#not recognizing that is blatantly biased i think

[uncanny-tranny]

I'm still so amazed at how far medicine has come for trans people... being able to take hormones and get surgeries that are life-saving and life-affirming are genuinely such amazing feats and I wish more people understood that. Like, even if those aspects of transition do not appeal to every trans person, it is still so important to recognize just how important it is that trans people have options.

If love were a language, it would be science.

[myfandomrealitea]

I really wanted to ask you about this:

Do you have any advice of how to develop critical thinking and media literacy?

There are many, many ways you can practice critical thinking, evaluation and media literacy. At its most basic, you can access student resources for lower levels of education like earlier high school years and look at the examples and guidance given there. Rehashing this will often give you a good foundation to build off of and apply.

One of the main aspects of critical thinking involves discerning what is fact and what is opinion. A good portion of media analytics is opinion. What is 'bad' by one person's standards is 'sub-par' or even 'great' by another's. Similarly, the majority of fandom space is opinion-based. The main pitfall of fandom spaces is that everyone wants their opinion to be taken as fact, which is where critical thinking and even basic communication begin to fall away.

"I'm right and you're wrong" and "this is the way it should be, if you do it or think differently, you're wrong" are common roadblocks people run into when engaging with things like media analysis and even basic fandom activities like fanfiction.

'Mischaracterisation' is fanfiction is one popular topic, especially here on Tumblr. What people often fail to recognize is the true creative depth of fanfiction and using someone else's pre-existing characters. Characters as they are in the source material may not make the choices or behave in the ways necessary to activate or validate certain plot material or author intentions in fanfiction. Which is, inherently, one of the main points of fanfiction. Exploring the alternate.

While you might immediately recoil and say "he'd never do that!" you then have to sit back and recognise that that's exactly the point. That this iteration of that character is not meant to directly reflect the source material. Its a re-imagining, a re-interpretation. That doesn't mean its bad. Its simply different.

'Mischaracterisation' is only actually applicable in fandom spaces when someone is trying to insist as a blanket fact that a character would do something or behave in a way that blatantly contradicts their canon behavior, opinions, morals and perspective or deliberately interpreting an action in biased bad faith. It is not actually applicable to fanfiction where creative liberty dictates you can do whatever the fuck you want with a character because you're not trying to claim it as part of the source content.

Questions To Ask Yourself

Am I reacting to [media] emotionally instead of rationally? Is my emotional response to [media] blinding me to the rational or critical approach(es)?

Am I allowing my expectations to get in the way of me understanding [media] fully? Am I forming a biased negative opinion of [media] because it isn't meeting my expectations?

Even if I disagree with [media], do I actually understand it? Can I recognise the reasoning behind choices made or actions even if I don't agree with them?

Am I searching too hard to hidden meaning or purpose in absolutely everything? Can I recognise what is simply passive information/detail and what is active information/detail? (E.g; English tutors saying a character's curtains are blue because they're depressed when throughout the literature its passively reinforced that blue is the character's favorite color.)

Even though I disagree with the statement or opinion shown, is it necessary to argue against it? Is there any benefit to making my counter-opinion known or is it simply a no-end argument? Am I just using arguing as a means of release/fulfilment? Am I treating this person poorly because of their opinion/statement?

Resources

Critical Thinking Exercises & Explanations #1 The Critical Thinking Activity Workbook Early Stage Critical Thinking Games Five Media Literacy Activities Six Media Literacy Ideas

[kiyomitakada]

One element of Aizawa's relationship with L is that Aizawa is really the only person who can call him out and get away with it. If Soichiro says something L can claim he's biased. If Light does it, he can claim that's what Kira would say. If Matsuda does it, he can say he's stupid. Mogi doesn't really criticize L in any instances I can remember, so Aizawa is the one voice of dissent he can't dismiss.

HMMM okay i will disclaim that i’m thumb-typing this at 1 a.m. so please correct me if there are any blatant lies in the following:

while lawzawa is based and possibly the realest death note ship i tend to think of soichiro and L’s relationship better than that. L never calls him biased about his son, and in soichiro’s defense that’s because he isn’t biased! or well, he is, but soichiro’s reaction to his son’s guilt being in question is to ask L to bring out all the big guns and cover the yagami house in cameras (the surveillance is L’s idea but soichiro specifically requests he be thorough). like soichiro wants to see his son’s innocence cleared in the most… i don’t know how else to say this… the most obsessive and compulsive way possible. light’s potential for guilt is literally an intrusive thought for him. he puts himself in jail because he’s so scared that he’ll turn dangerous if he sees light in confinement for a second longer. (and this carries on into second arc, soichiro keeps subconsciously doubting light until he’s on his goddamn death bed, etc, but this isn’t about that.) and L recognizes this about him! L never claims that soichiro is biased, it’s always soichiro literally doing everything he can to prove light’s innocence in the least biased way possible! i know your statement was “L can claim he’s biased” but i truly don’t think L would ever go for that, just because it is blatantly untrue.

also hmm i’m having trouble remembering any times matsuda has dissented to L’s face? (he goes off and does all sorts of wild shit on his own yeah, but i don’t remembering him disagreeing with L’s plans ever.) but admittedly i have terrible memory re: the task force so i’ll let anyone who remembers better than me chime in on that one lmao

[kakerutori]

Byler and Confrontation 1.5: The Importance of Season 4

Byler being immediately comfortable with each other in season 4 would have been too easy. Too obvious. No other pair is as close as Byler, and if they kept in contact, their relationship’s progression would have been so clear that it wouldn’t even be interesting, and that’s why I think that Byler is plainly intentional to end up together in slow burn fashion.

Imagine the airport scene but they hug with all the emotion of true best friends (which, they are, and that’s a canon fact that Mike asserts and Will agrees with in s4e4, but I digress-) meeting again, crashing into each other, joking right off the bat, being comfortable like they easily could have been. Will comments on Mike’s ridiculous outfit and Mike defends himself and Will laughs and Mike’s forgotten how much he missed hearing that laugh. Then Will would give him the painting and Mike would be blushing, and the story’s over! Even if they dance around their feelings for the rest of the show long, they could have instantly recognized that something’s changed and yet stayed the same, and they’d be a unit again. Or should I say, a team?

I feel like there’s no other way to treat Byler other than subtly vying for each other’s attention (Will looking at Mike longingly, Mike turning to Will for wisdom) or blatantly vying for each other’s attention (Will the Wise, Mike Wheeler in general), and to go full blown best friends attached at the hip from day one in California would have been way too romantically charged. Not necessarily openly, but just in the way it’s easy to doubt, to have brows raised.

And what good storytelling would that be? To just seal the deal the second they meet? We know that they miss each other. Will was ready to give him that painting. And yeah, it takes Mike a whole business day to realize how much he misses Will, too, but that type of love that reaches out doesn’t originate from only that business day. So do they just flat out hug and say, “God, I missed you so much” ?? Of course not! Because that’s immediate intimacy. That’s honesty with no side effects, and that’s something that doesn’t happen in any well-created nor real life love story.

Once upon a time, the end? There’s no way! No one would be as invested.

And I’m not saying that I don’t want Byler to be so strained, or I don’t want them to be happy. I want them to be so happy. And seeing their mistakes and growing through them only makes that happiness more and more apparent whenever they come around. Because they find each other, in the end. They forgive and work through things and their chemistry abounds through tough moments, and that’s what makes them amazing to me. Literally look at every other ship in the show. Jopper fought all season long during season 3 because Hopper was jealous and Joyce was a stressed-out boss ass bitch. Jancy fought in seasons 1 and 3 before and after they learned more about each other and worked through their biases. Lumax had that fight at the arcade where Max didn’t believe what Lucas was telling her.

Anger often breeds hate, but sometimes, it creates something beautiful in people who, deep down, want to figure something out about each other: steadfastness.

Simply put, their story grows.

Which is why they couldn’t hug. Which is why they barely spoke. Which is why they lashed out at each other. Which is why it took a whole business day to rejoin as a team. Which is why their forgiveness is all the more sweet. Which is why their relationship is all the more sweet. Which is why they prove to know each other. Which is why they’re so good together.

Look at them!! Look at Mike, chuckling at five damn words. And this was BEFORE they truly amended fences!!!

I love how hardships bring Byler together. I don’t know about you, but I’d want a partner who doesn’t avoid the rough patches but strives to love me through them - because they will happen! No one is perfect! And no, I don’t mean fight and you will find love. But when you love, you will fight. And that’s what I think is what happens when Byler fight.

So I can’t wait for it to happen one more time, probably about the lie of the painting being commissioned, for everything to fall apart only to come back together because they realize it’s all one giant story of misunderstanding and internalized homophobia and repressed feelings - a final and urgent fight that demands them to let everything out in the open and truly realize that they are the love that each other seeks.

And, I mean, I don’t know, I think that it would be pretty cool to write a slow burn romance amidst all the love triangles and love-at-first-sights and tragic losses. With bonus unique notes of being childhood best friends with deeply-explored queer coding. Just saying.

[lowpawly]

ok I'm still kinda waking up and I'm a little groggy so I hope I get this concept across but sometimes I feel like some tme lesbians can be kinda...disingenuous about transmisogyny among lesbians and in lesbian culture? a lot of the time people have a very kneejerk reaction to any associations of lesbians with terfs WHICH IS FAIR I have seen some people say some really lesbophobic things where they just blatantly say all lesbians as terfs or associated with terfs etc which I think is unfair and ironically ignores the presence of trans lesbians BUT!!!!! I also think like its pretty obvious that there's a lot of stuff that people need to unpack if they want to actually be safe for trans women. I don't think I need to tell anyone that there's a really big and politicized focus on lesbians' genital preferences specifically excluding penises and a huge focus on how much lesbians are supposed to be crazy for pwussyy and like yeah obviously gay guys get a similar thing with people saying how much they have to love dick exclusively but with lesbians preferences are waaaaaay more politicized and a lesbian's lack of intimacy with someone who has a penis is supposed to be this hugely political defining part of our sexualities that symbolize how we are like. I don't fuckin know free from the shackles of patriarchy or some bs like that. its hard for me to put into words really but there are so many little things in lesbian culture that are casually trans exclusionary or transmisogynistic and it just all adds up and ends up hurting girls who are already really vulnerable. I don't like how much lesbians are told that we have to have this innate violent disgusted reaction to a part of someone's anatomy or that our lack of interest in men is supposed to mean something grander than just a preference in who we want intimacy from. and I think a lot of the time tme lesbians will still hold and repeat these beliefs to varying extends and then just quickly tack on a comment about how trans women are women without unpacking their deeper biases. a lot of second wave lesbian feminism really focused on this association of lesbianism with grander political idea of "women who are free from the shackles of males" and if we are going to reminisce on that part of queer history we need to recognize its biases and grow from them rather than pretend that these concepts existed in a vacuum that never inherently excluded and hurt trans girls. how lesbianism connects to patriarchy and the unique misogyny and violence we will face because of that is something that needs to be discussed but that discussion must always include the experiences of trans lesbians too not just as a disclaimer at the end of an essay that is blatantly only talking about the cisgender/tme lesbian experience but as something fully integrated and understood as an unquestioned part of our history and community. there have always been trans girls who have been lesbians and there have always been tme lesbians who date and love and fuck trans girls and people need to stop acting like thats a development from the last ten years and that lesbianism and its culture has only ever been defined and pioneered by people who were afab

[egg-emperor]

Game canon Eggman is pure evil y'all, rest assured to my fellow evil Eggman enjoyers. He's never acted for any reason that wasn't fueled by his evil/selfish intentions. I've carefully analyzed him in all of his scenes for hours and hours for years and years. I don't need to theorize, speculate, or insist on personal interpretations to get to this conclusion because I specifically go by what the games tell and show me undeniably.

I analyze very literally, not abstract or based on how I feel about it, only literally what I can see and hear. I feel this avoids a lot of unnecessary confusion and complication and it can actually be this way and yet still have a lot of depth to it to explore despite this. I don't see appeal in straying too far with the what ifs rather than the literals that are deliberately blatantly presented because the former is when bias can seep in.

But I know some probably think, "If you think I'm biased because I don't like pure evil Eggman so I don't want to see him as such, why aren't you biased for not liking less than pure evil Eggman? What if you're just seeing what you want to see?" But with the way I only go by what's blatantly there to see and hear in the games themselves in bold explicit forms, I feel I avoid any chance of bias.

I don't like to admit this but when I was younger, I had some incorrect interpretations about Eggman. Yes, even me. XD I never thought he was this completely good and caring guy but I definitely didn't have the most accurate understanding of who he was, how he'd act in certain situations, and what he is or isn't likely to say or do. A lot of my own personal biases at the time were to blame.

Years of heavy studying and analysis got me to where I am now. And I realized he said or did the exact opposite in the games to what I thought he'd do or wrote in my silly private fanfics back then. So I started to look at him neutral and unbiased, without expecting or wanting anything specific and letting it influence my perception. Only exactly what I could hear him say and see him do instead.

I rebuilt my understanding into what it is now and ever since, it has stayed completely consistent. Every new piece of media just reaffirms it or gives me new stuff to add that tracks and doesn't contradict the old in the slightest. I'm still having new revelations, discoveries and eyes opened to new things about him but they only further prove, develop, and strengthen my understanding now.

This was all done by me just shutting off these biased parts of my mind and letting the game canon show me who he was, not by my own personal desires and influences. Then I realized I was such a big fan of what I understood him to be, all of my desires turned into loving game canon Eggman for exactly who he was and wanting him to stay the funny pure evil bastard he is. And he does! 💜

But yeah because of that, even though my old perception years ago certainly wasn't the same level as those that spread misinformation of him being way nicer, softer, and morally good than he is in the games, I know what it's like for bias to influence me in some ways. And those little things I believed then are far different from what I know now, so this isn't an example of me being biased lol

I'm very happy that I came to fully recognize, embrace, and appreciate his funny but very much pure evil self! And one of the main goals of my blog besides expressing my passion, is to help people learn more about him and understand him too because I swear, your enjoyment and appreciation of him can grow so much stronger when you do. I love when I'm told I've helped with that!

But if you really don't like that he's pure evil because it makes you uncomfortable, that's fine. But there's a difference between not wanting to see it because you don't like it and what happens in the games. And if you don't like game canon Eggman like that, I have a lot of respect for you if you admit that and just do something different in your fan stuff, without claiming it to be fact.

But game canon Eggman canonically being a funny silly but very evil and threatening bastard man personally fills me with immense joy and it's why I adore him so much. It's endless fun and entertainment! 🥰💜

[catenary-chad]

Doublestack, 25, Starlight heretic 90% here for the Electra multiverse and cheering on the chaos and shark jumping because I don’t respect the intended plot or main character. I confuse and enrage with my bafflingly serious views that “steam oppression” is a fundamentally bad social metaphor, being the CEO of Rusty hate (block #rusty hate train), and being a MASSIVE Electra apologist because the uniquely tragic history of electric trains in the US makes them a deep and compelling Other (and especially relevant if Black). Canon tried to approach multiple topics very relevant to train history but usually botched them, I have many extensive revisionist headcanons to counter that. The exception is Greaseball. He's so much more effective than they ever imagined.

Real train history is gloriously batshit and unintuitive and had so much human impact few recognize.  I’m sharply critical of how media flattens it and decries it as “boring nerd trivia” to prop up tired cliches that feed into a lot of ugly conservative propaganda.  As much as I love the visual conventions of the replica show, I have endless beef with its intended plot and politics and it’s a fascinating example of everything wrong with Anglophone train media.  I’m an absolute blasphemer because I think it could have stood for something if it was “REALLY about trains”.  

I focus on applying serious train history and problems in ridiculous ways, the invisible world of rail electrification (ft. Electra extended lore about their tragic history in the US), finding oddly specific real prototypes for characters, and weirdly validating widely mocked elements of the show that somehow have basis in reality.  

Not loyal to any production besides being a 2018 rewrite hater.  Revival neutral because it introduced some interesting concepts.  Not a serious shipper because love is for suckers, the BBC news van was the best “11th hour ballad”.  I just like laughing at crack pairings.  

I’m an engineer, not a theater kid.  I don’t have very strong or technical opinions on those aspects besides appreciating a lot of the 70s-80s street dance stuff many don’t get.  

I am very Mykalectra biased for weirdly elaborate reasons

Here is my list of train/transit info resources if you want to research more yourself, it’s a running list I’ll add to over time. You can also contact me directly if you want a source for something I've said or general train character advice.

I mostly draw, sometimes write. Please do NOT share my work with anyone involved with the show. I do not want to draw their attention to this blog.

Any concept I do as a fanfic/headcanon/other fanwork is free game to blatantly rip off as long as you don’t just claim my actual art/writing as your own. I actually welcome it since making train media more realistic and interesting so people become more engaged with and understanding of modern trains is a big aim of mine.

^My discord server for modern and/or non-steam talking trains and discussing more realistic/grounded approaches to train characters. Not exclusively Stex but very much friendly to it and OCs. PG-13 and beginner friendly, if you don’t know much about trains but want to learn!

(@head-end-power is my 18+ blog, if you are so inclined)

[autisticdoomslayer]

The thing about antizionism is that it is theoretically possible to be antizionist without being antisemitic, but I have yet to see it.

And this isn't me saying "all antizionists are evil nazis" this is me saying "there are a lot of nazis in antizionist spaces, and the antizionists that aren't nazis are doing nothing about the nazis, and many are even taking claims from the nazis at face value even though they're blatantly false."

I have to give some leniency for this, for multiple reasons, the main one being that currently the only sources about what's going on in Palestine are:

from Israel (biased, may misreport or leave out important details. I have yet to see an Israeli news source lie straight-up, but it's only a matter of time and it wouldn't surprise me if it's already happened)

from the Palestinian governments (biased, may misreport or leave out important details, sometimes lie, often rely on antisemitic tropes)

from a separate middle eastern government (i don't think I need to explain why reading news controlled by the governments of iran, qatar, iraq, and yemen is a problem)

So that kind of automatically means there are no completely trustworthy sources.

Please. Fact-check.

Please. Check who you're reblogging from.

Recognize that prejudice can be found even in people you agree with, or are even friends with.

Nazism, antisemitism, and prejudice in general are viruses of the mind. They start by agreeing with you, then "inform" you about things you didn't know was happening and that the media doesn't report. They slowly bring you down the pipeline of prejudice. You are stronger united. Call out antisemitism within your ranks, or soon you will stand, united and strong as the Nazis were, for prejudice and violence.

[youngparadisedonut]

Hello 👋🏽 so this might not sound like I’m complementing you but I am

When I first found your page I just thought you were a hater with no life.. I think I found you when season four aired and I saw you talking about the Iris situation and let me just say I think I hold the crown for the biggest Carlos hater during season 4, they made me hate him but everytime I would look at your page I would be like we get it so why are you talking about him this much then. I wasn’t really involved in the fandom or has obsessed in the show back then as I am now and I have come to absolutely love tk, and I have found my group of friends on Twitter who love him also. from the moment I came into this fandom it was blatantly obvious biased towards Rafa/carlos (I mean we all saw how fast they were to never talk about ronen again..)that I just didn’t understand, it’s like they foams at the mouth anytime they talk about Rafa/carlos

The Carlos Stan’s have gotten a lot worse imo and we need tk defenders more then ever

What I’m trying to say is I used to see you and go if you don’t like something why are you talking about it but I never said that to people saying the nice things about the characters which is unfair cause we shouldn’t push people who are rightfully calling out characters too the side and make them talk about it with just there friends, if people can say good things, other people can be critical and we need people like you more then ever. Thank you for constantly calling out Carlos cause the watered down “criticism” he gets is such bs

He was not the best boyfriend, definitely not the best fiancée and he’s not gonna be the best husband in the beginning and I’m so tired of these women who are old enough too realize what he does is wrong making excuses after excuses and babying him so much. I think tk deserves way better instead of a man who constantly lies and puts things/people above him then crawls back crying when the damage is done

So just thank you for not stopping with this account cause this fandom is truly delusional when it comes to Carlos and then that fuck ass spinoff they want to do? With his partner who he has “special chemistry” with…

Thank you! I know that I can be very annoying sometimes hahaha.

I’m so frustrated about how TK is often treated by the fandom and the writers. He was criticized for not being ready for a relationship with Carlos, even if he was recovering from a relapse after the boyfriend he proposed to said he was in love with another guy (and probably cheated on him). He was blamed for the breaking up with Carlos after Carlos triggered him by making a big decision that affected both of them without talking to him first, and no one (not the fandom, not the writers) recognized that his motives for the break up were valids. The amount of hate he got just because Cooper was his sponsor was horrifying.

Carlos hiding a marriage, being so dismissive of TK with the wife jokes, blaming TK for Iris disappearance and acting so hostile towards TK was objectively so much worse than any mistake that TK did in their relationship, but I saw feel people calling him out on his bulshit. People even found Iris interactions with TK funny. Everything was fine as long as their favorite could get alway with it. The double standards where very clear.

(It’s so sad how TK has such a kind heart and loves so big)

(Yet no one ever chooses him first)

(Owen with his job)

(Carlos with Iris)

When I saw the news about Carlos and his partner who he has “special chemistry” with was the nail in the coffin for me. Like, nope. I already know where this is going. People will ship Carlos with his partner (even if he turns out to be in a happy relationship) and compare him with TK, how he is so much better and supportive tham TK and Carlos definitely should be with him instead, especially during the probable Jonah arc.I'm not gonna put myself into that.

[lunar-years]

is there any flavor of TS criticism that DOESNT piss you off? like her neglecting to speak out against palestine, her private jet use, etc? no hate btw, I just feel like your prev post was really well thought out and made sense, so I just was wondering your opinion on criticism against her in general.

hi! Yeah, there is plenty of Taylor criticism that doesn't piss me off! stuff like the jet use, not speaking up about Palestine, not being more politically outspoken in general (especially taken in contrast to the activism she professed in Miss Americana, lol), the questionable people she's associated with (on a deeper level than taking a picture with them or being surface-level cordial, I'm talking like...dating the disgusting likes of ratty heely and some such, here).

For me, that type of criticism is based on where people draw their own personal moral boundaries and what they expect out of the celebrities they enjoy or the art they consume. If someone's hard line is Taylor not speaking out on xyz issue or her taking unnecessary flights and causing harm to the environment, I can completely understand and respect that! It's an individual choice and it’s fair game to have differing opinions on where that line is.

For me personally, I guess I just don't expect my favorite singers to also be my favorite activists, and I don't look to celebrities to be my political mouthpiece or tell me how to vote or what have you. We have politicians and actual activists for that. Quite frankly, I think a lot of people with platforms ought to step back from the incessant urge and demand to comment on everything happening everywhere, because it leads to a lot of people offering up a lot of thoughts and opinions (and rampant misinformation) about issues they really haven't got the first clue about or may not fully understand.

Do I think Taylor could (and should) do better in some areas? Absolutely! I think it would be great if she spoke up more, but I also want her to be informed before she does. At the same time, I like to think I mostly recognize she's a human being and human beings are hypocritical and imperfect on occasion. She is going to make mistakes. In the end, I can still feel that she is a good person, and that is okay. But if someone else's hardline is different than mine, that's also okay!

I am also under absolutely zero illusions that Taylor, in addition to doing a lot of good, is also an extraordinarily rich white woman with a lot of privilege, who is going to at times behave in a very out-of-touch, rich white person with a lot of privilege type of way. I don't expect her to represent me. Hell, she is paying more right now to stay two nights in a Sydney hotel room than I make in an entire year. I'm here because I think she writes cool songs lmao. Idk.

Lastly, obviously I am a fan who is biased in that sense. I'm not going to pretend I don't find criticism of any kind much more palatable when it comes from fans, to fans. If it's swifties talking on tumblr i am always up for dissenting opinions and discussion about pretty much any issue (as a goofy example, in terms of the "taylor swift writes immature music" comment, I couldn't give a single shit if a fan comes on here and posts about how they think ME! is an immature stupid song. It's a lot different when it's fans voicing opinions they recognize as just that, an opinion.)

When you get outside the fan community, it gets dicey, because people lob valid Taylor criticism around losey-goosey to mask the fact that they actually hated her to begin with and are grasping at the first thing in sight to get other people to hate her, too. It's very...transparent at times. Like, the people who incessantly complain about her jet usage whilst not talking about other celebrities who do the exact same shit, let alone the massive corporations systematically killing our planet, or who blatantly ignore things like the fact Taylor has actually cut down her jet usage substantially in the last year. They just pretend to care when it can knock the celebrity they already hate down a peg amongst twitter users, lmao.

Criticism is fine. I don't worship her! I just think, there's valid criticism and there isn't, you know?

[aroace-number-eight]

I really would like to pour myself over the series again one day and read it purely for analysis on what everything means, why it's out there, what biases were at play in the execution of the story (both realized by the writers and not) and for what reason did everything happen the way it happened. Not just looking at everything the characters said and did and judging on that like "wow yeah that's an ass move, if I wrote this that would not happen" but instead like "okay how does this move the story, what does this tell me the reader about the character"

Like okay, the series has plot holes, the series went in a completely different direction that betrayed everything that was set up in the beginning, a lot of foreshadowing went down the drain, the writers having a falling out or switching through ghost writers did a lot of damage to creating a cohesive story. And yet, we still have a working series spanning 7 books and 18 novellas, with a whole spin-off trilogy and novellas that expands on where we left off, all while creating compelling characters of super contrasting personalities and backgrounds that branched off of one cataclysmic event that spiraled their whole lives and led them into the same situation

And each of those personalities is representative of reactions to traumas and livelihoods, and the characters who represent these facets are tools meant to forward the message and themes the writers were putting into the books. What kind of messages and themes are those? Is the series addressing trauma and how it fucks up children in super intense situations? Is it criticizing the hero trope and how heroes are unequivocally expected to be good people by default? Is it a message on the traumas of war and child soldiers? Does the series mean to break down fascism and unfair systems that create bad people who had good(?) intentions? Is the series supposed to be about healing as the end goal, and is this performed through a "the end justifies the means" approach or "self-preservation comes with a moral code?" What is it, I wanna know

And it's undeniable that a lot of choices in the series feel very off to us one way or another, because the writers made that decision in order to push the reader into thinking one way or another about certain characters or events. Some of these choices were made on biases, ultimately harmful ones at that, which should be recognized and analyzed because this series does display a lot of questionable writing choices that have twisted so many moments and character arcs in blatantly antagonizing ways, notably when trying to differentiate characters in their moral standing (which is already a hot topic to debate on when the premise and rating of this series intend to explore a lot of dark topics and heavy nuance)

[a-very-tired-jew]

A few sections stood out to me.

So DWB is blatantly lying to the public about the open secret. It's not even one that you can easily deny because Hamas is the ruling government in Gaza. As such, Hamas personnel are going to be integrated into everything from healthcare facilities to press offices.

We've seen this before. Antisemites who openly endorse the killing of Jews as a means to push their anti-Israel agenda under the guise of "it's just anti-Zionism" get to keep pushing their bias as long as they "apologize" and say "they know better now". Except they still say the same shit, they just have the authority to say it with no repercussions because they were promoted.

This is just repackaged "It's anti-Zionism, not antisemitism" Soviet era rhetoric that was used to justify everything from spreading conspiracy theories about Jews to ethnically cleansing them.

Seriously, this article is absolutely damning for DWB and Amnesty, and it's just adding to the ever growing pile of formerly trusted organizations that are horrendously antisemitic. I think about the Matti Friedman article about the AP staff office having Hamas members in it, editing their work, and regularly being present, and the AP denying this. And now we have the DWB and AI caught lying about their own staff working with Hamas as well.

Part of this has to be sunk cost fallacy reasoning. Organizations like DWB, AI, the AP, and so on are aware that they have to work with Hamas in order to have a presence in Gaza. That means working with a recognized terrorist group that has violently antisemitic (and genocidal) rhetoric as part of its beliefs and operational structure. That means working with people who are part of that organization who have these beliefs and biases, which humanizes them. If you have lunch everyday in the cafeteria with someone you're going to learn about them, which means realizing that the person sitting across from you enjoys watching soccer games but will also kidnap and torture civilians.

The optics are not good for any organization if they acknowledge that they work with terrorists knowingly. So they have to deny the connection repeatedly, but at this point it's such an open secret that all they do is undermine their credibility and show that their morals and ethics are compromised when it comes to Israel, Palestine, and Jews.

Details

[avatar-legends-confessionblog]

So when does it stop being 'character made a mistake and hurt others and this is how they all learn from it and grow' and start being anti sentiment or is that what you want to call anti sentiment? What may be anti sentiment to you may just be the author letting these characters be human and make mistakes. You don't know if you stop the second the author points them out or frames them in a way you personally dislike.

Because at this point, it really sounds like some of you just can't handle your favorite characters doing bad things ever. And isn't that why we fell in love with these characters? They made mistakes and grew from them?

Don't get me wrong, I think the Zutara fandom needs to recognize that maybe they have some biases to be addressed and maybe properly tagged with appropriate warnings, but don't just lay the blame at their feet and call it a day when yours are pretty blatantly bleeding through in your criticisms.

I think we all need to recognize how our biases not only affect how we create fan content but how we engage with fan content. This definitely goes for me as well.

X

[lakesbian]

so i blinked & accidentally wrote 2.4k words of alec analysis, content warning for extended discussion of child sexual abuse

i am actually like. genuinely surprised by how common of an alec opinion it is that people would probably feel more negatively about him if we had a chapter from the perspective of one of his victims or if we had more details on his life prior to the undersiders, because the idea goes directly counter to one of the core Things you have to get if you want to understand alec: much like taylor, you should take absolutely fucking nothing he says about himself at face value, because--also much like taylor--he is Absolutely Fucking Terrible at understanding himself!

and speaking of taylor, she is also absolutely fucking terrible at understanding alec. nearly all of the commentary we get on alec is from taylor’s point of view, and she’s frankly incredibly ungenerous towards him.

her very first thought about his childhood mentally classifies him as not being one of heartbreaker’s victims, and the pity she’s offering him wears out pretty quickly when he doesn’t speak about the abuse in terms she finds palatable--while she does secondarily recognize that living with heartbreaker impacted him on some level, she regards him primarily as someone who does Bad Things because he’s a Bad Coldhearted Person.

she and alec are fairly similar--they’re both people who have been abused, people who are remarkably desensitized to violence because they’ve been abused, they’re both people who have ended up on the same villain team where they regularly commit terrible acts of violence, and they’re both people who are terminally oblivious to their own emotions while they commit those acts of violence. their actions are both similarly horrifying from an outside viewpoint, but by sectioning alec’s actions off in her mind as being horrifying because he’s ontologically a bad person w/ no interiority or justifiable reasoning for his actions, she doesn’t have to face that her own actions are horrifying regardless of how she justifies them to herself. neat little compartmentalization trick! alec stabbed that guy to death with a fork because he’s a Bad Person, but when she used triumph as a bargaining chip by filling his lungs with bugs, it was for Understandable and Interiority-Having reasons, so she’s fine.

what this means is that nearly all of the commentary we get on alec is from the perspective of someone who has a very strong psychological incentive to avoid being fair to alec.

much of what taylor thinks about alec is blatantly irrational and wrong, and the fact that he (similarly emotionally oblivious wrt himself + probably entirely unaware she feels this way about him) never directly confronts her misconceptions means that we spend the entire book being told “hey, here are the reasons you should think alec sucks” without any alternate viewpoints to consider. i think that if we saw the worst things pre-undersiders alec did without the repressed way undersider alec describes them or taylor’s biased perspective obscuring what actually happened, most people would feel Really Fucking Bad for him!

even in the very first discussion of his childhood, it’s clear that taylor’s reading of the events is wrong--aside from the fact that she’s not classifying the kids as victims (girl what), there’s these lines from alec:

“[He] pushed my limits, made me do stuff that was dangerous, stuff that was hard on my conscience.”

“I had convinced myself I didn’t care about the people I was hurting or about this guy I’d just killed, and maybe I didn’t. Maybe I don’t, still. Dunno.“

taylor’s response to this is:

“He’d been made to do it, he’d been in fucked up circumstances with no real moral compass to go by, still a kid. The way he described it, though, it didn’t sit well with me. Cold blooded murder.“

that is not how he described it. 

1. he outright says that what he was forced to do was “hard on his conscience”

2. he outright says that he “had convinced himself he didn’t care about the people he was hurting,” i.e he was a 10-13yo child being forced into extreme violence by his ridiculously abusive father & he naturally repressed his emotional reaction to it because there’s no other way to feasibly psychologically cope with feeling the full brunt of the emotions that induces. he’s not a Cold Blooded Bitch, he was a kid desperately convincing himself he didn’t care because he couldn’t care if he was going to survive.

3. yeah, he says “maybe i don’t [care], dunno.” this is because the 3+ years he spent learning to cram every emotional response he had to his abuse into a box & then solder-iron that box shut do not magically disappear the second he escapes from his father. it’s not at all unreasonable that taylor (also 15 and horribly emotionally repressed) misses this, but the “maybe” and “dunno” are indicators that he genuinely can’t tell whether or not he cares! as imp points out after he dies, it’s not that his emotions aren’t there at all, it’s that he has no ability to read them--much like taylor, he’s great at convincing himself of things regarding his feelings and then genuinely believing those things. he’s fifteen and has been out of his abusive home for all of 2.5 years--he’s not capable of grasping the full impacts that the abuse had on his psyche, and the way he describes everything from a detached perspective and waffles about on allowing himself interiority is a natural result of that.

if we saw this or any of the other murders alec was forced to commit as they were happening, we would not be feeling less generous towards him, we would be thinking “i want to beat heartbreaker to death with his own bones, because this is an evil thing to do to a child.”

okay, that’s the murder out of the way. now onto the significantly more controversial aspect of what alec did as a 10-13yo.

taylor generally regards alec as a special type of ontologically real & distinct class of person called a rapist. many people in the fandom share her viewpoint on that one. and, like, objectively true--he is a rapist, he raped people. but applying “rapist” as a descriptor meaning “evil piece of shit who sucks, but i guess he gets some leeway since he was a kid, but he still sucks and is bad and probably a sociopath” is massively flattening the circumstances under which he committed sexual violence & severely underestimating how it impacted his psyche.

taylor--and again, most other people in the fandom--tend to unilaterally go “gross and fucked up, he sucks, moving on” during bits where alec discusses that aspect of his childhood. but if we actually pause to read between the lines for the details and then address the actual context (which alec is not capable of doing, because 1. emotional repression to hell and back and 2. it was, as he said, normal to him), it becomes very clear that it’s unjustifiable to slap the “Sucks + Evil Predator” label on him and then move on feeling comforted by the straightforward moral judgement.

“’Sure,’ Alec drawled. In a more normal voice, he said, ‘But what I’m saying is he wouldn’t mind. Now, it’s been a little while, but there was a time when I had someone in my bed every night.’

‘When you were with Heartbreaker,’ I said. From the look of disgust on Aisha’s face, and what I imagined was a similar expression on my own, I suspected we were on the same page. At least on this one thing.

‘Sure. Cape groupies, my dad’s girls, people I used my powers on toward the end.’

There wasn’t even a trace of guilt or shame on his expression, no regret in his tone. He just looked bored.

He went on, ‘What I’m saying is that I’m speaking from experience.  Having someone cuddled up beside you, even if it’s a little bit of a pain in the ass, having that body contact isn’t so bad. Especially when you’ve had a bad day.’”

like, okay. let’s unpack all the implications there.

1. alec is bringing up this whole topic as an attempt at empathy--aisha is effectively saying “i’m pissy at taylor for being intimate w/ brian while he’s experiencing the worst pain of his life” and alec is effectively responding with “i support them, because when i was in similar circumstances, physical intimacy made me feel better.” it is extremely notable that he’s implicitly comparing brian’s “bad day” (getting fucking bonesawed!) to his own “bad day” (living with his dad)!

2. alec grew up in Emotional Neglect & Abuse: The Household. this is established in buzz 7.1--he recounts that there was zero attention paid to him & the other kids except for when heartbreaker was terrifying the shit out of them for either a perceived slight or in an attempt to force a trigger event. he also grew up in Sexual Abuse: The Household. as detailed in one WoG, the heartbroken were a massive group hiding out in significantly less massive houses--6-8 people sharing a room was common. alec was constantly in close quarters to normalized sexual abuse from the ages of zero to thirteen, e.g the memory mentioned in his interlude where he starts crying over not being given the TV remote and a sweaty, wearing-nothing-but-briefs heartbreaker stomps out of the bedroom to terrify alec for interrupting what was, very presumably, a marathon of sexual assault. exposing children to abuse happening in their environment is a form of abuse itself. there’s also the WoG in which this is mentioned:

“Look at it this way - at the age that many boys are raising an eyebrow at boobs, family members were saying 'hey, here are all the boobs you could want...’ Interested in dick? ... Dad's not that into it but a sister can hook you up. At an age when many are just figuring out enough of the world to ask 'what's heroin?' or 'what's weed?' he was given heroin and weed and everything else that was theoretically obtainable and told to only indulge if it was someone else's body. At an age when many are saying 'sex must be awesome' he was given free reign.”

which is sexual abuse! it is in fact exceedingly sexually abusive for alec’s father & older siblings to go “hey, 10-13yo son/little brother, i notice you are Hitting Puberty! here’s a fucking tidal wave of sex and drugs, have at it.” he didn’t magically get the idea to commit acts of physical violence w/o grooming & coercion from his family, and the same goes for the sexual violence. it’s not a hard extrapolation to make that after 10 years of isolation and abuse he leaps on the chance for physical intimacy, for something that actually makes him feel good when good is a feeling he’s never really gotten to have before--and how would he have a frame of reference for this being bad when his childhood was one long march of his own autonomy being violated + constantly seeing other peoples autonomy violated?

alec did not leave the house as a kid. alec Wasn’t Even Thirteen. the people he assaulted were victims, but he’s inarguably not the person with primary culpability for the assault--that would be the family members significantly older than alec who directly groomed him into hypersexual behavior, kidnapped + brainwashed victims also significantly older than alec, shoved them at alec, and said “have at it, buddy.” (which he, considering it to be normal and desperate for any positive attention or emotion, immediately adopted as a coping mechanism.) it would be absurd not to regard alec as a victim in this circumstance as well, and the fact that the way he was victimized led to him hurting people doesn’t change that. he was a chronically abused and manipulated preteen--he couldn’t issue meaningful consent or exercise any real autonomy in his decision-making. his lack of emotional reaction to casually sharing the story isn’t a moral failure, it’s an indicator of how badly the abuse skewed his perception of what’s normal.

and despite All Of That, taylor’s immediate reaction is to judge his lack of guilt, shame, or regret. which isn’t a wholly irrational reaction from her by any means--it makes complete sense given who she is and what information she has. but it does mean that the judgement we’re given on alec in this moment is nearly entirely detached from the material reality of what happened & how that reality should reasonably be regarded.

3. i think i’m literally the only person i’ve ever seen point this out--the first category of person he lists off as having slept with is “cape groupies.” as in, fans of capes. 

what kind of person do we suppose would be a fan of heartbreaker’s cult? what kind of person would have a thing for heartbreaker’s sexual abuse and mind control cult? the fact that he specifically mentions “cape groupies” means these were people who liked the heartbroken and were picked up by it voluntarily--what kind of person would want to sleep with one of heartbreaker’s barely-pubescent superpowered children?

yeah, that one sounds less like alec committing rape and more like heartbreaker providing access to his children to pedophiles w/ a Thing for the powers involved, presumably because it was a fantastic honeypot for people he could drain for money or otherwise use as a resource (which was his primary method of staying undercover & getting by). which alec parses as normal enough to casually slip into a random sentence.

alec’s childhood was not a lengthy tour of him committing sexual violence because he sucked, it was him being sexually abused, and a portion of that abuse included him being groomed to perpetuate it onto others. because that’s one of the Core Things about his character: he was a victim of grooming to perpetuate a cycle of abuse, he ran away from it at an impressively young age, and he spent the rest of his life making stumbling attempts to jerry-rig a distinct system of ethics & decision-making so that he wouldn’t be like his father.

no, the abuse he experienced & the way he responded to it wasn’t straight-forward or palatable. he’s not a stereotypical or idealized Good Victim--none of the traumatized teens in worm are. the specifics of what happened to him & what he did as a result are uncomfortable. he participated in hurting other people very badly. he still doesn’t really understand everything that was wrong with what happened. he doesn’t open himself up for pity or add caveats when discussing it to make it clear that he’s viewing his childhood the Right Way. he doesn’t feel or talk about it the way he’s “supposed” to. he doesn’t understand why or care that it upsets and disgusts people. the abuse left him with low to no empathy, and he’s not ashamed about admitting that.

and absolutely none of that changes that he’s still undeniably a victim, and if we saw any of the things that happened to him from the perspective of anyone involved, if we saw the abuse he experienced without the normalized lens he views it through or the villainizing lens taylor views it through--everyone would probably feel really fucking bad for him.

or in other words: alec vasil is a little boy whose life fucking sucks, and we all have to be nice to him, okay?

[leonardhoee]

A Rant About Ikesen’s Treatment of Motonari

I’ve been away from tumblr for a while but I had to come back for this.

So something I’ve noticed throughout playing Ikesen is the way that the game is very biased agains Motonari and I think it needs to be addressed because he is the only brown character and his portrayal is full of harmful stereotypes against brown men. I love this game but I haven't seen a single person acknowledge how badly Motonari is treated by the creators and the fandom as a result of that.

Also any racist comments will be blocked.

Possible route spoilers under the cut…

So lets start with the obvious, he is the only dark skinned character in Ikesen and when I first started playing I was so happy about that because finally (regardless of his ethnicity which honestly in this portrayal of him can be up for debate, I HC him as south East Asian) we are getting some representation. Throughout the game though I started noticing a lot of harmful stereotypes being thrown onto him that none of the other characters face.

Both him and Nobunaga are relatively misogynistic, I’m not denying that at all. However the way it is portrayed in their routes is very different. Nobunaga should in fact have sexual harassment charges, yet its romanticized repeatedly throughout his route. Motonari on the other hand treated MC as a possession the same way Nobunaga did, however he is shown as aggressive and scary as opposed to Nobunaga being shown as sexy and romantic.

There is also a difference in their respective CG’s 

Motonari’s CG is shown much more threatening and aggressive than Nobunaga’s

That brings me to my next point. Every other antagonist so far is shown to have a gentle and redeemable side. Kenshin threatened to wage war on the whole country while keeping MC locked in a cell yet he is still shown to be gentle and romantic. Kennyo repeatedly kidnaps and threatens MC’s life in other routes yet he is shown as a gentle monk who just wants revenge for his fallen brethren. Why doesn't Motonari get that level of consideration and empathy? Why is he, the only brown man, shown as an aggressive two-dimensional brute in every single route that isn’t his own? And this is a harmful stereotype that shows itself in all kinds of media. Brown men are depicted as predatory and aggressive both in fiction and real life.

This leads me to his ethnicity (I’m only talking about Ikesen’s portrayal of Motonari, I am well aware he was a Japanese warlord irl). In his route there is a part where he is talking about slavery and colonialism. As a South Asian woman I completely understand his perspective and its what got me thinking about this subject in the first place.

This subject is clearly personal to him. These lines, the way he looks as opposed to the other characters, and the fact that he speaks Spanish (around this time period the Philippines were being colonized by Spain), leads me to head cannon him as South East Asian, specifically Filipino. However, historically, Motonari comes from a region of Southern Japan, which is known as Hiroshima today. Cybird meant to market him as Okinawan. A large part of the reason Motonari is being treated this way by Cybird stems from the fact that people from Okinawa face racism from mainland Japan. Considering the fact that this game was made in Japan, and knowing what we know about their history of colonization, racism, and east asian beauty standards revolving around colorism, I am honestly not surprised that Motonari is being portrayed like this.

Until now they just showed his reason for fighting the Oda to be “oh I just want to watch the world burn for no reason”. But no that’s not the reason. These lines. That’s the reason. A lot of the context behind those lines comes from the fact that comes from because people from mainland Japan treated Okinawan people as slaves. He doesn’t want to see another colonizer come into power. Sure he’s a bit of an extremist but historically people who have this ideology have always been portrayed as savage and barbaric and “against the betterment of society” (think Jet from atla or even Malcom x). It’s no different in ikesen. The devs are clearly villainizing this ideology. Let’s not forget the fact that irl Hideyoshi invaded Korea. And the fact that anime and otome games are part of Japan’s way of erasing their war crimes and rebranding themselves to the rest of the world. It’s blatantly obvious here with the way they’re villainizing Motonari for having a perfectly valid reason to fight the Oda. If Japan stays divided they can’t invade and colonize other countries like the Philippines can they? Anti-colonialism = bad. 

Lastly I want to talk about how they downplayed his abilities as a leader and a warlord in his own right. In all the other routes he is depicted as less educated and frankly “dumb”, and it shows itself in his speech patterns too. Compared to Nobunaga and Mitsuhide, Motonari’s speech is stereotypically “less educated” and “lower class”. Yet he is just as much of a leader as any of the other warlords. However instead of acknowledging that, the game chooses to focus on his crimes and behavior as a pirate, instead of his role as the head of the Mouri clan.

At one point Kicho even compares his intelligence to a fifth grader which just rubs me the wrong way because lets take a moment to actually look at Motonari’s abilities. He is multilingual, has knowledge of global politics and economics, is an amazing businessman, and extremely analytical. He is literally known as the God of Decit, yet I did not hear that name once until his route came out. His strategies are good enough to be called a god, yet that is completely buried in the other routes in order to simplify his character into a trigger happy psychopath and a violent brute. He is just as smart as Nobunaga yet he is not given the credit he deserves.

Both Motonari and Nobunaga are extremely similar yet because of the horribly biased portrayals, Motonari is one of the least popular characters whereas Nobunaga is the second most popular. It makes me angry to see people in the fandom choosing to blindly hate Motonari without recognizing the fact that this stems from a frankly racist portrayal of an extremely intelligent and powerful character. Although truthfully, I blame the devs because if they had given his character even half the consideration and depth the others got, this would not be the case. 

You can disagree with me if you want. I am simply bringing attention to something I haven’t seen being addressed.

I hope in future routes, events, and sequels he is treated better by the devs and and the fandom. Please stop projecting racist stereotypes onto brown men.

[grelleswife]

Also I remember when Lizzie found out that O!Ciel was pretending to be his brother, she said something about that if the younger twin would have come back as himself and not his brother, she wouldn't have cared. While I think Lizzie has every right to be mad at O!Ciel for lying to her for three years, I was kinda angry at her for saying that? Like does ANYONE IN THIS FRANCHISE CARE FOR THIS KID?

Hi, anon! I’ve been sitting on this ask for a while because I wanted to give sufficient thought to my answer before making a reply, so I apologize for the delay! In brief, saying that Lizzy doesn’t care about O!Ciel is a blatantly false statement and ignores the complexities of her inner turmoil in the chapter you mentioned (144: “The Butler, Under Arrest”).

It’s true that Lizzy bonded more deeply with R!Ciel during the kids’ childhood, but that’s a product of circumstance. In addition to having more robust health, which meant that he was more active and hence made for an easier playmate, R!Ciel was Lizzy’s fiancé—of course she’d be encouraged to spend more time with him. If anything, I think the adults are the real parties to blame for O!Ciel’s feelings of marginalization. If they had made more of an effort to ensure he was included in all the children’s activities, I’m sure our warm-hearted Lizzy would have developed greater affection for him.

Moreover, consider her initial reaction to finding out that R!Ciel is “alive”:

As Lizzy explains to Edward, “My first thought was not “Oh, I’m so happy!” But rather, “What should I do?”” If she truly didn’t give a damn about O!Ciel, we would expect her to toss him aside upon learning the truth. But notice the bottom panel: She’s positioned between the two twins, loyalties torn, and her figure cracks and crumbles in imitation of her shattered heart. Even though Lizzy didn’t recognize O!Ciel as “the spare” when he returned from the cult, she now has history with him, such as the moment on the Campania when he accepted her authentic self. Lizzy’s knowledge that he stole his older brother’s identity doesn’t automatically eradicate those memories she made with the younger twin.

But now to get to the heart of the matter: The allegation that she wouldn’t have cared if O!Ciel had been honest from the beginning.

Lizzy tells her brother that, “I’m not sure I could’ve said something like, “I’m glad that at least you’ve returned to us alive,” and meant it. If he hadn’t lied...

“I wish Ciel had survived instead.”

Such a heartless thought might have popped into my head.”

Here’s the thing that I believe a lot of the folks who bash Lizzy fail to acknowledge—humans as a general rule are biased creatures. That’s not right, and it’s not fair, but it’s our natural inclination. If your significant other’s or best friend’s life was placed in peril alongside that of a casual acquaintance who you liked, and only one of the two could survive, your gut instinct would be for your most cherished person to make it out alive. Kuroshitsuji isn’t about saintly characters who do no wrong whatsoever; even sunny souls like Elizabeth Midford’s possess patches of shade.

In addition, we are not defined solely by our thoughtless, ignoble impulses, but by our responses to them. And how does Lizzy react when she’s forced to acknowledge this hurtful partiality where the twins are concerned, her past self’s failure to value O!Ciel? She sobs her eyes out. She is wracked with guilt. She views herself as an “awful person.”

Does the picture of anguish above look like the face of a girl who doesn’t care? Assuming O!Ciel truly meant nothing to her, I doubt that Lizzy’s conscience would torment her this way.

We do not tolerate Elizabeth Midford slander in this household. Yes, she’s angry, frightened, confused, and flawed...but she’s also one of the kindest and most self-sacrificial characters in this manga, and despite his betrayal, I maintain that she does care for our boi.