#because I only get validation when I'm online

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

Not to focus overly on my Rookanis feels, but I love the dialogue cutscene where Lucanis and Davrin are drinking together, sharing stories, and invite Rook to sit with them, for so many reasons.

I mean, I love the dialogue cutscene in general and both the guys in it. The mood is great. The dialogue is just so damn funny. It's a friendly dick measuring contest between our favourite boys. After the initial antagonism and tension, they've become friends. There are bizarre lore drops. The stories are entertaining and frankly wtf? A big writhing ball of angry nugs? Created through blood magic? The stuff of nightmares! I wish I could see Lucanis deal with that. I wish I could see Davrin figure out the big heap of tentacles. I love the way the guys are just a little tipsy in a cute way. Lucanis talks a little too loud in comparison with what we're used to. Davrin is starting to have trouble articulating. The "Of course we're getting along. We're PROFESSIONALS," as Lucanis raises his cup a little towards Davrin always cracks me up. Also, Lucanis, are you drinking wine from a coffee cup? The way they both invite Rook to stay and participate. The prospect of slightly drunk cooking and snacking and sharing stories. All in all, it's a beautiful scene that makes me smile every time.

But let me also yap about Lucanis for a moment. (Of course you will let me. It's not like you can stop me. No one can stop me. Not even me.) I want to focus on how Lucanis interacts with Rook in this scene.

It's obvious he's let himself relax a little. He's a bit intoxicated. Clearly he's having fun. He smiles easily and flutters his eyelashes at Rook. When you choose the dialogue option that mentions ruining Solas' ritual, Lucanis insists that Rook tells the story. "[Neve and Harding] don't tell it the way you would," he says, encouraging Rook to talk about something, from what he says, he seems to have already heard, because he wants to hear them tell it.

Then he decides he'll cook something while they chat, but he emphasizes that he will only do so "if Rook's staying," nudging them further. It couldn't be more clear that he wants them there and that he enjoys their company.

I feel like I don't see enough people feral about it, because come on, he's so sweet in this scene. He obviously wants Rook around and their presence makes him happy.

And, yeah, I know this scene also happens with "just" friendly Rook. The thing is, I don't give a fuck. I don't think it diminishes the interaction in any way. The context matters. It's sweet with friendly Rook and even sweeter when they're more. Also, I played Lucanis' romance first, and I did not know that. What I saw in this scene during that first playthrough was the man absolutely delighted by Rook's company, repeatedly and enthusiastically asking them to stay and spend time with him, and it made my day. Still does.

When I keep babbling about how much I love Lucanis' romance, it's not just about all the hearts I get to click to see where they lead or the beautiful post-Tearstone love scene, it's also interactions like this where you see how much he wants Rook to be there, all the more or less subtle signs of affection (and yes, also friendship, because that goes hand in hand) that happen throughout the whole game.

[theladygazingatemptiness]

hm. so looks like my love for making art is just gone forever huh

[loverboyfae]

nooooo overachiever who only values your intelligence don't fall into believing standardized, nonsensical and often white supremacist standards to give or take away your self esteem noooooo

[comicaurora]

I've been reading some stuff on punitive justice, and it made something click for me that I've observed a lot online but haven't been able to put into words before.

When someone does something wrong, that's bad, and the damage it does needs to be repaired while the person needs to try to do better in future to minimize repeating harm. We learn it in preschool - say sorry, don't do it again. If they keep at it, remove them from the situation where they can do the harm until they prove they're responsible enough to go back in.

So if it turns out someone DIDN'T do anything wrong, that should be a relief! There's no damage to fix, no internal errors to correct. Less work for everybody, literally no harm done. False alarm, all good.

The thing I've observed is, lots of people want them to have done something wrong. There's almost disappointment when it turns out there's no harm done. And I think that's because of this general undercurrent of punitive justice as morally righteous and desirable: someone does something wrong, you get to punish them. Turns out they're innocent? That's disappointing. Find another reason you get to punish them, or find another bad person you get to punish. But at the core of it is that desire to punish someone. Someone you can hurt in a way that makes you a better person for hurting them.

This particular brand of almost cannibalistic pseudo-justice is super common in tumblr, one of the most ostensibly liberal spaces on the internet; I see more borderline savagery in online discourse here than in the actually toxic parts of the internet that are just openly cruel for cruelty's sake. It's always thrown me for a loop, and has frankly also hurt me, because on the rare occasions I get personally dogpiled, it only actually stings when it makes me worry that I've legitimately hurt someone. If I did something wrong, or more realistically when I inevitably do something wrong, that would make it good and right for people to give me shit about it every day until I'm dead.

The thing that clicked for me most recently was this bit in Ijeoma Oluo's Be A Revolution:

Punitive justice is specifically, uniquely appealing to people who have suffered injustices. Of course it's the Tumblr zeitgeist. Everyone here is a marginalized person failed by at least one system. Punishing someone for perceived injustice is how someone the system has deemed worthless proves their value in blood, even if the person being punished hasn't harmed you directly - even if they haven't harmed anyone. "Righteous" anger isn't about the target in these cases, it's about the inflicter. This is how much my pain is worth.

And that kind of violent validation is so alluring and so very dangerous. It seeks an outlet, wearing the justification of justice. Who's in reach? Who's an acceptable target this week? What's a good reason to use?

Is there anything they could do that would make me stop?

[irrevocablecondition]

i have nothing to say that hasn't already been said in regards to the Uk Supreme Court hearing, nor do i have the mental capacity right now, so you get rhis long draft from february for now instead:

there is no feminism without trans rights. there is no feminism if you are pointing towards trans women and assessing whether they are "womanly enough". there is no feminism if you are pointing towards trans women and saying they can't get periods. "they can't birth a child, how are they women!?". there is no feminism if you turn around to trans men and ask if they've considered their future fertility. if you reduce their worth and their livelihood to their ability to bear a child. there is no feminism if you come after hrt because you can say it's trans healthcare all you want... until they come for your hrt. for your birth control, for your plan b, for your viagra, for YOUR hrt. there is no feminism if you insist on restricting trans healthcare. "no no, they need more time to think about it!" anyway, i'll wait 6 months for a doctors appointment only to be told i must be due on. have you considered it's anxiety??? there is no feminism if you insist on verifying people's sex. hi, hello, sorry! mandatory genital check! yes, we have security stationed outside the women's restrooms! don't worry about it, i'm sure that viral video of a cis woman being hounded by cis men pretending to be security guards is fake, it mustttt be a trans thing. yeah. no, it isn't bad that this trans person got misgendered and hatecrimed and assaulted. look at them, they aren't even trying. if they wanted to not be attacked, they would've worn the right thing. it's what they were wearing, right?

there is no feminism when the arguments against trans people are just misogyny repacked

what makes a woman a woman? no no, wait. you're 18! have you thought about your reproductive future? what if you change your mind and want kids ohhh you're gonna regret that. yes yes, these puberty blockers that both cis and trans people on? those are harmful because we shouldn't be messing with children's hormones but we're only going to ban them for trans people. yeah, i'm sure they work differently for cis kids! don't worry about it, the blockers know when a person is trans and then it starts attacking their body because that is absolutely how science works!

if jkr was a feminist she would talk about women's rights without a trans person coming into the equation.

she would talk about the fact that violence against women has been declared a national emergency in the uk, and she wouldn't follow it up with trans bathroom debates. that 70k donation to stop trans women being legally recognised as women? maybe that could have been spent elsewhere in the legal system. perhaps in ensuring that rapists and abusers actually get convicted of their crimes and that the 1 in 2 women who are victims of this do not shake their head with an empty sigh when they're asked if they would like to press charges. she wouldn't have come online with 14m followers and debated the validity of imane khelif's success, wouldn't have argued that a woman of colour was trans because she don't fit her western ideals of what a woman should look like, because feminism isn't feminism if it isn't intersectional. she wouldn't have handed johnny fucking depp millions upon millions. she wouldn't have given marilyn manson fucking flowers. if jkr were a feminist she would have spoken up about farage and his proposed restrictions to abortion. reform are leading the uk polls right now, this is becoming more of a threat but no no, silence.

if jkr was a feminist, she wouldn't be Supporting Donald Trump. she wouldn't be publicly praising him for his work against transgender athletes in america when he has over double the amount of sexual assault "allegations" than there even ARE trans athletes at college level in america.

there is no feminism without trans rights, and you need to take the wool off of your eyes if you think that you as a cis woman are safe from this. because you're not.

when we start bringing arguments about reproductive capabilities back? when we start arguing about how much "effort" a woman puts in, how much makeup she wears. when we start reducing womanhood back down to aesthetics and reproductive value?

you aren't safe.

and if you aren't standing with trans people right now, if you aren't standing for intersectionality right now?

then you aren't a feminist either.

[inhonoredglory]

Aziraphale’s Choice, the Job Connection, and Michael Sheen’s Morality

Update: Michael Sheen liked this post on Twitter, so I'm fairly certain there is a lot of validity to it.

I’ve had time to process Aziraphale’s choice at the end of Season 2. And I think only blaming the religious trauma misses something important in Aziraphale’s character. I think what happened was also Aziraphale’s own conscious choice––as a growth from his trauma, in fact. Hear me out.

Since November 2022 I’ve been haunted by something Michael Sheen said at the MCM London Comic Con. At the Q&A, someone asked him about which fantasy creature he enjoyed playing most and Michael (bless him, truly) veered on a tangent about angels and goodness and how, specifically,

We as a society tend to sort of undervalue goodness. It’s sort of seen as sort of somehow weak and a bit nimby and “oh it’s nice.” And I think to be good takes enormous reserves of courage and stamina. I mean, you have to look the dark in the face to be truly good and to be truly of the light…. The idea that goodness is somehow lesser and less interesting and not as kind of muscular and as passionate and as fierce as evil somehow and darkness, I think is nonsense. The idea of being able to portray an angel, a being of love. I love seeing the things people have put online about angels being ferocious creatures, and I love that. I think that’s a really good representation of what goodness can be, what it should be, I suppose.

I was looking forward to BAMF!Aziraphale all season long, and I think that’s what we got in the end. Remember Neil said that the Job minisode was important for Aziraphale’s story. Remember how Aziraphale sat on that rock and reconciled to himself that he MUST go to Hell, because he lied and thwarted the will of God. He believed that––truly, honestly, with the faith of a child, but the bravery of a soldier.

Aziraphale, a being of love with more goodness than all of Heaven combined, believed he needed to walk through the Gates of Hell because it was the Right Thing to do. (Like Job, he didn’t understand his sin but believed he needed to sacrifice his happiness to do the Right Thing.)

That’s why we saw Aziraphale as a soldier this season: the bookshop battle, the halo. But yes, the ending as well.

Because Aziraphale never wanted to go to Heaven, and he never wanted to go there without Crowley.

But it was Crowley who taught him that he could, even SHOULD, act when his moral heart told him something was wrong. While Crowley was willing to run away and let the world burn, it was Aziraphale (in that bandstand at the end of the world) who stood his ground and said No. We can make a difference. We can save everyone.

And Aziraphale knew he could not give up the ace up his sleeve (his position as an angel) to talk to God and make them see the truth in his heart.

I was messed up by Ineffable Bureaucracy (Boxfly) getting their happy ending when our Ineffable Husbands didn’t, but I see now that them running away served to prove something to Aziraphale. (And I am fully convinced that Gabriel and Beelzebub saw the example of the Ineffables at the Not-pocalypse and took inspiration from them for choosing to ditch their respective sides)

But my point is that Aziraphale saw them, and in some ways, they looked like him and Crowley. And he saw how Gabriel, the biggest bully in Heaven, was also like him in a way (a being capable of love) and also just a child when he wasn’t influenced by the poison of Heaven. Muriel, too, wasn’t a bad person. The Metatron also seemed to have grown more flexible with his morality (from Aziraphale's perspective). Like Earth, Heaven was shades of (light?) gray.

Aziraphale is too good an angel not to believe in hope. Or forgiveness (something he’s very good at it).

Aziraphale has been scarred by Heaven all his life. But with the cracks in Heaven’s armor (cracks he and Crowley helped create), Aziraphale is seeing something else. A chance to change them. They did terrible things to him, but he is better than them, and because of Crowley, he feels ready to face them.

(Will it work? Can Heaven change, institutionally? Probably not, but I can't blame Aziraphale for trying.)

At the cafe, the Metatron said something big was coming in the Great Plan. Aziraphale knows how trapped he had felt when he didn’t have God’s ear the first time something huge happened in the Big Plan. He can’t take a chance again to risk the world by not having a foot in the door of Heaven. That’s why we saw individual human deaths (or the threat of death) so much more this season: Elspeth, Wee Morag, Job’s children, the 1940s magician. Aziraphale almost killed a child when he couldn’t get through to God, and he’s not going through that again.

“We could make a difference.” We could save everyone.

Remember what Michael Sheen said about courage and doing good––and having to “look the dark in the face to be truly good.” That’s what happened when Aziraphale was willing to go to Hell for his actions. That’s what happened when he decided he had to go to Heaven, where he had been abused and belittled and made to feel small. He decided to willingly go into the Lion’s Den, to face his abusers and his anxiety, to make them better so that they would not try to destroy the world again.

Him, just one angel. He needed Crowley to be there with him, to help him be brave, to ask the questions that Heaven needed to hear, to tell them God was wrong. Crowley is the inspiration that drives Aziraphale’s change, Crowley is the engine that fuels Aziraphale’s courage.

But then Crowley tells him that going to Heaven is stupid. That they don’t need Heaven. And he’s right. Aziraphale knows he’s right.

Aziraphale doesn’t need Heaven; Heaven needs him. They just don’t know how much they need him, or how much humanity needs him there, too. (If everyone who ran for office was corrupt, how can the system change?)

Terry Pratchett (in the Discworld book, Small Gods) is scathing of God, organized religion, and the corrupt people religion empowers, but he is sympathetic to the individual who has real, pure faith and a good heart. In fact, the everyman protagonist of Small Gods is a better person than the god he serves, and in the end, he ends up changing the church to be better, more open-minded, and more humanist than god could ever do alone.

Aziraphale is willing to go to the darkest places to do the Right Thing, and Heaven is no exception. When Crowley says that Heaven is toxic, that’s exactly why Aziraphale knows he needs to go there. “You’re exactly is different from my exactly.”

____

In the aftermath of Trump's election in the US, Brexit happened in 2018. Michael Sheen felt compelled to figure out what was going on in his country after this shock. But he was living in Los Angeles with Sarah Silverman at the time, and she also wanted to become more politically active in the US.

Sheen: “I felt a responsibility to do something, but it [meant] coming back [to Britain] – which was difficult for us, because we were very important to each other. But we both acknowledge that each of us had to do what we needed to do.” In the end, they split up and Michael moved back to the UK.

Sometimes doing the Right Thing means sacrificing your own happiness. Sometimes it means going to Hell. Sometimes it means going to Heaven. Sometimes it means losing a relationship.

And that’s why what happened in the end was so difficult for Aziraphale. Because he loves Crowley desperately. He wants to be together. He wanted that kiss for thousands of years. He knows that taking command of Heaven means they would never again have to bow to the demands of a God they couldn’t understand, or run from a Hell who still came after them. They could change the rules of the game.

And he’s still going to do that. But it hurts him that he has to do that alone.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi Hilary, thanks for your efforts and deeply informed political posts. I appreciate them and have learned a lot! I have a sincere question if you have the bandwidth for it - why is posting not considered activism? I think it should be. I mean sure it isn't getting out in the world and protesting or working at a soup kitchen and such but isn't sharing information and building community also part of activism? I've learned a lot from posts shared by yourself and others online (and further research they pointed me to) and I'm a better, more progressive person for it. Education is important and that's part of the road that leads people toward those more material acts in the world, isn't it?

There is an important clarification that I should make here, which is that posting cannot be substituted for activism. Too many people, especially on the left-leaning side of the spectrum, think that the only thing that counts as activism is constantly and loudly posting the Correct Opinions on social media, and that's it. There are several fascinating analyses that have been made about how living in late-stage capitalism means that consumerism is the primary actionable force, so you have to make sure that you only "consume" (i.e. post and mindlessly repeat) "morally pure" or "ideologically correct" content, and that if you do that, there is no other action necessary.

This is why we have had the online keyboard warriors who have yelled so loudly at the rest of us and then are absolutely dum-dum-diddlysquat amount of use when the rubber hits the road and it's time for even the smallest amount of practical action -- whether it is voting for Not A Fascist (literally the lowest imaginable bar and one at which they repeatedly and spectacularly fail) or just taking a small action to resist, call their representatives, or do so goddamn much as post "hey it's not all doomed and maybe we have a chance to fix this." That is because accelerationists (the kind who think that everything will get really bad and then The People Will Rise Up and Gloriously Revolute, The End) depend on these kind of constant logical fallacies and displacements, and in some sense, it's beneficial for them to keep feeding the "just let things get a little worse and then this time the Revolution will definitely happen!!!" line, because it keeps them relevant even when they do literally nothing. So. Yeah.

In short: spreading information, awareness, and action tips online, because so much of our socialization and community-building takes place online, is indeed a valid form of activism. But when it's taken to mean "you only have to post the correct opinions and do nothing else because that totally counts as activism," or "actually taking concrete and flawed action outside the black-and-white neo-puritan stricture of an online leftist echo chamber is actively bad and evil," then that's where we run into problems.

[roboticchibitan]

I used to work at JoAnn's and let me give you a tip. Don't buy fabric there if you can help it. It's overpriced low quality crap. You can absolutely find fabric for just as cheap online and if you're a "have to touch it before I know if I'll hate it or not" person lots of online places sell samples.

Case in point: Robert Kaufman Kona solids. I've seen claims online that the Kona solid quilting cotton, which is the highest quality quilting cotton solids JoAnn's sells, is different and lower quality than the Kona cotton you can get at a quilt shop. I can't speak to the validity of those claims but I 100% would not be surprised if it were true. But let's set that aside and just see how JoAnn's prices measure up.

As you can see, the regular price at JoAnn's is $9.99. The regular price at this random quilting online store I spent 20 seconds on duckduckgo to find is $7.95. Sure, the sale price is 15¢ cheaper at JoAnn's. But JoAnn's is constantly playing this "our fabrics are cheap because they're on sale! Don't look at how much they regularly cost anywhere else" psychological warfare game which I do NOT appreciate.

I'm sure if you looked harder than the 20 seconds I spent on duckduckgo you could find Kona cotton for cheaper than JoAnn's has it and you wouldn't have to wonder about the quality claims. And all their fabric is like this. Maybe a decade ago it was a good deal but now? There's a reason they've gone bankrupt.

Just because I could, I compared fabric wholesale direct's price for solid color polyester Jersey knit fabric, which is regularly priced at $5.99 and is currently on sale for $5.09. JoAnn's comparable fabric starts again at $9.99/yard and that fabric is currently on sale for $6.99. There are 10 colors of the JoAnn's $6.99 fabric and 45 colors of the FWD $5.09 fabric FWD does free shipping over $99 and flat rate shipping at $7.95 for anything below that. Depending on how much you buy, you'll potentially be paying the same or less for the FWD fabric and 1. It's probably higher quality and 2. There's 4 times as many color options.

JoAnn's is good for if you need less than a yard and have the time and ability to go to the store in person. And yeah, if you're shopping in person, you don't have to pay shipping. But the quality of all their fabric is low and the "sale" prices are around the same as a place with higher quality fabric.

I buy embroidery floss and thread at JoAnn's cuz embroidery floss is cheaper in person than on DMC's website and you can't trust product photos of thread to be color accurate. And I buy sewing notions there sometimes cuz it's convenient. But even the scissors I spent $30 on there a decade ago (who knows how much they are now) were $17 at Walmart when I lost the first pair and had to replace them 4 years later.

Also they treat their employees like shit and currently no one besides store managers gets health insurance through them because the only full time position in their stores is the store manager. And even before the bankruptcy they shortstaffed and did everything in their power to avoid paying for benefits and overtime. It was the worst job I ever had and that's saying something because I worked at Walmart and had a "this creepy guy went to JAIL over what he did to me" experience there.

[maxtermind]

A smut, or fluff story, anything really. Where reader is slightly chubby with thick thighs, and she’s super insecure and lando hates how she doesn’t see her worth and helps her. - coming from a thicker girlie 🥹

a/n :: got me thinking and like im gonna ramble😓

lando would honestly be so fucking sweet everytime you'd feel insecure even when he doesn't understand it.

you are literally so beautiful so how could you feel insecure when he's absolutely smitten but he does get it.. he gets it better than most.

maybe you're just lying in bed with a sheet covering your thighs because it's really one of those days.

lando notices and is quick to reach under the sheet to rub your thighs while continuing whatever conversation you guys were having.

you instantly feel your heart calm down a bit and when you kiss him,'thank you.' without saying it out loud. he's just smiling cheekily as his hand keeps on moving higher and higher till it's cupping you fully and a hiss is leaving your lips.

calls you 'pretty girl,' in public whenever he feels like you're closing off with the insecurities creeping in.

glares at people if they stare till they stop.

he is proud of you and none can ever make you feel bad about yourself when you're his

imagine how he eats you out, teeth dragging sinfully against your soft thighs he is holding securely in his hands. dragging out a low,"patience baby!" when you try to grind against him to get his mouth where you need it the most.

"let me show 'em some love before I get you off, baby," and like who are you to reject such a princess treatment when he's making you feel so good.

you know you can approach him whenever.,

"do you think this makes me look ugly?" and he'll look up before his brows would draw together because like what the fuck?

looking at you literally reminded him that his heart beats because of how fast it goes suddenly.

"you look eatable if anything," lando replies nonchalantly before throwing the phone that was in his hand on the couch, pulling up to his lap so he can show you exactly what he thinks the dress makes you look like.

your cheeks burn and you're sure he can tell when you feel a very hard evidence of how that dress makes him feel.

"this is all for you, love. don't go shy on me now."

lando makes sure to keep an eye out because he knows you are chronically online when you want to be and salty people hiding behind their screens aren't exactly kind.

the minute he comes home and sees you slumped on the couch with your phone in your hand, he is snatching it away.

"babe I'm starving so I think we should cook together."

drags you across the room till you're sitting on a chair while he cooks, keeping you engaged in whatever gossip he gets from the paddock.

you get distracted for a bit and with a smile, lando is leaning against the counter and gently pressing his lips against yours.

hours later, when you both are fed and happily in love, he is again getting on his knees to show him just how much he appreciates your pretty curves.

the world is loud but all you can hear is his voice, he makes sure you know it's the only one that is valid.

it gets easier because he is able to love you at times it's hard to love yourself.

[postcardsfromheapside]

I'm going to put a video here where a published author and content creator is talking about the way readers frequently interact with the book world, and specifically Sarah J Maas readers and their ilk. The video isn't hating on readers, or Maas or the types of books Maas & clones write. I am not posting it in relation to the topic of plagiarism. The reason I'm posting it is because of the way people have responded to Veilguard. It's not very long, and I'm sharing it because he summarizes and briefly discusses the following points:

anchoring bias

schema theory

cultural myopia/commenting on things when you have limited cultural exposure

other people dealing with the consequences of a critical poster getting 15 minutes of attention

I thought the video was a good poke into problems coinciding with people criticizing (not critiquing, there's a difference) Veilguard, where anything from themes, plot points, characterization or even costume elements in the game are being torn apart...and the people doing the tearing are approaching the topics with often *self-admitted* lack of experience on what they're criticizing, and zero curiosity.

A concrete example: there was a discussion swirling recently in which there was an attempt to criticize Veilguard for the funerary practices Rook and Bellara go through. This in spite of the fact that a Dalish Rook and Bellara can have an in-the-moment discussion about the differences between their clan practices, and in DA:I Solas can mention how clans are different from each other, and there have been many, many posts on this site discussing from a lore perspective how the elves are not a monolith. I don't have to tell you that the posters criticizing the scene were myopic on both a cultural and personal preference level in their criticisms of the scene.

Critical posters have also frequently spoken over users who attempt to explain the diverse cultural, political, or queer experiences and influences which align with Veilguard's portrayals.

I thought it was great that this creator brought up how authors are affected for a considerable amount of time by shitty online takes. Recently there were screenshots where Trick mentioned that making Veilguard was traumatic, and folks passed them around with bioware/EA/Veilguard critical tags, but didn't include that maybe the fans themselves continue to bear some of the blame for this experience.

I don't think Bioware/EA are blameless as companies, or that Veilguard is a perfect game, but there's been a distinct trend where 'fans' claim to be critiquing things and are really only whining (and sometimes harassing creators) that they didn't get what they personally wanted. And if pressed about what they wanted, the examples they give aren't coherent narratives meant for published or produced media - if they were, those fans would already be working in those fields making art. Social media has made it very easy to 1) get access to and attention from creators, and 2) get validation (and very little pushback) from other fans for pithy remarks. In other words, it's easy to feel undeservedly "right" for shitposting.

[sha-brytols]

veilguard discourse in general is very frustrating because. ok. so there's this thing i was taught in debate class (please don't laugh) right. it's a sort of Offensive version of the motte-and-bailey strategy (tactic where you make a controversial argument that's easy to refute, and then when refuted switch to the Same argument but phrased in a more innocuous and reasonable way, in an attempt to make it seems like your opponent is just unreasonable) that goes like this:

your "opponent" makes a case for their argument. your goal is to discredit as much of their argument as possible. so what you do is you take the broadest and vaguest possible interpretation of their stance, and represent it in a way that makes it seem completely unreasonable, even if this is an exaggeration or misrepresentation of their actual stance. you use this not to change the minds of the people who disagree with you, but to create a false impression of your "opponent's" beliefs to third parties listening to the debate. this is used in politics a lot, and that's because it's Effective. the most difficult and frustrating truth of human discussion is that literally anything anyone says at all can be interpreted to mean absolutely anything. i can say "i think cats are cute" and you can twist my words as "i fucking love cats more than anything" and then you can go on to make a case for why i'm a crazy cat lady. and it's effective because when you're arguing in the realm of intangible things like opinions, feelings and beliefs, you can't really Prove your case. like i can't Prove that i don't like cats more than anything. there's no data i can provide for you, no physical record of me saying "My Official Stance On Animals Is That Cats Are Just Okay". you have to go based on what i tell you, and how i present my case. and that is incredibly vulnerable to manipulation.

and i say this because this happens a LOOOOT in online discussion. you know that meme that's like "you can say i like pancake and somebody will say so you hate waffles?" that is the essence of this strategy.

if i want to defend my reasoning for disliking veilguard, i can say something like "i gave this game as much of a chance as i could, i 100% completed it and got everything it had to offer and i just didn't find it enjoyable. i even replayed the whole thing again in hope that the experience of replaying the story would lend me a better appreciation for it, and it actually made me dislike it even more" which is the honest truth. and what i will get in response is:

"so you basically spent over 100 hours of your life playing a game you didn't even like"

"maybe you were just burned out? have you considered that?"

and so on. but what if i said the OPPOSITE? what if i said i tried it out and it got to a point where it was so unbearable that i couldn't even continue to play the game at all? well:

"so you hate a game you didn't even try to finish? that makes no sense. how do you even know if you'd like it if you hadn't finished it?"

"did you really give it a chance? or were you just looking to dislike it?"

and so on. there's no winning because any response you give can be twisted into a point of argument, and that's the entire purpose. the purpose is not to have a discussion, the purpose is to Discredit you. because the essence of this insaaaane drama is that no one actually wants to discuss their opinions, they just want a big circle of Stupid Dumb Idiot Babies to rally against to validate their beliefs. and that's not just one side. that's everyone. that's the only reason a matter of critique and opinion is being spun into discourse. people get to make these broad sweeping generalizations of their "opponent's" opinions and then they get to say whatever they want about those people, without ever actually addressing the substance of their opinions and beliefs. because what they are really after is a reason to believe that the people who don't like the thing they love (or like tbe thing they hate!) are just a bunch of stupid assholes, and their tastes are superior.

no one LIKES hearing that the thing they like is bad. it creates this inherent urge to justify why you like it because there's this implication that you have poor taste, or you're just uncritical and dumb. so people take it personally, and then the discussion turns away from the substance of the critique, and into a debate about the people doing the critique instead. and i hate it and i think we should all just shut up and make out or play pillars of eternity idfk.

[post-punk-revival]

“It’s obviously valid to be bugkin but you also can’t just expect people to get over it when they have a genuine fear!”

I’m afraid of dogs.

Dogs put me extremely on edge. I avoid them while outside and if one’s in a room with me I’ll try to leave or else start to panic. Especially medium-sized and larger breeds. Mere images of dogs may not give me a panic attack, I will admit that, it's not a phobia. But if you want to talk hypocrisy, if you're opening up that discussion:

Hey dog therians, dog otherhearted folks and clinical cynanthropes, what if everywhere you went, the unspoken attitude of the alterhuman community was—

Don’t post dog photos or talk about being a dog in the main alterhuman tags. Don’t talk about your shifts, your instincts, or your kind in the main tags. If you’re a CZ, don’t talk so openly about your biological reality. It’s extremely triggering for people with cynophobia. The idea of physically being or becoming a dog grosses them out to briefly think about, so try not to discuss your literal existence. If you must, at least trigger tag yourself with #tw dogs or #tw dog mention so people can stay safe by censoring things that will hurt their mental health. It’s okay if you’re dogkin but in my DNI I'm going to write something like, don’t follow me if your blog hosts too many graphic close-up images of dogs doing dog things, even if you censor them. Don’t add dog photos to open posts in the alterhuman tags, you have no idea who might be sent into a panic attack by images of yourself so you should play it safe and only put them on your own posts. And stop being so offended by people who comment on posts about pet dogs or dog facts saying they want to bleach their eyes or kill it with fire, they can’t help having a phobia.

Not great, is it? Fortunately, and I do genuinely mean that, this is a sentiment you will only see once, on this post, completely satirically. Except it’s just a real sentiment for bug therians/hearted and other invertebrate alterhumans. Of course what I said was satire. But if it pissed you off when you thought it might not be, please, contemplate on that reaction, really spend some time on it.

Also, if you're wondering what I mean by "other invertebrate alterhumans", (and I'm sorry for how heated I got when I was writing this part last night even after editing it down)

You know I’m a bug zoanthrope too, not just a bird? And see above if you're wondering why I never said shit about it, just said I was a centipede therian and even then said I was just questioning and didn't really talk much about it. Am I allowed to talk about it without tagging it #tw body horror, even though I obviously don’t fucking find my own body to be horror? Can I talk about it without tagging it #tw bugs like just the very thing that I am needs to be censored for people's well-being? I'm sorry if I come across judgmental. Offline I constantly interact with people saying they’re a nature lover but centipedes are the only thing on Earth that they still hate. And I have to come online knowing that any of those people could be bloggers in the alterhuman tags and it’s my responsibility to tiptoe around them. “Because centipedes are scary and disgusting.” Because I’m scary and disgusting. My brain is not capable of hearing a difference and I can’t change that. It is so much my reality that it's the same emotional mix of anger and anxiety and hurt that would be (has been, lol) triggered by someone ranting about how much they hate Jews or trans people to me.

[unsolicited-opinions]

I don't get what you mean about Western anti-Israel sentiment seeming empty. The two people I know who are most anti-Israel are Israeli citizens, both served in the IDF. Neither live in Israel any more. One left voluntarily, the other was forced to leave after he was fired from his university job in response to criticism of what the IDF was doing in Gaza recently. He now lives in the UK.

The next most intense criticism of Israel I hear are from people like me with friends and/or family who have also served in the IDF, or other close ties, such my friend who became more radically anti-Israel after his rabbi heard from someone he knew personally, who was forced into hiding after people started threatening his family, in response to him publicly criticizing the IDF for actions in Gaza.

I don't know a single person who is anti-Israel, who does not have at least one close connection to such a person, so at most two degrees of separation to people with direct experience over there, including voting, serving in the IDF, and potentially being vulnerable to antisemitic terrorism in daily life.

Maybe there are such people out there, but I do not come into contact with them in real life. And when I see a bad take online, I don't know that they're real, and not just planted there to discredit a particular perspective.

To me, it almost seems like these takes that depict criticism of Israel as shallow or out-of-touch are attempts by the hardliners who support Netanyahu's authoritarian regime, to deflect criticism and paint all such criticism as antisemitism. They are attempts to enforce an orthodoxy. They are part of the same trend of censorship and enforced silence, why people like us are all unwelcome at Hillel. Why Hillel is barred from even co-sponsoring events with student organizations that have, at one point or another, criticized Israel.

So yeah, that's my perspective. Take it with a grain of salt. I'm not even Jewish, I know, since it's my dad's side of the family that my Jewish heritage is from. But your post reached me, and your characterization of Western criticism of Israel struck me as very off-base given my life experiences. And I wanted to challenge that.

If you've read this far, thank you for your time.

No, thank you for yours, Anon.

Thank you for this thoughtful, civil pushback which is clearly from real lived experience of someone who cares about the topic. I'm grateful that you took the time to share your perspective.

I think you're making six points here, and I want to address each one.

I also need to note that I'm not Israeli. I'm an interested American. I do not and cannot speak for a single Israeli.

I would love for Israelis to reply here and share any thoughts they have.

1. The most anti-Israel people I know are Israelis who served in the IDF.

That may well be true for your circle, but it's a mistake to extrapolate from that into a general rule. The overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis are Zionists, meaning they believe Israel should exist as a Jewish and democratic state. That's not an opinion, there's evidence:

In a Pew survey, 91% of Jewish Israelis said they believe in the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Among those who disapprove of the current government, only a tiny minority support international delegitimization efforts like BDS.

Israelis are often critical of their government - sometimes brutally so. That’s democracy, and Israel's democracy is pretty polarized right now on a number of matters, but broad (and valid, imho) criticism of Netanyahu’s policies is not the same thing as opposing the country's right to exist.

It's precisely because Israelis have lived through wars, terror attacks, and compulsory military service that most of them are committed to Israel's survival and are not interested in dismantling it.

Regarding the IDF, the 2023 Israeli Democracy Index from the Israel Democracy Institute shows that Jewish Israelis trust the IDF more than any other government institution, at about 86%.

For contrast, only about 60% of Americans trust the US military.

Even in late 2023, please note, faith in Bibi and his government was pretty bad. It's gotten worse since. The most recent poll from Pew shows about 54% unfavorable views of Netanyahu and the Israeli political observers who I read believe public opinion on Bibi is far worse than this data shows. (Personally, I have loathed him with increasing intensity for about 20 years.)

So yes, you may know two dissidents. But the data (or talking with Israelis) will demonstrate they're the exception, not the rule.

(This is what's called an Anecdotal Fallacy. You have two self-selected data points, not a data set.)

2. Everyone I know with anti-Israel views has close personal ties to Israel or Jews.

This might be true in your social universe, but again, it doesn’t scale.

On social media and campus protests, many of the loudest voices have zero firsthand knowledge of Israel, no connections to Jewish life, and often can't find Gaza on a map. They’re not debating policy; they’re chanting slogans and treating Israel as a symbolic villain in a Western morality play. But it'd be fair to tell me that's an anecdotal fallacy too- so let's look at polling data.

A 2021 Pew study found that only 27% of Americans under 30 know someone who is Jewish - and that 27% includes American Jews.

American Jews overwhelmingly support the continued existence of Israel while simultaneously being consistently critical of its government.

(At the same time, most Jews worldwide remain flabbergasted that only one nation on earth routinely has the legitimacy of its existence - it's right to exist - questioned.)

Pew indicates that only about 1 in 10 American Jews support BDS.

So when you say you don't know a single anti-Israel person without strong ties to Jews or Israelis, I believe you - but that would make your circle a statistical aberration, not the norm.

This logical fallacy is called an Argument from Ignorance.

Just because you personally haven't met shallow, performative critics doesn't mean they don't exist, right? It just means you haven’t encountered them.

That's like someone in Maine saying, "I don’t believe in cacti because I’ve never seen one myself, ayup."

Meanwhile, the rest of us are watching protests full of people with no connection to Israel, chanting about "global intifada," while livestreaming from their iPhones. They’re not drawing from deep experience - they’re mimicking a subculture.

Here's one of the ways we know that:

Western "pro-palestine" demonstrators largely seem to believe that "intifada" means "uprising" and that "globalize the intifada" merely calls for global political protesting.

Israelis and Jews, on the other hand, hear that as a call for violence against Jews everywhere, and with good reason.

The Second Intifada (2000 - 2005) was quite violent, and included (but was not limited to) about 145 suicide bombings which killed more than 11,000 Israelis. Because these attacks targeted civilians, 78% of these deaths were civilians. "Globalizing the intifada," to Jews, is what happened to a young couple leaving the Jewish museum in DC when a man shouting "Free Palestine" emptied his gun into them. Jews feel that when 12 Jews who were marching (not for Israel but) for awareness of the hostages in Gaza were attacked with Molotov cocktails in Boulder on Sunday. One of them was a holocaust survivor. Two are still in the hospital.

To Jews, this is globalizing the intifada. It's people who claim to be antizionist-not-antisemitic...attacking Jews in the name of "freeing Palestine."

Yes, there are people with deep connections who criticize Israel, but they're not the ones shaping the dominant online narrative. Most of that comes from activists with no firsthand knowledge - just hashtags, vibes, and a deeply edited version of history. Their lack of knowledge is immediately clear to anyone who has been following this conflict, as all Israelis and most US Jews have been doing for decades.

But don't take my word for it about their ignorance and motives. Ask Gazans Hamza Howidy and Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, neither of whom are fans of Israel.

3. Bad takes online might not be real; they could be planted to discredit critics.

This is an understandable emotional reaction in today's information chaos - but it is awfully problematic.

When confronted with bad arguments on your side, instead of addressing them, you're saying: maybe they're fake.

That’s not engaging with evidence - that’s sidestepping it. It's a way to protect your belief by treating contrary examples as inauthentic.

It’s an epistemic trap: if every bad take is fake, and every criticism of your views is a psy-op, then no disagreement is ever legitimate.

Accusing them of being plants is a bit like plugging your ears and yelling "propaganda!" (Which, by the way, I see a lot of.)

If you want to reject bad arguments, engage them - but dismissing them as false flags just shuts the door on things like dialogue, evidence, and intellectual honesty.

Even if some trolls exist to make the anti-Israel side look bad (and I think they do exist because I've seen people clumsily and transparently pretend to be Jews in just that way), that wouldn't mean all or even a significant number of bad takes are planted.

Some people just don’t know what they’re talking about. When a cause gains cultural currency - as antizionism has - plenty of people will jump on board for identity reasons, aesthetic reasons, or social validation. That's not a psy-op. That's human behavior. That's most of what I've been writing about.

If you'd like to see videos of anti-Israel protestors demonstrating their utter ignorance (like not knowing what river and what sea or not being able to find Gaza on a map), there's quite a lot of that online.

4. Your post struck me as an attempt to enforce orthodoxy and deflect criticism.

I think I can maybe understand why. Some defenders of Israel absolutely do conflate all criticism of Israel with antisemitism - and that’s neither helpful nor honest. Fuck that.

I think fact-based criticisms of Israel which hold Israel to the same standards as other nations and don't play on antisemitic tropes are not just valid, but necessary.

My concern wasn't with criticism - it was with a specific genre of shallow, selective, performative, uninformed criticism that circulates online, mostly divorced from any actual knowledge of the region.

You’ve probably seen the people I’m talking about: They can’t pronounce "Yitzhak," they confuse the IDF with Shin Bet, and genuinely believe British Mandate Palestine was a utopia of pluralism until 1948. They’re not arguing for Palestinian liberation so much as LARPing as revolutionaries, casting themselves in a resistance cosplay.

Also, by preemptively framing critiques of your position as "enforcing orthodoxy," you're setting up a rhetorical trap in which anyone who disagrees with you can be dismissed as part of the authoritarian thought police.

But disagreement is not censorship and criticism is not suppression.

Questioning anti-Zionism - especially when it veers into demonization, double standards, or delegitimization - isn't an attempt to enforce orthodoxy. It's an attempt to draw distinctions between genuine moral concern and something much more toxic.

I hope you'll respond and let me know specifically where you think I did that - and I hope you'll feel that right now, I'm engaging with the substance of your criticisms - and not misrepresenting you, silencing you, or censoring you.

5. Hillel bans co-sponsoring events with anti-Israel student groups. That’s censorship and proves hardline control.

Your wording:

...Hillel is barred from even co-sponsoring events with student organizations that have, at one point or another, criticized Israel.

I'm certain that someone told you that and you're repeating it as you understood it, but that's false.

Hillel International's standards prohibit co-sponsorship with groups that deny Israel’s right to exist, call for boycotts, or associate with antisemitic rhetoric - not merely "groups that criticize Israel."

Saying "Netanyahu is awful" is criticism (a very common one among Jews).

Saying "Israel is a settler-colonial apartheid state that must be dismantled" is a political eliminationist position. Those are not the same, and to pretend they are would be dishonest.

Would you expect Black Lives Matter to co-host an event with an organization called "University White Pride" which describes the Civil Rights Movement as a disaster?

Imagine a group called "Friends of Turkey" which favors the abolition of the nation of Greece demands to co-sponsor an event with the Greek Student Association. Would you require the Greek Student Association to work with them?

6. I’m not Jewish - I only have Jewish heritage through my dad.

That doesn’t disqualify you from caring, from engaging, or from feeling a connection.

Jewish identity is complex, and belonging is about more than halakhic status.

I'm glad my post reached you, I'm glad you read it, and I'm glad you wrote.

I want conversations. I want to reach across some difficult lines with integrity, honesty, and sincerity - and I really hope you can feel that.

Final thought:

You read my post as a blanket dismissal of all Western criticism of Israel. That wasn’t my intention and I don't think the post says that.

What I was criticizing is the growing genre of Western anti-Israel performance that often relies on ignorance, moral absolutism, and aesthetic radicalism instead of real knowledge or constructive goals.

I dislike it because it flattens complexity, ignores context, and turns one of the most nuanced and complex conflicts on Earth into a cartoon of oppressor vs. oppressed...which is demeaning to both Israelis and Palestinians.

You, clearly, are not part of that crowd, and your Ask is proof of that.

So again: thank you for your civility, your honesty, and your perspective. We may not agree, but if more people engaged with disagreement the way you did, the discourse would be a lot less toxic and a lot more meaningful.

We can do better, and your Ask proves it.

Thanks again for reading and for writing - please do so again any time!

[erinwantstowrite]

do you have any advice how to get over the fear of posting fanfiction?

idk if you would relate to that but for some reason I just can't publish anything online that isn't my original work, idk if I'm scared that fandoms are going to bully me or that nobody will read it or something else

I know these fears are irrational, but I would love to hear if you had any advice for me

you gotta jump headfirst into it. like this:

when i was 13 years old i wrote a mary sue oc for a marauders fanfiction, named Lana Portland, who could see the future and fell in love with Sirius Black. her one goal was stopping the prophecy and saving everyone, but she died, came back to life at her own funeral, and then disappeared off the face of the earth because she lost her mind. what happened to her? she could only have a sane mind while she was an owl, her animagus form, but no one knew she was an animagus. you'll never believe what owl she was: Hedwig.

if the Erin writing to you right now was the Erin from about six years ago, they would NEVER have admitted that. however, the Erin I am now can. why? because the embarrassment i felt when i turned 15 and hated looking at it has worn off.

Now Erin has finally come to terms with the fact that being "cringe" is a hell of our making. 15 year old Erin was absolutely sure they'd get bullied to hell and back if anyone knew what they had written at 13. they were much more mature than 13 year old Erin, because they wrote Voltron fanfic, not Harry Potter

being scared of what people thought of my writing was a huge obstacle to overcome, and that's because writing is intensely personal

at first, i wrote my Voltron fics with the fandom in mind. i really wanted some validation, but i was miserable and hated writing. eventually, i went back to my roots of just... writing with only myself in mind. and i was happy again, posting with barely any thought to if someone would like the fic. so sure, reading any of my old works would make me want to throw myself into a pit of fire, but there's something freeing about knowing i had posted them. i am where i am now because i hadn't worried about what people thought of it when i was writing it.

over the years, i've found that fics i wrote that were intended to make absolutely everyone happy with me were my worst fics. i didn't enjoy making them, and people still found a way to be dissatisfied with something i've done. the fics where i do absolutely anything i want, even if it ends up making no sense, were the fics i had the most fun writing. and i didn't regret making them

all this to say: treat your fanfic like it's your own original work, have your fun! don't worry about if people tell you "Character would never do that, you are awful." because 1) who cares, and 2) you can block them, and they can block you

now let's say you're no longer scared of getting dunked on for your writing, so you posted it. good job! now you're wanting people to read your work, but you're scared they won't.

this part is complicated because you could do all the "right" things and still get nothing. that can be making sure you're tagging your fic correctly, or making a bunch of posts about your fic and asking people to read, etc. so, before you focus on getting more people to read, you should remind yourself that even if absolutely no one reads your fic, that doesn't mean you should be ashamed of your work. this also ties back into being content with your writing and doing it for yourself first and foremost.

my favorite fic i've written is "Coffee Jelly Disaster." it's only 900 words, it's not nearly my best writing technically, and barely anyone has read it. that last part ate at me when i first posted it because i thought more people would read it. but i still love it! it's so simple and i had fun

when i started writing LoF it was just for me and my friend, and then it got popular because i made a couple of silly tiktoks, which were also for me and my friend. i hadn't expected so many people to tune in when i started, because i had a couple of well read fics before, but nothing like this.

you don't have control over that kind of stuff because there's a lot of different favtors. and it really depends on what fandom you're writing for, too. Saiki K is not nearly as big as Spider-Man and Batman.

so the way i see it, if you post and get two hits and one like, that's still somebody out there who saw your work and wanted you to see they liked it. if you never post it at all, no one will. you gotta take the first step forward to get somewhere, and eventually you'll be running. we end up regretting our inactions the most

[shelleysmary]

lots of fans have made valid points and written well-thought-out posts about the trop ai drama, so i'm not gonna rehash them, but i do want to bring up something that no one seems to be talking about and it's the impulse that leads people to plug these things into ai generators in the first place.

fandom over the last year especially has become increasingly toxic to the point that actual billion-dollar corporations are afraid it. the result is subpar, pandering films, books, and television shows that break no new ground, recycle old tropes, and sacrifice story integrity to avoid catching heat from the loudest, most entitled people in the room. i'm calling this an issue of entitlement first and foremost because the idea that the audience should have any say over a non-crowd-created media project is preposterous. deciding that the cons outweigh the pros of watching something and choosing to walk away without making a fuss is a lost discipline now because everyone with an internet connection and a social media account believes that their vision reigns supreme. "how dare this show downplay my favorite ship! they were supposed to kiss! that was the whole point! the absence of this one thing i had on my wishlist is a crime against me personally!" so they turn to ai and click some buttons and now these gifs exist and are being circulated with an air of "i've righted a wrong." worse, the use of ai in this way is being conflated with the creation of fanworks???

there are reasons why i don't believe the ai saurondiel kiss is on the same raft as, say, making them kiss in a drawing or a published fanfic, but my main concern is with the spirit behind each. fanworks are made in homage to the source material, even the fix-it fics. there is an acknowledgment, a separation even, between the television show and the fanwork. this separation is necessary and i would say even integral to the nature of fan creation, while ai closes that gap until it no longer exists. the elimination of space between creator and audience also happens on social media, when disgruntled fans who have taken umbrage with a fictional character or creative decision directly harass the writers or the actors involved. more and more, fans are demanding to be in the rooms, in the minds, and to exert control over the people who tell their stories, and it has only ever worked to our collective detriment. now i'm not saying that if you liked and shared the saurondiel ai kiss that you're the same as the internet trolls who harass (mostly) women and people of color online. but i'm begging you to do some self-reflection and ask yourself why you feel entitled to seeing what you want on your screen.

what has changed in the last few years that would make you dissatisfied with, say, reading someone's fic or making your own drawing? is it a matter of "the tool is there, so why not use it?" is it "i believe it should have happened and it didn't and i feel cheated?" or maybe there's been a pattern you've noticed in your recent media "consumption" (god, i hate that word) where, unless a show or television series goes the exact way you want it to, it feels like you've been defrauded somehow? i'm not being facetious. i'm inviting you to notice that what you're feeling is probably discomfort, disappointment, maybe even cognitive dissonance because you imagined it going one way, and now you're at a loss because it didn't. you built it up in your head, you had something to look forward to, you were convinced that it would happen, it was exciting and you were so eager to get to that point, and then.... and then...

we've all been there. and it sucks. but i also want to remind you of how important it is to preserve the separation. this space is ours. the writer's room, the filming set, the editing room, those spaces are theirs. the actors' likenesses are theirs. thinking beyond trop, the separation is how we get creative works that challenge us politically, emotionally, that make us uncomfortable and tell us important truths. writers shouldn't have to - and shouldn't FULL STOP - do what we want them to do. sometimes that means knowing when to walk away, when to say "i no longer enjoy this show, i will no longer support it" or "i will continue to watch but pretend things went differently," the latter of which has been the spark that has moved so many online fans to draw, paint, write, or sew. it's a type of creation that allows "canon" and "fanon" to exist parallel to one another. moreover, the effort it takes to make anything with your own two hands, with your own time, and with your own energy increases your appreciation for the creative impulse. films and books and television stop being "products" for your "consumption" because you're aware of what goes into them, and it becomes easier to look at things you don't like or disagree with and say, "you know what, i'm gonna pass," or "not in my headcanon."

oh, and by the way plugging things into an ai generator? is theft. the same way that it's generally frowned upon for people to use ai to, say, write the rest of an unfinished fic without the express permission of the fanwork creator, using the actors' likenesses to make them kiss goes against everything the actors' union fought for last year. i'll also add that it's incredibly creepy. almost all of us are in agreement that intimacy coordinators are a good thing because they act - again! - as a separation between what's "real" and what isn't, the same way going on ao3 and reading a fic that very clearly says on the tin that it's a fanfic, unaffiliated with the official ip, is a separation. it's another beast entirely to normalize fan-use of ai, to say you support creatives, support actors, support unions, and then do this in your personal life. i repeat the question: what impulse leads anyone to believe that this is okay other than a feeling of misplaced ownership?

tl;dr: ai nonsense does not belong in fandom spaces. (in my home state of california, it is illegal to use digital replicas of an actor's voice or likeness in place of their actual services without their informed consent [which, in spirit, is what you're doing by using ai to make your gifs]). we all just need to mind our own business and go back to writing our fix-it fics and complaining to our friends in relative peace. if you're finding it impossible to do so, ask yourself why. remember that fanart is our longstanding tradition. stop outsourcing it to an unregulated technology just because your two faves didn't kiss.

[not-so-plus-ultra]

Okay, maybe unpopular opinion time, but I started watching DanDaDan (ADORE it so far) and some of you are starting to become the meme of "that one friend who is too woke" about what happens in the first episode

TW for sexual assault + CW light DanDaDan spoilers if you haven't watched it yet. Its gonna be a bit ranty

First of all I wanna preface this with saying that, if Momo's scene with the aliens impacted you and / or you found it triggering, that's extremely valid. I am not claiming it isn't, specially for people who have any kind of sexual trauma. What I'm gonna say is not about that

What I mean is; I think we have gotten so used to a very big number of anime using sexual assault as a "funny" gag, having characters violate other characters' physical boundaries, or having a token perverted / incestuous / p*do character, all in the name of terrible "comedy" or fanservice, that we have started bracing up for any mention or showcase of sexual assault to be treated as a gag or as a "sexy" thing; specially when it comes to female characters, because sadly they're the victims of this 99% of the time. This, without going over the sexualization of characters in general, even when mundane things are happening

It's a sentiment I understand and share. I hate all of these tropes and "jokes" and it makes me really sad when a series I otherwise like has to include something like that. I actively criticize these kinds of things no matter how big a fan I am of a work in question

However, I think because of all this, we have forgotten that media can choose to use scenarios like that as an actual Bad thing to show. A bad and unfortunate thing that happens to a character that isn't used as comedy or as fanservice

I had heard about the sexual assault scene in DanDaDan prior to watching it, and I had decided I was gonna skip that scene, as I am someone who is both disgusted by these things and has trauma related to them. However while skipping quickly through the scene I thought it didn't look as bad as I was bracing for, so I decided it was something I could stomach. I was really surprised when I saw that the scene was strictly being handled as a bad thing happening to Momo, and that it also ultimately ended up with her escaping her assaulters before anything truly scarring happens

No jokes about the situation per se, no compromising shots other than the fact that she was in her underwear - and regarding that, the fact that she was built like a normal girl, her proportions and physical features weren't presented in any objectifying or exaggerated way, and through the whole scene she was fighting against it and being uncomfortable instead of submitting to the situation or being made to blush and get flustered about it like you can Disgracefully see in many other instances of other shows

DanDaDan is ultimately a horror / paranormal series. It's not as dark as others and it seems it doesn't pretend to be, but bad things are bound to happen. I think that, as long as you do it tastefully, almost any subject can be used for those bad things. Sexual stuff is sadly EXTREMELY misused in anime, and tbh in media in general, but I don't think it has to be a taboo thing to have your characters go through as long as youre not being weird about it

Furthermore, I think it's pretty clear that, at least the parts that have been adapted of this manga so far (I am not a manga reader btw, I have only seen the 5 anime episodes that are currently out, so if the manga later proves me defending it wrong, I'm sorry, and I'd like to hear it), are in part talking about bodily autonomy

Our mcs BOTH get assaulted, but nobody online ever pays attention to Okarun losing his genitals as him also having been assaulted simply because it's presented in a more unrealistic way. His initial motivation in the series is to retrieve his genitals, and even when he seems to have gotten them back the first time, something is still wrong (another part missing) and he can't just go about his life normally again as if nothing had happened, which I think is a clear metaphor of a victim's feelings after having been assaulted; and what is more, our first arc ends with the revelation that the ghost who did that to him seems to have done it to protect the place she's bound to, a tunnel, from men, for we get told that many girls have gotten sexually assaulted, killed and dismembered in it

About Okarun, I DO get that his situation is shown in a bit of a silly light because haha penis, but I am also afraid that people would have reacted a lot more if he was a girl losing his genitals instead even if it was painted in the same light. Both Momo and Okarun got out of the situation fighting, both of them were brave and as nonchalant as they could to their assaulters, but it's only Momo's situation which gets treated as the bad one. Both get terrible things done to them ! And both of them are being shown as bad things !

None of this means you personally can't be uncomfortable with any of the mentioned scene; after all, they're portraying something horrible that happens in real life. And again, I get that in Momo's case, although unrealistic elements are involved, the situation she's put in can look closer to a real life assault, and thus, it can be more triggering. But the fact is that the sexual assault of both characters is being used to showcase a terrible thing, it's not there just for a gag or for people to put their eyes on the characters' bodies, and I personally just think it's silly when I see people lump in the situations in DanDaDan with series like Undead Unluck, when the former is portraying assault as not only a genuinely bad situation but also as part of the many points I think the first act of the series makes about bodily autonomy, and the later uses it as a reocurring "funny" gag (I have seen people say it gets better later, but still, it's still used as a gag at some point)

This is brought to you by me seeing people on Twitter compare DanDaDan's assault scene to incestuous characters from other animes like Yuri from Spy x Family, Makoto from Saiki K., and Lance from Mashle. I am a big fan of two of those three series and let me tell you: those characters can fuck themselves, I don't find haha incest jokes funny or necessary in any piece of media