'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.
I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.
About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'
-Casey Plett, Consciousness
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seeing someone with a pride flag bracelet plug her ears and roll her eyes when the names of murdered palestinian children are read outside a DNC convention By A Palestinian is next level evil i’m not reblogging the video bc it doesn’t feel productive and i don’t like having things on my blog that make me angry but wow i hope an anvil falls on her head
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The thing about Prowl is I don't really think canon was ever trying to frame him as a "necessary evil" or anything along the lines of "he's a shitty person but his work was necessary" like mmm.... That feels very much like something Prowl wants to believe about himself, not something that's actually factually true in reality.
I can't really make a good argument about it because I only remember like a handful of standout Prowl Moments in IDW1 but like... Prowl dropping a bomb on a neutral city and blaming it on the Decepticons is not "a necessary evil," that's a war crime. Prowl trying to destroy the space bridge to Caminus to keep Starscream from getting power over it, dooming the entire planet and its inhabitants to extinction by starvation, is not "a necessary evil," it's a fucking war crime. I feel like trying to frame such drastic measures as him "doing the dirty work of the Autobots" feels way too much like an excuse for actions that actually aren't justifiable. Especially since Prowl himself is far from being the 100% rational guy he thinks he is, considering how often he bases his decisions on things like his anti-Decepticon bias and his general refusal to follow any orders that contradict what he thinks is The Right Thing To Do (TM).
But also I think this is kind of the fault of the narrative of IDW1, since very few Autobots besides Prowl are given the chance to actually be morally gray even when the worldbuilding implicates them in some very morally gray things. Like, for example, JRO adding in the existence of MTOs which implies that the normally squeaky-clean leader Optimus was willing to approve the creation of new soldiers just to throw them into combat (and even the attempts to humanize the MTOs by giving them "an education" were eventually cut down to nothing but combat optimizations). And there's also the fact that Optimus knows about the Wreckers and has been known to call them on missions at least once (Stormbringer), meaning he's very much aware of the Wreckers and their tactics and is willing to call them in for fights when it's necessary.
I don't think you need to use Prowl as a crutch to make the Autobots morally gray. I think the Autobot leadership (or at least, Optimus, since few people besides him or Prowl seem to have major tactical command over the army as a whole) is plenty morally gray enough on its own, because the nature of war is inherently morally gray no matter how righteous your cause is. Reducing the lives of your own people into numbers on maps, harvesting resources, bringing MTOs to life just to die in a war they practically have no stake in, those things are enough.
And tbh it kind of bothers me when people try to saddle Prowl with the "dirty work of the Autobots", not just because it frames Prowl's blatantly evil actions as some sort of savior act taking the blame from the rest of the Autobots (which isn't even accurate, because the blame for war crimes falls on the entire army as an institution rather than one person), but because it downplays the moral grayness of the Autobots and pretends that no Autobot BESIDES Prowl ever participated in morally gray actions, which simply isn't true.
TLDR: Prowl isn't as much of a hero as he thinks he is because committing atrocities in the name of your cause doesn't change the fact that they're atrocities (and may not have even been justified). However, painting Prowl as the "token evil teammate" of sorts also places too much blame for the atrocities of war on him in particular, when in reality that's a burden shared by Optimus Prime and any other members of the Autobot military command structure.
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I love the way that, in addition to his origin story with his over-sized sword and the scar on his nose, the flashbacks to Guts's childhood show how much of his insane work ethic and reckless self-endangering abandonment in battle were all kinda ingrained into him by his craving for attention and approval from shitty father figure, Gambino.
Random nice mercenary guy: "Don't overexert yourself, kid. Just do what's needed. 'Cause if you die, you lose everything."
Gambino: "It's your first battle. Work hard!"
Guts: [throws himself into battle so hard he nearly dies multiple times, fixating on pleasing Gambino the entire time]
Gambino: "C'mon, hurry up! Work! Work!"
Guts: [gives Gambino his entire earnings, Gambino tosses him back a single coin]
Guts: [more motivated by this one mild bit of encouragement than anything he's ever experienced before in his life]
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hey so maybe i have a horrible memory and there’s a perfectly good reason for this that i can’t remember. but now that i think about it why did they have chozen take johnny around to look at rentals as if he’s chozen’s child that has never been on his own before and can’t handle normal human interaction. why would johnny not have gone with carmen, miguel, and robby to look at houses considering they’re presumably the ones that are going to live there and raise a newborn there?????? why do they all (and the writers in general) treat johnny like he’s completely incapable of doing anything ever???????
like i get that if the whole show was 100% realistic we wouldn’t really have a show (because let’s be honest, 90% of this show would just Never Happen), and i get the ‘comedic’ value of those scenes i guess, but come onnnnnn pleaaaaaase
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everytime i actually open up sdv to play i get flashbanged with sebastian's white ass sprites because i always forget not everyone sees him as wasian💔 my current hc for him is half chinese (liable to change... but ik for sure he's half asian) but he is Not bilingual he can't rly speak or write the other language he can only understand it when listening but even then he's not very fluent LOL this is just turning into a sebastian hc post might as well go full out. to me sebastian Does have relationship experience but has been thru shitty ones in the past which is part of the reason why he's so pessimistic & brooding </3 and he'd hook up with ppl in zuzu city for a night for a while but it just made him feel shittier so he's stopped since ☝️ also people make him out to be way cooler than he actually is like yea sure he's kinda cool but he's also a Massive Loser especially when he tells you how he hates "seasonal fads" like pumpkin spice and that one line about the potluck soup where he's like "Why ruin the potluck? Hmm... I guess some people feel liberated when the rigid structures of society break down a little. Maybe I'm weird.” WHO ASKED😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 his ass also can NOT cook he can make spaghetti but it's mid. he probably has low ass stamina and yeah he's tall and lanky (rn i see him as around 5'9-5'10) but you could snap him in half over your knee. when he's in an actually healthy relationship he gets really flustered over certain romantic gestures cuz he's not used to feeling valued or being considered someone's #1. he picks up on little things and does acts of service but i also think he can be really callous and insensitive at times because while he can be pretty perceptive he is also Very Emotionally Stunted. he unlearns lots of unhealthy behaviors & mindsets with the help of his partner & family & friends ^__^
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the thing i have the biggest beef with in the witcher netflix is the fact that the writers seem to. like. not like jaskier. like they make geralt be a dick to him “i’m not your friend” and then have geralt turn around and be friendly and affectionate with loads of other characters. moussack “old friend”, that flashback with eskel, “you’re important to me, triss” why can’t we get this same energy with jaskier. begging for a proper apology in season 3 that jaskier doesn’t have to basically fish out of geralt my dude deserves better
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I’ve come to realize that “well in the comics (insert factoid)” can/should really only be taken as a vague idea of what Might be true in the show and nothing more than that. like more often than not, if a question unaddressed by the show is answered in the comics, it’s an interesting note to take into consideration, but by no means should it be considered to actually, canonically answer anything in the show. because boy howdy they are drastically different, and the show is much less of a tv adaptation of the comics and more like a tv show that’s premise and characters are loosely inspired by the comics. i only highlight all this because it feels like I see certain possibilities and theories and whatever else shot down by the “canon” contradicting them via the comics from time to time, when in reality the show’s canon and the comics’ canon are two wildly different, occasionally overlapping things and should be treated as such.
(note: this is not, however, discounting the sandman tv universe’s canon as being true dbd canon– the shows absolutely DO have the same canon, and facts of the sandman (tv show) must be facts of dbd. but I digress.)
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