#what does it say about language ideologies? in fiction what does it mean for the characters and setting?

[antoniabishop]

I'm going to address some of the comments I've received on these 2 silly pictures.

These drawings of a flying car were inspired by a scene from a book intended for 12-year-olds. Nowhere in the post do I say what book it is—you have to know it to recognize it. Recently, I've seen that Beyonce has been riding in a flying car on her tour—the image has been on my mind. I don't expect to reach everybody. But I think it's important we talk.

Of course I'm aware of Rowling's political beliefs about the policy in her country. I read her twitter feed daily and have been doing so for months. Within reason, when her rhetoric reaches its most extreme, I try to engage with her and the journalists she associates with. It can be frustrating. It's made me cry. But in engaging with and responding to this rhetoric, I know I have done more to moderate the conversation than any fanart boycott/lynch mob ever will.

Please keep in mind that these books, above all others, were translated into over 80 languages and distributed widely to children in places where women have no rights whatsoever, where you can be killed for being gay, where children are sold into slavery, and where there is no running water—let alone state sponsored access to estrogen. JK Rowling's career began in global humanitarian aid with Amnesty International. She has personal experience fleeing from domestic violence and relying upon social resources and welfare to survive.

The money she has spent to create a penis-free shelter where one did not exist does not harm trans people. A trans inclusive women's shelter in the area already exists. To argue that cis women fleeing abuse choosing to stay in this shelter is transphobic only betrays the fascist ideology strawmen TERFs accuse our community of.

To take something as innocent and simple as a flying car and assume it means I hate trans people is bizarre. This is fanart of a book I read when I was 12. Doing so inspired me to write my own fantasy stories, which I've been doing ever since (it's been 20 years!). The books taught me more about friendship, dreams, division, and death than even my parents. I studied these books in school, alongside their film adaptations, and learned even more about its depictions of slavery, extremism, blood purity, and Britain's place as an imperial figure in the cultural milieu of fantasy fiction...

The body and its presentation—Ron's dress robes, Snivelly's pants, the boggart, polyjuice potion, Tonks—are depicted in Harry Potter without malice. In fact, it is liberal and playful with the subject even by modern standards. Twitter aside, Harry Potter itself is not outdated because there's no Colin Creevey gender journey, and frankly, I think getting caught up in cancel culture has caused a large part of this community to completely lose the plot.

I like R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet. I do, I think it's a crazy, funny, actually brilliant thing (the man is illiterate! this is Shakespeare!). I still watch the myriad of Weinstein Company films I enjoyed. Alec Baldwin killed someone. And I see people post Drake all the time. There is something suspicious and scary and strange about the way the tumblr community is so quick to exile people for increasingly petty political points: no engagement, no debate, toe the party line or get block button'd. I don't think it's a coincidence that JK Rowling became a target, since her stories were a point of common ground for fucking all of us and do address issues like "media cancel culture" and "extremist personality purity cult" in extremely tangible, detailed ways. And then some.

My coworker at the record store refers to me, and other nonbinary or transmasc people, as "man period." He's in his late 40s and he does not get transness, it pisses him off! And I love this fuckin guy anyway! The more you're out in the world engaging with its diversity and intolerance and strangeness, the easier it is to accept that good and bad exist beyond having a graduate level understanding of gender and sexuality as well as a flawless execution of "they" as a singular pronoun.

"But her money—!" I hear you say. And to that I have to answer, you are just not informed about what this money is actually doing. A trans woman was making a cis woman (who had a history child sexual abuse) uncomfortable in the changing room of the hospital where they worked. The cis woman requested privacy. She was fired.

I wouldn't know that if I hadn't chosen to tolerate the abrasive rhetoric and see what was going on for myself. To be brave enough to open my mouth and argue, to get a response, to form a counterargument. It's been good for me, as I believe it's good for any community to have dialogues on their differences. I've changed minds, and I've had my mind changed on a few things. It's uncomfortable, necessary work.

Thanks for listening.

You were seen.

[waitineedaname]

sometimes i get worried im not in the right academic field and then i think about another form of discourse analysis to dig into and i get all excited again

[transmutationisms]

Is mbti pseudoscience ? Also what makes a term pseudoscience ? Is it the people involved? Lack of empirical evidence? Inability to replicate the results?

this is called the demarcation problem and philosophers of science have not settled it. i find this debate trite because it's generally framed around ahistorical, apolitical, asocial notions of 'science' as a set of disembodied ideas rather than as a family of knowledge practices occurring and evaluated in specific social contexts. for example, if we call phrenology a 'pseudoscience' we end up making nonsense of the historical observation that phrenological ideas were part of scientific discourses, practices, and experimentation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. people measuring skulls and trying to map out localised brain functions were engaging in scientific activities; scientific inquiry is capable of producing ideas that are wrong, racist, internally contradictory, &c. one of the main ideological functions of the label 'pseudoscience' has been & continues to be providing a foil for its counterpart, the ideal of 'science' as an inherently noble and truth-producing activity.

it's dangerous to reify the sort of dichotomy that doesn't permit for the existence of scientific error, bias, or ideological taint; it also obscures the internal logic of previous modes of thinking and epistemological frameworks (bloodletting was not just something doctors did because they were stupid; astrology historically depended on particular cosmologies and philosophical axioms) and makes it extremely difficult to say anything worthwhile about practices and ideas that have been designated 'scientific' or 'pseudoscientific', 'orthodox' or 'heterodox', in different historical moments and places. it's easy to see the designation 'pseudoscience' as a neutral or even politically astute denigration of bullshittery or charlatanism, but consider also that powerful institutions, individuals, professional guilds, and states are just as capable of slinging accusations of 'pseudoscientificity' at those they wish to marginalise for various political and ideological reasons. one recent example of this is the fairly contentious argument over the basic and unfortunately true assertion that many respiratory illnesses, particularly covid, are airborne. the process of deciding whose ideas are bunk, and whose are proper science, occurs in social context just as much as the formation and dissemination of the ideas themselves does.

anyway if what you mean is "are the mbti categories real / fixed / universal human 'types'" then the answer is no, definitely not, it was always a philosophically unjustified taxonomy-forward attempt to bring jungian psychology to the masses that caught on with hiring departments and corporate consultants, and that more than a few people have compared to a kind of 'updated' astrological discourse on the 'personality' expressed in today's scientifically fashionable language rather than yesteryear's. now see if every psy-scientific discourse to which a similar critique applies were to be described as 'pseudoscience' then we would have an awfully hard time explaining what exactly are the professional activities their exponents are engaging in all day, and meanwhile we would have very handily preserved the fiction that there is some other, nobler, properly scientific discipline of psychology magically free of all such inconvenient history and conceptual baggage.

[danielwaldorf]

not to return to the drama of yesterday/invite more but the terf accusations are wild because like. the whole fucking thing is that it's trans exclusionary radical feminism. what makes terfs terfs is the transphobia particularly transmisogyny.

and accusing somebody of being a terf for. being mean to a fictional man. is like... first of all i actually don't think they believe anything they're saying like i do think they're just trying to use social justice language to make themselves seem justified but BESIDES THAT. it is actually so insanely transphobic and misogynistic to act like Being Mean To A Guy is equivalent to trans exclusionary radical feminism. terfs are not primarily hurting men they are primarily hurting trans women!! it is quite literally in the name!!

but "terf" has been watered down so much that now people just use it as an insult against any lesbian they don't like. if you commit the crime of not worshipping men then you are actually a radical feminist which means you are also a transphobe and now people can attack you for not liking men but in a Woke Progressive way. it does not matter your actual ideology or even if you're trans yourself All that matters is that you dared to not center men 24/7.

and the worst fucking part of all of this is that as always trans women are being shouted over and disregarded! these people don't CARE about trans women all they care about is bullying dykes. and they're losers so they invoke trans women as some bizarre justification for their actions while doing Nothing to aid or advocate for trans women. it's just like such hateful loser behavior and it pisses me off.

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

medialog march 2k25

books

angela carter, the bloody chamber — this was fun! i did kind of get the same sense reading it as i did with the secret history i.e. that i should have read it at 14 for maximum impact & appreciation… but i enjoyed it. the two i liked best were the beauty and the beast story, because i was sort of shocked at how it made me care about such a familiar narrative in i think less than 15 pages, and “the snow child” for kind of the opposite reason (admired how deranged and gnarly it was).

sally rooney, conversations with friends — i loooooved this book. it’s very hard for me to find books that fall into what one might call the “beach reads” category because unfortunately many books that people find fun and easy to read i find a huge slog because the prose is uninteresting and often clunky; similarly it’s hard for me to find romantic books to read because my ideology of romance is, like, just non-normative enough that i find most things marketed as “romance” to be dull and unsexy. so when i say that this book felt like a beach read for ME, i do not at all mean it dismissively; instead it feels like a magic trick that the book is so simply articulated and yet so addictive to read, and like an actual gift that this comes coupled with a narrative so animated by and invested in the question of whether love can transcend the very narrow confines we’ve marked out for it. i just found it so warm and open-hearted, even as it’s largely about a character who struggles deeply with both of those things… i loved that it was a book where hurting your friend’s feelings really matters, you know? a book where love and kindness always matter even when they’re difficult to access or in short supply. also very funny about annoying 21-year-olds are (to no one more than to themselves) & contains some really great obsessive crush writing. love!! i felt all glowy finishing it up!!

alice munro, hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage — meh. story by story, other than the first, titular story (which admittedly kind of rules), there are certainly moments i admired (in “nettles” she writes about a certain kind of pre-sexual desire and fixation extremely well, which was not an experience i had previously seen represented in fiction), and she is deft with exposition, but i was simply not interested, intellectually or emotionally, in her characters or the situations she puts them in, and while there is nothing bad about her style i also did not take any pleasure in her use of language. across the book certain repetitions really weaken the whole — the fact that, as i previously complained about, no fewer than four of the nine stories in this volume have pivotal emotional moments rest on the men kissing the protagonist out of nowhere, for example. some of those four stories are better or worse than others (although the best one is also the one where it would have been easiest to take the kiss out for i think an even better story!), but the accumulated effect is to emphasize that in this collection we’re in a world where men are often frustrating or annoying or frightening, but they are also the sole option for any source of solace, hope, catharsis, etc. it’s grim (and reading it after andrea skinner’s revelations, very hard not to interpret along the lines of “well this certainly was a woman deeply obsessed with male validation”). there are also a lot of gritty details about illness, aging, etc. (including two different stories that begin with characters killing themselves in the face of terminal illness), but in a way that does not feel like it ever quite arrives at reckoning with the emotional reality of these things… the first and worst of the kiss stories features a woman who has just been told her cancer might not be as terminal as previously believed (an interesting situation — and there’s a good line in it about having to potentially reacclimate to living with a future) whose emotional lift comes from a teenage boy randomly kissing her in a swamp which really like… sent me into full logan roy “you are not serious people” mode. that was the second story in the collection and sort of instantly soured me after the high of the first because it activated my “this is fucking bullshit” meter so strongly — sentimentality dressed up in ugly details to pretend it’s not sentimental is such a crime to me!!! — but like in case there was any doubt the collection ends with that absolutely heinous dementia-as-plot-device story (which, i actually picked this of all munro collections because i saw a NYT list that called this her BEST story!!! what!!!!), which, again, you are not serious people, i do not understand what is gained on any level artistically or emotionally by writing a story about a husband’s love for his wife through a magical kind of brain disease that does not exist in the world. if you want to do that be honest and call it science fiction, frankly, and then maybe i can respect the fun little thought experiment you have set up for me. (there’s also a subplot in that story about the husband’s adultery that is like… again… i know you were born in the 30s but this book came out in 2001. get it together. it reminded me of the unbearable lightness of being minus everything that made that book worth reading.)

percival everett, james — really liked this, & was pleasantly surprised given the buzz around it at how fun it was — it moves briskly, it’s funny and sly, i found it genuinely quite addictive to read. as someone with a slightly higher than average interest in many of the topics it engages with i was very interested in especially the book’s engagement with minstrelsy (there’s a line where he takes real-life minstrel performer & songwriter daniel decatur emmett’s notebook and says something like “i had the sense that his story was important to mine,” which is such a cool line given the influence of minstrel performance on twain & on the writing of huck finn in particular…), although i did have one annoying nerd moment re: james’s skepticism about the impending war, which turned into a referendum on slavery largely because of the fact that enslaved people recognized it as an opportunity. but i think i am being unreasonable here lmao. anyway you can also tell that as much as this book is arguing with twain it also comes from a place of deep, deep love for his work — like huck finn, it’s invested in being an adventure story and in articulating its ideas through humor, and in telling a story set in the past that is interested in the past but also very much a story for the present (i’ve seen some criticism of the book hinging on the idea that it’s like… not very realistic historical fiction? which i think just wildly misunderstands the project of the book in a way that is very clear if you remember that twain was a satirist above all… everyone should read huck finn’s america by andrew levy…). you can also see that love in the fact that james, somewhat miraculously, recreates perhaps the central feature of huck finn that makes the text work (if it does work for you, which i should say, for me it absolutely did): the character of huck himself is so, so instantly loveable, in a way that instantly undid all of my defenses.

movies

hedwig and the angry inch — i really can’t believe i fucked up by not watching this in eighth grade and making it my entire personality… but man this movie rules. funny, raw, absolutely incredible costumes, make-up, vibes, visuals (the little cartoons!), etc. the music only sometimes drips a little into turn of the century We’re In A Musical blandness. a friend of mine said a while ago that i saw the TV glow looked too good for the movie it was and i’m not sure i agree but having seen this i do feel like i understand now what he was talking about… the scrappiness of the endeavor is really key to the experience here (including the part where it’s obviously not made for a lot of money but a lot of it looks really good anyway so that the creativity of the production team is really foregrounded).

mickey 17 — i liked this! i had never seen any of bong joon-ho’s work other than parasite. this is not an obvious masterpiece like parasite and some things didn’t work for me (the writing for that one girl who wasn’t his girlfriend… really not sure what was going on there). but the high-concept sci-fi premise was structured to be a cool emotional exercises, and, most importantly, robert pattinson was absolutely fucking incredible? i feel like i’ve heard that his performance is divisive… i loved it. i couldn’t believe what i was watching, in a good way. i would have watched like 4 more hours of him pretending to be that guy.

black bag — soderbergh grooving through a story dressed up in spy clothes that ultimately has a denouement almost out of an agatha christie book, minus i suppose the blood on the wall… i had a great 90 minutes at the movies. love to see industry alumn marisa abela getting work and getting buzz for it — justifiably, it’s really fun to see a relative newcomer (i know she was in the amy winehouse biopic but shh we don’t speak of that) not only hold her own with fassbender & blanchett in the cast but get most of the funniest bits. (i’m still laughing at “girl, you know i do…”)

o brother where art thou? — i can’t remember why we decided to rewatch this but what a movie… what a film… i saw this around the time it came out and liked it then but remembered it hardly at all and appreciated much more on this go-round, not least of all because i have at least a little more context for appreciating the reliable greatness of not just clooney (duh) but perhaps even more so turturro & tim blake nelson. (watching this not long after severance s2 wrapped up was honestly crazy, like i kept trying to convince my brain “that’s irving” and i couldn’t process it… king shit). the coen brothers are so fucking good at making movies it almost makes you wonder why anyone tries. extra crazy to watch this with the specter of christopher nolan's odyssey looming...

freak orlando — this was a weird art movie which is the kind of thing i like experiencing every now and then as enrichment for my mental enclosure even though i don’t typically like actually love them as movies… my viewing companion for the screening who has a higher tolerance for this kind of thing than i do also voiced that it dragged somewhat though as did the friend i was going to meet at the screening who had to leave early because their friend broke a tooth(!) so in this case i don’t think it’s just me. that said, we support on principle a weird and very gay 1980s german trip through freak shit clearly made by some actual freaks! and the vibes were great, visually, truly.

tv

severance (season 2) — lol. lmao, even. i’ve complained about this season on here but a few key points to close with: (1) incredibly annoying to spend season one slow-building (very well and organically and ultimately suspensefully!) to that banger of a climax, which was a banger in no small part because it seemed to promise the entire premise of the show was being upended, and then spend the first TWO (not just one. TWO) episodes explaining how actually nothing is changing it all; but then (2) also incredibly annoying to spend the first two episodes of the season explaining how nothing is changing, but then actually totally dropping the show’s “normal” completely, thus somehow avoiding both the televisual pleasure of hanging out with our guys and the narrative pleasure of consistent forward momentum; (3) annoying to realize btw that you can only justify this (because nobody is doing any fucking data refining anymore this season) by making it so that mark’s job is the only one that matter and luckily will only matter a little longer, which we learn through increasingly corny ominous intonations of “cold… harbor…”; (4) truly fuck off with everything about that gemma backstory [i will redact this complaint if future seasons give me mark/gemma mutual divorce but They Won’t]; (5) here’s the thing, like here’s the THING. i’m not actually opposed to reintegration taking a long time, being an uncertain process that proceeds in fits and starts, etc. what i AM opposed to is doing that while simultaneously trying to play reintegration as a “holy shit” cliffhanger like three separate times in a single season! THAT is what you can fuck off with. it’s also crazy that like everything about the conventions of screen storytelling would suggest that when a flashback episode is framed by a character unconscious going through a brain-altering process, what that set-up is communicating is that we are living the memories as they are being experienced by that character, as a result of that process… but then it’s just like, ok so outie mark was just dreaming about his dead wife? k. (6) maybe the biggest tell at how much of this season was spent spinning their wheels is that they had to take helly r., their most dynamic character, off the board for nearly all of it. (but then… when they finally let her do something, it makes no sense that she’s there, because helena is only undergoing the switch to motivate mark, and mark… isn’t there that day… which lumon presumably… knows?). no shade to the cast who are all wonderful.

currently watching: yellowjackets, which honestly only gets worse by the episode and is mercifully wrapping up its season this week; white lotus, closing out tonight on a season where Well I Had Fun; daredevil: born again essentially as ringer podcast homework, which is objectively not good but i don’t totally mind because i didn’t think netflix daredevil was very good either, and i think is finishing up week after next? what will i with myself then... will i finally cave and give andor a chance... stay tuned

theater

grangeville - i saw this because my friend’s husband bailed at the last minute and not knowing in advance that it was by the guy who wrote the whale… anyway this was fine. well it was kind of mid but ultimately i kind of liked it i guess? but not in a way where i would recommend it to other people or be in a hurry to see something else by this guy. the main things i want to say about it are (1) my friend pointed out that literally every scene buries the lede i.e. features some kind of status quo disrupting revelation revealed halfway through… silly. also it’s largely a play about a guy trying to connect with his gay half-brother who’s like ten years younger than he is, and it’s not until the final scene that he mentions that his own kid came out recently… that strained credulity for me lol i do not believe that man would be sensitive enough to avoid bringing that up immediately even if he’s in therapy now because of a suicide attempt (is that bingo yet?) (2) this was a two-hander and one of the actors was out there giving an absolutely incredible performance that breathed complete life into familiar narrative ground about abusive trailer park childhoods and blowing my MIND for the scene where he then played the other guy’s soft-spoken dutch husband, i mean, really some of the greatest acting i’ve seen on a stage, just total and full mastery vocally, physically, finding the specificity in every single line… unfortunately the other actor was not very good and particularly failed to convince whenever he got particularly emotionally heated. ah well.

the picture of dorian gray - omg i saw TWO theaters this month, go me! anyway obviously i went to see this because this adaptation is a one-woman show starring sarah snook and i really have no thoughts about the adaptation, its effectiveness in making wilde’s tale sing for our time too, the use of screens, etc., because i really just spent the whole time being amazed that you could apparently watch succession and still remain totally clueless about this whole other realm of snook’s range and power. like think about that. think about sarah snook as shiv roy and then think about the fact that that’s not even all of what she can do. and also she is perhaps the most adorable person on earth. what a woman.

music

didn’t really have a non-album track i was like obSESSED with this month to put before the cut but here’s the latest from sorry mom, the scrappy punk duo who were my pick for last year’s amnesty week at TSJ — this song is not as appealingly big or as well-produced as “but i’m a quarterback” but it’s good enough (especially once the tempo picks up) to keep me feeling warm about the fact that they’re out there doing their thing:

rebecca black, SALVATION — this was good! hyperpop inflected but too smooth to really qualify i think (although as previously established i maybe don’t actually know what hyperpop is). i have a lot of fun when the songs are playing but do struggle to recall them when they’re not… many such cases i am learning in this, my albums era. hard to pick a standout from that but maybe… title track “salvation”? sure.

shygirl, club shy room 2 — i know shygirl mostly from her feature on the 365 remix. this was also fun! “je m’appelle” especially is a jam

doechii, alligator bites never heal — damn this album is GOOD. a rare album i actually like more as an album than as songs… i haven’t kept a lot of tracks in my shuffle mix but when i listened to the album i wanted to listen to it again straight through several more times. doechii is so versatile and talented and also really fun and the album is perfectly structured in terms of peaks and valleys to stay engaging and cool throughout. thank you all for coming here to receive such fresh hot takes as “doechii is good.” my favorite tracks are definitely the more straight-up rap songs like “boiled peanuts”!

tori amos, the music of tori and the muses — did you know tori amos released a collection of songs for a children’s book she did? someone on ONTD said it was their favorite production on an album of hers in years and tbh i kinda agree but it’s still hard to get past the part where it’s very obvious these songs are written for children… “spike’s lament” kind of a bop though

bad bunny, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS — bad bunny seems like probably one of the nicer people to be derangedly famous but my previous excursions to his music left me feeling it was pretty samey and like i respected it for what it was but it wasn’t really my thing except the one where he kept saying he was from “p fucking r”... so it was a pleasant surprise that i actually really loved this album, specifically because it’s soooo joyfully indebted to and engaging with puerto rican music! i don’t actually have the knowledge base to talk about this intelligently — my reaction was basically “hey, this sounds like stuff i used to hear in my mom’s car or at my grandma’s house” — but the pitchfork review provides some actually informed context that validated that initial instinct. also validating: i thought “i love this album for how puerto rican it is” and then thought about how annoyed my mom would be to hear that because she hates bad bunny so much… but then it came up in conversation when i was with her and she was like “the new stuff is great” !!! winning over the puerto rican moms over 60 contingent… slay king…. my favorite track is probably “cafe con ron” although opening with a track called “nuevayol” also won me over basically instantly.

miya folick, erotica veronica — folk-inflected indie rock? rock-influenced indie folk? somewhere in that triangle… this album has some really cool, visceral lyrics (“i punch myself in the face with my own little fist then i collapse into you”) and also is largely overtly about relationship issues being experienced by a bisexual woman in a relationship (now over i believe lol) with a man, which i appreciate not as a bisexual woman in a relationship with a man but as something far more important (a former teenage ani difranco fan), and it definitely has some bops. however the production is all like very… pleasant and respectable… it feints towards what dave called an aughts indie breakdown towards the end of “fist” but otherwise kind of just hangs out being fine. listening to “hate me” i was caught on the line “i need freedom to feel like i have a fucking soul” because it reminded me of rilo kiley’s “i am flawed if i’m not free” and then i had to listen to “does he love you” and i was like wow whoever produced this rilo kiley album was really good at their job and whoever did the folick album is… adequate. really love “prism of light” though.

marie davidson, city of clowns — listened to this on a discord rec, kinda droney electro-pop that is simply Not For Me. fun to have such experiences in this, my albums era!

jasmine.4.t, you are the morning — sweet folk music with some lovely guitar playing. ultimately too sweet and folky for me but it’s certainly very pretty! “kitchen” is probably my favorite.

BANKS, off with her head — i thought this was a fun listen at first and then as the album wore on it started feeling sort of samey and uninteresting and the songs have not had much replay value for me… except, oddly, for the gleefully misogynistic “i hate your ex-girlfriend,” on which doechii literally shows up to rap “i hate you bitches, i’m misogynistic”... slay queen(?)

deep sea diver, billboard heart — unexpectedly loved this very solid indie rock album, which sounds great, has some really good songwriting, and has a lead singer operating in that like… sweet spot between “great sounding voice” and “singing kind of wrong” that makes her both pleasant and interesting to listen to. after a few listens some of the choruses get a little droney/repetitive, but it’s also one of extremely few albums this year i finished and immediately started over from the top. best track is definitely “what do i know,” although “emergency” is a close second.

hope tala, hope handwritten — absolutely not for me but probably at least decent at what it’s doing? would recommend if you’re into norah jones (although take a grain of salt because norah jones is also absolutely not for me so it’s not the most informed rec… but that’s what it reminded me of)

leony, oldschool love �� did you ever wonder what if back in 2012 the lead singer of mumford and sons had died and been replaced by ellie goulding? well, now you can find out. that sounds like a diss, and it is, but in the interests of full transparency, something about the merging of these two mid tastes has proven very appealing to me personally, although in a way where i’m like, keenly aware as i’m listening to it that it’s not good, it is in fact bad, and yet i’m like, the dumbest part of me loves this please play it again. “favorite” track i guess is “afterglow” although i’m not sure what “favorite” means when i’m talking about what you might call the worst album i’ve enjoyed all year.

mae martin, i’m a TV — can never really tell what it is that makes some mid-tempo female-fronted indie rock hit for me and some totally miss… this was just too snoozy to do it for me but i liked closing track “people get back up”

lady gaga, mayhem — i’ve been feeling really warmly towards lady gaga as a celebrity lately largely because of chappell roan’s insistence on putting the “mid” in “midwest,” but actually listening to mayhem reminded me that i’ve never really fucked with her musically, in no small part because i find the actual sound of her voice annoying to listen to (i just can’t hang with a super nasal tone… i have this problem with ariana too and if anything have it with her more now that i’ve learned from her last album + wicked that she’s doing it on purpose and could just not). when we blurbed abracadabra at TSJ i mentioned that i happened to listen to it right after listening to JADE’s “it girl” (are you team JADE yet? you should be!) and it really highlighted that on the one hand “it girl” obviously owes a huge debt to the music gaga was making 10 years ago, and on the other hand, “it girl” sounds like a fun fresh great evolution of the space gaga opened up and abracadabra sounds like gaga treading water. that goes for basically the whole album! how bad do u want me is kind of a bop though i feel like i’m hoping for a remix that picks up the pace a little to make it a proper summer jam.

SASAMI, blood on the silver screen — i really liked this album the first time i listened to it even though it opens “i’m such a cancer” and that’s NOT the worst lyric on it, and then i saw someone talking about how bad the production was and i was like… hmmm… perhaps tru… i still kinda like it tho. further listens have convinced me that the production is in fact pretty bad, muddled and 80s-influenced but never bold or crisp enough to actually hit that maximalist 80s vibe, cheap sounding but also too glossy, and also sasami herself is not much of a vocalist (she’s not bad, just kind of… there)... but have also convinced me she’s got a genuinely good ear for popcraft, with some really solid, infectious, bop-worthy melodies. sorta wish she would go the julia michaels/bonnie mckee route and write for other people — some of these would really kill with a better vocalist at the helm — but at the least i would love for her to get a new producer… unfortunately she co-produces all her own stuff so this is probably her Vision. alas. the melodies do have me bopping though, especially on “slugger” and “i’ll be gone” (my new favorite song kelly clarkson would absolutely kill, even though it contains the actual worst lyric on the album: “when the weekend is over / like the end of a show that’s not getting renewed.” worst simile in pop music since taylor drove a new maserati down a dead-end street? maybe!).

SOFY, another day in paradise — one thing i am learning in my Albums Era is that there is literally so much music out there that is very pleasant and not special at all. this is a perfectly acceptable little soft-pop album that you could see being used in the scene of an indie movie in like 2004… i can never really remember what it sounds like but when it’s on i’m like “oh that’s nice”... sure! do not have a standout track on this one because they all sound the same to me.

TOKiMONSTA, eternal reverie — file under “probably good but not for me”

horsegirl, phonetics on and on — this one was a surprise! i thought it was a little too humble and quiet on first listen, and didn’t find myself inclined to keep many of the songs in the shuffle list as they came up… however then i found myself getting really obsessed with “2468” to the extent that i felt compelled to give the album another straight-through listen and now i’m like, is this my favorite album of the year so far? maybe! it’s definitely really, really good… sparse and sort of minimalist but so interesting and cool to listen to, every little detail thoughtfully assembled, the instruments sound ground, the vocals kind of wandering in and around them and each other sound great… just a wonderfully compelling little sonic world to spend 37 minutes in. hugely recommend! in addition to “2468” i really love “information content” but also “well i know you’re shy” just came up on shuffle and i was like “wow this one is great too…”

chloe slater, love me please — EP from someone who’s very much of the class i think of as “toiling away in the spotify girlpop mines.” pop sensibilities with a rock influence, or maybe rock music that sounds like pop music, nothing you can imagine being anyone’s favorite song but all of it about as good as olivia rodrigo’s output to date, at least… these are the girls i think of when i’m like “why would anyone be obsessed with [A-tier performers who are Fine] when like they don’t suck but you can find 500 people offering the same rewards in a few algorithmic clicks”... anyway slater’s fine. title track probably the best. i think some of her lyrics may be feminist but i can’t really understand her and don’t quite care enough to look it up and double check.

corook, committed to a bit — i HAAAAAATED this, omg. hated it like it made me upset. which is sort of on me, because, like, i heard their nonbinary coming out song “THEY!” and found it both generally cloying in a way i’m specifically really allergic to and genuinely ideologically irritating in that “nonbinary is when boy thing but also girl thing :)” way that makes me think we’re just never getting out of patriarchy ever… lest you think i’m being uncharitable please know that “pokemon shirt but you know it’s a crop top / they/them energy! they/them energy!” is a real line on this album. (as is, bafflingly, “tote bag filled with erotica poetry / they/them energy! they/them energy!” like first of all wow is “erotica poetry” bad and second of all you’re just describing being a sarah lawrence student…) however sonically it wasn’t bad and the melody of the chorus was decent so i was like ok they can’t possibly have that many songs about I Am Nonbinary Now so let me give this a try, as an open-minded listener in my albums era… but somehow THEY! is first of all definitely the most solid melody on the album and second of all not even close to as cloying as the album gets! the whooooole thiiiiiing sounds like it was made by someone whose sole exposure to culture — not queer culture, ANY culture, like any art or other purposeful human expression — comes from queer 22 year olds on twitter, and who also has adopted the cadence of a kindergarten teacher or children’s entertainer… i mean it’s bad. it made me angry. i was like why are we letting people do this… years ago in a TWOP recap about american idol jacob clifton said of “my life would suck without you” that he hated the song because, like, “being with you is so dysfunctional” is not songwriting, it’s just saying the thing that songwriting is supposed to be about, and that is what this whole album is like. truly some of the worst lyrics i have heard in my life. they start a song with “i’m a sensitive person,” for crying out loud!!! absolutely not. i had to listen to brat afterward to resettle my nerves.

jane child, jane child — i listened to this one because dave got really fascinated with it because it’s like what if someone was trying to invent the 90s but was trapped in the 80s due to the nature of linear time? like you can listen to this and imagine that if this person had been recording this album in a post-hole soundscape it would have (1) sounded real different and (2) honestly really fucked. unfortunately that didn’t happen so it really Sounds Like The Eighties, which is a sound i have a particular allergy to, so my stance on this album is “i liked this as much as i could like anything that sounds so much like the eighties but it mostly makes me want to listen to celebrity skin”

lucy dacus, forever is a feeling — kind of a snoozefest if i’m being honest! i liked my previous dacus exposure (“fool’s gold” which combined with phoebe bridgers’ “garden song” was really critical mood music for wrapping up a particular fic, the one about how she would murder her friend’s shitty dad), but i found this just very plain — dull melodies, pretty but not particularly interesting production, uninspired lyrics. i felt like her somewhat affectless delivery, which at points felt almost phair-like, nestled uncomfortably with the prettiness, glossiness, conventional-ness of the production… like it works for liz phair because her songs are also sort of weird sounding, her arrangements are weird or unexpected, she has a guy who spends her live shows coming up to her with guitars because she uses so many weird tunings… the album just didn’t feel worth a second listen.

japanese breakfast, for melancholy brunettes (& sad women) — i thought this was pretty good but it’s too quiet and artful for me to “enjoy.” respect it artistically tho & “picture window” is a little bit bop-shaped. her memoir about her dead mom is as good as you’ve heard!

great grandpa, patience, moonbeam — i enjoyed listening to this competent indie album but felt like it was 50/50 whether it would be an unexpected grower a la the horsegirl album or whether i would swiftly delete it out of the shuffle pile and forget it ever existed… so far leaning towards option B. pretty-sounding and not unclever but i think maybe it’s lacking oomph.

[gacha-incels]

It's astounding that these liberal bootlickers *still* can't do the basic ass things of just re-examine those official posts, consult with those who can speak the language and look up the translated threads of the unions' responses.

And before anyone tries to rebuke, no, the things said in both the August & September posts WEREN'T condemnation, just vague corporate reassurances without any statements direct intentions or actions against the perpetrators.

Are these people that cocked up in their echo-chambers to hear out of another person's culture or are they *that* sensitive of hearing of things they like that has done bad things?

ngl at some point it really does feel obscene to me seeing people write about how PM & Limbus are some top tier progressive anticapitalist haven full of lgbt+ characters while Korean women try to tell them the company’s antifeminist actions are actively harming female workers and perpetuating this misogynistic 🤏 witch hunt.

like of course MTL is not perfect here but essentially she’s saying “if you’re a transphobe in PM’s fictional city it’s unacceptable but if you’re a feminist working for PM in reality you’re at risk of losing your job. I’m surprised people who are sensitive to representations of queer fictional characters are indifferent to the labor rights of Project Moon’s employees.” This is just one example, couple of days ago I had posted another, it comes up quite often. these users are trying to tell you that this is something that directly affects Korean women in reality and you just tell them, what? they’re wrong, they don’t get it, actually what PM did was normal in their country and they had no other choice?? it must be fine because the lead singer of mili is a woman and still works with PM and this is actually just like the hays code in the US? I honestly cannot believe someone had the gall to write that last one in their “PM masterpost”. the Korean users telling you this organized boycotts, frequent digital hashtag campaigns to get information out in multiple languages, completely removed fan accounts, created an organization to help victims of feminist ideological verification, monggeu came forward explaining her awful working conditions, Mimi legally took Wonderlab down because she did not want to be associated with project moon. honestly it’s been incredible watching them rise to the occasion and accomplish so much. and you think….what exactly when you see this? that actually all of these people directly affected by the misogynist, incel catering actions of project moon are just misguided fools who don’t understand what happened? that these women are worthy sacrifices for a gambling game because you think it has some epic capitalism takedown and there are male characters who have traditionally female names?

Why do they defend PM so vehemently in the face of critique? I think part of it is this increasingly common phenomenon where these fans need to think project moon must completely have the same progressive political leanings as them because they enjoy consuming the works and they consider themselves progressive, therefore the reverse must be true, that the media they enjoy must also be ideologically progressive because they enjoy it. it’s why they’re so shocked when someone completely different from them in political leanings enjoys PM’s games, we saw this as well when Arknights KR engaged in feminist ideological verification. these high earning gambling games can make all the vague political statements they want but it doesn’t mean jack shit if they’re engaging in antifeminism and harming employees in reality. in the past decade (and especially 2020 until now) “fandom” and “consuming content” have evolved into integral parts of these people’s personalities (especially those who are gen Z and younger) and have significant impacts on how they interact with others and how they see themselves. they wrack their brains coming up with excuses for project moon’s antifeminist actions and this genuinely gets fanfiction tier at some point.

like look at this example from that “PM masterpost” a user here on tumblr made. this is the same one we were discussing earlier that reposted rumors slandering the youth union.

beyond the ridiculous untrue claims (this is nothing like the hays code, what PM did was not normal, Mihoyo isn’t the only company that told incels to fuck off, they also have offices in SK and had literally dealt with a bomb threat at one of their SK events, etc…u get it, I’m not going thru every word) you can see this wild conjecture regarding the actions taken by the 2 studios. To me this is an example that shows how much these people defending Project Moon warp their thinking in order to keep believing this company is “progressive”. The company Mihoyo that did not respond to incels’ increasingly ridiculous harassment, blocked their livestream chat then deleted all their misogynistic comments in the next livestream and was one of the only (if not the only) targeted companies that did not take Studio Ppuri’s work for them down - this is presented as essentially “whatever” and further downplayed by saying “I personally doubt [this] was a part of any deeply held opinion on women’s rights.” And Project Moon, the company that folded to incel demands immediately, fired a woman at their behest, sued unions and condemned them in their later statements while saying absolutely nothing about the incels that caused the incident, put memes in their gacha game from the very community these incels came from, makes sure to dutifully censor any🤏 in their gambling game, worked the Leviathan artist so hard she contemplated suicide frequently and had to get IVs? These things are presented as just inevitabilities of operating in South Korea and PM is lauded as “I can’t believe PM is fundamentally misogynistic.” The editorializing is absurd. imo there also comes a time where you compare your “poor little South Korean gacha game who just got caught in the crossfire and actually they are totally progressive and feminist 🥺” to the “Chinese company Mihoyo who does whatever to keep getting the most money and has no morals about it” that at some point starts to lean heavier on sinophobia. I’m not here to blow smoke up Mihoyo’s ass but I do think their action regarding the korean incels’ harassment was significant at a time when companies were falling over themselves to kiss incel ass. And, as has been discussed before on this blog, Project Moon’s capitulation to incels was also significant just in the opposite, misogynistic direction. idk it just gets so unbelievably frustrating to see English speaking users who believe themselves to be “progressive” or “leftist” making excuses because they want to keep playing videogames without feeling guilt meanwhile the Korean fanbase has consistently mobilized digitally and irl to spread info, protest, raise money, etc. like how are you not feeling any shame whatsoever after seeing how principled they are?

[bohemian-nights]

How do Targies unironically praise T@rgaryen blood purity like legit white supremacists and then deny there's any racism there?? Please make it make sense

Honestly liking the Targaryens isn’t the problem(and at this point, I'm pretty sure we all like a Targaryen or two).

Yeah, they undoubtedly have some bad views as a whole, but as long as you acknowledge that their views are an allegory for real issues that’s fine.

We aren’t necessarily defined by the fiction we consume.

However, these fans outright taking on white supremacist talking points about blood supremacy and blood purity with 100% sincerity and then being confused as to why people are calling them racist is a mind trip.

If all you are getting from the books is how special and magical the Targaryen’s are and how they must keep the bloodline pure, how outsiders dirty the blood, and then use that to degrade and mock characters(and harass their fans) who aren’t silver-haired with purple eyes then yeah, you’re a fucking racist.

GRRM is admittedly not the best at handling race(or even certain female characters). He’s an old white man and it shows, but even he didn’t create this universe for you guys to spout out this crap. You are supposed to question things like feudalism and Targaryen exceptionalism not uphold it.

Nettles is a prime example of this, but they want to say she’s Daemon’s kid, or unquestionably Valyrian, and how she’s irrelevant since she’s Black(not to mention deny the racism she faces in the text as well as outside of it) rather than admit that maybe your blood, your gender(she’s a woman too but they always seem to forget that), your social economic status, your race does not define you. You and your actions do.

That all being said, I do think the Targaryen ideology is what attracts people to the house in the first place, but they won’t admit this because that means they have to confront their own biases.

If Targaryen ideology is harmful and you agree with it wholeheartedly what does that make you? How do you view people who are different than you? Who do you view as beneath you? How do you treat people who you view as lesser than you?

Yes this is all fictional, but the language being used is very much based on how they feel about certain groups in real life.

Look I’ve seen people straight up say things like there are too many Black people on HOTD and that the only in-canon Black character should be cut because they’ve met their quota and then cry that they are being (rightfully) called racists.

I’ve seen people say that since Daemon rejected a white woman(Alys) who they view as better than her(Nettles) he would for sure never touch Nettles’ with a ten-foot pole much less love her in a romantic capacity and then cry that they are now being called a racist.

I’ve seen people purposely reduce characters solely down to their race and then cry that they are now being called a racist.

I’ve seen people harass and stalk actual Black fans and then cry and say that they are being bullied when we call them out for it.

I’ve seen people outright use racial slurs then the fanbase brushes that aside to say that the racism is limited to just a few individuals when many of these same people are using the previous arguments and treat real-life fans like crap.

Racism isn't limited to saying I hate n-words and wanting to commit acts of violence upon us.

It’s easier to say you aren’t a racist than to deal with the very real possibility that you are a part of the problem. That you treat people(including fictional characters) who don’t look like you like absolute shit because of something as stupid as the color of their skin. That you view them as so beneath you that we don’t deserve basic respect.

It should be noted that Targaryren fans aren't the only racists in this fandom especially when it comes to Black characters/fans, but they are the most outright hostile to the point where it is utterly ridiculous when they say they aren't racist.

But what do I know? I’m just a crazy hating ass bitch who’s out of her depth and who should shut her trap…

[brilliantfantasticgeronimo]

dw rewatch - takes on "the end of the world"

companion watch:

"the artic desert" hits different lol

something something bella vs the witch

rose's fear attack when she finds heres lf in the alien situation. she's genuinely terrified! it's a good beat, man. more than that, it's a rare beat. I get a lot of people don't vibe with it and prefer the more "buffy-esque approach, since it's "more to the point" and gets you larger than life figures… but personally I much prefer it when scifi/fantasy scenarios are portrayed as the terrifying reality they would be. also this: "ROSE: I just hitched a ride with a man. I don't even know who he is. He's a complete stranger"

war of the world vibes with the little robot fellas. /unintentional parallel to how cassandra dies and how the aliens in that book die?

"it gets inside and changes my mind, and you didnt even ask" "i didnt think about it like that" it's interesting that rose question this tbh

"five billion years in the future, my mum's dead" "bundle of laughs you are" /god i love this exchange. nine's constant attempt to downplay ANY surfacing of Real Emotions. rose's naivety in contemplating for the first time in her life that oh yeah, people die. the first statement of the "everything dies, everything ends" theme that will be woven throughout all the rtd era.

ngl i wish rose Did More in the plot of this episode, in terms of actually solving the crisis, feels like a stepdown after Rose giving her the most climatic moment... that said she does get a lot of great quibs in this one: "you two go pollinate and i'll go meet the family"/ "and i want you home by midnight!"/ "its better to die than to live like you, a bitchy trampoline" / "youre just lipstick and skin"

she's really similar to nine/ten in that aspect. they both have that "humor as defense mechanism" thing

blorbos:

the way nine and rose Lean in those stairs…. im Looking respectfully and im Thinking pure thoughts. (honestly ppl talk a lot about ten and rose's body language in s2 but there was A Lot going on with nine and rose as early as episode 1)

"all that counts is here and now" can't tell if zen mindfulness or a desperate defense mechanism to cope with ptsd.

first thing rose does is call her mum ): - Cassandra "I'm too young" vs Ten's "I was going to do so much more"...(ben wyatt voice) it's about the hypocrisy (oh having written this note before rewatching new earth... put a pin on that!)

timeless child retroactive continuity bonus: perhaps cassandra as "the last human" (not really a "human") paralleling "the last timelord" (not really a "timelord)? - "JABE: And what about your ancestry, Doctor? Perhaps you could tell a story or two. Perhaps a man only enjoys trouble when there's nothing else left". well post-s13 they're gonna enjoy themselves a lot more lol - there's something very anti-entropy about how the child gets to regenerate indefinitely without "losing" its essence and its dna integrity (vs cassandra's "flatness", the child gains more and more complexity as time passes).

colonialism/hegemony: - NINE: "mind you, when I say "the great and the good" what I mean is the rich." / "Five billion years and it still comes down to money" / this maybe be harsh,,, honestly i hate to say but doctor who sometimes really is just typical neolib """anti-capitalist""" fiction. - in the sense that it pretends to be anti-capitalist, but really is just capitalist realist. it's writers can imagine 203223 scenarios of the earth dying but they cannot conceive of a post-capitalist world, a classless society or simply a world without taxes. Of course you could say "this is so these stories are relatable" but even in their relatedness, there's rarely a portrayal of the anti-capitalist struggle (rather than just generic star wars-style, ideology-less "rebellions).- (that said, obligatory "I'm not a politics robot" disclaimer... "Do you think it's cheap, looking like this? Flatness costs a fortune." is an iconic retort lol) - there's also a kind of subtle Myth Of The Linear Progress Of History thing going on with cassandra being framed as someone who "stayed behind" and has not embraced this analogue to our "Color Blind Post Racial Society" which has "Obviously" outgrown prejudice and notions of racial purity. - "good thing i didn't take you to the deep south" / "you were to busy making cheap shots about the deep south" // parallels to-> "who do you think makes your clothes?" "Is that why you travel 'round with a human at your side? It's not so you can show them the wonders of the universe, it's so you can take cheap shots?" "sorry" . actually no rtd i dont think these are chepashots at all lol they are VERY relevant shots!! it's very transparent how the writers are kind of meek about making these *truly* transgressive points, but it's much easier to have the doctor argue that rose having a donor card is "a different morality"... again one is truly transgressive, the other is fun-but-no-challenging-of-the-hegemony scifi "dilemma". - the "quick word with Michael Jackson" line is doing A Lot but idek how to even begin to entangle it lol it's very 00s, for sure. - for once, a self aware one: "People have died, Cassandra. You murdered them." / "It depends on your definition of people, and that's enough of a technicality to keep your lawyers dizzy for centuries"

themes: - everything has its time and everything ends check your bingo cards. racial purity vs mixing vs 'progress'. class. life cycles. gut instinct (rose jumping the gun to empatise w/ the doc + nine going through the fans + rose reaction to the alien parade). destruction as tourism, as "artistic event" (an uncomfortable parallel to how this is what our heroes will be doing for the next 10+ seasons). - this episode does a bit of a u-turn on the previous (And the next) on its constant questioning of the intrinsic "meaning" of a physical body. in this, cassandra's continuous operations are framed as a kind of "lost of an essence". also the "surface" of her thinking as metaphor for her missing the "essence" of what it means to be human (biologically but more fundamentally, ethically).

Live Fast Die Young / YOLO / everyone deserves to be mourned. everyone deserves a dignified death. thread carefully and cherish life, because it will all be gone. our time is limited and short and it is because it is short that it means something. Life only means anything because there's Death.

ecology and environmentalism. "there are many species in that planet. mankind is only one / I'm a direct descendant of the tropical rainforest." obsessed with it. wish they brought back the rainforest.

[likorys-shimenawa]

Thanks, needed that spite to answer last time I guess - I repeat, if yo refuse to actualy educate yourself on the topic before responding again I will just block you. But honestly, this kind of vauge-abouting is the exact thing I feel needs to be adressed and corrected.

"Fiction is not reality" is a statement of fact, describing whether something exists in tangible dimension or not. It does not care about nuance: something either is, or is not a fact - the only nuance comes from what nomenclature is used to adress facts and what context it is used within.

An assortment of fact can give to nuanced discussion - male and female are a binary disambiguation based on reproductive roles, yet we have 6 cariotypes that present different male or female characteristics in a body which mean there isn't 'just' male and female sex.

To paraphrase Prattchet, there is no atom or mercy or justice, they are intangible construct humanity invented. You cannot make purely factual statement about something being just, because any quantifiers will be reliant on subjective definition of justice created by culturat context it exist within. [This gets more complicated if you include language variants, but that's because you need to include cultural variations of similar symbols, not because factualy of their definition changes. It's not that England and Japan have different 'blue', it's that 'blue' and 'ao' are different conceptually.]

Since you brought up ethics tho!

None of this cares about ethical part of validating trans identity, because identities are social construct. Trans identity is valid because out social understanding of gender means that being trans is valid (and supposted by scientific facts as well).

Just like vaccinating your children is currenly 'the ethical' oprion - based on human being a social animal who needs a community, and out communities currently require you to make small sacrifices of personal freedom for the sake of betterment of community as a whole. [Factual statement of vaccines lowering infection is neutral statement of fact - you can make arguments for and against that effect being beneficial or detrimental, depending on what context you speak within.]

The proship/anti discourse is not about how fiction affects reality. This is a topic of psychiatric, social, criminal and many other discussions.

Fiction is not reality. This is a fact, no matter how antis feel about it.

The discourse - which you are wholle uneducated about and refuse to educate yourself on - is indeed an ethical one. It's concerned whether certain types of fiction are 'immoral enough' to validate taking harmful actions against the person who creates such fiction or engages with it.

Proship is a 'moral' stance, supported with scientific research and liberal ideaologies, which says you cannot take harmful actions towards people based solely on what fiction they create or consume.

Anti is a 'moral' stance, supported by personal feelings and ideologies such as far-right, fascism, puritanism as well as extremist religion, which claim that you can take harmful actions towards people based solely on what fiction they create or consume.

That's why each and every single point here is explaining why you cannot take harmful actions towards people based solely on what fiction they create or consume.

Just like feminism as a whole includes everything pertaining to equalising the treatment of both sexes (to simplify it the most). It does not mean we 'stop sticking feminist labels' and 'focus on nuanced discussions' - it means we call it more nuanced topics their own more spcific names, such as intersectional feminism or radical feminism or pink tax or reproductive heal inequality or transmisoginy.

Periodic rent-lowering-gunshots:

Fiction is not reality.

You can enjoy things in fiction that would be awful in the real world. Like playing a murderhobo in a game! In the real world, being or supporting a murderer-thief would be pretty damn awful, while in the game it's just good fun. Same with anything else you choose to do with the pixels on the screen, like kinks that don't affect anyone real, so they're okay in fiction, but would be pretty damn bad in real life.

No one else is responsible for your online experience. They are required not to harass you, but they are not and never will be obligated to not post about ships, kinks, or tropes you dislike just to avoid you seeing them. It's up to you to blacklist words or phrases, block tags, or even block users as needed to avoid seeing content that upsets you.

No one can force you to read anything against your consent. Any content you don't like seeing can be instantly avoided by closing out of the offending post/fic.

You are not owed an online experience free of discomfort.

Nothing that happens in your imagination can ever make you a bad person. Words you write or read about fictional characters will never make you a bad person.

The claim that media consumption influences real-life behavior is intellectually dishonest and serves only to excuse the behavior of real offenders.

Fiction is a safe way to explore horrifying or confusing concepts. Therapists agree that fiction, even (or especially) about taboo topics is a good coping mechanism, especially, but not exclusively, for trauma survivors. Fiction is to adults what play therapy is to children. This doesn't stop being true if the work in question is of a sexual nature.

Sex isn't an inherently worse or better motivation than anything else. A work written to create feelings of arousal isn't dirty, shameful, or in any way less pure than works written to entertain, provoke moral questions, or for other reasons. And worth noting is that multiple purposes can exist in the same story, especially fanfiction.

You aren't entitled to an explanation for why someone reads, writes, or otherwise enjoys certain works, kinks, tropes, ships, etc.

[theophagie]

"cough cough he can’t help it with his choking kink 🤭 but my girl Nana wasn’t she scared that her child might die like his dad?? she was so sure that if "Zen knew about him, he’d use him" come on girl, how did you know exactly what this man’s mindset was?? That felt way too personal to be a guess.

now it's his turn : how the hell did he know about her little smile thing?? he does it just to mock her in front of AM, + he didn’t just adopt her philosophy—he literally simulated her mentor/pupil relationship with Toshi. In a completely twisted way. When Tomura was screaming in Kamino that he wasn’t ready AFO told him to keep fighting. compare that to Nana in Vol. 0 telling Toshi, ‘I leave the rest to you.’ And don’t even get me started on the whole “The next is you” thing. :))))))

‘Same level of importance as the other in-between OFA holders. Sure.’ Yeah, suuuure. And for some weird reason, she’s the only one who said the exact same thing that Yoichi told his brother about “taking advantage of people and toying with them.”

Yeah, Toshi also said the same thing—but he heard it from her! And she doesn’t even know about Yoichi. So suuuuure, AFO doesn’t give a f*ck about the woman who just happens to share the exact same ideals as his most beloved person. :))))))"

for Zen , she embodied everything he despised and stood against , and yet , she fit perfectly into the role he had crafted for her in his mind. Through his scorn, she became his foil. He never dismissed her as weak or beneath him, even though, like any self-assured villain, he believed himself above ordinary people. Instead, he saw her as lacking the competence and force needed to uphold the ideals she claimed to cherish. That’s why her death struck him as pitiful — a powerless end for someone who could never live up to her convictions. In contrast, he saw his own beliefs as a fiction that turned into reality and he embraced what others might call delusion, because unlike her, he had the strength to reshape reality to fit his will."

In essence, Nana represents a major point of failure, ideological opposition and a key part of the narrative that shapes Zen's motivations and actions throughout the series.

wow I got excited and write all of this 😳😳 😳

The master/student thing always makes me lose my mind because like. "The foils are Zen and All Might ☝️" well yes if you're only accounting for their respective roles in Tomura's and Izuku's lives, except that it goes beyond that!!! Because Nana did it first and they're both drawing upon her legacy, All Might as her student & pseudo-son and Zen as her enemy & whatever psychosexual horror was going on there!!!!!!!!!!! Mother............ They are forever exes with unfinished business, even on Nana's part who the hell just casually says something like this to the man who ruined their life and killed them. So solemn, not even angry or resentful.........

Even the way Zen talks about/to her is so distinct from everyone else... There's always a sort of edge to his insults and taunts (he likes toying with people! They're all beneath him, like you said), but when it comes to her he really gets childishly mean lol, and petty, sooo petty. "Haha you're dead, you sucked, you were weak, you're sooo dead, I got your grandson 😛". Even when he gloats to All Might for what he's done to Tomura he has to mime her smile, to make fun of her in one way or the other Hey Zen. How did you know that she would mime smiling. How did you know about it Zen...... and it’s very 👀 that the only other time he gets so direct with his language use is when he's de-aging and losing control from all the emotions he's feeling and the damage he's suffering. :))) I agree that he didn't truly think that she was literally "weak", just weak enough that she couldn't live up to her ideals and defeat him, but his verbal aggressiveness towards her is a mega point of interest because ultimately she does think of herself as weak, and he knows it (shocker), so tries to use this belief against her it to hurt her... expect that he goes about it in the most divorced man way possible rather than just being his usual arrogant self asidjfgjk

Since you brought up Yoichi, another interesting thing is that during the PLW it's Nana and him alone who show up to protect Izuku from Zen when they're inside the vestige world. Only them!!!!!! Who are so alike each other :)))))

[ticklepinions]

Not to like drop in and potentially cause drama but I am genuinely confused. Be nice in the notes/DMs. Content warning of mentions of s\x and m*rder and t*rture. I literally just say the words I don't go into detail

What's the issue with aging up fictional characters.

They are fictional

So that means they aren't real. They don't adhere to the same rules that we do irl. They quite literally can do whatever the writer wants them to do. If I want to make all my characters trans I can. If I want to make them all cucumbers I could also do that. If I feel like one character should be another race I can also do that.

Poetic license

The writer has full control over their writing. They can write about literally anything they want no matter how vulgar and taboo they have that right to do so. I understand the "it's giving people permission to do bad things". But I feel like we are giving writers too much credit, one of the hardest things to change are other people's behaviour. One smutty fic won't be enough to alter a person's ideology. It's the whole violent video games = to violence IRL argument.

The conscious effort to age up characters should not be punished and frowned upon

Like fr what is the point. If a character is canonically 12 forever does that mean that everyone is bound to never write about them in contexts where it wouldn't be appropriate for a minor?

To me if the writer ages up a character, is that not a good thing. That they loved a character so much they wanted to make it even more relatable to themselves by aging them up and putting them through experiences of the writer's choosing? How is that even remotely bad.

Calling people p*dos for shits and giggles isn't cool. Or because they disagree with you. Grow up. It's a psychological disorder. And how can you call someone that when they're aging up the characters to an "appropriate" age (18 in most countries).

Argument of giving people permission to do bad things

I've read about people being tortured and put through the worst of times. Do I now want to do that to another human being? No.

Using the same logic we should stop creating things altogether. Because people will interpret everything their own way. You can write the most sfw and tame fic and have someone use it as material to jack off. Sorry to burst your bubble. Alternatively the opposite is just as true. Does this mean we should just stop creating works that make us happy?

Conclusion

Like what am I missing. There is so much toxicity in the writing community when it comes to well writing. Like people have forgotten that writing is a tool, an escape for some people. It's so naïve to me to have a closed mindset of "you can't do this because I don't like it". Don't read it and most importantly don't create false narratives of calling people p*dos because they wrote about teenagers kissing. In the real world people have sex usually around 16+. Writing about it doesn't make you a terrible person, in the same way that writing about murder, or other taboo things doesn't tarnish your identity, or rather shouldn't.

There are lots of fics I will be less likely to read because they don't appeal to me. So I do this thing called not reading it. I also give the benefit of the doubt and acknowledge that whatever "bad" thing they're writing about could be their way of healing from their own trauma. It's quite literally none of my business. And I'd rather someone write about their inner demons in the fictional realm rather than unleashing them irl. But that's just my two cents.

Note: my language/tone may sound mad and you'd be correct. I'm just frustrated to see how toxic communities can get over a subject that to me shouldn't be that big of a deal? I'll try to keep an open mind to other thoughts/opinions/ideas but I'm just angy at the way people are going as far as shaming others for aging up characters for little reason.

[dark-skin-fem]

Kay so, I am saying black women were not saved by white suffragettes, abandoned by many of them, actually. You're playing defense for a movement that doesn't love you, they ally with people who hate women of color.

And white men stepped in to help, yes? White suffragettes abandoned black women, but white men didn't? White women ally with people who hate women of colour, but white men don't?

If white men and women are both racist, which affects me, and one of them is also misogynistic, which also affects me, I'm to let the misogyny slide because they pretend it's targeted at someone who is racist?

WITHOUT HESITATION. I'm sorry, I'm never grouping with a racist, I disavow them immediately, idc how trans affirming they are.

And I'm grouping with racists by saying men hide their misogyny by pretending they're talking about only white women? How does this even make sense in the context of this conversation? Is there a racist white woman somewhere in this thread that I validated?

Or are you saying that by recognising that white women suffer misogyny from progressive men, I'm also defending the racists among them?

I'm also VERY sure that since you're a terf all the racist nonsense terf white women say didn't include you, just those minorities that defend the transes. Fuck those guys! "Kingsley shacklebolt" was a fictional name one of the white saviors coined, right?

I don't know how TRAs make it to adulthood without understanding that people can hold 2 (or more!) opinions at once, and you can agree with one and not the other, and it doesn't say anything on what you think of the person as a whole. That I agree with some right wing, racist, or otherwise disagreeable women on the topic of transgenderism, and that I recognise how often leftist men use them as ideological punching bags, does not in any way mean I think I'm exempt from their racism. I know I'm not. I also know that I'm not exempt from the misogyny leftist men display which they veil with progressive language. So if you expect me not to "group" with racists, why would I group with misogynistic male TRAs? Why should I group with people who validate my blackness but denigrate my womanhood?

Bonus: I don't use "cis white women" to be misogynistic, if you scroll, i didn't use cis at all.

And yet here you are shilling for those who do. Have a cookie 🍪

Misogynoir is transcendent of conception of gender.

Misogynoir is based on race and sex. No one has ever claimed gender as a concept has any bearing on it. Sex isn't a concept, it's a material reality. No matter how one choose to present herself, sex is part of oppression as a black woman.

It is insane to me how we have literally made negative progress on civil rights, but trans people have been hit a few times and that seems good enough.

This can only make sense if you believe that transgenderism isn't hurting anyone's rights. Trans inclusion, especially of men in women's spaces have led to women actually getting hurt, raped, killed and harassed, our right to single sex spaces eroded, our womanhood being diluted. Transgenderism is sexist in and of itself, and on top of that we have men in women's prisons, sports, having access to women's sex based protections. Idgaf what progress or lack of is made on trans rights, but their encroachment into women's spaces is absolutely harming our own rights.

As a black woman the more radleaning I go the more I realise how much leftist men and libfems hide their misogyny by putting "cis white" in front of woman.

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form: Gender Neutral Names

I'm trying to name my characters.

I see there are plenty of baby name charts with gender breakdown popularity charts. But I have no idea why so many names listed as gender netural, one gender does not even appear on the chart or maybe just on the very bottom a year or two. Yet it's gender neutral? What makes it gender neutral if it's so far off. Very lopsided 95%/5% charts, I can kind of get, but to not even show up?

In fact any name can always have exceptions. I know some people both real and fictional with names that do not get listed as gender neutral but are in fact the opposite gender than listed.

How does a name become gender neutral when the occasional rare person just decides to go the opposite (which is inevitable) unless it's actually a trend and starts showing up on charts.

Is there any kind of sexism involved? I don't know but if I apply the same kind of reasoning with hair. People still keep calling long hair for females and short hair for males, instead of all gender neutral hairstyles. Yet there is way more instances of females with short hair and men with long hair than it seems for those names that are so lopsided the other gender doesn't make the chart. Yet the name gets called gender neutral and hair still gets divided.

Tex: Gender is applied to a name on the parent’s or individual’s say-so, and when the name itself is used for another child, the gendered connotations of the original bearer of the name carry over or not as a situation develops.

Sexism is an inherent, though unfortunate, part of gender as a role in society. This is mostly created as a means to make someone feel better about themselves, usually by denigrating someone easily identifiable as Different ™ than them. Sexism is as ideologically easy to adopt as racism, in that it’s usually the first thing someone’s eyes can find when they want to treat someone poorly due to their own perceived deficiencies.

Modern cultural perceptions aside, it seems as if you’re sourcing your worldbuilding and interpretations from a narrow band of sources. On tumblr and WordPress, which our blog is hosted on, there’s quite a few worldbuilding posts related specifically to names that are quickly accessible with a keyword search in your browser of choice. If you have particular cultures already in mind, those are useful additional keywords to help you, and can give you multiple perspectives on how gender may be variably defined.

Licorice: - Oh, names and naming is such an interesting topic! 

Since it’s your own world you are building, you can decide on the naming system they are going to use. Are you trying to create a naming system in which nobody can tell someone’s gender from the name alone? Some of the naming systems in our own world are largely gender neutral. I am told Punjabi is one language in which the majority of the names can be used for any and all genders. 

According to the Linguistics stack exchange, Chinese is a language in which names are not gendered. Bear in mind that I am not a Chinese speaker, and I’m happy to be corrected if this information is wrong, but apparently there is no set of words that are reserved for “proper names” in China. “​​In China you can use any word or words (max. 2 characters) you like as your name provided it sounds good and you find it meaningful.”

Unless I’m much mistaken, the naming systems for many First Nations follow the same principle. You could have a look at these different naming systems for inspiration. Several African countries I lived in gave children names that expressed their wishes for the child’s future - “Talent” or “Success” - or reflected the circumstances surrounding the birth - “No Money” and “Lonely” were two people I knew personally - or even the parents’ wishes for their own future. I knew a guy, the last-born of twelve, whose name was “No More.”

If you want to move away from names that in English are traditionally associated with one or other gender, you could

Invent names, as Tolkien and JRR Martin do. If you choose this route but want to avoid gendering your names, avoid ending sounds that are traditionally associated with the feminine (e.g. -a, -ia) for girls’ names or sounds traditionally associated with the masculine (e.g. -us, -ius) for boys’ names. 

Use ordinary nouns and adjectives as names. In this way you can also express the things your in-world culture values. Are they careful environmental custodians? Then they may give their children names associated with nature: “Summer Rain”, “Green Twig”, “Feathered Nest.” Are they warlike and aggressive? They may give their children names that commemorate weapons or martial qualities. “Fierce Helmet”, “Sturdy Shield” “Steadfast Courage” and so on.

(and that reminds me of the famous Puritan whose parents used names to express their faith: Praisegod Barebones)

The master of the use of names in worldbuilding is Ursula K LeGuin. If you like, take a look at some of her short fiction or novels to see what techniques she uses. 

Mod Miri Note: We also have a Master Post on Names Here. 

[flokali]

ꉂ★ Manners

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✕ 𝘞𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 :

— This is a yandere blog, I – Mori – don’t condone any, and I mean any, of the behavior displayed in this page or in my fics.

— I am well aware that fiction does hold an impact on reality, especially on the minds of young people, which is why I ask this account be 17+. However, I also believe that dark content in fiction isn’t wrong by itself as long as all parties involved (either it be as a maker or consumer) are aware of the severity and wrongness of the actions displayed.

— If you don’t want to or just don’t follow the rules, there’s nothing I can do – I simply hope you’re mature enough to understand that this is only fiction and that this behavior isn’t healthy (though I will say; I block)

— I write for female, male, and gender neutral readers. You ought to specify in your request what gender you’d like else I’ll default to GN.

— As I’ve said, I'll mainly write for: Genshin Impact (main), Honaki: Star Rail, Love and Deepspace, Twisted Wonderland, Enstars, and Tears of Themis ; I may post about other

— Do not recommend me on any other platforms, especially on Tiktok. Please, the platform is filled with minors and the last thing I need is a child running around reading through my blog. Please ask before translating any of my fics into another language.

— I will write: non-con, dub-con, cnc, yandere, gore, violence, cannibalism, a/b/o, breeding, pegging, dom readers, sub readers, sadomasochism, mind control, mind break, milfs/dilfs, cheating, & somno. Basically most things go?

— I won’t write: underage, unhygienic, self-harm, vore, beastiality, anything to do with unsanitary bodily fluids (piss nd scat), & ddlg.

— If anything isn’t listed here please ask me!

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✕ 𝘙𝘶𝘭𝘦𝘴 :

— Before I say anything else, I want to make one thing clear: I block liberally. If I see anyone actively going against my rules – it’s a block. I hope I don’t sound too rude but this is my blog and I’ll curate the experience.

— This is a side blog, one which I may transfer to a new account, I can’t send asks without showing my main; it’s easily accessible but I won’t be interacting much via main, sorry.

— Ask to tag, correct me on the terminology used or point out something that I missed, but don’t be rude about it — I’ll do my best to tag everything but things can slip my mind.

— Don’t try and guilt me into doing, changing things, or writing either; I don’t mean to sound rude but I’m literally just someone on the internet, I really, really don’t owe you anything and neither do you owe me.

— No bigotry, this includes (and isn’t limited to): Terf/Gender Critical Ideology, Racism, Xenophobia, Transphobia, Homophobia, Biphobia, Anti-Semitism, Zionism, etc. I’m not going to argue with you, go talk to the wall.

— MAPS/NO-MAPS (aka pedos) are also not welcomed and will be not only blocked but reported too.

— Radfems or “Gender Criticals”.

— Hate of any kind will either be deleted or posted to make fun of you, send three hate asks and you’re blocked though </3

… … … … …

If you are not 18+ don’t message or interact with me directly, please, you’re making me extremely uncomfortable. You shouldn’t be on this account in the first place but if you’re going to do it at least don’t be rude about it and brag to me. I know you think you’re mature (and realistically, you probably are!) — just, this isn’t the place for you. Come back here when you’re of age, please.

All of these rules have been written with my own experience and biases in mind, I’ve been on the “dark content” side of the internet for way longer than I should have — and I’m telling you this with all the love I can possibly give you. If you’re not 18+, don’t interact with me nor this account. I’m super honored anyone of any age likes my content but I’m begging you, please — wait until you’re older as exposure to this could affect you in the long run in a negative way.

[crewdlydrawn]

There’s a lot of text here, so while I recommend reading it all (and its links to the lead up timeline, if you haven’t been following along), below is an excerpt that gets to the core of the thing:

But as shocking as all this is, it is not the real scandal. In fact, if I have a criticism of Barkley and Sanford's report, it is that they seem to have been so hung up on having discovered the smoking gun that proves the theory fans have been bandying about for the last month, that they missed the true implications of what they had uncovered. The raw data spreadsheet Lacey leaked does not merely show that nominees like Babel and Paul Weimer were discarded for supposedly running afoul of PRC ideology. It also shows a large number of nominees, mostly Chinese-language, which do not appear anywhere on the final ballot or the nominations stats. When questioned about these nominees in the comments of File 770, Lacey—who, again, has been so apologetic about her treatment of Western nominees—replied simply that these nominations had been considered "slate" nominations (many of them were included in recommendation lists published by SF World and other Chinese-language SFF magazines in preparation for the Hugos; on BlueSky, user Yilin has translated the text that accompanied these lists to make the point that they were not intended as a singular slate but merely a list of recommendations). It's the removal of these nominations, Lacey suggests, that has caused the "cliff" that many commentators observed in the final Hugo stats, in which there was a drop of hundreds of nominating ballots between the top 5-6 vote-getters and the ones below them.

I'm going to say this again, because it is so shocking that it seems to have taken a lot of people some time to grasp the enormity of it: hundreds, perhaps even thousands of valid, legal nominating ballots were dropped from the final nominating stats, apparently under the pretext of having represented a slate, even though slates are perfectly legal under the Hugo rules. This was done on the orders of the Hugo administrator, with apparently no outside input or discussion, and appears to have elicited so little response from the Hugo team that they are casually mentioning it as if it's nothing. If these numbers are correct, it's entirely possible that the whole Hugo ballot should have looked completely different, and that none of the eventual winners in the fiction categories should have even been nominated.

What this means is that the entire 2023 Hugo scandal is something completely different from what we've understood it as during the last month. Appalling as it is, the choice to screen English-language nominees for ideological compatibility may, in fact, be a sideshow to the real scandal, which is that hundreds of Chinese voters have been disenfranchised. And—barring even more revelations—this disenfranchisement cannot be blamed on PRC sensibilities and censorship. I truly doubt that it was in the interest of China, or the Chinese business interests who took over Worldcon, to remove Chinese-language nominees from last year's Hugo ballot. This decision came from the American and Canadian staffers who made up the English-language Hugo team, many of them Worldcon volunteers of long standing.

In this context, it is infuriating to recall just how quickly the response to our original sense of what this scandal was turned to anti-democratic measures and calls to limit the power of rank-and-file Worldcon members. "Elections have consequences!" crowed the people who are still pissed they weren't allowed to steal the site selection vote in 2021, while others called to limit site selection to those with "skin in the game"—read, those with the wherewithal to travel to US-based conventions. But as it turns out, the call was coming from inside the house. This was never a China problem. It's an us problem. If the allegations that are now emerging claiming that McCarty has behaved this way in the past, and also harassed other Worldcon staffers, are to be believed (and there is certainly more than enough reason to believe them at this point), it's a profound failure on the part of Worldcon and its membership to police toxic members, which has now blown up in all our faces. And, it's a problem that casts all past Hugo awards into doubt—not existential doubt, because one of the advantages of EPH is that it reveals fiddling with the nominating ballots quite effectively, and the irregularities seen in the Chengdu nominating stats do no appear in previous years' data; but nevertheless, it's impossible to pretend that the award's reputation can ever be what it was.

“What this means is that the entire 2023 Hugo scandal is something completely different from what we've understood it as during the last month.”

[rpbetter]

How do you feel about all the 'proshippers dni" warnings in so many meme and resource blogs? If this is too hot of a subject to answer, that's ok!

Oh, I'm going to make it even hotter by being absolutely honest and saying that I hate it. For me, it acts as its own reverse-DNI. If I see that on someone's blog, I'm going to block. It's gotten bad enough that I won't reblog memes or resources without checking for it because I'm damn well not going to spread that around...and I'm not the only one.

It's also such an incredibly bizarre thing? lmao like every DNI that isn't "minors, don't interact," muns with that in their rules get weirdly bent out of shape when it is followed. My supposition is that either no one was actually supposed to notice their virtue-signalling bullshit so that their reblogs don't take a hit or the hope is that when they have an inevitable issue with someone, they can scream about how a proshipper violated their DNI. So, when muns who either are proship or who just feel this is a huge purity culture flag stuck in a meme/resource blog's front lawn don't interact, hit the block button instead...they're kind of out of luck on both.

I suppose I should, in rhetrospect, let people who might be new to the terms know what they mean before I proceed:

DNI - abbreviation for "do not interact." Usually found in a blog's description, pinned post, and/or rules. States who the mun of the blog (be it an RP blog, personal, help, resource, meme, or other blog) does not want to interact with their posts.

proshipper - someone who does not care what others ship or what might occur within the ship. A proshipper is not necessarily an "anti-anti," but they can be, and often are, both. They do not believe that fiction = reality - it does not have an influence on reality as relates to someone writing a ship in which something like incest or underage occurs making people in real life feel like either are normal or desirable. Neither does it mean that shippers are condoning whatever it is in real life, normalizing it, excusing it, or any other ridiculously charged language.

anti-anti - proshippers who have had enough, usually, but anti-antis are just as often simply reasonable adults who find it absurd that people seem to think shipping, liking a character, or enjoying a piece of fiction is activism. They are often concerned, like proshippers, about the language and methods used by antis and purity culture cultists as they frequently mimic the same language and methods used by various radical, exclusionary "feminists" and religious radicals. The difference tends to be that anti-antis are more actively vocal, taking on statements and arguments made by antis, running blogs specifically to counter that culture, and so forth.

purity culture/purity police/antis - people who seem to have no idea that they've been had by homophobes/transphobes/violent religious ideology, or that exactly nothing coming out of their mouths is new or a hot take, it's all just been mildly rebranded and rephrased in order to attract younger Millennials and all of Gen Z to keep peddling this shit. They believe that if you enjoy a character, ship, story, trope, plot, or anything else they've deemed as terminally problematic, that you, yourself, are the vilest non-human to exist. That's the crux of it, it's meant to divide, isolate, and remove the human element so that no one feels bad for bullying people. Just existing in one's own space isn't enough to not be called a pedophile, rape apologist, abuser, and so forth by an anti because you are considered to be an active threat to real people for liking the wrong cartoon people together.

Okay, I think that about covers it for those somehow spared thus far, let us proceed!

I feel that it's so disturbingly prevalent and spreading because purity culture operates on control by fear and exclusion, and is helped along by ignorance.

If you've just decided to start a resource blog, you might feel that it's just the thing to do to have a DNI that states this. (You might also feel that it isn't offensive or ridiculous if you're not directly stating something like "nasty ass pr*shippers dni," but that's still what you're saying so...) This is how you replicate what some popular blogs are doing, it works for them, right? And it's obviously the only way you can reblog their memes or other resources, by displaying that you're so far from being a gross proshipper that you also have a DNI about them on your blog.

Now, let's also say that you're young, kind of new to both fandom and the RPC, and have either managed to avoid discourse or ended up having friends on the anti side of it. You've come from a fandom that is meant for children, it's children's media like a cartoon centered around characters who are children or a live-action movie/series that's also meant for children and stars real children. So, the position in your first fandom has, not unreasonably, been that it's nasty to ship the child characters together in an explicitly sexual way. Much of your experience is having this posed as something that protects you from dangerous, disgusting people who would see you, also then a child, as a sexual object. Everyone who is proship is, then, A Predator.

What is cause for concern in one situation, like an adult who wants a minor to write a ship with them in which child characters are aged up enough to be legal adults, isn't modified as has to happen when approaching fiction and other people as an adult. They might not even actually know what proshippers stand for. Instead of being taught legitimate boundaries and warning signs, let alone being properly watched out for by adults "allowed" to be in a fandom, they've been indoctrinated.

Like children who grew up believing that queer people were Against God, these people are parroting what they've been taught into young adulthood because they genuinely believe they're doing the right thing. It's very...we've taught the children the rallying cry of "think of the children!"

So, yeah, I think this is a primary way it has reached so much of the RPC, specifically, and that it's symptomatic of the whole problem of purity culture, right from where it begins to how it starts exhibiting to how it ends up being weaponized. I mean, have you seen many rabid purity police older than about twenty-five? Me either. Probably a reason for that.

How many times have you seen posts written by former, now older, antis who expressly lay out how they were, effectively, indoctrinated in this way? Every time I see them, I reblog them everywhere. Not because I think any present bad actors will listen, they won't until they're in the appropriate cognitive and emotional places to see anything but red and any other option than reblogging the post themselves to, by turns, refute, callout, or make fun of OP. No, I reblog them for everyone else's education or validation.

As an evil proshipper myself, I'm pretty vocal about ship-and-let-ship and write-whatever-you-want, but not this. This isn't just fiction, it's a real problem, it's purity culture. Period. And purity culture, again, is meant to limit by any means necessary, preferably, it seems, by bullying very real people.

I feel like, if you're uncomfortable with the way muns might use your memes or resources or uncomfortable with the muns themselves...you need to reassess having such a blog.

People have the right to like and dislike whatever they want, on any or no grounds, and to cultivate their space. If you don't like what someone is doing, you have every right to not interact with them. But when you have a blog designed to put out interaction material not with yourself but with other muns on their blogs, that's fucking ridiculous. I cannot put it any more politely, it's that ridiculous and immature.

As well as being astoundingly obtuse to not realize that what you're doing is asking demanding in offensive tones that RPers cultivate their dashes according to your wishes. You...literally aren't interacting with any nasty proshippers lmao they're interacting with each other. Yes, they're using material that you provided, but why are you providing any material meant to be widely spread and used when you're aware that you're putting it out to a huge community like this?

(Look, I have no problem whatsoever if, say, a fanartist draws a canon friendship that fandom ships and it bothers the artist, so, the image's post specifically states it isn't to be tagged as that ship. Alright, that sucks if I ship it, but it's your original artwork, I'm not going to tag it as that. It's fine. If you're nasty about it and call everyone shipping it something vile, then I'm not going to reblog it at all and will just block you so I don't accidentally encounter and spread your work. That's how it works! You don't have to like my ship, I don't have to like your attitude. But it's very different than spreading memes around, things legitimately meant for community consumption, most of which aren't even original material.)

Most of that material isn't even lascivious in nature, either, which says even more about this problematic shit. They're not saying that they don't wish proshippers to use their memes in order to write the offensive material (imagine that, it's usually sexual), they're saying that they don't want a proshipper to touch even a meme about how their muse feels about snow. Doesn't matter if they're writing the offending whatever, being proship is enough.

It's like the statement itself, and others like it.

A decently well-adjusted adult in their RP blog's rules: I need dubcon tagged or I can't interact with your blog.

A purity cultist, anywhere: I'm okay with everything, except nasty freak shit like -giant list here- stay the fuck off my blog proshippers!

Stating one's boundaries in their own space is something I highly recommend, it's the only way we can be respectful of each other. Honesty and having boundaries is necessary and good! Flying off the handle because something nebulously exists somewhere out there in fiction, is not any of those things. It's a boundary alright...the boundary where being a respectful, mature adult ends.

It's not necessary to state any of this the way it is. Every bit as wildly unnecessary as hyper-controlling your memes, or resources, because that's totally even possible in an environment where muns just hit reblog from the dash and never see your DNI.

I love it when it's an aesthetic blog. I want to ask them if they think reblogging this image of a tree in the fog they lifted from a google image search/pinterest (not problematic, apparently, to repost a real person's photography or artwork, only to have two or more fake people fornicate incorrectly) is somehow personally violating them because I believe that someone else out there can ship my NOTP.

Little bit ironic, as well, that they tend to drop and reblog the actual most PSA's about treating RP too seriously. Normalize fucking off on everyone, it's just RP, it's not real! Normalize deleting your entire inbox because you reblog twenty memes a day while only wanting them for your preferred ship, it's just RP, you're here to have fun! Normalize treating other muns like entertainment machines and calling them out for having a problem with that, it's not real, it's just RP! Gosh, you little sparklebean angels, it's not real, you haven't any right to experience a single positive or negative emotion related to RP, and most certainly not to spend more than minimal time or energy on your hobby!

Weird how justifying and validating ill-treatment of other real people is fine because it's just fiction, but that doesn't apply to letting people engage with and create fiction as they please like adults. It's almost as though the fiction isn't actually the foundation of either of these things. It cannot possibly be that both things have more to do with policing other people who do not fit one's preferences, or that both serve the purpose of mob rule.

So, no...no, my feelings on so many meme and/or resource blogs slapping that on their dashes, or right there on the memes themselves, are about as far from positive as I can get with anything that happens online. I think it's part of a large problem that has severe, lasting, negative impacts on the RPC in the same ways that it does fandom.

DNIs are a part of purity culture when they go beyond age restrictions, and I know that's an incredibly unpopular take, but it's my honest opinion. You don't need a list like that. No, not even to list out every possible iteration of homophobia, racism, sexism, etc. We all have that same DNI, it doesn't actually need to be said in your blog descriptions that you don't want a damn TERF or nazis interacting with your blog. And newsflash, it's not going to stop anyone, it serves no purpose whatsoever. It's only become an extra space to virtue signal, place a callout or three, and establish oneself as being invested in purity culture/insulate oneself from bullying by throwing one's hat into the hate ring.

If you're an RP blog, you really shouldn't have to list all that in your rules either. It shouldn't be assumed that if you simply make the statement that you don't tolerate any manner of hate on your dash, it means you support or are this checklist of horrible things. But, if you're going to, likely because you're afraid of not doing so, your rules are the place for it. Not an additional DNI.

If you're a resource, help, meme, or other such RP-adjacent, RPC-support blog putting things out there for the community to interact with, you have the additional responsibility of what you're putting out there with how you engage with others and present yourself. Having DNIs that align with callout/purity/policing culture is not helping this community. You are not representing anything good. Your responsibility is to state that you are a minor inappropriate blog if that is the case, what sort of memes/resources you post, the language you use, how you tag.

The end, no resting drama face needed from you.