#discourse maybe?

[clarity2electricboogaloo]

Oh that’s not—

[ethicallysourcedbuddie]

911 is Thee most negative fandom I've been in since mid-show supernatural. Like, I don't know if you saw the black sails/ofmd pirate poll drama a year or two ago, but I still think 911 fans are more casually, immaturely toxic

idk anything about ofmd/black sails fandom bc pirates aren't rly my thing so i didn't watch either of those ajksdlfasdf (i'm so weird shows are either EXACTLY my thing or not my thing at all) but yeah it just feels like constantly having to navigate soooo carefully to make it so every single post on my dashboard isn't just a big downer. and i get it people get frustrated and they aren't satisfied with the show etc etc but sometimes i'm just like. god, this is not what i do fandom for. it's depressing to just see constant negativity (shout out to the people who always tag that shit so i don't have to see it y'all are the REAL mvps.)

[crypticcodexcreations]

You know, usually, I keep my opinions to myself and the people I trust, but I'm annoyed and have been thinking about this since breakfast and all day so fuck it.

I've been writing for a long long time. For my entire living memory of you count the things I imagined without ever actually writing them down. And here's the problem I've encountered with writeblr. It's not one community, it's two, and they don't want anywhere near the same things.

I can't entirely speak for what the community I don't want to be a part of wants, but they're the people who just care about the numbers from the outside looking in. From my perspective, you see it with the people who talk a whole lot about supporting the community, it's not about the quality, it's about how many asks they send or how many people they've reblogged or whatever. And then whether they're actually well intentioned or if it's for attention, I don't know, they do things like see people complaining about not getting interaction and just go "well keep writing!" Or they send more asks.

And that's when they butt heads with the community I tend to vibe with. The community where it's not about how many of anything we get. It's about seeing a genuine interest in what we're doing. So when people say "man it's discouraging that no one seems to care what I post!" The other group at best goes "just keep writing!"

I'm gonna let you all in on a little secret. I used to write fanfic. Used to post it too. But I didn't stop writing it at the same time I stopped posting it. I stopped posting it when people stopped interacting with it. And then I kept writing it for myself. I just stopped putting in the effort to make it legible for other people when other people stopped interacting with it. I may as well not put in the effort of making others able to read something that's only for myself after all. I then shifted to oh my own original fiction because that's what made me happy.

And the obligatory asks section because I know someone will make this about asks somehow, I don't mind if someone has one WBW ask or STS ask that they want to send to multiple people if it's something that actually makes sense for my works or is broad enough you know? What gets my goat is when someone who's sent me asks before, who's been my mutual for months, sends me a copy paste ask introducing themselves to me. Like, yes, I know who you are. Because we've interacted before. I want to feel like a person, not another number in your follower count. Because here's the secret. I will always be writing. It's just about whether I share it or not. And if I were to decide fuck it, I would still share with the friends I've made here. Because I know they care. It's just a matter of whether I would put my heart and soul into making it available to a bigger audience or not. Because all the people who've screamed in my tags, come into my inbox to ask me things, and be social with me? I have them on Discord. There's no reason for me to bother putting it on Tumblr other than the fact that I love to share it. I'd like more people to enjoy what I write. I want to bring the emotions I write to more people. I want people who can connect to my stories to be able to. I don't want numbers. I want real connections. And if you don't connect with my stories? If they're not to your tastes? Then I don't mind you not sending me asks.

Long story short, I'm not a content creator. I don't care about the numbers. I'm a storyteller who wants to tell stories for the same reason ancient humans did. Connections.

[transcendragonreblogs]

I generally agree with this post, but I know some people have noted that they know a bear would never SA them or try to humiliate them. That turns into a different question more about what people see as the worst possibilities and humanity vs animals. Seeing a human as more of a threat than a bear can be a very emotionally understandable position and I wouldn’t call anyone a problem for feeling that way, it’s just that the question is bad.

To be honest, I don’t think any question that relies on emotional preferences and reactions is a good framework for societal discussion.

Like I don’t think the concept is flawed because it might imply men are worse than bears (some people might think all humanity are worse than bears), but because it tries to understand gendered dynamics by judging individual emotional responses as indicative of reality or not which is like…. very silly.

I think we should call out women's misogyny more often. My mom was the most misogynistic person I had ever encountered growing up. At herself, at other people. like she's better now, but woman left me some deep scars.

[stolenkissesdiaz]

i hope buck, eddie and shannon are haunting helena through chris rn. i hope when chris rolls his eyes and snarks back helena freezes reminding her damn well who his father is. i hope when chris bites the inside of cheek and is suddenly really interested in his hands when he’s nervous about something helena scrunches her eyebrows in confusion bc she swears she’s seen it before and her eyes widen as she recalls eddie’s friend, the same friend who was there when they picked up chris, having the same mannerisms when eddie and his team came to texas. i hope when chris asks for the ice cream from the store 45 minutes from their house near the park and he picks rocky road helena swallows roughly bc shannon would do the same when she missed eddie and/or was sad. i hope she’s violently reminded no matter how much she pretends, that child will never be hers in the way she’s so desperately been trying to make it be for years. i hope she’s reminded of her damn place in chris’ life.

[raging-ajris]

Can we talk about how the vast majority of any porn/sexually explicit/fantasy geared to, or even remotely involving transmascs must involve the transmasc being 'fucked', uses of the word 'cunt'/'pussy'boy*, rape fantasies, breaking/turning the transmasc into a 'doll', fantasies of abuse etc?

And yet i very rarely meet transmascs who actually want anywhere near the level of (consensual) violence that people fantasise about inflicting, and push? A great deal of transmascs experience bottom dysphoria or at leas dysphoria at the idea of PIV sex, which is what a lot of these fantasies are about? There's a huge centre of porn focusing on 'reminding' transmascs about their vagina (usually in far cruder terms) And like, I don't want to kinkshame, but general trends always are rooted in something. Like the fact that 'dykebreaking', is SOOOO much more common than the idea of 'fagbreaking?'. Or that vast majority of porn caters to having the male anatomy being 'satisfied', and promotes unrealistic ideas about what is usually pleasurable for the one being penetrated.

I just think its something that should be thought about, like why is the majority of transmasc sexually explicit stuff, centred around what would (mostly) not be pleasurable for the transmasculine person? *not even getting started on how its always 'BOY' and never 'MAN/GUY'

[watchingwisteria]

listen there really was just something about how in the book, snow’s 3-page descent from hesitant lover boy to deluded mfer happens entirely in his mind. lucy gray gives him no indication whatsoever that she suspects him, that she’s going to leave or betray him. he’s just sitting quietly in the cabin waiting for her to return when that seed of calculated suspicion, which he has needed to survive the capitol, takes a hold of him and chokes the life out of any goodness left inside him. it really drives home your terror as a reader that “oh my god did he kill her? did she escape? what happened to her? why would he even think that?” in a way that when the movie had to adjust for visualization it lost some of that holy shit this guy has lost it emphasis.

[idliketobeatree]

btw when you're being mean to aziraphale this is who you're being mean to. hope this helps

[supertaliart]

It’s loving mom!Shaak-ti hours.

[magicalgirlypop]

i'm so well fed with amazing female characters in magical girl anime that i forget there's people who only watch shonen and think that's a whole representation of female characters in anime. how sad. you need some sailor moon, precure, and cardcaptor sakura, in your life.

[transcendragonreblogs]

It’s really weird to say that there are spaces for people of color and queer people but not men. Many men are people of color or queer people. If we’re talking about Trump voters, a significant portion of them are Latino men! I’m not trying to be down on that commenter, but this is part of what we need to talk about.

This implies that spaces for people of color or queer people are either:

1) Still full of toxic misogyny

Or

2) Not welcome to men with identities that should make them welcome in those spaces

I’m sure both types of the above spaces exist. I’ve been in and heard of both. The question is, how do we make more of a third kind of space that is welcome to men, especially marginalized men, but not toxic or misogynistic?

Related questions: What kind of organizing would that take? Who wants to and would be suited to taking on that organizing? What can we do for the spaces we are in? Are there any spaces we are already in that we can impact?

Leaving toxic masculinity behind as a source of community is pretty much an unmitigated good, especially for men who are chronically underperforming in one or more metric by which hegemonic patriarchal status is measured (heterosexuality, whiteness, ability to perform violence, ect.). No real external spur is needed for leaving. It doesn't even require empathy. Just perspective. Relying on an abusive pyramid scheme for self worth is bad, actually.

But when you leave that, I dunno, call me a whiny incel who expects emotional labour from others, it would be cool if there was some sort of community or support structure in place for progressive men to find celebration and identity and acceptance. It would be nice if we had cultural conceptions of positive masculinity that could be emulated instead of individual, exceptional, disposable blorbos to be fawned over. It would be nice if being masculine wasn't viewed as something that negates or problematises my queerness. It would be nice to even be able to find media about masculinity that isn't poisoned by fascism or more interested in dunking on said misogynists for clout. I feel like I'm trying to build something new from scratch. Why? Why is this such a fucking wasteland.

I don't know about y'all, but I have never felt understood and accepted by any community ever in my fucking life. I have never felt seen. I have never felt at home. I'm not gonna become a misogynist about it but there sure isn't anything positive to lean on or collective vision for a positive future to fucking strive for, is there? Christ.

And like, because I know I do have to end with this, before you try some faux-hopecore bullshit on me that actually seeks to shift the blame right back onto me, I'm already donating to and planning to volunteer for my local left wing party for our upcoming federal election. I already signed up for more classes to fill my time, I'm married, I text my stupid friends who bail on me and don't text back. I have been to therapy several times. I have already poured hundreds of hours trying to build community in male feminist spaces online. Systemic issues do not magically become individual failings when we talk about men.

[glitter-stained]

"why does fanon love making Jason care about his goons when he kills them in canon" I'm sorry to tell you that Jason's Robin run is a significant work for his characterization. And that Willis Todd was in fact a goon. Like, that's a significant thing that happened.

(jaybin fans exist not every Jason fan is a hardcore UTH fan who thinks everything about Winick's writing is pure and just and the right way)

[that-satireguy]

after being in trans spaces for a while i've come to the conclusion that there genuinely is a small but vocal group of people who think trans women get all the 'negative' parts of being seen as a man and all the negative parts of being seen as woman while trans men get all the benefits of being seen as a man and all the 'benefits' of being seen as a woman.

Like there are some who straight up say that:

Trans men are men so don't experience misogyny

Trans men are not seen as men so don't get profiled as violent/perverted

Trans men are men so have rights

Trans men are not seen as men so have freedom to express their gender

Trans men have access to 'male privilege'

And trans men also have access to 'afab privilege'.

Like bitch read your own fucking dissertations you are literally painting trans men as the most privileged gender identity in the patriarchy and only impacted by transphobia.

[lapdogchase]

me personally if i was making fun of asexuals or aromantics or polyamorous people or pansexuals and i noticed my notes were full of terfs who thought it was the funniest thing ever i would probably reflect on that

[acquired-elfroot]

The annoying thing is that reducing Solas to a dislikable two dimensional caricature in Veilguard didn't even come close to fixing the problem they set out to fix in doing so, and it was never going to.

I can’t pull up the exact quote, but I believe one of the writing team said something along the lines that they needed to make Solas less sympathetic because at the end of Trespasser too many people agreed with him and wanted to end the world. Which is why they chose to have him kill Varric, among other things. 

While I will say that I agree with the choice to have him kill Varric(I like the idea of him making Rook hallucinate him too, that could have been sweet if it had been well executed rather than a bland set up for a M. Night Shyamalan level twist) to raise the stakes and set Solas up as a serious antagonist for a new audience, or an audience that hadn’t been paying particularly close attention to him - but there is no way it could have ever suddenly made his goal to tear down the veil unsympathetic for those who found it to be so.

The writers seem to have been under the impression that members of the audience sympathised with Solas’ plan to tear down the veil not on its own merits, but for the draw of his sparkling personality alone. Not for well established lore related reasons, or for extra-narrative reasons rooted in a desire for emotional catharsis and narrative satisfaction (which a fictional body count has even less bearing on besides) but because he’s a sad pretty elf boi and we want to kiss it all better.

I’m going to be real with you, if they had surgically transplanted Ogrehn’s personality onto Solas and had him stone cold murder every other beloved character in the series, I would still want the  Veil to come down, or at the very least a better solution than leaving it just as it is. How likeable he is or isn’t has fuck all to do with it? 

Making Solas more dislikable does nothing to change the effect the Veil has on spirits and mages, it does nothing to address the question of the value of mortal lives weighted against immortal ones. It does not change the narrative role of a trickster in bringing enlivening chaos and upheaval to a stagnating world, in this case one that’s been forced to stagnate in service of the illusion of player choice; nor does it quiet our desire to see the rotten roots of Thedas’ corrupt institutions torn up and put to the torch ect. ect.

Most annoyingly, attempting to use Varric's death to accomplish this betrays the writer's assumption that players that did sympathise with Solas’ goals did so out of a naive misapprehension that he’s some sweet uwu softboy that could never do anything truly ruthless or cruel in order to accomplish his goals, and that once we had been disabused of that belief we would clutch our pearls in horror(you mean he’s willing to kill people? In a video game series with protagonists that each have kill counts numbering in the thousands? Quick, summon my fainting couch!) and tidily dismiss the notion that he might have ever had any worthwhile motivations at all. 

Look all you silly little girlies that want to kiss the fictional man, I feel like you don’t understand that he’s the *bad guy* here, glad we’ve cleared that up for you sweetheart. And isn’t he just sooo condescending?

It does not seem to have occurred to the writers that, to his fans, his stone cold ruthlessness is both one of the most well understood and deeply compelling features of the character.

I would happily give that writer a pass on a wicked case of foot in mouth, but the way Anaris & Cyran are written seems to very much enforce their the stance that an overabundance of sympathy for Solas as a person, as well as a desire to see him vindicated are the primary reasons any of the audience would ever agree with his goals. 

So to fix this issue, it stands to reason that the writers needed to de-emphasise everything that humanised(for lack of a better term) Solas and made him sympathetic as a person. Because apparently the problem is that their attempts to do so in the previous game worked a little too well on some people, right? 

As @mythalism pointed out, we cannot see him comfort his friends through their panic or grief or their crisis of faith, or have hushed philosophical conversations with them. We cannot see him flirt awkwardly, or try to pretend he didn’t just set his own coattails on fire.

We never see the god of liberation free so much as a wisp bound to a teaspoon.

And all of those compelling character motivations you thought he had about free will and self determination? Don’t worry kitten, we’ve sanitised all of the conflicts those might be applicable to right out of the setting anyway. Yay <3

At the same time, it feels like they’re too scared to upset the very same audience that they imagine has this woobified rose tinted view of the character, lest they scare them away. They’re too afraid of the audience to let him be truly unwaveringly ruthless, prejudiced, bitchy, vindictive, and even genuinely sadistic towards his enemies, because that might upset our fragile sensibilities too much! 

He can’t ever say anything mean to Rook - that might hurt our feelings!

He doesn’t really do anything bad, and if he does he doesn’t really mean it. He committed war crimes, but only because Mythal asked him nicely. He killed Varric, but it was an accident. He makes Rook hallucinate Varric, but he doesn’t use that to manipulate them; Varric just hangs out and vibes. He uses blood magic on you, but he doesn’t do any of the truly fucked up violating things that we know full well blood magic is capable of. He misleads you when he says “the Veil will not fall by my hand”, but it’s so transparent that it’s laughable. He’s never allowed the conviction to really follow through on any of his misdeeds, while still he’s bizarrely framed as outright villainous for them. 

So what we’re left with is a character divested of most of his admirable qualities, but with most of the rough edges filed off as well. Toothless. Boring.

It feels so much like they’re talking down to their audience? Like they don’t trust us to see a character with BOTH vices and virtues in spades come to our own conclusions about them? 

So we get this bland mealy-mouthed version of the character that we apparently need watered down further with ‘our team’s’ insipid commentary, much of which is blatantly based on bad takes people were spewing online almost a decade ago, and many of which have no bearing whatsoever on the actual story we’re being told because ohh my godd apparently we need to have our hands held while we’re walked though every opinion the audience might theoretically  have about the character and gently reassured by proxy that it’s a hashtag #valid opinion and why does this game insist on speaking to us like we’re morons??

For all that they incessantly bring up how condescending Solas is, I’m not sure if I've ever felt more spoken down to by a story I had been so invested in.

So Solas is boring now and I still l wanna tear down the veil lol

[tea-cat-arts]

Sometimes I wonder what Jiang Cheng could've become if his parents didn't instill a mix of "crippling fear of failure" and "impossibly high standards" in him. Cuz like, his dad was holding him to the vague standard of being as good as wwx, his mom yelling at him whenever he goofed around like wwx, and then both of them expressed disappointment when he's less successful than wwx. The thing both of them seem to ignore though is that wwx got where he is entirely because he had the freedom to fuck around and find out- he trained tirelessly because he made training fun for himself, he was innovative as a cultivators because he experimented and persisted through failures, and he was able to act in line with the Jiang clan moto because his actions had less political pull than members of the main family. Jiang Cheng on the other hand- if he fucked around he got told to "stop stooping to the level of servants." If his achievements were lesser than wwx's, he got either dismissed by his dad or yelled at by his mom to try harder. And if he picked fights with the Wens, they'd have an excuse to destroy his clan. Like ya- no shit that'd create an adult who's terrified of failure.

The kite game serves as such a good metaphor/embodiment of this set back- with Jiang Cheng never being able to shoot as far as Wei Wuxian because he pulls back and shoots closer the second he misses.

And its sad too because he's shown to be pretty brilliant when he's in "fuck it, we ball" mode. Like, when he's not freezing up, he manages to pull off things like rebuilding his entire clan from the ground up, leading armies and taking back territories from the Wens, and I'm fairly sure he's the only character we see counter the Lan music cultivation techniques (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that last one. Also feel free to add any of the other cool shit he did that I'm blanking on at the moment, cuz I know I'm forgetting something).

That being said- even with his anxiety, he's still one of the top cultivators. Imagine what a force of nature he'd be if he could sustain "fuck it we ball" mode