#this also isn't meant to be discourse about like

[riddlerosehearts]

okay, i've got some things i wanna say about twst EN's translation of scarabia's story that i was originally typing out as part of a response to an ask, but then i realized i was going off on a bit of a tangent and was like "this could basically be its own post"--so now it's going to be its own post!

i'm a twst EN player, and for the most part, i do really like the localization. i don't speak japanese but i love learning about language and the process of translation and localization, so at one point after finishing books 1-5 i went and reread them all (and 6 as well, once it was fully released on EN) with a fan translation and the localization side by side to compare them. and from what i could tell as someone who isn't a japanese speaker, i honestly thought it seemed like they usually did pretty well? sure, there were a few mistakes like cater claiming to be an only child (this one, i think, has actually been fixed recently), or how in book 2 they removed a small mention of falena making it seem like he's never mentioned at all until leona's flashback and they also removed the numerous times that he said "be prepared" (at least they finally properly translated it in book 6, though!!). but i thought most of these mistakes were somewhat minor and could be forgiven... until book 4 (well, and book 5, mostly in regards to vil and epel's conflict and i'm not talking about them here, so).

see, i actually realized that something was off about the localization when i first played through book 4, because i have a weird memory and have picked up a bunch of random words and phrases from being into japanese media and reading so much about the localization process. and i also play twst with the sound on because i love to hear the voice acting. so sometimes i would hear jamil speak, i'd pick out the words "shujin" and "juusha" for "master" and "servant", and then the subtitles wouldn't include them at all. so i'd guess certain things about the actual intent behind the story based on that. take this message i sent to my friend when i was sharing my blind reactions to the game:

and she ended up telling me that apparently, what i thought he should say essentially IS what he originally said!! according to the fan translation on wiki.gg he said this instead:

i had wondered if maybe i was reading into things and assuming too much, but it turned out i was completely spot on! but most people who play EN would not be able to pick up on this and realize that jamil was born into servitude to kalim and has no escape, because as i later discovered almost every single mention of him being a servant at all was removed, in events and vignettes as well. which is actually really weird to me because they don't remove it entirely, they do in fact bring up the fact that jamil has to test all of kalim's food for poison during book 4 and they also left in a line where he says he "works as kalim's servant". but they only really mention these things once or twice and then they try to sort of play it off as jamil being a paid employee or something most of the time... seriously, during beanfest there's dialogue where jamil says it would be rude to refuse an order from his boss but i've read that that line was originally him saying a servant couldn't disobey his master. and in the scalding sands event he calls himself "a dedicated employee" of kalim's... what, am i supposed to assume he works as a butler by choice or something? yeah, no. also, one of his birthday vignettes, which are fully voiced so i could TELL he said, with a devious smirk on his face, that if he had a parrot the first word he would teach it would be "shujin-sama". "master". what did EN change this into?

the person i was originally writing all of this in response to said that sometimes people's takes on jamil make them wonder if people are reading a completely different story but also that part of that can probably be blamed on the way EN completely changed the context of his situation with these translation choices. and yeah, i fully agree with that assessment: more casual fans or people who just aren't that interested in the scarabia duo could be said to be reading a different story with this whole "boss" and "employee" thing that has jamil make it sound like the worst that could ever happen to him if he got in trouble would be getting a really stern lecture from his parents.

and it makes me sad because i really do love both jamil and kalim so much and i think their dynamic is so tragic and complicated and interesting to think about. i think they're both really complex characters who are trapped in an awful situation. kalim is so kind and loving and would never wanna hurt anyone but he hurts jamil just by existing as part of the fucked up society they live in. kalim thought he and jamil were best friends, he had no idea of the toxicity of their dynamic and the pain jamil was in, and people say jamil should've just talked to him about it earlier... but jamil's first memory as a child is of seeing his parents bow to the asim family. being a servant is practically all he's ever known and he's had it drilled into his head since they were both small children that he can never be himself around kalim, can never just treat him like a normal person because he's a servant and kalim is his master. and even if he did accept kalim's offer to start over as equals and be friends, what would happen when they had to go home to their families? they won't be at school forever.

and i just. augh. i hate what the localization does with them. if you try to water them down to just an employee who's super mad at his obliviously crappy boss, or just two childhood friends who needed to communicate better or something like that, then you take away from the complexity of both characters. you also lose extremely cool writing choices like how jamil is a character who was born into servitude but has the power to make himself the master with his unique magic. i see so many takes about how jamil is just a jerk who betrayed his best friend and how kalim never did anything wrong in his entire life and i hate it but i'm sure the localization's choices are in fact to blame for a lot of this.

so anyway jamil and kalim's actual dynamic is fascinating and lives rent-free in my head, no thanks to how the EN version gutted it.

[fiona-fififi]

Since I'm digging myself a hole tonight, I kind of actively hate the "But I am ready for something, and I think maybe that something could be with you."

Like, my first instinct was that it was sweet and that Buck was taking back a little bit of agency there and asking for what he wanted.

But I don't know. In so many ways, it also actually feels like it feeds into a very unhealthy pattern for Buck.

I mean, I might just be projecting because I cannot imagine ever being so infatuated with someone that I'd be like "I want to try a relationship with you" after only knowing them for 30 seconds and being left on the curb after a failed first date, but I digress.

But just. I don't know. This feels like such a pattern for Buck. Have someone express interest, only to then be rejected (Abby, Taylor, Natalia, now Tommy) and then chase them that much harder.

Like, Buck. Darling. PLEASE. Your value is not defined by the people for whom you have to prove your worth.

And I don't even mean this as anything directly against these partners. But Buck gets so caught up in forcing a relationship that he speedruns things without actually giving anyone (including himself) any space to grow into it, and it just feels kind of devastating that that's still where he is with himself.

[abirdie]

Gael García Bernal in Desierto (2015, dir. Jonás Cuarón)

(these gifs also feature Alondra Hidalgo)

Gifs are all 540px wide so you can click to see larger.

[other gael filmography gifsets]

[anglerflsh]

neurodivergency moment on my part

[kaztheghost]

just discussing PvP and the issues people r having with Blue hiding !! tagged discourse and crit to be safe but it isn't intentioned with either it's just me rambling

Okay I mained bads perspective yesterday but I keep seeing people say that Etoiles and Roier couldn't find anyone to kill for nine hours--and listen . Is it that they couldn't find ANYONE or that they didn't find who they WANTED to kill, because they did see Foolish and Cellbit didn't they? Two people in nine hours is SUPER ROUGH yes but they did run into red more than once and just didn't kill them so idk I'd be more into it if they really didn't see a single player for any time whatsoever but like. Just because they didn't see bad more than once ISNT the same; I think I just mainly take issue with the fact everyone is trying to give bad a hard time for not fighting while refusing to acknowledge the entire server wanted his head on a platter, why should he 1v12?? Like that's ridiculous how is that even content when he'd get curbstomped against that many people, every time people want to fight him it's only AFTER they gather at least four to six people to take him out like be realistic if you want to 1v1 id be like fuck yea but he knows that where there's one there's the rest of y'all not too far away I just do not get it he's not a coward he's using basic common sense (plus even when people offer a 1v1 they're ALWAYS in a vc telling their team where to go to jump him) that is there's One of him and An Entire Server who wants him Dead good as he is (and tbf i also disagree with etoiles calling their fight from the other day a 1v2 because it wasn't--it started as a 2v2 and fit ran because he almost died (I'm aware of the miscommunication btw I don't blame either of them!!! It really really sucks bc I'm sure etoiles could've escaped) but regardless it WAS a 2v2 that bad didn't even Want to take on initially, it would've stayed that way if fit had stuck around because he was going to die anyways ykwim but to say it was unfair when it didn't start off that way is eh 2 me mostly bc it sounds like they jumped Etoiles off guard as if Etoiles and Fit didn't engage them first) HOWEVER saying all that I think they really should try to encourage PVP in different ways than just "everyone go hunt down this one specific player" because then it's kind of just . Like that encourages that player to just hide because why would they fight that many people? Boosting the kill percentage helps but manhunts don't imo they'll just stay underground the whole time and I don't blame anyone who does outside of even Blue--like when Blue and Green were hunting Red, of course red is going to stay hundreds of blocks away to avoid PvP it's just numbers ykwim idk it's purgatory but when you being killed will set your entire team back because there's significantly less of you then everyone else I don't blame them really and I hope the admins can come up with a different way to try and get fights going

[wreckedhoney]

cant fuck with fandom takes that defuck extremist characters. blorbo set fire to multiple buildings killed dozens and will do so again. every incident is accompanied by a rant about some warped issue or pathetic self perspective and a lot of bared teeth. then enough people who watched the same thing i watched will just.. not register that this is an angry personality. objectively bad and toxic. among other things. like suddenly seeing takes about this genuine asswipe being a normal chill person. where did u see this. what happened. where is my genuinely unwell off-putting blorbo. who the fuck is this

[ceo-of-the-pluto-defense-squad]

lesbians be dropping their opinions on the vincian flag, like their opinions actually matters 💀 

[forgive-the-sea]

i think somewhere along the line (in my experience) after 2020 reader fan fic became less about enjoying a story and more about inserting ourselves into stories and idk how to feel about that

[mint-swirl]

you ever see an infodump prime for an autistic audience but it uses red and green to try and differentiate details? like bestie know your target audience

[mildlylesbian]

At this point I refuse to touch any sort of online discourse with a 10ft pole because the landscape has become so toxic that people are more focused on fighting one another rather than the issue at hand, which leads to nothing happening ever.

However, scrolling through a screaming match between two people at 2am where niether of them makes any impact on the actual contriversy cause they're too busy fighting one another is so so so irratating but also so cathartic.

[stelashe]

Ogni volta che becco un italiano qui è un """oppresso""" del sud(o del nord/toscana che odia se stesso e tutta la gente troppo vicina alle alpi perché lui/lei/voi è speciale uwu) che insulta la gente del nord(generale ma ovunque è Milano citylife si sa siamotuttisa*vini) a caso ....mi ricorda qualcuno.

[fiona-fififi]

...

[ms-demeanor]

So I've been seeing some discourse around the No Fly List leak that looks a bit like "hey everybody, we can't make jokes about this, the list is racist and there are children on the list" or "if you're talking about identity categories instead of the list you're missing the point" and I think that we CAN make jokes about a trans bi lesbian catgirl owning the US government while also appreciating the gravity of the No Fly List but what I think is troubling to me is the way that these discourse posts are treating the blatant racism and inherently fascist nature of the No Fly List as news.

It is news that Maia Arson Crimew was able to download a copy of the No Fly List from an unsecured public server.

It is not news that there are 1.5 million people on that list, many of whom do not belong on it for any number of reasons, and it is not news that there are children on that list, and it is not news that the list is a tool used to deprive people of their civil liberties. That's why the list exists.

I'm aware that I'm getting older. I'm aware that there are entire adults of legal drinking age who were born after 9/11. I'm aware that it's not super common to follow up on foreign policy or national security debacles from when you were in kindergarten, but there are people who have been mad about this shit for twenty years and if you're just now hearing about how bad the list is for the first time, hell, maybe that's on us and we haven't been yelling enough (though when I'm yelling about how the TSA is security theater meant to make us accept encroachments on our rights, this is at least a part of what I'm yelling about).

The No Fly List is a list of individuals maintained by the TSA who are deemed a threat to security for some reason or another.

The TSA maintains the list, though they are given information for the list from the FBI, Terrorism Screening Center, and other entities. If you'd like to click this document, you can find 250 pages of FOIA'd documents about the No Fly List pre 2006. Much of this document is members of the FBI trying to justify why they need a copy of the list and lamenting that airlines have a copy of the list and they don't. This is very funny.

There have been issues with mis-identifications and false positives for the list for as long as the list has existed. You can click here to read through an infuriating 200 pages about a Pfizer employee who was stopped at least a dozen times at airports and who retained a law firm to hound the TSA/CBP/ICE clusterfuck of interagency buck-passing for nine months to try to get the problem resolved. One of the three documents at this link includes a complaint from the president of the Terrorist Screening Center lamenting the way that the TSA would refer obvious non-matches to be detained, including infants and the elderly.

At this point, the FBI/TSA/TSC/ICE/CBP claimed list was still relatively small, in the low thousands at most.

However a 2009 cost-benefit report by the Defense Technical Information Center found that in 2004-2005 30,000 people contacted the TSA to have their names removed from the list; 30k false positives suggests a list somewhat longer than a thousand names.

As long as the No Fly List has existed, criteria for being placed on the list has been subjective and selectively enforced.

As the Crimew leak shows, there isn't a tremendous amount of biographical data, but there are hundreds of thousands of names and it is enforced at the discretion of the TSA in each individual airport in the US, which is how you end up with duplicates and toddlers and 100-year-old men on what is functionally a filter to keep Muslim people out of the US.

The list has expanded every year that it has existed, and has been defended by republicans and democrats alike since it became one of the tools in our arsenal to fight "the war on terror"

And for just about that long, people have been talking about how it is unconstitutional, denies civil liberties, and also just doesn't really work.

It has never been transparent, it has always been a tool of surveillance, exclusion, and control:

And people have been documenting, protesting, and suing over the islamophobic nature of the list - and the security state's weaponization of the list as a threat - for two decades at this point because in the earliest days of the No Fly List it was OPENLY ACKNOWLEDGED that it was based on racial profiling and people made (shitty, cruel) legal arguments for why it should be:

THIS isn't funny. These are not the things that people are joking about when they choose to stay silly :3 in this conversation.

But these things also aren't news. Nearly everything I screencapped here was listed as a source on Wikipedia, and what wasn't was available as simple searches on Archive.Org or easily looked up on news websites.

All you have to do is just *look* at the sources on Wikipedia to see that people actually have been talking about it for quite a long time, very publicly, and that there has been a lot of public outcry about the list as it balloons and punishes innocent people with false positives:

And when you've been looking at stories like these for twenty fucking years it feels wonderful to say "holy fucking bingle" and celebrate that for once someone did something VERY COOL in order to shine a light on this massive (and apparently underappreciated problem).

[mr-ribbit]

gonna rant again bc im seeing a lot of trans women on my dash having to carry the heavy lifting to argue for their basic respect and a lot of other queer people who want to ??? get mad about that apparently. for the record as usual: im tme, im not speaking for anyone besides myself and my perspectives, but I am trying to reach out to fellow tme people to level with y'all from inside the house.

i thought we all got past the 'calling people gendered terms when theyve asked you to stop' thing in like. 2012. i swear we were allllll on board with not calling women dude anymore, nerfing sir and ma'am, neutralizing collective terms for groups, and all of that was like, during the onceler era. that's how we got off-putting shit like folx into the mix - remember???? why are we here again.

to those who I've seen claiming that they REALLY genuinely don't want to offend anyone, and that theyre trying to understand the dude thing, and they don't want to be seen as transmisogynistic when they aren't: ok. let's talk about it. step one, stop sending that really loaded anon to a trans woman you don't know, and close that in-group hatepost with 100 replies from people name-dropping trans bloggers they don't like. try to open your mind and assume for the duration of this post that I am not cynically trying manipulate thousands of tumblr users into making Bro the next big swear word, but a fellow queer human being who thinks you're all being pretty intentionally obtuse about an upsetting trend in our community

to be clear: this post is about the issue of trans women being called bro, dude, man, etc., particularly in recent tumblr discourse about transmisogyny, and the backlash they face if they get upset about it. this is also maybe moreso about the shitty ass excuses I see tme people make for why they supposedly can't stop doing this.

so let's go through some of the things I've been seeing people say they don't understand, supposedly in earnest, about this issue

"I DIDNT USE DUDE AS A MASCULINE TERM. I CALL EVERYONE BRO. MAN IS A GENDER NEUTRAL TERM"

I'm not actually going to exhaust my list of reasons why dude/bro/man are not strictly neutral, but you should be pretty aware that all words have context. Dude might be seen as neutral in many contexts, sure, but 'woman who is frequently called a man by others' is a situation where the context adds extra meaning to your words, just like calling someone "sweetie" might be neutral in some cases, but if you've got the context of knowing that's your coworker who's half your age, it's a bit less neutral. If you're not capable of reading that context and being tasteful about when you say dude, then you need to at least be ready to respond gracefully when someone asks you to stop. This is the part I'd rather focus on.

"BUT I DIDNT MEAN IT THAT WAY. IM NOT TRANSPHOBIC"

I think you should consider broadening your perspective *beyond* your intention behind the word. people may already understand that you meant the word neutrally and therefore didn't have transmisogynistic intent, but that's not really the entire scope of what people are saying. if that's your only concern, you're just trying to clear your record, not actually listen to what they're saying.

there are lots of words people don't enjoy being called, and in most cases, when they say 'pls don't call me that', people respect that and move on. even if the word isn't a slur, if it hurts someone's feelings, we all as a society have agreed that it's pretty shitty to keep calling them that. if your friend asked you not to call them 'buddy' anymore because their dead grandparent called them that, or something equivalently personal, you'd probably respect that instead of telling them 'but I call everyone buddy!!' right? even if you didn't really understand why it bothered them so much?

there is a prominent tendency for trans women to be denied this privilege, and when they ask not to be called dude or bro, people don't seem to respect this request as much as they would in other situations. when I accidentally use a gendered word and someone tells me they don't like it, I try to respond with something like "my bad, I didn't mean it as misgendering but I can see you were still bothered by it, so I'll try not to keep saying it. sorry!" and most people are willing to accept that. when trans women ask people this favor, a lot of people get VERY defensive, and treat the request as inane or unfair, instead of just apologizing and moving on. this is why people are upset when this happens, and it's why people are calling your actions transmisogynistic

also like you might not be doing this, but a lot of people DO use dude and bro in an intentionally gendered way to make trans women uncomfortable. it's a power play bigots use to talk down to them or otherwise maliciously harass them. do you know what arguments they use to defend that behavior when called out on it? 'oh I call everyone that' 'dude is gender neutral calm down' 'dont overreact its just a word'. by acting like this, youre all just giving credence to those same arguments.

"WELL THEY SHOULDNT GET SO MAD AT ME WHEN I DIDNT MEAN ANY HARM"

they can get as mad as they want!! also, are you sure they're 'mad'? or are they just expressing their feelings about a negative topic to you, and it makes you feel bad, so you have to make them out to be unreasonably emotional? how do you think they should have phrased 'dont call me that' to better spare *your* feelings?

also like, in most cases, these women do not knowww you. if your main response to someone saying you disrespected them is to say "I didnt mean it that way, I meant it in a friendly neutral way", well that's NOT YOUR FRIEND! she has no idea what your opinions are or what you think of her!!! she has no reason to assume you only upset her in a friendly way and not a bad unfriendly way! but she did get upset, and she did the one thing she can do which is *tell you what upset her* and your response is to say "well actually you shouldn't be upset at all"??????

and another thing:

it's not just the issue of using the word 'dude', it's because you're coming off extremely dismissive of women who have asked you to stop doing something that harms them, and because your argument is basically that they just shouldn't be so bothered by it. or that they're stupid, irrational, or otherwise crazy for telling you that it bothered them at all, just because you Technically used a gender neutral word according to Your Rules. be honest, does that seem fair? If people were calling you something that bothered you enough to ask them to stop, and they responded like this, how would it make you feel?

focusing solely on your intent and what the words mean when you use them is the same thing as saying "just get over it". no woman should need to Prove to you that 'dude' is gendered for you to care about what she's saying. the fact that you're asking people to do that sucks and makes you look bad, which is why people are arguing with you and calling you a misogynist.

especially those of you who are only doing this with trans women who are actively arguing with. you're wielding misgendering as a cudgel and we can all see it, grow up please.

[spaghettioverdose]

I've never really talked on here about how I figured out my gender, and since this whole egg discourse is going on, I feel like I should.

I'm not one of the trans women who figured out their genders at age 4 and became fully confident of it. Up until around 16 I didn't even begin to consider that I may not be a cis guy and it took me up until almost 19 to fully realise I was a trans woman. Before this, at 18, after feeling particularly shitty for weeks (from what I later learned was definitely dysphoria), I attempted suicide.

I only really started to understand myself once I started hanging out with other trans people on discord servers. My perception of transness was the more mainstream-accepted version (at that time) of "I always confidently knew I was a woman basically from birth and I exhibited x, y and z feminine behaviours at all times etc." which I didn't fit in with, so I always thought "well I can't be a trans woman because that's not me". Being around other trans people, and especially having other trans women point out behaviours I had, and tell me "that's also how I thought before I realised I was trans" helped me immensely.

I didn't get any of the rigid online definitions and examples, nor did I get the perfectly sanitised videos from the handful of trans people who made it on youtube. None of that felt like me at the time. I didn't have any point of reference. I only really understood myself once I related to someone who used to be in the same position. If some trans girl didn't call me an egg, I might still be a completely miserable "cis" guy to this day still, or even dead.

I understand that others have had worse experiences when it comes to this, but we must recognise that the problem in these situations is outing or harassment. The porblem is abuse, and as with all things interpersonal, you can always turn it into abuse. As with all things interpersonal, you have to have some amount of tact and caution.

I don't think we should harass anyone into getting their egg cracked (and this happens vastly less often than people here seem to think but it does happen), but also we shouldn't be constantly agnostic about if someone is trans or not, because in the end not everyone is capable of coming to that conclusion by themselves, and by the time you've "let them figure it out" they might've spent several more years being miserable and not knowing why or they might be dead.

It is also very important to point out that this discourse is only really happening because there is a particular bias against trans women. This isn't a discussion of how to approach the subject, or a handful of people talking about their experiences with it, it's a discourse where one side is trying to problematize another aspect of the transfem community. Notice that people are arguing this when it comes to transfems and not cis gay people or even transmascs. Notice that this website always cycles back to attacking some aspect of the transfem community every couple of weeks.

Do you really think these arguments are being made in good faith? Do you really think it's worth adding to the sea of transmisogyny that is this website and most of the world?

As always, this post is meant for people who are genuinely well-meaning. The dipshits who keep jumping on any excuse they can to harass trans women can go fuck themselves.

[snickerdoodlles]

one of my most formative fandom experiences was a comment i had gotten on a fic i wrote for a halloween themed fandom event.

this was for a manga/anime, so the fic was a general ghost story obviously set in Japan. the beginning of it involved a pizza delivery and while writing it, i had spent like 30 minutes just double checking tipping customs and the types of pizza they serve and even fell down a wikipedia rabbit hole looking up the history of pizza in Japan.

now, i just like the research part of writing, i do stuff like this because i have fun doing it. and while i was writing this particular fic, i had laughed at myself for my 30 minutes of googling that amounted to 2.5 offhand lines in a 3500 word fic. i didn't think anyone would care about or even notice those particular details except for me, especially since none of them were relevant to the ghost part of this ghost story.

except, when i had sent this fic to a Japanese friend, the first thing she said to me about it was "OH MY GOD YOU GOT THE PIZZA RIGHT"

and that was the moment when it had really clicked for me. what had just been 30 minutes of effort on my part had become a moment of relief for her. my friend was far more used to reading ethnocentric fic that ranged from unintentional ignorance to outright superiority against part of her culture (the original story's culture no less). and even with the "innocent" ignorance (heavy quotes on that) far outstripping any outright maliciousness, that's still so many people saying her culture was not worth learning about. the pizza in my story was a small detail, but i had cared enough to put in some effort to check it. and for her, coming from a fic experience where her norm was bracing for hundreds of inaccuracies born of ignorance, especially at that time after a flood of stories centered around "Halloween as a cultural holiday in the US" premises instead of the "Halloween is a commercial gimmick in Japan" reality, seeing someone put in some effort even for minor story details meant something to her.

this also throws me back to the discourse that arose in a french show fandom a few years ago because there were a lot of fic authors that wrote 'dollars' instead of 'euros'-- but when people brought this up as a prevalent issue across the fandom but an easy one to fic/watch out for, many of these writers instead pushed back to complain that they were posting stories for free and it wasn't that big of a deal. which really upset a lot of people, but then this upset was met with a new wave of indignation that people needed to 'get over it' because they're writing fic ~just as a hobby~. but, even if 'dollars' instead of 'euros' wasn't a big deal, by digging in their heels about the issue, they were saying "your culture isn't worth even five minutes of my time or effort."

I've been thinking about these things lately because the ethnocentrism in Thai drama fandoms is...staggering. just over the turn of the year, there were waves of Christmas fic for Buddhist characters. and just. Christmas in Thailand is a tourist thing at best. sometimes a pop culture gimmick for international audiences or maybe an offhand high school thing to blow off steam between midterms. it's not a cultural thing. and even if a character is a part of the Christian minority, a Christian Thai's holiday customs and culture are going to be vastly different than a Christian's customs in the Americas or Europe. and while the Christmas fic is at least finished for now, I'm already bracing myself for the Easter fic wave that also seems to pop up for Thai dramas. it's so frustrating to see this sort of cultural overwrite all the time, especially since most Thai drama holiday works aren't about Thai holidays.

but the thing that really got me bristling about all of this again was i saw a post the other day where op said that they weren't going to write [thai drama] fic because they don't know much about thailand.

what an absolutely appalling statement to make.

google is right there. wikipedia is free. you don't even have to leave tumblr or AO3 to learn more because there are Thai natives in fandom who write essays to explain common elements of their culture. hell, even just watching these Thai stories and considering the values and messages imparted by the narrative framework and story lens tells you something about that culture. the audacity to look at a culture different from your own and say "this is not worth my effort or time to learn anything more about," are you kidding me?!?

the messages and values of a story tell you about the writer's values, which are going to carry their cultural values, beliefs, and biases. Thai culture is going to be heavily relevant to any Thai story, even the ones that aren't explicitly about Thai culture/customs/etc. (hell, Thai bl/gl as a genre alone-- just the fact that queer Thai writers are making these stories in Thailand's current political climate is highly political, even the "fluffy" ones that don't seem to make outright political statements.) to approach any story like it was made in a vacuum is to remove the writer(s)' culture and values and to overwrite them with your own.

especially because this is fandom. these are the lowest stakes to learn! it sucks to see people say things like "but i'm scared i'll get something wrong" and hold up that fear as a shield to justify their ignorance. no one's expecting anyone to get every detail right, especially not for a culture that isn't theirs, just make an effort to learn something new about it. pick out something that caught your eye as different to learn more about and see where it leads you.

and for the record--making a mistake trying to broaden your horizons is a far, far better thing to do than to superimpose your culture on everyone else's because you're scared to confront your ignorance.

edit: check out this reblog thanks