#(and stop trying to start discourse with me also)

[ovaryacted]

I'm not gonna say I didn't want to say anything cause I did, I wanted to as the loud mouth bitch I am, and whether or not this gets dragged out longer than it needs to be is for everyone else to decide cause I just don't care. I also am not trying to speak for other people as I say this, both my close friends & BIPOC people in general because I know many disagree with me and that's okay, but I do think I would bring it up and call it a day.

I just want to address the nonsense idea that somehow I and a handful of other outspoken people are the reason why the tlou/ppcu fandom communities on here "fell off" or are toxic and we're at fault for making this space hostile and pushing people off of the platform. That couldn't be farther from the truth.

The community had it's issues before any of us were involved, and it got worse after some of us left and stopped engaging as much for a handful of reasons: the blatant racism & microagressions that continue to be swept under the rug, massive AI scraping & AI fics being posted altogether, that dumb confessions page & everyone who keeps entertaining it, a brutal uptick in purity culture that feeds into so much discourse surrounding what people like to create, consume, interact with, joel dying and the hype around TLOU going down after S2 ended & people now have to wait 2-3 years for S3, etc. All of those things existed before anybody within "my clique" (whatever that means) started talking about the overt harm that was directed towards us from the community we were all in. Many people leave these online spaces for different reasons, some personal, and some just because being on this platform no longer brings them joy. But outright blaming the faults of the fandom on a small group of people that were equally afffected by the same issues is just crazy I mean??

I know what people have been saying & entertaining, what people have been sending me nonstop, especially regarding a post I made a few months ago that was done in a fit of rage and frustation. I do apologize for my approach on that post, and if people are that upset & want to crucify me over screenshots that involved specific usernames, then I'm willing to have a conversation about it on a personal level & apologize directly if that would be something they're open to. I also would like to add that I didn't intend to call these individual people "racists", but rather it came off as ignorant which would've been a better word to describe how I saw that post. However, I do want to emphasize that my frustation about the issue didn't just come out of nowhere. It came from months of buildup of this passive agressive attitude that came from people, whether knowingly or unknowingly, interacting with posts that come off as microagressive towards those trying to bring awareness on topics revolving racism and non-white experiences in fanfic writing.

We've had conversations for months about the racism in the PPCU & TLOU fandom and how it's been trickling down in particular to specific people, me being one of them. The whole point why all of this bullshit started to begin with is because people weren't angry or proactive enough in their allyship towards BIPOC writers and creators on here. We had extensive posts explaining these things, celebrations to uplift BIPOC writers on here, the whole nine yards. And still, we were having the same problem on the backend: racial slurs and bigoted language posted in our inboxes for just bringing these things up, subposts directed towards us, a whole lot of nonsense that just didn't add up. That was the problem.

So yes, when I made that post I was heated and frustrated from nothing in the space being changed, which at this point seems like a lot to ask for. It was worse when a lot of us genuinely did want to have a conversation about these things, or people came to us to learn about how they could be better mutuals & hold space for us. And still, regardless of what we did, how we approached the issue, our tone of voice or who we were directing our attention to, we were still met with vitriol and hateful language we were just told to ignore or block & move on.

I think the biggest issue now when it comes to all of the drama and discourse to begin with is its all being turned into "stan shit" where some users/blogs are idolized and the same goes to people's parasocial relationship towards Pedro Pascal. Like, nobody was making shit up just to start drama, nobody just wakes up one day a hateful bitch and ruins an entire community. If it was that easy for a handful of people to break or ruin an entire online community, then that community had shaky foundation. The anon feature on here is constantly being used to start shit, and I've blocked people, filtered words out, done everything on my end to just avoid that space altogether cause it's obvious I'm not wanted and that's fine, I've made peace with that. But stop saying all of this started cause me and others wanted to cause problems. Cause look, some of us aren't in the community anymore and the problems are still there. Plus, doing things like purposefully agitating the users you have a problem with to start drama for your entertainment, watching who they interact with & their "circle", and patiently waiting for them to post something you can use as a "gotcha" when they're getting dogpiled is pathetic.

The elephant in the room many of you don't want to address is that you'd rather not have any of these issues brought up to begin with. You didn't want to hear about the racism in the fandom and the messages people were getting because it's an inconvenience for you, because having people talk about these things regardless of their approach or feelings interferes with your ability to enjoy things, the same things others, including me, also want to enjoy but don't get to, not fully anyway. This goes beyond just fandom spaces and specific users and confession blogs and online discourse; but many of you want to keep things on a surface level because this online community is all you know, and that's what you'll have to come to terms with. A lot of you also won’t admit to liking drama and the fallout, that’s why you still entertain that confessions page and why you still care about what they’re saying and about who despite everyone telling others to block and keep it pushing.

Anyways, seriously if you have a problem with me personally, which is fine btw I'm not doing this to make amends or change being the villain in anybody's story, then just address me directly instead of instigating drama involving me through my mutual's accounts or that confessions blog that I'm not involved with. Like seriously, this is exhausting, and holding something as trivial as this over my head when I've seen much worse on both ends is ridiculous, but sure. Imma go finish some of these blurbs for Jack Abbot, so that's all I wanted to say.

[incorrectskyrimquotes]

cicero and sheogorath are both so fucking annoying and someone needs to be brave enough to say it

[turtally-tubular]

honestly i dont get whats so hard to understand about the cpunk shit and why people are getting so fussy about it. its literally as simple as “if you arent physically disabled then its not for you”. and like. if you consider yourself physically disabled, then good for you, you can be part of cpunk. if not, go to neuropunk, madpunk, etc spaces.

how is that so hard to understand 😭😭

[thevegetablewhichnoonedaresname]

tonight I go to bed grateful not to be in my bnha phase right now

[scientia-rex]

When I was in ninth grade I wanted to challenge what I saw as a very stupid dress code policy (not being allowed to wear spikes regardless of the size or sharpness of the spikes). My dad said to me, “What is your objective?”

He said it over and over. I contemplated that. I wanted to change an unfair dress code. What did I stand to gain? What did I stand to lose? If what I really wanted was to change the dress code, what would be my most effective potential approach? (He also gave me Discourses on the Fall of Rome by Titus Livius, Machiavelli’s magnum opus. Of course he’d already given me The Prince, Five Rings, and The Art of War.)

I ultimately printed out that phrase, coated it in Mod Podge, and clipped it to my bathroom mirror so I would look at it and think about it every day.

What is your objective?

Forget about how you feel. Ask yourself, what do you want to see happen? And then ask, how can you make it happen? Who needs to agree with you? Who has the power to implement this change? What are the points where you have leverage over them? If you use that leverage now, will you impair your ability to use it in the future? Getting what you want is about effectiveness. It is not about being an alpha or a sigma or whatever other bullshit the men’s right whiners are on about now. You won’t find any MRA talking points in Musashi, because they are not relevant.

I had no clear leverage on the dress code issue. My parents were not on the PTA; neither were any of my friend’s parents who liked me. The teachers did not care about this. Ultimately I just wore what I wanted, my patent leather collar from Hot Topic with large but flattened spikes, and I had guessed correctly—the teachers also did not care enough to discipline me.

I often see people on tumblr, mostly the very young, flail around in discourse. They don’t have an objective. They don’t know what they want to achieve, and they have never thought about strategizing and interpersonal effectiveness. No one can get everything they want by being an asshole. You must be able to work with other people, and that includes smiling when you hate them.

Read Machiavelli. Start with The Prince, but then move on to Discourses. Read Musashi’s Five Rings. Read The Art of War. They’re classics for a reason. They can’t cover all situations, but they can do more for how you think about strategizing than anything you’re getting in middle school and high school curricula.

Don’t vote third party unless you can tell me not only what your objective is but also why this action stands a meaningful chance of accomplishing it. Otherwise, back up and approach your strategy from a new angle. I don’t care how angry you are with Biden right now. He knows about it, and he is both trying to do something and not doing enough. I care about what will happen to millions of people if we have another Trump presidency. Look up Ross Perot, and learn from our past. Find your objective. If it is to stop the genocide in Palestine now, call your elected representatives now. They don’t care about emails; they care about phone calls, because they live in the past. I know this because I shadowed a lobbyist, because knowing how power works is critical to using it.

How do you think I have gotten two clinics to start including gender care in their planning?

Start small. Chip away. Keep working. Find your leverage; figure out how and when to effectively use it. Choose your battles, so that you can concentrate on the battle at hand instead of wasting your resources in many directions. Learn from the accumulated wisdom of people who spent their lives learning by doing, by making mistakes, by watching the mistakes of their enemies.

Don’t be a dickhead. Be smarter than I was at 14. Ask yourself: what is your objective?

[antikate]

I see the occasional piece of discourse slide past me on this website (but also in other places) that goes something like this:

Every four years the democrats tell us our democracy is in danger and we have to vote for them or else! When will the centrists liberals stop holding us hostage like this! Why don’t they fix it for once and for all?

Here’s the thing: you can’t permanently get rid of fascism. We had a WORLD WAR that killed 75 million people to try to get rid of fascism and it just keeps on popping up again. It’s a weed that will always come back because it grows in the fertile soil of human misery, and until we end human misery for good, our soils will be rich and productive for a long time. Fascism flourishes when people are scared, unhappy, and suffering, because it gives humans easy solutions to complex problems.

Anyway… We! The Royal we! Need to stop thinking of voting as one weird trick to fix things forever and start thinking of it as weeding. Every four years you’re going to have to weed this fucking garden. For the foreseeable future. Now put your gardening gloves on and get to work, otherwise you’re going to end up with a fascist garden growing nothing but the thorn bushes of oppression and subjugation.

[justsomuchhacking]

So like another thing about the transgender mecha discourse is like... the mech can be a metaphor for empowerment and an extension of the customizable self, but specifically for transfemmes the metaphor also works in the other direction!

The mech is safe. And it is familiar, and you have gotten used to controlling it. You are told that your highest purpose is violence, but that's not true about you, though it might be true of the mech.

The mech is safe. It is many layers of cold steel and machinery between you and the world. When people see the mech, they see power and strength. But you will have to crawl out of it if you wish to be seen and known by your name, instead of your callsign*.

The mech is safe. It does not take courage to pilot - it takes courage to leave. Anonymous, stoic violence in a shell that is not your body vs the horrifying ordeal of crawling out of a numb pile of metal and hoping people will love the weird-looking girl who is a little unused to socializing. On account of all the mech-piloting.

Anyway if I was going to write transgender mecha fiction the robot would be the closet. War is hell, truth is life, get out of the fucking robot, girl, and live!

Other small things I would include in an anti-war transgender mecha story:

"Why did you stop being a mecha pilot? You were so good at it!"

Patriarchal military industrial complex discovers trans people are just better at using the weird neural mech piloting interface. This plays out as badly as you'd expect.

"cis" pilot who has an unusually high sync with the mecha and the veteran pilots who Definitely Know.

Nothing good ever happens as a result of mecha battles and the reader should start to feel anxious about which beloved character Isn't Going To Be The Same after this one.

This would of course be very difficult to pull off in a way that's like... as fundamentally entertaining as giant robot fights where the giant robot is a metaphor for personal agency and the power of the individual, where a very traumatized trans girl incinerates mecha hitler with a blue-and-pink laser beam she got from self-actualizing. I recognize that my version is harder to make and definitely not for everyone. But I think it should be made. Both should be made!

*historical note here about callsigns - in fiction people choose their own but in the military these are chosen for you by your unit - and if yours is cool it usually means that your unit thinks you're a dweeb. If you try to make people use a callsign you chose for yourself, there is no doubt at all about whether you are a dweeb. So for me a callsign is a terrible stand-in for a true name. Knowing this fact ruins movies, because every Cool Callsign Protagonist makes you think "Iceman? Oh, he definitely got caught masturbating in the walk-in freezer".

[meydang]

Flustered

(sfw)

Asaba Harumasa x reader

You have always been curious, does he actually have fangs? So you decided to find out yourself.

.

.

.

It all started when you were scrolling through the trending section of a fanpage dedicated to Harumasa. As his girlfriend, you’d seen it all - edits, memes, and the occasional over-the-top appreciation posts. But today’s featured post stopped you dead in your tracks.

"Harumasa’s fangs… real or just a vibe? Discuss."

The thread is filled with multiple opinions. Some argued that the fangs are indeed real, citing close-ups from promotional shots, pointing out how they gleamed in certain lightings, while others believed they are simply acessories - part of his carefully crafted, cool image. His fangs had always fascinated you, but now that someone mentioned it, you just had to know. Were they really the real deal?

You glanced over at Harumasa, who is sitting across the couch scrolling his phone, oblivious to the online discourse. Suddenly, a thought crosses your mind: not only could you get your answer, but you could also see what it took to fluster the usually unshakable Harumasa.

"Hey, Haru," you called casually, leaning against the armrest. "Do you..." you began innocently, setting your phone down, "do you ever read what people post about you online?"

"Not always. Why? Are they saying something stupid again?" He answered, not looking up.

"Not stupid," you said, suppressing a smile. "More like… curious. People were debating about your fangs just now." You continued.

"My fangs? What’s there to debate?" He paused mid-scroll, glancing up at you for a moment before returning his attention to his phone. "Some people think they’re real, but a lot are convinced they’re fake. Personally..." You trailed off, trying to look thoughtful.

"Personally what?" He looks at you properly now, his golden eyes narrowing slightly.

"Oh nothing," you shrugged, leaning forward. "I guess they do seem a little too perfect. Like, almost too sharp, It’s not crazy to think they’re fake."

His brows furrows slightly, and you fought the urge to grin. "You're not being serious." he said flatly.

"Totally serious," you replied, tilting your head - smirking. "And maybe I need to test it to see for myself." Before he could protest, you move closer, sliding across the couch until there was barely any space left between you. His eyes widened slightly as your hands gently cupped his face, your fingertips brushing against the sharp line of his jaw. Your face was so close now that you could see every detail - the faint blush spreading across his cheeks, the way his lips parted as if to say something, but no words came out.

Cute, you thought to yourself.

His breath hitched when your thumb grazed his chin, and you smiled inwardly, noting how his usually composed demeanor seems to falter. "Hold still," you added, your tone almost teasingly sweet. Harumasa swallowed, his eyes flickered from yours to your hands as you tilted his head slightly.

Very cute.

"What are you doing?" he asked, voice low and tinged with uncertainty. "Settling the debate," you said sweetly with a smile. You reached out carefully, brushing your finger against one of the pointed teeth. It was cool to the touch - and real.

"Whoa," you whispered, leaning back a little. "They’re legit." and before you could help yourself, you pressed a bit harder, only to yelp when it pricked your fingertip.

"Told you, and that’s what you get for doubting your boyfriend." Harumasa huffed, sitting back with a smirk despite his shyness still lingering.

"You could’ve warned me they were that sharp!" You cradled your finger dramatically, feigning the injury.

"Hey hey, you’re the one poking around where you shouldn’t," he states it like it's a warning, but the way his arm slipped around your waist said otherwise. "Next time, just ask." he continued smugly, baring his fangs out to you in an exaggerated grin.

"Maybe. But where’s the fun in that?" You laughed, resting your head against him. "Besides, I just learned something way more interesting."

"Oh? What’s that?" he asked, his tone now more suspicious and guarded as he glances back down at you.

"You’re easy to fluster." you said, grinning as you watch the faintest hint of color rise to his cheeks again.

"I’m not flustered!" Harumasa clicked his tongue, trying to compose himself albeit not being very successful at it.

"Sure," you said, backing away with a triumphant laugh. "Whatever you say, Haru." Despite his protests, his ears burned a shade of red that gave you all the satisfaction you needed.

[snapscube]

on the topic of ff14 - and this could just be me, having no friends who play and not really big on joining groups full of people i don't know either where i have to be good at socializing or the game to even justify being there. or plain bad luck but

are random encounters in this game with other people starting to lean more hostile as people stop playing for anyone else? i used to neeeever have this issue in random groups, everyone had always been so welcoming from the time i joined as a wow refuge! but the past year, a while after DT launched it feels like most of the time if someone talks in duty finder, it's to put other people down. like putting down sprouts for not knowing the precise time to use LB on their first run of a dungeon kind of mean. calling people names for not knowing the launcher throws an error during updates, or for thinking squenix could probably stand to update their server infrastructure (& god i agree tbh) etc etc.

i'm not really sure what to do about it because i'm generally a very asocial person and do not care to join a group of people i don't know that i'll mesh with at all, save maybe go back to wow and see if the culture is better there now. but my DF and general community experience has been so bad at this time that i've straight up stopped playing. it feels like the random pleasant encounters that kept me wanting to play with randoms just... stopped, in favor of people who want you to know everything and do it right all the time with little communication. it gets a bit better during the mog tomestone events when everyone is grinding raids but generally it feels like nobody talks anymore unless it's to complain about other people. doesn't matter if it's criticizing the game, asking questions about it, or literally just trying to exist in it. i don't understand what even happened, if it's really that so many people left or something to do with DT's boss design or what. it makes me sad.

I TOTALLY get where you're coming from. Dawntrail definitely has become a weird era for the community I feel like. A lot of stuff contributes to it. The game has a very large playerbase, there is a lot of dissatisfaction and discourse over narrative elements and game design, the fights are a lot more difficult now and so patience is tested so much sooner than normal. There's also just an increasing normalization of expectation that people playing the game are in the know about third party tools and sites and specific guides and PF etiquette that isn't enforced in the TOS and all that stuff.

For what it's worth it seems like an issue that mostly comes down to where you play and what content you're doing. Most of the toxicity I see is in like, endgame PF groups and whatnot. Early game dungeons and such still seem rather chill from what I've noticed. Could just be bad luck if you're running into that a lot outside of endgame. But in general I would hope that this is just a rough spell, I've seen the community be a lot better and I think if the game itself improves some key points of tension then people will maybe be less... grumpy? But I super don't blame you for not wanting to interface with it! We all have different tolerances and as the famous saying goes: if it sucks, hit da bricks.

[bangtanhoesthings]

Long ask.

Forgive me, this will be all over the place.

I have noticed that over the past few years the hate for the boys has been escalating particularly for Jimin, Jungkook and Joonie.

For Joonie, among other things, because as a leader, if they break him, they might break BTS. (Gosh look at him😭. Has me my man, my man, my man-ning all over the place like a dog in heat, it's embarrassing and a little concerning). Sorry, I digressed but look at him 😭😭😭, y'all don't thirst over this man enough. Woof! 🫦

Anyways, moving on.

For Jungkook, among a plethora of other reasons, because of the unrivaled, unmitigated global success he has had and continues to have (am so proud of my funky lil popstar ✨).

He came, he saw, he conquered. Kicked ass and took names. Ate and left no crumbs. Had them by the neck. Pulled up and shut it down (Somebody stop me 😭)

The way some army attribute his success to the 🛴 guy boils my blood, and that rage is for another day.

This post is towards Jimin.

Jimin's hate is both from outside and inside the fandom ( am not talking about solos, toxic shippers, mantis and the like) but people who claim to be 0T7.

I know that Jimin has had haters for years but the shady tweets I saw during the FACE and MUSE era from so called "ARMY" said a lot. Am not here to debate who is or isn't ARMY. That's for another time.

My question is, why does Jimin's success seem to be a sore spot for some 0T7s? The one reason I have been able to come up with is that Jimin sort of messed up the hierarchy system.

Let me explain and see if I make sense. For a long time, when people thought of the maknae line, no matter the order in which they ranked Tae and Kookie, Jimin was always the third one. Too many posts relegating him to the role of cheerleader and not much else. I saw posts before solo works commenced dismissing the idea that Jimin would ever release an album but would instead fully support the others. Well, he not only released two solo albums, but was also a composer, lyricist among other things, so they can take their opinion and smoke it.

When the solo era started, people had different expectations for what every maknae members would achieve but no matter the expectations, those for Jimin were that he would be third. Bronze medalist if you will.

FACE was released, Like Crazy got to number 1 and I logged off twitter. We were in hell particularly when it went from 1 to 45 after Billboard deleted over 100k sales and changed the rules (thank you Travis Scott for freeing Jimin and finally taking that number 1 spot). The hate from outside was expected, it was when it came from within the fandom that it hurt.

Fast forward to MUSE and it got worse. Sprinkle in a dash of Are You Sure and we have

Here I have a list of things I have noticed

1. An increase in the number of people talking about how they hate PJMs and how they are making them turn against Jimin. Honey, if a solo can make you dislike one member, you aren't sh*t anyway.

2. Dislike for Jimin disguised as dislike for his solos. If you haven't seen it, consider yourself lucky.

3. How sometimes ARMY came in droves when a member didn't achieve something but Jimin did. For example Spotify US. When a new song failed to enter but Jimin's songs increased ( during both LC and Who era).

4. His long run on the hot 100 has really revealed people's true colours. It's not his fault. Blame the fandom for their clear bias.

5. The number of ARMY accounts on X low key calling AYS fanservice.

6. Discourse on Jimin's ability to sing. I don't argue with stupid people.

I could go on and on but what I am trying to say is that in a perfect world, it would be wonderful if all the members had the same support from ARMY. The discrepancy needs to be addressed (caused by a multitude of reasons) but making it a member's fault and not the fandom is asinine.

I used to be a 1D fan and my favourite member to date is the least favourite and successful, Louis Tomlinson but that doesn't mean I hate on Harry, Zayn or Niall for their success. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

What prompted this you may ask? I saw a post talking about Jimin being the company and fandom fave and having special support. Like huh?

All in all what I am trying to say is that Jimin really shook things up and some people resent him for it. That one post (article?) about Jimin bringing out either admiration or envy keeps getting proven right.

Keep supporting this angel for a long and happy life.

What do you think are some other reasons for the increase in the 0T6 agenda against Jimin?

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Seeing that Luke post get thousands upon thousands notes is giving me hives. How does one become this fandom brained? I know the jokes are "don't mess with fans of X they don't even watch/read/listen to their own film/show/etc." and any fandom is going to cause some amount of ooc behaviour for the sake of jokes and memes and stuff, but surely at some point the character is so bent out of shape you stop to ponder what you're doing.

Who is this Luke Skywalker, collector of wayward orphans? Why would he want to be Reys dad? You get the feeling she might want it at the start of TLJ... And then the rest of the movie happens, going into great detail, at times in overly didactic ways, as to why that's a Bad Idea for her personal growth and the galaxy at large.

Even in older Legends material, where he ends up having actual kids, most of the lauded and beloved portrayals of his character are things like the original Thrawn trilogy, and in that he spends all three books struggling with if there's any place for him in the galaxy after the emperor died. The supposed definitive alternate sequel trilogy is, at least for Luke, largely about if he even should restart the jedi order, since his own training is incomplete and he has a deep fear any students he has are going to eventually succumb to the dark side, and how if they do it'll probably be a direct result of his incompetence. He does naturally, much like in TLJ, overcome these feelings of inadequacy and re-emerge as the definitive hero of the story, but spending a few years wallowing is just a very Luke way to deal with problems in life.

Like yeah I wonder why a bitter, self-isolating old man who views his life as a colossal failure wouldn't be jumping for joy when a younger, more naive version of himself shows up to his house uninvited.

For how desperate to venerate the Nostalgia the sequel trilogy project as a whole is, only TLJ really feels like it actually gives a shit about the story it's supposedly continuing. I didn't think you could look at Lukes death and not feel the overwhelming love and care for him specifically. I always shed a tear when binary sunset kicks in and I'm not even that into the originals. I was a prequel defender in 2010, Luke is the 20th character I think about when people mention SW.

Do people just not engage with the source material at all? Is this a product of the whole fandom tourism boom in the last 5-ish years? I genuinely don't want to be mean. After all, fandom is all of us playing with our toys, and you should always try to avoid a "old man yells at cloud" scenario, but like... It's a movie for 12 year olds that's very deliberately laying out all the cards. A slightly more nuanced and emotionally mature movie for 12 year olds than you might expect but... A child could get it, it's been focus grouped to hell and back so any given child on the planet should get it... How are you as an adult asking why the story had conflict?

I also broke out in hives a little bit when I found out that my addition (?) had made that thing go around. Or maybe it wasn't my addition, I'm actually not sure, but I worry that it was. The OP turned off reblogs, and I can only assume it was because people starting doing absurd bullshit discourse on the post which... hhhh I don't really like being part of inflicting that on anyone over something as unimportant as Star Wars opinions.

Also, the thing I was reacting against really wasn't the fact that people have headcanons about who and what kind of character Luke is - like, that's just normal and generally a good and fun part of fandom. I reacted against the idea of The Last Jedi being thoughtless about his character. It interprets Luke in a very specific way, but that interpretation is, I think objectively, deeply grounded in the history of his character and the thematic throughlines of the Skywalker-focused movies. So it annoyed me a bit to see people treat the depiction like it was some kind of failure to engage with the original material. I think that's not quite fair to what the movie was, and I think it leads to weak criticism of its flaws.

I think that the better angle for critique of the whole sequel trilogy and Rian Johnson's contribution is that obsesses far too much about the original trilogy, and is at its best in those few scant moments when it breaks away from it. If the sequel trilogy hadn't had the corporate mandate to be a kind of Frankenstein remake of the OT, perhaps a kindly old grandfatherly Luke could have been a fun and interesting interpretation of the character's future. Luke is what he is in TLJ because the trilogy absolutely fucking had to recreate the narrative beats of Dagobah, and therefore absolutely had to have Luke learn another lesson from Yoda about learning to let go of his attachments to and fears about the future and be present in the here-and-now.

Johnson is clearly a fucking nerd-ass Star Wars nerd, whose greatest mistake was assuming that other Star Wars nerds would engage with the material with good faith and an eye towards appreciation and discovery, rather than product-brained, screaming entitlement to their supremacy-affirming nostalgia security blanket.

To be clear, here I am talking about the culture war grifter assholes who poison the world, and not fandom people who have a cozy headcanon about Luke as a cheerful old community dad. I don't think it's fandom tourism to have a headcanon about a character, or a favored interpretation of them, even one which feels somewhat divorced from the original source-text. If I had to take a guess, the people on the original post developed that headcanon through fandom - by way of fanfics and fanposting and fanart, by way of fix-it fics and excited speculation. If I had to take a guess, they got their headcanon about Luke the same place everyone gets their headcanons about popular characters: from some combination of appreciation, projection, and a desire to see the thing you love tell a story that you need to hear. That's just human, and I don't think you can spend any significant amount of time in fandom without developing those attachments to certain stories or characters.

[firelxdykatara]

I think part of what frustrates me about age gap discourse with respect to BTVS specifically is that framing Buffy's relationship with Angel as 'grown man preys on teenage girl' requires that you ignore everything about the context of the show, the context that their relationship occurs within, and also what it means for both of them as characters and for the show as a whole.

It's also just like, really boring?

Like before you get to any of the story reasons why that's just a stupidly reductive analytical framework, you have to start with this: in a story aimed at teenagers, the fantasy is of being special and desired by a sexy immortal, and because the story is aimed at teenagers, the main characters are (or start as) teenagers, since the coming of age narrative that underpins everything else doesn't work without it. Hard to tackle that transition from adolescence to adulthood with a main character who begins the series as an adult!

(And it's not as if coming of age stories for adults don't exist. Phoebe Halliwell is a very good example--unlike her older sisters, she starts off unemployed and kind of adrift and desperate to find a purpose, which she ultimately does as a witch and a Charmed One, and all of this is done while she, as the youngest, is in her early twenties at the series start, because the show is primarily aimed at adults.)

And the thing is, Angel isn't just some adult man preying on a highschooler for kicks because he can't find women his own age. As Angelus, he spent well over a century enamored with Darla and committing wanton slaughter and destruction by her side. As Angel, with the exception of Buffy, all of his love interests are adults, and his love for Buffy is not tied to her youth, innocence, or naivete, considering that it links and binds them so completely that they keep crossing in and out of each other's lives through the end of Buffy's show, with the door explicitly open for a future relationship once Buffy's finished baking.

What draws Angel to Buffy--and what makes their relationship so dangerously compelling and also ultimately spells its downfall as, within the text of the show, it is explicitly a tragedy--is the fact that she's the Slayer.

That's the key point--her status as the Chosen One! He is drawn to her (as all vampires are, to a greater or lesser extent, but it's no accident that her only other truly earth shattering romantic relationship in the series is with another vampire) because she's the Slayer, and because of the soul he was cursed to bear and the guilt he feels for the evil he committed as a vampire, he wants to protect and save her as part of his atonement. He falls in love with her because she brings light back into the darkness he has been cast into since being forced to bear a soul even as a monster. And he would be 241 years old whether he was turned as a teenager and could pass as one of her peers or turned at 26 (the show is inconsistent on the age at which he was turned and it really doesn't matter, since the buffyverse never tries to pretend vampires are 'frozen' at the age they're turned anyway), and yes, part of what is darkly compelling about their relationship is that the age difference is obvious (Sarah Michelle Gellar was 20 and David Boreanaz was 28 during season 1), but the reason Angel being an 'older man' is never considered super relevant (aside from a few lampshades) is because... it really isn't.

The important thing, the critical thing, the thing that matters in the context of their relationship is that Angel is a vampire. That's why when Angel pulls out his 'I'm 241, you're 16' spiel it rings so hollow--because that doesn't really matter to either of them and he knows it. He's trying to push her away because it's the only way he can really protect her, and even then it doesn't work, and they all suffer for it horribly, Buffy most of all. (And even then she can't stop loving him, nor he her, and that makes it all the more tragic when he realizes the only thing he can do for her is leave.)

Also, it really throws into sharp relief the fact that people care so much about Buffy being a teenage girl when it comes to her romantic relationships but not at all when it comes to her being fated to die. Something the show itself is also quite critical of, because that's part of the point--being the Slayer is an awful burden that none of them have ever had a choice but to bear, and Buffy was supposed to die at sixteen years old. The only reason she survives is because she broke the rules by trying to have a normal life in addition to being the Slayer, which is the only reason she has friends to help her and save her, and I'm supposed to look at all of that and care that her broody vampire bf was a 'grown man' when he was turned? Really?

I don't think so. You can't just be willing to take what the show says for itself at face value when it comes to all the fighting and killing and dying but then balk when it comes to sex. That just doesn't work for me. (I mean, you can, and a lot of people do, but it's frustrating, hence this post.)

[gauntletgirlie]

Adding my two pence in to the Sauron shipping and sexuality discourse since I am a fan of Tolkien’s written works and The Rings of Power show whereas quite a few people debating this seem to fall into one camp or the other (not all, I will clarify, just from what I’ve personally seen).

Before I start, I’m not out here trying to cause strife, I’m trying to advocate for people to be nicer to one another about their conflicting views.

I love The Silmarillion. When I first read it, and in subsequent readings, I did not interpret either Melkor or Sauron sexually at all. I just didn’t. Not that I thought they were asexual or aromantic, I just didn’t think of them in terms of sexuality. It’s not what I was focussed on when I was reading and it’s not the vibe that I personally got, even when looking deeper at subtext and in between the lines.

I heckin love Angbang though. The art, the headcanons, the crack, the writing, the goofy stuff, the sexy stuff, and everything in between. I arrived on tumblr, stumbled upon Angbang and that was me seduced! I have space for my original interpretation of Melkor and Mairon and then the Angbang interpretation. I enjoy both.

I had fun watching The Rings of Power. Admittedly, Season 1 was a bit “eh” for me, but Season 2 slapped in my opinion. I think Charlie Vickers is doing a fantastic job of portraying Sauron. I was, and am, excited to see one of my favourite characters given more exploration on screen.

Charlie Vickers’ depiction, along with the writers’ and directors’, is just one interpretation. One based on limited and often vague literature (the appendices of The Lord of the Rings). The same way that Peter Jackson’s all-seeing, fiery eye atop Barad-hûr was an interpretation.

Peter Jackson’s LOTR films, TROP, Haladriel, Saurondriel, Angbang… they’re all interpretations based on Tolkien’s works, people’s own worldviews, people’s own preferences, and how people view Tolkien as an author. None of them are wholly “correct” and none of them are wholly “incorrect”.

So please for the love of Eru and the sanity of Tolkien lovers everywhere, stop acting as though your definitions, your ships, your perceived ideologies of a character, are the only correct ones. Let people enjoy what and how they may, without attacking one another.

Also as an added aside, when I make TROP memes, crack, and headcanons, they are solely for the characters as portrayed in TROP. I have my own headcanons and crack for written work Tolkien characters. I enjoy both. I love hearing other’s ideas and analysis, even if I end up not seeing it the same way. I appreciate not everyone can compartmentalise like that, but for me it allows me to enjoy more of Tolkien’s works. Heck, if I didn’t, I would not enjoy Angbang and what a sad world that would be for me because Angbang is ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥.

So go forth and ship and let ship!

[crimeronan]

musing on horror fiction and disability.

i've seen a lot of interesting discussion recently on whether or not disability horror is Okay (TM). the most common conclusion (from people who, like, care about ableism) is that disabled protags should Exist, but their disability shouldn't be the source of the horror, and should perhaps even help them survive. and there's been a lot of good horror fiction written around this specific concept!

it's a pretty sensible starting point because, like. disability Actually Exists. you don't want to write a story where the point is to gawk at an actual subsection of your readers n go "wow, GOD, that would suck!! how scary!! so glad it's not me!! okay byeeee"

On The Other Hand, though. when i write horror, i DEFINITELY plot using chronic illness and other disability-related stuff as a key source. so i'm musing on that.

people who already Know my horror work are gonna say "yeah, because you're writing from experience!! so you do it Right!!"

and if we're gonna set Rules (TM) on what narratives are or aren't done "right," then... yeah, i agree. i know what i'm doing and i will not stop doing it anytime soon, regardless of where the Discourse (TM) falls. but i'm trying to figure out what, specifically, makes it Right. you know??

so.

i think some of it is about knowing Why the thing is scary. the Why is what makes horror effective in the first place, anyway! if you know the Why, then you can lean into & manipulate your audience's feelings!

and sometimes the Why is just. shitty.

like, psycho is scary because crazy men in dresses with DID might kill you in the shower. split is scary for similar reasons. i'm trying to remember bad horror about physical disabilities but my mind is protecting me. let's just say, like, the whole subgenre about haunted hospitals with scary disabled patients. the PATIENTS are going to hurt you??? the PATIENTS??!!?!

but the Why re: disability isn't Always othering or cruel or inaccurate, imo.

sometimes being sick Is Scary. not gonna get too deep into it here, but like. it just is. it just fuckin' is. it's scary both internally and externally. the loss of control is scary. the loss of ability itself is scary; the consequences for that loss of ability are also scary. the loss of autonomy is scary. it's scary when doctors don't know what's wrong, and it's scary when they do. it's scary to undergo treatment, and it's scary not to have access to treatment. it's scary not to know what the future holds. it's all fucking scary!!

so like. the "why" in "why is it scary," for me at least, often boils down to "because it is Real."

disability is coming for everyone who's blessed with old age. disability is coming for a wide swath of much younger people, too. it is happening. that's a scary thing for people to reckon with on a personal level, and so it just seems sensible to me for this to crop up in horror.

what is scary about being sick?? take your pick. but for the love of god, ground it in truth.

then the Other thing is: i think you Have to know your audience. and i think you Have to assume a good portion of your audience Will share the disability in question.

i write my horror FOR chronically ill people. i don't really care about anyone else or anybody else's opinions.

and that's part of why stuff like psycho sucks -- the othering. the takeaway is "people like you are frightening and dangerous." another example that's not actually horror, but which Does hurt my feelings, is a little life by hanya yanagihara -- that book is engineered to tell all the disabled rape victims in the audience that the only sensible course for their lives is suicide.

but then, like. the episodes of the magnus archives dealing with hospitals and psychosis and addiction are Fucking Brilliant. because they're taking the Very Real Horror of those Very Real Experiences and telling the audience, "no, you're not crazy. that was fucked up. it was fucked up that it happened and it's fucked up that it still happens and you are right to feel violated. that's the horror here"

and like. that is!! SUCH an enormous comfort!! at least for some of us!!

so. i write about how being sick is fucked up. and i do it for the people who want someone to tell them, yeah, it sucks, it hurts, and it's fucked up.

not everybody wants this! many disabled people want The Exact Opposite of this in their horror stories. which is why the "disabled horror protag beats the slasher villain to death with their prosthetic leg" stuff rocks.

but different people want different things from their fiction.

for example, on a purely personal level, i can't Stand fluffy escapist fiction about no-ableism worlds where the disabled protags are all perfectly cared for n happy. it just makes me unhappy and upset about the world i'm currently living in.

but that specific genre is a lifeline for other people!!

so. anyway.

i don't know if any of this makes sense.

i will conclude by saying that i'm remembering something hank green said about how he only takes cancer advice from fellow cancer patients. his example was that if someone tells them weed helped with their chemo pain, he's like, thank you, that's great to know!! but if someone tells him to do weed for cancer bc they're.... just a stoner.... then he's like, "uh.... i do not care."

in that vein, i always always Always find it really valuable to hear from other people with the same kind of autoimmune diseases and degenerative illnesses i have/write -- those perspectives on horror/representation/visibility are Wonderful. (even when disagreeing with me!)

but if people's feedback amounts to "well, being sick Doesn't suck for me, so you should be more careful about writing sickness that sucks"

.....i'm like. well. i.... don't think this conversation is about you. i don't think i was talking to you.

maybe sometimes what's scary is being told you're hurting your own community by having. the Wrong Feelings.

[etz-ashashiyot]

You know how sometimes arguing a point is losing?

Like if you engage the argument at all you are inherently putting up for debate things that should never be up for debate and the argument itself is degrading?

You see this with interpersonal gaslighting:

A gaslighter doesn’t simply need to be right. They also need for you to believe that they are right. In stage one, you know that they’re being ridiculous, but you argue anyways. You argue for hours, without resolution. You argue over things that shouldn’t be up for debate  – your feelings, your opinions, your experience of the world. You argue because you need to be right, you need to be understood, or you need to get their approval. In stage one, you still believe yourself, but you also unwittingly put that belief up for debate. In stage two, you consider your gaslighter’s point of view first and try desperately to get them to see your point of view as well. You continue to engage because you’re afraid of what their perspective of you says about you. Winning the argument now has one objective :  proving that you’re still good, kind, and worthwhile. In stage three, when you’re hurt, you first ask, “What’s wrong with me?” You consider their point of view as normal. You start to lose your ability to make your own judgements. You become consumed with understanding them and seeing their perspective. You live with and obsess over every criticism, trying to solve it.

[Source]

But you also see this on a broader societal level, with people asking unfathomably awful questions about minority groups, such as:

[Source]

It should go without saying, but no group of people should be forced to explain that yes, they really are real people, dickheads. The question doesn't deserve an answer; it deserves at best a disgusted eyeroll + "Are you a Nazi?" and at worst a punch to the face.

There is also the related phenomenon of the "when did you stop beating your wife?" type questions. The question is framed as a yes or no question, but the real answer for the innocent is: "I've never beaten my wife and never would." But even that answer still dignifies the question with a real response and puts the idea in the mind of the listener that hey maybe that's a real possibility and this guy is lying because of course he wouldn't just admit that. Now I don't know what to believe, but I'm skeptical.

Even if he answers, doubt has been cast on his character and many people (maybe even most people) neither have the attention span to listen to his full counter argument and supporting evidence nor are invested enough in strangers' lives to take the time to dig for facts on their own. Critically, it comes from a good impulse that shouldn't be repressed or taken too far in the opposite direction; namely, that we want to believe survivors and make it socially acceptable to speak out about abuse.

This leaves us with the uncomfortable reality that balancing believing survivors and whistle-blowers against not automatically believing allegations that very well may be false and/or in bad faith is a very tricky balancing act indeed. Because of this, people tend to struggle with taking survivors seriously and with presuming innocence until guilt has actually been proven, both. And as for the latter, this is at least partially due to the same psychological factors underlying the Don't Think of an Elephant problem.

Why am I discussing this?

See the thing is that these types of discourse have all been used, heavily, against the Jewish community, especially since Oct 7th, but really going back hundreds of years.

If you want to be our ally, you need to be on guard for how people use this rhetoric to accuse Jews of absolutely batshit cookoo bananas allegations (like being lizard people or having horns, or secretly running the world, or killing Christian babies to use their blood in our matzah, etc. etc.) and get away with it. Now obviously if so many people weren't already racist towards Jews as a people and had a vested interest in maintaining their supercessionist cultural worldview from Christianity and Islam, it would be a lot harder for this to work. Alas, the past 2000 years has created a bit of a snowballing effect.

This culminates in the effect described so well by Sartre:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Right now, Jews are facing extreme levels of these types of rhetorical abuse, and are receiving very little help in the way of pushback.

We have to stop trying to explain ourselves and start just naming these tactics instead.

[scum-man-of-pesto]

Something that makes me nutty every time radblr has this het-partnering discourse (or really discourse surrounding how to treat het-partnered women) is that among some of the misogynistic comments made are ones about these women being "addicted" to males and like, no follow through on that thought.

Also, to jump topics for a second before coming back,

Throughout my radical feminist journey, I struggled a lot both with what the most 'feminist' choices to make in my personal life were, and also what I should expect/encourage in other women. I noted back then at some point that I saw many women who did things like wearing face-fulls of makeup actually doing more materially for women than others who just put on this weird costume of what they think radical feminism is, or just sticking to a list of behaviors that they think they are supposed to. Observing these sorts of things in real-life led me into researching the history of radical feminism in the second wave, and of note many activists retrospectively say the biggest thing of note that they think caused the movement to start to fall apart was when feminists broke into these strict subgroups (y'know ecofeminist, lesbian feminist, separatist, vegetarian feminists, etc etc) and stopped working together because they thought their way was the only way towards liberation, and saw any other way as a threat. The women who worked together in years previous and actually got us major reforms started focusing their energy on intercommunity issues instead of actually targeting the system they all were seeking to destroy, and now here we are with history we have to go out of our way to hunt for, Roe overturned, and our other rights on the line.

Anyway, these disjointed topics are both of massive relevance in this discussion. Firstly, I personally look at most patriarchal behaviors that women partake in similarly to how I look at things like addiction. Yes, if you're actually into feminism, you know that something like dating a man isn't wise, just like someone knows drinking alcohol isn't wise. Many are convinced that they are one of the ones that won't have to deal with the really bad stuff that comes with addiction, because it's so normalized and glamorized all around them. Alcohol is a net negative. It hurts far, far more than it helps anything. And yet, people still do it. Some drinkers don't start by choice, some have extenuating circumstances creating that reality for them, but it's never as simple as "just don't drink you fucking moron" for many. I think if you spend your whole life socialized to worship males, to crave a relationship with them, having it instilled into you that your ultimate goal in life is that relationship, it being so thoroughly normalized and even encouraged by those around you, sometimes needing some of the benefits, or being placed there by no choice of your own, etc, yeah, plenty of women who are very feminist minded are still going to end up with men. Most addicts are also well-educated on the dangers, but they still end up addicts anyway. This understanding can be applied to any patriarchal behavior imo. We need to discourage these behaviors and educate thoroughly, yes, but shaming and saying nasty and/or misogynistic things to someone trying to get by is genuinely never helpful.

Furthermore, even if you struggle to recognize how difficult it is for many women to leave relationships/stop all beauty rituals/whatever, there's still no good reason for lashing out or building more barriers. It does nothing to further the feminist cause, *especially* while using such vile and misogynistic language to do so. It has never helped us in the past to split up over differences like this, and we need solidarity among women more now than we have at any other point in my lifetime.

TLDR; there's a lot of nuance to these topics, and lashing out at women for making choices you see as harmful is at best unhelpful and at worst actively damaging, especially when the means of lashing out are incredibly sexist