#its message is actually anti-bullying believe it or not

[mishkakagehishka]

Call that Crazy:Dječaci

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The disrespect toward indigenous peoples is what popped put at me today in one of your posts. I wonder how long the English have been looking down on the Welsh. We're the Saxons like that or is it the Normans who really thought they were better than everyone else. Cause it seems like it goes back a long way.

Oh, both, just in different ways. The Normals were imperialist, the Saxons were more theft and landgrab.

Something that makes me want to start hurling knives is the INCREDIBLY COMMON English myth that the Anglo-Saxons were a sweet innocent indigenous British people who were conquered and bullied by those mean nasty Normans (and Vikings), and because the Normans came over via France, that means everything was actually THEIR fault, and the true English i.e. the Anglo-Saxons, were victims too :(

When I say it's incredibly common, by the way, I really mean it. Enormous numbers of modern day English people believe this. I've seen BBC programs about the Viking invasions that claimed without a trace of irony that the Vikings would take slaves from "the native Anglo-Saxons". I've literally had English people comment this shit on posts of mine about Celtophobia and Welsh history. Like I'm there describing how the last Prince of Wales was locked in a wooden cage in Bristol Castle at the age of eight and lived out the remainder of his life there until his fifties so the Welsh would know their place, and some snivelling English cunt will straight up write a message going "Teehee really it was the Normans not the English though and they conquered the poor Anglo-Saxons too, poor England uwu"

Anyway in the dying days of the Roman empire in Britain one of the leading reasons for Rome abandoning Britannia was the constant waves of Anglo-Saxon invaders. There were so many the east coast of Britain became known as the Saxon Shore. There were so many the Romans built a line of forts that were and are literally called Saxon Shore Forts. There were so many that an official, historically documented, paid governmental position in Roman Britain was the Count of the Saxon Shore, i.e. the guy responsible for keeping the bastards out.

Rome had banned native military, of course, so when they then withdrew and took the armies with them, the people left had no defences against the incoming waves of Angles, Saxons and Jutes. England fell pretty quickly, Angles in the north, Saxons in the south, Jutes primarily in the east, I believe. What stopped their westward expansion was the Brythonic Celtic nations living in modern day Wales. And this is the origin of the Welsh dragon - those separate kingdoms needed a banner that united them, and represented Not Saxon. An anti-Saxon force. They chose a red dragon.

This is also the origin of King Arthur. An anti-Saxon king of the Brythons, who would repel these Germanic invaders. (It was several centuries later that England realised they should probably steal the term 'British', because otherwise they were marking themselves as 'not native'.)

Anyway the saving grace of the Anglo-Saxons in the end was actually that they were whiny little bitches who gave up trying to fight in Wales with its difficult mountains and fought each other instead. The whole sorry tale of the Heptarchy is the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms fighting like cats in a bag, while Saxon king Offa built a dyke along the Welsh border and went "WELL YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED OVER HERE" and every Welsh king went "...we literally didn't want to conquer you anyway, you spectacularly sad and stupid man"

Oh, and of course, there's the name 'Wales'. Given to us specifically by the Anglo-Saxons. And translated by centuries of English scholars, mostly very smugly, as 'foreigners'. A fun bit of early propaganda, look - foreigners in our own country that they tried and failed to steal.

All of which is a circuitous way of saying - yeah, it goes way back.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Aita for speaking about how anti bullying group/server treated me?

This is a two year old situation that I got reminded of today

So background: I (22NB) joined a group via tiktok that was started after an incident involving a plus sized cosplayer and a company (person is not involved in this situation & is still one of my lovely mutuals). However due to the size of the group, a group of child predators joined including someone who was a mutual (I didn't know about their gross, as a csa survivor I blocked and such asap). Stuff got exposed (with some information given by one of my close friends). This caused the server to be remade and I was semi active in it but it was still a large server. I however noticed that my tiktok was blocked by the group's page and decided to message the ppl running it. After a week of nothing I get a message that I have some of the predators following my page therefore am now banned from the server and was basically told to keep me being banned between me and the server leader. I decided not to do so and shared the information, not once insulting them and even saying i understand their intentions but they didn't even share the usernames of the predators following my page. The main person who ran it has since blocked me and the few mutual I had who helped run it unfollowed me (didn't remove me from their following tho but I unfollowed them as well when I realized). I have friends and mutuals who are still a part of this group and I feel like an ah for having such a dislike for the group now. I'm tempted to bring it up again to be like still no apology for being kicked out of a group because of a bullshit zero tolerance policy because I'm petty and still bitter when I remember it

-also after my post someone (outside of the group) was able to figure out which predator was following me via their side page. I blocked them immediately.

-i expressed concern over possibly missing information (such as usernames). I didn't express that this was bc the information was hard for me to consume with triggering myself

-i showed screensshots of the conversations I had with the people running it

-they had also said it was inappropriate for a friend of mine who at the time was barely 18 to be friends with people who were 17 and 16

-the server themselves don't have all the usernames of the side pages of the predators

-there has been at least one person who claimed they were blocked by this group and such bc they were complaining about minors being rude or creepy in their comments but I have no proof and this person has said stuff that I ended up blocking them for

-their zero tolerance policy excuse feels like bullshit because they have my friends and mutuals still in the group (tho I believe its inactive for the most part bc they fall short of plans to do things outside of the server).

-dont hate on my friends and mutuals for still being a part of the group. This has actually benefit me bc of information the group keeps in their server including a person who tends to stalk and harass people online that started to harass me

-i have also have had info about a person being into l0li/sh0ta con but in the same spaces forwarded to the group via a mutual in the group. It's a large group with a lot of people so I understand the want to stay in it.

What are these acronyms?

[not-poignant]

Hi Pia

I've seen your posts (and other bloggers posts) about antis, and although i don't agree that anyone has the right to dictate what media people are allowed to enjoy i never actually believed that they could be that bad (since I'd never had any interactions with them) and thought their unhinged behaviour was exaggerated. Until I posted a fic with a controversial pairing and OH. MY. GOD.

I have never received this much abuse (and of such a vicious sort) in my entire life. I guess this serves me right for doubting other creators' claims of how awful antis can be. I could just never believe anyone could be this... this... diabolical. But now I'm experiencing it first and it is wild.

Like I'm receiving actual death threats? Because of a 2,000 oneshot? I'm being told that me and my whole family deserve to die slow and painful deaths because of the characters I shipped?? They're calling me a pedophile and an animal abuser because one of the characters I wrote about is a teenager and the other is a human-animal hybrid??? What?

Like, are these people ok? Are they mentally unwell? This is just... I'm in shock honestly that people actually think and behave like this. Holy hell. It's been a hug eye opener and not a necessarily nice one.

Sorry if this message was unwelcome, I just couldn't think of anyone else to share this with. I hope you're having a nice day/evening ❤

Hi hi anon,

Yeah, this is what it's sadly like, and in the most extreme pockets of anti-communities are people who have literally tried to murder other people over fictional characters.

It's truly unhinged.

You have people who just don't like what other people are shipping, which is fine and normal, we all have notps and things we don't like, and then you have the people who genuinely think it's okay to torment, harass, abuse, and bully another person based over something fictional, and those people need to be blocked.

These people coming after you anon, if they're on AO3, report every single one because it might take a while, but those people get banned from AO3. If they're on Tumblr, block but also consider reporting, because death threats get people banned and all anonymous IP addresses are logged on Tumblr's side. If it's on Twitter, block on sight. Don't tolerate them, don't give them the air to breathe, and make sure you get offline sometimes or go to online safe spaces and spend time with the people who love you for who you are, it's the best weapon against antis who have no idea who you are and feel like you're a great figure to bully and abuse.

Ultimately, at the very base of what an anti is, is someone who believes their emotion of 'don't like that' justifies them bullying and torturing other people over fictional characters. It is at its foundation completely delusional, and even people who get 'logical' about it are still going 'my emotions are real enough to justify hurting you over something that is a figment of our collective imaginations.'

Some of those folks are very young, and will grow out of it, and have just drunk the collective Koolaid, some of them are older and always wanted an excuse to bully others but feel 'righteous' and 'pure' for doing it. Some really believe they're doing the right thing, others know they're hypocrities but can be all the more vicious for it. There are many recovering antis, but they're often silent about the things they've done, or the ways they've tried to hurt people.

I'm glad you posted that story anon, but not glad about the response you're getting. Consider moderating comments if it's on AO3, just to choke out the antis for a while. And yeah, practice self-care, because abusers want to hurt and harm others, and if you feel hurt and harmed, the more you can act to look after yourself, the more you thwart their goal/s and give them the big proverbial 'fuck you' that they so desperately deserve.

They do, usually, die down after a while, especially the more they get starved out. They'll often hunt for more vulnerable people. But in the meantime you also might want to inform folks you trust irl that you're dealing with this right now, because antis are unhinged, and online abuse is serious. Take care of you!! <33333 I'm sorry you had to learn about this pocket of 'society' in such a horrific way.

Antis are the worst.

[maybeamultiverse]

Got sent a loooooong essay about apparently being an 'anti-semite' (I am literally of partial Jewish descent, albeit patrilineal, not that that matters) and an 'abusive bully' (I believe in standing up for Palestine and calling out the dominant white sci-fi/fantasy community, especially the one online, for its hypocrisy) that 'uses slurs' (I did not use a single slur towards anyone, feel free to go back and check).

I would answer this directly, but, when I first opened it, I was advised to just delete it. Besides, anon also doesn't really deserve a direct answer from me, but I just wanted to put it out there in case this communicates an important and relevant message to someone out there.

If you are a Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, anti-Zionist Jew, whatever, you are CONSTANTLY asked if you 'support Hamas.' We're tired of it.

No one likes violence. No one wants violence. That's a given, and I shouldn't have to declare my dislike of Hamas every time I talk about an ongoing genocide against indigenous people.

It's been a harrowing week. Lots of hate going around. Many of my friends and I have been legitimately hate-crimed IRL on the street (spat on, called like actual slurs).

Right now, I am in what I'd like to call the 'numb zone' emotionally. I did what I had to do, went to protests and events, and completed all my work. Didn't get much sleep, but I did what I needed to do.

As for my 'shitpost,' I will definitely keep up the energy, thank you, anon. <3

Hopefully, I can get back into writing fan fiction and reblogging stuff that brings me joy from the fandoms I love. Might start doing that now, even while the occupying state has begun to deploy white phosphorous on Gaza and southern Lebanon, ya rabb.

Anon, I feel bad for you, really.

!فلسطين سوف تتحرر

[decolonize-the-left]

god yeah about the exclusionism post and asking the queer community to hold itself accountable...

like, i'm young. im only 18. so i wasn't super around for the vast majority of the height of aphobic bigotry in this community.... but i've been around for most of the anti-bilesbian, anti-xenogender, anti-mogai stuff, and it has hurt so so much.

im a xenogender, genderqueer aroace bi lesbian. all of these things mean so so much to me. because they taught me to know and love all parts of myself, which has taught me my love of radical love and kindness. the queer community is what has transformed me into being a radical, queer-anarchist, anti-racist, anti-bigotry, and those things are so fucking critical to who i am. i wouldn't be who i am without the queer community and what its members have taught me about equity and compassion... and yet, it has also traumatized me to the point that it's hard to think about getting involved in irl queer events which breaks my heart.

in 2021, 11,000 people signed a petition telling me specifically to end my life for being part of the campaign that had the lgbta wiki support bi lesbians. i had a message board on there, and everytime i went on there, there were 10 new messages with different descriptions of how i should end my life. it got so bad that i couldn't sleep. i was shaking and crying ALL THE TIME. and despite that wiki being the one place i could be open about my queerness, i was forced off of it because if i stayed, i would be continually threatened and my mental health couldn't take it.

as a result, i lost contact with most of my online queer friends. i was so fucking angry all the time. everytime i saw any form of exclusionist rhetoric, i would become so anxious that i would spiral. i've been baited, threatened, relentlessly bullied, forced out of a queer 'safe' space, and treated like absolute fucking shit. all because i put the words 'bi' and 'lesbian' next to each other in a bio about me.

i can't put words to describe the kind of shit this has done to my mental health. i already had personality disorders from Emotional Trauma that made anger hard to deal with- so getting involved on Tumblr after the wiki went away, where exclusionism was sadly rampant, was hard because I felt like I had to choose- be an online part of the community that has made me who i am, but suffer bullying and self hatred in the process, or give up that community entirely. i don't think people truly comprehend how traumatizing it is for anyone, but especially a TEENAGER, to have to make a decision like that.

it's been almost two years now, and still, everytime i see exclusionism, everytime i get a death threat (sadly still a somewhat frequent occurrence), i spiral because it takes me right back to the height of my harassment two years ago. and part of my brain still genuinely believes i deserved it.

that's just me. that's just one person influenced by this. and yet it's not just me. the same stuff that's happened to me, has happened to thousands. and thousands more. and i don't think people truly understand that, just because it's online stuff and didn't really happen irl, doesn't mean it's some small little thing that we should stop complaining about because there's REAL problems for REAL queer people to worry about.

so, very long story short, coming from someone who has been hugely impacted by exclusionism, and i may be unique in this position, but every person who was once an exclusionist like that and has grown and apologized, seriously means the world to me. because i know that there's no excuse for it, and yet i understand the reasons why so many people struggle with it. out of all the self hatred exclusionism has caued me, how can i turn around and blame the exclusionists who were acting out of the same exact insecurities i was?

there is no excuse for bigotry. but you are not a bad person. thank you for growing. seeing your post actually gave me so much hope because i've had several people come to me personally and say that me being open about my identity has helped them grow out of their exclusionist mindsets and grown as a person, so seeing people grow like this just warms my heart because we all have the capacity for both good and bad- taking the opportunity to learn to be better is a prime example of the good and it fills me with hope that other people can learn too.

i also wanted to comment on something else from your post. you were talking about the generational trauma you've experienced, and how you perceived the concept of 'aphobia' as disrespectful to the victims of horrible systemic oppression irl, and while yes, that is not what aphobia as a concept is, you don't need to apologize for being angry because yes, you perceived something the incorrect way in that moment, but your anger was 100% justified. as a white queer person, i fully believe that inclusionism still needs room to acknowledge intersecting oppressions and that comparing intracommunity exclusionism to centuries of genocidal colonialism, is absolutely appalling. your actions were unjustified- your anger was not. i want you to know that you do not need to feel guilty for being angry like that. anger is an important emotion, so i hope you can truly internalize that you had every right to be angry, even if your actions were wrong.

again, thank you for being awesome and making that post. i'm very sorry if my super long ramble was unsolicited, and if you don't want to respond i completely understand! please please take care and have a wonderful time zone <3

🖤🖤🖤

[madara-fate]

Thats super strange. While i would have rather the whole game just be ignored, and we side eyed people instead of harassing them, the meme that was saying buying the game could endanger trans life wasnt that far off. Thats because JK is seeing people still buying her stuff as confirmation that she is right. She has said she donates money to Anti trans organisations. Many of these are lobbying, influencing politicians in the UK and the US to pass Anti trans legislations. In Nevada a bill is now under consideration that would make it illegal to wear clothes associated with a different gender than the one you were born with near children. Its a so called anti drag legislation, and is being suggested in several states right now. In Nevada it would be punishable with jail and having to register as a sex offender. But trans people won't just stop being trans if they make it illegal and remove all options of treatment, they will die.

Yeah, that's fair enough. It's like I said, I understand the point they're making and it's definitely a valid one, but I will simply never be okay with the way many of these people have conducted themselves. If no gross harassment had occurred, I would have been a lot more sympathetic, but I just cannot condone the actions of a large portion of that community (or at least the portions that are prevalent online and on social media). If those people are going to make it their mission to bully and harass anyone and everyone, sometimes even to the point of tears, just because their targets are playing a video game that they don't like, then those people are not in the right.

You referred to a particular meme that someone used and said how its message wasn't that far off, but I believe the meme below is a lot more accurate to the situation:

And another Twitter user essentially said the same thing:

Not wanting people to play the game because of the reasons you mentioned is totally fine, but bullying people for playing the game, is most definitely not.

That, and I still don't believe that even in light of everything you have just said, that if a gamer still chooses to play the game, that they should automatically be accused of transphobia, antisemitism, and that death threats made against them would be in any way justified. I mean, there are a lot of huge and very well known corporations who commit actual human rights atrocities in order to obtain their resources, and we (including these combative members of the trans community) fund them everyday, but of all things, they choose to become so aggressive over people buying a video game.

[ssvmptoms]

you know what- i’m not sure why those shawols hate newer ones. i think it’s because they most likely talk about… that, and it makes them uncomfortable or they’re anti jonghyun or ot4 in someway idk but this happened to my friend where he was bullied online and it was so bad that he would literally lie and say that he was a shawol of 10 years just to validate his grief. like bruh imagine having to proof that you had been a shawol for a long time just so people would take you seriously. i mean… this is awful and since we’re about the same age many people would assume that i also am a new shawol when i’m very old. fandoms are weird.

//talk of dec 18

this!!! i feel like the only reason some “shawols” will hate on babywols is just because theyre an ot4 in some way or need something to argue about. im so sorry about the way you and your friend were treated, i hope you guys are better now. wishing you the best

but also, why do you have to be an older shawol to grieve? whether you are a new shawol or a shawol since debut, you are very unlikely to have ever knwon jonghyun on a personal level.

all connections to him are through his beautiful music and nice messages via concert, or social media, or blue night. i believe that even if you were a fan of 14 years or a fan of 1 year, you have the right to grieve. admiring his beauty, his talent, everything he did for those around him, his kindess, his advocating towards communities in South Korea, his care, his sense of humor… those are all things you can cherish him for even as a fan who became a shawol after his passing.

though i do think that the rise of non-shawols around december does cause a bad stigma towards babywols — there are so many people who cant name a single song he wrote for shinee or a single solo song besides moon who claim how much they “miss” him… and then its the only shinee post they have on their entire page. those people can go fuck themselves honestly like maybe if you actually gave a fuck about shinee youd know thats not what the members would want…

i actually made an internet war edit and posted it on tiktok and someone told me to “not do jonghyun like that” like he didnt do that performance himself… when will they get a grip

but to end this rant, the first post i ever saw about jonghyun, about 2-3 years ago, was praise for his vocal talent, and not about his death. thats how it should always be

[sterlingarcher]

I love seeing your posts about like bandom history and just discussion and reflection from a more mature adult's angle, it's really relatable to me at 29. And while I have not involved in bandom before late 2015, I have studied a lot myself, and Panic! and Brendon were my first faves and still high up there. It really disappoints me how brutal antis are as I have figured them out to a T, treating minor errors as hate-crimes from Brendon but not anyone else. Are we not all human?

i havent checked my messages in so long so im not 100% certain when this was sent but this was a really nice thing to stumble upon today 😭😭😭 it makes me feel good to know that there are people out there who can sort of ~smell what im stepping in~ so to speak and that when i talk about this stuff its not always falling on deaf ears. ive always rejected the term “anti” because it feels so immature to say, but honestly what other word is there to even describe most of these people? haters? bullies? assholes? they dont have any actual critical thought behind why they came to hate brendon, they just know it became the cool and popular thing to hate him and “blame him” for shit and they couldnt bear the thought of not following the crowd and fitting in. youd be hard pressed to find me anyone whos life has been documented and scrutinized for as long as and as harshly as brendons since they were a teenager who HASNT stumbled or fucked up or put their foot in their mouth at some point. its wildly hypocritical because these people act very pure and righteous, and like theyve never done or said anything wrong or questionable or problematic in their lives which is just…. quite literally patently untrue for every person on earth. to assert moral and ethical superiority over a person like brendon is to be horrendously disingenuous, and it grossly highlights the efficacy of social media fandom war smear campaigns, lack of proper journalism, and the terrifying degeneration of peoples ability to engage in critical thought and perform unbiased fact-based research. these people act like brendon singlehandedly committed genocide or some shit, and honestly i find these people spend far more time thinking and talking about him than we as fans do. like he quite literally lives in these peoples heads rent free, and these are the same people who call us pathetic for still enjoying him and his music after all these years and not dropping off and following the crowd of sheeple like they did. like these people have the nerve to behave like 13 year old lunch-room bullies and then turn around and call people cringe and pathetic for *checks notes* … enjoying someone and their art and music. like honey the call is coming from inside the house. they love to use the classics like “jeez its just a joke” or “its not that deep…” when the reality is that if it was truly not that deep they wouldnt spend so much time obsessing over him and talking about him more than his fucking fans do. they quite literally troll his and panics tags and quote retweet and reblog almost everything they see with a shitty snide remark that they truly think is soooo clever and original (🙄) like its their fucking 6 figure paid career path. they constantly poke the bear, go swinging at a hornets nest with lead pipes, and then they get confused and pissed when they get bit and stung. like literally dude what did you expect? you come into a space specifically to cause trouble and piss people off and then act like the victim when you actually accomplish that??? call people cringe and fail and annoying and strange when they get emotional over something they clearly care deeply about??? as though if the tables werent turned these people wouldnt immediately start screaming crying throwing up and playing the victim. honestly though at the very end of the day i truly believe these proudly self-proclaimed “haters” are more miserable than ill ever be no matter how bad my life circumstances get. because ultimately i only spend a few hours, maybe a day or two at most being pissed that these bullies and mean-girls exist and love to invade our spaces for shits and giggles. but they apparently spend entire days, weeks, months… YEARS of their lives being bitter and vile and mean for the sake of maybe 10 likes on twitter and 5 minutes of internet validation. what a sad fucking existence. i prefer to be someone who enjoys things and engages with and consumes things that make me happy and joyful thank you :) anyway sorry for the ramble! if you read all of it i appreciate and love you for it!! 💕

[propheticalleg]

I have a problem with the way Billy Hargrove was written

Like, yeah, he's one of my favorite characters, of course i have a fucking problem with how the Duffer bros treated him. And i’m aware that this all was said before, but, you know, NOT BY ME

They could have fun with him. It could’ve been done in different ways.

1.The Redemption Arc

Well there is a couple points to address.

First, there are characters in the show who are: complicated - Jim Hopper; redimed - Steve Harrington.

With Hopper Duffers did surprisingly good job of showing us the good and the bad in him. We see that he cares a lot about El, but his way of showing it is a bit ~toxic~. And we know why he’s so protective of her. He lost a child before. Hopper doesn’t want to see it again. That’s the reason. But it’s not an excuse, is it?

And with Steve. Umm...well a bit of the confession i think Duffers dumbed him down just a tad too much. I get what they were going for. Lovable, bit of an idiot, with bite to his character and a heart of gold. And i praise and respect Joe Keery for his talent! Great job, not his fault. But i don’t think Duffers really respect Steve Harrington. It shows sometimes through the other characters. But anyway. Duffers redeemed Steve even though he was supposed to die a bully.

Second, the racism. 

There is a definet reason people are divided on this topic. Is Billy racist or not? Well show accidentally made it up to interpretation. Duffers wanted to make a cliche 80s bully. They didn’t follow through, but more on that later. Also the show in general handels this topic weirdly

And then there’s Dacre Montgomery. If you’ve listened or read his interviews you know that this man understands that people are not cliches. And he chose not to play Billy as a racist. Whether you like it or not can read that through the screen.

Was Billy wrong with how he treated Lucas? Absolutely! Billy Hargrove fans are in fact not blind to this.

And that’s how you get mixed message instead of characteristic.

So, how this could be handled? First route (one that is popular with fans): Its Billys father who is racist and that’s why he doesn’t want Lucas around Max. Second route: Billy should be told that racism is in fact bad and get educated on the topic. Please, oh please, to tell him that he is wrong. Educate him. Let him digest and accept this. He is 17-18 years old, there is a high chance that he can change. That happens in real life.

And that could be historically realistic. You know that there should be more racists in Hawkins in the 80s. I know that the show is a work of fiction, but c’mon. Ah, well, already said that this topic is handled weirdly. 

Third, Billys relationship with Max is written poorly, but the sentiment is there.

Their relationship is one of the biggest reasons why i like Billy.

At crisp age of ten a was gifted with sibling. I love them to death. I will become a sinner for them. But I didn’t want a younger sibling. Like. At all. So, I have very complicated feelings towards them that they are not aware off, cause they are ten. And believe me when i say it: getting a sibling at semi-conscious age when you weren’t planing on them is a traumatic experience,  no matter how dumb it sounds. And the fucking frustration of having to look after them is real. There was a couple of years when i was THE fucking babysitter, really exhausting, very anger producing. Props to my parents for understanding and fixing this as soon as they could.

(also had a beef with fourteen year olds at school when i was 16-17,not to demonize twelve to fourteen y.o., but they can be the special kind of annoying)

Both antis and stans had a problem with how Max was written in season 4. For the same reason actually. Because Duffers.

In season two we see that Max and Billy don’t like each other. Ok, great. Then season three Max cares for Billy when he gets possessed and was seemingly very upset when he died. In vol.1 this continuous with the letter (the part that got antis upset) and then suddenly in vol.2 Max says that Billy didn’t deserve to live (where stans got upset). Well i was upset both times. I was upset since season three, because there were no explanation of how we got from one to another. We all understand that Billy and Max had complicated relationship and all of the above can exist! It can be the emotional swing that it is, but when you looking at a swig you can see how it goes from one high to another.

Verdict: rewrite them from the beginning. Show us more. Duffers that’s the visual entertainment you’re giving us. SHOW DON’T TELL

That’s mainly it with the redemption. I mean there is also a fight at Byers, but that;s pretty self-explanatory.

2. MAKE BILLY AN ANTAGONIST WE WOULD ALL LOVE TO HATE

Duffers, you could have made Billy an absolute legend of a asshole. You could make him ridiculous! Let him be not only cliche, but something worse. You have real monsters in your world. Your world has goofy heroes and they are realistic (Murray), why not make an entertaining antagonist?!

But, ah well, Duffers fucked up a cliche. I really don’t how they so successfully failed.

[zelzenik]

my take on the infamous kataang kisses

so i just saw this post that spoke highly of Kataang and on how ATLA deals w consent and what's allowed between partners, and i'm... i'm mad, lol.

this has been spoken on before, but since these bad takes are still floating around on the internet, i feel the need to at least vent/give some sort of rebuttal.

i'm not linking or screenshotting this post, but this is word-for-word what was said regarding Kataang (questionable grammar has been transposed as well):

"One of the many things I adore about atla is how the girls are allowed to and do tell their partners off when they cross a line.... Katara gets upset with Aang for kisses her without her consent, and it's never made out to be overly dramatic or unreasonable, it's framed so that the girls are in the right."

HOW does Kataang properly convey this message??

there's a lot to unpack here. like, a lot

just to start off, yes, i'm aware that not all Kataangers believe that the kisses were consensual and can recognize how problematic (and WRONG) they were. but there are some (many) who do not

for the sake of this rebuttal, we're all going to establish and agree on what happened with the Kataang kisses. personally, in the Cave of Two Lovers episode, i don't believe they kissed - if they had kissed, the creators would've made that known in the show; in the Day of the Black Sun episode, it was clear that Katara was NOT pleased w what went down, same with the Ember Island Players episode; the finale kiss was consensual, however, in my opinion, it made absolutely no sense and came out of nowhere.

this is an address to the following various shippers within the ATLA fandom.

to those who DEFEND Aang's actions toward Katara and JUSTIFY these non-consensual kisses:

don't DO this. these portrayals of murky non-con kisses on television are so harmful!! they perpetuate this whole "nice guy" complex where a guy (or anyone) thinks that he (or they) deserve(s) or can take physical affection from others without their consent/mutual feeling. we have such an awful problem in media concerning these sorts of "nice guys" who wind up taking advantage of women simply due to the fact that they know they're nice and feel that they deserve it.

yes, Aang was a child. yes, he was in an iceberg for like 100 years. i work with plenty of preteens from the ages 10-12, and they've all been taught to respect other people's boundaries, especially when it involves romantic (and depending on how old they are, sexual) encounters; it's worth noting that, at least from my experience, guys are significantly less interested in relationships around this age than girls are!

portraying Aang in a light where he simply takes what he wants from Katara multiple times does a disservice both to him as a character and to all who watched the show without having a clear outside understanding of physical boundaries.

to those who claim that the non-con Kataang kisses are good lessons to others on consent

i might have been able to agree with you had the situations been ADDRESSED within the show! but they were NOT.

the non-con Kataang kisses are not a good example of when a girl has been made uncomfortable by a guy or has been touched nonconsensually by one and stands up for herself because we never have a scene where Katara actually stands up for herself!

between the two non-con Kataang kisses that occurred during the show, not even FRACTION of the show was dedicated toward addressing them!

okay, yes, if you rewatch the show as an older teen or an adult with accurate views on consent, then, yes, those non-con kisses can be an example of how pervasive lack of consent is within our past/current culture

but, for the most part, this show is watched by kids. it's a kids' show. ofc it's grown to be much more beyond a kids' show, and there are so many teens/adults who LOVE the ATLA fandom, and that's totally cool! i'm always anti-harassment and anti-bullying-people-for-enjoying-shows-they-love.

for a show that's primarily marketed to children, though, regardless of the time that it was made in (since the 2000's were far less up to date on consent than we are now in the 2020's), if non-con kisses are included, then they should be addressed.

they can only be good lessons if they're addressed, instead of left hanging and teaching children that such non-con kisses are rewarded.

canonizing Kataang, in a way, validated Aang's blatant ignorance of Katara's boundaries which annoys me to no end.

to those who who say that this behavior was FINE because Kataang canonically dated/married

it's not! it's really freakin not!

do you know how many women experience some form of sexual harassment or assault or rape within their lifetime?? 1 in 6!

and do you know how often these women are unable to do anything about it because the person who attacked them is someone that they love or are involved with?

just because one may be in a relationship with another person doesn't simply excuse this type of behavior.

"no" or "i don't think this is a good idea" or "i'm not feeling this" or "maybe later?" or "i don't feel so good" or "we're in the middle of a war right now" or SILENCE -> NOT CONSENT!!

regardless of your relationship with another person, if they do not respect these boundaries, then they have not respected your damn boundaries.

i don't care if they're your boyfriend or your girlfriend or your husband or your wife or your partner. whatever. if they ignore your boundaries, then they are not respecting you, point blank.

closing

it's no secret that i'm a huge anti Kataanger. i first watched the show as a teenager, and while i initially started the show off loving Kataang, as soon as i hit the non-con kisses, i was immediately turned off from the ship and became a huge Zutara shipper (not even knowing which ship was ultimately endgame but especially loving the dynamic between ZK post-Crystal Catacombs scene).

as someone who's survived a relationship with non-con elements present, i cannot in good conscience ship Kataang because of those non-con kisses.

i love both Aang and Katara too much as characters to see them portrayed in such a way. what hurts the most is that all of these issues COULD have been fixed in the show, if there'd been some sort of reconciliation between Aang and Katara, some sort of encounter where Aang recognized that what he did was wrong and Katara learned that it's okay to say no. but this did not happen. so here i am writing a meta/rant/vent about it.

i understand that this post may not be well received, but this is something i really needed to get off my chest (again) because i hate seeing people praising ATLA for its poor examples of consent within relationships. (it literally drives me crazy.)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook vs Robert Bork

Unless you're a certain kind of conservative, you probably haven't heard of Robert Bork, but he's one of the most important people you've never heard of. The best way to understand Bork is that he was Ronald Reagan's court sorcerer.

Reagan was an empty vessel with the hands of ruthless plutocrats shoved up his asshole*, operating him like a hand puppet for their collective will to power.

He served as a kind of dowsing rod for policies that would transfer wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

*Hence the polyps

That dowsing rod pointed straight at Bork. Bork was an alternate history writer, a fabulist with a unique and wildly improbable theory of antitrust statutes: that if you studied the Sherman Act and the Clayton Act with Qanon-style fervor, you'd find hidden messages in them.

Specifically, you would discover that the lawmakers who drafted, debated, amended and passed these laws thought monopolies were good, actually. They were only concerned with a small and possibly mythical minority of monopolies that were "harmful."

Not just any harms: Bork said that these ancient sages were worried about *consumer* harms, which, practically speaking, means monopolies that use their power to raise prices. This, he said, was the only thing that the government should step in to prevent.

Since it is nearly impossible to prove that a given merger or tactic would result in higher prices before the fact, and *also* it's nearly impossible to prove that a price rise after the fact was attributable to monopolism we should probably just forget about antitrust.

Reagan loved this. By shifting antitrust's focus from *democratic* harms (like reducing choice, distorting regulation, hurting workers, etc) to *consumer* harms, he could demote "citizens" (who have a role in shaping policies) to "consumers" - mere ambulatory wallets.

Reagan tried to get Bork a seat on the Supreme Court, but there was a little problem. Bork had committed a string of disgusting crimes while serving as Nixon's Solicitor General, and the Senate refused to confirm him for a seat.

(Conservatives were outraged that committing crimes at the highest level of government disqualified you from the Supreme Court and coined the term "Borked" to describe rich, powerful people who had to face the unfair prospect of being held accountable for their actions)

But Bork - along with the Chicago School economists - went on to completely revolutionize the world's conception of anti-monopoly enforcement, as neoliberal leaders all over the world (Thatcher, Mulroney, Pinochet, Kohl, etc) took up his theories and tuned them into policy.

Bork was a fringe figure, but he was preaching a gospel that stood to make the richest people on Earth *so much richer*, and they bankrolled the hell out of his theories.

For example, 40% of US federal judges have attended "continuing education" seminars at an annual lush Florida junket where they are initiated into the bizarre world of "consumer harm" theory.

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/10/18/law-and-economics/

40 years later, monopolism has surged in every industry, from bottlecaps to pharma, from poultry to pro wrestling, from eyeglasses to emergency rooms, from oil to car parts, from music to publishing to movies to online services to telecoms.

All driven by mergers, all resulting in higher prices (so much for "consumer harm") all wildly distorting of public policy (the decision to let Boeing self-certify the 737 Max is repeated in thousands of ways across hundreds of industries), all brutal news for workers.

It's a disaster, but it's one that we have been powerless to avert or address for so long as "consumer harm" ruled antitrust enforcement.

Finally, that's changing.

In 2019, Dina Srinivasan published a landmark paper: "The Antitrust Case Against Facebook," which made *incredibly* clever arguments showing that FB's democratic harms were also consumer harms, meaning FB could be sued without first undoing Borkism.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3247362

But the magic of this work was in revealing the poverty of the consumer harm standard: she laid out the innumerable ways in which FB is bad for society and showed how a sliver of these harms were technically illegal, raising the question: why isn't *all* this stuff illegal?

Today, Facebook was hit with *two* antitrust suits, one from the FTC and the other from almost every US state (including California!).

The complaints say that FB's acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp were anticompetitive.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/9/22158483/facebook-antitrust-lawsuit-anti-competition-behavior-attorneys-general

Of course, they *were* anticompetitive. We know, because Zuck - who specializes in tripping over his own dick - sent out memos extolling the acquisitions' anticompetitive advantages, proving he hasn't learned a thing since he traded incriminating IMs about founding FB.

https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/

The complaints build on Srinivasan's work and they carry the same flavor: claiming "consumer harms" in the acquisitions, but winking and nodding toward a broader, more democracy-focused (and less consumer-focused) critique of monopoly.

It's a weird tightrope act: they want to win, so their argument is designed to balance on the single, fragile hair that borkism stretches across the chasm of monopoly enforcement, but they wanna make sure we see that big sturdy bridge of nonbork antitrust right there.

If there was any doubt, it was erased by the remedies demanded in the complaints. The prosecutors aren't asking for money damages - a fine is a price, after all - instead, they want FB to sell off the companies it bought for illegal purposes.

And they want FB to get regulatory approval for future acquisitions (though the states will let it buy companies for less than $10m without approval). These are not "consumer harm" remedies - they're "democracy" remedies, aimed at removing the company's source of power.

Facebook has stood up a website explaining why it's a cuddly mom-and-pop business that's being bullied by mean government meanies:

https://about.fb.com/building-to-compete/

The argument's pretty similar to the one laid out in a leaked memo in October:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#dnr

Basically: it would be really hard for us to unwind these illegal, anticompetitive mergers. Seriously, it would cost a bundle and take so much work!

This is an unserious argument, and it shows how badly FB has misgauged the mood.

All of FB's arguments are garbage, really. Take the line that ex-British-Deputy-PM-turned-FB-salesdroid Nick Clegg has been peddling: "STOP TRYING TO BREAK UP FACEBOOK OR THE CHINESE WILL WIN!"

https://www.cnet.com/news/facebooks-nick-clegiden-must-unite-global-powers-to-shape-internet-amid-china-threat

The company's best arguments are about "market definition" - to claim that they don't have a monopoly because of all the competitors they face, provided you define FB's market broadly enough.

Like, "Here at Facebook, we are in the 'using computers' business. Now, just think of how much time you spend using a computer without interacting with FB! Your car has a computer and it's not on FB! How can you say we have a monopoly?!"

If you want to see someone making this argument as well as it can possibly be made and literally getting laughed at by a University of Chicago (!) audience, check out this debate from 2019:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Jp-GJ9LM0

Forcing FB to divest itself of Whatsapp and Instagram is a no-brainer. The company lied to secure those mergers, broke the promises it made to get permission to make them, and the penalty for that should be unwinding those mergers.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-minimum-standard-prudence-merger-scrutiny

And if FB fights this for a decade the way IBM fought its antitrust action, fine - IBM outspent the entire DoJ antitrust division every year for 12 years (Bork called it "antitrust's Vietnam"), but even though Big Blue wasn't broken up, they had their spirit broken.

It was fear of another tangle with antitrust regulators that caused IBM to sit idly by while Phoenix cloned the PC ROMs and created the PC clone industry, which became the US computing industry.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

And it was the same fear that caused IBM to hire an outside company to make the OS for its PCs, getting a couple of nerds named Paul Allen and Bill Gates to supply one for them.

IBM's 12 years of antitrust hell focused the attention of every tech giant of the age, letting them know what was on their horizon if they acted like IBM had. It created the US tech industry.

Today, VCs call the businesses that Big Tech dominates "the kill zones" because they know that monopolists have the market power to destroy any startup that tries to compete with them.

There is an entire - better, more pluralistic - tech industry that's been suppressed by Big Tech. If FB and Goog and Apple and the other tech giants spend the next decades throwing billions at the FTC and the states attorneys general, it will be money well-spent.

Because it will be money that these companies don't get to spend destroying the next wave of tech companies, co-ops, and platforms.

[tundrainafrica]

I just find it so unfortunate that some aggressive shippers ruin a ship and a character for so many people. A popular Erwin x Levi artist got hate comments by some Levihan shippers and so many people are bashing it now on twitter because of that. Its just so sad considering LH was one of the most beautiful and fun dynamics in such a depressing story. Even Hange is getting hated because LH is pretty much the default ship involving them and it just breaks my heart :(

Twitter has some great content and I actually hang around AOT twt for some quick content. It’s like every time I’m feeling fast food I just hang there, like a few tweets, read a few soc med AUs etc etc. 

But god. It’s a mess man. Last year I was constantly on twitter to be honest and it left me in a bad mood everyday because people are just being assholes for little to no reason really but just to put themselves in what they believe is a morally higher ground from their peers. And people just like fighting and the funny part is no opinions are actually heard, no views are actually exchanged. It’s just “you dont agree with me so you’re a bad person.” 

Ad hominem attacks are just everywhere.

So I like staying in my small little hole and just talking to myself there and just liking the content of the Levihan people I actually follow. I see stuff I don’t agree with but I’ve kinda accepted that a lot of people there are just there to push an agenda because really if people were that open minded, I don’t think lynching and call out culture would have gotten this far.  

I’ve used this same analogy so many times but I feel like in Twitter, people are just scrambling for some sort of moral high ground. Because of that, it is completely useless to engage in discourse there because one thing I noticed is most people who are vocal there already have a set stance on something and the fact that they’re ready to just bully anyone who stands in the way of their agenda, just makes convincing them out of the agenda impossible and a complete waste of time. And there are two issues in particular among the LH community which are really unsettling for me: the ship wars and within the LH community, the gender war. 

Ship wars

I find the ship wars unnecessary because really what makes a superior ship? 

Probability of being canon? How much fuel they were given in canon? Healthiness of the relationship?

The truth is people ship for many reasons. But really, who are we to judge how a person goes about the way they decide to participate in the fandom and ship? As long as it is something they keep within personal spaces and do it responsibly, I don’t think it’s our business to judge someone or lynch them. The important thing is people are able to not be an asshole about it. People can ship the most questionable shit, create the most dubious content, as long as that person is respecting boundaries and putting the right tags and trigger warnings, who are we to call them out right?

Of course I prefer LH over other Levi ships personally but is there really a need to attack other people’s ships about it? I probably do poke fun at Ereri because until now I still do not get why people enjoy Ereri in the first place but why destroy the fandom experience for people just because we don’t agree with them.

My general intention behind shipping Levihan is because above anything I value the healthiness in the relationship and the things people can learn about love and relationships by analyzing Levihan’s dynamics and headcanoning them. I love Levi and Hange’s dynamics to death and I like digging deeper into them and pulling out lessons from it about love, life and relationships and just sharing them with people which is my whole point for participating in this fandom in the first place. 

But in the end, ships are just preferences. Some people like getting a kick out of dubious pairings and toxic relationships. As long as they consume these responsibly and don’t emulate them in real life, I see no problem in it. 

The toxic ones are the ones who actively crucify people for preferences. 

The Gender War

One really disturbing thing I found about twitter is that deciding to use ‘she’ to refer to Hange can get you lynched. I found a few accounts that would reblog tweets where someone says something like “Yes, Hange, Queen” which gets retweeted by some NB Hange folk who say stuff like “Unfollow this transphobe now.” 

Because apparently deciding to headcanon Hange as a woman or just preferring to use ‘she’ makes people a transphobe. Which is personally just... really disturbing. I don’t believe words like homophobic, transphobic, racist should be so easily thrown around unless there is hard evidence to believe that someone is really one of the epithets above like for example: 

There are things I find completely assholish like of course, refusing to use someone’s preferred pronouns if they ask you. 

But Hange is fictional and Hange is a gift to the fandom.And I don’t even think the issue about Hange’s gender should have ever reached this far. The only thing Yams ever said was that Hange is just not the type to be tied down to a single gender. 

And policing Hange’s gender and saying NOPE SHE’S NON BINARY USE THEY Is just counterintuitive to the whole idea that she’s a free spirit. In the end, Hange as a character wouldn’t have given a fuck whether people called her a they, she or even a he. 

And yeah, it’s frustrating really that these two issues I just discussed above are ruining Hange as a character for a lot of people and consequently, ruining Levi x Hange as a ship. 

Apparently, a lot of people are closet LxH shippers or closet Hange stans because the moment they tweet something about Hange, there are people who will attack them. If people refer to Hange as they, they get attacked. If people refer to Hange as she, they get attacked. There are so many antis apparently to the LxH ship, some apparently are jealous because ‘it’s the closest to canon’ while others just apparently deem it a toxic ship because of our own internal gender war.  

There’s no winning really. And to be honest, there’s nothing I can do either and I don’t want to engage in any arguments in twitter if at the end of it, I’m just gonna end up wasting my time listening to ad hominem attacks directed at me just for not agreeing with someone in a fandom related matter. . 

I’ve said my piece about the Hange gender issue so many times. There are NBs who use she. There are those who use they. Being female and being NB aren’t mutually exclusive. You can be both at the same time.

But yeah, we still have people being assholes about this and pushing factually wrong agendas. I love research and I have been writing research papers and metas for a lot of things even before I started this blog in the first place. And I eventually learned that the world is so complex that no opinion is completely and absolutely correct. 

And ideally, opinions shouldn’t be made so easily. 

Don’t get me wrong. I believe everyone is entitled to a preference and when I say preference I mean the type of food they like, the type of wallpaper they like. 

But no one is entitled to a moral judgement or opinion just for existing and when I say opinion I mean questions on morals, on what’s right or what isn’t, what is or what should be. Every single person has the responsibility to research, hear both sides of a discourse and understanding them before deciding for themselves what’s right. And this is why hearing accusations that someone is ‘transphobic,’ ‘homophobic’ blah blah over how we hc a character just really does not sit well with me. 

Passing moral judgement on someone requires discernment, deep thought and lots and lots of evidence. But yeah this is a philosophical question and a political question so I ain’t going to delve into it here.

Because, in the end, fandoms are preferences. The way we choose to participate in a fandom and create content are preferences more than anything.

So what? (Btw, if you reached all the way here, thank you for listening to me ramble lol and sorry if you weren’t expecting this type of ramble)

I know I’ve just been rambling a lot up there for a lot of reasons but really what message do I wanna give? 

Fandoms are preferences more than anything so I don’t even believe that there should be a discussion on moral judgement here. People can have the weirdest kinks, the most questionable preferences but as long as they aren’t going around romanticizing abuse, beating up people in real life, killing them and lying in real life, who are we to judge?

Even if someone says they have a rape kink and abuse kink when it comes to fics, as long as they acknowledge it’s something they shouldn’t emulate in real life, as long as they can keep an adult conversation about it, I think these people are generally kinder and more pleasant overall than people who force their healthy canon ship and lynch everyone for having more questionable preferences. 

Ship and let ship. Live and let live. Headcanon and let headcanon. If a person has a differing opinion, listen. (Or really, if you just don’t want to deal with listening to differing opinions coz you’re just gonna get stressed, don’t lynch? Don’t send hate? And just ignore it?)

Ask yourself. Does the person acknowledge that it isn’t right in real life? Do they acknowledge if they emulate it in real life it has the potential to be harmful?

Honestly, all I wanna do is just let people stan Levi and Hange however they want to. There are obviously hcs I dont agree with. But in the LH community we just all love Levihan, let’s not ruin the fandom experience for anyone. In the AOT community, we all just love AOT, let’s not ruin it for anyone. Let’s not hurt anyone, attack them etc. 

If someone doesn’t agree and they can hold an adult conversation about it and they don’t emulate these toxic opinions in real life and they recognize that there is the option to just agree to disagree, why don’t we just listen and engage in this discourse to learn more about other people and to build more perspectives?

Because really it isn’t the questionable hcs or the multiple genders which leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. It’s the people who just go straight to attacking instead of actually considering that there’s potential for discourse and there’s potential to ‘agree to disagree’ because in the end, fandom discourse is a question of preference more than moral judgement. 

It’s easier said than done really. But personally for me, I just try to keep my fandom experience as non toxic as possible while at the same time as mentally fulfilling as possible. I enjoy discourse, I like hearing differing opinions and I really believe with something as light and as inconsequential as fandoms as our common ground, we can learn to peacefully co-exist despite differing opinions on what the best ship is or what Hange’s gender is. 

Note: I won’t delve too much on the Hange gender issue here because I have pending asks about those which I’ll answer in one go, but I really believe that both they and she are valid pronouns for Hange. 

I have a general preference for ‘she’ because it’s just easier to read. But personally I don’t think too much about the gender identity issue because it’s really just too complex for me and i like spending my time thinking of other headcanons about Hange than gender and people who push the Hange is nb agenda and people who push the Hange is a female agenda and just insult each other and lynch each other are both equally unsettling. 

[dramionediscussion]

I honestly believe that antis don’t know what dramione is actually about, and believe we just ship a bully with his victim–and refuse to deviate from their reasoning.

But dramione is NOT about that, because literally NO ONE in the dramione fandom (except a few bad apples) would ship a childhood bully draco with hermione. We understand that yes, doing that would make it toxic/abusive. 

draco’s racism was taught to him, just like the weasley children were taught that muggles and wizards and muggleborns were equal. the first eleven years of his life, he grew up with lucius malfoy as a role model–one of the chief blood supremacists. we know that canonically draco worshipped his dad. he learnt that muggleborns were scum of the earth. why would he question that? when we’re kids, we don’t question what our parents teach us–we just assume they’re right and that’s how the world works.

the same concept applies to his classism. the first thing he said to ron was “red hair. hand-me-down robes. you must be a weasley.” now, keep in mind that this is the first time draco is meeting ron. how is an eleven-year-old who’s never met the other child before, know exactly who the child is, and how the child would look?

again, the parents. lucius malfoy worked with arthur weasley in the ministry. he would obviously go home and complain about the “blood traitor and his poverty” to narcissa, and draco would probably overhear, and assume that that’s how you treat the weasleys, because they’re “bad people” in his father’s book, and by extension, his. 

the second book: at the start, lucius puts draco down because his marks were lower than hermione’s. draco is obviously put off, but he understands why–he’s a pureblood. he’s a malfoy. he’s supposed to be doing better than the muggleborns, because according to his father, they don’t deserve to attend hogwarts. later, he calls hermione a mudblood–again, where would he learn that type of language? definitely not the internet, because that didn’t exist. that takes us to his parents. 

now, the question probably is why wouldn’t draco see other non-racist people in school and change? because he didn’t hang out with other houses. slytherins are very isolated, and usually pitted against the rest of the school. draco’s friends, children of death eaters, were probably raised in the same way he was. if his parents taught him pureblood supremacy, and his friends’ parents taught them the same thing, why would he think to question it? 

draco malfoy was taught right from wrong, but those values just happened to be the opposite of what everyone else, like the weasleys, was taught. but just as the weasleys went in knowing that draco was wrong for believing in them, draco went in knowing that the weasleys were wrong for believing in theirs. 

in the third book, I think the whole buckbeak incident was realistic. if a child provokes a dog, and the dog bites it, the dog is the one that’s put down no matter what the child did. I’m not saying it’s “right”–I definitely thin draco 100% deserved to be punched by hermione–but it’s how the world currently works–maybe it will change later but for now, it’s reality. 

and as for the slytherins’ hatred towards hagrid–I’d say it was justified, because hagrid himself was no sweetheart to them. don’t get me wrong–I love hagrid, but he didn’t like the slytherins–you can see this when he talks about them in the first book. again, the books are from harry’s pov, so even if hagrid didn’t like the slytherins and said something about them, it would be biased. but yes, the slytherins often took it too far. 

the fourth book–draco’s bullying wasn’t even that bad. he actually warned hermione to get away at the world cup, in his own twisted way. he accidentally hit her with a curse meant for harry. he made “potter stinks” badges–juvenile things. 

now for the fifth. let me get this absolutely straight: I hate umbridge. I hate the inquistorial squad. I hate that the slytherins joined them. 

but we have to go back to slytherin inequality for this. the slytherins are booed at quidditch matches. the whole school, including most of the teachers and their headmaster, are against them. in fact, I could say that the only teacher that favoured the house was snape, and have canonical evidence. it’s basically the slytherins vs the rest of the school. 

now, comes along a lady that actually seems to favour slytherins. for the first time, they’re made to feel important. she wants to form a little group to catch their worst enemy in an illegal act. who would say no? 

but again–the golden trio was no less. they purposely excluded the slytherins from the DA. forget malfoy and his cronies. not EVERY slytherin would be devoted to umbridge/malfoy. but the trio didn’t invite ANY of them–and not all their parents were death eaters. 

now, put yourself in their place. imagine your school formed a club excluding your house. why would you protect them, instead of catching them? they had no reason to protect the DA, so they didn’t. 

in the sixth book–I think at this point, draco’s grown out of his blood prejudice and realised that it isn’t a game. his father, probably the person he expects the most to protect him is in azkaban. voldemort has his mum, and will kill her if he doesn’t murder the wizarding world’s most powerful wizard. but why did he continue his discrimination? 

do you really think that draco malfoy, bully and blood supremacist for five years, suddenly stopped bullying muggleborns, that word wouldn’t reach his house? his friends/housemates would tell their death eater parents, and somehow, it would reach his father, or worse–voldemort, who would just find it an excuse to kill his mum. 

but admittedly, he didn’t bully the trio that much that year, and I think he called hermione a mudbblood only once–at the top of the astronomy tower, when he was trying to kill dumbledore. 

also dumbledore KNEW that draco malfoy had been ordered to murder him. he knew who had been making those attempts the entire year. and then five minutes before the death eaters got them, he offered protection. draco was expected to make a life-changing, life-threatening decision in five minutes? when he didn’t even know whether he could trust the order? for all he knew, they could hold his family hostage to draw voldemort out. 

but even then, he began to lower his wand, but it was too late. 

IMHO, I think draco only referred to her as “mudblood granger” at that time as a last-ditch attempt to constrain to his father’s beliefs–which would be VERY advantageous to him at that point, because then he would be able to find a reason to murder dumbledore. but we all know he wasn’t able to do it. 

in the seventh book, he refuses to identify harry, even though it’s obvious he recognises him and his family could gain EVERYTHING–but that’s a flimsy redemption arc at best. he stands by while hermione’s being tortured, yes, but that’s because it’s bellatrix lestrange–probably the most feared death eater of all time. would you do anything? I think not. 

draco malfoy was brought up in a different way, having different beliefs ingrained into him. do you actually blame a child for doing what his father said, when the child should have been old enough to make his own choices? do you still blame that child for having been exposed to only one sort of right their whole lives, and having a biased opinion because they were never taught to see from a different perspective? and do you still blame that boy, despite everything he’s faced, that he never went through with it? 

people who say “draco had a choice and he made the wrong one” are just wrong. what kinda choice would they make if a genocidal maniac was sitting at their dinner table, holding their mum hostage, until they killed the president of their country? 

 to me, I think draco and ron were both very insecure people, though for different reasons, and just had different ways of showing it. ron cut people off when he thought they were going to succeed without him, and draco made comments about the other person’s insecurities, probably to make himself feel better. ron was insecure about harry’s fame, but since he was harry’s best friend, he just had to put up with it (until the 4th book). draco had no such obligations. 

and to say that draco malfoy isn’t redeemable, is saying that people who mess up when they’re kids, will remain that way for the rest of their lives. it’s sending a message to all young people out there telling them the consequences of making a mistake–no one will like them. 

I’m not “excusing” draco’s racism. he was a piece of shit, plain and simple. but I’d say 98% of that is because of the way he was brought up. 

also isn’t it the whole point that we want people to wake up and realise their mistakes? half of america would have LOVED for donald trump to get up one day and realise that he’s a racist misogynist. ofc it wouldn’t change the past, but it would change the future.

now, onto the dramione argument. 

first off, saying that hermione wouldn’t forgive draco for the past is going against every aspect of her character. she had a soft spot for kreacher, the house-elf that grew up in a racist household and was therefore racist and called her and ron “mudblood” and “blood traitor” (quite similar to draco, actually). she understood where he was coming from, and why he was the way he is, and ultimately didn’t care. after that, how can you say that she wouldn’t forgive draco for having beliefs and values ingrained into him from when he was a child? 

second, who is the real enemy in HP? yes, you could say voldemort, but it’s more about what he represents, which is prejudice. having draco, a former blood supremacist and the son and nephew of death eaters, getting together with hermione, a muggleborn girl, would show that he’s thrown his beliefs out of the window. it’s his character growth and how he matures through the war and its aftermath. 

putting draco and hermione together as kids without any change to their characters is toxic and abusive, no doubt about it. but that’s not what dramione is about.

even in hogwarts fics like isolation, what the room requires, and clean, the authors make sure that he repents. they make sure to explicitly write his character arc, and to show that he is no longer a bully or blood supremacist. 

hermione is NOT draco’s redemption, since canonically he shows signs of awakening, if not actual repentence. she’s the conclusion of his redemption. it’s officially showing the world and society that he is no longer a blood purist. 

dramione isn’t about crazy fans thinking it’s adorable for a bully and a victim to fall for each other.

dramione is about change. and if you believe that people can’t change, that’s on you.

———-

Edit:

I agree with most of the points you’ve made except for the second paragraph. The majority of Dramione fans do indeed ship Hermione with redeemed Draco, but there’s nothing wrong with reading fics in which their relationship is toxic (I do that every once in a while) because neither Hermione nor Draco is a real person and you can put them in all types of circumstances. They’re both fictional characters and thus can’t be hurt.

- AgnMag

[rpbetter]

Hey there, check out this pinned post first!

Thanks for visiting Roleplay Better, where I believe that you can fucking do better! That kind of language, however, is why it is important for you to read this post before proceeding.

This blog and its posts are meant for an adult RPing audience; be over legal, adult age in the USA, 18+. Do not interact by submitting, asking, reblogging, commenting, or liking unless you are over eighteen years of age. By interacting with RPB or me, Vespertine, you are assumed to be following this rule. If you are breaking this rule, you will be blocked.

I have that rule because this blog can/will/does address topics inappropriate for a younger audience. Those can include, but are not limited to:

not safe for work - violence, injury, sexual language, smut, substance use

“dark topics” and themes like violence, unhealthy relationships, mental illness, trauma, graphic injury, dubious consent, substance use, and so forth addressed realistically

foul, sexual, and otherwise “Adult” language

 unpopular opinions and approaches about writing, RP, fandoms

“negativity” since literally anything can be, and my whole point here isn’t about holding back; it is likely that, at some point, in some post or another, a shoe will fit you-you need to be mature enough to handle that without taking it as a personal attack on you

images and links that may contain things inappropriate for a younger audience

this blog is founded upon the idea that fiction has reflections in reality, but that fiction does not utterly equate to reality. You should write with realism, your characters should be people in their own right, and you should absolutely be addressing many popular topics responsibly, which is to say realistically. I do not support or otherwise condone purity culture, so while realism is a big deal here, fiction = reality arguments are a no

seriously, you have no idea how fucking salty I am! I try to be fair, reasonable, and mellow with everyone, but it can and does come out.

This blog tags for common, major triggers, but it is not for those easily triggered or particularly sensitive. By proceeding, you take responsibility for yourself...like a mature adult. I expect you to utilize blacklist, unfollow, and block. Tag format is simple, it is literally just the word in most cases, with “cw” and “tw” added to particularly common things. Example, a post containing a breakdown of forms of dubcon will be tagged #dubcon #dubious consent. If that was specifically of a sexual nature, since tumblr is unfriendly to using Not Safe For Work now, I will be using #notsafe for sexual topics. In the event that this needs to change, it will be posted about, the previous tag left intact, so that you may update your blacklist.

You are always welcome to send me an ask or private message requesting a particular trigger be tagged for you. I try to check blogs I see following, especially if I follow back, so that I can tag what you require. However, I’m a person, I’m an ND, ill, busy person though, I do make mistakes!

If you find yourself desirous of telling me to tag in a hateful way, don’t. You will not be responded to with an apology and kindness. Do not be rude, it’s uncalled for when informing someone of a problem or making a request.

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Don’t tumblr message me. Use the inbox or submit.

Due to recent events, I am changing this rule. It’s hard for me to receive messages unexpectedly, and I hate to imply that I’ll be able to get to these quicker because it isn’t the truth. Quicker, better responses come from the inbox. However, there have been too many incidents lately in which people needed to speak privately and had to make that a request. If you’re having a problem and need to vent, request sensitive advice, etc.? It’s alright, go ahead and drop me a PM, y’all. I’ll get back to you as soon as I am able. Please, do not be angry with me if I respond to inbox things or my queue is running! You’re important to me, I just might not have the requisite social cognition and energy you deserve at that time.

Aggressive inbox messages will be responded to in kind. I don’t care if you are on anon or not, if you haven’t an ounce of polite communication skills, I won’t have them either. This is not a “we don’t publish anon hate” blog.

I highly encourage asks and submissions on any and all RP topics, and it’s perfectly alright to be salty as fuck in them, you can totally vent here, but don’t take out your frustration on me or be demanding of me. I am always happy to help with information, advice, or just a response to your venting-it’s important to know someone is listening. However, it may take me a few days to a week to get to you, be patient. 

If you are going to vent, leave out usernames. This isn’t a callout or burnbook blog. It’s fine to state characters and fandoms, but if this becomes a problem, it’ll have to change. I don’t want this becoming a salt blog for one or two fandoms I very likely can’t even stand. Practice the fine art of alluding to things, its good experience for your writing! Besides, RPC problems are RPC problems, I promise. It might feel like it’s just your fandom, but there is something relatable in all corners.

I will not overly police comments. Keep the slurs and shit out of it, though. If there is an issue going on pertaining to a serious instance of hate speech, or behavior I, personally, deem as too inappropriate and/or immature to be taking place on my post, I will step in. Otherwise, I expect everyone to be adults in the comments and reblogs too. If you want to argue with each other, that’s your business. If you want to argue with me, I’m not sorry in advance.

Addition to the above: this is not a blog in which it will be tolerated that commentators or those submitting with the URLS are targeted for callouts, shaming, or other instances of bullying. No, I cannot make those people stop bothering you by blocking them, but the least I can do is address that by shutting down their access to this blog and it’s posts by blocking on the URLs I have for them. And I will. Fuck that “we can’t be responsible for” shit. It’s my blog, it’s my content I’m putting out there, I’m not going to just ignore shit like what went down over on COAR, thanks. Not. Cool.

This is definitely not a place for:

people who think giving muses labels, including top/bottom “dynamics,” is a good substitute for character traits, personality, and development

those with no reading comprehension skills

folks dependent upon aesthetics and aesthetics-based purple prose as filler for actual writing

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people who are going to tack onto my posts shit like, “it’s okay, OP, you can say x character.” Trust me, if I were talking about one character, I fucking would name drop them, don’t bring me into your fandom drama, I doubt I know or want to know who that anime guy is who looks like 12 other anime guys to me.

About Vespertine

You can call me that, Vespertine. I’d rather you didn’t go with Vesper, but as it is unfortunately so likely to happen, I won’t feed you to the dogs over it either. RPB Mun is also acceptable.

I’m alright with either she/her or he/him, they/them is also fine. Apparently, that was big enough clue-in for the poor reading comp crowd, so while I feel it is not of importance, I’m nonbinary, yes.

Late 30′s, chronically ill but still working adult with neurodivergence. I’m both busy and Busy, and always sick. This limits my brain power and ability to be here. I have an active RP blog that I won’t be sharing to keep responsible distance. That is always going to be my priority, it is my primary hobby.

Please, don’t tumblr message me totally random things if we don’t have that kind of relationship! I’m too ill and busy, and it really fucks my nerves to have a bunch of messages/have to suddenly interact socially with people. Don’t do it. Use my inbox, use the submit, comment on posts. I cannot do random messages of “hey” and so forth.

I only do written RP, don’t expect me to understand much of anything from tabletop. I’ve RPed for the last 23 years consistently, on every platform from AOL chats to forums to messengers and here. I also don’t do RP in discord, so I’m sorry, but I can’t advise you much on anything with a word count, except to stop it for serious RP. Other than that, I promise you that I’ve seen the trends, the drama, the fandoms. I can give a lot of advice and perspective on a wide range of topics, situations, and characters! When I don’t have a clue at all, I’ll try to do enough research to give you an answer.

Do I come off as a horrible, strict asshole? I do! I’m not going to say that I am just a shy bean who is more scared of you than you are me. I’m not. I’m honestly feral, but have common decency, compassion, and sense. All of which are lacking in the general RPC. So, if you can inbox/common/otherwise interact with anyone else on this site, you can totally handle me!

Honesty and openness are policies.

And in the spirit of that, I repeat; you can fucking do better, tumblr RPC!

[kingbennyboyyy]

benny’s RWBY rewrite: the white fang

so this is something that’s been on my mind for a while, and i’ve been trying to formulate my thoughts about it. the white fang in RWBY, as it stands now, is a really poorly thought-out approximation of the black panther party, an actual organization that fought for the equal rights and the equal treatment of black people in the united states. the black panther party’s actions have been long pathologized by white society and academia at large, and have been falsely contrasted with the ideals and teachings of MLK. the false dichotomy of violent and non-violent action is reductive at best, and blatantly racist at worst. while there is a whole fuckton to be said about the real-life consequences of these discourses, i’d like to focus on their impact on the writing of RWBY. i’d also like to talk about how i’d change how the white fang looks in order to make things a little less uncomfortable.

content warning for real and fictional racism, antiblackness, violence against marginalized people, and discussions of white supremacy under the cut.

so, the white fang. the RWBY wiki describes the group as “ a Faunus organization in Remnant. Founded following the Faunus Rights Revolution, the White Fang was initially a peaceful activist organization created to improve relations between Humans and Faunus and improve the civil rights of the latter.” more concisely, i would describe the white fang as a faunus rights activist group, whose modes of operation have changed over time. within the story, after the peaceful leader ghira stepped down, the faction as a whole took a notable nose-dive into violence. but why did this happen? why was the white fang written like this?

first of all, all of the following talk comes from the subjective opinion of one black genderqueer writer. i am not the voice of the entirety of my community, and i can bet that there are people who disagree with me. i’m just here to say my piece.

that said, i think that the white fang’s writing grossly misunderstands what oppression looks like to marginalized people. the RWBY writing team obviously wanted to handle racism in some kind of way- they wrote racism into the story. however, it’s incredibly clear that most of the writers don’t really understand how deeply racism runs in given societies. the oppression of the faunus is clearly mirroring the oppression of black people in the united states, and yet there’s little to this oppression other than surface-level discrimitation. ghira’s direction of the white fang doesn’t seem to understand that personal prejudice is a very small aspect of the continued oppression of the faunus. alarmingly, it’s only when “radicals” such as sienna khan and adam taurus take control that actual, structural avenues of racism are acknowledged. this has several issues.

- whether the RWBY writers intended this or not, attributing the acknowledgement of actual systemic issues to violent radicals is inherently a really bad call. the dismantling and destruction of racist structures is the baseline of most avenues of anti-racist thought, but by only assigning these beliefs to people like adam “kill all humans” taurus, you’re telling the audience that only people like adam “i’m gonna kill all my ex’s loved ones b/c she hurt my feelings” taurus think that these things are a reality. make no mistake, institutional racism and structural violence against marginalized people is a thing. by giving these ideas to violent actors, you’re sending a really shitty message. 

- another thing to note is the role of fear in the white fang’s activity. blake is quoted as saying that under adam taurus, people only pretend to respect the faunus because they’re afraid of the white fang. this is also bad. there is an actual line of racist thought that thinks that people who just want equality are a bunch of thugs using intimidation tactics to get special treatment, and by affirming this in-canon, you’re giving credence to these beliefs. in addition, adam’s literal desire to put humans in cages and make them go extinct is also an actual white supremacist talking point. actual fucking white supremacists go on about how the white race is going extinct as a means to manipulate otherwise well-meaning people into committing acts of violence against marginalized people. but RWBY says, “no, the white fang actually wants humans to be wiped off the face of the earth.” i shouldn’t have to tell you how buck fucking wild this is. 

- there’s also the role of violence in activism. the black panther party has long been attributed with senseless and anger-fueled violence against white people, but this assessment of the party is completely false. in truth, the arming of black panthers was a direct response to overpolicing and police violence against black people. the black panther party advocated self-defense, and acted as its own protective force for black americans. they had guns so that they could protect themselves from the cops, who were assaulting and killing them in absurd numbers. if the RWBY writers wanted to draw parallels between the white fang and the black panther party, they could have very easily done so by actually doing their research.

the question becomes, is it at all possible to have members of the white fang as actual villains within the RWBY universe? i’d say that it is possible, but it has to be done very carefully. there’s several things that have to be kept in mind here, and the entire understanding of faunus oppression has be to restructured in order for this to work. i’ll outline what i would change below:

- firstly, there needs to be more evidence of faunus marginalization past the surface level. this could be evident in a phethora of ways, anywhere from the trend of faunus hiding their animal traits being more common (an important thing to note is how accessible passing as a human is to the faunus), to beacon actually having much more bias than humans are aware of. blake highlighting these biases would be extremely helpful in establishing how deeply anti-faunus sentiments run. the only racists being cartoon bullies and shady billionaires rings too closely to the sentiments that white people have about racism. this is also a comparatively minor gripe, but the whole “becoming the monster people think they are” mask thing is just so... dumb. there are legitimate reasons for faunus to hide their identities during protests, and pathologizing this is just such a shitty thing to do.

- next, the white fang as a whole cannot be a terrorist organization in actuality. people can believe that the white fang are a bunch of terrorists, sure, but this can’t be the truth. for example, it would make perfect sense for weiss to think such things. her being the heiress to the schnee dust company, being fed stories about scary faunus with weapons trying to hurt her and her family would make sense. but the stereotypes humans have about faunus activism can’t be true. in addition, there should at the very least be more than one faunus activist party. the fact that there’s only one in the entire continent of remnant is so fucking stupid. you don’t think that some group of people would be dissatisfied and go and do something else?

- adam and sienna cannot be the leaders of the entire white fang. i’m sorry, but it’s just way too fucking easy for racists to say “oh, the entire thing’s just an excuse for (insert minority here) to ransack property and hurt people!” ilia could have been promoted after ghira stepped down. it would be interesting to see how she uses her ability to pass as human to actually make some changes for the people of menagerie, and the power structures that led to its creation. sienna has the potential to be someone disillusioned by strictly pacifist ideals of ghira, but she can act more in accordance to the actual black panther party, advocating for self-defense and knowing one’s rights. the arming and training of faunus, as frightening as it may be to the humans in power, cannot and should not be depicted at the beginnings of terrorism. there’s potential for actual discussion of the effectiveness of pacifism and respectability politics in activism, but all of that was overshadowed by the gross villification and oversimplification of the white fang.

- finally, adam. i think that adam is able to remain mostly the same, with a few adjustments to the environment around him (along with the previously discussed changes). i don’t think that adam should be the only person whose violent oppression is readily visible. the trope of the oppressed person going “mad with vengeance” is just adding fuel to the fire of the belief that those who speak out against their oppression should be put down. as satisfying an arc blake and yang beating the shit out of blake’s abusive ex was, it did just kind of feel like two people being like “yeah! violence wrong! pacifism good!” the unification of faunus SDC workers shouldn’t be attributed to adam. the advocacy for faunus to be able to defend themselves shouldn’t be attributed to adam. adam needs to be labled extremely clearly as an outlier, and even then this is risky. i think that adam’s group should be miniscule in comparison to the other sects of the white fang, and i think it would be interesting for his dealings with roman and company to be based on the distribution of android soldiers. adam shouldn’t come from a good place. yes, he suffered atrociously at the hands of his oppressors, but as a character and as an element of the story, he should be uniquely evil. for the few actual people in his group, he should rule through fear and violence, and defectors should be common. his brand of violence should be unique: rather than actually aiming to make changes to help the faunus, he should be solely focused on revenge. blake’s leaving him makes more sense in this way: rather than her leaving because of the inherent evil of violence, she should leave him because of his twisting the good intentions of the white fang into a self-serving cruelty. this all has to be contrasted against the well-intentioned actions of the actual white fang. the terrorist logo that appears universally on white fang regalia should either be solely adam’s, or his group should have a different name entirely.

so there. there’s my thoughts on the white fang and the stuff that the RWBY writers were trying to do. what should be taken away from this discussion is this: it is possible to write racism into a fantasy story without it being an absolute garbage fire, but it takes work. it takes understanding racism, the fact that it’s not just cruel people, but people complicit in the structures that uphold it. it takes being mindful of actual racist talking points, and making sure that your work doesn’t play into them. finally, if you’re going to make a main antagonist a member of the fucking civil rights movement, please for the love of god make it abundantly clear that they aren’t the villain because they want equal rights.

i’ve read so many stories where this defanged, platitude-ridden form of activism is treated as the only valid form of activism. in reality, it’s the form that people in power are most comfortable with. people approve of the idealized version of MLK because his activism was one that made white people feel good. the MLK we read about in schools is an illusory one. the real man kept a gun on him because he knew that as much as white media would have you believe that people liked him, he knew that people still wanted him dead.