#not to mention that it's a very reactionary sentiment

[newtclovers]

transmisandry has gotta be one of the nastiest tags I've ever seen on this website. you hate women and think you're oppressed for being a man but now its Transgender and that makes it somehow progressive ... cmon now.

[read-marx-and-lenin]

Can you explain why 1984 is fundamentally reactionary? I remember seeing a journalistic article talking about the same thing but sadly it was paywalled

The whole premise of the book is "if we let the government do too much stuff, eventually the government will get so big it will do Everything and nobody will be able to stop it, it will grow so big it will be a self-perpetuating tyranny."

It's your typical liberal cautionary tale against "authoritarianism", conflating fascism and communism while understanding neither. Orwell had never been to the Soviet Union, and instead drew heavily from his own experience working for the British Ministry of Information. Later in his life, he would even compile a list of suspected Communists to hand over to British intelligence agents, some on the list included solely because they were gay or Jewish.

Animal Farm is another example of his reactionary sentiment, in which the peasants and workers of the Soviet Union are depicted as gullible and weak-minded animals jerked around at every turn by the pigs, a stand-in for Marxists in general and Bolsheviks specifically. Incidentally, Orwell during his time at the Ministry of Information had become acquainted with one Gertrude Elias, who shared with him her own idea for a cartoon film depicting the Nazis as tyrannical pigs ruling over the other animals in a farm. Orwell had told her the idea wasn't any good, before going on to write Animal Farm, replacing the fascists in the story with communists.

Here's a good read about Animal Farm by the way, which I feel shows very clearly the kind of reactionary Orwell was:

Compare Orwell's depiction of the mindless masses in Animal Farm to the "proles" in 1984. 1984 hardly mentions them except to say that they all live in squalor and have no agency worth considering, which allows them to live free of surveillance and control, since the State doesn't see any purpose in expending the resources to surveil them. They're all dumb, mindless addicts and gamblers whose only purpose is to provide menial labor. Meanwhile, the protagonist of the book, who is cunning and able to question the whole situation, is a middle-class white collar propagandist, just like Orwell was during his time at the Ministry of Information. Orwell clearly viewed himself as superior to the mindless masses, and he was a racist to boot, just look at what he wrote about the Burmese or the Irish. The Russian masses as depicted in Animal Farm needed little more than to be ordered around and they were willing to follow whoever was giving the orders. The English masses as depicted in 1984 needed a bureaucratic mountain of sophisticated social engineering dedicated entirely to manipulating every last minutia of information in society in order to be subject to the same level of control.

[komsomolka]

In your esteemed opinion, is Mikhail Bulgakov actually a good writer or is he more in the Orwell end of the spectrum: popular for anti-soviet sentiment (despite clear disdain for women and working class) his works are heavy on?

Bulgakov was definitely a talented writer so much so that he was tolerated by Soviet power despite reactionary character of his works and even sometimes was (sort of) defended by such people as Gorky and Stalin (their pet liberal of sorts😅).

Gorky: Bulgakov is not my brother [...] I have not the slightest desire to defend him. But – he is a talented writer, and we don’t have many of those. There is no point in making “martyrs for an idea” out of them. The enemy must either be destroyed or re-educated. In this case, I am for re-education. (Further in the letter Gorky says Bulgakov wants to contact Stalin personally to ask for help with stable employment. Bulgakov later got a place in Moscow Art Theatre).

Stalin: Of course, it is very easy to "criticize" and demand a ban on non-proletarian literature. But the easiest thing cannot be considered the best. The point is not a ban, but step by step to force old and new non-proletarian trash off the stage in a competition, by creating real, interesting, artistic plays of a Soviet character that can replace it. And competition is a big and serious matter, because only in a competitive environment can we achieve the formation and crystallization of our proletarian fiction. As for the play itself, "The Days of the Turbins" (Bulgakov's play), it is not so bad, because it does more good than harm. Do not forget that the main impression left on the viewer by this play is an impression favorable to the Bolsheviks: "if even people like the Turbins are forced to lay down their arms and submit to the will of the people, admitting their cause is finally lost, it means that the Bolsheviks are invincible, nothing can be done with them, the Bolsheviks". "The Days of the Turbins" is a demonstration of the all-crushing power of Bolshevism. Of course, the author is in no way “guilty” of this demonstration. But what does that matter to us?

Bulgakov was heavily censored, called for questioning by authorities multiple times and struggled a lot financially due to his bourgeoise and White sympathies while living in proletarian state. But isn't it the same for communist intellectuals in capitalist countries? So i personally don't cry crocodile tears over his suffering artist lifestory. Bulgakov works were accused of valorizing the Whites by Soviet literary critics (he was universally hated by them) which is true but as Stalin mentioned idealogically it was still net positive for Bolsheviks bc Bulgakovs works were pretty defeatist when it came to Bourgeoise class.

Interesting analysis of Bulgakov in Soviet Literary Encyclopedia released in 1930s: Bulgakov entered literature with the awareness of the death of his class and the need to adapt to a new life. Bulgakov comes to the conclusion: "Everything that happens, always happens as it should and only for the better." This fatalism is an excuse for those who changed milestones. Their rejection of the past is not cowardice and betrayal. It is dictated by the inexorable lessons of history. Reconciliation with the revolution was a betrayal of the perishing class' past. Intelligensia's reconciliation with Bolshevism, which in the past was not only by origin, but also ideologically connected with the defeated classes, the statements of this intelligentsia not only about its loyalty, but also about its readiness to build together with the Bolsheviks - could be interpreted as sycophancy. With the novel "The White Guard" Bulgakov rejected this accusation of the White émigrés and declared: the change of milestones is not a capitulation to the physical winner, but a recognition of the moral superiority of the victors. The novel "The White Guard" for Bulgakov is not only a reconciliation with reality, but also self-justification. A forced reconciliation. Bulgakov came to it through the cruel defeat of his class. Therefore, there is no joy from the knowledge that the bastards have been defeated, no faith in the creativity of the victorious people. This determined his artistic perception of the winner (i.e. Proletariat/USSR/Bolsheviks).

[communistkenobi]

im an undergrad student who was thinking about specializing in studying fascist movements in North America for my masters and ive really enjoyed reading your book commentary - you connect things that I'm not always aware of in ways that are really comprehensive and appreciate

Do you know of any researchers who are moving things on the topic right now (most of the books ive read are around 20+ years old, unfortunately)?

(sorry if any of this is unclear/grammatically incorrect/weirdly worded - I'm super sick rn)

thank you! I'm really glad to hear that :)

For contemporary writing, I'm currently working through some of Alberto Toscano's work - he has a really interesting article from 2021 on fascism from a Black radical/Marxist perspective where he summarizes various historical analyses of fascism from Black (particularly US) thinkers and activists. One thing I especially appreciate is that he complicates Aime Cesaire's formulation of fascism (i.e., "european colonialism come home") as incomplete when applied to settler colonial contexts, especially the United States - one of Cesaire's articulations of fascism is that (to paraphrase) "one fine day, the prisons begin to fill up, the Gestapo gets busy" and so on, and Toscano, working through Angela Davis and George Jackson, responds with (again I'm paraphrasing) "the prisons are already full! The Gestapo is already here!" etc. Toscano also has a new book that just came out in 2023 called Late Fascism, which explicitly addresses the current moment. I only have a physical copy of that so I can't share a pdf unfortunately, and I still need to get around to reading it lol.

These are also a couple random articles I found insightful:

Carnut (2022). Marxist Critical Systematic Review on Neo-Fascism and International Capital: Diffuse Networks, Capitalist Decadence and Culture War - does what it says on the tin

Daggett (2018). Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire - talks about car culture as a site of modern reactionary political movements, links climate denialism with (proto-)fascist movements

Parmigiani (2021). Magic and politics: Conspirituality and COVID-19 - this one does not mention fascism explicitly, but imo the intersection between new age spirituality, anti-vaccine sentiment, and qanon/q-adjacent conspiracies are pretty important to understanding contemporary fascist social movements, so I'd still recommend reading this

Finally, this isn't an article but I found this recorded lecture about the history of Qanon pretty interesting. I don't think the author gives particularly insightful answers on how to solve the problem of far right conspiracies in the Q&A portion but I found it to be a helpful summary

Otherwise I've been focusing a lot on decolonial scholarship more so than fascist scholarship - this is again guided by Cesaire's argument that Europe/The West broadly is inherently fascist. These works aren't contemporary, but you can look at this post for some of the readings I linked on decolonial scholarship if you want to go that route. Those are serving me more for theoretical frameworks to guide contemporary analysis, not analysis of contemporary events directly

also idk if I need to put this disclaimer, but just in case this leaves my blog: this isn't a full throated defense of/apology for everything in these articles, I'm not claiming they're sufficient to understanding the present moment, these are just some of the things I've been reading recently and have found helpful in some way or another. a lot of contemporary work I have read (much of which isn't linked here because I don't think its very good/do not have it on hand) focuses on populism and authoritarianism as central analytical terminology, which i think does a lot of work to exceptionalize and mystify fascism as a historical and political process/project originating from European colonialism & Western imperialism, but these terms are endemic to the field so you have to contend with them no matter what

good luck with your studies!

[blackwoolncrown]

Hello! Real question here. How come 'queer' is a white cishetcentric concept?

I feel like I answered that in the very post I mentioned it but on the grounds that this is a good faith question, here is my sentiment on the matter:

'Queer' as a word connotates strangeness, outlier qualities etc.

Contemporary lgbt ppl often tout a stance of reclamation and we are occupied with both being proud of this non-normativity and justifying strangeness as natural.

This makes sense only within a context that still somehow centers and organizes in relation to a sense of normativity that is cis,white,het. Those cannot be separated because the mainstream gender norms were created WITH whiteness during colonization as a justification for the brutal violences against indigenous people.

This whole process of being like "Yeah I *am* strange! I'm weird! That's good! In fact nature is queer too!" is silly to me because again, there s nothing weird or strange about gender or sexual diversity. There is nothing truly strange in all of nature- only from a human normative perspective (and a narrow one at that) that views nature as separate from self, unknowable and somewhat hostile. To itself, nature in all its diversity IS common.

And that's all it is at the end of the day: mundane, natural diversity, the likes of which was and is well documented on the gender/sexuality scale in precolonial indigenous society.

I am not weird, I'm not an outlier. I'm not even 'afraid' of being weird- I just feel like the idea is juvenile. It's reactionary. It's coping. I'm beyond coping.

My identity is common, natural. It is not in opposition to a cis-het identity. It is just one of many possible ways to be. I am not comparing myself to cis het people. I would be me without them.

Let me repeat: I refuse to have an identity that requires cisheterosexuality in its definition. I am entirely disinterested in triangulating myself around or against notions of identity thought up by delirious, violent, spiritually ill europeans some scant handful of generations ago when I can have a sense of identity far broader and older than that.

My people existed for thousands upon thousands of years before 'queerness' was invented and tbh I think that it is an inevitable stumbling block that we today are concerned with looking back at these identities- which were as far as labels are involved more social roles than personal identities- and trying to understand and valuate them through a contemporary queer lens.

overall contemporary LGBT identity struggles are more concerned with seeing sexuality and gender as an individualistically oriented quality than a language of social role and responsibility which IMO is one area where it can fail to provide some people with a sense of personal meaning and solidity they seek. But you can't expect much else from an individualistic culture.

This is not to say that there are not gender/sexuality identities that DO have this quality of being more a social role but it is no wonder that most of that cultural aspect is found with and originates from people of color, generally speaking. This is also not to say there aren't reasons WHY contemporary queer culture is centered around reactivity and response to oppression. I'm just saying like... I don't personally vibe with the idea that my existence and expression is here to be a form of rebellion. I am saying it exists beyond, before, during and after any oppression. I am who I am with or without white people or colonization and ONLY within the context of created-white created-cishet people have I ever been considered 'strange' in any way. I'm not gonna affirm to myself and in my reality some shit ppl like that made up. I'm not in the business of centering the opinions of petty oppressors.

Lastly I feel like a non-zero amount of so-called queer people become so preocupied with reclaiming queerness by expressing an outer strangeness (which has its purpose!) that we overlook that for many what they really fear is being totally unremarkable and common.

I personally find it more important to develop an identity that explains what you do in the village; what you are to your loved ones.

:shrug:

[bestworstcase]

You've mentioned that hatedoms tend to be very similar to each other, if not outright identical across fandoms. What is it that causes them to be like this and so similar to each other?

well. to explain this i think it’s first helpful to lay out why hatedom… exists, because i think that is generally not understood in normative fandom space; what i see happening in a lot of conversations about hatedom is that there is a widespread presupposition that hatedom is kind of a side effect of bullies and bigots lashing out at fans for liking something they don’t, and… that’s a misconception because hatedom is a fandom subculture.

“but farran,” you might be thinking, “hatedom is full of bigoted bullies”—and yes, it is. that is true of fandom across the board and, frankly, the harassment is often mutual. it’s just that trolling hatedom or just being combative and nasty toward people in hatedom is broadly socially acceptable in a lot of fandom spaces and the perception that hatedom is demographically homogenous (white, cishet, male) allows fandom’s bad actors to spin aggression as self-defense by rhetorically invoking identity politics. 

which is not to say that hatedom isn’t ever reactionary or that hatedom doesn’t have a massive bigotry problem—it is and it does—but rather that those things are not unique to this one subculture. it is a Fandom Problem. 

so, with that said, what makes hatedom happen?

it isn’t about not liking something. it isn’t even really about hating a thing. people in hatedoms are… fans, actually. 

specifically they are fans who have reached the natural terminus of fandom’s “fuck canon/yay fanon” culture. this is actually the main reason i tend to get somewhat acidic with the anons i get sometimes kvetching about hatedom rewrites and the like, because… hello? 

inside every happy fan besotted with fanon is an embittered screed just one favorite-headcanon-shattering narrative turn away from getting out. it is the same. mindset. bifurcated solely by whether the preferred fanon resembles the real story enough to believe the fanon is real. 

this is why hatedom is disproportionately populated by shippers of torpedoed ships and hardcore believers of popular fan theories that flopped. (and once you notice this, perusing fandom tags and blogs becomes a fun exercise in forecasting the hatedom.)

anyway the point of all this being that hatedom arises when there is an irreconcilable break away from popular fanon in the actual text. when ships get sunk, popular fan theories get jossed, or the narrative status quo is changed, it’s really common for fans who were deeply invested in that ship or theory or paradigm  to pivot to hatedom because the emotional attachment they have to the story and characters doesn’t go away, it just hits an immovable obstacle and ricochets off in a new direction. 

again, fans do exactly the same thing at a lesser intensity. fix-it fic. headcanons of omission, ie, “i know x happened in canon but i don’t like it so i am choosing to pretend it didn’t, actually.” the entire sentiment that fandom itself is about stripping a story for spare parts to write bespoke au fic tailored exactly to suit the fan’s preferences. 

what distinguishes hatedom—& this is getting to the answer of your actual question—is that in hatedom the “fuck canon/yay fanon” principle is applied in the context of that irreparable breach opening between canon and fanon. in normative fandom spaces, the popular fanon kind of gets superimposed with the text in a manner that allows them to blend together, hiding any small discrepancies. that isn’t possible in hatedom because the discrepancies are always so large.

inevitably what that leads to is this feedback loop where the hatedom develops its preferred fanon through a combination of fanworks, meta-posting about why the fanon would have been better or should have been what happened instead, and cherry-picking whatever bits and pieces from canon people in the hatedom happen to like.

(which is how all fanon develops, yes.)

over time, it’s the meta-posting about the preferred fanon that causes hatedom to dissolve into the vindictive nitpicky circus. no matter where you go in fandom, there is always a huge social incentive to keep coming up with new things to talk about. obviously. in normative fandom spaces a lot of that is generated by excitement and joy and just a desire to spend more time with the story and share what you think and kick fun or interesting ideas around. but in hatedom, the passion binding these fans together is estranged from canon almost completely and the group identity is predicated on this really intense disappointment that the preferred fanon got left in the dust. 

so hatedom is fundamentally driven by a powerful social incentive to keep coming up with new reasons why the preferred fanon is better. that pushes the fanfic away from au and into spitefic territory, leaches nuance out of the discussions, encourages nitpicking and angry screeds. eventually it hits a certain critical mass and tailspins rapidly into bullshit because (and this is the key) people in hatedom are fans. 

as in, most of them like the stories they’re ripping apart. they largely do not actually have any deep problem with the story because they are fans having extreme reactions to disappointment. so they talk shit and nitpick and make melodramas out of molehills and sometimes fling bizarre identity politics around to either legitimize nonsense Story Bad arguments or score imaginary points in altercations with normative fandom. 

if that all sounds familiar, yeah. lmao

i will close with an anecdote to illustrate the broader point. 

once upon a time i made a snarky little post about an extremely stupid ironwood take i scrolled past while blogwalking. somehow or another that ended up in front of one of the BNFs of rwby’s hatedom; he misinterpreted my point (because it was a vague snarky paragraph) and wrote a fairly harsh response based on that misinterpretation. there were several followers of mine in the notes kind of signaling an expectation that i was about to receive a barrage of harassment over this. 

i responded by:

clarifying that i didn’t mean the (genuinely awful!) thing he thought i was saying

indicating that i understood how/why he’d read the post that way and no hard feelings

elaborating in detail on what i did mean and why i thought that

and what happened?

the dude apologized for jumping to conclusions and being so caustic off the bat, then explained his own opinion and the thought process behind it. and that was that. the number of hostile angry anons i received was zero. the number of inane bad faith reblogs i got on other posts afterwards was zero.

now this is a basic, basic deescalating tactic but it’s also really illustrative of what i’m talking about when i say that hatedom isn’t motivated by a desire to bully fans  out of fandom because if it hadn’t been for the handful of people in the notes going basically, “oh no! it’s him! brace yourself!” i wouldn’t have known the guy was a hatedom BNF at all. his initial response to me was indistinguishable from the tantrums the dadpin people or that one penny truther throw in my inbox every now and then and frankly he was a lot more reasonable and mature about our differences of opinion than them once the misunderstanding was cleared up. 

like…

i’m not conflict averse at all. anyone who’s been following me for any significant length of time knows that, lmao. but i do try to lead with reasonable and presume good faith until proven otherwise and the thing is? that shuts down hatedom aggro fucking instantly. because people in hatedom are just… fans, really. fans who are usually pretty stoked to be treated like fellow fans instead of the enemy and will usually make an effort to rise to the occasion. 

and once you grok that hatedom becomes really quite simple to understand; the homogenous pan-fandom slurry of inane bullshit happens because fundamentally most people in hatedom like the story but rode the “fuck canon/yay fanon” train all the way to its very toxic and unpleasant last stop and now they’re kind of… stuck there trying to shout the cognitive dissonance away. most of them would be 1000% happier if they hopped the fence back to fandom and went “here’s my wish fulfillment power fantasy au fic that i’m writing for a target audience of Me” buuut there are a lot of social and emotional headwinds against that. 

so instead they make up wildly entertaining bullshit reasons a story is bad like “the animation is ugly” and “it’s bad writing not to explain how [completely mundane everyday thing that children can understand, like haircuts or the concept of money] works” and “how could the disney princess show have monarchy in it?!/how could the fairytale show have fairytales in it?!” and so forth. it just gets sillier and sillier forever.

[fullhalalalchemist]

smut and nsfw works can be very deranged sometimes but how is it fair to compare it to the actual harm of porn? even if there was absolutely 0 effect on the people watching it(such as increased likelyhood of sexual aggression, decreased empathy for rape victims, irreversible effects on the brain etc) the actors in porn videos would still experience what they experience. you can fantasize and preach till your mouth goes dry about the self-sufficient empowered sex workers who choose their own work, but it won't make the truth of millions of trafficked male and female children fueling the industry disappear. the high rates of suicide, addictions to get through the scenes, physical harm thats basically part of the job description? there is so many porn stars that have come out with their stories of what they experienced on set, yes even the successfull ones that went into the industry willingly. their abuse is not comparable to words on paper.

not the mention "my christian parents are against it so i must support it" is a very weak argument. its cringe shortsighted reactionary bullshit.

1) if there is increased likelyhood of sexual aggression, decreased empathy for rape victims, irreversible effects on the brain then how come millenials and gen z, which grew up on these, have a better understanding of consent, more egalitarian views on gender and sex, there's less teen pregnancy and less sex being had overall by the younger crowd even pre-pandemic. secondly, WHO is having an increased likelihood of sexual aggression? WHO has a decreased empathy for rape victims? because i'm sure you can point to america's flawless and amazing attitudes towards women and rape victims historically (sarcasm, in case you're too stupid to realize). studies show that men who access sex work have more egalitarian and feminist attitudes than those with antisex and antiporn sentiment

perhaps youre talking about the cis men who already are prone to abuse women and are using things like 'rough sex' and 'bdsm' as an excuse, and its more visible now? because that takes a lot of nuance to talk about and i agree with you there that this IS an issue, but these men would have found ways to do that anyway. perhaps the issue is not the porn itself but the society that encourages violence in an era where increased societal collapse is happening all around us? where the trend of backlash against women has been happening for over a decade and really isn't tied to porn/sex at all but more towards increasing feminist attitudes toward work and gender roles going mainstream?

2) so you're ignoring sex workers yet again, got it. because there's also a lot of sex workers who came out and said that they love their work, they love being a sex worker. and in either case, these are the same people who have been criminalized and brutalized by police globally, the main source of their abuse. in fact YOU can fantasize and preach til YOUR mouth goes dry about how its the worst industry ever while ignoring the millions of queer, disabled, women, and poc who are in this line of work and love it.

3) and are these millions of traffiked children in the room with us now? you think that if there were millions of traffiked kids, they'd show up in mainstream porn more, right? except they dont. 100 members of congress asked the DOJ to investigate OnlyFans bc of 80 possible instances of CSAM in the same time that facebooks 20 million cases went ignored by literally everyone. and who's the site thats getting punished? pornhub and other porn sites which have a well-documented effort of putting time, resources, and moderation of getting rid of this content that some users upload. endtraffikinghub was a fucking psyop by far-right christian orgs posing as 'anti-traffiking' orgs, oh my god. where the hell are you getting these numbers anyway? because CSAM is NOT porn and NOT the porn industry and its psychotic to equate them.

4) high rates of suicides, addictions to get through scenes. can you link any studies? and again, do you TALK to sex workers or do you just rehash claims made by these antiporn/"antitraffiking" "activists" who are almost always far-right christians in disguise (hello look at NCOSE, formerly known as morality in media) rather than the actual people who do the work? because i can point to you several thousands of people who show up to their non-porn non-sex work jobs faded as hell and also have suicidal tendnencies from being in those industries. the issue is LABOR & CAPITALISM, not sex and not porn.

5) sure, there is always cause for abuse of workers. but again that is a labor issue, because we live in a capitalist society and across the board there are workers being abused. sexual harrassment and assault is not unique to porn, and you're naive to think that lmao. if you truly gaf about getting rid of the industry you'd push for what sex workers are calling for, decriminalization. there are hundreds of sex worker unions who talk about the issues they face, and most of it is decriminalization. in india a union of 60k people recently won a big court case on this. its a labor issue if anything. the main source of abuse is extensive criminalization and banking discrimination which pushes people into poverty and homelessness as they're forced to do more irl work and come across the police who have been killing and raping sex workers this entire time.

6) and no, it's not a weak argument when we live in an increasingly christofascist state and world. its' actually a very very good argument for the suppression of sex and sex workers. because these same antiporn "activists" have co-opted feminist language and you're all falling for it and once again ignoring sex workers

and lets just clarify. people say "porn industry" and are referring to the sites like pornhub. the "industry" is where the workers are. there is no like, shadow overrulling company making all the porn. there are a bunch of filming companies who sex workers HAVE spoken out against and a bunch that they love to work for instead. there are millions of people who work on their own terms, from their own sites too. my PERSONAL opinion that has been motivated by listening to sex workers and reading both sociology and psychological research has been that i will always always always support the worker first before the industry. there are a lot of issues, that is true! but it's mainly a labor issue and sex workers have BEEN on the frontlines of negotiating for better working conditions. to say otherwise would be foolish and would show you simply dont pay attention. why do you think many of them go to use sites like onlyfans now over pornhub?

[digitalcockroach]

i think a lot of tumblr has weirdly strong feelings and opinions on Neil Gaiman and Good Omens like it's popular and popular to hate and victim to Tumblr Discourse, there's a loud subset of (usually young but not always uhg) fans that are obnoxious uwu soft bean terminally online types, and there's a a kind of reactionary hatred and criticism for Neil and Gomens itself (and laugh at me if you must but there is some of that coming from a homophobic, transphobic, abliest place. it is not coincidence that these reactionary hate for fandoms is worst when a fandom is predominantly queer and neurodivergent like i get it whatever we all need someone to bully not the point here) and there are PLENTY of things to not like about the man, the show, and the fandom but like

one sentiment i see going around in the wake of s2 is that Neil Gaiman is just a Bad Writer which like. objectively doesn't really add up. in terms of technical skill and success of his work? he's very skilled and respected as a writer, he's considered a master of his craft, he's won awards, yknow? whether the stories he tells are compelling or interesting or important is subjective, hate em all you want, but he is TECHNICALLY a good writer which leads me to my main question

WTF happened to s2 of Gomens????? like i liked s1 enough to watch it 3 or 4 times, i loved the book in high school, i was excited for new content despite my misgivings about extending a completed story! and this is what we get? the major worldbuild hook, an arch-angel thrown out of heaven without his memories now in the care of the angel and demon who saved the world from said arch-angel essentially, is a fucking C plot after fanservice azi/crow flashbacks and a weird uncomfortable not-romance between two random new characters (and this isn't even mentioning the major spoilers for way stupider plot decisions). none of the humans from s1 are there. there's 0 tension (except for in the final cliffhanger scene) bc they just. basically say "nah no you wont" and fix all their problems. literal deus ex machina resolution. the writing is bad, the ACTING is bad in the case of the weird ass Beelzebub recast (WHY would you draw attention to it by mentioning they look different TWICE) who moves like a tiktok teenager and can't lipsynch and oh yeah has a completely different personality. i get that some things were on purpose, i see the hints and foreshadowing for a s3, i get that some ooc-ness of characters is likely to be revealed as part of a bigger plot eventually but y'all. i sat through this Bad season of TV hoping the few interesting and genuinely cute moments would pay off, and they did not. why would i wait for another season of this shit to actually resolve anything?

I'm just fuckin disappointed in it yknow it was a total fanfiction of itself and i have literally read better gomens fic than what s2 did

[atimetoteardownandatimetobuildup]

history and me

tw: mention of suicide

I know this is kind of a writing dump, but you probably are wondering, "how can you reconcile being queer and Catholic when the doctrine doesn't like you?"

Well, here's how. It involves the Bible, my own self-discovery, a history lesson, and a few quiet conclusions I made.

Most of the Church doctrine surrounding LGBTQIA+ people stems from the Pope St. JPII (John Paul II, for those not exactly in the know) era, and some of it from the Theology of the Body. This was during the 1960s through either 1980s of 1990s (I don't remember and don't have the energy to look this up). This was also an era where the Church politics were very "in this world but not of it" and things were also changing quickly. I don't know if this was what was going on, but the actual doctrines seem kind of reactionary, if that makes sense? The "traditional family" is very Eurocentric, especially when, around the world, so many other types of families are traditional? "But they're not Christian!" I know. I'm just acknowledging that Christianity is not the only religion in the world. And even in predominantly Christian areas, there are... um, how do I put this without offending the trads?... questionably gay traditions? For example, in Poland, where a lot of my family is from, it's completely socially acceptable for two women to dance together (with quite a few traditional dances). "their husbands aren't there" HAVE YOU CONSIDERED LESBIANS, SHARON? Also those outfits are really pretty and I want to make one, but it would sacrifice my hands and potentially a sewing machine forever. But that's another story.

Another thing that came out of this era was the consistent ethic of life. Which, personally, I have a couple of issues with. For one, life is really inconsistent, and while I agree with the sentiment behind the doctrine, it has issues. Which is another post. And yes, this matters. Because queer people have a higher suicide rate than straight people. And having to fit into a standard that doesn't fit you and in some cases, suffer under an identity that isn't yours, is REALLY depressing.

This is the first question I pose: how could you live with yourself if your words were what drove someone to commit suicide? Would that be considered killing them?

And this is my first answer: I couldn't live with myself knowing that anyone killed themselves because of my words, especially not my friends. And I would drive myself to Confession as fast as possible.

I realized that around seventh grade, and I had a slight crisis of faith. My faith recovered, and a seed was planted: was I straight? Keep in mind, my autistic self did not know what social norms were and had no concept of a crush and was terrible at recognizing flirting. Around this time, I realized what sex was and had the greatest "NOPE" reaction in the history of my family. I really should have put two and two together that point, but I didn't know anything about the queer community at the time.

Around the end of my freshman year of high school, I learned about asexuality. I had a lot of stuff to work through, but I remember thinking that it fit. I think I had this progression: straight -> alloace -> aroallo -> the weird denial/amnesia phase where I thought I was straight -> allodemisexual -> aroflux demisexual? -> aroflux? ace -> fork it, I give up trying to figure out what the romantic attraction is, aroace. -> wait, girls are cool? aroace -> sapphic aroace -> aroace lesbian/possibly bi but it's mostly girls tbh -> once again questioning the aromantic part of it -> HOLD UP SOMETHING IS HAPPENING WITH GENDER CIS PEOPLE HAVE STRONGER ATTRACTIONS TO THE WORDS THEY USE TO DESCRIBE THEMSELVES THAT I DON'T HAVE OH [BLEEP] HERE WE GO AGAIN -> something on the multigender spectrum, maybe agender but I Know There's Gender There

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Well, if my neighbor isn't straight, I'm going to accept them. Because I accepted myself. I may have trauma. I may have issues with my self-image. But I will not give up.

TL;DR: Last I checked, God wouldn't want me hating myself forever.

[bigcircle-smallworld]

Immigration

Societal Attitudes on Immigration: The Impact of Racial Bias

In our so newly globalized landscape, immigration is a complex topic spiritually, philosophically, politically, and otherwise. Within exchanging culture and physical location, and considering globalization’s context of colonialism and the invention of modern racism, immigration is deeply intertwined with societal attitudes around race and ethnicity. 

Considering perspectives from our speaker Ernesto Cisneros, the Latino/Mexican- American experience is unique in many ways. For one, California has a Hispanic/Latinio population larger than any other ethnicity. While a larger presence often feels like it should mean a mirrored distribution of power or education or capital or even stories, these communities are still vastly underrepresented in all fields. This type of “majority-minority” contradiction is difficult to wrap one’s head around when seeing it play out. It can feel very confusing, especially considering the cultural blending and separation that can happen simultaneously. Cisneros talks about how confusing these giant issues can be, especially for children, and the children he sees almost every day as an educator. Conservative narratives about immigration are especially unforgiving. The recent reemergence of Nazi-era “Great Replacement Theory” rhetoric now shapes itself to fit modern-day America, pulling in Mexican immigrants as job-thieves and people who are taking advantage of America’s powerful economy and social benefits without doing the hard work of being a “real” American. This timeless reactionary argument is not only baseless, but also applied hypocritically. Beyond the obvious lack of consideration on what exactly constitutes a “real American” and why that makes them deserving of something, in conflicts that involve other conflict-torn areas, racial bias rears its horns. 

For example, the response to mostly white Ukrainian immigrants is significantly different. The U.S. and E.U. governments, currently very strict and conservative on border policies, enthusiastically accepted Ukrainians and allowed them to skip bureaucratic formalities that others must spend years adhering to. In Poland and Belarus, physical violence that often takes place against refugee and immigrant populations was notably missing for Ukrainians. 

Middle Eastern immigrants also experience unique forms of discrimination and xenophobic rhetoric. Post-9/11, discourse about colonialism’s ravaging effects in Middle-Eastern governments and hugely ruinous U.S. invasions is somewhat overriden by anti-Islam and “terrorism” rhetoric. Many are fleeing from deathly emergencies, but that fact gets dropped when our discussions shift to racial and ethnic arguments.

Lina Sergie Attar, founder of the Karam Foundation, speaks in her New York Times op-ed about the utter destruction of Aleppo, a once-vibrant city where she spent much of her childhood. She ironically mentions how people claim “victories” as gaining more land foot by foot during this conflict, rather than aiding the many starving Syrian people and halting the constant death and destruction. This attitude applies to most situations regardless of race, but when racial bias dehumanizes victims of conflict,

Many of these differences are not simply racial; for example, pro-Ukraine sentiment is also partly an extension of anti-Russian sentiment and politics. Yet it is undeniable, especially considering current events in Israel and Palestine, that pre-existing systems of bias certainly do affect our conception of immigrants and refugees from different backgrounds. I hope that being conscious of this bias can help us limit its impact on how we act as Global Scholars. 

2023 Demographics - Summary Data for State: California, Claritas / Be Well Placer, March 2023

https://www.placerdashboard.org/index.php?module=DemographicData&controller=index&action=index

[terrania]

i know that shit’s all the way over now but im still angry about tumblr’s fucking fanaticism about boss. like you had two of his posts blow up and now for the next two weeks *everyone’s* talking about him. i mean goddamn left and right it’s fake post after fake post making fun of this guys on main hornyposting. you seen that post that said that how tumblr will band together to make fun of this guy is, like, truly a testament to its culture or some shit? i mean, yeah maybe it is, but it’s not a great part of the culture, lmao. look, mans actually been bullied off the site, but did you check his blog when it was up? if you haven’t then ill tell you that when i checked it myself, it was a normal goddamn tumblr blog, with a couple horny posts thrown in for flavor. and the posts in question sure were fucking riveting! if i get bullied off this app, i sure hope it’s for making a post as terrible, as immoral, as heinous as “buy her lingerie just to fuck her in it”.

hey, quick reminder as to how tumblr posts circulate: they don’t stop circulating. if a post is made at someone’s expense and it blows up, new people will start getting angry at that person every single day. you don’t *stop* being hated on this platform, even after what everyone hates you for has long since blown over, and you’ve taken as many steps as you can to distance yourself from it. take a wild guess as to how much anon hate boss got for the *first* post riffing on him. take another guess as to how much hate he got from each *subsequent* post people made about him. this guy tried so hard to stay on this site after all this shit started. he tried to press on through the harassment, and keep being himself. I can’t truly know the intensity of the harassment, but i know that its users didn’t let him stay. it was far more severe than it ever needed to be.

boss committed literally no greater sin than posting short fantasies about his significant other, fantasies he wrote for him and him alone, onto a small blog suspecting no wider audience. the worst possible take one could make with the available information would be to take the consensual s/a fantasies- bdsm shit he had seemingly already been bullied about before he got bullied for the more major thing, leading him to delete it- and say that he’s advocating for the actual practice. that take, one that i saw in the comments when i did check his blog, is obviously a reactionary, puritanical response to a post of very little substance in either direction, but it honestly echoes the sentiments of all the people making fake posts about him- that, the reactionary response to perceived slights. the “lameness” of those posts is what drew all these people to it, after all, spurring the comically disproportionate reaction we’ve seen.

that said, there’s an important place where these two ideologies break apart- while, in the delusions of the puritanical commenters, they’re accomplishing an objective good by preventing avocation for sexual assault, the vast majority of people making fun of boss have no such excuse. the lack of any actual good possible in funnymanning towards this guy is blindingly bright, unshakeable- as such, since no matter what there is no possible way to construe these actions as morally good, they can’t even be considered reactionary activism, like the post i mentioned at the beginning about tumblr banning together to take him down claimed. this entire series of harassments has been nothing but cringe culture.

it’s so obvious that it’s cringe culture, right? doesn’t anyone else see how every single post in this saga has been attacking nothing more than the very concept of something- of someone- being outside of the cultural norm this website’s users have imagined? the real reason he was ever attacked was because boss committed the cardinal sin of daring to care about something. the terrible, immoral, heinous act of loving another person.

let me tell you something. that sincerity- that earnestness, that passion, the weight of that love, needs to be protected. people need to be able to love, and to be loved. the greatest of passions you feel need not be snuffed out. the next time you’re seeing jokes taking the piss of someone you don’t know, check them first, and ask whether hating that person is the hill you want to die on. there will be a thousand more people as earnest as boss on tumblr. let’s try not to chase them off, too.

[deannaroxannewrites]

Tropetember Day 5 - Accidental Confession / In Vino Veritas (Drunk Confession/Drunk Dial)

Unrequited love? Bite me

Pairing: Elijah Mikaelson x GN!Reader

Fandom: The Vampire Diaries

Rating: Teen and up

TW: Drinking/alcohol, language, vampirism/blood mentions, FWB mention

AN: Day 5 of @tropetember. Not my best work but hope you enjoy. Might rework this slightly at a later point.

A visit to the Salvatores in Mystic Falls should be pretty fun, until Damon decides to drag you to a party the Originals are throwing.

Find this story on Ao3 here.

Word Count: 1.5k

“Damon, you cannot be serious.”

Your best friend just gives you puppy dog eyes. Bright blue and sad as can be. It’s kinda pathetic.

“Pretty please.”

You huff, knowing you won’t win this argument. You’ve known him since you were both children, through him being turned by Katherine and later Stefan turning you (long story), and then on and off in the intervening century and a half. You even had a casual friends with benefits arrangement when you were both lonely/bored. Knowing him so well, you decide to save everyone the time and give in.

“You’re paying for my outfit Damon! I can not believe you’re making me go…”

He scoops you up and spins you, making you squeal as he thanks you. Stefan, who has been observing from the couch being absolutely no help, just laughs.

“You won’t regret it. It’ll be fun and we can learn some things at the same time. We’ll be the most attractive spy duo in history.”

You just roll your eyes and go to grab your keys before stealing Damon’s wallet. If you’re going to have to face the Mikaelsons again, you weren’t doing it in something you’d worn before. And you were going to buy something expensive out of spite.

------------------

The entrance to the Mikaelson’s house was the same as any other house in Mystic Falls: opulent, excessive and with far too much marble. You’d take a cosy cabin over this nonsense any day.

Clinging to Damon's arm, you enter the space and, thankfully, Klaus is the only one of the family greeting guests.

“Darling, it’s been a while.” You can’t help the reactionary smile as you embrace him. He could be bat shit crazy at times, but he’d always been kind to you.

“Klaus! I’ve missed you.” Out of your eye corner, you can see Damon giving you both evil eyes. Had you accidentally on purpose forgotten to mention you knew the original family? Oops, your bad.

Klaus doesn’t let you go far, holding you at arms length to admire your new outfit. You do look stunning in it, if you do say yourself.

“Beautiful.” He leans in to whisper in your ear “My brother really doesn’t realise what he’s missing.”

You laugh him off, ignoring the implication. You knew better.

“Now boys,” you say, glancing between them, “I’ll have no part in whatever this little competition or measuring contest is, and I expect you all to leave me out of it.” They both look a little guilty as they nod. “Marvellous. If you need me, I’ll be somewhere out of the way with a glass of champagne.”

And with that you head further into the party, leaving them to bicker.

-----

"Urgh, I've missed you so much! I can't believe you left us."

You and Rebekah are both waaaay too many glasses of champagne deep at this point. You’d been there a couple of hours by now and it had only taken Rebekah 30mins to realise you were there and take you hostage. You're currently sequestered on a sofa in a corner and are both a bit sloppy.

"What do you want me to say Bekah? It's your arsehole brother's fault."

"Wait, what? What did Klaus do?"

You laugh, just a tad hysterically and fortify yourself with another sip out of your glass.

"Wrong one. Go older"

A look of understanding comes across her face and she wraps an arm around you. You, sadly, don't have enough of your wits about you to realise that this isn't the best place for a drunken heart to heart.

Everything starts to spill out of you. How you and Elijah had spent so much time together. How you thought he liked you back, only for him to turn up with what's her name wrapped around him. How he'd laughed when you'd expressed your surprise that he was dating, and how it made you feel like nothing. It was too much for your heart to handle. So you’d left, had a fun rebound weekend with Damon and tried to move on.

Rebekah pulls back slightly, wiping a tear that had escaped without your permission.

"You're too good for him anyway," she says and you laugh.

"I wish that were true.” You pull yourself together a little and put on your best fake smile. “For now, I'm just going to don an air of indifference and pretend I'm not in love with your oldest brother."

Your mirth leaves you instantly as you hear a refined voice behind you ask, "now why on Earth would you do that?"

It’s amazing how panic can sober you up.

You turn slowly and meet the eyes of the oldest Original. He’s in a suit, as always, and has a confident smirk plastered across his face. That pisses you off.

“Cos he’s an asshole” you coolly reply before turning to Rebekah, pressing a kiss to her cheek and walking swiftly out of the room to find Damon to take you home. You’d embarrassed yourself quite enough for one night.

You’d never admit that you were disappointed that Elijah didn’t try to stop you.

------------

One of the advantages to being a vampire was that you very rarely got a hangover. Instead, you just slept in a little, made a cup of coffee and did some yoga before heading out to treat yourself to lunch. You didn’t need to eat but you enjoyed the taste, there was much more variety in food than blood.

You'd only arrived in Mystic Falls a couple of days ago for your visit to see the Salvatore brothers and as such hadn't had a chance to try out the Mystic Grill. This seemed like a perfect fit opportunity. Something greasy would be perfect right about now.

The grill was a bit dingy but it worked for the place and you were happy to learn that they have a pretty good menu selection. Your excitement was soured though when Elijah decided to join you for lunch.

Dressed in yet another suit, no tie and the top buttons of his shirt undone, he oozes charm and money. Add in the handsome features and knockout smile and you were lost. You're sure back in the day the ladies with delicate constitutions had to keep their smelling salts close. You could easily have fainted over him.

But he wasn't interested in you, as he had made very clear, so you were just annoyed that he was existing in your space.

Elijah watched you eat for a few moments, clearly taking note of your reluctance to acknowledge him.

"For someone who's in love with me, you don't seem particularly happy to see me darling."

You groan quietly and lower your utensils. Wishing him away wasn't working.

"What do you want Elijah?" You sound bitter, even to your own ears. So much for attempting to sound neutral.

"One of my favourite people, who I haven't seen for a long time, has reappeared and I want to spend time with them. Is that too much to ask?"

You start eating again, using it to buy time. You had honestly missed his company. You just weren’t sure if you could bear him breaking your heart again, even accidentally and unintentionally. Luckily, he had more to say.

“Klaus told me off after you left, you know?”

You look at him in surprise.

“Told me that I’d wasted my best opportunity at happiness. Which is especially concerning considering who it was coming from.”

You nod your agreement. Klaus wasn’t exactly known for his sentimentality.

He continues, “would you believe that I really thought you were too good for me? That I really thought you weren’t interested?”

“Elijah, you can not be serious.” You pull a face at him. “I literally spent all of my time with you, hanging on your every word. I would have followed you to the ends of the Earth. How could you not have known?”

“I just thought you were being your usual effervescent self. I started dating again to try and let you go.”

Miscommunication. You shake your head. 30 years of heartbreak all because of miscommunication. God, you could bang the pair of your heads together. It’s basically a crappy romance novel. Ok, this is ok. You can fix this. You have pretty much forever left, after all.

Taking the initiative, you lean forward and grasp Elijah’s hand. His eyes fall to where you wrap your fingers around his. A hopeful look takes over his face as he returns to your eyes.

“Elijah?” You smile. “Would you like to go on a date with me?”

He laughs. It’s a beautiful sound. You’re going to make it your personal mission to make him do it more often.

Lifting your knuckles to his lips, he places a gentle kiss on them.

“I can think of nothing else I’d rather do.”

[shihalyfie]

What went down with the DigiFes situation, from the community and translator perspective

I think the events of the last few days have gotten everyone in a huge fuss, and because everything got caught up in a lot of chaotic social media stuff, there’s been a lot of questions about what came from what and who knew what at what time. Fortunately, I happen to be:

Someone who’s a veteran in this fanbase and thus has a small handful of friends in this community, who also have their own friends

Someone who understands a little Japanese (although not as much as others in this community do) and therefore can read things in Japanese myself to some degree without needing someone else to translate it for me

So hopefully I can shed some light on what kinds of things were being discussed, and what was known and not known at what time in this fanbase with all of this.

The most important thing I want to establish is that there was no organized coalition or smear campaign. (Kind of ironic I have to say this when the topic at hand has so much to do with conspiracy theories.) I’m a veteran, I know friends who are veterans, they know other friends who are veterans but don’t know me at all. My friends usually agree with and like the same things I do, and I give them advice and assistance with my skillset when I can, and they return the favor. We pass things along through the grapevine, not through some super-secret club grapevine, just via the nature of social relationships and some Discord servers (multiple; again, not everyone knows each other). So these are my impressions of what happened, based on said grapevine.

How it all started

Konaka’s blog is long. Like, really long. Which is only natural, because he was recapping basically the entire 51 episodes of Tamers in excruciating detail, so no translator in this fanbase would be able to translate all of that and not lose their mind! So for the most part people who couldn’t read Japanese had pretty much given up on reading it (with maybe a few dedicated people using machine translation), and some people who understood Japanese would point out parts they found interesting, but for all intents and purposes it remained untranslated and not super-accessible to the mainstream. (Even the Japanese fanbase itself wasn’t super aware of the blog’s existence.)

So when that first post in May about 9/11 dropped, the people who did read Japanese started going “uh...”

At the time, the DigiFes stage reading hadn't been announced yet. So, in other words, everyone reading it only knew it as, functionally, him namedropping an alt-right YouTuber and praising his observations. The reaction from anyone reading the blog at the time was something along the lines of “disappointed and mildly concerned.” (Note the mildly.)

The posts in June about the Great Reset and the anti-vaccine sentiment were when people keeping an eye on the situation started to get really worried about how far this was going to escalate. At this point, I want to make something clear that may not be apparent to those who weren’t keeping up or who are outside the fanbase: Most of the translators and Japanese-reading people deliberately chose not to be too public about this at this time.

Why?

This is the irony surrounding the fact that said translators are now being accused of trying to further “cancel culture”: cancellation was absolutely not what anyone wanted back then! If anyone wanted to create a smear campaign, 9/11 conspiracies, the Great Reset, and anti-vaccine statements are already more than enough to make a starting case. But at the time, this was a blog that very few people (Japanese or otherwise) knew about, translating it would basically just boost its platform more than it would have had in the first place (which would be counterproductive), and -- well, let’s be real, it’s not hard to imagine that people might get reactionary over it, and people would go nuts. Was there any real benefit that would come out of that? Not really, no.

So at the most, those keeping an eye on it might have vented a bit on their personal accounts, but some even tried to self-censor with “[redacted]” or vagueposting, because this was a matter that needed to be handled with delicacy. Thus, there were “mild rumors through the grapevine” about what was going on, but those who knew were trying to hold back with restraint and mostly inform people quietly in the hopes of this not needing to become some kind of huge social media campaign.

(Also, to be a bit blunt about it, it’s really hard to be in front of someone who loves Tamers and is gushing about it and showing admiration for Konaka, knowing all of this and wanting to say something, but feeling like a jerk if you pop their bubble like “also, he’s probably an alt-right conspiracy theorist now.” Not to say that the ignorance-is-bliss concept is always a good thing, but...)

But since the blog posts in question were discussing the prospect of having his sentiments in fiction, everyone reading them was on edge anticipating what might be in store for DigiFes. The hope was that it might blow over. Hopefully, everything would be in the form of subtle themes with plausible deniability, it would all stay within the realm of “it’s not worth causing a fuss over this,” that would be the end of it, and we’d all move on with our lives.

Unfortunately, “Political Correctness is activating Cancel Culture” isn’t exactly subtle.

DigiFes and the aftermath

I think it’s too easy to assign too much responsibility to the fansub group that was indirectly responsible for breaking the news for all of this, but actually, the truth is, this would have gotten out anyway.

Even when the stream itself was going on, there were Japanese livebloggers, and there were also English speakers who caught on that something was happening with “the Tamers fighting political correctness”. Some hours later, an upload of the stream went live on YouTube, and quite a few people started watching it and caught onto what was going on. If the fansub group that released the now-infamous version hadn’t done it, I’m absolutely certain someone else would have eventually (perhaps in a different language first, but nevertheless). And even before then, information about what the hell was going on was already starting to circulate in broken and incomplete forms. That fansub solidified what was going on, and perhaps accelerated the moment the bomb dropped on everyone, but if it hadn’t been there, it would have happened much more gradually and chaotically.

On top of that, while the use of Western alt-right rhetoric (seriously, please do not try to bring the “injecting Western politics into Japanese media” argument here when all of us are asking him to take the Western politics out) meant that it went over most of the Japanese audience’s heads (hence your answer to “who approved this?”), there was at least one Japanese person who was politically savvy enough to call it out for what it was in disgust. (I’m not linking them here because I’m not dumb enough to fling them in a place where some of you trigger-happy people will go after them.) They didn’t even need to be super in-tune with Western politics to get it; they understood enough to tell that there were some pretty alarming extremist views in there. If they understood that much, it was naturally going to follow that the Western side was definitely going to become aware one way or another.

Even all that aside, at the very least, said fansub is accurate; imagine how much worse this situation would have been if someone else had taken it up and confused things further with a misleading translation, or, worse, deliberately messed with the contents. Basically, this debacle could have easily been a lot worse.

I don’t think anyone expected this to get as big as it did (as in, to the point mainstream anime reporters outside the fanbase picked up on it). There was a similar tri. reading back in 2016, but even a lot of the hardcore fanbase barely remembers it exists! These aren’t even supposed to be canon, either! But when you have that disclaimer at the front, and the contents are really like that, it was probably inevitable for it to become a social media sensation. I mean the contents...sure are a thing.

One thing I should point out about the disclaimer is that it only mentions the program itself. It doesn’t bring up the blog, and it doesn’t bring up who wrote this scenario, just the fact that the program contains alt-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Because it does! It’s not even technically praising or condemning the content within, it just says “we don’t agree with it”! What the group did condemn was...approaching staff about it (and especially starting a fight). Because, in the end, that’s what the disclaimer was for: a heads-up about what was in there, and an added reminder that the people translating this are just translating it for the sake of informational purposes. Or, in other words:

It was a content warning. Even without the disclaimer, there were many, many people who would have recognized the contents for what they were and been caught by it unawares, and become upset by it. There were many people who said that they were glad to have that there because it at least gave them some time to mentally prepare for what they were about to be slapped with!

It really, really was a disclaimer. When you have something that level of extremely politically charged stuff, it’s only natural to start suspecting that the translation group had an agenda (official translations tend to get this a lot when content is remotely political). But no, the translation group did their due diligence, even if their opinions were starkly opposed to what was in there.

I was not personally involved in that translation, but I’ll give you this (copy-pasted with permission, from someone who wasn’t technically involved directly in it but was privy to discussions while it was being done):

no we brought up all of those questions like the fact that Yamaki's clearly off his rocker and this isn't supposed to be taken seriously in the first place or that maybe if we're lucky he'll just sound like a fake woke boomer but no matter how you slice it the plot is about him "convincing" the unbelieving Takato and co. into rallying up against the true enemy of Political Correctness and that's just literally the alt-right playbook in a nutshell

the thing even made it to YouTube, we were basically racing against the clock

I mean I really want to say this is plausible deniability but I don’t know how you can get any less subtle than this, this is not something you can mince words

like I really wish we could pass this off as “as long as you don’t know the blog you can take this innocently as political commentary or something” but I honestly don’t think this is something you can take innocently even without context

tbh the Political Correctness part is the most cringeworthy but Yamaki’s rant about fact checkers being evil and all that is probably a lot more worrying when you think about it

tbh I’ve never felt as conflicted about what’s the right thing to do as I do now

So in other words, it was not a reckless decision to just tack on a political label; it was done after a lot of consideration about the consequences to put the label on and what people would think of it with or without context, whether there might be a glimmer of light possibility to try and pass this off as more innocuous as it was, and eventually a determination that, in the end, there was indeed alt-right rhetoric in the program, and should be labeled accordingly.

The result was that, of course, everything broke out on social media, chaos burst out, a lot of hearts were unfortunately broken, and a lot of alt-righters started invading spaces accusing people of proving him right with cancel culture. Ironically, my personal observation is that, while there were exceptions, most people in the actual fanbase did honor the requests to not harass people about it, and this may actually be the most solidarity I’ve ever seen from the Digimon fanbase in my life, which is saying a lot considering how we usually tend to be a drama magnet most of the time. The ones who were actually directly messaging him were his newfound supporters locking down on offering him “support against people trying to cancel him” (I think they were more heartbroken and upset at him than anything...), and most of the harassment came from alt-righters not even in the fanbase, namesearching and sending harassing, accusatory messages to anyone involved for as much as expressing mild dismay. (You want to talk about harassment and being attacked for having an opinion? Pot, meet kettle.)

This leads us back to the question of the blog: if you’ll remember, I just said that the fansub in question did not bring it up at all. That’s because, at the beginning, there was no intention to bring it up if it wasn’t necessary; this was not intended as a smear campaign. The warning was attached to the DigiFes program because it was about the DigiFes program. But the resulting chaos had a lot of people bring up the blog because it better contextualized what was going on, and discussion led to people looking it up themselves and posting fragments of it on social media, sometimes even using machine translate.

Ultimately, that’s the reason this document was released: it was the same reason as the fansub being released at the time it was, which was “if it hadn’t been released, the alternative was watching things get disseminated more slowly and chaotically.” I will say outright that I was one of the people who got to lay eyes on that document before it was publicly released (and even helped out with some advice here and there); it’s no secret that it was being quietly passed around as an internal memo prior to the outbreak. The original version of the document had a request to not post it on public social media because of the chaos it would cause, and while I don’t know how many people got to see it before it was released, I’m under the impression that it was enough people that I was quite surprised everyone who saw it respected that request.

Why does the document contain a ton of analysis and debunking on top of just the translations? Well, when you’re translating those blog posts, you’re technically giving it a bigger platform (which was one of the reasons it was originally considered better to not post it publicly). Since the document exists primarily to inform people, especially about why certain things that may seem innocuous actually have wider context behind them, it’s going to need to contain an analysis like that.

The summary

There were a lot of decisions involved by a lot of different people through all parts of this ordeal. I think it’s fair to criticize whether they were the right decisions in retrospect or whether certain things should have been done slightly differently (including my small role in this), but nevertheless, it was one where the risks involved were thought through and taken into account in every step of the situation, with a desire to avoid chaos, or at least prevent it from getting too much worse. When you have contents like this, a controversy honestly is inevitable -- how on earth are you going to be able to put contents like Yamaki reciting off all the typical alt-right YouTuber talking points and ending in Political Correctness activating Cancel Culture and not expect that to make a stir at some point? -- and so, in the end, this wasn’t so much a conscious attempt at stirring the pot as much as it was the dam finally breaking, and a desire to keep it from spilling over too much. Nobody coordinated this! I think everyone just really hates drama.

Knowing all the steps and thoughts that went on behind all of this, I think being reactionary or accusatory for clout is the last thing anyone involved wanted to be. Considering just how many of these steps above could have easily been made into exposure, from the posts all the way back in May and June to the internal memo document that was made to keep friends quietly informed but could have been leaked to the public with only one bad actor, there was an active, common desire among people who didn’t even know each other to try and minimize the potential damage as much as possible. When you look at the situation now, of course it looks awful and hardly like something that came out of “trying to minimize damage”, but in reality there’s only so much you can do when the contents really are like that, and I personally believe everyone involved was doing what they thought was their best option as the situation kept changing.

I can’t speak for anyone else, especially since I don’t even know most of the people involved, and I didn’t have much of a role in all of this, but I think everyone involved, myself and my friends and everyone who’d been keeping tabs on this situation for months, has been going through a lot of heartbreak and conflict over what to do next, so please understand that there was a lot of thought put into all of it, and that it really was a difficult situation no matter how you look at it.

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

Given your hatred for liberalism, why are you a fan of the French Revolution? Or were they not as liberal as we're told?

good question.

my first reason is simply because i appreciate the french revolution as a moment of creativity, experimentation, potentiality, vision, ambition, etc. that is its primary appeal to me. it represented the liberation of man and facilitated the dreaming of new worlds.

but more practically, yeah i simply don't view the french revolution as particularly liberal. unless we are using the term in its broadest sense where if you believe men should be generally free or that citizens should be generally equal under the law you could be considered liberal. or that there should even be "rule of law". in that case i'm a liberal too, though i don't really think anyone would see me as that if they knew my beliefs. i just don't think the term has much usefulness when used that way because i think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who disagreed with those sentiments, except maybe the edgiest of reactionaries who unironically want to go back to monarchical feudalism.

but when i talk about liberalism in a negative way i'm referring to a very specific type of liberalism. often called "classical liberalism". there are a number of important distinctions between this liberalism and my "classical republicanism", but perhaps the most important is when it comes to the relationship between the individual and the state and/or society in general. liberals view the state as unnatural. it's a necessary evil that we merely tolerate and it should be minimized. what matters above all else is the individual, and the individual owes nothing to anyone. society is merely a conglomeration of atomized individuals acting in their own self-interest. by extension of all this, they tend to believe "the freer the market the freer the people" and so they oppose state intervention in the economy. the liberal believes the state's primary purpose is to protect property rights and enforce contracts. (i go into a bit more detail about this here.) i find libertarians to be the contemporary inheritors of the classical liberal tradition. basically capitalists who desire to be unfettered by the state and with little concern beyond their personal profit/self-interest, even if it comes at the expense of the nation.

now, as i mentioned above, part of the appeal of the french revolution in my mind is that it was an explosion of human creativity and diversity of thought. so almost as a necessary consequence there is bound to be liberal elements within the revolution. but there were also conservative monarchists and moderate republicans and protectionists and radical socialists and so on.

so in the broad sense was the revolution liberal? sure. the revolution got rid of the monarchy, secularized france, broadened suffrage, abolished slavery, embraced nationalism, popular sovereignty vs divine right of kings, created a constitution, etc. i agree with basically all those things too though (except maybe the suffrage). i think these were all preferable to the preceding order of things. if that's enough to make one liberal then i guess i'm a liberal.

but if we're using my more specific definition, i don't think it was liberal. the declaration of the rights of man itself makes plain the supremacy of the nation over the individual and of the necessity of public force to benefit the nation overall. doesn't sound particularly liberal to my ears. on top of that, throughout the revolution there were myriad cases of nationalizing land and property, state regulation (include wage and price controls), increased protective tariffs, and the famously liberal (pun intended) use of state violence.

^ beheading speculators and traitors and usurers and aristocrats who got fat off the blood of the people is something i can get behind. the revolution was very illiberal in a lot of respects. it was a sacred moment of orgiastic (state) violence, the purifying fire of god. and it was a very active effort in building a new nation. one which represented the people of france. and this is an important point about nationalism in general; that nationalism became the only force capable of keeping a handful of people from ruling the world with impunity. for a millennium "nations" were simply playgrounds for royals and aristocrats. often there was very little connection between the rulers of a nation and its people. often rulers were from an entirely different country and culture. and by the time of the revolution many european monarchs all came from the same families. the french revolution represented a sharp shift away from that. now there was a conscious effort to identify the nation with its people and to make the interests of the nation the same as the interests of the people.

and that isn't to say the outcome was perfect. or that the french government was my ideal. i can say explicitly that they weren't. but they were significant improvements and i believe the world is much better off for it than it would be if it didn't happen. and to top it all off, it gave us napoleon. who, contrary to the claims of others, i see as a continuation and preserver of the revolution rather than its end. napoleon saved the revolution from itself. curbing some of its excesses and refining the whole project into something that would have some longevity. napoleon was the savior and ultimate triumph of the revolution.

[entity9silvergen]

I recently asked reddit for some LGBT history from countries other than the US. Here’s what I got:

Germany

The Weimar Republic was surprisingly accepting of "alternative lifestyles."

During the Weimar Republic, Germany had a pretty active LGBTQ scene, with some major films and songs being produced, despite it still being illegal at the time. However, there was also a push to decriminalize homosexual behavior which sadly wasn't passed as the Nazis came to power.

This was based of two factors: after WW1 the authoritarian culture of Prussia sorta received a long overdue pushback. People were kinda sick of it, especially since these losers led them into a seemingly pointless war to begin with. Second: A LOT of men died in WW1 - and the army did not exactly prefer LGBT people. So with a lot of regular folks dead, the percentages of the total populace was sorta shifted. This also pushed the women's rights movements at the time for a similar reason.

Magnus Hirschfeld was helping trans people transition, crossdressers get crossdressing 'licenses', and generally advocating for and helping the LGBT community in the early 1900s in Germany. Nazis ended up raiding and burning down his research institute.

Hirschfeld was a gay polyamorous man. He was one of the first advocates for trans and gay rights but his work was destroyed by the Nazis.

The institute he headed even did the first modern gender affirming surgeries. The institute was destroyed and many people who were there (including the first known person to undergo complete MtF surgery) were killed by the nazis and the place was little more than bombed out ruins at the end of the war.

More information on the institute

Pre Nazi interwar Germany (Weimar Republic)  was pretty open when it came to not only sexuality, but also gender identity. The Nazis put a stop to that & tried to destroy any & all research into either, but, for a brief moment, it was there.

Russia

Pretty sure all Russian LGBT history was erased before we even had a written language, but Russia almost got gay marriage legalized in the first soviet constitution (didn’t happen bc Stalin)

The early soviet period (pre-Stalin) is sometimes called “the first sexual revolution” as opposed to America’s “sexual Revolution” of the 60’s. Broad women’s suffrage, female employment and education, parental leave, advancement of GSM rights & decriminalization of abortion. This unfortunately did not stand the test of time & reactionary sentiment.

Additional Source

UK/ Britain/ England 

The lead singer of Judas Priest is gay. The commenter’s father thought it was kinda funny because it didn’t match with his biker aesthetic, but the commenter doesn’t think he considered how much leather he wears on a daily basis

Hell bent for Leather was a track off Killing Machine. It was written by lead guitarist Glenn Tipton (who is straight), but it's fun to find alternative meanings in Priest songs. A second commenter likes to pretend a lot of the lyrics Halford sings are gayer than they actually are.

A couple people mentioned how uncomfortable it was seeing Ru Paul interact with British drag queens because he barely knows anything about British culture.

Ru Paul got angry that a British drag queen hasn’t seen the Golden Girls because “it’s gay culture” and then not five minutes later someone had to explain to him who Alan Turing was.

Alan Turing, who was an incredibly noteworthy figure (He made the Enigma codebreaker machine, which broke the code that was used by Nazis during the war and basically sped up the war by a significant margin. He also set the foundations for artificial intelligence, one achievement he was named for: the Turing Test), was homosexual and prosecuted multiple times because of it

Shakespeare was probably bisexual (some of his sonnets had homoerotic subtext/were sent to a younger man). Plus, Hamlet is gay as fuck. 

Sonnet 46 was very gay. Here’s a link!

King James 1st was corrupt and used his position to promote his gay lover to higher positions than he should've gotten. 

The 13 year old king James 6th of Scotland and 1st of England fell in love with a 37 year old catholic Franco Scottish man. The king gave the older man so much free shit that other lords started getting salty and his lover ended up converting to Presbyterianism out of loyalty to his young lover. He also fell in love with a man who ''was noted for his handsome appearance as well as his limited intelligence.'' 

Clearly James was into himbos, and women too.

He had a secret tunnel connecting his bedroom to George Villiers’s bedroom.

His relationship with Villiers was basically common knowledge and a source of much amusement and mockery. He also once said that his relationship with Villiers was equivalent to the relationship that Christ had with John the Baptist

Much more recently, there's obviously JKR and the banning of puberty blockers and Margaret Thatcher opposing LGBTQ+ rights by passing a law meaning you couldn't 'promote homosexuality'. 

Prince Philip was a racist twat (and probably a huge homophobe knowing him).

Gay marriage only became legal in 2014.

The Wolfenden Report was published in 1957, and it recommended the decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults. It was a huge topic of public debate, and ultimately led to the Sexual Offences act of 1967, which legalized sexual acts between consenting men aged 21 or over in England and Wales (sexual acts between women were never explicitly criminalized). Scotland decriminalized sex between men in 1980, and Northern Ireland in 1982. 

For a totally batshit real-life bit of gay history, check out the show A Very English Scandal. It's about a politician, Jeremy Thorpe, who put a hit out on his former lover who was threatening to go public with the fact they had had a relationship. 

Austria

Gay marriage was legalized in Austria about 3 years ago. The worst thing is that it'd have staid illegal if the Supreme Court wouldn't have jumped in and declare it to be unconstitutional.

Austria did have something called "partnership" which was where gay couples could officially register with the state as couples but not receive any of the benefits of married het people

They still have super backwards Transphobic laws requiring for example "real life experience" to get even diagnosed. Basically you're forced to be and live as feminine/masc as possible and a doctor them judges if you're femme or masc enough. It's torture

Australia had widespread, over 60% approval of gay marriage for well over a decade before the government legalized it. The governments were actually going against the people for a very long time by denying it.

Taiwan/ Hong Kong/ Mainland China

When Taiwan recently legalized gay marriage, their official statement was something along the lines that they were casting off Western-imposed values and returning to their own traditional values and the entire western lgbt community ridiculed them in a "if that's what you need to tell yourself" sort of way but it's actually the truth. 

Prior to western colonization, the Imperial Chinese attitude toward sexuality was not dissimilar to Greco-Roman attitudes in that a man must marry a woman to beget legitimate heirs but whatever else he does on the side is his own business. It wasn't until Victorian colonizers came along and imposed homophobic attitudes on China that China started treating gays like abominations. In Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China, as indeed most of the world, homophobia is a western value imposed by colonizers.

Bonus history: there is an actual saying in Arabic that was in widespread use across the Middle East and North Africa for thousands of years from classical antiquity until European colonization. The saying goes "Women are for babies, [young men] are for fun."

The commenter specifies that this means “college-aged twinks,” not children

Another commenter speculates about when homophobia arose in China and how. They also add that in Rome, bottoms were stigmatized. 

There’s a story of Emperor Ai of the Han dynasty & him cutting off his sleeve for his boyfriend

There is also a god worshipped in Taiwan, the Rabbit God Tu'er Shen, whose domain is managing love and sex between same-sex attracted people. He is meant to be the incarnation of a soldier from the 17th century, who fell in love with an imperial inspector and spied on him bathing, and was tortured and killed by that official because he was offended by the spying. A villager from the soldier's hometown dreamed that Tu'er Shen appeared to him and said that because his crime had been love, he had been appointed to manage the affairs of gay people. The villagers erected a secret temple to the soldier, and people have been praying to him ever since.

South Africa

South Africa became the first nation in the world to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in its constitution. It was also first country in Africa to legalize same sex marriage in 2006. What really set them back for so long was apartheid.

There is some speculation that that Shaka Zulu was gay since he never took any wives

South Africa's post Apartheid constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1996.

South Africa was also the 5th country in the world and only country in Africa to legalize same sex marriage in 2005.

Even before that the Constitutional Court ruled that sexual orientation was not relevant when deciding child custody in 2002.

Transgender folks have been allowed to change their sex in the population registry since 2003.

Conversion therapy is not illegal yet and public opinion still needs some work.

Spain

In Spain gay marriage was legalized in 2005, now they are considered one of de gay-friendliest countries in the world. The commenter is a lesbian and has never been closeted or directly experienced discrimination for being a lesbian.

In July 2005, Spain became the third country in the world to explicitly legalize gay marriage, after a thirty-year struggle following the fall of Franco's dictatorship, during which most activism was carried clandestinely (as it was illegal).

From 2007 onwards, Spanish [binary] trans people can legally correct the name and sex fields of their IDs and currently, there's a push for a law that would allow for legal recognition of non-binary Spaniards.

Despite the dictatorship in the 60s, there were cinemas that specialized in gay meet ups. Trans women also had ways to get passports so they could go to the US for surgery.

Ireland

In Northern Ireland, same sex marriage only became legal in 2020 and the leader of the most popular party is homophobic transphobic racist and sexist af. In fact, the majority of the party are but some of the quotes from the biggest party leader are depressing.

Same-sex marriage was only legalized in Ireland in 2015. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993. 

When Ireland legalized same sex marriage by popular vote in 2015, it was still something you got horribly bullied for in schools if you were out. Queer people got an apology from the Taoiseach in 2018, for the suffering and discrimination we faced from the State prior to the legalization of homosexuality.

In the case of trans rights, in 2015 the Gender Recognition Act was signed into law. It allows legal gender changes without the requirement of medical intervention or assessment by the state as long as you are over the age of 18. 

Ireland has fines and jail time for anyone found guilty of attempting conversation therapy. 

Ireland has seen a lot of progress in LGBT rights in the last 6 years but even up to the 2000s, citizens left their family members and friends to rot for being LGBT+. It still happens all over the country, especially in circles that are still fanatically Catholic. As the Catholic Church has lost the iron grip on the country, people have become more accepting of the LGBT+.

India

The Kamasutra(ancient text on sexuality etc.) has an entire chapter dedicated to homosexuality

The Arthashastra, a 2nd century BCE Indian treatise on statecraft, mentions a wide variety of sexual practices which, whether performed with a man or a woman, were sought to be punished with the lowest grade of fine. While homosexual intercourse was not sanctioned, it was treated as a very minor offence, and several kinds of heterosexual intercourse were punished more severely.

Sex between non-virgin women incurred a small fine, while homosexual intercourse between men could be made up for merely with a bath with one's clothes on, and a penance of "eating the five products of the cow and keeping a one-night fast"

Milk, curd (cheese), ghi (clarified butter), urine, and dung are the five products of a cow

The commenter adds that this is not a terrible punishment.

The Mughal Empire mandated a common set of punishments for homosexuality, which could include 50 lashes for a slave, 100 for a free infidel, or death by stoning for a Muslim

On 6 September 2018 the Supreme Court of India invalidated part of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code making homosexuality legal in India

Prior to the British colonization of India homosexuality was not all that looked down upon when compared to what happened when the British took over and instituted anti gay laws.

The Hijra (literally means third gender) were seen as normal and have been accepted since long before Christ, as evidenced by the Karma Sutra. The British took videos of them to take back to demonstrate how the Desi were “barbaric”.

Bonsia

In Bosnia, there was a one pride parade that ended with religious extremists ruining it and the police not doing anything. It was supposed to be 5 maybe 3 days long but ended in like 1 or 2.

The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe mapped out the entire night sky with only his eyes. It laid the foundations of many later scientists, such as Isaac Newton. He was a very rich nobleman, so much so that he owned 1% of Denmark's money. He had a pet dwarf that apparently could see the future, which sounds pretty gay. He was also part of the Elefant Ordning, which consisted of rich and strong Danish men.

Philippines 

Despite many attempts to legalize same-sex marriage, the Philippines still didn't budge. Being gay in itself is legal, but same-sex marriage still isn't.

Philippines ,the most Catholic Country in Southeast Asia, has held the largest Pride Parade in Southeast Asia.

Serbia

Serbia didn't have history from about 16th century to 1800's when the 1st revolt happened and failed till 1813's... Then yet another in 1830's for semi independence from Turks, and full in 1836

During the last lingering Ottoman rule over autonomous Serbia, Serbia was one of the very first few countries to have legal mostly everything... it then got removed with like 3 constitution changes and then it didn't move forward for a looong time

Switzerland

Would you have thought that small, conservative Switzerland was a center of the international gay community during the mid-20th century? The magazine "Der Kreis"- the circle - was the only queer magazine in the world that kept publishing during WWII. It was edited in Zurich and distributed internationally, which often meant illegal smuggling, even into nazi Germany. The magazine's annual ball was attended by hundreds of gay men from all over Europe each year. The whole thing was kept strictly secret from the public, though it was known and tolerated by the police.

The Kreis club disbanded in 1967, as repressions grew heavier after a number of murders in the scene had caught the public's attention. By then, other European and American groups took its place, publishing their own magazines.

They made a movie about it.

More info about Der Kreis

As of today, Switzerland doesn't allow gay marriage. A country-wide referendum will be held this fall on gay marriage.

The commenter speculates that gay marriage will be legalized.

A few people expressed surprise that Switerland is socially conservative and several people explained that women’s right to vote was only place in the 70s.

There’s a movie about it

Turkey

A Muslim Persian (born in modern day Turkey) philosopher/mysticist named Mewlana who is known for his sayings on acceptance and love for one another was gay! He had exchanged letters with his instructor Shams and wrote homoerotic poems to him! In Turkey this is ignored by many due to the country's stance on homosexuality

More information

Norway

The commenter’s hometown and the neighboring town arranged their first pride parade/event in 2017, which is a big deal for a small place and one of the local priests went livid and went straight to the newspaper and social media to condemn it. A local rapper wrote a short and to the point article in the newspaper calling him out for all kinds of things which was a great read. Then to top it off, the priest arranged for a "Jesus Parade" in protest to be held the day before the pride parade. Only like five people walked in it, not including the priest of course because he happened to be on vacation in Spain that week. The pride parade itself was a success though! It's become an annual event. Covid has put some breaks on it though, but they're making a documentary this year about the pride celebrations.

Hungary

Hungary has no same sex marriage or transition rights

Police are unkind to protestors

During “commie times,” being queer was illegal so queer people went to the gulag

Belgium

Same sex marriage was legalized in Belgium in 2003 (right after the NL who were the first in the world). The commenter says that same-sex marriage has always felt possible and she is confused about other countries’ actions.

Poland

Polish president on public assembly: 'LGBT is not people, this is ideology'.

Denmark

WHO took their sweet time declassifying being transgender as a mental illness, so Denmark got sick of waiting and became the first country to stop classifying it as an illness.

Australia

In Australia same-sex marriage wasn't legal until 2017.

Portugal

Portugal is know for having one of the most (if not THE most) peaceful revolutions in history back in the 60's, with only 4 deaths total.

Canada

Operation Soap.

Mexico

To learn more, watch Dance of the 41 on Netflix.

Netherlands

NL was one of the first countries to legalize gay marriage in 2001

Sweden

In Sweden they used to classify Homosexuality as a disease during the 20th century so in protest people would call in too gay to work.

New Zealand

When same sex marriage was legalized, the parliament broke into song.

The song

Other

Homosexuality is illegal in 73 countries, some by death or life in prison.

Only one country in Asia has legalized same-sex marriage: Taiwan

FNAF is older than same-sex marriage in the US

Condor Operation

I think this is some important stuff so please reblog so more people can see! And, if you would like to add to or correct anything here, feel free to do so!

[safitheartist]

So I decided to do some digging and found some more comments from people that watched the stream.

There is a lot of misinformation going on, a lot of reactionary people lashing out and presenting things out of context.

Here is what really happened:

-The Host of the podcast said the d-slur while promoting another creator's podcast which has it in the title. He is not part of the she-ra crew

-Double Trouble was said to do people watching to imitate them (the example given simply happened to be a child) I would like to remark that Noelle herself identifies as NB so I very much doubt she was trying to make any sort of implications of that manner.

-They talked about how one of Bows brother's is named Sow and how one of the board artists made a pun with it. Sow would be a farmer. There was never any mention of slavery and it's kind of weird to me that people instantly assume a black farmer is automatically linked to Slavery?? But I get that I'm not black and can't really weight in on the topic. That being said from what I saw most black people who actually saw the stream seem to be of the opinion that people are blowing this out of proportion

-Noelle never claimed that Entrappta and Hordak are good disability representation. What happened was that they read a e-mail from a Fan who is disabled themself saying they felt that way and Noelle never denied or agreed with the sentiment (Like duh, was she suppose to say 'Silly you, you are wrong for feeling well represented by my characters' that would have been 10 times more fucked) she then did a character analysis on those two and their arcs and how they impacted eachother.

That's the whole context. It's significantly less problematic then people make it out to be. Everyone is acting like they spewed malicious bigotry for the entire live stream, throwing around slurs like candy and calling LGBT people pedophiles and making jokes about slavery

That's not what happened. At best they made some unfortunate ignorant statements.

You can still feel hurt but please know the actual context of what was said and don't believe some very clearly emotionally charged call out posts that are misrepresenting the issue because they felt hurt by something that was said.