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serenagaywaterford · 5 years

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was I the only one who thought tuello was going to mention the 2x10 rape and not the nick thing when he arrested serena??? like, obviously I understand the thing with nick was rape regardless, but she did ask them both and june would've ended up in the colonies had she not gotten pregnant while the 2x10 rape doesn't really have any sustainable justification behind it. I don't see "I was in a mood and wanted the baby to come faster" working in court (1/2)

and I guess you can argue there's no way to prove that that rape happened, but serena got arrested before any paternal test was done so it seems as if fred's word is enough?? I guess they can get the test done later and confirm it, but I don't know, I feel like there's a way out of this for serena whilst I don't think there would've been a way out if they had proof of what happened in 2x10. I just find this flimsy. (2/2)

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No, you weren’t! I honestly... I thought it was going to be about her actual war crimes, like her blatant terrorism against the US, conspiracy to blow up state capitols, and overthrowing a democratic government via war. But hey, that’s too easy lol. Like, why on earth Fred wouldn’t turn her in for THAT, which are HUGE crimes that the ICC/Americans/etc would actually be interested in is beyond me. Oh wait, no it’s not, cos this is The Handmaid’s Tale and they don’t know shit about law or politics, or at this point common fucking sense. It’s a soap opera now.

I’m just so irritated by that whole “Let’s arrest Serena for rape!” concept because it’s entirely based on a) an individual and singular crime against a single person on foreign (sovereign) soil; not a war crime (so why the ICC would have ANYTHING to do with it is beyond me) and b) FRED WATERFORD’S WORD. Because suddenly they believe everything an admitted war criminal is saying against the woman who literally turned him in???? No, nothing suspect about that at all.

(The American government may have an interest because they do get involved in individual crimes against Americans on foreign soil. But then it gets into whether June is still an American, legally. And whether Serena is. Which is super confusing and murky. I’d say June is, and Serena likely isn’t since she probably renounced her US citizenship, but I’m also not a legal scholar or lawyer. And whether the international community even considers Gilead its own country, or just some type of military occupation on American soil. SO COMPLICATED. This is why the show should have just stayed away from all of this trash.)

I mean, we know Fred’s not lying about what happened to June then but the fact Tuello & Co. just take his word at face value with NO corroboration is absolutely fucking mental.

Not to mention, how the FUCK does Fred even know about that? All he knows is that June got pregnant with Nick’s baby. Was he secretly listening the entire time to everything Serena has said? Cos, let’s take a step back for a second and think rationally about how the hell Fred would have access to that information lol. Serena, from what we saw, was incredibly discreet about setting it up. Was Fred actually lurking in her bushes when she talked to June about it? Was he around when Serena supposedly spoke to Nick about it? (We don’t know where that was but probably either in Nick’s apartment or in the car.) So, does Fred actually have the whole house bugged? LOLOLOLOL. Even if he saw Serena bringing June out to Nick’s apartment, he has no idea what anybody’s thoughts or feelings were about that. Serena and June could have easily been in on it together, and there was no rape involved at all! He doesn’t know that. Did he sneak up to Nick’s second floor window and watch how fucking WEIRD that whole thing was? LMAO.

To me, the fact Fred knows all that is a fucking big plot hole. He didn’t before. But suddenly he knows Serena set up Offred’s rape by Nick? Did she tell him that? Cos that would be insane of Serena to do and completely OOC. All Serena’s said is that “HA HA! The baby isn’t yours, you manky chode!”

Anyway...

To be frank, I have a post--quite a long one--sitting in my drafts about how incredibly asinine and unrealistic that charge against Serena is as a “war crime”, not to mention how weak it is just from a legal standpoint, even if we would take it as a regular rape charge. (She would literally never be found guilty, lbr. There is no solid legal basis for it (there is a flimsy one) and when you consider her defense--which is way more solid than the charge--the chances of anybody ever prosecuting her for that, let alone convicting her, are so incredibly thin, even if it was just as a regular rape crime, not a war crime.) She’d be more likely charged with something like sex trafficking or procuring (prostitution) or coercion or accessory to rape and/or conspiracy to rape. (And she’s clearly guilty of those things). Not the rape itself. It’s so! fucking! stupid! Sex trafficking would be SO much more solid of a charge cos essentially that is what she did...

She didn’t rape June in that instance much more than she murdered those kids Fred shot in the woods. She’s a shitty fucking person for putting that idea in his head, and basically saying, “Go do this for me, you pathetic little man” but she didn’t actually say the words, nor did she commit the actual crime herself. (Heyyyyaaa Lady Macbeth!) Both Fred and Nick were acting of their own free will.

(Honestly, I will go on forever about how Nick is NOT some innocent, helpless creature. He’s a MAN (aka automatic superiority over any woman), and an EYE (AN EYE, YOU GUYS!!!! The most elite of the Gilead intelligence forces!!!), and to refuse Serena’s request would be EXPLICITLY FOLLOWING THE LAWS OF GILEAD and there is NO WAY he would ever, ever be punished by Gilead for that lmao--for following the law. If he reported Serena to Fred or even Pryce, Serena would be fucking punished--probably with death or Colonies (which is just prolonged death). And he’d have June’s supporting testimony too! What part of this misogynistic fascist state are you people missing? A lowly woman trying to make a man break the law and defile another man’s property?! HAHAHAHA. As if they’d take Serena’s side. Nick is a fucking Eye. There are instances where they do take a woman’s side, like with Janine’s random accusation--but significantly: Warren was BREAKING the law, not upholding it as Nick refusing to rape Offred and turning Serena in would have been following the law. To me, it never ever made sense that the men would just turn on their own like that over a literally mentally-ill Handmaid’s suicidal admission. I think, when it comes down to it, Naomi’s contribution made it “two witnesses” to the crime. Like, if you look at most religious texts or cult texts, they generally require more than just the victim. Some require at least 2, some 3 individuals. So for Gilead to require nothing but victim outcry is bonkers and not consistent with the type of society they claim they’ve built in the series. BUT ANYWAY, that’s a big digression...

Like miss me with that complete utter rape-apologist bullshit. He literally took advantage of the situation to put his dick inside a woman who did not essentially consent to it in that particular situation. Or, if you’re going to argue she did cos she wuvs Nick and wanted to anyway, then your case against Serena falls apart too.)

The only thing I don’t see as being up for debate is that June was raped. That’s it. That is clear and certain. It’s fact. June was raped in that apartment. (She’s raped a lot, obviously, but this was also rape. Nothing else.)

And the creepy part is by doing that she actually did save June’s life. Which is all shades of massively fucked up, and probably not her intention, but here we are. And it seems to be a big part of why June went along with the plan. If Serena hadn’t set up a rapey fuck session for Nick (which he LITERALLY COULD HAVE SAID NO TO AT ANY TIME WITH ZERO CONSEQUENCES and they could have fucked completely consentually another time), June never would have started sleeping with Nick (they had almost 2 years and never made a move on each other lbr), never would have become pregnant, and in a few months would have been sent off to the Colonies to rot. Serena is just going around saving June’s life and not even trying to lmao. Stupid gross idiot. Yes, June agreed under threat of death otherwise. So, that is NOT consent in any universe. If you must do it for survival, it’s rape. If you’re gonna die or agree to sex, that’s rape. Would she have agreed to get raped by Nick if the threat of the Colonies was not hanging over her head? No. Probably not. And Serena used that for her own ends. There is no way Serena is not a shitty criminal person for what she set up. But it’s also not a fucking crime against humanity, by definition.

So, anyway, without going into all the complexities and bullshit about Nick’s role any further, Serena’s role, etc in all this, it’s just absolutely motherfucking insane that any international law enforcement agency would charge Serena with THAT based on the word of a scorned husband who is also a massive rapist, liar, abuser, and war criminal himself. Like, give me a fucking break already.

And... I’m not gonna lie... if this was even remotely based on history/reality, they would turn a blind eye to anything Serena has done, especially if it was on such a small scale as one instance of sex trafficking. Sounds terrible to put it that way, but that is how these things roll. She’s a small little fish, comparatively. In the grand scheme of things, she’s FAR more valuable as a witness/asset against the Big Fish (Fred) and as a tool for their anti-Gileadean use. Unless they had significant evidence about ALL her crimes. She’s so much more useful as someone who has direct experience and witness to the entire rise of Gilead, including all the massive fucking terrorist crimes against an entire government and mass murders, that Fred et al. committed. To go after Serena so soon is just kneecapping their own damn case against Fred/Gilead lmao.

[This is where the rumours about Rita come in, but here’s the thing, Serena was already granted immunity for what she did under the guise of being a “Wife”. And seriously, what does Rita really know anyway? Serena’s smacked some people around. She’s locked June in her room. She makes June cry and drink gross smoothies. She helps with the Ceremony. She--with the entire system--forced surrogacy and basically kidnapped a baby. Those things, from what I can tell, are perfectly legal in Gilead for a Wife to do, just like it’s perfectly legal for Fred to whip the shit out of Serena--and Serena has been granted immunity for that shit (which is sorta funny in a way cos she basically used the Nuremberg defense, but it’s layered because she was actually a victim of Gilead too. Tricky shit).

Now, that 2x10 rape is pretty fucking awful (and likely NOT Gilead-legal) and I’m almost certain Rita would have known about that in some way--but she also wasn’t a direct witness. But maybe she doesn’t? It would be fucking stupid of the Waterfords to be like, “Hurr durr let’s illegally pregnancy rape the Handmaid with a Martha an/or Guardian around even tho it comes with a punishment of DEATH!” But I suppose they are not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed either...

Maybe she knows about the Rapey Sex Date Serena set up for Nick, maybe not, also not a witness to it. We can make assumptions about what Rita knows and doesn’t know, but also... like, none of that matters? (Yet.) Those are just regular fucking crimes on foreign soil and the American and Canadian governments have no jurisdiction to prosecuting them. War crimes require different criteria and Serena smacking Rita in the face isn’t a war crime. It’s shitty assault, but not something any international body would EVER go after.]

Anyway, the show is stupid af for suggesting they’d go after Serena for that singular instance of rape as a war crime. Crimes against humanity--of which YES sexual slavery (sex trafficking in this way) is--require widespread and/or systematic implementation. Serena was NOT going around making all Guardians rape Handmaids for her to get a baby. (Gilead however, and FRED WATERFORD specifically, were directly responsible for the SYSTEM of massive sexual slavery that they created AND maintained. Serena didn’t even come up with the Handmaid idea--THAT WAS THE MEN IN THAT DAMN CAR (Hi Nick, you were there too!).)

Like... ugh. Stick with what you know, THT. Cos clearly it isn’t anything remotely in the legal realm.

But hey, they had to make up some way to either put Serena on trial for an entire season (YAWNNNNN), or send her back to Gilead. If it’s for the latter reason, and it means we’ll revisit the June/Serena dynamic as the core component of the show, then I’ll let it slide but if it’s to set up the Miller Wet Dream Trial Season and keep Fred/Serena forced together, then I’m livid.

Not that I should care at all considering how many times I’ve said I’m not even watching it anymore, heh.

#long post #this one sort of got away from me.... oop #Anonymous

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flowisk · 5 years

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Alright, so here's a perspective from someone hated by all sides of shipping discourse: someone who ships bakudeku, but frankly thinks their canon relationship is various shades of abusive and toxic (although scheduled for positive development, and slowly moving there) My thoughts? In a nutshell, both antis and abuse apologism hooked Bakudeku shippers almost have made together a perfect coordinated effort to ban and villainize fictionally discussing abuse and use fanwork to discuss abuse. They essentially aid one another. Antis? Bad for obvious reasons. The movement mostly targets the most vulnerable people it can: people who are prone to being influenced by them, and especially people who use fictional discussions about abuse to cope. Bakudeku fandom? Honestly... I ship a lot of relationships with shades of toxicity and abuse (as someone who was abused and thinks it’s important to talk about for full disclosure), but never before have I been so embarrassed to be tangentially related to a shipping category. Thing is, a lot of shippers in bakudeku fandom have qualities that makes it hard to mesh with them: 1. They are absolutely willing to deride abuse victims by devaluing peer abuse in order to defend their ship. 2. 95% of them are willing to throw people who ship darker bakudeku under the bus as 'the bad ones' while acting pious for excusing abuse So, what is set up is a PERFECT storm of people refusing to talk about abuse. If you acknowledge it's abuse, you don't discuss Bakugou and Deku's relationship because it's ugly and we don't look directly at such ugly things! But, if you ship it, you argue, ah actually.... 'actually, it's the healthiest relationship, and anyone who ships it in a negative way is an anti'. So, the anti movement has been used to shutdown discussions of abuse TWOFOLD. 1. Antis use abuse discussions to say 'good you acknowledged its abuse and we all know abuse is disgusting so we're not going to talk about it' 2. Abuse apologists use it to say 'ah, you're talking about abuse, you must be an abuser yourself. An abusive anti.' You know what this means? Both movements use it to shut down meaningful discussions on abuse. You could say both movements adjacently are coordinated to shut down abuse together. And they both share one common trait: 'talking about abuse, writing about abuse? That means you're bad, YOU'RE an abuser' Honestly. I think it's truly insidious. Because these statements are thrown around by both groups with the knowledge that yes, the people they're throwing these statements against (often abuse victims who use fiction to write about experiences) are sensitive to being BAD. This is about bakudeku, because bakudeku is a perfect storm, but it's happened recently with a lot of other ships I've shipped too. I'm really not sure if there is a way to actively satisfactorily combat it, but it's a Major issue for me. Truly, I don't fit in with either side in this campaign. It's amazing to see two sides mess with each other with absolutely no regard, every time, for the fallout and the way they are literally cooperating with each other to degrade discussions about abuse because, yes, the people involved... aren't going to consider themselves abuse apologists. But a lot of them KNOW they are making unrealistic claims about the relationship between Bakugou and Deku 'just to hurt antis'. What they impact most of all is discussions by survivors. That being said, I understand wanting to use AUs or alternate scenarios to explore characters. Or saying 'what if'. Using fiction to explore concepts like that is natural. But I think if you look at the relationship featured and say 'yeah there is nothing wrong with THAT’... somewhere along the line someone or something has failed. There are certainly people who have to come to grips with what abuse looks like. Not everyone who doesn't recognize this is a Bad Person. But we have entered a culture where people don't want to recognize abuse because they see it as 'something that gets in the way' or ‘something that fucks someone up just by thinking about it’. and that's. so dangerous. please think more critically.

#bnha #long post #abuse #midoriya izuku #text #i talk #im only going to put it in deku's tag bc it discusses his abuse #even though this post does discuss bakudeku I am Officially Banned from bakudeku discussions bc. the community for it sucks.

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aceprosecuties · 7 years

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Okay, so I am still hesitant about writing/posting this, but I find that it is important based on my breakdown the other day and my desire for something like that to not happen so suddenly again. Basically I am going to go through some of my viewpoints on fandom and this website and all that.

If you would like to unfollow or block me after reading this, then that is your choice (if you read it at all…it’s quite long). I ask that you do not debate me or argue with me on anything I’m about to say, simply because I am exhausted and am not in the mood to do it. (Also I tend to not trust most ‘debates’ on this website because they quickly devolve into nastiness.)

My philosophy on fandom is very “Old Fandom,” if I had to describe it using a short phrase. In other words, I am very much against policing or censoring fictional content, because in the end, it is fictional. While “fiction affects reality” is a popular gotcha phrase here, it usually does not affect reality in the way that people claim it does. It is not really a “monkey see, monkey do” situation. If that was the case, people who play violent video games, for example, would almost always be violent people. That argument was brought up when I was a child and a lot of people considered it ludicrous.

That’s not my saying that fiction can’t affect reality or doesn’t; usually it involves affecting our emotions more than anything. While things like Hollywood movies and series can have a larger impact, fandom is…small. It seems large, but it really isn’t in the grand scheme of things. The impact one person’s fanfiction can have on the world at large, whether for good or for bad, is limited at best.

Essentially what I am saying is that things are grey. Middle grounds exist that many on this website refuse to acknowledge; living in such a black-and-white world is, in my opinion, very dangerous. It makes it so that people – who are convinced they are morally pure and therefore superior – are able to justify doing things like suicide baiting and harassment. If you’re convinced that your crusade is completely morally just, then anyone standing in its way is a dirty sinner and must be punished.

The need to be morally pure might stem from self-hatred. It is a form of perfectionism, honestly. Perhaps people are convinced that they’ll be more of a “perfect” person if they only consume things that have been deemed righteous by a mob of random internet users on this or other websites. I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist, so perhaps I am guessing.

People are shades of grey. (Most people, anyway. I would never argue that there is no such thing as evil in this world, but most people we will interact with on a daily basis are grey.) We try overall to be better, but we as human beings are not perfect and never will be perfect. We might say the wrong thing or get angry with someone for something that was inconsequential or might even have a belief that is grounded in incorrect facts or upsets others. The point of humanity is to grow, however. Maybe you will learn from your mistakes; maybe that opinion you held that was upsetting to others transforms into something else because of things you learned over time.

We all have people we like and dislike. We all have personalities and opinions we are drawn to and stay away from. But the declaration of someone as evil based on what essentially amounts to very little is…troublesome. (Note: ‘Very little’ does not include political views like nazism or the like. Those are not ‘very little,’ as they affect the real political world and therefore affect policy. That is not what I am referring to right now.)

What a person likes in fiction is oftentimes unattached to their real moral code, and declaring someone as evil or scum based on the themes they like is a highly dangerous way of thinking. It doesn’t allow people to explore the darkness in their own minds through writing or drawing. It doesn’t give them outlets that might be needed to help them escape their own world, which can be dark and depressing, really.

Personally, I am a fan of very dark themes in fiction (when people ask me what my favorite anime is, for example, I immediately say Hellsing Ultimate). Psychological torture, gore, dub-con/non-con, emotional manipulation and mental abuse, self-harm through physical acts or thoughts, etc. These things, while terrible in reality (and some of which I have suffered in reality) are just things I like to explore in fiction because I find them interesting or fascinating. Whenever I think about writing self-insert/reader fics (I have never done it, but I have thought about it), they are never…nice. They are rough and fucked up because that’s what I enjoy. I know that these types of themes are triggering to many people, which is why putting warnings on your work is important, and I believe wholeheartedly in doing that as a responsibility to your fellow fandom members.

The whole black-and-white mentality can also cause weird slippery slopes which end up with people claiming things as “problematic” and therefore “evil” that actually are not a huge problem. (I hate using this argument because most of the time I find that it isn’t entirely true, but in this case I’ve seen it happening more and more.)

I’ve seen people called pedophiles for shipping an 18 year old with a 16 year old (Otabek and Yuri P.), which is essentially the equivalent of a senior and a sophomore in high school dating. Not only does this cheapen the term pedophilia – making it oftentimes hard to recognize when someone is an actual child molester versus when someone just ships something “problematic” – but it also is just so far removed from what happens in real life, where teenagers date.

I’ve seen people called Nazis because they ship two villains and enjoy their dynamic and their individual characters (Kylo Ren and General Hux). Ignoring the fact that Nazism is not even a thing in the SW fictional universe, it also is saying that if you like these types of characters for whatever reason, then you are a bad person.

It is difficult for me to process that, since I always liked villains and anti-heroes the best. Saying that enjoying villains and their dynamics is basically condoning their actions in real life is infantilizing, in a way. It is basically assuming that I cannot differentiate between what is real and what is not.

Was I so evil and trash when I was around 10 or so? When I gravitated towards characters like Vegeta and Sephiroth? Yami Bakura and Darth Vader? If I’m terrible for liking them now, was I terrible for liking them back then, too? Would people call me an abuse apologist at 12 because I shipped Yami Bakura with Ryou?

I already have problems with perfectionism and self-hatred. The idea of standing across from a young me and telling her that she is a disgusting human being and a piece of trash because of the characters she identified with and liked or the characters she wanted to see kiss…it upsets me. Because I internalize it and wonder if it is true. Because if that is the case then I was born a broken person.

I’ve always had issues with depression. It just took until adulthood to recognize it. When I was young people asked me why I was angry a lot. I never really could answer them…I just was. My perfectionism (which started in elementary school brought on by extreme competitiveness) got so bad that in high school I cried and told myself I was a stupid piece of shit because I got an 88 on an AP Calculus test. If I did not get all As all the time I was not a worthy person. Hell, I was in the top 1% of my graduating class, and I was still somewhat upset because I was not valedictorian or salutatorian. (This was all internalized; other people were allowed to fail or mess up, but I was not allowed to.) I can’t even say that my parents or my family life brought this on. It didn’t. My parents were always very supportive. They would sit me down and ask if I did my best, and if I say yes, that is all that mattered. As long as I tried, it was okay to fall down.

My brain never really accepted that lesson.

It is frustrating. I have no reason really to be depressed and anxious (I guess aside from graduate school right now) and think of myself as terrible, but that is just my brain and it has been like that for a long time.

So now to have people screaming at me that I actually am that terrible person because of the fiction I choose to consume? It is…demoralizing.

…This has ended up way longer than I originally intended it to.

(Thanks to those who actually read the whole thing. Sorry if I rambled or anything like that.)

I sort of said this, but I do have a writscrib beta access key, so I will be setting up shop over there as well. I am wondering about leaving this place altogether if that takes off (and I’m hoping it will), but I’ll keep you guys updated on that front.

My semi-hiatus might turn into more of an actual hiatus, but we’ll see. I say that a lot, and then it doesn’t seem to happen.

#allie makes posts #this is v long #once again please do not debate me on things #I'm too tired to do that #I figured I would just write this so there would be no more surprises so to say #now people know my whole stance on this #and you can do as you please with this knowledge #this got personal

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sometimesrosy · 6 years

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OMG to that psych book post about having Tumblr having the mental complexity of a 7-year-old. It made me think that many of Space Crew as they were initially introduced - Kane, Abby, Clarke- had the complexity of 7-year-olds, believing things were "good," "bad" "right" and "wrong" without the shades of grey. Dying over here. Dying.

You know, it’s true. This show LITERALLY deals in the world going from black and white/good and bad mentality, us vs them, monster/Hero, to THERE ARE NO GOOD GUYS. It is EXPLICITLY about how the enemy is just like us but with different choices made. It DIRECTLY holds us accountable for our terrible actions even when we did them in the service of our people.

And it flies right over the heads of a lot of the fandom, because it’s so much easier to return to the simplistic and expected narrative of hero vs villain.

That’s the story we expect, and so we keep painting the characters we hate with the villain brush and the ones we love with the cinnamon roll brush. Doesn’t matter if that cinnamon roll is all for torture or genocide or betrayal. We erase that complexity and focus only on the pure (never mind the lying), untouchable (actual murderer,) protect my baby (who likes to blow things up,) deserves better (literally tried to kill everyone around them multiple times.)

I used to call this delusional.

It’s not actually delusional. Or it is, but it’s not that simple. So I was guilty of simplifying the issue, just like them. What it IS is called is confirmation bias, and it places opinion and perceived moral stance over facts or evidence. It’s very widespread and essentially places “I believe I am the good guy and morally superior to you,” over truth, complexity, or critical thinking.

Okay, I was going to go into this thing about how those in power don’t want the people to learn how to think critically and challenge them, (mostly because I am angry as an educator for how the schools are being used to further the agenda of corporations) but I stumbled upon a new concept to me, called The Backfire Effect

What should be evident from the studies on the backfire effect is you can never win an argument online. When you start to pull out facts and figures, hyperlinks and quotes, you are actually making the opponent feel as though they are even more sure of their position than before you started the debate. As they match your fervor, the same thing happens in your skull. The backfire effect pushes both of you deeper into your original beliefs.—You Are Not So Smart - The Backfire Effect[1]

Ooops. Psychology at play. People defend their beliefs against the facts because they feel attacked. Back to us vs them, good vs bad. black vs right. Back to thinking you are right because you are good and therefore the opposition is bad. THIS is why it’s so hard to get people to do the right thing on The 100 and stop fighting and killing each other all the time.

And why tumblr acts like 7 year olds. And why I reblogged that thing to ‘prove’ how immature people were. And why my first instinct was to say “ha ha aren’t they stupid, let’s laugh about it.”

Not taking ideas personally is made easier by the meta-belief that holding certain beliefs does not make you a better person.—Peter Boghossian[2]

However, what are you supposed to do, when your opponents come at you, telling you that your ideas make you an evil, inferior person. I keep getting told I am a lesbophobe, misogynist, abuse apologist, racist, arrogant white feminist. How do I fight against that? By rejecting the concept altogether or by saying “no YOU’RE the evil inferior person” let me show you why. Now it’s no longer about ideas, but about the moral rectitude of the people involved. Who is just and who deserves eternal damnation for being [fill in the blank]. Whoever wins the morality contest is the one who gets to be right. I guess that’s why so many people play identity politics, because somewhere in this conversation we have decided that the victims of oppression are pure cinnamon rolls and the oppressors are evil. So instead of talking about subjects, we’re running around trying to put people into victim/oppressor boxes. Or how about the stupid and immature/intelligent and superior boxes? Oops. Psychology at play.

Anyway. There ARE ways to fight this backfire.

The backfire effect is extremely strong. But there are some proven ways to bring someone around to your point of view.

Let tempers cool down a bit before bringing a subject up again. A large portion of the backfire effect stems from people not wanting to be seen as wrong or stupid in front of an audience. Once the flame wars die down a bit people will be more emotionally able to accept your viewpoint.

Stymied by the opponent’s selfishness? If possible, you should show your opponent how something would benefit them personally. A lot of people view certain positions as a zero sum game and if you’re able to show that it’s not (or at least they’d get the long end of the stick) you can bring them around.

Just wait for a little bit. Sometimes what you said actually sank in to some extent; they just need some time to mull it over.

Of course, the most important thing to remember is that you yourself are just as vulnerable to it as your opponent. Make sure you don’t fall victim to the backfire effect by carefully examining evidence that seems to contradict your preconceptions, and allowing for the possibility that you might have been wrong.

#fandom wank #psychology #critical thinking #confirmation bias #the backfire effect #and i was just going to dismiss 'those people' and make a joke but look what happened #question EVERYTHING #including yourself

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kelbottumbles · 7 years

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About your post: Or Khal Drogo too from Game of Thrones. Any one out there defending him or thinking he should be Dany's one true love? Hmm...abuser, rapist, slaver, twice as bad as Mon-El could ever be made out to be? I wonder... But besides that, it's the same with writers, I think. Just because a writer puts in a rape scene, does NOT mean they agree with or support Rape. Just because there is a homicide, does NOT mean they agree with murder. Fiction, people, fiction.

Omg 100% and if you tell me a beloved franchise, I could point out probably more than one beloved character that could be labelled as abusive and thus all of their fans be labelled abuse apologists. Also... murder is abuse, too... in the most extreme sense of the word. So let's just rule out any and all characters that have ever killed someone (and bear in mind that these antis see ONLY in black or white/good vs bad terms... so I'm including vigilantes as abusers too)...So, to recap, one is a horrible, shitty abuse apologizing excuse for a human being IF THEY ARE FANS OF: Oliver queen (or literally any of his team), Dumbledore (or Snape or Malfoy etc etc) , Rick Grimes (and every single other walking dead character) Jon Snow (or Arya, or Dany, or ANY character) , Han Solo (or countless other including Luke), Clarke Griffin (or basically anyone else on the 100), Buffy Summers (and Angel and Spike and lots more). Oh and let's not forget about Twilight fans or (OMG GASP) 50 shades fans... the list goes on.Or how about that idea is BULLSHIT and these "enforcers" (read: bullies/harassers) need to get a fucking life. People go to fiction as an escape from real life, you know why? BECAUSE IT ISN'T REAL LIFE. you can love a character or hate a character but at the end of the day... they're just a character. Words on a page, approved by a ratings board, acted by an actor. And in the grand scheme of things, these "receipts" they think they have are flimsy at best and would never hold up to a store's return policy! Because none of the abuse was explicit. Other beloved characters on other shows have way more making up to do because they've literally been shown on screen doing actual, undeniably abusive things. Mon-El’s transgressions have been debatable at best. And one last thing re: the good ol' slavery accusation... my parents bought a jeep when I was a kid. *I*, their child, have never owned a jeep. Being someone's child does not make them culpable for their crimes any more than the child or sibling or spouse of a criminal (read: murderer, rapist, the if, etc.) does not make them guilty of the crime by proxy!And how do we know that Mon-El wasn't beaten by his parents for daring to speak out against slavery on Daxam? It is IN CANNON that he said he didn't agree with slavery (and this was before he fell in love with kara)... and we all saw that his mother was willing to imprison him for 4 years just for proposing they implement change on Daxam.Call me dumb but I literally don't see how he could have done anything about it? And maybe he even tried but failed.Question: if we literally get a flashback scene of little boy Mon-El suggesting they stop slavery and then getting beaten for it... will that be enough? Will they finally like him? Actually, writers... I'm gonna need you to get on that...

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amorremanet · 7 years

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hate meme: harry james potter, abed nadir, freddie lounds & santana lopez? ^.^

“send me literally anything and ill tell you something i hate about it”

abed nadir

sometimes got too much attention and/or narrative forgiveness

like? abed is one of my favorite male fictional characters, period, and he means a lot to me because he’s one of the only examples of GOOD autistic spectrum representation in fiction, and i know that dan harmon and the writers loved him a lot (and for that, i don’t blame them)

but look at troy’s last episode in season five (the one where they had a massive, school-wide game of, “the floor is lava” before troy left to sail around the world with levar burton, but abed tried to drag it out forever, at the expense of literally everyone else, because he didn’t want troy to go)

for one thing: on the in-universe level, abed dragged the entire population of greendale into this game and kept dragging it out without regard for the game’s effects on anyone else (and people were getting hurt, greendale’s ability to function as a school — even by greendale standards — was pretty much dead, and abed was totally fine with that)

and he massively disregarded troy’s agency in the whole matter (because he lied to troy about the purpose of the game; britta, for all her many faults, is the one who went, “uh, troy, abed is screwing with everyone to keep you at greendale”) — and this was all cast not just as sympathetic, but as ultimately more or less okay, because abed only did it because he loves troy so much and he’s terrified of both change and losing his best friend

which *is* sympathetic, and i feel abed on both counts, but that doesn’t make what he did okay???

for another thing: on the meta-level, troy’s last episode wound up being more about abed than it was about troy. like, this was going to be the last time we got to see troy at greendale and he did have an arc in the episode, but his arc was subordinated for the sake of an abed-focused ep

and if they were trying to have a “troy and abed” focused ep, then…

1. troy’s last episode was really not the time for that; abed should’ve been a secondary focus, at most

2. they did not succeed, in terms of foregrounding the troy/abed relationship, because they approached troy and abed individually, rather than looking at their relationship, and they didn’t go back to the relationship enough to make it work (like in the “pillows and blankets” two-parter) 

3. there wasn’t a balance between troy and abed like the one you had in the “pillows and blankets” two-parter, or like the abed/shirley balance in “messianic myths and ancient peoples” or like the jeff/shirley balance in “foosball and nocturnal vigilantism” (or basically any jeff/shirley episode; they usually balanced pretty well, without either overtaking the other)

so, yeah. i love abed, but ffs. making him the show’s pet was really not good for anybody. to be fair, i would also say that annie suffered from this at least as much as abed did, so it’s not like abed was alone in this — but it really sticks out in a series that otherwise tried to be good about balancing its ensemble cast and challenging the typical protagonist-centered worldviews you see in most sitcoms

harry james potter

it’s less about him, exactly, and more about how tumblr fandom has taken to handling his status as a survivor of horrific childhood abuse and a few metric fuck-tons of trauma (but tbf, i think most of these answers fall into the heading of, “it’s less about the character, more about X thing in contexts surrounding them,” so)

which isn’t even exclusive to harry, because the hp fandom is totally bogus about handling abuse culture in general, and it’s rife with all kinds of double standards

—like, on the one hand, sirius attempts to commit a very premeditated murder by proxy, and even though the proxy is remus and he would’ve suffered for it more than sirius bc he’s a werewolf and the murder would have happened on the full moon, this is apparently totally 5,000% acceptable because sirius has abusive parents and the intended victim is snape

but on the other hand, you are victim-blaming, abuse apologist garbage if you think that severus is justified in never forgiving james and sirius even if his actions based on that were mostly in the wrong, or thinking that he had every right to fight back against james and sirius when they tormented him in school

(and never mind that james potter was not, at that time in his life, a victim of fucking anything. he is a wealthy, pureblooded man who came from a loving, supportive family, and is canonically regarded as both straight and white

TO BE FAIR, he is also never specified as being white, like voldemort, lucius, and draco all are — and as other readers have noted elsewhere, the way the dursleys talk about james/lily is heavily racialized, despite being about him being a wizard, in the text — so poc!james is one of the, “jkr didn’t say it’s not canon, so it could be” type of headcanons

but he’s also never said to be a poc, so that’s fanon

moreover, it can’t be treated as canon in order to make it out like james’s years of bullying snape were anything but a guy who is canonically privileged in every way that he can possibly be privileged in jkr’s universe bullying another kid who does not have most of james’s privileges [he’s male, a halfblood — less privileged than purebloods but more privileged than muggleborns — and he’s canonically regarded as straight and white; that’s it on the, “privileges that snape has in jkr’s universe” front]

—but hey, if it’s fair game to bring up all of the racialized coding in how the dursleys talk about james by way of trying to ignore the fact that jkr treats him as white in canon, then how about let’s remember all the antisemitic coding in how jkr writes about severus, even though she doesn’t outright say that he’s jewish: source (nb: this post was written in 2005, the author didn’t have dh), source, source, source, source, source

and oh, never mind how james flat-out says that he bullies severus, “more [because of] the fact that he exists, if you know what i mean” [ootp 647]

and never mind how plenty of the people who act like severus was obligated to forgive james and sirius have reblogged things about how nobody is ever obligated to forgive their abusers, and/or condemn him for fighting back while applauding when hermione punches draco [which i say without judging them bc she’s fighting back against a blood purist little snot who torments her and her friends for fun, and i love that moment too], like??

ffs, guys, you can criticize and/or condemn snape’s actions without acting like he was terrible because he saw no reason to forgive james and sirius for what they did to him, or acting like it was Totally Wrong Forever for him to fight back against the guys who meant he didn’t even get a reprieve from his abusive, neglectful home-life at school bc they decided to torment him, and they had classmates who thought it made them cool)

furthermore, it’s apparently soooo totally not sirius’s fault that he abuses kreacher because he’s stuck in grimmauld place and lashing out against his abusive parents because kreacher still loves them…… or so say people who are otherwise happy to call out the wizarding world for having this institutionalized and magically reinforced system of slavery, which i guess doesn’t matter when sirius “cinnamon roll uwu~” black is the person abusing that system to get away with his bullshit and explicitly abusive treatment of another sentient being—

which all goes back to harry because of how abuse culture ends up rearing its ugly head in how people discuss him as a survivor

like, apart from the double standards that all fandoms have toward abuse culture and survivors, there are two big sides that i’ve seen, in this trend.

on one hand, you have the people who want harry being a survivor to excuse him of things like trying to use the cruciatus curse (and successfully using it on amycus in dh!) or similar

on the other hand, there was the shit like what you saw after “cursed child” first came out, where people were going, “omg but harry is an abuse survivor, he would NEVER say/do anything like this to his kids ever” — which…… uh?

no. not how it works.

even ignoring the irl psychology parts related to abuse and survivors of it, jkr has two big models of abusers in the series:

people who are over-privileged af and bully down because they fucking can and who the fuck is really going to stop them (draco, bellatrix, the dursleys, bartemius crouch sr., umbridge, tom-mort voldingdong, albus dumbledore, and oh yeah, james and sirius);

and people who have been hurt by others before and lash out at others because of it, to the point of becoming abusers themselves (severus, sirius, barty crouch jr., peter pettigrew, arguably albus and tom-mort have shades of this as well but it’s very debatable, and if ginny, and remus actually crossed the line into abusive, rather than being, “well, they’re not abusers, but they have these examples of behaviors that could become patterns that went this way,” they’d both be on this list too, but since they don’t, they’re only getting mentioned)

(she has three big models if we include, “abusers who are not recognized as abusers in the text because she didn’t feel like it today i guess” — which mostly means the weasley parents, but other characters definitely have moments of doing shit that should’ve been called out and wasn’t, c.f. harry running around and trying to cast the cruciatus curse, hermione keeping rita skeeter in a mason jar and hexing the signup parchment at the DA, hagrid trying to attack dudley and turn him into a pig over shit that vernon said and dudley trying to eat harry’s birthday cake, fred and george full stop)

so, yeah, uh

idk guys, how about let’s NOT invalidate abuse survivors in fandom by perpetuating these ideas that survivors are and/or have to be perfect cinnamon rolls, while all abusers ever in the world are these ridiculous slobbering caricatures of all things terrible

that’s not how it works

acting like that’s how it works ends up helping police survivors and invalidate their experiences because it plays into things like the idea that all abusers are obviously abusive, which leads to real-world survivors having a harder time being believed when they try to reach out for help

which makes it all a function of abuse culture

if you really care about survivors — and if you really care about harry as a survivor — then don’t use his status as a survivor to make shit harder for irl survivors, period

freddie lounds

i guess this is more of a problem with how freddie was written tbh

but, like…… true, nbc!hannibal avoided being absolute about most things even more than hannibal himself avoids vegetarian recipes

the most absolutism you really got was, “murder is generally wrong, like. killing in self-defense is one thing, but even if you’re trying to get ingratiated with a cannibalistic serial killer again in the name of stopping him (william), murder is probably going to be wrong so you should, like…… not do that, i’m just saying” and, “eating people is wrong unless hannibal didn’t tell you that you were eating people, in which case it is still wrong but it’s his fault, not yours”

all of which is stuff that the show doesn’t really get any cookies for taking a stand on because, “in 99.999% of cases, murder is wrong and should be avoided” is…… not really a unique or groundbreaking moral sentiment

like, it’s one of the beliefs you find in, as far as i know, every human civilization all over the world, throughout history

(there are, of course, differences of opinion on how to punish murderers, and there are exceptions made for people who get around the law by being wealthy and powerful, or by virtue of having some form(s) of societal privilege [e.g., whiteness, or straightness in the case of the, “gay panic” defense], or all of the old arguments about how killing someone during a time of war isn’t a murder and therefore doesn’t count, and then there are all of the semantic debates about, “are all killings inherently murders or what”

—but still. most people tend to agree that murdering other people is generally wrong.)

but yeah, uh

one place where i would’ve liked a little less ambiguity is freddie’s relationship with and feelings toward abigail

like, i wouldn’t have needed her to suddenly develop an increased amount of sympathy toward other victims — whether in general, or even just specifically, “other victims of hannibal lecter,” and given how he treated her on multiple occasions, it’s pretty ridiculous to just expect her ever stop being a pain in will’s ass (i mean, even when she wasn’t in the right, which was most of the time, some of how will treated her was unhelpful to everyone and in the realm of, “yes, i get where you’re coming from but this still wasn’t cool”)

—but with abigail specifically, the show sort of went back and forth between, “freddie is genuinely interested in helping abigail and does have some kind of regard for her as a person” and, “freddie is just out for herself and only using abigail and her trauma to further her own career,” which was all further complicated by the fact that pretty much no one on nbc!hannibal was a reliable narrator about anything, for any number of reasons

like, beverly probably came the closest before she got totally fridged for no good reason, but even she wound up hindered by the fact that hannibal was manipulating the evidence and playing everyone around him like a really overpriced theremin

and idk

i think the best “compromise” or interpretation here would’ve been, like… “freddie starts out just trying to advance her career because that’s just how she does things in general, but eventually, she did come to genuinely care for abigail as a person and to genuinely want to help her, which would explain things like why will was open to working with freddie against hannibal in season two, since he may not have trusted her in general, but he would trust her to want to take down the man whom they thought killed abigail (even though she was secretly still alive, at that point)”

but the show itself was never really clear on that, and it’s like

okay, guys, i don’t think you need to spell out absolutely everything, and i realize that a certain degree of ambiguity in most situations and with almost all of the characters is part of your #Aesthetic

but this would be an example of you once again screwing over the characters who are not named will and/or hannibal, especially since I got a feeling like it’s less that you were leaving things vague on the, “freddie and abigail” front, and more that you just didn’t really care to figure things out about this part of freddie’s character

so……… yeah

santana lopez

okay, i don’t blame her for wanting artie out of the way when he was dating brittany back in season 2 because lmao, i did too, but for starters, artie wouldn’t have been dating brittany if santana hadn’t blown her off in the first place

—which isn’t #Problematic in terms of her character development because…… uh, well yeah, that was the point. santana created the problem by blowing brittany off and trying to convince herself that she was “totally straight, except sometimes scissoring with brittany, lmao feelings are totally pointless and should be hated and santana doesn’t have them” and it was part of the story of her coming to accept herself as a lesbian

but it was kind of, “ummm…”-inducing that she… never actually had to accept her own responsibility for brittany/artie happening, like

first, in the duets episode, she tried to meddle and break them up by going, “brittany’s just using you for the free dinner at breadstix lmao” — which she succeeded in, because brittany and artie didn’t even sing (though they both still voted for themselves in the, “who should win” bit at the end) — and santana apparently thought that was it

tbf, it’s not like she could foresee puck and artie bonding, and puck trying to ““help”” artie get back with brittany by being so thoroughly himself…… but then brittany and artie were back on, and santana’s response was to manipulate brittany into cheating on him by going, “it’s not cheating bc we’re both girls” and expecting brittany to just go along with it

then, brittany calls her on that in “sexy” — inasmuch as brittany got a chance to do back then — and santana only accepts responsibility for anything in the sense of, “okay, brittany wants me to get more in touch with my feelings and admit that i do love her because that is how i fucked up before”

she doesn’t look at brittany’s relationships with other people, or at brittany’s feelings about anything but santana and the current state of their relationship + how it might go in the future, and so on — and this is another example of a situation where santana is presented as being sympathetic but still in the wrong, and brittany calls her on it, and it’s part of her overall growth in the end

but we never really address the manipulation in telling brittany, “it’s not cheating because we’re both girls” (which, by glee standards, is not that bad, and tbf, brittany and artie weren’t perfect angels in any of this, either, since artie was pretty ableist to brittany even before the, “how can you be so stupid, brittany!” “you were the only one in this school who never said that to me!” moment in the fleetwood mac episode, and brittany had her own manipulative moments with both artie and santana

—but it still kinda bugged me that santana had an opportunity to grow and learn more about using her capacity for manipulation for good, and it…… didn’t really go anywhere?

and you can tell that she didn’t learn about manipulating brittany — at least not until way later down the line — because a few episodes later, she’s plotting to use dave to win prom queen bc she thinks she can then go on to convince britt-britt that she’d made a royal decree that brittany had to be her girlfriend)

finally, santana was really ableist toward artie throughout the entire brittany/artie arc

……and beforehand.

…………and afterward.

………………and just in general, even without brittany needing to be involved, because to be fair, this was just one part of a larger overall pattern of ableist bullshit on glee’s part, of which artie wasn’t even the only victim (he was just one of the most notable ones because he was one of the only canonically disabled characters)

so, it’s like? yeah, santana said pretty ableist shit about artie, on a pretty regular basis — the “stubbles mc-cr*pple-pants” nickname is one example i’ll never forget

—and yeah, she said offensive things to basically everyone else on the show (c.f., calling rachel, “yentl”; calling mercedes, “wheezy”; taking her internalized homophobia out on kurt, not in the scenes like, “kurt and blarren sing about how much they love each other all over santana’s pain over being forcibly outed because that’s so what she needed to hear right now, stfu both of you” or in fairly going, “hey, shut up and quit judging MY wedding to brittany as a bad life choice just because YOU couldn’t make it work with blarren” but in all the smaller instances that you barely even notice at first; taking her internalized homophobia out on dave even while asking him to help her win prom queen/blackmailing him into it; list goes on)

but the ableist shit she said to artie sticks out to me, in particular, bc santana’s other examples of this behavior were generally cast as, “she’s witty and outrageous, yes, but you should really probably not actually say things like this, it’s asshole behavior on her part,” while the shit she said to artie…… kinda didn’t

not because the ableist shit she said to artie didn’t get called out

(bc lbr, most of the things that santana ever said didn’t get, “called out”

it got shown to be Not Cool bc it would get associated with people getting upset with her

or it would sound too much like Sue [who is almost always in the wrong, so sounding like her is something that you generally want to avoid]

or it would be used to show that santana is being selfish and rude even without it being called out [like when she called mercedes, “wheezy” before going, “we don’t have to like each other, let’s sing a duet together and win that free dinner at breadstix”]

or it would otherwise have some kind of repercussions

—but it probably wouldn’t get, “called out” as such, outside of REALLY big exceptions, like how they used, “well, but santana was bullying him” as a justification for finn getting her outed, when…… yes, her bullying him was wrong but these things are not the same

or the bit in, “silly love songs” where oher glee club kids [in order: finn, lauren, puck, quinn, tina, and rachel] bite back at santana over insulting them)

but her ableist shit toward artie sticks out because the show always kinda seemed to…… not agree with santana about it, exactly, since her saying it was still narratively seen as Not Cool?

but it seemed to give her a half-pass because plenty of the other characters who weren’t physically disabled expressed similar feelings about artie and his disability, just with less vitriol (e.g., puck, who even got to be friends with artie but still said ableist shit; he just wasn’t actively trying to be mean like santana was)

or they tried really hard to make it sound like, “well, this is just commonsense and how things are, what can you do” (e.g., MOST of them, back in season 1’s “wheels,” where rachel was pretty vitriolic in her ableist nonsense, but not directly at artie

—like, she was one of the, “but this is just how things are, don’t take it personally” when talking to him, but then lumped schue’s, “all of you will spend this week in wheelchairs to learn about accessibility!” lesson plan in with him giving kurt a fair audition for the “defying gravity” solo when she had her little diva moment of, “maybe someday, you’ll find a way to create teaching moments without RUINING MY LIFE” and then tried to storm out while still in a wheelchair)

which is all really less about santana herself, and more about how santana fit into the show’s overall patterns of ableism, but

i’m really hard-pressed to come up with something that i actually hate about santana, which is why hers is the longest answer (bc i had to dig deep and bullshit my way through it, oops)

(harry’s is closest in length but that’s because i had an actual point to make; by my standards, his answer is pretty short)

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