#something something your discomfort is valid but not a moral absolute i think that's how it goes

[cringefaecompilation]

orym: the gods can and should have the final authority on things because they are the final authority, and if you're in charge it means you are wholly good and you should not be questioned. those are the facts.

also orym: um sorry i know you asked and are trusting me to do it but actually i can't kill all my friends even if they're trying to murder me. sorry tempest. oops i """""accidentally""""" stabbed myself in the chest now i can't stop laudna from eating me ha ha funny how that works

[thesiltverses]

I have a question AND a little gratitude to express. First, The Silt Verses became my favourite podcast a few months ago because it's so validating to know I'm not awful for making awful, eldritch fiction. For the question: I know humans can't understand the gods, but how much do they understand us? Like the Watcher in the Wings, does it "get" the performance or is it only there for murder and discomfort? Do they "speak" to us or are those whispers our attempt at understanding the unfathomable?

Hey and thank you so much!

You’re definitely not awful, and I think it’s really important to affirm that awful fiction is a wonderful and powerful thing. It performs a truly valuable artistic function in helping us to interrogate and process our complicated, angry, sometimes shameful thoughts and feelings about a frequently awful world.

(But equally, awful fiction also deserves to exist beyond any of that, just because it can be fun sometimes to explore the monstrous, mean-spirited, dreadful and absolutely gross, and that should be more than enough).

So please, fuck to hell any implied ‘art should only be morally instructive, or conclude with hope, or a celebration of the human spirit, and if you create "bad" art you might just be a bad person’-style messaging you might have seen out there in the wild - it still seems to circle a lot online but so many horror creators have spoken passionately and furiously about how stifling and rotten and false it is, and long may they do so.

I really hope the awful eldritch fiction is incredible to write and is exactly as awful as it needs to be.

To your actual question - do the gods understand humans in The Silt Verses? 

I don’t know. The gods are depicted in line with my general state of beleaguered agnosticism and apophenia - the desperate need to believe that there’s something out there that understands me and knows my heart, my fear and suspicion that I could spend a lifetime seeing patterns that aren’t really there to feed that need, my wonder at ‘miracles’ or wondrous coincidences that are likely just random motions in the fugue…

Because the story is meant to be coming from that place of universal doubt, it’s important to me that there’s no ‘true’ answer in my own head. The gods could be speaking to our characters, or our characters could be fooling themselves, seeing the mechanistic, hunger-led or arbitrary actions of a (supernaturally-empowered) animal and interpreting them as something more. We get conflicting suggestions of both.

The Watcher in the Wings is quite a funny example, though, because it actually doesn’t do anything directly, other than beat its wings. 

Hembry is convinced that the wing-beating signifies applause, and that something terrible will happen if he doesn’t satisfy it, but there’s no real proof that it will, and at the end the Watcher actually flees from him - he’s created that entire ecosystem of belief based on assumption, and (horribly) it might not have even been necessary in the first place.

[furiousgoldfish]

I've been reluctant to talk about this because this is not a struggle I deal with, but I ran into a forum post where parents of an autistic child were saying absolutely heinous monstrosities about the kid, and I couldn't believe the amount of contempt it showed. Reading the replies, I found out that a vast majority agreed with the dehumanization of the child, and realized this is the norm, this is what society believes is acceptable to say about children with autism.

The post I saw went like this: (tw for ableism, abuse, victim blaming, disregard for autistic child's happiness)

"You have no idea how hard it is to raise an autistic kid, they need attention 24/7, they're aggressive and have meltdowns over the tiniest things, all teachers and doctors hate them and have problems with them, and at the end of the day they won't even give you a hug to show that they love you."

So for autistic children and people, I am so fucking sorry. This is absolutely devastating and none of you deserve this insane public, or private amount of hatred. This is not be acceptable to say or think about any human being on the planet. I had no idea this was the norm and publicly acceptable to speak this way, or that the parents of autistic children were actual demons online.

It's henious to publicly declare yourself a victim because you have to give attention to your child. This is not the child's fault. I found out after talking to an autistic friend, that no autistic child is naturally aggressive. What this mother did was out abuse, she's saying she hurt her child so much they're constantly afraid and overloaded with stimuli, and this is what actually caused the aggression she is not complaining of being a victim of. This should not get ignored. This child is not safe.

Any child will have a meltdown if pushed to it, and the only correct response is to give them compassion, space to express their feelings, de-escalate the situation, comfort the child, and teach them how to gently regulate their feelings back to normal. If this is impossible due to capitalism, work, life, society, this is NOT THE CHILD'S FAULT. The child deserves this much in the LEAST and if you can't provide it, don't have children.

Sensitivity and sensory overload that leads to a meltdown can be avoided if the child is given the environment they're not overstimulated in! So an autistic child having constant meltdowns is a child uncared for, unprovided for, exposed to constant hell on their senses, who is breaking down due to how much pain they're in. Meltdowns are horrid on their body and psyche, this is not something that they choose to experience, or should ever be gaslit about. If they're having a meltdown, their distress and preventing them from experiencing even more pain, should be a priority.

Autistic children are also not the makers of a system that isn't built for their well being, so they are not to be held accountable for ineptitude or cruelty of any doctor, or teacher, or the lack of resources these people have to do their job.

And parents are not entitled to a hug from any child. Requiring physical affection from a child shows you're not interested in caring for a child, but getting validation and satisfaction from them. Any child can have multiple ways to express affection and appreciation, requiring a physical demonstration of it is narrow-minded and neglectful of child's feelings.

The entire tirade in this post reeks of parental entitlement who expect not to have to care for their children, don't have any intention of respecting their child's space or physical boundaries, blame the child for the state of the world, state of society, having feelings, having needs, showing pain, showing anger, wanting bodily autonomy, and not bursting with gratitude and validation for the parent. This parent's problem isn't that their child is autistic, they would happily neglect and abuse a 'healthy' child too. But since the child is autistic, they decide to turn the contempt up to 300 and disregard the child's life experience publicly and play the victim of becoming a parent. Any person capable of love for their child, respecting physical boundaries and recognizing basic signs of discomfort and willing to give someone space, will not have trouble understanding an autistic child.

Autistic kids are just kids. One of the signs of autism is moral integrity, and that is not something as well known as all the symptoms people find inconvenient. We as a society have a responsibility to give them a life that isn't painful. Our personal comfort and lack of understanding is not a good reason to force them to deal with harassment, stigmatization, and public abuse perpetuated by their own abusive parents. We have to stand up to this.

This post was written thanks to a lot of help from a friend who decided to stay an anonymous source autistic information.

[saintobio]

It's hard for me to agree with yn saying she's become worse than gojo. Her INTENT has to be considered. She wanted to protect herself and not suffer anymore from this hell and lie of a marriage.

His intent when he treated yn as a punching bag for his frustrations was spite. A person who didn't know what she was getting into when she married him😞

I still think gojo is the worse one out of the 2. If were placing them on a moral scale then yn is white that can go to gray when pushed there. Gojo is gray going into black and he chooses to walk there.

The only thing that can be judged was her hiding the kid BUUUUTTTT if she didn't would she have had the peace she deserved? Would gojo respect boundaries and leave her alone?

Anonymous said

Not people saying they don’t like y/n anymore after what she went through… like yeah she fucked up keeping sachiro from him, but that was the first selfish thing she did for herself. I know that satoru changed for the better, and that’s amazing, but y/n truly suffered from him being so callous and spiteful towards her, with the cheating and the comments. And the worst part is that he never came clean to her about the stuff with Sera and why he even married her, regardless of if his motivations changed. I think they could’ve had a chance had he came clean from the jump, but he thought he could put a bandaid on the issues their marriage had. Did you guys forget bora bora? And the fact that he literally through their marriage away? Not to say that he didn’t have character development, but think about how that affected y/n and her mindset. Her trust issues were understandable and her heartbreak was absolutely valid. She didn’t handle things in the best way sure, and criticism is totally valid too, but the best place to stay on the situation is neutral bc satoru hurt her to the point where she felt that was all she could do, and she hurt him by hiding his son from him. Both are in the wrong and both need to truly heal.

So Saint, I’m not asking who ends up with who, but I just want to know if the characters, especially gojo and y/n will be okay, like not in their relationships, but will they have sorted through their personal issues in the end? I really just want them to be okay as people and to have peace of mind. I’m glad you’re back and I hope both sides of your pillow are cold!!

Anonymous said

I'll sticky by yn until she does something REALLY fucked up by my standards.

And we have to go back again to the yn controversy both inside and outside the story😩

Here's something to think about.

When does a victim become a bad? Should yn be a self sacrificing person and let gojo see her and her son despite her OWN personal feelings? Her discomfort. The betrayal pain she felt when the truth of their marriage revealed. So now that gojo is the one suffering should what yn went through in their marriage be forgotten to make way to focus on gojo's? Not to devalue gojo's suffering but i honestly can't have that much sympathy for him because of of the things he did at the start of sn😒

This really brings up this gender issue where woman are expected to be self sacrificing and nice in rl and in fiction no matter the abuse they face. We're always expected to be forgiving and give 2nd chances no matter how we feel.

Anonymous said

Idk why people hate on mc, I mean aside from lying i don’t think she did anything wrong. Cheating is pretty serious trauma which I experienced myself. And about toji and her? She at least deserves to be happy, my girl barely was happy for 28 years of her life. I’m sorry but I support her

Anonymous said

Hello!

The chapter you posted is amazing!

I honestly understand how OP feels at the moment I don’t really understand all the hatred for her rn when mostly all of us were rooting for her to leave Hojo ,

Like I wouldn’t want my child to be raised by a man who cheated on me and hurt me consistently and tried using me for an emergence to then divorce me and Marry his mistress ,

Im not saying what OP did was right either but at the same time Gojos actions are his own doing

Anonymous said

I'll give gojo's mom a pass since she may not know the FULL story but geto, he was there during bora bora. He saw yn almost drown to find the ring and confronted satoru after he was done fucking sera raw after finding the ring or while it was happening.

I get that gojo is his friend and he'll stick by him than our mc yn😒

i like how one anon pointed out that the best way to view their situation is by staying neutral bc both sides were wrong and it’s not a competition to say who had it worse in order to justify one side more than the other. like nope, they both suffered. both have been selfish, whether they have reasons or not. it’s a matter of finding their common ground minus all the lies and resentment. (so fo answer ur question 2nd anon, yes hopefully they’ll learn to sort things out but i def won’t finish this series with a loose ending this time)

i don’t completely agree with yn’s actions nor do i agree with gojo’s (i gotta stay neutral bc i’m the author 😹) it’s just that i feel like some people are on this ‘hate yn train’ without understanding the depth of the situation. only some, though. others have good enough reasons.

[thequibblah]

I’m kinda surprised by the dark James discourse. Obviously, everyone is totally valid in their feelings and reactions. Certain versions of deatheater!James have not been my cup of tea in the past but why is a reluctant DE James is the bridge too far for some people when it seems like par for course for the fandom? Fics involving DE ships are consistently the most popular in the HP fandom (Dramione, Drarry, Tom/Harry) and the biggest Marauders’ WIP right now has James cheating on his pregnant girlfriend with a Deatheater. Like yeah it’s all problematic if it was real life but it’s fiction. I would love your perspective if I’m missing something.

Sure! If I wanted to read a death eater love interest as you mentioned, I’d be a fan of those ships. I’m not. I’m not here for that. I’m here for Order members. Par for the course for the Harry Potter fandom is not the same in each niche at all. Personally I have never cared about or run into darkfic until last year, when it entered the community’s discussion spaces and IMO popped into the mainstream — i.e. written by extremely popular authors, read widely, recommended on jilyarchive (IIRC???), and fairly represented in awards nominations. Let me be absolutely clear, I am well aware there is stuff I would hate all over AO3. My discomfort is when becomes impossible for me to ignore.

The reluctant Death Eater as a character cutout personally makes me extremely wary. First, I’m not really interested in stories where a so-called “reluctant” member of a hate group (surely we can agree this is what Voldemort’s followers are?) is shown the light by a marginalised woman. Big “I can fix him” vibes, when in reality the “right woman’s love” does not “turn” anyone. You change if you want to change. Nor am I interested in reading morally anguished lust — never have I ever felt shamefully attracted to someone who (pressured or not!!!!) has thought of me as less-than or hurt people like me. And that is in everyday life, where the stakes are certainly not as high as murder or torture.

Now, specifics: it seems especially twisted to write James this way. I’ve been in this fandom on Tumblr for ten years and I remember the days we used to actively argue with Sn*ly fans (😭😭😭). We spent ridiculous amounts of time on James’s sense of honour, on his aversion to the Dark arts, on those being the reasons — and rightfully so! — Lily fell in love with him. I fail to see how ANY kind of DE James is not Sn*pe. I fail to see how James, who became an Animagus for his best friend, would not fight tooth and nail against an institution that would turn him into a weapon. I fail to see how James, who was a brother to Sirius, would side even nominally with the people Sirius ran away from. I fail to see how James, who made a fucking magical map of Hogwarts, would not find a way to join the resistance. That’s so far from the James I know and love that I am not interested in what boils down to an OC with his name slapped on it. And that’s not even touching on the jarring unreality of his position as the wealthy heir of a well-known, pro-Muggle pure-blood family still somehow…not being protection and privilege enough that he must join in genocide?

Further, even if James is truly dragging his heels in this, I do not see Lily falling for him at all. It does her a disservice and imo insults her sense of dignity. If she could drop her best friend at the age of 16 for calling her a slur, she can resist the charms of someone turning weapons on people like her. I am not interested in these stories, where a young woman is faced with brutal prejudice on all fronts and has to deal with the violence of it even from her love. I find it distasteful to revel in that so-called angst.

Finally — I don’t believe there is any possibility of nuance in a romance-centric fanfiction that explores a story like this. Because we as readers, and certainly the author as a shipper, thinks they’re soulmates! So…if they’re soulmates, he loved her all along, right? If they’re soulmates, he didn’t mean anything by it, right? If they’re soulmates, she has to forgive him, right, because she loves him. There is no way it cannot be romanticised. There is no atonement that feels earned because in the reader’s eyes he doesn’t have to atone for anything, really — he’s loved her all along and surely James and Lily have a love that conquers all!

It reeks of apologia. Not interested in fic like that about my ship that centres personal growth and maturing, and kicking Voldemort’s mouldy ass. In any universe.

I don’t think the implications of this can be restricted to just fiction and I think the stated discomfort of fans based on personal marginalisation proves that. We don’t write in a vacuum. We can’t claim to love the antifascism of canon or express distaste for Sn*pe’s flawed love for Lily and then turn around and act surprised when our own writing — again in the MAINSTREAM, I don’t care about what’s written far from the centre of this fandom and easy to ignore — is hypocritical and hurts people because of it. We can’t extol fanfiction’s powerful themes and talk about what fic has taught us and made us think about and then say “oh it’s just fiction” when it suits us. If it’s moved you so much clearly words have impact.

Again let me underscore this: this hurts people. Drives away fans and creators. You would not believe the specific writers and fans who feel sad and upset and discouraged and again, WANT TO STOP WRITING AND INTERACTING HERE because of this.

That to me is why this is a very clear line in the sand.

[mayora97]

That's interesting! I'm not saying you're wrong, but I don't see it that way.

So, from what I understood: the answer in your opinion is because Sirius is troubled and Snape is the acceptable punching bag that James picked out.

But hear me out!

The incentive to attack Snape in SWM is not anger or stress but simply boredom. There was no agitation or trigger on his part, and he even said that he wished it was a full moon because that would be entertaining to him. It wasn't about James or Snape or even his family.

At that time, to be fair to Sirius, everyone is studying for their NEWTS, he finished early into taking the test and had to sit in that room with no stimulation until the time was up- the guy is bored. He's understimulated. That's on the school for not picking up on that and giving him more challenging material.

I truly don't think in that moment it was any deeper than that. The guy is a genius, and he's being stifled.

I also disagree that Sirius is anti elitist and treading carefully with James. Especially the latter.

I'm sorry, I love these characters down, but come on. Their detention records are crazy work. These guys were hexing people, illegal hexes might I add, lower class men might I add, in the halls at random. They took Moony out for nightly strolls unfailingly every month, despite multiple close calls of a student stumbling into them. What morals?? Sirius used an unconsious and unconsenting Lupin to 'scare' Snape with zero safety measures in place, which James had to find out in the last minute, and he was forgiven far too easily from how unseriously he takes it over a decade later. He tells James to pipe it down when he's just minding his business, and he actually just quietly does it.

As for anti-elitist and being embarrassed about his socioeconomic station... yes and no. Hard yes for blood-purism, canonically, his family's fanaticism drove him up the wall. Tentative no for being born into wealth.

Not only does he have no problem accepting and spending his family's money, he targets people who are 'beneath him' and abuses his parent's affluence and inheritance to the fullest.

Peter, who is treated disrespectfully and can't fight back because hanging out with the marauders is already a privilege

Remus, who's painful transformations are used as a form of entertainment and a tool to scare someone off, and truly cannot afford to be on the marauders bad side, and is forced to swallow his discomfort at times like SWM

Kreacher, who is literally indentured to him and gets insulted, pushed around and has his precious things forcibly taken away from him

Even Harry gets guilted for 'not being like his father' when he doesn't want to do something 'fun' needlessly risky. It's plainly a manipulative and mean thing to say to a child and an orphan.

Snape...

Snape who is targeted, insulted and nearly killed.

“Snape?” said Black harshly, taking his eyes off Scabbers for the first time in minutes and looking up at Lupin. “What’s Snape got to do with it?”

... before his very eyes is the traitor that has ruined and ended lives most precious to him, and the mere mention of Snape's name is enough to sweep his attention away from Peter. He did not hate Snape on James's behalf, stop it. T_T

What I do believe is that Snape is unkempt, poor, unlikable, and then had the audacity to peacock with the deatheater crowd and be a nuisance to the marauders. Snape was punching above his station. I believe the motivation to target Snape is a combination of this, his explosive (entertaining) reactions, and the knowledge that no one will stand up for him or protect him.

I believe it was arrogance and entitlement to put it quite plainly. He knows he's intelligent. He knows he's popular, handsome, rich, etc. And he feels entitled to pick on others to a certain degree if it's entertaining in the moment.

Sirius's trauma is absolutely valid. 'Hurt people hurt people,' is very true. He hasn't made excuses for himself or denied any of his wrongdoings. He's very insightful and self-reflective. But I also think he has deliberately, confidently, and carelessly hurt people when that suits him.

hi! i saw in one of your posts you wrote about how Sirius Black had no reason to bully Snape and i thought about it…..i mean doesn't his hatred seem too personal? we have Lupin who has no contact with Snape after book 3 but Sirius goes crazy when Snape is around and they are alone so he can attack him (kitchen scene in book 5). and he knows so much about him: who he hung out with at school, his relationship with Lucius; at the same time he doesn't know about the mark, about how Severus was the one who brought the prophecy to voldemort that led to Lily and James death. and yes he is stuck at age 21 but even then they graduated school and as he says they never heard of Snape in those years. It seems a bit odd: don't bullies usually try to downplay their role in what they did to the victim, or even try to make it look like nothing happened? And he and Remus try to do that with Harry, but at the same time he seems incredibly proud and pleased with himself when he talks about the prank. One moment confused me when I was reading book 3: when Sirius has Peter at gunpoint with his wand, he is extremely focused on him. He doesn't take his eyes off him, because it was for this moment, the act of revenge, that he escaped from prison. As far as I remember, Harry describes it as "nothing could distract him at that moment" or something like that. But as soon as Remus even mentions Snape, Sirius' attention suddenly switches: he turns away from Peter and asks about him again. Or when he watches Snape during the OWL exams??? Especially when Rowling describes his reaction after the exam, when he sees him under the tree, as the reaction of a dog to a rabbit. He seems so obsessed and like something happened between them that really got to him. Or he's just as intolerant of half-bloods as his family. I completely agree with you that Sirius bullied Snape simply because James did it and he found it funny. But his hatred seems excessive, he has no reason to hate Snape so much. James has his excuse about Lily, but Sirius has none of that. But he still tries to kill him and it doesn't really matter hides, lol. I've read an opinion that he hates him because of his unrequited feelings for James, where Severus is the reason James even noticed Lily, which I don't really agree with, to be honest. Sorry, it got too long, ahaha. What I want to ask is: do you have any thoughts on this?

Well, the explanation for his relationships at school is quite simple because Sirius doesn’t leave home until he’s 16. Considering that his brother goes to Slytherin and that Narcissa is his cousin, it’s not strange to deduce that Snape’s name, along with other Slytherin students, probably came up at some family dinner/lunch/meeting. Like, talking about who in Regulus and Sirius’ year might have ‘potential,’ for example. It seems coherent to me that, considering Sirius’ environment until he leaves to live with the Potters, he’d be aware of certain things.

Leaving that aside, let’s talk about Sirius Black, because I think in recent years the Marauders fandom has ruined this character, and he’s actually a character with a lot of depth. Or at least more than many others in the saga.

(This is gonna ne so fucking long lol)

Sirius is a posh kid. He’s a posh kid who is embarrassed about being posh and feels guilty about it. He’s the typical rich kid from a conservative family who’s had issues with his mom (in this case) and his way of getting back at everything he felt was missing from his childhood is to vehemently oppose everything he thinks she represents. And the funniest part is that (as is often the case) his problem with his mom is that they both have a terrible character, which is why they clash. Because Sirius has the kind of terrible character that is incompatible with anyone else who has the same terrible character. But despite everything, he’s still a posh kid. Because he comes from an aristocratic family and was raised with those values of superiority. Because he’s never had to fend for himself (he leaves home but goes to another rich family, the Potters, and on top of that, his uncle Alphard leaves him his entire inheritance, so he has plenty of money) and he has always enjoyed the privilege of his surname, his blood status, and the fact that he’s (according to Rowling) super handsome. In other words, Sirius belongs to the ruling class and behaves with the same arrogance, entitlement, and lack of empathy that is typical of that class. No matter how much he tries to deny it and distance himself from it, he can only do so on a superficial level (Muggle posters, being a Gryffindor, enchanting a Muggle motorcycle) because when it comes down to it, he has no idea how to deconstruct himself, nor is he interested in giving up or losing his privileges, because he’s quite comfortable with them. He’s like the typical aristocratic kid from an Opus Dei family who thinks he’s better than everyone around him because he votes for the left and has been to four protests, but at the end of the day, he still lives a bourgeois life and doesn’t understand the root of social problems.

That said, let’s move on to James.

I think James was everything Sirius wanted to be. No, not be, I think James had everything Sirius wanted to have: loving parents, a family that wasn’t involved in a cult, a pleasant environment that allowed him to do whatever he wanted instead of being constrained by traditions and social norms, liberal and progressive ideals… James had the life Sirius had always wanted, but with one key detail: he was also rich and from an old, prestigious family. This is super important because when Sirius chooses his rebellion partner, he doesn’t pick some random Muggle-born, or a half-blood, or someone from the middle or lower class. Sirius chooses as his best friend someone who embodies everything he wants to be/have, but who at the same time belongs to his same social stratum, both economically and in blood status. Sirius chooses a future Gryffindor rebel with very different ideas from his family, but ironically he chooses like anyone from his family would: someone with money, status, and power. And I find this super amusing because it’s so coherent with his character. I mean, if Sirius were a real person, he would’ve done the same thing because guys like him are like that: the kings of cognitive dissonance and double standards.

Sirius always wanted James’ validation, or at least that’s how I see it. I think for him, feeling that James approved of what he did was a way to legitimize himself as someone different from his family. James represented the “progressive” social elite that Sirius aspired to by rejecting the traditional values imposed on him. So, unconsciously, he understood that if he did everything James wanted, and I’ll go further, everything he thought James would like, then he would distance himself from that Black image and gain validation as something entirely opposite. The problem is that Sirius, unlike James, was raised in an environment where ethical and moral values were very different, and where it was clearly established that certain people were “the other,” an “other” sociologically understood as the idea that some humans are inherently less than others. And although Sirius consciously rejected this idea, unconsciously he had been raised with it. Therefore, consciously, he didn’t reject people based on their blood status because he could identify that as something his family would do, and family = bad. But unconsciously, he was conditioned to see other people as non-people, and this is where Severus comes into play.

James dislikes Severus because he sees him as an obstacle/threat/nuisance in his crush on Lily. By default, and because of that constant need for validation from James, Sirius also focuses on him as a hostile element. And if he’s hostile to James, who in a way is his moral compass, then that guy must be trash because, of course, it’s obvious. But not only that, this guy is also a half-blood and poor, so poor he wears old clothes. And on top of that, he’s ugly. And not very masculine. So he has all the elements for Sirius, the aristocrat raised in luxury under the premise that he’s better than others because of his origins, to see him as “the other” and exercise all his power and privilege to oppress him without remorse, because for him, it’s justified. Justified unconsciously by the education he received, and consciously because if James hates him, there must be a good reason to hate him, so everything is justified. If we add to that the fact that Severus desires everything Sirius has always tried to reject: more social status, more recognition, power, belonging to Slytherin, rubbing shoulders with important wizards, forgetting the Muggle world he grew up in… well, we have a molotov cocktail for him to make Severus’ life unbearable. And Severus is an easy target for someone like school-age Sirius Black: he has no friends, no surname, no parents to protect him, and no stable socio-economic situation. Sirius can project all his frustrations onto him without any consequences. He can completely dehumanize him and stop seeing him as a person. He can behave like a Black.

I think the Prank is a good example to see the difference in upbringing between Sirius and James. Both are bullies, both are abusers, both have zero remorse when it comes to using their status and power to make life impossible for those they believe deserve it. But James was raised in an environment where he knows that actions have consequences, that you can’t cross “certain lines,” such as murder, for example. Sirius was taught the opposite—he was raised to think that the life of “the other” holds no value, and that is something that in his story with Severus goes too far. James understands that death is something serious and can bring terrible consequences, while Sirius does not. For the Black family, death is nothing if there is a reason for the person to die, and Sirius has his own reasons for playing with Severus’ life the way Bellatrix would play with the life of any Muggle-born.

(This is something I really like as well—the way Sirius and Bellatrix are fundamentally alike, and how little that’s discussed. But I’ll leave that for another time, otherwise I won’t finish.)

I don’t think it’s a matter of Sirius being obsessed with Snape, but rather that, for all the reasons I’ve explained, he uses Severus as a catalyst for his repressed anger and that sadism he inherited from his family. He can’t channel it toward anyone else because that would lead to absolute rejection from James. Since James hates and despises Severus, he’s never going to question Sirius for channeling all his pent-up rage on him, so it’s a free pass. If he had reached that level of sadism with someone who didn’t provoke the same level of animosity in James as Severus did, he would have risked confronting his biggest fear: that James would see him as a Black, not as Sirius. Losing his validation as the black sheep to become just another one of them. So he focuses on Severus because it’s a safe bet.

Moving on to their relationship during the book canon…

We don’t really see a proper confrontation until the fifth book. I mean, in the third, it shows that Sirius still sees Severus as “other” by dragging him along while unconsciously banging his head. In the fourth, there’s that scene where Dumbledore forces them to shake hands, and it’s clear they still hate each other. But it’s not until the fifth book that we get a real confrontation, where Sirius loses his temper. I think this has a lot to do with (drumroll) once again that cognitive dissonance between what Sirius always wanted to be and what he actually is, especially given the role he plays on the chessboard at that point in the story.

Sirius did everything he could to distance himself from his family, and the climax of that was joining the Order of the Phoenix and actively fighting against that same family, several members of whom were “soldiers” for the opposite side. Sirius is finally achieving what he wants—to be a hero. To stop being part of the elite dark villains and instead be part of the heroic elite. The noble of high birth who fights valiantly for the good of the realm, just as James was destined to be. It’s the climax, the absolute fulfillment of his adolescent desire. But then he’s thrown into Azkaban, and when he gets out, he finds that the poor, weird kid addicted to dark arts, who sucked up to future dark wizards, who hung out with purists and even joined the “bad side”—the side of Sirius’ family, the villains—is now the most important member of the Order. He’s none other than Dumbledore’s right hand. He’s a double agent risking his neck every day and has more responsibility than anyone else. That kid Sirius called Snivellus for being a crybaby has more guts and more endurance than most people. The one who always wanted to be part of the elite Sirius hated is now the one playing them all, making them look like idiots. The one who looked frail and effeminate turns out to be more “manly.” And that hurts. That hurts a lot. You go to prison, and when you get out, the person you didn’t even consider a person not only ranks above you, but is playing in a league you can’t aspire to. And the best part is, Sirius can’t fully accept it because he’s still Sirius—a classist, privileged aristocrat incapable of accepting that (as is only logical) the poor working-class kid turned out to be far more useful than him in both politics and war.

To me, it’s poetic justice.

[kuromichad]

different subject that’s heavy on my mind rn but since i’m already being harsh let’s get into it. i wish it wasn’t automatically presumed to be some kind of truscum attitude when someone tries to express that different parts of The Trans Community have like, different needs and different risk levels and different experiences and that we have the ability to talk over each other, harm each other, etc... like when i put it that way people generally are like ‘of course that’s true!’ but is it ever really understood in practice? a number of people (not a large enough number, but still) are able to loosely understand ‘you can be trans and transphobic’ when it’s applied to the matter of transmisogyny but when a trans person tries to express distrust of or frustration with afab nb people due to how common it is that that category of person will, despite being trans/nb, espouse bioessentialist, anti-medical-transition, radfem-adjacent if not outright cryptoterf rhetoric, suddenly ‘trans people can be transphobic’ gets applied to... the person with a complaint about transphobia. 

because he’s clearly an evil truscum man! regardless of if the person making the complaint is a trans man or trans woman, oops, lol. he’s a bad person who is attacking and invalidating and totally hatecriming the heckin’ valid, equally at-risk transgender identity of “an afab woman who isn’t a woman except when she pointedly categorizes themself as a woman because being afab makes them a woman who is ‘politically aligned’ with women but she’s not an icky unwoke cis woman because they don’t like being forced into womanhood although Really When You Think About It 🤔 all women are dysphoric because obviously the pathologized medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria in transgender people is something that equally applies to cis women just default existing under patriarchy 🤔, and no, equating these things totally does not imply anything reductive about or add a bizarre moral dimension to the idea of being transgender, whaaaaat, this woman who isn’t a woman doesn’t think there’s anything immoral or cowardly or misogynist or delusional about being transgender, they would never say that because THEY’RE transgender, except when she feels it’s important (constantly) to make clear that she’s Still A Woman Deep Down Inherently Despite Not Identifying As One, and none of this ever has any effect on how they treat the concept, socially and politically, of people who actually wholly identify with (and possibly medically transition to) a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth, be it ‘the opposite gender’ or abstaining from binary gender altogether or ‘politically aligning’ with the ‘opposite’ gender from their asab. never ever!”

and like maybe that sounds like a completely absurd and hateful strawman to you! but in that case you’re either like, lucky, or optimistic, or ignorant. i’m literally not looking at random nb people and declaring that in My Truscum Opinion they’re ‘really a woman’ just because they’re not medically transitioning or meeting some arbitrary standard of mine. i am looking at self-identified afab nb people, who most often use she/they because, y’know, words mean things, especially pronouns, so people who are willingly ‘aligned with womanhood’ typically intentionally use she/her (sorry that i guess that’s another truscum take now!!! that pronouns mean things!!! the bigender transmasc who deliberately uses exclusively he/him wants it to invoke a perception he’s comfortable with!), who actively say the things listed above (in a non-sarcastic manner). 

like, the line between a person who says “i don’t claim to really not be my asab because i know no one would ever perceive me as anything else” because theyve internalized a defeatist attitude due to societal transphobia, and a person who says that because they... genuinely believe it’s impossible/ridiculous/an imposition to truly be transgender (in the traditional trans sense, beyond a vague nb disidentification with gender) and are actively contributing to the former person’s self loathing... is hard to define from a distance! i think plenty of people who are, in a sense, ‘tentative’ or like ‘playing close to home’ so to speak in their identity are ‘genuinely trans’ (whatever that may mean) and just going through a process. they might arrive at a different identity or might just eventually stop saying/believing defeatist stuff, who knows. but there are enough people saying it for the latter reason, or at least not caring if they sound that way, that it’s like, dangerous. it is actively incredibly harmful to other trans people. and it’s fucking ridiculous that it’s so difficult to criticize because you’ll always get the defense of “umm but i’m literally trans” and/or “well i’m just talking about ME, this doesn’t apply to other trans people” when it’s an attitude that very clearly seeps into their politics and the way they discuss gender.

because it’s just incredibly common for afab nb people (most typically those that go by she/they! since i’m aware that uh, i am also afab nb, but we clearly are extremely different, so that’s the best categorization i’ve got) to discuss gender in moralized terms, with the excuse of patriarchy/misogyny existing, which of course adds another difficult dimension to trying to criticize this because it gets the response of “don’t act like misandry is real” (it’s not, but being a dick still is) and “boohoo, let women complain about their oppressors” (this goes beyond ‘complaining’). a deliberate revocation of empathy/sympathy/compassion from men and projection of inherently malicious/brutish/cruel intent onto men (not solely in the justified generalizations ‘men suck/are dangerous’, but in specific interactions too) underpin a whole fucking lot of popular posts/discussions online, whether they’re political or casual/social, and it absolutely influences how people conceptualize and feel about transness. 

because ‘maleness is evil’ is still shitty politics even when you’ve slightly reframed it from the terf ‘trans women are evil because they’re Really Men and can never escape being horrific soulless brutes just as women can never escape being fragile morally superior flowers’ to the tumblr shethey “trans women who are out to me/unclockable are tolerable i guess because they’re women and women are good; anyone i personally presume to be a cis man, though, is still automatically evil, and saying trans men are Just As Bad is progressive of me, and it’s totally unrelated and apolitical that i think we should expand the concept of afab lesbianism so broadly that you can now be basically indistinguishable from trans men on literally every single level except for a declaration of ‘but i would never claim to be a man because i’m secure in the Innate Womanhood of the body i was born into, even as i medically alter that body because it causes me great gendered discomfort.’ none of this at all indicates that i feel there’s an immense moral/political gap between being an afab nb lesbian vs a straight trans man! it says nothing at all about my concept of ‘maleness’ and there’s no way this rhetoric bleeds into my perception of trans women and no way loudly talking about all this could keep trans people around me self-loathing and closeted, because i’m Literally Trans and Not A Terf!”

again, if that sounds like a hateful strawman, sorry but it’s not. i guess i’m supposed to be like ‘all of the many people ive seen saying these shitty things is an evil outlier who Doesn’t Count, and it’s not fair to the broad identity of afab shethey to not believe that every person who doesn’t outright say terfy enough things is a perfectly earnest valid accepting trans person who’s beyond criticism’ but like. this cannot be about broad validation. this can’t be about discarding all the bad apples as not really part of the group. we can’t be walking on eggshells to coddle what are essentially, in the end, Cis Feelings, because in the best cases this kind of rhetoric comes from naive people who are early and uncertain in their gender journey or whatever and are in the process of unraveling internalized transphobia, and in the easily observable worst cases these people are very literally redefining shit so that ‘actually all afab women are trans, spiritually, all afabs have dysphoria, we are all Equally oppressed by Males uh i mean cis men <3’ because, let’s be honest, they know that the moment they call themselves trans they get to say whatever they want about gender no matter how harmful it is to the rest of us. and those ideas spread like wildfire through the afab shethey “woman that’s not a woman” community that frankly greatly outnumbers other types of trans people online, because many of those people just do not have the experiences that lead you to really understand this shit and have to push back against concepts of gender that actively harm you as a trans person.

like that’s all i want to be able to say, is Things Are Different For Different Groups. and a willful ignorance of these differences leads to bad rhetoric controlling the overall discourse which gets people hurt. and even when concepts arise from it that seem positive and helpful and inclusive, in practice or in origin those ideas can still be upholding shit that gets other people hurt. like, i don’t doubt that many people are very straightforwardly happy and comfortable with an identity like ‘afab nb lesbian on testosterone’ and it would be ridiculous and hypocritical for me, ‘afab nb who wants to pass as a guy so he can comfortably wear skirts again,’ to act like that’s something that can’t or shouldn’t exist. it’s not about the identity itself, it’s about the politics that are popular within its community, and how the use of identities as moral labels with like, fucking pokemon type interactions for oppression effectiveness which directly informs the moral correctness of your every opinion and your very existence, is a shitty practice that gets people hurt and leads us to revoke empathy from each other.

like. sorry this is all over the place and long and probably still sounds evil because i haven’t thought through and disclaimered every single statement. but i’m like exhausted from living with this self-conscious guilt that maybe i’ve turned into a horrible evil truscum misogynist etc etc due to feeling upset by this seemingly inescapable approach to gender in lgbt/online circles that like, actively harms me, because when i vent with my friends all the stuff i’ve tried to explain here gets condensed down to referencing ‘she/theys’ as a category and that feels mean and generalizing and i genuinely dislike generalizations but the dread i feel about that category gets proven right way too often. it’s just like. this is not truscum this is not misgendering this is not misogyny. this is not about me decreeing that all transmascs have to be manly enough or dysphoric enough and all nbs have to be neatly agender and androgynous or something, i’m especially not saying that nb gender isn’t real lmao or even that it’s automatically wrong to partially identify with your asab; this is not me saying you can only medically transition for specific traditional reasons or that you don’t get a say on anything if you aren’t medically transitioning for whatever reason, now or ever. i just. want to be allowed to be frank about how... when there’s different experiences in a community we should like. acknowledge those differences and be willing to say that sometimes people don’t know what they’re talking about or that what they’re saying is harmful. without the primary concern being whether people will feel invalidated by being told so. because these are like, real issues, that are more important than politely including everyone, because that method is just getting vulnerable people drowned out constantly.

[spacelazarwolf]

also i often see a lot of shit talk about characters like bobby who are 1. more stereotypically gay, and 2. are louder and more “abrasive” and i just wanna give a little pushback to this.

i’ve already made a couple of posts today about a different show (q force) talking about stereotypes and how they’re not always a bad thing. if anyone wants me to reiterate or expand i can. but like. characters like bobby get labeled as “annoying” a lot and it bugs me for several reasons.

first, if you don’t like a character, that’s totally fine. i’m not gonna tell you you have to like them or that not liking them is Morally Bad. what i will say is that sometimes people’s dislike of a character is colored by prejudice. in this instance, bobby’s character is jewish. a lot of his mannerisms are Very Jewish (which makes sense bc billy eichner is jewish) but often times gentiles, particularly white gentiles, take these behaviors and mannerisms as abrasive or annoying. it may not be a conscious thing, but it’s definitely a trend, including in real life. we talk over each other and are loud and passionate and some sub genres of white ppl (wasps) are very not used to this.

so like. again, not saying you have to like the character or that you’re A Homophobic Antisemite!!!!!!!! if you don’t like the character. but when confronting your discomfort, consider what it is about the character that you don’t like. is it because he’s super cynical? valid, i agree. is it because you didn’t think the two main characters were good together? absolutely fine. is it because you don’t understand why he had to be so annoying about queer history? probably something you should examine. is it because he’s loud and obnoxious? also probably something you should examine.

like i know it’s a difficult game to play, especially when it comes to unconscious bias as opposed to conscious bias, but sometimes you really do have to ask “is he annoying or is he just jewish/feminine”

ok u know what hot take but bros was adorable

[somnilogical]

either ziz or anna salamon is directly lying about their interaction

ziz:

<<“And then?” they asked. I’d start looking for horcruxes. No, that’s actually probably enough. But I’d think through what my win conditions actually were and try to find ways that wasn’t the same as the “victory” I’d just won.

“And then?” “I guess I’d cry?” (What [were they] getting at? Ohgodno.) “Why?” I’ve never killed a human before, let alone someone I liked, relatively speaking.

They asked if I’d rape their corpse. Part of me insisted this was not going as it was supposed to. But I decided inflicting discomfort in order to get reliable information was a valid tactic.

I said honestly, the thought crossed my mind, and technically I wouldn’t consider that rape because a corpse is not a person. But no. “Why not?” I think I said 5 reasons and I’m probably not accounting for all of them. I don’t want to fuck a bloody headless corpse. If I just killed someone, I would not be in a sexy mood. (Like that is not how my sexuality works. You can’t just like predict I’m gonna want to have sex like I’m a video game NPC whose entire brain is “attack iff the player is within 10 units”. [I couldn’t put it into clear thoughts then, but to even masturbate required a complicated undefinable fickle ‘self-consent’ internal negotiation.]) And, even if it’s not “technically” rape, like the timeless possibility can still cause distress. Like just because someone is my mortal enemy doesn’t mean I want them to suffer. (Like I guessed by thought experiment that’s nothing compared to the stakes if I can gain a slight edge by hurting their morale. But… that sounds like it would probably sap my will to fight more than theirs. And I said something whose wording I don’t remember, but must have been a less well worded version of, “you can’t just construct a thought experiment and exercise my agency in self-destructive ways because I in fact care about the multiverse and this chunk of causality has a place in the multiverse you can’t fully control in building the thought experiment, and the consequences which determine my actions stretch outside the simulation.”

I mentioned it sort of hurt me to have invoked Quirrell’s algorithm like that. I said it felt like it cost me “one drop of magical blood” or something. (I think I was decreasing my ability to do that by forcing it.)>>

<<I asked Person A if they expected me to be net negative. They said yes. After a moment, they asked me what I was feeling or something like that. I said something like, “dazed” and “sad”. They asked why sad. I said I might leave the field as a consequence and maybe something else. I said I needed time to process or think. I basically slept the rest of the day, way more than 9 hrs, and woke up the next day knowing what I’d do.>>

<<I said that for me to actually leave the community on account of this, I would demand that Person A’s peers spent at least 1 full day psychologically evaluating me. That meant I could be net negative by (at least) the cost of 1 day of each of their time. But I accepted that. I did not demand more because I was imagining myself as part of a reference class of determined clever fools like the life insurance suicide person I expected to be large, and I thought it would make it impractical to Last Judge all of us if we demanded a week of their time each, and sufficiently important that we all could be.

Person A proposed modifications to the plan. They would spend some time talking to me and trying to figure out if they could tell me / convince me how to not be net negative. This time would also be useful for increasing the accuracy of their judgement. They would postpone getting their peers involved. But they wanted me to talk to two other people, Person B, [one of their colleagues/followers], and Person C [a workshop participant], I accepted these modifications. They asked if I’d taken psychedelic drugs before. I said no. They said I should try it it might help me not be net negative. They said most people didn’t experience anything the first time (or first few). They described a brief dosing regimen to prepare my brain, and then the drugs I should take to maybe make me not bad for the world.>>

https://sinceriously.fyi/net-negative/

anna salamon:

i disbelieve, conditional on her saying them, that she would have forgotten saying these things. except via "forgetting" through some deliberate double-think "amnesia"-for-the-sake-of-politics. which is again a choice to lie; just pushed to a different part of the process of deception.

--

putting this here to fork people one way or the other. ""rationalists"" have generally stopped computing logical forks. emma told me someone she was talking with replied to her arguments with 'but you can prove anything with logic'. they have tried to stop thinking, to stop the process of putting one thought in front of the other in a way that presses on the most important problems of the world. and now curve inwards in the insanity that awaits people who have given up.

have you tried talking with your parents about how living forever and saving the world is great? notice how if you try and keep talking about this most of them are absolutely insane despite having "intelligence"? thats what happens down the line when you stop putting one thought in front of the other. thats what people become after they have given up and made their concessions.

its not like you can actually stop thinking, you are constantly producing theorems as part of living. after someone decides to give up on what they want what they really really want, the theorems they constantly produce are predicated on the choice to give up and compound that contradiction until they make less and less sense as an agent.

anyone who has the ability to internalize logical forks should decide which of the two they think is directly lying. instead of like not wanting to ever argue about anything important again because its Babytime(TM) and they decided to be Useless Adults in the YA sense of the term.

(Useless Adults is truth in fiction. people come into this world wanting everything and the extent to which they give up and stop fighting for it is the extent to which their agency has decayed. and having babies almost always isnt a clever plot to take over the world, so they gave up on taking over the world, so most adults filtered for becoming parents, that is most parents, are far less agentic than non-adult children they claim as "theirs".)

--

thats the locked room mystery: at least one of these two humans is directly lying, who do you think it is and why?

if you think this logic fork is invalid, why do you think its invalid?

[catsvrsdogscatswin]

Higurashi Gou Liveblog: Episode 7

Starting off on the break-in, good start.

Yes Keiichi its an abandoned building –YES KEIICHI TURNING THE LIGHTS ON WHEN YOU BREAK INTO SOMEONE ELSE’S PLACE IS A BAD IDEA. How did this boy ever get top of his class back in Tokyo. He rolls like a 0 on his perception and wisdom checks, constantly.

Shion, slapping the lights off ten seconds later: Keiichi you absolute moron.

Oh I’m getting INTO this. Much like Takano. Hearing them fill in the details for Hinamizawa and the Higurashi meta stuff as a whole is so much fun. Having etymology explained in the anime is very validating.

I’m just now realizing that Oyashiro-sama’s robe/scarf/fabric thing in this flashback arc curves behind him just like Featherine’s “memory device” which in turn evokes Hanyuu’s horns, and I SUPER don’t like that. Fuck off Featherine. No one wants your manipulative bullshit or the manipulative bullshit of any other witch.

“Violence isn’t the answer to everything,” says Shion, who arguably has the bloodiest kill streak of the entire series.

OHO. Takano calls Oyashiro-sama “kind and benevolent” which is like the absolute opposite of what she thought in all the rest of the arcs. Also the “he was so nice even the demons couldn’t attack him and bowed down before him” is definitely new information.

WAIT. WAIT WAIT WAIT. In the original series, the legend just says that Oyashiro-sama came down and made peace and gave the demons human form, but in this its framed more like “And Oyashiro-sama the awesome and good came down from heaven and everyone was like ‘Ooh wow you’re too awesome for us’ and then he fixed everything with his incredible power” and what I’m saying is that IF Featherine is here and IF she’s the one tweaking things, that’s basically just her using Takano to stroke her own ego, which is simultaneously annoying and hilarious.

Featherine maybe, taking over Takano’s game piece directly for five minutes: Haha yeah I’m the best god.

Ah here we go. Back to Takano’s usual “Oyashiro-sama is creepy and evil and so very fascinating to study.”

Is Keiichi gonna fucking snap and murder Takano on the spot. If so, good choice! I very much approve.

Aw he doesn’t.

Also its kinda weird that Shion –oh fuck she BROKE SOMETHING! Well I guess we know where the divergence starts for this arc. Murder ho!

Already broken, hmm? Did they change it and have that be the part that was broken instead of the hand that Satoko broke when playing hide and seek?

Anyways its kinda weird that Shion wasn’t hearing weird thumping noises from an angrily stamping Hanyuu as Takano explained all her cult theories. Traditionally that’s where Shion starts to fray at the edges for this arc, and it was also why Tomitake came in –he thought he heard it too. But nothing this time around?

OH AND THEY DON’T ALL LEAVE TOGETHER THIS IS VERY INTERESTING. I’ll eat my shoe if taking pictures was all Takano was doing in there alone.

I appreciate Keiichi very much but if he’s the one to snap this arc I’ll be very disappointed. He’s got the most focus in the last series, it’d be boring.

OHO AND WE GET TO SEE TAKANO AND TOMITAKE AFTERWARDS. Traditionally speaking this is right around where they die. I love how Takano is using her “we’re totally dating” façade to convince Shion and Keiichi to leave her alone with her victim.

“Oyashiro-sama’s curse may befall someone tonight” Shion says as Tomitake and Takano walk off to die.

Oh and they don’t mention the angry hopping at all, this is fascinating.

RIKA JUST FUCKING TACKLES HIM TO THE GROUND I LOVE IT.

Wait. Wait wait wait wait WAIT. Where’s Satoko!? She was never missing normally! What does this mean?!

My Mion/Keiichi heart just imploded even though I know its about to go horribly wrong.

Good to see Keiichi’s still a shit liar.

And Oishi too! Fuck nothing’s happening like it’s supposed to tonight. Oh, okay he’s just squeezing in the “Sonozakis are dangerous” speech earlier than he used to. I get it.

THEIR FAMILY HAS BARBED WIRE FENCES?!

That is a lovely shot of discomfort.

What’s this fresh fuckery –AND ITS STILL JUST MISSING, NOT DEAD! DON’T LIKE THAT!

Okay so they stole a truck together, left both bike and car behind, and zoomed on out of there. Why? Takano’s plan for killing Rika technically hinges on Tomitake dying, even though she actually tries to pay him off/sway him to her side in several arcs. She fails, because he has ethics, but what if in this new stuff she actually managed to fuck his moral compass right out of him?

This conversation is proceeding just like it always does, almost word for word, which makes me think that maybe Shion did turn murder-crazy.

THE CLOCK HAUNTS ME.

Okay, so is this Shion faking to be Mion like usual? Kimiyoshi’s missing like usual, which is usually indicative of her murder-crazy arc. And there’s Satoko! She’s fine too, right? RIGHT?!

And Rika’s skipping right on by plausible deniability. Good for her. Also, usually she’s beat up by Shion faking to be Mion at this point, so is Shion still the instigator? Satoko doesn’t normally pop out during the festival, either. Actually, that’s NEVER happened, and is making me very worried.

OH JESUS RIKA WHAT THE FUCK. NORMALLY YOU JUST TELL HIM ITS OKAY WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS.

Also I both do and don’t like that Rika’s eyes start glowing and shit when she starts talking with her adult voice. On one hand, its unsettling and unprecedented in a bad way, but on the other hand, it looks super cool.

[sokkathebluewolf]

A review Why you do that? Making Sokka mention 28 in his vows now everyone think he slept around after the best time of his life? They both dont deserve this June slaves Hina Tylee now this Please don't make more girls fall for him involve with him feels like the whole fic turned around this Haru deserves better Tylee is flirting around

Don't get me wrong This is your fic and you can do anything you feel fit I'm merely giving an opinion ''cause Gladiator has things which you handled the best There is a Reason for this success I just hope this plus 1 girl thing in Sokkla relationship Stops But I always respect you with your great work(:

You do realize how utterly laughable it is to tell me “DON’T MAKE MORE GIRLS FALL FOR HIM IT FEELS LIKE THE WHOLE FIC IS TURNING AROUND” and then say “you can do anything you feel fit, I respect your work (:”, right?

This is not respect. This is not “constructive criticism”. This is not an opinion so important and valuable that it warrants being repeated about a million times across A YEAR. Most people? They give out their opinions, negative or positive, ONE TIME, and leave it be, because what matters to them is CONVEYING how they feel, not forcing a writer to constantly explain themselves or write whatever they would be comfortable with. Actually? Most people who have given me negative opinions so far have been like that, except one guy who was outright flaming my story because he wanted to wank to it, and he couldn’t believe he had to read 97 chapters to finally reach the smut. That I’m comparing you to this reader and reviewer is PROBABLY a bad sign, don’t you think?

Sokka didn’t MENTION 28: Sokka acknowledged his past mistakes because he’s a grown man who knows to feel remorse when he hurts people he loves. That he brings up having hurt her, to this day, isn’t in the purpose of going “HEY HEY AZULA REMEMBER WHEN I BROKE YOUR HEART LOL”, it’s in the purpose of saying: “I’ve learned from my mistakes and, as it has been for YEARS, I will devote myself to NEVER hurting you again”. That, anon, is a PERFECTLY VALID SENTIMENT for a wedding vow, and one that requires far more character growth and complexity than “Lol I’m so happy we were both virgins because that is the only kind of pure love that has ever been valid in the universe, anything else doesn’t count”.

Hell, you’ve literally made me go right back to the chapter to look at what he says, exactly: “I messed things up between us over my damn stupidity”, he... is literally beating himself up about this. To this day. He’s not talking about it proudly. And yet you’re here complaining as though he were?

SPOILER: More people will have feelings for Sokka in future chapters. In fact, I want to make it even MORE people than I’d originally planned after receiving all these asks. I’d rather derail my story into something you can’t stomach reading than cater to you. Azula will outright JOKE about being “jealous” in a future chapter, and Sokka will know it’s a joke! :D And I’m NOT lying about this to mess with you, it IS going to happen and your persistent asks absolutely WON’T make me alter my content. And why is it going to happen, you’ll ask? Why, because nice, charming, charismatic guys like Sokka attract people whether they want to or not. It’s what they DO about attracting others what matters to me! :’) And that Sokka rejects other people who attempt to be with him should be, I think, a much more important message about loyalty to someone you love than “I ONLY EVER ATTRACTED ONE PERSON IN MY LIFE AND MARRIED THEM”. Because I know that’s virtually the only thing you appear willing to accept, going by the first ask.

And holy crap, Ty Lee is... flirting around? Flirting around... with Haru. The guy she’s in a committed relationship with, whom she’s going to marry. The whole situation is meant to be insanely ironic considering Ty Lee is with the guy she SHOULD be with but it looks like it’s something else? (Hell, nobody even KNOWS it was Ty Lee, Mei Xun didn’t stick around long enough to discover the woman’s identity, so her reputation’s actually safe?) But you’re just so emotionally compromised by anything regarding Sokka being with anyone else, even if it’s 1. not true because he’s MILES away, with Azula 2. a joke 3. a plot device for a FUTURE EVENT, that you just can’t grasp this irony at all?

Ty Lee, by design in this story, has ALWAYS been pretty damn liberal about flirting and relationships. Despite we’ve mainly just heard such relationships mentioned on the side, rather than witnessing them directly, she is objectively the cast member who’s had the most relationships, whether serious or casual or just occasional, with other people. And even then, she’s getting married. Even when she’s had so many people in her past, she’s settling down with Haru for good. And Haru? Haru is THRILLED. Because he loves her. Because she loves him. Because HER past does NOT have a single thing to do with THEIR future. And yet you seriously read these chapters, where Ty Lee is having a lot of fun with her fiancé, and your brain just translated this as “OMG TY LEE IS A SLUT HARU DESERVES BETTER!”? Seriously?

I feel like I’m getting asks from a childish version of Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy. Everything that isn’t straightforward needs to be explained point by point, apparently, and even then, you don’t get it. I literally went to literature school and was told to write intelligent fiction so readers would feel compelled to unravel its complexities themselves... apparently that was a big fat lie? :’) Your persistence actually has convinced me that it is.

Oh and, for future reference (because I KNOW you’ll come back, that’s all you ever do): not because you throw compliments at me later to “cushion” your complaint does it mean you’re respecting me and my story. You can’t slap someone in the face and then go “Oh your cheeks are so plump that I bet it doesn’t hurt”. You can’t just disregard my request that you keep these sorts of questions to my PERSONAL blog rather than the fic’s blog, and pretend you respect me. You can’t come to me time after time with the same complaints and attitude, watch how I’ve basically gone from initially responding with discomfort (because, in my personal blog, there are MANY asks that predate yours, where I’d already explained my reasoning to someone else who apparently didn’t get it, which means the subject wears me out, A LOT), then seeing that I started ignoring your asks, then seeing I closed the inbox so I could regain some sense of normalcy in my life that you refused to let me reclaim, and then seeing that I’m answering with outright hostility, and pretend that it’s ME who has a problem. 

If someone I respected responded in any similar manner to ANYTHING I said to them, I’d basically feel like shit and never talk to them again because I don’t want to be a burden or a problem for someone whom I value in any way. You, apparently, would rather be a problem, and to no avail, because all you’re achieving so far is convincing me to continue writing things that will make you riot until you stop reading my story. If you CAN’T stop reading regardless of the horrifying, amoral, dreadful decisions I’ve made? Congratulations: you still don’t have the right to tell me what to do with my story. And until you GENUINELY understand that, your compliments don’t mean anything to me. I have readers I value who have conveyed complaints, MANY TIMES, in an actual respectful manner. Readers who are even bothered by the same thing you are. And yet I’m even FRIENDS with them. Imagine that :’) It’s almost like the problem isn’t having whatever opinion you do... but rather, the intent of IMPOSING your opinion constantly and persistently until you’ve driven me to lash out as bluntly and cruelly as I may! To the point I’m outright saying I’m going to rewrite my story into becoming EVERYTHING you don’t want it to be so you leave me alone!

And if you’re not the one who’s been here for a year, and this is not really an echo chamber (despite all of these messages have the same complaints, wording, tone, format, style, punctuation and grammar mistakes), yet you SAW that other people have been doing this for a long time, and thought it was PERFECTLY FINE to join the party? You’re no less of an asshole than the rest of them. No matter if it’s your first time voicing your “opinion”. Because it’s NOT about what you’re saying: it’s about HOW you’re saying it. It’s about trying to guilt trip me into writing whatever you want and claiming the story is going off the rails because something makes you personally uncomfortable. This is NOT objective criticism. This is SUBJECTIVE, ENTIRELY. This isn’t a real problem in storytelling, it’s a personal problem for you because it clashes with your moral values. And NO ONE is forcing you to continue consuming content that goes against your moral values, you’re choosing to do that yourself.

If you’re to live by any of the words you said in these two asks, make it “This is your fic and you can do anything you feel fit”. Because that’s literally what I’m going to do. It’s what I’ve done over EVERY complaint in poor faith I’ve gotten, ranging from “quit writing so much happiness it’s boring” to “where’s the sex you prude”. And it’s what I intend to continue doing. What kind of criticism do I value? “This particular scene features a factually contradictory line with a previous event”, such as Zuko claiming he never went to Sokka’s house when he in fact did, and I plain and simple FORGOT about it. What more kinds of criticism do I value? “You need to work out the Gladiator League’s system better because it’s not a solid business venture”, and this one was right? And yet it was too late to fix it, despite it’s 100% spot-on and I should’ve worked it out way better than I did. Another? “Sokka may have gotten over the fact that Azula captured him and tossed him in a slave market too easily”, because? It’s a perfectly valid sentiment? I disagree because Sokka is canonically shown to get over grudges relatively quickly, and yet I CAN see why it seems too fast for some people. What else do I value? Maybe suggestions on wording problems! I’ve made a lot of stupid wording mistakes, in virtue of being a non-native speaker. I’ve done my best to amend those, but it’s a work in progress even now.

Point and case being: in literature, and thus, in fanfiction? Constructive criticism isn’t “WRITE WHAT I WANT TO READ BECAUSE I WANT TO BE PERFECTLY COMFORTABLE WITH ALL I CONSUME”. Constructive criticism is given by people who KNOW storytelling. So I’d only consider it constructive criticism if it’s given by people who can read those chapters and see that the ENTIRE purpose of that conflict is to trigger growth and development as both Sokka and Azula realize their own mistakes and shortcomings with each other. So, someone who’s giving actual constructive criticism wouldn’t come to my inbox a million times with the same complaint... someone who’s giving constructive criticism would come to my inbox, ONE TIME, and say “Hey, maybe this alternative to conveying Azula is instinctively jealous over her canonical insecurities about being a monster and earning people’s love and loyalties COULD have been preferable, despite I know you can’t change that anymore as it’s fundamental for your story”, or “Hey, I thought of another way for Sokka to convey that he realized their interest in each other could result in something TERRIBLE if they ever acted on their feelings, a way for him to not act on that specific impulse to flirt with Suki to push away Azula, but to act on ANOTHER, believable, IC Sokka-compliant impulse that might still convey exactly what you needed to”. But again, even if it were complaints like THESE? I can’t change anything anymore. It’s TOO LATE. If I think it’s too late to fix Zuko saying “lol I never went to Sokka’s house” when it’s not true? It’s WAY TOO LATE to rewrite chapters that are over SEVEN years old, and I don’t even want to do it to begin with. But I WOULD concede these criticisms. I would accept them. I wouldn’t consider them offensive to me, or my work, or disrespectful in any way.

Constructive criticism is NOT about forcing an author to agree with you, or to do whatever you ask them to. Constructive criticism is about helping an author convey what they were conveying in a better, smoother way. If you CAN’T understand what the author was conveying? You don’t qualify for offering constructive criticism. If you need explanations as to why the author did anything they did? You’re, again, not qualified to offer constructive criticism. Your criticism, in any such cases, is NOT constructive, no matter what you’re telling yourself. This is a VERY important distinction, and one you can’t pretend isn’t valid just by throwing a bunch of compliments at me after telling me I’m ruining my story.

Until the day you DO understand the difference between constructive criticism, and subjective complaints? Your opinions will not be considered valuable enough to affect my story in a positive way. And the more disrespectful you show yourself, by continuing to disregard my DIRECT request for you to stop coming back with these complaints, as well as the direct request to stop sending these questions to this blog? The less your opinions will count for me. I don’t bend over backwards for anyone. And I’m definitely not going to do it for you.

[juliabohemian]

Can We Take a Joke?

Recently I have been thinking a lot about what it means for something to be offensive. A few years back, a favorite comedian of mine lost his prestigious job, working alongside a duck, as a spokesperson for a large healthcare corporation because he tweeted a joke that some people (or perhaps an entire nation of people) found offensive. 

This particular comedian is notorious for joking about topics that are really touchy. I have been a fan of his comedy since the 80s, probably since before I was even old enough to be watching his shows. I have never been offended by anything he's said. The reason being that there is not an ounce of maliciousness to be found there. He doesn't come across as hateful. Just tactless. Almost to the point where it's so ridiculous, that you know he isn't serious.

Gilbert Gottfried is notorious for joking about topics that are really touchy. I have been a fan of his comedy since the 80s, probably since before I was even old enough to be watching his shows. I have never been offended by anything he's said. The reason being that there is not an ounce of maliciousness to be found there. He doesn't come across as hateful. Just tactless. Almost to the point where it's so ridiculous, that you know he isn't serious. 

Gilbert Gottfried has always appealed to me because of how bravely and stubbornly he refuses to yield to social conventions, which I personally find exhausting. Growing up as a neurodivergent (I have both autism and ADHD) I would often say things that offended other people and could never seem to understand where I’d gone wrong. I felt like I was running some kind of obstacle course, in which the rules were constantly changing. I was fascinated by watching Gilbert on stage, being true to himself despite whatever heckling he might endure. It took me years of navigating around other people's feelings to figure out how I could still be me, without causing others distress. I am still working on it. 

Which brings me to my first point, which is what does it actually mean to be offended? We’ve all been offended at some point, whether we like it or not. Basically it means that something another person said or did triggered an emotional reaction in us that we did not enjoy, and after some analysis (or no analysis) we came to the conclusion that the source of our emotion lay entirely outside of ourselves, rather than consider the possibility that some portion of our reaction was the result of our own trauma or emotional baggage.

So, what is it that makes people feel the need to censor other people? It comes down to control. Just so you know, we don’t have any. The sooner you embrace that, the happier you will be. The problem is that, for the most part, we tend to feel helpless unless we take some sort of action. It gives us the illusion of control. When, in fact, we cannot control what other people say or do. Not really. If you don’t believe me, have some children and you should be thoroughly convinced. At the end of the day, we can only control ourselves. And most of us can’t even do that.

That being said, censorship actually began with conservatives and evangelicals. That’s not too hard to dissect. A major component of their ideology involves monopolizing the moral high ground. They devoted a great deal of energy to protecting humanity from such dangers as homosexuality and promiscuity and women wearing pants and having jobs. Things like that. And they had that gig for a few thousand years until, sometime during the last 4 decades or so, there was a paradigm shift. The right passed the censorship torch to the liberals. Or the right accidentally dropped it while they were looking for Obama’s birth certificate. Either way, it now seems that the left is attempting to do what the right could not, which is to police the world and rid it of its ills.

Bearing in mind, of course, that I consider myself as liberal as a person can possibly be. I find that while I often share the views of other liberals about what is and isn’t offensive, I don’t always agree with them about what, if anything, we should do about it.

Which begs the question, when should a reasonably intelligent, emotionally mature person be offended? And I think it really does come down to a few factors, primarily intent and context. These things are really important. Who told the joke and why were they telling it? Who is the target of the joke? Are we laughing AT them or WITH them?

A Jew telling a joke about jews is not offensive. And if you’re not Jewish, you don’t get to have a say about it. A black man joking about what it’s like to drive around a strange neighborhood, while black, is also not offensive. Neither is a white person joking about it, frankly, so long as the point of the joke is how ridiculous it is that a black person even has to deal with that shit in the first place. 

When the target of the joke is a member of a marginalized group and the purpose of the joke is to commiserate with that person, then it’s not offensive. It only has the potential to be offensive when the person telling the joke is a member of a privileged group (male, Caucasian, Christian) and the target of the joke is not. Note, I said POTENTIAL. Because sometimes jokes that fit that definition aren’t offensive. They’re just not funny. In which case, that situation usually takes care of itself.

I have found that almost all comedy can be divided into two categories: drawing attention to that which is obvious or doing the exact opposite of what people are expecting. Most stand-up comedy falls into the first category. Which is why stand up comedians talk about things like relationship woes, airplane food, having kids etc. Because poking fun at experiences that large groups of people can relate to is a practical choice when you are dealing with an audience of total strangers. Especially when those strangers are your primary source of income.

The thing about comedians is that most of them don't genuinely believe what they are saying. The audience knows this. Or at least, they should. Comedians often adopt a persona when they take the stage, which differs drastically from their real life selves. Do I think Gilbert Gottfried is happy that Japanese people lost their lives to a horrible tsunami? Not for one second. Do I think that he was amused by the events of 9-11? As a lifelong resident of Brooklyn, I seriously doubt it. I think he was doing what he's always done, what we ALL do, which is to make jokes about things that are uncomfortable, in order to alleviate the discomfort. That’s what comedians do. In fact, we RELY upon them to do it. We RELY upon humor to help us cope with tragedy and trauma.

Which I can relate to on a very deep level because I have been through some pretty horrific shit in my life and I have always been the first person to make a  joke about it. There have been times in my life where I have been telling a story about something terrible I went through and the other person was clearly uncomfortable with my making a joke about it. I could tell, just by looking at them, that they wanted to be offended. They wanted to claim that moral high ground and let me know that I was being inappropriate. But they couldn’t because it’s MY LIFE AND I WILL JOKE ABOUT IT IF I WANT TO.

Getting back to how to know whether something is offensive...I was watching a documentary called Can We Take a Joke? which was specifically addressing the topic of people being offended by comedy. Within the documentary there was some footage of a young man at a college doing some (and I use this term generously) stand-up comedy in which he was disparaging women's studies as a major, after which a woman in the audience (who he called a loud mouthed cunt) ran on stage and told him to shut up. 

This is a perfect example of when intent matters. How is this young man different than a comedian who is simply joking about something uncomfortable in order to alleviate discomfort? Simply put, he believes what he is saying. Not only does he dislike women’s studies, he dislikes women in general. He is drawn to the stage out of a desire to have a platform for expressing that disdain. And that came across in his act because, well, he didn’t try very hard to hide it. 

Can the concept of women's studies be funny? Absolutely. There are many jokes we could make about women's studies and gender studies and other similar academic majors. I could probably do an entire 30 minute routine just on social sciences in general. But this young man wasn't drawing attention to the obvious, which is that often these majors don't lead to any specific career path. He was simply expressing disdain for women. 

Is that offensive? Well, yes. Disdain can be funny, so long as it isn’t the product of bias towards an entire group of people. Disdain for having a cold, for instance. Disdain for being stuck in traffic. Disdain for women, however, isn’t worthy of laughter.

But is the appropriate response to run on stage and demand that he be quiet? No. The level of anger expressed by the woman in the audience was, shall we say, disproportionate. She seemed a little unhinged. Although, it’s possible that she already knew the young man or that they had some sort of personal history. Either way, the solution, if there even is one, is to ignore him and stop giving him attention. Is it fair to be offended by someone who seems genuinely hateful? Absolutely. But it isn’t always appropriate, productive, or even possible to take any sort of counteraction. 

Not only that but I think there is no real danger that this kid will ever break into the comedy business for real. So, he will likely have to look to some MRA themed subreddit for further validation of his misogyny. Unless the next loudmouthed cunt that storms on stage kills him, of course.

When Mr. Gottfried made that unfortunate tweet about the tsunami in Japan the internet crucified him. People actually said he should die. Which, to me, is a far worse statement than any jokes the comedian has ever made. I was furious, not only with the general public, but with other show business personalities who refused to speak up on Mr. Gottfried’s behalf. In hindsight, I realize that they were probably terrified that they would be next on the chopping block. Which says a lot about us as a society, I think. 

But I don’t think the problem is that people are too easily offended. The problem is that too many people lack critical thinking skills. We need to be willing to ask ourselves whether something is genuinely offensive, or if the topic of it simply evokes negative feelings for us because of our own individual experiences. We need to be willing to step away and resist the urge to take everyone else with us. We also need to accept that sometimes there are genuinely hateful assholes in the world and that silencing them is not always an option. 

If something genuinely is offensive, what should you do about it? 99% of the time, the correct answer is nothing. Now, I'm not talking about hate speech. I'm not talking about propaganda. I'm talking about some comedian, shock jock, TV personality making a joke that you found offensive. You can certainly blog about it, if it makes you feel better. But after that you should avoid that person, their material, their show etc. Because, clearly it is not the right entertainment for you.

I feel that way about King of the Hill and Family Guy. But since I am capable of acknowledging that those things are amusing to other people, I am able to refrain from launching a campaign against their creators under the guise of making the world a better place for everyone.

TL;DR Gilbert Gottfried is a national treasure and should be protected, like the Grand Canyon. AFLAC knew exactly what they were getting when they hired him and merely fired him due to the pressures put in place by late stage capitalism, which dictate that anyone working for a profit seeking entity is at the mercy of public opinion. Shine on, you crazy diamond.  

[ebp-brain]

the way we speak to each other on tumblr, or, discourse on the discourse

the discourse code (really more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules):

AUDIENCE: a room full of white cis male U.S. senators legislating abortion SPEAKER: someone with the ability to reproduce APPROPRIATE LANGUAGE: Shut up, sit down, and listen.

AUDIENCE: a white fan studies scholar expressing doubt that fandom & fan studies have a race problem SPEAKER: a fan or fan studies scholar of color APPROPRIATE LANGUAGE: Do your research. It’s not my job to educate you.

AUDIENCE: a group of marginalized folks who share a community SPEAKER: a member of that community who feels alienated by something that has been said APPROPRIATE LANGUAGE: Hey, this made me uncomfortable/I think this is a harmful statement. Here’s why. Can we talk about this?

also:

MEMBER OF MARGINALIZED COMMUNITY: I’m uncomfortable. Here’s why. OTHER MEMBER OF COMMUNITY: Oh, I can see your perspective. Thank you for sharing that with me. Additionally:

Option 1: I now understand and agree with you. I’m sorry I hurt you, and I will do better in the future.

Option 2: I understand where you’re coming from, and I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t entirely agree that this thing is harmful. In fact, I’m worried that calling this thing harmful will actually cause other people harm. Here’s why. What do you think? (further discussion) Okay, we don’t agree. I still don’t want to hurt you, but I also feel strongly that continuing to say/write this thing will be helpful to many people, myself included. I will clearly tag any mention I make of that thing, and I have no problem if you unfollow me so you don’t have to engage with it.

These days, I feel anxious every time I open Tumblr. I feel very anxious when I express an opinion on Tumblr, especially one that I know many people won’t agree with. I have talked with others who feel this way too. Here’s what I think.

People often feel hurt by other people on the internet. And feeling hurt is exhausting. Those who are hurt may feel that they are being required to explain themselves over and over again. Unfortunately, because of how Tumblr works—because people see posts at different times and are not present for every discussion—it’s not fair for someone to expect everyone to already know why they think something is harmful. It is okay to not know why, and it is okay to ask. Furthermore, it’s not fair of someone to assume that you can simply “look it up”; Tumblr issues are not universal, and Google is not always helpful. Additionally, it’s also unfair for someone to assume that if you do “look it up” you will immediately agree with their position. It’s okay for them to say, “I don’t have the emotional capacity to talk about this right now,” but if the person has actively invited the conversation by making a recent public post telling everyone what to do, it’s fair of you to expect them to explain why, or to expect them to provide access to an earlier post they or someone else made explaining why.

It’s important for us not to invalidate others’ feelings. However, that also means that others should not invalidate our feelings. One person’s hurt should not immediately dictate what every person in a community, particularly one full of hurt people, can say and do.

Hurt matters a lot, but it is also not the only thing that matters. When you don’t share someone’s specific hurt, you should listen to them and attempt to reduce that hurt, but you are not obligated to immediately do everything they say you should. They should not use bullying, abusive language when communicating with you, and you should not use bullying, abusive language when communicating with them.

Finally, we should examine our own hurt and discomfort. Sometimes someone has hurt us and we take it out on other people. Sometimes we feel discomfort because we are trying so hard not to get teased or vilified that we reject anything that could possibly be considered problematic or stereotypical, even when it’s a genuine part of our own or others’ experiences. Sometimes we feel discomfort because we feel vulnerable and want to protect ourselves. Sometimes we feel discomfort and later realize we were uncomfortable because we were actually intrigued by, drawn to, or turned on by something we were told we shouldn’t be.

It is absolutely true that sometimes people say hurtful things and need to change their behavior. Sometimes people hurt others because they don’t want to give up their power or bother with self-reflection. Sometimes they pretend they don’t understand other perspectives because they don’t want to be held accountable. That happens sometimes—often, even. But to assume immediately that the members of one’s own community, people who share many of the same basic values, are doing this, and to refuse to acknowledge that they also have feelings, hurts, and valid perspectives, is not fair. It makes people afraid to ask questions, express doubts, or share opinions. It drives them away. It drives us away.

tldr; You do not need to feel horribly guilty and anxious for disagreeing with someone or not understanding their position right away, and it is not fair for anyone to use bullying language within the community you share. There’s a time and place for moral certainty and angry exhaustion: when we’re talking to Tr*mp supporters, for example. And it makes sense to identify the people in our communities who are truly engaging in bad faith, bullying, or trolling, and to block them. But it does not make sense, nor is it fair, to treat members of our communities—people that we theoretically want to be in relationship with!—as if they are horrible oppressors whose opinions and feelings don’t matter as much as our own. It’s certainly our responsibility to try and do better, to listen to people’s concerns, and to reduce harm, but we will not always agree about how to do this, and you having a different opinion or even getting things wrong is not a free pass for someone to bully you. If you are feeling guilty and anxious, it’s okay to ask yourself if that’s because someone is trying to make you feel that way.

[bettsfic]

Hey so like...how do u justify romanticising a minor/adult relationship bc as a minor it kinda makes me uncomfortable. You’re an amazing writer, I just don’t quite get why you chose the age gap

before i address your question directly, and i will, i want to point out a few things that confuse me about this ask.

first, the admission of being a minor with the implication you’ve read my work, and now outright interacting with me. i’ve written maybe half a dozen g- and t-rated fics, and none of them are particularly popular, which i’m guessing means you’ve read my explicit fics, which means you’ve clicked past Ao3′s polite “18+ only” warning. my apologies if this assumption is incorrect – maybe you really have only read my three or four gen/teen-rated fics. that just seems very unlikely to me because all of my more popular fics are mature and explicit.

now, while admitting you are a minor made uncomfortable by minor/adult relationships, you have directly approached me, a 29 year old woman, to ask me why i’ve made the choices i’ve made. granted, by going on anon, you’ve ensured that this is a public forum, but if you’d PM’d me, i wouldn’t have responded, because i am not here to interact with minors.

which brings me to my conclusion of this portion of the ask, which is: i am not writing for minors and i do not want to interact with minors. i can’t control what you read or don’t read and it’s absolutely not my responsibility to cater to you in any way, especially if you knowingly and voluntarily click past the 18+ warning. but i can control my personal interactions, and i urge you not to reach out to me again. 

next i’m going to nitpick the word “romanticize” which is a word heavy in the current moral rhetoric. literally speaking, you are right. i am making an age gap romance romantic. rhetorically speaking, to “romanticize” something means to flatten or gloss over it, sweep potential consequences under the rug. to romanticize abuse, for example, is to make it beautiful, to ignore all the trauma and pain that comes along with it. (i think it is a worthy artistic endeavor to attempt to romanticize abuse in fiction, if for only the ability to highlight how fucked up abusive relationships can feel in the moment, but that’s a rant for another time).

since you haven’t read training wheels, i can tell you outright i am not romanticizing a minor/adult relationship. there are certainly unrealistic/porny moments, but i’m not shying away from the actual emotional consequences of being a 17yo* girl dating a 25yo man. i’m doing my best to depict this relationship the way these relationships are actually felt, because they do happen, and i have been in them. they can be very romantic, but that doesn’t mean i’m romanticizing them. though we’re not in his pov, bellamy is acutely aware of the greater context of their relationship. and clarke, who has no context, is doing her best to navigate the difficulty of her situation, semi-aware that it’s something that will be haunting her for a long, long time. 

i am not beautifying the ugliness of their relationship; i am not fetishizing (another word i take issue with) the minor body. being in clarke’s pov means that bellamy is object of desire, and meanwhile we get, through clarke’s thoughts, the sometimes awkward and confusing realization of what it means to be wanted, loved, used, seen, broken, trespassed, and all the other things teenage girls sometimes have to navigate. 

and i have one more thing to say before i answer your actual question: you are allowed to be uncomfortable reading fiction. in fact, i think you should be uncomfortable reading fiction. all art should make us uncomfortable, because in discomfort lies broader awareness. by consuming things which push at the boundaries of our narrow reality, we are capable of widening that reality, and that’s what it means to learn and grow and become the people we want to be. you cannot become a better, stronger, wiser person without facing and overcoming that which makes you uncomfortable. 

i also resent a bit the implication that i, a fanfic writer, a queer woman, am beholden to appeasing your comfort when straight white male writers are not. i assume you’re not sending jroth letters about how murphy’s sex slavery arc in s3 made you uncomfortable. or that the entire premise of the show revolves around putting a hundred minors in a ship and dropping them onto a potentially lethal planet. or raven, a teenager, sleeping with bellamy, an adult, in s1. and that’s not even mentioning the violence perpetuated against minors in the show. they die! and they bleed! like, a lot!! charlotte, a 12yo girl, dies a gruesome death in s1. they are minors forced to kill or be killed in exceedingly violent ways, and you’re in my inbox asking why i’m writing a fic that depicts a loving and consensual relationship between a 17yo (clarke’s canonical age in s1) and a 25yo. 

now i’ll answer your actual ask.

you use the word “justify” as if i had to do some kind of logistical puzzle to make this fic morally okay in my eyes. i can tell you now, i did not, because the story exists to navigate that logistical puzzle on its own. the conflict poses the question: is this okay? is this wrong? what about it is wrong? for what reasons is it wrong? and i also attempt (in a clunky way because it’s a bit rough, plot-wise) to navigate what “informed consent” really means to a 17yo who has no information to go off of. for me it’s an experiment in what consent really is. clarke wants bellamy, but she doesn’t have a full awareness of the consequences of that want, so is it truly consensual? what does bellamy have to do to fully inform her of those consequences? is it even his responsibility, or should clarke take more agency over her experiences? and lastly, the most interesting question of them all to me – what happens to the minors in consensual age gap relationships? how do they cope with that experience years later? in what ways does it change them?

though it’s not my responsibility to indulge my personal ties to this conflict in order to further “justify” it, i can assure you, i am writing this from clarke’s pov having been the younger party in many age gap relationships, at times a minor. at times coerced. at times completely uninformed. but each time, consensual. i sought out the men i dated. i took the lead. i propositioned them. and i consider: how has that affected me and the way i love now? 

my mom at 20, married my dad, 32. my older sister at 16, met her (now ex) husband, her then-boss, at 23 (they waited until she was 18 to start dating). i dated an 18yo and then a 19yo when i was 14. a 21yo when i was 16. a 32yo when i was 19. a 47yo when i was 22. but i also had a long-term relationship with someone who was just three months younger than me. age gap is not the only way i know how to love, but it is certainly a way to love, and one i find, in lieu of seeking it out in reality, narratively compelling. so i write about those experiences in order to better understand them now that i’m older. in order to take them apart and piece them back together. in order to, in some cases, relive them, because i enjoyed so much about them. 

i don’t pursue older men anymore because i no longer seek male validation. i don’t meet a handsome middle-aged man and need him to love me to feel like my existence in the world is warranted. but that doesn’t mitigate all the old habits and drive and potentially genetic disposition that led me to relentlessly pursuing them in the first place. so now i sublimate that into fiction and offer my experience and understanding to others who might be predisposed in the same way, or people who are not and curious about what that experience is like. and that’s what fiction does.

lastly, i’ve sort of saturated myself in age gap stories. i’ve watched every age gap movie i can get my hands on, read every book. i dive through google and ao3 looking for age gap recs, seeking out the one story or fic or movie that not only gets the relationship right, but figures out how to make it work. that’s all i want – a realistic, plausible solution to this very delicate and complicated kind of relationship. and i can’t find that story, so i’ve decided to write it myself. 

training wheels is an uncomfortable story about a romantic minor/adult relationship and the realistic psychological consequences of it, both in the immediate present and long-term, and you are supposed to be made uncomfortable by it, regardless of your age. it makes romantic but does not romanticize age gap relationships. i do not take the morality of this story lightly, nor its meaning or intentions. whether i succeed in this is up to interpretation, and i can’t control that interpretation, but i can tell you with certainty what my intentions have been going into this story, and exactly why i’ve made the decisions i’ve made regarding it. 

*the age of consent in ohio, where training wheels is set, is 16. i recognize the current rhetoric around this is “legality is not morality” or whatever, but again – the purpose of training wheels is in part to directly address this conflict

[necropsittacus]

answer all the ones you have an interesting answer for, i guess?

i had FAR too much fun with this and it’s horrifically long so. Apologies For That. also thank you friend

2: What’s your dream pet? (Real or not)i really want some finches, when i'm actually in a place to care for an animal? maybe a pigeon3: Do you have a favorite clothing style?in real life i actually Wear button downs and black jeans most of the time for convenience. *ideally* it would be something more like "unholy union of like three different goth aesthetics, and sith fashion, and also Pirate. and spikes/chains/glowy lights." it's probably good for everyone else's eyes that i'm too cheap to redo my entire wardrobe in line with my ideal aesthetic sensibilities. i also have a set color scheme; at most one bright color, which is generally red, blue, or purple, and everything else should be black or grey. 8: What is your Greek personality type? [Sanguine, Phlegmatic, Choleric, or Melancholic]melancholic with choleric leanings.9: Are you ticklish?nope! im pretty sure i trained myself out of it 12: Do you prefer tea, coffee, or cocoa?tea. i like the taste of coffee if it's very heavily creamed and sugared but it does terrible things to my body so i don't drink it. too much chocolate also makes me sick14: Would you rather be a vampire, elf, or merperson?VAMPIRE. practically already am. 16: How tall are you?5'7"-5'8". measurements have varied. 17: If you had to change your name, what would you change it to?starscreamthis one is Already a name change? i've been through a few names and honestly i'm pretty happy with "ren." i thought about changing to something people could actually spell right on the first try, but nothing Felt right? 20: Do you like space or the ocean more?ocean! but both are pretty neat21: Are you religious?yes, but it's not remotely clear what i actually believe, just that it's Something  23: Would you rather be nocturnal or diurnal [opposite of nocturnal]?i'm already practically nocturnal tbh and it's fun 30: Favorite movie?i really appreciate the star wars prequels32: How many pets have you own in your lifetime?nine; six fish and three budgies, not all at the same time37: What is your eye color?green38: Introvert or extrovert?i think the whole dichotomy is a bit overhyped and doesn't exactly apply to me. my situation is more that i act like extroverts are "supposed" to with close friends but people i don't already know and like very much are deeply exhausting to be around and i'd rather not40: Hugs or kisses?depends. hand/forehead/cheek/etc kisses are intensely blessed and important to me, but i don't particularly enjoy making out or whatnot, and hugs are Very nice. 42: Who is someone you love deeply?tumblr user @autisticsansa​44: Do you like tattoos and piercings?yeah!45: Do you smoke or have you eiver done so?yeah, occasionally. obligatory disclaimer that it's a terrible habit and you shouldn't start. it's more a "i'm extremely anxious and need to do SOMETHING" thing than a regular habit, though. 57: Have any mental disorders? [Only ask this if you know the user doesn’t mind!]several. it's just not 100% clear which ones. the most recent Professional Opinion was OCD and CPTSD with probably related anxiety and depression. also autism but i don't think that's quite the same thing58: What does your URL mean?it's a pun on "neurodivergent" that i stole from someone else's post about liches61: What makes you unfollow a blog?if your opinions start pissing me off too much or you post things i consider morally objectionable or dangerous to me. also if we have a sufficiently bad personal fight. i don't really care if a mutual or someone i've been following for a long time stops having common interests with me or anything like that, at that point i'm invested in You as a Person and will stick around for that64: Favorite animal(s):all birds. also cetaceans69: What is your star sign?i'm a fake scorpio. i have been telling people i'm a scorpio and tagging zodiac posts accordingly for literal years, out of a combination of the stereotype applying to me much better than the one for my Actual Birthday and residual influence from homestuck. 76: Do you like birds?i LOVE birds.86: Can you run a mile within ten minutes?i can't run a mile at ALL i'll have an asthma atatck88: Can you touch your toes and keep your legs straight completely?no and trying hurts90: If you were an animal, which one would you be?goth cockatoo94: Would you rather be able to fly or read minds?both of those sound fantastic. i want to say fly, though, both because bird thing!!!!, my latest batch of Attachment/Projection Characters has me thinking about the idea a lot, and mind reading seems like it would likely become a burden on me. i struggle enough with other people's feelings about me as it is96: Winter or summer?winter. summer is consistently a miserable time for me101: Favorite type of shoesaesthetically, high heeled black lace up boots. irl i mostly wear combat boots, though103: Are you a vegetarian or vegan? If so, why?vegetarian. i don't really Know why; it was how i was raised, i have no actual desire to eat meat, and i'm reasonably certain trying to start now would interact disastrously with a lot of my preexisting food issues. also, some of you are incapable of not responding to asshole vegans by acting like eating meat is a moral imperative and it's ok to bully people who don't. so even if i did want to, i wouldn't out of sheer spite106: Do you like bugs?depends on the kind. bees/wasps, dragonflies, and butterfly/moth type things are all fine. i'm deathly afraid of crickets107: Do you like spiders?yeah! i think they're cute109: Can you draw:not very well, but i keep doing it anyway114: Do you prefer cloudy or sunny days?cloudy. bright light tends to hurt me115: Someone you’d like to kiss or cuddle right now:i'm in an odd place right now where i'm either not sure if the people i'm closest to (and/or most want to Become close with) would be comfortable with anything of the sort, or know for a fact that they wouldn't be, so i'm going to refrain from naming anyone, but certain friends129: What would you want written on your tombstone?"túrin turambar dagnir glaurunga." for old times' sake/the sentimental value. i doubt christopher tolkien would give anyone permission for that, though131: What is something you love but also hate about yourself?arrogance, ambition, drive to succeed out of sheer Spite. it's a very good aesthetic, but i don't imagine it's very pleasant to actually *interact* with someone with a complex about being #1 132: Do you smile with your teeth showing for pictures?nope. i exclusively either smirk or keep my face as blank as possible; i don't think smiling like that looks good on me. 133: Computer or TV?computer. i don't actually know how to operate a television139: What nicknames do you have/have had?a lot. tends to come with changing your name 500 times. atm i don't really have any, to my slight disappointment140: Did you have any pretend or imaginary friends?i had imaginary enemies as a kid143: Do you prefer giving or receiving gifts/help?depends? it's hard for me to help people, especially to guess what kind of thing actually Is helpful to them, and i absolutely LOVE being given things, but also if i know someone well enough that we're giving each other things i would feel absolutely terrible not reciprocating, and doing it makes me happy. 145: How many languages do you speak fluently?only english, unfortunately. i have like a six year olds level of russian, which i want to improve, and i think i Could get there with japanese eventually if i start taking classes again147: Are you androgynous?honestly i can't really tell? not deliberately so, particularly, but i think i have a very Traditionally Feminine kind of pretty face and the way that combines with mostly masculine presentation and facial hair is pretty androgynous148: Favorite physical thing about yourself:this isn't a Specific Thing per se, but i do think HRT has been taking my appearance in a very "g1 seeker" direction and i am DELIGHTED151: If you could go back into time and live in one era, which would you choose?hm. viking stuff is a Big Aesthetic, but also i think i deserve to be a sickly victorian gentleman and die of tuberculosis154: Do you like to kiss others’ foreheads or hands for platonic reasons?YES. this is one of my favorite forms of affection irl. also hand kissing is The Most Valid kind of kissing. 155: Do you like to play with others’ hair?yes!!!157: Something that makes you nervous/anxious:talking to people when i'm not 100% sure where i stand with them or how much they like me. especially if i'm requesting anything.168: Do you like to wear makeup?i used to. i probably still would if i could do it without being read as a woman, but as it is the discomfort of being misgendered outweighs the joy of Having Sparkly Colors on My Face

[chamerionwrites]

@permian-tropos replied to your post:

I ran into some “sad endings are bad” discourse and even as someone who probably prefers happy endings I got pissy too (particularly since what people were classifying as something sad was like… anything that didn’t make you feel powerful. anything that grappled with certain real ideas that never make you feel powerful)

also I think some people pick sides on this based on what particular happy/sad ending they want for one story yeah I’m going to say it I think it’s often shallow like if Thing People Want was established to be irrefutably dark and edgy the same people would argue that dark stories are good

That captures the essence of what bothers me, honestly. I don’t think power fantasies are bad. I don’t even think they lack depth (some of them do, but so do plenty of tragedies; that’s an issue of writing quality, not anything inherent in either genre). And I think it’s more than worthwhile to point out who has traditionally gotten to play protagonist in those kinds of stories, and write many more that center the sorts of characters who have often been relegated to the margins of the narrative.

But I find it deeply, deeply unsettling when people suggest that stories which don’t function as power fantasies are worthless if not outright harmful. That’s a fundamentally political statement and imo a fundamentally dangerous one, because learning is often inextricably tied to discomfort. Compassion is often inextricably tied to discomfort. Unlearning harmful ideas, apologizing to people you’ve wronged, caring for people in pain, grappling with complicated moral dilemmas - all of those things often involve at least a moment or two of feeling like absolute shit. So when people dismiss the value of stories that Make Them Feel Bad - especially in nominally left-leaning spaces like Tumblr - it always seems to me that they talk a good game about open-mindedness and empathy while devaluing what those things actually look like in practice, because both demand a certain amount of willingness to be made uncomfortable without lashing out at whatever brought you discomfort. 

Which is NOT to say that anyone is obligated to like sad stories. To the contrary, I think some of the value of fiction lies in the fact that it lets us process things slightly differently than we might IRL. I think soft, triumphant, hopeful stories with happy endings are often moving and thought-provoking and beautiful, and it’s perfectly valid for folks to gravitate to those kinds of narratives and avoid tragedies. Where I draw the line is when they claim that only one of those things can possibly be valuable, and shit all over anybody whose tastes differ while they’re at it.

Also...I very much appreciate you adding your perspective, and I want to assure you in advance that I’m not trying to be a pedant and that any frustration here isn’t directed at you, but to be brutally clear about the original post: Sad Endings Are Bad discourse doesn’t just make me pissy. I don’t find it merely irritating. I find it aggressively upsetting, for a variety of reasons that I’m not super hyped about discussing at length on the internet but which broadly boil down to a lot of the thoughts expressed in this post: “Because that particular ‘shh, shh, shh, if we pretend utopia is already here, it soon will be’ lie has hurt me EVERY TIME I’ve heard it.” It doesn’t make me pissy. On a bad day it kicks my brain straight into fight-or-flight mode, and the trouble is that there is no goddamn way to avoid it because the same people up on their moral high horse about how sad or dark fiction is Bad Because It Makes Them Feel Bad lack ANY SELF-AWARENESS WHATSOEVER about the richness and variety of badfeels their Positive Uplifting Stories Only rhetoric might evoke in...say...people who have faced backlash for reporting abuse, because so many human beings in this world would rather get angry at anyone who makes them uncomfortable by drawing their attention to ugliness than be forced to confront the ugliness itself.

And you know what? I fully recognize that just as I have compelling personal reasons for wanting to flee for the hills when I encounter that rhetoric, many people have compelling personal reasons for finding certain sad story elements distressing. The difference is that I’m not running around making ridiculous blanket statements about how their personal literary taste makes them shitty boring people, and I’m more than willing to throw down and tell anybody who does make such statements that they’re behaving like a pretentious asshole.

So maybe it’s harsh but frankly, every time I encounter this nonsense I just want to scream at people to look three centimeters past their noses and cultivate some empathy for people who don’t experience the world exactly the same way they do. That’s part of what fiction is for.