#I don't think I will continue being active here because social media does so much to my mental health | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aptericia · 3 months

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Not proud to be here.

Ok, here goes draft like 5 of this fucking post. I spent 4 hours tossing and turning in bed last night thinking about this, and then this morning I found a tumblr post that really helped me understand what I was trying to say.

The post talks about how aromantic "advocates" claim that "aros don't take up resources, so there's no reason not to include them!" And if that's actually what people believe, I think I can finally articulate why it is that I feel so alienated in queer spaces.

It's because aspecs in general aren't "welcomed" by much of the queer community. We're tolerated. We perhaps get the luxury of not being contradicted on our own identities, or not being specifically kicked out of LGBTQ-only spaces, but that's the whole point: what we get out of the queer "community" is people NOT doing things, not actually doing things FOR us. And that, frankly, is not enough. We deserve conversations about us. We deserve to have others consider our feelings, even when making lighthearted jokes. We deserve varied, respectful representation in media. We deserve the active deconstruction of amatonormativity in society. We deserve to have space made for us, rather than at most being told we should "go take up more space!" ourselves.

Of course, the reality is that my being aspec is a personal matter that does not inherently affect anyone else. But the same can be said for literally any queer identity. Your being gay doesn't say anything about me, so of course I shouldn't hurt you for it, but why should I help you either? Because your happiness and comfort are important. The same goes for aspecs.

And most of the time, I don't even need anyone to make space for or expend resources on me; I can live fine in everyday, non-queer-specific places without mentioning my identity at all. But it's the queer community that claims it will make that space for me, doesn't, and then acts defensive and morally pure if I call out the hypocrisy because "we're queer too, you can't erase our identities to advocate for yours!!!!"

Again, this post isn't about specifics. I have queer friends who are incredibly thoughtful and supportive about my identity, just as I have non-queer friends who are. I find more solidarity in aspec-only communities, as well as trans/genderqueer ones, although there are still many exceptions. This post is also not about amatonormative ideology, which is extremely common from queer and non-queer people alike. This post is about the reason I've felt so betrayed by the queer community.

On a personal note, I remember being so excited when I started identifying as aromantic (and later asexual). Fitting myself into labels has been a lifelong struggle for me; to this day I still can't confidently say if I'm White or PoC, neurotypical or neurodivergent, abled or disabled, cisgender or not cisgender. I continue to struggle making friends because I don't fall into social cliques. To discover that I officially, certainly, was LGBTQ+ lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. And now I'm just so sad to find that despite that, I'm still stuck in the middle. I didn't get rewarded with a community. I still feel alienated from both queer and non-queer people. I know it was silly to get my hopes up when there's such vast diversity in both groups, but it really was a disappointment. Going to my first Pride parade last year was really the moment where I realized this.

#my art #lgbtq+#lgbtqia #queer #aromantic #aro #aromantic asexual #aroace #aspec #social commentary #aro tag #eyestrain #<- idk?#kissing #long post #aphobia #arophobia #vent art

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deeply-unserious-fellow · 2 months

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Vox and Velvette continuing to work with Valentino confuses me. Like, not even from a morality standpoint or "oh he treats them like shit", it's just a weird fuckin business choice. That man almost ruined one of Velvette's shows because he was throwing a tantrum, Vox regularly has to prevent him from causing scenes in public, he ACTIVELY ENCOURAGES VOX TO CAUSE A SCENE IN PUBLIC, he just seems like more trouble then he's worth, y'know? And on the surface it really does seem like he'd be pretty easy to get rid of. Since Vox could ABSOLUTELY kick his ass to kingdom come(like c'mon he can hold his own against ALASTOR-), and Vox and Velvette combine control literally all of the media in Hell(sans radio), they could kick Val out, or even straight up kill him, and then flood Hell with propaganda painting themselves as Good and Correct for this(which to be fair wouldn't be hard...). So then like. Why are they still working with him.

And then I remembered ~soul contracts~ and was like. Wait nvm that makes sense.

Right out the gate gotta make it clear that I do NOT MEAN THAT VAL OWNS THEIR SOULS OR ANYTHING that would be stupid. I mean like, social/political/whateverthefuck overlords got going on power works differently in Hazbin Hell then it does in any other setting. The Vees don't just have their reputation, they also have their soul contracts. And Valentino owns a LOT of souls. So, no matter how much propaganda the other two throw out there, no matter how low they drag him, Hell even if they kill him!, Vox and Velvette would lose a LOT of power by getting rid of Val. No matter how much damage he could do to the brand, they keep him around because he's better off as an ally then he is as an enemy, and he just. Hasn't done anything either consider egregious enough to outweigh any possible benefits of working with him, I guess. Small, fixable incidents that may damage the brand VS losing all those souls? The answers kinda obvious. There also might be a contract going on between the Vees but that's less about their souls being bound or whatever and more about like. Business. So. Not particularly dangerous for any of them I don't think.

Also there are two smaller reasons I'd like to discuss before I stop rambling: 1; Velvette probably uses Val's spit to make the love potions and 2; emotional connections with the other Vees.

The love potion thing is kinda obvious. Without Val, Velvette wouldn't be able to make her roofie juice, and since this is. Hell. Where all the sexually deviant freaks go to rot. Of course that's gonna be a popular item. And while I think the Vees would probably be fine if they took it off the market, that would still probably take a sizable chunk out of their profits, y'know? They can't really make it without Val's weird, disgusting pheramone spit.

And reason number 2: emotional connection. The Vees are a horrendous toxic polycule and we all know it. While I, personally, don't think Velvette and Valentino are dating(I still don't fucking trust that man and it's bad enough that he's involved with Vox), they do both have chemistry with Vox, and probably are at least on decent terms since they like. Sit together sometimes. WHATEVER THIS ISN'T A VEES RELATIONSHIP ANALYSIS(Im saving that for later)- basically what I'm saying is that Vox and Velvette probably, on some level, do care about and trust(?) Val, and vice versa. How much do they care? Unclear. Val's capacity for love is still TBD and Vox and Velvette's relationship seems a bit shakey at best, like they don't *fully* trust eachother, but there's still affection there!!! The Vees are exactly why we don't let villains discover the power of friendship, people!!!!!!!!! Like their part in the Finale is all the proof I need. You don't dance around like that with your business partners/fuck buddies lmfao, there's gotta be some genuine feeling there. So, at least a small part of why Val is still. Here. Is because Vox and Velvette do care about him. And, despite the fact that the three of them are entirely morally bankrupt and will probably die next season(god please don't let Vox die he's so silly :(), I can't help but find it sweet that they do kind of care about eachother. Like it's nice <3

(Genuinely though I am still worried for Vox and Vel's safety like idc how bad those two are idc if they're on decent-ish terms with Val most of the time he is still the most realistically dangerous character in the damn show besides *maybe* Alastor's serial killer ass and anybody within a 10 foot radius of him should be considered At Risk)

#hazbin hotel #the vees #hazbin vox #hazbin velvette #hazbin valentino #staticmoth #kind of #poly vees #voxvalvel #valvoxvel #velvalvox #velvoxval #!?!?!?! what the fuck is the ship name here help #actually I think velvoxval sounds the best and fits the structure of the polycule so Im gonna go with that #but if there's a different name being used lmk ig #late night ramblings #gal overanalyzes random shit

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elliespuns · 3 months

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What is your perspective on tlou2 being inspired by the Israel-Palestine conflict? It didn't register with me at first but I've gotten too attached to the characters by the time that I discovered it and it is genuinely disappointing HOWEVER I have separated their narratives from the political dimension of the game by just focusing solely on the individual emotional journeys that each of the characters go through and I never really bought the games myself first hand except get them second hand but is it still wrong to adore the characters?

Not happy about it. I mean, who would be?

I wasn't aware of it at first either; it just didn't click, and then I started seeing the rumors, and well, it all made sense. I am disappointed. Not at all for Neil Druckmann, though. I don't really care about him (except for his amazing mind, where he created Ellie and Joel, the only fictional characters that I've got to love so much). What I am disappointed in more is that almost everyone thinks that once you continue to love this game, you support the evil too. Which is not how I feel about it.

But then again, does even my opinion matter? I've already got a lot of anon messages throwing hate on me for managing a blog about TLOU and supporting the evil. And I sit here and wonder... where did I ever say that I supported the bad side of the conflict? I don't think I ever did. Why? Because I don't talk about politics on this blog. This blog has been made to share love with all TLOU lovers, not to support Neil Druckmann or anyone else's political views or to even share about politics in general.

People are quick to judge. They go and preach to stand with Palestine and then go hate on the people who chose to stay quiet. People should realize that individuals managing fandom blogs and not sharing politics doesn't automatically mean that they support the evil. We (bloggers) have our own personal lives out of our blogs and our own personal accounts. Many of us are posting about the conflict on our personal social media. People should think about this before making bloggers feel like shit for managing silly blogs where they don't want to discuss what can be discussed elsewhere.

I have a deep bond with this game; I had it a long time ago before any of this was happening (everyone knows I will always prefer the first game over the second). This is not something I can just throw away. I have memories connected to it, feelings, emotions... it's not like I can tell myself 'fuck the game' now just because of the news I got. I guess it's easy for others when the bond is not so strong, but this game has been in a better part of my life for so long, and believe it or not... when I think about how Ellie and Joel make me happy, I don't have fucking Druckmann in mind or any of his political views.

I will never mix my admiration for this project with politics. Me not agreeing with Neil Druckmann's political views won't change the fact that I've already fallen in love with this game years ago. I am not loving Druckmann; I am loving something he once created. That is a big difference. Especially if you've already loved the game before the conflict.

I say, unless you're actively supporting the propaganda and throwing your money at it, you are not hurting anybody. You, being emotionally connected to the story of this propaganda's project or its characters won't really change a thing. Not for good, yes, but not for bad either.

Anyway, this is my opinion. I think people should stop judging those who are not sharing politics on their fandom blogs because they never know what these people share on their personal accounts. We are here to enjoy things that are free; love and joy for fictional characters we've adored for too long.

Sorry, I got a bit carried away. This is probably the only post about politics I'll share, so this needed to be said.

Anyway, you don't need to feel bad for loving the characters. You are not doing anything wrong. I think every one of us who still loves TLOU to this day is able to detach from the fact of who's behind the games. We're here for Ellie and Joel. They don't care about Druckmann either.elliespuns answers

#the last of us #tlou #ellie williams #ellie tlou #joel miller #joel tlou #ellie and joel #joellie #the last of us game #tlou game #the last of us part 2 #tlou part 2 #i stand with palestine #elliespuns answers

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earlgraytay · 2 years

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why death note isn't copaganda

Since y'all seem to like my Death Note Metaposting, here's another nugget for you to chew on: I don't think Death Note is copaganda. Either in intent or execution.

I think that Death Note is a story from a very specific time and place, with a very specific target audience. It is a Japanese story from the 2000s, and it's aimed at edgy thirteen-year-old boys.

Japan does not, technically, have a rating system for TV. But most media outlets do choose to self-censor. (To give you an idea of how that looks in practice, I turned to Eirin- the Japanese film ratings board. Eirin splits movies into G, PG-12, R-15, and R-18. Most anime movies are somewhere between PG-12 and R-15. Drug use and abstract supernatural horror tends to get treated much less harshly by Eirin than by the MPAA, but graphic violence, criminal behaviour, and nudity/sex get a much harsher penalty in Japan than they do in the USA.)

A Japanese show for preteen boys in 2005 could not portray the cops as being fundamentally corrupt and violent, any more than an American show for preteen boys could have. So... assuming the writers of Death Note had Some Things To Say about the police, they had to make some choices. They had to figure out how to convey what they wanted to convey- "having the power to kill fucks you up, and cops have that power"- without pissing off their publisher or their TV company.

The easiest way- and the laziest- would have been to make one cop, perhaps Light's Dad, into the Designated Corrupt Punching Bag that the Good Cops have to defeat to catch their criminal. Maybe the Corrupt Punching Bag cop would use a lot of bureaucratic red tape that the Good Guys have to punch through to get their man, or slow down the justice process by insisting on Correct Procedure at all points.

That writing decision positions the failures of the police department as the failure of one man. That writing decision implies that forcing cops to follow the rules that are designed to keep people safe from them actually puts people in danger. I think you could definitely call that writing decision copaganda= and too many shows, on both sides of the ocean, choose it.

But that is not what Death Note chooses to do.

Another way Death Note could have handled the problem is to just... sidestep it. Completely take the focus off of the police, throw in a line about how they're baffled, and let our Genius Detective Hero-Antagonists handle the case completely. In this version of Death Note, we'd have no Aizawa or Matsuda, Soichiro would just be Light's father, and L/Mello/Near would be the only ones pursuing the investigation.

This writing decision positions the police as irrelevant in a way that means you don't have to think about them. The Police Are Baffled, and that's all you need to know; they've handed the case off, and the story goes into the realm of The Outsider Boy Detective Story. This isn't copaganda, per se; it acknowledges that the police are a flawed force that can need outside help... but it's not engaging with the social issues that make the police genuinely flawed. It's veering into pure fantasy. And that can be a valid decision...

But that is not what Death Note chooses to do.

Death Note chooses to actively present the police as being good, but deeply flawed people... who, because of the system they operate in, have no choice but to become bad people. The cops we get to know are kind, funny, ordinary people. But for one reason or another, they don't notice the monster in their midst, until it's too late. And Light's influence corrupts them- or forces them out.

I'll admit that I'm going off my interpretation of the anime here, which does make some significant changes from the manga, but considering that the big change to the ending that the anime makes from the manga is continued into every future adaptation? I feel comfortable including it in my analysis.

[oh, and, uh, spoilers for the end of Death Note, obvs.]

Soichiro refuses to believe that his son could be a criminal. He knows Light's a smart cookie, and he trusts Light's sense of justice. He comes to treat Light as something of a superior officer, even though Light is his teenage son. ...And Light repays him by sending him off on a suicide mission. I mentioned this on a reblog of the original post, but when Soichiro gets his hands on the Death Note? He dehumanizes the criminals he's been sent to kill, the other members of his squad, and ultimately, himself. He treats everyone like they're an expendable cog in a big machine. No one is a person; everything is something to be used in pursuit of Justice. And unlike Light, Soichiro includes himself in that. Soichiro falls into the ultimate trap of being a Good Cop. If you fight for justice as a cop, you wind up utterly expendable. If you're a Good Cop, you die, on command, and take as many people with you as your overlords see fit.

Matsuda also looks up to Light, though for slightly better reasons; they did more or less join the force around the same time, if you count Light joining the Kira Investigation as Light becoming a cop. Matsuda implicitly trusts Light, especially by the start of Season 2. He sees himself as naiive, weak, careless, and stupid- even though he's actually really good at his job. Matsuda is sympathetic to Kira, but thinks he's going about things the wrong way, and that surely there's got to be a better way to make a better world? ....And then Matsuda discovers that everything he thought he knew was wrong. That Light is Kira, and always was. That Kira wasn't a good guy doing things the wrong way, that he was callously manipulating the entire task force this entire time, and that Matsuda has been his patsy. And Matsuda goes out swinging. Matsuda shoots Kira. And hits. More than once. If Ryuk hadn't decided to put Light out of his misery, it would be Matsuda's fault that Light died without real justice being done. If Soichiro is what happens to you when you're a Good Cop, then Matsuda shows how a Good Cop can become a Bad Cop. A moment of anger at the wrong time, a realization that you've been living a lie, or a criminal the cop cannot see as a person anymore? He uses the power of life and death. The power that the viewer has just been told is murder. Only instead of coming from the inkwell of a pen, it's from the barrel of a gun.

Aizawa is... interesting. I'll admit, I remembered him as being The Cop Who Leaves, and that coloured my interpretation until I went back to check the wiki. It turns out he left and came back- what I remembered as "Aizawa working as a private investigator" was Aizawa working well within the bounds of the Kira investigation, but going behind Light's back to talk to Near. But I do think it's significant that Aizawa, more than anyone else in the Kira investigation, is the one who's able to leave. When the Kira investigation gets defunded by the Japanese government, it's Aizawa who can walk- who feels like he has the duty to walk, because he has something to live for that's more important than Justice. Catching Kira is less important than making sure his wife and kid don't starve, after all. He moves to a different part of the police force, and considers leaving the force altogether. And even after he's come back to the Kira investigation, he's detached enough from it that he can see Light's transparent bullshit for what it is. Aizawa is the Good Cop. He follows procedure when he can; when he can't- because the investigation is too corrupt, mostly- he still tries to do what would make the world a better place for everyone. He isn't violent; he isn't cruel; he isn't into justice as retribution. FFS, Aizawa tries to hold back Matsuda from shooting Light. The writers have said that if more people were like Aizawa, the world would be a better place.... And Aizawa is the guy who can leave. Who does leave. Whose loyalty is to his family and his own morals, not to the police as an agency, not to his comrades on the force, not to the thin blue line.

A couple of people have pointed out to me that in Death Note How To Read 13, the writers have said that they didn't have a theme they were going for. And honestly, that'd explain some of the hiccups with the writing.

But I can't help but feel like, even if it's unintentional, the way that the major cop characters' arcs play out is a very well structured critique of some common copaganda tropes.

I think that Death Note is only copaganda if you define "copaganda" as "there is a cop character who is sympathetic" without interrogating what the show is saying with its cops beyond that. And considering that Death Note is a show written for tweens, in a country where respect for authority is paramount? I think that the show's done as much as you can reasonably expect it to to subvert Being Copaganda.

(If anyone wants to say that the Autistic Detective Crew is somehow copaganda, a) I have another essay locked and loaded, do not test me, the short version of which is b) there are two genres of detective fiction, and the one that L/Mello/Near are part of is not part of the tradition that gave us copaganda, it's the other one.)

#death note #shoichiro yagami #touta matsuda #shouta aizawa #copaganda #< that doesn't even look like a real word anymore jfc #general malarkey #tumblr malarkey #fandom malarkey

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luxurybrownbarbie · 1 year

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Re: Piers feeling rejected by Meg: I'm glad you brought this up bc I've been dying to make this point: harassing women isn't always just catcalling and it isn't always sexual, but a lot of men don't seem to understand that. Male entitlement goes far beyond sex, misogynistic men feel that women owe them respect, favors, kindness, friendship, career opportunities, etc. especially if they consider that women 'beneath them' (read: non white) and especially if they feel they did said woman a favor (read: be vaguely nice to them once.) Like that one scene in Mad Men where Joan reprimands a guy for messing up a business deal and he says 'i thought you were going to be fun.' Meaning-- I obvi don't know Piers or William, but I think Piers' anger is that he assumed since he knew Meg he would always have a scoop. Like he would be her go-to for announcements and press statements and leaks, and when that didn't happen he lashed out. The press punishes you for not speaking to them. With William, who knows. Maybe he felt entitled to undying loyalty and silence and obedience as the heir and future head of the family. Judging by how people were mad at her 'woke agenda' I'm guessing a lot of these dudes felt entitled to Meghan being subservient and quiet and look at them all starry-eyed for allowing her to marry in, and she had self worth and dared to disagree w them and people couldn't handle that.

Hmm. While I think this is a very fair and balanced take, I also think there are several layers of context and discussion not really taken into account here.

Will’s behavior is absolutely up for discussion, because it can read as many things at once. But removing the elements of sexual entitlement in Piers’ behavior doesn’t make sense, respectfully. Nothing about his rage and hatred of her reads as professional anger in any way. It has been both alluded to and explicitly stated by several journalists and individuals that Piers’ hatred reads more as sexual/romantic entitlement and jealousy and not pure journalistic disrespect. He was called on it on social media and promptly deactivated for a couple of weeks back in 2021.

He did feel entitled to her because he asked her out on a “date”, and she appeared to have a good time. He had ulterior motives. If it was about being the “scoop” he would never have fixated on the “date” they had years before.

A smart journalist who felt disrespected would have used the fact that the two of them had a cordial relationship, and aimed to remain in her good graces to eventually get other scoops, like Omid and others did. Piers did not.

Harassment is entirely about power, but sex and power are inextricably linked under the patriarchy. Especially for women of color. Entitlement to women encapsulates all of those spheres, including sexual entitlement. We are hypersexualized and desexualized all at once. By her accepting that dinner with him, he immediately felt as though she was accepting him romantically/sexually, and that she should accept him because she is nonwhite and he is a white man. Her engagement filled him with rage, so much so that he has continued to hate her for years afterward, and actively sought to destroy her and possibly have her take her own life. That’s sexual entitlement taken up to 100.

Not to mention his disdain for her choice of partner. He would have been pissed no matter who she married, but the fact that she married Prince Harry set him off even more. She chose a man significantly better than him in every way. Harry is younger, titled, in the line of succession, and has a better reputation than Piers does. He is disgusted that Meghan not only “rejected” him, but managed to find a better partner. His hatred extends to Harry, which makes him even more dangerous. This is not journalistic envy, this is retaliation for wounded romantic pride. The press has absolutely punished her for not playing the game, but Piers has not led this charge out of professional grievance. The press doesn’t hate her, they like the clicks and revenue. Piers hates her.

The example you’re looking for for a man who was upset she wasn’t meek and quiet is Charles. He was happy to walk her down the aisle and constantly be seen with her until she decided to actually work and not just say yes and only speak when spoken to. Will’s anger is not nearly as controlled as Charles’ is, largely because I don’t think it’s coming from the same place. Charles is the one who demands undying loyalty by virtue of now leading the house. It’s why he cut Harry off the minute he no longer complied.

Will, who we now know (we didn’t know this when you sent this message) was a fan of hers and watched her show religiously with his wife, and was, by 99% of accounts, welcoming when they were first introduced and right up until Harry decided to marry her, suddenly feeling an anger so powerful he was willing to nearly beat up his brother does not read as anger over her not being subservient enough or not following the family blindly.

I promise, men like that, who are so deeply entrenched in their racism can, and often do, get pissed at the fact that they’re attracted to nonwhite women. I saw it at my university, and I see it now in certain circles. To be honest, Meg didn’t even need to actively reject an advance from Will. He might have expected her to be a hypersexual title chaser who would be more impressed by him and was shocked when she was only focused on his brother. Her not playing the part that he, a racist, had put her in in his mind, was also a rejection.

We obviously don’t know the motivations for these two men. But when comparing Charles’ anger, which we know to be motivated by his annoyance at her not sitting silently and looking pretty (and at her being biracial) to the anger of these two men...

#long post for ts #long post #answered #the royal rumble continues

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macarensesangles · 9 months

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rant about het shit under the cut ig

part of me wants to stop being SUCH a hater about these fics ive read btw like. im beginning to realize a lot of this is ocd, but when something gets me irritated or angry it's difficult for me to leave it alone in that like, if i don't continue to engage with it (effectively doomscroll 90% of the time) i experience this mounting anxiety until i satisfy the compulsion to Continue Looking At It. i could not really tell you why i feel this way. but it sucks. bc i get stuck in these loops of like staring at writing that makes me mad or authors' social media that makes me mad and it's like, Why am i doing this this is deranged and weird (the compulsions is why).

i think part of why it gets to me so much is like. maybe this sounds silly but bc so many of the people i interact with are also queer and very conscious about heteronormativity i am very comfortable a lot of the time. and i've had decent luck in being involved in hobby activities and fandoms that are similar; selfshippers are overwhelmingly lgbt, FL as a source material is very queer-positive and thus so are many fans, etc etc.

so like. getting back into ffxiv and encountering this kind of very very intense heteronormativity and like, implicit homophobia, i was kind of shocked? it's not that i'm not conscious it doesn't exist, like, i grew up in the fucking midwest, of course i've had to deal with homophobia. more that like, it was such a big thing in a space where i'd kind of expected to feel safe on that front, especially in terms of fandom for emet specifically given that as i've said he's very obviously gender-nonconforming in appearance and mannerism and dress beyond the dictates of genre convention (even if part of that is homophobic queercoding).

like it's one thing to encounter homophobia in your workplace when everyone there is a 40+ year old conservative from a town where there are frequent commercials for agricultural pesticides on television. like yeah, of course you're homophobic, you live here in this cornfield-blasted hellhole, so i get it. but like. From a bunch of fellow video game dorks who like the same flamer as i do? that one kind of stings. and especially when you feel like because you're gay your input is kind of unwanted or regarded as sort of a damper on all the fun within that space. idk. it just is rough. i've never fit in in Real Life and have long made my peace with it because i just don't live in the right location for someone like me, but it sucks to seek out like-minded people and still get left out, i guess.

and for a long time i'd never really thought about how homophobia has affected me. like with a lot of things i just kind of ignored it or bottled it up or minimized it because i thought "well that's just the price of entry! haha it doesn't get to me! fuck those losers!" and like. idk. being in this space all of a sudden where such a high value is put on like, how much more legitimate it is to be straight, it hurts. like that's how i feel when people make emet more masculine or when they import these really highly gendered narratives and ideas into the story and create these characters who are so effortlessly and perfectly feminine and then acting like the value and legitimacy of the relationship rests on how well emet and wol perform cishet ideas of manhood and womanhood respectively, and that anything otherwise is just unconscionable and gross, like. man! it really opened the floodgates and made me realize i've been dealing with a lifetime of fucking baggage about all this and it actually does hurt a lot to be viewed as disgusting and less than legitimate and this shit is 100% why i grew up ashamed of liking boys and thinking it was something wrong that i'd done.

so like it's hard for me to look away from it and put it down and not keep picking at the scab bc like. idk. i'm at the point with all this where i feel like if i just keep picking this stuff up and turning it all around one day something will click in my head and i'll stop wanting people like this to make provisions for me or stop being disgusted by me. like i am very frustrated that i still want this sort of approval, to be seen as legitimate by society or even just by the subsection of ffxiv fandom that writes like this. i know i'll never get it and that people this married to such conceptions of gender are never in their lives going to stop being grossed out by me or my interest in other men. it's just like, fuck! idk!

i think sometimes about how like, when i was a kid my dad used to think it was funny to insult people by saying they were gay or just outright calling them fags and faggots, and like, how uncomfortable and scared it used to make me when i was figuring out i wasn't cis and straight (there were a lot of labels, the specifics aren't important). it really sucked, it was awful and scary because he was such a violent capricious jerk. i think about having to grow up seeing the wbc protests and "GOD HATES FAGS" on tv all the time, and other kids talking about how if they found out their friend was gay they'd beat the shit out of him in high school. actively, "i am demeaning gay people in front of you in class" level homophobic teachers. i used to cringe at fag and faggot every time i read them and feel my stomach drop like i was being punched. emet being so like, loudly and admirably GNC and out there and me feeling like he would use those words as a point of pride helped me overcome all that and make it way less painful and make me feel way more comfortable with myself.

people in this fandom only like emet if they can make him as conventionally masculine as possible. all that stuff that helped me feel better about myself is so ugly and gross to them that they have to erase it entirely in order to enjoy him. it really feels like the worst kind of slap in the face, to me. so i guess that's part of why i can't let it go, too.

#tag for complaining

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statementlou · 10 months

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Does it though? Liam’s socials have been as weird as his promo since they cancelled his album in 2018. He’s said he doesn’t have access to his social media accounts and he doesn’t have management either. Who is booking a tour for him? Why random dates in South America? Why the short notice? Is Liam even aware someone has booked tour dates for him? Plus there were anons to several blogs ‘reminding’ people there was nothing odd about Louis canceling those Asian dates the day before these dates dropped. I’ll be shocked if they actually take place.

I don't think there is anything weird about Louis Asia dates being cancelled, I didn't see any anons like that but wonder if they have to do with the fact that we were discussing it, or if they were just a response to the fact that tbh, whatever story is apparently gaining ground sounds kind of fucking nuts. I would also like to remind people that there's nothing weird about it! I can't imagine what you think is the connection between Louis' tour dates and Liam's announced dates and who on the inside is allegedly sending these anons about it, what kind of weird conspiracy would somehow connect the two and result in them being announced and then cancelled. I would actually really love if you came back and laid out for me exactly what that would be and how it would work (I mean this- whatever you are implying makes no sense to me and I am curious); but I (perhaps overly optimistically) suspect if you try to actually articulate this vague scenario you yourself will see how little sense it makes. But hey, maybe this mysterious conspiracy also involves all the other artists who had to cancel their Asia dates this year due to the exorbitant costs of touring there! But anyway while we're at it: it's not WEIRD that Liam's album was cancelled either or that his management is a mess- it's a BUMMER and it sucks for him, but it isn't some huge inexplicable conundrum. I feel like this kind of stuff in the fandom is related to how when you're young, no matter how much people say otherwise, it's impossible not to believe that adults are Different and that grown ups possess some kind of magic competence- similarly people in this fandom continually discard the idea that behind the scenes things are just kind of a fucking mess sometimes, especially if the person at the top of the pyramid isn't the most together. I have been more up on the exact details of Liam's situation at other times in the past than I am now so I admit, I'm not sure of some exact things and where they stand right now (if anyone is). But one thing I notice here is that I believe you are mashing together things about Liam's situation from the past couple years, some of which may or may not still be true, and things from now. I'm not at all sure that Liam doesn't at this moment have any management and given how many things he's actively up to that seems very unlikely to still be true to me. But also that term is pretty vague- like these guys have various different people and agencies for different things. He could lack a direct personal Manager (again do we know for sure that that's still the case, or just WAS the case) and still employ a booking agency and a PR agency, for example. I'm going to ignore the part where you ask if Liam even knows he's had dates booked because wtf. We all worry about Liam but I personally think the story you've apparently settled on about what's happening with him is unnecessarily extreme and somewhat insulting to him. He may or may not make every one of his social media posts himself (few famous people do) but he is definitely making most of them himself (thus why they are weird tbh, because he is a weirdo and is running wild a bit on the socials, bless him). Also if you think he has no management who do you think is posting his socials and holding him captive and announcing fake dates?? This is giving me a headache. Anyway: yes I do think Liam will play the LATAM shows if he's personally able to, which tbh seems a more likely danger to them going ahead than an international conspiracy.

#blah blah blah #also they are months from now how is that short notice #I have to say I think Liam NOT cancelling performances when he should is a much more distressing problem #than shadowy figures taking dates away from him #liam latam dates

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violettierre · 1 year

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If you're my mutual or we've interacted before please read this,

So to save your time im going on a hiatus.

And here's some elaboration;

Tumblr have never failed to put a smile on my face it's a fun website to visit and i've always enjoyed the content made here, and most of all, enjoyed interacting with poeple that have always been very kind and sweet and some even consider me a friend which is a far bigger deal to me than one may think because of personal reasons and i really mean it when i say Tumblr never fail to make my day with those silly posts and inside jokes that may mean nothing, overall, it's my go-to place to relax from my noisy life and be my questionable silly little inner violetta that im thankful no one really judged, and it was a breath of fresh air when i signed in here. I've treated my account, like most poeple, as my account where i talked about stuff i enjoyed and my opinions in things, ect... but if you are my mutual i feel like you did notice sometimes i slip and im no longer enjoying my inner self like i usually do, which is common. It does happen to lots of poeple where real life issues just hit too hard for them to enjoy their distractions they used as coping mechanism to keep themselves sane just like i do that's why no one really judges that from what i concluded in my experience. However, as many times as everyone thankfully ignore that, those moments still bother me every time cuz it's never been about other users noticing, it's never been anything outside of personal. Like i said before, this is my prefered go-to comfort space that i open to rest from real life issues and the effects it had on me, and the interference that accure between them never fail to make my health worse, and so i don't go to details, this place simply start to lose its charm for me because it began losing the one thing i personally associated it with. Which is why as far as i believe, it'll be better to take a pause from being active here. Because sometimes the stuff that help us get through things that hurts, shouldn't be exposed to it, and the less harmful option is to hide it so we can go back to it when we're desperate for comfort instead of losing it completely.

Naturally, I have no idea how long i'll be on a hiatus for, it may take months, or maybe a year, who knows, even if i wish for it to be sooner than later, it's something that happen undecided, but it may most likely last at least until my personal crisis calms down and im a little more stable and ready to use once again that one violet that i admit i've mistreated as well, because in order to stop my stress and mental health from sneaking into my safe space i must face it and deal with it, which im really scared of, but that's pretty much what is left to do. Things that go our way aren't necessarily our ideal solutions.

It's a silly little hiatus for most poeple, but behind it, im going to a metaphorical war and im scared that's why im writing this long useless elaboration post before getting a pause from all my social media not just tumblr and try to look after myself in a way i've been running away from.

And if you're reading this as my moot or we've interacted, i do hope you understand this and mostly hope that everything will stay good between us once i come back sooner or later, it's already gonna be awkward for me to do anything i like again after im basically right now going to ditch my self care, so i just want you to keep in mind i do not want to lose you or anyone in here and we could remain in good terms.

And happy new year from now, since i won't be able to celebrate it here. I wish everyone on tumblr a healthy and lucky new year lifestyle starting or continuing from 2023 and fortune will follow everyone everywhere. And merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and whatever other holiday i won't celebrate in here, im sending all my love throughout those times and all time, thanks to everyone for everything and hopefully i get to interact with you guys later on.

With all my geniune love, Violetta.

#important

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liesandbrokenhearts · 1 year

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I'll play the part of the cracked potter and jump into this discussion with my views. I understand both parts of the argument. and I think a part of what anon might be missing is that. it's not just the male haze it's a game of probability. it's the oldest form of algorithm there is.

and that's public opinion. the boil down a consensus and then keep boiling that down. Men speak in terms of preference but don't realize how much of that preference is shaped by the people around them. but women have to deal with a running litany of criticism because they're seen as being on a timer. because of the age range, it's deemed healthy or prime for babymaking. it's a strange form of mortality fear-mongering. unasked for advice is warped into a form of just showing care or some weird form of closeness. as in we're this close so I feel comfortable speaking about you objectively. and it's a strange form of opinionated rubbish.

Western culture has evolved into more of a mixing pot in terms of who's seen as beautiful in terms of ethnicity or ethnic features. but even then they're held to the idea of what are the most idolized forms of those features. Look at Korea for example. there's this level of social pruning in terms of plastic surgery. to the point, that graduating high school is reworded by family members pooling money together as a gift for plastic surgery.

And it's crazy that you can tell someone that and the reaction is either that's crazy or I wish we had that here. and that blows my mind. yea the male gaze is being fed to us in terms of marketability or sex appeal. but that's literally because testosterone fuels sex drive and performance. but the idea of what a woman should look like is often criticized by other women. and mainly family members at that. especially by way of comparison.

Everything I've ever heard about a woman's body that came from a man's mouth was either in terms of sexual promiscuity, desirability, or the exact opposite, and it's always been in terms of preference. even when they praise aspects of a lover. because the main dislikes they speak about are in terms of personality or points of contention.

But everything I've heard about a woman's body is out of the mouth of women. Has either been in terms of envy, their lack of similarity, kind platitudes, or in terms of criticism or condemning them for their comportment either for not sitting like a lady or acting like one in some physical sense in how one walks, talks, etc.

that's just my two cents. I don't know how intelligible this all is. I tend to ramble. forgive me? at the end of the day, I'm not a woman so I'll never know what it fully feels like.

Very fair and I agree completely, algorithm is incredibly harmful in this offense. It’s also the downfall of not only individuality, diversity and actual talent in terms of photo and graphic media, but bc its #s and revenue it makes it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. It promotes media that fits their financial goals and highest engagement analytics so that’s what they push at the end of the day.

And while I’m not usually around for these talks between men of course, or what their individual preferences may be- there is a certain stereotypical “locker room talk” that does happen on public platforms like Twitter and Facebook where men rag on a woman for a certain feature they find lacking or their weight when they actively find these women attractive or lust after them in private spaces… but they continue on with these passes of judgement against these women bc it’s the popular thing to do. And that is just as harmful as not loving us at all. But It really is like that and I really do wish it wasn’t so much molded around others, because everyone deserves love. And I definitely don’t tolerate when any women talk down about men and their “flaws”. It just creates life long insecurities. And yeah our fertility is made so important over ever other aspect over ourselves, and called into conversation by both men and women alike, it’s always up for discussion if someone who can produce human life should be doing it or already have done it by now, I agree as well that it is seem that way. And it also feels like you are a being made solely for the purpose of creating life and not a being with objectivity on what their path in life should be.

And yeah it is very true that ethic ambiguity has truly been deemed the peak of beauty in western beauty as long as it fits within their guidelines and prime features-and while I’m glad it has gone passed solely white European features as “beautiful” it still lends ties to white supremacy in terms of colorism and anti-Black hate. And I’m not as up on Korean standards of beauty besides of brow lifts and such but that is interesting as it is very sad.

But mens obsessive sex fueled drive in marketing is what makes little girls and even grown women hate their bodies and their weight. And that is not to say I’m anti-porn, that’s a complicated subject with many intricate layers to it, but the everyday can be very harmful when it passes on to every tv ad and magazine cover you see. And I get what you mean, family members can pull us down, but mostly by women to try to get them to “better their form” “get highlights” “try waxing”- all to cater to what men might feel lacking from them, essentially male gaze once again. It’s a never ending voice in the back of our head. But of the women I know- at least in terms of friendship, acquaintance and otherwise, there are very few instances I’ve ever seen negative talk and instead are intense moments of hyping each other up and calling each other goddesses and such. That’s what I more so see than ever and that “mean girl” narrative doesn’t really exist in most of womens lives (though I understand that is a generalization) because at least the women I’m around don’t fuck with that shit.

But as for the women who say they’re “not like other girls” that I think you’re describing, that stuff mostly fizzles out around high school when girls realize men and our own internal critics don’t need to push us against each other and there’s nothing wrong with being like other women. Women are one of the most beautiful things on earth and the sooner we learn to let external forces pit us against each other the sooner we all heal, but I genuinely haven’t encountered a woman like that for ages.

And that’s okay, I ramble too. I was also drunk when I started this and tipsy while ending it so hopefully this makes some semblance of sense lol. But I appreciate your opinion of course

#ask

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calamitys-child · 2 years

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Obviously first and foremost I am saying just don't give jkr money. Don't buy the books, don't buy the merch, don't buy the tickets, don't go to the shows, don't buy any licensed products, don't watch it on prime or netflix or anything. If it matters that much, buy a dvd/book from a charity shop or pre-owned. That, first and foremost, is the thing. Put your money where your mouth is about trans rights.

But also, try putting your mouth where your money is. Unless there's a disclaimer attached I genuinely assume every person who talks to me about that stuff is, at best, actively clueless about trans rights and at worst actively out to get me more so than the average transphobe. This means, absolute best case scenario, that talking to someone who is a fan of the media and doesn't engage with the creator is going to be an emotionally exhausting trans rights 101 and, at worst, could get me killed.

"The number of fanfics doesn't affect policies" except... Yes it does? Any measurable statistic showing that the media has such a wide reach does, directly, keep jkr a public figure and, as a public figure, gives her opinions enough weight that she gets to write fucking policy. Let it fade! Let it shiver and blur its way to obscurity! She has influence, and by continuing to engage with her work you are continuing to perpetuate this influence. If her work is trending on social media? Policy makers see that! They use those metrics to decide if she's worth listening to! By engaging with the content, you are saying yes she is.

Look, the bottom line is, if you're not a trans person in the UK you can't possibly understand what this is doing to life here. I can't visit my friends because hundreds of people are blocking the city centre holding signs and stickers saying "Stand with JKR" and just waiting to spot someone they think looks wrong. I stay home those days. I almost had to phone out of work because of it once because I didn't think I could find a safe route in. They're blocking access to sexual health and reproductive services. They're harassing people out of their jobs. There's no way for us to safely access support after being assaulted. It's not just transphobia, it's all sorts of bigotry, and they're doing it holding wizard-themed signs. Her status as an author of something so widely supported is directly giving credence to these people. Even if what you're posting is trans [wizard] headcanons, the metric tracked is [wizard]. You're still saying yes.

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jojaqualityheadcanons · 3 years

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SDV's 1.5 update contains content that plays into racist, colonialist, and imperialist myths and beliefs.

Disclaimer: I loved SDV (which is a given, considering I have an SDV sideblog lol?), and I'm not writing this post to get people to boycott the game or stop liking it or whatever. I just want people to understand why this content is harmful, how it might be affecting your biases and beliefs, and think of how they can engage with this media without exacerbating the harm that it does. I'm Filipino, and I don't speak for all POC or all brown people, but I felt deeply hurt and betrayed by the content update. Please keep that in mind before you interact with this post. Explanation under the cut because of 1.5 spoilers (obviously) and because this got long.

(I will block people who clown on this post. Keep your opinions to yourself unless you also have firsthand experience with the issues I describe.)

Background

I was already wary of the 1.5 content update because of how the previews featured ~tropical~ and ~exotic~ stuff, but I decided to give it a shot because maybe I was being too hasty with my judgment.

I wasn't. I made a new save to play with the 1.5 content update, and at first, I was having a great time! The new special orders made gameplay more exciting and varied! I could finally get rid of the nursery from my house without mods! The remixed junimo bundles made me change my usual game strategy. And then, I finally unlocked Ginger Island.

It seemed cool at first, but I had a sinking feeling growing in the pit of my stomach as I kept playing. It got to the point that I started nursing a stomach ache and lots of anger that took me days to shake off. I know SDV has never been a shining example of racial/ethnic diversity and sensitivity (I mean... there's a reason why mods like Diverse Stardew Valley and a bunch of other diversity mods exist lol). But while the lack of diversity in the pre-1.5 content is more of a missed opportunity, the 1.5 content is just... actively harmful and hurtful, imo. Here's a breakdown of the issues with the setting and the characters:

The Setting

Ginger Island, along with the Fern Islands in general, is a tropical island that is clearly based on islands in the Pacific. Its features include fertile soil and an abundance of natural, foragable resources. And for some unknown reason, it has no native human population.

Many islands in the world are uninhabited by humans, and there's always a good reason why. The island's environment may be too hostile, it could be too small to sustain human life, it could be sacred or otherwise culturally unacceptable to live there, or some disaster may have occurred to wipe out the local population or cause them to flee. Some uninhabited islands are nature reserves or privately owned. The point is that if an island is habitable, people are bound to call it home.

Writing Ginger Island as an uninhabited "tropical paradise" feels like a copout. It's as if the game is saying, "don't worry, you're not colonizing this land because no one really lives here! You're not stealing this land or anything because it's up for grabs and is just waiting for the right person to come along to develop it and turn it into a resort for other people who don't live here!" But that claim rings hollow when there are so many signs of civilization there, such as literal computers and ancient structures. And the canon reason for the existence of these things is that dwarves, non-human creatures, lived there once. I just think it's ridiculous and harmful that the game completely ignores and erases the existence of the people who lived and still live in the places that Ginger Island is based on and goes even further to use non-human creatures as stand-ins. I don’t think I have to explain why this isn’t good, considering that people of color have been compared to animals and treated like animals to dehumanize us and justify our oppression for ages.

To really hammer in my point about whitewashing and erasure, all the human labor on the island is done by a flock of parrots that you pay with golden walnuts (i. e., resources that you get for free from the island they live on). There's even an anthropomorphized bird who's a shopkeep! I get that creating a whole cast of human NPCs to fill a town would have been way too much work for a content update, but CA didn't need to use a bunch of animals as stand-ins for non-white human characters. There’s a troubling trend of creators prioritizing animal characters over characters of color, and CA plays right into it. He seriously chose to create more anthro characters instead of adding characters of color to the game in a setting that in real life has populations that are primarily made up of brown people. The game includes brown people's land and cultures, but it draws the line at brown people themselves.

The erasure of brown people and the portrayal of our lands as wild and untamed have been used to sanitize the narrative of colonialism for centuries. Pretending that our lands were wild tropical paradises that were ripe for the taking is pretending that colonizing forces didn't use violent, dehumanizing means to subjugate or wipe out countless peoples and cultures in order to make these lands available. Ginger Island's erasure of brown people just perpetuates this colonialist myth, and the context in which it does so disgusts me: the farmer, who already runs a successful farm that was inherited from their grandfather, goes off to a tropical island they have no personal connection to and uses its natural resources to expand their business further. They also open up a resort on the island for the enjoyment of other privileged people from their homeland, and going there is treated as a luxury. This is a classic colonizer narrative, and I cannot believe the game forces players to colonize an island in order to win.

The Characters

I'm honestly amazed that the amount of feedback about the lack of diversity in SDV didn't prompt CA to create characters of color. I'm amazed that he chose the setting he did and still didn't bother to create any characters of color. The fact that all three of the new human characters who live on this tropical island are white makes me go a little apeshit, to be honest! I hate all three of them for a variety of reasons, so I'll go over them one by one:

Birdie

My reasons for not liking Birdie are primarily related to misogyny (lady spent literal decades in isolation on this island moping over her dead husband?) and ageism (if you tell her to live her own life, she tells you that she's too old to???). Sooo they're not really related to the rest of my discussion here, and I won't get into them further. Moving on!

Professor Snail

White historians, archaeologists, and paleontologists have been stealing and plundering artifacts, relics, and fossils from colonized lands for centuries. These white scientists would send their “discoveries” back to their homelands with little regard for the people they stole from. I’ll acknowledge that Professor Snail doesn’t bring the bones and fossils off the island, so his character isn’t as awful as it could be, but he still canonically has this line:

I really just don’t understand why it was necessary to make this character white when making him a character of color could have easily prevented the uncomfortable real-world implications of a white man coming to a foreign land to plunder fossils without asking anybody for permission. If he he’d been created as someone who traced his ancestry to Ginger Island and wanted to study the island’s biological history, his character could have been so sympathetic and even admirable to me! But his character as it is just makes me think of this meme:

Here are some links for further reading about colonialism in paleontology and other social sciences: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Leo

I had a hard time figuring out how to write about this character because the way CA wrote him is arguably one of the most racist parts of SDV. So many aspects of his character left me speechless and appalled because I cannot believe people are still writing shit like this in the 2020s.

I’ll start off with his storyline: this white child gets stranded on an island and is raised by animals. When the farmer meets him, he speaks in broken English to show how “wild” he is:

As the farmer continues to interact with him, he begins to speak more “proper” English:

Wow... he’s becoming more “civilized” because of the farmer’s influence!

As his story progresses, he reveals that he’s lonely because he doesn’t fit in among the other birds. Eventually, he leaves behind his non-human family and assimilates into a primarily white, Western-coded society because that’s supposedly where he belongs.

This whole storyline is made possible by the problems with the setting that I mentioned earlier. Leo wouldn’t feel so lonely and out of place if there were people on the island. He wouldn’t be depicted as wild and animal-like if he had an adoptive family made up of humans instead of parrots. But because CA chose not to have native human characters on this island, Leo can only be around other people if he leaves his home and family behind. As a result, Leo’s story has very uncomfortable parallels with how colonizers have historically separated indigenous children from their families and cultures and forced them to assimilate into the dominant colonizer culture because they considered indigenous cultures to be savage and barbaric (1) (2).

Leo’s whole narrative unintentionally implies that a good life in a good community can only be had in civilized white Western societies. I’m honestly having trouble with further explaining why Leo’s whole character makes me feel so gross, so just read up on the White Man’s Burden, The Jungle Book and other works by Rudyard Kipling (1) (2) (3) (4) (5, PDF download link), and even Tarzan (1) (2).

Leo’s character is also used to further whitewash non-white cultures:

Poi is a Polynesian dish. Mango sticky rice, which is also a recipe that Leo teaches you in-game, is a Thai dish. In the letter, Leo says that the dish is from his home and enjoyed by his non-human family. Considering that he probably learned these recipes on Ginger Island, and that the only “people” who could have taught him this recipe are literal animals, including these recipes in the game in this way just reinforces the equation of brown people to animals. I’m not Polynesian or Thai, but I know that if CA had included a Filipino recipe in the game and not only had it taught to players by a white character, but also passed off as something from the white character’s culture, I’d be angry. I’ll repeat myself: The game features brown people's food and cultures, but it draws the line at brown people themselves.

I don’t think there’s any way to tweak or edit Leo’s character to fix the issues I described. No matter how we change things, he’s still an orphan raised by animals coded as indigenous people, and he assimilates into the dominant white Western culture. The only way to address these issues is to completely redo his character and even the setting of Ginger Island. Here are some options that I’ve thought of:

Leo is related to someone in the Valley and stays with them for part of the year.

Leo lives with his human family and community on Ginger Island.

Leo’s parents are specifically from Stardew Valley/Pelican Town and he wants to visit in order to reconnect with his heritage.

This list isn’t comprehensive, but it does show that there are so many alternatives to having yet another Mowgli story in Stardew Valley.

Conclusion

I don’t think that CA had bad intentions when he made this content, but the fact is that he did create this content. I’m not calling him a bad person. However, he does have a lot of racist, imperialist, and colonialist biases that he has yet to unlearn. Considering the setting and subject matter of the new 1.5 content, he really should have hired some sensitivity readers to avoid creating harmful content. The man’s sold over ten million copies of his game, and he certainly has the resources to put together a sensitivity team.

I can’t look at Stardew Valley the same way I did before 1.5, but I’m not going to condemn the game as a whole. I might play the game again someday, but I absolutely won’t be going back to Ginger Island. If you’ve enjoyed the Ginger Island content, then good for you! Please just keep all that I’ve written here in mind and accept that that content hurts some people like me.

If you’re a content creator, I urge you to get sensitivity readers if you’re featuring cultures that you’re not a part of to avoid making the same mistakes that I’ve discussed here. Creating from a place of understanding and respect can only make your work better and more accessible to a wider audience, especially to the people whose culture you’re borrowing.

#stardew valley #sdv #sdv leo #sdv birdie #sdv professor snail #racism cw #imperialism #colonialism #blabbering #ids for images are in alt text btw!

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avintagekiss24 · 3 years

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Hi! I don't want to start anything on here and am always willing for civil conversations. At this point there's so much I've found out about Seb (besides the video he liked, the tommy lee thing, and the girlfriend thing) that I feel so guilty if I would continue to support him. I love him sm but it just doesn't look good rn. He is associated/follows an organisation (for helping veterans) that has posted a blue lives matter flag picture and who's co-founder has sexual assault allegations against him, and worked with him in 'The last full measure'. His friend Paul Walter Hauser has done blackface in the past, and when called out on it he just listed a few people that also did blackface. There's more, I found a discussion on here that I can link. I seriously don't support "cancel culture" bc I don't think it helps anyone but there are just a lot of 'mistakes' and shady people that can be linked to Seb, I wish it wouldn't be that way. I honestly don't know what to think about it anymore.

Hi! I’m also open to having civil conversations and I don’t believe you’re trying to start anything. I really do think this situation of dragging up a four year old video and taking it completely out of context is harmful not just to Black people, but to fandom/activism in general. This is gonna be long because I’m going to take your points one by one, and I want to preface this by saying that I will not answer any derogatory, sideways asks pertaining to this subject. I will delete every single one and will block your silly ass. I’m not going to argue with people who think I’m blindly supporting Sebastian because I’m just trying to get fucked by him, or people who think I hate myself and am trying to appease some white man.

So, on with the discourse!

The video he liked - this video was taken completely out of context and that is my main issue with this whole situation. It was not a video of a white man saying that he thinks he should be able to say the n word as everyone claimed it was. They were quickly debating on whether or not it's okay to say in rap lyrics. He was told no, that's not okay, that's never okay and they moved on from it. That's it. End of story. That somehow was twisted into a click bait style headline of "Sebastian Stan likes a video of a white man defending his right to say the n word" when that is absolutely not true. My other issue is that people are more upset that Sebastian liked the video than they are about the white man in the video literally saying the n word. So, do you really care about the use of the n word like you're claiming? Cuz if you do, you'd be more upset at the white man that said the word than you would be about the white man simply liking the video. Or, are you just using this as an excuse to grandstand against a white man you don't like?

The Tommy Lee thing - Sebastian Stan playing Tommy Lee does not make Sebastian Stan a bad person. Is Charlize Theron a bad person for playing Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who started murdering men? Is Leonardo DiCaprio a bad person for playing a slave owner? Is Edward Norton a bad person for playing a nazi sympathizing racist? Actors play bad people. That doesn't mean that they themselves are bad people. 1990's Tommy Lee was a bad person, but that should have no bearing on who Sebastian Stan is or his character as a man.

The gf/Paul Walter Hauser thing - Why are we holding Sebastian accountable for what the people around him are doing? Again, why are we more upset that Sebastian is associated with people who have done questionable things than the specific people themselves? I'm not going to speak on the kimono wearing -- I'm not Asian. It's not my place to say whether or not its offensive because it's not my culture, but she posted that picture and attended that party before she started dating Sebastian, quite possibly before she even knew him. Same with Paul. I think that black face thing was long before he knew Sebastian. Now, if Sebastian was defending these actions, going around saying "I think it's okay for white women to wear Kimono's" "I think black face is fine" "I think white people should be able to say the n word" then we'd have a different story, wouldn't we? But that's not what we have, and that's not what he is doing. He is not responsible for the things his friends do or have done in the past just because he's more famous than they are, and he is not required to speak on them. Let's put it this way -- would you be comfortable having to be responsible for something a friend of yours did before you knew them? Would you want to have to be forced to answer for your friend when you yourself had nothing to do with the questionable behavior?

The organization that supports the military/blue lives matter - Sebastian cannot control what message that foundation puts out and it does not mean that he is or is not pro-police himself. There is not enough concrete evidence -- if any evidence for that matter -- that Sebastian is a blue lives matter supporter. Did Sebastian donate before they put up the blue lives matter post? Or after? I don’t know, cuz I don’t follow him that closely, but if he donates before they come out with a particular stance, that means he should be held accountable for that? I know I donated to an organization once and they turned out to support something that i’m 100% against. That means I’m a bad person because I couldn’t see into the future? Another point, how can we be certain that Sebastian saw the blue lives matter post in the first place? I know I’m not online 24 hrs a day, I miss posts all the time and I’m just an average person. I make three or four tumblr posts a day, and I’m gone. I have to play catch up on social media, and even then, I still miss stuff. So I’m sure the same happens to a working actor. As for the co-founder, I don't know who this person is and would rather not get into any allegations against them because I don't want to trigger anyone who comes across this post. If Sebastian knows about these allegations, is a willing participant/supporter of this person then yeah, that's pretty shitty, but we don't know the inner workings of this friendship/acquaintance/work relationship. We don’t know how close they are or if they even still speak.

I’m a pretty big fan of Don Cheadle. He’s a stand up guy, he’s a great actor, he’s funny, he’s political and stands up for what he believes in and in a very public way. I support him. Don Cheadle is also friends with Chris Evans, RDJ, Mark Ruffalo, and Letitia Wright (just to name a few). Chris Evans has a bipartisan forum that highlights/promotes right wing politicians, RDJ defended Chris Pratt during the whole “he’s the worst Chris in Hollywood” crap, who’s technically done black face, and who once said to a female reporter “nice tits” when she walked into the room, Mark Ruffalo just walked back his support of Palestine, and Letitia Wright retweeted/supported an anti-vaxxer/anti-trans Pastor who equated an ingredient of the covid vaccine to the devil because it contained some parts of the word Lucifer. Does that mean Don is now a bad person because he’s friends with these people? Why isn’t he getting any heat for his friendships with them? Why isn’t he being held accountable for what they’ve done and said? Oh right, because he’s not a white fave. So people don’t care one way or the other, which brings me to my next point.

I can guarantee you that if Sebastian’s gf or Paul or this co-founder were not associated with Sebastian in any way, nobody would give a shit about her wearing a kimono, about Paul doing black face, or about the co-founder/organization being blue lives matter supporters and in that lies the actual problem. Being critical of people and their actions should be consistent and should happen all the time -- not just when they interact with your white fave. That’s when it becomes performative and looks like you just want to be able to show internet people that you follow/support/stan unproblematic celebrities, when really, you don’t care.

I think the moral of this post is that I think it's unfair to hold a complete stranger to a standard that I cannot hold myself to. I also don't view celebrities the way most teenagers/twenty somethings do, and that’s because when I entered fandom we didn't have social media, so I grew up with a wall between myself and said celebrities. There is no wall now with the presence of social media. "Fans" nowadays have a weird ownership feeling over celebrities because they can read their personal thoughts or view personal pictures and think that they have this personal quasi-friendship with them. I can't get on board with that. I prefer having the wall and I still keep the wall.

If supporting Sebastian makes you uncomfortable, then by all means, stop supporting him. Just make sure you are making this decision for yourself based on credible sources and concrete evidence and that you're not letting this fake woke activist mob make you feel uncomfortable. Internet activism means nothing unless you put your money where your mouth is in your real life and 90% of the social justice internet warriors do not. Real activism is bigger than changing your avi to a black square.

#asks #answered #sebastian stan

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yunhohours · 2 years

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Hi! I just opened tumblr for the first time in a week and your posts were the first I saw so here I am lmao I was wondering if I could request 10 + 23 + 28 (smut) for Ten? (wayv my loves 😭) what a mixture this should be fun 😂

if i don't get to dream about this tonight i'm fighting oml

10. “Please don’t stop.” 23. “That feels so good.” 28. “Can you feel what you’re doing to me?”

It’s movie night with Ten and Yangyang, a pretty common occurrence for you as Yangyang’s best friend and thus a friend to the WayV boys. These nights usually take place when all the other boys are busy doing something else, whether that’s going out together, spending time with other friends, or scheduled activities. This night is no different. Also like usual, Yangyang isn’t as interested in the movie but was roped into it by you and Ten both insisting on it. He’s currently switching through different apps on his phone, probably scrolling through social media and talking to fans through his platform of choice while you and Ten watch the drama you both have been dying to see.

Ten and Yangyang sit on opposite ends of the couch with you in the middle. Well, sort of. You’re between them, but you’re glued to Yangyang’s side. You usually cuddle into him at times like this and he doesn’t seem to mind. Sometimes he’ll play with your hair mindlessly while his attention is elsewhere aka on his phone. You glance over at Ten to see if he, at least, is interested in the movie. What’s the point otherwise, right?

He looks adorable. His hair is longer and dark right now, pushed back and silky smooth. He’s in sweats and a white tee, his glasses perched on his cute nose. You love the way he looks in glasses and you make sure to tell him that all the time. You smile to yourself as you admire him and he doesn’t notice because his eyes are concentrated on the screen. Slowly, you shift your position, laying your head in Yangyang’s lap and resting your feet in Ten’s. Yangyang hardly notices, just draping his free arm over your stomach to settle into the new arrangement more comfortably.

Ten does notice, but he doesn’t think anything of it. You’re usually pretty touchy with each other, something Yangyang is sure to point out and scoff at as much as possible. You both like being around each other and bond quite closely when you’re around, with or without Yangyang’s help. Ten just smiles over at you and rests his hands atop your feet before turning back to the screen.

You, on the other hand, are having a harder time turning your attention back to the movie you insisted on hours earlier. You can’t seem to take your eyes off of Ten–the way he pushes his hair back occasionally, the way his face contorts in response to the movie’s storyline, the way he is. You squirm around a bit, trying to shake yourself from the Ten tunnel vision, but the attempt is futile when your foot skates across the crotch of Ten’s sweats and you see a soft gasp fall from his now-parted lips. Oh no.

Ten doesn’t react any more than that, most likely chalking it up to happenstance–which it actually was. He keeps his eyes forward but yours haven’t seen the screen in several minutes and won’t any time soon. You’ve found something much more entertaining to occupy yourself with. You chew on your bottom lip, your restless fingers playing with Yangyang’s as you nudge your foot against Ten’s crotch again.

This time, he looks down. Not at you. He doesn’t even say anything. He just looks down, wondering how this seems to keep happening and what to do about it. His beautiful eyes look less focused than before. You rock the heel of your foot this time, back and forth, torturously slow. Ten’s eyes flutter closed as he enjoys the small sensation before coming down to earth for a moment to look at you. He can’t make sense of what’s happening even though he wants it to continue.

When he sees the devilish smirk on your face, his eyes widen in surprise. You were doing this to him on purpose. When you press your foot against him more firmly while maintaining eye contact with him, he melts for you. His eyes threaten to close again but he wants to look at you while you touch him so badly, even if it’s just this small amount. His low lids and soft, parted lips look sinful. It takes everything in you to not abandon Yangyang’s lap for his altogether.

You have no intention of stopping there. You continue stimulating Ten with your foot for several minutes, watching the way Ten tries his hardest to keep from drawing any attention to the two of you. He even starts to rub your feet half-heartedly so any movement in his lap will appear to be from a sweet massage. It doesn’t take long, though, before his hushed gasps turn into quiet moans. There is now a very obvious tent in his sweats as he strains against the fabric. You glance up at Yangyang who is none the wiser and feel relieved, but you know it’s only a matter of time at this point. You spot the remote on the arm of the couch next to Ten and sit up. “I can’t hear very well,” you say, explaining yourself to Yangyang in case he decides to care about what’s going on. “Stop listening to music so loud then, y/n.” He sasses, grinning to himself as he types furiously.

You lean over Ten to grab the remote. You turn up the movie in the hopes of drowning out the sounds of you getting him off in the middle of the room you’re sharing with someone else. He leans forward and holds you there for a moment, his lips pressed to your ear. “Can you feel what you’re doing to me?” His tone is desperate, wanting. It makes you beam with pride.

“Mm, you’re so beautiful, Ten.” You coo as you turn your face towards his, ghosting your lips over his for only a second before returning your head to Yangyang’s lap. You feel Yangyang trying to adjust to your presence again as Ten stares at you like he’s not quite sure you’re real and that this is actually happening. You offer him no mercy, licking your lips as you increase the pressure of your foot as you rub against the stiff cock you’ve erected.

Your plan works perfectly for a while. Ten’s choked moans are swallowed by the sound of the movie and Yangyang is completely oblivious. He even leans down to you to show you funny videos or tweets from time to time, but it’s clear his attention is on all things digital. This is probably the one and only time you’ve ever been grateful for that. The perfect circumstances start to falter, however, when Ten is no longer able to pretend he’s watching the movie. His head is resting against the back of the couch, eyes shut tightly, lips forced wide open from his ever-increasing moans. You have to do something or stop, and you do not want to stop.

“We need snacks,” you suddenly announce. Ten jolts up a bit from the sound of your voice. “Ten, you know where all the best snacks are. Will you show me, please?” You ask, smiling so sweetly at him he starts to think he’s imagined everything. “Y-yeah… of course.”

You carefully stand and pull Ten up with you, making sure his throbbing erection is pointed away from Yangyang. “We’ll bring you something too, I guess,” you tease your best friend who just smirks and waves you off. Game on.

You take Ten’s hand and lead him to the kitchen just on the other side of the den where the movie blares. He follows all too willingly and doesn’t even flinch when you press him against the counters the second you’re inside. From here, you can see Yangyang through the archway, but he can’t see you. You can see if he’s coming towards you, but he won’t know that until he’s already halfway there.

“Pretty Ten,” you purr, the most adoring smile on your face. He beams at the praise and all you want to do is replace his bright eyes and dazzling smile with the fucked out expression you’ve been craving. Your hand pushes inside the front of his sweats and wraps around his cock as you stare deeply into his eyes. He flinches and whines in relief, the feeling of skin on skin one he’s been desperately needing. His feet stutter and he relies solely on the counter for support as you start to pump him in your hand, the precum that had accumulated on his tip making the movements effortless. “That feels so good,” he breathes out between the most angelic moans you’ve ever heard.

“You sound just as pretty as you look.” He hums in response, your praise only facilitating his fast-approaching orgasm. You slow your hand purposely, craving more of his needy whines, as you talk him through the sensations he’s experiencing. “Feels so good, hmm?” An eager nod punctuated with a particularly high-pitched whine. It seems he’s non-verbal at the minute, communicating to you through anything but words. You’re practically drooling at how wrapped around your finger he is. “You’re so good for me, Ten.”

He’s gripping at the countertop as he whimpers, his hips thrusting against your hand a bit despite his efforts to keep still. He needs to cum. He’s chasing it. You decide you’ll make him, now, because you can only be gone for so long and you want it just as bad as he does anyway. You give his cock a tight squeeze that makes him moan particularly loud before adopting a fast pace, pumping him furiously inside his sweats. You glance over every few seconds to make sure you’re safe from prying eyes and ears and you’re so thankful you turned up the tv when Ten starts moaning like he’s chanting–one after the other, the pitch rising each time. “Please don’t stop,” he pleads, the words barely audible through his barely-functioning mouth.

And you don’t. You only grip the back of his hair in your free hand and pull it until his face is parallel with ceiling, your firm hand fucking him until he cums all over it with a sharp cry that floods your body with warmth. You fight the urge to drop to your knees and clean him up with your tongue and instead simply remove your hand from his sweats, leaving quite the mess behind.

You lean forward to wash your hands in the sink on the counter next to him, your lips leaving soft kisses on his jaw as you do. He is humming so happily, trying his best to recover from the unexpected earth-shattering orgasm you just gave him. You can’t help but smile to yourself as you watch him in this dreamy state, knowing he has no idea what you’re really capable of. “So pretty,” you echo one more time. You kiss the corner of his lips and grab a bag of chips from the counter, heading back to nestle into Yangyang’s chest.

#i'm going to HELL #anyways #tags #wayv smut #ten smut #wayv prompts #ten prompts #wayv smut prompts #ten smut prompts #kpop smut #nct smut #th: wayv #th: ten

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five-rivers · 3 years

Note

Oh God, imagine the social media reaction to tinyMight, the feral adorable badass. Imagine his bullies and unfortunate small-time villains from 40+ years ago finding out who they tried to beat up. Imagine those few who have seen Yagi but don't know he's All Might wondering if skeleton man is All Might's twin or something. Imagine the shenanigans if the de-aging takes longer to undo. Interactions with Gran, Izuku, the other teachers.

Sequel to this.

Toshinori felt his smile grow progressively more fixed the longer the detective stared at him with that haunted expression. Was he in some kind of trouble? It sounded as if the villain had swapped him for another rookie hero, one named All Might (cool name!), but that shouldn't be Toshinori's responsibility. Maybe the quirk also linked them, somehow? That would explain why the villains had been trying to kill him, and why the banana hero- Present Mic didn't want him to leave. On the other hand...

Oh, he should just ask. That would be easier.

He opened his mouth to do just that when the detective spoke instead.

"This is going to be so much paperwork," he said.

"I'm sorry?" said Toshinori.

"Yagi," continued the detective, "I love you like a brother, but ever since I met you, my paperwork load has tripled. Tripled."

"I've only just met you?"

If possible, the detective looked even more haunted.

Luckily, at this point, Present Mic opened the door to the car and slid into the seat next to the detective. "Thanks for coming, Detective Tsukauchi," he said. "Anyway, we have confirmation on the quirk that did this to you, and, well. It isn't time travel."

"Thank god," said Detective Tsukauchi.

"Um. I thought it was teleportation...?"

"You've been de-aged by about forty years," said Present Mic, all in a rush.

What. What?

The car started up in the silence.

"Are you telling me that I'm in the future? Oh my gosh, that's an amazing quirk."

"No, no, you're in the present. You're not-- It isn't going to send you back to the past when it wears off. You'll just, you know, go back to your normal age."

"Wow. That's still a really cool quirk. Does it have to be forty years, or can he adjust the amount of time? Like, he could use it on people with degenerative mental diseases, give their families one last time with them. Or, or for witness statements! It would be pretty good for a hero, too, you could de-age villains into kids and then they couldn't fight anymore... but maybe it'd be a little unethical... Hmm..."

"You don't seem very, uh, alarmed?" said Present Mic.

"What would I be alarmed about?"

"All of your friends and family being forty years older?" suggested Present Mic.

"Haha, I don't have any of those," said Toshinori, smiling as large as he could and giving the hero two thumbs up.

Present Mic and Detective Tsukauchi just stared at him.

Then Tsukauch turned to Present Mic. "You said it'll wear off? When?"

"Uh. The quirk registry wasn't entirely clear about that. But it does wear off."

"The press is going to be a nightmare," said Tsukauchi, rubbing his face.

"Why?" asked Toshinori.

The hero and detective exchanged another glance. Toshinori could practically hear them mentally screaming you tell him, no, you tell him at each other.

Tsukauchi coughed into his fist. "Well, Toshi- excuse me, Yagi-kun, you're... You've realized those two were trying to kill you?"

"It was... sort of hard not to, honestly," said Toshinori. "Is it because I'm a hero or something?"

"How did you-?"

Toshinori silently pinched the fabric of the overlarge jumpsuit leg between his fingers and raised an eyebrow.

"Right. Well. You're the Number One hero."

"Wow," said Toshinori. It seemed to be something he kept saying, today. "How did I do that without a quirk?"

"What?"

"He's a late bloomer," said Tsukauchi, quickly. "A late bloomer. You're a late bloomer."

"Uh. Okay?"

"UA is so cool," said Toshinori, shielding his eyes against the sun as he looked up at the building.

"Haha, yeah," said Tsukauchi.

"Did I really go to school here?"

"You teach here, too!" said Present Mic.

"That's so cool," said Toshinori. "I can't believe I'm going to be a hero for over thirty years. That's like, the longest any hero has ever served."

"There are a couple who've served for longer, now, actually," said Present Mic. "Like Yoroi Musha, Recovery Girl, and Gran Torino."

"Yoroi Musha is still a hero?" asked Toshnori. "Like, actively? That's so long."

The gate behind them beeped, and Toshinori turned around just in time to take the bottom of a boot straight to the face. Needless to say, he fell over.

"Gran Torino!"

"Holy crap! I thought he'd dodge! Toshinori, you idiot, are you alright?"

"Ow," said Toshinori, trying and failing to recognize the voice that was referring to him so familiarly.

"Gran Torino, you really can't go around kicking people like that."

"Yagi-kun? Are you okay? Should we get Recovery Girl?"

Toshinori raised a shaking hand, thumb up. "I think I have a concussion."

When they got to the infirmary, it was already occupied by a couple students and... a strange homeless-looking man, but that didn't make sense. Maybe an undercover hero was stopping here for some reason? But why?

The students, one small and green, other with a mix of red and white hair, stared at him openly.

"Oops, sorry," said Present Mic. "Didn't think that anyone would be here before noon."

The homeless man sighed deeply. "Neither did I," he said, "and yet..." He fixed a baleful glare on the two students.

"I-I'm sorry, Aizawa-sensei," squeaked the green one. "I tried to get out of the way of the door, but I didn't want to run into Todoroki-kun, and-"

"It isn't your fault, problem child," said Aizawa with a sigh heavy enough to crush an elephant, who... was a teacher, evidently. Man. Standards for teachers' dress had really fallen in forty years, hadn't they? "The first year support class shouldn't have been doing anything with explosives of that caliber. Anyway, who's-"

"Are you Midoriya-kun's secret brother?" asked the red and white student.

"Who?" asked Toshinori.

"Todoroki-kun! You can't just ask people that!"

"You have to admit, he looks just like your father-"

"All Might is not my father."

"Riiiiiight," said Present Mic, guiding Toshinori to a bed with a hand on his back. "Now, why don't you just relax here while I go get Recovery Girl?"

"Coward," whispered Tsukauchi.

Present Mic shrugged and disappeared.

"So," said Aizawa, exhibiting a well-practiced air of boredom. "Are you related to All Might?"

"Eraserhead-san," said Tsukauchi, through clenched teeth, "may I introduce you to Yagi Toshinori? Yagi-kun, this is Aizawa-san. He's in charge of class 1-A."

Aizawa went pale. "Please tell me it isn't time travel."

"If it was time travel, we would be in an underground bunker or something," said Tsukauchi. "No, it was an age-regression quirk."

The green student inhaled sharply, then let off a small, "Oh."

"Wait," said the red and white student- Todoroki?- narrowing his eyes.

"Don't say it," urged the green haired boy.

"What do you think about quirks, Yagi-san?"

"Quirks are great!" said Toshinori. "I sure wish I-"

"Had a note book to write about them in!" interrupted Tsukauchi, loudly.

Toshinori frowned up at him, confused. What did he say?

Todoroki rubbed his chin with a finger. "To... analyze the quirks in?" he asked.

"Um," said Toshinori. "Yes?"

"See, Midoriya-kun?" said Todoroki, turning to the other boy. "He's just like you. You're the same." He touched his pointer fingers together.

Midoriya, for his part, looked extremely flustered.

"The same," repeated Todoroki. He looked back at Toshinori. "Do you happen to have a brother? A twin, perhaps?"

"Uh, I don't think so? But, then, I was a doorstop baby, so..."

Todoroki nodded sagely. "So you must have reunited with your long lost brother, the skeleton man, later in life-"

"Stop calling him that!" hissed Midoriya, yanking on his friend's uniform jacket.

"I wouldn't have to, if you'd just tell me your uncle's name-"

"He isn't my uncle."

Both Aizawa and Tsukauchi looked like they wanted to die. Or at least be somewhere else.

"Uh," said Toshinori, wanting to change the subject even with his concussion. "What are your quirks, anyway?"

"My quirk is called Half-Hot, Half-Cold," said Todoroki. He raised his hands. "It allows me to make fire from my left side, and ice from my right."

"Oh, neat," said Toshinori. "There must be so many applications like that! I mean, combat is obvious, but it might be even better for rescue work- Lots of casualties in natural disasters are because of exposure, you'd be ideal to counteract that in any weather. Or if a victim is going into shock! Plus, it'd be useful to have in everyday life, if they ever change the public quirk usage law- Did they change that?"

"No," said Aizawa.

"Actually, yes," said Tsukauchi, "but probably not in the way you're thinking..."

"Don't use your quirk in public," said Aizawa.

"You don't have to worry about that, because-"

"Don't use your quirk in public," said Tsukauchi, interrupting again. "Please."

"He does have a hero license, though, so technically-"

"Problem child."

"Sorry."

"Oh, oh, and what's your quirk?"

"Please do not fall out of the bed, To- Yagi-kun," said Tsukauchi.

"I'm not going to," said Toshinori.

"Well," said Midoriya, who had a very complicated expression on his face, "my quirk is, uh, a strength enhancer..."

"Just like yours," said Todoroki, as if he had just made an irrefutable point.

Oh, yeah. Toshinori's older self had a quirk. Maybe that's what Tsukauchi was trying to keep him from talking about? He wished they had told him beforehand if it was some kind of secret.

Also: was Todoroki implying that Midoriya was Toshinori's son? That'd be, like... Wow. If this was forty years in the future, and Midoriya was about the same age as him, that meant he'd had Midoriya when he was forty? Hm. He wasn't sure how to feel about that...

Luckily, before he could start in on a spiral about whether the idea of himself at forty or the idea that he had kids was the thought that was bothering him, Present Mic came back with a little old woman who was, apparently, Recovery Girl.

Wow. Yeah. That was sure a change in... everything. Yep. Really driving home the whole 'forty years in the future' thing. It sure was.

Recovery Girl sighed deeply. "What did you get yourself into this time, Toshinori?"

"Gran Torino kicked him in the head," said Tsukauchi.

"I'm going to skin that man alive one of these days," said Recovery Girl. "But I was talking about the other thing. Although, I suppose that's rather obvious. Do you mind if I heal you, dear? It will probably knock you out for a little bit."

"Sure," said Toshinori, who was beginning to strongly desire an escape from the increasingly awkward conversations around him. "Knock me out. Please."

"Alright, then."

And then she did.

#boku no hero academia #fic #prompt fill #ask #answer #bnha #this prompt has been marinating for #uh #a while #oops

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peekbackstage · 3 years

Note

Thanks so much for sharing your perspective. I've found your posts very informative and appreciate your time and effort. I saw you mention something about XZ's team not doing a great job responding to the situation, though of course they aren't to blame for it. If you don't mind, would you share your thoughts on what a better response might have looked like, and what impact it might've had if they'd done things differently?

One of the things that stands out most to me is how unprepared XZ Studio was when dealing with a PR crisis. It seems to me like they most likely did not have a strong social media team at the time who would have been tracking any trends or conversations associated with XZ. (By the point at which 227 happened, XZ Studio had already been established for about five months.)

It is pretty standard to track your artist’s name and keep an eye on trending topics, especially to get in front any major issues. As 227 began to develop, had XZ Studio been tracking the development on social media, they could have potentially defused the situation very quickly when the big call to action first emerged from XZ fans to report a fanfic to the government. It was so out of hand, and there was no statement from either the company or the artist that it seemed as though both were complicit in allowing it to continue, which is precisely why so many antis emerged, incensed against XZ’s apparent lack of action to rein in his fans and guide them appropriately.

Much of the backlash that occurred against XZ and his fans is because there was no initial response when the call to action first appeared - they could have essentially stopped it before it got too far and prevented AO3 and Lofter from getting banned. A simple statement from the artist and the management company to defuse everything could have potentially stopped the movement in its tracks, with the amount of influence XZ does have over his fans.

When things did go sideways, there still was no statement or even an apology from management or XZ, who was being criticized for the actions of his fans. Though it wasn’t his fault (technically), the ways in which his fans behave reflected poorly upon him as an artist and an influencer. Had he taken “responsibility” immediately and apologized, it might not have gone so far as a boycott against him that resulted in so many brands dropping him.

What I think a better response would have looked like once 227 occurred would have been this:

1. Immediately issue a PR statement condemning the actions of the fans and take responsibility for not initially “guiding” fans properly. Apologize on behalf of the company, the fans, and the artist. Statement should also include a note that states the offending content is merely fiction and that there is no truth to the story. There is no reason to be upset over something that is not true or defamatory, as it is imaginary. (This would essentially be a coded statement denying a certain relationship to begin the process of dissociating and creating a different narrative.)

2. Artist should issue a statement condemning the actions of the fans and apologizing as well. Call to action for any fans who might continue to act out to behave appropriately. Remind fans that fiction is not real, and to stop acting out against something that is imaginary.

3. Meet with Weibo privately. Ask them to help with community management to ban accounts that are breaking their TOS. Do this very early on in the process. Also, invest a good deal of money to hire an entire social media management team or a company to heavily monitor Weibo and aggressively report accounts that are engaging in defamatory behavior and potentially breaking Weibo’s TOS. Take legal action against anyone who is actively breaking the law.

4. Book an interview with a large media outlet or a well-known media personality. Allow and even encourage questions about the incident. Artist should condemn the actions of the fans who caused the incident and apologize to the public for their behavior. Artist should also say something like, “The story is fake/imaginary/fiction/not real.” (Saying something like that more or less demonstrates how dumb all of this is.) I am assuming that questions won’t be asked about AO3/Lofter being placed behind the Great Firewall due to China censorship.

5. Dissociate from anything and everything that might allow others to continue associating the artist with the incident. In XZ’s case, that means dissociating from WYB, because he’s associated with said incident given the fact that this was all caused by a fanfic. Put a moratorium on kadians and any other potential “interactions” that would allow fans to continue to have “content” to discuss on Weibo. The point here is to change the narrative - this way antis won’t also have content they can use to criticize XZ.

6. While this is happening, call all brands and schedule meetings. Attempt to rescue the brand deals. For brands who are very unhappy, offer a contract revision to suspend the contract terms for a set amount of time (such as four months) to see if the issue blows over. (It’s better to put it on hold than it is to have to try and get a new brand deal, especially once the brand’s annual sponsorship monies have already been allocated for the year.)

Potentially work with third party PR team to circulate rumors among XZ’s fanbase that he is losing brand deals to create urgency for a counter-campaign against antis trying to boycott XZ’s brands. If there are just as many people calling brands to support XZ as there are calling for a boycott, then it would potentially be a 50/50 toss up as to whether or not a brand deal manages to be saved. This might also lead to a surge of sales for all of XZ’s brands, which would then maybe demonstrate to the brands that XZ shouldn’t be dropped.

7. Track sentiment/feedback once all of the above has been completed. If all of the above didn’t help at all, create new action plan which might include withdrawing the artist from all activity for a set amount of time.

So there you have it. Maybe a response like the above could have potentially ended up with a different outcome for XZ. Maybe it wouldn’t have helped at all and everything would have still been just as bad. We’ll never actually know.

What I hope is that XZ now has a better team who can handle issues like this in the future, and that he will see a full recovery for his career this new year. If 2020 has proven anything to anyone watching, it’s that XZ’s consumer power is still massive, and that his popularity has not waned at all. The fact that he is still sweeping all the awards that require fans to vote, often winning by millions of votes, and the red sea that fans managed to put on for him during the Tencent awards are undeniable symbols of his enduring popularity.

This kind of influence is staggeringly powerful - brands and media outlets that previously might have felt uncertain about XZ as an artist most likely will have positive sentiments towards him as a result.

So, let’s hope that 2021 will be the best year for XZ.

The future is full of possibilities and the sky above is endless.

Edit: @pepeyee Made it clear to me in the replies that I definitely did not clarify myself or my thoughts on all of the above well enough, so I will be writing a response to all of the above to further clarify some points so that there is no confusion about my stance here.

#Anonymous #ask #xiao zhan #pr response #artist management #227 incident #xz studio #peek answers

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