#tweet linked in the body of the post where i quote the quote from the tweet because the link under the tweet is the hockeyfights page

[kitnita]

'i asked him if he was a tough guy, he said not really' he didn't even have it in him to LIE & claim to be tough. thank god he's self aware. i cant believe he owned up to something he very much should have lied about in this situation & they killed him later in the game anyway. of all the ty dellandreas in the world he really is the ty dellandrea-est.

[sapphiresaphics]

The reason why I keep bringing up media literacy and bad faith criticisms is because of things like this. Follow along if you can!

^^^———

I saw this post the other day where this person suggested that the reason Vi didn’t get as much character development was because the writers didn’t know what to do with her. That’s a pretty bold statement to make. I’ve certainly not heard any of the writers express that opinion at all. So where did this idea come from? What interview provided us with that look behind the scenes?

Luckily someone asked for a source, and they obliged! And my friends… this gets weirder…

The “source” ends up being this game journalism article:

This is an entire article dedicated to basically interpreting, reframing, and summarizing…. A tweet.

A single tweet by Christian Linke.

An entire article that took his response to a question WAY out of proportion and infused it with more meaning than was intended.

Here’s the original tweet. A user ask’s about VI’s character being less prominent, and his response is basically “we had a lot of characters” which is true. There were a lot of characters to squeeze in appropriate amounts of time for. Vi included. Here’s the original tweet:

It’s really not much at all, is it? This isn’t him admitting they didn’t know what to do with her, or that they abandoned her storyline or anything like that. All he said was there were a lot of characters and as a result Vi got a little less screen time as a matter of fact. Nothing more, nothing less.

But here’s how the game article summarized things:

^^^———

So do you see what I’m getting at here? A fan asks a reasonable question, and Linke gives a very straightforward answer. This is picked up and interpreted by the games journalist reporter and given far greater weight that it deserves, including a flashy headline. People see this and add even MORE of their own personal biases and exaggerated opinions and spread that around… and before long that innocent tweet somehow is “proof they didn’t know what to do with Vi and that’s why her arc was reduced to X thing I didn’t like!”

Swirling around Season 2 of Arcane is this weird game of telephone where with each step of the journey the original message is getting lost and distorted and twisted around. Unfortunately when a quote is this ambiguous, it leaves it open to interpretation. I’ve seen this same tweet be used to explain why every character had “bad writing.”

And the games journalist isn’t technically wrong in their coverage… after all, all they did was post the tweet and then re-summarize the same tweet. But by taking what the fan asked and twisting it into “Arcane lead explains why Vi felt like a side character” as an article headline, they’ve distorted the original interaction and infused it with this twinge of negativity designed to get you angry enough to click on the article.

Arcane Season 2 had a lot of story to tell with a lot of characters. As a result Vi’s screen time was slightly reduced. Doesn’t matter that out of all the characters she has the most screen time across both seasons. Nothing about acknowledging that as a simple fact explains motivations behind the writing of her arc in season 2 at all. It says nothing about her pitfighter phase, her relationship with Caitlyn, or her final battle fight with Jinx and Warwick. But if you were already critical of season 2, this gives you a plausible air of credibility for whatever “reasons” you think they did what they did. And then you just spread this fabrication to the internet where it just snowballs out of control.

So much of the negativity surrounding Arcane Season 2 is the result of this game of telephone and it’s really starting to bother me. And when you label overblown garbage like this as “arcane critical” then I genuinely believe you’re doing this on purpose and you don’t have an original thought in your body. You’re not being critical, you’re just letting your ignorance and biases control everything. This is bad faith argument construction at it’s worst.

[matan4il]

That CUPE poster is fake. I don't know why someone would try to frame a Canadian workers union like that, but that is NOT the kind of thing they post, ever. They are in support of minorities and deal with Canadian issues and working conditions, not international conflict. And they would absolutely NEVER make a horrific poster like that. See for yourself: instagram . com/cupeontario/ and instagram . com/cupe_scfp/ and they're on Twitter and stuff too. The pixelatedness of that poster speaks to how fake it is too, none of their other material looks anything like that. And while Fred Hahn has posted/retweeted some stuff about the conflict on his twitter, he has never posted anything inflammatory like that and the reply of his that is in the screenshot is replying to something completely different.

Hi Anon,

I'm gonna reply to you and to the following ask together.

https://www.tumblr.com/matan4il/742531713829404672 This is a faked image; CUPE may have problematic opinions, but it doesn't help anyone to falsify atrocious posters when the reality should be more than enough.

Here's the post in question, showing a poster with the photo of Shani Lock's stripped, raped and murdered body being kidnapped into Gaza. The poster has CUPE's logo, as well as a text that legitimizes the Oct 7 massacre. CUPE, as mentioned above, is a Candian workers union.

Here are the links to the two IG accounts of CUPE from the first ask. To fthe first anon, you're right that the poster in question does not currently appear on either, you're wrong that they don't touch upon international conflict, they def weighed in on this one (more on that later in my reply).

The poster does use the pink filter and the CUPE logo with the right font, but it's true that someone skilled enough with photoshop can fake that. At the same time, if that person was good enough to be able to copy that well CUPE's visuals, I doubt they would be "exposed" through pixelation, so rather than proof of photoshopping, the pixelation seems to be a result of zooming in on the poster to show just a part of Shani's body along with the text. That would make the pic appear pixelated, and then a screenshot was taken that way.

So far, I would say nothing's conclusive one way or another. The poster isn't on the IG accounts, but it could have been there and deleted, or could have been posted on another social media site to begin with, the visuals being the right ones doesn't prove anything, and neither does the pixelation. BUT since I noticed the dialogue about the poster seemed to have taken place on Twitter, I went to have a look there.

I found the post where someone quote retweeted Fred Hahn, asking him about that Oct 7 poster, along with Hahn's reply that CUPE had nothing to do with it, and then he added the false accusation of genocide, telling people to "focus" (because apparently Jewish pain is never the main focus, not even when we talk about the Holocaust, which is the term for the genocide of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis... there's a reason I mention this, I'll get back to it later). I will keep my mouth shut about how many ignorant, antisemitic, anti-Israel tweets I had to see as I was scrolling in order to get to the relevant one, I'll just say that workers unions that want to be safe for Jewish workers as well should do better than that, including when the heads of these unions post on their "personal" accounts (since they're not posting as a private person, they're posting as the head of said union). Here's the exchange, dated Feb 14:

But the person who challenged Fred Hahn did mention where this poster was supposedly originally shared:

Apparently, CUPE has local branches, with numbers, and each has their own Twitter account, so I went to CUPE 3906, and went all the way back to their tweets around Oct 7. Needless to say, this official account is full of anti-Israel, antisemitic propaganda, too. Now around the relevant date, what does their timeline look like? There's one last pre-war tweet on Oct 6, a general anti-colonial one re-tweeted on Oct 7 (even though the timing makes the context obvious, the wording doesn't explicitly mention either Israel or Gaza), and then the next, VERY interesting tweet is on Oct 11. Here's the relevant segment (obviously the tweets appear with the latest at the top, older below):

Here is that Oct 11 tweet, which is a statement made in response to backlash they got for a tweet that they say was "made in solidarity with Palestinians."

Only the first paragraph is truly relevant, but the last one is also telling. "As the death toll rises," they said, just a day after Israel's counter action started, and while Israel was still counting its dead from the deadliest day in the history of this conflict, and the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Still, the more important part is that if there had been nothing wrong with the tweet they refer to in the 1st paragraph, it should have still been up on their account, but it's not. Something was there and deleted, because there's now NO TWEET between Oct 6 and this statement, that could explain getting backlash... Deleting the tweet indicates they KNOW something was wrong with it, and they no longer wish to be publicly associated with it. But what was it? Have a look at this tweet, replying to CUPE 3906 on Oct 11:

It explicitly mentions rape. If the above poster was a fake, photoshopped and shared online in February 2024, how did someone posting in October 2023 know to mention rape specifically, and not just CUPE 3906's general justification of the massacre?

I can't prove anything one way or another regarding a deleted tweet, and with the progress of fake images, no one else can either. But I feel like the general progression of events indicates to me that it's more likely the poster is real, CUPE 3906 realized they won't get away with it, deleted it, and then they all closed ranks, claiming the screenshot is fake. Again, whatever they posted in the deleted tweet had to be real bad for even people as one-sided as they are (with all of the anti-Israel and antisemitic stuff they do proudly still have up on their accounts), that they were compelled to delete it. And justifying not just the massacre, but the rape specifically, might just do that.

Now let me get back to the IG accounts that the first ask pointed to, because even though they post less frequently than the multiple Twitter CUPE accounts, they're still very clear regarding this union's bias, and I'll also get back to that Holocaust mention, as promised.

I did not find a single post of solidarity with or compassion for Jews on either IG account following the Hamas massacre. I did find, on the Ontario account (and cross posted to Twitter, too) shared on Oct 10 a post that states they stand with the colonized over the colonizer, while the image (as well as their anti-Israel tweets) makes it clear they're erasing Jewish history and native rights in the Land of Isral and Jerusalem. The image could have been inclusive, show both mosques and the Western Wall, but nope. Jews are excluded from this image of our holy city and historical capital.

I also found a post about Holocaust Remembrance Day, which presents the Holocaust as including Jews. To make it clear, as someone who works in the field of studying this: "The Holocaust" is a term which is meant to reflect the Nazi intention to fully annihilate the Jews, something that didn't characterize their policy with other minorities. This is why we distinguish the Holocaust, the genocide of the Jews, from the persecution of other minorities by the Nazis. BOTH matter, and we talk about and educate against both, but they do have different characteristics, and so these are events, which are related, but CANNOT be reduced into one framing term. It is so problematic, talking about an event that was specifically about the Jews, as 'including Jews.' But let's say maybe that was ignorance, a lot of people don't get this distinction. CUPE's text doesn't mention antisemitism once, in a post about the most extreme antisemitic event in history, at a time when antisemitism is reaching its peak since WWII. When CUPE posted nothing else about this rise in Jew hatred, this text is just NOT good enough.

And what makes it even more obvious that CUPE is not treating Jews as it does other minorities, is that the same account DOES include posts that are specific to other communities, and does center the term for their hatred and persecution. They shared a post about a mosque attack that occurred in 2017, and in the text, they don't hesitate standing in solidarity specifically with Muslims, and against Islamophobia. So, to CUPE, 6 murdered Muslims are worthy of centering in the post about them (rightly so), but at least 6 million murdered Jews are not. Worse, the post then goes on to repeat the false claim about a genocide in Gaza. It also mentions the rise in Islamophobia following the war, even though they posted NOTHING, on NONE of the accounts I looked at, which recognizes the much greater rise in antisemitism we've seen over the same period of time, and which was launched by an attack on Jews.

The bilingual account, which I guess is a national one, didn't even mention Holocaust Remembrance Day. But on the very same date (Jan 27), it did mention the 2017 mosque attack, as well as Islamophobia, anti-Palestinians, but not a word on antisemitism.

All of this together is so upsetting, shows such a deep lack of concern for the well being of Jews, such a strong bias against the Jewish state and Jewish identity, that I honestly wonder whether that one poster is truly an issue. If it was posted by CUPE 3906, as I tend to believe by all signs I've seen, it seems to be a continuation of everything CUPE is completely unashamed of. And if they didn't share that poster, well... I guess there's a certain amount of poetic justice about being accused of something you didn't do, and no one listening to you protesting against the lie, eh CUPE?

You're welcome to do with this what you will.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[stepswowdsen]

【KagePro】 KuroEne AU: Ene confronts Kuroha 🖤💙

Intro

Kuroha/Saeru + Uroboros Symbolism 🐍

KuroEne AU: Ene confronts Kuroha (Dialogue Scripts)

For the 2nd one, I imagined a scenario where, after Saeru's revealed his true intentions, Ene and Mary sneak into his underground lab and Ene finds his design/plans on the android body he made her and confronts him about his motives. I only posted a bit of it for now

Kuroha/Saeru reminds me of the imagery/symbolism of Uroboros (Ouroboros)

The imagery of a snake devouring its own tail to represent the cycle of destruction and rebirth

I've been meaning to make a post about this but I forgot

I was just thinking of how much this imagery/symbolism fits him...

F: I've heard of Uroboros from a game and the meaning, I never thought about associating it with Kuroha-

Tho it does fit, he destroys the future of the MekaDan and then the rebirth part is Mary reseting the world

Me: Destruction of the eyes at the end of a Route (destruction of the world) and rebirth (world rewinding back to the beginning)

Me: It would be nice to draw him with the Uroboros symbol 💗 I was thinking about how much it fits him with the context of KagePro!

Misc Rambles

When I first came off priv on this side blog, I was debating whether to use hashtags on my ramble posts or not.

I used to be on priv on my side blog cuz I was used to having priv accs for rambles with Twt and Insta, but then I came off priv when I realized how limiting Tumblr priv blogs were.

So I started using Tumblr as a public archive to remind myself of which rambles I've posted on my socials, since I copy post the rambles from my Notion docs

At first I was wondering whether to tag my posts (doodles or rambles) or not, but whenever I tried searching for stuff to ref old posts, I couldn't find them even with key words

I mainly started tagging my posts cuz Tumblr's search function was so dogshit I couldn't even search and find my own posts without them

Tumblr's search engine is ASS without hashtags

So I started using them to sort my interests and ref my posts

Ig the other option would be saving the links in a Notion doc and putting a header of what the post is about

Quote Bots

Me: Douman (FGO) and Idate (WATGBS AU) taught me that cannibalism can be a metaphor for intense love (in fiction) 👍

Me: OMG. LIMGUDA??? THIS QUOTE BOT FUCKS

THIS IS ALSO SO KUROENE OMG

I NEED TO CAPTION A LIMGUDA AND KUROENE ART POST WITH THIS

C: OP of this bot: Haha Cannibal gay esque quotes go brr

You, an intellectual: My demon meow meows are resonating with this

Me: 👍

Basically before Twt's bot API died, some accounts were gathering their favourite quotes from poets and literature and such, to post as tweets. And people would QRT with the quotes that vibed with their fave characters/ships

Not only LimGuda, but ngl this quote also fits sooo perfectly with KuroEne cuz of the symbolism of Uroboros, a snake always swallowing its own tail.

"Ouroboros (Uroboros): a circular symbol that depicts a snake or dragon devouring its own tail and that is used especially to represent the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth"

Which is exactly what Kuroha/Saeru's role is by destroying the "Eyes" (killing the Mekakushi Dan who are represented by their Eye Abilities) and forcing Mary to use her powers as a Medusa to reset the timeline, causing a never ending time loop tragedy (hence, an eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth)

I first saw the Uroboros symbol in KHR with Mammon when I was 11

It reminds me of how in KHR, Mammon, who is the Mist-flame Illusionist of the Varia, has Fantasma as their frog familiar but it turns into a snake swallowing its own tail when Mammon uses their powers to fly/get more serious with their powers

Also FMA as well

F: I wouldn't call this cannibalism, just endless physical mess 😭 The fact both the moebius strip and Uroboros represents "endlessness" really shows a lot

Me: Oh yeah I meant that just in general, the quote bot mainly posts Cannibal/Ship esque quotes

KuroEne Dialogue Scripts

KuroEne AU: Kuroha joins the Mekakushi Dan and pretends to be one of them, and proceeds with the plan to kill everyone on August 15th. Mary and Ene are the only ones left and team up against Kuroha. They sneak into Saeru's underground lab, trying to come up with a plan. Ene finds his designs and plans on her body while searching through his lab and confronts Kuroha when he finds her, and Kuroha tells her how he gave her everything she wanted.

These are still WIPs but I was thinking of something like this

Not the whole thing obviously, cuz this Route is REALLY LONG. This is a snippet of KuroEne's exchange

...

KuroEne AU: Mary and Ene team up against Kuroha. Ene confronts him when they’re alone together

So I imagined this scenario would happen when Ene confronts Kuroha. Basically, Ene stalls for time while Mary goes to search the other rooms, and Ene asks him everything she's wanted to know that he kept a secret from her up until this point

(The details of his android body, how he made it, his goals/motives, why he chose to do all of this and play the game with her, etc.)

Kuroha decides to indulge her curiosity & give her answers since it's the grand finale (of their game)

Me: Was watching recent FGO story - Ordeal Call 3 (OC3) so I got inspired to write this

F: SHE CLAPPED BACK

Clock that snake

Even Kuroha brings up the fact he did give her everything she wanted

I've always HC'ed that KagePro takes place during 2014

Me: That fact's pretty much deniable. He made all her wishes come true, even if it came at a heavy cost

Yeah I imagine it probably takes place around 2010s - mid 2010s

F:

Your KuroEne AU Final Route idea of Kuroha being a helper for the Kozakura family would be such a good idea of him being able to move onto the future together, despite him revealing his evil intentions

The idea of Kuroha living along with the MekaDan and the rest of the world…

F: That's when KagePro started anyway ✨

...

Yeah I honestly think this would be the perfect ending for them

Though some things need to get fleshed out since HaruTaka are supposed to reunite in the end

It'd be nice if he uses his knowledge of tech to make a body for himself to inhabit

Maybe this time he can live out his life/existence putting his knowledge to good use instead as a guardian figure to Azami/Mary's family

Though admittedly, I'm much more interested in the XX amount of Routes in a KuroEne AU than the Final Route

Since I like exploring their endless possibilities. But a good end for KuroEne is fun to think about

F: True, KagePro doesn't end

Let them keep being reunited in multiple routes until the world ends, which is impossible-

Me: The world being constantly rewinded to the beginning means they'll get to meet again forever and ever ✨

F: Infinite sex glitch wtf 😭

Me: If I were to do a Final Route for KuroEne, I'd have to come up with a less stupid way for him getting defeated

One that's actually feasible, and not bland/boring/generic/badly written like MCA was

No way would the "embodiment of knowledge" get defeated by the power of friendship so easily…

Though right now I'm more interested in writing many KuroEne Routes

F: DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE.

Me: He's going to hang onto his concept of eternity as much as he can

The only solution that I can see for this is that Kuroha uses his knowledge of tech to occupy an immortal body himself, (maybe HaruTaka gets reunited?), but he makes himself an Ene to be with

F: My guy coded a robot girlfriend props to him 😭😭

...

Also let's be fr, Kuroha would like being called "evil" and "the most evil person in the entire world" by Ene. Because it's an acknowledgement of him and his true nature

He had been pretending to be nice up until this point for the sake of the game, but Ene acknowledges him by calling him by his true name (after he's revealed all his cards and true intentions/betrayal)

He'd take it as a compliment. He'd be especially delighted at being called "the most evil person in the whole world..." It's an ego boost for him lmao

(Just gonna use this for phrasing cuz it's hard to put a defining term on their r/s in my KuroEne AU)

Like their r/s in my KuroEne AU is like lovers in a way...? But it's really messy

...

Me: Oh one thing I thought about is that he'd like getting called evil by Ene. He'd take it as a compliment. Especially getting called "The world's greatest evil" and "An evil monster"

F: I KNEW IT

Like it's an ego boost for him

"I'm so evil even my wife calls me evil I'm so good at being evil-"

Me: RIGHT

He'd brag about being evil and how they can't kill/defeat him

"Look at me I'm so evil even my wife calls me evil!"

(I'm evil and in your way)

Trying very hard to Impress gloat/call attention towards him

It strokes his ego

Me: I was debating whether I should use the term "Evil of Humanity" or "Threat to Humanity" but that's specifically a FGO term for Beasts

The Beasts in FGO are beings that manifests as calamities that threaten human history (and represent mankinds' greatest Sins/flaws)

Me: So I didn't want it to be too on the nose. It would fit him tho

Me: Especially for him to be called "The world's greatest evil" like he'd be smug at Ene saying there's no one more evil than him

F: It's like her admitting that's he's good at being evil 😭

Tbh he'd laugh at every negative comment she makes about him

Me: Like he'd be like "My cute cheeky wife is calling me evil wwww"

"Doesn't it prove how good I am at it?"

F: Him proposing to Ene in the middle of this mess would be funny to imagine (idk why I just came up with that) 💀

Me: HWHDHSHDS IT WOULD BE

Like in a lighthearted casual way

His form of "marriage proposal" would be like "I may have killed all your friends (collateral damage who cares), but I gave you everything you wanted, didn't I?"

/lh /j

KuroEne Rambles

KuroEne is one of my top fave ships (I tie all of them as no. 1), but I definitely do approach them differently from my other faves.

KuroEne is my case study ship like it's fascinating to me

I'm studying them like a hamster spinning on a wheel

My mad scientist brain (or maybe Kuroha/Saeru's mad scientist brain?) is going off the rails /lh

Every other fave ship of mine, I want them to be happy. My ship AUs are generally fluffy and focused on the ship and their character interactions and intimate moments and them spending together. Building moments of emotional rapport.

It isn't KagePro without tragedy y'all 👍

So that's why KuroEne's relationship ends up being super angsty (angst up the wazoo). I mainly write fluff for my other ships, but I clearly have a lot of fun writing angst too

It's inevitable with Kuroha's character that his ships would all be tinged in tragedy/angst

Once my faves are past the initial animosity/hostility, getting to know each other, I could definitely see my other ships in actual romantic relationships. KuroEne is different though

I see them as the type that's not really in a usual romantic relationship, but that they will meet and cross paths with each other and meet and engage in intimacy with charged sexual tension.

My ship AU for KuroEne is focused on their character interactions and intimate moments too, but for KuroEne, I want their infinite XXX amount of Routes to keep on going forever so I can keep writing their endless possibilities cuz it's so fun to think of

All the different outcomes with them fuels my creative juices (irt art and writing)

There are some ships where I'm like "I don't think of them in terms of being in a usual romance/relationship, I just think they're interesting"

And yeah. KuroEne engage in intimacy, but their r/s would be soooo complicated and messy, and that's what makes it fun.

Like I ship KuroEne mainly because they're my faves and cuz I think their dynamic/relationship potential would be interesting to explore.

I also love that Ene is really confrontational and aggressive and assertive with him (but would still be able to have a certain tenderness/softer side towards him too in their interactions)

Cuz imo KuroEne works better as a ship than KuroTaka. Their personalities mesh better together

KuroTaka still works but even though Takane/Ene are the same person, KuroTaka has much more personality clash.

She would react differently to him as Takane and clash way more with him (bite heads and get really aggressive and violent wtih him)

KuroEne is more appealing cuz their personalities balance each other out rather well. KuroTaka's personalities together is much more imbalanced

I have more thoughts on this, but, Haruka is the perfect counter to Takane, and Kuroha is the perfect counter to Ene (who has trouble being honest with her feelings and desires)

He is generally knowledgeable and good at reading people and figuring them out/their emotions/desires...

KuroEne is a different case from my other ships tho because of Kuroha's role/setup as the instigator of the time loop tragedy constantly killing the cast who retains the knowledge/memories of previous Routes...

So in these XXX amount of Routes, they get reset back to 0 at the end, everytime, and then they meet again... And so the cycle of eternity continues. And Saeru remembers all these encounters.

Their relationship is filled with conflict and tension, desperation, love, obsession, passion, yearning, desire, attachment.

KuroEne is definitely different from my other ships, cuz, in the context of a ship AU, Kuroha/Saeru loves mainly for his own sake due to his nature and selfish, twisted desires. The emotions are real, but it lacks pure, genuine love.

I imagine that the KuroEne AU started cuz he wanted to prove his theory that humans will do anything for love.

Irt how the KuroEne AU starts

He first questions humans' desire for love (that he probably mistook as lustful pleasure) then he decided to test his experiments on Ene (due to his vessel). Takane/Ene is more affected by Haruka & Konoha than anyone else. And that's how he comes up with the whole idea of the "game" with her, their trysts. And that's when he approaches her with the proposal to make her a body...

He pulls off his elaborate scheme in the most roundabout convoluted way, lol

One that he presents to the other party as being an equal trade, but ultimately benefits himself, mostly.

When he proposes the game to her, he makes an unfair trade that mostly benefits him the most, but he sees it as fair because it "benefits both parties" and the benefits/advantages of his game far outweigh the collateral damage

He considers it fair because he gives his partner everything they want... But he robs them of a future at the end.

Though it is true that Kuroha/Saeru grants all of Ene's wishes in their relationship... He caters to her wishes and appeases her personality and whims, takes her out wherever she wants, gives her gifts, and love and affection...

Kuroha gives her everything she wanted (even if it comes at a heavy cost)

That heavy cost being - He kills everyone at the end.

He gives her everything except for what she truly wants (getting to move onto the future with everyone and have a happy life)

And he gets to satisfy his desires for accumulating more knowledge (with getting to build the android body and improve on it)

It's filled with a very ILL affection, cuz he is at his core, ill.

Even Douman can be very genuine/show more tender sides...

When he reveals himself to Ene, the betrayal's gonna sink in... Like, if you spend that much time getting to know someone then the betrayal from him revealing his true intentions is gonna be devastating

I imagine they were basically living together for 1 - 2 years in one of Kenjirou's spare homes so they're constantly around each other

I imagine that he genuinely enjoyed his act of playing pretend with his S/O (and to the rest of the MekaDan, if he decides to join them and act nice) and enjoyed the time he spent with them, and that's exactly why he won't give it up.

Like...... He's gonna push back against the idea of Ene proposing moving onto the future with everyone as much as possible for the sake of his own immortality (above all else), and then, on a secondary level, for the sake of the game - the love that's keeping him fulfilled and fueling his obsession

I wrote dialogue scripts for this up above - Kuroha/Saeru immediately pushes back against Ene's ideas/notions of moving on with everyone (what he deems as foolish)

Though said dialogue scripts are still a WIP

Like. No. He gets everything he wants this way, why should he give that up and settle for anything less?

[uluruanarchist]

In light of this, let's take a closer look at the Lesbian Action Group. (readers should note that this post contains links sourced from anti-trans associations. if you're using Shinigami Eyes, I'm sure you're seeing a lot of red.)

The Lesbian Action Group is apart of the Australian chapter of notorious intersexist anti-trans hate group the LGB Alliance. The LGB Alliance was established back in 2019 in the UK, reportedly splitting off from the prominent LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall (named after the monumental historical event of the Stonewall Riots) over the charity's stance on transgender matters and refusal to allow for debate on said matters. Presumably, this ever-so devisive stance, was Stonewall's announcement of dedication to trans equality back in 2015 (note: this link is to the Trans People and Stonewall report pdf. Available by means of The British Library.) Dissenters argued, that the charity no longer represented them, and that they were promoting a 'trans agenda.' As an organisation, the LGB Alliance has claimed that: gender-affirming therapy is conversion-therapy; amab trans and gender-diverse people cannot be lesbians and afab trans and gender-diverse youth existing is lesbian erasure; puberty blockers are mind-altering(?); sex is not a spectrum; among other things. Also, it seems suggested in their glossary of terms, that people can identify other people as trans, regardless of that person's own self-determination. They claim to value "factual" and "honest" communication, yet ironically, frequently spread misinformation, and simply source a twitter status in some cases (I could not verify personally the nature of the tweets, as I do not have a twitter account, nor do I want to, but a trusted person assures me quite frankly that they're opinions). They have gone on to establish chapters in many countries. Now, onto the Lesbian Action Group. Given the group exists under the Australian chapter of the LGB Alliance, they follow the same core values, and quite obviously so. The Lesbian Action Group claims that lesbians can no-longer legally assemble in single-sex spaces. This is unequivocally false. The Lesbian Action Group seek to publicly assemble, which is an entirely different matter. They also claim trans-only events are widespread, which I cannot find evidence of, which suggests if they do exist, they follow the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, unlike what was proposed by the Lesbian Action Group, and are in fact, importantly, not public events.

The Lesbian Action Group may fall within the definition of a ‘voluntary body’ under the SDA.6 However, the Lesbian Action Group is not seeking an exemption to discriminate in connection with the admission of persons as members, or the provision of benefits, facilities or services only to its members, as permitted by s 39 of the SDA. Rather, the Lesbian Action Group seeks to hold public events restricted to ‘lesbians born female’ and to advertise those events ‘widely and publicly’, beyond their membership base. The Commission is of the view that the s 39 exemption does not apply in these circumstances, where the provision of ‘benefits, facilities or services’ is proposed to extend to persons beyond members of the Lesbian Action Group. (source)

(quote text sure is large.) In a bit of a side tangent, I'd like to mention this division within Australian lesbian spaces has been going on for at least 30 years. So while they may claim things about what lesbian means and what women are, I know there are likely many Australian lesbians in their 50s and 60s who disagree (yes they exist! isn't that wonderful? I'm going to make a post later about all the wonderful things i've found researching this!) I also think it's important to mention that the single-sex exemptions of gay hotels, The Laird, and The Peel, mentioned in the Lesbian Action Group's purpose statement (maybe I should just start calling them LAG) and male exemptions granted section, allow trans men. Certainly a claim, LAG cannot make. LAG doesn't consider trans women 'women' after all. (also not entirely relevent but there used to be a Lesbian Action Group back in the 80s who I assume are seperate from the current.) LAG makes mention of a trans-only (the article title in the link says trans and gender-diverse) swimming event. While it may have indeed existed, I cannot ascertain the nature of it as the link they supplied. led to a 404 page, and The Wayback Machine's only capture documented the same 404 page. Also, I believe a bloody good distinction to be made is that LAG is going for a public event and in contrast, The Laird and The Peel are hotels. Those aren't events. Those are places. Also, unsurprisingly, one of the main defenders within the preliminary review is the LGB Alliance Australia. Anyway, I'm really tired of seeing their stuff, so here's a bit from Q+Law.

Q+Law submitted: It is important to note that lesbians are not a homogenous group. The lesbian community as a whole is made up of intersectional experiences and diversities including but not limited to race, religion, socioeconomic background and gender. Q+Law supports rights-based inclusion and seeks to improve the well-being of lesbians regardless of other intersecting identities. … Q+Law assumes the exemption is sought to allow the applicant to discriminate against all people who are not cis-gendered women sexually attracted to only other cis-gendered women. Therefore, the exemption seeks the right to be able to differentiate between sub-categories of women.

Anyway, I would say more, but I am so damn tired. I have spent the last several days reading and watching LGB Alliance material and that of LAG, and it has just been a progressively terrible experience. I'm sure you can see the quality dropping off throughout this and I do apologise for that. I wanted to make this more comprehensive, and maybe I'll go into these groups more in the future, but I can't take anymore days of this right now. Yeah, so I apologise if I've made some errors. I'm a bit overloaded. I mean the stuff in the post-statements, so you'll see that somewhere down along the line. Love you all. Toodles! Bye~ (p.s. If you don't understand some of the words I'm saying. I'll happily elaborate! Also if anyone thinks this could be more accessible, I'm open to suggestions and then I'll see what I can do about it!) (p.p.s If I've gotten some stuff wrong, or there are ways you think I could make this better, let me know! I'm fully capable of making mistakes, and after working on this for a few days and it negatively affecting my sleep I've probably made some mistakes. I'll make an amended version later if I get some good feedback.) (p.p.p.s LAG if somehow you're reading this, please update your page to be better <3)

[may-bonne]

The Resident Evil series is soo fun. Mjovovich has a lot of other dumb movies that I enjoy greatly. I have links to both Machete movies in hd too if you want them. There's untapped femslash in Luz and Sartanna

The thought of being hit on by Mrod's fake tinder profile is so fucking funny. She nailed the rizz of the average tinder man with her performance tbh. Except Frank's first words weren't "Hey babygirl you wanna show me your tits" like the last guy I matched with ❤ (You are right by the way he should)

Accurate lol. He's like this sad thing with eyes too big for his little dog head you find trying to eat a cigarette on the ground when you're heading home from work late. He tries to squirm away when you first break out the towel and won't stand up long enough to dry his back legs and belly

There is just something about Mrod characters. They're always like that. Most of them seem like they need a hug but would turn it down when it's offered. Her characters in Battle in Seattle and 3 am are a couple of the extra rained soaked ones imo. Scratch putting Holga and Katarin in a room they need to be thrust into a D&D campaign together. I read somewhere that Mrod needed to be reminded more than once to not give Holga a Jersey accent. I doubt she went full Frank but I love the thought. I think she should play a few more villains and break out the vague European accent at least once more. Mrod in a D.e.b.s sequel would be sooo good

I forgot about that spoken word thing! Oh to be Mrod in 2014 going onto tumblr dot com to post that and gifs I found in the search library... Captivated by it sounding like one of her tweets and that being paired with the word mooshiness in the caption. Me in the 2010s

Your brain is way more wrinkly than the director's. Your version of the experiment sounds more in character for Doc Jane's unhinged ass than the boring as FUCK one we got. "Performing surgery on a gun" is funnier to me than it should be. Shakespeare was a weird choice. I get they wanted her to be the annoying smart person who spouts quotes but they didn't put any effort in. I'm assuming Johnnie saw Frank take the tape off at least once and it's a wonder that she didn't cringe and ask him why he was doing that to himself. He probably does it so tight that it hurts. Yay for Ace bandages and sports bras!

anon where were you for the last two years while i was having to cope with being obsessed with mrod alone 😭 i would never ever want to meet her but she's just fascinating on a personal level. i wish she'd come back on tumblr but reappearing once in 2022 to post "i've become SLIGHTLY OBSESSED BY THE THE IDEA ONE CAN BLOW METAL LIKE GLASS" and then vanishing forever is also very funny

i found this guy's fansite from like 2005 compiling her quotes and the one i think about is "everything we do is just reinterpreting god. cement is made out of sand. sand is made out of dead carcasses from the ocean. glass, we look through our windows, we’re looking through dead bodies. look at wood; those are dead trees. you live in an inferno, dude. we’re just living among death. we understand that there’s life in that, so we create something new out of all of it. to me everything is god." that's a wild thing to spout off the top of your head to a reporter for like some fucking men's lifestyle mag. honestly that has more thematic parallels to the assignment than anything dr. jane quotes so maybe they should have just let her write the movie

i wish she'd gotten to make that movie she was talking about writing for like 10 years about a secret society of women or whatever. or the other one that sounded suspiciously similar to the plot of jumanji but i'd still watch her take on it

i was so sad when nitter stopped working because i refuse to make an acc but i miss reading her ridic tweets. when vin diesel got exposed for groping that woman i was worried she was gonna leap to his defense but she was busy posting incoherently about the singularity

i think poe and shakespeare are such weird choices. for one thing, it's not like transformation or rebirth are really prevalent themes in poe's works. he just writes about death. at least have her be into kafka. and if you're going to quote shakespeare then i feel like there must be language about the sexes or disguises or transformation SOMEWHERE so i don't get going straight for richard the third. maybe we're trying to avoid comedies and that precludes twelfth night and midsummer night's dream but still. but also dr. jane's whole thing is that she's an artist and a scholar and so superior so why is she quoting writers literally everyone has read? the only explanation i guess would be that she's implying galen is such a philistine he hasn't even read the a.p. lit syllabus but then she scrawls all that stuff on the walls of frank's hotel room so i think her obsession is supposed to be genuine. also literary symbolism actually has to be reflected in the plot. why doesn't she just wear a t-shirt that says poe

give me the machete links please <3 <3 i'll watch resident evil this weekend unless i end up having to work :/ i like milla (i say that knowing literally nothing about her but tumblr recommends me a lot of gifsets). i thought the interview mag feature with her and mrod was cute too

i'll watch 3am and battle in seattle sometime too just for that <3 fast and furious fandom is always pissing me off turning brian into poor abused woobie baby when letty is RIGHT THERE. i kind of wish i were really into rain/alice or something because i love letty and mia too much to quit but it's such a dudeslashy fandom and letty just gets massacred

last thought for this reply is that i'm kinda surprised frank doesn't smoke but i guess maybe the fake beard was a fire hazard

[payservewomen]

Yesterday was a painful one….I’m off work Sun-Mon(todays tuesday) and was gonna go 2the $ store, and check goodwill for a shoe rack…But then I opened twitter😔

Goddess Aurora James tweeted something, and ofc that did it! Was around 12noon, maybe late as 2pm, and I began playing with my “Mr Winky”(Ex fiancée, Emma used to call it that; painful breakup, good 2remind myself 2b humiliated) and next thing I know, it’s damn near 8pm!

I’m broke af right now…last i checked, had $15 in the bank, so that means I can’t get any interaction with anyone who matters(dommes/women in general, even Hung Alphas) And that really got me desperate…..I crave attention soooo much….and when you’re a pathetic failure, a beta loser, well, only logical attention is negative ofc.

Oh! But the “wall of shame” girl DMed me, telling me it was time for her weekly wall of shame that she posts on twitter….I’ve been in a few of them, but it’s not too humiliating tbh, she edits the photos, and doesn’t show cocknballs…but my face is showing! I do wish that i’d stop tempting fate to expose myself as the perverted loser freak that I am! I sent her a link to a shared folder on google photos, and loaded that folder with tons n tons of very humiliating pics…dunno if she used any, but then i went to a different twitter account, same one I’d posted to last week, when I went to the store in running shorts(tiny ones with slits up the sides! But i’m glad i found these; they’re actually men’s legit running shorts! even tho I’m only ever gonna wear them cuz i’m a perv, desperate to show off my gross body n be laughed at, it’s better cuz I can act like i’m normal, and just exercising)

But this time….SMH, i posted the link to the folder…..the cover photo of it was from when Natti Banks made me crack eggs all over my dirty bedroom floor…then slurp them up, spit it back into my hands, and rub it all over my face. Then humped my hand for a couple hours while the egg dried, oh and this was AFTER i’d taken a shower!

I tried cleaning it all off, but even the next day, kept finding crusty bits of egg on my face etc

I can’t believe how many beyond embarrassing photos i put in that folder! I’ve exposed myself before of course, but many of these pics had my FACE! And plenty of them….so any kind of lies or explanation to someone who knows me….wouldn’t even be slightly believable.

Reminds me of…last year at some point, when I’d occasionally talk to “Riya Payel” To this day, still THEE goddess I worship above all others….Well, tough to say really, I prob do worship Aurora more…..and hopefully gonna see her this weekend! Omfg i cannot wait!

She’d tweeted about how she “still wanna jump a sub with my friends” 🥵🥵

Fuck I hope they do that! Maybe tell her where I’ll be at a certain time(or she tells me where imma be) and not a particular time and place, so that it’s more of a legit “getting jumped” kinda thing!🥵

Anyway! Back to Riya….the only one who’s absolutely, definitely without question, sadistic. When texting with her, I could actually tell when she’d orgasm! Could even sense a teeny tiny lil bit of guilt, which, if you’d seen what she’s said and done, you’d find hard to believe!

She was always very clear- “I want to destroy you. I want to leave you with nothing, broken, no self esteem, no self worth, no money…I genuinely hope to make you homeless and ruin your life”

Isn’t an exact quote, but she’s def said all that!

Many many findommes on twitter will say this shit, but their actions don’t match their words. But riya? If anything, her actions are somehow worse than her words!

I still cannot truly comprehend how any human could have such venom and hatred in them….(well tbh, i’m almost positive she’s been abused; sexually or otherwise) and whew, ngl, it’s not easy to think about my experiences with God Riya😔

Reminds me just how fucked up I am, mentally/emotionally and ofc sexually. When Riya blackmailed me, she did it 100% without my consent. She knew how much money I had, but since cash app allows you to keep sending, she made me send $18 to her, over and over and over and over…..At a certain point, we both knew that every single send would cost me the $18 PLUS $31 overdraft fee!

She loved that…that’s why it was only the low $18 send!

Last I saw, Riya’s bank account was close to $500k…yes, half a million!

She was also always very clear about the fact that any amount of money that my broke ass could send, wouldn’t even be noticeable to her……Most dommes say that, but with many, it’s quite clear that’s not true…..But riya? Genuine sadism. She’s every pathetic beta loser jerkoff/findom/humiliation addicts dream!

She broke me so badly….I prob sent her a hundred different voice memos…at a certain point, i got serious like “Hey, I understand that maybe i’ve implied that i’m ok with noncon blackmail, but please know, at this point, I’m not ok with what’s happening. I say this with all due respect. Please understand that I sincerely mean every word i’m saying. This has gone way too far….I’m not blaming you, and ofc will not report you or any shit like that….It’s just that well, I’m in serious financial and mental/emotional trouble right now….I’ve said “I’m gonna kill myself” many many times since seeing those photos on my employers FB and IG…I understand that you get off on causing me pain, and I promise that I’ll always be a punching bag for you…but please, I’m scaring myself rn, i’ve never felt like this and I truly terrified of what may happen…I’m coming to you, as one human being to another….I’m reaching out to you, asking, from the bottom of my heart, please help me”

Is essentially what I’d said, many times in various ways…..at this point, there was no longer any reference to anything sexual on my part….This was far beyond that….she took me to another level of self hatred, and my god, I can’t even describe the feeling of such loathing one’s self.

I even began talking to her about the idea of quenching her thirst for sadism in person!

She seemed receptive to it, which ugh, ngl, was exciting to me! She’d never seemed open to it in the past, probably cuz she’s had sooooo many twitter, sextpanther, etc accounts banned…I think eventually every site decided to permanently ban her, considering they must’ve gotten so many complaints from ruined losers. They’d contact her thinking of “blackmail fetish” or even just findom….since sooooo many dommes on twitter say all the same shit that she says, they figured they were safe🙄

Not only does Riya love inflicting real pain, but she’s even said that she’s addicted to it!

Imho, after following her for so long….she definitely means that…I’d imagine it’s even been problematic for her life!

It’s gotta be one hell of a rush! I know it was on my side of things, having myself posted, naked, on my employers social media accounts….being told the pics will be taken down….after i pay $100 for each one….Ofc she knew i not only had no money, but was already very negative!

So, she demanded I open up accounts on apps like Dave, Bridget etc..I began to make one and she got impatient…then simply asked for the info she needed to do it herself….I might’ve hesitated once(or prob just didn’t see her message) and she wasn’t having it, and posted more on my employers IG, along with asking “is this an employee of yours?” With my full legal name. I can’t remember the exact order of things, but suffice it to say, she taught me real quick that she’s in charge, and I’d better comply…So I kept getting text messages from the various creditors, and she expected the pin numbers IMMEDIATELY, which ofc she got…..Also she ofc had all my debit card info, and then i began seeing transactions come through my account somehow! When it had no money whatsoever! How’s that even possible?! site was something like “transact”🤷‍♂️

I was shocked that i was able to get her some more money on Dave or something, but only like $80…she did much better, getting another couple hundred somehow….

Ugh, my dick was rock hard a minute ago���.point is- this bullshit still turns me on far more than anything else ever will😔

Now that i’ve leaned into it so much, and turned it into a legitimate addiction, I can’t see how i’ll ever have normal sex, ever again😔 Or hell, ANY sex really! It’d be one thing if i knew a dominant woman irl….but no domme wants to try and actually date a sub, lol, can you imagine?!

I always tell myself “all i’ve gotta do is not jerk off so much…take just a week off, and I’ll def get nice and hard!” Maybe that’s true….but first off, I can’t go 2 days without fucking my hand, usually for hours n hours n hours….Edging ofc…the few times i have tried to cum in a normal amount of time? It’s not even a legit orgasm! Even my body knows i’m a pathetic loser who doesn’t deserve pleasure.

I’m trying to step back for a moment right now, and really take this all in….I need to fully comprehend what i’ve turned my life into…..I read tweets everyday from many dommes saying “this isn’t a phase. You’re a pathetic loser; your brain is too fucked up, you’ll never recover….” and i’m starting to think it’s true😔

I know that many dommes really don’t have such evil agendas….they’re just saying what they need to say to make tons of cash…I respect that, but my god, I often wonder if they know the damage they’re doing!

Many of them definitely do…you could debate whether or not that makes them a sadist or evil, but ehhh, they’re simply doing what many of us freaks beg them to do!

Many subs get the post nut clarity and get angry, start insulting dommes etc…so they’re familiar with how shitty most men are….

Ooops i didn’t mean to make this sooo long…..oh well

[felinedetached]

Fandom Ableism in the MCYT Community

[Edited 14 June 2021]

One thing I’ve noticed about the MCYT (Dream SMP, specifically) community on both Tumblr and Twitter is that when informed of things that are ableist, or harmful to ND people, a lot of people ignore the post/tweet, derail it or actively fight against it.

“I’m ND so I can’t be ableist” is a common statement, which is blatantly untrue. Even I’ve used ableist terms and phrases before, without realising they were harmful. So as a neurodivergent person, with autism, BPD, depression/anxiety, dyslexia, psychosis & brain damage*: here’s some common ableist things both CCs and fandom say almost constantly**.

*note that not every neurodivergent person will agree with me on these, but these are commonly ableist things people have previously talked about online, and/or have been discussed between me and other neurodivergent friends. No minority can ever speak for the entire group.

**note that a lot of these are common outside the MCYT community as well, and that some of these are just considered societally acceptable. This isn’t okay, but it explains why a lot of people don’t recognise jokes or comments like these are wrong, and it means that it’s not a direct moral failing of people that they don’t immediately or directly recognise these comments as wrong.

Now, let’s get into the things you might not have realised are potentially ableist:

1. Use of “Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath/Schizo” and other demeaning terms for people with mental illnesses as insults, or to describe characters who are considered villainous. Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath are already terms that people with ASPD dislike using, even not as an insult, but using these terms to describe people or characters who you disagree with or see as villainous only contributes to the villainisation of people with ASPD and other mental illnesses. Using c!Dream as an example: Dream as a character is not confirmed to have any of these mental illnesses. He is, however, commonly labeled as psychotic/psychopathic, incapable of any kind of compassion.

He is also a character that fandom largely insists that nobody is allowed to sympathise with. This is a huge issue, and has hurt a lot of people, especially people with low empathy, or mental illnesses that cause them to relate to some of c!Dream’s actions (e.g. pulling away from all his friends, desperately grasping at straws to gain control of situations etc). Insisting that these characters are characters it’s impossible to sympathise with, all while calling them psychotic/psychopathic/sociopathic, is extremely harmful, and I hope this post draws attention to that.

Here’s another post that talks about that.

2. Use of the term “freak”, in general. As an insult, “freak” has been typically used to insult neurodivergent people, people with visible physical disabilities (ex. “freakshow”, and the term was reportedly created with the intent of insulting people with physical disabilities), or people who display any kind of abnormal/atypical social behaviour/physical aspects — people who are usually ND people who lack a diagnosis or people with physical disabilities. Recent usage has come to mean “people who do things that hurt other people”, but this is harmful as well; using words like “freak” or “weirdo” which mean “socially atypical behaviour” to refer to people who are actually doing things that hurt other people conflates the two, and often has a side effect of hurting disabled people who see it.

3. Calling ND ccs like Technoblade monotone/emotionless. While the term “monotone” isn’t ableist in and of itself, the fact that it’s being used against a neurodivergent man who emotes in a different way to neurotypical people rubs a lot of ND people the wrong way. I’ve partially discussed this here, in a tweet responding to a person who said that c!Technoblade, quote, “has no human capabilities like emotion for example”. This, however, is not something contained to c!Technoblade — one of the most common jokes in this fandom is how rare it is to hear emotion in Technoblade’s voice.

The issue with that is that neurodivergent people almost universally agree that Technoblade emotes perfectly fine, and, in fact, emotes more freely and clearly than a lot of others do. Hence, calling him monotone perpetuates the idea of ND people as emotionless/less able to be hurt/less expressive, which often hurts us. It also contributes to the dehumanisation of ND people — related to how ND symptoms are most often seen in robots or monsters in shows — and is generally extremely harmful, on top of being untrue.

4. Related to point 3: the infantilisation of ND ccs like Tubbo and Dream, usually paired with assigning “caretakers” of their friends, like Tommy and George. This is about the posts that spread like “omg, Tommy helps Tubbo with his dyslexia, that’s so cute” or “omg George is so patient with Dream, I could never sit through that” on videos of Dream vocally stimming because of his ADHD. This is another post that talks about this, but I wanted to talk more about why this is harmful here.

4a) With Tubbo’s dyslexia, from someone with dyslexia, it isn’t harmful to correct his spelling and move on. Personally, I think this is helpful — others will think it’s condescending, because not all ND people are the same — but as the above linked post mentions, this is not what Tubbo’s twitch chat does. This is not what the comments say. It’s all things about how it’s “so cute” that Tubbo can’t spell, how Tommy/Ranboo are “so patient” with correcting him. This is rooted in the need to constantly watch over ND people while acting like we can't live our lives without someone having us under constant vigilance. It feels like savior-complex ableism, like people are trying so hard to not be ableist that they spin back around to hurting us instead. And it feels like we are being treated like children. Like we are lesser than, and need to be monitored/watched over.

4b) Similarly to what people do with Tubbo, the comments on posts about Dream’s vocal stimming are often full of people calling George “patient” for “dealing with it”, or claiming they “wouldn’t be able to handle it”. This is inherently ableist. They’re praising George for basic human decency towards ND people, and claiming in the same breath that they wouldn’t be able to do that themselves. And then there’s these.

These comments infantilise Dream — claiming he “wouldn’t be able to stop/calm down” without George’s help, implying he’d “spiral out of control” or claiming “everyone is now my child”. It’s all related to the infantilisation of ND people, and the belief that without help/a caretaker we cannot take care of ourselves.

5. The way people treat ccs who likely have undiagnosed neurodivergencies, like Wilbur. Wilbur has openly admitted on stream before that his parents considered getting him an autism diagnosis. He also openly admits on stream that he has habits he doesn’t understand why he does, and hyperfixates on things for months at a time and doesn’t know why. Posts like this have gone around Tumblr, in which Wilbur displays blatantly ND traits.

And fandom generally calls him weird for expressing those traits. This video where he talks about eating sand because he likes the texture? That’s an ND trait. This video where he talks about his irrational hatred for anteaters? While mostly a joke, irrational hatred of something when you can’t explain/understand/articulate why is also a common ND trait. He spends 20 minutes during a Philza stream info-dumping about self-sustaining ecosystems (sharing the photo, because I think it’s really cool) and fandom begins calling them “Wilbur’s weird jars”. It’s demeaning to people who infodump, and as a ND person who hyperfixates and infodumps it’s really upsetting to see. It’s also upsetting to see other ND traits being called “weird” or “freaky” & made out to be soley some funny joke for NT people to laugh at us about.

Additionally: It’s strange to me that people think it’s okay to make fun of ND traits just because they know that or perceive that the person they’re making fun of is NT. It’s still making fun of ND traits. It’s still insulting ND people. It’s still ableist as hell. Why is it okay just because the person is NT?

6. Implying that c!Ranboo’s enderwalking is inherently violent. Ranboo has shown us time and time again that the enderwalk state isn’t a violent state. That the enderwalk state isn’t a seperate version of c!Ranboo that does horrific things. Why, then, is it so common to imply that Ranboo would be violent and hurt people why he’s enderwalking?

It comes back to the perception of c!Ranboo as a character with “two halves”, or as a character with DID. Ranboo has made it clear that his character does not have DID, but this headcanon about his character persists, and it persists in a way that is directly harmful to people with DID — and to people who dissociate or sleepwalk. We do not commit horrific acts while we dissociate, while we’re sleepwalking, because the majority of the time we’re just checked out, our body is on autopilot. Insinuating that we do is harmful. Insinuating that Ranboo has “another half” that’s inherently violent or evil is harmful to people with DID. I’m not going to ask you to stop writing these headcanons etc, but please consider the effect you have on people before you do.

7. Related to point 6: the perception of c!Ranboo as “soft” and “cute” and/or perfectly moral because of his canonical anxiety. This is really harmful, and comes once again from the infantilisation of disorders like anxiety and depression. Ranboo has made clear time and time again that his character isn’t moral, and in fact is extremely inconsistent. He’s portrayed his character as inconsistent, as someone who hurts his friends unintentionally and often due to his want to please everyone, and yet he’s constantly seen as “soft/pure/the only moral one” because of his anxiety causing to have repeated and consistent spirals on-screen. These spirals are not healthy. They don’t indicate his “perfect morals” or make him more moral than anyone else on the SMP. Please stop infantilising people with anxiety, it’s really hurtful.

8. Implying that c!Technoblade is inherently a violent person because of his voices. I’ll admit here: my hallucinations are visual. I do not get auditory hallucinations, and I cannot speak for people who do. But many people have spoken out about this, and discussed how talking about Technoblade as an inherently violent character because of his voices is harmful, and a stereotype of people with schizophrenia.

Technoblade’s character is, in and of itself, inherently a stereotype (despite the fact that his chat are more likely to be a supernatural entity than a symptom of a disorder such as schizophrenia) in that the idea of “hearing voices that encourage violence” is a stereotype of people with schizophrenia. As an actual symptom, is a very uncommon one. More common auditory hallucinations for people with schizophrenia or psychosis are, reportedly, whispers or unrelated conversation. One of my friends hears screaming.

But the issue is with the implication that c!Technoblade is “driven to violence” by the voices. Canonically, he has dealt with the “bloodlust” of chat by grinding withers. He’s perfectly capable of being peaceful, even with “voices pushing for violence”, and he’s perfectly capable of being violent without the “voices” influence. It’s the connotations and the history that fandom has in demonising and villainising c!Technoblade for even having the “voices” in the first place, and acting having them makes him inherently violent and unstable. There’s precedent for that already in society, and it’s not okay to perpetuate it.

[Edit: as of 22/05/2021, I do experience auditory hallucinations, and I can confirm that I am not any more violent, and the voices I hear don’t push me to violence. The clearest one just said ‘click’ in my ear.]

9. Jokes about brain damage and the use of “brainrot” as a term. I made a post about how common jokes about brain damage are here, and I would like to reiterate bits of it.

Jokes like these are really really normalized in modern society. I’m sure a lot of you didn’t even register it as wrong, and that isn’t a moral failing! It’s a norm in society, and that means the majority of people arent going to register it as something hurtful, because it’s said so often. But it does still hurt. The idea of using a disability as an insult is really harmful and it feels dehumanizing, like our disability makes us lesser, something that should be laughed at.

“Brainrot” as a term originated in Skyrim, as a disease that literally rotted your brain. However, as a term, it has very similar connotations to “brain damaged” and has been used in similarly joking and insulting ways. It’s something that feels really off to me and other neurodivergent people to see used by neurotypical people. It even sometimes feels uncomfortable when used by neurodivergent people, even if it’s used in positive ways. I know quite a few people who have removed it from their vocab completely because of the connotations, and I have personally done the same. Once again, I am just asking you to please consider your words before you use them.

10. Calling c!Wilbur during his Pogtopia Arc “Vilbur”. Yes, he was a villain. Yes, he hurt people. But c!Wilbur during the Pogtopia Arc only has one major difference from c!Wilbur during the L’Manburg Arc: a visible depiction of mental illness, specifically paranoia and psychosis. Treating him as a seperate person and calling that seperate person “Vilbur” comes across as extremely hurtful, and contributes to the villainisation of mentally ill people. His mental illness does not excuse him from hurting people, but calling c!Wilbur “Vilbur” upsets a lot of us, because wether or not it’s intended, it feels reductive, hurtful, and insulting.

If you got to the end of this post, thank you so much for reading. I hope that this helped you recognise things that you might not have known were ableist, and that you consider what I’ve said here. I also know that I haven’t addressed everything ableist that’s spread through the MCYT fandom community, so if you’re ND and have something you’d like to add, please feel free.

[mitchtheficus]

A Golden Lovers Timeline

PART 6: SEIZE THE THRONE

Welcome to the pining chapter(s) of this love story

New Years Dash is one of my favorite events in NJPW, it takes place the day after WK and it generally sets up new storylines for the year to come. you never really know what’s going to happen

this particular NYD (Jan 5th, 2016 - Official LINK, Unofficial LINK) is extremely good. Kenny and AJ have a tag match against Nakamura and YOSHI-HASHI, and Kenny (still a junior) pins Nakamura (the IC champion) winning the match. It’s the exact kind of Proving himself he set out to do by joining bullet club

and as they celebrate the victory Kenny looks over at AJ Styles

[ID: AJ stands on the second rope of the right turnbuckle, hands raised in victory. On the other side of the ring Kenny is prepared to do the same but he stops, puts his foot back on the mat and turns his head to look over at AJ. End ID]

and goes, i’ve had enough of this fuckin guy

[ID: Kenny gets AJ on his shoulders from where AJ was standing on the turnbuckle in the last gif. AJ flails and Kenny hits him with the one-winged angel. End ID]

The other members of bullet club rush out to intervene, but when it comes down to a question of Kenny vs anyone else (a question they are forced to face fairly often), the Young Bucks pick Kenny.

[ID: two gifs. in the first the young bucks crowd Kenny into the turnbuckle, speaking closely to him while the other bullet club members are huddled around AJ's prone body. in the second the other members of the bullet club have AJ standing up with their help and Kenny and the Bucks superkick him. End ID]

Always.

[ID: two screenshots from twitter, in the first Matt Jackson posts a collage, with photos of the bucks being buddies with Devitt, AJ and Adam Cole on the left, and on the right pictures of them kicking them out of the bullet club with the twitter caption: “We’ve had to make a couple executive decisions over the years.” Someone replied “When’s Kenny” and Matt quote retweets saying “Wherever Kenny goes, We go.” Kenny has liked the tweet. End ID]

(at least in this story)

Kenny didn't sell his soul, carve out his own heart, and get saddled with a ring name like “The Cleaner” just so he could be some lowly underling. Now that he’s had a chance to feel the full breadth and depth of his own ambition, he’s come to believe that he is The Best Wrestler in the World and he’s ready to prove it. Who the hell is AJ Styles anyway?

[ID: Screenshot from the documentary Second Home. Kenny is saying: "I can finally take my position as the rightful leader. And yes I say the rightful, I should have always been the leader" End ID]

Kenny was just holding himself back out of some kind of misplaced loyalty to AJ

[ID: Gif of Kenny's promo after betraying AJ, he says: "While I struggled! While I starved! Forcing myself to be a junior!" End ID]

Of course he’s been a True heavyweight all along, only faking being a junior to accommodate AJ’s ego. But no longer. He has to reach as far as possible and AJ’s in his way

This moment is also the birth of The Elite (a group comprised of Kenny and the Bucks, separate from and Above the rest of the bullet club, the rest of njpw and roh, and the rest of wrestlers generally)

[ID: picture of Kenny posing over AJ’s slumped body while the bucks do their pose on their side of him. I’m not sure it’s intentional but it mirrors the pose Devitt did when BC beat Kenny in the super juniors. End ID]

When we next see Kenny his gear has changed

until now heel!Kenny has been wearing black trunks with two golden wings on the back framing the bullet club logo

[ID: image of the trunks described above]

but heavyweight!Kenny’s got full length pants!

[ID: screenshots of Kenny’s entrance, his pants are swirly pinks and black, with blue fringe down the sides, Bucks are with him wearing colorful pants with fringe at the bottom. End ID]

and they are multi-purpose

1. Kenny irl wasn’t especially interested in the silent/cold/calculating “badass” character njpw gave him, these new pants are colorful and a bit silly, asserting his own interpretation of his character over the company’s (kind of like with the broom shtick)

2. they kind of match the Young Bucks’ gear (colorful and with fringe), signaling their connection

3. these pants become Kenny’s Not A Serious Match gear, he only wears them when he’s in matches that he sees as Unimportant, and for those matches he also keeps his shirt on. So they can be used to demonstrate his contempt for his opponents (wearing them even in title matches against those he sees as unworthy etc.)

[ID: two gifs of Kenny speaking to the camera in a ring. in the first he says: “No black tights today! We keepin’ this shirt on! Not a big match.” End ID]

We see his Serious Match pants for the first time a little later, in a tag match against Tanahashi. it’s his first match as a heavyweight against someone who matters, and it’s the lead up to their IC title match

On this new gear are two wings, one is complete and whole, made of silver and gold feathers

[ID: the wing described above. End ID]

the other is skeletal and almost completely bare except for a few lone feathers still clinging to the bones

[ID: the wing described above. End ID]

(how dramatic is that. to put your broken heart on your gear and only wear it to important events in your life)

Kenny and Tana’s IC title match is really, really fun (Feb 14, 2016 - Official LINK, Unofficial LINK) there is some ridiculous, elaborate cheating involving the bucks, it’s so funny that one of the japanese commentators actually bursts out laughing

(this isn’t important but Red Shoes DOES kick at the young bucks in this match and i love him)

[ID: gif from the match. Kenny is laying near the edge of the ring while the bucks spray Cold Spray on his knee. Red Shoes sees them and runs over, sticking his leg through the ropes to kick at them. End ID]

Kenny wins

it’s a huge moment, not only because it’s his first heavyweight title (something Kota was never able to achieve) but also because he wins it from Hiroshi Tanahashi, the Ace of NJPW, one of the Big Three wrestlers of NJPW, and Kota’s wrestling god

[ID: picture of Kenny’s post-match promo, saying “ You have a new valentine. You have a new hero. You have a new god! You will love me!” End ID]

NJPW makes a short documentary called Second Home [April 2016 - Official LINK, Unofficial LINK] about Kenny as new IC champ. In it they go to the location of his first match against Kota, and it’s clear that even now, in this moment of triumph, Kenny is still mourning Kota’s absence

[ID: two gifs of Kenny from the documentary Second Home. He says: “Back then [...] he was the real Golden Star, he had everythinggg in the palm of his hands, he was the future, and that day [their first match] I just wasn’t good enough. Boy, things have changed. Really changed.” he looks wistful. End ID]

He’s openly wondering where Kota could be, making little comments that seem to simultaneously plead for Kota to come back and dare him to

“I thought from then [their first match] I had found my arch-nemesis. My rival. And then...as time went on, we became friends. Best friends. But alas... It's a new day. It's a new year. Everything's completely different. I'm the intercontinental champion and Ibushi is nowhere to be found. Where is he? I don't know. So will there ever be a match? I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe he's not in my league anymore. He's just old feelings. You know, like when you miss your ex-girlfriend. It's kind of like that. Just something that stays with you in your heart.” - Kenny in Second Home

Kenny may not know where in the world Kota has gone off to, but he’s about to find out

during the last few months Kota has been enjoying his time being a freelancer on the indies, wrestling as a representative of “the Ibushi Pro Wrestling Research Institute” and now his wanderings have taken him all the way to WWE

[ID: Screenshot of WWE’s article with the headline “Kota Ibushi shows up at NXT TakeOver: Dallas” with a picture of Kota in the crowd. End ID]

in June 2016 Kota is announced as an entrant in WWE’s Cruiserweight Classic tournament

[ID: Kota stands in the middle of the CWC ring, wearing a CWC shirt (part of the parade of cruiserweights). End ID]

(Kenny is unimpressed)

“For him to do that, be a junior in WWE, isn't that embarrassing? I can do so much more here (in New Japan)." - Kenny (translation by Chris Charlton)

(wouldn’t you rather be here, Kota? In NJPW? With me? Being a heavyweight? With me?)

and while Kota tests out the waters in America, Kenny gets ready to participate in his first ever G1 Climax

[PART 7] [ALL PARTS]

[shinelikethunder]

tinkering off and on with a custom theme whose codename is either "maximalism" or "social animals"

concept 1 is that it supports Fucking Everything and will dump Fucking Everything onto the page by default. tags, of course. post timestamps. post types. note counts. search. custom blog pages. day page links. prev/next post on permalink pages. chrono links on tag pages. likes and following (if enabled). pinned post labels. fancy readmores. submitted-by info. members / post authors (on group blogs). content sources. image clickthrough links. embedded-gif attributions. photo exif data. audio ID3 tags. link thumbnail/author/excerpt. extensive reblog info. share links, embed links, like/reblog buttons, a fucking "view in dash overlay" button for both posts and blogs. disqus support. semi-documented features like related tags/posts and highlighted photos. the "recent tweets" integration if i'm feeling really masochistic.

concept 2 is that showcasing Your Content nicely is all well and good, but most of the people I know use this site for its social features. so: reblog trails should be flat with no blockquote hell. reblogged-via and root-post info should be displayed as nicely and extensively as possible, and it should be clear who the OP is. original posts should be visually distinct from reblogs and your reblog comments should be highlighted somehow. @-mentions and those grody "(via blogname)" links on quote posts should be visually distinct from vanilla links. new-style link/multimedia blocks in "text" posts should be styled nicely too, with additional info extracted from the NPF JSON if needed. possibly a built-in section for Other Site Account links or extra "about" info. remove (to the extent possible) the nag screens for mobile users, "href.li" link crud, etc. it'd be really cool to offer floaty "prev/next post" scroll buttons or J/K and ←/→ keyboard navigation.

concept 3 is that tiny type and scavenger-hunt pagination links are OUT, stupidly narrow post width is OUT, icon-only navigation is OUT, tags that don't copy nicely or aren't properly inline are OUT, microdata formats are IN, and all the styling/size/spacing choices anyone would want to tinker with belong in variables that can be overridden by custom CSS alone. also customizable googlefonts for the chat monospace, the quote serif, and the faux cursive as well as the standard title & body fonts.

.......i have a WIP theme on a sideblog that does like 70% of this, including the hard parts like handling the vagaries of new-style reblog trails. but god it's ugly. not, like, "there's too much there for it to work," just the styling is still super halfassed. fully half of what's left is making it Not Ugly, including tinkering with the weird styling on NPF blocks. and the rest is remembering that people who make their likes/following visible or have a twitter integration or use social-media share buttons actually, you know, exist.

(the Vision theme does an awful lot of this already, but it makes me specifically miss detailed/ubiquitous post timestamps and day page links, and there are cases where the OP of a reblog is ambiguous or misleading. and if i'm going to roll my own theme i definitely wanna toss in visual markers for originals, reblog comments, and mentions)

[bigbrotherlouis]

i’m obsessed with joel farabee and morgan frost and you should be too: a primer

hello! welcome! recently i have become infatuated with morgan frost and joel farabee for a lot of reasons but mostly because of that one post that i spent like twenty minutes searching various blogs for that said “people are freaking out about sexualising hockey players, meanwhile joel farabee is one instagram comment away from telling morgan frost he’d suck him dry.” in my head rent free. hit a girl up if you have the post.

anyway! frosty and beezy:

[hard cut to me whispering “oh my god even their nUMBERS are friends” i’m fine.]

this is more like about vibes and less about facts, so you can google if you want to know more about their, like, bios and stats and stuff that’s not 99% rpf or conjecture. this primer is just the things that make me scream. however, that being said, they do play well on a line together and both are very good players.

joel farabee is american, from new york i believe but his dad is from philly, and falls neatly into the category of BORN TO BE A FLYER. longtime fan, hugely excited to play for the team, brings it up all the time.

morgan frost, from ontario canada, was not.

a real, actual tweet. he tweeted this with his WHOLE chest and then joined the flyers like three years later. i adore it. another real actual tweet i adore:

sweet, sweet joel. he misses his buddies :( no doubt including morgan because they are, by all appearances, obsessed with each other. i’m trying not to keep  using the word obsessed in this primer but it’s hard because they are. morgan’s a year older, a first round draft pick in 2017 and joel’s a first round pick in 2018, but they didn’t start playing together until 2019, i believe, because joel played for a college team in boston. side note: he also captained team usa and wore a number 28 in honour of claude giroux and i am absolutely not okay about it.

e! mo! tion! al! incidentally, frosty wears danny briere’s number when he plays for the flyers, which. take from that what you will. iykyk. their NUMBERS are FRIENDS. HERITAGE SOULMATES. joel’s been called up to play on the flyers (and did really well in the playoffs!) but we’re still waitin’ for morgan to come along too but the coaching staff hasn’t recognised the raw power of true love yet so.

at this point, you’re probably saying “sasha shut up about their fucking numbers and talk about why they’re obsessed with each other” but good news! i do not need to do that because the official flyers media has done that for me! (x) i’d recommend watching it because it’s a lot packed into a neat 100 seconds, but notable moments include the voice over saying “joel farabee and morgan frost have found that going at it together has its benefits” within the first thirty seconds. that is a real direct quote. i can’t believe it either. there’s also a lot of light homoerotic bonding over playing chel, them sitting across from each other  on their beds, the admission of being ROOMMATES (oh my god they were roommates), this shot of them sitting with their mouths wide open on either side of their dad,

and also joel wearing a hat with a canadian maple leaf on it, despite being from the the united states. wonder where he got that from. please watch the video.

when they’re not playing chel or, you know, going at it together, they’re being horny in each other’s instagram comments. there’s honestly.... so many of these that i can include but we’re just gonna go with my favourites.

when i say i think about this comment on a picture of morgan with isaac ratcliffe, a fellow flyers prospect on a daily basis, i mean it. i’ll be just doing my thing, minding my own business, and MORGAN MAKES ME VENMO HIM JUST TO TALK will pop into my head, completely uninvited. king shit for morgan to do and king shit for joel to admit on social media for the world to see, but joel admitting things he maybe shouldn’t is a running theme. 

cool. TOTALLY not flirting or anything.

joel. also both their exhibitionist streaks should be explored in fic more i am JUST sayin.

ok but bee you were lookin. like you can chirp but you were lookin, don’t lie. 

when ur in love with ur roommate but ur both hockey players so u can only communicate that love via chirping when he’s with the boys :(

what’s it called when you vibe really well with someone and also live with them and also comment on their shirtlessness and also maybe kiss them on the mouth a little? d... da... dating?? can’t be it.

morgan is a little more composed in the comments and mostly just posts inside jokes i cannot comprehend, or compliments. it’s still cute.

this was on a playoffs pic where joel’s wearing #28 love 2 see it love a supportive boyf always

this one was of joel with a fish he caught and i’m sorry but i did not want it on my phone.

but morgan can’t hide his affection for long. (me, in the distance: TWENTY EIGHT TWENTY EIGHT TWENTY EIGHT!!!!!!!)

there’s more comments but they’re boring and this is long, mostly joel chirping  morgan for wearing baseball or football stuff. however! they are also on twitter where they keep each other humble after incredible goals, like bros do,

this is DEFINITELY flirting. like, blatant. it’s like that kind of flirting when you’re thirteen and you don’t know what to do with your body so you just kinda steal your crush’s stuff or insult them because all attention is good attention, right??

but when push comes to shove, beezy is always gonna look out for his boy (because they are in love):

some important pictures of them together, for your pleasure: 

this is so DUMB and i love it

friends supporting friends!!!

this is them meeting their hockey dads :) so cute :) joel is promising g that he’ll have morgan back by ten yessir he will be respectful of boundaries and curfew. jake is high fiving morgan on getting some. this is facts i just call em like i see em.

and finally!

is this allowed?????  is this allowed???? it’s hard to tell but i’m pretty sure that’s joel on his knees for in front of morgan and i just??? how is that allowed???? it’s been five days and this picture has RUINED me. someone write me an essay to have on my desk by morning, stat.

also v unrelated but here is a video of morgan frost reading, proving he’s the smart one in the relationship. that’s not saying much but, hey! at least there’s proof he can read.

obviously different ships capture people in different ways but there’s something about them to me, personally, that is just so captivating. there’s a lot of potential for different fic vibes, and joel in particular always has a really fun voice to read (and also to write). they definitely have chemistry, they’re pitted against each other so there’s a good-natured rivalry going on, CLOTHES SHARING AND HERITAGE SOULMATE NUMBERS, and, like, they just genuinely seem to enjoy each other. someone PLEASE write more fic for them or by god i’ll have to do it myself.

ok that’s everything for now, i believe. they’re in love and don’t care who knows it and i’m obsessed. (however, i’m also obsessed with joel farabee and andrei svechnikov together, for which i have a one-picture argument for here.)

(p.s. anything not linked i screenshotted myself thank youuu for reading have a good day and remember: morgan makes joel vemno him just to talk 😌)

edit: hello. i wrote this on election night as a way to take off the edge of my nerves and it is not as funny or screechy as i wanted it to be so i’m going to add some now.  

[a-womans-rhetoric]

Natalie Wynn's "J.K. Rowling" and Disruptive use of Women's Rhetorical Tropes: A Defiant Reply to Transmisogyny

ContraPoints, surrounded by an opulent, candle-lit set and adorned in witch's garb, leisurely pours champagne into her glass — she's ready to breach the internet's hottest topic of January, 2021: her childhood idol being outed as a transphobe (link here). The video itself being over an hour and a half long, I would be hard-pressed to claim that I could ever hope to cover its entirety, comprehensively, in a single post. So to save-face, I'll be dedicating this space only to breaking down her most frequently used rhetorical tropes, one by one.

Irreverence

"Joanne, I wanna talk to you, Joanne! [Fans herself with a rainbow paper fan with the word "BIOLOGICAL" written across it] What is it about Joannes? I can't catch a break from these people" (00:23-00:29, emphasis added).

Wynn's introductory lines immediately open a dialogue with J.K. Rowling — however, this invitation of discourse is defiantly "irreverent" (reminiscent of Nomy Lamm's punk-feminist style in "It’s a Big Fat Revolution” (1995)). Contrapoints, herself a transgender woman, is aware that her very existence is considered in opposition to the TERF-ideology that Rowling subscribes to. Thus, she's rather playful — even openly disrespectful — with her diction: calling the British author by her first name in a mocking-tone and flaunting her own trans identity to the camera (in a way that would likely offend the fragile sensibilities of a transphobe). Her personal tone (with ample use of the pronoun "I") servers a duplicitous purpose: a simultaneous message of "sit down and listen" and a fair degree of "I don't care if you can't accept me."

"So, now that 2020 is finally over, I think we can let the record conclusively show that it was a year whomst is bad. And on top of everything else going on, truly the last thing we needed was the author of Harry Potter coming forward to announce there's two things she can't stand: bigotry, and the transgenders. (00:31 - 00:50, emphasis added).

Finally broaching the subject at hand directly, Wynn employs kairos alongside her irreverence. Kairos, or the rhetorical use of an "opportune moment," holds incredible weight in the first month after 2020: the year in which the whole world fell into a stasis. Characterizing Rowling's transphobia as a collective "the last thing we needed," is also rather dismissive — she unites herself with her audience with the pronoun "we" and invites us all to groan at the exasperating nature of Rowling's bigotry.

Claiming the Right to Speak / Personal Experience

"This is a painful topic for me all around because, as a transgender woman, I am honestly really hurt by a lot of the things Joanne has said in the last year. But I also know what it's like to be the target of a Twitter mob" (01:36-01:47).

As she begins to touch on the topic, Natalie Wynn claims the right to speak on the issue of Rowling's transphobia — a type of bigotry that directly effects her. However, Wynn also situates herself partially with Rowling in her acknowledgement that receiving Twitter backlash is a terrifying experience (an experience, she argues, that the human brain is not prepared to handle the scale of, 01:49-02:39). In treating her subject with such dignity — and adding her own deeply personal account— ContraPoints creates a credible ethos in the beginning of her video essay. The audience is inclined to listen to someone who has been directly effected by the subject of Rowling's controversy (transphobia) and someone who is, rather compassionately, willing to empathize with those who would wish her harm. Although the generally sassy, glamorous, and irreverent tone of the video still appears soon after (see: the above image), her opening up for this somber moment garners a fair degree pathos in the viewer — we, as human beings, are inclined to sympathize with people who are open about being hurt.

Metis (Embodied Rhetoric)

[The following ContraPoints quote is addressing the above J.K. Rowling tweet, content warning for transmisogyny] "Transphobes love to play this game where they pretend that trans people just don't understand basic biology, that's our problem! As if I didn't start taking female hormones because I'm acutely aware that my body is not the same as a cis woman's body, that sex is real. "[Fictional TERF character] You will never be a woman, Nathan. Every cell in your body is male and has a Y chromosome." Really? That's crazy. How you'd you learn so much about science? You know I don't really feel the need to have a second X chromosome, I get by with only one, I make it work. I actually like the Y chromosome, I think it's a little more dainty, you know, it's little softer, a little more petite. The X chromosome has a lot of extra appendages, and don't you think? I don't need anymore of those, thanks. No trans person thinks it's possible to change chromosomal sex and to pretend otherwise is to argue in bad faith" (08:47-09:34).

If you can excuse my gargantuan quote, I hope you'll agree that the dialogue ContraPoints builds here was just too good to cut short. Within this excerpt, we see Wynn's use of irreverance and personal experience blended seamlessly together. For this YouTuber, the personal is perpetually political — especially when her own identity is constantly taken as an ideological stance. She uses her own expertise in trans issues to pick apart just how disingenuous Rowling's assertions are — even accusing her of "argue[ing] in bad faith" with her reductive claims (later, taking specific issue with how Rowling treats trans-ness as a costume). But, here, she also directly invokes another rhetorical trope: that of metis, or embodied rhetoric. Natalie Wynn specifically references her transgender body as a sort of counterpoint to the condescending "sex is real" claims by TERFs. She cites her intrinsic desire to pursue hormonal therapy as evidence that she — and other trans people like her — are all "acutely aware" that there are chromosomal differences between themselves and cis women. With this salient statement, she then follows with some humor: which, again, utilizes her trans body in her rhetoric. Her characterization of the Y chromosome as "more petite" and playful declaration of not needing "extra appendages" lightens up the often dark tone that arguing for trans rights and liberation can take. The clever points she makes are by no means weakened by her humor — if anything, the audience is more willing to listen to someone who can "joke about themselves" (so to speak) while still arguing an incredibly important message.

Naming and Defining Issues

"When I see Joanne tweeting about how trans people think sex isn't real and they're erasing same-sex attraction and they're silencing women, alarm bells are ringing because I recognize these as familiar transphobic talking points, specifically TERF talking points. "TERF" means trans exclusionary radical feminism. God are we still talking about this? I promise this is the last time. So TERFism is a hate movement that disguises transphobia as feminism. ... The fundamental problem with TERFs is not that they're mean. It's that they're politically reactionary, they want to reverse the progress of trans liberation." (14:05-16:02)

In her definition of TERF rhetoric, Natalie Wynn outlines some dog-whistles that are obvious to her, as a trans woman. She calmly explains to the viewer that, oftentimes in the present-day, rhetorics of exclusion are thoroughly disguised; TERFs, specifically, hide their rampant transphobia as a form of feminism. However, she further clarifies that the specific "danger" that TERFs pose is not from their cruelty — it's from their fervent dedication to strip away trans rights through political means. By specifying this danger, Natalie Wynn shifts the conversation away from empty discussion of offensiveness/terminology, to issues which directly affect the lives of trans people every day.

[This portion addresses the picture above] Also an act of naming and defining, ContraPoints makes a distinction between "Direct" and "Indirect Bigotry." She argues that many people envision bigotry as a festering, public, frothing-at-the-mouth hatred — a phenomenon she dubs "the Westboro Baptist Church theory of bigotry" (20:06). In bringing attention to the human tendency to think of people as exclusively practicing "direct bigotry" — envisioning them as a sort of delusional "other" — she then forces the audience to contemplate the relative omni-presence of the more covert (and possibly alluring) "indirect bigotry." This definition, crucially, requires introspection. By allowing ourselves to think of bigots not exclusively as "Westboros," we're made to adopt a much more nuanced view of subjects (most) generally prefer to keep black-and-white. Natalie Wynn uses her J.K. Rowling case study to complicate this 2D view of "The Bigot," inviting others to more carefully examine how politically reactionary views develop.

Phew, this was probably the longest post I've ever typed up on tumblr! Hopefully, I succeeded in demystifying (or at least adding clarity to) some of the specific tropes ContraPoints uses (that are common to women's rhetorics as a whole). Thanks for reading if you stuck around this long, and my ask box is always open!

[snowonthebeachmp3]

July 2016

Jul 3rd - Taylor's 4th of July festivities kick off at her Rhode Island house. Guests include Tom Hiddleston, Abigail Anderson, Matt Lucier, Claire Winter, Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Karlie Kloss, Josh Kushner, Austin Swift, Ruby Rose, Harley Gusman, Halston Sage, Gigi Hadid, Cara Delevingne, Britany Maack, Ben LaManna, Martha Hunt, Jason McDonald, Uzo Aduba, Chioma Aduba, Jordan Masterson, Kesha, St Vincent, Ed Sheeran, Cherry Seaborn, Rachel Platten, Kennedy Rayé and the Haim sisters. (x) (x) (x) (x)

This is the day Tom wears the infamous 'I <3 TS' tank top while they're all at the beach. (x)

Jul 4th - The online mockery for the 'I <3 TS' shirt is quick to pour in. Daily Mail commenters are yet to shut up about it in 2021.

The party continues with a giant inflatable waterslide, body painting, karaoke, charades and fireworks. (x) And also Kesha and Haim getting tricked by Cara, Uzo and Ruby into thinking they heard scary noises in the night, and trying to call the police but not knowing their own location. (x) (x)

Jul 5th - The day after the party, when all the guests post their photos online.

Britany posts a photo of her & Ben, Blake & Ryan, and Taylor & Tom. (x) The internet has a field day with Ryan's unimpressed facial expression. (x) (Ryan later says that it's just his resting bitch face as he wasn't aware a photo was being taken. (x))

Taylor posts several photos to Instagram of her celebrating the 4th July with friends, but doesn't post any pictures with Tom. (x)

Claire Winter posts a bunch of Polaroids, including one of Taylor and Tom kissing. (x)

Abigail posts a photo to Instagram showing the banners Taylor put up to celebrate her engagement to Matt and the anniversaries of Cara & St Vincent (real name Annie Clark) and Ed & Cherry. (x)

Jul 6th - Taylor and Tom fly out of Rhode Island (x) and arrive at LAX that evening. (x) They then get on a plane to Australia.

Joe attends the Warner Music Group summer party in London. (x)

Rumours are swirling that Tom is no longer in consideration to be the next Bond, due to his relationship with Taylor. (x) (x) (x) (x) (x)

Jul 8th - Taylor and Tom are flying on a commercial Quantas flight so someone is able to take a pic of them on the plane. (x)

According to another passenger on the plane, Taylor plays Scrabble during the flight (presumably on her phone because nobody takes big physical board games on commercial flights and the creepshot of Hiddleswift on the plane suggests she wouldn't have had anywhere to put the board anyway). In hindsight, knowing how Taylor and Joe play lots of Scrabble together including online Scrabble aka Words With Friends, and how they stayed in touch largely via texting that summer, it’s very possible she was playing against Joe.

Taylor and Tom arrive in Sydney, where Tom is about to start filming for Thor: Ragnarok. (x) Aussie media, including daytime TV, goes nuts over Hiddleswift's arrival in the country. (x)

Flying from LA to Australia involves crossing the international dateline, so they would have left the US on the 6th July local time and arrived in Sydney approx 15 hours later on the 8th July local time.

Calvin's new song Olé, written for John Newman, is released. There is speculation that it's a Hiddleswift song, written from Tom's perspective and containing lyrics implying that Taylor cheated on Calvin with Tom. However, sources also told multiple outlets that the song was written and recorded months earlier, and its supposed links to Hiddleswift were just for publicity. (x) (x)

Jul 9th - Tom goes out for a run (x) and avoids answering questions about Taylor. (x)

Jul 10th - Taylor and Tom go out for dinner to Gemelli Italian restaurant in Broadbeach on Australia's Gold Coast. (x)

Jul 11th - Taylor is named as the highest earning celebrity on the 2016 Forbes Celebrity 100 list, with earnings of $170m mostly due to the 1989 World Tour. If she and Calvin had not split up, they would have been the top-earning celebrity couple. (x)

Jul 12th - Taylor visits Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in South Brisbane. (x)

Jul 13th - Us Weekly makes a wild claim that Tom is planning to propose soon, and Taylor is going to say yes. The magazine cover also claims they're already talking about babies. (x)

TMZ claims that Taylor wrote TIWYCF, and that Calvin disrespecting Taylor following its release was the reason for their breakup. (x)

Taylor Swift really is the creative brains behind Calvin Harris' monster hit "This is What You Came For," and their relationship fell apart because he disrespected her when the song was released ... this according to sources connected with Taylor.

It's a fascinating story. We've learned an early fan rumor about the song is true, but to a deeper extent than anyone suspected. During their relationship, Taylor wrote the song, sat down at a piano and did a demo into her iPhone. She sent it to Calvin, who loved it. They both went into a studio and did a full demo with Taylor on vocals and Calvin doing the beat.

They both knew the song would be a hit, but Taylor wrote it for Calvin and both agreed it was a bad idea to let the world know they collaborated as a couple ... it would overshadow the song.

So Taylor, who kept the publishing rights, used the pseudonym Nils Sjoberg on the credits.

//

The problem in the relationship came the day the song was released. Calvin appeared on Ryan Seacrest's radio show and Ryan asked, "Will you do a collaboration with your girlfriend?" Calvin responded, "You know we haven't even spoken about it. I can't see it happening though."

We're told Taylor was hurt and felt Calvin took it too far.

It was a quick downward spiral from that point. One source called it "the breaking point in the relationship." The Met Gala was several days later, when Taylor danced with Tom Hiddleston.

Tree confirms to People magazine that Taylor did write TIWYCF under the pseudonym Nils Sjöberg. (x)

Calvin also confirms that Taylor wrote TIWYCF and goes on a Twitter rant:

Katy Perry tweets a gif of Hillary Clinton with a smug/'told you so' expression. (x) She also retweets an older tweet from May 2015 which reads, 'Time, the ultimate truth teller.' (x)

#TaylorSwiftIsOverParty trends on Twitter (x) (x) and Taylor's Instagram comments are spammed with the snake emoji. (x)

Following Calvin's tweets, TMZ publishes another article claiming he is downplaying Taylor's involvement in the song as she wrote the melody in addition to the lyrics. (x)

Jul 14th - Taylor goes out shopping in Gold Coast. (x)

Tom mentions Taylor in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter: (x)

You're in the middle of a cultural frenzy right now because you're dating Taylor Swift. How would you respond to people who claim that you're involved in some sort of publicity stunt?

(Laughs.) Well, um. How best to put this? That notion is — look, the truth is that Taylor Swift and I are together, and we're very happy. Thanks for asking. That's the truth. It's not a publicity stunt.

Martha says at a Pepsi/World Emoji Day event that Taylor and Tom are 'both happy and free together. It's amazing, I'm all about people being happy in love.' (x)

Kim talks about Taylor and the Famous controversy in a clip from an upcoming episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. (x)

“I never talk shit about anyone publicly, especially in interviews. But I was just like I had so had it,” Kim says in the clip to her sister Kourtney. “I wanted to defend him in it. She legitimately quote says, ‘As soon as I get on that Grammy red carpet I’m gonna tell all the press. Like I was in on it.’”

“And then she just didn’t like the reaction?” Kourtney says in response.

“Yeah, and you know just another way to play the victim,” Kim replies. She then brings the infamous VMAs moment from 2009 by saying, “It definitely got her a lot of attention the first time… I just don’t think he should be punished for it still to this day.”

Jul 17th - Kim posts an edited recording of Kanye and Taylor's phone call. In it, they discuss the 'I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex' line and Taylor says, 'Go with whatever line you think is better. It’s obviously very tongue in cheek either way. And I really appreciate you telling me about it. That’s really nice.' However, nowhere in the Snapchat video does Kanye consult her about the line, 'I made that bitch famous,' which is the line Taylor insisted she had never approved. (x) The other Kardashian sisters retweet and support Kim. (x)

(The full recording of the call, leaked in 2020, confirms that Kanye never told Taylor he was going to call her a bitch. It also shows her reminding him that she sold 7 million albums before he had even heard of her, in response to him suggesting the lyric, 'I made her famous.')

Kim takes to Twitter to call Taylor a snake.

Taylor posts a statement on Instagram responding to Kim's Snapchat video. (x)

Selena tweets, 'There are more important things to talk about… Why can’t people use their voice for something that fucking matters? This industry is so disappointing yet the most influential smh' (x)

Katy Perry tweets, '#RISE above it all' and links to her new single. People interpret it as a dig at Taylor. (x)

Martha Hunt tweets, 'It's pathetic how quick our culture is to sensationalize a fabricated story...' (x)

Jul 18th - #KimExposedTaylorParty spends the day trending at number one worldwide on Twitter. (x) To the point where 0.8% of all tweets posted in the entire week from the 18th-24th use the hashtag. (x) (Assuming that 1/7th of the week's total tweets were posted on each day, that means more than 1 in every 20 tweets on the 18th used the hashtag.) #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty also returns.

TMZ claims to have a copy of a letter from Taylor's lawyer, dating back to February, demanding that Kanye destroy the recording of their phone conversation and reminding him that it is a felony to secretly record a phone conversation in California. (x)

Taylor changes the name on her writing credits for TIWYCF on the BMI songwriters database. She is now listed as Taylor Swift instead of Nils Sjöberg. (x)

Camilla Belle, the subject of Taylor's 2010 song Better Than Revenge, posts a quote to Instagram which reads, 'No need for revenge. Just sit back & wait. Those who hurt you will eventually screw up themselves & if you’re lucky, God will let you watch.' (x)

Abigail tweets against Kim and Kanye, saying, 'May God forgive you & your wife for doing to others the very things you pray are NEVER done to your daughter.' She deletes the tweets after receiving death threats but leaves a tweet which reads, 'Guys…I will always stand by my best friend. There's no point in fighting over that.' (x)

Joseph Kahn (director of many of Taylor's music videos) defends Taylor on Twitter. (x)

The aunt of Dinah Jane from Fifth Harmony tweets, 'I always knew @/taylorswift13 was a SNAKE! Trying 2 break up my girls & use @/camilacabello97 as her protégé bitch bye you’ve been exposed!’ (x) The tweet is soon deleted and she claims her account was hacked. (x) (Camila quit the band at the end of 2016 and has since said that Taylor had nothing to do with her decision to leave.) (x)

Paula Erickson, Taylor’s former publicist from 2007 until 2014, likes a two-and-a-half-week-old tweet dragging Hiddleswift for being a badly executed bit of PR by Taylor and Tree. (x)

James Corden spoofs the recorded phone call on the Late Late Show. (x)

Calvin is rumoured to be dating Tinashe. (x)

Jul 20th - Todrick Hall defends Taylor, saying, 'She's one of the most genuine people I've ever met in my entire life.' (x)

Uzo Aduba says Taylor is 'a beautiful person and strong' and that she will overcome the Kimye drama. (x)

Paula likes another tweet shading Taylor and Tree. (x)

A graffiti artist creates a mural in Melbourne 'in loving memory of Taylor Swift' (misspelled as Smith). According to the artist, they are then contacted by Taylor's lawyers and threatened with legal action. (x)

Jul 21st - Taylor's Wikipedia page is vandalised with insults. (x)

Taylor and Tom fly back from Australia into a private airport in LA, and are seen out and about. (x) (x)

Jul 22nd - Fergie, who had Kim appear in her M.I.L.F. $ music video, says she thinks the Kimye-Taylor feud was planned and 'they’ll probably all come together at the MTV Awards or something.' (x)

Taylor goes to the gym in LA. It is the first time she has appeared in public since Kim posted the edited video, and her phone screen is now shattered. (x)

She also returns to Instagram to wish Selena a happy birthday. (x)

Jul 23rd - Taylor goes to the gym in LA. (x)

Tom is at Comic Con in San Diego. (x)

Calvin lip-syncs to Kanye's song That Part in a video posted on his Snapchat. (x) He also attends J-Lo's birthday party and is photographed with Kim. Apparently they have a friendly chat. (x) A source claims to E!, 'When Kim walked in Calvin saw her and stood up. He was clearly excited to see her and said 'hi' to Kim backstage.' (x)

Jul 24th - Taylor blocks the snake emoji from her Instagram comments section using a new Instagram feature. (x)

Tom is seen at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills with members of Taylor's security team. (x)

Jul 26th - Tom flies back to LA from NYC, where he has just spent a couple of days. On the same day, Taylor's plane arrives back in LA from Nashville, where she has spent a couple of days. (x)

VMA nominations are announced. Taylor is not nominated in any category, despite Out Of The Woods and Wildest Dreams being eligible, leading some people to think she has been snubbed. Gossip Cop, an outlet widely used by celebrity publicists to quietly squash rumours, says that Taylor did not submit any videos for consideration this year. (x)

Jul 27th - Taylor goes to the gym in LA. (x)

John Newman, singer of Calvin's song Olé, jokes, 'Supposedly we had a holiday where he was movin’ on from his ex-missus,' referring to the trip to Mexico to film the music video, which involved girls and a yacht. He also says he doesn't think it's his place to say what inspired Calvin to write the song. (x)

Taylor and Tom go for dinner at Hillstone restaurant in Santa Monica. One source claims they 'seemed to really be enjoying each others’ company.' (x) It is the last time they are papped together.

Kanye makes a surprise appearance at Drake's concert in Chicago where he responds to Kim's Snapchat video for the first time, saying, 'All I gotta say is, I am so glad my wife has Snapchat. Because now y’all can know the truth. And can’t nobody talk shit about ‘Ye no more.' (x)

Cara appears on James Corden's show and talks about how she, Uzo and Ruby pranked Kesha and Haim at Taylor's 4th of July party. She mentions consulting Taylor and Tom first so that security knew what they were up to. She also says that Taylor and Tom got woken up at one point by all the noise they were making, and came upstairs together to find Cara and Uzo still making ghost noises. (x)

Jul 28th - Taylor goes to the gym in LA. (x)

Jul 29th - Sources close to Calvin deny rumours that he is planning to collaborate on music with Kanye. (x)

Abigail likes E! News' Instagram photo of Tom and Taylor going out for dinner on the 27th, which has a gushing caption about them. (x)

Jul 31st - Taylor is seen entering her gym in LA through the back door. (x)

A fan sees Tom and Taylor at The Church Key restaurant in LA. (x) The outing is not papped.

Intro // February // March // April // May // June // July // August // September // October // November

[faemytho]

I’m not really in the hazbin hotel fandom ((I love the show don’t get me wrong I’m just not in the fandom)) but I kinda wanna see what you mean? Also I figure you’re still okay with people shipping him just either the fact that people ignore that canonical he is aroace sex repulsed or use it as a “oh we just have to fix him” trope (which fuck that trope)

Same asker that admitted to not really being in the hazbin hotel fandom but liking the show- thought it over and i actually don’t know how you could do Alstser (can’t spell bare with me) without having him as aroace sex repulsed without having him look barely anything like the original- maybe apart from that fic you made a while back

-

okay so, in regards to this post i made earlier about aroace romantic/sex repulsed alastor, that was a headcanon. (i said, and i quote, its canon bc i said so, but in reality ive fooled u all it was just a headcanon i even said so in the tags)

my headcanons aside, alastor IS canonically ace, as referenced by this tweet below (and hey, canon bi character!!! we love that!!)

there is also a footnote on the HH wiki that says alastor is aromantic as well, but the footnote links to a four hour stream video, and i do not actually have the patience to comb through it to see if that's true or not (or if it even came from the mouth of vivzie)

uh, yeah. here's the link to the stream, in case anyone wanted it/was curious.

canonicities aside, lets get one thing out of the way:

i am all for ignoring canon, using fandom to do whatever you want, ect ect, all power to the fans and whatnot, do what you want and be free because its fiction

which means, yes, i am 1000% okay with people shipping alastor with whoever they want! with angel, with charlie, with husk, with vaggie, with nifty, ect ect ect, i don't care, ship what you want, be free, live your best life.

my problem, though, is this: literally nobody in this fandom knows how to write an ace character. and when they do write him as "ace", its OFFENSIVE.

i cannot COUNT the amount of alastor fics ive read where he's supposedly written as asexual (and its usually even tagged in the fic tags, "asexual character"), then ends up sexually attracted to his given partner for that fic, and when they actually go to do the deed, alastor is infantilized to, well, hell and back. and by that, i mean a few things.

he either:

doesn't understand his sudden sexual attraction and/or sexual feelings

doesn't understand what's going on during the sex scene

doesn't know the proper terms for body parts and sexual processes

is HIGHLY feminized and is categorized as "submissive" while the partner becomes the "dominant" and continues on with the sex scene

not only is that fourth one misogynistic and homophobic (an entire other can of worms about how feminine sub/masculine dom in homosexual relationships enforces toxic heteronormativity, aka, the idea that one must "be the girl" and one must "be the man"), but all four of these together are aphobic when you realize, "hey, alastor is an ace character".

off my point a little bit, but ANY relationship (gay, straight, and/or otherwise) should not be using sub/dom as a model to follow - sub/dom is a BDSM kink thing; it should NOT be the normalized sex model for ANY relationship.

there's nothing wrong with kink! but doing BDSM wrong can severely hurt/mentally damage either partner if done incorrectly. normalizing it means that so many young people don't actually understand what sub/dom actually means, and even less the consequences if done wrong.

but back to my point: asexual people get infantilized. and we get infantilized often, because people think "oh, you're not interested in sex/you've never had sex, so you must not 1) know anything about it, 2) know anything about the real world and how nitty gritty it is to survive out here"

basically, ace people get treated like children. a lot.

here is a fantastic article that explains the rampant infantilization of both aro and ace people, and why it is aphobic to do that.

i highly recommend you all read the article, because it is fantastically well written and concise. here's my favorite paragraph:

"Society conditions us to believe that a lack of romantic or sexual attraction is a transitory period. This viewpoint assumes an inevitable progression from a nonsexual to sexual state of being that marks entry into adulthood. Similarly, engaging in romantic relationships is recognized as a milestone of maturity. This stereotyping results in the infantilization of all aromantic and asexual spectra people, especially those who are entirely romance and/or sex-averse. It also incorrectly characterizes asexual people as sex-negative, even though personal sex-aversion and general sex positivity are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, the idea of “being ready” to progress from friendships to romantic and sexual relations undermines the value of platonic relationships, which are integral to our community."

i'm going to move on to one more point, because i know if i don't, i'll get SO many alastor allo-pologist authors whining and screaming about how ace people can have sex too

and yes, here's the thing: asexual people can have sex, can want to have sex, can be sex positive... but that doesn't change the fact that to be not-asexual (or allosexual, if you'd like to use proper terms), you have to be sexually attracted or experience sexual attraction - WHICH IS NOT THE SAME THING AS HAVING A LIBIDO, AND ITS NOT SOMETHING ACE PEOPLE CAN DO/HAVE.

what ace people can have:

a libido

sex

sexual arousal

sex drive

kinks

a partner they're not necessarily sexually attracted to, but trust to have sex with them anyways

what ace people can't have (unless they're not actually ace and are instead allosexual):

sexual attraction to someone

wanting to have sex with a specific person because of this attraction (a partner, celebrity, people they find explicitly attractive)

still confused? don't be!

here's a post where i better explain the difference between sexual attraction vs sexual drive and what that means for ace people

to close this out, im going to attempt to summarize why im so pissed about this.

alastor is canonically asexual.

he may be sex negative, sex neutral, or sex positive; we don't know, but this is fandom and we're allowed to headcanon him however we wish - we can even headcanon him as not asexual!

which is great, yea, but when the ace character is the fan favorite...

people constantly and consistently write alastor as "ace".

which would be GREAT! if they ever did it correctly.

here's what i see most often. instead of headcanoning him as not asexual, they've heard something about how ace people can have sex anyways!

so for woke points, they slap their alastor ship/sex fics with the "asexual character" tag, and write alastor in one of two ways

uwu baby "ive never said a bad word in my life and i dont understand how the world works" asexual

allosexual, but call him ace anyways

both of those are aphobic. i have yet to come across ONE fic where alastor's asexuality (negative, neutral, or positive) is written, and labeled, CORRECTLY.

you know, it actually hurts MORE when he's written as "ace (actually allo)" than it does if people just headcanon him as not asexual.

alastor is a successful serial killer. he has spent decades in hell.

ALASTOR IS A SUCCESSFUL SERIAL KILLER. HE HAS SPENT DECADES IN HELL.

and you cowards are going to write him as inexperienced, ""innocent"", sexually uneducated?? i think the fuck NOT.

NOT ONLY THAT.

alastor lived through the roaring 20s. the flapper movement. the harlem renaissance. AND the sexual revolution of the 1920s. HE LIVED THROUGH ALL OF THAT. and you're going to act like he doesn't know what sex is?? we even KNOW he lived through all that because he says it himself, "i havent been that entertained since the stock market crash of 1929", and 1929 was the end of all those movements and the beginning of the great depression - and then alastor died in 1933 after living a successful serial killer life in louisiana.

tell me again, why wouldn't alastor know what sex is or how it works? and if you can't, THEN STOP WRITING HIM LIKE THAT.

please please PLEASE educate yourself before you write an asexual character. ESPECIALLY if you're going to write them with a libido, and actually ACTING on that libido.

thank you.

sincerely, an exhausted sex positive asexual.

[harrowdubois]

okay, i said if there was interest i would think about making a post listing all the references i squeezed into the locked tomb fic i spent the last month or so writing, and now i’ve realised i don’t care if there’s interest because i want to be self-indulgent SO

under the cut is a (somewhat spoilery) chronological list of all the memes, vines, and cribbed tumblr posts, as well as homages to various books, tv shows, song lyrics, etc. that made their way into blessed with a wilder mind! 

(cw for suicide mention)

this is of course a reference to the legendary bodybuilding forum thread where they did, actually, argue over how many days there are in a week (cw for ableist slurs in the thread)

---

buzzfeed unsolved meme. i am dirt and i love to eat dirt

---

this is so well-known it’s almost not worth listing it but oh my god they were roommates

---

in itself, this isn’t a reference to anything in particular, but if you didn’t do this on your first read then i’d recommend taking another look at this scene and thinking about the specific wuthering heights/frankenstein/rebecca excerpts discussed by harrow and mercymorn but in relation to canon!harrow’s trauma/relationship with the body in htn :~) 

---

also not really a reference to anything in particular but when i looked back over the fic for this post it struck me that the ‘sex panther’ phrasing was probably at least partially unconsciously inspired by the shoebox project (professor mcgonagall’s oiled man panther was a formative moment for me, truly)

---

cw gross/unsanitary: it’s the tinder poop window incident. i mentioned this in the end notes of the fic as being what i had in mind for that scene but if it’s too gross for you (UNDERSTANDABLY) then feel free to Death Of The Author me to your heart’s content!

---

i listened to a lot of orville peck while writing this

---

 very very very loosely inspired by this clickhole article

---

respectively: fourth of july by sufjan stevens / wuthering heights by emily bronte

---

TWO BROS, CHILLIN IN A HOT TUB, FIVE FEET APART BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT GAY

---

there was absolutely no need to stretch this across three paragraphs, and yet

---

iconic

---

i already linked to this one in the end notes of the fic itself, but it’s good, so here it is again

---

 i can’t find the actual original post but it’s this fucking horrible thing 

---

the last line is a reference to the secret history by donna tartt:

“Could it be because it reminds us that we are alive, of our mortality, of our individual souls- which, after all, we are too afraid to surrender but yet make us feel more miserable than any other thing? But isn't it also pain that often makes us most aware of self? It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one’s own. Even more terrible, as we grow old, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think?”

---

a lyrical double whammy!

from ‘last words of a shooting star’ by mitski: “they’ll never know how i’d stared at the dark in that room with no thoughts like a blood-sniffing shark”

from ‘a better son/daughter’ by rilo kiley: “sometimes in the morning i am petrified but can’t move/awake but cannot open my eyes” 

---

*

shout-out to maybe my single favourite video game moment, the encounter with the sky cat in night in the woods: “There is a hole at the center of everything, and it is always growing. Between the stars I am seeing it. It is coming, and you are not escaping, and the universe is forgetting you, and the universe is being forgotten, and there is nothing to remember it, not even the things beyond. And now there is only the hole... You are atoms, and your atoms are not caring if you are existing. Your atoms are monstrous existence.”

---

“Nothing is ever fulfilled, not until the very end.” - rust cohle, true detective s1, this reference is VERY tonally dissonant because in context it’s actually grim as all hell but w/e w/e i couldn’t resist the shout-out

also harrow quotes from the goldfinch again here! i had the reference included before i read this post and realised tamsyn muir also quotes from the secret history in htn. terrible synergy 

---

they are in fact all real. you’re welcome

---

this one’s doing a lot of work lmao. it’s paying homage to this quote by tamsyn muir talking about the draco-in-leather-pants trope in relation to ianthe by loosely referencing drop dead gorgeous, the best drarry fic ever written, in which harry is part veela

---

“It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, "more like deer than human being." To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.” - that’s right it’s another reference to the secret history, with a little bit of mary oliver (tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?) sprinkled on top for flavour

--- 

a small one, but it’s the goldfinch again: “And I feel I have something very urgent and serious to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you...”

---

my FUCKING cinnamon apple

 what if i... put my minecraft bed.... next to yours... aha ha just kidding.... unless?

---

[cw: suicide discussion in these next two]

*

robyn can have little a rust cohle quote, as a treat.

1. “I'd consider myself a realist, all right? But in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist... I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. We became too self-aware. Nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself. We are creatures that should not exist by natural law... We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self, that accretion of sensory experience and feelings, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody's nobody... I think the honorable thing for our species to do is to deny our programming. Stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction; one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”

2. “This... This is what I'm talking about. This is what I mean when I'm talkin' about time, and death, and futility. All right, there are broader ideas at work, mainly what is owed between us as a society for our mutual illusions. Fourteen straight hours of staring at DBs, these are the things you think of. You ever done that? You look in their eyes, even in a picture, doesn't matter if they're dead or alive, you can still read 'em. You know what you see? They welcomed it... Not at first, but... right there in the last instant. It's an unmistakable relief. See, cause they were afraid, and now they saw for the very first time how easy it was to just... let go. Yeah, they saw, in that last nanosecond, they saw... what they were. You, yourself, this whole big drama, it was never more than a jerry-rig of presumption and dumb will, and you could just let go. To finally know that you didn't have to hold on so tight. To realize that all your life - you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memories, all your pain - it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person.”

---

ahaaa this one’s particularly rough. evil monkey no one alive dot jpg

“Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.” - annie proulx, brokeback mountain

---

a TRIPLE lyrical whammy!

- harrow’s words to gideon in the dream are a bit of a vague reference to the song ‘adventures in solitude’ by the new pornographers (”we thought we lost you/welcome back”) - gideon’s words to harrow are a reference to the song ‘blush’ by wolf alice (”you’ve got two hands to take all you can/but don’t take too long”) - what harrow texts to gideon is a line from ‘about today’ by the national, aka the most devastating song ever written (”hey, are you awake?/yeah i’m right here”...)

---

i CANNOT find a clip of it but harrow’s repetition of “life is short... it’s short” was me paraphrasing from memory a line from pride (2014), because i am the worst

---

spooky scary skeletons! 

“jail for gideon” is obviously a reference to the “jail for mother” tweet that tm also referenced in htn. so, not original in the slightest, but it’s a great tweet

---

one of my favourite tumblr posts

---

because naberius tern absolutely would watch rick and morty. he would. i know it in my heart. 

---

and that’s it, i think. hope you enjoyed this horrid little post and my horrid little fic!

[nightcannotlastforever]

My Opinion on the J.K Rowling Essay

Harry Potter is a good book and while it is a safe place for a lot of Queer folk, the writer has a lot to work on.

J.K Rowling created a fictional universe about a boy who lives in the closet under the stairs and escapes his veil aunt and uncle to go to a magical school known as Hogwarts where he learns spells and potions to become a wizard. So many people project onto Harry because like Harry, a lot of lgbtq+ people are in the closet for many years. Some don’t get that chance to come out. For LGBTQ+, their Hogwarts often gets new friends, get out of that house, and finding a career for themselves. Pride. To simply put it, Harry is a gay icon and we all know it.

Where Rowling went wrong was when she made Dumbledore gay

Rowling made a harmful representation by making Dumbledore gay after the fact. She could have left it alone and never stated sexuality but only after the franchise was over did she risk making him gay. I think it would be okay if she hadn’t made remarks and just left it alone or stated in a line or two he was gay in the books. By leaving it alone and NEVER saying anything, she kind of just slapped the word gay on his character after it was over to be more relatable and “woke”. She didn’t want him to be gay to mess with the story, so she probably wrote it without having in mind that he was gay. That was an afterthought.

On June Sixth of 2020, Rowling tweeted:

“‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure they’re used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?

Opinion: Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate”

If you wanna know what she said, honestly I think you should just read her essay. It's hard to say exactly what she wrote.

People saw she liked a post from this transphobic bitch and went crazy on Twitter.

J.K Rowling's Essay

Here is copy and paste from her essay:

“Speaking as a biological woman, a lot of people in positions of power need to grow a pair (which is doubtless literally possible, according to the kind of people who argue that clownfish prove humans aren’t a dimorphic species”

“It’s been clear to me for a while that the new trans activism is having (or is likely to have if all its demands are met) a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender.”

She is worried trans activism and healthy representation is messing with causes she supports such as MS research. MS is a disease that affects AFAB and AMAB differently.

“The second reason is that I’m an ex-teacher and the founder of a children’s charity, which gives me an interest in both education and safeguarding. Like many others, I have deep concerns about the effect the trans rights movement is having on both.”

Scared people being trans will affect children, Rowling?

I won’t get into her third reason because honestly, I don’t give a fuck about it.

Her fourth reason is being scared of lesbians detransitioning and changing their minds.

While that is a valid fear, first of all, the percentage of same-sex people attracted who transition and then regret it is so incredibly low compared to those who did and were happier with other genitalia and chest surgery. And yes, I will link resources and where I got my statistics, unlike J.K... Second, that's none of her business and doesn’t concern her. Third, I’m sure those people would hope that actual trans people get the T and surgeries they deserve and need.

Worried because friend groups all become trans because of one trans person in that group.

If one person in that friend group comes out and like three others come out, it's not because that one person “turned them trans”, it's because seeing someone else out and being proud, may have given them the courage and support they needed to come out. It was quite similar in my case of coming out. I saw friends and other folks online coming out and that gave me the support and courage I needed to tell my dad.

“I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria.” Where are these statistics? I don’t recall her in this article stating where she found any of these percentages or anything. She only quotes two to three TERF’s from Twitter.

In an NBC news feature, Lui Asquith states, “The actual numbers around them are significantly low,” Asquith said.

“A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.” That male you speak of J.K? That is no male. That is a woman who may not have dysphoria caused by genitalia or the lack of chest. The women you speak of may not mentally or physically be able to handle transitioning. Maybe they cant transition medically because of health issues. You wouldn’t know.

In the end, she states she doesn’t mean this in a hateful way and she only wants to call out trans folk and those who support trans activism who push women to the side because women go through a lot of threats and abuse and that is why she is writing this transphobic essay. If you want to promote women's rights and spread awareness, maybe don’t do that in a lengthy essay about why being trans is bad…

That’s all. This is kind of just a shitpost. I know that her essay was posted almost a full year ago, but it has been on my mind quite often recently and I wanted somewhere to post it. I don’t want to write this in a way to send hate to any of the people I mentioned, I honestly just wanted to write this to get out anger towards the anti-trans tweets and discussion J.K Rowling has started. She is not detransitioned and in my opinion, as a trans person, doesn’t have a say in what we do to our bodies and the pronouns we identify with. Her writing could perhaps be quite harmful to young trans youth. We, as a community, get a lot of hate and misconceptions.

RESOURCES

https://www.hrc.org/resources/understanding-the-transgender-community

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/2019/02/22/research-brief-data-on-transgender-youth/

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/media-s-detransition-narrative-fueling-misconceptions-trans-advocates-say-n1102686