#-and the fandom thereof-

[coldgoldlazarus]

Rewatching ATLA and got to Crossroads Of Destiny, and I noticed another interesting parallel/contrast between Aang and Zaheer. Both struggled with the problem of attachment to a loved one, holding them back from reaching full spiritual balance and potential. Aang was prevented from attaining the Avatar state at all until he completed the unlocking of his Chakras, and Zaheer was unable to master the extremely difficult airbending technique of unaided flight.

But the key difference is that when it came down to the bare wire, Aang realized that the world needed to come before Katara, and that he could love and try to help her, while accepting that to some degree her fate was ultimately out of his hands. By releasing that intense attachment, he was finally able to unlock his last chakra and reach the Avatar state. (And then Azula happened, of course, but that doesn't undermine that moment.)

Meanwhile, I think Zaheer somewhat failed in that by comparison. He could not let go of his attachment to P'li until after she literally died. Only then was he able to embrace the void and attain true flight, because that attachment was severed, rather than a conscious decision on his part. It's a subtle but interesting way of showing how close he was to understanding the Air Nomads' philosophy, and yet still so far from it in a few key ways. And that of course led to his flawed overall outlook on the world, and the well-intentioned but ultimately still monstrous path he and his followers took.

[cepheusgalaxy]

look guys i very strongly disagree with the "trans men hold privilege over trans women" point of view and i'm finally able to articulate why:

I think trans men don't hold privilege over trans women, because privilege is kind of a consistent thing.

Like, bear with me: I'm an abled person. I have privilege in relation to disabled people. Because, if me and a disabled person are in a Situation where this distinction is relevant in some way...I'm literally never gonna come out with the worst hand. Never. No matter what the situation is. This is a consistent fact.

Now, when we talk about different transgender identities, I think this gets more shady, because the "who has privilege in relation to who" is a relative statement. One example I saw of people explaining why in their view trans man have privilege over trans women is kind of like this: Imagine there are two passing and stealth trans people, a trans man and a trans woman, in a workplace. Then, it comes a coworker, being blatanly misogynist. Regardless of their views on trans people, in this situation, the trans woman is gonna get the worst of it, in relation to the trans man, because he will be viewed as a man.

It makes sense, and I don't think this hypothetical situation is inaccurate or anything, but I'd also like to point out why it doesn't work as a good point to why transmascs have privilege over transfems. Imagine we change about any variable in this situation. Let's say the trans woman is closeted as a guy, and the trans man is openly transgender. The misogynist coworker then would very much target the trans man in their points, especially if they are particularly transphobic. Now imagine both of them are out and openly trans, with the bonus that now both the man and the woman are gnc. Depending on other specifics, the misoginyst coworker might be bigoted to just one or both of them.

Like, do you see? In different situations, the different trans people have the worst hand. So that doesn't mean that because of the first case, trans men have it generally better. Because there are many kinds of trans men, and simply not all of them have privilege over trans women. In some cases, they might even have it worse precisely because they are trans man. So the privilege the trans man in the first example has is not a consistent thing over trans man! Maybe it's common, I don't know, but when we compare it with someone who has real privilege, like me, an abled person, I ain't ever encounter myself in a situation where I'm having it worse because I am abled in comparison to someone who is disabled.

That's why I think trans woman and trans men simply don't hold privilege over one another, simply because it varies. It depends on who the trans men and women are, it depends in what situation they are in, it depends on the people around them, it depends of so much!!! So saying that trans men have privilege over trans women sounds simply surreal!

I think that, also, the different patterns of the situations in which trans woman have it worse are important to be discussed, and that's why we have the word Transmisoginy, to discuss these issues pertinent to the nuanced oppression trans woman face (and on a similar note, that's why it's also important to have fucking words like Transmisogynoir, because a black trans woman's Situations will be different from a white trans woman's Situations and it's important to to recognize that). THAT's why I also think that we need words like Exorsexism and Transandrophobia, to identify the patterns of situations where trans men have it bad precisely because they are trans men and not something else or because nonbinary people have it bad precisely because they are nonbinary.

SO, in short, my opinion on the "trans man have it generally better than trans woman and that's why they have privilege" debate is that trans man don't generally have it better than trans woman, but some trans man in specific situations have it significantly better than trans woman and that in other situations trans woman have it significantly better than trans man and that is basically a case-to-case scenario and that's also why we need the specific words for different shapes and faces of transphobia to better understand these cases and why x happens with y at z situation. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[aetsiv]

every time i see someone mischaracterize matthias as a dumb, blonde, malewife with no personality except being nina's (dead) boyfriend i want to fistfight god and cause the mass extinction of humanity

[purplecyborgnewt]

[amethysttribble]

[chamerionwrites]

Somewhat more controversially - beyond just well-written characters, I think a lot of people find themselves repeatedly drawn to particular Types of characters. And I think the frequency with which those types appear, and the particular flavor of those types, is often (unnecessarily!) gendered. (Sticking with the espionage theme: it’s pretty difficult to find clever, calculating, socially astute female spy characters whose tradecraft doesn’t hinge primarily or at least very heavily on their sex appeal). TL;DR even very well-written female characters are often (unnecessarily!!!) confined to a much more limited set of narrative roles and archetypes.

And while I’m definitely not saying this is something we should all just accept completely uncritically, I do think it’s a pretty undeniable factor in why a lot of people’s lists of favorite blorbos might be kinda dude-heavy.

[saturnniidae]

The feeling of coming across a httyd fic that actually handles Hiccup's disability casually and well is akin to how I imagine a dehydrated and brittle frog would being spritzed with a revitalizing spray bottle would feel

[beansidhebumbling]

personally think 'live and let live' is an underrated philosophy this fandom should adopt.

[local-redhead-bookworm]

Things I’ve seen Hazbin Hotel fans take way too literally:

Taking Alastor’s verse in Hell’s Greatest Dad as true, genuine parental affection and not seeing it as him very clearly beefing with Lucifer

All of Poison and most of ep4 in general tbh. How can you not see this is a performance Angel is putting on and that he’s lying to himself?

Idk if this is taking things too literally or just not recognizing wordplay but saying “ace in the hole” is just referring to Alastor as a secret weapon when in context it’s CLEARLY an asexuality pun

“Tail between his legs” as confirmation that Alastor has a tail

People thinking “altruist” is Alastor’s last name

“Unclip my wings” meaning Alastor is actually an angel

I know I’m forgetting some stuff so feel free to add on

[destinationtoast]

Hello there! I'm currently combing thru various Hetalia character tags and counting the ships that appear for any individual character, and I'm considering doing a write-up like how I see you make them! I'd like to ask you how do you go about formatting/presenting the information? I made a pie chart n everything!

Hi -- that sounds like an awesome project! Very cool. :)

I'll share what I do for data visualization, but I'll also say that there are other ways to do all of this, and depending on your goals, other ways may be better. So this isn't a recommendation -- just insight into my own process.

I use Google Sheets (similar to Excel) to gather/analyze data and to make graphs. (Many other programs/methods would work and have various pros & cons, so if you have a different favorite/you've already made your graphs, no problem! I use Sheets in part because it's easy to share to make my data broadly accessible.)

To get the unified look of my fandom stats -- and because I often want to add additional notes on top of/next to my graphs -- I copy/paste the graphs into Google Slides and add notes/titles/etc there. I have a slide theme that I use to made to get my particular Toastystats look; here's a more generic template of it that you can edit/use yourself, if that's helpful. I like to use it to put a border around my slides (so that if it's on a white background you can still see the edges) and to put my blog credit and the date at the bottom (useful in case someone stumbles across it years later and doesn't realize the data is old, or wants to ask you questions). If you want to change any of the defaults in these template slides (e.g., change the colors or fill in the footer text), you'll need to use the menus to go to "Slide -> Edit theme".

After that, I export each slide as a PNG image ("File -> Download").

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I will also make a quick unsolicited suggestion about pie charts, which you can feel free to ignore: I use bar charts most of the time. I only use pie charts only when I have a bunch of different mutually exclusive categories that add up to 100% -- basically when I can think of the data as creating a "sensible whole pie."

So, for instance, imagine a possible pie here as "Fanworks where Character X is tagged." And I want to show how many of those fanworks have different ship tags. Well, multiple ship tags probably sometimes get used together, which means that actually some of the pie slices (i.e., the ships) should be overlapping, not separate -- and overlapping slices make for weird pie. :) Also, there are probably a large number of Character X tags that don't use any of the ship tags (which at minimum should mean I would also want a large "Other fanworks" slice of pie, if I did use a pie chart). Because of all this, I would probably choose to use a bar chart for that data.

---

Feel free to ask more questions if you have them (I recognize that many parts of this could be be confusing, depending on your particular background), and good luck! :)

[callmehopeless]

I don't believe in [producing Hogwarts Legacy content] or [interacting with Hogwarts Legacy content], I believe in [talking about producing Hogwarts Legacy content] and [discussing not participating in Hogwarts Legacy content], which my brain equates to [producing Hogwarts Legacy content] which feels like productivity

[nostalgia-tblr]

how the FUCK are there only 38 dubcon lokius fics???

[purplecyborgnewt]

[moonlightperseus]

okay like i want to preface that i do not have anything against the storylines that they are doing, i’m straight vibing with this season, having fun. i just want to say it’s a little frustrating to me that 911 keeps tacking on these buck and/or eddie centric “surprise” scenes at the end of an episode because then it becomes the big talking point of the episode after the fact and a lot of the other stuff that happened in it falls away to the sides a bit

[tyrannuspitch]

thinking about the specifics of loki's sexuality for the first time in aaages and like... while i am personally not too fussed and tend to go with the flow here. i've decided i think it's fair to argue that the loki show is so far removed from the original character that you don't have to accept what it says on the subject.

obviously SOME people will be doing that maliciously, especially (but by no means exclusively) if their alternative is that he's cishet. it's def worth watching out for (and reflecting on a little in yourself.)

but at the same time - there are genuinely zero datapoints on mcu loki's orientation while he has his original characterisation. he's never visibly attracted to anyone, and he never expresses any personal feelings on sex or romance. (i mean, overtly. you can read anything into anything if you go looking for it, but nothing is canon.) loki is queercoded, but his queercoding in the first three films is entirely about gender presentation. so, if you accept that this era of canon is separable from the rest, then by the same logic it follows that loki's actual orientation is a blank slate.

so yeah. obviously if you like seeing loki as bi that's great, vive la bisexualité. but also. if you see loki as gay or aroace or whatever else, especially if you've been doing so since the 2010s, who are any of us to tell you you're wrong.

[mumblesplash]

one funny fandom thing that i always love is when adult male characters are shown to have grown out their hair bc of an extended survival situation and/or some kind of mental health crisis but they barely have so much as a 5 o’clock shadow. he said ok i can forgive long-term neglect of most of my appearance due to extenuating circumstances but i draw the line at shaving less than four times a week