#this is a strawman argument

[local-hellhound-steals-spaghetti]

Genuinely would love to meet the "purely positive" dog trainers that aversive/balanced trainers keep talking about. You know, the ones that are so against using force that they just let their dogs walk into traffic.

Boy, they sure must lose a lot of dogs every year and honestly I'm amazed they're still alive themselves if they're getting dragged in front of a semi trailer every time they go out for a walk...

[t1sunfortunate]

I truly do think one of the largest pitfalls among the "media consumption is my passion" crowd is the tendency to treat characters as human beings with agency rather than narrative tools manipulated by the author

[zeddylux]

Caitvi stans when they realize many of the people who dislike the pairing are POC, women, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community...

[rwbyrg]

hi! noticed the ask by the anon about the reactions to rosegarden and i can't help but wonder...

do you think any of them would have some reservations because of the oz in oscar's head thing? i reckon there may be some slight lingering intensity for each member regarding him so there's a chance they could be wary... but more so for ruby and oscar, rather than exclusively ruby

I answered the last ask on the assumption that them becoming canon wouldn't happen until after the war is won and the Oz curse is broken. Simply because I don't think either of them have the time or capacity to tackle that sort of relationship before the main plot is resolved. So in the hypothetical situation that they would get together and it's before the curse is broken, I think there's a chance some of the people around them might be a bit wary. At least Qrow, Tai, and maybe Yang. However, with it being so close to the final fight, it would probably be the least of anyone's concerns at that time. "Seeing as the world might end in three weeks, so long as those two are happy for whatever time we have left, I don't really care if Oz is around for it or not", if you know what I mean?

That being said, I think I am too biased to answer this in a yes-and kind of way. I know you're probably asking in good faith, but in full transparency, I'm pretty jaded by how often this particular topic gets brought up. Since this is not the first time and probably won't be the last, I'm going to take this as an opportunity to share my stance on this idea as a whole.

Ozpin's place within Oscar and RG's stories is one of conflict; which is what all stories revolve around. And it is not, nor has it ever been, a deal breaker for RG's relationship to me. The Ozcarnation curse is an allegory for a few things. The first is simply growing up. RWBY is a coming of age story, and Oscar isn't the only one going through that arc. But this conflict and grief of how he doesn't get to choose the kind of person he wants to be - largely because of the people he's met and things he's experienced - is not unique to him. The curse is just a fantasized and exaggerated version of it.

The next one isn't so much an allegory as it is plainly stated in the text, but it's a story about choice. It's about how even when we are irreversibly changed by things outside our control, we can still choose who we want to be. Even when it's hard, even when the influences are strong, even when it's downright traumatic. Oscar's story is about self discovery and self acceptance; about choice and change. Regardless of if Oz fades into the background, or his curse is broken, or they become a blendy merge of the two of them, Oscar is still going to remain his own person in some way by the end of it. Because this is ultimately a happy story and that is the main driving conflict of his personal arc.

The assumption that Oscar is going to get absorbed or overwritten by Ozpin being such a common take in this fandom never ceases to confuse me because of that. It also confuses me because the show - while it doesn't fully explain the extent of the merge mechanics - has told us that Oz has had families in his previous lives by "learning to live with the souls with which he had been paired".

The other allegory I'll mention - of which I am not the first, nor necessarily the best, to be pointing out (here is a great example from a little while ago) - is one for plurality. Some of the friends I've made in RG spaces have DID and have spoken to me about how they interpret the Ozcar situation; how it's similar or different to their own experiences. Hearing those stories, once again, makes it really hard for me to see Ozpin as any sort of deal-breaking barrier to a rosegarden relationship. This idea that Oscar must be isolated from his friends and constantly scrutinized when showing interest towards any romantic partners because of Oz's presence lacks both imagination and compassion for me. Oscar never asked for this curse, he didn't do anything to deserve it, and to condemn him to a lonely life because of something like that seems really antithetical to the themes of this story and to the characters involved. While some characters within the story might have some doubts about the relationship, at the end of the day it is not up to them on what Ruby and Oscar decide to do for themselves.

Again, this isn't aimed at you, Anon. I just wanted to say my piece on it given how pervasive this topic is. I truly look forward to the day where folks can talk about RG without this being the first thought or argument that everyone jumps to.

[pynkhues]

When black people tell you that some of your talking points are racist, you should probably sit up and listen rather than slinging accusations of terfism back at them. Just a suggestion.

I mean, I have been listening, anon, and I've actually been reading pretty widely, and as I said yesterday in this post, which I assume is the one you're replying to, my talking points aren't being addressed at all. What's happening is that strawman arguments are being created for people to demonstrate my apparent racism which are built on things that I never said and would never argue, because it's easier to do that than actually engage with the nuances of what masculinity is and has been.

One of the ways that I've been listening was in regards actually to that post I was linked to yesterday which talked about the fact that Louis doesn't embody Black masculinity in 1910, which was genuinely an argument I was really curious to know more about, but because it was a stated point and no argument was actually mounted, I did / am doing my own research - I read Michele Mitchell's The Black Man's Burden: African Americans, Imperialism, and Notions of Racial Manhood 1890-1910 last night and I've read parts of Alexa Dagan's These Hard Times Gon' Kill You: Black masculinity, racial and intimate violence, and the blues in the Mississippi Delta, 1918-1945 with the intention of reading it in full over the next few weeks - and those have provided really useful context, so I'm very glad to have read the former and be reading the latter, but they don't support the argument that Louis doesn't mark traditional Black masculinity for the era. In fact they argue the opposite - particularly the first one that specifically goes into Black men being emasculated by white supremacy and the impact that had on Black masculinity, and the effect of class mobility being Black men would distance themselves from lower class Black men when they attained wealth, both things which I think are really present in Jacob's astonishing performance.

I've also previously read Jesmyn Ward's The Men We Reaped, Maxine Beneba Clarke's The Hate Race, and Clint Smith's excellent poetry collection, Counting Descent, among many others, which all explore topics of contemporary Black masculinity (although are broader explorations of Black history, life and identity), and yeah, obviously I don't have lived experience - I'm open about being white and Australian - but y'know. I'm not completely ignorant, and I am listening to voices. A lot of them actually. I just don't agree with you, and I'm not sure why that offends you so much that you've come into my inbox a couple of times now to say words to this effect (calling me a racist before saying 'just saying' / 'just a suggestion' is kind of a tell, anon), but I would say that when you send me asks like this that you're being disingenuous. I don't think you're asking me to listen, I think you're telling me to shut up, which really goes back to that point about this whole thing being an exercise in control, not conversation, which I made in that last post.

I'd also just pose a question to you too, if that's alright. Why is this request for self-reflection never one that goes both ways? I am interrogating my internal biases, are you? Do you ask yourself the question of why TERF rhetoric is really, really pervasive in these talking points? Do you think about why it is you try to apply heteronormative gender essentialism to a queer character / couple? Do you ask yourself why it's so important to you that this character be 'female-coded'? I can appreciate the challenge of that - trust me, working internally in this sort of way is a lot, I know how hard it can be to unpack this sort of thing, and I really do mean that genuinely, so I hope that you take it that way - and look, it can be really hard to know where to start, so here are a few resources, just in case you do want to explore this and maybe start tackling your own biases, because it's not enough to put TERFs DNI in your bio, and it's not enough to only be listening to the terminally online on tumblr.com (I say as someone who's often on here, haha):

Archer Magazine is a great magazine that explores gender and sexuality, with a really big focus on trans and non-binary identity and queer sexuality. There's a physical magazine, but they post a lot online for free. Here's the gender tag, if you want to have a look. I'd really recommend signing up for their e-news though.

TeenVogue's On Queer Fandom and the Radicalization of the Underdog

Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson is a really interesting read on her romantic relationship with the trans artist, Harry Dodge, and merges memoir and philosophy. It talks also about gender and parenthood in ways that might be interesting in regards to these particular conversations.

Of course, the documentary Paris is Burning, which is available to watch free on YouTube here.

I also haven't read this one yet, but a few friends have recently recommended Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender by Oyeronke Oyewumi that sounds genuinely pretty fascinating.

So, yes! Anyway. Not really sure how to close this one out, but again, just to reiterate, I've got no issue with you enjoying femme!Louis. Good for you, have fun, we interpret the character and the show differently. That's okay, anon, there are lots of people who like your interpretation more than mine, and I hope you guys have a great time with that in the hiatus and over the next season, but I'm gonna keep doing my thing over here.

[dreamyintersexouppy]

tmras will really post about acceptance and unity and tired "you people aren't nice to the weird queers like (lists only tmes)" shit while peppering in some of the most vitriolic memes calling transfems "the real radfems" and using intersex people as a prop for their bioessentialist arguments like shut the fuck up about love and acceptance and touching grass you're the one stepping over the bodies of your sisters as we cry for help just so you can shout about another conspiracy theory on your blog

[pricklypear1997]

You do realize that our ancestors moved from Asia to Europe too right? Idk what kind of Balkan you are, but I’m Bulgarian, and the bulgars were a semi nomadic Eastern iranic group that settled in the Balkans and mixed with the thracians and Slavs. The Slavs also migrated from the north to that region as well… even Serbs moved around before arriving in the Balkans as well… I’m well aware that our people were enslaved by ottomans 👀 don’t need to tell me twice. I never once said that the Targaryens are EXACTLY like the ottomans, but partially um yeah. There’s definitely some similarities. For starters, they were literally foreigners who force their way in to rule a continent that doesn’t belong to them lol. The Baratheons mixed with the targs because that’s what royals do. The people of Westeros had settled into Westeros long before the Targaryens showed up. Just because they too were once foreigners, doesn’t give the Targaryens the right to just show up out of nowhere and force their rule upon the people. Yeah, the people supported the rule after 300 long years because they were weakened. How else do you think that happened? The Targaryens LITERALLY had DRAGONS lmao. Robert took back the throne and many supported him, including the Starks who were always semi independent for starters.

I really hope that the racist pattern of depicting Arya and Jon as unspecified POC while Arya's full-blooded siblings are the whitest white that has ever whited doesn't become the new "Dornish are POC". I wish this series had racial diversity as well and it's fun to racebend the characters. But there is a clear pattern of only making certain characters POC while characters they share the same ethnicity couldn’t be paler. And this better not start being treated as a faux social issue where people start demanding that Arya, Jon, and Ned can ONLY be fancasted as random POC while the other Starks MUST be FCed with white actors.

With the unfortunate trend toward racism blended with faux wokeness ramping up, that's the likely direction that crowd is going to push for soon.

[jack-of-aces]

I know this is nobody’s argument but the idea gripped me and would not leave my head.

[2-braincells]

one complaint abt vaggie's character is that she doesnt have much going on outside of being Charlie's Girlfriend. it could just be bad character writing, but it's also an interesting character trait. she was an angel exterminator, totally devoted to adam, doing whatever he says. once she gets kicked out, shed find something else to channel that devotion to. charlie's the perfect choice. it'd be fun to explore what vaggie would do if charlie left. she could have a whole character arc about finding who she is separate from charlie

[viewpointb]

listen. harry brewis isn't exempt to criticism. however I think it's very ironic and telling how much people have been missing the very point of his video on plagiarism and turned his name on a new topic to exploit as of late. when i was trying to look up clips of harry's older videos this came up, and the contents were about the creator clearly being disapointed her line of work (drama youtube) was disregarded as sloppy and something with no effort put into it.

while I do understand her hurt, the thumbnail and title is inherently clickbaiting potential viewers, and her point comes off as a nitpick of a segment harry made out of his own frustration with content mills and how much situations on or between content creators can be so throughly exploited for "commentary" when people don't end up saying anything at all. I think that this is a prime example of the things harry deemed important to criticise. someone who clearly had a point to make about harry's video felt the need to make sure they could milk the shit out of it.

[bookwyrminspiration]

“But sometimes it feels like you don’t realize that it’s only a matter of time before something you do gets someone killed.” (Stellarlune 425-26)

“she couldn’t believe that Fitz had accused her of trying to get someone killed.” (428)

going to fist fight Sophie’s unreliable strawman narrator ass that’s not what he said at ALL

[coreplush]

"why is jax such an asshole? they should make him nicer in the show" SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP i need them to continue to cook if you make him so so niceys i will kill you

[mapswithoutwyoming]

I think a lot of tumblr leftists don't realize "military propaganda is a thing that exists" and "every soldier of an imperialist regime is wholly culpable for all of the atrocities that regime perpetrates" aren't actually beliefs that can coexist. it's like nuance is something that only applies when the stakes are low, and for the most important issues everything's black and white.

[mercurialmalcontent]

I keep thinking about a nasty argument I had a few days ago with a friend (or 'friend' at this point) where they got really upset at me for a conversation about alt text I reblogged and then made my own posts about on Bluesky. The conversation made me feel like I was having a stroke, and it took me a few days to process exactly why--

Nothing I said seemed to matter, nothing I explained seemed to matter, it was all met with "No it isn't difficult to add ever" or "yes it is ableist not to add alt text, no matter your circumstances" with no unpacking, no explaining their position (and many of their responses were just "No it isn't" or "Oh, but it is"). They approached me with an attitude of "You're wrong and have to agree with me" and dug in their heels about it, with some manipulative "I don't know if we can be friends if you hold this position [that's a distortion of what you actually said]" statements in there for flavor.

How do you have any sort of conversation with someone who comes in assuming the worst of you and whose arguments are largely "Nuh-UH"??

Well, you don't, really. Eventually after a few rounds of going around in increasingly stupid circles with me not being able to keep up to their five or more messages to my every one and having longer and longer stretches of silence because I was kind of freaked out they calmed down enough, I guess, to read some of what I was actually writing and figure out that I didn't post those things into the void to Attack Them Personally*. (That the void suddenly paid a bit of attention to my posts was surprise.) It's like it didn't occur to them I was seeing alt text discourse from anyone other than them until that point. SUDDENLY, they were all "well maybe we can agree to disagree :)" and sweetness and light.

Seriously???

The rest of the conversation was light and surface level and if we have any conversations in the future, that's how it's going to stay. This was already a sometimes friend, but now they're an at-arm's-length friend now that I know they employ Twitter asshole argument tactics even against ostensible friends.

* (I find their posts about alt text have become increasingly scolding and condescending, but they're far from those of the most obnoxious people on Bsky, who I've seen say shit like anyone who doesn't use alt text always should be driven off the site. Only one kind of accessibility is important!!)

[gnomewithalaptop]

"Everyone is expected to be in a relationship that's amawhatever" newsflash but when society expects people to fall in love, get married, have kids they are not lumping gay and trans people in there lol, cishetero society doesn't want LGBTQ people to get married much less have sex and have kids, cishetero society doesn't even want LGBTQ people alive AT ALL lol, you think gay and trans people that experience romantic and sexual attraction have some sort of privilege over people who don't because of "amatonormativity"? Lmao gay and trans people get killed for having sex still and in some places in the world people get killed for it LEGALLY

Normal people: hey man how's it going

[pynkhues]

Hi sophie! I hate to be the person who brings bad vibes your way, but I keep seeing ppl twisting your arguments in the worst way possible and it’s honestly bumming me out. The latest vaguepost claims that saying Louis is traditionally masculine or a patriarch is antiblack (this is the post btw in case your curious: https://www.tumblr.com/nashvillethotchicken/770055675307065344/a-lot-of-people-in-the-iwtv-fandom-regurgitate?source=share). It made me wonder whether this pushback against Louis’ masculinity has something to do with a narrow concept of gender roles in general. Because there always seems to be this idea that being masculine equals being a hyperviolent abuser, while any gentle or submissive trait immediately gets interpreted as “feminine” (and overall I see a very strong correlation between femininity and victimhood -especially in the context of domestic abuse -which is understandable but not necessarily helpful when talking abt a gay couple). I agree a lot with your interpretation of Louis as a Byronic hero and the points you’ve made about his and Lestat’s gender presentation, so it sort of surprises me to see so many people believe that recognizing Louis’ masculinity somehow negates his sensibility and his capacity for tenderness (not to mention the assumption that we are trying to defend Lestat and make him into a victim, which is a wild leap and a very bad faith reading of the whole argument imo)

Hey, anon, and that's okay. I can appreciate feeling bummed about my words being twisted into a strawman argument - I do sometimes too - but at the end of the day, that's out of my control and I think says a lot more about the people who'd do it than it does about me.

It's actually kind of interesting to me, because I think with a lot of those sorts of posts, the person actually kind of knows they're strawmanning, because they'd address me directly if they actually thought any of what they wrote in that post was what I was saying, and they almost never do. They make these sorts of posts loudly and publicly to turn the argument into one that stokes outrage and becomes something they can adopt a moral highground to and win, and I think in a lot of ways, it becomes an exercise in control. If they can put words in my mouth and not actually engage with me, they can control the environment of the debate, and therefore they can attempt to control the discourse in the fandom i.e. dictate the way Louis is perceived and received as a character by others. They want it to look like they're arguing my points, but they're not.

They're arguing with the points they want me to be making, because if my points are that Louis' a mindless, hypermasculine 'brute' and a 'sexual deviant', they know they're right and they know how to argue against that, but if my argument is what it is - that Louis is pretty traditionally masculine, and in fact that he has almost all of the Byronic masculine traits which includes sensitivity, warmth, depression, egotism, a vengeful streak, and a complex relationship with religion, sexuality, and the self - it becomes a conversation that requires a more nuanced understanding of what masculinity is and has been throughout history and literature, which doesn't work with the TERFy talking points that are, frankly, endemic in fandom spaces broadly right now.

Which yeah, that goes to your second point about gender roles, because I think that you've hit the nail on the head. A lot of people in this fandom seem to view the concept of masculinity as inherently violent or abusive and femininity as - to borrow a phrase I loathe from TikTok, haha - demure and mindful - which is, again, literally TERF rhetoric. This desire to reinforce the gender binary and feel like you're not simply because you're applying reductive and stereotypical female characteristics to a male character is just sort of baffling to me, on so many levels.

And it appears in a lot of their arguments, like, gosh, even the post I was linked to yesterday about Eartha Kitt, David Bowie and Grace Jones being influences for Louis as indicative of his 'feminine divine', which to me - honestly - reads as a pretty homophobic and misogynistic take. Cisgender men can be (and are!) influenced personally, creatively and professionally by women, and the suggestion that to be so negates masculinity and is indicative of femininity feels like a pretty dangerous rhetoric to me.

The funny thing is, I don't actually have an issue with people liking femme!Louis at all. It's not how I see him, no, but I respect the fact that how we interpret characters is subjective, and people bring their own history and interests and yes, kinks to a show, and I actually think that's really cool! That's part of what makes engaging with stories and fandom fun! What I find exhausting is the recurring accusation that anyone who doesn't see Louis as a battered housewife entering his liberated woman era is a racist.