#to see if its stuff i still wanted reblogged or not

[deadbeatbirdmom]

Happy Valentine's Day my fellow RWBY fans. This should be a day focused on love. Which is why I'm going to talk about something that's been troubling me for a while. This isn't about any single post, and I'm not singling anyone out. I'd put this under a read more cut but I think it's important enough not to do that. Scroll down for TLDR and a poll.

One of the common courtesies of tumblr etiquette is: don't tag hate with things like a ship tag or character tag. Or should be common, but let's face it, it's more like uncommon.

A good chunk of tumblr users who I end up blocking are those who post hate in tags like the 'Bumbleby' tag, or 'Yang Xiao Long' tag (it'd be the 'RWBY' tag too, but I don't often go there and rarely post in it). No, it's not toxic to block people, it's how you control your tumblr experience. It's how I avoid seeing hate, or try to.

But there are some tumblr users who I don't want to block but also end up putting hate in the tags: some of my fellow fans. It's not intended the same way as those who do it out of spite, but the end result is the same: your fellow fans end up seeing stuff they might prefer not to.

There's another rule, an old one that predates tumblr: don't feed the trolls. Don't give them attention. Please delete anon hate rather than answer it, although I definitely understand how trolling trolls can be fun. Just please don't tag it with the main tags or you'll do the anon's work for them if it's hate about a ship or character.

I see all too much fan art around that gets far less engagement than posts trying to fight back against hate (and unfortunately share the hate at the same time, especially when it's something from elsewhere like reddit or twitter). If you like the art, don't only hit that heart button, reblog it too!

RWBY fandom isn't dead, but we do need to do our part to encourage artists to make and share more art. Likes alone don't help the art get in front of more fans. I don't think everyone looks in the tags to find art, some will rely on those they follow reblogging art. This goes for sharing fic too! And giving fic writers comments (and kudos on AO3).

This is an appeal to keep negativity out of the main tags. I'm not saying you can't post whatever you want, just when it comes to tagging: please spare a thought for your fellow fans who are incredibly tired of negativity. If all else fails, maybe include a tag that can be added to filters? 'Wasps' for posts about Bumbleby hate, maybe?

I don't know about anyone else, but if I wanted to see hate and get angry, I'd be on twitter or reddit. I check tags here on tumblr to find fan art, and to see fellow fans talking about how much they love RWBY and its characters and ships, and find interesting theories and analysis.

I'm also not entirely sure how tumblr works with followed tags and words mentioned in posts. Do untagged posts still show up if the word appears in the post? Does that mean breaking the word with a backslash or something to avoid it showing up? I don't know, perhaps something to consider.

TLDR: please don't feed the trolls and don't tag hate with main tags. Show RWBY fan artists and fic writers some love and reblog their posts, and comment on fics!

One last thing: a poll to find out if I'm an outlier and posting hate is actually normal in this post-twitter world.

[side-by-side-sideblog]

Also the tma/tme debate demands that queer people out themselves to everyone online by saying which they are... outing culture isn't a safe place. Plus it's binary, binaries are our enemies. Sex is a spectrum, Gender is a spectrum, they're a set of traits that come at random. To create a "you are this, you are that" puts people who are in the middle as targets to force them to pick one. Like it isn't welcoming to intersex people, it's outing them to a binary of "are you us or them" again. It also puts nonbinary people in a tough spot in a similar way!!

Also I don't get why this whole fight against transmascs acts as if transmascs are cis men. I'm butch, I am a woman, but I am getting top surgery, I consider it a masculine transition and consider myself transmasculine. I think trans men are like buddies of mine, just dudes who support masc women. A lot of the oppression I face is similar to theirs, so they're like comrades in arms. With this debate I guess makes me an enemy, someone who doesn't face misogyny or transphobia at the same time... I'm a woman, one with a complicated gender but like, that changes nothing.

I see people reblog/post things like "praying for a bomb that kills all transmascs" and then turning around and reblogging horry posts about butch women. I guess I am a sex object that is also only worth being sexy or bombed?These tma/tme groups use transmisogyny to be misogynistic to any queer person who disagrees. They also habe no singular gender identity because there are a bunch of trans men harassing other trans men over this. The tma/tme groups go after trans women, they go after trans men, they go after intersex advocates for not agreeing. Almost every intersex resource is now marked red on shinigami eyes because people are not being honest with wanting to make a good community that accepts people. All it takes is one person saying something "wrong" and they get death threats, rape threats. That's trans misogyny, and it's happening to any trans person masc, fem, neutral, all the of the above. I've seen some people go around calling transmascs zipper tits. Woah, noooo!! That makes this place fucking unsafe, there's nothing good about that, that's not safe for trans men, for butch women, or any anyone who gets top surgery, ever, like, wtf!!! You can't say stuff like that and be like "All butch women are cool" I am a zipper tit butch women??? You're not protecting anyone by doing that.

I am in both camps, a lot of butches are, so what fucking game is this? And not to mention, I feel more connected and safe with trans men than cis men, but I am still comfortable with cis men at times too. Men have helped me feel comfortable being masculine, and being myself. Being strong and loud, and that getting treated as acceptable in spaces with men comes from men who have respect for women.

My butch partner has a lot of the same opinions, we talk about this stuff together. Feminine spaces feel unsafe by how they demonizes masculinity, but then act like femininity is safe. So now the community has to decide when to like me and when not to like me, as some sort of tokenized minority. The way that works is oddly familiar to trans men, because sex and gender is a spectrum and I am a masculine woman so I have a lot of boxes ticked that trans men also do, just less than they have.

I had a reblog on a post about this discourse a bit ago saying "when a white woman cries a black person dies." Women have a unique way that they can harm and hurt and oppress others by their connection to the concept of purity, divine creation, and whiteness. Purity can be a weapon used by women intentionally, and people die from it's blade and the user walks away as victim. Femininity is its own balancing act of pros and cons that isn't something divinely perfect or a hidden evil behind a pretty face (like some misogynists think)

Just like masculinity isn't evil, men aren’t evil, and can harm if they choose to. But trans men/transmascs do not have any sort of power over women systemically like cis men. There are chances that trans people can hurt one another through minor power, like having a social media account and sending your followers after people, but that is nothing like how cis men can harm trans people systemically by denying them healthcare through voting it into illegality.

There's also the fact that some queer spaces are not safe for everyone. "no men" spaces makes almost every trans person of any identity look at in the same way... do they mean me? And I do think that too because I am a weird man woman thing, which is fine with me, but am I included in that "no man" part?

The idea that we must turn a word to help describe oppression into a box is childish at best, and malicious at worst. It becomes the same old "men are invading women's spaces" and I guess I'm a man in this situation but also a women that will be loved and hated depending on what the situation requires.

We have trans men online talking about escaping trafficking, and how there are people interested in trans men because they're trans men. That's misogyny mixed with ownership, the people interested don't respect trans men as men, they see a unique women to buy. Why is this somehow a problem to talk about, why did the responses to that conversation get "this would be worse for trans fems"

Oppression isn't a game to win!!!

And the fact that each country has its own issues. How trans men are treated in india by the queer community there is oppression, they're seen as brood mares, and must be submissive. The way trans people are treated is wide, vast, and complicated beyond belief.

My trans sister also isn't on Tumblr much but I read her out loud the discourse so we can talk about it together and she has so many opinions on how dangerous this all is. She says that it's genuinely a very black and white minefield, and that transmisogyny has been turned into a way to inflict transmisogyny on others. That misogyny is the main tool used to enforce gender norms, so of course that's the tool that bigots are familiar with to use against trans people. We shouldn't be doing the same. Transmascs are being called hysterical bitches, that's misogyny, that's misogyny against them for being trans and masculine specifically... So transmisogyny. I don't want the people who find me or my partner to be sexy butches (in a fetishized way - because no one wants to talk about that either, that the community doesn't respect butch women), also calling me a hysterical bitch actually because I'm *checks notes* transmasc and am not a women because I am transmasc so it's okay, I am a man and an oppressor. ����😑😐😑😐 what?

As long as anyone thinks trans people can easily be accepted by a society that has yet to really accept anyone who is 'weird', like even furries, then we have a long way to go. Trans men haven't escaped misogyny, their minds and bodies surely haven't and probably never will, and that's how trauma works, how oppressive trauma works, you never forget it.

A society that has a narrow acceptance for men, that made being a man into a competition to win doesn't have open seats. Trans men are not on that playing board, and I'm definitely not either, and I don't think many queer people are unless to be an isolated token piece.

I don’t understand TME v TMA. This is the same as the idea that patriarchy exclusively affects women and can never cause harm to men. Trans misogyny is real and of course it disproportionately targets trans women, but its still the reason that trans men, non binary and intersex people face their unique issues. Trans misogyny is not fixed by calling trans women terfs or trans men soft UwU babies. If you want to combat transmisogyny stop reinforcing it you numbskulls!!

[n0bluev]

@fushiglow hmm….wonder who i’d draw this for all of a sudden and why… 🤔🤔

[bloodied-dagger]

my “for you” page is fucked. Completely unusable

[pekoeboo]

just thinking again (based on some of this blog's activity)... I felt it was probably worth saying that if you've followed me for Nicktoons Unite or Danny Phantom content, please don't be expecting any more. I have no plans to ever draw it again and while I've tried to be appreciative of the fact that ppl still seem to like that content, it does make me sad that that's the only thing that still gets the most attention on this blog even tho I want nothing to do with it anymore 😔

obviously I'd love if I was only known for my OC content but I know that's not how the internet works, lol. I'm trying my best but judging by the constant influx of activity just for Nicktoons and DP (and the fact that all of the blogs recommended on this blog are phandom-related and have been for 6 freaking years 😭), it seems like I'll never escape that being the only thing most of tumblr associates this blog with. wahhh

anyway. just letting y'all know that like. if you've been following me for a while with the expectation of someday seeing new art within those fandoms, you might as well look elsewhere because I'll just disappoint you ><;; rip

[skitskatdacat63]

My favorite thing tumblr does is when it hides all of my most important art(and other posts) from my organizational tags. Like wow thank you. So glad I can easily find a random sketch I once posted, and not the art I spent hours on. Sick. Thank you.

[philautia-agape]

She veemo on my woomy til I splatoon

.

[iphigeniacomplex]

im going to write a paper on this but the more time i have spent reevaluating my selfhood as i move into this new and unique period of my life the less i feel satisfied with the gender labels i have used prior and the more i have spent considering what gender actually means to me personally. i am perfectly happy moving through the world as a mirror figure for others to project ideas of gender onto, as i dont care much about gender as it relates to me but find it endlessly fascinating outside of myself, but after being asked point-blank ive found my previous explanations are no longer relevant to this version of me. i have spent a long time and employed various terminology throughout my short life to attempt to communicate the simultaneous alienation from and connection-through-alienation to womanhood occurring within me, but ive never been able to find a pre-existing label that identifies the root of my alienation, because it is, obviously, this intensely personal thing; any microlabel with a corresponding flag would be useless, because my gender is myself.

so im not attempting to coin a microlabel here, and i dont want a flag, but ive been moving steadily closer to a reclamation of “hysterical”, as i feel that my relationship to the social position of woman has been corroded over the years by an outside “ungirling” done to me in various ways due to pathologized mental state and developmental disability. i dont feel that i can meaningfully separate my experiences in psychiatry from my experiences in gender, and i have no current interest in trying. i dont know if i comfortably identify as “woman” without the adjective “hysterical”, and i dont believe the cisgender label describes me accurately for various reasons, some related to this, but “hysterical” is where i’m at for now.

[azuredrg]

not that im crazy about making public statements since i think what i repost shows my stance well enough. i just thought that the people that established a country after being thrown from their own wouldn't do the same thing to others. it just hurts to see that as a jewish american israel is using my faith as fuel for a genocide and it hurts that all i can do is pray i am doing enough here to support the people of palestine

[thatgirlwithasquid]

disappointed in myself that im whining about antis here but it really does get me a bit when i see them using other characters just as tools to hate certain fans more. cause like, when theyre not even posting in those character’s tags and say they hate seeing us there and to stay away from these characters. like. no. i actively like them and will not be doing that.

its just sometimes so apparent that they dont care about the other character, they just want to take them away from other fans out of some strange spite. and i find that so sad, especially when the character is one that doesnt get that much love at all.

[plasticsandwich]

its really hard to use this site now knowing things will literally never change

[ulnabayleaf]

Tumblr is nice because I can just be me and if I wanna like horny stuff or interact with accounts that post lewd stuff without worrying about someone's asshole getting potentially shotgun blasted into someone's screen who is sex repulsed.

Granted I still might make another blog in the future but idk as someone whose first social media was Twitter this is so much better.

[waywardsalt]

the phantom hourglass manga is the one i care about the most out of all of the loz manga and therefore the one i am most willing to rip apart because of its relation to the game, its own problems, and the potential that was lost or thrown away for any reason at all

making this separate than the list of things i liked about the phantom hourglass manga

im not going to be too organized about this; ill go by topic and in each topic go in chronological order through the manga and everything else will probably be all over the place

im not even going to touch the story yet and just go after the art off the bat because i really believe that this manga has the weakest art of all of them. i dont know if its due to some kind of time crunch or a lack of care but its really… im not expecting any of these books to have killer art, but in ph it just feels like there was less effort with inconsistencies in some designs and either very low detail or just absent backgrounds. this feels like a mean-spirited critique since i understand that manga is difficult to create and requires a lot of effort but its just visually… worse than the loz manga that came before or after it.

some specific grievances i have with the art are things like inconsistent designs of some characters (linebeck is hard to draw and i get that but hes just… never totally consistent) and some items like weapons (the shape of bellumbeck’s sword changes during the fight for some reason) and stuff is… left out. the fire temple has basically no layout since link’s just in some flavor of void for the entire blaaz fight. one of the panels with linebeck’s ship shows it from the behind at an angle where you should see the deck but its just not there

his ship is also missing its chimney on the cover art

this is also more of an opinion thing but the way astrid looks almost nothing like her game counterpart is just… it’s a nickpick based on opinion but that is Not The Same Character.

you can absolutely tell a fantastic story with lacking art, but the reason why im criticizing this manga’s art is because its the tenth in a series of manga who, up until this point, has had consistently good art, and then it drops off with weak backgrounds and character inconsistencies.

plus, i really care about how this story is visually portrayed.

the pacing, even with half of the story cut, is also a bit of a problem. as far as i'm aware, this is the only loz manga to have significant chunks of the story cut out, and while it admittedly works well with only half of the story, it fucks with the pacing a bit. specifically, it screws over linebeck's arc, which i'll talk about more in a different section, but it also kind of glosses over the phantom sword and (obviously) loses some possible time for further character exploration and whatever. the cut from the ghost ship right to jolene right to the final boss is, while handled well, kind of abrupt.

obviously, cutting half of the damn story will make what's kept feel a little too fast, but even some of the stuff more original to the manga is paced weirdly or is just... eh.

there's a bit after neri is found where linebeck decides to stop working with link and basically ditches him and this whole thing lasts one to two goddamn pages before everything is patched up and good and... why even include it if you turn the page and oh problem fucking solved. it's even a little out of character for linebeck at that point since a few pages before he's seen getting the sands of time for link and it's... it make sense but it's a really extreme character choice and while it serves its purpose (introducing the idea of linebeck not valuing other people very much and realizing that) it's still extremely brief.

the added stuff with linebeck being a past member of the ghost ship, while fine and interesting at first glance is also a strange choice that doesn't work all that well? it works for characterization and all of that but it makes for a weird situation with linebeck's character motivation where he's a coward and after the ghost ship for the treasure on it, but if he was present on the ghost ship literally as it was fucking gutted then he would know exactly what the danger of the ship is and want to avoid it no matter what. in the game his motivation for going after the ghost ship works because he doesn't know for certain whats on that ship and has never been on it. plus, aside from character backstory and whatever, it doesnt serve much of a purpose. linebeck even makes some comments about the ship's interior and the like but it all amounts to nothing because link never actually goes into the ship anyways. it's just a weird backstory to give linebeck.

the shuffling around (and cutting of one of) the three final bosses is also weird. it makes sense for the story order the manga goes with, but it actually lowers the stakes for the bellumbeck fight (in the game literally everything is on the line but in the manga its just linebeck and they absolutely use that to their advantage but still) and mixing the ghost ship fight and bellum fights make the final encounter really brief and kind of anticlimactic in some way. it's difficult to express, but the order of the final bosses in the game makes bellum a more interesting villain and melds with linebeck's arc in a much more interesting way. it feels like there was a specific reason for that given order and for the manga to just toss that aside means it loses something.

also reserving pretty much an entire chapter for jolene is A Choice to make. there's nothing wrong with using an adaptation to flesh out a character but here you don't learn anything new about jolene she just kind of makes very little sense in her motivations when you give her more screen time but dont change her from wanting to kill linebeck for fucking off but also still liking him maybe. good for you if you like jolene since she got more time here but they did pretty much nothing interesting with her

this is something i figured out while writing this, but the manga actually does Fuck All with the actual hourglass. you could've cut the fucking thing out and it wouldn't have effected the story too much. link never goes into the temple every again and the phantom sword is just. made on request with link having no interaction with it before using it to kill bellum. the only time the phantom hourglass is actually plot relevant aside from link first getting it and then using it to gather sand is when bellum tells link to bring it to the temple and then it's used exactly once to stop time and then it's used as proof that everything happened. oshus says link needs to use it and the sand to break the curse over the temple of the ocean king and then that never actually happens the sand and the hourglass is just used once to stop time once and otherwise it might as well not be in the story it's so weird. it's also implied that oshus needs the sand to restore tetra after he returns to his own true form but they dont say anything about that after he initially mentions it so who cares. oshus also tells link that zuaz will teach him how to defeat bellum. link never meets zuaz and still beats bellum anyways.

it feels like they cut the latter half of the story but forgot that the fucking majority of linebeck's entire goddamn character arc happens in that part of the story. sure, most of the cutscenes and whatever happens in the first part and linebeck does develop a bit in the first part but he doesn't really start to change until after the ghost ship, when you get his letter and his dialogue starts to change slightly to suggest that he's starting to like link more and care about something other than the possibility of treasure. the manga cutting out the latter half of the story but still making linebeck's arc end in similar places makes his arc feel really fast and even abrupt in the manga. he goes from being fully motivated to get treasure and still kind of selfish to caring a lot for link and deciding not to wish for treasure and the time was just NOT put in to make that a smooth transition.

honestly linebeck overall got fucked in the manga more than any other character. his arc was shafted, his characterization is strange and even kind of changed from the game, he's never drawn consistently and doesn't even look great since he seems to be stuck between two styles when he's drawn, he's more shallow and generally a less interesting character, and while most of that is probably a product of having one book to cover ph, it's still a problem.

like with all of the loz manga, the extremely limited amount of space and time the story is given absolutely fucks it over so you really are stuck with telling nothing more than an abridged and seriously inferior version of the story. i dont care how good the original stuff is if it barely qualifies as a good adaptation. the story wasn't told all of the way and none of the game's strengths are kept or expanded upon. you lose the majority of the best character's arc and depth. half of the story was cut. the title item is barely used. it feels like they didn't really care about adapting phantom hourglass and just hashed out a trimmed-down version of the story to fit into 188 pages and while there was some effort put in with a bit of a unique take on linebeck but it just falls flat when everything around it feels like it wasn't given a second thought.

i'm not suggesting that the author's didn't fucking care, i don't know what the process was with this, but it just... it doesnt feel like they actually wanted to earnestly create a good adaptation of this game. i have an altered perspective on all of this because this game is my special interest and something i deeply care about and inspect the little details of and it kinda just sucks that phantom hourglass never got a good adaptation because... this game has some serious potential for a really good extended adaptation.

Unlike the other Zelda games that the other manga cover, the structure of the journey in Phantom Hourglass has an insane amount of space for fleshing out of character, exploration of new concepts or character relationships, or just.. whatever you want. Providing you cover the original story, of course. Off the bat, there's a nebulous amount of travel time between islands, which can be used by authors for character moments and interactions and just little moments that can be used to further themes or concepts. You can use the implied time overseas between islands to have some interactions between Link and Linebeck. Show the three fairies hanging out with each other. Show the whole crew becoming closer to each other as time drags on.

Linebeck's existence and function within Phantom Hourglass alone is so fucking unique and amazingly good for an extended adaptation. In most other Zelda games, the companions are pretty much glued to Link's side and follows him through dungeons, or they're characters locked in a specific place, more or less divorced from Link's quest, but Linebeck is an integral part of the plot, present for every part of it as it advances, and yet he's out doing fuck-all while Link is in dungeons. He's a great excuse for authors to add detail to islands, write new characterization for background characters, or even just give Linebeck his own b-plot running concurrently with the game's normal plot. He's important to the plot and yet doesn't touch the gameplay; he's free to do whatever you want while Link does dungeon stuff. One possible idea I've mentioned before is the idea of, while Link is in the temple of the Ocean King, is to create and explore a possible relationship between Oshus and Linebeck. Scenes of them talking can be used to flesh out Oshus as a character and to add some extra depth to Linebeck and make his arc more interesting to follow.

There is... SO MUCH you can do with Phantom Hourglass if you care enough to do it, and I'm just so frustrated that we got this solid 4/10 of a manga.

[033h]

tumblr is still the best social media i go thru phases w others and right now I'm trying to leave my instagram phase... ill always come back bcus every other site makes me feel worse

[theapocalypseisuponus]

probably going to purge tumblr for a few weeks to see how it goes to try and help with dissociation. i’ll probably still pop on a little tho. part of a bigger social media exercise im doing. Sigh. Goodbye beloved tumblr mutuals see u October 20 when I will be physically incapable of not becoming a cattails wildwood blogger.

[bronze-main]

Vent under the cut and in the tags

Sometimes it feels like it's never gonna be ok. And I don't know what to do.