#quo-do the thing

[quodo-wip-event]

Hi everyone! It's time to Quo-do the Thing! Come join us in our quest to actually finish a Quodo work this summer.

🌻 Sign-up form 🌻

Sign-ups are open from now until basically the end of the event (August), but I recommend signing up earlier so I know how many people are participating and where. Note that you can always change up your projects later, so it's okay to put something provisional now and edit it later when you have more of an idea what's going on with your project and your free time.

The event has officially started, so you can start working on your projects right away. I'll be posting an AO3 collection soon, and our next check-in will be the start of June. See our sticky post for more information and follow this blog for updates and reminders. 😊

So sign up for Quo-do the Thing! Don't let your dreams stay dreams!

[inkskinned]

the thing about some men is that they want you to remember, at all times, that you are underneath them. that with one word or look or "joke", you will stay beneath them. that even "exceptions" to the rule are not true exceptions - the commonly cited statistic that one in eight men believe they could win against serena williams.

women's gymnastics is often not seen as real gymnastics. whatever the fuck non-euclidian horrors rhythmic gymnasts are capable of, it's often tamped down as being not a sport. some of the most dominant athletes in the world are women. nobody watches women's soccer. despite years of dancing and being built like a fucking brick, men always assume they're faster and stronger than i am. you wouldn't like what happens when they are incorrect. once while drunk at a guy's house i won a held-plank challenge by a solid minute. the party was over after that - he became exceedingly violent.

what i mean is that you can be perfect, and they still think you're ... lacking, somehow. i hope you understand i'm trying to express a neutral statement when i say: taylor swift was the possibly the most patriarchy-palatable, straight-down-the-line woman we could churn out. she is white, conventionally attractive, usually pretty mild in personality. say what you will about her (and you should, she's a billionaire, she can handle it), but a few things seem to be true about her: 1. she can write a damn catchy song, and 2. the eras tour truly was a massive commercial success and was also genuinely an impressive feat of human athleticism and performance.

i don't know if she deserves the title of "woman of the year," i'm not debating that in this post. what i am saying is that she was named Woman of The Year, and then an untalented man got onstage at the golden globes and made fun of her for attending her boyfriend's football games. what i am saying is that this woman altered local economies - and her dating life is still being made into a "harmless" punchline. the camera panned, greedy, over to her downing a full glass of champagne. congratulations taylor! you are woman of the year! but you are a woman. even her.

fuck, man. write better material.

a guy gets onstage at a college graduation and despite the fact like half the crowd is made up of women, he spends a significant proportion of it warning these people - who spent possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars on their education - that they were lied to. that the "real" meaning of femininity is motherhood. that they shouldn't rest on the laurels of that education-they-paid-for but instead throw it away to kneel at a man's heel. imagine that. sweating in your godawful polyester gown (that you also had to pay for!), fresh out of 4 years of pushing yourself ever-harder: and some guy you've never met - who knows nothing about you - he reminds you this "win" is a pyrrhic one at best. you really shouldn't consider yourself that extraordinary. you're still a woman, even after years of study.

god forbid you are not a pretty woman, but if you are pretty, you must be dumb. god forbid you are not ablebodied or white or cis or straight or good at swallowing. you must be beneath a man, or else they are not a man. the equation for masculinity seems to just be: that which is not a woman or womanly (god forbid). anything "feminine" is thereby anathema. to engage in "feminine" things such as therapy, getting a hug from a friend, or crying - it is giving up ones manhood. therefore women need to be put in their place to ensure that masculinity is protected.

this is something i have struggled to explain to terfs - they are not doing the work of feminism, but rather the patriarchy. by asserting that women and men must be (on some secret level) oppositional and in conflict, they also assume that being a woman is akin to being another species. but bigotry does not stem from observational truths or clarity - that is what makes it bigotry. there was nothing in my childhood that made me fundamentally different from my brother. we are treated differently nonetheless. to assert there is some biological drive that enforces my gender role is to assert that women have a gendered role. men do not see women as equal to them not because of biological reality - but instead because the core tenant of the patriarchy is that women aren't full, realized people.

we are told from a very young age to excuse misbehavior as a single man's choice - not all men. it is not all men, just that one guy. all women are gold-digging bitches who belong in the kitchen - but if a man is mean, bigoted, or violent to you, it's just that particular guy, and that means nothing about men-as-a-whole. it is only one guy who got mad when you gently rejected him. it is only one guy who warns her this trophy is heavy, are you sure you can hold it? it is only one guy who smashes her face into the cake. it is only one guy talking into a mic about hating our bodily autonomy.

i have just found that they often wait until the moment we actually seem to be upstaging them. you sit in a meeting where you're presenting your own findings and he says get me a coffee? or you run to the end of the marathon and are about to finish first and he pushes your kids out in front of you. you win the chess game and they make some comment akin to well, you're ugly away. we can be the billionaire and get the dream life and finally fucking do it and yet! still! they have this strange, visceral urge to say well actually, if you think you're so great -

it's not one just one guy. it's one in eight.

[cologona]

I am just so fundamentally uninterested in the story where Jason is in the wrong and needs to Gain Perspective or whatever. God what a snore. What an absolute waste of my time.

[its-sunny-somewhere-else]

I got TROLLED

[sergle]

what I was talking abt earlier. we have fully looped back around and away from feminism, societally, whereas before it was very Feminism 101 to acknowledge that many parts of existing as a woman in a misogynistic society are painful and upsetting. not that being a woman is Inherently Negative in a bubble. but that living on this earth, in the conditions we're living in, is hostile to women. and that gender is a performance. that many of the Staples Of Femininity as accepted by society are things that you have to create and perform and mold artificially and aren't inherent, that COMPLAINING about day to day difficulties of existing as a woman is something that you're allowed to do. acknowledging these basic, again, feminism 101 things, that something tied to womanhood is more time consuming or more expensive or more dangerous Because Of The Problems. does not CREATE the problems. that when women complain about having to perform femininity, they are not, in fact, oppressing themselves. the call does not come from inside the fucking house. saying that you HAVE suffered does not fucking equate that you believe you SHOULD have suffered.

like I could talk about this for hours. how braindead and one-dimensional the Takes are getting. "being a woman is looking in the mirror and going fuck yeah i'm a woman" damn. I guess any negative experiences you have by living in a misogynistic world... are your fault if you are anything but positive? "you don't actually want liberation" we've fully gone back to telling feminists "you WANT to be oppressed" when anything negative about our society is pointed out. it's not real until I say it out loud, I guess, and then I'm actually the one who caused it. if anybody expresses any unhappiness with how they're treated or the status quo or the language and culture surrounding womanhood and femininity. they've created it, right that second. they invented it just now. it wasn't a problem before somebody complained, right? also trans women aren't braindead zombies who just follow the flow of whatever cis women around them say. I am pretty fucking sure they are very much aware of pain, and are MORE than aware of the swirling torrent of misogyny and standards of femininity than anybody else. actually. and I am pretty sure someone complaining on tumblr that being a woman means always putting on a performance is going to make someone change their mind about transitioning. also "performing femininity" as a necessity to being treated well as a woman is not fucking NEWS to your Local Trans Woman. I AM PRETTY SURE SHE GETS THE CONCEPT. using trans women as a scapegoat for this braindead perspective on gender politics is spineless, meritless, and pathetic.

[iwritenarrativesandstuff]

sorry guys I really do feel like narratively and thematically that Fukuzawa is going to win Asagiri’s favourite character award (death)

[factsilike]

Really tired of constantly seeing posts declaring that everyone in MXTX novels is complicated and 'morally grey' and that's what makes her works wonderfully written, and that everyone else who doesn't see that is stupid, or is 'demonising' characters and bashing them for rightfully criticising their shitty, very much unjustified actions.

And ironically it seems so simplistic to just declare that, because yes her stories are wonderfully written and complex, but not for that reason. You're clearly not reading her works and only spouting what you think her stories say. There are many morally grey characters in morally complex stories out there, but MDZS IS NOT ONE OF THEM.

NONE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS (i.e protagonists and their male leads except for LBH maybe) ARE MORALLY GREY OR MORALLY COMPLEX.

THEY ARE ALL MORALLY RIGHTEOUS.

Just take a closer look at their actions compared to the actions of literally everyone else around them, it's not that hard to see.

Not to mention that MXTX herself literally says that WWX and LWJ are both morally ideal and that ahe hopes her readers can be like them, but people seem to have no respect for the word of authors in the name of their self projection onto the characters being contradicted nowadays 😒

(also saw someone dismissively say that HC may think that the world revolves around XL or whatever, but others don't and they're right??

First of all, did you even read the novel? HC made his judgement based on how others treated him versus how XL did when he was a CHILD. And how XL continues to treat others to this day. He is well within his rights to think the world of XL, especially since XL suffered more than every other person and still doesn't succumb to evil, despite having every right to do so, miles more than others. He all but regards XL as his moral compass, because he's proof that truly good people do exist in this world, and not ONE other person in the novel is shown to be as good as him.)

One of the reasons why I really don't like the Xianle Trio is this; neither FX nor MQ seem to regard XL as his own person with his own agency, who is capable of making his own decisions initially as HC does, and only near the end of the novel do they let up a bit when their asses had to be saved by XL multiple times. (especially considering what fools they made of themselves in that spiderweb cave lmao)

Both of them try to enforce XL ALL THE TIME ("Your Highness don't do this or don't do that or don't say this or don't go there or don't talk to him"), as if XL has not survived perfectly well on his own without them FOR 800 YEARS.

The difference between them and HC is clearly spelled out when FC asks HC about why he is not stopping XL, and HC replies that while he may not agree with some of XL's decisions, he would never force him to do what he thinks is correct, something both MQ and FX are CONSTANTLY shown to try to do.

Like please. Xianle Trio who? More like suffering XL and his pair of nuisances who think themselves to be his babysitters. And most of the time he's the one babysitting them.

Another thing that irks me is that their frequent arguments are often played off for laughs, but XL is truly a saint, because if my friends were constantly bickering over petty things all throughout our dangerous journey and giving me nothing but headaches, especially in survival situations, I'd given them the boot a long time ago.

[juney-blues]

not the biggest fan of how "society should be structured with basic care and regard for the germ theory of disease" is now apparently a fringe left position even to the fringe left, reserved for wokescolds and loony lefties who don't know when to let things go.

it is quite depressing to see that "maybe we shouldn't let large groups of people die to preventable illness" is, very much a lost battle at this point.

[yabagofmilfs]

kind of sucks that i chose to start following a sport and now 2-3 times a year i get to feel sick to my stomach because the league makes it clear they’d light me and everyone i care about on fire to maintain their vitriolic straight white fanbase.

[whatudottu]

Sketchy sequel to this little thing I drew on an 8 hour plane trip without references because no wifi :(

Shockwave's logic tree of 'only breakdown's brave/stupid enough to call him breastie' and 'breakdown saying "hey breastie" is in reference to him' meets Breakdown's rarely seen mischievous side like a downball piffed against a wall-

[nix-that-rad-lass]

Judicial misogyny:

Men who rape, torture, slaughter, and defile anywhere from 5-100 people (usually women or children) get a life sentence.

Women who kill <10 men (in a quick way with minimal suffering, no less) because of previous abuse by those men get death

Journalistic Misogyny:

These crimes being presented as being equal in cruelty, scope, and scale, and without context for the perpetrators actions.

Male serial killers do so for fun. Women often do it out of stress, fear, or for vengeance against their abusers and rapists.

They are not the same.

[quodo-wip-event]

Quo-do the Thing! - Final check-in and promotion date claiming (Aug 1-7)

Here it is, the final check-in! This one is a bit different from the previous check-ins -- you only have to fill this out if you have a work ready to post (at least partially) during the August posting month, and you will need to fill it out once for each such work.

📅 Final check-in and posting date claiming form 📅

The check-in form is open from now until the end of August 7th (whenever that is for you). After that point, I will use the information I've gotten to create a promotion posting schedule. More information on how promotion posting works over here.

Sign-ups are technically still open, but less useful at this stage. If you've been on the fence about signing up and have something you intend to post for this event, it is OK to just request a posting date using the form above without needing to sign up. The AO3 collection is also open for posting, if you have already finished a work that fits this event. (You don't have to wait until your promotion date to post your work, although you can if you like.)

Helpful links: Sign-up form | AO3 collection | Event info | Posting info

Below the cut is a reminder of what you said you'd like to have done by August, for those who have signed up. If you marked that you are using Tumblr to follow this event, I have @'ed you -- I hope it's okay.

chacusha:

Quodo UC II: Goal: N/A

colorcoded:

Smutty Quodo art: Goal: The whole thing, if it hasn't already been finished

@mossmx:

QuodoCook: Goal: rendering/shading

neptuneflytrap:

Go the Eff to Sleep: (No August check-in goals written.)

@rulesofacquisition:

Doctor Odo and the No Good Very Bad Physical: Goal: Edits

Weaver:

Earring: Goal: 3 chapters?

@yvanka:

Anniversary date: (No August check-in goals written.)

Quark bi bi bi vid: Goal: Fixing audio, timing specific clips

Use the form above to request a promotion date, which will serve as your deadline. Here we go -- it's the final stretch!

[mxtxfanatic]

Ngl, I’m actually pretty uncomfortable reading my old posts defending the goodness of the common people and their right to defend themselves—as persecuted groups or as individuals—from hierarchical tyranny, given how easily in this current irl moment a not-insignificant amount of people have fallen into supporting an active genocide, because I cannot separate this from how much pushback I got (and still sometimes get) for being consistent in my politics

[maxdurden]

adaine's family relationships are something i can actually be so incredibly normal about too btw

[quonit]

Page 9

HAPPY [checks date] 14TH BIRTHDAY LADYVERSE! Now back to Smoker getting stabbed,

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[natp20]

i love the idea of guest lecturer caleb widogast upgrading to associate professor at the soltryce academy and constantly stepping on other professor’s toes with his lessons

and of course this upsets at least someone with political influence in the empire (headmaster, volstruckers, the assembly, king dwendal). nobody expects a single mage from blumenthal to put up any trouble - he doesn’t have anybody backing him, not in any truly important sense, they can silence him without causing too much fuss.

except caleb widogast is one of the most popular professors in the academy, by a considerable margin. he’s a fair grader and even when he’s proselytizing about the dangers of blind nationalism and the importance of critical thinking, his lessons are really interesting. he’s one of the few professors who actually seems invested in the wellbeing of his students, and if you’re having a hard time, he’ll take the time to sit down with you and figure out a solution

(also sometimes he brings his cat to class and that’s the perfect balm for stressed-out students prepping for exams)

and that’s how caleb’s enemies find out the hard way that he has a surprisingly large following of radicalized students devoted to keeping him around as long as posible