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Careful How You Go.

Ella Kemp explores how film lovers can protect themselves from distressing subject matter while celebrating cinema at its most audacious.

Featuring Empire magazine editor Terri White, Test Pattern filmmaker Shatara Michelle Ford, writer and critic Jourdain Searles, publicist Courtney Mayhew, and curator, activist and producer Mia Bays of the Birds’ Eye View collective.

This story contains discussion of rape, sexual assault, abuse, self-harm, trauma and loss of life, as well as spoilers for ‘Promising Young Woman’ and ‘A Star is Born’.

We film lovers are blessed with a medium capable of excavating real-life emotion from something seemingly fictional. Yet, for all that film is—in the oft-quoted words of Roger Ebert—an “empathy machine”, it’s also capable of deeply hurting its audience when not wielded by its makers and promoters with appropriate care. Or, for that matter, when not approached by viewers with informed caution.

Whose job is it to let us know that we might be upset by what we see? With the coronavirus pandemic decimating the communal movie-going experience, the way we accommodate each viewer’s sensibilities is more crucial than ever—especially when so many of us are watching alone, at home, often unsupported.

In order to understand how we can champion a film’s content and take care of its audience, I approached women in several areas of the movie ecosystem. I wanted to know: how does a filmmaker approach the filming of a rape and its aftermath? How does a magazine editor navigate the celebration of a potentially triggering movie in one of the world’s biggest film publications? How does a freelance writer speak to her professional interests while preserving her personal integrity? How does a women’s film collective create a safe environment for an audience to process such a film? And, how does a publicist prepare journalists for careful reporting, when their job is to get eyeballs on screens in order to keep our favorite art form afloat?

The conversations reminded me that the answers are endlessly complex. The concerns over spoilers, the effectiveness of trigger warnings, the myriad ways in which art is crafted from trauma, and the fundamental question of whose stories these are to tell. These questions were valid decades ago, they will be for decades to come, and they feel especially urgent now, since a number of recent tales helmed by female and non-binary filmmakers depict violence and trauma involving women’s bodies in fearless, often challenging ways.

Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, in particular, has revived a vital conversation about content consideration, as victims and survivors of sexual assault record wildly different reactions to its astounding ending. Shatara Michelle Ford’s quietly tense debut, Test Pattern, brings Black survivors into the conversation. And the visceral, anti-wish-fulfillment horror Violation, coming soon from Dusty Mancinelli and Madeleine Sims-Fewer, takes the rape-revenge genre up another notch.

These films come off the back of other recent survivor stories, such as Michaela Coel’s groundbreaking series I May Destroy You (which centers women’s friendship in a narrative move that, as Sarah Williams has eloquently outlined, happens too rarely in this field). Also: Kata Wéber and Kornél Mundruczó’s Pieces of a Woman, and the ongoing ugh-ness of The Handmaid’s Tale. And though this article is focused on plots centering women’s trauma, I acknowledge the myriad of stories that can be triggering in many ways for all manner of viewers. So whether you’ve watched one of these titles, or others like them, I hope you felt supported in the conversations to follow, and that you feel seen.

Weruche Opia and Michaela Coel in ‘I May Destroy You’.

* * *

Simply put, Promising Young Woman is a movie about a woman seeking revenge against predatory men. Except nothing about it is simple. Revenge movies have existed for aeons, and we’ve rooted for many promising young (mostly white) women before Carey Mulligan’s Cassie (recently: Jen in Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge, Noelle in Natalia Leite’s M.F.A.). But in Promising Young Woman, the victim is not alive to seek revenge, so it becomes Cassie’s single-minded crusade. Mercifully, we never see the gang-rape that sparks Cassie’s mission. But we do see a daring, fatal subversion of the notion of a happy ending—and this is what has audiences of Emerald Fennell’s jaw-dropping debut divided.

“For me, being a survivor, the point is to survive,” Jourdain Searles tells me. The New York-based critic, screenwriter, comedian—and host of Netflix’s new Black Film School series—says the presence of death in Promising Young Woman is the problem. “One of the first times I spoke openly about [my assault], I made the decision that I didn’t want to go to the police, and I got a lot of judgment for that,” she says. “So watching Promising Young Woman and seeing the police as the endgame is something I’ve always disagreed with. I left thinking, ‘How is this going to help?’”

“I feel like I’ve got two hats on,” says Terri White, the London-based editor-in chief of Empire magazine, and the author of a recently published memoir, Coming Undone. “One of which is me creating a magazine for a specific film-loving audience, and the other bit of me, which has written a book about trauma, specifically about violence perpetrated against the body. They’re not entirely siloed, but they are two distinct perspectives.”

White loved both Promising Young Woman and I May Destroy You, because they “explode the myth of resolution and redemption”. She calls the ending of Promising Young Woman “radical” in the way it speaks to the reality of what happens to so many women. “I was thinking about me and women like me, women who have endured violence and injury or trauma. Three women every week are still killed [in the UK] at the hands of an ex-partner, or somebody they know intimately, or a current partner. Statistically, any woman who goes for some kind of physical confrontation in [the way Cassie does] would end up dying.”

She adds: “I felt like the film was in service to both victims and survivors, and I use the word ‘victims’ deliberately. I call myself a victim because I think if you’ve endured either sexual violence or physical violence or both, a lot of empowering language, as far as I’m concerned, doesn’t reflect the reality of being a victim or a survivor, whichever way you choose to call yourself.” This point has been one many have disagreed on. In a way, that makes sense—no victim or survivor can be expected to speak to anyone else’s experience but their own.

Carey Mulligan and Emerald Fennell on the set of ‘Promising Young Woman’.

Likewise, there is no right or wrong way to feel about this film, or any film. But a question that arises is, well, should everyone have to see a film to figure that out? And should victims and survivors of sexual violence watch this film? “I have definitely been picky about who I’ve recommended it to,” Courtney Mayhew says. “I don’t want to put a friend in harm’s way, even if that means they miss out on something awesome. It’s not worth it.”

Mayhew is a New Zealand-based international film publicist, and because of her country’s success in controlling Covid 19, she is one of the rare people able to experience Promising Young Woman in a sold-out cinema. “It was palpable. Everyone was so engaged and almost leaning forwards. There were a lot of laughs from women, but it was also a really challenging setting. A lot of people looking down, looking away, and there was a girl who was crying uncontrollably at the end.”

“Material can be very triggering,” White agrees. “It depends where people are personally in their journey. When I still had a lot of trauma I hadn’t worked through in my 20s, I found certain things very difficult to watch. Those things are a reality—but people can make their own decisions about the material they feel able to watch.”

It’s about warning, and preparation, more than total deprivation, then? “I believe in giving people information so they can make the best choice for themselves,” White says. “But I find it quite reductive, and infantilizing in some respects, to be told broadly, ‘Women who have experienced x shouldn’t watch this.’ That underestimates the resilience of some people, the thirst for more information and knowledge.” (This point is clearly made in this meticulous, awe-inspiring list by Jenn, who is on a journey to make sense of her trauma through analysis of rape-revenge films.) But clarity is crucial, particularly for those grappling with unresolved issues.

Searles agrees Promising Young Woman can be a difficult, even unpleasant watch, but still one with value. “As a survivor it did not make me feel good, but it gave me a window into the way other people might respond to your assault. A lot of the time [my friends] have reacted in ways I don’t understand, and the movie feels like it’s trying to make sense of an assault from the outside, and the complicated feelings a friend might have.”

Molly Parker and Vanessa Kirby in ‘Pieces of a Woman’.

* * *

A newborn dies. A character is brutally violated. A population is tortured. To be human is to bear witness to history, but it’s still painful when that history is yours, or something very close to it. “Some things are hard to watch because you relate to them,” Searles explains. “I find mother! hard to watch, and there’s no actual sexual assault. But I just think of sexual assault and trauma and domestic abuse, even though the film isn’t about that. The thing is, you could read an academic paper on patriarchy—you don’t need to watch it on a show [or in a film] if you don’t want to.”

White agrees: “I’ve never been able to watch Nil by Mouth, because I grew up in a house of domestic violence and I find physical violence against women on screen very hard to watch. But that doesn’t mean I think the film shouldn’t be shown—it should still exist, I’ve just made the choice not to watch it.” (Reader, since our conversation, she watched it. At 2:00am.)

“I know people who do not watch Promising Young Woman or The Handmaid’s Tale because they work for an NGO in which they see those things literally in front of their eyes,” Mayhew says. “It could be helpful for someone who isn’t aware [of those issues], but then what is the purpose of art? To educate? To entertain? For escapism? It’s probably all of those.”

Importantly, how much weight should an artist’s shoulders carry, when it comes to considering the audiences that will see their work? There’s a general agreement among my interviewees that, as White says, “filmmakers have to make the art that they believe in”. I don’t think any film lover would disagree, but, suggests Searles, “these films should be made with survivors in mind. That doesn’t mean they always have to be sensitive and sad and declawed. But there is a way to be provocative, while leaning into an emotional truth.”

Madeleine Sims-Fewer in ‘Violation’.

Violation, about which I’ll say little here since it is yet to screen at SXSW (ahead of its March 25 release on Shudder) is not at all declawed, and is certainly made with survivors in mind—in the sense that in life, unlike in movies, catharsis is very seldom possible no matter how far you go to find it. On Letterboxd, many of those who saw Violation at TIFF and Sundance speak of feeling represented by the rape-revenge plot, writing: “One of the most intentionally thought out and respectful of the genre… made by survivors for survivors” and “I feel seen and held”. (Also: “This movie is extremely hard to watch, completely on purpose.”)

“Art can do great service to people,” agrees White, “If, by consequence, there is great service for people who have been in that position, that’s a brilliant consequence. But I don’t believe filmmakers and artists should be told that they are responsible for certain things. There’s a line of responsibility in terms of being irresponsible, especially if your community is young, or traumatised.”

Her words call to mind Bradley Cooper’s reboot of A Star is Born, which many cinephiles knew to be a remake and therefore expected its plot twist, but young filmgoers, drawn by the presence of Lady Gaga, were shocked (and in some cases triggered) by a suicide scene. When it was released, Letterboxd saw many anguished reviews from younger members. In New Zealand, an explicit warning was added to the film’s classification by the country’s chief censor (who also created an entirely new ‘RP18’ classification for the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, which eventually had a graphic suicide scene edited out two years after first landing on the streaming service).

“There is a duty of care to audiences, and there is also a duty of care to artists and filmmakers,” says Mayhew. “There’s got to be some way of meeting in the middle.” The middle, perhaps, can be identified by the filmmaker’s objective. “It’s about feeling safe in the material,” says Mia Bays of the Birds’ Eye View film collective, which curates and markets films by women in order to effect industry change. “With material like this, it’s beholden on creatives to interrogate their own intentions.”

Filmmaker Shatara Michelle Ford is “forever interrogating” ideas of power. Their debut feature, Test Pattern, deftly examines the power differentials that inform the foundations of consent. “As an artist, human, and person who has experienced all sorts of boundary violation, assault and exploitation in their life, I spend quite a lot of time thinking about power… It is something I grapple with in my personal life, and when I arrive in any workplace, including a film set.”

In her review of Test Pattern for The Hollywood Reporter, Searles writes, “This is not a movie about sexual assault as an abstract concept; it’s a movie about the reality of a sexual assault survivor’s experience.” Crucially, in a history of films that deal largely with white women’s experiences, Test Pattern “is one of the few sexual-assault stories to center a Black woman, with her Blackness being central to her experience and the way she is treated by the people around her.”

Brittany S. Hall in ‘Test Pattern’.

* * *

Test Pattern follows the unfolding power imbalance between Renesha (Brittany S. Hall) and her devoted white boyfriend Evan (Will Brill), as he drives her from hospital to hospital in search of a rape kit, after her drink was spiked by a white man in a bar who then raped her. Where Promising Young Woman is a millennial-pink revenge fantasy of Insta-worthy proportions, Test Pattern feels all too real, and the cops don’t come off as well as they do in the former.

Ford does something very important for the audience: they begin the film just as the rape is about to occur. We do not see it at this point (we do not really ever see it), but we know that it happened, so there’s no chance that, somewhere deeper into the story, when we’re much more invested, we’ll be side-swiped by a sudden onslaught of sexual violence. In a way, it creates a safe space for our journey with Renesha.

It’s one of many thoughtful decisions made by Ford throughout the production process. “I’m in direct conversation with film and television that chooses to depict violence against women so casually,” Ford tells me. “I intentionally showed as little of Renesha’s rape as humanly possible. I also had an incredibly hard time being physically present for that scene, I should add. What I did shoot was ultimately guided by Renesha’s experience of it. Shoot only what she would remember. Show only what she would have been aware of.

“But I also made it clear that this was a violation of her autonomy, by allowing moments where we have an arm’s length point of view. I let the camera sit with the audience, as I’m also saying, as the filmmaker, this happened, and you saw enough of it to know. This, for me, is a larger commentary on how we treat victims of assault and rape. I do not believe for one goddamn minute that we need to see the actual, literal violence to know what happened. When we flagrantly replicate the violence in film and television, we are supporting the cultural norm of needing ‘all of the evidence’—whatever that means—to ‘believe women’.”

Ford’s intentional work in crafting the romance and unraveling of Test Pattern’s leading couple pays off on screen, but their stamp as an invested and careful director also shows in their work with Drew Fuller, the actor who played Mike, the rapist. “It’s a very difficult role, and I’m grateful to him for taking it so seriously. When discussing and rendering the practice and non-practice of consent intentionally, I found it helpful to give it a clear definition and provide conceptual insight.

“I sent Drew a few articles that I used as tools to create a baseline understanding when it comes to exploring consent and power on screen. At the top of that list was Lili Loofbourow’s piece, The female price of male pleasure and Zhana Vrangalova's Teen Vogue piece, Everything You Need to Know about Consent that You Never Learned in Sex Ed. The latter in my opinion is the linchpin. There’s also Jude Elison Sady Doyle’s piece about the whole Aziz Ansari thing, which is a great primer.”

Sidney Flanigan in ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’.

Even when a filmmaker has given Ford’s level of care and attention to their project, what happens when the business end of the industry gets involved in the art? As we well know, marketing is a film’s window dressing. It has one job: to get eyeballs into the cinema. It can’t know if every viewer should feel safe to enter.

It would be useful, with certain material, to know how we should watch, and with whom, and what might we need in the way of support coming out. Whose job is it to provide this? Beyond the crude tool of an MPAA rating (and that’s a whole sorry tale for another day), there are many creative precautions that can be taken across the industry to safeguard a filmgoer’s experience.

Mayhew, who often sees films at the earliest stages (sometimes before a final cut, sometimes immediately after), speaks to journalists in early screenings and ensures they have the tools to safely report on the topics raised. In New Zealand, reporters are encouraged to read through resources to help them guide their work. Mayhew’s teams would also ensure journalists would be given relevant hotline numbers, and would ask media outlets to include them in published stories.

“It’s not saying, ‘You have to do this’,” she explains, “It’s about first of all not knowing what the journalist has been through themselves, and second of all, [if] they are entertainment reporters who haven’t navigated speaking about sexual assault, you only hope it will be helpful going forward. It’s certainly not done to infantilize them, because they’re smart people. It’s a way to show some care and support.”

The idea of having appropriate resources to make people feel safe and encourage them to make their own decisions is a priority for Bays and Birds’ Eye View, as well. The London-based creative producer and cultural activist stresses the importance of sharing such a viewing experience. “It’s the job of cinemas, distributors and festivals to realize that it might not be something the filmmaker does, but as the people in control of the environment it’s our job to give extra resources to those who want it,” says Bays. “To give people a safe space to come down from the experience.”

Pre-pandemic, when Birds’ Eye View screened Kitty Green’s The Assistant, a sharp condemnation of workplace micro-aggressions seen through the eyes of one female assistant, they invited women who had worked for Harvey Weinstein. For a discussion after Eliza Hittman’s coming-of-ager Never Rarely Sometimes Always, abortion experts were able to share their knowledge. “It’s about making sure the audience knows you can say anything here, but that it’s safe,” Bays explains. “It’s kind of like group therapy—you don’t know people, so you’re not beholden to what they think about you. And in the cinema people aren’t looking at you. You’re speaking somewhat anonymously, so a lot of really important stuff can come out.”

The traditional movie-going experience, involving friends, crowds and cathartic, let-loose feelings, is still largely inaccessible at the time of writing. Over the past twelve months we’ve talked plenty about preserving the magic of the big screen experience, but it’s about so much more than the romanticism of an art form; it’s also about the safety that comes from a feeling of community when watching potentially upsetting movies.

“The going in and coming out parts of watching a film in the cinema are massively important, because it’s like coming out of the airlock and coming back to reality,” says Bays. “You can’t do that at home. Difficult material kind of stays with you.” During the pandemic, Birds’ Eye View has continued to provide the same wrap-around curatorial support for at-home viewers as they would at an in-person event. “If we’re picking a difficult film and asking people to watch it at home, we might suggest you watch it with a friend so you can speak about it afterwards,” Bays says.

Julia Garner in ‘The Assistant’.

But, then, how can we still find this sense of community without the physical closeness? “It’s no good waiting for [the internet] to become kind,” she says. “Create your own closed spaces. We do workshops and conversations exclusively for people who sign up to our newsletter. In real-life meetings you can go from hating something to hearing an eloquent presentation of another perspective and coming round to it, but you need the time and space to do that. This little amount of time gives you a move towards healing, even if it’s just licking some wounds that were opened on Twitter. But it could be much deeper, like being a survivor and feeling very conflicted about the film, which I do.”

Conflict is something that Searles, the film critic, knows about all too well in her work. “Since I started writing professionally, I almost feel like I’m known for writing about assault and rape at this point. I do write about it a lot, and as a survivor I continue to process it. I’ve been assaulted more than once so I have a lot to process, and so each time I’m writing about it I’m thinking about different aspects and remnants of those feelings. It can be very cathartic, but it’s a double-edged sword because sometimes I feel like I have an obligation to write about it too.”

There is also a constant act of self-preservation that comes with putting so much of yourself on the internet. “I often get messages from people thanking me for talking about these subjects with a deep understanding of what they mean,” Searles says. “I really appreciate that. I get negative messages about a lot of things, but not this one thing.”

Michaela Coel in ‘I May Destroy You’.

* * *

With such thoughtful approaches to heavy content, it feels like we’re a long way further down the road from blunt tools like content and trigger warnings. But do they still have their place? “It’s just never seemed appropriate to put trigger warnings on any of our reviews or features,” White explains. “We have a heavy male readership, still 70 percent male to 30 percent female. I’m conscious we’re talking to a lot of men who will often have experienced violence themselves, but we don’t put any warnings, because we are an adult magazine, and when we talk about violence in, say, an action film, or violence that is very heavily between men, we don’t caveat that at all.”

Bays, too, is sceptical of trigger warnings, explaining that “there’s not much evidence [they] actually work. A lot of psychologists expound on the fact that if people get stuck in their trauma, you can never really recover from PTSD if you don’t at some point face your trauma.” She adds: “I’m a survivor, and I found I May Destroy You deeply, profoundly triggering, but also cathartic. I think it’s more about how you talk about the work, rather than having a ‘NB: survivors of sexual abuse or assault shouldn’t see this’.”

“It’s important to give people a feel of what they’re in for,” argues Searles. “A lot of people who have dealt with suicide ideation would prefer that warning.” While some worry that a content warning is effectively a plot spoiler, Searles disagrees. “I don’t consider a content warning a spoiler. I just couldn’t imagine sitting down for a film, knowing there’s going to be a suicide, and letting it distract me from the film.” Still, she acknowledges the nuance. “I think using ‘self-harm’ might be better than just saying ‘suicide’.”

Mayhew shared insights on who actually decides which films on which platforms are preceded with warnings—turns out, it’s a bit messy. “The onus traditionally has fallen on governmental censorship when it comes to theatrical releases,” she explains. “But streamers can do what they want, they are not bound by those rules so they have to—as the distributors and broadcasters—take the government’s censors on board in terms of how they are going to navigate it.

“The consumer doesn’t know the difference,” she continues, “nor should they—so it means they can be watching The Crown on Netflix and get this trigger warning about bulimia, and go to the cinema the next day and not get it, and feel angry about it. So there’s the question of where is the responsibility of the distributor, and where is the responsibility of the audience member to actually find out for themselves.”

The warnings given to an audience member can also vary widely depending where they find themselves in the world, too. Promising Young Woman, for example, is rated M in Australia, R18 in New Zealand, and R in the United States. Meanwhile, the invaluable Common Sense Media recommends an age of fifteen years and upwards for the “dark, powerful, mature revenge comedy”. Mayhew says a publicist’s job is “to have your finger on the pulse” about these cultural differences. “You have to read the overall room, and when I say room I mean the culture as a whole, and you have to be constantly abreast of things across those different ages too.”

She adds: “This feeds into the importance of representation right at the top of those boardrooms and right down to the film sets. My job is to see all opinions, and I never will, especially because I am a white woman. I consider myself part of the LGBT community and sometimes I’ll bring that to a room that I think has been lacking in that area, when it comes to harmful stereotypes that can be propagated within films about LGBT people. But I can’t bring a Black person’s perspective, I cannot bring an Indigenous perspective. The more representation you have, the better your film is going to be, your campaign is going to be.”

Bays, who is also a filmmaker, agrees: representation is about information, and working with enough knowledge to make sure your film is being as faithful to your chosen communities as possible. “As a filmmaker, I’d feel ill-informed and misplaced if I was stumbling into an area of representation that I knew nothing about without finding some tools and collaborators who could bring deeper insight.”

Carey Mulligan and Bo Burnham in ‘Promising Young Woman’.

This is something Ford aimed for with Test Pattern’s choice of crew members, which had an effect not just on the end product, but on the entire production process. “I made sure that at the department head level, I was hiring people I was in community with and fully saw me as a person, and me them,” they say. “In some ways it made the experience more pleasurable.” That said, the shoot was still not without its incidents: “These were the types of things that in my experience often occur on a film set dominated by straight white men, that we're so accustomed to we sometimes don’t even notice it. I won’t go into it but what I will say is that it was not tolerated.”

Vital to the telling of the story were the lived experiences that Ford and their crew brought to set. “As it applies to the sensitive nature of this story, there were quite a few of us who have had our own experiences along the spectrum of assault, which means that we had to navigate our own internal re-processing of those experiences, which is hard to do when we’re constructing an experience of rape for a character.

“However, I think being able to share our own triggers and discomfort and context, when it came to Renesha’s experience, made the execution of it all the better. Again, it was a pleasure to be in community with such smart, talented and considerate women who each brought their own nuance to this film.”

* * *

Thinking about everything we’ve lived through by this point in 2021, and the heightened sensitivity and lowered mental health of film lovers worldwide, movies are carrying a pretty heavy burden right now: to, as Jane Fonda said at the Golden Globes, help us see through others’ eyes; also, to entertain or, at the very least, not upset us too much.

But to whom does film have a responsibility, really? Promising Young Woman’s writer-director Emerald Fennell, in an excellent interview with Vulture’s Angelica Jade Bastién, said that she was thinking of audiences when she crafted the upsetting conclusion.

What she was thinking was: a ‘happy’ ending for Cassie gets us no further forward as a society. Instead, Cassie’s shocking end “makes you feel a certain way, and it makes you want to talk about it. It makes you want to examine the film and the society that we live in. With a cathartic Hollywood ending, that’s not so much of a conversation, really. It’s a kind of empty catharsis.”

So let’s flip the question: what is our responsibility, as women and allies, towards celebrating audacious films about tricky subjects? The marvellous, avenging blockbusters that once sucked all the air out of film conversation are on pause, for now. Consider the space that this opens up for a different kind of approach to “must-see movies”. Spread the word about Test Pattern. Shout from the rooftops about It’s A Sin. Add Body of Water and Herself and Violation to your watchlists. And, make sure the right people are watching.

Brittany S. Hall and Will Brill in ‘Test Pattern’.

I asked my interviewees: if they could choose one type of person they think should see Promising Young Woman, who would it be? Ford has not seen Fennell’s film, but “it feels good to have my film contribute to a larger discourse that is ever shifting, ever adding nuance”. They are very clear on who can learn the most from their own movie.

“A white man is featured so prominently in Test Pattern as a statement about how white people and men have a habit of centering themselves in the stories of others, prioritizing their experience and neglecting to recognize those on the margins. If Evan is triggering, he should be. If your feelings about Evan vacillate, it is by design.

“‘Allies’ across the spectrum are in a complicated dance around doing the ‘right thing’ and ‘showing up’ for those they are ostensibly seeking to support,” Ford continues. “Their constant battle is to remember that they need to be centering the needs of those they were never conditioned to center. Tricky stuff. Mistakes will be made. Mistakes must be owned. Sometimes reconciliation is required.”

It is telling that similar thoughts emerged from my other interviewees regarding Promising Young Woman’s ideal audience, despite the fact that none of them was in conversation with the others for this story. For that reason, as we come to the end of this small contribution to a very large, ongoing conversation, I’ve left their words intact.

White: I think it’s a great film for men.

Searles: I feel like the movie is very much pointed at cisgender heterosexual men.

Mayhew: Men.

White: We’re always warned about the alpha male with a massive ego, but we’re not warned about the beta male who reads great books, listens to great records, has great film recommendations. But he probably slyly undermines you in a completely different way. Anybody can be a predator.

Searles: The actors chosen to play these misogynist, rape culture-perpetuating men are actors we think of as nice guys.

White: We are so much more tolerant of a man knocking the woman over the head, dragging her down an alley and raping her, because we understand that. But rape culture is made up of millions of small things that enable the people who do it. We are more likely to be attacked in our own homes by men we love than a stranger in the street.

Mayhew: The onus should not fall on women to call this out.

Searles: It’s not just creeps, like the ones you see usually in these movies. It’s guys like you. What are you going to do to make sure you’re not like this?

Related content

Sex Monsters, Rape Revenge and Trauma: a work-in-progress list

Rape and Revenge: a list of films that fall into, and play with, the genre

Unconsenting Media: a search engine for sexual violence in broadcasting

Follow Ella on Letterboxd

If you need help or to talk to someone about concerns raised for you in this story, please first know that you are not alone. These are just a few of the many organizations and resources available, and their websites include more information.

US: RAINN (hotline 0800 656 HOPE); LGBT National Help Center; Pathways to Safety; Time’s Up.

Canada: Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centers—contacts by province and territory

UK/Ireland: Mind; The Survivors Trust (hotline 08088 010818); Rape Crisis England and Wales

Europe: Rape Crisis Network Europe

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thejustmaiden · 4 years

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Fiction and Real Life Go Hand In Hand

This blog goes out to all those pro-Sessrin fans out there who refuse to acknowledge the very real effects fiction can have on our world and vice versa. I highly encourage other Inuyasha fans who defend/enable these shippers to read this, as well. I assure you, by no means are my intentions here to stir up trouble. Honestly, I just want some good healthy discourse for once if that’s not too much to ask. If you do decide to engage, please be mindful of that and treat others with respect and I will do the same in return. All in all, the goal of this blog is to exercise my right to speak out and be critical about content I believe to have very potentially detrimental repercussions. I ask that you not attack me or insult me simply for stating an opinion. Thank you!

It’s like the title says, meaning fiction does matter. Where do you think we get ideas for all the stories we tell? Where do we draw inspiration from in the first place?

Real life, that's where! And yes, always with a touch of imagination! Long story short: fiction matters because real life does.

Allow me to elaborate.

Shippers of the Sesshomaru x Rin (Sessrin) pairing say it's not fair of us to throw around serious accusations or use certain deragatory terms that suggest such awful acts like child grooming or pedophilia because of the harmful implications. One of their reasonings being that some people IRL have actually lived through these traumas, so we shouldn't dare to assume they're comparable since one is just fiction and the other is not. But this isn’t about which is worse than the other, because they’re both super problematic. All we’re literally doing is making a link between grooming in real life and grooming in fiction. They mirror each other. Same issue; different mediums. We’re not undermining any one’s past experiences with grooming or the like, nor are we prioritizing fiction to diminish real life abuse. They’re both awful in numerous ways and that’s all we’re trying to say. In fact, if anything we’re attempting to demonstrate just how crucial this correlation is between them. In order to protect past victims and prevent future ones, we must remain vigiliant of the content we consume, and yes, sometimes that means we have to challenge it too. Just because it’s widely-viewed does not make it widely-accepted or well-received. It is paramount that we educate ourselves on how to be more critical of some of the harmful tropes and images that are still way too prevalent in mainstream media. Sexualizing young and pre-pubescent girls is way more normalized than some of us even realize. It’s sad but true that Sessrin is just one of many examples. I know it feels like society has failed us in a lot of ways, but it’s never too late to re-evaluate and re-learn better and more improved ways of viewing and processing information presented to us.

Our mission: Let’s not show our kids that grooming or any other form of abuse are acceptable if they may ever come to experience or encounter it themselves. Be it the real world or on screen. Deal?

There have been a number of occasions where real life victims do speak up against the Sessrin ship and express how extremely uncomfortable it makes them feel by what it represents. The problem is that it’s becoming more evident now that many of their fans will dismiss anything purely on the basis that we pose a threat to their ship and nothing more. What it comes down to is they have no real leg to stand on and cannot possibly top any of what we have to say so instead they simply disregard it. Our inconvenient truths don't fit into their ideal *cough* OOC *cough* narrative so they just choose to be willfully ignorant. It conflicts with their fantasy, so rather than present a sound argument of their own, they flat-out reject it and offer no plausible back-up behind their reasoning besides "I don't interpret it that way." GUYS, CHILD GROOMING IS NOT UP FOR INTERPRETATION.

Just because you so desperately want your ship to come true does not mean you can up and decide to redefine a word so that it caters to your stance. Remind yourself that these are complex AND objective terms that we have no right to fiddle with to serve our own selfish purposes. This is why we can conclude that there's no debate about Sesshomaru's actions towards Rin embodying child grooming.

I apologize if any of my words are triggering by the way, so please feel free to take a break and return later if that’s more suitable for you. it's just really important that everyone in this fandom comprehends the extent in which Sessrin going canon is catastrophic. And no, I'm not exaggerating; I'm simply speaking the truth. Shippers justifying these horrible acts- yes, even in fiction- is usually due to the stubborn refusal to hear us out. No offense to anyone (just stating facts), but more times than not antis like myself feel as if we’re talking to a brick wall when we interact with Sessrin peeps. They go in circles and never expand on their perspectives.

Just a head’s up: THIS GETS LONG. Stick with me. :p

Just look at their take on the Inukag vs. Sessrin relationships for example. This isn't a question of age gaps, this is a question of physical/emotional compatibility. Inukag are the same age mentally wise regardless of one being demon and the other not, whereas Sessrin is not and never will be, and yes, even once she's an adult. The thing is we have debunked this time and time again, because they’re not the same and therefore not comparable, but for some reason these fans won’t drop it. Nothing has changed in their argument, yet they’re persistent in bringing it up. I choose to not go into more detail, since like I said, you can find it around everywhere. I just wanted to touch upon it briefly to prove a point. Maybe it will come up again later in my blog though!

Where was I earlier? Right, child grooming! Haven't you guys realized that what you’re doing is precisely what child groomers do to make excuses or deny any grooming took place at all? (FYI: I’m not accusing you of being child groomers yourselves.) “They reciprocated so the feelings are mutual" is a typical groomer response, but of course it varies. More often than not, victims of grooming aren't even aware they've been groomed until much later. That's how manipulative groomers are that they can legitmately convince you that maybe you're wrong in questioning their motives. Perhaps in the victim’s mind that because one huge indicator of grooming never actually took place it technically cannot constitute as grooming. They start to doubt themselves even though their intuition is telling them something’s off. They should just ignore it then since it can’t possibly be grooming if that one particular thing never happened, right? Wrong, grooming isn’t strictly this or strictly that. It's much more complicated and multi-faceted. This is why the “but Sesshomaru left Rin in the village” point upsets me greatly. HE WAS STILL INVOLVED IN HER LIFE, Y’ALL.

On top of that, are you aware that this is the exact same kind of predatory mindset pedophiles use to describe their infatuation with children? They'll say things like, "I don't see them as an adult and a child. I see them as two people with a soul connection." Okay no joke, I wish I was lying, but that is literally a point one pro-sessrin fan on here recently used to defend this ship. It both astounds me and terrifies me that they don't see the glaring similarities they share in common with actual pedos.

Alright, I want to quickly return to what I was saying earlier about fiction's impact on real life. (Sorry, I’m a bit of a scatterbrain!)

The characters and their worlds in our stories that we dream up and bring to life are nothing short of awe-inspiring and magnificent if we so choose them to be. If it wasn't for our imaginations, stories like Inuyasha would have never come to exist. Fiction provides us an amazing outlet where we are given the opportunity to express ourselves and explore its infinite creative possibilities.

But strip away all the demons and magical components of this show we all love so dearly and what are we left with?

At the very core, Inuyasha is a story that's very reminiscent of the human experience: love, camaraderie, a sense of purpose, and much more!

So perhaps we got a full-fledged dog demon like Sesshomaru, but does that necessarily mean we can't relate to him or understand him simply because dog demons don't exist in the real world? Well, I hope that's not how you view it or else you're missing the whole point of why humans create stories to begin with. We create them to make better sense of and thus connect with the world we live in. And when you really think about it, our stories are just a celebration of life- both our struggles and our triumphs. Now I'm no philosophy professor, but I'm pretty sure they'd say I hit that nail right smack on the head. ;)

All shitty jokes aside, the whole reason I’m mentioning this specific example in the first place is because this recently came up with another Sessrin supporter. That supporter tried to defend the ship by stating that we aren't allowed to use Sesshomaru as an example to judge by since his kind don't exist in the real world.

Now if it isn't evident already, this "it's just fiction" argument is a popular go-to stance many Sessrin fans will resort to once they've run out of ideas and are metaphorically backed into a corner. The funny/sad thing is that they seem to sincerely believe this is strong enough evidence to defend their ship with, but per usual, they fail to see how hypocritical that would be. I’ll clarify soon down below.

Seriously, since when did we decide that fantasy- or any story genre for that matter- stopped reflecting the real world we live in? I mean, we humans are the ones writing these stories. Our human influence is bound to make an impact in some capacity. In fact, we want it to!

Obviously none of us have ever met a dog demon like Sesshomaru, because how could we? Let me tell ya, this is gaslighting at its finest! This is a fictional story with fantasy elements, so of course there will be beings and creatures in their world that don't exist in our own. Does that somehow translate to the fact that nothing from the story of Inuyasha can be applied to our own personal stories or that there aren't meaningful messages to be taught and learned?

So on the flipside, if they're not screaming at us "it's just fiction" for the hundred billionth time, then they are, believe it or not, doing the reverse and comparing it to real world history. One instance of this is how they tell us we're making a big deal about something that isn't real, but go right ahead and use the history of feudal Japan to support Sesshomaru's decision to court (aka GROOM) a young girl because that's how it was done back then. And so, your point being?? It wasn't right then just because it was legal, and it's most certainly not right now. This is how all of their arguments go by the way, where you'll constantly witness a cherry-picking approach. It's agonizing to endure contradiction after contradiction in their arguments filled with nothing but holes in their logic.

I'd just like to add that if we're overreacting to this fictional ship like they love to say we are then technically so are they. They tell us things like "grow up" or "nobody is telling you to keep watching," yet fail to realize they're reacting just as fervently as we are but just on the opposing side of the same damn argument. I find it interesting how they're as invested in this show but pretend they aren't then STILL have the audacity to say it's only us who care this much!? So thank you Sessrin shippers for further proving our point that fiction is more than capable of affecting reality and the people- YES, US- who reside in it.

It's insane that people act like pedophiles and other creeps don't enjoy entertainment too like the rest of us. Believe it or not, they look just like you and me most of the time. Yes, that means they can easily pass as a “regular guy” if they so wished to. My question to you is how do you think pedophiles will take it when they discover others- underage fans more specifically- who dig the same kinda media they get off to? Maybe not in the exact same way, mind you, but there's a thin line between them when you really think about it. I mean, what other explanation is there for why literal pedos on the internet have been known to sneak into pro-sessrin group chats here on Tumblr before? (Thankfully, they were later kicked.) I know that for a fact! It's almost as if the universe is trying to tell them something they refuse to listen to elsewhere. Hhmmm I wonder what that may be.

I imagine it’s possibly one of the hardest things to admit out loud and to themselves, but I can almost guarantee you that most of these Sessrin shippers who are victims of CSA and who still see no issue with Sessrin must be living with some sort of unresolved trauma caused by the very abuse they claimed to have undergone. It's been proven that victims who do not seek or properly receive the help and treatment they need in order to address and live with a traumatic experience such as this are more likely to perpetuate that very same abuse themselves in some way, shape or form. What if in this case fiction is enough for them, but who's to say it won’t eventually manifest itself in other more dire and far-reaching ways? It's not like we haven't seen this vicious cycle before, and I can promise you that Sessrin won't be the last. LET'S STOP NORMALIZING & GLORIFYING THE ROMANTIZATION & SEXUALIZATION OF CHILDREN. Fictional example: Usagi Drop. Need I say more? Real world example: Woody Allen. Again, need I say more?

Bottom line is that Sessrin shippers don't want us to think too critically about this ship of theirs, because if we dig too deep then they're forced to face the very troubling implications this pairing really stands for. Of course they'll never admit to them, because instead they rather double down and grasp at the same old straws as long as it means their precious ship is protected at all costs. Screw everyone else if that's what it takes, because they'll threaten to burn down legit buildings in real life if that ensures Sessrin goes canon! (True story, this happened on Twitter.) They’ll taunt and bully anyone who disagrees. Even if all you literally say is that you don’t like the ship, they’ll gang up on you. Tell them about your past experience with being groomed? They’ll laugh in your face. I wish I was kidding, but I assure you I am not. And they say we're ridiculous and taking this way too seriously? Yeah...

The typical behavior of a Sessrin shipper demonstrates an overly aggressive front since they're usually on defense mode anyway. They only want to ship their sick ship in peace in other words. But just because neo-nazis have a right to spew their bigoted ideology, doesn't mean we don't got the right to punch them! Freedom of speech doesn't equate to freedom from consequences. And Sessrin shippers wonder why they got so many haters. Just sayin'.

Their presence on other platforms like Twitter and Reddit are some examples of how delusional and unstable some Sessrin fans are capable of becoming. Even recently, an anon here on Tumblr sent Richard Ian Cox (English VA for Inuyasha) a totally uncalled for ask telling him that "sessrin is love and there's nothing he can do about it." (That's not verbatim, but if you're interested I'll link you to it.) It appears they discovered that he didn't like Sessrin based on how he had been replying to asks, and just for that reason alone they thought they had the right to harass him. For simply stating his opinion, y'all. They didn't even have the decency to show their face either. Talk about immature and cowardly!

Just yesterday (or was it the day before?) a fanatic Sessrin user on Tumblr- who’s also been known for hateful remarks on Twitter but those tweets have of course been deleted since then- went out of their way to not only lurk in a group chat they don’t belong to on here but to then proceed to harass a few of us in there. They had the guts to take screenshots from that group chat, tag us in posts on their page regarding what they read in there, and without our knowledge or permission went ahead and actually blogged them?? I mean, who calls out people behind their backs while they're just minding their own business?? It worries me how unhinged and out of touch with reality some Sessriners are. Not all of them, but a whole lot of them.

It seems all they are doing is looking for trouble, as they just can't stand how much we hate this ship. So it's more than okay if they love on their ship but it's not okay if we don't and we should just keep our mouths shut. But since when do Sessrin fans have authority over our opinions? Even if they were officially canon, nothing is ever gonna change our opinion. Now when they actually do decide to participate in discourse with antis, you'll see them fishing for excuses to bow out. How they normally go about this is by fabricating a way to blame us antis for their exiting a conversation as if we're being the irrational ones here.

There’s no denying that some antis can also be overly blunt or aggressive (nobody is saying we’re perfect here), but speaking for myself, I know I would never make such nasty comments about other fans and their personal lives. And honestly? It would make me feel like shit talking bad about someone I don't actually know. Nah, I won't stoop to that level or give haters that satisfaction. I may not attack them as people, but that doesn't mean I can't attack some of their messed up ideas that threaten to distort how we should or shouldn’t perceive certain dangerous situations and events. Seeing as how for me this is more than just a matter of opinion- it's a moral responsibility and even an obligation.

I know it's difficult to remain civil when things get heated and people start taking things personally- yet more proof that fiction impacts our lives- but that's the only way any of us will ever have constructive discussions about serious topics like this. Unfortunately, Sessrin shippers, from what I can tell, are incapable of engaging in real discourse for the most part. They may be vocal but that doesn't mean they can pack a punch. I’d really love to be proven wrong someday.

Okay, moving on! If they're not involved in some big-time gaslighting then they're using their infamous strawman argument approach.

Sessrin fans’ sole purpose isn't really to defend their ship, per se, but rather to deflect and antagonize. They like to mislead in order to shift the focus/blame onto their opponent or something else that's not related so that they can stray from the main point.

Take the drama CD for example. It's officially NOT considered canon, right? But that hasn't stopped many fans from referencing it anyway so let’s too consider it for a moment. The point is that they use its "existence" whenever convenient then deny it or downplay it whenever it’s not. So on one hand, it's plain as day that they celebrate it as proof of a romantic future for Sessrin. But then later once we point out to them that Sesshomaru is essentially confessing to Rin that he will wait for her until she's of age, they'll brush it off and quickly add that they didn't interpret the scene that way and leave it at that. I mean how else would you interpret it? And if it's not a proposal of sorts then why exactly are you bouncing off the walls about it to begin with?? If that's all it means is nothing then why are we even talking about this?! You see what I mean here??! And somehow we're the crazy ones?

Let me to be frank with you. If you haven’t listened to it already, this proposal he offered her sounded like a declaration of love in a multitude of ways, which is wildly inappropriate since Rin was only 12 at the time. Signifying that Sesshomaru was/is indeed grooming her. Well, that is if you choose to recognize the drama CD. Nevertheless, whether you do or not, I personally hate that this non-canon satire is even associated with the Inuyasha name to begin with. Ugh.

Intentional or not, Sesshomaru made a deliberate decision in that moment to tell a little girl- and not just any little girl mind you but a girl he's taken in under his care for a good year- that he would wait for her if she so chooses once she's old enough.

The issue is that it isn’t only age of consent we’re concerned about regarding this pairing. What Sessriners fail to see is that this grown male authority- her vassal, her guardian, her adoptive father, or whatever you wanna refer to him as- is basically making a move on this girl he had in his company for quite some time. There's no sugarcoating that. Us antis call it how it is, and I'm sure as fucking day other people who don't watch the show would most certainly agree that the Sesshomaru/Rin bond is filial. Set aside those rose-tinted glasses of yours, and going by everything we’ve been delivered in the manga and parts of the anime (and NOT the drama cd), there are literally no hints that indicate a blossoming romance between this adult male demon and this small human girl he’s taken under his wing. You can imagine them all you want if it pleases you, but that doesn’t mean they’re there. Adult!Rin is a figment of your imagination, nothing more. The idolization of this pairing is pretty disturbing seeing as all we have to go off of in canon is Child!Rin. There have only ever been sweet and innocent moments passed between the two, which is why I’m positive that an unbiased viewer or an outsider would state their dynamic resembled something akin to a father-daugther relationship. I would bet a shit ton of money on that, believe you me!

Rin's inhibitions are low because children are naturally naive and don't know any better. Remember, she adores and trust this man with all her heart, so why would she think any of this so-called grooming is not normal behavior. (I only say “so-called grooming” because I don’t think Sesshomaru bringing her gifts in the village has to be a romantic thing.) Or how would she ever be able to understand that she’s being taken advantage of if she has no previous experience with it? Maybe if she was present for that time Inuyasha and the gang scolded Miroku when they had learned that years previous he had supposedly proposed to this young girl in the village they were visiting, then Rin would. And he didn’t even assist in helping raise her but look at how they reacted! How is this any different than Sesshomaru hooking up with Rin later? It’s actually worse in Sessrin's case. Do you honestly believe that Inuyasha and the others would take kindly to this?

It's not uncommon and considered harmless for young children to have crushes on adults, after all, but the adults in these scenarios should never resort to using and abusing the position of power they held or continue to hold over this child for any reason whatsoever.

What I'm trying to get across here is that no matter how you spin it, Sessrin can NEVER be deemed a morally acceptable pairing. Like ship what you want, we're not saying you can't ship Sessrin. What we're saying is this:

STOP referring to their bond as "pure" and not expect backlash for your grossly inaccurate statements. Just admit it's toxic, because it's extremely harmful to many viewers- and not just victims- to pretend and suggest otherwise.

Please remind yourself of the very real canon fact that Rin traveled with Sesshomaru and they established a bond all while she was just a girl. Oh, and he saved her life too many times to count, not to mention brought her back from the dead TWICE. This is why I don't care much for your counter argument "that dynamics can change over time," because although that's true, like with everything in life there must be standards we adhere to. Exceptions to rules, if you will. Our own basic morals demand it.

For instance, it’s normal that some childhood friends begin to like each other as more than friends years down the road. Nothing wrong with that, because that's a natural and healthy occurrence. Now you cannot apply this to an adult and a child for obvious reasons, but what you also cannot do is apply this to an adult who met and knew another adult while they were still just a child. Why? Well, because it'd be like betraying and perverting that former child's view of you. They were never your equal because your established dynamic resembles that of one an adult posesses with a child even once they've grown up. Think about it this way: it's in the same bracket of family members or family friends who've watched you grow up and mature into an adult. Then later just because they're all grown up, does that mean that those children "are not off bounds" - that's quoting a Sessrin shipper by the way- to these certain family members and family friends?

If you're still struggling to grasp this, I urge you to take a moment (or all the time you need!) to really put yourself in that child's shoes and self-reflect. Would you truly be alright with a family friend you haven't seen in years (but sorely missed because they used to occasionally babysit you) just someday coming back into your life and then very inappropriately flirting with you or even making sexual advances on you? (Sorry for the run-on!) Or even worse, can you picture this happening to one of your own children??! Seriously, ask yourself that and sit with that for a while and really take it all in. It’s not fun, I know, but if that’s what it takes to help you finally understand then please try and practice more ways to utilize your self-awareness in the future. It’s for everyone’s benefit, not only yours, I promise! You'll also find it makes it tremendously easier to empathize with others.

I got news for those fans who don’t view Sesshomaru as a father figure to Rin. The title we give him doesn’t hold as much weight as a lot of us are making it out to be. Let’s try to be neutral here and stick to the hard facts, shall we?

*Sesshomaru is an adult male authority whose protection Rin is under*

*It’s safe to assume that Rin has grown attached to him and maybe even looks up to him*

*They care about each other and the other's well-being*

*He has has played a crucial part in her supervision and care for a significant period of time (yes, even if it’s just passing a message along to Jaken)*

Not so random anecdote: In an Inuyasha episode I recently revisited, Sesshomaru had just rescued Rin from Kohaku who had been possessed by Naraku and was ordered to kill Rin. Anyway, at the end of their scene you can hear Jaken ask out loud, “what should we do for dinner, Lord Sesshomaru?” And that’s about the most domestic thing I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth. They’re such a family dammit and nothing will ever change that!! <3

This is precisely why I could never in a million years view those past students of mine in a romantic light. I don't care how many years have passed, it's just not possible for me. Just the idea of pursuing a romantic and/or sexual relationship absolutely repels me.

Speaking as a former teacher, you don't need to be a parental figure who's around all the time in order to have great love and affection for a child. I would've done absolutely anything in my power to protect them even though they weren't my own. Then again, I did consider them my children in a way even if wasn't in a familial sense. Does that make my love for them any less unique? No, it's just different but not inferior. When you stop to think about, it really doesn't take as long as you may think to establish rapport with a person, particularly children. Connecting with a child is almost instant (but of course some are more receptive than others), and once you do make that special connection one can only make with a child, a strong and overwhelming need to guide and protect them kicks in almost automatically. The unconditional love an adult feels for a child is powerful and constant, and nothing should ever change that. As much as some of you really want to believe otherwise, that feeling doesn’t just go away because they turned 18. In your eyes, they’ll always be that kid.

I get it, sometimes when we escape into these fictional worlds of ours, it's difficult not to project our own wishes and desires onto certain characters. I don't blame fans for picturing themselves with Sesshomaru- I know I did haha- but never once did I self-insert myself as Rin. I know she's one of the biggest catalysts for his character growth- if not THE biggest- but how and why does that need to turn romantic? There are other antis who I have spoken with on this. They informed me that they used to live vicariously through Rin and ship them together, as well. As they got older, they later learned how weird and twisted this ship actually was. That's what's supposed to happen, y'all, you're supposed to grow out of that fixation.

Now take your mind out of the Inuyasha universe for a second and hypothetically (or not hypothetically if you have kids) answer me this: if and/or when you ever have a child, would you genuinely be comfortable with the idea of them dating and eventually marrying their father’s best friend who was also there to witness them grow up? Be honest please.

I highly doubt you would want that- or at least I hope not. You see, that's another MAJOR point I've made a few times already and yet you Sessrin shippers continue to avoid the question. It's pretty obvious it hasn't been rhetorical either. Ignorance is bliss?

Finally, I’d like to address one more point. It seems there is a HUGE misconception and I'd like to clear it up real quick. That is Sessrin shippers misinterpret one of the issues we have with this ship. They chalk up our complaints of Sessrin being canon (which is a LIE, nothing has been confirmed yet) to us just being salty because that somehow means our ships aren't or won’t be. I assure you, readers, other antis and I will attest that this ain't about dumb shipping wars, this is so much bigger than that!!!

I noticed recently that some Sessrin fans have even begun calling us Karens lolol like if anybody is a Karen it's them! This ain't about some mere difference in taste, this is very likely to have LONG-LASTING NEGATIVE EFFECTS. Sessrin going canon is a very harmful message to send viewers and children/teens especially. So if anything, it’s these shippers who are being the entitled ones here thinking that the fact we don’t support their ship is the worst thing in the world. NO, THE REAL PROBLEM IS CHILD GROOMING. GET OVER YOURSELF.

Out of nowhere, some of them even started assuming all us antis were white, which in their books is also equivalent to Karens or even white supremacists somehow?? Those aren't one in the same, but it's easy to make it appear that way when the US is currently tackling major systems of oppression and racial injustice. Because to them, all antis must be from over here. (Yes, I'm American. But no, I'm not white.) How else can anyone explain not shipping Sessrin, right?! Somehow they have it in their heads that ALL of Japan and surrounding places are super approving of this ship, and that everyone else isn’t because of their upbringing and “Western way of thinking.”

To give you an idea of what I mean, look back at what I talked about earlier with their incessant mention of Sessrin vs. Inukag. Because THIS is another popular example of how these shippers present their side and then ignore all the facts. Many fans have already proven how fucked up and inaccurate it is to label whole countries and cultures. It’s like they simply think mentioning it makes it count even though we’ve discredited their points over and over. Nah, you got to back it up with good reasons that support your side of the argument. That’s How To Have An Argument: 101. So at the end of the day, all they're actually achieving in doing is making dumb and entirely unrelated accusations based on nothing just to lead to deductions that are equally unfounded. Nothing at all is accomplished but more gaslighting and hurling of insults on their part = a complete waste of time for antis = an excuse for them to peace out early from the conversation & that’s what they wanted all along

We’ve reached the end (finally! sorry for all the rambling!), and I hope those of you who stayed till the end or read enough can take something positive out of this. As many Inuyasha fans are aware, there will be a livestream with the VAs for Sesshomaru and Rin coming out within the next few hours. We don’t have all the details yet, and afterwards we probably still won’t. I’m not just talking about Sessrin here but about the sequel in general. Whatever happens, please just remember to be kind to one another. If you don’t think you’re capable of doing that, then it’s best you vent and fume elsewhere. Easier said than done, I know, but just try. Throughout this blog, I admit there were moments where I got frustrated and took some jabs at Sessrin shippers. Please believe me when I say that I do not and would not ever wish any of you ill will.

Inuyasha was such a huge part of my childhood, and I’m not gonna lie, I’m anxious as hell that Sunrise will ruin one of the best things I loved about this show. So pardon me if my reactions are too visceral for your liking. haha Also, like the movies and the drama cd, this sequel is not in fact canon. Therefore, for those of you who disagree or who still plan to enjoy this new series, respect the fact that some of us fans will definitely “cancel” it if we feel that’s what we have to do to come to terms with it and move on. Fans have that right, after all. Why should we get on board with something if it’s so uncharacteristic of and unrecognizable from the original source material? If all this is some sort of cash grab of Sunrise’s doing, then count me out. I truly hope that this sequel turn outs being a lot more promising than a lot of us are expecting. I’m begging you, Sunrise, I wanna believe you’re better than this. Please and thank you!

By the way, if you’re interested, feel free to check out my two other blogs on this same subject. Click here and here. The last two screenshots do not come from something I’ve written myself. If you’d like to read more from where those came from, let me know and I’d be more than happy to send you the links. Okay, bye for now. Peace out and stay safe, everyone!

#inuyasha #hanyo no yashahime #anti sessrin #sesshomaru #rin

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ardenttheories · 4 years

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Homestuck's always been antagonistic and insensitive, but I don't recall seeing any of you try to dox Hussie? But please, continue to rationalise how cyberbullying lgbt people for not being nice enough and having opinions about a fictional character you disagree with puts you in the right. A story doesn't go the way you'd like and this is how you respond? You COULD have just not bothered reading it instead of CHOOSING to make your online life about something you hate like a toxic weirdo.

Hi, Kate. I’m so glad you could find my blog. (Edit: that was a joke. Apparently, some anons find it impossible to tell that I don’t actually think you’re Kate). It’s clear to me that you didn’t take the time to read through any of the content that’s actually on here, since you’re throwing around rather wild accusations, so let me take this down step by step.

Homestuck has only rarely been antagonistic and insensitive. Things like the Alpha Trolls - which were clear criticisms of fandom culture - were relatively few and far between, and when we complained about them, they actually stopped. Remind me, for instance, how relevant the Alpha Trolls were to the plot? How long they stayed as mockeries towards the fandom? Yeah, not long. I actually have talked about this before on the blog - alongside other things I thought were negative towards the fandom from the original comic - but the difference here is that... in the entirety of Homestuck, these things were outliers and inconsistencies. They stuck out because they were in stark contrast to the otherwise wonderfully handled content Homestuck went over.

For instance, Homesuck is critical of abuse - especially in terms of relationships. We see through a critical lense the shit normalisation of parental abuse can do to a child - with actual talk of triggers and of the mental and emotional scarring left behind, and the complexities of the child’s feelings towards the parent’s death through Dave - and we see how self destructive relationships can be, how harmful they are, and how hard it can be to leave them - such as Terezi’s very toxic blackrom with Gamzee, which was always portrayed as something negative and harmful especially with how worried Karkat was for her and how withdrawn she became during its run, and Dirk’s relationship with Jake, which goes very much over how communication can cause a deterioration in romantic relationships especially when the two participants have conflicting mental illnesses.

It also goes over how men, though they can be mired in toxic masculinity, can choose to be good. How sometimes we’re not born as good people, but we can become good people through the love we have for the people around us, through frequent attempts to check what we’re doing, through the sheer willpower to be good. Dirk’s entire arc, knowing that he could very easily become Bro but deciding he doesn’t want to be, that it’s something he wants to work on, is so important and incredibly powerful. Mental illness in men is often just given as an excuse to make them violent with no attempts at betterment - so Dirk actually existed as proof that you don’t have to be that stereotype.

In contrast, Homestuck^2 completely uncritically gave Jade, who was cis, a dog dick, made her, a bisexual woman, a sex maniac and the yaoi “woman who gets in the way of the gays” trope, made her a cheater and someone who forced her partner into the relationship to begin with, and made her a neglectful mother after having cheated with her best lesbian friend in something that has incredible recall to just about every futanari video ever - and they tried to claim that this was good representation of trans women, actually, and that the only reason we didn’t like it is that Jade is “a woman” who “has sex”.

Likewise completely uncritically, they made Gamzee, an anti-black stereotype, enter a relationship with Jane, a fascist, and then made the entire thing into a cuck joke wherein Jake being frequently drunk and sexually assaulted was funny because he wasn’t “man enough”. They then forced him to go back to his abuser after he left her in a scene that read very much like, “ridiculous man thinks woman is abusing him, go back and do your manly job”.

This, of course, doesn’t even go into the travesty that is any form of trans representation in the comic. Roxy, a trans man, is barely even focused on as trans; they make no attempt to enforce in the fandom that he’s a trans man the way they do that June is a trans woman, and even then, they seem to think that just saying someone is a trans woman is actually good representation. Not, like, bringing it into the comic - just saying that it’s a thing. And of course, that’s not even going into the completely uncritical lense they have of Vriska, wherein her being a trans woman completely frees her of any and all blame for the past abuses she has comitted, and once again she becomes an amazing character to save the day without a single flaw - which in turn inherently associates trans women with abuse apologism, abusers, and the ideology that just because we’re trans we can get away with anything scott free.

I honestly cannot think of one instance of good and genuine representation in Homesuck^2, nor can I think of any scene where negative content was actually treated as the negative thing it actually is. There’s no critical lense at all, not like we have in Homestuck; there’s just no fucking comparison. And this isn’t a one-off situation, either. Whereas Homestuck does do fuck ups - isn’t perfect - in between the otherwise brilliant content, Homestuck^2 is just founded upon these horrific takes. There’s almost no good content in between, and what is left is a slog to get through when surrounded by the thick slurry of shit that compromises futa Jade, abuse apologism Vriska, and victim blaming Jake.

Of course, we didn’t “doxx” Hussie. Hussie actually listened to our complaints, for the most part, and worked with us to create something that worked well. The way Homestuck^2 was touted to work. You know, since it was meant to be written with the fandom in mind, influenced by the things we suggest and react to. We went into Homestuck^2 with the explicit idea that we were going to be listened to and taken into consideration when it was being written - the way we were with old Homestuck. I’m very sorry to say that, when you make these expectations, people are going to be a titchy bit upset when you then commandeer the entire thing and exclude the fandom from any of the process that you said they were going to be part of.

Additionally, it’s rather funny, isn’t it, that what you call doxxing is actually just people upset with how triggering content is being handled, and going to the people who actually wrote the content in order to voice their complaints? It’s almost as if social media exists to allow this communication between reader and author, which is a fundamental thing you’ll learn in any creative writing course, such as the one I’m on currently, wherein you’re actually taught how to respond to social media and to build up your image with your fans.

Homestuck^2 is an ongoing piece of media. We’re well aware that we have a potential to change these uncritical takes and the horrific way they’re being handled if the writers will just listen to genuine criticism. This is, frankly, no different to the people who go to J. K. Rowling’s Twitter to tell her how harmful her transphobic comments are; because if she believes these things, they will work their way into her texts and will perpetuate harmful ideologies.

The literal same thing is happening in Homestuck^2 - again, such as futa Jade, which normalises the point of view that bisexuals are cheaters and completely trivialises what it means to be trans, or Gamzee, which perpetuates just about every anti-black stereotype possible. Media does have a very powerful impact on what people see in the real world. This is why, for instance, positive black characters are so important in media; if they’re always portrayed as villains, then people will see real world black people as villains as the ideology is perpetuated to the point of fact. This is especially true if the people already believe in the ideology.

Fiction is one of the best ways that we can counteract this cycle. If you make a character that they like, and they happen to be positive representation, and then they watch more media that is likewise positive representation, it’s more likely to stick that these positive representations are the actual experiences of minority groups. Also? It’s important TO those minority groups. A black person, especially right now, doesn’t want to see an anti-black stereotype fuck a fascist, engage in sexual assult, and then enact pedophilia - only to die at the hands of a hero and be laughed at for the death. Surprisingly, shit like this is why we need to tell the writers that what they’re doing is harmful, that they’re perpetuating phobic ideologies, and that we need better representation - especially in a comic that is this widely read, and also has a very large minor fanbase.

I shouldn’t need to explain why exposing minors to anti-black stereotypes, transphobic, homophobic, biphobic, abuse apologism, victim blaming, and the trivialisation of rape and sexual assault (especially towards men), might be a federal fucking issue.

So, no, we’re not actually cyberbullying LGBT+ people. We’re trying to hold shitty writers accountable for the incredibly toxic and harmful ideologies they’re forcing into a text that has always been written with critical thought in mind.

I should also point out how funny it is that you’re focusing on how some of the writers are LGBT+ - as if we’re not? I’m trans, I’m gay, and I’m ace. Yes, I can actually be these things and absolutely furious that a trans women is writing some of the most transphobic shit I’ve seen in a while into characters she then claims to be completely free of blame. We can be furious that people within our own community are enforcing negative stereotypes.

Being LGBT+ does not make them free from blame. We cannot give them a free pass to be racist, to be transphobic, to be homophobic, biphobic, to be abuse apologists, just because they’re LGBT+. Not only because that’s just a terrible fucking idea to begin with, but because it also reflects so, so badly on the community as a whole. As if being part of the community instantly means that you can do no wrong? As if there can be no toxicity within our own community, despite the fact that there very much is and it is still an issue to this day?

That is such an issue, one of the biggest issues even shown just in Vriska and the way Kate handles her as a whole - and, once again, is WHY we need to get them looking at this shit more critically. This view that LGBT+ people can do no wrong and cannot be criticised is shoved into Homestuck^2 and, once again, perpetuates the ideology. This isn’t something to be proud of. This isn’t something that’s actually okay.

Also, your point that the writers aren’t nice enough and that we disagree on fictional characters - well, I’ve already been over the second part. But for the first part, I would like to remind you that they aren’t just random LGBT+ people on the internet that we’re going to because we think their takes are a little shitty. They’re actual writers working on a piece of media. They are official content creators.

Again, one of the first things you learn on any creative writing course is that when you become a writer, you gain a significant amount of responsibility for your interactions with the fandom. This is something that you genuinely have to expect, and if you don’t, then, unfortunately you just don’t know what it means to write something that thousands of people have a potential to read. As a writer, it is your responsibility to portray your image online; it is your responsibility to engage with the fans in a meaningful way; it is your responsibility to not cause drama and to listen when criticism is brought up, to have genuine discussion and not to perpetuate hatred - especially towards your own fanbase.

Consider, for instance, the way I’m talking to you right now. This is the sort of tone that someone should take when talking to a fan about genuine criticism. When things are brought up, you go over them step by step, you listen, you write back - you don’t go on a flurry of “fuck yous” to a minor who asked you why your team didn’t post anything about the BLM movement on the official Twitter, and you definitely don’t respond to every comment with genuine criticism with the word “pigshit”. You almost definitely don’t tell your trans masculine and masculine-aligned nonbinary fans that their opinions don’t matter.

As a writer, Kate and the rest of the team have a responsibility with their interactions with their fans. They aren’t just normal fandom voices anymore; they’re official fandom voices, voices that have more weight behind them than anyone else. They’re who people are going to turn to when it comes to anything regarding Homestuck^2. Their words now reflect literally everything about Homestuck^2, the future of Homestuck as an expanded universe, and the opinions of the group as a whole. They have to be careful with what they say. They have to be held to the same standards as industry voices because that’s essentially what they are - especially now that Homestuck is something you pay for.

Also, this isn’t a point of the story not going the way I want. This is a point of many of people in the fandom being upset with how content is being handled, upset that their voices are being shut down, upset that triggering content is being laughed at or used flippantly and without care or respect. This is people being upset that trigger warnings were removed specifically to make the comic unsafe for them as a punishment for daring to say that something was wrong. This is people being upset that a piece of media that used to be so fucking good at portraying sensitive content in a critical light, that used to be so good at normalising LGBT+ identities and healthy representations of those identities, has suddenly turned to this.

The story can go whatever way it wants - and frankly, that’s fine be my. What isn’t fine is that content is being used specifically to hurt and to incite.

And, of course, that final piece; nothing will improve if we don’t say that it’s wrong to begin with. Someone needs to voice the complaints of the fanbase, othrewise these toxic ideologies are going to go unchecked. One of the biggest things I’ve come to understand while making these posts is that a significant portion of the fandom feels isolated in their hurt; they don’t think other people feel the same way they do, and several people have mentioned feeling like they were going crazy because they were upset with things that the text and writers are normalising. It’s so important to make sure that these people know they’re not alone. It’s so important to make sure that our voices are heard. It’s so important to try and create critical discussion and debate over something that so many people still fucking love.

The thing is, I don’t hate Homestuck^2. I actually really, desperately wish I could enjoy it. I wish I could read through it and theorise, could go in depth about how amazing the characters are, could write long and extensive posts on how creative and engaging it is - could even just go on about how interesting the Meat-Candy divide is, and all the points they’re trying to make about canonicity. But I genuinely fucking can’t. There is just so, so much wrong in the text that is completely unrelated to plot and to the overarching Point that makes it impossible for me to read, to want to read, to try to encourage other people to read. They’re things that literally don’t need to be in there, either; stereotypes and toxic ideologies and uncritical or badly handled sensitive topics that could be rectified so, so easily.

Homestuck^2 could be amazing for a lot of the fandom. It could be something that we all rally around the same way we did for the original comic. For for a lot of people, it has ruined their fandom experience, has ruined their desire to want to read anything more to do with Homestuck, and has caused a significant portion of the fandom to just drop out entirely. That in and of itself should be a sign that this isn’t just a little fandom drama. That this is something much bigger and much more serious that, just maybe, needs to be looked into, talked about, understood - and, potentially, changed.

#homestuck^2 #homestuck^2 critical #long post//#ardenttheories #Apologies for how long this is. I wasn't going to finish it until I got every point across #And that ended up being... uh. Several thousand words I suspect #Anonymous

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jatpficfest · 3 years

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JATP Fic Fest Rating & Tagging Guidelines

First off, we want to thank the fandom creators and @jukebox-week moderators for allowing us to admire and acquire the language that they used when outlining their rules/guidelines for posting during Jukebox Appreciation Week (JAW). Please go to this link to see the original post.

The JATP Fic Fest Moderators/Wine Aunts are in full agreement that fandom is a space for everyone and content shall not be policed, with an emphasis on the importance of tagging and rating content appropriately so that people can avoid that with which they do not want to engage. With that said, here are our official guidelines to tagging and rating content created for any of our events. And again, thanks to JAW for allowing us to use this language and process.

The JATP Fic Fest Moderators are big supporters of tagging culture and the fandom policy of “don’t like, don’t read.” We ask that writers appropriately rate and tag fics so readers are aware of the content in advance, and we ask that readers read those tags and ignore content that doesn’t appeal to them. If you’re unsure how to tag on AO3, there are a couple of resources here and here.

We strongly encourage writers choose ratings for their fics rather than leave them unrated, as ratings help readers filter fics and anticipate the type of content they will find. There are some ratings guidelines here, here, and here (and this is a good description of the difference between M and E.)

If you are posting a fanwork on tumblr with an M or E rating or with potentially triggering content, please put the fanwork below a cut and a rating/content warning above the cut so that readers can easily identify and avoid content that might be upsetting to/harmful for them.

For fandom participants who want to filter out fics with higher ratings, we will be tagging any reblogged M and E rated and unrated fics with #jatpficfestmature. Add this to your tumblr filtered tags and/or blacklist extensions to keep them from appearing on your dash. And if you’re reblogging this content, feel free to use the tag on your posts.

#jatpficfest #rating system #tagging system #julie and the phantoms #jatp

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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You’re a disgusting, abuse-survivor-shaming cunt. I hope you choke, I truly do.

So I get way more of these kinds of messages than I could possibly ever count. Have been for years. I don’t generally reply to them the way I mock some other hate messages I can at least have fun with, because like, what’s there to say about this kinda thing, y’know?

I don’t know how to get people to understand that there is NOTHING hypothetical about my anger about the things in fandom I get angry about. My rants about dark fic are PERSONAL, they have NOTHING to do with some arbitrary moral superiority stance. I don’t make assumptions as to others’ survivor status or motivations for writing various things because I don’t HAVE to, my anger and frustration are with the OUTPUT, not the inciting reasons.

My hostility towards fandom comes directly from the hostility fandom shows me every time people try to convince me that I have no reason to have the reactions I do to the way they interact with the extremely combustible topics that define my own trauma and that of others. And the fact that fandom at large has decided that the ONLY acceptable reactions from survivors upon seeing others engaging with these sensitive topics in any way they choose, is either to be silent, or to take part in it.

I don’t have to know which writers of which fics are or aren’t actually survivors attempting coping mechanisms of their own to be fucking furious at the way fandom has literally commodified these traumas, made them exploitable by making the catchphrase “some people write dark fic to cope” all-inclusive, utilized by anyone. With no shame or self-scrutiny as to the fact that YOU at least know if you are or aren’t a survivor, and if you aren’t one, you have ZERO business offering this particular line up as a defense to any survivor taking issue with the ways you embrace particular topics in particular ways.

The only things I have any interest in shaming people for is their choices, the fucking CHOICE to turn on any survivor who dares say “I have issues with this take” and this goes for abuse as much as it does rape. I’ve lost count of the number of authors over the years who HAVE spoken of being rape survivors specifically but then turn around and treat childhood physical abuse as their personal playground, with none of the care they put into crafting rape storylines on display when they casually have male abuse survivors punching each other in every other argument and just citing ‘boys will be boys.’ I can have sympathy for their status and experiences as rape survivors while still being upset at how they simultaneously perpetuate so many of the untruths that make it so hard for abuse survivors to affirm that they have actually been abused rather than call it something that its not, something that they’ve seen writers call it because the writers simply don’t want to inspect the fact that they’ve casually and without awareness written their characters abusing another.

It’s not a zero sum game.

I get angry not because I feel powerless in my own life (I don’t, actually, thanks, I’ve taken actionable steps every single day to fix what’s wrong in my own life and lol that’s power baby), and not because I’m fixated on my own trauma and unwilling to move past it (lol yeah I have no money to spend on anything BUT therapy because I’m committing to the highly specialized and expensive therapy I only arrived at after years of trial and error with other forms because I just don’t want to move past any of this, okay sure).

Nah, I get angry because of the galaxy brain intellects who smarmingly just decide on this view of me for themselves, condescension dripping from every ‘well-meaning’ expression of contempt sympathy, with zero examination of the fact that like.....idk guys, its a little hard to move past my trauma when everyone ELSE seems more fixated on it than I do! LOL, so we’re just gonna skip merrily on by the fact that the only reason its an ISSUE for me in fandom is because its EVERYWHERE in fandom, huh? ‘Mind the tags’ people parrot mindlessly, as though its not like tags HAVE to be created with self-awareness for what people are supposed to mind, or like I haven’t had people literally try to trigger me with tags aimed specifically at getting under my skin as ‘payback’ for something I wrote (out of moral superiority, naturally, not a visceral display of emotion, never that). As though the tags have anything to do with the fact that even outside of Ao3, there are incest-themed shipping weeks every single month of the year, that every major discord server and fic exchange and other fandom wide event demands participants be ‘ship-friendly’ which might as well be code for ‘not friendly to anyone who doesn’t prioritize ships over survivors,’ like fandom hasn’t created a culture in which people are more inclined to be defensive over how people make writers FEEL about stuff they’ve written than they are to be defensive over how certain writing makes various survivors feel.

I’ll never get over how a fandom that universally expressed disdain for Devin Grayson’s disrespectful handling of the sensitive topic of rape has obliviously embraced every form of euphemism under the sun for their own content, and just flat out REFUSES to concede that there is ANY room for criticism in ANY handling of even the most sensitive of topics. Because there’s no sensitivity allowed when it comes to any topic in fandom....unless its the writer’s sensitivity, that must be respected at all costs.

Does that not really strike you as....odd? Aren’t there lines out there about how no society or culture or environment that truly embraces free speech can simultaneously embrace freedom from criticism? And yet time and time again, its anyone who dares criticize - in ANY fashion - the HOW of what someone wrote, not even the WHY, they’re the ones termed authoritarian, censor, the one attempting to SHUT DOWN conversation rather than expand upon it. Tell me, what conversation was THIS anon and similar ilk attempting to invite? Every criticism I write of fandom invites people to engage with it. I fucking BEG people to engage with it. You’re the ones who choose not to. At least not in good faith. Because its only when I refuse to let you move the goalposts from anything other than this being about me reacting to what you wrote, no aim at doing anything other than being a reaction to an action, not an attempt to tell you what to do, just an attempt to get you to tell me WHY, if it really is as defensible as you loftily claim it is - then why is it you just can’t tell me, straight to my face, that it doesn’t matter what negative reaction your writing evokes, you don’t actually have to care? Cuz you don’t, of course. But if you’re that content with your own motivations, your own impact, why so uncomfortable just saying that?

The funny thing is, I truly don’t make any assumptions as to the why of anyone writing dark fic. I have a lot to say about the fact that we all know damn well that at least some of the people offering up the ‘some survivors use dark fic to cope’ aren’t speaking of themselves when they do so, but I have ZERO interest in imagining who that is and why. I’ve spoken of the fact that its willful naivete to assume that even if your own motivations for writing certain content are innocent in your own mind, you can’t assume the same of EVERYONE. That its nothing but willfulness to pretend that actual predators don’t peruse the same content. That the very same factors that make Dick Grayson so appealing to survivors, for example, as a strong heroic character who neverthless has been victimized and violated more than once - the flip side of this coin is this of course makes him EQUALLY appealing to people on the other end of things....a strong heroic character who nevertheless can be victimized and violated more than once.

And yet I honestly, truly have no interest in figuring out who might be whom, when it comes to writers, and I don’t assume everyone who writes or reads certain content in certain ways is in the latter camp. IT DOES ME NO GOOD, to go through life assuming that many people are all potential rapists or inclined to side with my own rapists’ or abusers’ side of things. I CHOOSE to give people the benefit of the doubt there, I assume perhaps they ARE survivors trying in good faith to cope with their own trauma and defensive about hearing that butts up against with other survivors trying to move on in other ways, or that they’re simply people who grew up in fandom being told there is nothing they can write that can be termed wrong, and have trouble with such a deeply held conviction being contested. Or perhaps only got into shipping incest because the ‘fandom elders’ of various fandoms like SPN deliberately and with full intent once upon a time pitched incest as being the same kind of taboo relationship that the same kind of people who forced gay men into secretive relationships were against....that incest ships and closeted gay ships were basically the same, and so as the latter became less of a thing as media showed more open gay relationships, incest ships became more of a thing among fans who were really compelled by the secretive/’society’s against them’ aspect of forbidden love.

I don’t assume any of that on a ONE TO ONE basis with any single writer or reader because I don’t KNOW their personal story and I’m not TRYING to. It makes no difference when I’m not talking about or arguing against the WHY of someone doing a thing, but the HOW. The end result, and the interactions it creates in the environment in which their output is published, shared, celebrated.

All at the expense of any survivor who doesn’t enjoy seeing things they’ve struggled with getting taken seriously about, maybe all their lives....not taken seriously, and offered up as just a themed week on the latest fantasy porn prompt generator. The problem with incest shippers isn’t even just ‘you ship incest, why do you do that,’ its that you can’t seem to manage to do it without assuming anyone who objects is only doing so out of a place of moral superiority. You try and make it a hypothetical argument “well what about when you do this” as opposed to something rooted in the here and now of the personal. We’re not talking about what ifs, we’re talking about what is. Deal with that before you try raising something else, instead of always raising something else so you never have to deal with that.

The problem is people condescendingly assuming we have ZERO basis for any objection, or any negative reaction at all. Its our own fault, you see, for being too stupid to get that fiction doesn’t affect reality (even though we’ve debunked that time and time again). Its our own fault, you see, for not getting that its not really incest BECAUSE (a claim that is never actually as universal as it tries to pretend to be, and thus is never more than a distraction for the specific argument that prompted it). Its our own fault, you see, for not getting that this isn’t really a big deal, there are bigger problems, and its awfully sad if we’re so fragile and delicate we can’t handle someone enjoying something that has nothing to do with us (even though its never your call whether or not it has anything to do with us, just as its never our call what your specific motivations for writing specific content might be).

The problem is the same thing I’ve been dealing with all my life, and all the more exhausting for it being front and center in fandoms that claim to be escapism and catharsis for survivors....as long as those survivors perform in the manner fandom is comfortable with....aka the manner fandom has exploited and commodified in order to make certain manners of enjoying certain topics possible and defensible for ALL fans, regardless of their own connection to such topics, or motivations surrounding them.

Denial, avoidance, and abdication of responsibility. There’s no problem if YOU don’t see a problem, after all. There can’t be a problem if you just refuse to acknowledge a problem. A problem has nothing to do with you if you simply have nothing to do with it.

And all the while, you continue engaging in the same behaviors that provoke the same reactions that you refuse to ever actually engage with or address, relying on gaslighting to try and sell people and everyone around them that THEY’RE the real problem....its us that have no respect for freedom of speech, creativity or the creative process, other peoples’ traumas, the difference between fantasy and reality, etc etc ad nauseam.

We see people waving away instances of physical abuse with textbook abuse apologism, and we’re told we don’t know what we’re talking about. We see people offering up wording and phrasing in the comment sections of fics that are literally textbook grooming techniques we recognize from our own experiences and we’re told we’re imagining things. We see characters raping others without it being described as rape and we’re told we didn’t mind the tags, even though oddly enough, none of the tags actually said ‘rape’ but rather other euphemisms and if they aren’t in place to tell readers not to expect actual rape in the actual fic, then, what purpose is it they actually serve, again?

But sure.

Talk to me some more about survivor-shaming.

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memoriesofthefuckingbullshit · 4 years

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I’d like to preface this with a personal note:

I do not want to write these posts. I absolutely hate that there is a need for it and it’s been chewing me up. It’s taken me the better part of a month to round up all the evidence (I had to be sure and double-check my sources) and to put this together, in bits and pieces so as to not overwhelm my own mental health.

I loved the Underfell Fangame community. I briefly met Mania at ATLANTALE early 2018, before I even knew about the project. I became a patreon supporter because he seemed to genuinely love the community and Undertale and the game he was working on. I joined the Underfell community in March and made a second home there.

I considered him a friend. Looked up to him as a fellow creator, game developer. A fellow community admin. And I thought it was really cool the way he did the whole community server events Ink vs. Error stuff. I loved the concept and have been passionately involved in it since its start over a year ago. I’m closely involved in the development of the comic series based on these server events, called Memories of the Multiverse War and have spent countless hours dedicated to expanding the world our comic takes place inside the Doodlesphere.

I have since learned much is a horrific farce. And I’m really unhappy about it.

But if I don’t do or say something before I go I could never live with myself.

There are so many victims already. And more than a few look up to me like their big sib.

There are good ways to make the audience cry.

This is not one of them.

It hurts me knowing the other Event Masters put their heart and soul into creating fun content, intended for people to enjoy, while Mania twists their work into ways to torment people, and even drags them to emulate his behavior. How much more will get swept under the rug, if I don’t speak up?

It boils down to:

Mania knowingly emotionally abuses server members, most of whom are children between the ages of 13-19.

He shows no remorse for it.

Our Mental Health is a Joke to Him Part 1* (xFrisk debacle; please take trigger warnings seriously)

Our Mental Health is a Joke to Him Part 2 (Fallout from the xFrisk debacle)

Ink Was Never Going to Die (He just liked fucking with us)

No, He Really Hasn’t Changed, And Won’t Be Anytime Soon* (xPapyrus introduction, and all this matters)

*If this much reading overwhelms you, prioritize this post and starred pages above.

Important:

Event Masters are not the ones at fault here. They’re just doing as they’re told to play out the story Mania calls for, and probably do not even realize the impact their actions have on people since they’re told it’s all just for pretend. When they are aware, they’re under threat by Mania to keep quiet.

Abuse through role play is particularly insidious. Yes, the server events are a form of role play, by definition. Pretending to be a character, or otherwise assuming the role of as a way to interact with others is fundamentally role play.

In terms of power balance, the server events are more like a D&D campaign than traditional online roleplay. We even have “Event Masters” to parallel the “Dungeon Master” who has nigh god-like power over what happens in the dice-based roleplaying game.

There are dozens of articles about proper DM etiquette, and how to tell a uniquely engaging story to invoke high emotions in effective ways:

There's no shame in manipulating your players' emotions, because that's part of your job as a storyteller. But, like anything else, it requires a deft hand. Be mindful of how your players react, and be careful not to go too far. If anyone at the table starts to feel uncomfortable about the situation you're presenting, it can quickly start to take people out of the game. Be mindful of your players' limits, and give them the option of saying when something isn't going over well with them. But once you start to get the hang of it, you can turn a night of goofy dice-rolling over drinks into a tense situation, or provide a moving, emotionally honest moment for your characters.

In short: It was mere storytelling until the moment the characters reacted to and responded to the players. At that point, it is role playing and the concept of consent comes into play, because real people with real feelings are part of the story, which, curiously, is canonically enforced:

And it’s it’s our fault for taking hurtful things that characters say and do personally?

Jerking player emotions around for laughs isn’t just an asshole thing to do; it’s straight up bad storytelling.

There is no excuse for choosing abuse.

End of story.

I am hesitant to come forward with this, as I do not have evidence compiled other than the threat itself, and considering the nature of the issue there are privacy concerns regarding the victims. He has a tendency to target 17-19 year old girls, as a 28-year old. This was sent to me while playing minecraft while in server voice chat on June 16th, 2019.

I’m including it because this is a perfect example of how he’ll backtrack and play upsetting things off like a joke. The threat has since been deleted so I’m glad I grabbed a screenshot while it existed. He has a habit of deleting things that could be used as evidence.

hahahahahahaa no sir you do not get to drop a threat like that on someone and then play it off like a joke, particularly when “if you didn’t hear it doesn’t matter”

It does matter.

They matter.

All those kids are important. They matter and so do their feelings and all the grief they’ve experienced at your hands. The event may be more like a D&D campaign setting, in terms of balance of power, but this article does a great job breaking down the cycle of online roleplay abuse.

Here’s an excerpt:

Some people roleplay to heal their wounds, others play for fun or to escape. Any way you cut it, a good chunk of roleplayers have personal investment in their roleplay.

The human brain is a curious silly fickle sort of thing, a person who is capable of empathizing can empathize with anything that has human traits, be it a brave little toaster, a cartoon dog, a character in a book,crying at a movie, or screaming at the little man on playing sports ball on the television. People feel empathic sadness from witnessing sadness of others,people can feel empathic excitement by watching sports, in some cases to the point of violent outbreaks after their favorite sportsball team wins the big game.

Human beings are capable of immersing ourselves in the situation of others, and we are capable of feeling a wide variety of emotions as we endure the human experience of whatever we immerse ourselves in. This experience of emotional stimulation is not just a flaw in emotions or an inability to tell in character from out of character. Feeling this way does not make someone insane, weak, or flawed.

It is, in fact, a physiological chemical reaction in the human body. It’s chemistry, it’s oxytocin, it’s cortisol, it’s adrenaline, it’s dopamine, it’s serotonin, it’s estrogen, it’s testosterone, and who knows what else. When things happen in online roleplay we really feel it. (This is why consent is so important.)

In both roleplay and interpersonal interactions in online communities, and the feelings we feel when engaged in these things are real,are chemical, and they are not in our head.

Online community narcissists engage in their own flavor potentially insidious psychological abuse and manipulation, and it can cause real life distress, depression, anxiety, all in a situation where people are trying to escape, to relax, to have fun, and to heal wounds.

More importantly, this serves to validate the feelings of that the narcissist’s victims, be it ex-roleplay partner or a storyteller silenced.

You are not overreacting to a video game. Your pain is valid. The people you are interacting with on the other side of the screen are real; you are having real interpersonal interaction. The emotions you are experiencing are real chemical reactions in your body not a personal flaw. You are not crazy or stupid.

It is okay to cry about stupid online drama. It is okay to talk to your therapist if you have one. Know that even if you feel isolated and alone, even if you think everyone hates you. The truth is that outside of the narcissist’s circle, there is going to be people who do not even know of you let alone hate you, who do not care or believe the bullshit the narcissist tried to feed them.

—Credit to @zanpyr. Thank you for this wonderful article.

Now. All of you, on the server, who’ve been subjected to all this fucking bullshit over the months or years you’ve been in the community: It’s not your fault. Your feelings and heartache are valid. You matter, and you deserve better than how we’re made to feel through this series of fucking bullshit. You’re not weak for caring about these characters; caring about characters is WHY we loved Undertale so much. You’re not stupid for getting hurt by someone you trusted and considered a friend. You can get through this and you’re gonna grow up and do great, okay?

And any other adults who’ve been emotionally manipulated too: It’s not your fault. You’re no more at fault than the kids for falling for his tricks because guess what: you’re human and you have empathy. Those aren’t bad things.

I know from personal experience that online interactions can be clinically traumatic, as in, diagnosable trauma response symptoms that should be taken seriously. I’ve already been talking people through their thoughts and feelings about this stuff and I recommend you do the same. Sorting out all the self-blame from guilt-tripping is important and if you have signs of trauma related to this event, please please please seek treatment even if it seems silly to be that affected by “a fucking discord event.” Gaslighting from any source messes with your perception of reality and doubting your ability to perceive the world can have lasting effects that topple like a domino effect.

Once you’ve developed trauma response symptoms, you become more vulnerable to developing further symptoms by more common disturbing events. Don’t do like I did and let it go untreated for over a decade of accumulating traumas and Traumas. Many of you are already suffering with depression, anxiety, and existing trauma. The sooner you seek treatment the better.

Outside Sources:

Quoted/Linked in Article:

How To Manipulate Your Players (Into Having Emotions)

Wikipedia - Gaslighting

Abuse Through Online Roleplay

Adventures In Random Roleplay: Safety/Consent Tools in Gaming

Additional Reading:

Lovebombing, Gaslighting, Benching, and Ghosting

Three of the Easiest Ways to Manipulate Someone

Gaslighting Definition, Techniques, and Signs of Being Gaslighted

Emotional Abuse in Non-Romantic Relationships

Signs an Abuser is Twisting Your Reality

Trauma: Big “T” and little “t”

20 Tips For Becoming A Better DM: Lessons Learned At The Table

One final addendum:

As vindictive as I may feel after slogging through so many horrific conversations, I absolutely do not condone any attempts to actively harass him. Hold him accountable for his actions but do not send him hatemail, threats, or any other shit like that. He’s a fucked up human being but he’s still a human being and this whole effort has been to call attention to how much online interactions affect our mental mental health. Don’t do that shit to anyone, even if you think they deserve it. And don’t be a flying monkey, please.

Okay, that’s it.

Stay safe everyone.

#main post

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fredrichards91 · 4 years

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Save Relationship Text Wonderful Unique Ideas

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andreacaskey · 4 years

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How B2B companies can be proactive about managing paid media during COVID-19

Throw away those 2020 forecasts and best practices; the COVID-19 outbreak has changed the game. As marketers, we’re used to being flexible and moving quickly. Now, more than ever, we’ll need to be ready to shift strategies.

B2B businesses have some unique challenges in dealing with the effects of COVID-19. Here are tips on how to navigate this changing landscape to make sure that your brand continues to deliver value to your customers while building a pipeline for the future.

Set up dashboards

What’s the best way to tell if performance is dipping? After all, not all verticals are being impacted the same, and even within verticals, the trends can vary dramatically by company. There are a few ways to look at this: brand search volume reflecting demand changes (if typically steady), conversion rate changes, year-over-year trends. You can set up dashboards in Search Ads 360 and Google Data Studio to monitor performance.

For global brands, examine trends at a country level. Some B2B brands we work with in APAC did not see performance declines through February, in part because of high spend in countries like Australia and India, where COVID-19 cases remained low to that point. For B2B, you should especially look for changes in front-end performance, as conversion latency may cause a delay in an impact on back-end results.

Also look out for changes in media consumption. Mobile traffic will likely increase. Is your site optimized for mobile conversions, or should you incorporate mobile bid modifiers? YouTube viewership for certain content is on the rise, potentially resulting in lower CPV. Now might be a good time to explore new digital channels.

Consider context

Review your existing marketing plan and ask yourself, are my campaigns still right given the current context and target market? Are we using the appropriate tone in our copy?

What once seemed harmless may now be upsetting. Review all creative for instances of handshakes, high fives, hands touching faces, crowds, etc. These images can be triggering now so it’s best to pause before any negative comments roll in.

Play it safe

For B2B brands that want to avoid showing next to COVID-19 content can exclude broader topics in Google like Health or News or go more granular with Infectious Diseases topic exclusions. Set YouTube inventory to “Limited” to err on the conservative side. Exclude COVID-19-related keywords, e.g. covid, ncov, coronavirus, corona, sars, wuhan, virus, pandemic, epidemic.

Also, be careful about which tests you choose to run while auctions and markets remain turbulent from COVID-19. Tests that are meant to inform strategic decisions for the long-term (greater than 3 months) are irrelevant in a highly dynamic time, as are matched market tests in which you compare different geos. After all, it’s not business as usual for anyone right now.

Test new audiences

Think about alternate uses for your service/product that might be especially relevant right now. For example, sales teams for a CRM software can try targeting industries like pharma/biotech that traditionally rely on field sales but are now remote.

On Facebook, you can test turning on “detailed targeting expansion” for interest audiences. This will expand reach to a broader set of people than defined in your targeting at a time when many users are now engaging with content that they do not usually consume. Or you can test opening up targeting with broad audiences and let the algorithm look for new users who are likely to convert.

Build awareness through demand generation

B2B sales cycles tend to be longer, so making drastic changes to your paid media strategy could have lasting effects. While you may be reducing budgets overall, it’s important to keep feeding the upper funnel so that your brand remains top of mind when demand bounces back. Think about ways that you can repurpose existing content to fit the times, e.g. promoting a whitepaper with a lead gen form or turning a summit into a virtual event. Consider using sponsorship dollars that you recoup from canceled in-person events to produce a video content series, upgrade your webinar content, and more to connect with people remotely.

Above all, maintain empathy for your users and their changing needs and challenges, and focus on the data, not fear or anxiety, to make the right decisions for your business. Staying strategic in this time means making quick adjustments as news cycles and performance reports dictate, so make sure you’re monitoring the macro landscape and your company’s internal and competitive reports aggressively to set your course with confidence.

The post How B2B companies can be proactive about managing paid media during COVID-19 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

How B2B companies can be proactive about managing paid media during COVID-19 published first on https://likesandfollowersclub.weebly.com/

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lindarifenews · 4 years

Text

How B2B companies can be proactive about managing paid media during COVID-19

Set up dashboards

Consider context

Review your existing marketing plan and ask yourself, are my campaigns still right given the current context and target market? Are we using the appropriate tone in our copy?

Play it safe

Test new audiences

Build awareness through demand generation

The post How B2B companies can be proactive about managing paid media during COVID-19 appeared first on Search Engine Land.

How B2B companies can be proactive about managing paid media during COVID-19 published first on https://likesfollowersclub.tumblr.com/

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thesimplyluxuriouslife · 4 years

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275: 34 Ways to Attain Emotional Freedom and Cultivate More Joy of Living

"Emotional freedom is a homecoming to your own heart and fullest power. It salutes authenticity, not conforming to someone else's notion of what to feel or how to be." —Dr. Judith Orloff, author of the New York Times bestseller Emotional Freedom: Liberate yourself from negative emotions and transform your life (2009)

The middle of the night, before you can fall asleep or early morning thoughts that swirl and fuel agitation, worry and fear preventing you from falling asleep.

The feeling of being lonely and falling prey to the purport by society that the simple solution is to find someone to be romantically involved with.

Ratcheted chronic anxiety that cements you from pursuing something new or chasing your dreams or simply enjoying your everyday life.

An assumed negative default in perspective when it comes to the world, the future, especially your future and what is actually possible no matter what your age.

In sharing each of these scenarios, maybe you most strongly identified with one, or maybe none of them spoke to you, but moments of one or two rear their heads in your life when your energy is depleted or life temporarily becomes exhausting. And hopefully, maybe you recognize your former self in one or more of these and now are able to celebrate having broken free of the counterproductive emotional patterns that were learned and accepted as "how life will be".

Wherever you find yourself on the continuum of learning the skills of attaining emotional freedom, after reading/listening to today's post/episode you will have a clear path forward for identifying with the latter description in the previous paragraph.

I picked up Dr. Judith Orloff's book because I needed to read it. I knew the skills I needed to improve the quality of my emotional life were lacking, but I did not know what they were or if I had a sense of them how to strengthen them.

Dr. Judith Orloff defines emotional freedom as increasing your ability to love by cultivating positive emotions and being able to compassionately witness and transform negative ones, whether they're yours or another's.

Choosing to become emotionally free is entirely the choice of the individual. Whether healthy emotional patterns were modeled by your parents or not, you can learn them, apply them and shift how you engage with the world, how you experience the world and thus how you move forward and elevate the quality of your life experience.

Have a look at the benefits of setting yourself free emotionally:

BENEFITS of acquiring the the skill of EMOTIONAL FREEDOM

liberation from fear

navigate adversity without going on the attack, losing your cool, or being derailed by it

choose to respond constructively rather than reliquishing your command of the situation whenever your buttons get pushed

communicate more successfully and gain more confidence in yourself and empathy for others

no longer feel disconnected or lonely

feel more comfortable in your own skin

be part of nuturing relationships

discover more contentment

become more flexible with life

own the moment no matter whom or what you are facing

"be more fiercely alive"

liberation from the compulsive tyranny of negative emotions such as worry and anger so you can choose more joy

Now to do the homework, the steady and consistent exercises to welcoming the emotional freedom you seek into your everyday life. Today I would like to share with you 34 tips, practices, ideas and insights that spoke to me and what I thought would speak to TSLL readers/podcast listeners. However, there is far more detail in Dr. Orloff's book, Emotional Freedom, which I highly recommend reading and keeping as a resource to return to as you incorporate and habituate the new practices that can improve the quality of your everyday life and cultivate more joy.

1.Discover your emotional patterns: Know thyself

What emotional type do you most define yourself as? The Intellectual, the Empath, the Rock, the Gusher (chapter 4 details each of these emotional patterns, shares the tendencies, strengths, drawbacks AND most importantly, how to strike a balance to welcome the good and let go of the unhelpful emotional patterns)

2. Take charge of who you want to be

Begin by understanding how you were nurtured as a child and as you grew into an adult and even into your adult years regarding how you were raised by your parents and continue to interact with them. There were most likely strengths and weaknesses. Dr. Orloff suggests observing each with an objective perspective for the purpose of gaining self-knowledge of what have become positive and as well as unproductive ways of emotionally engaging with the world. Once you have done this (this is for you and has no need to be shared with your parents), move forward consciously. "Consciousness [is] the path to freedom". Acquiring self-knowledge will lift the fog as she describes it and show you the way to clear blue skies of clearly, concretely knowing what you want to change and why.

3. Seek calm and eliminate stress

One enhances of your overall health, (yes, your physical health too) and the other depletes and destructs it. No doubt you know immediately which does which. Simple ways to welcome more calm practices into your everyday routine: experience and partake in laughter, exercise, meditate (breathing is powerful), "anything that makes you feel loved".

4. Resist negativity and turn toward and amplify the positive

Becoming emotional free is a choice by each of us, so it requires that we act and thereby think differently. Actions include what and how we speak. The words we utter and the tone in which we utter matter immensely and absolutely. We have control over these two qualities of speech. Orloff explains how words contain energy and we are transferring that energy when we speak, and how when we say something supposedly positive or kind in theory is entirely accepted and received with love or disbelieved and caused hurt is determined by the tone in which the words are delivered.

"Words impart energy that can be enlivening or malignant. This is true whether you direct words to yourself or others."

5. Pay attention to your physical reaction around others.

To determine if the people you either choose to be around or have to be around, or are newly introduced to will bring positive energy into your life, observe your physical response to them. Having to do with how someone speaks to you, when they do, observe, Dr. Orloff's suggests, your physical reaction with your body instead of how your brain processes the actual words. Let your physical responses guide you to help you determine who to continue to spend time around and who to walk away from. E.g. The charmer who says the sweetest compliments with a smile but causes your body to physically cringe, yep, that may be a sign that negative energy is coming your way. Walking away may just be the best idea.

6. Use breathing practices to calm/quiet a hyperactive mind.

If you discover you identify your emotional pattern to be the Intellect, your mind is busy. It is busy planning, learning, inquiring, planning some more and trying to figure out how to get it all done. However, when this happens before we can figure out how to fall asleep or need to fall back asleep, it is defined as a hyperactive mind and it is not emotional helpful. Simply breathe. Get out of your head in other words.

7. Exercise

Regularly, aerobically, but also with strengthening and flexibility activities. Exercising requires you to be present; it helps you get out of your head and focus on what you are doing.

8. Engage with others first with empathy and secondly with your head.

9. How to handle an unwanted situation: Think first.

Think all of the details through first, and once, well. In so doing, you are making sure you do not react which would be your emotions taking over and potentially throwing you into a "fizzy" state. How do you think first?

use positive self-talk and logic to become grounded

take deep breaths. Do not take on the emotions of others. "You can still be loving and now feel the emotions they are emoting."

10. Allow regular quiet time for emotional decompression (for the Empaths especially) throughout the day.

11. Honor your empathetic needs.

Reminder: "No" is enough.

Learn what your max socializing time is, and honor it without apology.

I love this one: if you need to take a separate car so you can return when you are emotionally ready to leave, take your own car. Do not feel guilty for needing this. Similarly, if you need your own space when visiting family on the holidays or when traveling, honor you need by reserving a nearby Airbnb or reserving your own room.

12. Engage with life

If you have been hurt or if you see yourself as the Rock on the emotional type list, engaging with life will intially be uncomfortable or foreign. However, keep in mind what Brené Brown teaches, vulnerability is needed in order to sincerely connect, but as shared in episode #126, do not forget to partner it with setting healthy boundaries (which plays into #11 - honoring your needs).

13. Simple daily task: express one feeling a day in your journal

Why? To acknowledge honestly how you are feeling and when you are ready, to examine the why. Triggers or prompts. When we partake in this daily practice, we become more knowledgeable of ourselves, but also improve how to better communicate how we feel and why. Even better, we begin to see that emotions are temporary, and that is helpful to keep in mind as well.

14. Are you a gusher? Before seeking advice or support, follow these steps to gain more emotional freedom.

center your feelings by defining the upset - what prompted you to feel as you do.

Answer the question: How does this make me feel?

work with your feelings: clear the emotion, exhale the negativity, use positive self talk, tune into your intuition to find the solution

Read this post on Intuition: When to Trust It & When to Ignore It

15. Extricate emotional vampires from your life

Sharing a list of the different types of vampires, it was helpful to see their characteristics, and I will admit, I saw my older self in some of the descriptors. Just as important as it is to sweep out the emotional vampires from our lives, we also do not want to be one to others. Evaluating each of the lists is a good practice.

Back to the extrication of E.V.s. It entails clear and calm communication as well as setting boundaries. Once you recognize how they make you physically feel (returning to #5), find your voice, set your boundaries and walk away to seek other nurturing individuals to spend time with.

16. Set limits.

It is important to repeat what has already been mentioned twice thus far - set boundaries. Episode #126 shares in detail how to do this and why it is imperative to your emotional well-being.

17. Be solution-oriented.

Previously here on TSLL and on the podcast it has been shared that complaining about something you dislike or someone you dislike is only a positive contribution to our lives and the lives of others if we are also accompanying the 'complaint' with a sincere solution. Otherwise, let it go and move forward.

18. Understand that fear is a form of stress, and then move beyond your fears

Dr. Orloff explains in biological detail the body's physical response to fear, and it is not good for our health (page 149-152). If you are someone who catastrophizing the future, expects the worst in situations, have fearful thoughts that keep you up at night, are afraid to speak up or go for what you want, then you are letting fear play a significant and consequently harmful role in your overall life. In other words, you are welcoming more stress into your life that need not be present.

Move beyond your fears not by avoiding them but rather by "facing them in a proactive way".

"Courage requires the presence of adversity. In fact, no fear, no courage. WIthout something to overcome, there's no biological push to be brave or conquer negativity, true evolutionary milestones."

avoid people who reinforce your fear

avoid violent media - news, arguments or other scenarios that cause you stress

immersing yourself in hot water (a bath) will help relax muscular tension quickly

practice your breathing.

19. Seek out and remain close to "emotional nurturers"

20. Identify the fears you'd like to be free from and identify their triggers.

To return to #1, self-knowledge is the fundamental component. We gain clarity when we investigate ourselves and our reasons for feeling the emotions that arise, seemingly out of our control. When we can identify the trigger, we can then successfully change it or eliminate it altogether.

21. "We attract what we are"

"A basic law of emotional energy is that we attract who we are. Fear attracts fear. Courage attracts courage. If you want positivity coming at you, you've got to generate it . . . This influences which people and events keep appearing in your life."

22. Stay optimistic despite fear

Regardless of what goes on in your life, wanted or unwanted, be mindful of your response. In other words, do not react. Take a breathe or take a beat before speaking or taking action. When a fear arises that you won't be able to accomplish what you've set before you to achieve, focus on even the smallest victories - you're still trying, you still care. When you make a habit of positive mindful response, eventually it becomes a track in the mind and when it becomes a track, it then has become your default to not be thwarted by fear but to courageously facing them in a proactive way.

23. Continue to grow into self-awareness

Each of us is continuing to change, as we are dynamic creatures whether we want to be or not. In actuality, it is a good characteristic to be dynamic because it means you have an opportunity to grow. As we are continually growing, should we choose to, that means we have to continue to be aware of ourselves - our needs, emotional responses, etc. and not become complacement. In other words, as the book shares, our life truly is our career. It takes effort, but such effort pays many positive dividends.

24. Overcome frustration with patience

One of the biggest roadblocks to emotional freedom is frustration.

~Discover the benefits of patience.

"Making a more deliberate choice to delay instant gratification and cultivate patience will help you achieve emotional freedom, have faith in yourself and your destiny."

25. Let friendships and romances develop slowly

Why? In order to cultivate trust or determine if someone is trustworthy.

26. Find and welcome nurturing sources into your daily life

Nurturing sources need not only be people. Nurturing sources exist within and outside of ourselves. Anything that provides a sense of home is a nurturing source.

27. Foster positive human contact or community

When you engage with others whether at work, your personal life, in your neighborhood, online, choose to make it a positive exchange.

28. Learn the power and skill of meditating.

~I break it all down for you here in a 2014 post Why Not . . . Meditate?

29. Practice gratitude

Something that I have enjoyed sharing each month is my "What Made Me Smile" post, and I look forward to adding to this list as the month unfolds, then sharing a handful here on TSLL. However you practice gratitude, maybe in a daily journal, through prayer, by sending thank you notes, any action that asks of you to reflect and see all that is going well, make this a regular practice and it will begin to shift your focus (remember #21). We attract what we are, and if we are grateful, we will begin to see even more of which to be grateful.

30. Listen to your intuition.

But first understand what intuition is and what it is not (read this post). Once you can accurately define what you intuition is, then you have a powerful skill in your arsenal to enable you to elevate your everyday life due to the choices you will make.

31. Redefine the traditional paradigm for coupling.

Communicate what energetic preferences and boundaries you need in a relationship so that you are not emotionally engulfed. From how you live together, to how much time you spend together, to sleeping arrangements, if you are an Empath as described in the Emotional Types list, you may deeply want a relationship but fear, based on past experience, that you will not be safe due to all of the energy and emotion of others you absorb. Due to this you have either acquiesced and let yourself become engulfed or spoken up ineffectively and been berated for being difficult or cold. Neither are true, and effectively communicating and more importantly being with a person who is open to understanding you, is the key to being part of a healthy, nurturing relationship.

32. Take time for solitude regularly

"Solving lonliness involves connecting to yourself as well as others. That's why it's vital to find your own right rhythm of worldly involvement and solitude."

33. Acknolwedge and celebrate current healthy connections

As mentioned in #26, not all healthy connections will involve other humans. From Mother Nature - hiking, gardening, simply being outside, to spending time with animals to luxuriating in your thoughtfully curated home, these and many more are healthy connections. Invest in them, savor them and do not let others dismiss the value they hold in your life to feel connected and whole.

34. Strengthen the relationship you have with yourself - it's the most important one you will ever have

In other words, invest in understanding how to welcome emotional freedom into your life. It will take time, it will make you uncomfortable for a short duration, but that is the way with change, it is uncomfortable because it is stretching us.

In our personal life toolbox, as shared in detail in Living The Simply Luxurious Life: Making your everydays extraordinary and becoming your best self, it is filled with both strengths and skills. Strengths are innate and when we choose to strengthen these talents, we share with the world a unique gift only we can offer. Skills are tools any one of us can learn and apply to our lives to elevate the overall quality. Emotional Intelligence is discussed in detail in my book, which is why today I wanted to talk even more in-depth about why Emotional Freedom is a skill of great benefit.

Personally, upon reading Dr. Judith Orloff's book I had many aha moments, validation moments and clarity-of-how-to-proceed moments, and as it happens on many occasions here on the blog and the podcast, I wanted to share what I learned in hopes that you too will find great value for this skill in your life as you continue to grow and create an everyday that truly delights you.

Petit Plaisir

~Monty Don's American Gardens, BBC2

Three 60 minute episodes

View all three episodes for a short time on BBC2

View Episodes #1 & #3 on YouTube, Episode #2 on DailyMotion.com

Tune in to the latest episode of The Simple Sophisticate podcast

#tsllpodcast thesimplesophisticate

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garden-of-succulents · 7 years

Text

I've taken some time to think over and process recent criticisms that people have made of me. Thank you to everyone for being patient while I took this time to reflect--I think that a brief review of my behaviour in the past has shown that I often respond poorly and clumsily in the heat of the moment, and these conversations benefit when I give them the thought and effort they deserve.

I am responding to people whose direct responses to me, or public commentary, seemed to indicate they wanted some sort of response from me. I hope I've addressed everyone; please let me know if I've missed anyone. I have also, as was requested, cleared out my OMGCP-related blocklist.

Briefly, about that: I have, in the past, blocked people for two main reasons. The first is that they're producing fannish content (fic, art, or meta) that triggers my anxiety, which my body reacts very poorly to; the other is that I have disagreed with them about something, but know that they are significantly younger/less privileged than I am, and blocking is one of the tools I use to make sure I don't impulsively strike up an unfair argument about something unimportant.

I would like to apologize for the distress and insult my blocking users caused them; it was not intended. I have been investigating ways to curate my online experience to what I can manage with mental health that varies from day to day, with less of a negative effect on other people and maintains their ability to draw my attention to important conversations.

Although I believe listening to criticism is important, especially on topics where I am privileged or ignorant, this is something I have to balance with my mental and physical health; I have to carefully budget time and energy to engage with it when I am capable of thinking clearly and deeply. Sometimes I'm able to seek out and read criticism, but sometimes I'm not. I miss conversations or misunderstand peoples' points. I know this is frustrating to people who do not have the luxury of ignoring or escaping these issues in their daily lives, and I'm sorry.

On a practical note, I am taking pains to make sure that people can contact me through my des-zimbits account, but I should make clear that unfortunately, I cannot accept anon messages and I am very unpredictable about seeing things written on blogs I do not follow; my friends are not in the habit of telling me about criticism made by third parties. There have been times that I only found out long after the fact that someone has put enormous amounts of time and energy into critiquing my behaviour on their blog, and become upset that I have not responded or changed. In those circumstances, I never saw the original posts in the first place. I don't have a complete solution for this, but I encourage people to tag me or message me a post they think I should see; if you don't want to deal with me thereafter, just say, "Don't reply."

I am making this apology not in hope that anyone will change their opinion of me or forgive me. I know that people of colour in this fandom are frustrated by white fans' inability to listen and respond in a way that makes things better, and I know that my own behaviour has contributed to that. My sincere desire here is to make it plain that I am willing to listen and try, and perhaps even make other fans feel that they can directly approach me with their frustrations and concerns.

I am beyond grateful to the fans of colour who have expended energy and time educating me, criticizing me, talking to me, and helping me. Your willingness to be open about your feelings and experiences, and to speak truth to power, have been unspeakably helpful in helping me see my blind spots, and understand the effect my behaviour has on other people. I know that it takes a lot of energy and courage it takes to speak about such a painful and infuriating subject. I want to thank the people who, despite my resistance at times, continue to engage me in these issues. Your feedback is valuable and appreciated.

@dexydex and @georgiapeche, re: this post

You’re right, I haven’t been responding correctly to your criticism. I’ve taken it too personally instead of taking a step back to consider your perspectives in a more nuanced and empathetic way. Thank you for all of the emotional labor you’ve expended up until this point trying to get through to me. I’m sorry that I’ve made it your responsibility to teach me what I’m doing wrong rather than go out and learn for myself. I’ve been complacent in the ways I’ve interacted with my own privilege. I’m sorry that my apologies have fallen flat time and time again. I’m sorry I haven’t done enough yet to unlearn my implicit racism. This is something I will increase my efforts to address and correct in the future. It is not your job to forgive me. It is not your job to absolve me of any ill will.

phillipsheabutter, re: this post

You're right; Kent's behaviour in canon is cruel and abusive, which Nursey's isn't. My response to them is very backwards the usual responses. I am especially sorry that my answer about him didn't address the word "hate", so I flatly said that I "hated" him, which is a strong and unwarranted negative assessment to make of his behaviour. This was especially wrong of me because the behaviour I was criticizing is a response many Black readers identify with, to the experience of having their emotional responses intensely policed and invalidated. It is a testament of my ignorance and prejudice that I felt this perspective was something I could choose to discard when thinking about him.

As to how I struggle to have empathy for one behaviour but not the other, I can't offer any excuse for my racism, but I can briefly explain: I’ve tried to articulate in the past that Kent’s narrative strongly evokes people and relationships that have been incredibly formative for me, and that I have dedicated years of personal searching and academic study to understanding Kent's kind of extreme behaviour and maintaining relationships with people who display it. My relationship to invalidating behaviour is still too raw and painful to talk about in detail, but in short, it was something I had powerfully negative experiences with when I was young, and as an adult I have found it deeply distressing when it was directed at me; I have embraced a career based around validating emotions. I hadn't yet truly realized the extent to which it is used as a coping mechanism by African Americans--the majority of Black people I have known have been first- or second-generation Canadians hailing from Africa or the Carribean, who have had expressed different cultural and racial experiences to me, and I haven't consumed enough American media to truly understand where Nursey is coming from. I struggle to relate to him as much as I do to characters like Ransom whose cultural experiences and coping mechanisms are more familiar to me.

In equating Nursey to generic white hipsters I encountered this behaviour from, I was erasing his Blackness in favor of pointing to an implied socioeconomic privilege that in no way makes up for or safeguards him from the experiences of being a Black man living in the United States. That wasn’t just wrong of me, it was careless and racist.

There’s a lot to his character that I’ve yet to explore and it was wrong of me to say I hate him when I haven’t done enough work to understand who he is or where he comes from. I'm going to work more to expand my knowledge and find deeper empathy for him.

@oluranurse, re: this post

You’re right, I keep making the same mistakes over again. I can understand how frustrating it feels when a larger blog says repeatedly that they will be different, and better, but the results are disappointing at best. I can only hope that by taking the time to listen, really listen, to your feedback, that someday I won’t have to apologize for my mistakes (because they will few and far apart).

I realize that as someone who doesn't have Borderline Personality Disorder, it is potentially problematic that I am so invested in its fictional depiction, especially given the extreme stigma against the disorder by members of my own profession. As I've explained before, however, it's a condition I've had significant personal experience with, and writing about mental health issues helps me build the skills that may let me someday write coherently about my own C-PTSD. What's more, I am not pulling these conditions out of nowhere or treating them lightly; I'm a licensed mental health professional, and I take a great deal of care to root my mental health headcanons in close analysis of the source material. The diagnoses I suggest for characters are by no means the ultimate truth about them and alternate perceptions of them are wholly plausible

I would like to talk more about your classification of BPD as "a mental illness that fandom likes to give to characters that have 'bad attitudes'," but on a separate occasion where that discussion doesn’t detract from the real conversation we’re having here.

In reference to the disagreement I had with brenbits, I still believe that the way they engaged me could have been more direct, and less heated, from the start. But I respect that other users confront issues they find problematic differently.

In reference to my post about dealing with criticism, I understand that the tone implied something much different than what I intended. I was attempting to be a resource for content creators who feel discouraged by discourse and offer show them how to respond to said criticism in a thoughtful and nuanced way. I realize how ironic that may sound considering some of my past responses. I know that in that post it sounds like I will apologize and defend every microaggression and racist comment that comes my way. That was never the case, but I’m sorry I did such a poor job of articulating that. Times that I have provided this service include helping writers find essays written by members of minorities about common difficulties or pitfalls in depictions of their experiences, or in helping them personally connect with someone who has the cultural competency to assess a situation, and is willing to expend the emotional labour of providing an author with a critique.

With regard to the time that I answered the question, "Are genderbends transphobic?" I shouldn't have answered, given that I am cis. I will make an effort in the future not to summarize trans peoples' opinions, and step back to amplify the voices of trans people who have already made their thoughts accessible.

I feel that the fandom should do more to support content creators and to talk through (especially with younger creators) what they could be doing better in terms of representation. I do understand, however, that doesn’t mean members of the fandom should have to stand for racist and stereotypical content and/or be grateful that it even exists.

You’re right, I’ve been complacent and racist in how I treat POC characters. I need to take a step back, consume more media and academic material related to the experiences of these characters. I need to immerse myself in the positive representations and transformative works this fandom already has for these characters. I need to make these already available transformative works more visible by interacting with them on my blog in ways that are supportive and enriching. I need do more to change my racist thoughts and tendencies because this is a comic made by a WOC that seeks to better minority representation and inclusion in the sports world. I need to be more present in how my behavior affects the experiences of others in this fandom.

I also concede that I do not understand the inherent danger that POC and trans people endure daily. I cannot take your concerns for granted just because I don’t understand them at first. It’s my personal responsibility to seek out information and understanding. I’m also sorry that I have focused more on my personal reaction to criticism rather than on the concerns raised about my behavior. I have many privileges in this fandom, I need to do a better job of utilizing them properly.

@eriquebittle, re: this post

You’re right, my apology focused too much on my feelings and not how my actions have hurt others. I was attempting to start a conversation I wasn’t ready to engage in properly. My apology was lackluster and nothing new at best. As I’m addressing in other posts, I am working on active change. From now on, I'll give the performative white guilt a rest and focus on listening and changing my behaviour.

@senor-lapin, re: this post

I meant what I said about doing my best. However, my apology was neither warranted in the way I handled it nor effective at articulating how I’m taking steps to fix my racist thoughts and actions. As I’ve addressed previously, I have removed the blocks I placed on other members of OMGCP fandom and will work in the future not to exclude them from the discussion. I will listen, research, and reflect for as long as I need to in order to understand my critics. That is the least I owe them.

@duanlarissa, re: this post

I was ineffective in trying to articulate or consider an intersectionality between neurodivergence and racial identity. The way I addressed Nursey and Dex’s relationship was very simplistic and downright racist. There’s a lot of nuance to their relationship that I haven’t begun to explore and shouldn’t have commented on. Nursey has every right to negotiate Dex’s behavior in a way that keeps him both mentally and physically safe.

@onethousandroaches, re: this post

It isn’t worse. You’re right.

In trying to dissect different aspects of his personality, I was not only minimizing his experiences and struggles, but othering and essentializing him. It was racist. I was racist. I need to consider and accept every part of his identity. I need to take a hard look at what I haven’t liked about him in the past, accept that I’ve been narrow minded and prejudiced, and unlearn those tendencies. I need to set a better example of how white fans should support characters of colour (especially Black characters in a fandom created by a Black woman). I need to use the privilege I have (as a white person, as a popular blog) to support this character and the people who enjoy him. All of him.

#race in fandom discourse #stuff i wrote

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