#they abuse their power > they oppress us humans > they're not like us
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It's actually so disappointing that Naruto's narrative took the route that it did. Kishimoto created an incredibly interesting world and premise, and ruined it by having everything amount to a shallow message of forgiveness that undermines almost every meaningful element in the story. And it's like,, I want to appreciate the world outside of the plot, but the moral framing of the story makes it virtually impossible because of how disingenuous it is. It completely undermines the audience's understanding of the tragedy and horror of the world so that Naruto becoming Hokage and being the most powerful person in the world by the end doesn't come across as distasteful as it actually is.
Like it's made abundantly clear throughout the story that the village system, and Shinobi society as a whole, is incredibly flawed. Kishimoto goes out of his way to show us that Konoha's council is made up of objectively horrible people. We see first hand how the council's short-sighted ideas of what 'protecting the village' means results in devastating tragedy for people both in Konoha and outside of it. It's clear in how Danzo and the rest of the council act that their atrocious behaviour is them just blatantly abusing their power to maintain their authority. The council has no remorse in anything they do; human experimentation, genocide, slavery, and blatant exploitation is all fair game to them if it preserves their status quo. And instead of maybe, like, addressing Konoha's skewed morality in a sensible way and setting the village up for reform, the narrative just tries forcing the audience to perceive Konoha's genuinely heinous actions as necessities. Which, you know, will work when you're like 8, but once you've grown up and developed some reading comprehension and critical thinking,,, it just feels annoyingly manipulative.
At its core, Naruto is a story that attempts to deconstruct morality. Like this is abundantly clear in how Kishimoto is constantly paralleling the dichotomy of good and evil literally every chance he gets. In the end though, this dichotomy just doesn't work in the context of the Naruto story because the narrative framing of the village being the good guys is just hysterically ridiculous. Konoha is an awful place, that does awful things, and is run by awful people that refuse to change anything because it benefits them for the village to remain awful forever. To anyone with a developed sense of media literacy the village cannot in any way be framed as morally good, so when the story resolves itself with Naruto becoming next in line to govern Konoha under the same unchanging authoritarian regime, with the same council supporting him because of his sheer physical prowess and complete dedication to their twisted ideology,,, it's honestly just an incredibly underwhelming conclusion to a story that made itself out to be more profound than it actually is.
If I had to guess, I imagine Kishimoto just didn't think through how negatively the world he created would reflect on the plot. Ultimately though, you can't write a moral story that's so deeply entrenched in real world social inequity and decide halfway through that because you don't know how to fix these things your story's going to have to be about how they're actually okay to be doing and perpetuating,,, like that is awful and also a terrible lesson to impart on an audience of children. With how serious the issues are in Shinobi society, trying to resolve things with the power of friendship was always going to fall flat. These broad scale injustices can't be brushed aside in that way without undermining their severity and diminishing the understandable impact they had on the characters that experienced such extreme oppression. That's essentially the trap that Naruto's conclusion falls into though, and so the story just ends up feeling incomplete and unfulfilling because none of the issues brought up are actually addressed or discussed with the gravity they deserve.
#i guess kishimoto was hoping the aliens would distract us or something#i love the naruto world but i can't stand the pro-konoha rhetoric like it's just so bad#anti konoha#anti naruto ending#anti shinobi system#pro uchiha#pro sasuke uchiha#pro neji hyuuga
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Winter 2024 Anime Overview: Metallic Rouge
Metallic Rouge
Premise: There are a robot-alien-whatever race called Neans and they're really oppressed and all that, you've heard about Detroit Become Human you know how it is. Rouge is a Nean who's been tasked by her brother with killing the Immortal Nine, super powerful Neans who want to not be oppressed and are willing to kill the humans that use them as slaves. Rouge's partner is Naomi Orthman and she's pretty fun. Eventually, Rouge sort of starts to wonder if ruthlessly killing her own people who are fighting oppression might be a bad thing actually.
Man what a mess. Kind of a fascinating, ambitious mess, but it's so bad. (If you're a fan, I encourage you not to engage with this review, you have better things to do than upsetting yourself for no reason).
I was attracted to this because like, it's focused on two women with really cool character designs! And they get to fight and be cool and have a vitriolic best buds kind of partnership! Naomi is pretty charming. The show does often LOOK good, and there's some genuinely cool animation moments, I'll give it that.
However, I realized fairly quickly that the story was a hodgepodge that didn't seem to have much of a grasp on even the basics of writing, but by that point I wanted to see what stupid plot twist it'd pull next. I don't know if it was a good decision but it sure was a decision I made. It means I get to write a review where I can be mean which is always easier than trying to convey how good a show is, I guess because less pressure.
The story starts in media res in a very confusing way. It does (attempt to) explain things a bit in later eps, but you never really stop having the feeling you've just been plopped in the middle of an ongoing story. I think it's very likely, that like so many shows, this was supposed to be a 26 episode show but it was cut down to 13 because anime originals sadly don't get to be that long anymore.
I don't think a longer runtime would have made the plot less stupid and frustrating, but it probably would have made the show a little better and some events have more impact. But rather than cut some events to let the story breathe, the show insisted on cramming a ridiculous amount of plot twists into a short runtime, meaning they never had time to land and you had no reason to care about most of the characters.
The approach to the Neans was a total mess especially. Very badly written for the most part. The Neans are literally slaves. Because of the Asimov Code (literally naming it that in universe is pretty funny I'll admit) they have to do whatever humans say, and most of the humans ruthlessly abuse them, use them as shields when there's danger, often steal their life giving nectar for kicks and leave them to die horribly, the police gun them down all the time, and also a huge amount of them are in a forced labor camp on Venus where they either die from the horrible conditions, (often falling directly in lava or being irradiated or whatever) or they just work until their bodies give out. (It definitely doesn't help that two of the Neans we see killed most horribly are Black-coded.)
DESPITE ALL THIS, the story inexplicably tries to both sides it for most of the anime. Some of the Neans are actually really evil because they'll do violence to escape their oppression! That's so bad, they're just as bad as the humans, they're really mean and randomly murder their own allies! Rouge is genuinely presented with the dilemma of "you can free the Neans and maybe they'll rightfully want revenge and kill some humans and society will ~be in chaos~ or you can just let your own people continue to be enslaved and horribly killed and abused every day. And she's like "hmm I dunno. Both sides have a point. yeah I think freeing them could be bad". Incredible. (Granted it does come around a little in its conclusion when some characters randomly change their minds, but it's way too little too late)
If you couldn't tell, Rouge is a really nothing character who it's hard to sympathize with thanks to her baffling choices, except for in a couple episodes that were genuinely charming and fun and made you think "hmm maybe it would have been fun to see these characters get into some shenanigans". Naomi at least has a fun personality, and I had a little bit of crush before her character mostly went down the tubes with everyone else.
Naomi and Rouge's dynamic could be pretty fun and was definitely the best thing about the show (and the only times Rouge showed any personality was with Naomi and a spoiler character), but the show insisted on speedrunning their conflicts and separating them constantly despite that dynamic supposedly being so central to the story, so.
But really, as I said, the most entertaining part of the end of the show was seeing how many ridic plot twists it could cram in, most of which had no impact because you didn't care about the characters, they didn't make much sense, and there was very little to set them up. EVIL ALIENS, EVIL FAMILIES, THIS BORING CHARACTER HAS SECRETLY BEEN PULLING THE STRINGS BECAUSE REASONS, that kind of stuff.
But I have to leave off telling y'all how one plot twist in the final episode is undone LITERALLY 30 SECONDS LATER because of something a character did off screen. also it's done two minutes before the episode ends. It's so funny I have to tell you.
SPOILERS
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Rouge pressed the button that frees all the Neans. Then a character who hadn't done much but I guess is the big bad now pops up and is like "Rouge you freeing the Neans was all part of my plan because you activating the device actually infected them with an EVIL PROGRAM AND NOW THEY WILL FIGHT FOR THE EVIL ALIENS!! Rouge was like "wha?" but then the Neans glowing red evil eyes immediately turned off and the brother was like "actually I anticipated it and hacked it offscreen they're actually free." And the villain just leaves without really reacting. Amaaaazing.
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So yes, wouldn't recommend this show unless you really like watching trainwrecks, and despite how amazing a trainwreck it is, there are stretches where it's just a slog.
(God, this review ended up longer than I thought. So much carnage and crumpled metal to describe. But now I'm officially free.)
#metallic rouge#winter 2024 anime#anime overview#my reviews#i was going to pair this with a more positive review but it's fairly long so probs needs its own post#i'll just have to pray people like a roast as much as I do and its relative negativity doesn't mean noone reads it
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Because OP blocked me. I decided to make my own post to debunk every single one of their points. source in case you wanted to see their foolishness directly.
Transcript:
"buh buh buh Dreadwolf not Baldur's Gate 3"
You're right, Dreadwolf won't be Baldur's Gate 3.
Dreadwolf won't be a game where the creators were so uninvested in a non-white woman's story that they refused to actually finish her storyline and then declared that her being condemned to slavery was the ending she "deserved".
Dreadwolf won't be a game that's obsessed with victimizing and slaughtering members of an oppressed minority, all while portraying them as leeches and criminals preying on the people providing them with refuge.
Dreadwolf won't be a game where an entire foreign culture is portrayed as irredeemably savage and evil, and where a character of that culture's "good" ending is to abandon her culture for that of western-/white-coded society.
Dreadwolf won't be a game that constantly romanticizes emotionally manipulative and abusive white men, placing them at the forefront of stories while constantly portraying women in positions of power as evil and stupid bitches.
Dreadwolf won't be a game that vilifies a matriarchal society, especially one of dark-skinned women, while at the same time treating them as sex objects even in the context of them abusing prisoners.
Dreadwolf won't be a game where the amount of story content and dialogue a character receives is dictated entirely by their skin colour.
Dreadwolf won't be a game where an evil character is heavily queer-coded, with a backstory filled to the brim with allusions to homophobic stereotypes about gay men being manipulative and predatory.
Dreadwolf won't be a game that uses a female character to paint a male character as being totally awesome and totally smart, then writes that female character as not only a total bitch but short-sighted and stupid as well.
Dreadwolf won't be a game where the roles of recurring characters and whether they return as playable characters or reduced to shallow villains isn't dictated by whether or not they're white.
So yeah, Dreadwolf won't be like Baldur's Gate 3, because it is not made by and for shitty people.
Lets go down the line of their "points"
Isabella, when she was given to the Qunari in DA2.
City Elves, insanely victimized and deemed criminals by in world humans. And they (and Dalish) are often slaughtered in the narrative by humans.
Qunari, Tevinter, you can't go five minutes without someone calling Tevinter evil or deeming any Qunari as a savage. And Iron Bull's entire arc is about him leaving the Qun as the "good" ending.
Cullen, Samson, Anders, Solas - their stories are pushed forward, despite the fact their narrative counterparts get the shit end of the stick. Vivienne, Calpurnia, Wynne, and Merrill
Rivain. and Isabella nuff said. In the comics she throws slaves overboard.
The black main character (Vivienne) in DAI has much less content in comparison to any of the white faves.
Samson is an evil character with a tranquil as his partner. As a templar he was part of the oppressor group and could be seen as grooming the mage turned tranquil. Especially when you remember that Templars often abused tranquil, and then what happens in DAI to tranquil.
Merrill vs Solas in terms of the Eluvians. Or, Morrigan vs Solas. Take your pick.
I present to you, Varric, Leliana, Cullen, Samson, as recurring again over multiple games. All white, or at the very least light complected. Then the ambiguously brown characters who only got cameos: Alistair and Zevran. And then the sole brown/black character cameo got shunted to multiplayer only, Isabella.
This person clearly never played dragon age and are pretending to in order to make this post for clout.
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Y'know, in the same vein as the earlier post about not policing reclamation of slurs/language used by marginalized groups...
I really hate not feeling safe in any spaces dedicated to activism for others causes as a disabled person.
I'm too scared to ever say how much it hurts when the words for our symptoms and pathologies are used derisively. When "delusion" is used to mean "a non-pathological disconnect from reality caused by radicalized hatred and bigotry". When "stupid", "idiot", "moron" and so on are used nearly exclusively to describe bigots, bad people, and exclusionists, reaffirming the idea that intelligence has any correlation to morality and harm. How words like "narcissistic", "sociopathic", and "psychotic" are used as synonyms for abusive and bigoted.
I see it in activist spaces for communities that I'm in. I'm scared to say anything out of fear I'll be denied both resources and community itself and be outcast and dogpiled for daring to ask for a change in language that would make disabled people within the community feel safer and more comfortable.
I see it in activist spaces that I enter as an ally. I'm afraid the axis on which I have privilege will become a weapon in trying to speak up on the axis in which the people using the language (often) have it. I know dynamics of privilege and oppressive power are complex and often fluid themselves, and try to simply uplift the disabled people within these communities... but they're encountering the problem in the last paragraph and are often just as scared to speak, so no ones does and the issue continues unchecked.
(I see it in activist spaces where I am questioning or joining the community, especially where I'm trying to educate myself while I occupy the weird space between "ally" and "member".)
Sometimes I see members of specific marginalized groups that I'm not in say that no one else could possibly understand entering queer or plural or even just leftist spaces and facing the deeply rooted bigotry against that marginalized group in what's supposed to be a safe space. I know I can't understand exactly with each specific form of bigotry, but I have experienced a form of that. I know what it's like for what's supposed to be a safe space to be deeply unsafe on the basis of identity.
I wonder when I see these words being used in this way: if they knew I had NPD, would they think I'm more likely to be an abuser? Would they reveal years into a friendship as close as any romantic relationship that they thought I was "one of the good ones"? Would they say "narcissism is different from Narcissism the Personality Disorder, anyone is capable of being a Bad Narcissist" and simply not care enough to listen to the person hurt by those words about how they hurt them? Would they care that I don't know whether they think people like me are less than human when they use that language, but I do know they're using my identity as a pejorative?
I wonder: If I ask them to reconsider conflating lack of intelligence with harm, if I pointed out that this is insidious language which upholds the oppression of those with mental, intellectual, cognitive, and developmental disabilities - particularly by subtly perpetuating the idea that we are dangerous - if I point out the way we flinch every time we see "stupid" as an insult because, well, it's a word that's been used against us, that belongs to us, that is us (in a way we refuse to have taken away)... will they care?
I wonder: If it's pointed out how misuse of terms related to psychosis and delusions are foundational to sanism, that the contexts in which they are misused often link them to "dangerous" and "harmful" behaviors which only serves to further the myth that "mad" mentally ill people are a danger and need to be locked away for their own good and the good of society, if I talk about how this language is inaccurate, taking the few words we have for what can be intensely traumatizing experiences internally and are almost always intensely traumatizing identities to hold in a sanist society where we are many times more vulnerable to abuse than most... what would be the response?
Will I be accused of "derailing"? "Stealing important language" from "the real victims"? Of "speaking over marginalized people" in cases where we each have full, nonconditional/noncontextual privilege on one of the axes involved? Will attempts at education over words being used derogatorily against nonconsenting parties (which is still harmful even by parties that can reclaim said language for self-usage) that are carefully neutral in tone and wording and even encouraging be ignored because it's not focused on "the real issue"?
I mean, this is an issue even within disabled spaces, particularly those for physical disability (which I am in as a physically disabled person), much like corpoableism is prevalent and harmful in mad and neurodivergent spaces. It's not a unique issue. Ableism is so pervasive and so insidious in our society that many people are legitimately ignorant. Ignorance is neither evil nor a crime.
When I was less traumatized in this regard, I had many lovely interactions with individuals who were grateful to be informed about these things, with whom I was able to have nuanced conversations about how language itself can be neutral but the context of its usage can cause it to further harmful ideologies.
Unfortunately, the bad interactions vastly outnumbered these in scope, scale, and magnitude. People who seemed otherwise progressive and anti-bigotry would go full mask-off fascist, claiming everything from "narcissists should all be lined up and shot" to that I was "clearly too [r-slur] to understand how these words were actually perfectly fine" to how I was "psychotic and should be locked up and asylum treatments should be brought back".
Honestly, those were the least traumatizing interactions. It was the little, subtle stuff - the way self-identified abled people would turn around the accusations of ableism and accuse me of being ableist (or otherwise bigoted, usually against my own other identities) in classic DARVO fashion. The way people would twist and manipulate my words to claim I was arguing something I never said in order to shut down discussions of ableism that might force them to examine their own accountability and complicity. The way people just wouldn't ever take conversations on ableism seriously and will ridicule any attempts at discussing any ableism that isn't shouting r slurs at people in the streets or telling disabled people you hope their disability kills them.
The way that I struggled to find examples extreme enough for that last sentence, because if you're subtle enough you can use equivalent words to the slur or simply IMPLY that disabled people are burdens on society who live miserable lives that are not in any way fixable and that we and everyone else would be happier and better off if disabled people were dead.
I want to make it clear: if you have any willingness to learn, if any of the language you use has been out of ignorance and you are willing to listen (even if you need to take time to be in the headspace to process it properly), if you can even sit with this post and not reactively do the aforementioned behaviors... this isn't about you. This is a vent post about the people who make it unsafe and terrifying to open a dialogue with the people that simply aren't educated on every possible form every kind of bigotry can take.
I'm constantly terrified. I relate to what other marginalized people - jewish people, people of color, even people with specific disabilities I don't share - are going through right now. This isn't to call out any specific space, because it's just... everywhere. How can you stand up to it when it's so completely ubiquitous? How do you maintain the courage to keep demanding a baseline standard of decency when everybody is using the language that the people who legitimately think you should be dead or worse use?
How do you explain that something is a dogwhistle for your own dehumanization and oppression to someone, when odds worse than a coin flip are that they agree with the premise of the dogwhistle even if not knowingly using it as such?
I dunno.
People are welcome to reblog this, though of course I will never pressure anyone to do so (and if this triggers any kind of OCD or other compulsions, this is me giving you a pass not to do so!)
I debated on asking people to keep the discussion centered on ableism or to limit commentary to only those affected by ableism, but quite honestly, I think the discussion would be enriched by discussing this phenomenon as it pertains to other forms of bigotry. All I ask is that for anyone who does participate in this conversation, that no one ridicules or derides anyone for expressing "this is a form of my oppression/bigotry that hurts me" and that we all do our best to center the voices most affected by a given issue, even while allowing for participation in that part of the discussion by others.
(Maybe this post will languish and die without opening a conversation and that last paragraph is just my ego getting the better of me lol. Who knows?)
This also is really just a vent post. Not a call out post, not meant to assign blame, not any kind of attempt at holding anyone accountable (what an ineffective tool a tumblr post would be for that, anyway!), not anything other than expressing frustration and rage and grief and pain and terror and trauma over the way the lines between well-intentioned ignorance and malicious but pretty-sounding hatred have been blurred by bad faith actors.
I will say though for those willing, one of the best ways to combat this problem is to educate yourselves and others. It's okay to focus your efforts on members of your communities that you trust to be receptive to you specifically. It's okay to only spread the basics and direct to disabled (or otherwise marginalized, for other issues) activists who are focused on education for further information.
Sometimes "privilege" in the context of marginalization can simply mean "I will not be hurt by someone being reactive towards an identity that I'm not, AND they're less likely to do so in the first place because they know I am a safe person for our shared identity".
That's maybe an imperfect explanation, but it's one pulled from my own experiences calling in members of communities I'm in. Calling in is better, whenever possible, for this reason! It's why my fears expressed about communities that I am entering as an ally and a disabled person are about causing harm, rather than just being harmed, but which tie into the fact that disabled people within those communities fear being harmed.
Entering the conversation as someone who is marginalized AND nonmarginalized on the same axes as the other person puts you very solidly on even footing. It makes a space recognizable as safe by ALL parties from the start. Discussing bigotry that does not affect you especially, even if you lack some depth of perspective on it, lowers the stakes and allows the delicate conversation to take root and grow.
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I started "A Girl & Her Dog" but just put a bunch of things together so I need to start it over. Or do I? Maybe things changed since last time. I consider any margin under five percent effectively a tie.
Propaganda under the cut.
Saw Down Heaven: The sequel to a Nanowrimo novel, Girl Bites God, picks up the story with Alice Buzzsaw, the reanimated corpse of one of the religious zealots killed last novel, who has become home to a small colony of emotionally sensitive mutant tapeworms. She is taken in by "Iggy," a disabled superstring mechanic who is trying to separate her neighborhood from the authorian oppression of the FCC grid, which helps to prevent the physical world from experiencing a sudden catastrophic entropic collapse but is also used to rigorously oppress the ability of the US population to experience free thought. In the same neighborhood lives AthenA6, former involuntarily institutionalized experimental guinea pig, now subject of a resumed national manhunt due to her ability to process the disruptive anomalous energy trying to destroy all physical matter, ever since the last FCC chairman was killed by a mutated video spider. This is enough of an excuse to lay seige to the upstart off grid community, but they'll have to contend with Alice Buzzsaw, AthenA6, and other locals like Fireball Jill who don't want any cops on their streets. Ghastly, gory anarchy.
A Girl And Her Dog: Intentionally rude and obviously reactive counter to Harlan Ellison's "A Boy And His Dog," not to mention purposefully arrogant to even think of such an undertaking. Roz is a former inhabitant of one of the underground cities on a planet colonized by humans in a far, far distant future which, several thousand years after colonization had the human civilization destroyed thanks to a disaster which resulted in a second sun and a hostile radioactive surface, and the story itself takes place several hundred more years after the disaster. Once imprisoned and abused by the brutal psychic warlord and god eater Viktor Blud, she is returning to his menagerie in the crystal forest for revenge. Her companion is Champ, one of the animals mistreated by Vik, a sort of lizard ant eater pangolin porcupine creature roughly the size of a wolf and with retractable teeth. Champ had a kind of powerful empathic sensitivity that allows him to navigate and sometimes avoid the psychic domination of Vik, and with Roz they have a plan to turn the tables, but it's going to take a lot of dead gods. Luckily, the whole planet is lousy with em. They're joined by Mel, a deserter from the giants teeth valley, formerly a soldier in their dragon tooth army but now fascinated by the road to revenge Roz is walking. It's going to be ugly and messy.
Short Change Hero: Obsidian Bonesplinter made the jump from ensemble ttrpg character to main character of her own world and there's not any going back. Dishwasher at mob front by day, bouncer by night, once in awhile part time knee cap breaker, she's perfectly content with drinking her way through a haze of meaningless sex and violence until a few of her friends from back home show up to visit in the big city. They barely even make it out of the train station before one of the girls is brutally murdered and then they make an even worse mistake: talking to the city guards. Now Obsidian has to untangle the mess of dirty cops and mobsters that goes all the way to the top - which she already knew, but it's a lot different when it's actively trying to kill her and her two friends instead of passively letting her drink and fight herself to death. A hardboiled detective story in a noir fantasy setting. The only thing shorter than Obsidian is her temper.
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as a fellow south asian woman, those posts make me deeply uncomfortable. seeing terfs that are woc is always sad for me because..... radical feminism has never included us and it never will. they want to use woc to act like they aren't racist but their fight for us is conditional on us suppressing our lived experience as poc. we don't fix misogyny and patriarchal beliefs in our communities by turning to that rhetoric.
i also feel like there's a certain dehumanization required of men for radfems. they can't see them as complex human beings, they need to see everything in these black and white good and evil binaries. but that experience, especially for marginalized men, is so out of touch with reality. i've watched the way the men in my family have been abused by white people - often white women - and so it's like. yes, they can perpetuate misogyny and reinforce the patriarchy, but they're also harmed by racism. it isn't as simple as man bad woman good. this idea that gender based oppression is the ultimate form of oppression and everything else stems from it just feels so imaginary. we can't separate the "marginalized" and "privileged" parts of our identities into neat little boxes, that's not how it works.
and i don't really get the logical leap to go from "marginalized men can face discrimination in how their marginalized identity intersects with their manhood" to "marginalized men can't perpetuate misogyny" they can. it's just not a 'they are wholly evil beings and only exist to oppress women'. it's reductive, and that feels like the point, because nuance would destroy the whole argument.
Ah yes good food but you see that's nuance on the no-nuance piss on the poor I think coolsville sucks website.
Speaking from the black experience, where I have seen the disparity between the power black men can have over black women vs the power white women can have over black men, I think too many times these pieces of radical feminism try to create a clear-cut us vs them scenario that frankly has no bearing in real life.
Especially, as you said, when trying to discuss how someone may actually experience discrimination and oppression in one scenario that also allows them privilege and power in another, we keep ending up back at "so you're saying they're the most oppressed!?!?!?" and "how can I, an oppressed person, ever oppress someone else". Of course men of color can perpetuate misogyny- and often do! Just like how white women can perpetuate racism by leaning in on racist stereotypes for men of color! The whole system sucks, that's the entire point!
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As an abuser, you will beg them to teach you to be better and do better... but forget the part where you're supposed to put in the effort to learn
What you really want is someone to mildly scold you every time you fuck up and otherwise not do anything about your behavior so you have no necessary reason to actually stop
While you get to push all personal responsibility for your behavior onto them so that way if you're not getting better, it's not your fault. It's theirs.
But if they're too mean, too punishing, or actually hold you accountable, you'll tell them they're not patient enough and that that's not how teaching works. You'll say you're a slow grower and learner so they can't actually use stronger methods, they just have to keep babying you while you walk all over them.
And if they give up and stop trying to teach you, you can tell everyone they left you while you were vulnerable.
And you'll say any changes you as an abuser miraculously make after they leave has nothing to do with them and everything to do with you building yourself up from the ground... when it was them holding your hand 24/7 telling you what to do and not do while you tried to insist that everything was okay. You can't flip a switch like that and suddenly be the good guy who was oppressed by the only sensible person in any given situation you put yourself in, in order to harm others.
So either you had the power this whole time to change and chose not to because you didn't want to and didn't need to as long as you could manipulate someone into taking the fall; you haven't changed at all and you're faking it until someone else falls into the pit; or the lessons finally kicked in after you faced a real consequence to the actions you kept indulging in... but none of it has anything to do with you deserving most of the credit, tbh.
You were spoon fed solutions to your problems while you were dragged around like an unwilling, tantruming child about the bare minimum. Just because you, out of desperation to protect your ego for being left from being so inept, finally started doing (or acting) the bare minimum, does not make you worth applauding for. That's all it is... the bare minimum.
Being prideful of finally acting like a normal, decent human only after you could no longer pretend to be stupid toward someone who was willing to take you for a fool is in fact not something you should be bragging about "clawing your way up from the bottom" for. It is the absolute bare necessity. Just like men don't get to brag about not being rapists- you don't get to brag about being a decent person.
And only someone who had to be told over and over how to be a good person while playing stupid, would be so ignorant and emotionally underdeveloped to believe otherwise. So maybe don't be so prideful about your "newfound power" of "being a good person all on your own".
#emotional abuse#verbal abuse#abuser mention#abusers#psychological abuse#gaslighting#bullying#neglect#weaponized incompetence#You have to want it#effort#actually abused#no mercy
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some (possibly) unpopular opinions pt. 2
It turns out my rant about manhwas that did not appeal to me were actually pretty fun to read, and since I am nothing but a jester for entertainment I have decided to make another one of these. I feel like I'll get flamed for some of my choices though 💀 doesn't matter, all in good fun 👍
Under the Oak Tree
The Beginning After the End
Solo Levelling
Beatrice
I Have Become the Heroes' Rival
How To Hide the Emperor's Child
Why Are You Doing This, Duke?
Beware of the Brothers!
Under the Oak Tree
Let me just preface this by saying that my complaint is not about Maxi's timid, soft-spoken nature. I understand that her fear to defend herself and her inability to communicate her needs properly is a result of years of cruel abuse, oppression and control. In that regard, she is very similar to Soru from Twilight Poem (Heeran Love Song), and I love them both. They both have a quiet strength evident by their capacity for kindness in the face of constant barbaric mistreatment - not to mention their resilience. Few people would go through what they did and still strive to heal or accept genuine human connection.
However, I am far less empathetic towards Riftan. With how often he gets it on with her, he's been classically conditioned to associated Maxi with arousal and sexual pleasure. Too many times has he initiated this type of thing when Maxi was only trying to express herself and communicate, which made for a frustrating narrative - and if I'm honest, after some time it felt like he was using Maxi as a sex toy, which enraged me like nothing else.
Most people liked the smut, some thought it was a bit overkill. I, for one, am proudly ace and so it did nothing to appeal me to the story when it was obvious their sex life was 99% due to lust alone, rather than any sort of connection. I kick my feet and screech just like any other person when I read about two people loving each other so much and finding refuge through touch and physical intimacy - but this was shallow sex. It got to the point where when Riftan would made advances I would start laughing because it was just that predictable and boring.
(Also! Their first wedding night! Stank! Of! Sexual coercion! It made me so enraged and it was so confronting that I honestly skimmed through the dialogue and skipped the scene altogether. "You're my wife so we must fulfil our marital duties" PLEASE I WANTED TO BARF. Nobody come at me about historical accuracy and context when this story has fucking wizards and shit.)
Also, I'm a bit of a man hater (we all have flaws 💀) so reading about a man who by all means solely holds the power in a relationship makes me dislike the story on principle. Maxi has been under the thumb of men from the moment she was born, so her marriage to Riftan felt to me like a simple switch from one type of oppression to another. I'll admit I was projecting a bit because I was seeing the many women in my life who've suffered because of the patriarchy through Maxi and resenting Riftan as a result. However, I still don't think my assessment is that flawed.
TL;DR: I hate presumptuous, inconsiderate men, and unfortunately Riftan fell into that category, but Maxi, sweetie - I love you with all my heart.
The Beginning After the End
Manhwa that is obviously intended for a male demographic are honestly a bit of a hit or miss most of the time. I loved The Return of the Mount Hua Sect, and the main character from The Return of the Crazy Demon has my whole heart.
The reason why I dislike a vast majority of them is that they obviously cater to the idea that an ideal man should be cold, uncaring, callous, invulnerable and entirely masculine-presenting. The comment sections of male-targeted manhwa like Solo Levelling and the Beginning After the End are full of boys that look at all these MCs acting superior with their hands in their pockets and their arrogant smirk and think they're the 'goat'. Female characters are treated as incapable of rising to the same level of strength as the male main character, and indeed when they're confident in their skills the boys in the comment sections have nothing but derogatory comments to make about them.
In the comment sections of the Reaper of the Drifting Moon, not only is the MC under fire after their transformation to a leaner, more snake-like, curvy frame that appears more feminine, but the women he encounters are insulted in every way. Case in point:
I wish this was the worst among them, but it's not. I bet many other people can attest to the fact that comment sections like these are drowning in misogyny.
Arthur is in many ways that toxic masculinity personified. Always superior, always overpowered, always better, always smarter. Also, he's a thirty-eight year old weirdo that goes around having under-aged girls as love interests. If that isn't deeply disconcerting I don't know what else to say.
Solo Levelling
I'm so gonna get hate for this.
I also don't care.
Anyway, my issues here are three:
Jin-Woo panders to that ideation of an OP 'Goat' protagonist that I really don't fuck with personally.
The romance sucked. There was no real connection between him and Cha Hae-In. We had like one episode of them going to the amusement park. The whole "he-doesn't-smell!" premise was an obvious (and weird) attempt to force a romance subplot and give Jin-Woo a female love interest, perpetuating that image of him as desirable and flawless. She was, in a word, a prop.
The ending sucked also. It was one step away from the Protagonist Loses Their Powers And Settles Into A Life of Domesticity trope and I hated it. It was so unfulfilling.
The reason why I stuck around and read it in full was simply that it's fun. It's fun, sometimes, to read self-indulgent trash about OP main characters that solo every challenge. It just doesn't exactly make for a very memorable story or a likable protagonist, which is why I don't really care much for it.
TL;DR: The kind of brainless story you read when you can't be bothered putting yourself through the emotional and cognitive effort of connecting with complex characters and loaded stories.
Beatrice
I dropped this so fast I don't remember much about it, but I can say three things:
The fact that she was a slave and was basically rescued from hard labour because she was charming and cute was very much not it 💀 Why do all these girls that used to be slaves conveniently forget about slavery and its ramifications on others when their status is elevated and they posses the influence to do something about it?
LMFAO WHY DOES SHE LOOK SO HAPPY WHEN SHE'S SAYING THIS PLEASE-
In almost every panel, she looks dainty, petite and naïve to the point of appearing like a child, especially when compared to the ML's massive hulking rippling-pectoral figure. It made for equal parts ridiculous and creepy panels when they were put side by side.
LOOK:
ALSO CACKLING AT HIS POSTURE AND POSITION
TL;DR: Should have been classified as a comedy because I laughed more than I swooned over their apparently dreamy whirlwind forbidden romance.
I Have Become the Heroes' Rival
This story was so good and now it's rapidly going downhill. Claudia and Irene, my beloveds.
Felix - well, very questionable. When he abandoned her on the seaside after their first kiss and dramatically walked off into the ocean I laughed for hours.
And when he broke her bone during sex and the entire thing was romanticised and established to be proof of his inhuman verility I was actually gobsmacked.
"Don't provoke me because I won't be able to stop or control myself after" is the biggest fucking red flag to me. At any point during sex, Irene has the right to feel safe enough to say no or to change her mind. But whatever. The whole attraction of this story appears to be the kinky demon sex. I mean, judging from the comments and the fans it has garnered, I won't say this isn't successful.
TL;DR: Not my cup of tea.
How To Hide the Emperor's Child
I'm so tired of subpar, pathetic MLs.
Why Are You Doing This, Duke?
Some people thought the Duke's transformation from cold-blooded, cruel man to loving and kind to Nöel was funny and cute and a testament of the power of love.
I was uncomfortable with it. The overstated, grand gestures of love, the superficial nature of their relationship in the beginning, and Nöel's own focus on self-preservation to keep her position as the Duke's beloved made me uncomfortable. The Duke felt like a victim.
TL;DR: I don't like Nöel. I don't like the Duke much, either, from what I've seen of his real persona. That said, I did drop it, so I don't know how the story progresses with regards to that love spell and its origins.
Beware of the Brothers!
Sweet home Alabama~
#beware of the brothers#manhwa#solo leveling#the beginning after the end#under the oak tree#why are you doing this duke?#how to hide the emperor's child#i have become the heroes' rival#beatrice#unpopular opinions#please don't send vitriol about these without basis because i won't give a single fuck#discussions are welcomed though
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So I felt like making a hot take post about this audacious bitch:
Minene Uryuu, Ninth Future Diary Holder from The Future Diary. (Yes, she and Black Lagoon's Revy Two-Hands are almost the same character, I know.)
Losing her parents as collateral damage in religious extremist militia warfare when she was 8 years old, Minene was forced to live a brutal life as an orphaned, homeless street rat in a Middle Eastern nation overrun with the religious extremists' ceaseless conflict, possessing little of her own and having to resort to theft in order to survive. The result of this was Minene developing a burning hatred towards the idea of God and of all religion as a whole, organized or otherwise.
Carrying this disdain for everything related to religion and letting the wrath and hatred fester inside her heart as he got older, Minene was eventually able to make her living as a terrorist bomber, specifically targeting religious structures, religious organizations, and prominent, influential religious individuals, in order to destroy them in the name of atheism and shit. Before it was turned into her Future Diary by Deus, Minene's Escape Diary was a regular journal that she used to chart out all the possible escape routes in whichever area she was planning to attack. She is very tactical and intelligent, able to easily gather information and make deductions based on it. Having spent her adolescent years alone with no love or guidance, she believes she is fated to be all alone in the world, does not need anyone else in her life to help her, and must survive and endure at all costs so she may one day see the stated end goal for all her evildoing realized: the erasure of the very idea of gods and all religious faith built from the world. Throughout her life, Minene appears to be haunted by her eight-year old self and the memory of crying over her dead parents, symbolizing her desire to escape her own past and be saved.
So where I am going with this? Well, here's my hot take:
Minene Was Right.
...Except for all the ways in which she was not.
While wanting to erase the concept of deities and higher powers from the collective of humanity is childish extremism in her thinking (people have believed in such things for ages and I really don't think there is anything that could stop them), Minene's want to see the total abolishment of all religious institutions, depowering of religious leader figures, and cessation of both all damaging religious practices and of the relevance thereof, is honestly completely understandable. Sure, she cannot and should not force atheism onto all peoples of the world, and I'm sure once she was gifted god-like powers by an actual deity she'd find herself beginning to understand that, but when she looks at religion and its place in the world, Minene sees flawed, fallible, needy, selfish, hideously ignorant and deluded human beings taking the fact that conceptualized notions of divinity, spirituality, and higher power over all physical reality that is sacred and holy exist in life, and using it as an excuse to interpret spiritual faith in very human ways and apply them to human work for the fulfillment of human desires. Thus can religion become the driving force behind wars, behind crimes, behind abuse, behind oppression, behind classist, racist, sexist and homophobic practices, etc. If defined very broadly and stretched to meet the requirements that humans want it to meet, religion can be a vehicle for sin, all while the sinners hypocritcally preach that they're doing the righteous and holy work of their god(s) and stand against evil, vice, and sin that corrupt this world.
I feel I don't need to ellaborate on how much suffering is wrought upon too many innocent human lives due to violent conflict driven by extremists who use their religion to justify their acts of inhumane atrocity, who cling to the sacred dogma of their faith and the way in which they've chosen to interpret the words and will of their priests, prophets, messiahs and deities as being permission, or a mandate to satisfy their hatred, bloodlust, and hunger for power and dominance. Or on which currently going conflicts in particular I've in mind when I say all this. I've seen or heard the rhetoric of "our religion tells us..." or "our faith dictates that...", or even "our God commands us to..." applied to blatantly worldly matters and very human-centric, material-based disputes. And it strikes me as fucking ludicrous. So I just have to think that Minene had it right the whole time: if human religion and all the harmful ways religious faith gets utilized ceased to be, the world would be a far better place to live in. To me, this ideal is just.
So how did Minene then end up going oh so very wrong in her life?
I could easily point to the fact that she's a bloody terrorist, that she has gleefully bombed, gunned down, slashed up, and decimated populated areas with much human cost that she didn't seem to give a damn about, and clearly that's wrong....but that's a bit too obvious. Anyone with a functional moral compass can tell that the clear cut bad guy doing clear bad things is in fact bad and their actions cannot be considered right. I could go deeper and point to her hypocrisy, how she became what she'd hated most - someone who persecutes and victimizes other human lives due to her own belief that evil, sinful acts committed in the name of her own brand of faith (atheism) are justified or "necessary evil" - and that she's been every bit the demon that she'd come to see Murmur #1, 1st World Yuno Gasai, and John Balks as being....but nah, her worst error of all isn't even that.
Where Minene went wrong most of all is that her anti-religion ideals aren't and were never the true reason behind her turn to crime and terrorism, but merely the rationale she told herself. Meaning she was out committing impersonal, indiscriminate acts of mass harm and murder for the sake of no vision of a greater good, but over small, deeply personal psychological burdens that are really no good reason to do any of this awful, heinous shit. See, when I mentioned in my summary of her character that "Minene appears to be haunted by her eight-year old self and the memory of crying over her dead parents, symbolizing her desire to escape her own past and be saved"? That's what it's really all about. She chose to become a destructive, mass murdering terrorist and a public menace as a cry for help. Terror was her language for saying "someone help me, love and accept me, save me the way I was yearning to be saved, tell me it's okay for me to be human, to move beyond my painful past, live in the here and now for a better future, and not throw my life away doing horrible things....or if not, then please kill me! Just put me out of my misery now!" Anyone of sound mind and clear consicence truly motivated by a desire to make the world a better place for others to live in would never think terrorism to be an effecive recourse. Ever. That's how you can tell that Minene was never acting for the sake of that cause. It was always about her internal cycle of self destruction and the crying of her buried inner child for the healing and salvation of her soul, for the help she'd never recieved when she was orphaned years ago, never about the erasure of religion and how that might help the world at large. Minene's war was truly with herself.
With such a well thought out, disturbingly mentally and emotionally malnourished character to work with, it sucks that Sakae Esuno didn't always know how to work with her in the most effective ways. When you have a very realistically human set-up for someone who represents realistic human evil but then use it to depict instead a cartoonish, costume-wearing comic book supervillain and then still go for nuance, redemption and heroism with that character, it's gonna feel more than a bit awkward. But while I wish she'd have gotten more interplay with Yuno and Kurusu (and none at all with Nishijima), I do really appreciate that the core of her character arc was kept focused on her association with Yukiteru. What Minene truly needed was someone who'd be steadily open and understanding with her, which prompts her to be open and understanding with them, which itself taps at Minene's concealed humanity and draws out her better qualities, and Yuki was this person to her. What compounded this with the healing of Minene's heart and soul is that Yuki himself was, in his current state, reminiscent to Minene of what she'd been like as a kid: a naive, hopeful, and good-natured yet troubled youth walking towards a dark abyss as their innocence dies and their heart cries out for anyone or anything to pull them back away from the edge. While Minene realized the truth about what she'd yearned for and re-embraced her humanity too late to save Yuki from taking the plunge, it was just in time to save her own soul and make some difference, as ensured by, ironically enough, an Act Of God - literal Deus Ex Machina (but I remain torn on how this was implemented by the writing within canon, it sort of diminished Minene's arc tbh.)
And what she did not need was someone telling her "I love you as you are, warts and all, but only really because I love the idea of the person you could be and who I can see you becoming, because if you did become like that, then I'd want to marry you and get laid with you!" Goddamn, I hate the writing for that fucking character so much.
Hey, I now just realized - Minene and Cyrus from Pokemon could be considered like inversions of each other. Both characters suffered hardships in their young lives that brought them to some very valid points about worldly issues in need of being addressed yet their untreated personal pain and all the defects born from it in both mentality and personality steered them in the wrong direction, towards extremism and terrorism in their pursuit of a solution. But Minene seeks to eliminate the very idea of the divine while utilizing mundane human means, while Cyrus wants to eliminate human spirit while utilizing the exploitation of higher power in hopes of ultimately becoming a deity himself. And this is actually the second time one of the Diary Holders in The Future Diary has been likened to Cyrus!
#Future Diary#manga#anime#Minene Uryuu#uryuu minene#analysis#opinion#criticism#religion#terrorist#terrorism#tragic villain#poor girl#my feels#anti religion#anti terrorism#anti masumi nishijima#anti minene/masumi#anti sakae esuno#sort of
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🌙 Moon: Do any of your OCs have dark backstories or secrets they’re trying to keep hidden?
🥧 Pie: Which of your characters takes care of the others around them? How do they take care of themselves?
For the fall ask game :D
( @angsty-prompt-hole )
From the Fall-tastic Asks
@angsty-prompt-hole
🌙 Moon: Do any of your OCs have dark backstories or secrets they're trying to keep hidden?
But of course. (Content Advisory: passing mentions of natural disaster, death, murder, transphobia, scars, abusive parents/guardians, religious abuse, self-isolation/neglect)
Isaac: Saw his entire family killed and eaten by a werewolf. Said werewolf happens to be the patron of the department he devoted ten years of his life to. Carries the scars from this on his back along with a load of survivor's guilt/PTSD.
Renato: Grew up trans as the world was falling apart from a climate/magical cataclysm. Witnessed countless deaths, saw his own parents die as the ship they were on sank. Helped drown a man at 15 to protect his best friend, Oleander. Was manipulated into becoming a vampire and an agent for an oppressive organization by his sire/father figure.
Oleander: Also grew up trans as the world was falling apart from a climate/magical cataclysm, but it was made worse by her family being in an apocalyptic cult. Was forced into a conversion program when she confided having Gender Thoughts™ at 13 to her mother. Still bears a cross-shaped brand on the back of her right hand. Escaped and was adopted by the same vampire as Renato. Hunted down her remaining brothers and father after she turned. Regrets nothing.
Kinslayer: Had their soul mutilated by a god of light and order as part of an experiment to "help" humans. Is now the most powerful psychic vampire in the world, but is forever hungry and destined to self-destruct, taking the universe with them. Is on a quest to avert this fate, but time is running short.
Cassius Mergus: Was a middling vampire from the realm next door to Earth until he came to our world and started taking advantage of our limited magical knowledge. Befriended a brilliant alchemist, then murdered him to steal his idea of forming a network of supernatural cooperation. Turned said idea into an oppressive organization where he's at the top of the food chain. Recruited a ruthless necromancer, psychic vampire torturer, evil werewolf family, and *ahem* super cool poltergeist to aid him in his quest for power. Made infinitely worse by how Mergus is so damn likable in person.
🥧 Pie: Which of your characters takes care of the others around them? How do they take care of themselves?
Here's another area where Mergus excels, making him that much more effective at what he does. It's like he memorized the Evil Overlord Handbook. He treats all his subordinates so well that the majority blame themselves when/if he disposes of them. Mergus remembers their birthdays and children's names--and not even for nefarious purposes necessarily. He will use those bonds as leverage if need be, of course, but...he also does take a genuine interest in those around him, warped as it may be.
As for himself, Mergus enjoys nothing more than sitting by the fire in a cozy chair and discussing everything and nothing with a confidante. Who, these days, is usually his aide, Ayman. A human man who is honestly more like a platonic life partner at this point, and would gladly--maybe even eagerly--give his life for Mergus.
As for less villainous characters, Isaac is pretty good at going the extra mile for the people around him. When he's not, you know, isolating as a trauma response. He's definitely better at caring for others than he is for himself.
Ben Zebrowski, though, is a much more consistent example. This imposing vampire man with a foul-mouth and oft-broken nose sometimes gets called Babcia/Busia, Abuelita, Nana, or some other form of "Grandma" by the neighborhood (always behind his back, of course). The affectionately derogatory practice likely arose from a couple of things. 1) His go-to of feeding people, human or vampire, to show he cares. He practices cooking regularly in order to keep this habit up with the human side of that equation. 2) The fact he'll be deeply insulted if someone doesn't eat. Nobody makes this mistake twice. And 3) he will hound anyone who stubbornly tries to push themselves until they've submitted to being fussed over. Ben is Isaac's worst nightmare in this regard.
Despite some collective eyerolling, Ben's methods of caring have endeared him to his community. Thus, he never really wants for getting his simple needs met: blood, playing or watching some baseball with friends, and uhhhh lots of, shall we say, physical affection.
#thank you for the ask!#I'm pretty pleased this one involved both Mergus and Ben#whom I don't gush over nearly enough#dysthanasia
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"WEIRDER THAN USUAL" 🎃🌴💜
Comic coming in 2024. AGE RATING: 15+
The final product will feature themes of abuse, trauma, mental illness, and inappropriate language-- [IE: Swearing]
In the current day and age, somewhere in Florida, never mind where & how long exactly, sits the hidden town of Hollow Heights.
It's not invisible or anything! Just one of those small towns nobody really cares about. People don't really come by unless they're lost tourists with shitty GPS. And there isn't really much to note? It's your standard Florida suburb where everyone knows everyone; full of questionable adults, birds, bugs, casually insane crime, and some pretty cheap-yet-decent houses!
...Oh, yeah. And a magical curse that turns everyone who lives there into MONSTERS!
No one is ever born this way; Pax, Robin, Clinton & Ozzie sure weren't! But despite their looks, all Monsters maintain human brains & minds. And they're actually... pretty normal! 4 outcast teenagers simply doing their best (on a good day) to survive this hell-hole.
No one knows how it started. Most people don't even care anymore. All that everyone around here knows is that that the curse only effects people living in Hollow Heights specifically; and that it's only a matter of time before it gets to YOU.
They've also noticed that Monster forms primarily reflect the individual; they're NOT determined by genetics! In fact, whenever you become a Monster, & develop the powers that come with, there are 3 things the curse seems to always keeps in mind.
Who YOU are.
The things you've gone through.
And how you handled them!
More specifically... they tend to manifest after exposure to trauma.
There is cruelty for all of us.
While only 1 in 4 people suffer with a mental illness, I think it is fair to say that everybody faces trauma at least once in their lives. Be it a loss, injury, or being met with somebody who doesn't love you like they should.
It is very easy for us to get stuck on these experiences. They can make permanent changes to who we are, to the point where we may not recognize ourselves in the mirror anymore. Scary, ain't it?
And that's it. That's "the curse."
It makes for an experience where simply existing begins to feel... Weirder Than Usual.
And whether we heal / move on or not is a choice that only we can make, and a process only we can begin.
And while the trauma that induced it never truly goes away, there IS a way to get rid of the curse; and it's not as crazy as you'd think!
You can only heal so much inside of a toxic environment like HH. So the solution is simple: Get out of there. Free yourself & live freely somewhere else; ANYWHERE else! But of course, that's easier said than done. Especially in a world where things like money, power, oppression, and "being a child" still exist.
One of the poor souls trapped here for now is Pax Manalo: a down-on-their-luck martian violinist with strict parents, telekinetic & semi-psychic powers, adorable heart antennae, and a VERY charming & freaky clown boyfriend who swept them off their feet. And for months now, Pax (being the isolated wallflower & hopeless romantic of a 14-year-old that they are) has been certain that Florian Funnyman was THE ONE.
...Until Valentine's Day came around, and Florian puts his girlfriend through the unthinkable. Something so horrible that it broke her heart, changed her life forever, and left Pax wondering if there'd even be a point in ever speaking about it again.
She doesn't want to get in trouble. She doesn't know if she wants HIM to get in trouble. She doesn't even know if anyone will believe her! Especially since Florian & his family have pretty damn high reputations around town. It's a small place, he's only a grade above her, she's friends with his brother, she doesn't have any other good friends--!! and Florian's been keeping a very watchful eye to make sure nobody ever speaks of it.
But as time goes on... Pax realizes that they can't just stay here in Hollow Heights, or dating a guy like him. And that they need help, a support system, to help them through this. And thus, Pax is left no choice but to reach out and connect with the other Monsters around them; and it doesn't take long before she finally meets some kindred spirits along the way.
Kindred spirits who are willing to help keep her safe; Kindred spirits who will support her as she tries to get her life back, learns to better advocate for herself, share their own sorrows with her as well as they face other hardships & all grow together, and stand by her no matter what.
As she finally finds her voice and speaks out about the true monster, and seeks all the justice she can get. 💞
#pitch bible#synopsis#original story#original characters#ocs#oc#monsters#halloween#october#spooky season#spooky cute#monster ocs#monster#spooky art#october art challenge#concept#concept art#character concept#character concepts#comic#comic development#comics#cartoon art#cartoonist#florida#teen angst#high school#high school struggles#coming of age#sa survivor
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I don't follow the DSM personally. To me, most labels are social prejudices from the majority of society which is not always accurate and can be very harmful. To me and my friends, we're the "normal" ones.
I believe that disorders and other things exist, but not in the way the DSM paints it. I never wanted a diagnosis because I knew my medical autonomy wouldn't be respected because once you have mental health issues or physical disabilities, the medical system likes to think that you can't think for yourself or make your own decisions and takes your medical or human rights away. I don't like that.
I avoided an autism diagnosis. Because I don't want to be reduced to negative harmful stereotypes that ableists see us as. My communities and friends know more than doctors who thinks that ABA therapy is ethical, who think that autism is a genetic flaw, who think functioning labels are nice to call someone.
I never saw ADHD as a deficit rather a trait. Folks with ADHD don't lack attention, they just having an abundance of attention. But if you don't focus on the things society wants you to then all of a sudden you're the problem.
Just like autism. You're considered high functioning or a productive member of society which shouldn't be the only measure we value people at like what they can do for work. If you mask if you're super intelligent and then society respects you like oh my goodness look at you!
But if you're a person that wants your individual happiness respected which autism therapies are never based on your needs are too much for neurotypical people then you are considered low functioning. Instead of being encouraged to just be around people that understand you and want to understand you.
I mean look at the traits of autism. What are they from the dsm? Plays awkwardly. Can't communicate. Can't feel emotions. It's because kids who are autistic often are very creative and do things differently and it's okay. Usually kids on the spectrum are very honest and people think that it's a flaw it's not.
I mean if you put kids whether they are on the autism spectrum or not with people that understand them and love them for who they are instead of trying to force them to be an awkward situations that they don't want to be in or interact with people they don't want to you'll see a world of difference in happiness.
I don't like how the medical industry is based around lack of human autonomy. It's why I'm against psych wards and forced medication because there's no advocacy for us just for the doctors. The amount of times I've seen psychiatrists get away with malpractice or tragedy is ridiculous it's just as much as like CPS getting away with harming children.
People in power don't have my respect. I've always protected folks or freed them from the system because there's no good in the system it doesn't matter who they help. The systems were built on ableism and oppression.
What happens if a disabled person says something about a caregiver abusing them? They're told they don't know what they're talking about. What happens when an autistic person says they were abused in therapy? They're dismissed. What happens if a person with mental problems gets abused in asylum? They're told that they're crazy.
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Early atheist hours again
Anytime I push against Christianity, charity often gets brought up as a gotcha. Like 'oh but churches do good! They support their community' and it has to lead into a whole OTHER argument because like.
Churches are SO BAD at charity. It's not charity so much as reinforcing white supremacy. Many churches will refuse to help you if you're not cis, if you're not the RIGHT kind of Christian, if you don't fit in with their specific community clubs. So you do all this paperwork and jump through all these hoops while also juggling whatever else it is-- abuse, homelessness, unemployment, etc-- and at some point they can just go
'Are you Trans? Well we don't like your vibes anyway. Come back never.'
'And you're married to a black person? Sorry, we have peers who want to preserve the community's current state'
'And you had a child out of wedlock? Oh we hate that. You should have thought of that before you dared to possess a womb'
That's not charity. That's gatekeeping resources. Theyre using the power imbalance to cultivate WHO gets help. And by trying to give churches the benefit of the doubt via their biased charity, you're also removing power from the idea of a secular support network-- which ought to be free from 'sincerely held belief' standards. Churches shouldn't HAVE to be doing biased charity because we OUGHT to have a robust society where people have options and don't have to play 'function in a white conservative vacuum' to get housing and food and other necessities.
And the people who say that conversion is not a requisite. Maybe not a PRErequisite, sure. My old church would target impoverished families and then bring them into the fold. Which, from a white savior standpoint, makes you feel SO good! Until you realize that you're treating human beings like stray animals and try to assimilate them into your social fabric, which again, is HEAVILY rooted in white supremacy. They're not helping you because you're a person. They're helping you because you're a number, and you're expected to join their ranks without question. Hate the people they hate. Continue the cycle of oppression into others until they also assimilate.
Just saying. That sounds less like charity and more like making a deal with a violent organization that wants to enforce a cruel and unfair institution. A fascist's wet dream.
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“Radfems read two lines of Marxist theory challenge” lol
I hate this superiority complex exhibited by Marxists. Imagine being so ignorant about radical feminism, to the point of missing/ignoring the fact that the radical feminism theory and practice was developed through Marxism but since marxist focus on the male worker, it misses tons of particular experience women suffer as a women, having men (independently of their classes) as the agent of our oppression.
I recently finished a book called “Proletarian Union” from Flora Tristan and while it has important contributions(such as uniting class struggle with women's rights), my core problem with the way socialists/Marxists (no matter their sex) treat women's rights as how useful women can be to both proletarian men and the revolution remains the same. Women aren't viewed as full human beings but in how useful they can be to the proletarian revolution and socialist/marxist tendencies of relegate male supremacy as a side issue (at best) alienate women from the oppression we face in the hands of men, in this particular dynamic which men do have privileges over women in the basis of sex.
I think Marxists should read real radical feminism theory and learn how sex-based oppression can't be treated as a mere side affect of class exploitation. But I guess, acknowledging the existence of sex-based oppression sounds more appealing when it comes from Engels, when women create an innovate form of analysis(women living experiences of oppression and exploitation) and still use the powerful class analysis of Marxists, we get demonized, mocked and isolated because how can women not accepting that we are secondary in the struggle? Duh
Right? Like maybe we as feminists aren't quite satisfied with an analysis of women's oppression that amounts to "Women are only raped, abused and exploited for economic factors, bourgeois women are not meaningfully oppressed even if they don't really own or control capital, proletariot men only mistreat women because they're economically oppressed themselves." or being told "women are the mothers and sisters and wives of the oppressed male worker and will therefore be liberated once he is liberated!"
Fuck Engels, his work was myopic, unconvincing, based on very little actual information or sources, doesn't adequately explain how women came to be oppressed or why and still supports essentialism. I'm sick of being told he's the be all end all. I’m also sick of radfems who feel the need to pander to marxists by quoting any vaguely feminist thing Marx or Engels said as a gotcha because that will only get you so far and we shouldn’t be working within misogynistic men’s limited frameworks to “prove” that feminism is essential to class analysis.
This is a really well written ask by the way, thanks for sending it.
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Ok so I don't typically post anything that can be considered political on my page cause it's supposed to be my little happy space free from torment on the internet but I feel like I'm loosing my fucking mind right now.
WE NEED TO STOP FIGHTING WITH EACH OTHER.
Political parties are the stupidest fucking thing that was ever invented- I hate to break it to you, but you're not all so different. Lots of people have the same ideologies as you and are on the "other side" of the political spectrum, but you are only hearing the outspoken angry people.
You ever play that game "we become what we behold"? It is a prime example of what's happening right now.
Anyways that's not my point right now.
My point is:
No one who is part of the 1% or in power wants to or is going to help you.
The government? Doesn't want to help you. Those billionaires? They don't wanna help you. Anyone who is running for president or any government position? They won't help you.
There has been an exorbitant amount of time for policies to be put into place to help the people who are struggling today. The only people who are in power or want power today are people who want to control you. I'm not talking about making it safer for people- I'm saying they want to continue to exploit and abuse the working class for their own gain.
And if we don't come together and fight the common enemy?
We'll continue to become more and more enslaved to corporate greed.
For once, stop complaining on the fucking internet and fighting with people you won't ever see in person in your lifetime and look at the people in power. They are the ones oppressing you. Not some random joe shmoe on Twitter. The political party they are with doesn't matter. They don't care about you. You are nothing but a bug under their shoe. You can "call them out" on the internet all you want, but that won't do anything in the long run. Register to vote, sure- your options are all ass- Do your own research look at what bills they endorsed or if they had been in the government before look at what they promised and what they delivered.
None of these old bags running are gonna tell you the truth, whether they're republican or democrat or an individual runner. Cause they wanna win. Start pushing for actually beneficial bills, make petitions, fuck run for president yourself.
As the people we're supposed to have the power. But we aren't fucking acting like it. Stop letting these old mother fuckers make outdated decisions and start pushing back. There are more of us than there are them.
I'm not saying riot or storm the white house for fucks sake. I'm saying do the paperwork, work with your local government, push back against the insane amount of leniency the government gives themselves.
They want us to fight with each other because it keeps our eyes off them.
If we keep looking at the state of our country and going "eh someone else will fix it" nothing will get done. I'm sure you know the bystander effect.
The people you see everyday are not so different from you. And guess what? We're all humans and we're all learning as we go. So the last thing you should do is ridicule or harass someone who's goal is to learn and better themselves for a better future. We need to stop acting like one different opinion means we can't get along with each other- because guess what? If we only interact with the most extreme sides of the spectrum we'll never learn from each other. It's okay to change your opinion when you are exposed to new information- stop acting like it's not.
This is not a post about anyone specific or anything specifically happening. I just want people to stop fighting each other when they have just as little power as the other person.
At this point I hate this point and really don't want to post it cause people have a habit of misinterpreting things said on the internet, but I think I will this time.
I'll reblog this with a link with an official list of current bills. If I can find anything else helpful I'll add it too. I can also look for more specific things if asked nicely. I'll see if I can get a link for voter registration too. Since things vary state to state I can only do so much. On more reminder that I don't want to fight with anyone, I want to be as helpful as possible.
#ugh#politics#cw politics#tw politics#united states#america#i keep drafting similar posts but not posting them because it goes against my whole brand#but everytime im on here i see people arguing and its driving me insane#send help#american politics#election#eat the rich#if we dont start helping eachother noone else will#if you disagree with anything stated please be gentle#cause im loosing my mind#like im about to go Chris McCandless and live in the woods until is inevitably starve to death#im not here to fight with anyone#this is supoosed to help unite people#as cheesy and classic American as that sounds#ugh im having serious doubts about posting this#if the response is overall negative ill delete it#i mean like ill delete it and never comment on this again#cause im new at being an adult but all this fighting is ridiculous#im sorry i broke my now politics rule but i feel like my mind is going to snap from the stress#democrats#republicans#political parties
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So apparently there's this post floating around twitter about an interview with the writers of MLB and they said "Sentibeing is common in miraculous universe and currently there's more than three Sentibeing being active" what do you think about it?
I think this makes senses considering the Peacock miraculous nature, we don't know how much holder Duusu has before Gabriel found her anyway. Allso while this doesn't confirm anything about Adrien being sentimonster, people just jump into the whole "all rich kids must be Sentibeing" but me think Majestia is the Sentimonster.
Sounds like that interview is just making thing more complicated if it has any weight to it, and that it's a big if. Let's, for a moment, consider the possibility of actual multiple Sentimonsters, human or otherwise.
I think, if you're going to establish a slave race in your fictional universe and focus on them, you're going to need to at least suggest the possibility of a liberation movement for them, or that piece of media is going to have some very harsh unfortunate implications. If Sentimonsters are "common", that makes them a fundamentally oppressed group in the Miraculous universe because, as I have stated repeatedly, they are all under an unbreakable magical slavery bond. They'd be living under constant paranoia of someone taking their Amok and forcing them to do their bidding, or of someone just picking it up without knowing what it is and causing them to lose all sense of self. Although that is only if they were created with enough self-awareness to be capable of that existential dread. Not everyone would use the power to make a 100% loyal slave to make a person, because that's messy (how do you explain a person popping into existence) and gross (most people are uncomfortable with slavery).
Frankly, I think the less focus the people behind the show place on Sentimonsters, the better. We've already seen repeatedly from tweets and interviews that they are incapable of addressing the Sentimonsters' slavery, most likely because they don't intend the Sentimonsters to be read as slaves and are therefore just ignoring that part of it. The only clean solution here that doesn't require the crew to completely change their angle on Sentimonsters (which is: they can be totally normal people or animals with no drawbacks that the writers admit to) is to not focus on any Sentihumans and ignore the ethical implications of a magical artefact creating beings that can only be slaves. Double down on the Sentimonsters being automatons. Feast and Sentibug's sense of self is questionable because they had no purely personal goals. Just confirm they could act independently but with no independent intent and the story doesn't need to go full-blown Sentimonster Liberation Front to justify itself.
I'm just going to be upfront here; the whole: "Every bad parent got their kid through unconventional means and all the good and loving families are conventional families" expansion pack of the Sentimonster theory makes it really hard for me to believe the theory stans when they claim that the theory and it being canon wouldn't be spiteful towards adoptive and other families that aren't strictly nuclear families with two parents and their shared biological children. Like, yes, you can say Sentiadrien alone isn't necessarily saying only adoptive families are abusive, since Chloé and Kagami got brought up the way they did but, if they're Sentimonsters too, then the show has a consistent pattern of pointing at abusive parents and saying: "They're not conventional parents so they're abusive because of that," because their only contrast will be loving and kind biological parents. I actually hate the Sentikid Expansion Pack Theory even more than the Sentiadrien Theory because of this. It's rooted in typical paranoia about adoptive parents and foster parents.
Having Sentiadrien happen and giving him peers would mean that the show would need to ascertain their future agency to the audience in some way, or this cartoon will be giving one of its main leads existential dread for the rest of his existence. And like, a story can do that, sure, but Miraculous' story doing that sounds out of place to me at least. Season five would have to get really dark really fast for that one thing not to cause whiplash.
Although, I do think they're talking about Sentimonsters specifically to incite Sentimonster discourse, because the Sentiadrien theory is the only big theory of this calibre for the show. It's a big deal because, if true, it will make people drop the show, so everyone is tuning in to see if it will happen or not, even people who are not otherwise that interested in the show. This means that any statement or interview that mentions Sentimonsters will get attention. It's pure manipulation of the fanbase. They're going to keep milking it for clicks even when all of this noncanon tweet or interview content offers no actual insight to the show or theory. As I stated earlier, the slavery and lack of agency issues have still not been addressed by anyone related to the show. They are not selling the theory as a possible story path to people who doubt it, they are just encouraging people who already buy into it. The least amount of effort for the most amount of attention.
Basically, the Sentiadrien stans going "Sentikids confirmed" over the interview is the intended reaction. This does make it less likely to happen, though, since the Miraculous writers do hate when the show gets spoiled, so they would not basically lead the fandom to the correct twist by their collective nose. The reason a lot of theory stans are ignoring this implication, however, is that they ignore the implications of the theory happening as well, which has enough bad stuff that I’ve made a bunch of posts about the negative implications. Implications don't matter, because "it just makes sense." It's not about what the twist would mean, it's about there being a twist because, apparently, every story needs one of those big twists now. Every show needs to have a big conspiracy theory that then gets confirmed to be canon because a couple of other shows that got big on tumblr did that too. Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, The Owl House and Miraculous Ladybug all being big on tumblr creates the illusion of the shows being related to each other so it makes it feel like they could be following a pattern.
#adrien is not a sentimonster#today on the 'can you imagine how nightmarish it would be to be a sentimonster?' show#although for gravity falls it really was a fifty-fifty on the big theories being confirmed#two stans was canon but grunkle 4 grandpa wasn't#ml fandom salt
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