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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 4 years ago

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I read your headcanons about James Potter and I’m really interested to hear your thoughts Sirius and regulus Black pls pls pls

Oh no.

Alright, strap in people, because I’m about to say some things that nobody will like.

Let’s start in alphabetical order with Regulus.

Fandom often sees Regulus as a reformed Death Eater, the redeemed villain, or else a cooler suaver version of Sirius steeped in pure blood culture, making him more palatable than many pureblood characters as a love interest. There’s a lot of fics of him having almost defeated Voldemort, coming back from the dead and actually defeating Voldemort, reconnecting with Sirius, showing Harry the cool pureblood ways without being racist, etc.

Well, I don’t really buy into any of that.

I think, even with his defection, Regulus was likely still a very racist character and never really disavowed the cause. True, he was young when he was sucked in, he had his whole family meltdown when Sirius was disowned and suddenly he was heir, but I do think he really did believe in blood purism and nothing from the books suggests that he died not believing in it. He just stopped believing in Voldemort.

Instead, I believe he discovered that Voldemort a) did not mean anything good for his culture and b) Voldemort was a fraud.

What do I mean by that?

Well, in the first case, I’ve always viewed Tom Riddle in that period in time as a hate filled nihilist who doesn’t really believe in what he preaches. It’s just convenient to him as the purebloods are the ones with the money and the power. There’s no point in him appealing to Dumbledore’s ilk as they’re far less likely to be able to make him king (also it would mean putting up with Dumbledore and his stupid speeches about love and friendship). Most of Voldemort’s actions throughout the books don’t make the muggle borns’ lives miserable (at least not until he gets into power) but makes hell of the purebloods’ lives and absolutely ruins them.

The Black family, in particular, he essentially wipes off the face of the Earth.

With that in mind, I imagine a young Regulus eventually came to realize that Voldemort was systematically destroying the great families from the inside to put himself in power. It was never about the muggleborns or the country, it was only ever about power.

Then we get to the other bit, Voldemort being a fraud. Unlike many, I believe the Death Eaters had no idea who Voldemort was. It’s too unbelievable to me that some guy named Tom Riddle, who their fathers all went to school with, who everyone knew as a muggle born impoverished orphan, could convince them all that he was the next Merlin who they should devote their lives (and their money) to. Tom’s charismatic, but he’s not that charismatic. Better for Tom Riddle to just disappear entirely and show up as the Count of Monte Cristo, descendent of Salazar Slytherin himself, impressing all the young heirs while their young, angry, and stupid.

With Regulus finding out that his great leader is actually just the halfblood son of a squib, the whole movement falls apart. Regulus is a pawn, fighting for nothing he believes in. Now, that said, I don’t think Regulus ever figured out who exactly, Tom was. He clearly knew the name, as we see from the locket, but just knowing that Riddle is a muggle last name would be enough to know that Voldemort was nothing he presented as.

Basically, Regulus becomes extremely disillusioned with the Death Eaters and Voldemort in a few short years. The change he wanted to see sweeping the country doesn’t happen. Instead the violence, which he was initially very excited for (guys, Regulus did join a domestic terrorist organization and I will not cut him slack for that, he was excited to blow up some muggle borns) is pointless and hurting their own people as opposed to the muggle borns.

During all of this we have Kreacher borrowed by Voldemort for the creepy horcrux placement. This certainly makes Regulus go “hm” and he’s clever enough to put together on his own that the locket must be a horcrux.

That said, I do not believe he knew enough about Tom Riddle to have been able to hunt down the rest or even know where or what they would be. Dumbledore had been paranoidly collecting memories of Tom Riddle’s entire goddamn life and relying on the plot convenient aspect that Tom was apparently so much of a romantic he never left his horcruxes anywhere but Britain and always left them in very noticeable sentimental objects. Regulus knew about the locket because of Kreacher, had he lived, he’d have no idea where the hell else to start.

So that’s Regulus for you, a fairly intelligent, yet youthfully stupid, extremist whose dream did not live up to the reality and probably still would have spat in Hermione’s face had the gang resurrected him from being a lake zombie.

As for Sirius, well, he’s James the asshole times a thousand to the point where he makes some “ha ha, very funny, but actually really this is horrifying” decisions.

I guess we’ll start back when he’s young.

We don’t see much of the young Sirius, and granted, what we do directly is given to us by a very bitter, resentful, and biased Severus Snape but his actions still read a lot like pretty much any Stephen King bully villain. The scene where they’re tormenting Snape (and Snape drops the slur, Lily abandoning him) is horrifying to read. And it’s clearly one of many moments over many years of this group of boys sexually harassing him (and yes, that was sexual harassment guys, let’s not pull out stops here).

Then we get to the joke with Lupin that... really wasn’t a joke.

The flimsy excuse we’re given in canon is that a) it was all in good fun b) Snape was so much of a coward he’d never actually go to the Shrieking Shack because he’s a big chicken. Bawk bawk bawk, Snivellus the chicken. But, well, these excuses are flimsy.

When you get down to the bare bones of it what Sirius did there was attempted murder via his chronically ill best friend. It’s one of those actions that I simply cannot justify, even had Sirius not thought it all the way through, as boys will be boys. What was the good outcome there? Snape sees Lupin and shrieks in terror? (Only to probably run to some authority and try to get the uncontrolled werewolf the fuck off of campus, nice going Sirius) Snape gets infected with lycanthropy? Snape dies, Lupin wakes up covered in blood with the horror of knowing he ate a classmate?

Later, we do get Sirius sort of apologizing for his behavior. But it’s at best a ‘sort of’ apology. He never admits the full horror of what he did, just how relentlessly brutal he was to Snape, or what the werewolf thing really would have ended in. Instead he goes, “yeah, James and I were kind of assholes. He grew up though, Lily married him so he couldn’t be an ass anymore! And it was Snape, Come on, Harry, it was Snape.” And Harry, messed up asshole that he himself is goes, “Yeah, it was Snape! Stupid Snape!”

I also never got the feeling he ever fully apologized to Remus. Sirius used Remus in the worst of ways, made it clear he had no respect for Remus and no compassion for his condition, and continues to treat him as a sort of secondary friend to James. I think it says a lot that Remus was able and willing to believe Sirius was guilty of murdering James and Lily in cold blood.

Which probably gives you a hint that I think Remus/Sirius would never happen except in the most toxic of ways possible.

Basically, in a fair world, Sirius should have been expelled if not tried for the werewolf incident. However, Dumbledore plays favorites and chose the sons of two lords as opposed to the poor half blood (which I imagine cemented Snape’s path to becoming a Death Eater). And so there is some cruel irony in that Sirius was eventually jailed for something, even though it was something he didn’t do.

Now, after Azkaban, Sirius seems to have mellowed out a lot. While he’s a bit unhinged and thoughtless (his rescue attempt of Harry’s rescue attempt at the end of Order of the Phoenix) a lot of this can be seen as after effects of his stay in literally hell on Earth for over ten years.

That said, a lot of people see him as the cool uncle character who, if Harry had been able to live with him, all would have been well. I firmly disagree. Young Sirius was, well, god knows how warped Harry would have been growing up with a young and reckless Sirius Black. After prison he’s in no condition to take care of Harry, and even says as much multiple times. Sirius is cool to hang around at a distance, but up close and personal he’d be very messed up and not at all ready to be a father to a teenage boy.

Otherwise, Sirius was very very very gay for James Potter. Unfortunately for him, James Potter was straight and into Lily Evans. I’m sure it was a very sad day for Sirius when Lily actually said yes to James. Except not really, because James always strikes me as a “bros before hos” kind of dude. Not that I’m sure if Sirius ever admitted he was gay and in love with James, I’ve always been of the belief that pureblood culture is extremely homophobic and it just... wouldn’t come up.

So there it is, now excuse me while I go hide behind this barrier before I get eaten alive.

#harry potter #head canons #regulus black #sirius black #remus lupin #severus snape #ask #anon

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flying-elliska · 4 years ago

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one of the most impactful things I have read lately are two of French author Edouard Louis' books, Pour en finir avec Eddy Bellegueule and Qui a tué mon père (translated into English as The End of Eddy and Who Killed my Father). It's been two months and I'm still thinking about it.

The first book is an 'autobiographical novel' about the author's childhood growing up as an obviously gay boy in one of the poorest areas of France, until he leaves and reinvents himself as a writer. It's fraught with bigotry, abuse, bullying, violence, deprivation and social despair, and it's one of the most harrowing things I have ever read. It reads as many things as once : a recognition of trauma, an angry exorcism, a cry for society at large to pay attention, and to be honest, as a horror story.

It was criticized by some in France as portraying the working class in a manner that was too negative, which tells me they missed the point entirely...ironic for a book by someone who actually grew up poor - one of my least favorite things ever is progressives telling a marginalized person they can't talk about their own experiences because they don't fit the desired mold. (The French love to romanticize the working class and I'm pretty sure it's often an avoidance mechanism.)

The point of the book is so obviously not about 'look at how terrible and bigoted those poor people are'. Little Eddy spends a big part of the narrative trying to escape - himself at first, then his family/circumstances and the persistent homophobia everywhere. In the end of the book, he finally manages to get accepted into a fancy high school in the city on a scholarship and tries really hard to fit in. The last scene of the book is a bunch of his - educated, upper/middle class - classmates throwing homophobic taunts at him, starting the cycle anew. I can't think of a clearer way to say 'this is not a story about a sad gay boy escaping the evil bigoted countryside for the city and then everything was wonderful!!!! this is a story about a systemic, pervasive problem.'

One of the key arguments of the book, to me, is how homophobia, sexism and bigotry in general are both a product and a reproduction mechanism of social and economic exclusion. For instance, he describes how the norms around what it means to be a man in his village (being tough, disobeying authority, quitting school early to go work at the factory, drinking alcohol, neglecting your own health, fighting over women, repressing your feelings, etc) perpetuates the cycle of poverty ; but again this isn't 'oh these people are so stupid' and more 'these people are trapped'. Because he makes it evident how degrading and dehumanizing poverty can be, this masculinity reads as a desperate attempt to cling to a certain amount of dignity - it's an extremely dysfunctional coping mechanism. At the same time, anyone falling outside of the mold is violently ostracized (like Eddy, who tries and fails to fit in). So the system keeps reproducing itself.

In Who Killed my Father, the author makes his political argument clearer. This is more of an essay, centering on his father, arguably the most complex figure in the first novel. The man is an angry, bigoted alcoholic who makes his family miserable ; at the same time he is the son of an abusive father who makes a point of honor to never hit his kids or wife even though it's very normalized in this context. In this essay the author keeps talking about the moments of almost tenderness with his father that haunt him, the picture he has of him doing drag in his youth, the fact that the father tried to leave the village when he was young to find a better life for himself with a close friend but failed and had to come back - the moments of what-ifs, of trying to struggle free from the cycle, when the system appears almost fragile and not so unbreakable after all, that the son kept holding close like a sort of talisman.

The narrative is structured around the fact that his father injured his back working in a factory and that he had to keep doing physical labor afterwards for money, instead of resting to recover, until it completely destroyed his body. Now he finds himself bed-bound at 53. Louis inquires into who is responsible for this premature 'death'. After considering individual choices, he turns towards political decisions - the successive governments, left and right, who have been destroying the French welfare system for decades and accelerating inequality. The point is to step out of the neoliberal obsession with personal responsibility and who is guilty and who is a bad or good person, and look at systems.

An element that isn't focused on but hovers over the story constantly is that this village is one where the majority of the population consistently votes for the extreme right National Front party in most elections. The book is too angry and nuanced to be some stupid "it's not their fault that they're racist because they're poor!" argument. It doesn't make any excuses for how awful this is but instead illustrates how dehumanization replicates itself, how people being denied basic dignity leads to them wanting to deny it to others. If you want to really understand the rise of the far right you have to look at where the inequality comes from in the first place, and how easy it is for people in power to wash their hands of it by blaming the bigoted masses. (Just like you can blame societal ills on minorities ! Two for one strategy.)

Towards the end of the essay, the author talks about how proud his father is of his son's literary success - for a book who clearly depicts him as a horrible person ! And this is a man who has spent his life openly despising anything cultural, because it never showed him a life like his own. But maybe now he feels seen, now he knows people want to read about these things. Maybe there is a reclamation of dignity through looking at the horror head on. Maybe his son somehow slipping through the cracks of the cycle gives him more room. The man stops making racist comments, and instead asks his son about his boyfriend. Most importantly, he asks his son about the leftist politics he's engaged in. They talk about the need for a revolution.

I think what strikes me the most is this attitude of "wounded compassion" that permeates the book. What do you do when your parents are abusive but even after you grow up, you can't help but still love them, and you know they've been shaped by the system that surrounds them ? Recognizing, speaking the harm is essential. You need to find your own freedom, sense of worth, and safety. You need to dissect the mechanisms at hand so they lose at least some of their power over you. You need to find people who love and believe you. But then what? Do you dismiss your persistent feelings of affection and care for those who hurt you as a sign you're just fucked up in the head ? You could just decide to never speak to them again, and it would be justified, but is that really what is going to heal you the most? It's important to realize you have the choice. But there are no easy conclusions.

This makes me think of a passage I have just read in Aversive Democracy by Aletta Norval. The essential ethos of radical democracy, she says, is about taking responsibility for your society, even the bad parts, instead of seeing them as a foreign element you have to cleanse yourself of. It's too fucking easy for queer progressives, especially the middle class urban kind, to talk about dumb evil hicks, to turn pride into a simple morality tale, and forget that any politics that don't center the basic dignity and needs of people are just shit. The injury is to you and by you and you have a duty of care just as much as a duty of criticism. (And this is obviously not only applicable to class matters.) You can't just walk away and save your sense of moral purity. (This is not an argument that the oppressed are responsible for educating the oppressors ; it's about how privilege is not an easy simple ranking and it is too damn easy to only focus on the ways in which you are oppressed and forget the ways in which you may have more leeway.)

There is no absolute equivalence between political and family dynamics but the parallel feel very relevant somehow. Several truths can coexist at once : you needed help and it was not given. You were let down. It's important to recognize that people are responsible of how they treat each other. You need to call out what isn't ok and stand up for yourself. At the same time, there is a reason why things are like this. Making people into villains is often bad strategy (within reason!), and in the end, easy dichotomies are often an instrument of power. The horrors you have been through might have given you a very specific wisdom and grace you do not have to be afraid of ; you are not tainted by your compassion (it is very much the opposite of forced forgiveness ; it has walked through the fire of truth.)

To me these books fit into what French literature does best, sociological storytelling a la Zola or Victor Hugo - the arguments aren't new and they can come across as heavy handed, even melodramatic. But I'll argue that the viscerality is the point, how the raw experience of misery punches through any clever arguments about how exploitation persists for the greater good of society. Really worth reading if you can do so with nuance.

#edouard louis #french literature #france #queer culture #queer literature #lgbt books #bookblr #also just like the first book is a walking trigger warning in every possible direction so like careful #also the dude is literary buddies with ocean vuong and im curious to see if there are any parallels there #long post #poli sci

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the-ghost-king · 3 years ago

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Interestingly enough the fandom isn't always rational with their criticism. Take Percy and Rachel for instance. A perfectly healthy cute and functional relationship dynamic, but people really hated it because it got in the way of Percy/Annabeth.

I think it can also come down to the fact that not all situations are exactly equal if that makes sense. If you have a character dynamic in couple A, that often playfully bully of fight with eachother that's a different dynamic than relationship B, where one person has trauma resulting from bullying and the other parter behaves in roughly the same way as couple A do. In that case the behavior may be seen as inappropriate. Not that this example has anything to do with the ships at hand, but I think a long form meta examining the different paralleling issues from both relationships and their validity would be easier.

Also I haven't seen anything about about Nico/Will being called toxic. Yikes, what are people saying exactly, because I don't doubt a lot of people might be projecting unconcious bias.

Oh absolutely, I may seem young but I remember the Rachel vs Annabeth ship wars all too well... I do not want to go back 😅

The rest is under a read more though, I got a little carried away talking! Also this isn't my best post on the issue by far so please feel free to check out the tags I mention later on!

(AN: I use nblm alongside mlm in this post because some nblm individuals will consider their attraction to men as gay, or queer, while others will not and those individuals are often closely connected to mlm experiences and they also deserve to talk about their thoughts and feelings if they wish. I am aware nonbinary people are not a monolith and not all nonbinary people will categorize themselves or their attraction this way, it's up to nonbinary individuals reading this to determine where they fall on what)

As for Solangelo being toxic some of the conversations revolve around the ableist nature of the ship, this is definitely most obviously a dynamic in BoO, and it's a more than fair point about the ship I don't have anything negative to say there in the slightest!

(The above parallels with the idea that Will is introduced as a "healer character" for the "sad gay kid", which is a fair criticism as well but one that's often left rather one sided, because while that is true- if it's a way Nico likes being treated (watched closely for injuries and cared for) then it's not wrong, and in ToN Will is seen overstepping Nico's boundaries which causes a healthy argument about Will doing so and he stops, so if Nico doesn't tell Will "no" or some variation he's obviously not horribly uncomfortable with the situation, or from the way it would be interpreted alongside previous text, there's fair reason to think he likes it)

The thing with Solangelo I see often is "Nico is still processing trauma, and internalized homophobia and isn't ready for a relationship" which is a huge misunderstanding on how trauma and internalized homophobia work as a whole, because the experiences can be different for everyone. You can absolutely date someone while processing internalized homophobia, you may struggle with certain things but it is absolutely doable for some people. And trauma is such a varied thing, and it's not like he's solely relying on Will either, he is seeing Dionysus for therapy and getting the help he needs! Your life doesn't have to go on hold for therapy no matter how much trauma you are sorting through! (Not disclosing my medical history or anything but I have struggled with both things and my life didn't stop for me to deal with them, I made new friends, went on dates, etc- it is possible depending on the person so the very narrow view of "this is unhealthy" and "this is impossible" rubs me wrong when it's treated as fact over opinion, because it's an opinion).

There's also constant discussions about how fandom (in current) fetishizes both Nico and Will, which I, and other mlm and nblm have spoken our own thoughts on multiple times to be largely ignored by the biggest perpetrators of this "they're overly fetishized narrative". There's also fairly consistent discussion of how fandom treats Nico and reduces him to uwu small gay boy, which more often than not seems to mean "effeminate" rather than actually harmful stereotyping (yes queer men are allowed to be "girly" especially considering there is some canon text that could be interpreted with that meaning, if there wasn't a plausible way to determine canon that way I wouldn't care if people were going after others feminizing Nico a bit- but the issue is again, fact and feeling aren't the same and fandom seem to conflate the two rather often).

(Some of that ties into nonbinary Nico head canons which are common as of current, and that argument quickly becomes transphobic is people don't watch themselves... Even without bringing nonbinary Nico into the equation, headcanoning Nico as femme isn't bad or wrong, and to say otherwise becomes gender policing which is bad).

There's also this weird obsession with there being a "correct way" to ship mlm ships (specifically solangelo), which when considering it's not mlm or nblm saying those things, it becomes really uncomfortable. Especially because the wording of some posts is less "hey this is homophobic" and comes off more like people are more upset at seeing an mlm couple than at the fact that they're being shipped poorly.

All of this in combination with the constant, talking over of queer guys (specifically mlm and nblm) comes off really messed up, and yeah homophobic.

It's not something that can be pinned down to one specific thing but rather a series of smaller microagressions (which in sure most of are intended in good faith but are being filled with subconscious bias) that build up over time- which is why my concern is that solangelo is facing harsher criticism/different treatment that percabeth simply for being a queer ship.

I can't be 100% sure on that like I said, because that's something that is hard to gain tangible evidence for, or maybe even impossible :/

If there wasn't so many other small things going on alongside the harsher criticism of solangelo, I would honestly just ignore it... But the weird policing of "how to ship solangelo" while proclaiming it's "overly fetishized" all while speaking over a not insignificant number of mlm and nblm who have agreed with certain opinions, or taken time to write their own (+ some of the rhetoric that can be found on he blogs of people commonly expressing these opinions) is super uncomfortable and definitely homophobic... Even if they were treating the ship kind of weird, but treating the queer guys talking about it well and actually listening (because the current solangelo fandom probably has the highest proportion of queer guys in comparison to any other fandom I've been in with an mlm ship as of right now) I wouldn't be so bothered... But sadly that's not the case..

(I'd also like to note out of my posts criticizing the current conversations happening around the issue my post saying "listen to mlm voices" got a lot more notes than some of the other ones, which I can't say is specifically anything, because like solangelo perhaps being treated unfairly to percabeth, I am willing to acknowledge there might not be an issue- but it's weird how often mlm and nblm's posts on "listen to us" will be uplifted but never any actual criticism... Just a thought)

I detail things a little closer and in more detail in some of my posts tagged #fandom homophobia, #mlm fetishism, and #gender policing in fandom, it's not a full or comprehensive list (I've only really started speaking up in the last month or so), and it is largely solangelo specific. However I am always interested in listening to the voices of other queer guys about the issues and hearing out their thoughts as well (people aren't a monolith and I'm interested in trying to be as nuanced as possible!) and I acknowledge that although I am mlm and am going to be a little better at recognizing issues and calling them out (although I like every person am not perfect of course)

So yeah! That's a bit of the current ongoings, again not a full comprehensive list, and definitely not my best explanation ever but I think the point gets across well enough? Definitely check out my other tags if you're interested in more, there's also definitely more posts I need to make on some of the things I've seen (maybe not all of them so solangelo fandom specific, and maybe some of them even more solangelo fandom specific) but it's rather slow work in progress!

#asks #anon #long post

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theexecutionerssong · 4 years ago

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I want to ask you as spn expert hdbfbdj i heard that destiel made creators/actors uncomfortable and they banned mention of it at the cons? And made anlotbof writing decision to keep dean and cas characters from each other in the show? So how do you think what changed and why the decided to make deancas canon (bad as it is but canon) in almost last episode when they could just not do it jrbfkf

Hi! Oh damn I hope you’re ready for a long ass answer because I have 13 years worth of memories to answer this question dfghjklm

So, your first question, when you say creators, you have to keep in mind that the original showrunner stepped down years ago and since then, there’s been several showrunners who each had a different view on where they wanted to take the story, which explains the disparities in writing quality from one season to another, in my opinion. Of course the orginal showrunner is still around and would chime in from time to time but he went on on working on other shows (which flopped, besides The Boys, tbh), and we definitely didn’t see it that way in 2005.

Then comes the writers team, that has also seen many changes over the years. I truly believe some left because they wouldn’t make Destiel happen, among other things like the treatment/lack of representation of female and POC characters. Robbie Thompson definitely left because they killed Charlie in the most horrifying way, and Charlie was his baby, and he got better opportunities elsewhere. I remember over 7 years ago when Bo Berens (the writer of last night episode) joined the team, my whole dash was full of people screaming because holy shit the new SPN writer is gay!!! and wouldn’t that change things??? Well it did. He wrote, along with Robbie Thompson, some of the most explicit Destiel episodes that they could get away with. I don’t believe this was ever queerbaiting, not from them, and I think they took advatange of the other writers just not seeing it, or not wanting to see it.

For a very long time, the showrunners and writers were kind of oblivious to the shipping, they didn’t take it seriously because it wasn’t how they had thought it could be interpreted. As time went on and the shipping only grew and as the cast and crew actually started to see what we were seeing in their own damn writing and acting, they started to be more aware and careful around it. Some were downward enjoying putting down fans, like fucking Guy Norman Bee gloating on Twitter and engaging with fans over it. A mess. He left 5 years ago that one, good riddance. It was also the time when actual canon queer ships would appear on TV - keep in mind that in 2010-12, Destiel was as explicit as it could get. We had nothing else, so of course we would latch onto that. But we started getting more and more actual explicit representation with Shameless, Shadowhunters, Eyewitness, Skam, HTGAWM, Orphan Black, etc around 2013, and shipping Destiel got very frustrating.

The actors have always been another story, and I saw a lot of comments being made today towards Jensen so I’m gonna copy paste my answer to an ask I got last year : “I think he was just extremely “protective” of Dean and would get actually mad and shut down every conversation about Destiel because that’s not how he sees his character. Like, proper pissed off. He would get uncomfortable about pride flags during photo ops. It came to the point where people would walk on eggshells at cons. 2012-13 was hard on the fandom on this point. He would never speak up about lgbtq related topics in politics either. Liking a tweet like Chris’s 10 or even 5 years ago? Never. He used to say that people in highschool would bully him for “looking too gay” because of his pouty lips and big eyes. I think he didn’t want to care about it but bullying leaves scars. Getting married to Danneel, meeting Misha, who are both very outspoken about lgbtq matters, opened him up, and he’s said himself that having his first daughter changed him deeply. He had a whole new perspective on unconditional love. Now, he’s enthusiastic about posing with pride flags, to sign fanart, he’s always so supportive of lgbtq fans at cons, hugs them, gives them words of encouragement, etc. Years ago he said “my father told me that there’s no manly way to drink out of a straw” and now he’s out there being crowned King at the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, posting rainbows on his social media, having makeup sessions wit his daughter, etc. He was very outspoken about his support for Beto in Texas last year, he goes to rallies, posts about it on social media, etc. And yeah maybe that’s the bare minimum but he wouldn’t have done it years ago but now he does and that’s worth something. He’s not a Destiel supporter but now the topic isn’t banned at cons anymore. He jokes about it, he understands better where people who see Dean as bi are coming from, even if it’s not his take on the character. He’s much more comfortable with himself and has come a long way. I’m happy for him.” That was my reply last year to somebody asking if Jensen was homophobic and while I obviously don’t know him, it’s what I gathered over the past 17 years or so. I was already a fan of him beofre Supernatural soooo, I’ve been around a while. Yes there was this moment, over 7 years ago at a con, where he let fans boo other fans for asking a question about Destiel, and he shut down the question, then the questions about Destiel were banned. That’s not the case anymore and it hasn’t been that way for years. Misha on the other hand as always been supportive of the ship, his “You’re not crazy” tweet from 2013 fueled us for years, and the fact that he went back to like it and bring attention to it today is the biggest I Told You So he could have given us.

About your question, making decision to keep them away from each other, yes, that has been a pattern for years, something would go in the script, and then they would change their minds - “the only thing we have left, Dean and I, is each other” in 5x04, the “A part of me always believed you would come back” in 7x17, the “I love you” in 8x17, Castiel’s heaven being just pictures of Dean everywhere, etc. The decision would come from either the actors or the writers and they gave tons of reasons but I won’t get into that. And every time we would have a Destiel heavy episode, it would be no Cas for weeks. Their reason for that is that if Cas was always around, what with how powerful he is, then there would be no plot for monster-of-the-week episodes, because he’d be able to fix the situation with a snap of his fingers. So they gave him storylines that would weaken him and/or keep him away from the Winchesters. But I also think they would give us crumbs to keep us hooked and then backtrack because it wasn’t the end yet.

Destiel is the only ship I’ve really invested in that wasn’t canon. Yet. Because, to me, it’s been canon for years. And I am absolutely convinced that had Supernatural ended with season 10 as planned, it would have been canon then. There were tropes and parallels that nobody could ignore. The whole of season 10, with the Cain/Dean and Colette/Castiel thing was so obvious even my Dad picked up on it. But the series got renewed again and again and they pushed it back, because The Powers That Be at the CW didn’t want to lose their homophobic fanbase, I guess. Isn’t that great :)))) Now that it’s ending for real, who cares? They don’t have anything to lose anymore. It must be quite an unpopular opinion but I think making Deancas canon at the end of the series has been the plan for a while, but it got pushed back with every renewal.

To me they have been canon since season 8 thanks to a few selected writers, and as infuriating and sometimes hurtful as it was to keep watching for all these years when it could have been so much better, I’m still ecstatic they finally did it. Maybe for the wrong reasons, definitely not in the right way, but 1. the show isn’t over, and 2. this was my first real big ship when I had nothing else, and to be able, after over a decade, to hear that I love you, with no room for doubt that it was meant romantically, is making me happy.,

#gaelle parle #spn #you asked for it sdfghjkl #honesly the way i could talk SPN for hours and hours and hours...#sigh #Anonymous

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altaruwusmolboiz · 4 years ago

Text

TW: ABLEISM IN THE SCRIPT.

Lines in 13 that make me believe Brett Sampson isn’t straight.

When I thought about 13 the musical from a queer standpoint, I originally didn’t think of Brett. I’d agree that Brett was queer in some way, but I felt like the character that was really queer was Lucy, especially towards her feelings towards Kendra. However, I am now fully convinced that Brett particularly is suffering from compulsive heterosexuality. Here are some lines that make me think that.

Let’s start with how, instead of actually stating his love for Kendra, he makes Malcom and Eddie do it. This already makes me believe he doesn’t have genuine feelings for Kendra, and just thinks he likes her because he feels he’s supposed to. Otherwise, he’d be considered uncool.

Okay, look, I would give the writers the benefit of the doubt and say he’s trying to be friendly if he didn’t just meet him. But he did. And you do not just give someone a positive nickname out of nowhere the second you meet them. If Brett was straight and just wanted a friendship with Evan, he would have just said he was really smart and cool. Think of it this way: There is a new kid at school/work/camp/etc. You don’t know who this person is, and you don’t even know if you should trust them. Regardless of how cool they are, you would not give them a nickname the first time you met them, especially not a positive one. It doesn’t make sense.

SIDE NOTE: Like what I said earlier, why would Brett try to get his friends to ask Kendra out if he truly liked her? I get asking for help like a promposal, but that isn’t what he did. He basically had his friends ask her out for him. Let’s move on.

This one I didn’t think about until making this post, but Brett doesn’t seem to care that Lucy is telling Kendra can’t go. Neither do Malcom and Eddie, I feel, represent Brett’s inner thoughts, that he doesn’t really care if Kendra says no (That obviously was not the intention, but that’s what I got from the scene). He does not intervene, despite not really being fond of Lucy, as we’ve shown in previous scenes.

This one is slightly pushing it, and I know I mentioned how Brett calls Evan “The Brain” earlier, but I’d like to think of this scene as “Hey, that’s the most handsome person I have ever met and I only met him yesterday! Look at him go! No homo though.” Keep in mind, Brett had no idea about the Bar Mitzvah yet.

Here’s an example of him after getting invited the party, proving my last point.

Okay, hear me out on this one. Brett actually has an insult for Patrice. Geek. Not the greatest one, but still one. But he just says Archie is “not cool”. Not, at least in this scene, does he make fun of him for anything else about him, not even his very obvious crush on Kendra. While Brett undoubtably has a crush on Evan, I think he is probably attracted to Archie in some way, hence why he’s not great at bullying him. I’ll get to that more in a second.

The kids here seem really excited for Brett to kiss Kendra. It’s almost like he’s pressured to do it, and doesn’t actually want it. He does not want kiss Kendra, but feels like he has to if he’s going to keep their friendship.

Hmm, I wonder what this reminds me of. Oh, that’s right...

(I mean Dean’s parts. I hope that’s clear.)

(Also fun fact: I’m listening to ETAJ as I write this)

TW: FOR VIOLENCE IN THE NEXT PICTURE. PLEASE BE WARNED.

Why would Brett want it to be private? He invited the others there for a reason. My guess is not to show that he doesn’t actually like it, so he can remain popular while still saying he did the tongue with Kendra. Maybe he doesn’t want to do the tongue at all and just to pretend he does. Either way, he doesn’t want it, he’s just saying he does.

So I reached the picture limit so here’s basically the exact quotes of what he is saying.

NOTE: This song also includes violence but I deleted it in these lyrics.

And i’m sitting here

And i should be doing something

And she’s sitting there

And i don’t know why i’m waiting

But oh, any minute

I’ll be getting closer

And i’ll be where i want to be

Any minute

Let’s be real. He does not want this. He has shown that he’s not into this. I think you get that he does not want to tongue Kendra.

Kendra:

And he’s sitting there

And maybe he doesn’t want me

Even Kendra doesn’t think he actually wants her. I don’t think she’s necessarily suspecting Brett is gay, but I do think she knows she’s just being used. I’m not the hugest fan of Kendra, but she is used to being used only for her looks, and that being the only thing people care about when it comes to her.

Brett: [For context, this is when Archie comes in] Hey!

That’s all he says. He has no other response to Archie interrupting him to sit right next to his girlfriend. I think he knows Archie is better for Kendra, and he doesn’t care what Archie does.

Then we have the kiss.

Link:

https://youtu.be/uMwPknXHMNc

youtube

For context, this is the entire song. And I think Brett’s initial reaction is shock, but not because it happened. Because he liked it.

This is where his realization really comes in. That’s why he starts going bigger with the insults. Because he’s embarrassed he liked it.

This is NOT EXCUSING HIS ABLEIST WORDS AGAINST ARCHIE. It is not okay and I want to make that very clear, before I move on.

Then, he goes out with Lucy almost immediately after that. Possibly as a retaliation. Possibly to show his friends that he does, in fact, like girls, seeing as they were making fun of him for kissing Archie accidentally.

Brett: I thought I’d just hang with my boys...

Lucy: No. Here’s what we’re going to do this weekend: Go to the mall, buy new shoes, get a mani-pedi...

Brett: Yeah. I think I’ll hang with my boys.

I will not hesitate to admit that a huge chunk of why he isn’t willing to hang out with Lucy is that she is manipulative. I love Lucy but that is true and should be acknowledged. However, I do think a part of the reason why he seems so distant and reluctant is because, like I said, he doesn’t actually like her (Like I mentioned earlier, I don’t think Lucy likes him either. It’s compulsive heterosexuality on both sides.). And, that is even canon. He does not like her. He’s using her the same way he’s using Kendra: Making himself look straight because they are hot. They’re who he is supposed to date.

Brett: Oh, she’s going to destroy me. But she’s hot. But I hate her. But she’s hot.

This tells us everything we need to know. Brett only likes Lucy because she is hot, he only likes Kendra because she is hot. My work is cut out for me.

Evan:

Tell her you’ve thought about what happened

Tell her you haven’t slept at night

Tell her although you made a huge mistake

You want to make it right

Brett: Okay, but this is starting to sound a little gay.

Yep. There it is. I have three different theories on this.

He’s using “gay” as an insult because he thinks it’s a bad thing, like his friends make it out to be.

He’s trying to get over his internalized homophobia by trying to see it as a compliment. He does use the advice, after all.

He has a crush on Evan Goldman himself, and wants to make it sound like he’s also gay, that he may have a chance with him.

But, regardless, this confirms that he views “gay” as some type of negative thing, even if he himself is straight. This town seems pretty homophobic, considering it is Catholic and he got made fun of for kissing Archie in the first place. He was raised here, and must’ve been told all his life he’s going to grow up to have a wife.

Patrice:

Tell her she shouldn’t have ignored you

Or dissed you in front of all the school

Tell her the minute she got out of touch

You felt like such a fool

Tell her that studying together

Was so nice, you prayed it wouldn’t end

Say you forgive her, say you were jealous

Ask if she’ll be your friend

Do I think Patrice is catching onto how Brett isn’t straight? Absolutely. That may be why she said friend instead of girlfriend. And, why would Brett be jealous in a situation like this? Unless he was jealous of Kendra because of Archie, or her because of Evan.

And, then, the fight scene.

I’m not saying Brett wasn’t mad at Kendra, because he definitely was. But, he seemed more mad at Evan. Because he wanted a reason to be. Any reason not to crush on him.

When Evan told him he sucked, Brett responded by punching. I don’t think he would have if it was Malcom or Eddie. Because he could, and did, convince everyone to abandon Evan, and he could do the same for Malcom and Eddie. What got to Brett was that it was Evan.

Also, when Evan told him he would be lucky to have Patrice and Archie, Brett knows it’s true. He thinks he doesn’t deserve them as friends, or even deserves everyone as friends. He thinks he should be miserable for the rest of his life.

Or, he could just be a homophobic, shallow bully, but we’ll never know.

#13 the musical #Brett Sampson #musicals #13 musical #theatre #queer #lgbtq+#gay #Evan Goldman

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joshler · 4 years ago

Text

regarding my last post

tw// topics relate to suicide/suicide prevention, racism, and bullying

before i get put on blast for “being white” or whatever the replies have accused me of: no, i’m actually a queer asian poc! my dad is a chinese immigrant from hong kong and my mom is cambodian who immigrated to america from vietnam during the vietnam war. i support blm 1000% bc i feel that as a fellow minority, we are on the same team. we’ve felt oppression, in different degrees, yes, but oppression nonetheless. i wanted to clear the air in regards to myself personally because the things aimed at me in the replies of my last post were insensitive and ignorant when you do not personally know me.

i would like to say i’m more of an update page at this point for TWENTY ONE PILOTS. i’m not here to get political, but i do want to say some things in regard to yesterday’s twitter incident with tyler joseph. first of all, YIKES. the joke was distasteful and the entire “thread” on everything he made yesterday had the worse timing in the history of ever. the platform “joke” was in regards to everybody pressuring for him to say something on current events such as blm, lebanon, etc. those things are very important and i have already done many things on my part to support blm and lebanon including donations, signing petitions, and posting on my main social media accounts (i’ve really ghosted tumblr) with ways others can help. i put links to resources, petitions, and places to donate among other helpful sites. the way tyler handled things yesterday was really idiotic on his part. with that dumb joke, he could have immediately linked blm and apologized right afterwards which is what should have been done. instead, he moved on into a tangent regarding mental health and suicide awareness. i understand what he was trying to say, but in the heat of the political movement RIGHT NOW, shifting the conversation to mental health while it should have been about blm was a terrible choice on his part. even if he connected how mental health and blm tied in together, it would have been great for what he was trying to say.

WHAT HE MEANT for all of the sjws jumping on this bc “a white man is being racist and using his privilege”: september is suicide prevention month. tyler’s intensions with the platform tweet was to make fun of everyone mass tweeting him for the past few months (you cannot make people do things). he was NOT mocking blm or any political movement. that platform joke was supposed to lead into talking about mental health. for anyone who doesn’t know, tyler is a very meticulous person. there’s no doubt he’s planned talking about this stuff for a long time. the fucking band’s moto is “stay alive” so of course mental health is a huge part of twenty one pilots culture, and tyler would want to talk about it. at the same time, that doesn’t mean i’m at all excusing him for not immediately speaking on behalf of blm in yesterday’s tweets. once he saw that what he was saying was not received as he thought it would be, tyler apologized for hurting anyone and sent out the links.

this is not the first time he has talked about blm either (as seen above). his band mate (josh) and wife (jenna) have spoken on behalf of blm as well. debby ryan (josh’s wife) has been the most vocal in regards to everything going on right now. for you strangers out there to jump on here and to call him this and that is doing nothing but spreading negativity. you are wasting your own time. instead of badgering people, how about taking your business elsewhere or at least trying to educate others. do not come onto my replies just to make trouble. as fans, you can’t just say “we don’t personally know them” while you know even less than we do since you just popped in when shit hit the fan for them and they turned “problematic.” tyler did what was right at the end of the day. i am not praising him at all, but he has at least apologized and learned his lesson.

in regards to them being rich and not donating: nobody knows what they’ve done behind the scenes. i personally donated to many blm funds and to the red cross in lebanon, and nobody knows that until now! just because you donate does not mean you are obligated to publicly blast that for everybody to know. your money is going to a cause that you support, and that should only really matter to you. celebrities are no exception to that idea.

fun fact: tyler has a niece named mercy on his wife’s side! she is black and tyler and his wife are extremely close to her and her family. to come out of no where just to call him racist and all that when you in fact don’t know a thing about him besides some surface tweets is uncalled for. in regards to being silent on the crisis in lebanon, tyler is part lebanese! without a doubt, he’s donated to some sort of lebanon aid fund. but again, we will never know.

for those of you upset about the platforms: dollskill isn’t the only site that sells those boots! dollskill is certainly the most popular brand the shoes are on, but if you look them up, the platforms pop up else where as well. to blatantly say “oh he supports dollskill so he’s racist/homophobic/supports the police/all the shit that company stands for” is just as ignorant as you think he is! dollskill as a company is complete shit. i don’t support them at all. many people think they’re from dollskill mainly because of this one instagram page that’s all about finding the exact/similar clothing to what tyler/josh/jenna/debby have worn, but we cannot be 100% sure that they were purchased from dollskill. that shit company steals from other smaller artists/designers, remember? (that same instagram account reuploaded a link to a different store who is selling them, as found here)

if you still have beef with tyler and what he said, there’s really no point in bickering just to call complete strangers “stupid” or “clowns” or just really hurtful names! you are screaming into an abyss and hurting others at the same time. there is a fine line between straight up bullying and educating others on bettering their understanding with what is currently going on. my intensions behind the post was to show that he had become active again. we are a fandom, and i like to update my page when they post new pictures. that is simply what i did. i made THIS post to clear the air on what people were saying about ME. i deleted tumblr off my phone because what was being said was just belittling and i didn’t want to see that when this whole situation with what tyler did already made me upset. feel free to dm me if you would like to talk about anything. i would be happy to discuss any points that i’ve mentioned. i would much rather have a civil conversation than be picked on through replies and anonymous messages.

at the end of the day, not everyone can always have satisfied and that’s okay. if anything, this entire situation truly opened my eyes to that. hopefully you read through this whole thing before you put anything on blast again.

here’s this, too. they do care.

summary: sorry on behalf of tyler joseph. he needs to work on reading the room better.

#k talks

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aizenat · 4 years ago

Note

Regarding claims that asexuals weren't around, I have read old documents from well before AVEN was made discussing how the community viewed asexuals as a flavor of bisexuals since both groups feel equally attracted to all genders. The difference of that equal attraction to all genders being zero for for asexuals was a later distinction. Just because the labels weren't made yet doesn't mean asexuals popped into existence when AVEN was made! (This is similar to how the lines between the lesbian and bi women communities used to be a lot fuzzier back then, with both gay and bi women being labeled under the lesbian umbrella. Labels have changed over time.)

It is indeed different from BDSM because BDSM is a fetish about how people like to perform sex and is not directly related to attraction, marriage, and other orientation-relevant topics. Your comparison makes it seem you misunderstand asexuality as a function of sexual performance rather than orientational attraction. Which is wrong. It is 100% about attraction! Within the label of asexual, people still fall on a spectrum of liking sex to not liking sex independent of their asexual lack of attraction to any gender. It is not abstinence it is not preferences in bed, it is purely the lack of ability to be attracted to others. You may have defined LGBT+ as only "same sex attraction" but plenty others in the community--dare I say the majority of the community defines it as simply not being straight and/or cis.

Asexuals get medically mistreated in similar ways to gay and trans people through attempts at conversion. Asexuals get bullied, abused, correctively raped, etc by violent homophobes for all the same reasons too. Asexuals do not perform attraction and romance to the satisfaction of homophobes. Asexuals need community for the same reasons you do. They need similar protections from discrimination against orientation. This push to exclude asexuals is a rather recent trend that helps nobody, only serves to divide a community of vulnerable people that is strongest when united.

You’re a fucking liar, and disgusting and I hope you know that.

You don’t get to retroactively tell people how they identified. You’ve “read old documents from well before AVEN was made discussing how the community viewed asexuals as a flavor of bisexuals since both groups feel equally attracted to all genders?” Liar. You mean you’ve read RECENT articles of people analyzing texts describing bisexual people and reading that as “asexual” even though that’s not how those people identified.

You want to know how I know you don’t know SHIT about gay history? “This is similar to how the lines between the lesbian and bi women communities used to be a lot fuzzier back then, with both gay and bi women being labeled under the lesbian umbrella.” That never happened! Lesbian/gay women identified as such, and bi women identified as bi! Back then, bi woman said they were bi with their whole chests! They didn’t go around calling themselves lesbians! They do that now! Like what the fuck revisionist bullshit are you on about? Fuck off.

Asexuality is not a sexual orientation because by your own definition, asexuals do not feel sexual attraction. What kinda nonsense? And there is no way for an asexual to “like” sex or whatever nonsense. You guys just made that up because in our hypersexual world, you don’t know the difference between someone with a low (or, hell, a healthy) libido and an actual asexual person.

And shame on you, and there is a special place in HELL for you, for bringing up violent homophobia and conversion therapy and corrective rapes. Are people going around writing laws forcing you to have to have sex with someone? If you ever wanted to adopt, would the agency disqualify you for being asexual?

The medical ish is real, and obviously traumatic, but to pretend that’s on the same level as conversion therapy (seriously, a deep, dark, HOT place in hell for you for that!), is deplorable! You have obviously never been to one, been threatened to be sent to one, or even spoken with someone who went through conversion therapy to pull that out of your ass.

This is the reason why people don’t like you idiots. You take what could be valid critiques of our society’s views towards sex (hypersexuality, medicalization of low libidos, conservative expectations of relationship dynamics that treat people as broken for not wanting or enjoying sex) and morph them into fallacies, half truths, and false equivalences. You’re literally taking the experiences of other groups of people, and trying to say they happen to the same degree, and from the same place, as what asexuals face when that is just NOT true based on reality.

You could grow up to be an adult, quietly never get married or date, and live your entire life without having sex and no one will kill you for it. Homophobes don’t care that you’re not fucking other people. They don’t care enough to use gay panic as a defense to murder you, they don’t care enough to ban you from marrying, you weren’t ignored during the AIDS crisis, you wouldn’t have to hide the fact that you don’t have sex from colleagues for fear of getting fired from your job for it, you don’t have to worry about being sent to camps to be electrocuted or sent to mental institutions or religious conversion therapy camps. Not now, not 20 years ago, not 50 years ago, not EVER.

You can play the “we’ve always been there” game because there have always been people who probably would ID as asexual today, but the vast majority of those people got married, had kids, and that is more due to the fundamentalist religious nature of western society, especially in America, than it would be due to homophobia. Completely intellectually dishonest.

Don’t fucking send me any more fucking shit, and if you do, come off anon so I can block you. In fact, I’ll make it easy and turn it off so you don’t hit that button by mistake.

I have seen and experienced first hand real life traumatic homophobia, so don’t ever in your life try to come at me with that shit. I spent years thinking *I* was asexual because I was repressing my sexuality.

And that’s the biggest issue I have you with weirdos. Talking about “you can like sex and have sex and be asexual” nonsense. I see so many kids coming up that are taking LONGER to realize they’re gay/same sex attracted because they don’t relate to the hypsersexual, porn-obsessed way sex is portrayed. And they hear THIS nonsense and think “oh, I’m asexual.” Then they grow up, get interested in sex, and have literal mental breakdowns over their identities because they made not wanting to fuck their hogwarts house badge.

We’re not talking about grown adults who have gone through numerous experiences coming to an understanding of their sexualities. It’s a bunch of kids who don’t realize that it’s normal to not experience overt and raunchy sexual attraction, that only wanting to sleep with someone you’re in a relationship with is literally normal, and who aren’t even old enough to legally rent a car trying to tell grown adults about their lived experiences.

Fuck off mate. Just fuck off. You’re an idiot, and if you think you’re going to convince me of your side, you’re not.

And you really want to know how you’re not LGBT. Because with all the alphabet soup terms that have come up to describe bisexuality 40392092039220 times in recent years, gay people have (for the most part) not said that these people aren’t same sex attracted. Because, despite how unnecessary, they are same sex attracted. But you lot are the ones actual homosexuals and bi people are like “nah, you lot are weird. We don’t know you.” And there’s a reason. Because this response, aside from being intellectually dishonest, historically inaccurate, and filled with logical fallacies and bad-faith arguments, was at it’s very core WEIRD.

You’re weird. Now sod off.

#Anonymous

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vaiyamagic · 4 years ago

Text

My favorite teacher ever was a high school english teacher. He was great, even if the class itself was full of students who were lazy and unappreciative. I would even visit him in off class hours the next year even though I didn't have his class. (I always got along better with teachers than most of the students, especially at that particular school.)

I remember the first time checking in with him after summer and discovering he'd gotten married. (He had a wedding photo on his desk.) I then did the little wedding tune "bum bu bu-dum" and he got seriousface very quickly and said that they didn't walk down the aisle to that song. Curious, I asked why. He said it was because the composer of that tune was antisemitic. I was unfamiliar with the word, so I asked what it meant. And when he explained it, my stupid teenage brain decided to immediately ask, "Oh. Are you jewish?"

And then something happened that I will always remember: He hesitated.

Now, one of the reasons I always loved his teaching is because there were no stupid questions. He would encourage the pursuit of knowledge of any kind. He was always honest and prompt with his answers.

And here he hesitated.

It wasn't a long hesitation, probably only a second or two, but it felt like minutes. And in that long silence, my brain did some thinking.

If he hesitated, it meant he wasn't sure how to answer that question. The question was basically yes or no and if the answer was no there was no reason to hesitate, right? But if he hesitated then the answer was probably yes, and that meant he wasn't sure if he should admit it. And if he was hesitating it meant he was afraid of what admitting it would do. And if he was afraid then that meant there was a reason.

Now, I'd had WWII history a few times by that point (I swear, school was obsessed with it. Every year. I got so tired of WWII, I just wanted to learn about some other time period, please.) So, I knew about the Holocaust, and knew that for some reason, people hated Jewish people back then. But that was all over right? We fought Hitler. We won. Everything was okay now.... right?

This teacher of mine was not old. He was a very young man; I'd estimate, mid to late 20's? Maaaybe early 30's? So, if he was hesitant to admit it, then it clearly wasn't just something that used to happen a long time ago, and maybe things hadn't completely changed.

It made me feel like shit. That this grown man was afraid to admit what religion he was a part of to this little bitty teenager, just in case I decided to ruin him for it. How fucked up is that? And I’d already told him he was my favorite teacher by this point. That he even had to consider that maybe this new information could change my opinion of him so drastically... that’s a horrible way to live.

In the end, he said yes. But I remember the tone, and the look he gave while saying it. The tone was still hesitant, and the look was very much "Okay, I've trusted you with this, now it's your turn. What are you going to do?"

I was a teenager, and this was awkward. Teenagers don't deal with awkward very well (I mean, many adults don't either, but teens moreso.) I didn't want to give the impression that learning he was jewish bothered me (because it didn't) but I also didn't want to get into a discussion about everything that happened in the span of those few seconds. So, I just said "Cool." and immediately changed the subject.

Still to this day I don't know if that was the correct thing to say, but I guess it was at least acceptable, because our teacher-student relationship continued on as though that little hiccup never happened.

Neither of us ever mentioned it again, but it stuck with me. I thought about it the rest of the day, and on and off for the next few weeks, and even now, almost 20 years later, I’m still reminded of it.

If my teacher had reason to be afraid of revealing that information, then that meant there was something wrong with what we’d been taught. The fact that I’d had so many different classes and lessons on WWII, and yet didn’t know what antisemitic meant? That was a problem.

I’d already known that some teachers were terrible (4th grade. Thanks for THAT Ms Jenoka. I hate you.) But to learn that it wasn’t just the WAY some teachers taught that was bad, but WHAT was being taught too? It had never crossed my mind before that. It was the first time I realized that racism and bigotry and all that stuff was still around. After that moment, I had to reassess everything. (Yeah, if you hadn’t realized by this point, yes, I am white.)

***

I remember way back in 1st grade, living in Virginia, we’d had our first Black History Month lessons and had just learned about Rosa Parks and segregation and all that “fun” stuff. I remember walking home after school and saying to a black classmate of mine something along the lines of “I’m glad racism is over so we can be friends.”

I wonder sometimes if my classmate believed it too, or if she knew better already in 1st grade. I wonder what she thought of me saying that. I wonder if she even remembers it, or if it’s just one more stupid thing a white person has said to her.

***

My sophmore year of high school (before I ever had that english teacher) there was this muslim kid in one of my classes. He was a jerk. He would tease me and make fun of me all the time, to the point where I got so angry once that I threw a brush at him (I missed.) And any time anyone would criticize him for anything he did he’d say mockingly “It’s ‘cause I’m muslim, isn’t it?” And no one wanted to be ‘that person’ so no one called him out saying “No, it’s because you’re a jerk.”

9/11 happened 2 years later. I had moved since then and now went to a new school, but when 9/11 happened, I asked a friend who still went to the old school how things had changed. I remember them saying, “If it makes you feel any better [name] is bullied now for being muslim.”

If it made me feel any better.

That made me feel like shit, just like that moment with my english teacher (which had occurred earlier that same year.) No! Of course it didn’t make me feel better! I wanted him to stop acting like a jerk, not to get bullied back! LEAST of all for just being muslim. And that my friend thought I would be okay with it was the worst part.

I honestly don’t remember what I said after that. I probably just got quiet and said nothing. After all, they were my friend. I didn’t want to fight over it. But I should have said something. I should have called them out. But I didn’t. I regret that.

***

The moral of this story is, even if (and perhaps especially if) you’re taught that racism/bigotry/homophobia/etc is over, it’s not. You’re just not seeing it. And just because you don’t think you’re racist/homophobic/etc doesn’t mean you can’t do or say offensive things. You will. You absolutely will. And if you do? Apologize. Admit you were ignorant, even to yourself. Learn. Try to do better.

#racism #bigotry #life #long post #please don't eat this post this time tumblr #seriously

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larstenobar · 4 years ago

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Okay so I mentioned it in the tags but I kinda wanna talk about my experiences with So/uth Pa/rk. I say this as a cis, gay, non-Jewish man. I also say this as someone who used to actually engage with the forums on the main site. I also say this as someone who played. both the two major video game RPGs. So I am speaking not from reaction to other people’s reactions but from my own personal knowledge. This post is incredibly long so it’s under a read more. In it I provide what I believe are the actual effects of South Park on its viewership but I need to stress that I think it’s the wrong energy to blame parents for letting their children watch the show.

Don’t blame the parents, blame the show.

That show is genuinely horrible. I’ve seen a lot of people questioning how anyone could let children watch it - and to that I say you’re not adding anything to the conversation by shaming parents for letting their children watch that show.

My own parents weren’t even out of their twenties when I watched the show, and many other parents grew up with the show as a non-issue. Young parents make mistakes.

At the time it came out and its early years only extremely vigilant parents realized how problematic the show was and the news was hard to spread without social media. At best you could inform your parent friends and hope they listened.

The show’s main characters are children, many parents found/find it hard to believe that a show with children as the main characters could be bad for those children. If the show were exactly the same but the children were college-aged then it would be another raunchy show they could easily see is not meant for their kids.

There’s a good portion of children who watched the show that weren’t actually allowed to watch it because their parents weren’t as tech savvy as them and therefore didn’t know about pirating/streaming until it was mainstream. We who grew up with YouTube knew you could put in [show] episode 1 part 1 and start watching. (this is gonna be another point later btw)

I know that it’s hard for you guys to even know all the reasons it’s problematic because you all barely scratch the surface of it’s problems. But before we even get into the meat of its problems (Science Denial, Homophobia, Transphobia, Ableism, Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, etc.) we have to look at the very premise of the show.

The main characters begin in fourth grade. Fourth Grade. There’s a phenomena in our culture where we believe that children saying stupid stuff is harmless, and we forget that when children hear children speak - even animated children - they are hearing their peers. And peers learn from each other. This is why the show is so insidious, because it makes it easier for children to digest the messages.

Another thing that’s very important to note is that - while it’s labelled satire, every single joke is played straight, and the straight man character (usually either S or Ky) are ridiculed by the culture they’re surrounded in. Don’t believe me? Think I’m over-exaggerating? Think about the election episode, where they had to pick between a literal piece of shit or a douche. Our Straightmen were constantly saying how ridiculous the situation was, but everyone around them was telling them they were the ones who were stupid for not particpating in the election until they eventually break and submit to the absurdity. This is a light example, but it’s the typical formula. If they aren’t actively participating in the absurdity around them, they’re ridiculed until they break. What this tells the audience isn’t that the people who were particpating were stupid, but that they were right.

Now that we’ve looked at the show premise, let’s get into the details. A note: This is just what I remember from approximately age 5-18, the latter years I’d been turned off from it slowly so I wasn’t as engaged but it was not any better then. Since this is just what I can remember without looking through episodes or looking up articles, this is going to be a small sampling of things that stuck with me. Be assured, there was much, much, much more.

Science Denial and its effects on the viewers.

This is the lightest thing I can recall, and probably going to be the smallest section as it’s mostly centered around their stand-in for global warming, a cryptid figure called M/an/Be/ar/P/ig. Al G/ore was painted as a desperate, raving lunatic for believing in the phenomena, and was even implied to be making it up by having him dress up as the cryptid. I don’t have to explain why this is wrong, but we need to look at the effect this had.

On the one hand it made fans think that Global Warming (as it’s something A.G. believed in) was a hoax. Furthermore, it made them believe that anyone who believed in it was telling lies, which was overwhelmingly the most progressive people. A direct effect of these jokes (which they apologized for but never stopped propagating btw, MBP was still a joke when I stopped watching) was that progressives were seen as over-dramatic and stupid.

Now, I am not saying people watched these shows and immediately thought “oh wow, how fucking stupid of A.G. I don’t believe in climate change anymore.” It’s more like this: “Oh haha, S thinks A.G. is annoying, I like S so I agree, A.G. is annoying. You know, A.G. is kinda annoying with all that global warming, maybe there’s something to him being over-dramatic? Gosh why can’t these progressives see that it’s not that big of a deal. If they trust A.G. then they MUST be blowing other things out of proportion.” That’s the thought processes it trains its viewers to have.

LGBT+ Characters

Okay so there’s actually a lot of things that go into the Homophobia of S/P. And it goes back to the very beginning of the show, and is both explicit and implicit. There is a huge problem with these, but the main problem isn’t so much that they exist, but the show’s attitude towards their own ‘jokes’ and the ways in which fans suck up that thought process.

Before I get into this, there were some things that I need to say in favor of the show - not because I think the show deserve praise, but because there were some things that I latched onto and showed a surprising nuance. There’s like one thing, really but it is, of course, attached to something that’s a much larger issue within the show, so while it is a small glimmer, it’s in no way outshining any of the problems in the show.

For a while, the teacher underwent gender reassignment when he (the teacher currently identifies as male from my last interaction with the show) got breast implants and presumably bottom surgery (I vaguely remember a surgery but honestly that could be an invention) he was in a gay relationship. His then boyfriend had a very heartfelt and difficult conversation about how he still cared about him and how he’ll never hate him for being the woman that he wanted to be, but there was no way that he could pursue a relationship with him. I thought that this was a very mature depiction of a very difficult situation that is never really talked about. However, as I implied earlier, this is attached to a larger issue. Before any of you start having second thoughts about your ideas about S/P’s portrayal of gay and trans people, immediately after getting broken up with the teacher became violently homophobic as a backlash, I vaguely recall a group being formed.

Our main examples of LGBT individuals in the show are these big four (five?):

The afforementioned teacher

The teacher’s boyfriend, who wears leather gear at school and can’t stop talking kink even in front of the child characters

A character called B/ig G/ay A/l who is just as stereotypical as his name implies.

T/weak and C/raig, who are classmates of the focal characters. There’s a lot of reasons this is problematic, none of them being the age of those involved in the relationship - but the portrayal of them is hugely problematic.

Since I’ve already touched on the teacher, we’ll get into them first. When he was introduced, he was a sort of ambiguously gay character who was very bitchy and spoke with a slight lisp that eventually became a canon gay character with his relationship with the Kink Character. He was violently hateful towards his class, verbally abusing them all the time and often particpating in bullying children. Furthermore he’s seen as incompetent. This is problematic not because he’s a gay man doing this (though it’s not great either) but because this taught children that teachers don’t care about them and that they shouldn’t listen to them because they don’t know what they’re talking about anyways. This goes into their anti-intellectual stance mentioned earlier. It enforces the idea that education systems are useless, not because of the institutional problems they have with racism, but because of the incompetence of the system.

Going back to the point of this, still with the same character, let’s further explore the problems they had when the teacher had an arc as a trans woman. Honestly, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but the show made a point to let you know that the other characters were uncomfortable when Mr. G became Ms. G. The most damning thing about this, however, is the fact that Mr. G detransitioned bc he realized he wasn’t a straight woman, just a gay man. I think this is problematic because it frames transitioning as a sexual strategy. I don’t think I have to go into detail on why that’s problematic. And while this isn’t actually a tie into how horrible their handling of this character is, it should be noted that he’s the character that went on to be their T/rump stand-in.

The next character is the Kink Man.

God, the character’s personality isn’t actually all that bad. He’s loving and caring and empathetic and actually usually on the right side of topics, but. He doesn’t separate his kink from his personal life. He’s always strutting around in leather-daddy gear and has a lisp. His name is literally Mr. S/lave. There was an episode where he shoved a hamster in his ass. To viewers, he represents the dirty gays that keep shoving their sex-life down their throats - and this view is never, ever, ever subverted, so since the show never makes fun of people for having that view it reinforces that idea in their minds.

Honestly the least problematic character of the LGBT characters that I mentioned was BGA. He’s still a stereotype, yeah, he has a gay dog and is super flamboyant and constantly talks about how proud he is but honestly that’s not really all that bad. I can’t directly recall anything bad about him except that he’s incredibly flamboyant, speaks with a lisp, and loves to call things he owns “BGA’s Big Gay [noun].” Relatable. That doesn’t mean there was nothing problematic, it just doesn’t immediately come to me.

Now, for the next most problematic “representation” in the show. First, T&C showed no signs of actually being gay before. I do recall them both being my favorite characters before they became a couple, however. T is a coffee addict which has some suspect aspects we’ll get into later, and C used to flip everyone off. This was why they were my favorites. They became gay literally when fangirls started shipping them in the show. I’m sure there was an actual fandom movement, but their getting together was incredibly forced - that was part of the joke btw, that gay shipping is always forced. What’s horrible about this is that this was in an episode about ya/oi.

Now, let’s try to dissect this issue. First off, what this tells viewers is that being gay was not a natural part of who they were, but was an active choice (if you’re being kind) or something society forced on them (if you’re not.) The two were actively fighting with the narrative that they were gay and in a relationship. I think their actual agreement for being boyfriends was more of a mutual public display than an actual relationship, but it’s a fuzzy memory because that whole episode felt like a fever dream.

What’s worse about this, is that the show actually displayed ya/oi depictions of these children within the show. Nothing NSFW, but clearly sexually charged situations were definitely shown. At the time, they were 5th graders. 9/10 year olds for those not in the states. This emboldened actual CT shippers “If the show could do it, then so can I” was the general mentality on the forums I was on. So we can talk on pedophilia to reasons why this show is awful.

And those are just the named recurring characters. Another commonly recurring character is a prostitute with a deep voice who is very sloppy looking that, from my recollection, is implied to be a transwoman. This might have just been a conclusion I drew when I was young however - but even that is reason to be critical of the character, that such a conclusion could even be drawn means it might have played a factor in the character’s inception.

They also “Solved Overpopulation” with a gay orgy. I don’t have the language to define why this sat so wrong with me, but I remember being very deeply hurt by it. I think it has something to do with the idea that homosexuality is a choice and that it should only be accepted because of the potential benefits it has for population control.

Islamophobia and Racism

Okay so I’m just gonna come out the gate by saying that they fought hard to depict the prophet Mohammad. Like, hard. And they did it twice - one time went almost unnoticed but the second had a huge backlash from the Islamic people. For those who aren’t aware, it’s sacrilege to depict Mohammad. It’s like desecrating a church, maybe worse - I really have no frame of reference for how bad it’s viewed, but however bad it is, it still boils down to being a strict taboo that S/P broke not once, but twice.

Now, as I keep reminding, my memory gets hazy for many things, especially things I wasn’t aware of being insensitive early on. I have vague memories of terrorists being depicted in traditional Sikh garb, and similar instances of directly relating Islam with terrorism. I don’t recall the show ever making fun of anyone for relating Muslims with terrorism, for all those fans out there saying they make fun of everyone.

There was an episode where the characters wore blackface. There’s a black character literally named t/oken b/lack. Sure, that could be satire and maybe even be defended if they subverted the trope, however it should be noted he’s not the only black character in the show! There was an episode where there was a child adopted from Africa whose name escapes me - he was emaciated and devoured food at an alarming rate and generally was a nuisance if I remember correctly.

There was an instance where one of the main character’s father was on Wheel of Fortune. The category was people who annoy you. the letters on the board were ‘N_ggers.’ You know where this is going, the father said the N-word. The word was really naggers, but the rest of the episode was a sympathetic journey with him dealing with being ostracized. He became known as an ‘n-word guy’ which was treated as a worse term within the universe. I say this because a law was passed where the phrase was outlawed and they said you had to have a space of at least 5 words between ‘n-word’ and ‘guy’. Also, the n-word was said multiple times by a number of white characters. Now, I know the argument people make about this episode. They say that we were supposed to find the scanario ridiculous, but the issue I take with it is more that we’re led to feel sympathetic to racists who’ve had their lives ruined for being racist. That’s the issue with South Park’s brand of ‘satire’. It satirizes one issue, but doesn’t touch on the problematic things used to support that satire.

Almost every single Mexican character is a stereotype of some sort. Either a laborer who can barely speak English, a gangbanger, or some other stereotype. There was an episode where they had C’s hand become a famous Latina popstar by singing about Mexican Food themed songs, like the actual songs ‘T/aco F/lavored K/isses’ and ‘T/aco B/urrito’. The hand’s name was Jennifer Lopez, I don’t know of these songs are direct parodies bc I’ve only heard Jenny From the Block.

And while S/P tends to stay away from very direct anti-black jokes, they don’t shy away from other races. There’s an asian character whose business is called ‘c/ity wok’, but he always pronounces it ‘shitty’ because the joke here is ‘oh haha asians have funny accents’ and literally nothing else. I honestly believe that asians receive the WORST treatment on S/P when it comes to facing racism, but I’m not qualified to make that claim. Other examples of anti-asian racism: There was an pokemon episode where they said that Japan was using anime to indoctrinate youth, they literally had the kids operate fighter jets to make an attack on the U.S. What’s worse about this, is that whenever the Japanese execs were questioned about this, every time, they dropped their pants to show how small their penises were and how they should be pitied for it. Another instance, I very strongly remember a depiction of asian characters as being lemon yellow with eyes like this: \ /. There was an episode where they had Asians violently murder whales with glee. They lean into anti-asian racism so much harder than any other form of racism - the only thing they’re worse about is their antisemitism, which will get its own section later.

Antisemitism

God there’s so much. Jew Gold, nazi imagery, the entirety of c/a/r/t/m/a/n as a character and there are so many posts on this website by people much more qualified than me to delve into what exactly is wrong with this and the depictions of it, so I’m mostly just going to catalog what comes to mind and then speak about the actual factual instances of S/P inspired antisemitism I’ve witnessed and been party to.

There was an episode devoted to Jewish people having a secret bit of gold around their necks. This was proven true in the universe when Ky gave up his ‘J*w Gold’ to C.

Ky’s mom is such an overbearing harpy who bulldozes over everyone, this was later explained as her having Jersey-Blood (yes this was a Jersey Shore joke) but before that it was completely because she was a proud Jewish woman.

Ky’s father is depicted as weak-willed and piddling. He always wears a yarmulke no matter the situation.

Ky is often depicted as being whiny and non-commital

OF ALL THE CHARACTERS, KY IS THE ONE WHO IS DEPICTED AS A HYPOCRITE THE MOST

Ky’s cousin with the same name is depicted as in poor health, complains about everything, whines about things not being fair bc they don’t go his way, and has caricatured Jewish features

As mentioned above, there are hosts of Nazi imagery associated with C

C has said every Jewish slur I have ever heard. In fact he introduced me to the concept of antisemitism

Ky, in a Christmas episode, is depicted as wishing he could celebrate Christmas and Hanukkah is depicted as a sort of consolation prize that’s Not As Good.

Ky’s father was an internet troll, and the trolls were. literal trolls. with certain features that are not great.

The following image is the Prophet Moses:

And there’s more and more and more. I will not accept anyone saying that this is just jokes because I know firsthand how insidious their treatment of Jewish people is because this show literally made me think it was okay to engage in Antisemitism. I made greedy jokes, like saying a got J**ed when i was screwed over, or that someone who was being greedy was being a J*w. I am not proud of this, and I think I grew out of it relatively quickly as I dropped that language in middle school.

But not everyone did. Even some of my closest friends were still saying they got J**ed when we were graduating high school. There were no Jewish people at my school, so there was no humanizing face for the Jewish people for us. Thank god for the Nanny or who knows what kind of person I’d be now. There were people even worse than me, I should mention. There was one person in my school who literally used J*w as a stand-in for loser because of this show. This show was the only interaction with the Jewish faith that most of my classmates ever had, and the same is true of many rural towns in America who have only Protestant populations.

Fatphobia

All the most unlikeable characters are fat. C. Ky’s mom. The gun-toting republican. And there are other specific episodes where they equate fatness to not being healthy. In their episode partnered with WoW (don’t forget that happened, y’all) the main antagonist was depicted as a no-life having loser and he was, surprise, fat. This show draws a very direct line between being fat and being unlikeable.

Sexism

God, the portrayal of women is so horrible, literally my only entry here is going to be one single link:

youtube

Note all the other isms depicted in this btw.

Substance Abuse

The prostitute mentioned in the LGBT section would wander into scenes screaming about how she wanted crack. There was an episode where they created a league of basketball players who were comprised entirely of ‘crack babies.’ I’m being generous by not putting that in the racism section because most of the babies were BIPOC which says something about the kind of people that M/att and T/rey think are addicts.

The character T/owelie is supposed to show an addict, but his addiction is literally just weed which means they’re claiming weed is addictive.

I can’t even begin to describe the show’s relationship to alcohol. As a child of an alcoholic, I can say that it’s not fucking cute that they made S’s dad a violent drunk. It’s genuinely scary to see your parent fly into a rage because of their alcoholism and them reducing it to a joke was, I think, one of the points where the ‘it’s just a joke’ mentality started to break for me personally.

While we’re on the subject of parents, C’s mom was literally a crack addict who was also a full service sex worker. The correlation is not sympathetic in the slightest. And even worse was Ke’s parents. They were depicted as abusive, neglectful, drug-addicted rednecks. This was sometimes played to make you sympathize with Ke, and it worked because even now I can hardly think of how Ke himself was problematic rather than the situations he was in. (He’s the one who gets gruesomely murdered every episode) I don’t know if this is because of selective memory, if he was genuinely just the least problematic in the show, or if I’m waxing nostalgic for the show. Regardless, as I said, his situation was mostly played for sympathy. However, it was also played for jokes almost as often.

Pedophilia

The children are put in sexual situations a nonzero amount of times, they make priest molestation jokes, and they made jokes about MJ.

Slurs

Yeah they said them a lot. There was the aforementioned N-Word Guy episode, but there was also an episode that thinly mirrored immigrants coming to America for work and the people (time-travelers) were called ‘Goobacks’. I think the word ch*nk was used a nonzero amount of times, C used every slur for Jewish people in the book. None of these were censored by the show, any censoring was done by networks.

Why make this post?

Because I know people know this show is garbage, but I think it’s important that people know why it’s garbage with specific and nonspecific instances of why the show was problematic.

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cakeandcrows · 5 years ago

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I remember this one time I was watching some documentary about a white actress, I can’t recall who. One of her first roles was something like... a German lesbian with some kind of drug addiction (I think cocaine?). Point is, in her interview segment about it, she said something like, “When my mother heard about the role, she said, ‘if I were you, I would have told the director to pick just one of those things, not all of them at once.’” And all I can think about is how like... so many of us on here are more than one kind of minority or ‘invisible’ identity, or neurodivergent, or in some level of recovery from one thing or another.

Like, this isn’t huge news, y’know? Yeah, privilege is a thing. And people are so absolutely unaware of it when they have it that it makes me want to scream. I’m even unaware of my own privilege a lot of the time and I won’t go into a moment of how I feel when I realize I’ve forgotten, because my guilt on the matter is irrelevant. I just need to get better at keeping myself in check and that’s that.

Yeah I’d love to be cis some days because of how much easier it would make my life (and honestly for not many other reasons, I’m pretty happy being trans... if it just... y’know, weren’t for how people react to it). Sometimes I think, “Man, straight people are fucking insane; how on earth do they function,” while looking back on the days when I thought I was straight and realizing that even back then I was lost as hell, but some days I’m just like, “If I were straight, would life really be so much easier?” And it would. It really would. If I were also cis at the same time. Etc.

And I don’t want to make this into an us vs them sort of thing for even a minute, either, because everyone has common ground somewhere. Does that common ground always matter as much to one person as it does to another? Probably not. Jeff Be/os probably shares a home town with a fuck ton of people but I’ll bet he doesn’t give a shit about a single one of them, or that commonality, while you could see a popular rock band and never hear them shut up about how proud they are to be from the West Coast. Sometimes it just doesn’t fucking matter to other people what you have in common with them, because to them, what’s different is so much more volatile. And it goes both ways.

There’s people from my home town, my graduating class, and even old friend groups that I could never see myself talking to again because of how we’ve split paths in beliefs and lifestyles. Or, maybe they’ve stayed the same and I’ve changed, or the opposite... and I’ll bet they’d see how I’ve changed and think the same things of me. “Wow, I want nothing to do with that person.”

I’m just... constantly having little wake-up calls over and over again of how some people seriously think that I’d choose a harder life on purpose. And I’m not ashamed of living as I am; I’m very proud of who I am and what I’ve overcome to get here.

Customers at work, where I feel like I live 2/3rds of my life these days, are always just like... a window into the world for me sometimes. Most people don’t mention my pronoun button. Some people don’t notice it outright and misgender me because they’re looking at my face; entirely being polite and engaged, and not at all aware of how they’re upsetting me. I let it go a lot of the time. It’s not worth it.

There’s the few good folks who listen carefully and patiently and are seemingly brought to a new awareness by my gentle explanations. They’re polite and they honestly revive part of my faith. Like the guy who opened his coffee order saying, “yes, miss,” and left the store tipping his hat to me saying, “thank you very much, sir.” God or whoever does things fucking bless that guy.

Then there’s the people who decide to look at my pin, and ask about it. So far, it’s either people who are just reading it aloud for the sake of it, and then becoming confused but not actually wanting to understand so much as they’re just desperate to make some kind of conversation with a Youth (which is wild because I’m 25??). They don’t actually care, so I don’t really put effort into explaining. They either cut me off mid-explanation, or listen and don’t say anything further.

Then there’s the people who look at it and laugh at me. Or the woman who decided it was a good idea to read it, listen to my explanation, and say, “You know, my daughter tried to explain that to me. I just don’t get it. I think it’s silly and too complicated. People should just stick to the old ways.” Like... lady. What the fuck do you want me to do about it. Why the fuck do you think telling me this will make me happy or even... want to engage further. I straight up just don’t understand where these people get off. They’re just as rude and uninterested in me as a human being as the people who start rattling off their order and refuse to wait for me to get it all down before shoving their credit card at my face. They do not care. They do. Not. Care. And my patience is starting to wear extremely thin.

I had a new coworker, who knows I’m trans, the other day stop mid-sentence to say, “Oh, you know, sister? Oh! Also, I call everyone ‘sis’, boys or girls.” “Not me, you don’t.” “...oh?” “You don’t call me that. Ever.”

“ >:/ tch. Glad we got that out of the way.”

It’s not cute. I don’t think it’s endearing. I don’t think it’s funny. And I don’t give a shit if you call other people that. If you thought about it for five seconds you’d realize how insensitive and fucked up it is. If anyone, anywhere, I swear to god, just thought about ANYTHING for five fucking seconds... I wish... I hope, that they’d be better human beings than they are.

Like, god, what a horrible inconvenience it is for you to have to stop and think about what to call another human being. To use their name. To use the right pronouns. To avoid nicknames or pet names that would be inappropriate for such a person. Heaven forbid you have to do that for anyone, right? Why am I different? Why are you trying to step on my toes and see if I’ll just sit here and take it? I know why. Everyone knows why. And I’m so sick of being the dog under the table who gets kicked every time it whines about having no escape or being surrounded by the feet of people sitting around the table.

I don’t hate being trans. I don’t hate being pansexual. I don’t hate being poly. I don’t hate myself. I hate the people who hate me for being myself and intentionally or ignorantly go out of their way to make my life an extra level of hell Just Because They Can. ,

I have been bullied and abused all my fucking life by one kind of person or another and not a single excuse I’ve been given justifies it. Humans are better than this. I want to have faith in humans. And there are good humans; I surround myself with them. But if I have to pry yet another motherfucker’s eyes open to yet another goddamn social issue they were too thick-minded to notice, and then have them turn around and bless me and hail me for some kind of... Joan of Arc bullshit, calling my suffering and my existence some kind of blessing, like my life had to be this hard to spread words and messages across time and space to reach their Oh So Important Ears, I’m gonna choke. Or... even the people who mean well that just straight up make me think that they actually believe that the queer people in their lives are some sort of Manic Pixie Dream (gender) who’s come into their lives to teach them something new and advance their own character development. That’s what it fucking feels like! Being reduced to someone else’s educator and being placed as a Background Character in their own fucking Growth Arc.

If there’s some sick destiny where I’m lined up to be some kind of flogged messenger to idiots for the rest of my life I want a motherfucking refund. Ship me off to the next incarnation. I don’t care if I come back as a ladybug for two days and die under somebody’s shoe.

And I’m not somebody’s teacher. I’m not somebody’s martyr or savior. I’m not somebody’s free fucking Queer Almanac and Seasonal Guide to the Experiences of Not Their Own. I’m so fucking tired of explaining myself.

I’m so fucking tired of People ™ But I also want to have so much faith in People ™ that I think I’m just setting myself up for disappointment.

Sometimes people prove me wrong and it’s okay. Other times I write a several paragraph long rant at one in the morning. Fuck me honestly, just, fuck me and boy howdy do I wish I could pluck one or two things off my list of identities if only for the sake of not having to Explain Shit To People ™

And at the same time, I very clearly care about people. I want people to understand because fuck, I was there! I used to be some Jacked Levels of Crazy and I was hugely homophobic when i was a teenager. I look back on the way I used to be and I can’t feel proud of who I was and what I believed. I know a lot of it was internalized hatred and disgust. I know all of that shit now. But I see myself in some people and that’s the mistake I make sometimes. Most of the time, I’m fine; I help other folks learn something new and it’s good and I feel fine about it. I just hate feeling like other people assume it’s my motherfucking duty to tell them and speak on behalf of all non-cis, non-straight people everywhere. I sound like a goddamn Gender and Women’s Studies textbook.

Fuck, I’m going to bed...

#rant #long post #2/14/2020 #transphobia tw

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littlemicrocosims · 5 years ago

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need to vent about chocolate real quick

okay so some of you may know that I used to work for choccywoccydoodah (if you’ve heard of it, great, if you haven’t, i’m also not surprised). Choccy just went out of business and I just need to vent because all the news coverage (the few bbc articles etc there are anyway) are making me SO ANGRY so if you want chocolatey behind the scenes drama and what it was ACTUALLY like to be employed by christine taylor READ ON

The entire news coverage for this business going into administration is solely ‘oh what a shame this awesome creative business is gone! noone could have predicted it! such a shock we all loved it!” lIKE NO FUCK OFF IF YOU SPOKE TO A SINGLE PERSON THAT WORKED THERE YOU WOULD KNOW THAT THIS IS NOT A SURPRISE AT ALL. This has been coming for YEARS. This company has been driven into the ground by Christine Taylor and if you ever watched the TV show i’m sure you have a little understanding as to why that is.

When I worked at the company (for about a year between 2016 - 2017), I was told many things by the owners. It’s a million dollar company, she said. It’s international. We make MAGIC. And yes, to an extent, they did make magic. The two Christine’s founded the company in Brighton in 1994 and carved a niche for themselves. They made amazing cakes for amazing people and I was so, so thrilled to be a part of it. The TV show had already ceased filming by this point, of course, and whilst the show was still running in some countries (the company was inexplicably popular in the Netherlands, I came to realise) the popularity of the show within the UK was something akin to marmite... Either you love it, or... well, you’ve never heard of it. I always knew the company and its running was unconventional - no safety training for the amount of physical labour you had to do, an incredibly stressful work environment, always expected to work unpaid overtime, the list goes on - but I loved it anyway. My manager was an amazing woman (and still is!) and I was keen to learn and master what I could. This is when the cracks started to show. Christine and Christine would make plans - we want to promote you, but we can’t promote anyone unless they’ve worked here over a year, we want to open a third store, we’re going to launch a side business, here’s a range of more affordable cakes that we are going to sell - but somehow, nothing ever followed through. They could barely afford to run two shops (one in brighton, one in central london, where i worked), let alone even CONSIDER opening a third. Their marketing relied solely on the now outdated television show and they refused to upgrade with the times. They weren’t without help - younger members of the team had plenty of suggestions and contributions but they were never recognised or accepted. I managed to convince them to invest in snapchat geo-filters (as all customers did in the shop was record and take photos). Not a huge step, but a small one in the right direction. This was once they actually ALLOWED people to film - for months part of my job was telling people to put their phones away! Why make edible art if you can’t even share it!? Their social media ‘team’ consisted of some guy who used to bake the cakes and got promoted to Christine’s PA. He could barely even spell, let alone maintain a facebook, an instagram, a youtube... To put it bluntly, they knew fuck all about promoting their own company and got complacent in how successful they had once been.

To compensate for this, the company began raising prices. The impractical “chunky bars” rose in price in the time I was at the company from £12.99 to £14.99, while cakes for 10 servings jumped from £35.99 to £40+. Commissions that staff had got and were promised for another quarter for bespoke cake consultations disappeared with no warning. They began outsourcing more and more chocolate, reducing the cocoa content of the chocolate they DID create, and staff began leaving. I thought the high turnover was normal. If you’ve watched the show, you know that Dave made all the magic happen. Well, people like Dave started leaving. Once the two Christines decided they didn’t like a member of staff, they would quietly sit and gather evidence of the smallest infractions until they had enough to fire you or play hardball until you quit before they could pull the trigger. I saw this happen to many, many members of staff in my time there. Luckily, they always seemed to like me, but I have a feeling that if I’d stayed any longer the same would have happened to me. It happened to their own son, who they demoted from operations manager in favour of the london store manager. He got no say in this. They never gave the new operations manager the payrise for her promotion for the year plus that she held the position (until closing) and they regularly expected her to work 6/7 day weeks as they refused to replace staff that were leaving. She was expected to continue to manage the london branch as well as manager the operations for the entire company. She HAD to work these hours just to make sure there was a senior member of staff in the building. This was around the time I decided the stress and constant crying when I finished my shift every night was too much, and I made the very hard decision to leave despite not having anything else lined up. I was in a fortunate position of living with my parents and having a safety net. Not everyone else had that.

Since I left the company, things only deteriorated further. The Carnaby Street store (just off oxford circus, in central london) was deemed too expensive to rent, and they moved to covent garden, to a location my former manager oh-so affectionately refers to as “crack alley”. It was unsafe and I’ve been told that staff closing up in the evenings would regularly have to ask for backup as they would feel at risk within the store. The size of the team started to dwindle (the whole company was 50+ strong over both stores and the studios when I was there, it was 20-30 when it shut and the london store alone had 6/7 members of staff). More members of staff left without replacements. Then the inevitable happened - Dave reduced his hours, with an intention to leave, leaving very few people in the studio able to actually make the cakes (which were often dry and poorly made as it was, people regularly found bits of plastic in the cafe cakes and the cafes never even got what they ordered in the first place). Being incredibly secretive about her processes, Christine had staff sign an NDA to know the ‘secret formula’ for the modelling chocolate. Like it’s a goddamn krabby patty. So when Dave began to move away and the other staff from the studio moved on as well, instead of training anyone new to make the cakes, Chris decided she would just... price people out of them. She’d long since abandoned any premise of making affordable versions of her cakes for weddings and raised the minimum price of a bespoke design from £450 to £2,500!!!! The one thing her company was well known for and she priced everyone out of it. Just because she’s made a few cakes for celebrities (I helped design one for Jack Whitehall while I was there, but other big names include Tinie Tempah, Johnny Depp, Kylie Minogue, Boy George, the Game of Thrones launch party....) she arrogantly believed that her entire clientele could afford this, when actually her entire clientele was children who loved the show and their hard working families. These people simply cannot afford £50 for a 10 portion cake, or £30 for a slice of cake and a drink in a cafe. £5 for an outsourced chocolate coin! £20 for a bar of chocolate! She was out of touch, and arrogant, and stubborn. Other companies do it better and cheaper and she refused to ever acknowledge her competition, let alone follow through on any plans to be better.

The staff who were made redundant were barely even informed. No notice. They were told they had to vacate the building and haven’t even been paid for their last week of work, while the Brighton store continued trading for nearly a week. Because the company hadn’t gone into administration yet, they aren’t even able to claim redundancy from the government. Couples who have paid an eye watering amount of money for bespoke wedding cakes are being left up shit creek without a paddle while Christine retires to her bloody house in france to lick her wounds.

Other thoughts:

- Doggymoggydoodah was a shit idea, and poorly executed. - I’ve never met such a homophobic lesbian. She forced the manager to leave the building so she could drill her about her sex life without the repercussions of having these conversations inside the building because she knew she could get done for it if she did. - She’s a bully, plain and simple - the youtube channel posted a video YESTERDAY. who the fuck is posting on there? there’s been no action in 6 months and NOW IS THE TIME TO TELL ME HOW TO CUT ONE OF YOUR CAKES? - my old assistant manager literally robbed the company of several thousand pounds because she knew that christine couldn’t be bothered to get her security cameras fixed :) they couldn’t even get the proof to fire/charge her and had to settle for bullying her out of the company - christine would make us tell customers that we melted down display pieces to reduce waste but actually we just broke them down with a hammer and threw them in the bin. enjoy looking at that luxury easter egg knowing i literally stomped on it so it would fit in a binbag - that glitter on the cakes is not edible. it’s just non-toxic. - the chocolate they use for the modelling tastes vile. - the london stores had biiiiig rat/mice problems. We had to kill them ourselves! We trapped them in glue traps and stamped on them! I GOT PAID FOR THAT! - the brighton store was filthy and gross behind the scenes! If you’ve ever eaten in that cafe then I am sorry but the staff there didn’t like to clean :) - that whole burlesque vibe isn’t child friendly, stop trying to combine the two, a cartoon drawing of your naked ass doesn’t belong in a cookery book you narcissistic twat!! - your chocolate is impractical and horrific to actually try and eat. there. I said it. it tasted good though. until you discontinued all my favs :(

THIS IS NOT A SURPRISE. THIS IS NOT A SHOCK. THIS BUSINESS HAS BEEN POORLY RUN AND UNABLE TO ADAPT FROM THE GET GO. Please don’t keep feeding this woman’s ego. She needs a sharp dose of reality and to face up to all the staff that she has let down. I was lucky to get out when I did but I know single mothers, people trying to afford to live in london who are now completely screwed over and out of a job. People who have given their lives to this dysfunctional company. I begged them to leave because I felt like this was going to happen but they were too loyal and devoted, and wanted it to turn around. My former boss is owed nearly £5k that she’s never going to get, and all those customers who put deposits down or heaven forbid paid the full balance on their cakes are without refunds AND cakes! Just please stop idolising Christine Taylor and look at the situation before you say how shocking and sad it is.

Yes, this company was magical. But that ended a long time ago.

#choccywoccydoodah #real talk #personal #delete later #text post

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prettysubpenny · 5 years ago

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Not a homophobe or gay icon

You know, not all of us considered Pennywise or Babadook gay icons, not all of us considered Pennydook anything other than a joke. It was a damn joke to me, one that didn’t even carry far, though some may have taken it too seriously. I thought it was harmless, cuz you’d have to be dumb to seriously consider these horror villains gay icons when they literally do nothing to prove that they are. I am a slash fan, and it always felt like a poke at how people think slash fans make every character gay. I am a slasher, so I enjoyed Pennydook, as I also love horror, same reason I like Two Cents. That’s simply all, I never believed they were gay icons. It was a really dumb thing, but I didn’t see it as horrible or problematic. But the antis, the people who don't like that anyone merely likes Pennywise, especially if they want to fuck him, decided to remind us that Pennywise kills a gay man in the book as a reason why we shouldn't like him. And with the gay basher scene in Chapter Two, we are again being reminded of that. This is something they use against us. That’s why I don’t like it being used now. And yes, I’m going to use the word ‘antis’ for the people who don’t like people like me. I don’t think I’m superior because I want to fuck a fictional horror villain, as I once heard for using 'anti’ or 'normie’. They're not superior either because they don't want to fuck a fictional horror villain. No one is superior here.

I wish they hadn’t included the Adrian scene in IT Chapter Two. I understand why Stephen King wrote it. I get it. This is horror and he wanted to express how horrible it was, and the movie did that. The scene was uneasy and terrifying- but that wasn’t because of Pennywise. And I’m not talking about the scene in the book, but in the movie here. People are what’s terrifying about this scene, the people who make the decision to beat up Adrian and his boyfriend and dump Adrian off the bridge simply because they don’t like or accept that they’re gay. Pennywise did not even have to instigate this, he did not have to send homophobes after Adrian. The homophobes assaulted a gay couple of their own free will, because they wanted to, because of their hatred and ignorance. Pennywise just picked up the scraps. He ate Adrian because the poor guy was an easy meal, he was there already scared and beaten up, Pennywise was just hungry. But I still wish they’d left it out. The scene is used so Pennywise can be seen and word can get out so the Losers would know Pennywise was awake and come back to Derry. They could have done that another way without Pennywise eating Adrian.

I hated the scene as someone who despises homophobia. When Adrian kissed his boyfriend, people in the theater said “ew, gross” and I wasn’t the only one to report this experience, which breaks my heart. I was afraid these same assholes would applaud the beating that the homophobes in the movie gave Adrian and his boyfriend, and then cheer when Pennywise takes a bite out of Adrian, but thankfully, they did not. But imagine if they had cheered that.

I didn’t want the scene, because people would misinterpret it and they have. The New Pennywise became popular and there is a ton of merchandise out there right now for him because of the movie and the Halloween season. They've wanted to make money off this character, so making him seem homophobic isn't a good idea. Sure, some of us don't see him as homophobic. But people on here have already accepted him as homophobic as a reason that no one should like him, horror villain or not. This new Pennywise should not have been portrayed in any way that fans could interpret as homophobic. I know the scene is in the book, I understand why King wrote it, but it should've been left out of the movie that Penny eats the guy. There's too much awful shit in real life right now with bigotry. I'm solidly against bigotry, but if I like a character who's seen as even a little biogted, I'm saying it's okay, right? I know it's silly, we like him regardless of the fact that he eats people, especially children, but make him bigoted and you've went too far, but that's how it feels. It shouldn't matter if the killer clown monster who eats kids is homophobic or not, but it does.

A while ago, we were argued that Pennywise molests children and we shouldn't like him for this reason. This isn't true in any canon, for the book, the 90's one, or the remake. But antis used this argument. If they had made Pennywise an outright child molester in the remake, that wouldn’t have done well, I don't think. I wouldn't have liked him if they did that, maybe it's still silly, but that's how I feel. Take Freddy Krueger, he was never portrayed as a child molester in the original Robert Englund Nightmares. Once in part five The Dream Child he is called a child molester, but he never was. Wes Craven himself thought that would have been too awful. It would have been too far and Freddy may not have been as popular. The 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street does make Freddy a child molester, and I hated that they done that, I didn't like that Freddy and I still don't. I hate that remake, so I was glad they didn’t do this with Pennywise and just let his remake be awesome. I know it's strange, they can get away with killing people, but add in molesting children or bigotry and you've went too far. They're still villains, but not marketable villains. But Freddy and Pennywise can still be villains without crossing lines. Shit, Jason Vorheess kills anyone, he doesn’t care who’s gay or straight or what their color or gender is or about their political beliefs.

Pennywise also gets considered homophobic for killing Eddie, since it’s confirmed that at least Richie is gay and in love with Eddie. And since yeah, Pennywise taunts Richie with knowing his secret. Pennywise taunts adult him with knowing and outing him, but he doesn’t out Richie. Pennywise could have outed kid Richie to fucking Henry Bowers in the arcade. Point is, Freddy, Jason, Michael, etc have all killed poc, and have most likely killed gay people. They don’t really give a shit, everyone is fair game.

I’m fine with it, as I know it’s horror and I do not see Pennywise as homophobic, like I do not see him as a gay icon either. I see him as indifferent. I see him as a predator who doesn’t fucking care, he’ll use whatever he can to scare his victims so he can eat. He could’ve just as well went after the homophobes, and I’d been happier, but I still wouldn’t have saw him as a sudden gay icon.

I'd also like to clarify that the whole wanting to fuck Pennywise thing is also just a joke to me. It's not serious. Come on, this character isn't real. He's fictional. There is no way in the world I actually could fuck this character outside of someone dressing up for me and roleplaying. It's fantasy. I'm not delusional, I know it's not real or possible. I've said this many times, and once someone posted saying "oh, now they're mad that they can't fuck Pennywise cuz he's fictional." This isn't true, I'm not mad that I can't fuck Pennywise cuz he's fictional, that's stupid. This is pretend.

These opinions are my own, this is how I feel. And if you like this character, like him. Some people aren't gonna like that, but boo-fucking-whoo. They wanted Pennywise to be seen as a child molester to justify their bullying of people who like him. They want him to be homophobic for the same reasons.

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go-diane-winchester · 6 years ago

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My debate with a destiel shipper

@artificial-strawberry Thank you for your response, and not just cussing me out. It is nice to know what is going on in your head. First of all, neither I nor any of the other disgruntled fans I have encountered have any issues with ships. We have issues with militant destiel fans behaving in a way that we think might endanger Jensen and Jared. I have receipts on that.

People don't hate them for nothing. And I have never seen destiel shippers do posts about bad bullying and death threats online behavior towards Jensen. The good ones don't police their sides. They quickly say ''we are not all like that''. So please understand where my irritation is coming from. Mine and everyone else's.

Your response to ''Jensen can make decisions, including stopping destiel from becoming canon''.

You’re entitled to your own opinion. You don’t have to ship destiel. And you’re right, Jensen and the others do probably have a lot of power on the show, and maybe I should have phrased that more clearly: since I’ve seen some people blaming Jensen/Misha for not advocating for destiel bc ”they would be able to make it happen”, I wanted to point out that 1. they probably DON’T want to make it happen and 2. even IF they did, this is such a big decision that the writers/producers most likely wouldn’t listen to them if they were completely against it. Were the roles reversed, however, and the writers wanted to make destiel happen and the actors didn’t, then yes, Jensen and Misha probably could tell them not to do it if they didn’t want it to happen.

My response

Actually only Jensen, Jared and Bob Singer [unfortunately] are allowed to make decisions regarding the script. Misha is not a lead and no longer No 3 on the call sheet. He is a guest star [not a series regular] whose time on SPN has only increased because the season has been shortened. Contractually, he is still doing the same amount of work, but it just appears that he is making more appearances. This, according to the SPN spokesperson. He has no clout in the decision making process. This is what I find baffling about you, don't speak about Jensen and Misha equally when it comes to decision making. Misha has no power. Jensen has power. Speak about them individually. So yeah, Jensen can make changes. Misha, and he had said this so many times, has no power to make changes. Not only has he worked in fewer seasons. He has worked in less episodes.

Misha, according to another destiel fan, wants destiel to be canon. You are saying he doesn't. Meanwhile, Jensen gets an arson threat for telling the truth too many times. So no, this is not a live and let live situation. There is no destiel. It is a fanon ship, not a canon ship. And only Misha gave his fans the impression that it could be canon.

Your responses to ''Misha queer baited the shippers with his itch tweet and he consistently queer baits''.

What you said about Misha, I can’t necessarily verify. I haven’t seen all the things you talked about, but it is true that he has ”joked” about destiel in the past. I, too, at first was annoyed by it. You know, don’t talk about it so much if it’s never going to happen. But then I thought about it. And I realized that Misha is part of that ship. We are not. We can distance ourselves, he can not. He gets stories written about himself giving blowjobs to one of his best friends. We do not. So the fact that he jokes about the ship might be something he does in order to make fun of the thing that makes him uncomfortable. And I understand that.

You cant verify whether Misha sent out the tweet? But the tweet is what the hellers are complaining about. It is one of many instances that he has done that. Misha is only part of SPN. He is NOT part of a ship. He didn't sign a contract with destiel. And yes, he can totally distance himself from it. Who is holding a gun to his head. All he has to do is stop talking about it. J2 have been aware of wincest for 14 years. They have only mentioned it a handful of times, but only when they are asked about it, and yet they are aware of the stories and the fan art. They use the art to prank each other. But they don't discuss wincest with fans, because that is the intelligent thing to do. They don't want to give fans ideas. How come they managed to distance themselves. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, is ''compelling'' Misha to make everything about destiel and even Cockles, which he had no business speaking about either, because Cockles is a tinhat pairing. He is only one half of a pairing. And if the other half, Jensen speaks against destiel, Misha calls him a motherf*cker. I have receipts of that. Why would he do that? No one is forcing Misha. He is doing it for his own amusement. Who forced him to make the TSA movie. He is not making fun of destiel. He is pushing destiel, even though he is aware that people think he is queer baiting. He spoke about queer baiting. Don't you watch his panels? He calls the people who criticize him ''haters''.

Your response to Misha criticized SPN for being misogynistic in 2013.

I can’t really respond to this, since I haven’t seen it, so I can’t comment on it. I do want to ask though: how do you know he wasn’t reprimanded for that?

There were news reports written about this. Just google ''Misha Collins accuses Supernatural of being gratuitously misogynistic''. You will find the articles. It won't take you two minutes. What was the result of that? Misha fans, at his behest, starting rallying together to attack SPN for misogyny and demanded a spinoff. Their campaigning lasted three years. That spinoff is Wayward Daughters. It failed due to bad ratings because only Misha's fans truly wanted it. Everyone else didn't care. So the spinoff didn't have an audience. So Misha, and his big mouth, costed SPN time, money and resources but they can't get rid of him, because of Bob Singer, his wife Eugenie and her writing partner, Buckner. That is probably why older SPN writers like Sera Gamble, Ben Edlund and Jeremy Carver just left. They got fed up of dealing with Misha's antics and constantly shoehorning Cas into a script and they know it. Bob keeps Misha and Cas on board.

Your response to ''The show is not queer baiting you with metaphors, purples shirts and parallels etc''

The queerbaiting issue is difficult, I’ll say that. All I can really comment on is that I believe the show queerbaits - whether they do it on purpose or not is another thing. You’re allowed to believe that the show doesn’t and that’s cool. You’re also allowed to believe the show is perfect and has no flaws - also cool. I don’t. And that’s that. Agree to disagree.

Oh no honey. That is not how it works. Queer baiting should not be based on your opinions and beliefs. You are tarnishing a show's name and yet you can't provide examples of how they are queer baiting you? No, that is a cop out of a response if I ever heard one. Recently, MM spoke about Supernatural's ''notorious'' queer baiting. Not because they have seen queer baiting, but because of Destiel shipper's social media trends. The destiel shippers actually trended the topic of Jensen being a homophobe and MM picked up of that. All because he is not giving in to Destiel. That is sexual harassment. They are destroying his reputation because he is refusing something sexual that they want. Go look up the word social rape. That is what is happening here. I am shaking my head because you based a large part of your argument on queer baiting and yet you cant speak about it. I cant believe you just said ''agree to disagree''.

Your last response

And finally: I get it. You’re protective of the boys. You love them and you love the show. I don’t want to attack you and I don’t want to even try and convince you to agree with me. You’re you and I’m me and we don’t think alike and that’s fine. All I want to say is that in the future, please reconsider before calling someone names or urging people to block them. I’m a big girl; I can handle it. But there are so many little kids and young teens on this site who are vulnerable and might not be able to just brush it off.

You hate name calling. Well, then you must despise the hellers. They ship shame. They tell the wincest fans to kill themselves. They tell Jared, a suicidal man, to kill himself. And they threatened Jensen's life multiple times. I have receipts on my blog. They even threatened to kidnap Jared and his children. And they base their actions on headcanons. That is why I call out headcanons. I have likeminded people following my blog. One of them directed me to your mistagged post. I didn't find you myself. They are fed up of destiel shippers mistagging their posts. And they use my posts, calling out these shippers, to block because filtering tags doesn't work. Why do you think Destiel is called DeanCas, CasDean, DeanxCastiel and various other derivatives? So that a non-shipper would be unable to block them. They indoctrinate people. By the way, ''little kids'' are not supposed to be on Tumblr. Its a violation if they are. You should know that. And teens are not babies. Just a few days back, I reported a teen destiel shipper for threatening to kill SPN creators because they are not making destiel canon. Tumblr, according to one of my readers, responded. So no, if you misbehave on Tumblr, you should be called out for it. Tag your post properly. Because all that plus the online threats and excusing Misha's horrendous behavior is making your side intolerable. People aren't getting angry for nothing. People who were neutral on the subject,now hate it because of the tagging. They don't even know about the threats. Destiel, like a fly in their face, all the time, bothers them.

All in all, it was nice engaging with destiel shipper for a change, because they usually don't engage in discourse. They just tell me to eff off. So thank you for that. I wish I heard more about the queer baiting, because another shipper I am currently talking to also is shirking that part about the discussion. Which I find very quizzical.

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battlestar-royco · 6 years ago

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Who would you say is worse: SJM or Cassandra Clare?

Oh gosh, this is hard. It really depends on the definition of “worse.” Are we talking in terms of craft, worldbuilding, problematic tropes, behavior? Because I think sometimes one is worse than the other. So I’ll compare both in all those respects.

In terms of craft, I think SJ/M is worse because the writing style of T0G is readable while AC0FAS is a nightmarish slog. From what I can judge, CC’s style has improved between TMI and TDA, or at least has remained the same. A lot of reviewers hold the opinion that TID’s writing, characterizations, and worldbuilding are far better than TMI, so that’s what I’m basing this judgment on. I’m not a fan of CC’s abundant, try-hard similes, nor of her dialogue tags constantly interrupting her characters’ speech (like, “And therein,” Jace smiled sardonically, “lies the very problem.” This isn’t an actual quote, but just an example of a writing pattern she overuses to an obnoxious point). In SJ/M’s case, her writing has devolved. Into monotonous sentences. Like this. Which occur so often that. They basically take up the entire book. And lose their clarity. And dramatic effect. So, both of these authors have annoying tendencies and overused words/metaphors, like all authors do. But I think SJ/M’s writing issues are more extreme because while Eclair does noticeably overuse certain literary devices, Mess and her editors have allowed her “style” to take precedence over clarity.

As for worldbuilding, my gut reaction is to say CC is worse, but they’re honestly both so bad for so many reasons. It’s no secret that SJ/M’s worlds are background dressing for smut, lacking names for significant places and characters, logical social structure and magic, and pretty much anything unique to the overall canon of fantasy. Plus, there’s the undeniable and disgusting magnitude of cultural appropriation in SJ/M’s books. However, T0G and AC0TAR haven’t caused SJ/M multiple lawsuits due to plagiarism like TMI, and she hasn’t lifted almost verbatim paragraphs from other works like CC has. (Look into the anti cc tag or literally just google “Casserole Eclair plagiarism” and plenty of sources will show up.) Ffs, Eclair’s TMI characters look and act exactly like HP characters, with 75% the same magic, aesthetic, and social order as the HP world. Maybe her new stuff is moving away from the HP-inspired original S/hadowhunters books, but it irks me to no end that CC built a career and an entire franchise with a movie and TV show on ideas and characters that are clearly not hers. So, both of these authors are lazy and problematic worldbuilders for different reasons which I find similarly terrible.

I don’t know if I want to compare SJ/M and CC’s racist/sexist/homophobic etc writing because after a certain point it doesn’t matter who wrote what and why and how, or who’s worse, but that they did it and it’s in readers’ minds. Both of them have a ton of published books under their belts with incredibly homophobic (here used as an umbrella term for all the queer-phobic shit they’ve written), racist, and misogynistic/sexist characters, lines, and plots. According to current readers of CC, she has been making efforts to improve her rep, so good on her, but that still doesn’t undo the way she discusses her past and current mistakes (like how she called show Alec a rapist????? and she blocks fans who dare to question her rep??). As evidenced by AC0WAR, SJ/M has been making incredibly half-assed attempts to improve her rep, which in the long run only make her worse. So yeah both of them are trash in this regard.

I think in terms of treatment of fans, CC is worse. Both authors are bad, but where SJ/M is an ambivalent bystander, CC is and has always been a very public bully. SJ/M doesn’t interact much with her fans at all and she’s not there for them like other authors are, but she doesn’t have to do either of those things. Do I agree with those decisions/would I do that myself if I were in her position? I don’t think so. But what changes Mess’s behavior from ambivalent to bad is that she suspiciously backed out of social media as people started to critique her rep, and that she only updates her fans on her latest vacation spot and when they can next spend $24 on her fae porn. She uses her social media absence to starve her fans of creator-fan interaction to the point that they’re willing to pay exorbitant amounts to see her answer the same five questions about R0wan’s dick instead of engaging in a conversation about something actually useful to them like craft or diversity. Meanwhile, CC has gotten into terrible Twitter/Insta fights with her fans, acts incredibly condescending to anyone who disagrees with her, often takes the victim role when people call her out, and a buuuunch of other terrible stuff (again, anti cc tag and google have extensive receipts).

So who is worse? I think I have to say CC, on the grounds that she reaches a wider audience and has had a longer career during which to exhibit terrible behavior. But honestly SJ/M and CC are my two least favorite YA authors at the moment, and just because one is worse than another in certain respects doesn’t mean they’re not both bad. They’re simply bad in different ways, imo. But I think the reason why SJ/M’s anti community is bigger (or at least it seems that way to me) is because she has shown less effort to improve and a lot of people in the YA book community as a whole have more respect for CC’s books than SJ/M’s because CC has been around longer and has a bigger fanbase. I hope that answers your question!

#sorry this took me ages to get to; i had a lot of reading for school!#asks #anti sjm #anti cassandra clare #anti cc #anti tmi #anti tog #anti acotar

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