#But if you're a fan who's still mixing real world politics in with your fandom blogs right now and think real boots on the ground

[heartshapedcreaturefromcriptoon]

Going to some bitches blog via someone else's Hazbin blog, because I tried to like/reblog their meta but tumblr wouldn't let me, and then I find out the reason why it wouldn't let me is because the OP of the meta apparently blocked me, but I've never seen or interacted with them before, but OP has like a video game icon and a fucking moving gif video game graphic of like a damn nuclear explosion for a header on top of that going off anyway, and I'm trying to read through her other Hazbin posts but I can't focus, because I'm distracted by a goddamn fucking nuclear explosion taking place above me that won't stop and just as I'm thinking "OP, that was such good meta why would you hurt my eyes and brain like this? Alas, you have a video game character for an icon, I should've known!" and in all my disorientation from that seizure trigger waiting to happen, I happen to glance at the upper right corner of her blog and clock there's no follow button for me, and it's just like, "Alright, your loss, Toots! Have fun endangering disabled people by being yet another person in this fandom obnoxious enough to keep some tacky moving gif as your header and actually think that looks good in the year of Our Lord Alastor Hartfelt 2024, I hope you make your Journey To The Light soon! ^_^ <3"

... It was probably my posts tagged with ace discourse god knows these gamer bitches never actually have any, l o l...

[scumashling]

Welcome newcomers! You can call me Ash (they/she).

About this account

•i made this account after realizing I've been into whump for years without knowing it and discovering that I'm not alone in finding comfort in fiction about characters being put through emotional and or physical hell. I've often struggled with intense shame related to my interest in whump, especially as it's tied to my own trauma, so learning about this community has felt like a huge weight off my chest.

•fan of: defiant whumpee, intimate whumper, Lady whump, living weapon, non con body modification, drugged Whumpee, revenge whump, dehumanization, fantasy whump,Bastard whumpee, religious whump, Whumpee turned Whumper, Bad Caretaker and nsfwhump,

•I'm fairly new to tumblr and am still trying to get a feel for how things work around here, both in terms of the people and the site itself, so I apologize in advance for any possible future faux pas. I'm also a novice writer and still building my confidence in it, but I do I intend to post some of my own fiction, art, and memes.

•I'm in too many fandoms to count but currently you can expect stuff related to Chainsaw Man, Berserk, Slay the Princess, The Boys, and Delicious in Dungeon

•DNIs: I don't intend for this to be an overtly political account, and i'm not into policing people's behavior so giving a list of opinions/positions I find morally objectionable and demanding you keep away from my account if you hold them isn't my style. If I think something you posted is wack then I will simply unfollow or block you, because I am an adult who knows and enforces their own boundaries. That being said, I am a leftist (socially, economically, foreign policy wise) and related themes are more then likely to show up in my fiction, so if you have a problem with that my account probably isn't for you. The one exception to the DNI is Zionists (including "progressive" two staters) in which case, fuck Israel, fuck genocide, fuck you for supporting it, you're a N@zi, Long Live a Free Palestine 🇵🇸

•WARNING: there will be non con stuff posted on this account, as well as general content related to abuse, kink, trauma and addiction, as well as the occasional gore post. I will use appropriate tags/cws but if that is not something you can handle, or just not something you're into hearing about, please take care of yourself and disengage. I use fiction to cope with my own history and truly do not want anyone else to be harmed by it

•I do not consider myself proship or antiship and as far as I'm concerned yall both have some weird people on your side. Basically as long as you aren't being creepy or harassing anyone, have common sense around media literacy/ engaging with fiction as fiction, but don't use the fact that it's fiction to avoid thinking about real world implications/themes, you are welcome on my page.

some facts about me:

•im a nonbinary femme lesbian who's currently studying fine arts.

•I'm mixed (Asian and white)

•I'm a 22 years old

•I was diagnosed with autism at age 18. Some of my special interests include manga, horror, feminist theory, animation, media analysis, mycology, vampires and cooking.

•i adore poetry, my favorites are Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath, Ozymandias by Percy Shelley, and She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo (specifically the canto Drowning Horses)

•I have been drawing for 7 years

[amplifyme]

So I had to drag my ass off the couch and to my desk to share this. I know most of y'all won't give a damn. I don't care. This excerpt of a piece of Beauty and The Beast fanfic was written by my mentor, Nan Dibble. Look her up sometime. Her book "Plot" (under the pen name Ansen Dibell) is still a standard in writing classes all over the world. She also wrote two pro BATB novels, as well as several others in the sci-fi genre. She dabbled in the Buffyverse, too.

Nan could write Vincent like no other BATB writer in the fandom. Hers is the one I compare all others to, most especially my own. And she took a character we all-season fans had caught only wonderful glimpses of in S3 and expertly filled in all the missing pieces of Diana Bennett, Vincent's second love, an NYPD detective. This is from the story Inside Out from her Acquainted With the Night series. (Drop me a message if you want a link to it).

All you need to know is that Vincent is a fully functioning empath, the half-lion warrior-scholar heir apparent of a community living in the tunnels below New York City. As he and Diana grow closer, he unconsciously awakens that same latent gift in her (with a kiss, naturally) and it almost kills her. After a three month separation enforced by Vincent, he's taken her down to the deepest levels of the tunnels to keep her out of danger and teach her how to build the barriers she'll need to keep her empathetic abilities from overwhelming her in the world Above. Diana starts us out here:

"What I'm getting at is, we're different. You and me. And things are gonna get real mixed up if you're doing what you think I want when I really don't care, and I'm doing what I think you want when you'd really like something else but you're too polite to say so. What I mean is, we gotta say what we mean here. Be who we are. Agree that different is OK, no apologies, no empty politeness.”

            He met her eyes then, his own grave and very still. After a long minute, he returned his attention to his mug. “You ask something... very difficult.”

            “So it'll be difficult, then. I'll try. Will you?”

            Medium silence. Then, with a judicious finality, he set his mug back on the tray. “Yes.”

            A small word, but one with implications she suspected they'd never be fully done exploring. A word that committed them both, but especially him, to an honesty she'd enforced against all comers and he'd spent his life publicly ducking for the sake of peace. For the sake of acceptance. And stuffing the hard truths away for the Other to gnaw at.

            Softly, he added, “One of the things I love about you is that you force me beyond myself.”

            The comment startled her worse than the one about time. She felt the blush rising in her cheeks. She wasn't used to blunt compliments, matter-of-fact avowals of love. They caught her flat-footed, not knowing what to say.

            Smiling slightly, eyes downcast, he said, “And your honesty. Forthrightness. And that you are lovely in your bones, so that there is a grace in your least movement, arising as it does out of such stillness. And that even in fear and uncertainty, you are endlessly brave, endlessly kind... May I say such things to you sometimes, Diana? Even though you would rather I did not? For they are true. And I like to say them.”

            Her burning face felt about the same shade as her hair. But fair was fair. Couldn't open that door and then gripe about what came through. “Then I'll try to get used to it. `Lovely bones': my God!”

            “An image from a poem,” he admitted. “By Theodore Roethke. `She moved in circles, and those circles moved...' I have thought of it often. And was sad to know I might never say it to you. You do not like love spoken, as I do. Keeping the silence is sometimes difficult. And a sadness to me.”

            Now it was she who had to take a couple of minutes to collect herself. Then she said, “After that, `You smell real nice' comes out sounding pretty dumb.”

            He glanced up, surprised. “You like that? About me?”

            “Crazy about it. Especially when you'd come through the skylight, been rained on a little. Wonderful, the smell of it in your hair. Or after the bathing pool. It was things like that I missed. So much, sometimes, I didn't think I could stand it. And your voice. Your being there. Everything. Dammit.” She knuckled her eyes.

            The prickly moonlight feeling had started up again, firefly sparks glimmering delicately between them.

            He said, “I have found that one does not love in general, but in the particulars. Moments. As now. I am accustomed... to having only words. But there are other eloquences.”

I mean, c'mon! This is so romantic it makes me want to curl up in a ball and weep. I'm such a sap. 🥹

[jyndor]

(Imperialism etc anon) Ok I get where you're coming from! Thank you for being understanding. While Zutara is obviously not inherently racist or anything there are zutara interpretations that *are* racist (example: fire lady katara which I can get into) and it does need to be acknowledged that Zuko's status as fire nation royalty does create a power imbalance between him and Katara. Now, this is a conversation that has a lot of nuance to it but it seems like the people harassing you are (1/2)

(2/2) just repeating some genuine critique they saw without understanding what it means just to say that they're right, harassing people in the process. I did not have that context when sending that first ask and I apologize, since anons harassing you and others are clearly doing it out of bad faith. I just didn't like the leveraging of concepts that really matter in real life (colonialism, etc), ykwim? But I get what you were trying to do.

hey anon I’m finally getting to you after 84 years XD

so first off, I want to be careful about how I approach this because I understand that as a white person (even if my ancestors experienced imperialism) in the US I absolutely benefit from imperialism and don’t want to like, idk, whitesplain XD so if anyone gets annoyed with any way I say anything, just lmk and I’ll rework it. and I also do understand that these are real world issues that are far more consequential than messaging in media (although I do think it’s very important that we challenge messages in media because of media’s influence on our thinking and politics).

but before I talk about zuko and his relationship to fire nation imperialism, and then later fire lady katara and why it isn’t INHERENTLY racist but definitely can be, I want to talk about the atla fandom and how we got here. like, why I assume that most anons who come at zutara shippers are asshats acting in bad faith. if you already know fandom history, skip this section.

1. atla and the fandom has always been kind of shitty and racist

so IDK if everyone is familiar with the history of the ship war in atla fandom, but it’s regarded as one of the nastiest ship wars in fandom history which I agree lol. atla’s creators were some of the first to interact with the fandom the way they did - back then it wasn’t all that common for creators to get into twitter feuds with fans and boundaries were respected more than they are now imo. but for better or worse, and it is a mixed bag, bryke interacted with fandom a lot. certainly at cons but also on social media.

but honestly things really got extra mean in fan spaces when bryke made a “joke” atla season 4 slideshow out of fan art (some of which was really sexual in nature and totally inappropriate) that mocked fans’ creations, but especially zutara fanart and zutara itself. it was pretty tasteless especially considering how most zutara fans were teen girls, and featured some art of sokka saying that if you think zuko and katara would be good together, you’re doomed to have failed relationships. that’s where the whole “dark and mysterious” bs came from, which does describe some zutara fic but not even most of it lol. I actually do respect bryke a lot despite my criticism of them, but I don’t think I’ll ever get over that shit. like even if you hate zutara, even if it’s a joke, we were kids. and they were adults, and the whole thing was nasty.

however, the ship war was chaotic and messy, but it does feel worse now. maybe it’s because back then the fandom was MOSTLY teens and kids, and I don’t think that’s true now. we were all trying to prove our ship was best with like, content from the show and theories and all that, and now it’s like... whose ship is ~problematic lol it’s a show by white us americans appropriating from various cultures impacted negatively by us/british imperialism that they then profited off of, of course it’s racist. that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about that, and in fact many poc have been saying this shit for years - that atla is racist and colorist at many times (guru pathik anyone?) and no one really listened.

if fans are complaining only about zutara, then I’m automatically writing them off as being insincere or ignorant. and since most of these people are anonymous, I have no idea if they are having substantive discourse about colorism in avatar or cultural appropriation (even if it is mostly appreciative). if you are on anon, I have no context about what you actually think except for what you give me. and that definitely is how I view anons in general but especially within the atla fandom because for all 13-ish years I’ve been in it, it’s been messy. that’s why zutara fans have isolated ourselves from the rest of fandom, because the rest of fandom has been really nasty to us. like did we give back some nastiness? absolutely.

but I would hazard a guess that most anti-zutara shippers don’t know about the conversations we have had in this community to make it safer for people of color, conversations that centered poc and woc especially. hey, that’s okay - not to compare zutara to r*ylo because eurgh but like, idk what discourse the r*ylos have about their community. no idea, I don’t go looking for it. and I don’t go to the tags and harass r*ylos - even though they harass the fuck out of everyone else.

2. so zuko and his privilege

undoubtedly zuko as fire lord is in a fairly privileged position LMFAO. but during the show zuko is very clearly exiled - he holds very little political power in the fire nation EXCEPT for during the first season when he is in command of a ship that ozai gave him on a punishment quest lol like yeah he does terrible things and he of all people would not excuse his actions even if he was a traumatized kid, that’s the point of his arc - that he got some exposure to the rest of the world and worked to be better. and the only reason he was exiled at all was because he cares about people - he didn’t question fire nation supremacy at 13, but he sure did question the morality of his people being lead to slaughter.

but after zuko and iroh defect from the fire nation and stop hunting aang, he has next to no power, in any kind of way. like the guy is a political refugee. and yes, he goes back to the fire nation for like five minutes before realizing that he hates everything about fire nation hegemony and that he wants to end his father’s reign of terror, like that isn’t exactly someone who is going to be well esteemed by the powerful elites when he returns and takes the throne.

and I disregard the comics because they suck lol but zuko does have power as the fire lord, but he limits his power. like compared to ozai, phoenix asshole? azula? for the rest of the world, zuko is kind of an ideal leader for a former colonizing/imperialistic nation to have - someone who worked to end that tyranny, who is anti-imperialist, who believes in justice and equality, who wants to make things right for the peoples who his family oppressed.

I do think it is important to talk about power dynamics and imbalances in relationships - for instance, one could argue that mai is at a significant disadvantage in her relationship with zuko. sure she is from a powerful family but not as powerful as zuko’s. sokka? hah forget it. he’s just as disadvantaged as katara is politically speaking. toph? well, she’s definitely not as powerful politically as zuko - her family tried to silence her for years because of her disability. and oh, she’s disabled so it might be ableist for zuko to strike up a relationship with her when they’re both adults. forgetting of course that toph and sokka and katara and suki and mai are not going to be shy about their wants and needs, that these relationships are not likely to be coercive by nature of the show they’re in and the characters they involve. this is not bill clinton with monica creepiness. like, you’d have to write the relationship that way.

the only person who arguably has more political power than zuko is aang. I guess zuko can’t ever be in a relationship with anyone other than aang. and zuko’s family massacred aang’s people so I guess we can’t ship zukaang. now I know you’re not saying that, context matters. power dynamics are important. but you can’t take away the agency of characters - katara, who is essentially a princess, has agency and can choose who she wants to be with. strictly speaking, aang is more powerful than anyone in terms of political power - he’s the avatar - and of course the dynamic is different by nature of aang not being from a line of oppressors, but there still is a power imbalance in their relationship. and I don’t know how many k/ataang shippers have discourse~ on that. not that I really feel like they NEED to, um idk what they talk about lol I’m not in those circles.

3. fire lady katara is in the eye of the beholder

so fire lady katara is not inherently bad or racist, it’s essentially like saying michelle obama shouldn’t have been first lady of the us (now I get that like the obamas being in power didn’t mean black people are not marginalized lol). you can have conversations about whether or not individual versions of fire lady katara are fucked up, and I’m superrrr open to that because I’ve seen it be kinda shitty before. i’m just gonna leave this link to @shewhotellsstories and her post on this.

but often times katara as fire lady is very dominant in global/fire nation/water tribe politics, she’s a game changer ambassador (that is probably the most popular headcanon I see), she holds on to her culture (and many fans have designed her being in her wt colors, zuko is respectful af to her, she and zuko spend extended periods in the swt, etc. like... it just depends on the way it’s written.

also leaving this response by @avatarnerdkiller to the idea of katara being a prize figurehead.

anyway, thanks for your patience anon and I am curious to see if you see this or even feel like responding after all this time XD