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borzoilover69 · 1 year

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ULTIMATE JAKE: an idea and an execution

iA I Aka the post where borzoi talks to the crowd how awesome Lord Jake English is, the guy that everyones seen around, but have no idea who he is. Pull up a chair, this will get long.

If Ultimate Dirk can be summarised by the mask of tragedy in theatre, LE Jake, AKA Ultimate Jake, could be summarised by the mask of comedy. I’ve barely read HS2, but from what I can see, Dirk wants to make a serious nitty gritty tragedy of serious and epic proportions. But he tries so hard that he ends up making it almost laughable.

Jake wants to make a thighslapper huckshaw comedy where everyones having a grand old time but there is such deep and hollow tragedy hidden within the folds of all those pretty smiles.

If anything they abide a lot by aristotles theory on comedy and tragedy. While tragedy imitates men better than average, comedy parodies those who are worse.

Aristotle stated that those of a more serious type that may have once been inclined to celebrate the actions of great heroes in poetry and prose turn to tragedy, while those who’ve been dishonourable, humbled, turn to comedy. It comes down to duality, tragedy viewing duality as a fatal contradiction forever a fault in things, while comedy views it as natural, but something that everyone must live with the best they can, enjoy. Do you see where I’m going here? Dirk, who praised Aristotle and read the epics turned to tragedy. Jake, dishonourable and hiding from those who he care about, turning to comedy. They line up well with the cognitive psychology of the tragedy and comedy visions, which you should totally look into when you can.

Tragedy is idealistic, stubborn and serious. They long for something higher and greater than common existence. They value heroism, hierarchy, and finality.

Comedy is pragmatic, adaptable, and playful. They consider the self, comfortable in their own skin. They’re anti-heroes, valuing situation-based ethics and reversal.

With that out of the way, lets keep to philosophy like it’s a boat in the atlantic. If Dirks look in life upon going ult is one of pessimistic realism, Jake is an absurdist.

If life is a cruel joke to jake, and it has been, then in his ultimate form hes acknowledged it, and given the cruel void, hes decided to seek out his own meaning. And it just so happens to be his best friend.

Misc details

- Capitalist

- He wears old 3D movie glasses because he’s that idiot.

- He collects a lot of things. He has plenty of things hes shot killed and stuffed in his collection.

You could say he’s rather past oriented, taking care to document it all out of interest and perhaps a subconcious pursuit to figure out the future.

- Very apathetic. He may be charming, but he’s still a jackass. He thinks existence itself is funny, he’s an absurdist; but he’s also a guy who realises he’s been kicked to the curb too many times and started shooting people. - His crew consists of John/June, (in place of rose. They have a lot of movie nights!), Karkat, and one (1) dead dave.

And finally some thoughts about ult Dirkjake: Maybe Dirk wants Jake to just kill him. It’s a game of cat and mouse, and perhaps it’s love for someone who deems himself unworthy, no, incapable of doing so. What better love than to kill someone? To trust and know they will kill you. Feeling safe in the knowledge they’ve known you in every universe and are here to kill you. Not that Jake would let him. I like them.. I think it’s my fave brand of dirkjake besides the original.. they’re dysfunctional, intolerable, and they hate each other, but it’s just interesting. For better or for worse, they’re stuck, and they’re not afraid of the fact they suck. If anything, it’d spur them to be worse.

“Oh yeah. I find the other guy fucking annoying and I’d gladly take a moment to rip his guts out and walk him around a tree until they’re all out and he's calling me every bad name he can think of, but if anyone tries doing this shit with him without my consent, I’m going to be hells of more pissed off.”

Look. It’s funny in the way that realistically, they could probably do a lot of damage to everyone else but due to the fact they know the other guy exists, they’re too busy trying to kick the others ankles out and then beating each other up to become dangerous.

Oh you bet your nanny it’s the gayest most fucked up kismesis known to man. Ultimate Dirk hates LE Jake, because he doesn’t give a damn. Because Jake makes him feel things he denies feeling. And that ridiculously, somewhere in paradox space, Jake went ultimate and decided he was going to man up and pursue Dirk to the ends of the universe. Ultimately: “My soul is bound to you in explicable ways. Our bonds cross the multiverse and wherever you are, somewhere I am by your side. Even in a hundred universes, maybe even a million. I will still find you.”

Perhaps the greatest thing and a closing note is that given they are the ascended versions of themselves, they’re aware of the fact that they’re aware of every time the other guy screwed them over, kicked them in the balls, etc. But they’re also able to see everything else. So what’s with a little hatelove eh?

#homestuck meta #dirkjake #ultimate dirk #ultimate jake #homestuck #ultimate rose: ive seen the light and you two either need to get laid or die #jake english #dirk strider #a lot of philosophy/#borzoi talks #borzoi meta

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beesmygod · 1 year

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who fills the pot holes in “lore olympus”?

the thing about criticism is this: you can absolutely think “too hard” about something intended to be light fare and the delicate balancing act of art criticism is about threading various needles to avoid as many retorts as possible accusing you of opening discussions in bad faith. one of the many ways to obliterate trust in your critical audience is to become so derisively nitpicky that your attempts to draw attention to the pre-existing holes in the setting or the structure of the story will look like petty sabotage. i recognize this is the risk im taking when i get set off by the existence of sports luxury vehicles within a fictional universe created entirely to cater to a specific sexual appetite. indeed, there is no type of pedantry more obnoxious than the sexual pedant.

BUT.

the work doesnt exist in a vacuum. if we’re going to be honest about the work’s intent (or, how the work’s intent explicitly reads to the audience), part of the fantasy is to be completely taken care of. i mean, who among us hasn’t dreamed of this, at least briefly. it’s one of the most fundamental of all human desires. but to be taken care of, in settings which are founded in capitalist societies (everyone groans at my shit), begs the obvious question: where is the money coming from?

author’s note so everyone knows im not insane (hahahaha): i’m not here to argue the virtues of communism over capitalism or imply that depicting capitalism favorably in your comic is a moral failing. it is not capitalism itself that i have a problem with (...in artistic depictions), it is the way that it is invoked within this comic specifically that bothers me; it demonstrates a terminal thread of thoughtlessness that threatens to unravel the entire setting, premise and moral ambiguity of what is being presented as a desirable fantasy. this element is the catalyst that sparks the degradation of the taboo into the unconscionable.

look i’ll be up front: my primary motivation is that this comic sucks and im a hater. the anti-feminist overtones are their own kettle of fish but the runner up contender for most concerning (oooueerrrg, everyone is groaning again) element is the complete lack of class consciousness. look, i mean concerning in the sense of “why has none of this gone recognized by, like, anyone?” every time i show someone a real LO panel they react like i’m went out of my way to fuck with them in an ultra specific way. it has completely recreated the feeling of being the only person in my friend group watching riverdale, if riverdale were the crown jewel of the WB.

to strip the pretension from the phrase “class consciousness” and put it in plain text: the insertion of modern capitalism into the comic has necessitated the creation of an underclass to serve the gods (the focus of the comic). as a result, the comic has repeatedly needed to justify the abuse, exploitation and acts of dominance over the subjugated class in order for the main cast to remain sympathetic. the author is incapable of envisioning a world that does not operate on disparity, in spite of the immutable fact that the gods are the sole arbiters of seemingly infinite creation.

and i’m capable of comprehending that there are times when a work has grotesquely unlikable asshole protagonists on purpose. it could be argued that the fickle behaviors of the gods is SUPPOSED to be detestable and there are obviously times where that is the intended audience read. but this is not “succession” and the entirety of the work does not indicate that it is trying to create quiet commentary by inviting the audience to draw their own conclusions on the characters by simply presenting them with the truth of their actions and deeds. additionally, if the romantic hero also engages in that behavior and it’s unremarked on or encouraged by the author or the heroine, what is the intended audience read?

regardless, all this to say: i do not want to alter the content of the comic, but to verbalize how it reads to me as an audience member. the purpose of criticism is to demonstrate and encourage reflection and to help refine one’s own perceptions.

okay. right. the cars.

this is minthe. i could write 100000 more words about the treatment of her by the comic and, by extension, the author. her introduction is about as subtle as a brick: she serves as the evil whore foil to persephone’s virgin perfection. her introduction as hades’ randomly abusive, hyper-sexual, and cruel younger girlfriend is contrasted with persephone’s naivete, chastity, and sweetness. shes literally smoking a cigar and wearing lingerie. somehow she is not the hero.

like i said, there’s a lot to unpack with her but i need to stay on target. minthe is a nymph, one of many “beast races” (for lack of a better term) that populate olympus and fulfill menial tasks and jobs. for example, this guy runs a modeling agency.

a modeling agency that include car shows. or...dealerships. its not really clear. anyway: she is introduced to hades in a flashback through his brother zeus who sexually harasses her during her shift.

lol uh. or comes as close as he can without becoming objectively villainous instead of “rakish”. as a result, what plays out is all VERY schoolyard behavior.

he executes a 0/10 prank that still kills for some reason.

and then it happens. “it” isn’t a singular event limited to just the example im about to give. “it” is the complete undercutting of the dramatic and logical tension within the story and “it” happens with alarming frequency as the comic introduces more and more modern elements. each additional luxury vehicle or department story or cell phone comes with the artist being forced to depict the people (or in this case, beast races) providing those services. the author cannot imagine a world where luxury is not predicted on service or a product, even or especially when the existence of the service or product does not make sense.

back to “it”...hades poofs away:

if gods can poof and fly (as its been implied some or all of them can), what in the hell is the purpose of the luxury vehicle on olympus? the beast races are sure as shit not buying them as they are explicitly the working class in every single one of their appearances. what does it run on? who pumps the gas? who services the cars? the streets of olympus have been paved so that cars can be driven so this would suggest the city’s infrastructure was centered around the use of vehicles. does he hire someone to drive him around in it, despite the fact that he can teleport? he and persephone clearly use it to get around even though she can fly. these cars are so successful despite having an extremely limited number of buyers, they make enough money to hire booth babes all day explicitly so they can be sexually harassed by the men (of a superior magic immortal race) buying the cars.

why does an entire seemingly unnecessary industry exist within the confines of the universe?

all of the above questions are overthinking a basic logistical problem with the setting for anyone with a moral center: in order to be served, one must have servants. the entirety of the universe in LO is constructed around not a modern re-imagining of the ancient myth, but instead a lazy and depressing hodge-podge of various products and physical items the author places great value on as status items in the real world. and, sadly, this is not as a bit within the universe. this isn’t setting up any message other than the central one of the comic: love and worth can be quantified with a dollar amount.

hades’ department store (staffed entirely by beast races who are delighted and eager to serve their master) offers a purse that two beast race women drool over, only to be informed:

this scene has a direct and obvious purpose: through it, we establish that hades’ store caters to the ultra-ultra-rich. this is a level of rich that is unobtainable to anyone except the pantheon of gods, whose unique abilities maintain the fabric of reality and thus set the terms for the world they unilaterally control. at best, minthe, a nymph, experiences a fraction of this wealth when sugaring for hades. on the other hand, persephone is the heiress to a cereal empire (who is eating the....?.........you know what dont even get me started on that whole thing) so she is all but assured to be independently wealthy even if she was temporarily without funds during certain events of the comic.

back to the purse: hades and persephone arrive at his own department store so that she can have a restorative shopping montage. she learns a heart-warming lesson about how its okay to be rich in what i think is one of the most gratuitous and absolute dog-brained moments of the entire fucking comic, thus far, including the part where persephone gets big and accidentally steps on (real, human, ancient greek) people and has to go on the lam. her accidental manslaughters evidently require a tribunal and a trial of her peers, which is odd when contrasted with the justice meted out on the beast races indiscriminately and unilaterally by individual gods who act as judge, jury, and executioner.

granted these are not the nice gods (i can think of an event with demeter, persephone’s confusingly controlling mother, specifically, as seen above), but there’s an echo of this behavior when hades bullies two beast race women into divulging information about persephone. in one example, a woman purchases a hair comb from a pawn shop, ignorant that it was a gift from hades and persephone is the one who pawned it for emergency funds. when hades shakes her down and demands where she stole the comb from, she directs him to the pawn shop and he just...takes it. to give it to persephone again. whether or not she was made whole or is even okay with this is completely inconsequential to the author but left me, the reader, in a total lurch. the complete disregard for addressing this within the narrative is less shocking when taken into total account with everything else ive been talking about.

the sequence in which hades takes her on a shopping spree to both improve her mood and express his love was too grotesque for me on every conceivable level. it is not just the shockingly antiquated “women b shoppin!” stereotype presented as a healing process, but the open and shameless conflation of money and love, net worth and self-worth. what possible message could come from this except to reinforce that within the fictional universe of LO, it is the place of the lesser to fawn over what persephone is ultimately entitled to. it is her birthright as the protagonist/self insert and as a literal goddess who determines the creation of food...and nymphs. the underclass. the gods are responsible for the creation of their servants.

the industries exist because they are 1:1 representations of or conductive to what the author considers to be a desirable luxurious fantasy. i do not think there is a more complex reason than that, as that is the reason why the entire comic exists: as a personal love letter to the author’s tastes and desires. and frankly, that’s the point of comics. ALL comic artists should succumb to this desire. what continues to vex and haunt me however is the complete lack of reflection occurring despite the author putting these elements together and presenting them for an audience who then lapped it up without questioning what, specifically, was appealing about this and why. it is by sheer accident that these elements combine together to paint an unflattering picture of a culture that has created artificial disparity for no apparent reason than personal gratification.

my question, is this:

who fills the pot holes on the roads built exclusively so that the gods can drive their luxury cars? why do they do it? to get hades some pussy????

#long post #lore olympus

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jewish-sideblog · 5 months

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As someone who believes in horseshoe theory (not entirely because politics is way too complicated to simplify into that), I’ve always seen it as less of a thing about people’s actual beliefs, and more the structures of those beliefs, and the way they go about them, if that makes sense

So like, the alt/far left has this fantasy of some kind of violent revolution, where we not only dismantle or reform corrupt systems, but we also brutally slaughter people that are deemed as too privileged or having the wrong views, and I think that’s very similar to how the alt right’s endgame seems, especially the evangelical right. These types of people never want to actually make small changes that will progress us to the point of a better society, they just expect to wake up suddenly and society is being toppled. Like, isn’t that just the rapture, but dressed up in leftist clothing? Idk. There’s also this mentality on the alt left that capitalism is caused by billionaires and people like that, instead of the other way around, and that we can get rid of capitalism just by getting rid of those people. I am anti capitalist and very anti billionaire, it’s just that I see capitalism is a deeply ingrained societal issue that’s not caused by specifically people, only exploited by them. The idea that there’s a select few behind a huge part of our world is a right wing Jew hating talking point, but it’s something I see a lot of the far left embrace

Also, the behaviours of the alt left tend to mirror the alt right. Calling everything that doesn’t fit their narrative propaganda, conspiracy theories that everyone outside of the bubble can see are bullshit but they are convinced are real, that cult like mentality of ‘if you say or do anything that goes against what we believe, then you’re just as evil as Nazis/the people who want to topple society (I don’t know right wing terms lol). I mean, they’re literally sharing neonazi slurs now (the number of leftists I’ve seen using ‘zio’ is shocking)

I don’t know, I’m a leftist (or at least someone who agrees that human rights are maybe a teeny tiny bit important compared to money, you know), but I’m also very critical of the current state of the left, especially the far left. I want us to build a much better world than what we have now, and I don’t think any kind of extremist ideology is not going to improve it

Yup. 100%. I still consider myself a leftist too-- at least, I'm trying to-- but the current state of the left is hyper-radicalized, hyper-polarized, and severely under educated.

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piniatafullofblood · 17 days

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Finally got around to doing the intro post thing. Okay! Hi, I’m Drift. They/them. My main content is gonna be fandom related stuff, the occasional political rant, long-posts where I message with my mutuals, and sometimes a diary. I’m 15, so keep that in mind and don’t be weird.

I’m pretty much your standard ‘of course you have blue hair and pronouns’ type person (except imo a lot less polarizing and violent than the blue extremists. NOT saying I’m a centrist but also not saying I’d vote yes for another hunger games) so if your somehow like a maga republican and you want to follow me, don’t, I don’t want you here. There’s gonna be a lot of anti capitalist/anti imperialist/anti police content here.

for fandoms, it’s DW, mha, (although I post almost nothing about that on here, you’ll have to find my burner account for that,) GO, the sandman, Loki, the mcu, I/ATSV, THG, MLB, nimona, ATLA, BTVS, SDV, SU, PJO, and also if you ask me about HP I will respond and I can still tell you all the lore even tho I haven’t participated in the fandom or read the books in years. I’ll add more as i remember them.

Team Lokius, team River. No question.

that’s it. be nice or I’ll block you.

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perfectlyvalid49 · 3 months

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Hey, I don’t mean to come across as confrontational or rude at all. I am not Jewish or Palestinian, but I would like to know a bit more about what you mean by “I’m a Zionist depending on your definition” thing.

As far as I’m aware, the definition (or at least a piece of it) is someone who thinks Israel is a valid country and that we shouldn’t bring back Palestine as a country. I also am very aware that many Jews who aren’t Zionist have been accused of being so by people who are upset about the Jews defending themselves from antisemitism.

So, I wanted to know what your definition of Zionism is and if you are a Zionist by your own definition. Just because I’d like my context on what you’re trying to say.

Again, not trying to rude and I’m really sorry if I ever came off that way in this ask. I also know that some anon asks are often cowardly, so even tho I didn’t mean anything bad by this ask, I’m also not doing it anonymously.

I hope you have a wonderful day and please, don’t rush to answer this, I understand you probably have a lot on your plate right now between usual responsibilities and the antisemitism that’s been going on

This did not come across as rude or confrontational at all, so no worries there! And I’m always happy to share information with people, so I like answering things like this.

There are a few problems with defining the word Zionism. The first, as you alluded to, is that some people will use the word “Zionist” to mean either, “Jew I don’t like,” “Jew who disagrees with me,” or “Jew who complains about antisemitism.” This is not what the word actually means, and I want to be clear, when it is used in this way it is absolutely a slur.

The other is that Zionism is a political ideology with a lot of sub-branches. Different branches hold different beliefs, so some Zionists are in favor of a two state (Israel AND Palestine) solution and some are not. It’s kinda like leftism that way – you can be an anti-capitalist leftist, a post-colonial leftist, an anarchist leftist, etc. People ascribing to those different types of leftism will disagree on a lot, but they’re all still leftists.

But that doesn’t give an actual definition of Zionism. I would say that to start, we should look at the origins of the political movement. You say that you are not Jewish, so I’m going to get into some history here that you may or may not be familiar with. I apologize if you know this already, but I don’t want to assume. I’ll keep it high level and you can google or ask me if you need more info.

Antisemitism has historically ALWAYS been a problem for the Jewish people. Sometimes it meant that Jews were treated as second class citizens, and sometimes it meant that Jews would be rounded up and killed. Back in the late 1800s things were getting particularly bad across Europe. In particular there were a series of pogroms against Jews in Russia, and there was the Dreyfus affair (basically a Jewish army officer was convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, and when evidence came to light that he was innocent, he was re-tried and *checks notes* found guilty again. Don’t worry, he was declared innocent 12 years after the original trial) in France.

Jewish intellectuals in Europe responded to all this by forming some new political ideologies. One was Bundism, which basically said that if we assimilate hard enough into the culture of the countries we live in, then they will stop bothering us. It was a very popular movement in Russia, Poland and Germany, but lost steam for some reason in the 1930s.

The other major Jewish political ideology formed at that time was Zionism. In its original form, Zionism was simply the belief that Jews should have their own state – a place where Jews could live with a guarantee that there would be no state sanctioned violence against them for being Jewish. And if you look at all the different sects of Zionism, that’s the one idea that they all have in common. Originally the Jewish state being in what is now Israel was not included in the definition of the movement, but it was added not too long after.

As for my definition of Zionism? I would say it goes something like, “The right for Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland.” And by that definition, yes, I am a Zionist. Having said that, I also believe that the Palestinian people also should have the right for self-determination in their homeland. The fact that these homelands overlap means that these two peoples will have to find a way to share the space – that’s the only way for a real, meaningful peace to be achieved.

#zionism #history #asks and answers #please let me know if you want me to clarify anything here - I was trying to keep it short(ish)#also I couldn't make this fit into the flow of the response but #fuck netanyahu #seriously - fuck that guy #zionism supports the idea of the state of Israel but not necessarily its current leader #or its current actions #to give a comparison #most people who hate Trump did not think that the united states should cease to exist because he was president #or because of the things that his administration did

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heathersproship · 2 years

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I’m saying this in anon bc I’m scared irl friends or followers will see this but I like the pro-ship community.

I’m new to it, and while I don’t have any kind of ships that anti’s usually hate (minor/adult, family/family, etc.) I do have a lot of age gap ships and one ships that’s especially problematic.

My super problematic one I use for coping, and I want to talk about and share and stuff, but I’m worried people will send threats or call me things like an abuser bc I like this certain ship.

It sucks that I can’t just talk about my problematic ship, but the pro-ship community makes it better. I just wish there was a way to make sure only pro-shippers see my toxic/coping ship posts, and not anyone else like anti’s or irl friends lol.

I’m not really sure what the point of this was, so I’m sorry if this was annoying, I just like your blog and wanted to just say that I appreciate pro-shippers :)

Everything is /g

You’re not being annoying, no worries! I’m glad you’re having a nice time in the community! (Also thank you, I appreciate you taking time to tell me you like my blog! That’s really sweet! Sorry I took so long to respond, I had a very early night lol.)

Someone put Howl’s Moving Castle on a list of “problematic media” because for the majority of it Sophie is cursed to be a 90yo woman and Howl is in his late 20s. Both the novel and the Ghibli movie had the romance as the subplot, but antis are still against it cuz age gap (also spoilers, she turns back to her original age of 18 at the end, so while the gap is still there it’s not even half as severe). But nooo, a gap is a gap so in it goes! Also, Tangled is problematic. Frozen. Zootopia. Disney as a whole is problematic “just” because “racist.” (While I won’t deny there are some very racist things in Disney media like SotS, the depiction of Native Americans in Peter Pan, the Siamese cats in both Lady and the Tramp AND Aristocats, and the company itself is capitalist asf, to condemn Disney based on “just” racism alone is a bit of a stretch.)

Haters gonna hate for the sake of hating. There’s a high chance it's not going to make a lick of sense to you because of the long leaps in logic to get to those conclusions. And that’s entirely a them problem. I’m actually really surprised When Marnie Was There didn’t make it on the list (iykyk!).

Anyway, back to you. There is a way for you to post freely about your ships here! Two ways, actually!

The first is to make a sideblog.

Pros:

great option if you’re lazy and don't want to log out

anonymity. no connection to your primary blog unless you link it (literally or if there’s enough info to reasonably ID you)

much like a vent blog, a writing blog, or an art blog, can be dedicated solely to one thing so you don’t have to clutter your primary/stuff won’t get buried if you want/need to find them later

can be as private or as public as you want

can get asks (anon or not) and submissions

can block people*

can send Tumblr DMs

*Blocking someone on mobile only applies to your primary blog. I don’t know if there’s a way to do so for sideblogs but if you’re on browser you’ll have go to to Settings > select the sideblog URL > scroll down and manually type in/copy-paste the URL of the person you want to block into the Blocked Tumblrs section. Which leads me to

Cons:

the blocking thing, as mentioned above. if you block from your primary account, you can’t see them, but they can still see your sideblog unless you block them there.

can’t send asks, reply, or follow from sideblog; all interactions will come from your primary

always the risk of posting content to the wrong blog so whether you’re on the web or on mobile, double-check and save as drafts just in case!

if you’re going by a different name/persona, you may need to be careful what headcanons/aus/ideas you put out there. this goes doubly so for artists

The second is to make a new account.

Pros:

brand new shiny clean fresh start! anonymity!

sending asks, following people, replying to posts, all the perks!

no worries about posting to the wrong blog

block to your heart’s content without jumping through hoops

again, can be as private or as public as you want

Cons:

a bit more work (emails and passwords and all that)

might feel trapped to just be about One Thing

same con as the sideblog if you’re going by another name/persona, in that very specific or niche hcs/ideas/aus/art could be used to ID you. or just go for it and pretend this really is another person who just happens to share your exact opinions on things. who’s going to know but you, ya know?

Whichever route you take, do what you need to keep yourself safe. You can’t stop idiots from seeking things out they don’t like (you’d think they just wouldn’t but antis aren't known for being logical, ironic they insist they are), which is why proper tagging is so important. Note the tags proshippers use and tag your posts with those. Pop into inboxes to say hello, a majority of us are friendly and chill! And regardless of what the antis say, you do belong in the main tags. People just need to learn to filter and block shit they don’t like, but that’s far more work than screaming at other people to a) block them first and b) not post things they worked hard on making.

If people call you an abuser for liking something in fiction, they need a serious reality check. Tell them to grab the fictional character’s hand with their real one and drag them away from the person harming them if they’re so concerned. Please. Don’t grab a plushie because that’s a doll and that's not alive. Don’t grab a body pillow because that’s a pillow and not alive. Don’t grab a drawing, that’s paper and not alive. Grab the real, living, breathing character who’s being abused and make it all better. Guaranteed they can’t.

How you cope is your business. You’re not self-harming unless you’re intentionally triggering yourself, and you’re not harming another living person if they happen to see something they don’t want to see. You are not responsible for their reactions. If it matters to them so much how you cope, if it offends them so much, they’re not worried about you, they want to control you. There's no one-size-fits-all approach for dealing with shit. Some people go to therapy, take medication, or both. Some people talk to friends, some people run, some project onto characters and draw vent art, write stories, or read those stories about characters suffering through their same problems to feel less alone in them. All are valid. It’s about what works for you. Not them. You. And if they can’t understand that, they also need help.

Happy shipping, friend! Take care of yourself!

#proship #proshipper safe #proshippers please interact #anti anti #antis dni #antis don’t interact #anti harassment #not Heathers

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genderisareligion · 1 year

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How long do you think this trans nonsense is going to last? Do you think people, especially women, will eventually realise how sexist, homophobic and racist trans ideology is? Or do you think society is just going to keep regressing? I had a discussion - not even an argument - with a girl recently about it all, she has a brother that calls himself a woman, and she cried when I said that I thought we should be abolishing gender stereotypes. I thought I was pretty moderate, I said that I think people should be able to dress and act however they like, but it just doesn't mean that men can claim and appropriate womanhood. She cried and called me a transphobe, and then stormed out when I said that it's inherently misogynistic. Most of my friends, both men and women, agree with me, but said that I shouldn't have brought it up. Which I think is just shit - so women are just meant to lie back and accept the erosion of our rights? This issue is occupying so much real estate in my mind, I'm constantly thinking about how absurd it is and I'm constantly angry. How long do you think I'm gonna have to be angry for?

I can’t say for certain how much longer it will be, but I can recall what ten years ago was like, so maybe things will have changed that drastically in another ten.

2012 Tumblr was peak what’s good about liberal feminism. It’s not all garbage it is still feminism after all. Consent was a huge conversation, used to see posts about male rape culture in the tens of thousands of notes, it was cool and on trend to call out “I’m not like other girls I don’t need feminism,” sexism in the workplace was being addressed. My in progress tag #notes is in part meant to capture what female solidarity used to look like on the site

because it’s taken a massive fucking nose dive and I’m trying to figure out where we went wrong. Going through archives of radblr blogs around 2015-16 is when I start noticing more of the trans/TERF conversion happening, although it always was just on a much smaller scale using different words. “Lesbians who don’t like dick” and sex industry critical women have always been attacked for one reason or another iirc they just used to call us “radscum” and other nondescript shit before landing on these handy -ERF acronyms

The thing is 2012 Tumblr was also peak Superwholock Fujoshi time and “supporting the gays” (voyeuristically living vicariously through them) was more on trend than liberal feminism. The two were seemingly in unison at the time but were going to be at odds inevitably. Mostly straight and male-pref bi women (with a sprinkle of closeted lesbians) coping with IRL men’s increasingly sadistic view of women by fantasizing about safe love between fictional men on an obsessive level. Fandoms and thus show creators going out of their way to avoid F/F slash and instead feeding the monster that is M/M until Tumblrinas felt like just “supporting” them wasn’t enough and they had to skinwalk lol and shame one type of SSA while worshipping another

Iirc by 2016 gay marriage in the US (where most of these people live) had been “won” and queer MOGAI was the shiniest newest trend thanks to a number of influences (Caitlyn Jenner and LaVerne Cox come to mind but it was definitely more than just them). Liberal feminism is capitalistic at the end of the day and the powers that be saw “queering gender” for the cash cow it’s ended up being and the powers were probably terrified that in the early 2010s under popular lib feminism hundreds of thousands of girls and women were openly in agreement online that male violence was the problem. Now it’s “gendered violence” and you can never tell who’s a male and no one can call a spade in a dress a spade

It’s inconceivable to me to cry about the idea of gender abolition like your friend did anon…..makes me like sad how convicted so many women are about this. But I’m also not surprised and don’t blame them all because anti feminist males will stop at nothing. The TERF wars are so fundamentally ridiculous like the topic is a distraction about something that’s not even real yet they’ve made it seem so real and threatening by using their male privilege to instill fear and angry infighting.

I would advise you to not let this shit take up too much real estate in your mind. As someone who sort of watched it all start or at least get this bad I try to remember when I wasn’t censoring my language this much and when misandry was a fun meme on here. Also try to keep in mind how many times the queer theorists change their mind on what language is appropriate for who and when. I will never forget how quickly writing trans* with an asterisk or transwoman with no space became crimes when before you’d get lynched for not doing it. Imo things that change that often have no foundation or could change into something unrecognizable someday. Hopefully whatever follows gender is better than this shit. Hang in there 🖤

#shadow.txt #ask.txt

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cha0ticr0b0tic · 2 years

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GDT Hyperfixation Vibes :)

OK so what with the Pinocchio news/interviews coming out this is just a super friendly reminder that Del Toro has ALWAYS been this sincere, this earnest, and this anti-authoritarian!! Even his more lighthearted films, like the Hellboy movies and Pacific Rim, feature rebellious protagonists who aren’t rebellious just cause it’s fun and edgy, but because the systems holding them back are corrupt and not really meant to be trusted.

In the case of Hellboy, the BPRD did keep him safe and away from those who might want to hurt him, but they’re also having him hunt down those of his own kind. At the end of The Golden Army, he, Abe, and Liz straight up leave the organization – they’re polite about it, but they’re also firm: this is no way to live and work. Their monsterhood (i.e. their authenticity) cannot truly exist within the confines of an organization that hunts monsters.

Pacific Rim is a little different, Raleigh is naturally cocksure in a Han Solo type way, he’s a maverick, etc, but he and Mako both know that they’re drift compatible and yeah, that’s going against Pentecost’s wishes, but they stick to their guns because that’s how they know they’re going to win!! (Side note, I really appreciate Mako telling Raleigh that she doesn’t actually want to disobey her father, that she wants to be respectful of him, because he’s a reasonable authority figure who has her best interests at heart. PacRim definitely goes less on the “disobedience” theme and is more about teamwork, cooperation, community, etc, but Raleigh and Newt both have a stubborn streak, and when they trust their respective guts, things Happen. Risks are taken and they pay off.)

Nightmare Alley is also a bit of a variant here because it’s noir and Stan Carlisle is probably the most anti-heroic del Toro protagonist we’ve seen thus far, in keeping with the genre and is also true to the original novel. Stan’s disobedience (in doing “spook shows” when specifically told not to, for the sake of the audience) is not heroic, it’s all because he’s greedy and insecure and wants to see how high he can climb. Whereas other GDT characters have their disobedience shown as brave, Stan’s is decidedly dishonest and motivated by ego and it gets him in the end (capitalist commentary, perhaps?). Again, that’s all keeping in line with the genre and the OG source material, GDT’s take on Nightmare Alley is pretty damn accurate to the book.

All of this is to say – all his work has an anti-authority stance, even the more kid-friendly stuff. I’m really excited to see what his take on Pinocchio is going to look like, I miss the Devil’s Backbone/Pan’s Labyrinth/Shape of Water days of anti-fascist fairytales.

#guillermo del toro #hellboy #golden army #pacific rim #nightmare alley #pan's labyrinth #the devil's backbone #the shape of water #pinocchio #stop motion #antifascist #im hyperfixating so hard rn

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lookwhatilost · 1 year

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I think a very revealing line in The Force Awakens is Han Solo’s first line, when he enters the Millennium Falcon: “Chewy, we’re home.”

That’s the thing with these types of movies, what I’ll call “legacy franchises” – the new Halloween movies are guilty of this, same with Ghostbusters Afterlife – the original source material and the cultural impact and the fandom around them have proxies in the universe of the movie. Within the new Star Wars universe, Han Solo is a legend, and the Millennium Falcon is a legend, and Luke Skywalker is a legend, and all these characters have heard of them and are fans of them and they’re so important in their legacy. It’s just become Star Wars about Star Wars. Ghostbusters about Ghostbusters. Who the fuck wants that? We’re watching a movie about how much we liked the previous movie. What the fuck is that? I know I liked the previous movie! I could just watch the previous movie! It’s really irritating and it’s really sad because I’m not strictly anti-nostalgia. It’s nice to go back and revisit the things you love, and the distance between you now and you then, it’s all good. But this is wallowing and refusing to do anything else. And it’s this reverence for these key elements of the past, that were so in awe of them that we don’t want to do anything different or better. We can imagine tweaking or correcting them, or putting more lesbians in them, but we can’t imagine surpassing them. We can’t imagine a better Star Wars and we definitely can’t imagine doing something that’s not Star Wars that’s better than Star Wars. We’re so in awe that we can’t get out from under its shadow and do our own thing culturally.

In a reboot, you’re trying to appease the people who want a sequel and trying to appease the people who think they want something different, and trying to do both at the same time. Or, appearing to do both at the same time, but just doing the former. The Thing reboot was released as Thing in 2011, which functionally worked as a remake but was also canonical to the first movie. I guess they call those “soft reboots”. It’s not even driven by markets per se, because with enough money and cultural influence you can decide what the market it. People will watch what you give them if it’s adequately entertaining. I don’t want to say that this is what people want, it’s a matter of what people will accept. These are very different things. They can’t consume anything better. Maybe they would, but they’re not really being given an informed choice. Studios are so afraid of it that they won’t do promotion. There’s a very conservative and risk averse mindset among the capitalist class making decisions, at least in this instance.

2015 and 2016 were very pivotal years in the popular culture landscape, especially the one that I’ve been posting about for the past… 2 and a half hours? Oh god. There were two other reboots of IP franchises at around the same time – Mad Max: Fury Road came out earlier in 2015 and Shin Godzilla in 2016. I think those are both great movies. But the interesting difference between them, and I’m kind of curious how this happened in that era of Hollywood, is that Fury Road was a passion project driven by George Miller. An actual movie by a guy who wanted to make movies, who made the original movies. He was looking not to cash in on what he’d done before, but thematically add to the level of spectacle and scope and outdo what he’d done in the 70s and 80s… Like an actual artist! And he did! It’s a perfect movie! And Shin Godzilla, it’s not the same guy, but that’s the same impulse driving it to a large extent. You watch the first episode of Evangelion, and it’s obvious that Anno is a huge Godzilla fan. He wants to do what the first Godzilla was to the post-WWII atomic bombings, which is an important thing to keep in mind with the original Godzilla. It’s an allegory for an atomic bomb in an abstract way, but it came out less than 10 years after those bombings. All the people in the theater watching the first Godzilla, watching those buildings falling, lived not just through the atomic bombings, but the harrowing convection and napalm bombings that leveled the whole cities before they dropped the a-bombs. Shin Godzilla is that, but for the post-Fukushima moment. It’s not in a cynical way, the going through the checklist of the discourse way, but a genuine response to the period way. Modernizing something in the sense of a difference product line for new sensibilities, versus reinterpreting a text artistically for a new context. The new Star Wars is the former. Fury Road and Shin Godzilla aren’t devoid of commercial influence, but they’re much more so the second direction. Truly great older blockbusters have some counterbalancing the commercial side with sincere artistic influence. Take this against things that are so lopsidedly commercial that whatever creative impulse and craftsmanship is there is drowned out, or filtered, or banded, or never present in the first place.

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watchwhatyounodto · 2 years

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via @yourariesreads As I’m seeing much nuance about this man, I can’t help but think about the majority of times I’ve seen others, including Light-Skinned folks, who have had so much grace regarding him, yet concerning any Dark-Skinned Black woman and femme artist in the industry, many folks do not have that same energy. No one is above critique, sure. But, I’m reminded by y’all’s selective outrage and the misogynoir that informs it. I’m reminded of how y’all pick and choose who you want to afford grace versus whom you want to throw the book at. When someone’s out of pocket, they one-thousand percent deserve to be checked, but y’all never keep that same energy and do so by Anti-Blackness and that’s the problem. Ain’t nothing about what he’s doing is “shocking” or “surprising.” Unpack why you feel that NOW is when you feel some type of way. 💫 The same goes for all Black capitalists. But, I suppose that when it concerns y’all’s Light-Skinned favs, y’all aren’t going to be honest or non-defensive when the same critiques are applied, right? What those two wanted yesterday was attention and they thrive off of performative outrage that only happens in certain intervals. I’m not going to tone police folks engaging in this conversation, but what I will say is to check your Anti-Black biases and how it’s showing up. What K*nye has been doing is harmful and there’s no excuses to be made for it. Full stop. Black capitalism will not save or liberate anybody and any idea that what he’s doing is “good marketing” is a reality check that y’all need to be for real and serious as y’all are neither. 💫 By the way, Black women and femmes do not owe him anything. We will not “save” him and it’s not our duty to. If other Black cis-het men want to do their hotep call in, they can easily do so on their time and dime and leave the rest of us out of it. This conversation is also the result of how y’all continue to coddle Black cis-het men. Don’t talk or speak on Anti-Blackness when y’all, in the same breath, make excuses for their harm, and have more energy for Black folks who are holding these honest conversations. 💫 https://www.instagram.com/p/CjTziXOJ-Ny/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

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qqueenofhades · 3 years

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Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #covid for ts #i had a lot to say evidently #rant

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fatliberation · 3 years

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I’m Abandoning Body Positivity and Here’s Why

In short: it’s fatphobic.

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

• • •

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#body positivity #bopo #body posi #body positive #body acceptance #fat acceptance #fat activism #fat liberation #anti fatness #anti blackness #anti fat bias #lookism #beauty standards #self acceptance

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black-coffee-and-sugar · 3 years

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Azie killed it!!!

me praising a supergirl episode? i know, shocking. but 6x12 just came for me where i live! i knew it was going to be great but it surpassed my expectations. sister are really doing it for themselves! so many things to point out that were phenomenal but here’s what comes to mind rn:

- the camera work while kelly’s all distressed at the hospital, lil joey struggling to breathe, orlando looking so helpless > i was already stressed within 5 mins

- rankin literally saying “i’ll do everything i can to help these people” while rolling away to her private hospital room with access to trial medication when the residents of the heights probably don’t even have insurance or money to pay the bills. also rankin literally sucking the life out of this disadvantaged community, building wealth and pushing her political agenda on the backs of black people is the most realistic portrayal of true villainy that this show has ever given us

- kelly’s phone call to james in the stairwell, talking about how exhausting it is was so personal to me. i work in these types of communities all the time and it’s a hard fight. i get emotionally tired too. it does feel like screaming into the void, like one step forward and ten steps back. and i felt this for kelly.

- alex’s solution is to send respirators and nothing else? just makes me realize that while the super friends were protecting mxy and trying to capture nxyly, they were pretty much neglecting the heights. people who were literally dying and it’s horrifying to think of where their priorities lie. especially considering the fact that they could have handled the nxyly issue without alex so she can support her gf

- writer 1: how do we make the audience hate rankin some more?

writer 2: have her kill a guy for a sandwich on white bread. it’ll make her look like even more of an asshole

but seriously, what kind of psychopathic shit was that?

- andrea has always been portrayed a shameless capitalist who only cares about grabbing eyeballs but it has never been highlighted as negatively as it was in this episode in that phone call with kelly

- i think kelly reaching out to lena who isn’t even in national city really speaks to her desperation to have someone see her. someone hear her. someone fucking help and i’m glad she had at least diggle’s support

- that slim stack of bills is all it took for that woman to sell her soul to rankin? bruh...

- the super friends showing up to the heights, only concerned with tracking nxyly, not giving any amount of fucks about what kelly is trying to say enraged me. i know that was the point of the episode but STILL

- kara telling kelly that mxy can fix all this once they get him out of the crystal. what are you five? give me a goddamn break with this foolishness kara! so lil joey’s lungs are just supposed to hang on til whenever the fuck y’all save mxy? lena, please come and collect your wife

- kelly looking directly at kara when she mentions the word hope while dragging the super friends for their nonchalant behaviour > oof, a slap to the face

- i see nia had the one brain cell this week. she’s the only one who attempted to help kelly in whatever way she could.

- brainy really said racism is still a problem in the 31st century and it did not surprise me.

- seems like having tunnel vision is a danvers sisters trait. i get alex not being able to relate to kelly’s struggle but come on she’s your girlfriend. can’t you tell when she’s upset?

- i’m glad that they addressed j’onn choosing the appearance of a black man and how even though he may have been a target because of it, he still can’t relate fully to the experiences like kelly, james and diggle can. it’s optional for him. they don’t have that luxury to check out whenever it suits them

- kara talking about the anti-alien hate with the col and i would like to remind kara that she genuinely thought things were improving and that the division didn’t exist despite j’onn and brainy repeatedly telling her otherwise. because, once again, her physical appearance affords her privilege that no black person or visible alien will ever receive

- every kelly scene was so emotional i was bawling wtf. her talking about pushing her pain and anger down and trying to be positive and all smiles > 100% accurate

- i can’t believe i’m saying this but i did not need the lena scenes. they should’ve just kept those out. on the other note, magical amazon package delivery

- guardian’s suit is so fucking badass!!! i’m glad little black girls will feel SEEN and INSPIRED in this episode. thank you azie

- kara was really out there getting her ass kicked by a human who just got powers for a few hours? stop nerfing her abilities!

- the way we got an actual scene of kelly carefully wrapping her hair, the say her name t shirt, the books on the coffee table > well done azie

- alex and kelly in the final scene was a good portrayal of an interracial relationship where one partner wants to but just will never understand the issue fully. alex just needs to be there for kelly and i’m glad that they didn’t make it a moment to educate her white gf about racial discrimination. they kept the focus where it needed to be. i’m also glad that unlike the other soical justice topics we’ve had, they didn’t try to make it seem like something that is so engrained into the fabric of society can be wrapped up with a neat little bow and be done with. there’s more fighting to do but at least it seems like kelly will have the support going forward

- the promo after such a powerful episode gave me whiplash. back to our regularly scheduled nonsense i guess

This episode holy shit. man it was amazing. azie is a talented writer and it’s easy to tell that she was drawing inspiration from real and personal experiences. it was very easy for me to relate to these scenes, especially the hospital ones. also makes me annoyed because they’ve been wasting all this potential and this episode is proof that the show and it’s storylines can be nuanced and still include superhero aspects. too bad this episode will likely become one of few in this show’s entire run that actually accomplishes that.

#supergirl #kelly olsen #john diggle #dansen #supercorp

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olderthannetfic · 3 years

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"the internet has become accesible [...] instead of only certain privileged people" are you saying dumb and ignorant people (often poor or barely hanging there enough to have internet access) are the ones ruining your precious spaces, be them fandom or not? / "monetization of fandom" Ignoring ffnet and wattpad, what about the people who takes fanart/fanfic commissions? Are all the same "capitalistic ghouls" taking advantage of the oh so sacred hobby of fandom? Not everyone is a creator

That's quite a chip you've got there, nonnie.

In the 90s, you needed a lot of privilege to be online. That level of privilege makes you less likely to have trouble making rent. Thus some of these issues were fundamentally less likely to come up. (And offline fandom always required certain resources/geographical locations/etc. to access also.)

On the whole, I think fandom (and the internet!) being more accessible now is a good thing. It does, however, mean there are going to be more culture clashes: between new-to-fandom people and fandom Olds, between Olds of different fandom traditions, between people with very different offline lives, etc. I don't place any particular moral judgment on the existence of clashes. It's just a natural and inevitable outcome of more types of people rubbing elbows.

Yes, there is a double standard with regards to fic and art. People have explained its nature and why it exists ad nauseam. I'm not going to rehash them all here for such a disingenuous ask. Fanlore covers it amply.

My take from the legal side (I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice) is that all of it is on thin ice. Fan art regularly gets the axe despite people thinking it's safe.

My take from a social side is that none of it is necessarily bad full stop, but a space with creators and audience is fundamentally different from one of peers in a gift economy. The former is monetized youtubers. The latter is AO3.

There are plenty of fan artists and fan art fans who dislike what the commercial factor has done to art spaces, and there are plenty of fic-focused fans who are jealous of the profit-focused art spaces.

I choose to use my labor to build more of the not-for-money spaces. A lot of different people built AO3, and when they did so, they too chose to put their efforts towards a space that was not into monetizing. It's fine to not like that style of fandom... It is not fine to disrespect all that labor by posting your patreon on AO3.

Build the space that reflects your values. Go to spaces that do the same. Yes, obviously, that means multiple spaces reflecting multiple understandings of what fandom is.

Too often, I see people upset that I'm prioritizing this anti-profit model as though I'm taking away something they had an equal right to. But, in fact, I'm talking about me using my labor how I see fit and taking my friends with me.

I'm not quite sure where you're going with "not everyone is a creator". Not everyone draws or writes well, but in the "fannish gift economy" understanding of fandom, things like posting good fic recs are one of the gifts a fan can bring to the community. Anyone who wishes to put in a little effort can participate.

It's possible to have a real life that precludes putting in a little effort, and that's very sad, but I'm talking about community building here, not consumption. I wish 100% lurkers joy in their lurking, but by definition, they're not part of my community because they do not interact. They do not have social ties. This isn't a judgment but a neutral description of fact.

I subscribe to a subculture model of fandom that focuses on the social ties between members as opposed to a model that focuses on concrete products produced by fandom. This difference in approach is behind a lot of the really intense failures to communicate among people analyzing fandom.

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aropinions · 3 years

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So What Is Exclusionism, Anyway?

As I've looked through inclusionist circles, I've come to a startling realization that most of them have an extremely skewed understanding of what exclusionism is (along with its various offshoots, subtypes, and related beliefs). They equate it to hatred of whatever group is being excluded, and they don't think people part of the excluded group could ever support exclusionism.

So, I've decided to write a long post to clear up some of those misconceptions. This post is mainly targeted to inclusionists and people wondering where they stand on the inclus/exclus sides of various types of discourse, but if you're exclusionist already, please feel free to reblog or boost it. <3 Thanks in advance for reading!

I'll start by introducing myself. Hi, I'm Ivy, or at least that's what I go by on here. I am a heterosexual, aromantic female. I am neurodivergent (ADHD, so forgive me if I ramble or write in a scatterbrained way) and have several other mental illnesses that I don't wish to talk about online. I do not have gender dysphoria, but I do not "feel feminine," and my personality has been described as rather masculine. In fact, many people in the inclusionist trans community have tried to convince me that I'm nonbinary because I don't feel a strong connection to a female gender, and I'll talk about that more later in this post.

I'm going to put all my relevant discourse opinions on the table right now. (In the next paragraph, I'm going to explain what all these labels actually mean and why they don't automatically make someone a horrible person.) Contrary to popular belief, I am not a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF), an aphobe, a transphobe, or a bigot. I am ace-exclusionist, aro-exclusionist, trans-exclusionist, transmedicalist, pro-LGB, and gender-critical.

Now here's the fun part. Bear with me -- we're about to debunk the myths about these opinions, explain each term's real definition, and talk about some of the reasoning behind the beliefs.

Exclusionism, as a blanket term, is the belief that gatekeeping is necessary to make any group or community meaningful and safe. Various types of exclusionists fight against the lumping together of various marginalized identities or groups, because they believe that letting different types of people into spaces meant for more specific groups will detract from the safety and functionality of those spaces. They do not hate the groups they are excluding, and they typically want to exclude both ways. For example, ace exclusionists don't want allosexual LGBT let into ace spaces any more than they want asexuals let into LGBT spaces. Many exclusionists in LGBT discourse support the exclusion of groups that they themselves are part of, because in addition to the idea that it's harmful to the main LGBT community to lump them into it, they also think their group deserves its own recognition as a separate thing from the LGBT community. Exclusionism is not hatred.

Time to get into more specific terms. Let's start pretty simple, with truscum and transmeds. Someone who is truscum believes that people must have dysphoria to be trans. Someone who is transmedicalist believes that gender dysphoria is a mental disorder, and that transness is a medical condition synonymous with gender dysphoria. All transmeds are truscum, but not all truscum are transmeds. Most truscums and transmeds are against MOGAI, neopronouns, gender microlabels (e.g. genderflux or demiboy), and xenogenders. Most truscums believe in nonbinary people. There are some transmeds who don't believe nonbinary dysphoria is real, but they're not the majority.

The direct opposite of truscum and transmed is "tucute," which denotes a belief that dysphoria is not required to be transgender and gender identity is completely unrelated to biological sex or medical disorders/conditions. Tucutes also generally support MOGAI, xenogenders, neurogenders, microlabels, and neopronouns.

Next, we have bio-essentialism. Bio-essentialism is the belief that oppression is based on biological sex, not gender identity, and that identifying as a different gender than your birth sex doesn't automatically mean you are oppressed. This doesn't necessarily mean bio-essentialists believe that gender doesn't exist or that you can't identify as whatever you want, just that your social oppression is based off your biological sex. Not all bio-essentialists are truscum or transmeds, but most are. Bio-essentialists prominently use the terms "male" and "female" to describe biological sex rather than gender identity, and non-radical ones will use "man" and "woman" as blanket terms that include transmen and transwomen while maintaining "male" and "female" as words for biological sex only.

Then, we have the big bad term, TERF. I've seen a lot of people misuse the TERF label, so I'm going to try to clarify its actual meaning. The acronym stands for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist." It's important to break that down into two main parts -- TE and RF -- because trans-exclusionists are often called TERFs when most of them don't fit the "RF" part of the acronym at all.

Trans-exclusionism (TE) means that you believe transgender issues/discourse/activism should be separated from LGB issues/discourse/activism because they are fundamentally different. L, G and B all have one thing in common: being attracted to people of the same sex as you. T is about someone's gender, not their sexual orientation, so trans-exclusionists believe that the LGB and the T should not be lumped into the same community. It doesn't mean they think trans people deserve less respect or are not real. Most trans-exclusionists are also truscum or transmedicalist, but not all are. Many trans-exclusionists who are also feminists are gender-critical, but not all are. Pro-LGB is a synonym of trans-exclusionist, but in my experience, people who describe themselves as "pro-LGB" are more likely to also be gender-critical than those who identify themselves as "trans-exclusionist."

Radical feminism (RF) is a subset of feminism that -- in addition to general feminist beliefs -- is anti-porn, anti-kink, against the makeup industry, and very often openly misandrist. Radical feminists are not always trans-exclusionist, and trans-exclusionists are not always radical feminists (in fact, most aren't). Most radfems are anti-capitalist, and all are against pink capitalism and rainbow capitalism (the commercialization of feminist ideas, gay rights, etc.) Most radfems are truscum or transmedicalist, but not all are.

All TERFs are also gender-critical. "Gender-critical" people are bio-essentialist, but they go a step further to say that gender identity is a meaningless term, and that biological sex is the sole basis of oppression. However, one can be gender-critical and still support trans people if one is a transmedicalist. GC transmeds believe that trans people are still oppressed in society according to their biological sex, not their gender identity, but that social/physical transitioning is acceptable as a treatment for the mental disorder known as gender dysphoria.

Neither trans-exclusionism nor radical feminism is inherently transphobic or hateful toward transgender people. To differentiate a regular trans-exclusionist from a TERF, ask yourself if the person fits the radfem beliefs outlined above. If not, they aren't a TERF.

Now that all of that is covered, we can talk about the last couple types of exclusionism I want to touch on -- asexual exclusionism and aromantic exclusionism. These almost always come together as a package called aro/ace-exclusionism or aspec-exclusionism, but it is technically possible to be ace-exclusionist and not aro-exclusionist (or vice versa), though I've never personally met someone with such beliefs. Aspec-exclusionists believe that aspec people should not be included in the LGBT community because the lack of sexual or romantic attraction is a completely separate struggle and involves separate experiences than having attractions that exist, but are not heterosexual. Some more extreme aro/ace exclusionists strongly gatekeep aromanticism and asexuality. These ones don't believe in microlabels on the "aro spectrum" or "ace spectrum" such as demisexual or grayromantic. They maintain the belief that if someone has sexual attraction (regardless of whether they actually pursue people sexually) then they are not asexual, and if someone feels romantic attraction at all (even if they don't pursue romantic relationships) they are not aromantic.

Aro/ace-exclusionists, regardless of their beliefs on aromantic and asexual spectrums or microlabels, are not inherently aphobic. They only want aromanticism and asexuality to be separated from the rest of the LGB or LGBT community, and treated as their own distinct identities.

I hope this post was informative, and if anyone has feedback on anything I should edit, they should let me know in replies. Regardless of your beliefs, if you actually read this whole post or even just scrolled to the bottom, I'd like to offer a sincere thanks for bearing with me thus far. If you are an inclusionist or otherwise disagree with the things in the post, but you read it anyway, I have a lot of respect for your willingness to hear opinions other than yours rather than blindly blocking out everything you disagree with.

No matter who you are, I hope you have a great day. <3

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