#deflection tactics

[justherebecause15]

all i'm saying is jon and jay had damian go to pride with them

[tswwwit]

i have a counter argument to the 'only one person can boop bill' thing, mabel. she's the type of person to slap stickers on people, she would definitely be the type to also boop others occasionally and bill would be no exception. she probably doesn't do it to annoy bill like dipper would, but maybe as a form of a friendly gesture, kind of like those people who will lightly punch friends in the arm when they hang out.

You know what? Good point. Mabel would get away with more than most, as a fun-loving lady! Bill understands those impulses, and being a touchy person! He indulges in similar ones himself.

Though when Bill's not in the mood to be playful and gets booped anyway? The 'sister-in-law' status grants her considerable grace.

[the-final-sif]

In a period where we are seeing increasing levels of bad faith takes, particularly from right wing assholes/terfs/nazis/etc, I think it's time that people on the left learn about eating the red card. The best example I've heard of shrugging off fake power structures.

Transcript below the cut.

Mike: Sure.

Dan: Mhm. So did you say any of those things by the way?

Mike: Nope. I didn't say any of that.

Jordan: Maybe next time.

Dan: Interesting.

Mike: Maybe next time. [crosstalk with Jordan], maybe cnn can invite me on and give me a shot-

Jordan [crosstalk with Mike]: Next time you're on CNN, give it a try.

Mike: I will say all those things, but that won't matter because I'll just have not said something else.

Jordan: No it won't.

Dan: Yeah. Go on and say, just do a satanic ritual on air and see- see how he plays that one.

Jordan: That's where I feel like we're like we're at-

Dan: He'll probably ignore it.

Jordan: I feel like we're all in eat the red card territory. You know, like if somebody says, "Oh, you, you're, you lied about this." Just be like, yeah, you're fucking right. I did. And I'll do it to your face and your mom's face! Fuck you!

Dan: Is that, is that a reference to my story?

Jordan: Yeah.

Dan: Okay. I didn't know if that-

Jordan: That resonated with me.

Dan: I didn't know if that was like vernacular-

Jordan: No, no, for me-

Dan: Wow.

Jordan: Yeah, that story is stuck with me forever.

Dan: That's pretty sweet.

Jordan: I love that story.

Dan: So Mike, I'll give you the short version of this.

Mike: Okay.

Jordan: When I was a kid, my parents only let us play soccer because the other games were like, I don't know, not European enough or something.

Mike: Oh, sure, okay.

Dan: We, we would play and on my brother's team, there was this guy who was kind of a bad-ass. And so in one game, he got a yellow card and he ate it.

Mike: Wow.

Dan: And so immediately the ref pulled out a red card, gave it to him, and he ate that too.

Mike:: Yeah.

Jordan: Like- what do you- See, I feel like that's just such a great story of like, what did you think was going to happen? You thought that you would exercise your real authority finally. And the truth is you have none because I'm going to eat this red fucking card and then walk away. You're nothing to me. Yeah.

Dan: So that, in sort of the metaphor, that is doing a satanic ritual on CNN.

Jordan: Yeah, totally. Absolutely. Yeah!

Jordan: Oh, they say he does satanic rituals. Fucking- let's see if I can do one! If you think satanic rituals are real and you believe that I do them,then should I do one on TV? It should work.

Mike: Yep.

Jordan: So eat the red card, man!

Dan: Don't do that.

Jordan: See if you can summon a demon.

Dan: Mike, don't do this.

Jordan: Summon a demon, Mike. Mike summon a demon.

Dan: There's an angel in a, uh, pride, uh, devil month on your shoulder.

Mike: Pride demon month- gotta go out in my pride demon month shirt?

Jordan: Angel month isn't until August. You've still got a couple of days.

[teaveetamer]

How does Raxis's orientation, gender, and skin color matter? And why does yours matter?

Why does me being a queer woman matter when a cishet white man accuses me of being queerphobic and misogynist?

Assuming you're the anon Ezra keeps getting who is complaining about us pointing out his age (since I got this right after I reblogged one of those), you probably read his blog right? Considering Raxis claims to be such a great progressive ally and co-opts all that progressive language, I'd think people who follow him would understand why this is so important?

Okay, I'll be very clear, cut because this got long, I'm not repeating it ad nauseum after this post.

His gender, sexual orientation, and race wouldn't matter if he hadn't made it matter. Raxis is not only a bully, he's a bully who constantly appropriates the language of social justice. My very first direct interaction with him was literally me calling his ass out for using the murder of Roe v. Wade as a bludgeon to win a fandom argument. Which happened, like, right the fuck after that decision came down and most women in America were fucking traumatized from literally having our rights stripped from us. And I wish our relationship ended at that "apology" but he hasn't changed and he keeps doing it.

He is the one who consistently accuses me (and other women) of being misogynistic and having internalized misogyny. He is the one who consistently accuses me (and other queer folk) of being queerphobic. He is the one who accuses BWIIDT (who is mixed race) for being out of line for thinking Cap (another white man!) has written racist elements into his fic (unintentionally or not). He consistently uses our oppression as a justification for why it should be okay for him to bully us.

If you are going to use our identities as part of your justification for harassing us, then we have every right to point out that these are identities that we hold and you don't. We have every right to point out that the opinions of a cishet white man about misogyny, queerphobia, racism, etc. do not matter as much as ours because you have never fucking experienced it like we have.

The role of allies is to amplify voices in spaces where we are not respected (e.g. with other cishet white men), not to lecture marginalized people for being "bad queers" or "bad women" from your throne of privilege.

It's especially fucking slimy because he pretends to be super progressive live and in concert, but when he slinks back to his buddies he laughs at us for being upset about being misgendered:

(Yes because you repeatedly misgendered me for months and only started correcting yourself and your anons when I called your shit out. You are literally "the misgendering type" but it's cute how you tried to act like I was being unreasonable for wanting the basic human respect of being referred to by my proper pronouns)

Accuses us of trying to hide behind "identity politics" when we're talking about the fucking oppression we face:

(Always a great sign when a cishet white man accuses queer women of "trying to use identity politics as a shield" when they're talking about their own fucking oppression. An even better sign when a cishet white man brags about "out identity-politicking" queer women when they're telling you to stop fucking throwing their oppression back in their faces. Whining about "identity politics" whenever marginalized groups try to voice anything is frankly such an alt right dogwhistle in itself at this point and I genuinely hope he's just not aware of it.)

Bullies queer women on his side who disagree with him and try to say basically exactly what I'm saying right now. That straight men can't appropriate the language we use to describe our oppression:

(usernames censored for the privacy of those being harassed and those not participating in harassment. This conversation has so much fucking more btw holy shit.)

Accuses me, specifically, of being "desperate to be a victim". I'll remind you I quite literally tried to give him grace despite him consistently using my oppression as a bludgeon to win stupid fucking fandom arguments and harass people (see also, the link above about me calling him out for the Roe v. Wade thing):

(Yes, Raxis, I fucking loved pouring my heart out about how my dad would kick me out for being queer and how I've faced sexual harassment. Tee hee. I'm having soooooo much fun "being a victim". I don't 'argue', I tell you, because your horrible treatment of people and my feelings about it are not up for debate.)

And engages in racist behavior like calling being black a "multiplier" to deflect from criticism and mocking a WoC when she posts about how racism upsets her.

(Yes Raxis, WoC tend to get "big mad" and "suffer" when they encounter racism, you ghoul. Before you ask, the blacked out part just wasn't relevant to the conversation.)

And this is just the stuff I got out of a quick keyword search because I don't want to expend that much energy on this. God only knows what else is buried in there.

This tells me you aren't actually an ally. You're an "ally" when it's convenient for you or when you think it'll make you look good, but your allyship is conditional, and the second you're "crossed" by someone you claim to champion you throw their trauma back in their faces. Not even your supposed friends are safe from it, so what chance did we have of not getting harassed by you?

"But there's queer women in the Edelgard fandom who like him!" Okay? So he can't be engaging in harmful shit just because he has a queer friend? When has "I have a [blank] friend" EVER been an actual good faith defense against criticism? News flash, we're not a monolith, and just because some women and queer folk might like you or even agree with you doesn't mean you get to tell me how I should respond to my own fucking oppression. It is not your place to accuse me, a fucking queer woman, of having "internalized misogyny" or "internalized homophobia" every time I say something you don't personally like.

Frankly, from what I've seen of their server, it's less "queer women like him" and more like "queer women are too afraid to say anything against him" because whenever they try he cries to his pro-genocide mod buddy (THAT is a whole fucking story) who threatens to ban them.

And I'm not going to add these screenshots because I feel icky airing her personal business like that so explicitly, but I do have them. The woman involved in the censored screenshots above posted, in the server, about how unsafe she felt because she'd been threatened and silenced by cishet men for trying to talk about queerphobia. She left the server entirely after that.

And let's not forget what started this: he's thirty five years old and in many cases he's pulling this shit on people who are significantly younger than him. Exceeding a decade his junior in some cases. I point that out primarily for the power dynamic inherent to that. Not only is he privileged on the basis of race, gender, and orientation, he's fully developed and he knows what he's doing. He has the privilege of age and experience.

Fuck dude, he started going after some folks on Tumblr when they were still like? 18? 19? Not children, but fucking close.

I'll be very explicit because I know he's going to take this and try to accuse me of ageism, because that's what he always does when he gets called out for appropriating the language of social justice: you are a fucking adult. You have been an adult the entire time you have been in this fandom. As an adult, it's your job to be a fucking adult in these situations. Not to verbally abuse and harass inexperienced teens and early 20 somethings because they don't agree with your video game opinions. You are a grown ass 35 year old man man who thinks he's cool because he can "beat up", "cow", and "bitch slap" teenagers and early 20 somethings who are still developing, figuring themselves out, and learning how to express themselves in an articulate manner. Many of whom are already dealing with varying levels of actual trauma based on their upbringings (abusive, hateful, uncaring, or just generally unpleasant environments) or how they've been treated because of their identity (race, class, gender, sexual orientation, mental health, disability, sometimes multiple all at once) or both. That is why I keep bringing up your age.

It is quite possibly the single most embarrassing thing I have seen someone in fandom brag about. Not even just because you did it, Raxis, but because you're proud of it and you genuinely think it makes you look cool. It's embarrassing. You're embarrassing yourself.

[traumatizedjaguar]

Abusers will get angry with you for you not being able to figure out that they’re manipulating you.

They think you’re weak and stupid for not being able to figure it out. So they’re blaming you for them manipulating you. They’re proud of themselves for manipulating/deceiving/abusing you. Everything is competition to an abuser.

“How dare you try to ask me personal questions to get to know me?” -abuser

Sweetheart, that’s what human beings do. But you’re not human I guess so you wouldn’t know that.

You say to us survivors “I don’t trust you” “I don’t like you” “you’re trying to manipulate me” you might be seeing yourself in everyone else.

You always say “nobody will ever get to really know me!”

I’ll tell you who you are. You surround yourself with people smaller and more vulnerable than you to exploit and manipulate. To validate your own existence. Because you ain’t shit. You’re nothing. There is nobody to get to know.

[trainingdummyrabbit]

u know uve got it bad when u look at a dialogue sheet and go God I Wish I Could Print Out And Annotate This

[luobingmeis]

“do you scorn my great domain? this mountain is bigger than your cloud recesses, you know. the food is better too.” “wei ying, you know what i mean.” exchanges i will be rotating in my brain

[sirenium]

stop using lesbianism as an excuse to hate men. Stop using feminism as an excuse to hate men. You just hate men, full stop.

stop using being gay as an excuse to hate women. You just hate women, full stop.

Get over your hatred and grow as a person.

[sunsoak]

I need to find a balance between reading the news and reading the Twitter News that doesn’t result in me wanting to hit myself repeatedly with a sledgehammer

[scaryscarecrows]

Is there ever a time that Jason doesn’t say ‘I’ve had worse’ as a response to someone asking about how he’s feeling?

No. It works. Either people are too horrified to pester me further, or they're frustrated and change lanes to lecture me about my answer. :) Either way, they lay off.

-Jason

[thecryptidenthusiast]

I’ve got so many thoughts ping ponging in my head about the N route that I wish sera had elaborated on-

[agdab]

sometimes for no reason i think about the exes who told me they hated the things i enjoyed. like what did that even accomplish dude

[ghostsandyoumightdie]

Friendly reminder that you don't have to be perfect to set boundaries. If you tell someone not to raise their voice at you or you will leave, and they bring up that you also raise your voice when you're mad (or any other comments on your character), kindly remind them that they are free to set the same boundary and that does not give either of you free reign to treat someone badly.

[pegasusknightsonly]

it kind of sucks that claudevain is the big inter-house Sylvain crack m/m ship because Sylvain/Hubert is so much funnier. Sylvain's open distaste for everything Hubert does vs Sylvain's deeply buried chivalric desires to be useful. Hubert's frank appraisal and appreciation of people's talents vs his weakness for annoying redheads. that one line of dialogue where Sylvain calls Hubert stupid out of nowhere and Hubert isn't even there he's just living in Sylvain's mind rent free. it has it all. and if Sylvain is going to have an interesting conversation with either of the two house leaders he doesn't already support it's not going to be with Claude. im simple. im honest. i want to see Edelgard radicalise him

[intimidatingsqueak]

smapxsmap (1999.10.4)

im actually breakin’ my own heart over here

(read tags if you want a bit of a nonsensical ramble…😭)

[catlokis-blog]

you can tell who has and who has not seen gorgeous freeman based on how they design & portray him and its glaringly obvious