#you can be broadly right and also dangerous at the same time

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

I cannot stress enough that going up to random people online and trying to force them to engage in debate with you, or justify themselves to you, is NOT activism, no matter how correct you are.

Least of all your allies who's imperfections you are trying to police.

There is in fact a line between advocacy and harassment. It's pretty thick.

And even if you were in the right there are still behaviours that will ultimately hurt your cause and make people ignore you because they are generally toxic behaviours that make people feel unsafe.

The rules aren't just for the people you disagree with.

Even if someone is doing something that is in fact part of the problem, that doesn't put you in the clear to publicly single out and attack random people. You have freedom of speech, but they also have rights, like not being harassed and attacked by a bunch of strangers. Don't set them up to receive that. You do not have freedom of social consequences for that speech.

Turning around an saying anyone uncomfortable with your behaviour is also just a traitor to the cause and part of the problem is not helping anyone.

There is an important difference between publicly critiquing behaviours in generalizations, "people who", and targeting those criticisms at one person you have decided to pluck up and put on display 'you random person are doing this and it means these terrible things about you'.

There is a difference between calling out someone for uniquely dangerous behaviour [me too and such], and harassing one disabled person for falling in line with what every single other person around them is doing to avoid being harassed [people going along with social convention because their lives are already hard enough, even if it's detrimental to them].

Even if you are correct, and these people generally need social pressure applied to them, as we all do to hold each other accountable, singling random people out to put them on blast will make them defensive and make all your other potential allies afraid they could be the next target. It is not an effective strategy.

Some behaviours are toxic and harmful no matter whether you are on the right side of history or not. The rules do not just apply to the enemy.

Public calling out by a big 'important' blogger -and their potential mobs- for some little rando is not the same as 'accountability'.

Sometimes you are doing a lot of important work that no one else is bothering with, and what you have to say needs to be heard by everyone, and you ALSO manage to make yourself a toxic asshole no one wants to associate with because they do not have the energy to deal with you turning your attention on them next, and don't particularly want to cultivate/support you doing that to other people.

Sometimes there are gentle and non-accusatory ways to make the same point without continuing to harass someone who wants to be left alone and it would be better for your cause and not just reach more ears, but make more people want to listen.

Not everything needs to be an accusation and a debate instead of a gentle discussion. If you don't have the energy left to bring these things up in a way that isn't toxic, maybe sit this one out and wait till you do.

Maybe take a mental health break.

Sometimes the answer is to keep educating people instead of trying to force individual people to conform to what you think is best using personally directed public shaming of random individuals.

Sometimes people are stressed and tired and even if they wanted an educational resource on their dash they do not want to see a bunch of targeting arguing and shaming for various mental health reasons and that doesn't make them traitors, or complicit in the problem.

Hope that helps <3

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

having a lot of thoughts about how people use 'normalize' when they mean 'destigmatize' or 'make the nature of into common knowledge,' and how they conflate 'the perception of this thing as normal' with the thing actually being a normal occurrence, and how it is in fact incredibly harmful to try to convince people that an ideal situation is normal when that does not map onto their lived reality or the dangers they need to be aware of to avoid. it is 3:33am though so writing up an actual poast about it will have to wait for later

[kiefbowl]

On radblr, in my early twenties, now what is likely 10 years ago (which, it's hard to remember when I started actually feminist positing on tumblr in earnest), I used to write about rape a lot more. I think my younger self felt invigorated not so much about the conversation of rape (of course, it's horrific), but by being angry and political about it. Being able to articulate complex, feminist ideas about rape, and have likeminded women engage. It felt intellectual and important, while a form of my own conscious raising. As I've aged, I find it harder. I can only say so many things, over and over again. It was never not hard, or depressing, or angering, but where the bad feelings once felt righteous and worth experiencing for the sake of speaking towards truth, now it can feel ineffective and exploitative.

I'm not saying one way is right, the other is wrong. I think (speaking broadly of course) that this is a part of aging. I think there is some truth about the patterns we see between young people and their thoughts and abilities, and then aging out of them. I think, speaking politically, younger and older activists need each other because two perspectives work in congress: the young passion that can be short sighted and ideological, and the elder pragmatism that can fall into complicity. These two perspectives together can be stronger than when apart. It's always more complicated than that, and each person is different, but I do think the trend of "I'm full of energy and angry and shocked and won't faulter" giving way to "I'm going to be measured and find priorities and perhaps become more lenient" is a general trend that is true. You get older and you realize both how short time is and how much longer you get to live it, and constant anger is not only exhausting, but it can be counterproductive. What's more, is that not only do your responsibilities increase, but some of those responsibilities also rub up against the very "machine" you used to rail against. You can achieve a lot with money, and to gain money you have to work. You gain money, you can start increasing your circle of influence, but then that increases the people you need to take care of. You need to take care of people, then you need to buy things. Suddenly, what seemed so easy being young and living off a shoestring budget 10 years ago seems irrational and dangerous today. I need to feed my dog, I need to help my sister, I can't expect my parents to live forever, I want to retire one day, I can bet on declining health...on and on. I'm speaking about myself in many ways, but I'm also trying to gesture to the larger trend generally. Extrapolate as it suits you, I think more of you than you realize will find yourself re-evaluating what actually isn't reconcilable as you get older. It's both hard to swallow and yet...like a toad in boiling water, you're almost not surprised looking back and realizing how much has changed and how right so many adults were when you were younger.

And so to this point, my intellectual posts about rape decreased. Never completely out of the fight, but being more specific about my time, my energy. Opting out of discussions that were too triggering, being more careful about my word choices. Understanding the harm that can come from being combative towards strangers on a public platform. Realizing that some periods of my life could be dedicated to enriching my life and creating enjoyment, and that meant certain things could be put on the backburner. Just because I wasn't writing, doesn't mean I wasn't thinking. I didn't need external validation (especially from strangers on tumblr) that my time was being well spent when it came to observing the news and thinking about it. I know what goes on in my head, putting it into a public post didn't make it more true. I'm not so sure I had the same belief at 22/23/24, etc. I think whether I would have articulated it that way, I think I felt like what went on in my head was meaningless unless it was being crafted into a message that had some sort of impact, with tumblr being my main platform to do that. I don't think that way now. I think my thoughts have value even if I keep them to myself, which means when I really have something I think is worth sharing on tumblr, I can craft it more precisely if and when I find the time. Or at least that's my goal as a 30-something, and I don't think that was as explicit of a goal as a 20-something who just wanted to get every thought down because it felt like my brain was being turned on for the first time.

But something that is coming into focus with the accusations of Gaiman that I haven't really reckoned with, or at least not as much as I have the past 24 hours & past 6 months, is that while I aged privately and passively by blog followed suit, is that the landscape of tumblr has evolved around me. I think there's a trick my brain has played on me: that at the end of the day, something of what I engaged with on radblr 10 years ago still exists. And, yes, to an extent, there are some women here I've followed for the entire time (but they have also aged...). But my followers have increased and decreased and increased and decreased with every stupid post that goes viral, and as I've aged and remained on tumblr, many many more women have aged and bowed out. It's becoming increasingly clear that I have a lot of young women following me who are not my age, and did not see those posts, mine and others. The "classics" that live large in my mind but weren't viral hits, just radblr discourses of the week. Some of these young women have a wildly different online experience than I did, and I think I knew but didn't know know the difference 10 years makes when growing up on the internet. I never had twitter, some of you are "twitter expats." I remember when youtube was people uploading 20 second home videos, some of you only know youtube as the long form video essay platform. I remember events like they were yesterday that are already erased in the public consciousness. Some of you were coming into your own during the "Me Too" movement and gave it so much credence, where I was not surprised nor expected much from it. Now I can see how we retroactively talk about it like it was such a bombshell, when most women I knew at the time, even "normie" women were, like, "yeah duh." I also haven't really reckoned with the fact that it's been long enough era of the "new algorithm" that there are (although young) full-grown adults who don't remember the internet before it.

The conversations I took for granted on tumblr are changing. To be sure, there are still a lot of women on tumblr who are likeminded to myself, making amazing posts that are good, true, & eye-opening. I'm not panicking that the "landscape" has changed so much that I can't recognize anything anyone says anymore, and that ""real"" feminism has dried up and disappeared when I stopped looking. But I want to say some things about rape that I believe are ideas that were shared between a collection of women that I deeply associated with on here a long time ago that maybe isn't explicitly talked about in these terms as frequently as I used to experience. I want to say some things that I used to say all the time that I think I assumed that "everyone knows" I say "these things" and "think these ways" - when maybe I haven't been so explicit in so long that people don't know, or haven't seen me speak these things before.

And so, some thoughts on rape:

Rape as a word is known to be an evil act, and therefore people (men and women) will speak of it as if they are against it. However, rape as it functions in our life is seen as a necessity. This is why people can speak out of two sides of their mouth about it. Rape is a concept of evil, but it is not an evil action. Why? Because women are meant to be raped. This is what's understood: women are inherently rape-able. Women are not sexual beings, they are sexual objects. They are incubators, and they create lust in men, which is what unravels the virture of men.

When a man rapes a women, the ultimate evil is that the man's virtue was corrupted, not the woman's. These ideas aren't explicitly articulated by anyone, but they are patterns at the heart of rape myths. It is a "shame" that a man "lost his will" because he happened across an "object" that "tricked him" into being "bestial", something that is ultimately excusable because man is beast. Is woman beast? No, she is not man.

If a man can resist, he is the paradigm of virtue; if he can't it's because she was too rape-able to remain virtuous. This is how men know they are rapists but don't agree they are rapists. They know they do the necessary action of raping, they disagree it's the same as the agreed upon concept of Rape. Rape that is evil is some monstrous other using these women as they are reserved for men.

When it suits men of a community, they can use this idea against other men they want to other. When it doesn't suit men, no man can be monstrous because all men are brothers, and so rape ceases to exist. You can't rape my daughter, unless you marry her, then do as you please. You can't rape madonnas, unless she is a whore, then do as you please. You can't rape my women, but if they're your women, do as you please. These ideas are not concrete convictions, they will morph to suit the man at the center of the rape accusation. A rapist who date-rapes might very well feel righteous anger when it happens to his sister. He can and will find a way to excuse whatever he did as part of some normal paradigm, a way he must act or should act, or a thing that is excusable for him. The inconsistency of this logic does not matter, because it does not suit him, and therefore does not suit male supremacy.

I say this all because, even though I'm appalled by the reaction of Gaiman's fans online, who are both men and women, and who can only fucking think of how they consume media (truly unbelievable and juvenile), I am simply not surprised. In so many ways, Gaiman's victims were rape-able, and that's why in so many ways his fans can readjust the variables of the situation and come up with some sort of conclusion of how it is rape, but it isn't Rape. Maybe she liked it sometimes, maybe she is misremembering. Maybe he was just confused on the terms of consent.

But what's more important to them is that they give credence to the idea that of course Rape is Evil, because they are good people who must think that way. What they're trying to convince themselves, and what can seem like they are speaking another language, is that this isn't Rape, this is rape. And so it's not that "she is misremembering" means she wasn't raped, but that she was raped in such a way that is the natural order of things. Man, who is a virtuous human and a beast, raped a sexual object who can only expect to exist so long in the world before tempting a man. This seems so obvious to most people. Feminists seem so intense and crazed, because they are centering something that is unnatural to most: a woman's experience as a human, not an object.

It comes natural to these fens to ask: "How can I enjoy my tv show knowing so many people think my hero is a capital R Rapist, when that's philosophical idea on evil and not a material reality, when I don't want people to think I don't take the capital R Rape idea as a serious evil." They are having two conversations in tandem. One is the idea that of course it's possible for Rape to exist, it's possible for some monstrous other to exist, but this man is not a monstrous other, because he is just a man. And men rape, that's just how it goes, because women are rape-able.

I'm condensing many ideas I have about rape into something simplified, for the sake of a tumblr post. And I got there in a circulus way, but I want to encourage the "old guard" who is still here, or women that agree with me above, that although they don't need to, if they have the time to speak more about rape as an intentional weapon against women, to do so. I think there are many ways the political conversation about rape for young women is first happening online, and I think the popular discourse is going sideways. A blind leading the blind moment. This is not a value judgement, but I'm gobsmacked at some things that are said as if they are "given" feminist talking points, that fall outside my understanding of rape as a feminist. Things like equalizing the complicity of Palmer with Gaiman's actions, rationalizing certain sexual proclivities as rooted in some innate sexuality, creating a hierarchy of which actions were worse for which victims, and so on. In many ways, also not surprising, par for the course for how feminism is generally spoken about. What is surprising to me is the confidence of speaking this way, and being convinced of their transgressive ideas. I think feminist online discourse must be so dire that the needle moving to some mid-point in a woman might convince her she's quite enlightened, when there's so much more she could learn. I think this idea that "libfems" are actually women who are clearly anti-feminist has convinced a lot of women that they are "good feminists" by engaging with ideas that are at odds at all with blatant conservatism, that it might be mystifying that they are quite centrist in comparison from many feminist talking points 10 to 20 years ago, at least as it appears to me. I'm speaking broadly, I know, but I had to get some thoughts down. Some angry part of me still exists and I do still feel the need to discuss rape, if only to show some young woman that there really is a deeply radical way you can think of rape that perhaps you hadn't thought of before.

As always, I'm open to critiques about anything in this post.

[comicaurora]

(sorry for the long ask)

So there's this thing? That's been kind of bothering me, I've noticed it in the shera remake but also other places, where all these faceless minions are just there to show how hard/easy it is for the protagonists to get rid of them.

There's a couple of things, but I think that it just boils down to that they're not treated as characters? The hero will push them into a volcano and celebrate, then get all conflicted when facing the villain captain puppy kicker because "if I kill/hurt you I'll be just as bad" and in the same shot there's a pile of downed henchmen. And I get that, because from a meta perspective it would be hard to animate several hundred or however many individual people all fighting, but it's just weird right? In the show the only people without helmets on 24/7 are the main cast and of course the Rogelio/Kyle/lonnie group. Which is Confusing?? Because it seems like there's only a few options, either every single other person likes wearing the helmets all the time with no breaks, or they're breaking dress code and getting away with it, or "cadets" means they're in training. And somehow way more competent than all the other trained soldiers. It's weird, and I'm not even fully sure how to describe it. Do you have any thoughts?

Faceless minions are a time-honored storytelling tradition that persist despite being slightly reality-breaking story convention because-

They make it very easy to choreograph cool-looking fights against a big pile of interchangeable bad guys

You only need as many extras as you'll be showing together in one shot, meaning you can imply a vast army of evil with only like five costumes/character models

They make it easier to pick out the heroes in group shots and fights

They provide contrast against the important villains with unique designs

Easy protagonist disguises for sneaking around in

This is pretty useful stuff, but it does all feed into the effect that armies of faceless minions are generally not composed of full-fledged characters. They're a pile of broadly interchangeable mooks. This is one of those things that's technically dubious from a realism standpoint, but I honestly don't think it's automatically a bad thing for a story to make it really easy to tell who's an important character and who's an interchangeable obstacle in their way.

This does get shaky when the characters start acting like that. To them, in the reality of their story, those mooks ARE real, dangerous people, and their facelessness doesn't detract from that. The protagonist's morality shouldn't depend on how important a character is to the plot or how unique their design is, and that character inconsistency is the more disruptive bit of writing. Mowing down minions by the truckload only to spare the big bad makes it feel like the main character is standing apart from their own story and making the kind of value judgment the audience is, and that's weird. It's not weird that the faceless minions exist, it's weird that the protagonist evidently doesn't see them as real people.

But that doesn't mean every stormtrooper or background orc or ninja needs their own unique design, name and backstory. Narrative conventions exist for a reason, and while I do love a setting that feels like it's absolutely full of unique main characters all living their own lives, it's absolutely not mandatory. Sometimes things in stories are made unrealistic so they don't undercut the impact of the story itself, whether that's simple theater sets that don't draw the eye away from the actors, unrealistic lighting so a movie viewer can actually see what's going on, song and dance numbers, flashy showstopping villains, or convenient armies of ninjas to take down with one punch each. Storytelling has its own tools.

[mxtxfanatic]

One thing that I really appreciate about mxtx’s stories is that even though the common people are shown to have an understanding of hierarchy and a healthy skepticism—dare I say, disdain at times—for the elite class at the top of each world’s hierarchy, that doesn’t mean that their every judgment on the subject is right.

Tgcf is a perfect example of this in multiple arcs. The peoples of Xianle and Wuyong know that a person with money can bend the ear of a god, and the nobility of Xianle, specifically, even bar the poor from entering Xie Lian’s temples without first paying an entry fee. Lang Ying leads the Yong’an refugees to rebel because he sees the corruption girding Xianle society. However, these same peoples also believe in the hierarchy they despise for oppressing them. When the beloved princes of the respective kingdoms are unable to save their kingdoms from certain doom because they are unwilling to sacrifice the lives of others, those same citizens turn on them. Worse yet, Xie Lian and Jun Wu were the only gods who were about treating their worshippers equally regardless of status, while the gods who their former followers turned to for help were the very same ones that had watched them suffer, gleefully waiting for them to turn on their gods so that they could poach new worshippers. In the end, the people end up casting aside the gods who defied the heavens in an attempt to save them, in favor of worshipping the gods who wanted them to perish. We see this same level of misapplied understanding on smaller levels too: Mu Qing understanding classism but only taking issue with it when it negatively impacts him, personally; Lang Ying’s descendants devolving into the same kind of wasteful nobles that Lang Ying had deposed; the people in the temple who choose to stab Xie Lian to preserve their own life because “you’re meant to save us.”

Similar things happen in svsss and mdzs. In svsss, humans are reasonably wary of demons (who hunt and eat humans in this story) and look up to cultivators as their protectors, but broadly applying this allowed the corrupt Old Palace Master to weaponize that rightful wariness to harm his innocent targets: Su Xiyan, Tianlang-jun, Luo Binghe, and Shen Qingqiu. Had the common people witnessed a group of adult cultivators chasing a fearful toddler around be so convinced of the “righteousness” of the cultivators they admire? If so, would we, the audience, still look to the crowd as moral? At the same time in mdzs, the common people actually don’t look up to the righteous cultivation clans as inherently good, only a necessary expense—have you the funds—but even that is a weapon. Thirteen years after the first siege, a farming couple discusses how terrifying the power Wei Wuxian wielded was, grateful to the great cultivation clans for having killed him without any understanding that Wei Wuxian was the most upstanding cultivator of his generation.

In all of these examples, though the common people have an accurate understanding of systemic violence and the dangers present in their worlds, they are not always able to accurately apply that understanding on an individual or personal level, especially if their morals do not align with the idea that said violence is an inherent wrong. The common people in tgcf are not rioting against the concept of monarchies and nobility or the elitism of the gods, even as they know they suffer from it. The common people in svsss still shy away from demons, even though they’ve likely been harmed more times by a passing cultivator or rich person than they could even claim to have seen a demon. The common people in mdzs still turn to major cultivation clans for help and consider them to be overall moral people even with their publicly immoral behavior. None of these groups move to challenge the systemic violence despite knowing it exists on a personal level, which is what makes it very poignant when a character in these books does. Why did that person choose to speak up and stand out while most others didn’t? And what message is mxtx teaching us by showing us this character?

Knowledge, an understanding of systems of violence, and hierarchical placement does not make morality. Moral alignment paired with matching actions do. And without the latter, the former can be easily manipulated by bad-faith actors to reinforce the very systems that create the ills of society, regardless of what position one is born into on the social hierarchy.

[indelen]

This is my reread of the Lockwood and Co. Books, organized by @blue-boxes-magic-and-tea , I'll make a general summary of several chapters and then post bits and pieces that jumped out at me.

Part IV, Chapter 22

This chapter are all action and it’s where the trio really come together and work well as a team which, after so many hiccups and spats and disagreements is really nice to see. The one thing you broadly notice throughout this book but especially in these chapters is that for all his flaws Lockwood is the first to enter any danger. He’s the first to go down the secret passage, the first to go through the crack in the wall, first to enter any danger basically. This is not presented as something he does to the point of recklessness … yet. At the same time the first hints of conflict between Lucy and Lockwood are introduced. It’s here that Lucy first vocalizes her frustration with how closed off Lockwood is and how uncommunicative about his plans. George is more used to Lockwood's antics but as the chapter goes on even he has had it. And the way it's written sets things up for the next book, but also shows that Lockwood is not doing it consciously or out of distrust. His intense resolve, the ability to shut down any emotional response and put on a calm facade, are all so automatic it’s obviously second nature to him. Even after they all escape the terrifying room of blood his calm doesn't crack. When they’re held at gunpoint it doesn't crack. And we’re left wondering how he got this way and what will it take to break through that facade.

Odds and Ends:

Dozens of deaths in one room. Dozens. This is a murder room. People got locked in here before. Lots of people. One guy dies in a room is sad. Two is bad luck. Anything over three is a pattern. When you get to the double digits someone has figured out how to make use of some very angry ghosts to get rid of some very disliked guests. People got Cask of Amontillado-ed here. It’s why the apparitions manifest as they do, a sea of blood that floods every inch of the place. The Red Room is a condensed version of The Problem itself - it’s a supernatural phenomenon greedy assholes use to kill and manipulate the situation in their favor. To murder people, to control people and look innocent doing it.

Lucy is obviously a once in a generation Listener, that much is certain because we have a very specific measurement by which we can go by - she can talk to Type 3s - but Lockwood’s Talent is also extraordinarily powerful. Like Lucy's, it’s powerful enough to be debilitating. It's powerful enough to pick up on deaths of small, non-self-aware beings (RIP Little Vole of Sheen Rd.). Lockwood’s Sight also bleeds into Smell (like Lucy’s Listening bleeds into Touch). I'd argue, Lockwood is on par with Lucy in terms of Talent. But his is all factual, while her’s is way more emotional and empathetic. In a way they were always going to be two of a pair.

Lockwood blames himself here, as he is often want to do, but it was a fairly natural and logical to assume they would be alone in this part of the house. He had no way of knowing adults have a way to protect themselves from the supernatural because they made sure he and other kids didn’t know this.

I love how Lucy and George’s friendship develops in this book into a “each one gives as good as they get” dynamic. If there’s a snipe volleyed in one direction another gets sent right back in equal measure.

I don’t have a comment here I just think this is a hilarious passage and it doesn't get it’s laurels enough. I love George but he must be a lot to live with day to day.

No listen, the trust and faith Lockwood has in Lucy is so unwavering. From the beginning and despite everything. Stroud said that Lockwood on some level knew he was in love with Lucy from the moment he saves her at the well and I like that over “love at first sight” because it means that he had, from the first and no matter what feelings developed later, respected Lucy personally and professionally in a way no one else ever did.

The fact that Lucy had to save herself by jumping out of a window during the Mill case, and now, it’s six months later and she’s preparing, fully preparing to jump again and she knows it’s probably to her death. And she suppresses all of this, she barely talks about it to the reader or to anyone else in universe, because dwelling on it, going over it, especially at times like these would render her catatonic.

Ok so I think Lockwood is projecting here. This foreshadows The Room in Portland Row a bit, or more specifically explains how Lockwood feels about it and why he has such difficulty talking to people about it. Jessica’s Room is a place of intense supernatural aura tied to a traumatic event. And the traumatic event for him was so all consuming that I think he stopped seeing The Room as part of the house at all. It’s a place suspended in time, removed from the rest of the building by iron bars and wards and memory and grief. Life moved on around it, an agency was formed, new people moved in, time passed everywhere but in there. And Lockwood haunts the space. He’s the only one who can enter it. He is it’s only Visitor. Jessica never returned to the place where she died. It’s Lockwood that haunts it.

See this is the nice thing about George, you call him out on something and he’ll own to it. My emotionally aware king!

No mention of Lockwood's smiles this time around so the counter is still at 9. I'm going to end on this all round favorite though:

[lambourngb]

six sentence sunday

so even though I have 203 wips, I signed up for kinktober on FighterTown. Only a 100 words, sure I can write something short... but then I was given prostitution as my prompt. Listen, I know all the fucked up parts of sex work, the power dynamic is fucked, even in places where it's legal... that said, but I'm also a gremlin fic reader, so I just had to write a Pretty Woman AU for IceMav.

The window slowly went down, the driver was leaning across the front interior to pump the handle. Incredible. The car was probably one of the most expensive to ever be produced but it apparently lacked power windows. “Hey-”

Ice pasted a smile on his face, and leaned down at the stranger’s call, letting his shirt billow open for the driver to see his whole chest down to the dark furrow of hair at his belt buckle. “Hello,” he purred back, peering into the low set sport scar. He had expected the driver to be someone recognizably famous or someone old with money, but neither turned out to be true. 

He was around the same age, or slightly younger to Ice’s eye, with dark messy hair and sparkling green eyes. The smile he shot at Ice was crooked, and there was the faintest bump that spoke of an old healed nose fracture. Those mild imperfections  only highlighted the perfect symmetry of his cheekbones and the white-flash of his grin. In one word, though, he was gorgeous.

When Ice had first started in this type of work, he had to learn to separate his desire for men from the act, because beggars could not be choosers when it came to johns, literally. It was a job, and most people did not enjoy their jobs, broadly speaking. Of course, he had to push down the recent memory of being in the Navy, because god dammit he had loved what he did back then, even if he didn’t love the rules that had governed his behavior. Still. That life was over, and now he was used to turning a blind eye to soft white middle-aged bellies, and hairy backs, ignoring the bad breath and then imperfect skin. It was a job, he reminded himself, and not every job was pleasant.

This guy on the other hand- he was the furthest thing from what Ice had conditioned himself to accept. With one look, an old, neglected part of Ice perked up, something he belatedly recognized as genuine attraction. The stranger was dangerous.

“I was hoping you could help me-”

Ice lifted one eyebrow at the stranger, “I’m at your….service.” For once it didn’t feel like a line.

“So I’m lost,” the stranger explained with a boyish grin, gesturing around the dim neighborhood. Ice lifted his eyebrow a little higher at him because that had been a line offered a time or two from a nervous first-timer. “I’m trying to find the La Abber-barrage? Or maybe it’s aubergine? That’s a color, right?”

He had to wince at the poor pronunciation, the stranger clearly did not know French any more than he knew how to drive a manual shift supercar. “Do you mean the L’Auberge? The hotel?”

“Shit, that’s it! How do you say it again?”

“L’Auberge,” He repeated slowly, the years of studying French and his air carrier duty near the old colonial holdings in the South Pacific came back with ease. “It’s not a color, it means hotel or inn in French. You’re very lost then,” The handsome man waited for an explanation, looking adorably befuddled by the information, until Ice continued, “You’re in San Diego now. You’re trying to find the L’Auberge Del Mar, which is in… Del Mar.”

[mswyrr]

This time around, they have initiated vast planning operations that have produced detailed policy plans, expertise, and an armada of ideological loyalists ready to go to work. Project 2025 is the best known among them, and in many ways the most important one, as it managed to unite much of the rightwing machinery in an effort to guarantee a more efficient, more ruthless regime. The result is a multi-level plan to execute what amounts to a comprehensive authoritarian takeover of American government. Broadly speaking, Project 2025 envisions a vast expansion of presidential power over the executive branch. It seeks to dismantle certain parts of government while simultaneously mobilizing and weaponizing others. And finally, Project 2025 is a promise to purge from government anyone who is not all in on the Trumpist project and replace them with loyalists and ideological conformists. Thereby, the Right seeks to transform American government into a machine that serves only two purposes: first, exacting revenge on what they call the “woke”, leftist, globalist enemy – and secondly, imposing a minoritarian reactionary vision of white Christian patriarchal order on society. No serious observer believes they will be able to implement everything they have planned exactly as they have planned it. But there is no question that the Trumpist Right is far better prepared than it was in 2017. Last time, the Trumpists didn’t even know how to write a presidential executive order; this time, they have already drafted dozens, probably hundreds. Where last time they had so much catching-up to do and were constantly shooting themselves in the foot, they will have a proper base from which to start come January. If you have been paying attention to who Trump is nominating to be part of his team, you might find it difficult to accept the idea of a more effective regime. Fox News extremist Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense; Matt Gaetz, one of the most buffoonish MAGA trolls in Congress, as Attorney General… doesn’t this sound more like “malevolence tempered by incompetence” on steroids? Surely, such personnel decisions must derail the Trumpist project?

I struggle to see much reason for optimism. While these people are manifestly unqualified, they are also extremely loyal to Trump. The most willing executioners of MAGA extremism. Don’t expect any kind of pushback from them. The competence won’t come from Hegseth or Gaetz, fair enough; but they may only have to serve as figureheads, as a cadre of more capable extremists around them and around Trump goes to work. With such personalities in the mix, there will undoubtedly be unforced errors. There will be chaos. But chaos is not the same as moderation. Chaos can also accelerate the harm. And in authoritarian movements, frustration and chaos are much more likely to lead to further radicalization. If the recent trajectory of the Right is any indication, that’s what we should be expecting. Every potential off-ramp, the Right has ignored; at every crossroads, they opted for ideological purity. The Trumpist worldview constantly privileges the more radical over the more “moderate” forces. Every crisis situation only heightens the sense of being under siege that’s animating so much of what is happening on the Right, legitimizing and amplifying calls to hit harder, more aggressively. There’s always permission to escalate, hardly ever to pull back.

The circumstances favor the Trumpists Crucially, a new Trump regime would also operate under conditions that are vastly more favorable to its political cause. Almost all the factors that inhibited the extreme Right during the first Trump presidency are no longer present; all the guardrails that kept Trump and the more extreme rightwing factions in check after 2017 have been vastly weakened or destroyed entirely. First of all, during Trump I, the courts played a key role in opposing the radical Right. But several federal courts are now in the hands of Trumpist judges. Jay Willis and Madiba Dennie over at Balls and Strikes expect that by the end of his term, Trump will have picked about half of the federal judges across the country. A judiciary remade in his image. And most importantly, Trump can now count on a hard-right 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court. Let’s remember this was not the case until Amy Coney Barrett’s ascension in late October 2020, towards the very end of the Trump presidency. The 6-3 Court is a game changer. Not that we needed more evidence, but the Court’s almost unprecedentedly extreme ruling to declare Trump functionally immune from criminal prosecution should have erased any lingering hope that the Roberts Court “would not go THAT far.” And we have never even seen this Court operate with Trump in the White House, with a Republican trifecta.

tl;dr

[m--rtyr]

I am gonna go into the British gang vs. American gang stuff cause I do have actual first-hand knowledge on this. Before I start, I am going to preface this by saying they are both very serious issues that shouldn't be made light of.

I think Americans' problem with how we (I am including myself) view your gang culture is just due to the varying extremes that each has. It's the drowning in a pool versus drowning in the ocean debate. Both are different extremes but show an obvious problem of a lack of resources and proper care and preventative measures to ensure it doesn't happen (like life guards), but ultimately in both situations someone is dead.

Essentially, to a lot of Americans, your gang violence is so not severe. For a good portion of my life, I went to a school that required uniforms. I lived in such a poor area that many students couldn't even afford lunch, but we still had to wear uniforms. Not as a sign of class, but so we couldn't associate ourselves with gangs as school. At one point, I had my hair dyed bright blue cause it wasn't against the dress code but the faculty through a full-on fit and panic because of it. I had to dye it a completely neutral color.

This was in elementary school. I was no older than 11, but by that time, kids were already bringing knives to school and finding ways to associate with their older siblings' affiliations. I am not saying this to be rude or diminutive, but the children were doing exactly the same as your British gangs. As someone who has family from Chicago who has had run-ins with both British and Chicago gangs due to military service, it is somewhat sadly child's play. (Which screams a such larger problem and issue on America's part, cause seriously, I have had guns flashed at me by kids no older than 13)

Also, it just takes into account what each culture views as severe, and it is unfortunate that Americans have such a high tolerance. This entire thing is not to say that the jokes or references are right, though.

[Talking with my mother about this cause this stuff is her cup of tea and she wanted to provide mom lore: *Not paraphrased at all* Oh, mention to them that it is much easier to defend from a knife than a gun and getting shot is a lot more painful than stabbed. Also a lot more difficult to stitch yourself. I WOULD ASSUME! 👀👀 (she has had an interesting life)]

Obviously, I don’t think anyone ever denies that guns are ultimately the end-all-be-all of accessible weaponry. They’re terrifying.

But in the same way that Brits are detached from gun violence, and as such make jokes because ‘oh well it’s stupid it happens’, but they absolutely shouldn’t… Americans also shouldn’t make jokes about knife violence either just because they have a ‘tolerance’. People die.

Like sure, whatever, knife crime isn’t as broadly dangerous or whatever. But people still fucking die. People can stop being insensitive pricks about it, too, because our government is putting in a huge effort to stop it as well.

Why are people making fun of something which is actually a good thing? Yeah people are gonna be scared of knives when it’s the scariest thing that can happen to you. We don’t have guns (mostly), so yeahhh… our gang violence isn’t going to include guns on a big scale.

Like the thing they find funny about Uk gangs is what British people find funny about US school shootings: people (especially kids) die to guns, our government did something about it and yours didn’t. You can’t make jokes about one without enabling jokes about the other.

At the end of the day, it still pisses me off. Even if I understand why it’s seen as funny by Americans, it’s infuriating to know people who have been stabbed, or threatened with knives, and have people dismiss that because ‘we have it worse 🥺’

Like what happens when a gang of guys with knives corners a girl on a night out? Are they making fun of it then? What about when it’s black and brown people getting stabbed in hate attacks? Or kids at a dance class? It was only this year that 3 little girls died to a singular stabbing. And that’s funny?

I don’t care if it’s ’child’s play’ it’s fucking disgusting that anyone finds it amusing.

If school shootings aren’t okay to joke about, why is it okay to joke about little kids getting stabbed and killed? dying even after they get medical attention?

Two things can coexist; guns are bad and so are knives. Neither are funny. Anyone who thinks either is needs to get a fucking grip

[some-triangles]

It's Portland's annual new year blizzard/ice storm, which we are unprepared for every year, because this never used to happen. It barely snowed here when I was a kid! I was a kid 30 years ago, mind you, and this has been happening pretty consistently for the last 20, but institutions are slow to change. We have been spending our money on other things.

So here I am, sitting in my own living room (my own in the sense that I rent it), in my long johns and thermals and two pairs of socks, heat on, still gradually losing feeling in my toes. This seems like a good day to write the politics post.

I belong to the category of person who expresses political and moral beliefs mostly through jokes, and only then when my personal frustration has reached a point where I can no longer make myself be quiet. The jokes are there to make the pain less raw, but lately the jokes themselves are getting dark enough that it's upsetting people. So let's proceed without the jokes.

Where to begin? In the 90s, I guess. I was brought up liberal but cynical, which is already kind of a tense balance, and I was by inclination a person who wanted things to make sense and follow understandable rules. (The answer is as always neurodivergence.) I figured out that religion wasn't real by looking at a map and realizing that the world was too big for any one group of people to be right about things. Despite this, I still thought American democracy was the correct answer, the least bad option, and that the world as a whole was heading towards where I was, a kind of tolerant, reasonable middle class existence.

In my defense, this was a belief broadly shared by my parents' generation, and I hadn't been taught a lot of the stuff that argued against it. Francis Fukuyama got up in front of people and declared the world a solved problem and nobody important even laughed at him. I bought into this to the extent that I suffered from a kind of wistful sadness that all the important battles had already been fought. In short, I was a child, and not a particularly bright one, despite what people told me. I did, however, form a belief that stays with me to this day:

I AM NOT SPECIAL. I, personally, do not deserve any more or any less than any human being. And since I think I should be safe and well fed, every other human being should also be safe and well fed. The fact that I am better off than some others is an accident which should be rectified.

This came about because I was aware that a lot of the people in the world were poor and miserable and I wasn't, and I had to decide whether luck or virtue was responsible for my safety. I went with luck. I didn't realize it at the time, but this choice put me at odds with a lot of the logic underlying the society I live in - because if I'm not special, you better believe nobody else is either, and that means no elect, no chosen, none blessed by god, none elevated by blood. I was 10, I hadn't even had a chance to fuck up my life yet, and yet there were all these other 10-year-olds worse off than me. Did they deserve that? And what about those kids who had it better?

And so, decades later, we end up with the joke about how it's a good deal to trade your life away to take out a rich person. It's the same impulse, just with a lot of broken promises and bitterness stacked on top. I work full time at a job that's officially essential (no stoppage during the pandemic), strenuous, and physically dangerous - I get paid the 1993 equivalent of a little less than $30k a year - I will never be able to afford a home in the city I grew up in. This job has to be done. I am not special, I do not "deserve" a better job. I, as a working person, watch people who do jobs that do not need to be done or who don't work at all get paid more because they are members of an invisible elect. I conclude that they must believe they are worth more than me, that they are better than me, because how else could they justify their lives? And I think if I subscribed to that worldview, it would be a net win for me to blow both of us up. Thus, the joke.

I also watch the rest of the world. My belief in liberal democracy is a pretty aerated Jenga tower by this point. Learning about America's imperial history took out a bunch of pieces, but I could still believe all that was behind us. Then we went back to war, which I could initially write off as a traumatic reaction, but as years turned into decades it became obvious that peace had been the exception, and that even that peace hadn't been that peaceful, had it? At that point it was still possible to believe that at least all of our bombing and killing had been in the interest of some kind of moral good, if you really tried. I think Gaza killed the very last part of me that could believe that. There is no atrocity we will not enable to pursue our own ends. Does it matter that much what kind of system we use to choose our leaders if this is what our leaders do?

The last thing keeping my tower standing is the need to protect the outgroups I and my friends belong to, which doesn't really rise to the level of a moral imperative. It's a moment by moment strategic thing, where you support institutions if they protect you and oppose them if they attack you, like any interest group. Right now HR culture and capitalism are trending pro-trans, so we support Disney against Florida. We will do voter suppression if the alternative is Trump. It doesn't go well with rule number one up there, but neither does the fact that I care about my friends more than I care about people I don't know.

At the end of the day it's all a joke. Moral imperatives give way to political reality one hundred percent of the time. It doesn't matter what I call myself. I hate tech culture, so why not be a Luddite? I'll smash steam looms in my mind while continuing to pay for my groceries. Just let me have my jokes. Trashfuture did a great riff about Butlerian Jihad the other day where they imagined a butler named Ian Jihad. "I've oriented sir's slippers towards Mecca, sir." That's the kind of political commentary I want, and the kind I will refrain from posting here unless my toes are really, really cold.

[alicent-vi-britannia]

The association between chess pieces and the main characters of Code Geass (according to me)

Chess is one of the most important elements of Code Geass since the creators used this game to explain to their audience what the philosophy and, by extension, the main convictions were and where the extraordinary strategic skill of its young protagonist comes from. .

Today I would like to explain which chess pieces would best fit the four main characters of Code Geass based on the symbology and the tactical value of the pieces.

If you don't mind, I'm going to use the separators from my fanfic since I established the association there (and, besides, they turned out nice to me), so it's perfectly illustrated.

I decided to give chess a high value for my Code Geass fanfic not only because it occupies a special place in the anime, but because it was so meaningful to Lelouch and functioned as an allegorical representation of my Lelouch's revenge and therefore, the plot of my story, because, broadly speaking, it is a mental battle between Lelouch and Schneizel, in which both are required patience, cunning, planning, analysis, concentration, strategy and deploy pieces (allies) throughout the field.

Said that. Let's go with the most obvious relationships.

Why is Lelouch the king?

Okay. If we ignore for a moment that Lelouch perceives himself as the king, what does he define within the story as such?

Symbolically, the king represents the player in the game (in this case, it is Lelouch since he is the one who is going to duel with the other king, Britannia). And therefore he is the commander on the battlefield leading his troops to victory. That is the position that Lelouch occupies in the organization of the Black Knights literally. You don't need me to expand on that idea. I think.

It’s the most vulnerable piece and, at the same time, it is the most crucial since when it is captured the game ends. Think of the first Black Rebellion. The moment Lelouch abandoned his army, the Black Knights order lost to Britannia and until Lelouch resumed his post, the order was inactive, even though there were meritorious assets, none could be the king/commander (in chess, this could be translated that pawns can be promoted to queens, bishops, knights and rooks, but never kings).

The king isn't exactly an agile fighter (and Lelouch isn't the most skilled Knightmare pilot, let alone an expert combatant). On the contrary, the king is slow, cautious, calculating and thoughtful (note that the king moves only one square in any direction). Just like Lelouch, the king needs to anticipate its opponent to think and make decisions. The king stays behind because its power lies in devising strategies and leading its subordinates. Hence, the other pieces combine all their efforts to protect it (for a reason, the king is located in the heart of the army).

We pass Suzaku. Why do I associate him with the Knight piece?

It’s obvious. The Knight not only alludes to "a piece in the shape of a horse's head", but also "a man given a rank of honor by a British king or queen because of his special achievements, and who has the right to be called “Sir’”. Therefore, the Knight represents cavalry. You already know. Those soldiers armed with spears or swords that were mounted on horses. In this case, Suzaku is riding a Knightmare, but he earned his knighthood anyway (Knight of Princess Euphemia, Knight of Seven, Knight of Zero).

The Knight moves in a radically different way than the others, being the only one capable of jumping to other pieces and executing double attacks and checkmating the king, even if it is surrounded by his own pieces. With which we can conclude that it is a dangerous and unpredictable piece, despite the fact that it isn’t more powerful than a rook and queen and is equal in strength to the bishop. You know, I like to visualize Suzaku as a Pawn who was promoted to Knight for loyalty, determination, talent and skill since he started out in the lower ranks of the Britannian army due to "his race" and ended up as knight. That is, he rose in rank, but is still susceptible to receiving orders from superiors. And, well, Suzaku in the first season was the element of surprise in the battle that changed the flow of it and on more than one occasion checked Lelouch.

Something that I also think is worth mentioning is that the Knight can alternate between different colored squares and that makes me think that Suzaku gravitates between the two existing social groups and can’t belong to either: he is very britannian for Elevens and is too japanese for britannian.

We continue with C.C.

Many people I've interacted with don't think C.C. should be a piece as she is essentially a bystander and she didn't play much of a role in the military.

I respect and understand their point of view. However, I don't think it's wrong to view her as a piece since, regardless of her reasons, she joined the Black Knights and got involved in the rebellion.

So why a Rook? To begin with, what does it symbolize? It is the castle/fortress of the king (it is also considered to represent the battle tanks that invade the castles of the adversaries). With which the Rook has the function of protecting the King from the enemy behind its walls and C.C. has assigned herself the task of preserving Lelouch's survival (which is equivalent to defending him from external threats and those that Lelouch seeks out on her own). Also, C.C. is Lelouch's confidante, so she protects his secrets (of course, she was a lousy confidante: she gave information about Lelouch to Kallen, Urabe and Marianne, who in turn passed it on to Charles; but today we aren’t going to blame her nothing to C.C.).

The Rook has great tactical and strategic power (it is more powerful than a bishop, a pawn and a knight, although not more than the queen). Hence, it’s reserved for the final phase since its position can be decisive in the game (in addition to the fact that it can’t move if its passage is blocked, it is not like the Knight that can hit jumps). In a way, C.C. was a wild card for Lelouch. If I remember correctly, she almost always intervened at the end of battles to give Lelouch time to run away (like the Saitama ghetto skirmish, the Narita battle, the final battle) and that brings me to the next point.

The rook and the king can make a special move called “castling”, in which the king, which moves two squares to the side, and the rook, which jumps over the king and stands next to it, and Lelouch and C.C. often act in tandem (the two operated the same Knightmare).

Now, why does Kallen get the queen piece?

The queen is the most powerful piece available to the player because it has greater freedom of movement on the board by virtue of the fact that it can move in any direction, which allows it to defend the king and simultaneously attack the enemy. This means that the queen, due to its versatile nature, has an active role and is even more effective than the rook for both offensive and defensive plays (although it is usually used for attacks).

Kallen is Lelouch's most valuable asset as she is the most talented and skilled Knightmare pilot he has in his army. Since the Guren has close range weapons, Kallen's fighting style is highly offensive and opportunistic. Hence she is the ace of the Black Knights. Precisely her skill together with her unconditional loyalty made her the captain of Zero's Squad, which is the squad in charge of protecting him (and, by the way, Kallen is the one who has saved Lelouch the most) .

Something interesting that I found while I was researching chess pieces is that, for the author of the book The Man Who Calculated, Malba Tahan, the chess queen symbolized the people and patriotism (because the queen was able to raise the morale of the people and, by extension, the army). And, even though Lelouch's rebellion is fundamentally a war against Britannia, in principle, his rebellion is the fight for independence of Japan (since it is the first step towards the destruction of Britannia). And can you think of anyone more patriotic than Kallen? She is (the spirit of) Japan (Kallen's first line was literally her reaffirmation of identity: "we're not Elevens, we're Japanese!"). As long as Kallen has faith in Lelouch/Zero, the Japanese people do too (until we get to the Zero Requiem).

Outside of chess, alchemical symbology established that the King and Queen embody man and woman and therefore marriage and that makes me think of the beautiful romantic relationship that Lelouch and Kallen have in the anime.

Also, Lelouch made Kallen the queen of his troop by giving her the nickname "Q-1". What more do you want, Larry?

(By the way, something I did and really liked in my story is that I introduced my Kallen as a pawn initially or, well, that's how my Lelouch envisioned her, but as the story progresses, she learns from her two mentors and her narrative arc unfolds, Kallen is crowned queen).

Well then, that would be it. If these arguments don't convince you, nothing will, so I hope I did! 

I had fun writing this and I hope you do too :3 We're in touch!

[infinitemonkeytheory]

It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous place for abortion providers than Texas. Doctors who perform abortions face up to life in prison, with civil penalties of at least $100,000. That’s to say nothing of the physical risks: violence against providers and clinics has skyrocketed since Roe was overturned, with a 2022 study showing major increases in stalking, death threats, and invasions.

So you can imagine how OBGYNs felt when they got an email last month from the American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology (ABOG) telling them they’d have to take their certifying exams in Texas this year.

[…]

ABOG, headquartered in Dallas, is telling candidates that they “should not be at legal risk” because Texas’ criminal and civil penalties only apply to abortions performed in the state. But the group hasn’t addressed the danger for doctors in pro-choice states who ship abortion medication to Texas patients via telehealth—potentially a tremendous criminal risk.

It was also just last week that a group of Republican attorneys general, including Texas AG Ken Paxton, pushed the Biden administration to allow them access to medical records of those who get out-of-state abortions. So if there’s a question of how broadly Texas law enforcement plans to interpret their ban, it seems fair that doctors would want to err on the side of caution.

Especially considering that the exam itself necessitates that some doctors talk about their work in abortion care: In order to be certified, OBGYNs must prepare a list of cases that they’ve worked on and are ready to discuss with a panel of examiners.

For OBGYNs of reproductive age, the threat of traveling to Texas goes beyond legal concerns. Those who are pregnant or considering becoming pregnant aren’t keen on being in a state that would rather let them die than provide them an abortion.

And while ABOG says they have a partnership with a nearby hospital offering “high standards of obstetrical care in medical emergencies,” pregnant OBGYNs know better than anyone what the standard of care is—and that they’ll be unable to get it in Texas. After all, the state is being sued right now by 15 women whose lives and health were endangered by the ban.

There’s also something uniquely terrifying about the idea of hundreds of OBGYNs, many of whom perform abortions, all descending on one publicly-listed building at the same time in a state filled with anti-abortion sentiment, few gun regulations, and a recent spate of mass shootings. (ABOG’s emailed promise that their staff is trained in “active shooter response” isn’t all that reassuring.)

Given the legal, physical, and emotional threats to doctors—testing-taking is anxiety-inducing enough in a state where you’re not afraid of being arrested or killed—there’s no real justification for ABOG’s decision.

It’s plainly unethical to ask doctors to put their freedom and lives at risk over an exam that could be given remotely or in another state.

[…]

Given that the exams have been successfully conducted remotely, and that ABOG is explicit in their support for reproductive rights—even threatening to revoke the board certification of doctors who spread misinformation about the procedure—some OBGYNs believe the organization’s insistence on holding the exams in Texas must be a financial one.

[dateamonster]

actually since its on my mind now im gonna give u another big loredump. this is how angelique gets kicked out of angel school.

to start, a little background info. while celestial and angel are terms used interchangeably, celestial refers more to what angels are as a like species and angel is more like. a career? except not really its more like a career if that career were the only career. its like if humankind was split into like kids and accountants, and if you grew to adulthood and didnt become an accountant youre like not even rly recognized as a person. youre some other weird Thing the other normal accountants dont even have a word for. does that make sense? well moving on.

so the main purpose of young celestials' schooling is to guide them into full-fledged angelhood and help them earn their wings. wings show up usually in like late adolescence to young adulthood upon the completion of some kind of significant life event or milestone. think mlp cutie marks except theyre all functionally the same one. you may be sensing a theme.

new babby angels for the most part kinda just pop into existence, but angels can also be born the ya know traditional way, and angels can procreate with non-angels. the result of an angel and mortal union is a naphal or nephel (plural: nephilim). nephilim are actually a good deal more powerful than your standard angel, possibly due to the fact that theyre not limited by the compulsion towards Goodness that angels are generally beholden to. unlike full celestials who only gain access to the full range of their angelic abilities upon maturation, nephilim are able to access their powers from adolescence onward, but also have a much harder time controlling them, and are broadly stigmatized as dangerous, uncivilized, and impure as a result.

despite this, nephilim are welcome (at least in the most surface level way) and in fact strongly encouraged to integrate into angelic society in the event that their celestial heritage makes them unable to blend in with human society. nephel kids who graduate from an angel institution (and earn their wings, something which a lot of kids experience upon graduation anyway) are even granted honorary full angel status and any trace of their former human heritage is completely erased ^_^ yayy

this is a lot of very rambly worldbuilding but i feel like the context is important.

so back in angel school angelique was a pretty popular kid. top of her class, an exemplary angel in the making, you know the drill. one day by chance she catches a classmate stealing the answers for an upcoming test. the classmate in question is a nephel kid named quinn who was raised human for the first thirteen years of their life before their powers started coming in and they were forced to transfer. as you might have guessed, its not been an easy transition for quinn, and distributing these answers to a few less than studious young celestials is meant to serve as payment for their protection from the pretty much constant bullying.

at first ange doesnt care why theyre doing it, its wrong! but.. quinn points out that she doesnt know what its like. shes the star student, the headmistress' daughter for goodness sakes. theyve been dealt a very different hand.

before angelique can think too much on that though, a teacher walks in and the two of them get busted fighting over the answers. in the heat of the moment angelique takes the fall, protecting quinn. because after all theyre right, the punishment she stands to receive is probably going to be much lighter than what quinn stands to face, right? theres no way the headmistress would punish her own daughter too severely, especially once she explains that she was only trying to do what was right, as always!

angelique doesnt get to explain. angelique gets expelled.

[cazort]

I wish people would be a bit more sparing about using the word "transphobia" and would instead also use other terms like "anti-trans", when they are more descriptive or accurate.

transphobia = fear of trans people and/or other negative emotions or attitudes (anger, hate, etc.) rooted in fear.

anti-trans = more broadly, any anti-trans sentiment, policy, or behavior, whether or not it is rooted in fear.

cisnormative = a set of assumptions that everyone is cis

transphobia is often closely-tied to hate against trans people, and much of the anti-trans sentiment in society originates as transphobia. however, transphobia is not the only source of anti-trans sentiment or policy.

cisnormativity is related to transphobia but it isn't the same thing. the combination of cisnormativity with norms that make it bad to be different, leads to transphobia. but one can be cisnormative without being transphobic. a person's belief system or culture that was cisnormative but not transphobic, would lead to people being surprised and possibly confused by trans people, but without being afraid of them, and they might embrace them openly or be curious (in a respectful way) about them. at the same time, cisnormativity can be deliberately supported by people consciously advancing anti-trans stances, because it tends to make transphobia persist and strengthen.

this may sound weird coming from a trans person, but i really think true transphobia is "more innocent" than a lot of what is going on. a lot of people are initially afraid of what they don't understand, but get over this quickly. what we are seeing with the surge in anti-trans sentiment in our society is far worse than mere transphobia. it is a calculated move to divide and manipulate.

far-right politicians often use us trans people as a "wedge" or a scapegoat. they are not necessarily transphobic, and in a sense, saying they are "transphobic" projects a certain innocence on them that may not be true in most cases. far-right politicians often use transphobia as a way of drawing in votes from demographics who would not normally vote for them. for example, far-right politicians who support regressive tax policy and anti-union stances have historically been unpopular with low-income, working-class voters.

but in recent years, these politicians have found a new way to draw in votes from these voters: playing off prejudices, including racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and transphobia.

these politicians have found that it is effective to stir up transphobia (and other forms of bigotry) in society, and then appeal to it as a way of earning votes. this distracts the voters from their economic platform, which if people thought about it rationally, most voters would reject.

calling these politicians, people like Donald Trump "transphobic", is a misnomer. these politicians aren't actually transphobic or even opposed to gender-deviance more broadly, and this fact is betrayed by the fact that, in the recent past, a lot of them engaged respectfully with trans people, and did things like enthusiastically going to drag shows and being openly friends with trans people, drag performers, and other people they now publicly demonize. not just Trump, you can find examples of this with dozens of prominent GOP politicians who are now aggressively pushing anti-trans policies and spewing anti-trans rhetoric.

their transphobia is insincere, it's a performance. but they play to genuine transphobia in the populace. they are willing to throw us under the bus, but they are not doing it out of genuine fear, they are using us in their quest for increased power and influence.

and their anti-trans platform is much more dangerous than mere transphobia. it is a calculated move, a scapegoating much like how Hitler scapegoated the Jews along with all sorts of other groups including Roma, LGBTQ people, immigrants, disabled people, and anyone else who didn't fit into the mainstream norm, and used this to draw up support for an authoritarian platform that people would otherwise not support.

by using more accurate, truthful language, we can more accurately describe what is really going on.

if you mean transphobic (i.e. rooted in fear of trans people) say that. if you mean anti-trans (any stance or policy harmful or oppressive towards trans people) then say that. if you mean cisnormative (assuming everyone is cis) then say that. you may also find other useful worms.

[circular-bircular]

hey uhh sorry if it's not appropriate I just want to give my two cents on syscourse. and I'm too scared to do it on my own blog + you seem really cool

also right and wrong used very very broadly it's a ramble and I'm no judge on morality by any means

so my (very lukewarm actually) take is that people all across syscourse are scared to be wrong, as if it's a bad thing to be "wrong" or change one's mind. but! I can understand where they come from, especially in the case of anti endos.

anti endos are more often than not severely traumatised, and also speaking from experience, being "wrong" is dangerous, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, or even the right thing but that an abuser doesn't like so it's still the wrong thing, is dangerous.

you get traumatised for it, abused, or lose a sense of safety, in support networks or emotional safety or physical safety. it's really scary to be wrong, and it's also scary to be right, you get abused either way. but often times if you're right in your own way you can maintain some sort of community with people who are also like you, while if you're wrong you lose it.

and I've been thinking for a while that people who are severely traumatised get more often into anti endos circles because they want to keep their sense of security and the last speckle of identity, and that they're afraid they will lose their circles and support networks that come with those if they dare step out of line, should they change their minds later on.

the same happens in a lot of pro endo circles, especially in the spaces where the are traumatised pro endos, it's just that I've seen it more as a reoccurrence in anti endo spaces, because they're usually made of people who have been severely abused. I also think that a lot of endos or pro endos who got big on the Internet are really looking for attention (not a bad thing by itself! just very poor execution) or at worst trolling, and don't want to change their mind because their thoughts are not what they're actually putting out on the Internet.

not sure where I want to go with this exactly? I just wish people were kinder both with themselves and each other 🧍🏼

Honestly, I can agree with this. I'm gonna add some extraneous thoughts that I had while reading, if you don't mind.

Most anti-endos on tumblr are DID systems, meaning they're traumatized.

Many pro-endos I see in syscourse here are also traumatized.

When I first joined system spaces, I was told a lot of things were wrong that were actually right. This is what led to me feeling unsafe in pro-endo spaces originally, and why I originally left those spaces. (Note: these were things like "You MUST have introjects, you have autism" being said to me).

I know I absolutely was terrified of being wrong when I was first in the pro-endo community, but the problem persists in anti-endo spaces, and even when unlabeled, it's there. That fear is everywhere, not determined solely by a syscourse "group."

That fear has gone away more now that I've (sadly) gotten used to harassment. When I post, I just automatically assume that I am going to be harassed for anything I say, or at bare minimum, get into a screaming match. Getting told repeatedly by pro-endo systems that the harassment I was facing was my fault because I was medicalizing my own disorder and talking about it online really fucked me up, to the point that baby's first anon hate doesn't have as much of an effect anymore (so... thanks? I guess?)

Don't know necessarily if I had a point with all of this. But there you go!

[commajade]

would you have any advice or tips for someone wanting to delve into queer theory? I honestly have no clue how I would go approaching it

i can't necessarily say i'm well versed in queer theory but i can offer some tips for the emotional journey that reading lgbt accounts and opinions can put u through.

1. honestly just read as much as you can and see what people are saying to each other and don't push yourself to form any clear opinions or take anything as truth unless you've fully thought it through. learn the dogwhistles of dangerous groups and avoid them but otherwise just read broadly and think deeply and critically, and form your own opinions slowly and be aware that everyone is kind of wrong and kind of right but to vastly varying degrees. you can start with queer studies primers made in academia and supplement with queer erotic literature/zines/archival work. a comic about gay experience is the same amount queer theory as an academic article is, think slowly about what might shape the authors' points of view of the world based on their positionality (gender, age, class, cultural background). learn the big historical trends like different feminist movements and how they affected queer political life and it'll make interpreting the texts a lot easier.

2. don't go in expecting to find a right answer but there are definitely wrong answers, lgbt existence is a site of conflict. it is a site of struggle and contradiction and co-creation and co-evolution in which words and social formations shift constantly and are highly regionalized. everyone has been arguing with each other over every single part of how we live and talk and interact as long as there have been 2 gay people in the same space together. every site of queerness/gender incorrectness is an individual site of creation and evolution that is also inherently collaborative because we are all doing it at the same time. we are all making a queer life for ourself for the first time, in a way that has never been done before. be aware of the plurality of experience and how every person is a different cross section of time space culture experience that must find their own answers about gender and sexuality. but also there are people that find answers that aid hegemony and serve themselves and the ruling class over the liberation of all people.

3. lgbt topics and issues immediately provoke some of the most intimate and fear/shame steeped places in your intellectual and emotional self. by our existence lgbt people challenge fundamental organizing structures of hegemonic society. morality and punishment, capitalist/colonial family structures and what we think of as a normal life, makes people question and doubt how we identify and categorize human beings, challenges whether the society we live in is structured in a way that actually functions. you will read things about how people live and think and talk and interact and you will have an emotional reaction. feel these deeply and sit with them, investigate the source and see if it is fear and shame from being indoctrinated by a gender oppressive system in which deviant sexuality is inherently dangerous to the social order.

4. remember to read firsthand accounts of lgbt disnefranchised/working class poc because that is where the culture is! struggle with the more cerebral and linguistic aspects of queer theory but sometimes it's just not as important as how poor lgbt people have lived and how we have found joy and love with each other. so much of queer culture as we know it is specifically black trans culture from the world of bars and balls and parties and sex workers, be careful when reading queer theory which is mostly written by middle to upper class white people who wanted their identity to be seen as a legitimate field of study. many works of lgbt academia have that underlying tension of people talking with authority about things they were not historically a part of when there are firsthand accounts u can find. remember that there is an abundance of queer words on the internet, you just have to try a little harder to find and curate it for yourself. try to build a functioning intellectual framework for yourself through which you can slowly learn to discern what is important and true. it's gonna take a while. let it change you!