#but people act like it/its is so uniquely awful that it's unfair to expect other people to respect them

[foxxsong]

I get not understanding neopronouns. I totally understand if people with developmental or intellectual disorders need to avoid people that use them because they can't wrap their brain around them enough to use them right or find having to think about them long enough to use the right one, when they very literally are incapable of understanding, distressing. Competing access needs are a morally neutral thing that I will never judge anyone for.

But to go on to talk about how despite this you respect neopronouns EXCEPT (plain text: except) it/its? If you feel the need to clarify that you don't have an issue with most of them, but want to single people like me out specifically? Trauma is understandable, and I know people with those disorders are in particular susceptible to being referred to that way cruelly, but you can just... not mention us.

Literally everything they shared was FINE (plain: fine) up to that point. But singling us out and saying you'll never respect our pronouns specifically - when you could've just not mentioned us at all - does in fact make you an asshole. Having trauma and saying that people that identify with something that was used to hurt you means you don't have to respect them makes you an asshole. Just don't fucking mention us and avoid us like you JUST (plain: just) said you can do fine with every other neopronoun user. You do not have to sit there and list off all the reasons you will never respect us specifically!!

I/DD people have so many limitations that most people just refuse to try to understand and take seriously. If someone struggles to not talk badly about things they find upsetting or confusing because of having an I/DD then that's one thing. People upset by it can block and move on because harassing someone who cannot change is cruel. But you don't get to demonstrate and self-proclaim that you CAN (plain: can) respect and avoid and move on for other people and then turn around and go out of your way to single a specific group out and talk about how horrible their identity is and act like that's somehow acceptable.

Literally, just shut up and do not talk about us. We KNOW (plain: know) people hate our pronouns. We KNOW (plain: know) there are people who do not respect our choice to use them. We KNOW (plain: know) there are people who will just never call us by them no matter what. We don't need people fucking going out of their way to single us out while defending how they respect everyone else like us. That makes you an asshole.

[toshootforthestars]

Donald Trump does not become president of a country by accident, although there has inarguably been a strong slapstick element to it.

A country would first have to be depraved enough to produce a Donald Trump in the first place, and then it would have to go on getting progressively sicker in ways that permitted him to rise, through one egregious public idiocy after another and from one act of casual defilement to the next, to the sort of prominence that would make that presidential campaign possible. It would have to be sick in ways that would make it such that long before he inexorably won his party’s nomination and then the nation’s highest office, nearly every American knew his name.

The country would have to be distracted and defeated and deluded enough to believe that this qualified him, and even qualified him in unique ways. It would have conflated not just who Trump appeared to be on TV with who he really was, but its own governance with unusually slow-moving TV programming.

[...]

One of the most important things to know about Trump is that he never has a plan. He barely has an itinerary. He simply moves from one flubby gilded hustle to the next, dedicating each moment to whatever feels good or whatever he thinks looks strongest. What mess he leaves behind is by definition not his problem, and he’s always already somewhere else by the time the stain sets.

Trump is used to having other people do what he says, because he is richer and more powerful than them; that people have almost always done just that has made him soft and weak and strange, but also it has seldom led to him being seriously inconvenienced. He’ll call that a win.

So of course Trump didn’t have a plan for losing the election. He expected that the people working under him—that is, the entire United States government—would find a way to stop the election that he’d lost from becoming official when he gave that order, but he had no sense of how that might work beyond them just somehow doing it. He promised evidence that would show he was right and then told other people to find it. It never came, but at some point he just started acting as if it had been delivered and denied, and began talking about how unfair that was.

It was his opinion that he’d won ten or so million more votes than he’d actually received, a victory that Trump, Trumpianly, called “a sacred landslide.”

On Wednesday, after he told them to do it, hundreds of people who live to share Trump’s opinions overran the U.S. Capitol building on his behalf, because they believed they were doing their patriotic duty or at least serving their own unenlightened self-interest; it is a pillar of Trumpism not to recognize a distinction between the two. They were mostly following through on the promise that has always been at the heart of Trump’s appeal, which is that they would get to be a part of his greatest deal ever, and cut in ahead of every less-connected other person when it came time to share the winnings, and enjoy the premium luxury finishes and absolute personal impunity synonymous with the word “Trump.”

Trump has used this glib old huckster’s promise long before it became the heart of his last and most ambitious grift, to sell real estate seminars and signature neckties and ghostwritten books about winning and any number of other similarly valueless things.

Trump has always promised to make the profoundly broken American state work for the people that voted for him, or at least more readily and brutally against the people that those voters didn’t like.

He really did deliver on the last bit, but Trump’s success in unleashing the full idiotic force of American sadism was less a matter of anything he actually did and more a matter of the license he gave others to do as he does—to do whatever outrageous harm they want to do, to demand whatever they want simply because they wanted it.

As the clock ran out on his presidency, Trump began making demands that were more and more difficult and dangerous and degrading to fulfill, and when he stopped getting those things he simply demanded them again, this time more bitterly and with redoubled grandiosity. By Wednesday, the conflations were total—for him to lose the presidency was inherently unconstitutional, it was illegal, it went against God; the only truly patriotic thing to do was to keep the country under his singularly damp command, indefinitely; to save the nation, everything that was not Trump would need to be permanently replaced with him.

“We’re going to walk down,” Trump told his people on Wednesday, “we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.”

Trump didn’t actually walk with his people down to the Capitol, because he doesn’t walk as a matter of course and because he doesn’t do his own errands. His loyalists rushed the Capitol and briefly, giddily, took it over and defaced it on his behalf; the president was driven home to watch it on television and complain on Twitter about all the people who had let him down.

[...]

...the country’s leaders cannot quite bring themselves to say that the lives of people living in this country matter at all, let alone act as if they do. The state fails daily; it has somehow forgotten how to do anything but hurt and cannot even agree that it would be good to try to help. It does not tell the truth as a matter of course, which gives license to everyone adrift in this to believe whatever story they find most compelling.

In the ways that matter most, in the places where it is needed most, the state barely exists. Where there is supposed to be strength is only power and brute force; what is supposed to be held in common has been openly looted; the triumphal national image is gnawed to bits by a frantically denied shame and raw fear.

The distance and defeat in this is awful to behold, and has created a nation that is both desperately strident and shockingly servile. In the absence of any capacity or will to demand more from it, politics just becomes what people argue about instead of what’s actually happening to them. It’s just a TV show, and people watch it as such.

This was the one big thing that Trump understood—not just that he could do whatever vile thing he wanted, but how many millions there were who truly could not imagine any greater pleasure or higher calling than the chance to do it for him.

Dave Roth:  After The Sacred Landslide 

Defector   /   9 Jan 2021

[wangxiandecoded]

Episode 12

Previous Episode | Next Episode

(Spoilers for the whole show ahead!)

Even when Wen Chao asks for their swords, Wei Ying is trying desperately to make Lan Zhan look him in the eye to telepathically understand what his soulmate is feeling. Lan Zhan hates it but he has no choice but to cooperate with the enemy. He has withdrawn to himself after the multiple losses he’s faced and being a puppet at the hands of the Wens must be rattling him some more. Even if he wanted to tell Wei Ying everything that’s on his mind, he wouldn’t have been able to find the words to. 

Lucky for him, Wei Ying has an inkling that his Lan Zhan has faced an inexplicable disaster and that’s why he’s behaving this way with him. He knows it doesn’t mean he should stop reaching out. His concern for him leads him to repeatedly seek Lan Zhan’s face, looking for anything that might suggest how he can alleviate his plight.

One of the perks of having Wei Wuxian as your boyfriend is that he was born ready to make a clown out of the most dastardly villains.

Wei Ying Says “Fuck You” In The Name Of Love

Wei Ying has a brilliant idea to talk to Lan Zhan or at least let him know he is not alone.

There is something powerfully impressive and quietly romantic about Wei Ying insulting the Wen clan by reciting the Lan clan’s rules to Wen Chao’s face, on the heels of the former decimating and annexing the latter. Of course Wei Ying is the first one in a room to stand up to a bully and protect the others but Wei Ying knows Lan Zhan’s hands are tied right now, even if he doesn’t know what exactly happened. But that’s okay, because Wei Ying will defend his honor and become Lan Zhan’s hands, his mouth, his everything that delivers the unmistakable “fuck you” on behalf of his family. And he does it in an act of rebellion that originates in the sanctum of love. Understandably, Lan Zhan falls more in love with him.

Wei Ying’s Plan Misfires 

His happiness is short-lived, but honestly who could predict his plan would go like this?

We see that Lan Zhan does want to confide in his soulmate the pain and pressure he’s been dealing with alone the whole time, but it’s too dangerous for them to talk right now. 

Wen Chao carries the same kind of smugness as a prick who’s been waiting to out a gay couple. I mean how awful do you have to be to physically abuse Wangxian for.. being Wangxian? Blatant homophobia right there.

Wei Ying has had enough of Wen Chao’s bullshit and is unafraid to clap back with his signature cheekiness.

When Wei Ying is captured, Lan Zhan blocks the whip coming his way and ends up taking a hit to his injured leg. Wei Ying then wants Wen Chao to come for him instead of Lan Zhan, and we can honestly expect nothing less from Wangxian at this point.

Lan Zhan conquers his silent grieving and mute seething to stand in defiance against Wen Chao. It is worth mentioning that his patience and tolerance can even bear the brunt of a fallen world, but cease to exist the second someone mistreats Wei Ying before his eyes. You know what they say about love being a vicious motivator. His protective stance here screams..

Lan Zhan Holds On To Wei Ying For A Short Span Of Eternity

Wen Chao sure is very curious about the nature of their relationship and unable to fathom what Wei Ying could possibly want with Lan Zhan. He’s already safe and sound with him in Qishan, so if they’re not talking about the Yin Iron, what the hell is it? This inquisition is a bit ridiculous, as if the writer specifically gave him these lines to point out to the audience that Wangxian are being soulmates in love once again.

What Lan Zhan does not say, he makes up for with the million times he reaches for Wei Ying instinctively; spontaneous skinship is one of the ways through which his love for Wei Ying finds expression. It is phenomenal that He Who Does Not Touch People firmly holds on to his lover through this whole monologue that follows.

There are few things in the world that can inspire Lan Zhan’s wrath and protection right now, and Wei Ying commands both so effortlessly. Defeated as he is, for Wei Ying, Lan Zhan is always a man of action. And this action particularly proves his willingness to send packing to hell whoever dares to come close to his lover. I wonder what would’ve happened if Wei Ying hadn’t gone to the dungeon on his own volition.

Wangxian Are Once Again Ready To Risk It All For Each Other

It would’ve been nice to see them get their alone time, but what’s one more complication on the path of true love, right?

If you thought about it, Wangxian’s universe truly conspires to bring them together sometimes. Wen Ning tells Wei Ying everything Lan Zhan wasn’t able to, and Wen Qing does everything in her power to ensure they’re both out of harm’s way. Even when our heroes aren’t able to spend time together, they are being assisted by outside forces that work to ensure their love has a future. There are always people left in the world who are rooting for Wangxian because they’re the good gays guys! 

We are well aware of how deeply and madly Wei Ying loves Lan Zhan, but it is startling all the same that even when he is in physical agony, what infuriates him to the point of madness is the news of Lan Zhan being hurt and his home being burnt down. Wei Ying is also more than willing to endure his pain a while longer if it means Lan Zhan has a shot at getting better.

Wangxian at any given point of time are ready to sacrifice themselves for the other and wage a war against the entire world for wronging the love of their life. That’s what makes these soulmates more unique than most, if not all lovers in fiction. Throughout the story, their romance is subjected to a billion tests and every choice they make is bound to make the viewers cry and highlight the unfairness of the impossible stakes they go through to be with each other. This is no ordinary romance, and that’s why it is all the more fantastic they are able to survive these unthinkable odds and come out shining in the end.

Lan Zhan’s concern and affection for Wei Ying is so open that it bleeds all over our screens. It’s like he looks at the rest of the world with aloof objectivity but the minute his lover comes into his sight, his eyes can bloom only warmth and emotion. Even the vision that touches Wei Ying from afar should be gentle and reverent, fit for holding in sight something precious beyond measure. This can be said about the both of them.

It is when NHS mentions their halcyon days at Cloud Recesses that we realize how their lives have changed irreversibly. Both Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are visibly sadder, like they’re wishing to return to simpler times when courting Lan Zhan was the biggest problem in Wei Ying’s life and fighting his feelings for Wei Ying was Lan Zhan’s. They’ve grown closer since then but the impediments on their road have also grown bigger.

Wei Ying Asks Jiang Cheng To Stay Out Of His Love Life

Lan Zhan keeps walking like #conceal don’t feel but the sad version of WuJi reveals all.

Wei Ying has been growing tired of Jiang Cheng trying to dictate what he should and should not feel or do about things that do not concern him and he rightfully puts him in his place in this scene. Jiang Cheng tells Wei Ying to not choose “someone else” as “we” already have a lot to deal with. He implies Wei Ying shouldn’t help Lan Zhan because he isn’t family and is clearly underplaying his injury despite Wei Ying emphasising its urgency. And Wei Ying is so done with putting up with that kind of negative energy in his love life.

He is quick to silence anyone who thinks they can hold him back from his heart or overstep the boundaries of his relationship with Lan Zhan. And his logic is very sound, for who on earth is capable of stopping Wei Ying from helping him? Not even Lan Zhan! 

Wei Ying breaks free of Jiang Cheng's grip and leaves in Lan Zhan's direction after patronizingly patting his arm. And that is his answer. To him, Lan Zhan isn’t just another person and there is certainly no choice he has to make when it comes to him. It will always be Lan Zhan who is his foremost priority and the rest of the world has to simply get used to being left behind.

We see that he knows Lan Zhan would never ask for help but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t need it. His soulmate will hence always offer it, and if rejected, simply throw him on his back and continue while Lan Zhan informs him once again of how “boring” it is. He doesn’t get to do that, but his sentiment is romantic enough to stay in Lan Zhan’s memory for sixteen years and become an action he boldly reciprocates when Wei Ying comes back.

Wangxian’s Love Story is Truly “Epic”

Episodes 11 and 12 trace the beginnings of the turmoil that will forge Wangxian’s path (and make us weep). Every romance starts from the idyllic state of undisturbed happiness but it seldom remains there through the whole story. And let’s be honest, calamities bring emotional depth and complexity to a plot, exposing that our favorite characters are human, flawed and a lot closer to reality than we imagined. Both the heroes stay loyal to their core values, with the conviction to be fearless in the face of unforeseen adversities in life and love.

And we hope like the hopeless romantics who are in love with the greatest love story ever told, that maybe all the tragedies that are about to befall Wei Ying and Lan Zhan won’t matter one day because their happy ending will heal all wounds. Obstacles will continue to strew our heroes apart and push them towards the other on a loop, but Wangxian are like magnets destined to snap back together. They will ascend beyond the stratosphere of romance, straight to the heavens, because their love’s greatest virtue is that they have each other and know each other more than any two people ever did in all of history. They are devoted to the other unconditionally in soul, mind and body. 

It’s just that our idiot-soulmates take the long way round to realize that their own joint force is capable of annihilating and birthing entire universes, and nothing that ever dared to stand on their path ever stood a chance. And when they do realize that their love is an infinite, impossible force that can bend the laws of nature and be a harbinger of greatness to a world that is doomed to fail, their story is exalted to an epic that doubles as a romance, effectively displacing all the bland, straight examples of love that have infiltrated our past and perpetuated heteronormativity. Because it boasts a love that all of humankind should vie to fashion their lives after and is a true sight to behold - a sight we will rewatch for as long as we live, and bequeath to posterity so they can grow up looking up to Wangxian. Because their love story is the big budget live action fantasy that queer people have been deprived of for so long and is now here to tell us : You should dare to love because it will become your greatest strength. Just like it became Wei Ying and Lan Zhan’s.

[jonthethinker]

Together Or Alone?

Since I finally have a few days off work, I want to get weird and really dig deep into why I personally enjoy the Mighty Nein and its particular breed of found family so much, and why the dynamics between its members are so satisfying for my heart in particular. Let’s get unnecessarily deep, shall we?

You may not completely understand why I think this would be weird, but you’ll understand fairly quickly as I get started.

I’ve been on a sort of spiritual journey, in a way, over the course of this most eventful year. A small part of me feels bad that while so much suffering is going on, and so much of the world feels like it’s falling apart, I’ve been making positive strides in determining my place in the grand scheme of things. But a larger part of me is just really grateful to finally find a bit of internal peace after years of not having it, of finally having some bit of quiet in a mind that’s never been able to still itself long enough for any such thing.

I haven’t exactly found religion, but I have given more shape to how I best want to imagine our universe and my humble place in it, and I’ve finally started asking the right questions.

One of those questions stands above the rest, and it’s the question I’ve decided the Universe Itself is asking; Together or Alone?

I started seeing attempted answers to this question everywhere. In the universe bursting outward, yet huge masses of it clinging together to form all we know and can perceive. I see it in wondrous solar systems forming and spinning in a rippled field of mutually affected gravity; and I see it in the black holes that can form, and tear and pull all that beauty into nothing. I see it in incredible ecosystems where the life and the land combine to form what feels like its own organism, larger than just the sum of its parts; and I see it in the environmental devastation caused by our own actions, killing that organism, and in turn doing irreparable damage to the very spirit of our world.

I see it in humanity’s natural inclination for cooperation and concern for others; and I see it also in our inclination to be blinded by power and in that blindness, inflicting unspeakable harm on each other in order to hold onto that power. I see it in our bodies, organs one by one relying on each other in a perfect act of faith to form something greater than a liver or heart or brain could ever be on their own; and I see it in cancer, single-minded in its pursuit of self-replication by all means, all memory of belonging to something greater stricken from its damaged DNA. I see it in basic elemental particles, most of them ready and able for their eventual combination with other particles to build wonderful compounds with entirely new properties, adding untold dimensions of complexity to how our world works; and I see it in those small rogue particles the neutrinos, that can shoot off from a star for eons without interacting with a single thing.

The question and its many answers, and the dialectical relationships those answers have, are what I feel can really undergird all of our interactions with each other, all progress and all regress, all friendships and all rivalries. It’s there in all our stories and all art we create; Together or Alone? What’s your answer?

For me, the answer that felt like it escaped the singing lips of an angel, was, “Of course, together. Always together.”

It shapes my politics heavily. I’m a lefty, but its not just because I believe we’re all equal as individuals; it’s because I believe we are all a part of the same thing. We are all a part of that same great organism, that same great body. The Universe. God. Whatever you want to call it, though it needs no name. We are in this together because we are one thing from many different things, whether we like it or not.

But I’m not just blindly optimistic about this. I don’t think it works like this all on its own. It takes work and time. It took billions of years for solar systems to form. For single-cell organisms to band together into colonies and then evolve into multi-cell organisms. It took a while longer for creatures to stick together as families, for the mutual dependencies of ecosystems to form, and even longer for the first tribes and societies to form. It took time, and an incredible amount of energy and effort, and so much failure. We’ve hurt each other so much, that’s true. But it’s only by coming together that we’ve ever been able create anything new, anything Good.

The universe has a bias towards entropy; things tend to fall away and apart. So there’s a beauty in the struggle for togetherness. I’d argue that it’s the only source of beauty in the first place; the unity of forces interacting. The quest for togetherness gives my life meaning, drive, and purpose. And for someone who’s struggled with depression for so long, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to have purpose, especially for something bigger than me.

And by this point, you’re probably wondering when I’m going to stop sermonizing and actually talk about Critical Role. so here we go.

The individual members of the Mighty Nein are some deeply flawed and deeply troubled people, at least when we first met them. Some of them have done awful things, sometimes against their will. They’ve all been the victims of powers much greater than themselves, and as a result, have been left feeling frayed at the edges. They’ve all had hurts and been shaped by those hurts; whether it was loneliness, unfair expectations, or just being unfortunate enough to be different in all the wrong ways. Damaged is a word that carries unfortunate implications, as does broken; but it’s undeniable that you’ve got seven people who have all felt like Sisyphus when the boulder rolls back down the hill.

Some have taken this fate better than others, but it’s undeniable that these people have suffered, and in that suffering, gained nothing.

But then they met each other.

It wasn’t all roses from the get-go. You throw these people with underdeveloped social skills and an untold amounts of personal baggage, and you’ve got yourself some friction to say the least. But when they all met each other, they had nothing but their bodies and their hurts. They were total equals. Even when the Mighty Drei met Caduceus, they had just felt like they lost everything, and they were meeting someone who had no one. They all started together at their foundations, and over time, built something I think is truly beautiful.

This process hasn’t been perfect. Beau, for instance, can still be totally rude and abrasive to strangers and outsiders (and I love that about her), and still has a hard time swallowing her pride long enough to ask for help. Caleb is very much struggling with his trauma, and that path is never a straight line of progress for anyone. Jester for the longest time still didn’t really want to feel any negative emotions around the others, and her own pride has gotten in the way of owning up to how new she is to all this. Yasha bears a great deal of guilt for a great many things, and while she’s making strides, it’s still left its mark on her. Veth has come so far, but doesn’t know how to reconcile the contradictions between the two lives she wants as both a mother and an adventurer. Fjord has a deep desire for answers, answers that may open up a lot of wounds that have started to heal in the Mighty Nein’s care. And Caduceus refuses to share his troubles, his doubts about how much his time with Nein has fundamentally changed him from the boy his family knew all those years ago.

That’s a lot of hurt, and some of it will never go away completely. But it’s like how our bodies have all of these vestigial functions that no longer serve any purpose to it, and make our daily lives in office chairs or standing in one place all day harmful to our health. Or like ancient seas whose waters are long since gone, but have left their undeniable mark in the shapes of canyons and mesas, in the colorful layers of sedimentary rock they leave behind. The past is an unavoidable factor in how everything in the universe gets to take shape, but the present finds a way to adapt. And we people get to choose how to adapt. And the Mighty Nein chose caring about each other as their method of adaptation.

And the thing of it is, I don’t think its just having people finally caring about them that has allowed them to come as far as they have. I think it’s also the act of caring, the act of serving others, considering how the path you wish to take will affect someone else, that has really pushed them to this great place we currently find them in. I truly think there something inside of us that wants to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and that in the moments we feel emptiest it isn’t because of what we lack on the inside but the connections we lack on the outside, and it’s the systems we inhabit that make us think otherwise. I see this so clearly in the Mighty Nein. If left all on their own, in the cruel worlds we first found them in and have learned they came from, I see seven people going on seven unique paths of self-destruction; but together, they can build something greater than themselves, that thing being the Mighty Nein.

I really do think the Mighty Nein is like its own entity. They are something totally different when they are together, like seven different elements that came together to form a compound with entirely different characteristics. It’s why the work so smoothly together in combat. Why, when the pressure is on, they tend to work as a relatively well-oiled machine. Why they hurt so much less when they are with each other. It’s like up-scaling from an atom to a cell, a cell to an animal, an animal to an ecosystem.

This togetherness is why I love the Nein so damn much. It’s reaffirming at a deep level for me. The story that they are telling, and the one forming without their active intention even being involved, is a wonderful thing. Stories about togetherness are my bread and butter; it’s why I’m a sucker for a good romance or found-family narrative, because I love it when people come together to make something more than them, making one plus one equal three. There’s nothing quite like it. And Critical Role has it in spades.

And it’s not all about the depth of answering some spiritual question. I enjoy the potty humor and the eight people just trying to fuck with each other and make each other laugh. I enjoy the silliness and joy and endless pop culture references. But also the act of eight friends coming together to make a show where they create a beautiful, silly, heartfelt story together has its own sort of spiritual resonance with me.

I also want to establish that I understand that this is a company selling an entertainment experience to me. They aren’t just doing this in the spirit of togetherness, they are doing this to strengthen their careers and incomes. I get that. But in the end, it’s all a part of the dialectic. It’s all motivation for me to continue working towards building a world where people can make wonderful art like this without worrying about building a career out of it or paying the bills. It reminds me of how much work there is to be done, but also of all the work that’s already been done.

Critical Role has its flaws, but it is a wonderful thing and I’m happier everyday I’m reminded it exists. The Mighty Nein are probably my favorite found family ever, and lately, a very powerful affirmation for my own journey. I do wonder if anyone else has had similar experiences, with this artwork or others like it. If so, I’d love for you to share them with me.

[khalifaalsuwaid1]

Drag Race Winners Ranked

I should start out by stating two things:

1) This is not a “least favorite to favorite” list. If it were, these would be in a completely different order. I’m ranking the queens based on their runs on the seasons they won in, the queens they were up against, and their overall C.U.N.T.

2) These are my opinions, and mine only. If you disagree, fantastic! People have different opinions, it’s what makes us human.

Edit: Updated with our Season 10 winner, Aquaria!

13) Trixie Mattel

Trixie isn’t a bad or mediocre queen by any means, despite undoubtedly being the most undeserving Drag Race winner as of yet. If it weren’t for All Stars 3′s (one of the most disappointing, soulless Drag Race seasons, but that’s another post entirely) ridiculously flawed jury twist, where previously eliminated queens decide the top two All Stars, and BenDeLaCreme eliminating herself, she wouldn’t have won. Her performance on All Stars 3 was mediocre in the first half of the season, but she turned it out in the second half. There were, however, other queens that did much better than her throughout the season, and were solid all the way through. I think Trixie’s great, but her win felt extremely anticlimactic, and it wasn’t really her fault.

12) Sasha Velour

“Four challenge wins, four challenge wins..

Then the finale comes and the crowned queen is?…”

Sasha is a great queen. She’s intellectual, artsy, unique, annoyingly endearing with her history lessons that pop out of seemingly nowhere, and her run on Season 9 was relatively great, landing in the bottom once and never having to lip sync for her life. She’s winner material through and through. Why is she this low on the list, you might ask? Two words: Shea Couleé.

Let’s be honest, Season 9 was Shea’s season. She won four challenges, a record which she shared with two queens at the time, Sharon Needles and Alaska Thunderfuck (AS2), both of whom won their respective seasons. Even the editors weren’t expecting Sasha to win, since Shea was very clearly getting the winner’s edit. Season 9 felt like Season 8 most of the way through in terms of how obvious the winner was. “There’s no way in hell Shea isn’t winning this” the majority of people thought. Then it happened. In one of the most iconic moments in the show’s history, rose petals came flooding out of Sasha’s wig during her lip sync against Shea, and it all came crashing down.

“It’s not right but it’s okay” was the perfect final lip sync song, indeed.

11) Violet Chachki

This is where things get tough, because from here on out, I genuinely believe every single winner deserved the title of “America’s Next Drag Superstar.”

Oh, Season 7. Such a great cast wasted on a stupid amount of acting challenges. It’s a shame Violet never got the chance to REALLY shine during the non-runway parts of the season, because she’s a fantastic queen. Interestingly, her best moment came from an episode of Season 8, not 7. At the end of Season 8′s crowning episode, she came out wearing what is, in my humble opinion, the best thing to walk down a runway in the entirety of the series, stealing the three finalists of Season 8′s thunder.

She might not have always been at the top during the challenges in her season, and she can come off a bit rude, but when it came to the runway, she never under-delivered. Being up against, in the words of Trixie Mattel, “a partially sedated twink from Brooklyn” might have helped her win the crown, though. Ginger Minj was stiff competition, but in the end, Violet prevailed. Thank God she did, because she gave us one of the most iconic moments of Season 8, one which I’m obviously still not over.

10) Tyra Sanchez

Let’s get this out of the way: No, Raven was not robbed.

Look, Tyra can be mean-spirited, hateful and rude. Tyra on Season 2 was, in all honesty, a bitch. But you know what? She fucking deserved the crown. Her reasoning behind being a bitch was that she was focused on winning the season, and while I’m not sure if that’s true or not, she definitely slayed the game. Tyra delivered in almost every single episode of her season, and has her fair share of iconic moments (”DIS GROOB IS FOR MAH GIRLS” remains one of my favorite Drag Race moments ever!) She unfortunately gets a lot of unwarranted hate from “fans” of the show for “robbing” Raven of her crown and being a bitch.

Being nice is great and all, but Tyra showed us that you don’t have to be Miss Congeniality to be America’s Next Drag Superstar.

Unfortunately, Tyra has lost her way recently. It’s extremely unfortunate, because she’s extremely beautiful and talented.

9) Chad Michaels

I’m going to try my best not to reference The Hunger Games during this section.

If there’s one thing the Drag Race fanbase can universally agree on, it’s that All Stars 1 is objectively the worst season of Drag Race ever, because of its oh-my-god-this-is-so-stupid-who-thought-this-was-a-good-idea teams twist. This is why Chad’s win is usually swept under the rug in the community, but in all honesty, I’m just glad Chad won something.

During Chad’s run on Season 4, he showed us how a professional drag queen acts, dresses and talks. If it weren’t for Sharon Needles, Chad would have probably won the season. There’s really not much else to say other than Chad was a really polished queen that deserved to win something, even it was the worst season of a great show.

8) Bebe Zahara Benet

Dubbed “The Lost Season,” Season 1 of Drag Race is kind of a mess. The best kind, of course. The budget was paper thin, they had that awful vaseline filter throughout the whole thing, and nobody knew what they were doing. Not Ru, not the producers and definitely not the contestants. In a way, Season 2 was actually the first season of Drag Race, whereas Season 1 felt like an elaborate pitch. There was no “Snatch Game,” a challenge that would become a staple in the series, for example.

However, Season 1 has something later seasons lack in a major way: genuineness. The contestants of Season 1 didn’t really come in with catchphrases prepared, or cared how “fans” would harass them on social media. They were a bunch of men in wigs having fun. One of those contestants, Bebe, really stood out. Born in Cameroon, as she likes to remind us (she really, really likes to remind us) she had and still has a sense of presence none of the other contestants on the show have. When she walks on stage, you really feel like a Queen is walking down the runway. To this day, she is the sole queen that gives off those vibes.

She is sadly always forgotten, despite having a stellar run on Season 1 and being the OG winner. Thankfully, All Star 3, where she had another great run, put her back on the radar. May she never be forgotten again. Cameroooon!

7) Aquaria

In all of my years watching Drag Race, I’ve never done a complete 180 on a Ru Girl as hard and fast as I did on Aquaria. Rewatching her “Meet the Queens” video, I still have no idea why she presented herself the way she did. Going into the Season, I saw Aquaria as a bratty look Queen that was extremely full of herself, and to be quite honest, the first few episodes didn’t change my viewpoint.

As the season went on, however, she started to show her true self. Aquaria went from a brat to a sweet, awkwardly endearing dork, and I loved every single microsecond of it.

I’ve failed to mention her runway looks, which were nothing short of excellent. Every time she walked out on the runway, all you saw was polish from head to toe. Her Mermaid, Hats Incredible and Evil Twin looks are absolutely breathtaking. Her performance in the challenges was just as good. If you had told me Aquaria would win Snatch Game at the beginning of the Season, I would have laughed in your face. But she did. Week after week, she defied expectations and was always full of surprises.

She didn’t deserve the crown, the crown was deserved by her. It truly is the dawning of the Age of Aquaria.

6) Bob the Drag Queen

I’m paraphrasing, but Thorgy Thor, a contestant on Season 8 of Drag Race, said something along the lines of knowing she wasn’t going to win when she saw Bob walk into the werkroom for the first time in an interview.

Season 8, perhaps more than any season of Drag Race, had the most predictable winner, and yet, nobody was really mad about it. The reason being is that Bob deserved every single fake jewel on that crown. Season 8 had a fantastic cast, but Bob was so much better than the rest of them, it bordered on being unfair. You could sense that the moment he walked into the werkroom.

Fashion and Makeup is where Bob usually faltered, but more than made up for it by being absolutely hilarious in acting challenges, killing Snatch Game, and all around just being a good sport.

There’s this thing about Bob that other winners lack but I can’t quite put my finger on it. He feels…”Real,” I guess? I don’t really know how to put it into words, but whenever Bob talks, he exudes friendliness, whereas most of the other winners have an “aura” around them. It makes him very, very special.

5) Jinkx Monsoon

Everyone loves a good underdog story!

For the first half of her season, Jinkx mostly flew under the radar, despite constantly doing great in challenges. The other queens started realizing that she was a threat around halfway point of the season, when it was a little too late to be able to do something about it.

Because of this, Rolaskatox, a clique created by Roxxxy Andrews, Alaska Thunderfuck, and Detox Icunt, started going ham on Jinkx, bullying and hating on her every time she did as much as draw a breath. It felt very similar to Season 3′s “Heathers vs. Boogers,” except this time, “Boogers” was made up of one person. Seeing Jinkx take them down one by one felt fantastic and oh, so satisfying.

Jinkx, out of all the winners, is probably the nicest and most innocent one. She’s kind and completely unbothered by any kind of drama whatsoever. She marches to the sound of her own drum, and it’s honestly so refreshing.

4) Raja Gemini

Raja gets major props for winning hands-down, the most difficult season of Drag Race yet. Queens frequently say that Drag Race is the “Olympics of Drag,” and rightfully so (Yara Sofia wouldn’t have broken down during a lip sync if it weren’t. Season 3 in particular was pretty bad.) But other than that, Raja served some of the most creative and iconic looks to ever grace the runway. Her Marie Antoinette and Native American looks, I imagine, are engraved in everyone’s minds because of how beautiful they were. Her drag is extremely different than everyone else, especially than the ones that were on her season.

She also gets props for beating Manila Luzon, who is undoubtedly the most talented runner-up in the show’s herstory.

To this day, Raja still delivers some of the most gag-worthy looks to come out of Ru girls, and managed to stay relevant by being the co-host of “Fashion Photo Ruview,” a show where she and Season 2′s Raven Toot and Boot looks from episodes of Drag Race.

3) Sharon Needles

When Sharon walked down the post-apocalypse runway dressed up as a half zombie, half mummy thing, with blood pouring out of her mouth, she made an impact on the entirety of drag. Up until that point, drag, especially on Drag Race, hadn’t gone there.

This is why Sharon is celebrated, because she showed everyone that drag wasn’t just about looking fishy, pretty or anything of the sort. Drag can be spooky, disgusting and horrifying. I don’t believe Sharon invented this kind of drag, but she certainly brought it to the forefront. I honestly believe that Dragula, another drag competition, would not exist had Sharon not won Season 4.

She was also a part of one of the best Drag Race storylines, if not the best: Sharon vs Phi Phi. No matter how hard the show tries, it just can’t replicate the legendary rivalry between those two girls. Sharon obviously prevailed at the end, but it was a story for the ages.

2) Alaska Thunderfuck 5000

I’m going to say something a bit controversial here: Alaska isn’t really one of my favorite queens. She comes off as a bit of a perfectionist, something I personally despise. Why is she this high on the list, then?

As I stated at the beginning, this isn’t a “least favorite to favorite” list. It’s a list based on queens’ strength, and I struggle to find someone as unapologetically talented as Alaska.

She is, in my opinion, the most well-rounded queen in the show’s herstory. She can act, sing, lipsync, serve looks, read…I could go on. She’s the epitome of “Jack-of-all-trades, master of all.” She absolutely swept the floor during All Stars 2. Yes, it might’ve been rigged for her, but even if it weren’t, she’d still easily sweep the floor and win.

She’s also a Drag Race superfan, and will probably get any sort of reference you throw at her.

1) Bianca Del Rio

Pretendstobeshocked.gif

I mean, was there really any other choice? We’ve reached a point where I personally believe we’re never getting a winner as good as Bianca, and a season as good as Season 6 of Drag Race, and I’m at peace with that.

Bianca is the living embodiment of C.U.N.T. She’s charismatic as all hell, unique and unlike any other queen, can and will read a bitch whenever she gets the chance to, and she’s out-of-this-world talented.

She sailed through her season, never landing in the bottom 3. Just like Bob, everyone knew Bianca was going to win the moment she walked in, but nobody cared because it just felt right.

It felt right.

[victorineb]

I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day, Forever

My (slightly late) Christmas gift to my dear friends who are kind enough to put up with my whining. I love you @desperatelyseekingcannibals​ @slashyrogue​ @hotsauce418​ @hotmolasses​ @tcbook​ @drjlecter​ @kateera​ @devereauxsdisease​ @redfivewritingby​ @fragile-teacup​ @wraithsonwingsposts​ @jadegreenworks​ @thisismydesignhannibal​ @thesilverqueenlady​ @chronicopheliac​ @pragnificent​

Also for @radiance-anthology​‘s First Kiss Challenge. Thank you to the Radiance team for all your hard work and patience, and for the amazing book that was the result.

Also on AO3.

Will was never sure, looking back, what alerted him to the presence of an intruder climbing his front steps. A shift in the air, perhaps. A noise on the edge of hearing. Certainly not his dogs, most of whom hadn’t moved an inch; though that was perhaps unsurprising, since he’d given them their traditional Christmas Eve treat – ground turkey cut with cranberries – and they would be in a food coma until morning, at least. But even Buster – who could not be stopped by a mere overstuffed belly – only lifted his head, cracked an eye and then flumped back down with a sigh.

Which meant that whoever was creeping around on Will’s porch at past two am on Christmas morning was someone the dogs knew and trusted.

And that left really only two options since Alana barely showed up even during the day anymore, and Jack would simply have pounded on the door until either it splintered or Will answered.

It was either Santa, or Hannibal fucking Lecter.

Will opened his front door, letting it bang as he did so in hopes of surprising the creepy bastard of an actual serial killer now making his way back along Will’s snow-dusted driveway. Of course Hannibal, being Hannibal, showed absolutely no signs of fright, halting his steps and pivoting smoothly to face Will with a placid expression.

It was utterly unfair, really, Will reflected, the way Hannibal looked. Soft flakes of snow fell to rest in his loosened hair, quite silver in the moonlight, and his eyes seemed to glitter like frost. If Will had been forced to reach for an adjective at that precise moment, the only one that would have fit was angelic. A fallen angel, to be sure, but still breathtaking in his beauty. It made something deep inside Will ache to see him that way.

“Good evening, Will,” Hannibal said, eyes flicking for the barest moment over Will’s half-dressed form and then back to his face. “My apologies, I had hoped to complete my errand without disturbing you.”

“I suspect you rather enjoy disturbing me, Doctor,” Will shot back, at a loss as to what Hannibal meant by the word errand. “Not a social call, then?”

“Those I pay a call to in the wee hours tend not to be my friends, Will.” Hannibal smirked and Will – dammit all – could not help but return it. Apparently Hannibal took this as a sign to take a few steps towards Will, and he decided to allow it. He had nothing to fear from Hannibal – whatever their ending was to be, it wouldn’t be this bizarre, dreamlike meeting in the quiet of a frosted night – and he was curious to find out just what the man was up to.

“And we are friends, aren’t we, Doctor?” Will asked, letting the words drag slow and teasing from him.

“Indeed, Will. You are dear to me in ways I do not imagine you fully understand.”

Will cocked an eyebrow at this, but didn’t ask Hannibal to elaborate. He was pretty certain madness lay on the other side of letting Hannibal explain just what Will meant to him. Instead, he tilted his head and looked down on Hannibal with a small smile. “And yet here you are, during just those wee hours, acting suspiciously on my property. Convince me that I shouldn’t call the police and inform them I have a trespasser.”

Hannibal’s smile broadened from polite to delighted, and he took another couple of steps towards Will, until he could set one foot on the bottom step.

“Close enough,” Will told him, holding up a hand.

“As you wish.” Hannibal gave a small nod in acquiescence and remained where he was. “In that case, I will have to point you in the direction of my purpose,” he added, and gestured for Will to look to his left. There, resting on the seat Will had forgotten to bring in earlier, was a huge hamper, full to bursting, and tied with a ribbon that might have been red and might have been black; Will couldn’t tell in the moonlight.

Will stared at it, unmoving, for a good minute. The cold was beginning to make him shiver – he was sure it was the cold – but he couldn’t quite bring himself to go inside, to move, to look away from Hannibal’s gift. A suspicion began to form in his mind.

“Couldn’t have me missing out on your unique culinary tastes over the festive period?” he growled, finally snapping his eyes over to Hannibal, who met them with a strangely wounded, resigned expression.

“A gift should never be designed to satisfy the giver, Will. That would defeat its purpose.”

Will’s eyes narrowed at the endearment. “And what is your design, Doctor?”

“Can you not see it, dear Will?”

Will studied Hannibal’s face. He would never be able to instantly understand Hannibal’s motives or emotions the way he could most people’s, but he had learned much about how to read the man over the past few months. There was doubtless some ulterior motive or three he was missing, lurking under Hannibal’s beneficent exterior, but Will could see nothing but a yearning sincerity in either his face or his words. Words he could choose to believe or reject – it didn’t really matter what was in that hamper, what mattered was how Will reacted to it.

“So, what, a ceasefire for the holidays?” he asked incredulously.

“A truce, yes. A moment in which we may relax with each other, without our masks or person suits.”

“Just like the old days, huh?” Will considered the offer. “I’m cold,” he said, eventually.

“Once again, my apologies, Will, I should not have kept you out here in the snow.” He began to turn away, saying, “I will leave you in peace now, my car is just-”

“No,” Will interrupted him, receiving a look of confusion in return. He took a deep breath and continued, “Come up here.”

This time, Hannibal gave a genuine look of surprise – reflexively and effectively covered up, of course, but plain for Will to see. He hesitated for a moment, and then began slowly climbing the stairs, with something approaching awe on his face. Will stood, unmoving, patiently waiting for Hannibal to reach him, and when he did, Will reached for Hannibal in return, bringing his warm body against Will’s cold one. Hannibal stiffened for a moment, apparently stunned by this turn of events, and then gently pushed Will away a little.

The sting of hurt that lashed through Will was breathtaking, and he was about to shove Hannibal back down the steps and return to his bed, humiliated, when Hannibal breathed out, “Wait,” in such a pleading tone that Will was stayed by it. Then Hannibal began unbuttoning his coat, and Will felt a flutter at what he seemed to intend.

Hannibal kept eye contact the whole time he was unbuttoning, time seeming to slow to a crawl as his strong fingers deftly worked each one. And then, finally, he was finished and stepping forward, drawing Will back to him and wrapping the heavy, warm fabric around both of them. His arms remained tight around Will, and Will found himself returning the movement before he was even aware of it, shocked somewhere in a distant part of his mind at how easily they fit together. It was simply a natural progression to then tip his face up towards Hannibal and let their mouths fit together too.

The kiss wasn’t passionate or heated, but soft and sweet. Languid, even, as if they had all the time in the world to press their lips together, to each learn how the other moved, the sounds they made, the way they tasted. Will let himself fall into it while he could, let himself fall into the fantasy that this could ever be more than a moment, frozen crisp and clear under the light of the moon.

And then he made himself stop.

The tiny whine that Hannibal made as he pulled away was almost enough to convince Will to lean in and kiss him again. Only almost. Instead, he extricated himself from Hannibal’s coat, and pulled it back around, straightening his lapels as an excuse not to meet his eyes. “Thank you for the gift,” he said, his voice a little husky. When Hannibal didn’t answer, he finally forced himself to look into his face, finding his controlled mask had been put back in place.

“It was entirely my pleasure, Will,” Hannibal said, tone blandly warm and friendly. It might have been cruel, Will thought, for anybody else to make so clear how little affected they were by his impulsive gesture. But how could he expect anything else from Hannibal?

“Not entirely,” Will told him, with a small smile, and then stepped back to separate himself completely. “You should go.”

“Indeed,” Hannibal said, “I should not have kept you out in the cold, it was unforgivably rude of me.”

Will snorted gently. “Of all things, Hannibal, I think that’s one I won’t hold against you. Besides, cease-fire, right? No harm, no foul.”

“Simply slip back into our roles as though nothing had happened. Just keep things… professional?”

Will shot another smile he couldn’t help at Hannibal. “God forbid we do any adult socialising.”

They held each other’s gaze for a moment, wry smiles plastered over flickers of pain. Then Hannibal nodded at Will and made his way down the stairs once again, leaving Will with the cold seeping back into his flesh. For a moment he wondered if he would remain in that spot, unmoving, slowly freezing, a monument to dashed hopes and wrong decisions.

Then.

“Hannibal?” Will asked the retreating figure, which stopped and turned once again at his words.

“Yes, Will?”

“I really don’t want to be this cheesy but, if this is what relaxing with you is like then… I wish it could be Christmas every day.”

Hannibal held his gaze for a moment, no discernible emotion on his face. And then he was stalking towards Will, who was running down the stairs to meet him at the bottom, crashing into each other, kissing and clutching and desperate. Hannibal hitched Will’s legs up around his waist, apparently mindful of the snow and Will’s bare feet, and they clung to each other as he walked them back to the porch, kissing too deeply to pause for breath.

“It could be, it could be, Will,” Hannibal burst out, stroking a hand through Will’s dishevelled curls. “It could be just this, forever.”

“Hannibal… no, I… it’s not possible. There’s too much – how could I trust you? How could you trust me?”

“I have and will always trust you, mylimasis. I will put my life in your hands if only you ask. Let me prove to you that you may do the same.”

“How, Hannibal?”

Hannibal paused for a moment, not, it seemed to Will, to think, but simply to appreciate the moment of possibility hanging between them. Then he let his hand drift down to cradle Will’s cheek and asked, “Would you come with me? For only a little while; I can have you back to your dogs before they ever know you are gone.”

“Where? Why?” Will asked, not even attempting to mask the trace of desperation in his voice.

“Up the coast, I have a property. There is something hidden there I would like to give you. Something precious but thought lost. A true Christmas gift.”

Will knew he should consider. No, he knew he should just decline, go back into his house, back into real life. But echoing in his head was that tiny noise Hannibal had made when he pulled away from their first kiss. That chink in his armour that showed he was just as lost, just as vulnerable to this as Will. Just as liable to be hurt if it went wrong.

“Show me.”

One Year Later

Alana stared down at the note in her hand, countless emotions warring in her mind. A year since they disappeared. A year of wondering, searching, hoping for good news and – on her worse days – bad, and now this. An unmarked envelope, a single sheet of paper, and a photograph.

Dear Alana,

We hope that the festive season finds you in good health and good spirits. We should have loved to pay you a visit in person but, alas, circumstances prevent such a happy event. Please accept our thanks, in absentia, for your kindness in taking care of Will’s dogs, and our apologies for our rudeness in leaving without saying goodbye. Perhaps you will understand, though, that one’s ideals must sometimes be sacrificed for something of greater importance.

With best wishes from all our family,

Hannibal and Will Lecter-Graham

The photograph was of a nondescript but beautiful beach, pinks and golds staining the sky; though whether it was dawn or dusk, Alana couldn’t tell. In the distance, their backs to the camera, were three figures, making their way along the shoreline. The two men, one slightly shorter than the other, were holding hands, leaning into each other as they watched the third member of their group, whose appearance had caused Alana’s breath to hitch and her hands to shake.

It was a young woman, slim but strong-looking, her dark hair streaming behind her as she chased a familiar pair of dogs through the surf. She looked full of joy, her face turned just far enough to show the smile she was giving to the men with her.

From all our family…

Alana gazed at the photo for long minutes, letting silent tears fall onto the letter on her lap. Eventually, she gathered herself together and went to get her phone. It took a few rings but eventually Jack picked up, sounding exhausted. Bella’s condition had worsened badly in the last couple of months, and Alana suspected between caring for her and his job, he rarely slept anymore.

“Hello, Alana. You ok?”

Alana looked at the photo once again. It really was beautiful.

“Fine, Jack, just calling to wish you Merry Christmas. How’s Bella?” she asked, throwing the photo into her fireplace, followed by the note. She watched them curl up and turn to ash, as Jack told her that Bella’s health had rallied a little, and they made small talk about their plans for the day.

It was the season of forgiveness, after all.

[rahirah]

On murderbeasts

Many years ago I wrote a story.  Partly it was in answer to a challenge – someone said that they'd never read kidfic which didn't make them barf, and I wanted to see if I could write non-barfy kidfic*.  Partly it was because I'd been thinking seriously about going that way with a sequel to Parliament of Monsters, and I wanted to test the waters to see how readers in general would react.  I had a very definite idea of the tone I wanted the story to have: I wanted to take a lot of the elements of your standard schmoopy kidfic, and give them a creepy supernatural twist while retaining some genuine sweetness in the characters' interactions.  I wanted the reaction of the average reader to be two parts "Awww!" to one part, "OK, that's disturbing." The story was generally well-received, and the majority of readers, I think, had about the reaction that I was hoping they'd have.  Most of the feedback I received specifically mentioned the creepy-vs-cute quotient of the fic.  

I got one piece of public feedback from someone worried about readers who 'romanticized the awfulness' of dark fic.  This person was a noted anti-Spuffy crusader, so I just replied that I'd never gotten any feedback of that sort myself, possibly because I'd never written anything that dark (they wrote a lot of noncon.) So they wrote me back in private pointing out a comment I'd gotten from another reader (who was a Spuffy shipper) as an example of said romanticising.  It was a comment (accurately) comparing Spike's behavior in the fic to that of a cat teaching its kittens to hunt.  Concern Troll's logic seemed to be "People think cats are cute, therefore this person is one step away from marrying a serial killer."

As it happened, the other reader was about the worst example of a romanticiser-of-awfulness the concern troll could have chosen: she was an extremely logical and unromantic academic who analyzed everything to death.  Furthermore, she was a devout follower of her religion who was deeply concerned with ethical questions in general.  Concern Troll knew none of this; to them, the mere fact that she shipped Spuffy and that her comment had not explicitly referenced the creep factor in the story was enough to brand her as a gullible dimwit whose wavering morals could easily be toppled by my story.   I pointed out to Concern Troll that Other Reader was the last person I would suspect of romanticising anything.** But even had I not had personal knowledge of Other Reader's disinclination to run out and marry a serial killer IRL, I trusted my readers to be, you know, smart, and experience had borne out that trust.  

I don't think I convinced Concern Troll of anything, but I didn't really expect to.  The ironic thing, of course, was that Concern Troll also wrote an extremely Problematic pairing.***  Even more problematic than Spuffy, by some measures.  And ranted and raved on a regular basis about how unfair it was that people who disliked their OTP made assumptions about them based only upon the pairings they shipped or the types of fic they liked to write and read.  

What it comes down to is, it's easy to make the assumption that people who agree with us are smart, savvy readers who are easily able to separate fiction from reality and act accordingly.  People who disagree with us, however... well, they're already foolish or misinformed enough to like the wrong character or ship the wrong pairing, aren't they?  Doesn't that prove that they're weak-minded enough to uncritically absorb bad messages from the (by definition bad, because we don't like it) fic they read?

No.  It doesn't.  By extension, none of us should never be allowed to reblog a cat gif without attaching a disclaimer explaining that cats are ruthless murderbeasts who enjoy torturing their prey to death, and we should never, ever allow ourselves to enjoy their cute fluffiness without recalling this fact and feeling bad about it.  

Sometimes, even though you know perfectly well that they’re a murderbeast, you just want to go “Awww,” and reblog the damned cat.  And that’s fine.

*Thinking back, one big reason that I made the decision to give Barbverse Buffy relatively easy pregnancies is that at the time, there was an extremely popular Spuffy series which was already several stories into the pregnancy-and-kidfic stuff.  The Buffy in that series had miserable pregnancies that left her more or less bed-ridden for long periods.  This was used, among other things, as a plot device to explain why she was unable to escape from a forced and unhappy marriage.  The medical stuff was very realistic.  But the angst level was constantly at 9000, and one of the many reasons that I am a Bad Fan is that I don't enjoy being in the head of a character who's miserable for long periods.  Whump is not cathartic for me, just oppressive and/or angering.****   So I really didn't want to write something similar.

**Other Reader had, in fact, written a long-running series about a minor Buffyverse character whom she wrote as a thinly-veiled self-insert meeting her One True Love...who was a middle-aged, balding, slightly chunky OC Watcher.  Together, they wrote properly footnoted research papers!  And occasionally fought vampires.  It was the least romanticized Mary Sue story EVER.

***Curiously, many Anti-Spuffy Crusaders of the day who objected to the pairing on the basis that it was immoral for Buffy, A Good, to have sex with Spike, A Bad, had villain/hero OTPs where both characters were male.  This made it OK.  None of them were ever able to come up with a satisfactory explanation for why it was OK when both partners were male.  Women, apparently, are uniquely susceptible to contracting sexually transmitted Evil.

****Which made many of the seminal academic works on fanfic, like Enterprising Women, absolutely infuriating for me to read, because they told me that using hurt-comfort fic to process the pain of their patriarchy-dominated lives was the core reason why women wrote fanfic, and that...did not match my experience at all.  Couldn't be that we just want to tell a story, nope, there's got to be a pathology behind it.  Of course, on the opposite side of the coin, they also claimed that H/C had NOTHING to do with kink or smut, oh my heavens no only a pervert would suggest that!  So yeah.

[blainematters]

For your reading pleasure, a selection of awful fucking quotes from CC’s latest *~masterpiece~*. That’s right, I read all 407 pages so you don’t have to! Unless you too are a complete masochist, in which case go nuts.

This is image heavy, fair warning. Some names have been slightly altered to protect the crazies who would read this and cry.

Audiences found the show’s campiness to be rather charming, its unique underdog spirit resonated with them, and a global phenomenon was born. Nice description of Glee there. Very original. Good work.

Pitying looks were cast upon the unfortunate souls without seats, as if they were third-class passengers on the Titanic. The death of 1500 people in the worst maritime disaster in history is not a funny or clever simile.

Luckily for him, these days Cash had a little help to take the edge off. He reached into his pocket and pulled out three large pills and two marijuana gummy bears. This is how the main character treats his anxiety. He takes this combo with whiskey. This apparently makes him ‘completely numb’. 

He thought it was funny how there was hydrocodone, weed, and alcohol flowing through his veins at a work event but he wasn’t the biggest douchebag onstage. Except he really, really is. Funnily enough people on drugs aren’t the best judge of character.

If he responded with something they didn’t like, his social media would be bombarded with pictures, videos, and GIFs of decapitated animals, human feces, and militants destroying priceless artifacts.

“Olá, fucktards,” Davi said—his use of American slang was a work in progress. What. This character is brazilian, and he swears constantly. Those are his only character traits.

“That’s incredible, Huda,” Mo said. “If only diplomacy worked as efficiently as a fandom, there would never be war again.” I’m fucking dying.

“Young lady,” the psychologist said. “I have studied the human mind for more than four decades. I understand the appeal of joining the transgender community, but I promise you, the transgender movement is nothing short of a trend for nonconformists. In fact, it is still considered a mental illness by the World Health Organization.” Sorry, what appeal? What even is this nonsense? Why does it go on for five pages? Why the need to unnecessarily torture the trans character with this when it makes no difference to his storyline? Why?

Mo had suffered from OID (overactive imagination disorder) since childhood. The condition wasn’t officially recognized by the United States Department of Health (because Mo had made it up) but the disorder was just as taxing and consuming as any. From the entire community of people with mental illness: Fuck you CC. Fuck you for this awful, awful thing. Kindly go fuck yourself for pretending you have any understanding of what a mental illness is like to live with. Ugh.

A very good-looking man in his early twenties. He wore thick sunglasses, a black leather jacket, dark jeans, and designer boots. Yes, this is how ‘Cash’ is described. He’s also been previously described as a total mess who hasn’t showered in days, so I’m not totally convinced it’s accurate.

“I’m T0pher C0llins. It is such a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Carter.” T0pher C0llins? Are you fucking shitting me?

“I walked into my bedroom and saw Peaches had taken a huge dump in the middle of my bed, so I had to clean it up and put my comforter in the washer.” This is said by the only girl in the group, in front of ‘Cash’, who she idolises. Because girls are just stupid fucking blabbermouths right?

“-it’s getting asked advice on how to break into the industry from the guy taking a dump in the stall next to you” Oh look, another thing that has never, ever happened.

“You gotta say that shit so no one labels you as a future has-been—that’ll kill a career. Even if it’s obvious you’ll never do anything but the show you’re on, you can’t admit it.” The first honest and realistic thing in this book, and it only took till chapter seven!

“Every time I get any recognition he writes me into a coma or puts me through something horrendous as punishment. After I was on the cover of TV Guide, he put a dangerous stunt into a script and it broke my ankle. After I won a People’s Choice Award, he put my character in a coma for twelve episodes. The list goes on.” I wonder how Ryan Murphy will react when he hears about this character who is so clearly him?

“Nothing is stranger than fanfiction,” Cash said, like a sailor recalling his encounter with a horrible sea creature. THIS ENTIRE BOOK IS REAL LIFE FANFICTION YOU HYPOCRITICAL ASSHOLE.

“He’s a little jaded, I’ll give you that—but after all the joy he’s given us over the years, the least we can do is let him be a human being. ” Yes, let the straight white cis male tell you all how to think, feel, and act. Your hero isn’t a douche, he’s misunderstood. Let him treat you like shit because who else gets that experience?

The world’s biggest rubber-band ball bounced into the horizon like a deer recently freed from captivity. Chapter nine: ‘Cash’ destroys a national landmark for shits and giggles.

The actor excitedly passed out tickets to Topher, Joey, Sam, and the Sacagawea statue—mistaking it for Mo. He’s also a racist. Are we surprised?

Why is he dancing like an epileptic on roller skates? Aaaaand a joke about epilepsy. I’m sure Hannah loves it.

“What did you do? How did you get over it?” Joey said. “One day I woke up and decided I had had enough.” ‘Cash’ cures his crippling agoraphobia by just going outside. Again, fuck you CC. That is not how mental illness works. Do two seconds of research for fucks sake.

“The night we were all watching the season six finale of Wiz Kids at Joey’s house, I was actually supposed to be watching Billy while my mom was at a Bunco party. I gave him some cold medicine so he would sleep and ran home to check on him every commercial break.” Drug your disabled siblings, your friends will think you’re cool and laugh about instead of telling you  that you’re an awful fucking person. Which you are.

“Then one day, as I was posting a GIF of a decapitated giraffe on her profile, I learned WizKidLiz01 was a little girl with Down syndrome.” Also on the list of things that make you an awful fucking person… plagiarism or no, don’t do this shit.

“So what’s your real name?” Topher asked. “Now, that you’re not going to believe,” Cash said. “It’s Tom Hanks.”

“They were the most eccentric group of stoners Cash had ever seen and he couldn’t take his eyes off them, like they were the subjects of a fascinating nature documentary.” One character is literally screaming her head off with paranoia and scratching invisible bugs in her skin, but hey, watching teenagers on a drug trip is so interesting!

“I think you’re giving him too much credit,” Cash said. “He’ll be long gone by then.” Oh yeah, ‘Cash’ is extremely preoccupied with death. He frequently says shit like this alluding to it. No-one notices.

“Because if you don’t, I’m going to tell the fangirls about the treatment we’ve received today and unleash them upon your establishment like a plague of locusts! They’ll harass you, humiliate you, and chase your wrinkled, old, racist ass into hiding for the rest of your miserable existence! Do I make myself clear?” Um… what? Why would you even?

“Of course the brakes worked, I was just fucking with you,” Cash said. ‘Cash’ continues to be the absolute worst by making someone think she’s going to die. Of course, she somehow she also doesn’t know that James Dean died in a car accident. Sigh.

“But I think we’d know it if he was mentally unbalanced or an addict of some kind.” YOU ARE EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD AND YOU ARE A COMPLETE IDIOT. YOU LITERALLY JUST DESCRIBED ‘CASH’.

“You lose the right to humanity when you become famous. It’s just the way it is, but I’m not going to whine about it.” Except in this entire book.

“I’m transgender!” Sam declared. “I know what it’s like to have everyone treat you like something you’re not because people have been doing it to me my whole life. I’ve never met someone who could relate—but it’s like everything you just said! We’re both trapped! We’re both prisoners of unfair expectations!” These! things! are! not! comparable! Mostly because ‘Cash’ could leave that life any time, Sam won’t ever stop having to deal with being trans. Shut the fuck up CC. Sam then spends waaaay too much time explaining gender and sexual identity to ‘Cash’ because he’s a complete moron.

Darla spoke with the energy and enthusiasm of a camp counselor on crystal meth. How is this joke in any way appropriate when the main character is clearly a raging drug addict? He’s literally constantly tweaking.

The others stared at Cash in disbelief. It was like a demon living inside of him had taken the reins. Watch as these people we’re supposed to believe all got into prestigious colleges like Colombia and MIT completely fail to recognise the signs of an addict going through withdrawal.

They had never in their lives felt more exposed, more violated, or more gutted. It was as if someone had ripped off all their clothes and chucked their hearts into the depths of the Grand Canyon. ‘Cash’ is so self-obsessed and full of self-pity he decides to out two people in the group and tell another she’s wasting her life just to make them all feel as awful as he does. What a delightful person huh?

“Joey, I have always wanted a gay best friend. I’m not mad because you hid your orientation from me; I’m just upset because of all the Will & Grace opportunities we’ve missed out on.” ARE YOU SHITTING ME?

He was staring at Topher with a weak smile and his eyes were opened just barely enough to see. He clearly knew who Topher was, but Topher couldn’t place him.

“I have glioblastoma,” Cash said. “That’s a fancy stage name for brain cancer.”

I was fine and could easily hide this until a few days ago, but now I’m so weak and frail you don’t even recognise me. Usually Glioblastoma on the brain stem causes symptoms like seizures, confusion, paralysis, vomiting, dizziness, and loss of basic functions, but I’m a special snowflake and get to stay able-bodied and cognisant until the end!

“In April I started getting these really bad migraines,” Cash explained. “A doctor came to the set and recommended I get a scan. We were behind in production so the producers wouldn’t give me time off to get it done.” It’s all Hollywood’s fault he’s dying! Not his for not getting any fucking treatment. And actors can and do take days off for health reasons, that shit is totally allowed.

“Holy shit,” Topher said. “These are all mine.… You’ve saved every letter I ever wrote to you.…” That’s not totally fucking creepy at all, ‘Cash’.

“He’s not a bad person—he’s got brain cancer! That’s why he’s been behaving the way he has!” That makes everything okay! Except not really. Cancer doesn’t give you a free pass to be an asshole. You aren’t making the most of what life you have left, you’re just being a shithead.

“The actor had had so little control over his life, but his death was exactly how he wanted it to be.” Yes, he dies five days later. No-one wondered about his odd behaviour or suspected he might be sick until they visited him in a hospice. These people must be so stupid they can barely function for this to make sense. He’s been dying for months and nobody at all noticed? Bullshit.

“Oh gosh, I’m so nervous to hear how it went! I practically feel like I came out as transgender, too!” NO MORE.

“Not to be a downer, but did anyone watch the footage from Cash’s funeral today?” Mo asked. “Why did they wait a whole month to have it?” Topher asked. “Because it was sponsored by Canon and their new camera comes out this week,” Mo said.

I don’t think companies generally sponsor funerals? Let’s just hope it wasn’t an open casket, that shit would be nasty after a month.

“Fuck off, I’m banging Marilyn Monroe.” No, god no. Please no. Just end this thing now please.

The aspiring writer felt like she and her friends were living a ridiculous happy ending straight from the final page of one of her outlandish stories. Uh…

And a bonus from the author’s note:

However, for the purpose of good storytelling, the characters’ opinions and choices are sometimes flawed. Please do not view their actions as generalizations or examples to follow, but as the mistakes and triumphs of individuals. All of my characters were awful and/or treated like shit by everyone else, but that’s for the sake of the story. It’s not my fault if you act this way and everyone hates you! (And still love me please god I’m so alone...)

[weederstudy06-blog]

How to Fire a Customer

Can you remember your toughest customer? Chances are, the experience involved some sweat, maybe some tears, and a few extra cups of coffee.

When you’re dealing with people, there’s no rulebook. A rational approach doesn’t necessarily evoke a rational response. Learning to tease out the nuances of interactions with difficult customers and untangle the right solution takes time, thoughtfulness and skill.

In the most extreme situations, though, firing a customer is the solution. But it’s one you have to leverage sparingly and discerningly to yield positive outcomes for your business. With a rigorous approach, you can save your company time, money and heartache in an otherwise impossible scenario.

The catch: There are no boilerplates for this big call, so we spoke to several experts to tap into their wisdom.

When to consider firing a customer

Firing a customer is a radical act, but there are times when it’s necessary to protect your team. With a measure so extreme, it’s important to clearly establish what merits a firing.

Challenging customer support interactions happen all the time; almost always, though, there’s a nugget of gold at the heart of a customer’s feedback and their experience of your product or service. The majority of these criticisms can contribute to valuable insights, whether they’re given constructively or not. It’s a company’s job to separate the wheat from the chaff, or in our case, important feedback from plain old negativity.

When you fire a customer or client who’s giving you tough insights, you miss out on all that value — not to mention you’re setting a dangerous precedent. Michael Redbord, the General Manager of HubSpot’s Service Hub, cautions that firing should be an absolute last resort:

“In our world, ‘firing a customer’ refers to cases where we, the vendor, proactively introduce the concept of terminating the relationship to the customer due to extreme outlying circumstances not covered in our Terms of Service. There could be extreme cases of cost-of-goods-sold (COGS) overrun that you failed to predict, far outgrowing a solution so that it's best if a customer finds a new provider or a sufficiently awful working relationship with the humans of your company that warrants it. But these should be extreme cases that crop up rarely, and are statistical outliers by all measures!”

Here’s how to identify if your situation is the extreme exception to the rule of awesome support:

A customer is abusive or threatening

Examples:

A customer uses abusive language in their interactions with team members.

A customer threatens a customer support person with emotional blackmail, or issues threats of a smear campaign on review sites unless their demands are met.

A customer says they’ll prompt undue chargebacks.

Just as you wouldn’t tolerate slurs, curse words, and name-calling from team members, these toxic behaviors shouldn’t be tolerated from customers either. Mercer Smith-Looper, Head of Support at Appcues, explains that verbal abuse is the most cut and dry reason for firing a customer. “If someone verbally accosts an employee or makes any suggestive or overly aggressive comments via email, usually, that merits a firing,” she says. “On occasion, we can issue a warning and then a firing, but usually it just comes straight to firing.”

It’s critically important for team members to feel safe at work, and it’s the employer’s job to protect workers from inhumane behavior.

In some terrible scenarios, customers also make threats to try to derail the company’s reputation with unfair or rampant reviews on sites like TrustRadius, Yelp or social media. These situations are less straightforward than verbal abuse, so they’re worth considering one by one. If a relationship reaches that boiling point, it signals that the customer may not be open to more constructive avenues of support.

A customer is never, ever, ever happy

Examples:

A customer makes insistent and continuous support requests that have previously been addressed a number of times.

There’s a terrible customer-product fit that can’t be realistically remedied with workarounds, integrations, updates, or product changes within the needed time frame.

Whether a customer just can’t get what they need because of a poor product fit or they’re endlessly frustrated with your support team, firing is only an option when the customer exhibits repetitive, unceasing behavior. Are their complaints a daily pattern? “You can usually find ways to approach their needs or reframe their expectations that can work around firing,” says Smith-Looper.

Jason Pearson, Head of Product Support at Figma, agrees. He’s never had to fire an unhappy customer in his current role, but in a previous position, Pearson just couldn’t facilitate an alignment between the customer and the product. “The customer became increasingly aggressive in their tone and was bombarding our support team daily. The team was spending an inordinate amount of time assisting this customer and they were causing a great deal of frustration for support as well as engineering.”

Pearson and his team exhausted every possible solution, and the engineering team worked around the clock to roll out new features. Unfortunately, the development timeline didn’t sync with the needs of the customer. This kind of example — when a customer just can’t benefit from the product as-is — sometimes signals that it’s better to part ways.

How to fire a customer (the right way) in 5 steps

Once you establish that a customer’s behavior or the situation merits firing, there are some guidelines you want to follow to ensure that your team walks through the process with integrity. There are so many ways to approach the task, but these five steps can serve as building blocks for a thorough, fair experience all the way around.

1. Confirm you’ve exhausted other options

Knowing when it’s appropriate and how to fire a customer depends on a detailed record of every interaction. Set aside time to talk formally with anyone at the company who has been involved with the abusive or difficult customer. Reread every support ticket, talk to account managers, and ask for formal written feedback from any support personnel who have corresponded with this customer during the course of the relationship — even if you’ve been hearing about it every day for months.

Take all this information and compile a detailed list of the customer’s complaints, the way that the customer made them (escalating in language or frequency), and how the team tried to resolve issues. With everything clearly in front of you, you can discern how the problem has unfolded and whether it’s an escalating pattern.

These details also give you the bulk of the information you need to take the issue to company leaders and explain the situation. The nitty-gritty details show that you’re taking complaints seriously and you’ve listened to and integrated the customer’s feedback as much as humanly possible.

2. Set up a time for a meeting of minds

Unless you’re a support leader making a clear-cut decision about a non-paying customer, you don’t want to make this choice alone. Colin Flanigan, Customer Support Manager at Pingboard, says the decision should include an account manager, one executive, and one support leader. Because these situations are so rare and directly impact revenue, it’s better to bring more voices to the equation than stumble through firing a customer in a detrimental way.

Redbord says HubSpot elevates these rare situations to an executive team who digs into the issues to get to the root of the problem. “When we have difficult situations they’re handled on the phone or in-person, at the executive level, and we always do a ‘five whys’ and look at how we got into that situation, with an aim to fix the root cause and remediate the customer situation to the point where we don’t fire them,” he shares. HubSpot — and a lot of other SaaS companies — intentionally don’t build out a documented process for firing customers because they don’t want to normalize the action. .

Ask yourself and your team: Is there anything else we can do to make this relationship work? If, in this exceptional circumstance, firing seems like the most beneficial option, it’s even more important to do due diligence and investigate the outcome. For large contracts, you may want to consult a lawyer or your company’s general counsel to understand any legal implications.

3. Consider the potential financial gains or losses

When firing a customer or client, you also want to thoroughly assess the financial risks and benefits of the choice. Even though every situation is unique, there are some consistent factors at play. For example, happy customers always spend more money than their unsatisfied counterparts. These joyful folks also cost a lot less to support, and they’re a lot more likely to refer your business to friends and colleagues.

Next, consider the possibility of issuing a partial or complete refund, even if it’s not required in your Terms of Service. The upside of this kind of generosity is clear: A refund helps bring the relationship to a close in a cordial manner, even if the customer was clearly in the wrong. It also neutralizes some of the perceived loss for a client, buoying an otherwise bad experience and lowering levels of resentment. It’s a case-by-case scenario, but usually, some level of refund strikes a chord.

Given the likelihood that the customer took up a ton of your team’s resources, the operational gains (your team takes back its time) will most likely offset any revenue losses that occur when canceling a contract and offering a refund. Plus, you’ll free up energy to pump toward customers who love your product. That will always yield financial benefits in the long run.

4. Pick the right person and channel to communicate the break-up

Ending a customer relationship is a big deal — it should be handled by leaders who have the experience and the confidence to deal with these exceptional circumstances. Take it up the chain — as Redbord says, “If you don’t feel you can introduce sternness with ease, you’re not the right person to fire a customer.”

Within that context, there are two schools of thought on the right channel a business should use to fire a customer:

Let go of a customer through the channel in which you receive their support inquiries.

Opt for the most personal method of communication: in-person, video chat or phone.

The first method may work for non-paying customers, but the level of consideration you bring to the process should align with the depth of the relationship and the financial commitment of the contract. An email from a support leader is awesome for detailing each issue the customer experienced — and that a solution isn’t plausible — but ending an expensive contract should always occur over the phone.

As Flanigan says, “Nobody likes to be broken up with via text, right?” The bigger the contract, the more important it is that a senior executive (or two) leads the calls. Again, escalating seniority of the people leading the conversation and the channel imbues the process with a level of seriousness that customers can respect.

5. Communicate with transparency, sincerity and firmness

All of these thoughtful steps lead up to the business of actually firing a customer. Regardless of the method you use to communicate the end of the relationship, you want to do it with strong boundaries and neutral language.

Lead with empathy and a firmness that scales with the circumstances. When you and a customer come to a mutual “break up” because it just isn’t the right fit, an appreciative, cordial tone is appropriate. When a customer is being abusive, you need to be stern, succinct and final.

Every situation requires a completely tailored approach. Here are some final words of wisdom from two of our experts on getting it right:

“The clearest standard is honesty, sincerity and finality. Nobody should ever be happy about breaking up with a customer, so you can be honest about that — you should be honest about that. Practically speaking, avoid qualitative statements. Be purely objective. State facts and be brief.

If you're on the phone, speak calmly but less expressively than you might usually be. Be specific about what has happened, what will happen next, and their options for how to move forward.”

— Colin Flanigan, Customer Support Manager at Pingboard

“It's incredibly important to tailor your communication to each person that you are talking to. You should not use a boilerplate template for firing a customer unless firing them over something like a Terms of Service violation.

Even then, there should still be a level of personalization — they are human, after all. Avoiding condescension and any heated language while clearly presenting the reasons that you are firing them is a good way to introduce sternness. Avoid words like ‘maybe’ or ‘possibly.’”

— Mercer Smith-Looper, Head of Support at Appcues

Once you’ve mastered how to fire a customer, let it all go. You’ve done your best, made an exceptional decision in a trying circumstance, and communicated with clarity and strong boundaries. Now, you’re free to focus on the customers you love to serve every day. Make those interactions count, too!

Free PDF: How to Talk to Your Customers

Communicating with customers is an art, a science ... and a competitive differentiator. Get your own free copy of this comprehensive guide to talking with customers.

Source: https://www.helpscout.net/blog/firing-a-customer/

[mjdtumblog]

Silly Billy, Comics Aren’t Just for Kids

I believe child-friendly pop culture to be, in more ways than one, vastly underappreciated. There are many specific topics, such as the discrimination of animated films by awards shows and the value of returning to books read as a kid, that I am eager to discuss, yet I could not quite figure out where to begin. Fortunately, Bill Maher’s latest fit of ignorance in light of Stan Lee’s death last week provided the launching pad I needed.

There is a lot to unpack here, but the fundamental assumption that Maher’s argument hinges on is that “comics were for kids.” That “for kids” descriptor has gotten run describing cartoons, books, movies and more in addition to comics for many years, and it almost always carries a negative connotation. “We shouldn’t watch that show, it’s for kids,” and “Why would you read that, isn’t it for kids?” are examples of casual derision that each imply that simply because something was made for kids, it should be viewed as inferior.

It is exactly that use of the descriptor that Maher is using in his attack on comics.

Maher characterizes “big-boy books” as books that lack pictures, a quality the comic books obviously do not share. This description cuts right to the core of what Maher and so many others get wrong. Pictures help to make stories more accessible to audiences, namely children, who do not yet have a complete enough understanding of the primary language of the work. In comic books and graphic novels alike, the text obviously plays an important role, but it is the medium-defining visuals that make them unique.

If one were to flip their way through a solid comic and not read a word, the story would in all likelihood still be apparent. Often, the text that does appear is not too complex in form, and can be read by kids who may not have a deep vocabulary. As is the case for many “children’s books,” new and more challenging words will be introduced along the way, and it is the presence of the pictures alongside them that can help readers connect the dots and discover the meaning of that initially daunting but now understood word.

The form is only half of the equation though, and the content of comics often receives just as little if not less respect.

The phrase “popcorn movie” has come to refer to films that one can watch without much thought, which in and of itself would be fine if not for the negative connotation that has infected its use. Comic books and their film adaptations have, for generations, been subject to an unfair relegation underneath this umbrella. It is a credit to the art that people can lose themselves solely to the visuals that the genre has provided, but that does not mean that is all there is to experience, and Stan Lee himself played a critical role in making that the case.

Lee’s legacy is inextricable from heroes like the X-Men, Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk, all of whom were characterized not just by their extraordinary abilities, but by their struggles with identity, responsibility and emotion. The powers of these characters shine during the uniquely awe-inspiring action sequences, but those scenes and their participants are inseparable from the humanizing struggles that make them compelling in the first place.

Coming to grips with one’s individuality or coping with loss are just two struggles that these comic book stories tackle, and they are not struggles that we reasonably expect children to be able to resolve easily, especially when some people do not manage to do so over the course of an entire lifetime. One of these struggles could just as well affect someone at age 15 as someone at age 50. So why exactly should content that helps their cause be relegated to an audience consisting only of children?

Not everybody has to enjoy comic books. No medium of entertainment is right for everybody, which is precisely why shaming people who do like one more than another is needlessly insensitive act. Maher has a unique platform and with it, a unique responsibility. Perhaps some advice from Uncle Ben would help him channel it.