#the discourse for ts

[gemsandjunk]

sanders sides in its current state is so funny. new content is released fairly regularly but also there hasn't been an official update in nearly four years and I don't think anyone even believes the s2 finale exists. It was originally just a series of sketches about hehe what if your personality traits were people and now everyone is emotionally repressed and beefing with each other 25/8. Its made by one of the biggest ex-viners online. It is a man talking to himself in his apartment. the biggest source of fan speculation is the colour orange

[road-rhythm]

"Why should I have to wade through disgusting, debased, kinky shit on AO3 just to read some wholesome stories about my comfort characters??"

Because your desire to read wholesome stories about your comfort characters is not actually more important than or morally superior to other users' desire to read anything else. Hope that helps

[kiyomitakada]

Taylor Swift discourse but it’s about Misa Amane

oh god paging @ai-the-broccoli

[atopvisenyashill]

"It is such a long way," she complained. "I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl." No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words. "Fire and Blood," Daenerys told the swaying grass.

[butchnat]

why are losers shipping sammie and remmick, the sigh i just sighed. if you watched sinners and all you could take from it was "yaoi 🥺" you are the problem sorry.

[galedekarios]

i'm honestly so confused where the general assumption i've seen more and more comes from that gale is insecure about his looks or body.

he has grey hairs, he has fine lines, he has the odd scar--and he never once mentions or indicates that it's a thing that irks him or something he feels like he needs to hide.

on the contrary, gale seems quite comfortable in his body.

gale has a lot of insecurity in him, but this insecurity is anchored in other parts of himself that i feel like are overlooked in order to project something on his character that... isn't really there.

if you want to dig deep into gale's insecurities, i think you'd need to look into something that instead is very blatantly obvious in the game: being good enough for who he is.

i'm also a bit confused by some of the body type headcanons i have seen that i feel veer sort of into age bias territory, but i'm not sure i've organised my thoughts enough to speak about this yet with the sensitivity it requires.

i honestly feel like this a matter of people on this site needing to learn that people in their 30s/40s exist and that they don't die with shame when they leave the house.

[we-all-horny-here]

This is some of y'all with Remus

[queermania]

I saw someone in a server say they were blocking you for the drunk driving 💾🐎 and I'm laughing so hard. Imagine blocking someone for their take on whether or not a fictional character drives drunk lmao.

now why do i keep getting punished for deangirl crimes i didn't commit

[qqueenofhades]

I mean, if Netanyahu doesn't want to be treated like a war criminal, kinda think he shouldn't act like a war criminal.

[herefortheships]

What do you think of the Bj and Lydia controversy due to age?

You know, the short answer I have for this is that I do not think it should be an issue that's even brought up anymore. Lydia is now an adult woman in her 50s; plenty of people end up with a partner who is 10+ years older than them, meaning that they would have been a full adult if they would have come across their partner at sixteen. And that's just speaking about the real world; let's not forget Beetlejuice and the characters in that world are all a work of fiction. I don't think the fact that they met when she was a teenager all those years ago should even be an issue to ship it or not. As a matter of fact, people can ship whatever they want. They can even ship it in the first film and it's not an issue... Shipping in itself is inherently innocent. These characters and the situations around them don't even exist, and therefore, whatever you imagine with them, has no effect in the real world. Shipping is no different from a kid grabbing a couple of dolls and making them kiss. It's all in good fun.

Let me tell you, I had written a long freaking essay under this question 😅, but I decided to leave all of that for a separate post. But a few notable points from that essay which I think would be good to include here are the following.

Back in the 90s and early 2000s we had ships with pretty big age gaps on network TV and nobody batted an eye about the age gap (as far as I'm concerned). I'm talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer specifically in this post. This was before social media, but as far as magazines and fandom spaces go, I'm sure the discussions around Buffy's love interests in BTVS centered around which hot vampire was better for Buffy, Angel or Spike. (Even nowadays we see this kind of article, exhibit A). And you don't see these articles starting with disclaimers and trigger warnings, either.

For those who haven't watched BTVS, Angel was around 240-something when he slept with 17 year old Buffy. He slept with her the night she turned 17, by the way; they were already together while she was 16. At the time he was turned into a vampire, Angel was around 26 years old. Angel met Buffy when she was 16, but he was stalking watching Buffy since she was 15:

Now about Spike. Spike met Buffy when she was 16, but he didn't actually become obsessed with her until she was around 20. Still, they got together and it wasn't ever an issue that he met her when she was a teenager. In Spike's case, he did stick around and interacted with Buffy multiple times before they started dating. In Betelgeuse's case, we know that while he watched Lydia from afar, he never actually managed to interact or even be seen by her during the years they were apart.

A lot of antis throw around the word "grooming" around Beetlebabes; I don't think they understand the meaning of that word. To put it simple, to groom someone is to condition them and emotionally manipulate them for years into a certain behavior, in this context, into falling in love or becoming sexually involved with the groomer. This term, therefore, cannot and will not ever apply to Betelgeuse and Lydia's relationship (it also does not apply to Spuffy, while we're at it). How can it? When they only had a few interactions over 30+ years ago and only met now after all that time.

And about those interactions in the first movie, the fact that Betelgeuse attempted to marry Lydia is attached to an idea of sexual inappropriateness only when that particular idea is projected onto what actually happened in that scene. Objectively, for Betelgeuse, marrying Lydia was a means to an end; there was no sexual or romantic implications in their marriage in that movie.

I believe in the case of Betelgeuse x Lydia versus ships like Buffy x Angel or Buffy x Spike, people are quick to see an issue in one where they never notice an issue in the other for the following reason: While Angel and Spike are hot, young-looking vampires, Betelgeuse is gross and does look like a dead guy. That is literally the difference. Spike and Angel are good-looking hotties; Betelgeuse... I love him lots and he is hot for me, but he is not conventionally attractive. I bet you if Betelgeuse looked like Michael Keaton did playing Bruce Wayne... People wouldn't have an issue that he's lusting after 50-something year old Winona Ryder, (also a hottie herself btw).

Let's add here before I close off this post that both Angel and Spike did objectively horrible things to Buffy when they were soulless (Angel while Buffy was still a minor), and meanwhile Betelgeuse has never harmed Lydia (no, the insta-pregnancy didn't harm her; everything that happened in that scene was an illusion). He didn't even behave inappropriately toward her in the first film when he was wilder and hornier than he is now. And yet shipping Bangel or Spuffy (last I checked lol) isn't widely seen as problematic. I ship Spuffy to the moon and back, and used to ship Bangel as well at some point 🤷🏻‍♀️ and I haven't seen people attacking shippers nor have I seen discussions of these ships being inappropriate (though I'm sure there must be... it's 2024 and the purity culture fandom infection has spread widely), not in the way I see Beetlebabes fans being harassed.

Anyway, I wrote a separate post about this and will post it eventually. This wasn't meant to be this long, but here we are 😅.

[jankypromoters]

a lot of y'all are really showin y'all hand with this "oppressed people shouldn't date their oppressors!" shit because now it's making me think; y'all must get sick to y'all fucking stomach when y'all see a white person date a black person irl. or a cis4trans couple. or a financially stable person with a poor person. or just a man and a fucking woman, like, if you this bent over FICTION where you writing essays about how two consenting adults from different walks of life shouldn't be together then baby you're fucked when you go outside. "people should stick to their own kind" but make it... ✨liberal✨ y'all not even tryna hide it atp.

[road-rhythm]

Pumat Sol voted for both Bushes both terms

[hauntedfalcon]

mom, can you come pick me up? yeah, the AO3 stans are speaking gibberish again

[atopvisenyashill]

why do you think targ nation fans favor daena and naerys so strongly? obviously, they would enjoy dany, rhaenyra, and alysanne because they're the most visibly "girlboss" and they probably prefer rhaenys because she was the more "conventionally feminine" of aegon's queens and appeals to the targcest shippers for being the more loved wife. but why daena and naerys?

imagine me deep sighing, taking a long drag of a blunt, coughing a bit too much, then saying "it's the madonna whore complex, that old bitch."

for naerys, it really is that simple - she is not just a clear madonna she's also pretty clearly meant to be in a conversation about madonna-whore dichotamies. i think the main problem with Those Insane Twitter Stans (which is a vibe - there's a LOT of those people on here too and they just completely took over reddit) is that they don't engage with Naerys any deeper than that. She is the perfect peerless madonna and no need to actually dig into how naerys may have felt about her reputation as the constantly suffering sweet queen. she did her duty and that's all that matters.

i do think daena also falls into this, but in sort of the opposite way, like how the rhaenyra-alicent discourse will get SUPER deranged. Daena is really easy to divorce from what happened to her because she has an ~aesthetic~ that is interesting on its own. I think they want to deal with the powerful parts of them and ignore the fact that the "Whore" in a lot of the Madonna-Whore groupings are/were deeply miserable in their lives, or engage with the fact that the men they loved share a lot of personal responsibility for putting them in danger. So I think a lot of the feelings towards Daena right now are glossing over the actual damage being in the maidenvault did to her + completely glossing over how she's likely very supportive of Daeron's stupid ass war in Dorne & the fact that her romanticization of him probably comes from her anger at Baelor.

[fadewalking]

@ anon i am not going to post that ask because you name drop literally every single person even tangentially involved in this and none of those people agreed to be directly mentioned on my blog. I have no interest in facilitating any of my followers to harass anyone involved here, so I think it's best we stop pointing the spotlight at specific people who never willingly stepped forward on my blog.

But i will respond here, and this is the last anonymous message about this im going to respond to because we all really need to move on. So if you want to continue talking about this, you can, again, say it with your whole fucking chest in dms, and not cower behind anon.

"bro, the original post about the vallaslin had you blocked for at least 2 months. he doesn't even know you personally. he did have the decency to block you when you made him uncomfortable months ago too." im not sure how this is relevant to anything being discussed tbh. Of course he doesn't know me personally. that's like... 99% of tumblr mutuals? that's how social media and the internet works. you and i are talking right now and we don't know each other personally. and yeah he had me softblocked since a while ago, im not sure what that has to do with anything. Some friends sent me the og post bc it made them uncomfortable, so I offered my opinion to them in private. Then several more indigenous folk made public comments about it, and i offered an extremely vague, broad opinion that we shouldn't try to force people into agreeing with us. that's all I did lmfao.

"what you're doing to him... and other indigenous folx in the darpc is wrong and i hope you can realize it." Omitted all those names you mentioned. Again, originally all i said was don't try to force people into agreeing with you. A stance which, not for nothing, several other indigenous people endorsed. There is no world in which saying that is doing anyone wrong. That would have been the total end of my statement on the matter btw, had gcldfang not decided it was a good idea to send me anons.

"i saw you support a post from user [name omitted] (now conveniently deleted) that said everyone could do whatever wanted with dalish characters and it would not be racist. to me? that post and your reaction comes off as weaponizing your own identities against other indigenous people to excuse your white friends and make them feel better for participating in racism." So there are two different sentiments at play here. We could say "muns who feel that vallaslin is bad and slave markings are perpetuating racism." and/or we could say "Elves in the game who feel that vallalsin is bad and slave markings are perpetuating racism." both of these statements are kinda problematic but this one is more problematic than the other. It seems like you're saying the latter thing right now, idk whether you would agree with both statements or not, but it seems like right now you're only saying the latter.

But it strikes me as really ironic that you can't see the hypocrisy in saying things like "you can't tell me how to feel about my own culture" and in the same breath saying "your elf cant feel this way about their own culture, or it's racist." there are very clearly at least two canonical perspectives of the Evanuris. One as benevolent creators, and one as tyrannical slavers. It is canon that the Evanuris enslaved people. did some of them willingly serve? Of course. But it's canon, still, that there were slaves, and that perspective is offered by more people than just Solas. It just isn't racist for Elves to feel whatever type of way they feel about learning about that aspect of their culture. It's their culture. You can't tell them how to feel about their own culture.

This has pretty much been my and everyone else's point. Saying "if you think this way, that's racist." is not a good thing to say when it blatantly dismisses both in-game character's valid feeling about their own culture, and other irl cultural perspectives from real people. It's been mentioned by multiple people that facial tattoos have been used for a variety of purposes in other real cultures that were also used to inspire the portrayal of Elves in the game. I'm going to quote someone who sent me a message about this, who has already said it: "no one disagreed that the devs using the vallaslin the way they did was a poor choice. while it's true there have been cultures in history that did use facial tattoos for slaves, it's still an insensitive decision! and NO ONE disagreed with that! but from what I saw, you and roughly 4-5 other indigenous people, as well as several other writers, some white, some white and Otherwise marginalized, and some poc of other sorts were saying: 'hey. we get what you're trying to say here, but saying that your culture's perspective is the only correct/non-racist one is not good and not okay. it silences people of other cultures who see their cultures in these characters. yes the devs were racist and careless but that doesn't mean that erasing the other cultures that contributed is ok, and doesn't mean that you get to tell people of those cultures that their interpretations are inherently Less than yours'. Because that is how that original post read."

What that person pointed out is the "railroading" that i've been talking about. It's one thing to say something like "I and my characters all feel that the evanuris were actually gods and that Vallaslin is a good thing because im upset with the bastardization/villanization of how my culture was used to inspire these things in the elves." and it's a different thing to say "And if you and your characters don't agree with my perspective then you're racist/perpetuating racism, too." because that one cultural perspective isn't the only one that exists. Other cultures have their own perspectives and experiences with facial markings, and those matter, too. And yet even still, we have only ever acknowledged and agreed that the choice for Vallaslin to be used as a symbol for enslavement in the game is racially problematic.

"It feels like you punching down on other indigenous people for protesting their mistreatment. that is why people are blocking you. you are vagueposting about a vaguepost." my criticism of other indigenous people, as an indigenous person, is not punching down. That's not what it means to punch down. Nor did I ever say that they can't or shouldn't protest their mistreatment.

"i understand you like solas. i enjoy the egg too but equating the vallaslin with slave markings is racist. speaking from experience: the stigma against indigenous facial tattooing is a product of systemic racism and colonialism. what the characters say in dragon age is sadly impacted by the writers being racist: this is a fact. also people are allowed to be uncomfortable with your fave being a vessel for developer bias." I think it's a mistake to involve Solas in this conversation, honestly. but alright. Given Solas' experiences, and his own personal perspective, he is justified to feel the way he does about his own culture. That isn't racist. Especially considering that, in canon, the Evanuris did enslave people. But that's the fiction. In real life, again, as it's been pointed out, facial tattooing has been used for a variety of different purposes across multiple different cultures. Some were positive, some weren't. I agree that in western society, as a whole, there is stigma against indigenous facial tattooing that is a product of systemic racism and colonialism.

The characters in dragon age exist within the context of the fiction of their world, which has been influenced by a multicultural mix of real world identities. There is no one correct interpretation of their facial tattoos. Neither in the game or irl, because of the fact that multiple cultures were used as inspo for the Elves. You can't insinuate that the perspective of other real world cultures is racist, which is what it seems like you're doing. The world isn't black and white. Indigenous people are not a monolith. People are allowed to be uncomfortable with vallaslin based both on what it represents within in the fictional context of the game and how facial markings have been used within their own real world cultures. Every character in the game, not just Solas, is a vessel for developer bias. That's how bias works, it's inescapable. I've never said that people aren't allowed to dislike him. But it's curious to me how it's only ever Solas who gets hounded for his perspective and not anyone else who is equally as guilty of developer bias or blatant bigotry.

"coming from a tattooed inuit: don't you dare tell me how to feel about my culture being portrayed in a bad light." I'm not. Nowhere did I ever try to say you or anyone else can't how you feel. In fact, i've only ever said the exact opposite of this. We are all allowed to feel how we feel.

"don't tell me not to be pissed off at the way bioware handled things regarding vallaslin. the discrimination the dalish receive is exactly what i deal with everyday." I'm not. I have only ever agreed that it was wrong of bioware to handle Vallaslin the way they did.

And i've said that blatantly more times than I care to count atp. You and everyone else are right to feel whatever you feel about it, and Vallaslin should never have been used as a symbol of oppression in the game. But you just can't tell other people how to feel about it. It really is simply just that.

[galedekarios]

there are gifsets floating around here with ast*ri*n being uncomfortable with the potential foursome involving the drow twins and the dialogue option chosen -- rightfully so! -- points out that it's not right to ask this of him: someone who has experienced abuse in the past, especially after this foursome is very much a spur of the moment thing, jumped on the love interest suddenly and without proper discussion beforehand, of the expectations and consequences this would have for the relationship in the long run...

only for a handful of people to then turn around on all of that and call it "pearl-clutching" and "totally not" coercion when the decision comes up for gale. even though he expresses being uncomfortable with it as well. even though he, too, has experienced abuse (grooming, in his case, and a relationship that also held an incredible power imbalance). even though you have to make a hefty 25 persuasion check to yes, coerce him into a situation he didn't want. gale isn't even comfortable with someone he does know when the protag does take the time to talk about things properly before they are done (halsin).

i am not even going to get into the cuck jokes. this is a man who removed himself from the situation in a way he still could while also still trying to please a partner who coerced him into this in the first place.

at this point i just wonder why gale's trauma is being turned into a joke. and by 'wonder' i do mean i know exactly why, but it's Truly A Choice.

(i should clarify that this is a personal interpretation and one that i'm not comfortable arguing over.)