#The discourse

[fandomsandfeminism]

I think you can tell a lot about how rigorous and committed someone's belief in a human right is by how quickly they are able to name people who they think could or should have that right taken away.

[self-winding]

Along with the "how do we stop young men turning into angry radical right-wing types" discourse there's been a lot of discourse about the need for cishet male allies of the cause to stand up to their racist, sexist, homophobic etc. male friends and tell them to stop being those things, and other people saying "I've tried that and it doesn't really work, they just call me a fag and then stop hanging out with me."

And yeah, given that the left and right are more divided than ever it is kind of strange to assume that a male feminist is going to be hanging out with a bunch of sexist dudebros who will take it to heart when they make a rape joke and he says, "dudes...that was fucked up." That's not how it works.

(Also, yes, I realize that "the right" and "sexist dudebros" are not really the same thing but there's an area of overlap that is specifically being focused on in a lot of this discourse.)

I've been in sort of the Mirror World version of that scenario: being in heavily left-wing spaces, hearing people say fucked up shit about men and being the one who says, "uh that's kinda fucked up why would you say something like that?" and can confirm, yes, this kind of pushback does not work in that context. They just ridicule you and double down on whatever they were saying. Pushing out dissenting voices is a time-honored bonding ritual for these types of groups.

On the other hand, when I am alone with an actual friend, someone I care about who also cares about me, and they say something fucked up and I respond with shocked silence or a quiet "hey now," they usually backpedal pretty quickly.

So I guess if you're trying to stop someone from going down a rabbit hole my advice is not to confront them in a group setting or online where other people can witness the confrontation, especially if you are in a setting where most onlookers are likely to side with them. Talking to them alone, and in a less confrontational way, is what actually gets results.

[broadwaybalogna]

This is so interesting to me because it’s technically canon that Katara was reduced to being “the avatars wife”. Like, A@ng was always the breadwinner while Katara just watched from the sidelines.

Also, Zutarians will more commonly say that Katara being fire lady gives her the same kind of political power as Zuko, or he would give her such. So it would be a relationship where both are important figures and neither are living in the others shadow.

[forthegothicheroine]

Miss Manners is adding denouncing political correctness to her list of conversational prefaces from which no good ever follows. When people announce that they plan to abandon the rules of civilized discourse, they should be taken seriously. The response should be "Well, if you are in favor of being offensive, I'd rather not hear more."

Judith Martin, Minding Miss Manners In an Era of Fake Etiquette

[sokkastyles]

The way some antis talk about zutara as if Katara continued to hate Zuko for the rest of her days is like if I argued that Katara could never be with Aang because he's in an iceberg and pretended that nothing ever happened after Aang was frozen in the iceberg. Like wdym they got marrried, he's an iceberg.

[stardust948]

*Tired sigh*

[toweringclam]

These takes are so exhausting.

Because nudity = fanservice = hates women.

Nevervmind that Okarun and Jiji are naked just as often and often more naked (girls at least keep their underwear.

Never mind all the awesome female characters, including the fucking Granny Special Forces unit.

Never mind all the flashbacks that highlight gender-based injustice and oppression.

Never mind that the only actual source of real overt fanservice is Granny Seiko.

Nah, none of that matters. The mangaka who said he set out to create a genuine girls' shonen and only added Okarun to appease Shonen Jump editors* must be a virulent misogynist. Because underwear.

[pepperf]

Listen, with all due respect, I don't give a fuck about what Five would or wouldn't do. It takes two to tango, and I don't believe that Lila would change so fundamentally from a chaos gremlin who loved Diego to distraction, into some lobotomised cottagecore manic pixie dream sex toy. This was all set up so that Five could get laid, lbr. They could have given him a mannequin and a Fleshlight for the same effect.

And if, as Steve Blackman claims, she and Five are so right for each other bc they have such similar experiences, blah blah blah, why did he need to shoehorn them into a situation where they're stranded alone for 7 years to even reach the point of having sex? He couldn't even convince himself that it was plausible without cooking up the most extreme nonsense - and even then, like 90% of the fandom has called bullshit.

As if the degree of similarity of experience is such a key factor in a romance, anyhow. All the Umbrellas had a background more similar to Lila's than to Joe or Jane Public, but those are external factors, they all responded differently. Hell, by that argument, why didn't he make Lila and Allison the endgame ship: after all, they were raised by sociopaths who turned them into weapons, they experienced life in the 60s as WOC, they were both parents...

(And that's not even getting into the fact that this was all a writing choice, as others have said. It wasn't inevitable, it didn't have to happen, it added nothing to the plot and contradicted past characterisations. It's just masturbatory.)

[imperiuswrecked]

I simply do not care what Marvel says is official about the Magnet Family that removes any aspect of them being Romani/Jewish, so why would I care if anyone goes "Billy and Tommy are white because blah blah soul magic whatever but they have white/non Roma parents" lol, like sorry not sorry but if you are gonna claim them as the Minimoffs, and as Wanda Maximoff's children then they are Romani, full stop. You do not get to have the aesthetic/connection without the background, fuck that.

And it's just so fucking tiring to have to see these old and new shitty takes that keep trying to divorce the Maximoffs or Minimoffs from their Romani background.

Why are you, a fan of the Maximoff or Minimoffs, doing Marvel's whitewashing for them??? Why are you deep throating Marvel's boots??? Grow a spine and a brain and stop trying to "but the comics-" you mean the comics that were literally rewritten on a whim because some corporate cry babies were mad that XMCU decided to use Quicksilver (who was whitewashed!!! or the MCU also whitewashed!!!), and I'm supposed to accept their word on it over 40+ years of collective canon stating that the Maximoffs are Romani and Jewish? lmao.

[maikingsenseofit]

I think almost all of the anti Mai discourse from namely Zutara shippers boils down to this.

You can try and deliberately misconstrue the writing to say Zuko forgot Mai, was never happy around her, never loved her, etc etc

But not once can you say Zuko ever looked at Katara, Jin, or any other female character you ship him with the same way he looks at Mai in these four panels.

What I love about the art of animation is it conveys so much when words can’t.

The eyes, Chico. They never lie.

This single scene conveys so much love, adoration, and the happiness of finally reuniting with your soulmate. And no amount of dissertations on how a fanon ship would’ve made a children’s tv show more enjoyable to you will never change that.

The curse of canon weighs on Maiko and Kataang shippers, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

[wufflesvetinari]

controversial, but as someone who's spent the last year tearing her hair out adjudicating student conduct cases involving AI misuse: i'm never going to be impressed by an anti-AI post that sounds like an abstinence-only educator wrote it

it goes without saying that AI as implemented has many problems.* it fills me with a low-level sense of dread! but some of you seem to think that if we teach the children to Just Say No, it will go away. which...maybe this is because i work with engineering students but that sounds about as likely as email going away (and that message is just about as likely to resonate with kids as The Internet Is Evil So Stay Off).

students are graduating into a workforce that requires them to use AI. it is, in certain contexts, an appropriate tool. so between an engineer who's never touched AI in their life and one who's had a thorough education in it--who knows what it can and can't do; what it can and can't be trusted with--i'd pick the latter every time.

like, they're going to build the airplanes for christ's sake. they're going to be handed AI, usually of higher quality than public-facing chatgpt but still. i don't want them graduating with the sense that AI is a Forbidden All-Knowing Cheating Machine instead of something they've spent time understanding the limitations of. i want them to understand which programs work for which tasks, and which don't work at all. and that requires active education on the tool, the same way you'd teach about internet safety or how to detect fake news

(this goes, imo, for people trying to make AI safer and more ethical as well. if you consider it unethical by definition to work on AI, the only people working on it will be the ones who don't care about ethics.)

-

*i will say it. misinformation, algorithmic bias, disruptions for the labor force, shoving it into tasks it's not good at LET ME SCHEDULE MY OWN DAMN VET APPOINTMENT, unethical sourcing for datasets, environmental impact (the data center planner in my life is VERY skeptical of DeepSeek being more efficient but one hopes)

[bug-filled-corpse]

"your struggle with this particular thing is valid and important" and "someone else is at a greater disadvantage than you in this particular thing" are two statements that are not contradictory

neither of these statements are in contradiction with "we are in this struggle together as peers, equals, and comrades"

[tyetknot]

*carefully tosses a golden apple labelled 'TO THE LEAST PROBLEMATIC' into the middle of witchblr discourse*

[sokkastyles]

I really don't like that some Azula stans are trying to compare the comment about fans from the recent comic to Bryke actually stealing fanart from zutara shippers so that they could make fun of them and literally telling them that they will be abused in real life.

You could MAYBE compare the Azula fan comment to the Ember Island Players parody of zutara, which is much more like light-hearted poking fun, and can actually be argued as pro-zutara, and is more about the characters' reactions in-story than it is about the fans.

But the way Bryke went out of their way to humiliate zutara shippers with the book four video is much more comparable to the misogynistic comic that was drawn specifically to mock criticisms of Legend of Korra. In those two instances, Bryke directly addressed (their idea of) their female fans in really gross ways.

Also, in order to figure out who is being harmed by something, a useful tool is to look at where the hate is being directed. Zutara fans are still getting harassment to this day because of what Bryke did, much of it based on misogynistic ideas about female sexuality. Right now, the person being harassed is a female comic artist, and Azula stans haven't even waited more than a few days to launch their campaign because of what is perceived as the tiniest slight against them, which is what Azula stans always seem to do.

[broadwaybalogna]

zutara is BOOOORING azutara is better 🤑🤑🤑🤑

For the past few days I’ve been searching far and wide, going on journeys over the tallest mountains and longest rivers, hiking through the most dangerous forests. Everywhere I look, however, I just cannot seem to find a fuck to give. So sorry :(