#someone who i can have a nuanced conversation with

[rahleeyah]

What are your thoughts about Elliot Stabler consistently being labelled as 'toxic' for Olivia Benson? Despite all their differences, I always have found him to be very caring and respectful towards her.

Well my first thought is who is saying this consistently? Anyone who calls Elliot - not the EO relationship, not them together, but Elliot specifically - toxic is not someone whose opinion I value, really. That's not someone who sees him, who can actually recall his on screen actions or his words. That's someone who has an idea of who he is that is separate from what we actually know about him and like. Sure that's frustrating but we can't change everybody's mind and we'll go crazy trying. So like. Let em be wrong, you know.

Yes, Elliot was good for Liv. He looked after her. Sure she didn't advance in the job, didn't have a stable long term romantic relationship while they were partners, but to pin the blame for that on Elliot is reductionist and frankly a lil immature. Liv didn't have those things bc she didn't want them; she had what she wanted already. Elliot never stopped her from going for Sergeant; she never gave any indication that she wanted to! And for all that we talk about jelliot, the only time we actually see him give any of her boyfriends shit is Porter, who he already disliked for reasons unrelated to Porter fucking Liv, and we never saw him say anything negative to Liv about the men she was with. Hell, even Kurt, he goes to see Kurt bc he wants Kurt to help Olivia, and he is not unkind or violent or loud or anything toxic during that interaction.

It's back to Huang's classic question: how does she make you do anything? Huang helps Elliot realize Liv wasn't making him do anything; Elliot was making his own choices bc he cared for her. Olivia made her own choices bc she cared for him. Not seeing that, blaming Elliot for that, is a denial of Liv's agency over her own life.

Did they fight? Sure!! But for every sharp word he ever said to her she threw her own right back; he wasn't victimizing her. They were equals!! And equally complicit!

Now if you want to call their relationship toxic, sure, I've done that myself - half joking, but only half. It's toxic in the way they shut everyone else out, lie for each other, break the law for each other. Toxic in the way that if this was real life you probably wouldn't want to be friends with them bc my God, the drama. But it is not toxic in the sense that they hurt each other.

I think it boils down to the fact that people have an idea of Elliot, an idea they don't like, and in this current media climate standard practice is to moralize our preferences. If I don't like this thing it must be morally wrong. I am good and pure and right, and anything I don't like is evil and fucked up and wrong. It removes nuance from the conversation. It's not serious commentary.

[mythalism]

i feel like i can maybe bring some comfort or at least some clarity to that anon & other fans taking datv so hard as someone who's been playing EA's sims: fortnite for like. a decade.

for those who don't like life simming games i have to preface this by saying the first three sims games had their own lore, timelines, easter eggs and theories and storylines imbedded into the world to make it feel more livelier and less of a Click Here Go Here game. when EA took over maxis they covered sims 3 with paywalled bullshit known as "sims points" where you unlock base game content / new towns through. paying money to get fake money.

anyway. when sims 4 came out we didn't have toddlers, pools, or shit that was basically a base game item since the sims 2. but the create a sim was soooooo immersive!!!! and that was kind of the biggest marketing for the game (lolz. deja vu anyone) and for about three years EA & the sims devs gaslit the players into saying shit like a pool or a roofing system were just too difficult to include. as someone who's spent an atrocious amount of money on sims DLC, much of which for the past 5 years has been broken, as in, your game fucking crashes and is unplayable, broken and still unfixed, i had no hope for veilguard lol.

like i'm not gonna lie, we got fucked, like royally, and i expected no less. but considering that ea has managed to strip the soul of a game which the entire point of is "create your own world!" and you can't even do that without 30GB of immersion mods and custom content, i'd say bioware did an ok job at keeping veilguard slightly above the Fuck You, Pay Me EA gaming model.

i also have to say ea as a parent company does not care about players. i don't know the intricacies of why they bought bioware and maxis apart from the fact that they held franchise potential, and i don't pretend to know. but EA's end goal with veilguard was always to milk it as much as they can from the baseline consumer (fifa, battlefield, that dogshit star wars multiplayer) and not bioware enjoyers.

i won't talk ab the writing bc everytime i hear "it's up to interpretation" all i hear is either we were forbidden from having difficult/nuanced conversations about anything or we ourselves don't care enough because the state & quality of bioware's writing has always been subpar and constantly pandering to a very specific audience that think racially or sexually diverse character = pinnacle of good writing & representation even if said character has nothing else going on storywise (like how taash's quest is literally just WOE. ROOK CHOOSES THEIR IDENTITY with no nuance or care to tell their story outside or LGBT BE UPON YE or MISGENDER BE UPON YE if you don't do their quest, or the returning hypersexualization of isabela being ignored cus yaasss slayyy girl power. it's empowering to wear a bra & thong during battle! pussy out during the blight shes a thief but shes so kind and woke and cares about the little man!!!!)

also the allegories for elves, dwarves & qun as people of color esp indigenous people when a huge chunk of biowares writing & creative dept is all white people. well. ✋🙂‍↔️ let me be quiet lest the ire of VOTE YOUR WAY INTO THE REVOLUTION crowd finds me. but it's always been questionable it's just more obvious now with EA breathing down their neck like a velociraptor bc they need that sweet sweet MAGA money they get from musty 30yo men stroking it to FIFA24 to invest in veilguard

nodding along sagely. i was a sims 2 & 3 lover as a child and i bought 4 when it came out, played it for like 2 days and never picked it up again lol so i fully agree that dragon age made it out pretty damn good in comparison on its fourth entry. i also agree that we should be careful to absolve bioware as a studio itself too much.... the games have always been full of racism, misogyny, islamophobia and generally insensitive and reckless portrayals of real-life cultures and issues for the sake of their games. veilguard, i think, takes that deserved criticism and course corrects in the complete wrong direction - instead of correcting the racism they uhhhhhhh just got rid of any sort of sociopolitical commentary. and actually kept the racism so it didnt even work. anyway. yeah companies dont care about us LOL. but thats why we have each other here on this silly website <3

[just-your-average-tangerine]

There's nothing quite as healing as two trans people being mildly transphobic towards a third trans person who happens to be a dick about gender and transness

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Council of lovefools.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[puppyeared]

i feel like im not making any sense but does anyone else feel like there are stories that let u run with them and ones that spell everything out for you

[dykedvonte]

Ty for answering my asks! Recently, I saw some fanart of the gender bendered crew and it got me curios, how much would the plot change if Jimmy was a woman. I mean, she would still be emotionally abusive (esp to Fem!Curly), but at lest, I guess, the crash would've never happened (?)

Also, her relationship w/ Anya: if she was assulted still, it prolly would've been dissmissed, since it's between 2 women. Or, if Anya is male in this scenario, he couldn't really be able to talk abt it, since society decided that "women can't r*pe men", so it's not serious and he should suck it up. Man, it's just sucks to be Anya in any scenario my poor girl 😭

What do you think? If you have an opinion on that at all, that is

-💀

I think the scenario's where the gender was flipped or any level of gender based intersectionality is expanded makes it so much more complex.

If this is the scenario with fem!Jimmy, it comes with the territory of questionable internalized homophobia. Does Jimmy brush it off in this scenario because she doesn't think lesbian encounters are real ones? Is she struggling with her identity and taking it out on Anya who may be openly queer compared a fem!Curly who is either straight or just not interested in Jimmy? Perhaps it's a sort of weird entitled that can occur in female dominated spaces "We're both girls, I know what you have, it won't matter." It's still is something I don't see Jimmy denying in this scenario, he never really denies it in canon just talks around it with Curly. Here I can see it's less about the pregnancy and more so about the internalized homophobia. Not seeing Anya as anything but an unwanted aspect of her femineity and the allure of it, there's a lot more objectification of both Curly and Anya in this alteration as I would believe feels better thinking of them in that light if they are just fodder in her mind. Guilty pleasures that no longer bring her such. It's a careful situation because I don't want this to fall into predatory lesbian stereotyping, Jimmy is just a person who does not respect other people or their choice, if it conflict with what he wants or perceived is owed.

The idea of Curly having to report it and outing her not only as a rapist but queer and the denial, especially in the case Anya and Curly are both out as she feels a sort of resentment she can't be secure with herself that way. If it is masc!Curly, there could be the jealousy of him being able to actively pursue relationships he wants while she feels she can't, Anya and Curly playfully flirt, its casual but it's something she longs for in the same way she doesn't. She obsesses over Curly because she wishes she could be Curly in a social sense in both aspect male or female Curly.

If it's fem!Jimmy and masc!Anya? It's a much more delicate situation. In this scenario Jimmy gets pregnant. Maybe Anya does a blood test after the incident and finds out Jimmy is pregnant. It's a very sensitive matter because if it's fem!Curly her first assumption is Anya may have done something. That is just the immediate assumptions in cases like this. I think the fact that Anya is telling her would make Curly think it's not that simple, especially since Jimmy isn't brining it up or really caring but everyone reacts differently. Jimmy is pregnant however, and that's a big deal, she'll figure that out eventually on her own but how will she react? Curly knows it won't be good, Anya knows too.

I think the crash is instigated in this scenerio by fem!Curly actually doing more, refusing to sweep it under the rug because she can conceptualize that fear, likely she and Jimmy are the only girls on board. She trusts everyone, well did trust everyone, but it's just something you live with. She can't just live with that double standard but I feel like she really doesn't know how to address it. How does she bring it up to superiors without implicating Anya? What does she do with Jimmy, it still feels like she's catering to Jimmy but now the concern is primarily focused on the life this baby will be born into. If it is born at all. I don't think Jimmy would try to kill Anya in this concept but try to spin the narrative it was mutual up until she got pregnant. Curly doesn't really buy it but it's a lot of processing, a lot more he said she said but what Jimmy is saying just doesn't make sense. It gives Jimmy too much time to really settle with the fact she's pregnant and likely can't support a kid nor wants to give birth out in space. Jimmy feeling like she's being othered from the only other woman could also be a factor, maybe even starting into her thinking Curly is behaving like a "pick-me" for siding with a guy over her. The crash is more spiteful in terms of having to protect herself alone, due to Curly not outright supporting her delusions.

It really adds a certain horror to Jimmy's pregnancy hallucinations because after the crash they are about her, her symptoms the sign of showing. She doesn't want the child either and considering what being pregnant can do to your mental/physical state, especially some of the more negative symptoms, I doubt she is handling it well. A lot of Anya's struggles are with the stigmas around male victims. His body reacted so did he want it? He's gonna be a father and courts likely will make him pay or care for the baby even if they take Anya's side, their world is just like that. Would the other's blame him for not doing more, he is a man after all? Should he be considered lucky a woman was that into him? It's eating away at him because not only does he not feel safe, he actively blames himself.

In the case Curly is still a cis guy, its that weird feeling guys often get when talking about male victims of assault. I don't think he'd victim blame but he likely asks or thinks about how it could've happened, why wouldn't Anya just overpower Jimmy? Maybe he couldn't? Maybe Anya didn't have it in him to strike a woman. He wouldn't. Now he thinks of what he would have done if Jimmy did something like that to him. SImilary to my trans!Curly post, he's wondering if it could've been him. It's likely one of the first times in his life he has to think of that type of vulnerability in terms of himself and other men and against likely his girl best friend. I think that arm pat right before Jimmy crashes the ship would really make him feel weird, not like he'd have the time to really dig into those feeling but y'know WERE GONNA CRASH!!!.

In terms of Jimmy and Curly's specific relationship, it just gets messier if they aren't both guys or girls. There's a lot of misogny on Jimmy's side with fem!Curly. He often points out she's a woman captain or makes a point of her being one of the few independent woman in her field and how certain men hate that. It's insidious but Curly doesn't think about or like to cause she likes to believe Jimmy isn't one of those guys. He can be a bit antiquated, maybe a bit of a pig but no ones perfect! Here a lot of his resentment is more gear toward a woman having that power over him as Captain/filling the typical male roles he fails at. He can't stand that she's above him in almost aspect and he likely takes it out on other women. Similarly, fem!Jimmy and cis Curly is just as bad. It's a fact of not knowing if she wants to be him, wants him or wants to destroy him. It's obsession without anything positive. She feels entitled to his space and life and time and he has a hard time setting up boundaries cause, well, Jimmy's a girl, his bestfriend and it comes with all the stigmas around boygirl best friends. To him it's a sort of oppressive doting, he feels wrong telling her not to pick and like he's being controlling. That's how she'd spin it whenever he'd try to make boundaries with her.

They are still just friends but most people can't tell even if they can tell it's not healthy, in both cases. Either way I feel like if they were opposite genders to each other there would a specific infatuation Jimmy would have with Curly that would be less hidden but sort of unaddressed because the idea of Curly rejecting them would make them lash out in a way Curly may just leave for their safety. It's also Jimmy wouldn't want to be with Curly specifically but just want what would consistently provide/available.

If they are both girls, its envy. It's that sort of hate that someone fits the standards you don't, wanting them to be picked second or crack. She likes to get into Curly's head, point out flaws and act like it's just her being helpful. She wants Curly to be a girls girl but only for her. There's a sort of possessiveness like purposely jeopardizing relationships because why would a man come first? That girl hates me and is a pick me, why are you friends with her still, Curly? Like this is silly but think about how Regina George treats Gretchen Wieners and that's effectively how fem!Curly and fem!Jimmy would work but technically Curly has the sway of Regina.

I believe the crash would always happen. Jimmy would try to escape responsibility or really thinking about what they did in any world, any gender. It's about facing the consequences, losing things he refuses to let go of or having to deal with responsibilities he's not ready for. The switching of sex or gender really doesn't change those core aspects.

[yuri-for-businesswomen]

someone has never lived with a coke addict. lmao

no but for real i see these posts a lot and while the basic idea is 100 % correct (drug addiction and homelessness are not personal or moral failures and people affected deserve respect and dignity), they usually take a direction or have implications i dont agree with.

first off, drug addiction is not a class issue. people of all backgrounds are drug addicts. ceos too. so i dont know what this has to do with leftism? as someone who struggles with substance abuse and for that reason has lived with and been around addicts, there are good reasons for people to be biased against them. in active addiction, many people are erratic, unpredictable, and egoistic. being wary of active addicts is self-preservation, not „bourgeois“ or whatever the reference to leftism is supposed to imply. this is also partly a gendered issue because men tend to exhibit addiction, egoism, and aggression at higher rates than women.

secondly, especially at the intersection of homelessness and drug addiction - i see a lot of these posts taking the direction of „mind your business if a homeless man is next to you mumbling to himself“ etc - it seems these people also romanticise what drug addiction with nothing to lose can do to a person. a friend of mine was hit in the face by a homeless man walking by, someone else i know was stabbed by a homeless man after they took him in. just because someone is underprivileged you dont have to stop listening to your insticts and keeping your distance to erratic and intoxicated men who seem like they might do something unpredictable. this doesnt just mean homeless men by the way, i dont trust any men exhibiting this behavior, and yeah would possibly call the cops if someone like that hung around my home or work (never have though).

on the other hand, when a homeless woman was hanging out in the hallway i let her be. my neighbor wanted to call the cops but i told her not to. personally i dont even care if she shoots up there, but if i had kids i might not want her around either.

are homeless drug addicts vulnerable and more likely to be harmed than harm someone else? yeah. do cops and doctors treat homeless people like shit? yeah. these are important conversations to have, but i wish they would happen without romantisation.

talk to any woman who has worked with homeless men, myself included - marginalisation is not virtue. many still harrass and even assault women. and these posts never take a gendered perspective: how most homeless and drug addicted women land in prostitution, how they are not safe in homeless shelters because of the men, etc.

im not saying op here said all of this but from the tone (and the tags and reblogs) it struck me as one of those posts that shames people for being alert around drug addicts and alcoholics when there is ample reason to, especially if youre a woman and theyre a man. and they never take a gendered perspective which is really important in this context, as it usually is.

[widevibratobitch]

me when im obsessed with dead singers from 50 (well... mostly 70-120) years ago and im heartbroken to know i'll never see them on stage... never hear them breathe, never see them sweat, never even touch the hem of their garment...

it really is enough to drive a person mad...

[psalmsofpsychosis]

one thing about me is, i'll always always always value creativity and experimental ideas and stories and new structure-breaking narratives above established "commonly valued" creations, even if the creative idea's execution is less than ideal, even if the established story is "perfect and spotless". Like, i literally dont care, unconventional and paculiar and unexpected works of art are infinitely more valuable to me whether in subpar execution state or in perfect structure. If you did it differently and did it your way your creation will always be more important to me than any predictable and "proper" narrative made in complete and utter obedience of well reinforced explicit and implicit rules. "this is very well made in all the technicalities look at all these clean details—" catch me give a fuck. It's cliche, repetitive, it's boring, i dont care. We live in a time where obedience of known metrics seemingly ranks higher than any form of outside-the-box creativity and i'm done with it. Say something new, say something personal, say something earnest and paculiar and weird or i'm out of this theater.

[angel---eater]

Being consistently misgendered in DBT is slowly driving me insane.

[lettersiarrange]

Since I just checked my ask box for the first time in a hot minute:

Just a note that tumblr doesn't tell me when I have new asks or messages and I rarely check my notifications. Helpful corrections of misinformation/any messages in good faith are appreciated (though it's possible I won't see them until weeks later, sorry), but if something I reblog angers you enough you feel the need to get hostile in my askbox on anon, I reccomend the unfollow button.

I'm also not comfortable posting asks asking for any sort of donations/directing people to your blog for donation purposes, sorry :// I just don't have time to vet asks like that

[were--ralph]

why exactly do you dislike generative art so much? i know its been misused by some folks, but like, why blame a tool because it gets used by shitty people? Why not just... blame the people who are shitty? I mean this in genuinely good faith, you seem like a pretty nice guy normally, but i guess it just makes me confused how... severe? your reactions are sometimes to it. There's a lot of nuance to conversation about it, and by folks a lot smarter than I (I suggest checking out the Are We Art Yet or "AWAY" group! They've got a lot on their page about the ethical use of Image generation software by individuals, and it really helped explain some things I was confused about). I know on my end, it made me think about why I personally was so reactive about Who was allowed to make art and How/Why. Again, all this in good faith, and I'm not asking you to like, Explain yourself or anything- If you just read this and decide to delete it instead of answering, all good! I just hope maybe you'll look into *why* some people advocate for generative software as strongly as they do, and listen to what they have to say about things -🦜

if Ai genuinely generated its own content I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it, however what Ai currently does is scrape other people's art, collect it, and then build something based off of others stolen works without crediting them. It's like. stealing other peoples art, mashing it together, then saying "this is mine i can not only profit of it but i can use it to cut costs in other industries.

this is more evident by people not "making" art but instead using prompts. Its like going to McDonalds and saying "Burger. Big, Juicy, etc, etc" then instead of a worker making the burger it uses an algorithm to build a burger based off of several restaurant's recepies.

example

the left is AI art, the right is one of the artists (Lindong) who it pulled the art style from. it's literally mass producing someone's artstyle by taking their art then using an algorithm to rebuild it in any context. this is even more apparent when you see ai art also tries to recreate artists watermarks and generally blends them together making it unintelligible.

Aside from that theres a lot of other ethical problems with it including generating pretty awful content, including but not limited to cp. It also uses a lot of processing power and apparently water? I haven't caught up on the newer developements i've been depressed about it tbh

Then aside from those, studios are leaning towards Ai generation to replace having to pay people. I've seen professional voice actors complain on twitter that they haven't gotten as much work since ai voice generation started, artists are being cut down and replaced by ai art then having the remaining artists fix any errors in the ai art.

Even beyond those things are the potential for misinformation. Here's an experiment: Which of these two are ai generated?

ready?

These two are both entirely ai generated. I have no idea if they're real people, but in a few months you could ai generate a Biden sex scandal, you could generate politics in whatever situation you want, you can generate popular streamers nude, whatever. and worse yet is ai generated video is already being developed and it doesn't look bad.

I posted on this already but as of right now it only needs one clear frame of a body and it can generate motion. yeah there are issues but it's been like two years since ai development started being taken seriously and we've gotten to this point already. within another two years it'll be close to perfected. There was even tests done with tiktokers and it works. it just fucking works.

There is genuinely not one upside to ai art. at all. it's theft, it's harming peoples lives, its harming the environment, its cutting jobs back and hurting the economy, it's invading peoples privacy, its making pedophilia accessible, and more. it's a plague and there's no vaccine for it. And all because people don't want to take a year to learn anatomy.

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

Rook isn’t a Dragon Age protagonist. Rook is designed to be a stand-in for people who never played Dragon Age, don’t care about diving deep into the lore, and aren’t interested in the romance mechanics. Rook is designed to be said bland avatar so that non-DA fans (who for some fucking reason decided to pick up and play Dragon Age 4 FIRST) have a pawn to control and navigate through the world in the most superficial and rudimentary manner possible. The way Solas is positioned in this game—which was originally pitched as him being the central antagonist all those years ago,—is evidence of this. Your Rook is deeply unconnected to Solas emotionally, mirroring how disconnected and uninvested a newbie player would be coming into this story blind at the climax of this decade long story. Even non-Solasmancers had a deep connection to Solas, whether as a friend or annoying thorn in their side.

The way that Rook is set up—someone who has no connection to Solas and can thus ‘do what’s necessary because sentiment is not clouding their judgment’—is coincidentally reflected further in the meta in that Rook, you, also end up functioning as having surface-level shallow connection to everything else in the game and world. You exist technically, you interact with it, but the world is rendered so bland, the dialogue so basic and repetitive and uninsightful, the roleplaying so limited, you might as well not truly exist in the Dragon Age world.

For a character so layered and so intriguing, Solas is sidelined and all greater access to him cut off. The golden opportunity to truly give us that Bioware levels of character exploration we saw in Trespasser by having us interact and speak frequently with this ‘Dread Wolf’ Solas—to interrogate him, to converse, debate, question— was never adopted in favor of…I guess flashy combat and pretty set dressings.

Elden Ring pulled off this angle of “late to the party” gimmick because Elden Ring did the heavy lifting of jamming several games’ worth of history and world-building into it. Veilguard plays both sides: “Eh, you’re a returning player so we’re not gonna go into much detail. You know how it is.” and “Eh, you’re a new player. Don’t sweat yourself on the actual in-depth history and nature of things established by the prior media. We know you’ve rotted your brain with a pure diet of MCU and tiktoks for at least a decade, so we’ve gone and removed the thoughtful nuanced spices and unique properties of the story so you can dive right in to the generic fantasy action rpg moba-like slop’.

Rook is the least real protagonist I have ever encountered in a supposed RP-heavy RPG. There are faceless boys in harem anime with more personality and weight and presence in their worlds than Rook.

[zipper-neck]

Trans Rules of Engagement

By Florence Ashley

Strong communities make us all safer. As anti-trans movements gain in power and influence, holding space for each other through our flaws remains critical. Yet the very conditions that create our need for community care make it hard for us to care for each other. We are raw, wounded, traumatized, and hypervigilant. We make mistakes brought on by fear and hurt. We lash out at each other when we do wrong, often partaking in pile-ons facilitated by the synchronous nature of online interactions. Whether we realize it or not, we often exclude trans people from community when they need it most.

I have lost count of the number of trans people I have seen cast out of online trans spaces for misdeeds both major and minor—far too often with my help. I sometimes find myself wondering where they are now and whether they are still alive. Because, as Kai Cheng Thom has taught us, social death often means real death for trans people. Trans communities are life-sustaining in a world that hates us so, so much. In a world that wants us dead. We have lost too many people not to stop and think about how we can foster life among each other.

This goal I have for myself—that of fostering life—motivates the following principles and rules for engaging in online intra-community conflicts while preserving the life-sustaining spirit of our communities. Countless times have I failed to heed these principles and ignored these rules. This failure, which many of us share, is precisely why I now want to lay these principles and rules down on paper. If only as a reminder of my aspirations. The principles and rules are meant to be adopted for oneself, not imposed onto others. Their purpose is to foster productive engagement, not create even more conflict and rigidity. I hope that this will be a living document, and invite you to make your own version if you would like. Borrow what is useful, supplement with what is needed, alter what can be improved.

Some, and perhaps all, of the principles I acknowledge are false, hence the need for a living document. Each of my suggested rules have exceptions. In setting them out, I am staking a claim as to the sort of myths and half-truths that are necessary to sustain life in a world that wants us dead. We must treat them as true if we wish to foster life-sustaining communities and survive the hellscape we belabor.

Principles

1. We are all flawed, traumatized humans at the end of their rope. Many of our actions say more about the conditions we live under than who we are as people.

2. No one is disposable. No one is unsalvageable.

3. Life holds greater value than being right or comfortable. Hurt is preferable to death.

4. No one should be deprived of community.

5. Harm does not require further harm. Punishment does not equate protection or healing.

Rules

1. Do not depart from these rules, unless you have to.

2. Morgan M. Page’s Rule: Try to avoid criticizing other trans people in public. The world does it enough already.

3. Favor in person or private conversations: Addressing someone’s comments or actions in person or privately is typically more constructive and effective. It allows you to communicate more cogently and with more nuance problems in someone’s actions or words and because it is less likely to make them react defensively from a place of trauma or fear.

4. Take your time: Few things require an immediate response. Responding while caught in a surge of thoughts and feelings is often unproductive. Ask yourself how much harm was done, versus how much we are reminded of an earlier harm. Ask whether your response is rooted in misperception or potential biases towards the person due to race, disability, gender, or other marginalized identities. Consider whether their words or actions reflect a different kind of thinking or communication style, a lack of access to education, or limited access to progressive communities and norms. You can respond tomorrow, once you have collected your thoughts, talked to others, and gained perspective.

5. Don’t mob: Be aware of group dynamics. Ask yourself if you are connected to this person and in community with them. Avoid jumping into the fray when others are already criticizing the person. Do not invite others to join in and mob them. Withdraw if others join in, and kindly ask people to stay conscious of mobbing dynamics. Mobbing rapidly grows out of proportion.

6. De-escalate: Focus on de-escalating conflicts. Ask what people mean or want, and why. Ask them for clarification or elaboration if needed. Ask yourself if you know enough about the context of the situation. Distinguish the action from the person, and acknowledge that it is normal to respond defensively or aggressively to public criticism and mobbing. People are traumatized, mentally ill, and are scared of losing the little social support they have. As a result, conflict can trigger a fight-or-flight response in both those who are criticized and who criticize, which leads to escalating conflict and ends in a loss of community. Dropping the conversation to return at a later date is preferable to escalation. Often, I find it best to limit myself to three replies in conversations that aren’t constructive.

7. Respond proportionately: Responses to words and behaviours should be proportionate to their harm, and reflect a need for healing and protection rather than punishment. When we speak from a place of hurt, we can understandably but unfortunately forget the measure and impact of our response. Use language that reflects the nuances and gradations of harm rather than a coarse good and evil binary. Cutting all social support and community banishment are rarely a proportionate response, even for someone who doubles down and does not apologize. Responding proportionately is asking first and foremost what response sustains rather than dissolves life. Especially when it comes to words, it is better to under-react than to over-react.

8. Ensure support for everyone: Check in on those who are criticized and those who criticize them. Remind people that we are all in this together, and that banishment is not how we work as a community. Everyone deserves to have their needs met. Do not shun or reproach people who offer support to those who were criticized or called out. Distinguish supporting a person from enabling their behavior.

9. Hold space for people to grow: Allow space for people to be accountable, change, and move on from previous conflicts. Do not hold past behavior over people’s head, nor dig up past misdeeds to fuel present conflicts.

10. Resolve conflict and harm as a community: We must ask how our communities enable and cause hurt and harm, and find ways to transform the conditions that create them. Holding accountable, problem-solving, and conflict resolution are functions that should be taken up by the collective, not isolated and unsupported individuals.

11. Center those most hurt or harmed: Focus on supporting and empowering people who are hurt and harmed rather than on punishment. Ask what they need to be safe and integrated in our communities, while committing to support for everyone; what they need to repair their relationship to the person who hurt or harmed them. Focus your involvement on bringing people together, fostering dialogue and mutual understanding, and restoring a sense of community togetherness, rather than deciding who is right or wrong.♦

[kanmom51]

Jikook came home

God, how I missed this.

How I miss them!!

Before getting into the whole JM post followed by the cute-flirty interaction that followed, I will take this opportunity in congratulating both JM and JK for their MAMA awards achievements.

JM winning Daesang fans choice of the year.🎉🎉

JK winning top 10 fans choice, best male artist and best dance performance (SNTY).🎉🎉

JM being the sweetheart that he is came to us with a lengthy post to thank Army for voting and receiving a Daesang.

There are a couple of nuanced differences in some of the translations, but all in all, they are pretty much on the same page.

The main difference I've seen is the translation of this part:

벙벙 벙벙 벙벙벙벙벙

Being it "dumbfounded" or "stunned" or "bemused".

I think this probably captures it best:

And then we had JK....

Who was most likely sitting there right by JM's side, the speed of their back and forth being one of the indications to that (we are talking within seconds here), not to mention patterns of past behaviour with those two.

Do we discuss for a second the Weverse translation of the discussion?

Like wtf? 🤣🤣

Ok, so the actual translation would be:

Insert the word of bemusement of your choice I guess, lol. But basically we have JM telling us he's stunned/dumbfounded and mainly happy and then that back and forth between those two right in front of our salads.

Oh, and can someone explain the @JK to me please? I mean, I get JM @JK -ing when posting his replies, but why the hell is JK @JK -ing when posting his replies to JM?🤣🤣

The way those two keep doing this shit (in such a good way, may I add) is just absolutely and utterly hilarious.

This whole exchange gives me these vibes:

And Idk why, but this interaction came straight to mind as well when I saw this back and forth between them...

Take those two and combine them and then picture that in mind with this back and forth going on:

Oh, and do I mention that obviously they had access to Internet, enough to have this back and forth between them, while both in the same place, and JK preferring to flirt in our faces with JM rather than post himself about his wins, which I can assure you he knew of. You know how it is when you don't want to take away from your boyfriend's thunder...

Maybe we'll hear from him later on maybe not, but this was about JM, his win, his moment, his post, his excitement.

And JK CANNOT miss out on a little teasing-flirtatious banter with his man, now can he?

Let's back track for one moment, because I do want to talk about JM inserting JK into his post. I do believe this is going to be a new standard/constant/reality. You know, the "me and JK"/ "JK and I" or "me and JM"/"JM and I". That very natural way of inserting one another in their interactions/conversations with us. Now, don't get me wrong, this is not a new thing what so ever. They have been doing this since forever. But I do think that it's going to become more of a constant and less of a "OMG, he mentioned JK/JM" moment for us. They have shown us for years, but more so over the past year, just how important they are to each other, but even more so, just how intertwined their lives are with one another. They literally could not even part ways to do their military service!! Choosing to spend those 18 months together, even if it meant having to endure much harsher conditions and a much more difficult service as a whole. All to be able to be together. With each other. What I'm saying is that I do think we will be getting so much more of "US" from those two.

Openly and proudly.

US.

One last thing, and again this is either Jikook coincidence or kismet or maybe not too much of a coincidence and more of a conscious decision, but JM's post yesterday, 23 Nov 2024, was posted on the year mark of Jikook leaving for their oh so very special and emotionally charged Japan trip, 23 Nov 2023.

💜💜💜

Coincidence or not, we got Jikook back then, and after radio silence from those two for such a long time, we got Jikook yesterday again!!!

[fromgoy2joy]

I have been… biting my tongue from saying things. 

Partially because I’m not “really Jewish” (on the way to it via conversion), and because I didn’t want this blog to be political. 

But I realize I want this page to be a safe space. If anyone takes issue with what I’m about to say, I don’t want them on this page. 

I joined the college jewish community very shortly after 10/7 and was immediately welcomed in. There was no separation between me and the girl who had gone to orthodox shul all her life and was the head of the state youth group. I was told explicitly  “you are one of us. And together, we are mourning. We have lost our people and so have you.” 

Still I felt no authority to speak on things as insidious as antisemitism until recently. But how many times do you have to experience an antisemitic incident until you get to stand up? 

Six. The answer is six. 

Since explicitly aligning myself with Jewishness, I have lost friends who told me I have “dual loyalties” in so many words. I’ve been ostracized in events because we were singled out . I’ve been followed back to my dorm room from events by people hurling genocide accusations at me- white girls wearing keffiyahs who don't know anything about the Nakba when I try to connect with them about how awful it was.

My face was used in a local “fight jew hate” campaign” where I’m in a group of people with clearly middle eastern descent. But what circulated around my campus was my blonde hair and blue eyes, with people using laughing emojis.

“This is who we’re supposed to be defending!? Bitch please! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣” 

(Which is perfectly ironic because they singled out the person who wasn't ethnically Jewish and focused on her. )

Campus security and the disciplinary office knows me quite well from all the reports I've filed whether for me or other people.

I leave campus for breaks. Even though I’m returning to my highly Catholic conservative family, I breathe a sigh of relief. I don't have to look over my shoulder constantly or check myself in the surroundings I'm in. I already feel the dread about returning in January.

What hurts is the blindness- the lack of nuance- that is being given. Every single Jewish person at my school is not a self described zionist, other than that they acknowledge Jewish indignity to the land, and that there was a reason for the creation of Israel- not even justification in the current state or the matter it came about.

But they- and we- shouldn't have to prove ourselves. We shouldn't be debating if we should fundraise for Gazans (we are) in case someone accuses us of "lying about our intentions" or if we'd be pointed out as "the good jews!" They shouldn't have to have a tab open on their computer for Israeli passports, even though they desperately don't want to leave the United States. I shouldn't have to wonder whenever I'm at a synagogue "If I get killed here in a terrorist attack before being immersed in the mikvah, will I get a Catholic or Jewish funeral?"

But that never mattered. Our voices never did. Unless the antisemitism came from a high school dropout neo-nazi with a shaved head and swastika jacket, it's never going to matter.

I will never forget- even as I advocate for Palestinians, call for a ceasefire, and donate. Or any other cause where I'll be marching besides these activists I can never call well meaning.

I could go on and on about it. But I won't be able to write it out in this post.

All I know is when the counsel of rabbis ask me if I'm ready to be apart of an unpopular group, I'm going to have to fight myself from laughing at the question