#they made it so the women are all catgirls and the men are all more elven which is. something?????

[ajdrawshq]

i finished 7th dragon a lil while ago n some of the worldbuilding is so funny i cant stop thinking abt it. why is the lost city of atlantis populated by catgirls

[olderthannetfic]

/olderthannetfic/769334704445997057/another-fandometrics-year-in-review-another-bevy

I am - genuinely - very sympathetic to the frustrations of solely f/f shippers and I DO think some people are a little too quick to shrug off the lack of f/f in fandom spaces with “lack of representation in media what can you do” when fandom is all about assigning personalities and backstories to one-line characters. HOWEVER. As someone who likes all kinds of ships, the experiences I have had across many MANY fandoms with solely f/f shippers treating people who also liked the main m/m ship as traitors and bad feminists, not to mention the number of people who have told me, a trans man, that I HAVE to write more f/f and less m/m For The Sisterhood, has made me LESS likely to engage in f/f, not more. Some of y’all are your own worst enemy when it comes to this stuff I swear. (Hashtag not all femslashers, hashtag some of my best friends are femslashers, etc)

--

Demands that people defend and explain perfectly commonplace things always end up generating dumber and dumber explanations.

I agree that that explanation by itself is kind of weak, but "Why are you asking only about AO3?" (as people often are) plus representation problems plus the other commonly cited reasons add up to a perfectly sufficient explanation. People just don't like what they're hearing.

--

The kind of f/f fandom people are often looking for—a by cis wlw, for cis wlw one—is not that different in size from the by cis mlm, for cis mlm one. They are both small.

Yes, I know they pretend that's not what they mean. They are lying. Possibly to themselves. Just look at the bawwwwing over the idea that cis men liking f/f could add to the amount of f/f art or the audience for the same.

Many AO3 slashers are better compared to transbian catgirls making lesbian furry porn or cis dudes horny for Buffy/Faith or something. There are plenty of people who care about f/f. They're just not necessarily the ~right~ people in the right spaces making the right art to count in some wanker's statistics.

Part of the reason our explanations and discussions always sound so bonkers is that we constantly compare apples to oranges.

--

And while we're at it, let's talk about that hoary old ~one-line character~ thing.

The reality is that we like to talk about how we elevate random walk-on characters, but the vast majority of shippy AO3 fanfic is about fairly major characters. Clint/Coulson was bizarrely popular in 2012. It has been twelve years. It is time to get over it.

On top of most things focusing on leads, the focus is often on characters who are given a lot of interiority. The audience is invited to be in their head and care about their feelings. People aren't usually good at analyzing film, so they use more familiar metrics involving text: how many lines do they have in the script? How many minutes does that translate to on screen? They don't know how to quantify a character being treated as an object to be looked at beyond "Booty shorts bad". But it's not general sex appeal or amount of skin on display that matters here.

As audiences, we respond to film grammar and "Just happen to like" or not like some character as a result of it, but we aren't aware of the mechanics, so we can't explain why beyond vague spluttering and "How dare you! Everyone should think this because it's the natural response!"

In general, media with multiple central women who have intense relationships with each other and who are conventionally attractive generate plenty of interest in f/f. Media with one hot girl who has the camera trained on her ass all the time while the men do everything interesting usually don't.

It's a no brainer and the harebrained explanations come from trying to look deeper to find the secret conspiracy where there is none.

--

The biggest mistake of most of this dumb discourse is "But I see all these queer women here. Why isn't there more f/f?"

This presupposes some default "normal" level of f/f without any actual justification for why that would be expected. You see the same nonsense from people going "Why is there so much m/m?"

What's the default? 10% because of the fake statistic that 10% of people are gay? 75% because action movies are sausagefests and all the important relationships are between men? What's the "normal" level of femslash? 25% because f/f, f/m, m/m, and gen are all equally valid? 80% because lots of fanfic writers are women?

Chasing one precise number is a fool's errand, but building a whole theory on the idea that there's an implicit number without even digging into that assumption is more foolish still.

When you look at the fanfic (or art!) spaces that are full of dudes, they often look like a bit of a mirror of AO3. Lots of het still. Lots of f/f. Lots of lady blorbos people are obsessed with. Limited m/m. Depending on the space, there might be a lot more gen. It's not perfectly 1:1, but then AO3 isn't precisely like other chick-heavy fanfic spaces anyway.

--

In my experience, the thing that makes a blorbo take off is that they're fairly major in canon, often driving the narrative even if they aren't the main protagonist, and they show up early.

In the cases where they weren't there at the very beginning, them showing up was the catalyst for fans who like this type of character to get into the canon at all. It's not just Castiel: you see it with Methos from Highlander and plenty of others. It's usually in a context where that fandom didn't have that much established for this type of fan. There wasn't a second dude to pair the lead with or the ship turned some people off or something. Highlander, for example, had fucktons of het shippers, both of canon het and of various OFCs and canon dudes. It was the slashers who stampeded over there when friends told them there was new ship potential for m/m. SPN... Sam/Dean was very popular on LJ, but I think it's obvious why a viable non-brother ship was of interest to people. I watched tons of people get pimped into Teen Wolf for Sterek. Of course they ended up liking it and not really caring about other ships: they were pre-selected to like that specific vibe. (And they are all wrong because Scott is the best and Derek has weird teeth.) The same thing happens with f/f. People get into media all the time because they're promised such-and-such a ship dynamic.

Wynonna Earp had plenty of people who were there for the women because the women are who matter for the most part. People were super into the canon f/f because it's hot and because it didn't seem like they were just going to get hit by a bus and shooed out of the narrative.

How many things that everybody and their sister saw have that many main women who matter? Some, definitely, but they're outnumbered by the sausagefests and by the things with very central het. Not everything with a huge audience gets a big fanfic fandom, but most things with big fanfic fandoms do have a big audience. You need critical mass to make a fandom happen.

Something like MCU has a variety of tasty shipping options, but the characters it spent all its time on first were the small selection of guys fandom cares the most about. When other characters were established very early, they also had an early spurt of fandom. I can't be the only one who remembers Pepperony fandom on LJ. It wasn't just people tagging canon ships in the background: Pepper/Tony shippers were a whole thing.

Yes, there are exceptions, but we make a big deal of them while ignoring the overall pattern.

Again, it is time to get over Clint/Coulson, Arthur/Eames, and people hallucinating that Hux had a personality in that first movie.

These are rare exceptions, and they're all snark-based at that. Darcy Lewis was also obnoxiously popular based solely on a few lines of snark, but that didn't count because she wasn't the correct and virtuous choice of favorite female character.

(Seriously, you should have seen the whining about all the people horny for Darcy who didn't give a fuck about boring Jane. Sorry, but your blorbo is a snooze and mine has amazing tits in addition to being funny.)

--

Let's go look at what's big on AO3 since it's easy and that's what other lazy statistics compilers do and then base their whining on:

Looking at the M/M tag, here's the sidebar:

Castiel/Dean Winchester (111856)

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter (70823)

Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski (70134)

Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (67796)

James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers (61397)

Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens) (56548)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (55109)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (49179)

Bakugou Katsuki/Midoriya Izuku (46679)

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark (44754)

I'm seeing canons with huge audiences. Teen Wolf and SPN are way more popular in fanfic fandom, relatively speaking, but they're certainly not obscure media.

I'm seeing a lot of leads. Sirius/Remus does stand out a little: they aren't walk-ons, but fanon did elevate them. Same with Draco, but main protagonist/most obvious nemesis is hardly a surprising ship type.

Let's play with exclude filters and see what's next (numbers won't be exact since this is via excluding the previous batches):

Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson (43234)

Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian (40115)

Jeon Jungkook/Kim Taehyung | V (38398)

Keith/Lance (Voltron) (32757)

Dazai Osamu/Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs) (32744)

Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester (31834)

Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV) (31527)

Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin) (31011)

Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter (30819)

Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood (30133)

Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson (27403)

Original Male Character/Original Male Character (26854)

Bakugou Katsuki/Kirishima Eijirou (26854)

Jeon Jungkook/Park Jimin (26454)

Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov (26453)

Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF) (21154)

Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion (20946)

James T. Kirk/Spock (20716)

Min Yoongi | Suga/Park Jimin (20561)

Blackbeard | Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet (20113)

Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru (20039)

Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio (18806)

Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel (18013)

Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier (17577)

Dan Howell/Phil Lester (17518)

Levi Ackerman/Eren Yeager (17404)

Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know (17390)

Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou (17141)

Tartaglia | Childe/Zhongli (Genshin Impact) (17041)

Harry Potter/Severus Snape (16773)

Oh look: more leads.

Sure, there are some little oddities, like the fact that taekook is obviously the worst BTS ship and it is a personal attack on me that it is that popular. But come the fuck on: this is a parade of some of the most famous musicians and most popular anime, shows that had huge audiences and particularly huge audiences of the type that like fanfic.

Let's have a look at f/m:

Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug (33773)

Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy (33031)

Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s) (29586)

Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren (24192)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (21606)

James Potter/Lily Evans Potter (21088)

Kylo Ren/Rey (16028)

James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader (15922)

Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley (15635)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (15335)

Pepper Potts/Tony Stark (14552)

Fox Mulder/Dana Scully (14214)

Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin (13616)

Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson (11471)

Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak (11383)

Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan (11272)

Castiel/Dean Winchester (11187)

Other Relationship Tags to Be Added (10529)

Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov (9750)

Original Character(s)/Original Character(s) (9736)

Okay, it is AO3 after all, so some m/m ships have snuck in there, but the general trend is still leads, leads, leads, now with some readerfic. (For James/Lily, you can blame the insanity that is Marauders fandom on TikTok, or so I hear.)

And f/f:

Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor (21520)

Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Character(s) (17873)

Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan (16168)

Minor or Background Relationship(s) (13681)

Clarke Griffin/Lexa (12876)

Adora/Catra (She-Ra) (11532)

Amity Blight/Luz Noceda (10880)

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (10532)

Caitlyn/Vi (League of Legends) (8925)

Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long (7766)

Robin Buckley/Nancy Wheeler (7369)

Korra/Asami Sato (7146)

Wednesday Addams/Enid Sinclair (6720)

Other Relationship Tags to Be Added (6684)

Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught (5764)

Original Character(s)/Original Character(s) (5529)

Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell (5347)

Laura Hollis/Carmilla Karnstein (4895)

Jirou Kyouka/Yaoyorozu Momo (4662)

Charlie Magne | Morningstar/Vaggie (4402)

Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan (4284)

Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer (4223)

Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam (3936)

Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova (3876)

Maya Bishop/Carina DeLuca (3700)

Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva (3689)

Castiel/Dean Winchester (3664)

Maxine "Max" Caulfield/Chloe Price (3471)

Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs (3394)

Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee (3324)

Carmilla might be a little obscure compared to some media, and some other ships have snuck in here, but again, we're seeing some fairly prominent canons and the leads or at least main cast who have intense relationships in those canons. If most fantasy tv shows were Once Upon a Time, all of AO3 might be awash in nothing but swanqueen and captainswan.

The big thing that one sees is simply that f/f fandom often revolves around different media, while m/m and f/m are more likely to be into the same stuff that's full, full, full of main dudes getting to do things with one woman who matters.

We do not, in general, elevate anybody.

Not unless some very talented writer leads the way first with a juicy longfic that establishes all the fanon.

We repeat the myth that we do because it suits a certain narrative about how creative and transformative fandom is—and another equally popular narrative about how the lack of ship A/B is a ~conspiracy~ to rob one of one's rightful overflowing feed trough of fic.

It's bullshit.

We write about leads.

[triptychgardener]

Hello sorry if this is a bother but I am asking in good faith where is the reading for transmasc nepeta. I’m asking this cuz of your last ask (the June one) and I see aradia Dirk and Jane. Thoes all I have seen post and analysis about. But I have not really seen anything about nepeta.

Okay so first thing you gotta understand is that gender in Homestuck, for lack of a better way to say it, can be understood in how characters reflect and relate to each other. That being said to understand Nepeta's gender, we gotta understand the gender of at the very least one other person.

Dave.

And more specifically.

Davepeta, Homestuck's very own first(ish) trans character.

Davepeta is noted to be a sort of platonic ideal of existence for both Dave and Nepeta. Somehow, through a strange series of cosmic coincidences, these two end up making an odd sort of parallel. Both having a strange relationship to a man who loves him some goddamn horses. The whole Akwete Purrmusk thing. I mean, Dave canonically engaged in semi-nonironic furry roleplay with Nepeta offscreen, and given what we know about what becoming a furry in Homestuck means, it's not a leap to describe this as their ideal form.

But, although we don't see a lot of Nepeta's character arc, we do see a lot of Dave's. He struggles his whole life under an incredibly oppressive masculine force (both of Bro and, indirectly, Lord English), and once the game is over ends up deconstructing and largely rejecting that.

So when Davesprite, who's also probably been thinking about this for even longer, bereft of purpose or identity, finds a kindred soul in a spunky catgirl... well the rest is Davepeta.

And similarly, there are points in the story where Nepeta acts kind of uncomfortable with how others see her as exclusively something to be protected. The whole "Dear, sweet, precious Nepeta" grates on her early on, as Equius uses it as an excuse to control her actions. The whole of moiraillegience as it is originally explained (i.e. one party helps to calm down an especially brutal and violent person from outbursts of anger, and in turn that person will protect the more docile, even-tempered soul from external harm) even kind of FEELS like the way heterosexual relationships are portrayed in a lot of conservative spaces, where women are nuturers and caretakers while men are protectors. And Nepeta is supposed to, in this situation, be the person who helps Equius manage his emotions, which she feels some consternation at!

Now, over the course of Hivebent, their relationship appears to evolve and get a bit more balanced, but it still carries these overtones of "I will protect you, and you will handle my outbursts." Notably, when Equius goes to seek the Highb100d, and leaves Nepeta behind.

And of course not after roleplaying as each other.

Which. I mean come on.

But notably, Nepeta doesn't just stay put! She doesn't really want to be protected all the time! And when push comes to shove, she leaps out to defend, or at the very least avenge, her best friend.

And then, we don't really see Nepeta for a while!

Until we get to the end of the comic.

During their whole "date", Nepeta seems a little uncomfortable with Jasprose's affections. She may be a bit flattered, but Jasprose also fully admits later that she was frankly looking for any girl she could fall in love with after the tragic death of her girlfriend and possible more tragic untimely resurrection.

But then the pivotal handshake happens, and we get to see who is perhaps the most happy being in all of Homestuck.

Then we get into some of the only actual discussion of gender in Homestuck. We don't get much besides that, for both of their lives, Dave and Nepeta both felt something was missing. Something felt wrong that they couldn't quite place that made them both miserable. I don't think it's a massive stretch to say this could be gender dysphoria.

And when they combine, they feel the fullness of the gendered experience they were missing, melded together like a two-piece puzzle.

Now while the abovementioned "strong identities as a boy and a girl" might throw you off, I would point to what Victoria Lacroix said about this passage: note the lack of the word "respectively." I rest my case.

Now full disclosure, my personal headcanon for Nepeta is genderfluid transmasc. The whole affinity for roleplaying lends itself to a more shifting identity and I just think Nepeta, given more time, would love exploring the little nooks and crannies of gender.

This isn't going into the more complicated shit with Gender when it comes to Equius and Dirk and all that other stuff. Here's a quick summary so you can see exactly how my brain is broken.

Anyways, thanks for the question! I hope I answered my thoughts on the topic adequately! If other people have more to say about this, please feel free to add on!

[enaspaces]

my shuri headcanons 𓃠

a dump of my thoughts because i love her and she’s taken over my mind

• on the trans/nonbinary spectrum. more specifically a demigirl and doesn’t care what pronouns you use on him. owns a binder for specific days that she wants her chest to look flat.

• very lesbian. her heart is for women and non-men 🏳️‍🌈

• i view her as a stud or a stem. it depends on how i’m feeling atm.

• she’s not just a nerd in the science sense she’s a huge fandom geek and has a stan twitter account to talk about her interests.

• also has fan edits of her favorite characters and interests saved on her phone. probably makes her own edits too.

• average minecraft enjoyer (she’s obsessed)

• reads a lot of wlw comics, novels, and other media bc they’re a gay ass.

• has AuDHD, argue with ur mama.

• is almost always seen wearing noise cancelling headphones or earbuds because she gets overstimulated at times. when she visits riri in chicago for the first time, the constant loud city noise is something he’s not used to. he had forgot to pack the headphones he made for himself so riri makes him a custom made pair to help him relax. they end up using riri’s more than their own. (riri indulgently put small cat ears on the top of them and shuri almost cried at the sight).

• catgirl energy. riri may make her look tall but that’s still a 5’5 girl twink that stopped growing at age 13. she’s small and likes to sit on counters, lab tables, the floor and any other weird place that’s not meant to be sat on. she curls up in a ball when she sleeps alone, and if she’s in the bed with someone else her limbs are all over their body. has cute sounding sneezes that m’baku makes fun of her for. one of the lab workers once found her asleep in a random corner of the room. naturally very light-footed and basically has human toe beans, making it very easy to sneak up on people without them hearing.

• has quite a few fidget toys to help her focus on work in the lab and ease her anxiety. a rubik’s cube, fidget spinners, stress ball, pop its, etc.

• she stims. so much. especially after she successfully completes a task or experiment and she’ll do a dance or do the lil hand flapping thing. her vocal stims are always random song lyrics or tiktok meme audios lol.

• has a sweet tooth. when okoye was a dora she’d occasionally bring candy or other sweets for her to snack on. riri goes to the store and buys him all the popular american snacks for him to try. nakia always has a mini stash prepared for when they visit her and toussaint in haiti.

• favorite color is purple. it just suits her.

• a GAMER™. she plays all genres but her favs are probably minecraft, puzzle, or rhythm games. did i mention minecraft? she loves it. riri loves rpgs and pvp games the most and has her play smash bros ultimate pretty often. they’re super competitive with each other and both sore losers lmao. shuri got her to play minecraft once and riri kept getting blown up by creepers.

• ↑ she becomes super close with mj, ned, and vivian through riri. they’re always on discord vc together playing games and doing many other things and it’s the most chaotic shit you’ve ever seen.

• if the word ticklish was personified. simply elbowing her in the stomach on accident would get a giggle outta her. every ticklish spot she has is extremely sensitive and you could have her curled up cackling in tears with ease.

• funny as hell for no reason. life of the party fr. she takes her jokester persona very seriously but sometimes she’s hilarious without even trying. the first time she ever smoked weed was with riri in her dorm and riri never laughed so hard in her life that day. shuri was literally all over the place. she’s definitely a lightweight too, just as goofy, giggly, and clingy in her drunken state.

• definitely likes kpop girl groups. I can’t prove it but they love loona you just have to trust me.

• also loves vocaloid and has a hatsune miku figure in her room somewhere. trust me on that.

• has a list of favorite black american artists. riri definitely put her on some r&b classics and less mainstream artists. has a massive celebrity crush on black women rappers.

• music taste is very versatile. her playlist has almost everything. she just can’t listen to one genre only, she’s too open minded and exploratory for that.

• he’s not one to fall in love easily, but when he does he falls hard. riri was the first person he ever fell for and it changed the trajectory of his life, poor thing had no idea what to do with that information.

• a romantic, lovesick loser. cannot flirt to save his life. flustering him is so fucking easy lmao. riri once called him shawty and he malfunctioned for 5 minutes. whenever he’s on the phone with riri his crush is genuinely so obvious to everyone around him. he be giggling and cheesing real hard 😭. kicking his feet squealing on the bed when he’s alone thinking about the cute nickname riri called him.

• her love language is acts of service and gift giving. she’s not always good with words or emotions so she expresses her appreciation towards her loved ones by distributing her wealth in many ways. buying riri things she might need for college, fixing stuff that breaks in nakia’s home. things like that.

• has trouble being vulnerable with those close to her. she’s lost so much, so opening up to new people is always a scary, big step. it took a while for her to let mj, ned, and viv into her heart because the closer she becomes with them, the more it’ll hurt if she loses them. they take her in with open arms regardless, because having a support system with people her age is something she needs. they take her seriously in ways that the elders don’t. they see her for who she is outside of being a royal figure to her country and allows her to be her full, authentic, geeky self. she’s able to grasp onto the youth that she almost lost when her family was taken away.

• very talkative. can infodump about an interest for hours and completely lose track of time if you let them. they cannot stay still when excited, nor can they keep eye contact, pacing around the room and darting their eyes everywhere while rambling about the history of vibrainium or something.

• maladaptive daydreaming. will lose herself in a song and start imagining scenarios in her head. t’challa once caught her in the act and refused to delete the video footage. sometimes, she pulls up the video her brother recorded just to hear his laughter in the background.

[favouritefi]

I love your Terror catboy AU, it’s a funky combination of adorable drawings and Victorianesque pseudoscientific hierarchies. However, it made me wonder about catgirls/doggirls; if you’re happy to answer, how do you see the intersection of gender and hybridity playing out in this universe?

I LOVE THIS QUESTION THANK YOU FOR THIS QUESTION i have a lot of thots on this bc the whole "angel in the house" image of the ideal (middle class) victorian woman is such a fun concept to play with more under cut

ok so what im about to say rn really only applies to middle class and upper class women in this au as those are the main characters in the terror if we get into the lower classes its a more complicated and nuanced story.

anyway in victorian times women were expected to be chaperoned everywhere by an older woman such as a female relative or female servant lest she be corrupted by the ills of the world and by men etc. this is where cat/doggirls come in. its expected that if you have a daughter then you goooootta adopt a companion or two for her both to show off your status and to ensure that your daughter has a friend / chaperone / mentor / moral compass for life. so in cat/dogpeople households the cat/dogboys usually go off to whatever institution their bloodline is associated with and cat/doggirls usually become companions for the wives and daughters of the men employed by those institutions. its very different from human family structures because the expectation here is that your child will not stay with your household, youre making children knowing that they will likely not belong to you regardless of whether they are male or female and that you might never see them again once theyre adopted and they need to be adopted or else its a failure on you and your bloodline. (grim i know) this system is also why each generation of cat/dogpeople tends to be fairly large, little and hodgson and irving all have an overabundance of siblings and cousins many of whom theyve never met in their life.

interestingly, cat/doggirls are actually more valued amongst these families than cat/dogboys because cat/dogboys can only be sent off to the institution the bloodline is associated with whereas cat/doggirls can be sent off to any upper/middle class household regardless of association and it would still be considered respectable AND it creates new relationships between human families that the human owners might find beneficial (kind of like how marriage was historically the exchange of women to strengthen political ties between families). this means that excess cat/dogboy sons are often disappointing to the parents - edward little is one of these. all 3 of his elder brothers had already left for the navy so he grew up playing w his sisters and getting dolled up in their dresses and being told that oh he'd make such a pretty girl and pretty bride oh if only he'd been born a girl etc. totally doesnt fuck him up.

speaking of fucked up theres hickey and his whole situation w sophia. having a catboy as a companion for an upper class girl is a big no-no and only happened because [insert hickey backstory here that is too long and really should have its own post]. no body approves of this but sophia loves him so very much and they were inseparable up until they were separated when sophia went to tasmania with the franklins and hickey was abandoned to the streets against both his and sophias will. sophia refused to adopt a new more appropriate companion in tasmania and after the franklins returned to england she tried to find him but couldnt and assumed he died. then when it seems like the ships are lost and jane starts campaigning for a rescue mission suddenly hickey shows up and for a few blissful years they are together again. he is older and quieter and has scars he wont explain, but hes still hickey and sophia still loves him. and then sir john comes back and fucks all of that up again.

sorry this was meant to be about gender dynamics in my deranged catboy au but i got distracted by hickey (as per usual)

[zephyrine-tale-archived]

Thank you for showing me the project sekai facts but sincerely what the juice

It's a really good game teehee :3 let me try and provide context for the ones i understand

-a character can see ghosts. this is never elaborated on (fuck i dont remember lmao. is it mafuyu?? maybe. oh well i cant elaborate on this lol)

-all main characters can teleport to a separate dimension based on their psyches and also hatsune miku is in there (this is the plot of the game! :3)

-a girl imagines her female friend kissing her and gets so flustered those around her are concerned (she rizzes her up good. also she saves her from dying. they also get married canonically sort of <3)

-a song very explicitly about having sex with men, originally sung by all women, is covered by all men (ifuudoudou akty/fantasista squad cover <3 lmao)

-actually correct me if I'm wrong I can't think of a single love song that is covered by an m/f pairing (WRONG akian gimme x gimme)

-a character causes explosions at school near daily (this guy is an inventor and he's Very Silly)

-a character is sad her friends don't go to the same school as her so her solution is to sprint across the entire city and break into their school to hang out. she does this frequently (EMU OTORI!! shes very hyper and yeah her green haired gamer gf questions it and her orange haired world future star ⭐️ bf also sometimes question it but the previous silly guy she is also dating and they cause chaos together)

-a group gets stranded on a deserted island (canon event, the character in the previous one happens to be a part of a family that owns a theme park! she does ambassadorial shows for said theme park and on the way to one their yacht crashed on a deserted island)

-hatsune miku stops a suicide attempt (this girl who lost herself due to severe emotional abuse and manipulation from her mother tried to strand herself in one of the previously mentioned worlds created from psyches, but miku saves her)

-a highschooler makes a borderline if not outright sapient robotic replica of his childhood friend. nobody considers this a particularly world shattering achievement of ai (this is the guy who blows stuff up)

-the robot was created to help with social anxiety/stage fright (the girl is very social anxiety!! she is an INCREDIBLE singer but due to failing in the past, she cant sing in front of others so she uses the doll)

-the robot has rocket launchers (what can i say the guy who made it is very silly)

-the robot has a job as a theme park performer and gets a salary (yeah)

-a characters family member is dead and it takes her three years to find out (light up the fire... eughh.... not much context honestly it is what it is)

-a character has a body guard dressed in a full mascot costume at all times follow her around (she's the girl whose family owns the theme park! she must be protecc lol)

-a character got into fights with professional wrestlers on tv as a middle schooler/high schooler (not sure the exact age) (i actually have no fucking idea who this is lol)

-there's official sonic collaboration costumes (yep, theyre called Sonic Style)

-fuck is said three times and it's all by members of the theme park troupe that performs for children (indeed! law-evading rock twice and ego rock)

-catgirl hatsune miku almost impales a man without realizing it (they do a magic show in which the man went into a box which was supposed to be stabbed with three swords. but uh oh oopsies miku accidentally uses all five)

-sometimes miku is a catgirl (this is true. one of the mikus has raccoon ear things)

original list by @/lagomoz

somehow i feel like this only made more questions for you but oh well <3

[writingwithcolor]

Goblin Tailors

@huffeling asked:

I am writing a fantasy world where there are no real world religions, but there is the world’s own kind of religions. So no Muslims, Jews, and Christians etc. But I would lend characteristics from one religion (like covering ones hair or some church rites) and put them to one of my own religions. There will be several religions, skin colors and creatures. Is that appropriating ones religion and customs?

I read your answer about goblins. But I am still terrified of writing goblins in my story even if I don’t associate them with money. There is a group of goblins as a really handy seamstresses who can make gorgeous armors and clothes. (They are really appreciated, high-demanded, and well-paid and FREE to walk away if they want). I am worried that is read as a anti-semitic. I mean, there is back story why this particular group works as seamstresses, and world has more goblins who won’t work for people.

“Is that appropriating ones religion and customs?“ 

I think it would only feel like appropriation to me if you took details specifically characteristic of a very marginalized IRL religion and assigned them to a group of people in your book who are white, thin, small-nosed, and otherwise bear resemblance to IRL privileged cultures. For example, when we read "the bible” in temple (physically, which mine hasn’t done in nearly a year) we are often reading off a literal Torah scroll that’s made of sheepskin and stays rolled up when not in use, and it would be weird to me if an otherwise Protestant-American or Northern European flavored culture read their texts that way. However, something like covering one’s hair is not exclusive to Judaism and Islam, so if you wanted to have the Fake English people or whatever cover their hair that’s fine with me. In other words, it would depend on how specific the detail was, respective of the IRL culture it’s from. 

As far as the goblins. Yes, there’s a (positive/neutral) trope about Jewish tailors, the garment district, etc. Here’s an article about the history of Jewish immigrants working in the clothing industry a hundred years ago in New York City:

Jewish Immigrants in the Garment Industry

And I quote: 

“By 1910 the city was producing 70 percent of the nation’s women’s clothing and 40 percent of its men’s clothing, creating jobs for newly arriving Jews. Even if we discount their exaggerations (only 10 percent of Eastern European immigrant labor force were actually trained tailors), these Jews brought with them from the old countries significant skills in garment work, one of the few occupations open to Jews in 19th-century Europe." 

The article goes on to explain that German Jews often owned the factories and hired all the Eastern European Jewish immigrants (who had less money) as they entered the US. So, while this might not be the first stereotype anyone today goes to, which might be something more along the lines of lawyers (or doctors), this is still awkward enough that it would make me question the author’s motivations.

Question. Can you make these seamstress goblins some other mythical creature? Some examples that come to mind include: fauns/satyrs (top half of a human, but with goat legs), elves (either smallish ones like in Christmas cards or tall and ethereal like in Tolkien), fairies, or make up your own anthropomorphic animal people like a catgirl. There’s just something that doesn’t sit right with me about them being literal goblins because of the way goblins are usually depicted as, well, distasteful. And a group of small, distasteful beings who are humanoid but not quite human, all working in the garment industry makes me have "what year is it?” vibes.

–Shira

[onemattwolf]

I posted 17,464 times in 2022

215 posts created (1%)

17,249 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@la-mancha-screwjob

@iamnotlanuk

@aces-and-anime

@loth-catgirl

@meabeck

I tagged 1,728 of my posts in 2022

#oh - 26 posts

#me - 20 posts

#ya - 18 posts

#yes - 15 posts

#matt's rambles - 13 posts

#oh mood - 12 posts

#yup - 11 posts

#personal - 10 posts

#huh - 9 posts

#long post - 8 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#like this is not how evolution works you can't just undo it by giving it something it needed a millenia ago to not turn it into a bug eater

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I fucking love firefox. I've used it for Years. I Love that it's gotten some love more recently. Love the privacy settings, all that good stuff.

Know another thing that's awesome about firefox? The themes. Hella customizable. My webbrowser has cute fluffy cats on it. I use to have one that turned all the buttons to cute fox shapes. Love it.

5 notes - Posted May 4, 2022

#4

nothing like the queen dying to discover i apparently know pro-monarchy people that are genuinely upset, and i just gotta nod sympathetically and keep my mouth shut. canada is weird when it comes to the monarchy. cbc news today is going to be so obnoxious, hopefully i can be out of the house before my dad turns the news on at 6.

6 notes - Posted September 8, 2022

#3

I managed to take a bath/shower, finally put on new bedsheets, and took the stinky garbage from my room. I wanted to actually have new years plans, but they didn't work out. My dad and brother have already gone to bed. I'll probably give my mom a call after the count down. Maybe I wanted to have a better new years eve, but i'm glad I get to head into the new year freshly washed in a clean bed.

It's not new years here yet in the EST (11:15pm rn), but happy new years, ya'll

6 notes - Posted December 31, 2021

#2

Watching the fellowship of the ring with my dad, cus he bought the entire extended addition series on a whim-- Me: Ooh Aragorn is so handsome My dad (with zero hesitation): I always thought Faramir was the most handsome.

Ok, Dad.

7 notes - Posted January 17, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

i’m gonna write something that i’ve been meaning to write for awhile, but have been delaying ‘cus i know i’m out of my lane here, but,

The phrase “what someone has in their pants is none of your business” needs to extend to cis people as well. Even if it’s someone you’re hoping to bang.

I’m specifically talking penis’ here--I know the issue extends to AFAB individuals too, re: the pressure to have a porn star-esque vagina, and never seeing any variance. I’m not going over that here, though, because i’ve seen a shift on that front. As in, I’m seeing a lot more discussion and media representation about the multitude of vaginas/vulvas out there, and acceptance of all the uniqueness. Having one myself, i’m really glad to see that talked about more. but, i believe this is something we need to extend to dicks, too. What someone’s dick looks like is none of your business. And It’s always made me uncomfortable, how women would talk to other women about their partner’s dick. It just seemed like a huge invasion of privacy. but I could never really word this well before, esp because it was so normalized.

I’m talking about girth, length, and circumcision status. what got me to write this is a post I saw a while back; Folks were sharing their biggest relationship red-flags, and the one that stuck out to me the most was someone saying their partner not disclosing they were uncircumcised before they had sex was a “red flag.” I was completely flabbergasted--it was like they were equating it to the person not disclosing they had an STD.

Circumcision is not half-as common out of the USA. the OG reason circumcision became popular for non-religious reasons was another anti-masturbation tactic. This stuff is well documented and easily found through google. A lot of men surveyed for why they chose to have their son’s circumcised in modern times say it is because /they/ are. Not because of supposed cleanliness, or to keep their child from masturbating. It’s so their sons wouldn’t have a different-looking dick than theirs.

like, i get if you aren’t used to it, you may feel some discomfort? But that’s kind of a “you” problem, not something to push on your partner. it’s not something they had any choice in, and there is already SO much pressure on men to have the perfect dick. Which is also super unattainable!

but because dicks are more out-there, folks seem to think it’s information that’s owed, or something that can be openly discussed with others. Honestly the best post i’ve seen here for awhile was one talking about how body neutrality needs to extend to penis,’ too. as in, it’s just another body part. most of the men i’ve been friends with held some kind of shame around what their dick looked like, a lot of times brought on from criticism from a previous girlfriend. i know this issue might extend some to gay male communities as well, but i haven’t experienced any of that personally so it doesn’t feel like my place to comment. the only equivalent i’ve experienced is the “how do i tell this dude that seems into me but is reading me as a cis man that i don’t have a dick?” which i think is a common trans experience.

The first (consensual) dick pic i received was sent by a dude who was super ashamed of his dick, cus an ex made a lot of bad comments. he apologized a lot for how it looked. And i was like, i honestly see nothing wrong? and it’s not my body part, it’s yours. it’s not my place to judge or make comments? and the guy was so grateful he actually cried. i didn’t understand why it was such a big deal til a lot later, hearing similar stories. i really don’t think this is an uncommon situation, and it just makes me sad.

so, ya, i’m gonna leave it at that. i just really wanted to write something.

3,101 notes - Posted February 2, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[themarkofoxin]

People literally supplied you with screencaps of contra being racist and shit, are you intentionally ignoring it to scream at anons cuz you know you can't disprove it or what

i actually wasn’t going to respond because when that reblog happened i was crying in the bathroom at work so like. just straight up did not have time.

but for realsies, i literally cannot see how any of the screenshots in that reblog prove that she is Undeniably Antisemitic, Racist, and Transphobic. i think they’re insensitive and brash, but i don’t think natalie is A Racist because she pointed out that it’s weird an old racist statement was trending.

in none of my posts am i saying that this ^ stuff isn’t uncomfortable or insensitive. i take issue with so many people’s need to permanently vilify someone for stuff that she probably thought about for maybe 30 seconds before tweeting two years ago. also, she’s not being racist here? a native person responded to her tweet, but nowhere in natalie’s original tweet does she say (or even imply) anything about race. at all?

next:

if you were to actually watch her videos and listen to what she has to say now, not in june of 2018 when this tweet was sent, she acknowledges that she held this perspective at one point and she regrets it. she talks about this in two of the videos in my original reblog AND in her one titled “beauty.” yes, she thought like this at one point. she recognizes it was harmful now, and has apologized. even if she hadn’t apologized in “canceling,” if she had just shown her change in perspective through her actions, would i hate her to the extent that so many people on the internet do?

no. because it’s just not that deep.

when i first realized i might be nonbinary, i was fucking terrified. i had a million different tmed arguments swirling around in my head, and i spent months arguing with myself about it because of it. i’m absolutely positive some of my fears came through in my conversations with people, and i definitely said damaging, tmed-adjacent things because i was scared to be One of Those Nonbinary People. the only difference is my conversations were verbal and impermanent, and a year later no one was combing through all my social media posts to find evidence to damn me for it.

okay, lastly. the lizard people thing.

1) she’s stopped using the lizard people characters since the growth in power of far right movements in the US

2) originally, she used them as kind of a joke about capitalism, and later learned their antisemitic origin and aftet that clarified every time she used those characters that she does not condone antisemitism and that she knows about the dogwhistle and is not, and would never, use it to that end.

3) i know tons of people irl who have no idea the “lizard people control the world” conspiracy is linked to antisemitism, so it’s not that hard for me to believe natalie didn’t when she started youtube either. the important part is that she has acknowledged their implications and, believe it or not, she was actually the first person who taught me that conspiracy was antisemitic.

conclusion -

in “cringe,” natalie made a lot of really interesting points that had me thinking for months. specifically, she analyzed trans man kalvin garrah’s visible hatred of “transtrenders” and compared it to her own difficulty accepting catgirl trans women. note that here she was admitting to a bias she’s aware of within herself and outwardly working to improve it.

she basically talked about how the feeling of intense “cringe” that leads to the kind of content garrah makes comes from a fear that the people you’re cringing at are similar to you. have you ever not told someone you have a tumblr, or loudly lambasted cringey tumblr blogs because you don’t want them to think you’re one of those tumblr users? it’s kind of the same deal, but on a more damaging scale. garrah sees gnc trans men as making him look bad because he’s a Real Man; natalie cringes at catgirl trans women because she feels like they infantilize themselves. she acknowledges in the video that this is unfounded and wrong, but she was using self-analysis to create discussion. 

i bring this up for two reasons - one, to point out that natalie is a self-reflective person who admits to her own faults and grows; and two, because i think the cringey thing is part of the reason the hate for natalie is so intense, and why i see it mostly coming from trans women, rather than nonbinary people, jewish people, or poc. 

TL;DR

do i think the screenshots above mean she’s antisemitic, racist, and transphobic? no. it’s not that deep. there are so many better things you could be putting your energy towards, so many more worthy people you could hate, than sending anonymous messages to a dan and phil blog about an educational leftist youtuber.

[noisytenant]

dont rb and dont screenshot this postnlike “lol people are so sensitive” “this is such a reach xD” or whatever im not that mad its just vaguely annoying but frequent enough that i want to complain on my personal blog

“cis people are getting too comfortable about generalizing jokes made by trans people for trans people”

Yes but also consider that these jokes are obnoxious for some trans people too... a lot of the “all lgbt people like x” jokes are alienating

[[MORE]]

When i was questioning if I id’d as bi i felt really alienated by all the jokes about bisexuality as being primarily about attraction to women with very few men. ultimately i dont feel bi fits me regardless of the jokes, but it did make me feel like “if i were bi, i don’t know who i’d hang out with, because all the loudest people are nothing like me and don’t seem to want me around.” ive seen and heard other bi people or bi-questioning people feel similarly

especially when theres jokes about nb people liking ~weird~ ~moody~ ~quirky~ things 100 gecs and having ~wacky~ names, or trans women being weirdly hypersexualized in this animesque way (thigh high programmer catgirl), or trans men being bland and uncreative men-lite with all the same name, it’s not an entirely neutral joke because it sometimes reinforces stereotypes and often cements lgbtq identities in primarily white-dominated spaces and interests. (how often do these posts reference white artists whose style is inextricable from the work of poc? an artist of color whose work is whitewashed by viewers? compare to the amt of artists who Are poc and artists who are explicit about race/race and lgbtq intersection in their work. i’m also white here so i don’t want to claim the final word on this, but i’m echoing what i’ve seen from others and what i feel as someone who’s trying to cultivate taste beyond the white gaze)

and for what reason? i love making jokes about being gay, and about my friends being gay. i love making jokes about being trans. i just think this particular brand is annoying. like they’re only capable of building this insular community of people with vaguely similar interests to you. if that’s what you really want, that’s okay, but i feel like it’s a tiny drop in the broader trend of lgbtq teens forming these loose “friendships” that amount to nothing and fall apart super easily because they want to tie themselves down to some tangible thing that just... doesn’t exist. idk. have fun and live your life im just a curmudgeon

[cornflowercanine]

assorted kill six 8illion demon thoughts HUGE HUGE spoiler warning and also despite how much i love this comic and think its good as shit dont read it if u arent comfy w moder8 gore heavy 8lood (there are other cws o8vs 8ut thats the main one) 8ut if ur ok with that i highly highly highly hiiiiiiiiiighly reccommend reading it first cuz there are lots of wowie zowie surprise moments that are 8etter when u dont know a8t them <3

i think allison a les8ian for several reasons; the entire start of the comic interaction, her worrying a8t zaid(?) always s33ms to 8e more a8out status, its never 'i miss and love this man who is also my 8oyfriend' its 'i have to find my 8oyfriend:tm: 8ecause... i just have to!', only mentions or displays of her in a rel8ionship with or 8eing attracted to men is zaid which she is very o8viously not attracted to, emotionally invested in women way more than men (which might 8e 8c the main cast is all girls, 8ut) AND! 8ecuz i am a les8ian and when i think of these things this way i rel8 to her and it makes me happy and comforta8le and just :3 nice :3

i cannot think of white chain for longer than a minute without tearing up xoxo <3

dont think i can overst8 just how much i love most of the girl chars 8ut holy fucking shit they 8low my mind

gog agog. makes me f33l <3< cuz i think shes attractive 8ut she is also very literally made of worms and wormy 8ugs are literally THE reason i have trypopho8ia and possi8ly [8ug]pho8ia. i really really like 'ah little tyrant no man is soverign from MAN your law of kings is no more su8stantial than a fart in time it too shall dissolve into a spectacle the mass REMEM8ERS the mass is IMMORTAL and most of all the mass ALWAYS wins.' 8UT ALSO OOGUHOGUHHHH 8UG GROSSYYYYYYYYYY

ALLISONS FRIENDS FUCKING SUCK ASS EVEN IF U HAD 833N FRIENDS SINCE U WERE AWKWARD EARLY T33NS YOUR FIRST RESPONSE TO THEM COMING 8ACK SHOULD 8E PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING 8UT 'DID YOU LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY OR NOT' IT MAKES ME SO MADDDDDDDDDD

i can write down every moment that made me go HOLY FUCKING SHIT 8ut in short; holy fucking shit

i think zoss(?) going 'may8e choosing you was a mistake after all' IMPLYING CHOOSING ALLISON WASNT A MISTAKE AND ZAID ISNT MEANT TO 8E THE NEW KING 8LOWS MY FUCKING SOCKS OFF and also uhhhh [that one qu33n 6 letters name starts with m i get her and the giant dino mixed up a lot] going 'i killed my hus8and 8uried him and slept for 3 days and when i woke up i heard him asking for more wives' is hands down one of the most unsettling moments in the comic its so good

'had i known heaven was so real and so choked with evil i never would have prayed in my life' and;

alongside gog agog quote is also like, holy shit lol

I WANT ZAID TO DIE SOSO 8AD I LITEALLY DO NOT CARE IF 8EING TRANSPORTED TO ANOTHER UNIVERSE+EVERYTHING ELSE HAS CHANGED HIS LIFE I WANT HIM TO DIE 8C OF THE THING HE SAID A8T ALLISON LOOKING SCARED AT THE START OF THE COMIC <3

aspected chaos.... hummina hummina.... why am i not an 18 foot tall sapphic polycule woman with hooves huh. Huh

i love maya so much its unreal i love her cut things and i love her 8ackstory and i love her chin and i love her (in spirit) milfing and i love her saying with a completely peaceful expression 'god will never forgive me for the h8 i f33l for that man' and i love every time she appears and i looooooveloveovlolovelovloeloev her

my fave char is Prolly princess jack moonshine 8c i think shes so hot it is Literally un8elieva8le and thats consistant 8ut otherwise my fave char cycles through any of the female chars at any moment

HOLY FUCKING SHIT LUCKY FELICIA I. CATGIRLS I LOVE YOU NEPETA-ALIGNED CHARS I LOVE YOU EVERYTHING ELSE LUCKY FELICIA DOES I LOVE HER 8UT HOOOOOOOOOLY SHIT THAT PAGE WITH HER IS THE ONLY INSTANCE I CAN RECALL IN WHICH DRAWN 8LOOD ALONE HAS FREAKED ME OUT XOXO <3 ITS A REALLY REALLY GOOD PAGE AND HASHTAG FEMININISM MOMENTS 8UT ALSO HOLY SHIT LOL

regardless she deserved all the money she stole and i hope her and nyave kill oscar together <3 if lucky felicia doesnt show up for the rest of the comic im gonna 8e sooooo sad for real

IM ALSO SO FUCKING GLAD MAYA AND NYAVE ARE REOCURRING CHARACTERS 8C I LOVE EVERYTHING A8T THEM 8UT THEIR FIRST INTERACTIONS KINDA... COME ACROSS AS LIKE JUST A REALLY COOL 8G CHAR? WHICH HAPPENS A LOT CUZ THERES LOOOOTS OF COOL 8G CHARS

i read the entire comic over 2 days and just as i started reading on the 2nd day i felt like. u know when ur eating smth and its so so so fucking good you wanna get seconds AS youre eating it, 8efore youre even finished. thats how ks8d made me f33l and i still f33l that way more women please please :open_hands: a88adon please women girls yes?? :innocent::open_hands::open_hands: please thank you please girls

anyway ks8d is good 8eyond good, if i wasnt a les8ian 8efore i am now after reading it, and if u can stomach it i cannot recommend it enough

[powerbottomblake]

How well do you think RWBY handles its race metaphors and well its characters of color? I seen a lot of people upset at the Faunus subplot and the lack of good characters of color. Like a series can have good (white) female and/or LGBT rep but fail POC. That’s white feminism in a nutshell. RWBY has its stumbles with some colorism here and there but with Maria I think CRWBY is improving. Thank you in advance.

I think CRWBY are extremely hit and miss when it comes to handling race.

Undercut because it got long.

So first: Faunus as an allusion to every kind of racial systemic oppression confounded is kind of iffy since it lumps all people of color together and assumes that all of them face the same kind of oppression, which is…utterly simplistic to say the least. Plus when you take actual race away…from a racial storyline and attribute it to a whole other species, you kind of dilute the message considerably. The point will fly over people’s heads 9 times out of 10. People will sooner empathize with catgirls than black or brown people and this has been proved time and again.

But seeing how the story is being helmed now by two white men who seem (and iirc have outright said) that they’re out of their depth when it comes to race, it’s probably preferable to have a blanket statement rather than go for actual racial storylines since the risk of a misstep gets higher. 

And the thing is, when CRWBY miss their mark they really Miss The Mark. The two very clear missteps I think of that denote a certain tone-deafness/ignorance on their part were:

At the end of V1, we never get an apology from Weiss. What’s worse is that Blake is somehow framed as the only one who has to come clean and justify herself which is so…wrong after Weiss’ vicious, racist insults. Yes the White Fang are Bad now and are extremists but Weiss literally started the whole thing about Sun, who had no known affiliation to the White Fang, calling him a degenerate just because he was a Faunus like?? She made it clear she distrusted any Faunus?? And somehow the whole arc was framed to get Blake to realize that White Fang had lost its soul, which yes! She should! And it’s part of her storyline! But we never get to actually see Weiss going back on what she said. We never see her apologize for the racial prejudice she hurled at both Blake and Sun? And at the end it’s just. brushed off. The whole thing is very clunky and awkward and overall, I’d say tactless.

In V5 when Blake states “Humans didn’t do this…We did this” as she points to her house on fire and it’s. ok so it makes sense in context bc this is about Blake reclaiming the White Fang movement from Adam which is fair. But the thing is, the phrasing is very. This is dangerously close to making the oppressed class shoulder the full responsibility for the clashes occuring…because of the systemic oppression they’re being put under. That was very close to a “black on black crime” rhetoric. That scene, that particular quote left an incredibly bad aftertaste bc somehow the Faunus are taking full responsibility for smth that was primarily born out of the humans’ oppression of them. Incidentally this is the exact bone I had to pick with Black Panther too. Both Erik and Adam are products of what the oppressing class has done, yet the full responsibility for taking them out falls on the oppressed somehow. Humans might not have lit that house on fire but we wouldn’t even be on that island, Adam wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the SDC apparently using Faunus slaves for their mines. I know this is more a result of short-sightedness than actual malice but yeah…again it still ends up being tone-deaf.

Now beyond that I think that likewise when CRWBY hit they do Hit the Spot. The White Fang storyline especially asks some incredibly important questions when it comes to activism and fighting for your rights as an oppressed people: How far can political correctness carry you in the face of people who are out to rob of your most basic rights? When is retaliation righteous and what kind? What is justice and what is spite? How can you walk the fine line between meekness and violence? All of these questions are especially relevant today and make for a compelling storyline, especially since we get to see one of our main characters (Blake) navigate them. We’re shown that Ghira’s position, while foregoing violence, recoiled too much from conflict and ended with a deal mostly disadvantageous to his people. We’re shown that Sienna’s guerilla warfare ultimately devolves into Adam’s White Fang: bloodshed that only really perpetuates the cycle of violence and forgets its initial cause along the way. Now Blake has rejected both paths; the next logical step, and one that would neatly wrap up both a great leadership arc for her and a great political storyline all around would be for her to witness the full scale of horrors in Mantle and establish the threshold at which fighting back isn’t just necessary, it’s righteous and a duty. There’s a balance to be found and Blake is the one geared to find it. Question is: will CRWBY take the storyline there as it should (my guess is YES otherwise we wouldn’t have had need of Adam being literally branded by the SDC, adding up to Ilia’s backstory)? More importantly will they do it justice? Jury’s out on that one tbh. I think it’s fair to be wary considering the past offenses but the White Fang subplot has been surprisingly and really good mostly so. Wait and see I guess.

Despite all of its flaws I think calling RWBY white feminism is deeply incorrect? White feminism is about propping up white female characters’ storylines at the expense of POC characters, while disregarding any type of specific oppression non white characters and non white women especially have to face, which is not what’s happening here. Beyond the Faunus allegory, Blake is literally not meant to read as white and has very apparent asian coding. Ilia, who’s both very clearly POC and LGBT, has a story that is given weight and proper development and gets the redemption arc from within the White Fang. Bumbleby is literally meant to be read as an interracial couple, and while yes I’ve had qualms about Blake’s skin tone being incredibly inconsistent between volumes and especially washed out in V6, I do believe it stems more from a lack of foresight/animation and lighting wonkiness than outright malice or disregard, which I hope gets resolved in the later volumes. 

[zwei-the-penguin-with-a-pen]

‘Blake Has Wares, If You Have Coin’

Exhausted from her journey, Yang Xiao Long decided to take the night off and find herself an inn in town. All the ones she had tried so far had no vacancy, or so they had all told her. Maybe some of them actually were full, but she figured others just wouldn't sell a room to a Dragon. She didn't even have any scales showing, but it seemed humans could tell the difference anyhow.

Was there at least a tavern in this dingy little settlement that would throw her a drink? Even if they threw it in her face, she would no longer be thirsty. She went to tie back her enormous mane of golden hair, but her tie snapped apart. She huffed and almost cried. Nothing was going her way lately.

"Aye, Dragon Lady! Shall Blake sell you a trinket?" She heard from behind her. She spun around and laid her eyes on a Khajiit saleswoman. She had never seen a lady Khajiit, and her face probably said as much. Her eyes almost turned to stars at the sight of the sales cat.

"Wait... You sell to Dragonfolk?" Yang asked 'Blake' apparently. The Khajiit nodded, her long black hair bouncing and blowing in the faint breeze. Her large black cat ears wiggled. Yang was taken in by the hairpin curve of the cat woman's lips.

"Is there any Khajiit who will turn down a sale?" Blake asked. Yang nodded sadly.

"Every man cat I run into seems all too happy to sell to me, but they turn me away when I start trying to bargain. 'Khajiit does not sell to greedy Dragons!' is their usual excuse." Blake scoffed at the idea. Her eyes were bright gold, Yang noticed. Her own purple eyes could not help but gaze at this feline seller.

"Khajiit men sell to no one they think will outsmart them. Their gardens are overgrown and their cucumbers are soft, you might say..." Blake responded, eyeing Yang almost as hard as Yang eyed her. "Blake does not discriminate. Gold is gold, no matter whose hand it touches. In short, Khajiit has wares, if you have coin!"

"Wow, that's wonderful to know. Wait, don't Khajiit have fur all over?" Yang asked curiously as she eyed the catgirl's face and arms and saw soft skin instead of fur. Blake only smirked.

"Don't Dragons normally have scales and wings?" Blake clapped back.

"That's fair. So... how much for a date?"

"One thousand apologies, for Blake does not sell fruit."

"No, not a fruit date! A 'drinks after work' date. Me, you, a stiff ale... What do you say?" Yang winked at her, her scales glowing under her clothes. Blake seemed taken aback by her words. Her gold eyes widened and her ears folded forward.

"I've never dated a Dragon before..." Blake finally responded, her accent and speech patterns different. Yang grinned.

"Whoa, your voice is different!"

"Yes, the 'Khajiit has wares' bit is a sales pitch. Some of us do speak that way, but not all of us. Just like some of us look more human than others. I'm only part Khajiit. My dad had a thing for human women," Blake confessed, blushing brightly and tucking her hands away.

"Hey, my dad was the same way! Or rather, my mom had a thing for Dragons!" Yang replied, grinning at Blake. Blake smiled.

"So what's your name, Dragon?"

"I'm Yang, Kitty Cat! Yang Xiao Long!" Yang announced proudly, flexing an arm for good measure. Blake's eyes turned to hearts at the sight of Yang's golden scales and bulging muscles.

"A sunny little dragon. Interesting. I'm Blake Belladonna." Blake replied once her reaction to Yang's muscles subsided.

"A black poison. Sounds lovely. So, where's a tavern that will serve mixers like us?" Blake laughed at Yang.

"I haven't agreed yet!" She snapped. That seemed to kill Yang's enthusiasm. "You asked for a price, yes?" She pulled a purple ribbon out of a box and showed it to Yang. Yang reached out and touched the ribbon. It was made of very fine fabric but would still be strong enough for a hair tie. "I saw you having hair troubles. Buy this from me and I'll take you to a spot that serves everyone."

"How much?"

"A kiss for Khajiit..." Blake answered, putting her accent back on. Yang's eyes turned to hearts at the idea. "Just joking, Dragon." She continued in her regular voice. Yang scoffed. "Twenty gold, and a kiss if you don't mind."

Yang slapped twenty gold onto the table and her lips onto the cat woman's lips. Blake kissed back, surprising Yang. She pulled Blake closer with one hand, sliding the hand from Blake's shoulder down the length of her back. Blake stopped Yang's hand from proceeding further.

"Calm down, Yang. I might still have customers..." She told the golden Dragon. Yang pulled away with a smile. "Meet me under the street lamp at sunset, and we'll go to the tavern. It's a seedy place, but they'll serve anyone. I once saw a criminal get a drink there." Blake grinned. Yang nodded, looking up to see the street lamp in question. She waved at Blake and walked away.

They met under the light post after Blake tucked her makeshift shop away, and the two of them took off toward a tavern on the sketchy side of town. As Blake said, Xiong would serve anyone with gold, and the two of them had plenty between them.

\/\/\/\/\/

\/\/\/\/\/

\/\/\/\/\/

So I heard it was Bumbleby Week and I finally got a drip of free time. I guess this would be for AU day, but idk. Fantasy AU where Blake is part Khajiit and Yang is part Dragon. 

[jessica-problems]

I have this theory that the reason My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic had such a weird fandom is because it accidentally convergently evolved into a bunch of surface level similarities to a slice of life harem and/or moe anime, for completely different reasons, and then it got a reputation on 4chan and spread from there.

---

overlap 1a.) there’s a huge cast of female ponies with relatively few male ones. This is done to show little girls all the different equally valid ways to be a woman.

overlap 1b.) in harem anime, women vastly outnumber men because the point is to cram in as much sex appeal for straight men as possible.

---

overlap 2a.) the ponies have ambiguous ages, and their maturity fluctuates based on the episode. This was done to allow the writers to tell all sorts of different stories, with either childish or more mature situations.

overlap 2b.) harem anime often have characters with ambiguous ages for entirely skeevier reasons, either hypersexualized teens or infantilized adults.

---

overlap 3a.) MLP has lots of non-action focused plots, because they wanted to show non-violent conflict and teach kids other ways to solve problems and such.

overlap 3b.) slice of life harem anime revolves around, as they say ‘cute girls doing cute things’, just watching the characters go about their lives in charming ways.

---

overlap 4a.) MLP has a main cast full of female characters that each have a broad personality archetype they fit into(nerd, fashionista, farmer, party girl, tomboy, doormat, etc)

overlap 4b.) harem anime often pull from a standard list of personality archetypes(tsundere, genki, yandere, kuudere, etc), leading to a similar situation where each character is strongly typecast so as little as their hair style can sometimes tell you what their personality is going to be.

---

overlap 4a.) the ponies are, well, ponies, and not humans, so they occasionally do animal stuff like eating hay or neighing. They also sometimes need more creative solutions for tasks a human would find trivial, like opening a door. 

overlap 4b.) the Moe subgenre heavily features small, childish and incompetent characters that need help with basic things so that even an unremarkable viewer feels like they could actually contribute to the character’s life in some way if they were in a relationship. Non-human characters(catgirls, robots, elves, etc) are also common, but idk if that’s relevant.

---

And then, there’s all the standard stuff, like, any well made kid’s show will attract a few adult fans, and MLP:FiM is quite well made, and it’s just cute and heartwarming and all that.

[itsclydebitches]

Do you think Monty made a mostly female cast simply because he liked women? Look at deaf Fantasy. Mostly all women probably because Monty preferred to animate all the hot women he grew up with in games. RWBY is just his own OC's, but the same principle. Why have a team of guys when you can literally have a cute catgirl? Monty never seemed like someone who specifically set out to create a diverse show. Just was a big otaku who liked anime girls so he made more anime girls.

I honestly have no clue what Monty’s intentions were. It’s a combination of me having little interest in researching that---through interviews and the like---as well as the fact that a) authors don’t always admit their intentions (especially in regards to something like this) and b) they may not always be fully aware of their intentions. An author might be making decisions in part because they’re a guy who prefers to animate primarily hot, very young women (and we can delve into the reasoning behind that), but that doesn’t mean they’ve consciously acknowledged it. Especially when you have cultures like anime where that is so normalized. 

Ultimately though I don’t think it matters much. Authorial intent is important, but not the only aspect we care about. Whether Monty intended to create a diverse show or not... he kind of did. In that he took a genre dominated by men and gave us an all woman team, notably one undercutting a lot of assumptions about what women-led teams look like. (Example: the girls get badass hammers and sniper rifles instead of glittery transformations). The audience is almost always interacting only with what the text gives us. Which in this case was a text that marketed and presented itself as a story about these four women, first and foremost. So when that changes, the audience is likely to take notice. We’re not mind readers. Even if Monty were alive we can’t dive into his head and pick out some justification like, “I only ever wanted to animate hot people” or even “I always intended to change the focus of the show somewhat, that’s been in the works since Volume One.” All we can do is take note of the changes we see and theorize about their existence. For me personally, aspects like gender, audience preference, common tropes, what’s going to make them money, etc. will always play a part in that kind of theorizing. They’re just too prevalent not to consider. 

[nascentflash]

never-ending survey: j’lihmu

RULES: Repost, do not reblog. Tag 10 blogs! 

tagged by:@violet-warder​ (thank you so much!)

tagging: honestly? anyone that wants to do it! (i don’t know who actually got tagged already) you are more than welcomed to tag me :>

BASICS.

FULL  NAME :  J’lihmu Rhatni

NICKNAME : Crimson, Li

AGE :  25

BIRTHDAY :   19th Sun of the Third Astral Moon (5/19)

ETHNIC  GROUP : Miqo’te (Seeker of the Sun)/ Elezen (Wildwood)

NATIONALITY : Ul’Dahn

LANGUAGE / S : Common, a hit of Hingan/Doman (broken)

SEXUAL  ORIENTATION : Demisexual

ROMANTIC  ORIENTATION : Panromantic

RELATIONSHIP  STATUS :  Taken (Single in some AUs)

HOME  TOWN / AREA :  Abalathia’s Spine/Sky Frost

CURRENT  HOME :  The Lavender Beds — a small home she bought herself.

PROFESSION : Hunter, mercenary, the good ol’ Warrior of Light resume being handed out.

PHYSICAL.

HAIR : Naturally red with orange highlights.

EYES : A bright green.

FACE : Resting bitch face syndrome, always /annoyed, slightly round.

LIPS :Full, tinted with the same color as her eye paint.

COMPLEXION : Slightly tanned.

BLEMISHES :None.

SCARS : Littered across her body, reminder of the victories — or losses — she always came out alive.

TATTOOS :  Tattoos litter her form, it is part of her tribe back home. Her arms are covered, legs, and back.

HEIGHT :  5′2″.

WEIGHT : 143lbs.

BUILD : Athletic.

FEATURES :  Large, somewhat almond shaped eyes, small, slightly refined nose, both ears pierced and longer than the normal miqo’te.

ALLERGIES :  None.

USUAL  HAIR  STYLE :  When long — messy, unkempt until told otherwise. A large braid would encompass a portion of her hair, and the other wild and free. Sometimes in a large, messy bun when she’s working, or doing anything out of battle. Short — has now a tendency to keep it up to date with oils and minerals, making sure her hair is looking better than before. She would not have it in a braid, with the exception of one on her side or most of her hair swept away from her face.

USUAL  FACE  LOOK :  Thick painted eye-makeup, whether blue (for her tribe) or red (for herself), lips tinted red. Besides that, she has no other make up on her whatsoever. It is rare to see her without her tribal paint unless she’s at home, relaxing.

USUAL  CLOTHING :   Leather, furs/coats, jewelry made from bones of bears long dead from her home. However, she adapts and changes depending where she is. Example; in Kugane, she is seen wearing more of their traditional outfits in some instances, but will always opt for the good ol’ tank top and shorts if she can get away with it. Yes, even under the kimono.

PSYCHOLOGY.

FEAR / S : Failure (more so towards her WoL than anything else), falling to her Inner Beast, death— in a sense.

ASPIRATION / S :  To achieve greatness and be worthy of remembrance outside the confines of her tribe. To eventually help lead a line of new, young warriors from her tribe.

POSITIVE  TRAITS : Confident, resourceful, passionate, outspoken.

NEGATIVE  TRAITS : Short-tempered, impatient, competitive, ruthless.

MBTI : ESTP-A/ESTP-T

ZODIAC : Azeyma (?T-Taurus?)

TEMPERAMENT :  Choleric.

SOUL  TYPE / S :   Warrior.

ANIMALS :  Bear.

VICE HABIT / S :   Isolation, punching the wall a couple of times until her knuckles bleed in anger, running head on in battle and not tending to her wounds.

FAITH : Questionable, leaning on no beliefs.

GHOSTS ? : Yes.

AFTERLIFE ? : Believer.

REINCARNATION ? :  Believer.

ALIENS ? :  ????

POLITICAL ALIGNMENT : The only time she gave a shit is when things started going down in Ishgard, just to be spiteful to Ul’Dah later honestly. Would care for her tribes political shenanigans, but thats about it.

EDUCATION  LEVEL :  Home-schooled in a sense. Her father and the elders of the village taught her all she knows to a point.

FAMILY.

FATHER : Close.

MOTHERS :  Estranged, trying her best tm.

SIBLINGS : ...Complicated (Half-siblings are a handful)

EXTENDED  FAMILY : Many, but she does not know her mother’s side, only her father’s.

NAME MEANING / S : Her name has no meaning, but, if you asked her father—J’zahlu would say it reminded him of the sun.

HISTORICAL  CONNECTION ? : No..?

FAVORITES.

BOOK :  Intricate pages describing worlds she will never know.

DEITY : Azeyma.

HOLIDAY :  Starlight Celebration.

MONTH : October.

SEASON :  Autumn.

PLACE : Mountaintops with caves, deep within, a system of caves that lead you to the deepest part of home.

WEATHER : Sunny and cloudy days.

SOUND / S: The sound of metal clashing unto one another, the sound of rain hitting the earth.

SCENT / S :  Damp caverns, burnt fur, perfumes.

TASTE / S :  Sweets, orange, blood.

FEEL / S : Fur, cold floor, rough skin, broken wood.

ANIMAL / S :  Bears, hunting hawks, paissa — who is now her son, don’t @ me 

NUMBER : 18.

COLORS : Vermilion, black, gold, aquamarine, orange.

EXTRA.

TALENTS : Existing, hunting, beating people at bars, talking shit about powerful people because she knows she can’t be killed, headbutting is her specialty.

BAD  AT :  Loss, dancing, drinking — she will fall asleep or drunk fight, who knows.

TURN  ONS : Men — large hands, broad build, scars, messy hair, independent. Women — someone who can kick ass, makes her laugh, independent.

TURN  OFFS : Attention-seekers, arrogance, stupidity, carelessness — basically what she does what else is new.

HOBBIES :Hunting, people watching, trying to be a good blacksmith, mining — it’s therapeutic.

TROPES : Green-Eyed Redhead, Fiery Redhead, An Axe to Grind [idk a lot im baby]

QUOTES : “If one more noble attempts to be snotty with me, he’s about to get his ass ripped open by my axe.”

MUN QUESTIONS.

Q1 :  If you could write your character your way in their own movie,  what would it be called,  what style would it be filmed in, and what would it be about?          

—The Lost Crucible, it would be filmed like a documentary, so to speak, switching from third POV [narrator] to first POV [dumb catgirl] that would be finding out about her tribe, and the trial young warriors go through. 

Q2 :  What would their soundtrack/score sound like?          

— Songs that remind you of a time when you’re one in nature; drums that give you that itch to move and dance to the beat, to appease the old and new gods, whatever you believe in. It would be of her home — where the village barely touches the heavens itself.

Q3 :  Why did you start writing this character?          

— I did it in a way to sort of make a new oc from an old oc, so to speak. The OG version, as you could call it, is vastly different and I kept making lots of jokes with her when I name changed and eventually she just started to slowly build up.

Q4 :   What first attracted you to this character?          

— It’s a mixture of self insert, so finding a way to incorporate stuff into my own character is what sort of ... made her my lovable daughter. She’s not all self-insert, her attitude, her anger, her sorrow, her accomplishments and failures and imagines on how she would deal with X and Y is just absolutely fascinating for me and having a fierce miqo’te hailing from the snowy mountain tops of Abalathia’s Spine who’s tiny with a big axe is my aesthetic okay.

Q5 :  Describe the biggest thing you dislike about your muse.

— Her desire to keep things quiet until the last second—mostly when it’s about her. Anything related to her life, her health, her problems, she’d rather deal with them alone. Even if there’s been major character improvement, there are some things she does not feel comfortable sharing, or letting people in. Her desire for more power so she can finally be at peace.

Q6 :  What do you have in common with your muse?          

— We are both stubborn bitches. However, she deals with things far better than I ever could, as I am baby. Similar in arrogance, and in anger — to a point.

Q7 :   How does  your muse feel about  you?          

— She’d fucking kick my ass. I think she would appreciate me, and not be as bully as with others — not because I am her mun, but more so as I think we’d clash a lot but get along quite well, too.

Q8 :  What characters does your muse have interesting interactions with ?        

— I, unfortunately haven’t had a lot of interactions with Li trying to be nice, or fight somebody but— people like her, who are broken yet continue on. Who carry a mantle too big to carry and they do it anyways. Fighters that only know how to fight, when she eventually wants peace, but that will never leave her soul. People so nice that it makes her want to protect them; to view the world the way they see it. Warriors, even if they are not from the same village, are all brethren to one another and the desire to meet and see how they live out their lives — just a handful of stuff in my head I’d like to see.

That and a bar fight, she really is the one who would start a bar fight drunk or angry okay. Also nobles. She sort of hates them cause of her mom but then eventually doesn’t and it’s awkward asf.

Q9 :  What gives  you inspiration  to write  your muse ?        

—Vikings, Game of Thrones aesthetics of the Dothraki tribe, anything tribal honestly. The existential dread that is Nier: Automata, some Fire Emblem aesthetics, a lot of stuff honestly.

Q10 : How long did this take you to complete ?          

— I STARTED YESTERDAY. I finished late today cause my last two braincells hate everything