#you WILL know about the problematic past of a book creator you don’t care about and you WILL recognize the person who granted you that info | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dreaming-colourful-skies · 1 year

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Hello again 👋

I am... not sure if a mass exodus to Tumblr is happening? Or if any of my mutuals from years ago are still active? 😅

If anyone cares and/or if I ever, like, relaunch this acct, lil fandom update &... context statement I guess!

It’s getting long so I’ll hide it behind a “Read More”. But if you’re hemming and hawing over a follow or have a weird “you shipped that??” moment then feel free to take a look!

(And welcome to my page 🎉)

Past: FMA & Brotherhood

I stand by my older writing, at least to the extent you can see your old stuff without cringing too hard ahaha.

That said, I wouldn’t say I currently ship this pairing. Their fanon interpretation is in my memories fondly, especially from certain authors, but I’ll be honest, the ship did not occur to me while I was watching the show itself. I think part of the beauty of fandom is that transformative aspect, and I did appreciate experiencing the anime and manga in a new way through fanfiction.

I never set out to ship somewhat “problematically”, stumbling into it as FMA’s most popular Ao3 ship at the time. For my own writing, I consistently made it clear that Ed was an adult (like, at least 20), maybe Roy younger if an AU, and adjusted things like employment context to minimize power imbalances, because that was important to me.

Can people ship them in different ways, incl. age gap, boss/employee, etc.? Sure! I’m not out here to judge and don’t really want to touch that, tbh. It’s important to me that we can all create fandom in the ways that are meaningful to us, tag, curate our own experiences, and mute or click away as preferred, but I’m also too sensitive to dive properly into Discourse around these things (I mean, I’m out here creating soft bantery fluff hahaha) so that mismatch was a bit of a deterrent. Nuance is difficult online, and often in short supply.

Leaving was a weird combo of fandom getting quieter, inspo leaving me, and I guess life stuff. Tl;dr I’m pretty “ship and let ship” and against harassing any creators, but my own take was gentle and if it makes anyone comfier, I did want to add that context!

Little did I know that I would later stumble into a whole different arena of “don’t call me short, bastard!” exchanges.

Past: Carry On

My time in this fandom was fun! Ngl, there was no issue or major reason for leaving; I simply read the second and third books, once the third was out, and lost inspiration. 😅 What can you do?

CQL/MDZS, HQ

These fandoms are still dear to me, but I didn’t end up creating content for them for a couple of reasons. Perhaps someday if it makes sense!

Bungou Stray Dogs

It’s been... idk, eight months of BSD obsession? Six months writing it on Ao3 (Colourful_skies), in any case! If I do move back to Tumblr, I’m sure you’ll hear more. As of now, I’ve published ~65k in that time, which is... hard to compare, I suppose, but a high rate for me personally! I don’t know if that will continue, but at this point, I hope so. More recently I’ve attempted a bit more engagement w others, which has been fun.

In short, Soukoku and especially Chuuya have my heart, and I also really appreciate Sigma. I tend to write soft skk, fluff, and introspective fics, but mentioning that simply for context; I prefer to follow wherever inspiration leads me. Analysis is also v fun, including drawing connections with BSD authors’ works and making non-BSD poems or songs about skk/Chuuya, but idk if I would post about these topics here.

Moving forward, I hope to continue to work on my craft and brainrot over BSD & fandom with other lovely people, until my inspiration or mental wellness (?) lead me elsewhere.

Thanks for visiting my page! 🌻

#writer statement #greetings #tag in case of muting #royed #safe royed #fandoms summary #sorry I'm v rusty on tumblr tagging #new fandom

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

#long post #anonymous #ask

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milliethekitty27-writing · 3 years

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The Ladder

In a hole in the ground, there lived a lonely hobbit. It all started when Bilbo grew tired of his empty kitchen.

He hadn’t been fond of eating alone since the dwarves destroyed his pantry, but he hadn’t after Frodo joined him in Bag End. He’d eaten with the elves in Rivendell, which had been full of lovely music and pleasant conversation, and then he’d eaten with the elves, Frodo, and Gandalf when they’d traveled to the Undying Lands.

Now he was here, in Yavanna’s Garden, living in what was basically Bag End. (the actual Bag End was right next door for his parents) He had his beautiful garden back, which only mattered really because he’d been brought back to his youthful self with working hands. The house was always clean (and he’d never really liked cleaning, so that didn’t matter much to him) so he had all the time in the world to work on his maps and his stories. He got the occasional social call from neighbors or family. He ate dinner with his parents on Thursdays and went over to their home on Sundays for family nights with many cousins and aunts and uncles, but he spent the rest of his time alone. He got the same whispers he had in the Shire, but he was satisfied with his cooking and working in the garden. Except… on the days there were no social calls, no family dinners, Bilbo Baggins sat in a very quiet house and talked to nothing.

“You know-” Bilbo said to no one in particular as he weeded a particularly stubborn patch of grass out from underneath his rose bush. There was a basket of tomatoes ready to be made into a sauce, or maybe used the fish tonight, but he’d seen the weeds and wanted to deal with it before it spread. “-I would have expected the garden to take care of itself when I died. Not to be doing the same tasks as before. But here we are, fighting with weeds, aren’t we Tho-” Bilbo stopped, shook his head, and pushed that thought aside.

He made dinner for fourteen but only ate for one. The rest got put away for the multitudes of meals of the next day, but almost five years after he’d died he found himself looking at the empty table with a frown.

The next morning he perused his bookshelf until he found a collection of stories. From there, he found tales of the dwarves. He sat in his armchair until a collection of cousins knocked on the door and pulled him away, but he found what he was looking for when he was waiting for a peach pie to bake.

Dwarves belief that they return to the halls of Mahal upon their deaths. From there, they await the Final Battle. Upon the arrival of that day, they will be sent back to rebuild Arda, but until then the dwarves rest in their creator’s halls.

Bilbo hemmed over that. He wandered down to where most of the Tooks lived, asking if they had any maps or had heard of the Halls before. It was a bit of a long shot, and he wasn’t surprised when they all said no. He returned to his smial and examined his garden.

“Well-” he said to the same problematic patch of clover that refused to leave. “-I know that dwarves do like their underground tunnels and their mines. And if the Green Lady is married to the Smith, then it stands to reason that they might go underground nearby. I don’t think there’s any harm in looking, I’ll just get a bit dirty and ruin my garden, and I do that on the regular. Or I’ll fall into a great underground river and run back into Gollum.” Bilbo sighed, then went to see if he could borrow Hamfast’s good shovel.

There was a patch of yard in the back Bilbo had been planning on planting carrots in, but he had a better idea now. He wiggled his toes in the cool earth, nodded, and stretched out his shoulders. Then Bilbo Baggins put his shovel into the soil and started to dig.

It took quite a bit of time, but he didn’t get as tired as he had in his old age and he didn’t have to take as many breaks. Death might mean you didn’t have to eat, or sleep, but it was routine, and he had dinner with his parents that were tradition. One day, maybe, he’d be able to bring more than just himself and whatever his mother wanted him to bring for dessert, but he pushed the idea of muddy boots and braids out of his mind in favor of helping his mother finish up the roast.

“What are you doing, Bilbo?” his father asked during one dinner. “Gorbadoc says he hasn’t seen you at the Green Dragon in some time.”

“I’m digging a tunnel.” Bilbo said matter of factly. “I’m going to try to find the halls of Mahal.” His parents looked at each other for a minute.

“What for?”

“I… suppose it’s just because I can.”

“Have you considered asking the faunts?” Belladonna suggested as she took a second helping of mashed potatoes. “I’m sure they’d be more than thrilled to be asked to ruin a garden.” Bilbo considered that.

“I think this something I want to do myself.”

Bilbo digged and digged. The hole was big enough for him to stand in rather comfortably, though he had to dig some stair-like notches into the side so he could get in and out. It took almost a week of non-stop digging to reach literal rock bottom, and then he was left with a conundrum. He’d dented Hamfast’s good shovel, so he returned it with an apology and a promise to pay him back, but would Hamfast please lend him a good pickaxe?

Bilbo woke up that next morning with arms that were incredibly sore and demanded he take a day, if not more, off. He agreed. The dwarves had waited this long, they could wait a bit longer. Bilbo went to market, got a drink, avoided questions about what he was up to, dodged a few nosy grandparents, and returned home with arms full of goods. The next day he baked an apology pie for the Gamgees and sent his mother and father cookies, lounging for the rest of the afternoon with a good book. On the third day his arms didn’t yell at him for raising them above his head, so Bilbo hoisted his pickaxe.

“How’s your hole going?” Belladonna asked as she took out a tart to cool. It was nearly time for the harvest festivals. Hobbits loved to work in their fields and grow their goods, and that meant the harvest festivals of the Shire still went on. That meant competitions (his mother was entering a lovely pumpkin she’d been growing all year, while his father was entering in a poetry competition) and baking, canning for the winter, and family time.

“Rather well, I like to think!” Bilbo gave the bread he was kneading one last good push. “I think I’ve nearly reached it, the rocks started to change to the next type of rock underground that I read about in the book that Adamantius lent me last week. It’s supposed to mean you’ve gotten to the next layer or… something. The book was rather complicated. I suppose I’ll just have to see what happens.”

“Maybe you’ll have it fixed in time for the summer planting competitions.” His father brushed his hands off on an apron as he came in from the garden with a basket of potatoes, placing them on the counter and taking a moment to kiss Belladonna’s cheek. For a moment Bilbo wondered if soon he’d be seeing his dwarves, be able to kiss one particular cheek, but he pushed those thoughts aside. It was possible he was nowhere near being able to see his dwarves, but that was a thought he’d deal with when he came to it. He was nothing if not practical, as a Baggins (no, Baggins weren’t actually practical, he knew that now, but don’t bother telling the Baggins side that) and he didn’t want to consider that what if.

“Maybe.” he ceded. “But I’m hoping that I’ll be able to make it a permanent feature.”

Bilbo returned to his hole the day after the festivals had finally finished. His larder was filled to bursting, along with all his storage rooms, and he was just planning on doing a little bit of work before settling in with a nice book.

That plan fell a bit short, though. He drove his pickaxe in rather deeply and the earth suddenly crumbled all around him. Bilbo let out a yell as he fell through a suddenly rather large hole, landing with a rather sharp thwack on something… surprisingly soft.

When he looked around, he found that he was surrounded by an incredible amount of short, bearded people wearing multiple colors and gems.

Dwarves.

He looked up and found an incredible amount of sunlight falling on him, along with a decent amount of dirt.

It seemed he’d found the Halls of Mahal. Now the question was how to get back to Yavanna’s Gardens.

...he’d cross that road when he got to it. For now, he had dwarves to find, and, uh, oh dear. The dwarf he was sitting on didn’t look very happy. He jumped off of the poor dwarf’s back.

“I’m so terribly sorry-” Bilbo offered the dwarf a hand. They were covered in braids, with long black hair, and Bilbo tried to dust them off once they were up. “-I had no idea I’d almost broken through like that, I would’ve given some warning.”

“You’re what’s been making all that noise?” a dwarf behind him said. Bilbo turned on his heel. This dwarf was dressed like a miner.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The noise-” the dwarf gestured at the ceiling. “-for the past month, we’ve been getting this awful banging- that’s coming from you? But you’re a halfling!” There was a great deal of yelling at that as the crowd of dwarves surrounding Bilbo all realized what he was. Bilbo felt his cheeks heated up with rage.

“What do you mean a halfling fell through the ceiling?!” someone bellowed after several minutes where Bilbo couldn’t get his voice loud enough. There was a great deal of pushing through the crowd and Bilbo offered another apology to the poor dwarf he’d probably concussed in his fall.

“I’ll have you know I’m not half of anything!” He said loudly into the suddenly silent hall, but there was a further commotion.

“That’s not just a halfling that our halfling!” Bofur, that was Bofur, he knew that voice. A bald dwarf covered in tattoos practically rammed his way through the crowd and there were all his dwarves, looking alive and well and whole, no blood or funeral garb, no sorrowful letters or tearful tales from Frodo about bodies and ancient stone walls. He was hugging them, pinching cheeks and smiling as wide as he had in some time. He did a quick head count - twelve. Where was thirteen, where was-

Oh.

There he was.

Thorin was standing at the other end of the mass of dwarves in the hall, firelight glinting off the silver in his hair and around his neck. There was no sign of gold or bronze, just silver. He practically blended into the cave wall in his nearly black clothes but Bilbo met those beautiful blue eyes and something just clicked. He was covered in dirt, and in his gardening clothes. He looked a mess, he was sure of it, but Thorin was looking at him in a way that made his breath catch in his throat.

“Master Burglar.” Thorin’s voice rumbled across the nearly silent crowd.

A moment later he and Bilbo met in the center of the path, both having run as fast as their feet could carry them. Bilbo’s fingers curled into the thick, wiry hair and he inhaled the smell that was undeniably Thorin.

“I thought I told you to call me Bilbo.” he said in a thick voice after a moment. “Or should I be calling you your majesty?”

“No.” Thorin said instantly. He shook his head and Bilbo felt the gentle thuds as beads connected with his skull. “No. Never you.”

They looked at each other for a moment. Thorin didn’t have the wrinkles around his face anymore, the silver in his hair was less than it had been, but there was still that shadowed look in his eyes. Bilbo took a quick breath, then leaned up and kissed his cheek like his father kissed his mother’s, like he’d been thinking about for ages and ages.

“Hello.” he whispered. “Hello, Thorin Oakenshield.”

“Hello, Bilbo Baggins of the Shire.” Thorin’s face was flushed now, but he reached up and brushed his thumb along Bilbo’s jaw.

“That counts as a kiss!” someone bellowed. There was a loud thud and the dwarf, definitely Nori, yelped. “That hurt!”

“Bilbo can we get a boat through your hole?” Fili called. A moment later there was a thud and both Fili and Kili were there, smushing Bilbo into the center of a Durin family hug.

“A bo- what do you need a boat for?”

“I want to find Tauriel.” Kili sounded elated. “If you could get through, then she-”

“Boys, I have to get back up myself, I can’t just pull up a boat-”

“What about cheese?” Bofur piped up. Bilbo realized that the entire company had encircled him. He was surrounded in a mass of dwarves. Stinky, hugging-too-tight, wonderful dwarves that he’d missed. “Bombur’s been talking about that recipe you sent him-”

“He sent me dozens of recipes, you’ll have to be more specific-” Bombur started.

“I told you he could break in, I don’t know why you’re still not giving me money!” that was Nori again, directed at Balin.

“These are the Halls-” Balin began.

“Bullshit, this is Bilbo, he stole from a dragon! This is all in a day’s work for him!”

“Have you seen my Gimli up there?” That was Gloin. “You know, my beautiful laddy, with the curly red hair and the most beautiful eyes, I haven’t been able to find him and we haven’t heard anything about him in a long time for a while, I’m starting to get worried-”

“He just got here, Gloin, don’t start yelling about your kid again-” that was a voice he didn’t totally recognize but he saw Bifur without an axe and grinning widely as he spoke.

Bilbo looked back up at Thorin, who was smiling at him in a way that made him come into focus and drown everything else out.

“I’m glad to see you, Bilbo.”

“I’m glad to see you too.” Bilbo smiled back at him. His dwarf reached up as if to touch his face again, but faltered.

“We’ve… we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“We do.” Bilbo agreed. “Bu-”

“Bilbo?” Someone shouted down the hole. He recognized his mother after a moment. He struggled out of the throng of dwarves much like a whale breaching for air. There was a shadow over the patch of sunlight from above, bits of dirt trickling in.

“I’m fine!” he yelled back. “Be careful, it’s a pretty hard landing at the bottom, I don’t want you to slip!”

“Wait that’s the burglar?” someone in the crowd said. There was a loud shushing noise, a thwap, and an ow.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, Mum, I’m alright!”

“Wait is that your mother?!” Kili and Fili said together.

“Did you find your dwarves?”

“I’m going to regret this-” Bilbo sighed, then he pitched his voice back up high. “I fell but I’m alright, I just didn’t realize how far down I was!” He paused for a moment, then shouted back. “Do we still have the apple picking ladders?”

“I’m sure we can dig one up-” there was his father. Poor Bungo was probably tearing his hair out. “-are you hurt?”

“No, he’s not, he said he’s alright-” his mother’s voice was muffled. “-we’ll go check, darling, stay out of trouble!”

“Can you throw down some cheese?” Bofur shouted.

“Bofur!”

“Oh some apples would be lovely.” Dori sighed.

“And some apples!” Bofur yelled a bit louder.

“Just send down his whole larder!” Kili yelled. “And a boat! I need the hole to be big enough for a boat!”

In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. This hole was comfortable, and warm, and cozy. It was also full of Bilbo Baggins’ things. This hobbit had lived a remarkable life and thus his home was quite remarkable in many ways, but the most intriguing bit about this hole was the larger hole in the backyard. It was surrounded by stones, with a lovely set of carved steps going up to the house. It led to a sturdy but worn wooden ladder that had been used for apple picking but now served to connect the Halls of Mahal to Gardens of Yavanna. This ladder fell in the center of a massive stone hall, which was filled with flowers that hobbits would come down to tend to. The two races regularly wandered through Bilbo Baggins’ garden to meet - dwarves would come up for market day bearing gifts and coins, eyeing steaming bread and crisp red apples, while some of the more adventurous hobbits would slide down the ladder to inquire about repairs for their tools.

For Bilbo, though, this hole meant so much more. It meant thirteen dwarves crashing into his house ridiculously early in the morning to nag him into making them breakfast. It meant having his family, blood and not, over for dinner. It meant listening to his mother talk with Dori and Balin about tea, to his father engage Fili and Ori into long tales of age-old tales. It eventually meant Kili tugging a tall, red-haired elf into Bag End no. 2, covered in water while a tired Fili collapsing into a chair complaining that Kili and Tauriel hadn’t stopped making doe-eyes at each other.

It meant that, after a long conversation with tears and laughter and shy touches, Bilbo made dinner with a dwarf that made him laugh as he stole pie filling and got flour on his nose and in his beard. It meant that Bilbo would come back to market to find someone frowning on his porch with little metal bits twisted in his lap as he worked on making ornaments for Bilbo’s garden. It meant that Bilbo Baggins woke up next to Thorin Oakenshield, one hand tangled in that beautiful dark hair. It meant that they sat on the bench under the oak tree and blew smoke rings into the setting sun, holding hands.

When Frodo Baggins finally entered Yavanna’s Gardens, he found his uncle beaming like he hadn’t in years, with a braid in his curls and a ring on his finger. There were thirteen dwarves in the living room, and Frodo was just in time for tea.

---

Thanks for reading!

This is based off of a post made by @wheeloffortune-design about Bilbo digging his way into Halls of Mahal, which has literally been living in my brain since I read it. (and @gallusrostromegalus put down some delightfully funny comments that also made my day) So… here we are. You can find the post here, assuming the link works!

The AO3 link is here!

man i love bagginshield.

#writing #writers #writers on tumblr #fanfiction #the hobbit #bagginshield #thorin x bilbo #bilbo x thorin #bilbo baggins #thorin oakenshield #my otp honestly #i started shipping this and never stopped

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theyilinglaozus · 2 years

Text

Thank you, to those who reached out after my (now deleted) post from yesterday. I’m sorry if anyone was particularly worried, and I am deeply touched by those who extended their kindness 🥺 I will be responding to those messages in a little bit.

I feel as if I should make a little post - one which I won’t delete - to let people know about my headspace and feelings within fandom as of late.

I’ll pop them below a cut for those that aren’t interested, but if you are, please read ahead. If this is as far as you’ll be reading, just know that I am telling myself not to post late and when the low moments take over, and to instead go back to retreating into comfort spaces away from internet spaces (like the books I have to read, the shows I have to enjoy) until the next day when, hopefully, such phases pass.

Last nights low period helped to remind me that there are those in fandom circles who care and show kindness, and that I need to ignore the louder parts of the circles which make me feel such feelings of discomfort and upset.

As mentioned yesterday, for some time now I have felt uncomfortable in certain spaces - especially areas of the tumblr community for MDZS/CQL. There are reasons for this, of which I won’t go into too much detail as I am still actively trying to distance myself from past happenings, but I saw a few gif posts that made me rather concerned. Again, I won’t go into it as I’m sure many will just be like ‘Kimmie, that’s silly. It was a joke!’ which I understand! But, jokes can sometimes be pulled in poor taste, y’know?

The thing is, I do sometimes feel like there is - perhaps unintentionally - an aura of gatekeeping and bullying in the fandom, to the point where it’s started to feel as exhausting as being at school. I know I am not the only person who has recently felt this way, as I have seen much the same sentiment shared amongst others - creators and non creators - and it truly saddens me, especially given how we’ve all been brought together over a joint love for not only these stories and characters, but also the culture and the country they come from.

Right now is a difficult time for fans of Chinese danmei and danmei adaptions what with all the drama happenings in and around the industry and what it means for the future - but I sometimes feel like members of the fandom don’t treat others as if they are already adults understanding that a lot of the current troubles stem much farther than just ‘my favourite show / book / character / actor is causing controversy’ and into the veins of what it truly means for the LGBT+ communities native to these countries. Of course you do have those fans that are problematic and only care about their favourite characters and stories (as I have, very sadly, seen examples of just today on twitter in relation to Immortality likely never seeing an air date), but a lot of the people I talk with and have been in contact with are truly passionate and saddened by the real life ramifications far more, and what it means for things like representation for queer youth, how certain behaviours affect not just those who hold/held fame but the average Chinese person.

I also feel that there are spaces filled with hypocrisy. Where people are vocal about addressing issues on one thing, but then are ready and willing to put down others on other matters, or partake in certain things as over sexualisation of actors or infantilisation of K-Pop stars. I sometimes think it’s just me that sees this and often wonder if I’m just noticing things that aren’t there, but it makes me wonder.

I don’t really want to keep on this topic - I could go on, but it won’t change anything. People need to learn to grow and be something better for themselves, and my pointing out each individual case I’ve noticed won’t help in any way. Those people won’t see this, and if they do they’ve long decided not to speak with me if they’re not already blocked by me. But the reason why I felt to speak this even partly openly is because I feel it’s important for people to be aware that their words towards others may not mean much to them, but it means something to others. That their actions may seem fun to them and their friends, but may actually be harmful to others. I rarely want to make CQL/MDZS content these days - and that upsets me, as I used to take great comfort and joy in doing so. I’d like to return to a feeling of comfort where I can create for this fandom, but it’s not right now.

I’d like to bring to focus this tweet thread + replies, which I think is incredibly important. Please know that I am not Chinese, so I often do not want to comment on such matters, but these voices from those who are Chinese and welcome diversity into the community give me the strength to bring these issues to light.

As for me? I’m not going anywhere. I know a few people who messaged thought I was posting a leaving message - and I wasn’t. While the thought has happened its more for the creative atmosphere feeling stifling - much for the reasons above. When I first found this community nearly two years ago it felt very welcoming and comforting - much like when I used to be a part of watching Taiwanese and Japanese dramas over ten years ago through the days of myanimelist. I am very much a fandom old, so slowly seeing the space close and feel more inclusive and pressurised as of late has felt very disheartening. To me, as long as people are being caring and respectable, and acting with a level head and bearing in mind the real world ramifications as well as what is on a screen or in a book - I have no problems with how people have fun in fandom! I always say, the more the merrier. But I also understand this is not primarily a space designed for me, so my say means little. I just wish more care and kindness extended - on both ends of the spectrum.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading. I think this will be the last I say on the subject, but if you do want to talk about anything I’ve said, please message me privately.

#off topic chatter

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floridabaiter · 3 years

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the cornerstone of self-idolization and lack of self-preservation: our ex-twt stan + has a cc as a sibling rant

preface: my system joined mcyttwt a while back (i can't remember exact times due to personal reasons) and it genuinely contributed to the downfall and spiral of our mental health in the past year. especially from my perspective as a protecter alter, i saw the brunt of things that stressed us to the point of detriment. our sibling has half a million followers on some platforms (not mcyt) and we have seen firsthand through him how pressure from online can affect ccs. (we will not be speaking on his experience as they probably do not want us to publically.) also sorry if this is a little incoherent we had a seizure this morning- this is just to get everything off our chest.

DEHUMANIZATION + STANDARDS:

b4 i start here's the dictionary definition of dehumanization: "transitive verb. : to deprive (someone or something) of human qualities, personality, or dignity: such as. a : to subject (someone, such as a prisoner) to inhuman or degrading conditions or treatment "… you treat people with respect, you get respect back." + heres smth from brenebrown.com "Maiese defines dehumanization as “the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment.” Dehumanizing often starts with creating an enemy image."

the dehumanization of content creators on mcyttwt is disgusting. they are placed on pedestals and expected to walk on eggshells when creating their own content and writing THEIR OWN tweets and messages- they are expected to drop FRIENDS over what teenagers on twitter who don't know them personally thought of them. they were expected to respond to death-threats and criticism and harassment with a big smile and an apology for whatever they did. they are people who are not treated as people by stan twitter- they are treated as higher-than while simultaneously lesser-than when they are normal people who make mistakes. this is not okay. having interpersonal relationships + making mistakes & learning from them are basic parts of life that these content creators are being stripped of by twitter's cesspool of a community and it's so blatant and disgusting that they are faced with daily swarms of harassment for simply making mistakes + making friends + having lives while making content.

(side-note: another form of dehumanization is the fact that twitter consistently strips people of their privacy and private lives. cc or not you are expected to put everything about yourself out there [face included ie: selfie day] and that's blatantly unsafe for minors and adults alike. the way they dig into personal histories and pasts and relationships while simultaneously preaching "respect boundaries" is disgusting and deplorable.)

twitter's policy of "i stan this person, i like their content" while simultaneously harassing the ones that they claim to enjoy content from is confusing at best. it is detrimental to any cc's health. the villianization of ccs is fucking ridiculous.

WHITE SAVIORS:

coming from a poc person, twitter has a rampant disgusting problem with white saviors 👍🏼. i don't even need to get into it, everyones seen it and you all know. also i'm not even getting into how mcyttwt treats mexicans 👍🏼 i'm not your little maraca drug cartel "ayyy man" meow meow, emily.

white people on twitter: we are not your toy for activism. we are not yours to use to excuse your harassment of real people. fuck you. shut up. let us speak for ourselves and uplift our voices when we ask. (also stop with the "ugh 🙄 white people" shit. we're talking about you ❤️.)

PERFORMATIVE ACTIVISM:

twitter preaches to not be performaitve in lifting up voice and then is preformaitve.

there's countless threads that are out there just for clicks and likes (ie. "things not to say to a trans person" *states the most obvious shit like 'don't call them their agab'*) for fucking popularity. it's all the time, people chase clout under the guise of pretending to care about minorities. it's sickening, especially when they bring race or ethnicity into these threads for their ""activism"".

MISOGYNY:

twitter's gender bias is again, blatant.

female ccs will call out the same behaviors male ccs get praised for calling out and will get degraded and put down and have their name trending under "[name] neg //" for hours after the tweet is sent, they'll be harassed for days afterward and shamed. their bodies will be judged by fucking randoms who have no place saying anything (women aren't objects!). they get shit for the same thing male ccs do with no consequences. it's disgusting, it's blatant, and it's not being talked about or addressed.

PERSONAL AFFECTS:

it never allowed for enjoying content. it was contestant stressful pressure to keep up with every minute and miniscule detail of what a cc did, constantly choosing sides and never being allowed to speak outside of what the collective group on twitter thought. having an opinion other than "this is wrong and should be the downfall of this human person" was not allowed. there was an issue every day, we felt like we couldn't say we enjoyed anything without someone coming in our dms like "um.. did you know [insert something mildly problematic]... you should delete that post about liking them." and god forbid when "cc neg //" would trend because everyone couldn't maturely move on from something that wasn't a big deal. twitter has made my system SPLIT NEW ALTERS because of the stress and obligation we felt to keep up with every minute detail. (albeit we are polyfrag and prone to splitting, and our co-host at the time was an emotionally volatile dream introject during a very dream-critical time. that still doesn't excuse the toxic environment that caused the splits in the first place :|.)

what twitter does to people- especially ccs, is unsafe and unpleasant at best and traumatizing at worst. these people need to grow the up, put on their big boy pants and realize that not everything is about them.

all of this is off the top of my head too :| we've been waiting to rant about this since we got ON twitter. this doesn't even scratch the surface of the abelism and babying of ND ppl or people with disabilities + the other horrid shit that happens on that app.

tl;dr twitter touch fucking grass and do it FAST holy shit. please go outside and talk to people. get a job. read a book. do some math or something idk.

#rant #vent #i guess #cw negative #twitter talk #009post #long post #cw Twitter critical #cw critical #sorry i just really needed to get this off my chest. like badly #ask to tag

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alectology-archive · 3 years

Note

if you don't mind me asking: if you dislike sjm's books so much (well of course because her books are kinda bad lol) do you keep up with the news and books? As in I get that you have already read the previous books and didn't like them which is why you're an anti, but why continue reading her upcoming teasers/books? Like isn't that just supporting her and bringing attention to it by continuing to talk about it? It's a genuine question because I've been curious

For starters an sjm anti isn't a person who necessarily loathes her books. In fact most of us were some sort of fan of hers at some point and just... labelled ourselves antis when we realised that her books were super problematic because the fandom is a really horrible place where any and all criticism of her books are not tolerated - her fans also have a history of being super racist, queerphobic and ableist so it's not really a healthy place to be involved in.

I get what you mean about giving her attention and to put it shortly, it's a double-edged sword of sorts. Critiquing and talking about her books means we're bringing her more attention but the consequences of not critiquing her books are... far worse? I'm aware of the issues in her books now because I came across other people critiquing them. I'm more critical of what I read and write now because the antis fostered and supported important and healthy discussions about representation and issues with any media in general. A bunch of people who used to 'stan' her books are now aware of the issues with them because I in turn talked about them and are therefore more careful about the way they interact with them now and so on so forth equating to healthier fandom spaces because the racist/sexist/queerphobic/pro-imperilialistic nonsense in her books are called out. So I think the benefits of critiquing her books outweigh the cons.

At this point I also think authors like sjm/cc/rainbow rowell etc are super popular so I'm not quite sure we're really making people 'more' aware about them? Even if so, we emphasise how important it is to approach the books with a critical eye so I hardly think we're essentially marketing their books for them.

The attitude of don't interact with a media if it's imperfect is kind of pointless and basically stupid because there's literally no piece of media that isn't flawed (although the degree varies and again sjm/cc and co fall on the rather more extreme part of the spectrum) unless the creators are bigotted or super insensitive (see: jkr).

As for why I personally keep up with the news, it's because other antis or stans make me aware about it. Why do I care about her at all? Because her books are flawed and made me internalise some harmful ideas and I want people to know that. Because her books were among the first young adult books I read and they're therefore partially responsible for my love of reading and writing now so they carry some sentimental value. Because I'm still invested in her characters although she always does them dirty in the end. That said, I do still enjoy reading some of her Throne of Glass books. There was a time when I enjoyed reading her A/cotar series. And at this point, having read all her 14 published books, I'm very familiar with her writing style and her favourite tropes so reading one of her books is not really a very painful experience although I'll confess that the books she's published after a/cowar have been really hard to get through because they've just been so badly written and I hope I'll just stop picking them up someday (maybe sometime soon because I think I've fallen in love with enough talented writers these past few years that I think I'm ready to fully move on). That won't necessarily mean I'll stop talking about her books because she's still a bad writer who's consistently writing books that are straight, white and cis to the point where my teeth hurt but some of the characters in her books are really memorable (ahem Manon and Kaltain) and it would be a lie to say otherwise.

#asks #anon asks #anti sjm #.#text #personal #edit: so I just realised I typed this wholeass essay on my phone and. I'm sorry. I didn't realise how long it got.

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ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is · 4 years

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one: Hi Em. It has recently come to light in social media that Myers-Briggs was racist and wrote racist books, so people started saying we shouldn't use MBTI anymore. While I know it's mostly based on Jungian theory, it still has a bit of her theory into it and I wanted to know your opinion on that matter? I stand by the Black Lives Matter movement and it makes me uncomfortable to keep talking about something made by an antiblack person and I also don't want people I care about to think

two: I support racist people and cancel me/stop talking to me/pick up a fight, but MBTI and Jungian theory have helped me a lot and they make me happy, I genuinely enjoy reading about it and having it in my life. I feel like I'm in a moral compass that will inevitably make me feel bad in some way.

------------------------------

So I’ll talk about my thoughts below re: my personal opinion about this sort of situation. That said ultimately this is your choice and I cannot make it for you. I am going to use the term “you” a lot in like, a general sense, but this is just how I’m talking about it. You yourself can choose whatever you want.

So: I did have to look this up, and the most reliable article I could find was from several years ago on New York Magazine’s the Cut, indicating that Isabel Briggs Myers in particular had written a novel in the 30s that had a very racist plot with overtones of eugenics. She also indicated that a person advocating for equality (circa the 1950s) indicated an undeveloped type.

As for my personal opinions: Briggs Myers was pretty obviously racist, and while arguments of “it was normal for the time” are never great anyway (normal doesn’t mean correct), the timing indicates this was particularly conservative/reactionary. Eugenics was a very popular idea earlier in the 20th century, but was falling out of favor and heavily targeted by progressive activist organizations by the 40s and 50s. That’s not going to be the argument here; it’s racist and you can’t paint it as not racist.

As for how I personally choose to engage with such things:

If you stop engaging with all literature, theories, or ideas created by people who were racist (or bigoted in other ways, or problematic for whatever definition you use for problematic) - or even ‘more racist than usual at the time’ - you will be left with very little to engage with. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be critical. You should. But it does not mean you need to cancel or throw everything out. This personal opinion is heavily influenced by me being Jewish; if I tried to stop reading anything by someone who had engaged in antisemitism, I would pretty much have to throw out anything from before like, 1950, unless it was written by someone who was either Jewish, whose other works were lost such that we know nothing about their opinions, or who was from a place that had little or no Jewish presence.

The concept of canceling really only makes sense for me for people who are ongoing creators. It makes no sense to, for example, cancel Shakespeare, despite The Merchant of Venice being quite antisemitic. He’s dead and we’re not going to change his mind. Nor do I think we should ban access to The Merchant of Venice (I have a general hard line against censorship on the grounds that it will be used against antiracist works as well - and indeed often is). I think a theater group choosing to put on The Merchant of Venice does need to think about how they will present it and what context they will use. But I don’t think they need to attempt to strike it from their repertoire.

The same goes for works by antisemitic and racist creators that are not themselves explicitly bigoted (eg: Roald Dahl was very antisemitic, but I don’t think Matilda, for example, was itself a book with antisemitic themes).

The point where canceling does make sense to me is for a living creator who is still being racist (or bigoted), with the intent being to limit their access and show them that this behavior will result in negative consequences. Ideally people should be anti-racist (or respect women, or accept LGBT people) out of a sense of compassion, but when that fails, shutting them up because they fear losing their movie career is at least better for the world as a whole.

I would note again, in my opinion, that if you already have supported them in the past/own things they created, you do not need to throw those things out. Don’t burn your Harry Potter books because of JKR’s transphobia, but don’t spend money on Harry Potter merchandise.

Now, when it comes to specific theories, it does get a little more complicated because I am sure some motivation for MBTI was coming from a place of eugenicism. I also think nearly all personality and intelligence tests were. The SAT was originally created to prove the superiority of the so-called Nordic Races. We live in a racist society, and the categorization and ranking systems of said society will, unfortunately, often reflect that.

I believe the way to use such tests in the modern day is first, to remove the idea that a certain type is better than others (you can have personal preferences; you don’t have to like all people. This is more the idea that no type is inherently more intelligent or kind or whatever, since MBTI is about cognitive processing and the expression of intelligence or kindness) This includes ideas about which types might be more or less racist. Second, I try to include cultural context in typing people, as a lot of theories about the intelligence of different ethnicities being in some way inferior come from a gross misunderstanding of culture (eg: a more competitive academic environment is seen as a negative thing in some cultures and students will consciously not engage, and this has been incorrectly seen as them being unintelligent, rather than a cultural divide). And finally, I have never given money to the MBTI foundation and don’t intend to nor do I think anyone needs to.

None of this erases the racism Myers and Briggs had, but it does mean that your own use of cognitive theory as they interpreted it is not perpetuating ideas of anyone being inherently superior. I take the things I find beneficial (understanding yourself and others) and leave behind anything else.

#mbti #rosespotions

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violethowler · 4 years

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The Things That Matter

I’ve talked a lot over the last two months or so about the many different ways that the characters, story, and themes of the Kingdom Hearts series align with the framework of the Heroine’s Journey. For the final chapter in this series of essays, I’d like to talk about what it means for this series to follow this narrative formula. Because the fact that Kingdom Hearts fits into this storytelling pattern is critically important now more than ever.

The three most recent series I know of that aligned with the Heroine’s Journey framework all ended up missing the landing in various ways. Two of the three - Voltron: Legendary Defender and the Star Wars sequel trilogy - abandoned the formula in their final installments, while the third one - the Frozen movies - managed to fit into the formula almost completely, but suffered in the second movie from a lack of clarity as to which of the two leads is the main protagonist and which is the Animus. Two of these were under the Disney umbrella, and all three have had evidence found that executive meddling or other behind-the-scenes conflicts over story direction played a role in how the final installments ended.

As I mentioned in my essay “Into the Unknown,” when a story deviates from the structure it appears to be following, it produces a visceral sense of wrongness in the audience. In stories which up toward the end aligned with the Heroine’s Journey, that effect is amplified. The framework of the Heroine’s Journey was designed to uplift the experiences of identities outside of what society considers the default option in storytelling. The lived experiences of those identities are mirrored in the narrative’s themes. So when a story set up around calling out prejudices and double standards about those identities that are ingrained into the audience’s culture deviates from that formula, the result inevitably ends up reinforcing those biases instead, on top of the brokenness of the narrative in general.

In terms of how this applies to Kingdom Hearts, Sora and Riku’s individual character arcs have been noted by many LGBTQ+ fans to have notable parallels with elements of their own lived experiences:

Riku’s arc of learning to accept his darkness as something natural that’s a part of him and which he can express in a positive way mirrors how many LGBTQ+ people grow up with the idea that same-sex attraction is “sinful” and “unnatural” and have to unlearn that mindset in order to realize that there’s nothing wrong with them. Likewise, Mickey’s line in Re:COM about how spending time with Riku has positively changed his opinion about Darkness can be read as an analogy for straight people who are initially unsure of or hostile to LGBTQ+ identities changing their minds with education and first-hand interaction to become staunch allies. Esmeralda’s talk with Riku about how “There are just some things we need to keep separate from the world at large, at least until we have time to figure them out”[1], while on one level is referencing Riku’s Darkness and his inner turmoil relating to Ansem, can also describe the common LGBTQ+ experience of being in the closet and hiding that part of yourself from the people around you[2].

As for Sora, in Kingdom Hearts III he responds to Davy Jones’ comments in The Caribbean about the romantic relationship between Will and Elizabeth by saying that “I still have a lot to learn about love[3],” indicating he lacks understanding of his own feelings in the area of romance. This is supported by the official Kingdom Hearts Character Files book published by Square in February 2020. Short stories in this book featuring Sora’s POV depict him as actively confused about what romantic love is[4], and struggling to define the nature of his relationship with Riku[5][6]. This can be a common experience for LGBTQ+ youth growing up surrounded by media that only ever depicts romantic relationships as one boy, one girl. Many people who grew up like this—myself included—have had similar experiences of struggling to understand our own feelings about someone of the same gender because for our entire lives up to that point we had little or no exposure to the idea that being romantically interested in someone of the same gender as you was an option.

Sora and Riku are each written in ways that speak to common LGBTQ+ experiences, and the fact that so many things—the canon parallels to Disney romances, the match with how love interests are portrayed in the Heroine’s Journey, the fact that one of the series’ Lead Event Planners Michio Matsuura was described by the Co-Director Tai Yasue to be “head over heels for the bond between Riku and Sora’s hearts[7]”, in connection with his enjoyment of “pure love dramas[7]”—are all pointing to the conclusion that these similarities did not happen by accident, but by design.

It makes so much sense for Heroine’s Journey narratives to be used to tell LGBTQ+ stories because there are so many ways that homophobia and transphobia overlap with and are rooted in the very same gender and cultural norms that the framework challenges. Many countries have come a long way towards public acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities, but in terms of the stories that we tell, mainstream fiction is still skewed in favor of stories with protagonists who are straight and cisgender. Storylines with straight romance are treated as a society-wide default, while creators in countries like the U.S. who want to include even the smallest background references to LGBTQ+ relationships have had to fight and push back against corporate pressure to remove them.

This is especially true for media aimed at children and teenagers, as the fact that being openly LGBTQ+ is still widely considered problematic in many countries is frequently used by entertainment executives in ostensibly more progressive countries as an excuse for censoring LGBTQ+ storylines and characters. Multiple creators working on animated shows for Disney and/or its competitors have spoken out in recent weeks about the resistance they faced to including LGBTQ+ relationships[8][9][10] and how they were told that openly acknowledging characters as non-straight was too controversial or “inappropriate for the channel"[9].

As a consequence of this environment, creators wishing to depict non-heterosexual relationships have had to resort to creative methods of getting the implications past the censors in a way that LGBTQ+ audiences would recognize while still maintaining plausible deniability so that the executives could make money off the story in anti-LGBTQ+ markets. The downside to this is that because these efforts are more subtle, most straight audiences will either not notice the implications, or else dismiss them as an accident. Some will go as far as coming up with alternate explanations to justify why any potential LGBTQ+ subtext about a character or relationship could not possibly have been put there by the creator intentionally.

This extends not only to audiences, but also to people who interact with these stories in a professional capacity, such as translating and marketing a story’s international release. Animated shows that feature same-gender relationships have had international dubs change the gender of one character in the pairing to make it straight, for instance. Or there's the infamous example of how the English dub for Sailor Moon in the 1990s changed two girls from lovers to cousins in order to provide an explanation for their closeness that didn't involve acknowledging that the characters were not straight. In terms of the Kingdom Hearts series, the English localization has routinely downplayed LGBTQ+ subtext in the series while in some cases adding romantic undertones to interactions between a male and female character that did not exist in the original Japanese script. Kingdom Hearts III was one of the most egregious examples of this:

Hercules’ recollection of how he dove into the River Styx to save Megara’s soul in KH2 is thematically connected to Riku sacrificing himself for Sora at the Keyblade Graveyard through the phrase taisetsu na hito (literal meaning: “precious person”) when Hercules is talking to Sora in Olympus and when Mickey is talking to Riku in the Realm of Darkness at the beginning of the game. The English version translates this as “person I love most” for Hercules, while changing it to “what matters” for Riku and Mickey to call back to his meeting with Terra in Birth by Sleep, which the scene includes a flashback to. While Mickey and Riku’s original meaning can still be deduced from the conversation around it, especially with Mickey saying "sometimes you care about someone so much," changing the line for the sake of a callback downplays the evolution of Riku’s goals from protecting “things that matter” to protecting “the *person* who matters”.

Donald and Goofy’s teasing Sora in the scene at Galaxy Toys where Sora comments on how much he or Riku resemble Yozora is framed in the English version as “Riku would be a great action figure because he’s cool, unlike Sora.” However the original Japanese indicates that the teasing is centered around the fact that Sora said a character who looks like Riku was good-looking.

When Kairi offers Sora a paopu fruit, she says in the original Japanese that it’s simply a good luck charm so that they don’t get separated, while in the English localization, she says “I want to be a part of your life no matter what, that’s all.” While “that’s all” still fits with how the parallels to Winnie the Pooh indicate her connection with Sora has weakened and she wants to maintain it, the first part of the English line calls back to the legend of the fruit introduced in KH1, which was openly referred to as romantic by Selphie in the original and localized versions of the first game. As a result, this adds romantic implications that contrast with Sora’s unreceptive body language and facial expressions[11] as he reacts to the initial offering of the paopu fruit.

In the original Japanese, Riku’s words to Sora before his sacrifice at the Keyblade Graveyard translate to “I believe in you. You won’t give up.” The English localization changed it to “You don’t believe that. I know you don’t.” Not only does it remove a callback to the original game, but this phrasing dowplays Riku’s faith in Sora and ignores Sora’s very clear feelings of inadequacy.

During the scene where Sora and Kairi are floating through the dark tunnel toward the Keyblade Graveyard, Sora’s line in English, “I feel strong with you,” was originally an acknowledgement of Kairi’s strength that called back to how he wouldn’t let her come along on the return trip to Hollow Bastion in the first game because he thought she’d “kind of be in [his] way”[12]. Removing this callback takes the focus away from Kairi’s growth and brushes aside one of the ways the game shows that Sora’s view of her has changed over the course of the series.

Some fans defend changes such as these insisting that the development team had to have approved of them. However Testuya Nomura himself feels strongly enough about the subject: he stated in a 2018 interview several months before KH3's release that “an incorrect or defective translation risks compromising the comprehension of the whole story,” referring especially to the Kingdom Hearts series[13], and the English localization of Re:Mind—which was much more accurately translated than the base game—directly references the original meaning of Kairi’s words during the paopu scene in one of the DLC’s Kingstagram posts. This all indicates that changes such as these that remove important connections or change the meaning of the conversation are ones that the development team very much do not approve of.

LGBTQ+ fans of Kingdom Hearts who recognize their own experiences reflected in Sora's and Riku’s journeys know that Disney has not had a good track record when it comes to depicting LGBTQ+ characters in properties they are affiliated with. The most we ever get in their movies are background moments or nameless characters that are only there in one scene that easily can be cut out for distribution in countries with heavy anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. And that’s if the character’s orientation is even mentioned out loud in the film at all instead of simply being confirmed by interviews before or after release but never acknowledged on-screen. Television has fared better, but until recent years we never had any main characters who were confirmed in-show to be anything but straight. But things are slowly starting to improve. Within the last few years shows like "Andi Mack" and "The Owl House" have depicted major characters as openly interested in others of the same gender[14], and Pixar recently released a short as part of their Sparknotes program called “Out”, which openly centers on a man worrying about telling his parents he’s gay.

This is why it is so important that the Heroine’s Journey of Kingdom Hearts follow through to a structurally appropriate conclusion, with the development team being given the freedom to tell their story in full without restriction or censorship. Deviating from the formula this late in the series would represent a continuation of the recent trend of Heroine’s Journey narratives being structurally broken by inference from forces other than the main creative team. But if the Kingdom Hearts story is able to complete it’s Heroine’s Journey without executives or localization teams getting in the way of the intended story, then the LGBTQ+ themes already present in Sora and Riku’s journey will break so many barriers,challenge people’s expectations of what is possible, and convey powerful messages of self-discovery and acceptance—just like the framework was designed to.

Sources

[1] Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance; Square Enix; 2012.

[2] Tumblr post by @blowingoffsteam2; December 3, 2019. https://blowingoffsteam2.tumblr.com/post/189461796759/blowingoffsteam2-dont-mind-me-over-here-just

[3] Kingdom Hearts III; Square Enix; 2019.

[4] Translation of KH Character Files Beast’s Castle story by @lilyginnyblackv2; February 3, 2020. https://lilyginnyblackv2.tumblr.com/post/611420864489062401/character-files-beasts-castle-story-english

[5] Translation of KH Character Files Arendelle story by @lilyginnyblackv2; March 3, 2020. https://lilyginnyblackv2.tumblr.com/post/611490139845345280/character-files-arendelle-story-english

[6] Translation of KH Character Files Arendelle story by @notaseednotyet; March 1, 2020. https://twitter.com/notaseednotyet/status/1233993459670765569

[7] “Message from the KINGDOM” Updates!; April 11, 2012. https://www.khinsider.com/news/-Message-from-the-KINGDOM-Updates-2427

[8] “”Steven Universe” and “She-Ra” creators on Representation”; Paper Magazine; August 5, 2020. https://www.papermag.com/rebecca-sugar-noelle-stevenson-2646446747.html

[9] Twitter thread by Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch; August 9, 2020. https://twitter.com/_AlexHirsch/status/1292328558921003009

[10] Twitter thread by Owl House creator Dana Terrace; August 9, 2020. https://twitter.com/DanaTerrace/status/1292321440029478917

[11] Frame by frame analysis of Sora and Kairi’s body language during the KH3 paopu scene by @notaseednotyet; September 14, 2019. https://twitter.com/notaseednotyet/status/1172774158167506944

[12] Kingdom Hearts; Square Enix; 2002.

[13] “Nomura stresses the importance of direct translations on story comprehension, and talks about world development as well as the Gummi Ship;” August 27, 2018. https://www.kh13.com/news/nomura-stresses-the-importance-of-direct-translations-on-story-comprehension-and-talks-about-world-development-as-well-as-the-gummi-ship/ [14] Disney’s The Owl House Now Has a Confirmed Bisexual Character; August 9, 2020. https://io9.gizmodo.com/disneys-animated-series-the-owl-house-now-has-a-confirm-1844665583

#kingdom hearts and the heroine's journey #kingdom hearts meta

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offbeatcappuccino · 4 years

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It’s Okay To Not Be Okay Review

Its Okay to Not Be Okay (2020) Cast: Kim Soo Hyun, Seo Ye Ji, and Oh Jung-Se

Streaming Platform : Netflix

Trigger Warnings (in the show) : Fear, Violence, Abuse, Suicide, and Workplace Harassment* (I’ve decided to include trigger warnings in this review in order to emphasize their importance and hopefully encourage their use especially in entertainment since we only tend to rate movies and tv shows based on their maturity level, but fail to provide a disclaimer for trigger warnings)

Background:

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay stars Kim Soo Hyun (KSH) , Seo Ye Ji (SYJ), and Oh Jung Se, as well as a plethora of supporting characters, who honestly all did an amazing job with their roles. Kim Soo Hyun is one of the biggest stars in Korean entertainment. He’s had a successful career in both movies and tv shows. Some of his other well known shows are Moon Embracing the Sun, Love From Another Star, and Dream High. I’ve watched some of KSH’s dramas before and one notable aspect is that he’s one of the few mainstream Hallyu actors that I’ve seen who play characters that show who frequently challenge the norms of masculinity that are often exhibited by stereotypical male lead roles in other K-dramas ( e.g. Producers). I think SYJ’s previous roles (Lawless Lawyer, Save Me) also really challenge the gender roles imposed on women and the characters she plays are bold, confident, and intelligent women not afraid to challenge systems of oppression. Synopsis:

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay really is another drama that shows these two actors pushing themselves to once again play challenging and unconventional characters. Its Okay to Not Be Okay is advertised as a healing drama and its a touching tale that revolves around the lived of Moon Gang-Tae, Moon Sang-Tae, and Ko Sun Yeong. Sang-Tae ( Oh Jeung Sae) is a thirty five year old man with autism, and Gang-Tae (KSH) is his younger brother and primary caregiver. Gang Tae also works as a nursing assistant for psychiatric hospitals. Because of a traumatic event that occurred in the past, Sang Tae suffers from PTSD and has an intense fear of butterflies. Due to this, the brothers are forced to move every spring to a new city, which has often come at the cost of happiness for both brothers as they struggle to settle down and live peaceful lives. Ko Mun Yeong ( SYJ) is a successful children’s book author with anti-social personality disorder, who has also had a traumatic childhood and also suffers from PTSD like symptoms on a daily basis. How these three characters meet and how they open the door for healing and choose to move on from their past experiences is what forms the crux of the story Pros: Depiction of Mental Health : I really want to applaud this show for bringing issues like co-dependency and normalizing the importance of self care for those who are often the primary caregivers for their loved ones. I also loved how the writers of the show also challenged many of the ableist narratives that our society puts forth about disabled individuals through the character of Sang -Tae. Seeing Sang Tae not only be a crucial main character for the show, but also showing his own journey of self empowerment and healing is refreshing to watch. Also, kudos to the show for destigmatizing many of the mental illnesses that Hollywood has unfortunately misrepresented like manic disorder, anti-social personality disorder, substance abuse, and multiple personality disorder.

Storybook Themes & Cinematography : Every episode on the show is named after a fairy tale and the ending and sometimes the beginning uses really creative animation and narration that beautifully convey the theme of every episode. Also, the show really employs this really beautiful contrast of dark and light throughout each episode and also has some really outstanding “gothic” architecture that I found to be really pleasant to watch.

Character Development: Many K-dramas tend to be plot focused rather than character focused, which means that many of the characters are flat in that you don’t really see them grow and change into different versions of themselves. I really like how this drama really focused more on character and you could really see the growth in some of these characters and get to know them as though they were real people beyond simply being a medium through which a plot line is carried out and fulfilled.

CHEMISTRY!!! : The chemistry between Ko Mun Yeong and Gang-Tae in this show ( more towards the middle-end) literally gave me goosebumps. These two have more chemistry than the actual field of chemistry. The attraction between these two is stronger than an ionic bond y’all ( sorry for the chem references). I’ve never seen two people act more in love with each other than these two. Its so convincing that thousands of fans worldwide ship these two together and I swear if these two ever end up getting married in real life, I would not be surprised. Their relationship is so wholesome and amazing and ahh!!! Cons: Depiction of Harassment: Mun Yeong’s interactions with Gang Tae come off as extremely problematic in the beginning of the show because a lot of her behavior could be classified as harassment. This is was especially pronounced in one scene in Episode 3 that was kind of a hot mess and that particular episode actually ended up with over 50 complaints sent to the Korean broadcasting regulatory committee.

Mun Yeong initially does come off as problematic, but many individuals have argued that her character was exhibiting usual characteristics of someone with ASPD, as ASPD affected individuals do struggle with understanding concepts like consent. While I don’t think this completely justifies her behavior and I don’t think the show is trying to justify it either, I think that particular scene could have been shot in a better way and that the show could have benefitted from a disclaimer in the beginning of the episode clarifying that the creators don’t condone this behavior. This scene definitely did throw me off first, but I really think seeing Mun Yeong work through her toxicity and trying to be a better person is worth sticking to the show. Depiction of Therapy: For a show that talks about mental illness, I would have loved to see more scenes showing the characters (especially Mun Yeong) talking to the psychiatrist ( one of the main supporting characters) on the show. I understand that the creators wanted to focus on the romance fluff, but I think it was important for them to show that healing involves not only having a strong support network of family and friends, but also licensed mental health professionals.

Slow Pace: Because the show is more character focused than plot focused, the first few episodes, your not really sure where you’re heading because while there is a mystery element in the show, the main focus of the show isn’t to solve the mystery or fulfill a certain adventure. However, I did not mind there not really being a clear plot in the show as I felt the acting, humor, and seeing the characters experience different aspects of life was really entertaining. Also, this issue resolves itself towards the end.

#kdramas #kim soo hyun #seo yeaji #seo ye ji #its okay to not be okay #netflix #hallyustar #hallyu wave

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scentedmoviesaestheticempath · 4 years

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Compiled cbw’s Kuraneo thoughts + theories

Warning : Don’t read if you’re a Kuraneo antis. For fellow Kuraneo fans, just because I write it doesn't mean you have to agree. There are multiple but no wrong ways to interpret the ship and my opinion below strictly follows the canon storyline. We don't need any reason to ship anything but considering their rocky start, it's fun to analyze what happen.

Disclaimer : HxH belongs to Yoshihiro Togashi.

Is it really a senseless ship?

Most complaints regarding Kuraneo is how problematic the ship is and the impossibility for Kuraneo to happen. The main problems are : Neon is a body collector, therefore it is impossible for Kurapika to be with her. Especially when she specifically collects scarlet eyes. Neon is also a shallow childish brat, while Kurapika is portrayed as a mature, cool-headed protagonist. But is it really?

Implications to be Canon

In January 2020 I spared my time to catch up with HxH. It really surprised me after I read the manga carefully, Kurapika was given the title of 'young boss/underboss' in Nostrade family. Whoever has seen the Godfather and read Cosa Nostra Wikipedia page would know that the title is usually given to a son. He could've been given the title 'consigliere'', but he didn't. There has been several changes in translation but he still is the Nostrade family leader(The Japanese version is Waka-Gashira(Young Boss), under Oyabun(Boss), while consigliere is Saiko-Komon). That gave me an assumption : "What if he is a Nostrade now?" I am not surprised since a man marries into a girl's family is kind of traditional norm in Japan (Reference : mukoyōshi (婿養子).

“ A mukoyōshi (婿養子) (literally "adopted son-in-law") is an adult man who is adopted into a Japanese family as a daughter's husband, and who takes the family's surname.

Generally in Japan, a woman takes her husband's name and is adopted into his family. When a family, especially one with a well established business, has no male heir but has an unwed daughter of a suitable age, she will marry the mukoyōshi, a man chosen especially for his ability to run the family business.[1] If there is no daughter, the candidate can take a bride from outside his adopted family (fūfu-yōshi: 夫婦養子). This is done to preserve the business and name of the family when there is no suitable male heir, since traditionally businesses are inherited by the oldest male heir. Mukoyōshi is also practiced if there is no capable male heir to run the family business.[1] This is a centuries-old tradition and is still widely practiced today. Many Japanese companies with household names such as Nintendo, Kikkoman, and Toyota have adopted this practice.[1] This adult adoption may take place in marriages where the woman's family is of a higher socio-economic rank than the man's family, where the woman has no brothers to be the heir to the family name, when the man has been disowned by his own family, or when the man's natural family comes from a notorious or shameful background and he thus prefers to hide his identity. “

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukoy%C5%8Dshi) (picture source : Kurapika x Neon Facebook page)

Kurapika and Neon are also paired in the Mobage which implies that the creator himself has approved the ship. There is a reason why Meruem and Bisky is not paired together.

Looking at Kurapika as a character

Now let’s look at Kurapika’s character. His character goal is to avenge his clan and collect all his brother and sister’s eyes. He’s shown to have strong prejudice against flesh collector and even decided to work for Nostrade family based on that reason. He went as far as planning to arrest them before meeting Neon. And even after meeting Neon, he convinced himself once again that in order to pursue his goal, he is willing to kill her (”If I have to kill her, so be it”, as rephrased my Melody). Yet he is also shown to be pleased when he is pointed as the head bodyguard, stating that “I didn’t think... It would work out so quickly” .He seems to have completely changed his plan. Because what is better than arresting/killing Neon? That would be having access to Nostrade’s family resources by being Light’s trusted person. And after Neon lost her power, Light Nostrade is shown to be losing his mind, being unable to function normally as a leader. Begging Kurapika to turn “Neon back to normal”. Kurapika does the job instead for Light, saying that “Don’t worry. I’ll handle everything.” At this point, he is the suitable guy to run the family. Considering his Waka-Gashira title, it is safe to assume he got the title by marrying her through son-in-law adoption. Looking at Neon as a character I am a big fan of aspoonofsugar’s character meta posts and the post about Neon’s Nen and Character insight brings a new perspective on how I see Neon.

https://aspoonofsugar.tumblr.com/post/176668230707/nen-and-characters-neon-nostrade Neon prefers not to be involved with people. She is clingy to her material possessions but not to people, as implied in her reaction to Dalzollene's death. While all her bodyguards and haters assume that she’s a heartless unempathetic character. The actual reason is related to her belief. For Neon, the present is the only thing that matter. She shows her empathetic side when Chrollo cried and Eliza broke down hearing Squalla’s death. She cares about the livings and her noble altruistic power reflects her character.

Regarding the son-in-law theory, I would say that she simply does not have a say in this matter when her family is crashing down. We are never shown Neon’s perspective on Kurapika whether she likes him or not. I personally never ever once see a canon scene where Neon is implied to have crush on Kurapika. She had fluttering heart moment for Chrollo instead and I guess that's because Chrollo is one of the people whom has shown genuine emotions in front of her, just like Eliza over Squalla. Her appreciation to genuine feelings and honesty is probably caused by Light’s many lies in order to use her power.

We're told the story from Kurapika's point of view, therefore it's very easy to antagonize Neon like majority of her haters. But given Neon's appreciation to honesty and authenticity, who is at fault here? Kurapika just appears in her life, planning to use her and her family for his ends. He is just another Chrollo and Light Nostrade. (IRONICALLY This is why I ship their very unique relationship. But they do need each other for provision and protection, so props for Kurapika lmao)

So if the son-in-law theory is true, is it possible for them have feelings for each other?

Of course it wasn't long before we got twists here and there. Neon's power disappearance from Chrollo's book, Kurapika referring himself not having the place to go home anymore. He seems to have so much authority to access Nostrade family resources without having a friendly term with them. Assuming they don’t have a normal loving relationship at the first sight makes sense. I don't think anyone marrying into Nostrade family will ever get their emotional needs fulfilled. Nostrade is never the traditional happy family. Neon is emotionally detached and Light only cares about power. They are the opposite of Zoldyck whom are sick in their own way. They only care about themselves and Kurapika is also one. He missed Gon's recovery and does not seem to value his own life. In other words. Doesn’t that mean Kurapika is only using her, then?

No. At this point, it means they need each other and it’s either they do like each other or simply have mutual physical attraction regardless how they feel.

(It is unfair to say Kurapika takes advantage of Nostrade family when Nostrade family themselves need Kurapika, or else, they will not function. Needing each other is not equal to taking advantage of each other, it is the basic of household.

As for the last part, I have seen many cases where even people who constantly says "beauty doesn’t matter” and proving their point by considering their spouses unattractive are STILL ATTRACTED PHYSICALLY to their spouse. Please feel free to disagree)

When we say that we like or love someone, we are experiencing interpersonal attraction—the strength of our liking or loving for another person.

Although it may seem inappropriate or shallow to admit it, and although it is certainly not the only determinant of liking, people are strongly influenced, at least in initial encounters, by the physical attractiveness of their partners (Swami & Furnham, 2008). Elaine Walster and her colleagues (Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, & Rottman, 1966) arranged a field study in which college boys and girls were randomly paired with one another at a “computer dance.” After the partners had danced and talked for a couple of hours, they were interviewed separately about their own preferences and characteristics as well as about their perceptions of their date. Walster and her colleagues found that the only important determinant of participants’ liking for their date was his or her physical attractiveness. None of the other characteristics—even the perceived intelligence of the partner—mattered.

https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/initial-attraction/

When feelings are discussed : From my intrepretation, I always think people got it backwards about Kurapika and Neon. Kurapika has an icy facade, but he is the type of person who grow on people, while Neon is not. Even when he distanced himself from the other bodyguards at their first meeting, he is the one who cares the most about his "comrades"/teammates, he punched Uvo for killing his teammates. Neon, on the other hand, doesn't even flinch when she heard that Dalzolenne is dead although he's been the one who took care of her. She even made one of her servant as wall decoration. But there is a possibility she also grows on people AS LONG AS they’re still alive, that’s why she cared about Eliza. The problem is, once they’re dead, they become another story in the irrelevant past. That does not make her a bad person in grey HxH universe, but someone with different values due to her belief and upbringing. Kurapika demonstrates his understanding of her when describing her to Basho. In fact, he is the most understanding person that treats her nicely and does not harm her even though he had the intention to. Kurapika didn't think Neon losing her ability as the family downfall or disability, unlike her own father. As much as assuring everything will be okay when Light broke down in GI Arc. This is a huge revolution in her life because since Kurapika stepped in, someone is finally using her without the need of her ability.

Neon’s loss of ability actually sounds like a parallel to Pairo when people around them refer them as "not normal" for having less functional leg and no ghostwriter ability. They were also both supposed to be under his care/companion when the accident happened. This leaves a huge question mark for me of how Kurapika interprets her at this point. Is he only using her or he feels responsible? or both?

This leaves us some possibilities if their relationship was merely based on physical attraction & mutual benefit or if it is indeed more.

The first possibility means he likes her enough to marry/sleep with her but still barred from prejudice to consider her as his friend. (Even this is debatable, Kurapika simply could be a private person and given that his clan was living in hidden presence, it's only normal if he want to hide Neon's presence too. Also "Traditionally, part of the Mafia code is to keep the wives and mothers out of the loop of confidences for their own safety" is an actual study from The Independent,UK.)

And Neon also likes him enough to marry/sleep with him but not enough to get involved in his life. (Or is she? Sometimes I have to remind myself HxH can't be seen through normal perspective because no hunter is fit for normal family life. So maybe Neon's dismissive attitude makes her the perfect one for him)

The second possibility means they are in loving relationship off-screen. I'd say this is a very high probability because based on personality analysis above, both characters are capable of growing on each other. Another note : Neon's design is strongly based on Princess Luna from Level E, where she is a love interest to Prince Baka. The story take it lightly despite being "king x revolutionary" couple. And while for us, it feels like a long time. For the in-universe characters, black whale is only like a month of work CMIIW.

But either way, I’d say they do harbor some sort of affection in canon. We have a negative perception on arranged marriage, assuming the affection is not valid because it is a form of Stockholm syndrome. I will quote my argument straight from Quora where the responder had successfully arranged more than 40 marriages.

“Not every western theory is a reality. I think those who do not know the basics of arranged marriage speak at will and trying to create a fear syndrome against a successful system...”

“...Those who shun arranged marriages can live as they wish. Law does not prevent them to be at liberty. They have no business to criticize a system which is far better than other ways of creating male female relationships. Stockholm syndrome belongs to Stockholm... They are civilized enough to live in a system where there is nothing to lose. Stockholm syndrome is an illusion.One should not insult a culture without knowing an iota of that system. “ https://www.quora.com/I-feel-that-the-affection-after-an-arranged-marriage-is-basically-a-form-of-Stockholm-syndrome-What-is-your-opinion-on-this

Or maybe, there is nothing between them yet and these implications are just a foreshadow to what’s planned for them

What if she’s dead?

Some people would say Kurapika killed her but that is totally impossible and out of character. Her death is only assumed by the Phantom Troupe because her power dissapear from the book. Nen is extremely flexible concept even in-universe and there are many ways to work around that. Also in contradictive, Kurapika managed to take 9 pairs of eyes from 'the mafia's daughter' without killing anyone. I doubt he would do nothing after Chrollo stole her ability. I assume it would be insulting to Kurapika if people say he let Neon to just die considering he takes his job seriously and inheriting Nostrade name.

And frankly, I don’t care if she’s dead. Kakin war arc & Dark continent arc will also take approximately 20-40 years to finish. Whether she’s dead or not I’m going to enjoy my time with my interpretations based on canon implications given. And if she is indeed proven to be dead, I’ll accept it and just have fun in the fandom. I respect Togashi as the author.

Why don't the Nostrade just adopt Kurapika without the marriage?

I dunno, better ask mafias and Japanese. Because based on this theory, they clearly like to keep it in the family, I'm just reading my references.

cbw’s Final words

This theory is inspired from baby foreshadowing theory in reddit (page: HxH craziest theory), which inspired me to write my fic. Which, inspired me again to write this son-in-law theory.

I am combining implications from “Cosa Nostra”, “Waka-gashira”(The similar organization structure), “Godfather”(How Kurapika gain Light’s trust), “Son-in-law adoption”(Underboss in Sicily organization structure), Neon&Kurapika paired cards in Mobage, and Princess Luna from Level E as spouse from opposing faction(The base for Neon’s character)

Whilst the western sources about obtaining the title in mafia marriage is abundant, the sources regarding obtaining the title in yakuza marriage are Until Death Do Us Part and & GTA:Liberty City

Toshiko Kasen: My husband is samurai, Mr. Toni. He is very strong... but very, very bad. He only married me to become waka-gashira in Liberty City.

https://www.grandtheftwiki.com/index.php?title=A_Date_With_Death&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop

(Page 161 Until Death Do Us Part)

Honestly after my last note, I gave it another thought and I couldn't possibly see another explanation of why he could be a Nostrade family boss. If anyone asks me, I refuse to ignore the implications Togashi gave and say they're canon 100%.

Given Kuraneo’s complex relationship and their neutral interaction, its brilliance lies in how flexible people can be in interpreting them. I enjoy many different kind of interpretations. My favorite thing about Kuraneo is although we never get any implication that Neon ever noticed Kurapika, many fics describe it as the other way round because from Neon’s POV it would be liking someone that embody her fetish. I especially love this headcanon, love it when people portray Neon as deviant.That escalate from 0 to 100 real quick. Being a part of Nostrade also means Kurapika gets to accept his past as something that shapes him to be the man he is today. But honestly, I just love hateships and their big chances of hating while loving each other.

I would say that whatever off-screen and how readers interpret their relationsip and feelings is up for us to decide until HxH truly reach the ending. And that’s only if Togashi is willing to disclose their relationship. I would be happy if they become canon, but if not then I’ll still ship them just like how I will still ship Pitou x Kai and Chrollo x Kurapika. Naoko Takeuchi, Togashi’s wife said once in her interview that she likes seeing different interpretations of Sailor Moon from her fans. I’m a Sailor Moon fan too and I wish to respect her view by applying the same to her husband’s works.

Thanks for reading!

#kuraneo

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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I get blends of innocent beans confused with what queer coding is or isn’t, and malignant beans misappropriating points, so we’re gonna do a quick run through.

Queer coding started as a malignant thing. The truest use of the phrase “queer coding” came from stereotypes and villainizations that straight people found sCaRy. This is like, why Scar seemed classically flamboiyant, or a variety of Disney villains were long, lanky, gestured exaggeratedly, wore eyeliner, etc. There’s a million examples but I’m not going to cover them all because I think you get what I mean. At the time, straight culture was painting gays as bad so painting villains as how straights perceived gays was like, super useful, cuz it creeped the straights out oOOoooOOo.

When people talk about queer coding enforcing stereotypes, if you’re talking about the original form of queer coding, this is inherently true. However, coding reached other levels, and has adaptive forms.

For example, watching (as I’ve been mocked for saying 10,000 times, but because it’s needed) The Celluloid Closet will clear up a lot for you. Subversive queer coding is when queer creators use a great deal of things to communicate with a queer audience past censorship. The film documentary (if you can’t read the book -- which I understand, it’s difficult to find) clears a whole fuckton of this up.

There’s some things that, quite frankly, we as gays know as part of our language. It is what it is. While it’s not a stereotype, it’s quite literally a language I highly warn straights against stepping into, because then they flounder around confused on what’s our actual language and what’s a stereotype

A truly innocent bean asked of me yesterday, well why then is menthols fair subversive queer coding? How is that not a stereotype?

Well like, because it’s facts. And that’s really, really hard to wrap ones’ head around from an outsider straighty perspective or even someone who’s queer but trapped heavily in a hetnorm world outside of where this is visible and/or in the wrong demographic otherwise. A black person who hangs out with black people of all orientations is not going to blink at a media dude getting menthols generally, because it’s one of the cultures that statistically engages in it to the point of memes about Kools or whatever. That’s not my culture, I can’t comment on much beyond that, but it’s just something to take note of.

But even if you don’t want to take someone’s word on “no, seriously, white dudes smoking menthols is queer culture and literally like a great sign for a hookup to another queer white dude”, google the various intersections of gender and menthol, race and menthol, and sexuality and menthol.

This isn’t pulled out of thin air. These were populations quite literally heavily targeted by Big Tobacco and, by nature, are the ones that smoke it, whereas Big Tobacco put(s) on airs of masculinity and chick-magnetness to smoke good ol non-menthol shit. It’s literally marketing. Yes, it does literally impact who buys product and yes, it does after generations have a noticeable affect. Track the numbers I told you to google down and you’ll realize less than 3% of menthol smokers identify as straight white men (depending on the way the numbers sort out and the year of polling, often 1.x%, 3% is the liberal number).. Lemme tell you, on the street, that’s an “okay, honey :)” when you do find it. Maybe a little pat on the head. An invisible brochure for Welcome To The Gays. Like, White Men make up more than 31% of America and they still refuse to tally more than 25% of the US as queer [some censuses as low as 6% and LOL] so like-- that should be like minimum 25% of dudes available and nope, 1-3%)

(that’s not to say all gays or even all white gays smoke menthol, but this is that rule of “not all fingers are thumbs, but all thumbs are fingers” in loose application.)

But understanding these things, these signals, from the outside is utterly flabbergasting to people.

No, someone making an immasculating joke is not subversive queer coding. No, a dude wearing a certain kind of shirt or eating a certain kind of food generally isn’t queer coding (Unless it’s a rainbow flag BITCH IM GAY shirt, or uh, maybe for food quiche or hummus? I mostly joke for the latter two, but that’s the kind of self ball punching queer community sometimes does to itself in awareness that yes, there ARE elements. No, eating hot dogs and burritos isn’t gay. Yes, we make make penis jokes. No, that isn’t itself queer coding.)

When a queer author codes a piece, it’s designed to communicate to the resonant audience. It also may not communicate to /all/ gays. The language of a middle aged cis gay man that lived through the AIDS crisis is a whole other fuckin adventure from the language of 17 year old trans gays squatting behind their Xbox, it’s just fact, it’s just what is. Completely different cultures and lives being lived, completely different experiences resulting. A few things here or there may connect across generations but some shit that’s written by a gen Z gay is gonna whiff by a boomer gay, sorry. Also just facts.

Explaining exactly what is and isn’t queer coding is almost impossible beyond the fact that “if you don’t get it, it’s probably not for you.” -- At the same time, that leaves the problematic room of people taking that grey area and packing in a bunch of shit and we’re back to ground zero on the original problematic queer coding.

I once read a meta of uh-- I’ll just say, [Fantasy Character]. The fantasy character had an addiction problem that gave them villain-like attributes. Someone implied the “villain coding” made it queer coding. Okay like. Fucking absolutely not. Because if the show in question WAS doing that, first off, that’s literally the kind to make mockeries of gay people so you literally shouldn’t be reaching for that and second off they’d be doing that lanky sassy bitch with eyeliner bullshit like Disney villains with it, give or take. You don’t apply this shit in reverse, “he has villain attributes and so he’s gay” is literally the worst possible angle to take a discussion while trying to slap fight in a representation arena. Like I can’t say enough DO NOT DO THIS SHIT.

If you wanna write fic or headcanon whoever as gay or whatever have fun but like once people keep trying to talk about “coding” you’re talking about conscious elements inset by the authors. Does a character have a bunch of on the record sexual encounters that just happen to include dudes persistently even if we don’t exactly get the exact angle or Proof Of Dicking? That’s gay (also depending on the phrasing, as settled in older stuff, that’s just deadass queer text and settled long before this fandom ever had pissing matches about this shit in older cinema.) Does the character happen to be respectful and use like gender neutral pronouns on people? Sorry folks that unto itself isn’t gay, that’s gays writing allies at best, unless you can give specific and directly applicable situations relevant to the character rather than eternally vague blogging through and swearing up and down it’s just about their partners or some shit. Yelling it in general though, sorry, no.

Does the character engage in things or events with non-het gendered partners that in the very least are heavily coded into the areas of relationships even if they’re unclear (eg, do they routinely go out with non-family people and hold deep or meaningful conversations in things that LOOK like a date, even if nobody SAYS it’s a date) -- congrats, you have coded text. Alone it could even be queerplat stuff, depending on the suprastructure of the plot, text, subtext and everything else around it (same way, gasp, a man and a woman can sit at a table and not necessarily be in a relationship, but if they’re trading courting gifts and having unique and powerful exchanges or have big like, “the heart is the thing that binds us together uwu” shit, we all figure out what the fuck is going on like grown assed adults.)

It’s easier to list things that are NOT subversive queer coding:

Insults against gay people

Immasculating commentary

Random foods short of it deadass being a gay author making fun of some gay meme shit in some gay equivalent of ‘right in front of my salad’

Favorite colors or clothing

---

We got it? Good. Rule of thumb though. Deadass unless you are involved in some thick-ass queer culture don’t try to queer code shit. I don’t even care if you’re queer yourself because that doesn’t mean you’ve actually been subject to the culture in a meaningful way. There’s 30 year old bis that grew up in white picket fence suburbias on top of trust funds with hovercraft parents guiding them through 17 degrees and keeping them out of party culture that married a het-passing relationship and settled down and started having babies and their grasp of queer culture ends at what they perceive out of memes online, if they even hover in actual queer crowds online at all as much as general ones. That person literally is not going to speak much of the language. They aren’t. At best they’ll speak the language of 30 year old trust fund het-married bisexual mothers which, I mean yeah, technically some queer language but that’s a very, very fucking niche experience path right there compared to street-dwelling club-goers that attend pride, hold D&D parties with all their coworkers they figured out are gay on the weekend, occasionally brick a window in a riot. The latter is gonna have a far more diverse queer experience. And by such, a far more diverse queer language.

That’s not even to gatekeep. 30 year old trust fund het-passing-marriage bi-mom is in fact bi. So yeah, they’re queer. But we’re talking about language and culture, which is related to but not something you inherit. It comes by lives and experiences.

And I think this is where a LOT of the fucked up early Queer Coding fuckery comes from in discourse. Yes we have a language. Hell, to some extent a few things might even kinda BE stereotypes but there’s a certain amount of living and being where you know the difference between “this is a stereotype made by straight people villainizing us that has no idea what we’re fucking like” or “this is a stereotype born out of mass marketing that targeted and victimized then imprinted on an entire population that we’ve come to recognize among ourselves.” Or even “this is a stereotype but FUCK YES it’s one we embrace, go get fucked, straights.” And it’s not NEARLY as ambiguous as fandom circle jerks try to make these things out to be in the interest of wanting every interpretation to be valid or every character to be gay or not wanting to admit some person may know what the fuck they’re talking about more than they do.

Huge point on that last one though, because like. I’ve seen some angry straights that are pissy about the show try to throw wrenches in the gears by concern trolling as if in defense of the gays about “offensive queer coding” and most of the time they’re basically that “how do you do fellow kids gays” meme. “How do you do gays I am very concerned about *checks notes* the twitters talking about gay men walking fast” and half the time turn around like two tweets later like “besides the character doesn’t even have a lisp anyway” or some bullshit that is outright offensive ass stereotyping while they’re out here trolling over the fact that a gay man admits to diva worship as a cultural trait.

General rule of thumb: ask a queer culture immersed gay about queer coding.

Shipping culture in the blue hellsite is not queer culture, for the record. Even if a bunch of queerfolk are in it.

Thanks.

Sincerely,

A very tired gay

#supernatural #spn #fandom #queer coding

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tlbodine · 5 years

Text

A Brief Guide to Enjoying Problematic Creators

There was once a prevailing wisdom, “You should never meet your heroes.”

When you consume a piece or media or know only about a person’s achievements -- not who they are as a person -- you develop a set of private expectations about that person. Sometimes, with art and literature especially, the connection you feel to a creator can feel quite intimate. Sometimes you read a book or listen to a song and think, This person GETS me. But you have to be careful, because the person you are forming this intimate relationship is not the real artist; it is a construct of your own mind and needs. It’s impossible for any living human to meet the expectations of someone’s private imaginings.

An unfortunate price of the social media era is that now it’s practically impossible to avoid “meeting” your heroes, or at least learning a whole lot about them.

Creators are expected to have platforms. Maintaining a social media presence and directly interacting with fans -- and broadcasting thoughts and messages blindly across the internet -- is pretty much a requirement. And even if a particular creator isn’t on social media, it’s pretty hard now to live without knowing the nitty gritty details of their life and past transgressions: such knowledge is just one Twitter thread away.

So how do you deal with this? How do you reconcile your expectations with reality? What moral responsibility do you have to drop your support when someone is “canceled”?

Let’s see if we can tease it out a bit under the cut!

This is a very long post, so let me sum up the tl;dr right now:

You are free to make your own decisions about the media you consume, and liking (or disliking) a piece of media should not be the deciding factor of your character or value as a person.

You should consult your own values and do your best to live in accordance with them without casting critical judgment on others who are doing the same in a way that’s different from you.

The goal of cancelling/boycotting should be to exert pressure on systemic forces of privilege and inequality, not to bully people into agreeing with your personal values.

First: A Person is Not Their Work

Writing problematic fiction does not make one problematic. The opinions of a character are not necessarily those of a creator. By the same token, a creator may hold odious opinions, but those opinions may in no way be reflected in the art. You can like a person’s work even if you don’t like that person, and vice versa. You can even like a person’s work because you like a person. But the two are separate. That’s important for later, so commit it to memory.

Second: Guilt by Association is a Logical Fallacy

Just because a person enjoys something made by a problematic creator does not make that person automatically problematic, especially if the things the person enjoys are not reflective of the creator’s odious opinions. There is a difference, for example, between enjoying Ayn Rand (an author whose books are written to illustrate political views) and, idk, Nathan Pyle (a cartoonist who is pro-life but whose cartoons are totally unrelated). Me liking Nathan Pyle does not make me pro-life; me liking Ayn Rand might make me a believer in her cause. But then again, it might not, maybe I like her prose or something (spoiler alert I don’t actually like Ayn Rand). It is a fallacy to assume that someone shares the beliefs of a creator simply because they consume that creator’s work.

Third: "Canceling” Makes Sense As a Challenge to Systemic Abuses

The point (it’s been lost in the shuffle, perhaps) of “cancel culture” is supposed to be to put social pressure on people who are otherwise shielded from the consequences of their behavior. Sometimes famous people, or people who are talented or very popular artists, are favored by the law and social systems around them. If a popular artist commits a crime and receives a slap on the wrist when anyone else committing that same crime would receive jail time, then that person is benefiting from privilege -- and that’s what “canceling” them is meant to counteract. It’s supposed to be about holding people accountable who are otherwise not subject to fair accountability. If we expect a just society, this should be a means to an end (ie, changing the way privilege affects punishment) and not the end goal itself.

Fourth: Beliefs Are Not Actions

This is a bit of a philosophical rabbit hole to fall down, and it gets real slippery around the intersection of thought/speech/online communication, especially when it’s so easy to tweet every thought that pops into your head. But here’s the thing: People don’t control their thoughts and emotions. They can (and should) control their actions. But a bad take or a stupid opinion is not the same thing as a bad action or a pattern of behavior. People are allowed to be wrong, they are allowed to have uninformed opinions, and they are allowed to change. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with them or like them or even support them -- but it does help to maintain a sense of scale.

Fifth: You Do Not Need to Have an Opinion on Every Piece of News

Although it may seem that “everyone” is talking about something, and urging you to pick a side, you do not in fact need to take a side in every argument. Yes, when you see injustice and it is within your power to stand up for the victim, that is a good thing to do. But there is a difference between stepping between a bully and a victim, and in standing on the sidelines dissecting the character of the people involved. You are not obligated to have a dog in every fight, and you are not a bad person for simply not having the energy to care about every single argument that comes your way. If you don’t want to get involved, or you don’t know enough to have much of an opinion, you can choose to walk away from the debate rather than join a side. I promise.

Sixth: Collateral Damage Exists

Issues are never black-and-white, and “cancelling” or boycotting one person can damage someone else. You have to decide where your values lie. For example: A popular restaurant chain may spend its money promoting political agendas you disagree with, but the local franchise owner is a very good person who gives money to the community. Or, one actor in a particular show has engaged in illegal behavior, but his co-stars include disenfranchised groups like POC or LGBTQ community members who would be hurt by the show being canceled. It should, generally, be the goal to punish only those who are doing wrong, while hurting as few others in the process. It’s not possible to be perfect in this, and you need to consult with your own values and do the best you can to act in good faith. But just bear in mind that someone else’s reasons for supporting/not supporting a particular person may be very different than your own, and those reasons may be valid.

#discourse #analysis #cancel culture #psa #long post #I had a lot to say ok #i'm sorry

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randomarcanatingz · 4 years

Text

the arcana characters as youtubers

nadia

always has her hair and makeup impeccably done for her videos and when she meets fans,,,no one has ever seen her look like less than an 11/10

makes videos on fashion trends and fashion history (think a less experimental safiya nygaard), ones where she gives advice to viewers who send in questions, and unboxing/review videos for beauty items and clothes

people always comment calling her “queen” which she thinks is sort of cute and “mom” which just confuses her (“for the last time--i appreciate all the kind words but i DO NOT HAVE ANY CHILDREN”)

has never been demonetized once and doesn’t plan on it

whenever her videos are sponsored, she manages to sneak the sponsorship in smoothly, in a clever way

goes to vidcon but typically is too busy to stay the whole weekend

wrote a book on self care and how to be independent and successful that became one of the best-selling youtuber books ever

isn’t a huge fan of collabs on her own channel, but appears occasionally on portia’s or asra’s

does a yearly giveaway of high end jewelry and makeup for her subscribers, and holds a charity donation event for her birthday (like colleen ballinger’s childhood cancer one)

seems to avoid scandals effortlessly, but actually works hard to stay out of drama

asra

has absolutely no theme to his channel and just rolls with whatever video idea he can think of at the time

some examples include an instructional tarot reading video, a docuseries on the stigma against reptiles (featuring faust in every episode), a collab with nadia where they just drink tea and talk about current events, and him playing the weirdest children’s games he can find online

LOVES meeting fans and spends the whole weekend at vidcon, has like 7 meet and greets, and appears in every panel that will let him participate

his videos are low on editing and mostly just edited for length, but any special effects he does add in are not subtle at all (aka random sparkles and dramatic jump cuts)

has been dubbed a “cinnamon roll” by his fans but he isn’t afraid to call out other creators if they say something problematic

is very expressive and there are many reaction images and videos of him all over instagram and twitter

doesn’t usually make travel blogs but he does travel a lot, so most of his videos don’t have the same background

all his merch is tye-dye and the best seller is a mug with a faust-shaped handle

follows a bunch of fan accounts for him on instagram

tons of fans ship him with julian and while he’s not super into it, he finds the shitty instagram edits hilarious

julian

the KING of clickbait titles but his fans don’t mind that much because it just parallels his dramatic personality

“Staying in a Haunted Hotel???” (it’s not haunted, he just heard the people in the room beside him talking at midnight and thought it was ghosts), “I Solved the Jon-Benet Ramsey Case” (he didn’t, it’s just him discussing theories on it), “Proof the Government is Plotting Against Us” (no solid proof, just off the wall conspiracies that he explains confidently)

makes videos of him exploring supposedly haunted places, ones where he discusses unsolved crime cases and what he thinks really happened, and conspiracy theory videos

very active in the comments section; likes every nice comment he sees and replies to them with a winky face

also very active on twitter and instagram, especially past midnight, and replies to tweets and dms from fans

sometimes collabs with asra for conspiracy videos which immediately leads to 20 fanmade compilations titled “julian annoying asra for 5 minutes straight”

is always sponsored by the weirdest, most random companies that have no relation to the kind of videos he makes at all

does 6 hour live streams where all he does is look at cursed images on reddit

is determined to not let any of his subscriber’s discover that his birth name is ilya

random haters have tried to cancel him multiple times but it Never Works he is literally immune to being cancelled

portia

vlog QUEEN !!! her videos are mostly vlogs of her daily life, with a few scripted videos scattered here and there, usually involving pepi

contrary to her brother, her titles are very blunt and true to the content and are in all lowercase (“a day in my life”, “getting frustrated in my garden”, “buying my cat clothes online”)

she tries to make her videos appeal to everyone, but 90% of her demographic is still teenage wannabe aesthetic vsco girls

has never done a proper collab, but her vlogs always end up featuring nadia, julian, and some of the palace guards

has a popular merch line that sells unique items like flower seeds, pet food bowls, and baking tools

her favorite thing is seeing her fans’ reactions when she picks up one much taller and heavier than her for a picture at vidcon

fans all agree that she has bde

sometimes makes so-called “family vlogs” where she hangs out with julian and mazelinka and calls them “the maz squad”

for april fool’s day, she posted a fake giveaway announcement video where she claimed she was giving pepi away to a fan

her twitter is mostly retweets of fanart and sweet messages from fans (and pictures of pepi, obviously)

muriel

has the smallest subscriber count of the group but it's surprisingly high for someone who never wanted to be popular in the first place

his videos are very niche and are usually on topics like how to survive in the wilderness and how to raise chickens

many of his subscribers think his quiet personality and unique videos are all an act or persona and muriel does not understand why

he's only ever been to one (1) fan event/meet and greet and it was when he tagged along with asra to vidcon

despite his protests, asra always plugs muriel’s videos on his twitter, so they share many subscribers

he doesn't really have any haters because those who actually watch his videos think he's super sweet and those who don't are too scared of his huge stature

didn't want to include inanna in his videos initially, but caved after fans saw her in the background of one and demanded she make an appearance more often

fans (and asra) keep insisting he change his username to “the mountain man” but he heartily refuses

does his own editing but also isn't great with technology so sometimes his videos are strangely edited and include parts he meant to edit out (but it's kinda endearing)

has never sold merch, never plans to, and ignores any requests to do so

lucio

listen i'm not comparing him to the paul brothers but you know …..

makes prank videos, makeup tutorials (but it's the same look just varied SLIGHTLY every time), and vlogs where he not so subtly flexes how rich he is

his merch is supposedly “the highest quality and extremely stylish” but that just means the prices are sky high and the quality is not that great

goes to every convention he can and holds random meet ups because he craves attention

isn't mean to his fans because he couldn't bear seeing his sub count go down, but will absolutely TEAR his haters to shreds and get their channel taken down somehow

gets demonetized all the time and complains about it (as if he needs more money)

people are either a huge fan or they HATE him there is no in between

uses clickbait just as much as julian but people are less forgiving about it

none of the other people in the gang really want to collab with him but julian did once, got tricked into eating a beetle, and refused to do it ever again

king of scandals, tweets random controversial stuff and then deletes it

#the arcana #arcana #the arcana game #nadia satrinava #muriel #asra #asra alnazar #julian devorak #ilya devorak #portia devorak #count lucio #lucio #youtube #youtubers #the arcana imagines #the arcana imagine #imagines

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irageneveart · 5 years

Text

there are so many things a 16 years old person should be doing beside throwing hate, BUT HERE YOU ARE BEING A BRAT

@bfmyers I really can't take this anymore, are you really that full of hypocrisy to scream TOXIC left and right while you yourself use your free time to only spread hate? I don’t usually do this and I try to stay away from useless discourse but you're just kicking on my nerves way too much

under the cut cause boy I have a lot to say. (really, it’s long. I needed to point out everything)

I'm going to kindly tell you to fuck off artists' backs.

you have 0 fucking knowledge of what you're talking about yet you're making callouts and worse, people agree! the same people who supported the artists before by reblogging and liking their art are now shitting on them and "ihh no more reblogs from them" only because you write a lengthy shit in which not only that you threaten a human being, you don't even know how to argue. a link to a picture and screaming "toxic" ISN'T A GODDAMN ARGUMENT

people of this community, PLEASE use your fucking brains and don't bow your head to what every nameless kid has to say. you don't have to believe me either, just use your fucking brain and heart and do the decision making yourself

Now, you did a callout post on @dbd-omija pointing out how toxic they are!!! omg gasp animal death? abuse?? HOW IS THAT pOsSIbLe

where have you been until now because this is a horror community:

in the TCM universe inbreeding is mentioned multiple times

in the Halloween movies Michael kills two dogs and eats one of them

omija clearly stated they went with the 1978-2018 timeline BUT NO YOU KEPT SCREAMING BECAUSE HOW DARE THEY SAY SOMETHING AGAINST YOU

on that matter: in the halloween movies Michael's cult makes him rape his niece, in another movie Laurie, before jumping to what it seemed her death, kisses Michael's mask lips. GASP, when will you sue the directors?

after he escaped, Max literally slaughtered every living creature in that farm. put the DBD devs on your "I need to sue them cause I have something to say against this horror game!!!" list

If there’s something I can agree with you on, it’s about tags. Yes, these are triggers, yes tagging is important, but let’s not forget that being in this community IS about being surrounded by triggers. out of courtesy sure, we should tag our stuff accordingly, but to go all out to say “omija, if you’re reading this, i’m going to pee in your mouth.” HOW. IS. THIS. ACCEPTED?! HOW

HOW THE FUCK PEOPLE WHO REBLOGGED THAT CALLOUT THOUGHT YES THIS IS GOOD?!!?!

now you said that Omija's making all of these seem cute and that’s the real problem. this is where you are sooo wrong and let me explain:

a round head doesn't instantly make everything cute. there are many many details that the human eye perceives as cute, things that artists go to when they want their art to be seen as cute. from the color chosen to the way their eyes and mouths are drawn, to the very line work they’re using. yes, shapes count too, but this is not the case and we should get out of our tiny box and see the big picture. Their comics are not meant to be cute, actually much respect to them for being brave enough to approach well known subjects that are not explored. But that’s it. If YOU see it as cute then it’s your problem really. Art and fiction is prone to interpretation

If anything, how much cute stuff we have in the community should be the anomaly, not that someone draws anxious Bubba

omija's Amanda and Bubba art is problematic! someone asks why, you: because is toxic!!!

really? I actually think that, given their individual personalities, omija portraits the ship’s dynamic really well. Amanda is not dealing well with her feelings and with humans and Bubba has problems understanding things in general. they are two deranged people finding a way to cope and to accept another human presence nearby. "Amanda is picking on a disabled person how can you say it's well!!!!" let me remind you that his entire family is picking on his disabilities and the fact that he loves but also FEARS his family is a big theme in Leatherface's story and personality

Also, another argument of yours was about “the power play” and how that’s problematic. I’m...honestly surprised you even thought of this argument because the entire slasher fandom, the movies, everything slasher related IS BASED ON POWER PLAY. Have you read what they wrote for Laurie/Michael to say the ship is based on power play and it’s wrong? No, me neither, cause I don’t care, but you seem to care enough to vomit about it. Go read some things and tell me how problematic the writing is, you need to call out writers too after all

Btw, surprise! I don't ship neither of the mentioned ships, but I can use my brain enough to see what omija does is actually well made and well thought, sick, weird in some instances, but well thought. kudos to you artist. I can also see those who ship Laurie and Michael are still nice people

But just like you and many others I have my own morals (do you now? Exposing yourself like that to NSFW content while so many people are scared for their life because of people like you? hmmmm) and I can’t really stand explicit pedophilia. I’ve read so many books or seen so many movies where it was mentioned, it’s a trigger factor, it’s taboo, therefore is normal to be used in darker works. It all depends on the circumstances and the way it is presented, cause it’s a piece of fiction. Nobody attacked George R. R. Martin for the controversial things he had written in his books right? I wonder why

Because, another surprise, fiction is different than reality and only this argument alone should be enough, but some monkey brains out there will come to scream at me how fiction affects reality. Someone who writes a murder mystery isn’t actually killing people when they put pen to paper. People who play shooter games do not wish to shoot people in real life. Someone who writes about rape will not welcome the rapist in their arms nor do they wish to rape someone. So on, it’s simple, again, we just need to use our brains.

If you have bullying-related or a family related or any thing related trauma and you see a Michael/Laurie fic or Quentin/Freddy or whatever other ships or subjects you have seen around, and decide to click on it, and then you have a negative reaction, that fiction is not harming you. Your unresolved trauma is harming you. Your decision to read something when you know it triggers you is harming you. The past actions of yourself and those who inflicted harm upon you are harming you. All of those things – your trauma, your real-life bullies, your actions – are real, and have the ability to harm you. (the italic bits are from @dracfics who said it better than I ever could put in words. Thank you)

next on your "who am I going to shit on today" is @renlvbon

not gonna lie, for the omija callout I read everything searching to see whenever you are right or not. I don’t personally know either of the artists but I could read enough to see you’re just a self entitled person with something to say regarding everything. for ren's callout I simply skipped after I saw your argument.

you're not doing gods' work by opening people's' eyes that they can or should portray the characters the way they are, disabled and gross. no, you're just picking on someone's art style

Can we stop this toxic nonsense???

don't get me wrong, I agree that we shouldn't make them supermodels and we shouldn't erase what they are, fucking ugly and gross killers, but saying people who don't draw them a certain way are cowards or calling them out or whatever else shit is TOXIC and ANNOYING. We all change them more or less, we have to because none of us are the original creators! We’re just thirsty people making them to be what we want and what we imagine because they’re fucking fiction

I’ve seen people agreeing with you saying the artist should consider real people with disabilities or on the heavier side (“like me” they pointed out). I’m so sorry if this comes out as rude but if you search or need validation in a horror community that’s not a good thing at all! Body positivity and a healthy approach to disabilities should. not. be. searched. in. a. horror. community or any community on tumblr for that matter. You want some positivity on that? In a real case scenario with them we all would die, no matter how you look like

Going back to the artists, some people don't have experience/ are insecure/ are uncomfortable drawing body hair or fat bodies or whatever. That doesn’t make them fatphobic or whatever shit I saw you writing in your tags.

Drawing a black character less than the color YOU think is good? Have you ever tried to color skin? There are so many ways to do it, there are so so many colors you combine and you play around with + lighting and shading that alters everything. and yeah maybe some people pick a different color, a lighter one, or a more yellow one than they should for asiatic people, or whatever. but these tones are NOT easy to get well (you can always put a brown color down and to call it a day, but maybe people won’t want that. They don’t want to be disrespectful, exactly cause there are predators like you that don’t know how to help, only how to fucking scream). Or maybe they simply don’t know how. Every artist has their own range of comfort zone, be it about subject - composition - colors - etc. I don’t do well with neon colors for example, it happens. Hell even the screen you’re using alters the colors

How about giving actual tips, support and explanations instead of rude call outs? And don’t come at me with the “color picker” shit cause color picker from a real life photo is hell and if you don’t know some color theory your art is going to look dull and lifeless regardless

The only time I can agree that whitewashing is wrong is when white-supremacy, nazi and other ugly shits like these are coming into the topic. But it’s not the case here

some young artists don't have the skill to draw certain body shapes, or body hair, or even a non-anime face. some others think putting a scar on the character’s face make them 'uglier' and ‘scarier’ and for them that's enough AND THAT'S ALRIGHT

drawing something that's supposed to be ugly but still having anatomy and proportions and a functionable mouth or eyes placement or whatever ISN'T EASY. ofc, you can go all out if that's what you want, but personally I want things to still be working because at the end of the day every single one of them is human. I'm not drawing dark fantasy in this fandom, I'm drawing slashers

NO ONE IS DRAWING FOR YOU. NO ONE IS USING THEIR SKILL TO MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD. art and writing, especially when is made in the free time of the creator, is made FOR THEMSELVES. If there are people enjoying it? Yay, that’s a win, but no one expects everybody on this planet to like what they’re doing. We’re getting back to that golden rule, DON’T LIKE: MOVE THE FUCK ON/ BLOCK AND LIVE YOUR LIFE. EASY. no one uses these unnecessary callouts for anything, if you have something to say do so kindly, if you can’t, just vent to your friends

So now let’s wrap it up cause IDK how many of you even make it through this point

can we fucking stop making young artists and writers cowards for drawing or writing how they can and however they fucking want? Please and thank you

this shit going on with "the best artist/writer for x y z character" or "conventionally drawing ugly Bubba uwu" will just destroy the confidence of whoever wants to keep drawing or writing or joining the fandom. There’s no competition who draws Bubba the ugliest nor who writes Michael the best. if you can do things a certain way, do it, and let the rest draw and write whatever they can WITHOUT FEARING THEY'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

now I'm waiting for your very "well" argumented reply but I hope you'll understand that what you're doing is TOXIC and you should stop or at least change your way to address things. You’re talking to other human beings, not a void when you can throw any random thought you have in the morning. I don't care about you to be honest, but there are so many people out there following your words mindlessly and the creators are suffering and it's not fair.

don't forget to tell me to go kill myself. have a nice day

#ira talks #bfmyers callout #vent and triggers #this shit needs to stop #long post #my opinion #i won't put this in the main tags cause that's really useless #so I don't really know how to tag lol

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