#this is how you Victim Complex and Abuse

[waystarresourceco]

Jesse explaining that although all three boys generally experienced the same physical abuse, Roman has internalized his experience as a victim in a different way than Kendall and Connor.   

“I would suggest Logan would have cuffed and hit all the boys at different times in their lives.  I think the difference for Roman maybe is that he feels like he was bullied in the domestic environment and so we can all react to things in different ways. I think Connor and Kendall probably have experienced that and have managed to accommodate it without it being a big part of their psychology whereas I think Roman being that beaten dog and being - there’s often a dynamic isn’t there with bullied people as sort of needing the feeling of negative attention that you get from that and I think he’s become, not addicted to it, but related to it.” 

Excerpt from Firecrotch and Normcore: They Like to Watch (recorded at Edinburgh Fringe Festival) – Aug. 29, 2023

[traaanskimkitsuragi]

who is out here claiming that shathann isnt abusive 😭

[minorfamilysupremacy]

said it once, saying it again outside of tags: the person you are when you're being abused is not truly reflective of who you are. in an abusive situation, you are in constant survival mode. you are behaving in ways that you think a) are going to please the abuser and b) are going to keep you from being hit, berated, or otherwise punished. you do not get to be who you really are because that is legitimately dangerous. it creates a vulnerability you cannot afford. you need to act with your self-preservation instincts in mind first and foremost, and self-preservation often conflicts with authenticity and honesty. so when you're looking at those texts, judging build for being such a thoughtless, hateful person, try to understand what it's like mentally to have your back to the wall for months or years on end.

[sadkachow]

Fuck Wilbur Soot. Support Shubble.

I've tried to get rid of as many reblogs that I've made of content regarding Wilbur (and I don't tend to interact with content regarding SMPs as much lately anyway), but as there's so many, I don't know if I'll be able to get rid of all of them. So just a notice if you happen to see any of those reblogs, I do NOT support him in any way, shape or form.

That said, I absolutely support Shubble. I've vaguely known about her for some time, and I plan on getting into her content more now (not just because of this situation, I've been interested in viewing her content for some time now).

I'm a bit emotionally all over the place right now, so that's probably all I'm gonna say on it. I don't know if I'll be interacting with any content regarding the situation other than this post, so yeah.

[magnusmodig]

||. it's not meme weekend but you guys the "i stg stop mischaracterizing thor for the sake of your blorbo" salt is STRONG rn

[autistichalsin]

In retrospect, four years later, I feel like the Isabel Fall incident was just the biggest ignored cautionary tale modern fandom spaces have ever had. Yes, it wasn't limited to fandom, it was also a professional author/booktok type argument, but it had a lot of crossover.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a writer, whether fan or pro, publishes a work. If one were to judge a book by its cover, something we are all taught in Kindergarten shouldn't happen but has a way of occurring regardless, one might find that there was something that seemed deeply problematic about this work. Maybe the title or summary alluded to something Wrong happening, or maybe the tags indicated there was problematic kinks or relationships. And that meant the story was Bad. So, a group of people takes to the Twittersphere to inform everyone who will listen why the work, and therefore the author, are Bad. The author, receiving an avalanche of abuse and harassment, deactivates their account, and checks into a mental health facility for monitoring for suicidal ideation. They never return to their writing space, and the harassers get a slap on the wrist (if that- usually they get praise and high-fives all around) and start waiting for their next victim to transgress.

Sounds awful familiar, doesn't it?

Isabel Fall's case, though, was even more extreme for many reasons. See, she made the terrible mistake of using a transphobic meme as the genesis to actually explore issues of gender identity.

More specifically, she used the phrase "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" to examine how marginalized identities, when they become more accepted, become nothing more than a tool for the military-industrial complex to rebrand itself as a more personable and inclusive atrocity; a chance to pursue praise for bombing brown children while being progressive, because queer people, too, can help blow up brown children now! It also contained an examination of identity and how queerness is intrinsic to a person, etc.

But... well, if harassers ever bothered to read the things they critique, we wouldn't be here, would we? So instead, they called Isabel a transphobic monster for the title alone, even starting a misinformation campaign to claim she was, in fact, a cis male nazi using a fake identity to psyop the queer community.

A few days later, after days of horrific abuse and harassment, Isabel requested that Clarkesworld magazine pull the story. She checked in to a psych ward with suicidal thoughts. That wasn't all, though; the harassment was so bad that she was forced to out herself as trans to defend against the claims.

Only... we know this type of person, the fandom harassers, don't we? You know where this is going. Outing herself did nothing to stop the harassment. No one was willing to read the book, much less examine how her sexuality and gender might have influenced her when writing it.

So some time later, Isabel deleted her social media. She is still alive, but "Isabel Fall" is not- because the harassment was so bad that Isabel detransitioned/closeted herself, too traumatized to continue living her authentic life.

Supposed trans allies were so outraged at a fictional portrayal of transness, written by a trans woman, that they harassed a real life trans woman into detransitioning.

It's heartbreakingly familiar, isn't it? Many of us in fandom communities have been in Isabel's shoes, even if the outcome wasn't so extreme (or in some cases, when it truly was). Most especially, many of us, as marginalized writers speaking from our own experiences in some way, have found that others did not enjoy our framework for examining these things, and hurt us, members of those identities, in defense of "the community" as a nebulous undefined entity.

There's a quote that was posted in a news writeup about the whole saga that was published a year after the fact. The quote is:

The delineation between paranoid and reparative readings originated in 1995, with influential critic Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. A paranoid reading focuses on what’s wrong or problematic about a work of art. A reparative reading seeks out what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art, even if the work is flawed. Importantly, a reparative reading also tends to consider what might be nourishing or healing in a work of art for someone who isn’t the reader. This kind of nuance gets completely worn away on Twitter, home of paranoid readings. “[You might tweet], ‘Well, they didn’t discuss X, Y, or Z, so that’s bad!’ Or, ‘They didn’t’ — in this case — ‘discuss transness in a way that felt like what I feel about transness, therefore it is bad.’ That flattens everything into this very individual, very hostile way of reading,” Mandelo says. “Part of reparative reading is trying to think about how a story cannot do everything. Nothing can do everything. If you’re reading every text, fiction, or criticism looking for it to tick a bunch of boxes — like if it represents X, Y, and Z appropriately to my definitions of appropriate, and if it’s missing any of those things, it’s not good — you’re not really seeing the close focus that it has on something else.”

A paranoid reading describes perfectly what fandom culture has become in the modern times. It is why "proship", once simply a word for common sense "don't engage with what you don't like, and don't harass people who create it either" philosophies, has become the boogeyman of fandom, a bad and dangerous word. The days of reparative readings, where you would look for things you enjoyed, are all but dead. Fiction is rarely a chance to feel joy; it's an excuse to get angry, to vitriolically attack those different from oneself while surrounded with those who are the same as oneself. It's an excuse to form in-groups and out-groups that must necessarily be in a constant state of conflict, lest it come across like This side is accepting That side's faults. In other words, fandom has become the exact sort of space as the nonfandom spaces it used to seek to define itself against.

It's not about joy. It's not about resonance with plot or characters. It's about hate. It's about finding fault. If they can't find any in the story, they will, rest assured, create it by instigating fan wars- dividing fandom into factions and mercilessly attacking the other.

And that's if they even went so far as to read the work they're critiquing. The ones they don't bother to read, as you saw above, fare even worse. If an AO3 writer tagged an abuser/victim ship, it's bad, it's fetishism, even if the story is about how the victim escapes. If a trans writer uses the title "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" to find a framework to dissect rainbow-washing the military-industrial complex, it's unforgivable. It's a cesspool of kneejerk reactions, moralizing discomfort, treating good/evil as dichotomous categories that can never be escaped, and using that complex as an excuse to heap harassment on people who "deserve it." Because once you are Bad, there is no action against you that is too Bad for you to deserve.

Isabel Fall's story follows this so step-by-step that it's like a textbook case study on modern fandom behavior.

Isabel Fall wrote a short story with an inflammatory title, with a genesis in transphobic mockery, in the hopes of turning it into a genuine treatise on the intersection of gender and sexuality and the military-industrial complex. But because audiences are unprepared for the idea of inflammatory rhetoric as a tool to force discomfort to then force deeper introspection... they zeroed in on the discomfort. "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter"- the title phrase, not the work- made them uncomfortable. We no longer teach people how to handle discomfort; we live in a world of euphemism and glossing over, a world where people can't even type out the words "kill" and rape", instead substituting "unalive" and "grape." We don't deal with uncomfortable feelings anymore; we censor them, we transform them, we sanitize them. When you are unable to process discomfort, when you are never given self-soothing tools, your only possible conclusion is that anything Uncomfortable must be Bad, and the creator must either be censored too, or attacked into conformity so that you never again experience the horrors of being Uncomfortable.

So the masses took to Twitter, outraged. They were Uncomfortable, and that de facto meant that they had been Wronged. Because the content was related to trans identity issues, that became the accusation; it was transphobic, inherently. It couldn't be a critique of bigger and more fluid systems than gender identity alone; it was a slight against trans people. And no amount of explanations would change their minds now, because they had already been aggrieved and made to feel Uncomfortable.

Isabel Fall was now a Bad Person, and we all know what fandom spaces do to Bad People. Bad People, because they are Bad, will always be deserving of suicide bait and namecalling and threatening. Once a person is Bad, there is no way to ever become Good again. Not by refuting the accusations (because the accusations are now self-evident facts; "there is a callout thread against them" is its own tautological proof that wrongdoing has happened regardless of the veracity of the claims in the callout) and not by apologizing and changing, because if you apologize and admit you did the Bad thing, you are still Bad, and no matter what you do in future, you were once Bad and that needs to be brought up every time you are mentioned. If you are bad, you can NEVER be more than what you were at your worst (in their definition) moment. Your are now ontologically evil, and there is no action taken against you that can be immoral.

So Isabel was doomed, naturally. It didn't matter that she outed herself to explain that she personally had lived the experience of a trans woman and could speak with authority on the atrocity of rainbow-washing the military industrial complex as a proaganda tool to capture progressives. None of it mattered. She had written a work with an Uncomfortable phrase for a title, the readers were Uncomfortable, and someone had to pay for it.

And that's the key; pay for it. Punishment. Revenge. It's never about correcting behavior. Restorative justice is not in this group's vocabulary. You will, incidentally, never find one of these folks have a stance against the death penalty; if you did Bad as a verb, you are Bad as an intrinsic, inescapable adjective, and what can you do to incorrigible people but kill them to save the Normal people? This is the same principle, on a smaller scale, that underscores their fandom activities; if a Bad fan writes Bad fiction, they are a Bad person, and their fandom persona needs to die to save Normal fans the pain of feeling Uncomfortable.

And that's what happened to Isabel Fall. The person who wrote the short story is very much alive, but the pseudonym of Isabel Fall, the identity, the lived experiences coming together in concert with imagination to form a speculative work to critique deeply problematic sociopolitical structures? That is dead. Isabel Fall will never write again, even if by some miracle the person who once used the name does. Even if she ever decides to restart her transition, she will be permanently scarred by this experience, and will never again be able to share her experience with us as a way to grow our own empathy and challenge our understanding of the world. In spirit, but not body, fandom spaces murdered Isabel Fall.

And that's... fandom, anymore. That's just what is done, routinely and without question, to Bad people. Good people are Good, so they don't make mistakes, and they never go too far when dealing with Bad people. And Bad people, well, they should have thought before they did something Bad which made them Bad people.

Isabel Fall's harassment happened in early 2020, before quarantine started, but it was in so many ways a final chance for fandom to hit the breaks. A chance for fandom to think collectively about what it wanted to be, who it wanted to be for and how it wanted to do it. And fandom looked at this and said, "more, please." It continues to harass marginalized people, especially fans of color and queen fans, into suffering mental breakdowns. With gusto.

Any ideas of reparative reading is dead. Fandom runs solely on paranoid readings. And so too is restorative justice gone for fandom transgressions, real or imagined. It is now solely about punitive, vigilante justice. It's a concerted campaign to make sure oddballs conform or die (in spirit, but sometimes even physically given how often mentally ill individuals are pushed into committing suicide).

It's a deeply toxic environment and I'm sad to say that Isabel Fall's story was, in retrospect, a sort of event horizon for the fandom. The gravitational pull of these harassment campaigns is entirely too strong now and there is no escaping it. I'm sorry, I hate to say something so bleak, but thinking the last few days about the state of fandom (not just my current one but also others I watch from the outside), I just don't think we can ever go back to peaceful "for joy" engagement, not when so many people are determined to use it as an outlet for lateral aggression against other people.

[sphacelating]

i can’t say i’m surprised that these people will continue to twist canon, reject the core of the story and bastardize characterization to cling to their own piss poor interpretation of the source material, because it takes a special kind of willingly delusional to babygirlify andrew fucking graves even prior to episode 3: decay.

Okay, that's it.

If there's people still defending Andrew after playing chapter 3, then they're simply beyond saving.

Although I won't deny that I find it funny that it takes the game itself to say that Andrew isn't innocent at all for some people to understand it.

[mushyushy]

The rise of discourse about trans mascs/trans men in the lesbian community has me realizing something.

So many of ya'll hate heteronormative standards, but are all too comfortable upholding cisnormativity. I'm fucking tired of people saying "maybe I'm not woke enough for this..." instead of trying to understand queer people's unique perspectives on gender and its relation to sexual identity labels.

Here's my take: Gender is complex and is defined differently by everybody. Womanhood and being socialized as a girl can be notoriously traumatizing due to the sexism ingrained into our society (especially when we're taught from such a young age that we will always be victimized and abused for being women). As such, when someone transitions to a masculine identity, those experiences don't suddenly go away.

And no, you're not "invalidating yourself" by saying you're a lesbian if you're a trans man. You're exhibiting a unique combination of female socialization and male gender identity. And you're not invalidating other trans men, either, because you're not forcing them to use the lesbian label.

Stop pushing queer people into boxes!!! Especially when the lesbian community is known for its gender-nonconformity and trans identities (butches and studs, for example, many of which are transmasc).

I could also talk about how this corresponds with a rise of fascism and conservative values, and that by pushing queer people down you are only contributing to homophobic mentalities, but you CLEARLY aren't ready for that.

Sincerely, a transmasc lesbian

[swanpyart]

Honestly, there’s a lot of instances of the game where Jimmy’s intense rewriting of history really shows how delusional he is. And I don’t think these manifest from guilt, but from a victim-martyr complex: a lot of these are used to make himself look good to the audience, but the utter dissonance between these visions and reality make it terrifying instead.

1. The Birthday Party scene

It seems like something obviously scary, but it’s actually what Jimmy thinks his crew should do. He wants to be celebrated, wants to be admired, and up until he dies is still convinced he was just a well meaning guy who did his best. The party was not a guilt and fear ridden hallucination, but Jimmy deluding himself into thinking he’s the hero. His team should be thanking him and throwing him a party, even when they’re all dead by his own actions. In reality: there probably isn’t even any balloons or confetti, and all Curly sees is Jimmy and the rest of the corpses of the crew sitting at an empty table in a dark room.

2. Curly in the Chair attached to Wheels

The scene where Curly is attached to wheels that must be turned for his organs to sit right so you can feed him his leg is also a good example. This isn’t how bodies work, and Curly is a burn victim, so his internal organs being rearranged makes no actual sense; all of his health issues are external. No, this is what Jimmy thinks must happen; that Curly simply can’t keep down his food, and that all Jimmy needs to do is try harder to get him to eat it. Jimmy, in reality is probably just forcibly feeding Curly his own puked up leg chunk over and over again until Curly grows too tired to fight. And isn’t it like Jimmy to shove a square peg in a round hole and insist it’s the hole’s fault? Jimmy already has shown he’s perfectly fine with force feeding Curly already and is not afraid to get violent when doing so. The reality of that situation is that Curly was probably resisting as much as he physically could, but eventually grows too tired of the abuse and just gives in.

3. Swansea with an axe

And with Swansea, the entire sequence of Swansea chasing him around with an axe may be partially true, but a lot less even-sided in reality. Swansea was shown to have a temper, but killing Daisuke was horribly difficult and emotionally crushing, even if he wouldn’t admit it outright. Jimmy on the other hand clearly views Swansea as an axe wielding maniac who kills without remorse and wants to hoard the cryotank all to himself. I think Jimmy was hallucinating Swansea chasing him around, because I think it would be in character for Jimmy to witness Daisuke’s death at Swansea’s hands and, rather than think over his actions, instead become paranoid and fearful that Swansea would target him, too.

Cus think about it: while Swansea is bigger, he’s also a drunken old man whose grieving the loss of a kid he viewed like his own, while Jimmy is a comparar healthy younger man with a gun. Jimmy already has a track record for picking on those he sees as vulnerable (Anya being the only woman with her room not having a lock, Daisuke being the youngest and easy to influence, and Curly being physically disabled and unable to fight back). What’s more likely: that Swansea suddenly goes from sullen and mournful to an axe wielding maniac gunning for Jimmy’s blood, or that Jimmy is paranoid about an older grieving man and holds him at gunpoint to tie him to the chair?

Feel free to add more examples, this is fascinating

[agentrouka-blog]

Respectfully, Do you even realise you are not the minority in this situation? Sure, some people have pushed their hate for Jewish people to extreme levels, but just looking at the map, Israel is not the victim here. Innocent civillians in Palestine, including children, are dying slowly every day. As a Jewish person, you should know what it feels like to be discriminated , and sadly this is a case of victim turning abuser with Israel. Have you even tried to analyse the situation critically outside your biases? Can you not see that this "rise in antisemitism" is most of the time people speaking out saying you can't defend what Israel is doing? Sure, even if it isn't "their native territory" is it then justified to fucking wipe them out like a smidge on the map to reclaim it???

I am not Jewish.

The fact that you assume I am is pretty telling, because the utter indifference toward what you so glibly describe as

Sure, some people have pushed their hate for Jewish people to extreme levels

by the non-Jewish vast majority has been terrifying to me. People shrug off attacks all over the world against Jewish civillians just trying to live their lives, or worse they try to justify it as political action or as something the perpetrators just can't help.

Have you even tried to analyse the situation critically outside your biases?

Have you? I'm not the one trying to press a complex and decades (centuries) old, deeply protracted problem into a simple frame of good and evil or "victim and abuser". (Nice, trying to turn the history of antisemitic persecution into a teaching moment that Jewish people just failed to learn from.)

Come back when you can explain to me how hunting Jewish children in Berlin, pelting them with rocks in London, violating them in France or burning their facilities in Australia is helping children survive in Gaza. I'm sure it's going to be riveting, seeing how me sharing (a very few) posts calling out antisemtism already provoked you into going "but Israel!!!!"

Stop trying to pretend away or ignore the very real and terrifying danger people face just for existing as Jews everywhere, and maybe I'll find your humanitarian concern credible or consistent. As it is, I'm seeing a hypocrite coming into my Inbox to complain that I am sullying their feel-good morally pure middle eastern political cause with dirty dirty nuance. For asking them to care about maybe addressing that negligible issue of hatred of Jews being "pushed to extreme levels" (as opposed to the normal and acceptable levels, I presume).

[fangsandfeels]

I gained the next level of appreciation for how well Dragon Age 2 understood trauma, the ugly side of it.

I don't blame Fenris. I understand why after enduring years and years of abuse, humiliation, having your autonomy, your memories, everything that constituted you including your own name stripped away from you, you have no empathy for anyone reminiscent of your abusers - especially if nobody came to save you in the end and you are the only one fighting for your life and freedom. I understand why upon hearing how someone (who reminds you of your abusers) suffers unfairly, the only thing you can say is "Good" - and lash out at anyone trying to tell you off for it. Where all these fucking preachers were when you were suffering? Why even in the land that is supposed to be different from your own hellhole, your word and your experience still don't matter?

I don't blame Anders. I understand why after being betrayed by your own parent, after the decades of listening how you must suffer for the sin of being born, being confined to isolation, being treated like a monster while being a child, being denied the simplest of comforts, you fiercely defend people who share your abilities - because nobody else would ever look out for you and them. Of course you would clash even with someone who has legitimate reasons to be negative towards people like you because your own wounds sting more than their pain. You have dealt with the Chantry's vile propaganda for so long, you no longer take things at face value. Of course, Chantry would say that the foreign land where mages rule is foul, and corrupt, and full of blood magic and demons! So many times rumors, lies, and twisted religious depictions have been used to abuse, lobotomize, and enslave you, you're no longer letting it happen - and you only believe what you see and hear. And all you see around is injustice and indifference. And you're only the one screaming into the void, raging against the horrors everybody else is willingly blind to.

I don't blame them both for losing their mind in their own ways while the rest of the group silently wondered why they couldn't just be normal.

Personally, I don't think there was any chance for them to become friends or make peace during the events of the game. The "I suffered so I don't want anyone to suffer like I did" or "I'm a bigger person" are pretty lies and half-truths at worst. At best, they are mindsets only possible after someone who suffered finally feels safe and can be out of their survival mode. Which is not really true for Fenris and Anders, even during the final act of the story.

Even on high friendship or romance, Anders is still self-destructive, ready to die at Hawke's hands after launching his plan in motion. Even with a friend/lover at his side, he is alone in his head, in his vision of the world, in his pain.

Even with proper support and help, it takes Fenris three years to accept a relationship, but it doesn't change his perspective and if you don't have enough of his trust, you lose him to his trauma-based response.

I may be overthinking it, but I am truly thankful to the game for not toning down the complex, hard and uncomfortable aspects of trauma. People have always been in love with the concept of the perfect victim (who hates only "the right" bad guys and suddenly knows when to be tolerant, nice and accepting and doesn't say any rancid and hateful shit ever), but it became particularly aggravating lately.

[valtsv]

can you pitch tsv to me fandom propaganda style… like sell it to me. hook me in. what is it about

the silt verses is a folk horror/political satire/weird fiction podcast set in an alternate ambiguously modern-day reality that asks the question "what if gods (and their saints, and angels, and miracles) were real? what if they formed the core infrastructure of the society you lived in? what if they were sustained by human belief and sacrifice? what if this was just the accepted Way Things Are?" and then introduces you to a cast of characters for whom this is their normal daily routine, and shakes them up through a series of intersecting arcs and plotlines. it deals with a lot of compelling themes - including identity and personhood, how institutions of power are formed and maintained and the potential for abuses of that power even by the most well-intentioned who wield it, action vs. rhetoric and the power of words; whose story is worth telling and whose is erased or adulterated by those privileged enough to write the version that becomes the widely accepted canon, and how struggles for control of something as conceptual as narrative can become very real and legitimate fights for the right to have one's autonomy and personhood recognised, human connection and why it's both so valuable and so destructive, etc. - but the central question it unceasingly begs is "why do we continue to live like this? why do we accept that this is all there is? what will it take for us to care about what's happening all around us, every day, right before our very eyes? what will you do when you realise you've spent your whole life drowning, and every option for relief comes at a cost? how long can you keep telling yourself that you're not really drowning before the water closes in over your head and swallows you like all those before you?"

tsv takes a magnifying glass to the horrifying exploitation and cruelty that so much of our own society runs on, and literalises it, leading to what is often rather heavy-handed satire bordering on the parodic - but it does so with such grace and unflinching, grounded honesty, without preaching to its audience but without letting them off the hook, either. it recognises that we are all both complicit in and victims of our own collective slow grind towards annihilation, and it asks us "isn't this absurd? isn't this horrifying? is this really all there is? is there nothing we can do in the face of this seemingly insurmountable, inescapable self-defeating routine-turned-ritual? why should we, or shouldn't we, care? why should we, or shouldn't we, try to make a difference?" and it's brave enough to admit that it doesn't have all the answers. but it still tries. because the silt verses is, fundamentally, a story about hope - real hope; the difficult, unglorious, unrelentingly in need of maintenance kind that is, nevertheless, still worth every effort to inspire it. the silt verses is a story about why we get up in the morning and try again, even though it might never be enough.

it's also a very character-driven story, and the character writing is truly second to none. every character is a person, in all their infinite messy, human complexity. every character has the capacity for abject cruelty and incredible kindness; to be a significant influence on their reality and to be utterly meaningless in the wider context of things; every character has the potential to be both the hand that pulls someone to their feet in their hour of need, and the boot that grinds them further into the dirt, and every character is both of these things, at some point or another, to someone. every character is both the martyr and the one holding the knife. no character is a saint - not even the actual, literal saints. and while this isn't necessarily something that should be used as a selling point, the way this podcast handles the diversity of identity is fantastic, and never used tokenistically, or as a character's sole defining trait (though not all aspects of identity get equal consideration; the creator has acknowledged that he didn't tackle race as a topic much beyond examining the developmental factors of broad strokes "us vs. them" nationalistic identities, and the arbitrary nature of patriotic loyalty to one's nation when it runs on the same oppressive systems as that which is painted the aggressor, and some fans have pointed out that while diversity of gender and one's lived experiences according to one's gender identity gets plenty of focus, some things are left to implication and inference in a way that doesn't necessarily strengthen the story's themes).

anyway. not sure this is the "fandom propaganda style" pitch you asked for, but listen to the silt verses. it's a brilliant work of fiction and to my mind deserves to be considered a landmark piece of art (even if that does mean that some of my more fandombrained takes would likely come to be seen as unflattering misconstrusions of the source material that betray my personal deficiencies. well whatever it was fun i had fun.)

[shrimp1y]

"wrio isn't a cop hes a king"

Can someone with brains please please PLEASE talk about the disgusting portrayal of cops, crime, court proceedings, justice system and prison incarceration in genshin impact's fontaine update because I cannot SIT HERE and see people completely destroy their brain cells just so they could play a mediocre game and make some fictional men fuck in their mind

I'm deadass surprised there isn't more people talking about it??? I'm honestly so ??? It's literally presenting prison labour as a good thing. Wriothesley, the prison administrator, got rich off of making his inmates build police robots for the state AND HE'S PRAISED FOR IT. AND THEY'RE PAID IN COUPONS THAT CAN ONLY BE USED IN JAIL. HE WAS REWARDED FOR IT WITH HIS DUKE STATUS.

The fact that the fucking MC's mascot was like "oh the prisoners get one free meal a day? you're making life too good down here what if no one wants to leave :(" what in the bullshit. What in the. There's also a fighting ring in the prison, by the way, and you can bet on it with your coupons you just can't bet on both fighters.

The. This is a scene people think is hot. "But that's a bad guy!" THAT'S HOW THE NARRATIVE IS WRITTEN. THEY ARE ALWAYS THE BAD GUY IN FICTION. THAT'S HOW COPAGANDA WORKS, they make you think people in power can just beat the shit outta anyone and of course the person deserves it because they are clearly always the bad guys! And the people in power are always right! This is sarcasm btw.

Neuvillette and the magic judgement machine are literally seen as undeniable justice ordained by magic and NO ONE KNOWS HOW IT WORKS. NEUVILLETTE HIMSELF HAS NO CLUE WHAT HE'S DOING HE'S ACTIVELY FIGURING SHIT OUT AS WE SPEAK. And yet it's what sends people to The Worst Most Dangerous Super Scary Prison Ever Where There's No Laws [but 1 meal a day's great /s].

"But he feels bad!" Genshin has repeatedly chosen to highlight the pains and troubles of the oppressors [Eula] [Ei/Shogun] and there's literally never any repercussions for them aside from when they portray The Haterz clearly as villains or they turn it around and say "Well it was a misunderstanding all along! No one's to blame here!"

I'm not smart enough to go into details I'm just saying. This. needs to be talked about. I'm not telling you to stop the game bc Hyperfixations not really smth that can be controlled or whatever I get It I Got Back into the game when the first trailer dropped I drew neuvillette fanart and then everything just went downhill since then and I'm like why the fuck did I expect anything better than racist, pro cop dogshit from Mihoyo It needs to be talked about ESPECIALLY by people who still cares about it to critically. assess what the fuck you are absorbing because this shit isn't okay. This is literally paw patrol for weebs they just didn't call anyone a "cop"

PLEASE. TALK ABOUT IT.

[margaretkart]

The failure of Greek myth retellings

This is a personal rant about how I, as a Greek and mythology lover, view these modern retellings and how they came out more as a disappointment.

Here are some examples of forced labelling from the book sites like Bookreads:

Do you see a pattern? Is not only they are telling the audience rather than showing how "feminist" are these retellings but also..

Man vs woman

According to the retellings all ancient Greek men are bad, sexist, misogynists, worthless, abusers and women are girlboss ✨. But it's obvious that humans regardless of gender are complex beings.

But when you read the Original epics you realise that women have as much importance in the story as men. But not in the way you are used to...

The women aren't afraid to speak their mind, they have agency, they are a driving force the admire, but it's not with shields, armor or physical strength. They are also showing it with kindness, empathy, cunning but also with anger, sorrow, vengeance.

Penelope, Electra, Antigone, Ariadne, Andromache, Helen, Cassandra etc. ARE strong women! They don't have to go to battle to prove it!

BUT that also doesn't mean we should glorify the women who are abusers and do wrong things!

Clytemnestra for example, exiled Orestes, had her daughter Electra a slave, showed proudly her Trojan women (also slaves) and killed Cassandra an innocent woman.. Do i understand how and why she acted? Yes 💯. Does this justifies her actions ? Of course no.

Medea, killed her brother and her children, and also poisoned Jason's next wife and her father because "she wanted to make him suffer like her". Do i understand why she did it? Yes. Does it justify to have everyone suffer because of one man? No.

Hera, punished several women and men alike because she couldn't do it on Zeus (because he is the king and stronger). Is cheating bad? Yes. Does it justify her to punish someone who was obviously a victim or was powerless against a god? No.

The retellings:

fail to do complex characters.

fail to let the audience come to their own conclusions who's right, wrong or neutral.

They fail to make daring characters without be labelled on a modern stereotype.

Fail to understand the norms of ancient Greece and how they shaped these stories.

Fail to realise that men and women are more complex than modern stereotypes.

I am not against retellings but do better! Making a great retelling respectful to the source and having complex characters with quality reading would be deeply appreciated.

And to the readers to not rely on retellings as "faithful resources".

[ninjaturtlecosmo]

The difference between Vivziepop antis and people in the Hellaverse fandom (Based on what I've personally seen)

Fans;

- Show their appreciation for Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss in different ways, be it fanart, fanfiction, Tiktok videos, ect.

- Acknowledge the flaws characters have, but will also carefully analyze the characters in a way that explains their actions, but doesn't justify the things they say or do, detailing how complex those characters actually are.

- If fans have different opinions, as long as they're respectful, they agree to disagree

- Know how to actually enjoy a show despite it's flaws, while also knowing how to separate the art from the artist, regardless of whatever Vivziepop may or may not have done.

Antis;

- Usually give the most narrow, shallow minded views on characters and episodes, only caring about if a character does anything remotely sexual and then getting mad when it happens, because God forbid a show made for adults has sexual situations in it.

- Get mad when fans of the show don't share their worldview or call them out on said shallow views when they try to explain that a character isn't as bad as they claim them to be

- Criticism towards characters often includes victim blaming and defending the abuser, specifically Stolas and Stella, or the Karen client and her husband from the Sinsmas episode, and then they still get mad at people who defend Stolas or the Karen's husband

- Clearly only watch the Hellaverse just to hate on it more when their time would be better off spent consuming content they actually enjoy and then making content on that instead

- Don't actually care about helping Vivziepop improve her work, only post destructive criticism in the hopes of tearing her and all her crew down

- Obsessively keep track of every move Vivziepop makes, keep a record of all her past actions, and then document on it obsessively despite claiming to hate or dislike her..... should be enough to tell you how insane a lot of the antis are that they're this obsessed over hating on someone just because they don't like her work.

[dephoraowo]

Posts that defend abusers will always be ridiculous to me, but there was this one particular post that did it. It's basically a Madam Yu stan post where op said that both Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Fengmian were shitty parents that fucked their kids (& wwx) up in various different ways. But in op's words, also said that they will forever be more sympathetic to a frustrated woman in a patriarchal society stuck in a toxic marriage than to the man who has power and authority to change something but refuses to do it because he doesn't like conflict and pretends like nothing is wrong. (?????) They make it sound like Madam Yu was forced into the marriage and never wanted to marry a man like JFM when it's actually the total opposite 🫠. The real reason the relationship is so toxic is BECAUSE OF HER 😭😭😭💀.

Then the reblogs went on, and gosh, it gets worse because people were reblogging stuff like "justice for yu ziyuan", "shes such a badass", "oh shes so cool with her lightning whip". Another guy said that "You can say a lot about yzy, but you can't say she lacks courage." (Girl, courage?? Where??) They also said Jiang Fengmian has just exited that marriage, he's physically there but emotionally absent, it doesn't have to be a love marriage to be a real partnership, but he won't show up for that either and he makes decisions that carelessly undercut yzy's choices, like dissolving jiang yanli's engagement, and weaken her power, by his treatment of her son and their heir jiang cheng. (Oh, I guess her daughter's happiness never mattered to her?) They also said JFM also totally sucks as a sect leader. She's out nighthunting and training the disciples. Then they ended it by saying yzy and jfm's entire dysfunction made the whole household unhappy and damaged the kids for life, but at least one of them is at least trying to fulfill their responsibilities to the household and the sect and it's not jfm. I literally lost braincells after reading this smh.

I see that you've been in the mdzs fandom for quite a while. I would like to ask, what's the most ridiculous or outrageous post, or maybe any post that you really don't agree with during your time here.

Wei Wuxian irl would be a Republican (American politics) from literally last year. @jiangwanyinscatmom @admirableadmiranda @chai-chahiye-yr @grewlikefancyflowers wanna join?