#liberal boundaries discourse

[qhazuban]

thinking a lot about how phrases like

“I’m at capacity, I can’t engage [with you] right now” / “I don’t have the capacity to reconnect” / “I don’t have capacity for more connections” / etc.

“Thank you for sharing [your vulnerability]”

“These are my boundaries, I’m articulating them so we can better show up and care for each other / be in community with each other”

“I want to honour your needs and boundaries” / “What do you need / what are your boundaries?”

“What’s bringing you joy these days?”

“I want to be intentional with our plans” / “I’m setting an intention to…”

“Let’s unpack that” / “There’s a lot to unpack here” / etc.

“Let’s practice authenticity”

“I’m looking for slowness and intentionality”

“That’s so valid”

“I want to be mindful of…”

& other such vocabulary popular in the lexicon of western social justice communities, gentle parenting and nonviolent communication circles, tenderqueer social circles, various new age / woo / healing social spheres, etc etc

just feel like lies, codes, ways of obfuscating and justifying, getting away from really being direct and honest (while ironically purporting to be direct and honest forms of communication), ways to say “wow you’re toxic / oversharing / crossing boundaries / immature / clearly in need of healing / etc, get away from me” without actually saying it

I need to articulate this more, but I guess it all feels related to my thoughts on liberal boundaries discourse

I do use some of this language too, sometimes, both out of necessity and exposure and habit and whatever, often because it feels like the only way to communicate with all these people who don’t even realize how deeply individualistic and alienating this kind of communication is, I’m not saying it’s always terrible or should never be used or whatever, it’s complicated obviously

but then I have to feel guilty both for using the language when it feels so fake *and* for feeling angry about the language itself since apparently that means I’m just a terrible person who doesn’t believe in boundaries or respect or whatever at all 🙄

anyway I need to articulate this more & there’s so much constantly swirling in my head about it but it all feels very very much part of disposability culture, the thing we do not name or talk about enough or properly, all these ways to seem so “evolved” and “self-actualized”

honestly i would just prefer if you said

“I’m exhausted I can’t deal with this”

“I’m angry about [xyz], I don’t want to talk to you anymore”

“yeah I don’t trust you, bye”

“why are you oversharing so much” / “that’s too much information” / “just shut up now”

“yeah if you do this again I’m leaving, bye”

“if you can’t communicate in a healthy way then I don’t want to talk to you”

“why are you so upset all the time, can’t you be happy sometimes”

“you’re too chaotic to do things with”

“this is too overwhelming”

“I don’t want to deal with all that”

“you’re overwhelming me”

“yeah you’re being too real, stop it”

“that’s crazy, get away from me”

“okay whatever but that’s too much again”

or whatever else

and, you know, it’s valid (haha) to feel overwhelmed, tired, scared, etc

and I wish we could just say that

instead of inventing all these ways to obfuscate and act like we’re so “in touch with our feelings” when we are really, really not

[kabbalicgay]

Motherfuckers got embarrassed when they were being called ''SJWs'' in their teens or early adulthood that you all stopped reading any sort of theory or political work that encourages us to stop and think about what mechanisms and structures are a part of society that influence the way we see ourselves and the people around us - which includes patriarchal and euro-centric standards of beauty and appearance - so now you're too busy arguing over if a child wanting to make her "big nose" less big is progressive and #feminist or not.

[gougarfem]

i've never had such fake, shallow friendships as i have with white, liberal, "queer" friends. people i've supposedly been close with for years consistently left me on read when i texted them at 4am in hospital scared and alone with critically low sats because they didn't have the energy for emotional labour. you have to ask to vent, respect triggers, never ever traumadump, so real conversations are difficult because nobody wants to complain - unless, of course, it's related to identity somehow - you can say you had a bad day because your teacher is transphobic, but not because you had an argument at home or threw up or just didn't feel well - none of it comes from genuine concern but instead the rules and norms within your online community. constant reassurance, validation, knowing there's no possibility of a nuanced discussion on anything other than your approved safe topics. attempts at open communication feel sanitized and are laced with therapy-speak, not reflecting real human emotions, but "i sincerely apologize for crossing your boundaries" because it's ideologically wrong, the undertone is 'please don't make a callout on me', not 'i'm sorry', abuse and manipulation are wrong because they get you ostracised and put on blast publicly by your friendship group so any little disagreement comes with a flurry of reassurance that you aren't an abuser, and they still call you they/them behind your back, they still ask your other friends what they think of your opinion on ace discourse, have you crossed the line yet, can we cut you out yet, it's so fucking tiring and there's no space for real connection or humanity in all of it

[allilcat]

Ive been noticing an increase amount of Dreamtwt refugees, and let me preface with saying: Welcome!!! Genuinely, we lovingly welcome you to this happy lil community.

That being said, Tumblr is confusing, between the big etiquette book and the interface that hasn’t changed since 2008 there is a lot to learn. So this is my little attempt to a welcome guide tailored to our lil dream community! Feel free to add your own recommendations and stuff.

Tumblr is a Blogging site, a goog ol relic from ye olden days, your ‘profile’ is your blog, and you can put anything you like on there! However, please do change your avatar and background, we have a massive bot issue here and we tend to auto block someone with a standard avatar.

The main tags for the dream team are as follows: - just their entire usernames, but, those do get hooped up in controversy from time to time. -Dreamblr for the content creator dream

-Dreblr, for C!Dream

-404blr for CC George

-pandasblr for CC Sapnap

-Dtblr for the Dream team

PLEASE REFRAIN FROM USING: #Dream, that’s for people actually posting about their dreams, and #myct as it is mostly used for general MYCT stuff, we prefer to stick to our own spaces.

‘how do I find people?’ you go to any of these tags, find someone you vibe with and click ‘follow’. The algorithm here sucks, and we don’t advice the ‘for you’ page.

On that note, the ‘like’ button is useless, use reblog instead! If you like someone’s hot take, art or stupid shit post, REBLOG. Its how we keep our fandom alive and active here :D

When you reblog you usually keep your comments in the tags, one only really uses the comment section when they DON’T want to reblog. (usually because of le discourse).

Send people asks! People love to chit chat, you can do it anonymously! Tell that one artist youd love to have their brain for lunch! Engage with everyone! We love discussion and open communication here. (prob since there is no real word limit to posts)

Tumblr has developed a nice ‘block liberally, no need to make a fus’ culture. You can block someone for any reason, and it really isn’t a big deal.

On the Tumblr is more relaxed note, we tend to be more relaxed on CC boundaries, since most CC’s do not use twitter. If you don’t like people breaking CC boundaries, even in places where they cant see it, follow the advice above and blockkkkk!!!

Please spell out words! Don’t censor triggering words at it can fuck with people’s filter settings, by censoring these words you put people in more risk.  

Now for some technical advice: Most tumblrina’s turn on ‘hide likes and follower count’ . Any blog can have 4 people following it or 4000, we like to keep it mysterious.

Also turn of ‘best content first’- once again, the algorithm is not to be trusted.

Furthermore, you can really personalize your Tumblr experience and please do! Under ‘account’ you can find many options to filter the content you see, make use of it, for your mental health sake.

[willknightauthor]

What happens in the Dolorian church in Martinaise is a profound bit of worldbuilding. At first Elysium seems like a normal, secular world, and if anything it's surprising how absent religion is from it. Liberalism has become the religion. The only real reminder that Moralism was once a fully functioning world religion is the abandoned and broken church west of the lock.

But learning about the pale point, the history of the churches, it makes sense now. The pale is directly interacting with human thought and society because they are both manifestations of information in the universe, in an evolving dialectic. Dolores Dei pulled information from the future and literally expanded the world by inspiring others with her dream. She was, by the standards of our world, a prophet. The churches, built around nascent points of pale particles, are a social attempt to control the pale through the collective act of ritual dreaming. By dreaming the divine, humanity pushes back the death of the world, for a moment.

By the time the game takes place, that side of Moralism is long dead. The churches have been abandoned and their function forgotten. Moralism has degenerated into liberalism. The Revolution was a moment of mass dreaming, of the future manifesting itself. It was the best hope to push back the Pale, but the MoralIntern crushed it, and restored global stagnancy. Growing entropy is accelerating the consumption of the world by the Pale, and no-one knows what to do because there is no future, only past.

Harry though, depending on how you play him, has the potential to start the reversal of this process, if just in Martinaise. The man who has effectively dedicated himself to a kind of monastic worship of the Pale (unknowingly) is the first one to start the process. (Never give anyone too much credit, even Harry.) But if Harry helps the homeless ravers start a club in the Church, he is effectively helping to start a new ritual community with the same properties as the old Moralist Church, right under the pale point.

If you get Noid to warm up to you, you learn he's a kind of organic existential philosopher. He even discourses with Tiago. He and the others don't just party as a hedonistic act, they maintain partying as a kind of ritual act of life affirmation and contemplation, an attempt to transcend themselves and realize something new and powerful. In short, they are reaching into the future to create something new. It's ridiculous 90s Euro club music, but the way they do it it's as ritually powerful as any church service.

This ties into the more general theme of Disco Elysium, that the human power to dream of a new future and then collectively act to bring it about is a powerful act of creation that pushes back the boundaries of the universe, and is necessary for our species to even survive. To crush the revolution, to crush democracy, is to crush the future. Elysium has killed God, but they haven't gotten to the next stage of becoming gods.

Dolorian humanism ironically does not end up elevating human beings. Only the communards had a chance at elevating humanity to a level of creative consciousness that would allow them to tame the Pale the same way they used to with religion. And the revolutionaries, even though the Moralists never recognized them as such, were likely pulling from the future as much as Dolores Dei. Kras Mazov will never be recognized as an Innocent, but in terms of prophesying and inspiring people with a dream which could push back the Pale, he effectively was.

Now with the revolution at a low point, the world is in a kind of existentialist limbo, lacking the conviction of faith in either the divine or the future. The old is dead, but the new cannot be born. What happens in Martinaise is the beginning of the return of that faith.

[rotzaprachim]

a significant portion of the problem with online leftist discourse is that people didn’t take the whole “decolonization of the mind” thing very seriously because they had to jump onto the “not a metaphor” thing and have welded technically decolonial sounding stuff in words to much older more conservative thought processes like they’ve taken the CONCEPT of indigeneity as they understand it and welded it to 20th century great power state theory to assume that the necessary changes for global liberation are to get rid of the States that are Fake in favour of the states that are Real and have of course single defined ethnic groups throughout all history with defined borders and defined single languages and cultures, when even that one state for one people with one language idea is often heavily colonialist in nature. They’ve also taken this concept into assuming there are defined settler/colonised boundaries in every situation - true people versus external colonizers - a framework which is not applicable in many many situations due to the base structures of how colonization actually functioned in practice (not so much room to discuss slavery or debt bondage and indentured servitude in such a paradigm, not mestizaje or complex tiered structures such as that utilized by the Spanish, nor the fact that not all colonists were settlers - in fact, definitionally, many of the most powerful colonists were never settlers ar all because they were powerful enough to access the resources of colonization without ever leaving the metropoles.) what the linear division of the oppressed/oppressors does allow people to do is engage in the mental fiction that all a better world really takes is killing or getting rid of the right people and that’s actually caused a lot of the problems in the first place

[spacelazarwolf]

y’all i found it, i found the post that originated the claim that i’m a ZionistTM and it’s even more ridiculous than i expected.

—————————————

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this is, of course, the same person who labeled me a MisogynistTM for making a half baked joke reblog basically saying “jewish standards of masculinity are different than white western standards of masculinity” then cited orthodox judaism, a community i’m not a part of, as why Actually The Jewish Community Is Horrifically Misogynistic And Bad (as if i haven’t faced misogyny from jewish cis men before???????)

anyway, my post in this screenshot didn’t once mention israel. it didn’t mention zionism. it was talking about antisemitism. i turned off reblogs because people were making it about zionism and israel, which was derailing my original point. i set a specific boundary and people kept crossing it, so i turned reblogs off and blocked people who wouldn’t leave it alone. absolutely nothing about that could possibly indicate that i’m a zionist unless you think that diaspora jews setting boundaries about being forced into a conversation about israel, especially one where we are essentially being blamed for the antisemitism we face because of the government of a country we don’t even live in and have no control over (there’s a phrase that, it’s called dual loyalty and it’s been getting jews killed for decades) or if you think simply talking about the history of antisemitism and current rising levels of antisemitism is somehow “zionist propaganda” in which case you might want to get your head out of your ass and question why you’re agreeing with literal nazis. also bonus points for this person literally just blatantly blaming jews in the tags for the rise in antisemitism because we’re apparently not being antizionist enough to deserve basic human decency and safety! not even trying to hide it anymore huh!

and of course it worked like a charm bc now, months later, you have people saying this:

“the jew is trying to disguise himself as one of you to trick you!!!!!! he is actually evil and trying to manipulate you to further his evil (((zionist))) plans!!!!!!!!!! beware!!!!!!!!!!!” which is literally just repackaged antisemitic tropes that are centuries old. i’ve never interacted with the person in this screenshot in my entire life, and yet they seem to think they have insider knowledge into my Evil Zionist Plans to infiltrate the community and spread Zionist Propaganda because they interacted with one gentile witch that threw a hissy fit about being told not to be antisemitic in discourse about gentiles appropriating lillith. this gentile decided that every single jew who disagreed with them was a zionist, and when i told them it was antisemitic as fuck to call any jew they disagree with a zionist they went on about me being a “raging zionist” and “faking being queer” for DAYS. so it’s not a mystery where the person in this screenshot got the “ooh scary (((zionist))) pretending to be queer and trans to spread his evil (((zionist))) propaganda” rhetoric from. it’s word-for-word from the gentile witch who was pissed about fucking LILLITH DISCOURSE.

bc the thing is, these ppl don’t actually care if i’m a zionist. if they did, they would be engaging with what i’ve said (which is practically nothing because i knew the second the word israel touched my blog that this would happen — which is why i didn’t want people going on and on about israel on a post about antisemitism). they know that labeling a jew a zionist is an immediate death sentence in progressive circles. they know it’s the easiest way to discredit a jew you don’t like. because it doesn’t matter how many times you say “no, i’m not” you will be forever tainted in the eyes of gentiles by that accusation. that’s why they made the accusation in the first place. and so i will continue to not share any of my thoughts or opinions other than “i’m pro palestinian liberation” and “i’m not a zionist” and people will ignore that to play yet another game of Zionist Telephone to target a jew they don’t like. it’s not the first time it’s happened, to me or in general, and it won’t be the last time. i just hope people seeing this and reading this will help people understand how fucked up and antisemitic it is.

so yeah. if you see accusations floating around that i’m a zionist, this is where it came from. a situation that is textbook dual loyalty, being punished for setting boundaries on my own blog, and people who hate trans men jumping at the chance to demonize one with one of the easiest tricks in the book as soon as they see he’s also jewish. the fact i keep having to address this when the origin of the rumor is literally just antisemitism should heavily inform how seriously you take random claims online that a jew is a zionist. most of the time it’s just blatant antisemitism, and very often it’s a way to silence an unrelated conversation that person was trying to have.

[littlest-bugz]

. introduction post .

Hello!

My name is BUGZ ! I am a bodily 21 year old [polyfragmented] DID system. We collectively have ADHD, Autism, OCD and a few other comorbid disorders. They all affect our day to day, but we will likely only post about our experiences as a DID system. Collectively we use they/he/she pronouns!

Get to know us more below the cut!

[ byf and dni also below cut ]

About Us !

OUR FREQUENT FRONTERS !

As of Recently, we've been in a state of Resolution/Functional Multiplicity. Things don't really change much around here anymore. We do have a collective identity, which is the body's identity itself [though we did have someone split off based on the collective identity].

We collectively identify as transmasc, bigender, panalterous, omni oriented aroaceflux, and ambiamorous ! This is an agreed upon identity the entirety of The Crew and Co. and is essentially for the body itself. Names, pronouns, genders and sexualities all vary from alter to alter individually.

On our page, you will find. . .

Lots of reblogs on random topics and hyperfixations

System Content [Mostly Text Posts and half-baked, lazy memes]

Original userboxes, blinkies, stamps. [The link to my hoards are below!!!]

Stimboards and Moodboards

Worldbuilding and OC talk

. . . and more!

Flag and Userbox Reqs are open!!

Before you interact. . .

Our account may not be fully SFW, but we never reblog or post explicit material. I have a bad swearing problem, and due to my trauma, I have a hard time telling what is socially acceptable in regards for entirely being SFW. It's something I'm working on, but please be weary! We don't mind agere and petre engagement, just please know my blog is more skewed for mature audiences.

We almost never tag who is posting! We try, but it causes a lot of anxiety for a good amount of us. Please don't ask us to sign off our posts, as we feel it invades our boundaries. We're willing to give pronouns, but we generally try to keep our names more private.

We are endo apathetic. We honestly do not care if endos exist or not, we are just vibing in our own space. We only care about the misinfo on CDDs that is being spread. PLUS anyone is welcome on our blog as long as they don't drag us into any discourse/syscourse, aren't promoting misinformation, and/or being a generally bad or gross person.

We block liberally and without telling the blocked party. It's a force of habit that proves handy on the world wide web. We also ask you don't bother us to be unblocked.

BPD/NPD/HPD/ASPD havers are all welcome on our blog! If u believe in narc/histronic/borderline abuse, leave!!

WE ARE PRO-EDUCATED SELF DIAGNOSIS!!!

Do not interact. . .

Basic DNI Criteria [this is a link.] [note: some of the items on this list are repeated for ease of identification]

If you intend to ask about stances on discourse. [note: I'm always willing to be open to new lines of thinking and new ideas, as well as be corrected for any misinfo I may accidentally spread, but if you're going to talk down to me because I don't know or don't believe what you believe, I will block you. Speak to me as an equal or don't speak to me at all.]

pro/comshippers and pro/comship supporters.

transid/transx/radqueer or supporters [transRAMCOA/transProgrammer blocked on sight]

“cringe culture” supporters

ageplay/ddlg [again sfw agere/petre fine, but please know this account has mature themes.]

MAPs/Pedos and Zoos

Transphobes, TERFs, Radfems, Transmeds and the likes

anti-xenogender/anti-neopronouns

anti-mspec

pro-forced birth (“pro-life”)/ anti-abortion

More will be added as time goes. . .

Tags!

#important - important posts to us!

#littlest_bugz og - my original posts,,, may not be very original tho LOL

#reblogs ?! on my feed ?! /lh /j - My reblog tag!! Everything that gets reblogged should be under this tag, but I don't always remember

#you asked we answered - My ask tag! Feel free to send in asks at anytime

#so real for this - I don't know how to describe this properly, but these posts are so real.

#original userboxes/layouts/flags/ect - All of our original content divided into specifics! [ note: they are not all lumped together like that, just putting them all together for the sake of space, you can find most of them tagged in this post ]

#system posting - Our experiences on system hood as well as reblogs and other stuff! Was formerly 'system stuff'

#kinito posting - I am obsessed with an axolotl virus [mostly kinitopet fanart]

#stardew posting - I'm an avid stardew valley fan!!! I reblog fanart and post abt it sometimes

#lps posting - I am/was an avid lps collector!! I reblog fanart and post original content [sometimes,,, but usually text posts]

#cat posting - I reblog a lot of cat pictures and art!! cats r a huge comfort for me

#writer posting - where I post all my writing content, such as memes,,, mainly memes

#artist posting - where I put all my art text posts, especially memes, but also just general art we make

#poem posting - poems we make or poems we reblog

#the hoard - I hoard and collect deco. If the links don't work for some reason, just click this tag

more tba . . .

Links!

Deco Collection - A hoard of all our deco, which includes stamps, blinkies and userboxes WARNING; FLASHING IMAGES, BRIGHT COLORS, AND MORE! PROCEED WITH CAUTION

pronouns.cc - has [some of] the frequent fronter's pronouns, names, and sign-offs. Only the peeps that are safe to say

personal blog - a wip but where I will post a ton of journal entry stuff! but not rn, unfortunately

art comms website - two of our hosts are artists and take comms- this is their site! comms are currently closed, except for the demented chibi heads [link]

my ko-fi - commission payments go here! The chibi head listing is on here! you can also donate if you feel inclined to, but it's 110% not expected

[note: you will probably see a linktree on some of these because I get freaked out by so many links on a page, but this is different bc tumblr is like my hub, if that makes sense?]

[gatheringbones]

[“A reminder I find helpful is that trauma, especially developmental trauma, often shapes our thinking into this polarity, this all/nothing, pink/blue, man/woman. When I view the rigidity of this binary through this lens, I can also be more compassionate towards myself and others when we get caught in its net.

All/nothing patterns are tough to break out of, after all. We can notice the rigidity of the gender binary in a range of ways: the gendering of chromosomes, body parts, behaviors, mannerisms, clothing, emotions, toys, experiences, and so on. All/nothing thinking patterns are those that view duality as the only option. For example: you are male or female, good or bad, with us or against us. Given that we live in a cloud of historical, intergenerational, cultural and social trauma when it comes to gender, it makes sense that we have internalized much of this thinking.

In fact, even when we get away from binary ideas of gender, we might still engage in all/nothing thinking patterns, if we are not careful. For example, some young people who identify as trans and/or nonbinary have internalized such a deep need to police gender that they might be afraid of being viewed as “trans trenders” (that is people who think they are trans because it’s “trendy”). Within this paradigm, you are trans or not (another all/nothing pattern). There is no exploring, playing or considering; there is simply, you are or you are not. Some trans and cis people alike question the validity of nonbinary genders, and then other trans and/or nonbinary people turn around and talk about “truscum,” that is, those trans people who align with a medicalized and pathologizing model of gender and believe that dysphoria is an essential trait for some people.

All/nothing patterns are insidious and, if we are not careful, we tend to reproduce the same discourses that oppressed us, creating and recreating boundaries around gender identities and experiences to make sure we know who is “in” and who is “out,” who is “with us” and who is “against us.” While these patterns are understandable, when people are hurt, in survival mode and trying to protect themselves, this is not conducive to healing or liberation. As long as there is policing of gender, any gender, there cannot truly be liberation. This is a really tough one for many of us who have been hurt by rigid gender binaries, and who might have come to our identities through hardship, risk and loss. It is so tempting to feel that now that we are “in,” whichever label, identity or experience that “in” might be, we get to police others and make sure that “fakers” and “trenders” are kept out.

We are simply afraid. Afraid that if we let anyone in who is not 100 percent certain, or in agreement with us, or just like us, we might get hurt. We are afraid that whatever we have built will be blown away. It is understandable. It is what everyone is afraid of. Trauma keeps us afraid of one another. Colonial and patriarchal ways of thinking divide us, and seduce us into believing that, if we behave in certain ways, we too could have power over our little domain, whatever that domain might be. However, these are all lies, lies that trauma tells us and that oppression thrives on. These dualities of Men are from Mars and Women from Venus, cis women against trans women, sex workers versus SWERFs (sex worker exclusive radical feminists) are all deeply rooted in historical, cultural and social trauma.

How can we, then, find another way? The idea of another way is key. If polarities are foundational to all/nothing patterns, our way to liberation can only be found in a third road. Building and nurturing flexibility in our individual and collective soma (bodies) is therefore key. Practicing saying and noticing the maybe, the pause between breathing in and breathing out, reflection, curiosity, slow, kind and consensual relationships are key to healing. We cannot heal from gendered trauma when we are still caught in rigid polarities, still invested in finding a perpetrator or savior so that we can stay in a victim place. Or so invested in being the irredeemable perpetrator that there is no hope for us. Once more, it starts with us, our own gender journey and dismantling internalized polarities first.

Once we engage with this work, we can then support those around us—be they clients, students, fellow community members and communities—to challenge those polarities within themselves and one another. This might all seem very idealistic, and it is. I truly believe we cannot move towards healing through violence. If we are to heal from gendered trauma it has to be through relationships: human, messy, complicated, infuriating, joyful, loving relationships. We cannot be in relationship when we are in opposition. We can be in a tug of war, push and pull at one another but, as long as we stay locked into these patterns, we can only view ourselves as victors and losers. In the meantime, the only victors seem to be systems of oppression.”]

alex iantaffi, from gender trauma: healing cultural, social, and historical gendered trauma, 2020

[silkysong]

what was fandom like long ago?/gen (asking as a minor)

people actually had boundaries on what fanworks they would engage with and used the block button liberally (as one should) instead of leaping straight to harrassment and discourse. literally nothing in a fandom is important enough to treat another real life person badly. and its sad that ive seen this happen time and time again, both to myself and my friends over the dumbest of reasons. but i digress.

there was no predatory algorithm that would push popular works forward, and less popular ones backwards. everything was, in fact, readily accessible through the tumblr tag search no matter how old or obscure it was. it was easier to find your niche and friend group that way. entire archives of fanworks got wiped out when the Big Tumblr Purge of 2018 changed how this website worked fundamentally, not just for nsfw content, but EVERYTHING.

there wasnt such a severe parasocial phenomenon with the "big name fans" and the obssession with their validation and constant demand for attention. thats a can of worms i dont think i can unpack in just one singular ask anyway

im not saying fandom was perfect back then either, there were plenty of problems that would drive one to say "its not the same anymore :(" even then. but the state of fandoms right now is very, very bleak and i dont really find the appeal to commit myself to an online space anymore (without the guarantee it wont turn into a giant cesspool)

[jinitak]

Why I think much of Only Friends discourse here is flawed

TL;DR Western audiences expects Only Friends to be more progressive than it can be considering its situation. Only Friends is already a gamble by GMMTV as it is one of the first prime time series focusing on queer sex life to be aired on TV. As Thai audiences and censors are still quite conservative, GMMTV probably added some conservative messaging on sex and relationships to appease those people and for the series to be able to be aired during prime time. Much of the discourse didn't factor in these aspects.

--------------------

Note: I think I did a shitty job building up to the conclusion, I did not proofread this. I think the TL;DR captures the gist of my argument already.

I have noticed that much of the negative reaction surrounding Only Friends finale has been coming from Western audiences, this might just be me being in an echo chamber where people don't discuss BL series or it shows a divide in audience

I think the ending is catered to the Thai audience rather than Western audience which creates a crash of worldview. Thai dramas has always been filled with moralistic messages and almost always ends in a happy ending, this is already the case in plays as early as the late 1700s.

Even into the TV era, Thai audiences are also accustomed to the moralistic storytelling that ends in a happy ending, most Lakhons basically boils down to this. Branded ships also began in this era (I remember the Channel 3 heterosexual ships getting much popularity, although many of the couples actually married later on so IDK). Although as time progressed, audiences are more accepting of less moralistic storytelling, but still a general sense of good triumphing over evil is still present.

Coming into the BL boom, despite BL being a new genre at the time, Thai audiences still expected the same kind of things they expect from heterosexual lakhons and most Thai BLs still follow that. With the popularity of BL ever rising and fan service being an expected part of promotion, happy endings are kind of mandatory for BLs.

I think Only Friends ended the way it did because GMMTV understood Thai audiences. Much of the Thai audience watches a series for their favourite actors and only some watch for the story (as you can see from the amount of boring university BLs). Deviating too much from the standard pattern would only alienate viewers away.

Despite the picture the tourism board may be trying to presenting, Thailand is still a conservative society, many people still cannot separate sex and relationships. Open relationships and polyamory relationships are still being frowned upon.

Combined with conservative censors which rate BLs for a higher age level than heterosexual dramas with straight up domestic violence, without moralistic messaging, the show might get an 18+ rating and has to be aired after 22.00 (like Friend Zone) or even worse, not being able to be aired at all.

GMMTV probably understand this very well, pushing Boston's separation of sex and relationships as normal might as well be suicide. Much of the audience does not appreciate that view and the censor probably would not like that very much.

I think in their minds, pushing a show so involved with queer sex life into prime time is already enough of a gamble for them, risking that spot being taken away or alienating their (somewhat) conservative audience too is not a chance they's like to risk.

I think the production still should've pushed more for Boston to be accepted but in the end that was what we got. The negative reaction is justified.

I think the issue in the discourse right now is that Western audiences expect a liberal viewpoint being presented in this series, but in reality, Thai audiences are still quite conservative and for a boundary pushing show like Only Friends (Gay OK Bangkok amongst other works are not prime time shows and maybe not even shown on TV at all, that's why I said Only Friends is boundary pushing) has to make compromises to appease those audiences which ended with Boston ending up the way he did.

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Afterword: I think my analysis mainly focuses on cultural viewpoints rather than the content of the series, whilst Western audiences tend to do the opposite. This probably stems from my background in advocacy, which focus on cultural aspects when it comes to analysis.

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Feel free to respond or criticise, I want to hear differing viewpoints from mine as well. I agree with much of the analysis about the series here but feel that they are too overly critical because their analysis lack the cultural background that explains the thought process behind the decisions the production team made.

[xxlovelynovaxx]

The queer community: LOVE WINS. LOVE IS WHAT MAKES YOU QUEER. LOVE IS WHAT MAKES YOUR IDENTITY VALID. SAY LOVE WINS OR YOU'RE HOMOPHOBIC.

The majority of loveless aros: Nah actually stop forcing love wins on me.

The queer community: LOVE WINS YOU BIGOT.

The majority of loveless aros: Okay y'know what fuck you. Love loses.

A random aroace blog claiming to be a safe space: LOVE LOSES IS HARMFUL AND EXCLUSIONARY SAY "LOVE WINS WITHOUT US" AND EXCLUDE YOURSELVES OR THESE OTHER REPLACEMENT PHRASES INSTEAD, OR YOU'RE APHOBIC.

Us: Um, fucking no? Stop trying to replace a phrase that's a direct response to "love wins" being used in arophobic ways?

Them: HOW DARE YOU GET UPSET AT THE ALTERNATIVES WE OFFERED. YOU'RE A HYPOCRITE FOR NOT JUST RECOGNIZING THEY'RE NOT FOR YOU EXCEPT THEY ARE BUT ALSO WE'RE TRYING TO TELL YOU THAT THE PHRASE YOU USE IS UNACCEPTABLE WHEN ALL YOU TOLD US IS THAT IT WASN'T FOR US.

Us: Okay literally just go away. You don't get to make that decision for the whole community because of your discomfort. Actually we even recognize if you feel hurt but "harm" is a bullshit claim.

Them: ACTUALLY WE MISINTERPRETED THE PHRASE "LOVE LOSES" AND KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ASPEC COMMUNITY HISTORY SO IT'S YOUR FAULT WE WERE ABUSED. ALSO US CONTINUING TO WATCH YOUR BLOG WHEN YOU'VE BLOCKED AND FILTERED US AND BLOCK EVADING TO HARASS YOU AFTER AN ATTEMPTED DOGPILE (that only didn't happen because we've been harassed before in this way and were proactive about removing all possible avenues to contact us) IS YOU CYBERSTALKING US BECAUSE YOU'VE VAGUED US A COUPLE TIMES AND CONTINUED TO TALK ABOUT THE WIDER DISCOURSE AROUND THESE PHRASES. THIS CONTINUED HARASSMENT AND VIOLATION OF YOUR CLEARLY ENFORCED BOUNDARIES IS US DEFENDING OURSELVES. DON'T YOU KNOW THAT IF SOMEONE SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT YOU THAT YOU DON'T LIKE AND YOU CONFRONT THEM AND THEY WALK AWAY AND TALK ABOUT IT SOMEWHERE ELSE AND YOU KEEP FOLLOWING THEM AND AGGRESSIVELY GETTING IN THEIR FACE ABOUT IT THAT'S SELF-DEFENSE?!

Us: Cool. We don't know if we'll be termed from malicious mass reporting or log on and see more harassment. We have made every attempt at de-escalation, including making our own post from the very beginning, except for letting them silence us entirely. We're in a constant moderately triggered state and yet they keep playing the victim, and misdirecting blame at the most marginalized members of the aro community and the ones who refuse to assimilate and pander to the idea that the social construct of "love", rather than the liberation of all queer people, is what needs to win or makes us not deserve oppression.

Y'all are so baldly two-faced and manipulative it would be funny if it weren't so scary. It's like you keep looking in the mirror and pretending it's a window that I'm standing on the other side of when you shout all these accusations.

At least we can admit that when we accuse you of the things you've accused us of, it's easy to spin that into pretending we're doing "DARVO", despite the fact that you were the ones who attacked us, denied our accusations, and pretending like you were the victim instead of us in the first place and continue to do so. And we actually can point to specific things you're doing and explain WHY they're harmful, rather than just making baseless claims that aren't logically supported or that even rely on logical fallacies.

Or to sum up the above:

Queer community: You have to say love wins even if you don't love because love is what makes us human and worthy of liberation, and if you don't you're a bigot.

Aros: Fuck no, love loses

The post that kicked this all off: You have to say love wins even if you don't love because love is what fights hate and stands against war, and if you don't you're a bigot.

P.S. To claim "love wins" is an anti-war statement, while continuing not to provide evidence, is at best a baseless misrepresentation of bigotry as war and at worst blatant historical revisionism.

PPS almost all of these posts, except for ones we missed due to being triggered (so the vast majority of them) are tagged love loses for easy filtering, but then again if you'd been filtering the phrase in the first place any of the "harm" you claim is the fault of people who use it wouldn't have happened in the first place. Like, when someone who doesn't have power over you uses a phrase about something you claim you don't feel to the point where it bothers you, and you DON'T literally just throw the phrase into the "don't show me this content" function, which would allow you to interact with the majority of aro community posts still... that's on you. Full stop. (The abuse still isn't. That's on your abusers. Not on the aro community.)

[homonationalist]

At present, it is standard among practically all communities to fête the family as a bastion of relative safety from state persecution and market coercion, and as a space for nurturing subordinated cultural practices, languages, and traditions. But this is not enough of a reason to spare the family. Frustratedly, Hazel Carby stressed the fact (for the benefit of her white sisters) that many racially, economically, and patriarchally oppressed people cleave proudly and fervently to the family. She was right; nevertheless, as Kathi Weeks puts it: “the model of the nuclear family that has served subordinated groups as a fence against the state, society and capital is the very same white, settler, bourgeois, heterosexual, and patriarchal institution that was imposed by the state, society, and capital on the formerly enslaved, indigenous peoples, and waves of immigrants, all of whom continue to be at once in need of its meagre protections and marginalized by its legacies and prescriptions” (emphasis mine). The family is a shield that human beings have taken up, quite rightly, to survive a war. If we cannot countenance ever putting down that shield, perhaps we have forgotten that the war does not have to go on forever.

This is why Paul Gilroy remarked in his 1993 essay “It’s A Family Affair,” “even the best of this discourse of the familialization of politics is still a problem.” Gilroy is grappling with the reality that, in the United Kingdom as in the United States, the state’s constant disrespect of the Black home and transgression of Black households’ boundaries, as well as its disproportionate removal of Black children into the foster-care industry, understandably inspires an urgent anti-racist politics of “familialization” in defense of Black families. Both the British and American netherworlds of supposedly “broken” homes (milieus that are then exoticized, and seen as efflorescing creatively against all odds), have posed an obstinate threat to the legitimacy of the family regime simply by existing, Gilroy suggests. The paradox is that the “broken” remnant sustains the bourgeois regime insofar as it supplies the culture, inspiration, and oftentimes the surrogate care labor that allows the white household to imagine itself as whole. As a dialectician, “I want to have it both ways,” writes Gilroy, closing out his essay. “I want to be able to valorize what we can recover, but also to cite the disastrous consequences that follow when the family supplies the only symbols of political agency we can find in the culture and the only object upon which that agency can be seen to operate. Let us remind ourselves that there are other possibilities.

There are other possibilities! Traces of the desire for them can be found in Toni Cade (later Toni Cade Bambara)’s anthology The Black Woman, published in America in 1970, not long after the publication of the US labor secretariat’s “Moynihan report,” The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. The open season on the Black Matriarch was in full swing. And certainly not all of the anthology’s feminists, in their valiant effort to beat back societal anti-maternal sentiment (matrophobia) and the hatred of Black women specifically (more recently known as “misogynoir”), make the additional step of criticizing familism within their Black communities. But one or two contributors do flatly reject the notion that the family could ever be a part of Black (collective human) liberation. Kay Lindsey, in her piece “The Black Woman as a Woman,” lays out her analysis that: “If all white institutions with the exception of the family were destroyed, the state could also rise again, but Black rather than white.” In other words: the only way to ensure the destruction of the patriarchal state is for the institution of the family to be destroyed. “And I mean destroyed,” echoes the feminist women’s health center representative Pat Parker in 1980, in a speech she delivered at ¡Basta! Women’s Conference on Imperialism and Third World War in Oakland, California. Parker speaks in the name of The Black Women’s Revolutionary Council, among other organizations, and her wide- ranging statement (which addresses imperialism, the Klan, and movement- building) purposively ends with the family: “As long as women are bound by the nuclear family structure we cannot effectively move toward revolution. And if women don’t move, it will not happen.” The left, along with women especially of the upper and middle classes, “must give up ... undying loyalty to the nuclear family,” Parker charges. It is “the basic unit of capitalism and in order for us to move to revolution it has to be destroyed.”

Forty years later, the British writer Lola Olufemi is among those reminding us that there are other possibilities: “abolishing the family...” she tweets, “that’s light work. You’re crying over whether or not Engels said it when it’s been focal to black studies/black feminism for decades.” For Olufemi as for Parker and Lindsey, abolishing marriage, private property, white supremacy, and capitalism are projects that cannot be disentangled from one another. She is no lone voice, either. Annie Olaloku-Teriba, a British scholar of “Blackness” in theory and history, is another contemporary exponent of the rich Black family-abolitionist tradition Olufemi names. In 2021, Olaloku-Teriba surprised and unsettled some of her followers by publishing a thread animated by a commitment to the overthrow of “familial relations” as a key goal of her antipatriarchal socialism. These posts point to the striking absence of the child from contemporary theorizations of patriarchal domesticity, and criticize radicals’ reluctance to call mothers who “violently discipline [Black] boys into masculinity” patriarchal. “The adult/child relation is as central to patriarchy as ‘man’/‘woman,’” Olaloku-Teriba affirms: “The domination of the boy by the woman is a very routine and potent expression of patriarchal power.” These observations reopen horizons. What would it mean for Black caregivers (of all genders) not to fear the absence of family in the lives of Black children? What would it mean not to need the Black family?

Sophie Lewis in “Abolish Which Family?” from Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, 2022.

[bimboficationblues]

What is the difference between liberal and reactionary defenses of the family?

I don’t think they’re easily generalizable, and to some extent they’re not wildly different from each other (this is part of my project in understanding contemporary familialism as a key component of reactionary modernism, which in turn was forged within the fires of liberalism - that is to say they’re nested subjects rather than mutually exclusive or merely overlapping)

but generalize we shall. liberal familialism is about the importance of preserving private life from the overreach of the polity and civil society, which I think ties into liberalism’s interest in procedural quasi-agnosticism about what is “the good life.” because that’s contentious and different people will have different intuitions about it, the idea is that leaving families alone, letting them act as sort of societies or states in miniature (though with some degree of oversight/obligations because of state interests) kind of keeps things relatively stabilized socially. it’s an attempt to generally depoliticize the family.

reactionary familialism is more about the polity as a macrocosm of the family (and religion), treating it as the fundamental mode of social organization and a model to emulate - they’re all about relations of proper place in the world and obedience to that telos. it’s an attempt to renaturalize the family as a prepolitical entity.

the reasons I say they’re nested subjects is that these justifications bleed together because of both the unfirm boundaries between ideologies and the history and development of the bourgeois state as a security state (which is clearly attentive to both of these different ideas), you might see the language of “parental rights” or concerns about the rationality of children (a la Mill) for what is nakedly a desire to subordinate. or biological justifications for why the family arrangement is ultimately the most pragmatic.

trans kid debates are illustrative - the reactionary position is that this needs to be stomped out by government power, “parental rights” only really matter insofar as it’s used to make it functionally impossible to be something that they regard as destabilizing to familial and political life. whereas I think a lot of liberal discourse tries to stake out a sort of minimalist parents’ rights positions (hence the “it’s all blockers, no kids go on hormones or get surgery” refrain). transfeminist or more radical discourse just says bodily autonomy or perhaps “children’s rights” are the salient values.

[familyabolisher]

could you reword /post/719924987074609152/? i can’t make heads or tails of what you’re saying there, i’m sorry 😵‍💫

[post]

i'm responding to a strain of reactionary positions on sex and desire and kink which stakes its criticism on the grounds that practitioners of particular sexual practices have failed to apply some form of "critical thinking" to their understanding of the practice in question, and were they to do so, they would understand it + their relationship to it as the result of social conditioning brought on by occupying a particular subject position. to be more precise, i was thinking of kink discourse & specifically the idea that women who desire certain kink practices which an uncharitable onlooker might have grounds to claim is "reproducing" the logics of patriarchy only desire (or think they desire) these practices because by virtue of being women they've been conditioned to, idk, think of themselves under the particular subject terms that the kink allegedly imposes. this critique essentially posits that the practitioner needs to be made to understand that she actually only wants, eg. BDSM, CNC, whatever else, because of her patriarchal conditioning, and women's liberation means absconding from this conditioning and therefore absconding from these practices.

reactionary position on several levels, but in that post i was specifically trying to note that this is v misogynistic---far more so than a woman who asks her boyfriend to spank her during sex might be. it's incredibly patronising. it starts from the assumption that the woman in question not only has no agency in this scenario but also no awareness of the supposed subjectivity that she imposes on herself in participating in it, and leaves no room for the notion that women have a say in their own desires and an understanding of how to negotiate them within consensual boundaries without bringing the entire composite force of the patriarchy down on their heads. these poor women are too stupid to know they're being oppressed under patriarchy, as is evinced by their horrible sex thoughts :(

[dtkqer]

wait why ranboo (idk much abt him)

ESSAY WARNING AHEAD do not fucking repost this shit anywhere holy fuck i will kill you!!!!!!! respect my boundaries :((

ok my thought process was somewhere along the lines of

rboo (kid wanting to blow up as a mcyter during summer 2020) getting attention through making fan content of dream smp (also trying to write themself into the lore) -> dream (kid who blew up as an mcyter before the pandemic hit, getting even more insane numbers) sees himself in rboo, adds him to the dream smp

-> path 1: parasocial stan delusion - ran is both viewer and cc, relatable to viewers in a down to earth way while gaining an insane amount of success very very fast -> heightened scrutiny to not fuck things up because his audience is full of normal people who care about social justice on paper (part of dreams influence in having a gender and race diverse (somewhat) audience) -> growing importance of boundaries (tm) -> fandom becomes insanely blue haired liberal and jumps on every mistake, demanding quick and GOOD apologies for both inane and serious shit -> fandom becomes volatile and creates disproportionate responses to everything -> they (rboo) become spineless -> this attitude and spinelessness leaks over to the whole of mcyt since most of dsmp shared an audience at that point -> feedback loop we see today (sidebar: growing media illiteracy combined with volatile reactions extend to lore shit on all ends and was absolutely compounded by their joining -> "sanctity" of the lore -> michael -> dsmp audiences split over the parasocial belief that character = content creator's thoughts beliefs and actions in real life instead of. acting)

-> path 2: control and queerness - branch off from blue haired liberal -> viewers have good intentions in wanting more rep in the cc space (queer and women, not so much race) -> marginalized communities cant afford to make mistakes as much as white men in the space -> disproportionate amount of criticism for both white men and marginalized ccs -> viewers attempting to take control of ccs due to ran blurring the line between viewer and cc during lockdown/most viewers' formative social years being taken from them -> not much education about queerness in the first place -> queerbaiting discourse and queer being a symbol of goodness -> people seemed to want dream to be straight and evil and ran to be gay/queer and good -> double standards when dream and ran come out because of dream's perceived power, status, and past growing up in conservative florida he had already been addressing, but ran gets a warm welcome because of bending to the audience more than dream has and past not holding as many mistakes meaning they could claim queer as an identity -> selective biphobia because if dream is queer hes a bad queer so everything he does is evil

-> return to main thread - brighton bastards formed, beeduo date and break up, everyone becomes bitter boots after lockdown ends and dream abandons his adopted bastard child he came to love that george originally gave birth to -> october and drexodus -> quackity resentment somewhere in there behind the scenes, dtkq breakup -> former audience split over lore comes back into -> qsmp shit -> dream and by extension dteam/munchy is evil except badboyhalo who supports dream but is still on qsmp because hes a lore andy -> schisms from the past continue to grow, new schism of q's side vs dream's side appears (secret third challenger of brighton floptopia) -> people air out their dirty laundry and snide comments -> november and december -> relative peace -> march-> karl gets hit by a car -> present day -> dnf sextape

i may be wrong for quite a bit of this but this is how i saw it . again this is a tumblr exclusive if you repost this anywhere even iwth my url cropped i will fucking kill you.