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advicesuggestions · 1 year

Note

Hi!! You can ignore this if you want, it's OK.:) I was just looking for blogs on tumblr that help / advise LGBT people. (don't you know any please?) and I noticed your profile. Can i tell you something? I am desperate :(i'm a girl. I thought I was straight. I've always liked boys. But .. sometimes I ... like actresses. I've always said myself that this doesn't mean I'm bi, that's normal. I just think they're pretty. But .. it has happened to me a few times that .. well, for example, I have one classmate (she is 100% straight) and .. I don't know if I like her, probably yes? I could imagine kissing her, maybe others things, but sex itself probably not? I'm confused. I also tried to do orientation tests and it turned out that I was straight. But it is written somewhere that when somebody takes tests for orientation, he/she is probably not straight. I know I should know this by myself, whether I'm straight or not, .. I'm really confused. please would you help me ?? thank you very much. have a nice day and i hope i don't bother you!

desperate anon :(

Well first and foremost, My apologies for not answering this question when you asked. I didn't forget this, I never had tbh, I just didn't know how to tackle it since I wasn't fully sure of my own sexuality and gender identity at the time. I didn't feel fully qualified to answer this question, But I think I have an answer:

It's a struggle to realize a lot of things all at once. Experiencing and thinking things that tie along with the queer community is a lot to handle, especially if this is the first instance of questioning. Being lgbt or coming to the conclusion of being apart of the lgbt community isn't easy nor going to be easy for you. But, the first battle you'll have to face is questioning your sexuality, what thoughts and feelings are considered to be lgbt? do you actually find the same sex attractive? do you find both attractive? maybe the feelings you feel are platonic and maybe you've never actually felt romantic attraction?

On the rumor of "if you take gay quizzes, you probably are gay", A lot of folks in the lgbt community started off their journey by taking the "am I gay?" quizzes, I certainly did and now i'm a comfortable oriented-aromantic trans-dude. Usually the first step of knowing whether or not you're lgbt is if you take quizzes that simulate common stereotypical lgbt experiences. However, this doesn't mean anyone who takes those quizzes are automatically lgbt. It's all up to you to decide. Being informed of the diversity in the community is wonderful and I absolutely encourage you to delve deeper to (hopefully) find a label you feel comfy with. However, experience is key. You may like something in theory, it doesn't necessarily mean you will enjoy it in practice. Don't be afraid to experiment with your identity if you're willing to make that leap.

Side note: You can find someone attractive but not be attracted to the gender in particular, it's called conventional attraction. There's also a term that I suggest you look up: compulsory heterosexuality. This is a common experience with lesbians and the WLW community.

Another Side note: Romantic and Sexual attraction can go hand and hand but are not necessarily the same thing. You can romantically attracted to someone but not be sexually attracted to them. If you notice a lack of sexual attraction for the same sex but not for the opposite sex chances, you could be bisexual with a preference for women. If you notice a similar experience but vice versa, you could be a lesbian. If you notice a lack of sexual attraction for anyone regardless of identity, you could be asexual!

Again, this is YOUR experience, YOUR identity, only YOU are allowed to make the calls but never get scared to experiment. In my eyes, that's what the lgbt experience is. Just know that no matter what happens, who you end up loving/dating, you are incredibly welcome and valid in the community. I wish you luck on this journey!!

[Don't feel bad for asking this question. You aren't a bother at all. I hope that this very delayed answer will still provide some use and comfort in this path of yours. If you do ever desire to ask for more advice, feel free to send another ask or even a DM. Good Luck :] ]

-Mod K

#advice suggestions #lgbt advice #life advice #advice blog #advice ask #advice answer #lesbian positivity #asexual positivity #lgbt positivity #lgbt questions

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ljf613 · 4 years

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This year has been super-stressful and frustrating for all of us, including young people. I was talking a middle schooler I know through her third or fourth panic attack since August (that I know of, there have probably been more).

She’s got a lot of stress going on right now. Her school is offering a Zoom option for students whose parents aren’t comfortable with sending them out into public places like smart people-- but, of course, when you’re one of only two or three students working over the computer in a class of twenty or thirty, you’re at a disadvantage, especially if you’re someone who has trouble with the learning in the Zoom format to begin with.

(She can’t hear the teachers well, can’t really see the board, and is having a lot of trouble following lessons, among other things. And then she spent the past few days pouring her heart out into a presentation, only to wake up this morning to find out she’d overslept (likely because all of this stress is not conducive to a healthy sleep cycle) and missed the class she was supposed to do the presentation for.)

And this whole situation is praticularly frustrating to her, because she’s always been a great student with good grades-- she’s not used to feeling like a failure.

So as I was talking with her, trying to figure out where to go from here, and I realized that, while a lot of the advice I was giving her sounded intuitive, much of it was stuff I didn’t pick up until I was older-- in high school or college-- and some of it I still haven’t internalized.

And I said to myself, “who else do I know who could use this kind of advice? The good people of tumblr!” So here we go.

Life Advice for a Struggling Middle Schooler (or Anyone Else Who Might Need It):

1. Try to identify exactly what your issues with a given situation are. It’s easy to say, “Nothing works, the whole system is broken,” but ninety-nine perecent of the time* that helps no one. If you say, “I have an issue with these specific things,” or, even better, “Here are some simple things that could be changed to make it a lot easier for everyone involved,” you’re half-way there.

2. There is nothing wrong with asking for help when you need (or even want) it. The worst answer you can get is “no,” in which case you’ll be no worse off than you are now. The people in your life want to help you. (If they don’t, maybe think about getting new ones, but that’s another discussion.) However, none of them live in your head. They don’t always know what it is that you need (even if it seems obvious to you). If you come to them and say, “these are my issues, and here are some things that you could do to help,” most of them will be thrilled. (This is especially true of parents and teachers (good ones, at least). It is literally their job to help you succeed-- they want you to fail even less than you do. Ask your teacher for a copy of their lesson plan. Ask your parent to go over a particular topic you’re pretty sure they understand better than you do.) Again, in most cases, the worst answer you can get is “no.” Most people don’t listen to someone come to them with open and honest issues and think, “What can I do to make this person’s life harder?”

3. Nobody in your life is ever going to care about what grades you got in elementary school. Once you’re in high school, nobody cares how you did in elementary school. Once you’re in college, nobody cares about your high school transcript. Once you have a degree and a few years of work under your belt, nobody cares what your class ranking was. (Those movies you watched as a kid where someone goes in for a job interview and one of the interviewers pulls out their third grade report card and demands to know why they got a “D” in Gym are total lies.)

4. Don’t make a situation out to be worse than it is. I was looking over her math assignments with her, and most of them were 90 or higher. Yes, there were a few 60s or 70s, but right now it looks like she’ll probably get a B+ or an A-, both of which are perfectly acceptable. Being not perfect is okay.

5. Your feelings are valid. This is something I tell her all the time, because I know how much I would have loved to hear that as a middle schooler. Life is frustrating. You’re allowed to be frustrated. You don’t always need a reason-- you can just say “I feel sad right now,” and that’s okay. You are allowed to feel things. Your feelings are not “stupid” or “trivial”-- they are important.

6. Mental healthcare is just as important as physical healthcare. At the end of this whole discussion, she says to me, “I used to see a therapist. I think I’d like to go back.” And I said, “that sounds like a great idea. Talk to your parents.” Destigmatize therapy. I am a firm believer that everyone should be in therapy. (And yes, that includes therapists. Frankly, I would be rather concerned if my therapist didn’t have their own therapist.) There is nothing wrong with therapy-- it just means that you could use some help, and are willing to get it. Sometimes, mental healthcare looks like, “this situation is too stressful for me to handle right now, I’ll deal with it another day.” Sometimes it means actually getting stuff done so you no longer need to stress out about it. Sometimes it looks like, “I really don’t think I’m capable of this, is there an alternative option?” And sometimes it means telling someone, “I love you, but I can’t be around you right now.”

*(Note that all numbers and statistics are completely invented.)

#real life #advice #life advice #middle school #note that i am not actually qualified to advise ANYONE #but imma do it anyway #because people deserve to know these things

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qqueenofhades · 5 years

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Okay, I’ve read Joe Biden’s plans.

I’ve just sat down and spent several hours actually reading all the damn plans on his website, the whole thing, so you don’t have to. And here’s the conclusion:

They’re pretty good.

Are they absolutely everything we want immediately? Maybe not. Are they a solid Democratic agenda anyway? Yes they are. Are they better than Trump?

Light years!

His Violence Against Women plan is lengthy, detailed, and pays specific attention to violence against Native, lesbian and bisexual, low-income, disabled, rural, transgender (especially trans women of color) immigrant, domestic abuse victims, and other vulnerable women. He calls for replacing and expanding Obama-era policies and funding for campus sexual assault programs that DeVos trashed, and for providing money for culturally specific services that are sensitive to the diverse backgrounds of survivors. He also notes that sexual assault, while it predominantly affects women and girls, needs to be taken seriously and addressed for people of all gender identities.

His gun safety plan is forceful and lays out several steps for banning assault weapons, taking existing weapons from offenders, closing gun purchase background check and other legal loopholes, addressing the intersection between domestic violence and weapons ownership, and reducing or eliminating weapons and ammunition stockpiling.

His plan for tackling climate change and creating green jobs is also lengthy. He makes the connection between economic, environmental, and racial justice. He pledges to immediately rejoin the Paris Agreement and restore American leadership on the issue in pushing for even stronger climate standards, make climate change a central part of our trade, international, and justice goals, demand a worldwide ban on fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks (!!!) and if the Green New Deal is passed, to sign it, as well as for the U.S. to achieve 100% clean energy and zero percent net emissions by 2050.

His healthcare plan is decent. It offers an immediate public option for all Americans regardless of private, employer, or no coverage, and generous new tax credits to put toward the cost of coverage. It strongly protects abortion rights and federal funding for Planned Parenthood, as well as rescinding the “gag rule” that prevents U.S. federal aid money from being used to provide or even talk about abortions in NGOs abroad. It attacks generic and drug price gouging. It calls for doubling the capital gains tax on the super-wealthy (from 20% to 39.5% paid on capital gains by anyone making over $1 million) to help fund healthcare reform. He also has a separate plan on the opioid crisis in America, and on older Americans and retirement, including the protection and re-funding of Medicare and Social Security.

His immigration plan is lengthy and detailed. He apologizes for and acknowledges the excessive deportation that occured during the Obama-Biden administrations, pledges to do better, and attacks Trump’s current inhumane acitivities on every front. The policy of children in cages, indefinite detention, the metered asylum system, and the Muslim Ban are gone on day one. In this and his LGBTQ plan, he notes the vulnerability of LGBTQ refugees, incuding LGBTQ refugees of color. He proposes streamlining of visa applications and prioritizing the immediate reunification of families. It also specifically states that ICE and CBP agents will be held directly accountable for inhumane treatment.

Speaking of which, his LGBTQ plan is comprehensive. It pays attention to multiple intersectional issues, down to the high rates of incarceration among trans people of color. (He also notes the rates of violence against trans women of color particularly.) He calls for a complete ban on conversion therapy and the discrimination against HIV-status individuals, as well as removing the ban on blood donation from gay and bisexual men. He will remove the transgender military ban immediately. He calls for funding for mental health and suicide prevention among LGBTQ populations.

His plan to empower workers calls for raising the federal minimum wage to $15, as well as indexing this to median hourly wages to ensure that working-class and middle-class wages grow closer to parity, and implementing strong legal protections for unions. He expresses support for striking workers and to empower the National Labor Relations Board in workplace advocacy. Farmworkers, domestic workers, gig economy workers, and other non-traditional labor groups are included in this. He will restore all Obama-Biden policies related to workplace safety and regulation.

His plan to restore American dignity and leadership in the world calls for immediately investing in election security and reform, restoration of the Voting Rights Act, immediately restoring White House press briefings and other Trump refusals of information, tackling criminal justice reform and systematic racial discrimination, calling for campaign finance reform, and basically blowing up all the stupid things the Trump administration does on a daily basis. It also calls for an end to all ongoing wars in the Middle East, restoring the Iran nuclear deal, and new arms control treaties with Russia, among general repairing of international alliances.

His plans for K-12 education and post-high school education call for greatly expanded funding across all levels of 2-year, 4-year, and other educational options. There will be no student loan payments for anyone making under $25,000 a year; everyone else will pay a capped amount and be completely forgiven after a certain period. Public servants qualify for up to $50,000 in loan forgiveness. This is not total loan forgiveness for everyone, which is obviously important for me and many of us, but it’s acceptable to start with. Additionally, his wife is a teacher and has a proven track record of calling for education investment and supporting public school funding.

His plan for housing addresses the needs of formerly incarcerated, LGBTQ, veteran, low-income, sexual assault survivor, black and Hispanic, and other vulnerable populations at risk of losing housing. It calls for a tax on companies and corporations with in excess of $50 billion in assets to fund comprehensive new housing initiatives, including $100 billion in accessible and low-income housing development. It includes extensive investment in public transportation and a high-speed rail system. This ties into his plan to repair infrastructure and invest in new technologies across the country.

His plan for criminal justice reform calls for the end of mass incarceration, the decriminalization of marijuana, the automatic expunging of all cannabis convictions, and an end on jail sentences for drug use. It highlights systematic institutional racism and the impact on black and brown people particularly. It calls for an end on all profiteering and private prisons. It focuses on reintegrating offenders into society and funding the needs of people released from prison. It proposes to “expand and use the power of the U.S. Justice Department to address systemic misconduct in police departments and prosecutors’ offices.” It broadens funding for social services and other programs for people who are otherwise placed into the prison pipeline.

There are more plans, which you can find here. These are the ones I read top to bottom. I am not by any means a Joe Biden fangirl; he was not my first choice, my second choice, or really anywhere on my list. However, having carefully read through his policy documents, I can say that:

He has at the least a good team of advisors who are keenly aware of the political climate, and is willing to both restore Obama-era standards and to improve on them where necessary. Obviously, all politicians’ promises are politicians’ promises, but this is a solid Democratic platform with obvious awareness of the progressive wing of the party.

If progressive legislation is passed in the House and Senate, he will sign it, including the Green New Deal.

He represents a clear and definite improvement over Donald Trump.

Is he everything we want? No. Are his policies better than I was expecting? Yes. I advise you to read through them for yourself. It has made me at least feel better about the likelihood of voting for him.

I realize it’s an unsexy position, especially on tumblr, to advocate for an old centrist white man. I’m not thrilled about having to do it. However, speaking as someone who was very resistant to Biden and still doesn’t agree with all of his previous legislative track record, that’s my consensus. He is a candidate who broadly aligns with values that I care about. His policies represent a concrete end to the damage of the Trump administration and gets us on the right track again.

Joe Biden, if he is the Democratic nominee, will receive my vote on November 3, 2020. I urge you to consider what I’ve laid out above and join me.

#hilary for ts #politics for ts #long post #if you're gonna argue with me about this #at least read the plans first #i'm still not super excited #but it's acceptable #it's much better than trump #it does more than i expected #and that's a good start #so there we have it #joe biden

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anupalya · 2 years

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Dinluke Dialogue

This started as a reblogged response to this original post, but I think it works as a standalone too!

I think what might happen every time these discussions arise in the Dinluke fandom is that whatever gets said ends up going through the Anti Funhouse Mirror before it becomes an onslaught of anon hate, or otherwise gets distorted when shared around from the actual message being given by those most impacted and trying to speak about their own experiences, like an awful game a telephone. Here are some links that helped me understand what was going on. I will primarily be pointing towards the words of those who are best qualified to speak on these topics as they are primarily affected by these issues.

(note: I am a POC fan and a queer fan, but not MLM or Latine, so I may summarize but am mostly linking to centralize them and elevate their voices. Thank you to everyone whose work was linked, and who also advised and gave feedback).

I also want to say that yes, fingers were ABSOLUTELY pointed towards specific genres and writers (and may still be), but this scapegoating has been checked (in the links I have given) and the dialogue largely returned to its original intent. I also want to acknowledge that it was in no way okay that anyone received anon hate or threats.

The Issues

Pedro Pascal: Race vs Ethnicity

It has been clarified after some initial misconceptions, by white Latine voices, that yes, Pedro Pascal IS White Latino. He still experiences xenophobia because of that, and fandom racism can still occur around this when Din’s skin is darkened while also portraying Latine stereotypes in the same work. I encourage you to check out this explanation of what ends up happening.

Anti-Latine Racism and Xenophobia in Fic

Early on, this conversation mutated when dark fic started to be centered. This should not have happened. Dark fic existing as a genre in and of itself is no issue and not the one being discussed (and anyone who was saying that was distorting the point). Fic rules are kink rules (and to be very clear, I personally am both dark-fic-positive and kink-positive)! The issue brought up is when Din being characterized in Latine stereotypes is the dominant Pattern, not just Din being an abuser in dark fic, but Din also being consistently shown as aggressive and "macho" in vanilla fic, as well as his ethnicity being heavily fetishized (once again, please see the link above, as well as this one). When that is pretty much the common thread through most of the material that exists (and yes there are exceptions, but it takes work to find them), fandom spaces become hostile places to minority groups who are affected by microaggressions and dehumanization every day.

"Bottom" and GNC Luke

For this one, the point is not against Luke taking a "bottom" position in bed in a fic, or Luke in a dress in its own right (and anyone saying that has drastically distorted the point – there are some AWESOME works in this fandom that showcase gender nonconformity!)

Please see here for an explanation of the "bottom" issue.

And please see here for the nuances of the dress issue and GNC portrayals (of which there are some awesome ones out there!) being discussed.

And here as well for expansion on that.

And more on application of heteronormativity to queer pairings as the fandom "default," and their defaults in fandoms in general.

To summarize these above links: it's not portrayals of gender non-conformity or being on the receiving end of anal penetrative sex in and of themselves, it's the characteristics of "bottom" and gender nonconformity being consistently and heavily conflated with characteristics of weakness, submissiveness, and archetypal femininity, in a way that if it were applied to a female character, it would clearly be sexist (and it already is sexist when applied to an MLM character). It's the consistent conflation of "luke in a dress" with "must mean he's 'the bottom' and 'submissive and innocent.'" It's also the fact that there is a Default character in this pairing that such characteristics are given to, even when done respectfully in their own right (e.g. there are fics where Luke bottoming is just Luke bottoming, no bearing on his personality, but the fact that it HEAVILY skews towards Luke when looking at fic percentages is an overall Pattern). Just as above, when these are the default patterns and common threads in a huge percentage of material (vanilla, dark, otherwise) fandom becomes a hostile space for those who constantly experience microaggressions and bigotry in everyday life.

Finger-Pointing and Scapegoating

The person who originally said "louder and meaner" has since apologized for centering dark fic and taken accountability for their mistakes in the conversation, and has clarified what they meant by "louder and meaner." I won't speak for them, but will link their apology post below. However, I'll also leave you with some links to people again clarifying that this conversation should never have pointed fingers towards a specific genre or specific people as solely responsible:

Apology and accountability post

Other posts referenced: Here

Here

and here (same link as shown in point 4)

And of course, there are plenty of more supporting posts than what I have pasted above!

In Summary

This conversation is not about who is “allowed” to write or read queer characters, or characters of various races and ethnicities and nationalities, or fic showcasing dark topics. It also is not about what genres are “good” or “bad,” or saying writers of one genre specifically are at fault for the overall fandom trends. If arguments of that nature have reached you (I've seen some), they are distortions of the intent (and many of those who initially pointed fingers have checked themselves and listened when told this was not okay and not the intent, and not even accurate, and have re-engaged with the discussion with the intent to learn). It’s also not an accusation of bigotry of any individual.

Overall it is a call for introspection, for recognition of implicit biases pushed by mainstream society that we have defaulted to and currently dominate the ship, and for recognition that this dominance actively pushes microaggressions in unavoidable, unfilterable, and demeaning ways at marginalized fans and prevents them from taking part in fandom without having to endure the stereotypes that pervade their everyday lives. While there are definitely amazing works in the fandom that do not fit the descriptions I have linked and summarized above, they unfortunately aren’t the norm in the culture just yet. I strongly believe that for the vast majority of fans, the harm is unintentional, but the harm is also very real.

Niche fic and content that is not for everyone and is not intended to reflect reality will always exist and has a right to exist, and individual fics and works in their own right do not a Pattern make. However, this post describes the dominant trends in fandom (not just ours!), and it is which trends that emerge as dominant that reveal how we collectively are at least subconsciously still perceiving MLM and Latine people, and this is what we perpetuate by remaining uncritical of these trends.

It is also true that no minority is a monolith, and it may be asked who gets to decide where "the line" is drawn. My own answer to that, speaking only as myself, is that it's messy for sure, there will always be debate and discussion, no two people will always agree, etc. Imperfect works also have a right to exist, and the “perfect” should never be made the enemy of the “good.” The point is that we make a good-faith effort and be willing to listen, because so much of what is presented does not stem from specific malicious intent to drive out marginalized voices. No content will be for everyone, but until we listen and learn, very little content will be 'for' the people who have been speaking on this for so long, people who resemble the marginalized identities the ship portrays in real life. And in the meantime, stereotypes will endure.

This is a very good post, both the original, where that post's OP describes the "death of the author" and "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" ideas of engaging with content in general fandom, which I strongly agree with, as well as the reblog by that OP last year, clarifying that this does not mean that sensitive topics or minorities should not be approached with consideration, respect, and intentionality in fan works, or that stereotyping should be ignored, no matter who is posting.

Here are links to people who have specifically offered to engage with those seeking to learn how to portray MLM and Latine characters without falling back on stereotypes:

softieskywalker

Withercrown

Thank you for your time.

#this is to elevate marginalized voices #Who are directly affected in their real lives and fandom #with permission #my thanks to all consulted #Leveraging my tendency to write thousands of words in one sitting #ADHD hyperfocus is a gift and a curse #Fandom racism #Fandom xenophobia #Fandom sexism #Fandom queerphobia #Dialogue #Discourse #Dinluke #Star wars fandom

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scriptlgbt · 3 years

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TW: Transmisogyny, and mentions of sexual assault

Ask

Hi, I'd like to mention my ask is on sexual assault.

The victim (f) and abuser (m) are both cis and straight and the victim now shys away from men. But how would she see people who are not cis? Could she see a trans woman as an abuser if she knew she had a penis aka has the body part that the abuser used? How about a trans man? Or another gender identity? Especially if gender identity is not easily seen or when people don't pass as their wanted* gender. Say, the victim says she needs a woman's comfort and approaches a nonbinary character who uses male* pronouns, I don't know how to deal with that. I don't want to make it sound cissexist or transphobic but still be able to validate abuse triggers and circle of comfort. Otherwise my only solution is to put all non cis people or even cis people who are nonconforming and don't present as cis out of scences with the victim, but isn't that cissexist?

Answer

I first need to link our Writing Trans Characters: Corrections of Common Mistakes post, as you've made a couple of missteps when it comes to wording. I have put red asterisks beside the issues, if it helps any. But just in case, the first one should either just say "their gender" or "their actual gender" rather than "their wanted gender" and the second asterisk is covered in the linked post.

First, I think you are asking about how one hypothetical individual would respond when this isn't necessarily the purview of this blog. Everyone responds differently to sexual assault. Not all responses are healthy coping mechanisms. And some people get PTSD and some don't. (And contrary to popular belief: the presence of PTSD is not always 1:1 with the severity of the event. But I digress.)

I can try to advise on writing this in a respectful way. I don't think people who aren't trans women specifically are qualified to write a version of this story that involves genitalia as being the factor for safety. It is specifically trans women who are constantly seen as predatory and whose genitals are seen as disqualifying them from experiencing oppression. Despite trans women facing some of the highest rates of sexual violence out of any other demographic. It would be most responsible for you as a writer to write this character's aversion to be around people who directly remind her of her assailant. Personally, I do double takes around people with the hair cut and colour of my rapist. For different reasons, I also can't deal with people when they are expressing anger, especially if it involves some kind of angry interaction with their environment, like kicking a wall or slamming down a keyboard or mouse. My reaction is to become small or initiate a fawn response, especially if I can't flee. I'm probably projecting with this one but for other survivors that I've talked to, a lot of our trauma is more about the circumstances than people who fit a whole category that our rapist belongs to. Things like a certain style of bench, certain events, florescent lighting. Being alone with just one other person you don't know very well in a situation can also make things harder. I think it makes sense to be skittish around men after experiencing violence from them. BUT It does not makes sense to group an exceptionally marginalized group of women in with them, in a fictional story you are writing. There's just too much baggage to address there, too many things tied up in that which are harmful (explicitly transmisogynist) when put in public.

It also goes into committing sexual harassment to actually ask and assume the genitalia of people you interact with. That's not information everyone has the right to, regardless of what they've been through.

Trans women are targeted by narratives that claim their bodies are somehow dangerous. Often it revolves around their genitalia, regardless of what their genitalia actually is, regardless of who they are, regardless of their experiences as survivors (when applicable, which is at least 47% of the time). That's a very specific, very transmisogynist belief. It is specifically used to justify taking their lives.

I am not trying to deny that trauma can be illogical. But it is unhealthy, maladaptive, and oppressive, to use trauma in order to marginalize people. Writing this into something fictional is dangerously irresponsible and will most likely be used as transmisogynist propaganda. Even if you mean well. It is an attitude which people use to rationalize policies which criminalize trans women and put them in extremely dangerous situations just for existing. This sort of thing has been used to rationalize hate crimes and, in cases where transmisogynoir has come into play, lynchings.

For these reasons among others, I would find a different way to write your character's triggers. Or else get a trans woman survivor to co-write these scenes. I do not trust that anyone outside of that group could write this in a way that is remotely respectful.

- mod nat

*Note: I am TME, but a TMA person was involved in sensitivity-reading this answer.

#mod nat

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drdelphinecormigay · 3 years

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Hey I love your work! I was wondering if you had any writing tips for longer fics :) have a great day

Hey, thank you so much!! And of course I am happy to share some tips! I will say I am in no way qualified to be giving advice seeing as this is the first piece of creative writing I’ve done since school but I will share some tips based on my own experience writing tgu:

1. Have a rough plan of what is going to happen in each chapter before you start writing them. At first I didn’t know exactly where the story was gonna end up and I basically started with the general idea and I knew what the climax was going to be. I wrote the first couple of chapters just to get a feel for it, and then I produced a rough timeline of the whole fic. I then split it into chapters and bullet pointed the key things that I wanted to happen in each chapter, and used that as a guide.

2. Planning is essential, however it is possible to OVER plan. At least in my experience anyway. If I am too strict with myself on what needs to happen in a chapter, I struggle to make it feel natural. Hence the bullet pointing of the general outlines rather than a step by step of the whole thing. Don’t be too strict with yourself - let the writing happen. My ethos is that I know where I wanted a conversation to end up and the key points that I want to be made, but the actual getting there is up to what happens when I write. This is just personal preference though, it may suit you better to plan every last detail - depends on how you write best!

3. It’s basic story structure but a climax is important - you want there to be a point to the story, something for the readers to be waiting for (unless the point is to write something chill and fluffy and nice in which case screw climaxes and give us fluffy stuff). If you want to know more about this, then I’d advise googling story structure and there will be loads of information from people much more qualified than me!

4. Side plots are useful - sticking to one plot the entire time can sometimes get a little boring (not always but sometimes) - I liked to use relevant side plots that occupied the characters as a way to break the main story up a little. You do still want them all to be relevant and to feed into the main story - add to it in some way. They’re also good for building suspense towards something happening in the main plot - keeps the readers waiting a bit longer.

5. Make sure you understand the characters and their motivations. Every single thing that they say or do needs to be something that they would feasibly say or do based on them as a person. Do they have trust issues? Are they a type-A person? Are they lazy? Did something happen to them in the past that has affected them? Any action that doesn’t fit them as a character will take the readers out of the immersion. (Cough*greys anatomy writers take note*cough)

6. I know I’m a sucker for a slow burn but still, take your time getting to the climax. Of course you don’t want to draw it out too long but equally you want to build the interest. Don’t rush it.

This is just a couple of key bits, I hope that this helps! Also btw I don’t know how much you know about writing so sorry if any of this seems condescending. Equally let me know if you want more generalised writing tips or anything more specific! I am happy to share what I know (which is very little I promise you). Have a lovely weekend :)

Ps if anyone is a real writer and finds any of this to be completely wrong then I’m really sorry I haven’t done an English class since I was 15

#the girl upstairs #writing tips #from a not-pro

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codename-adler · 3 years

Note

TW: I was wondering in you could do a hc about Aaron sleeping with people while he was high and he talks about it with bee and Andrew and they are like yo that’s r@p3 (mind you Aaron probably started drugs really you g cause of his mom so when he actually does hang out with people he’s like in middle school and alit if the people there are in high school) and he remembers sometimes he would be so high he barely knew what was going on. (With both girls and boys). [[he could have also done things for drugs]]

!TW: SA/r*pe/non-con!

Hi anon,

I will try to write this out as respectfully as I can manage.

The short answer is: No.

The long answer is still very much no, but with a little (long) PSA. Here's how it goes:

I will start by saying that I, as a contributor to the AFTG fandom, am very aware of how problematic and triggering the series is. Whenever I write something that isn't comedy, I try my best to put every TW I can think of that is related to my content.

I will follow this statement by saying that as far as headcanons go, to each their own, whatever floats your boat, yaddi-yaddi-yadda. I believe we all know the limits, even if some of us choose to go beyond them or ignore them. I can't make anyone stop loving problematic tropes/ships.

However, I have control over my content. I thought that I had been pretty obvious before, in my fics, posts and headcanons, that I try to follow as much of canon as possible, to stay true to characters, when it comes to key personality traits/life-changing events or trauma/etc. Hence, I don't refuse to acknowledge Andrew's trauma and SA, because I believe Nora Sakavic has written his character very well, very realistically, and very considerably. Andrew's trauma and SA have shaped him, but it isn't what I believe people call "trauma p*rn". I am glad this expression exists, because it sums up really well what many toxic authors and fans do in their works. And, as problematic as some of her stuff is, Nora Sakavic's AFTG is not trauma p*rn, to me. Emphasis on the "to me". I am speaking for myself and I well aware that to other readers, it could qualify as "trauma p*rn".

So, as much as I accept Andrew's trauma and SA as part of his character, it does not mean that I accept all the trauma-inducing stuff that the author has made the characters go through. Nor do I accept/respect some of the extra content. Specifically, Jean Moreau's trauma induced through repetitive SA by the Ravens. To me, this "fun fact" about Jean is as ill-advised and harmful as JKR announcing Dumbledore's homosexuality after the series had ended. These extra contents weaponize trauma/experiences without consideration for the real people out there that have been through it. These authors forget that these are too-real issues that impact the lives of millions. To add as a side note that Jean was basically the Ravens' s*x doll and Riko's plaything has absolutely no purpose. We already knew that Riko was the worse. We already knew that Jean was a survivor. And, most important of all, the series was over. Without a sequel. Again, no point in adding that as a "personality trait" for Jean. To me, this is very wrong, which is why I choose to disregard that extra content when writing about Jean Moreau or Jerejean. I don't feel comfortable writing SA, I don't like writing SA, I don't believe in using SA as a plot twist or device. So I don't write it. I just don't. It does not add "spice" to my writing and it does not fit my stories appropriately enough to be well-written.

What I've said so far is more or less detached from my person, except for my opinions on AFTG. As in, I haven't talked about me, Adler. About my life outside of this, my experiences, my traumas. You don't know me. You know only what I'm willing to share. Same thing goes for my Instagram.

So I find it immensely, incredibly, tremendously disrespectful and insensitive that you, under anonymity, have the nerve to ask for such a triggering idea. This goes beyond being distasteful, beyond being harmful. Have you no empathy? Have you no consideration? Why would you ever, ever ask for such a thing, and from a stranger? What if I had been less strong than I am today? What if I'm a minor? What if, instead of writing this, I had done something else because your suggestion triggered fresh or old wounds? If you had gone ahead and wrote it for yourself, and posted it, I'd have nothing to say to you. You do you, I'll do me, and we can just ignore each other's content. But you come on my blog, drop this in my ask box. It's not enough that you began with "TW". It's not enough that you modified the triggering words. You have no idea the effect of your words on my life. No idea. I don't know where you got the idea that sending me this would be great. I don't know where in my writings you found that I would be an appropriate and grateful writer for this. I don't know who you are, I don't know what you've been through or what you've experienced, and so I won't invalidate any of that, because you might be a survivor too, you might have been the abused too, this might have grown from personal experience. But your actions are still, at the end of this, unacceptable. You were probably coming from a good place, with no intention to provoke such a reaction out of me. To that I say, be more aware. Be more mindful. Be more compassionate.

And to all of you out here. There are as many ideas as there molecules composing our bodies. Not all of them will be accepted. Not all of them will be liked. I cannot control what people are into, even if it disgusts me to my core. But none of you can come here on my grounds and throw these ideas at me. None of us should ever have to receive this sort of ask unsolicited. I debated writing and posting this a lot, because it will most certainly trigger some people and the purpose of this message, to me, is to prevent further harm. To those that have been harmed by this post's contents being triggering for your mental health, I am so terribly sorry.

I will end this by saying that I won't be justifying myself for my opinions. This message is not open for discussion or debate. I will not be sharing my life in order to prove my point. If you want to share or reblog this because you, too, don't want to receive such asks, go ahead. If you want to comment on this, I can't stop you. But I won't respond. This has been hard enough to write, and I've made my point. I have nothing to gain in going further.

Thank you for reading this far.

- Adler

#aftg #nora sakavic #trauma p*rn #trigger warning #all for the game #jean moreau #jerejean #andrew minyard #aaron minyard #kevin day

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komaeda161 · 4 years

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Now I realize we’ve been at this for some time already, but at the risk of derailing the dialogue you initiated, and may I just say how thrilled I am that you did, Karkat, I would just like qualify my entire analysis of your “Alternian culture” by saying that in contrast with life on Beforus, while your people may have been engaged in violent, lethal class struggle for millions of sweeps, by no means does this imply that the Beforan way of life was entirely without problematic elements, perhaps even more disturbing and insidious for their lack of acknowledgement and open discussion, particularly as a consequence of what in my view were widely and dismayingly unexamined systemic social injustices resulting from the entrenched power dynamics in play, dynamics strikingly similar to those of your planet’s markedly more bellicose iteration, which has only served to fully vindicate my hypothesis that such a hierarchy is really predicated on intrinsic dysfunction, and failure to shift all the usual narratives and undiagnosed problems into an open, judgment-free discourse through which problematic issues are constructively channeled into more intelligently problematized avenues of discussion. Now before I continue, it is only decent of me to warn you about certain triggers that are surely ahead in this essay. I mean conversation. Triggers include but likely will not be limited to class oppression, culling culture and violence against grubs, lusus abuse, complementary and analogous hate speech, pail filling, slurries and other concupiscent fluids, lifespan shaming, ableist slurs, prolix dissertation… Actually, maybe it would be easier for you to list your triggers, and I’ll do my best to avoid those topics, or navigate them more delicately, if at all possible? Great. It sounds like you don’t have any triggers, at least none that you know about. I’ll proceed with caution nevertheless. Just please let me know if you start feeling triggered by anything I’m saying, and we can take a brief time-out while you summon your moirail to help pacify you, assuming you have one. Not that I’m presuming you do, But I heard that you did, is that correct? If not, I apologize. I further apologize if your orientation precludes the possibility, as a pale aromantic, panquadrant demiromantic, something in the gray palesexual department or such, and hopefully you are not triggered by such presumptuous concillianormative language. It wouldn’t be the first time I was guilty of such an inexcusable microaggression, and I am not so oblivious to my own romantic privilege to believe it will be the last time either. I’m glad I brought up the subject of unexamined privilege, because it dovetails beautifully with the point I was about to make regarding beforan society and its savage umbral potentiality which later manifested through the kind of Alternian brutality you are all too familiar with. Those in the higher echelons of the hemospectrum such as the ceruleans, or “blue bloods” (careful, being loose with such terminology is opening the floodgates to a whole host of toxic signist language and hemophobic slurs), when addressing the challenges faced by those lower on the spectrum, such as the midhues or in particular warm castes like umbers, ochres, or “rust bloods” (another slur, highly problematic, deeply offensive and triggering terminology, strongly imploring you steer clear of this term), they would be well advised to check their cerulean privilege, particularly before dismissing hardships or marginalizing claims of oppression, which can be difficult for them to identify or empathize with from their advantageous position within the beforan//Alternian power structures. And some may argue that in our peaceful “utopian” culture that we have freed ourselves from injustice and disparities in privilege in a post-scarcity economy, largely equal rights distributed across the hemospectrum, and therefore exist in a “post-spectral world” (laugh out loud), and therefore there is no need to champion important social causes and there is nothing left to debate, but really nothing could be further from the truth. You just need to educate yourself and carefully investigate the longstanding power dynamics in play. For instance, a seemingly “harmless” remark from a cisblooded cerulean toward an umber or God forbid a burgundy or yes even a warm-identifying physically-cooler caste, about their very long term future plans such as on the order of centuries, then this may prove to be a very hurtful microagression due to the fact that lowhues cannot possibly live that long themselves, and the more priviliged caste could easily outlive dozens of generations of midhues or hundreds of generations of BUOYs (burgundy-umber-ochre-yellowgreens, note please avoid describing the lattermost as “lime bloods” as it has historically been used as an especially vicious epithet). Such remarks can further trigger painful reminders of how cooler castes, to some extent OJAs, but CIPs and Royal-Vs in particular, have been able to use their tremendous lifespans over the millenia to gain a stranglehold over the social order, have been able to completely dictate our societal evolution by ensuring only their cultural agendas and narratives receive the dialogue’s air supply, assuring the codification of those resultant ideals and deciding what “normalcy” entails, and sadly these absolutes become internalized across the full spectral range, even within those of most compromised privilege, and so you begin to see the cyclical nature of the dysfunction and the resulting inertia against positive change and raising awareness of the most underproblematized issues, which I think we can agree, is pretty problematic. And really, it’s everyone’s business to examine their privilege, even burgundies, who may be subject to the pitfall of believing incorrectly there are none on the scale beneath them whom they enjoy certain privileges over, which off-spectrum trolls will never know, such as those identifying as otherbloods or caste-multiples, “polyblooded”, any who hemoglobically ID as having a caste which manifests nowhere (as yet known) in anyone physically, or for that matter offspecs who physically do possess such a blood type, or “mutants” (VERY problematic term, highly triggering to some, be warned), such as you and I, Karkat. but this puts us both in a situation which to our knowledge uniquely allows us to understand and empathize with tragically underprivileged and unempowered groups across all scuttles of life, thus affording us both what I like to call a “uniquely underprivileged privilege”, which, yes, is a kind of privilege we should both strive to check as well, whenever we can. This same uniquely underprivileged perspective as I’m sure you know was disadvantaged upon my post-scratch iteration as well, and while I have no doubt you justifiably came to revere that figure of your planet’s rich history and your personal lineage, and while his goals of peace, equality, and a truly spectrablind society, I’m afraid I personally have trouble condoning his methods. I don’t like to use the term “problematic” lightly, but, well, his tactics were nothing if not massively problematic, to say the least, employing violent uprising to effect change, and emblazoning his mark upon history and his faithful followers with the salty flourish of a single rude, shouted swear word, it’s not to my taste even though he is who I would have grown up to be in another life. but no, I prefer to effect social change through rational, honest discourse and contributing to ongoing dialogues, focusing on what should be the real goals, through keen adherence to the discipline of Problematics, ensuring that we stay focused on successfully problematizing a wide range of direly undercomplicated social dilemmas. It’s nice to see we agree on so much. Maybe we are not so unalike, despite our drastically different upbringings. Anyway, as I was saying, the story of your ancestor, and more importantly my exhaustive list of misgivings with his approach to social change, is quite a long and elaborate one, but it actually fits brilliantly within the larger mosaic which captures the broad strokes of my post. I mean our discussion. Trigger warnings for the following content include: ancestor bashing, faith shaming, loud swearing, torture, burn wounds, ship sinking… again, seriously, just let me know if you begin to feel triggered by anything, even slightly. We’ll pause and see if we can really explore those issues, and identify exactly how I may have invalidated your struggles. Without further ado, the story is as follows:

#copypasta #kankri vantas #homestuck #long post

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theorynexus · 5 years

Text

Time to Continue with part 83!

Dave is correct. Such matters are never simple. The ways of the heart are extremely complex, and while it wants what it wants, whether it has the heart to actually go through with whatever that is is an entirely different matter altogether. But that, and the wonderful weird silliness aside, I believe Dave was suggesting that there was more to it insofar as there are other factors than just his own “gay awakening” involved with the current difficulties. We shall see just what they are, and how much they have to do with Jade... now.

100% on the money. I am not sure that technically qualifies as incestuous, though, my man. I am also not 100% sure that you are correct in this matter, other than the fact that it may make her rambunctious and more confident that she is playing a successful role as whatever strange matchmaking hate girlfriend she envisions herself as. (Not that I don’t think that humans could successfully play the part of a kismesis; rather, I am simply nooot sure Jade is actually doing well at it, or that she has quite the “stuff” for it, at this point. We’ll see.)

***laughs hysterically at this wonderful awkwardness***

That she has. And honestly, from a Trollish lens, it would seem that she’s had the “hots” for Karkat’s black concupiscent quadrant for quite some time, as well. (Man, that is sortof weird of her, to go out of her way to exclaim that to John... . Especially with the distance between her and accomplishing that goal. You’d think she’d at least want to get them to show some interest before doing that. Does seem very puppy-like of her, though. Hmm~)

Honestly, John is right in that thought. Mind you, trying might not be the worst idea in ideal circumstances (because at least he could say he tried, and it wasn’t working out for him; thus hopefully become able to get Jade not to push further, and salvage the friendships of everyone involved), but at this point, it’s honestly a great big gamble for Dave. He doesn’t have much romantic experience, and he’s not really sure 100% what he wants. Not only that, he clearly feels pressured and uncertain with regards to the matter, and that is not a good point to embark on any relationship. It leaves the door open for all kinds of potential abuse, because things aren’t starting out with firmly established boundaries and the necessary mutual respect for the desires of each person involved upon which all healthy romances are founded. If it were me, I would most certainly advise against Dave bending to the pressure from Jade like this. If she wanted to make a potential situation between the three of them work out, Jade needs to understand that patience will need to be involved. She’s immortal, Dave’s immortal, and while Karkat may not be, they do have quite a bit of time before they’ll have to worry about him aging too much to make it work, I’m sure. This is simply a horrible mistake from all parties involved, if it’s going to swing into effect as things are now. Of course, mistakes do not have to be totally damning, and learning from them is necessary for growth, so... we’ll see how things work out.

... I guess Megalodon MIGHT have technically been classified as a paleolithic megafauna, technically, though its existence mostly extended much further back. I do appreciate his continued enthusiasm about paleontology, though, and I understand that his metaphors can get convoluted and distracted, though. On that note?: Is that reference to the Meg supposed to be an association with Karkat’s mouth, and how his teeth are apparently quite disorganized, sometimes sticking out of said mouth when it’s supposed to be shut? I mean, that DOES give a bit of a shark-like image. To be fair, though: no. It was to eat whales, not other sharks. Big Game Hunter. (I really do appreciate the double meaning of his last line of the above quote. His uncertainty and circuitous path through the conversation really does show how anxious love can make a person, especially when things are rocky.)

I don’t necessarily think that that is correct--- that is to say, I am not sure that e actually was “leading her on” by dodging the issue for so long. This would require him to imply he did in fact have that same sort of desires as her, or at least that he was willing to reciprocate. Based on what we’ve seen, at the very least, I am not sure that he has actually done that. (Man, it must have been weird for Game Over Continuity!Dave to see Davepeta once they joined the fight--- to know on some level that he could sense something familiar, there, but to have no idea what the heck was going on with them~) That said... no. I’m not certain that even if he had been leading her on (that is to say, showing interest, but never committing), he would actually owe it to her unless he had been using that to exploit her in some way. Particularly, if this was done because he was uncertain if he’d be able to go through with anything, and then he then decided/will have decided to just tell her he’s not interested, I don’t think that this would be wrong at all. Certainly, she’d have good reason to be upset, but while she’d have lost a significant deal of time, at least he’d be being true to himself instead of potentially doing her, himself, and Karkat greater harm by forcing himself into something that has a good chance of failure+painful consequences. Sorry if this seems overly negative. It’s just... these are not the ideal circumstances, and honestly it’s sortof making me uncomfortable.

(H3H3H3~) Dangit, that “ghosted” business is sortof painful, given the natural association with John’s death in the Meat Epilogue. @w@ I am not 100% sure John’s mind is fully realizing the implied 3 person relationship that is being talked about as a potential possibility, by the way. With the way he’s talking, it makes it sound like he’s saying to use the coin to choose Karkat or Jade, rather than yea or nay to a situation with both of them. Particularly with the reference to his logic, and the “same chance” business. Either that, or John is sortof wishy-washy and weird, and is in fact not keeping a constant goal/argument/side as he proceeds in this conversation.

It’s beautiful to see Dave suddenly becoming confident, now that it’s in his wheelhouse. And sortof awkward and sad, seeing John flail about like this. But he’s always been that sort of silly jokester, so I will embrace this and accept it.

It’s funny how one can get these intuitions about things, yet be unable to properly explain them, at times. Of course, this rarely happens to me, because I’m a bit of a windbag (joke at Egbert’s expense), and am willing to look up words that may or may not fit in order to help me organize my thoughts, but it *is* certainly a phenomenon which I am familiar with. Particularly, in the context of attempting to make connections with others, by which they may or may not latch onto and be able to infer the true meaning you’re trying to get at.

... Yeah, that is definitely one of the things being a friend is all about. And sadly... I think Dave is right. He probably does need to talk to Dirk. Not that it is likely to do all that much good. Dirk’s not all that great, as far as Heart players go, and as a brother, he’s been remarkably distant with Dave, but... well, it somehow seems right, even if it’s something dreadful and somewhat repulsive. Given that Dave is having a hard time figuring this matter out, and he’s not able to properly latch on to John’s nonsense, this is probably the best option.

I mean, it got Caliborn out of a particularly nasty bind, one time. ;D

Yeah... I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that “cracked” will apply to all situations, but having someone who knows and understands you-- how vibrates on the same wave-length, you might say --is absolutely necessary for some issues.

This is incredibly silly. I don’t think that is appropriate on the part of the proprietor, all things considered. Moreover, it strikes me as curious insofar as I don’t think anyone ever came to try and help them order? I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t understand how the fanciest restaurants work. Or something might have happened while John was gone. Them noticing he was gone probably had something to do with it, but... still pretty ridiculous, regardless. I mean, who even kicks out a pair of gods? XD

(Super cute.)

How very true. Time is something difficult to properly hold onto even in the best of times. That one is unequipped to do something that might make a difference does not necessarily mean it’s your fault that bad things happened. For example: one should not blame terrified bystanders for not mobbing a lone gunman in a mass shooting and forcibly stopping them before anything can happen, or at least partway through. At times, life will present you with barriers of that sort that are almost impossible to overcome, and one has to think of what can be done for the future, rather than dwelling on the past. Of course, the cataclysm is in Dave’s future at this moment, and John could technically do a whole lot of other things to make events work out; yet as the narrative subtly suggests, while the possibility technically exists, it may not be something that is feasible--- for not only is Gamzee’s presence passively screwing with everything, now (and in particular, messing with characters’ abilities to make important choices well, probably), but there is the issue of the narrator potentially manipulating things, as well. If they are being subtle enough, rather than trying to force certain actions like Dirk did at certain points, it is difficult to oppose such a being’s control. Man, I wish I knew for certain who was doing said narration, right now.

#Homestuck Spoilers #Homestuck Epilogue #Homestuck Liveblog #Candy Epilogue #Dave Strider #Romance #Davekat #karkat vantas #Jade Harley #Healthy Relationships #Relationship Issues #Polygamy #Happiness #Tragedy #John Egbert #Gamzee Makara #Rage Aspect #Do:

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realitysangle · 5 years

Text

Okay, I’ve read Joe Biden’s plans.

I’ve just sat down and spent several hours actually reading all the damn plans on his website, the whole thing, so you don’t have to. And here’s the conclusion:

They’re pretty good.

Are they absolutely everything we want immediately? Maybe not. Are they a solid Democratic agenda anyway? Yes they are. Are they better than Trump?

Light years!

If progressive legislation is passed in the House and Senate, he will sign it, including the Green New Deal.

He represents a clear and definite improvement over Donald Trump.

Joe Biden, if he is the Democratic nominee, will receive my vote on November 3, 2020. I urge you to consider what I’ve laid out above and join me.

#Joe Biden

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randomslasher · 5 years

Note

How do you navigate being a minor on this site and setting proper boundaries?

I assume you’re asking me because you’re a minor, not because you think I am. Truthfully, the main advice I would give you is guard your personal information religiously. I’d say that to anyone, really, but especially if you’re a minor. Do not give out your real name (other than maybe a first name if you really want to, but I’d go with a nickname personally), your address, your phone number, your facebook, anything that could lead someone to finding out who you actually are IRL. It’s not worth the risk involved.

Otherwise, I can’t really tell you how to set your boundaries. I don’t know you, how old you are ( “minor” could mean anywhere from 13-17, and that’s only assuming you’re following tumblr’s age restrictions, so in theory you could be even younger. I’m not asking you to disclose your age, just saying I can’t give out blanket advice about managing yourself online with that big a potential age range, even if I DID feel qualified to do so, which I don’t). I don’t know anything about you, therefore I really am not in a position to tell you what you can and can’t handle.

What I will say is this: be cautious. If something feels wrong, err on the side of safety. Don’t let anyone manipulate you into telling them anything you don’t want to tell them, or into doing anything you don’t feel right about doing. If something feels off about a situation or a person, trust that instinct. If they’re a decent person, then they’d rather you be safe than put yourself in a potentially dangerous position. If they act offended that you don’t trust them, let that be a red flag. I will say as an adult that if a minor gave me any indication they didn’t feel comfortable interacting with me, I would advise them to unfollow and block me immediately, and I’d do the same for them, because I would so much rather they feel safe than that they take chances they don’t feel right about taking.

Basically though, like I said, I can’t make any calls for you, or really give you much advice, because I don’t know you or your boundaries--only you can find those. When I first ventured into the world of the internet as a teen it was still dial-up and AOL free trials, and none of us had any idea what we were doing. I found my own boundaries through trial and error, and not without some grief along the way. But no one’s experience is ever going to be the same.

All I can tell you is what I already have: be cautious, be careful, guard your PII, and start working to figure out those boundaries based on your own age, experience, maturity, and comfort levels.

(Oh,and as a side note: please, please heed warnings when consuming content. If you see something in a tag or a warning that you don’t think you can handle, then don’t read it. If you’re online without supervision, then you need to take responsibility for what you choose to consume. This isn’t saying you wouldn’t or anything, just a general piece of advice that I often see getting forgotten by a lot of people online these days :-/ )

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alloftheendgamefeelings · 5 years

Text

Endgame spoilers

Talking about arcs, rewards, and empty space. And, because I’m me, explicitly tracing character arcs through all of the movies, even though anyone who cares enough to read this probably already knows.

The hardest part for me, dealing with Nat’s death Endgame, is realizing that there were a few different things happening simultaneously.

There was the arc I was reading into the ten years of the MCU, and I genuinely felt rewarded because, in interviews pre-movie, it sounded like Scarlett Johansson saw Natasha in the same way that I had: that what she wanted, more than anything, was to find a place where she belonged, where she could love and be loved without fear of rejection. Where she was valued as a person rather than just as an asset.

And you can trace it. In IM2, you can see her realizing that while Iron Man isn’t qualified for the Avengers Initiative, his found family is what makes him special. You see it in her careful recitation of “love is for children” but her absolute loyalty to Clint. You see it in how she puts in the work to befriend Steve. You see how she just accepts that Tony doesn’t trust her because of IM2 in Avengers, but how hurt she is that Steve doesn’t trust her in Cap2, or that Nick’s’ small circle excluded her. You see it in her only goal in Cap3 being to keep the team together, joining Team Stark not because she believed in the Accords but because it was the best way to stop them from being separated, and she went to Steve in that church and she gave him as much of herself as she could.

And there was another arc, the one I liked much less. The one that kept repeating. The one where, since the time when Clint recruited her, no one has ever just accepted that she’s not a threat. We see it over and over: other characters don’t trust Natasha, and she has to do the work to prove that she’s trustworthy, and they grudgingly agree to accept her until the next time she has to show she’s worth taking a risk on even if their goals aren’t exactly identical.

But then there’s the arc that was on screen. If you actually look at what was in the movies- not the deleted scenes, not the novelizations, not the interviews, not what we got out of comics- so little of this is actually there. So much of it is those of us who care about Nat connecting dots (about her and around her), and making educated guesses.

As a result, we never actually find out what, canonically, she wants. And when you think about this movie, you realize: that’s not true for any of the rest of them.

Clint wanted his family happy and safe. We see that in how no one knew about them until Ultron, we see how much it kills him to leave them in Civil War, and we see how even though he’s wearing an ankle monitor he’s delighted to be picnicking with his wife and kids. His relief when Laura calls is palpable, and we see how close he holds the kids during Tony’s funeral.

Bruce didn’t want to be a monster, too dangerous to be around people. And while we have no idea HOW he became Professor Hulk, he did it, and now the guy who thought his inability to have kids made him a monster has them coming up to him for photographs.

Thor never wanted to be king, but it was his responsibility. Once New Asgard was settled and he’d killed Thanos, he felt lonely and directionless, and mostly just played Fortnite. He got one last time to spend with his mom, which gave him the boost he needed to consider a new life: one where he lets someone else take the crown, who can actually handle it, who he trusts, while he gets to fuck off to space to have more adventures.

Tony wanted to not grow up to be his father, but also wanted his dad’s approval. He got both of those. We see how much he loved Morgan, and how well he took care of her; we see how he was able to advise his father, and even get that hug.

Steve... Steve’s a weird case here, because he talked about that missed dance, and he got it. The missed dance always seemed like a metaphor for all the things he’d missed out on, and that he’d chosen a different path, and everyone lives with regrets and etc. But here he got the opportunity to take exactly what he’d always held up as that one big thing he missed, and he took it. Whether or not it works for you as a viewer, he got exactly what he’d been looking for since his first movie.

My first instinct was to say that Nat, in this movie, doesn’t get what she wants. And while I stand by that, I also can’t prove it, because we don’t KNOW what she wants as much as they wanted those things. In this movie she says she’d always wanted a family and now she has it with the team, but we don’t get to see that. We see what they mean to her; we don’t see that she means the same to them.

So the closest Natasha gets to joy is probably flying with Clint on the way to her death, and that isn’t the same as, say, Scott’s realization that Cassie isn’t missing. Every other character gets the joy of human connection. Natasha gets “Shit, space is cool.”

So going back to her death- it would have been upsetting no matter what. Because she wasn’t getting what she wanted. But if they’d done more with the aftermath, it could have been a cap to her arc of wanting a place to belong. It could have shown that it wasn’t just how much her family meant to her, but how much she meant to them.

I mean, look. Clint is clearly upset with the cost of the soul stone. Bruce tried to bring her back with the gauntlet. The whole team made noises about valuing her, and I don’t doubt it.

But her loss had no real narrative weight- not like Tony’s did. There was not a single moment during the fight where they acknowledged we could really use Natasha to help us win here. As much as I felt it (I sobbed), the gorgeous scene with all the women fighting doesn’t seem to really HAVE that bittersweet note of how Nat should be there. There was not a moment where anyone realized how much she’d always been responsible for, in terms of handling the aftermath. Clint’s kids call Natasha “Auntie Nat,” but we don’t see them mourning her, while we do see them at Tony’s funeral. We don’t see anyone surprised that Natasha chose to sacrifice herself for Clint and for her family and for the world, but we also don’t see anyone grateful for it.

Don’t get me wrong. Natasha was resplendent in this movie. She was brave, and noble, and good. She did what no one else was strong enough to do: she stayed, and she worked, and she gave all that she could for five years of absolute devastation, and then she gave even more. Natasha was a hero. But from Iron Man 2 on, Natasha was a hero. She didn’t grow to this point. She was here all along.

You know the biggest Nat moment for me all movie? It wasn’t her at the desk with all the people reporting in, or even her dying to let Clint live. It was the moment when Steve checked to see if she was okay, because in her previous six movies, that was never something anyone thought to do- after extreme trauma, sure, but not just when she was doing something hard. That moment of her not being taken for granted was a throwaway line, but I had so much hope that it was leading to more. And it didn’t.

So maybe the answer is that Natasha’s arc didn’t have an ending, because Natasha never had an arc. Other characters’ shifting perspectives of her never had to follow a path, and her journey never had to, because no one- aside from ScarJo and parts of the audience, I guess- cared about it. But I don’t like that read at all. I want to read Natasha’s sacrifice as closure.

I want there to be something I missed that proved that her growth was important to the Infinity Saga. I am trying so fucking hard to find a way that Natasha’s actions in this movie signified growth for her, rather than just a way for the narrative to remove one of the pieces and prove its stakes.

If you find one, please let me know.

#Avengers Endgame #Endgame spoilers #Black Widow #Natasha Romanoff #I cried like ten times writing this post I'm a fucking mess

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prorevenge · 6 years

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Not Going to Show Up for My Class? You Picked the Wrong One

Warning: Very long post. tl;dr at the end.

This happened ten years ago, when I was a junior in college. I had changed my major from French to Classical Voice, having decided that I wanted to be a professional opera singer. This meant that I was giving up any opportunity to graduate on time, and meant that I’d have to pay out of pocket for school since my scholarship only covered the first four years of an undergraduate program. I was willing to make the sacrifice, however, because this was my dream, one that I had not discovered until I was introduced to opera my freshman year.

While I went to a very well-known university, its music department was small, and the voice concentration was miniscule. There were only two full-time voice teachers: mine, “Mrs. Smith,” a diminuitive 88-year-old who’d had a stellar career as a coloratura soprano, and “Dr. Jones,” a baritone who had a very big voice and regularly performed in the area and out of it.

Now, as I imagine most readers aren’t familiar with the way music departments work, typically, every voice teacher has individual voice students they meet at prearranged times every week, and a load of regular classes they teach as well, things like Diction, Solo Vocal Literature, and Vocal Pedagogy; in other words, classes for voice majors and minors. Until the fall semester, I had not taken any classes with Dr. Jones, but I was friends with several of his students who told me that he was inconsistent and unprofessional: he often missed lessons for his own performances, and tried to make them up at the end of the semester. The thing is, vocal study is very cumulative; it is impossible to cram them in at the end and see any sort of progress as one should. You need to be working hard over the whole semester.

Happily, I encountered none of this during the fall semester. There were five voice majors in the class: me and four freshmen. I would usually have taken this class, Diction, my freshman year, but I was not a voice major then. In addition, I was the only junior voice major, and there were no sophomore majors (though there were manor minors), so the Department of music had not offered the class my second year, which I spent catching up on many prerequisites. Dr. Jones was delightful. He was very knowledgeable, and seemed interested in my progress and that of the other students. The homework was relevant and my French knowledge helped me greatly. I aced Diction and looked forward to my next class with him. He only missed one class the entire semester, and we’d been warned about that the very first day.

The next semester, I had Solo Vocal Literature with Dr. Jones. I was very excited about this class because as the only junior voice major, I was the only one qualified to take it. This meant lots of time to get down to the nitty-gritty with Dr. Jones about composers and how to interpret art song, which I am a big fan of. That first day we met in his office and went over the syllabus. We would focus on a different composer every week, starting with Schubert, a personal favorite of mine. I left that class filled with excitement, confident that we would have another great semester.

The next week, prepared with the work on Schubert I’d done, I walked to his office a few minutes early to see a sign taped his door: Dr. Jones will not be in today due to illness. I was very disappointed, but these things happen. It was January after all, and singers are especially prone to getting sick. I also knew that Dr. Jones lived at least four hours away by car, so it could not be easy to get to class when he wasn’t feeling well. The next week, he apologized for his absence, and we spent an hour happily discussing the works of Robert and Clara Schumann. But the next week I found another note saying that he would not be in due to a performance.

Illness is perfectly understandable, but a performance? Surely he would have known about that more than a week in advance. On it went. By the time we reached midterms, he had not been present on our class day since our second meeting. I was emailing him weekly asking for updates, but received no replies. The only chance I ever had to talk to him was between other classes. He was scheduled to be in class and lessons Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but seemed to be making up a lot of them on Thursdays. However, since I was still minoring in French, I had classes all day Thursday, so I could not meet him then. I needed to do something.

One of my other professors advised me to put pen to paper. Most students aren’t willing to, he said, and then they have no recourse when they get a bad grade from a professor. The next Tuesday when he didn’t show up, I did. I laid out exactly why I was dissatisfied with the course, how I had not seen him for weeks, how nothing on the syllabus suggested that we were not to meet for that long, how I was taking a full load of classes that semester, and could not be bogged down with trying to make up a full semester’s work at the end of the semester, and how I wanted a both an A in the class and a refund for the scholarship money that had gone toward paying for this waste of time. I sent it to him, and copied one to Mrs. Smith, who was the coordinator of the voice concentration, the chair of the department of music, the associate dean of fine arts, the dean of arts and sciences, the provost and the president of the university. I slipped my letter under his office door (since, of course, he was not there), and hand-delivered the rest.

To my surprise, It seems that the president and provost themselves actually read my letter and insisted that everyone down the chain act on it. Two days later, I received an email from Dr. Jones. Didn’t I understand? He had mentioned in our first class that this would be an independent study course! (He had not.) It was on my syllabus! (It was not.) He would meet with me the following Tuesday and we would discuss it.

That Tuesday, lo and behold, he was there. We worked out a plan wherein I would take the course as independent study and my grade would only be calculated from that point. I still wasn’t please that I was getting less than half a semester’s worth of work, and that all of a sudden, I had to do pretty much everything myself, but he strongly implied that I would definitely be getting an A, and I did not want to make a fuss just for the heck of it. I wondered how many students he’d strong-armed into getting whatever grade he gave them and deprived of knowledge it was his job to teach. It seemed to me that he had a pattern of only showing up for classes with more than one person in them, and trusting that the individuals would never complain as long as they got an A at the end of the semester. It’s a shame, but I also wondered whether he’d be doing the same thing if he weren’t teaching at a historically Black institution. Either way, I got my A and a great lesson about the power of the written word.

But that doesn’t qualify this as pro, does it? Here’s what does: it turns out that Dr. Jones was up for tenure that very semester. He had been brought in as a planned replacement for Mrs. Smith, who was very ready to retire, but every year had been so lazy that he was never promoted. This year was his final chance. However, my letter was the tipping point that caused him not to get it. I was later told by the chair of the department that while she had heard complaints about him for years, no one had ever actually officially reported him to anyone, so there was nothing that the faculty could do, and that he had essentially been a shoo-in for tenure otherwise.

Dr. Jones was a nice man, and I hope he is doing well. That said, I also hope he learned that it’s not okay to deprive students of the opportunity to learn.

#submission #prorevenge #pro revenge stories #revenge stories #pro #revenge #revenge story #last10

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qqueenofhades · 5 years

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I have a weird question for you. Where do you get your daily news from? I feel like I shouldn’t ignore it but it’s all so tainted.

Heh, well. My answer to that depends on your motives for wanting to read the news. As you say, it’s a constant bombard of bad news from everywhere, it’s hard to manage healthy boundaries and practice self-care while still being informed, and feeling like you have a responsibility to know absolutely everything from everywhere (fueled by the passive-aggressive and “DON’T SCROLL PAST THIS!” tumblr shame culture) is not going to work and will just leave you feeling worse. So if your motive for reading the news is that you feel like you need to, I would advise you to think about why and what for and who you think you need to please/validate by doing so. If it’s genuinely something you want to do, then great! This is obviously a good thing! But if you feel like you have to, and it will wear you down by doing so, then it’s also okay NOT to.

Because we live in the darkest timeline, there’s some sense that if we just check out or filter it or otherwise don’t engage with it at all times, we’re “cheating” or we “don’t really care” or so on and so forth, etc and nonsense. Long-term activists and the people who make the actual difference in their communities and among their friends know that empathy burnout is a very real thing, that you can’t care about ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE because there’s no way you as one person emotionally or mentally can, and you have to manage your expectations and your emotional investment. Social media has made it easier than ever to know about the (mostly bad) events everywhere, and again: human beings aren’t really designed to live that way. Technology has changed the world in plenty of good ways, but there are a lot of downsides and dark sides to it as well, especially in the “performative purity” of looking as Woke as possible at all times and immediately cancelling anything Problematic. That is a recipe for bad mental health and for feeling constantly inferior to invisible people who you will never meet in real life and who have no actual effect on your day-to-day existence. And really, you straight-up don’t have to participate in that culture. Nobody is going to make you do it, and nobody is going to feel the way you do at the end of the day. So yes. It’s about what you need to do, what works best, and how you can balance your presumably functional moral compass and sense of social ethics with your personal well-being.

So if anyone needs to hear this, again: it is okay to check out. It is okay not to spend time actively consuming more dark and depressing news (since while the good things absolutely do happen, as ever, they are less likely to be reported). It is okay to come to tumblr for escapist reasons and curate your experience accordingly, and to use blacklist and tag block and whatever else. I keep this blog as a mostly fandom-and-history zone, but when I do go on politics rants since I feel like I need to use my platform on this worthless blue website to talk about it, I use the tag “politics for ts.” That way, anyone who comes to my blog for other reasons has the choice not to see those posts, and that’s fine with me. I don’t police what people like from me, as long as they don’t try to police what I post (and by and large, my followers and anons are all completely awesome and nerdy and love the same things I do, so we get along.)

All that said, I usually do hear about things on here, and as a UK resident presently unwillingly transported to America, I also read the BBC most days (bbc.co.uk for UK or bbc.com for the rest of the world). They have problems of their own, of course, but I can usually get a sense of major world events (and especially Brexit nonsense, which I likewise often have to tune out of) with a relative minimum of scaremongering or overt ideological bullshit. They also have interesting pieces on travel and technology and other things that I enjoy reading because I also like to be informed about the world aside from just whatever stupid thing it’s done now. I also love to go on Wikipedia rabbit holes; i.e. type in a name or a place or an event that I have seen recently or want to learn more about, and just click my way around for a while. I learn tons of new things, I travel to new places, it’s a fun and shielded-from-Current-Events (tm) way to investigate issues, and you’re supporting the free exchange of information on the internet, which a lot of big corporations and special interests have an interest in shutting down (see the whole Net Neutrality brouhaha and why that matters).

(On that note, I am a professional academic with a doctorate, and I LOVE Wikipedia. It’s not usable as a high-level source, and I sometimes do facepalm at what people think qualifies as one, but also... it tells me what I need to know on a basic level for almost everything, it empowers me to look for more resources, and takes me all over the world from wherever I am at the time. Plus, all this accumulated knowledge of the human race is largely at your fingertips FOR FREE. So if you run into elitist bullshit about it, this is also me telling you feel free to ignore).

Anyway. I hope that was helpful for you. Good luck!

#anonymous #ask

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theveterinaryqueen-blog · 5 years

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Should I become a Veterinary Technician

Many people ask me pretty regularly if I think they should go to tech school and become a veterinary technician. I actually love talking to people about it because I have seen all of the aspects of our job and I feel as if I have a good insight to the pros and cons. I typically start by telling them that if they have a real passion for caring for animals it is a step in the right direction but that veterinary medicine is not for everyone, even if you love animals. It is also important to consider that you can go on many different route in the tech world: general practice, mixed, small or large animal, Specialty, ER, and research are just a few of the more common options. I personally like fast paced, high energy, exciting things and have been through a lot of death in my personal life (which means I understand it in a different light than most people do) and am very comfortable around loss. Because of that, I really enjoy ER but more importantly, I am good at ER. I don't like the typical pace of GP (I really like not knowing what is about to get rushed back at any moment) so I chose a position that worked for my needs. I think I would like working with large animals too (I was raised on a farm where we typically vetted our own livestock for a marjory of their issues) but do not have much clinic experience so I am not sure how well the fit would be. Knowing what type of animals you are comfortable with is important too. If you were raised with exotics, you might make a great exotic tech. If you weren't, I would advise spending some time around people who do have them and figure out if you like those species. If you are very intelligent and retain information well, you may make an excellent internal medicine tech (I must add that I worship the knowledge and skill level of the internal medicine techs at my hospital! They are the best and brightest.). If you have a hard time accepting the circle of life and death takes a large toll on you, oncology and ER may not be the best place for you.

I always recommend job shadowing at MULTIPLE clinics and settings to make sure you are comfortable being around animals, sick, broken, and healthy, old and young, gentle, timid and aggressive. Loving animals and treating ill animals are very different.

There are different routes to getting to a tech/vet assistant role( in some places techs and vet assistants are the same apart from one is licensed/certified/registered and the other is not while other clinics will have vet assistants as truly assistants and they are at a lower skill level). You can go through an accredited 2 year program and then typically you will sit for the test or you can work your way up through the ranks. I think both can bring very valuable things to the table. I work very closely with another tech and one of us worked our way through the ranks while the other went straight into tech school and then straight into our hospital and we work really well together.

I know many certified/registered/licensed techs have a problem with techs who work their way through the ranks. I have personally been attacked many times by CVTs who, to my face, call me a lesser skilled person because they went to school and accumulated debt and I did not. To be very forward and honest, I do very poorly in class room settings. I always have. My agriculture classes were always my best grades and stuck with me because most of our classes were held in the barn or green house learning hands on. I do poorly when sitting down writing notes but when I get to actually do or see something happen in front of my eyes, i absorb all of the information. And i believe that is what makes me so good at my job. I didn't fry my poor brain making it do something that it doesn't like. I learned on the job and saw mistakes and good lessons that techs made and learned that way. No, I didn't have to pay for a tech program (I have taken many courses plus my hospital offers CE to all techs certified or not so I take many CEs and have certification in subjects that those techs who belittle me do not have) but I am just as qualified. So do not let your fear of school stop you. If you do elect to go my route, just understand that you will face many road blocks ( some legal issues, some will be issues with others in the field) and it will take a while to become skilled enough to work alone but it is totally worth it! If you want to go through a program, there are some awesome programs out there both on campus and online depending on your needs.

And one of the biggest things I tell people who are considering vet tech is that they must love what they do, not what they make. Technicians typically do not make much money and you have to be okay with that. Do not go into this profession thinking that techs must make a lot of money. In some places, techs are lucky to make a few dollars over minimum wage (warning: if you work your way up instead of sitting and passing your test, you will probably make much less than the certified techs around you even if you are more qualified. It's unfair but how the game is played). The pay will also depend on your specialty and location (often specialty techs make more than GP but that is hospital to hospital dependent). Some areas also will pay more or less depending on the income level of locals. It is important to realize that you will not be rolling in the dough simply from this job. But if you love what you do, it can be worth it. I LOVE my job and get paid poorly. It's a toss up and for me, the work that I get to do won.

I think teching is a great job. It is not for everyone but if you are up to the challenge, please come have fun with us! We are in a national tech shortage (ESPECIALLY in ER) and we need more techs. I did not post this to discourage anyone, just prep you for a busy, but amazing, career choice. And no, you don't have to want to be a vet to be a tech!

🐕🐴🐒🦒🐁🐊🐠💊💉

#theveterinaryqueen #veterinary #veterinarytechnician #vetmed #dreamjob #lovewhatyoudo

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tfrohock · 5 years

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How to write strong male characters, or writing non-toxic heroes

Okay, that title is a tweak on all of the numerous blog posts I once read (and to be fair, wrote) about writing strong female characters. Remember those? Back a few years, you couldn’t swing a dead rat without knocking down a blog post on how to write a female character. I enjoyed those posts, not simply because what the authors were saying was true, but also because of the empowerment those essays gave to both the authors and the readers.

However, when I floated the idea on Twitter of writing a similar post about male characters, I was met with some snark, such as a recommendation to gender-flip everyone, or make all of the characters female. Frankly, the suggestion of gender-flipping the characters and suddenly all-is-well-with-the-world-and-bluebirds-sing as a solution tells me the individual in question hasn’t been around toxic women, which is another blog post altogether, but suffice to say that gender-flipping isn’t a cure and completely avoids the toxicity of some male characters.

Another individual advised me to write a gender-balanced novel, which tells me they haven’t read mine.

For the record: the male/female ratio from Where Oblivion Lives is 17 men and 15 women. This is a rough count from my style sheet and omits anyone who is/was an actual historical person.

With a bisexual protagonist married to his gay partner, I was highly conscious of the number of females and their roles as I wrote the story. Whenever possible, I made the supporting characters females in high-profile jobs (such as Sofia, who is the chief of Guillermo’s spy unit, and Carme, who is more badass than all the men put together) wherever and whenever possible. However, we’re not here to talk about them.

“TOXIC MASCULINITY" AND WHY I DISLIKE THE TERM

The term “toxic masculinity” is mutable, depending on the time period, who is defining it, and whether it is the product of popular jargon or actual gender studies. No one denies that male violence and sexism are issues that need to be addressed on a cultural level; however, the cause of those issues aren’t necessarily masculinity. Men do not burst from the womb loathing women and fighting the other babies in the nursery. Misogyny and violence are learned behaviors, and one of the many places where men learn those toxic behaviors is by reading books with characters who make misogyny and violence an acceptable part of being male.

Also, I’m not here to lead a discussion in gender studies, because I’m not qualified for that. I’m a writer and we’re here to talk about writing characters that provide positive role models not just for young men, but also for young women. So rather than “toxic masculinity,” I’ll be talking about the toxic behavior we normally ascribe to men, and how I avoided making the men in my novels behave in ways that would make violence and misogyny seem appealing.

I gave the toxic behavioral traits of glorifying violence and power-structures to my antagonists, Jordi and Karl. They believe they are “destined for greatness” and that by virtue of birthrights and poorly constructed ideals of male dominance, their place is assured. Stylistically, I approach these aspects of character through their actions and by what the other characters observe of Jordi’s and Karl’s behavior.

For example: we never go into Karl’s point-of-view, but we see him through Diago’s eyes as Diago walks through a drawing room, looking at pictures of Karl standing triumphantly over big game animals he has killed. Diago notes that “Karl likes killing things.” However, it’s not so much about killing as it is about Karl’s need for dominance over other creatures.

Does this mean that Guillermo and Miquel don’t possess toxic behaviors? No.

The difference between the Jordi/Karl and Guillermo/Miquel dynamic is that Jordi/Karl see nothing wrong with their behavior and make no efforts to change. Guillermo and Miquel, on the other hand, tend to listen when confronted about their behavior, and they do make sincere efforts to modify not just their actions, but also the thought processes that lead to those actions, thereby making an active effort to break the cycle of toxicity.

WRITING NONTOXIC HEROES

Is not as hard as it sounds; although it takes a lot more than just adding more women to the cast. The women have to be proactive and possess agency of their own, and the men need to respond to them as equals.

One of my favorite scenes from Where Oblivion Lives is the dinner scene, where Guillermo’s eight-year-old daughter, Ysabel, decides to make her stand for independence. Her mother, Juanita, is in full support of her daughter and coaching her from the sidelines. Guillermo’s behavior is toxic in that he wants to control the situation, and he uses manipulative means to do so. At the same time, this particular scene is the catalyst for some of the subsequent changes in Guillermo’s personality later on in the novel.

I’ve edited this scene down to its essential parts, but it all begins after dinner when Ysabel asks if she and Rafael and can go outside and play fútbol:

Guillermo traded a calculating look with Juanita. “I don’t see the harm in it.” Before Ysabel could move, he pointed at his jubilant daughter. “But it had better be fútbol and not that spy game you’ve started playing. No more of that. I don’t want you creeping around the compound listening under windows. Do you understand me?”

With her round face and thick auburn curls, she was an eight-year-old version of her father, right down to the way her face belied her guilt when caught flat-footed in a scheme. “How am I ever going to be a proper nefil if I don’t learn how to gather information?”

“If you want to be a proper nefil, you’ll follow orders and I’ve just given you one.”

Ysa showed no sign of letting the argument go, however. “You said you learned on the streets when you were younger than me.”

“That was a different time.”

“Not that different,” Juanita said.

Guillermo’s cheeks flushed pink. “Whose side are you on?”

As cool as her milk-pale skin, Juanita rested her chin on her hand and met her husband’s glare. “It’s not about sides. If she was a boy, you’d be complimenting her on her acumen.”

“That’s not fair,” Guillermo shot back. “I give my experienced female Guards the same respect and assignments as I do the males.”

Ysabel seized the opening. “How did they get their experience?” She didn’t give him a chance to answer. “By doing the work.”

“They weren’t eight years old.”

“I want to learn, Papá.”

Seeking to help his friend, Rafael said, “Ysa is really very good at it, Don Guillermo, and she is very careful.”

High praise indeed, given that Rafael spent his first six years on the streets. Nonetheless, Diago touched his son’s arm and whispered, “Be still.”

Guillermo ignored everyone but Ysabel. “This has nothing to do with your gender. You’re my daughter. If something happens to you, my heart will die.”

An appeal to the emotions. Nice save, Diago thought, taking mental notes in case Rafael developed a sudden interest in proving his value to the Inner Guard through espionage. Fortunately, his son seemed more intent on picking the almonds off his plate with his fingers.

Ysa stood her ground and retorted, “I’d be in a lot less danger with your guidance.”

And touché. Diago wondered what prompted her to challenge her father today. A quick glance at Juanita told him that whatever the reason, she supported Ysa’s cause, because she assessed her daughter’s attitude with the eye of a maestro watching her student deliver a master performance.

Juanita said, “She has your craving for knowledge, Guillermo, and she is ready to begin learning about the family business.”

Guillermo’s cheeks reddened again, but this time from chagrin rather than anger, because everyone at the table knew Juanita spoke the truth.

She continued, “Besides, she’s right: it’s better she work under your supervision rather than running amok on her own.”

* * *

Although I don’t actually state it, a couple of things can be noted from Guillermo’s behavior:

He doesn’t immediately deny Ysabel’s request and send her to her room. The closest he comes to an ultimatum is “If you want to be a proper nefil, you’ll follow orders and I’ve just given you one.” However, he doesn’t cut her off when she continues the argument. This shows he does respect his daughter’s opinion as well as her personal autonomy.

Nor does he treat her like a child. He tries to reason with her on an adult level, and even though he’s manipulative at one point, he knows in his heart of hearts that both of the women in his life are right. That much is evident from his actions. As much as he wants his little girl to stay a little girl forever, he recognizes the fact that she isn’t mortal and that he is going to have to eventually teach her the family business, ugly though it is.

As Guillermo’s character arc develops, we see him proactively working toward changing how he views his daughter and her place in Los Nefilim. Ysabel blossoms into a strong leader in the second novel, primarily because of her parents’ partnership and mutual respect for one another.

Any character (male or female) can certainly possess toxic behaviors—in this particular scene, it’s Guillermo wanting to be overprotective to the point of crippling Ysabel—but the key to making the character non-toxic is having them resist that impulse to lash out and exert dominance over others based on nothing more than the power dynamics of the relationship. Guillermo exhibits a willingness to listen, and subsequently, a willingness to change. These two points are what elevates him over his brother, Jordi.

GIVE THE TOXICITY TO YOUR ANTAGONISTS

As the antagonist, Jordi and Karl exhibit the classic toxicity often associated with male characters. They are abusive, violent, and in their reasoning, the world belongs to them. They feel justified in their excesses. And I deliberately give them those characteristics, because by showing toxic behavior in all its ugliness, I have the chance to contrast the two types of men.

WHY SADDLE THE WOMEN WITH THE RESPONSIBILITY OF SHOWING MEN THEIR TOXICITY?

Parenting is a partnership, where the spouses play to one another’s strengths and weaknesses. In this case, it just happened to be Juanita nudging Guillermo in the right direction. Later on in the same novel, Miquel has his own ideas of how to raise Rafael, which Diago ignores, so it’s not about women but about spouses.

It also just so happened that I needed a character arc for Guillermo and the issue of Ysabel’s upbringing fit his personality perfectly while showing that men make good parents. Which brings me to my final point …

WORDS HAVE POWER

… and our characters exist through our words, so they, too, have power. Writing a story requires being conscious of the world around us, but also of the world we want to see. In stories, we shape our worlds through our characters and their interactions, which often mirror our own. Fortunately, we don’t always have to show our readers the world as it is, but we can explore the world as we’d like to know it. Shifting the toxic behavior normally associated with men from the heroes to the antagonists gives us a chance to reshape our world.

#heroes #strong male characters

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