fascinating that the biphobes, who say that BG3 companions are not accurate as bisexuals/pansexuals, literally haven’t played the game!! they don’t know the characters or who they flirt with and choose to sleep with.

a textpost said that everyone is allowed to play the game as they want and romance characters with a character of any gender and one person commented that OP is a homophobe and Astarion “would be the biggest gay if not for making everyone playersexual.” I clicked on the username and they have a post stating “will buy that game just to play as the furry albino elf and have homophobes watch him get fucked by every dude” ok. sounds fun, I will do the same, I’ll simply also fuck every women. but no.when not everyone is playersexual, 80% of them just end up straight. the remainder mostly still bi and they would deny the bisexuality of those few as well. why do they feel so comfortable attacking bisexuality that they will even comment on bi characters when they are unfamiliar with a given piece of fiction

For the anon talking about how they hate how over exaggerated a character is. I am not trying to start hate or anything, but if you don't like the way how someone portrays the character, just stop reading it. Some people don't delve deep, they just want to write fanfics for fun they're not going to make sure it's 100% the characters VERY complex personalities. Or the way how they view a character is different from their beliefs. I've gotten this message before and I am TIRED of it

I think it's a good time to talk about this because I've been thinking about bringing the topic up for a while. To begin with, let's clear something between the two anons because I think it's a misunderstanding:

Note: Please read this, this is important.

Anon A is saying that they're sometimes bothered by how some fanfics and Aus have a different way of picturing character X, in other words, they don't really enjoy it when a character is bring mischaracterized

Anon B (this anon) is saying that if you're bothered by a fic because you don't like how they're characterizing an specific character, then you don't have to read it.

Let me say that both of these anons are right, yet to think that their ideas are the opposites of each other, is totally wrong. In other words they both have a point, but I guess their points needs a stronger a better way of being explained in order to avoid any further dramas and misunderstandings.

Why am I doing this? Because I've seen -enough- of it. After the twst character analyses, aruges toward the mischaracterizations in this fandom became a thing, it's been causing some issues and arguments between the fans and it's mainly because of how sides fails to explain their points clearly.

Though I didn't really receive any rude asks/comments regarding myself the matter I can still how some fans feel attacked, offended or called out by character analysis posts or have the NERVE to attack or offend others with their own perspective on characters and try to force others into accepting them.

Enough with drama, I'm sick of it. I'm going to explain this as clearly as I can, hopeful that this would at least lessen the chance of having to go through another drama regarding the mischaracterization issue.

1) The concept of FANfiction

First off, the fanfiction itself; what is a fanfiction? What type of writing is considered to be a fanfic? What is it even used for? These are the questions we all need to answer before getting to know the world of fanfic.

Just as its name explains, it's fan + fiction. It's the result of the fan's creativity and imagination taking place in a fictional plot, something that hasn't happened with the original characters and he original story. The fans' imagination is often far beyond the plot which the original story/series/book offers, yet this isn't going to hold fans back from imagining it. Fanfiction is the way of giving yourself (or others) the specific and plot with the original and canon version isn't going to give you, in other words it's a way of getting what you wish to see through a story but this time, it's you who'd decide what will happen.

You are the one who decides how characters will be, you are the one who decides how and where this story happens and you are the one to choose how this story must come to an end. It's all about your own imagination and creativity, which enables you to have power over everything about your own story and fanfiction, everything (In expection gor than legal issues including claiming the original character as yours). You have the power, and you choose how it should be.

2) Fanfiction and mischaracterization

This was mainly the most brought up issue in the recent Twst drama, mischaracterization through writings. Many were saying how they find this annoying and nerve-wrecking, but no one really talked about how mischaracterization comes to life.

Let me tell you, as long your writing is a fanfic, there is a 70% chance of mischaracterizing the plot or the characters and there's nothing wrong with it, that's just how fanfiction works! It isn't supposed to be canon, it is fanon and only fanon. Everything that happens is fictional and fanon based, in other words, it's the fan who decides what should happen in a fanfiction and how it's supposed to be!

One of the Fanfiction's best purposes is giving the fandom a chance to mischaracterize! To write the characters the way they wish them to be and not necessarily the way they truly are. Fanfiction allows us to imagine and create something that isn't true, so let me clear my point here: It's totally okay to change the characters' personalities in your fanfics! As the writer, you have the right to do so, and since writing a fanfic must be for your own pleasure in the first place, no one can stop you from imagining whatever you want! No one can jump out and say stuff like "YOU CAN'T MISCHARACERTIZE A CHARACTER IN A FANFICTION" because that'd be super lame. It's your own fanfiction, your story, your creation and you're free to mischaracterize if that's how you like it to be! And if anyone doesn't like that, remember that they don't have to read that.

3)What is the problem?

Look, we've been going through some drama because of the recent character analyses of twst fandom, and I'd like to explain why. First off, note that I think both sides of the argument have been wrong and I'm going to talk about both of them.

Let me begin with a small example: It's been argued that based to what we've seen from Leona's personality so far, he doesn't seem to be the type to love healthily or even easily fall for anyone. Some of the fans seemed to be offended by the statement and said that "They still want their Leona fluff no matter what everyone else says" okay okay, this is the problem I was talking about: Saying that canon Leona doesn't seem to be much of a fluffy lion or a sweet lover isn't equal to forbidding the fans from writing fluffs for him or picturing him as a adorable and gentle lover! No one has the right to hold fans back from appreciating and enjoying what they like! But it's important to know what exactly is happening.

I'll talk about some crucial points you need to know about character analyses and how it's different from a fanfic in part (4), but before that, let me continue to give some examples of the recent argues and how each of the sides were wrong.

A) You enjoy reading fluffy Malleus content but character analyses have been saying that he isn't as soft and cute as you'd expected him to be. Does this mean that you can no longer ask for wholesome Malleus content or enjoy reading them? -> Of course not! You're still free to read/imagine/write whatever you like with Malleus! No one has the right to tell you what to do, and character analyses aren't meant to be a way to hold you back from enjoying what you like! If you're enjoying something, go for it! In this fanon world no one can accuse you for not following the canon interpretations!

B) You've spent a rather long time getting to know Ace and his canon personality, and you really like the way he is! But by reading fanfics/ fandom's interpretations on him you can't help but to feel like they aren't giving his personality the justice he deserves, and aren't seeing the great and amazing character he truly is. Is it okay to feel upset about this? -> Just as I said, it's totally fine to have your personal interpretations of a character no matter how different the rest of the interpretations are! But the real question is: what should you do when you think fandom isn't doing a character justice? This would be answered in part D!

C) You are enjoying your personal ideas and headcanons with Idia and many are saying that your way of picturing him is so adorable! Does this necessarily mean that the canon Idia as well is like you describe him? -> Absolutely not! No matter how adorable an Au/headcanon is, everyone's free to enjoy it but you should remember that canon ≠ fanon. You are totally free to imagine whatever you'd like! But keep this in mind that you shouldn't insist on your ideas being necessarily canon!

D) You feel like many are mischaracterizing your favorite character and you don't like it, what should you do? -> Well to begin with, remember that other fans have the right to characterize a character just as much as you do! You can't stop them from doing what they like or expect them to change the way they are because of how different the canon interpretation of a character might be. But you as well have a great chance to inspire the fandom by your own ideas! You can try to discuss how different the canon personality of your favorite character is and even try to turn that into a character analysis! This way you'd not only avoid causing any drama because of disagreeing with someone's way of picturing your favorite character, but you will also have a chance to present your personal ideas and characterizations to the fandom in a friendly and polite way!

E) You don't like how an author is characterizing some of the boys, what should you do? -> Easy solution, don't read it. Let me tell you, I have gone through this a lot and do you know what I do whenever I read/see something that doesn't match my tastes and expectations? I keep scrolling! That's all, I don't have to like it, but I don't have to read it either! 😀

F) You're an author and a writing request is asking you to write for a character in a way you just can't or don't want to write because that goes totally against your idealistics and ideas on a character, for example: You just can't write something really wholesome and fluffy for Leona because you can't imagine him being like that, what should you do? -> It's obvious, then don't write it! You have the right to choose what you'd like to write and how you like to picture a character no matter what others think. If you want to picture Leona as an emotional and soft boy, it's totally okay! If you want to picture him as a cold-hearted and mean prince, again it's totally alright! Remember, just like fans you have the right to picture and characterize the characters the way you want to, and no one can tell you otherwise!

G) You've read a character analysis and you realize that you've been mischaracterizing Floyd for a while, should you feel bad or sorry about it? -> Of course not!! Even if you were mischaracterizing him, keep this mind that there's nothing wrong with picturing Floyd as the way you want him to be! As long as you don't claim your headcanons to be canon and share stuff like "Canon from is definitely like this" or "Floyd would do that, canon! ^-^" it's totally alright to imagine him the way you like!

H) You saw someone saying something about Malleus that didn't match the canon interpretations of him. You quickly replied to then and corrected them about their wrong point of view and tell them how the real Malleus is, which kinda led to and argument between you and the person, did you do the right thing? -> Absolutely not! Attacking others out of nowhere and without any context isn't the right way of introducing the canon characterizations to the fandom! Even if you were right, keep this in mind that the other person has the right to picture Malleus or any other character the way they want them to be so if you want to correct them or try to get to know the canon character interpretations, you should do that from the logical and polite way.

I) Someone wrote a character analysis for Idia and said how they find it so annoying when people who refer to Idia as "Baby" and "uwu beanie". You often refer to Idia as baby or cutie yourself and the context of that analysis/general post some how got to you. You feel lowkey attacked and offended, did the original poster say the right thing? -> No, matter what the context is or how accurate and well-written that analysis was, directly calling people who have a certain way of picturing a character "Annoying" is rude no matter how you think of it. Even if the original poster were right about Idia not being UWU, their way of wording their sentence wasn't really pleasant; keep this, in mind that everyone in the fandom is free to picture Idia as they like and it doesn't even matter if you don't like it or not! If you're going to write an analysis/essay regarding a character's personality, remember that you should prove your point and disagree with opposite opinions through logical reasoning and explaining your point, NOT by offending and attacking other ideas by savage contexts like "You have to stop saying that Idia is like this", "I hate it when people say Idia is like this", " It's so annoying to see people saying Idia is like this... "

4) What's with the character analyses then?

There's a difference from the canon and fanon interpretations of a character, this is a truth which cannot be denied. But it's important to remember that just because a canon interpretation of a character exists, you can no longer enjoy the fanon interpretations!

Even I, for example, enjoy picturing someone like Malleus as an purely evil being like Maleficent herself because I enjoy seeing him as a perfect figure for "Mister of all Evil", but in my Malleus analysis post I explained how we should NOT think that Malleus is nothing but pure evil or a heartless monster! See, this is the difference I've been talking about. I'm pretty well-familiar with the canon Malleus, but I'm also enjoying the my own fanon Malleus and I know that the Evil Malleus I admire is a fanon one, not the canon one!

The thing is, character analyses aren't meant to be a way to hold anyone back from enjoying their fanon interpretations or imagining what they like, they aren't call out posts either. They are simply a way of getting to know the characters as if you're getting to know one of your irl friends. You come to think of them, see how deep their personalities are and get to learn more about them!

It's true that reading a character analysis might make you realize that you've been somehow mischaracterizing a character but this, isn't anything to be sorry or frustrated about! Character analyses are written to learn us more about our favorite characters, or as I like to name it, they want to show us that they're a lot more that we may imagine them to be!

Now, you may wonder how can we write a good character analysis without getting out of the line, offending anyone or giving out any cheap information?

I, personally, am pretty strict when asked to do a character analysis. Doesn't matter if I like the character or not, I'd try to judge them nonetheless. You HAVE to talk about both good features and bad features, and you must strictly avoid your analysis from getting personal; you have to make sure that your personal thoughts, feelings and emotions regarding a character aren't effecting your analysis. You shouldn't be writing it in a way to show off with your analytical ideas either.

Some people think coming off as rude would make them sound valid and acceptable, or they might just be used to being a little offensive in general, but as I explained in part 3-I, I won't recommend using any harsh or mean languages at all. Let me note that your way of wording your ideas is crazily important and if you're not careful enough with what you say and how you describe your ideas, your post would be not only be not much helpful as an analysis but also a cause of more drama and arguments. Also, keep this in mind that even the best of character analyses can't totally catch the characters' personalities correctly because we do not own them! Twisted wonderland's characters are a property of aniplex and neither me not anyone else in this fandom has the right to claim what a character is 100% like unless Disney officially releases those details!

Writing character analyses can be hard, from finding enough of hints to defend your point to choosing the right Grammer and way of speaking to avoid any further misunderstandings. But remember, those who write character analyses have no right to attack anyone because of them (They can oppose to different opinions of course, opposing ≠ attacking ), but keep this in mind that readers have no right to attack then because of their analysis either! See, that's a two-sided relationship. Both of the, sides have to learn to respect, both of the sides should, know, their boundaries and both of the sides have to be respectful!

Warning: When I say you're free to do or imagine whatever you wish to do, know that posting and sharing writings too has its own rules. Make sure to put the proper warnings, and avoid using any taboo or clearly impolite and sometimes, illegal concepts such as incest, pedophilia, etc.

I actually had a lot more I wanted to say regarding the matter but I'm keeping it short, because I know that writing too much would make this boring and pretty hard to read. Hope that it's clear enough and avoid the possible future misunderstandings and arguments regarding the matter. Please, this isn't even about twst, it's about learning to respect each other it's about real life. Having people read THIS is a lot more important than having them read my character analyses or writings.

Do you think someone can be queer and still queer bait? I think Harry really is bi, but something about the way he does things regarding his sexuality and ‘support’ of the queer community still to me seems very manufactured and done for money and attention. Like sure he waves around the flag on stage and hints around about stuff, but what exactly does he do besides that? What issues has he spoken on? What exactly does he fight for? What has he taken a stand on? How does waving a flag help if you aren’t doing anything else? And sure he may date men in private but it’s like the same damn thing with him for years, wave the flag on stage, but actually date a woman, make some statement that fans interpret as him being gay, but then stunt with a woman, wear a dress or traditionally “feminine” clothes and get people talking about him possibly being trans, but talks about sleeping with women. It just rubs me wrong and I’m tired of it. And I don’t believe it’s “big bad management” closeting him like some people want to believe. Harry is not a baby and he knows this stuff gets people talking about him and he makes money that way. He willingly chooses to do this stuff. I totally get what Billy Porter was complaining about. I think if Harry finally came out, his family, work colleagues, and queer fans would praise him from here to the mountains. He wouldn’t have to worry about getting disowned or struggling like some people would so why can’t he just be honest? Either he knows people would initially be excited about it and then lose interest because (unfortunately) there isn’t much else people talk about regarding him other than his looks, clothes or who he sleeps with, OR maybe he isn’t even really queer. Which one is it? Because all of this seemingly performative stuff he does and making people wonder is he or isn’t he gets old after a while. It’s all doing the bare minimum but not really doing anything at all.

I get it. It's frustrating. I feel similarly and the only thing keeping me from being entirely angry over it is the belief I hold that he's bi, or part of the community to some degree, and even that might be naive or a stretch.

I think it's possible to queer bait if you're queer, at least to some degree. It would have to be a case of you have absolutely no intention of ever coming out, which I worry might be the case with Harry. Not that he should be forced to come out at all, and that's where part of the problem lies. He shouldn't be forced to come out but in my opinion, he should in turn be mindful that some of his actions could be harmful towards the LGBTQ+ community. And I don't mean harmful as in it's the most important thing, because there are far more pressing matters, but it's certainly not helpful.

I don't think Harry's problem lies with his clothing, however. A cis man can wear a dress without identifying as trans, just like a cis woman can wear a suit without identifying as trans. Harry most likely identifies to some degree as metrosexual, although I'm fairly certain that term applies to straight men only. But technically speaking, Harry is straight, at least to the general public. He hasn't identified otherwise. And I know there's the argument that he said he doesn't like to label himself, which is true, but unfortunately that only adds to the sexual ambiguity if you read it as such.

Queer baiting is very common with celebrities - it's not something that's exclusive to Harry, and I also don't think a lot of people are aware of what queer baiting looks like. Billie Eilish was accused of it from her "Lost Cause" video and posting a picture with the caption "I love girls". Ariana Grande was accused of it through her lyrics in "break up with your girlfriend". Calvin Klein/Bella Hadid was accused of queer baiting through an ad where Bella kisses another female. JK Rowling was accused of it by claiming a couple of her characters in Harry Potter identified as gay, even though it was never explicitly said in the books. Harry is accused of it through his "Medicine" lyrics as well as his "Lights Up" music video (amongst other things). Many TV shows and movies also queer bait by promoting LGBTQ relationships but then those having not much presence in the actual product.

In the end, maybe Billie or Ariana is bisexual and we just don't know it. Maybe JK Rowling always had the intention of having gay characters in Harry Potter but only revealed it recently. Maybe Harry is bisexual or gay and just isn't ready to come out. Listen, it's celebrities' information to have - they don't owe it to us. But as the conversation opens up about legitimate representation and statements for likes, it’s fair for many to want answers. The LGBTQ+ needs support, and queerbaiting is not the right way to go about it.

I know, in my heart, Dean is bi. But it's killing me that we won't ever hear them commit to bisexual Dean because "it was left open to interpretation" and the fact that commenting on it, either positively or negatively, will hurt the CW.

If they say he isn't, then the accusations of queerbaiting don't go away. It's just magnified. It does diminish Cas's ending because letting himself die after confessing his love adds to 'bury your gays' and no one wants to see a gay man die for a straight man who doesn't feel the same. They lose any credibility and a lot of fans stop watching and engaging through official channels.

If they say yes, then they have to admit that it was a matter of deciding not to fill in the blanks and purposefully letting a character (and actor) be misrepresented and, again, queerbaiting doesn't go away. We get textual confirmation the ending was messed with (possibly even before the season plot was written - Dean must die and do nothing until Sam arrives in Heaven). The people who are angry CW "gave in" and "ruined a character by making him not straight" leave because they feel shafted as 'true fans' (which is bullshit i don't even want to get into).

The fact that the network isn't even touching that, rather having Misha interact with the fans while he is still in the process of grieving and hurting (the day before a holiday) where he doesn't have the full picture is just nuts!

It's rancid nuts!

Like I feel the CW won't ever admit it did anything wrong on its own without twin sets of pressure squeezing the truth from them. Us below and Warner Media above. And if this happens there are only a few, worthy actions they can take towards rectifying this:

- An apology, public or on social, via press release or whatever someone needs to say sorry for profiting off of queer voices and giving nothing substantial in return

- Company shake up; the only way to commit to doing better (or at least signaling they mean it) is by restructuring how the company is run top-down and who are in positions of power

- Sell the rights to Supernatural; it won't ever see profit in the C*W's hands ever again, and the longer they stay silent the truer this statement is. Let someone else hold onto it so, when the time comes, a reboot/revival will be done right (and it might be soon if acquired by the right people)

- A virtual script reading of an uninfluenced series finale; even if covid was to blame because of this, let us be the judge; the cast all got together to watch an episode live, they can do the same and show us how the finale was supposed to look; it's the most cost effective way of fixing their "mistakes"

Like even if the first three don't happen, the C*W should still do the last one. At this point it is the only way to save face and truly make it so covid was to blame, and they can keep up the lie.

Anyway, just putting this out there because the whole yo-yo of this situation has really thrown me this past week and messed with me and I am running on Empty.

KURIN’S FOLLY : World of Sea : Part 15 of 15

KURIN’S FOLLY

Part 15

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

23,699 words

© 2020 by Glen Ten-Eyck

writing begun  2006

All rights reserved.

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

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Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.  They may reblog the story provided that all author and copyright information remains intact.  They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fiction is actively encouraged.

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New to the story?  Read from the beginning.  Part 1 is here

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The whole crew watched in amazement as the Great Sea Dragon swam lazily toward the ship, her long serpentine neck cutting a wake larger than the ship’s.  The birds of Sea swarmed peacefully about their creator, even perching on her head and spines.

Innocently, Kurin asked, “Would there be some other reason that you don’t want to make a boat with this glue?  It’s the left overs from the contest and you did make it.  Master Juris has expressed full confidence in your work.”

Yoram got a sinking look as he realized how badly he was snared.  He pointed at Juris and exclaimed, “It was his doing!  He was my Shop Master and he said to make the glue that way!  It won’t hold.  He said to put the soap in it and label it as number 1 panel glue.”  He ran down, saying, “Juris said it would make you look bad is all.  I didn’t think that he would let you actually go out in the boats.  When you did, and then needed to test the glue, I knew that we were caught.

“I’m sorry for all of it.  I should never have gone along with mislabeling the glue.  I’m sorry that I tried to hit you with the mallet.  I knew that I could never be a Master if it got out that I’d done something like that.”  He hid his face in his hands and sobbed.

Juris was trying to maintain his disdain for the whole proceeding with its attendant doubt of all the evidence, in the face of his wonder.  He had only seen Dari once before in his life.  In fact, he was one of the few who had seen all five of the Greatest of the Great Sea Dragons.

The problem that he saw was a simple one.  Before she had gone to the Grandalor, Juris would have trusted Kurin above all others on Sea.  After she jumped ship, Kurin had made a fool of him in front of everyone.  It was bad enough that the Court had seen it.  Did the Great Dragons have to see him made a fool as well?  Now it was happening all over again.

She had just presented him with a simple, impossible choice in front of a court and here came a Great Sea Dragon to see his humiliation.  He settled for pretending that the entire plot was Yoram’s.  He pointed at his chosen victim and said bitingly, “After hearing Yoram confess to trying to murder Kurin, not once but twice, can you truly believe that I was a part of his plot?  He forged the tallow slate that was found planted in my quarters.  He mixed the glue and mislabeled it.

“I have a grudge against Kurin and admit it freely.  I have spoken out when I should not because of it.  Everything that I did was of a peaceful nature.  I am a man of passions but not violence.  Yoram showed his true colors when he attacked Kurin with a mallet in a clear attempt at violent murder.”

Yoram was struggling in the grip of his guards and trying to shout his innocence over Juris’ blatant accusation.

Juris continued as if the interruption was not happening.  “I did do things that on reflection I should not have done.  They have very properly cost me much.  I have lost my shop and my Mastery.  Possibly, I have lost my place on this ship.  I came to my senses too late.  I did wrong.  But murder?  Never.”

Alor clearly saw Juris’ brutal attempt to frame Yoram, who was certainly in deadly shallow water. She remembered the trial in the Dragon Sea all too well.  She remembered one thing in particular.  If asked, the Great Sea Dragons would provide testimony.  She turned and called, “Dari!  This is a trial concerning Juris.  Can you answer some questions for us?”

The five hundred foot creature swam close enough that her wake made the Longin rock gently and answered, “I know little of the matter under trial.  However, I can interpret for those who do.  The Longin’s Orca pod are totally familiar with every movement and word spoken aboard your ship.  That is their duty.”

Whales surfaced around the ship, rolling and swimming playfully as Dari spoke.  She concluded simply, “Ask what you will.  They understand you perfectly.  They simply cannot make your speech.  I will accurately translate what they reply.”

Alor nodded, accepting.  Juris jumped to his feet and exclaimed, “The Tenth Great Law requires us to accept the word of a Dragon.  Nobody contests that.  The Orca Whales, though, are but beasts.  We cannot accept their so-called statements for anything!”

Drawing back in distaste, Dari retorted, “You must take my word for this by the very Law that you spoke of.  The Orca Whales are quite as intelligent as you humans, perhaps a bit smarter.  Their memories are perfect and precisely detailed.  I personally shaped them so, two and three quarter million Gatherings ago.  We rely absolutely on their reports in the management this whole planet.”

Juris shrank visibly at Dari’s reply.  Alor asked, “For the record, first.  By what means do you follow events aboard our ship?”

A Whale whistled briefly.  Dari replied, “They use echo location and simple listening.”

Again Alor nodded.  Thinking for only a moment, she said, “A simple yes or no to this question, please.  Are you able to track the history of this tallow-slate from the last Gathering to now?”

A brief whistle was interpreted as, “Yes.”

“Then who all handled this tallow-slate, up to the moment when the search of Juris’ quarters brought it to my attention?”

Three of the Whales whistled for a few moments.  Dari said, “The apprentice Morgan was given the chore of recasting all of the tallow-slates for the boat shop.  Yoram took the renewed tallow-slate and used it for two and a half days. Master Juris took the tallow-slate and removed it to his quarters where he wrote on it.  After a talk with Yoram he erased the top line of writing.  After a talk with Kurin outside her shop, he erased the second line of writing.  Later, after another talk with Yoram he erased the next line of writing.  Then your search found the tallow-slate.”

Alor thought for a moment and said, “Juris had two conversations with Yoram in connection with this tallow-slate.  We have conflicting tales concerning those conversations.  In the first one, did Master Juris ask Yoram to make number 17 glue and label it number 1 glue?  Also, did he give Yoram any reason to believe that nobody would be hurt?”

Whales sang together for several seconds and Dari replied, “Yes, Master Juris did tell Yoram that he should add soap to the glue but not so much as for true number 17 glue.  Use about half that, Yoram was told.  The reason given was to be sure that the boats were beyond assistance when they came apart. I quote, ‘Then we’ll be quit of the little Ord once and for all.’”

Alor pursued her line of questions, “Did they consider the rest of the ship at all?”

Dari simply spoke, “This was covered in what the Orcas told me about the conversations.  Yes, they did consider the Longin.  They were of the opinion that there were enough who knew the mapping and navigation that the school could be recovered from ‘the terrible accident.’  As to the bankruptcy, they stated that the Longin’s creditors would have to extend their loans or lose everything.

“If I may be allowed an opinion with no basis but more than six hundred Gatherings of observation, the fleet would not extend those loans without solid collateral.  At present, the only collateral is the school and it would not exist without Kurin’s driving force.”

Downcast, Alor replied, “I am forced to agree.  Back on the track of the events, then.  From what you have said, both Master Juris and Yoram were well aware that they were attempting the murder of most of our students and Kurin as well. That is hard.”

The Great Sea Dragon extended a tentacle and touched Alor gently, saying, “I am well aware of that. As short as your lives are, we often get very attached to some of you.  In this case, Blind Mecat and I are very fond of both Kurin and Juris.

“That makes it very difficult when one tries so hard to slay the other.  Kurin has used every resource at her command to save not only Juris but this ship, too. Regrettably, in Juris’ case, it appears that Kurin has failed.  The court must still reach a verdict but I fear that you have little sea room.

“Normally, we Dragons are not allowed by our own law to interfere in human affairs.  Being asked for specific aid or testimony is not considered interference.  Juris could have succeeded in his plot and I would not have been allowed to interfere.”

“I will stand by within call for the rest of this voyage.  I need to observe the ecological consequences of your mapping school.  I also want to continue my conversations with Kurin.”  Dari slid silently under the water. Her location was given away by the flock of many species of birds circling amicably not far away.

Alor turned to the jury.  She needed a few breaths to gather her shaken thoughts.  “With the testimony of the Dragon Dari, I believe that the case against Juris and Yoram is complete.  I can see no possibility for acquittal.  You must decide their fates.  The principal victim of their schemes, Kurin herself, does not wish to see them die, though that is the penalty prescribed in the laws of the Naral fleet.”

The Officers and Masters were looking at each other uneasily.  They all knew both Juris and Yoram. Captain Mord tried to put off the inevitable by asking, “Alor, could we include exile from the Naral fleet in our deliberations?  We could let them go in a boat the way that Kurin proposed.”

Regretfully, Alor pointed out, “That is not possible, now.  Before the trial or before the case was concluded, it could have been done.  You must consider only guilty or not.  For the attempt to murder in cold blood, there are no mitigating circumstances allowed.”

Captain Mord stood and led the jury away to consider their verdict.  Kurin was looking at the glue blocks with which she had secured Yoram’s confession.  Tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes.

The jury returned almost as swiftly as they had left.  Captain Mord spoke.  “Is the Log of the Longin ready to record the verdict of the jury?”

“It is,” Alor replied.

“Then the defendants must stand to hear the judgment of the court,” Captain Mord stated.  Both Juris and Yoram stood.

Captain Mord pronounced, “Juris, by a jury of your fellow Masters and officers, you have been found guilty on all counts.  Yoram, the same jury has found you guilty of the attempted murder charges.  For you both, the sentence required by the law of the Naral fleet is death.

“Your convictions and the evidence upon which they are based will be reviewed by the Captains Council of the Naral fleet.  If that review goes against you, the Council will set the time and manner of execution.”

Lissa realized that Kurin’s upset was at more than just the verdict.  Holding Kurin close, she asked softly, “What is it?  Kurin, you have done all that could have been done.  This isn’t your fault.”

Burying her face in Lissa’s chest, Kurin said swallowing around her grief, “Exile.  I didn’t even think of it, really.  I was so clever with those glue blocks that they had to refuse it.  Now they are on the reef and I put them there.”

High Cloud detached himself from the flock celebrating Dari’s presence and dove into the sea. Climbing out, he came straight to Kurin, accidentally giving Lissa a few small cuts as he landed on Kurin’s shoulder.  The still flopping skelt in his beak was being expertly stuffed into Kurin’s mouth before she realized what was happening.

The interlude gave Lissa time to think.  She helped to hold the fish while she said sternly, “Kurin! You did all that you could.  When a choice must be made between a whole ship and a single person, the ship must come first.  Juris tried to destroy not only you, but this ship as well. You saved the Longin.  Trying to save Juris too, when he was so intent on her destruction was folly.”

-THE END-

<==PREVIOUS

The first comic: Maturity or rather the lack thereoff.

Something I commonly saw within the last decade was people arguing that animation has reached a new peak by the amount of quality in storywriting put into them and some even claiming cartoons have become more mature, particularly compared to shows of the 80s and 90s. Dobson too joined the trend and as such made this little comic in 2015 titled “Mature”, in which he argues that cartoons for children are more mature and handle serious subjects better than any media tagged with an r-rating or not following the format of animation.

  While I admit that the comic is not the most offensive and insulting thing Dobson has ever created when soapboxing about nerd/american culture, I do think “Mature”  actually in composes quite a good insight in how Dobson does not understand concepts of storytelling and overhypes the achievements and merits of children entertainment to a degree that is hurting the “cause”. Which greatly annoys me as a fan of storytelling and animation in general and paints Dobson as incompetent in the field of work (cartoonist, comic writer/artist) he tries to engage in. And I can bring this lack of understanding by Dobson down by just one simple question:

What exactly counts as a mature subject here?

 Dobson randomly accuses any form of fiction that is not a children’s cartoon or comic to have no idea how to approach a “mature” subject, but he can’t even give an example of what he defines by this term.

See, for me a mature subject is e.g. an social, emotional or political issue we as humans can correlate to in the real world. Either as a result of personal experience or a bigger picture in our history and culture (such as racism, poverty, existential dreed, personal/emotional growth, any form of oppression etc.) Something that does not only drive a story forward as a source of conflict or a character’s backstory/arc for the sake of entertainment, but may even make us think afterwards.

 And as much as I like cartoons, I do not think this is something children cartoons do most of the time.

 And before I get accused of thinking cartoons are only something for kids or that a thoughtful story can not be told via the medium of animation, let me put a few things into perspective.

Unlike Dobson, I do not have an educational background in animation. However, I grew up with a lot of cartoons, animated movies and comics from all over the world and thanks to the wonders of the internet read up here and there on the different ages of animation and certain tidbits in what went into the making of certain works of fiction and why they may have been a huge thing in the time periods they emerged in.

As such I know that the medium of animation can be used to not only create “child appropriate” content, but also movies like Barefoot Gen, Fritz the Cat, Felidae, Animal Farm and so on, which tackled themes of social issues, political worldviews and personal/historical tragedies.

 Then there is the fact, that depending on the culture, there are very different interpretations in what can be considered “child appropriate” in certain parts of the world and therefore what themes a cartoon may tackle. Like how in European children cartoons such as Alfred J. Quack there was a story arc resembling the rise of Adolf Hitler in power, to tell about the heroes of the show working in the underground against an obvious fascist regime. Or how in certain Japanese children shows the subject of death can be rather common, while in American cartoons just mentioning the word “die” seems a red flag to some studio executives. Lastly, a lot of early animation, (particularly western animation) did not even start off as something targeted primarily at children. Animation started off as a technique to tell a story through “moving pictures” and some of the first animated shorts ever had a huge fanbase of adults and children. “Snow White”, Disney’s first animated movie back in 1933 was a technical marvel at the time. A movie we nowadays mostly consider a children’s movie with a slightly dull story compared to other Disney outings, was back then a risk that earned Disney multiple Oscars and was appreciated more by adults than it was by children, despite being based on a fairy tale. A type of story mostly considered “appropriate” for kids.  

 What I am trying to say is, that I am aware of how not all children cartoons are the same and can vary in terms of “maturity”. Something I think Dobson can’t, because he also can’t see that there is a huge variety of “children” cartoons.

 Despite his background and claims to consider animation an art, Dobson has shown a huge lack of knowledge or admiration for shows/movies that do not fit into the specific mold of “western animation primarily targeted for children and airing on american television”.

And that is not a claim I make half-heartedly. I have done research on the guy, I know how he likes to brag when he considers he found a great cartoon or something interesting. So I find it telling that aside of nostalgia for certain 80s and 90s cartoons we all know, Dobson’s recommendations and taste in shows seems to be primarily focused on just the most recent stuff everybody else likes/a very small pool of rather generic shows. I am not saying he should be contrarian on principal and e.g. dislike Gravity Falls, but he lacks initiative to look out for new and old stuff himself.

I in fact remember when he asked twitter first if he should give Wander over Yonder, one of the best cartoons of the last decade, a chance, cause it seemed he was too chicken to have an opinion on his own.

Then again, weirdly enough, Dobson actually tends to be contrarian for the sake of it, till someone he respects or sucks up to tends to have a different opinion on a show/movie. For example, while he acts like Frozen is a great movie franchise and defends the second movie to the point he becomes anti-feministic when a woman has a different opinion than him on it, he actually gave the first movie a terrible review on deviantart back in 2014. Accusing it of “same face syndrome” and a shame to the name of Disney. Obviously that was also before the hashtag #GiveElsaaGirlfriend became popular and he went so far as to hint he thinks an incest ship with Anna was great. And Legend of Korra? According to first deviantart posts by him garbage. Which was an opinion swiftly changed the moment Korrasami became popular in the fandom by season 3.

 The point I want to make with this digression is, that there are a lot of past actions by him hinting on the fact that Dobson kinda despises animation, when it does not fit within a very narrow niche of things he likes. Further indicated by his disdain for “adult” animated shows or hostility towards foreign animation, except the occasional movie by Studio Ghibli for example.

 Because of this lack of a bigger picture, I do not think Dobson is aware how in terms of story, cartoons can heavily vary. And when it comes to mature subjects, you can’t really engage with them if you lack a story carrying them in turn. Let’s look again at the comic. What cartoon characters do you see in it, when Dobson talks about how he believes children cartoons “treat these (non-defined) mature subjects with FAR more respect than the hardest “dark, grim and gritty” stories”?

Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony, three main characters of Spongebob, Steven Universe, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Blossom from the Powerpuff Girls and Mickey Mouse. You want my opinion on them? None of them are from any cartoons tackling mature subjects in a huge manner.

 However, they are from great shows. (Well, everyone but Steven, but I explain that later.)

See, this is where putting cartoons into perspective within the vast history of animation, comes in handy. Cause looking at them it is undeniable that people put effort into these shows. Effort in the animation and the writing in order to create an entertaining product, decent enough that not only little kids can enjoy it as a mindless distraction, but even older people can find merit in it, thanks to characters with decent personality, good humor, world building and even an engaging story. But all of that doesn’t make these shows or any story necessarily tackle a “mature subject”. Sure, the latest incarnation of My little pony was not as saccharine as its predecessor but rather cartoony as a good 90s show, but that doesn’t mean the new version is the Schindler’s List of animation (excuse the hyperbole). Same for the other cartoons, with Dobson also not acknowledging the fact that Spongebob e.g. had quite some dips in quality over the years (and even made pretty awful jokes about serious subjects such as suicide) or that Steven Universe, while tending to tackle mature subjects for its story (like trauma, war, abuse, self esteem issues, racism, rape and homosexuality) has failed multiple times over its run (even back when this comic was made) to treat these subjects not just as plot and drama points, but also with enough respect within the narrative, to the point a lot of former fans of the show turned their back on it, cause they had enough of the issues they could relate to being simplified and resolved in a cookie cutter manner so Rebeca Sugar could tell a whimsical story about gay space rocks and forgiveness.

 Let us not even forget the fact, that while there is a huge number of cartoons with decent writing and value to them (and that those were not only created within the last 10 years or so), there is also just a lot of garbage out there that counts as “kids animation”. Cartoons and movies that were written with not a care in the world and at times outright more mean spirited as some of the stuff Dobson likely hates in life action. Are you telling me those toilet humor driven garbage piles of creativity are mature?

 The point I try to make is, Dobson’s GENERAL statement that kids cartoons tackle mature subjects better than other form of media, is factually wrong, because a lot of shows don’t even try to be mature in the first place. Which however does not mean, there aren’t attempts made at being mature or tackle a mature subject.

 Growing up with cartoons since the 90s, I saw quite a few cartoons once in a while having episodes with themes to them that were surprisingly “dark”, dramatic or related to issues I and other kids could also see and relate to in the real world. Bullying going out of control, eating disorders, school violence (even school shootings), dealing with the passing of a loved one, to name a few basic ones. Gargoyles and Hey Arnold were two very important cartoons for me in that regard, with Gargoyles showing me how dramatic a good action cartoon could be when compared to other action cartoons at the time (like Ninja Turtles) and Hey Arnold episodes like “Helga on the Couch” giving me a rather somber look into what “therapy” looks like closer to reality, while normally being a show with the slice of life adventures of a kid in the big city.

And I do highly appreciate that nowadays there are more cartoons doing ongoing storyarcs and as a result of actually having more drama to them, adding tension and character development to their plots. Things we did not quite have to the degree we have nowadays back then in the average show. But it is debatable if those things are equal to “mature subjects” such as racism, abuse or trauma. Cause at the end of the day, a lot of kids cartoons tend to only scratch the surface of those things in order to flesh out a plot, instead of making the plot about those issues. Which at times is even for the best if you ask me. Cause we should not forget, these shows and movies are made for kids. And because of their age, a lot of kids lack at times the knowledge and experience in life to properly understand the themes and subjects some people may try to convey with their work. Particularly when you want to tackle subjects such as trauma, abuse and war which lets be honest, a lot of people can’t even comprehend in their complexity as adults. So how are kids supposed to comprehend them? One way, in my opinion, is by simplifying them and turning them into part of a narrative instead of the main focus of the narrative. But that in itself doesn’t always work and can have negative consequences in multiple ways. For example by making the story suddenly non engaging, delivering the subject in such a manner that people can get the wrong message of what you are trying to say or (at worst) simplifying it to such a degree, it becomes outright offensive to others.

A good example that comes to my mind for that would be how Captain Planet back in the 90s tried to tackle the subject of AIDS in one episode. On one hand, considering how the disease was a big deal back then but no one openly talked about it, you kinda have to give credit to Captain Planet to tackle it. On the other hand, is a subject such as a deadly disease that back then was barely researched and killed millions, really something you want to tackle on an overly preachy (but considering whose company produced it, also very hypocritical) kids show, where most of the time the solution to a problem was not even grounded in reality? And spoilers, the episode treated AIDS not even as the big deal it was, but as something the villain would exploit to spread a rumor on the ill kid, because that somehow equaled a chance to pollute the world more. Not really mature, if you ask me.

 What all of this ranting is boiling down to, is that Dobson failed to make a case for how kids animation is able to tackle mature subjects, by not putting his opinion in the bigger context of what animation is/can be and what he means by the term “mature theme”. All he did was just indirectly soapbox that he thinks every other form of media is incapable of being about a serious issue, in doing so also insulting the art of storytelling in itself by disregarding anything not expressed in funny pictures specifically made for children or manchildren on tumblr who want to act they are the big boys, cause a cartoon horse made them feel sad.

He did so by making a very weak argument, not being able to present it in a manner that was hard to debunk and by drawing a comic in which everything looks surprisingly lifeless and like the least amount of quality and effort (things I argued can make a great cartoon) was put into it.

 Which ironically, is the total opposite, of being mature.

And lastly, can’t believe I have to say that, but Dobson, the Pokemon’s name is Butterfree, not Butterfry. Butterfry is what you get when you make a statue of a Futurama character made out of something you put on your bread.

A Study On Confirmation Bias

So. Recently. A new adaptation of a Hamilton song into the VM canon has been making the rounds. Now, full disclaimer, I’m not a fan of the full musical that exists. I acknowledge that the singers and writers are extremely talented and brought joy to many, many people. What they did is impressive and while it is not for me, I am not going to drag them for doing it in the first place. I generally liked what I heard when it comes to the voices, the lyrics were damn clever, but I just can’t divorce the songs from the originals in my mind, so listening to the whole thing would not have brought me joy, so I didn’t.

Still. Great accomplishment. Great performances. Great work. Nothing but love and respect for all the people involved.

However, with this newest song, I take… issue.

Second disclaimer: Vex is my undisputed favorite character. Yeah, I know, and I’ve been so subtle about it. So my interpretations of her are generally a lot more charitable than the ones found in common fandom discourse are.

And that’s going to matter for my second point, but not so much for the first one. So. The new song. The lyrics.

 RAVEN QUEEN/(VAX):

Vax'ildan…

(Vex’ahlia)

Congratulations.

 Your sister's invented a new kind of stupid:

A touch before thinking it through kind of stupid,

A now she is dead, turning blue kind of stupid,

So, Vax, whatchu gonna do? ...kind of stupid.

 Let's review:

You chased a rumor a few, only two Sphinxes knew

And ran headlong to a crypt with a Beholder,

Which you all luckily slew,

But her eyes were on coin alone

So she abandoned you.

 Okay, so, simple fact checking for now. I know the writers have since published an explanation about how they forgot that Percy was the one to reach for the armor. And apparently they have also forgotten that Vax was being pulled out of a pit he was knocked into, something Vex with her 7 strength wasn’t exactly any help with, and that he was a) fine and b) already in the process of getting out of the pit without her help being needed in the first place, so she went to the coffin. To try and disarm a trap. Stupidly, apparently. I don’t exactly count any of that as abandoning or as doing anything particularly stupid, at least where Vex is concerned. She was the one to do the smart thing and check for traps, Percy was the one who set it off, something universally acknowledged in-universe by everyone involved. Including Vax, by the way.

So the conclusion from this is… That the writing team did not watch the scene before writing this song about it. Okay.

 So scared of what the Raven Queen might do with her,

But Greed's the only enemy she truly should have favored.

You'll give your life for hers no matter the cost?

I shouldn't dignify this hot shot with a response!

 So, yeah.

Congratulations.

 You're left with this tragedy.

Congratulations. (Vex’ahlia)

 (But perhaps you will take this sacrifice!)

Sacrifice?

 (The Ward languished in peace in this deep dark cavern;)

(A Champion is what you've needed.)

(I don't know much about revering gods,)

(But my bargaining should be heeded.)

 I’m pretty much fine with all of this. Well written and all that. It’s fine.

 (It doesn't wipe the stain of her blame away,)

 And here is the crux. Here is Vax endorsing the view of the Raven Queen. Stain. Blame. And that is important.

So the argument being made is that the opinions voiced are the opinions of the characters, and not of the creators. And that’s usually a good argument. Depiction vs. Endorsement. A plurality of viewpoints.

However, with Vax agreeing here and taken the narrative as presented on a factual level and on a… Evaluational? Word tells me that’s not a word. It should be. Judgmental?  Interpretational? That level, so both when it comes to the facts presented and the opinion about the facts presented, the only voices we have in this song are in agreement about Vex being stupid and greedy. There is no opposing viewpoint made. Vax defends all her other good qualities (and all the good things she has done for him, which is extremely in character, so kudos), but this point is never challenged.

Now I will challenge the extremely shallow reading of Vex being the greedy and stupid bitch of the group every time I see it. But that’s also not the point here.

Remember how we already established that the things Vex is specifically accused of in this song – bringing about her own demise – did not happen? And yes, it might very well be that the creators wrote this song being convinced of the events going down the way they described them in here. Honestly, that is very likely.

And they didn’t bother to check.

Didn’t bother to rewatch the scene

Because they were so convinced that what they remembered of it going down was correct; that Vex was being a greedy bitch and to blame for her own death. That includes forgetting all about the follow-up scenes with Percy getting clocked by Vax over this and presenting her an arrow after an evening of unbridled guilt and all, which is a whole lot to forget before writing about this moment, but that’s not exactly the point here, the point is confirmation bias.

And that’s what it is. They made a goddess express views about Vex they assumed were backed up by the facts in this situation, and they had Vax endorse those views in the song. Now you could Steelman this and say that Vax was down in his hole and didn’t see what happened, and the Raven Queen is trying to manipulate him. And that’s pretty neat, she’s a manipulative bitch and this is right in her wheelhouse.

However. That doesn’t work anymore after the creators came out and said they didn’t remember that it was actually Percy who touched the armor. That means they wrote all of this from the point of view that the characters were factually correct in their recollection of events. Meaning the writers were so convinced that Vex the greedy bitch brought this tragedy upon herself (and Vax) they saw no reason to double-check before writing this. Because of confirmation bias.

So the views expressed by the Raven Queen aren’t just the views held by the Raven Queen. It’s what the writing team behind this buys into as well. Probably subconsciously! I’m not here to accuse anyone of malicious intent! But if the writers behind this song weren’t on some level in agreement with the view that Vex is a greedy bitch who abandons Vax for coin and brings about her own demise, the song wouldn’t have turned out this way.

And the fact that the writers of this song aren’t the original team is pretty irrelevant, but let me address the statements made by the original writer, too: That they read over the lyrics and approved them, not because they were factually true, but emotionally true.

So they knew the facts presented were wrong, but they rang so true emotionally, that going with this is fine and just a reflection of the judgement of the characters and does not at all reflect the views the people involved here have on Vex, at all. Honestly, that series of youtube comments was supposed to be a clarification on how there’s no negative bias towards Vex here, but the song ringing emotionally true for them kind of just makes it worse.

The Problem With Canaries

A group of pro-Israel, anti-BDS students at a variety of college campuses issued a statement harshly criticizing the Canary Mission for hindering their efforts on campus and unjustly maligning fellow students. They wrote:

Canary Mission is an anonymous site that blacklists individuals and professors across the country for their support of the BDS movement, presumed anti-Semitic remarks and hateful rhetoric against Israel and the United States. 

As a group of conscientious students on the front lines fighting BDS on our campuses, we are compelled to speak out against this website because it uses intimidation tactics, is antithetical to our democratic and Jewish values, is counterproductive to our efforts and is morally reprehensible. 

This blacklist aggregates public information about students across the country under the guise of combating anti-Semitism. It highlights their LinkedIn profiles, Facebook pictures, old tweets, quotes in newspapers and YouTube videos. The site chronicles each student’s involvement with pro-Palestinian causes and names other students and organizations with whom the given student may be affiliated. 

We view much of the rhetoric employed to villainize these individuals as hateful and, in some cases, Islamophobic and racist. In addition, Canary Mission’s wide scope wrongfully equates supporting a BDS resolution with some of the most virulent expressions of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel rhetoric and activity.

The ADL initially supported the students, referring to Canary as "Islamophobic & racist". Critics quickly contested what, exactly, Canary did that was "Islamophobic & racist", and a day later the ADL backed off, apologizing for "overly broad" language. I want to talk through why I think objections to Canary as Islamophobic are potentially justified. But I want to do so in what I think is a more nuanced and specified way, because there really are interesting questions here regarding the ethics of counter-antisemitism (or counter-racism, or counter-Islamophobic) discourse that I think are being elided in the usual rush to back our friends and lambaste our enemies. Let's stipulate for sake of argument that Canary doesn't use specifically Islamophobic rhetoric (in the form of racial slurs, conspiratorial claims about creeping Sharia, and the like), and that in general the factual claims they make about the targeted persons (that they did say X or join group Y) are factually accurate. I'm open to the possibility that they do use such rhetoric or that their claims aren't factual (in which case the argument that they're Islamophobic becomes trivially easy). But I make the stipulation because the case I'm going to make doesn't depend on any such behavior by Canary. Instead, let's focus on what we might think of as Canary's strongest possible foundation: factual revelations of things the profiled individual has definitely said, or groups they have definitely joined, absent any additional commentary. Again, I'm not saying that this is, in fact, all or even most of what Canary does -- I'm saying that this sort of thing would presumably represents the formulation of Canary's mission that would be most resistant to a claim of Islamophobia. So. First, I do not generally think it is a smear or otherwise wrongful to simply republish a terrible thing somebody has said (with appropriate caveats about not taking things out-of-context, omitting apologies, etc.). For example, the other day Seth Mandel accused me of a "smear" and a "lie" towards him in the context of my column on sexist responses to Natalie Portman not attending to the Genesis Prize. The irony of Mandel's complaint was that he was actually never mentioned in the column at all; he only appears in the context of two of his tweets being republished, verbatim, with no additional commentary or interpretation directed towards him whatsoever. If you can be "smeared" simply by quoting your own words back to you, then I suggest that the problem lies inward. Moreover, I'd suggest that there actually is something important about revealing the prevalence of antisemitism that exists amidst certain social movements (on campus or not) -- if only because Jews are so frequently gaslit on this subject. Just this week, the Interfaith Center at Stony Brook University had to release a statement (cosigned by a wide range of campus Jewish, Christian, and Muslim groups) in solidarity with campus Hillel after a campus SJP member demanded that Hillel be expelled from campus and replaced with "a proper Jewish organization" (proper, the student confirmed, meaning anti-Zionist). This blog had already covered the Vassar College SJP chapter distributing literal (1940s-era) Nazi propaganda about Jews. These things happen, and there's something off-putting about claiming that it's a form of cheating or a smear to document it. Too many people think that naming and shaming antisemitism is by definition a witch-hunt. That cannot be right, and we should be very suspicious of political arguments which act as if it is right, or act as if the very act of accusing someone of antisemitism (or, for that matter, racism, or sexism, or Islamophobia) is dirty pool or foul play. So what accounts for my unease? Well, for one it might be the sense that college students, in particular, often say dumb things they regret, and there shouldn't be an entire website dedicated to spotlighting them and inviting people to berate them for it. How much one sympathizes with that point would seemingly correspond to how much one dislikes "call-out culture"; if you're not a huge fan of it (especially when it comes to young people not otherwise in the public eye) then Canary would seem to be one manifestation of a generally malign social trend. Another basis for objection might be the distinctively chad gadya character of many of Canary's entries. If one reads the site, very frequently a profiled individual is listed because he joined a group which hosts a speaker who supports an organization who bit the cat that ate the goat ... and so on. There's a very distinctive "guilt-by-association" character to what Canary does that I think is obviously objectionable, regardless of how you label it. And note how it resonates with the way blacklists are being deployed against Jews and Jewish groups right now (e.g., the announcement by several NYU student groups that they were boycotting a bevy of Jewish organizations -- including the ADL). Such calls very frequently proceed by similar logic: the group supports a program which hosts a speaker who said a thing ... so on and so forth. Such logic could be used  to ensnare essentially anyone who affiliates with anything -- which means in practice it must be deployed selectively to delegitimize certain groups and causes under the guise of neutral idealism. If that stunt makes us uncomfortable when it's deployed against Jewish groups, it should make us uncomfortable when it's deployed against Muslim groups. And here is where I think the Islamophobia charge has legs. I don't want to say "imagine if this were done to Jews", because it is done to Jews (albeit perhaps not in quite as organized a form). But there absolutely are cases of blacklisting Jewish students simply because they've joined pro-Israel groups, without any claims that the student has said or done anything remotely racist or Islamophobic. And such behavior I think is rightfully thought of as deeply chilling, and striking too deep in terms of the way it polices to the letter Jewish political and communal participation. Many Canary entries seem to be based entirely on groups the individual has joined (everything from Students for Justice in Palestine to the Muslim Students Association -- the latter of which, it is worth noting, joined the letter in solidarity with Hillel at Stony Brook), rather than any specifically antisemitic things that the individual has said or done. That seems to be as dangerous as equivalent blacklist efforts targeting Jews who are part of Hillel, or Students Supporting Israel, or J Street (yes, J Street). Indeed, I could go further. Let's take the case of the students who have, themselves, said antisemitic things -- they're on the record. Surely there could be nothing Islamophobic about including them in a database? Yet even here, I'm conflicted -- and again, the mirror-case involving Jews perhaps reveals why. Imagine there was a website which cataloged people -- mostly, though not exclusively, Jews -- who were members of Zionist or Zionist-affiliated groups for the purpose of declaring to the world that they were racist and should not be worked with. Wouldn't we view that as being antisemitic in character? Suppose that it limited itself solely to those persons who had engaged in Islamophobic remarks -- with the goal of showing the degree to which Islamophobia and racism were prevalent in Zionist discourse, in a way that gave the impression that such views ran rampant amongst (Zionist) Jewish college students. Could that be viewed as antisemitic? My instinct is yes. It is an instinct that is, admittedly, at war with my above acknowledgment that documenting the real and non-negligible existence of antisemitism that exists in pro-Palestinian movements is not a form of cheating (and I'd likewise agree that documenting the real and non-negligible existence of Islamophobia that exists in Zionist movements is likewise not wrongful). But in both cases it is a delicate thing, lest the impression be given that Jews Are The Problem or Muslims Are The Problem. It isn't wrong to demand that groups be attentive to that possibility and work proactively against it, and it isn't wrong to be suspicious of them when they seem indifferent to it. What was it that Maajid Nawaz said? “Who compiles lists of individuals these days?" Of course, the answer is "many people and many groups," and maybe that's not per se wrong (or even avoidable). But certainly it is something that requires considerable care and concern, and Canary -- given its propensity for guilt-by-association, given its wide sweep, and given the range of individuals it includes under its ambit -- doesn't strike me as expressing said care and concern. Is that Islamophobic? Depends on how you define it, but I would suggest that there is a prima facie case of a sort of moral negligence directed at Muslim students. In other circumstances, that same sort of moral negligence impacts Jews. Either way, it's a wrong, and it's entirely fair to label it as such. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2r7Rd2y

An Open Letter to the Nalu Fandom

Dear Nalu Fandom

Not too long ago after I was rereading my letter to the anti-Nali fandom, I saw a letter from a Nalu fan that accused the anti-fandom of being in denial. I saw a person respond to the letter saying they were wrong, but the truth is that they were right. 

The anti-fandom is totally in denial. 

I mean, the new wave of people in the anti-Nalu camp totally isn’t just a natural reaction to a ship they didn’t like that was totally popular not being officially confirmed by the series creator. No, that’s totally insane. You guys are right to say that this is just our way of coping with the fact that Natsu and Lucy are clearly in love.

There are plenty of people who might say, “Mashima said that he wasn’t planning on making Nalu canon?” While it’s true that he said that was his original plan, in the same interview, he also said that he’s writing Natsu and Lucy to be “more than friends, less than lovers”. That obviously means that his plan is to make them grow from being friends into lovers, just like he always planned on doing. Because of course friendships between guys and girls will end in a romance between them. I mean, it’s not like there’s popular romantic ship in our fandom that involves two characters of the opposite sex liking each other and not actually being friends first.

But even if that wasn’t clear enough for us, the last chapter should have made it clear as day. I mean, it’s obvious that Natsu’s insistence that they would “still be together from here on out” (I use the official translation), was one hundred percent a romantic statement and not in any way related to the fact that they were going on the Century Quest with the rest of Team Natsu. Obviously, we want to interpret it as the latter because we hate Nalu so much as to ignore what has obviously been portrayed in the series. Not to mention, there were no Nali moments in the last chapter.

And frankly, this wouldn’t have been the first time. You guys have been calling us out on how much we don’t care about canon. I mean, as a Nali shipper myself, I find it hard to grapple with the fact that there are so many romantic moments and character interactions between the two main characters of the series as opposed to a ship that hasn’t had a moment since the beginning of the arc. Obviously, that’s better and more profound than liking a ship you’d have to believe would withstand a separation of two years and the grieving process. There are so many examples of that in media already.

Obviously, Lucy’s reaction to Natsu groping her after Universe One was a clear sign that she was okay with Natsu groping her and not a totally disgusting fanservice moment. As was the fact that a while earlier, he had no real reaction to seeing her in her underwear. His complete and total apathy towards Lucy’s state of undress, especially as opposed to Loke’s reaction, shows that he absolutely can’t be asexual. Take that, FT fans in the LGBTQ+ community that claims to want to have harmless headcanons about being represented that don’t necessarily affect the prospect of Nalu. Clearly, the only reason you care is so that you can discredit the true one true pair of Fairy Tail. Or as I like to call it, the TOTPOFT.

Clearly. Natsu leaving her a letter after deciding to abandon her to train without telling her to her face made his actions okay. And getting the guild back together after seeing Lucy’s map was a great way for him to apologize for hurting Lucy even though what he did was apparently not wrong. I mean, it’s not like they would have gotten the guild back together because Natsu wants the guild back and Lucy has a way to get them back. Or that Hiro Mashima messed up in making Natsu seem correct for his clearly wrong actions, while also making Gray the villain for basically doing the same thing. Even to the point of addressing that issue in canon. I just made two posts about that subject because I’m in denial.

Clearly, stuff like chapter covers, which are usually not actually part of the chapter proper, point to how romantic Nalu is. I mean, chapter covers like that for chapter 520 obviously are proof that Natsu and Lucy would go on dates and that he’d let Lucy wear his scarf, which is the only thing he now has to remember his dad by. And it’s not like there’s a chapter cover of Natsu, Happy and Lisanna together, right?

And don’t even get me started on the omakes and filler. Clearly, if the stuff that’s a part of the canon universe mean nothing to us, then the stuff that, if anything, have even less if any weight on the actual narrative of Fairy Tail should have convinced us that Natsu and Lucy are totally in love.

How could anyone not see the Opening/Ending 15 and not realize that Natsu and Lucy totally like each other, despite containing events that never actually happened in canon? 

How could anyone have read the chapter Mashima made outright clear isn’t a part of the canon timeline and created an explanation for every out of place special chapter after it and not see that Lucy’s most important day together was when she met Natsu?

Don’t you remember that scene near the end of the Key of the Starry Sky arc where Natsu ran to save Lucy from falling from the sky? Clearly, as a callback to the scene from the Phantom Lord arc, it’s a sign that he would only have done that if he had romantic feelings for Lucy, and in no way similar to the exact same moment happening in the last arc with Erza.

(I’d make a comment on Stone Age here, but I haven’t read it.)

And we haven’t even got into the Twitter stuff. Guys, if the stuff that’s even only kind of actually happened in the series hasn’t convinced you that Hiro Mashima has made Nalu canon, the stuff that’s never actually happened and, in many cases, never could happen should have convinced us that he’s made Nalu canon. I mean, it’s not like he would draw things that he knows a lot of his fans will enjoy for fun. He’s doing this to prove the idiots that still think Nalu isn’t canon wrong.

Take those two Nalu pictures from a while ago. It’s obvious that Natsu and Lucy are totally in a BDSM relationship with each other. I mean, you’d have to be an idiot to believe that a couple with as much development as they do wouldn’t be in a sexual relationship with each other. What kind of idiot would actually believe that Nalu would just have a special kind of romantic relationship where nothing overtly romantic happens? That would be out of character for them. And it’s not like Mashima drew a picture of, I don’t know, Makarov and Ichiya in the exact same pose.

So, yeah, you got us. We’re clearly just unable to face the reality that the best and most popular ship in Fairy Tail is canon.  ❤️

Sincerely,

A member of the Anti-Nalu fandom who’s clearly been too hurt by Nalu not happening to make a new anti post and isn’t busy following other series, working on other projects or anything having to do with real life responsibilities. To be honest, I wanted to talk about Gajevy, but I finished this first so...

P.S. Nalus (I ain't done yet.)

I also want to apologize on behalf of the people in the anti-Nalu fandom who have said mean things about the Nalu fandom on their own blogs. Clearly, the fact that anyone has the audacity to say that the Nalu fandom is terrible after having plenty of bad incidents with their fans, seeing the mean things they say to other people and having almost no good interactions with any of them is in the wrong and that makes it okay to harass them and call them mean names. This especially applies if they properly tag their stuff and the only reason you’re able to see it is that you don’t understand Tumblr’s search and tag systems. 

Our bad, Nalu fans.

On the Beauty of Women: Becoming a Femslash Author

This post is part of Femslash Revolution’s I Am Femslash series, sharing voices of F/F creators from all walks of life. The views represented within are those of the author only.

I was well into a decade of writing Silmarillion fan fiction before I became a femslash author. For years, I supported femslash–my archive, the Silmarillion Writers’ Guild, had signed on as an official participant for the International Day of Femslash beginning in 2008, and in the interest of civic spirit, I had occasionally written something for it–but it would be another five years before I would identify myself as a femslash author.

My excuses were myriad. I was straight and married–not only married but happilymarried to my high-school sweetheart. And the Tolkien fandom was conservative. When I joined the fandom in 2005, slash was controversial, and femslash was nonexistent. Slash writers tended toward their own sites and communities where they were safe from incessant objections to their stories: homophobia disguised as canon. These fans wanted to celebrate, share, and squee over Tolkien’s world just like the rest of us, and I do not blame them for avoiding the unremitting criticisms they endured in many mainstream fandom spaces, but their absence from my experience meant that I lacked models, inspiration, the impetus to see Tolkien’s world as a more diverse place than my heteronormative interpretation had heretofore allowed.

These were my excuses.

The truth is that I struggled to see the same value in women’s stories that I saw in the stories of men. I struggled to find their stories worth my time to tell them. I struggled to see their beauty.

And I struggled to see all of these things in myself.

I was the kind of woman who was always more comfortable with men than with other women. I can trace back the reasons. I was tormented by my peers in elementary school, and that torment came almost entirely from the girls in my class. I found much more acceptance from the boys. I had a group of girlfriends in the eighth grade, but those relationships were stretched to the breaking point when I opted to attend a magnet school for math, science, and computer science rather than my home high school. One of those girlfriends went with me to that school, and when I began dating the boy who would one day become my husband at the end of our ninth-grade year, our friendship was unable to weather the balance I couldn’t achieve between my best friend and my new boyfriend. From that point forward, my closest friends were almost always men.

I was the only girl from my high school to go to the university I attended for undergrad, but several boys went, and we remained friends. I worked as a cook in a family restaurant through university, in the kitchen subculture that was hypermasculine: foul-mouthed and physically grueling. I was proud of my ability to lift cases of fries and ice cream or deep fryers full of scorching-hot oil, just as well as any man, and I rebuked anyone who suggested otherwise. After graduation, I went to work as a statistician for a law enforcement unit; there were never more than two women working there besides me during my six years there. One of them had been the first woman allowed into the state police academy; feminineness was stricken to signal equality. When I became a teacher–traditionally a woman’s profession and one where nurturance is assumed prerequisite–I accepted a position at an alternative high school for boys with emotional and behavioral disabilities. It was a hands-on school staffed almost entirely by men; I was taught to break up fights and restrain young men who were sometimes twice my size. And I did. Many women stood aside from the physical encounters our job occasionally produced. I started weight training to minimize my chance of injury. I wasn’t invited to happy hours by my few female colleagues, but I earned cred among my male colleagues for being fearless and a reputation for sharp-tongued ribbing liberally sprinkled with four-letter words of Anglo-Saxon origin.

I considered myself a feminist but not particularly feminine, and I never noticed the dissonance in that. To be equal was to be invited to the same playing field as men; it was not recognition that maybe the rules of the game themselves were all wrong.

Fandom began to change that.

Less than 4 percent of the Tolkien fan fiction community identifies itself as male. When I began my fanfic career as a solidly genfic writer, I developed deep female friendships for the first time since I was a young teenager. My fandom friends were incisive and brilliant, opinionated, and strong-willed–and they were also generous and warm and compassionate and unabashedly women: as seemingly unafraid of being tender or sexual as they were to immerse themselves in the textual minutia of a male-dominated geek culture.

Because there was that too: geek culture and fandom was often male-dominated–even aggressively masculine–in its mainstream form. But then there was fan fiction: This room of our own that we’d carved for ourselves out of the larger fandom. While men argued on forums over whether Balrogs had wings and computed the sizes of the various armies of Middle-earth, we wrote Maedhros and Fingon–two of the most battle-blooded characters of The Silmarillion–in tender love with each other and reverse-engineered their deeds to prove that love as canonical. Where Tolkien turned his attention to the colonialist business of conquest and settlements and battles, we turned our attentions to the friendship, families, sex lives, social customs, and everyday existences of characters the books rarely showed without a sword in hand. When Tolkien dismissed a character’s actions under easy explanations like “pride” or “heroism,” we delved deep into the minds of people–human beings–capable of such acts and plumbed out the motives and the rationalizations and the pain of those acts. And we wrote those stories for each other, for none of the rewards–money, influence, fame–that the world of men had told us signaled our worth.

We were widely dismissed by many in the Tolkien fandom and, of course, the male-dominated, capitalist business of mainstream publishing. Our writing was dismissed as escapism and wish fulfillment, and we were accused of wanting to change ourselves and change men from our (and their) supposedly inherent natures, for we weren’t so beautiful and so brave, and men didn’t love as we imagined they did. No one ever considered that we weren’t trying to change ourselves or men as much as we were trying to change the world.

Writing slash began for me as a political act. Although I began as a genfic writer–one who once professed to “not get slash”–I got it quickly enough and read it from time to time and once even wrote a Maedhros/Fingon story for a friend. But I didn’t become a slash writer until my sister invited me to lunch one day and told me that she was bisexual, she was leaving her fiancé, and she was in love with a British woman she’d met online.

If writing fan fiction is supposed to be escapism, then why was it the only way I found to make sense of where I suddenly found myself? I’d always supported LGBTQA+ people in the vague, detached way of someone doing her duty as a good progressive but who has no skin in the game. I am not proud of that, but in my university years, I cared more about injustice against animals than against LGBTQA+ people. But in the midst of the Bush II years, sitting opposite my sister in that restaurant, suddenly that administration’s attacks on LGBTQA+ people wasn’t an abstraction; now it was my family, people I loved, who were suffering. If my sister’s relationship worked out–and it did; they’ve been married more than ten years now–that meant that I would lose one of my best friends to the bigoted laws of my country that would sooner drive one of its own daughters from its shores than to accept the woman she soon after made her wife. My body didn’t seem big enough to hold my rage.

A friend dared me to write a PWP of Fëanor/Erestor, two characters who appear thousands of years apart in the canon. She knew I didn’t write slash, but she was a good enough friend to shove me into unfamiliar waters and trust that, as I flailed and bobbed along on the waves, I wouldn’t accuse her of trying to drown me. I wrote a novel in response. I remember it bleeding from me, from some angry, wounded place, in gouts of words. It remains one of the finest stories I’ve ever written.

But it was M/M, not F/F. In retrospect, I wonder at this, that I would choose to unknot the conflict between my love for my motherland and that nation’s cruel disregard for my sister by writing a novel about the love between two men. Of course, there was the convenience of my friend’s challenge to me, and there was the fact that, in the Tolkien fandom, femslash didn’t really exist yet. I could probably count on one hand the number of femslash stories I’d seen before that point. There was the fact that I still hadn’t learned to value the stories of women, despite being a woman myself in a community of women, representing in my writing a distinctly feminine worldview (although I didn’t yet recognize the latter).

At that point in my life, I still lacked woman friends in my offline life. I still took pride in my characteristics that marked me as masculine and dismissed or downplayed those that marked me as feminine. I thought of the former as strong and the latter as week. I still believed that what I wrote was a fantasy: not what the world was like at all.

Becoming a femslash writer was likewise a political act.

But it was subtler in how it happened. There was no provocation, no epiphany, no angry hemorrhage of emotion. Becoming a femslash writer was not a statement–as my becoming a slash writer had been–and more a slow evolution, shaped by fandom, by the women I admired and loved in that community, and by my art. It was an awakening to the fact that I wanted to use my art to express that women are beautiful and the world we, as women, have the potential to make is also beautiful.

It wasn’t fandom alone that provoked this realization. In my work with disadvantaged, emotionally disabled young men, I was physically strong, I was fearless, I broke up fights, I expanded my repertoire of swear words, and I was unflinching (even when I was scared). Yet none of those reasons were why I was successful with those students.

These young men suffered for a lack of love: often abandoned by their families, cast adrift in a careless succession of foster and group homes, shuffled from one school to another that didn’t want them, affixed with labels to justify the isolation and injustice to which they were subjected. And I imagined myself full of so much love to give them. There were days that I could feel it pushing to be free of the bounds of me. “The love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay,” I would say to myself. “Love isn’t love till it’s given away.” This wasn’t masculine, that claimed that they needed to be shoved and squeezed into the expectations of our society. This was feminine, that sought to understand, to love, to heal.

I began to realize my power, and it didn’t lie in my impersonation of masculinity.

The world of women is beautiful. It is a world of compassion and understanding. It is just. It does not make pecking orders; it does not lock horns. I began to understand that, for me, feminism was not only access to the same playing field as men but the power to change the rules of the game. To say that conflict, competition, warfare, and strife were not the only ways by which the world could be governed. To insist that acceptance, love, justice, and peace deserved equal consideration, and that as feminists, we must lay aside our conviction that the way men have done things for all these thousands of years is superior and advocate for a better way.

If fan fiction is wish fulfillment, then this is a wish that could only be fulfilled in its entirety through femslash. As I have been told by more than one man explaining to me why Tolkien wasn’t sexist, there are so few women in his books because they are books about war. And war is the province of men. Fair enough. Then to fulfill my wish of imagining a world without war, then I must also imagine a world with women at its center. For even in the gentlest of slash fanfics about Tolkien’s characters, the hands that caress so tenderly know or will know the stains of blood. They will become toughened by spear and sword. The minds that love will turn also upon plans of treachery and war; the hearts capable of passion and devotion can be hardened also against mercy and compassion. Even in the prelapsarian innocence of Valinor, their love is shadowed by what they will–what they can–become in the world of men.

But not the women. The Silmarillion is a posthumously published prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, where the Elves are brought by the godlike Valar to inhabit an “deathless realm,” isolated behind impassable mountains and illuminated only by the light of two sacred trees. When one of the Valar rebels and destroys the Two Trees, plunging the land into darkness and murdering one of the Elven kings as he goes, the son of the slain king swears vengeance and pursuit of his father’s killer into Middle-earth. But Tolkien’s Elven women largely rejected the flight to Aman, which in The Silmarillion was preceded by an attack by the armed and armored Noldor upon the Teleri, who wielded only light bows, after the Teleri would not give up their ships to the Noldor. And even though these women are possessed of little more than names and a place in a family tree populated almost entirely by men, Tolkien bothered nonetheless to explain one woman’s motive for remaining: “Fingolfin’s wife Anairë refused to leave Aman, largely because of her friendship with Eärwen wife of Arafinwë … though she was a Noldo and not one of the Teleri.”

This obscure line about two women barely characterized would become the canonical basis for my femslash OTP, but more importantly, it would define the world of my fantasy. What woman would forsake her husband and her children for a friendship? One guided by compassion for the stricken; one whose sense of justice will not allow her to condone a journey–however just in and of itself–that was inaugurated with an act of violence. One with little interest in conquest or vengeance. One who believed in a world that could be founded upon love and justice and knew that the bloodshed perpetuated by the Noldor upon the Teleri had no place in that world. In The Silmarillion, one of the Valar curses the departing Elves–“tears unnumbered ye shall shed,” he forewarns–but though accurate in his prescience, we need not blame the curse: We need only to look at the world built by men, where violence multiplies in the ways of the proverbial Hydra’s heads. Their world is our world, and I dream of something better.

In one of my earliest stories, Anairë and Eärwen coordinate the governance of their people whose kings have chosen exile after their land was deprived of light. In later stories, these women became lovers in their youth and pillars in each other’s lives as they navigated their roles in the Eldarin monarchy, became wives and mothers in accordance with duty and tradition, and resisted the division of their people. They are keepers of a vision of the paradaisical realm of Aman that is neither that of the autocratic Valar nor the power-lusting Noldor but a distinctly feminine vision that seeks to heal and progress.

My feminism has changed; my view of women–and of myself–has changed.

I used to imagine that gaggles of women were inherently frivolous and that I’d be unwelcome by default because I wasn’t interested in babies, mani-pedis, or shopping. I was a loner or a friend of men. My fandom friends taught me differently, and I began to open my heart to–even to seek–friendships with the women in my life.

If my stories are a vision of what it means to be human, then writing femslash freed me from the idea that every story worth telling was a precursor and an explanation for a future violent act, or a reaction of the heart against inhumanity. My femslash stories let me explore a world untouched by war (though not violence or injustice), where the conflicts were centered on love and justice. They kindled in my mind possibilities I’d never imagined in our own world.

Writing always awakens me to what is important. Fan fiction made me realize that I wanted nothing more than to teach the love of words to young people, especially underprivileged young people. Now my work as an author has convinced me that I must be an active artificer of the world I hope to see, which is very different from the world I have.

Three weeks ago, I journeyed with a dozen other women on a twelve-hour overnight bus journey from Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom to the Women’s March on Washington. I was new to Vermont–a flatlander–but they accepted and welcomed me. We shared toothpaste and wine on the bus; we held hands when the crowds thickened and threatened to separate us; we stood in the middle of the sidewalk with signs held high, calling like crows until we located anyone separated from the group. We watched out for and took care of each other in the midst of an event that was physically and emotionally overwhelming: not only the crush of a record crowd but the sudden manifestation of a movement inspired by many of our ideals.

We weren’t even back for a few hours before we were planning our next steps. Our first meeting was standing-room only and opened with a series of swift commitments: inclusiveness to all who wanted to join and an approach that sought common ground and resisted partisan dogma. In the midst of the meeting, I realized how happy I was to be there, building this world by women.

About the Author

Dawn is an author and archivist in the Tolkien fandom. She is the founder of the

Silmarillion Writers’ Guild

and moderates on the

Many Paths to Tread

archive and for

Back to Middle-earth Month

. Sometimes she gets dressed up fancy and presents at Tolkien conferences. Dawn is a Vermont teacher and activist with big dreams of raising milk goats, living off-the-grid, and changing the world.