can i be real with you guys for a second. do i have permission to speak my truth without being flayed alive. just for a moment. the way many of you talk about zuka makes me think you guys don’t actually enjoy their relationship. people will be like “oh i love how it’s grumpy x sunshine because zuko is a little grouchy grouch and sokka is funny and flirty and bubbly” and i’m just like……. in what world?????????? i don’t think you guys ship zuck actually i think you guys just wish you could ship zukang without being perceived as weird for age gap reasons. but in no world is zucchini a ship wherein sokka is emotionally uplifting zuko thru the power of love and friendship. they’re literally both suicidal freaks. and yet people love making them not only as boring as possible, but also giving sokka a personality transplant (aang’s personality, to be specific) because they hate the source material or they just see conventionally attractive teenage boys and black out or who knows what. but it’s okay you guys can just ship zukang if that’s really what you want out of their dynamic. i won’t judge
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im gonna start a fight; and, at the same time, i need you to take this in the most good-faith way possible, but:
videos that involve body-checking and intentionally (and uncritically) show a mealplan of an unhealthy number of calories are just a revamped version of pro-ana food diaries.
and yeah, i know there's arguments. i address some of them under the cut. but at the end of the day, we're just coming back to romanticizing mental illness; we've just found a better platform for it.
this is already something we've done. we knew it was wrong and tried to stop it. and tbh. it just wasn't enough.
there are people who argue "well, what if you have an eating disorder, you can't help it if you don't eat!" except that as someone with an ED; we are not infants. we know what we're doing. part of having an ED is that you are like, maybe too self-aware. even if we can't help our own food choices, we don't need to fucking romanticize the disorder - something we've been warning you about since 2013. there are hours of setup, filming, and editing that go into these videos. they do not happen to fall into place randomly. there is a reason they are pieced together to be beautiful, bright, inspiring.
there's this woman who pretty much only posts daily plans under a normal amount of calories, and everyone defends her saying but it's better than nothing! and i'm like. except she opens those with images of her showing off her body and provides no context in the video or caption that suggests that she believes what she's doing is unhealthy. she has hundreds of thousands of followers on a platform designed for young kids and teens. i refuse to believe that by accident her content just happens to be cheery advice on "healthy" versions of starving.
for any other symptom of mental illness, we would be incredibly enraged by this kind of placid acceptance of a "tips and tricks" fast-start guide. imagine if people posted pink & pretty videos saying "best places to cut yourself" as if it was a fucking storytime. we, as a society, are so fucking fatphobic that we would rather accept blatantly harmful displays of self harm than admit that we are obsessed with a hyper-thin body type.
i am not suggesting someone never talks about their disorder. i talk about mine. actually, it's a plot point in my book.
here's the difference: i recognize it's a fucking mental illness. i am very careful to never mention a specific weight, eating pattern, or calorie plan. i always make sure to position it as something that ruined my fucking life. i do not put cheery music in the background and hearts and sparkles over my worst moments. i do not film it in bright light. i do not start each passage with an image of a thin body followed by "here's how to look like her."
eating disorders should not be framed as aspirational. and the problem is that society worships the "after" image, so long as you don't get too sick. there is a reason so many people who quit being "influencers" will later admit - i wasn't eating well that whole time; an obsession with food was completely destroying my life.
we let any uncredited, uncertified person write the most backwards, fucked up shit about how to get the body you desire! because the underlying, secret belief is: well, at least they're thin! and the real thing that fucking gets me each time - they make fucking money off of it. their irresponsibility and societal harm literally pays off for them.
"why do you care so much." "don't like it don't look." "so what if people experiment with new ways of thinking of food?"
thank you for asking. we're about to get extremely personal. it's because when i was 18 i discovered "thinspiration"/"thinspo." and it absolutely influenced, shaped, and codified my pre-existing eating disorder. i went from having some troubling habits and traits to being incredibly unwell within what felt like a matter of days. there were actual pages designed to train me on how to have an ED correctly. it was all so suddenly easy. i was sick; and the nature of the illness meant - i wanted to be sicker.
it takes an average of 7 years for a person to fully recover. i know this personally - even now, 10 years from the worst of it, i still fucking struggle. i am so much happier now and i eat what i want and i literally don't think about food at all (19 year old me would shudder) and yet - i still fucking know the calories of plain toast with butter.
an eating disorder is one of the deadliest types of mental illness. over 1 in 4 people with an ED will attempt suicide.
and i'm sorry. i just do not see the exchange rate of "high rate of engagement" versus "the value of a human life."
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Affirming Luffy is aroace and using it as an excuse to talk shit about a ship is both fucked up and just extremely wrong. And I'm saying "wrong" in the sense of "actually not accurate" because Luffy is not canonically aroace. It is a very popular headcanon and he does seem uninterested in both romance and sex. So much you could even say it's coded. But inside of that term, which happens to be a spectrum, by the way, there are infinite possibilities and different ways of experiencing both aromanticism and asexuality. Affirming Luffy denies relationships like those completely is both inaccurate in canon and also extremely harmful for the aroace community because he could still be canonically aroace and want those relationships. Maybe in different ways. Maybe with little to no frequency. But still, saying it's "wrong" to ship him with people that way is insulting to the aroace community and to the fans of Luffy ships. Not to mention that the people who often use a character being "aroace" as an excuse (I'm referring to when the character is not canonically uninterested completely in those relationships, by the way) are not even aroace themselves. They use our identity only in negative situations. They speak about being allies, but only mention our existence when it comes to harmful statements and ship wars that don't even matter. There's so much you could say about Luffy being aroace! So many possibilities about his way of seeing the world and experiencing love in different ways! And yet, people decide to infantilize his character and make a whole deal out of him not knowing what sex is and being an innocent baby who doesn't know what masturbation is. He's nineteen. He's a pirate. He is not stupid, thank you very much. He knows what he's talking about, whether he wants to do it or not is a whole other story and it depends on your views on him. And infantilizing him only comes from a place of infantilization of the aroace identity itself, and it's so, so fucked up. Of course, these people are also the ones who treat him like a baby and excuse themselves by saying "those are neurodivergent traits" when they probably aren't even neurodivergent themselves. It's disgusting. And also, as a reminder, do not post hate comments about a ship in its tag. It's really mean. Hope I made things clear <3
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you guys ever think about how shadow was manipulated and used by people his whole life. not just that, but almost exclusively used by people who are technically his family. constantly having his emotions preyed upon and being tricked into doing terrible things. being told his whole life who he is and what his purpose is by other people. being dehumanized and treated as just a weapon rather than an actual person, to the point where that's how he viewed himself. identity and autonomy are soooo fucking integral to shadow's character and it makes me crazy
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more and more i become of the opinion my dogs are not reactive to strange dogs but in fact it is unreasonable to expect them to NOT be reactive when the dogs we pass are unwalked, understimulated rural hellions that thrash at the windows of their houses, bark at us and follow us for entire lengths of properties, snarl at us, run at us with tense body language etc.
is this because a neighbor (who does skijor!) moved in half mile down the road from us a half a year ago with the most polite, unreactive dog that my dogs glance calmly at as they walk by? as it is unrestrained (no underground fence) on the property? absolutely is.
is this because a few years ago a neighbor's very nice pitbull mix got out and when it walked up to us with polite calm body language my dogs reacted just as calm and we were able to walk this dog home? absolutely is.
like i am a human woman and have lived in areas with much larger populations than i do now. i remember being followed by strangers, yelled at by strangers in aggressive ways. it made me tense and yes...reactive in those moments to ensure my own safety and needs were met. but was it my fault for having to react that way? To call friends and family and be on the phone any time that i walked alone? to check in when i got to where i was going? to bring pepper spray and iron knuckles to walk less than 10 minutes away from home? I don't think it is. Rather it's the failure that allows that behavior towards me which is at fault. i should not have had to carry those things with me. or call a single soul.
same with my dogs. my dogs aren't reactive, i'm just the only person who walks my damn dogs in my rural neighborhood. even though we can walk for 4+ miles either way on safe dirt roads out of our driveway before we reach pavement. nobody else. walks. their. fucking. dogs. yes i manage my dogs behaviors, it can be embarrassing when they get riled up, but know what? it is not their fault so many other dogs fucking SUCK. and it is not those dogs' fault that they suck either. i encountered more politely behaved dogs when i lived in the suburbs and city than i do now because those dogs at least had some sort of experience with being around other dogs (passing them on the sidewalk even) out of necessity. Rural people truly just throw their dogs outside and expect that to be enough. if you're lucky they install a little underground fence that will maybe keep fido in the yard (like uwu WE don't want to have a look at a fence and we're going to make all our neighbors GUESS if our dog might run into the road at them uwu).
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