ive never felt a stronger urge to say good riddance in my life. this blog has caused months upon months of discourse, made the tag for my favorite character near unsearchable as a result of it, and i could not be happier to see it go. i am over the fucking moon. no longer will i have to see these mile long thinkpieces about why someone is a terrible person for their opinion on the writing on a video game when i just want to look at art or content made by the community. Good Fucking Riddance, may you never return, and may we be free of what this blog has caused forever on top of that. i wish i could say this hasnt stained my view of you as a person too but it has. im happy youve realized that this wasnt a good idea now, but if only you did that months earlier, things wouldnt be so terrible!

Hmm. So while I've gotten (and ignored) plenty of messages of this sort over the course of running this blog, I think I'd like to post this one just to give a sort of sense as to why this blog hasn't been particularly good for me mentally.

I have nothing against you, anon, but I do hope you don't speak to people like this in real life. You're more than welcome to have blocked this blog to avoid its content, by all means! I understand the constant flow of posts can be a little annoying. There have been plenty of posts on this blog that I myself have vehemently disagreed with, but the point of being a confessions blog is that I'm not only open to posts that back my own opinions. If it were, I would just...post my own opinions.

And, admittedly, while I understand the frustration towards discourse 'mile long thinkpieces,' I'm not sure if sending me five multiparagraph submissions on how terrible I am and why I should kill myself for running a tumblr blog about fighting games is the best way to express that. Nonetheless, I still wish you the best.

As a bisexual who has also identified as pan in the past and now considers the two terms to be essentially interchangeable, it really frustrates me that it seems like the misunderstandings about these words will never end ... simply because people are people.

There are always going to be people who see the "bi" in "bisexual" and jump to the wrong conclusion. There are always going to be people who think the "sexual" refers to sexes or having sex rather than attraction (to be fair, it did refer to sexual practices a very long time ago).

There are always going to be people who think "it makes no sense" to have two labels for the same thing, who can't even conceive of that being a possibility, and will therefore hunt for an explanation of the difference until they find one, no matter how wrong or outdated it may be.

(The solution to their dilemma, of course, is this: words are not created by an official word creation committee. There are in fact many things in life that we have two or more words for. If I hand you a pebble, is that a stone or a rock? Asking either the bisexuals or the pansexuals to give up their label "because the other one works just as well" would be unfair, and how the hell would we decide which one to keep?)

For what it's worth, I think the "bi" was originally meant to denote something like "both heterosexual and homosexual" instead of referring to two genders. Which is obviously not how we'd describe it today, but it was also never meant to be exclusive. Personally I'm in favour of returning to a more laid-back understanding of gay and lesbian, along the lines of "mostly attracted to the same gender, with some wiggle room." Straight would then mean "mostly attracted to a single different gender, with some wiggle room" (a little less wiggle room, granted). From there it would automatically follow that bisexuality includes everyone.

But I could talk about this all day long and it would make no difference because someone somewhere is constantly discovering these words for the first time and getting confused.

Would any of this be happening without transmisia and intersexism tho? Guess we "just" have to get rid of those once and for all. Haha.

Okay, so I wanted to discuss the situation with Alastor, his canonical sexuality, and fans.

I have seen the two sides alot.

So one side ships Al with numerous characters and sees this as casual fun.

And the other thinks this is disrespectful cause he is ace, or Aroace.

(I believe that he is Aroace. His va said so, his character has shown no interest in romance, and Viv may have confirmed it at some point)

Now, I am sex repulsed ace and I'm aro. And I have strong opinions. Alastor is my favorite character in Hazbin Hotel, he is also the FIRST confirmed ace character I've seen. (This doesn't include subtly implied characters) Because Al is the first and I care for him he is very important to me.

My opinion is really mixed because on one side it's; yeah, it is a fandom, and fandoms ship. It's what they do. Its also kind a rude to judge someone for their favorite pairings and stuff, in my opinion.

On the other side though I'm hurt. I am a queer person with basically no rep. And I hadn't realized how upset I was by this until I saw discourse over this character. I had FORGOTTEN that it was possible to have confirmed canonical ace characters. I had gotten so used to that just being a head cannon. And not only just an ace character but also an Aroace character. And not just that but a seemingly non sex favorable ace character. I would even argue he is sex repulsed.

My real problem with all this is:

Yes, I KNOW ace characters can have sex. But do you know who else can? Literally every single allosexual character. I KNOW aros can date. But you know who else can? Everyone else. The appeal of ACTUALLY having characters with the same sexuality as me is that they would be like me. Cause I and other aces like me never, ever get stories like that. So many times in media I would be enjoying a character who had shown NO interest in sex/romance and would suddenly be partnered up with another just for the heck of it. This has happened SO many times it's not even funny. It's incredibly frustrating.

So, the point I'm trying to make is that; YES, there are aces who have sex. HOWEVER, a large number of us do not. And it's like everyone forgets that. Your not writing Alastor having sex with Angel cause your showing the vast spectrum of asexuality. Your most likely writing it cause it's sex between two hot characters. It's simply maddening.

(One thing I wanted to say was, despite the fact that Al is ace i don't think it's bad to find him attractive. He is very pleasing to look at so I understand allos finding him hot. However I'm not sure where I stand with people sexualizing him. I think I'm leaning towards, 'please don't do it'.)

Now, the worst thing though is when I'm looking for content to enjoy. When I found out Al was canonically ace I was so happy and excited. I'm pretty sure this situation wouldn't make me nearly as frustrated if it weren't for the overwhelming amount of sexual content for Al. Some would be fine. I could just scroll past it if this were the case. But it is not. Content for Al is MOSTLY sexual. That's why I don't believe people when they keep saying they aren't invalidating aces because almost every time I go looking for a fic I have to scroll for HOURS just to find few non ship fics.

I can't even use the Asexual Alastor tag because all that does is bring me to a bunch of fics where the author is like 'he's ace trust me,' then proceeds to write smut.

Why can't I even use a tag made for aces without being drowned in smut. It's so frustrating! Like I'm getting to a point where I wish the authors would stop using the tag and openly admit they made him not ace for the story. Like I know your trying to not throw away his canonical sexuality but I mean at this point I think it'd be better if you did. And if someone is going to write sex favorable ace Al then please leave it to the aces. I trust us to at least weave it into his character instead of stating it and acting like it's there when it's not.

So basically: I don't mind if you ship him, just don't say he's ace or Aroace if your neither of those in ship/smut content. I'm sick of trying to find content that isn't sex/romance in Aroace tags!

I don't want to judge people for liking a ship. But I'm really tired.

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE, I would love to see content with Al and Lucifer. Like them hating each other to like frenemies. It would be so funny.

Anyone have any platonic content with Al and the rest of the cast???

Good morning/ evening! My name’s Sam and I’m currently a film student hoping to get into freelance writing. I’ve got a couple questions if you don’t mind (hoping you haven’t already answered them and I just missed them).

When you first starting making your own films, did you have already have thick skin for any critics/ bad reviews? Or is that something you grew over time?

Also, for your production company, do you hire interns and PAs or do you prefer filmmakers with more experience?

Thank you!

To your first question, I do not have a thick skin in that area AT ALL and never have. I don't know many people who do.

I'm often approached by fans who will talk about what a project of mine means to them, or I find a review or think piece online where the author really connected with my work. I want to let that feedback in, because it's validating. But letting it in means letting ALL of it in, even the negative. I don't really get to pick and choose. Once I decided to let myself react emotionally to other people's feedback, those gates are open I've got to accept whatever comes through.

I take my work very seriously, and tend to pour my heart and soul into it. We make these things because we love them. It can literally take years of daily work to do. When people love it, it feels great. When people don't, it hurts. There's really no way around that.

Film criticism has, like a lot of things, devolved over time. I was a massive fan of Robert Ebert, who was thoughtful and sophisticated in his critiques (most of the time), and tried to approach each movie he watched on the film's own terms - from the perspective of "how successful was this at achieving what it set out to do?" I see a lot of criticisms today that don't do this, and instead are lamenting what a movie is or isn't, saying things like "I wish this was more..." or "This isn't good because I wanted it to be something else."

"I wanted a ________ and what I got instead was ______ so it sucks."

The other issue is that loud, sensationalized vitriol gets more clicks. Negative reviews, especially brutal and callous ones, get more attention than positive ones. I've gotten to know and befriend some professional critics over the years, who have all told me that the positive reviews don't generate the audience reaction quite like the negative ones. People enjoy watching things get beat up. We reward the wrong kind of discourse, and that isn't unique to film criticism - it's everywhere. That's just a symptom of our culture.

One of my great frustrations is how we assert our opinion as objective truth. There's nothing more dangerous than tweeting "I liked ______ movie!" The comments flood in about how you're wrong, how it sucks, blah blah blah. People think their own taste is somehow factual. If someone says "I had a fantastic steak dinner last night and I loved it," we don't say "you're wrong, steak sucks". We understand the concept of taste when it comes to other things we consume, but when it comes to entertainment each one of us thinks we're the ultimate authority.

For myself, my producer and my wife have long discouraged me from reading reviews. I still can't help it. It's not healthy though. I can scroll past a dozen positive ones, and they evaporate in my mind, but I read one scathing thing and it sticks with me for days. There is one particular review of MIDNIGHT MASS that is one of the most baffling and frustrating things I've ever read, as the author appears to have misunderstood just about every aspect of the series, and drawn the angriest, most misguided, most erroneous conclusions. I read it with my jaw on the ground... "but they're objectively wrong. That isn't what happens, and that isn't what the show is even about." But what can I do? Who am I to say their experience of the show is invalid? They feel how they feel, and that's fine. That's okay. It has to be.

So your skin doesn't get thicker, it is a bizarre emotional experience to put something personal out there into the world and see the gamut of reactions. But at a certain point you have to remind yourself that it's impossible to please everyone, and that these projects don't belong to the filmmaker - they belong to the audience, and each and every one of those experiences is unique and valid. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned, and perhaps the critique can help you grow as a filmmaker.

I have similar feelings when I see someone trashing someone else's work I happen to love - for example, I remain baffled by people who didn't like EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, but that doesn't mean anything. It didn't work for them, that's all. Nothing works for everyone.

I have found over the years that I respect and appreciate analyses and criticisms that take this more personal point of view, and talk about their own interaction with the work as opposed to just dismissing it outright. When someone says "this movie didn't work for me," or "I didn't connect with it," or "It just wasn't my cup of tea," I have a much easier time taking it seriously. It's changed how I talk about my own reactions to movies or shows that I didn't respond to. And I found that it's made it much easier for me to enjoy things even if they aren't quite for me. Instead of being reactive and saying "it sucks" or "I hate this," I've gotten better at realizing it's not a binary experience - I can look at what DOES work for me, and I can appreciate it, even while other elements might not.

It makes for a much more nuanced discussion, and helps me grow. Sometimes, though, it's just the wrong thing to watch on the wrong day, and that's fine too. Maybe that makes it a little easier. If I step out of something and just really don't enjoy it, it helps remind me that it's not personal. Clearly, other people DO enjoy these things, sometimes I'm very much in the minority. And when that happens, I can say "oh, it's not so bad if someone hates a movie I made, or a show, or whatever. Life's too short."

But I long ago decided I'd never say anything negative about someone else's work in public. I know too much about what it takes to make a movie, and I'm not a critic. I'm a filmmaker. This town is too small, and there is zero upside in dragging another filmmaker's efforts. On the rare occasions when I do see another filmmaker indulge in that behavior, it is always a terrible look. And it can have real-world consequences - there are a few filmmakers who I've seen publicly slag off other people's work, and I quietly decided never to hire them. Like I said, it's a small town... and most of us read what people say about our work.

We should get back to that work, remember how lucky we all are to do this for a living, and leave that kind of thing to the critics.

"What I really realized about some of my ideas of freedom is that they were like neoliberal fantasies. It's like, 'let me choose everything,' 'leave me alone all the time,' 'don't put any demands on me--only I will make demands.' It's a dark vision, and it really took me a long time to understand that the things that I'd been taught by the capitalist 80s to believe were unfreedom are freedom. Having people who mean something to you, who you have duties towards, is not unfreedom; it's freedom. It's actual existence...To be free of meaning is not freedom. Now my life is full of meanings, sometimes they're difficult, sometimes they're painful, but it's absolutely full. I don't think children are the only root to that kind of meaning, but I absolutely think you have to find something other than yourself to focus on.

...

When I meet a lot of other lady writers, I know, when we first had children we spent our whole time talking about how we were somehow trapped or imprisoned, but that's the most superficial idea of what a relation with other people is like. Now I consider all my relations--my friends, my dog, my husband, my family--as things that liberate me from myself. They are absolute freedom to me, and without them I would just be completely lost. A dog can do this for you, a cat can do this for you, going down to the larder and volunteering can do this for you. You just need to be among other people at some point, because otherwise it's hard to find in yourself (or for me anyway) a reason to go on.

...

It's a question of what does that freedom involve. I notice with the 'children thing' is that, at least in my own case, you spend so long battling to try and retain your own space. Then, when you look at what you've battled for, it isn't very much. These children are about to grow and disappear so quickly that you're going to get what you want sooner than you can imagine. All of these things are so out of sync with our capitalist discourse which is about 'you do you,' 'get what you want.' When it comes into conflict with this other thing, I guess we have in our heads, 'Am I become some kind of Victorian or old-fashioned person who is domesticated and a traditional woman.' We fight against that as if there's no liberating version of being connected to other people. That is the triumph of capitalism: it convinces you that it's just you and the shops, it's just you and the phone, and that's all that there is. Where there is an older vision of solidarity between people, within families, between children, between men and men, women and women, men and women--a community that is freeing. It's not a trap. It's like the only thing that brings joy.

...

I also think that's one of the tricks of the patriarchy: it makes you feel that all the traditional, supposedly feminine arts are humiliating. But why are they humiliating? In my house, it was the other way around. My dad was the cook. My dad was the cleaner. My mom was working a lot. My dad did a lot of those things. They're not humiliating when a man does them, apparently--[Interviewer Annie Macmanus: They're noble.]--He's been dead a long time, and sometimes, I can think of a meal he used to cook me, and it will bring me to tears. It was an art. And it was nourishing. And it was beautiful. And I'm so grateful. It was an act of love. I can't cook like that. My children will never have those memories of me. But, it's not nothing. It's the art of living. If it was a supposedly traditionally male art, you'd be getting awards for it...So I really resent the idea that these things are humiliating, even when I am picking up pants off the stairs, I think, 'I'm doing something for somebody else.' There is something noble in that, I hope.

Of course, the frustration is real. I think men suffer it just as much as women. I think to the credit of many contemporary men, they are doing absolutely the same amount of work...So the frustration is no longer purely female, which might be one of the triumphs of feminism. It's now something that lots of people have to experience, men and women. It's not that it's not real, but I have come to realize that [the frustration]'s not entirely debilitating. When it comes to art making, frustration can be really useful. Not being able to write, having your hands tied for part of every day, when I get down to my desk, I can't wait. Whereas when I was twenty-seven, I do remember embarrassingly moping around saying, 'Oh, I've got writer's block,' 'Oh, I've got ennui.' That to me now is like a comic thing, a ridiculous person who can't be taken seriously."

Zadie Smith, interviewed on Changes with Annie Macmanus

Okay so I unknowingly got involved in some Sunny discourse earlier and um... did not mean to. Sorry.

My autistic ass saw 'Dennis hates Mac' and got frustrated BC on my tumblr feed that seems like all I see anymore and I'm tired of sifting through negative posts. It's also important to mention that I was coming at things from the 'I've been exposed to way too much r/iasip' mindset, where the discourse is entirely discouraged because people are so adamant that Dennis only hates Mac (as in, he despises him and just wants him to leave him alone always).

Anyway, given this, I feel the need to clarify the way I see their relationship, and that I definitely don't think there's no resentment on Dennis' end. Of course Mac pisses him off, because Dennis doesn't understand where all this devotion is coming from (imo). His self-esteem is so cripplingly non-existent, despite the exterior he shows, that it does genuinely baffle him that somebody could see so much worth in him.

Mac is loyal to a fault. He pursues Dennis even when the latter gives him no regard at all, and is constantly seeking his approval, which inevitably leads to more disapproval on Dennis' end.

Does this disapproval ultimately= hate? I don't know. I'm not in RCG's heads.

What I do know, though, is that sunnyblr is a mess of negativity and all I want to do is have that... not be so? Idk.

I want there to be an appreciation for the richness of this show, and when I see comments like 'Dennis hates Mac' without any context, yeah, I get fired up, because wayyyy too much of r/iasip (for example) is people shutting down Macdennis because of that exact reason and ignoring how complex their relationship really is.

There's too much discourse and I really didn't intend to make more, especially not about shipping because (and I genuinely believe this):

SHIP WHO YOU WANT!!!

idc if you ship charden or charmac or idk is there anything going on w frank ??? (this is making me realise that Frank fans are living the dream, there is absolutely no discourse about his ships lmaooo)

We all love the show, and this page is dedicated to that, so if I ever sound pissed about certain shippers I am 100% fucking around, I love all you guys

... except you Dee/Dennis and Dennis/Abigail freaks... u guys can stay away please and thank u

ROUND 1 / SIDE B / POLL 1

Lady Ignis Solon (@containmentbreach, art by @mechanomorphic) vs. Alice Luoja (@cantdanceflynn & @pyxehastoomanyinterests)

Lady Ignis Solon info:

Description: ignis is a member of a noble family from her home dimension, where shadowy, demonic creatures make their home and occasionally emerge to hunt, kill and eat lesser beings (who are pretty much anyone, by their standards). ignis takes a lot of pride in her position, despite not seeming particularly…happy. but "happy" is a relative word. she has mothered thirteen children (demon noble families are expected to be large and can include up to 20-25 children. twins, triplets, etc. are also more common) with the king of the realm, despite not being attracted to men in the slightest. she views this as her duty granted to her through her position. commoners from her realm are allowed to marry freely without regard to gender, but ignis isn't jealous of them.

not even a little bit. seriously like not at all.

ignis' preferred hunting grounds is the planet known as "earth," and she has personally trained each of her thirteen children to be the toothy shadows that hide in your house when you think you're alone. well, she's trained twelve of them. she's run into a slight hiccup with the thirteenth, who seems to be getting a little attached to her human target. but that's all right. she'll come around.

ignis enjoys black tea, playing the piano, and horror novels. she views them as some of the few things humans have gotten right.

Crimes:

-well the cannibalism. she did like tons of that. i guess it's not really considered cannibalism if she herself is not a human? but she ate humans is the point i'm trying to make

-she has also committed some regular murders. of humans and of other members of her species.

-does not understand her kids. she loves them but she does not Get them. it tends to frustrate her.

-she basically has very little regard for human laws in general and breaks them as often as she can get away with. if she does get in trouble she lies low for a little while in her dimension, then sets up a new place to live. this means of course that she does commit tax evasion often and well.

Other notes from the submitter: ignis is in a lot of ways a love letter to moms who get shit on by fandom for not understanding their kids. 90% of the time the amount of hate they get is just misogyny tbh! ignis is bad in a lot of ways but she's not a bad mom, even if she comes off as that at first because the story she's in is from the perspective of her daughter and the human she got attached to. people would probably still make discourse about her and shit on her but i do not care because i adore her and i adore fucked up moms in general. and if you don't that's a you issue.

Alice Luoja info:

Description: A Phineas and Ferb background character design turned oc, an old woman basically obsessed with finding or creating godlike perfection. How she does it doesn't matter to her, even if she has to go to lengths beyond what any respectable evil scientist would. She practically adopted Professor Mystery, taking him in as a son when his parents disappeared, although she tends to use him for her own purposes rather then taking good care of him. Greatly manipulative and ruthless, she attempts to run things from behind the scenes all while constantly, zealously, searching for that perfection. Depending on her role in any given au or story with the cast, what she's searching for in that perfection is different, but in her major ones, godlike perfection is more literal. She's also a disaster lesbian cannibal.

Crimes: Well, murder, dismantling of bodies, eating the bodies, child abuse, child murder, platonic (and only platonic I promise she's literally a mom) grooming, basically being a mini cult leader, generally being a mad scientist as part of L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N.s inner circle with no respect for Doof's morals, blood letting in this day and age for both trans and non-trans reasons, dismemberment, eye gouging of both dead and alive people(including an approx 9 year old), not fucking staying dead like she's William Afton, several curses on items, hoarding, desecration, religious zealotry, being a piss-poor mother even tho she'd actually be a rly good parent if she wasn't scared of being emotionally attached to her own fucking son, lots of murder if you hadn't got the drift she's basically a slasher horror villain in disguise, giving multiple people eating disorders, letting a sentient robot escape tower back onto earth in Knife Roomba form, doesn't know how stores work and just steals everything, poisoning so many people alive, general war crimes, mass murder, attempting to destroy the universe, breaking several peoples limbs, creating a time loop to trap Candace in a state of never being able to avoid killing her loved ones, using her son to specifically torture the cast consistently regardless of how he feels about it into seeing visions of their loved ones being destroyed horrible and usually killed at their hands, encouraging self harm and suicide, she breaks peoples bones a few times, I can't stress the manipulative cult leader thing enough this bitch does blood sacrifices whenever, she's just kinda a loser also.

Other notes from the submitter: SHES CALLED "THE BITCH" BY US FOR A REASON

Fandom's Takes On Trauma Are Terrible And Here's Why: brought to you by terrible Coriolanus Snow and Anakin Skywalker discourse

I've been on the verge of making this post for a while now, but I kept not doing it because this might be a bit of a hot take and I don't like offending people. However, I've been growing increasingly annoyed with the perception of one specific character type so lets see how much my dumb opinions stir the pot this time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. This will be focused mainly on my current main fandom: The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, but will also dive into Star Wars. You'll see why. Now, I need to make it clear that I'm not judging anyone for their opinions on characters for any reason. In no way am I insinuating you're a bad person for having opinions different to mine. What I am saying is that fandoms have some frustrating and frankly insulting beliefs around trauma and those who survived it, and I'm gonna talk about it because I want to get this off my chest. With that said:

Y'all don't understand how trauma works and it annoys me

As stated in the title, I'm writing this because of the Coriolanus Snow discourse, specifically regarding whether he's a good or bad person. Lets rip off the bandaid straight away: He's a bad person. There's no question about it, Snow is a vile human being. And he's one of my favorite characters because of it. He's fantastically written and hands down one of the most realistic, viscerally terrifying yet utterly pathetic villains ever. And what I hate about the TBOSAS fandom more than anything (aside from how some of them treat the actors) is the way they take away all his agency in the story. But I'll put a pin in that because I have a lot to say about him and instead start at the beginning of my growing frustration with how fandom perceives trauma (feel free to skip through this post, I'll label my sections in case you don't wanna read this whole thing). There's two sides, and both are equally stigmatized and wrong. So lets start with the more obvious one through the lens of Anakin Skywalker.

The Star Wars Fandom's Weird Relationship With Traumatized Children Behaving Like Traumatized Children

So Anakin Skywalker AKA Darth Vader is pretty explicitly a Bad Dude who's done some Bad Things. Bro committed genocide, ain't no getting around that, except... It's a little more complicated. Sure, he did all those terrible things, but a lot of people take that to mean he was always a horrible monstrous big bad in the making who was destined to become the galaxy's worst nightmare. That's missing the whole point of the prequel trilogy, because those movies essentially serve to explain all the reasons for Anakin's descent into villainy, and he had surprisingly little hand in it. Growing up into slavery means he not only has a warped view of the galaxy thanks to all the horrors he's witnessed, it also means he lacks the teachings Jedi younglings get when they grow up in the temple. He was pawned off onto Obi-Wan who had only recently been knighted and was in no way ready to raise a child, and became "friends" with Palpatine who fed him all sorts of lies to manipulate him into becoming little more than an attack dog. Not exactly ideal circumstances for a child in their formative years. Did Anakin shirk the Jedi's rules? Yes. Did he do dumb stuff? Yes. But he was a traumatized teenager, of course he's acting out. When he massacres the Tusken Raiders, it's Padme Amidala who reassures him it was the right thing to do. He felt guilty about it, so this idea that he's some apathetic monster from the second he's born is dumb. It's not that Anakin was born wrong, it's that the people around him either failed to help him go down the right path or were actively trying to push him down the wrong one. Anakin never fully grasped the Jedi's ideals, because the person meant to teach him just wasn't equipped to do so. If he'd had someone to teach him how to get a hold of his emotions, distancing himself enough from them to make the best possible decision and helping him understand the importance of letting someone go when you have to, he wouldn't have fallen to the dark side the way he did.

Anakin did terrible things, but blaming it on him just having an evil heart shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how people's environments change who they are. A life in slavery, where he was not allowed to have anything and risked losing what he held dear at any second with no control over it likely caused him to be very possessive of what he held close to his heart once he did have some control over what he kept and lost. Shmi died because he wasn't there to protect her (in his head), so he clung to the people he loved so he could save them the way he couldn't save his mother. Palpatine actively groomed him, if you think that didn't have any effect on him I don't know what to tell you. Throughout the war, he constantly lost people he was close to. That control he had slowly starts to fade as Ahsoka leaves and he starts having dreams about Padme dying. He does everything to save her, only to find out she betrayed him (in his mind, a thought quite likely influenced by PTSD as well). I can tell you that believing one of the few people you trust has betrayed you can make you act very impulsively. Anakin made an impulsive decision and regretted it for the rest of his life. He wasn't born a monster, the world turned him into one.

However, that does not excuse his actions. It explains them and spreads the blame to more people, but his actions are still his actions. Anakin separated himself from his past because of all the pain it brings him, and in doing so he did a lot of bad things. And he still needed to face consequences for those actions, even if the events that led up to them aren't necessarily on him entirely. If he'd gotten therapy, he wouldn't have choked Padme to death. Possibly he wouldn't have attacked the temple. But he didn't, and he did all those things trauma or not. I have major issues with the way some Anti-Anakin parts of the Star Wars fandom insist on ignoring or writing off his trauma, but that doesn't mean I'm absolving him of all guilt.

An explanation is not an excuse, and that sentiment brings us to the reason for this little rant:

Coriolanus Snow's defenders have a habit of infantalizing trauma survivors and I wish they would stop

Oh Snow, how your amazing character completely flew over the heads of most of your loyalest fans. I'm joking, obviously, but also... It's not exactly wrong. Now, I need to make this clear: I'm not insulting Snow fans here. I'm kind of one of them (I hate his guts but I love how he was written, it's a love hate relationship). However, the way people talk about his trauma... I'll be honest, it's kind of sickening for reasons I'll talk about later after getting through the technical(?) stuff. Where the way people view Anakin disgusts me, the way people treat Snow disturbs me. Because people view The Ballad Of Songbirds and Snakes as if it's some typical tragic villain backstory that humanizes and in some ways justifies who he became, to show what changed him from a normal person into a monster. It's not. It actually shows that Snow has always possessed the traits that made him the monster we know from the OG series. What it does is explain why specific things were so important to him and how he grew to lose all redeeming qualities, letting the worst aspects of his personality grow and take over until it's all there's left of him.

What made Snow do stuff like poison political adversaries and constantly beat down the districts so they don't rebel? A thirst for power. A thirst he's always had, born from the feelings of entitlement he held thanks to his family's previous status. He deserves that power in his mind, so he'll do anything to get it. Power, control, and influence are his driving motivators. It's at the back of his mind throughout TBOSAS, and by the time he becomes a gamemaker it's the only motivation he has left. Those traits, the things that pushed him to do what he did, they were always there. There was just more stuff to cover it up. Stuff that fell away with time. Snow is a terrible person, but people pretend he's some poor misunderstood baby who just needed a hug because... why? Because he has trauma. And that's the root of the problem. Does he have trauma? Absolutely. He survived a war, he lost his parents, struggled through poverty while being raised by propaganda from the Capitol and was arguably groomed by Gaul. Sound familiar? It's kind of like Anakin. Horrible childhood filled with loss, less than amazing figures raising him and grooming. Except people use the opposite argument for him which is equally wrong: he's traumatized, so we cannot blame him.

Yes we can.

Trauma does not justify your actions. It might explain them, but you are still accountable for your own actions. Snow murdered people, starting with Bobbin, and every single time it was his choice to do so. It doesn't matter why he made that choice, because he still did it. He ruined countless lives and ended nearly as many, both directly and indirectly. No amount of trauma justifies that. I've seen people claim he's just an anxious young boy who's a poor victim of circumstance, and anyone who doesn't believe so is simply unable to separate the actions of an 80-something-year-old from the 18-year-old, but... No. That's one of the most braindead takes I've ever heard, I'm sorry. Snow hadn't committed the crimes of his older self yet, but the behaviors he shows in TBOSAS are the ones that led him to doing so later on and ignoring that is just stupid. I don't need to judge Snow based on his later actions to call out how fucked up he was in TBOSAS. Again, he chose to murder several people and deluded himself into believing he was justified. That's what makes him a great character. Bad people always believe, on some level, that they're doing the right thing. It's fascinating. But people take his words at face value when he says he's doing the right thing, and the whole point is that he's wrong. He's lying to himself. Because that's what people do sometimes. Snow's family was knocked off its throne, and Snow clung to the idea that the districts are beneath him and at fault to cope with that. He deluded himself into believing Gaul's dumbass theory to justify continuing the games.

It's the exact opposite of Anakin Skywalker: Trauma is relevant, it does inform your perspective on the world and your actions, but it does not mean you can do no wrong. Snow had every chance to be a good person: Knocking Bobbin out or running away instead of murdering him, joining the rebellion with Sejanus, staying in district 12 with Lucy Gray and being honest with her. But he killed Bobbin. He fucked over the rebels and got Sejanus killed. He lied to Lucy Gray and destroyed any chance he had with her. Every chance he got, he threw into the fire without hesitation. Anakin leaned into being a bad person to forget the past, Snow chose to be one because it benefitted him the most. Neither of them are excused because of their trauma, their descent into villainy is simply explained. You know why? Because both of them created new victims. Snow was complicit in the murder of hundreds of children before becoming responsible for thousands more, he killed people with his own hands and ruined several lives over the course of TBOSAS. All that pain he caused isn't erased because we can explain why it happened. Even at 18, Snow has many things he should be held accountable for. War, being an empoverished orphan, being groomed, none of that nullifies the shit he's done. People who say Snow's just an anxious, young, traumatized boy are one side of the horseshoe theory of the myth of "the perfect victim". The "Anakin's Trauma Should Be Ignored Entirely" crowd are the other side. Which brings us to...

It's all horseshoe theory

To conclude the analytical part of my post, I'll bring it back to what I briefly mentioned in the intro to all of this. Agency. That's the running thread here. Both in cases like Anakin and cases like Snow, the fandom takes away all agency a character has in the story for the sake of justifying one's feelings about them. Anakin was born a monster and he was always destined to be evil. It wasn't the trauma, it wasn't the events of the story, he's just bad. On the other hand, Snow is a good person who was made to do terrible things by his trauma. It's all the trauma and nothing else. His bad childhood caused him to be this way and it has nothing to do with his own worst personality traits. See the connection? In both these instances, the characters had no influence over who they became. With Anakin, nothing could've had any influence because he's just born wrong. With Snow, it's everything around him that shaped him into who he was. Both scenarios completely ignore the character and focus on external factors to explain everything. One demonizes trauma victims by saying those that went off the rails are just bad people and there's nothing to be done about it, the other infantilizes trauma survivors by saying they shouldn't be held accountable for their actions just because they have trauma and it's only when they're older and should know better that we can bring consequences down on them.

Victims of trauma should be held accountable, though. The only thing the presence of trauma should change is what kind of accountability. Merely locking them up won't change anything, they should receive help to work through their problems while residing in a place where they cannot hurt anyone else. Including themselves. That is what acknowledging trauma is useful for. But this? This is doing nothing but stigmatizing trauma survivors even more than they already are, and I hate it. And you wanna know why I hate it? Because I've been both sides of this horseshoe, and it nearly got me killed.

The part where I talk about my Tragic Backstory(TM) to explain why this bothers me so much

This'll be a little heavy, so while I'm not gonna go into detail I advise you to please be careful. If you're not in the headspace to handle talk about actual real life mental health issues, feel free to stop reading here. I'm putting this at the end for a reason. If you really wanna know why people's perspective on Snow disturbs me but don't wanna risk getting triggered, skip to the last bold line in this post.

Without going into detail, I've dealt with some pretty big mental health issues throughout my life. One of them is PTSD, so believe me when I say I understand that trauma can heavily influence one's actions in ways even they don't understand. But I had to learn the hard way that there's a difference between explaining and excusing. I used to believe that, because of my previous experiences, I was entirely justified in doing what I was doing. Kind of. At that point, I didn't know that what I was experiencing was PTSD, but I did feel justified in my actions the same way Snow does. I explained every bad thing I did away and wrote it off as nothing or sometimes even as a good thing. Granted, I never did anything as big as committing murder, but I don't live in a country as dark and horrible as Panem so we'll chalk it up to that. As I grew older, I started to recognize the ways in which I accidentally hurt the people around me, and eventually had the realization that my past does not in fact justify the pain I was causing people entirely uninvolved in what happened to me. They had nothing to do with that, and shoving all my pain onto them the way I did was wrong. My view of myself pivoted to the other side of the horseshoe. If I'm not justified, am I... am I bad? Am I evil? Am I just born wrong?

I don't know how to explain this to anyone who hasn't gone through this themself, but that is a horrible feeling to have. To feel like you're just bad and there's nothing you can do about it... It kills something inside of you. A hope, a will to keep going and keep trying. Why bother when you cannot be fixed? I've lost the will to live at two points in my life, and that was one of them. And now I get to see both of these mentalities be repeated by dumbasses who don't understand the first thing about trauma. It's... not fun. It's grating and aggravating in a way I can't accurately bring across with just my words. It makes me wanna scream and laugh hysterically until I cry.

Here's the thing: I relate to Snow, and the way people perceive him disturbs me on a visceral level.

As I said, I justified my own bad behavior the same way he does. I convinced myself I was a blameless poor victim who had no hand in their actions. But just like Snow, I did. Not nearly as much as I would have liked, but I did. I learned to control the defensive mechanisms my trauma gave me, and I grew from it. Seeing people defending Snow with the same arguments that kept me from ever getting over what happened to me, crying out that he's just traumatized so none of it's his fault... it disturbs me. Because they're outsiders who should be able to see the pain he caused others and realize that nothing changes the fact that he did that. But they don't. They're me, without any of the personal stakes that kept me trapped in my own delusions. It's all just fiction, and I know that, but it hits just a little too close to home for my comfort. It's a little too raw and a little too real for me to just let it go and move on again like I always do.

I'm sorry for the rant, I didn't mean to make this post this long but I guess I hope you find something of interest in here that made it worth reading? Have a nice day 💜

Some thoughts on...everything that's happened in the last couple of days.

There's a lot of discourse around what was said on the podcast. I have a few thoughts. Feel free to skip this if it doesn't resonate with you. You're entitled to your own perspective based on what you heard. I'm sharing mine.

Unfortunately the small group of fans that "obsess" about NR and his life seem to be the ones that are validating the show and not asking any questions or keeping the room open for disappointment (I'm not directing this at anybody, it's just an observation). It's a small percentage but they're very loud. I haven't met any of them. That being said, there are fans who watch his show and like his show who understand the boundary between his character and his personal life.

It's important to be mindful of the media you consume. Most shippers and fans have been asking valid questions (respectfully). You're investing your time, money and emotional capacity into a show. If you feel like it's not doing a good job then you have every right to ask questions and decide to withhold or withdraw your investment if the answers don't appeal to you.

The questions that were brought up were ones that could've been tackled really well if they had a competent marketing strategy.

How did he get to France?

The strike complicated things, but there were ways to adhere to guidelines and lean on the resources they had at hand to tease this question months before the show premiered, in a way that hooked the audience and didn't talk down to them like they were being "difficult".

Instead of choosing to ignore the biggest question they were getting consistently, they could've utilized it for the show's promotion.

Daryl finally took a bath. Why did he finally take a bath? (Or something along those lines. It was hard to discern)

I'm tired of 'Daryl finally took a bath' joke and understand his frustration here. But the big issue is that the bath was whittled down to shipbaiting fuel when it could've been a strong and powerful scene on its own – featuring Daryl alone.

It had the potential to be a scene where Daryl was put under a microscope and not in a voyeuristic way.

A moment where Daryl sat quietly, took stock of all his scars, contemplated his life and where he was. Norman would've done a great job communicating the nuances there. A quiet scene to amplify the feeling of hopelessness, his discomfort about forming a reluctant alliance, and his feeling of displacement.

A defining moment to prove it was about Daryl. Not anyone else. But Daryl, who was alone again after he left behind his found family with the complacent trust that "they would always be there" and now had to face the possibility that he would never see them again.

It would've been deeply vulnerable yet relatable to many. It would've given a peek into Daryl's mind and forced the audience to slow down and understand the gravity of his situation.

People asking genuine questions about the show are not doing it to attack anyone. They're not doing it to be nitpicky or difficult. They're doing it to get information on key aspects of the show that they need to understand before investing in it. It can be seen as mindless criticism or it can be seen as an opportunity to improve the show in areas where there are glaring issues.

Implying that the fans who are asking repetitive questions are hysterical instead of looking at what's being said means they're making a show that he likes, not a show that takes their core audience's expectations into consideration.

Which is definitely something they can do if they want to. They're entitled to it. It makes a statement.

But statements don't keep shows running on TV – audiences do.

Why Short Sirius Black Mattered to Me

So I'm having some feelings about the whole "sirius black is tall" discussion that's circling my dash right now, and I don't want to comment on anyone else's posts with my *feelings* because it really doesn't relate to the actual factual information they're sharing, but I did want to put them out there.

At first I felt pretty defensive about how angry people seem over people headcanoning Sirius as shorter than Remus, and I am still taken aback by the level of anger/frustration being felt about this whole thing by some. But I am also a very logical person so I read the posts and I mean, the "sirius black is tall" people are not wrong. It is canon that Sirius is tall, I just read @pommedeplume's post about it that really laid it all out well and with the canon sources (thank you for doing that, btw), and yeah, it's just true. Sirius Black is canonically tall.

But I'm still finding that I feel hurt by the discourse around it (namely, the animosity toward the "short sirius black" idea), and I wanted to flesh that out a bit -- not because I'm trying to tell someone to change their thoughts/opinions/feelings, but just because, maybe this will offer some insight into why short Sirius Black is fanon and means something to some people.

I didn't always imagine Sirius as shorter than Remus, but personally, since returning to the fandom after transitioning to a trans man, I started imagining him as 5'10" (~178cm) or so and Remus as 6'1 (~185cm) or so, mainly because I started reading fics about Trans Sirius Black and they were just so...validating. Trans men try to make ourselves feel better about being shorter and not having dicks by calling ourselves "short king" or "tiny dick solidarity" or whatever, but frankly, it's incredibly dysphoric, especially as a gay trans man. It's intimidating and sucks to know that most of the guys I am attracted to and want to be with will be 5-7 inches (13-18cm) taller than me.

So there was something about picturing Sirius Black, who I already relate to as a person, being able to contain all of his big personality, all of his attractiveness, all of the things about him that make him so Sirius Black in a body that was simply an average height for a man. Not even my height! Just a height that didn't make him feel cosmically out of reach from me. And, really, that's often the driving force behind something that becomes fanon -- a thing that makes the character more relatable to the readers. Because 6'2" (188cm) Sirius Black is not a trans man (I mean, obviously some trans men are that tall, but...clearly that is VERY rare), and doesn't feel like he could be a trans man. And as someone who is a minority and doesn't get that representation ever, it's nice to feel like there are small things about the characters you love that mean that maybe they could be like you, too.

What I'm trying to say is - I think that short Sirius Black came from the queering of the marauder fandom, which as an older queer person who only recently came out, is really cool to see. I definitely don't agree with all of the fandom interpretations of characters that have come from this queering (i.e. femme sirius), but I'm also just...not gonna tell people how to view this character who might be helping them feel more safe and proud about their own identity. Short Sirius Black makes me feel less shitty about being a short guy. And seeing everyone be really pissed at the idea that Sirius Black is imagined by some people as short...hurts. At the end of the day, I know it's about just wanting to stick to canon, and I get that. I am that way about a lot of things. I just wonder if we can be more understanding of why people might be clinging onto what they want to believe is canon. Because I'll be honest, I'm disappointed to have read that it really is canon that he's a tall guy. I'm gonna change how I picture him and Remus (flip their heights basically), and I'll live. But I wonder, at what point can we say that sticking to canon is less important than letting people feel represented by their interpretation of a character?

Okay, first sorry for presuming you didn't work with children - the way you talked about them at first was really oversimplificated, easy to misunderstand.

About "using Third Wolrd countries as props", sometimes they pop in the middle of an argument out of the blue and with no nuance at all. Like "don't eat quinoa, eat meat!" - we export meat and the contidions of workers in slaughterhouses are AWFUL too. We plant too much things to export (both for animal feeding and people), and for the exchange farmers don't plant local crops anymore, prices rise, and stuff. Not to mention mineration. Almost everything produced here, specially most brute products, come from exploitaition. I don't think individual buyers interfere much, maybe organized though.

Or the parrot thing. Shelters here are full too, to the point of workers saying "please find a new home for this lost bird yourself." (Happened to a co-worker that found a lost, absolutely healthy, and clearly imprinted parrot).

And to be honesty the discourse of "undomable parrots" "the WILD!" sounds also fetishing to me. You see? It is still a open question. You say what you want about husbandry, but how *we* feel is still open. What Europeans did to parrots is fact, what we make from it? It's *our* turn to discuss and decide.

These are just random ideas. Idk how you will receive them.

Also, I'm amused by the idea that some comments threw "imagine until they know about unicorns or dragons" or "they are adad". I'm totally for imagination, and if I made understand I'm against it I'm sorry. I'm not *against* whatever dino toys, I just *wish* we had more variety than JP bootlegs, including pleasant and accurate critters.

What I will say to you is that my response to parrots is very US-centric because that is where I live and have experience and knowledge about the exotic pet trade on a first hand level and because that is what OP specified they were speaking on in the first place.

I am not speaking for your country because I have not lived there and you haven’t disclosed which country you reside in meaning I can’t give any assumption to what the situation is there.

The state of parrots in the pet trade in the US is that anyone can buy as many parrots of whatever species they want as long as they pay a lot of money to the seller. The seller very rarely does any kind of background check to ensure the buyer even knows what they’re doing or what the bird eats, they take money and they give bird. There is often no way to verify that the parrots were bred for health and good temperament, or even that they weren’t bred to parents or siblings. There is often very little transparency about what methods they were imprinted with, there are several types of imprinting and some result in a nightmare bird and others result in a very calm bird.

Because you can profit off of selling large quantities of parrots with unique patterns or colors, there are a lot of people breeding them in unethical ways to do so cheaply while selling at the highest possible price. This, much like the human labor and land exploitations you’re referring to, are just the end result of capitalism. Rich white countries like things cheap and convenient so they imperialize and leech off of countries they intentionally sabotage financially so they have to stay in line.

Because of the mindset Americans have towards convenience and instant gratification, they go to a store, see a parrot, buy a tiny cage, and bring the parrot home with a bell toy, dowel perch, and just whatever bag of generic “parrot food” they happened to grab on the way out. Then the parrot is loud or bites or never talks so they cover it with a sheet, release it into their backyard, or force it onto an already overcrowded rescue.

Every type of parrot has unique needs, but they at the very least should be able to fly, have others of their species to interact with, and bonding activities that don’t frustrate or upset the bird. So many parrots in the pet trade here have never actually felt the sunlight aside from through a window. So many parrot cages are designed in ways that lead to damaged feathers. So many parrot cages have no room for the bird to stretch their wings or even have a private place to hide.

My stance on parrots is at the bare minimum people should have to go through a similar process falconers have to go through before getting their first raptor. Falconers here must build an enclosure that meets guidelines approved by the state department of wildlife, they must pass an exam regarding the natural history, husbandry, equipment, and training of the animal. They must study under a master falconer for two years before becoming fully independent in the sport. If we held people to this standard and required it before they could buy a parrot, I would have far less complaints I’m sure. But that isn’t the case. Every parrot I’ve worked with was a rescue, and every one of their stories was heartbreaking. Yes, true, people will neglect any given animal because people can be cruel, but the vast majority of parrot owners are still keeping them in terrible caging, still keeping them all by themselves, and it’s still greatly encouraged to breed more and more which just gets parrots killed or dumped at a rescue.

Saying people deceive because they continue to follow QSMP and saying continue to follow is against the admins..... I just think it's to forget people who believe in free start and changing things and are able to see things must change. There is no good nor evil, but both.

Yes, they dont talk, but if they talk the persons responsible of the things could legally say "you see, i'm not responsible he recognized it ", if I understand correctly. And yeah, it's frustrating and has a huge lack of communication but we dont know all the things behind the scenes so how can we judge correctly ? Moroever, Quackity was guilty of not checking and being too trustful, yes. And he recognized his wrongs.Horrible things were done, yes, and it needs to change and they promised it already begin. Have we ways to know they are lying or not ? No. And I understand people will not trust them without proofs because of the betrayed trust. I understand how it feels, no problems. They are trying to change things, and it takes some Time, yes. Will they succeed and are they lying ? Only the future will tell.

On the other side, yes she talks, but it was necessary to change things. Say there are problems. And yeah, she posts things on public which create an infinite source of problems (between two camps that are in reality except the huge fans, two sides of a same coin ) AND continue to do so, but WE can also understand how frustrating the situation was and how she was afraid to never be heard otherwise. And yeah, she encourage dangerous situations not in a direct way (doxxing and cyber bullying), but I dont think it was on purpose and simple consequences of some words and she recognized herself it were errors.

So now. Yes both sides made shit and it's not a contest for knowing who did the worst. Plus they are both aware they did wrong. The problems remaining is........ US. By judging our camp did everything good even when our camp didn't ask for it. And shaming the others for have faith in changes or for not have it. We are now the problems AND that's probably why WE wouldn't have to know. If we were able to not see things in black or white nor weren't able to shame each others.... Maybe. But WE aren't. But what has been done can't be undone.... So lets continue this discourse.

NOBODY IS the good nor the bad. To be on one side doesn't necessarly mean you're against the others and you betrayed the others. In fact, there are people who see the rights and wrongs of each side and are willing to let QSMP have a second chance but dont accept what was made in the past. Naive ? Maybe. Parasocial ? No. Not when you know they aren't perfect and say it. Because obviously, they aren't. Each side has their wrongs and worst of all, they triggered each other bad sides (fear climat resulting in wanting to be heard publicily result in silence which result in more leaks etc....).

I already say it. It's now a matter of how much trust you have left. But you can't expect people to have the same as you. Feel betrayed ? Can understand, yes. But doesn't mean they are wrong for wanting to believe things can change.

NOBODY is really wrong in this matter of trust for us, viewers and X and Tumblr users. The only wrong IS when you attack someone because they think differently of you.

I'm gonna make an original post because I am not a discourse blog nor am I looking for a fight or, God forbid, for somebody to harass the OP or me over this. I am just a disabled person who's really fucking tired with how people treat accessibility features and I need to vent out my frustration

(As a disclaimer, idk if the OP of that post is disabled or mentally ill or anything, nor do I care. It genuienly doesn't matter. Being disabled or mentally ill or having any kind of disorder doesn't prevent you from being ableist. You can't hide behind "I'm disabled/have PTSD/whatever".)

But I saw some garbage take about trigger warnings today, that basically boiled down to that fanfic writers and artists don't need to use trigger warnings, that it's a fairly new thing and the standard for fiction was not using them for many years, and anything more than what the site requires is just a courtesy, but what ticked me off was these two ending points

(Image ID: A tumblr text post that reads "➡️ It is your responsibility to protect yourself and close a book, or hit the back button if you find something in fiction that you're reading that upsets you. ➡️ You are responsible for protecting yourself from fiction that causes you discomfort." End ID.)

Which I absolutely agree with, which is why it's so frustrating.

Because how can somebody protect themself if the author chooses not to disclose potentially triggering and dangerous content they're posting?

Is it a standard? Yeah. Does it mean it's a good standard and shouldn't be changed? Hell no.

Yeah it is within your right to refuse to trigger tag something, but it doesn't mean it's the moral choice nor that it doesn't make you an asshole. Like not giving up your seat on a transit for a person in need is within your rights and you nobody can stop you from not doing that, but you are being a prick.

I'm all for people controlling their own online experience, they shouldn't demand somebody not post something and instead learn to block and filter their own experience, but they can't feasibly do that if somebody chooses not to use warnings. Just because something is the standard or law or a policy doesn't mean it's a moral choice. AO3's "Creator chose not to use archive warnings" is a good compromise, it can keep the creator from spoilering their story while warning the readers that they're clicking on their own risk. But to post something with absolutely ZERO warning? Yeah, full offence, you're just a cunt.

Call me crazy but it's not "courtesy" when it's about accessibility and people's health and safety, it's the bare minimum you should do to avoid dangerous situations. It's not just about comfort for many people, posting something triggering without any warnings can be genuienly dangerous. If you genuienly think everyone can just click away from a fanfic like that and be only uncomfortable at most then you're naive and sheltered, a lot of people need these warnings, fandom spaces are hostile to disabled people as is. If you want people to protect themselves from fiction that causes them discomfort or worse then you need to give them the tools to do so, you can't just wash your hands off any responsibility and absolutely refuse to meet anyone half-way.

It seems that when some people say "you need to control your own online experience" don't genuienly mean it, because if they did they would understand it's a two way street. No, they just want an easy guilt-free way out to shooting down people who criticise them for posting uncensored, not warned about triggering content.

I swear to god, when people pull out "Well it's the standard!" when talking about accessibility features for disabled people it makes my blood boil. Well it SHOULDN'T be!

The neuroplasticity (or lack there of) of CDDs is really interesting in how it manifests over time. Because in so many ways I really am still a 5 year old child quietly crying myself to sleep, or a 17 year old girl desperately trying to establish an identity of my own in a world that feels like it has no place for me awash a sea of hormonal changes (second puberty really hits so different and yet so similar). But it also really does afford the room for real growth and change.

That change comes at a cost though, which is that I constantly feel alienated from my past selves. I cannot remember what I used to think, or why I thought it, only what I did and said and maybe what I was interacting with and try to work out my thought process from that. It's like most people are playdough, constantly being reshaped to a lesser or greater degree but still containing all that they were, while I'm Lego, I can be disassembled and reconstructed, but the pieces are solid, adding new bricks as needed and discarding those that are not (or putting them in storage at least).

We are also, of course, products of our environment. When your life is marred by identity uncertainty, we look to our surroundings to give us clues of who we might be. When I was on Reddit and browsed /r/all I would see the occasional tumblrinaction post about the plural community, fictionkins, and IRLs and think "well that's definitely not me. Discovering I was trans and coming to terms with being a marginalised identity, it was discord communities that taught me what that could mean and what I should be ready to fight against. On twitter I was lucky, I found the traumacore/empty spaces community that helped me to process the images I saw in my head that I didn't understand, and use my trauma as a tool of creation.

Taking part in the system community, it was the older focused communities that helped me to understand myself. I honestly don't know what my syscourse stance was back then, if I even had one. There are aspects of the wider online community that just don't vibe with me, some were a little damaging, others were simply incomprehensible to me. Joining Tumblr definitely shoved it in my face though.

The only thing I can imagine is that I must have thought that endogenic plurality was this "other" thing, I knew about DID, what switching and fronting and host and protector and system meant in that context, but endogenic plurality was something else that didn't concern me and I hadn't really come across it yet. So I was absolutely confused as fuck when I came here and saw people using all those "DID" words to mean something else. When anti-endos said "you can't form a system without trauma" that made absolute sense to me at the time because system meant DID and that's caused by trauma, why are people claiming to have DID things and using DID words while also saying that they don't have DID? Actually I do still kinda think the terms should be separate but it's not a battle I can be fucked to argue about anymore.

Because the point is that while online spaces might not change all that much, and there will always be people who join those spaces and be influenced by the culture in them, there are always other spaces that will influence them differently. So while it's absolutely frustrating as fuck to see anti-endos repeating the same horrible origins discourse, and endos saying fucking awful stuff like "I think traumagenic systems cling to trauma as a cause because they feel insecure about being a system", we need to accept that it will still keep happening while the spaces exist and remember that the people from those spaces are the ones with the opportunity to change. To learn, to see things from a different perspective, and most importantly grow.

And if they refuse to? If they keep spouting the same points over and over and over again, refusing to back down or learn, reigniting old arguments and digging stuff up from the past because they just can't let go of it? Just leave them to it I guess, we'll all be off making ourselves and each other better ^^

I just wanted to say to that Anon: nobody was being sassy with you. I hate how much Marius and Armand fans are denigrated on this site.

I'm sorry, anon! I know how that feels and I want you to know that I did not intend to denigrate or invalidate Marius/Armand fans. I apologize if I did.

I am on your side! I think they're fascinating and while they're not one of my main ships, I always enjoy reading the fics people write about them and trying to figure out how they fit together in various eras. I want them to work out their shit and have all of the kisses and cuddles they deserve.

About ten years ago, the last time I was in this fandom before I left for a while, Armand and Daniel were Le Problematic Ship Du Jour on this site, where there was constant discourse and shitposting about how toxic and awful they were and how if you shipped it, you were terrible and also wrong, because look at Daniel with Marius in Prince Lestat! They are together so Armand and Daniel can't possibly ever have anything again 🙄🙄🙄 It felt like you had to constantly defend yourself if you posted or wrote about them, and it was exhausting.

Now I see that same shit going on with Marius and Marius/Armand. It's fine to not like a character or a ship, but people get Weird about it, and decide that their dislike is Moral and Righteous. Or that canon or Anne has blessed their ship somehow, which is equally silly. Back then people would harass Anne on Facebook trying to get her to say which ships were canon or whatever, as if they are not very clearly all canon on the page.

I will never believe that Daniel and Armand reconnecting means Armand and Marius can't do the same (or that Daniel and Marius aren't going to still have a deep relationship, for that matter.) Ditto Armand and Louis, etc. etc. down the line.

Ships are not a zero sum game, especially in this fandom. You don't have to like a ship. Sometimes they just don't give you that warm fuzzy feeling. But none of these ships are mutually exclusive either. Armand can lay on the couch playing with Lestat's hair and still appreciate Daniel as he walks out the door. There's enough love to go around.

Okay, sorry, wow, I don't know why anyone sends me asks when they all lead to tangents. 😂 Point is, I feel your pain, anon, and I wasn't trying to join in on that kind of nonsense, so I hope it didn't seem that way and I don't think you were be sassy with me, either. I understand your frustration! I'm sorry fandom tends to do this stuff!

ena proseka frustrates me, because I very much so love her Personality and I enjoy her character After the base nightcord story

But She Very Much So Did Tells A Suicidal Person That They're Selfish For Being Suicidal To Their Face Because She Has An Inferiority Complex.

and that's like !

it's really out of pocket, but that wouldn't inherently make her character Bad or anything. except the Narrative doesn't treat her doing this as a bad thing. in fact, the other characters poke fun at her for Really Caring After All while she's forcing the suicidal person to apologize To Her.

and it's such a Bizarre writing decision. because I truly would not mind a messy character who is mean sometimes because of her own trauma, that's Literally also what mafuyu has going on.

but it truly does not work if the Narrative doesn't engage with it that way, and if the other characters don't recognize it.

and see, I Thought that the fandom was just pretending that this didn't happen, since it wasn't properly addressed in the source material and gets brushed off.

but then. Sometimes I see people call out This Exactly as like, Relatable and Good Writing. and then I look for criticism of the character writing and all I get is people hating her for being an instagram girlie (which, not a reason to hate a character).

so I just feel a little bit like I'm losing my mind every time I engage with anything that involves nightcord. because I Like This Character but her role in the base story and how it was handled was so bad that I had to stop playing the game for a while. And Nobody Else In The Entire Fandom Seems To Have Noticed?

people still hate tsukasa for yelling at nene once, but the same fandom spaces has nothing bad to say about someone telling a suicidal person that they're selfish for wanting to commit suicide. and I can Only Assume that it's because the narrative took what tsukasa did seriously while the narrative seems to trip over itself to pretend that what ena did was like, normal. not even justify it but pretend that it's just like. Fine.

I don't even have a stake in project sekai discourse, but this has well and truly haunted me

"don't kill yourself, aha, I hate you and you're selfish and you owe everyone more music because you're popular"

I understand that I'm Supposed to know that ena really does care for mafuyu and doesn't want her to die, but I'd be killing myself after this one