#obviously there is nuance even with this

[lunapwrites]

I am only going to post about this once.

Doing a little cleanup on my about me pages... kinda feel the need to revisit the author-induced HP-verse blowback and renewed fan creator exodus for a moment, just bc I keep seeing... discourse.

For context, in case you're reading this far and are unaware: I am pretty open about being nonbinary probably most accurately agender? still kinda feeling that out, and about being queer in general. So I feel like I have at least a small leg to stand on in this conversation, given the umbrella I fall under.

I understand why other authors and artists feel the right decision for them is to disengage from fandom, or to remove/orphan their body of work. I support them in their choice, and I wish them the best. Likewise, I understand why others may choose to remain, and to continue creating content (subversive or otherwise) that speaks to them and to others who are able to see themselves and their experiences in it. As a member of this camp myself, I salute these people. It's not an easy decision to make to continue in this climate.

I am extremely fortunate in terms of where I'm at in my journey, and where I live and work, and a supportive partner who is cis enough for the both of us lol. I understand that my situation comes with a certain degree of privilege - but that privilege is bought with the sacrifice of my truest self. These online spaces are one of the precious few places I have where I can express those sides of my identity, and my writing is the best place I have to explore them. Characters like Remus and Sirius and Tonks? They're the most familiar to me, and therefore the safest. For me, continuing is the best choice for the sake of my mental health - even with the pressure to quit.

To that end, it... bothers me a bit when I see discourse claiming that people who continue to engage in and create for this fandom are morally deficient. That, by and large, is not the case. Most folks are just out here trying to do the best they can. I don't think that shaming or call-out posts are constructive.

If you are expecting me to post disclaimers or to self-flagellate on every fandom post/fic, you will be disappointed. I will instead continue as I have been and put my limited bandwidth and energy into keeping my queer friends and family housed, fed, and safe. And I will continue to do so without posting about it because frankly I don't have the spoons to advertise every time I do something. (That said, if you're in the US and in need of help, please reach out privately: I probably have resources I can leverage.)

I am a big proponent of doing what you can with what you have and that every little thing counts. Make friends and network. Promote causes. Feed each other. Show up for each other. That's the important part. Like, it's not all big activism and protesting and bold proclamations. Sometimes it's just buying eggs.

Idk. I just feel like we all have better ways to spend our time than all this empty grandstanding. Just go... do something positive. Even if it's just providing emotional support, you know? Everything counts.

[declawedwildcat]

I think one thing that's going to be interesting to see play out in Touchstarved is the theme of willing vs. unwilling. I feel like Ais, Kuras, and Mhin's bad ends are going to be largely unwilling; their monster forms overpower their will and attack you out of spite or random animal instinct, or a "this hurts me just as much as it hurts you" greater-good kind of decision.

Meanwhile Leander and Vere are going to be almost completely willing. You were always just a pawn in their game from the start, a means to an end for them. It's a pity they got so attached, but... oh well. There's always whoever comes next.

[artronenergy]

Honestly if you're looking at Doctor Who (2005) as a piece of fiction with, you know, themes and intent, it's really necessary to engage with it as actual queer media. At least a little. I think it's status as a fandom show from the mid 2000s means people are quick to dismiss this as some sort of transformative read rather than something that actually informs the storytelling and characters, but it can not be understated how it's fundamentally part of the same body of work as Cucumber and It's a Sin and Queer as Folk

[thereallyreallylatebird]

Something something... Finetimers not being able to properly walk without being told where to go as a critique on how many people don't form proper and informed opinions on their own and only parrot what they're told by influential political and social leaders

[callixton]

i think the thing to understand abt martha jones is that even after she leaves she is five seconds away from dropping everything and traveling with the doctor at any given time. bc that itch to blow everything up and damn her personal duty to hell in search of a higher call never leaves her. but martha is smart. and rational. and has spent a long fucking time needing to keep herself safe. (bc he comes when she calls but never before.) and so she has gotten very good at keeping herself on the right side of those five seconds. but i do think if ten was a different person (if he could acknowledge how much he needed her instead of just how much he liked her) (if he didn’t feel this righteous martyrdom when it comes to being left alone) (if he cared enough about her to beg. if he cared enough about himself.) i think that her answer no would come crumbling down pretty quickly is all.

[lesbianfakir]

There’s a huge focus in tutu of defying fate but something I love is how again and again the characters choose to embrace Drosselmeyer’s tragic ending.

Even after learning Tutu can never be with the one she loves, Duck still puts on the pendant. Rue chooses to put on the black shoes and become Kraehe though it makes her miserable. Never once does Fakir consider leaving Mytho’s side, knowing it will most likely lead to his gruesome death. Even Mytho chooses to receive his heart and return to the story, inviting the capability to experience tragedy into himself once more.

Why cling so hard to these tragic fates?

In the eyes of the characters it’s better to immerse oneself in another’s bitter role than be stripped to the ugly, naked self. It’s like Fakir says: everyone wants to be given a role to play and no one wants a story to end.

Sure, Fakir could've left mytho’s side and likely lived, but without the legacy of The Knight be left with only Fakir. Better to be a doomed knight than a frightened young boy unable to protect those he loves and terrified of losing anyone else.

Likewise with Rue though It hurts to be Kraehe, without the security of a princess, she’s just a hurting, abused girl who could never hope to catch the attention of a prince.

Drosselmeyer even encourages Duck to let herself disappear in the lake of despair so she could live on in memory as Tutu rather than as a simple duck. This theme is taken to the extreme: even death is seen as preferable to true vulnerability.

Princess Tutu follows a cast of teenagers deliberately hurting themselves to hide from their fragile, vulnerable side. They'd more readily accept a gruesome fate than face themselves in the mirror.

[fallowtail]

controversial take here but i really hope hetty is on her absolute worst nastygirl/comedic clown behavior in s4 to push back against the poor little meow meow woobification curse shes been experiencing since holes because i am tired

[bitterrobin]

I've realized as I write CHIROPTERA that a lot of the interactions/first impressions about Damian boil down to:

Dick/Tim/Barbara: damn. this kid sucks

Cass: *cringe*

Bette: noooo he's just a little guyyyy. he's just a babyyy

Tom: ok he sucks but he's funny when he insults people

Rory: ok he sucks but also, counterpoint, all kids suck and no that doesn't say anything about me-

[utilitycaster]

I just want to say, that I agree with almost all of your Critical Role takes and you have 1000% better and more nuanced takes than all of Twitter and I greatly appreciate it! The takes over there regarding Liliana and the gods are just wild and you bring some much needed sanity to the content I see

Thanks! I hope you don't mind because I've been thinking about this re: the Twitter takes but the thing about Twitter and Liliana specifically that I've seen is that there's this really bizarre fetishization of like, the fact that she is a (white) southerner (this also weirdly happened for Birdie though to a much lesser extent, and the person who spearheaded that wasn't even American so I have to assume this is a specific corner of Twitter Culture At Large). And like, here's the thing. It's true that fantasy tends to be very British in its accents, and it's also true that accents in a fantasy world are used to convey the same things we'd assume in our world - RP British for educated, southern American for rural, Cockney for rougher types, etc.

It's also true that laying the exact socioeconomic parallels from our world onto, say, Liliana and Orym (who reads to me as non-regional but I, like Liam, am from the Northeast originally) is a recipe for disaster. Or rather, it's not, but it is going to reaffirm your own biases, some of which are dangerous to reaffirm.

There was a popular post on Tumblr a while back, probably not long after Trump was elected, of someone talking about how they were convincing a relative with the confederate flag towards socialism by appealing to the idea of "isn't in unfair how uneven wealth distribution is and how a small group has so much control" and a number of people were rightfully like "uh, maybe you should focus on the racism" or "hey OP ask your relative who they think that small group in control is because I'm getting a really bad feeling they're going to say it's The Jews." And I feel that a lot of the empathy for Liliana from those spaces feels like that OP. Or in other words: I get that you see your relatives in Liliana. Unfortunately, I cannot help but see me and mine in Orym.

You see someone trapped by circumstance and desperation in a dangerous ideology. I see the fact that I haven't gone to a synagogue in easily 6-7 years without there being a security guard present and usually, the doors locked with someone looking through the window to let you in, and then in the sanctuary there's been an installation so that you can quickly bar all the doors in case an alarm goes off or you hear shots in the lobby.

I think there's a great case for seeing yourself in Imogen, who is in a painful struggle with the fact that her mother does love her very much but is in dangerously deep and has done a number of incredibly terrible and harmful things. That latter point is important, incidentally; I get that cult members sometimes rise through the ranks but all but the leader are being manipulated. But the fact remains that a brainwashed person can still commit atrocities, and in this story, they have, many times over. It's especially true because like...sure, plenty of people are like "I lost my relative to a cult and I just want them back and I couldn't harm them," but also, as we've seen, this cult can and will harm Imogen! Plenty of people are also like "yeah I gotta cut them off, it hurts but unfortunately my horribly bigoted and violent relative, while a victim of brainwashing, is a threat to me too." It's not even the full picture of the Temult side of things, let alone the picture that includes the Vanguard's victims.

I also think the Southern gatekeeping is unhinged because it's like. guys there's QAnon members and other cults across the country; the Confederate flag example above was actually notable in that OP wasn't even Southern so you couldn't even write the flag off as deeply misguided heritage but rather was explicitly being used as a hate symbol. It's awfully presumptive to assume all southerners have the same experience (especially since the Temults are portrayed, physically and in accents, as white southerners, not that the experiences of white southerners aren't also incredibly varied). It's awfully presumptive to assume that people find Liliana threatening because they have no personal experience with people like her; often, it's because they have all too real experience with people like her, and it says something even worse about you if you can say "but you guys, I see me and my family in Liliana" when people are telling you that they see them and their families in Orym. I would not, personally, publicly admit that one's empathy extends to the people who remind you of your family but runs out before it reaches their victims. Nor would I publicly admit that I assume everyone who disagrees with me clearly has never had personal experience with this topic.

I should also note that, as I've noted a number of times before, that these are fictional characters and not real people. Twitter seems to be really fucking bad at grasping that. Like, yes, this is the other thing; I do not think that OP should kill their Confederate flag-toting relative, whereas if Imogen did so to Liliana I'd be like "hell yeah." The former is a real person who I do hope gets deprogrammed, just, you know, maybe adjust those priorities; the latter is a fictional character in a story.

[billfarrah]

@unfortunate17 and I were discussing Wille’s anxiety and how we don’t feel like Wille’s reluctance to partake in public speaking was a result of his anxiety, but rather his history of being forced to speak and say things he doesn’t mean and follow a script in order to preserve the reputation of his family and control the public’s perception of him. He was forced to follow a script three times in season 1 - the first when he had to apologize on TV for a fight he was not sorry about, when he had to read a written speech to his classmates regarding his brother who had just died, and when he was forced to lie about the video leading to the destruction of his relationship with Simon.

In my opinion Wille’s fear of public speaking in season 2 is not related to general or social anxiety - as I do not believe Wille has social anxiety at all and is not shy at all despite some people in the fandom tending to believe he is - but rather a fear of being perceived, because that is ultimately Wille’s main struggle in the series - not being with a boy, not being in love with a gay, not being queer, but being perceived by others and feeling forced to live up to a certain standard or expectation when all he wants to do is live his life truthfully and without people having opinions about the things he does.

What’s so powerful and beautifully written about the scenes with Boris is that even though Wille is made to see a therapist by his mother, the Queen, who is the one who persuaded/forced him speak out when he didn’t want to, Wille’s sessions with Boris are the first time he is told he doesn’t have to say anything if  he doesn’t want to, and the confidentiality of their sessions and Boris’ position as an unbiased professional allows him to be more honest with not only himself, but with another person without feeing like he is being judged or forced to feel or believe something he doesn’t.

We see in season 1 episode 4, when Wille goes off script and speaks from the heart about Erik, and in season 2 episode 6 when he once again goes off script, that Wille really has no issues with speaking to a crowd, but only when he feels he’s being truthful and honest and in control of the narrative. His fear of speaking in the class presentation, in my opinion, has a lot to do with how out of control of his own narrative Wille felt throughout season 2 as a result of the lie at the end of season 1 and the events of season 2 - he is perceived by his classmates now as having denied being a part of the video, as if it was something to be ashamed of, he is perceived as being interested in Felice when in reality he’s desperately in love with Simon. He just wants to exist and stay true to himself and it scares him to do it in front of an audience, and that’s what makes it so powerful when we see him slowly begin to accept how he feels about himself and the circumstances of his life through the sessions with Boris, and how that results with him re-taking control of his own narrative at the Jubilee at the end of the season, and that’s just beautiful writing.

[sirenofstyxx]

This isnt new or original at all but i gotta say some of my favorite characters are always those absolutely awful charismatic bastard villians who in fiction I enjoy but if I met in real live I would punt into the stars. Bonus points when they get their inevitable and extremely satisfying comeuppance and get their ass handed to them

[worflesbian]

I think part of the reason janeway compels me so much is bc i really feel like on any other show she would've been a sympathetic villain at best. like in the last episode I watched she holds a baby while talking about killing it's siblings and it's genuinely only through the thoroughly established context of janeway having to make horrible choices in order to save her crew that we can read that scene as anything but unhinged. and it Does make sense in context bc she's talking about killing adolescent Borg drones to stop them from assimilating hostages, but in most other shows that kind of thing coming from a female character especially would not end up with her being the good guy at the end of the episode.

im thinking about how btvs which aired at a similar time had a whole arc about the pressures of leadership driving buffy to become way too harsh and the consequences of that are she gets kicked out of her own home. avasarala on the expanse does a lot of awful things but being uncompromising and not giving a fuck is like her most notable character trait, she tortures a guy in her first appearance. these narratives have little sympathy for women who do bad things in the name of something greater, either they're punished for it and rejected by those around them or they're characterised as cold and lacking compassion. but janeway for the most part has the full support of her crew and spends the majority of the time being kind and diplomatic, As Well as choosing to sacrifice lives or collaborate with mass murderers when she has to.

and it's conflicting bc although this is almost a one of a kind female character I think part of her existence is due to voyagers unwillingness to challenge the status quo of star trek despite having the perfect premise to do so. everyone wears uniform and adheres to rank despite half the crew being unenlisted terrorists, starfleet is largely unquestioned as an absolute moral good despite the origin of the maquis being designed to undermine and examine that, and the captain is always the hero at the end of the day.

[vaugarde]

okay so as a gen 5 stan who does adore the story in bw and bw2, and now that gen 5 has experienced both a vicious hatedom that wouldnt hear a single positive thing about the games, and now a super protective fandom that insists they were perfect and had zero flaws... can we admit now that the bw1 story at least was. a little mid.

[termagax]

Am I misunderstanding that post because a lot of fat fetishization Does dehumanize fat people I'm not sure i entirely understand your tag

thats basically what im saying. i absolutely agree that the fat fetish community enables dehumanisim + fatphobia and that is a problem which should be talked abt considering how rampant it is, and i dont like people using "oh those purity obsessed assholes just hate us for Loving Something Different" as a shield. fetishization is a specific term for that kind of dehumanization + objectification where someone is reduced to a pure sexual object instead of being viewed as like, a person, with their value only being filtered through the sexual pleasure other people get out of their bodies, and is often accompanied by massive amnts of fatphobia and a general intense disrespect for fat people ioutside of sexual contexts as well. and its something that is absolutely worth talking about especially from fat women who are most often the targets of this kind of treatment

but ive absolutely seen people take that conversation to mean "fetish = bad" and that is what annoys me. theres a difference between having a type, having a kink, and fetishization. and the way anyone who speaks affectionately or sexually about a fat person or fat bodies is immediately slapped with the label of DIRTY FETISHIT is something that comes from a well-meaning place, but more often then not just says "being attracted to fat people is Not Normal, and therefore impossible to do in a way that isn't fatphobic, therefore fat people should not be seen as sexually desirable". even if the intentions are good, the result ("fat people are not viable sexual interests") just contributes to the existing stigma around fat bodies.

[wonder-worker]

The division between the two families [the Woodvilles and the Nevilles] and their allies can be seen in the royal charters that they witnessed. Warwick, Rivers and Archbishop Neville of York, while serving as chancellor and afterwards, were fairly constant witnesses to royal charters and consequently often appeared together. This was not, however, the case for other family members and friends. From 1466 to 1469, if Scales or Woodville associates like Sir John Fogge, John Lord Audley or Humphrey Lord Stafford of Southwick witnessed royal charters, then members of the Neville group, such as John Neville, earl of Northumberland, or John Lord Wenlock would not, and vice versa. Discounting the ubiquitous Warwick, Rivers and Archbishop Neville, of the twenty-four charters issued between February 1466 and June 1469, twelve were witnessed by men associated with the Woodvilles, eight by men associated with the Nevilles and two were witnessed by no member of either group beyond the two earls at their heads and the archbishop; only two charters, both from 1466, featured associates of both families.

Such striking segregation of witnesses suggests that something more than simple convenience or availability was at play. [...] The evidence of these witness lists does show the extent of the split between the two groups from early in Edward's [first] reign and of the need for political society to work with that cleavage in the heart of the Yorkist regime."

-Theron Westervelt, "Royal charter witness lists and the politics of the reign of Edward IV"

*This is specifically applicable for Edward IV's first reign; in contrast, the charters in his second reign displayed a great deal of aristocratic and domestic unity and cohesion.

[shiraishi--kanade]

I don't knoooow how you can take a character who avoided her own feelings and felt unease and anxiety and wasn't able to fully enjoy what she loves most because of it but also wasn't able to resolve these feelings because she didn't want to upset the person who unwittingly caused this situation even when it became actively damaging to her mental health and make her into a villain somehow. Like you'd have to try