#this post is anti supporting people thinking that activities where you suffer are the only activities with worth

[wormsoft98]

When talking about ai, yall need to be careful to not romanticize struggle. Your art does not contain value because you spent 7 hours agonizing through it, it contains value because you created something. You can be proud of your hard work, but activities are not inherently more worthy if you suffer more to do them

[mixtape-timeout]

It’s baffling to discover that certain authors have blocked me since I made that post. Let me reiterate that holding people accountable for Zionism is not drama, and refusing to platform people with such ideologies is an important part of activism. It always begins with your own community. I have been isolated from many people in my own, real life community for my strong activism for Palestine. I find it very offensive for users who have never spoken about Palestine to pretend I’m just an online Twitter-fingers type person when I have sacrificed so much in my life and fought so hard both in real life and online for Palestine. To act like I am attacking someone on the internet just to feel morally superior is a completely ludicrous statement and diverting from the true issue.

If you think that someone:

1.) Blocking countless Pro-Palestine people ((including other authors))

2.) Taking issues with boycotts and refusing to boycott, calling boycotting “pathetic”.

3.) Making many Pro-Israel posts calling Palestinians terrorists then deleting them only because of backlash.

4.) Making almost every conversation about the genocide about how Israel is the victim, refusing to acknowledge Israel’s crimes, and sharing “activism” posts that skews the genocide as a "war" where both sides are suffering instead of what it really is: The oppressors commiting genocide on the oppressed.

5.) Saying a Zionist propoganda movie which glorifies a Zionist war criminal is your all time favorite.

6.) Using Zionist talking points such as “Zionist is just another word for Jew” and is just another way to be anti-semitic.

If you think all of these examples don’t indicate where that person’s loyalties lie and don’t warrant being called out, I truly don’t know what to tell you. I think it’s ridiculous to act like I’m grasping at straws to look morally superior when there is so much clear evidence. I was terrified to make that post for days because I have been constantly attacked and ostracized for supporting Palestine in real life. My friends advised me to turn off my DMS and Inbox because they knew I would get hate for it here, too. I made that post purely to warn Stays of an individual with dangerous beliefs in our community, and if you see that as something to block me for, you need to re-evaluate yourself.

[edenfenixblogs]

Hi, I have a question and you seem like a really balanced person, so here goes: I want to join a drag king collective, and I’m so excited about it, but the king leading it has some Interesting views. It’s the kind of thing where it’s constant “fuck Zionists” and what feels like extremely performative activism (Palestinian flag in bio but no actual fundraising/peace efforts, posting misinformation/irresponsible rhetoric etc.) I’m scared that if I join it I’ll be treated different, and even more scared that my friends will think the antisemitism justified (they aren’t great at understanding what antisemitism looks like these days). Idk what to do about the fear of someone being antisemitic because I don’t want it to stop me from doing what I want, but I also know it’ll devastate me if it does happen. If you can offer any insight I’ll be very grateful.

Hi friend!

I'm really glad you reached out to me. Not because I pretend to know all the answers, but because I love that we can all rely on each other during this time.

Unfortunately, whether you sign up for this is ultimately a matter of your own personal priorities and how you are prone to handle confrontation.

Personally, if it was me, I would join. I'm not afraid of defending myself (but I very much used to be, so no shame if you're not there yet). If I wanted to explore my gender identity through performance (if indeed that is what you are doing. I've never been personally drawn to perform drag, so I cannot pretend to know exactly why one might start. But I don't think I'm out of line to assume that it involves some kind of exploration or critique of gender both personally and societally) I certainly wouldn't let antisemites be the reasons I didn't go for it.

If the Anti-Zionist jerk starts coming at you, you can simply say "OK, great. Real quick question: What's a Zionist?" And watch him squirm to say anything real or substantive other than "a Jew." He might say, "They're basically Nazis!" or "They're people who want Palestinians to suffer!" or some other confidently incorrect hyperbolic statement. If he does so, you can say, "Oh! Well, then that's definitely not what I am," and move on.

If he says something slightly more substantive, like, "They're people who think Jews should get to take land from Arabs/Palestinians in order to have a Jewish ethnostate!" You can use the same response as above. But you can also say, "Oh, weird. That's definitely not what I thought it was. Which Zionist Jews have said this, exactly? Cuz I heard it was something completely different." Remember, their goal isn't actually to educate you or help anyone or even to provide limited but factual information. The goal is to shame you into aligning with their self-righteous point of view. That is not an effective tactic when you respond with QUESTIONS instead of outright CORRECTIONS. Making people explain themselves is a great way to defang a bad faith accusation like that.

Finally, they might say, "It's someone who supports Israel." In this case, either of the above methods will work. Or you could question even further. Here's an example of a chat:

You: Supports Israel how?

Jerkface: They want Biden to use our tax dollars to fund a genocide!

You: Oh, well then I'm definitely not a Zionist.

Jerkface: No, you don't understand! It's people who think that Jews can only be safe in a settler colonial apartheid ethnostate that justified its existence by crying about the Holocaust.

You: Well then I'm still not a Zionist. I don't know why you're assuming these things about me. But people should generally cry about the Holocaust. It was really bad thing that people did to Jews. Do you not think the Holocaust is a big deal?

Jerkface: Of course I think it was a big deal. That's why we all have to condemn THIS genocide. The Jews are the Nazis now.

You: I don't know. I don't think that' show Nazism works. But I definitely don't like genocide. If liking genocide makes a Zionist, then I'm definitely not whatever you're accusing me of.

Jerkface: No! I'm just saying that Zionists don't want a ceasefire. They're trying to kill all the Palestinians.

You: I don't know what to tell you then. Because that's still not me. Of course I want Hamas and Israel to both stop bombing each other.

Jerkface: No, Palestine is JUSTIFIED in bombing Israelis because of the oppression.

You: I think its weird that you're conflating Palestinians with Hamas. Are you saying that Palestinian civilians are bombing Israel as as a protest tactic? I thought for sure that Hamas, a terrorist organization, was the group responsible for Anti-Israeli violence. Personally, I've always though that most Palestinians just want to live in peace and don't support terrorism and violence. I don't know why it would harm Palestinians to suggest that both Israel and Hamas should end this conflict diplomatically rather than with violence.

Jerkface: Right! That's why we need to tell Biden to call for a ceaseefire!

You: OK, but I still don't know if you're saying Israel should just stop firing or that Israel and Hamas should stop bombing. I definitely want everyone to stop bombing each other. But I'm not really sure why Hamas would care about what Biden says.

etc...

I call this the "Rabbi method," because when you go to a rabbi, they never really give you an answer to your question. They answer with other questions designed to get them to see their own answer.

Either Hamas is a terrorist group unfairly targeting Israeli civilians and launching bombs into civilian territories--something that is clearly bad and which makes average Palestinian civilians innocent victims (this is the truth btw) that require both Hamas and Israel too lay down their arms. OR Palestinians and Hamas are interchangeable terms and the ongoing oppression of Palestinians have driven them to violent, offensive, armed resistance--which you may or may not agree with as a revolutionary tactic (To be clear, this is NOT TRUE OF PALESTINIANS. PALESTINIANS ARE NOT TERRORISTS AND DO NOT DESERVE TO BE BOMBED). Palestine IS NOT HAMAS. Hamas is bombing Israeli civilians.

Israel is retaliating with extreme force and prejudice against a terrorist organization in a way that is devastating the lives and futures of Palestinian Civilians, who very much deserve for all sides to lay down their weapons and address their mutual grievances diplomatically and responsibly. What is occurring right now is a messy, ugly, brutal war that is killing and traumatizing all civilians in the Levant. And a one-sided ceasefire leaves the side that ceases firing dead. A ceasefire means that EVERYONE must cease firing.

Unless Jerkface has a plan for how to ensure the safety of Palestinian civilians from Hamas that also includes Israeli safety from Hamas, asking for Israelis to simply lay down all their weapons without any guarantee of safety is asking for a nation of mostly Jews to die without putting up a fight. And wanting Arab Israelis and also Jews not to die is not what Zionism means. It's not even what pro-Israel means. That's just called not being violently antisemitic, actually.

Israelis aren't mindless Zionist Nazi Monsters who get off on killing Palestinian babies. Palestinians aren't Noble Savages who have never done anything wrong as individual people and who are inherently morally superior to every single Israeli because they were born Palestinian. Both Israelis and Palestinians are complex, global micro-minorities who have both perpetrated tremendous harm to one another over the course of several decades, and neither group is going anywhere. Neither group deserves for its people to die. Neither group is only "worth helping" if western onlookers categorize them as "innocent" and "good." If someone's activism isn't geared toward respecting the inherent dignity of Palestinians and Israelis regardless of either group's history, then that person is not engaging in activism. If someone is asking you to support that cause because their chosen cause involves perfect cinnamon rolls being targeted by pure evil enemies, then they are not asking you to join them in activism. They are not even asking you to join them in a political reality. What they are asking is for you to join their toxic fandom.

And reducing this conflict down to simplistic fandom rhetoric is not going to help anyone and is frankly offensive to all Jews, Israelis, and Palestinians--all of whom deserve to be seen for the traumatized, suffering, imperfect people they are.

People don't earn support by being good. They inherently deserve support, because they are people.

All that said, maybe it's not emotionally useful for you to engage in this group. Maybe this type of conflict is too much for you. That's OK, too.

And while I would never let antisemitism take away an opportunity for me to fulfill a dream, I will say that my experience of Antisemitism during this time is 100000000% responsible for making me realize that the dreams I had before this experience need to evolve. I no longer wish to be in the town where I live. I wish to be home with my family closeby, because when the chips are down, that's who matters. The idea of moving back to my home state was unthinkable to me before October. Now? I cannot get out of here fast enough. There's nothing I want that is exclusive to my current location anymore. The community I thought I'd built for myself is gone. And while antisemitism didn't take them from me, it sure as fuck showed me that I never had it in thee first place.

If you're going to join this collective, be sure its worth the fight. And if it's not worth the fight, then look for a place that is. Exploring your gender identity freely should not come at the cost of living your ethnic and religious identities openly. Ever.

Don't trade one closet for another. You deserve more than that. We all do.

hope that helps @kit-chaos-doodle

[hareofhrair]

Please tell me if you're a zionist or not. Because the notes on that post of yours are absolutely rancid regarding Palestinian people and I need to know before I submit your url to the zionist block list

No, I am not a zionist. Israel, like any ethnostate, should not exist and what they are doing to the Palestinians is unquestionably genocide. I fully support Palestine and their right to resist in the face of annihilation.

I am also not anti semetic, for the record, and stand with the many Jewish people who support Palestinian liberation.

I also recognize that while Biden or any president is unlikely to ever stop supporting Israel as it’s too critical to colonial and capitalist action in that area, Trump has voiced support for Israel straight up nuking Gaza.

There is unfortunately very little we can meaningfully do with this particular election for the Palestinian people. Continuing to pressure the democrats may mitigate the damage to a degree, but I’m aware how thin a comfort that is to a country currently being massacred.

But we cannot help ANYONE if our democracy is actively overthrown, as Trump has made extremely, unambiguously clear he intends to do. He has every intention of making himself a Putin style dictator, with the full support of Putin himself, who knows he can use Trump as a puppet, in a manner so like the way we’ve overthrown democratic countries and installed puppet dictators in the past that the dramatic irony would be heavy handed were it fictional. We almost deserve it.

But we are a country full of innocent people the same as any other, who don’t deserve to suffer and die to punish the idea of western imperialism, which the vast majority of have zero control over.

The one tiny bit of control we DO have is through voting.

This is not a situation I’m happy with, but this isn’t a situation of trading Palestinian lives for American ones. This is a situation where saving Palestinian lives isn’t even on the table, and refusing to acknowledge that is only going to make the situation worse. We can either save American lives and hope it doesn’t make the situation in Palestine actively worse. Or we can refuse to do anything like petulant children and watch everyone die.

Vote, and then get back to organizing your community, participating in protests and direct action, volunteering and donating to relief and evacuation funds, and voting in local elections so that we can maybe end up with some better options next time!

And if yall ever get the violent revolution off the ground, I’ll be right behind you! But if you tell me you’re not voting because the only moral action is firebombing a Walmart, you’d better firebomb the goddamn Walmart.

And to the assholes in the notes of that post and talking shit in my asks, for the record, I’m a disabled trans lesbian living in goddamn Louisiana, living on less than $1000 a month. Aside from my friends in Florida, no one is getting the ass end of this garbage government more than us. And for the record, yeah, I’m boycotting McDonald’s, and anything else I can. I’d boycott Starbucks too if there was one within 50 miles. I vote in every local election. I organize as much as I can in rural Louisiana. I take direct action whenever I get the chance, which isn’t often given my lack of mobility and remote location, but I’m willing to bet I’ve done more than most of the assholes in the notes.

Let me put it very plainly, TLDR: if you refuse to vote because you think it doesn’t make a difference or you think it’ll make you complicit in this country’s crimes, you are actively putting your personal comfort and moral purity above the lives of the Palestinian people, as well as above every vulnerable person in this country on top of it. If you want to save Palestine, start by not letting our god damn democracy go up in flames.

[anythingforourmoonysstuff]

Jonathan Glazer is not a hero. That’s a fucking awful thing to say. I have many things to say about this so I’ll list them below. First though I will say that the only person who ‘highjacked the holocaust and Jewishness’ was Jonathan himself in his disgraceful speech. He sold his people for money and acceptance from people he should not be trying to please and that is so wrong and pathetic.

1. Regardless of what he actually meant when he said ‘we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the holocaust being highjacked…’ that was incredibly poor phrasing and the fact that so many Jews had the initial reaction of thinking he had meant he refuted he Jewishness is enough to show that he was simply trying to be provocative and did not care who he was hurting in the process. Clearly, he was hurting his own community, or shall I say, the community he so desperately wants to distance himself from. So desperately in fact that he had to state it in front of the Many people who watch the Oscars. Anyway, when you have spent time writing a speech, especially about such a delicate subject, you better be careful with how you chose to express yourself. I mean that should be the bare fucking minimum.

2. In his speech, by blaming the events unfolding in this tragic war where both sides have suffered so much loss solely on the occupation, he did what so many have been doing since the 7th which is victim blame. Not only is it historically incorrect that this conflict is a result the occupation (rather, occupation is something that comes as a result of conflicts not what cause them- to clarify- areas of the West Bank are occupied not Gaza) but it is also disgusting to justify the massacre carried out by Hamas which is what led to this war.

3. It’s so telling when someone gains support from many people outside their community while being called out by their own community who feels betrayed by them. Specifically when it comes to Jews who decide to identify themselves as a ‘good Jew’ to supposedly please non Jews and create an illusion of assimilation when we all know that if the nazis or Hamas or any other Jew hater were pointing a gun at him they would not stop to ask if he was ‘a good Jew’. If this happened in any other oppressed minority, and by ‘this’, I mean one person speaking against the communities values and interests and actively promoting hate against that minority, they would not be praised. Because why would they. They would be called out. By their community and people outside of it. So once again ‘I’m not antisemitic I’m just anti Zionist’ yeah I’m gonna need you to shut the fuck up. The double standards when it comes to Jews is horrendous.

4. Jonathan Glazer is not a hero. He is a coward and a traitor to the Jewish community worldwide. He won an Oscar for a movie about the holocaust and failed to mention the Jewish victims who died in the holocaust and specifically in Auschwitz. Not one mention. In his entire speech. And all because it is suddenly trendy to completely dehumanise Jews whether alive or dead to the point where a jew, who should know better, is doing it too. That is not heroic. It is disgusting and dangerous. It’s been so heartbreaking to see holocaust survivors speak about how disappointed and hurt they were by his speech. If that doesn’t bother you then I suggest you start doing some major self reflection. If you are speaking over these holocaust survivors you are a disgusting human being.

5. Instead of opening up much needed, especially in the current climate, dialogue about the holocaust, he made his movie and the conversation about it about the current israel-Hamas war. By doing this, he completely diminished the scale and horror of the holocaust, that no, cannot be compared to other atrocities, no matter how tragic they are. The holocaust is one of a kind because antisemitism is one of a kind. (I’ll attach a clear explanation of this from rootsmetals at the end of the post). By universalising the holocaust, a form of holocaust distortion, he betrayed Jews that have been fighting since the holocaust for their stories to be heard and remembered.

6. By diverting the attention away from the holocaust, he essentially gave permission to non Jews who have been relentlessly attacking Israel and Jews in general, using the holocaust , to continue doing so with the assurance that they are backed by a Jew. We call people like him a self hating Jew but I digress.

7. This leads me to my next point which is this, by linking his Jewishness to Israel in the sense that he must answer for Israel’s actions, he legitimised any attack of Jews in the diaspora in the name of support for Palestine and the fight against Israel. Because if every jew mush condemn israel or else they are a ‘bad Jew’ then why not just attack us all right? I mean ‘globalise the intifada’ and whatnot.

8. HE DID NOT MENTION THE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS SLAUGHTERED BY HAMAS ON OCTOBER 7TH NOR THOSE HELD HOSTAGE IN GAZA!!!!!!!!!

There’s honestly so much more to say and I might add more later but I’ll end with this:

Jonathan knew he was speaking in front of a massive audience. He was obligated to speak of the victims of the holocaust. He didn’t. He could have used the speech to speak out against the rise in antisemitism we are seeing all over the world. He didn’t. He should have used he speech to speak about the holocaust survivors who survived a genoside only to be slaughtered by Hamas. He didn’t.

I saw a comment someone made about this speech which I think sums it up well: “In Jonathan Glazer's "Zone of Interest," you don't see one Jew. Those are the best Jews, according to Glazer: the faceless victims screaming in the distance. Ironically, he's the villain: picking up awards from the bodies of those anonymous dead Jews while ignoring the living ones getting slaughtered in the Gaza Envelope by genocidal murderers.”

I’ll leave you with this quote and hope it makes at least one person question their response to Jonathan and his speech.

The explanation mentioned above about the uniqueness of the holocaust and why what Jonathan did is incredibly disturbing-

[catcatb0y]

The thing that really gets me with people who say that they enjoy the leaks/spoilers/current canon is that.

Like.

I dunno man, it sounds so fucked up to say, "Yeah, I like this kid but I want them to die-" and I say that as a wholehearted 'sir, that is a fictional character' person, but I mean like. How are you going to say that you support a character, that you like a character, and then actively stop them from reaching their ONE GOAL.

Like Bakugou has been training his ENTIRE LIFE to become a Hero- even assuming that his death was somehow the epitome of sacrifices, the beau of death, contributed to every thing in the plot, especially given the blatant show of him AS A CHILD in that chapter!!

You're really going to say 'yeah, I think his death adds to the narrative, so I want it to happen/stay canon- even if that means that Bakugou will never become a Hero, never reach the goal he was striving for, never be able to reap the benefits of being a better person-"

Like

That sounds so anti-ish for one, but also it's such a huge disservice to his character. I wanted to make this post less mean than my asshole postings but I am so fucking tired from zoning in and out of reality all night on this stupid eleven hour shift.

I dunno, my main points were:

- It's reslly hypocritical from fans (especially BakuDeku fans) who have been talking about how intertwined Bakugou is with the narrative- only to all of a sudden completely flip switch and say 'yeah, no actually, the Heroes could afford to lose him just like that, and his death adds to the manga' (bitch where??? Like not even in a mean way but fucking where???)

- It's really, really shitty to Bakugou, who is a WHOLE ASS CHILD. What about his dreams? His aspirations? His hopes? His goals? Can you really say 'yeah I'm a big fan of this character, but it doesn't matter to me if they never get their own thematic ending, if they never have the chance to be a better person, see a better world, or accomplish the things that they've been going after'. Especially not when Bakugou has been training since he was a literal child!! He's one of the most phyisically fit characters, has the best hold over his quirk as a whole, and the dude can mauever mid air- like that alone shows you just how much he has put into his training.

Only for what? For him to do his absolute best and fail. Somehow manage to scavenge up even more power than THAT only to die in vain-

And I was talking with someone (not meant as like a vauge, I genuinely can't remember who I was talking to) that said 'I don't think his death (should it be permanent) is in vain' and not to the fight, yeah, not to the war.

It's anticlimatic as all fucking hell, so I really don't understand people who like/support/want it to be permacanon but still claim to like Bakugou- because wow it's just so shitty to him, specifically. Even if he is the driving force of the future narrative, even if his death is the thing that sparks the change in the war, like.

His character arc is dying in vain. All of the work that he put in to be a better person, to be a better Hero, to train harder faster swifter- everything he's done up until now... For what?

How can you support a character's growth for years- honestly even just for months- and think "Yeah, I would love to see all of his efforts wasted as he dies a brutal death; ending up nothing more than a pawn to move the narrative forward"

Which he HAS been!! Epsiode one, his Sports Festival ceremony, Kamino- like. The kid has already suffered enough. He cannot catch a fucking break and it's ALWAYS at the negligence of Heroes and (almost) ALWAYS due to failed teamwork!!

You guys just want. One last shitty hurrah? Bakugou's only point to be how Heroes fail the people they claim to protect?

Not only does it just. Erase all of Bakugou's hard work, but it makes him nothing more than just a reoccuring theme. Is that. Is that really what people want nowadays?

Like. I'm just baffled. It's disheartening and annyoing and whatever, but it's also just. Confusing. Why even say you like the character when you just like the plot. The kid hasn't even gotten a fucking hug from his goddamned mother and one of her only lines is calling him weak for not being able to stand up to grown adults when he was caught off guard.

*And BakuDekus especially, when you guys end up boiling every thing Bakugou does back down to Midoriya- I don't even want to hear the "I know Bakugou isn't dead, because Midoriya-" right as you may be, he is his own character.

His "death" is so sad to me. I truly feel no joy from the way he calls out to Midoriya (partially because of the fandom completely sidelining Bakugou as "Midoriya's closest person"), but because he has spent literal years comparing himself to Midoriya.

"I tried to show superiority over you, but I always lost-" those words probably mean so much to Midoriya, who never saw his own worth; but to Bakugou? They're heartbreaking. I dunno maybe it's finally going off the deep end and getting fed up with every goddamned BakuDeku derailing conversations/theories/posts about Bakugou's death into his worth according to Midoriya. But like.

This kid has spent years comparing himself to Midoriya, years of hatred and anxiety and self doubt- and his main climax, his final moment is "Yeah, my insecurities were right all along."

I still kind of do want an SPOP CatraDora ending, but at the same time... I really don't. Because it every turn this poor kid has been watered down to just. The way that Midoriya sees him, his importance to Midoriya- and he deserves better than that. I'm glad that he did everything he could to make it up to Midoriya, but I don't want this groveling shit either. This bland comparison. Like I have feelings about Midoriya and his input, but I still do want to keep this as nice as possible, so I won't. I won't get into that.

But honestly? I genuinely don't get how you can call yourself a Bakugou fan and be okay with- dare I even say enjoy- how shit of an ending this would be for him. How underwhelming his entire prescence has become. How downplayed his stregths are. How disregarded his goals and hopes and genuine drive has been and all for what?

I still really don't see the side of anyone arguing his death has "narrative merits" other that like. Antis. Who have and continue to make all of these arguments, and yet people who claim to be fans are making the same ones, like.

The rude thing to say would be 'do you have no self awareness?' which truly, like. How. How do you have to genealize this in your head, how did you get from genuine meta and well thought out headcanons and presictions into. Anti takes, "but better," because you say that you like the character.

But it still really begs the question, like what?

Anyways, I will go to sleep and Tumblr will give me my two notes while I am gone. I will wake up and hopefully just. Get a better interest. Even if the people this is targeted towards would happen to see it, I'm pretty sure I blocked them already so it doesn't matter.

[likeabxrdinflight]

so I've finished Silver Snow and I certainly...have thoughts

so...I understand why people say Crimson Flower feels a bit unfinished given it just kind of left the Agarthans as an afterthought to be dealt with in the post-script. and I think I agree that they easily could have slipped a Shambhalla chapter or two in between the attack on Arianrhod and the final fight with Rhea in CF, I don't even think it would have been hard. I do think, however, that Rhea needs to be the final boss for CF and I don't think you can change that. Adding the TWSITD as chapters after defeating Rhea is, I think, kinda stupid.

...and it's kinda stupid in SS too, is what I'm saying. The way there's like three whole chapters left after the climactic battle with Edelgard makes the whole thing feel paced very oddly. Like I get why they wanted to address it in this route given the Agarthans are Rhea's primary nemesis, but one- they don't even let Rhea fight them at all outside of the animated cutscene, she's not even an ally unit- and two, they're not even the final boss? Somehow that's still fucking Rhea???

And speaking of which, that just did not make sense as a final boss for this route. At all. This is the church route, the one where I'm supposed to sympathize with Rhea the most, and somehow at the end of it I'm still putting her down for being an out-of-control monster? Like I don't even like Rhea (even in this route I never got past C support with her lol) and I still think that's a harsh ending. It made sense in CF- there was no other character that could be the final boss in CF and have it make thematic sense. But in SS? Not only does it not make thematic sense, it just doesn't make plot sense either. Totally came out of nowhere, happened for no reason, really just felt like they wanted a cool dragon fight for the Black Eagles regardless of whether or not you side with Edelgard.

Despite CF kinda hand-waving aside the Agarthans, both it and Azure Moon (which also kind of ignores them despite the whole Tragedy of Duscur thing) feel like complete, thematically cohesive stories. Neither of them suffered too dramatically from not having a Shambhalla chapter. The character arcs of the main lords feel relatively complete and the general story that each is trying to tell ultimately get told effectively.

I don't feel like I quite know what story Silver Snow was trying to tell. It's not really Rhea's story, she's absent for most of it. It's not Seteth's story either, even though he functionally takes Edelgard's place as the "lord" character. You could maybe argue it's supposed to be Byleth's story? But I'm not sure that's accurate either. There's a lot of emphasis placed on the mystery of Byleth's birth and why they have Sothis' powers, but it doesn't feel like the story is really about Byleth. It kind of can't be, not when Byleth is a silent avatar for the player. So whose story is this? What's it for, and what's it trying to say?

CF was about Edelgard and felt like it was telling a story of revolution, of finding humanity, and had something of an anti-religion tone to it. AM was about Dimitri regaining his good heart and compassion for the world, it was about overcoming personal tragedy. It had the least political feel to it of any of the routes I've played thus far. But SS was about...what, exactly? Upholding the status quo? It didn't feel like it was making a statement about political or clerical reform. It didn't feel like it was about the Church characters all that much. It didn't even feel especially anti-war, even though it had an opportunity to be as the only route you can theoretically enter by actively deciding not to side with Edelgard's war.

Like there were some interesting things going on here. We do learn a bit more about Rhea and the children of the goddess. And Byleth's crest stone is a little better explained (though I kinda had the gist of it by now from the other two routes). So I dunno...I don't feel like it added much for me. It did make me like Seteth and Flayn a little more, but honestly I still just don't care for Rhea. Any good will it tried to extend to her was kind of ruined by the ending where I have to kill her anyways.

Granted I am not predisposed to like Rhea, so any route was gonna have an uphill battle convincing me to like her. But this route was billed to me as the one that was gonna try, and damn it sure didn't try that hard.

I'm told Verdant Wind is very similar to Silver Snow so honestly I'm not gonna play it any time soon. If it's as messy as this then eh...I'm gonna need a break from this particular game before I return to do that route. I do wanna see Claude's story at some point though, so I'll get to it eventually.

[thebluespirit83]

debunking pro-snape/anti-james arguments and putting it on the internet because clearly i hate myself. buckle up. this is gonna be a VERY long post. im ready for the amount of hate i will get; im willing to take one for the team. 

1. james forced lily into dating/marrying/etc him 

this literally never happened? because its almost as if lily is her own person who is able to stand up for herself-

“I wouldn’t go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid,” said Lily.

“LEAVE HIM ALONE!” Lily shouted. She had her own wand out now. James and Sirius eyed it warily.

She turned on her heel and hurried away [from james]. 

-and so she would not allow someone to walk all over her. its almost as if james (canonically) matured as a person, and she appreciated this, realised he was a good person and got feelings for him? because james’ only negative traits were that he was conceited and a show off. people are able to mature and grow from these things! james did this! he did not ‘force’ lily to go out with him!

2. james and the other marauders bullied snape

you know what, i cant even disagree with this one. you’re right - they did bully him. but lets look a little bit at the context. 

sirius and james were both upper class, naive white rich boys. they are idiots. they were both stupid smart teenagers!! they were popular! and while this does not excuse the gross bullying snape was subject to-

Pink soap bubbles streamed from Snape’s mouth at once; the froth was covering his lips, making him gag, choking him

Several people watching laughed; Snape was clearly unpopular ... Snape was trying to get up, but the jinx was still operating on him; he was struggling, as though bound by invisible ropes.

-it (unfortunately) makes sense with context. james and sirius also stopped bullying people, and even expressed discomfort/regret with the way they acted-

“I’m not proud of it,” said Sirius quickly.

“Of course he was a bit of an idiot!” said Sirius bracingly, “we were all idiots!

[sirius talking to remus] you made us feel ashamed of ourselves sometimes

A lot of people are idiots at the age of fifteen. He grew out of it.

-when they were younger! i’d also like to point out these little lines i noticed when i was finding quotes for my argument which snape stans like to ignore:

James and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on each other

I mean, he [snape] never lost an opportunity to curse James

there was a flash of light and a gash appeared on the side of James’s face, spattering his robes with blood

wow, look at that. the hate they felt for each other was mutual! snape also jinxed james! but oh wait - james was the one who matured! snape was the one who bullied his son twenty years later because he looked like james! 

3. snape didnt abuse the kids at hogwarts 

here’s a real argument i saw when looking through some pro-snape posts: ‘snape wasn’t an abuser, because abusers don’t let their victims retaliate, but snape did let the kids talk back to him’

what. the. fuck?! 

this is the dictionary.com definition of abuse: ‘to treat in a harmful, injurious, or offensive way’ or ‘to speak insultingly, harshly, and unjustly to or about’. i’m pretty sure snape did both of these things-

“I don’t need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!”

“So,” said Snape, gripping Harry’s arm so tightly Harry’s hand was starting to feel numb.

Snape threw Harry from him with all his might.

[hermione’s teeth]  "I see no difference."

‘Idiot boy!’ snarled Snape [at neville]

-on multiple occasions. i’d also like to remind you guys that neville’s worst fear is SNAPE?! his TEACHER, a figure that is supposed to be there for emotional and educational support is his worst fear in this entire world?! above the woman who drove his parents to insanity? over failure, over his abusive grandmother, over everything? his teacher? and for the pro-snaper that used this quote-

Nearly everyone laughed. Even Neville grinned apologetically.

-to claim that it was a joke, it isn’t a joke. because when snape came out of that cupboard, he was terrified. yes, it’s an embarrassing thing to have as your boggart, but the point is is that it is. he is terrified of that man. 

4. james only joined the order because his wife was a muggleborn and he ‘had to’

this is just factually incorrect. james had been sticking up for muggleborn rights since he was in school, far before he started dating or even became friends with lily: 

“Apologize to Evans!” James roared at Snape, his wand pointed threateningly at him.

“I’d NEVER call you a - you-know-what!”

so this is literally not true!! plus, at least he did join the order, whatever his reasons where (which were canonically good). snape didnt join the order. snape was friends with someone who suffered discrimination in society, and instead of using his privilege to help her and support her, he joined a group that was set on murdering people like her. when james had a friend who underwent oppression (remus/lycanthropy) you know what he did? he illegally became an animagus. 

5. snape had to be a death eater to survive at hogwarts as he roomed with blood supremacists

this is the shittiest excuse i have ever seen in my entire life. as a poc, this comment really reminds me of the argument ‘i was raised in a racist white household! i cant control my beliefs!’

you can always control your beliefs. i understand not going on big rants about blood inequality in front of a bunch of supremacists, and i understand wanting to blend and fit in (especially because he was unpopular and needed the support the slytherin boys provided), but i will never understand then becoming an active member of the group yourself. he got the dark mark. he helped voldemort. he was a death eater, and a proud one at that! no-one forced him to join. this argument literally makes my blood boil. 

6. snape had a lot of trauma from being raised in an abusive household

okay? so did sirius. so did neville. luna was bullied at school, just like snape. harry lived in an abusive household. did any of those people bully children? did any of those people join a blood supremacist group? and dont get me wrong, im not calling any of these people perfect - they all had a lot of flaws - but none of them hurt another people to the extreme that snape did. 

7. snape saved the trio’s lives many times

this is the absolute bare minimum. ‘oh wow, he didnt let harry die!! what a king! he should be respected and praised! we should excuse all of his other actions because he didnt let people die <3′ 

8. snape is not a perfect person, he also did good that many people overlook

you’re right, snape did do some good things in his life. but unfortunately, for me and many others, doing a couple of good things doesnt excuse all of the shitty, abusive things he did too. we’re not ignoring them - we just dont think they’re good enough reasons to forgive him. 

‘but james and sirius hurt others! you ignore all the bad things they did in favour of the good!’ you do the same thing with snape, first of all. second, they did a lot of good stuff. james’ and sirius’ only crimes were being annoying. for being a bit of a dick, conceited, knew they were hot and were a bit entitled. while these things are annoying as fuck, they were also stupid teens that eventually grew out of their behaviour and became better people. not perfect! better. while snape just stayed bitter at the marauders, long after their deaths, and even took his anger out on an innocent child. 

9. people only hate snape because he was poc and queer coded

as a poc and queer person, please stop. this is a very bad excuse. being poc and queer (which im pretty sure he isnt, but anyway) doesnt excuse you from your actions. plus, a huge amount of harry potter readers are poc and lgbtq. why would they hate snape for those reasons?! 

so thats all i got for today. im not gonna go into a deep snily/jily thing because i literally cannot be bothered. anyway im done. i need to go revise, i’ve already spent long enough on this. 

[lesetoilesfous]

Anders and ‘‘Murder’’ in Dragon Age

Ok so I’ve seen this a few times recently and want to break down my thoughts on it.

Anders is a murderer - this is true.*

(*Though there are some really great meta posts proving how by Dragon Age Canon he killed less than 100 people in the Chantry boom. I’m on mobile but if anyone wants to add that please do.)

Hawke is a murderer. Varric is a murderer. Isabela is a murderer. Fenris is a murderer. Aveline is a murderer. Merrill is a murderer. Sebastian is a murderer.

Guys you, you have a kill count. Hawke and their whole gang are a group of dangerous vigilantes who kill people according to their own personal moral judgements.

The difference between Anders’ Chantry Boom and the Kirkwall Crew’s merry decade of mass murder is that a) the Chantry Boom was the beginning of a Civil War b) That Civil War started, in part, to prevent a genocide

(Canonically, Meredith had called for the Rite of Annulment with no good reason. Canonically, she is going to enact it knowing the Circle mages are innocent. Canonically, the Gallows had over 800 innocent people inside including children and the elderly. Not to be utilitarian, but yes, I would kill 100 political and religious leaders in a corrupt, dictatorial, violent theocracy in order to save nearly a thousand innocent people.)

The third difference between Anders and Hawke and the gang’s multiple-hundreds head count is that you, the player, don’t do it. So you don’t excuse him the way you excuse yourself - despite the fact that Anders’ last ditch effort to save over 800 people after ten years of peaceful protest is infinitely more justifiable than Hawke’s slaughter of hundreds of refugees and gangs in a city that is canonically riddled with poverty, prejudice, unemployment and homelessness.

When I say Anders Was Right, I don’t mean, “he’s my favourite character so I’m turning a blind eye to his actions”. I mean, seriously, I think that what he did was the morally correct choice and a necessary one.

I don’t mean that Anders isn’t an asshole. He’s a huge asshole!!! He shouldn’t have lied to Hawke. He shouldn’t have manipulated them. He’s selfish, and ignorant, and often blind to the way his words and actions hurt other people. He can become self absorbed and arrogant. He demands disclosure of trauma, he’s short tempered, he leaps to conclusions, he hurts people’s feelings, he IS blinded to the causes and needs of other communities because of his single minded focus on mages and his own suffering. And a lot of his dialogue towards Fenris and Merrill (however cartoonishly exaggerated, but more on that anon) is unforgivably rude AT BEST.

I think Anders actions at the Chantry were correct and morally justifiable. Does that mean I think he’s perfect? Of course not! His flaws are what make him interesting!!!!

But even if all of this weren’t true - EVEN IF the rest of the gang didn’t canonically have a kill count as high as, or higher than, Anders’ first action in a civil war to prevent a genocide - EVEN in that case.

I also cannot condone Bioware’s conscious, deliberate, centrist, toxic, ableist caricature of a mentally ill, queer character and his fight for civil rights. I…don’t actually think we need a story right now that explains to us how, fundamentally, queer bipolar men are ‘unhinged’, violent and evil, simply for the fact of their resistance against state and religious abuse. Even when they’ve been tortured. Even when children are going to die.

We have this appalling, condescending, imperialistic idea that people - in reality and in fiction, are only allowed to violently resist violent oppression by the state and church if we find them palatable. If they step a toe outside of our personal comfort zones, (themselves constructed by the same imperialistic propaganda we’ve consumed since childhood) we immediately rescind that right - damning an individual for resisting, even if their life is on the line. Even if it concerns the death of children. This is not a moral choice. It’s a social bias.

As for Fenris and Merrill - I struggle to believe that a man who spent ten years providing free medical treatment to refugees, criminals and the homeless never met an elf or learned anything about discrimination against elves. I also struggle to understand how - despite the fact that the Circles are the only place in southern Thedas where elves are not segregated from humans, and where they can reach an equivalent position of authority to humans, somehow Circle mages are most often the mouthpieces for anti elven discrimination.

And by this of course I mean I don’t struggle at all. It’s very helpful for bombastic, oppressive governments like the USA, and all who support them, to set up a false dichotomy between marginalised communities. To peddle the lie that marginalised communities’ biggest threats are one another and not, say, the church or state actively enforcing violence against them. (The Chantry teaches that mages corrupted heaven. It also teaches that elves are inherently more sinful than humans because they are ‘born further from the Maker’s light’).

Once again, apart from the catastrophic failure in internal logic that results in these forced, cartoonish caricatures of Anders as a character - I also disagree with this because I fundamentally do not believe that we need a story about queer people and mentally ill people fighting people of colour but never daring to raise a finger to the people lobotomising them, r*ping them, killing them and driving them to s*icide. I don’t like that story because I don’t think it’s a good one - I don’t think it’s narratively interesting. I do think it’s morally corrupt. I think it’s toxic propaganda. I think it drives us apart.

There’s this incredibly condescending attitude among DA fans towards people who like Anders. The patronising, lazy assumption is that we saw a pretty blonde white man and didn’t engage with the narrative at all. This is rarely the case. We are also adults. We also played the game. We just came to a different conclusion.

[fatliberation]

I’m Abandoning Body Positivity and Here’s Why

In short: it’s fatphobic.

“A rallying cry for a shift in societal norms has now become the skinny girl’s reassurance that she isn’t really fat. Fatness, through this lens of ‘body positivity’, remains the worst thing a person can be.” (Kayleigh Donaldson)

•  •  •

I have always had a lot of conflicting opinions about the body positivity movement, but it’s much more widely known (and accepted, go figure) than the fat liberation movement, so I often used the two terms interchangeably in conversation about anti-fatness. But the longer I’ve been following the body positivity movement, the more I’ve realized how much it has strayed from its fat lib origins. It has been hijacked; deluded to center thin, able, white, socially acceptable bodies.

Bopo’s origins are undoubtedly grounded in fat liberation. The fat activists of the 1960s paved the way for the shred of size acceptance we see in media today, initially protesting the discrimination and lack of access to equal opportunities for fat people specifically. This early movement highlighted the abuse, mental health struggles, malpractice in the medical field, and called for equal pay, equal access, equal respect, an end to fatphobic structures and ideas. It saddens me that it hasn’t made much progress in those regards. 

Today, the #bopo movement encapsulates more the idea of loving your own body versus ensuring that individuals regardless of their weight and appearance are given equal opportunities in the workplace, schools, fashion and media. Somehow those demands never made it outside of the ‘taboo’ category, and privileged people would much more readily accept the warm and fuzzy, sugar-coated message of “love yourself!” But as @yrfatfriend once said, this idea reduces fat people’s struggles to a problem of mindset, rather than a product of external oppressors that need to be abolished in order for fat people to live freely.

That generalized statement, “love yourself,” is how a movement started by fat people for the rights of fat people was diluted so much, it now serves a thin model on Instagram posting about how she has a tummy roll and cellulite on her thighs - then getting praised for loving her body despite *gasp!* its minor resemblance to a fat body. 

Look. Pretty much everyone has insecurities about their bodies, especially those of us who belong to marginalized groups. If you don’t have body issues, you’re a privileged miracle, but our beauty-obsessed society has conditioned us to want to look a certain way, and if we have any features that the western beauty standard considers as “flaws,” yeah! We feel bad about it! So it’s not surprising that people who feel bad about themselves would want to hop on a movement that says ‘hey, you’re beautiful as you are!’ That’s a message everyone would like to hear. Any person who has once thought of themselves as less than beautiful now feels that this movement is theirs. And everyone has insecurities, so everyone feels entitled to the safe space. And when a space made for a minority includes the majority, the cycle happens again and the majority oppresses the minority. What I’m trying to explain here is that thin people now feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces. 

Regardless of how badly thin people feel about their bodies, they still experience thin privilege. They can sit down in a theater or an airplane without even thinking about it, they can eat in front of others without judgement, they can go the doctor with a problem and actually have it fixed right away, they can find cute clothes in their size with ease, they do not suffer from assumptions of laziness/failure based on stereotype, they see their body type represented everywhere in media, the list goes on and on. They do not face discrimination based off of the size of their body. 

Yet diet culture and fatphobia affects everyone, and of course thin people do still feel bad about the little fat they have on their bodies. But the failure to examine WHY they feel bad about it, is what perpetuates fatphobia within the bopo movement. They’re labeled “brave” for showing a pinch of chub, yet fail to address what makes it so acceptably daring, and how damaging it is to people who are shamed for living in fat bodies. Much like the rest of society, thin body positivity is still driven by the fear of fat, and does nothing to dismantle fatphobia within structures or within themselves.

Evette Dionne sums it up perfectly in her article, “The Fragility of Body Positivity: How a Radical Movement Lost Its Way.”

“The body-positive media economy centers these affirming, empowering, let-me-pinch-a-fat-roll-to-show-how-much-I-love-myself stories while failing to actually challenge institutions to stop discriminating against fat people. More importantly, most of those stories center thin, white, cisgender, heterosexual women who have co-opted the movement to build their brands. Rutter has labeled this erasure ‘Socially Acceptable Body Positivity.’

“On social media, it actually gets worse for fat bodies: We’re not just being erased from body positivity, fat women are being actively vilified. Health has become the stick with which to beat fat people with [sic], and the benchmark for whether body positivity should include someone” (Dionne).

Ah, yes. The medicalization of fat bodies, and the moralization of health. I’ve ranted about this before. Countless comments on posts of big women that say stuff like “I’m all for body positivity, but this is just unhealthy and it shouldn’t be celebrated.” I’ve heard writer/activist Aubrey Gordon once say that body positivity has become something like a shield for anti-fatness. It’s anti-fatness that has been repackaged as empowerment. It’s a striking double-standard. Fat people are told to be comfortable in their bodies (as if that’s what’s going to fix things) but in turn are punished when they’re okay with being fat. Make it make sense.

Since thin people feel a sense of ownership over body positive spaces, and they get to hide behind “health” when they are picking and choosing who can and cannot be body positive, they base it off of who looks the most socially acceptable. And I’m sure they aren’t consciously picking and choosing, it comes from implicit bias. But the socially acceptable bodies they center are small to medium fat, with an hourglass shape. They have shaped a new beauty standard specifically FOR FAT PEOPLE. (Have you ever seen a plus sized model with neck fat?? I’m genuinely asking because I have yet to find one!) The bopo movement works to exclude and silence people who are on the largest end of the weight spectrum. 

Speaking of exclusion, let’s talk about fashion for a minute.

For some reason, (COUGH COUGH CAPITALISM) body positivity is largely centered around fashion. And surprise surprise, it’s still not inclusive to fat people. Fashion companies get a pat on the back for expanding their sizing two sizes up from what they previously offered, when they are still leaving out larger fat people completely. In general, clothing companies charge more for clothes with more fabric, so people who need the largest sizes are left high and dry. It’s next to impossible to find affordable clothes that also look nice. Fashion piggybacks on the bopo movement as a marketing tactic, and exploits the very bodies it claims to be serving. (Need I mention the time Urban Outfitters used a "curvy” model to sell a size it doesn’t even carry?)

The movement also works to exclude and silence fat Black activists.

In her article, “The Body Positivity Movement Both Takes From and Erases Fat Black Women” Donyae Coles explains how both white people and thin celebrities such as Jameela Jamil profit from the movement that Black women built.

“Since long before blogging was a thing, fat Black women have been vocal about body acceptance, with women like Sharon Quinn and Marie Denee, or the work of Sonya Renee Taylor with The Body Is Not An Apology. We’ve been out here, and we’re still here, but the overwhelming face of the movement is white and thin because the mainstream still craves it, and white and thin people have no problem with profiting off the work of fat, non-white bodies.”

“There is a persistent belief that when thin and/or white people enter the body positive realm and begin to repeat the messages that Black women have been saying for years in some cases, when they imitate the labor that Black women have already put in that we should be thankful that they are “boosting” our message. This completely ignores the fact that in doing so they are profiting off of that labor. They are gaining the notoriety, the mark of an expert in something they learned from an ignored Black woman” (Coles).

My next essay will go into detail about this and illuminate key figures who paved the way for body acceptance in communities of color. 

The true purpose of this movement has gotten completely lost. So where the fuck do we go from here? 

We break up with it, and run back to the faithful ex our parents disapproved of. We go back to the roots of the fat liberation movement, carved out for us by the fat feminists, the queer fat activists, the fat Black community, and the allies it began with. Everything they have preached since the 1960s and 70s is one hundred percent applicable today. We get educated. We examine diet culture through a capitalist lens. We tackle thin, white-supremacist systems and weight based discrimination, as well as internalized bias. We challenge our healthcare workers to unlearn their bias, treat, and support fat patients accordingly. We make our homes and spaces accessible and welcoming to people of any size, or any (dis)ability. “We must first protect and uplift people in marginalized bodies, only then can we mandate self-love” (Gordon).

Think about it. In the face of discrimination, mistreatment, and emotional abuse, we as a society are telling fat people to love their bodies, when we should be putting our energy toward removing those fatphobic ideas and structures so that fat people can live in a world that doesn’t require them to feel bad about their bodies. It’s like hitting someone with a rock and telling them not to bruise!

While learning to love and care for the body that you’re in is important, I think that body positivity also fails in teaching that because it puts even more emphasis on beauty. Instead of saying, “you don’t have to be ‘beautiful’ to be loved and appreciated,” its main lesson is that “all bodies are beautiful.” We live in a society obsessed with appearance, and it is irresponsible to ignore the hierarchy of beauty standards that exist in every space. Although it should be relative, “beautiful” has been given a meaning. And that meaning is thin, abled, symmetric, and eurocentric. 

Beauty and ugliness are irrelevant, made-up constructs. People will always be drawn to you no matter what, so you deserve to exist in your body without struggling to conform to an impossible and bigoted standard. Love and accept your body for YOURSELF AND NO ONE ELSE, because you do not exist to please the eyes of other people. That’s what I wish we were teaching instead. Radical self acceptance!

As of today, the ultimate message of the body positivity movement is: Love your body “despite its imperfections.” Or people with “perfect and imperfect bodies both deserve love.” As long as we are upholding the notion that there IS a perfect body that looks a certain way, and every body that falls outside of that category is imperfect, we are upholding white supremacy, eugenics, anti-fatness, and ableism.

[captnjacksparrow]

Hey, really liked your analysis of Hinata. I feel almost the same way about her. Even though generally I dislike female characters who are naturally meek, subservient and pointless with no character arc in any type of media, what made me absolutely hate her character was how she treated Neji. If Kishi wanted to show her arc being developed organically, instead of proposing to Naruto that removes her stuttering and gives her new found confidence (because girls only get confident when proposing to guys 🙄), Kishi could have shown her talking to Neji after he literally told his bitter story on the chuunin exam grounds in front of everyone. She is shown like she is sympathetic but didn't do anything about it. She didn't even talk to him after he was hospitalized. She knew exactly why he was the way he was, and yet she fights him as if it was his fault. She, an heir of the clan, could have asked her father to support Neji, she had some clout. But nope. In fact, it was Neji who apologizes to her in a way, he is the one who trains her and help create a new jutsu for her. What did she ever do for him exactly? And Neji didn't have to help her. She was in the best position to help and understand Neji but what did she do? A lot of fans like her character because she is reserved but kind and sympathetic. She is reserved but a coward. She was not kind towards Neji. He died for her when he didn't deserve to, he had dreams and goals that were much bigger than Hinata's entire existence. She couldn't even see her own cousin's pain and she claims to understand Naruto?? Really??

Even Kishi said she was a pitiful character who only watches from a distance. He deliberately made her that way, no goal, no backbone and no lines. And I think she sucks the most after Danzo.

WoooW!!!! Thanks for the ask, Anon.

[[Hinata and Sakura fans!!!! Please stay away and don't interact. I fucking tagged them properly]].

Even though generally I dislike female characters who are naturally meek, subservient and pointless with no character arc in any type of media, what made me absolutely hate her character was how she treated Neji.

We definitely share the same thoughts on this one, Anon.

I am really tired on most of the media for their poor treatment of female characters.

The last time I was amused by a female character was from 'Game of Thrones', I loved Cersei Lannister, who is an absolute biashhh and Sansa Stark, started out as an annoying rose tinted princess but ended up winning everyone's heart. Both are non-combative, soft spoken and somewhat powerless women in a world dominated by men. But they just didn't let the inconveniences stop them and instead they learned how to fuck that world back and take control. Both are similar and yet very different.

After seeing, such well-developed characters..... For me girls in Naruto series, is blehhhhh..... Nothing to get inspired from them. And I knew it by episode 3 itself. I have no idea how can girls, in real life, treat Sakura as some feminist icon, which makes my skin crawl for number of reasons. If you point her mistakes out in any discussions, they will pull the misogynist card to your face. When in reality, I am also a girl and my world views are entirely different from Sakura or Hinata. There is no way a 12 year old girl would want to look at the Duck of another boy.

And the problem is, They form the majority, I mean people who can connect with Sakura or Hinata. So, as long as girls like them exists, we really should suffer from these crap portrayal I guess.

That's why I advise people that If you want to see a good woman character, Narutoverse is not the place.

Having said that, I find Temari, Konan, Tsunade were better (I mean inside the Narutoverse). Though their motivations or reason to achieve a goal revolve around their men, I find their attitude relieving. Unlike Sakura or Hinata, they don't wet themselves on the sight of the men they love.

What irritates me was, Kishimoto could've easily put a character like Temari or TenTen or Tsunade into Team 7. It would've made my viewing experience a lot better. If he doesn't want the strong girls to take over the attention from his boys, then he should've introduced a meek character like Rin Nohara. She is silent and cute but atleast she was willing to die for the Village and never wetted herself over Kakashi, though she loved him. And she treated Obito like her best friend. But he deliberately made Sakura hateful and he never stopped.

Sakura and Hinata were the lowest of the low, compared to any other side characters. And, in the end, they got the main Character's Ducks without actively doing anything. For me this tells me three things

He was using these girls as a shield to close the hetero normative mouths while in reality hiding those boys true feelings under that shield.

He really hated these kind of girls and constantly showing his hatred on them at every given chance and never redeemed them back. 

He knew the target audience’ mindset and he simply caters them by giving them what they need and at the same time writing the important arcs according to his wish.

I think, it’s the combination of all three. 

Just to give you an example.

There is this delusional SS shipper Who justifies Sasuke was acting Tsundere throughout the war arc. I mean, come on!!!! 

I came across this post because, the Original Poster was an idiot who comes into the anti SS tag and reblogged my content and saying I was wrong... So, I don’t mind sharing that person’s content.

So I don’t know where this delusion comes from... It's truly pathetic.

There are millions of idiots who believe in this kind of shit and Kishi is deliberately feeding them with bits and crumbs while making his boys go out and save the world.

These delusional mindset tells us they don’t give a single shit about the story as a whole. They watch it purely for the pretty faces and getting high over them. In this case, Sasuke.

It’s as clear as day that Sasuke didn’t care about anyone other than Naruto when fighting the war. You don’t have to be a shipper but even a non-shipper can point this out. I mean Sasuke wouldn’t have saved Jugo either, if he didn’t come to Sasuke and advice him. Do you think Sasuke would’ve tried to look for Jugo and saved him at all cost???? It’s just that he came to Sasuke and he helps him back. But Sasuke would’ve saved Naruto from the bomb blast even if he was standing a mile away.

So, if these delusions reflects the mindset of the majority of the women audience, then the creator will never try to give anything better but instead give us some low-life characters like Sakura and Hinata. 

So, Anon, your expectation for Hinata’s character could’ve been developed much better is just a wishful thinking. Because, Hinata is a character for these kind of people and not for us. And the author deliberately did it. 

She was in the best position to help and understand Neji but what did she do? A lot of fans like her character because she is reserved but kind and sympathetic. She is reserved but a coward. She was not kind towards Neji. He died for her when he didn't deserve to, he had dreams and goals that were much bigger than Hinata's entire existence. She couldn't even see her own cousin's pain and she claims to understand Naruto?? Really??

For me, this also irked me a lot. 

Hinata could’ve tried to talk to Neji about his problems even when he was a child. But she was simply playing innocent when in reality, she is just a coward. Even after the Chunin Exams, there was no apologies from her side, like you said. Because she is from the Main Branch. That hierarchy never changed. If she had the gall, she could’ve easily broken that hierarchy by saying, ‘I want Neji Nii-San to take over our Clan, He is the best candidate for this and I can gladly help him with all my efforts’.  A single line and just 2 or 3 panels, it all takes.

For me killing Neji is where Kishi asking us silently, 

Do you really want these pair to happen despite having a blood stain of another character??? 

Most people said, ‘Yes!!!’, because they don’t give two shits about Neji. As long as Hinata gets Naruto, the main character’s Duck, that’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter who dies, who lives. 

That's why Kishi is shitting on them by making her as a non-existent woman in the Boruto Manga.

Even in real life, there are many hopeless foolish little girls who would do anything for the man she loves. I've seen them and I always stay 2 miles away from them. I mean, they even ditch their own friends and spends her entire time with him and when he dumps her later, she will come back to her friends for consolation. I think Sansa Stark is the best example for this. She started out much similar to Sakura and Hinata, believing in Princes and shit, she even naively betrayed her father for the man she had crush on. But the author made her to learn her lesson in a much painful way and later she came out as a Queen who no longer needed any man at the end. I think, this is called Development.

At the end of the day, Romance and Sex is all that matters. The author knew it. So, he is feeding these girls with some low quality cookies and they are very glad to take and eat it.

[olderthannetfic]

I wanted to ask you about radical feminism (TERF-ism & TIRF-ism). Radical feminism never seemed to be *necessarily* some of the really bad things that people on this blog say it is. For instance, everything roach-works says it is in an earlier post. There are at least some people I've read who are part of the movement of radical feminism (whether or not they would self-identify as that) and who really don't espouse any of the views in roach-works comments. (1/2) Thinking of the list of points

--

From nothorses - the people I’ve read (e.g. Iris Marion Young) *do* espouse many of these, but not so in a way that has to lead to these more extreme views that roach-works mentioned. One may not agree with them but they don’t seem so bad to me? Are they? Am I a terrible person? It disturbs me to hear something with the word 'feminism' in it denigrated so harshly, and it always seems to me like the views get mixed up with the worst half of the people who believe in them. (2/2)

(Appendix...) I feel there's a lot of truth in SOME of the views that nothorses correctly ascribes (i. m. o.) to radical feminists, in particular: "Women are all miserable with their bodies, cursed with the pressure to reproduce and have sex with men. ... miserable with their genders, forced as they are to ensure the overwhelming and constant suffering that is patriarchy." Is it just that the "all" makes the views too strong? Or is there, for critics, a more fundamental problem I'm missing?

I've seen some much nicer, saner people self-describe as radical feminists and object strenuously to how I see radfems... However, all of them still kept talking about porn in terms that only make sense if you're talking about the evils of the mainstream industry, and moreso the mainstream industry of the 1970s (which is when a lot of this rhetoric comes from). And yet this attitude gets over-applied to porn in general, regardless of medium, working conditions, or level of economic necessity involved in its creation.

The attitudes I think are pretty much universal in this ideology, and universally shitty, come out when they're confronted with fsub content by and for women.

Yeah, yeah, "mommy porn". I'm not saying Fifty Shades of Grey is well written or not kind of embarrassing, but when people start bleating about how confused womenfolk will get bad ideas from it, you should be suspicious, whether they're radfems or fundies.

"The hot billionaire falls in love with me for no reason and does all the work to make sex hot while I lie there like a dead fish" is a common fantasy. It really doesn't say anything about the woman in question, nor does it make the patriarchy stronger.

The big one to look for from nothorses list is #5:

Sex, in particular, is more often exploitative than not. Only some kinds of sex are not exploitative. Many kinds of sex that we think are consensual, or that people say are consensual, are either rape or proto-rape.

This is saying "BDSM is rape", which is something that most radfems do think once you scratch the surface. Rape roleplay is also rape and furthering the patriarchy.

Even if they make some small allowance for informed adults doing BDSM in some strict environment with specific rules, show them 50SoG and women's right to choose goes out the window. Sure, the relationship in the book looks pretty unhealthy, at least at the beginning, but the thing being criticized is readers' right to choose.

Even the radfems who support butchness and don't think butch women are gender traitors will usually be assholes over trashy wank material like 50SoG.

And once you open the door to "your libido is political", you've started down a very dark road that leads to a bunch of naturally kinky tumblr teens sitting in their bedrooms, staring at their computer screens, and wondering if they're a future rapist because they like a/b/o or sex pollen or something.

--

I get where you're coming from. Maybe you're in a context where most women are pretty miserable. But I'm not. I was raised by a mother who thought diets were stupid and telling your daughter what you think of her body is active child abuse.

Being a victim of abuse, including "you're too fat" type abuse, is neither inherent nor unique to women. Sure, women tend to be under the microscope, but so are lots of people.

As an upper middle class anglo white woman in the US and moreover as a woman who looks fairly conventionally femme even with my very hairy legs (much to my annoyance), I honestly don't experience that much policing. I already, through no fault and certainly no merit of my own, conform reasonably well to the "neutral" standard of white womanhood. My male equivalent would be the most unmarked in the US, but I'm only a little marked.

What this gender-obsessed analysis misses is that it's not about womanhood: it's about failing to be the "neutral" default. Poor people fail. Black people fail. Asian people fail. Disabled people fail. At least in the US. In Japan, third generation Korean-Japanese fail. Burakumin fail despite being ethnically Japanese due to having been a separate caste for centuries.

"Intersectionality" on social media tends to get used as miserypoker: the speaker with the most listed oppressions wins the argument and you should signal boost them or you're a bad person.

In actuality, what intersectionality means is recognizing that gender and sex may sometimes just not be very important in a given person's life if they experience enough privilege or if, conversely, they have such a profound lack of privilege elsewhere that this other identity overshadows gender in terms of their lived experience.

Radfem ideology says I must prioritize Woman out of my many identities. But, in reality, I feel more kinship with bisexual men than with lesbian women. I feel more kinship with kinky straight people than with bisexuals who want AO3 and pride parades to be nothing but g-rated hand holding.

--

I get that it's upsetting for people to be railing against something called "feminism", but that's like saying that disliking the Jews for Jesus makes you antisemitic. The whole point is that a lot of people feel that radical feminism is pretty anti-woman in many of its core values.

I don't think you're a bad person. I do think that some of the underpinnings of radfem ideology lead directly to sensitive people who are concerned about such things wondering if they are.

[liqdrababbles]

About this (and about me)…

Liqdra

29

any pronouns is ok

still learning english (ESP/ENG)

🔞 NSFW blog

sometimes I will talk about sensitive or taboo stuff

fictional characters are not the same as real people

⛔ if you are a minor please don’t follow me. DNI

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If I'm on your "DNI" and I accidentally followed you / commented on some of your posts, I'm sorry. I didn't notice the warning. Block me please 

↓ PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE FOLLOWING ME ↓

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Hey hello! As my description says, this is a blog where I will post my random headcanons, and maybe some memes and drawings. Please don't expect much order here, a LOT of what you’ll see will be pretty raw / barely built overall. Whenever possible, I will try to write my ideas in an organized and better written way, but many posts will only be isolated thoughts that little by little I will improve, correct or merge with others. Imagine that this is a blog full of ugly sketches… very ugly written sketches.

(don't expect perfect spelling either, English is not my first language and I'm still learning)

Please don't follow me if you are a minor, there is nsfw material here. Although the nsfw elements of this blog are not very graphic or explicit (they are written headcanons, often explained in a very flat or medical / scientific way), I don't want minors to follow this account. None of my accounts are suitable for minors and this is no exception. If you are a minor, don't follow me, don't message me.

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Don't follow me if you are an anti or if you support harassing people depending on their fictional ships. I may sometimes write headcanons that some people may find disgusting, shocking or too weird. All things written here are about fictional characters, who don't exist in real life, so I can imagine them in infinite situations. None of these ideas indicates anything at all about my moral compass or how I perceive those things in real life. There are many ideas that I find interesting to explore in fictional contexts and with fictional characters, but that cause me total disgust, frustration, sadness and anger when I see them in reality (when they involve real living people).

It's like when a writer or film director horribly kills one of their characters in their book/movie... it's interesting for them to explore this event (the death and suffering of a fictional character) in fiction, but if you ask them about it using an irl context, they thinks it's horrible that something similar happens to a real living person.

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Additional Info

parts of Homestuck I will consider for my Homestuck headcanons

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It only remains for me to say: welcome and I hope you have a good time here. I am also active on twitter, there you can find my (sfw and nsfw) art and other short headcanons

[where-theres-smoak-2]

With the way antis have taken advantage of Alina being half Shu on the show in order to use it against Darklina I’m wondering would more people take the Grisha persecution and really discuss it rather than parroting the same “Ohh,they did such a good job with Mal on the show and the Darkling is so evil”if Aleksander was a POC on the show since Demon in the Woods heavily implies that he probably has some Shu blood since he can pass as one. I mean personally I think it feels super forced to insert 21st century (mostly American centric) racism where you already have a fantasy group as representation for discrimination and persecution but there’s no doubt in my mind that if he has been played by a POC actor those fake some fans would immediately start defending him. I think in general there should def be more discussions online about the way Grisha as a minority group has been presented and how the narrative represents them because yes Alina keeping her powers and the Darkling getting some sort of redemption would be amazing but that doesn’t solve the bigger issue of how Aleksander is vilified for doing everything he can to protect his people against a system that’s been abusing and enslaving them for centuries while Alina is so anti Grisha and spends half of her life hiding who she is(hello assimilation and co dependency so she can be the perfect “normal”girl her jerk of a “best friend”could love)and then it ends up being permanently stripped from her because the story can’t have a powerful woman learning of the unjust system that’s been commuting genocide on her people and deciding to put a stop to it. Instead we need someone like Zoya who has no leadership or political abilities to be queen and is very much pro monarchy(aka the system that oppresses her people)and her becoming a queen has to be because of her white saviour boyfriends decided she’s the best fit for it because characters like Daenerys from GOT and Aleksandr are deemed “too extreme/dangerous /ambitious”when they try to change the status quo because they’re “too violent”.But if you make another character a WOC(then change her to white passing scree you capitalised on POC buying your books)and give her how many powers basically turning her into a Mary Sue and make her a queen without her doing anything to gain it or even wanting to be one (because they would make her greedy and violent/evil)people will so not notice and root for her because performative diversity/activism solves everything. Anyway sorry for the rant I just had to vent for a bit,lol.

That's ok rant away, I think having a good rant is healthy sometimes. You've raised an interesting question in if Aleks was played by a POC would antis have actually defended him and would that have made people discuss the oppression of the grisha more. I mean I don't know the answer to it. I do feel like antis will use pretty much anything to paint darklinas as bad people. I actually talked a bit about the fact that in the books m*l is white and Aleks is the one that is presented as potentially being a POC when some antis started accusing darklinas of being racist for not shipping m*lina making the claim that they only ship darklina because archie is a MOC and Ben is white. Considering most darklinas have openly admitted that show m*l is 100% better than book m*l and how alot of people liked him in the show but just prefer the chemistry between darklina, the argument that we are all racist doesn't make much sense. Unfortunately I do think that antis use racism as a weapon in ship wars far too often and this I find worrying because if the subject of racism comes up in a more serious discussion are people just going to shrug and say its just antis being antis instead of engaging in what needs to be an important and educational discussion.

The fact that Aleks as a leader of a oppressed minority group is villainised the way he is in the books is something that has always frustrated me and made me kind of angry too. I honestly don't feel like the show villainised this character even with the bad things he does in the show. They did a very good job, in my opinion, of showing that he was a man who had spent hundreds of years watching his people suffer and was now committing these dark acts out of desperation, he feels like he has tried every other way and now fear is the only weapon he has left to use. They go to great lengths to show you why he is doing these things making him more of a morally grey character than an outright villain, which is why I think the character has even more support post release of the show. I mean I wasn't part of the fandom when it was just a book fandom but from what I've seen others saying the darklina fandom has grown bigger as people are watching the show and are just being drawn to Aleks' character and the darklina ship. This isn't something that happens in the books where he is just depicted as being evil to his core pretty much and its very hard to understand his motives and I also don't feel like he gets much development as a character he's just kind of there in the background doing villain things. Most of his development in my opinion is in demon in the woods and I kind of wish she had actually written that into the actual book trilogy.

As for Zoya I don't know much about her character past the grisha trilogy so I can't really form a personal opinion on how her character is developed past that point. But from what others have said I get the impression that LB tried to fix the mistakes she made with Alina with Zoya in that people didn't like that Alina lost her powers so she makes Zoya really powerful, they wanted Alina more involved in politics and maybe even as a grisha queen so she made Zoya a grisha queen. In some ways this is good because it shows growth and that she took on criticism and tried to fix it. Unfortunately it does make Alina's fate an even more bitter pill to swallow because Zoya's journey really should have been Alina's. In my opinion Alina should have ended the series with her powers and in a position of power so that she can help better her people's situation. Whether that position of power is as the new queen or whether they decide to get rid of the monarchy altogether and form a council or government instead that includes both otkazat'sya and grisha working together.

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Mary Ruth Keller

Mary Ruth Keller has 42 stories at Gossamer, plus her stories are at AO3. She's written a number of short standalone stories, but she's thought through the X-Files mythology and written about it probably as much as anybody ever has. So if you want to dive into the mythology and all its drama, you need to go read her mythology fics ASAP. (But read this long, interesting interview first!) Big thanks to Mary Ruth for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Quite frankly, yes. The Kuxan Sum Cycle branches off the actual series following the Third Season episode Syzygy. I took the myth-arc as it stood at that time, post Nisei-731, and the agents in mid-Rift. Although I didn’t quite realize it when I started out, I was most interested in moving the myth-arc forward in a continuously unfurling narrative, one where Scully and Mulder became an effective investigative team who support each other as partners and friends again. After I started writing in my little corner of the X-F universe in 1996, there was a lot of stuff on the show that just happened, with no real storytelling logic to it I could fathom, but that seemed to be popular. I stopped writing in 2000 because I was frantically busy at my new job (which consumed far too many twelve-plus-hour workdays and weekends) and because my sister and I were trying to take care of my elderly, increasingly frail, Mother. So, I never expected, when I started writing in 2018 and posting again in 2019 (I reposted all my stories, in order, to AO3 and fanfiction.net, because Chermera would never have made sense without them) for readers to take an interest in myth-arc and character issues that the series writers had simply abandoned to go chase, well, anything else, especially if it made no coherent sense whatsoever. What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

The fandom was a lot of fun. There were many interesting, engaging discussions I took part in with other fans of the show, some of whom I am still in touch with.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

All of the above. I spent a lot of time discussing writing and characters with other writers on ATXC, except when I was actively working on my novels. Since I was doing basic research into microwave remote sensing of the Earth while working at the Naval Research Laboratory at the time – yes, I was one of those dreaded Department of Defense scientists the show had a love/hate relationship with – my writing happened at night and on weekends. Novels, especially the longer ones, take me about a year from first words on disk until release, which meant I didn’t have all the time to participate on-line as I would have otherwise. But, I enjoyed chatting with the fellow denizens of the Endies Board, and on the EMXC, Scullyfic, and Je Souhaite mailing lists. I’ve saved some of those posts and conversation threads on my older computers, where it’s fun re-reading them from time to time. What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

There were a lot of generous, funny, very intelligent fans involved with X-F back then (not that there aren’t now; there are, of course). I started writing because I wanted to get the myth-arc and the characters back on-track, the long-term story moving forward and the agents again being the smart investigators I loved hanging out with on Friday nights. But, outside of having read a lot of myth, literature, fiction, and non-fiction, I didn’t know enough about the mechanics of writing fiction. Several authors were willing to help out, some explicitly through E-mail conversations, and some from general comments about crafting stories that were posted to ATXC. I had a real problem with how I initially handled dialog, which I had some E-mail guidance on, that was very much appreciated. I also had two quite diligent beta readers, one an on-line fan, and one a real-life friend, both male, who helped me with the direction of the Scully-Mulder half of Anath. I was, at the time, utterly exasperated with how the pair of them had become such complete morons on the series, both totally incapable of investigating anything successfully, which was affecting my writing the characters in that story.   What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? Ooh, boy. I’d like to say I started watching with the show with the Pilot, but I didn’t, quite. Tom Shales was the Washington Post TV critic at the time the Pilot aired – yes, not only was I a government scientist, I was living in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1992. He was intrigued by the characters and premise and found Duchovny and Anderson engaging while playing their roles. At the time, I was wrapped up trying to work on a PhD while still employed at NRL, so I tucked the review away, waiting until I had Friday nights free to check it out. I’m a great lover of science fiction, so I thought to give the show a try, eventually. [Lilydale note: I found a couple things Tom Shales wrote about The X-Files premiere in 1993: Fall 1993 TV preview article and a “Pilot” episode review.]

The first episode I sat down to watch was the First Season Darkness Falls, where Mulder and Scully get trapped at the logging camp with the Earth Firster, Doug Spinney, the logging executive, Steve Humphries, the Forest Ranger, Larry Moore, and the gooey green bugs. I was amazed by that story. It was as perfect a little piece of science fiction as I have seen on TV (except for one bit toward the end), with an environmental moral to it as well, where all the characters make good and bad choices, and they all suffer or succeed because of them.

What hooked me, really hooked me, were the first/second acts, specifically, Dana Scully’s actions, once they find the desiccated logger in the tree. The investigation is handled logically, in that it’s not the big male agent who goes shinnying up the trunk to look at the evidence while everyone else stands around watching and wailing, “Whatever shall we do!” No, it’s little Dana Scully who takes the ride to the upper branches. This made oodles of sense, in that she was this tiny woman whom two men could lever up that far with a rope, a hand winch, and pulleys. When she gets there, after grimacing (who wouldn’t, considering what she saw), she starts investigating. She does an on-the-spot post-mortem exam, while Mulder makes an ooky male-body-parts joke, but everyone takes her results seriously. I was thrilled. Here was a female character I could really relate to, someone who could hold her own in a difficult situation, unlike most of those on the tube, then or now.

I made a point, over the following summer, of watching as many re-runs as I could, catching up on the episodes and characters. The stories ran to science fiction and horror, which are my preference. Further, although there was an emphasis on the paranormal, several of the first season episodes were written so both Mulder’s wanting-to-believe-but-needing-proof intuitive, emotional approach and Scully’s logical, scientific, justice-oriented viewpoint each got the narrative coherently from initial crime to identifying and apprehending a suspect. It was some spectacular, complex writing, and I was hooked, hopelessly hooked. I discuss this some on my old author web-page, which still exists, courtesy of the Wayback machine), so I won’t belabor it. What got you involved with X-Files fan-fic? The shenanigans within the Third Season, quite honestly. The myth-arc wasn’t moving forward, as it had during the Second Season, which I really couldn’t understand. Carter had given us this bang-up start in the ABC Trilogy with all these new fictional possibilities to explore, but instead, bupkis. The MOTW’s were retreads with no depth or moral/ethical weight to them, except for Darin’s stories. The intelligent agents I had enjoyed spending time with while they pursued their oddball investigations were evaporating before my eyes. Mulder had always been this deeply intuitive character who cared about others and knew he could get it wrong, so needed Scully’s logic in their investigations, even if he didn’t always want to hear her observations and questions. But that character was being replaced by a cookie-cutter misunderstood anti-hero, who wasn’t thinking, just running off to chase butterflies, who was always right because he was The Guy. Scully, as an investigator, the little agent who could, was simply being sidelined. Sure, she’d argue with Mulder, but the writers had stopped giving her and her logical viewpoint a real role in their cases, Darin excepted, again. As the series went on, the Agent and Doctor Dana Scully I respected was replaced with this snappish little female whose only notable skill was running in high heels, who spent her time standing around with her arms crossed, and made pruney faces at Mulder if she were required to do any actual investigating. I hated that character, but, apparently, the all-male writing staff just loved her.

I knew about the on-line fandom, so I thought to check out if anybody else had noticed these “improvements.” First, I spent time at ATXF, discussing the changes with the series, that disturbed a lot of folks, not just me. Eventually, I tripped onto ATXC. There were writers there who understood the two characters, quite well, but weren’t that interested in the other problems with the show that bothered me deeply.

Like many fan-fiction writers, I decided to try to bring in, or in my case, bring back, what I was missing in what was being aired. Sins of the Fathers was the result. As I mentioned above, it was a far from perfect story, but I learned much putting it together, and it got a lot of positive feedback. So I kept writing and trying to improve what I wrote. Folks appreciated it, then and now, surprisingly, which was endless encouragement to keep going. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? With work and my Mom, as I mentioned above, I dropped out for a few years. My new job is still microwave remote sensing of the Earth, at a University-affiliated laboratory, not working directly for the government, but the NASA/NSF-type funding for the research I like to do is much harder to come by, so it takes up a lot more of my time to keep funded and working. Adding to that, I haven’t found places like ATXC in the 90’s or the Endies Board, but I suppose lightning only strikes once. Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

Not really, no. I’ve enjoyed other TV series, but, I never felt those shows were just throwing away essential parts of themselves as X-F did, or, if they went bad, I simply stopped watching them. A fandom is, or can be, a huge time commitment, which, as I’ve noted, I don’t have that much of. I discuss this quite extensively in my author’s notes at the end of Chermera, so I won’t repeat myself. [Lilydale note: the long author notes are at the end of the story’s last chapter, not in the AO3 notes section.] Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

As a child, I loved reading myths and legends from many different cultures. So many amazing stories, so much that touches on truth. Greek myth, Norse legends, Islamic tales, Celtic fables, all of them. It goes without saying that discovering Tolkien’s fully-realized Middle Earth in my early teens was like falling into an river of endless delights.

In literature, perhaps the character I enjoy most is Sherlock Holmes. On television/in movies, I’d have to say: Beverly Crusher, (early) Dana Scully, Susan Ivanova of Babylon 5, Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan and (early) Aeryn Sun on Farscape, Samantha Carter on Stargate SG-1, Hermione Granger, and most recently, Lagertha on Vikings. Dunno, there might be a pattern there. Possibly. Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

Yes, absolutely. I started rewatching the series when it ran on BBC America, enjoying the first two seasons again. I’d actually never stopped thinking about Mulder and Scully; I just lost the time to write about them, until two years ago, when I managed to land some long-term funding so I wasn’t staying up nights writing proposals every few months. I’d have a thought about how to advance the story that became Chermera, so I’d make a mental note and play with it in my head. I also have two more novels and a satyr play left to go in the sequence of stories I want to write, so I’m turning over plot-lines and potential arcs in my head all the time. Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom? I do read X-F fan-fic. Since the series has wandered so far away from what engaged me, and most fan-fic keeps up with that, I don’t read very much. As far as other fandoms, one was enough. Do you have any favorite X-Files fan-fic stories or authors?

Reaching back into the dark ages, I’d say Pellinor and Nascent. They may both be available on Gossamer. [Lilydale note: Fortunately, they are!] What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise? Zurvan is the favorite of my older stories. It, like Twelfth Night (Denha on AO3 to avoid confusion with another X-F story named Twelfth Night), builds on the past stories in their trilogies and brings the overall arc to new places. It’s fun to uncover surprises when writing and develop challenges to address in the future, which both of those stories did. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I’d certainly like to. I had planned to write three trilogies with their satyr plays, each of them focusing on an aspect of the mythical Triple Goddess: Maiden, Matron, and Crone, in the X-F universe. Only, being me, I turned it around. Sandra Ann Miller (Samantha) is the Maiden, but I’ve just started telling that part of the arc with the transitional Anath and the first trilogy story Chermera. I’m approaching this trilogy as a coherent tale spread across the three novels, which is different from the other two. The Caroline Lowenberg Trilogy didn’t really get organized until Twelfth Night. It was only the third story I’d ever written, so perhaps I can be excused. The Dana Scully Trilogy was all interconnected, but that was more of an organic, rather than a pre-planned and deliberate, effort. I didn’t really grasp the full arc of what I was creating there until I was writing Chermera and looked back over the threads running from Rustic Suite through Anath. The next story in the Sandra Ann Miller Trilogy involves the exposure of the Japanese arm of the Consortium, but, I need to read up on Japanese history, myths and legends, and world view before I write it. After finishing and posting Chermera, that’s what I’ve been doing. The conflict between Amaterasu, the Sun goddess, and her ne’er-do-well brother Susanoo-no-Mikoto, the god of, among other things, storms, marriage, and love, as told in the Kojiki and the Nihongi (both written down in their near-final forms at the same time as we in the West were just recording the first skeletal versions of the Arthurian Legends), will definitely get worked into the Sandra Ann Miller Trilogy. I’m starting to put the arcs and plot-lines together, but, I’m not ready to begin writing yet. Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work? As I’ve discussed, I do. Part of why I take my time is because Mulder and Scully are owed real, challenging cases to solve - the two intelligent agents with their own approaches, strengths, and weaknesses, remember. Partly, because I have original fiction ideas I’d like to pursue. Trying to do the best I possibly can in the sheltered world of X-F where I attempt to create stories with universal themes, well-realized settings, coherent plot-lines, and original characters who resonate with my readers is practice for the original fiction. I’ll never write the Great American Novel (whatever that is), but I’d like to write stories that are as good as I can make them and fun for my readers, so I keep plugging. Where do you get ideas for stories? Reading and thinking, mostly. I try to look for ideas that haven’t been done to death, or different approaches to old themes. I have four original novels I scribble mental notes on. After I bring this myth-arc I’ve been working on to its (to me) logical resolution, I hope I’ll be able enough of a writer to get started on them. What's the story behind your pen name? Actually, it’s my real name. At the time I started writing, I didn’t think to do anything else. On ATXC and Gossamer, I wrote several of the shorts that are separate from the Kuxan Sum Cycle under the pen name Lise Meitner. She was a Twentieth Century theoretical physicist who explained nuclear fission, then was cut out of a Nobel prize because the judges of her day thought Marie Curie and Irene Joliot-Curie were “enough” women physicists working in radioactivity to be so honored. [Lilydale note: here’s her Wikipedia page. Among many other fascinating things talked about there, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize 48 times in two different categories and had the 109th chemical element, meitnerium, named after her. She also escaped Nazi Germany in a plot involving trains, boats, planes, and an emergency diamond ring. You really ought to read about her.] Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

I’d shared the first five of my novels with my family back in 1996. They liked them, my sister especially. I’m not sure they knew what to make of them. I haven’t shown them to my in-laws, but, I think my sister-in-law found them on her own. We haven’t discussed them, as they aren’t her usual preference, which is Romance. One distant blood relation was thrilled to discover them on-line and wrote me about them. My sister, though, is my (self-admitted) biggest fan. When we were kids, she and I shared a bedroom, where I’d make up stories to tell her at night so she could fall asleep. She and I correspond regularly by E-mail (she’s in Florida and I’m in Maryland). Back while I was working my way through Chermera, she asked out of the blue if I was ever going to write any more. She was thrilled to hear I had been but she doesn’t have regular Internet access other than at her job. I made printed, bound copies of all my stories to mail to her last Christmas. She loves them, bless her. Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

I’ve sent Chermera to Gossamer, but, it hasn’t been updated since July 2018. All the rest of the stories are there.

At AO3, my stories are under: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrkeller. The Kuxan Sum Cycle is linked together at: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555492.

I’ve published the Lise Meitner stories under my own name there: Faustus Mulder; Late Night Thoughts on Evolution, Hard Times, and Lost Pets; You Just Don’t Understand; and Lux Perpetua. Since I could separate out the trilogies into their own cycle, it just made sense.

At fan-fiction.net, they’re under: https://www.fanfiction.net/~maryruthkeller

Again, the Lise Meitner stories are under my own name. Since fanfiction.net doesn’t have a linked series option like AO3, I’ve added a header to all eleven of the stories in the Kuxan Sum Cycle so far explaining the order. The novels all are tagged with thumbnail versions of the covers I made for them. Also, the literary quotes I started each chapter and begin and end each story with, are kept in the AO3 versions, but are removed at fanfiction.net to avoid potential copyright issues. Shakespeare, Christine de Pisan, the Popol Vuh, the Ugaritic myths around Anath, and others are all long out of, or never were in, copyright, of course, but, just to be on the safe side, I’m following fanfiction.net’s rules.

If folks care to write, I’m still at my old eclipse address: mrkeller@eclipse.net. Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Enjoy it, use it as an opportunity to make connections and expand your horizons as a storyteller. Fan-fiction was much more of a home-grown effort back in the 90’s than it is now, when there are how-to books, of all things. But, don’t get so wrapped up one forgets about real life. That’s where all the best stories are.

(Posted by Lilydale on October 27, 2020)

[abla-soso]

I'm sending you this ask because I saw this post and I think this might be a case of a cultural misunderstanding? The entire conversation was very disconnected; almost nobody understood what the other was attempting to say.

I think witchesofcolor did assume about mimiwrites2000 originally but they did correct themselves pretty quickly.

They warned mimiwrites2000 about the language they were using and then explained it to them. In the U.S. if someone saying says something incredibly offensive (part of the statement they made most certainly was) then it's considered good manners to correct them immediately (particularly foreigners) so that they don't accidentally offend others. However this might be offensive in wherever you're from.

I also don't particularly believe you're anti-black either.

But, your overall behavior was (by western standards) super aggressive and you've mistaken some things as well.

When referring to AAVE that is not a 'Westerners' issue. AAVE is a specific dialect native to only Black Americans. It's words have become quite popular on the internet but they're often used improperly (as you mentioned); however because Black Americans still use the words as they were meant to be this leads to confusion and irritation (particularly the latter for Black Americans). Both you and mimiwrites2000 use it quite a bit so be there might be more confusions in the future.

Throughout the post no one called mimiwrites2000 a racist or anti-black; they said the language used was. The action was anti-black; no one said anything about the person. There's a big difference.

It was said/implied that both witchesofcolor and visibilityofcolor attacked mimiwrites2000 which again isn't accurate. To attack is imply they were purposely malicious; which they weren't. In reality, they were relatively polite. That of course doesn't mean that mimiwrites2000 didn't feel hurt; but they weren't attacked.

Honestly, you sounded really dismissive? It almost seemed like you didn't care that something offensive was said? You appeared more offended that someone corrected mimiwrites2000 and you then that something harmful was said? Like, as long as you're suffering in Palestine damned be anything else; even if it's hurtful to other marginalized communities.

Also, you claimed that you were being tone policed but you really weren't. Tone policing is when someone refuses to help/support a movement because they didn't like your tone (or attitude/words/etc.). While your tone wasn't liked; all involved still support Palestine regardless.

Overall, everybody made accusations and assumptions.

I believe neither you nor mimiwrites2000 are native English speakers (or from a western country) and language is really tricky (especially English!) so certain things are maybe lost or aren't understood but it's lost on me how you are so confident you've said or done absolutely nothing wrong. Especially since most of that entire post is in regards to something most non-Americans (including those from western countries) would have a lot of trouble understanding.

Anon, I appreciate your compassionate effort to fix this mess, but I’m really over it, and I highly doubt we can see eye to eye on this. 

It’s not just a language barrier, there is definitely a huge difference in culture clues/values. 

What I found incredibly offensive in my culture (ignoring a grieving person’s cry for help and focusing on how their wording offends me) doesn’t seem to be a big deal to you. Where I'm from, if a person is in desperate need of help, you don’t get to make it about yourself instead. Even if that person deliberately insults you, you listen and help them first and then deal with the insult. And it’s more outrageously rude when that person who was asking for your help was obviously clueless and never meant to offend but you still prioritized your hurt feelings anyway. 

You can’t imagine the level of shame and humiliation a person from an Arab culture feels when a person ignores their cry for help and tries to nitpick the words they used to ask for help, especially if they were subjugated to constant silencing and dismissive attitude before (and mimiwrites2000's private messages to me expressed how terrible she felt). 

That’s why I was angry and aggressive. 

And I’m not gonna apologize for it. 

Because while I listened and honored those guy's wishes and vowed to never again use that word that they found offensive (because I was NOT dismissive of their complaint itself), they - on the other hand - never listened. 

They demanded that a grieving victim who was crying for help be held accountable for an innocent mistake she made, but they completely absolved themselves of their own gross western-centric bias. 

They choose to call me all kinds of nasty names over and over and bombarded me with really vile, hateful messages for days.  

So sorry, but I don’t owe them shit.

But I will answer the rest of your points:

I had no idea what AAVE is, and neither did mimiwrites2000. Assuming we should have known anyway is a classic example of western-centric bias.

Even if mimiwrites2000 wasn’t directly accused of racism, the mere fact that her cries for help were ignored and she was forced to defend herself - because of an unintended offense that was caused by nothing but innocent cluelessness - was outrageous enough to me as an Arab. That post was about uplifting Palestinian voices - who were actively silenced right now - and allowing them to express their outrage and grief freely, regardless of how westerners feel about it. It was NOT the time or place to nitpick and police Palestinians voices. If someone was offended by a Palestinian’s choice of words; they should have approached them privately and respectfully, but not in my fucking post.

Mimiwrites2000 felt hurt because she felt ignored AND attacked. You don’t get to decide that for her. I already explained why an Arab victim would feel greatly humiliated in this situation, so I won’t repeat myself. 

Excuse me, but I’m too busy caring about my people being killed and colonized. I don’t have enough emotional energy to ignore my own deep pain and grief and focus on catering to other’s hurt feelings (which were caused by an unintended mistake and nothing else). We’re already deeply suffering and utterly emotionally exhausted, so have some freaking empathy and don’t demand that we should prioritize your feelings. And the most fucked up thig is: even AFTER I swallowed my own deep grief and pain and catered to their feelings; I was still called a racist bigot who didn’t really care about my own people’s suffering!!! I truly can not fathom this disgusting level of entitlement and lack of empathy.

Tone policing has many examples and it’s not limited to the one you mentioned. Also; claiming to “support” Palestine doesn’t mean shit when you nitpick and derail posts made by Palestinians and prioritize your own feelings over theirs. Don’t police, derail, or silence Palestinian voices. If you find something offensive; you can speak up, but keep the discussion in the DMs.