#especially if they're not white

[magnetothemagnificent]

Non-ADHD and non-autistic disabled people whose only idea of ADHD and autistic people is shaped by media depictions of a nerdy white boy or a quirky goth girl with low support needs: "Yeah ADHD and autism are destigmatized and we should ignore people with ADHD and autism in favor of real disabilities. I am very smart and progressive."

Lateral prejudice towards other disabled people will get us nowhere.

[whetstonefires]

Hey you said something about the my hero academia creator being unhinged about sexism, do you mind explaining?

I tried to write like, a thorough explanation of this and it just got longer and longer and longer and I have not touched this series in actual years and yet I've still got all these receipts a;lkjk;lfasd.

So rather than trying to build the whole massive case, here's a pared-down version. It's normal to have sexism in media, and shounen manga especially. Everyone does it. The level and mode and intentionality and so forth all vary, but of course it's there.

What's not normal is to have lots of varied and interesting female characters with discernible inner lives, and on-page discussion of how sexism is systemic and unjust and holds them back in specific ways, and then also deliberately make consistent sexist writing decisions even where they don't arise naturally from the flow of the narrative.

Horikoshi is actively interested in gender and sexism, he's aware of them in a way you rarely see outside of the context of, you know, fighting sexism. He is hung up on the thorny issue of what women are worth and deserve and how power and respect ties into it. He genuinely wants, I think, to have Good Female Characters, and not be (seen as) A Sexist Guy!

But. He doesn't actually want to fight sexism. He displays a lot of woman-oriented anxieties, and one of the many churning paddlewheels in his head seems to be that he knows intellectually that morally sexism is bad, but emotionally he really feels like it ought to probably be at least partly correct.

There are so many things I could cite, and maybe I'll get into some of them later, but the crowning item that highlights how the pattern is 1) at least partly conscious and deliberate and 2) about Horikoshi's own weird hangups rather than simply cynical market play, is Mineta Minoru.

The writer has stated Mineta is his favorite character. Mineta is also designed to be hated--that is, he is a particularly elaborate instantiation of a character archetype normally deployed to soak up audience contempt and (by being gross and shameless and unattractive and 'unthreatening') make it possible to include a range of sexual gratification elements into the narrative that would compromise the main characters' reputations as heroic and deserving, if they were the actors.

Good Guys don't grope girls' tits and run away snickering in triumph, after all. Non-losers don't focus intense effort around successfully stealing someone's panties. Nice Girls don't let themselves be seen half-dressed. And so forth. You need an underwear gremlin for that. So, in anime and manga, longstanding though declining tradition of including such a gremlin, for authorial deniability.

Horikoshi definitely uses him straight for this purpose, looping in Kaminari as needed to make a bit work. And yet he has Feelings about the archetype itself.

The passages dedicated to the vindication of Mineta, then, and the author's statements about him, let us understand that Horikoshi identifies with the figure of the underwear gremlin. He understands the underwear gremlin as a defining exemplar of male sexuality, at least if you are not hot, and finds the attached contempt and hostility to be a dehumanizing attack on all uh.

Incels, basically.

It's not fair to write Mineta off just because he's unattractive and horny (and commits sexual harassment). Doesn't he have a mind? Doesn't he have dreams? Doesn't he have human potential?

So what's going on with Horikoshi and gender, as far as I can figure out, is that he knows damn well that women are people and are treated unjustly by sexist society, but however.

He also understands the institutions of sexism as something protecting him and people like him from life being nebulously yet definitively Worse, and therefore wants to see them upheld.

So you get this really bizarre handling of gender where obviously women's rights good and women cool, women can be Strong, and the compulsory sexualization imposed by the industry isn't them or the author, and so forth.

But also it's very important that in the world he controls, women never win anything important or Count too much, and that jokes at their expense that disrupt the internal logic of their characters are always fair game, that women asked about sexism on TV will promptly get into catfights amongst themselves, and they are understood always in terms of their sexual and romantic interests and value, and sexual assertiveness and failures to perform femininity well enough are used to code them as dangerous and irrational, and that the sexy costumes are requisite and will never be subverted or rebelled against--at most they might be circumnavigated via leaning into cute appeal.

And that Yaoyorozu Momo, who converts her body fat into physical objects, is being frivolous when she wants to use money to buy things instead (rather than as sensibly moderating her Quirk use) and is never encouraged to eat as much as possible at every opportunity to put on weight and even shown being embarrassed by hunger (even though Quirk overuse gives symptoms that suggest she's been stripping the lipids out of her cell walls or nervous system to keep fighting) and always, no matter how many Things she has made, has huge big round boobies.

[lunarin64art]

That feeling when he can't stand to see you that way, no matter what you do, no matter what you say😩😭💔

[canisalbus]

What?? Why on Earth would they bloodlet Machete when he's already anemic?

Anemia wasn't discovered until 1852, so his physicians have no idea. He's just moody and achy and visibly unwell and bloodletting happens to be the cure-for-all fix at the time.

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say it was one of the most used treatments in western medicine from ancient Greece to 19th century (and even earlier than that in Egypt, for example). There weren't many ailments that a little bit of breathing a vein wouldn't alleviate, supposedly. This whole concept is based on humoral theory which is a fascinating cornerstone of medical history and also completely unfounded nonsense, look it up if you haven't, it's interesting. People believed that blood didn't circulate through the body, it was created, used up and then the bad blood would stagnate in the extremities. Having too much blood would disturb your humoral balance and create illnesses so removing it was beneficial to your wellbeing. Even completely healthy people would sometimes go get themselves bled a bit just to be sure.

You kind of need blood for your body to function so this treatment was completely pointless at best and life threatening at worst. If you were sick to begin with it would only weaken you further (and expose you to potential infections, which in the absence of antibiotics, wasn't great). The only viable use for it would have to be rare blood disorders where your body produces too many red blood cells, like polycythemia vera, essentially the polar opposite of anemia.

[scentedluminarysoul]

[headphonemouse]

redraw (light mode users try clicking it! dark mode users there's a solid version below)

My favorite tags from @borealiszero that gave me the strength to finish this

[celiaelise]

bro Marcille was really having her White Woman Moment this episode.

[idlesuperstar]

Joseph Quinn as Billy Knight: Strike // Lethal White

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Compound Fracture

YA thriller set in rural West Virginia

follows an autistic trans boy who survives being almost killed by the Sheriff’s son after a party, and accidentally kills one of the boys who hurt him when he tries to get back at him

and is pulled head-first back into the 100 year old feud between his & the sheriff’s families, that began when his great-great grandfather was executed after inciting a miner’s rebellion, the grandfather whose ghost has started to haunt him

community & family & socialist revolution

aro-questioning MC

arc from netgalley, out september 3

[bonefall]

Would the cats recognize a two-leg kit as a kit? Would they harm a kid if one of them picked up a warrior? I'm imagining a scenario at the old territories where Frostfur gets loved on by an 8 year old and her whole patrol is freaking out while she has to tolerate it. Like, "I've taken on boars and foxes and even a badger, but there is no way in Cat Hell I'm going to hit a baby. What if I scratch out their eye? Or what if their Mi is watching and throws me?!"

It's extremely frustrating that the main series does that and I have no intention of having my battle cats hold back from biting a large animal that suddenly grabs them

If you run at and grab a feral cat to "love on it" you will get bit and you will deserve it. NOT CUTE!

Any strange feral animal. Do not do this. That dog will bite you. That cat will scratch you. That horse is going to stomp you into the consistency of grits. Parents should prevent their children from doing this as much as they should prevent them from touching a hot stove.

Clan cats have always disliked humans and been terrified of them. They aren't going to politely let a potential predator squeeze them, it makes no difference if it might be a kit or not, it's as big as a dog. Even a red deer fawn would get hissed and swatted at if the Warrior felt freaked out about it.

More likely situation is that Pinestar’s people see him in the woods while he's leading ThunderClan, recognize him, and then he has to make some sort of excuse as to why he's NOT freaking out about being touched.

But even they don't run up and grab him. Living things are not stuffed animals.

[lgbtlunaverse]

The thing is: there's actually absolutely nothing wrong with modern/university/highschool or whatever AUs that take characters originally from japan or china or korea or any other country and plop them in america. There's a huge and varied disapora population in the us, and if the (usually usa) author wants to write about characters in a setting familiar to them that's perfectly normal and fine.

But what gets really jarring is when a fic clearly takes place in the united states but it doesn't know it takes place in the united states. Characters are just going to us-style schools and colleges and eating fluffy pancakes with maple syrup but they're also still using honorifics like -ge or -hyung or -kun and names are said last name – first name so you think ok they live in the usa but speak their native tongue around each other. That makes sense. Except it's never actually mentioned or talked about and no one ever switches to english in public, no one is relieved to have friends from the same ethnicity, no one has family that still lives overseas, no one talks about not being able to get certain ingredients at the grocery store to cook their favorote childhood dishes, and no one in general seems to be even be aware that they're diaspora. As if the fic isn't even meant to be in the us.

It's like the reverse of ace attorney's japanifornia, instead of a los angeles with an incredible amount of japanese cultural influence they live in a japan where everything just happens to be usamerican.

[eduobsessed]

i find it funny to imagine crowley and aziraphale living through the rise of capitalism and being absolutely baffled by it, like not to idealize pre-capitalism life more than we should but imagine aziraphale going "crowley... you won't believe what they're doing about the borders of nation-states now..." and crowley like "oh angel i just got a commendation for that and i don't even understand how it works"

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID: a coloured and shaded digital sketch of Luz and Lilith from the owl house. They're depicted with their designs from For the Future. Luz is tackle-hugging Lilith, ugly crying and exclaiming "I missed you so much". Lilith braces for the hug and smiles with tears also in her eyes. The background is a pale yellow colour and previous versions of the sketch can be seen at low opacity behind the full drawing. End ID]

When you see your cool aunt (actually a loser but you love her) for the first time in months and she has a badass apocalypse makeover but still somehow looks like a librarian

[apostate-in-an-alcove]

What gets me about Westerners, is that they'll whine and cry all day long about immigrants and refugees from "third world countries" meanwhile people from those countries wouldn't have to come to the West if the West hadn't exploited, bombed and otherwise destabilized their country.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Tuvok & T’Pel at their Koon-ut-la: May peace and bliss follow them forever.

Based on this picture I found:

Love how T’Pau is sitting down for this. Tuvok & T’Pel’s ceremony was presided over by a local but well-respected priestess because not everyone has the sway to get a stateswoman. Also, I count this more as an approximation of engagement than marriage since they’re established to have a whole marriage-or-challenge thing as adults later on. After the ceremony Tuvok and T’Pel were each given a seed and instructed to plant them side by side in the temple’s garden. When they returned to the temple for their marriage proper whatever they’d planted there that day would be in full bloom.  After that they played- uh...I mean...bonded with one another until their parents had to drag them away kicking and screaming. A fact which neither pair of parental units will ever let them quite forget much to their joint embarrassment.

[kindheartedgummybears]

you wanna know what??

I am

TIRED

of overmasculinized werewolves!!!!

I WANNA SEE A

WEREWOLF

WALKING AROUND IN A CVNTY LITTLE OUTFIT!!! WALKING THE STREETS!!!! DISEMBOWELING CREATURES!!!!

I WANNA SEE WEREWOLVES COVERED IN BLOOD AND GORE WHILE WEARING A SHORT SKIRT AND CROPTOP WITH HELLO KITTY ON IT!!!!

I WANNA SEE A WEREWOLF WALKING AROUND IN COTTAGE AND FAIRY AND PRINCESS CORE OUTFITS!!!!!! WITH A DEAD MANGLED RABBIT IN ITS MOUTH!!!!

AND MAKE THE WEREWOLF

D I S G U S T I N G ! ! !