#who are ironically also very misandrist

[statisticalcats2]

So I know from experience the MRA community is a toxic pit that doesn't even actually care about men but I'm also uncomfortable with the popular culture of mocking them and feel like there needs to be a litmus test for making jokes about them because a lot of them are probably just coming from a place of "haha men losers and bad looool"

[mizukagami-takamagahara]

Favorite and least favorite Blazblue characters?

Yay~ finally getting to this ask. I’ve got a lot of really cool asks (thank you everyone so much) that I’ve been wanting to get to, but my health is Rather Poor, and when I do answer these things, I want to be able to put a lot of energy and attention into them.

Now, getting to the ask! I had a lot to say, and it all came out messy... and somehow, I only ended up talking about one character, Nu 13. Who fits as both one of my favorite and one of my least favorite characters, for reasons detailed below. To not make this an entire fucking novel, I'll cut the post off here and consider it an early birthday post for her.

That said, here's a quick run down of some other stuff I didn't get to talk about, relevant to your question.

My other Hated Fave is Nine/Konoe. One of those “I love the character but if we were stuck in a room together I’d maul her” situations. I consider her to be a misandrist, and I have a very charged history of like, generational reactive sexism in my family, so her generational reactive sexism (relationship with her father coloring her relationship with men overall) enrages me. On the other hand, it’s so well written, SHE’S so well written, she’s an incredible character and I adore her as an art piece. She is like a cathedral to me. The most beautiful symphony in a key you hate.

Touched on briefly in the post below, my all time absolute favorite is Terumi/Susano'o. That's a story for another day. I like him in a very particular way where he's like, the best character ever, but also he's constantly on probation. Or reverse probation? I need to see him try to kill/maim/ruin someone once a month or he's at risk of being evicted. Being the champion is a title you have to defend, y'know?

I think the character I study the most and talk about the most is Noel, although to my tastes, she's very middle of the road. I feel neutral about her. I just use her as a guinea pig for all my BB related project. You know Dangan Ronpa? How they used Sayaka and Leon as a starting point/beta test for everything? It's kind of like that, except I haven't gotten so sick of her yet that I'm killing her off or anything.

With all of that covered, allow me to get into the actual post! Thank you for your patience!

Off the top of my head at least, I can’t honestly think of BlazBlue characters I dislike. Every character that comes to mind shares something that makes me hesitant to actually claim I dislike them. That is, the characters I like the least are the characters I understand the least. Spinner Superior and the entire Bloodedge Experience cast make the list… but I haven’t read BE. Valkenhayn makes the cut- another character I really don’t pay attention to. Bullet, Hibiki, maybe Amane- all characters I really just… haven’t paid much attention to yet.

I don’t really want to claim I dislike them at this point, because when I really think about it, I’m like 99% sure that I lack interest in them BECAUSE I haven’t taken the time to look at them.

One of my hobby/goal/things in my free time is working on these BB character documents, analyzing everything I can about each character in the series for my own personal work. I have a feeling that when I get to really analyzing and writing about these characters, I’ll find things I like about them.

Here's a quick look at my files, to see what I'm talking about. Have mercy, it's very WIP.

There are two characters that stand out to me in an… almost “love to hate” way, but not quite. I have a lot to say about these characters, but I’m still tired, and this post is going to be LONG as is, so I’ll try to keep it brief.

Author's Note: I fail to keep it brief.

Before BBDW, my least favorite character was DEFINITELY Nu13. Ironic, because she almost got me into BB back in the Continuum Shift days. I saw her and some of her crazy behavior and thought... well, not much, just kind of an error message in my head going “hot woman spotted.” So I looked into her, and her story!

And got bored immediately. At first I was intrigued- I love violent characters that could arguably be described as “rabid” or “feral,” but upon further inspection, she had one of the few character flaws I just can’t look past. She was absolutely static. Immutable. The only character she was willing to interact with was Ragna, and even when interacting with him, she couldn’t hear a thing he said. In my interpretation, at the time, this made her a character that couldn’t connect with the outside world in any way. To me, she was an island. Absolutely remote. And completely useless to my interests.

A fear years later, a few months before the launch of Chronophantasma Extend, I ended up getting into BlazBlue anyway powered by sheer Terumi thirst. Are you guys starting to get a picture of my type yet? From then on, BB has remained my all time favorite series, and Terumi/Susano’o continues to be in my top three favorite characters, usually comfortably wearing the “#1 all time fave” crown. I suppose that answers the other half of your question.

Throughout this time, Nu still didn’t appeal to me at all. Locked in as my least favorite, definitely. Eventually, I got my college roommates into BB. One of the girls fell in absolute love with Nu. I couldn’t understand it at all. In hindsight, she’s right on every point about Nu that she likes, and I really appreciate those traits now too- but I couldn’t see it at the time. She was able to see Nu as an incredibly tragic character for the same reasons I saw her as inert. In the C-Series, Nu is alone, horribly alone, locked in her pain and her delusion. I saw that and ultimately felt she was beyond saving, but my associate felt that made her into a beautiful tragedy, a princess more worth saving than any other. Maybe I’m getting a little abstract out of nowhere here, but I now feel that’s the best way to look at Nu’s story- she’s locked away in this fairy tale delusion. Ugh, I have more to say on it, but look at how long this has gotten already!

Anyways, then BBDW came out, and Mori gave us a glimpse of what he intended to be the next step in Nu’s story. Juusan, XIII, Thirteen. And hooooooooooooly shit my guys, I absolutely love Nu, XIII, and her arc now. It’s her fucking healing arc! It’s her fucking growing arc! She’s finally able to start becoming a person, fleshing out, interacting with the world!

I’m not the type who really needs or even WANTS redemption arcs for characters, but Nu DESPERATELY needed this chapter. My biggest gripe with her, as mentioned, was that it seemed impossible for her to have any kind of relationship with ANYONE. I guess I was a little close minded- I needed to see evidence that Nu could be reached, that she could wake up from her fairy tale slumber and start really living. And we have that now, in XIII.

Looking back on the writing from the earlier games, when I hated Nu so much, I see those scenes in an entirely different light. Her first fucking scene in every route is waking up, our sleeping beauty. But she wakes up to the same dream every time. She’s put right back into her coffin, death, to dream and dream and wake and be killed again. Isn’t that kind of beautiful??? Her CT story mode IS a dream, it’s a desperate dream, the one she holds most dearly but doesn’t even understand- Nu is a character who THINKS what she wants more than anything is a romantic love with her prince charming, but we see in her story mode there, and in the relationships that finally save her, that what she really wanted was a full relationship as a real person. Platonic relationships, with no expectations, just someone seeing her and maybe offering her a smile. She craved, needed, the ability to connect with others, but that was a dream so far out of reach she couldn’t understand it. I KNOW I’M RAVING AT THIS POINT, I DIDN’T MEAN TO, BUT C’MON IT’S BEAUTIFUL.

And, and!!! As I mentioned, the relationships that finally save her, finally wake her up from the dream the same way the BB world is being woken up from ITS looping dream (WHICH IS ANOTHER AWESOME CONNECTION AND GREAT WRITING, THE WAY NU AS A CHARACTER CAN BE SEEN TO EMBODY THE LOOPING WORLD, NEW AND BROKEN AND UNABLE TO CHANGE WITH NO HOPE OF TOMORROW)

Ahem, ahem-- It’s familial connections. She so badly wants that romance with Ragna, but it isn’t the love of a prince that saves her- it’s when he accepts her as his sister. It’s when he accepts her as a victim and her own person and not a bastardization of Saya, and comes to save this lonely girl. An echo of his little sister he couldn’t save. HIS ENTIRE JOURNEY WAS TO SAVE HIS SISTER AND HE FINALLY DOES. IN SO MANY WAYS, INCLUDING IN THAT MOMENT OF REACHING OUT TO NU.

And then it’s Noel. And Lamba. Her sisters. Again, people who once saw her as a disgusting representation of what they feared the most, a replacement or a copy- when they let that go, see past it, and really face her, they take Nu in as their little sister. And its their patient love that heals her. Just like Ragna, when they first met Nu, her connection to Saya and themselves terrified them, infuriated them, but now they look directly at that connection and don’t see it as a threat. It fills them with compassion. It can be a lovely thing, to share something so fundamental as your creation with someone else. There’s love in that. They see it now and are able to offer it to her.

This answer has been very messy and very long, but hey, let’s pretend it isn’t that bad. Give me some mercy, I’m on so much cough syrup.

[majorbaby]

very very long rant

when i first left tumblr after the porn ban, the sjw stuff was starting to plateau, but you still had big bloggers ironically calling themselves misandrists in bio. I say ironically because unlike an open misogynist, an open misandrist cannot amass vast structural power, they instead will remain on the fringes of society. before they can even be shunned in the mainstream or the elite, they're being shunned by their own peers.

at that time, there was a lot of popular blogs run by (sometimes allegedly) racialized people or "poc-run spaces" like thisisnot[country] and blogs specifically dedicated to pointing out cultural appropriation. i personally contributed to the reclaimthebindi which in retrospect seemed inspired by blackout selfie day (not to be confused with thr subsequent 'blackout' posts associated with BLM - that was later), altho idk to what extent the south asian diasporic community (of which i am a part of) actually paid homage to the black blogger/s responsible for blackout day.

now many of those blogs are defunct or have been scrubbed from level-one searches of tumblr, and their history has not been well documented. it's hard to understand what the climate was unless you were there because not many secondary sources, like the one you're reading right now i suppose, exist. or they weren't well-circulated. this one won't be, i'm turning off reblogs i think.

this is, in my opinion, in contrast to other major trends in internet culture that inform offline social justice movements. that's your gxmxrgxte (so well-ingrained in my memory that it still upsets me enough to censor today), metoo and the annual around ao3's right to host any and all content with very limited few exceptions.

reclaimthebindi is still up, so are a few of the thisisnot blogs, but you can't really tell that they were all interconnected, a part of the same zeitgeist. i have a few theories as to why, and which one you pick depends on how generous you are when imagining the people who ran these blogs. some of them for sure were run by bored college students seeking an outlet. some of them were denied recognition by their offline peers because of racism, so it felt good to find a space where they could actually amass social capital on the basis of the very thing that disadvantaged them in every other space. some were concerned with punitive justice, others with restorative justice. some just posted black and brown bodies so that those images would exist on the internet somewhere. some were run by racefacing white people who also felt like outcasts offline, and saw a quick and easy way to be embraced elsewhere. it's possible that some people did it for a combination of these reasons.

whatever benefits there may have been, it wasn't enough to keep the momentum going. very few put out 'retirement' statements, most just stopped posting and were eventually purged. tbh, i see the draw in airing your grievances all in one place, but it's exhausting, and eventually your supporters grow tired of the negativity, and you grow tired of the negativity too. that's why i think it's usually better to stick to posting and sharing the stuff you love, not the stuff you hate, or at least, find a balance. though their presence is much, much smaller, creator networks for women, lgtbq, and racialized people have sprung up, and so have spaces where people post and repost art that engages with class, race, gender etc.

but it still feels like racialized people have a much quieter voice on tumblr. i have to rely on stumbling upon them naturally, which is next to impossible, especially if you're on tumblr for a small to medium sized fandom, which i think most fandoms are these days. your supermassive fandoms - doctor who, sherlock, kpop, harry potter, the mcu, also no longer dominate the site. i would still say tumblr is the big fandom site, but a lower user count means that the internet's fandom site is smaller than before.

so, less users in general, and any existing minority shrinks. and if we're talking racialized people who are lgtbq, that's an even smaller minority.

this in my opinion has contributed in a major way to the backlash against feminism, the idea that "terfs ruined feminism" with the subtle suggestion that feminism has perhaps failed, or was never really good to begin with, and a laser focus on terfs as the ones responsible as though the mainstream, patriarchal, cis-heteronormative bloc had absolutely nothing to do with it. or the ludicrous idea that terfs are the mainstream, patriarchal cis-heteronormative bloc. two things can be bad, that doesn't mean they're the same thing.

anyway! a big part of the original tumblr feminist movement was not just the "poc run blog" but in the "woc run blog". "poc" was absorbed into BIPOC, and "woc" is a legacy term. your woc were regularly venting about how being a woman of colour means choosing between your race and your gender, putting up with the misogyny of the racialized men in your life who you show up for constantly but who throw you under the bus when the white man asks them how high to jump. now there's white lgbtq bloggers all over the place asking whether you "include black and brown men when you said you say men are trash?" (yes, i absolutely am) and if you ask that question to a room full of white people, they're all going to keep their mouths shut because they don't want to appear racist.

well, white men do not have a monopoly on misogyny. misogyny levied at racialized women by racialized men is a huge intra-community barrier to trying to organize against racism and white supremacy. it is extremely upsetting to see white people suggest that racialized women, lgbtq people and children are not oppressed by the racialized men in their own communities. that we are not survivors of domestic abuse, sexual abuse or that we do not endure oppression under patriarchy in the home, workplace and in society inflicted upon us by our own kin, which compounds upon what we already absorb from white people.

and they can go on doing so on here because many racialized women have shut up and gone away. even running blogs aimed around celebrating themselves has become a service to white consumers that they've done thanklessly for years. just to hear that actually, they have no right to say "men are trash" because what if the brown man that abused them or their mom or their aunties overhears and gets his feelings hurt. didn't we discern the difference between hurt feelings and systemic oppression almost fifteen years ago on tumblr dot com?

like, sure, maybe we should adjust "women only spaces" to be "spaces for women and trans people" but we can do that and not pretend that we have absolutely no idea why women live in fear of men, or that a reasonable amount of fear is completely unwarranted.

man it is one thing to come back here to find all the, admittedly, sometimes kind of annoying sjw blogs around race gone, and another to see a resurgence of popular MRA talking points. but i see how that's happened. racialized women are done talking about this, and who can blame them. white women, and i wish i only meant cis women, get slapped with 'terf' the second they open their mouths, so they are also done talking about this.

if you managed to read all of this please be a little careful when reblogging posts that are critical of feminism. yes, there are a few bad-faith actors within feminism, but feminists in general are a minority group, even if it doesn't feel that way on tumblr. think about it, how long has it been since you saw someone with 'feminist' in bio? is it a good thing to keep facilitating this growing resentment against feminism? has feminism done nothing for us? should we toss it out with the bathwater?

[gacha-incels]

its so... incredibly sad to see how these people are misusing the terms TERF and radfem. It is not hateful of trans people at all to... *checks notes* not gamble for PNGS, let alone in a way that supports a misogynistic company. They're using us trans folk to hurt women and it's awful.

Yeah unfortunately there are some people who use terms like “terf” not out of any actual concern for trans people, but rather as an easy silencer. They see an opinion they disagree with but do not know how to actually engage with it directly, so the easiest and quickest route is slander. Ironically this is also the term korean incels discussed would be the best way to get westerners to turn on the limbus company artist Vellmori after “misandrist” and “feminazi” did not work for them. It feels particularly vile for them to try and label me as some crazy extremist transphobe in order to defend, again, a literal gacha game. It’s very sad to see and I’m truly sorry they use you like this.

[crazyalien87]

[in response to op's comment about me]. hi. I'm not transphobic or bioessentialist or thinking all men or bad or whatever. Unfortunately, many of my fellow radfems believe in that shit, but I try to avoid it. Also, I only became a radfem in like 2022. I was in plenty of anti-radfem lgbt+ spaces online for many years before that. It is kinda funny (and condescending) how you say that "it’s possible [I] are trying to be sincere but very confused" and "refusing to listen to others outside of your radfem bubble". I follow and interact with non-radfem blogs on here. Also, I have a life outside of tumblr and social media lol. I also try to find radfems on here who are not transphobic, bioessentialist, or misandrist (mainly tirfs).

I think it is very cool that you are gonna donate to trans causes. I am sincere and not even trying to be a crypto-terf (Im not even a "terf").

Ngl it is kinda ironic how you think I'm refusing to listen to anyone other than transphobic radfems when you refuse to believe that non-transphobic radfems are possible. Or listen to non-transphobic, non-bioessentialist radfems such as myself. Maybe you are the one in a bubble since you randomly assume I may be a crypto-terf. Idk.

Good day✌🏻

We need to bring back the term “benevolent sexism” into widespread use for real. It’s a major mechanism in how bioessentialist Girlboss Radfems can be turned into bioessentialist conservative Tradwives.

[meeda]

long ramble about idk.. politics?

re: that last post, it got me thinking about the evolution of my own beliefs overtime, starting from maybe 2012 ish when I was a teenager and a pretty stereotypical left liberal sjw type. I mean most of it is still the same shit I believe today, if not a little more naive and annoying about it. I was also a raging “feminazi”, as it was called back in the day, and as many a teenage boy on the internet would label me as because I had the radical notion that women are people

I think the turning point in 2014 (if you know you know) happened as a result of overcorrecting my sjw-ness. Thinking that I was somehow “cringe” for believing in the things I did, in the manner of which I did. Thinking hey, maybe social justice and feminism has gone too far actually. Thinking hmm, maybe men have it rough too actually, and it’s all feminism’s fault. then discovering other people that thought the way I did.

Despite being knee deep in anti sjw, anti feminism, mra nonsense, I still retained most of my core beliefs. I never actually called myself anti feminist because I knew that in my heart I still supported “real feminism” (which ironically enough included men’s issues). I didn’t fall for the alt right pipeline because i have always supported lgbtq rights and racial equality. I’ve always been religiously agnostic, and I never cared for religious extremism.

Turning point #2 happened shortly after the blm movement started gaining traction. It kinda snapped me out of everything and brought me back to reality, and it also showed me the true colors of many of the anti sjw bloggers i followed. because now the mask was off, and they started becoming full on racist. It was embarrassing and I started to become ashamed that I ever associated myself with people like that.

enter the trump era. by this point i was already out of the anti sjw echo chamber and boy oh boy was i glad because this mask off moment just became a whole face transplant. no emotion could compare to what i felt seeing the beliefs I once entertained suddenly morph into the alt right movement and qanon. It felt like i dodged a bullet.

my relationship with feminism was and is complicated. I was born, raised, and socialized as female. i think it’s only natural that i feel very strongly about female centered issues. Like I mentioned before i was a naive but staunch feminist as a teenager. I remember the teacher asking a show of hands who here identifies as a feminist. I was only one of three people, in a class of majority females, that raised their hand. I remember telling my friend at the time (who, in retrospect, was probably a closeted transwoman) that they’re a fool for wishing they were born female because why on earth would you ever want to be a woman in a violently patriarchal society.

to me, the allure of anti feminism was the chance to redeem myself for harboring misandrist beliefs and not seeing things from a male perspective. but it was also the opportunity to question my own beliefs instead of blindly believing what i, as an afab, am “supposed” to believe. This overcorrection, years later, swung to the other end of the horseshoe when i rediscovered radical feminism in 2021. Prior to that moment I’ve always looked at rad feminism with disdain, even when i was still a so called “feminazi”. They were too extreme for me. It didn’t help when things like gender critical and trans exclusionary feminism were on the rise as well, which contradict not only my core beliefs but my existence. but there was something about it, something that reminded me of the same feeling i had when i discovered anti feminism. Like i was discovering forbidden knowledge. It was time to dip my toes in.

I orbited radfem circles for awhile to try to enlighten myself but it didn’t take long for me to realize that something felt wrong. It felt less like I was trying to “see other perspectives” and more like I was doomscrolling. Bad news after bad news after bad news. It almost felt like they were having a competition for who could share the worst injustices towards women. I did learn some actually useful things, like the detriments of the adult entertainment and sex industry. How “choice feminism” only benefits the patriarchy. The evolution of contraceptives. But the bitterness, the lack of empathy, the tone deafness. The last straw for me was when i saw a terf gleefully express their joy about the murder of brianna ghey, and said they wished it happened more often. It was time to get out of there.

This decade has been a roller coaster for my personal beliefs, but I think for the most part, my core beliefs have stayed the same. I still care about humanity deeply. As juvenile as it feels to say, I do just want things to be better for everyone. None of us asked to be born. Not one of us. Literally we’re all here against our will and we had 0 say on the circumstances of our birth. But we’re here, and we’re here together. The least we can do is help one another.

[redheadbigshoes]

My controversial opinion of the day is that I don't think people should get so mad when a lesbian just makes a comment saying "I hate men".

Like I get it's one thing if they start being like "and all men should die and they're all testosterone filled monsters", but a lesbian who's Not doing all that and saying they hate men is, more than anything, an expression of exasperation at the patriarchy and rampant sexism. And lesbians especially have to deal with people from both right wing sides and in queer spaces trying to push men on them, trying to say they're secretly into men, and force lesbians to include them in their sexuality and its exhausting.

It's not an attack on trans men obviously and it can also be pretty hyperbolic, like I'm not gonna go around telling the men at work or in my classes that I hate them for being men, obviously. We shouldn't have to philosophize over minor venty comments passed in seconds, and honestly men can stand to bare what's the equivalent of a minor negative youtube comment in return for all the damage the patriarchy has done. Just another one of those things people love to scrutinize lesbians over tbh

-🦇

What’s funny is that people don’t seem to care when the one saying “I hate men” is a straight woman, a bi woman (or anyone who isn’t a lesbian), well obviously allo cishet men are usually bothered by that statement no matter who is saying it.

And it’s ironic because the same people who contribute to think all lesbians are men haters, when they see a lesbian saying something like that they get mad?? It doesn’t make sense.

People are very pressed over the fact we’re not attracted to men and that lack of attraction is enough for them to think we hate men because how could someone not be attracted to men?? So non-lesbians always act offended specifically when it’s a lesbian saying “I hate men”, calling us misandrists (as if that existed lol), terfs or anything to try to offend us.

It’s like they can’t think we also suffer misogyny and we also suffer because of men. They seem to be very empathic when a non-lesbian shares their hatred for men and their bad experiences with men but the same people do not allow lesbians to hate men even if we also have to deal with them daily.

It’s like people think lesbians cannot be oppressed by men, always treating us as if we weren’t a minority.

[butchladymaria]

i have seen the post, i am just not going to dignify that with a response. it’s a bad faith personal attack. if k//tyahina sees more importance in insulting an individual over listening to trans people when they point out what she did wrong, that decision speaks for itself about what she actually values. it is also precisely why i have not, and will not, personally engage with her: because i value my time and wellness enough not to tolerate someone who literally, in her own words, does not respect me on a personal level, and has not for a long time.

my mental health matters more than a stranger screeching about misandrist fictional character dislikers instead of taking her own advice and engaging in good faith. our values are fundamentally incompatible as evidenced by her recent behavior. for all the faults i find with her, i have not personally attacked k//tyahina once. i have contextualized publicly available statements she has made and criticized them for their bigotry. k//tyahina has refused to so much as read what i have to say, and has resorted to ad hominem “arguments” from the beginning. it strikes me as rather ironic, given that, in her own words, she “only understands language of logic and reason”.

i’ll conclude my statement with this information, to do with as you will: my first and only interaction with k//tyahina involved her taking a single sentence joke post as a personal attack, writing an extremely long-winded, condescending addition, and then instantly blocking me before i could so much as squint in confusion. it strikes me as hypocritical, given the contents of her most recent addition seems to be all about her calling me an awful person because i “refuse to talk to people” and “block people on the spot for disagreeing”.

i blocked k//tyahina for her bigoted views, because i value my mental health more than some literal stranger on the internet demanding that i “debate them”. i do not owe an explanation for blocking her, because i am entitled to do so. i do not owe anyone a discussion, especially when they have misgendered, disparaged, and now apparently threatened me from the very beginning.

a lot of people talk about what ad hominem arguments are, but in my opinion, miss an important point in regards to what they do: they serve to derail discussions. k//tyahina’s most recent post is completely irrelevant to my grievance with her: the fact she is a transphobe. unless she is willing to engage in good faith with the original issue, i will not be giving any further commentary upon any additional attempts to derail attention from this subject.

[chaos-cauldron]

I know this is an old post but as a trans person (trans guy specifically) I had to give my two cents on this because I've seen this claim three times now.

As much as I appreciate the sentiment of defending Sailor Moon from terfs trying to appropriate her as an icon (eww), I absolutely do not believe Nyanko is a terf or transphobic. I highly doubt that's what Naoko had in mind when she wrote that scene.

The way I view it, Nyanko is simply talking about how she doesn't trust men and it would extend to women who pretend to be men. Let's not forget in the manga the Starlights are 100% women, so this isn't Nyanko being transphobic towards trans men but being suspicious of three women she knows are masquerading as men. But if they were actually trans men, that's quite literally the opposite of being a terf since she'd be including them in her misandry. Trans-Inclusionnary Radical Misandrist (TIRM) actually xD

More seriously, I think that line was just to point out the Three Lights were being deceitful and not truthful with their identity, which was really ironic because Nyanko was being the same as them. If anything, that was Nyanko being a hypocrite, not a transphobe, and also showing she knew the truth about the Three Lights.

On another note, I do understand why people have very uncharitable opinions of Nyanko, mostly because of her actions in the 90s anime. But I feel like she's very misunderstood there and a lot of people forget that she was explicitly brainwashed and corrupted into being that horrible person. We saw once Sailor Moon partially healed her that she used to be a good person, her good healed side actively tried to fight back and resist against the corruption and help the senshi fight Galaxia. Kakyuu herself said Nyanko "used to be a good senshi" and that she was only manipulated by the bracelets. She is a very tragic character who met a tragic fate and didn't deserve it.

Oh, fun fact, the line where she said to not trust the Three Lights is NOT in the Cosmos movie. The rest of the scene plays out exactly the same except for that.

Tin Nyanko, a VILLIAN, is literally a TERF in the manga and people still think Sailor Moon would be one?? How????

omg you're literally right

Tin Nyanko does give off major TERF vibes in the manga and Usagi is just like "????? Okay???"

But yeah, again, Usagi is literally known as "the Senshi who embraces all" and that includes trans people. She is not a TERF icon!

[marveldc-imagines-hub]

Hey do you have any general poison ivy headcanons? ya know like like/dislikes, hobbies, quirks n shit!💚

Sorry this took a while! This was really one of those streams of consciousness types of posts, lol. It was really fun to write once I got started; I hope you like it!

~~~

Poison Ivy

She was a trust fund baby

Only child to wealthy parents? Of course she was

She chooses to live fairly modestly compared to her wealth, though

A nice house, nice clothes, enough money to eat well and do whatever she needs to get done

She definitely could and would be a sugar mama if she finds the right person

Harley would definitely be the right person but she actively stays out of situations where she might become dependent on a person, even if she trusts said person

Harley certainly doesn’t mind being pampered and taken on trips occasionally, though

Contrary to popular belief, she’s not fully misanthropic

Just misandrist and rich people-phobic, ironically

She’s working on the misandry bit, though; she really doesn’t like how hateful she can be

On the other hand, she’ll happily keep hating the one-percenters, lol

Her house in the middle of nowhere, fortified, and mostly glass

She basically lives in a greenhouse, located in an overgrown forest

She does try to help people who she deems decent, those who have suffered at the hands of the same people who destroy plant life, those who try to protect and restore said plant life

Frequently anonymously donates to charities for protecting and preserving plant and animal lives

She loves alone time

She’ll spend it reading or dozing in the sun or taking care of her plants

Occasionally will also spend it plotting and experimenting with plants and poisons

She loves to lay in the sun

Stretch out like a cat and just vibe

Her favorite colors are pale yellow and sky blue

Pink has grown on her too but that’s just because a certain woman in her life likes the color so much

The fancy and sexy costumes and outfits she often wears during schemes and other business are solely for the sake of manipulation

When she’s on her own, she dresses a lot more casually

Baggy, torn, and/or frayed jeans that are stained with dirt and grass

Comfortable and usually loose-fitting shirts that are light-weight and breathable

Almost always barefoot but on the rare occasion that she can’t be, she’s usually wearing simple sandals, flats, or work boots

Hair is always tied up

She does actually enjoy makeup and getting her nails done, she just doesn’t do it very often when she’s at home because she’s always working in her gardens

She’d love to have long, claw-like acrylics but A) her nails are always short as hell and dirty from work and B) acrylics are bad for the environment, so fuck acrylics

She definitely has a tattoo or three though, from her college days

Her favorite animals are birds

She really enjoys cooking and is extremely good at it

She goes to therapy because Harley makes her

Harley is Ivy’s best influence, honestly

She suffers from nightmares

Not that it really needs to be said aloud but just for the people in the back, lady’s a lesbian

Oh, she also definitely knows flower language and definitely uses it whenever she gives Harley flowers, which Harley then has to give back because she’s bad at taking care of them and doesn’t want Ivy to get sad because a plant died

[veryvincible]

I don't want to be mean about a character you like so I'm leaving my opinions out of this, but can you explain to me why so many people like Rumiko or forgive her for cheating on Tony?

So, she didn’t actually cheat-- I mean, she didn’t technically cheat, since (if I’m recalling correctly), she had broken things off with Tony right before bedding Ty. But that’s not a hugely important detail, since she did admit (multiple times) that she slept with him to hurt Tony’s feelings.

And, like, yeah, that sucks. She certainly got the job done. But Tony also straight up neglected her in their relationship (which he also admits to-- they’re clearly not bickering about who deserved what, as they admit the shitty things they did to each other pretty easily). And this isn’t to say he deserved what he got or anything, it’s just to say that this wasn’t some bout of repetitive targeted attacks against him that he did nothing to cause.

We get the benefit of actually following Tony as the narrator of his own story, and we get to sympathize him pretty much the entire way through Vol. 3. When he does things that hurt other people’s feelings, we understand, because he’s Iron Man, and being Iron Man means his relationships are going to be messy.

If we saw this from Rumiko’s perspective, we would get the story of a woman desperate for love whose boyfriend disappears for days at a time, at random, without telling her where he’s going or who he’s going to be with or why he’s leaving or really anything at all. And she goes through this for a long, long time. It’s not just that, either; she pours her heart out to Tony on multiple occasions and is met with very little of the same. Of course, relationships don’t always mandate that you and your partner have the same level of self-disclosure every single step of the way, but like, she’s in love with this guy. And finally, after a long ass time of dealing with this mysterious neglect, this happens:

And then, probably on a whim, she sleeps with Ty.

They’re a messy couple. I think they’re realistically messy in the only way that a couple involving a superhero with a secret identity can be realistically messy. And I think, at the end of the day, she’s been reasonable enough in her requests in their relationship and straightforward enough about the fact that she loves Tony (so, so much!!!) that it’s easy to be sympathetic toward her. She’s been through a lot, and though she’s had some missteps, so has Tony. I think fandom, sometimes, finds it easy to equate this messiness with long-term toxicity, and... I don’t know. If that’s how you read it, that’s how you read it-- it’s not like you don’t have the evidence to say that they’ve had problems.

But she’s a sweet, outspoken girl who’s protective of both Tony’s feelings and her own. She’s a romantic with a great sense of fashion. A lot of people think she’s really, really lovely. And, had she not super-died, I think Tony would have proposed and they could have been happy together. She’s one of the few love interests of Tony Stark who gets to be attached to the idea of a “happily ever after”, one of the few that fandom recognizes as someone he could have married.

(The sheer amount of effort put into ensuring she was an actual good bit of representation for East Asian people in, like, the 90s also helps. Not to have Asian bias here, but it’s really heartwarming seeing people embrace her multidimensional character. She’s outgoing and has a sense of self-worth without being, like, a misandrist dominatrix Dragon Lady stereotype. She’s soft and romantic without this making her appear weak or lesser. She has values separate from her family’s-- a big deal at the time, explained to a slight extent in my response to this ask, and... I don’t know. Tl;dr here: thank you, Busiek.)

So, I don’t know. You don’t have to like her or forgive her or anything (Tony both... is and isn’t okay with it, depending on the canon you’re looking at, which is really weird, but sure), but since you’re asking why people do, here’s your answer.

[mzyrimworld]

Duster Colonists: Septober 5504

There’s an awful lot of colonists nowadays and the broadcasts have been slow in processing, so here’s a recap of who we’re dealing with!

Beatriz Henry - one of the three original colonists, now biologically 61, been with the colony 4 years. Came with her pet husky Jethro, but even now barely likes anybody else (closest friend is Lucya with +10/+18). This is perhaps unsurprising as she’s a misandrist and most of the other colonists at this point are male (she’s also slothful). As a child she was a music lover and grew up to be a vet, which gave her decent artistic, medical and intellectual skills (all of which she enjoys) as well as animal handling, and she has developed decent shooting and melee that she enjoys too. She’s lost an ear and a toe, but the (right) ear has been replaced with a bionic. Personally she is generous, emotional, judgemental, pure and logical. Other random fact: she hasn’t spent a single second on fire, apparently.

Francois ‘Zeiph’ Schmitt - one of the three original colonists, now biologically 60, been with the colony 4 years. Grew up as a nerd and became a state engineer before taking the challenge and becoming a colonist. He’s accordingly one of the most intellectual of the colonists and is good at crafting, making most of the prosthetics they have needed. He’s also good at shooting (has a sniper rifle), construction, mining, cooking and animal handling, but he cannot social at all. He’s a night owl and a masochist, but is ironically one of the very few colonists who has no consistent pain, despite having lost an ear (since replaced with a bionic), a toe, and has an old gunshot wound in his chest. He apparently has a number of relatives out there, including a wife, ex-wife, father and stepmother, but we haven’t met any of them yet. He feels positively about a number of the other colonists, but the only one it tends to be mutual with is Lucya (+19/+24). Personally he is nostalgic, passionate, emotional and competitive. Other random fact: despite his wife and ex-wife, he’s a 4 on the kinsey scale so is actually slightly more interested in men than women (in the closet perhaps?).

Legua Lion - was a tribesperson and the first person to try and raid the colony, but was captured and converted and has now been with the colony for about 3 1/2 years (age 54). She was initially a fire keeper and then a lore keeper for her tribe, but given that she’s a transhumanist (and a socialite), it’s not surprising she give in for the chance of a more technologically developed settlement. On that note she’s already got an archotech eye (that she didn’t really need) and an advanced bionic ear, together with missing a finger and having scars on her torso and left arm. Her best skill is construction, but she’s also good at cooking, plants, crafting, medical, social and intellectual. She’s been married to Colin ‘Steroid’ Neemor for a year, and is on good terms with a lot of the colonists. Personally she is compassionate, generous, thoughtful, geeky and moralistic. Other random fact: she was a prisoner for 21 days before converting.

Vaska ‘Vas’ Neemor - Vas was rescued from a nearby location of the first base, and has been with the colony for about 3 years (now age 49). He was a vat-grown assassin and a mercenary, which has left him with great skills in shooting and melee, as well as being good at construction and animals, but he is unable to do cooking, planting, medical or artistic. He’s also a brawler so he doesn’t even like to use his shooting skill, and is unfortunately ugly, but that hasn’t stopped him having relationships (as per the deceased Priscilla Bellerose) and minor friendships amongst the colonists. Steroid is his brother, and their mother stopped by at one point in a caravan. He’s had to have a bionic ear implant, and has a bite scar on a shoulder. Personally he’s extremely trusting and outspoken. Other random fact: he’s dealt 1894 points of damage as a colonist.

Lucya Dalton - Lucya was chased by tribespeople and joined the colony almost 3 1/2 years ago, and is now age 32. She grew up in a convent and became an evangelist as an adult, making her incapable of violence or intellectual skills, but she’s decent at cooking, construction and plants. She’s a night owl, a pluviophile and a transhumanist, but she’s not had any opportunity for the latter since she’s always kept out of the firing line (though she came with a scratch scar on her head). She gets on with a lot of the colonists and was previously married to now-deceased probable-asshole Vladimir Black. Personally she’s extremely geeky, as well as pure, naive, judgemental, outspoken and emotional. Other random fact: apparently she’s cooked 2190 meals.

Skyler ‘Sky’ Guy - Sky was a prison guard holding Lucya’s ex-husband Vladimir, and was taken captive when the colonists came to free him. He was subsequently converted and has now been a colonist for about 3 years (now age 29). He spent most of his childhood in a coma, and then became a paramedic when he woke and grew up - his best skills are planting, medical and social. He’s psychically hypersensitive and a jogger, and personally empathetic, nostalgic, organised and rational. He’s currently dating Green Jay but isn’t overly close with anyone else (closest +14/+14 with Vas, fighting buddy). He hasn’t been too injured, has a stab scar in his leg, but has recently developed anxiety. Other random fact: has now spent exactly the same amount of time cleaning as he spent as a prisoner (9.2 days).

Lorenzo Morales - Morales was a prison guard holding Vas’ ex-lover Priscilla, and was taken captive when the colonists came to free her. He was subsequently converted and has now been a colonist for about 2 1/2 years (now age 33). As a child he was a shopkeeper and then became a caveworld illustrator as an adult - probably related to the fact that’s he’s an undergrounder, depressive and a pluviophile, which has left him good at mining as well as social. Despite the social skill he’s actually not very good with people, with his best relationship being with Green Jay (+15/+10). Personally he’s adventurous, extroverted, moralistic, experimental and passionate. His only physical injury has been losing a finger, but he’s recently gained anxiety from the base move. Other random fact: he spent 18 days as a prisoner before converting.

Julio Steele - Julio was chased to the colony by tribespeople and joined about 2 1/2 years ago (now age 78). As a child he was used as an organ farm and then got free as an adult to become a housemate. Nowadays he’s an incredible medic (despite being slothful and psychically hypersensitive), but most of his other skills are underdeveloped and he can’t shoot or melee at all. For his own health, he’s got an old gunshot in his shoulder and is currently frail, but with some health serum...? Personally he’s extroverted, generous, organised and empathetic and he’s relatively popular, including being a mutual friend with Emu. Other random fact: he’s a 5/6 on the kinsey scale, so he’s out for another guy if possible.

Colin ‘Steroid’ Neemor - Steroid was the first person to join at the second base when he was chased by tribespeople there, joining about 2 years ago (now age 44). Unlike his older brother Vas, Steroid grew up as a medical assistant and then became a civil servant as an adult. He’s very skilled with animals, and decent with cooking, social and intellectual, but for some reason cannot fight fires. He’s jealous, a gourmand and a nudist, but isn’t allowed to actually go around naked for his own safety and other people’s sakes. Naturally he has good relationships with his wife Lion and brother Vas, but he’s also pretty popular with other colonists, and has bonded with an alpaca named Aesop. Physically he has a scratch scar on his left arm, and personally he is generous and extroverted, as well as aggressive, competitive, cultured, cool and trusting. Other random fact: has never killed a human, but has still managed to deal 1296 damage.

Nobreitra Xosea - Nobreitra was one of the tribespeople who chased Steroid to the second base and was captured and converted, so he’s been part of the colony for almost 2 years (now age 39). He was a tribe child and then grew into a digger, and is an undergrounder, bleeding heart and codependent. His best skills are construction, plants, shooting and melee. He’s taken some damage from the fights, having lost an eye (replaced with an advanced bionic) and three toes. Socially he likes quite a few people, but it’s rarely mutual, and personally he’s spontaneous, judgmental, romantic, outspoken, cultured and empathetic. Other random fact: he took 12 days to convert, and is a 2 on the kinsey scale, so is nearly evenly bisexual.

Jean ‘Frenchy’ De Dion - Frenchy was a pirate who came as part of a raid and got captured and converted, so he’s been part of the colony for almost 1 1/2 years (now age 28). Before becoming a pirate he was a corp student and an executive officer, and he’s incredible at intellectual and pretty good at social, but can’t do medical or cleaning. He’s codependent and a fast walker, and actually manages to have two mutual friends (Jay and Hauke) and is generally fairly popular. Personally he’s judgmental, cool, polite, friendly and emotional, and physically his only damage is one missing toe. Other random fact: he took exactly a season (15 days) to convert.

Hauke Pahl - Hauke was fleeing tribespeople when he joined the colony, and has been a colonist for almost 1 1/2 years (now age 20). He was barely out of childhood and had spent the whole time as a medieval slave, but somehow still being sedentary (and psychically hypersensitive). Being so young he doesn’t really have any developed skills, but there’s nothing he refuses to do, and he’s taken no lasting injuries so far. The only people he’s at all close to are Frenchy and Lion, but there’s nobody he dislikes. Personally he’s pure, cultured and logical. Other random fact: he’s chronologically 68 years old, so he was probably kept in stasis until somebody bought/found him to be their slave.

Emu Trobo - Emu was one of the tribespeople chasing Hauke and was captured and converted, having now been a colonist for about a year (now age 60). He was a tribe child and grew into a healer, but he’s misogynistic and has an annoying voice, so maybe he’s not particularly missed. None of his skills are above 9 (animal handling) and he doesn’t have much enthusiasm either, plus he has brain damage from a machine pistol (slightly improved by a brain stimulator) so he’s probably not learning very well regardless (also lost a couple toes). Personally he’s extroverted, outspoken and experimental, and manages to have a friend in Julio. Other random fact: took 18 days to convert.

Green Jay - Jay was another one of the tribespeople chasing Hauke and was captured and converted, having now been a colonist for a bit over a year (now age 44). She was a cave child and then a scout, so she’s an undergrounder, a masochist and has a great memory. She’s very good at construction and has enthusiasm for mining and plants. She’s dating Sky and is very good friends with Frenchy, and is popular with others she doesn’t like as much, and personally she’s empathetic, nostalgic, trusting, passionate and friendly. She has taken a few hits, losing a finger and having an old gunshot wound in her torso. Other random fact: converted after 10 days.

Gordon Bellerose - Bellerose crashed to the ground right by the second base and was rescued and chose to join after a few days, so has now been a colonist for about a year (now age 47). He was an organ farm as a child, and then got to become a mathematician as an adult, being very good at intellectual skills, but unable to do violence and unwilling to do hauling and cleaning. He was the father of an already deceased colonist (Priscilla), but nobody else really likes him, perhaps because he’s a cannibal (with a great memory?). For those who can get past the cannibal tendencies, he’s polite, trusting, adventurous, thoughtful and compassionate. Other random fact: ... we probably should have not kept him, but we felt bad about Priscilla?

Ricardo ‘Skissor’ Rodriguez - Skissor was part of another group after the same stash as our colonists and got taken down, captured and converted, so he’s now been a part of the colony for about 1/2 a year (now age 25). He was a bunker kid who grew into a game tester, with good skills in shooting and melee, but won’t do planting or artistic things. He’s also misogynistic, greedy and ‘too smart’, which is probably why most of the other colonists aren’t very keen on him. He’s personally competitive, extroverted and ambitious. Other random fact: he converted after 17 days, and is a 5/6 on the kinsey scale, so just as well he doesn’t need to get involved with women.

Emilia ‘Gazelle’ Norris - Gazelle was part of the same group as Skissor that was after the same stash as our colonists and got taken down, captured and converted, so she’s now been a part of the colony for about 1/2 a year (now age 69). She was a pyromaniac as a child and then became a defector as an adult, still being a pyromaniac and also super-immune, so she won’t fight fires or do artistic things, but she’s good at shooting, melee and medicine. There are some people Gazelle likes, but none of them like her. Personally she’s judgemental, nostalgic, passionate, optimistic and compassionate. Physically her only issue is that she’s got a surrogate heart that’s not very effective, but there’s plans to replace that if she can survive the surgery. Other random fact: she took 14 days to convert and has never been on fire despite her pyro tendencies.

Tycho Rich - Rich was part of a group of pirates who came to raid the colony, got captured and converted, so he’s been a colonist for less than one season (current age 36). Rich was another pyromaniac as a kid, and then got to become a sheriff as an adult, being promising at construction and shooting, but unable to fight fires. He’s still a pyromaniac, but also an iron-willed night owl. He has a lover out there somewhere, but within the colony he only really has rivals so far. Once there stops being mutual hatred, he is judgemental, naive, cool, moralistic and intelligent. Other random fact: he took 29 days to convert, the longest of anyone so far.

Hopefully more episodes soon!

[vaspider]

Sometimes when people speak in this extremely academic, rather over-the-top way, it's because it's the only way to engage clearly and meaningfully with the topic at hand because it's a very complicated and dense topic.

And sometimes, when people talk the way they do in that screenshot, it's because they're trying to throw so much smart-sounding bullshit at people that those people will get intimidated or overwhelmed or feel like they're not smart enough or not informed enough to engage with the topic. In those cases, the overly-academic speech is a form of obfuscation: it hides that their point is poorly supported or that the actual point they're making is "shut up and don't challenge me."

Which do I think is the case here? Well, misandry as a word is attested in the 19th century, starting with a translation of the French misandrie to the German as Männerhas by Johann Georg Krünitz. Its early English-use attestations include an 1871 appearance in The Spectator, in a review of the novel Blanche Seymour:

"We cannot, indeed, term her an absolute misandrist, as she fully admits the possibility, in most cases at least, of the reclamation of men from their naturally vicious and selfish state, though at the cost of so much trouble and vexation of spirit to women, that it is not quite clear whether she does not regard their existence as at best a mitigated evil."

Likewise, we can find it defined in the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary in 1952, some thirty-seven years before its first attested use on Usenet in 1989. A word's appearance in a printed dictionary during the early and mid 20th century tends to imply its usage is widespread enough to justify its inclusion - or, at the very least, that the word is known to and used by the men who write dictionaries.

Misandry is not as old a word as misogyny, this is absolutely true. Misogyny is attested in the mid 17th century, according to the OED. However, stating that the word was created as a response to and an explicit reference to misogyny is - at best - poorly supported by the evidence. Feminist theory usage of the term misogyny comes from second-wave feminism in the 1970s, two decades after the word's inclusion in a collegiate dictionary and a full century after we find it casually used in a book review - where, again, we can only assume it's being used because both the reviewer and editor understand it and the editor believes that readers will also understand it.

To argue that a word or phrase only exists in a reactionary framework and cannot be used because it was created for the express purpose of reactionary politics is a strong claim and one which should be backed up by evidence, not scattered across a collection of smart-sounding words in the hope that the writer will intimidate the reader out of even trying to refute those claims. This is especially true when a writer is claiming to represent the progressive position and their argument would, rather than supporting the progress of gender theory and gender discussion, strip a marginalized group of language necessary to verbalize the ways in which the dominant paradigm oppresses and marginalizes them.

Or to put it more plainly: if someone's trying to make people who are hurting and getting hurt shut up about the ways in which they're hurting? They'd better be right. They'd better be supporting their arguments with iron-clad evidence. And if they want to be thought actually progressive rather than a reactionary wearing the hat of progress, if they want to be taken seriously, they'd better make arguments that can't be disproven in two minutes on Wikipedia.

Otherwise people will see right through the monstrous clouds of academic bullshittery to the actual core of that argument, namely: shut up, you're making me feel bad, and I don't want to actually have to change anything about what I'm doing.

So, yeah, I dunno. It would seem like if this is a poorly-supported piece of academic bullshittery, it would call the entire argument into question.

But what do I know? I just spent 2 minutes on Wikipedia looking up how old the word "misandry" is & whether it was really coined as a counter to progressive feminist theory.

Maybe I'm wrong, though. I'd love to see sources. :)

It is very disingenuous to frame the discussions in which the term misandry is being brought up in this way. Transmasculine people and men of color have been using this term to describe how our masculinity intersects with our other axi of oppression and results systematic, lethal violence against us. The discussions around misandry do reference misogyny and the scholarship behind it, because these spaces in general don't consider women's oppression antithetical to theirs. Misandry is only "contrary" to "progressive" analysis insofar as this analysis is used to launder racially chauvinistic and gender essentialist ideas.

Understand that these conversations are happening in a context you are not familiar with, and remedy that before attempting to do material analysis prematurely. I recommend starting here.

[elegant-etienne]

have you met any friends in RL from rp? How did that go?

Munday Story Time!

I’ve met so many it would be hard to name them all! When I try to do a loose tally, it’s probably around 30-40 RPers I’ve met IRL from the various RP communities I’ve been a part of in my 20+ years of online RP. I’ve met about seven FFXIV RPers, not counting people I met IRL at other nerdy events that wound up being Balmung RPers! So, it’s not easy to say what it’s been like in summary, aside from the fact that a majority - a large majority - of people are just wonderful and lovely when you meet them face to face. Sometimes even people who wind up behaving abominably online. One thing I can say with relative certainty is I don’t think I’ve really met a person involved with any of these communities who is ‘strictly’ neurotypical, which is something I carry with me in every interaction with new people online and off. The community is more diverse than you might believe at first blush, and a lot of marginalized folk gather here, not just those who navigate the world from different mental settings than is considered the default. Considering the core aspects of the hobby, I don’t find it surprising. 

I’ve met more nice people than creeps, but I have met a few creeps. Honestly, it’s hard to gauge when it’s appropriate to offer to give a hug, because like - a lot of the time these are people we’ve known for years online! And now we even voice-chat. I’ve met so, so many people who immediately felt like old friends after meeting them. After I’d traveled across the country to meet someone who promptly dumped me, I took a train on my own to visit some friends in our community. They looked at me and said, “You need a drink.” We had an amazing time, with both of them showing me great local spots and letting me just cry and sleep on their couch and be a mess and vent about the whole thing. To this day I have an open invitation to visit their city, even though we haven’t RPed with each other in probably six or seven years. We keep in touch a little, and I sincerely hope I get to see them again.

But I’ll never forget a particular guy (not in this community) who insisted on a hug after we happened to meet/chat at the bus stop. There was nothing particularly physically imposing to me, in fact I’m pretty sure if I’d thought about it I could’ve tackled him down like a linebacker, but I had a total-deer-in-the-headlights reaction.

Here’s more dirt behind the cut, and also toward the very, very end of the story, some discussion of some very disturbing abusive behavior. I will note it before it begins, in case you don’t want to read that part.

This guy was a textbook narcissist manipulator: nerd edition. He’d act like he was your best friend and always doing you a favor but it was clearly just a way to control others around him. He wasn’t exactly doing the ‘nice guy’ thing so much as trying to look good to everyone regardless of their gender and create a bubble of love around him, making a big show of how nice he was doing things that didn’t actually require much effort (like saying nice things or giving people gifts or doing them favors they did not ask for). But, lacking any magnetism or charisma, he instead used that ‘niceness’, and then when that didn’t work, feigned helplessness and the pity of others to get what he wanted. For me, he also tried to lean hard on a shared aspect of our identities is the LBQTIA community - ironically in the way a lot of people try to when they’re outside the community and don’t understand it. Like, bringing it up just to make positive and admiring remarks about it apropos of nothing! Thanks for outing me on the bus, asshole. Don’t bring up my name on social media in hopes that I’ll make you look more legit, I’m not here to fight people’s battles, and I don’t always agree. This was over a decade ago, I think these days we’d call him ‘fake woke.’

So yeah, to be around this person was just constant discomfort. And I don’t think he knew. I think he thought we were best friends, and I legit feared him having a huge, self-destructive public meltdown on social media (or just… in actual public) if I told him off, so, I just cringed and suffered through.

He and his gf absolutely abused all the goodwill of some mutual friends with whom they stayed during a local con they traveled to. They apparently bought the badges and the tickets to fly out (he’d left living local to me to live with the gf) and had no money whatsoever for food. When someone is visiting a city and intending to be out at an event for most of the time, one would expect they’d have a budget for food. Instead, they loudly martyred themselves over not having anything in hopes everyone else would pay their way. Naturally, the mutual friends bought them some groceries, but it wasn’t up to their standards. I’m not talking about��“they accidentally bought things they were allergic to” but they were picky about brands and so on. AND, they still expected the friends they met at the con to treat them.

This cumulated in an event I sadly didn’t witness, which was him throwing a fit over wanting to eat somewhere aside from where everyone else wanted to, even though he was being treated. Later that night, he called asking if they could stay in my hotel room - probably because they could resent how close our friends were to telling them off - and I said a resounding no.

I wound up being the only person who could tolerate he and his gf’s presence the last day of the con. I think I took them to a cheap lunch. They both made a huge fuss about how they loved me so much on the bus. And I was like, can I get a helicopter to take me to safety. Fortunately I did not see him face-to-face after that.

Here’s where things get disturbing.

He wrote this post throwing a pity-party for himself, feeling like he was a bad person, for assaulting one of his cousins when they were both children (he was older), and people not understanding how sometimes things involving that subject matter triggered him. Nothing about anything he went through, only this thing he did. WHAT. Naturally the community lost their shit over it and he wound up getting blacklisted all over the place. In the end, I told him off too, that he had no right to keep begging people to be sympathetic to him, and that it was in fact abusive for him to go to victims of similar abuse (myself included) and ask this be overlooked and forgiven about him. If he cared about victims he would have tried to make his amends to his cousin and not gotten any strangers on the internet involved, it was HER story, not his to get attention from. He had no right to ask for ANYTHING from ANY victim.

Ironically he blocked me a week later (I have to admit I kept him followed just to see what depths he’d sink to, which wasn’t healthy), because I sarcastically told him he didn’t deserve special treatment and to be allowed to have his phone on him in a no-screens classroom because he felt anxious after having a dream that something bad to happen. So uh. Yeah. That’s the one I think about and do a full-body shudder. That and the guy who acted very nice to me and all of my friend’s faces and then cheated on my best friend by sexting with a woman from the RP community who had the internet persona of a misandrist lesbian. Ew to him too, but I don’t think he ever demanded a hug from me.

FTR many of us were worried about his gf, and over the years tried to contact her and see if she needed help. I want to say I messaged her but it was so long ago I don’t want to take credit for having done something like that if I only thought about it and didn’t. If I did message her, I don’t think she replied. I think eventually she got away from him, but I’ve been out of touch with that community for awhile.

[otnesse]

Just as I get extremely annoyed when people state Belle had Stockholm Syndrome (regardless of my personal views of her right now), I also get very annoyed when people claim that Gaston is a misogynist. He's many things, a pig, an attempted murderer, a backstabber, a slanderer, and a huge narcissist, but he is NO misogynist. He's at most a Male Chauvinist (and there is in fact a distinction between the two. A male chavinist, while looking down on women and viewing them as inferior, otherwise doesn't mind women too much and is willing to go for them. A misogynist, by contrast, is completely disgusted by the very idea of females, and would at best not wish to interact with females in any capacity, certainly not up close, and at worst would be closer to the type of guy who wants to murder women, period, like Ted Bundy. Doesn't even need to feel women are inferior to them in order to qualify. They could also have an inferiority complex towards women and hate them because they perceive women to be "better" than themselves and loathe them for it. Jealousy-motivated misogyny in a sense.). The fact that he even WANTS to marry Belle at all and has very little problem with the triplets overall, heck, actually likes the fact that he's the heartthrob of the various village females (and if Disney Theme Parks are of any indication, Gaston treats little girl patrons surprisingly well, being courteous towards them), makes clear he is no misogynist, as no actual misogynist would even stomach the idea of being liked by a girl, or for that matter a girl being within six feet of him unless she's a corpse he himself created. Even in the cases where they only go for the women at all out of pure pragmatism due to realizing they're the only way they can have children, they generally hate females to such an extent that if they get a girl, it usually results in the girl being killed or worse.

Actually, want a good example of how an actual misogynist would behave regarding a woman, ignoring pragmatism or anything like that? Try looking at how General Blue reacted to Bulma flirting with him:

And just to reinforce the point, since Bulma's behavior there could just as easily point to him just being disgusted with how she flirted with him rather than her per se, replace Bulma in at least the first page displayed (plus the video) with, say, Fiona from Dead or Alive Xtreme Venus Vacation, in particular how she acts in her debut episode, where while flirting with the Owner upon meeting him isn't nearly as crass about it in order to make it significantly less ambiguous as to him not tolerating the presence of females at all, much less them flirting with him in any capacity:

The long and the short of it is, if Gaston truly was a misogynist, he wouldn't go for Belle at all, and if anything, his reaction to Belle even being in close proximity to him, or any girl in the village for that matter, would have been a lot closer to that of General Blue. Or, if he DOES go for Belle, it's more of a "serial killer" kind of thing, like Ted Bundy if I must cite him again, or even Brian Irons from Resident Evil 2. I prefer precise definitions, laser-focused and all of that, not wishy-washy basic stuff.

Ironically, Belle in at least the New Adventures of Disney's Beauty and the Beast actually could make the case of being a misandrist based on this choice line of dialogue here:

Particularly the final two panels. Even there, however, she grew out of it by the film, and was at least receptive to marrying a guy, provided he's good.

Heck, if anything, the closest in Disney that we've got to an actual misogynist is Chi Fu from Mulan, who literally refused to give the titular character any credit, did not tolerate Mulan speaking at all, and even attempted to have her EXECUTED at one point. As bad as Gaston was, at least he was willing to let women speak and even sing in his presence. Heck, even his dislike of reading, particularly women, though he implies later on that he's probably not even fond of men such as himself reading either, is pretty tame overall. At least he doesn't throw acid at Belle's face for having a book on her, while the Taliban were notorious for doing that to girls in Afghanistan caught going to school.

Bear in mind I don't even LIKE Gaston at all, so don't think for one second I'm defending him. I just dislike the misuse of words, that's all. Even less so when they're utilized on places like the Disney Wiki. I know it's not official, but it's still an Encyclopedia, which requires facts.

[yanderefairyangel]

little update : it just got worse

Ok so this guest account called anonny (very subtle I know) has been responding to the negative comments she had been getting HOWEVER... not the one celebrating she isn't liking alearcryst anymore or the one who said she left the fandom being "good riddance" no no no no instead it was the NON anonymous and NON guest account (for the most part) that were instead sharing their own side of the story Lucy/Lulu/Flower/Timerralover had been giving to make herself seem as the victim

Hmm... I just take this as a confirmation that the many many MANY guest account either siding with her or mocking her are in reality HERS. Why ? Because she constantly does that. Non stop.

"But why pretend to be harrassed ?" so she can get to scream miserare mei and we all side with her and feel pity for her, that's why ! Ms Scribbes did the same exact thing !

Also isn't that ironic how they are accusing people of being ableist because "she has autism uwu" while BEING ableist themselves ? Like

Girl... you are literaly arguing that being belittled your entire life and compared to your older siblings in a way that demeans you isn't as bad as being abused by your father and groomed into a perfect bride ...

Those might seems like different severity to you but people handle trauma very differently, so no, Alcryst's situation isn't something that is "easier to move on from" than what Bernie had to suffer

Trauma isn't a competition, suffering isn't a competition, you can't argue someone's pain and trauma are not "as bad" as someone else because the situation is "seemingly less bad" ! That is freaking ableist ! And then saying that people are terrible because they act like Alcryst's situation is just as bad as Bernie's is the absolute... i's just ... insane...so basically if someone showed the same personality traits as Alcryst and told you that they had been belittle their entire life and compared to someone they believe they can't be like and shun down for being themselves, you would tell them "Eh ! there are people out there who are being beaten by their own parents ! Your situation isn't nearly as bad as theirs" ?!

That is just insane ! what a rancid take !

You can swallow your own accusations of being ableist at this point and no, the F!Alear troll being autistic doesn't excuse ANY of this, autistic or not, this behavior isn't ok and you can't claim people are being ableist for calling you out on that !

Autism isn't an excuse to stealing fics ideas, orphaning fics so that people can't avoid them, insiting on partaking into activities that involves characters you don't like only to make everyone miserable with your endless demands, it's not an excuse for constantly pretending to be someone else and manipulating people who MIGHT HAVE BLOCKED YOU FOR A REASON into believing you are someone else so you can intereact with them, and if you are indeed the same person as the sockpuppet that made a mess in the Genshin and Twisted Wonderland fandom, it's not an excuse to be misandrist, xenophobic towards asian people and policing fandom spaces

You can't demand people to be any more patient with you because "she is autistic" when you make no damn effort to change

Not once, not once did you ever acknowledge you were in the wrong, that you wronged people, never apologized and like... how the heck are people supposed to give you any more chance ? They did and you constantly bite the hand that someone tends towards you to help you, you constantly make people regret having felt pity for you and you constnatly portray yourself as the victim and scream the people trying to call you out or even try to reason with you are evil for doing so because "they aren't being patient "

Being patient isn't shutting your mouth like a quiet dog and letting do whatever you want ! And people can't be patient infintely, everything has a limit, and you constantly plays with people's limits

That is insane and I don't want to see any more single Anon ask being like "but they can change" or "they are a real person with feelings too" I couldn't care less about that when they don't even want to bother make ONE effort, ONE, how hard is it just... tell me how hard is it to just AVOID intereacting with Alcryst fan since you dislike him ? How hard is it to AVOID intereacting with M!Alear fan since you hate him ? How hard is it to write fanfics without orphaning them or stealing ideas? How hard is it to enjoy fandom space minding your own buisness ? I am just at lost

Ok so

After receiving many anons telling me that the F!Alear troll is getting people mad at her in her comment section and that they are being rude and mean, i went to check and

I stumbled upon their author note which is even longer than the actual fic

She is sharing her story and many people are pointing out that it's not what happeneed and trying to reason with her

However, what struck my attention is this part

OH God what is this... ahhh

Ok so (where to begin)

She brings up that Bernadetta and Alcryst are in the same character trope which... I disagree, Alcryst is more similar to MARIANNE than he is to Bernie and I have no idea why he is constantly compared to Bernie when they don't have the same symptoms like Alcryst for example is actually social and doesn't have agorophobia while Bernie is modeled after the hikkikomoris

So that was for the begining

Than she claims " Everyone acts like he is superior compared to characters like Bernadetta who fit the same troupe, all cause he is a man and not a woman. They treat him like a serious person with feelings while treating Bernie like a joke for being a women "that is scared of the world. Let's laugh at her for that!" Which feels misogynistic to me. If any of this is pointed out, people were quick to defend Alcryst and saying it was not his fault. And that "it has nothing to do with him being a man. Bernie just sucks and deserved what she got." Which was very icky to me."

While I agree with the sentime, I don't think everyone is doing that...mainly because of how many people actually believe every single character in Engage is one noted and that I saw many people claim Bernie was better than Alcryst for the same reason this person does anyway

I do remember someone bringing up that THE WRITERS thought that way because as the troll said herself, Alcryst is taken much more seriously and the jokes made about him aren't as mean spirited as for Bernie (FEH doesn't exist) but like... in that case it would be because the writers are showing sexist biais and not the fandom, if there are people who think like that then EWWW but the "They treat him like a serious person with feelings while treating Bernie like a joke for being a women "that is scared of the world. Let's laugh at her for that!" is how they are written so naturally many people call that out on Berni's characterization, the only reason I would argue in a devil's advocate fashion is that other female character don't get treated like Bernie either, but that doesn't mean the writers didn't have this sexist bias into play, after all FE can be very weird about female characters

But the real issue is this part, this part

"Yet when I look at it all, Bernie seems like the better written character. While her trauma is passed on like a joke by other people and the characters around her, she has a serious reason for acting that way. She was abused by her father. She had been tied to a chair and forced to keep quiet because her father wanted her to act like a submissive wife. Her trauma led her to locking herself away to hide from other people. Bernie has complexity to her character. She was at least able to grow and learn from her experiences thanks to the help of her classmates and professors. But Alcryst? There is no explanation for the way he acts. He is just self-deprecating and runs away from other people. But that does not get treated as a joke for some reason. People act like this is a better characterization, but Alcryst has no reason to be the way he is. The only thing given is that he is constantly compared to his older brother. So what? Comparison is something that happens to everyone. It is not reason enough for someone to have "trauma" like that. What Alcryst has is not trauma. That is just overreacting to what other people say."

Ok so I am using this because I saw other people having a similar take and that's just disgusting ?

She is basically saying Bernie is better written because she was being abused by her father while Alcryst wasn't which would allegedly give a better reason for Bernie to be the way she is than Alcryst

GOOOOOD

Ok so the reason why people think Bernie is a poorely written case of trauma and mental heath is because she is constantly mocked for it

Every single one of her C support begins by her having what is essentially a panick attack but it's played as comedic

But then the game turns around and also try to take her seriously... after revealing that her "quirck" is PSTD, that the game has been trying to maker us laugh at her PTSD and now it is acking us to pity her ... That is bad

That is a terrible way to write a character struggling with mental health and trauma, and the way her backstory is detailled make it even worse

As someone who often has panick attack and sometimes for reason I myself do not understand it feels like having a knife plunged into your chest and someone rubbing it to see a character that is showing the exact same reactions as one does when they have panick attacks and seeing it being played for comedic effects

It's not even the context, it's not even the support, it's the panick atttack itself that is the joke, the punchline, heck Byleth's C support and Linhart's C support shows how terrible that thing is, in Byleth's C support Bernie is panicking because Byleth caught her singing when she was essentially thanking them at first, that is BAD, that is making fun of something that happens very often to people and that is furthering the point that Bernie is ashamed of some of her hobbies but she is also being mocked for being anxious about that

And also the way she screams "worthless, useless, unmarrigeable" is supposed to be comedic but then you get to her support explain her backstory and boom, she is screaming in a comedic manner meant to make the audience laugh stuff her abusive father probably told her when she was locked in her room tied to a chair... that is just insane that we are asked to laugh at that and then told we should take that seriously later on

And don't get me started on Hopes, 3 Hopes my beloathed this time around because THEY MADE HER ABUSER INTO ANOTHER COMIC RELIEF ! What the heck was in their head to make him a comic relief who is also showing signs of anxiety ?? And this isn't even explored in detail, it's just a character you have to either escort or kick depending on which route you join I.... I....(ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh)

And Hopes trippled down on making her anxious about everything, back to Houses, do we talk about how the writers think it's funny to have Bernie have a panic attack so intense she stopps speaking and can't move, she is paralized, in her supports with Hubert ?

Like....that's just

And I say that as someone who likes Bernie, because this isn't her fault she is written like this, it's the writer's fault. Bernie on her own is a character of potential, but the way her PTSD is treated is harming her character and I refuse to pretend like it's not the case

Meanwhile Alcryst isn't treated as harsly, even if there are some jokes about his apoletic nature, in the large context they aren't mean spirted (at least in Engage, we don't talk about FEH)

His support with Alear's comedic aspect place his apologetic nature in a context where it is comedic, the fact he is apologizing to a wolf to make him go

Unlike how Bernie's anxiety was treated as being an inherently comical trait, here it's the context that makes Alcryst's apologetic nature come off as a comical trait, which means the writers aren't relying on it alone unlike what they do with Bernie, finding any good reason to make her feel anxious because "it's funny, the traumatized teenager is being having another anxiety crisis ha ha ha why are you not laughing"

Plus this support is actually begining with a clever connecting device (the wolf) that is used to show that Alcryst's personality can have some postives : using his apology helped him protect Alear from the wolf without harming the wolf and he even befriends him

That's adorable, and as someone who is very apologizing that's not something that comes off as offensive to me, it's something that actually makes me wanna laugh because it doesn't feel like I am mocking Alcryst, it feels like the situation is comical

Likewise, in his support with Fogado, that's treated as comedic but unlike Bernie where you have to wait till B or A for the more heartwarming side to come off, the hear warming side is visible right away, because of how he is talking about Fogado and complimenting him, this shows that Alcryst is very honest when he is admiring someone

Also, he has a whole support with Hortensia to tackle this is who he is and he shouldn't be pressuring himself into changing

Unlike Berni whose anxious nature is treated as a joke and ONLY as a joke until the writer decided it's time to be taking it seriously, Alcryst's self deprecating nature isn't treated only as a joke nor as a funny trait in itself and the game actually bother to show that people like him aren't hindrances like they think they are but that their nature can bring up some good things

That is a crucial difference and why Alcryst is overall better handled than Bernie, not because of their damn gender

Plus what is this bit about character developement and learning... Bernie isn't alone in this, Alcryst does that too... he has several support chains focused on that, also I will remind you that a lot of supports that help Bernie grow requires you to have some characters, plus that in any route outside of CF she just stays in her room like always and we don't talk about Hopes

But that was just for the writing part

the reaaaal issue lies with the "if you are being abused than you have an actual valid reason to have anxiety and deserved to be called a trauma victim but if you didn't than you don't have an actual valid reason to suffer from axiety" and I am just... I

....that is an awful take...

Anxiety doesn't necessarily steem from abuse and it's a toxic and ableist mindest to just argue that if you are showing signs of anxiety or low self esteem despite not having being abused than you don't have an actual valid reason to be that way, that is just vile

Many people are suffering from anxiety for various reasons : family, work, schooll etc. You can have supportive family, supportive friends and so on and still suffer from anxiety and depression

And saying that if you "dont have an actual plausible reason" you shouldn't feel that way just perptuate the same type of rhetoric used to shut people down so" they dont bother you with their mental problems"

There is no criteria that makes someone being more valid in how they feel when they struggle with anxiety or mental disorders and arguing that Bernie is more valid than Alcryst because she got abused is insane, so someone is not as valid because they didn't got told repeadetly by someone else that they sucked and were miserable ? What if they did and it just wasn't their parents or what if they do hear that but it comes from their own self because they suffer from imposter syndrome or because they are too perfectionist or ANYTHING

It is miserable mindest to tell someone stuff like that, it's further reinforcing the idea you need a valid reason to have mental issues of any kind and a mindest of people suffering from this fearing they will be not taken seriously because "you don't have trauma, you don't have triggers you are just weird" or " you are too sensitive" or "you are just overeacting"

And even then Op just contradicted themselves by admitting that :" The only thing given is that he is constantly compared to his older brother. So what? Comparison is something that happens to everyone. It is not reason enough for someone to have "trauma" like that."

Ok let me break it to you : when you are constantly compared to someone, when people will non stop tell you that this person is wonderful while you can't even come close to them, that you, as you are is bad and that you should be more like that person whom you view as perfect, that you are constantly belittled for not being like your amazing older siblings who used to be so good at this, so talented at that...

That's literaly what creates inferiority complex, why, because you are going to interiolize the idea that you are inherently inferior to everyone, that everyone is better than you, that you are constantly in the wrong and should apologize, sometimes for things you don't even understand yourself

That isn't a new trope, FE already did that with Leo and Takumi from Fates heck even Rafal aslo suffer from that, the main difference between them and Alcryst is that Alcryst doesn't cope by pretending to be cold, acting rought as if he didn't needed them so he couldn't feel hurt when he hears that, something we know Alternate Alcryst does too, Alcryst, the regular one instead just shows the effect that this type of behavior has on an individual, it makes them into a meek soft spoken person who constantly feels like they have wronged the world and need to apologize no matter what

The thing is that the game also makes it clear that Alcryst might have self image issue but that doesn't mean he can't get angry at others or that he doesn't try to protect the people he cares about, that's why the game doesn't present his self deprecating nature as being a default worth laughing unlike the way Bernie's PTSD feels written, it's shown that yes he is like that but 1) even then there is a strengh to this and 2) he is more than that and 3) that's precisely because he is more than that that even his flawed nature has some strengh in it

Alcryst is a much better handled character than Bernie not because of their GENDER but because Alcryst is actually receiving empathy for his situation from the writers whereas with Bernie this isn't the case, it's not like the game doesn't try to take her seriously, but because 3H's writing is very inconsitent in how it treats her, it all falls flat

I simply cannot understand how anyone could hear that someone grew up being constantly belittled for not being like their extraordinary older sibling (keep in mind that Diamant never shown prior to this to Alcryst he had his own weakness, Diamant was like perfect to Alcryst) and think "they are overreacting, at least they didn't got severly abused" whenever this someone is showing of negatively this has affected them

And again, abuse isn't the only reason you can get people like Alcryst or Bernadetta, trauma isn't the only cause of the symtomps they show so downplaying one to prop up the other as more "valid" isn't criticizing the writing" it's showing you don't know a damn thing about mental health

Also "He shot at Alear and nearly kills her. Then that is just brushed off and never brought up again."

What ? Don't tell me they dislike Alcryst because of how Alcryst mistook Alear and Alfred for bandits... please tell me it's not that

That is not "just brushed off and never brought up again", that literlay almost costed a rift between Citrinne, Lapis and Alfred, the reason why it was "brushed off" is because Alcryst apologized, explained why he mistook them for theifs (he and his retainers had been attacked non stop so they acted rashly in self defense) and because Alear accepted their apology because Alear is that kind of a person, but Alfred still lectured Alcryst on this and there were more importants matter such as idk THE WHOLE WORLD BEING IN DANGER ?

"Then he threatens Ivy's life and blames her for his father's death and the loss of the emblems when she is not at fault at all. If anything, it is his fault for insisting on a rescue."

(I still dont get why they cut off this line)

He got mad at Ivy because Ivy quite literaly blamed him and his brother for wanting to save their dad... like ... you are doing right now...

This is a 17 year old boy who is established to love his family dearly, wanting to protect them and he just saw his father being turned into a zombie, he possibly even had to kill him himself if you used him to defeat Corrupted Morion, but he even then he had to fight and see someone kill his dad or do it himself

Of course he would want to save his dad, he loves his dad, and even Diamant, who is much older insisted on rescuing him and let's be honest, Alear wouldn't have ordered a retreat even if they didn't reacted this way because Alear is show to hesitate (they answer "but" when Marth ask them to order retreat and when Diamant and Alcryst gave their piece of mind Alear repeats their name to indicate to the audience they understand the sentiment)

But this has nothing to do with him being mad at Ivy honestly, they went there specifically to save King Morion and even when the situation turned out to be in the villain's favors, Alear refused to order retreat... when Diamant and Alcryst wouldn't have objected because they aren't even in that scene but also, because what's done is done, Ivy just blaming it on them when she wasn't even there for having a human reaction, calling this foolish is comming across as insentitive

She does apologize for not having stopped her Father in time but it's only in their support she apologize for having slowing them down which is what Alcryst is talking about

But I'll be honest, I get where Alcryst comes from, if someone told me something like this right after I had lost my father forever, I might have done worse

This isn't to say Ivy is heartless, she isn't, but she was being insensitive with this line

As for Alcryst's reaction, just because it's understanble and human to react like this doesn't mean he was in the right... that's why DIAMANT, his BROTHER who is just as sad as he is calls him out on that...

I swear to God why the heck did you even felt the need to talk about that

Also don't pretend like it's new, you have ALWAYS presented those (his anxiety, his reaction towards Ivy) as a reason to hate him and Brodia at large, you were just pretending to like Alearcryst but you never ever hid the fact you couldn't stand him

All that's telling me is that you still believe you are a victim in all of this when you have been dishonest from the very begining with everyone and even pretending to be someone else each time you came back, you feel the need to force everyone to know your opinion about Alcryst and that is just toxic, but it's made even worse by the fact you can't accept criticism of people sharing their disagreement with your opinion and that you back that up with dangerous "you don't have a valid enough reason to be anxious" rhetoric