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shortnotsweet · 5 months

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[ “SOMEBODY TOLD ME”]:

BREAKING MY BACK JUST TO KNOW YOUR NAME. SEVENTEEN TRACKS AND I’VE HAD IT WITH THIS GAME. A BREAKIN’ MY BACK JUST TO KNOW YOUR NAME—BUT HEAVEN AIN’T CLOSE IN A PLACE LIKE THIS.

— The Killers, Hot Fuss (2004)

Princess Rhaenyra’s insolence is wearing her stepmother’s patience thin. Queen Alicent is not ten years her senior, but even during her own sixteenth year, she cannot recall herself behaving so brazenly. She would never burst into courtly discussions in nothing but gilded armor and the underskirts of her riding leathers, awash in blood. (She would never be spotted in blood that was not her own, anyway. Alicent has never picked up a sword, not one that belonged to her.) Nevermind that Rhaenyra is attending to diplomatic affairs with bared teeth and scales, no—the crux of the matter is just that, her affairs. Rhaenyra is the Realm’s Delight, a beauty incomparable to any fair maiden, Alicent included. She indulges herself with appetite of a spoiled child, the confidence of man, and the pickings befitting only to her royal blood. Criston Cole. Daemon Targaryen. Harwin Strong. Laena Velaryon. She’s full of love, isn’t she? That selfish, foolish girl. What does Rhaenyra Targaryen know of love, of duty? She is a child in so many ways—she thinks killing makes her a man, thinks the throne is hers despite being a woman, thinks she can have her knight and her uncle and her protector and Laena Velaryon in one fail swoop. She’s wrong. She doesn’t know herself half as well as Alicent does. Alicent, who sees her for what she truly is, who wants to see all of her and more of her and none of her. Alicent has been stolen into the Keep by her own father—both of their fathers—but Rhaenyra is the key to this place, is the window to everything barred. Rhaenyra Targaryen has a dragon. Rhaenyra can fly.

That’s what Rhaenyra had promised her once, with her lips pulled back in a grin, exposing the white of her teeth like the violently radiant creature she was. “Perhaps when you grow tired of plotting against me, we shall ride on dragonback together,” she had said. The tease.

Alicent had yanked her into an empty corridor by the silk of her sleeve, ready to chastise her for her ill behavior. Conversing with the lords and ladies of the court at a feast was one thing, but chattering about her bloody encounters in battle over the pudding tureen were another. The lord at her elbow was going green. Alicent’s own face was likely red; her heart raced whenever Rhaenyra got like this. Alicent had never seen the battlefield—only seen battered men in dented armor and the slumps of corpses lined along dirt roads in the aftermath of war—but her own imagination terrified her like nothing else.

(Rhaenyra is better with a sword than half of the knights in Westeros, and more lovely than the lot. Her reign has not yet begun, but already the commoners flock to her—lured in by tales of her beauty and fine hair—and soldiers would follow her into battle. Alicent would not follow, but she would watch and bite her nails down to the quick.

She thinks of the figure Rhaenyra cuts in full armor, the heat in her gaze underneath the slots of her helmet. Alicent remembers the weight of her own hand in Rhaenyra’s—which was gloved—when the princess rode up to the spectators box and grasped it in her own, bringing Alicent’s knuckles to her lips. She thinks of Rhaenyra murdered in the sky, skewered with another man’s sword, plummeting to the ground, torn in half, streaking crimson across the clouds. Alicent would scream, or cry. She might laugh. She would throw herself from the window of her tower. Rhaenyra’s bloody exploits terrified Alicent for reasons she could not identify, and excited her for reasons she refused to.)

“I’d sooner be confined to the castle for the rest of my days than get on the back of that bloody lizard,” Alicent scoffed. Rhaenyra only tucked her hand over Alicent’s, where it was resting on her forearm. She flexed her fingers, moving to release her grip on the dark fabric, but Rhaenyra intertwined their fingers and held them fast.

“You’re confined already. You are already accustomed to such a thing. I know you. But—”

“But you forget yourself. You think you’re invulnerable, Rhaenyra. You don’t know who you are.” Alicent intends for it to be a sneer, but instead it comes out quietly, and too gentle for disdain. She can’t know. Rhaenyra is as trapped as she is, but they’re trapped together. They belong together. She belongs with Alicent.

“I am Rhaenyra Targaryen, Heir to the Iron Throne and all of Westeros. I am a dragonrider. I am—I am your daughter. In a way. Your sister, too. Your enemy. Your sword, your shield.”

“And what am I?” What else is left for me? Alicent wonders.

“My Queen. For now.” Rhaenyra cocks her head, and the gleam in her eyes burns like fire raining down. “When I am Queen, you will be my lady.”

#rhaenicent #rhaenyra targaryen #alicent hightower #house of the dragon #hotd #rhaenyra x alicent #my art #a book show fusion where alicent is the wicked resentful older stepmother first and foremost but even so she and rhaenyra have a connection #burdened by envy and fixation and reluctant affection. in this universe rhaenyra is given more liberties and trains as a knight would #is given a sword and flies into battle frequently and wears extravagant clothes which endears her to the small folk and makes her a hot #topic amongst royalty for her strangeness and charisma. alicent is expression not only of her freedom and expression #but of the company she keeps. rhaenyra has so many lovers and so many who are willing to follow her and it’s just not fair ok. alicent #and rhaenyra understand each other and know each others misery like no other. those other flings and beloved friends are going to get #her killed w how much they indulge her and encourage her dangerous habits and alicent may be in a cage but she won’t live in it alone. with #out her stepdaughter to torment and be tormented by (she represses the urges rhaenyra inspires bc she is devout to the faith) then there is #no meaning to suffering. god she’s in love w her. she hates her so much she wants to be her she wants to be with her she needs to touch her #she need rhaenyra to stop looking at other people bc it’s killing alicent by the day

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baoreal · 1 month

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Valentino finds him crouched against the wall of the motorhome that they share with Honda on the other side, still seething with white hot rage after yelling at Márquez. Screaming at him had done nothing to get the anger out of his system, and then he’d heard Marc telling the press he wasn’t even going to bother discussing Marco’s outburst, and now he’s trying very hard to calm down before he goes to congratulate Pecco. His brother doesn’t deserve that kind of negativity, and right now, Marco wants to kill somebody.

Vale crouches in front of him, one of his big hands finding the curls on the back of Marco’s head. “Ben detto” he murmurs softly. “It’s not your fault, he clearly hasn’t changed at all.”

Marco scrapes his hands over his face, wincing at his nose. “He didn’t even react when I screamed at him. Just stared, and then told someone else to remove me from his motorhome.” His fists clench. “And then he says he’s not going to waste time discussing me! Figlio de puttana!”

Vale ruffles his hair. “I’ve been telling you, he’s a crazy motherfucker. He’ll never learn.”

“Hey!” A voice he doesn’t recognize rings out on the other side of the wall.

“Hey, man, ¿qué pasa?.” That one, he’d know anywhere.

“Classy move out there today, completely sidestepping the questions.” It’s not a driver. Someone from the Honda team, probably.

Márquez snorts. “Bezzecchi is what, 23?” He must be changing out of his leathers. They’ve clearly not realised that there’s someone left on the motorhome next door, because they’re making no effort to lower their voices to avoid being heard through the paper-thin walls.

“24, I think.” Says the other voice. He’s almost 25, actually. He rolls his eyes at Vale. What does it matter that he’s young? He has half a mind to go back in there and yell at him some more. Fuck him. Youth does not mean he’s not legitimate competition, or a good driver.

“Eh, still barely an adult.” Márquez again. “Everybody is a fucking idiot in their twenties, but I’m no longer in my twenties. I know how this circus works now, and what would happen if I said anything personal about him to the press. I don’t mind giving my opinion on what he’s done on the race, or what I think he’s done on the race, but anything beyond that is a no, even if he’s a dickhead.” He pauses. Then adds, softer. “Actually, I don’t think he’s a dickhead. He’s just young, and we have both heard everything he said today before, and we both know they’re not his words. I can’t fault the kid for following a god blindly, I used to do it too.”

The world tilts three degrees on its axis. Valentino’s face goes white as a sheet.

“Look at you. Is this what maturity looks like?”

Márquez’s laugh sounds bitter. “I already said it in my documentary, but I don’t wish what Valentino put me through at 22 on anybody. 22 is a stupid age. You think you’re immortal, but you also think you’ll die if you don’t win this championship. Or not die, but the team will drop you if you stop performing, which is just as bad. There’s always someone behind you waiting to get on your bike, if you can’t stay on it. Your body can recover from almost everything, but the press and the team are already counting down the seconds until it gives out. It's an environment where it’s almost impossible to make good decisions, especially in the middle of a race where you’re going 300km/h, your only thought is that you have to be 1st, and you have 2 milliseconds to see and react to anything.” Something opens on the other side of the wall.

“You must still be angry at him. Especially after everything you heard today.”

There’s no need to clarify who “him” is. It’s clearly not Marco.

Something closes. “I’m not even angry anymore, more like. Disappointed? Disappointed with Valentino, because he was supposed to be my friend but he thought badly enough of me to believe that I’d do all those things he accused me of. Didn’t even let me explain. But also disappointed in myself, because it really is the worst feeling when you are just being yourself and your idol, friend, favourite person” - Marco can’t look at Valentino - “in the world publicly says that makes you a danger for everyone and poison for the sport you have dedicated your life to. And suddenly everybody despises you. You don’t just shrug something like that off, no matter how hard I’ve tried to pretend I have.”

There’s a metallic thunk, like someone dropping a bag on a bench.

“I can only be myself. I’ve never learned to be any other way, and I will never play mind games. I want to keep winning until I physically can’t anymore, and then retire and be done with all of this.”

“Are you going to set up your own training academy?” Suggests the other man, timidly.

There’s a meaningful pause.

“I don’t know if you’ve seen the documentary, but only two drivers came to see me before I got the surgery. A surgery that involved re-breaking my arm on several points and rotating the bone. There was a chance I might never come back to motogp, and most people didn’t care, not even my own teammate. And even younger drivers like Bezzecchi clearly believe everything that has been said of me, after all these years and after riding with me. I don’t think I will have any kind of legacy other than a number of championships and a bad reputation for my riding style. And a lot of scars and metal in my body. I don't think mentoring will ever be a possibility. I don’t think I want to teach anyone how to ride like me, when this is what it gets you.”

Marco can feel his own face drain of blood. There’s no emotion to Márquez's voice. He’s clearly thought this over plenty. It sounds practised, rehearsed, and utterly sincere.

“You still said very nice things about Rossi in a recent video, even after all of this.”

“I told the truth.” Comes Márquez’s response. “They ask what I think about him as a driver, and that has never changed. He’s the best. Always the best.”

He sounds as certain as anything. The sky is blue, the sun is yellow, and Valentino Rossi is still the best ever MotoGP driver in Marc Márquez’s world.

Valentino’s face is doing something so raw that Marco feels filthy when he hazards a look. He averts his eyes again.

“As I said, I’m not even mad. I would be happy if he decided to stop hating me one of these days. I still like Valentino. I think what he’s done with the academy is great, the way he’s basically adopted those kids. I try not to think much about him other than that.”

He sounds wistful, Marco realises, like part of him wishes he could have been one more of them at the ranch. Like part of him envies that they got that with Vale.

“Except when one of said kids goes to your motorhome to yell at you.”

Marc snorts again. “Hm, maybe he should have taught them better manners, that’s true. But he’s Valentino Rossi. We wouldn’t like him half as much if he had manners.” And with that, the voices finally fade, Márquez clearly done changing. And then it’s just him and Valentino, still crouched on the floor on the other side of the wall.

Valentino looks ill. Properly green, and Marco understands, because he’s feeling queasy himself when he thinks of everything he’d yelled at Marc only hours earlier, everything he has said about him loud enough for everyone to hear.

Valentino has approximately eight years of that.

God help them both.

#I have been on my Rosquez feelings so I had to engineer a situation where Valentino has no choice but to confront his sins head on #and then grapple with the realization of how much irreparable damage he’s dealt Marc #marc/vale #rosquez #realistically would Marc ever bare himself like this? Absolutely not #but let’s pretend that Bezz yelling at him in Valencia caused a weak moment and the jagged edge was visible for a millisecond

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silversatin2105 · 15 days

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Hi!!! Kisaki is one of my favorite antagonists! May you write something with the reader being in love with him; they hang out all of the time and admire him. The reader confesses their feelings to him only for him to turn them down cause he's in love with Hina? The reader will be very sad about it😭

Yes I can do this and believe me it killed me to write this, I had to come to terms with this not ending in love and happiness but I did after discussing it with a friend of mine and so I do hope you like this, so without any further delay please enjoy

Trigger warnings

Angst

Mental health issues

Bullying

Unrequited love

Kisaki X rejected Fem-reader

Ever since you had become a freshman at the school Kisaki attended, You were deeply curios of him, his aura called to you in a no one else did, but you were nervous, watched him from afar, afraid to talk to him because deep down, you were at your core afraid of him, he made your fight or flight response trigger and you wrongly equated this to love, you wanted to talk to him yes, but your heart told you to stay away.

After half a year of yearning and pining over this amazing person, even as a fantasy crush you decided to confess to him, true you both never talked, but it didn’t matter, you had built up this image of him in your mind, you had imagined dates with him and in your distorted heart this was enough.

A verbal confession ? no this was too much for you to handle and so you chose to write him a little love letter, confess in a little pink envelope, it worked out for some people in your class you told yourself and so after school that day you blew off all social gatherings you had planned to pen your magum opis, your note of pure love.

You sat at your desk at home and drafted so many versions of how you would tell him, many ideas passed though your mind as you wrote your feelings upon your light pink stationary, ball after ball of crumpled paper fell from your desk as you poured your heart into your confession that night, hell you even forget to come down for dinner when called, you focused so much on this one little note that much that it was first light when you had the finished letter.

On your walk to school the next morning you were a physical mess, you look tired and you were, you didn’t have the same level of pep and energy your friend commented, you ignored her as you headed to the lockers at the entrance of school and slipped your confession into the locker of Tetta Kisaki.

After you waited, you nodded off a few times, but you kept yourself awake the only way you knew how, think of how he will react, hell take it well, you will be together from that day forward, how wrong you were, you weren’t even part of his world.

You watched from your vantage point for the fruits of your last night labour to grow and a little after six, he appeared, the guy of your dreams, he opened his shoe locker and your little pink envelope fell into his hand as he retrieved his school shoes, you hoped for the best as your heart raced, but then the cold reality hit you with the sound of paper being ripped.

It hurt you, killed you as you watched with cold horror as Kisaki ripped your confession letter, your penned feelings turning into scattered shards of your very soul, your deep feelings massacred as the little pieces of paper fell into the waste bin.

Cold reality set in and all you color vanished from your vision turning your world black and white, you withdrew from socializing, only stuck by your usual spots, but they no longer brought you comfort, some of your fellow school mates began talking rumors of Kisaki meeting with a girl, her name Tatchibana Hinata, you shuddered and tired to mentally process this information but in your state you came to the conclusion they were an item and your apathy turned into bind hatred.

If you weren’t the love of his life you decided it was your god given right to hate this Tachibana girl, you spread slander about her, you got some of your remaining friend group to try and ruin her life, anything just so she would feel your pain, it only ended with one action when he the perceived love of your life accosted you at your locker, your blind to love heart thought he had seen the light but all that changed with a message spoken in a cold tone.

“I don’t know what your planning but if you go after Tachibana again …I WILL kill you” his cold voice spoke as he began to walk away from you, that aura of curiosity being shattered as you stood in fear.

About a month later you had to transfer out of Tokyo for a place overseas, you protested at first but after being told by your mother that for your mental well-being it was for the best and it was a new beginning you left Japan, true you were still pining for what could have been but you decided that you needed to move on.

For time can heal most wounds

END SCENE

#tokyo revengers #toman gang #tokyo manji gang #kisaki tetta #character x y/n #reader x character #written response #Toman-Inquisitorial-division

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vampire-wizard-solidarity · 2 years

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i think a problem i have with most discussions of queerness in botw is the fact that, inevitably, gerudo (and everything that has to do with them) are brought up, and inevitably the racism and misogyny inherent in those elements is ignored, despite being massively important.

“would the gerudo let trans women in, or are they terfs?” neither, because making gerudo town a female only space isn’t an actual world building decision, and isn’t treated as such. everything about that storyline is done for the sake of a mindless consumption by an audience that isn’t brown, or queer, for that matter. multiple gerudo realize link is a man and all of them say the exact same thing: “oh? whatever, i don’t care”. no differing attitudes, explanations as to why they don’t care, how significant being female only is to gerudo, culturally, is not explored. the text deeply uninterested in exploring the implications of gerudo town as it exists, which is why it falls apart the moment you think about it:

if the gerudo are merchants, how come gerudo town, their merchant hub, is a gated community? how have they maintained their reputation as merchants when their main hub turns away half the customers? why are there are a ton of male merchants outside gerudo town trying to get in, but all of the women inside are presented as simply tourists, not even interested in selling or buying wares for the sake of business? if the gerudo have been like this since forever, why haven’t merchant groups got specifically female representatives to do business in gerudo town, and why is the bazaar so empty compared to the town, if it’s open to men as well, and also has several gerudo merchants?

and that’s just the surface level logistical problems, i think a very notable way to demonstrate the way the gerudo are treated in a uniquely misogynistic (and racist) way is the fact that botw has TWO monogender races. the gorons are also monogender, they’re all men, and notably they’re let into gerudo town, implying a difference in cultural perceptions of gender between the races. the topic of reproduction is never brought up with the gorons, despite the fact that daruk, one of the primary goron characters, has a direct descendant. the logistics of how this came to be are never brought up. for the gerudo, on the other hand, these logistics are a massively centred. they have a whole class for how to interact with men, several characters explain how women have to leave gerudo town at some point in order to find a man, and there are several gerudo women you can interact with that will react to link being a man in some way (including shyness, fear, apprehension). in contrast, no goron ever reacts in any special way to a woman, goron x hylian relations are never brought up, and gorons being a monogender race are a background detail that is treated as simply normal within the world, with only a minor implication of a pretty interesting piece of world building.

there are multiple quests involving getting a gerudo and a hylian together. notably, cross species relations between a gerudo and another race are never brought up. interspecies relations are only a topic of discussion when it’s between a hylian and a humanoid enough girl. only when a basically human man is getting together with an “other” girl.

the logistics of reproduction of a monogender race are only brought up when the answer is a narrative where an “other” race can be “consumed”, fetishised by a (usually white) man who is on the inside of whatever exists that is considered the “inside” in relation to the “other”.

notably, this also applies to the player, and the way they’re invited to get inside gerudo town: there are several men outside gerudo town, who are all presented as weird and creepy. you are invited to make fun of them in dialogue, laugh at the way they change their disposition when you approach them disguised as a woman, and you even basically scam one of them in a comedic side quest where you are not even given the option to humour the man or be sympathetic towards him. these men are presented as laughable and condemnable for wanting to get into a female only space with the intent to ogle women.

and yet, the player is invited to get into the very same female only space by lying. and sure, you can argue about link’s queerness all you want, but the fact is that he gets clocked as a man several times and doesn’t correct anyone or present any feelings that the gerudo town experience is more than lying. and sure, link’s, the character’s, intentions are pure: he wants to save the world, and that’s a noble cause, of course. he isn’t creepy towards any woman, and doesn’t express interest, let alone nefarious intent, towards any of them: all his dialogue options are fine and dont comment on anything weird and focus on the issue at hand.

and yet, you, the player, are not link. while link, the character, doesn’t express any interest in the women in question, the player is only invited to: the gerudo are designed to be sexualised. they wear heels and metal bras and all expose their abs despite none of that being practical. urbosa is, in most her cutscenes, deliberately is posed to be appealing, and i don’t think anybody in their right mind would say she isn’t designed to be sexy. the player is invited to consume them, in the same way the men outside gerudo town wish to consume them. and this is supported by the way a lot of fans perceive gerudo: a lot of people describe them as tall hot ladies, those they are attracted to and like because they are attracted to them.

so, in the end, the game invites the player to make fun of the men sexually desiring its race of brown women, while simultaneously inviting the player to do the exact same thing as them. in the end, they’re weird losers because they’re desperate to get even a glimpse of the female only space while you, existing in game as a man, are not a loser, because YOU get to be inside the “paradise” designed to be specifically sexually appealing to you.

#botw #breath of the wild #gerudo #orientalism #racism #media analysis #botw critical #loz #legend of zelda #i feel uncomfortable tagging thsi as my hot takes bc thsi is just. an analysis of racism in the video game #misogyny #queerness #anyway fucking critically consume the media you enjoy stop being stupid

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buttercuparry · 9 months

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I know sometimes most of us are just playing around in the fandom without any insidious reason. Hell sometimes things are just a vision and we all want those visions to see the light of the day, and there truly isn't anything wrong with that! But if a fan of colour is commenting on your post about something that might be a concern of theirs and you know this concern is related to matter of fandom racism, I don't think they are doing so to personally attack you about something. And if it indeed does feel like a criticism and you know you didn't mean your art/post/whatever else to express any sort of discrimination, I think just talking about it simply can help clear things. You don't even need to go into an explanation. It's really that simple.

I know fandom can get heated and hell despite our best attempts, back and forth tangent of discourse happens. But the way the fandom treats fans of colour not just in the asoiaf side of tumblr but everywhere-it's a bit disheartening. You have people mocking a fan of colour in tags of a post and going "all this discourse for lily white starks". Well you all don't really listen or even acknowledge unless fans of colour are loud, do you? And when they do get loud, you all start having problems.

"Lily white starks" was the point of discourse. That's what many of us who are PoCs in the asoiaf fandom have been saying. They are all the most ashiest whites to have ever whited and race bending is cool as fuck but they aren't 90s animal cartoons where you have two cats having kittens and half of the litter has orange fur while the other half has brown fur. But somehow the character whom fanon deems to be "plain" ( never mind the text says the opposite), whose gender identity gets questioned every now and then ( even though in text they specifically state what they identify as), is drawn racially ambiguous while her siblings look like they don't even have a drop of melanin-you bet fans of colour are going to feel a type of way about this. And till now I haven't seen any major discussion regarding this, not even a peep of acknowledgement that it's a bit weird that the fanon trajectory where people shout "let (redacted) character be ugly" and then this (redacted) character and all who look like her is drawn with brown skin. But wait there's more! The "Helen" of asoiaf universe, even though is said to look like this (redacted) character is often argued to have looked nothing alike at all. So you see how all this shit evolved into the discourse under that art post right? Like it's not like this discontent was bred in a vacuum.

Even now when a new fan comes into asoiaf fandom, after a few months around they know what the dead ladies club is. Because it is that discussed and it should be because Grrm is shit like that. But dead ladies club evolved from being a genuine criticism to a championing a kind of womanhood that posits itself as the best of them all. And this mentality continues to this day and the race bending of certain houses comes from that. You have a fandom that dislikes one of the most important characters so much, that every thing they do is considered a devastation. This dislike is based on the fact that she doesn't really fit in with the kind of womanhood that's considered traditional. It has been literally witnessed how this character has changed the fantasy genre's notion of the "chosen one" but you have dudebros crying foul. And thus anything related to her is bashed more than it deserves to be and you have one of her deceased family members being presented as the devil incarnate. The woman this dead man has supposedly wronged is suddenly a woc, and the whole of the kingdom she belonged to is also a representation of poc culture in fanon?? Like do you see how exploitative this is? And then to further drive in the notion of evil, there came the dominant headcanon where one of the most priviledged and bloody houses in the fictional asoiaf universe is made analogous to real world indigenous pocs who are still fighting for their rights in their own country. It cannot get more batshit insane than that.

I genuinely believe that certain characters were initially drawn in darker shades out of a personal artistic vision. But then this got twisted by the fandom at large to suit their supposed intellectual narrative and bnf artists just simply followed the trend never questioning anything and years and years of this practice got cemented as natural and canon. Never was it questioned why a character ( and all who look like her) who is falsely fanonized as violent and ugly is drawn shades darker and why another character of whom we know nothing of but how violently she met her end is also a woc.

The most recent discourse that happened under the post carries a weight of this particular fandom history. I know there's artistic vision to consider which is why I personally try not to criticize an artist on their own post. This is also a fanart, something given to the fandom freely and I am of the opinion that if it cannot be celebrated then it should just be left alone. But what got to me was that how it felt like through the response there was this tone of trying to turn the tables on the fan of colour who commented. Like the sarcastic commentary on how there is an insistence on Valyrians being whitest white...like dude...hello?? Pretty sure this is on grrm and do you really think this person who is actively frustrated at the racist caricature would mind genuine attempt at being inclusive?! Like I have seen you around, I have enjoyed your posts, I think I even saw you under posts which criticized these particular trends while drawing certain Stark siblings, are you really going to pretend you don't know where the comments came from???

There is also the pointing towards how fandom casts all of dorne as poc and I think we have already established that this fandom is shit. Like I won't lie I enjoy my guilty pleasure of looking at Bollywood gifs representing Dorne, and I think there is this headcanony idea that Dorne is based on North Indian hindu hindi speaking culture. But in same post representing a particular house through this Hindu Hindi speaking culture you have the gifmaker using gifs of the Islamic hajj!!! Like ajaldleryjdlsldldlfg the headcanon then is the idea of amalgating brown bodies and meshing them in homogeneity because that's what we are all over the world right? 😂😂😂

Like I understand the frustration and you really got nothing to explain but it's trying to turn the tables for me (including calling a poc racist when they themselves were trying to address a racist issue)

EDIT IMPORTANT:

I am making this post non reblogable because the assumption on the basis of which I made this post was wrong. The person I have been referencing is a artist of colour themselves- so the core idea of the post isn't applicable. However I still don't know or can't wrap my head around how someone got dog piled on for a comment, and got called a racist ( a poc themself), when they have been one of the primary voices who pointed out many of the racist issues in the fandom.

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nikkiitalks · 10 months

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Race Baiting - A thoughtument by Nikkiitalks.

Okay.. Here we go.

Firstly, for the sake of absolute transparency, when I was first contacted by @olivaraofrph in a tirade of a novel of a response, my skimming through it had me starting to be swayed in her favour, mostly because of the depths of which her privacy was invaded for the sake of the allegations against her. And in that moment, I prematurely forgave her. Told her I understood. But it turns out, after much more has come to light, that I in fact do not understand. And in turn my forgiveness is recanted.

I did not have all the information. Hell, I had a fraction of it. Natalie and I, we were friendly, but not close. We don't talk every day and we never did. We had, though, stood arm in arm against that moment's hot button issue that I had felt strongly about, and so had she. It seemed. We'd held each other in places of mutual respect, shouting each other out and praising each other's advocacy.

Now, it all feels so... silly. This performative display that I so willingly let be pulled over my eyes. But that's beside the point. That was all I knew of her, really. There are others in this tiny niche of our already tiny community, that were far closer. Those that ran servers, indigenous servers, with her. They weren't even afforded the respect of being given an explanation to, but I did?

I was the one, who when I it was brought to my attention, when I was urged to send a DM which I already had, that was deemed the one to get that? A novel, let me be clear, the contents of which I won't make public upon request. A lot of it had nothing to do, truly, with the issue at hand but served to distract from it in a wall of text. It was overwhelming, and it felt just a teeny, tiny bit, manipulative.

There's so much evidence now, even evidence regretfully obtained, that the only place her advocacy extends to is Tumblr. None of your public, irl facing socials having anything there about it. Your own admission of percentage, (how that had been confirmed as she claims I can't speculate), and other things that don't line up. Those of us in the community affected haven gotten together to compare and talk through our feelings toward it all and there is a consensus.

It fucking sucks.

Just the fact that this needs to be brought up absolutely sucks. It detracts from the credibility of other indigenous creators in the space. Not all press is good press, and Natalie right now, is bad press. Beyond myself and the others being lied to. Beyond the personal offense I take to that. This is what bothers me the most. For all the posturing and all the 'talking in wrong and confusing ways' it makes us all look bad. And for what?

The other personal and religious or spiritual beliefs she believes doesn't mean anything to me. The other racism claims about her I can't confirm, whatever. Talking shit about a beloved creator, real or not. Doesn't matter.

What matters is there is damage done to the indigenous community here on the rpc, and before we came together to discuss it, it was distressing to all of us. There is no such thing as clout on tumblr and I don't know why people can't seem to get that through their heads? What need is there to claim to be something you're not, even through insinuations, half truths and vague details? I don't understand.

Yes, the indigenous community is so willing to accept anyone with any indigenous blood, and it's the fact that this is what was taken advantage of by someone... that really gets me. That's what really makes it sting. It's a blow to every white passing Native out there, in my opinion. That's where my hurt is. It's the fact that there is question of the validity of the claims toward a shared familial and generational trauma to myself. That still impacts my father's side of the family to this day.

I don't even know where I'm going with all this, and I feel like I'm typing myself in circles, but it's all to say that I don't care about all the other stuff that serves to muddy the waters of the real issue. Race baiting does nothing but end up hurting those who's real life experiences you're roleplaying.

#olivararph #race baiting tw #rpc #discourse tw

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sob-sister · 5 months

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I honestly laughed at your list and while a lot of them come with finding the humor in jack Harlow as a potential boyfriend (which I still don’t know if he’s even capable of that at this point) most of them even the ones that I laughed at were very accurate. I think the fame part will be piece of cake for her compared to everything else. Also didn’t he used to make a joke about liking the idea of having a girlfriend that would “beat the shit out of him”. He definitely needs someone strong enough to compete and with urban and Zion and Nemo and basically everyone in his life. The race thing is something i don’t necessarily feel the most comfortable with because after a while it just started to come off as weird. During one druski’s dating live stream urban was doing it he asked her I think if she was white because they were blind folded and he was like oh I don’t really date white girls anymore. I don’t remember word for word but it came out sounding like he was looking for it make him sound cool and cultured but it was so unnatural and forced. I felt like during chtkmy jack was pushing it real hard with race being the thing that stood out the most to him. At least guys who reduce women to their body and looks own it and know what they like, jack picks race like it’s a personality trait.

you think so (the fame part)? if they are not in the industry, i guess it would depend on how he approaches the fame part and explains it to her. going to use his love of privacy as an example, but if he's out here telling her she can't do this and post that, that may be something hard to adapt to. not saying he would do this, but i would just hope that the relationship wouldn't come with control and he lets her do her own thing. honestly, he needs to sit down with his person and discuss all of this stuff beforehand, so they are on the same page.

yeah, he did. it was one of his 10 question things.

she's either going to have to be a a very social person or she's going to have to have very strong boundaries when it comes to his people and their ways. i agree. jack should shut up about the this whole race thing of his possible love interests / crushes. like nobody cares that you're into mixed girls in 2023. it's not some novel idea. it's giving "exotic" vibes.

as for urban, i don't even want to address his dating preferences. it's very clear that he fetishises asian / mixed race women, or those interested in asian culture - anime, cosplay, etc. australian girl was half asian, the next girl had big everything and now he's dating avanti who is into the cosplay and all of that. safe to say he has a type. he has also followed lots of girls who fit that mould in the past and he clearly is not hiding his interest.

youtube

i remember that live stream. will link it above for anyone else. it starts at the 50 minute mark. quick break down: he's on a blind date with a girl and both of them are blindfolded.

** "doesn't have a type", likes big lips (true!!), "like some ass too, i can't lie", "every type, ethnicity or whatever … i stray away from white women these days". druski asks why he's not into white girls and urban says he "had a lot in his past … high school trauma". ** sex on a first date? yes. done it a few times. ** thick or petite? likes thick women, but not opposed to petite. mentions his love of lips again. ** head or penetration? "imma need both!". (???) ** body count? they were being counted down and were meant to say their body count together and he left her hanging and everyone went in on her and were basically shaming her for her "high" (18) body count. he goes onto say that his is higher than that, even if you doubled it. says he's lost count. ** the girl asks him if would it be an issue is she said the same (about losing count), tries to avoid answering, then says it might matter in atlanta (that's where she is from / i have no clue what this statement means. any atlanta folks in here?), then says that the past is the past. ** made a sex tape? "yeah, i have a few". ** has dated "like 3 girls" in his life. ** gets his ass ate, "that's all i need".

very misogynistic and sexist vibes from everyone asking questions and they would always focus on the girl. very shamey, but passing it of as "humour". urban was not involved in this, but didn't speak up either.

#urban wyatt

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see-think-write · 23 days

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Why do we hate protesters so much?

1.Intro, what are we talking about?

All these years we've been experiencing many protests , although most of them, at least the most memorable ones, share one objective: To save human lives and the planet; from these we may remember BLM(i.e Black Lives Matter),which had an up rise after the killing of George Floyd in 2020, Ultima Generazione in Italy,Germany and other countries (in English:"The last Generation".) which are climate activists ,who gained a lot of attention in Italy because of their actions towards art pieces, and more recently the Free Palestine movement, an initiative for the liberation of Palestine from the oppression of the Israeli ethno-state.

All of these movements have been repudiated both by the antagonistic groups, i.e most right-winged groups, but also by the common proletariat.

2.Why are these actions and actors hated?

The reasons why the right wing hates these movements are very simple:

They,the protesters, do not condone the "rightful" killing of the lesser beings, the half-animals , the savages , the lower race(s)

These problems do not exist, in their view of reality, so why protest and bother(i.e stop working, i.e stop making them their "hard earned money") those who are working ever so hardly to actually get somewhere? :( (Of course this is pure sarcasm , fuck the bourgeoisie<3)

But what would be the reasons why the proletariat would hate these movements for, when they are fighting for the people too?

There are none but the influence of the ruling class' ideas in our own minds.

If we are only ever taught to think about concepts A,B and C through one specific lens , and that is the ruling class' lens , we will never be able to see the liberation of the people as something that is: 1. Achievable or 2. Desirable.

3.Divide to conquer

And it may as well not be achievable if we do not open our eyes and stop "othering" anyone that doesn't look the same way as us, that doesn't love the same things, or people like us , etc; that is another concept, that has been handed down to us by the ruling class, who must:

Divide the white from the black , to conquer.

Divide the man from the woman, to conquer.

Divide the queer from the "normal", to conquer.

Divide the civilization from "savagery", to conquer.

Divide the Christian from the Muslim, to conquer.

Divide the civilian from the protester , to conquer.

To conquer what? Everything: All land, people, animal, or entity to make the wheel of the capital turn once again, to redirect our class hatred towards ourselves , to keep us blind of who is pressing the boot to our neck.

Martin Niemoeller once said:

"First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist

[...]

Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me."

This is the "Zuerst kamen sie..." poem (in English:"First they came...".)where the pastor speaks on why staying silent in front of brutality is so dangerous:

If we do not use our only power, our organization, to speak for those who have the boot on their throats ,either figuratively or literally, one day the boot will reach our throat.

4.So, why are protesters hated so much?

Because they are a threat,because they are a demonstration of the power that the working class has when properly organized even in such a small scale.

The ruling class hands this fear down to us , in the form of hatred , to keep us blind and disorganized.

●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●

Warning:ALL of my posts may be subjected to changes and or elimination.

Discussion and/or criticism is always welcome!

FREE PALESTINE! FREE CONGO! FREE SUDAN! FREE YEMEN!

VENCEREMOS!

#class hatred #communism #thoughts #spilled thoughts #stream of consciousness #thinking #emotions #society #consumerism #always learning #divide to conquer #protest #direct action #human rights #activism #venceremos #fypツ

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sissytobitch10seconds · 7 months

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Made a Family

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy Summary: Diego Hargreeves' daughter has been telling him all about her daycare class and begging him for a playdate with another one of the little girls. He can't deny her anything, even if it ends up being more than he agreed to. Warnings: Mentioned OC death, mentioned parental/partner loss, and canon-typical child abuse Word Count: 4,263 Ship(s): Diego Hargreeves/Lila Pitts, Diego Hargreeves & Viktor Hargreeves

Archive link!

A/N: I wrote this a long time ago and then put off posting it because I felt like it was too short and self-indulgent. I was having a discussion with one of my wonderful mutuals and they mentioned that they wanted more parent Viktor stuff, so I'm basically just posting this for them! @lovely-number-7 , I hope that you enjoy it lol. Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Picking up Chrysanthemum from her daycare class was one of Diego’s favorite things to do. It didn’t matter how hard he had been working that day or how exhausted he was, he loved getting to see her little shining face looking up at him from the other side of the half-door that blocked him from the rest of the class.

Diego’s daughter had been born right as his life finished settling out in the new universe that he had been dumped in. He still felt guilty for leaving his siblings standing in that park in the middle of unfamiliar territory, especially after everything that they had done, but he didn’t regret it. Not when he got to see his beautiful girlfriend every day when they both returned home from work and got to hold Chrys in his arms. Lila and Chrys meant more to him than anything ever had before and he would never regret his decision to make sure that they were safe and well cared for.

He pulled up to the outside of the daycare, closing the door behind him. He tried to keep his gruff exterior, the one that kept the single parents away from him, plastered onto his face but it was incredibly hard when when was thinking about his little girl.

The foyer of the daycare center was a plain white room with four staircases, half going up and half going down on the wall opposite the door into the building. The two bottom ones were for the older kids (5-7 and 7+) and the top two were for the younger (1-3 and 3-5). To the left was the office where the parents could check their kids in and out and to the right was the kitchen where the meals were made.

Diego turned to go to the office so that he could check Chrys out and then go and collect her from her room. The check out process was quick because the secretary immediately recognized him and so was able to hand him the sheet where he signed to prove that it was him.

He walked as quickly as he thought appropriate so that he was standing on the landing on top of the right staircase that led to the toddler room. He stuck his head through the open top half of the door and then scanned around for his daughter. He always showed up right after naptime, so she was either groggy from just waking up or bouncing around because she had renewed energy.

The teacher was stacking the purple foam pads in the corner so that the kids could have the floor to play again. She caught sight of him and then smiled softly, “Chrys? Your dad’s here to pick you up!”

Immediately upon hearing those words, the aforementioned toddler’s head appeared from behind the low bookshelves. He knew that she had been playing with the Mega Bloks that the school kept. They were her favorite thing since she could make whatever she wanted without repercussion and she loved the bright colors.

“Daddy!” the little girl squealed. She raced around the bookshelf towards the half door as fast as her little legs would carry her.

As soon as she was in arm’s reach, Diego reached past the wooden barrier and scooped her up. She let out a shriek of excitement as she was whirled through the air and then down into her father’s arms. He securely tucked on of his arms underneath her thighs so that she wouldn’t fall if she were to lean too far back. “Hey flor pequeña,” he chuckled as he kissed her chubby cheeks.

Chrys let out a series of long winded giggles as she used her little hands to push his face away from her. “Daddy! Your beard is scratchy!”

He chuckled as he pulled away from her so that she was no longer under the barrage of kisses. He took the backpack that Chrys was sent to school with every day from the day care worker and slung it around his other shoulder. “Thank you,” he said politely. He turned around and began to carefully walk down the stairs while he asked his daughter, “How was class today?”

“Good! I got to play dollhouse with Luna,” she chirped, clapping her hands together to demonstrate how excited she was.

Diego got her out to the car and then fastened her seatbelt securely over her body so that she was tightly strapped into her carseat. He gave her another kiss on the top of her head to make sure that she knew she was loved before he got into the driver’s seat. He glanced back at her to continue the conversation while they started backing out of the parking lot. “I’m glad you got to play in the dollhouse, bebita.” He genuinely was happy for his daughter, he knew how desperately she had wanted to play with the huge dollhouse that the daycare center had set up.

“I got to play with Luna, Daddy! She’s my favorite” the four-year-old explained happily. Diego was grateful every day that his daughter didn’t have to suffer with the same speech impediment that he still struggled with to that day. He would have loved her just as fiercely if she had, but he wanted her to have an easy childhood, free of stress and worry.

“Yeah? Is Luna your best friend?” he asked, glancing back at her with the rearview mirror once more before he turned his attention back to the heavy post-school traffic.

“Mhm! Bestest bestest friend,” the little girl giggled. She reached over and grabbed the bag that her mother had helped her pack before daycare that morning. She removed the stuffy that she had brought with her today and grasped her tight. It was something that she always did when she wanted a hug but wasn’t in the right situation to get one. Diego and Lila had thought it up when they realized just how many long trips were going to be required from them for her job.

Back before their little girl had been born, Diego had considered going back to the Police Academy, but after what he had gone through when he was living in Dallas in the sixties he knew that he couldn’t. So instead, he went back to college and worked on becoming a swim coach and teacher. Lila already had a degree from when she was living with her mother, which had transferred into the new universe, so was putting it to good use as a specialist detective working for the government. That was the real reason that they had to travel around so often, because her job brought them all over the country so that she could examine crime scenes and pieces of evidence up close. They kept their roots down in The City, though.

He felt a small smile slip over his face as he thought about his daughter getting to have the childhood that Lila and Diego had desperately wanted for her. Neither of them got to have a normal childhood, with the exception of Lila before she was four, so they wanted Chrysanthemum to have it. She was already connecting with more children than either of them could have ever been allowed to and her interpersonal skills were flourishing. It had been a huge achievement for them both to get their daughter this far in life without giving her any massive trauma and seeing her develop well.

She was kind, compassionate, and the sweetest little girl that either of them had ever had the joy of meeting. Both of them were overflowing with pride for their daughter and felt so lucky that they got to call her theirs.

The entire time that they were driving through the crowded streets back to their apartment, Diego thought felt his heart swelling with pride and joy. He could hear Chrys singing to herself in the backseat whenever a song came on the radio that she enjoyed. It reminded him of Allison when they were younger, before that childhood innocence had been stamped out of her. It was normal, according to their pediatrician, for children to have some amount of echolalia because that was how they began to pick up on language. Seeing the trait that had been stamped out of his sister in his daughter made Diego miss Allison more than he had in the nearly five years since he had seen her.

That was the one thing that he wished he could change about his life. He and Lila had disappeared into the city so that they could start their family and create a steady life for Chrys before she was born. He had meant to try and reach out to his family so that his daughter could know her aunt and uncles, but then he just never had. He was happy with his family, even if he wished that it could have been bigger for the sake of his daughter if nothing else.

They pulled into the parking garage of the apartment where Diego and Lila lived. He found his reserved spot and then began to get Chrys out of her carseat. She was winding down from the excitement of daycare and was beginning to look a little sleepy like she did everyday when she came home from school. She had just been weaned off of having multiple naps a day but still went to bed fairly early in the evening.

“What do you want for dinner, bebita?” he asked as he shouldered the backpack a little easier and began to walk her towards the house.

“Can Mommy make chops?” she asked as she scrubbed at her eye with one of her little fists.

“I can ask her. I think she just finished one of her cases so she might be really tired when she comes home. Daddy can make you something else, though,” he offered.

She considered it for a moment before she gave him a half-shrug of agreement. “Can I have cheese and crackers for my snack?”

“Did you not get a snack from daycare?” Diego asked, brows furrowing together with worry. That had only happened once before, when the kitchen had an issue so they weren’t able to get any food up to the kids, but it had still upset him. Reginald withheld food from the kids several times when they were younger and he determined that they hadn’t done a good enough job in their training to earn the right of a snack or even a meal if they had been bad enough. The idea of his daughter going at all hungry made him furious.

“I did, but I’m still hungry,” she whined, leaning further against him. Her hand was still clenched tightly around the purple unicorn that she had pulled out of her backpack in the car.

Diego chuckled and kissed the top of her head. It was only when they had gotten into the elevator of the parking garage that would lead them up to the apartment building that he realized what was wrong about what he had just seen. “Where did you get this, bebita?” he asked as he reached down and touched the stuffy in her hand.

“Luna! We traded, which is why I brought one of the stuffies that’s not my favorite,” she explained, flushing slightly.

Diego resisted the urge to laugh at that. He knew that his daughter was deeply ashamed that she couldn’t love all of her toys exactly the same amount since she was worried that some of them would get sad when they realized that they weren’t her favorite. He thought that it was adorable and he was so proud of her for already having this much compassion and kindness when she was only four years old.

“I wish that you had told us that you were going to do that, sweetheart,” he reprimanded gently as he tucked some of her brown-black hair behind her ear. “Mommy and I need to know when you do things like that so that we don’t think anything’s lost.”

She listened to him and then nodded. “Sorry, Daddy. I’ll tell you next time, okay?”

“Thank you,” he kissed the edge of her forehead. They walked through the halls of the apartment building and then he set her down. Chrys immediately ran off so that she could unpack her bag. Diego set his own bag down on the dining room table and then removed his shoes so that they were resting beside the door. He got out a plastic plate from the cupboard and then set out some crackers and cheese slices for Chrys when she was finished unpacking her bag.

He turned on the television to the PBS kids channel that The City got as an initiative to have more widely available entertainment for lower income families. For the four years before Diego had graduated that’s what they had been since they were only getting income from Lila’s job in the government, and she wasn’t able to take as many jobs when Chrys was younger and needed to be minded more often.

He was sitting on the couch while grading some of his student’s papers, he was currently working as a health teacher for the sixth grade class of the local middle school, when Chrys suddenly turned to him. “Daddy, do you think that me and Luna could have a playdate?”

“Sure, but I’d have to talk to Luna’s parent or guardian about it first,” he nodded.

Chrysanthemum grinned. “She’s gonna talk about it with her dad tonight! Can I have a piece of paper with your phone number so that you guys can talk? It’s how Abby and Derek had their playdate since their parents are always super duper busy.”

“Okay, I’ll have Mommy send you with one tomorrow when she packs your morning backpack,” he smiled and ruffled her hair.

The child turned back to her snack and show, happy as a clam that she might get to spend time with her best friend outside of the daycare environment.

---

The next morning, Diego woke up at the normal time that his alarm clock went off. He went about his routine just like he always did without thinking that something might be off or strange about the day. He went on his mile long run (having toned it down from five miles when he had a screaming newborn in the house to exhaust him for about a year straight) and then took a shower. He was just about ready to make himself his normal breakfast when Lila burst out of their closet looking rumpled and upset.

“Is everything okay, mi corazón?” he asked, brows knitting together with worry.

She looked stressed for a moment before she answered, “I got called on another job. I know that I need to take Chrys to school because you have swim club today and need to grade your papers since you can’t do it in the afternoon but I really have to take this. We could get a loan for a house after this, Diego.”

He reached out and took her hands, bringing her out of the closet doorway so that she was against him. He brushed her hair, still styled like it had been when they first fell in love, away from her face. “I can take her to school today. The kids can wait to have their papers graded for another day. You know that they want to put off finding out their grades for as long as possible,” he chuckled.

The worry lines that had been creased around her face softened and she smiled back at him. “I just don’t want to be a shit mum.”

“You are anything but a shit mother, Lila,” he murmured as he pressed a kiss to her forehead. Worrying about whether or not they were going to be good parents was mostly what had destroyed their sleep schedule after Chrys was born since she was a fairly quiet and very sleepy newborn.

He gently kissed her on the lips and then said, “Pack up and get going so that you make your flight on time. When you’re settled down wherever they’re sending you this time, call us.”

“You’re the best husband that I could have asked for,” she grinned. She fisted his shirt and then pulled him down the few inches that he towered above her so that she could press a longer kiss to his lips.

The two then split apart and went their separate ways. Diego went to wake up their daughter and get her dressed for the day while Lila focused on packing her bag for the trip that she was going to have to make for work. Soon she was headed out the door, giving a kiss to both her husband and her daughter.

The rest of the morning was generally pleasant. Chrys always woke up kind of groggy but in a relatively good mood, having inherited Diego’s morning person attribute. She was overly excited once she actually woke up because she knew that today she was going to be at least one step closer to getting the playdate that she wanted with her best friend. She could barley sit still the entire time that Diego was trying to do her hair and help her get dressed.

Her bag was almost forgotten in her hurry to get out the door and to the daycare center. Diego still managed to remember it and included his number tucked into the frontmost pocket where nothing else was so that she wouldn’t forget it.

Lila was normally the one that dropped Chrys off at daycare since she worked later into the afternoon so wanted to spend more time with their daughter when and where she could. Diego had done it a couple of times before, in situations like this when Lila had been on trips. It still felt like his heart was breaking into a million pieces when his little girl wrapped her arms as tightly around his legs as she could for only a moment and then rushed off to climb the stairs all on her own to her daycare room.

It didn’t happen that day though, because the person that she was most excited to see that day was still standing in the foyer getting checked in by her parent. “Luna!” Chrysanthemum called as soon as the door opened far enough for her to see the other four-year-old.

The aforementioned little girl whirled around and met her friend with a big hug. “I missed you!”

“I missed you too! Did you ask your dad?” Chrys asked.

Diego was so focused on his daughter interacting with her best friend that he didn’t even notice the adult that was checking her in until he spoke up. “She did. If your parents said that it was okay and I can talk with them then we can get you guys on the road to having a playdate.” His voice was eerily familiar, but Diego couldn’t quite put his finger on it until he looked up and saw who it was.

He felt like all of the air had been stolen from his lungs. His brother looked very different than he had the last time the two of them had seen each other, but it had been about half a decade so he wasn’t surprised. “Viktor?” Diego breathed.

The man turned towards him, giving Diego a much better view of him. Viktor’s face shape had changed so that his cheekbones and jaw were a lot sharper. His muscle mass had shifted so that it was broader through the shoulders and less heavy on the hips. His chest was entirely flat instead of the small bump that had come with his binder back when they were Hotel Oblivion. The hair on his face had obviously been shaved off that morning, but Diego could still see the traces of stubble along his neck. The veins in his hands and arms were also a lot more prominent.

“Diego,” Viktor blinked. “I, uh, didn’t realize that you were still in The City.”

“There wasn’t really anywhere else for us to go what with,” he gestured down to where Chrys was pulling the note from the front of her backpack pocket to show Luna. He then turned his attention back up to Viktor as he spotted the baby sling over his chest and stomach. “You’ve got two kids?”

“Kind of a long story,” he nodded. “This is Nikolai, and then you’ve met my eldest.”

It was surreal to see that. Logically, he knew that something like this could happen. Before all three of the apocalypses that they had to fend off, Viktor had a life and a career that he obviously adored. It made sense that he would have jumped back into that when given the chance and even settled down to have a family.

“Listen, I have to go to work but do you want to catch up sometime? Maybe you can come over the first time that Luna and Chrys have a playdate,” Diego suggested.

“Yeah,” Viktor nodded. “We can do that.”

He then finished signing in his daughter and walked both of the little girls up to the room where they would stay for the rest of the day. Diego had signed Chrys in and then gone back to his car by the time that Viktor came back down.

---

The two brothers talked and not three days later, when the weekend had finally come, they were both sitting in Diego’s living room. Chrysanthemum and Luna were down the hall in her bedroom, playing with the myriad of toys that she had been vibrating with excitement at the idea of getting to show off. Viktor had Nikolai out of the carrier that he had brought him up in and was currently patting his back as he tried to soothe his cries.

Diego held his hands out to offer some help. Viktor seemed grateful for this, passing the three-month-old baby over to his brother. “Was Luna this fussy?” he asked as he shifted the baby around and began to bounce him. He had gotten very good at doing that while half asleep when his own daughter was this young.

“I wouldn’t know,” Viktor half shrugged. “I became Luna’s dad when she was eighteen months old.”

Diego knew that it was prying, but he couldn’t help himself. He hadn’t quite realized how starved he was for familial affection like he had gotten when they were all trying to stop the end of the world. He was desperate to become a part of Viktor’s life again and to know what had happened in his absence. “Oh? Did you adopt?”

“Sort of,” he sighed. “You know how I have the absolute worst luck when it come to romantic partners?”

Diego nodded and waited for him to continue. “Well after the whole reset of the universe I found out that all of my old stuff was there, minus what I blew up with my powers. It was like everything had stayed from before Harold showed up. So I just kind of picked up where I left off but I was standing up for myself and able to actually be a person instead of the husk that the medication made me be. I met someone who called themself Light. We got along great because we were both trans, and they had already had Luna. We ended up moving in together and becoming co-parents and we were kind of trying to take romance slow but then they got pregnant again with Nikolai. I was going to stick around and continue to help with the whole parenting thing but, um, they didn’t make it through the delivery. So now I’m a dad and I don’t have my partner.”

There were so many missing details that Diego was desperate to know, but Nikolai was only a couple of months old so the loss of this partner still had to be a fresh wound on Viktor’s heart. He chose to drop it instead of pushing forward. “You’re a good dad. Chrys is enamored with Luna, I think that they’re going to stay best friends forever or grow to resent each other.”

Viktor laughed at that, running a hand through the short locks on the front of his head. “I worry. I didn’t have anyone good to base my parenting off of from my life. I mean, Sissy and Light were both amazing parents but I hadn’t been around them for all that long. And I was learning alongside Light because they had aged out of the foster system so they didn’t have anyone to base their parenting off of either.”

“Lila and I worry too. It was really hard, the beginning couple of months. But eventually you kind of feel like you get some footing and you begin to gain confidence,” he reassured.

The two of them fell into an easy back and forth just like they had before the whole family had split up once again. They talked about parenting, what the other had been doing their time apart, and what they thought that their siblings were doing now that they were free in the world. It turned out that Five and Viktor were still very close, which wasn’t all that surprising, and Klaus would pop into his life every now and again. Slowly, Diego got the family that he had been hoping for since his daughter had first been placed into his arms.

#fanfiction #fanfic #writing #ao3 #archive of our own #tua #the umbrella academy #viktor hargreeves #diego hargreeves #lila pitts #diela #diego x lila #lila x diego #made a family fic

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acourtofthought · 2 years

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Is Lucian poc? I get confused by some peoples talks about the matter. He is initially compared to looking lkke Beron in the first book. But then in book 3 Feyres says he looks like Helion. So to me..he reads as white passing, because I imagine Beron would have killed him off if he was visibly not his. I don’t know. I’m confused. I’d appreciate your input?

To sum it up, Lucien is 100% a POC!

Now to further discuss. I understand your confusion because SJM retconned that. We were told something in book 1 that didn't line up with information presented to us in later books and sometimes your first impression of a character sticks in your head.

Here's the thing though. My little sister is adopted (originally from Guatemala). I'm Caucasian and pale to the point that you can see my veins pretty much all year long (not a good look, let me tell you). My oldest sister, who I am blood related to) has red hair and Amber eyes. My half brother has blue eyes and blond hair. But because my adopted sister and I both share brown hair and brown eyes, we're told we look the most alike and she's been told she looks like our mother without people knowing her background.

She really doesn't look like either one of us but sometimes we humans do this little thing where we like to draw comparisons to what we're familiar with even when we're totally wrong. So it could be said that Feyre, having no awareness of Lucien's real father as it's later revealed, saw Lucien standing next to a man and drew conclusions because she didn't know any better. Not to mention Lucien is mixed. His mother is white (from everything we've been told). When you have someone who is mixed, they can look a whole lot like one parent, a lot like the other parent or a combination of the two. I've seen a bunch of Tik Tok videos of a POC holding what is an extremely pale baby with blonde hair and blue eyes. The captions say they constantly are told their baby must be adopted when they are in fact their biological child. That baby, regardless of which parent they favor in looks is still a POC and will grow up being proud of the race that they received from each parent even if they only look like one of them.

Even though we can provide real world explanations for why Feyre was mistaken in book 1, I think the simple fact is that SJM ended up realizing she needed a new storyline for Lucien. Whether that was because she decided Elain would be his mate and she knew Elain wasn't destined for the Autumn Court or whether she decided she wanted Eris to have a bigger role so she needed to free up the Heir to the Autumn Court Throne, I'm not sure. But she definitely switched his appearance up and that is the one we now should be holding on to as canon.

It doesn't seem like a lot of the characters have suspected at this point so I understand why readers have a difficult time imagining exactly how he looks. Lucien himself doesn't seem to question who his actual father is (though maybe we'll find he suspected in later novels). Feyre and Rhys being face to face with Helion and Lucien managed to put it together but so far it seems they are the only ones and now that they've seen it they can't unsee it so it's become completely obvious to them. Regardless that they are the only ones who have admitted to knowing, that doesn't change that he's a POC though. Even if he looked 100% like the LOA (because, like I said before, people can strongly resemble one parent from a mixed couple), he is a POC. We know he has Helion's nose and smile and a darker coloring that his brothers.

I believe @moononastring made a really great post on how Helion might be of Egyptian descent though I apologize if I am not remembering that correctly. All I can say is whoever he looks like or whether he's a perfect blend of the two, our boy lucked out in the gene pool.

As far as Beron suspecting, they did briefly touch on this in the books. There's a good chance he knows Lucien isn't his (which is why he's always treated him horribly) but to draw attention to it would mean admitting to everyone that his wife stepped out on him which would be more than his ego could bear.

#lucien vanserra #lady of autumn #helion

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

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By: Lisa Selin Davis

Published: May 17, 2023

Lily Cooney was fully committed to social justice. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, the now-26-year-old writing tutor marched proudly in Black Lives Matters protests through the streets of Portland, Oregon.

But the culture in which she was steeped began to take a toll on her mental health. As a white person, she felt responsible for America’s racist legacy of slavery, and worried about her relationship with her Asian American girlfriend. “I felt like I was hurting her, harming her, just by being white,” Cooney told me.

Though she knew she was a lesbian, she began to identify as nonbinary, a result of her understanding that being a “cis woman” was “associated with colonization and white supremacy and oppression.”

One day in June 2020, she found herself suddenly unleashing a tirade against the next-door neighbor of a friend, a white man who said he supported BLM but had cops in his family whom he supported, too. “I had this moment afterwards where I was like, ‘This is not how I want to behave. I don’t want to be a person who just screams at people because they’re white.’ ”

Anxious and depressed, she had trouble concentrating on work. “I started just going a little crazy,” she said. She decided she needed therapy to work on both her “internalized white supremacy,” her “white guilt,” and to “become a better person.’ ”

In January 2021, Cooney sought help from a black therapist in Portland she found through a therapy database, who agreed to work with her around issues of race and gender.

Initially, they practiced mindfulness and self-compassion techniques, from forgiving oneself out loud to the “butterfly hug,” crossing arms and tapping the chest. The therapist even cried with her when she cried about sexual assault or feeling unsupported in relationships. Cooney felt supported and eventually, more in control, more accepting of herself as female.

Then something unexpected happened. The stronger and more mentally healthy she felt, the less Cooney viewed the world through the lens that had informed her activism—a binary perspective that split all people into categories: white and black, oppressor and oppressed, victimizer and victim.

“I care about equality, I care about racism, I care about homophobia, I care about trans people being safe. I just don’t want to walk around in the world where everyone’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are dictated by their identities,” she said.

Cooney wanted to share her newfound realizations, but feared being canceled and ostracized—by her friends, fellow activists, perhaps even her girlfriend. The burden weighed on her, and therapy seemed the place to address it.

When she first tried to do so, in June, 2022, Cooney’s therapist reacted badly. She told Cooney that critiquing cancel culture was giving in to “white supremacy culture,” and said Cooney was making her feel “unsafe” as a black woman. By the end of the session, the therapist had given her an ultimatum: they could continue to work together and keep cancel culture discussions off the table, or “the relationship was over,” Cooney said.

Cooney continued with the therapist for six more months, but her therapist seemed to emphasize Cooney’s victimhood, reiterating that other people were responsible for her oppression as a gay woman. “She said, ‘You’re not free because of homophobia and sexism. You’ll never be free.’ ”

Cooney began pushing back, expressing views the therapist had declared taboo such as not wanting to categorize people based on their identities, or asserting that too many people were being shamed and punished for minor supposed transgressions. Finally, her therapist told Cooney their relationship was finished.

Ultimately, the thing she had feared the most—being canceled for her views—had happened, by the person with whom she was supposed to be able to share her deepest secrets. “I was just totally in shock, just kind of dead inside,” Cooney told me.

Cooney is not alone in finding therapy overtaken by the same kind of social justice ideology prevalent in schools, medicine, and the law. I spoke with more than two dozen therapists and clients who painted a disturbing picture of what happens in the treatment room when therapists make the tenets of this ideology central to their work, instead of offering empowering approaches that help patients make better choices and take control of their lives. Some patients, like Cooney, have also found themselves “fired” for expressing unacceptable thoughts.

I spoke to new therapists, some still in training, who describe a profession that teaches the ascribing of oppressor or victim categories to patients, based on their innate characteristics, instead of seeing them as individuals. Several sources said their applications to graduate schools required them to make a written commitment to anti-racism. Some said they’d been penalized for asking the “wrong” questions in class, detailing how this ideological encroachment damages their own mental health.

I reviewed mission statements and other documents released by professional organizations in recent years, revealing how this revolution has transformed the central tenets of the therapeutic process.

And I talked to psychologists and others fighting back. They described their alarm at how the very people who are supposed to help ease trauma become the source of it, as therapy sessions transform into ideological struggle sessions. British psychotherapist Val Thomas told me “the reason this happened is that activists captured the institutions and professional bodies of counseling and psychotherapy.”

At a time when as many as 90 percent of adults believe there’s a mental health crisis in this country, parts of the mental health profession are in crisis too.

An Overcorrection

There is no doubt that, historically, the fields of psychology and psychiatry—founded in the 19th and early 20th centuries by men like Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and others—made many mistakes and did people serious harm. Bookshelves are filled with volumes on the mistreatment of women. In the early 20th century the field embraced eugenics, leading, especially in America, to appalling treatment of black people. Homosexuality was classified as a mental illness until 1973.

In recent decades, the profession has sought to address its bad treatment and historic wrongs. This led to the development, in the ’80s, of “cultural competency”—an awareness of one’s own biases and a commitment not to impose them onto clients. Subsequently, as psychiatrist Sally Satel describes in a recent article, the idea that therapists required specific training to treat minorities expanded. By the early ’90s, the American Psychological Association (APA) had updated its ethics code, requiring therapists to behave in “culturally sensitive” ways and appreciate “the worldview and perspectives of those racially and ethnically different from themselves.”

“The whole point of understanding cultural differences was that you didn’t walk in and assume,” says Christine Sefein, until recently a professor of clinical psychology at Antioch University’s Los Angeles campus. But over the past decade—spurred by the rise of social media, Trump’s election in 2016, and George Floyd’s murder in 2020—Sefein, like many in her profession, began to see the mission change to something more insidious: imposing the bias and framework of Critical Social Justice (CSJ)—the term some psychologists use to refer to social justice ideology.

According to CSJ, one’s identity categories are paramount to the therapeutic process. Neutrality and objectivity—once the cornerstones of the practice—are now tools of oppression and white supremacy. The major professional organizations for the therapeutic fields have in recent years produced scholarship, mission statements, position papers, and curriculums reflecting this newfound dogma, one that leads therapists to refashion themselves into social activists.

In 2015, the American Counseling Association (ACA), which represents over 60,000 professional counselors, published the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies, dividing counselors and clients into “privileged” and “marginalized” groups and encouraging them to “possess an understanding of their social identities, social group statuses, power, privilege, oppression, strengths, limitations, assumptions, attitudes, values, beliefs, and biases.” They identify “social justice” as “one of the core professional values of the counseling profession.”

The American School Counselor Association offers training for school counselors in all 50 states as “leaders in social justice advocacy, working to eliminate racism and bias in schools.” The National Association of Social Workers—the largest membership organization of social workers in the world—says that “social workers pursue social change” and “embrace the intrinsic role we have in combating discrimination, oppression, racism, and social inequities.” They add, “The NASW Code of Ethics calls on all members of the social work profession to practice through an anti-racist and anti-oppressive lens.”

The influential American Psychological Association, which has more than 146,000 members and is the primary accreditor for psychology training programs, in 2021 issued an “Apology to People of Color for APA’s Role in Promoting, Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism, Racial Discrimination, and Human Hierarchy in U.S.” Also in 2021 it published an Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion framework, promising to “embed” these principles “throughout all aspects of our work.” This includes a commitment “to applying psychological science to create a more equitable and inclusive world” and elevating and honoring “the voices and perspectives of marginalized social and intersectional identities.”

Florida psychologist Nina Silander researched the political bias within the APA, finding a 532 percent increase in politically slanted communiqués—almost 80 percent left-leaning—from 2000–2002 to 2017–2019. (Her data will be published in July, in a chapter of this book.) She says an unacknowledged irony of social justice dictating the therapeutic approach is that it often fails to understand the patient in the room. “A lot of immigrants, or ethnic minorities in general, actually possess surprisingly conservative or more traditional values,” Silander said. Therapists who approach these clients through the lens of social justice may be “wholly unprepared for that reality.”

A recent journal article by more than two dozen academics titled “In Defense of Merit in Science” writes of the APA’s new mandate: “They promote a radical, non-evidence-based, untested psychotherapy that encourages patients to see their problems through a lens of power and race.” This is an abandonment of best practices, they write. “This is not science; it is ideology and, arguably, malpractice.”

Weakening the Client

Critics of this ideological turn have no trouble acknowledging that systemic racism, homophobia, and sexism exist, and that patients may be damaged by these forces. “Of course oppressions exist, of course unfairness,” says Carole Sherwood, a psychotherapist in the UK who has studied the impact of social justice on the field. But, she adds, “The whole idea of identity politics doesn’t fit with therapy because we look at individuals, we look at unique individuals. We don’t group people. The minute you start grouping people and slapping labels on them, you’re making assumptions.”

“Psychology, and especially clinical psychology, is oriented to the individual,” said Tab Shamsi, a clinical psychologist at the University of Chicago who has written about his field’s ideological shift. “But a lot of this social justice ideology isn’t concerned about the individual.”

Counselors steeped in this ideology may assume that systemic racism—rather than, say, destructive habits or distorted thinking—is the source of depression for all patients who are racial minorities. Or that discrimination and stigma (known as the “minority stress model”) rather than concurrent mental health issues are to blame for a young person’s gender distress.

Critics of the CSJ approach are concerned that therapists then focus on forces outside the client’s control, rather than empowering the patient to make positive personal change.

The point of therapy is for clients to “develop more insight into what is troubling them and be able to live more resourcefully,” says UK-based psychotherapist Thomas. “The problem with critical social justice–driven therapy is that there’s only one way of understanding the client’s difficulties. And that understanding is: you are operating in a sort of nexus of oppressed or oppressor groups in society.”

As Thomas put it: “Woke therapy weakens the client.”

Andrew Hartz, a clinical psychologist in New York, points out that when a therapist injects a specific political worldview into the therapy room, many patients are left feeling it isn’t “safe to ask questions.” This population includes, he says, conservatives, liberals, and moderates who feel stifled and censored; people of color who are concerned about racism yet object to anti-racism ideology; gay people alienated by the LGBT culture wars; cops vilified by communities they serve; and more.

Kobi Nelson, now a 41-year-old high school teacher in Colorado, was seeing a therapist for anxiety and depression and to help her assert herself more. Nelson grew up working class in the fundamentalist Church of Christ community outside of Denver, where she was taught that girls should be quiet and self-effacing.

Nelson was pursuing a PhD in education at the University of Colorado a few years ago, and her therapist encouraged her to speak up in class. Many of the classes, from “urban education” to “critical theory,” focused on power, privilege, and critical race theory. This explicitly linked whiteness with oppression

One day, Nelson followed her therapist’s advice and raised her hand to ask why it was okay for students of color to have “safe spaces” to work out racial issues, but white students struggling to understand their “privilege” shouldn’t. “What if white people could have ‘safe spaces’ to work out their privilege in places of higher education before they became urban teachers?” she inquired.

The room went silent, then the professor, a person of color, yelled at Nelson, “There are no safe spaces!” There was more yelling, and though one student gingerly pointed out that they’d probably misunderstood Nelson’s point, the others debated Nelson’s power and privilege. She was shaking, devastated, but she didn’t want to cry “white women’s tears” or leave, which would be seen as white privilege. After that, she says her fellow students shunned her, no longer collaborating on presentations or papers.

When she talked to her therapist about what happened, the therapist pushed Nelson to examine her own racism, instead of helping her to deal with the pain of her public shaming. “It brought me right back to that place that I grew up in, which was this church that said because you are a woman, because of an immutable characteristic, you can’t speak up,” she told me. She felt she was treated like a “heretic” because she didn’t fit the model of an oppressed person.

At least church offers a path to redemption. But not social justice. “There’s no forgiveness. You’re just confessing and confessing and confessing,” Nelson said. “I think many who go into therapy honestly don’t feel like they have a lot of agency, and it doesn’t help when your therapist is confirming that.”

For the burgeoning number of young people experiencing gender dysphoria—distress with one’s biological sex—not only does pressure inside the profession limit the kind of psychological care they receive, so does pressure from outside. More than 20 states have laws banning what is called “conversion therapy.”

Conversion therapy typically refers to the now-discredited efforts to change gay people’s sexual orientation to straight. But in the context of gender distress, activists have intentionally reengineered that phrase to include any therapy that doesn’t immediately and completely affirm a young person’s desire to change genders. This means the therapist cannot explore possible sources of dysphoria such as traumatic childhoods, sexual abuse, and family homophobia. It’s also well-documented that many gender-dysphoric young people have numerous other mental health conditions that need addressing. These include autism, ADHD, eating disorders, and self-harm.

Because “anti-conversion therapy” laws may prohibit exploring those other issues, and require therapists simply to affirm a person’s gender identity, providing exploratory therapy can be dangerous. These laws “create a chilling effect,” says Lisa Marchiano, a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia who often works with clients with gender issues. “Good therapists are afraid to do good therapy. They want to get away from this topic altogether.”

This leaves the rising number of “detransitioners,” people who have made a gender transition, realized it was a mistake, and wish to return to their birth sex, without professional psychological support. “When a client decides to detransition, affirming therapists have no professional tools to cope with it,” said Joe Burgo, a California-based psychologist who works with detransitioners.

(When I told Dr. Mitch Prinstein, chief science officer of the APA, about the patients being damaged by CSJ, he said he had never heard of the problem. The bigger issue, he said, is therapists whose religious or ideological beliefs spur them to deny care to sexual and gender minorities. He pointed me toward the APA’s Code of Ethics, which states that psychologists should be “aware of and respect cultural, individual, and role differences” and “try to eliminate the effect on their work of biases.”)

Treatment based on dogma and ideology contradicts proven modalities like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT helps patients manage anxiety, depression, and other problems by recognizing and mastering destructive thought patterns and behaviors. Rather than focusing on, say, microaggressions as the source of personal distress, CBT encourages people to put things in perspective, stop catastrophizing, and gain control over their reactions and perceptions.

But one therapist in training—who was afraid to be named—said that much of what she is learning is the opposite of CBT. “My concern is that we’re not helping people heal and transcend,” she said. “We’re just helping people live in their victim mentality.”

Training Wheels

The ideologically motivated therapists of tomorrow are being trained today, and anyone who publicly questions the dogma risks jeopardizing their career before it starts.

Take Leslie Elliott, now 46 years old, who was a part-time wellness consultant and homeschooling mother of four when she decided to go back to school in 2019 to get her master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling from the online program at Antioch University.

As her studies progressed, she told me, “I started to be disturbed by the ideological bent of the program.” For example, a faculty advisor told Elliott—who considered herself liberal—that the school was aware they are producing counselors who would not be able to work with Trump supporters. “They are training people who will not be able to see half the population as human beings who need compassionate treatment,” Elliott said.

As she neared the end of her program in the fall of 2022, all students were required to sign a civility pledge that had been put in place after the death of George Floyd. It read, in part:

I acknowledge that racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, ageism, nativism, and other forms of interpersonal and institutionalized forms of oppression exist. I will do my best to better understand my own privileged and marginalized identities and the power that these afford me.

Despite being against racism, sexism, and all the other “isms,” she refused to sign, even though her refusal meant that her master’s degree was, she said, being “held hostage.”

“It was like a purity test,” she told me. She posted a video sharing her concerns that “counselors were being trained not to remain objective and neutral with their clients.” Instead, she said, “We were taught that our main role as counselors was not in our work with clients—individuals and families—but rather as activists for social justice.”

youtube

Students were taught they need to assess themselves and their clients on a continuum of privilege, using criteria such as race, gender identity, disability, and more. “For each of these categories we are to give ourselves either a value of ‘marginalized’ or ‘privileged,’ and do the same for our clients,” she said. “And then add these up and see who’s more privileged. And this teaches you how you’re supposed to interact with your client.”

Depression, bereavement, relationship issues, or any host of problems that might bring a client to a therapist were subsumed under identity categories, Elliott said. White clients, students were instructed, should be made to become more aware that they were perpetrating white supremacy. For clients who were not white, the students were told to help these patients “increase their racial identity salience”—that is, to see their problems as race-based, even if they weren’t.

After her video was released, the dean of her program published a statement accusing her of “white supremacy, transphobia, and other harmful ideologies in direct opposition to our professional ethical guidelines.” (The provost did not return several emails from The Free Press requesting comment.)

Antioch’s approach to training future therapists is hardly unique. Delaware Valley University offers a master’s in counseling psychology whose “focus is on developing socially conscious counselors with an interest in facilitating an equitable and fair society for everyone.” New York University’s Silver School of Social Work master’s program offers “clinical social work practice with a social justice perspective.” Montclair State University’s master’s in counseling puts an “emphasis on the infusion of multicultural counseling and social justice practice in all courses.”

This trend is not limited to the U.S.

Carole Sherwood, the British psychotherapist, sent Freedom of Information requests to 30 clinical psychology training courses in the UK. Her goal: “to try and find out the extent to which they had all been captured by critical social justice ideology,” she told me. All 21 of those that responded touted their expansive adoption of these ideas.

Given the training that new counselors and psychologists are receiving in the U.S., not only would they be unreceptive to offering services to those who don’t share their political views, an entire half of the population would be unwelcome because of their chromosomes.

For more than a decade, psychology has been predominantly female. Women now make up almost 75 percent of students in psychology graduate programs (in other counseling professions, the percentage is even higher).

A white, male graduate student in the Midwest, who received an undergraduate degree in psychology in 2015, noticed a sharp contrast in the tone of instruction when he returned to school three years later to pursue a PsyD in clinical psychology. “Everything in terms of the language, in terms of acceptable discourse, had completely altered,” he said.

His program, and others like it, had started to push “levels of activism that we need to be engaged in in order to be good psychologists, to be good clinicians, to do what is morally right and correct in society.” Identity, he said, mattered more than anything else.

He was often the only male in the room and sometimes felt shunned and shut down by classmates, who accused him of “centering himself” if he objected during their discussions of “hegemonic masculinity” and “internalized misogyny,” or to the assumption that every male was an oppressor. “These ideas are no longer just being utilized to identify and spot oppressive circumstances or inequality, but are really being used to silence anyone who has a different viewpoint,” he said.

He also worried about the men and boys who would be seen by ideologically trained therapists. He said several of his female classmates expressed discomfort with males and concern about having to treat them. Usually, though, he didn’t speak up. The fear of being ostracized, or even reported to administrators, if he did so affected his own mental health.

Woke therapy weakens therapists, too. After Trump’s election in 2016 and then the death of George Floyd in 2020, Christine Sefein, who taught graduate students at Antioch, said she noticed her students becoming increasingly delicate. One couldn’t hand a paper in on time after being misgendered, requiring two weeks of bedrest. Students announced they’d fire clients who voted for Trump. “You can’t practice as a therapist if you are that fragile,” said Sefein.

Her students went from “being curious and wondering to being assumptive,” says Sefein, herself a first-generation American whose parents emigrated from Egypt. She resigned in 2021, in protest over the encroachment of politics into her program.

Val Thomas says that any students questioning what’s happening to the profession will be labeled a reactionary or bigot, and “taken through a process of moral reeducation.”

One student at a highly ranked East Coast program texted articles to some classmates questioning the gender-affirming model of transitioning minors, and describing how several countries have severely limited young people’s medical transition. Another student reported her, and she was put on a remediation plan and found to be deficient in “orientation to multiculturalism and social justice advocacy,” because she had “openly shared content that shows a bias against the transgender community, which demonstrates a need to grow in sensitivity towards diversity.”

Compelled to appear before a panel of professors, she disavowed the perspectives she shared in order to continue. If she received another poor evaluation, she was warned, her fitness to continue in the program would be reconsidered.

“We’re in this graduate program where critical thinking I assumed was encouraged. But it’s apparent that we can think critically as long as we’re in the same ideology,” she said. If therapists “can’t handle information that is outside of their realm of comfort,” she asked, “how can they possibly be in the position to counsel clients?”

Fighting Back

Therapists concerned about the direction their profession is taking are banding together to offer alternatives.

Christine Sefein is now part of Critical Therapy Antidote, a platform co-founded in 2020 by Val Thomas. Its website says it “has become a significant platform for critiquing the tenets of Critical Social Justice in relation to therapy. . . . We provide support, advocacy and resources for an increasingly beleaguered profession.”

Andrew Hartz is launching the Open Therapy Institute this summer, whose mission is to “foster open inquiry in mental health care and support those underserved in the face of politicization of the field.” The institute will offer professional development for therapists and promises to provide patients therapy from professionals who “strive to be open, curious, and empathic,” he said.

In 2021, psychologist Brian Canfield, Professor of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Florida Atlantic University, co-founded the International Association of Psychology and Counseling to, according to the website, “oppose all forms of racism, cultural bias, discrimination. . . and cancellation” and to promote “critical thinking over indoctrination.” Canfield told me, “Under no circumstances, ethically or morally, should we use our clinical positions to proselytize or try to shape the worldview of our clients.”

Jungian analyst Lisa Marchiano is president of the Gender Exploratory Therapy Association, which launched in 2021. The website explains, “We are here because those who are exploring gender identity or struggling with their biological sex should have access to therapists who will provide thoughtful care without pushing an ideological or political agenda.“ And Joe Burgo is a co-founder of Beyond Transition. Launched in 2021, it offers low-cost, non-ideological therapy for detransitioners.

Some are finding alternatives to providing therapeutic services for clients. Leslie Elliott refused to cave to the demand that she sign the mandatory pledge and so has not received her master’s degree—she hired a lawyer to resolve her dispute. In the meantime, she formed a peer counseling group with others concerned about encroaching ideology in the workplace, and offers private coaching, based on her belief, as her website says, that “we are each a whole and unique person, not divisible into ‘identity’ categories or political parties.”

As for Lily Cooney, she feels free to express herself, and no longer has the desire to go to therapy. “At this point,” she said, “I feel like what I can do for myself is healthier than what these ideologue therapists can do for me.”

When your therapist wants to assimilate you into the collective.

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bookishfeylin · 1 year

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I read something you said and you put into words what I've been struggling to verbalize for a while. I'm a bi brown woman, and always happy for representation. But it bothered me that Fandom insists black and brown women are always gay to push them out of the way for a white ship, or white authors (in this case SJM), lazily slapping on queer on a woc (Emerie) for brownie points. I'm not saying men loving us validates us, or that we need them to, but it is weird that a lot of media refuses to put woc into loving relationships with men. You saying that it says "woc aren't deserving of love from men" was finally what I was looking for to describe it. So thank you.

Hi nonny! I think you're talking about either this or this post? But either way, you're very welcome, though before I fully answer this ask, I want to add the disclaimer here that I'm straight and cis, though I've also seen many LGBTQ+ POC complain about this phenomenon too, like @positively--speculative.

Firstly: Of course LGBTQ+ POC need representation, and deserve it. I don't want anyone who reads this to think otherwise. Representation matters. But this is a nuanced conversation that needs to happen.

The problem is that many white authors and their fandoms want to seem "woke" and "diverse" without actually caring about their diverse characters. So they'll make the POC the token gay and sideline them so they can focus on the white (usually cishet) ship. They won't develop the character or give them a personality beyond their race and sexuality, half of the time don't even bother to give them a love interest or even a relevant love story with screen time***, and mainly use them as little more than a background prop for the story of the white ship. @positively--speculative has discussed how white fandom did this with Valkyrie after Thor Ragnarok came out: white fandom claimed Thorkyrie couldn't be shipped because it "ruined" Val's bisexuality. Never mind that there's no other woman in Thor Ragnarok that Valkyrie can be reasonably shipped with, apparently we just don't deserve to see Val in love at all! (I recommend checking out all her posts tagged Thorkyrie if you want more of her--a Black bisexual woman's--perspective, on the matter). And Sarah J Maas is a big offender for doing the same to her WOC.

As you and I both said, a large part of it is people being uncomfortable with WOC being the romantic interest of men (this is especially true of ships that involve Black women. A lot of the time fandom considers the Black woman to be an "independent lesbian" who doesn't need romantic love from a man, so her male love interest should be with [insert popular white character here]). What it ultimately boils down to is racism, and us not being seen as viable love interests worthy of romance (from men).

But many people simply don't want to admit that, and merely switch to the 'this woc is a lesbian' game. And it sucks, doing a disservice to all the marginalized people involved.

***or they're fetishized.

#ask #anon #acotar #acotar critical #sjm critical #on media #fandom racism #discourse #not to mention WOC not being seen as worthy of romance does have real world ramifications #(ever heard of desirability politics?)#compare black women's marriage stats to white women's here in the states and you'll see there's a big difference there #us not being viewed as viable love interests affects our real world relationships (or lack thereof)#and it is a problem white fandom and authors choose to perpetuate for some reason #and again: LGBTQ+ POC deserve representation!!!#what im saying is that white fandom is more invested in making POC background props than in providing genuine representation #racism

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fizzigigsimmer · 11 months

Text

@mania-mono I had to move my reply so I can give this my best shot at an answer without worrying about a word limit. So here I go, and pardon any pre-coffee typos.

I don’t speak for every Billy fan, because I can’t, nor do I speak for every POC because I can’t do that either. Blanket statements, generalities, and opinions grounded in the belief that what you see in front of you - which can only ever be a sample size - is everything, leads to closed mindedness. We are all vulnerable to these things. I think it is human nature to accept what we see and what we are told, in order to make friendly in our groups. So that we feel accepted as well as acceptable and to never think beyond that.

So I understand where opinions like “People only care about Billy because Dacre is attractive [and white]” come from. Within those opinions I can hear the faint echos of social discourse that I as a woman of color have had to bring to the table at one time or another, and I recognize that there is a merit of thought there, that I am 100% sure some fans need to reckon with.

I will never be the person sitting out here trying to disprove that the general fandom is suddenly unproblematic and completely free of the persuasion of whiteness combined with attractiveness and a preference for men.

This black girl will certainly never tell you that she hasn’t run into Billy friendly hot takes and writing that did have whiffs of white washing and erasure that made her uncomfortable and irritated at times. I have no reason to be afraid or to hide from that fact because it’s my lived reality. Every day in every fandom, in every ship. It’s my reality. It sucks. And I am confident and grounded enough in my own thinking to say something when I feel it needs to be said, or to just move on and find something better to read for my own peace of mind.

Yes, some Billy fans are problematic. But that is not my whole experience nor even half of it, and that matters.

Because I will also tell you that in my year or more of engaging in Harringrove fandom I have experienced that type of blindness and bias less than I have in other fandom spaces I have taken part in.That’s why I am here. I do not subject myself to being in places that make me consistently uncomfortable.

My empathy for the character brought me, and I stay because it’s a lovely place to explore my thoughts & feelings and make friends. For the most part I have found this pocket of fandom to be filled with nice people who actually do think through the characters flaws and have conversations about culture and social issues as often as any other fandom space. We bond, we have fun, and occasionally I might get into a debate with someone who I disagree with or disagrees with me about how we perceive the character’s flaws and their cultural impact.

I will tell you that I avoid many other subsections of Stranger Things fandom because my experience was that the balance is not the same in other tags. Because I felt consistently attacked, provoked, and silenced. Not just where it comes to discussions about race, but also disability, fat phobia, and my experiences of trauma and surviving abuse.

The problem I see a lot in fandom is that people are very good at manipulating others. There are whole communities that thrive on the basis of taking popular progressive opinions and using it to bully others for their entertainment or to control their behavior, or both. They rely on the public memory of the valuable work other people have done within culture and use those talking points to invoke fear and shame in their peers for their own selfish reasons. To feel good in the moment. For more reblogs. To feel like they’re part of the winning “team”. To feel like they’re meeting requirements of acceptable behavior. And for many more reasons I’m sure.

Whatever their reason, these folks know when they type out, “people only like Billy because Dacre is attractive”, that most people will instantly remember every discussion they ever sat through on the topic of bias and think ‘I don’t want to be that guy’. Because that’s natural and good and without those natural and good instincts we couldn’t be manipulated into a fear response. But the reality is even just a little bit of critical thinking would make it obvious how biased and unreasonable this take is.

When I hear “People only...” no mater what follows, a little yellow warning light goes off in the back of my mind. Because yes we can joke about certain things and make dumb memes for the fun, but when it comes to making a serious judgment, “People only” is a dangerous place to start. More people need to remember that.

Because I don’t think anyone actually needs to spend a great deal of time talking to Billy fans or researching much of anything at all to debunk this theory. If you replace Billy’s name with any aspect of his character that a person might relate to it falls apart. Because they are there to be related to. And if they are there to be related to, you’d have to be carrying some deep seeded rage and wearing some thick ass blinders to stick to the argument that you truly believe that nothing but white male attractiveness matters to anyone.

“People only care about that teenager because his actor is good looking.”

“People only care about that child, whose mother left, because his actor is good looking.”

“People only care about that blue collar boy because his actor is good looking.”

“People only care about that child of divorce...”

“People only care about that boy who was forced to move towns right in the middle of high school because...”

“People only care about that kid whose dad was abusing him because...”

“People only care about that kid who was dragged into the dark by a monster one night and violated because....”

I think the ridiculousness as well as the danger of this thought process speaks for itself.

I think that if someone finds it easy to believe a blanket statement like “People only care about Billy because Dacre is hot,” and can’t think up a single other reason someone else might relate to the character and talk about it honestly while defending their opinion, that’s their problem and not mine or yours. Either this is someone who doesn’t think much for themselves and is just parroting others, or someone who knows what they are saying probably isn’t actually true, but doesn’t care because the aim is to hurt some and manipulate others.

#Just my opinion #thoughts #on me liking Billy just because he's hot #tw: fandom discource #tw: fandom wank #Billy Hargrove #thanks for asking and I hope this was clear #I am not a morning person lol

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eroticcannibal · 11 months

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I’ll just get this out of the way: I believe in transandrophobia or whatever people want to call it, I believe in listening to trans mens experiences.

BUT. I cannot stand most of the big people on here who discuss it for reasons similar to the recent post you made about how privileged women still experience violence.

I once saw a thread of trans men all saying that cis white women who fear violence and being kidnapped murdered, shouldn’t fear that, and that any cis white woman who is scared of misogynistic violence has just been brainwashed by mainstream true crime and crime shows, and a couple people said “lol they don’t want you why are you scared”.

I am a white cis girl (I’m also a trans guy but that’s not super relevant rn lol). I fully know my privilege and frequently have discussions along the subject of white privilege with friends of color. I don’t shy away from the topic.

but I have almost been kidnapped twice in the short 18 years I’ve been on this planet. One of my earliest memories is that experience in a shopping mall. Every cis girl I know, white or not, has had real life experience at least once with this kind of thing.

and when I saw that thread, it made me feel ill. To me it feels like so many other trans guys on here decided that the “being a man doesn’t make you bad” doesn’t apply to any other privileged group because they didn’t want to be seen as deniers of other forms of privilege. I also saw an entire thread where a shit ton of trans guys were literally saying that, because white cis women are the physical “vessels of the white race”, then apparently we are not at risk of domestic violence because cis white men need us to keep their dream of a white supremacist world alive. and many people responded with righteous outrage just to be dismissed as “well they are just trying to defend white women”.

the fucking rampant misogyny in these spaces is so fucking hard to deal with, and they complain all day about how people ignore issues men have, then turn around and act like one form of privilege means your other experiences of oppression don’t matter.

so long story short thank you for those posts I’ve been so ducking exhausted lately trying to find a balance between discussing transandrophobia with other transmascs, and protecting my mental health from all the misogyny in those spaces. it’s so fucking tiring.

U get it. U get it. And yeah this sickening attitude towards women is rampant in spaces that support the idea of transandrophobia (and honestly I think this most recent wave of "progressive" misogyny is squarely on trans men who believe in transadrophobia, and insay that as one of them) I wasn't sure if I was gonna call out that group specifically myself but since u bring it up!

Also I think we saw the same post cus that sounds like one of a few that set me off lol

Like im not even shocked at ur experiences there. I have experienced and seen some SHIT while playing the role of a white cis woman. And it was all normal. The women who raised me to always be on guard did that for a reason. The distrust of men among white women isnt from brainwashing, its from knowing half your friends were molested by their male relatives and seeing their mothers get beat every evening.

But also that other example you discuss... now I've not seen it in these spaces specifically but I have seen *some* people dismissing violence against white women due to something something white supremacy and just. Its truly sickening. Its evil. (And shows a fundamental misunderstanding of white supremacy, female subjugation is an intrinsic part of it).

And yeah like you say. Any time someone brings attention to any of this shit its "how dare you defend WHITE women". As if they arent still women.

And especially when the social space i occupy still overlaps with the experiences considered that of white women, when I'm facing these justified fears of violence (again) in my day to day life.... yeah. Its fucking exhausting. When the spaces that claim to support my experiences as a man dismiss my experiences and fears because those are the experiences and fears of icky white women. (When they arent even mutually exclusive categories, and even people like me and the most cis of cis women have more in common than difference)

#ppl dont touch if u arent willing to approach this with compassion

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chocolate-teapots · 2 years

Text

He’s Soft: Dinger Holfield

━━━━━━━━━▲━━━━━━━━━

Joel had a lot to say about you now you weren’t there.

And Dinger didn’t like it one bit.

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

Warnings: swearing, the world faggot, homophobia, bullying, references to violence, mentions of sex, jealous Dinger.

I was clutching my books realising how no one had bumped shoulders with me since I was seen with my new friends.

I even sped up a little, whistled made extreme eye-contact and no one dared look my way just in case one of the guys found out. Some of the girls even stared at me in admiration to have such boys looking out for me constantly. They were always just that one step behind me but also in front.

Sidney, a girl from my English ran up to me calling my name to make me stop. Poor thing looked like she'd been running for hours. Her hair was dishevelled and her face was as red as her shoes.

"What's up, Sid?" I continue cruising by her side.

"Didn't you hear what happened at lunch today?" she started poking my arm, expecting me to know something that I shouldn't.

There was probably a fight that I didn't care enough about to bother witnessing. Nothing happened today.

"Oh my! Did people eat?"

She slaps my arm.

"No silly. There was an outburst between Joel and Dinger. I don't know the full story but Sheila told Betty that Joel was saying bad things about what he wanted to do to you and Robin told Tom, Cameron's friend, that Dinger totally was there for you and put that asshole in his place."

"What!"

----

half-hour earlier

"Hey, Bobby, Joel."

Dinger sat down next to Bobby and Joel. They seemed to be deep in discussion with each other. Dinger didn't really want to interfere but the worried face of his new friend was in his mind, telling her constantly that she deserves better.

"How're things with Y/N Joel?" he asks, squinting at the sun in his eyes and spitting his name next to yours as if it was poison.

Bobby turned in Joel's direction, agreeing with his friend's question with the same curiosity.

"Yeah Joel, how are things?"

Did Bobby know something he didn't? His heart began to race and fist began to tighten.

Joel took a second to contemplate, chuckling with a scoff to himself. Things weren't looking so good already at this point to Dinger and he wondered if there was a missing piece to this puzzle that Y/N or Joel or even Bobby wasn't telling him.

"Well it's just, I'm a guy you know and things are just so- lacking. All this romance shit is tearing me to pieces. And she's so hot I just wanna grab her and... you know?"

Dinger sat up a little on the wall, Bobby searching his face for the same reaction.

"No Joel, I don't think I do know."

Joel was looking for confidence as his friends were staring at him in a way that he was intimidated by. He knew that he was doing something wrong but Dinger didn't have to know and he didn't really understand why it was so wrong in the first place.

"Sorry to interrupt but I believe you're being a little vague to Dinger Joel, you know one of Y/N's new buddies?"

He turns to his dearest friend, whose worried face contrasted with his crazy carefree red locks.

"Dinger, Joel was just telling me that he wants to use Y/N so hard until she cries. He wants to- what was it? Grab her hair and swing her around like a pinwheel? Want her to do as she's told just to show all the other guys and girls who's boss. Isn't that right, Joel?"

Joel was white, hearing his own words from Bobby's smart-ass mouth was like a punch in the stomach, like a badly remembered memory and it turned him sick to his stomach. Of course, he wanted all those things but in this group, you were always told never to speak your mind no matter how fucked it was.

Dinger looks at Joel in disgust, more than Bobby somehow even though his eyebrows here down to his dirty socks. He continued to sit, manspreading like there was no tomorrow and seeing only blurry red smudged everywhere in his vision.

"How dare you be so fake to somebody only to say things so disgusting and god damn awful behind their back? You're an airhead Joel. I warned Y/N but I don't know what you've said to her but she has somehow come to think the sun shines outta your asshole. You and I both know that is total bullshit man. Major."

Joel goes to speak.

"I don't wanna hear a god damn fucking thing you have to say because I know it's all from your dick and not from your heart or even your head. I will make sure- no I'll promise that she never trusts you again. Later."

He goes to leave but not before whispering to none but himself:

"Is there any love left in our universe?"

Joel grows a pair, finally planning and editing the words he wants to say to win this battle and keep his crown just for the next few days even

"You what, faggot?"

Time seemed to stop for every single member of that friendship group. The yard went silent and all you could hear were the sudden gulps of a dozen teenagers riding out the wave of suspense.

"Faggot? I'm a faggot for having feelings Joel and respect? If that makes me a faggot then consider me the all singing all dancing faggot of the fucking universe," he snaps, head moving, hands throwing, teeth-gritting.

Dinger Holfield was present.

"How are you so different then huh? I'm sure a million bitches at this school would gladly announce how played they were by Mr Dinger Holfield."

"I didn't love any of those women Joel. If I loved a woman- if I loved Y/N I would take her out only when she wanted, spoil her if she needed, let her be an independent woman. Wait for everything until she was ready. I would never rush her into anything because why? Because I'm a decent guy at the best of times. I fight, talk shit, do shit but I am not a shit."

"Now, later."

---

I did try to find Dinger but at the same time I was pissed at both of them

Who was Joel to own me like that?

Who was Dinger to decide my life like that?

I needed to take a chill pill so I just went home. And, it was really working until the doorbell rang.

At the other end of the chipped paint was a worried-looking redhead who looked as long he hadn't blinked, ate, talked since 'the incident'. I didn't know what to say and neither did he so we both just leaned against the doorframe, gazing at each other but my glare was a little stronger.

"Have you got anything to say for yourself?"

He was taken aback as if a wind inside my house had blown him off of the step.

"Me? Are you kidding? What side of the story did you hear?"

"The right version, now tell me how is this any of your business at all?" I asked, a little hurt in my voice as I realised that someone was trying to control me like a third possessive parent that I didn't need today.

"What's your damage Y/N I'm sick of seeing him treat you like that. I can't hide my hurt anymore every time he grabs your chin to kiss you or glares at guys when they ask you for help with their homework. It's sick demented shit. And, I can't hide the fact that I love you anymore either," he mumbles the last part, declining in confidence suddenly.

I laugh in my place, sounding too much like Joel at one point. He shrinks twice in size.

"Oh please, you don't even know what that means Holfield. It's too late anyway, I'm going with Joel," I cross my arms, trying to pull myself from the fantasy of my life together with Dinger.

How different my life would be if I was going with Dinger.

"I won't beg you into loving me but don't waste your life on an asshole like him, for me. I'm not always right but I know this time I really do, I know what I'm talking about. Guys like them just hit it and quit Y/N," he gets closer to me, his puff of hair finally taller than me.

I lift my eyebrows, that lifestyle was copied and pasted into that entire friendship group. Who was he to judge? Why was he so god damn special?

"Isn't this a little hypocritical?"

"What? No! I only hang out with chicks- women, that know what they're signing up for. They're not being played, they know what's happening."

"How am I any different, how do I know this isn't some kind of move to steal me off of Joel?"

"Is it working?"

Seriously?

"No, you're not being vulnerable or truthful enough to me," my arms cross harder, scared of the rest of the lies he'd unleash upon me and how ready I was to believe them.

Dinger was the bad guy and not Joel.

"I'm a virgin."

Proving his devotion he turns around to the watchers in the street shouting at the top of his lungs and pointing to himself.

"Virgin! Virgin right here. Soy virgen! Dinger Holfield is a virgin!"

I laugh into my hand, and people in the street turn to a red-faced and haired Dinger to look at him. He takes the next step up to the door frame, eyelashes tickling my own we were so close.

"Listen to me. You can listen, leave Joel and be happy with a guy who loves you for you. Or, you can give me a shot and if you hate it I will leave you alone and never come back."

He gulps at the thought alone and what made tears prick my eyes was that at that same time, i gulped too. Despite knowing him for only a few months, I couldn't imagine a school day without him, never mind an eternity.

I cry at the monster that I've been wasting so many things on, the first kiss, first real handholding, first date, first makeout, first skipping of school. I hung my head low, tears hitting the grime of the boy's boots in front of me. When I think about it Dinger has given me the warmest welcome to the school, introduced me to all his friends the day he almost knocked me over in the hallway, carried my books, listened to my concerns and told me what I should do only for my own sake.

His finger tickles my chin, bringing my saddened eyes to his beautiful ones. He smiles knowingly, not in an I-told-you-so way but in a way I could not explain.

"May I?" he asked.

"Yes."

He tilts his head, leaning in as if I'm made of slightly shattered glass. Although I'd done it before, it felt like the first time all over again and I felt my hold of his waist slacking and trembling. Checking again in my eyes and dragging his gaze from my lips, he sees the want in my eyes and connects our lips. We're standing on a doorstep, in a world full of dirty shame and dirty people having an innocent and pure moment.

An older man and lady observed from across the street, smiling in each other's embrace as they recalled their older memories together and the years they had spent in complete bliss.

"Remember our days like that? They were the best times, still are."

#80s movie #80s imagines #dream a little dream #dinger holfield #corey haim #corey feldman

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