#oh yeah also the racism did i mention the fucking ableism

[catinasink]

oh my god i hate my irls sm

[starlightshore]

explain Danny phantom to someone who’s never seen it before?

uhhhhh so i can only talk about it as the most insane kinda fandom person because

i was obsessed with this show when it first aired when I was 8 years old. it was my first fandom. i read fanfic for it before i even knew what fanfic was. its HEAVILY tied to my nostalgia and I've been engaging with the fandom on/off for literally 19 years. at this point DP is in my DNA.

while it's not my main hyperfixation (thats undertale) its the one tag i visit regularly and the one fandom I'll jump to every few months and binge fics for. i don't even read UT fics anymore but the DP fandom is always doing something. its very active!

under the cut I talk about my thoughts on the show, the fandom and explain the premise. It's a wild ride.

TLDR; i have a lot of THOUGHTS on this show and i do not actually recommend it. MAYBE if you're curious explore the fandom and some fics but be careful about it, it's a bit gratuitous with its angst.

If you want a basic premise: local 14 year old accidentally lets loose hell but also has become part ghost. This kid can fit SO much trauma in him.

first off: I fucking love Danny Phantom.

And I'm going to spend the next two segments complaining about it. Feel free to skip if you're already aware of this /or don't wanna linger on it.

Second off: This show fucking sucks*

* Ok fine yes sometimes it can be good, but it will always have an asterisk next to it.

it has NOT aged well. it was created by an asshole who's got a long shitlist of things he's done and still does that's all terrible. i am not one to hate someone publicly unless its for something like this. Feel free to google what Bitch Fartman has done if you're curious but I'll warn you: he is a horrible person and he disgusts me. I only acknowlege him when its to mention how awful he is and how I do not want to support him.

This is not like with FNAF where supporting that franchise supports Scott. Danny Phantom first aired 19 years ago. The show was written, directed, and sure as hell animated by a team of professionals. It is not his sole creation. Studio Animation is not the sole work of an individual. I respect (most) animators and the hard work they've done and do. IIRC Shitfartman doesn't even have the rights to the IP anymore. I assume he gets residuals though. That said the only canonical piece of media we've gotten is a graphic novel that was released last month. Up until then, supporting DP was just not literally a thing you could do!

Its not just the creator who sucks. There's a lot of BS in the show too.

the show is very early 2000s (and even then thats no excuse) and it has a bingo card worth of shit in it. racism, bigotry, ableism! you name it. I do not condone and i do NOT recommend this show because of this! its horrible with what they did with this show and its shocking it was acceptable enough to put on TV. you literally can't do shit like that anymore.

I'm not going to go list every detail of every horrible, fucked up thing the show has done. The list is too long and I haven't watched the actual show in a few years now. by god, I know there is a list out there though.

Anyway outside of my obligatory "fuck this show actually" rant aside

i do love this show because it DOES have a lot of good and cool stuff outside that. but also. its so much wasted potential.

the core premise is:

Hey what if a pair of paranormal obsessed mad scientist parents punched a hole into the after life hell dimension- and what if their son was basically spiderman-ed about it?

And here's the core part of the premise: Danny only keeps his identity a secret to the humans. Ghosts learn like, pretty much straight away that he's a Halfa (half human, half ghost). He's if spiderman's worst fear wasn't the villains but if like. Aunt May was going to rip him apart.

Oh yeah that's. a thing. Danny's parents literally want to rip his ghost identity apart from, and I quote, "molecule to molecule."

For a an comedy-action show its WEIRDLY morbid and dark at times but then has the tonal whiplash to make you question what the fuck did they just do. How'd they do that and then not care they just wrote that in. Seriously. It'll just lore drop or hint to dark things and then brush it aside because it's main focus is comedy.

Anyway back to explaing what the show even is about. the show likes to say Danny got his DNA merged with ectoplasm but that's stupid af i'd rather say he died but only stayed half dead. He can transform between the two states: living and dead. But he's not just two halves that make a whole -the two sides blend together. He can use his ghost powers as a human -and early on he couldn't control them so he'd just. go intangible or invisible at the worst moments.

The show just. jumps right in. You don't get to see the accident outside the intro (at least until season 2 when they retcon some stuff) you just have it thrown into your lap. He has powers now. He sucks at it. Deal with it.

I think it's important to acknowledge that this show was written before Netflix did streaming. Before Plot heavy cartoons were a thing. (Not to say they didn't have reoccuring plot, it justw asn't the same thing as it is now.) You had to write the show with the limits of:

Comedy being a major focus

You have to write it with the expectation that anyone could jump in and (reasonably) understand most things going on. While there's some continuity and plot progression, the status quo is god.

because streaming wasn't a thing yet, you could only watch the show by jumping into whatever the fuck episode was playing. I doubt it played in order all the time. You just couldn't make a cartoon that had weeks upon weeks of plot developments and expect people to keep up.

The show is, in fact, meant for kids. While it does dive into some darker stuff (being ya know, a ghost show) its still going to be overly silly.

So while YEAH i'll complain about the very very shitty things the show did but I can't soley blame Fuckhateshitman for all of it. It's the restrictions it was made under + likely a lot more circumstances I don't understand. I am a hobbiest animator. I have no real world experience in the animation industry. I can critique the final product but I can never understand what shaped the cartoon. If shitheadmcgee wasn't involved and the studio gave the show more room + had you know, more POC and women on team + animation (even for kids) was respected more then who KNOWS what the show could of been! But like. its a 2000s show. It is what it is. I think the show has its good and bad and i'll harp a lot on the bad rn because I think its important to acknowledge especially to new people, but I do want to frame it by saying it really is the product of its time.

I want it to be better and I hope if it gets rebooted its better. We expect a lot more from cartoons now then we did then. (I know this was a long tangent + kinda over simplifying things but whatever, moving on.)

The (Ph)Fandom

19 years later and here we are. Enter the Phandom (called that before that phill and whoever used the term, idc i'm still going to use the term.) We, the fandom, almost completely just retconned the show's finale. (obviously SOME people still like it but its like. an incredibly small percentage) Like. we straight up pretend it didn't happen. i don't even want to get into it rn. It was SO BAD that the graphic novel that just released literally (spoilers) retconned everything about it aside from a ship pairing.

Anyway the Phandom- personally I think it goes a little TOO harsh in its angst. LIke, maybe a bit too much. But it DOES add nuance and explores the themes and lore that the show just flat out refused to engage with at all. It really digs into the premise of "hey wtf this 14 year is half dead. hello? hello??? thats fucked up.... lets explore that." and i'm here for it.

As long as its not like, masochistic and gratuitous for no real reason. 😬That is my biggest complaint with the fandom is that sometimes it goes over board.

But yeah outside of that, it can also be VERY silly so expect tonal whiplash here too! We got memes. We got fandom holidays and events. Whacky stuff.

OH AND OCs. We have fandom OCs like Wes. The best nonexistant character ever. Love that lil weirdo <3. His whole schtick was "What if Danny had another human villain? What if this random background classmate knew his secret and was trying to expose it?" and its spiraled from there. No one ever believes Wes and he's tortured by it. Some make him out to be a conspiracy nut while others make him more of a threat. (or a joke, as I do) Considering this show has a ghost-version of the Men in Black (Guys in White) conspiracy actually lines up accurately for what Wes does. And, you know. The Fenton's have a portal to the afterlife in their basement. Honestly pretty reasonable.

so like the fandom just kinda... picks and chooses the canon. It does have an edge of "we can do better" but in fairness, as I just discussed, there's an awareness that the version we make is not restricted by the environment the show was made under. I would hope most of the fandom understands this and doesn't say it in the sense of like "oh yeah I know better than professional writers and artists fuck the show 1000%" instead of acknowledging Yes He Fucking Sucks but its also more complicated. I don't want to foster an environment of superiority and disrespect to any media/creators (with exceptions ofc) cause. Jesus christ we live on the internet in 2023 you have to know why I feel this way by now.

Anyway with that in mind, I do think it's a positive thing! I mean, fuck, the show had no new content for almost 20 years I think its obvious by now we'd just make our own doll house out of it by now.

So yeah the Phandom is like this:

We're oddly consistent with the phandom lore we've built around from the canon's lore. We expand it, we make it more queer, we do our own thing. And I really enjoy it! I partake in it! It's pretty cool.

So while there's some merit to the OG show I would not recommend it on account of the amount of BS I mentioned at the start of the post. But I would recommend the fandom! As long as you got a strong black list with trigger warnings in place. Again, I think the fandom is a lil too gratuitous. But oh my god I love so much of what the fandom does. There's so many fics that just stick with me and (ha) haunt me. There's a reason I still come back after all these years. there are SO many good fics.

also the fandom got adopted by the DC fandom a year or two ago. personally i have to have like 80 tags blocked so i can even navigate the tag. Its not my thing but i'm happy people are having fun!!

[miraofhearts2point0]

reason for me abandoning the aib fandom: an in-depth explaination, just bc i havent actually elaborated a whole lot.

(copy and pasted from a moot on tt asking me about it)

the way the aib fandom treats women has always been so weird to me. like they pride themselves having strong female leads but then proceed to either put them against each other, or ignore them entirely in order to boost up a man.

i see it most often with Lisa/Q♤, Usagi, Heiya and Arisu, which is so, so weird bc it misses the point of all their arcs when certain people make "WOMAN VS WOMAN" edits when it's only comparing their relationship with Arisu, if that makes sense.

not to mention the direction the writing took during s2 just seems off too. it was already weird during s1, since they completely changed Shibuki's character, but they did something similar with Heiya. both Shibuki and Heiya had openly expressed their sexuality in the manga without being demonized, and the adap writers saw that, and immediately ran with "oh, they have to force it on the men around them then." because obviously women are either evil for it or only exist for mens pleasure.

also the constant criticism toward the female characters from the fandom is so odd too. it's like none of them can exist without their relationship with a male character (Shibuki = Chota, Heiya = Aguni/Arisu, Usagi = Arisu, Mira = Arisu, Kuina = Chishiya, etc).

it's like none of them can exist as their own people to the fandom which is so fucking demeaning.

and thats only the misogyny; the ableism, homophobia, racism, transphobia and fetishization are all other reasons i left, but thats it's own rabbithole i think.

so yeah, mostly bc of misogyny lol.

------

i am coming back (as of now), but thats bc theres like no one active anymore and it's boring LMAOOO. just know you will be blocked if you speak about any of the women of aib negatively and im so serious.

the men can run around doing whatever the fuck but as soon as a teenage girl is hypersexual shit is just nawwttt okay for whatever reason. (well, we know the reason) (see what i had said previously)

[imaginarianisms]

okay so. one thing ive been meaning to talk about in the rpc over the years is. the blatant ableism, sanism, racism & overall downplaying & watering down of serious issues such as cults to the point where nonsurvivors are rly out here making cult jokes which, to actual survivors, are like a massive slap in the face.

that's telling us "you don't matter".

on disabled characters & representation. i& genuinely don't remember the last time i& saw someone with a character who had a mobility aid or a wheelchair... if at all. i& genuinely don't remember the last time i& saw a disabled character actually Talk about their disability if it's even mentioned at all in threads & if it is it's usually a skinny cis white character, mostly cis white male characters, with the disability & fuck me& if there are any disabled characters of color at all.

i& genuinely don't remember the last time i& saw a character go indepth about the ableism & sanism they face. & i'm not saying that a disabled character has to let their disability define them but just like gender & orientation, a disability affects people & this doesn't just apply to physical disabilities. & i'm& not even getting into the way disabled & neurodivergent MUNS OF COLOR are treated, ESPECIALLY if their disability and/or neurodivergence is stigmatized.

i'm& not even getting into the stupid fucking way ppl go around throwing "delulu" everywhere as if they somehow have that right to mistreat schizospec & psychotic ppl & stigmatize us further. no, worstie, you're not fucking "delulu" for wanting your unlikely ship to be canon. no, you're not fucking "delulu" for wanting your crackpot theory to be true. it isn't some cutesy fucking trend you can hop on, theyre serious fucking issues. no worstie you're not "delulu" you're just sanist & hate psychotic people. stop using my& fucking symptoms as a stupid joke while stigmatizing me& for having them. i see a lot of nonpsys (for the unaware: nonpsys are people who dont have psychosis & aren't on the schizospec) using the word as if it's this cute quirky word to describe their fantasies & desires. its. literally not. delusions can INVOLVE fantasies & desires but arent those things on their own. it's not fucking funny to call yourself delusional as a joke & it's definitely not funny to just armchair diagnose people when a) you're not even a fucking doctor, psychologist or psychiatrist or any kind of medical professional & b) it's dehumanizing & c) i'm& betting y'all who use "delulu" have never even actually experienced a delusion, this isn't something you throw around for fun, it's an actual serious symptom with serious consequences for people who experience it. & as a schizospec did system myself i'm& Very Fucking Tired. noah fence but i& don't get delusions that're mostly trauma based & persecutory delusions just so y'all nonpsys can make it into another fun quirky thing & the same shit apply to ppl who use "psychopathic" "sociopathic" & "narcissistic" as an insult when most of the time personality disorders come from TRAUMA. & ESPECIALLY if you're autistic, you fucking know better

also. ppl are like "yeah i support systems!!!! :)))))) except fictive heavy systems, systems with lots of members, systems that share everything about themselves and systems who won't shut up about being systems. oh sorry your did and/or plurality makes me uncomfortable :(((((" i've& had people just. straight up refuse to acknowledge my& system at all & act like everything was fucking fine even when people claim to be my friend & give a fuck about me. my& older sister literally told me& to my& face that i& was lying for attention then she heard i& was actually dxed & she shut her ass up real quick. ive had people literally REFUSE to use our names or our pronouns despite KNOWING we're a system & some of us& were Also talking to these people. even from people who claim to be all like "oh i'm all for disabled people!! i'm all for respecting everyone's pronouns" but when it comes to our& plural ass they shut up real fucking quick. like. it won't kill y'all to ask about the rest of us&, about our& lives, showing us&.. idk, the latest episode of a show we've& never seen or a psd you made or introducing memes to us& & it definitely won't kill you to use an "&" by our names & pronouns or at the VERY FUCKING LEAST refer to us& as "y'all" or "you guys".

as someone w/ undxed aspd i& can tend to be very blunt especially if i'm& irritated. does that make me an evil person? uh. no. i& don't think so. someone w/ a personality disorder doesn't automatically mean an abuser & that goes ESPECIALLY with people with narcissistic personality disorder & antisocial personality disorder. disorders by themselves cannot be abusive. not everyone who's abusive has a personality disorder & even if they did, it's bc of their actions, not the disorder itself. & sometimes people just suck & are downright cunts.

if i& sound irritated its bc i& am. i'm& your local angry mean madcripple tryna tell y'all that this is a rpc. rp COMMUNITY. there are people who see this ableist shit. there are trauma survivors in your community. yes, this is worded aggressively but i& need y'all to understand that y'all Need to be able to engage with the anger of people with more stigmatized disorders & ESPECIALLY trauma survivors w/ more severe trauma & not just when we're being informative or entertaining to you if the rpc's gonna be better.

[boydykedoctor]

would I be wrong to draw a connection that the Upside Down, at least in s1, takes characters we perceive or come to perceive as "other"? Between Barb and Will I definitely thought it was a statement about the way society treats otherness, maybe even queerness, although by now I don't know if that's as relevant anymore

yeah! some of my mutuals and i have talked about this before

here's a somewhat long and convoluted analysis i did last year

not to mention this blog post by Shawn Decker, an HIV survivor, who connects season 2 to ryan white.

regarding barb, there's a long standing horror tradition that the couple who has sex is killed, but instead we get a heterosexual couple who hook up while the arguably lesbian-coded-enough-for-general-audience-to-joke-about-it best friend suffers in the upside down

and i think it'll keep being relevant! ST is interested in lots of facets of marginalization--like I said, doing some story lines regarding that much better than others. classism, sexism, racism, ableism are all in there, and homophobia is one that's been there since the very first episode.

(major spoiler content ahead)

part of why some of us want eddie to be gay isn't just cause of like the vest and steveddie. like of course i want that that's fucking adorable, but in reality he's going to be victimized by the town as the dangerous satanist guy who killed chrissy during a time of immense paranoia, and we're at the point now in 1986 that the American AIDS crisis is in full swing and causing paranoia among the straight public. in an audition tape, chrissy's boyfriend jason says "eddie? i think he's the wrong kind of person" and says that playing dungeons and dragons warps people's minds, has been "happening all over the country, like an epidemic" which is very specific wording

edit: oh my god not even to mention the idea that jason is pissed that the police are spreading the idea that chrissy is "some druggie," and HIV/AIDS also spreads through needle sharing

so yeah. i 100% agree with you.

[clocks-are-round]

🤔 What is the hardest part of writing fic? ✨ Choose three adjectives to complement your own writing. 💭 What is a headcanon you have about your own work?

🤔 What is the hardest part of writing fic?

Writing outside your experience— especially things like race and disability. “But people are people”; yeah and people are also shaped by every facet of their identity and how others respond to those facets. The options are pretty much risk screwing up, or curl up into a little ball and avoid posting anything publicly ever (tempting, very tempting). I’m going with the former and if I fuck up, learning from it in the future. Honestly even mentioning this makes me anxious, but like… systematic racism and ableism are things and pretending they don’t exist won’t change that it influences on even a subconscious level. Hate to be this real in a fun ask meme, but I’m answering honestly. Fic writing feels more low stakes than a novel, or even my Queer Canyon webseries, but still… not trying to be insensitive (except when I am because I’m writing dialogue or POV of one of the many RvB assholes but even then there are lines not to cross). I try to avoid stereotypes but sometimes you don’t realize. For example, single moms are a go-to for me because of my own life experience, but then realizing absent fathers are apparently a common trope for black characters I was like ohhh noooo. I tried to mitigate that by acknowledging Tucker knew he did not have a normal home situation (obviously) by comparing it to his childhood friends’, and avoiding other stereotypes (as far as I’m aware, and I did look up lists of stereotypes). Simmons and Caboose also had shitty dads and both those dads were white so idk if that also helps balance. Oh and Grif’s dad abandoned them canonically but idk his race. As for Tucker’s, I HC it wasn’t intentional abandonment, though I couldn’t find a way to bring that up naturally other than Julie mentioning she didn’t know which guy was Tucker’s father. Julie opted not to inform the guy. Probably would’ve been better to not go through with writing it at all but i wanted to write that particular story so i chose selfishness ig. I also changed directions on my plans for Doc’s parents (Like Tucker I also HC Doc as black); before I came up with Tucker’s mama they were going to be neglectful, continuing (beginning?) the “Doc is always ignored/forgotten” trend. Like Marilla and Matthew’s parents from Anne with an E. Same situation— based on it really. But I don’t want to write almost the same parent story twice so I’m going to go in the complete opposite extreme. You will see what that means when it’s written. I read many posts by the writing-with-color blog regularly (and also check other sources as well when I have specific wonderings), and hope everything I read will stick to my brain permanently but it probably doesn’t. As for disability… I kind of avoid/dance around that topic? I know I’m not super knowledgeable so so far I haven’t really touched on more than mental health stuff like anxiety attacks. I do plan on touching on disability a bit (I mean, it’s the reds and blues for fuck’s sake!) but it’ll definitely be little by little.

TLDR: Ableism and systematic racism have almost certainly imprinted into erybody’s subconscious in some way, and I try not to do that because those are bad things, but there’s probably stuff that gets past me that I don’t realize is bad. Gonna post this before I chicken out because these are BIG topics that make me ANXIOUS but imma say it anyways

Also not really knowing anything about the military outside of what I learned from RvB and RvB fics. And the Marvel movies. And occasionally funny tumblr story time posts. Yeah, I could go research… But unless I have something specific I wanna know I don’t ( ; .w.) If I’m not personally interested in something my eyes just glaze over, so I’m not going to read pages and pages about military life unless I suddenly become interested.

That was an essay and a half. Moving on!

✨ Choose three adjectives to complement your own writing.

uhhhhh

angsty, silly, soul-devouring

does that work?

💭 What is a headcanon you have about your own work?

Fffgssdd wrote like three before I was like— wait, too much lol but i couldn’t decide which of these two to keep so here’s both

Tucker’s mama’s friend Sal is one of the people Tucker went to when looking for an Earth caretaker for Junior. After Julie’s death, Sal wasn’t super big on the party scene. They were never as into it as Julie in the first place anyways. They settled down with someone and raised a couple kids. Later, Junior. Although Junior was a teenager at that point. First half of his childhood was with the Sanghelli, second half on Earth. Then as an adult he could choose for himself wherever he’d like to be. That was the deal Tucker made with the embassy. I just like reusing characters and tying stuff together like that.

Caboose’s memory is pretty spotty a lot of the time (after Omega, Alpha, and Beta went in and had a fucking FIGHT in his fucking HEAD) and that can lead to a lot of confusion obviously. This unfortunately especially applies to his memory of his siblings since he’s not around them as often as the guys. This was touched on a little in Fuzzy Feelings. He doesn’t forget he has siblings, just… what they currently go by, how many there are, whether they’re all girls or not (most of them have called themselves one at one point or another and at one point almost all of them did at once). Sometimes he just remembers a sibling by how he knew them a couple decades ago as kids and that doesn’t always match up with their current name and pronouns since a LOT of them are trans (like half I think? like Caboose probably assumes half of ALL people are trans bc of that). Or their age doesn’t match. He’ll be reminded that a sibling is a parent and sometimes it’s like— does not compute— what? How? But? It’s easier when he’s with them in person but when talking about them he might get mixed up. Or occasionally he’ll be visiting for a holiday and ask why Dad’s not home yet and everyone’s just like “yeah, he’s not coming home anymore”.

[imagining-in-the-margins]

Oh god. I have so many Anons. When did this happen 😅

Answers below the cut 👇

1. I watch it on Netflix and Amazon, which are the only legal options I’m aware of outside of CBS All Access. Sorry love - Check out Anon number 9 though!

2. I adore you!!! You’re wonderful!!! Thank you for your message and support 🤗

3. Thanks for being more patient than I am currently capable of, lmao. You’re a darling and I hope you’re having a wonderful day 🥰

4. No, I very much agree with the “who gives a flying fuck if a disabled person’s hair is greasy,” I just want to point out that it... literally isn’t. I point it out because it goes to show that this is more likely an internalized ableism problem. They perceive him as “dirty” or “gross,” but he was professionally styled. There was nothing “dirty” about his hair.

I never make fun of people for their appearance. It’s a very hard unconscious bias to deal with, but it’s often rooted in ableism, fatphobia, and a hatred for poor people (not to mention racism, which is an issue in itself for many demographics). It’s fucked up.

5. Honestly? It tells me that you are way too defensive over people possibly perceiving you as ableist, which makes me even more suspicious and doesn’t comfort me in the slightest. If you know it doesn’t apply to you, then there isn’t a need to announce it to the world (especially anonymously).

Also, it wasn’t the hairstyle that was in question. You should reread my post and realize why your defensiveness is very off putting and makes you look guilty.

anyone who singles out this season as the “ugliest” look and calls him “greasy and unhygienic”

If this didn’t apply to you, then you shouldn’t be bothered by it. This point still stands. Still think it’s weird to shame anyone over their hair choices (as long as they are not appropriative), but that’s just me. Also, see Anon 3′s very sweet message to you, since you’ve unfortunately figured out the one area where I am most impatient. Best of luck!

6. He is just so soft 🥺 Truthfully, he’s not my favorite in hair or character, but he definitely doesn’t deserve all the shit he gets.

7. I just don’t get it. I love Reid in all shapes and hair lengths. He’s just a big silly baby. 

8. You’re very sweet. I hope you’re doing well, too ❤️ I appreciate you. I’ve had migraines for the past three days but I think it’s passed for the most part!

9. Neato. I already own all of those, but I’ll post it nonetheless. Thank you!

10. Yeah! Like I said, he seemed very confident and happy with it. Not to mention it’s his natural hair, so it seems less styled.

[bowithoutadaemon]

Don’t mind me just a vent post directed at a person who I can’t tell any of this (right now or possibly ever) because even mentioning the tiniest bit would make an already fucking bad situation even worse.

You are not fucking getting bullied you numpty!

You did racist bullshit. You got called out for it. You continued to do it. And now people don’t wanna like hang out at the watercooler with you. That is not bullying.

You did not do your job. People asked you to do your job. You complain that people keep pestering you with the same questions again and again. You get told that if people ask you a (reasonable and important) question again and again that you should answer it and not get annoyed. That is not bullying.

You don’t want to “keep the organization hanging”. The fuck? You didn’t do your job properly for years and did everything in your power to keep that fact hidden, you stopped numerous attempts at trying to help change the organization's structure to make it work better for everyone (including you btw) and rn you let a bunch of new people and volunteers to do the jobs of company management, financial management, accounting, head of hr and communication with the federal government. You are keeping us hanging. And if you do not see that you are fucking kidding yourself.

“I hope once it is save to do so we can have a nice brunch to celebrate my leaving.” Really? Do you really think that is gonna happen? After the past 3 months of shit you have pulled? After the decade of bullshit you apparently pulled before that is slowly coming to light now?

I was one of the few people left who thought that “yeah alright, he is definitely only at the very start of dealing with his own racism. but he is good at his job and also a pretty decent human being”. And now I don’t think any of that anymore. I think you have decided a long time ago that being discriminated against because of transphobia, fatphobia and ableism means you get a free pass at being racist. Like you are entitled to discriminate someone because someone else discriminates you. Which, fuck no, stop insisting on doing racist shit! I think you are and have been mediocre at your job. You are utterly unable to take criticism and have a victim complex, which you use as an excuse to not see your own privileges. And you have a real big problem with letting go of power, both again in terms of privileges but also in terms of delegating job related things.

Up until recently I was sure that if we ended up walking past each other on the street or saw each other at some event I would go up to you and we would have a pleasant conversation.

Now I am sure I would avoid you. Not even in that “oh shit please let him not see me”, but in that “you better be seeing how I am actively ignoring you!” way. And yeah with that I am starting to skirt near to bullying you, I am aware of that. But I have no responsibility to deal with you. Actively ignoring you and not reciprocating any attempt on your part to start a conversation does not cross the line over into bullying you.

I am glad you decided to fuck us all over by leaving two months earlier than the entire organization has planned for. Good riddance. Go spread your “I can’t be racist, because ...” bullshit somewhere else. Like preferably stop doing that and like do some self reflection and learn to be a better human being, but that is too much to ask of you. That has been irrefutably proven now.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: “Out in the Open”

Last night, out of morbid curiosity and perhaps a smidgen of self-hatred, I asked myself, “Huh. I wonder how long my RWBY Recaps are?” Not the whole project, just this season’s writings. So in the fifteen minutes between being a functioning member of society and falling into bed, I copied all my recaps from Volume Seven, chucked them into a Word document, removed the images, fixed wonky spacing, and ended up with:

Over 40,000 words. I have, arguably, written the equivalent of a middle school grade book. If middle schoolers were interested in reading salt about a web series. …Which now that I think about it, they probably are. The point though is that there’s a lot here and some of you have read every single word of it.  That’s seriously impressive and I want you to all have virtual cookies. Especially when I watch “Out in the Open” and realize how absolutely off the rails this show has gone and I consider it a minor miracle that any of us are still sticking with it.

First off, let me lay out the things I really liked about this episode:

Setting the trap for Watts at Amity Arena. Provided that Ironwood really can beat him solo (does his skill deserve that amount of self-confidence? Especially after recognizing that he should craft a team of three to go against Tyrian?), that was just an all around smart move on his part. Watts now has enough control over the technology of Mantle and Atlas that he would have come across the Amity project eventually, so best to just spill the beans on his own terms. The terms being claiming it’s complete when really that’s just a lie in order to lure Watts out into the open. And uh, yeah... take note that this was another lie. If viewers honestly believe that leaders must never ever lie/keep anything from their people simply because it’s morally wrong, then start calling out Ironwood for this now. Because we don’t get to praise some lies when they work out well (like now) and others when they don’t (like with Ozpin).

Setting up the fight at the Arena itself with Watts having control over the dust there, essentially turning the whole area into one massive weapon. If Rooster Teeth makes use of even half the possibilities here, that should make for an absolutely epic fight.

Watts’ steampunk-esque, dramatic as fuck gun. That weapon is a thing of beauty.

Yeah, basically if it has Watts in it I enjoyed myself. Everything else? Not so much.

We open on Mantle positively overrun with grimm. No surprise there. We’re once again shown though how absolutely devastating grimm remain as an enemy. Ironwood’s soldiers are able to kill the lesser grimm with their guns, but in seconds one is taken out. The older, mammoth-like grimm take at least two to three highly skilled huntsmen to defeat and, as we saw with Blake, Yang, and Elm, they’re going to be really out of breath when they’re done with just one of them. Really then, with a team of only fifteen or so, how are they going to manage all of this:

Obviously they do manage and I can’t truly fault Rooster Teeth for giving us a solution that doesn’t quite align with the problem. It’s common enough in any story to set big stakes and then have the heroes, somewhat miraculously, come out on top. Rather, this is only an issue as it pertains to the conflicts Rooster Teeth themselves have introduced, namely what telling people about Salem will do to the rest of the world as it pertains to grimm attacks. I’ll get to the details of Ironwood’s announcement in just a moment (oh boy...), but we’re seeing that same sort of ~everything is magically okay, just hand wave away the issue~ writing here. It’s one thing to watch the group struggle and then have all those grimm conveniently defeated off screen, to have the audience fill in those magical blanks during a single battle. It’s something else entirely though to do that for one of the major problems you’ve set up for a season. Ironwood is right to worry about the grimm because everything we’ve been shown tells us that an announcement of this nature would decimate the world. Mantle gets that many grimm, of that age and power, because their heat has been off for half an hour? But telling them about a woman hell-bent on their destruction doesn’t change the situation in the slightest? Everyone just conveniently cheers in solidarity rather than experiencing a base function they have no control over: fear? If RWBY adhered to its own logic that announcement should have been Mantle’s ruin. It would have been another Fall of Beacon. Because all the “We can beat her!” encouragement isn’t going to override the basic terror that comes with learning that a) someone is actively trying to kill you and b) at least two of that person’s minions are currently in your city, doing a damn good job of it. To say nothing of the added anger at learning that Ironwood was keeping this from them, that this is why he was taking resources, that he still hasn’t managed to fix things, etc. The only reason this announcement didn’t lead to Mantle’s destruction is because, again, RWBY prioritizes one very convenient emotion over all the others. Mantle miraculously comes together, putting aside all their previous fury and only feeling hope in the face of even worse news, conveniently keeping more grimm from arriving. That’s... not how an angry mob works. And as I’ve pointed out numerous times before, RWBY is no longer a fairy tale unconcerned with realism. This isn’t, as I’ve seen others insist, a wonderful moment of hopepunk. This is the writing turning repercussions on and off at their will.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself. Before all this we see Nora taking out some sort of saber-toothed cat grimm, then looking put out at the horde rushing towards her. Which for me just re-emphasizes how huntsmen are the only ones capable of handling this kind of threat. They’re almost bored at times, whereas the normal fighters are straight up dying. All of which should be a problem because there’s like twenty fully trained huntsmen in Atlas right now and we had a whole arc about how Lionheart managed to wipe out a ton elsewhere. How will the world handle these kinds of grimm attacks when the one group of people capable of beating them are so few and far between? Again, it’s not a question that is answered or shown to have any consequences attached to the implied answer of, “They can’t.” Because all those hundreds of grimm are just taken care of off screen. Somehow, someway. 

During all this we get a nice moment where Weiss saves Marrow with her knight. Love new team-ups like that! Too bad Blake and Yang are still attached at the hip. Will they ever be allowed to be girlfriends while also maintaining other relationships? Who knows.

We also see Nora dealing with the above mentioned angry mob and the only reason she’s not put into the position of defending herself against civilians is because Ironwood and Robyn conveniently pop up on the screen to make their announcement. 

Okay... Here we go. 

I’m going to be honest with you readers. I don’t even know how to write about all this. It’s just a colossal mess and my thoughts are so scattered I haven’t even figured out how to pull them together yet, let alone start expressing them to an audience. So I apologize that this recap is a mess all its own. However, I can at least start with this.

Ironwood didn’t tell them about Salem’s immortality.

That’s the crux of EVERYTHING here. I could point out how astoundingly stupid it is to tell the people this while they are currently being attacked by grimm and how, again, the only reason why that didn’t result in his people’s massacre is because the writing is straight up inconsistent about when grimm are a threat. I could spend this whole recap criticizing this moment---another moment---where we see Ruby smiling over the horrible situation she’s helped create, the story painting her as a perfect hero. I could also talk in-depth about how flawed Ironwood’s logic is. Salem inciting hatred has never and will never be the problem. What, does he think that with a common enemy the racists will suddenly open their doors to the faunus? Or that the bandit attacks will stop? That people like Jacques will suddenly start loving everyone who can’t give them more money? I’ve gotten a lot of asks over the last year regarding real life issues, asking me how we solve these horrendous problems. My answer is always the same: there is no simple solution. There is no one, convenient thing that we can implement and then bam, racism, sexism, ableism, etc. is solved forever and always. It takes generations of slow, methodical, one-step-forward-two-steps-back work in order to enact change, the precise sort of work that Ozpin was doing in the form of schooling and advocating for tolerance across Remanant. Ironwood, meanwhile, has given the people that band-aid solution. Salem is the reason we’re divided. Salem is the reason why we’re in danger. Don’t think about our own prejudices or the separate threat of the grimm. Just come together against her and it’ll all be fine, I swear. 

Which may have been a decent way of getting people to defeat Salem---we’ll tackle the other issues later---if Salem could be defeated.

Everyone realizes this is just a massive version of what Ozpin did, right? Please tell me people get that. Ozpin had a small group of people, told them about Salem, they logically worked under the assumption that they could beat her, and when her immortality was revealed he was condemned for that supposed manipulation. You sent us to fight a war we couldn’t win. How dare you?

Now Ironwood has done the same thing, but dramatically increased the number of people involved. They find out about Salem, they’re encouraged via no corrections to believe that she’s beatable, and thus this city is preparing for a war that many would view as unwinnable if they had all the information. Every one of our leaders has manipulated in this manner now. Ozpin did it, Ruby perpetuated it, and now here Ironwood is doing it again. Except that, again, given the more specific context of each scenario... I still think Ozpin was the most justified. He never wanted the group involved. Rather, they insisted they be a part of things. The group at least are all made up of skilled fighters, not everyday civilians. Telling willing huntsmen in training that they need to “take care of” Salem with the hope that they’ll continue the work of keeping her at bay is not the same thing as letting Ironwood take resources from Mantle for a doomed plan, or Ironwood telling a city of mostly defenseless people that it’s their responsibility to help him deal with this threat. This is who he is calling to action: 

Not skilled volunteers, but terrified people unwittingly drawn into the situation, and the only reason why their terror hasn’t taken over is because they’re allowed to function under the assumption that Salem can be killed. I’m all for stories where the “useless,” non-combat characters help turn the tide (it’s one of the reasons why I love Pacific Rim so much), but that scenario only works when there’s a clear end in sight; when sacrificing this peace is worth it because banding everyone together will actually lead to victory. But that’s not the case here. All Ironwood has done is set up a situation where the people, like that council member last volume, are going to start asking, “Do you think he can win against Salem? He has to. He’s our only hope. So why hasn’t he beaten her yet? Why aren’t you doing something, Ironwood?” It’s going to be this moment right here on a massive scale. 

A mob of angry people closing in on an innocent, demanding to know why Ironwood isn’t fixing a problem. What the hell is Ironwood going to do now that he’s set up an expectation he can’t fulfill? More importantly, why would he do that in the first place? I really hate how stupid RWBY has made its characters, shooting themselves in the foot in the name of “Well, secret keeping is bad.” It’s not a setup I agree with, but I could at least stomach it if everyone was on the same page regarding where they place blame. However, once again we see how Ozpin is the only one who got heat for these choices.

Everyone remember Yang’s fury over, “How could you not tell us this?” That wasn’t so long ago, folks. So why isn’t she gunning for Ironwood the second he makes his announcement? How could you tell Mantle about Salem but not that she’s immortal, the exact thing Ozpin did to us and we screamed at/physically assaulted him for? Or, more realistically considering that Yang doesn’t seem to know Ironwood has been informed about the immortality yet, why isn’t she gunning for her sister? How could you put Ironwood in the position where he does to an entire city what Ozpin did to us? This is what I keep talking about in regards to the hypocrisy. The group is endlessly furious at Ozpin for his choices, but when they make those same choices, or others make those same choices… nothing. No reaction. Or the reaction is praise. Why the hell does Ruby look like this

while watching Ironwood put an entire city into the position she was in during Volume 6? It’s the same thing! Either the city of Mantle is duped into fighting an impossible war without all the pertinent information---the thing that the fandom has raked Ozpin over the coals for supposedly doing to the group---or they’re told about the immortality later and you’re faced with all the same dangers. Who’s going to attack innocents in their fear and anger? Who’s going to dive back into their addictions? Who’s going to give up completely? Who is going to join Salem? “He’s doing it,” Ruby whispers even though hypocrisy remains the name of the game and “doing it” achieves nothing. Seriously, what did Ironwood accomplish here besides briefly emboldening his people? He could have done that through teaming up with Robyn alone. All revealing Salem has done is set up a host of new problems and put an entire city into the position the group thinks Ozpin is morally horrific for putting them in. “Telling us about Salem but not that she’s immortal is Bad” was the emotional center of Volume 6, but now suddenly it doesn’t matter anymore? Would the writing please acknowledge the double standards here? 

Especially given how many secrets still remain. In the last few hours I’ve seen multiple posts with fans writing about how happy they are that everything is coming to light when... it’s not. This is by no means a clean slate, devoid of secret keeping. In fact, you need a list to keep track of who knows what right now:

Yang: Knows that her mother is the Spring Maiden

Weiss: Knows that her sister is set to become the next Winter Maiden

Blake and Yang: Know that they told Robyn about the Amity secret

Ruby and Oscar: Know that Ironwood now knows about Salem’s immortality. The rest of the group presumably doesn’t know they told him 

Ironwood: Knows about Salem and her immortality but (potentially) not that the relic still has a question, it draws grimm, or the real reason why Ozpin left. Those secrets weren’t acknowledged either way

Robyn: Knows about Salem but not her immortality. Presumably does not know about the relics, the Maidens, etc.

Mantle: Knows about Salem but not the fact that they can’t beat her

At this point I’m just a broken record and I do apologize for that, but what else is there to say when RWBY keeps making the same mistakes every episode? More sloppy setups, more hypocrisy, more picking and choosing when there will be consequences for actions, or when characters will get angry, or even when realism applies. It says a lot about a story that I’m wincing over a shot of our supposed hero smiling and actively agreeing with the villain. Watts is 100% right when he said that “Our tin soldier’s heart has cost him his head.”

And we’ve still got half an episode of nonsense left. I’m just going to power through the rest of this. 

Hated Jaune’s ridiculous “line up!” moment. That just read as so stupid to me. I get that other people loved it but it just didn’t work on my end. There are better ways to demonstrate growth than having him learn the (oh so difficult?) skill of giving an order via treating adults like five-year-olds. 

Tyrian goes off to cause more chaos in the form of trying to murder Robyn, only to find that Clover and Qrow are there to back her up. I liked Qrow’s little line about getting a crack at him first because yeah, for him this fight is personal. Last time they met Qrow nearly succumbed to his poison and Ruby was nearly kidnapped. He deserves to get in any killing blows if Tyrian is set to die this volume. 

We learn that Neo is off to try and steal the lamp from the “farm boy” and oh yeah, wouldn’t it have been great if there was a way to avoid this whole scenario? If the group had, just maybe, put the relic into the vault like they’d intended to do from the start? Or at least give us a good reason for carrying it out in public, at the Schnee mansion of all places. RWBY is chock-full of the most contrived situations I’ve ever seen, relying entirely on random bouts of stupidity for them to “make sense.” No one thinks twice against carrying around their most precious object in a city they know has been infiltrated by Salem’s men. Ironwood starts talking about his secrets in front of the people he’s keeping secrets from. Is it really that hard to come up with scenarios that don’t rely on our heroes randomly losing a large number of brain cells?

Meanwhile, Cinder is going after the Winter Maiden and will no doubt find that Winter is guarding her. Back at the fight, Ruby tries to use her silver eyes but is too distracted. That at least is a limitation on her power, even if it doesn’t make much sense that she’d be more distracted now than when she had a leviathan grimm bearing down on her. 

Penny takes a massive hit and for a brief moment I thought, “Here! Ten episodes in and we’ll finally see Ruby have some reaction to Penny’s resurrection. After all, seeing her friend lying on the ground like that is going to trigger some pretty traumatic memories.” But no. Penny pops up with an “Ouch!” and it’s once again just another joke.

I did like them using the grimm’s own tusk to take it down though. That was a good and visually interesting plan. We also get to see Penny as the darling of Mantle again, including Robyn complimenting her over the comms. So again, what was the point of framing her, either from the villain’s or the story’s perspective? Who knows. We’re not given a reason. It’s just a thing that happened that, like always, led to no consequences. 

Watts walks into his trap, reveals that he has control over the arena, pulls out his gun, and Ironwood absolutely roasts him with, “You always were a pain in the ass.” Highlight of the episode. Everything else remains a chore to watch.

Three more episodes. Just three more and we can put this mess of a volume behind us. Or at least I can.

Until next Saturday 💚

[herefortheace]

Masterpost: People in “Ace Discourse” DO Hate Aces and Aros

And it’s despicable and scary and it needs to stop.

I’ve made most of this post before, but I’m creating a new one because 1) I didn’t expect how long it would get and failed to include a by now much needed “read more” at any point and 2) tumblr won’t let me update the old post anymore via reblogging.

So before I copy the old links and add new ones, a not so brief explanation of why this is necessary.

People, for some reason, after years of blatant evidence to the contrary still claim “ace discourse” has NOTHING to do with anyone hating aces and aros, that not even a single person involved (or anywhere) does. By blatant evidence for people here hating aces and aros, I mean everything from pathologizing our identities to comparing us all to violent misogynists and white supremacists to wishing harm and death on us. Yet the anti-ace/aro crowd will claim we’re just making it all up because we’re hysterical liars who “wanna be oppressed”. It’s a blatant and nasty silencing tactic, but sadly not ineffective because people fall for that shit.

Which is why I originally made this post and am now making it again.

A too influential bunch of people on this site have spun a wild narrative wherein aces and aros are this super privileged group of people who essentially can’t be harmed and whom it’s therefore funny to treat like shit. They also act, over and over, as though asexuality and aromanticsm are some sort of evil idoelogy rather than minority orientations.

A lot of us - most of us I see around - belong to various oppressed groups, but the anti-ace/aro crowd has worked hard to erase that, because it becomes very obvious very fast that it’s not funny to sexualize aces and aros or compare us to Trump or claim our orientations give us an “oppression fetish” when you keep in mind who exactly they are saying it to (I’ve spoken at length about the anti-ace/aro crowd’s efforts to erase aces and aros of color and how they make me furious as a WoC here, but you’ll find plenty proof among the links below). This is not just incredible bullshit, but harms especially the most marginalized of us.

As does the more general willingness of the anti-ace/aro crowd to throw misogyny, racism, ableism and all sorts of bigotry around as a weapon against us. A ton of the links here contain some seriously dehumanizing shit.

Whatever else you may believe, asexuality and aromanticism as identities do not confer any social privilege and do not make people impervious to or deserving of harm. And frankly I should not need to say this.

But apparently I do, and I also (after all this time still) need to prove we’re not just making it all up for attention or to trick people, so here we go. I’m mostly copying the old parts (1-8) of the list as-is because I don’t have time for anything else. Also, while my point definitely isn’t that every single person involved loathes aces and aros, this crap didn’t suddenly come into an already existing “ace discourse” (by that name) either - it’s a huge part of how it got started and was a deliberate move by many to make it gain traction.

This is by no means a complete list, but the shit the anti-ace/aro crowd on this site has pulled includes:

Comparing aces and aros to Trump  (and pretending this is funny)

Comparing aces to Pence 

Comparing aces to Ronald Reagan (and pretending this is funny)

Comparing aces to a literal slave owner

Making fun of aces not being accepted by their parents and of aces finding this upsetting (making it into a crytyping “joke”)

Making aces feel shitty/shaming them for telling their parents they’re ace because it’s supposedly “unnecessary”

Saying if we tell family about being ace, it’s no wonder if they send us to therapy

Doing their best to sexualize the orientations of aces, in so many cases. The link before these two is also connected to that. They treat our orientations like (graphic) details about “our sex lives”, frequently acting like if we want to talk about them ever we’re gross/creepy

This one is also “nice” re sexualizing aces (one of many examples of ppl also engaging in sex-shaming while they’re at it, saying only one’s partner should know anything about one’s “relationships with sex”. Except this person goes kinda even further)

More sexualization, when I say this freaks me out as a WoC, I’m told this white person gives no fucks and wants me to be miserable

Another person who says the identities of aces but also of aros need to stay between them and their Partners because they’re “TMI” and inherently sex-shaming somehow

Oh yeah did I mention, much the same with sexualizing aros and ppl frequently link our identities to misogyny and to using people while they’re at it

Making light and fun of ace WoC asking to not be sexualized because don’t we know aces have done Bad things and so we deserve it/don’t get to complain

One of many examples of white people who hate aces+aros talking over PoC and trying to erase us from our communities (+usually when we call that shit out they don’t care. This is actually one of the more cordial responses I’ve come across despite the lack of apology lol.

Another example of white ppl in the anti-ace/aro crowd talking over aces and aros of color here complete with that person condescendingly lecturing a PoC about racism

People like this saying outright they hate aces

Saying sex ed shouldn’t teach about asexuality

Outright stating they think being ace/aro gives people privilege (because supposedly aces+aros both benefit from conservatives pushing for abstinence)

Outright invalidating the identities of aces (who don’t have the attitude towards sex they think they should have)

Calling asexuals demons

Outright calling aces and aros a “plague” and saying aces/aros regardless of other identities all need to be kicked out of the LGBT+ community.

Erasing the identities of people who speak out against anti-ace/aro shit to declare them “straight” or “cishet” …or saying that treatment is what they get for being “traitors to their own community”

Ignoring the boundaries of aces/aros who have them blocked and don’t want to be vagued to make fun of them …

…or even to continue sexualizing them after they have made it very clear that shit freaks them out (cheerfully doing this to a WoC)

Someone saying asexuality does not exist and “encourages slut shaming”

Spamming the ace positivity tag with vile hate (ppl have talked a lot about how this harms and endangers especially mentally ill ppl)

“aces are embarassing“ in the positivity tag

Posting nsfw content in the ace positivity tag and being completely unapologetic, apparently using the reasoning that our identities are inherently nsfw anyway (see the “TMI discourse” aka people sexualizing our identities)

Calling aces and aros a “sexuality fandom” while pretending we’re a group full of people with every privilege imaginable, bored of being accepted by everyone and of having no Actual Problems in our lives. This kind of nasty erasure constantly goes on and is a big tactic in this mess tbh

Wanting aces to be “exterminated”. For good measure putting this in the ace positivity tag

This disgusting vile shit that I don’t even know how to sum up but it includes wishing death on someone

Talking about wanting aces/aros dead after somehow misunderstanding(?) a post that was very clearly not about asexuality or aromanticism

Graphically telling aces to die

Specifically telling ace kids to kill themselves

Did I mention that many people in this mess have wished death on aces and aros and that they often put it in positivity tags. Some of the most messed up shit I’ve seen is missing because I didn’t reblog/respond to it at the time or can’t find it right now

And I know anons don’t count as hard “proof” for anything but have the less graphic one of the death/rape threats I got  in my inbox for speaking out against anti-ace/aro shit (still kinda eerily detailed though. Not linking the other one because it is extremely graphic)

Part 2:

Comparing aces to a literal white supremacist (in the positivity tag)

Again someone invalidating the identities of aces who don’t have the attitude towards sex they think they should have

Sexualizing aros again, not caring about how it affects particularly aro PoC. And here two other ppl sexualizing and demonizing aros, like in posts further above claiming (non-ace) aros just use people for sex (said on positivity post).

Someone sexualizing aces again and engaging in sex-shaming at the same time, as usual with the claim that literally no one but a partner “needs” to know our orientations

Those Rachel Dolezal comparisons I mentioned made by non-black/white people who want to use antiblackness for what they call “ace discourse”? Yeah here is one white person doing it and here is another, even worse example where a white person goes “this is like if I pulled a Rachel D. and put on blackface and used the n-word…” (paraphrasing here). Here is the latter person utterly dismissing me being upset by their antiblackness (because black ppl’s pain only matters when it’s useful)

[For ppl who don’t know: Rachel Dolezal is a white woman who pretended to be black and built her career on it. White people sure as hell do not get to compare this shit to anything that is not antiblackness and use black people’s pain for their own purposes.]

A white person using antiblackness as a weapon against aces and aros in general (aka “ace tumblr”), acting smug regarding how supposedly we’re all so racist and “get triggered” by black people existing. (I am so tired of white ppl using racism as a cheap “gotcha” against aces and aros - groups which include PoC. And who then ignore or belittle PoC who call them out)

White person randomly informing WoC aces/aros can have white privilege

Again someone claiming ace privilege exists and here another person doing it adding to the post further above, claiming aces/aros have privilege for being ace/aro and that this is the case bc people who don’t have sex are privileged (wrong definition of asexuality… also of aromanticism??… and also no. No.)

What I mentioned about ppl telling us asexuality/aromanticism are not orientations but only ever modifiers? It’s happened a lot but here’s one example. And here’s someone outright saying aro aces don’t have an orientation but only modifiers.

Here’s the same person who said aro aces don’t have an orientation later turning around saying the orientation of aro aces is determined by how they behave and who they have sex with.

Another person putting nsfw shit in the ace positivity tag (link is to nsfw text)

And people try really hard to justify despising aces and aros by pointing to shitty people who share our identities/orientations. Honesty is secondary in this. Here you have someone taking a shitty post from an obvious nasty troll blog to say this is why ppl hate aces, and later when having the troll thing pointed out to them saying they already know. The post got over 3k notes.

“asexual shouldn’t even be a way people identify themselves”, with a second person in the thread agreeing

Part 3:

Someone saying they hope all aces “get checked out by a doctor” first (holy shit)

Saying asexuality is not a sexuality aka more invalidation like in posts further above

Someone calling aces a “turbo virgin club”, then declaring if an ace gets upset about it this shows their immense privilege

I’m 96% sure this is a troll and/or worse but here’s someone using absolute bullshit reasoning to claim asexuality is an inherently racist/antiblack identity (…on a black person’s post)

Speaking of racism, someone claiming vile crap and utter bullshit about aces including that we are all white

Once again a white person trying to use (extremely vile) antiblackness for so called “ace discourse”

Another incident of a blatant troll post getting nearly 3k notes because people wanted to use it to demonstrate how horrible aces/aros are, since we supposedly made up the fake slur “arobot”. Explanation in link, but basically no, “we” didn’t, it was an ancient pretty blatant troll post.

Again someone linking aromanticism to misogyny and to using people for sex

Someone in our positivity tags basically claiming aces and aros in relationships are selfish leeches who demand things but don’t give anything back. Talking as if we don’t deserve “time, effort, attention and love” and as though people in relationships with us are to be pitied

People spamming the ace positivity tag with nasty negativity and hate (once again)

Someone repeatedly wishing rape and like so often death on aces and aros (among other things) in our positivity tags. This person also put nsfw content there and spammed the tags

Again someone specifically wanting ace kids dead, talking in the positivity tag about hoping they get hit by a bus

After someone in this thread talks about the worry of being sexually assaulted for being ace, a person responds with the vilest victim-blaming, claiming shit like “it is easy to learn how to defend yourself“ and worse that I don’t want to put here. If you want details check the link

A number of screenshots of extremely vile posts, out of which two older ones weren’t listed here before: one is about wanting aces/aros to have “full blown panic attacks” and “cry themselves to sleep” over being marginalized/erased by society;

the other utterly disgustingly talks about wanting aces/aros to face torture and medical experimentation and death (the person brings in concentration camps)

This anon was also among the screenshots just now: extremely graphic torture and death threat I got from someone because they hate all us “ ~uwu~pure~smol~aceys~”. There’s wanting to peel the skin off my body as well as gun violence and sentiments that echo the post above

Since we’re already talking anons, somewhat graphic rape/death threat I got in my inbox, this time using the “dare I say meme” that is frequently employed to shit on aces and aros (still leaving out the most disgustingly graphic threat I’ve received bc I don’t want to link it)

Part 4:

“I would actually fucking slaughter aces if I could“

Listen this crap is terrifying and at this point I’m just tired. I could add the same sort of shit to this list over and over. Yet there’s still a huge crowd here denying any of this is happening, who’ll come to posts about ppl hating aces and aros to declare that no one does and we’re all just making it up or too clueless to understand what’s Really Being Said, because that’s how they like to paint aces and aros and anyone who supports us. It’s unbelievable and so so horrible and draining.

It needs to stop. I hate putting this negative crap on ppl’s dash but what’s going on is just so harmful and there’s not much else to do about it I can think of. Aside from people condescendingly explaining to us all the time none of this is happening (or outright calling us liars the moment we don’t put the links directly on a post and claiming we’re making this all up to make other aces/aros feel unsafe holy shit), I’ve also had ppl come to this very post (the original version) saying it’s just “mean words on the Internet” so I shouldn’t talk about -isms here and ppl literally wishing us dead.

Please help get word around that this is happening and a serious issue if you can? (But also if you can’t please don’t feel bad about that)

Part 5:

Someone saying ppl only get to headcanon extremely privileged characters as ace/aro

Someone spouting the incredible, unironic line: “isn’t that the point of being ace?? to desexualize yourself??“  

Telling aces to date non-aces otherwise they’re automatically abusive for “taking sex away” from their partners (holy shit)

As I mentioned, if we speak about the anti-ace/aro shit on this site, ppl love to try and shut us up by coming to our posts acting like we don’t know what we’re talking about or are deliberately lying for example because they’ve not personally seen what we’re talking about, and they can get really utterly horrible about it

Someone making up an insult (”stiff”) for aces to mean “a prude who cant keep their trap shut abt it “ (the person also posted a screenshot of a dictionary entry of the word in the positivity tag where “a dead body” is listed as one of the definitions)

Same person saying aromantic means “a boring person nobody will ever love”

Yet another person sexualizing aces, making fun of how supposedly we constantly talk about wanting to “fuck”… and about wanting to be led around on a leash in public

Two people defending hating all aces and comparing this to statements about privileged groups like white people, because ace/aro privilege I guess

A white person mocking me having experienced racism in “ace discourse” while heavily implying I must be lying (while demanding proof and no I’m not saying asking me for links is the problem)

Another person outright defending hating aces, except it’s okay and not bigotry according to them because it’s… not our existence that’s the problem but us existing as aces??

Part 6

Saying ace/aro identities belong in the DSM

And also a post I really want to talk about that made me add to this post again:

Saying asexual/aromantic people are “weird” and “ugly as fuck” and we id as ace/aro because “no one wants us” (I got an extremely vile anon once that made a similar “argument” and this line of thought is neither new nor harmless)

The thing about this post that makes it especially horrible and made me put it here almost right away? The notes. There are tons of people who responded to that post with approval and if you check, you’ll see them acting like aces/aros being treated like this and getting upset about it is just one big joke. There are many people going “lol that’s mean but true” and “lmao careful they’ll use this as proof they’re oppressed haha” (paraphrased)  and otherwise talking nasty shit about aces and aros. This is fucking vile and the kind of shit you’d expect from anti-sjws, but nope, “ace discourse” everyone

Someone saying ace awareness week should not be a thing because they’re already “painfully” aware we exist

Did I mention when we talk about any of this people immediately in big numbers rush to silence us, dismissing and mocking us out of hand and painting us as hysterical liars who “just wanna be oppressed“ because who gives a shit about aces/aros saying they’re being harmed

As a bonus, let’s return to the anons for a moment, which I’ve not talked about much before:

Someone telling me to die after I made more posts calling this sort of anti-ace/aro shit out

Someone telling me they want to ally with conservatives and shoot me and also other aces, calling aces a “plague”

Someone telling me sending the above to a black person has nothing to do with racism, and also that asexuality is a symptom of mental illness/trauma that needs to be corrected, not a sexuality. They tell me to “get fucked” so I’ll be fixed

Right after these asks I also got a nazi in my inbox (”88″ is nazi code). Make of that what you will

Another person coming to my inbox calling aces a plague and wanting us all dead

“Tumblr aces are deserving of every drop of loathing they get”

And now back once more to the posts people actually put their blog names on (aka most posts by far on this list, so no one skimming better try to claim this is primarily about anons just because I put a few in)…

Reacting to hateful vile anons by claiming we must have sent them to ourselves (why? because they say so), such as graphic anon rape/death threats. Nasty on so many levels and encourages people who hate us further to send shit like that

Part 7

People thinking it’s appropriate to tell a black ace woman (me lol) she has an “oppression fetish” just based on her minority orientation, in response to her asking ppl to not do EXACTLY that

Someone comparing asexuality to a kink to mock the idea of and paint as gross aces talking to family or anyone not involved in “their sex life” about their orientation

Same person in a wild post calling all aces “demons” (as ppl keep doing)

Someone not only as so often comparing aces to Trump with a moodboard, but also including the word “fascism” in ace colors in it (this is an older post)

Someone coming up with the wild conspiracy theory that people upset by aphobia (along with inclusionists) are actually largely the alt-right trying to disrupt activist communities wtf I can not make this shit up  (the person being ace themselves does not make this better or any less anti-ace/aro. This is fucking vile)

Someone mocking all aces by calling us “aceys” and talking about wanting to fight us, and another person approving of this and calling aces speaking out against it “dumb” and my legitimate anger “cute”. Also apparently being upset by this at all means I’ve “deluded” myself into thinking I’m oppressed

Same person who said the above claiming aro aces are somehow straight

Mocking aro terminology and aros for calling their partners (who they may or may not be married to) anything but “friends”

People (once again) painting aros as monsters who by virtue of being aro treat their partners without basic respect and decency. Also making aro identities all about wanting to “fuck” people without loving them, or caring about them in any shape or form. This shit is both sexualizing our identities (as usual) and nasty as hell in general

Another person outright saying they hate aces and trying to justify this by comparing it to venting about a privileged group, as if ace privilege exists rather than asexuality being a minority orientation

Someone (as too many ppl have done) comparing aces to “incels”, dangerous misogynists who are frequently rape apologists/rapists

Silencing tactics still include viciously mocking aces/aros speaking out against any of this shit and painting us as irrational, Senselessly Angry, and evil like in this bullshit “parody” post of what I (and two others?) have supposedly been saying. Apparently when I make posts like this one, that is what the OP gets from that… somehow. People keep doing shit like this to me, and painting black women as hysterical and angry for no reason when we’re legitimately upset is not a new move?

While we’re on the topic of antiblackness and misogynoir, remember how ppl love to send me graphic anon threats? Yeah this person purosely invoked the image of lynchings while doing so, aware themselves it’s racist and admitting they don’t care, as long as they can tell a black person they’d like to “hang me from a tree” and then also all other ace ppl, because “ace discourse” has proven to them we’re evil apparently

Part 8

Saying there’s somethong “wrong” with aces and aros and that we need to get professional help, and that our orientations are “unnatural”. There’s way too much pathologization among these links

Comparing aces to Ayn Rand, a racist rape apologist among other things. Apparently it makes for a fun moodboard about how we’re evil (and hate poor people?? wtf)

Once again someone comparing aces to incels (for some reason people love associating aces with misogynists, rape apologists and rapists, hmm)

Someone sexually harassing a user for simply saying to ignore/block aphobes, putting extremely explicit sexual content into the post’s notes, very possibly trying to deliberately trigger the OP. This is disgusting af

Someone saying asexuality isn’t a real sexuality (again)

As usual someone putting negativity in the ace positivity tag like we don’t deserve to have positivity - this time about how we’re “idiot aces” and all “cishet”

Talking about how this masterpost that, you know, has literal death threats on it and not few of them is hilarious

Here we have someone after being linked to this masterpost defending the Ronald Reagan and Trump moodboards (while completely ignoring all the other shit on this list)

Someone spewing the old bullshit notion that conservatives love aces for our supposed “celibacy”, with the typical implication of ace privilege or at least the idea that being ace makes those of us belonging to various oppressed groups less oppressed (or that we don’t exist at all lol)

Here’s an older post where someone cruelly made fun of an anon on an ace blog non wanting to get a pap test, presuming it’s due to internalized oppression and treating that as funny and inherently mock-worthy (the post got lots of approving notes at the time), because haha aces “valuing their virginity more than their health”, even though 1) the anon said nothing of the sort and 2) even if they had, people not wanting to get health care due to messed up ideas surrounding “virginity” is not funny either. (And this sort of ridicule is nowhere near comparable to correcting actual misinformation)

Making Kylo Ren ace/aro moodboards because aside from real life fascists it’s fun to compare us to fictional ones

Since we’re on the topic, another, older post that has a lot of people comparing aces to various fictional abusers, mass murderers, fascists, etc., “joking” about how these are the characters we can have as “ace representation”. And then ppl going “lol it’s just a joke haha silly aces not getting the concept of humor” in typical bigot fashion, something the anti-ace/aro crowd does A LOT

Meanwhile once when I in response to someone comparing aros to Voldemort (based on him being incapable of love) made an aro-spec Hermione positivity post using the same meme the Voldemort post had used,  emphasizing her good qualities/sense of justice, a whole wild mess happened that included people making jokes about (house elf) slavery on my aka a black woman’s positivity post and calling one of the most commonly hc-ed as black characters demonic and equating her to Taylor Swift… for among other things the evil trait of having an issue with, you know, slavery.

(Later a white person tried to in a separate post paint me as hysterical/irrational for getting upset about this, completely [and deliberately] erasing the fact that it was about race at all in that retelling of things. Not that it’s not bullshit and extremely telling to gleefully heap negativity on a positivity post like this in general, but damn.)

But back to comparing us to real life fascists, someone literally said “cishet asexuals act almost identical to white supremacists and nazis” because saying this about a minority orientation which includes aces TARGETED by white supremacists isn’t fucked up at all I’m done

For the xth time someone outright saying they hate aces

Here we get tons of misogynoir again from someone making a sort of Nicki Minaj ace moodboard that compares ace inclusionism to her breasts/”silicone implants“, and someone else approving of how hilarious that supposedly is. It’s pretty fucking gross tbh, the OP even put it in the Nicki Minaj tag

Fitting in with the above nicely: someone suggesting that subsets of aces and aros be called “breeders” (this is an older post)

Calling asexuality and aromanticism “cults” and comparing them to scientology among a ton of other vile shit including once again pathologization

Calling (non-ace) aros “objectifying assholes”

More demonization of aros, claiming as so often that being aro is the same as fetishizing and using people

Once again someone calling aces (or well just ace girls this time because misogyny is fun) ugly and claiming we’re all white (because racism is also fun)

Part 9

And here finally the new part that tumblr wouldn’t let me add to the original post the usual way. Not to repeat myself but I’m exhausted. And pissed. Remember these are all just examples. And I’d like to say there won’t be more in the future but who am I kidding.

Making light of comparing aces to incels, who are still dangerous misogynists/rapists/rape apologists. How dare aces and especially ace women be upset about it

Another person making light of (nasty moodboards) comparing aces and specifically ace teenagers to vile af dangerous bigots

Again someone comparing aces to incels (....who apparently no longer oppress women, at least if they’re ace)

They really love that incel comparison

They love it a lot. Yet another person comparing aces to incels (while defining asexuality as “not wanting to fuck”). Someone else joining in and going, “Is ‘turbo virgin’ better for u”

The same ppl as in the link above continuing to be horrible+apparently thinking ace and aro WoC are no longer oppressed by racism and misogyny. Did I mention I could not make this shit up

Also if you scroll a bit, there’s a link there to one of them telling an ace to “get laid” to be fixed (this link here leads to the same thread as the one above)

Once more comparing aros to Trump

White person thinking it’s a good idea to equate aces/aros of color upset about being compared to white supremacists with white ppl upset about jokes about white ppl

“asexuals go to hell”

Claiming it’s just “crying racism” and funny that I call call out, you know, all this pretty blatant racism, such as comparing aces and aros to slave owners/white supremacists to give just one example of the literal dozens here (even sth on the level of that anon wanting to lynch me apparently doesn’t count as racist for the OP there what the hell even)

Pathologizing our orientations, saying aces all have some “underlying issue” and that we just id as asexual as an excuse bc we don’t wanna “work through” said issues

Again someone claiming aces can’t have sex, making fun of ppl saying otherwise (apparently we physically can’t this is so wild)

Again ppl claiming aces and aros are basically all white, hurting (and pissing off) aces and aros of color bc that’s always fun. Also I’d argue some not that subtle misogyny there but decide for yourself

Among other things claiming aces are obsessed with sex which uhh uncomfortable+creepy. If ppl’d stop sexualizing us that’d be fucking nice

Another nonblack person comparing ace inclusionists to Rachel Dolezal (not giving a shit about black ppl’s opinion on the matter)... and then claiming antiblackness isn’t racism (when coming from other PoC)

Claiming asexuality is a “specific sexual preference” that no one wants to know about and also the same as “not fucking”. Literally saying (as ppl in this mess do so often) we should literally mention our orientations to NO ONE but our partners bc of this. AND not giving a shit about being told this sexualizes aces including aces of color

As usual pretending we make all the shit documented in this post up (and let me repeat this post was just meant to have EXAMPLES, there’s way more horrible crap out there)

Ace girls are apparently “like straight girls, only worse”. And that regardless of other identities

Using the term “acehets”

Another person referring to “acehets and arohets”

Apparently asexuality and aromanticism are “technically het” now

Calling aces (explicitly+deliberately ALL aces) a “cancer to the lgbt community”

Saying a black aro ace woman wouldn’t have time to be “melodramatic” (=make posts like this one lol) if she had more sex. I CAN NOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP it’s so incredibly sexist, racist, and creepy omg. There’s already examples further above of this person’s misogynoir BUT DAMN

Here we have some pro Trump, pro gun person after going “fuck tumblr ace culture” talking about how aces aren’t oppressed (especially those of us to whom guns or ppl like the president they support are an incredible danger I’m sure lol) and how dare we make our orientations “our entire personality”. This is all so wild help me??

Remember when we talked about how ppl like to when we talk about this despite all the easily available proof accuse us of lying/being hytserical/just “wanting to be oppressed” as a silencing tactic? Yeah here we have someone calling me speaking out against some of the (racist) shit listed further above “delusional”

Linking being ace to being a nazi (”Been noticing a lot of these “Asexuals” are also nazis”)

More linking being ace to being a nazi (”You can't spell asexual without axis power”). Did I mention the anti-ace/aro crowd is wild and despicable af

The solution to people being this horrible to us is CLEARLY for us to “log off” so why the hell are we whining

This white person wants millions in “emotional damages” from people with ace headcanons for characters belonging to various oppressed groups, including characters of color. Because clearly others acknowledging the existence of aces of color must be incredibly painful for them. Wtf is the anti-ace/aro crowd even. Also, this is what aces and aros of color mean when we talk about constantly being erased by ppl wanting to pretend our orientations are somhow “white” identities - frquently like here under the guise of protecting us from those evil aces and aros aka ourselves.

Putting “your flag is ugly and so are you“ in the ace positivity tag

Same person posting in the ace positivty tag about wanting subsets of aces to get hit by a bus

Okay I know further above I’ve directed you to such unbelievably vile anons they must be getting old but I’m gonna put just one in this part: wanting aces dead but it’s our own fault because the ace community on tumblr made them into a shitstain devoid of decency who thinks fondly of people dying based on them sharing a minority orientation!! They had no problems with aces before!! And it’s just if we’re on tumblr that they want us dead really!! Using this site like other people makes us... wait for it... “incel equivalents” apparently

Aaand here the nonblack ppl go again with the comparing ace inclusionism to antiblackness/Rachel Dolezal, one of them specifically complaining they got called antiblack for it when clearly this white person also doing it proves it’s okay

After as the anti-ace/aro crowd loves to do pretending none of this is happening, this person admitted that yeah sure their crowd compares aces and aros to misogynists and racists, but it’s not because of our orientations but because we’re Bad, and if we claim otherwise we’re manipulative and just wanna victimize ourselves!!

racism and comparing PoC (because their asexuality continues to not magically turn aces of color into white ppl) to their oppressors are apparently still funny (”date an asexual who thinks reverse racism exists“)

Someone talking about wanting “porn of aces” where aces are raped and turned into “hypersexual sluts”. The person adds, “ESPECIALLY if it’s real”. This shit is VILE AND DISTURBING AF HOLY CRAP

And apparently aces who have sex are by virtue of this themselves rapists now, along with anyone who consensually sleeps with people they’re not attracted to?? Wtf even. (These people REALLY want to villify us and for us to not enter relationships - if we don’t have sex with a partner, we’re absusive, but if we do, we’re rapists. We’ve had both these “arguments” now I fucking can’t.)

Again someone posting (in the ace positivity tag) about wanting an “ace concentration camp”

“asexuals get death challenge”

And listen I WISH I was making this shit up and that these posts all didn’t exist. Then I’d not have to deal with the knowledge that a ton of people here don’t even see aces and aros as human beings, constantly throwing -isms and nasty af shit in general at us and pretending when aimed at us it’s somehow okay. People are doing all this to us, and trying to claim we deserve it, based on our MINORITY ORIENTATIONS.

It’s wild, it’s despicable, and it needs to stop. And I’m going to say it as many times as necessary.

[nexiraptor]

Warrior cats is garbage here is why (Edited: now with racism rant)

For several years majority of us who are in this fandom have read a lot of these books and when we were young we used to praise them as great works of fiction and really cool for any cat lover so much so that we made little animated music videos of these fictional cats in their fictional world.

However it’s time for those rose tinted goggles to come off as we need to talk about how warrior cats is a garbage series and how it can be fixed but it won’t be because the Erins are not listening to us in all actuality.

Continuity what’s that?: The writer’s don’t know either

So Warrior Cats has a lot of books, I mean tons that you would think that they would have a good sense of continuity. Let me tell you something my friend continuity does not exist in these books. Some cats will have the wrong pelt colors, names will be badly spelled, and don’t get me started on characters coming back to life (Literally). The most prominent example of these continuity errors would have to be Clawface who dies in the book “Fire and Ice.” but then comes back to life a book that is between “Forest of Secrets” and “Rising Storm.” You might be asking yourself “Why are there so many continuity and mistakes in the series Catie?” Well the thing about most book series is that the authors probably have a backlog of what is canon and the continuity of the series in general.

However it seems the Erins do not have this as they seem to be writing the books very carelessly which brings a lot of problems with it. Sure this is a series for children but that does not mean you get to be lazy with your continuity or editing. Frankly if I were in charge I would have the Erins write down everything they are going to write in the future into a book for continuity sake. That way we don’t have cats being misgendered or coming back to life however there might not even be a good source of continuity when the Erins keep having different opinions over which cat becomes mates with which cat (we are going to get back to the Erin’s bickering later though) The same happened with Dovewing’s eyes and everyone threw a massive shit fit over that… Maybe in the future this problem will be fixed but lord knows that will happen....

Incest is wincest: The Erins creepy obsession with mates and incest

I don’t think I have to make this any simpler but DON’T FUCK YOUR COUSIN! I don’t think has been iterated enough to the Erins and i’m fucking impress the editor has caught only instance of this when there are several instances of this shit. The most recent which had me seething was Ivypool and Fernsong, we literally had an arc about pretty much how Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Dovewing are all kin of Firestar and that Ivypool (Dovewing’s sister) and Fernsong (Lionblaze’s son) are literally cousins! Like not even distant cousins! Yet Kate Cary did not find that a little weird… We then have Dustpelt and Ferncloud who are related (Dustpelt being Ferncloud’s uncle) Let us not forget that Willowpelt and Patchpelt who are SIBLINGS also be come mates and had Greystripe. Oh and don’t get me started on how Sandstorm’s half brother was hitting on her daughter! You could always put in the notion “But Catie they are just cats what is wrong with incest.” and I have to say that we can’t keep crying that when this is a fantasy in which cats are organised, have their own religion, and have their own myths and traditions. These are anthropomorphized cats and this is also a children’s book. The Erins should not have so much incest in a children’s book of all things but they have done much worse so I don’t put it against them.

However let's talk about the near graphic depictions of childbirth these books have. These authors have a weird obsession over pregnant cats and giving us wonderful imagery of these cats giving birth. Like think about it for a split second how many graphic depictions of birth do you read in a warrior cats book. However the weird thing about the Erins is how the she cats keep getting younger when they get pregnant have y’all noticed that. Violetshine who was just named a warrior suddenly gets pregnant and has kids. Mothflight who was a brand new medicine cat gets pregnant as well and has some kits. (Mothflight is probably the worst mother though because she gave away a kit who literally drowned and might have PTSD to a clan that swims like it would be interesting to see where that goes but I doubt the Erins would ever go down that path) there is also Star Flower who is impregnated by Clear Sky and his son Thunder was lusting over this she cat and it’s really weird and I don’t get it…

Either way the Erins are very creepy with this stuff and let’s just leave it at that (Of now…)e

Death of the author: The Erins should not dictate canon unless it’s in the books:

Time to get to the most important point in this whole entire rant that is address to the wiki in particular. It’s time to commit to death of the author because if we want to determine what is canon and what is not we need to do this action.

To the people who have no idea what “Death of the author.” is it’s when we decide that what the authors say outside of the books should not be canon because these writers are doing nothing but harm if we keep having their words be the word of gospel because from what you can tell the Erins are not that good with continuity and have even started several fan wars. One of the most prominent examples of when we needed to commit “Death of the author” the most though was with warriors superfan Su Susan. Su Susan helped fill the wiki pages however giving a super fan that much power is going to lead to a lot of wars between fans and we already have enough to bicker about. Yeah it’s interesting to see who Swiftpaw’s siblings are or who the rest of Princess’s kits are but if you give a superfan the power to change possible canon then it becomes a problem and what makes me a little ticked off is that a wiki that is suppose to give us official information followed this superfan’s word which is a giant problem.

You guys have to be more critical of what you accept what is canon and what is not guys or else we are going to face even more problems in the warriors fandom in general.

The part where I talk about Ableism from the Erins

Yeah not fancy title here because what the erins do to disabled cats is kind of disgusting. The cats who have disabilities in this book series really get shit on like a lot. Then again it does not help that the first disabled cats we meet are named One-eye and Halftail. That’s not even the beginning of all of the bad names these cats get for having a disability we got Deadfoot, Crookedjaw, White-eye, Runningnose, and Lostface. Most of these are renames too like what is with these leaders and allowing these names to exist or should I say why is the editor allowing this shit in the first place? Sure most of these guys get high ranks and that’s fine but do they have to have such awful names and don’t get me started on Rainflower and how badly she treated Crookedstar. Even worse is probably Brokenstar who got ridiculed by his whole entire clan for having a broken tail like why do the Erins write this shit… Let’s not forget all the disable cats that became medicine cats. The most prominent being Cinderpelt and Jayfeather one being crippled by a car and the other being blind.

It would have been so interesting to have a cat like Cinderpelt despite her injuries rise up and become a warrior after he leg injury because that would have showcased a strong female character despite her being crippled by a car instead what do the Erins do? “Let’s make her a medicine cat and then reincarnate her and then not even do that and just let her spirit be possessed by this cat.” Oh yes that’s definitely what I want to see instead of something empowering to give to all of the female audiences that are reading this series which seems to be the majority of warrior cats fans!

Then there is Jayfeather who is blind and pretty much get shucked into the role of medicine cat apprentice which fucking sucks because a blind warrior would have been a cool concept as well. Like imagine all these cool concepts that could have happened in warriors but did not because The Erins didn’t even think of the possibility. Another possibility for a blind warrior before even Jayfeather would have been Longtail but that was also wasted potential too. Then we finally get to the most wasted potential and possible good representation for disabled people if The Erins had not killed her off Briarlight. Briarlight is pretty much oozing with potential to be a good storyline about a warrior who overcomes her disability and helps her clan in some way. Hell you could have made her a mediator it would have been a perfect role for her as it would give Briarlight something to do besides be the medicine cat assistant. Then in the most “Fuck you.” moment they kill her off because of course we can’t have a cat with such a crippling disability be useful… I also forgot to mention Snowkit who was deaf but didn’t matter if would get a deaf warrior who could possibly use sign language let’s just send a hawk in to kill the kit!

This is how ableist the Erins are when they won’t let us have any good representation when they won’t let a fully blind cat be a warrior or even a deaf cat. However it seems The Erins don’t seem really into that and would rather have warriors be normal cats without any disabilities which is wrong.

She cats are dispensable: The Erins are sexist

Yes despite there being a lot of women in the writing process of this series the series seems to really love killing off mainly she cats. (This also might be why we keep getting a lot of incest) There are very few she cats that really live for a very long time hell sometimes they will even kill off she cats with major storylines off book or you will find out about their deaths in their super editions or novellas if you read those. The most notorious currently is Leafpool in the most recent novel as we barely get any mention of her at all and yet her death has impacted the clans but when you don’t let us see her die or even let us say goodbye to a character until another couple of months people are going to get pissed. Hell Hollyleaf’s death was another example of people getting pissed at the Erins as you just introduced her in one book only to kill her off in the next. Needletail who should have been a way more prominent character in Vision of Shadows gets killed off way too early as well as I believe she did not get enough character development for me to really like her all that much. Silverstream, Spottedleaf, Ferncloud, and Sorreltail are probably the most prominent of characters that should not have died so soon because there could have been some interesting plot development with these cats.

Even Bramblestar in Bramblestar’s storm talks about there are very few she cats left in his clan. Maybe it’s because The Erins just keep killing she cats who have potential to be good characters if they didn’t keep shanking them with their writing knives. It’s disgusting how many times we get she cats who are strong and powerful who then get shanked by the Erins everytime the plots needs to move on. Sandstorm was killed off to “Lessen the load.” Spottedleaf was killed off so “Firestar did not have to choose in starclan.” Hollyleaf did because “She made the ultimate sacrifice.” these deaths are preventable and provide nothing to the reader at all but disappointment and anger.

We still have some interesting she cats like Mothwing, Tawnypelt, Mistystar, and Squirrelflight but lord knows when they are going to get the knife as well…

You are going to love these characters: Erins have made some really bad characters

Welcome to the several hundred take on why Ashfur is a bad character for so many reasons even though I can now do you a couple better. Let’s just start with Ashfur because he is one of the easier cats to point out The Erin’s shit writing. First of all Ashfur starts out as friends with Squirrelflight and they get close but I think we all knew she was going to end up with Bramblestar eventually. However instead of acting like a normal person during a breakup Ashfur goes straight to 11. Ashfur sets up a trap to MURDER Squirrelflight’s father and when that didn’t work he tried to murder her adopted children (Another thing The Erins seem to hate is adopted families) still Ashfur goes to Starclan because he “Loved too much.” you can clearly see the problem here… How about a cat who complains about their fucking leg being crushed DARK FOREST BITCH that’s what happened to Lilywhisker when one The Erins confirmed that but was quickly revoked because that gives us even more questions about Starclan and whoever is judging the cats up there needs a fucking intervention.

Onestar fucking Onestar… there is so much wrong with this cat that even I was like “Mudclaw would have been a better leader than this asshole.” Onestar decides to be mates with a random kittypet and then when it’s time to move he doesn’t allow his son to be in the clans and prevent pretty bad disaster from happening. Demanded more than he rightfully deserved because of his status as a leader and being a general dick to Firestar along with dissing him off. You expect me to accept his apology for doing all of this shit only for him to drown to death and calling it “Heroic.” fuck no Erins Onestar deserved that because he no longer was leading that clan because Onestar is the worst character in the warrior cats series because The Erins decided to shit on Onestar’s character I would rather read a fanfic where Mudclaw was leader cause he probably would not be doing this shit.

Spottedleaf’s Heart: The worst book in warriors so far

Alright let’s rip the bandage off because you all knew this book was going to come into the discussion some how and we need to talk about this like grown people because this is where I pretty much stopped reading the series. Vicky who wrote the book as written a book where the lesson that was learned here was “It’s okay to groom a child and force them down a path they don’t want to go on.” This book is the worst offender of how shitty The Erins are in my opinion when they themselves even after Vicky left did not denounce this awful book and made it noncanon because frankly this book is the only book in my opinion that I am convinced is non canon because of how disgusting it is. Vicky retired when this book got the much need criticism and backlash it needed but sadly because Vicky retired we will probably never get a statement about possibly making this one story non canon because frankly children should not be reading that kind of stuff especially when it is written so poorly.

So just to summarize The Erins are currently saying “Child grooming is okay.” to their readers and not even think “Hey maybe we should have Spottedpaw talk to a grown up about this stuff and maybe get her out of this situation” that would have been a great idea but no body decided that was a good idea.

The tribe of racism: How The Erins are really fucking racist

This is an edited in part because after thinking it through and someone having opened my eyes about this I was shocked that I did not think about this when I initially posted the essay. Let’s talk about racism in the warrior cats series.

The clan cats will be coded white

The tribe cats coded native american

Bloodclan coded African american

Susan and Jacques coded hispanic

other rogues, loners, and kittypets can be coded as other minorities as well.

Now warrior cats has a white savior complex because The Tribe cats cannot defend themselves without the clan cats apparently because they had to be saved from a giant lion and a bunch of rogues along with there being a panic over who the next leader should be. The Erins pretty much wrote native Americans as “Confused defenceless people who don’t know what to do against really bad threats.” despite surviving for 60 YEARS. I would love to see a book on the tribe being strong cats but The Erins don’t want to do that as it would be “Too boring and there would be few cats.” like wtf Erins the tribe of rushing would be very interesting and would introduce us to different customs maybe even learn about how their religion works. When we do get a POV of a tribe of rushing water cat they all immediately leave the mountains to go to the forest so we can’t have a proper POV of the Tribe of rushing water’s life.

Bloodclan though has a very different problem from The tribe of rushing water. These guys are coded black as they seem to have some sort of organized gang and judging by how racist the Erins are it would not be too far from the case to believe that they are an African american street gang/mafia (They could also be a form of an Italian mafia as well which is still bad) however the gang after being led from their city to the clan territory they are quickly killed off by the “Superior clan cats.” who once again are coded white. You can see where this is going the white people killing off and disbanding an African American street gang. If this sounds familiar that’s because it happened to the black panther party a group of African Americans who wanted to defend themselves only to be killed off and tortured by the very white government. 

Now you can argue with me that Jaques and Susan are not hispanic however they are pretty much very muscular and are bullies to the clan cats. They also killed Talonpaw and are then confronted by the clans and are quickly defeated. These two kittypets while this is going to be a stretch are most likely based on the hispanic stereotype of how they are quick to anger and are super macho. As secrets of the clans states “They are both Hostile and dangerous, with no warrior code to guide their actions.”

Then there are the rogues, loners, and kittypets who the very white clans constantly insult and are pretty terrible to despite their kindness. The only clan that is very accepting of rogues and even lets them stay in their camp in Windclan. Even cats who originally did not have racial prejudice suddenly have it and get very angry over having to welcome a new warrior in (Oh no more people to help you defend your clan how terrible!) All in all The Erins are pretty racist writers which is great to stack up with the other shit they have done as well...        

In Conclusion

The Erins currently are really bad writers and as it currently stands people. I recommend to stop reading the warrior cats series as I believe it’s only going to get worse from here. I would instead focus my attention at fan works which have a far better continuity and even though there are some great books after Dawn of the clans I think Dawn of the clans is like the best ending to read and warriors and the Erins should have stopped there and then just did super editions and novellas.

[tasedandconfused]

whoops opinions and sass towards @ m/arvel @ e/ndgame  also kind of @ i/nfinity w/ar if we’re honest will be under the cut so don’t look if you don’t wanna see it js

how the r/ussos and whatever writers were interviewed for e/ndgame plan the characters futures:

Character with immense anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, has sacrificed themselves more than enough times already and finally has a life that they’ve been trying to get for years in spite of their trauma and still is one of the most traumatized humans: Let’s kill them because it’s the only sacrifice that makes sense! 

Character who’s had a ton of unseen trauma, been through more than literally everybody else, has finally obtained a found family and done everything possible to ensure the future is successful? Let’s murder them and in interviews state that she didn’t deserve a funeral because she’s a cipher, when we’ve been ignoring their storyline the entire time. Oh yeah, and say that she, who’s spent her entire time in the movies trying to make up for the murders she committed when she was being tortured, abused, manipulated, and forced into a life she never had a choice out of (and, at least comic wise, the one time she did break the rules was in a v consensual relationship w a guy i’m mentioning later who was then shoved on ice for it because he disobeyed orders and fell in love, which we don’t know if it’s actually in the movies or not bc they keep saying they might include it then cut all scenes of them talking)

Characters who’ve been abused by their adoptive father since literally the beginning? Let’s have one of them die for man pain after trying to rationalize the abusive parent and make him a likable villain, bc why the fuck not, let’s have the other one suddenly be more or less forgiving of him for no real reason, then have a second version of her killed because she refused to stop trying to make her abusive father care about her when he wouldn’t! Because who cares about abuse victims right!

A character who’s been traumatized for essentially 90 years, abused, manipulated, had his mind wiped, his head adjusted, who even knows if he had to suffer for his love for another character in the movies bc they erased their entire and extremely important relationship for favor in q/ueerbaiting and pushing all their female characters aside and ignoring them, continuing to force him into further trauma, have him voluntarily go back on ice in spite of the fact he was literally forced to be on ice whenever he misbehaved while they tore apart his mind repeatedly, then, rather than just say that they want him to be his own character awhile longer before taking over the mantle of another character, state that he’s too damaged to take over the mantle because he was kidnapped, tortured, and abused into a role of a mass assassin when he’s been cured of most if not al of the programming and has been trying to heal for the longest time, and every time he tries to get out of fighting he’s forced back into it by his supposed ‘best friend’, and he’s not had a single incident since the programming was removed from his head but apparently he’s still ‘too damaged’ and ‘not good enough’ for the mantle.

I’m not even gonna try to describe everything about l/oki, but having his abuser murder him is kind of more than a little fucked up. Then again, they’re the same people who thought bringing re/d skull back would be a ‘fun and exciting idea’. 

A character who never really had to give up anything, especially now since they decided sending him to his ‘old life’ would be so much better than having him make a new life (which already was gonna be canon, he’s supposed to be living w s/haron according to the writers before the r/ussos had that cut bc they didn’t want emily back and they thought it was ‘too domestic’. and hey, sending him back to a girl he knew for a few months but apparently ‘loved more than anyone else, including the woman he actually fell in love with now, and his two best friends who fucking needed him’ was such a better storyline than letting him make a new life in modern times, not fuck up the past and the universe, and not be able to be held fully accountable for every horrible thing h/ydra did, from infiltrating s/hield to kidnapping and controlling b/ucky, because he already showed by fucking p/eggy that he didn’t care about preserving the t/imeline. he had the opportunity to stop it and chose not to. But hey, he didn’t have to actually suffer at all during the whole movie! Cause apparently he didn’t care that his two best friends died! Or that he fucked over his relationship with one of his other best friends from the comics! Because fun! 

Also, on a slightly unrelated note, there’s one thing that really pisses me off about M/arvel as a whole, that nobody actually cares about but somehow I notice every single time. And no, this has nothing to do with how I personally feel about any of the actors, some I like some I don’t, I’m not specifying who or who, some of these are ethnically and some are religiously, but here’s the thing.

G/weneth P/altrow? J/ewish. Not coming back. We know she’s gonna be referenced in FFH. That’s probably it.  R/obert D/owney Jr? J/ewish. T/ony died. S/carlet J/ohannson? J/ewish. Has her BW movie and is probably done, killed her in what is one of her most canon moments, but in a shitty way and giving shitty excuses. N/atalie P/ortman? Jewi/sh. They basically deleted her from the canon with nothing but a few reused scenes and a few throwaway lines from T/hor. K/at D/ennings? Je/wish. Don’t even reference her anymore, doubt she’s coming back, they really don’t care.  A/aron T/aylor J/ohnson? Half more correct than E/lizabeth was for his role. He’s J/ewish. They killed him. 

Do you see the pattern here? But hey, R/ed S/kull, one of H/ydra’s elites? He’s alive! Isn’t that great messages to throw for people! Like the entire rest of this shitstick is. And hey, H/ayley A/twell, who literally sent her fanbase to attack Em/ily V/an camp for taking a role, and to attack C/hloe B/ennett for being the lead on A/gents of S/hield bc it had more of a fanbase than her crappy show did, and she tried to get it framed as anti-feminist and racist when it has more WOC in the main cast than her show did in probably both seasons? She got to win! She got her way! Isn’t that fantastic! 

anyways the reasons I don’t conform to the M/CU w most of my characters is very much so these reasons, they have no problem showing their r/acism, s/exism, and bullshit repeatedly and only pushing the w/hites forward while fucking over everyone else whenever they can. I know a lot of people don’t see it, and I’m not saying it’s not okay to like the movies, but I’m pretty tired of having to explain my reasons for being pissed off when the heads have no problem showing their ableism, sexism, and racism at any point they can. 

[friday-night-puyo-popping]

Hey, you there.

It appears you've stumbled upon this tumblr.

What is it about?

Well, it's basically some crossover AU. Between Friday Night Funkin. And Puyo Puyo.

Who are you asking here?

The main stars of this blog are going to be the following four:

FNF

Boyfriend

Girlfriend

2. Puyo Puyo

Ringo Ando

Ecolo

How are asks answered?

A dialouge box will be utilized in accordance to who is speaking.

Are any headcanons in particular involved?

Yes, actually. Here's a couple of them:

Boyfriend and Ringo are both undiagnosed autistic. The former canonically has ADHD, which commonly occurs alongside ASD.

Boyfriend is a nonspeaking catboy. The nonspeaking bit actually has a bit of justification in canon, as Boyfriend tends to make random beep boops to avoid talking to people, and the catboy bit is from another user. Boyfriend answers questions with his phone, in a way that looks like this:

Now that what this blog's pmuch about, we need to discuss the

Ask Rules

1. When dealing with ships.

Ships are a natural part of fandom activity, it's inevitable that there'll be problematic ships around. Problematic ships are NOT a basis for harassment. If a ship bothers you, oh well. If you want to send an ask for a ship, just in case I get confused please label your ask with the ship in format of [Person 1 x Person 2].

2. Keep it safe for work.

Please I'm icked by NSFW mentions and such. The only cases where any asks are allowed to be suggestive is when the asker is roleplaying as Schezo Wegey, a Puyo Puyo character notorious for his mishaps in speaking that make him sound perverted. Oh yeah, submissions are also going to be disabled in the case of NSFW content being sent anyhow.

3. Headcanons, headcanons...

If you have a headcanon to share, cool! I have latched onto other people's headcanons such as Funkin Quonit's headcanon that Boyfriend has hidden cat ears. Sharing your headcanon is NOT the same as forcing people to agree with your headcanon, however. That's just mean.

4. Don't go attacking other users here!

Is there an ask you don't like? I don't want to be involved in arguments regarding the offending ask. If you and someone else get into an argument, please sort it out peacefully, do not call upon other users to attack the asker.

5. Just don't be an asshole in general.

I know you're getting tired of me rambling on about "don't be an asshole." But I really do not want any bigotry of any sort on this blog. Said bigotry is racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, enbyphobia, xenophobia, ableism, basically anything that is discriminatory and associated slurs. Oh yeah, doxxing and death threats are also a huge no go, you will be blocked if we find out you did that with proper evidence.

6. Don't be a creep.

Now, you might be expecting me to mean "don't ship the bad ships!" That's not it. What I mean is don't fucking approach anyone, myself and P1 included, and say sexual shit. That's a major red flag and that's gonna warrent a block alright. If I follow you, you probably will be able to DM. Limiting DM accessibility is a safety measure.

DNI

Bigoted folks

You already have gotten the idea from the rules alone, though I'm putting this here too as a just in case measure.

Discrimination is bad, period. No matter what you try to justify it with.

Most forms of bigotry are already very bad. There's one form I'm worried about in particular though: Ableism. This form of discrimination is as terrible, if not worse, than the others, as its ways are unfortunately widely accepted as a norm. It does not help at all that Hollywood's stereotypes are only adding to the stigma.

Fandom Police/Antishippers/otherwise

They've been known to harass proshippers and accuse them of being criminals over a ship.

They also have been known to harrass, doxx and send gore to proshippers.

Examples of ships they hate are age gaps (usually where A is 18+ and B is 17-), noticable height difference (the shorter one is always percieved as child-coded), and enemies or exes (deemed abusive). This section may be edited by P1 to provide more examples of ships that are despised by these people. (P1 here. Strangly enough, they hate ships between two children as well? Like Skid x Pump.)

[shu-of-the-wind]

foster care au pt iv

pt i   pt ii   pt iii   pt iv

CW for ableism/discussion of ableism, mentions of racism

“Mom—”

“Kitchen,” says Jyn, and accidentally sends a half-written email. “Fuck.”

“You shouldn’t swear,” says Finn, stirring something on the stove. Finn had decided that he was going to learn how to cook about two months into him being placed with her. “Someone in this place should be able to make something edible,” he’d said, when she’d asked why, and—yeah. It’s logical. Jyn feels silly and small for being jealous of the fact that a thirteen year old boy is better at cooking than she is. Then again, she’s also sensible, and if it means Finn keeps cooking (and if it means she gets to see evidence that they’ve both eaten) she’ll gladly sit and supervise while doing other work.

“Don’t start with me,” says Jyn, and Finn smothers a smile behind his wrist.

“Mom!”

“Kitchen!”

Rey’s voice goes high and wheedly at the end. “Mom—”

“Kitchen!”  She whacks at her computer. “Fucking emails—”

“Swearing,” says Finn under his breath. Jyn points at him with a carrot stick.

“I will end you.”

Finn snorts and goes back to fussing with the oregano.

“Mom,” says Rey again, and at least she’s in the door frame this time. Her hair’s wet and tangled, dripping onto the shoulders of her T-shirt. “Your phone—”

“Jyn,” says Jyn.  

“Jyn.” Rey rolls her eyes. “Your phone keeps buzzing. And I finished my homework. And I forgot to give you this earlier, but I was supposed to. Can I play Prey now?”

“What is it?”

“Parent-teacher conference stuff. Mr. Andor told me to give it to you when I came home. I forgot. I had to do everything.” Rey flaps the little blue slip of paper at her until she takes it. On her computer, there’s a ding. New message from: Mara Jade. “Can I play Prey now?”

“Yeah, fine.”

Finn, at the stove, scoffs under his breath.  

Parent-teacher conference notice. A week from yesterday at 4:30pm, and she’s going to have to reschedule her shift at the garage for it but with this much of a cushion she can at least get that done. Mara will be irritated, but Mara’s irritated with everything, and besides, no matter how snippy Mara gets, she’s never once been anything other than cooperative about Finn and Rey’s school obligations.

The signature on the bottom keeps dragging her eyes. Cassian Andor.

Call me, please. Please.

“Hey, Mom—”

“Jyn.”

“Whatever.” When Jyn looks up, Finn’s much closer, and holding a spoon of pasta sauce. It’s been just long enough that the split in his eyebrow has started to heal, the bruises have started to fade. His mouth is almost the proper size again. “Try.”

“You don’t need to feed me.” Still, she takes the spoon, sticks it in her mouth and shuffles papers. In the other room, her phone goes off again; Rey must have turned it off vibrate as a pointed come answer your messages, because now there’s the irritating triple-beep of a text alert echoing through the door frame. She needs to clean, Jesus, the kitchen table is covered with bills and her paperwork and Rey’s homework and half a million other things.

“Does it need salt?” Finn fidgets a bit. “I think it needs salt.”

“You’re asking me?” She tosses the notice onto the stack of homework, and stands. “My pasta sauce is nuclear waste.”

“It needs salt.” He bites at his thumbnail, and then peeks at her. “And maybe more thyme.”

“Do we have thyme?”

“That’s that plant that Bodhi gave you.”

“Oh.” The nice smelling one they keep on the kitchen windowsill. “Up to you.”

“Mom?”

They’re not going to give up on this, tonight. Jyn admits defeat. “Yeah?”

“Do you know Mr. A somehow?”

She absolutely does not choke on the spoon. Jyn shuffles to the fridge, and snags one of the cans of seltzer water that Rey and Finn absolutely won’t touch. “I met him at the back to school fete, remember?”

“No, I mean—” Finn pinches off a bit of thyme, and drops it into the pasta sauce. “You act funny when people mention him, that’s all. And you were acting weird at the fete, too.”

“I was tired.” And I’m not going to tell you any of this, kid. It’s something years in the past, anyway. It’s not like she even had sex with Cassian Andor—that would have made this easier, somehow, because sex is something she can explain away to herself, not like the emotional scorchmarks that night left behind. Nothing happened, and it was years ago, and she’s not explaining any of this to Finn. Or Rey, for that matter. “That’s all.”

His forehead puckers up. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“Making a face.”

“There’s no face.” She really ought to go get her phone, but she doesn’t want to leave Finn unsupervised while the stove is on. Jyn compromises, and heads back to her computer instead. Subject Line: Assuming that was only half done. “Did you get one of these notices from your teacher, yet?”

“No. It should come in tomorrow, though.”

“I’ll talk to Mara, then.”

Silence from the stove. When she looks up, Finn is watching her, frowning, thumbnail still caught tight between his teeth.

“You know,” says Jyn, “for a kid, you really shouldn’t look like a drill sergeant.”

“I do not.”

“How’s the pasta?”

“Almost done. Once the noodles are cooked it should be okay.”

Her phone goes off again, and, like clockwork: “Mom, phone!”

“I’m coming.” She snags another carrot stick off the bowl on the table, and points at Finn. “Do not burn the building down.”

“You’ll be gone thirty seconds.”

“Whatever.”

Jyn squeezes Finn’s shoulder, on her way out of the kitchen. He’s not going to let it go, she knows that as well as anybody ever could, but for now, at least, she doesn’t have to think about it.

Wednesday, 4:30pm. Cassian Andor.

“Fuck,” she says under her breath, and goes to grab her phone.

.

.

.

It’s a half-day for all the middle school students at Yavin Prep—for teachers to cram all their PTCs in, she guesses; even a year into it she’s still kind of new to this whole parenting thing, education wise—which means that Finn stays at home when Jyn and Rey head back out for the school to make her conference on time. They could have just stayed at the school, she supposes, but neither of them wanted to, and she can’t blame them for that. They’ve rerouted their walk home, too, to stay within sight of security cameras and after-school staff, and she can’t blame them for that, either. If she could, she’d come and pick them up every day, but working makes that impossible. She’s either on late at Mara’s garage, or working a shift at the Cantina, and neither of those schedules works well for meeting her kids on their way home from school.

Hux hasn’t tried anything since, not that she knows about. Neither has his mother. They’re still waiting to hear back on if Finn will have to be suspended, but considering the circumstances, Jyn very much doubts it. She’s not sure she wouldn’t burn the school down if they tried to punish him for defending himself, so all’s well that ends well.

“Jyn,” says Rey.

“Hm?”

“You’re muttering.”

Jyn flips on the blinker, and stares at the crosswalk. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

The school uniform is a bit too large on Rey. Her sleeves are always dragging just a little around her wrists, like she’s put on a costume. Jyn presses her thumb into the steering wheel, and then shifts to touch Rey’s shoulder. “You’re quiet.”

Rey steals a look at her, and sways. “Thinking.”

“What about?”

She shrugs. “Things.”

Usually with Rey that means anything from talking about Prey (her newest thing, though new in this case means as long as Jyn has known her) to asking random, invasive questions about Jyn’s past to demanding explanations about car engines, so there’s no real way to respond to it other than “Okay.” The traffic light turns red, and Jyn turns into the parking lot of Yavin Prep. “School things?”

“Do you think Armie Hux hates Finn because Finn is a foster kid?” says Rey. “Or because of me?”

Jesus. If there’s something worse than a gut-punch out there, that’s what just happened to Jyn’s stomach. She swallows. “You think he tries to bully Finn because of you?”

Rey shrugs again. Jyn doesn’t know what to say, exactly. She thinks, or tries to, tries to come up with the words, but when she puts the car into park and turns off the engine, she doesn’t have many. Rey undoes her seatbelt, starts to yank at the handle of the door, and Jyn says, “Rey.”

Rey goes still, and peers at her through her lashes.

“Armitage Hux bullies people because Armitage Hux is a bully,” she says. How else can I say this? “It doesn’t have anything to do with you and Finn. He’s just decided to fix on you two because—” because you’re both fosters, maybe, or because you’re the only autistic girl in school, or because Finn is one of four black students and the other three are in the high school division, or a million and one other things, who knows “—because he’s decided. It’s not your fault. Or Finn’s.”

Rey debates that, in her own head. Her hand loosens on the door to the car.

“I don’t understand it,” she says, finally. “If I didn’t do anything, why does he hate me?”

“Sometimes people are just hateful, I guess.” Jyn leans back in her seat. “Like me.”

“You’re not.”

“I don’t like people.”

Rey sets her jaw, mulish. “Because people are stupid.”

Jyn snorts. “Damn right.”

“Don’t swear.”

“I do what I want, kid.” She undoes her car door. “Let’s go in and get this done so we can get home.”

Cassian Andor’s a history teacher—that much, at least, she remembers—so when Rey tugs her down a side corridor towards a series of classrooms marked History & Social Sciences instead of towards the staff rooms, she’s not super surprised. It fits, almost. A classroom instead of the staff room, for a parent-teacher conference. Putting him somewhere he has confidence in, where he’s comfortable. Somewhere she’s never been before. Jyn bites her tongue, and wonders if he did it on purpose.

You study history?

I want to teach it someday.

Really? You don’t seem the type.

Why not?

Too angry about the present.

“This one,” says Rey, and tugs at her sleeve. Jyn almost jumps.

“Right.”

“You okay?”

“Fine,” she says. Freaked. “Are we supposed to wait?”

“Nah,” says Rey, and knocks.

“It’s open,” he says. It’s muffled through the door. “Go ahead.”

Rey, thankfully, doesn’t look back to see Jyn steady herself.

Cassian’s classroom feels like Cassian, she thinks. Or what she remembers of him. A quiet kind of focus, muzzled in fabric, laser-sharp in intent. There are desks, a whiteboard covered in writing, still—a lesson on the Armenian genocide, from the look of it—and a low series of shelves along the wall, some used as cubbies for the students, others just as general bookshelves. A paper pasted to the wall above reads sign out with Mr. A if you want a book. Three world maps, each with different sequences of pushpins jammed into different countries, yarn tied between—the Ottoman Empire? World War One?—and then the teacher’s desk up at the front, two chairs before it like being received into an office.

She hates that he looks tired. She hates that she notices. She shouldn’t notice something that subtle in how his face sits, in how his eyes dart between her and Rey and back again, but she’s always been good at faces, and exhaustion isn’t all that easy to disguise. Cassian takes off a pair of reading glasses, tosses them onto the desktop, and stands. “Hi.”

“Hey.”

“Hi,” Rey says, in a bright voice, and dumps her backpack into one of the chairs. “I brought the book back.”

Cassian darts one last look at Jyn before focusing on Rey. Whatever awkward, desperate look he’d had on the steps into the school last week is gone, now, or at the very least obscured. There’s just a teacher, here. Cassian Andor, history and homeroom teacher, purely professional. So get control of yourself. Jyn bites the inside of her cheek, and watches Rey hand the book off. “You only took it out two days ago.”

“I had time, Mr. Antilles was absent yesterday so we had a substitute and she just had us do worksheets.” She drops her backpack onto the floor, this time. “She didn’t even notice I was reading in the back.”

Cassian looks more amused than chagrined as he says, “You should focus in math, you know.”

“It was worksheets, and they were done.”

“Still.”

He’s good with her. Jyn lets it sink in, slowly. Rey doesn’t babble with many people, and it seems like Cassian Andor is one of them, and that should be more of a relief than anything. It is a relief. She’s just having trouble swallowing, on top of it. When Cassian looks up at her, his face shuttering, just a bit, Jyn just nods.

“Rey,” says Jyn, and Rey looks back up at her. “Can you wait outside for a bit?”

Rey looks between her and Cassian, and then says, “Can I take a book with me?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool,” says Rey, and inspects the wall for a grand total of three minutes before finally snagging a book on the Mexican Revolution and darting back out the door again. “Thanks for agreeing to this timeslot,” he says. He does not offer a hand to shake, thankfully. She’s not sure she could stand that again. “I know it’s awkward.”

Understatement of the century. “It’s fine.” Jyn sinks onto the empty chair, perching on the very edge. “It wound up working out.”

“Originally I was going to have you come in on Friday but then there was a scheduling change.” He stops, suddenly, like he’s realized he’s said too much, and then sits down. “So.”

Jyn says, “So.”

They look at each other across the desktop for a second or two, and then Cassian coughs.

“Primarily this meeting is to talk about Rey’s performance and what we can do to supplement it inside and outside of the classroom, but in my opinion there’s not a great deal left to discuss. Her grades are good. I think she could be working harder in computer science, and so does her teacher—there’s a note, here, if you want to talk more about that, but she has high grades in almost every other class. The primary issue outside of class is her relationships with other students.”

“Like?”

“Obviously considering the last week or two there’s been some blowback, but even before that there hadn’t been a great deal of integration into the classroom, at least not in comparison to what’s optimal.” Cassian leans back in his seat, and goes through a few papers. “Rey keeps to herself. Normally I wouldn’t be overly concerned, considering how close she is with her foster brother, but there’s been a few small difficulties. I don’t know if she’s talked about them at home.”

Jyn unfolds her hands, scrubs her damp palms against her jeans. Why on earth did I think wearing my work shoes would be all right? There’s oil all over the toes. “Rey tends to—not tell me things.”

“Does she think she’ll get in trouble?”

“No.” It comes out harder than she wants it to, but it’s true. Rey knows—or Jyn hopes she knows—that she won’t get in trouble for not having the most active social life. “She—one of her last foster families didn’t react well when she had issues at school. She knows she can talk to me. Sometimes she just doesn’t remember I won’t be angry.”

Cassian scuffs a hand over his stubble, and doesn’t reply right away. He hasn’t quite blinked in the last minute or so. Jyn wonders if he’s trying to work out what to say.

“She doesn’t interact with anyone in her homeroom class,” he says, finally. “And from what I can tell, she doesn’t seem particularly close to anyone in the school, aside from Finn. Like I said, I wouldn’t be too concerned about it—she’s new, and it seems like her home life is a strong support for her, just from what she’s said to me—but some of the other students are ostracizing her.”

It is not acceptable, Jyn tells herself, to want to punch small children. She still does, at least a little.

“It’s not that she’s not friendly, or that she’s had any particular issues with anyone outside of Armitage Hux, and that’s obviously being handled, it’s that the other kids are—not quite sure how to handle her, I think. Whether it’s because some of her behaviors are too unknown to them and they’re not used to her yet, or because of their own preconceptions about children on the spectrum, I’m not sure, but she doesn’t get a lot of interaction with students in any of her classes. She seems all right with it, for the most part, or used to it by now, but I’m—concerned.”

Jyn digests that, slowly. She sweeps hair back out of her eyes. Her knuckles are bruised and torn from getting caught in a motorcycle engine, and she can’t help noticing that Cassian notices. His eyes follow her hand back down to the arm of the chair, and then snap away.

“I was thinking both Rey and Finn might benefit from doing an after-school activity, actually,” he says. “To take Rey out of an academic context and see if she gets along with other students better. I’ve brought it up to her once or twice, but she’s been cagey.”

“I work two jobs,” Jyn blurts, and then feels stupid. “I think—I think she wants me to know that she’s home by a certain time. It helps both of us.”

“Understandable,” says Cassian. “I still think it might help her improve socially in the classroom, if she has a place to relax and do something interesting to her with other kids around. The robotics team might be good, but that’s intensive, and as good as she is at math, it’d probably be better to ease her into something more interactive, considering she’s had so many changes in her life over the years.”

That’s one way of saying she’d had twelve foster families in four years, Jyn thinks, but she wets her lips and keeps it between her teeth. “She’s probably told you, but she likes history. And science fiction. And—learning about the world, I suppose. I don’t—know too much about what the school offers for extracurricular stuff along those lines, but—”

Cassian’s eyes flicker again, and Jyn stops. He’s quiet, debating, before he says, “There’s a history club.”

“History club?”

“Yeah.” He hesitates. “We’re not too highly ranked, at the moment—there’s another private school that goes to nationals every year—but it’s a tight-knit group of kids. Rose Tico, from Finn’s history class, is in it as well. I think I’ve seen her and Rey talking, once or twice. A handful of other students. I—didn’t want to suggest it immediately, I wanted your input, but—”

“It might work.”

“I run it,” Cassian says, after an even longer pause. “I don’t know if that’s a dealbreaker.”

There’s something there that she can’t afford to chase, right now. Jyn says, “You’re her favorite teacher. I’m sure she’d be fine with it.”

They look at each other again, in silence. Jyn almost says, Thank you for caring about my kids. She keeps her mouth shut tight on that.  

“What else do we have to talk about?”  

[mommabearclarke]

House Pride

Rated: GA Summary: Bellamy and Clarke fight a lot over Harry Potter. Their friends scheme to get them together. Fun ensues. Author’s note:  I must be on a roll! Two drabbles in three days! This one is more a one-shot, but still short and sweet. Enjoy! Also on: ao3

“Clarke, for the last time, the way Dumbledore treated the Slytherins was completely fair! They basically did it to themselves with their racism, classism, sexism, and ableism!”

Clarke rubbed her eyes hard enough to gauge them out, but it didn’t deter her. “That was one faction of Slytherins! Death eaters! Not every Slytherin is pure evil, Bellamy!”

Bellamy let out an exclamation of annoyance. “That is such a Slytherin thing to say, Griffin!”

“House pride!” yelled Clarke back.

They were sitting on opposite ends of the room, both red-faced and huffy. Their age-old Harry Potter argument had once again resurfaced when Jasper had been foolish enough to suggest Harry Potter-themed trivia. It had taken them about two minutes into the game to start shouting at each other, and their friends were now sitting in between, looking extremely uncomfortable. Raven was the only one who only looked exasperated. As Bellamy’s sister’s and Clarke’s roommate she had heard them going at it too many times to be annoyed at it anymore.

“Are you saying that every Gryffindor is heroic and brave and good?” Clarke shouted.

“Just about, yeah!” Bellamy countered.

Clarke scoffed. “Peter Pettigrew!”

“Was an outlier and should not have been counted!”

Monty turned to Jasper. “This is your fault,” he muttered. Jasper looked miserable, shaking his head in dismay. “This is why we never play Harry Potter-trivia with the both of them in the same room, Jordan. Lesson learned.” Wells leaned in from the side, grinning at both of them, and Monty rolled his eyes. “Are you enjoying this?”

Wells shrugged. “Just a bit.” Raven hit him on the back of the head, but it lacked real heat. Wells was the only one who was ever spared the full force of Raven Reyes’ smacks.

Meanwhile, the two hotheads were still at it. Clarke was practically spitting fire. “You are so narrow-minded, Bellamy, I can’t even! The world is not so black-and-white, Blake! The world is not divided in Death Eaters and good people!”

“Slytherin was born from racism and classicism! Salazar Slytherin started the whole thing by only allowing Pure Bloods into the school!”

“And because the founder of the House did a bad thing, automatically means that the thousands upon thousands of students, kids, are evil, too?!”

“Yeah!” said Bellamy with a sanctimonious little nod, apparently satisfied that Clarke had gotten his point.

Clarke dropped her head into her arms and groaned in frustration. “Why do I love you?!”

A complete silence fell over the group. Every head turned to Clarke, who was still sitting with her head in her arms, shaking her head in dismay. Octavia and Raven were grinning, Wells silently held out his hand to Monty, who grumbled and put a twenty in it. Murphy looked mildly surprised, and Emori was just staring.

Bellamy looked star-struck. His mouth was hanging open, his eyes staring unblinkingly at Clarke, and at a complete loss for words.

It took Clarke a full two minutes to realize that nobody was speaking. Slowly, she raised her head from her arms and looked at each of them in turn. “What?” she said, as her eyes landed on Bellamy. He tried to speak, but after opening and closing his mouth a couple of times, he gave up and continued gazing.

Octavia took pity on her brother. “Eh, you kinda just told Bell that you loved him.”

Clarke’s mouth dropped comically. “What?” She looked to Raven in confirmation, who grinned and shrugged.

“Kinda did, babe,” she said, without sounding the least bit sorry or even embarrassed for Clarke, which Clarke thought bordered on high treason.

She looked at her friends in turn. Wells was grinning proudly, waving his twenty in front of Monty’s face, who looked grumpy but had a small smile on his lips. Emori and John had stopped paying attention and were feeding each other grapes, but Murphy had class enough to nod in confirmation at Clarke.

“Oh, my God,” she muttered in horror. “Bell...”

Bellamy looked up, still star-struck, but his eyes were slowly gaining a light she hadn’t seen in them for a long time. “You...you love me?” he said, sounding both scared and amazed.

Fear gripped her heart, and she tried to find a way out, any way out. “I mean...I don’t...I didn’t mean...” Her voice faltered. The look on his face of pure adoration and emotion was heart-stopping, and she suddenly felt all her fears melting like snow. “I – yeah.”

The other kept as quiet as possible, knowing that if they made a sound, they could break the spell and ruin their entire plan.

“Clarke...” Bellamy muttered. His eyes were now searching her face, as if to look for any hesitation. She had never seen him look so happy, amazed, shocked, and surprised before. “Really?”

“Yeah,” she repeated, and slowly, a smile spread across her face. “You know, normally, if a person says ‘I love you’, they expect some kind of response...” Before she could finish her sentence, Bellamy had surged forward and cut her off with his mouth.

They were kissing.

Clarke could hardly believe it. After two full years of pining and altogether awful timing on both their parts, the world finally seemed to fall into place. His hands cupped her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks as he kissed her, and she gave as good as she got. Her hands quickly found his hair, intend on doing what they had been itching to do since forever. Revelling in the fact that she could touch his hair, run his hand through those soft curls, she deepened the kiss, pushing herself up on her knees to make herself slightly taller than him.

Suddenly, there was an outburst of cheering and whooping, startling them both. Their friends, finally deeming it safe to open their mouths, were actually cheering them on as they kissed. Bellamy smiled into her mouth, but didn’t stop, and Clarke decided it would be a damn shame if she did, so the kiss continued.

It seemed to last forever, yet not nearly long enough, but in the end, they had to break apart. Sheepishly, they looked around at their friends, who were all grinning, Jasper most of all. He and Wells high-fived and whooped, startling Monty. “Told you it would work!” Jasper said. “Something primal and disgusting happens when they argue over Harry Potter Houses! Bound to result in either kissing or hate sex!”

Clarke cringed, one of her hands still in Bellamy’s hair with no intention of ever letting it from her fingers. “Ew, Jazz!” she exclaimed.

Monty narrowed his eyes at Jasper. “You suggested Harry Potter trivia on purpose?”

“Duh,” Jasper said, rolling his eyes, and holding out his hand to Wells, who dropped a ten dollar bill into his hand. “Did you really think I didn’t know about this Harry Potter kink? Wells roped me into this bet of yours the moment it started!”

Bellamy looked aghast. “You bet on us getting together?”

“On you two ending up together by fighting so much over Harry Potter, yeah,” Monty said, a tone of resentment in his voice. “You couldn’t have gone on a date first, could you? This cost me twenty bucks!”

Clarke grinned. “Serves you right for betting on us getting together.”

Bellamy nodded in agreement, then looked up at Clarke with soft eyes. “Now that he mentions it, would you like going on a date with me sometimes, Griffin?”

“As long as you leave your wrong opinions at the door, Blake,” she said, with a teasing smile on her face.

“Done,” he said with a smile, before kissing her again.

John let his head drop backwards with a groan. “Great job, Jasper. You made them even more disgusting.”

Everyone laughed, and Clarke and Bellamy broke their kiss, giggling. Clarke leaned her forehead against his and smiled. “We are kinda disgusting, aren’t we?” she muttered.

“The most disgusting,” Bellamy agreed.

----------

                                                          Nate <3

                                                              Guess what you missed at game night?

They kissed?

                                                                                                                     Yup.

So we’re out twenty bucks, huh?

                                                                                                                     Yup.

Fuck.