#it was just... provably untrue

[baejax-the-great]

I think some of the arguments about fan interpretations of characters and OOCness forget a fundamental part of human nature which is this: each of us perceives the world and the people in it in slightly different ways based on our own experiences.

Most people have certain characteristics they consider fundamental to their Blorbo and some characteristics that are less important and could be changed, ignored, or scrapped for AU purposes. Unfortunately, which specific characteristics fall into which category are not going to be the same from person to person. Sometimes the overlap between two people's interpretations will be huge, and those two people will probably enjoy the same fan content. Sometimes not so much.

Personally, I write for a ship that were childhood friends that became lovers. In many AUs, people have them meeting for the first time in adulthood, and for me, that changes the nature of the ship and their characters so much that I can't really get into it. I consider their childhood friendship fundamental to them as people, and those authors don't. Which is fine. Many other people like those AUs. Nobody here is really in the wrong, we just have different opinions on what makes these particular Blorbos them.

In almost all cases, someone out there will find your interpretation of a character OOC. And that's fine. Hopefully they are polite and simply choose not to read your fics/engage with your HCs/whatever. But I think all of us have had the experience of reading a wildly OOC take and seeing other people enthusiastically going along with this "wrong" interpretation of the characters and thinking, "What??!?!"

It's fine. It's normal. It's annoying as hell (people are wrong on the internet), but it's inevitable. And if you find that interpretation particularly heinous to your Blorbo sensibilities, the block button is your friend.

[boycritter]

when i’m in a lying competition and my opponent is my ex boyfriend

[tossawary]

Part of the problem with discussing how racism manifests in fandom and in fan organizations is that to present a nuanced and thorough take on a complicated problem, which actually consists of a number of different complex issues with lots of different potential solutions each, you have write really, REALLY long posts about it.

And people don't read long posts.

Or they read the first part and get stuck on one point they don't agree with or can't 100% agree with. So they get caught up in proving one point wrong instead of at least expressing sympathy or sharing the parts they do actually agree with.

(Or people make fun of you for caring about "people being mean in fanfiction communities" as an issue. Because caring is cringe, apparently. Racism in hobbies like book clubs and local knitting groups and kid sports leagues is also important, even if it's "not that big of a deal" in the grand scheme of things in your opinion.)

Which can have (unintentional or intentional) vibes of telling fans of color to shut up about racism. Which is rude and understandably upsetting to people who have experienced this kind of harassment. Saying "go make your own archive" implies that the affected fans of color have not been a part of building the OTW or in running AO3 and don't belong there as writers or readers, which is untrue and unkind.

Now, I know that people have a kneejerk defensive reaction to any form of "We Need To Ban The Bad Fic That I Don't Like". I have that too. And I won't deny that this is a conversation partly about content moderation. And I won't deny that within this broad conversation between lots of different people who want to do something about fandom racism, there are probably some people who are calling to ban everything they find even a little problematic. They're always popping up. I don't agree with those people.

I didn't reblog End OTW Racism's Call to Action post the first time that I saw it because my brain wanted to chew on the thoughts it inspired. I thought a lot about how exactly to write detailed policy that could explicitly ban the worst examples of fanfiction used as intentional hate speech provably for the purpose of targeted harassment, while still ensuring the protection of the queer content, the problematic darkfic, and the explicit kinky fiction that the archive was created to host (which EOTWR also cares about). I do want fans to be able to explore some disturbing and distasteful topics, even if they don't always write it well, without being censored. And yet I also thought a lot about the "Paradox of Tolerance" as a social contract and what it meant to be "Fair to Unfair Voices".

I also thought a lot about how AO3 volunteers can never review every single thing posted to the website (which was not being suggested). And about how this issue intersects heavily with the structural issues that leave some AO3 volunteers overworked and underappreciated. And the structural issues that leave some AO3 volunteers feeling isolated, neglected, ignored, or mistreated. And also how AO3 is shockingly enormous now for being the result of volunteer work on a budget that's small compared to other non-profit organizations.

And honestly, I was fucking exhausted from my job that day and I cynically thought to myself, "I'll read through the links later, but I don't really see how changing the names on a bunch of fics is going to inspire great change within an organization."

(And the people behind this online protest are pretty open about the fact that they didn't expect their awareness campaign - and that's what it is: it's just an awareness campaign - to do anything on the front of "Solving Institutional Racism Immediately".)

But then I thought to myself, "Okay, but I do believe in antiracist action. And even if I don't think some of these suggestions are workable with the current state of things, or that the OTW will ever agree to some things here, there has got to be something here that could be done right now to make things a little better."

I kind of like the idea of expanding the required archive warnings so that more well-meaning people will opt-in to tagging triggering material, which is a form of content moderation. Like the way that the "Graphic Depictions of Violence" tag works already. Major Archive Warnings are left up to the author's best judgement unless reported. And even if people repeatedly refuse to use any relevant warning tags when writing blatantly racist stories, when they get reported for not even using "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings", then we'll be pretty sure that they're doing it to be a jerk, and AO3 volunteers can suspend or ban them for it.

I like the idea of expanding the abuse policy and clearly defining its terms so that Policy and Abuse volunteers can still retain some freedom of best judgement, but also be more consistent about recognizing when someone is being a racist jerk in the comment section or being racist by gifting violently racist fic to fans of color or otherwise behaving badly. And I like the idea of improving the reporting system while keeping potential misuse in mind. And giving PAC volunteers better admin tools and other resources.

Even if you believe that AO3 is largely run by well-meaning queer women, I personally don't 100% trust that every single volunteer will be great at recognizing the many varied forms of racism, or antisemitism, or transphobia, or prejudice against bisexual or asexual or polyamorous people, or against mentally ill or physically disabled people. And part of this discussion is about when individual members of the PAC team have failed to address malicious behavior that is already explicitly covered by AO3's existing anti-bullying policy. Or that can't be solved by just blocking and muting someone.

Like, this discussion is about racism, and it's worth caring about solely for how it affects fans of color, but optimizing the abuse policy and protocols against harassment would better protect everyone. (And also, please do not assume that fans of color are not also older fans and/or queer fans who care about censorship.)

Some of End OTW Racism's offered solutions are suggestions originally made by AO3 itself back in 2020. A huge part of this discussion is just some fans (they're only, like, 5 people) trying to make some noise so that the OTW will give all users a thorough update on their progress. They are trying to raise awareness to keep the conversation about fandom bigotry going and recruit people to show up to OTW Board meetings to ask what obstacles need to be tackled. They want volunteers trying to change things internally to feel supported and for some more transparency on this subject to externally hold people accountable to their promises.

And I also thought, "Fuck it. This post is worth reblogging if only to remind people that AO3 needs work, to educate new fans on the history and present of fandom racism in general, and to maybe make one person out there feel less alone and connect them with some new friends. Fans of color don't have to be perfect to be heard."

I believe that AO3 has gotten bigger than ever anticipated and management of the OTW has only gotten harder. And I think hiring a diversity consultant, as per AO3's own suggestion back in 2020, sounds like a good idea to curb harassment of all kinds and improve the working conditions of volunteers. Outside contractors have been hired before and these professionals have no effect on OTW's non-profit status. A temporary consultant's job would be to identify where the organization is getting stuck and give suggestions on how to fight bigotry, and the OTW Board can just pick the solutions they think will work in practice with their mission statements.

Honestly, I kind of think it might be a good idea to also hire a security consultant of some kind after some of the harassment of AO3 volunteers in recent years. And if hiring some programming contractors would help the coding volunteers build better admin tools and make tag blacklisting happen sooner, then I support that as well. But that's all up to the OTW Board. And I want the OTW volunteers to know that I support their original suggestion to hire some outside professional help, so that fandom can begin to address some of these ongoing problems beyond just acknowledging that they exist, even if it simply starts with AO3 explicitly calling for more volunteers to get the planned work done.

Saying that there's nothing to be done is defeatist. Saying that the affected fans of color and their allies sound too angry or too serious or too ungrateful, or that everyone involved just doesn't understand how hard these things are, is pretty rude. I don't expect perfect solutions on the first try. I don't expect them immediately. I expect some of these things to take the OTW... years, honestly. I don't always feel very optimistic. I find this entire discussion discomforting and depressing. I'm not ungrateful to the OTW and AO3 when the community has been an undeniably good experience for me personally over the past 10 years. I want people to be able to escape into fandom at the end of a shitty day.

End OTW Racism's awareness campaign is one small part of a much broader discussion and you don't have to agree 100% with everything that they say. Or with what other people talking about fandom racism say (and some people, including academics and journalists and media critics and video essayists, have been talking about fandom racism for a long time). And you definitely don't have to 100% agree with what I've said here.

You don't have immediately volunteer all of your time to the OTW to fix these problems to be a good person. We all have other shit going on in our lives. Just... keep some of the points being made in mind moving forward, yeah? If you have a moment, maybe listen to some of the frustrations with an open mind, and maybe show a little extra love to your fellow fans who are going through it.

And if you have the energy to tear down what you think just one of EOTWR's suggestions is as bad - and they are NOT calling for every single fic on AO3 to be reviewed for problematic tropes or racial slurs before posting, that would be ridiculous, and it's disingenuous to misinterpret them that way - are you also separately talking about and supporting any of the antiracist actions and other harm reduction policies that you think are genuinely viable?

[waysideangel444iloveyou]

I hate the wendigoon unabomber video So much. After it dropped I’ve seen so many people spreading just provably untrue things about his writing it makes me so mad. Mainly the “Ted was a nut job who hated creativity” thing. Id contest this by bringing up this part from a letter he wrote in prison. It was in response to a letter he got arguing being able to travel freely and find new hobbies via the internet is a good thing. many interpret it as ted being against creativity and having fun but if u Pay A Fucking Tention he isn’t saying art, creativity, and hobbies are “bad”. He’s saying that activities we engage in under an industrial society will always be unfulfilling, and humans can derive the most pleasure from being able to complete tasks that satisfy our basic biological and evolutionary needs.

Agree or disagree with his ideas All u want. Nobody gives a shit except actually crazy people on Reddit. But I think drawing a conclusion about him based on like two paragraphs u heard from A YouTubers video U watched with your dick in ur hand, without actually engaging with his writing is Retarded. U speak sooo confidently on a topic you literally don’t know anything about. Like a child. Maybe try reading his work a little bit before discarding it fully LOL. Also Wendigoon is ugly and dresses like a guy who stands outside of a mall spencer’s gifts Waiting for freshly 16 year old girls to appear, So he can use the fact he has a car and ability to Buy beer to make them Fuck him. I hope one of his airsoft melts and the molten plastic Drips into his mouth killing him instantly

[slavonicrhapsody]

i had to straight up stop watching his elden ring videos cuz id just keep stopping like "thats not true. thats been debunked. theres no support for that. thats your conjecture presented as fact" just all the time. not going to invoke a certain eternally youthful lil bug god but the fact vaati keeps deliberately saying certain tree soldiers are mind controlled into blowing themselves up *when their armor description says the exact opposite* just to provide support for a certain bazonk reference was one of the last straws for me.

ALSO HE JUST SAYS RYKARDS A REDHEAD!!!! DO YOU SEE ANY HAIR ON THAT SNAKE VAATI??? CUZ I DONT. what we SHOULD be theorizing about is radahns reaction when morgott pounced on him chimpanzee style when he attacked leyndell

godddd its literally so obnoxious like he just makes assumptions that are either unprovable or provably untrue 😭 either way it’s misinformation… like if you’re making an assumption based on your own conjecture you should be open about what sources of information you’re basing your conjecture on. you can’t just present it like a true statement

“three children were born each with radagon’s red hair” rykard having red hair is an assumption that is not provable. you could point to the gelmir knight helm description (“its red feathers symbolize rykard’s pedigree as lord radagon’s son”) as evidence for why you believe that to be the case and make an argument, but then you also have to account for the fact that he literally does not have red hair in any portrait we have of him. the video this statement is from is presented like a grand cinematic narrative, so of course he goes with the romantic image of radagon and rennala’s three redheaded children complete with art and music and dramatic narration. that doesn’t automatically make it true though

[hunkledunk]

This is going to be a bit of a vent but I'm also curious if anyone else feels the same. Please share if you do ❤

Something I've been feeling more and more recently is the drive to be creative, and I'm going to be honest but it doesn't feel good? I've never been that good at art or music or woodworking or textiles or baking or anything expressive, really. When I see someone playing an instrument beautifully, constructing a lovely little ornament, or even just a reference sheet for someone's OC I feel an intense sense of longing.

The only thing I would consider myself notably good at is gaming, and that doesn't really feel like something I can share with people, as in I struggle to express myself with it? I can't show people how I feel by playing a run of Isaac the same way a pianist can with the notes they play. What I feel like I'm missing is the ability to draw a scene and have people see what I'm feeling inside. That sense of understanding that comes with damn good art.

I know the popular response on this site is "do it badly anyway" and I really do appreciate the sentiment but doing something badly just makes me feel truly awful. I can't get around that mental block no matter how hard I try and it's stopping me from practicing any of these skills. It doesn't feel like I have so much space to improve, it feels like I'll always be this bad because I always have been. Regardless of how provably untrue that is it's how I feel.

I want to be able to enjoy the process but that's simply impossible for me right now, not when everything I try ends up worse than I expect. I know it's a problem with my mindset and not a profound lack of talent but it's just as insurmountable a barrier to me. I wish I could play the violin.

[inkdemonapologist]

Sammy is a bard ,prophet is a cleric , joey is a druid, what does this makes henry and jack?

I feel like you COULD play a version of Sammy Lawrence as a bard, but you'd really have to have to go into it with party dynamics in mind. Because Sammy is PROFESSIONALLY good at being a support role; as much as he complains about Joey, it seems clear to me that he wants someone else to have the big ideas while he uses his genius musical brain to make those ideas work. The specific skill Joey loved in him in TIOL was how good he was at making other people look good. So if you set up Joey or Henry as some sort of dashing hero and Sammy as the bard in the background making him succeed, it'd work. But left to his own devices, Sammy doesn't tend towards the bard's subtlety. He's not the sort to cast charm person, he's the sort to scream at everyone until they leave him alone. He runs in with an axe and zero plan because he's feeling big emotions. He's the least subtle and most gullible man on the planet. I've always seen Sammy as a barbarian whose passion happens to be music.

Joey's the bard. He says a thing that's visibly, provably untrue and contradicts other things that he himself has said and against all odds people believe him. Last time I pondered D&D classes for BatIMs, I think I gave Jack bard or rogue, and Henry either fighter or monk.

But then I realised you mention Prophet, who is only really a separate entity in the Cthulhu AU, so hm! The Cthulhu boys are tough to give D&D classes to, because the whole nature of Call of Cthulhu means that they often don't have "powers" so much as "horrifying things they've learned", so it makes more sense to look at the vibes of what they do than their literal abilities. In terms of how they come across to me, I'd lean more bard and/or some kind of mind powers for Joey, some kind of supporty/healy for Jack, and either late-bloomer magic or some kinda tank class for Henry -- maybe paladin, so then Pointy Henry can be a fallen paladin. But they aren't my characters, so the others would have to weigh in to be sure!

Sammy in Cthulhu AU is absolutely still a barbarian though; his only social skill is Being Very Intimidating, he's the least magical of the four boys, and next to Henry he's the most likely to channel his terror into rage and Just Punch It. Prophet is a little harder to place, because while he does canonically have to beseech his lord for his prophecies like a cleric does for spells, neither of the Sammys are really built for Magic outside of that, and Prophet's actual style of fighting is just a slightly stealthier version of Shepherd Sammy -- so, more Rogue, tbh. If you lean into Vibes instead of what they literally do, then Prophet's vibes more closely match a very loyal warlock -- he is not praying for spells and marching armoured into battle with an array of supportive blessings, he is seeking his patron's will and then sneaking through the shadows to do as he's asked, ignoring the party's needs unless he believes his lord requires him to help them.

[callmearcturus]

Also raised my eyebrow that the “pseudonyms” used in the piece were all TMA characters (and generally well-liked ones) which is something that’s going to play a certain way to the readers depending on who they’ve chosen and they definitely knew that! That alone discredited some of their journalistic integrity for me, even without knowing who the author was. The title of the piece was also off to me, considering it really wasn’t about Alex at all and that was acknowledged near the end. Not saying this means one thing or another either, but knowing who wrote it definitely puts some things in perspective for me!

yeah no zyka is sharing parts with the class and like this is so far from being objective or reasonable, it's complete horseshit

again: i am sure that managerial fuck ups happened and screwed people and that's not okay

but this shit is trying to build a narrative and uuhhhhhh

Was Rusty Quill testing the waters to see what they could get away with, and what people were prepared to call them out for? It seemed they hoped for everyone to stay quiet so the company’s image could stay clean and things would blow over. Why?

nah brah its pretty common to ask people not to talk about layoffs while they are still in progress, that's actually really fucking normal. you can choose not to obey but its not weird

An observation has been made to me that there’s a very good chance that the list on Kickstarter of stretch goal guest writers may be the totality of the people in the audio fiction indie world that have still not had an experience with Rusty Quill.

this is provably untrue and also the way it frames a specific narrative is incredibly suspicious

What Rusty Quill seems to be doing with The Magnus Protocol is banking on its fans to bail it out. Instead of putting in the work with their original shows, shows full of stories and characters fans have already become attached to, they’re pulling back and returning to what is profitable and nostalgic.

lmao fuck off

guess what, folks, i knew the second the KS was announced that TMA2 was for money. like, i'm sure they worked on an idea and formed it and tried to come up with something cool. but if one of their other properties had blown up, we would not be seeing TMA2

just because you are doing something to get paid doesn't make it soulless and evil.

and folks I'm sorry but: when you are a working artist, doing the art that gets you paid isn't a fucking crime, and the marketing director of fable and folley knows it.

also i hated the "WTNV is only big bc its gay" and i hate the "TMA only blew up bc its gay." get fucked. a lot of people found out about TMA bc jonmart but to be clear: if the show wasn't good, people would not have listened to 159 fucking episodes just for two boys to hold hands. grow up.

no fucking sell.

[genderkoolaid]

while obv you should call out people on saying things that are provably untrue, i hate when peoples only response to someone describing their experience is "that didn't happen". its not a good argument. you don't have to agree with the conclusions they come to because of that experience, but by just insisting they are lying, you aren't actually engaging with their argument at all. if someone's real experience conflicts with your worldview, either do some introspection and change your worldview, or make an actual argument why the conclusions they draw from that experience are wrong/harmful. its lazy and cruel to just insist someone else is lying for no reason other than their experience conflicts with your accepted worldview. if your position relies entirely on other people's experiences not actually happening, its a weak fucking position to take.

[thevagueambition]

Les Mis 1.1.8 thoughts

If you mix and match Myriel's and the senator's arguments and perspectives, you soon get to the real meaning of Marx's "religion is the opiate of the masses."

The point is not so much that to believe in a religion is to be an addict seeing the world through a haze, but rather that when you are poor, beat down, a miserable, religion is what soothes you. The people is not stupid for being religious, it's natural to cling to the one thing that makes life feel easier rather than harder. The point is also not some banal "but logic!" point about religions not being provable. It's about the material conditions people live under and how religion fits into that structure. If you're powerless in life, believing that divine justice will sort things out makes that powerlessness more bearable.

The senator is a self-serving noble who exists in large part as a straw man of atheism, but I have no doubt that this type of person existed at the time. The atheism of the modern west did start as an upper class thing, to my knowledge, and it certainly can be a useful belief to synthesise if you want to avoid certain moral duties.

(It is obviously an annoying and untrue idea that atheists simply have no morals because we don't derive them from the belief in god(s), but if you are a rich/powerful person in a highly Christian society and want to rationalise your selfishness as well as dodge the sort of moral responsibilities Christianity (and practically all major religions, afaik) explicitly expects the powerful to take upon themselves, you can get out of that through ahteism. Another way is of course to just interpret the Bible in a self-serving manner (e.g. the prosperity gospel) so it's not like powerful atheists are any more likely to be bastards than powerful Christians.)

What I find interesting, however, is that the senator does identify the use of religion for the miserable. "He who has nothing else has the good God." Indeed! That is exactly what "opiate of the masses" problematises. The senator is merely saying this as some with no solidarity with the masses. And Myriel agrees with that part, as far as I can tell, but as someone with solidarity with the masses. But to him that doesn't problematise the role of religion, it problematises materialism/atheism as a way to escape moral duties and to grandstand about how much smarter one is than the miserable who have been "tricked" into their beliefs by circumstance.

Anyway, this is certainly not what Hugo intended, but what I take away from this chapter is yet another way Myriel's charity and desire for reform is never going to be enough -- real change is needed

[lakesbian]

i havent read worm so i might be missing something but how does arguing for a characters textual traits have anything to do with aura theory?? are they implying youre forgiving her problematic aspects because you like her vibes? or are they just saying anything

AHFSDKLHSDFH i love that we somehow have a non worm reader here witnessing this. okay so basically "aura theory" is like. this really old worm discourse from way back before i was in the fandom theorizing that canonically speaking amy fell in love w/ her sister because of her sister's superpowered aura which can have some impacts on the emotions of those around her. it's provably untrue, and i certainly in no way implied that i believe it by discussing amy's textual traits, so i have no idea whymst that guy thinks he saw it in my post. but i digress. that's what aura theory is. also for context regarding the whole amy situation. her narrative is extremely homophobic, worst predatory lesbian trope on the planet, but it also unfortunately contains genuinely interesting crit of the nuclear family + cops. and she is a genuinely interesting character bc despite the homophobia inherent to her characterization she's given a lot of depth rather than just being a one-dimensional cartoon villain. so there's a lot to pick apart & analyze there and subsequently people get into debates and or arguments about her a lot. although this one is less of a debate and more some random guy doing kind of a lame job at insulting me because he's incensed i was doing aforementioned arguing for a character's textual traits

[mixelation]

i don't understand what motivates people to just make completely untrue comments on posts. i just fact checked a laundromat fire. one time i had to fact check a fish sculpture. very frequently i see people "explaining" things but every other word is provably untrue. why

also because this is a fandom blog. do you understand why i don't believe canon "facts" when people can't point at where they occurred

[hardware-sparks]

All my friends hate me <== Negative self-talk, provably untrue, doesn't help the situation

I'm just like Johnny Ghost <== This one doesn't help either but it's fun

[yusuke-of-valla]

Also, on the topic of the Emperor link, I figure that Minato - a depressed orphan without a stable home life who doesn't give a shit about authority - has probably been accused of not just smoking but also probably drinking and drugs before. All provably untrue, of course, but rumors will persist.

And that Odagiri is the first time anyone has actually stood up for him against these kinds of accusations.

Minato is more touched by that then he lets on.

God that's so cute.

Minato finding someone who doesn't even know he's doing Persona stuff and still standing up for him, especially if you're BAD AT SCHEDULING and get that after Shinjiro dies like I did

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s4 ep17: Retrospect

Somehow I'd never seen this one before, and all I can say is thank goodness, because it's far and away the worst episode of Voyager, and one of the worst episodes of Star Trek, I've ever seen. Not only was it full of plot holes you could drive a truck through, but it's whole message was shockingly clueless and insensitive, and honestly made me angry to sit there and watch.

(Long post below the cut- Content Warning for discussion of sexual assault:)

I have no idea who thought this storyline was a good idea- there's like four different writers credited, so hopefully it's just a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth, but if this garbage was what anyone actually set out to make- MAJOR YIKES!

The whole theme of the story is that women shouldn't be believed when they accuse a man of attacking them, and that even investigating such an allegation is a terribly bad thing to do because it will ruin that poor man's life. Really. That's what this episode is about. Even in a pre-Me Too movement world, these were some absolutely rancid takes.

When a used car salesman-ish arms dealer comes to Voyager to try to sell them a cannon, Janeway agrees to trade for it. He's arrogant and rude, he gets angry and bitches at Seven, and tries to shove her out of the way in engineering, to which she responds by punching him in the face. He complains to Janeway that he did nothing wrong and she attacked him unprovoked, which is provably untrue, since it was observed by other characters. The guy is obviously a jerk, and Janeway attributes the incident to Seven's lack of social graces as an ex-Borg, and that's that, it seems.

But then Seven has a panic attack and flees when the Doctor uses medical devices to examine her for her routine check up, which she can't explain. The Doctor finds unusual activity in the memory center of her brain, and decides he's going to be an amateur psychologist today (um, no??? playing psychologist when you're untrained is bad, duh!) and tries to help her delve into her memories to find out why she reacted that way to the medical instruments. Seven rediscovers an incident with used car salesman guy- we see in flashback when she was on an away mission to his planet, when they were alone in his lab. He fired one of the guns they were testing on her, then he experimented on her Borg implants to steal nanoprobes from her, and erased her memory of it.

The whole rest of the episode is basically a rape investigation, since the allegory here is not even a little bit subtle. The alien guy denies it and makes a fuss that he's being persecuted, it will ruin him, he's a poor victim, blah blah. Janeway and Tuvok are shockingly sympathetic to him, and skeptical of Seven from the beginning, which is like, um, wtf??? Just because Seven doesn't like to follow Starfleet rules, it doesn't make her any less credible. (Though why they were even assigning her duties again right after Janeway supposedly took away her access to the ship's systems in the last ep, idk! Wanna know why your disciplinary actions don't work on her, Captain? Because you don't follow through with them! Can't just say you're giving her a time out, and then not do it, and expect her to learn anything.)

At every turn it's suggested that Seven imagined the whole thing, or that she's just remembering incorrectly, which is wild considering how many times they've had aliens or space anomalies messing with their brains before. The whole thing has a major 'she's just a hysterical woman' vibe, which is super gross, and even the Doctor, who seems to be the one character who believes her, seems a little too into the idea that she was attacked, and keeps going on about how she was so horribly violated, and she should be angry, and she'll feel better when her attacker is punished. All of which is like, oh my god, what?? First of all, leave her alone and don't tell her how to feel, and secondly, stop telling her that punishing someone who hurt her will magically make her feel better, that's not how it works!

When they investigate the guy's lab, they find active nanoprobes, which leads them to believe he intentionally fired on Seven, and his planets authorities try to arrest him, but he transports away to a ship and flees. (Which seems a little far fetched that he would have all that in place if he wasn't doing shady stuff, but this episode isn't about logic.)

Back on the ship, they test out Seven's nanoprobes to find out if they would activate whether the phaser was fired intentionally at her, as Seven claims, or overloaded accidentally, as the guy claims. They find that the nanoprobes react the same way either way, which everyone inexplicably takes as proof that alien guy is innocent. What?? That doesn't rule out anything, either thing could still have happened! But they don't investigate further, they consider the case closed. How quickly everyone turns on Seven is legitimately the most chilling thing I've ever seen on the show, and all the more so because it wasn't even supposed to be.

The amount of plot holes here are glaring- Seven and Tom are the only crew who go down to a strange planet, full of aliens with guns, and they split up? For two hours? Without checking in with each other, or the ship? What??? How is that safe?!? That can't possibly be Starfleet procedure- that's a recipe for getting your officers killed. Next, Seven remembers seeing a female lab assistant in her flashback- did they look for her and interview her? No. She also saw them inject another guy they had strapped down in the lab with Borg nanoprobes that started to assimilate him- did they look for this other guy? Or a body that's half Borg buried somewhere? No! That's kind of important!! If they really were stealing Borg technology to use as weapons against people, that's very bad and dangerous, and they absolutely had a duty to investigate that possibility and stop it, but no, they don't. As soon as they get their (totally inconclusive) nanoprobe evidence, they decide Seven is just confused/delusional/whatever, and that alien guy is totally innocent (wtf??). They try to track him down to apologize (wtf??) but he kills himself by blowing his ship up (wtf??) and Seven and the Doctor feel guilty about it (major wtf??) and have learned their valuable lesson about how bad it is to make false accusations. (off the charts wtf!!!!!) I just... cannot even begin to unpack everything wrong with this scenario.

First of all, they went to the trouble of setting the guy up as someone who had acted agressively and lied before, yet then turned around and said, actually, he's totally trustworthy, it's Seven who's wrong for suspecting him, which is such a cop out. Making an episode about how it's wrong to distrust strange men, even when their behavior shows that they're disrespectful and aggressive, is a terrible and harmful message to put out there, especially on a show that kids watched.

Meanwhile, showing the audience what Seven saw, then saying it wasn't real, without bothering to explain what it actually was, feels like being gaslit by a TV episode.

Next, the idea that a mere accusation of wrongdoing could ruin a man's life is, quite frankly, offensive. They can say 'oh but it's an alien culture' all they want- the aliens in Star Trek have always just been thinly veiled allusions to our own society, and in reality, accusations against men rarely have negative consequences for them, even when they're true. The accusers usually get worse consequences than their attackers. Men get believed, and continue to work in their fields, respected and celebrated, while women get doubted, and hated, and slut shamed, and sometimes even targeted for more violence. (I recently read an article about a woman musician in the NY Philharmonic who was drugged and raped by two of her male colleagues, and when she came forward with her story, despite having actual evidence against them, the orchestra believed the men, despite the guys track record of bad behaviour to women, and they fired her instead of them, and told everyone else in the orchestra they were forbidden to even talk to her or listen to anything she said. And this was just a few years ago! The parallels between that situation and this episode are so strong, and realizing that a show you love is taking the side of institutional misogyny is like being hit in the face by someone you trusted.) In the real world, any kind of assault allegations ruin the accusers lives, which is why people only brave coming forward if it's true. That these writers have the audacity to say that the (miniscule) possibilty of someone being falsely accused is worse than the possibilty of someone being assaulted, and worse than their attacker going free to harm more people, is apalling. What was the alternative here? That Seven should have just said nothing? Are they saying she should have just let it sllde, because no matter what might have happened, this guy's reputation was more important?? Jfc, these attitudes are exactly why we need the Me Too Movement! And then to blame Seven for the guy's choice to freak out and kill himself is also apalling. His actions are not her responsibilty- putting that on her is more misogyny.

And then, if we're to believe that he didn't do it, and what Seven remembers isn't what really happened, then what the hell did happen??? They never answer that! They never even bother to investigate at all! If she's having panic attacks and flashbacks, they owe it to her to find out what's going on and help her. Especially since she's often performing delicate work that affects the whole ship, they need to figure out what's going on with her for the safety of the whole crew, so she doesn't have random flashbacks and freak out in the middle of an important mission. (And you know, because they should care about her well-being in an of itself!) They wrote it off as 'oh, she experienced a lot of trauma as a Borg, she's probably just remembering that and getting confused!' but even so, that's something that needs to be addressed! But no, they seem content to let her live with flashbacks or delusions or whatever they are, and never addresss it again. (Sloppy writing alert!!) (Also, how come in every other episode they jump to Tuvok mind melding with someone- but not here?? When an investigation (and a main character's mental health) depends on it?? Janeway should never have let the Doctor run around playing unlicensed psychologist, she should have just asked Tuvok to help Seven find the real memory from the start, and not only would it have avoided this whole situation, we would have had a far more interesting episode.)

And then, to top it all off, in an episode where Seven experiences what may have been an attack or a traumatic memory, it then becomes all about the Doctor! The last scene is him going to the Captain saying that he's going to delete his subroutines that make him want to do more than his medical programming because he got carried away with trying to be a psychologist when he's unqualified, and it made him mess with Seven and led to alien guy's death. (Which tbh, is more self-awareness than he usually has.) But then Captain Janeway says no, don't do that! Who cares what negative consequences your actions have, you should do whatever you want regardless of how it affects other people! I absolve you of responsibilty in this because you Learned Something! (She didn't say it in so many words, but that was the gist.)

It's legitimately one of the grossest episodes I've ever seen, and not worthy of Star Trek at all. I just want brain bleach to scrub it from my memory so I can keep loving the show as much as I did before. This is up there with 'Cogenitor' for the Worst Star Trek Episode Ever prize.

(This is another episode that should come with a trigger warning whenever it's aired, although I wish it would be pulled from rotation altogether. This is full of deeply harmful tropes that should be consigned to the past.)

Tl;dr: The most offensive, misogynist nonsense to pass itself off as Star Trek that I can think of, besides Enterprise's 'Cogenitor'. The absolute worst episode Voyager ever did. 0/10, a failure on every level.

(Addendum: I listened to The Delta Flyers ep after I wrote my recap, and they had co-writer Lisa Klink on to try to defend it, but it honestly doesn't change my opinion of the episode. She said the theme they were originally going for was based on some study that showed that people can be easily led into believing they remembered something that didn't happen, but that was totally lost in the final episode. The Doctor didn't even suggest anything to Seven when he tried to help her retrieve the memory, so you can't construe that as a theme of the actual episode no matter which way you look at it. The use of a female character as the accuser and a male character as the alleged assailant, the use of the words 'he violated me' when Seven recalls an incident that's uncomfortably similar to a drugging and date rape- the parallels are undeniable. That, coupled with the constant questioning of Seven's perceptions, and everyone's quickness to sympathize with the male character, despite him already having demonstated his inclination to mistreat women and then lie about it, are just too much to be able to interpret this episode in any other way in good faith. Even in the 90s, for anyone to be so tone-deaf to not see how this looked- I just can't give anyone a pass here. I was disappointed that Lisa Klink didn't just admit she screwed up- as a writer, if you have to explain what you really meant with a story after the fact, you didn't do your job right. The reason audiences 'misinterpret' this one isn't because they're not smart enough to understand what you were saying, it's because you didn't say it well. They made those choices to put those words on the page, put those characters in those situations- own up to it. Reflect on how your words made your audience feel, take the criticism and learn from it, and do better in the future.)

[h0wlcastle]

my grandmother recently told me she was "scared for me" because ive spent 2.5 years taking testosterone, and i asked why. of course she rattled off all these misconceptions about it. she's under the impression that it causes cancer.

which makes the next thing she said, uh. very interesting.

she asked if i "got rid of anything yet" and i said no. so she leaned in closer and emphatically told me "GOOD. never get rid of your breasts. ever!"

so i asked why again. explained id have to worry less about getting breast cancer, which her sister literally died from.

and she told me i might regret it. "lots of women are doing that and then regretting it" she said. (untrue but i didn't have the energy to argue that point) "my doctor told me i should get a double mastectomy because of my sister. i said no, id rather risk cancer than get rid of them."

i asked her why and she said "it just makes me feel nice and feminine. i like my figure. i wouldn't feel female without them, and i love that i'm female."

i told her i don't feel the same about my chest at all. it makes me feel ugly, awkward, burdened. plus. breast cancer is a thing im worried about too. id be much happier without them.

she said "oh...that's so sad."

what i didn't say back, but thought privately, was "actually it's sadder to me that you watched your sister die a slow agonizing death and you'd rather do that than get a mastectomy" but you know. whatever

actually the saddest thing is, she's telling me testosterone is dangerous and causes cancer. but also wants me to keep a body part that is provably more likely to develop cancer?

transphobic fearmongering is insane. honestly.

she also asked me if i "grew anything extra" and i laughed and she said "or, you know, if anything got bigger" and i said that's a very personal question and she said she had a right to know bc she changed my diapers. would not let up until i said "yes, that is a thing that happens, but its not nearly as scary/weird/dramatic as you might imagine, and it happens to plenty of cis women too."

this conversation took place at a restaurant with outdoor seating btw. 😑 she was saying this shit in public at normal volume. outside. there were people within 3ft of us in every direction.

and she's actually very accepting of trans people. like in general. this happens with nearly every "supportive" cis woman in my family. accepts that im trans but soooo scared for me bc they've heard a bunch of nonsense about HRT being dangerous.