#like I’m used to being ignored on tumblr cause I don’t really contribute to the eco system on here

[spinogreen0iq]

my attention seeking ass when my next animation meme gets ignored by the YouTube inhabitants AGAIN:

consumes 20 thumbtacks without lubricant

[dartheclipse0816]

Trolls Band Together

Hello once again, everyone.

At this point, I’m sure you all already know why I’m not as active as I used to be.

But if some of you need a refresher, in Layman's terms, being an adult, with the responsibilities that all comes with being an adult, has left me very busy, and it just caused me to lose interest in Tumblr and only come back for short periods of time, from time to time.

But now, now that the newest Trolls movie, Trolls Band Together, has released, I figured I’d write my thoughts about it.

But before I begin, I must give you all a heads up: There’s going to be major spoilers with what I’m about to talk about, so if you are reading this and haven’t seen the movie yet but still want to see it, if you don’t want the movie to be spoiled, then don’t read this any further. It’s going to have major spoilers.

But, for those who have seen the movie, well, here’s what I have to say:

I loved it.

I loved the music, the animation, the voice acting, as well as the all the new characters and the chemistry between the new and returning characters.

I appreciated that the movie started acknowledging the Bergens again and gave them a more prominent role in the movie after they mostly went ignored for a long time after the first movie, Trolls Holiday, and the first few seasons of TTBGO (even though it and Trollstopia aren’t canon to the movies). Seeing Gristle and Bridget finally getting married and contributing significantly to the plot was nice to see, and cute, I'd say.

I also thought it was cool seeing that Branch also once was part of a band with his four older brothers, and him going through the movie trying to reconnect with them, while difficult for him after they left him in his childhood, was still nice to see, especially with Floyd. It was nice seeing Floyd comfort Branch when he was a baby, and be the most supportive of him throughout the movie next to Poppy, after seeing Branch being the one who always got the short end of the stick for a long time throughout TTBGO and Trollstopia. It really made me smile.

I also liked Camila Cabello as Viva. Seeing the singer who sung Havana voicing Poppy's secret long lost sister, it was cute.

And, of course, seeing *NSYNC appear in the movie and collaborating with Justin Timberlake again after over 20 years, was awesome! Their new song, 'Better Place', gives me the same feeling of joy when I listened to 'Green Light Ride' from Crush 40 when they reunited with the Sonic series after a long break for Team Sonic Racing. It was awesome to hear them back together again in both instances.

I also especially loved seeing the combined band of Branch, his brothers, and Poppy and Viva all singing together for both a remix of 'Better Place' and 'Family', and it made me realize why the film was even titled Band Together, because they were literally banding together!

Now, with all that being said, I did have some issues with the film as well.

The movie's villains, Velvet and Veneer, they felt kinda one-dimensional and shallow. I thought they could’ve spent more time with them to develop their backstories a bit more and make them a bit more fleshed out.

And also, what’s the name of the species of Velvet and Veneer? They never appeared in any of the previous movies, holidays specials, or non-canon shows, and were never implied to or hinted at before, but that we do know about their existence, why don’t the Trolls or Bergens know about them? And also, they have advanced technology that can suck out a Troll's musical talent? And apparently Wi-Fi and social media exists in the Trolls world? What the heck?

Okay, okay, I know most of that doesn’t bother a lot of you guys, but to me, it highlights an ongoing issue I’ve always seen within the Trolls series: Inconsistencies with regards to its world building. I know a lot of you guys have seen it in the non-canon shows, but I also saw it in Trolls World Tour, since that movie introduced Trolls tribes that all have their own unique musical genre. As cool as I thought that was, it also made me think: Do those other musical Troll tribes know about the Bergens? Do the Bergens know about those other Troll tribes?

And speaking of those other Troll tribes, I was also disappointed that they aren’t even seen or mentioned in this movie. It left me very disappointed, since there’s a lot of potential you could do with those other Troll tribes, like make some kind of new evil threat that could threaten the entire Trolls' and Bergens' species, and have all the Troll tribes and Bergens band together (pun intended) to stop that evil threat. That could’ve been awesome!

Oh, and the Snack Pack got reduced to extras, which, like my disappointment with the absence of the other Troll tribes, left me feeling a bit disappointed, since they could’ve done something more with them in this movie.

Other than those things, I really loved the film!

And for all you Trolls fans out there, I think it’s time that I mention the elephant in the room with regards to Broppy.

Finally…

After waiting over seven long years since the first movie…

And seeing a far away version at the end of World Tour…

Branch.

And.

Poppy.

Finally.

At.

Long.

Last…

…

…

…

KISSED.

THEY FINALLY DID IT!!!

BRANCH AND POPPY FINALLY KISSED EACH OTHER ON THE LIPS!!!

IT HAS FINALLY HAPPENED!!!

Now, unfortunately, unlike with Trolls World Tour, Trolls Band Together is still in theaters, and I didn’t find any leaked screencaps in time for the writing of this review, but trust me, I’m not kidding, this actually happened in the movie!

And I couldn’t have been more overjoyed to finally see it happen officially, front and center, on screen, and made me cheer in the theater!

And I thought I’d let you all know after being silent for a long time!

Because after waiting for over seven years, after all that waiting, I couldn’t be happier to see that the kiss was well worth the wait.

As a big Trolls fan.

Thank you all for reading this.

And I’ll talk again next time.

Maybe when there’s a new Trolls show or movie?

I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out!

Thank you all once again, and have a wonderful day.

[scazrelet]

Art Theory: The Torso is a Clawfoot Bathtub

This is a bit of an experiment. This is a mirror of my most popular Ko-Fi post, now in full form here on Tumblr (though it does look better there with all the images properly sized and the text centered and etc etc). If it gets enough eyeballs I’ll mirror the other ones too. Now, without further ado...

Due to the popular demand of like... a couple people, I will be going over how THE HUMAN TORSO IS LIKE A CLAWFOOT BATHTUB. But first, a story. When I was still just a wee babby artist I would wander into the local library and pick up art books and be confronted with all of the in-depth anatomy images and feel a bit, well... overwhelmed.

And it's not as if I'm a dumb person or anything. It just never really made any real sense, not in a way that was meaningful to me. I struggled to retain it, unlike with other subjects, which of course confused me even more.

In hindsight I see now that it was like trying to memorize the parts of a car engine, how they all looked visually, where they were placed spatially (in 3D nonetheless), without knowing how a car operates or how all the parts work together in motion.

Which is a bit ridiculous. In any case, since I didn't have much interest in drawing western style comic superheros with musculature that looks like it's been vacuum sealed by their skin I spent a good amount of time just ignoring it and sneaking by, using a lot of shorthand and doing practices drawing from life. And, to be fair, I did learn a lot like that.

(Thanks for your contribution to the arts, Rob Liefield. I don't like feet either.)

Which brings us back to torsos. So when you look at a torso you can visually see there are features, like pecs and belly buttons, but their relationship to the internal structure is not immediately apparent.

(Me drawing in high school, probably.) So what ends up happening there is you just end up sort of... putting stuff where you best guess it kind of belongs. And sure, sometimes it's a really educated guess, and can be hella convincing. I tend to notice this most with collarbones. I can tell when an artists has learned largely through shorthand and idioms when their collarbones are just sort of floating around doing their own thing, basically acting as decoration on the chest without suggesting any greater purpose.

So what changed? And what does this have to do with bathtubs?

Well, I had a few paradigm shifts. To put it more simply, I realized I am a very conceptual and relational thinker. Anatomy never stuck with me because it never "clicked." So my success came from starting with big concepts and adding increasing levels of complication as I became ready for them. Pieces falling into place bit by bit.

Like a car, for instance, is a vehicle that runs on a series of explosions. Which is kind of badass. These explosions, in turn, are caused by pistons which rotate in time, which is kept going by... weird shaped gears and belts and pulleys... sparks... compression... well that's about it for my knowledge of engines.

*I have since been informed that it is the spark plugs that make the explosions and the explosions that power the movement of the pistons. I think it was clear by my diagram of a car that I am not well versed in automobiles. 

So what is the bathtub about? This is literally all I came here for.

Ok, ok... So the bathtub is a conceptual metaphor that helps an artist understand the structure of the torso. Cool. So, to break that down... It's easy to think of the body in terms of a column. A series of objects supported by the object below. That makes sense, right? At heart we are, essentially, the Michelin man.

(★ ☆ ☆) Except not at all. Unlike palm trees, pyramids, and economic class systems we are not, in fact, a series of parts dependent on the parts beneath them. And we knows this. I know this, you know this, we've all seen spooky skeletons before, but for some reason artists consistently fail to internalize it. The issue being that we are still just mammals, just mammals that walk around funny. And Mammals are basically flesh tents. But... less horrifying than that phrase suggests.

(Like this but skin.) Essentially your standard cat or dog is holding up its spine with its four legs and then its body is hanging from that support structure created by the spine. The body is not being held up from below by the legs. And that's a fairly crucial distinction as it turns out. The muscles of the legs connect to the spine(ish), and the ribcage hangs down from the spine, making a nice tidy sack to hold all the insides where they are supposed to be.

And humans? Well we're all evolved from previously four legged critters. 

(We're really just some jumped up fancy rats.) Which means we follow a very similar diagram - but with alterations to account for a bipedal stance.

WHICH BRINGS US TO BATHTUBS.

So, take this weird upright mammal and break it down into very basic blocks.

(I can draw better but I refuse.) Got some hips, a spine, a ribcage, just like a cat but vertical. So, again, all the focus is on supporting the spine, specifically. Which is why our arm muscles still largely connect to our back (except, like, your pecs which are literally contracting and yanking your arm bones forward which is metal AF).

So, like an umbrella designed in hell, we are actually bags of meat hanging from our spines. And that "decorative" collarbone? Literally holding up a ton of meat draped over it so we can continue to move our arms.

Which 🎉🎉🎉 BRINGS US TO THE BATHTUB🎉 🎉🎉

( F***in told you. ) It's not a perfect metaphor since usually the curtain rod is held up by other supports besides just the shower head (it's literally called a head this is such a great metaphor) but give me a little slack. The ribcage is like the curtain, held up by the spine of the showerhead, and the hip bones are the bowl of the bathtub, within which are lovingly nestled... all the intestines. And stuff. This metaphor helps an artist conceptualize the human structure, so they can start applying further degrees of knowledge, like muscles and motion and afsGkljSAKjhgfajhs hands.

But I specifically said a clawfoot bathtub you say pedantically? Well...

I didn't stutter. It is a CLAWFOOT BATHTUB. Specifically.

And not just for some reason like "oh because it has feet." (OK like maybe a little but not only, alright?) So let's talk about hips.

Now muscles work by contracting, something I passingly mentioned before (didn't think that would be on the test, did ya?) so to create motion the better generally contracts a muscle that has ends tied to two bones.

(Hips. You might already see where I'm going here.) That's why we don't resemble ball jointed dolls. Due to *insert complicated mechanical reason based on leverage, pulleys, walking, flexibility, and so on* we, again, aren't just objects stacked on top of each other like dishes.

(I only chose this image because it sounds like a band name.) So, as it turns out, rather than balls and sticks and vague underwear shapes, there is another pretty stellar way to consider the leg hip connection area.

Excuse my atrocious rendition of it here, but I assume you get the jist. Two turkey drumsticks tagged onto Lego Bionicle pegs jammed into a pair of hipster undies, with some amorphous fleshy bits spackled in there.

( I am very serious right now. ) So, I'm sure you've figured it out by now, but this shape very much resembles...

And that, my dear friends is why the human torso is a clawfoot tub. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Enjoyed this post? Find more tutorials and drop me a tip on my Ko-Fi Want art help with something else? Critiques and reviews? Just to chat and share? Join my discord. Hate this? Day ruined? ME TOO B

[quinn-loves-liam]

Hey dumpling, you can totally ignore this but I just wanted to apologize. I know you probably don’t even want to see me in pictures, I really never wanted to hurt you or Liam but Star had me on a choke hold and she was very manipulative, she made me feel like shit for talking to y’all and when she learned that I felt something for y’all she started to say scary stuff and the only way for me to calm her was to say what I said again I’m very sorry and I hope you are doing well

Oh, hey,

I'm not sure where to start, so I'm just going to say it, and I hope other than this, you're doing well. I know it's been quite some time since we last spoke, and I've been reflecting a lot on our past interactions. Recently, you reached out to apologize for the hurtful things you said to both me and my partners, and I want to acknowledge that I appreciate your effort to make amends.

The words you spoke at that time cut deep and left lasting emotional scars. I won't deny that it took me a long time to come to terms with the pain they caused. At that time, I was struggling with feelings of insecurity, unsure if I was a bad person or not, and you used that vulnerability to harm me, regardless of what led you to say those hurtful things.

The fact that you blamed your ex for manipulating you only added to the complexity of my feelings. I couldn't help but question why you didn't communicate with me about this manipulative person or take a different path that wouldn't have hurt me so much.

Since that time, life has taken an unexpected turn for me. I was involved in a car crash that served as a wake-up call, forcing me to reevaluate my life and the people in it. This experience made me realize that life is precious and too short to hold onto grudges or negative feelings. While I can't forget the past, I'm willing to consider giving you another chance.

However, I need you to understand that rebuilding trust is not an easy task. It requires genuine effort and accountability. I want to believe that you've grown and learned from the past, but I can't ignore my concerns about being manipulated again.

One thing that adds to my doubts is the anonymous nature of your apology. You sent it without revealing your main tumblr account, and this makes me question if you're truly willing to genuinely say sorry. I'm aware of how you had several accounts, and there was one in particular that I wasn't allowed to see much of. I even remember when you mistakenly sent me the link to that account once. All of this contributes to my uncertainty about your sincerity. I hope this will help you understand the magnitude of the pain you caused and the importance of making amends sincerely.

If you genuinely wish to be a part of my life again, I need to see a consistent effort on your part. It won't be an overnight process, and I can't promise that things will go back to the way they were. However, if you demonstrate through your actions that you've changed, learned from your mistakes, and are committed to being a better friend, there's a chance for us to rebuild our bond.

Please understand that my decision to reconnect will be based on your actions, not just words. It's essential that you respect my boundaries and give me the space to process everything. Copy-pasting an apology feels less genuine, and it would mean a lot more to me if you took the time to craft a heartfelt message that addresses the specific hurt you caused.

I hope you can comprehend the weight of my emotions and the significance of rebuilding trust. As I contemplate letting you back into my life, know that I'm doing so out of a desire for closure and not wanting to harbor resentment forever. Life is precious, and I want to make the most of it by fostering healthy relationships.

Take some time to reflect on what I've shared with you. When you're ready to demonstrate your sincerity, reach out to me with a genuine and personal message. Let's talk openly and honestly, without any pressure or expectations.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and whatever the truth is, I just hope no one gets hurt this time around.

[felinedetached]

Fandom Ableism in the MCYT Community

[Edited 14 June 2021]

One thing I’ve noticed about the MCYT (Dream SMP, specifically) community on both Tumblr and Twitter is that when informed of things that are ableist, or harmful to ND people, a lot of people ignore the post/tweet, derail it or actively fight against it.

“I’m ND so I can’t be ableist” is a common statement, which is blatantly untrue. Even I’ve used ableist terms and phrases before, without realising they were harmful. So as a neurodivergent person, with autism, BPD, depression/anxiety, dyslexia, psychosis & brain damage*: here’s some common ableist things both CCs and fandom say almost constantly**.

*note that not every neurodivergent person will agree with me on these, but these are commonly ableist things people have previously talked about online, and/or have been discussed between me and other neurodivergent friends. No minority can ever speak for the entire group.

**note that a lot of these are common outside the MCYT community as well, and that some of these are just considered societally acceptable. This isn’t okay, but it explains why a lot of people don’t recognise jokes or comments like these are wrong, and it means that it’s not a direct moral failing of people that they don’t immediately or directly recognise these comments as wrong.

Now, let’s get into the things you might not have realised are potentially ableist:

1. Use of “Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath/Schizo” and other demeaning terms for people with mental illnesses as insults, or to describe characters who are considered villainous. Psychopath/Psycho/Sociopath are already terms that people with ASPD dislike using, even not as an insult, but using these terms to describe people or characters who you disagree with or see as villainous only contributes to the villainisation of people with ASPD and other mental illnesses. Using c!Dream as an example: Dream as a character is not confirmed to have any of these mental illnesses. He is, however, commonly labeled as psychotic/psychopathic, incapable of any kind of compassion.

He is also a character that fandom largely insists that nobody is allowed to sympathise with. This is a huge issue, and has hurt a lot of people, especially people with low empathy, or mental illnesses that cause them to relate to some of c!Dream’s actions (e.g. pulling away from all his friends, desperately grasping at straws to gain control of situations etc). Insisting that these characters are characters it’s impossible to sympathise with, all while calling them psychotic/psychopathic/sociopathic, is extremely harmful, and I hope this post draws attention to that.

Here’s another post that talks about that.

2. Use of the term “freak”, in general. As an insult, “freak” has been typically used to insult neurodivergent people, people with visible physical disabilities (ex. “freakshow”, and the term was reportedly created with the intent of insulting people with physical disabilities), or people who display any kind of abnormal/atypical social behaviour/physical aspects — people who are usually ND people who lack a diagnosis or people with physical disabilities. Recent usage has come to mean “people who do things that hurt other people”, but this is harmful as well; using words like “freak” or “weirdo” which mean “socially atypical behaviour” to refer to people who are actually doing things that hurt other people conflates the two, and often has a side effect of hurting disabled people who see it.

3. Calling ND ccs like Technoblade monotone/emotionless. While the term “monotone” isn’t ableist in and of itself, the fact that it’s being used against a neurodivergent man who emotes in a different way to neurotypical people rubs a lot of ND people the wrong way. I’ve partially discussed this here, in a tweet responding to a person who said that c!Technoblade, quote, “has no human capabilities like emotion for example”. This, however, is not something contained to c!Technoblade — one of the most common jokes in this fandom is how rare it is to hear emotion in Technoblade’s voice.

The issue with that is that neurodivergent people almost universally agree that Technoblade emotes perfectly fine, and, in fact, emotes more freely and clearly than a lot of others do. Hence, calling him monotone perpetuates the idea of ND people as emotionless/less able to be hurt/less expressive, which often hurts us. It also contributes to the dehumanisation of ND people — related to how ND symptoms are most often seen in robots or monsters in shows — and is generally extremely harmful, on top of being untrue.

4. Related to point 3: the infantilisation of ND ccs like Tubbo and Dream, usually paired with assigning “caretakers” of their friends, like Tommy and George. This is about the posts that spread like “omg, Tommy helps Tubbo with his dyslexia, that’s so cute” or “omg George is so patient with Dream, I could never sit through that” on videos of Dream vocally stimming because of his ADHD. This is another post that talks about this, but I wanted to talk more about why this is harmful here.

4a) With Tubbo’s dyslexia, from someone with dyslexia, it isn’t harmful to correct his spelling and move on. Personally, I think this is helpful — others will think it’s condescending, because not all ND people are the same — but as the above linked post mentions, this is not what Tubbo’s twitch chat does. This is not what the comments say. It’s all things about how it’s “so cute” that Tubbo can’t spell, how Tommy/Ranboo are “so patient” with correcting him. This is rooted in the need to constantly watch over ND people while acting like we can't live our lives without someone having us under constant vigilance. It feels like savior-complex ableism, like people are trying so hard to not be ableist that they spin back around to hurting us instead. And it feels like we are being treated like children. Like we are lesser than, and need to be monitored/watched over.

4b) Similarly to what people do with Tubbo, the comments on posts about Dream’s vocal stimming are often full of people calling George “patient” for “dealing with it”, or claiming they “wouldn’t be able to handle it”. This is inherently ableist. They’re praising George for basic human decency towards ND people, and claiming in the same breath that they wouldn’t be able to do that themselves. And then there’s these.

These comments infantilise Dream — claiming he “wouldn’t be able to stop/calm down” without George’s help, implying he’d “spiral out of control” or claiming “everyone is now my child”. It’s all related to the infantilisation of ND people, and the belief that without help/a caretaker we cannot take care of ourselves.

5. The way people treat ccs who likely have undiagnosed neurodivergencies, like Wilbur. Wilbur has openly admitted on stream before that his parents considered getting him an autism diagnosis. He also openly admits on stream that he has habits he doesn’t understand why he does, and hyperfixates on things for months at a time and doesn’t know why. Posts like this have gone around Tumblr, in which Wilbur displays blatantly ND traits.

And fandom generally calls him weird for expressing those traits. This video where he talks about eating sand because he likes the texture? That’s an ND trait. This video where he talks about his irrational hatred for anteaters? While mostly a joke, irrational hatred of something when you can’t explain/understand/articulate why is also a common ND trait. He spends 20 minutes during a Philza stream info-dumping about self-sustaining ecosystems (sharing the photo, because I think it’s really cool) and fandom begins calling them “Wilbur’s weird jars”. It’s demeaning to people who infodump, and as a ND person who hyperfixates and infodumps it’s really upsetting to see. It’s also upsetting to see other ND traits being called “weird” or “freaky” & made out to be soley some funny joke for NT people to laugh at us about.

Additionally: It’s strange to me that people think it’s okay to make fun of ND traits just because they know that or perceive that the person they’re making fun of is NT. It’s still making fun of ND traits. It’s still insulting ND people. It’s still ableist as hell. Why is it okay just because the person is NT?

6. Implying that c!Ranboo’s enderwalking is inherently violent. Ranboo has shown us time and time again that the enderwalk state isn’t a violent state. That the enderwalk state isn’t a seperate version of c!Ranboo that does horrific things. Why, then, is it so common to imply that Ranboo would be violent and hurt people why he’s enderwalking?

It comes back to the perception of c!Ranboo as a character with “two halves”, or as a character with DID. Ranboo has made it clear that his character does not have DID, but this headcanon about his character persists, and it persists in a way that is directly harmful to people with DID — and to people who dissociate or sleepwalk. We do not commit horrific acts while we dissociate, while we’re sleepwalking, because the majority of the time we’re just checked out, our body is on autopilot. Insinuating that we do is harmful. Insinuating that Ranboo has “another half” that’s inherently violent or evil is harmful to people with DID. I’m not going to ask you to stop writing these headcanons etc, but please consider the effect you have on people before you do.

7. Related to point 6: the perception of c!Ranboo as “soft” and “cute” and/or perfectly moral because of his canonical anxiety. This is really harmful, and comes once again from the infantilisation of disorders like anxiety and depression. Ranboo has made clear time and time again that his character isn’t moral, and in fact is extremely inconsistent. He’s portrayed his character as inconsistent, as someone who hurts his friends unintentionally and often due to his want to please everyone, and yet he’s constantly seen as “soft/pure/the only moral one” because of his anxiety causing to have repeated and consistent spirals on-screen. These spirals are not healthy. They don’t indicate his “perfect morals” or make him more moral than anyone else on the SMP. Please stop infantilising people with anxiety, it’s really hurtful.

8. Implying that c!Technoblade is inherently a violent person because of his voices. I’ll admit here: my hallucinations are visual. I do not get auditory hallucinations, and I cannot speak for people who do. But many people have spoken out about this, and discussed how talking about Technoblade as an inherently violent character because of his voices is harmful, and a stereotype of people with schizophrenia.

Technoblade’s character is, in and of itself, inherently a stereotype (despite the fact that his chat are more likely to be a supernatural entity than a symptom of a disorder such as schizophrenia) in that the idea of “hearing voices that encourage violence” is a stereotype of people with schizophrenia. As an actual symptom, is a very uncommon one. More common auditory hallucinations for people with schizophrenia or psychosis are, reportedly, whispers or unrelated conversation. One of my friends hears screaming.

But the issue is with the implication that c!Technoblade is “driven to violence” by the voices. Canonically, he has dealt with the “bloodlust” of chat by grinding withers. He’s perfectly capable of being peaceful, even with “voices pushing for violence”, and he’s perfectly capable of being violent without the “voices” influence. It’s the connotations and the history that fandom has in demonising and villainising c!Technoblade for even having the “voices” in the first place, and acting having them makes him inherently violent and unstable. There’s precedent for that already in society, and it’s not okay to perpetuate it.

[Edit: as of 22/05/2021, I do experience auditory hallucinations, and I can confirm that I am not any more violent, and the voices I hear don’t push me to violence. The clearest one just said ‘click’ in my ear.]

9. Jokes about brain damage and the use of “brainrot” as a term. I made a post about how common jokes about brain damage are here, and I would like to reiterate bits of it.

Jokes like these are really really normalized in modern society. I’m sure a lot of you didn’t even register it as wrong, and that isn’t a moral failing! It’s a norm in society, and that means the majority of people arent going to register it as something hurtful, because it’s said so often. But it does still hurt. The idea of using a disability as an insult is really harmful and it feels dehumanizing, like our disability makes us lesser, something that should be laughed at.

“Brainrot” as a term originated in Skyrim, as a disease that literally rotted your brain. However, as a term, it has very similar connotations to “brain damaged” and has been used in similarly joking and insulting ways. It’s something that feels really off to me and other neurodivergent people to see used by neurotypical people. It even sometimes feels uncomfortable when used by neurodivergent people, even if it’s used in positive ways. I know quite a few people who have removed it from their vocab completely because of the connotations, and I have personally done the same. Once again, I am just asking you to please consider your words before you use them.

10. Calling c!Wilbur during his Pogtopia Arc “Vilbur”. Yes, he was a villain. Yes, he hurt people. But c!Wilbur during the Pogtopia Arc only has one major difference from c!Wilbur during the L’Manburg Arc: a visible depiction of mental illness, specifically paranoia and psychosis. Treating him as a seperate person and calling that seperate person “Vilbur” comes across as extremely hurtful, and contributes to the villainisation of mentally ill people. His mental illness does not excuse him from hurting people, but calling c!Wilbur “Vilbur” upsets a lot of us, because wether or not it’s intended, it feels reductive, hurtful, and insulting.

If you got to the end of this post, thank you so much for reading. I hope that this helped you recognise things that you might not have known were ableist, and that you consider what I’ve said here. I also know that I haven’t addressed everything ableist that’s spread through the MCYT fandom community, so if you’re ND and have something you’d like to add, please feel free.

[perpetual-stories]

How To Fight Writers Block

hello, hello. hope everyone is doing well. as you can all tell, this post will be about how to fight writers block.

it’s really annoying to me when I hear people say “oh you don’t have writers block, you’re just lazy.”

first of all, yes, I am naturally lazy. second of all, how dare you. writing isn’t as easy as many think. granted, all you have to do is write down words on paper, but it’s not always easy to find the right words to express what you are feeling, or what you wish to say.

I have had terrible writer’s block for the last few days and it’s horrible! as a business owner or a small writing store, I have to be ready to write and fulfill my clients’ ideas and orders.

it’s not easy. It takes a heavy toll on my imagination, and digs me a deep pit of blockage, drowning in the lack of originality because of the constant writing and repetition or certain phrases and sentences in different projects.

i am making this post in the hopes to remind myself about over coming the dreaded and sometimes skeptically believed writer’s block.

What is writer’s block?

Yeah, I know. We all know what that is, but let me define it.

is the state of being unable to proceed with writing, and/or the inability to start writing something new

some people believe it to be a real problem, others believe it's “all in your head”

What Causes Writer’s Block?

in the 1970s, clinical psychologists Jerome Singer and Michael Barrios decided to find out

they concluded that there are four broad causes of writer's block:

Excessively harsh self-criticism

Fear of comparison to other writers

Lack of external motivation, like attention and praise

Lack of internal motivation, like the desire to tell one's story

How to overcome writer's block: 20 tips

1. Develop a writing routine:

Author and artist Twyla Tharp once wrote: “Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is a result of good work habits.”

it might seem counterintuitive

if you only write when you “feel creative,” you're bound to get stuck in a tar pit of writer's block

The only way to push through is by disciplining yourself to write on a regular schedule. It might be every day, every other day, or just on weekends — but whatever it is, stick to it!

2. Use "imperfect" words:

A writer can spend hours looking for the perfect word or phrase to illustrate a concept

You can avoid this fruitless endeavor by putting, “In other words…” and simply writing what you’re thinking, whether it’s eloquent or not

You can then come back and refine it later by doing a CTRL+F search for “in other words.”

3. Do non-writing activities:

one of the best ways to climb out of a writing funk is to take yourself out of your own work and into someone else’s

Go to an exhibition, to the cinema, to a play, a gig, eat a delicious meal

immerse yourself in great STUFF and get your synapses crackling in a different way

Snippets of conversations, sounds, colors, sensations will creep into the space that once felt empty

4. Freewrite through it:

free-writing involves writing for a pre-set amount of time without pause — and without regard for grammar, spelling, or topic. You just write.

The goal of freewriting is to write without second-guessing yourself — free from doubt, apathy, or self-consciousness, all of which contribute to writer's block. Here’s how:

Find the right surroundings. Go somewhere you won't be disturbed.

Pick your writing utensils. Will you type at your computer, or write with pen and paper? (Tip: if you're prone to hitting the backspace button, you should freewrite the old-fashioned way!)

Settle on a time-limit. Your first time around, set your timer for just 10 minutes to get the feel for it. You can gradually increase this interval as you grow more comfortable with freewriting.

5. Relax on your first draft:

Many writers suffer form perfectionism, which is especially debilitating during a first draft

“Blocks often occur because writers put a lot of pressure on themselves to sound ‘right’ the first time. A good way to loosen up and have fun again in a draft is to give yourself permission to write imperfectly.” — editor Lauren Hughes

perfect is the enemy of good,” so don't agonize about getting it exactly right! You can always go back and edit, maybe even get a second pair of eyes on the manuscript

6. Don’t start at the beginning:

the most intimidating part of writing is the start, when you have a whole empty book to fill with coherent words

instead of starting with the chronological beginning of whatever it is you’re trying to write, dive into middle, or wherever you feel confident

7. Take a shower:

Have you ever noticed that the best ideas tend to arrive while in the shower, or while doing other “mindless” tasks?

research shows that when you’re doing something monotonous (such as showering, walking, or cleaning), your brain goes on autopilot, leaving your unconscious free to wander without logic-driven restrictions

showering is my favourite thing to do if I may add

8. Balance your inner critic:

successful writers have in common is the ability to hear their inner critic, respectfully acknowledge its points, and move forward

You don't need to completely ignore that critical voice, nor should you cower before it

you must establish a respectful, balanced relationship, so you can address what's necessary and skip over what's insecure and irrelevant

9. Switch up your tool:

a change of scenery can really help with writer's block. However, that scenery doesn't have to be your physical location — changing up your writing tool can be just as big a help!

if you’ve been typing on your word processor of choice, try switching to pen and paper. Or if you're just sick of Google Docs, consider using specialized novel writing software.

10. Change your POV:

great advice from editor Lauren Hughes: “When blocked, try to see your story from another perspective ‘in the room’ to help yourself move beyond the block. How might a minor character narrate the scene if they were witnessing it? A ‘fly on the wall’ or another inanimate object?

11. Exercise your creative muscles:

Any skill requires practice if you want to improve, and writing is no different! So if you’re feeling stuck, perhaps it’s time for a strengthening scribble-session to bolster your abilities

12. Map out your story:

If your story has stopped chugging along, help it pick up steam by taking a more structured approach — specifically, by writing an outline

13. Write something else:

Though it's important to try and push through writer's block with what you're actually working on, sometimes it's simply impossible

feel free to push your current piece to the side for now and write something new

14. Work on your characters:

It follows that if your characters are not clearly defined, you’re more likely to run into writer’s block

15. Stop writing for readers:

write for yourself, not your potential readers

this will help you reclaim the joy of being creative and get you back in touch with what matters: the story.

this is something I really need to do. because of my etsy business i don't write for fun anymore, but instead as a business and a deadline. i'm going to have to pull out my old crappy wattled fanfics or write some new ones.

16. Try a more visual process:

when words fail you, forget them and get visual. Create mind maps, drawings, Lego structures — ideally related to your story, but whatever unblocks your mind!

17. Look for the root of it:

writer’s block often comes from a problem deeper than simple “lack of inspiration.” So let's dig deep: why are you really blocked? Ask yourself the following questions:

Do I feel pressure to succeed and/or competition with other writers?

Have I lost sight of what my story is about, or interest in where it's going?

Do I lack confidence in my own abilities, even if I've written plenty before?

Have I not written for so long that I feel intimidated by the mere act?

Am I simply feeling tired and run-down?

once you identify what's wrong, it'll be so much easier to fix.

18. Quit the Internet:

If willpower isn’t your strong suit and your biggest challenge is staying focused, try a site blocker like Freedom or an app like Cold Turkey

19. Let the words find you:

meditate, go for a walk, take that shower

Word Palette is a great app that features a keyboard of random words, allowing you to simply click your way to your next masterpiece.

You can also try AI auto-completers like Talk to Transformer, where you can enter a phrase and let the app “guess what comes next.”

even though they often produce nonsense, it's a great way to help that writer's block.

20. Write like Hemingway:

And if your biggest block is your own self-doubt about your prose, Hemingway offers suggestions to improve your writing as you go

it's a pretty cool app if you ask me.

it highlights your sentences (if need be) and makes suggestions on how to improve them!

well, there you have it! a lengthy post on how to fight writer's block. now i just hope i can combat my own soon.

like, comment and reblog if you find this useful! feel free to reblog in instagram and tag me perpetualstories

Follow me on instagram and tumblr for more writing and grammar tips and more!

[jess-the-vampire]

honestly i’m not even sure i should be talking about it, i guess i just feel better to mention it then bottle it up to people who might be wondering

personal stuff under the cut

i’ve had some people recently try to send me moringmark comics, or link me to posts that he’s made and so on and so forth and  it’s cool and i appreciate it cause i love when people send me to new works and stuff.....i just wish i was able to really respond to them like i can with others.

mark blocked me guys, at least here on tumblr (Everywhere else i’m fine for some reason), i can’t view any posts of his and haven’t for awhile.

While we were friends a few years ago, but things have changed since i was helping him with his star vs comics.

back a few years ago when mark’s tumblr got randomly deleted, i was trying to contact him to make sure he was ok and nothing happened and all that and....ever since then he’s never spoken to me.

He kinda...ghosted me, and he has since then.

this was our last exchange:

I never got a reason why, one day we were talking fine and the next he was well....not speaking to me. I didn’t want to spam him so i would try again every few days, then weeks, then months....just with conversation starters....nothing accusatory, i just wanted to check up on him and everything.

I tried contacting him on other Sms and everything but i never got a response, and for awhile i thought maybe he was busy and i was kinda sorta bothering him so i gave him space and tried again months later.....and yeah, he never said anything.

i tried sending him apologies if i said something wrong, i tried asking if he wanted to talk and see what was happening, i was willing to accept if maybe i had said something hurtful and he no longer wanted to be in contact with me.

Because maybe i did at one point and if i did i wanted to own up to it to him because i liked being his friend and wanted to keep being his friend.

but as far as i can tell we had nothing but polite conversation with each other.

And after awhile it started to feel, at least to me, like he was purposefully shoving me to the side and ignoring me. First he stopped following me, then he had a whole comic about the art programs he was using which felt awkward to me because i was actually the person who introduced him to medibang 

not that i needed to be credited for it, obviously, i guess it just felt weird at the time when he mentioned how much he loved it and then just never mentioned i had been the one to introduce him to it. It only came off as weird as it did because i was being ghosted, i probably wouldn't have cared at all if we had been still in contact.

it kinda makes looking at any comics i ever do get to see of his surreal, because i think to an extent “i helped make this.”

I guess it hurts more now looking back, because now i just kinda feel.....used.

Because i never was told why i was being ghosted i’ve been just kinda left to speculate what i did, and sometimes when you’re left thinking like that your mind makes you wonder if he was never my friend in the first place.

or if i felt differently about the friendship then he did.

i helped with ideas for his star vs comics for awhile, got him into a new art program, then all of a sudden he just.....pretended i didn’t exist....it’s...y’know, sad and makes you think.

And it’s upsetting too because i had a very positive experience working with mark briefly, talking about the show and ideas for projects, when this happened i was heartbroken.

Also he never really finished that specific comic so i don’t know if i should be credited for the help exactly, i don’t know if he ever got to most of my ideas.

at most i helped him find artists and their ocs for him to draw and that was the biggest contribution i had that i can at least recall.

Point being tho, it felt hurtful to me, because of course it feels hurtful to feel like you made a friend and helped them and then they pretend you never existed.

But even after this had been happening for a few years i still was giving him the benefit of the doubt because i still wanted to think i was misinterpreting the situation and maybe i still am....

but when i found out he blocked me now as well, i gotta admit, i lost faith on that.....

i only mention all of this at all, because i used to say i really respected mark like a lot, as a creator in the star vs fandom, and that’s still not entirely gone either....but i have to admit....i’ve soured on him....a lot since this happened.

i don’t want anyone going after him or anything (Though i doubt he’d listen to it anyway he’s got so much on his blog it’d drown in the notes, but still, don’t), i just wanted to address why you’ve never seen his content on my blog despite us being friends awhile ago, why i barely talk about him, why i may sometimes get uncomfortable when he’s brought up.

it’s been pretty upsetting tbh, because friends turning on me is something i’m uncomfortably used to happening and it gives me serious anxiety about me being a bad friend or hurting ppl because i’ve had so much bad experience with friendships with rather toxic ppl.

honestly if mark showed up today in my dms and said something to me and why he did all this i’d probably forgive him if he had a reason and i was just being silly or something. But because of how limited the information is for me, i’m sadly left to think of the worst and there’s not much here making it any better.

he’s a very creative guy and he does deserve his following.

but as is, i just wanted to address that our relationship as friends has changed a lot since i talked about it last and why things may seem off these days so people can get a better grasp on what happened.

i feel it’s better i address it then not address it.

the guy doesn’t owe me anything, i just felt personally betrayed as a friend that i at least wasn’t given an explanation for him cutting our relationship how he did.

it is how it is tho, he may never contact me again, especially now that i know he blocked me, and it does make me sad tbh. I did like being his friend and i wish we were still friends, but this seems to be out of my control, he pushed me away and blocked me for whatever reason and i’ve just had to deal with it.

i’ve been trying to move on from it, i have not attempted to contact him in over a year at this point, but it’s hard to avoid thinking of it when he’s as popular as he is.

but i hope this helps give you all an understanding on things and why we don’t seem to be as close as we used to.

[theajaheira]

Oh your “Jenny being alive would make Giles WORSE in season 6” sounds Fascinating please expand!! (If you would like)

took me a hot minute but thank you VERY kindly for enabling me <3

so as y'all know, the point i always hammer home on dreadfulcalendarwoman dot tumblr dot com is that giles's character arc starts and ends with jenny. like she is the turning point for him in EVERY way wrt the way he chooses to interact with the world, despite her never being top priority in his life. i actually think it is so deeply interesting that buffy's unwavering love for giles is not enough to pull him out of his determined isolation, simply because she is The Slayer and she's Fated To Die and while she's come to terms on some level with her death, giles doesn't ever completely seem able to come to terms with the concept of losing her. so it's actually not gonna ever be buffy who can spur giles towards growth, partly because of that and partly because of the fact that she cuts him SOOOOO much slack. like that's her dad! she wants him to take care of her! she will forgive SO much of him.

jenny does not do that with giles. jenny draws lines and sticks to them to the best of her abilities and we have seen in canon how badly giles deals with those lines -- like in ted, where she essentially says "you being around me is bad for my recovery right now" and he behaves like she killed his dog or something. but the thing is that he still does register and respect that she's got boundaries, and he does try in his own way (hindered as he is by what some might call an unhealthy obsession with jenny) to adhere to the rules she sets down. there is also a very clear problem here in that jenny is super fucking inconsistent and what she allows giles is completely changeable and arbitrary up until the dark age -- like she is deliberately yanking him around because she wants to see how complete her control over him is, and still doesn't totally believe that it's absolute. and then of course GILES thinks that jenny KNOWS she has absolute control over him and is deliberately USING it, which i think definitely contributes to the resentment and anger of the angelus mess. but that's just canon.

ANYWAY i wanted to talk about that because i think it sets the stage REALLY NICELY for giles and jenny's dynamic in a canon where she lives! jenny represents this sense of normalcy and stability in giles's life -- in a lot of ways, his obsession with her is centered around this idea of her as his future wife and long-term life partner, which is something he never thought he would get to have or even WANT to have with anybody. canonically, in season three, the loss of jenny causes giles to double down real hard in his role as a watcher -- reflected in his suddenly incredibly rigid and starchy wardrobe, but also in the way he's no longer pursuing connections outside the scooby gang at all. losing jenny in canon makes it clear to him that he has nothing but being a watcher, and that he will fail at that as well if he allows himself to love someone the way he loved her (see: acathla). and loving jenny brought giles such profound joy that i don't think he ever wants to really handle the concept of never having that again, so of course he throws himself into watcher stuff instead of confronting that.

but in a canon where jenny lives (even in a canon where they spend the third season continuing to be a fucked up mess, which i think is realistic -- it's gonna take time for them to build something healthy after all the we-are-never-ever-getting-back-togethers of season two), giles no longer has that reason to double down as a watcher! instead he has this enduring and consistent possibility that he is allowed to love somebody without it blowing up in his face, and i think that that would genuinely help him so much. he wouldn't need to adhere so rigidly to Watchery Standards, he wouldn't WANT to do the cruciamentum if it ran the risk of hurting buffy -- he would start letting go of this pessimistic, cynical view of the world and the fact that buffy's doomed to die, and work instead on cultivating a home and a surrogate family with jenny. like at his core giles is a homemaker and he longs for community and family and a sense of belonging, just like the rest of the scoobies! he canonically likes being cast as the patriarch but labels himself as an "uncle" because it still gives him an out. i don't think he'd want to wriggle out of familial attachment if this was a world where he never had to experience losing jenny.

THING IS THOUGH, this is still a world where he loses BUFFY. and while canon giles cultivated this very deliberate distance between himself and buffy in an attempt to prepare for the eventuality of her death, this version of giles is one who has started to genuinely view buffy as a daughter and support her in that way as well. there's no emotional distance that he can fall back on to support himself through his grief. he has lost his daughter. in so many ways that is worlds worse than losing jenny before he ever got the chance to really love her, and i think it would have the potential to wreck him on a level that rivals canon.

so season six giles would be handling his grief in the same way that canon giles did -- he's throwing himself into a role that distances himself from the trauma of losing somebody he loves. this time he is ACTIVELY trying to distance himself from buffy -- not "for her own good," but because he just refuses to handle his grief, and even her coming back wouldn't shake his sudden understanding of the fact that she could die just as horribly and permanently again. and so in THIS version of season six he is very aggressively defining himself as Jenny's Husband and trying to push jenny towards having their own biological children and absolutely ignoring the fact that because of his insistent refusal to acknowledge his loss, his marriage is falling apart. he no longer wants to view himself as a watcher or as connected to buffy in any way, because he never ever wants to lose her like that again. that's his daughter. he cannot love her anymore because losing her destroyed him and he can't go through it a second time.

and jenny is just having A Time because she is a smart cookie! she sees why this is happening and she wants to be able to help giles through it! but she literally can't help giles when he is refusing to admit that there's even a problem. and poor buffy who is still dealing with the trauma of being ripped out of heaven also has to deal with and in some ways cater to giles, whose grief prevents him from being there for her in the way that she was genuinely expecting from him. like i think this is a canon where buffy and giles's relationship could have been at the place for her to tell him the truth, but then she comes back and he is a fucking mess and she does the whole depressed repression thing and tries to take care of him. Which Does Not Go Over Well With Jenny.

i'm not sure how this gets solved. i actually wrote a chapter of this a billion years ago wherein jenny and buffy and spike and dawn start forming this weird and incredibly sad family unit after giles leaves for england, and jenny and buffy kinda mutually struggle with this idea of a mother/daughter relationship after years of weirdness between them. i think that the onus would really be on giles to pull himself out of it, because he would have effectively burned his bridges with his wife HARDCORE by that point -- but it would still be a version of giles who had three more years of emotional stability than in canon. there's always a chance.

[robininthelabyrinth]

part 3 of Escape Your Destiny (Star Wars Wangxian AU) - on ao3 or tumblr part 1, part 2

-

He had been right to reject seclusion, Lan Wangji thought grimly. The sweet siren call of calm contemplation had nearly seduced him, the Dark Side seeking to eat away at him through other means now that anger and hatred had not done the work – he would have meditated himself into a stupor, becoming little more than a vacuum within the Force, a black hole of deathly intent.

More than that, though, he would have missed – this.

This disaster.

Wei Wuxian’s lips were pale from blood loss and hypothermia. Two of his limbs were at odd angles, probably broken, and Lan Wangji feared that there were more like them beneath the body that was bruised like a tender peach – he had been shielding as many people as he could, Lan Wangji knew, because he knew his Wei Ying too well to think that he might have done anything else.

Lan Wangji still didn’t know all the details, what exactly had been the disaster or why Wei Wuxian’s starfighter had crashed when he knew (with painful recollection) exactly how good a pilot Wei Wuxian was, but it hadn’t really mattered. Xue Yang had rushed into his chamber shouting excitedly - not exactly a rare event - saying something about an alarm and a disaster and a crash and can I have one of these gadgets? possibly two, maybe, I’m thinking two but haven’t really committed yet, it’s a big decision you know, and Lan Wangji’s blood had run cold when he realized what alarm he was referencing.

(A proper Jedi would never have tagged the object of his affections like an endangered bird or a criminal, injecting the tracking chip so deep into bone and muscle that standard scans wouldn’t pick it up and even in-depth scans might register it as a naturally occurring aberration. A proper Jedi would think of such intimate surveillance as cruelty, dehumanization, the caging of a free bird –

A proper Jedi wouldn’t have known what happened.

A proper Jedi wouldn’t have been able to rush over at once, wouldn’t have been in time to retrieve the body from the wreckage, finding it still warm and breathing but swiftly fading into the Force.

A proper Jedi would have been worthless.)

��That looks pretty bad, Master,” Xue Yang said, the comm crackling in his ear, and for once his tone was almost solemn. Perhaps the lessons on empathy were working, following the introduction of the rancor Xue Yang had named Chengmei with an expression so pained and vicious that Lan Wangji had refrained from asking. Perhaps it was that he’d grown so obsessed with his pair of bounty hunters and their foundling assistant, a little not-blind Bothan girl who liked to mouth off at him. Or perhaps it was just something as simple as knowing that if Wei Wuxian were lost, Lan Wangji would have no reason to –

No reason to anything at all.

“It is within the limits of what a bacta tank can heal,” Lan Wangji said, because it was, it would be, as long as he got him there in time. 

Time that was swiftly running out.

Later, when Wei Wuxian was safe, Lan Wangji would return to that obscure little space station that had nearly caused his beloved’s death and he would find out what had happened properly. He would find out, and he would slaughter every one of them that caused it, torment them for days if he needed to in order to know who to blame – it didn’t matter if their contribution were accidental or deliberate, major or slight. He would offer up a sacrifice of their suffering to the Dark Side, as solemn as lighting a stick of incense at a temple –

When Wei Wuxian was safe.

Because he would be. He had to be.

Lan Wangji’s Wei Ying would not die so easily.

“Uh, Master? We don’t have a bacta tank.” Xue Yang was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know that many people around here that do. This is Outer Rim, remember? Not even the Hutts have one.”

“There is one in an outpost in the Quiberon sector,” Lan Wangji said. His attention was split between piloting their stolen ship as fast as he could and monitoring Wei Wuxian’s vital signs. He had transferred a certain amount of energy into him already, but the Dark Side was poisonous in overly large quantities, especially if one was not accustomed to it; a pure Jedi like Wei Wuxian couldn’t tolerate it, and Lan Wangji would not risk making him worse. “Inat Prime system. I’ve entered the coordinates. Set us up for a jump to lightspeed.”

“Inat Prime,” Xue Yang repeated, instead of doing as he was told. “Isn’t that – near Rothana?”

Lan Wangji said nothing.

“Rothana’s a manufacturing planet. Heavy engineering – warships. It used to belong to a subsidy of the Jin Engineering Corps, maybe still does, I don’t know, but either way manufacturing planets like that are where those sleemos keep their precious IP. And that means it’s going to be guarded and booby-trapped up your chubba. Who in their right mind would set up an outpost anywhere near there?”

Xue Yang was descending into Huttese slang again, Lan Wangji noted to himself, keeping his calm only by sheer force of willpower even as the Dark Side screamed in his mind that now was the time for rage and pain and blood. Given his hatred of the entire species, Xue Yang only did that when he was especially anxious and didn’t want to admit it.

Later, when he didn’t have more pressing things on his mind, Lan Wangji would have to inquire of his apprentice – which he had previously believed was as transparent to him as a sheet of transparisteel – how he had learned about things like top-secret Jin Engineering manufacturing planets and IP and such things like that.

Later. Right now, he didn’t care.

“Prepare for jump,” he said again, the threat in his voice clear, and this time Xue Yang scrambled to obey, mumbling curses as he went. This was more typical of Xue Yang, but in this case it signified that he was concentrating, and that was all Lan Wangji cared about.

The rest of the trip passed as if in a daze, time counted in the beats of Wei Wuxian’s heart. Still strong, because Wei Wuxian was strong – this wouldn’t be the end of him. It wouldn’t.

Lan Wangji would make sure of that.

“We’re here,” Xue Yang said, breaking through Lan Wangji’s extreme focus on the rise and fall of Wei Wuxian’s chest. “I’m going to guess that our destination is the third planet? If you can call those other ones planets, they’re barely more than asteroids…”

Lan Wangji hummed, affirming.

“So, you going to tell me what this place is? Some super-secret Sith hideout?”

“No.”

“Smuggler’s base? Bounty hunter lair? Mandalorian terrorist cell? Clone factory?”

Lan Wangji rolled his eyes. Xue Yang had been reading too many historical action comics again.

“No, but seriously, Master! I deserve to know what we’re getting into, don’t I? What is this place?”

Lan Wangji was tempted to say you deserve nothing but what I give you, you filthy-tongue swamp-rat, but that was the Dark Side speaking, not him, and not only because the Gusu Lan Jedi order in which he had been raised did not permit cursing. It was simply anathema to him - he was Sith, but not a Lord, and he had encouraged this self-same insolence because it was better than having Xue Yang cringe before him like a kicked dog.

No matter how irritating it might be at times like this.

“It’s Jedi,” he said shortly, and to his amusement that actually shut Xue Yang up for a solid minute.

“I’m sorry, Master, I think I temporarily went insane due to Dark Force poisoning,” Xue Yang finally said. “But did you say that we’re planning on popping over and ‘borrowing’ the bacta tank of a bunch of Jedi?”

“Mm.”

“Master. Master. Please tell me you remember that we’re Sith, right? Sort of the sworn enemy of the Jedi? Arrest-on-sight orders? Any of this ringing any bells here? No? In short, have you lost your mind?”

Lan Wangji took Wei Wuxian’s pulse again. It was getting increasingly thready; he frowned.

“Take us in,” he ordered, and Xue Yang made a whining sound not unlike an especially agitated cat, but he obeyed, finding the planetary base and flashing them with a urgent medical attention required signal and transmitting the passcode Lan Wangji recited to him.

The base opened its doors in silent invitation.

Xue Yang took them in, apparently resigned to his fate and determined to pointedly suffer and judge him without saying a word.

This determination cracked the second they passed through the gates.

“Master!” he shrieked. “Master, Master! That’s the Qinghe Nie emblem!”

“It is,” Lan Wangji agreed. Foreseeing Xue Yang’s next question, he added, “It is here because this is an outpost of the Qinghe Nie Jedi order.”

Xue Yang sounded a bit like a rusty door when he hyperventilated, and even more so when he started laughing hysterically. How had he ever survived being a Sith before, if this was how he reacted to stress?

“Great, right, yes,” he said, nearly howling. “Sure, why not? Let’s go knock on the door of some Jedi and ask them for a bacta tank like we’re borrowing a cup of sugar, sure, okay, we can do that. Jedi are chumps, they’re all about mercy and sympathy and bantha fodder like that; we can con ‘em - it’ll be tricky, but it can be done when you’re in a pinch. I’m fine with that, up for it, it’s cool, all cool. You know who we can’t con? Qinghe Nie, that’s who. ‘Suppress evil no matter the cost’ Qinghe karking Nie.”

Lan Wangji ignored him, scooping Wei Wuxian into his arms and heading out into the saber hall.

Three grim-faced Jedi dressed in the immediately identifiable colors of the Qinghe Nie were waiting there, hands on their lightsabers and droids lingering in the corridors, but they did not attack. Instead, they led Lan Wangji, a nervous Xue Yang dogging his heels, to the medical bay, never uttering a single word.

The medical droids took Wei Wuxian from his arms – Lan Wangji forced himself to recall the Lan sect mantras on restraint and allowed them to do so without ripping out their wires for daring to touch him – but it wasn’t until Wei Wuxian was firmly encased in the bacta tank, the oxygen-rich liquid flowing into his lungs to heal him, the colors on all the screens all showing positive signs, that he was finally able to release the breath it felt that he’d been holding since he first saw the broken starfighter that encased Wei Wuxian’s broken body.

This was fine.

“Wangji,” a low voice said from behind him, and Lan Wangji’s back stiffened.

This was not fine.

The Qinghe Nie were a strange order of Jedi – almost heretical, really, by any traditional measure. The orthodox Jedi order, for the most part, valued calm and serenity and selflessness, prioritizing the logic of the mind over the yearning of the heart, preaching detachment from worldly concerns and attachments…

Qinghe Nie, in contrast, valued righteousness, and cultivated rage.

Halfway to Sith, Lan Wangji’s uncle had once remarked after a glass of something stronger than tea. He’d regretted it later, of course, and tried to walk it back, smooth over his uncharacteristic rudeness, but Lan Wangji still remembered.

The adherents of Qinghe Nie were of the view that for every virtue there was a fault – that the Jedi’s emotional remove would at times render them passive, that self-control could too quickly shade into indifference. They argued that it was the duty of the virtuous to be enraged by evil, intolerant of it, and that only through that anger would they be motivated to act to eradicate it.

Their philosophy often led to their deaths, whether through reckless action or through the corruption of rage into madness, but even their harshest critics had to concede that they were devastatingly effective. 

Lan Wangji had always thought that there was something heartbreakingly sincere about all the Jedi that took the harsh vows of Qinghe Nie, each one willingly trading away long lives for the sake of righteousness, for the ability to make a change in the world, each one unable to tolerate life if it meant they weren’t striving to make things better. Perhaps they did not match the Jiang for creativity or the Lan for elegance, perhaps their techniques were more brutish and less refined, their diplomacy little short of appalling, but no other Jedi order could match them for sheer power.

Very few people wanted to be between a Qinghe Nie Jedi and their target, and still less if they had allowed themselves to succumb to the beserker rage that sometimes took them on the battlefield – indeed, in a crisis that called for force of arms, most people who knew what they were about would rather have a single Qinghe Nie on their side than an entire battalion of war-droids from the Jin or Wen engineering corps.

Still, even that efficiency might not have been enough to convince the ancient sticklers of the Jedi Council to condone such a Sith-like view of the Force, but the Qinghe Nie also had an unsurpassed connection to the kyber crystals that were essential to the creation of lightsabers – the mines under their hands were far more numerous and more fruitful than any other order, and for all that they seemed to have dubious connections to the lightsabers they crafted and wielded, with their highly unusual one-sided edge, they were always open-handed and willing to let other Jedi pick freely from their stores. 

With the ancestral weapon of the entire Jedi order at stake, even the Jedi Council unwillingly bowed its head to reality and compromised.

Not very happily. Especially since the fierce young head of the Qinghe Nie order – the great Chifeng-zun, Nie Mingjue – had been constantly causing trouble for them ever since he had been admitted to their deliberations.

More relevantly, though, was that Nie Mingjue was also a good friend of Lan Xichen, Lan Wangji’s elder brother by blood, and it had been the gift of his token, his passcode, never revoked, that they had used to enter through the gates.

(Look what happened to the Twin Jades you prized so much, my old clansmen, Uncle, Father, Grandfather. Look at me now. Begging for scraps from a Nie -)

Lan Wangji turned and saluted, bowing deeply and ignoring Xue Yang, who had progressed so far into hysterical laughter that he was now hiccupping.

Nie Mingjue caught his hands and raised him up, just the way he always had, and that grim face surveyed Lan Wangji from top to bottom, those searing eyes seeming to pierce into the depths of his corrupted soul.

“You look well,” he said, which surprised even Lan Wangji, who had thought himself beyond surprises. “That’s good.”

“What the fuck,” Xue Yang muttered. “What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck – you guys are with me here, right? This is kriffing insane…”

The Qinghe Nie Jedi ignored him.

“Chifeng-zun,” Lan Wangji said politely, and ignored the man’s raised eyebrow. He was not about to fall back into calling him da-ge the way he’d done back when he was in the Jedi crèche, no matter how tempting – everyone had called Nie Mingjue da-ge back then, too young to be afraid of his fierce and barely leashed energy. “Thank you for lending us temporary use of your base.”

There wasn’t really a polite way to say I wasn’t expecting to run into you here under the circumstances, but from the way Nie Mingjue snorted, Lan Wangji suspected he’d understood regardless.

“Checking up on the Jin,” he said, an explanation that Lan Wangji didn’t deserve to hear. “Treasonous svapers, the lot of them. Is this Wei Wuixan?”

Lan Wangji nodded. His heart was unexpectedly in his throat as Nie Mingjue studied the other Jedi through the glass of the bacta tank, though he wasn’t sure why.

He was Sith now, after all. Why would he care what Nie Mingjue thought?

It would have been easier if Nie Mingjue had been angry at him, full of rage the way he so often was. Easier if he’d turned his tongue as sharp as any lightsaber to scolding him, or turned his face away in coldness. Nie Mingjue notoriously despised the Sith, had probably meant to call the Jin Sithspawn instead of svapers earlier, had probably switched the word only in deference to Lan Wangji’s current occupation – which meant he knew, because of course he knew, there was no way Lan Xichen hadn’t told him even if his position on the Council hadn’t already entitled him to all such secrets.

He knew, and he still persisted in acting like – like –  

“Cute enough,” Nie Mingjue commented, and Lan Wangji covered his suddenly burning face with both hands. “You have good taste.”

“Please stop,” Lan Wangji mumbled, mortified beyond all belief. Xue Yang was looking back and between the two of them with his jaw gaping wider than a Gungan’s.

Nie Mingjue snorted, amused. “I carried you around on my shoulders when you were knee high, Wangji. I think I’m entitled to torment you a bit about your crush.”

Xue Yang looked like he was going to forsake the ways of the Sith, convert to Qinghe Nie, and start logging prayers at the temple of Nie Mingjue, and Lan Wangji couldn’t even blame him.

“Don’t you have anything to say about –” Lan Wangji shut his mouth with a snap. 

He didn’t actually want to hear Nie Mingjue exorcising him for his choices, no matter how little he regretted them.

Nie Mingjue was silent for a moment, contemplative. “No.”

Lan Wangji blinked, not understanding.

“I don’t have anything to say,” Nie Mingjue clarified with a shrug. “I can’t say I entirely understand why you chose what you did, but we all choose our own paths in the Force, Wangji. I have faith that even though your path leads you to the Dark Side now, it will eventually lead you back to us once more. If you keep your sense of righteousness about you and continue to stand up for what you believe is right as you always have – and avoid engaging in the wholesale slaughter of innocents the way so many Sith do – I will never be disappointed in you.”

…maybe Lan Wangji would allow the people in that spaceport to live.

But only because it would hurt Wei Wuxian to know that he had sacrificed so much for nothing, of course. It was pure selfishness, nothing more. 

(The Dark Side hissed in his head, bitter-angry-vicious-hate-hate-hate, but Lan Wangji hadn’t been Hanguang-jun for nothing. He controlled himself, allowing for only the influences he chose to accept – it was his independence that had led him to the Dark Side, and his independence, he believed, that would allow him to forge his own path, as Nie Mingjue had said, even inside the ways of the Sith. His uncle would say that such thoughts were pure arrogance, pride before the fall, but, well. He’d already Fallen, hadn’t he?)

“Would you like to stay with him until his vital signs have recovered?” Nie Mingjue asked, and Lan Wangji nodded, grateful despite himself.

Grateful, too, that Nie Mingjue did not speak of Lan Wangji reconciling with the rest of his old order.

“I will not stay longer,” he added. “I know it must be a burden to you, opening your doors to one such as me –”

“Ridiculous,” Nie Mingjue scoffed. “This is a secret base, Wangji. If you don’t say anything about it, who’ll know? And before you ask, I’m going to tell Wei Wuxian that you saved his life whether you’re here for him waking up or not, so take that into account when selecting your leave time. And I’ll exaggerate.”

He would, too, Lan Wangji thought fondly. Nie Mingjue had always been big brother to all the Jedi younglings, no matter how grown up they eventually got, and he never let them forget it.

“I’ll consider it,” he allowed, and settled into a meditation pose at the side of the room.

“As for you,” Nie Mingjue said to Xue Yang, who straightened up so quickly that he might as well have attached a ruler to his spine. “I hear that you’re the one that’s been attacking Hutt palaces?”

Xue Yang glanced at Lan Wangji, who sighed. 

“You shouldn’t encourage him, da-ge,” he murmured. “He gets into enough trouble as it is.”

“Comradery does more to defeat evil than any amount of solitary philosophizing,” Nie Mingjue proclaimed, certain as ever in his own righteousness. It would be unbearably irritating if it was anyone less sincerely bullheaded about it, earnest but full of flaws. “Anyway, it’d be good for some of our padawans to see a Sith in action without needing to go up against one right off the bat. You in?”

“…in? I don’t – there aren’t any Hutt palaces around here..?”

“They take their travelling palaces on the Quiberon Line,” one of the Qinghe Nie Jedi said, and Xue Yang’s eyes lit up at the promise of what he undoubtedly thought was an opportunity for wholesale slaughter. It wouldn’t be, of course, not when he was going to be fighting alongside the strict Qinghe Nie, but it would keep him busy for the time it took Wei Wuxian to stabilize and recover.

Maybe Lan Wangji would even stay long enough to speak with his Wei Ying before retreating to be his silent and unwanted protector again.

Maybe.

[monstersinthecosmos]

Another white woman can’t shut up and let us speak for ourselves.

Oh man, Anon. You’re setting me up for failure here! This is a paradoxical message bc if I respond, I’m continuing to not shut up.

(Cut for length, apologies for the wall of text. More apologies & sources to Black opinion pieces beneath!)

I do wanna say I’m super sorry if any of the language in my posts about the casting was alienating or insensitive. I said several times that I wasn’t trying to speak over anyone. And I don’t want “I’m sorry if” to sound like an insincere apology—I do mean it, but I’m also saying that if I got anything wrong it was just me being ignorant and I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. And I want to say that, now that the dust has settled and there’s been such an overwhelming negative response to the news in general, I see why that feels discouraging and hurtful to fans of color, and that fucking sucks. So I also hesitate to bring it up again cause like, I feel like it would be more productive and healing for people to post positive stuff for a while so we can try to build a space that prioritizes inclusivity and lets this bullshit rest for a minute. And I’m really sorry for contributing to that, I really didn’t intend to hurt anybody.

Sometimes I treat Tumblr like an opinion space and I can be kinda lazy about citing sources and I’m super sorry about that, honestly. I should’ve. Some of my opinions are kinda baked in at this point from conversations I have pretty often IRL, and I listen to several podcasts with Black perspectives on media, and I’m sorry for paraphrasing some of that instead of linking. My fault, my bad!!! 🙏 Here’s a few of the sources I consulted that shaped my opinion:

Twitter thread by cheryllynneaton about specific elements of the story that might look bad in a race-swap

Twitter thread by endlessyarning about the importance of diverse crews and also the broader picture of racism in the industry as a whole

Twitter thread by AfronautGriot about how casting Black actors in white stories isn't good representation

Here's some YouTubes I watched:

This one talks about the history of slavery in Louisiana and the Free People of Color, as well as how problematic the brothel angle is.

This one is about how this change is tokenizing.

These final three also address the idea of not wanting "hand-me-downs" and how it's pandering.

(I just checked again and so far these are the only YouTube videos I can find from Black creators who have spoken on it, so far no one supports it. idk. Let me know if I missed somebody! I'm really trying to challenge my confirmation bias and understand the full spectrum of opinions but I'm having a hard time finding anyone in favor of it.)

I looked up some other sources, too, that are memorable to me and that I could think of off the top of my head -

This particular episode is actually about Hamilton and the complications of race swapping a historical story and what that means to the erasure or belittlement of slavery, while also taking on the challenge of creating a meta experience for a white audience who doesn't actually understand it for what it is, along with calling out the idea of using Black culture and POC to entertain the elite theatre audience while making the show prohibitively expensive to regular people.

Afro Horror - The Skeleton Key

This episode of Afro Horror about The Skeleton Key I think is relevant, too, I love this podcast and this one sticks out because I think it has a lot of similar themes to IWTV and the idea of where to draw the line when it becomes gratuitous Black suffering for the sake of the director’s white guilt or the sake of the white audience. (I think their episode about The Craft is relevant to this conversation too and the issue of creating Black characters whose arcs revolve around racism instead of having a fuller personality, which I think has come up in some of the IWTV convos as far as like, would it be good to create a more accurate picture of slavery in the show and acknowledge it fully instead of dancing around it, or would that be contributing to representation only being about trauma?)

Attack of the Queerwolf! - A Pity Party is my Favorite Party

And this episode of Attack of the Queerwolf! reviews IWTV and got into the plotholes of writing Louis as a sympathetic slave owner, which!, while not exactly the topic we’re on right now, I thought really did sum up why this is a problem in the text, and it really influenced my opinion lately as I’ve daydreamed about how they might navigate it on the show.

I also re-listened to a few epsiodes of Fansplaining today to refresh on what lessons we can learn about racism in fandom spaces. I generally suggest this podcast to everyone who fandoms as a hobby because it gets into really incredible conversations about navigating this space in a way that takes it seriously as a hobby, creative outlet, and social forum. And these conversations were a great reminder to be careful how we talk about race, even when we're well meaning. I think going forward as the show comes out and the fandom gets louder these will be really great reminders about how to conduct ourselves and call out shitty behavior when we see it.

https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/135a-race-and-fandom-revisited-part-1

https://www.fansplaining.com/episodes/135b-race-and-fandom-revisited-part-2

I’ve been following the news about this show pretty closely so my initial unhappiness was not “Oh my gosh I don’t want a Black actor” but more along the lines of “omg these white people are going to make this show so fucking racist.” And I tried to convey that in my posts. I hope that was clear. Anyone who caught my post out in the wild might not have had that context. I know that my intention doesn’t matter if it landed wrong, that it still might have hurt people, but I just want to say that for the sake of clearing the air. And the ironic thing is that I was actually more open to Black Louis a few months ago when the leak came out, until Black fans on Discord told me I was being an obnoxious white person and we started having the conversations about getting meaningful and respectful representation. (As a couple of those videos above called it, original characters instead of “hand-me-downs.”) It really got me thinking about some of the angles that hadn't occurred to me and that I'd taken for granted, and I defer to those conversations. I mentioned in my posts that I know all Black fans are not a monolith and of course there isn't going to be a consensus here, like some people are going to disagree with the sources I shared, I totally understand that, but combining all of this with the overlapping lessons in queer representation and disability representation (which I feel more qualified to speak about and spend a lot of time with in other fandoms) definitely influenced my opinion.

I really didn't intend to speak over anyone, so while I repeated a lot of the ideas I heard from Black fans, I'm sorry for not linking them!

I’m excited to see how Jacob does and I think he’s gonna be handsome af in the period costume and I’m going to watch and I’m cheering for him, but I am also critical of even more racist storytelling in this fucking universe, like I really thought that was something the show could improve upon since it’s already rampant in the books. So I’m curious to see and I hope they get their shit together and do it right lol. I think everyone who likes VC is kinda like, in the fucking trash fire together and we all know that the books are fucked up, and it would be really nice to enjoy the show without making everyone feel even worse about our bad taste. Anyway anyone feel free to share these links independently in their own posts! Feel free to reblog as well bc I'm not afraid to get dunked on by this anon and I'll take the heat LMAO but it would be nice to give them their own space where it's not framed by a white person gabbing about it. =) That's counter-productive.

[pop-punklouis]

hi hope. idk if you’ll post this or not, but the other month i had came across some posts of yours from about 10 (?) ish years ago of you using the n-word with an “a” and i know you’ve grown since then and i know you grew up in the south (so did i & so many kids used it aunfortunately for slang) but just wanted to message and say that knowing people can grow and that you can see that growth in someone over time is really nice. constant evolution and education is so important. hope you’re well

Hey. yeah, i actually want to address this. I’ve been talking with someone privately about these posts recently and just reflecting on them, myself, from all those years ago and the person i was compared to who i am now. and although that term was never used on a black person or about a black person, just using it as slang for anyone/anything was not okay and was horrifying to see from myself. regardless of its intent, it’s still a very harmful and traumatic word. i don’t remember much of this time period in my life, but that isn’t a justification. that word has such a devastating origin with a weighted history that i will never, ever be able to understand as a white person. knowing i contributed to that weight as an ignorant kid is something ill be ashamed of for the rest of my life, but that doesn’t erase the harm it had on those black people who saw that on their dash from me and experienced it or any of the black people who dealt with this term being used so casually by white people growing up and still are working through the scars from that to this day.

going through those posts that i’ve now deleted because of how disgusted i was from the casual use from myself and tumblr as a whole back then (some reblogs i had), i saw an ask where i dismissed a black person after they asked why i used the term— saying if it wasn’t used as a racial slur, then it didn’t feel as bad… and i want to apologize from the bottom of my heart for even believing that fucked up idealogy 10 years ago. to know, in the back of my mind, it could offend someone who has been generationally hurt by a term but using it anyway because it “wasn’t used with that intent,” is so far out of who i am and who i’ve grown to be. like i keep saying, i was absolutely horrified to see some of these things, but my horror of my own ignorant past and the environment i grew up in doesn’t take away all the harm it caused and still causes black people. i take full responsibility for that behavior and usage of that term. it’s unjustified, and i keep thinking about the pain i know ive caused people who have had to see that tied to me. no black person deserves to suffer because of the blatant ignorance and dismissal from another race, and it’s devastating that you guys do :(

i am so, so sorry. and i know those words only go so far. even though i was from the south, it doesn’t matter. we all should’ve known better than to say that term so nonchalantly. i hope i can be forgiven for these past actions, and if not— then that’s totally fine. no one has to forgive me or understand. it would be completely justified not to. this has given me a long overdue self-reflection for parts of my past i didnt remember until it was brought to my attention. so much of our comments comes from how we’re raised and the environment were raised in, but after time we grow and change because we learn new things and are educated and brought awareness to every day. that doesn’t mean the hurt and harm is forgotten just because someone can “wipe their hands clean of it” and stand on the moral high ground knowing they aren’t that person anymore. but, it is hopeful to know how much growth someone can have. and i hope you all have seen that in me.

i know i harp on tumblr a lot, but i believe this website exposed me to so much information, news, politics, injustice, prejudice, and hard truths as a teen that i didn’t have anywhere else at the time that it helped me evolve as a person. just knowing this platform gave me access to so much of the world i didn’t have access to otherwise is something ill forever be grateful for. i’ll never be able to apologize enough for these past comments, but it didn’t feel right not to talk about this publicly. it’s been heavy on my heart since being made aware of them, and i just want to be as open and honest as possible about everything— even if that means facing such hard behavior from my past. i know i’m not that person anymore, and i know i’ve grown and would never even think to say or do something like that. but, at the end of the day, i’m not the one who has been affected. it’s black people, and i’m so so sorry.

[alarajrogers]

Is this the latest meme? People jumping on a post that debunks a hoax or a piece of false information to claim that it’s true, with all the sincerity of the Sharks Are Smooth As Hell guy?

I am really fucking suspicious of this, and here’s why.

The degree to which misinformation shapes our political lives, generally in a very negative way, is unprecedented at the moment. You have people who sincerely believed Donald Trump was protecting children from a secret cabal of child molesters who drank children’s blood to stay young. You have people who believe that 570K dead people don’t exist but that a vaccine that has a 1 in a million chance of causing harm is a terrible danger. You have people believing that vaccines cause autism and that the diseases they protect against don’t exist anymore. You have people who believe that socialism and communism are the same thing and literally indistinguishable from totalitarian dictatorship. You have people who believe that a man passing a counterfeit $20 deserved to be slowly murdered in front of an audience of the entire world.

In the 00′s, we had a lot of people playing with edgy, politically incorrect humor. White people using the N word! Hilarious! Can’t you take a joke, you stuffy, too-serious person? Let’s be anti-semitic on main, what’s wrong with you, it’s just a joke? Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we told jokes about women deserving to be raped?

All of these were popular, specifically with white young men (mostly straight, cis and either Christian or atheist with Christian background), and all of them used “it’s a joke” to test out radical right-wing ideology that since then has suckered in huge numbers of people, enough to get a completely incompetent grifter elected president because he was openly racist. That is what bad ideology presented as a joke led to.

The past three days or so I’ve seen this thing going around Tumblr where a really fucking absurd claim is made, and someone debunks it, and a whole host of people jump in and vigorously defend the really stupid claim. Thus far I’ve seen “Joe Biden really did bury a dog” and “The poster’s son really was killed on a ride at Disneyland”.

Now when this was the “sharks are smooth as hell” thing it was funny because there was one guy insisting that sharks are smooth, a lot of people debunking him and being ignored, and it was a new joke... and we hadn’t had QAnon become a serious factor in politics yet, and we hadn’t had misinformation kill literally thousands of Americans. But I’m sorry, guys, this bullshit with doubling down on defending misinformation is not funny anymore, not after COVID and vaccines insert a 5g chip and adenochrome, and it really strongly smacks of the testing-the-waters shit that the white supremacists did with 4chan and PewDiePie and performative racism. Maybe you’re doing it because you think it’s funny, but the thing is, the ironic “reality isn’t real, nothing actually matters because on the internet you can pretend anything is true” stance is literally killing people. Literally. Killing people. Dying of COVID, dying because people would rather believe lies that fit their existing belief systems than accept that the police are corrupt and murderous and that their training makes it impossible for them not to kill people as long as it isn’t challenged and they are not retrained and defunded.

Also, dare I say it: you’re being ableist as hell. Autistic people have a very hard time not going down a rabbit hole of “no! that’s not true!” because we are wired to have a very hard time handling deliberate misinformation. People with high anxiety are likely to be really freaked by photoshops of a little boy being thrown off a roller coaster in the context of a poster insisting that that little boy was their son and it really happened. You’re fucking with people’s heads because you think it’s funny. Some people’s heads are going to get considerably more screwed up than you think, because their neurodiversities magnify the impact of your misinformation.

I have never blocked anyone on Tumblr before. I’m going to start blocking people who participate in this bullshit. I can handle a person with reprehensible ideas; I can argue with them. I can’t argue with people who just laughingly refuse to acknowledge that reality is real and continue to pretend that their son was killed by being thrown off a log flume, illustrated with a picture of a roller coaster and an obvious photoshop. And five years ago I’d have shrugged it off as people telling edgy jokes, but edgy jokes literally contributed to the rise of the alt-right. And misinformation -- which is what this particular set of edgy jokes is playing with -- has murdered thousands of people. Many of whom didn’t believe the misinformation themselves, but were forced to interact with other people who did (tell me, when Republicans went to super-spreader events and got sick with COVID, how many mask-wearing cashiers got sick from them because they refused to wear a mask and kept breathing on the cashier because they thought it was funny, and the companies that employed the cashiers gave them no tools to protect themselves from outright malice from customers?)

So no. Your jokes about Joe Biden killing a dog aren’t funny. Your jokes about a little boy being killed at Disneyland aren’t funny. And your posture that people who take the truth seriously and actually debunk things are people who should be mocked, presumably because who cares about the truth, is disgusting.

[henshengs]

About Rule 63 fanworks

I was asked yesterday to elaborate on my genderbend opinions, as a trans person, which I’m happy to do, and I’ve thought about it a bit today to make sure I’m not saying something off the cuff and not thought through. Still, this is a sensitive, complicated topic, and I’m open to discussion on it.

This also got long, so I’m putting it under a cut.

So, obviously I can’t speak for all trans people. No minority group is a monolith in our opinions and this is particularly the case for the transgender community because our experiences are so very diverse and individual.

I am very rarely hurt or offended by genderbends/genderswaps/rule 63 fanworks. I know people for whom this is not the case, and I believe the pain involved is very real. The thing is... living in this world is inherently kinda painful when you’re trans. This world’s not built for us. All kinds of random things can cause me pain throughout my day. Store mannequins. My own reflection. Lesbian poetry. Pictures of other trans people. When something triggers my dysphoria or feelings of alienation, I have to stop, acknowledge the feeling, and then consider whether the thing is, outside of hurting me, contributing to the ignorance of and hatred of people like me by its very existence.

I don’t think the basic act of asking, “What if this character who is a cis man, was a cis woman instead?” does that. I think if anything, it opens the door to then ask “what if he was a trans man? Or a trans woman? Or nonbinary?”

Asking “what if this story was about a cis woman” lets cis women talk about their experiences and see themselves in stories, something I think is valuable! and also can lead to stories exploring sexism and misogyny, things which affect all trans people too!

In the rest of this post I’m going to use the terms “rule 63″ and “genderswap” to refer to the act of creating a fanwork changing a cis/presumed cis man to a cis or not-specified-to-be-trans woman, because this is the vast majority of the work under that label, because most fictional heroes and iconic characters are cis men, and because people who create cis man->trans woman or cis woman->trans man content, in my experience, usually use terms like “trans headcanon” instead.

(A lot of rule 63 fanworks don’t explicitly specify that the now-female character is cis. We can presume that most artists aren’t even thinking about the possibility of the character being trans, but we can presume that for 99.99% of all art, anywhere. It’s not a unique evil of rule 63.)

The claims that rule 63 is inherently transphobic, rather than just something where it’s good to be extra careful to avoid transphobia, as far as I’ve seen, use two arguments: A) that making the character a cis woman is wasting an opportunity to make them a trans person, and this is transphobic, and B) that rule 63 fan art is gender essentialist and cissexist, because it ties gender to physical characteristics.

Argument A doesn’t hold up for me, 

because couldn’t one then say that reimagining an abled white cis character as an abled white trans woman is racist and ableist? that reimagining them as an abled trans woman of color is ableist? No transformative reimagining can cover every identity. We say “write what you know” and talk about Own Voices, and that includes cis women who want to write about the experience they know. 

It’s also not fair to tell trans people that we must always think about trans experiences, even in our fiction. A lot of the time we don’t want to have to write or think about dysphoria and discrimination and we want to live in the heads of cis characters or even just characters whose AGAB is not mentioned! 

And it is also, imo, not a great idea to pressure people who may not be educated about trans experiences to write about trans characters just because they want to explore sexism or write about lesbians. 

many, many trans people first begin exploring their gender identity through creating cis rule 63 content, because it’s ‘safer’ than directly engaging with trans content.

With argument B, I agree that a lot of rule 63 art looks like this

and this sucks. To me, though, it’s important that it’s not the genderswap aspect that makes it suck. Artists who do this are also designing original characters with sexist, gender essentialist designs. Artists who don’t draw sexist art in general, also don’t draw sexist rule 63.

(yes, I know She-Hulk is not a rule 63 of regular Hulk. But you guys know the kind of art I’m talking about.)

I’ve also noticed a genre of fanfic that’s like, “if these characters were girls, they’d be sensible and conflict avoidant and none of the plot would happen!” or “what if these violent, tragic male characters were Soft Lesbians who braided each others’ hair” and again, I assume these authors write canonical women the same way. The genderswap part isn’t the bad part, the sexism is. 

Non-sexist rule 63 actually, in my opinion, fights gender essentialism and cissexism. When a character is exactly the same except for the ways a gender essentialist world has shaped and pressured them based on their AGAB, that’s a strong statement on the constructed nature of gender! 

But the argument that making /any/ change is gender essentialist, is... I understand where it’s coming from. I am a trans person who presents androgynously and I am a hypervisible freak because of it. I would love to live in a society where visible gender markers weren’t a thing! Unfortunately, we don’t live in that society. We live in one where we are constantly under pressure to conform to one of two profiles. There are almost no gender non conforming male characters in popular media. And changing a gender conforming cis man into a gender conforming cis woman seems to me to be a neutral action at worst. Not to mention characters from historical canons, who would be under a ton of pressure to conform. 

For physical body type characteristics... 65% of all speaking roles in Hollywood are cis and male. It’s harder to get statistics on other forms of media, but it’s undeniable that overall, most stories are told about cis men who do not have breasts or wide hips. Changing the story to be about a cis woman who has those features is introducing more diversity! 

I typed “rule 63″ and “genderswap” into the tumblr search bar today, and I saw a lot of art of women with a variety of aesthetics and body shapes and characteristics, who looked like people I’d see out at the mall.

Again, I sure do wish we lived in a post gender society. But we don’t, and in our society, everyone, myself included, looks at a picture of a person and gender categorizes them based on appearance. It is not wrong for someone to draw “Geralt the Witcher as a hot butch woman” and give her some physical markers generally agreed upon to denote ‘butch woman’ rather than ‘gender conforming man’ to tell the viewer that that is what they have drawn. Just as it is not wrong to draw “my OC who is a hot butch woman who fights monsters” and give her those markers. 

Finally, both arguments against genderswaps are, in my opinion, flawed because they implicitly posit the act of creating fanworks of the original, cis male gender conforming character design, as neutral. I think this is incorrect. I think that if you’re going to argue that drawing a cis male character as a cis woman is transphobic, you have to also argue that drawing the character as a cis man is transphobic. But I’ve only seen people do this when a trans headcanon becomes extremely popular in a fandom.

Again, I’m just one person. I’m also biased, because firstly, as I mentioned, rule 63 doesn’t usually trigger my dysphoria; secondly, I almost always come down on the side of “don’t limit what people can explore in fiction; ask them to explore it more sensitively or with more content warnings instead.” 

I definitely encourage creators to seek out and listen to a variety of trans opinions. But this is mine: I love rule 63, I make a lot of it myself, and I think if no one created it we’d lose something awesome. 

At the end of the day, what I really want is more trans content*, but I’d rather have cis rule 63 than just stories about cis men. 

Also: I personally have nothing against the terms genderswap or genderbend. I don’t think it reinforces the gender binary to acknowledge its existence by saying you’re ‘swapping’ the character from being cis with one AGAB to being cis with the other. But I can definitely see the argument against it, so I don’t blame anyone for going with rule 63 instead.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading; I hope you have a nice day, and have fun creating and consuming the fanworks your heart desires. I’ll end by linking this comic, which is just eternally relevant.

(*by which I mean: trans content created by other trans people, that matches my hyperspecific headcanons, likes and dislikes, and doesn’t set off any of my often changing dysphoria triggers. See what I said at the start, about transgender existence being constantly mildly painful. There are many awesome aspects to being trans! This is one of the less awesome.)

[aegialia]

self-indulgent reflection on being on tumblr

so i recently hit 1000 followers on here and this blog has existed for almost exactly 8 years, so i wanted to ramble about tumblr and my experience of it for awhile. under the cut so definitely feel free to ignore this.

i started this blog right around when i was fourteen and had just started high school. at that point, i was out to my parents (and no one else) as bi, i had an inkling i was Struggling with something but i had no idea what and felt like i couldnt actually acknowledge it, and i had left leaning but very vague politics. tumblr definitely has shaped my journey around sexuality/gender/mental health/politics, both for good and for ill. 

for good: 

seeing other ppl talk about being lesbians helped me realize i could be a lesbian w/o being a traitor to the concept of bisexuality. hearing trans ppl talk about their experiences and explaining non-binary stuff and dysphoria helped me understand what i was going through 

i don’t like talking about my mental health stuff in detail on here, but suffice to say, i was Going Through it in high school. i’m still going through it now, but i am in a much better place (thank you medication and 7 years of therapy!). seeing ppl talk about the weird, dumb, awful parts of mental illness let me acknowledge that i was going through those things too, that i wasnt like evil for feeling like that, that i could change. people talking about adhd/autism was particularly helpful---being able to identify why i’d always felt like my brain just didn’t work right is the first step in the (ongoing) process of not hating myself for the way my brain works

politics is definitely the area where i think tumblr was the best for me. i got exposed to so many opinions i definitely wasn’t hearing in school, from intelligent, well-read people who could articulate theory in ways i could understand. tumblr didn’t give me my politics and i didn’t learn everything i know about theory from it, but the communities of people i was around pointed me in the right directions. tumblr was also a good place to learn how to react to criticism. this doesn’t seem to be most people’s experience, but getting called out over minor things on tumblr genuinely helped me learn how to take a step back, look at my behavior, apologize, and try to change, which, as it turns out, is a helpful skill irl as well

for ill:

wrt sexuality and gender, it’s probably pretty obvious someone who’s journey is ‘cis bi girl -> cis with a million different microlabels -> nb w a million different microlabels for both sexuality and gender -> nb butch lesbian who’s not super into romance’ would have some bad times on tumblr. the bi circles i was in made being a lesbian seem like an immoral choice, the ‘’’mogai’’’ (or whatever u wanna call them) circles made me feel like i had to divy up and perfectly label every aspect of myself in a way that really wasn’t helpful for me, the lesbian circles i was in made me feel like being a lesbian was about ending up in a monogamous butch/femme cottagecore relationship and that there was something wrong with me for not really wanting that. to be clear i think microlabels can be very helpful for people/a monogamous butch/femme relationship is a perfectly fine thing to want, they just didn’t work for me. im very very glad ive reached a point in my life where i dont feel the need to stay up to date on the latest discourse and am more focused on finding a way to exist that is comfortable for me and supporting my community irl. 10/10 would recommend to everyone

not going to get deep into it, but social media is. not good for my brain in general. i still enjoy using tumblr, but these days im pretty careful to step back from it frequently and treat it as an occasional hobby. 

the cons of political stuff on tumblr are probably also very obvious. there are some just awful discussions on here and the culture surrounding the way we handle bad behavior and justice and accountability and working to become a better person and make up for the harm you’ve caused has historically been fucking awful and trying to unlearn it and find new ways to engage with this stuff is exhausting. 

for all that i’ve changed over the course of having this blog, this blog has stayed pretty fucking static. i started out being super into diana wynne jones and the iliad and those are still two of my biggest interests and things i talk about the most on here. there are definitely specific things that have petered away (i started this blog almost entirely to keep up with good omens fan stuff and i pretty much haven’t touched it since the miniseries came out, i haven’t sought out pacific rim/supernatural/elementary/mcu content in years), but im still pretty much interested in the same things. i like relatively small fandoms, i like weird side characters, i like to be a grumpy child playing with my toys in the corner. when a fandom im in gets popular, i tend to stop engaging with it entirely (hello rqg/tma/good omens/enola holmes!). i dont think its a pretentious ‘i liked it before it was cool’ thing so much as a ‘people get Weird and awful when a fandom hits a certain level of popularity and there’s too much content and i really, really hate the bad faith arguments larger fandoms tend to spawn’ thing. i’ll consume content from big fandoms, but i pretty much refuse to actually engage with them at this point.

one of the stranger parts of my experience of tumblr is the social side. i’ve never really known how people make friends online---how do you go from liking each other’s posts and occasionally replying to them to actually being friends who communicate off social media? i’ve had conversations with ppl on tumblr and i’ve had sort-of friendships that are contained to tumblr where i’d like to get to know them better, but i’ve never figured out how to do that. my best friend’s job is pretty much to make friends/connections on the internet (she’s an activist and artist), my dad knows people everywhere in the world from twitter, and i’m just sitting here like a little old grandpa who doesn’t understand how you can have internet friends. 

at this point in my life, i’m fine with this, but this has made me feel real fucking bad in the past---like, if everyone online, even the ppl who say they’re weird and brainbad in a similar way to me, can make friends on the internet, what’s wrong with me? particularly in high school and my first year of college, when i was just horribly lonely all the time, it made me feel super disconnected and like there was something fundamentally bad about me. these days, i’m a lot chiller about it. i use social media to engage with stuff i enjoy and share my thoughts about it. it’s okay that my social difficulties extend to me not knowing how to use the internet to socialize.

on a somewhat related topic, it’s wild that i have 1000 followers. obviously, that’s not an actually super large number and a huge number of them are probably bots or inactive. if you post consistently for eight years and follow lots of people, like i do, it’s not a surprise to end up with this many followers. it is also, thankfully, the sort of followers that are not fans. probably most ppl following this blog dont remember why they followed and dont know anything about me or my interests. this sounds like its meant to be depressing but it’s not. i like that my way of engaging w the internet lets me do pretty much whatever i want and no one will care. the mere concept of being. like. tumblr famous in any capacity, even just in one community/fandom, is viscerally horrifying to me. 

i really enjoy the space i’ve created for myself on here. on one hand, going back through my blog is obviously embarrassing and full of hating my past self. on the other hand, i now have a very nice collection of things i enjoy in this blog. i like seeing what i’ve been interested in and (when i’m in a good mental health place) i like to be able to remember how i thought and talked about the things i loved when i was younger. im not at the place in my life where i can love a younger version of myself, but sometimes i can laugh at zir with a level of fondness. 

i’ve always been paranoid about sharing details about my life on here (and the fact that my parents have always been able to see it certainly contributed), so the version of jack on here is a carefully curated version, who’s super enthusiastic about the things they love, was very conscientious about apologizing and trying to do better when ze messed up, and tried to be polite to others. that’s a younger version of myself that i’m closer to being able to have compassion for than the version i find in essays and poems and memories. 

i’m starting grad school in ten days and i’m still using the blog i started when i began high school. tumblr has helped me in a lot of ways and hurt me in a lot of ways, but i still have to admit that it’s been a significant factor in shaping me. i’d be incredibly embarrassed to admit that irl, but it’s true. other than my family and like one friend, this blog is one of the only things that’s ‘known’ me since i started high school. i’ve changed so much in that time and im glad to have this weird little record of myself throughout those changes, even if i’d probably warn my younger self away from tumblr if i could go back in time.

tl;dr i have had a mixed experience on tumblr and i have mixed feelings about that experience. no idea if anyone read any of this very long, very rambling internet memoir

p.s. fun facts about this blog:

i’ve never changed my icon or blog title

i recently got a second version of the poster i got my blog title from. i chose my blog title by looking at what was hanging on the wall directly in front of me. 

my original url was gloomthkin. this was not, as you’d probably assume, an otherkin thing. i had literally no idea what otherkin was at that point. i’d just learned the word gloomth from a bill bryson book and thought it would be cool n edgy to be the child of the quality of gloom. i changed my url after i learned what otherkin was and realized everyone probably assumed something about me that wasn’t true which i hated (not bc i had an issue w otherkin, just bc i don’t like ppl thinking untrue things about me)

during my good omens days, i once sent a tumblr ask to nail guyman which, in retrospect, was kinda rude. i stand by the content but id never send an ask like that now. he replied to it privately in a way that so deeply embarrassed and shamed 15 year old me that i’ve never gotten over it. i still get nervous and embarrassed when i see anything about him or his books

[hacked-by-jake]

Ok, i wanna follow up on the "being less talented or useless" anon ask, and yes, i will do it as anon too, cause, tbh, im a chicken to do it with my blog name😂

Firstly, I can understand that anon, i myself had the same feelig manny times, and honestly, i dont think that feeling will ever leave me. Follow that feeling up with the preasure of trying/wanting/needing to get better...it sucks, and it can screw with your mind really badly. And yes, im aware there are and always will be manny people that are more talented than me, and I am well aware my fics will never get a 100+likes, but thats ok. But i write, and will continue to do so, cause it makes me happy. And even if theres just one like on something that i wrote, that will make me happy.

But the reason i sent this to you is actualy something completelty different, so let me try to explain:

I came to realisation, that in every fandom,  there are a few types of people. And here where the problem is - if you are not "in cahoots" with the right people of that fandom, no matter what you do wont be good enough. Now, you can disagree with me here, thats fine, everyone is entitled to his/her opinion, but this is mine, and i stand behind it totally. Cause i read so manny great fics with so little likes/coments that were way better then some who got lots of likes, cause the one who wrote it wasnt connected with the right people of the fandom.

Again, just my opinion, but thats how i see it.

So, once again, to the anon who sent you that ask, dont give up, do what makes you happy firstly and mostly for yourself. You will either get better at it, or wont, but dont stop doing what brings joy to you! You wont know theboutcome of it by simply giving up.

And to you Hbj, i thank you in advace if you read this, and i apologise for this long rant, you are free to delet it without posting/answering it, but this thought was occupying my mind lately, and this anon ask just resurfaced that thought back, and tbh, its good to finaly let it out.

First of all: Hey Anon!

You know, I actually don’t quite agree with you, I can tell you why. I’ve been here longer than most of the people who are here right now. When I started here, the fandom had a lot more active members. There were many more people here and they were also active throughout.

I don’t think I need to pretend that I’m not so well known, because I’m one of the biggest blogs here at Duskwood Fandom on Tumblr. No, of course it’s not supposed to sound pretentious, but I also think it’s no secret. I’ve been here for over a year now, I’m incredibly proud of the range one my blog has reached, but see? It also took me time, and I also "fought here"😅

Of course, I would also reblogged a few times from larger blogs but with me it all came with time. At the moment, fandom is actually not as active as it used to be, which of course also contributes to the fact that some things don’t get as much attention as they might otherwise. It takes some time to build up a "range", I did it myself.

And what was also part of it for me was that fandom was generally more active, which is why it went even faster.

Personally, I don’t care who the person is, and what they belong to, if I like the work, I share it. And I don’t share everything, nor do I read everything, and of course I don’t see everything.

But in the same way, I don’t share everything that the blogs I'm connect with the most post.

And I’m very much referring to me now that you sent me this message, so I’m assuming you mean me, too..

Well, and as you also said, you saw stories that had less likes but were better than stories that had many likes. Please remember, that’s your opinion. Everyone has different tastes and just because you found them better doesn’t mean that it was actually like this or that everyone sees it like this. To say that this person just doesn’t belong to the right group is unfair not me, because maybe not everyone liked it as you liked it. I don’t know what you’re referring to now, so I’ll take it as this..

I fully accept your opinion, I even think it’s a pity that you think so because this is certainly not an intention of anyone here.

Yes, of course you sympathize more with some people, but you generalize this in such a way that I think it’s a pity. Because as I said, I do not see every single post that is published here, nor will others. And to say that this is generally the case is, in my view, a great pity. But I’m serious, I have absolutely no problem with your opinion, and I don’t want to change your opinion either, but I still feel like I have to explain myself, because I don’t prefer anyone directly, I share and like that, what I like, I also read only what appeals to me in general.

-

But about what you say yourself and to the anon, I can agree with you one hundred percent. As I said, I am still unsure and I still feel that I am less talented. (As I also say, this is simply a fact and I can live with it, of course this is not the most beautiful feeling in the world, but so it is, I will be able to improve, but maybe never become as good as others are)

And believe me, you shouldn’t say you’ll never get over 100 likes. I also thought so, and if we are honest, my first fanfictions are really grottos bad. xD And many of my own stories aren’t over 100 likes yet. But you’re right, you shouldn’t stop because of anything if you enjoy it. Because it’s still all about fun and having a good time together.

And don’t worry, your rant is okay. It’s your right to share your opinion, and believe me, I really have no problem with that. :D

I have to admit, I felt a little bit attacked because I don’t want to make anyone feel like they’re not good enough or anything. I want to treat everyone equally here and not give anyone any advantages or disadvantages.

And, of course, I won’t just delete or ignore your submission, that is not proper. It’s okay to let go of your thoughts, and also to share, don’t worry.

I hope you will have a great day/evening/night! Take care of yourself and stay healthy! 🥰🌹💚

Also, I hope you don’t take my answer badly, or anything else, it’s not meant to be mean, and I’m neither mad, nor anything else. I’d rather thank you for sharing and for taking the time to write all this.🥰

And I hope you understand what I want to say with all this. 😅

-

And of course, this is for everyone now, always remember, be nice to each other and love each other. No one wants to argue and I hope that we can continue to do so.❤️

[kuromichad]

different subject that’s heavy on my mind rn but since i’m already being harsh let’s get into it. i wish it wasn’t automatically presumed to be some kind of truscum attitude when someone tries to express that different parts of The Trans Community have like, different needs and different risk levels and different experiences and that we have the ability to talk over each other, harm each other, etc... like when i put it that way people generally are like ‘of course that’s true!’ but is it ever really understood in practice? a number of people (not a large enough number, but still) are able to loosely understand ‘you can be trans and transphobic’ when it’s applied to the matter of transmisogyny but when a trans person tries to express distrust of or frustration with afab nb people due to how common it is that that category of person will, despite being trans/nb, espouse bioessentialist, anti-medical-transition, radfem-adjacent if not outright cryptoterf rhetoric, suddenly ‘trans people can be transphobic’ gets applied to... the person with a complaint about transphobia. 

because he’s clearly an evil truscum man! regardless of if the person making the complaint is a trans man or trans woman, oops, lol. he’s a bad person who is attacking and invalidating and totally hatecriming the heckin’ valid, equally at-risk transgender identity of “an afab woman who isn’t a woman except when she pointedly categorizes themself as a woman because being afab makes them a woman who is ‘politically aligned’ with women but she’s not an icky unwoke cis woman because they don’t like being forced into womanhood although Really When You Think About It 🤔 all women are dysphoric because obviously the pathologized medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria in transgender people is something that equally applies to cis women just default existing under patriarchy 🤔, and no, equating these things totally does not imply anything reductive about or add a bizarre moral dimension to the idea of being transgender, whaaaaat, this woman who isn’t a woman doesn’t think there’s anything immoral or cowardly or misogynist or delusional about being transgender, they would never say that because THEY’RE transgender, except when she feels it’s important (constantly) to make clear that she’s Still A Woman Deep Down Inherently Despite Not Identifying As One, and none of this ever has any effect on how they treat the concept, socially and politically, of people who actually wholly identify with (and possibly medically transition to) a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth, be it ‘the opposite gender’ or abstaining from binary gender altogether or ‘politically aligning’ with the ‘opposite’ gender from their asab. never ever!”

and like maybe that sounds like a completely absurd and hateful strawman to you! but in that case you’re either like, lucky, or optimistic, or ignorant. i’m literally not looking at random nb people and declaring that in My Truscum Opinion they’re ‘really a woman’ just because they’re not medically transitioning or meeting some arbitrary standard of mine. i am looking at self-identified afab nb people, who most often use she/they because, y’know, words mean things, especially pronouns, so people who are willingly ‘aligned with womanhood’ typically intentionally use she/her (sorry that i guess that’s another truscum take now!!! that pronouns mean things!!! the bigender transmasc who deliberately uses exclusively he/him wants it to invoke a perception he’s comfortable with!), who actively say the things listed above (in a non-sarcastic manner). 

like, the line between a person who says “i don’t claim to really not be my asab because i know no one would ever perceive me as anything else” because theyve internalized a defeatist attitude due to societal transphobia, and a person who says that because they... genuinely believe it’s impossible/ridiculous/an imposition to truly be transgender (in the traditional trans sense, beyond a vague nb disidentification with gender) and are actively contributing to the former person’s self loathing... is hard to define from a distance! i think plenty of people who are, in a sense, ‘tentative’ or like ‘playing close to home’ so to speak in their identity are ‘genuinely trans’ (whatever that may mean) and just going through a process. they might arrive at a different identity or might just eventually stop saying/believing defeatist stuff, who knows. but there are enough people saying it for the latter reason, or at least not caring if they sound that way, that it’s like, dangerous. it is actively incredibly harmful to other trans people. and it’s fucking ridiculous that it’s so difficult to criticize because you’ll always get the defense of “umm but i’m literally trans” and/or “well i’m just talking about ME, this doesn’t apply to other trans people” when it’s an attitude that very clearly seeps into their politics and the way they discuss gender.

because it’s just incredibly common for afab nb people (most typically those that go by she/they! since i’m aware that uh, i am also afab nb, but we clearly are extremely different, so that’s the best categorization i’ve got) to discuss gender in moralized terms, with the excuse of patriarchy/misogyny existing, which of course adds another difficult dimension to trying to criticize this because it gets the response of “don’t act like misandry is real” (it’s not, but being a dick still is) and “boohoo, let women complain about their oppressors” (this goes beyond ‘complaining’). a deliberate revocation of empathy/sympathy/compassion from men and projection of inherently malicious/brutish/cruel intent onto men (not solely in the justified generalizations ‘men suck/are dangerous’, but in specific interactions too) underpin a whole fucking lot of popular posts/discussions online, whether they’re political or casual/social, and it absolutely influences how people conceptualize and feel about transness. 

because ‘maleness is evil’ is still shitty politics even when you’ve slightly reframed it from the terf ‘trans women are evil because they’re Really Men and can never escape being horrific soulless brutes just as women can never escape being fragile morally superior flowers’ to the tumblr shethey “trans women who are out to me/unclockable are tolerable i guess because they’re women and women are good; anyone i personally presume to be a cis man, though, is still automatically evil, and saying trans men are Just As Bad is progressive of me, and it’s totally unrelated and apolitical that i think we should expand the concept of afab lesbianism so broadly that you can now be basically indistinguishable from trans men on literally every single level except for a declaration of ‘but i would never claim to be a man because i’m secure in the Innate Womanhood of the body i was born into, even as i medically alter that body because it causes me great gendered discomfort.’ none of this at all indicates that i feel there’s an immense moral/political gap between being an afab nb lesbian vs a straight trans man! it says nothing at all about my concept of ‘maleness’ and there’s no way this rhetoric bleeds into my perception of trans women and no way loudly talking about all this could keep trans people around me self-loathing and closeted, because i’m Literally Trans and Not A Terf!”

again, if that sounds like a hateful strawman, sorry but it’s not. i guess i’m supposed to be like ‘all of the many people ive seen saying these shitty things is an evil outlier who Doesn’t Count, and it’s not fair to the broad identity of afab shethey to not believe that every person who doesn’t outright say terfy enough things is a perfectly earnest valid accepting trans person who’s beyond criticism’ but like. this cannot be about broad validation. this can’t be about discarding all the bad apples as not really part of the group. we can’t be walking on eggshells to coddle what are essentially, in the end, Cis Feelings, because in the best cases this kind of rhetoric comes from naive people who are early and uncertain in their gender journey or whatever and are in the process of unraveling internalized transphobia, and in the easily observable worst cases these people are very literally redefining shit so that ‘actually all afab women are trans, spiritually, all afabs have dysphoria, we are all Equally oppressed by Males uh i mean cis men <3’ because, let’s be honest, they know that the moment they call themselves trans they get to say whatever they want about gender no matter how harmful it is to the rest of us. and those ideas spread like wildfire through the afab shethey “woman that’s not a woman” community that frankly greatly outnumbers other types of trans people online, because many of those people just do not have the experiences that lead you to really understand this shit and have to push back against concepts of gender that actively harm you as a trans person.

like that’s all i want to be able to say, is Things Are Different For Different Groups. and a willful ignorance of these differences leads to bad rhetoric controlling the overall discourse which gets people hurt. and even when concepts arise from it that seem positive and helpful and inclusive, in practice or in origin those ideas can still be upholding shit that gets other people hurt. like, i don’t doubt that many people are very straightforwardly happy and comfortable with an identity like ‘afab nb lesbian on testosterone’ and it would be ridiculous and hypocritical for me, ‘afab nb who wants to pass as a guy so he can comfortably wear skirts again,’ to act like that’s something that can’t or shouldn’t exist. it’s not about the identity itself, it’s about the politics that are popular within its community, and how the use of identities as moral labels with like, fucking pokemon type interactions for oppression effectiveness which directly informs the moral correctness of your every opinion and your very existence, is a shitty practice that gets people hurt and leads us to revoke empathy from each other.

like. sorry this is all over the place and long and probably still sounds evil because i haven’t thought through and disclaimered every single statement. but i’m like exhausted from living with this self-conscious guilt that maybe i’ve turned into a horrible evil truscum misogynist etc etc due to feeling upset by this seemingly inescapable approach to gender in lgbt/online circles that like, actively harms me, because when i vent with my friends all the stuff i’ve tried to explain here gets condensed down to referencing ‘she/theys’ as a category and that feels mean and generalizing and i genuinely dislike generalizations but the dread i feel about that category gets proven right way too often. it’s just like. this is not truscum this is not misgendering this is not misogyny. this is not about me decreeing that all transmascs have to be manly enough or dysphoric enough and all nbs have to be neatly agender and androgynous or something, i’m especially not saying that nb gender isn’t real lmao or even that it’s automatically wrong to partially identify with your asab; this is not me saying you can only medically transition for specific traditional reasons or that you don’t get a say on anything if you aren’t medically transitioning for whatever reason, now or ever. i just. want to be allowed to be frank about how... when there’s different experiences in a community we should like. acknowledge those differences and be willing to say that sometimes people don’t know what they’re talking about or that what they’re saying is harmful. without the primary concern being whether people will feel invalidated by being told so. because these are like, real issues, that are more important than politely including everyone, because that method is just getting vulnerable people drowned out constantly.