#also just as much as it isn't my word to reclaim i also don't think it's mine to censor when used by someone who's had it used against them

[purpledemonlilyposting]

Oh good the Lorch is sending herself asks about me again.

[Lily's Post]

Oh yeah Lily calling marginalized people a "pick me" for not having the same exact opinions as you doesn't make you look bigoted at all.

Unlike you I don't think children's cartoons are activism. And my pointing at that some people like to try to downplay the lesbian themes in Steven Universe, or at least the way lesbians interact with the themes of the show, actually has nothing to do with the show itself.

Hey Lily did you know I also really don't like the word queer being thrown around, refuse to call myself that because it means strange and also dislike "anti-assimilationist" types?

Speaking of which:

[Lily's Post]

Yeah I say that about the kids telling me queer has been "reclaimed" for me. I would think you'd agree, Lily.

Those are two completely different concepts you dumbass. We can have gay content in mainstream media without it being insulting dreck driven by rainbow capitalism.

Lily is the one who basically wants the Hayes Code back. She wants every show and movie to tell her who is good, who is bad, what to think and for the bad guy to get thrown off a cliff at the end.

Lily just because those are the only two pieces of media YOU know I like doesn't mean that's all I like or have ever seen. Have you seen But I'm a Cheerleader? How about Saving Face?

Hey Lily if you'd actually watch my responses to you:

No I sneer at shows with bad depictions of gay characters when they have bad depictions of gay characters. Especially when they break their own spines patting themselves on the back for it.

Are you trying to get ahead of my VOD you falsely struck going back up on Thursday? You know the one where you said an early 2000's flaming queen stereotype in some shitty Alicia Silverstone vehicle was super good "gay rep" because you had some retarded need to paint a narrative that Canadian cartoons "did it first"?

The whole "she's just mad other shows are outpacing things she likes" lol it isn't a competition, dawg. That's you, Lily. That's how you think.

This is how I know its a self ask.

Yeah that's why in my reaction to James Somerton's somehow EVEN WORSE takes on Utena than yours I kept saying things like "Utena isn't really that hard to understand it just tells it's story in a very abstract way".

Also if you think the Sword of Dios is "the sword of patriarchy" you really didn't get it but much like James here I doubt you ever even watched it, Lily. I look forward to your "In a Nutshell" video where you will read out TVTropes with zero context and get everything wrong.

Lily I hadn't watched the show fully in over 15 years when I made my very first video on you. I wasn't even expecting to talk about Utena you just went on a tirade about it in the middle of your 2023 Steven Universe video.

In fact, the reason I even cut that video in the first place is I was so impressed with my own recall of the show. And then it got 5k hits out of nowhere on my then completely unestablished channel because people just hate your takes that much.

And now making fun of you has paid for my new GPU and CPU. No Man's Sky is running great and I'm ready for Dragon Age Veilguard so cheers!

[a-queer-seminarian]

An excerpt from Eli Clare (1999) exploring the language used against and used by disabled & queer folk. TW for the r word.

_

"Handicapped, disabled, cripple, gimp, retard, differently abled. I understand my relationship to each of these words.

I scoff at handicapped, a word I grew up believing my parents had invented specifically to describe me, my parents who were deeply ashamed of my cerebral palsy and desperately wanted to find a cure.

I use the word disabled as an adjective to name what this ableist world does to us crips and gimps.

Cripple makes me flinch; it too often accompanied the sticks and stones on my grade school playground, but I love crip humor, the audacity of turning cripple into a word of pride.

Gimp sings a friendly song, full of irony and understanding. Retard on the other hand draws blood every time, a sharp, sharp knife.

In the world as it should be, maybe disabled people would be differently abled: a world where Braille and audio-recorded editions of books and magazines were a matter of course, and hearing people signed ASL; a world where schools were fully integrated, health care, free and unrationed; a world where universal access meant exactly that; a world where disabled people were not locked up at home or in nursing homes, relegated to sheltered employment and paid sweatshop wages. But, in the world as it is, differently abled, physically challenged tell a wishful lie.

...

Queer, like cripple, is an ironic and serious word I use to de- scribe myself and others in my communities. Queer speaks volumes about who I am, my life as a dyke, my relationship to the dominant culture. Because of when I came out-more than a decade after the Stonewall Rebellion-and where-into a highly politicized urban dyke community-queer has always been easy for me. I adore its defiant external edge, its comfortable internal truth. Queer belongs to me. So does cripple for many of the same reasons.

Queer and cripple are cousins: words to shock, words to infuse with pride and self-love, words to resist internalized hatred, words to help forge a politics. They have been gladly chosen — queer by many gay, lesbian, bi, and trans peoples, cripple, or crip, by many disabled people. ..."

- Eli Clare in Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation (1999)

[valeechtine]

Having a realization but I like. Cannot think of a way to post this and phrase it in a way that won't IMMEDIATELY make people jump me

[roboticchibitan]

I remember when same sex marriage was legized in my state (3 years before obergefel vs Hodges which legalized it nationwide). It won by a very narrow margin.

People who had taken care of me when I was young, people who were like second parents to me, (along with half the other people I knew) were saying it was the end times because I could now get married. And I couldn't help but wonder... would those people have protected me, cared for me, let me play with their children, if they had known I would grow up to be queer?

I came out in 2011. I was lucky. My parents were accepting. My mom was clearly uncomfortable at first but she made it clear she loved me no matter what.

Except.

My dad didn't care if I was queer and assured me that didn't mean there was anything wrong with me (in a speech I didn't need to hear but I think he needed to say). But he still said "that's gay" and "that's faggy" anytime my little brother showed vulnerability.

And I was a lucky one. My father used homophobic slurs around me regularly. He turned the word gay into a slur with his homophobic mouth. And I was a lucky one.

When I came out publicly, my grandmother stopped speaking to me for a while. I'm lucky that she changed her mind. I'm lucky that my grandparents let me bring my girlfriend with me when I went to visit them in October. October of 2022 and I still consider myself lucky that my grandparents let my queer partner into their house. My other grandma likewise visited with us, and was polite and friendly, but she still refused to call my gf anything other than "your friend." Still lucky. Incredibly lucky.

People don't understand just how bad things were as much as ten years ago. When I came out at school, I was lucky. No one bullied me. No one shoved me into lockers or called me slurs. They all just stopped talking to me. I became invisible. I went to a small school. I was the only person who was out. Exactly one person talked to me the rest of the year. And I was a lucky one.

When I was in middle and highschool, the go to insult was "that's gay." I heard it constantly. Every day. Sometimes people said it to me to insult me, long before I even knew I was queer.

I was lucky because the worst that happened to me was social isolation and people using slurs around me or turning my identity into a slur. No one called ME faggy. No one beat me up behind the school bleachers. I was incredibly lucky.

I have experienced the word "gay" used as a slur far more than I ever heard the word "queer" used as a slur. Young "queer is a slur and only a slur" people need to know the world you live in is not the world the rest of us live in. Why is "queer" a slur but "gay" isn't? My homophobic father thought the word "gay" conveyed just as much offense and disgust as the word "faggot." So why is queer the horrible word that can never be reclaimed but people say "that's gay" as a compliment now? The loneliest I have ever felt was in a room full of teenagers who thought my identity was the height of insults. So why is gay fine but queer isn't?

I am a fat butch queer and I do not hide that. My shoes have a pride flag on them. I have a masculine haircut and wear men's clothes. I look queer.

And I am afraid. I dress like this anyway, because I want other queer folks to know I am a safe person. I dress how I do partially because I like it but also partially so any queer person in the room, no matter now closeted, can see me and feel a little bit safer. Because I will protect other queer people with my life if need be.

Because I am openly and visibly queer and live in a world where being queer can get you killed. Because it can. Gay bashings still happen. The alt right are getting bolder in their violence, and that includes homophobic/transphobic violence. There are organizations in the US that are actively pushing to make homosexuality punishable by death in Africa. They know they could never accomplish that here. But they would if they could. People want us dead.

Young people need to understand that. And they need to understand that the people who did the most work to free us from criminalization were queer. They identified as queer. And they weren't the perfect law abiding queers toeing the line of what's acceptible. Because being queer itself was illegal. You could end up on the sex offender registry for being gay. In fact, there are queer people who are STILL registered as sex offenders just because they were queer in 2001. Pride wasn't a permitted parade with wells Fargo floats. It was angry queers illegally marching down the streets, screaming "We're here. We're queer. Get used to it."

Being openly queer is a radical act. It is still a radical act.

I did not live through Windsor vs the united states, the referendum 74 debate, my father punishing my brother for being human with homophobic slurs, and the pearl clutching fearmongering about "the gay agenda" (that was a go to phrase for 2012 homophobes) for some LGBT kid to come at me with TERF bullshit they got off tiktok about how my identity is a slur and I'm a horrible person for using it.

I was a lucky one and I'm still saying "no, absolutely not" to this bullshit.

Queer is more inclusive. Queer accounts for any possible fluidity because people change. Identities change. Queer is there for people who know they're Something Different but are not sure of the details yet. Queer is intentionally vague. When you're young you want everyone to know exactly who you are but as you get older you realize actually my identity is none of your business. In fact, sometimes when you tell someone your identity, you're handing them a bludgeon for them to hurt you with.

If you have trans classmates, you do not understand the world the rest of us grew up in. Trans people were not a public topic. They were not even acknowledged as existing by most people. I didn't know what being trans was until I was like 17. I'm nonbinary now and consider myself trans 10 years later.

And I didn't even have it that bad. But you know what? It still sucked and it was still hard and I can't imagine what it was like to grow up a decade before I did. I had it easy compared to most people.

If you can jokingly say "that's gay" when someone expresses queer love, then you can fucking handle people using the word queer as their identity.

The infighting and policing each other has to stop. You're oppressing queer people with this bullshit. It does not matter what words queer people use to describe themselves when there are people actively killing us. What are you doing? For fucks sake look at the bigger picture. Direct all that rage at our oppressors and the people who mean us harm. Queer people and he/him lesbians and bi lesbians and people who use neo pronouns and whoever else is the discourse of the day do not deserve this kind of treatment. Punch a homophobe and maybe you'll feel better.

[rorschachisgay]

i wish there was some nuance between "everyone has to love the word queer" and "if you don't like it you are a terf automatically". because the reality is i don't identify with the word queer and i never have. as a kid i was aware of it as a slur and as a teenager i started to understand it in an academic concept first (as in Queer Theory) but i didn't identify with it because in my mind it was like, a clinical, academic word. and then later as i got older it became an increasingly prevalent point of conflict around me.

im not arguing that terfs dont dislike queer as a group term, though speaking from a british perspective the majority of them here are very focused on removing the T from LGBT over arguing about queer as a term at all, so it doesnt really feel like a particularly important form of conflict over what is a very targeted erasure of trans identity Specifically.

and thats kind of partially why i struggle to identify with the term Queer. it is not specific. it does not describe or capture my identity. lately i have found much more identity in words like fag, faggot, transexual, which do relate directly to my specific identities and have a very long history in the community. and additionally, won't get fuckin sold back to me by coke.

like that's really all Queer feels like to me now, something that has now been packaged up as an easily marketable buzzword to be printed on t-shirts at Primark or used meaninglessly by Disney to pretend they care. it does not refer to the aspects of my identity that matter to me, it's not something that i ever claimed for myself, and now i am continually getting told that if i don't identify with it im bigoted against myself and my siblings.

"queer was reclaimed by everyone, it was reclaimed in the 80s". i actually don't feel like someone else gets to decide this for me? im not going to lie and pretend it was never used as part of the campaign for equality for decades and decades, it obviously has a crucial place in history, but now in popular culture it has become like. ubiquitous.

like ive said before i think words like fag and dyke can be used in a way that reflects our communal family and is a sign of camaraderie and that's also true of queer, but with those words it's extremely understandable when someone isn't comfortable with them and when someone doesn't want to identify with queer it's treated as a sign they're in the wrong.

idk this is so far from being a crucial issue it's barely worth talking about but i just really struggle with being told that i am in the wrong because i have my own complicated feelings about a word with a complicated history. in the grand scheme of things it's NOT that important but it does grate on my nerves to be told that theres zero room for any kind of debate or alternate opinion in this. like i just wish we didn't have to be so black and white as if the issue has no grey area or room for personal expression at all.

[lavernius]

Locus and Lopez vs. dehumanization and seeing your own humanity through someone else

AKA 1.5k words worth of me trying to justify a random pairing I've been trying to sell people on for 5 years. Feat. a lot of my own introspection on both characters, CW for mentions of abuse.

It's kind of easy to assume that Locpez as a ship only exists because Locus is one of the few people who understands Lopez and one of even fewer who has had an actual (off-screen) conversation with him with full mutual fluency, especially since they interact directly, like, twice in canon (Objects In Space and the "Holy shit he's bilingual" scene from The Federal Army of Chorus). To be honest, that was my initial reason for shoving them together whenever I got into RVB and there was literally no content for them because no one was really considering them together in any capacity but a brief, funny passing interaction.

I do think language is an inherent motivator in their relationship with each other. It's a catalyst. Spanish, of course, is perhaps the most obvious thing they share--Locus being a Latino man and Lopez being the same in a convoluted and meta-racist metaphor. Beggars, choosers: anyone who knows how I operate knows I lean into reclaiming their depictions for my own brown person machinations. For Lopez it's the beauty of meeting someone who not only understands him, but isn't going to belittle him for the language he speaks or imply it'd be easier if he learned English. Locus will just listen to him talk and respond without commenting on the language barrier; Lopez isn't exotic or abnormal or "broken" for it, he just speaks Spanish, big deal, Locus speaks it too.

For Locus, it leans more toward reminding him of who he used to be when he was a simpler and kinder person. His culture seems like a forgone part of himself in many ways, but even if only because he's so distant from his humanity that he doesn't remember HOW to embrace his culture, or what the point of cultural pride even is. Lopez is like, reverse culture shock for him, where Locus is very familiar with Spanish as a language--grew up with it, learned it young, whatever, he canonically understands it and given he's Latino it's easy to assume it could be his native language--but has divorced himself from it so much to be malleable to his abusers that hearing someone speak it so unabashedly feels new. It's the lack of it that makes it so foreign, but it's so ingrained into him that it's easy for him to just slip back into it.

And Lopez being so stubbornly proud of what he is plays into that language dynamic, yes--now that there's someone who will listen and not judge, he has room to be adamant and own his monolingualism, and having someone as aggressively, straightforwardly prideful as Lopez forces Locus to recognize the beauty in the language too--but it applies on a grander scale, which is what I suppose the point of this post is: Locus and Lopez don't just share Spanish, but also histories of abuse and dehumanization, of being overlooked as living, thinking things in favor of taking advantage of their skills. And the results of this abuse manifest differently in both of them, but they're alike in just enough ways that their differences stimulate each other into bettering themselves and reflecting on what makes them, dramatic pause, human.

Some of Lopez and Locus's defining personality traits to me are their shared low empathy (forcibly learned on both of their parts) and the way they feel so alien in any group they're a part of. They're people with a lot of potential who don't care how others see them (at their worst, especially in Locus's case), but are limited by someone who only sees them for their usefulness (Sarge, Felix) and doesn't truly see them as a person. Lopez may be a Red, but they don't really care about anything he says, so he's just a wrench to them. Locus has Felix, but he doesn't recognize that Felix has one-sided power over him and is keeping him on a short leash; he's a shield and a weapon. They're tools, they don't have feelings, and if they realize as much it's a fault in their programming, they can and have to be steered back into place.

They're reflective of each other in this way. However, they're not identical in disposition: Locus resigns very easily to what he's told to be. He had more hope once, made attempts to be humanitarian, but was swiftly taught that kindness is suicide and that the point is to survive, no matter the cost. It was easy for Felix to take advantage of him by saying they needed each other when Locus was at his worst, because having kindness ripped out of him gave Locus little else to rely on but his hands. Locus has no room for questions, because a rulebook is absolute. It takes a reminder of what he used to be to make him falter, but even when Santa is showing him one of the inciting incidents of his "soldier" mindset, Locus can't stop himself from resigning to the mindlessness that Felix and the UNSC have already taught him.

Lopez feels trapped and is hyper-aware of it. He'll listen, but only because there's nothing else in the world for him. He's subservient but not in the same way Locus is, because he's angry about his situation: he knows it's not fair, but what can he fucking do about it? He was made to be Red Team's mechanic, and every word he says falls on deaf ears. He carries this self-awareness like a shield, like a threat: he could do something, but there's no point because his nature as a robot defines him. All he has is a sharp tongue and his hands, and the Reds only need one of those things from him. He revels in being able to complain and reminds himself that he's meant for something greater, but he's so fatalistic that he won't take action.

The balance comes from this anger. They're so alike in how they see the world and how much life has mistreated them, but they don't fully understand each other despite it. Locus sees Lopez as privileged for having a team because Locus has never had people to belong with, but he doesn't understand that Red Team isn't a safe place for Lopez. Lopez thinks Locus is misguided for letting himself believe he could ever be reduced to a mindless weapon, because Lopez has only ever been an object and Locus can't comprehend what that's really like. They see each other for their imperfections first and foremost and it frustrates them mutually: "You could've fixed this sooner, you could've escaped the grief, why didn't you try?"

It's this back-and-forth that they both need in order to reflect on themselves. They're harsh people who don't want to be coddled and admonished, but they're not making forward motion on their own because they're both stubborn and tend to decathect before they even recognize they CAN feel. They refuse to see themselves as human, but they can only see the humanity in each other, and they're both so alike that it could make them hypocrites. For a robot, Lopez's anger is so potent that it's alive: Locus sees more feeling in him than he's ever felt in his own life. Locus wants to be a weapon so bad, but he doesn't realize an object doesn't have heart the way he does, doesn't mourn the years it spent under someone's thumb, doesn't want to fix itself.

They're both brutally honest and they both need brutal honesty. They get along WELL by nature of being as similar as they are, but they argue so much because they want to understand each other and don't realize they already do. They're mapping details of their reflections. It's great: Locus is so hurt that he can only see the damage he causes, Lopez is difficult to hurt and notoriously good at fixing things. Lopez wants true accountability and retribution and Locus has cultivated complicity and guilt to perfection.

After Felix, Locus needs room to command his own life and put others in place when they overstep his boundaries, but he's scared of becoming Felix, so he also needs an anchor to keep him grounded in reality and reasonable. Lopez has never had real control over his own life before and would kill to have the power to make small choices and do as he wants, but he's a very private person who also needs a lot of space to work. They balance each other out and know the other's limits so well that they can easily go "You're hurting yourself and I'm not going to let you get away with it."

It's about understanding yourself through someone else and vice versa. Realizing that you share so much that if they deserve good, you do too. Reclaiming pain, experiencing freedom, finding support. They will deconstruct each other to the metal and muscles and rebuild one another over and over again, and they'll never get it perfectly right, but they're both going to learn more and more as they go. Flawless navigation of a road you've driven a million times, forward and back, potholes and all.

[seaweedstarshine]

Hi! Long time no yap but I've been really bothered by this thing and I know you're just the person I can go to with this (even if we don't always end up agreeing at times).

I got into a tiff with someone in a comments section of a post that was about Amy (Which character do you think deserved to become a villain? or something similar). They brought up Amy's abuse of her boyfriend. I may have tried to defend Amy (key word is tried. I am officially rubbish at debating) but then I may have said something? Because they said that I (and apparently a lot of other fans) was excusing Amy's abuse because of her trauma. It got me stumped because isn't young Amy's treatment of Rory rooted in her trauma? Did I miss the memo where we separate trauma and abuse? Am I missing something?

That statement bothered me a lot because if there's one thing I never want to do it's defend an abuser. So here I am, humbly asking and hoping to clear the muddy waters.

Your really confused and disturbed moot, Tia 💌

TIA!!!!! Thanks for the ask 💌 , and I send you all the hugs.

Discussion of abuse, trauma, ableism, infidelity, and unhealthy relationship dynamics beneath the cut.

(First off… while I really appreciate your faith in my explaining skills <3 <3 <3 my passion for traumatized characters and mentally ill+neurodivergent rights doesn't make me especially qualified to fully clear muddy waters especially not knowing the full context, but I feel you, and what follows is my informed perspective!)

Speaking generally first, harm done in media is best examined by the impact on the audience, with a different lens than harm done to real people. While relatable experiences in media can be useful and validating and incredibly important, you can’t be “defending an abuser” when the abuse is fictional. It's actually normal for traumatized/ND/mentally ill people to project onto mentally ill villains, when villains are the only significant representation for those stigmatized symptoms in a media landscape that excludes and demonizes us simply for existing. RTD can't stop people who hallucinate from reclaiming the Master's Drums and projecting onto the Master, for example — 90% of the best Doctor Who psychosis fic by psychotic authors is about the Master, whether RTD likes it or not. It's not true crime.

(This is speaking generally. Amy Pond is very much not the Master.)

Abuse is a behavior, and there can be many reasons for it, but reasons based in trauma don’t make it not abuse (some forms of generational trauma can propagate abusive parenting styles, when the parent thinks abusive parenting is normal, or lives entirely vicariously through their child). This absolutely should not be taken to mean trauma correlates with abusive behavior; rather that abusive behaviors from traumatized people are more likely to present in specific ways.

Abuse is also a targeted behavior, based in control — not consistently displayed C-PTSD symptoms as seen in Season 5 Amy Pond through many aspects of her life. Mental health symptoms don't become abuse just because they hinder one partner from meeting the other partner's needs. Any life event can do that.

Without knowing the context of the arguments, this is the aspect of their relationship I've seen you talk about before (which I also feel strongly about), and what I assume is what you were debating? So, here I will talk specifically in regard to Season 5.

We all know Amy — she's never attached to Leadworth because she never wanted to leave Scotland, no steady therapist because none of them stick up for her, can't stick with one job yet her first choice is a job that simulates intimacy because her avoidant behavior (a known trauma response) isn't sustainable to her wellbeing. Rory knows her fears of commitment stem from her repeated abandonments, it’s why he’ll always wait for her, and it's why he blames the Doctor “You make it so they don't want to let you down.”, who apart from having caused a lot of her trauma, has actively taken advantage of her being the “Scottish girl in the English village” who's “still got that accent,” because he wants to feel important, so yeah, I think interpreting Amy's issues (and how Amy and Rory transverse them) as Amy abusing Rory indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of their relationship, as well as a misunderstanding of the (raggedy) Doctor’s role in Amy’s formative self-image (which of course she works through in Season 6, but I am sticking to Season 5).

Abuse is always based in control. That just doesn’t fit here. While Amy's detachment from her real life includes things like calling Rory her “kind of boyfriend” (which she is upfront about to his face; differing commitment levels isn't abuse, though it can be a relationship red flag for both parties IRL) — her Season 5 disregard of Rory’s feelings occurs only in response to the fairytale embodiment of her trauma. It's never a response to Rory; it's a response to the Doctor, who stole her childhood and led her by the hand to her death. She cheats on Rory with the Doctor in her bedroom full of Doctor toys, drawings, models, she made from childhood to early adulthood.

(And yes, like many repeatedly-traumatized people, Amy is prone to being sensitive and reactive. Take her “Well, shut up then!” line in The Big Bang; but given Rory responds to this by hugging her, clearly he doesn’t take it as her actually dismissing him. He knows her better than that.)

And by no means do I meant to imply this is fair to young Rory, poor Rory, who's left struggling with the feeling that his role in her life is in competition with the role of her trauma (aka the Doctor). But not every unhealthy relationship dynamic is unhealthy because of abuse. Labelling Amy's treatment of Rory in Season 5 more accurately isn't the same as excusing her harmful choices — but making mistakes is part of being human, Amy's mistakes are certainly understandable, and she works through them out of love for Rory.

If there's one thing to say about Moffat women, it's that Moffat allows his female characters the same grace that the male characters *coughTENcough* have always had, to hurt and struggle and make realistic mistakes and overcome those mistakes and to heal without being demonized.

Amy isn't perfect, but she is a fully realized character, and her story gives us a resonant depiction of childhood trauma.

[codenamesazanka]

what was the point of the i engineered your life reveal? it didn't have a resolution, and won't get one if shigaraki and afo are both dead now. not only that, shigaraki never got shattered in the first place? he didn't come back out of his own volition or reclaim his agency by himself?? it didn't change anything about deku's relationship with shigaraki. so what did it do other than to provide horikoshi with an easy way to kill shigaraki off.

Yeah, it does feel like an easy way to get rid of Shigaraki. Tenko got saved, but he came out of it still declaring he wants to be stay a Villain; he wants to be a Hero to the Villains. That will involve, yeah, destroying stuff again; that will involve making trouble for the heroes; that will involve helping people that society has decided should not be helped, should not be saved, so put that back where you found it.

How's Deku going to deal with that? How is he going to face off against a Shigaraki that isn't fueled by hatred and angry this time, but rather by a sort of heroism and love for his friends? Lucky for him, he doesn't have to! AFO came and shattered Shigaraki. Got rid of that annoying conviction too. No confrontation for Deku! No re-examining his values and beliefs and assumptions! Now he's only got AFO to punch into pulp.

I guess there's also the excitement of the 'twist'. Hot Dog! wasn't Horikoshi-sensei so clever? Isn't it great how shocking this was? Or people can pat themselves on the back for predicting it. Those are fun emotions for readers.

But yeah. What was the resolution? Shigaraki didn't come back via his own will or connections that tether him to the world or a journey of self-discovery or whatever. He didn't gain new insight and feelings towards his dad or family or personal history or beliefs or motivation or the future as informed by the past. He got shattered; but it's mentioned off-handed that Nana kept him together off-screen with no new insight or development to their fraught grandson-grandmother relationship; and now he can come back to help kill AFO for revenge, I guess. Is that reclaiming his agency? Idk. he dies right after because his body has been punched to pieces by Deku so he never gets to actually exercise any agency in the real world. Bummer.

And as you mentioned, love how Deku has no reaction to this. He just learned that the kid he just saved from tears and guilt and bloodshed over his dangerous quirk was actually give that quirk for a nefarious plot by AFO. Should he go back and revise any of his saving words? idk. Deku just found out that Tenko was literally conceived to be a vessel, that kid can be considered as someone who 'never had a chance'. Should that affect his approach to stopping Shigaraki? idk again. Not relevant to Deku's dynamic with Shigaraki.

Apparently not all that relevant to Shigaraki's character development moving forward either.

It really does feel like a way to get rid of the interesting, challenging villain to make way for the easily punchable, dismissible evil villain. Fight ended in three chapters and Deku never had to think or reflect or introspect much! good for him. Convenient this will also destroy Shigaraki's body so that's over and done too. Good work everyone. Horikoshi-sensei can finally go on vacation. I don't blame him for this, he deserves a vacation. I sympathize that he wanted the story to end. But man, my disappoint is quite immense.

[saberamane]

I would just like to share this lovely comment from someone on chapter 65 of 'We Were Born For This', it is just so great to see some just get it when you write something that isn't blatant or right in your face.

I've been binge reading this wonderful story over the past couple days, and when i got to this chapter i just had to comment. It feels almost like the culmination of... a lot of things desmond is overcoming, i don't quite know how to put it into words though i'll try (if it comes across awkwardly just keep in mind i absolutely adore this story with my whole heart, so it absolutely isn't intentional).

The way i'm thinking about it, is that we've been slowly watching desmond reclaim how to be a person, and this is one of the last Big Things that have been taken from him without any progress on overcoming it, so it feels like a big victory for desmond to find a way that feels 'safe' for him to explore this side of himself. While as an ace myself i'm fully aware sex isn't necessary for a fulfilling life, it is a completely different thing to have something forcibly stolen than it is to willingly give it up, so there's almost a feeling of pride in seeing desmond begin to grow past it. I also really liked the subtle dom/sub aspects you introduced, even if it was apparently an accident, because i've always felt like it was almost, natural, for things to go in that direction with characters like that. Let's see if i can put it into words, sorry if i ramble on too much...

Okay, so when you have that human weapon vibe from a character, it almost feels like having some sort of sub vibes (sexual or non-sexual) comes naturally, you know? Like, when someone has been built from birth to be nothing more than a weapon, with no wants or desires of their own, the idea of taking charge of themselves for no purpose other than to serve themselves would probably feel unnatural. Like, even when those characters heal and grow beyond just being nothing more than a weapon, that doesn't erase the past, doesn't change the fact that they feel more like they were /built/ than /born/, and that part of their being is always going to be there in the background. And it's its own kind of healing, to choose for yourself who you /want/ to guide and direct you, to willingly offer what was previously taken forcibly. To still be a weapon, but one wielded by gentle hands that you know would never hurt you, that doesn't even view you as the weapon you know yourself to be but instead considers you as the person with wants and needs you can only allow under their encouragement... still a weapon, but more than just a /thing/ to be used and thrown aside... the inherent eroticism of the weapon/wielder dynamic, is what i'm saying. I like my smut with a side of psychoanalysis, lol.

It was wonderfully executed as well, i must say. The smut was written in a wonderfully visceral way, and you could just feel desmond giving himself over so beautifully. Being a good soft dom apparently comes naturally to ezio, with his easy confidence and understanding of what desmond wants and needs, and sheer delight at providing it. Desmond being able to completely relax into it thanks to the mix of the pleasure (unfamiliar and taboo) with the feeling of being commanded (easy and safe). The shame and fear being countered by the comfort of a person he loves and wholly trusted being the one to guide him through it, turning it from something he's doing wrong and must be punished for, to something he's unquestionably doing right as ezio tells him how good he is for it, all while being considerate to hold himself back and not push desmond too far for his own wants and desires.

Basically, thank you very much for such a wonderful story, i am very happy to read this :)

[alisaint]

there's a difference between crying a lot and being a "crybaby." The accusation "crybaby" is something Will antis throw at Will a lot, but the difference between you and me is that you seem to say, "Hell yeah, he is!" whereas we say, "No, that's not true. Crying doesn't make you a crybaby."

crybaby typically has a negative connotation within culture. And I definitely disagree with the idea that will is powerless (not any more powerless than anyone else, pretty much everyone other than El is powerless... Mike is often powerless too) or "delicate" (he certainly doesn't want to be treated in that way, as he's made clear).

Is he liable to break? Maybe. Sometimes. But so are most of the other characters? I don't think he's more liable to break than others, and even if he is, party of his bravery is pushing through that hell.

perseverance IS a form of bravery. You can even argue that Will's internal struggles are a sign of his bravery precisely because he doesn't want to burden others with his pain. Mike is brave too, and I fully agree that he has more traditional knight in shining armor traits, and so the question of, "Who is braver?" then comes down to what kind of bravery you value more. Mike is also going through a lot too.

I wholeheartedly agree that Will is sensitive, but I think we disagree on what that means. I don't see Will's sensitivity as a limitation, so I don't think it should be combined with other terms that actually are seen as negative in one poison pill package.

And I don't think will's sensitive traits are a weakness at all. In fact, I actually think Will being unapologetically himself is one of the things that make him brave, and it's why I voted for him. He made an Alan Turing poster! But I think distilling him down to those traits and placing him in a stereotypical gendered box is misguided, and IMO it twists Will's positive traits into a weakness by exaggerating them/Flanderizing them. And when that happens, the people who DO see them as weaknesses pounce. And for good reason.

Because it's not Will! And Will is gonna be the hero in S5!

I do believe in nuance. My position is very nuanced. But when it comes to these polls it really does seem like people take sides, and there are two very different ways of seeing these characters. And the usual suspects tend to chime in for your "side" of the debate.

So in conclusion?

Will sensitive? Yes.

Will crybaby? Well, he certainly cries, but I wouldn't use that term.

Will powerless? Sometimes, but it's not a core trait.

Will "delicate?" Not a fan of that term. Nor is Will lol.

Will cowardly? Not a fan of that term either.

Will damsel in distress? Sometimes. Situationally. But again, it's not something he's defined by, nor is it something he wants to be.

Mike brave? Absolutely. He's the paladin!

Will brave? Hell yes!

Who is braver? Well, that's up for debate.

one thing you'll notice if you live in and interact with others in the world is that people will often take a pejorative word that is being thrown at them and reclaim it in order to render it powerless. will does cry a lot. because he's a sensitive gay boy, misogynistic people will opt for the low hanging fruit that is calling him a crybaby. by saying "yes, and? what's so wrong about a boy crying? especially when his life is shit and he has a million reasons to cry?" you're doing much more for him and everyone else that's faced similar bullying than you are doing whatever this is. turn that statement back on them. make them explain to everyone in the class why that's such a bad thing.

if will isn't powerless against those that attack him, then why doesn't he fight back? if he does hold power, why doesn't he wield it? is it because he's a coward then? or...? like, lol. he is powerless. the odds are stacked against him in every single way, both in a supernatural and sociopolitical way. it's also just not who he is. if he wasn't meant to be powerless, i don't think the duffers would've written him in such a way repeatedly in multiple seasons. he can't fight back against his bullies and he can't fight back against monsters. if his loved ones hadn't worked together against unimaginable horrors to save him, he would've died.

will does not have the ability (couldn't fire the gun; doesn't fight back), resources (hasn't used any superpowers to fight), influence (he was overtaken by the shadow monster; he is lower on the totem pole among his peers and sociopolitically), power (couldn't fire the gun; no powers like el), authority (lower on the totem pole; his father has more power over him; has a gentler, more passive personality), or capacity (again, gentler, more passive personality; couldn't fire gun; not a fighter) to fight back and win against the antagonists.

he's a character in a show. he was written and shown to be powerless against all that hunted him. he literally died in season one and was close to being lost again in season two. like... huh? and i never said he was more powerless than anyone else. stop jumping to conclusions and arguing with a made up version of me that exists only in your head.

will doesn't want to be treated like a baby that can't handle himself. he wants understanding, empathy, and support. not to be smothered or wrapped in bubble wrap. the only characters that manage to do this are mike and then jonathan after will shares this with him. still, will is sensitive. characters don't treat him the way they do other characters (and this is called having tact). lucas even tells max not to talk to him about anything that happened when he disappeared, because "he is really sensitive about it". will gets ptsd flashbacks. he freezes up and experiences a bodily reaction. he gets panic (?) attacks. he is susceptible to triggers, he requires careful handling, etc. he's tough! and he doesn't want to be babied! but he's treated sensitively because he is sensitive and this is unique to him. they don't roughhouse or bro out with him the way they do with other male characters. like. even the party has to go through mike to get to will when it comes to the more sensitive stuff lol.

when you say "but not more than the other characters" you're still agreeing with me. you're wasting time saying. again, you're making assumptions. fucking quit it. lord knows i'm saying enough as is! you don't gotta make up more shit!

the question of who is more brave comes down to what you define as bravery, not your values.

you'll find that a lot of definitions of bravery and brave mention courage. a lot of these definitions suit mike more than they suit will.

we both agree that perseverance is a form of bravery, that's what i meant by strength to survive all that he's survived lol, so idk why you wanna capitalize and act like i don't. i just think mike fits more of the definitions, the most popular and standard definition. this poll asks who's bravER not who's brave point blank.

…….. why would you ever think i view his sensitivity as a limitation? especially after i just said it's his strength and spoke extremely clearly? like. what the fuck are you talking about? and people absolutely do see his sensitivity as a negative. both in canon and in real life. why do you think they use crybaby as an insult? why do you think he gets bullied both by his peers and his dad? for the love of god, think about the shit you say and these points you're making instead of just trying to fight with me for no fucking reason.

he's not being placed in any stereotypical gendered box. i'm sorry for you and the people you'll meet if you really think that just listing his traits and things that have happened in the show is placing him in some box. it doesn't make him a girl to be sensitive or a former damsel in distress. it also doesn't make him a stereotype. which btw. you do realize people like that exist right? like. you don't even realize how homophobic you're being. people like that exist. stereotypes do not arise out of thin air. people will see those things and consider it a weakness and pounce BECAUSE THEY'RE HOMOPHOBIC AND MISOGYNISTIC. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD USE YOUR BRAIN AND READ THEORY AND HISTORY AND JUST FUCKING THINK.

will is sensitive, a crybaby, a former damsel, and so on and so forth and still he's going to be the hero. these are not contradictory statements. you say you understand nuance, and yet you spew all of this black and white lonnie bullshit. will is not a perfect mary sue cardboard cutout kind of character. he has strengths, weaknesses, positive traits, neutral traits, negative traits, he's been right, he's been wrong, etc etc. he's a fully-fledged character.

the only person trying to shove him into a box is YOU. the only person being homophobic is YOU. the only person assuming shit is YOU.

the question was who's braver. i looked up the definitions, thought back to canon, made my choice, and explained why. my argument that mike is more brave does not mean that will is not brave. it does not mean that he has never been brave and never will be brave. stop. being. willfully. obtuse.

[brother-one]

[Twitter repost]

Just because something was the last straw for me today...

On Kainé's intersexuality:

A (long) post, from an intersex person to you 💛💜💛

First of all! Why am I making this post?

I hope it doesn't seem out of nowhere, but let's start bit by bit.

I am making it not because I'm mad at anyone, but because I genuinely want you all to learn about who Kaine as a person, how she can be interpreted, and most details that can be taken and associated to her intersexuality, from an intersex perspective. There's A LOT of things I want to address in this thread, not necessarily all of them negative, but I do think the NieR fandom as a whole needs to get educated on intersexuality.

I can't speak over every single intersex person, but I can give my insight on this.

Now, the first thing I want to address:

1- Kainé, intersexuality AND transness.

Why is this first? Well, because there's a really big issue hiding in plain sight here: Intersexism, and therefore intersex erasure.

First on this, a detail that a lot of you know about, and yet it's not even close to EVERYONE knowing it: The use of the word "hermaphrodite" for an intersex person. Even if it's widely accepted by people as a whole, it is a slur against intersex people and even if some DO reclaim it, its casual use is not correct whenever you employ it to refer to an intersex individual, be it fictional or not. Not only is it considered insensitive, but it's also heavily inaccurate whenever used to describe an intersex individual, even if it may be in fact accurate for, in this case, Kainé.

It is a word a lot of us are uncomfortable with, and seeing a character who is one of the very rare cases of representation being associated with it doesn't really make it better. Especially since being intersex isn't just about the genital differences, but hormonal differences and such. Anything that doesn't conform to the SEX binary is considered intersex, usually also known as hyperandrogenism. I've seen people frequently agreeing that even PCOS can be considered an intersex condition, so there's also that.

Next, is the reduction of Kainé to either a transgender woman, or a transfem individual.

While these headcanons are completely okay and I personally have never minded them, there is an issue hiding here too.

It seems that people either don't care enough about intersex issues to do proper research, or they're blissfully ignorant about general facts on intersexuality.

Some of these facts are:

- Intersexuality isn't a "third sex" or an in between.

- Intersexuality does not NECESSARILY have to do anything with one's gender identity.

- It is completely, and I repeat, COMPLETELY okay to just call someone "intersex".

- Not every intersex person is transgender. Cisgender intersex people exist.

- Even if trans people and intersex people may relate to the other in certain aspects, they're nowhere close to being the same, or to share the exact same experiences.

- Every intersex person experiences gender and life differently.

- There are many, and I say, MANY different intersex conditions.

- Intersexuality is way more frequent than you may think.

And many other facts, really, but they would pretty much need another entire, separate thread to be listed.

Now, where's the issue I want to approach here?

Explained simply to non-intersex people:

Turning a headcanon like trans Kainé into something so widespread not only gives a totally different idea of what her character is from the start, but also gives a place for intersexism to rise. It is a way to force us intersex people into conforming within a system, a binary that EXCLUDES US and always has from the start. Because yes, the current ideas of identity are wrongly still binary.

I thought Kainé was trans from the start. I thought it was extremely cool to have such representation, being also a fellow trans person myself. Then I discovered she's intersex.

Then, everything felt unfair.

To have such an idea of something, then discovering the reality is very different to that idea didn’t feel right. Not because transness is bad because, again, I am trans myself, but because that just feels like everyone is forcing her into transness, when it doesn't have to be like that.

Intersexuality and transness can coexist without problem, the problem only manifests itself when you do not give those two the opportunity to even try and coexist. It is already hard by itself to embrace your body as an intersex person, and personally topping that with transness only makes it more of a struggle. And yet, in the end, everyone's experiences, feelings and identity will always be different to one another. Intersex people can decide to stay as the gender they were assigned (keyword here being assigned) at birth, they can decide to transition (or maybe they could've transitioned way before discovering the fact they're intersex), and they can also decide to just be intergender.

Our experiences and relationship with our body, and the way we perceive ourselves may be similar to the one of, say, a perisex transgender individual, but there will always be a gap between both.

To finish up with the first point, the general objective with this:

I want you all to understand that, while trans people need representation, it's not okay to erase intersexuality or to try and make us fit into your concept of identity. Intersex people are already stigmatized enough, and the last thing we need is erasure. Our voices as a whole are already heavily ignored, so the least we can ask from you is to not erase us. You can keep your headcanons (I encourage so!), but PLEASE don't forget about Kainé's intersexuality. Intersex representation is extremely important and needed, even if the character’s intersexuality may not be handled in the best way sometimes.

In summary:

That is pretty much it for the first point. Now, on to the second:

2- Kainé and body dysphoria.

Here comes a very important part, too.

Some parts of her character and dialogue can be interpreted as dysphoria, and also as a way of showing rejection towards another aspect of her body, since it’s possessed by a shade.

A very important dialogue in the first fight against Hook that I originally interpreted as body dysphoria is:

“She gave me the strength to deal with this goddamn mutant body! Do you know how long I’ve been like this? How much I loathe myself?”

This dialogue has been in my mind ever since I first played. And I still strongly believe it can be interpreted as dysphoria, I just acquired a different perspective on it after finishing NIER and doing a dive into what she is, as a character. While I don’t believe I have the deepest understanding of her, I think I have the main aspects of her character clear.

No one in the world could understand her.

Yet another thing on her I believe is important, is this:

“A heart and body in constant conflict.

Now, and even if she may or may not have dysphoria, here’s something that I think should be spoken of way more often - the fact that dysphoria doesn’t make you transgender. Even if it may be considered necessary in order to get certain medical treatments in the case of trans people, having dysphoria doesn’t make you trans, and not having dysphoria doesn’t make you not trans, either.

And loneliness was eating her alive.”

Because while it may not be part of, say, a main storyline game, if we talk about NieR (it comes from SINoALICE!), it does give us a really interesting sight into her. Even if it may probably refer to her struggle as being possessed, it sounds very familiar to the experience I know as dysphoria.

Kainé’s hatred for her body exists in a way where many reasons for it overlap. I think it could be narrowed down and represented like this:

I think it’s very important to note that Kainé, as a gestalt, wasn’t intersex. Somewhere in the process there was an error that made Kainé, as a replicant, intersex. Which doesn’t sound very good, if you think about it, but it gives you room to think about Kainé a bit differently.

Which takes us to my third (and probably last) point:

3- Kainé and identity.

Carrying on from a detail in the last point, we can see a clear, yet maybe not intentional mistake in her writing. The error of her becoming intersex.

While it can be read as intersexism, it is also rather understandable - mistakes and errors happen, especially if we talk about literally separating soul from body, and considering the fact that there were more defects in the transformation process too. Another very important fact that comes into picture is the different ‘generations’ of replicants, and the way that there have been multiple Kainés over time. So probably, since the system was already long-running by that point, that could be the reason for it.

Still, if we’re taking it the intersexism way - we have to understand that it is not and it will NEVER be caused by some kind of “error” or mistake, even if people have chosen to see it that way for a long time now. It is not an inconvenience nor is it something not meant to happen. It IS meant to happen, and there is much evidence that sex is variant - could go from slight differences, to more “noticeable” ones. Not just in humans, but in animals too.

People want to change something that just happens, that always has. In here, I beg you to take into account the fact that intersex CHILDREN are forced to go through surgeries to make them fit into the sex binary. Children are bullied, hated and seen as freaks just because they were born different. 

Sounds terrible, yes ? Well, thanks to this, many intersex people often feel more comfortable identifying as their own gender - intergender. Others stay cis, and others feel more identified with the term transgender.

Kainé is a hard to figure out case, since she had been and identified as a woman from the start, as much as she had been dehumanized or degraded by others. Because they didn’t even call her a man, for they didn’t think she was deserving of that. She wasn’t deserving of a gender - she was a freak, and that was all of it. Though it is a struggle that a lot of trans people go through too, for intersex people it often comes from society as a whole.

The rejection intersex people go through is there from birth, and the eagerness from others (who don’t even have the right) to change it is too. And as much as it follows us through life, as similar as it may be to trans struggles, it is not and it will never be the same.

For that, trans and intersex people have to stand together, but sometimes that feels like too much to ask of the community.

Because intersex people, much like ace or aro people, are often ignored in queer spaces (or not considered at all, for that matter). It is harsh.

But then there are the intersex trans people, who use both terms. The cis intersex people, the intergender people, the intersex people who chose not to bother with gender…

So that is, too, one reason why lots of intersex individuals choose to not call themselves trans, as much as they may identify with the term. Or the complete opposite, choosing to present themselves as transgender, as to not have to bear with the load that is being intersex sometimes.

After some time of knowing her, I think canon Kainé fits into the cis intersex category by a lot - considering she has always identified and KNOWN she is a woman. But of course, that is canon.

You are free not to, I can’t stop you. But I think that, if you’re perisex and trans, it shows the way you are with the people who have stood with you since always. To not recognize our existence is to not recognize a part of what brought all of us trans people to where we are.

My headcanon? Trans, intersex woman. Not hard or complicated, is it ?

And that is the way it should be, if you want to listen to intersex people. To listen to our voices.

So, please, if you care about us - don’t take away from intersex people what we have struggled so much to even get.

To close this thread, I just have to say: Thank you for reading, I hope you could at least learn something or get a bit of perspective on to what being an intersex person is like, and a bit of interpretation about Kainé from one.

If you want to go ahead and follow what I’ve said on it, you have a forever thanks from me. Happy pride month guys <3

[katyspersonal]

i genuinely wished if they did go with the blasphemous route with Messmer instead of making him another loyal hound of Marika, like everyone is doing Marika's bedding then get betrayed/abounded by her, that's boring and uncreative

"Boring" is a strong word here, because in grand scheme of things it isn't that many characters and each carries unique context! Godfrey and his champions got stripped from grace when there were no more wars to fight in the Lands Between, and sent off so Tarnished become the powerful army of the Elden Ring! I am not sure about this counting as betrayal completely; he loved her, but he ALSO loved battles! Maybe their spark naturally started to die down because as the OG warmonger (with Radahn being just a fanboy -_-) he would have nothing to do and become depressed 😔 Again, since Radahn adored Godfrey, not Hoarax Loux, I assume Serosh only did that much for chaining his violent personality!

Maliketh was created by the Greater Will as her shadow, and from what I pieced together 1) she was broken by the death of Godwyn and several others Demigods 2) it was kinda awkward that it only happened because he allowed the Destined Death be stolen from him 3) she gave him a hope to redeem himself by telling him to go eat Death everywhere (to reclaim it?) 4) turned out that it was just a lie so he'd be far away when she shatters the ring and thus can't stop her as creation of Greater Will (remember his dialogue towards Marika "Marika... why... wouldst thou... gull me? Why... shatter..." if you kill him as Gurranq + the paranoia sequence about Blaidd who is also Shadowbeast). Not only this betrayal came from a place of reasonable fear, but also technically Maliketh deserved it gfhgf The girls LOVE the sentiment of "It doesn't matter if you didn't mean it, acknowledge that the damage IS done!", and the damage here is a lot of deaths in her family.. Betrayal is betrayal, but the nuance here is strong!

...I don't count divorcing Rennala as betrayal either, because it is just divorce that kinda happened because Marika needed a Lord! The fact that after Godfrey she couldn't find anyone better than literally herself is really telling though fdgrxn Alternatively, it was a Radagon thing, not Marika, depending on how different are they! Nor I count Morgott and Mohg being hidden from the world as Omens, because they were not doing her bidding and then betrayed; they were discarded from birth! As for her betraying the Hornsent in the end, I don't recall them stated on "doing her bidding"! It was careful planning to finally get to the Divine Gates and finally obliterate them all.

So, I think maybe Messmer is, in fact, merely a second example of her betrayal! He is another extention of her terribly flawed personality and bad mother skills, that much is true, but she was trying to love him and did a lot of things to ease his burdens! Eventually she just grew too fearful of the power within him, and that is expected from the person who started war on Fire Giants only because they might have burnt the Erdtree, or ordered burying Nomads alive because some random Leyendell asshole (Shabriri) said they worshipped Frenzied Flame! 🤦‍♂️ These darn cursed fire powers always put her at risk of losing everything again.

_________________

That all being said, I'd also loved to see Messmer being an awful person and Marika being justified in abandoning him for another reason than her being a MILF Gwyn but with fire rather than darkness paranoia before cursed fires powers! Like, if Messmer himself attempted burning Erdtree for one reason or another, or did God knows what else that he had full control over unlike with the horror that lives inside of him that made him deserve worse punishment than simply abandonment! But this is my own wish and the writers got their own vision! Marika's reactionary paranoia haunts the entire story, and it is fun in its own way!

The "uncreative" part could be how much he parallels Malenia, but the use of parallels in Soulsborne games is a reoccurring trend! Not only that, but it is always masterfully done to show the trap of the vicious cycle and how people are bound to repeat mistakes of the ancestors/family/others whether they've learned from them of not!

[ofbreathandflame-archive]

Here's my thing: Why join (or continually contribute) a fandom with an author who is known to be racist -- that is racist by your own admission -- and then get mad when other people continually talk about those problems?

I'm not even saying fandoms can't reclaim and participate in fandoms with irksome authors -- I'm saying that when you're in those fandoms and you seem irritable at those critiques then there are some ideological problems there. I like ASOIAF but I live for the scathing anti-criques because they're absolutely right. I scroll through like yep, yep, yep. It never bothers me, not even a little. That's for every fandom I participate in. Because racism is never just an irksome problem, it should never get on your nerves, and I could talk about it all day. Because when you look at the world through the lens of a black woman (and other women of color ofc) you are NEVER not going to see it. I like TVD but there was so much shit one dealt with, that we had to actively ignore for the sake of being able to enjoy the show. I really wish I could ignore it all, but sorry not sorry.

I feel like a lot of people like to make their annual post about SJM's racism, and then don't want to consider two things (1) that the racism isn't actually isolated and permeates throughout all of her works and (2) there are consequences (or at least there should be) to being racist. Even if you have somehow come to terms with the racism in the story, that doesn't mean other people will or have to. The only way we even begin to solve the problem is by continually talking about it. It's just very crazy, IMO, to say that we are allowed to be upset -- but not in a way that disrupts your fandom experiences. That little irritation you feel every time a new post hits the anti-tag is racism. That little irritation you feel every time someone brings up Nehemia and the problems in Throne of Glass -- is also racism. I may be over the character conversation, but I'm not over the ones like these that have real consequences in the world of literature. It's just very frustrating to see people turn criticism of SJM's writing into a misogyny problem when the majority of the people doing the criticism are women of color.

LIKE -- are we supposed to talk about the racism once every blue moon for kudos points and then go back to pretending it doesn't exist? What are we gaining with that approach quickly?

The anti-anti sentiment is tired, and much more representative of people's unwillingness to address the problems than anything else. Like y'all are asking a group of people to....sympathize with someone who doesn't see her black readers as human enough to live on the page/?? Human enough to be represented as actual, complex human beings -- it don't sound wild to y'all? I'm pro anti for any racist author who crawls up the depths into the light of the publishing industry.

We complained about Nehemia and not only were we met with silence -- she did it AGAIN. And then stuck the remaining mixed race women with the man the story thought needed to be redeemed, with the main whose people enslaved her own -- and then the next black women we met come in the form of servents, and then the next black women as jealousy fodder, and then the next black women is brutally murdered, debased -- and I think has her head shaved, and that was FOR HELPING the main character. Then the next black woman is sidelined for the villainous, blonde-haired sister who got all of two words in the first book of CC. Lack of diversity is bad, but not inherently racist -- rather a symptom of white privilege. I wouldn't fret about it. Conscious, negative, and continuous bad representation is another thing entirely.

Anywho may the anti-community continue to thrive for this and any other racist author ❤️

[ditizygirl]

omg forgive me for using your askbox as a dumping ground for my rant but you're one of very few people with common sense so I'm sending it in anyways feel free to ignore or delete 🫶

as someone who's been in the mogai community for three whole tiresome years and who has also been heavily involved in communities which literally engage in child exploitation (as a victim LOL I gotta clarify 😭😭) there's a lot of overlap even if some people refuse to admit it

like is it emiko rei asano from the real hit show I Dressed Up As A Drop-dead Gorgeous Model for a Day and My Entire Class Fell In Love With Me?!?!'s fault that predators would decide to target them for their typing quirks and the way they present themselves? no, absolutely not, and it never will be. but is it still relatively their responsibility to make sure that what they're doing doesn't genuinely border on ageplay? yeah, I would say so, because if as many of them are involved in sfw age regression as they claim they should know what's commonly in those sfw communities and what's typically only limited to ageplay—yet they don't.

if you dance around in a landmine field, eventually something is going to explode.

a really common tactic used by child predators which I'm gonna like explain super briefly and avoid giving too much info abt is that they expose people to explicit things under the guise of it still being sfw, and gradually move on from there. if you are a predator and you are entering the editblr community all you need to do is scroll through an anime list, pick one, pick some shitty dividers from canva to slap onto a character and add a psd coloring to it. it isn't that difficult to talk in third person ꒰⁠⑅⁠ᵕ⁠༚⁠ᵕ⁠꒱⁠˖⁠♡, it isn't that difficult for your one and only idol to start dming u abt how cool && awesome ur work is and how they wanna get 2 know u better ^–^ none of this s××t is difficult to replicate xD

and I'm not saying it's their fault if a predator comes up to them. but I am saying that editblr puts a large focus onto fake personas that everyone holds up no matter what, and a lot of them are all-knowing goddesses who are meant to fear nothing—so what happens when you mix that with someone who knows how to use that to their advantage? an explosion.

I'm not gonna sit here and claim that everyone on editblr is pedobaiting or predators because most of them are lonely afabs with no irl friends looking for a safe community they can reside in and be seen as cool. and that's fine. but when you worship a 15 year old and treat their work as if it's the greatest thing to ever touch the tags.. that is going to cause issues. that could potentially cause disorders, or at least traits of disorders which cannot be "fixed" or "cured", for lack of a better word, without a fair bit of therapy.

teenagers are easy to manipulate. lonely teenagers who don't get attention from anyone other than one community are the easiest, because they'll go all the way to get what they want. and when they go too far, get ostracized from the community and end up alone again.. it opens up more opportunities.

I wholeheartedly believe that the emphasis on the personas, the layouts, the typing quirks, the aesthetics and the most important aspect everyone tries to live up to, perfection, will cause the downfall of the community.

I do also think it's funny that everyone is caught up on the dyslexia thing considering half the people in this community are faking disorders and saying slurs they can't reclaim just because nobody will question them for fear of being attacked but uhm that's a different personal topic !! btw for a group all abt acceptance they certainly do hate it when people aren't white or "japanese" (you know fully well why that's in quotes) .. lol .. kinda funny how that works !

.

[intheholler]

Been reading your posts about the accent and all, and I wanted to share two horror stories I wrote in my accent. :)

Knock Three Times

Ol' Knocky

Also it's interesting reading your posts about it - I've always been proud of my accent and my home and not exactly able to empathize with people who internalize the prejudice and turn against their home. So your posts are helping me see that side of things more.

Maybe it's because I grew up in Mount Airy, and of course we pride ourselves on Andy Griffith and Mayberry and all that. So maybe I got lucky and didn't grow up around the shame as much.

As for people assuming we're "dumb" - in 7th grade I scored high enough on the verbal part of the SAT to go to Duke's TIP program. There was a girl there from Tobaccoville with the thickest accent I've heard yet. I hope she kept it and I hope she's proud of it.

Anyway I love your blog and I hope you keep fighting the good fight. :)

hi, thanks! also thanks for being here contributing a counterpoint perspective.

i'll explain it how i see it personally: it isn't like the accent is just a collection of sounds or something equally as simple. it is one of the accents and dialects that carries on its back something much heavier. this has to do with code-switching, which occurs in all sorts of sociolinguistic cases.

it also isn't necessarily us 'turning away from home' (i'd like to address that further in a minute).

so to the sociolinguistic point:

in my case--and in a lot of cases given by those who have shared their stories with this community here--we are queer, non- or ex-religious people with leftist ideals. the opposite of what people are adamant about associating this region with.

the accent has become like a hallmark of that kind of behavior we don't align ourselves with but are still stereotyped and harmed by.

it seems to be a common experience that we want to hide the accent so we aren't automatically pegged as being the exact opposite of who we truly are.

because so many people, consciously or subconciously, revert to their misconceptions when they hear it, before we even have a chance to show them we're of like mind. i say this as someone who moved away from appalachia for several years. it's a thing. i promise.

so if you're trying to see it from our perspective, i think that's an important thing to understand. lord knows there ain't shit wrong with the accent itself. to me, it's home-y and warm, soft and familiar and hospitable.

it's what the accent unfortunately implies before we can get a word in edgewise. it isn't fair that we are made to feel this way, and i am hoping by reclaiming my own accent as i have been, i will be changing minds for the better.

but socially--its HARD. its EXHAUSTING. and code-switching has historically just been so much easier.

also--and i say this gently--i struggle with your idea of "turning away from home," because it reminds me of something regressionists in the south/appalachian south say about young people leaving the region, calling them traitors. this us-them mentality simply needs to be dissolved.

i am not turning away from my home when i protect myself from hatred and vitriol based solely on how i drawl my "i" sounds. my home has turned away from me.

it was always mine, always ours. my ancestors--our ancestors--were generous, loving, community-driven, hospitable folks. these hateful fucks have stolen what it once was and projected an awful image out into the world instead. that's not on me. all i can do is try to set it right again.

thanks again for your thoughts! <3

[ghostonly]

The Western Christian Understanding of Israel

So, there's something I haven't seen much said about and I wanted to address it briefly. But, first, I want to be absolutely clear that this post is not condoning or excusing what I'm writing about. It's simply to shed some light on something I think a lot of people may be unaware of.

So, I grew up in a baptist household and was taught pretty much everything you would expect from one. One thing I was taught was to support Israel.

I hope it's obvious I don't anymore, but it doesn't hurt to be clear.

Anyway, supporting Israel is something that's taught in, I would guess, just about every conservative Christian household in America, or close to it. And in their churches. This isn't purely family politics; it's church politics. The American Christian church (meaning, like, "the church" - all of the American Christians collectively) is in support of Israel. This you may know. But this isn't about the collective, this is about how it spreads on a smaller scale.

I was taught from a young age to support Israel, not through direct communication, but through hearing the adults in my life talk about it. This included at church, where it was more explicitly referenced and spoken of with respect and admiration. It was called the holy land, it was spoken of as basically the most revered land in the world, because it's, you know, God's Holy Land. And the Jews are the ones who belong there. That's what the Bible says. So, that is what was preached to us.

There was never ANY mention of government. Everything was spoken of in the abstract. Jews belong there, they have to reclaim it because the land has been stolen, etc etc. It was honestly not something I could reasonably differentiate from biblical lore as a child.

I think this inability to recognize Israel as a real and modern country with real and modern politics is something that continues on for many people into adulthood, especially those who stay away from current events and news (which is a HUGE amount of Christians, because "news is a constant stream of negative secularism that we don't need to expose ourselves to")

So, what I'm saying is, an absolutely massive number of Americans - pretty much anyone who was raised particularly Christian and who hasn't Gotten Out of the Bubble (which can also mean those who are no longer practicing but haven't made any effort to find new circles or challenge their views on the world) - is going to view Israel as a holy place made up entirely of Jews - and obviously, we support the Jews. Duh.

So what you end up having is, a huge chunk of people with this very vague, biblical understanding of what Israel is, who want to blindly support "The Land of the Jews" - especially after the holocaust - and they're very particularly susceptible to propaganda about this. If anyone even suggests that the Israelis (read: Jews in the Holy Land) are under attack or are being prevented from land that is, by God's Word, theirs) it is not going to be looked upon with favor. It is going to translate to anyone raised like this, who isn't keeping up with current events online (which is a lot more people than you think) as: The Jews Are Being Attacked Again (And in the Promised Land No Less)

And then you can go ahead and just factor in the ungodly amount of racist propaganda that has been fed to all Americans about middle-easterners. You end up with the perfect cocktail. A bunch of brown people are attacking the poor Jews in God's Holy Land. Sounds fucking terrible, doesn't it?

The reason I want to explain this is because I think it would really empower people to make stronger arguments in favor of Palestine if they understand that a lot of the pro-Israel people in their offline lives are supporting Israel from a good place. A lot of them think they're supporting an oppressed minority. They hear about the bombing of the music festival and they immediately think this is an attempt at a second holocaust and they don't look any further into it than what their local news station has to offer - which, you know, is probably a crock of propaganda laden shit.

So, if you know people irl who are saying that they're pro-Israel, it might be more beneficial to inquire a bit about what they actually know before laying into them with accusations. You may find a few resources and an understanding explanation is a lot more effective at winning more allies. People are a lot more receptive when they're being reached out to in good faith, on a 1-on-1 human level (and not at the dinner table, I'm begging you).

I know it's hard to be patient right now and I know it's hard to have good-faith interactions with people who you feel should have already been properly educated on this topic, but I also promise you that if you come in, guns blazing, accusing someone of supporting genocide, they are going to immediately stop listening and dig their heels in, regardless of whether they would have listened and understood, given the right opportunities to learn.

And no, this does not apply to people yelling on the internet who are already knee deep in online political warfare. I'm talking about your Aunt Sarah who doesn't know anything political outside of who the current president is and is just repeating things she thinks are good because her pastor said them. You know the people I mean.

Please also remember that there are a lot of people vocally calling those who are anti-Israel antisemites. If you know someone who is only just slightly "online", they probably have seen this and used it as a cornerstone of their continued support of Israel. It is a strong fear-based reinforcement of their existing understanding of events. I mean, the last thing "good people" want to be is "one of those neo-nazis." They adopt this understanding of what it means to be pro-Palestine without question. If you're pro-Palestine, it means you're antisemitic. They're not antisemitic, therefore, they are not pro-Palestine.

If you want to help them understand the reality of the situation, I think it would be extremely helpful to remember, in your sources, to include a lot of content outlining just how many Jews are speaking out against the actions of the Israeli government. Make sure to give them that understanding that the Israeli government and Jews as a collective are not synonymous. The Israeli government is not the formal representative of all things Jewish and Good. Being able to bring their understanding of Israel into a modern framework, rather than a biblical one, will be a great starting point.

Do your best, and good luck. #freepalestine