claim virtue through this, just stating my position.

So… Why do I go to bat for these things? Why do I get annoyed when websites block lolisho, when artists have 'proship DNI' in their bio, etc? It's lost me a couple friends, it's certainly cost me followers and general reach, it's gotten me blocked by countless people I respected the work of. It's earned me a few callout posts, multiple with 1k+ followers, and one particular obsessed stalker who tells anyone who will listen that I actually groomed a child (despite all evidence otherwise). It's caused me a really significant amount of trouble. Why die on this hill?

The answer's kind of simple, when you boil it down: fictional fantasies either affect reality, or they don't. This is why I go to bat for things I'm not into, but it's also why whenever you see someone making concessions to antis, it's never enough. Cohost banned lolisho last year (I believe it's still banned?? Unclear), but the antis still make constant callout posts about this site and its owners. Some of the team have even gone out of their way to state very firmly that they're against these things, they've gone above and beyond just 'ban the bad thing' and broadcast their views about the morality of it. You'll frequently see artists write some huge apology or clarification when a callout post hits, usually involving some variation of 'I do not condone x y z and think it's disgusting.'

It's never enough.

But it makes sense, when you think about it. By drawing a line, you have essentially agreed with the core angle of the people screaming at you: that a fictional fantasy affects reality. That it's dangerous. You will, by necessity, now have people start to work down the list. Incest, ferals, gore, noncon, sure. Any relationship with any kind of skewed power dynamic. Sibling-coded, minor-coded, postminor nonsense. All of these things are less easily agreed to than lolisho, I've seen countless porn artists concede with the core idea that lolisho is immoral, then they act like it's unreasonable that people just keep going until they're being told that a knot on a furry is bestiality, or a 23 year old dating an autistic 21 year old is pedophilia. These are genuine examples of things I've seen people dogpiled for. Seriously look up "postminor" if you want to see how bad this can get, on top of being absurd it's one-for-one the kind of gross ableist shit that Autism Speaks gets into.

But YOU AGREED TO THEM. You agreed with the core concept, that the fantasy must reflect reality. Of course they're going to keep demanding more; by the logic you used to agree with them, you are doing immoral things. If fictional lolisho is immoral, so are the rest of them. It's way easier to look at your average pic on baraag or inkbunny and go 'oh, eugh, vile,' but at the end of the day the cutesy played-for-laughs sleeping kiss, the dubcon bondage that you don't call dubcon, or the meet-cute where they're a bit too drunk, they're all immoral fantasies.

That's not even to get into non-sexual stuff. If the lolisho fantasy is wrong, so is running down civilians in GTA. Suddenly your notifs are full of 16 year-old Jack Thompsons with rainbow flags in their bios.

This really is an all-or-nothing debate. If fictional fantasies affect reality, then even the immoral fantasies that you're personally comfortable with, the cutesy coy playful ones, must be immoral. If fictional fantasies don't affect reality, then even the ones that make you uncomfortable, the ones that have you scrambling to close your browser in case the feds are looking, must be fine.

It should have become very obvious over the last decade that you cannot fence-sit on this. There's a huge internal disagreement going on among progressive/queer/compassion-minded people, on whether these kind of things affect reality, or whether they don't. You can learn to apathetically dismiss stuff that squicks you, or you can learn to sanitize everything you ever make so there's not a trace of contentious theming left. Immoral fantasies are immoral, or only immoral actions are immoral.

You're going to have to pick one.

[maoam]

Ramblings stemming from frustration with this fandom sometimes. ( Naruto. )

I know Naruto fandom has always been a tad toxic ever since it started becoming popular and such, but something about these newer fans who are so comfortable with d3ath threats, body shaming, sa threats, and d0xxing other people for the sake of a character. Fandom discourse is truly never that serious and the fact that they’ve become so obsessed with “ratioing” or “owning” other people that they’re willing to say absolutely vile things all for what… some likes? Validation from other gross people?

And then for these people to still say they’re the “good part of the fandom” or “the sane part”. It’s almost narcissistic for lack of a better word at the moment. ( not diagnosing anyone or speaking as if I’m some sort of mental health expert. Just can’t think of another word right now because of the headache this phenomenon is causing me as it is becoming much too common. )

They have this obsession with demonizing “the other side.” To the point of making false claims, which is insane. Or maybe they actually believe them? I can’t tell. They just spread whatever makes them feel good about what they like and don’t care about the source.

This is mainly a lame annoyed rant about the Hinata fanbase which have become somehow even worse within the past few days with their weird obsession with trying to get the Boruto artist (I think he works for sp? Unsure as he says most of his art is fanart but he made a like two or three official pieces that were on the official boruto/naruto page.) fired and sending him death threats for I guess just not drawing Hinata as much as they want? Like to the point where they were literally saying she was being “oppressed and bullied” by this artists. It was insane to see in person because you really would like to believe people WOULDNT compare a character not being drawn in a way they approve of to the oppression the people of Palestine are facing but hey, I suppose it’s a competition now to see how much of a bad person you can be for the sake of a character.

Also I know this is not just an issue in the hinata fandom, although the recent need to fetishize how “Asian Hinata is compared to that white girl sakura.” Is irking me a lot more than what other fandoms have done as of recent that I’m aware of. The Sakus seem to be their usual level of delusion and crappy attitude. Which is easy to ignore for me.

Does it sound like I’m making stuff up at this point? Because as I’m writing this I’m seeing just how insane this really is. This *shouldn’t* be real. This *shouldn’t* be things people say without shame. And yet, people just throw their morals for… what, internet points? The self validation that they defended to their favorite character? Who knows.

You might not even read this, I wouldn’t blame you lol. Just me being annoyed with how comfortable people within the naruto fandom have become so comfortable with being bad people.

My only real question is have you noticed an increase of toxicity within the fandom? Do you think this behavior has gotten worse with the ending of Naruto and beginning of Boruto?

I kinda get what you mean. I remember even before the manga ended there was apparently aggressive fights between Narusaku/Naruhina shippers, like the body shaming towards the other ship's girl and so on. And SS also were aggressive. But nowadays it indeed seems worse. I'm not sure if it's because we have new big platforms? Twitter and Tiktok I mean, both have really cancerous fandom spaces.

SS/NH harass official staff all the time, as well as other parts of the fandom. And then they act like victims because some people think Sakura and Hinata are shitty characters lol. Meanwhile they treat real people like shit. I think it might be because everyone makes fun of their ships/girls all the time, because it's so easy, so they become even crazier in trying to compensate, they try to harass the staff for more content for their ship, to get back at the people who say their ships suck. Also because so many popular content creators keep making content on Naruto and Sasuke being gay and Sakura/Hinata being their beards it's also humiliating to them.

Of course, they also need to fight which girl is the best girl. Which girl is less of a single mother for example. XD

"Or maybe they actually believe them?" Considering how many SS have convinced themselves that some moments that happened between Naruto and Sasuke actually happened between Sasuke and Sakura, I can believe them being that delusional.

"Does it sound like I’m making stuff up at this point?" No because I have witnessed it myself, plenty Sakura and Hinata stans on twitter have that toxic "bad bitch" attitude that they think makes them queens or whatever, they harass people and are extremely aggressive and think female character doing the bare minimun = queen behaviour. It comes off as very childish and narcissistic. No wonder Sakura and Hinata as characters appeal to them.

[ltleflrt]

can i ask - what are you thoughts on the current anti-shipping phenomenon in fandom? I've recently gotten into SPN fandom and fallen in love with your fics, but the state of the fandom puzzles me a bit.

Anti-shipping is not a SPN fandom phenomenon, and maybe it seems to be a bigger deal to you because it's a bigger fandom? Wincest and Destiel shippers have been at war since episode 04x01 aired lol...we even have derogatory names for each other: Wincels and Hellers.

(Jokes on the Wincels, because Heller is a fucking awesome name.)

(Wincestiel shippers are fandom unicorns, and they deserve love and respect.)

I've only been involved in fandom since 2011, so most of what I know about anti-shippers comes from piles and piles of posts talking about fandom history, but the gist of it is that this is not current, it is ongoing since the dawn of fandoms, we just have names for it now. Think about Spirk back in the 60s...there were lots of rabid fangirls who saw nothing romantic between them too. We just don't hear as much about them, because they lost their fandom war lol

It's just really loud right now with the rise of conservatism, fascism, and terfs. And social media amplifies all of the above.

Anyway, my thoughts on anti-shippers is that they need to grow up and mind their own business. I am a pro-shipper, which means I believe that anyone has the right to love any ship, no matter how problematic, no matter how much it squicks me out. I believe everyone should be allowed to read whatever vile smut they want, because thought crimes are not real.

Unless a real person is being hurt, have fun.

Antis claim that problematic ships and kinks hurt people, but I think it's important to understand that there's a big difference between accidental and deliberate harm. And harm mitigation is highly important in a world with 7+ billion people and 7+ billion different lived experiences.

If an anti-shipper is hurt by a ship they don't like, they need to learn how to block and filter content so they don't see it, and on the opposite side of that, the vile shippers/kinksters need to tag their nonsense so that they're not accidentally burning someone's eyes out. Which most people ARE kind enough to do. They sit around in their little ficcing circles and cackle over the evil things they're putting their blorbos through, and they put up warning signs, but the antis come barging in to bug them anyway.

In my opinion, many antis are big fucking bullies and do a lot more harm than they claim to try and prevent, and they can all go fuck themselves with something hard and sandpapery.

So uh... yeah, that's how I feel about it 😁

(okay actually I'm not done, there's a lot of anti-shipping discourse about age gaps and what counts as incest that are just... really fucking stupid, and I honestly believe that shit started out because people were grasping for straws to justify why their ship is better than the ship they don't like. unfortunately, the youngins have been soaking up that moral purity language as Objective Truth because they're little sponges. i hope they outgrow that bullshit eventually. i will forgive and forget if they leave behind their purity police badges.)

[reclusiverisottonero]

I don't know if you consider yourself a proshipper or anti but like. I'm an anti who's friends with literally one fucking proshipper and I get hate for it by the anti's. These little bitches are so outta pocket too and they one, call me a proshipper just because I'm friends with literally one[I don't even ship any proships]. And two, I've had like three antis call me racist and when I ask for proof, they couldn't give it to me so they're obviously just pulling shit out of their ass just because they don't like me lmfao.

Anyways. I've noticed some proshippers are pretty sane compared to antis. But there's also sane antis and insane proshippers. It's just weird and frustrating.

I’m going to assume in good faith you’re an adult (albeit a very young one) and messaged me this seeking some kind of advice because I honestly do not know why else someone would send this to me. If you wanted validation from me though you’re not about to get it so this is your one warning you might not like the answer I give if you read any further.

Now, if you read my about page you’ll see that I don’t care at all for either of these labels. That doesn’t negate the discourse I’m surrounded by, and by all definitions these days people would categorize me as proship. I’m not going to dispute people that want to do that to me because again the unfortunate reality right now is that even if you don’t side with either term, people are going to put you into categories anyway. I’m my eyes being proship is literally just going about your fandom experience like a normal fucking person and if antis are gonna be mad at me about it then tough shit.

Trying to be neutral about it will only work so much as there are large swaths of antis that consider anyone being neutral as ‘just as bad’ as proshippers and will harass them or accuse them of gross behaviors just like they do to proshippers. It doesn’t matter if you don’t ship anything considered a ‘proship’ ship, or don’t even dabble with dark content. If you don’t care about what other people ship or do with fiction to the point you’re FRIENDS with someone that defines themselves as proship I promise you’ll continue to get shit from the antis you willingly surround your with, period. From the way you describe your situation here you do not come off as anti to me but as someone with the common sense of respecting how others ship stuff in fiction even if you don’t agree with it, meaning to antis you’re not on their ‘side’ and so they will make up whatever they want to try and fuck with you since you’ve decided not to be swept up in their group think.

I know you claim there are sane antis, and I believe you in a sense. I think though, this is only possible if you’re anti-leaning or already an anti. Because in my own experience I have never had or seen any non-anti have a single positive interaction with antis. I do not seek to talk to antis as I fundamentally disagree with what they believe in on principle. I block accounts with ‘proship dni’ so I don’t have to see their wrong opinions and don’t consume any of their fan-content at all.

Yet they make videos calling out my friends for writing fanfic they don’t like then directly harass my friends over said fanfiction no one is forcing them to read. They send death threats and suicide bait. When I defend my friend I too get sent those messages as well as grossly misinformed opinions stated as if they’re facts when the law and academia prove them wrong.

Nor have I seen any of the positive things many antis claim they do (ie protecting minors, advocating for victims). The continue to suicide bait, victim blame, stalk, be racist, xenophobic, transphobic and more to people online over fictional content. This doesn’t mean I don’t think there are proshippers and neutrals that don’t do this, anyone can be a shithead despite whatever they choose to align with. The big difference is that for a group of people that claim they have the superior moral doctrine, they continue to very loudly and proudly be hypocritical and point blank wrong about their beliefs.

Also, when people within proship circles are found to be harming real people they’re quickly exposed and called out so ppl can rightly stay away from that person which is why you do not see many people who claim to be proship as militantly insane as antis are. Many proshippers/neutrals just want to be left the fuck alone and it’s antis that are the ones not respecting that.

Callout don’t happen within anti circles from what I have been told from ex-antis. Antis hide behind their poor attempts at their virtue signaling with victim blaming and shield abusers and predators within their own ranks just to keep their status quo. The reality is they do not care about the feelings of real people if it means they can ‘protect’ their precious fictional characters from being shipped ‘wrong’ or written in ways they don’t like.

You should strongly think about the relationships you’re cultivating right now and determine who is worth keeping in your life. Continuing to hang out with people for the sake of keeping the peace or from fear them turning on you (this is actually a very common reason ex-antis who have shared their stories on twitter were antis for so long) or whatever reason you still stick with them when they clearly are trying to dig their claws into you is going to make your life worse and you can be spending that time with better people. I can’t tell you what to do or who to hang out with in the long run. Just know that this is a good life lesson on figuring out what’s important to you, and realizing the one who will be most affected by your decisions will ultimately be you.

[statementlou]

IYO, any red flags/deal breakers one should look out for when following larrie blogs here? already blocked the GIF making ones (cuz they're mostly blouies) and the big ones, who loves the drama.

hmmm... I mean there are loads of blogs on here that seem like cool people but who I don't follow cause they post lots of stuff that isn't what I personally want to have to scroll through, be it full on deal breakers or just stuff that's uninteresting to me and untagged- like there's just a whole spectrum going from eh not for me to holy shit I wish I could fucking delete that blog. But you're asking about the far end of that spectrum, so... um I guess for me: people who state their theories as facts/ don't seem to understand the difference between theories and fact. People who want to delete other peoples' blogs tbh, like who think that if someone disagrees with their theory they need to be Dealt With and Schooled, so I guess I wouldn't actually delete anyone's blogs. I just don't like cops be it the real kind or just people acting like them, like thinking some fanfic is Bad and needs to be censored, or believing that not thinking Louis and Harry are married is punishable, or insisting that their lyric analysis is CORRECT and the only possible one, or who think taking a job pretending to be someone's partner publicly is morally Wrong and they are Bad People. IDK though, I think I have distanced myself so far from the really nasty shit that I'm forgetting some bigger bad flags maybe? in any event my personal shit under the cut why not

My personal NOs are: if someone is super negative and hateful all the time, be it about someone in the 1D-sphere or other segments of fandom (I worry that I'm one of these kinds of blogs to someone but I do try not to be), or who publish anti anons spewing their gross hate and nasty theories, even if its to make fun of them: hate just depresses me, even directed at targets I also dislike. It truly lowers my mood in a way that is hard for me to shake. Likewise if someone's blog is all asks or posts with the worst takes I've ever seen, regardless of how thoughtful their counterpoints, it's just not my thing. You can be hilarious or very correct in replying, but I already had to read that shit and it genuinely depresses me to be reminded how terrible people (and their takes) can be. It's the same reason I blacklist Tr*mp and shit like that you know? So with fandom, like the news, I'll go looking sometimes to see what's being said or to track down something I see people referencing but I want to be able to scroll without being blindsided by it. But maybe what ruins your day is something different? I have pals who find anti trolls hilarious and seek them out to see what they're up to, but flat out blacklist totally different stuff that I might roll my eyes at but not really be bothered by. But also my YESes! When I come on here I know what I wanna see: 1) a bunch of pics of Louis cause he makes me happy 2) some funny takes and memes 3) the people I follow having funny or insightful commentary on new pics or whatever in their tags or telling me some bts type info, I love knowing all the details and gossip 4) intellectually stimulating but emotionally low stakes discourse that doesn't involve anyone spewing hate at anyone else 5) enough UA type content to know what everyone is up to 6) enough clues about what's going on with the fandom or in the non-UA type updates (like, what did people figure out from that official post) to figure out if I wanna go find the drama and roll my eyes or comment. So that's what I look for!

[shiroikabocha]

I suppose the question is, what “things” specifically does OP mean when they say “then these things won’t happen anymore”? When I first read it I assumed OP wasn’t talking about the specific concept of Girl Dinner or even TikTok’s existence/popularity/influence—I thought OP meant that if Tumblr users who dislike TikTok trends stopped going to TikTok, seeing the trends, and reporting back to Tumblr about all the new annoying TikTok trends, then people who use Tumblr to avoid annoying TikTok trends could more successfully avoid seeing annoying TikTok trends. Which I get! This is supposed to be the website that offers a reprieve from the soundbyte-based algorithm, I can understand OP’s frustration when TikTok discourse bleeds over onto the site-for-people-who-want-to-get-away-from-TikTok.

You’re right, TikTok is huge, it’s far more influential than Tumblr is, it’s an unavoidable part of the social media landscape, it’s not going away any time soon and it’ll keep spawning memes like Girl Dinner cuz that’s what catches the user base’s fancy—nothing we can (or honestly, should) do about that. At the same time, Tumblr users complaining about TikTok trends on Tumblr can feel a little like:

“Look what I found in the horrible room! Isn’t it awful?” “Yeah, that’s why I tend not to go into the horrible room.” “I’m going to go get MORE shit from the horrible room so we can look at it and talk about how much it sucks!” “What if, instead, we just stayed here in the place that’s not the horrible room, and didn’t go get any more stuff from the room that we don’t like? That’s an option.”

I mean, there’s another component to it if you believe that discussing problematic TikTok trends is a moral imperative, lest we allow the youths to slip into degeneracy. But even then, selection bias more or less ensures that the version of “girl dinner” that makes the jump from TikTok to Tumblr is the worst version in circulation, not necessarily a representative sample of how the population at large uses the term. For all the screeds I’ve seen on here about Girl Dinner promoting eating disorders/performative daintiness/uncritical embrace of traditional gender roles, whenever it comes across my wife’s FYP (I don’t care for TikTok but she likes it), it’s been more along the lines of: I don’t have the time/energy/money to make a big fancy meal right now but I still gotta eat, whatever, I’m having fun with it. Wrap some cold cuts around some baby carrots, call that GirlDinner. It’s just not that big a deal.

There will always be Girl Dinner and things like it, but we don’t have to chow down (or serve it to guests) if it looks unappetizing, you know? I don’t interpret the original post as a call to abolish TikTok or even a plan to prevent the rise of trends like Girl Dinner, but instead, a plea to leave TikTok discourse to the TikTokkers and refocus on Tumblr’s core values: fake Scorsese movies and fucking that old man.

the only reason i know about girl math and girl dinner is because of people on here complaining about those terms. and those people who first started complaining saw it on tiktok. so heres the thing. why dont we all just never look at tiktok again forever. then these things won't happen anymore.

[hanzi83]

Sports Entertainment Level Analysis

Keep in mind before I get into the thick of things, that I don’t regularly watch NBA or other sports and I don’t know about this player’s actual history within the sport or what he has accomplished, so it is kind of weird for me to try and focus a blog on Ja Morant, but I look at the sports entertainment aspect of it, because no matter what your field of expertise is, once you become fodder for discourse, you are no longer just whatever you have your degree in, that becomes background noise because being a sports entertainer takes precedent, and they have always eased us into that shit over the last 30 years, it used to be a big deal if a celeb or public figure did or said some stupid shit. But now we live in such a mentally ill society, despite the aesthetics looks like we’ve evolved, but we still find gimmicked ways to be regressive in the current era, where in the next decade or so, people will look back at this time like one of the most fucked up times in history. We, as a society, have created nonstop discourse to goof on and talk about, we’re at the point where it feels painfully obvious that whenever it comes to a celebrity doing stupid shit, it reflects that they are now a sports entertainer. I don’t know much about the NBA, but it feels like from my experience of taking in the general culture of sports and pop culture throughout my years while focusing on professional wrestling, that Rodman was one of the first examples on a really transparent level was defined by what he was doing outside the court, like all I know about him was he was a good rebounder apparently, I would hear people say that, but I know more about him partying at Scores, and looking like an over the top caricature. And now it feels like we have moved into an era where the normalcy is that all of these public figures and politicians are constantly doing and saying dumb shit, so we can half ass analyze with comedic levity and it used to mean something when this was on and off and it stood out, but literally every piece of discourse is about what transparent corrupt shit is going on but under the guise of “America’s dumbest criminal” because if they admitted there was full intent to poison a fucking city, those would be mentally ill criminals making shit worse, or we have a celeb say some out of touch shit that serves in fighting and culture wars to get everyone in the studio audience to basically chime in with their 2 cents. So when I see this Ja Morant situation being one of the prime examples of discourse, what annoys me is that people who chastise him and judge him would rather show the powers that be they are willing to pile on someone for something they require these celebs to do. Talking heads who happen to be the same color as Ja Morant will then basically show the white delegation they will judge him and give a Bill Cosby like speech of pulling your pants up, then other people who are not black then partake in subtle racist shit acting like he doesn’t know how to adapt to a regular society and he thinks he is like a rapper in the hood, when nothing about being in that celeb world is completely healthy. Just because it looks like it is glamorous, people automatically believe that world is not really dangerous with fucked up billionaires, we judge these situations with public figures individually because we would want shit to be judged individually when it comes to regular people, but do people not see an overall pattern over the last 20 years and how much fucked up shit politicians and celebrities have to do and say?  The only thing Ja Morant should take accountability for is selling his soul, and what I mean by that, once you are a public figure, you are booked for social media discourse, the money being made is not solely just for the talent, it is for what they will make you do in the public space so a bunch of mediocre and mentally ill cogs in the system can judge them like they are the most moral, but the higher up you socially climb, the system will have you doing the same fucking shit. I am not defending Ja’s decision to just promote a gun but sometimes I feel since this shit is sports entertainment, and if he gets suspended or whatever and his career is done, people think his career is over when it is just getting started. 

I don’t like having to realize our society is moving and has been moving into this direction but they have literally turned our lives into a fucking show. It would not surprise me since people do product placement in fucked up ways since everything is for sale, maybe right wing interests paid under the table for Ja to promote guns and this situation creates cancelation so then they have to resort to aligning with more right wing interests since it seems most celebs are government and corporate tools but it is only obvious when it is something liberal. But either way Ja doing that is part of his job description, it feels there is an investment to throw black public figures under the bus so that other tokens in the system can show allegiance to the system narrative of proving they hold members of their own community accountable, because if I believe we are moving in a more racist direction on a grand level, like when Bill Maher was talking about how him and other celebs discuss this cancel culture shit, and basically guilting other black celebrities to call out the violence in Chicago etc, acting like people don’t ever hold anyone accountable. I have seen more black people in the public space hold more black people accountable, but since the protests in 2020, it was like the impression was that it went so out of control, that now it feels like there is this grand push to pushback against anything black related, whether it talking down and generalizing the entire community or putting blame on the celeb, and because society loves to make public figures the symbolism of a cause, constantly having black celebrities in the forefront of everything negative feels like it is planned out, but since we pretend we judge the situations by individual cases, people are just reacting to the stories that are out, but in my opinion, they have planned out storylines for the non stop 24/7 news cycle, they need fuel for what to talk about. We pat ourselves on the back because within the meaningless and useless television shows and movies, we have the aesthetic of more progression, but since the entertainment has now become social media storylines, public figures are booked like it is a wrestling character. Just look at this award show shit or some fancy events where a lot of the black celebrities always bring chicken to the events, most people look at it like this is just something that happened and it was just some wacky and silly thing but I believe the social media shit is also written so now the regressive stereotypes are showing up in this form of entertainment while we pretend the actual television shows and movies don’t have the problematic and normalized racist tropes. I am looking at this in a grander way than the repeated limited tropes to talk about racism but it feels we are going back to early 2000’s edginess with this stuff. People don’t want to realize it. The reason I am focusing on the black angle of this is because I feel the system has so much anti blackness entrenched into it that even though we like to think we are progressive now, there is always normalized racism that we as a society don’t see. I am not making excuses for Ja Morant, I don’t know what his trajectory is in the system, but once people start shitting on you constantly, it means you are going to exist in this discourse to just be goofed on and act like it is solely on him, when there are billionaires that fund this kind of behavior. 

You are more outraged by the individual who is put in positions because that world doesn’t have mentally well people in it, but the cogs in the system are put through the mental ringer and we think we are calling it like it is, but we are doing the system’s bidding and then the system will put us through that shit. It happens with all public figures, but when it is someone from a marginalized community, the system normally has all this symbolism of putting public figures from their respective communities in the spotlight so then it turns into talking heads generalizing the entire community because the celeb’s actions is what we define it by. Here and there, there will be some subtle truths coming out, like Lil Durk admitting that labels pay him to beef, and that would not surprise me, but they make it seem like this destructive shit only happens within the hip hop world. Again the black art form gets thrown under the bus as the worst when I could argue professional wrestling and comedy have done destructive shit to people’s psyche and brainwashed them, comedy more so because everything in our lives has to revolve around making it funny to lessen the threat and we don’t see how that has gotten us to the fucking place we are in now. But our lives are nonstop gonna be funded bullshit to get people to think more regressive. So I could buy that labels do pay to have beef out there for promotion, but this could literally be done in every artform or field of expertise, because once you become a social media character, it is just sports entertainment. Look at the required sports entertainment now with lawyers doing viral shit to show they are a shit therapist, and a bunch of social climbers then think they are doing the good thing by getting them fired, when they are probably required to get social media buzz even if it looks kind of shitty to disparage your patients, but to me I look at it, like maybe these people are good at their jobs but they are getting social media clout because there is value in social currency. But I just noticed this trend with everything. This Ja Morant situation though has become even more annoying because everyone who is a talking head thinks they are doing their due diligence of calling him names and talking about him fucking up his career, when this is what the career entails. The reason why talking heads wouldn’t want to admit that, then it would reveal and expose that the shit they are analyzing is no different than WWE panels doing kayfabed commentary over storylines. The commentary through different platforms talking about these topics don’t even feel organic anymore. It is obviously gonna lead to something but maybe if people looked at the overall patterns in the world and what the trajectory has been with people in the public sphere maybe we could solve shit but I don’t think we are destined to, whenever TYT covers a celeb story that is a dead giveaway it is sports entertainment but it has real life consequences. You can’t say you are holding people accountable for their actions and then at the same time socially climb up in a system that will turn your life upside down and turn you into a parody. People used to mock me about breaking down on Stern Show and being brought down mentally but those same people have been compromised and could not handle the mental shit that me and others had to deal with because they are still brand new, they can barely handle any mild pushback. I always find it funny that people who never hold themselves accountable for what they partake in get the balls to then judge others who are being used as tools, maybe it is too much for people to break away from their constant need and investment with entertainment. I will sound like the party pooper because do gooder preachy blog because it is getting in the way of your entertainment, but I don’t write this shit or podcast about shit to talk down to people, because I have also been part of this, I have been the fucking token wanting the system’s approval, and since I have kicked down and suppressed, on my flight down, I have interacted with people on their way up at a mutual meeting spot, and when you think there would be more of a need to call out the system for what it is, it feels the people who were on their way up as I was coming down from my 15 minutes, they want to embrace the worst parts of the system and exploitation. It is unfortunate. People make those decisions. I might get upset at them but they are not the main ones I am really angry at. 

Again I just wanted to write something down, if people can look it from my view and stop limiting themselves, maybe they will see the bigger picture in how more and more our lives are turning into a shit show and this constant obsession over entertainment, but people rather partake in the storyline of the day. I also find myself in the same situation. I tell myself I am not gonna watch wrestling anymore because of all the bullshit around it, and it feels we are gonna regress and judging by how some of the smart fans pretend they are progressive but they lean into their regressive side and do the system’s bidding of hazing people mentally since it can’t officially happen like it was advertised back then, and I tell myself I am done with it because I am finally losing interest since the discourse is taking precedent and I still give in and I chime in with my opinion on CM Punk or whatever. I am not well either, but I can at least recognize it is a problem and hopefully I am not around longer to have to think about it because I don’t want to think about this entertainment shit. Most of this shit is gonna get worse but if this is what is going on with wrestling social media, just add in every single fandom and every culture war, and every identity politics issue, it is nonstop performative shit online and the lesser established person calls out the super established person, and that person then becomes what they claim to hate. I have seen this way too much, and maybe writing out this shitty blog will make me not care anymore and I just need it in written to get me in that direction, but this Ja Morant thing has taken the spotlight for discourse and more than usual, the hot takes on this from other mentally ill sports entertainer cogs have just annoyed me more than usual. I just think the overall nature of always having the black celebrities put in situations where it turns into people talking down the whole community has been played out and I see it more and more. The purpose of him doing that is because there was incentive given to do that stuff, but people don’t want to admit that people are controlled in that world and you are not supposed to think anything strange is happening because you are focusing on their artform like it is a regular job that it is relatable to regular people when these people are in a different world than most of us. They don’t operate by the same rules. It is like why I keep worrying about John Mulaney’s trajectory because once you are defined by what your scandal or controversy is, it will precedent in your career but it is like you are playing a reality show character and the more Mulaney will lean into it, it will become less funny each time, it is the same shit with Artie Lange. But we keep wondering why these repeated things will keep happening. We wait until it gets very bad and we pretend we are gonna change shit but we keep amplifying the negative in such an inorganic way. Again this Ja Morant thing could be a right wing pivot because purposefully everyone piled on him and whatever happens with his career, he will further become more of a sports entertainer from it who will make bank under the table with this social media currency, but I am looking at the trajectories of a lot of people and seeing the overall patterns that have played out since social media cancellations and piles on have become such a transparent thing. People are playing with other people’s lives so they can be a mediocre talking head to appease the powers that be that they will shit on someone for shit the system probably gave them incentive to do. It is not gonna end well and I feel we as a society are gonna get much worse, there is more incentive to do the regressive shit and since the internet is considered the underground palace, people love to cater to the underground when it is just as mainstream as the mainstream media. Again everything I have stated here is just my opinion, again go ahead and pile on a mentally ill person who lives in his mother’s basement and show off how much money you have, money that you barely have control over because the system will make you have to buy something luxurious that you don’t even need but you are paying the elitist toll booth to make other companies rich.

[whitehotharlots]

The point is control

Whenever we think or talk about censorship, we usually conceptualize it as certain types of speech being somehow disallowed: maybe (rarely) it's made formally illegal by the government, maybe it's banned in certain venues, maybe the FCC will fine you if you broadcast it, maybe your boss will fire you if she learns of it, maybe your friends will stop talking to you if they see what you've written, etc. etc. 

This understanding engenders a lot of mostly worthless discussion precisely because it's so broad. Pedants--usually arguing in favor of banning a certain work or idea--will often argue that speech protections only apply to direct, government bans. These bans, when they exist, are fairly narrow and apply only to those rare speech acts in which other people are put in danger by speech (yelling the N-word in a crowded theater, for example). This pedantry isn't correct even within its own terms, however, because plenty of people get in trouble for making threats. The FBI has an entire entrapment program dedicated to getting mentally ill muslims and rednecks to post stuff like "Death 2 the Super bowl!!" on twitter, arresting them, and the doing a press conference about how they heroically saved the world from terrorism. 

Another, more recent pedant's trend is claiming that, actually, you do have freedom of speech; you just don't have freedom from the consequences of speech. This logic is eerily dictatorial and ignores the entire purpose of speech protections. Like, even in the history's most repressive regimes, people still technically had freedom of speech but not from consequences. Those leftist kids who the nazis beheaded for speaking out against the war were, by this logic, merely being held accountable. 

The two conceptualizations of censorship I described above are, 99% of the time, deployed by people who are arguing in favor of a certain act of censorship but trying to exempt themselves from the moral implications of doing so. Censorship is rad when they get to do it, but they realize such a solipsism seems kinda icky so they need to explain how, actually, they're not censoring anybody, what they're doing is an act of righteous silencing that's a totally different matter. Maybe they associate censorship with groups they don't like, such as nazis or religious zealots. Maybe they have a vague dedication toward Enlightenment principles and don't want to be regarded as incurious dullards. Most typically, they're just afraid of the axe slicing both ways, and they want to make sure that the precedent they're establishing for others will not be applied to themselves.

Anyone who engages with this honestly for more than a few minutes will realize that censorship is much more complicated, especially in regards to its informal and social dimensions. We can all agree that society simply would not function if everyone said whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. You might think your boss is a moron or your wife's dress doesn't look flattering, but you realize that such tidbits are probably best kept to yourself. 

Again, this is a two-way proposition that everyone is seeking to balance. Do you really want people to verbalize every time they dislike or disagree with you? I sure as hell don't. And so, as part of a social compact, we learn to self-censor. Sometimes this is to the detriment of ourselves and our communities. Most often, however, it's just a price we have to pay in order to keep things from collapsing. 

But as systems, large and small, grow increasingly more insane and untenable, so do the comportment standards of speech. The disconnect between America's reality and the image Americans have of themselves has never been more plainly obvious, and so striving for situational equanimity is no longer good enough. We can't just pretend cops aren't racist and the economy isn't run by venal retards or that the government places any value on the life of its citizens. There's too much evidence that contradicts all that, and the evidence is too omnipresent. There's too many damn internet videos, and only so many of them can be cast as Russian disinformation. So, sadly, we must abandon our old ways of communicating and embrace instead systems that are even more unstable, repressive, and insane than the ones that were previously in place.

Until very, very recently, nuance and big-picture, balanced thinking were considered signs of seriousness, if not intelligence. Such considerations were always exploited by shitheads to obfuscate things that otherwise would have seemed much less ambiguous, yes, but this fact alone does not mitigate the potential value of such an approach to understanding the world--especially since the stuff that's been offered up to replace it is, by every worthwhile metric, even worse.

So let's not pretend I'm Malcolm Gladwell or some similarly slimy asshole seeking to "both sides" a clearcut moral issue. Let's pretend I am me. Flash back to about a year ago, when there was real, widespread, and sustained support for police reform. Remember that? Seems like forever ago, man, but it was just last year... anyhow, now, remember what happened? Direct, issues-focused attempts to reform policing were knocked down. Blotted out. Instead, we were told two things: 1) we had to repeat the slogan ABOLISH THE POLICE, and 2) we had to say it was actually very good and beautiful and nonviolent and valid when rioters burned down poor neighborhoods.

Now, in a relatively healthy discourse, it might have been possible for someone to say something like "while I agree that American policing is heavily violent and racist and requires substantial reforms, I worry that taking such an absolutist point of demanding abolition and cheering on the destruction of city blocks will be a political non-starter." This statement would have been, in retrospect, 100000000% correct. But could you have said it, in any worthwhile manner? If you had said something along those lines, what would the fallout had been? Would you have lost friends? Your job? Would you have suffered something more minor, like getting yelled at, told your opinion did not matter? Would your acquaintances still now--a year later, after their political project has failed beyond all dispute--would they still defame you in "whisper networks," never quite articulating your verbal sins but nonetheless informing others that you are a dangerous and bad person because one time you tried to tell them how utterly fucking self-destructive they were being? It is undeniably clear that last year's most-elevated voices were demanding not reform but catharsis. I hope they really had fun watching those immigrant-owned bodegas burn down, because that’s it, that will forever be remembered as the most palpable and consequential aspect of their shitty, selfish movement. We ain't reforming shit. Instead, we gave everyone who's already in power a blank check to fortify that power to a degree you and I cannot fully fathom.

But, oh, these people knew what they were doing. They were good little boys and girls. They have been rewarded with near-total control of the national discourse, and they are all either too guilt-ridden or too stupid to realize how badly they played into the hands of the structures they were supposedly trying to upend.

And so left-liberalism is now controlled by people whose worldview is equal parts superficial and incoherent. This was the only possible outcome that would have let the system continue to sustain itself in light of such immense evidence of its unsustainability without resulting in reform, so that's what has happened.

But... okay, let's take a step back. Let's focus on what I wanted to talk about when I started this.

I came across a post today from a young man who claimed that his high school English department head had been removed from his position and had his tenure revoked for refusing to remove three books from classrooms. This was, of course, fallout from the ongoing debate about Critical Race Theory. Two of those books were Marjane Satropi's Persepolis and, oh boy, The Diary of Anne Frank. Fuck. Jesus christ, fuck.

Now, here's the thing... When Persepolis was named, I assumed the bannors were anti-CRT. The graphic novel does not deal with racism all that much, at least not as its discussed contemporarily, but it centers an Iranian girl protagonist and maybe that upset Republican types. But Anne Frank? I'm sorry, but the most likely censors there are liberal identiarians who believe that teaching her diary amounts to centering the suffering of a white woman instead of talking about the One Real Racism, which must always be understood in an American context. The super woke cult group Black Hammer made waves recently with their #FuckAnneFrank campaign... you'd be hard pressed to find anyone associated with the GOP taking a firm stance against the diary since, oh, about 1975 or so.

So which side was it? That doesn't matter. What matters is, I cannot find out.

Now, pro-CRT people always accuse anti-CRT people of not knowing what CRT is, and then after making such accusations they always define CRT in a way that absolutely is not what CRT is. Pro-CRTers default to "they don't want  students to read about slavery or racism." This is absolutely not true, and absolutely not what actual CRT concerns itself with. Slavery and racism have been mainstays of American history curriucla since before I was born. Even people who barely paid attention in school would admit this, if there were any more desire for honesty in our discourse. 

My high school history teacher was a southern "lost causer" who took the south's side in the Civil War but nonetheless provided us with the most descriptive and unapologetic understandings of slavery's brutalities I had heard up until that point. He also unambiguously referred to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshmia and Nagasaki as "genocidal." Why? Because most people's politics are idiosyncratic, and because you cannot genuinely infer a person to believe one thing based on their opinion of another, tangentially related thing. The totality of human understanding used to be something open-minded people prided themselves on being aware of, believe it or not...

This is the problem with CRT. This is is the motivation behind the majority of people who wish to ban it. It’s not because they are necessarily racist themselves. It’s because they recognize, correctly, that the now-ascendant frames for understanding social issues boils everything down to a superficial patina that denies not only the realities of the systems they seek to upend but the very humanity of the people who exist within them. There is no humanity without depth and nuance and complexities and contradictions. When you argue otherwise, people will get mad and fight back. 

And this is the most bitter irony of this idiotic debate: it was never about not wanting to teach the sinful or embarrassing parts of our history. That was a different debate, one that was settled and won long ago. It is instead an immense, embarrassing overreach on behalf of people who have bullied their way to complete dominance of their spheres of influence within media and academe assuming they could do the same to everyone else. Some of its purveyors may have convinced themselves that getting students to admit complicity in privilege will prevent police shootings, sure. But I know these people. I’ve spoken to them at length. I’ve read their work. The vast, vast majority of them aren’t that stupid. The point is to exert control. The point is to make sure they stay in charge and that nothing changes. The point is failure. 

[rahleeyah]

So let's take a step back. Far right extremists latch on to "democrats are child sex traffickers/murderers" as a cause du jour (pizzagate was 2016 can you believe?) A very real problem - sex trafficking - becomes a dog whistle for neo nazis and q-anoners. It bleeds into the national conversation. Websites like Backpage get targeted in the name of protecting kids, which maybe it does, while also hammering sex workers. Sex workers start looking for other places to build businesses. Apple, with a chokehold on the mobile app market, goes on a puritanical spree to eliminate sexy content from its apps. To protect the kids, of course. Tumblr gets removed from the app store bc there was a thriving sex-interested community here, and scrambles to remove anything even vaguely sexy, including female presenting nipples and several pictures of my pet rabbit. Sex workers - and just! People who like sex in general! - go in search of somewhere else to make a living and create content. Again. They go to onlyfans, turn it from nothing into a billion dollar company, but onlyfans "can't attract investors" with all that sexy content, so they decide to kick the sex workers out. Again. You know what happened to Tumblr when they banned sexual images (or tried to, I promise you there are naked people on my dash at this very moment)? Usage of the site plummeted, along with its valuation, and left them desperately scrambling to find some way to make enough money to keep the lights on. What is gonna happen to onlyfans without sexual content? How many people use it for non sexual reasons?

Now. I do happen to believe it almost impossible to consume traditional porn ethically; it is almost impossible to know if the actors were plied with drugs or forced into situations they didn't initially consent to or were otherwise coerced or abused and the business is full of those stories. But onlyfans? By and large most of those creators are in business for themselves, and in charge of their creative directions. It provides them with agency. It provides them with a means to control their own income, on their terms.

But we can't have that, can we? We can strip a woman down and force her into uncomfortable, revealing clothes and positions for big budget movies, but we can't have her deciding to do that for herself, can we? We can make art out of her trauma but we hem and haw when she demands respect. Companies can make millions of dollars on their backs and then throw these women away like they're nothing. Corporations, CEOs in big cushy offices raking cash in hand over fist can shit all over the women who made them rich; it is inherently classist. And misogynist; no, not all sex workers are women, not by a mile, but that is the way our society understands this business to operate. The women do the work, the men pay - or get paid - and the women are punished.

The rise of this neo-puritanism (which has also infected the left, make no mistake about it) hurts women, hurts sex workers, and gives young people no option to turn to for exploring the concept of sex but the traditional porn industry or mainstream media, and god the damage that does is quantifiable. There is data on this, on the rising trend of sex related injuries that boil down to "well I saw it in a porno and they looked like they were having fun", bc the porno didn't show the prep work, or didn't care that the acts it was showing were violent and abusive.

We need a public discourse about sex. We need access to different presentations of what sex is, or can be. We need protections for sex workers, instead of continually forcing them into smaller and smaller corners, where the risk gets greater and greater. Sex is not evil! Sex is not bad! Sex can coexist on a platform with other kinds of content without eroding the moral purity or whatever the fuck of that platform. No one was forcing Tumblr users to look at porn (well except for whoever runs the porn bots, which are very much still here) and if a tumblr user doesn't wanna see it then they can take some fucking responsibility and use the tools that are available to shield themselves from it.

Same fucking thing with onlyfans. It's a subscription based website; no one is encountering "sexual nudity" by mistake. But paternal, puritanical, pearl clutching corporations wanna dictate the content we can and can't consume.

This is censorship, plain and simple, and it is and always has been a slippery slope. Every inch of ground given is a loss of freedom. Corporations are taking charge of what we see, using algorithms (make sure you have best stuff first turned off on your Tumblr) to curate our experiences, steering us in whatever direction will make them the most money. I am thinking now about that expose about how the reporter could track a right wingers descent into q anon madness through his Facebook likes. Each click dragged him deeper and deeper into that hole until there was no way out.

Do I use onlyfans? No! But this continuing tend of throttling sex based content is alarming to me, and I don't know how we turn back the clock but holy shit. Bodies are not shameful, and sex is not repugnant, and the more we act like it is the more damage we do to our national psyche.

[magicwithineleteo]

ok so below the cut is me addressing my feelings about the “drama” in the fandom. i would just like to mention that i am hesitant to post this out of fear of receiving backlash and being attacked/harassed by those who disagree. if you are as mature as you believe yourself to be, then please act as such and try to have a healthy discussion instead of just jumping on me for speaking up.

tw: pedophilia, bullying, swearing

i honestly don't have words for what’s happening in the fandom. i joined this fandom out of love for an amazing show, and was pleased to find a community of like-minded people who enjoy it just as much as i do. but i was not expecting this toxic element. i agree with the fact that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and they are free to ship whatever they want to. usually, i wouldn't give a fuck. but i do care when the ships are morally wrong. to reiterate, this is NOT a matter of opinion, this is a matter of MORALITY, which if someone wants to go ahead and say is subjective, at the end of the day, there are basic definitions of what is morally right and wrong. these ships are gababel and esteomi. (i am against cedfia too, however i’m not in the sofia the first fandom. only the eoa fandom so this is primarily about these ships.) i do not understand how one can comfortably ship these ships. at the beginning of the show, naomi is 15 and esteban is in his mid 50s. i don’t get how so many people don’t see the issue with that??? and at the beginning of the show, isabel is 10 and gabe is 18. again, a big issue. there is only one context in which esteban and naomi would morally work, if naomi was around pre-amulet. so by the time elena is freed, naomi is a similar age to esteban. but she’s not. regarding gababel, i don’t see how aging up isabel makes it any more acceptable. gabe has known isa since she was 10, i don’t think he’s just gonna immediately get feelings for her when she turns 18. that just sounds like a bunch of bs. other excuses for these ships are also a bunch of bs. dang, i didn’t know that not shipping gababel was because i’m not imaginative enough to think about the future of that ship. at least i'm imaginative enough to see that it's not even worth imagining because why would anyone even want to picture it? 

treating people with kindness and living by the golden rule means a lot to me. that people should be nice to each other, no matter if their beliefs clash or not. so why is it that when a young minor calls out these morally wrong ships, they are targeted? once again, this is a young MINOR. A CHILD. and not to mention, they were targeted by a bunch of adults. this child has called out something that’s morally wrong and adults came for them. i feel like these adults were aware that they are a child, but only to a certain point. they used the fact that they are a child to prove the point that they don’t know what bullying is, or that you were once in their shoes, an opinionated teenager. didn't know having an opinion was exclusive to teenagers, but i digress. however, a lot of you failed to recall that this is an actual child. not to mention, a handicapped child who has expressed time and time again how negative criticism affects them. at the end of the day, this context shouldn't even matter, because no one should be treated like that anyway. this child was bullied. this child felt invalidated and hurt. i don’t care what you think the definition of bullying is. they were bullied. imagine you’re in their place. a young (at the time 14 year old) who is receiving replies from  several adults telling them that they are wrong about pedophilia. you wouldn’t feel so nice either. their mental health went down because of this. you all failed to realize that this is a child, and that you need to be respectful to them. they are an equal member of the fandom, and they deserve several apologies. 

going along with this whole dialogue of age, i would like to point out that your age has nothing to do with your level of maturity, understanding, or comprehensibility of matters. just because someone is younger than you doesn't mean that automatically you are more correct or have the upper hand or whatever it may be simply due to your age. sure you may have more life experience, but what about your level of decency? empathy? awareness? sense of morality? these matter just as much, if not more. you can be 15 and wise and be 80 and be less knowledgeable. your actions and character display these things, not your age.

also with the whole “woke/woke teenager” thing. it's funny how it was said that buzzwords are being thrown around yet here we are, throwing this word around too. anyways, being “woke” is about being aware, having an open mind, and being able to not only recognize when something/someone is wrong, but being able to shed light on it and call it out. if you think i’m “woke” for calling out your pedophilic fantasies (which yes it is pedophilic i don’t think i need to explain to adults how that is so; and no, just because you aGe tHEm uP in yOuR hEad doesn't make it okay) then i’m damn proud to call out your shit. and i'll be damned if one of my friends or i get scrutinized for standing up and doing the right thing. no one deserves to get attacked for this, especially not with superficial strawman arguments that go after the person themselves rather than their “argument”/point of view. you can do all the name calling you want to, that does nothing to enhance your argument. all it does is shine a bright light on your character. and thank you for that, so we can see what kind of people we have in this community. it’s not about being sensitive or “woke” or whatever useless argument you want to use to steer away from the fact that you are MORALLY WRONG. i would understand if this discussion was about something lighter but this is so much deeper. this is not about “not being able to imagine/not being creative enough to imagine” i mean seriously? is that the argument here? that would be laughable if it wasn't as sad. what a substanceless argument that shows there is no viable justification for these ships. and it is not just about these pedophilic ships; it's also about how people are getting treated, specifically how adults on a power trip are attacking younger members of the fandom (wrongfully) with their petty posse of people. i mean seriously? can none of you (just a one on one not one of us versus your gang) have a decent conversation without needing your other friends to attack along with you? just childish honestly. and i wouldn't even say that because children aren't low enough to act like that. they are aware enough of others' feelings and know how to solve problems without hurting each other.

the fact that this is being deemed as “policing” and “telling the fandom at large what to do” is just ridiculous. first of all, no one is forcing our stances down people’s throats. second of all, who said you suck? you said it, not me. third of all, think of it like this. we have laws, yes? sure, the laws are written and yet some people still choose to break them. the law is enforced but yet still people have the option to follow it or not (even though they should follow it, duh). now say someone is breaking the law. would law enforcement be wrong to call them out on it? would they be wrong for charging them? no, because your actions have consequences. someone can “believe” they were not breaking the law but if their “belief” is objectively illegal and morally wrong, then by all means they should be called out on it. just because *you* personally don't find you shipping a 10 year old with an 18 year old (a fifth grader and high school senior for context) doesn't mean it's not problematic. and it doesn't matter if you're aging them up, it's still weird like why? it’s like you’re trying to justify pedophilia? and then you have the nerve to collectively attack ONE younger person who called out your foolery? this analogy was not to make it seem like we are the police of the fandom and are high and mighty or whatever, but simply to try and get across the point that just because *you* think it's not wrong, does not absolve you of it actually just being wrong. 

the way this matter has been addressed (and i wouldn't even say that because it is more like a one sided conversation/scolding where the opposite side of the discourse is either silenced because of fear or silenced after being attacked) has been absolutely petty, snarky, condescending, and catty; you really give yourself a sense of superiority over people because you are older and therefore more mature and more able to understand things on a deeper level? then understand this. handle this discussion in a more mature way. allow others who disagree with you to at least come to the table and share their feelings and see from their perspective. do not immediately pounce on them with your similarly-aged clique like this is some early 2000’s high school movie. it's funny because you are invalidating us by belittling us as just “high schoolers”, but if anything you guys are the ones acting like what you are projecting on us. literally bullying children. how depraved do you have to be to sit here and behave like this with actual children. it's funny because some of you actually have children and here you are, being a keyboard warrior for a pedophilic ship. is that the hill you are choosing to die on? at least try to open your eyes and see why we are addressing this. to your point, yes, you are adults. ADULTS. so act like it.

i would also like to mention that there is a big difference between notps and morally wrong ships. notps are ships that you do not ship because that’s just not what you like. an example of that for me is elenaomi. i don’t ship them like that, that’s one of my notps, and that’s okay. however when there are ships like esteomi and gababel, those are more than notps. those are morally wrong ships because they are pedophilic. i am not gonna call these my nOtPs; these are HELL NOTPS.

some of you are also big hypocrites. you say to scroll on, and to ignore it if you don’t like it. yet you feel the need to respond to things you don’t agree with. yes, it’s your blog, but if you’re not going to practice what you preach then, what’s the point? this reminds of the whole dialogue surrounding “if you don't like it here (your country), then leave.” this phrase is used to invalidate people who call out issues within their country, whether it be the societal structure as a whole, or the government etc. it's like you are only patriotic if you have 0 complaints and love everything about your country. you don't care if things are ruined; it's your country so you love it. in my eyes, true patriotism is when you are able to recognize and not be in denial about issues in your country; you are willing to not only acknowledge them as a problem, but are actively trying to address and fix it. similarly, i believe that you shouldn't have to just scroll on or leave the community because you are uncomfortable because of a genuine problem. why should we just be silent and accept what's going on? us scrolling on while recognizing the problem and not saying anything, letting it thrive, is being complicit. it's like being a bystander, and we are not going to do that. we want this community to be a great place for all of us to get along because of our shared interest of eoa. but that doesn't mean that these things should be excused or ignored. if you are having an issue with people calling this out, if the shoe fits, that's your problem, and moreover, you are part of the problem. i am not calling out specific names in this, so if you have an issue with it, then….hate to break it to you.

i understand that i’m usually a lot nicer on my page. however, i feel that i have been silent for too long. but i’m not a hypocrite and i know that i’m right. how people respond to this just reflects their character more than mine. i am a 13 year old child, and i am hesitant to discuss this because you guys did not hold back at a 14 now 15 year old. that is not okay, especially when this is supposed to be a loving community about a show that is aimed at children. that was all. please have some empathy, understanding, and especially respect.

[mc-slowwalker]

hahahahha that’s funny lol (saying that the author of the common enemy fics is c!dream) but yeah common enemy definitely won’t fix the issues cause it’s the cycle of violence that they have to break and that definitely will not be fixed easily

woooo syndicate supremacy (I’ve finally learned how to spell syndicate correctly through our conversation lol) they’re definitely doing better than other people on the server and I love that for them! oh yeah either or both c!tommy and c!dream definitely need to reflect on the fact that they’re both make eachother worse. I absolutely loved how that fic handled that aspect of it because closure and freedom is exactly what I want for c!dream and c!tommy more than anything. yeah exactly!! which is why I don’t like the idea of c!dream dying either cause it just leaves everything unresolved. I doubt that’ll happen in canon tho

yea!! can’t wait for the angst! cc!wilbur just posted on reddit about ghostbur so we’ve already got some more of it 😔✌️which also reminds me that I’m sooo interested to see how c!dream is like once he’s out of prison because so much of the fandom believes different thing and there’s no way that he’s gonna be better or changed cause he’s had no opportunity to plus he’s been through terrible torture for so long and I can’t wait to see the effect of that. which also reminds me that I’ve seen lately that a lot of the fandom seems to think that c!dream was put in the prison as a punishment when it was less about that and more about the fact that he could revive people and that his last canon life would have been taken if not for that fact. a lot of the fandom says he deserves the prison but not the torture as a punishment but that’s not why he was put in the prison and if that was the case literally every other character would deserve the same punishment as well as they’re all characters that have done bad things. I feel like my typing is just getting more and more rambly and less and less well punctuated lol sorry

oh yeah those fandom rules definitely make sense. especially as someone who has been in online fandom spaces for like a long time and has seen all the tumblr discourse lol. like yeah those rules were actually not bad and don’t send death threats or harass people shouldn’t have to be said as much as it is in mcyttwt. I really do wish that the young people in this fandom realise that they’re allowed to just have fun and do what they like in fandom

I think that taking into account the fact that a character is a minor is definitely important I just disagree with the way that a lot of people use it as such a final argument that doesn’t leave room for discussion. yeah I’m the same like when I was younger I used to think I was so grown up but like I’m 18 now and I realise that that’s still so young even though at 18 I’m an adult. basically like the “child” argument is not so black and white either like instead of a defence I think it’s more something that should be taken into account when discussing a characters actions and I definitely agree with the characters you’ve added as people who that can be extended to. and yeah like in real life the minors would face soo many more consequences it’s kind of funny like everyone would but with it being such a prominent topic of discussion it’s funnier applying real life rules to dsmp is often so funny. I agree c!tommy should 100% pay taxes that would be hilarious

ooh yeah the three life system interesting cause at first glance you’d think it makes them worth less but evidently not and I do wonder how the characters see it. like you said with c!foolish and c!puffy it was traumatic to take a first life but for some it just seems as chances and the last life is what actually matters. who it’s against and also circumstance I think matters. I also tend to brush off c!tommy taking two of c!dream’s lives but I also tend to brush off the canon lives lost during the first l’manburg war as it was war and c!dteam and co were just better. I suppose I’m an everything but l’manburg apologist because of its foundations ig although I can still understand and acknowledge it’s importance to the characters such as c!tommy. I’ve seen it said that c!dream deserves prison because he took two of c!tommy’s canon, amongst other reasons of course, but so many other characters have taken canon lives and how do you determine the consequence of that in the dsmp cause in irl it’s very different and in the dsmp so far there really is no consequence for murder. like for example c!punz took two of c!wilburs canon lives (I stan him for that I’m a punz simp what can I say) and other characters have taken canon lives too. hmm I wonder what determined the severity of crimes on the dsmp cause the one character that’s in prison wasn’t actually put in there for his crimes.

hahahaha yeah I just can’t wait till we finally don’t have to reach that much

ahaha fair enough I just sometimes type too fast and autocorrect never seems to know what I want to say and I do not have the brain power to proof read a single thing I write. also I type out the asks in notes and after I sent the last one I was like damn that was really long and pasted it into pages to check. and oh my god this one is over a thousand words that’s like longer than one of essays I wrote for my philosophy final exam😭😭 I am so sorry

I will say though that I am quite enjoying this discussion cause it’s the most in depth discussion I’ve been able to have about this

I saw the angst wilbur put on reddit that mother fucker (affectionate) I actually have a rewlly weird relationship with wilbur’s meta lore. Things I accept: sally is a salmon, fridge mom, all the characters being morally gray. Things I don’t accept: whatever he was trying to do with character ages, also saying revivebur was straight when c!tommy saw him and quackity making out like nice try king. One of my biggest issues with the sever is that I get so easily attached to mobs/npcs in dream smp and they die so easy so Im always sobbing,,,, if anything happens to shroud, yogurt, michael (notchill), or fran I’ll mcfucking lose it

For c!dream getting out of prison I see there being only two routes: 1. he’s worse by a lot more evil more fucked up or 2. He’ll be actually too fucked up/tired/traumatized to do shit. Either of which is gonna hurt the sever so I’m looking forward to it personally

Other real life things I think should be implemented into dream smp: jury duty, required 3 life insurance, dentsits, and OSHA

I do think the rebellion against c!dream (in the final control room) is really interrsting in that c!tommy/c!punz was about to organize a bunch of the server against dream? I know c!tommy has amazing puppy eyes tm but c!punz was able to organize a big group of people, half of them didn’t really have that much against dream (other than the l’manburg people) and were only there on more vague terms. Like c!hbomb and c!ponk really didn’t have shit against dream but still helped in getting him into prison

I feel like we’re always gonna have to reach a little bit and oh shit 1,000 words? Bruh half my classes require that and I have yet to actually right that much. it’s way easier with stuff you’re passionate about and with all the content dream smp has gives way more to analyze

[blasphemie]

you know, @bumkeyz​, i think it’s very nasty for you to say i have some kind of privilege in all of this. we don’t get to pick and choose who was affected by addy and her actions. just because you see the shit that we posted on tumblr, does not mean you have the full story. and i’m gonna be honest... fuck you and the anon in my inbox for making me feel like i MUST talk about my own trauma because if i didn’t, i was staying silent for her.

when i say my brain couldn’t handle this, it’s because of outside factors that i won’t get into and the fact i had the stark realization that i was in fact manipulated by addy. it’s been hard to come to terms with and all i wanted to do with that ask was highlight that i did not stand by her. but fine, you want the long post of it all, so here ya go.

here’s my story. my side of things. read if you want, or don’t.

tw : manipulation , guilt tripping .

i’m not going to pretend like i remember when addy and i met. all i remember is something was happening in the rpc and i was involved in some discourse and she came into my ims offering support. i was very leery of her at this point, as she had just come back from her stay with rpslayed. tumblr won’t let me reopen those ims now she’s deleted that old blog, but i know that i did reply. it went from that discourse, to the one she was having with B, someone that took advantage of her. and again, i have morals to uphold, so of course i went off about it. through all of this, i started to believe she had changed - which was a large lapse in my own judgement at the time, but we became friends. i wish i hadn’t NOW, but that’s not something i can change now.

i have a terrible memory as i’ve stated, so again, i’m not going to be able to give dates on this one either, but you know how there was an asterisked name in certain posts of her’s? yeah that was my name right up until her current boyfriend. me and addy had this... thing going. more of like a back and forth, will they won’t they. i wish it was as poetic as some wattpad fic because that’s where i begin to realize i was manipulated. the biggest thing i can remember is the whole situation concerning my best friend, who is also my ex-boyfriend. something that was truly one sided occurred between them and soon it was such a big thing that me and him were friends. one time, she did not even talk to me for days and would only add like an emphasis or thumbs down to my imessage texts ( idk what they’re called but you get me ) . i was constantly made to feel bad that my ex was my best friend, i remember once she found out we wanted to make a rp together and was all “im going back to bed”. i once made a post that said “you know it’s real if i send you tiktoks” and tagged him in it and that again, led to her ghosting me because she didn’t feel important enough to me or whatever.

i remember there was this time we didn’t talk for a certain amount of time, so i blocked her thinking we weren’t friends. and then i get this over cashapp.

i won’t lie. addy has given me money. she gave me money when i really needed it and i think that’s why i didn’t want to speak against her. because i didn’t want her to think i had just been using her for money because i know at one point that is what she thought of me. but anyway, at this point, i’m like oh so we ARE friends ? and i’ve just been thrown back and forth so much with her that it was normal to me at this point. so we reconnected. i think the guilt over accepting money from someone kept me by her side and kept me standing up for her.

people who know me know i’m not an active replier sometimes. i sometimes disappear for days at a time and come back. that’s just who i am. addy didn’t like this. i remember once she was mad at me because i posted a screenshot of something my friend said and again, i was ghosted. this is how even part of that went.

the entire thing is that i respect people’s boundaries. but this stemmed from a place of pettiness. this was the aftermath of that btw once i was softblocked.

things like this also occurred.

it felt like i was being PUNISHED for not replying. when i don’t reply, it’s not because i want to make someone not feel as if they’re not important to me, which is something she tried to say me posting a screenshot of someone else was me saying.

on the subject of the sexual jokes / allegations from other people : i had NO idea then that they were being made to everyone, especially minors. i thought it was something that was exclusive to people she liked. it became clear to me that she did make those jokes to everyone, but never, EVER to minors. please do not say i stand with someone whose said that shit to kids, because i would never. i’ve been at the receiving end of those and some were consensual, but not all, but i do digress.

ya know, i was always was to be blame for a failed almost relationship because don’t get me wrong, i did like addy. but i’ll also be the first to admit i am a VERY closed off person, but i still flirt with people a lot. but it was always pointed out to me that it was very clearly my fault, no matter if i apologized. it was always my fault. i always hurt her feelings ( to the point she would delete my number and contact entirely ) . it was just always, ALWAYS salt’s fault, she never let me forget that. i remember indirects were made about me such as this.

btw this right here, was made BEFORE the “who gonna tell me” post, which she ended up deleting and then posting those.

i remember even when i would TRY with her by saying hmu if you want to watch a movie, she would reply with “go ask [ex bf]” or when i reconnected with an flame she would say “whatever go flirt with [name]”. go do this, go do that. 

but the kicker? she would always come back and act like nothing happened. and i would always be in such a state of whiplash with this. she would flirt with me again and i would flirt back because that’s what i was used to.

when she got in her newest relationship, it all kind of came to a close, except if i made a joke about it all, she would say i hurt her feelings and lash out about it all. i was STILL made to feel bad about it even when she was in a relationship.

i think at the end of the day, i should and WILL take full accountability for even becoming friends with her in the first place due to her past. i could’ve easily stopped all of this happening to me if i had not made that ONE decision. at the end of the day, i was still manipulated, i was still made to feel like trash over a failed relationship, and i let it happen because i had feelings for her AND she had helped me out when i most needed it. but i’ll be dammed if i let someone say i had a PRIVILEGE in this situation when i felt like i had to stay friends with her because of the money or because she would say some shit about me if i tried to not be friends with her. and while there is so much more i could pull up and show y’all, i do not feel like going through all of that. just know this pattern is what i experienced for upwards of a year or so.

you can believe what you want or feel how you want about me. it doesn’t change a damn thing that happened to me and i’m so, SO tired of being silent.

- salt.

[gayregis]

I've listened to the part where Geralt talks with a very ill Cahir about Ciri and vengeance... it was one of the most emotional parts of the book by itself but also thanks to your take about the lost innocence of Ciri ! I felt it thrice hard in the feelings! Also, do you have thoughts on the declared love of Cahir for Ciri? Personally I see it as disturbingly romantic, let's say. Thank you for your commitment to the books and sorry to bother you

omg thank you for the ask. first of all i have to say you’re not bothering me!! tbh i have been loving getting asks because it gives me an opportunity to like bring more discussion to the witcher community... 

i feel like although reblogging pretty gifs of characters/landscapes from tw3 and any good fanart i can find is nice, my FAVORITE thing to do is write or read a really long textpost about the witcher books, i really like the discussion aspect of fandoms where people post their reactions and opinions to the content they like, because you get a bunch of shared reactions and differing opinions.

so no this is NOT a bother at all, and its nice especially to get asks about topics that i have strong feelings about but have not made posts about yet, like this one

ok, as for the actual topic: i hate forced heterosexuality, so you KNOW i hate that canon cahiri! it was out of line from sapkowski and imo, it came out of absolutely nowhere in tower of the swallow, it wasn’t something built up to or foreshadowed at all, so it felt not only weird in context but weird for sapkowski as an author.

my main problem with canon cahiri: i think it’s super creepy!

first of all, let’s discuss the age difference. cahir in baptism of fire is estimated to be “not over 25,” which i see as putting him around 20 to 25 years old, and i usually take the median of this which is around 23. while this “not over 25″ comment is said in the context of the hansa to remark upon how young cahir is (i believe it’s thought of by either geralt or dandelion, and geralt is around 60 years old and as a witcher he looks 45, and dandelion is 38 in tower of the swallow), and how cahir is described as a young man in time of contempt to illustrate that he has a sense of innocence to him as ciri cuts him down, his age gap with ciri is super innappropriate for anything to occur between them, since she is 10 or 11 during the massacre of cintra (as stated by geralt in something more), so she would be around 14 at thanedd, and 15-16 during baptism of fire to lady of the lake. so sapkowski deemed it fit to pair a 23 year old man with a 16 year old girl. this isn’t the first time he’s done something like this, what with essi being “not over 18″ and shani also bein around 18 / college age, and yennefer canonically looking around 20. listen, the man has some messed up values when it comes to women’s ages. we have to take it upon ourselves as people who like the not-weird parts of canon to understand how worldviews and personal biases affect one’s writing, and change it for ourselves to make it right so we can continue interacting with it, if we so choose (tldr: retcon some shit when it’s fucked up in canon).

now, before someone argues that “it’s fantasy medieval world, medieval relationships between men and women were just like that,” believe me, i am aware. i study ancient greece/rome and men who were in their 30s were most often paired with women in their teens as part of their arranged marriages. that is how their ancient societies functioned more than 2000 years ago. the issue is that this is a fantasy world, in which societal norms and laws do not have to conform to real-life earth history, and this is the work of a modern writer writing in the 1990s. it’s not “just how the times were,” it’s deliberately choosing to include an age gap like that to be something canonically acceptable by their society/ies.

also, one could argue that the age gap would be fine once they are older, like, when ciri becomes an adult she is already medievally-style betrothed to cahir so they start dating when she’s like 20 and he’s like 27. eh... that’s still an uncomfortable age gap, at least for when they’re in their 20s. people in their older 20s have more life experience than people in their younger 20s. but at least it wouldn’t land cahir in modern-day jail.

it’s still just an uncomfortably large age gap, and if you think about it, it’s even creepier considering that cahir met ciri when she was a helpless child around 10 - 11 and it just makes the bathing scene excruciatingly creepy too if you put it in the context that he eventually would fall in love with her. it even begins to not be about strictly age, but about life experience, development, and power imbalance within the relationship. i mean, he did literally kidnap her.

cahir in tos calls ciri a “woman” when she is like, 15 or 16 (with the rose tattoo) (to anyone reading, please don’t come at me with that “the age of consent is 15 in poland, just because it’s 18 in the US doesn’t mean your laws and culture apply to everyone” ... please do not try and justify this with laws, legality is not morality. only saying this because i’ve seen it in other posts). like.... hm! don’t like that! she is a teenager... he is in his 20s... this should not be occuring.

sorry for the loooong explanation, but every time someone brings up the subject of age gaps on tumblr it turns into crazy discourse with everyone trying to justify it.

but yeah, CANONICALLY cahir would have been 16-21 (median 18) when he met ciri at 10-11, and 20-25 (median 23) when he declares his love for her at 15-16. that’s ... not good ... to put it more into perspective, these are their ages on a traditional school system path: a 18 year old is a high school senior, an 11 year old is a 6th grader. a 23 year old has been out of college for 2 years, a 16 year old is a high school sophomore. ITS NOT GOOD

my other problem with canon cahiri: it’s boring and contradicts sapkowski at his own game.

all of the witcher is about taking fantasy tropes and inverting them, like you can’t have some random peasant kill a dragon, you’d need a professional, and also guess what, the dragon isn’t evil but a dad trying to protect his wife and child.

all of the characters in the hansa (as well as the four main characters of geralt, yennefer, ciri, and dandelion) are inversions of the tropes they represent. for some examples, milva’s trope is something like the hot action girl who only exists to be the only girl in the company and to be sexy eye candy. instead of falling into this, she is actually an action girl, not bothering with sexiness and appeal to the gaze of a male audience but a “get shit done” type, who also dresses and acts “like a man.” regis’ trope is all vampire tropes ever. he/vampires in the witcher doesn’t/don’t fall into any of the traditional european vampire myths like burning in sunlight, needing to drink blood to stay alive, being disdainful of humanity, having aversions to garlic, belonging to a super-secret orderful society that lurks in the shadows and controls everything like puppetmasters, etc... instead, he is the epitome of redemption arcs and overall “goody-goodiness,” understands humanity perfectly and does things out of his good nature. i already talk about regis too much, so i’ll quit it. 

cahir is an inversion of every knight trope ever, particularly the evil knight. he scars ciri’s memory as a night terror, but actually is not ... a bad person. he’s just some guy, pressured by his family and his society to do what he saw as an assignment like a college kid might see their final essay assignment posted on canvas. except you know. the final exam was to kidnap a girl. and he got an F on that and failed the course (ie got thrown in prison). ANYWAYS, cahir is meant to be this inversion of the knight tropes, so WHY, WHY, WHY make him become the knight trope of being the one to romance and to save a hapless princess? if we’ve learned anything about ciri, it’s that she’s the inversion of the princess trope! she KILLS PEOPLE. she ALMOST KILLED CAHIR. she can defend herself and kill for herself, she doesn’t need the knight trope going to protect her! 

heterosexual romance as the Big Reason and Motivation behind all of a character’s actions is tiring, annoying, boring, and not well-thought out. it’s so base and not unique, it doesn’t fit in with everything else about the witcher.

how i would fix it: not make them fall in love.

cahir already HAS a motivation to find ciri and to help her. he needs to APOLOGIZE. he needs to say, hey, i’m sorry i kidnapped you and ruined your life, i made peace with your dad, he doesn’t wanna kill me anymore, i can only hope that you can forgive me too after i SET THINGS RIGHT. 

as opposed to regis’s arc (i swear i am not playing favorites with regis, i just tend to compare and contrast regis and cahir’s redemptions because they are quite different yet they join the hansa side by side so they’re bound to be compared), cahir actually can find the one (not many) people he wronged, and set things right on his own accord, not go forth with a larger mission to assist all humanity, or whatever.

i think cahir also had this WONDERFULLY UNDERUTILIZED anti-imperialist message as part of his character that pains me to see being swept under the rug for some cheap lame romance story. sapkowski already created some anti-war sentiments with the battle of the bridge in baptism of fire, and he tried to create anti-racism sentiments throughout the book/at the end of lady of the lake. anti-imperialism fits with the rest of the saga as a message.

the fact that cahir was instructed by his family to hate the northern kingdoms, despite the fact that they were related to northerners, is really profound as something to happen to a character, and holds a lot of meaning in today’s society. the fact that he broke, finally, after he lost ciri, just completely lost his mind and had to be restrained because he was wailing so hard, because of the pressure that this society put him under to succeed and achieve pride for his family, is such a great example of the tragedies of society. then he speaks out against his leader and is jailed... and yet, after this, he gets to learn from his mistakes and redeem himself as a good person, and his character has developed SO much. he is not doing what his country wants him to do, he is not doing what his family wants him to do. he is doing what he wants to do because it is the RIGHT thing to do. that already is such a powerful message, he doesn’t need anymore character motivation!

so yep that’s my thoughts on why cahir is a good character asides from all that forced romance biz

[morlock-holmes]

I think I kind of get the Bronze Age Pervert (I keep wanting to call him Bronze Age Patriot) thing, even though I don’t really agree with the approach.

I think a lot of people out there, especially young people, are struggling with two basic questions:

What should I do when I get up tomorrow morning?

Why should I even bother to get up at all?

I know the term meaning gives all my mutuals hives, but, like, for now just go with me that something as big and abstract as “the search for meaning” is very wrapped up in those two questions.

I think there are some major gaps in addressing these questions, particularly from the left and, honestly, to a pretty big extent in my circle of mutuals here, too. 

And I also think that the sort of “Weird Right Self-Help Diaspora” represents both an effort to answer those questions, and, just as importantly, an effort to assert that those two questions are worth asking and taking seriously.

@sophia-epistemia

When I say authenticity is the problem, it’s not because there won’t be things that immediately grab each of us and say, “Yes, this is something I love” or that we will immediately be talented at.

The question is more, what is to be done with the vast swathes of life that don’t fall into those categories? Particularly, to be an adult involves things like budgeting, cooking, cleaning, scheduling, dating, etc. many of which I believe can be sources of joy or pride but which will rarely come naturally to us, and instead often require quite a bit of work both to master and to learn to take pride in.

I think there’s basically two thoughts that the people who get into these kind of right-wing self help movements struggle with related to authenticity.

The first is a voice that sort of tells them that anything that doesn’t immediately spark this sort of uncoerced, authentic joy is, at best, a kind of absurd, laughable affectation, and at worst a terrible chore to be ruthlessly avoided.

The second is a sense of deep shame that this uncoerced joy of exploration or doing only seems to come out when it comes to, I don’t know, Lego collecting, and does not appear for the kinds of self-care and self-improvement tasks that help us live well-rounded lives (e.g. keeping the bathroom clean, going out on dates, job hunting, etc.)

And a voice asks, “If all you do is lie in bed all day and occasionally buy legos, aren’t you just fiddling while Rome burns?”

That’s where the shame comes from.

And, I think the modern left, particularly as the internet becomes more and more a source of our political news and hashing out of belief systems, nurtures these thoughts and offers little in the way to relieve or reframe them.

Like, I’ve talked about my friend who believes that the collapse of civilization is essentially fait accompli in the absence of violent overthrow of several governments, and there’s also this meme here on Tumblr which goes,

“Remember, there’s no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism!”

I thought this might be a paraphrase of some famous philosopher, but it really does just appear to be a meme, which makes it easier to criticize.

The intent, I suppose, it to galvanize people into radical action, but in practice I see it driving people towards profound cynicism and a sense of helplessness. Because at some point the food in your fridge runs out and you have to consume something just to survive.

In the worst case, you could get complete amorality, where people just decide that since whatever they do is equally unethical, they might as well just take what they can and screw everybody else.

But more often, people still make ethical decisions, but, because they fundamentally believe that those decisions don’t matter, it becomes gauche and self-indulgent to discuss them, or to make explicit whatever ethical framework they’re using.

Ethics and politics are the realms of the vast impersonal systems of oppression, and the small cadre of people who have enough power and influence to pull strings and direct those systems. They can and will wash away whatever you might accomplish, so there’s something a little quixotic about pretending like the shit you do every day is worth discussing or taking pride in. It’s just simply not important enough to bother with.

If all consumption is unethical, then it would be insane to discuss how you choose what to consume in ethical terms.

If that upsets you, I find that most people respond with “Something something existentialism.” and, when that inevitably doesn’t help, a suggestion that you go to Therapy.

It’s not that therapy is bad advice here, but rather, to go back to the beginning of this essay, it sort of makes much more concrete the idea that the question of what you should do when you wake up in the morning, as to why you should even bother to, are questions that are irrelevant to ethics, philosophy and politics, and are not fit matters of public discussion, but are rather basically trivial, silly things best worked out in private one on one conversations with professionals.

This in turn increases your sense that your actions are deeply disconnected from the world around you, and in my experience, I find there’s a strong implicit attitude of, “Ugh, you’re on this meaning bullshit again? The rest of us just get our chores done without all this bullshit, you know.” which in turn increases the sense of shame I mentioned above.

What your BAP or Jordan Peterson seems to give people is, for one thing, a framework to make sense of the questions I outlined above, as well as a community of people who understand why they are important.

I still don’t like what little I’ve read of BAP. For one thing, as I said before, I think his ironic/not ironic pose largely functions as a strategy to avoid engaging in debate or engaging with the people he sees as his enemies.

Second, the reason I brought up authenticity is that I think the red pill and black pill types fundamentally have it wrong. When they hit that bit where things seem uncomfortable, where “adulting” simultaneously feels like an unnatural affectation and you feel shame that it doesn’t come more naturally, he appears to sort of create this narrative where the reason that it feels like an affectation is that your natural state of being has been stolen by a terrible coalition of fags and women, who are conspiring to empty you of your precious masculinity.

I use the term “fags” because from what little skimming I did, BAP’s cohort and a lot of similar groups really heavily buy into what CJ Pascoe termed, “fag discourse”.

That is, there are a cohort of unmasculine men, who are both laughable and pathetic, because they lack male vigor, they lack the male drive to conquer and fight, they allow themselves to be penetrated, they represent the opposite of everything strong and virile but they’re also dangerous, because they have the sinister power to sap the virility and strength out of other men. Sometimes they ally with women (Who are basically aliens in this framework, and kind of inherently not worth discussing) to sap the masculinity from real men more effectively. 

And of course, we’ll never be real men again unless we fight back.

Now, I think this is a big ‘ol pile of horseshit, but beyond the obvious moral concerns, you also get this dynamic where the guys buried in this mindset spend a ton of time looking for signs of faggotry (or soy, or bugman, or whatever synonym is used in a given culture) in others and carefully arranging things so that they can’t be called out as fags themselves. 

Which energy, I think, tends to distract from the kinds of concrete projects which might actually cause being an adult or being a man to begin to feel less like affectations.