#reaching a point i don't even want to share my pronouns bc it just outs me without it increasing the likelihood people even use them

[tethered-heartstrings]

grateful i had several weeks of being only around people who know and respect my gender and pronouns and feel comfortable only to return back to school where Nobody gives a fuck and I have to be misgendered everyday and multiple times a day

[freebooter4ever]

Mailbox peak!

My ass is so sore LOL that says how long it has been since I've hiked any real distance or elevation gain :/ it was... Hard to find a trail that sanjeev and i had not hiked... But mailbox will always be special cause it's more my dad and mines hike from when I was a kid, and i knew it'd be well traveled even on a weekday - so safer for alone hiking than some of my other favorites (also the north cascades are on fire so that ruined my first choice lol) (and by lol I mean omfg humans are disgusting what have we done to our natural environment)

Anyway i hate hiking alone - I'm not someone like say nick who last month finished up a two week backpack trip alone across the east coast mountains or some shit, like I don't go out to nature to escape from people, I actually really enjoy popular trails and chitchat between hikers and all the socialness that comes with running into random strangers who share a hobby. If I'm hiking alone my anxiety tends to go haywire.

bSO the first half of the hike was actually the hardest - which I know is like the opposite of most people, who find it harder to finish bc of getting more tired by the top. But for me it's harder to fight my brain to stop freaking out and shutting down, and making me think my heart is pounding out of my chest. When I was hiking mountains and trails every weekend while living here, this was not a problem, I could overcome the anxiety pretty easily, but this being my first serious hike in like... Ughhh two years in LA, I was a mess. The first ten switchbacks were the WORST, I convinced myself I was dying, I was stopping for water almost every switchback, one couple passed me (who were having a very loud conversation comparing nonbinary people who use they/them pronouns to dogs) but other than those unpleasant people, no one was on the trail.

BUT I remembered breathing techniques a friendly ranger once taught me on snoqualmie pass - how to acclimate ones lungs to higher elevations quickly if you come from an area of the country without much elevation change, and was thinking about some of nicole's videos on meditation/breath work, and just kept putting one foot in front of the other. Oh and I was humming 'Mr blue sky' a lot because that happened to be the song that was playing in the car when I pulled into the trailhead lol. About at the 2/3 point, when I hit the first Rocky field and north bend opened up below me, I started to calm down and feel normal. The rest of the hike was a joy, especially the boulder field - probably partially because once the trees open up you can see all the other people on the trail, and its less lonely. AND I MADE It!

I made some friends on the top, there were two girls from Chicago who were in the northwest for the first time in their lives, and there was a Woodinville high school teacher who said he grew up literally a few miles away from me. I spent probably an hr ish there, just chilling, talking to anyone interested in conversation, taking in the view, and then hiked down with the school teacher for a bit. AND finally reached the trailhead and my car successfully

I have hiked mailbox peak tons of times, there was no reason for me to believe I couldn't do it, with all my exercises and strengthening there was no way I didn't have the physical ability to march my way to the top, sure I cant run anymore but that doesn't mean I'm not in shape... It was ALL in my head. I've had people tell me that they admire me for being independent - and I guess that's a more positive spin on it - but the way I see it is that I'm... Not a popular person, or someone who is the type people want to be around... But if i do end up alone, im going to do whatever I want to do anyway even if I have to deal with my crazy to do it. (oh god i remember that one time alex introduced me to a cool group of music people in the burgh, and one of the group decided he had a crush on me without telling me, and then got mad when i turned him down and told me he didnt need any more friends so he didnt want anything to do with me now, and i was like wtf is this high school? and yet i sTiLL showed up to some of alex's friend groups events like some kind of loser hanger on, ugh why did i do that for so long). I DONT see this as a good thing haha, I would much rather be one of those easygoing popular people.

So yea. Stupid Bruno. Don't let him tell you what to do :P

[crayfish-critical]

I'm honestly super glad your blog isn't purely SU critical tbh, because at least blogs like this don't have an obvious bias towards one show and they act completely stricter on one show compared to the other. While I personally casually enjoy Voltron and BNHA (I do agree there's issues with how both treat some of their characters), and love SU, your points are extremely valid and you give good reasoning behind them besides reaching for subtext that can be interpreted in many different ways.

Aw gosh thank you anon, this honestly means a lot to me!  My goal is to be fair to most of the media I criticize.  To be honest, I probably criticize Voltron about as much as SU (and then BNHA more since I have such strong opinions on pedophilia) and I really think both of them are good shows.  I just like to scream, but I also like being fair about it!

Criticism whose goal isn’t to positively influence the original media’s creator or positively influence others is ultimately worthless imho; like hey, free country, you can say what you want about it.  As an aspiring cartoon/kids show creator, I learn from criticizing the shows of others and put their mistakes as something I can learn from.  I’ve honestly learned a lot about pacing, story structure, and character building from my problems with both SU and Voltron, and they’ve helped me sort out what does and doesn’t make a good story since some parts of them are so good and other parts aren’t.  Honestly it’s kinda embarrassing to look back on my original story now, having learned everything from SU and Voltron - but hey, that’s alright!  I’m far, far from above the writers of either of those shows, yknow?  I don’t think they’re bad people or bad writers; at worse they have a skill level similar to me.

I’ve also first-handedly put the pieces together of a show that became a mess for seemingly no reason, realizing that there was a reason and it was basically unavoidable.  There was a sitcom I watched that’s overarching love triangle bullshit became an absolute goddamn nightmare of a mess (sprinkled in between with various weak episodes that didn’t even reference the drama).  But, when you put together that a major reoccurring character would have likely been part of that plot since the beginning (as opposed to just being in the very end), whose actor got into a serious accident around the time when the episodes would’ve been filmed, the original intention of the arc makes a lot more sense.  Like seriously, once you watch the episodes with that knowledge, the pieces fit in perfectly.  The show was a horrible victim of circumstance and I just hope all the actors and writers have a good rest of their lives.

Point being, you never know what’s going on behind the scenes of a show, so I think it’s unfair to act like minor plot holes and weird pacing are some moral failing of the writers.  Yes, it’s their job to write a good story, and yes, you have a right to dislike their writing.  But it shouldn’t be seen as such a crime??

The crewniverse has made mistakes, like the Concrete incident, but they’ve tried to fix issues that they’ve caused.  Quite frankly, racism is the only argument in SU that I can’t defend them against; not only is it not my place, but it’s hardly revolutionary like their LGBT representation.  As a dumbass white person, I can tell you that Rebecca and her clue is probably more clueless than the SU critical community realizes (if you don’t live in SoCal, you don’t know how sheltered us middle-class white folks are) but that doesn’t make it okay.

However, everything else I find to be rather shit.  As a fat person, Steven becoming “thinner” isn’t fatphobia; the art style changed.  Rebecca is a BISEXUAL NONBINARY WOMAN, and I will literally never forgive the SU critical community for their insistence that her nonbinary rep is enbyphobic (bc they “present as women” and “go by she/her pronouns” and “sure stevonnie goes by they/them but they act like nonbinary is just male + female and its not” and “either way they don’t call themselves nonbinary in the canon” even though nonbinary people can present and go by whatever pronouns they want, bigender people exist, and the only valid point is the last one but its still fucking stupidly insignificant.  Like Korra and Asami didn’t call themselves bisexual [ok scratch that korra called herself “buy-curious”] but they’re still bisexual.).  And yeah, “lgbt people can fetishize other parts of the lgbt community” but do you know how hard it is for a bisexual woman to fetishize lesbians?  It’s.  Pretty fucking hard, considering she’s a wlw.  She can be lesbophobic but when you have one (1) “predatory lesbian stereotype” out of a cast of different types of lesbians, maybe you should uhhh stop policing how lgbt people are allowed to act?  There’s a big difference between a predatory lesbian stereotype and a lesbian who happens to be predatory (and pearl isn’t a predator anyways, she’s an abuse victim - that doesn’t excuse her behavior but I digress)

god I dunno, there’s just so much stupid shit that goes on in SU critical, which is a shame because it’s an idea with a lot of promise.  Really, the SU critical community developed because fans didn’t like having negativity towards something they cared about on their dash.  But since it became an isolated pocket of everything negative towards SU, it just festered and festered and what started as simple criticisms has turned into outright hatred and malice.

Personally, I hope that SU’s portrayal of LGBT people becomes outdated some day - it’s really not that bad and I think even if we make great strives in the next decades, it’ll still be able to hold its own, but as an lgbt person I think Rebecca would agree with me that only good things can come from kids shows being better than SU.  But for now, it’s far far ahead of anything else in its time, showing LGBT people as real people (or….aliens), as flawed individuals.  It doesn’t make them particularly evil nor does it make them particularly good.  They’re characters who happen to be their sexuality, and that’s alright, and that’s normal.  And that should be celebrated.  People should be allowed to celebrate what SU has done so far, and I hate how SU critical likes to shit on fans minding their own goddamn business.

I feel bad for SU critical too, because keeping yourself in that kind of environment becomes very toxic.  I’ve been trying to keep my own opinions under control (actually, that’s part of the reason I made this blog) because I can become very angry and opinionated while typing and I know that that can hurt other people.  But it’s just exhausting and toxic for me at this point to keep doing it too much, so I just write what I can but also try to embrace the positive so I don’t die of a heart attack lmao.  I can’t imagine what running an SU critical blog 24/7 must be like, it sounds absolutely exhausting and immensely unhealthy.

You have the freedom to choose to do that, but as someone who shares some of your opinions and mindsets I advise you to take a break and have things you DO like in the things you critique.  Point out things you like alongside things you dislike.  It’ll make the world so much better for you.

Overall though sorry for rambling anon haha, but thank you for the kind words!