#not saying it can't be used otherwise in other cultural groups/ages just that this is interesting because it's like.

[aro-culture-is]

Aro culture is knowing the phrase "bros before hoes" waaay before I realized I was aro and

So that's why that phrase resonates so much with me back then because it is aro coded af in a sense that, your bros shouldn't be lesser than the gf

And i think that's actually nice to know that there had been aro sentiments way before the term aro was popularized

... hm. tbh i've always heard it actually used in one of two ways:

bros (male friendship only) before hoes (the women we fuck and consider lesser than as people, typically not someone we are dating)

the meme-y version that typically just has lesser intensity on the male-focus.

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

This is complaining day because I realized there's more than one thing that got on my nerves lately and it's not just about the treatment of a kpop idol's mother. Let's begin.

Please, stop refering to Jungkook's mother as mama Jeon. I know the tendency is to ignore so many of the cultural differences that exist, but in SK, people don't change their surname after marriage. It just sounds idiotic and westernized in a ridiculous way.

So, Jungkook's mother loves all BTS members. She LOVES them all. How does army know that? How? I'm genuinely curious and genuinely asking. Because they say it as a certainty. Or, forgive me if my memory is faulty as well, but the only instance that we as outsiders were privy to in which we heard that woman speak for the first time, it was in early 2021 on another phonecall with Jungkook when she said I love you to Jimin.

Of course, the same ot7 narrative came as a buldozer at that time too. Damn, does that mean Jimin = BTS? Sometimes yes, but only when Army wants to diminish Jimin's importance and doesn't allow him to stand out individually too much. Musically or otherwise. But back to this Big Love that Jungkook's mom is supposedly feeling for everyone and which has been invoked once again when that woman mentioned Jimin twice while talking to Jungkook on the phone. Cause she already knew they were in Jeju. I bet she didn't have to find out randomly from a schedule group chat.

So what happens? An assumption is turned into certainty because of small people being extremely insecure. Because they see that one person is once again given more importance on a personal level and we can't have that. No sir! So in a panic, they tweet, they post on tumblr, tiktok, youtube the old age, boring af, sounding like a broken record sentence: "Mama Jeon loves all seven". Fuck me gently with a chainsaw cause that sounds a lot better than the feeling of throwing up I get whenever I read such things.

No, she doesn't love all of them. That is not a fact. It could be true and it's not impossible. But it is not a fact based on the knowledge we have at the moment.

Also, it shows once again that an entire fandom is actively creating a reality of their own which is not even like some sort of simulacrum of the reality they must live through. In Army world, the mother of one member of a k-pop group must love all the members of such group. It doesn't matter than irl, our mothers a lot of the times don't even like all our friends, besties or partners. We might have the most incredible connections and it would mean nothing to our mothers.

In that same vein, another narrative that makes me want to pull my eyes out is the "awww, their bond is to die for, they are (like) siblings after all". Do any of them never had any siblings? Never saw other people and their relationship with their siblings? Or with their family?

I also had to read (which was followed by me blocking it immediately) how Jimin and Jungkook's relationship is the sum of the other relationships they have with other BTS members. I mean, why would I have any sort of expectations from any of these people when they are completely incapable of looking at JM and JK as actual people. As persons with individual minds and an intellect of their own. Let alone the fact that their world does not stop with the presence of 5 other men. In what realistic scenario does this translate in real life? That's not how it works. Yes, we are social creatures and a product of our surroundings, but it is not in the way in which these stans believe it to be. They think that living in a dorm for a few years and working together with other people, it means that those experiences are the only ones that actually shape the personality of a person. They are real people, not fictional characters. I've never heard such ridiculous theories in my entire life, to be used as talking points about someone's behavior or relationship with another person.

Maybe the need to create this elaborate fantasy comes from the lack of love in their life, which then gets projected into this Disney, kumbaya, capitalist heaven narrative in which everyone is a big family and they love each other so much and equally and all the parents of all the children love every single member and thus, harmony is created. Love is always platonic and ever present. The complexity of human relationships must not exist.

[redditantisemitism]

"I'd Rather be fetishized than oppressed"

This is an interesting one, as it comes from a user that claims to be Jewish (unverifiable, but unless the person is suspicious I tend to believe self identification). Also important to note is that while this post does not contain any explicit antisemitism, it does make excuses for antisemitic behaviors.

Philosemitism, at its most basic definition, is a love and respect for Jews. This, on its own, is not a bad thing. However, philosemitism is in many ways simply another facet of antisemitism.

Philosemitism, especially from Christians, often crosses the line from a healthy appreciation of other cultures to a fetishization of Jews. It has roots in supersessionism and replacement theology. I could go on for a long time about why fetishization is bad, but I'm going to focus on a few relevant aspects.

Putting a minority group on a pedestal does harm to the people in that group. By placing Jews in a position where we are expected to be worthy of special reverence, we are being set up to be disappointing.

Jews are "respected" not for being a beautiful, diverse, and very much living culture worthy of celebrating, but instead as tools, either for apocalyptic scenarios (the frequent goal of Christian zionist organizations, more on that in a moment), because of our "connection" to Jesus ("I love Jews! after all, Jesus was a Jew!"), or as some mystical ancestor, a relic of the past that can be used as a tool for interpreting Christianity ("ancient wisdom"). Otherwise we are "appreciated" for stereotypes: being good with money, for example, to the point that in some countries there are traditions of having figurines or paintings of Jews for good luck. How flattering. Especially interesting is that those "praiseworthy" stereotypes are the same ones Jews were first forced into by, and then later persecuted for, by Christians themselves.

Conflating support for Israel for support for Jews. Like many antisemites of a different flavor, philosemitic antisemites often associate all Jews with Israel. Christian zionists believe that the return of Jews to Israel is part of a prophecy. In this prophecy, Jews will return to Israel. They will be given the chance to convert, and only a small portion will accept. The rest will be tortured in hell for eternity, as the messianic age continues. Christian zionist actions are an attempt to speed up the fulfillment of this prophecy. As you can see, supporting Israel is not at all the same as supporting Jews, as they claim. a phrase often heard from them is "I love Jews! I am a strong supporter of Israel!". Or, "I can't be antisemitic! I'm an Israel supporter!"

Now, the specific user you see in this post's argument boils down to this: "At least they aren't killing us!"

This is, if I'm being honest, a pathetic attitude to have. Not being murdered is not exactly the best bar for what is and isn't acceptable. They go on to say that they aren't in favor of fetishization either, but that doesn't change the fact that they think Jews should just suck it up and cope, since we aren't being gassed or beaten in the streets.

They make excuses for the antisemitism. since they see it as not that bad. But excusing antisemitism contributes to the normalization and perpetuation of it. So while they are not themselves explicitly antisemitic, I feel they still deserve a place on this blog.

[nem0c]

sampled that guy's book (Disch's) and he's very much a "TV HAS ROTTED AMERICANS' MINDS AND WILL MAKE THEM INTO FASCISTS" type midwit boomer with very little to to say

so it's kind of funny how fanatically he keeps on jumping down to suck Gene Wolfe's dick just for writing an Guy With Sword book with good prose & unclear coherency

also apparently in the early 80s Wolfe's romishness wasn't known. so Disch thinks he's an Anglican.

Disch was published in New Worlds and very consciously belongs to the same group as Moorcock and Ballard (and I guess Brian Aldiss, who retained a very fannish appreciation for older sf) - who were quite polemically seeking to drive a wedge between New Wave sf and the stuff that came before it. I think Disch is more charitable than Moorcock was in 'Starship Stormtroopers' but the motivation is similar.

I would agree with his assessment (in the first chapter, which is all that I read, so we are both throwing half the facts at each other here) that the majority of sf is compensatory power fantasies written by and for lower and lower middle class machinists and technicians, and with his modifying statement that the resentments and power fantasies of the lower classes are not in themselves bad things, and his further modifying statement that when these resentments and desires remain unconscious they can be exploited by unscrupulous actors.

I would disagree with his decision to then seek new forms within sf entirely, or to seek to 'mature' the genre by hoping to attain credibility in the eyes of the Academy and become 'real literature'. Given I'm not an sf writer of the 70s, I have no motivation to create a break from what came before, and I don't think such a break is tenable in the US (in the UK, maybe) - most of the Golden Age authors became editors, publishers, teachers, encouragement to the subsequent US New Wave. There was a direct continuity in the field.

His extremely pessimistic and elitist take that Americans have become beholden to new cultural tech (as though each text has a definite, singular reading which not only can be found by readers but will necessarily be unconsciously absorbed by them with no breaks or slips or contestations) is unfortunately the source of much of what I enjoy about his fiction (particularly 334) - that detailed study of sociological changes '5 minutes into the future' using all the best techniques of 19th-century french realism and an inductive spooling out of the possibilities of current tech. I can't dismiss it off-hand.

It is also very funny to me when people who would cry horror at Robert Howard or Fritz Lieber or Jack Vance or whoever love Gene Wolfe because he makes Joyce references and so 'redeems' what is otherwise a fantastical sword-and-sorcery tale. Disch was raised Catholic and became an atheist so it's a shock he wasn't hyper-aware of Wolfe's Catholicism. He's not hiding it.

[uncloseted]

How do you feel about the desensitization social media has about tragedy and how this affects our brains? I’ve studied media and communication and I’m super passionate about this topic.

The other day I was scrolling on Youtube shorts, and I saw a girl post a video about the air quality in new york due to the wildfires in Canada. The video was satire/comedy and she sped her video up while prancing around lip singing to yellow by coldplay or something. (Side note: why do people even find these sped up videos funny? They’re annoying)

I’m just wondering if you have an opinion on how desensitized people have become. Like at first glance I was like Oh that’s a bit funny! And then I caught myself and was like hang on this really happened as is currently affecting others… that’s horrible. I’ll scroll on my snapchat news and see murder case / true crime headings reading like fun little blurbs. And people do their makeup and profit off other peoples trauma for views like they’re professionals doing it and it’s so insulting. The list really goes ON.

Do you think some studies will start coming out soon about how our empathy levels are incredibly low or even developing our brains differently because of social media’s impact on empathy and being desensitized to so many things?

Sorry for the loaded question! I’m curious to see what you think.

Thank you for this question because I've been thinking about it for like, three days straight. At first I was inclined to be like, "well, no, I think the internet is fine and our worries about empathy are just a moral panic that we see with every new technology that's developed." And then I was inclined to be like, "people have definitely become less empathetic lately, and the internet is probably a big part of that." But I think the reality is that the internet is kind of neutral. More than anything, the internet is a tool that acts to magnify and intensify the way people already are. Some people use the internet to become more aware of other people and understand their unique situations; other people use it to be trolls.

The first thing I want to talk about here is the idea that people used to be more empathetic in the past. I just don't know if that's actually true. Blood sports- games in which people are violent towards one another on purpose as a form of entertainment- have existed for most of human history. Gladiator combat in Ancient Rome is a relatively popular example of this, and often ended in the death of a gladiator. Boxing is a sport that has historically been popular and continues to be popular to this day, despite the fact that it's just two people violently attacking one another. Lynchings used to be public spectacles, where the attendants often treated these as festive events, with food, family photos, and souvenirs. I don't know that I believe we were really more empathetic in the past at all. I think we've actually really improved on the "you can't torture, maim, or kill other people or animals for entertainment" front, especially since those types of things are generally banned from social media.

And like I was saying before, I do genuinely think that the internet can foster greater understanding and empathy towards marginalized groups. I know the struggles of all sorts of groups that I might never encounter in real life. I know how to be polite to people from a variety of different cultures that I might never experience. I've been posed with some really challenging philosophical questions through the content I've been exposed to online. I'm hearing the narratives of marginalized groups that I may have never otherwise heard, and I'm hearing it in their own words. That's incredibly valuable, and I think people who have grown up in the internet age don't fully appreciate how historically rare that actually is. Up until now, history has been written by the victors, the powerful, the oppressors. Now that narrative is democratized and widely available. That's huge in terms of its ability to build empathy and understanding if we choose to be open to it.

But, that same democratization can create problems. The first is that there's not really a distinction between in-group and out-group content anymore. It used to be that there was kind of a sense of, "well, I can say that about my own [group/family/situation] to people who understand, but you can't say that, because you're not part of it and you don't get it." People create content with their in-group in mind, but it often "breaches containment"- it's seen by people who aren't in that in-group. People who are living in New York and making jokes about the air quality situation in New York are usually making those jokes for other people in New York who are in their same situation. They're trying to lighten the mood of something scary. But the people who are seeing it aren't necessarily in New York; they're all over the world, and the context and emotional intention of that joke is kind of lost. There's an implicit assumption in these videos that you're starting from a place of understanding how horrible it is because you're living it, but that's often not true of the actual viewers. In your case, you saw a funny video and thought it was funny. If you had seen a serious video about the same situation, you probably would have been like, "oh shit, this is serious. I hope the people are okay." It's not necessarily a lack of empathy here but a lack of shared context in the way the information is being presented (or something like that?)

That brings us to problem two, which is compassion fatigue. More than ever before in history, we are constantly aware of every bad thing that has happened everywhere in the world, every single day. It used to be that you would get the newspaper and it would be focused mostly on local news, with some national headlines and a couple international headlines that were really important. The information we had about bad things that were happening were mostly things we could do something about. But now, that's not really the case, right? Today, I know that the Jenin refugee camp suffered massive damage following the Israeli army's biggest assault there in 20 years. I know the Palestinians fear that the situation will escalate. I know that Allison Mack, who ran the Nxivm cult, was released from prison after serving just two years of her sentence. I know that a suspect in a Philadelphia shooting was charged with the murder of five people, and that a Canadian man is facing terrorism charges over far-right videos, and that Japan has announced a controversial plan to release treated waste water from the Fukushima nuclear plant, and that Senegal has been facing a crisis because their President, Macky Sall, was threatening not to step down after the end of his second term, and that France is protesting police violence because a police officer shot and killed a French-Algerian teenager. And I can't do anything about any of this. I just know about it, and I have to care about it because I know about it.

And we've created this weird ecosystem online where everyone feels like they need to issue a PR type statement about whatever sociopolitical thing the internet cares about in the moment to show that they're a good person who is informed, even if they don't have a significant following and aren't impacted by the issue at hand. All of us are doing a weird kind of brand management for a brand that's just our own self, and we're managing it for the sake of our friends and family because we feel like we have to. And any time a person with a significant following does publish one of those statements, inevitably there are people badgering them about why they haven't spoken on the issue that they care about that's happening in their country. I just don't think that we as people have the emotional capacity to process that much information or care about that many things, especially when they're situations that we can't really do anything about, and especially when that situation will be replaced with something new within a few days. I think that's one of the reasons so many people feel helpless and disempowered right now. There's too much to fix but no real way for us to do it, especially in the time scale the internet provides.

So in this sense, I don't think that we're lacking empathy so much as we're required to be so empathetic that we've exhausted our capacity for it. There are more demands put upon us to be empathetic than ever before, and so we reach those moments of compassion fatigue more than ever before.

The other thing that I think is worth talking about here is the way in which the internet prioritizes extremes. The goal of algorithms is generally to get people to stay on the website longer, and the easiest way to do that is by getting them to feel a strong emotion. That's why clickbait works. It's also why the internet is invested in creating so much outrage. And the easiest way to continue getting people to feel outraged is to show them increasingly outrageous things, whether or not they're true. The internet kind of got 4chanified- like teenagers on 4chan, social media algorithms and article headline writers are trying to out-do one another by recommending or posting the most outrageous thing they can in order to capture the attention economy.

This is the part that concerns me the most with regards to the internet in general. Famously, Facebook’s negligence facilitated the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar after its algorithms amplified hate speech and Facebook failed to remove the inflammatory posts. Outrage = views = money for Facebook = more outrage bait being pushed = in the most extreme cases, genocide. And also, outrage = views = money for Facebook = more outrage bait being pushed = Donald Trump getting elected in the US. Outrage = views = money for Facebook = more outrage bait being pushed = people believing misinformation about medicine. And I think that creates a kind of interesting dynamic when it comes to empathy. Because in some sense, these people are very empathetic- they're outraged because of their empathy. They read a (fake) story about a child being victimized by a pediophilic trans teacher (or whatever) and panic because they have empathy for the children that they believe were victims. They're anti-immigration because they have empathy for the people who (they believe are) losing their jobs to immigrants. In the case of the Rohingya genocide, the Buddhist majority in Myanmar had empathy for the individuals that they believed were victimized by the Rohingya for their religious beliefs. These people were all wrong, but they're not lacking empathy. They're making a decision that an outside group isn't worthy of empathy because they've committed such heinous crimes. And that's a tale as old as time; just ask anyone who's Jewish.

I think what we need to be worried about is the ways in which the internet, and especially social media, can platform and expedite that process on a level that hasn't really been seen before. After the 2016 election, I used to really believe that we just needed to sit down with people across the aisle and have a civil, empathetic, rational conversation about the issues. But now I think that if that was ever possible, the time for it has passed. Misinformation, disinformation, and sensationalized information have become so rampant online that there's not really any way to have those discussions anymore because there's no way to agree on what is and isn't true. And unless we change something really quickly, that problem is just going to get worse with the advent of deepfake technologies and AI bots.

I feel like I've said a lot here but I haven't really come to any conclusions... but those are some of my thoughts, at least. I guess maybe it's that humans have always kind of sucked at being empathetic to people who are part of an out-group, but now we're just doing it on a global scale and reacting to threats that are (perceived to be) larger than ever before? Maybe it's that we should focus on strengthening and bettering our local communities as much as possible, and contributing on a global scale when we can? Maybe it's that media literacy is important, and we should always interact with news articles critically, even if they seem like they're a credible source?

[eye-in-hand]

I mean personally I don't agree w this speaking as an ex pagan now converting Jew. Neo-pagan communities obsession with appropriating Jewish traditions and Native traditions are completely different reasoning - from what I saw, I can't speak for every single person ofc

And honestly its more the New Age movement that's the worst offender irt appropriating these things. Most pagans (esp. irl, not on tumblr and shit) aren't using sage to cleanse their auras, they're reading what's left of the historical record of their ancestors before they were converted to Christianity and trying to rebuild what they had before. There is a HUGE problem in the pagan community of antisemitism, because their hatred towards Christianity killing off the pagan traditions gets misdirected at Jews, because it's somehow the Jews' fault that Christianity exists.

There's a problem with not unpacking their cultural christian upbringing, so they treat paganism like Christianity, which is also notorious for stealing from the Jews, obviously. But most pagans aren't looking to do Jewish traditions, renamed or otherwise. Because a lot of pagans have unpacked antisemitism or are just flat out White Supremacists.

New Agers or Wiccans on the other hand, who are not pagan, because this comes from the 60s and shit, have just reworded Christian ideas into more "Spiritual" sounding ones. Like god is the divine feminine, heaven is ascension, sin is negative energy, etc. They take from indigenous cultures because they see them as "more natural, and closer to the earth". They take from the Jews because Jews are "mystical", especially Kabbalah. (All that crystal shit that goes around, is New Age, not pagan)

Occultists/Alchemists take from Jews because they're cultural christians with edgy dark words instead of the "pure bible" words. They're obsessed with Solomon (the whole Solomon's keys thing) and demons with Greek or Hebrew names, and they still see Hebrew as the holy language. Because it's "Exotic" and "mystical".

It has nothing to do with them seeing Jews as a dead culture or religion, believe me, a lot of people in these groups are very aware that Jews exist, the problem is is that they don't like that because those groups have a deep core belief of antisemitism.

And I'm kind of irritated at the "they take from dead dead dead religions", a lot of pagan traditions never died out, especially in rural parts of Europe. A lot of it was renamed with "saints", but the traditions are still there. They aren't dead religions anymore than Judaism is (which is to say, they aren't).

Like I get what you're trying to say but that's not what's going on

I think one of the big problems jews have in particular with neo-pagan appropriation of jewish rituals and traditions is that most of the things neo-pagans usually take from are dead dead super dead religions so it feels like a threat,

like you're taking care of a relative who's really sick in the hospital and you're pretty sure they're gonna make it through but as you're sitting next to their bedside a taxidermist shows up and tries to slip you a business card.

[gwemmieee]

So some of us have been part of a trend during young adulthood.

For those of us who were too marginalized to have a good time in high school, we have this moment of clarity. We look back on it all and we realize, wow, high school sucks!

It just sucks. Every time. For anyone like me. Because kids at that age are typically set up to perpetuate all the harm that destroys the lives of anyone like me.

I think a lot of us have grown up and looked back and had this realization--high school was just never going to be our time to feel comfortable and accepted and able to actually find ourselves in relation to others in most of society.

Well, I'm reaching a new realization now:

College sucks too!

You ever notice that neurodivergent transfems keep not coming out, often not even fully hatching, or at least not ever feeling safe and able to properly find ourselves, until our mid 20s?

It's because society right now still sets up most of its kids, even other trans kids who are not both neurodivergent and transfem, to completely ostracized and alienate us until around that age--until a couple years or so *after* graduating college.

How many times have you worried about being thought of as a creep? Or openly been called one? Or been gradually ostracized by a friend group who gave you every reason to think they had accepted you, because they thought you were creepy and never had the guts to say it to your face (that one happened to me)?

I think, and this is speculation, but I think it's because we're at the cross section of 2 common forms of marginalization.

Transfems in general are often ostracized, especially as eggs but even after coming out, specifically because a lot of people just instinctively are mistrusting and/or hateful of anyone who they perceive as either male or partly subconsciously male because of transphobia, acting very feminine.

Neurodivergent people are often ostracized because their behavior is perceived as antisocial or weird. I hope we all know this story well at this point. You can do some research if you don't.

Additionally, neurodivergent trans fems are very early on put into this extremely isolating box by most of society that is far away from the feminine, from women, etc. We're taught very early on that the only pathway we have to be accepted by society, to be loved and to feel pride in ourselves, is to embrace male nerd culture. And male nerd culture is very sexist, and otherwise toxic. There's a very good reason that most women who have the privilege to be perceived as women don't spend much time in those circles. We'd rather be around better friends who don't objectify us or ignore our agency or question our identities and presentations (like being accused of fake as a girl gamer).

AMABs (regardless of gender identity) who grow up obviously neurodivergent, though, are raised so far out of any healthy feminine circles that we struggle to find or relate to any role models we can truly look up to. Sometimes, out of desperation, we can even look up to role models who help us mask and lock up our closet door tighter, because what else do we have to turn to?

I've said something like this before on here, but I truly believe this intersection of neurodivergent and transfem, and the treatment we're often cordoned off into for who we are, is perhaps the most cruel and most deadly form of marginalization in the modern world, out of forms of marginalization that aren't so oppressive that some semblance of a community can't still find each other and find pride. We're thrust into one of the most likely groups to completely dehumanize us and ostracize us if they ever knew who we really are, and told, "These are your friends and allies. Nobody else is going to understand you. This is the best you'll ever get." And then that sentiment is reinforced by the fact that other men bully us (which we transfems take much more personally than a cis boy ever would, often developing lasting persecution complexes), and other women just look at our physical presentation and conclude that we're another one of those creepy nerds. We're pushed further into our clique, because they at least don't avoid us or deliberately harm us, even though they would be just as terrible to us if we ever stopped hiding. So we don't. We just try to get along with the "friends" we have access to, and try to find some common ground over shared interests, like gaming, computers, comics, etc. This is probably also why so many transfems are programmers and engineers.

This marginalization continues throughout college. Adults aged 18-22 aren't equipped to fully accept anyone who's too different from them. A lot of them are just there to experiment with who they are, up to and including trying stuff out with someone they'll ultimately throw away because they don't understand how to communicate effectively, open up during intimacy, and finally treat someone like a human being with feelings when they breakup (for example, college is when many gay and bi folks are dumped after being someone's "experiment").

Many of them, especially marginalized folks like women and POC and other members of the LGBTQIA community, are at least at a point where they've got a bit of a handle on who they are, but they're still processing trauma. Often trauma that came from actual predators who've harmed them.

But neurodivergent trans fems, we have no idea who we are that early in life. Up until that point, most of us have started to suspect that we could perhaps escape capitalism and maybe start to find ourselves if we enlist in the unhealthy crunch ethic of STEM, and that's a whole other can of worms. Many of us are there to get those degrees and start trying to make enough money to avoid a rat race that, as underdeveloped children in many ways, we are not ready to face.

And the marginalization continues. As we don't know who we are and desperately cling to our "smart" or "nerdy" identities that serve as our first perceived ticket to safety, our fellow women look at us and see a male nerd. A creep. A predator. And they do whatever it takes to minimize interaction and conflict with us, and minimizing conflict sometimes means engaging in a friendly but fake sort of interaction. Which we don't have the social skills to pick up on. So to us it's deceptive and heartbreaking, as we think we're starting to find friends more like us, but they've already painted us as likely abusers to throw away. And it's simply because our society is trained to see feminine behavior, or social ineptitude, especially both at once, in perceived male people, and equate that with predators who would harm them. And most people aren't mature enough to break out of that pattern until much later in life, mid 20s at the earliest. And so after having spent high school alone, isolated, and sad, when everyone tells us, "don't worry, [just like any male nerd] you'll hit your stride and have a great time in college," we don't, and we remain alone and isolated, and sad. And that's when those of us with access to generational wealth or career connections or a real caretaker start to finally find a way out. But those of us without any of those things, we go back home to our parents' basements to spend the rest of our unnaturally short lives in isolated depression. And most of us do. I just got lucky.

College sucks too!

That bare minimum degree of human acceptance that we all need to connect with other people, without which we spiral into isolation and early graves, comes to most of us eventually. If we can stick it out long enough. In more accepting regions, these days it can often even reach trans people by the time they're in college. But not for neurodivergent transfems. The earliest we ever see it, in any part of this world, is our mid 20s. Far too late for most any human being to have stuck it out and survived on their own.

[qqueenofhades]

I'd love to read your thoughts on powerful/badass/interesting medieval queens! I love the Queens of Infamy series on longreads. com, if you're familiar with it. Sending extra love and hugs. <3

Aha, thanks dear. It is much needed. I am sending you hugs in return.

As for badass medieval queens: they're obviously fun to read about, and most people with a passing acquaintance of history will know the most famous ones (Empress Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France, Catherine de Medici, etc etc). However, as a historian who works on (among other things) medieval social and gender history, one of my chief focuses is getting people to think about all medieval women differently, not just the well-known royal ones. We all discard the "great men and European kings are the only people who played a role in medieval history and/or had influence in the world before modernity" hypothesis, and rightly so. But I feel as if the fetishizing of certain medieval queens, where the modern historiography and/or popular history points at them and goes, "LOOK HOW AWESOME THIS ONE WOMAN MANAGED TO BE IN A TERRIBLE RAPEY PATRIARCHAL WORLD!!!" is... to say the least, somewhat wrong-headed.

This is because it promotes the "exceptional woman" theory of history, where it is implied that one woman with superlative personal qualities managed to overcome the limits of patriarchal medieval society, and that all other women who weren't as "gifted" didn't do the same. You may recognize this as an offshoot of the "Extraordinary Negro" racist pseudoscience of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wherein it was proposed that a few "superior" African-Americans could become almost (if not quite) culturally, intellectually, and socially white, overcoming the limits of their "inferior" race in these isolated special cases. If you can doubtless easily see why that is hella racist, you can also understand why applying the same framework to medieval women is equally ridiculous, reductive, and sexist.

Likewise, there is a lot of recent scholarship that strives to finally discredit this hypothesis once and for all, such as Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power 1100--1400: Moving Beyond the Exceptionalist Debate. Likewise, somewhat appropriately given what has happened today and the mustering of informal female social networks to effectively counter an unfavorable legal climate (once again, if anyone tells me Things Were So Much Worse Back Then For Women, I will punch something), the study of medieval women in community shows that they had collective as well as individual agency. As Women and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia puts it:

First, the emphasis on communities moves us firmly past any narrative of the exceptional woman who found ways to engage in independent political, social, or economic activity within otherwise constraining legal and social norms. Women, both as individuals and as groups, had the knowledge and skills to successfully interact with a variety of communities, and even create new ones when necessary. These communities also reveal the degree to which communities were structured around women's agency. [....] By moving beyond the binary of inclusion/exclusion, these authors acknowledge the ability of patriarchal norms to constrain women's activity and at the same time, for women to take action on behalf of themselves and their families.

This topic is likewise explored in Relations of Power: Women's Networks in the Middle Ages, and others that I can't think of right now. Anyway, this was a long-winded way of saying that while I love me a good badass medieval queen as much as anyone, that often comes with the prevailing stereotype that queens were the only medieval women able to wield any power at all (and then only if they were personally motivated to do so) and that therefore they're the only ones who are "interesting" or worth learning about. This obscures a lot of the important work that has been done on ordinary medieval women, their lives, and their networks of influence, and likewise props up other damaging myths about the Middle Ages that are continuing to be repeated today. So yes.

[exilethegame]

(I still need to read the last part of your story so bear with me/i'm at the group meeting w/Queen) So...how does this work- how much the court knows about the Comm.? I mean, do they know that there is a 2nd child in the royal family (obv. some of them knows)? I think (due to the masks) they don't know that MC is the Com...but if they know that there is another child, won't they be curious where did they go? or is it: insiders meet the kid, send the kid to camp, hey court here is ur Commander?

The short, direct answer is the Council and upper nobility all know MC is The Commander-- that was never a secret to them. The whole split identity that’s used by the nobility is intended to hide their identities from the public more than anything else, not necessarily from each other. 

A long, extended answer along with a mini history lesson can be found below! I answered this a while back but I can't find it, so I figured I would just update it entirely.

I'll start the off by saying that hidden identities are a big part of Plaithian culture. The use of them began ~75 years ago with MC's adoptive grandfather, King Aridivus Naulvonte, and the beginning of the High Crown Council. At that point, the Council became the controlling force over the ruler and was incredibly corrupt. To conceal their identities from their misdeeds and to avoid having to deal with constant harassment outside of the palace where they wouldn't be protected, they created separate, secrete identities. Thus extravagant masks and titles were created to be used by all Plaithian nobility-- something the citizen of Plaithus tend to find very annoying and over the top.

Within the Royal Family, it is expected for the ruling couple to have their names revealed to the public. This is a personal choice on Marcelle's behalf-- her father's name was already known when he was a boy since it was before the title custom was implemented, and Marcelle herself doesn't like the idea of hiding behind an alternate identity to get away from the consequences of her actions.

Because of this, there’s a national event known as the Naming Ceremony which is where the heir of the crown publicly reveals their face and name to the public at the age of 18-- so that’s something both Marcelle and Esmerelda have gone through, but not something MC went through. So MC’s identity is still very much hidden from the general public. The public only knows them as The Lost Royal and that’s about it, and as far as the public knew before MC’s exile, The Commander and The Lost Royal were not the same person.

That being said, Plaithian nobility is split into parts-- there’s general nobility, The Queen's court, and then the High Crowned Council. The Queen’s court and the Council all know MC’s identity. They knew MC when they were just a baby and watched MC grow up through the years, and as a result, they are aware that MC is also The Commander.

So basically the general public and lower nobility think that The Lost Royal ≠ The Commander, meanwhile the elites of the country know otherwise. As for the sudden disappearance of both, there’s definitely a lot of rumors and conspiracies that started. Like some people have realized that The Commander and The Lost Royal must be the same person, but then there are others who are like “obviously The Lost Royal was a lover of The Commander and they ran off to be together,” meanwhile others think it really is just a coincidence and nothing else.

[postsforposting]

"There are things you deserve to die for" is entirely too broad as a cult flag. That's not sufficient to identify a "cult". Most people think there are good reasons that people deserve to be killed or hurt beyond self defense, because most people aren't abject pacifists. Are all of them part of cults? Are most countries in the world cults because they still have the death penalty? Are most parents cultists because they'll happily tell their kids "I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it", or even only because they think children are nothing but property they can bleed as they like?

Obviously not. This is as useless as the feathered biped definition of humans. If that's what you're going to teach people, that's extreme thinking just as nutty as any cult--like saying "everyone who believes in racism is a nazi". It's paranoid, when the world we live in is steeped in violence, to claim that people who believe in violence are cultists. It's just how people are taught to act, like slavery used to be normal, like homophobia was. It's not cult programming, it's standard social behavior. To claim otherwise is no different than saying any and all religion is by definition mental illness and to create organization around it therefore makes it a cult. Batshit insane analysis.

Obviously you should not interact with people who think harming you for mundane actions is peachy. (Again, most people think you should be ostracized from society, or from their group, for doing mundane things. Because that is a standard belief structure. Like most people use "But I was afraid" to justify killing and permanently drugging mentally ill people who aren't doing anything but talking to themselves, or even worse are going to report their abuse. Are they all cultists? Are they all nazis?) But that's a huge difference from going all the way to toon town and yelling how they're clearly in a cult. There's nothing wrong with other people because they fail to reject mainstream beliefs. Society at large is not a cult just because it functions with all the trappings of a society, and all its failings.

Even if we go with wacky claims like rice is worth killing over, that would mean things like the new age wellness craze are a cult because they believe things exactly like that: mundane things will kill you, are poison, are harmful. These people are clearly not a cult because they are not going to chase after you if you decide to horf down a cotton candy mountain. But there are again exceptions: there really are people for whom "mundane things" literally are poison and will kill them, so you can't go ahead and make an ironclad rule where "if people say something mundane is bad then they are cultists". If you can't recognize that being in a room with peanuts can kill someone, and you instead go on tirade about cults and how you refuse to respect their "simple request", you are the whackjob. Context and why matters. But, again again: people can and have used those very same things as tools of abuse to create situations where you can't question them without risking violence, such as when people claim things like "cultural appropriation" are harmful to other people. Same framing as the peanut allergy, completely different situation. Or things like making you walk on eggshells and blowing up at you or harming you, because "they're sensitive" or "you should have known" aka they expect you to have telepathy and omniscience.

Recent discourse reminds me of that cult indoctrination trick that's often used to weed out more difficult marks early on, where they tell you all that you aren't allowed to eat rice on Tuesdays and then if you protest they go "wow SOMEBODY likes rice a little much huh" as if you're the fucking weirdo who cares too much about how much rice is consumed between Monday and Wednesday instead of them.

And this forces you to decide whether your autonomy matters to you more than the approval of the group - while they'll still act like you're on thin ice either way, if you give in at this point they know you're theirs forever, because now they've established a foothold, you've shown a moral weakness, which they will brand you with so it can be used against you in the future ("hey RICE-addict here doesn't want help break into the city records office") to force you to double-down and isolate you further.

And if instead you do decide to push back further, after your abrupt departure from the group ("You're seriously leaving us over RICE?!? Seriously?") and subsequent ostracism, you can then be used as a demonstration to the others who were more pliable, of how the outgroup is full of people like you who are obsessed with violating the No-Tuesday-Rice rule to the point where they'll abandon all their friends, who cared so much for them, so it clearly isn't an arbitrary restriction, you're the kind of monster these rules are intended to protect them from, thus all the other wise and esoteric precepts of the charismatic leader are implied to be equally justified.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Who would win, Bartimaeus or an average strength giftless Twilight vampire?

Ooh, interesting question with a two-fold answer.

The Other Place, Spirits, and the World of Twilight as We Know It

The Bartimaeus Trilogy is one of those worlds that actually does make sense in the Twilight context. Not so much in that we'd see the history of the Bartimaeus universe in the Twilight world (I'm not sure the Volturi would allow humanity to get away with summoning alien beings to do their bidding that can cause mass calamity and a simple mispronunciation) but that I see no reason the Other Place and the Twilight universe can't coexist.

Perhaps the Twilight earth simply never tapped into The Other Place in the way the other Earth does, or they did, but knowledge of how to summon spirits died out with some culture ages ago due to some catastrophe/the Volturi going "OH HELL NO".

But the reason I bring this up is there's a fundamental question here: how do vampires in that mashup relate to The Other Place?

Given everything we see of Twilgiht, the answer appears to be that it doesn't. While in the Bartimaeus universe there are people who face side effects due to proximity of The Other Place (physical deformities, uptick in resistance to magic, whatever the hell is going on with the werewolves) without any indication of spirits for at least a thousand years if we're assuming the Volturi put an axe to that and rewrote history, vampires being something spirit related is a little questionable.

Possible, if it's some side effect that spun out of control and is infectious with a single victim, but unlikely.

That Was... Weird, Muffin

I brought it up for a reason and that reason is golems.

Of the enemies we see Bartimaeus face we have a few groups. Humans with resistance who are otherwise immune to what he'd throw at them, other spirits, and golems who are a little complicated.

Humans with resistance are only good in that they can resist him. They still need to use things like molars, artifacts, and other spirits in order to actually attack a spirit. It just means that Bartimaeus can't magically swat Kitty like a fly.

Golems are interesting in that they're also created via ties to The Other Place but that they are specifically a kind of anti-spirit weapon being creatures of earth and water where spirits like Bartimaeus are fire and air. Because of this, a single touch is enough to drain a spirit of all life and you see Bartimaeus terrified of even getting near these things.

So, what are vampires?

If vampires were due to some Other Place nonsense, are they too creatures of earth and darkness? Unclear. Depends on what we decide the origin of vampires really is.

For the sake of this ask I'm going to say no.

Spirit vs. Vampire

Before we get to Bartimaeus, let's look at your average spirit versus your average vampire.

The spirit, given some level of strength, probably wins. They can shift form into a vampire themselves, including the physical form of the vampire teeth, and they are such that if powerful enough our physical reality starts bending to the Other Place.

The laws of physics no longer apply, matter changes form, so instead of a vampire you suddenly have a puddle of goo.

Of course, you have to be very powerful for that, but even something like a djinn or higher can probably shift into a vampire, use the vampire teeth, then light their opponent on fire.

Not to mention that vampire gifts are almost guaranteed not to work on spirits as they're not physical bodies with physical human brains.

Bartimaeus vs. Vampire

Bartimaeus wins and not just because of the above.

Bartimaeus wins because he has a knack for picking and choosing his battles. Specifically, we see time and again in canon, Bartimaeus purposefully avoids fighting when he can help it and almost always knows when he's in over his head.

He's not the strongest (see Jabor), not the smartest (see Faquarl), but he also knows this, and he has absolutely no shame in running away and getting out while the going is good. He does the bare minimum/out of the box method to complete his task and always looks out for his own hide.

This means unless he has absolutely no choice but to fight a vampire (he doesn't and I can't see that he ever would), he's going to go "NOPE" and bravely run away.

It's why he's still here after five-thousand years.

[not-poignant]

Can you talk about how you came up with Dogwill Borough's name?

I would love to say that I spent a lot of time on it, but I think I had it in about 10 seconds.

I generally find name creation for characters really easy unless there's a cultural component that requires a deep dive (like Damilola Adayemi's name in Falling Falling Stars required some decent research into name structures and names used in Yoruba linguistics - the one thing I wanted to do least was a mish-mash of words across different African language groups that would make no sense for that character for example).

But otherwise, yeah, I just sat there and thought of a name I thought fit the character, lol. I wanted something more British sounding, and 'Will Borough' sounds completely ordinary, but 'Dogwill' sounded just ordinary/fae enough for the character. I wanted him to have a surname due to the community/area he'd been raised in. Sometimes Fae Tales has too many 'single name' Madonna types, lmao.

Tbh if you asked me to name 100 characters in about an hour I'd find it pretty easy to do. That's one area where I don't struggle much. The names aren't necessarily good, but I find characters tend to grow into their names anyway.

The character I struggled naming most was Mosk. And I'm struggling a bit with some of the side characters in Malloory & Mount, not because I can't think of a name, but because I have too many, lol. It's pretty common before writing a big fic like Stuck on the Puzzle to just make a relatively culturally accurate 'name list' with like 50-70 names on it. I just pick a name when I have a new character that comes up, that seems to suit the character. The name list for Mallory & Mount is truly excessive (sitting on like 300 names) with names from like 1700s Brittany, 1800s Ireland and Scotland etc.

I kind of love names x.x

I wish I had like more deep symbolism about explaining why I chose them though. A lot of the time it's 'I just think it suited them' or 'I liked the sound of it.' I can't imagine calling Betsan anything other than Betsan for example. The root word of that was Betsy, but in Dragon Age, some of the characters have names that are just slightly outside of what's familiar. So characters like Hensley and Betsan etc. have names that are deliberately sort of familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The most research I do tends to be into language groups and historical usage of names at the time.

But since Dogwill Borough was a fae OC that wasn't going to live that long, and I didn't have to fit any canon except my own, I gave him a very quick throwaway name. Hell, the fact that he's a dog shifter is literally in his name. x.x

[xnchxntmxnt]

HEY it's me here for the event <33

So fandoms is just Sk8 the infinity, and if you're doing yoi then that too but otherwise just the one is fine also I'd preferably like a dude

So that's the outift im SORRY it's all black but i wore it recently and i rlly liked it so it's the first thing that came to mind

Totally unrelated to the event but this is the pair of shoes I'm wearing in that outfit and I'm in Love with them probably my fav pair shoes

So uh yea these ^ shoes with black pants, a white tshirt with a printed tie tucked into the pants, and a black denim jacket over top. Also a black knitted belt. I always wear those bracelets and like, a normal watch.

Ah personailty. I'm that generally nice guy that noone rlly has any beef with but who's not like, one of the popular kids uk? Not very talkative but that's only around new people. In contrast, I'm probably the most talkative one within my friend group lol.

I LOVE reading I've loved it ever since i was a toddler. I don't have a fav genre, as a kid i would read literally anything, from encyclopdias to kids books to classics to even this one big book about herbal medicine that i read for some reason? I don't even remember what was in it but it was rlly cool.

I have a system where my tbr list doubles as my book ranking list. My highest ranked books tend to be those that make me cry a Lot. So books like The Song Of Achilles, aaddtsotu, No 6, Circe, A Thousand Boy Kisses.

I'm a hoe for animation, and I don't watch live action movies/series alot. When i was younger it was disney pixar etc and now I watch anime. I still love disney pixar movies tho, and im always down to watch a classic like Mulan or newer movies like Luca or Encanto (three of my favourite films of all time btw). I prefer animation to live action because it has this sense of wonder and fantasy and excitement that you can't replicate with live action, and that's what i rlly enjoy abt it.

I loove music, i play the uke guitar and piano, tho I'm not Amazing at any of them. My fav artist is Taylor Swift. I don't support Celebrity Stan culture and I don't follow her life too intensely, i just find out stuff by filtration from my mutuals/friends lol. That being said, i think Taylor is so incredibly talented and her music never ever fails to make me feel a whole slew of emotions.

I also have adhd and it messes w my life in some ways, makes it more interesting in other ways. I Cannot hold a topic I go on multiple tangents, i have the short term memory capacity of a spoon, i cannot sit still and am always fidgeting , I'm hypersensitive to sudden sounds, but im also unable to function in total silence. School was weird cuz I'd never be able to pay attention in class or while studying normally but sometimes I'd hyperfixate on my studies for hours on end and so I'd do fairly well anyway.

I'm bisexual grayro! I'm aromantic in the sense that I don't feel romantic attraction, but i still wanna be in a romantic relationship someday (btw I am taking this event date as romantic not platonic). I'm also into boys girls and anything else, although i have a preference for guys.

I love being alone and left to do my own thing, but i hate feeling lonely or isolated. Which is smn my friends understand, so we don't talk a whole lot, but whenever we do it's so refreshing and the love between us is so palpable uk?

I watch documentaries in my free time! I especially love ones about history, which is one of my favourite subjects. I'm not TOO interested in war history, although its important and just as significant. I'm more interested in the development of society through the ages and the small quiet revolutions that made the world what we know today.

UHHHH that got longer than i meant it to but yea!! This was so fun thank u :)) hope u had fun reading all that!

i just have to say i was gonna text u this but i just. i love listening to people ramble like this its so fun because i love when people just. talk. especially about themselves. all these cool little things i now know about you i just. yes. i love it i love all of this its such a cool thing to me

ramble over. thANK YOU FOR SINGING WITH ME AT THIS <333 i did not even have to think about this matchup i got about halfway through ur submission before i was like lol i have the perfect idea

𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡... 𝐑𝐄𝐊𝐈 𝐊𝐘𝐀𝐍

kjgbkjdbg suit for him <3

the tie disappears after about 5 minutes he HATES ties. anyway

little different than others: you guys didn't actually meet here

you two had kinda been seeing each other for a little while but nothing was super formal or official

but you wanted to bring him because 1) you found out his friend was gonna be there too 2) gave you a chance to vibe a while yknow?

so reki's your plus one going into this

dude was SO nervous he was calling langa in a panic trying to figure out how to style his hair and what he was supposed to be wearing and all this other stuff

poor dude

but hey, he showed up, he looks great, its awesome

you told him beforehand that you were going in early bc music setup n stuff

he decided to come around the time everyone else was supposed to be there & just come by himself

hung out w langa and his girlfriend until yours truly makes their entrance

oh boy this dude was AWESTRUCK when it was music time

i've got this idea in my brain that like. i od a song then we do a song? said song is lover

he was vibing w the music for a while yk and then you started singing

lets just say dude went as red as his hair

he gives me the vibes that he'd have a thing for musicians or just people that can sing well

so like every gay panic siren was going off in his head when he heard you sing

finally music stuff was done

time to eat

before you could even get to the table reki ZOOMS over to you and is geeking out

incomprehensible rambling

he's just !!!!!

but overall he's just like ,NGNMJBHDGJNH BLUE THAT WAS SO GOOD

expect to be almost trampled in a hug

he will hug you

<333

so anyway you go through dinner

congrats you officially met langa + his girlfriend koi (who also participated in this lol)

however

ur probably halfway through a conversation and reki hears a song that he likes and makes u dance w him

he's never been one for social standards anyway he doesn't care if it seems rude its only langa

and he wouldn't care

he knows he wouldn't

so now ur cute redhead is pulling you onto the dance floor

he cannot dance but its okay!! he's trying. just vibe with him and let him spin you and spin him and he'll be smiling and laughing at you all night

that's all I've got but he's whipped for u and know that either that night or soon after u two make it official he had so much fun w you that he probably asked you night-of or the day after

[kerakeriza]

I just want to add my own input~ I don't engage with fandom much but pre-flashpoint Damian is my bread and butter, so I do love a good reckoning with canon.

Not just fandom. His first appearance was pale and blue-eyed. He was first shown with darker skin in the Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul, but it was for one panel alone. I believe he first had green eyes in the Son of Batman movie. Sometimes he would be drawn with black eyes, but that could just be a part of the art style. I don't think he was ever explicitly stated to have traits from Talia until the Secret Files book.

Agreed. Fans should keep that in mind when talking about the character. If you write another character calling him those things, be wary of what it implies about the other character to say those things. (Even if that implication is just that they don't think about it lol.)

Blood son didn't spawn in fandom. I can't recall if it originated with the movie, but the movie definitely had him saying he was the blood son.

It may have become more obvious in those instances, but Damian always believed that his biological relation trumped any adoptive relation to his father. It took time to change his mind, but he had still always been jealous over the adopted ones getting more attention and trust from Bruce than himself. But it makes sense for Damian to have a longstanding belief of the superiority of blood relations, as his grandfather always prioritized such things as well, and of course Damian learned many cultural values from his grandfather.

Given that we never saw Damian prepare separate weaponry for different days, we can assume he always has his swords at the ready. It's reasonable to prefer his use of swords, as it makes him more unique. While other Robins know how to use them, he keeps them in his permanent reportoire.

Agreed. Damian acknowledges himself that he gave up a lot in becoming Robin. The Bats didn't save him, because he didn't need saving. He just didn't want to be the heir of the League of Assassins. (Note: I don't agree however with the writing or editing decision to have Jason shoot Damian. He's not going to just shoot some ten year old kid.)

I'm not sure how far people take this in fandom... but his ignorance of some aspects of American culture is canon. He had no clue what Stephanie was talking about when she made a Master Po reference. (But then, I grew up in America, and I also had no clue who that is. It could instead be attributed to their age gap. But usually, comic writers allow characters of different age groups to share referential knowledge, and only limit that knowledge based on what culture they are from. Besides that, Bryan Q Miller very much wrote Damian as more, um... foreign or worldly. Actually, no other writers at the time really bothered making it obvious he has non-American cultural influences.)

Agreed. Diversify it a bit! Throw in a few beloveds and darlings and dears and sweethearts. He may also use some Cantonese. (But I also just find it cringeworthy when anybody writes him calling his mother and father anything besides mother and father. That includes in canon.)

It was pretty well implied that Dick had conversations with Damian offscreen... I'm sure they talked it out plenty of times. Otherwise, agreed.

Agreed.

Agreed. No one ever thought of Damian as a threat, they just found him annoying lol. Or, well, they may have thought him to be a bad person, but even then nobody was actually afraid of him.

Things I hate/dislike about Fanon-Damian Wayne

AKA me just bitching about the various icks of Damian portrayals in fanon that range from weirdly racist things to a blatant misunderstanding of the core character.

Whitewashing - not only in art, but in descriptions; making Damian pale or white, an "exact copy of Bruce" and having blue eyes. He'll share features with Bruce of course, but it's rare I see anyone describe him with traits from Talia or Ras or Melisande. Y'know he's still half Arab/Chinese despite Bruce being white. He should have, at the very least, a shade of brown skin and non-blue eyes.

Describing Damian like an animal (hissing, biting, clawing), calling him feral or rabid - I already have a post about how its pretty racist to constantly describe a poc character like this, so I won't go any further here. Also, rabid, really? Anyone who calls Damian that will die by my hand because it's so genuinely ignorant that I just can't excuse it.

Overuse of terms like "Blood Son", gremlin, "Demon Spawn", "Satan" - these spawned completely in fandom and its gotten to the point that I will immediately click off something if its included. Just stop using these as shorthand to describe him or joke about him. Come up with something else, or maybe just don't include Damian in a fic if he's only there to get made fun of.

Connected to the "Blood Son" term, making Damian obsessed with his biological status as Bruce's child and making him demean his adopted siblings/other adopted characters - he's only had a couple instances of this in canon comics. Once, in his introduction in the fight with Tim written by Grant Morrison when his character was still being fleshed out. Again, in a fight with Tim in Red Robin when Damian is mostly being written as an antagonist and not a character of his own. It frustrates me to no end when this is brought up because Damian's status with being Bruce's son has nothing to do with biological connection or genetics. It has everything to do with just being a son of a father that doesn't put any effort to knowing you and seeing him have deep connections to other kids that you have been raised to see as competition, not family.

Constantly having him carry around a sword/katana - this does happen in some comics, but its really not the main weapon he uses as Robin. A good majority of his time as Robin he just used the standard stuff (batarangs, grapple etc). The really aggravating part is when fics insinuate that he'd carry one around in public or in school.

Making Bruce's half of the family his good white saviors, while also making the al Ghuls evil abusers - if you demonize Talia and then prop up Bruce as a good dad who's done nothing wrong to Damian then I'm going to assume that you don't read comics and you don't have a good understanding of Damian's relationship with his parents. If you make Dick or Jason the good protective big brothers while putting down Talia or Ras or Mara, again, I'm going to assume the worst. Dick did not like Damian when they first met. Tim spent most of their time together as Red Robin/Robin hating him. Jason shot Damian point blank in the chest the first meeting they had, and then continued to threaten his life. Damian has never had a great relationship with anyone in the batfamily when he first appeared. Yes, not even Stephanie or Cassandra or Duke. With everyone, it took time for him to be tolerated much less liked or understood. Making them the ones who understood him and babied him from the start ruins his character development and his relationships with them. Only if you're writing an au where Damian is raised by Bruce, then it's excusable but still not the least bit right when handling the al Ghuls.

Making Damian ignorant or plain stupid, especially when comes to white American concepts - Damian is insanely smart. He knows what riddles are. He knows what metaphors are. He knows that Gotham is a city in New Jersey in America, and that American concepts like school clubs and sports teams and cliques and dances exist. Sometimes it sounds you're making Damian intentionally an idiot when you imply he doesn't know what a video game or a tv show is. Just because he grew up sheltered does not mean he's fucking blind. He's a kid who grew up Middle Eastern, not in another planet.

nitpick but Damian calling Bruce "baba" at every turn or throwing in "habibi" when you write ship content - I am not Arabic, but i'd feel the same kind of annoyance if someone wrote Damian calling Bruce "papa" or "padre" all the time, or randomly listing off Spanish endearments in ship fics. In moderation, it can be cute and appreciative. But sometimes it reads like you just discovered a new funny word and you're throwing it around for no reason.

Insisting that Damian should have learned morality or been punished severely by any of the bats when he first showed up - I must stress that none of them did jack shit to teach Damian any kind of morality when he appeared. Bruce met him, yelled at him, fucked off for a mission, came back and then promptly left him behind with Talia before they were presumed dead by explosion. Then Bruce straight up died. Bruce had very little to do with Damian in the early era. Dick, also, didn't really do anything in terms of actually sitting Damian down and explaining the Bat code or just general "killing=bad". He taught Damian to be Robin, and by that process, gradually got through to him about being a hero and a good person. You cannot expect good behavior from a child from the get-go if you've done nothing to teach that child. On that matter then, implying that Damian should have been kicked out of the house or beaten up on behalf of Tim as a form of punishment or a "teaching moment" is genuinely insane. You're going to abuse the already abused ten year old because he hurt your favorite character? Really? You're truly the pinnacle of an adult figure that he should respect /s.

Being annoying about Damian's attitude towards other characters - he's sarcastic and rude on purpose. It's pretty clear from the start to Damian that no one likes him, so he chooses to not like them back. If you cry about him calling Tim names, then I honestly think you don't have a high opinion of Tim at all if you think a seventeen/eighteen year old teenager would be hurt or psychologically scarred by a ten year old calling him a mean name.

Exaggerating Damian's violence and making people terrified of him - calling his fights with Tim "attempted murder" both undermines what murder actually is and undermines Tim's skill levels. The cutting the line incident for example. Obviously the action of cutting it was dangerous, but if you genuinely believe that Tim would have died from it or that he would regard it with any PTSD-level importance is (imo) kind of stupid. We always hear about the actions Damian takes around other characters, but never the canon reaction. In the 2009-2011 era, Tim was angry and annoyed about Damian. Whenever Damian did anything to him, he fought back. He would shoot back remarks, land a blow. Tim wasn't scared of Damian. They didn't even live together long enough for Tim to feel "unsafe in his own home." The second Damian became Robin, Tim left. They never lived in the same house since then, until the reboot, and even then Tim has been pretty independent and Damian has been away from Gotham more often than in it. Same deal applies to Dick and Steph and Jason and Cass, they never took Damian's actions lying down. He's just a mild annoyance to them. In fact, Damian doesn't attack them in their sleep. He doesn't try to kill them every chance he gets. He doesn't plot their demise. Every instance of Damian fighting someone in the family has either been; protective impulse, a reaction to a fight they instigated, or a sparring-type situation where neither of them are taking things seriously.

[afeathertothestorm]

My latest fascination in the realm of absolute insanity (ever since the flat earth well had run dry) are the super soldier program people. There's a pocket community on youtube that believes they were abducted by the US military as young children and recruited into interplanetary wars. Typically it's the Moon and Mars military bases where the recruits are being sent to battle with alien forces (races native to those planets and/or aliens from other solar systems). They believe that this super soldier program is being run by some external power (e.g. gray aliens) but using actual existing US military operatives as their subordinates.

The way by which humans (soldier recruits of the program) are being sent into space is usually a combination of the following: physical teleportation (through something they call star gates?), cloning (clone is enmeshed with the human child/person so multiple bodies are sharing the same mind?) and out of body travel (self-explanatory).

People who believe themselves to be part of this program are typically middle-aged Americans, and hold it that their memories of these events had been suppressed for the majority of their life. They're usually in continual process of uncovering these memories (that transpired from around the 70's to the 90's, but are also actually taking place until this day); they're frequently "coming out with new information" and connecting the dots – receiving intel from otherwordly beings or forces in non-physical form (voices in their heads, essentially).

When discussing these topics amongst themselves they never encounter any disagreements. At most it could be a remark like "I don't have any information about this" but otherwise their "recovered memories" always match between each other, often with a sense of deep validation of shared experience. They never actually confirm being together on any of the "missions" but they almost always seem to know and corroborate each other's understanding of these galactic war events. It really just sounds like endless "yes, and" improv where which each next piece of dialogue the narrative becomes more and more fantastical (but also, strangely mundane). The lore is very expansive by the way, and saturated with many American pop culture references and earlier "star seed" channels' works (I'm not personally that well-versed in either but I'm sure if someone had the patience to make a thorough catalogue of everything this group of people is saying – each individual detail could be traced down to either an 80's TV show or a 90's/early 00's new-age book).

There's also deep significance of "blood-lines" and "alters". Belonging to certain blood-lines (alien half-breeds or simply specific human family-trees) informs how the children are chosen for these super soldier programs. A lot of them come from or have close ties with US military. As a result of going through the programs, people develop an awareness of their alters – fractured parts of themselves that are more often than not non-human (grays, dracos, mermaids, fictional characters, etc.).

Sadly, another thing most of people who hold these beliefs have in common is having experienced abuse at a young age (sexual or otherwise). I suppose that would be key in explaining this whole chain of delusion but I'm not a psychotherapist so I can't even begin to imagine how and why.

This group of people is universally concerned with being tracked, monitored and controlled. They're paranoid about their devices, strangers they may meet, the government (of course), media-conditioning. The underlying ideology of breaking away from powers that be, escaping the matrix and regaining their true power is painfully similar to flat-earthers or any other flavour of thuthers, really. Except this blend has an extra thick layer of alien conspiracy and an added twist of actual real-world space travel all mixed in with the more traditional stuff.

I really wish somebody kept a close eye on this and made some sort of general anthropological record because there's something absolutely amazing about these small communities. I personally witnessed the flat earth community renaissance on youtube circa 2014-2019 and it was dramatic and beautiful, very ephemeral, I believe most of the channels are lost or mutated into something else by now, but there was a real sense of quick and potent growth, briefly scratching the surface of the mainstream, and then slowly fading back to obscurity. The drama between several factions in the community was brilliant. The grip of delusion was truly immaculate. It makes me a bit sad and there's probably dozens of these ideological microbiomes being born and then dissipated in the depths of youtube without ever being seen, because some of them are real gems to be admired.

[clarz-cc-archive]

answered April 29, 2020

Q: You know how Jin said he made the conscious decision to be less “respectable” so that Namjoon wouldn’t feel as pressured as the leader and so the others could be closer to him? Just has this thought that maybe Yoongi did something similar? How he allows the other members to manhandle him around and slap his bubble butt and basically play around with him and he doesn’t even bat an eye? I’m not that well versed in sk culture or that into other groups so I don’t have much comparison to go on, but I feel like for some “elders” that might not fly, but Yoongs is just like: “I’m happy that you’re happy :]” and that’s just???? So sweet to me? What are your thoughts on this? :D (in response to)

A: i think that when they were all much younger yoongi used to take on some of the Eldest Hyung stuff that jin might otherwise have been expected to do, just bc they used to all say if one of the maknaes was misbehaving in the dorm or something yoongi was sort of the designated one to scold them because he was the only one who could remain stern about it. but i also think that yoongi was in sort of a different position than jin was coming in and so it might have felt more comfortable for everyone for him to take on some of that stuff, since even though namjoon was the leader he and yoongi were the two members who'd been together the longest. this is totally me guessing but i think yoongi probably had fewer fears about stepping on namjoon's toes as the leader with the age hierarchy than jin might have, since they'd already spent so long living together and learning to communicate with each other before that! i've also always had the impression that yoongi might be less bothered with the other members of rapline over the age stuff off camera since i've seen people say that both namjoon and hobi will occasionally slip up on camera and use ban mal (informal speech) with yoongi; like i do think he still acts very hyung-like toward them, and hobi especially still treats him a lot like a hyung (hobi's attitudes toward members changes SO much based on where they are in the age hierarchy imo it's very fascinating), but i think that rapline already had a more stable and negotiated relationship put in place by the time the other members joined since they'd all been together for so long and also had this equal footing with each other as musical collaborators. i do think yoongi lets the other members play with him and stuff, but i don't think i see him performing the same kind of purposeful abdication of his own authority that i see jin doing. in my view, the younger members seem to know very well what they can and can't get away with with yoongi and there are definitely moments where one of them will realize that they've crossed a line and kind of back off quickly (like that one bomb where they're shoving a camera in yoongi's face while he's sleeping on the floor and he wakes up and curses at them lol!) i think they like to poke at his boundaries and see what will or won't get a reaction out of them, and he lets them when he's in the mood for it, but i also get the impression that everyone understands when yoongi needs his space and that the other members are willing to give it to him.

asks in response to this one: #1