#trying to go back to my roots

[doctorsiren]

back at it again with combining interests

[dantelionwishes]

clavell asks player who his crush is (speaking of, where's clive?)

[welcometogrouchland]

I also think it's nice that they made Camilla a sci-fi nerd and Luz a fantasy nerd. They're genres that are often seen as completely opposing one another by many people, which is what we're led to believe about Luz and Camilla in season 1. Luz is silly, nerdy, frequently in over her head and irresponsible and loves the boiling isles. We're led to believe that Camilla is the normal, conventional TV mother who'd be disgusted and terrified by the demon realm if she saw it.

Then yesterday's lie gives us a lot of nuance to this, and we realize that while they're still very different and now on opposite sides of a conflict, both mother and daughter are incredibly kind people (seen in their treatment of Vee) who love each other but struggle to make the right choices without hurting one another.

Then thanks to them drops all this Camilla characterization and we realize! She was a nerd too this whole time! The wedge between Camilla and Luz is motivated by past traumas and grief! and for the future has them switching sides on the central conflict of where Luz should stay (Camilla now wanting Luz in the demon realm because it's what's best for her, and Luz believing that staying in the human realm is what's best for the people she loves). They finally talk and realize that, like Willow pointed out earlier in the ep, the two are so alike. Camilla reveals that she's a secret nerd too! That she had a hard time growing up and accidentally hurt Luz trying to save her from the same fait! It's so important to me that Camilla keeps calling Luz a good witch. It's affirming her interests and goals, reminding her that she's just as good as the hero of her favorite story. And Luz finally only realizes that she wants to be understood...when she's finally able to understand her mom. When she realizes that the woman she loves and admires is just as much of a nerdy screw-up as her and that there's hope for her. Her palismen ends being multiple animals at once, showing both how Luz making unconventional choices (like carving an egg) keeps paying off for her and how her potential is limitless now that she finally knows and accepts her own goals, but to me it also reminds of the fact that Camilla is a vet and passed a love of all the weird and unliked animals (like wolves, possums, snakes, etc) to her.

It's just so so sweet and it really shows how much love and thought the crew put into this mother daughter storyline (FTF haters are not welcome on this page, respectfully). I can't wait to see how both of these misunderstood but healing women (who radiate "little/big sister" and "mom" energy respectively) are gonna interact with a) the lonely, easily manipulated and well intentioned but ignorant collector (a mix of both their interests as a magic being with a space motif! I just realized that lol) and b) the nasty puritan white man who's really obsessed with conforming to society's norms even when it literally doesn't benefit him at all.

Anyway, I believe in noceda( AND clawthorne 👀) family supremacy 💙

[linusbenjamin]

Person of Interest | 1×01 // 3×09

[bolithesenate]

new and improved jedisona doodles

no braincells just vibes she fucked off to the AgriCorps at the first sign of drama and spends her days trying to float as many space carrots as possible in the air

[mechanichuntsman]

I wonder who these fruity fuckers are

[tumblezwei-art]

Long time no Ruby Rose

[yayforocs]

👉👈 so @silverskye13 i saw this and..............

had to make an aron helsmet!!!!!! this was really hecking fun to think about actually like what she'd be like n design (which. is a poke at the rp server she was from actually) and also made me sit down and think more on my other minecraft ocs i have sittin around and why they ended up getting redesigns lkdsfh BUT YEAH i!!!!!!!! aron!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[knifebaby3000]

you can see my heart burning in the distance

[woozi]

no one ever wins against yoon jeonghan

[flamboyant-king]

I drew things today! Hooray! Based on stuff that happened in tomodachi life.

[charmac]

i don't think people hcing charlie as transfem are trying to dismiss the transmasc charlie hc! i think it's more of a projection thing for a lot of people, since i know at least a few of the main people who enjoy the headcanon are transfem themselves!! i don't think you have much to worry about in terms of people dismissing the tmasc or other genderqueer charlie hc anyways, since it's already much more popular! i think you're perhaps being a bit too critical.

I've literally never said anything like this at all, I think you've either misinterpreted something else I've said or have the wrong blog.

All of my Charlie gender-based posts or reblogs I've stated/tagged that I think any interpretation of Charlie's gender can make sense, be it transmasculine, transfeminine, nonbinary, agender, whatever you want.

I am one of the ~3 blogs that has access to The Bathroom Problem script and who posted and pointed out that you can make out/slightly hear the Joyce cuts in the episode itself. I would not have excitedly shared that for open-interpretation if I was "worried" people are "dismissing" transmasc Charlie headcanons. (Which, again, I've literally never said, but in any case, I believe it's valid for anyone to dismiss a headcanon they don't agree with, fandom is a sandbox.)

What I personally don't care for are genderbends and, almost by extension, analysis/meta on canon scenes that rename/re-gender the characters with no basis (or, one that comes off wrong). Both topics I've literally never publicly spoken out against here, nor have I said anything bad/negative to everyone who personally enjoys these things, so there is no way for me to possibly be "too critical" in that regard. I keep most of my opinions to myself and my close mutuals, almost exactly for what you're saying: I personally don't want to harsh or dismiss anyone's headcanons.

I have never said, and have never meant to imply, that anyone interpreting Charlie as transfem is attempting to dismiss anyone else's headcanon (which again would be a non issue to me anyway).

[eyefocusing]

i <3 guys that r birds

[xxlovelynovaxx]

Something I've noticed but only just now been able to put into words, is that a lot of the people who are like "I could never fall for cult shit, I'm too smart", and "I would never be bigoted against marginalized people, I do all the Right Social Justice Things" also seem to be incredibly convinced that if they ever listen to what anyone they believe is harmful is saying to really try and understand it, not even to agree with it but literally just to understand it, that they'll be "brainwashed" into believing the harmful shit is good and being a harmful bigot.

That cognitive dissonance there, that "I'm immune to propaganda because I never ever ever look at propaganda of any kind, not even to learn to recognize how it works" - radicalization relies on that.

Long post about this below the cut.

It's how people fall down the te/rf, the incel, the far-right pipelines. It's how people who consider themselves "leftist" become anti-porn, anti-sex-work, pro-censorship. It's how people who are otherwise progressive go from a baseline level of ableism, antisemitism, intersexism, radi/cal feminism, etc, that hasn't been unlearned, to spewing violent bigotry against these groups thinly veiled as "justified resistance" against "fakers" and "able-bodied" people, against "zionazis" and "genocide apologists", against "tmes" and "TMRAs", all while the people they're attacking are none of these things.

No one is immune to doing this is some way. There is no axis of marginalization that makes you harmless, in part because there will always be people in your own marginalized group that you have privilege and power over along another axis of marginalization. There is no identity that makes you only a "victim" and never the one doing the harm.

But radicalization, bigotry, oppressive systems, they rely on this doublethink of "I can't do harm" and "if I listen to those who are Categorically Harmful, they will Seduce and Turn me into being One of Them and Doing Harm". Because then all anyone has to do is convince you that the Other is inherently a Harmer, and that therefore fighting them makes you inherently Harmless.

This is especially true when the victims (not necessarily victims of the alleged aggressors, but inarguably actual victims of horrific acts), have very little power to speak for themselves about who is really doing the harm.

Sexual assault victims and especially CSA victims are a rhetorical tool in arguments about censorship and queer people, despite many of us being anti-censorship and either queer or allies. Victims of foreign wars and oppression, particularly with limited access to communication, are used for racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia - despite often actively telling people that those bigotries make things worse for them too and don't help. Disabled people have the symptoms of our disabilities used to excuse the behavior of people who are liked and condemn the behavior of those who are not - disabilities are only genuinely disabling to others for as long as its convenient for them to be.

I don't really know what drives it? Is there at some level a recognition of a fear that maybe, actually, the moral cause you've championed for so long actually made you one of the Bad Guys, because of puritanical culturally christian thinking that is only worsened by the punitive, bloodthirsty mindset of social media nowadays? Everyone likes to watch whoever's been assigned Main Character of the Week get "justice" fighting in the coliseum, always aware of the eyes on us waiting to shove us in too.

It would make sense - it's not just a fear of hurting people, but that if you admit to doing so, "both sides" will descend on you like ravenous wolves. It's a fear of Being Hurt, from people who have already been hurt far too much. I've endured many types of trauma, and can say with confidence that online harassment and dogpiling is as horrific as any of them.

Is it just basic fascist ideals that haven't been unlearned, that the "enemy" is both weak and strong? That they can't get to you because you're not reading all that, because you know better than to try and understand your enemy, but that if you ever did they'd immediately corrupt you completely?

I don't know. But the reason it works is because if you think the people you're fighting will convince you if you listen, once you're convinced you should be fighting them, you'll see every last drop of blood spilled as righteous. This, all while radical groups and bigots rely on you not knowing or examining how propaganda of any kind - helpful, neutral, or harmful - actually functions.

I don't know what to do about this. I know I've unpacked harmful beliefs a dozen times because I actually listened to people. I know another dozen times, actually listening to people has only further shores up my own beliefs - but critically analyzing what they are saying, weighing it against my own knowledge and experience, giving it a space where yes, I genuinely evaluate it's validity.

I think that's what scares people the most. It's "well but then, aren't I saying that [bigotry] could be valid?"

The thing is, that's not really what you're evaluating. You've been successfully tricked, indoctrinated into believing that if you question "is this actually bigoted against that group", you're actually questioning "is it okay to BE bigoted against this group".

This, too, I believe is coming from a place of cultural christianity. Questioning whether something is "sinful" is itself "sinful". Critically analyzing the way you apply your beliefs is conflated with critically analyzing the underlying beliefs themselves.

And of course, there are times when critically analyzing beliefs themselves is important, also something tantamount to being seduced by the "devil". That is how the "enemy" is treated in secular spaces - an all powerful force waiting to corrupt you at every turn and steer you away from the Good Progressive/Leftist Path. Generally though, these questions are not "is bigotry actually okay", so I'll leave a wider discussion of these for a different post.

I will say, though, that I do think not having devoted any analysis to the above is part of what makes that conflation possible. Disabled people arguing against other disabled people for exercising their right to bodily autonomy in a way that affects no one else because it's "unhealthy" despite disability itself being based around abled standards of health, trans people treating other trans people as dangerous and/or oppressors on the basis of bioessentialism and/or gender essentialism, plurals arguing in support of the historically violently pluralmisic psychiatric institution and using it first and foremost to support their right to self-determination, rather than said right being inherent...

How much of this is simply based in, rather than valuing autonomy, rejecting bio and gender essentialism, and prioritizing self-determination, simply relying on things like "the logic of disgust" and what "feels" right, despite those "feelings" and "instincts" being largely guided by the bigoted socialization we all grew up with?

Of course, some people might genuinely have chosen to explicitly prioritize an oppositional value - conformity over autonomy, authority over self-determination, assigning inherent moral value to identity over decoupling morality from inherent traits.

But given the inconsistency I've seen, these people seem to be rather few, and those that do exist are almost refreshingly honest even when fundamentally opposed to my very existence. They typically don't make convoluted justifications for their actions, nor contradict the very values and beliefs they claim to uphold, nor undercut the causes they claim to stand for.

But everyone else... it goes back to something that I've seen talked a lot about in discussions about censorship.

It is important to read and analyze things you disagree with, and listen to people you believe are harmful. Even if you're right a hundred percent of the time - a true rarity especially nowadays when there's so many "ins" for indoctrination into bigoted and oppressive systems - doing so will only make you better able to fight bigotry. It'll also serve to make you able to either deradicalize, help deradicalize, or minimally avoid hindering deradicalization of, bigots and other radicalized people.

And it's also important because yeah, some of the Harmful people you think you Can't Harm in your Moral Crusade to Protect Innocents, you're harming. Full stop. No one escapes socialization in our societies unscathed. No one enters the wider world as a blank slate, sure, but no one enters the world without ignoring systems we benefit from and the harms that maintain those systems.

You have to be willing to be wrong. You have to be willing to admit you've hurt people. As someone with moral OCD, yeah, it fucking SUCKS. As someone with BPD and depression, we've split on ourselves (in the BPD sense, but also sometimes the DID sense) and been suicidal over it.

So we're not saying you have to be examining this and yourself every moment of every day. There's times where you won't be able to and that's okay. Those are generally the times it's important and healthy for a good portion of people to step back from social justice movements and activism anyway and rest - but in cases where it's not helpful, it seems that often people will still narrow their focus to issues which most directly impact them anyway, which does help reduce harm.

But people justifying lateral aggression and oppression by utterly rejecting the material reality and oppression of marginalized people, because of that depersoning and positioning of said people as ontologically Harmful? If you're viewing any identity as inherently, categorically, Dangerous and Bad before anything else, ironically, that framework makes you significantly more likely to do harm.

This gets complicated, of course, with nonmarginalized identities. But people don't exist on only one axis - and if we're actually using intersectionality theory as it was intended, acknowledging that each identity interacts with each other identity to form a complex, multifaceted, cohesive whole, well... even people with many axes of privilege may still be marginalized, sometimes significantly. There are severely disabled nonqueer people who have essentially no power over queer people, abled children who have little to no power over disabled adults, white trans people who hold power over all nonwhite trans people - and drive transphobia even as they uphold colonial gender standards and white supremacy.

And of course, this all gets even more complicated with rhetorical tricks used to obscure that identity is the actual thing being attacked.

People are convinced that it's not antisemitism to attack "zionists" while making the one and only criteria for whether someone is a "zionist" whether they are Jewish, all while weaponizing "antizionism isn't antisemitism" as a shield. If what you're attacking is the privilege of "being transmisogyny exempt"* it doesn't matter if you're basing that on someone's identity regardless of their actual experiences with transmisogyny or even whether their identity matches your idea of what that identity entails (for example, intersex people who were assigned female or male at birth).

*Obligatory disclaimer that we are not blaming any specific gender for doing this. We have seen this from everyone from multigender to transmasc to transfem to maverique people to plenty of other people.

Heck, if you attack a "non-marginalized identity", whether or not said identity is actually non-marginalized or has any power over you, that obfuscation isn't even necessary. If neurodisabled people are all able-bodied and always have physical access everywhere and are basically not even really disabled anyway, then how could it be lateral ableism to attack them for pushing back against those false and ableist narratives of their experiences?

If Jewish people are all genocidal Israeli oppressors, then you can go straight into "actually jewish people aren't oppressed and are basically powerful - and controlling the media - and the US government - and are babykillers anyway - and are stealing organs from Palestinians - and you've dove headfirst into blatant antisemitism. But wait! According to you, it's not, because you don't hate theoretical Jewish people, only any Jewish person that doesn't kowtow to you and sycophantically uphold literal blood libel and conspiracy theories.

And if you stopped listening as soon as I said something that you thought conflicted with your existing beliefs - about the tma/tme dichotomy, about Jewish people and zionism, about neurodisabilities being disabling and not all neurodisabled people being able-bodied, etc etc ad nauseum - then this post is about you.

Because you heard someone say "this harms people, you are harming people if you do this" and went "nuh uh I'm not listening actually you're the harmful ones", if you "interrogated" your beliefs without actually listening to what people who are calling them harmful are saying, or at most by decontextualizing and maliciously misinterpreting their arguments to reaffirm your own biases and cognitive dissonance...

You're who I started writing this post about in the first place.

I have laid out, frequently and extensively, the interrogations I have done of myself and my beliefs to come to the conclusions that the things I claim are harmful, are. I've actively looked for logical fallacies and ethical violations. In some places, I've found them, and been forced to re-examine my views. When this has happened, sometimes it's changed those views, and sometimes I simply shored up the foundation by removing the bits that were themselves not supportive or dangerous.

I've apologized and owned my mistakes. I've had the privilege to not just apologize, but undo the harm I did. I've gotten to work to repair not just my relationship with people and their trust in me, but the wounds - and work against the larger structures that I had acted as a single finger of.

And more than anything, I'm sure there's still harm I'm doing or will do that I'm not yet aware of. Out of over seven billion people, there might be several dozen who are not currently, passively or actively, participating in some kind of harm at some level. I can basically guarantee that if you're reading this you're not one of them. This is not because we are inherently harmful, but because we exist within harmful systems that make it impossible to exist without doing so.

"No ethical consumption under capitalism" as an example. Many of the things you might have zero control over right now.

The point of this is not "you are bad" - quite the opposite, in fact. It's "you are complex, and doing harm doesn't make you bad". It's "attempting to never do harm will often make you more likely to do so, and will certainly hinder or outright prohibit attempts at effective harm reduction". It's "the sooner you accept that you will do harm and evaluate that from a neutral standpoint, the sooner you can focus on doing less harm where it IS possible".

But to do this, the very first step is - you have to be willing to listen. You have to understand that you're not going to suddenly be brainwashed into being a hateful bigot because you critically analyze whether something is bigoted or harmful. You have to understand that if you're not willing to try and understand even the most truly harmful, awful people, that you ironically WILL be susceptible to being turned into a bigot by anyone who convinces you that someone else isn't worth listening to.

You have to understand that not listening - is actually just listening to the people who have a vested interest in telling you what others are saying. Who really benefits from controlling the flow of information that way - because it's not you or other marginalized people, I guarantee it.

...

One addition: Yeah, I'm literally the person that has my partner screening my notifs for harassment and hate rn. So this all might seem ironic.

The thing is, you don't have to respond directly to someone who you feel is harmful. In fact, especially if you're triggered or otherwise in a heightened state, I'd say it's often better not to. When triggered especially, you're literally less able to process and integrate information and critically analyze stuff.

It's actually usually better to do this in your own space and time. Privately or with trusted people is best, though yes this sentence alone makes me a hypocrite because I absolutely do this shit publicly and that's absolutely something I should be working on that I'm... not, really.

Anyway yes there's always exceptions, yes there's times where it becomes important to actively seek out people to talk with and find recommendations for reputable educational sources and ask good faith questions of people, yes, even regardless of who is actually doing harm. Sometimes asking those questions is key to deradicalizing them and sometimes it's key to your own deradicalization and sometimes is just makes you able to realize that you all are crab bucketing and you can start helping each other instead.

But while I'll admit to hypocrisy on the "public vs private processing" front, I very much am not on the "listening to people" front. I've had to put some trust in my partner to help me with this because of trauma lately, but as she's documenting any harassment anyway, I can go back to reference it later. And if there's literally anything other than literal slurs or fakeclaiming or similar, she is good about letting me know. So... yeah, I might miss something on the individual level, but I am still doing the work of listening to - seeking out, if I have to - people opposed to our beliefs and such.

[uncanny-tranny]

It's still fucked up to go "why can't people accept trans men as men when they act JUST LIKE cis men," and it (at best) is putting trans men in a shitty position wherein we have to prove ourselves suffieciently enough and at worst is actively just transphobia reliant on gender essentialism, which affects all trans people and then some.

[stuckinapril]

Giving my hair the Big Chop soon. I’ve decided