there's this video you've probably seen already where a woman is shaking in front of a microphone and delicately tries to ask - how can i make my husband listen to me, i've tried everything, i don't want to seem ungrateful and the other man laughs - the problem is that you married a man, we're only listening 25% of the time and we only understand 5% of that! and the audience laughs and the woman laughs and you just sat there, phone in your hand, letting the sound of it echo

and the thing is that people make think-pieces about it (isn't this one of them) and satire versions and "flipping the script" which is good and fun but at the end of the day, there's some truth in that man's response about men-not-listening. and you have tried to language that feeling for years, this sense that you can only take up 33% of a conversation before others view it as being "dominating".

it's not that they aren't listening, it's that the action they're taking is purposefully silencing. it's different. you accidentally-don't-listen a lot; just because the world is loud and you're distracted. you don't mean anything by it. and the truth is that the man who spoke is relying on that to be true of you; the way it's true of everyone. but there is a different undertone to his kind of not-listening. what he means is they don't respect you and you shouldn't expect them to. there is a difference between oh shit i forgot to take the trash out and why didn't you remind me to do it, just like there is a difference between i didn't realize you wanted to go out this weekend and why do you expect me to plan things why can't you just tell me where we're going.

and the thing is that it isn't just him, and it's actually not just because of your gender - your skin, your class status, your weight, their ableism - it happens often. so often it feels like a tightness around your throat and a weight in your stomach. you're not even "really" allowed to be upset about it, because to them it's a joke. and they laugh. and you know exactly the amount of work that goes into every conversation. how you have to work to condense down your thoughts into intelligent, crisp soundbites; worried someone will try to swoop in and cut you off. and there's this sense from everyone else - oh stop being so sensitive, are you really upset just because they weren't listening and you don't know how to say the way that feels when it happens constantly.

there's that video of the science summit where a woman in the audience finally says let her speak please! and the whole crowd bursts into applause and the man leading the summit holds up his hands and bows his head and says oops, sorry! like what he did was awkward and embarrassing, a little social gaffe that happens easily. later in your meetings, you're asked to take notes, and you don't say anything, you just hear let her speak please! ringing in your head and know that you'll never be brave enough for that kind of thing. and besides. think of all the people who agree this was a one-off, he just got excited and all of the people who say one man is not indicative of all of society

at the dinner table you're talking about someone you don't like and how he's not good to his girlfriend and how she always has to remind him to put the effort in and before him, she was glowing with curiosity and passion but now she just seems... tired, unhappy. that he likes the way she burns out; she stays home and takes care of him and their 2 kids. and your father sniffs and says that men take a while to learn those kinds of things. and you just stare at him and think about your childhood and are like - no wonder i turned out like this

and you want to say - there's no fucking secret school or mystic form of communication. i was not sent to Rearing a Child University. i did not graduate from Getting Chores Done College. i ask questions and i listen and i pay attention, because that's basic fucking human decency. it stems from respect, and how i respect others and their agency. i clean the house because someone should clean. not because it comes "naturally".

hell, you had to google "how to boil an egg" the other day, just because you usually make them scrambled. you can never remember which of the 2 bathroom cleaners make chlorine gas, only that two of them definitely do. you've accidentally bleached your clothes. it took you like 3 years of self-teaching before you figured out how to actually cook things correctly - for that whole time, you burnt or undercooked everything. but you did teach yourself; just like you taught yourself how to listen with empathy. just like how you taught yourself to think before you speak. to be kind first, to be better at communicating. it seemed like a good thing, an adult thing.

the joke the man in the video makes is that women say i'm fine! when they are not fine. and you think about the 150 conversations that happened around that; about how she probably has had so many arguments with her husband. how she said i'm upset you don't take me anywhere and he got mad at her because of course i do, you made me go to that stupid restaurant like last week and she probably said that's not what i'm saying and he said now i'm supposed to be psychic or something and she said no of course not and he said how am i supposed to know what to do when you don't even like everything and she said i do like things and he said well how am i supposed to win? and her pastor probably told her to be more grateful because they do things at all, even if she has to plan them and her mom probably told her that's just how men are honey and she probably cried over her journal, trying to figure out why the fuck she "has everything" and is still so bitterly, horribly unhappy

and how, in your life, for so many reasons, you looked down the barrel of another argument; of explaining yourself and being vulnerable and begging for help again. how many times you just said i'm fine because it was better than doing that again; it was better than wringing yourself out when it's literally easier to just pretend. because he wasn't going to listen. your father wasn't going to be better and your boyfriend wasn't going to be better and your boss wasn't going to be more respectful.

and you sit in front of a video of a woman shaking, looking horrible and guilt-wrought that she's even asking this question. and you know; deep in your heart - that's you. in a different life, you are her. you've stood in her spot. and you had to listen while someone else cackled - why would we bother to notice when you talk?

i love how desperate some of yall are to call trans ppl you dont like retarded degenerates who need to be eradicated from the gene pool. and over homestuck of all things. but of course you cant say all of that so you just call them neurally degraded instead

points at how john interacts with, talks about, and even resurrected g1deon

points at how john engages with augustine in comparison to both g1deon and mercy (will get more into in just a second)

points at how ianthe sought power in her relationship to john by shifting to a more masculine presentation, when before she had a relatively feminine presentation

points at how john seems to take some extra joy out of both shaping alecto into the appearance of a white woman and also how he seems to feel a very specific facet of power in how he engages with mercy, who is also presumably a white woman

points at the concept that if pyrrha WAS a white woman there's a very specific exchange in how john perceives and engages with her relationship to g1deon

points at how cavaliers are repeatedly referred to, in some way, as largely darker in skin-tone than the necromancers AND how they're constantly described with/compared to beasts in some sense

points at how john is fixated on the roman empire and also catholocism

points at actual catholicism (and the history it has with race and colorism)

now.

is it hard to see how colorism is also a possible read into his character

On the topic of How Do You Handle XYZ Comment, I've always wondered how you handle terrible responses on your toh takes. Like I know the toh fandom doesn't lack piss on the poor reading comprehension and they also really enjoy wildly out of touch takes, but I've never seen any comments on your princess luz stuff of that nature. I'm sure they must be there but maybe I'm too early? But anyway, how do you tend to deal with the "acktually shipping luz and Hunter is incest" and the "ur not a real lesbian because putting amity in a poly ship is lesbian erasure" and the "as a white person kinda sus you make the poc woman an empress" kind of responses? Ones that are technically not hate and maybe if you squint could be from people who aren't inherently trying to do bad but just lack the maturity needed to engage with the internet at large?

this ask made me giggle. honestly, i haven't received as much pushback as you might expect! way less pushback than i expected. in the princess AU, i've gotten a LOT more "this is actually too grotesque for me to stomach" comments than "this is problematic" comments, which is fine. horror-thriller isn't for everyone, those comments do not upset me.

i have had a Few run-ins with bad faith people, whom i mostly block. there's one prolific commenter in toh tumblr fandom who would repeatedly write angry essays on my humor meta posts -- essays that were all about how belos is too evil to be sympathetic and/or about how hunter is a soft gentle boy who shouldn't be jokingly referred to as evil. then they'd go "i can't help my active and conscious decision to type a bunch of rude fucking words and then my active and conscious decision to send those rude fucking words because i'm autistic :(((" around the fourth or fifth time this happened, i was fucking done with that nonsense and finally blocked them. shoulda done it after the first comment tbh!! no more autism exceptions.

as for the rest of it, my main management strategy is to simply.... preempt the bad faith comments?

i had a LOT more unpleasant and conflict-filled fandom experiences when i was in the raven cycle fandom. that was my first exposure to "you can't ship multi-gender polycules if anyone involved is gay" and "queerplatonic het relationships are just heteronormativity shipping that you're trying to get away with." having dealt with those takes before, i've found a few different ways to disarm bad faith readers before they get started.

first is to be super open and honest about my interests. i talk about what i find compelling in different relationships All The Damn Time. it's really hard for anyone to accuse me of only wanting hunter to fuck amity if they've seen, like.... anything i've said about hunter and amity.

same with hunter and luz. the only negative reactions i've really gotten to how they're written in the princess AU is like.... two people being squicked by camila thinking they're romantically involved. i REALLY expected more pushback on the touchyfeely bed sharing stuff, but from what i remember, there's never been Any....? not even from people who consider them siblings.

i expected a lot of pushback on how mean hunter and amity are to each other, since it's taken So much farther than the canon. but it turns out that there's a very large overlap between people who like dark horror AUs and people who like hunter and amity murdering each other. (in a fluffy fic i don't think this characterization would fly Nearly as easily.)

i find that being funny really disarms people, too. when you look at any of my toh meta posts that could be controversial, they're basically all funny. people are a lot more willing to listen to what you have to say if you make them laugh, and it's harder for them to get angry at you.

and then the last thing is that i think i'm in sort of a privileged position in toh fandom. i've written a lot of controversial subjects and relationships and characterizations.... but i've also written some WILDLY popular mainstream fic. and people who like the mainstream fic don't really want to beef with me about differing niche opinions, bc there's a level of respect there. which they might not have for a writer they don't like.

but anyway. when things Do happen, i almost always just block and move on. there are so many people here who get what i'm talking about that there's no need for me to try to convert people who don't, you know??

i wonder if white people specifically white progressives realise that black people are only ever seen as their skin color first and foremost

oscars drama is always embarrassing but today especially because why are people acting like greta gerwig and margo robbie are the only women to ever exist within the film industry and ignoring and throwing the women who got nominated over them under the bus? and of course not a single person is talking about greta lee and celine song being snubbed for past lives (a better film in my opinion,) I wonder why... 😒

Y'all do know you can't make Jason be NOT white without changing his whole character, right?

For other characters, yes, because their physical appearance are not that influential in their story, on how they are viewed by people, on their personality formation — you can have a black/asian/indigenous/arab/brown/latino/etc Nico and yes, the hate he gets will have a undertone of racism but at the same time nothing significant on his story, motivation or personality will need to change. This is also true for other characters: Clarisse risks repeating the "aggressive WoC" stereotype but the character itself doesn't change.

This isn't true for Jason, whose main character trait is how he is perceived by others and how he showcases himself to others based on that perception. (specially with how little effort Riordan put on him besides making him perfect-er Percy who's somehow also weaker and less important than him).

Let's not pretend a black, Arab, indigenous, Asian, Latin man, etc, in the USA would ever be treated with the universal reverence Jason gets from New Roma, you can't have the illusion of perfection and most of all, of invincibility they have about him when you see him suffering racism or xenophobia in the middle of a mission. Nothing in his life has ever gone wrong, that's his image, destined to be king, he is supposed to have no weakness on his peers eyes.

He is not trying to prove people wrong, he is trying to prove them right; he isn't worthy despite their prejudice, on the contrary, he only tried to make himself worthy to fulfill their expectations. He can't be a woman or an immigrant or have a visible disability or any other thing that strays him from a perfect ideal by western society standards, and be that same character.

ok real talk small pet peeve of mine again. just little things. white trans ppl things. not gonna credit the artist cause i dont want to draw negative attention to them, this drawing is hella cute & relatable

yeah that drawing is so cute funny and relatable! but also! im kinda sick & tired of seeing "average trans people" always have caucasian features. cause its not the first time im seeing this for SURE.

should i get this mild annoyance at 2 hairstyles in a meme? nope. but im gonna talk abt it anyway. ok bye

sick of white wedding dresses. add some flavor and color im begging you

there is a problem when the largest progressive spaces online are led by three problematic white men, where two of them actively shit on woc voices, and one is a pedophile groomer that wants to fuck his pets.

everybody owes plaidos the biggest fucking apology btw yall have been fucking vile to her over literally nothing

Sorry. Saw a gay trans man accuse a lesbian of being transphobic one too many times because they said they "hate men." Grow up. Grow the fuck up. I'm so tired

my spotify wrapped being mostly female-fronted bands isn't really a hashtag feminist thing or even about me liking women, i'm not involved in bandom and just listen to whatever music makes my brain go BRRR.

but, like. when what you like is goth rock and symphonic metal......

there are a lot of hateful transmasc people out there, there are misogynists, a lot of guys willing to use their masculinity in shitty ways. i wish we had healthy support systems to lift guys out of that instead of the hatred they get sucked into when people turn their backs on them for the "sin" of being men. i've seen it happen, i've experienced it. a transmasculine person is one of the "good females/femmes" (even if they dont id as such) until they reach a certain point (whether they start T or simply reject the all men are evil rhetoric) and all solidarity is lost. of course that's going to feel bad. if you're continuously isolated and told these same t/erf talking points over and over again, you're going to become bitter. i'm fighting bitterness every day, seeing so many posts shitting on people like me. i have one person to talk to about this, who is my sibling (who isn't transmasc). i have no support group, no close friends, and i feel like if i were more inclined towards being a shithead, i would be taking it out on internet strangers who post transphobia. we desperately need these discussions and words and communities, unless people want to breed more awful guys who take it out on women.

really though it fucking sucks. you lose the community you had because you've "escaped oppression" (god i wish). you lose friends because their opinions on your identity are more important than your identity. you are rejected from spaces that welcomed you before because you're not feminine enough to be safe anymore. suddenly you're one of the Bad Guys, and there's nothing you can do about it. you're not allowed to talk about it. you have to bottle it up because don't you want to be just like a cis man? and if you do talk about it you're upholding the patriarchy. there's no winning.

i dont expect lots of people to see this post but please approach with sympathy and not hostility. men and masculine people should not be your enemy. the patriarchy sucks for us too

not to be that person but absolutely to be that person, but i don’t understand how i live in a fucking country where we have school shootings and gay bar shootings and grocery store shootings and nail salon shootings and gun rights are still deemed a “complex issue with lots of overlapping perspectives :(” but according to the Supreme Court, a woman’s right to do whatever she wants with her fucking body is deemed a Hard No from a group of old white christian men

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