#bc i've had bad experiences with people who have it/claim to

[gay-simple-and-chaotic]

huge vent ramble under the cut (my love if you're seeing this I'm just trying to process and get it out there, no need to check up on me)

beginning to think I might actually not just be traumatized and depressed but also have a personality disorder because damn. quiet bpd and avpd both really strike some uncomfortable chords

but at the same time i have too much control for it to be bpd, but I have too much self esteem for it to be avpd,

but at the same time, it's worse than just anxiety because there's so many more layers to it like,

if it was just social anxiety, I probably wouldn't be so debilitatingly terrified of putting myself in a situation where someone might criticize me. (Yet at the same time I've been able to overcome it sometimes! It's uncomfortable, it's draining, and I avoid doing it, but I have done it)

if it was just anxiety, I would have a stable sense of who I am (but I'm young and autistic, right? There's time)

if it was just anxiety, surely I wouldn't spiral into panic when I attempt to set a boundary, and if setting it seems to annoy someone, surely if it was just anxiety, my first reaction wouldn't be to recoil and downplay, to minimize my upset and my struggling? (but that's fawn response, it could be an anxious attachment style, I know I have that)

if it was just any of it, surely I wouldn't be so utterly unable to believe someone when they said they liked spending time with me, when they told me to my face that they don't see me as a secondary/backup friend, right? That wouldn't be this persistent, all-encompassing fear, that even though I like myself (too much too much, have a big head, make yourself smaller or you'll be intolerable and they'll hate you they'll leave you) and generally don't take shit (but you're too outspoken, over dumb things, you're sensitive and you've taken to "voicing your needs" and you're going to push everyone away asking them to do inconsequential things that annoy them, like asking them to not be mean to your favorite character), and show my affection openly to my friends (TOO MUCH TOO MUCH you're going to suffocate them and they're going to leave even after all your attempts to keep them close because you're too much you're TOO MUCH) and love them a lot, surely it isn't normal to be paranoid about your friends having favorites, surely it isn't normal to feel like no matter how much you try to bridge an unspoken gap (that probably doesn't even exist, it's in your head, they were annoyed once and now you're assuming they're holding onto it as much as you are) they're always pulling away faster and faster because all they were waiting for was an excuse to ditch you,

panicking and spiraling and self deprecating, wanting to drive them away but being so afraid, you're not angry you're never angry (except when it's unreasonable and you're frustrated and you want to cry because it's all so unfair) you're just afraid, you want them to go but you NEED them to stay, the thought of them leaving feels like you're dying, your throat is tight and you're struggling to think or act right when it occurs,

god, surely that's not something someone's supposed to experience, right?

[tangents-within-tangents]

Thoughts on Echo as amputee/disability representation

First and foremost, I am not disabled or an amputee and I don’t claim to speak for those communities (and if I was I couldn't speak for everyone). What little I do know mostly comes from this youtube channel (@oakwyrm), this post, and other research I’ve done for my writing (and like one amputee I kinda knew in passing). By all means correct me and add to the conversation, I just have some thoughts I want to share because I haven’t really seen this discussed anywhere

Overview

So Echo is interesting. He is a triple amputee which is pretty rare in media. His disabilities come from extremely traumatic circumstances: injured in a near-death experience, imprisoned and dehumanized as an experiment with no autonomy over what happened to his body.

There are a few moments in the shows where Echo is treated… questionably. Like this bit where Rex uses him as an example of the Separatists' evils to convince the locals to fight back:

To be fair, yeah Echo’s treatment does prove that the Techno Union is not neutral like they claim. The modifications that everyone is gasping in horror at here obviously weren’t made with comfort and accessibility in mind, nor with Echo’s consent. But you still just want to be sure that “They took away his freedom, his humanity, they tried to turn him into a machine” is about using him as a living computer, not the fact that he is missing limbs. 

The Batch is also pretty insensitive toward him and his trauma imo, which is weird considering they've supposedly also faced discrimination for their mutations

Disabled people do have to deal with stuff like this in this day and age so I guess it can speak to those experiences. I think especially him being mistaken as a droid (and Hunter going along with it (bruh)) might resonate with some people. 

Aside from that stuff, Echo isn't really treated any differently as a character/person which is really good (as low of a bar as that is).

We get this moment in CW where Echo contemplates that yeah things are gonna be different now

While also (imo at least) showing that he is still the same person regardless, evidenced by the fact that he just echoed Rex :,) I also think it's significant that he joins the Bad Batch on his own terms and we're given a really emotional scene to specifically show that he's not just like 'lumped in with the other misfits' but that it is his choice to go where he feels his place is.

A lot of people, myself included, are disappointed that TBB didn't have more time to explore Echo's PTSD, but I think the one panic attack scene we did get is really good. Even thought it's minor it at least is an appropriate reaction from a guy who was medically tortured (which is more than I've come to expect from Star Wars shows lol)

And it's really sweet to see Omega showing Echo some empathy and consideration.

It would have been nice to see more of his adjustment period, and other side effects like chronic pain and maintenance, but there’s a lot of daily life stuff the show never had time for (i.e. we don’t know if he removed his prosthetics to sleep, but we also never saw him sleep anyway). His disabilities might take on a background role (much like the character himself sadly) but for the most part they aren’t invisible or erased, nor do they define his character and arc.

Physical Appearance

Okay this one is bit dicey, bc on the one hand, yes complaints that Echo’s paleness (most likely caused by burns from the explosion or chemical burns from the cryo-chamber) is whitewashing are totally valid. But I also think you can draw comparisons to real life conditions that affect pigmentation/complexion (like you know burns). So while I understand why a lot of fanart will depict him with his original skin tone and with hair, consider that there are real people who have to live with temporary or permanent changes to their appearance, and the idea of “fixing" him by making him look more like his old self can be problematic.

It's also interesting to note that Echo could act as a reversal of the 'disabled/disfigured = evil' trope. He's pale and bald and wears black and red, which is so often visually associated with villains, but we all know Echo is the bestest boy™

The Headpiece

Echo’s headpiece is interesting because within the show we don’t actually ever learn much about it (idk if there is more info in books or whatever bc i don’t have them so?). He didn’t have it in CW so we know it didn’t come from the Techno Union and therefore Echo probably had more choice with it. We don’t know its exact purpose but it’s most likely related to his scomping abilities. When he is hacking with his scomp in CW, before he has his headpiece, it’s clearly very mentally straining:

We don’t see him struggling like this in TBB once he does have it (though that could be bc he got more used to it over time). There doesn't seem to be much of an impact when he removes his headpiece in s3 ep14-15, except that he gets stuck in the ports every time he uses his scomp which is not something we’ve seen before: 

There might not be an exact real-world equivalent, but the headpiece is some kind of accessibility aid. It means that someone specifically designed a device to help him adapt to the changes the Techno Union made, as well as a helmet that integrates it. It’s removable and visually very present, much like a cochlear implant would be. (A lot of people actually headcanon it to act partially as a hearing aid, since it makes sense that Echo’s hearing would have been damaged in the explosion, but there isn't really any indication of this in canon.) The headpiece is never really acknowledged in the show, but I think that's a good thing. It's something he needs/wants and it just exists, completely normalized, and that's pretty cool 👍

Legs

Sigh... So from the very first episode of TBB I was really disappointed that the animation team or whoever completely visually erased Echo’s prosthetic legs (I think we all were, honestly, if fanart is anything to go by). It’s one thing when he’s in armor because he would probably want to protect his prosthetics, but we literally see him in his blacks and there is no indication whatsoever that he lost his legs even though it was not left up for debate at all in CW:

Like ??????!?

This is just really strange to me! Idk what went on behind the scenes with this decision but I don’t really see why it would be that much harder to animate or anything since it’s 3D and they've done it before. We do see some pretty sophisticated cybernetic technology in Star Wars canon that mimics real limbs:

But Luke’s fancy hand is technically 20ish years from now, so Anakin and Maul are more of a representation of what level we could expect here

So yeah, for no apparent reason, his leg amputation is effectively, visually and narratively nonexistent. Which is not great 👎

Arm!

The scomp on the other hand (uh lol!) is the complete opposite and I kinda love it!

At first I, like many others, thought it was a bit odd that they didn’t give Echo a prosthetic arm. Losing hands is basically a Star Wars tradition at this point, so robotic arms/hands are well established within the worldbuilding: 

We aren’t necessarily given a canon reason for why Echo doesn't get a cybernetic arm (again unless it's in some lore book I haven’t read, sorry). General fanon explanations I’ve seen are that he either couldn’t because the Techno Union wired the scomp too far into his nervous system, and/or the resources to give him one were deemed too expensive for a clone (what about his legs tho?), or that he chose not to, usually because he thought the scomping was useful. 

Regardless, I actually really love this choice (and it's the whole reason I made this post), because here's the thing: There’s a lot of problematic tropes out there that either erase/cure disabilities or compensate them with perks (like how pretty much any blind character is actually not blind by some sort of magic power). With amputees that is done with robotic arms. The character is still an amputee or course, and there is still value in that representation, if this story from Mark Hamill that makes me tear up is anything to go by:

but for the most part these characters function like anyone else, just with a limb that looks a little different. It’s no more than a video game skin, an able-bodied actor with a green screen glove. It “cures” the disability, or it actually makes the character even stronger than usual: 

It usually makes sense within the world of the story, but the reason it’s not so great in my opinion is that in the real world we just do not have technology anywhere close to that yet. Prosthetics can more or less replace any mobility from lost legs, but not for all the complexities of a hand (and even if they could the average person wouldn’t be able to afford it).

So

I think it's actually really super cool that Echo’s scomp bypasses the canonically-established amputee erasure and functions much like a stump would irl. He integrates it into his movements and everyday life and it’s (as far as I know) a lot closer to an everyday amputee’s experience. 

It doesn’t define his character, it doesn’t hold him back, he lives a full life, the other’s don’t treat him any differently, and he’s still a total karking badass 

The only additional thing is that he sometimes uses it as a weapon (which given his story, I think it’s cool to see him taking back autonomy in a way, and we only see that like twice)

And also the scomping, which could be seen as the 'added/compensating superpower' trope. But narratively it's no different than if he was plugging in with a hacking gadget of some kind (he didn't necessarily "need" to lose his arm for it) and it’s not like Echo is completely defined by this skill. Personally, I think it's well worth the positives of him actually having a visible and realistically impactful amputation. 

I see a lot of posts or comments out there that say stuff like “how come Echo doesn’t get a hand?” or fanworks that do give him one and I just think it’s a bit of a shame. If he did get a robotic hand, it just would have disappeared the same way his legs and Anakin’s arm did (aside from that one time he got yoinked by a magnet). When Echo did “get a hand” in the last two episodes there were comments like “yay he finally got a hand! but it doesn’t even work” but I was actually so relieved that it didn’t! Bc for one thing that wouldn’t make any sense, he grabbed it off a droid, it wasn’t designed to implement with his scomp, that would be really complicated. But more importantly because it again refused to erase/cure his disability! It functioned like a real-world cosmetic prosthetic (useless beyond appearance) which is exactly what he needed it for, so that he could blend in better with his disguise.

And he continually took it off throughout the episode and ditched it at the end. He only used it for the necessity of a stealth mission, he doesn’t feel the need to visually “fit in” in his daily life. 

And, last but very much not least, he made a dad joke and from my intel that is very accurate representation!

TLDR: Echo’s scomp is actually really cool from an amputee representation perspective, especially within Star Wars, and I think that deserves some appreciation 

[ariaste]

listen i've had a 100 degree fever for four days and i have not been able to string any thoughts together except for gently rotating Devil's Minion in my brain and the bleary conclusion i have come to is this:

we know armand is a control freak

we know armand has spooky psychic powers of imposing his desired reality on top of other people's lived realities

the interview is happening despite armand supposedly claiming that he thinks it's a bad idea

Armand gives in to participating in the interview awfully quick. including a theatrical reveal of his true self at exactly the right moment for maximum Drama.

therefore, stay with me here, I will argue that armand DOES ACTUALLY want the interview to be happening. Who else is going to be pushing for it? Louis??? If Louis pushed for something Armand didn't want, Armand would simply wipe it from Louis' mind and move on with his day. He has that power, and yet he didn't USE IT in this case. So that means that the little tissue paper objections are mostly for show and to camouflage his true intentions (see also, though: the scene in Paris where Louis comes in and is playing maitre and Armand offers just a teeny resistance of "oooh but i'm looking at Sam's new pages", so it's a documented behavior pattern). There is one exception, but we'll come back to that in a sec.

So then the questions are: Why does he want it to be happening now as opposed to any other time? What is his motivation for having it happen again at all? What changed between 1973 and now that caused this?

(the rest under a cut bc this is gonna get long and i don't wanna clutter people's dashes too much)

my wild fever hallucination theory rn is that armand (my canceled wife who i stand with) is manipulative and psychopathic enough that he may have looked at daniel at some point in the 1970s and said to himself "you know what, the one thing that I would change about him is if he was like 40 years older, because i'm kinda into that, and also maybe he hates me a little bit, because i'm kinda into that as well" and then set Daniel on the back burner to basically finish cooking into the Perfect Daddy Boyfriend.

so why is he doing this whole charade again? Because the first time Daniel had the interview, the end result was "omg omg omg make me a vampire PLEAAASE", right? So Armand's insane little brain is like "ok, so we do it again, and replicate the same results :) and this time i will win and get everything i want, just like always :))))"

Going back to the tissue-paper objections i mentioned above, the one exception that strikes true for me is when Armand tells Louis that he's lost control of the interview. What control? What control, babygirl? what are you trying to control about this interview? what is the goal that isn't being achieved rn? Are you worried that Daniel seems Jaded and Cynical and Unimpressed nowadays? Are you worried that Louis does not seem to be selling the Allure Of Being A Vampire as effectively as he did back then and that Daniel is not going to beg for it like he used to? Armand is so used to being around people who NEVER EVER CHANGE in hundreds of years and so maybe he has forgotten that mortals do change actually. Oh no. Science experiment cannot be replicated. Results are going awry. PANIC.

this would also explain why he keeps explaining himself to Daniel, censoring the diaries, and lying about his involvement in things. could it be that he thinks Daniel won't play along with what he's supposed to be doing (ie: being deeply into him) if he knows upfront that Armand is Fucknuts Crazy?

that is where he is wrong tho. Daniel thinks fucknuts crazy is irresistibly hot. Daniel "I want BOTH [to survive AND the book] >:\" Molloy, aka Daniel "YOU BOTH FUCKED LESTAT? :DDD" Molloy aka Daniel "Fascinating Boy" Molloy loves mess. he loves mess. he's an investigative journalist who interviews KGB agents and the most dangerous people in the world because he's an adrenaline junkie who sincerely loves the thrill of hanging out with people who might kill him. He has been chasing that high since 1973 (and I use that phrasing intentionally). Every time Armand tries to control the narrative and woobify himself and act like he's not absolutely insane bc actually he's innocent and blameless, he is shooting himself in the foot re: the pursuit of his endgame goals. And that's extremely funny to me. Bc Daniel's love language is "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU [enraptured, intrigued, captivated, fascinated]"

and in conclusion, that's why they're the ship of all time, ur honor. defense rests.

(will this make coherent sense once i'm not sick anymore? idk.)

[theminecraftbee]

I'm really glad to have found the Hermitcraft fandom here on Tumblr, I've been a long time fan and it's awesome to discover all this great fanart and content and stuff. Any must-follow MCYT/Hermitcraft/Minecraft blogs?

oh gosh, welcome! in general i am BAD about remembering who i follow and who i don't; a great way to find who you want to follow might be to just go through the #hermitcraft tag and follow people you find funny, or, heck, if i reblog a lot of art from a certain artist you like (or not a lot, like one art even), go follow them!

while we're here, a few additional general etiquette rules (keeping in mind that like, this is tumblr, trying to claim ANYTHING is a whole-community norm is basically impossible i am claiming a norm from my specific circle of guys): do not crosstag, only tag things that are actually in your post. don't use the 'minecraft' tag, that tag is for people who like the actual game. (i mean, you can use it if you are posting about minecraft, but not if you're posting about the youtubers). it's generally considered rude to put your crit in the main tags, especially without tagging 'discourse' somewhere so it can be filtered. shipping should generally have a 'hermitshipping' tag on it for filtering purposes as well, but if something is tagged hermitshipping and you're mad about it just like, block them, they did the important part.

the hermits i know of on tumblr (could be more, idk): @/joehills @/pearlescentmoo @/falsesymmetry @/therealdocm77 (not actually active but has the account) @/geminitayyt. cleo also had an account but it is no longer active. also @/inthelittlewood is here and like very active, as is @/askzloyxp and @/quinnhills. as a general etiquette rule, just... act like they're perfectly ordinary tumblr users and continue your business as usual! and don't send them weird asks or anything.

off the top of my head, a few blogs i like, an EXTREMELY non-exhaustive list, find your own guys out there as well you won't regret it! like, you will find the experience you like best just going out there and looking for it yourself! i've absolutely missed a bunch of guys i love, let alone guys you would love! this is like 10 million percent non-exhaustive, i follow 1,570 blogs apparently, many of which aren't hermitcraft or mcyt related, but many of which are, so i just sorta. went for it. and when i was having trouble remembering if a name was a repeat that's when i stopped. so. non-exhaustive list:

@nightshadeowl, @jestroer, @astronomodome, @kingtheghast, @floweroflaurelin, @roenais, @silverskye13, @wasyago, @rusty-courage, @art-by-fate, @silverskye13, @redstonedust, @betweenlands, @sixteenth-days, @judas-iscaryot, @terracottakore, @cherrifire, @antimony-medusa, @hybbart, @made-nondescript, @luigra, @cuteiemonster, @mawofthemagnetar, @potionofinstantdamage, @concorp, @spiderziege, @salemoleander, @bc-jpeg, @magicalmanhattanproject, @simplydm, @12u3ie, @mishapen-dear, @lunarblazes, @girltimeswithscar, @kishdoodles, @quaranmine, @shadeswift99, @bdoubleowo, @quicksandblock, @beacon-lamp, @kikunai, @sideblague, @applestruda, @ingapotejtoo, @belmarzi, @strifetxt

anyway FEEL FREE TO PROMO GUYS OR YOURSELF ON THIS POST TOO! from what i understand we may be getting some new guys sometime soon here from the twitter lands? so it may be helpful to have that for anyone who's looking for new guys to follow!

and most of all: WELCOME!!!

[zzoupz]

when it comes to the Isan region, does the average Thai person care whether or not they side with Laos or Thailand? due to the past wars, it seems like the people of the Korat plateau have their own identity—yet from books I read, many of the younger generations feel stuck whether claiming to be “Thai” or “Lao” and in doing so only speak central Thai.

another question is are all the Russians and Chinese people in Thailand all that bad like how the media portrays them? ex: defecating in public, pushing and shoving, public drunken fights, etc. whether you’ve personally dealt them or not, do you ever wish they either not visit all together or just be very cautious and respectful of local life? 

(I think) my final question is about westernized Thais. While many foreigners visit Thailand for either cultural reasons, religious, retiring, food, sex tourism, surgeries, etc., there are many westernized Thais who have moved/visited Thailand. do you think natives sees them as lesser than or as another foreigner? are they treated differently despite having mannerisms appearance, mindset, etc. that’s more associated with the west?

hi, thanks for the questions

I may not be the best person to ask this bc I'm a Chinese descendant who grew up in central Thailand all my life haha. I can say at least from my friends they don't really care, they are just Isan and consider themselves Thai bc they are born in Thailand (and vice versa). They speak central Thai to people from other places only bc that's the universal one (as other regions also do). I don't think they have to pick a "side" considering we're not in a conflict. idk I've never heard of that before.

I've not had bad experiences with them personally. I've heard it's bad in tourist spots but that's just typical tourist behavior (hell most of the time it's USAmerican tourists that gets in trouble). So not as much as they're portrayed but they DO do that. And yes I hope they still visit but be more respectful, not just Russians and Chinese but everyone

I have an aunt who moved to USA to be a professor for about 10 years before coming back, and I can guarantee they're not treated any differently, they'll always be Thai. If anything people praise and envies them for having the money/opportunity to move aboard haha

hope those were good enough answers ! :]

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[softbutchthatlovesyou]

First things first: I am not deactivating. Just. Taking a break.

Mututals: You can get my discord if I don't ask for yours before I leave in a couple days. You can also give me a snap though I may be worse at responding to that.

This is my reasons for leaving so no one thinks I do anything crazy, or if anyone has their own gripe they can take this as a sign to take a mental health break of your own.

.

The Racism on this site remains unchecked, and the agression against black user who call it out should absolutely NOT be that high. You adore recreating the racist systems that got us here in the first place. You think your lense on how we experience opression, even the theories we wrote, are better and clearly so much superior.

Exorsexism is disgustingly rampant. We are a jokes to people. We are fakes to other. We are a convenient argument about people passing. We are "dangerous" to a preciously protected set of binaries that do nothing to help any of us.

Lesbophobia across the site has no reason to be so high on a site with so many Lesbians and yet!! We treat labels like they're more important than lives. People act like a personal interpretation of the idenity is an attack. We go "Being a Lesbian is so complex. It's intricate and special" And then when a butch takes t, or a femmes uses he and maybe even gets top surgery, or someones attraction isnt the simply wlw Lesbianism they're told they're doing it wrong and that it's not fair to try and over complicate being a lesbian.

Transandrophobia and Transmisogyny against me and other trans people on this site is out of control. People are infighting and people are lashing out laterally and comparing it 1:1 to the opression the system holds against all of us.

Intersexism continues to be like, so easy for you guys to commit no matter how many voices speak up about how best to be aware of intersex issues.

You guys adore ableism just as you have for years and years. You're obsessed with degrading people who do mental illness or disability "wrong." You see someone stuggling with illness and you don't wait to tell them your personal opinion on their experience. Adding ocd triggering guilt tripping to post. Refusing to hear out people about adding image ids/alt images and how screen readers work.

The Antisemitism I was seeing well before 10/7 was gross. It only increased as people scrambled not to be associated with "the bad jew." People had mutuals and friends for years that abandoned them at the first chance. They spread lies or twisted truths in order to chose Jewish bloggers off the site. I DO notice that when people make post on antisemitism there is often more Jewish people than goy in the notes acknowledging it. I don't think I've seen one without horrid Antisemitism in it's own notes in months. Multiple people have told me to leave my heritage out of pride in their attempts to keep out Jewish people.

Voices from Palstine are only used when they support certain ideas. You all turned supporting people into a fucking witch hunt against profiles on the Internet. You reblog a post of Palastine joy and then reblog an unsourced tweet about something Palstinians have said isn't true, that slanders Jewish people unprompted. For a long time some of you weren't even sharing the right sources for helping them bc you couldn't fact check before sharing?

-

And then there's fucking STAFF. They couldn't stop themselves from banning trans blogs if you paid them. They couldn't keep harassment campaigns at bay if it killed someone.

They used us to coax queer people here for years by sharing that they support queer identities and even at one point let our porn exist here! And then it was all fucking wiped off the map. Now one mass reporting of an untrue claim can get an minorties blog permanently removed.

They say "We need money!" but when people gave it to them this site got w o r se. They use distractions and try and make stuff around the fun shit we came up with to keep us from fussing.

They mute and remove users who make a loud enough point to sway people. They mute and removes uses that are so quiet no one would notice.

Minorties inboxes are a headache.

.

So I'm out. I'll probably be back at some point because I have things I DO enjoy here.

But for mental health I just gotta catch my breath.

This will be my pinned until I get back I guess im case anyone wonders where I went.

I'll have a queue going of a few last minute things i want on my blog but when it runs out thats it for a while until I return.

Thats all

[jaqobis]

sorting out some finale impressions after sleeping on it

it's like.

moiraine being able to burn the ships despite the oaths; the protracted scene of renna's murder; perrin going into a rage and killing bornhald senior; rand one-shotting turak etc; mat stabbing people left and right with the dagger; nynaeve torturing the sul'dam but that plot coming to nothing (returning to that in a moment). like i read the interview, i know what the rand scene referenced. i can imagine the perrin scene was buildup for fear of the wolf. it's not that i just don't get it.

but like did dain necessarily need Valid Reason to hate perrin lol. again, i can see what they're doing. but What If The Whitecloaks Were Here To Fight The Seanchan -- which, yeah, they do oppose the seanchan in the books. but the specific framing of them to help and whatever, when no one else was willing to. specifically also throwing siuan under the bus bc allegedly the amyrlin also got a letter about this. even if this turns out to be a lie, this is the standing narrative for now, and in combination with everything else they did with siuan this season, yikes.

i read the interview, i know what the rand thing was referencing, but also that's a scene of rand acting in self-defense against darkfriends that were literally about to murder him. if he'd struck a second later, or waited, they might have succeeded. more importantly that's where he's in a situation where people have been trying to murder him literally day and night for, like, months. he hasn't slept in as long. the context is totally different. there is also a rand scene in TFOH where he talks about how it feels unfair to use saidin against non-channelers. you can just as easily argue that he Wouldn't do this.

i actually, personally, think it's very important for the egwene/rand parallels that her friends were there to save her from the seanchan, and that he later has to save himself from the box. i also think it was important for her development that she could know she has friends who would and do come for her. i also personally find that narrative much more satisfying, cool as her Moment was. i'd been spoiled about her killing renna going in, and like we can discuss morality whether rj was Right to ask if revenge is justice or if it's More Right for egwene to kill renna, we'd be here forever. i'm not really looking to comment on that. it is kind of a weird vibe to remove a meditation on violence, however, in a series that is anti-war, in a finale that seemed to make a lot of choices to depict and make this battle Cool, etc. that had us watch renna die for quite a long moment. renna certainly got what was coming to her, but idk.

Violence Is Cool. Traumatic Experiences Lead To Empowering Moments. that's the vibe it's giving.

lan continued to be used just to prop up moiraine and explain how she's feeling and talk about how good she is. at least daniel henney got a pretty cool fight scene!

tbf leaning on the whitecloaks and ishamael as sad and sympathetic has sanderson written all over it

making the sul'dam weak channelers seems to lose some of the hypocrisy central to the seanchan empire; losing some of the hypocrisy and deep societal rot undercuts the commentary on institutional-level change needed to remove the damane system. combined with the deaths of both collared sul'dams, that secret also goes lost.

(they certainly might bring it back and address it later, but arguing that It's 100% Coming, Shut Up & Stop Whining is just as much of a bad faith argument as claiming the show sucks bc hurin isn't in it. i can only comment to what exists now. also, frankly, i've been told things i was criticising previously were OBVIOUSLY going to be addressed in the finale and. weren't? so like.)

nynaeve really was allowed to accomplish nothing useful huh. no speech about justice, no part of the successful figuring out how to uncollar, no healing, no protecting her friends from forsaken, nothing. for all that elayne was immediately walking around everywhere after her dramatic wound, they could've just. let nynaeve do that.

like i obviously understand that they're showing the block is a real problem, which it is, but this is a choice that was made.

also not a single mention of ryma after her big sacrifice huh. it would add approximately 5 seconds to runtime for the wondergirls to talk about saving egwene and ryma at any point.

loial's speech about them all being heroes + mat's hero of the horn thing + crowds cheering (yes i remember the end of tdr) + etc etc really building up this idea of Heroism As Cool. could be something they'll work to subvert later but it's certainly an element that existed in the books at this point. that they've stripped out.

also like why even bother destroying the heron mark sword without the buildup of why it matters to rand or why its destruction was narratively impactful. unearned. rand saying he won't serve ishamael in a thousand lifetimes, unearned. there were plenty of other moments that didn't feel earned to me that escape me now, which. a shame!

i've already rb'd a post that laid out my feelings about rand thus far pretty well so i'll mostly spare y'all but. it's an incredible disservice to his character to take a scene where he tries to sacrifice himself for egwene/his loved ones, knowingly opens himself up to terrible pain, and thereby gets the wound that gives him chronic pain for the rest of his life and kills him, and make it...a mistake of mat's. like. yes, we've seen him try to sacrifice himself at the eye. there's nothing wrong with repeating this beat? it's called a consistent character trait. it was already a subversion of the conceit of a 1v1 op heroic battle. they tried to fix something that didn't need fixing, to make a point it was already making. also rand just immediately up and about after getting this wound, even with healing, where he was out for days in the book. it just doesn't bode super well for depiction of chronic pain sufferer rand al'thor. i don't doubt they intend to show us the wound breaking open etc etc but you're also undercutting significance on multiple levels out the gate. it bothers me! but i'm chronically ill with chronic pain so i'm not going to pretend this is some coldly logical clear-eyed opinion.

also perrin killing bornhald sr the same way he killed laila. except it's not even an immediate heat of the moment in the same way, he had to go out and find bornhald sr and stab him repeatedly and be held back. like i love hopper too (another death that felt really. gratuitous in handling.) but christ's sake. it's sure a Look.

tl;dr the themes??? ? ? the themes ???? ? ? and then i remember the sanderson of it all and i understand lmao.

[sexyleon]

I felt that post of yours about the Dracula fandom and the way it talks about adaptations tbh, like, I'm someone who was very involved in DD last year and I've written critique myself about Dracula adaptations bc I love comparative analysis and really thinking about the choices adaptations make, for good or for ill, but from my personal experience, a lot of fandom commentary on adaptations isn't really thoughtful analysis, and don't get me wrong, I'm a hater sometimes too and enjoying venting, but I noticed that this year, there were so many posts that started out as thoughtful commentary on the book, then launched into bitching about the evils of adaptations out of nowhere, and people can write what they want, but it got tiring after awhile to be in a fandom with so much angry energy, not to mention the divergence in canon vs fanon that was much starker this year that made me feel like I had read a different book.

Also, every time I see people point at re: Dracula to be like, see, it's so easy to do a perfect 1:1 adaptation of the novel, why can't other adaptations do it?, it's like, it's an audiobook, a movie can't be that long, even a television mini-series would have to make cuts. And I might dislike a lot of choices adaptations make, but creatives absolutely have the right to take a public domain work and put their own spin on things beyond book accuracy as the number one goal - and like, do we truly want a 100% accurate adaptation when the novel is still ultimately a xenophobic reverse invasion story? Like, I would hope modern directors would seriously grapple with those aspects of the original story instead of reproducing Victorian bigotry unquestioned.

Hi, thank you for your response! I'm glad that my post resonated with a few people!

I definitely also felt a shift in energy with this season of Dracula Daily, and I'm pretty sure it is a direct result of the phenomena that is Re: Dracula. Don't get me wrong, I am a HUGE supporter of RE: Dracula, and I found it to be absolutely delightful specifically because it was a 1:1 adaptation of the book, but I also think that it has skewed the way people engage with all the other adaptations of Dracula. You are so right when you say that Re: Dracula's media as audiobook is what allowed it to be so authentic. Even if it was a long-form series, there would have to be creative liberties taken to account for visualising certain aspects of the text. I am 100% sure someone would be able to do it, but it would undoubtedly be a labour of love and expense.

I think the biggest thing that got lost in translation in my post is that I was speaking specifically on the rhetoric of "bad adaptation = bad media." I don't even like to use the term "bad adaptation" because it feels inaccurate and gives the connotation of being holistically terrible; "failed adaptation" or "inauthentic adaptation" seems more apt when discussing how close an adaptation relates to the source material. I think it is unfair for any adaptation to be written off solely on the fact that it does not strictly adhere to the original text. This can be in way of narrative, characterization, theme, etc. I don't think it's fair to say "x adaptation is bad because it ignores x from the text" because that fundamentally dismisses all the other attributes that contribute to whether or not a piece of media is subjectively good (because honestly that's all it is-- subjectivity). Media, especially film and stage, has so many dynamic and moving parts. There are so many attributes that contribute to the success of any one given thing, especially adaptations (which can claim the title with even the loosest references to the source material). I feel like the black and white thinking when it comes to this doesn't really allow for a dialogue to exist between people who enjoy Dracula adaptations for what they are and, forgive me for saying this, book purists.

Understandably, there is criticism against some adaptations that have claimed to follow the source text closely, but very distinctly did not (Ahum, Cappola). However, I think it does everyone a disservice to deny the impact of a lot of these (mostly) films. Someone in the reblogs of my original post did a good breakdown of the origins of the Dracula genre itself, and I think it goes to show that the story of Dracula has a life of its own outside of the pages of Bram Stoker's book.

The most annoying thing about the responses to my initial post was the refusal to believe that anyone was making these comparisons. I really would not have gone out on a limb to rant about this if I hadn't been consistently seeing vent posts in the main tag with mostly negative responses to a lot of different adaptations of Dracula based on the authenticity of them to the text. I admit I was frustrated when I wrote it, but it really was meant to just address the black and white thinking re: failed adaptations making bad media. This is not to say that criticism of adaptations isn't valid, but I think there should be more nuance to this conversation and that's what I wasn't seeing. It's not fun to dive into the broad Dracula tag and find post after post shitting on your favourite media because it isn't like the book.

Sorry this was a bit long! I am just really passionate about Dracula okay!! And I really really really like all the shitty little shows and movies and plays and comics and all other media that comes out of his name (because YES, a lot of adaptations really make vampire synonymous with Dracula and ROLL WITH IT). Vampires are really neat and the Dracula genre of film has been a huge influence on horror media. I think there is a lot to be said when analysing adaptations, but none of it can come from blanket statements against them.

@spider-xan

[smoshsfavoritepizzaplace]

something has bothered me about shayne and im too shy to start my own post ab it bc no one cares, but he always claims that he's always had a hard and fast rule that he never drank the liquids on eat it or yeet it BUT OLIVIA WAS THE FIRST ONE WHO MENTIONED THAT RULE- AND SHE WAS THE FIRST ONE WHO HAD IT. IF I'M NOT MISTAKEN, SHE MENTIONED IT AT LEAST TWICE AND HE WAS THERE TALKING WITH HER AND QUESTIONING HER ABOUT IT AT LEAST ONE OF THOSE TIMES >:(( shayne topp count ur days >:(( (im kidding i still think he's funny n he's one of my faves but this is just something i've thought about for a long time hahahahahaha)

I haven’t binged eioyi in quite some time, but for some reason I feel like I remember this happening. He also did something similar in the last episode, he thought Ian was the one to originally get the cold burger when in reality, it was Shayne. I think he just has a bit of a bad memory, or he’s one of those people who takes other’s experiences and makes them his own or his actually experiences someone else’s lmao. But don’t give him too much of a hard time, we all have bad memories one way or another (especially me, mine is very wonky)

But don’t worry, if you ever have some more opinions you wanna share anonymously, you’re welcome anytime 👍

[bru1sed-apple]

this isn’t to dig on ur anti zutara post but rather start a discussion.

in my experience, the reason we zutarians don’t like zukka is because of the animosity we get from the fandom. we analyze the subtle details we are given because practically every zuko and Katara interaction in the show is because all of them save the first have some degree of zutara in it. their chemistry- be it platonic or romantic- is undeniable.

and yet, we are told by zukkas and kataangers that we are wrong for shipping the ship. a lot of zukkas sideline the women in atla- sokka is given a lot of Katara’s qualities that are stated in the show (ie: people claiming that sokka is the team dad when he literally confessed that he saw Katara more as his mother than his actual mother), mailee is just there (majority of the mailee fics on ao3 are just them being a side couple in zukka fics), and not to mention comradekatara’s posts from back when they were lesbians4sokka about Katara being homophobic. even if it was a joke, it was something that people took seriously. a lot of the same zukkas are the ones making fun of katara for talking about her mother’s death when that literally happened three times outside of the southern raiders episode.

dont get me wrong, I know that the zutara fandom was absolutely rabid in the early 2000s and that’s where we get our bad reputation, but the only time that we’ve had issues with other people in the atla fandom was when they interacted with our content and it blew up.

Honestly you make some points I agree and disagree with so I'll go one paragraph at a time

1.

I do agree that some zutirans get hate that isn't deserved. I definitely think that a lot of the fandom doesn't like zutartians, I'm part of that group as well (for the most part). I also do think they have chemistry, but more in a way that's more like family rather than lovers.

I think the over-analyzing is a bit too much, I'm overwhelmed every time I see a zutara post. Obviously, some analyzing is okay, I sometimes analyze ships, but I feel like zutartians do it sm that it feels kind of annoying?? Maybe that's just me, but I feel like you don't have to analyze things just to justify your ship. Just ship what you like

2.

I agree with the fact that zukka shippers tend to sideline women in fics. I've def read fics where katara is sort of villanized, and I definitely don't agree with that. A lot of the time, ppl prefer MLM ships to than WLW ship, (which if you ask me, is because ppl prefer male characters to female ones (*cough* misogyny *cough*)(though i dont think most of the misogyny is purposeful))

Idk if it's bc we're in different parts of the fandom, but I've never really seen ppl say that shipping zutara is wrong?? I've seen ppl say they don't like it, and why, but they always state that they don't care if people ship zutara and that they're only stating reasons they personally don't like it.

Perhaps it's because I tend to stay away from the more toxic part of the community because if I see smth I don't like I more often than not just scroll past. But I def believe that their are zukkas who are toxic, but I think some of that is just because ppl are toxic, no matter what fandom you're in.

I can't really speak on kataangers because while I do like the ship, I'm not really in that part of the fandom, so I'm not sure if ppl are unnecessarily mean to zutarians.

(Edit: nvm kataangers can be real assholes, I def believe that they're unnecessarily mean to ppl who dont ship kataang 😒😒)

3.

As for the zutara Fandom in the early 2000s I can't really speak on that bc I didnt watch atla until I wanna say 2017 or 2018. So I don't really know what the fandom was like.

So yeah, that's kinda my take?? Idk I spent like a good while trying to figure out what to say 🤧🤧

[imperiuswrecked]

The main difference i think is the justice systems of the us and mexico. Not that the u.s. is good, i just heard mexico does things differently?

It's very late, I'm very tired, and I've been trying to stay offline because the sheer amount of racism, misogyny, and hate I've seen directed to both Tenoch and Elena is honestly horrible and I've been feeling very burned out from people in general but I assume this ask is about the recent statement Elena released, which I had to translate and piece together so if I'm wrong please let me know.

Tw: sexual abuse discussion

Elena released this as a response to Tenoch's statement:

Basically what I understood is that Tenoch is a flirter, a womanizer, and has had lots of flings, casual consensual sex with women with no promise of commitment and often ghosts them after sex, or sometimes hooks up with them again later.

Elena felt used because this happened to her. Ghosting after sex isn't a crime, it might make Tenoch a cad, and it's a shitty thing to do, but its not a crime, flirting/making you feel loved isn't a crime either. Again it seemed like even after they broke up last year things were fine between them up until sometime this year.

Then she goes on to say that Tenoch abused her because one time during (consensual) sex he removed the condom, and she says that even if sex acts start off as consensual they can turn non consensual and removing a condom is what changed it to abuse. That's the issue here, and she goes on to claim that other women have told her he does this, but she doesn't name or reveal any information about the others, the one other woman (an actress) who posted a public tweet about Tenoch saying she had a bad experience with Tenoch once (7 years ago) has gone private on twitter after deleting that tweet.

Elena accuses Tenoch of Stealthing, which isn't a crime in Mexico, but in the U.S. only California recognizes Stealthing and the guilty party can face fines or up to 6 months in jail, and yeah I googled it for this answer bc I'm not a lawyer.

Stealthing is when someone removes a condom (known or unknown) without consent from the other person.

Which brings me to your question, yes the way Justice Systems work are different and not all things that are registered crimes/civil offenses in the U.S. are recognized in Mexico. Which is probably why Elena did not file a police report because they do not recognize it as a crime or abuse.

This is once again a "He said, She said", and when/if other women speak up then there nothing else to say, because again, we don't know what happened between them in the bedroom. Speculation about whether Elena was ok with it then and later changed her mind or that she wants to extort money from Tenoch which is why he hired lawyers or if she's lying or if he's lying or anything else is just that, speculation. It doesn't mean anything.

I will say personally I think there could be truth in her words but I wasn't in the room with them to know so I do not know if this is truth or if she decided to exaggerate what happened, but if more of his past partners come out affirm this then it's likely true.

However I will say that the way Elena handled this, tacking the accusation on during a dispute about money, leading people to believe that Tenoch is a huge rapist who assaults and preys on women in the worst way (I'm not downplaying or ignoring her experiences with him or questioning if she was abused) and not stating things clearly from the start have created a super toxic environment that could have been lessened if she had just posted that statement or done an interview outright. I'm not victim blaming here, but I am pointing out that her handling of this made it worse because it gave people time to speculate, create wilder accusations, and go on a near week long harassment spree directed not just at her but also at Tenoch, if she wants to claim cyber bullying from Tenoch's "fans" (I don't doubt that Tenoch fans harassed her but I'm pretty sure a huge chunk of those vile people don't even like Tenoch, they just hate women) then it's only fair to point out that he is also cyber bullied because of the racists who hate Tenoch and thats not either of their faults because people suck. What's also sad is many people who are nice people in the Namor/Tenoch fandom also got harassed because of this, mostly on the Spanish speaking side of things. I don't think that all of this hate wouldn't have happened even if she had come out with a clear statement from the beginning but I do think that it was worse because of how it played out.

I tried to keep up with what's going on but it's actually super depressing to see so much gross hate from all directions.

Anways I'm done with this whole thing and this is the last I'll be talking about it.

[agentoffangirling]

so here's the thing, your post didn't describe fiction affecting reality but manipulation from others or even grooming

you should know this: all ships are valid. Your 13 year old self did nothing wrong. Being manipulated / groomed into saying "I was wrong for liking a ship" is extremely worrying. Grooming also doesn't have to be sexual, it is essentially someone with power taking advantage of a vulnerable person (you) by posing themselves as their protector/mentor/whatever

other red flags to look out for are things like being told you "deserved to be mistreated because you gave into sin" and being praised if you "have given up that sin and thus changed for the better" because this is the kind of manipulation tactic you find in religious cults.

Here are some sources on how to spot grooming and the difference between an adult who means well and a predator

https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/health/what-is-grooming

https://safekidsthrive.org/the-report/introduction/other-warning-signs/

https://www.splcenter.org/peril-guide-online-youth-radicalization

and here is a safety PSA to spot grooming in fandom communities

http://web.archive.org/web/20240815114926/https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GTtAK2qWwAApG8c?format=png&name=4096x4096

If you are still friends with these kind of people, I suggest you take a long look at them and ask yourself if your relationship is healthy. Pro-tip: if they still control what you are/aren't allowed to like, if they tell you that you are a bad person because of your past/present fictional interests, then the relationship is unhealthy and these people can and will drop you the moment you don't act in the way they want you to

be safe

I made a quiz about my favorite ships. One of those was that proship. I had a comment one time that was like:

"totally agree with all of these except blank"

"oh why not?"

"well, they're brothers"

"not by blood, but okay"

And my day went on. Another time I went over to a friend's house (who is of the same age as me) to chat with her, and she didn't know anything about this media at all, so it was mostly just me gushing my love about it. She did however, know these two characters were siblings, and brought up concerns that it was weird to ship them. Again, I claimed it wasn't, we went on with our days

I started to realize that I was in the wrong when not only did I think about these two experiences, but I started watching more of the media itself, which clearly put them as brothers. That's not grooming, that's called growing from a kid bc kids often don't know what is right or wrong. They learn from it. It's natural to ship problematic things when you're younger bc you don't know it's problematic, and it's only through interacting with the media and other fans do you start learning. From what I've seen, most pro-shippers are never told no and are given content that reinforces their beliefs. They usually don't interact with the fandom or distance themselves from the piece until later. This makes them think that the ship is perfectly okay. Telling someone no is not grooming

Not all ships are valid if they reinforce toxic behaviors and/or mirror real-life problems. To be told that shipping siblings is bad is not grooming and I am astounded you actually think that. What the actual fuck

[tanadrin]

Hello! Bisexual cis man with BDSM/noncon fantasies. Two things that I think might be kind of interesting about my sexual situation:

First, although I recognize that "autogynephilia" is an awful, transphobic concept used to delegitimize trans women, it does kind of accurately describe me. In most of my life, I'm pretty much comfortable being, presenting as, and being perceived as a man. Sexually, however, I have a lot of fantasies in which I am a woman, and sometimes get kind of sad that I don't have breasts or a vagina specifically in sexual contexts, though on the whole I quite like my body and current genitalia situation and wouldn't actually want to make any changes.

Second, my kink fantasies tend to be about certain power dynamics or situations, and I nearly always enjoy imagining myself as either party. If I watch/read noncon porn, or just imagine such a scenario, I might picture myself as victim or perpetrator, depending on my mood. Likewise, in an IRL kink scene, if I'm interested at all, I'm pretty much always happy playing either role, though again I do sometimes have a preference for one or the other in the moment.

One unusual way these interact is that the "girl version" of me is exclusively submissive. In a dominant role, I'm pretty much always envisioning myself as myself, a man with a penis. When I'm being submissive is when I'm much more likely to envision myself as a woman with a vagina. The closest thing I've experienced to dysphoria was when I was I was subbing during cowgirl-style PIV and my partner made reference to my cock, when I had been imagining myself as having a vagina that she was penetrating with a strap-on, and it fairly violently broke me out of the fantasy. I've considered the possibility that this is just some sort of internalized misogyny (submissive=female/receptive) but it's not like I really have any control over it so I mostly just enjoy it for what it is.

I think autogynephilia is a bad concept etiologically bc I don’t think there’s much evidence to support the “erotic target location error” Blanchard hypothesizes is even a coherent idea. Aside from AGP as described not encompassing a huge swathe of the transfem experience—almost certainly the vast majority. There is another equally compelling model to me that nonetheless accounts even for the experience of self-identified AGPs, which is that sex is necessarily an extremely gendered activity. Most people, including most *cis* people, have a strongly gendered sense of themselves in an erotic context.

Thus I would expect it is pretty usual for someone who is mostly cis by default, or who is not dysphoric in most of their life (or is disconnected from that dysphoria) and therefore not often preoccupied with the issue of their gender presentation, to twig on that issue most strongly when it comes to their erotic life, if they are in fact in some capacity trans, because it is really really hard to disconnect from issues of gender even in our comparatively egalitarian society inside the bedroom.

I was mostly cis-by-default as a kid (though there were Signs in retrospect), and it wasn’t until adolescence, when I began to notice “hey, that’s weird, I like imagining myself as a girl a *lot* more when it comes to thinking about sex” that I began to consider these questions more deeply. And even then it took a while—not only because I grew up in a time and place where awareness of trans stuff was pretty bad, but because I was so meh about gender in other areas of my life (and un-confident about myself in general) that the idea of staking an actual positive claim in contravention of societal expectation of my identity was kinda scary. Terrifying, really. And that’s something I still have issues with as an adult, and not just around gender identity.

I think this experience is not all that unusual among folks who don’t realize they’re trans until adolescence or adulthood. Couldn’t say how common it is in the general population of such folks though.

I’m not saying you’re really trans or would be happier identifying that way—I mostly just wanted to pontificate on my alternative hypothesis of AGP. People should use the label that feels most useful to them (if they want), and if you identify as a man but like imagining you’re getting fucked like a woman, AGP is useful for that purpose. I hope you find someone to peg you and call you a pretty girl!

[ssaalexblake]

Hot take but the kneel scene in spyfall is literally Tame for the doctor and the master, and I could provide a multitude of examples why and how (but not, I have to get ready to go out), but if This is your deal-breaker in context with All of their crap in general then it says far more about you than the show or the doctor and master's relationship on the whole.

I've seen people whine she's being submissive when no, she was threatened, if you want a submissive doctor look at ten who had the spinal strength of a wet strand of spaghetti when It came to the master. I've seen people use actively racist rhetoric around the whole situation. I've seen people use actively misogynistic rhetoric over the situation. Less seriously, I've seen the most media illiterate takes on the situation I can fathom that would have actively involved literally ignoring whole parts of the sequence to justify. I've seen some utter bullshit, basically.

Because as I said, for these two, him saying she kneel, her looking like she was planning a murder and doing it and then him immediately sinking to the floor with her and her immediately gaining the upper hand is the tamest of the tame. She then grinned like a shark bc he got injured, btw.

And I guess the question is, if you have an issue with this, and did Not with the two of them before this casting. Why not? This for them is tame, it was objectively bad, yes, but if this is bad then why isn't anything with the last two pairs on the shitlist? The master is a bad guy, first and foremost, to want him to behave well is naive as hell. To claim they'd not do this stuff to a white male doctor is patently false cuz we've seen them do it before.

The doctor and the master's characterisations have not changed here, the casting has. Any attempt at toning it down because the doctor is a poor waify blonde woman now would have been actively offensive in the kind of way you can't explain by saying this guy is a bad guy doing bad things. He does bad things. Of course it's offensive. It would actively be playing into sexist stereotypes narratively if you changed their dynamic bc the poor lady doctor can't handle the mean man.

I'm really sick of this discourse. If you're mad at chibnall era for making the master all Awful and Horrible bc they made 13 kneel at his feet, I have some bad news for you about how disgustingly simm treated ten. But most of the people saying this Do know that he did that and think it was a super cool plot.

Just because your clocking of abusive and toxic dynamics depends solely on the gender and/or race of the participants, doesn't mean it works that way for the rest of us. They've always been like this! Maybe use it as a learning experience. How about 'wow abusive dynamics are bad in any configuration' instead of 'this is obviously So Much Worse because the mean Asian man victimised the poor helpless white lady'.

The scene is not meant to portray something good. Literally even baby shows have characters do bad things to teach you how not to do things and to show how much they suck. Beyond that, it's not actually media's job to teach you morals anyway. You are not supposed to view a clearly bad scene as an endorsement of bad things, and if you missed that in lit classes, I'm not sure anybody can help you here.

[sapphire-weapon]

I think the fact that so many people want to label Leon/Ashley as canonically "sibling- coded" is because they feel threatened in the way they view other of Leon's relationships, they can tell Leon and Ashley have chemistry and they try to convince themselves that they have a familial bond going on (like Ellie/Joel) so that they can justify not shipping them and making people who ship it feel bad/weird.

Because nowadays so many people can't just dislike something, they have to make up a reason why it's morally wrong and unacceptable so that way they can bully people that think differently and feel like their own personal opinions are objective and right while everyone else is wrong smh. This is mostly the case with younger fans (tho a lot of people older than me does this too lmao) so that's why I don't really find it frustrating bc it's most likely they have limited real life experience. Plus they might not be that good at interpreting canon from contextual clues yet.

In my case though I think a lot of these people are actually doing the opposite tbh because to me it just shows that they recognize that Ashley's relationship with Leon is real and they can't even concede that they're friends in the canon because they know it could lead to something else if followed through in the story, they admit there's potential there subconsciously with how hard they try to make it seem otherwise with nonsense claims. It's like when insecure guys feel uncomfortable but try to seem tough by buying big trucks and having guns on them all the time lmao.

So, I've talked about this before -- about how the "sibling coded" or "problematic age gap" discourse is just modern-day fandom's way of slutshaming and engaging in casual misogyny in a societally acceptable way.

I'm pretty confident in saying that anyone in my generation who slaps "siblings" on Leon and Ashley are probably people who have another ship and have had it for a while and don't want Ashley getting in the way of it, tbh LMAO

Like.... my generation has co-opted the current generation's vernacular, but make no mistake about the kind of bitches we are. We're ship war bitches. That's all we've ever been AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO CHANGE OUR WAYS NOW fjdskfh

But if we're talking about the current generation...

Media illiteracy is a big factor in this. It's no secret to anyone that the US education system took a massive shit starting in the late aughts/early 2010s, and things like critical reading skills aren't being taught in schools anymore.

I graduated high school in 2007. Two years later, I went back to visit an old English teacher to get a letter of recommendation, and he was lamenting to me that he'd just given up. It wasn't worth trying to explain the deeper themes of Beowulf to kids who didn't care, because the only thing that mattered was getting them to pass standardized tests.

So, now, without an overt, explicit declaration of love or something visually concrete like a kiss, kids literally do not have the skills to parse through a text and pick out themes and tropes and use of symbolism and imagery. They were never taught how to do it.

But there's a more culture-based thing happening here, I think. It's this fucking mess of a cocktail of internalized misogyny paired with learned helplessness, social anxiety, intense sheltering possibly exacerbated by the pandemic shutdowns, peer pressure, and internet purity culture.

I think it's pretty safe to say that fandom is predominantly made up of women and teenage girls. That was true in the 60s in Star Trek fandom, it was true in my generation, and it's still true today. And what I've seen happening today is that young women are absolutely terrified of their own sexual agency -- because the internet keeps telling them that, if you're under 18, it is wrong and bad and unacceptable for you to engage with anything even remotely sexual and how dare you express your sexuality -- and you'd better not do it not just because it's wrong and bad, but also because you are GUARANTEED TO BE PREYED UPON IF YOU DO. SEX IS DANGEROUS ALL OF THE TIME AND YOU'RE LITERALLY TOO YOUNG AND TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND ANYTHING SO DON'T TRY TO EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. Because if you're 17 and he's 18, he's a pedophile!!!!!!!!

I just.

So, we've now basically turned an entire generation of young women into the same type of young women who created the BL genre in Japan. These are women who were too afraid to explore their sexuality on their own, and it felt safer to do it with two male characters, because it was always more "okay" for men to be sexual. This is happening here in the West, now.

Slash ships have always been a thing in the West, but not to the degree that they are today. In today's fandom, if you have an M/F ship at all, you are outnumbered by at least 3:1 -- because M/M just "feels" safer for a lot of the current generation.

So, I think young women look at the Remake portrayal of Ashley Graham, and they identify with her. A lot. They're probably around her age, and her personality is very relatable to the kind of girls who play video games. Ashley's clearly introverted, but she's a fast learner who just wants to help, and she's got a good heart and a weird, kind of awkward sense of humor.

And, not only do these girls identify with Ashley, they're probably thirsty as fuck for Leon.

But that's terrifying to them.

Because they have been taught to fear their own sexual agency. The idea that an attractive, traditionally masculine, older man would be romantically or sexually interested in them is immediately categorized in their brains as wrong and bad -- and they don't want to think of Leon in that way.

So... for them, it can't be romantic. It can't be sexual. But there's clearly something there, but Leon would never abuse or prey on anyone so... that bond must be a perfectly innocent familial affection. That's what it is. That's what it has to be, because anything else forces them to face the uncomfortable reality even young women like them go on dates and have sex -- and sometimes, it's with men like Leon.

So, they thirst over Leon at a safe distance through Luis, primarily. Or they self-indulge on reader fic, because that's so much easier to write off as "just a fantasy" and not a statement on who Leon actually is as a character.

And it's just kind of sad, man. It sucks to see this happen to an entire generation of young women.

That's why I don't really get mad when I see the "siblings" shit out in the wild. I just feel sad for those people -- because they can't just say "I don't like the ship." They're so insecure and neurotic that they have to think of a reason why the ship is literally impossible to ever happen so that they don't have to be worried about it.

One day, they'll finally suck a dick for themselves and learn that it's not that serious. It's really fuckin not. Dicks are stupid, and the boys that are attached to them are even dumber.