#i am definitely putting to much effort into this

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

Hello! Someone genuinely trying to understand and perhaps unlearn some reactionary tendencies. With the response to that anon about "not asking if you're a pro or anti", the response about "imagine if they put this much effort into protecting real kids" definitely got me thinking. So... Is an adult shipping children and finding that hot NEVER a red flag? Or is it case by case on seeing how that person handles the distinction between fiction and reality in other things? And bringing the issue of real kids into it, if a real kid who has been abused sees someone shipping kids and finds that a red flag in that person, that... No, no I juicy answered my own question on that one. Block them and cultivate your own experience.

hi there anon, and congrats on trying to unlearn some things! and great job catching yourself at the end there, that's exactly correct.

I will start by saying this right out of the gate: fundamentally, I do not really give a shit about what made up scenarios about fictional characters people are jorking it to in private. I am, first and foremost, interested in how they are interacting with actual, real people.

"but Makenzie are you saying people who look at sexually explicit images of real human kids should be allowed near children?" no I'm not. please note that I was specifically talking about people engaging with fictional characters who are, you know, not real and do not have feelings and therefore cannot actually be hurt, traumatized, abused, etc, in any way that actually matters. I want to be so clear about this: you can genuinely think whatever vile things you want about fictional characters. you can enjoy any problematic shit you want with little guys who don't actually exist.

like, here's an example I use a lot: I'm kind of a huge Batman fan. don't know if you could tell that or not, I'm pretty subtle about it. if you spend any time in the Batman mythos, you know that this is a story where you just kind of have to take for granted that our hero is a billionaire using his vast wealth to dispatch vigilante justice with military grade weaponry and a small army of child soldiers and cop friends to help him put people in prison. these are moral quandaries that are discussed and acknowledged within the story, but fundamentally the universe is always going to involve billionaire vigilantism and child soldiers and the so-called carceral justice system. that's just the price of admission if you're gonna read Batman.

and like. I spend a lot of time in that world. I love Batman, I love his child soldiers. he's my little blorbo or whatever. but like, at no point have I said "yeah, fuck it, preteens should be learning martial arts to fight domestic terrorists, actually. I think Elon Musk SHOULD be allowed to put on a fursuit and beat up criminals. cops need more funding." no amount of Batman comics can make me believe or act on any of those things because, you know, I'm a person with a brain and I know the difference between "thing that makes a good story" and "thing that should actually happen for real."

and the thing is that genuinely, honestly, if someone thought that it was a red flag that I like Batman, and that enjoying Batman comics was somehow a red flag indicating that I'm fine with violence being done against real, actual children? I would think that person was a nut, if I can be super real. like, I'm thinking about somebody trying to make the case that I shouldn't be allowed to hang out with my nephew because I enjoy the fictional character of Robin so clearly I'm going to kill my nephew's parents in front of him to try to get him into vigilante justice. or if someone attempted to bar me from teaching my 4th-6th grade sex ed classes on the grounds that I was obviously going to teach them to do karate to clowns instead of how their reproductive systems worked.

(although, lets be real, there are a lot of politicians who would MUCH rather let little kids cage fight each other than learn anything about safer sex.)

this doesn't just apply to morally bad things, either, btw. I also read a lot of romance novels, especially hetero romances. and the thing is, not one of those books has made me want to fall in love with a ruggedly handsome but condescending straight man. hell, none of them have made me want to fall in love with anybody, period. that's not really something I'm interested in for myself, it's just a fun and frequently funny dynamic to explore. I'm hardly the first queer person to point out that the allegations that queer media "turns kids gay/trans" is obviously bullshit since the vertible mountain of cishet media evidently failed to turn any of us straight/cis, you know?

my point being: no, I genuinely don't think it's often, if ever, reasonable to judge someone's actual, real life morals by how they interact with fiction.

I'm going to say something so vulnerable right now, because we're in a safe space here: since you asked me this very reasonable question, you evidently value my judgment and perspective at least a little bit. and I once read and thoroughly enjoyed a fic in which Dr. Horrible, from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, gets fucked by a sapient evil horse. and I don't think that makes me a morally reprehensible person, or a person who advocates for real human beings having real sex with real horses. I think it just makes me kind of a weirdo with a bullshit tolerance.

if you want to hear a MUCH more thorough take on this, complete with addressing the issue of shipping fictional children, I cannot recommend Princess Weekes' video essay enough:

[wtfforged]

i dont go to d*stiny anymore but it certainly took over my life for a year (repost. 4/2022)

[mirrorhouse]

.

[runefactorynonsense]

Cozytober - Day 21 - [MORE] LEAVES

[loumauve]

I snapped today at work, and by snapped I mean I politely commented on a help desk ticket by summing up an mess of an (type of) issue that's come up for at least the fourth time in the 2+ months I've been managing user accounts, and asked the person responsible to fix it (himself for once) because last time I fixed his mess-up it took me two whole days to work out the details with at least four other colleagues from different departments and I really don't want to do it again. there's other shit that needs doing, I've been working 10+ hour days for most of this week already, so I need to cut down not add on more.

(good thing tho - at least we managed to fix the issue where the dataset of a newer employee got mixed up with another one of the same name and therefore wasn't able to apply for any of the access/accounts she needed. technically not entirely my area but it does impact us not being allowed to create an account for her so I figured I might as well track that issue down. took three days and at least three other people, but hey - it should all work out now. yay for that)

[popping-greenbean]

i am thinking about.if i want to post some of my school work on here or not..,giant ramble in tags feel free to skip

[corset]

God I hate my voice God I Hate My Voice I hate it I detest it it makes me so dysphoric and angry and rrrgrgrhgrh *gets on all fours and starts ripping up grass with my teeth*

[dylanlila]

i make silly little videos now | song

[elegyofthemoon]

lmao i never came out to my siblings about being nb (and questioning more) but the gender euphoria of my sister calling me 'boy' did a number to my brain

[ub-sessed]

I am writing a little essay to post on Facebook about what I'm going through, workwise. This is a very rough first draft. I'm gonna post it here and let it sit for a day before I come back and clean it up.

(À mes followers francophones : Si vous voyez des erreurs dans mon texte, n'hésitez pas à m'avertir!)

Tourner la page

[English follows below.]

J'aimerais d'abord remercier tous mes collègues du plateau pour les presque dix ans de compagnie amicale et inspirant. C'est vous qui faites le movie magic, et vous le savez: Il n'y a rien qui est plus magique que d'assister à une équipe de feu dans le jus créer un nouveau monde au complet avec que leurs mains, leur imagination et leur collaboration. Personne d'autre ne peut comprendre c'est quoi travailler ensemble avec les gens comme vous-autres qui ont chacun leur propre super-pouvoir. Mes heures sur le plateau étaient les meilleurs de ma vie.

Là pour raison de santé ma vie est en plein transition.

--+--

I am intensely proud of the work I did as a script supervisor, especially of the sustained exertion it took to get that good at something that demanding, and in my second language! I feel lucky that I found my calling, that for almost a decade I got to do a job where I knew that once I got to set, all my other worries would disappear. When I was on set I was in my element, I was laser focused. I was my favourite me. I am grieving the loss of a career that I loved so much and that I worked so hard to build. (So hard. You have no idea how hard. How much effort I put into making it look easy.)

But now that I have finally acknowledged that I won't be able to go back to it, I find that I am enormously relieved. The fact is that in order to do what I did on set, I had to push myself to the very limit of my capacity when I was off set. Well beyond anything sustainable.

What a relief it is now to no longer be straining to be exceptionally good at something exceptionally difficult.

I have spent my whole life pushing myself outside of my comfort zone because that's the only way to really excel. But looking back I realize that the expectations I have set for myself have been absurd. That I have always pursued careers that were well beyond my physical capabilities, or that demanded inhumane hours, or required a level of self-discipline and self-motivation that were completely inappropriate to my temperament.

Script supervising was the closest I ever came to finding the perfect career for me, but even before I got sick, it was clear to me that the only way it would be sustainable was if I could always insist on having an assistant to do the paperwork. Very few script supervisors in the industry can demand that.

My whole life I have been told that I should be more ambitious, that something-or-other should be easy for me because I'm so smart, that if I just had the right attitude I could do things that I actually find nearly impossible. And my whole life I've felt like I was drowning.

Whenever I have tried to make a realistic assessment of my abilities and accept my limitations, I have been told that I'm being "too hard on myself" and that my "negative attitude" was what was keeping me from reaching my goals. But this misguided advice just made it harder to set healthy goals in the first place. I have spent the great majority of my adult life nowhere near my comfort zone. It was exhausting and stressful. These people were right that I should have had more self-confidence: then I would have believed that I know myself better than anybody else does.

It took being completely incapacitated by illness to realize that I have spent my entire adult life feeling inadequate for not meeting the well-meaning expectations of people with only the most superficial understanding of my situation. What a relief it is to no longer be trying to "live up to my potential".

I'm just grateful that I'm young enough that I still have a chance to build myself a life that actually goes at my own pace. A life where I put myself first.

[hopefulqueer]

i rly like that i'm at a place with my art where i can literally see the improvement from one piece to the next

[girlscience]

i am having a quarter life crisis about being painfully average and idk what to do about it.

[astrxealis]

started rereading the pjo series the other day actually wawawa still my favorite fr it means the world to me :(( but yeah also! rewatched big hero 6 and ngl it probably really is my favorite movie for many personal reasons hehe AND THEN also watched the first part of hamilton on tv w my parents they loved it hehehe

[orcelito]

Got in a debate in my gender communication class about gender vs sex and whether people have to identify with their sex etc etc

Got to help introduce the concept of intersex people to a few cisgender people who had never even heard the term before. Among other things.

Even if it's only one class of them, I'm going to hopefully help open the minds of a few cis people. And I think that's really cool actually.

[musical-chick-13]

Here's the thing. I have read/watched some. REALLY bad stuff, in my time. Stuff that seemed half-assed, poorly-written, in terrible taste, artistically bankrupt. And I can count...probably on one hand. The amount of female characters I've encountered who genuinely are flat and have absolutely nothing going on.

So all of this "well, people just don't write women with any personality" bullshit is. Well, it's bullshit.

[thefleshyougoveggie]

thinking about how my friend pointed out someone who walked bys pants the other day.

it looked like a pair of tripp nyc pants

i desperately wanted a pair of tripp nyc pants in like 2020-2021 (maybe even 2022 too idk?) and i told her that

i don’t think that was the response she was expecting hahah^_^

i think since i dress pretty “basic” these days, my friends don’t think about the fact that i dressed a bit more alternatively before (and ultimately plan on gradually dressing more and more alt when i start uni), i mean i don’t think they’d judge me for it at all. i just don’t think they think abt it :p