#topic: discourse

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Is anyone gonna explain to people that ‘proship’ does not actually mean ‘problematic shipping’ or ‘problematic ship’ or are we just going to let this misinformation spread some more?

It means pro-shipping. The prefix pro, meaning ‘supporting.’ In favor of shipping.

It only became a defined position after anti-shippers who initially identified themselves as anti-a specific ship started harassing creators they didn’t like, doxxing them, and trying to get them fired from their irl jobs for shipping reasons around 2014-2016.

So people who had been in fandom for long enough to know where that kind of rhetoric leads (ffnet purges, LJ strikethru, as well as the direct harms caused by doxxing) observed this increasing trend of harassment and rallied to say ‘oh you lot are anti-shipping, as in opposed to certain ships? Well in that case, we are pro-shipping, because we follow the adage of ship and let ship.’

Before that point, it was just basic fandom etiquette to not bother people who ship stuff you don’t like, and to understand that if something squicks you out, it’s not the fault of the people who made it.

If someone says they are pro-ship, it means fuck all about what they actually enjoy in fiction.

It just means they’re opposed to harassing creators for making content that doesn’t cause tangible harm to real people. A better way to understand the ideological position is being anti-harassment and anti-censorship.

I have a lot of ships I find disgusting blacklisted so I don’t have to see them. But I am not interested in forcing people to comply with what I think is gross. That’s what it means.

Curate your online experience, and understand that your disgust response is not a defensible moral indicator or a justification to harass, deplatform, and dox fan writers.

[tanadrin]

i think one of the most interesting things about generative ai is not just that it was a pretty unexpected thing--seems like very few people were sitting around ten years ago imagining we would have this technology in 2025--but that i think it is also pretty difficult for people who aren't well versed in the technical background to trace how we got here from there, you know? like when the internet became a big thing, i think if you were familiar with the concept of the telephone or even just one computer networked to another somewhere else you could grok the fundamental concept: it's just a bunch of electronic machines connected to a bunch of other electronic machines; it's an extremely cool piece of engineering, but packet-switching is not (at least at the nontechnical level) that conceptually different from a telephone exchange.

and you could extend this backward pretty far. electronic computers from mechanical ones; the telephone from the telegraph. likewise future developments that emerged from the internet: smart phones are not to conceptually different from computers and radios, they just ("just") are very sophisticated devices that use new versions of those older technologies. and a lot of technology is like that. if you understand a cannon you can understand the basic principle of the space shuttle.

gen ai seems... not like that? that kind of, i guess, statistical approach to problems in computer science wasn't invented in the 2010s, i gather it's a lot older, but it was mostly a niche research topic, i think? and there were some nifty demos of still pretty crude versions of stuff like deep dream, but it's not like we'd had twenty years of this kind of stuff being part of the wider milieu of technology in everyday use before gen ai started getting good. it's weird! it wasn't an accident, people had been working on this stuff for a while. but in some ways it feels like the discovery of antibiotics, one of those medical breakthroughs that happens just as kind of an a priori discovery of something useful out in the world.

and because computers are already omnipresent in our lives, unlike a medical breakthrough, it's suddenly everywhere. and yeah often it's used or promoted in ways that are pretty obnoxious, but even still, no wonder it provokes feelings of dislocation and anxiety. technologies which emerged much more gradually into society have provoked just as much unease. and the idea that it might keep getting more useful, as much more useful as computers have gotten over the last, say, 25 years--that's just hard to fathom from any angle. i think it's as hard to estimate what kind of social impact that would have as it would have been to anticipate all the social impacts of the internet back in the 1980s.

and it kind of seems a pity to me that the three camps in the discourse right now generally seem to be "ai is useless and stupid and a fad and a scam", "ai will destroy the human race", and "ai will usher in a post-scarcity utopia," because the possibility that ai is neither a complete mirage nor the end of human civilization as we currently understand it is much more interesting. and much harder to speculate about.

[samcarter34]

If you want to see a campaign featuring an actual complicated, morally difficult question about the risk of unleashing untold destruction on the slight possibility that it might make things better, may I recommend CR Campaign 2 and Caleb Widogast's campaign long quest to invent time travel.

[synchodai]

I get this impression that House of the Dragon doesn't get that "named" heirs aren't really the norm in Westeros. If it were that easy for someone to just give everything to their favorite child, Randall Tarly wouldn't have needed to force Sam to go to the Wall and Tywin could have simply chosen Cersei over Tyrion as heir of Casterly Rock.

If we look at the history Westeros borrows from, the concept of "naming" heirs wasn't really a thing in medieval England. Landed gentry didn't have direct say over the order of succession until the Statute of Wills in 1540. Before then, land and subsequent titles could only be inherited through agnatic primogeniture.

Agnatic primogeniture prioritized the living, eldest, trueborn son. Claims can only be passed on patrilineally. This means that a grandaughter can inherit a claim of her grandfather's titles through her father, but a grandson cannot be given the same through his mother. However, if his mother finally does have land and titles under her own name (not under her father's), only then does her son and other children enter the line of succession.

The reason it was like this was because it kept land and titles under one family. Daughters are less preferred because when they are married, they become part of their husband's family — meaning that any titles they receive will be inherited through a new line. This wouldn't be an ideal situation because it gives two families claims to the titles. The more claimants there are, the more unstable the hold the owner has.

In other words, agnatic primogeniture was practiced for stability. Because back in the day, titles weren't just property or land. They came with governorship over a people, so a stable and predictable transfer of titles was necessary to avoid civil conflicts and questions of legitimacy.

A landed lord or lady wasn't given the right to designate heirs for a few reasons:

Most of them were vassals who oversaw the land in the name of someone higher up. It technically isn't even theirs to give away (see: feudal land tenure).

The wishes of a human being are less predictable than having a determined line of succession based on birth order. What if he becomes incapable of declaring an heir either through illness or disability? What if he's captured and a bad actor forces him to name this person heir under threat of violence?

People died unexpectedly all time. This was before germ theory and modern medicine — child mortality was extremely high. With no refrigeration technology, a single poor harvest could mean dying from starvation. Bandits, cutthroats, and raiders were a constant threat. They could not afford to rely on a person choosing a different heir every time the old heir drops dead, because the landed lord/lady could die just as suddenly.

Even 21st century families stab each other in the back over who gets grandma's house — so imagine having an uncertain line of succession in the middle ages over a life-defining lordship and without a modern-day court system to mediate.

Going back to HotD, whenever Targaryens did go against the established line of succession, they could only have done it by consolidating the support of their vassals. Only royalty seemed to have the power to bend agnatic primogeniture, but even then they were beholden to it.

When Jaehaerys I ascended the throne over Aerea, it was mainly because there were those who saw Maegor the Cruel's act of disinheriting Jaehaerys as null and void. This restored Jaehaerys place in the line of succession above Aerea.

And when Rhaenys was passed over for Baelon, Jaehaerys had to convene his lords and offer compelling reasons as to why — her young age, her lack of an heir, her Velaryon last name, etc. It wasn't a given that just because she was a woman that she was ineligible. If he was doing it purely out of misogyny, he still had to legally justify his misogyny in order to strip away her rights.

Even after consolidating support, the book mentions Jaehaerys I and Viserys I's respective hold on the crown was still weakened. Even though their claims were backed by reasons cosigned by a powerful majority, they still had to ensure the security of their rule through other means. There were people who doubted their right to rule, and those people had to be placated with gifts (by Viserys) or intimidated into submission (by Jaehaerys).

So we come to Viserys I who never gave his vassals a reason why Rhaenyra should supercede his three sons other than, "I said so." Had he convened with his lords and maybe made the argument that a first marriage takes precendence over a second one, then maybe he could have set a new precedent and gathered support.

But no, he didn't. He relied on the power of his own words and the lords' personal oaths — oaths that he didn't exactly plan how he would enforce posthumously.

And the Realm did not choose to adopt a different succession law after Jaehaerys's designation of Baelon in 92 AC or the Council of Harrenhal choosing Viserys on 101 AC. If those two events did change anything, it was that now women were exempt from the line of succession for the crown and only the crown. It did not set the precedence that monarchs could freely choose heirs. It did not upend the whole system; it only made a tweak, as most lawful policy-changes do, by carving out at an exception. It was a committee, not a revolution.

Before and after the Dance, no other monarch, lord, or lady "declared" an heir that went against agnatic primogeniture, save for Dornish who have cognatic (equal-gender) primogeniture instead. Ramsay had to get rid of Roose Bolton's living trueborn son AND be legitimized by the crown in order to be recognized as heir (only a crowned monarch can legitimize baseborn children which is another world-building pillar a lot of people miss). Randall basically had to force Sam to abdicate because he wanted his younger brother to inherit instead. And of course, Tywin despite his intense hatred of Tyrion is forced to acknowledge him as his heir.

The rigidity of the line of succession is a major and constant source of conflict in the series, so it baffles me that people really thought that characters could just freely choose their heirs. That's why we have a civil war. It wasn't a misunderstanding. It's the expected consequences of someone carelessly going against a foundational tenent of the society they inhabit.

[ed3lsgard]

btw the ppl who diminish mark and helly’s relationship to an “office situationship” are literally doing the same thing as lumon. acting as if innies aren’t actual people and their feelings don’t matter. the office and work is their entire world and life, it’s all they know, so of course it’s an “office romance”. the show has shown us multiple times that innies are their own person, that their feelings and experiences matter, despite what some say. so it would be incredibly hypocritical if they set up markhelly just for them to not end up together in at least some form.

also, even if they were to get gemma out, it’s not as if mark and her can ever go back to the way things were. narratively it would make no sense for the show to have them reunited and have their relationship go back to normal. mark wont be rewarded for escaping from his grief. now i have no idea how things will go, but i genuinely doubt any of it will be an easy fix.

[astarionancuntnin]

he's not only a clown, he's the entire circus

astarion + text posts (part 22)

[editblr-confessions]

editblr is literally the same as the art community on Instagram back in 2019 — 2022. the only difference is that we are editing and not drawing /neu /neg leaning ?

—🪶 (if not claimed)

.

[creeps-and-pasta]

creepypasta been around so long the discourse never changes its always one of these:

nooo you can't date the creepypastas because they'd murder you! anyway enjoy my super realistic and gritty creepypasta rewrite where Jeff the killer eats babies

character age-based shipping discourse. Ben is 12 except when he's weed smoking college student and can't be shipped with Jeff who's an adult except Jeff is also 12 or maybe 14. Tim can't be shipped with Toby because he looks older and Toby is only 16. except for when Toby is an adult.

^^^ ppl using the above point to try and justify shipping Sally with other characters

hey guys have you considered tagging ur nsfw or putting it under a readmore that way the hundreds of children in this fandom don't find out what Slenderman's dong looks like

your oc is dumb and you should be drawn and quartered because of this

your headcannons are dumb and you should be shot by firing squad because of this

you drew a popular character as a POC and now ppl are mailing you anthrax

hey guys did you ever notice the creators of some of these stories are....bad?

offenderman

[revvethasmythh]

You know, I think there's something so, so insidious to the idea that Orym's perspective of the Vanguard is "flawed/human" or that him repeatedly reminding his friends what the Vanguard does (kill innocents to achieve their means) "blocks nuance" in the conversation, etc, because it implies that, in this mythical "objective" perspective that apparently exists, the Vanguard aren't so bad. If only Orym could put aside his petty grievances, such as the murder of his father and husband, and let people be nuanced about this situation, he'd see there's two sides to this story. And why discount the Vanguard's perspective just because *checks notes* they're a massive, manipulative cult that preys on vulnerable people to join their ranks and turns them to violence, or that they work with a centuries-old fascist eugenicist literally mind-controlling psychic government with the goal of freeing a creature that could very well destroy the world as we know it and even if it doesn't, will leave an enormous power vacuum for that fascist government to potentially occupy when they invade Exandria?

I think there's some misconception people have that they think war shouldn't ever be personal and if it does become personal for someone then their logic is too clouded by their feelings to see the situation clearly, just automatically. And perhaps sometimes, in some contexts, this can be true! But not here. It's actually quite cut and dried that Orym's "flawed, human" perspective is the one reminding everyone of the human cost to Ludinus' grand plans, all in the name of so called "progress"

[taradactyls]

So I could be totally wrong but, I believe it was sort of expected that men/gentlemen lose their virginity before marriage in regency times. But I also there’s some fandom ‘debate’ about whether or not Mr Darcy would’ve had sex before getting married. So I was just curious about what your canon for Mr Darcy in T3W is. Is he a virgin or not?

I knew someone would ask me this eventually, haha. I've actually had really long conversations with my beta reader about this trying to figure it out. It sounds like this might all be stuff that you’ve already seen discussed in the fandom, but I’ve never thought about it deeply before and so these are new thoughts to me.

I keep going over the historical real-world likelihood, the authorial intent, and the text itself but I’m still not 100%. I’ll explain my thinking and what I find most likely, but here’s your warning that it’s not a clear cut yes/no.

Because on one hand, at that time period it was most common for men in his position to have seen sex workers or have casual encounters/mistresses with women from their estates. Though I do absolutely believe not all men did that, no matter how much wealth and power they had. To go back some centuries, William the Conqueror seemed to be famously celibate (no hints of male lovers either according to the biography I read) until his marriage, and there's no evidence of affairs after it either. The best guesses as to why are that it was due to his religious devotion and the problems that had arisen from himself being a bastard and not wanting to recreate that situation. Concerns over religion and illegitimate children would certainly still have been applicable in the regency to men who thought that way. And in modern times I've seen sex workers say that when an 18/21yo is booked in by his family/friends to 'become a man' often they end up just talking and agree to lie about the encounter. After all, it’s not like every man wants casual sex, even if they aren’t demisexual or something in that vein. But, statistically speaking, the precedent of regency gentlemen would make Darcy not a virgin.

On the other hand, just how aware was Jane Austen, the very religious daughter of a country rector, of the commonness of this? There’s a huge difference between knowing affairs and sex workers existed (and no one who had seen a Georgian newspaper could be blind to this) and realising that the majority of wealthy men saw sex workers at some point even if they condemned the more public and profligate affairs. The literature for young ladies at the time paints extramarital sex - including the lust of men outside of marriage - as pretty universally bad and dangerous. This message is seen from 'Pamela' and other gothic fiction to non-fiction conduct books which Jane Austen would have encountered. Here's something I found in 'Letters to a Young Lady' by the reverend John Bennett which I found particularly interesting as it's in direct conversation with other opinions of the era:

"A reformed rake makes the best husband." Does he? It would be very extraordinary, if he should. Besides, are you very certain, that you have power to reform him? It is a matter, that requires some deliberation. This reformation, if it is to be accomplished, must take place before marriage. Then if ever, is the period of your power. But how will you be assured that he is reformed? If he appears so, is he not insidiously concealing his vices, to gain your affections? And when he knows, they are secured, may he not, gradually, throw off the mask, and be dissipated, as before? Profligacy of this kind is seldom eradicated. It resembles some cutaneous disorders, which appear to be healed, and yet are, continually, making themselves visible by fresh eruptions. A man, who has carried on a criminal intercourse with immoral women is not to be trusted, His opinion of all females is an insult to their delicacy. His attachment is to sex alone, under particular modifications.

The definition of a rake is more than a man who has seen a sex worker once, it's about appearance and general conduct too, but again, would that distinction be made to young ladies? Because they seem to simply be continuously taught 'lust when unmarried is bad and beware men who you know engage in extramarital sex.' As a side note, Jane Austen certainly knew at least something about the mechanics of sex: her letters and literature she read alludes to it, and she grew up around farm animals in the countryside which is an education in itself.

We can also see from this exert that the school of thought seems to be 'reformed rake' vs 'never a rake' in contention for the title of best husband, there's no debate over whether a current rake is unsuitable for a young lady. And, from Willoughby to Wickham to Crawford, I think we have a very clear idea of Jane Austen's ideas of how likely it is notably promiscuous men can reform. This does not preclude the possibility that her disparaging commentary around their lust is based more on over-indulgence or the class of women they seduce, but it's undoubtedly a condemnation of such men directly in line with the first part of what John Bennett says so it's no stretch to believe she saw merit in the follow-on conclusions of the second part as well. Whether she would view it with enough merit to consider celibacy the only respectable option for unmarried men is a bit unclearer.

I did consider that perhaps Jane Austen consciously treated this as a grey area where she couldn’t possibly know what young men did (the same reasoning is why we never see the men in the dining room after the ladies retire, etc) and so didn't hold an opinion on men's extramarital encounters with sex workers/lower-class women at all, but I think there actually are enough hints in her works that this isn’t the case. Though, unsurprisingly, given the delicacy of the subject, there’s no direct mention of sex workers or gentlemen having casual lovers from among the lower-classes in her texts.

That also prevents us from definitively knowing whether she thought extramarital sex was so common, and as unremarkable, as most gentlemen treated it. But we do see from her commentary around the consequences of Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford's elopement that she had criticism of the double standards men and women were held to when violating sexual virtue. Another indication that she perhaps expected good men to be capable of waiting until marriage in the way that she very clearly believed women should. At the very least, a man who often indulges in extramarital sex does not seem to be one who would be considered highly by Jane Austen.

She makes a point of saying, in regards to not liking his wife, that Mr Bennet “was not of a disposition to seek comfort for the disappointment which his own imprudence had brought on, in any of those pleasures which too often console the unfortunate for their folly or their vice.” This must include affairs, though cheating on a wife cannot be a 1:1 equivalent of single young men sleeping around before marriage. However, the latter is generally critically accepted to be one of the flaws that Darcy lays at Wickham’s door along with gambling when talking about their youth and his “vicious propensities" and "want of principle." Though this could be argued that it’s more the extent or publicity of it (but remembering that it couldn't be anything uncommon enough that it couldn't be hidden from Darcy Sr. or explained away) rather than the act itself, or maybe seductions instead of paying women offering those services. I also believe Persuasion mentioning Sunday travelling as proof of thoughtless/immoral activity supports the idea that Jane Austen might have been religious enough that she would never create a hero who had extramarital sex.

So, taken all together this would make Darcy potentially a virgin, or, since I couldn't find absolute evidence of her opinions, leave enough room that he isn’t but extramarital sex isn’t a regular (or perhaps recent) thing and he would never have had anything so established as a mistress.

I’ve also been wondering, if Darcy isn’t a virgin, who would he have slept with? I’ve been musing on arguments for and against each option for weeks at this point. No romantasy has ever made me think about a fictional man's sexual habits so much as the question of Darcy's sexual history. What is my life.

Sex workers are an obvious answer, and the visits wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows. Discretion was part of their job, it was a clean transaction with no further responsibilities towards them, and effective (and reusable, ew) condoms existed at this time so there was little risk of children and no ability to exactly determine the paternity even if there was an accident. It was a fairly ‘responsible’ choice if one wanted no strings attached. In opposition to this, syphilis was rampant at the time, and had been known to spread sexually for centuries. Sex workers were at greater risk of it than anyone else and so the more sensible and risk-averse someone is (and I think Mr Darcy would be careful) the less likely they would be to visit sex workers. Contracting something that was known as potentially deadly and capable of making a future wife infertile if it spread to her could make any intelligent and cautious man think twice.

Servants and tenants of the estate are another simple and common answer. Less risk of stds, it can be based on actual attraction more than money (though money might still change hands), and is a bit more intimate. But Wickham’s called wicked for something very similar, when he dallies (whether he only got to serious flirting, kissing, or sleeping with them I don’t think we can conclusively say) with the common women of Meryton: “his intrigues, all honoured with the title of seduction, had been extended into every tradesman's family.” And it isn't as though Wickham had any personal duty towards those people beyond the claims of basic dignity. Darcy, who is shown to have such respect and understanding for his responsibilities towards the people of his estate and duties of a landlord, would keenly feel if any of his actions were leading his servants/tenants astray and down immoral paths. Servants, especially, were considered directly under the protection of the family whose house they worked in. I think it's undoubtable that Mrs Reynolds (whose was responsible for the wellbeing - both physically and spiritually - of the female servants) would not think so well of Mr Darcy if he had experimented with maids in his youth. It would reflect badly on her if a family entrusted their daughter to her care and she 'lost her virtue' under her watch. Daughters/widows of others living on the estate not under the roof of Pemberley House are a little more likely, but still, if he did have an affair with any of them I can only think it possible when he was much younger and did not feel his duties quite so strongly. Of course lots of real men didn't care about any of this, but Darcy is so far from being depicted as careless about his duties that the narrative makes a point of how exceptional his quality of care was. Frankly, it's undeniable that none of Jane Austen's heroes were flippant about their responsibilities towards those under their protection. I cannot serious entertain an interpretation that makes Darcy not, at his current age, at least, cognizant of the contemporary problems inherent in sleeping with servants or others on his estate.

A servant in a friend’s house would remove some of that personal responsibility, but transfer it to instead be leading his friend’s servants astray and in a manner which he is less able to know about if a child did result. That latter remains a problem even if we move the setting to his college, so not particularly likely for his character as we know it… though it wouldn’t be unusual for someone to be more unthinking and reckless in their teenage years than they are at twenty-eight so I don’t think having sex then can be ruled out. Kissing I can much more easily believe, especially when at Oxford or Cambridge, but every scenario of sleeping with a lower-class woman has some compelling arguments against it especially the closer we get to the time of the novel.

Men did of course also have affairs with women of ranks similar to their own, though given Jane Austen’s well-known feelings towards men who ‘ruined’ the virtue of young ladies we can safely say that Darcy never slept with an unwed middle- or upper-class woman. Any decent man would have married them out of duty if it got so far; but if he was the sort to let it get so far, I think it impossible Jane Austen would consider him respectable. Widows are a possibility, but again, the respectable thing to do would be to marry them. Perhaps a poorer merchant’s widow would be low enough that marriage is off the table but high enough that the ‘leading astray’ aspect loses its master-servant responsibilities (though the male-female ‘protect the gentler sex’ aspect remains) but his social circle didn’t facilitate meeting many ladies like that. Plus, an affair with a woman in society would remove many layers of privacy and anonymity that sex-workers and lower-class lovers provided by simply being unremarkable to the world at large. It carries a far greater risk of scandal and a heavier sense of immorality in the terms of respecting a woman’s purity which classism prevented from applying so heavily to lower-class women.

I think it’s important to note here that something that removes the need to think about duties of landlords towards the lower-classes or gentlemen towards gentlewomen is having affairs with other men of a similar rank. But, aside from the risk of scandal and what could be called the irresponsibility of engaging in illegal acts, it’s almost certain that Jane Austen would never have supported this. For a devout author in this era the way I’m calculating likelihoods makes it not even a possibility. But if you want to write a different fanfiction (and perhaps something like a break-up could explain why Darcy doesn’t seem to have any closer friend than someone whom he must have only met two or so years ago despite being in society for years before that) it does have that advantage over affairs with women of equal- and lower-classes. I support alternate interpretations entirely – it just isn’t how I’m deciding things in this instance.

I keep coming back to the conclusion that, at the very least, Darcy hasn’t had sex recently and it was never a common occurrence. It wouldn’t surprise me if Jane Austen felt he hadn’t done it ever. Kissing, as we can see from all the parlour games at the time, wasn’t viewed as harshly, so I think he’s likely made out with someone before. But in almost every situation it does seem that the responsible and religious thing to do (which Jane Austen values so highly) is for it to never have progressed to sex. I also don’t think it conflicts with his canon characterisation to say that he wouldn’t regard sexual experience as a crucial element of his life thus far, and his personality isn’t driven to pursue pleasure for himself, so it’s entirely possible that he would never go out of his way to seek it. So, I’m inclined to think that the authorial and textual evidence is in favour of Darcy being a virgin even if the real-world contemporary standard is the opposite. (Though both leave enough room for exceptions that I’m not going to argue with anyone who feels differently; and even if you agree with all my points, you might simply weight authorial intent/textual evidence/contemporary likelihoods differently than I do and come to a different conclusion).

Remember that even if Darcy is a virgin this wouldn’t necessarily equate to lack of knowledge, only experience. There were plenty of books and artwork focused on sex, and Darcy, studious man that he is, would no doubt pay attention to what knowledge his friends/male relatives shared. Though some of it (Looking especially at you, 'Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure') should NEVER be an example of appropriate practice for taking a woman's virginity. Darcy would almost certainly have been taught directly or learnt through exposure to other men talking to make sex good for a woman – it was a commonly held misconception (since Elizabethan England, I believe) that women had to orgasm to conceive. It would be in his interests as an empathetic husband, and head of a family, to know how to please his wife.

Basically, I’m convinced Darcy isn’t very experienced, if at all, and will be learning with Elizabeth. But he does have a lot of theoretical knowledge which he’s paid careful attention to and is eager to apply.

[gray-ace-space]

recently encountered a post where someone said "gender is fluid but sexuality isn't". (they were talking about bi lesbians.)

my first thought was: does that person, like. hear what they're saying? how can you explicitly hold two beliefs that are so logically inconsistent and not see it? how can you simultaneously think gender is this fluid and complex thing, but sexuality, much of which is defined around gender, is simple and stationary and its boundaries need policing?

but like, fuck, why even argue against it, right? there is no internal logic because there is no logical thought behind it. these are not genuine beliefs. this person is repeating what is currently acceptable in their (small) specific social circle. this is the same person who, a few years back, would be excluding nonbinary lesbians, but nonbinary lesbians are cool and normal on queer tumblr now, so they'll exclude bi lesbians instead, and not even pause to reflect on the difference.

oh, and if you read this and thought "these people don't even actually accept nb lesbians either", ding ding ding! because it's not a real, deep belief, that acceptance is extremely shallow and conditional. so as soon as someone is an nb lesbian in a way these people find odd (like being both a man and a lesbian) they will exclude them too and find a way to justify it.

why do we have to endlessly go through this cycle with queer identities. can we not? can we just not. i'm tired.

[chaoticpositvty]

"Evan, your face is filthy," Tommy laughed, "the soot," he said reaching to help Buck clean his face, "everyone will know."

"No," Buck replied swatting Tommy's hand away, "I don't care" he smirked, "also, it's more fun this way."

[cannibalistic-deer]

It baffles me that I've seen people say "Alastor is canonically sex and touch repulsed" as a reason people "shouldn't" be shipping Alastor sexually/romantically.

Why assume that the sex repulsion applies to every relationship in his life, permanently? Some aces are sex favorable, or may develop more favorable feelings for specific people, even if otherwise repulsed.

And the same applies to touch repulsion. That's such a weak argument. Alastor canonically, and very clearly, is okay with or possibly even enjoys touch in specific situations. He does seem to be touch repulsed in general, but again, there are specific people it doesn't apply to. (Rosie is the best example, since with anyone else it is more brief, but Rosie touches him, and is the one initiating that, frequently.)

All types of attraction, or comfort levels with different manners of affection, are fluid. This isn't ever an excuse to invalidate real people who are telling you their identities, but it does mean that assumptions really can't be made about what a person would or wouldn't do.

And this type of thinking is what really leads to invalidating real people, because even if you think "being asexual means never having sexual attraction," and then an ace person shares that they think they might have experienced sexual attraction at some point but still identify as ace... then you have to be open to that. You cannot put sexualities in boxes. This applies to all sexualities.

I'm a fictive of Alastor myself, and I am sex repulsed, so I understand the discomfort, but I also understand that people are not harming any real, living person by making fanworks where Alastor is having sex. It also doesn't mean they're inherently rejecting his asexuality.

If people want to ignore Alastor being aroace completely, that's different. Alastor is canonically aroace (or asexual at minimum), and he always will be. But jumping to conclusions about what people think because you're too naive and stubborn to understand that sexuality and attraction doesn't fit into tidy little boxes is harmful and is a way of thinking that must be changed.

This became longer than intended because I was mostly thinking about the "Alastor is touch repulsed to everyone!" claims some people make, which are frankly incompatible with canon. But the rest of this post is also true.

[annabelle--cane]

gwen throwing lena under the bus like that is rolling around in my brain because, basically, they've been playing chicken this whole time, right? gwen brings blackmail to the table, lena deliberately under prepares her for assignments in a series of sort of vague half-hearted assassination attempts, and gwen takes liberties and rejects every offer to quit or just go back to her original job. gwen's blackmail doesn't even seem to figure into it anymore, she didn't bring it up when lena demoted her or any of the times lena has threatened to fire her, it's a pure battle of wits and ego at this point and neither of them wants to be the first to flinch. and now in a surely unpredictable turn of events something has gone wildly wrong and they've been connected to some murders.

the ink5oul incident was a particular team effort, because lena was pretty clearly using such a dangerous mission to try and force gwen into check mate. she had to know it was a terrible idea, she said she's the one who usually does the recruiting assignments and ink5oul immediately took against gwen because they clocked that she was too new to the whole game to be taken seriously. but because gwen could tell that lena was using this as a gambit, she ultimately ignored her own misgivings and reacted quite rashly when ink5oul questioned her competence, knocking over the final domino in the inevitable spiral to consequences town.

gwen's problem has been that she's always ready to go low but lena's actually the one with power in this situation. lena can toss her at as many magical serial killers as she wants but all gwen has to fight back with is her measly lena being bad at murder cringe compilation and her passion for endangering the lives of herself and those around her. the second that she gets another mysterious email with more leverage she immediately looks for an in and uses it to betray lena to trevor, the one thing that lena has been treating like a real potential threat to her and the one thing that lena didn't actually seem willing to do to gwen. potentially be responsible for her death-by-bonzo? not ideal, but acceptable. rat her out to the bossman? no no no that's too scary. gwen's weird email gave her an edge, but lena could have cancelled it out by just saying "yes, I think I know who's responsible, take her away, minster," and she didn't.

lena has always been willing to use her position as an employer against gwen to coerce her into danger, but she's spent the last few weeks quite visibly on edge about the possibility of her own employer bringing harm to her in some way, and refusing to cross the line of siccing him on gwen was her first flinch, leaving gwen open to use her position of class (or, in trevor's words, "quality") against lena by immediately getting the minister on her side.

[genevawrenn]

My thoughts on the BBH situation & apology from today :

[if you don't know, don't worry about it and take care of yourselves <3 this situation is concluded in my eyes, we just block what and who we need too and we don't bring it up unless its something that needs to be addressed but the best thing would be to let it fade away]

Final thoughts : Please give everyone patience and validate people's hurt cause, yes, this was a betrayal of trust, but please, please, please allow time to prove things have changed. People who have messed up need time to prove they have learned. Keep that in mind is all I ask.

And also, be kind <3 Everyone makes mistakes, and some are a lot more visible than others, but we can help guide those who have messed up to better places. We have enough toxicity and hurt, use the block and mute buttons if you have too and just allow people to change.

You are valid if you feel hurt and betrayed or unsafe, and I beg that if you do take a step back and go hug a loved one, rely on a trusted friend for support, and remember at the end of the day we are all people and we mess up. Be patient and understanding please <3

[editblr-confessions]

editblr drama/discussions remind me of when captain america: civil war came out and within a week you HAD to decide whether you were team captain america or team iron man, and if you were neutral or didn't choose a team, they thought you were the most fake avengers fan ever 😭

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