#what a long way we've come

[scarletlotus182]

Have I mentioned that the reward for clearing this event is a second M4?

[userhobi]

🫶🏼

[rhinocio]

NOW WITH PODFIC ACCOMPANIMENT!

[sollucets]

rowan's eclipse anniversary celebration

week eleven: a scene

When I told my mom we were dating, I meant it. Akk... should we get together? Don't be ridiculous. I'm a guy and I'm going to sleep.

[tomfrogisblue]

ok but hideduo enjoyers

can we appreciate the fucking wild character development of how q!fit used to be unable to even admit he thinks q!pac is attractive, to today's events where he wrote That Sign about "kiss, marry, kill" today?

[lunarharp]

:')

[somegrumpynerd]

I read your post about if nightmare gives up his boys & my heart was aching so badly ;w;

Dadmare want what's best for his boys 😭

He does!! As much as he hates to admit it, they mean the world to him and he wants them all to be happy. Not only because of what they've done for him in helping him not hate the world anymore, but after all they've been through themselves.

Even if it meant he wouldn't see them anymore, he couldn't stand the idea that he was hurting them by keeping them trapped with him y'know? If you love somebody you have to let them go and be free. But also, maybe he could come and visit sometimes if they moved out? Or they could visit him? Please 🥺

Thankfully it doesn't come to that though, they like staying outside the castle sometimes for a little break but none of them plan on leaving, it's what they all consider home <3

Or, as Dust would put it if Nightmare asked, "we haven't paid rent in like 6 years, what kind of idiot would move out??"

[cerubean]

townies pt. #334298

[wanderingcas]

well fellas i watched brokeback mountain for the first time ever

[fictionadventurer]

*

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[panharmonium]

What do you think about this: "Kakashi was never interested in Sasuke as an individual, he only projected himself into him and saw a smaller version of himself on Sasuke, Sasuke was never Sasuke to him, just a little Kakashi". I wanted to know your opinion because I miss your meta posts and I feel like lately people are hating Kakashi for things that aren't real :/, also you are really good at explaining and I feel that both characters need love

Hello! Thanks for the question!

The answer to "what do i think about this" is, honestly, that I don't think about it X) I watched the whole show without engaging with the fandom at all (for fear of spoilers, initially), so I was able to experience it without being exposed to anyone else's thoughts, and now that I'm done I generally still avoid poking around, because devoting mental energy to opinions that I find bizarre/not supported by the text doesn't enhance my fandom experience.

Kakashi and Sasuke's relationship is one of the most compelling things about the series to me. I was very surprised when I finished the show/manga and first exposed myself to the fandom only to find so few people invested in them, but at this point I've (mostly) stopped asking myself "what show was everyone else watching" and just settled into enjoying the show that I watched, because that's more fun for me. I can't convince people not to dislike Kakashi if that's what they want to do. I do find it a little weird, because I don't think that's what the story is asking from us, but as long as people mind their business and aren't bugging me on my own blog, they're free to do what they want.

I know it can be frustrating when there are people hating various characters for "things that aren't real," but the fact that these criticisms aren't "real" is precisely why I generally avoid engaging with them. For Kakashi, specifically, there are certain things people can say that will immediately make me stop taking them seriously - "projecting" is one. "Bootlicking" is another, but again, these terms are so wildly inaccurate that I'm not interested in talking about them. The manga and the show are easily accessible; if people want to rewatch/re-read them, they can.

In general, I just prefer to avoid engaging with most of the fandom negativity I see. I think overall most of the rancor I've stumbled across boils down to people engaging with the story in very ungenerous ways, if that makes sense, and that's not how I prefer to read/watch things. Like - back when I was still in the middle of watching the show, I remember someone sent me a message saying that they loved seeing me talk about the story with earnestness/joy, and it was such a lovely message to receive, but it also made me pause and wonder for a second if this was really an uncommon enough thing to be remarked upon. Wouldn't that be the default? Aren't we all here because we love the story and the characters so much? But the truth is that sometimes it does feel like large chunks of fandom spaces (not just Naruto, I mean; I've certainly experienced this elsewhere) are very focused on being negative about "things that aren't real," as you said. Like - people calling Sakura "abusive" for bopping Naruto on the head when he says something rude, when this is not something the text is even remotely trying to say about her. People writing off Jiraiya's entire storyline because of the non-consensual spying on women - which, yes, of course, is disgusting and wrong. Obviously. I am very aware of that. However, I can simultaneously recognize that the story isn't really interested in that or intending me to read it like that; the voyeurism is written as a joke (yes, I understand how gross that is) and there are a hundred potential personal and/or patriarchal and/or genre-related and/or cultural factors that may have gone into Kishimoto writing this particular fail. If I want to understand and appreciate what the story was ACTUALLY trying to communicate with Jiraiya (that he's an idealist who gave up on the world when everything went wrong, who turned to shallow pleasures of the flesh to distract him from the pain of his disillusionment, and who was finally restored to his former faith after meeting Naruto), then I have to mindfully set the voyeurism aside and go, "This writer wrote a gross thing, and I recognize that, but I'm also not going to fixate on it, because I can simultaneously appreciate/find meaning in what he was really trying to say."

I think some of the Kakashi complaints out there very much fall under this umbrella. If I have to see one more person frothing at the mouth about Kakashi briefly tying Sasuke (a qualified ninja who has already demonstrated his ability to escape rope restraints and whom Kakashi has been individually mentoring, sparring against, and connecting with for a month) to a tree for approximately sixty seconds - honestly. I don't know how to tell people they're missing the point, so I don't bother.

Ultimately, the fact of the matter is that people are entitled to dislike any character that they want, even for contrived reasons. As long as they're doing their own thing in their own space and letting me do my thing in mine, we're good.

[demenior]

“Just find Artagan. That’s how you can be useful.” There’s heat in Jester's voice when she responds, as if she’s offended that he’s asking her to do anything to help him. “I’ve tried! I’ve tried everything!” Fjord grabs his things, and turns to head for the door, “it sure looks like you’re trying.” “Why do I have to fix all of your mistakes?” she shouts after him, “you’re being such a dick!” Fjord rounds on her, “I’m saving us! Why do you keep making things so difficult?” Jester flinches. Fjord wants parting remarks from her. A reason to slam the door on his way out. He doesn’t expect the hitch in her breath. “Why— why do you hate me?” Jester whimpers. And then, to Fjord’s horror, she starts crying.

Read chapter 26 here

[sysig]

I know you, a little to the left (Patreon)

[simplydnp]

Stop im rewatching why dan is leaving me bc of ur post theyre so disgustingly domestic i adore them

sometimes i watch that video just to feel something

[shivasdarknight]

Time for your regularly scheduled, "Killjoy Hour with Enya" because we're being a killjoy about Dawntrail (:

So first and foremost: fuck Square and the XIV team for taking this angle. We could've gone any direction and we're going with Colonizer The Adventure. They looked at what we did on the Steppe with Hien and went "let's do it again! :D"

Mandatory CW for racism as it pertains to the indigenous peoples of North America, Mesoamerica and South America, and discussion of the genocide enacted by Spain against Mesoamerica and South America.

(Sections and the first letter of each sentence have been bolded for ease of reading)

But to explain further: Square has a really awful track record with their take on Tural, the "New World", especially in their handling of the Mamoolj'aa that are in Eorzea. This has been an issue since ARR and has been frequently criticized due to their extremely anti-indigenous writing. The way they handle the Eorzean tribes (which have been known as "beast tribes" and "beastmen" for a good part of the past decade that XIV has been around, I Should Not have to explain to you why that's deeply problematic) is an issue in its own right, but I'll only touch on what we've seen of Tural in the game itself and why this doesn't bode well for Dawntrail.

Let's get the obvious one out of the way first, this fucking shit:

For those unaware, this is the New World set. It's a craftable gear set from Heavensward that players can wear as a goddamned costume. I shouldn't have to be saying this in 2023, but this set has caused a great deal of controversy because it's a bastardization of plains tribe regalia. Square never should have added it to the game, but here it is and players constantly wear it in further offensive glams.

The only instance of this set being used with NPCs is in the Blue Mage quests and what we see of the Whalaqee. Again, to those unaware: the ARR Blue Mage quests are an extremely racist storyline that plays into white savior narratives and more offensive caricatures. The only representatives that we get to interact with of the Whalaqee are a little boy in this outfit (who's also extremely pale), and two Mamoolj'aa who are the lackeys of Martyn, the job trainer for Blue Mage - a white man! Further, the magic is notably not from Eorzea and is instead a cultural practice of the Whalaqee that Martyn took and turned into profit, and he's who you're supposed to work for. You are - yet again - considered a master of the practice, and this is written in mind with a default white man in mind considering Meteor being the stand in for everything. There is in-game appropriation of cultural practices, clothing, and tools but it gets worse the further you go into them.

The main plot of the ARR quests is that the Whalaqee are dying from a plague brought toTural by Martyn and other researchers with the Arcanist's guild 🙃 There were two trips: one to study Blue Magic, and one where people from the first trip went back because they found ceruleum in the sacred lands of the Whalaqee and began drilling for it. But remember: you only get to meet the Whalaqee through the two Mamoolj'aa and the Whalaqee child. The fate of the tribe rests in an Eorzean's hands because they put the medicine behind a bet for the further profit of Ul'dah. Win the carnival and make the owner a bunch of money and you get the medicine; lose, and they go raid the place for ceruleum and wipe out the tribe. It's a deeply offensive storyline that turns past and ongoing horrors that indigenous peoples - especially those of North America and Mesoamerica - have faced and are still facing into some trivial goal for a questline for a joke job that's solved through the white savior trope.

Then, of course, there's how the Mamoolj'aa are generally treated. Like the other ARR tribes and anyone the game doesn't consider civilized, their dialogue is written in broken speech patterns to reflect "lower intelligence." They're one of the only ARR tribes (next to the Qiqirn, who only got that somewhat through the SHB Qitari quests) that haven't gotten any kind of humanizing that the others have seen over the years (and even then, that's only been recently). Throughout ARR-HVW storylines, they're portrayed as extremely aggressive, are often throwaway mercs for hire around La Noscea, and they have them use this "cultural dance" of theirs that's described as extremely suggestive and is frequently used to sexually harass the white women of Eorzea. They're also seen in the Wanderer's Palace (Hard) as "aggressive barbarian" types who enslaved the Tonberries, which were originally the Spoken of Nym (so y'know, predominantly white society that became malformed and gangrenous tonberries). And your job as the Warrior of Light is, naturally, to exterminate them. There's other stuff like the naming of abilities they use (frequent use of barbarian/barbaric, which in it of itself is problematic), the totems and standards that you're actively encouraged to destroy, the shaman stuff + the fact that again: they're the only ARR tribe that never got the same kind of humanizing lens that tribes like the Sylphs got early on, or like the Amalj'aa got only recently.

Dawntrail looks to be as if it might be that humanizing effort that began in Stormblood and was most prominent in 5.X (ARR-SHB tribe side quests don't count as it's side content, not MSQ), but of course there comes the problem: beyond them never treating the Mamoolj'aa with any respect in the content we already have, they've already framed 7.0 as you meddling in the rite of succession for this new area. An area that is ruled by a two-headed Mamoolj'aa that we have to help overthrow (which is not new, as a two-headed Mamoolj'aa was already shown in The Wanderer's Palace (Hard) - but that one was portrayed as brutish, unintelligent, and played into inbred stuff as...the final boss of the dungeon who gets a special end dungeon cutscene to showcase the Tonberries brutalizing his corpse). And again, this plot thread isn't new! We already helped Hien do that to the Steppe back in Stormblood! This is yet another instance of the game treating imperialism and colonization as a fun thing for you to get in on, especially since they're using the setting and the getting to the setting as a summer vacation.

The fact that they are framing Dawntrail as summer vacation-like is insidious. You are a party of fantasy Europeans sailing to fantasy Mesoamerica/South America to meddle in their governing process.

And let's quickly go over that: the fact Tural is the "New World" as you search for "a city of gold."

These names are rooted heavily in European colonization. The idea that Europe is the "civilized Old World" and that the Americas were the "uncivilized, waiting-to-be-conquered New World" is what drove the colonization of the region, especially in Mesoamerica and South America. The term "New World" is inseparable from white supremacist narratives about the colonizers that engaged with the peoples of the Americas. It's bad enough that XIV introduced Tural as "the New World" to begin with and populated it with a fantasy race that's characterized by violence, a lack of intelligence, and sexual harassment + a gross caricature of North American plains nations, but they have now made it into the destination for the Scions' "summer vacation adventure"? So that you can go do an imperialism there, too? They even framed it as some tropical paradise as if that's not an extension of how colonization of these regions is perpetuated today through the tourism industry.

The other term - city of gold - was a myth that was used as the excuse to ransack Mesoamerica and South America. You've definitely seen it, as that was the entire plot of Road to El Dorado. It was under this pretense that Spanish colonizers decimated indigenous populations in the search of glory and gold. The search for the "city of gold" in the "New World" was a mass genocide - enabled through widespread massacre, and a vicious plague that wiped out 80% of just the population in Mexico alone.

In Mexico, the pestilence reached the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, before its fall in 1521. Pathogens also reached Peru, inciting a civil war among the Incas. Both of these situations were extremely favorable for Spain. The plague—cocoliztli—was the most devastating post-conquest epidemic in large parts of Mexico, wiping out somewhere around 80 percent of the native population.

(from "How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics" by Richard Herzog on JSTOR)

This is not a subject to touch upon lightly in any respect. And for XIV to use it for their "fun adventure in a foreign land" is deeply inappropriate and frankly disgusting. But is anyone surprised? This is the same company that ignored the demands of the Saami council to remove the offensive Far Northern attire from the store.

What I'm disappointed the most about, however, is the number of fans chomping at the bit with angles about a tropical tourist destination, taking the summer vacation angle the devs are actively encouraging, and even stuff with pirates (do not get me started on how white pirates contributed to colonization of the Americas). As a friend put it very aptly: how do you see "new world," "city of gold," and a fleet of European ships sailing towards fantasy Mesoamerica and not get skeeved out at the prospect? This isn't something you should be excited about because they're having us role play imperialism Yet Again. But this time, it's all to the tune of "tropical summer vacation in a foreign land". And y'all are excited to join in?

I don't want the expansion to turn out this way. We barely have any information on this, I understand. But what I've laid out here is what the game has already done with regards to Tural's pre-7.0 depictions and what they've shown they want to continue perpetuating. If Dawntrail turns out to be somewhat decent (and it better be better handled than Thavnair and feature fewer white people populating the countries that are inspired by black and brown cultures), then fine. But as it stands, Square has not given us any reason to trust them in how they've handled their indigenous stories leading up to 7.0. This entire concept is rife with the potential to be extremely offensive and extremely racist, and the main takeaway most fans seem to have from this isn't that this is a gross depiction of indigenous cultures, but instead a fun summer vacation with the Scions?

Really?