#away from the toxic cycling discourse

[daughtersofyesterday]

[lets-all-calm-down-a-bit]

i just saw the most toxic, bad faith all around reblog thread ever.

are we ok? can we be ok? lets just be ok.

[fansplaining]

IWTV is the best show on TV. In today’s media environment, it is singular to be able to enjoy a show without the toxicity of the large fandoms. I have found that a majority of the show’s fans are hardcore Anne Rice fans making conversations about the show far more interesting. I am concerned of how this will change once S1 premiers on Netflix. The show deserves a larger audience and it will get it after it premiers on Netflix, but I hope the show runners remain true to the source material and continue on the path they have laid. Looking forward to future IWTV episodes.

Hello! Apologies for the delay in answering this, which I believe was in response to this article I wrote about the show and its audiences. With the official announcement this week that the AMC slate of shows are coming to Netflix on August 19th—

(also: lol Netflix, thank u)

—I was reminded to come back to it!

I totally agree with you re: the show itself, of course—but I also think you've curated your feeds very well haha. I've been observing many corners of the fandom throughout s2, partly because I was reporting on the fan/creator stuff, partly because I'm in the fandom, too. Fandoms are multifarious, and I'm not trying to paint with an overly broad brush—I've seen a ton of creativity and plenty of smart analysis etc. But I have also seen *so* much toxicity and *so* many willfully bad readings over the past few weeks, it's been shocking. Twitter in particular seems to have a literal Discourse of the Day and I don't understand how this is going to be sustainable over the year+ until s3 (lord help us all when s3 arrives lol).

There's a running joke—made so many times I'm not even thinking of a specific post—that people fear ~the Netflix masses~ will bring Bad Takes, but it seems highly likely a casual viewer will go, "Wow! Entertaining!" and move on with their lives, whereas existing fans of this show are already rocket-launching The Worst Takes at each other like clockwork (and even at random viewers who love the show but aren't a part of fandom conversations—because they don't like a person's phrasing, or the picture they chose for a post, etc etc etc).

As far as the idea that Rolin Jones or AMC will waver from their plans, I absolutely don't see that happening. AMC has long licensed their shows to large-audience platforms (Netflix in particular), but they're not making TV *for* those platforms. Jones and (IWTV EP) Mark Johnson have been pretty explicit about how they only could have made this show at AMC. I also found these post-finale comments from Jones very interesting:

I’m confident that we made the best vampire show we could make. I’m proud of the adaptation. There’s the element of second windows, how these things are going to be disseminated going forward. There does seem to be a lot of legwork done by fans. I look at 98 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and part of me is like, Ugh, that’s way too high. If the intention here is to make something that will haunt you and that will work 15, 20 years from now, did we piss off enough people?

There was another interview I cannot find now about how a larger viewing audience in those "second windows" means more chances for the people who really connect to the show to find it. I've loved seeing that this season, even—people who hadn't checked it out for whatever reason and have now been changed by it. When I wrote that article, fans were kind of cycling in an information vacuum, with minimal signals from AMC/the creators that the metrics for success weren't a pure numbers game. But in the final press run, they hit that message hard—they are in it for the long run, they want to make the best show they can, and they understand this is a sustained partnership with fans. I think they're going to continue taking the biggest creative swings they can, and I can't wait to see what's next.

(BTW, IWTV folks: I pulled @flourish away from their baby for 90 minutes and despite their combined total of perhaps 10 hours of sleep over the past 4 weeks lol we managed to finally record a season 2 special episode. It should be out for patrons early next week!)

[mcyt-cfwf]

Storm season is about to start! (MCC29)

Any big storm is preceded by very active tropical winds (Team announcement) clashing against temperate winds (fans during periods of rest between MCCs) And even if some stronger than usual tropical storms approach the shore there is no need to panic. You can fare this storms better by heeding the following advice:

Team announcement and pre-championship guidelines

Teams will be announced on the MCC official Twitter account, you can wait for the information to be replicated in the MCC subreddit as well as the @mcc-updates updates account here on tumblr. So choose the option you feel the most comfortable!

Some recommendations for each site

Twitter:

Continues to be one of the most volatile storms so tread carefully! If you do not have any experience or confidence to face this storm it is advised you remain away for your own safety!

Open the app and head directly to the MCChampionship account, do not linger on your feed or the tags you may see trending if you aren't sure you've effectively filtered out any potential discourse

Wait for the team announcements and express your excitement over your favorite team on your own profile, that way you may avoid looking at the comments that can get out of hand very quick

⚠️DO NOT OPEN THE QUOTE RETWEETS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ⚠️

Leave Twitter and do not open it again.

The nature of Twitter discussions is mostly based on perceived moral uprightness as well as the popularity of the contestants which is why the winds of this storm can reach such high speeds since the starting point of discussion is one deeply personal and biased. Arguing may not accomplish much aside from creating more arguments, so be careful if you face that storm it may impact your emotional well-being almost immediately in many cases.

Tumblr:

It is a misconception that the site is immune to spikes in toxicity so be aware some caution will still be needed, once more if you do not feel comfortable faring this storm, avoid it for your own safety!

Go to @/mcc-updates or wait for the post to make the rounds until it reaches your blog

If you don't feel confident you have blocked and filtered tags and users that may upset you avoid going through the tags

In case you encounter something that slightly or greatly upsets you, back off slowly and block whoever is needed. The block button is a powerful tool at your disposal at all times.

Harassing other users is not advised as it will result in a cyclical increase of toxicity. REFRAIN AT ALL TIMES OF DOING SO

If you feel in any way nervous or scared of the possibility the storm may impact you directly, remember options to turn off anons and even close your inbox are options!

Tumblr discussions stem from a more meta perspective as it focuses immediately on the effects the event will have or is having on the fandom. Traditionally Tumblr's storm system would only react after harsh winds coming from Twitter, but lately, the storm system has become unstable in itself. As the reaction of Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr itself are evaluated alongside the exchange of thoughts about teams, lengthy discussions can start and as calm as they can be they can turn insidious too, in a less immediate upsetting way than Twitter, or just as upsetting in some rare occasions so employ your filters and be cautious.

Reddit:

Reddit is a very cyclical storm system that has allowed us to identify a clear pattern, and even if its winds may not be as fast as Tumblr's or twitter's it is much more constant and long-lived. Take this into account while traversing it. If you do not feel confident you can navigate the storm safely, avoid it for your own safety!

Go to the subreddit and wait for the team posts

Do not go indepth into the comments as the terms "nerf" and others may be thrown around

Once you've seen the team, leave the site for the rest of the storm cycle!

Why? you may ask.

Reddit's long-term discussion focuses above all on possible performance and the meta scene of the championships. Thus the forum will spend the next two weeks predicting the upcoming event by using tools like tiers and statistics to classify the performance of a team or players. This discussion can vary from very rational and cordial, to very upsetting and heated, and the nature itself of evaluating a player or team solely on statistics may be upsetting to some. So be cautious!

General recommendation:

Taking refuge in a private discord server with friends where you can exchange thoughts opinions, illusions, and grievances in a safe place is beneficial to everyone! as it allows you to get any upset out of your system and receive feedback in a safe environment and in such way other people who are going through their own experience won't be affected.

You deserve to be excited and have fun over this event!

And building hype over the teams and the prospect of seeing them compete! Don't let anyone take that from you! You are allowed to protect your fun and experience from discourse and are not obligated to partake on it!

If you need to take a step back be sure to do so!

Take care <3

[system-of-a-feather]

You know, I honestly do think people would greatly benefit from taking some time to deeply reflect on the known idea that "one of the key point ways to radicalize into a dangerous, harmful, bigotted, and sometimes fascist (NOT CLAIMING THAT IT IS INHERENTLY, JUST THAT WE KNOW IT PLAYS A ROLE IN RADICALIZING FASCISM I DO NOT PISS ON THE POOR) is to create an 'us' vs 'them' way of thinking." Like this is tumblr dot com, yeah there are some people who don't know that and/or disagree with that, but I'd like to think the sensible majority of us who are on the trans gaysex website have heard that be said and have at least mostly agreed with it.

And yet, even then, we have some of the most pointless discourse that is fundamentally built on this "us vs them" ideology. The same "they are ACTUALLY [emotionally and morally charged claim] and are DANGEROUS to live and let be". "[Insert Group] is ACTUALLY a [insert claim that generates fear] because [semi plausible claim and/or over generalization of a few people]." "[Insert Group] wants us dead / gone / silenced and will not stop until this or that and can not be trusted when they say otherwise"

Like, I'm pretty sure this is in queercourse / LGBT discourse, proship related stuff, and all that general way too online internet discourse, but the one I'm most familiar with is syscourse so I'm going to use that as a reference and talk specifically to that audience.

If you are reading this and go "Oh you are vagueing XYZ of [this group] because they literally say those things", I'm sorry to tell you this literally had at least half of the regular syscourser names in my mind - from BOTH sides.

Honestly, I feel if we just really stopped using labels to put OURSELVES into us-vs-them categories that people can immediately box us one place or another, it'd do everyone a lot better in having productive conversations cause you'd actually kind of need to, ya know, talk to a person before you inherently decide that they are the "enemy who wants to take things away from you and silence you."

Nine out of ten times, people just want to live, want to be able to exist and have human decency, and are just generally scared. I'm sure there are some bad apples out there that explicitly do want to actively cause harm to other people for no good reason other than its funny, cause yeah, they obviously exist - but I've come to find most people, even the most aggressive and vocal people, are scared and often isolated and thus trapped in this cycle of discourse.

There is a lot of benefit to be found by taking time to sit, pull off all the assumptions you've made about a person, and just genuinely give space and time to have a genuine, best faith, private discussion about what matters and drives them. If there are people who you think you know their opinions, thoughts, and reasons for doing and saying what they do from just their online public presence, you are honestly probably humorously wrong.

And that isn't to say I'm exempt from it, cause I liberally block at the slightest annoyance which - while minimizing negativity on my dash also happens to shut down any room for any deeper understanding of a person - is good because no one is entitled to you going out of the way to understand them and their perspective, especially when they are actively putting things out that make you feel stressed, annoyed, and/or concerned.

It also isn't to say there is any reason or internal dialogue that fully excuses toxic behavior on it's own. No one is entitled to your forgiveness either, especially if they don't make amends on their own effort.

It's all just to say that I think people would benefit a lot from sitting down and spending some time thinking to themselves what it means, why it is, and how it appears chronically in social communities the "us vs them" mentality and how that ends up causing unhealthy and toxic behavior.

[thedomesticanthropologist]

Writer resource on Ascended Astarion

This info/these ideas come from the perspective of someone interested in writing Ascended Astarion as an abusive narcissist who perpetuates the cycle of abuse begun by Vellioth and carried on by Cazador (and now Astarion). It is NOT intended to be anything other than a writing resource so please keep discourse out of the replies!

A character may rationalize supporting the vampire's Ascension ritual due to several factors, and post-Ascension may experience some of these situations/feelings:

Hope for Change: Individuals in toxic relationships often hold onto the hope that their partner will change, especially if promised benefits and told that they can have what they want in the future, or that their partners sudden negative traits are temporary and they'll "go back" to how it was in the beginning after a period of adjustment, and NOT that this is who they are now. They may believe their partners promises, and only time will prove if those promises are empty or not.

Love and Attachment: Despite the abusive behavior, the emotional connection and attachment formed in the relationship can be strong. People may cling to the belief that their love can overcome the negative traits, especially when Astarion professes love in return.

Manipulative Tactics: Abusers often use manipulation to maintain control. Astarion might employ tactics such as gaslighting, where they make the victim doubt their own perceptions, or intermittent reinforcement, alternating between affection and abuse to keep the victim off balance.

Isolation: Abusive individuals may isolate their victims from friends and family, creating a dependency on the abuser. This isolation can make it challenging for the victim to see the relationship objectively.

Emotional Investment: If the lover has invested significant time and emotions into the relationship, they may be reluctant to acknowledge the negative aspects. The sunk cost fallacy can play a role, where individuals feel they've invested too much to walk away.

[septembersghost]

babes, i hate to say this, but i need you to please not send me negative/toxic discourse that i cannot do anything about. you already know i'm going to agree that it's wrong and i commiserate with why it's upsetting, but there is no power that i, or we, have to change it, and i've learned from my time and various battles in fandom that it simply is not worth it, it only makes you miserable. i know none of you are intending to take anything from me in having these discussions, but it's honestly really stressed me out and taken the edge off what began as just pure happiness and/or interest, and i can't engage with that, i'm trying so hard to do better with my mental health.

i know it sucks when people attack something or someone you enjoy and admire, i know it makes you want to fight back, but it's, to borrow what a friend just said to me, a sisyphean task: "don't waste energy on people you know don't care. your opinion does not have to be validated by the entire internet, especially when ppl have a vested interest in popping off hot takes about things they don't understand bc it gets them Views." you can't ever win with people who won't listen and whose entire goal is to stoke misinformed outrage, you're only going to keep hurting yourself in the process. spending your time engaging with that negative feedback cycle is detrimental and will do nothing but steal your joy. you do not have to fight every war, ESPECIALLY with people who don't know what the fuck they are talking about! let them be performatively angry/dismissive/whatever and ignore their nonsense takes. curate you experience! if this means blocking people, block people. i personally take great care to not see these things, so i wouldn't know a lot of stuff if people didn't bring it to me, and i am always understanding in the feeling of protective defensiveness, but it is ultimately not something i want to engage with and not fun.

if this means your fandom experience becomes you, the thing you love, one trusted friend, a teddy bear, and a corn chip, then that's totally fine! you do not need to prove your own informed opinions or the reasons for your love or constantly be validated by fools frothing at the mouth over the dumbest arguments you've ever heard. let the haters seethe. they are not worth your energy, they don't deserve to get their needles into your spirit.

take the thing you love and hold it close to your heart and look at their cute little pictures (or listen to their songs or watch your favorite episodes, whatever the subject is we're talking about, however you can access that and get that enjoyment from it!), and remember THAT is what matters. what it means to and does to uplift you makes it valuable, and you deserve to engage with that in a passionate way, but it shouldn't be doing you harm. what it provides you is what lasts. that's yours and no one can take it away from you!

[redbullseb]

didn't know the sport well enough to do this last yr and i've been joking about things for a while but ! here r my official 2022 szn predictions:

1. fom create a red bull v ferrari narrative, w/ plenty of comments about how the Defending Champion™ will have to fight to keep his crown away from Il Predestinato®. the number of charles/max accounts on this hellsite increases substantially as a result

2. aston martin do better than expected, but neither der Plan nor El Plan quite work out this year. gonna say AM is an optimistic 4th in the constructors championship, just managing to edge out alpine? to fernando's chagrin. it's enough to keep seb around for at least another year tho

3. miss amr22 is named sylvia (trench. sylvia trench). bussy galore campaigners everywhere spend a night mourning what could have been

4. lando averages about 2 -gates a month, one of which is an ambiguous possible reference to h*rner-does-coke-gate. this place is sent into a spiral that lasts for a solid two days minimum

5. mick and este rocket up the popularity ladder, almost collectively dethroning daniel. blogs who shat on them before are metaphorically choking on their dicks by the time june swings around

6. zhou guanyu vs guanyu zhou discourse becomes toxic somehow. white people claim to know how chinese works, probably

7. people who were salivating for george to beat lewis find themselves deeply embarrassed for reasons (val beating george in the championship)

8. alex and nick become the new fan favourite teammates with a bromance to rival charlos. kmag makes a passing comment about them on instagram and this place starts discoursing within 10 minutes

9. Mark Webber Isn't That Bad, Actually renaissance that towards the end of the year cycles right back to Mark Webber Is A Cunt

10. i get run off this site at some point from markposting and sundry (see prediction 9)

[brax-was-here]

Name: Nafiona, Duchess of the Nightmare Court

     Nafiona was birthed from her pod from the Pale Tree during the cycle of Night. She didn’t have a wyld hunt, instead her dream showing her the world as a dark and mysterious place. Her early years in the Grove were filled first with the traditional study of the tenants of Ventari’s tablet, but later turned to the dark arts of magic and necromancy. Her studies into the realms of the afterlife did not go unnoticed. Grand Duchess Faolain of the Nightmare Court took notice and had Nafiona brought before her. Faolain offered her a place in the Court, which Nafiona gladly accepted, finally being free from the Pale Tree and the words of Ventari. Nafiona served the court well, recruiting sylvari saplings to the Courts cause and using her cunning and ruthlessness to rise up through the ranks, finally being awarded the title of Duchess. She formed her own arm of the Court, setting out to cause mayhem and discourse in the growing sylvari population in Caledon Forest.

     During Scarlet Briar’s campaign against Tyria, Nafiona and her group were assigned to Scarlet’s Toxic Alliance by Faolain. Nafiona protested the reassignment arguing that such a thing was beneath her station, but finally relented and stubbornly agreed. While stationed in Kessex Hills, her courtiers oversaw the krait that helped build Scarlet’s Tower of Nightmares in Viathan Lake. When the duchess finally figured out what Scarlet’s plan was for such a tower, she took it upon herself to harvest the poisonous spores for possible future use. When the Pact Commander, along with Marjory Delaqua and Kasmeer Meade, assaulted the tower, and the Lionguard and Pact forces routing the krait and Toxic Alliance, Scarlet Briar fled the area, abandoning the tower and the Alliance. Nafiona, along with a handful of courtiers, managed to escape capture.  

     After the fall of the Nightmare Tower, Nafiona retreated to a secluded area of the Tarnished Coast. She managed to procure the help of other members of the Court to help study and reengineer the spores from the giant toxic plant. She vowed revenge on Scarlet Briar for leaving her and her courtiers to the Lionguard. During this time, she rebuilt her part of the Nightmare Court, recruiting the sylvari Ordhram and his siter Orla. Ordhram was a sylvari of above average built, standing much taller than the average sylvari, with an increased musculature.

     During the rise of Mordremoth, Nafiona was forced to move her courtiers to a location farther east, away from the Maguuma Jungle. The calls of the jungle dragon were much too strong, causing some of her group to head into the jungle. Ordhram had started to change as well, large sections of his skin growing tougher as his appearance started resembling the Mordrem Guard. It was at this time that the Priory scholar Thaddeus Sheeran who approached the duchess with the rumor that another seed, one like from which the Pale Tree had sprouted, may exist in Maguuma Jungle within the lair of the Jungle Dragon. The seed could be used to reunite the fractured Nightmare Court, which had splintered after the death of Grand Duchess Faolain. Nafiona commanded her courtiers make preparations for an excursion into the jungle once Mordremoth had fallen.

     During this journey, she would have multiple meetings with Scarlet Briar, herself looking for the rumored seed. Nafiona’s group would find the seed, which had already been found by Scarlet Briar. After a small confrontation, Nafiona procured the seed and returned to Twilight Arbor in a bid to reunite the Court under her banner. Her plan would be cut short by an attack by Scarlet Briar and a group of allies. During the battle, the rogue sylvari Malyck would appear and steal the seed away. Nafiona, realizing the seed as well as the battle is lost, retreated.

     She would take up residence in an upscale apartment in Divinity’s Reach along with Thaddeus, who she had become seemingly romantically involved with. He tells her about the branded crystal storing an “Aspect of Mordremoth” that had been captured and is now being stored in the depths of the Priory vaults. He informs her that the aspect contains a corrupted part of Scarlet’s mind, and if she were to free it, she could exact her revenge on Scarlet Briar and bend the Pale Tree to her will. She tells him to formulate plan to acquire the crystal.

     Before Thaddeus could initiate the plan, he is sent to the kingdom of Elona to help gather and study artifacts from the lich king Palawa Joko’s kingdom. He finds an amulet containing desert sand imbued with residual necromantic magic from Joko himself. He finds the trinket was used to quickly awaken fallen troops on the battlefield but had limited uses. He sends the amulet back to Divinity’s Reach to Nafiona who begins studying the artifact extensively. She modifies the magic to allow her to resurrect the long deceased and uses the amulet to raise Priory Magister Sieran from the beach of Claw Island. She raises Pale Reaver Tegwen from the Alter of Tempests in Orr and raises Courtier Ordhram from the halls of Twilight Arbor, along with other fallen sylvari. Twisting them to Nightmare’s will, Nafiona sets them out to acquire the branded crystal from the priory vaults. After a protracted operation, the crystal is brought before her. She takes it to a secluded ruin in the Shiverpeak mountains, where she removes the wards and cracks the crystal, freeing the Aspect from its prison. Nafiona very quickly realizes the being within is much too powerful to control. The Aspect grants her freedom, but warps her courtiers into branded forms of the Mordrem Guard. The Aspect then tranforms before her into a dragon form that resembles a mixture of Mordremoth and Kralkatorrik. It then commands Nafiona to bring Scarlet Briar before it.

     Nafiona and her group depart the ruins in a bid to capture Scarlet, but sadly fail. Her courtiers are killed and Nafiona is forced to flee. She is currently slowly rebuilding her group of courtiers and only time will tell what her next plans are.

[letteredlettered]

Hello! This is a broad question so it's fine you don't feel like answering. Do you ever get tired of fandom and its culture? I feel like sometimes there's nothing but discourse and arguments and just... it can be quite draining. Just wondered I'd ask you since you've been in a number of fandoms for a long time! I'm sure you've seen it all. Thank you for your time!!!

I think the last time I got tired of fandom was over 12 years ago. At that time, two things were true: 1) I was having some personal problems that meant I didn’t have a job, didn’t feel good about it, and didn’t have a lot of friends that could talk about things I wanted to talk about. 2) Fandom felt a lot more centered; it was easy to build communities and become a part of them. As a result, at that time, fandom was my main support network. Therefore, when certain aspects of fandom became unpleasant, I felt I had very few places to turn to. I eventually got a job, a lot more stable relationships, and several types of community. Fandom also dispersed onto many platforms, making it very hard to rely on fandom for social interaction. I still do get annoyed by some things in fandom, but when that happens, it’s very easy to dip into another corner of fandom that isn’t toxic or to walk away completely.

I will say that having participated in fandom for a long time has also given me a different perspective. Conversations about social justice--racism, misogyny, homophobia, ableism--as well as conversations about porn--what gets written, with which characters, what age and sex those characters are, how they’re treated, how this porn is posted and consumed--are conversations that have cycled through fandom since long before I was in it. I’ve learned a lot from these conversations, but after participating in them for years and listening to them for even longer, there’s not much more I can learn from random people on the internet. The same is true for issues with less of a social justice vibe--feedback culture, ship wars, fest etiquette, anonymous behavior, etc--I’ve seen it all before, and while I think these can be worthwhile conversations, I no longer feel a strong urge to participate all the time. Generally I feel like arguing on the internet has a smaller value for someone like me than listening, having compassion, modifying my behavior when necessary, and doing what I can irl and with my friends.

I have more to say about fandom cliques.

The other aspect of fandom that can grow wearisome, besides the cyclical debates, is the cliquish nature of fandom communities, and the way typical group behavior is exacerbated by the very fact of being online. Who is popular, who they like, what they say, who likes whom, who did what to whom, how everyone reacted to it--all of this can feel super important online in a way it doesn’t to me irl. I’d like to pretend I’m very classy and stay above all this, but that would be a lie. I have often wanted, in my fandom life, to be someone who has hordes of fandom friends, who leaves comments on everything they read, someone who recs with abandon, someone who runs fests, someone who replies to everyone and makes new people feel welcome and develops starter kits and makes memes everyone loves and invents all the fanon everyone uses etc etc.

Alas, my own social reticence prevents me from being that fan. I have tremendous problems with routine or anything that needs to be done regularly. This includes but is not limited to communicating with friends or people that interest me or people whose work I like. Basically, all the people who love me are people who are willing to keep reaching out to me even when I don’t always respond. I try to warn people about this and communicate clearly that it’s something I really struggle with, but it is not conducive to making friends.

Additionally, I have found that I struggle to feel a part of communities--partly because maintaining your status in a community means regularly being a part of it, but partly I have trouble identifying with most people. Fannish people share more of my interests than most people in the world, but even among fans, I often feel left out and excluded, an extra thumb on a hand that does beautiful things without me. These social difficulties isolate me, but they do have the benefit of insulating me. The one time I was almost in the middle of a fight about who wanted to be my fandom friend, I had the fortune to be so far out of the loop that I didn’t really know what the fuck was going on.

Anyways, the result of my personality is such that I mostly tend to look at fandom on the outside. I get pretty sad about this from time to time, but the times I have gotten deep into fandom have not gone particularly well for me. Either I’ve felt that feeling of exclusion I’ve mentioned before, or I noticed that others were being excluded--ie, I was for some reason included in The Popular Clique. This makes me intensely uncomfortable, and I’ve extricated myself in situations where I’ve felt that way. Unfortunately, fandom spaces that allow for cliques are also the places where you really get to know people and build community. As such, I really don’t make fandom friends easily. The few I do have are pretty much lifelong friends that I share a lot with besides fandom. My best friend is from fandom. My girlfriend is from fandom. Most of the friends I go to when I need to talk irl are from fandom. My original novel-writing partner is from fandom. These are the people I tend to talk to when I need to talk about fandom, though it can feel very lonely when I have a new fandom and no friends fall into it with me.

This is a long answer to say--fandom is exhausting if you’re really participating to the hilt, but given that I really mostly just write fics and answer asks, most of the time it’s chill. When I get deep into something I might join a discord or do a twitter, but I burn out of that pretty fast--though I sometimes do make friends that I keep forever after.

[notthatiwilleverwriteit]

Was Ugetsu manipulative?

Some time ago, I posted my AkiUgetsu timeline thread on Twitter and was asked in the replies if I thought Ugetsu was manipulative. I had seen that discourse around, but I have never really pondered about it. So, I thought I’d take this opportunity to see if I thought he was manipulative.

Before I get more into this, though, a couple of disclaimers.

Firstly, this is merely an answer to a question. I am not responding to any piece of anti/pro-Ugetsu discourse out there. Also, this is just my personal take on things. I am not posing this as one and only correct interpretation. If someone agrees with me, great. If someone disagrees, that’s also fine. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to feel about Ugetsu’s character or the AkiUgetsu relationship.

Secondly, it’s no secret that I’m an Ugetsu and Akihiko stan and AkiUgetsu is my Given OTP. That disposition is good to keep in mind by whoever is reading this. However, I try to put my own biases aside when writing these kinds of analyses. Just because I love Ugetsu’s character doesn’t mean I’m only going to write things that my fellow-Ugetsu-fans like to hear. But I am interpreting things as someone who claims to understand his side of things, and I understand if that might seem like I’m already being too biased to someone.

End of disclaimers!

“Do you think Ugetsu was being "manipulative"? Many people call him that and it hurts me a little”

I found this a surprisingly challenging question when I wasn’t given any concrete examples of Ugetsu supposedly being manipulative. It was difficult to grasp that perspective by myself when I was going through the manga.

Usually, I don’t have big trouble putting my own bias aside for these things, but now I felt like I was questioning/second-guessing myself at every turn. Because I feel like you can see Ugetsu as manipulative if you simply take that point of view/stance. The answer is in the question.

But trying to make myself do that felt like I was going against my interpretation of what kind of story Ugetsu and AkiUgetsu are telling regardless of my bias. I really don’t think Kizu wrote Ugetsu as some kind of toxic/manipulative villain, so trying to take that stance felt untrue from the get-go. But on the other hand, if I was really this unable to see things from the manipulation perspective, was I just letting my bias cloud my thinking? Can you see my struggle?

In the end, I decided to go with what “manipulation” I myself can see. So, I’m sure many people will disagree with me on this reading.

Some time ago, I wrote another piece about AkiUgetsu when I was asked why do I think they stayed together for so long even though they were both suffering. In that, I explained how I tend to visualize AkiUgetsu in two ways: a circle/cycle, and two layers on top of each other. I think the layers might help me in explaining how I see the “manipulative Ugetsu” interpretation.

One of the reasons why I think AkiUgetsu got so bad was the ambiguity of their relationship. There were two layers to what they were. Officially and on the surface, they were platonic roommates. Both of them were single on paper and free to date other people if they so desired. In this regard, Ugetsu was in his full right to sleep with other people without that making him a “slut” or a “cheater”.

But under that “official”, platonic, and visible layer, there was another hidden layer that was what still bound them together. Under the surface, they were still emotionally and occasionally even physically involved with each other. They still had feelings for each other, and living together only kept those feelings lingering and tying them to each other despite how painful it was.

These two layers created a “yes, but…” situation in many ways in AkiUgetsu as roommates. The ambiguity gave room for very mixed messages from Ugetsu’s part which is where I think the “manipulation” interpretation can be found if somewhere. It’s quite easy to take a look at Ugetsu dating other people while also allowing Akihiko to stay with him as Ugetsu manipulatively stringing Akihiko along. He could have his cake and eat it, too.

And I’m sure that’s at least partly how it came across to Akihiko, too (vol. 4 ch. 20):

Ugetsu appearing to be hot and then cold was a painful game of hem and haw for Akihiko. He was confused and frustrated by Ugetsu not making a decision and sticking to it, especially since he knew Akihiko still loved him. It felt like Ugetsu was indulging him out of pity. Akihiko had never wanted to break up in the first place, so if Ugetsu was going to throw him a bone or give him some kind of leeway, Akihiko was unable to let that pass and stop holding on to Ugetsu. And I have a feeling that Ugetsu knew Akihiko would stay, too, if he gave him even a slither of hope.

So, yes, I do think that to some extent, Ugetsu was aware of how much his indecisive behavior was hurting Akihiko (vol. 3 ch. 17):

He knew his actions probably came across as cruel to Akihiko. I think he was aware of the fact that he was hurting him when he slept with someone else while not rejecting Akihiko properly. So, I’m not trying to say he was innocent or couldn’t have handled their relationship as roommates better. If he wanted both of them to stop suffering, he should have made up his mind and not allow himself to waver.

All in all, I’m also not surprised if this side of Ugetsu’s behavior can come across as manipulative and selfish to some readers. I could see that.

But I think if you leave your interpretation at that, you are looking at things only on the surface level and ignoring a lot of how Ugetsu feels. Ugetsu’s character is all about seeing behind what he says or how he behaves.

Just as Akihiko felt like he “can’t quit” Ugetsu no matter how much it hurt, the same applied to Ugetsu as well (vol. 4 ch. 17):

When Ugetsu slept with someone else, Akihiko took it as him ceasing the chance to finally get rid of Akihiko and to provoke him. And he kind of got it right, but the tone was actually different from Ugetsu’s point of view. He was trying to take the chance to end their relationship, but because he was unable to do it as such, he purposefully hurt Akihiko to push him away. Ugetsu made himself the bad guy when trying to break up with Akihiko for good because he himself couldn’t take that last step of walking away. He needed Akihiko to do that.

When Ugetsu told Mafuyu about why he had originally broken up with Akihiko but why he was so powerless to let go of him now, Mafuyu heard it as Ugetsu’s “scream”. He saw how much in pain Ugetsu was behind his words.

And that’s the thing. Ugetsu was suffering in the same cycle as Akihiko. His own indecisiveness was bringing himself pain just the same (vol. 5 ch. 27):

On one hand, Ugetsu couldn’t picture Akihiko not coming back and leaving him for good. Whenever he thought “maybe…”, he always arrived at “no…”. He recognized Akihiko might leave one day but couldn’t imagine his life without him. He was just as unable to let go as Akihiko was – probably even more – and yet, he also wanted the suffering to end. Try to grasp the level of the complex inner conflict of that.

And this is what I meant when I said that with Ugetsu, you need to see behind the surface. He wasn’t giving mixed messages (or being “manipulative”, if you want to call it that) out of some kind of malice. When he was seemingly willfully ignoring the second layer of his relationship with Akihiko by openly dating other people, he was trying to push Akihiko away and free them both. He wasn’t toying with him for his own amusement.

But he also lacked the resolve to go through with the last step of breaking up – just like Akihiko before the intervention of him moving out for a while – which came across as him indulging Akihiko’s lingering feelings cruelly out of pity. Under the surface, though, the truth was he also “couldn’t quit” Akihiko and was suffering from the same pain as him.

Ugetsu wasn’t innocent of any wrongdoings. He should have done some things differently. Just as Akihiko was ultimately responsible for not leaving, so was Ugetsu for not sticking to his decision of breaking up and not allowing Akihiko to linger. Personally, I don’t agree with the “Ugetsu did nothing wrong” discourse. They were both “guilty” in their prolonged suffering.

However, that is not to say I don’t sympathize with both of them. I understand why they couldn’t let go of each other despite all the pain. So, I honestly can’t vilify either of them. The way they were struggling and yet unable to stop was very human to me. “Should have” often isn’t nearly as easy as “could have”.

I think you can interpret Ugetsu as manipulative if you want to. You can interpret any character in a bad light if you want to. But in doing so, I think you’re only seeing the “what” and ignoring the “why”. You’re missing the complex, between-the-lines flip side of the coin that I think is at the very core of Given – especially regarding Ugetsu’s character and the AkiUgetsu relationship.

[ingek73]

For Meghan Markle, leaving Britain must seem more and more like the right choice

Afua Hirsch

The Duchess of Sussex, a woman of colour, has faced relentless media attacks – and had no protection from the palace

Published: 17:54 Friday, 05 March 2021

‘The media has used Meghan’s private life for a feeding frenzy.’ Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Racism is a lucrative business. When it comes to Meghan Markle, the media’s strategy is transparent. Tabloids pillory her with a range of mostly ludicrous allegations – her baby bump is too prominent, her avocados are not “woke”, her earrings are drenched in blood – and then networks double up with manufactured debates in which anti-racist commentators try to push back on those narratives.

It’s no wonder that, in the teaser for his forthcoming interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry referred to history repeating itself. We saw a similar strategy of obsession and vilification play out with his mother. The genius of it then and now – from a tabloid perspective – is that they as perpetrators are also the major beneficiaries, as their endless coverage racks up clicks and newspaper sales.

Knowing this, and being aware that this discourse is rarely designed to achieve progress or change, has made me reluctant to continue entering the fray. I have not answered the literally hundreds of calls I’ve received recently from broadcast networks, asking me to comment first on the state of Meghan’s womb (presumably the entire nation feels entitled to have a view), and then on her decision to speak to Winfrey.

There is the general obsession with celebrities and royals, and then there is the particular shape this obsession takes when the object in question is a woman of colour.

It’s hardly breaking news that the British media is often driven by deeply racist instincts. You never have to look far to illustrate the point. “Do you look at [Meghan] and see a black woman? Cause I don’t,” said LBC host Andrew Pierce. “I see a very attractive woman. It’s never occurred to me.”

The idea that being attractive and being black are mutually exclusive has a long history in Britain. The very first time I was interviewed by a newspaper, aged 18, I was asked to comment on Jeffrey Archer’s view that, in the past, “your head did not turn in the road if a black woman passed you because they were badly dressed, they were probably overweight and they probably had a lousy job”. (At the time Archer was the Conservative candidate for mayor of London.)

Pierce simply offered us an up-to-date example of how, confronted with Meghan – a black woman he does consider attractive – commentators reconcile this apparent anomaly by reclassifying her as not black at all. And so that cycle continues.

So does the one involving the character assassination of women of colour as a kind of sport. The Mail on Sunday was willing to break the law – as a recent high court summary judgment established – and to take its attack on Meghan to a new low. Having obtained and published a distressing handwritten letter from Meghan to her estranged father, the tabloid deployed a handwriting expert to reveal that her penmanship shows her to be, “a showman and a narcissist”, “self-aware” and “self-oriented”, someone who suffers from “anxiety”. It would be strange not to suffer from anxiety, wouldn’t it, when the media is using your private life for a feeding frenzy, and the institution capable of shielding you – in this case, Buckingham Palace – has decided to sit back and watch?

Indeed, the palace has decided that this precise moment – days before the Sussex’s highly anticipated interview with Oprah Winfrey is broadcast – is the right time to launch an investigation into allegations of bullying made by former royal aides against Meghan three years ago.

Bullying allegations must be taken seriously. That should have been the case for home secretary Priti Patel, who was found culpable of abusing senior civil servants and has just paid out £340,000 to one of her accusers. Yet despite being accountable to the electorate, her political career seems unscathed by this. Clearly she plays a useful role for Boris Johnson, who has consistently protected her, even when she was found by his independent adviser to have broken the ministerial code, which is normally a resigning offence.

It’s richly ironic therefore that the media – which has relentlessly bullied Meghan, including most intensely during two periods when she has been pregnant – is now consumed with these latest allegations that she herself is a bully. It’s also not without context because – as numerous black women have attested of their experiences in white spaces – we are frequently perceived as threatening.

I have my own painful memories of how, as a teenager, younger children at my school said they found me “terrifying”, and how I was dubbed “Scary Spice”. Being biracial did not exempt me from being perceived as frightening simply because of my physical appearance.

It’s difficult to compare these personal experiences to those facing Meghan, because she has become a fixation of the global news media in ways few of us can imagine. She is in this position because of her relationship to the palace – a unique institution that creates global superstars who are not elected, not accountable to the electorate. In her case, she no longer even lives at the taxpayers’ expense.

And yet there is so much the palace could have done to provide Meghan with the same shielding that other senior members of the royal family enjoy. For Prince Andrew, who has faced allegations of involvement in sexual abuse, a palace spin doctor even tried to enlist the help of an online troll to discredit the prince’s accuser.

I would condemn the idea of discrediting Meghan’s sex abuse accusers; except she doesn’t have any. I would criticise Meghan for visiting Saudi Arabia, as other members of the royal family have on many occasions; except she has never set foot there.

Instead, she reportedly wore a pair of earrings gifted by Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whose track record of extreme human rights abuses, including authorising the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the dismal war in Yemen, has not prevented our nation from selling him arms. I doubt the royal family will open an investigation into this particular allegation anyway, since doing so would offer an inconvenient reminder to countries in the former empire – now its Commonwealth friends – of how much of royal treasure was stolen from them.

I would criticise Meghan for furthering Prince Philip’s current state of ill health, except – contrary to the suggestion of one royal commentator – it has nothing to do with her whatsoever. If Meghan can be linked to murder for wearing jewellery, I dread to think what she’d be blamed for were his condition to get worse.

The greatest irony in all this, of course, is that Meghan left Britain – as I suspect we will discover with some clarity when her Oprah interview is broadcast – to get away from the toxic and racially motivated media obsession with her. And yet even in its remarkable track record of denying her the basic human expectations of privacy, the media are outdoing themselves all over again in proving that her judgment was right.

Afua Hirsch is a Guardian columnist

[cina-full-moon-xanadium]

the thing about stepping back and having rational considered opinions and ideas on a piece of media is that it is heavily HEAVILY influenced by the communities you’re in. like when pokemon sword/shield came out i was super involved in a lot of pokemon communities (both specific ones like dedicated forums and larger things like a lot of fans on twitter) so even if you would usually step back and think normally about something the nature of those communities being so reactive and hyperbolic and honest to god fueled by discourse and Unpopular Opinions meant i had to have An Opinion and make that, like, part of my identity. I’m the girl who believes yadda yadda about dexit and that makes me Cool And Edgy. And like I probably would have had those opinions to begin with but those communities’ reactive nature meant i REALLY had those opinions and i was super forceful about it -- it wasn’t enough to just believe, say, that dexit was probably fine as long as they had a certain amount of pokemon and in particular popular ones like starters and lucario, and that really the bigger problem here was the absolute nuts development cycle of one-game-a-year; it was also that other people were stupid for not getting that and they weren’t seeing clearly enough and i felt like a badass stating my opinion which was so cool and different to theirs. 

and it was stupid! it was -- it was fucking stupid!! i DO believe pretty much everything i just said there about ‘dexit’ but once i removed myself from those communities i realised wow this really doesn’t... this isn’t that important? and that distancing allowed me to develop my opinions in a more natural way and work out what my actual issues were and why i was getting so angry. and the same shit goes for three houses; i used to be a stupid huge edelgard stan back in the day and now i can just step back and go “well she is my favourite but the point of the game is a lot more complex than this”, and I’m also experiencing this a bit now with tokusatsu now that i’m removing myself from certain online communities and i’m able to not get so mad all the time about people Stating Their Opinions about kamen rider zero one

it’s hard to articulate precisely the complex boiling emotions that happen on internet communities like this for most topics and just how much it clears your head to be away from them for at least a while and step back and think about things normally; especially when you have other people to talk to who are just fucking normal about it rather than stuck in the Discourse like you were before. but i’m sure a lot of people have been in this situation and can speak to this experience it’s just something i’ve gone through a lot and i try to avoid it a lot more now; communities are important for things but they can so easily boil over into toxicity not just sometimes but as like their natural state and status quo

this is what politics is like all the time btw

[mcyt-cfwf]

Storm season is about to start! (MCC30)

Any big storm is preceded by very active tropical winds (Team announcement) clashing against temperate winds (fans during periods of rest between MCCs) And even if some stronger than usual tropical storms approach the shore there is no need to panic. You can fare this storms better by heeding the following advice:

Team announcement and pre-championship guidelines

Teams will be announced on the MCC official Twitter account, you can wait for the information to be replicated in the MCC subreddit as well as the @mcc-updates updates account here on tumblr. So choose the option you feel the most comfortable!

Some recommendations for each site

Twitter:

Continues to be one of the most volatile storms so tread carefully! If you do not have any experience or confidence to face this storm it is advised you remain away for your own safety!

Open the app and head directly to the MCChampionship account, do not linger on your feed or the tags you may see trending if you aren't sure you've effectively filtered out any potential discourse

Wait for the team announcements and express your excitement over your favorite team on your own profile, that way you may avoid looking at the comments that can get out of hand very quick

⚠️DO NOT OPEN THE QUOTE RETWEETS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ⚠️

Leave Twitter and do not open it again.

The nature of Twitter discussions is mostly based on perceived moral uprightness as well as the popularity of the contestants which is why the winds of this storm can reach such high speeds since the starting point of discussion is one deeply personal and biased. Arguing may not accomplish much aside from creating more arguments, so be careful if you face that storm it may impact your emotional well-being almost immediately in many cases.

Tumblr:

It is a misconception that the site is immune to spikes in toxicity so be aware some caution will still be needed, once more if you do not feel comfortable faring this storm, avoid it for your own safety!

Go to @/mcc-updates or wait for the post to make the rounds until it reaches your blog

If you don't feel confident you have blocked and filtered tags and users that may upset you avoid going through the tags

In case you encounter something that slightly or greatly upsets you, back off slowly and block whoever is needed. The block button is a powerful tool at your disposal at all times.

Harassing other users is not advised as it will result in a cyclical increase of toxicity. REFRAIN AT ALL TIMES OF DOING SO

If you feel in any way nervous or scared of the possibility the storm may impact you directly, remember options to turn off anons and even close your inbox are options!

Tumblr discussions stem from a more meta perspective as it focuses immediately on the effects the event will have or is having on the fandom. Traditionally Tumblr's storm system would only react after harsh winds coming from Twitter, but lately, the storm system has become unstable in itself. As the reaction of Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr itself are evaluated alongside the exchange of thoughts about teams, lengthy discussions can start and as calm as they can be they can turn insidious too, in a less immediate upsetting way than Twitter, or just as upsetting in some rare occasions so employ your filters and be cautious.

Reddit:

Reddit is a very cyclical storm system that has allowed us to identify a clear pattern, and even if its winds may not be as fast as Tumblr's or twitter's it is much more constant and long-lived. Take this into account while traversing it. If you do not feel confident you can navigate the storm safely, avoid it for your own safety!

Go to the subreddit and wait for the team posts

Do not go indepth into the comments as the terms "nerf" and others may be thrown around

Once you've seen the team, leave the site for the rest of the storm cycle!

Why? you may ask.

Reddit's long-term discussion focuses above all on possible performance and the meta scene of the championships. Thus the forum will spend the next two weeks predicting the upcoming event by using tools like tiers and statistics to classify the performance of a team or players. This discussion can vary from very rational and cordial, to very upsetting and heated, and the nature itself of evaluating a player or team solely on statistics may be upsetting to some. So be cautious!

General recommendation:

Taking refuge in a private discord server with friends where you can exchange thoughts opinions, illusions, and grievances in a safe place is beneficial to everyone! as it allows you to get any upset out of your system and receive feedback in a safe environment and in such way other people who are going through their own experience won't be affected.

You deserve to be excited and have fun over this event!

And building hype over the teams and the prospect of seeing them compete! Don't let anyone take that from you! You are allowed to protect your fun and experience from discourse and are not obligated to partake on it!

If you need to take a step back be sure to do so!

Take care <3

[conservativetranny]

2020 blog update

Hello. No idea if any of you ‘remember’ me but I do seem to have a fair few followers on here. I managed to access the login information for this account and it is safe to say this blog is dead. I denounce everything I stood for on this stupid shit. 

I’m writing this because it’s what the blog deserves. Not looking to be dramatic, not looking for sympathy, in fact I think i’ll get a bit of backlash for this but bring it on. 

The past and the present- a summary

I had this blog when I was 14, unfortunately way too young to have a social media presence (one which carried any responsibility like this one anyway). No matter what age I said I was, no matter how I portrayed myself or how you, my followers interpreted me, I was a sad young trans guy desperately hoping to look big, cool, masculine and stoic, and that manifested in the most toxic way possible. 

I’m 17 now, still very very young, and after developments in my life, especially pursuing my medical transition and becoming happy within myself, I no longer hold such toxic beliefs as I once did. I am happier with myself and no longer feel the need to sacrifice others’ dignity, respect, and unfortunately sometimes on this blog, privacy, for my own. I was a very insecure, stubborn, and ignorant teenager, who dealt with a lot of denial. I’m not blaming the way I treated people online on other factors, but of course external factors came into play. I was dealing with bullying and insecurity, with parental problems, and with loneliness and depression. I seeked some sort of community, and I wanted to push myself away from the ‘weak’ trans community (the way I viewed it at the time). I wasn’t in denial personally, with the fact that I was trans (being gay is a different story- I was in complete denial with the fact that I’m gay), more just with the way other people viewed me (I will expand on this). I could elaborate on the way in which I viewed other people and the way that projected onto my conduction online, but it is a complex and confusing story. I have completely changed my viewpoint on trans ‘discourse’, I am open minded, I am close friends with people I would have turned my ignorant nose up at years ago. I am so proud to say that I am a completely different person now. I grow every day, it seems, and I can assure that I will never return to this ignorant mindset.

Growth

With experience, I have grown too. Obviously, from 14-17 i have become more mature. I have different experiences now as well, for example, I don’t bind often at all really anymore, because its more comfortable and can sometimes make me more dysphoric to know I am binding. I’m bringing this up because I bet you back when I was active on this blog, I would’ve laughed at the more mature, tolerant me, and probably went on a tyrade about how I was a fake trans guy or less of a man for not binding. I often wonder what ‘old me’ would think of ‘new me’. Now obviously, three years isn’t a hell of a big difference, but to a 17 come 18 year old it is. I understand I am not an adult yet, but I’ve always taken pride in conducting myself with a sense of maturity and articulacy, and for this post and platform especially I feel it is appropriate.

The Truscum Mindset

Back when I ran this blog, I was in an echo chamber of like minded people, which didn’t help my ideological development. I watched youtubers like Blaire White and Kalvin Garrah, who I thought gave me a balanced, moderate, and fair opinion which is clear is not the case. Back then I would’ve scoffed at the idea of Blaire and Kalvin and other similar people as being radical or a gateway, but I urge you, if you feel you are slipping to obsession with those ideologies, to seek to widen your opinions and associations. I understand it’s a fairly niche discourse topic, but for me it opened a wider rabbit hole into the alt right. From wanting to fit into the lgbt and wider communities as a masculine male, this opened up the black hole of the alt right, I browsed (now deleted) subreddits and 4chan boards, and forums that put me in a very negative and dangerous place. If you’d like me to make a post elaborating on this, I am more than happy to, but this post is to address conservativetranny.

Denial and owning up to responsibility

Back in 2017/18, I was very much in denial of certain aspects of myself, especially my sexuality. I am gay. I thought that this was, and especially as a trans guy, a demasculating quality. I still deal with those feelings sometimes, as a lot of young gay guys do, but thankfully it does not manifest itself as toxic as it once did. I just wanted to portray myself online as how I thought I wanted to be viewed-I didn’t want to be viewed like ‘any other trans guy’. I wanted to be different, but now I can appreciate individuality and I can also embrace being trans as well.

I used to think that having alt views was the coolest thing ever, which contributed to my slip into the alt right, something on which I’ll elaborate on in later posts. I am now an advocate for deradicalisation, and being rational, truly rational. I’m also an advocate for maturity and owning up to your mistakes.

I have hurt people, especially in my personal life, throughout my time as a stupid, thoughtless immature teenager and i am sorry, from the bottom of my heart, for that. I now respect the hell out of those people and unfortunately, but definitely rightfully so, they have lost their respect for me. I don’t blame them, because as I said, up until very recently I was a horrible, toxic person. With maturity, in the past half a year I have been able to own up to my mistakes and I am now taking responsibility for that. No excuses, because I was a shitty person. Of course there is a line between excuses and justification, and I hope those which are reading this can distinguish and appreciate this difference.

Self Hatred and Truscum

Back when I ran this blog, it was very easy to tell I was self hating. Everything I wrote on here, pretty much, was hateful except for the odd two posts that were about something unrelated to my ideology. I was extremely dysphoric and in a bad place when I wrote these things and certainly projected my insecurities onto others. I wanted to find a community of different thinking people that would accept me, and this community was certainly the wrong turn. I had a feeling that it was wrong at the time, but I was too naive and cowardly to own up to it and seek a way out. I kind of just naturally fell out of it, a a lot of things happened in my personal life in late 2018 that forced me out of trans discourse and into much more toxic places like the alt right and true crime fandoms, and I think I’ve only recently ‘found myself’ in the past year or so. I might make a post on self growth on the future as I intend to keep this blog to elaborate and voice my opinions on deradicalisation and highlight the importance of owning up and self awareness.

Don’t fall into the rabbithole

I’m not too acquainted with trans discourse anymore, so I’m out of the loop on this one, but I’d imagine that there’s still ‘transmed vs tucute’ ideas. Kalvin Garrah’s community comes to mind, I haven’t watched his videos ‘as a fan’, if that makes sense, for a while now but I am aware he has a large fanbase of young trans teens that were in a similar mindset to where I was back when I ran this blog. I would love for this post to reach his opposers and supporters for that matter, as a means to show them that they don’t have to fall into this cycle of hate which can be very damaging. I used to be an avid fan of Kalvin, and Blaire White, amongst others. I watched exclusively their content alone and formed my opinions around theirs. If you’re doing that now, I urge you to consider other people when you do. Think about the people like Brennan Beckwith, people who were severely impacted and hurt by hateful rhetoric. Those people are human too, and with maturity you will learn that people with different experiences and views are, at the end of the day, the same as you, and they have feelings as well .I’m going to make a post in the future about Kalvin Garrah, certainly, but maybe Blaire White as well.

Why now?

You may be wondering why this post is being made now of all times, and that is a question that has every right to be asked. I feel as if this timing is right because I finally possess the level of maturity needed to own up to my mistakes and tell you that I was wrong and it was certainly wrong to post those opinions and mistakes online for all to see, and put people in my real life on blast like I did.

I had completely forgotten about this blog, and forgot about the rude and ignorant words I had written towards the people in my real life, until chance had it that I was in contact with one of the people mentioned in this post. [https://conservativetranny.tumblr.com/post/169351517511/no-one-pretends-to-be-trans]

I’m not going to go into the nuances of the conversation we had, but it turns out they had, for a while and definitely rightfully so been hurt by the fact that I had mentioned them, by name, in this post. And while I’d of course still like to keep these people anonymous and will not sacrifice their anonymity in order to tell a story or ‘save myself’, this post is quite funny to read back on as I am good friends with the people referred to as ‘P’ and ‘Shadow’ now.

This is the end of this post, as I feel I have said everything I have wanted to say regarding my previous conduct on this blog. I’m going to change my name on this blog and my bio as I do intend on further posts in the future. I’m not sure how many people, if any, this post will reach, but I’m satisfied I have written this anyway. I certainly do plan on writing future posts but I’m not exactly sure how to formulate them. But thank you so much for reading this far, and if you have, I appreciate it.

[miseriathome]

it's totally understandable and ok if you're notinthemood, but i stumbled upon the paper about "str8" and it reminded me that you once mentioned something about the formation of masculinity in incel comms. and i'm still interested in that. anyway hoping you are doing well or ok.

 I’m doing well, thank you! I love when people ask me about identity.

The identity formation paper which really made me start thinking about incels and identity formation through the reification of abjection is called ‘That pony is real sexy’: My Little Pony fans, sexual abjection, and the politics of masculinity online, and it’s actually about the brony community on 4chan.

To very briefly summarize the construction of the abject masculine brony identity, you have people who find community among other like them, interested in ponies as objects of sexual attraction. They know it’s viewed as strange to outsiders and at a certain point, being a freaky lonely pervert failure man starts becomes just as much of a trait to bond around as liking ponies. Extreme performance of “I’m a freak, I’ll never find love, I can never be who I am to people in real life, I despise my own existence” is not only expected, but rewarded with community and affirmation of suffering. They are hyperaware of the real stigma and ridicule that will face them should they ever be authentic away from /mlp/, and they direct their righteous outrage against women and feminism. The collective identity of “brony” is characterized by emptiness, shame, victimhood, tension, and social disadvantage which falls across gendered lines.

It follows that many aspects of incel identity formation run a similar course; incel identity is defined by the perception of inescapable suffering and shame at the failure to achieve acceptable manhood. This consuming grief is both relieved and magnified by affirmation from peers, but acceptance into the community is always perilously contingent upon proper performance of failure, self-hatred, and reactionism against acceptable classes/institutions. I definitely had one or two good papers on incels on 4chan or reddit, but I recently lost a very big reading folder and I can’t for the life of me recall anything about them; there are plenty of decent non-journal theses on incels available through google scholar, though, which approach their identity formation and misogyny through various analytical frameworks.

The idea of identity based around abjection fascinates me--after all, that’s a very central theme to queer identity and pride. But as we’ve seen time an time again with various circles and discourses, there are communities in which persecution becomes a marker of validity and suffering becomes not a consequence of stigma, but an identity in and of itself; we’ve seen how truscum have warped transness into its own intrinsic site of pain, and how radfems twist womanhood into being synonymous with victimhood, and how antis stoke the fear that the outside world is malicious and cruel. These groups gatekeep community through extensive performance of suffering and alienate people from other avenues of self-actualization; they emphasize that the only people who will be there for you are the ones who readily confirm your lack of value. They do not challenge the institutions from which the pain stems, they do not seek to uplift each other out of the toxic spiral of self-loathing, and they do not desire solidarity with other hurting people; instead, they provide the incredibly fleeting but oh-so-enticing relief of reactionary politics and targeted aggression.

When we understand these identity formation processes and we consider the complex matrices that overlay binary axes of privilege and oppression, we become better equipped to disrupt the cycle and create more effective outreach. People ridicule bronies for having a persecution complex while being privileged, and yet they readily understand in other situations how toxic masculinity, mental health, sexual purity politics, stigma against paraphilias, amatonormativity, and heteronormativity are all institutions which profoundly impact the lived experiences of non-white, non-straight people. There are real insecurities to be had among the privileged, but by and large the only communities willing to address those insecurities in an affirming way are toxic breeding grounds for reactionary radicalism and bigotry. Men who have some niggling sense of the injustice in this world and how it negatively impacts their own lives are more readily recruited into these depressing, vitriolic feedback chambers, but a comprehensive leftist praxis which makes room for deradicalization and inoculation from radicalization could work to uncouple abjection from shame/destigmatize abjection, and to create spaces for men to feel positively about their masculine identities and process their suffering.