I’m literally begging y’all not to disclose your trauma in order to justify and validate your tastes in fiction.

The people who are or you fear are going to get on your case about your fantasies, taste in fiction or how you identify? Do not give a shit about you. Or the trauma you have faced. They don’t give a shit about other trauma survivors either, and they don’t care about how callous and shitty they seem. All they care is about controlling and policing people they think they might have a sliver of power over.

You can block or clown or do whatever you want. (I recommend blocking, don’t feed the trolls) But please for the love of god do not tell random strangers on the internet who have absolutely no business knowing you’re traumatized and have X Y and Z mental illnesses from it.

Don’t reveal yourself as vulnerable, don’t paint that target on your back, and don’t give people access to possible triggers that may hurt you.

.....does anyone else get the vibe that the limitless expanse of the internet, media, and consequent ability to interact politically, spiritually, and apathetically with people locally and globally maybe had an influence not only on the individual's relation to the collective but also their ability to participate in it and see their significance to it?

Can we talk about it?

Like I feel like as some who was a frontline activist and now is a disabled social activist who dabbles in radicalizing liberals... The wall I and my peers continuously keep running into is the collective feeling that someone else will do it.

"it" being whatever action.

For me it's signing a petition, protesting, donating, community organizing (both online and offline).

We get tons of interest on stuff. Interest which very rarely translates to doing more than showing a poster to the friend theyre with before trashing it, reblogging a post, or hitting "interested" or like when we post local events.

And on All these platforms posts gets to a point of "enough" responses where ppl just stop responding and sharing, too.

On Tumblr you see this a lot with donation posts and people constantly having to make new ones. Cuz they're getting notes, but not tangible assistance that will help them. And the reblogs stop because there are so many notes that ppl start assuming that the goal was met or will be met soon.

But that isn't what's happening. And like I said this isn't just with donation posts or money so the answer isn't "well ppl are broke" which would be an easy and sensible answer.

Honestly, I've been thinking that with so Many people easily accessible online with so many opinions and varying levels of popularity and followers that it's easy to lose yourself in them. Especially now when so much of life takes place online.

It's so easy to think you're just one of those many people. ....So surely nobody would notice if you were being a little facetious, right?

Gonna be real, it seems a lot to me like a lot of people are trying to hide their lack of integrity through the anonymity offered online.

And like sure maybe nobody would notice if it was just a few people being facetious about supporting something but it's SO MANY (in my experience? Upwards of a thousand once) and Everywhere. Online, offline, and apps.

And the thing that makes it weird is that every one is assuming that people are being more helpful than they are. That more people are showing up.... Even though they themselves are not showing up either. Like I said reblogs for donations stop, shares stop, and only a handful of ppl show up to events irl. You can literally compare reblogs to the signatures when a petition is being shared.

Wanting to show up isn't the same as showing up.

"People" are not coming to change or show up to the revolution. It's you. You are the people. You are the people that need to show up. Not just as a notification on my screen but actually, because you think someone else will have enough integrity to show up for you but they don't.

Your integrity matters.

You matter so much. I don't know what it is behind this mass behavior that has y'all acting otherwise but I'm telling y'all right now that YOU and the choices that YOU make matter. The events that you choose to spend your time at and how you spend your energy and protecting your rights matters!

That isn't some "im just another drop fighting an endless battle in the ocean" kind of deal.

I'm telling you from experience: there is no ocean! We are in a fucking drought and every drop matters.

Show up. Nobody else is doing it on your behalf.

.......or is it just me? Has anyone else noticed this

Sonic Broke. What's Next? (IDW)

For those who might know, quite some time ago I wrote about Sonic’s next emotional arc in the IDW comics, where he won’t be so immediately trusting of new faces after what happened to Mr. Tinker. I analyzed how this new dynamic is characterized through his interactions with Belle and was justified by the events of the metal virus arc and, more specifically, the way in which everyone piles onto Sonic for his decision to keep Mr. Tinker alive.

Espio’s done it. Shadow’s done it. Zavok’s done it. Metal Sonic’s done it. Starline’s done it. Eggman’s done it. Sonic’s done it. So many people have put Sonic down for this one decision; this one decision has backfired in so many ways, but Sonic, ultimately, never lost faith, never lost hope, never lost his optimism for a better world where everyone has even a little bit of good in them. This optimism is one of Sonic’s key defining characteristics that shines through every single continuity of this franchise and every single iteration of this character.

But this is it. This. Is. It. Chekhov’s gun has fired, and Sonic has fucking broke.

This collapse hits Sonic in two waves, the first one being his first confrontation with Surge.

Surge says everything the others have said regarding Sonic’s “moral code,” but her specific language illustrates the key difference between her and everyone else—and why it hits Sonic so hard. Everyone else in Sonic’s life is adjacent to Eggman’s terrorism, but Surge is a victim of it. And what makes matters worse is that she’s only brought in this mess through a chain of command.

If Sonic ended Eggman, Starline wouldn’t have been able to bring Eggman back, nor experience the apprenticeship that turned him against Eggman and sent him on the path of creating enforcer cyborgs—which means that Kit and Surge would not exist in the state they do now, and they would be able to live happy lives. Even if after ending Eggman, Starline would have still surfaced on a track of “Eggman Avengement,” the same argument could be made, because Sonic would have directly spared Starline, too, and he knows it. If only for a second, something clicks.

The collapse finishes in one fell swoop in his third confrontation with Surge, where she spells it out for him further, and where a technical fault on Eggman’s Device, of all things, saves his life by almost surging hers.

Sonic has now, for the first clear and objective time, seen the true consequences of his decision, and for the first clear and objective time, he cannot fix it.

This isn’t the same as Metal Sonic, who, as a (sentient) robot, serves a purpose outside of replicating Sonic (he’s a protector, an attack robot, and a companion to Dr. Eggman). Surge once had a life of her own, one she no longer remembers because, through a sick and twisted train of events, Sonic has deprived her of those memories, that freedom. Surge isn’t a robot. Surge isn’t an android. Surge is a real, tangible person that Sonic’s decision has thoroughly fucked up, and Surge has just framed him—not his choices, HIM—as the key reason she’ll never be free. She will either kill him or die trying, and either way, Sonic cannot win.

In the first second he can breathe, let alone process everything that just happened, Sonic… can’t. He has nothing to say—not in front of Tails, at least, but maybe nothing, at all. Until this point, Sonic has wondered if he, specifically, was to blame for Eggman’s actions because he was the one to let Mr. Tinker go. However, this is the first time where Sonic seems to question whether he should have let Mr. Tinker go, at all.

When Eggman emerges from the rubble, Sonic isn’t smug. He’s not amused. He’s not even bemused. Sonic is gutted and disgusted by the fact that Eggman’s still alive. He might even feel guilty that he’s still alive.

Eggman doesn’t know sympathy, doesn’t know remorse—not in Sonic’s eyes, not anymore, and it shows, because when Eggman has the audacity to ask for another truce—

—Sonic could fucking kill him for it.

Sonic’s always hated Eggman, but he’s also always had faith in his ability to be good. However, what Sonic has learned from all this—what Sonic finally believes down to his core—is that Dr. Eggman is lower than the scum of the earth. Sonic finally understands why Eggman helped stop the arc, why Eggman worked with him to fight the Deadly Six, and why Eggman helped eradicate the metal virus. Sonic finally understands that he mistook Eggman’s ever-cunning, manipulative mind for a shred of benevolence.

Now, what does this mean?

Now that we’ve witnessed the breaking point, I think it will take a fair bit of effort to pull Sonic back from the brink of rage. He’s not going to give up on Surge—not at all—because if he did, he might truly fucking lose it, but there is no way that Sonic will be entirely unchanged by this. In the future, when he’s placed in another complicated situation and given a difficult choice to make—especially if it has to do with Eggman—we might not see even a shred of lenience.

I thoroughly believe that the primary narrative purpose of the IDW comics, as they currently stand, is to investigate Sonic’s tenant optimism and push it far beyond its limits. This story’s purpose is to interrogate and observe Sonic’s declining psychological state until it shatters. This story’s purpose is to stand by one of this franchise’s biggest arguments: Sonic’s big, big emotions cause problems, and his inability to cope with those emotions makes problems worse.

When Sonic’s happy, he’s ecstatic, when he’s confident, he’s cocky, when he’s sad, he’s depressed, and when he’s angry, he’s livid. And all of these emotions, without balance, can come crashing down around him.

We’re seeing this fact so prevalent in the movies, Sonic Frontiers and especially Sonic Prime (which takes the direction that the movies do and turns it up to eleven). However, in the same ways they weaken him, Sonic’s emotions give him strength. Without his optimism, Sonic would have fallen, long ago. Without his optimism, Surge will never have a chance to see a better future for herself. It’s all counterbalanced by how big his heart is and how much he evidently wants to be better and do right by others.

And if there’s anything he’d die trying to do, it’s that.

Responding to your post about fiction affecting reality: very well-written post and that’s something I agree with wholeheartedly!

Full disclosure: I am a Vivz supporter and don’t really interact with the critique community because of negative past experience (hence the anon), but I really liked your post as it was well-researched and brought up a lot of points that I did agree on. Mostly that, as you evidenced, “it’s just fiction” isn’t a great argument for poorly portraying a serious concept when there can be tangible consequences for that portrayal. And you gave some really striking examples.

In terms of Hazbin, it is not that I believe that Val’s portrayal as an abuser (and consequently Angel’s as a victim) lacks any impact, but instead that it adds a positive one. This isn’t something I’ve researched so the evidence I have of this is personal experience, but as you said in your post that media can affect real life I felt inspired to add to that conversation with how it personally affected me.

So I was aware rationally that a common result of abuse/SA is hypersexuality, like I’d seen that on psychology blogs and such but never really understood it. I’m ashamed to say I thought it was a little weird and very rare. Hazbin was what finally challenged that notion with me. Being able to see how abuse looks and attribute those events to Angel’s actions step-by-step made something click in my head. I even remember that shortly after seeing that episode, I apologized to one of my friends (a survivor themselves) over some judgmental comments I’d recently made over hypersexuality. Said friend also watched Hazbin with me and it’s the reason they talk more openly to me now and we’re a lot closer. Val’s “stupid” behavior in the show and mentioned in Vivz’s comments did not lessen the impact that episode had on me, or make it unbelievable to me that Val could be manipulative. If anything I understand more now that abusers don’t always appear as psychopathic masterminds. And I know my friend finds comments like the Mean Girls one funny and they tell me it’s empowering to make fun of Val’s incompetence.

That’s not the only positive influence Hazbin’s had on me, but the most relevant to your post, I believe. It’s the reason I’m often a skeptic on most criticisms, because my lived experience tends to go against them. You said the negative impact of Val was that people are drawing fetish art of him, but the only time I ever see that art is within critic’s posts. It never shows up in my regular feed, so it looks to me like he’s equally as fetishized as every other character; the unfortunate inevitability of the internet. I can’t say I’ve seen anyone post about stories like mine about learning to understand survivors, but I have heard positive stories from survivors themselves in person and online which lead me to believe that the positive impact outweighs the negative.

Fiction has real impact, very true. But consider that might be a good thing in this case.

Thanks for being respectful!

TW: Rape, SA

I'm a victim of SA myself and that's why I wrote all of this post. If you got something positive out of this piece of media, that's great. Same with victims that saw potion and were okay with it- that valid as much as the people that didn't like it at all. I recommend watching many others shows yourself (or movies, books, whatever) will help you out with sorts of topics in bigger ways. I understand you feel like you got something good out if (and I'm glad) but I do need to say, this is minimal in comparison to other media you could consume regarding the topic!

I personally suffer with Hypersexuality, and the treatment in the show (and merch and otherwise) I found completely wrong. Even if you got to a good understatement of the topic, please put research into it (also outside Tumblr for that matter! There are better places to find stuff about!). Thank you also for admitting your faults over your treatment of hypersexuality and apologizing for it. Many people will never let themselves grasp this concept, so thank you.

If you took Valentino's comparison to Mean Girls or Powerpuff Girl as a way of making fun of him, that's you. I found it, personally, terrible. Specially cause many comments regarding that (that I put on the post) were people actively disregarding the topic at hand. Saying that Valentino is just a karen, or He is Bubbles coded, feels so out of the realm of everything (the last one didn't feel like making fun of him). I don't like the comparison of an active sexual predator to a mean high school girl or a kinder garden girl that's regarded as bubblely or dumb. Feel like you should reach into his actions over It feels diminishing to me and other people (who also complained about this themselves).

People should be extremely careful of what they portray about this topic in media. Other stuff written in Hazbin or Helluva Boss regarding R-pe jokes also is extremely disgusting to me. Never forget that if you think this portrayal is ok, one episode apart it's a gang r-pe jokes towards Sir Pen... and an r-pe joke towards Moxxie in Spring Brakers. Which I find extremely disrespectful to do and adds to r-pe culture as much as any other r-pe jokes (general or towards men) in media. Especially when they want to portray it in a serious way with Angel, where was that energy then? (Don't say Viv didn't write that, she liked a tweet about the Sir pen joke, and the spring braker is written by Viv and Brandon.)

Also, about manipulation:

The tweet right below says that "He isn't manipulating them" because he is too stupid to do so. Responding "The Vees are just meangirls" it's crazy to me.

About "You said the negative impact of Val was that people are drawing fetish art of him, but the only time I ever see that art is within critic’s posts. It never shows up in my regular feed"

Val has being fetishized by the crew itself! The person (who is not an SA/r-pe victim said by themselves, who has being open of shipping ValxAngel and being into r-pe porn) is the one that produce the whole poison part of the episode (also based on his previously non canon ValxAngel comic). You could also go throught the people Viv's responds and likes and it's mutuals with, and they also do the same thing as this crew-member (Raph). Congrats that it doesn't appear in your timeline, tho. If this art appears in a critic post, it is because it's being criticized or brought up to make a point.

[It's not on my blog yet, but I don't like receiving double ask in the inbox, specially of anons! Sorry. I don't know if it's the same person or not, and I don't want to end up receiving 5 asks in my inbox again.]

I saw you said in the tags that you don't agree with Seven being about 13 etc, and I could not agree more because it irks me so much when people say how Seven was mentally 6 when they freed her from the Borg, or something to that effect. She was abused by the Borg to the point of not having her own thoughts but she still aged. Maybe she struggled socially after she was freed from that but it didn't take away the years she spent in the collective. It's basically infantilizing and paired with Seven being perceived as autistic by some, or just the fact that she went though the trauma of being Borg, is ableism to me. End of rant.

I apologize for not replying sooner to this ask but I wanted to grab a couple of links before replying because yes, I think you're totally right that saying anything to that effect (that Seven is actually a child, or that 'she doesn't actually know what's best for her') is infantilization of a character who is canonically a physically disabled adult, as well as having a very strong subtext for neurodivergence, and that it plays into ableist stereotypes that contribute to making the lives of real disabled people tangibly worse.

First, I want to make clear that no matter how muddled the metaphors get when it comes to Seven (and oh boy do they, between the cyborg technobabble and the completely absurd way Seven was "dressed" and made up on Voyager, talking about her is always a struggle), she is disabled. She makes use of many prosthetics and she has to regenerate (ie she has to make use of an external device) regularly or there are unpredictable consequences to her health. I realize this is maybe not super clear from the text, which sometimes conveniently forgets about Seven's limitations re: regeneration (see this post) and turns her prosthetics into a sort of superpower; I'm not saying it's an accurate depiction of disability by any means, but it's not something that can be completely ignored when discussing Seven either. In all honesty I've downplayed this aspect of Seven's character in the past and I really regret it because after it was pointed out to me, it's indeed pretty obvious. The trauma of Borg assimilation was disabling, and it's embodied in Seven even more than it is in other xBs, since it happened to her so young. She can never 'get rid' of it and she doesn't exactly want to, either*, even with all her very understandable ambivalence about it ("I am human, but I am also Borg").

(*I think Picard S2 makes this argument more complicated but recent live-action shows have been truly fucking awful at dealing with disability and metaphors thereof so I won't try to make sense of it. What matters is that Seven ultimately couldn't be 'magically cured' there either.)

ETA: I forgot to add, Seven is absolutely an adult. To me there's no question about it; she's played by an adult and none of her storylines, none of her struggles about figuring out how to be an individual in a group, about how to live with the terrible guilt and responsibility about her actions as Borg drone make sense if she isn't an adult. The whole character of Seven of Nine falls apart if she isn't an adult who is struggling with the terrible consequences of trauma.

Second, infantilization is a very real manifestation of ableism. This article defines infantilization as "a nondisabled person having more power than a disabled person and using that power against them to invalidate their thoughts, opinions or experiences. This can show up in numerous ways, such as indirectly speaking to a disabled person or assuming that the individual can't advocate or speak for themselves." In short, treating a disabled person like a child who needs to be directed at all times and who is assumed to not fully understand the ramifications of any independent decisions. It's not a matter of just language, either: the same article points out that 1.3 million disabled adults in the US were under conservatorship in 2018, and that forced sterilization of disabled adults is still legal in at least 31 US states plus Washington D.C. So let me make this super clear: disabled adults having their autonomy revoked, especially their bodily autonomy, is absolutely an issue in our current world. And it all stems from this ableist conceptualization of disabled adults as being like children, incapable of making the right decisions by themselves and for themselves, especially about their own bodies.

Now it's maybe clearer how this relates to Seven's whole deal, both in the show and in fandom. On the show, so many things about her prosthetics and about her looks were decided by the Doctor without consulting her at all, and how ironic it is that the one taking the decisions is a hologram coded with the biases of so many medical professionals, and it's one of those cases when no one, no one challenges the EMH! Sure, the Doctor pretty much saved her by making the reclamation process very smooth, but of course the idea that he can 'shape her' and ultimately 'cure her' of her disabilities (subtextual neurodivergence included) keeps popping up in the show pretty frequently, and she almost never gets a word in edgewise. Seven and the Doctor end up striking up a friendship, and things get a little less eyebrow-raising, but still it's pretty horrifying how the sexism of the production translates into ableism diegetically, though to be fair to Voyager it's definitely not the only Trek show where this happens. It's just that being about Seven, it's a very sustained theme on Voyager, and one I really wish wasn't there.

Off the show, in fandom, I think it would behoove us to at least try to do better than Voyager. Ultimately Seven of Nine is a fictional character that has no real feelings to hurt etc, but again what message does it send to real people when (part of) the fandom insists that Seven is 'mentally a child' or 'doesn't know what's best for her' and can't take her own decisions about her own future, even her own name? Again I'm not saying this to be a scold, and I can recognize that I haven't always been fair in my approach of Seven's disability. There's a lot of work I still need to do, and language is just a very tiny start. But it is a start nonetheless; I'd like it if people could see it as well.

stayed silent publicly at the time to avoid harassment, but given that alex kister's accuser has come forward themselves and acknowledged that their callout post weaponised transmisogyny to ruin kister's life, i feel like i can finally say it: the callout of alex kister and the subsequent spiral is a textbook example of transmisogyny in action, and further exemplifies how few people can put their money where their mouth is when it comes to it. i cannot put into words how fucking heartbreaking that original document is to read, and i cannot articulate my disgust at people who read someone promising to never explore their gender identity or sexuality again and came out the other side going "yeah, this sounds reasonable". in the weeks since, i've been going back and forth over it, and writing this post i keep trying to soften the blow, to make this less impersonal for the naive to read -- but i can't. there is no way for me to spin this as anything but what it is: a failure. every single person who blindly followed this shit failed, and you should be ashamed, because it's fucking shameful that all it took to blind some of you was some vaguely progressive-sounding wording sprinkled throughout a hate screed.

like, every single aspect of that original document is a perfect case study in transmisogyny -- how it frames trans women's sexuality as something inherently awful, the fact that it literally concludes that kister's gender was a fetish... fuck, man, i could go on, but i don't particularly want to. instead, i just want to present this very telling quote from it:

I then created a thread for the channel because I was getting a little annoyed with gender discussions and the Mandela Catalogue discussions colliding and constantly going off-track. He continued talking about his experiences and what he does in private.

this, right here? if opening with outing their ex didn't do it, this should have been your wake-up call. not only is op upset that the creator of the mandela catalogue is taking things "off-topic" by talking about themselves in a tmc server, of particular note is their wording here: "what he does in private", as if discussions of gender are akin to what you do in the bedroom.

this is what happens when you do not know how to define something beyond the dictionary, and this failure has real, tangible consequences for everyone involved. let me reiterate: alex kister was fucking outed. this is something that cannot be undone. i wish it could be, but it can't, and we all have to live with that. about the only kind thing i have left to say is: failure is also an opportunity for growth, and i, for one, hope those who did so take it.

the rest would be against tumblr tos.

How Phantom Pains Establishes Stakes

Phantom Pains is a beautiful song, and one of my favourites in the Stray Gods musical, and I'd like to delve into why. I've said before that what words are doing is more important than what's being said, because people can lie, but the plot and themes remain unchanged.

So what does Phantom Pains do? What do I mean by stakes here? Surely Grace's life is on the line, what more could you want?

Phantom Pains establishes what happens if Grace fails to bring the Gods into a healthier state of mind. It establishes why Grace's story has wider consequences on the rest of the world. Allow me to explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The most obvious thing about this song is the visuals. The silhouettes of times gone by.

Étienne de Silhouette was a French politician in the 1950s who was notorious for his economic policies to the point where his name became synonymous with doing things cheaply. As such, when people would get a cheaper portrait of themselves, they would get it in the style of Silhouette.

Essentially, a silhouette isn't a real thing. It's a shadow, an echo of what was once, and might still be there, but it is a cheap copy, a fake. Apollo is lost in his memories, burdened by guilt and a whole lot of depression, but that's the problem. These memories are all consuming, but they aren't the real world. At least, they aren't the present he is actually living in.

"I have paths I like.

Smooth, paved in stone.

She got tired of our divide.

We weren't the same. Never the same."

I mentioned that this song sets up stakes, and this is the point where that happens. Calliope represents change, and Apollo couldn't do the same. The stakes are the paths these gods are walking. They are walking to their own destruction, because they know the way, and can't bring themselves to turn off it.

The style shifts here, and there's a point to that. It's becoming more real. Apollo is being confronted with what his path led to. It's loud, and its in his face. But it's still not tangible. He is still lost in the past, only now that past is telling him to leave it be.

The reality is then shifted again, into the actual light house.

And Apollo finally snaps back to the present, to reality, Grace has persuaded him to change, just slightly. Not into a different person, but to take a different action.

"Perhaps there is some change we can effect."

This song is showing the power of Grace's singing and musical power, specifically to heal this wound. If she doesn't the wound will remain open, but if she tries, she can at least make it less painful.

Ok, so I need to address the name of this song, because it's relevant. A phantom pain is often experienced by an amputee, and it is described as a sensation of the missing limb getting injured, and the mind feeling its absence.

This is setting up an anatomical metaphor that Stray Gods keeps using. It's not the main even, but it keeps coming up. For example, Athena is the head that plans and directs, and Calliope is the arm that reaches out to grab for safety. So when it's cut off, the body continues feeling the pain.

I am not an amputee, I cannot speak from experience here, this is just what I have observed from my experiences in the real world, so bear with me.

But here's the thing. Amputees are not often the type of people who will sit back and stop doing anything because of their injury. There are some who do that, humanity is a diverse bunch, but a lot of the time, the person will just get a new leg and keep moving. They often don't use it as an excuse, but an obstacle to push past. And the new leg often doesn't look like a real foot, it fits the same purpose, but its obviously mechanical, and it still fits. They have found a replacement from elsewhere and made their lives work around it. They still feel the pain, sometimes, but it doesn't stop them from living their lives.

Grace here is filling the role of the new limb, she is an outsider, a misfit, but if the idols accept her, they can move forwards, and reach for newer things.

The secondary stakes of this musical are convincing them to do just that. To change, to accept, and to embrace.

Previous - Next

"hot allostatic load" is very much a work worth reading and discussing, and it's shameful how the harrowing experiences described can be found unchanged these 9 years later. it highlights so many intersecting dynamics and consequences of the transmisogyny, ableism, and racism that are perpetuated within ostensibly "inclusive" spaces.

that being said, i feel like it still kind of reifies the victim/aggressor dichotomy and maintains "abuser" as a meaningful ontological class of malicious actors, and i'm skeptical of that part of the argument.

mostly i feel like messaging is mixed; between nominal challenges to the moral hierarchy and innocence/guilt paradigm, there are a number of lines that assert the innocence and good intent of victims, while taking as fact the malice and wanton destruction of aggressors.

lines like "abusers don't spend years disabled by those thoughts [of being sociopathic, crazy, or abusive] because they don't care if they hurt other people" have me raising my eyebrows. i feel that this line of thinking leaps over all of the little social and mental tricks that enable abuse--the minimization of consequences, the willful and selective ignorance of power dynamics, the magical thinking of intent trumping impact.

it has been my experience that a great deal of abusive individuals think they care deeply about hurting others, and do at times ruminate about the morality of their actions, but inevitably fall back on various justifications to maintain their behavior. i worry that the reassurance, essentially, "an abusive person wouldn't worry about being abusive" can terminate necessary reflection and growth.

it is an important part of the healing process to first realize that it wasn't all your fault, and that you are not uniquely evil or irredeemable. but i think it's an important part of being a political actor to challenge framing issues in terms of blame and ontological badness entirely. sometimes you are the one who fucked up, badly, and the question of handling that situation is fundamental to anticarceral politics.

the essay seems to believe in a type of genuinely "bad person", but it offers little in the way of how to identify them and what to do about them. how does one distinguish confused and righteous people from "pathological liars"? how does one distinguish the airing of personal grievances privately and without a major callout from the weaponization of whisper networks and silent ostracization? what punishments would be appropriate for the "bad people" who avoid them through privilege? if someone fucks up, what does it look like for them to actually atone and change things for the better?

i agree with the concluding sentiment that "there is no kind of justice that resembles hundreds of people ganging up on one person, or tangible lifelong damage being inflicted on someone for failing the rituals of purification that have no connection to real life". we should carefully consider what tools and methods we use in a quest for a more just world, because some of them have grave consequences. but this alone feels imprecise when paired with the whole of the article's wobbly stance on victimhood and abuse, and general lack of suggestions for how marginalized people can be heard and believed.

i guess my feeling is that i'd like to view the piece as a snapshot of this kind of abuse and its effects on all levels, but i personally think many of the core arguments are better discussed elsewhere. it just isn't very precise and honed, and i think a sharp argument is required to cut through the muck of cognitive dissonance and self-justification that perpetuate the abuses we're trying to stop.

anyways, that's just my two cents. hope it resonates with others; if you see the article differently, i'd love to hear a different perspective on it too. i worry if i'm misreading somehow, or overly critical due to unexamined bias. but i can't really know if that's the case if i don't share my thoughts with anyone else. so, here i am with my thoughts. Heart

"Why do you like Adam Taurus when Cinder is right there" is a sentiment that's been popping up lately and it's so fucking stupid. The two have a lot of similarities, but only on the surface

Both Adam and Cinder were abused during their childhoods, but Cinder was bought by a business woman who enforced servitude via a shock necklace while Adam was forced into hard manual labor due to his race by a powerful, far-reaching company and permanently disfigured while under its thumb

Both have hurt the people they've worked with, but the dynamics are completely different. Adam and Blake were presented as equals while from the start Emerald and Mercury have been Cinder's underlings. While it's unclear how Adam and Blake's relationship started, we know for certain that Cinder found E&M while they were desperate and vulnerable and made them an offer they couldn't refuse, thus creating a power imbalance. In the voiceover in The Beginning of the End, we hear her slap Emerald for speaking out of turn. When Adam slaps Blake, it's for her perceived naiveté about a peaceful path to equality

Both use violence to gain influence, but only one is a proper terrorist. While the definition of terrorism isn't entirely agreed upon, one of its main hallmarks is the targeting of civilian spaces. The White Fang were explicitly said to go after businesses that refused to service Faunus and people associated with the Schnee Dust Company. It's more akin to assassination than terrorism. Cinder, on the other hand, targeted a school during a major event that was being broadcasted live across the world with the express purpose of spreading fear. She even blackmailed Adam into assisting her

Both have lost an eye, but while the source of Cinder's wound is unknown, Adam is branded with the initials of the company that stole his childhood

Both present themselves as cool and collected to cover up short tempers, but Cinder is clad in Femme Fatale while Adam is more Gentleman Criminal

One thing Adam has that Cinder doesn't is the fact that, at one point in the writing time, Adam did fight for a noble cause. "We are a force of revolution," he'd once said. "You're asking my men to die for a human cause. That's not an idea I'm willing to entertain." He clearly cared about his people, even agreeing to work for Cinder to stop her from harming them more. At no point has Cinder ever indicated she cared about any of the people around her

Yet Cinder is the one that gets both narrative and audience support. She's the one that gets a whole flashback to her sad childhood. She's the one that has a moment of vulnerability to endear her to the audience. She's the one that gets to live despite impossible wounds and falls. People look forward to a potential redemption arc despite her never once showing any remorse over her actions and actively fucking over every person unlucky enough to be in her path, like the woman she robbed and potentially killed at the beginning of V6. She does the same thing over and over again - uses brute force to plow through obstacles, mistreats her allies until they leave or die, does whatever she wants even against orders - and somehow fails upward

In a word, she's boring. It's boring for her to have no real consequences, no arc, no unique characteristics, and no real endgame

Compare that to Adam. His goals are tangible: uplift the Faunus by any means necessary and fuck over the partner who betrayed them all for human favor. Even as atrociously shitty as the writing is, his negative arc is still interesting. After his failure at Haven, he's lost his respect and standing within the Fang. Everyone turns against him, so he fights like he always had to. It's all he knows, all he can do. But the game has changed, the new rules are constraining, and he can only ever lose

There's plenty of other reasons folks might like Adam more than Cinder. He's got a cooler design, his weapon and semblance are badass, Cinder's voice is annoying, etc. I'm personally drawn to characters that get fucked over by the narrative and misconstrued by the audience. I didn't like Adam any more or less than other background characters until I saw the constant vitriol against him and now he's my poor little meow meow

Also, it's not cute or progressive to suggest people like one character over another because they're sexist or an abuse apologist. Y’all are just drinking the radfem "all men are evil"/white liberal "violence is uwu bad" propaganda koolaid cocktail

5. Has your OC always had the same opinion of themselves or has this changed over time? Have they learned to love themselves - perhaps with the help of others - as their journey progressed? Or have the consequences of their actions only served to erode their sense of self-worth? for Aemon

You know what, this is sort of perfect for him, because a lot of his character arc is about this & this ask gives me a chance to really think about it.

Minor spoilers for Chapter 13 (I've already alluded to them, but I'm noting it anyway) & beyond are below the cut.

When we first meet Aemon as a sentient character in Chapter 11/"Be Not A Bed Of Roses," he doesn't have the most developed sense of who he is, because he's 5, but he trusts the world & the people in it & thinks well about himself because he's never been given a reason not to. He "knows" how his life is going to go with all the confidence of a child who has been loved & nurtured, & who has an older sister he looks up to that has given him a tangible goal that she herself accomplished. He's not always sure of himself, because again, five-years-old, but those fears are, generally, other people's problems & have nothing to do with how he sees himself. He maintains this throughout Chapter 12/"In The Name Of The Mother, In The Name Of The Father," as well because not a lot different happens to him.

In Chapter 13 (tentatively 2 halves, we'll see what it starts looking like when I get to writing) things get to be a different story. He was the only one there when his mom died, he saw what happened & he was powerless to stop what was going on because he was 6 & was too physically weak to do anything, & because he hadn't claimed Silverwing at that point. There was, quite literally, nothing he could have done to stop what was going on, & he blacks out before going largely non-verbal for a good month-and-a-half. He doesn't necessarily blame himself for what happened, not fully anyway. He definitely lays blame at Daemon's feet because, well, he's who did it. But Aemon does think he should have been able to do something: if he was big & strong like Ser Gerold & Ser Gunthor he could have stopped his dad, if he had claimed Silverwing earlier he could have stopped his dad. Just a lot of really heavy stuff that he lays on himself even though he's really young, that he sort of buckles under the weight of for a while & lets control a lot of things that happen once he's sent to be fostered in The North.

It takes a really long time for him to recover from actively thinking about how he could have/should have done something, & from how badly he views his response to the direct & quite frankly dark trauma of witnessing his mom's murder. Truthfully, a lot of it doesn't every really leave him: he trains ridiculously hard to get Big And Strong because he doesn't want to ever be in a situation where he can't protect someone ever again, he hates how he clams up and reverts to how he was when the trauma was fresh if he's put in a situation that makes him confront Daemon is a real person who exists, he dislikes how his reaction made him isolated from other people because it made him weird (& that fuels a lot of his closeness with Helaena later on once they meet).

His siblings & their spouses all help on some level, by going to visit him while he's fostering most times he asks & constantly writing him & showing him lots of attentive care that reinforces that they still love him & don't blame him for anything because he was a literal child & that he was sent away to help everyone/not just to get him out of the way. A lot of the work gets done by the House fostering him (don't want to necessarily spoil where he goes since I'm already spilling some of his emotional arc, lol), because they're who he's around all the time & reassure him & put in a lot of the Ye Olde Therapy work. Also, ngl, his boyfriend does a lot of the helping. His Non-Relative-Bestie/Foster Brother/Lover (Aemon is going full Fucky Targ Relationship Dynamics lmao) is his manic pixie dream boy toy who helps Aemon do a lot of inner work to get okay with things by being a stable, supportive presence in his life who sees all of/the worst of him & never gets scared away.

So by the time Aemon gets back to Runestone once he's 16, I'm not gonna say he's back to where he was, because Kill The Boy And Let The Goth Be Born, but he's doing about as well as one can when you live in a setting/time period where therapy doesn't exist. He sees himself in a way better & healthier way. None of the negativity ever leaves him, because what he saw just irrevocably altered him, how could it not? He gets to thinking about himself positively though, & once he's back home & starts growing up he keeps making little bits of progress until he's got a good view of himself a good 85-90% of the time/really needs a dark moment to get in a bad Self Image place again.

U know? Actually we always talk about Jack or Alice having a happy family, seeing their ups and downs or their actions towards the pregnancy and the baby.

But in reality we have never stopped to think if the son of Jack and Alice feels about having a ghost father which only he and his mother can see and touch. Wouldn't this create some kind of conflict for the child? I mean, it's great to have a supernatural dad but no one except your family can see or touch him, it's great that you can do tricks like "fly" or "have telekinesis" but after all everyone think you don't have a dad.

Other than that, the boy would gain his father's powers? It would be half human half ghost hybrid? He would be unlucky enough to meet Ian and he told him: "I should have been your father"? What consequences do you think this would generate for the child and what would be its advantages?

This is an excellent line of questioning. There's so many possibilities that are involved, especially since we don't know how the game's story is going to go. For all we know, there might be a happy end route where Jack becomes human again... or maybe a route where he becomes something else and keep his powers while still being able to be seen by others.

My previous pregnancy headcanon posts were done with the assumption that Jack's ability to affect reality stays the same since there's so many variables involved if it changes and how he might settle into living as a normal person. This was to keep things simple for me. It also offered some interesting storytelling ideas, like Ian seeing Alice and her kids talk to empty air, yandere Ian watching Alice get yanked away from him, Jack carrying his baby and (deceased) sunshine out of the hospital, Shaun having to drive Alice to doctor's appointments because Jack can't, and of course what would happen if Jack drove while unseen by others and using his spooky ghost(?) powers on a speed radar.

Personally, I do believe that Jack becoming real and tangible to others is going to be part of the climax of the game... for good or ill depending on the route.

Still, it's fun to consider how the kids might deal with having a dad that only they and their mom can see. It would be something normal to the kids. If anything, they might get upset at people treating them like they're lying and making things up. Alice and Jack would have talks with them early on that Jack is special, so only they (Alice and her kids) can see/hear/touch him. Jack pipes in that it's because they're even more special. Cue a proud papa pulling them all in for cuddles.

It would be a strong source of frustration, but Alice and Jack wouldn't have children without considering that problem. They would've practiced how they would explain it all in a way that would impress upon the kids that it's better not to mention that their dad is a ghost(?). I figure the official story Alice would tell people she can't trust with the truth about Jack is that her partner is shy and reclusive (which was hard for her to say with a straight face the first few times). He is camera shy, and he prefers to only show his face with people he trusts.

Alice would even try to get her family and friends in on the act. The more people who claim this is true, the less likely it seems to be a lie that's been made up. The kids would be encouraged to avoid talking about their dad with strangers or people that aren't close to them, like the family.

I don't have too much in mind yet for their eldest son, but I can imagine him wanting his dad to carry him so he can "fly" and impress other kids. Jack would have to explain that would get the bad kind of attention.

If there's one thing Jack would impress upon his kids, that would be stranger danger. He has reason to greatly distrust "other people." Sure, he's managed to open up more thanks to Alice, but she's a pretty guarded person herself.

Though Jack will compromise and let his son pretend to be a superhero and fly around when playing with his cousins. They know about uncle Jack after all, and were also told to keep it a secret.

Kids being kids, chances are one of them might tell someone else anyway. Even if rumors spread... who is going to believe it that a classmate's dad is an invisible clown? The parents would just tell their child that whoever told them was just making it up. It would be something Jack and Alice would've cautioned their kids not to do for this reason after all.

It would be a complicated situation, one that would require a lot of talking about, but ultimately Alice and Jack would emphasize that some people are just really special. Not everyone will be able to understand things like that, and that's okay. They have each other, they love one another, and they take care of each other. That's what counts.

As for powers... I really like the idea of the kids getting some sort of supernatural power out of the whole deal. I'm not entirely sure what exactly. Hell, maybe if they hold Jack's hand or hold onto him, he'll be solid/visible/audible to everyone who sees him. I mean... they're half of Alice and half of Jack. If they have some of his supernatural abilities and Alice grounds him to reality, what if they could, even unknowingly, do the same thing even more effectively?

It would fit with the idea that Jack would become more real the more his sunshine loves and needs him. His kids would be born needing him.

Aside from that, I'm not entirely sure what their powers would be. I'd be inclined to have them all have different abilities related to the things Jack can do, but not all of them. They're decently powerful, but not as powerful as he is. There's so many possibilities here that I'm not sure where to start. I'd have to give it more thought.

As for a bitter Ian telling their son that he should've been the father... That would confuse the hell out of any kid. Then there's Jack and Alice's reactions...

Alice, when she's a mother, will have strong mama bear instincts. They'll be enough to make her push back strongly against even Ian for her children's sakes. If she overheard Ian saying that, she would snap at him, telling him coldly that no, no he would not have been. She then would tell him to get the hell away from her son and never talk to him or any of her other kids ever again.

Jack's reaction would be worse, naturally. While he would have mellowed by this point to be less violently yandere... Ian would be having nightmares for quite a while to pay him back for that and to scare him away from Alice and the kids. At minimum.

Depending on how hard Ian pushes his luck, he might push Jack into deciding that he really does need to be taken care of... permanently.

@channydraws @earthgirlaesthetic @sai-of-the-7-stars @cheriihoney @illary-kore @okamiliqueur

Book Review: Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

I ended up giving this book a 3/5 star rating based on just a craft perspective but as soon as I finished reading I ended up looking at reviews by Hindus online and well. Let's discuss below the cut.

So Kaikeyi is a retelling of the Ramayana from the perspective of Queen Kaikeyi. The Ramayana is a very important text in Hinduism and thus, assuming that Patel grew up in a Hindu household, one would expect her to be familiar with it in the same way I, as someone who grew up in a Catholic household, am familiar with the Bible.

Before I get into all of that, I would like to actually talk about the content of the book, since I am the target audience as an outsider to Hinduism looking to learn more about the stories that make up its foundations. I don't know anything about the Ramayana and I found this retelling to be very off, at least from a historical perspective.

One of the biggest issues I have with historical books is that authors really love to put their modern, 21st century views and ideals onto the narrative. It happens on all sides of the political spectrum and as a historian it makes me want to tear my hair out. I know it's unavoidable that our own perspectives shape how we write, but I wish that more people would take a step back and see how their ideas of feminism, in this case anyway, would actually have looked in the time period their book is set in.

Kaikeyi is the third wife of Dasharath and gives birth to his second son, Bharata, whom has been promised upon their wedding to ascend the throne. Kaushalya, Dasharath's first wife, also gave birth to his first son, Rama, of whom the Ramayana is actually focused on. However, while their children are growing up, we get a lot lot lot of the pushing of 21st century ideals in a historical setting. Kaikeyi is very invested in the ideas of women's rights which is fine? I guess? But it is very very hard for me to believe a woman of her standing, quite literally as the Queen of her nation, would be so class conscious and care this much about the average woman in her country without much reason.

Every single time Kaikeyi devolves into a rant about the Patriarchy and Feminism, it feels like this book would have been better suited to a modern retelling of the Ramayana rather than a historical one, though I can imagine it would still come with a lot of the same baggage re: an apparent lack of understanding of anything in the original Epic. The whole thing feels forced and like if Kaikeyi doesn't care about all women then she can't be a feminist character or reclamation or a "girl's girl" as the kids on tiktok are saying these days I think. Honestly I'd rather have a meaningful examination of her biases that are certain to actually be there if she were written to be like a person rather than a perfect ideal of Patel's feminism.

The first 2/3 of the book also felt like everything was just handed to Kaikeyi on a silver platter with very minimal pushback which just made her such an unbearable character to be in the headspace of for that period. I feel a lot of that space could have just been used better to show her stubbornness in the face of adversity that shines towards the end of the novel rather than just. Letting her passively have all of her goals handed to her with very minimal work on her part.

As a reading experience, the last 150 or so pages were probably the best to read as Kaikeyi's actions finally have real, tangible consequences for her but this is also the point where I saw a lot of Hindu readers had such an issue with this retelling of the Ramayana. Rama being portrayed as a misogynistic, war hungry prince and the erasure of Ravana's history of raping and kidnapping women were the two biggest points of contention for Hindu reviewers. I don't see why either of these changes were necessary to adapt this story for a modern, Western audience. By doing this, I believe Patel, intentionally or not, is playing into colonialist narratives about Hinduism rather than fighting them. It's also a disservice to present the Ramayana this way to both Hindu and non-Hindu readers, given that Hindus will be able to spot all the changes and disregard them, and non-Hindus are none the wiser to all the liberties Patel took with her retelling and are bound to spout them as fact if they don't look into the original.

I'd probably skip this book unless you're really into hashtag girlboss feminism retellings of fairy tales and myths, since so many of them miss the point of the original story. I can see the potential here for Patel as an author and am on the fence about trying her book coming out next month as the writing itself wasn't awful, but I'm not sure if I trust her with another myth retelling. At the very least, I suppose I can thank Patel for making me interested in reading the Ramayana at some point in the near future, so this review might have an update eventually.

Generosity

When I get together with family or friends, I like to play board games. Board games give a lot of flexibility - you can go silly and simple party games, like “Pictionary” or “Apple to Apples”… or high on the strategy with “Risk” or “Settlers of Catan”… There’s also a spectrum of conflict - from direct confrontation - as with chess or checkers, to cooperative games, where there is a shared goal for all players (like in this post). Some games are good with few people, some work best with a large group. Board games can be educational, silly, gross, moral or inane. It seems like board games, and maybe all play in general - is sort of a microcosm for life. We model outside interactions through play and (hopefully) friendly competition. “Monopoly” parallels a capitalistic struggle for wealth, and oppression. “Sorry” shows the intended and unintended consequences of trying to reach a goal before others. “The Game of Life” very literally parallels a path from higher education to retirement. I could do a whole series of posts about board games and real world applications, with gatherings each time to play and discuss... Oh, I like it!

But that's an idea for later... I want to talk about one of my family's favorite games, “Bohnanza”. It’s a German game with a play on words, as the German word for bean is Bohn. “Bohnanza” is played with cards that represent different types of beans and each player is a farmer: planting, trading, harvesting and selling their beans in order to make money. The goal is to have the most money at the end of the game. Okay, that makes sense. What is really neat about this particular game is how much it parallels what I have found to be a theological truth - that the more you give away, the more you get.

There are times in “Bohnanza” when beans can be traded or held onto, discarded or shared. Depending on our different approaches to life and to gaming, some people trade a lot and others hold on to and hoard what they have. This isn’t hard to imagine. I have some green beans which I know you want, but I don’t want you to gain anything, so I don’t trade you for the red bean which could really help me. Or the opposite: I have a card which will help you and keeping it doesn’t benefit me at all so I pass it along with no material gain, only the promise for a kindness in the next round.

After many times playing and seeing the different strategies, we have found that the more generous you are, the better you will do. The person who came over to play and traded only when it also benefited them, and sometimes wouldn’t share a card in order to hinder another player... constantly came in last. When someone else was very generous with beans, that person consistently performed better. This may be how the game was designed, that the writers designed it so that generosity was rewarded. But I think there is more at work here.

Yes, it’s just cards on a table, my fake beans don’t produce more actual money if I have been generous. Yes, I might get more of what I want, but I also think there is something less tangible than game mechanics. When I share more, people around me are more likely to share and we start to create something larger than ourselves, in the microcosm of play.

I see in “Bohnanza” human nature and dare I say, theology, at play. This can be generalized and that’s one reason I think a series on games would be so neat. The generosity embodied in one action helps to grow giving and generosity in other's actions.

I generalize the lessons learned in board gaming. You can help to create a more loving world with your love. You can help to create a more loving world with your generosity. You can help to bring the holy into reality right now and right here. If you want to benefit yourself, if you want to benefit the world, if you want to win at “Bohnanza” - be generous. Give a little bit of yourself and see if you can also create a chain of generosity and love.

for social change, what's your hottest take?

ohoh this is a fun one.

There's no such thing as a good or bad person. There's just circumstances and choices.

I'd leave it at that but people tend to hear that and think what i mean is that we can't hold people accountable or go "what about <insert historical person here>?"

i'm gonna go into what i mean. read through before you come at me.

If someone's good or bad, that's an innate character judgement. They just... Are. The logical next step of this is to believe that of course they made the choice they did. It couldn't be helped. It also makes it very improbable to make a choice that didn't align with their good/bad category placement, they're just not cut out for that. But that's just now how life works.

Every single "good" person in history has made mistakes, and every single "evil or bad" person in history has some things right. Even on the extremes. We consider them to be good or bad because on average, we as people struggle with nuance, and these individuals, on average made decisions that either significantly bettered or worsened society around them.

These decisions though, weren't because of some innate quality that people had. They were responses to a wealth of factors: what they'd been taught to value, their psychological state, what resources they had, what they knew in the moment, and a bunch of other things. But at the end of the day, they were decisions. They could have chosen not to do that thing, good or bad.

As pedantic as this feels in the abstract, it does have very tangible social change consequences.

As many humans struggle with nuance, many also struggle with accountability. If a person is just a good or bad person, it doesn't matter what's happening in the world around them. But people respond to their circumstances, and those who enable positive choices, and those who enable negative choices are still partially accountable for the outcome of the situation.

Example of this: a kid A gets upset on a playground and lashes out at another kid B, hurting B in the process. We could call A a "bad kid," but if that's how conflict resolution and emotional regulation's being modeled at home, is A really bad? or did they just use the tools at their disposal to the best they knew how? The parents here are partially accountable for A's actions because they enabled that behavior.

What I'm getting at here is that if we stop at calling people good and bad, we're not going to get at the underlying issues that perpetuate problems. In the example, kid A is still going to have to apologize and do what they can to make amends for their actions, they did harm, after all, but unless this knowledge gap is filled by those who can see it needs to be filled, the problem will continue.

That's the circumstances part of "there are just circumstances and choices." The other side is that even a person we see as "good" can do major harm, and a person we see as bad can do major good.

Example of this: if close friend X is always super kind when you're around, and does a lot of good work, maybe volunteers, and then you hear from his son that X is a perpetrator of domestic abuse, does the fact that you see abusers as bad people and X as good mean that X is inherently not perpetrating domestic abuse?

No. The answer here is no.

Another (real) example: if someone radicalizes a lot of people towards a hate group and then gets deradicalized themself and start an organization centered around getting others out, does the fact that they caused part of the problem to begin with mean that what they're doing now doesn't matter because they're already bad?

I would argue no here. It might not undo the problem and collateral damage but it does matter.

What I'm getting at is that people can help people in one area of life and then turn around and hurt others in a different area. If we believe that "good" people are incapable of doing harm, we're going to abandon those who feel the direct brunt of the damage being caused and we'll be afraid to call out the actions taking place, and it will continue to go unchecked. If we believe that "bad" people are incapable of doing good, then we inherently forfeit any battles we fight trying to make positive change. How can a person do better if we lock them into a narrative where their only options are to continue harm?

Similarly, this goes to how we view ourselves. One the one hand, a lot of people who consider themselves to be "good people" have done a lot of harm because of the belief that hurting others makes someone a bad person and they're not a bad person so therefore they could not have done harm - it's the other person's fault, or it wasn't actually hurting someone because there just wasn't another way. Or the other hand, if people consider themselves to be "bad people" then that must mean they're the ones causing the harm, regardless of whether or not they are.

Having this in mind also protects us against scapegoating mentality. What actions are the people we're told are good making? Why are they making them? Likewise, what actions are the people we're told are bad making, and why?

In the end, people are in control of the choices they make. Being kind and compassionate is a choice. So is being violent or destructive. People will always have their reasons because most of us like to see ourselves as the hero of our story, but a choice made is still a choice made. We all have to answer for that.

[and for the people who are picking their worst villain from history and saying what about them? yeah they made horrible choices. but it was in their power to make a different choice. the weren't predestined for badness, they were taught that it was okay (or weren't taught that it wasn't) and chose to do it anyway. they also chose not to right those wrongs. they probably didn't even see themself as anything but a hero, especially since they were kind to at least someone. and that's the dangerous part, because anyone, given the right conditions and resources can go down that path.]

TL;DR, a good and bad binary doesn't reflect reality, it obscures a lot of problems, lets enablers of bad choices get off free and leaves those of good choices in the shadows, makes it harder for people to change for the better, makes it harder to call out when people change for the worse, enables scapegoating, and makes it harder to recognize the agency we have over our own actions and the consequences thereof. That's my hot take.

Gosh I have so many thoughts about the Sapphic Showdown discourse!

Personal bias disclaimer: I've never watched Supergirl and have zero interest in watching Supergirl. Meanwhile, Utena is one of my favorite stories ever that I consider a classic and a masterpiece. Under just about any conceivable context, if you were to ask me, "Which is better, Utena or-" I would cut you off right there and just say, "Utena." Okay? Okay!

I'm going to use this post as a jumping-off point. I'm linking instead of reblogging first of all because I don't want to make my followers have to read through OP's belligerence before getting to see whether I'm agreeing with or contesting it (I am definitely contesting it!) and second of all because I would rather if at all possible avoid dragging OP into a confrontation about this. I don't know anything about her beyond this one post that showed up on my dash via reblog. I have no reason to think she isn't a perfectly fine person overall. Also, just saying, she seems like she has good taste in anime. Anyway, that post is useful because it shows the brackets and also sums up what seems to be the central point of The Discourse:

this is just Exhibit A of Fandom People™ caring more about “shippable” characters and having “ship moments” than they do actual canon queer rep

First of all, I don't think the poll results actually mean much. For one thing, we know that paid bots get involved with polls like these. For another... as far as media that centers female characters goes, Supergirl is about as mainstream as it gets. It's live action, English language, and based on a corporate IP. Superheroes are currently fashionable and no longer even a little bit nerdy. Superman is the most timeless and well-known superhero of all, and most people have probably at least heard of his constellation of spinoffs. Supergirl winning a popularity contest over anything even a little bit more niche is just regression to the mean. All it says about the people voting for it is that they have basic taste, and I mean that in the least insulting way possible.

Second of all, let's say this is a demonstration of what the above sentence claims it demonstrates. In the context of a twitter popularity poll with zero real-world consequences... why would that even matter? What tangible harm is being done by LGBT people - and in the context of "Fandom People" who care either about f/f shippiness or actual canon queer rep (or both!), we are talking mainly about fans who are LGBT, many of them specifically queer women - getting more personal enjoyment out of something basic and mainstream than out of something politically important? How much impact is that really going to have on what media gets made going forward, let alone how LGBT women are treated more broadly on a societal level?

I would say it's actually the opposite of progressive to insist that the mere existence of LGBT people is so inherently political that we shouldn't ever get to relax and do normal, harmless human things like openly enjoying mediocre television, but must instead dedicate every moment of our lives to performing a political identity. The only actual utility value of a random LGBT person's personal enjoyment of media is the enjoyment itself. In this case, "let people enjoy things" isn't a cop-out, but a coherent ethical stance with the aim of maximizing utility.

I do think that some people who went for Supergirl over any of the other options might personally benefit on some level from broadening their horizons, and that personal benefit might in turn have some infinitesimal knock-on benefit to the broader community. But framing this as purely a matter of "supporting" the media with the "best" "representation" as part of a political performance is actively counterproductive to that goal, because it erases the possibility of joy in engaging with queer media and turns it into a chore - "eating your vegetables," as one particularly obnoxious old-school fangirl said in her infamous and widely mocked essay on engaging more with marginalized characters as an unpleasant but morally improving project rather than a labor of love.

Now, all of the above is pretty similar to stuff I've seen said before in the context of discussions about m/m fandom, which I have zero stake or interest in. What makes the Sapphic Showdown so interesting to me is that I have more specific in-depth knowledge and opinions on a lot of the media being discussed, so I'm going to get into some of my thoughts about that.

One thing that immediately jumped out to me was Alphyne from Undertale being held up as a canon ship that everyone should in every possible context care about more than whatever is going on in Supergirl simply because it is canon and therefore Actual Rep. Undertale is one of my all-time favorite games, and it means a lot to me that it contains a canon f/f couple, and I myself love Undyne and Alphys and have had way more intense feelings about them both as individual characters and as a couple than I will ever have about anything or anyone in Supergirl. BUT. It is worth mentioning that they are secondary characters whose relationship gets relatively little onscreen development. I think it is pretty understandable for audiences to get more emotionally invested in relationships that get more narrative focus, whether those relationships are actually canon queer or just shippy! Catradora is so compelling not just because they declare their love for each other and kiss onscreen, but because they do that as part of the climactic scene that the whole story was building up to. Catra's and Adora's love for each other and the thorny, difficult road they took to realizing it is the very heart of the show! And that "central relationship" element can be there even when the relationship in question isn't necessarily canonically romantic. I don't know how much that's the case with Kara/Lena, but one example I can point to is NagiHono from Futari Wa Precure. The show wastes an unfortunate amount of time establishing and maintaining plausible deniability about Nagisa's sexuality, but her het crush is only ever hovering on the margins of the story, where her ambiguously gay bond with Honoka is the very heart of the show. The two girls stand together against the end of the world, repeatedly putting their lives on the line for each other. To me as a lesbian watching this, it means something when Nagisa lies in bed with Honoka and says, "I'll be by your side forever, if you'll have me, even though I'm not good at domestic stuff," and when she calls her "my most important person," and the show's refusal to commit to this being what it looks like can't completely erase that meaning.

Another thing that needs to be said is that it's kind of hypocritical to be having this discussion over Utena in particular, given that the canonicity of Utena/Anthy in the tv series is... uh... complicated. Ikuhara was basically always treating it as romantic, but Saito was vehemently against that! In terms of what made it to the screen, the story only comes together thematically if you accept that they are in love, but it is possible to refuse to accept that without resorting to blatantly countertextual readings. Utena denies that her feelings for Anthy are in any way sexual as late as the third-to-last episode. It's clear that something big changes in the last two episodes when she regains her repressed memories and rejects her false prince, but she never has the chance to articulate that as explicitly as she articulated her earlier denials. And you know, I think any framework under which the Utena tv series could be treated as a lesser work than every and any show where two women explicitly declare their romantic love and kiss each other is not really a framework worth engaging with.

And really, the whole idea that the entire point of media as it relates to LGBT people is to have Good Representation is just a set-up for tearing down anything less than perfect - which is ultimately everything, because it's impossible for any one show to be all things to all people. We've seen this with people denigrating everything that came before She-Ra when Catradora kissed, and again with people denigrating She-Ra when Lumity got together mid-series rather than right at the end. Other people have explained how this is a really bad state of affairs for anyone who cares either about getting to see fictional LGBTQ characters on screen or about the well-being of the real-world LGBTQ creators who put them there, and I'm running out of steam, so I'll just point out that saying people's most important criteria in what ships they like should always be political purity feeds into it, and that's not good!

Ok, Steven Universe fanbase, we need to talk. Because there’s this issue that keeps cropping up when talking about the Diamonds and no one seems to really understand what folks are saying.

Don’t know what I mean? Allow me to explain…

Whenever I or someone else talks about how the Diamonds never really faced any real consequences for their actions, why is your first instinct to immediately say “but Steven didn’t forgive them.”

Yes, we know, pretty much all of us have seen future by now, or at least the scene of Steven almost murdering White Diamond that y’all most likely drop to provide context.

But that’s not what we’re talking about. I don’t care if Steven personally thinks the Diamonds are swell and takes them to Funland on the weekends. Because, get this, my judgement of the characters doesn’t depend on who among the cast Steven is giving the most ‘good boi’ points to.

This is such a frustrating topic to discuss with fans because it feels like y’all treat Steven as the ultimate judge of moral character. Newsflash, Steven is a CHILD! And by Future he’s an angry, emotionally unstable child!

Why do we keep circling back to this? Like ok, let’s compare this to another show, and to be fair I’m going to ignore the Owl in the room and pick something that is slightly less obvious, Avatar the Last Airbender.

Imagine if ATLA ended with Aang making Ozai promise to stop being evil and conquering the other nations… but did NOTHING to remove any of his power, either through his position as Firelord or even through taking his bending away.

Even if Aang said he didn’t personally forgive Ozai… would that honestly really matter? Because what did he ultimately accomplish then? Ozai still has all his power and the only thing stopping him is a disapproving look from Aang?

And don’t think I’m being unfair with the comparison here. Yeah, Steven’s a pacifist, but like… so was Aang, dude was literally a monk and was just as much of a child as Steven. And even he understood that even if he couldn’t bring himself to compromise his morality to kill Ozai, he still had to find another way.

And even if the show bent over backwards to make it seem like Ozai really was remorseful for what he did, would it not seem uncomfortably jarring compared to his behavior throughout the entire rest of the show up to that point?

That’s the point I’m getting at with the Diamonds, they ultimately suffered no real repercussions. Because there was no tangible effort to strip them of their power. If White Diamond woke up tomorrow, decided Steven was full of it, and just went around forcing Homeworld to backtrack hard to the point of just bleaching everyone to obey her to start colonizing planets again than who or what can really stop her?

Here’s a bitter pill that SU fans need to swallow, when bad people don’t face any consequences for their actions, than how do you expect them to learn ANYTHING?

Why change and become a better person if no one is going to stop you? Why not abuse your loved ones and cause untold death and destruction to everyone and everything around you if you aren’t going to pay for it?

You can still like the show, there’s still good stuff here, but we gotta accept that the finale sucked, regardless of whether it was a creative decision the crew took from the start or it was compromise that was forced because of CN.