#i just really hated all the posts saying those kind of things

[tofixtheshadows]

You guys really need to stop and consider the ways you're talking about Kabru I am dead fucking serious. Like I know that flattening characters is just what fandom does to a certain extent, but Kabru's actual personality is getting lost to the fandom hivemind insisting that he's aggressive/cruel/sociopathic/hateful, and these are particularly concerning takes to see leveled at the only brown character in the main cast day after day. "My poor sweet golden child Laios needs to be protected from this scary brown man" is not a good look! Like, it's very telling that the bulk of the hate and bad faith readings are reserved for Toshiro and Kabru. Everyone else's flaws get to be discussed and validated and forgiven (or erased), meanwhile people are straight making up things to be mad about with Toshiro and Kabru but patting themselves on the back for being smart.

The worst part is how undeserved it all is. I'm trying to lay off anime-onlys because we're still kind of in the red herring stage of getting to know Kabru, but I would still like to gently suggest that even if you think Kabru is up to something, you don't gave to get in the tags of every fan creator's post and bring up how you hate him or You Can Tell he's totally evil. Sometimes I think Kabru's blue eyes give people license to say things about his appearance that they know would sound completely racist otherwise, but referring to his blue eyes acts as a get-out-of-racism free card. The jokes about the dog with brown contacts are getting old, by the way.

For people who have read the manga, it's disappointing. Kabru is one of the most complex and important characters in the story, and if you base your interpretation of him and all your fandom interactions on shallow first impressions you are completely missing out.

I know part of this is because Dungeon Meshi is a comedy, but the story also wants to be taken seriously. For example, it's admittedly really funny when Chilchuck calls Laios "sick in the head", but that doesn't change the fact that the way Chilchuck casually belittles Laios caused him to hide the fact that he was "hallucinating" from his friends for weeks. Those feelings matter.

Like, this

is funny.

But this?

Is not. This is just a very clear example of a brown boy with PTSD. As someone else with PTSD, just looking at this fucking sucks, man.

The only reason why Kabru thinks about killing Laios is because he is in the middle of a flashback. He's struggling through a panic attack. If he truly wanted to kill Laios because he's violent or because he finds Laios inherently annoying, he wouldn't otherwise talk with Laios normally. Notice how he doesn't act this way at any other point in the story- it's just because he's triggered by monsters. Even when he's thinking about his plans to "deal with" Laios later, he's reluctant to actually kill him and only considers it to prevent another tragedy. Despite his deadly skills, Kabru relies far more on "soft" power- insight, persuasion, diplomacy. He's a rare example of a character who absolutely is, or at least can be, manipulative, but seems to use his abilities for good. He's not a pathological liar, he isn't looking down on everyone behind a smile. He's someone who is extremely emotionally intelligent, and he's willing to put aside all his own basic wants and needs to stop the cycle of dungeons devouring humans.

I'm going to cut a potential thesis on his character short and just give some examples of things that fandom should consider about his personality more:

Racism in fandom isn't just about whitewashing in fan art, or using racial slurs. The insidiousness of bad faith readings, reductions to racist tropes, lack of fan content for characters of color, and dismissal of a character's complexity are far more common. You can believe yourself to be completely neutral or even positive about a character and still churn out low-grade bile about them into fandom's collective unconscious. Fandom reflects real life.

And I have been around fandom long enough to see how these behaviors (mostly from my fellow white fans) affect fans of color, how it makes a fandom feel hostile and unwelcome to them. It's fun to make jokes and memes, I'm absolutely not saying that everything needs to be a deeply nuanced take, but we need to be careful that it doesn't veer into toxicity. Please think about how our contributions to fandom come across, and what sort of vibes they cultivate in this communal space.

[bixbythemartian]

Okay, I wasn't going to say anything, but I've seen posts about this get passed around. And it's probably too late to push back on this, anyway, but I'm so frustrated I feel the need to say to say something. This is coming from a place of love- I just hate seeing this going around, and I want to offer some perspective on the matter.

First of all, regarding that poll where the user did not know how to pronounce 'Miette'- if you look in the replies, it doesn't take long to discover that the OP was genuinely confused about the pronunciation and, when corrected, was working to get it right. That poll came from a place of innocent ignorance. I hope the OP took it down and stopped reblogs and turned notes off or whatever, because some people said some awful shit. I hope you are the kind of person who is kind and understanding, in the face of such ignorance. Or, if you can't be that, I hope you can at the very least be quiet. (And props to the people in the replies who patiently and kindly explained things to the OP.)

Second of all, I've seen a lot of posts talking about literacy rates, and I'd like to point out that English literacy has very little to do with figuring how to pronounce a French fucking word, goddamn. The OP just didn't know. The dunking, the pointing, the laughing- rude, unnecessary, not helpful.

Thirdly, in response to the complaints of 'they don't even teach phonics in schools these days'- that's bullshit. Because the odds are very good that they didn't teach phonics in schools when you went to school, either.

When I was a kid, it was called Whole Language. It was the new hot literacy technique, and a lot of schools adopted it. It used cueing techniques and sight words and was very similar.

If you're a millennial, you might remember the commercials for Hooked on Phonics, and you might conclude that teaching phonics in schools was perhaps not common, if you think about that for a bit. If it was worth it to sell a whole reading tutoring program for struggling readers based in phonics, perhaps it might lead one to conclude that phonics weren't as common as other methods, right? You might not have been taught phonics to start. What you do know about phonics, you might have picked up in the past 20-30 years, right?

Okay. Lets go back further, you know Dick and Jane? It was based on, more or less, the same sight words principle, and those primers date from the 1930s, although I don't think that teaching technique came really into vogue until the 40s.

If you are alive, today, in the United States, the likelihood that you were not taught phonics in school is well above non-zero. Especially if you're a millennial.

The notable exception is the 1970s. And during that period of time, there were probably plenty of schools that still used fucking Dick and Jane. And plenty of schools that were starting to adopt Whole Language, because while it was popular in the 80's and 90's, it was developed before. So, Gen X, you didn't get out of this unscathed either, though you had a better chance of getting a phonics-based reading program, I think.

'Kids these days' are not less literate because they were taught wrong. A great deal of us who are alive and speak English as a first language were taught wrong.

(I also think this is the common way English as a Second Language is taught and I'm sorry if you learned sight words, it's so much less intuitive than phonics, and English phonics aren't particularly intuitive. But I know a lot less about this, and I'm not sure.)

The reason some younger people struggle with language and words that I, for example, don't, is that I've been reading and speaking the language a lot longer. That's it. That's likely the same thing for you.

Please quit mocking people for their lack of information, for a start. I don't blame you for not knowing this about the literacy programs, for example. I had to do a lot of research on this. Right? Odds are good, you didn't know this.

And you are hitting people who struggle with literacy for other reasons- English as a second language, for example. The people who deal with dyslexia, there's plenty of autistic people who struggle to communicate fluently in their first language, and many more people who struggle with learning, speaking, and otherwise communicating in English for a huge variety of reasons.

Even if you're right, you're hitting people who had no choice in the language method they were taught from. They were five.

I don't think people mean to be unkind, generally (some do, but we block and move on), but it's really frustrating to a lot of snark circulate without the greater context of 'actually, a lot of English speakers of all age groups were taught English this way, especially USAmericans' and 'hey, what does English literacy have to do with pronouncing a French word, anyway?'

Okay? Okay.

Love you bye

[saintmeghanmarkle]

I'm not a bully! by u/number1crsh

I'm not a bully! Alright, I know it shouldn't bother me but it just does. All of these bullying claims that have started to resurface and some of these royal correspondents have stated "Well, things are a little different in America, the culture is different..."NO! There is a HUGE difference between cultural differences and being rude, hateful and arrogant. I understand that to the rest of the world, Americans are seen as overbearing and pushy to get what they want and perhaps this is true for some but for the bulk of Americans, it is not. Meghan Markle is a woman that was never taught manners as a child. She was given everything she ever wanted and did not have to work for anything (or didn't have to work very hard IF she ever did any kind of work as a child). She was never taught the value of a dollar. She was never taught that every time you go to the store you don't get a toy, that only as a reward or a special occasion were you allowed to go pick out that one perfect toy that you have coveted for weeks before that moment. Those were the moments that as a child made you value what hard work got you and it taught you to be grateful and thankful for what was given to you. That is how most Americans (well, of my generation, the same generation as her, I will be 41 this year) grew up, to be thankful for the things they were given. If it were me and I had done all the hateful, embarrassing and unhinged things that Meghan has done on the global stage, my mother would disown me. She would not want to be associated with me because that is not the kind of woman she raised. She raised a woman that would stand up for herself but do so in a polite and respectful way.I really makes me angry to hear these reporters saying that the reason she was rude was a cultural difference. The culture is different, sure, but her behavior did not show a culture clash, it showed a grown ass woman that was never taught manners and whose head became too big for her own good, so she treated everyone, even the people stationed above her like they were ants under her feet.REPORTERS--IF YOU ARE HERE READING THIS--PLEASE start correcting yourselves. The reason for the way Meghan Markle acted was not due to cultural differences, it was due to her mean, hateful and dare I say, bullying, nature.That is the end of my rant. Thank you for attending my Ted Talk. post link: https://ift.tt/p47rivm author: number1crsh submitted: April 28, 2024 at 08:28PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

[sassypantsjaxon]

'Wah Kurogiri is Aizawa's villain because' Shut up

'Wah Mic doesn't see Oboro in Kurogiri' Shut up

'Buh buh erasercloud' Shut up Shut up Shut up

*this is not my official analysis of this chapter yet. This is just me being sleep deprived enough to be pissy

[ducktracy]

reminder that if you're not watching Crayon Shin-chan then you are living a hollow and empty life. this is not edited. this ripped straight from the movie (Movie 8: Jungle That Invites the Storm, highly recommend for fellow Masaaki Yuasa lovers)

if you need further convincing: these monkeys run an animation sweatshop

[tortellinigirl]

I feel like recently, ADHD has kind of become shorthand for “a person who is annoying online and has no real problems,” and I don’t really think that’s awesome news, given the context that ADHD has a long history of being disregarded as a made up disorder that’s just an excuse for poor/obnoxious behavior, no matter how much scientific research proves otherwise. ADHD is not by any means the only disorder that has people making a thousand misleading tiktoks about it, so perhaps do some critical thinking about why specifically ADHD has become the poster child for that behavior. There are certainly valid criticisms to be made of the way we discuss mental health online, but maybe use your brain and determine why this disorder in particular is the one that’s easiest to point at for being “annoying” and “not that big of a deal.”

[philsmeatylegss]

A huge underlying view among many terfs that frustrates me beyond belief is Islamophobia. I have seen countless of posts from Terfs using the stories of abused Muslim women as an excuse to say the whole religion is oppressive and sexist. I have seen so many posts about how hijabs and burkas are oppressive and women who choose to wear them are working against women’s rights. They often imply that most of, if not all, Muslim men are violent in the name of religion. They fail to make the obvious connection between the fact that there’s a huge difference between fascist governments using Islam as an excuse to oppress women and actual Islam and Muslims. Ofc women should have the right to chose if they want to be religious, if they want to cover up, if they want to take on a submissive role. No one is denying that. The reasons those rights are taken from women, often in the Middle East (which is what terfs often reference), is the fault of the government, not the religion. Yeah, there are abusive men who will use Islam as an excuse for their actions. Just like there are Christian men who will use Christianity as an excuse for their actions. Same goes for pretty much all religions. People covering up their abuse under the guise of religion is not limited to just Islam. It happens in most religions. It’s happened pretty much since religion started.

It’s just so ignorant and out of touch and you know they have never spoken to a Muslim person. If they did, they would know Muslims are the same as Christians and Jews and atheists and so on. It’s not some evil curse. It’s a religion that mainly focuses on peace. And to demonize it, using the horrors women have faced as an excuse is just so messed up. Most people on the internet haven’t realized there’s a big difference between a religion and people using that religion as a coverup for their shitty actions. The existence of governments using Islam to persecute women is because of bad people, not Islam. Terfs just want one group of people to be declared bad so they can blame everything on them. They claim to want to protect all women, and then condemn an entire religion. They talk about horrid treatment of women and blame religion rather than the perpetrators. It’s a very common belief a lot of them hold and I never see it mentioned and it just really pisses me off.

[sureuncertainty]

at least now i've gone through an important tumblr rite of passage, watching a longtime mutual become a radfem :/

[lwoorl]

I'll say it: "Oh all AI artists do is write a stupid description and immediately get an image with no effort, there's no art in that" is the new "Digital painting doesn't count as art because it takes no effort"

[pepprs]

beaver gnawing on wood noises

[legionofpotatoes]

incredibly close to adding an unpleasant wrinkle to my views on asylum seekers

[insanechayne]

~ ~ ~

[lebrookestore]

feelings are so complex

[jovalencia]

not to be dramatic but I literally feel like I’m going insane lol

[pirates-and-posies]

If I start posting about how much I love my boyfriend just keep scrolling because at this point I'm about to launch like a fucking nuke and only talk about him

[dravidious]

You're more amazing than Propagator Primordium

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck this is a 2-drop 3/3 that's also a reanimation spell that makes its own reanimation targets what the fuck

In related news about perfectly balanced cards, I was inspired by cards like Bitter Triumph, Cast Down, Devour in Shadow, Doom Blade, Feed the Swarm, Go for the Throat, Heartless Act, Infernal Grasp, Malicious Affliction, Power Word Kill, Terror, Victim of Night, and Walk the Plank to make my own removal spell