2017 is ending ! and so should this bullying & negativity !

2017 has been a tough year on everyone. Regardless of where you live on this globe, we’ve all suffered in one way or another. From the US election to Brexit, from the terrorist attacks in London and Manchester to the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. We’ve survived hurricanes and tropical storms in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The mass shooting in Las Vegas. Even now in the height of Christmas season, California’s fires burn on. Palestinians are being illegally arrested, detained and displaced every day. Not to mention Net Neutrality battles in the US and Canada. No matter where you might be, something has affected you.

And outside of just the world news, the RPC has dealt with many things. We’ve seen hate crimes and suicides. Toxicity and bullying beyond belief. Ageism and accusations. There’s been so much hurt that the community has inflicted upon itself. So here’s a list of things that the RPC can work on in 2018.

AGEISM. Fandom is a place for people of all ages. It’s not just for teenagers and not merely for adults. This is applicable for both sides. There’s so many people who say “ Don’t talk to me if you’re under 18 ! Stop lying about your age ! “ and similarly there are others who say “ You’re too old for this fandom ! Focus on your own life and get your own hobbies ! “ What both of y’all need to understand is that roleplaying is a collaborative activity. And not only that, it’s such a large community that you could easily just go from one blog to another. To damn a whole age group for an individual experience is toxic and close-minded. Those who are underage still have a place here-- because it probably figures that you were online when you were underage. And for those who are underage, don’t get yourself into activities that could easily get the other party into legal trouble. Respect each other’s boundaries; and if you can’t play nicely, don’t play at all. There are so many variations of characters, of fandoms, of portrayals that you can very easily just... move on elsewhere. Do that, and do so quietly.

ANONYMOUS HATE. Or even, just hate in general. It should just be a rule in general: if you don’t have anything positive or constructive to say, don’t say it at all. It’s not that hard to just move on to another blog. If it makes you uncomfortable to see someone on your dash, unfollow them. Still there? Blacklist them. Tumblr Savior gives you the option to remove the banner that notifies you if an item has been hidden from your dash. It’s like they’re not around at all. Afraid they’ll message you? Block them. And one additional option would be to speak up if you can be non-spiteful about your message, clear the air, and go in peace. No reason to just be nasty to people. 

PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE NEGATIVITY. I’m not counting vaguing because sometimes you need to be able to let people know about a situation without being too in detail: it can be a cry for help without being too obvious. But I mean just stirring the pot to see what will come of it. Just saying something negative to someone like “ No one cares about x ” or “ You know you should really do this or otherwise x. ” It’s childish & it shows a lack of accountability. People will ask for your opinion when they want it: otherwise you can probably keep it to yourself, or move on if the blog no longer suits your interests. No need to harass someone out of some sick sense of entertainment or pride. 

ACCUSATIONS. Get both sides of the story, understand the situation, make informed decisions. And then, once you do, keep things to yourself. You can warn your friends or something privately if you have a concern about someone based off of personal experience, but rumors spread so fast around here. Even if something is proven to be true, like say someone is bullying or being abusive, and they’re still active? It’s not your responsibility to continuously bully them about it. If you’re so concerned, contact an authority figure. If you know Tumblr Staff isn’t taking it seriously enough, then contact your local authorities-- online bullying is a serious thing that police are supposed to take seriously. If you think you have a real case-- or heck, even if you’re worried? Get serious and contact someone. Otherwise, if you don’t have any evidence to back up your accusation, or you’re just tagging along, you’re just another part of the problem. You are contributing to an unhealthy online culture. 

SHAMING. There’s a trend of claiming people are into pedophilia and bestiality, or even go on to call people rape and abuse sympathizers. That is not okay! At all! Some people write content to cope over something that occurred in their private lives. Some people want to experience writing something outside their comfort zone or daily lives. Some people are interested in experimentation. Whatever the cause may be, that’s no reason to call people anything. Do you not realize that if these victims-- yes, victims ( because that’s what they are ) could easily report you for abuse, and if inclined sue you in court for defamation of character? Because that’s what you’re doing, publicly slandering someone’s name out of something you personally don’t feel comfortable with. Don’t like someone’s interests? It’s probably tagged-- meaning you can blacklist it. Still uncomfortable? Chances are that there’s someone else who writes a similar enough style or character-- so unfollow. What authority do you have to blaspheme someone for the content they produce on their blog in their own space in their own comfort in their own time if it’s not hurting anyone else in the process?

FACECLAIM / POC BASHING. Which I think is a really interesting phenomenon because most of the time the people who call others out for their choice in face claim aren’t even of the race themselves? The idea of the faceclaim is to have that person pick a public face that matches the portrayal of the fictional character they’re writing, usually of an animated background. And it’s also gross to tag someone else to bash another person for you? I’ve been asked to publicly call out someone on their choice of FC-- and that’s disgusting. Don’t bully someone ‘cause of a personal preference. And if you’re trying to “ stand up “ for POC, which is what I assume this is supposed to be... you should probably just ask a POC what they think of the situation. But be prepared to like consider your thoughts wrong: ‘cause sometimes what you consider correct just... isn’t. I was asked to call out several people on “ white washing ” WOC, and honestly POC don’t come in a cookie cutter model... This isn’t to say I don’t appreciate the faceclaim resources made available: because those allow someone to make a valuable educated decision on a choice as opposed to a random Google search. But like, it’s not necessary to harass anyone over what you think might have triggered your radar. Instead, you could start a discourse without accusation, politely ask how the person made that decision, & then like if you don’t agree with the moral / ethical decision of that person idk,  move on.

DUPLICATE HATE. Discomfort is acceptable: and you can unfollow or blacklist or block, whatever you need to do to distance yourself from a duplicate should you feel uncomfortable with them. But under no means necessary is it necessary to bully, abuse, harass, slander or otherwise attack another person for sharing the same muse as you. Because unless it’s an OC, you don’t own rights to that character anyway, and the only person who has the authority to tell someone not to write a character is the person / company who owns the creative rights. If you’re not pleased with someone else’s portrayal of your character? Focus on your own, make it the best it can be. Produce the content you’d like to see about ‘ your ’ muse. Stop deflecting responsibility onto everyone else.

I am sure there’s plenty of stuff I’m missing out on, but these are things I’ve seen a lot over the year & while it’s probably a dream, I’d love to see change in 2018. But I think change begins a person at a time, and it begins with us. If this at least opened your eyes a little, then I’m glad. Let’s make this next year a better one.

So could you please explain Sessrin to me? I'm not in the fandom nor have I watched the show but from what little I've been told the antis (as usual) have completely mischaracterized the whole thing.

P. S. Can we please ban grooming from the fandom lexicon? It lacks semantic meaning other than age gap bad.

Well, it’s been a while since I last saw/read Inuyasha, and I’m super-behind on Yashahime, but I do love SessRin and am pretty bummed about the amount of hate this ship has been getting lately, so I’m going to do my best to share why I love these two so much. 

First off, anyone who uses the word ‘grooming’ either doesn’t know what that word means, or was not seeing the same story I was. The definition of grooming is “befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a child, and sometimes the family, to lower the child's inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse.” This never happened. Sesshomaru did not look at this traumatiized child and go “hmm, how I can I best get her to trust me so that I can convince her to sleep with me” or whatever-- in fact, a large part of their dynamic is Rin choosing, over and over, to stand by him even as he is actively trying to push her away. (And considering that I suspect many of these antis are also Sesshomaru fans, the fact that they’re so quick to launch such a serious and out-of-character accusation at him is rather strange.) 

Here’s their story in a nutshell (and, again, I may be slightly misremembering details, it’s been a while): Rin, whose entire family was slaughtered by human bandits, comes across Sesshomaru in the woods and is initially terrified because, you know, demon. However, despite her fear, she realizes that he’s been injured and incapacitated, and does her best to try and help him (cleaning his wounds, getting him food and water, etc).  Sesshomaru, who, up until this point, has been a fairly typical demonic antagonist with your standard mindset of, “humans are stupid, selfish, and weak,” is understandably bewildered by this, and tries to scare her off. It doesn’t really work. This goes on for some time. (Several days? Weeks? IDEK.)  One day, after Rin returns to her village, a tribe of demons arrives and kills everyone. Rin tries to run back to the woods and escape, but the demons eventually catch and kill her. Sesshomaru finds her body, and, for some reason even he doesn’t understand, decides to use his magic sword that brings people back from the dead (yes he has one of those) to revive her. (This is significant because up until this point he has never even used the sword, as he hated the fact that he’d gotten the stupid healing sword while his little brother got the cool, killing sword.)  And Rin, who has no one left and no home to go back to, decides to travel with him.  (One of the interesting things here is that, despite the fact that she was killed by demons, Rin is actually more afraid of humans, because they’re the ones who murdered her family.) 

Their relationship throughout the course of the story is fascinating. At first glance, it might seem like Sesshomaru is always the one saving her, but she saves him too. Rin forced him to acknowledge that the world wasn’t black-and-white, that humans were complex, that just because he didn’t like someone or something didn’t mean it didn’t have a right to exist. Sesshomaru’s arc is subtle, but by the end of the story, he’s fighting side by side with the heroes-- something that would never have happened if he hadn’t met Rin. 

Now, the thing here is that, for most of the story Rin is eight years old. Their relationship is never, ever shown as sexual, but there’s clearly love there, and the implication the story ends with is that they will likely get together once Rin is older. I’ve heard antis say that they read the relationship as being more along the lines of “Sesshomaru ‘adopts’ Rin,” which explains a lot. However, I personally never saw it that way. They were partners-- just because Rin didn’t take out a sword and fight off anyone who tried to hurt Sesshomaru doesn’t mean she she was primarily on the receiving end of the relationship.  (In a story about battling evil, where nearly all of the characters are these awesome fighters, it’s pretty cool to see a character who is not a warrior, who just gives and loves and trusts and cares, and is never treated as lesser by either the characters or the narrative because of this. I really love Rin.) I think it’s a cultural thing-- people are used to the narrative of ‘coldhearted bachelor meets and adopts lovable scamp who reminds him how to love again’ and are primed to see it even in a story from an entirely different culture set five hundred years in the past. 

(Part of it is also about shipping wars-- many of the antis ship Sesshomaru with other characters, particularly Kagura, and would rather make the argument about morality versus just saying that they would prefer something a little different.) 

Here’s where I admit it gets a little bit sticky: How much of this is Rin just imprinting on Sesshomaru and using him as an excuse to avoid her trauma surrounding other humans?  And the narrative did a great job of resolving this dilemma. Near the end of the story, Rin leaves Sesshomaru. She goes to live among humans, to learn how to be human again, so that once she’s an adult, she has the agency to make an informed decision about what she really wants. 

There happens to be an audio-drama CD that was released in Japan sometime after the show ended, which is set just after the original story ends (when Rin is eleven). In it, Sesshomaru says something to Rin which is referred to by one of the other characters as a ‘proposal.’ Now, I don’t follow anti discourse, so I’m not sure if they know about it, but I can imagine they’d have a field day with that one. “Omigoodness, he proposed to an eleven year old, that’s so creepy.”  However, there’s some context involved. The word ‘proposal’ is used by one of the other characters-- who happens to have time-travelled from five hundred years later (that is, the present day). The whole plot of the CD starts when she complains to her husband/lover/whatever-their-relationship-status-is-supposed-to-be that he never actually proposed to her, and since he doesn’t know what a proposal is (because, again, culture gap), he thinks it’s some sort of monster she wants him to go fight for her before they can actually be married, and hilaraity ensues. She calls Sesshomaru’s words to Rin a proposal as in “see, that’s what a proposal is supposed to look like.” It has very little to do with SessRin in and of themselves. 

For reference, here’s what Sesshomaru actually said in this so-called ‘proposal’ (thanks to @inu-drama for the translation): 

“Rin, have you grown accustomed to life in the village?  No one is bullying you or anything?  Did you make a kimono out of the cloth I gave you the other day?  When you are troubled, or anxious, or sad, or any other time, feel free to call on me.  I will come to you immediately.  Even if we are far apart, if you call my name I will absolutely come flying to you.  If you cannot speak, you can whistle. Whistle through your fingers, if you like.  Distance is no object. Our hearts are tied together.  With the power of trust, there is nothing to fear.  Simply having that feeling should be enough to fill your heart.  That is why it is fine for things to remain as they are for now.  We have plenty of time.  You can examine your heart at your own pace.  Until then, take care of yourself.” 

(Is there something inherently creepy or predatory about that?) 

To me, SessRin is about love, in its purest form. It’s about believing in someone when the rest of the world is against them. It’s about choosing the person who chooses you. It’s about learning and growing and changing together. 

What’s that quote-- I think it was from Dawson’s Creek or something?  “What's a soulmate?” “It's uh... Well, it's like a best friend but more. It's the one person in the world that knows you better than anyone else. It's someone who makes you a better person. Actually, they don't make you a better person, you do that yourself - because they inspire you. A soulmate is someone who you carry with you forever. It's the one person who knew you and accepted you and believed in you before anyone else did, or when no one else would. And no matter what happens, you will always love them. Nothing can ever change that.” Yeah, that one. That’s what SessRin is about.