Hey hey I need to uuh hum fight you at the back of a Denny's or something over those tags on my cyberpunk post lile wtf? That's such a good analysis of his character I love your work a lot in general but this is doing me in I'm gonna cry, you're so fucking right about this dumb broken man 🥺😠
I will not fight you I will bake you a cake and give you a kiss because you're very sweet I appreciate your kindness 😘
I really love your perspective on Johnny's disabilities and addictions impacting how he sees and interacts with the world-- as someone who herself isn't disabled I tend to overlook the way people view the world through that lens and as a result have realized that I haven't touched upon it much in my own analysis of Cyberpunk, and your insight really was spot-on and spoke to me in a way I hadn't considered before.
I talk a lot about the themes and meta of the game but Pondsmith himself came out and said, like, before the game came out that Johnny is not the hero of the story. He THINKS he's the hero of the story but the way people and even himself idolize him and his actions are in many ways his biggest shortcoming. Johnny is addicted to the image of himself, much like he's addicted to his vices and addicted to his cause. He needs his anchors no matter how detrimental they are to him, but in many respects those anchors were never his choice. Now he's stuck in his place, dug in and unable to move, and that's the way he dies. Alone, unmoored, and stuck in his ways.
He's a very tragic and even empathetic character-- I do understand why he does the things he does and feel for him when he suffers tragedies-- but treating him as a hero of this story is wrong, in my opinion. He's a disabled, traumatized war veteran who was set up in life to fail at a very early age. His flaws are of his own making. They are not of his own design.
do people truly not understand that being tied, by blood, to asunaro is like. one of the worst fates someone can have. it’s intrinsically a tragedy; and writing this out doesn’t immediately intend to inspire sympathy...
Random but it feels important to say but I just watched this tiktok and this guy said that someone empathizing with another person by telling them a story about how they experienced the same thing is a red flag and, I quote, “love how you’re making things about yourself”, and I just really need y’all to understand that there is a difference between someone deflecting from what you’re going through and trying to put attention on themselves and a neurodivergent person trying to prove to you that yes they can personally relate to you and empathize with what you’re going through because of a similar experience. That’s not trying to “make things about themselves”, that’s genuinely trying to make you feel seen and like you have someone who is there and understands at least to some degree besties.
the inability of the people on here to play pretend there is no infection in the reality of my post !!! i am tenderly feeding my mutuals berries and kissing them on their foreheads while they relax stop saying you’d die or kill them !!!
idk what the hell anyone is talking about in the notes of that 'one who will inevitably destroy me' post except for the people who said killing eve, who are right and have good taste
(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)
An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:
(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)
I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:
IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.
You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:
HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:
First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.
Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.
Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.
In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.
In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:
I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.
In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.
Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.
Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!
NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!
when I talk about how the last three days have been a massive wake-up call for Jews in the diaspora, I mean stuff like realizing the broader extent that many people, including those with little knowledge or contact with Jews, genuinely have internalized some kind of ideology as Jews as controlling the “world state” and media, and then I mean stuff like this:
ah yes. Stuff from modern tumblr accounts run by young-ish people, who have a mental backlog, it seems, of “jokes” about Israeli Jews as being rich landlords in New York/New Jersey. Now, one of the most consistent rage inducing goy-takes is the suggestion Israelis just move back to where they came from, but this isn’t that.
Because the rich New Yorker landlord jokes aren’t even tangentially attached to the ideology of Zionism or the state of Israel as entity and location. They’re just antisemitic jokes about Jews in general, tied into much older strains of antisemitic thought around Jews and money and *actually being in control.* to make this kind of joke the joker has to draw a linear collection between Jews as a whole and the Israelis they Don’t like, and trust that their friends Make that connection in order to find it funny. This is why the coverage and discussion has been in so many ways stomachs churning from the diaspora - it shows that people linearly connect all Jews to the state of Israel, and that not only does realllly old timey wildly pre-state antisemitic rhetoric have a voice, it has young people who consider to find it valid and an appropriate addition to modern political discussions
for a few years now (like since at least 2021) i’ve been occasionally seeing isolated individuals try on “AFAB trans woman”, “AFAB transfem”, “AMAB trans man”, “AMAB transmasc” and dreading the possibility of this becoming an inclus/exclus thing where there’s a huge vicious debate and a ton of people develop calcified stances that it’s “valid” because they are straight ticket voters on uses of language being “valid”. i’ve recently come across multiple fairly high-note promotions of each of 1) yeah, sure, anyone can be a trans woman (normal understanding of the language of AGAB, replaces meaning of “trans woman” with “someone who is a woman and also trans” or, worse “someone who identifies with the vibe of trans womanhood”) and 2) your AGAB is whatever you decide it is, maybe even a neolabel (completely opposite the concept of gender assignment at birth). i’m crossing my fingers that these uses somehow go no further, or that if they do the ensuing fight blows over quickly.
as an individual topic, it’s frustrating because it points to the complete failure on a lot of people’s parts to absorb or understand the basic premises of this idea of transgender.
we live in a world where, when humans are born, the adults around them decide what role they are going to have in a system of male/female boy/girl man/woman. usually they pick based on a quick look at the child’s external genitalia. if the quick look doesn’t match their idea of what a baby boy or baby girl is supposed to look like, they might or might not do further physical investigation, and either way they will pick a role for the child. if the child doesn’t look one of the ways expected, they might enforce this decision through surgery to conform the child’s body to their ideal for the role they chose. whether the decision was immediate or after deliberation, whether surgery was performed or not performed, this process of role picking is coercive. a first act of coercion in a childhood of coercion in a lifetime of coercion.
children are raised to the roles they were assigned. sometimes this involves the deliberate imposition of a lot of restrictions and expectations about how the child will look and behave, sometimes fewer, sometimes almost none but that they will agree that they are what the adults said they were. even if it is only the last, the child will sooner or later feel the weight of much greater expectations, because they will become aware that wider society says girls should look girly and do girl things and boys should look boyish and do boy things. sometimes it becomes apparent that a child’s body is growing to not match the adults’ idea of what a male body or a female body is supposed to look like or do. if this happens, the adults might allow or force the child to switch roles, might ease or double down on their expectations, and might or might not give the child a choice in whether they biomedically intervene in the child’s physical development.
sometimes, a person grows to refuse the role they were assigned and adopt a new one. sometimes they only refuse the role they were assigned. sometimes they only adopt a new one. sometimes they only refuse the expectations and restrictions. sometimes they refuse being a boy-male-man or girl-female-woman. sometimes they first do this as a child, sometimes as an adolescent, sometimes as an adult. sometimes they conform to the expectations and restrictions for the role they adopt on purpose, other times less so, other times not at all. sometimes they seek to change their body. rejecting one’s assigned role is an opportunity to escape the pain of the old coercion and find new joys in new, chosen ways of being.
to adopt a new role is simultaneously to adopt that role and to adopt the social position of a role-adopter and the social position of one-who-has-moved-from-that-role-to-this-role. these social positions come with expectations and restrictions in addition to the ones associated with the role adopted. having rejected the assigned role, more possibilities are available to a person. there is a great deal of free choice available for those who are willing to make it. sometimes there are special roles that are never assigned at birth and can only be taken on by someone conscious enough to choose.
gender assignment at birth isn’t an identity, it’s an act of coercion. trans womanhood isn’t a feeling, it’s a particular confluence of adoption and abandonment in a social system premised on gender assignment.
the prospect of discourse fights over “AFAB trans girls” and etc. is unpleasant because they’ll suck super bad and exhaust tons of people for nothing, but more present and disturbing is this even being an issue. understanding the nature of gender assignment is such a keystone in trans theory that i genuinely do not know what models of transness people are functioning on without it.
one piece is genuinely the only series that i can think of that puts its money where its mouth is in regards to its message of "family doesn't end in blood, and chosen families are no less important or valid than biological families"
Of the ten main cast members, six of them come from adopted families, in addition to many more characters in the supporting cast
What is widely regarded as one of the best arcs in the entire series (marineford) revolves around a character trying desperately to save his adopted brother from execution. The entire world knows that they're not blood related, but even the marines (their sworn enemies, the people trying to kill them) still refer to them as brothers
One of the four strongest pirate captains in the world refers to his crewmembers as his children, and they all call him their father
One of the main characters looks his biological father in the eye, and tells him that the only reason he's still alive is that he didn't want his (adopted) father to be disappointed in him for letting his bio family die
Family, both chosen and biologically related, is one of the core themes of this series, and the way it's portrayed is so diverse and lovely and healing
(I'm writing this as a trans non-binary person btw)
Basically: "Transmen are only depressed females who are ashamed of being women" In other screenshots, she has another pfp, which people already knew she had a Blitz pfp, people thought it was fake cause of the moe pfp. But right here there was proved it was her. Dates match up and all. This is all in 2023!
This is directly from Ken btw, who they were friends with- and worked on Hazbin. Also wrote a most of the fucking pilot and got ""additional writing" credits... plus the Cherry bomb thing too!
"I honestly believe it's incredibly rare, VALID as hell, but rare"
Based on this few messages alone, you should realize her ""acceptance"" of trans-people is selective as fuck. She also NEEDED to state the trans people are rare, so bad here too. I as a trans person, I have always considered this a BIG red flag! Because people who say that are ready to invalidate others on the idea of "trans people are rare, you must not be trans because you don't fit my standard!"
Here she is using She/Her on Ken who uses only They/Them. She already knew Ken as a friend, so the misgendering here is just rotten.
All of this is recent as fuck! Since Hazbin was getting made until 2023! This one below, of Salem, shows xe experienced the same thing during the start of Helluva Boss. (Below there is a link to a threat talking about Viv being terrible to xem!)
Here also seems to be another trans character, from millie's siblings! Designed to be transmasc?
Oh fuck me, never mind! They changed his design to be a cis male imp.
I have already talked about how I personally feel about how Sallie may is treated! Viv treats all trans characters and people terrible, and she has something against transmasc people specially. -And for someone so selectively transphobic, with all of her comments-she is transphobic against Non-binary people! I mean, she already didn't respect the usage of them/they pronouns, so... She can not go around saying this shit of telling queer stories and people who critique me are being homophobic WHEN SHE IS LIKE THIS.
This is older, too! Viv has being transphobic back then and still is! Drawing a caricature of a transman you don't like -like this!?
This is a meme video that Vivziepop did too. This is rotten. People sure can change, but this woman has being transphobic over 10 years, like... I don't know how old is this character but- you can search fan art of this character since 2015...