#again: my post was about ‘this word is not derogatory an in context is actually a good thing. pls stop acting like it’s a bad thing.’

[jahiera]

I think there’s a definite problem though with the amount of art and fics being HEAVILY Astarion with cis women. That reeks of his queerness being erased. There should be a healthy balance of Astarion with different partners, but the “default” in the fandom is always him with a woman. As a gay man it’s very frustrating.

Okay so. in however much any of this matters. 1. Shoving this under a cut for people who are tired of seeing the discourse (I am too, I tend to scroll really really fast past it.) 2. I know the fandom discourse machine looooves super firm and snarky opinion jabs summed up in 169 words or less but I am literally incapable of not elaborating so. sorry YOU asked. since it’s also probably relevant, Im coming at this with the Mega Dyke with the fuck around and find out perspective irt my life experiences and queerness. I don’t generally care about niche queer internet discourse and I don’t generally care about fandom discourse, so you can tell how bored I am at work rn that I’m deep diving into this. tldr yeah you’re not wrong I agree that astarion’s queerness is erased in certain spaces but that has nothing to do with being attracted to women. my funny hot take is once again that astarion is a he/him evil femme to me so. let’s MOVE.

I received the second one within the first few minutes of the first, and I’m goingggg to proceed on good faith and with the idea that I think we’re all in agreement for the most part, because I think we are. But I’m going to address the most obvious thing that. I don’t really…. think is necessarily the point in this. first of all, I empathize that it suuuucks to not see as many works made for your main pairing of choice (there’s generally a deficit for literally everyone BUT astarion to boot too.) however ultimately fanworks are exactly that: fanworks, and they’re made For Free and posted by a Fan Author who has done this As A Hobby, “a problem nobody is addressing” in this context is……. you are one google doc and keyboard away from writing what you want to see in the world. or, I don’t know. encourage + comment + follow up on fic authors that write what you enjoy. fic is not paid content and the fic authors in bg3 are writing for themselves and what they put out, that they wrote for FREE, is up to them. I once again empathize with not seeing as much of a specific thing as you would like, and I definitely empathize with seeing a popularization of specific characterization that makes you want to scream, cry, throw up, etc. which brings me to what I can actually comment on and critique here. (general note: if you proceed to misread me on the basis of “people can do what they want!!” I assure you. you can do whatever you want forever. I do not care. I am not mad. I am minding my business 90% of the time. do I like domstarion? no. but it is NOT my concern nor my judgement.)

“That reeks of his queerness being erased. There should be a healthy balance of Astarion with different partners, but the “default” in the fandom is always him with a woman.” <- so! now that we have “it’s all for free man idk what you want me to say here” out of the way. we CAN critique something real in this that I do agree with. the sort of…. honestly kind of fascinating (derogatory) trends of what I’ll call Straightifying astarion for lack of a better word.

this brings me to the point I kind of offhandedly made in the previous post, about how there IS nuance to be said on astarion’s queerness getting erased. I do actually agree with you that in some spheres of the bg3 fandom, his queerness has been heavily sanitized and he’s become something of a placeholder for Sexy Vampire Boyfriend romance tropes. he’s mostly there to be a stand-in for a sexy dom vampire man; MANY of his complex character traits that have literally Nothing to do with romance have been basically entirely removed to serve a specific idealized idea of him that suit the scene. it’s frustrating! I find it frustrating. I also agree that within this specific Brand of Mischaracterized Astarion, he’s been so……….. reduced down to this that his more overt queerness is basically entirely removed. however, the issue is not that he’s with a woman in this? the issue is that the writer is not incorporating a sort of.. overarching queer lens, for lack of a better term, to the characterization they’ve got going on. you can write whatever you want forever, but it’s not written in a vacuum, I agree.

Since these are all popular straight romance tropes, he falls directly into the pit of Sexy Man (straight) very quickly, and his attraction toward others (let alone, good god, his complex relationship to sex, sexuality, desire? good fucking luck finding something thoughtful in there about that) tends to fall by the wayside as a result. It is what you would expect but it’s not without room for critique in what I think we’re aligned on; which is seeing astarion’s queerness erased is maddeninggg. And it is EXTREMELY frustrating to see if you’re someone like me, or possibly yourself, who’s into 1. really analyzing characterization and 2. really into exploring queer dynamics in writing + lit + media many different formats. THIS—the sanitization, the removal of astarion’s queerness—this is what is irksome as a queer reader.

however. the issue I’m seeing is that ^^^^^ this brand of mischaracterization is 1. being conflated with simply that he’s with women, and 2. the frustration of having less content (understandable) is turning into a very WEIRD dialogue in which the extreme of “well actually he wouldn’t even want to fuck women!!” is the stance to take (very weird) (kind of misogynistic) (kind of also reeks of continuing to talk about women as sex objects that astarion would not or would want to fuck) (astarion himself doesn’t even want to fuck for about 90% of his romance so maybe we should talk about that too) — rather than that it would be nice if his queerness would be addressed more openly and with more nuance and clarity than it currently is in That Particular Sphere Of Astarion Characterization. and, of course, the idea that it would be nice if he was portrayed with other kinds of partners! which I agree with and equally appreciate.

but there is no default. literally, there’s no default. what you’re seeing is what people are making of their own tavs, and maybe you would like to see more of another kind, but it doesn’t hold up as an actual fandom critique. what holds up is when we dive into how people write him; how do they write his personality, what traits are being exaggerated and what traits are being ignored; IS his queerness remembered within the text at all? and beyond that, how is that queerness treated when it is written? because I’ve seen the other extreme in which it’s The Homophobic Gay Stereotypes That Maybe We All Agreed At One Point Were Equally Offensive To Exaggerate To The Point Of Horror. half the discussion I see AROUND his queerness amounts to “omg he’s such a slutty flamboyant little fag” but in a quirky haha internet way. very “fruity is a nice alternative to saying queer!” “calling a gay guy fruity in the real world will get you punched out.” vibes in here sometimes and it is EQUALLY weird.

anyways. Astarion’s a multifaceted character which means the first thing everyone did was pick one or two traits to exaggerate and cling to and these color the entire reading of his character rather than taking in the whole. i agree that means his queerness got put to the wayside in some formats of him, and that’s deeply unfortunate + very frustrating. but fanfic is free, so I’m not with you that there’s a Problem That Needs Addressing so much as that’s what people are creating, and you should add to what you want to see in the world.

I’m not going to go on a tangent about how “oh let m/f be a thing!!” because I ALSO agree literally no one needs to be told “m/f is okay to do ❤️” we live in the real world here. and it’s really mindboggling how in some iterations he’s been turned into Straightstarion rather than his CANON QUEERNESS being applicable in every format of every relationship dynamic he could ever possibly be in. However. However. the answer to that is not? acting like the baseline attraction to women is the problem. if the way you’re talking about attraction to women feels rooted in upset about not relating to it and feeling like you’re forced to either relate to it or simply not engage, I do Get It, but at the risk of opening up an entirely different can of worms that needs an entirely different essay to address, gay men are not immune to misogyny and if the language used while talking about women is also objectifying or belittling women to some extent or acting as though attraction to women makes his queerness lesser. newsflash. that is still misogyny (and biphobia). it is not about defending straightness here, it’s entirely that reducing women down to sex objects even in the conversations about not seeing women sexually is alive and well (and repulsive), and that’s what I mean when I say I can hear the “lol I don’t fuck WOMEN that’s DISGUSTING” behind some of the other side of the conversation here. also this is an entirely separate essay but queerness will almost never exist in an easily consumable binary and trying to type him by his character traits is also. kind of weird. just as a thing.

#critical / #this feels like such a I will die on any hill. I am going to forget about this now #like again I’m not even disagreeing with some of you but other things in here. it’s a little bit deeper than that #or as deep as fandom discourse is anyways. #now that the high of soap boxing has worn off as I write these tags I’m like good lord. #I will NOT let inanities ruin this game for me. #sorry that’s once again not really directed at you anon but in general #good faith! we keep good faith!

[mostlydeadallday]

hello! i dont want to bother or sound mean but the way you use 'it/its' pronouns as being self derogatory bothers me a bit because i myself identify with it/its and seeing it spoken of like its wrong makes me uncomfrtable

if it want meat like that in your fic then sorry for misinterpreting it that way! hope you have a good day!

Hello anon! No bother at all, and I appreciate you reaching out about this. Honestly, it's something I've wanted to address ever since I began posting this fic, but I wasn't sure how to go about it, or if it was actually necessary.

I do understand your discomfort with my choice of pronouns for Hollow. I'm hoping that explaining the background for why I made this choice will help a little.

Hollow using it/its internally during this fic was never meant to be a statement about those who choose to use those pronouns for themselves. Rather, it's a comment on Hollow's state of mind—a glimpse of the conditioning they're under, where they've only ever been referred to as an object and don't have a concept of their own personhood. The element of choice is crucial, and Hollow was never given one, never allowed to form or shape their own identity, or specify how they would like to be referred to. I'm portraying that pronoun usage as wrong because it is wrong... for Hollow.

I could definitely see another vessel, one more comfortable and confident in its own identity, choosing those pronouns for itself, but Hollow is not there yet, and perhaps never will be. I do agree that there's a lack of representation of this concept in the fandom; however, the convention I'm relying on is far too firmly established in Lost Kin to change it now. (I have seen an increasing amount of fics using it/they interchangeably, however. For a couple of good examples, check out @ashyronfire's recent oneshots, @lingershade's ongoing comic, or ctdogma's current fics.)

My use of this narrative device was informed by other HK fics that I've read and loved, in which Hollow's character growth is signaled by moving away from the pronouns that were assigned to them and toward ones they choose for themselves. I was vaguely aware that there were possible repercussions for going this route, but my interactions in the fandom were limited at that point, so while I wish I had been able to tackle this issue with more knowledge than I had, I could only work with what I knew at the time.

Others have made the point that the game itself uses it/its in a neutral fashion, but I was not familiar with that theory when I started this fic. For the purpose of this AU, I'm positing that the language spoken in Hallownest makes a sharper distinction between person/object pronouns than English does, and "it" is just the closest approximation of the word Hollow is actually using, which would be a unique pronoun that is only ever used for objects.

At the end of the day, though, your mileage may vary. If seeing a character being dehumanized by your choice of pronouns is disturbing to you no matter the context, it may be beneficial to choose other fics to read.

Once again, I appreciate you reaching out to clarify. I'll be (perhaps belatedly) adding a disclaimer to the beginning of the fic regarding Hollow's pronoun choice and eventual change, and the reasons behind it, to inform future readers right away. Hope you have a great day as well!

#answeredasks #elletalks #anonymous #lost kin fic

[on-wednesdays-we-eat-the-rich]

I'm posting about autism again.

Because I've seen a couple of posts making the rounds that I've had some Feelings about but I only just managed to put them into words.

The posts are something along the lines of "neurodivergent people are making jokes about neurotypical people and Clearly this means neurodivergent people think neurotypicals aren't real". Or, to shorten it slightly: "neurodivergent people are oppressing neurotypicals by making jokes about them".

I have made a post already in which I semi-comedically argue against this idea, but I thought I might as well write an essay about it too just to make sure I'm being completely clear.

For a little bit of context, here are the kinds of jokes neurodivergent people make about neurotypicals (taken from pins in my autism board on Pinterest) (just to clarify, neurodivergence is not limited to autism and covers a whole bunch of different disabilities; the reason these jokes are mostly about autism is because I got them from my autism board. I'm sure people with other disabilities have made similar jokes.)

Obviously there are other examples but these are my favourites. Especially the last one, it's hilarious.

Why do we make these jokes?

Because they're funny

To parody the kind of mocking we get from neurotypicals by turning it back on them and showing how silly it is

To let off steam after a frustrating social interaction

Probably more reasons because I don't speak for everyone

Very rarely do I see a neurodivergent person make a joke that is specifically meant to hurt, harass or alienate a neurotypical person. However, those are all common reasons that neurotypicals make jokes about us.

You can apply the same logic to basically any marginalised group. For example, we see a lot of queer people make jokes about straight people, right? Always silly sarcastic things like "straight people have no fashion sense". Why is this a common joke? Because it's a very common stereotype that queer people, especially gay men, are fashionable and wear pretty clothes. Also, we get a fair bit of confusion from straight people about popular gay fashion. So making this joke is both a response to the confusion, and often judgement or piss-taking, and a reclamation of a stereotype that has been used in a derogatory way.

It's a very similar concept with neurodivergence. Many symptoms of disabilities, for example, autistic special interests, have been commonly seen as something bad that needs to be changed, and have only recently been reclaimed by the neurodivergent community as a good thing that brings joy. Special interests are still made fun of by people who don't understand them. We get called obsessive, annoying and childish. So if we make a joke like "I guess neurotypicals don't have interests" in response to this, it is not to make all neurotypicals feel bad, or to separate them from us, but to point out and laugh at the ridiculousness of telling us off for something that 1. we have very little control over, and 2. is not even a bad thing.

I don't know if neurotypicals are under the impression that neurodivergent people can't be sarcastic, but if that's the case it would explain rather a lot, because they seem to always take everything we say really seriously. Whereas if they say something about us that is actually hurtful and damaging, and we call them out on it, we have to listen to them call us overdramatic snowflakes and tell them that yes, we can in fact take a joke. The difference is that what they're saying is rarely actually a joke. Because they believe it. For hundreds of years, they've learned and been taught to believe that we're some kind of alien species, that we don't even count as human beings, that we either have no feelings at all or we express our feelings too much, that we need to change everything about ourselves to live up to their standards, and that we should never have existed at all. And when we retaliate, they tell us we're hurting their feelings. They say, "you know neurotypicals are still people, right?" and it's exactly the same thing that straight people do to queer people, that cis people do to trans* people, that white people do to POC, that men do to women, that any privileged group does to any marginalised group as soon as they show the slightest bit of resistance. All of a sudden you're the victims and we have to be reminded that you're People and you have Feelings and you can't take even a little bit of criticism because if you do you'll spontaneously combust. You're the ones who have been dehumanising us for as long as you've known about our existence, but sure. We could stand to be taken down a peg or two, right?

I'm reminded of James Acaster's stand-up routine in which he took the piss out of other comedians like Ricky Gervais for making transphobic jokes.

"I'm An EdGy CoMeDiAn, It'S mY jOb To ChAlLeNgE pEoPlE! Yeah because you know who's long overdue a challenge? The trans community."

I'm just going to leave that here. Feels like its fits.

#autism #the tism #neurodivergence #neurodivergent #long post #james acaster #just a little bit of james acaster #neurotypicals whining about how we're “excluding them” or some shit #as if they haven't done the exact same thing to us #doesn't feel good does it guys? #try being mercilessly bullied by a gang of teenagers #or sent to therapy that's meant to threaten you into behaving in a socially acceptable way #i think y'all can survive a little bit of piss-taking

[softdomhailie]

I can't remember why exactly I followed you because it has been a while but I suppose it was because I was so curious about what you do. Sure, a lot of people here write scenarios etc, but I love how you can create such a soft scene just with a few lines of text and there have been so many times I just curl into a ball and mentally scream because I want someone to be that loving with me in real life (I like to call myself patient but sometimes I need a little attention!).

So what you have is talent! I am sure a lot of people find comfort in your content. And you seem like a very gentle and fun person overall so I am happy I found your blog!

I wish you a good day/night, remember to take care of yourself too! ❤️

So kind <3

I actually get some, definitely not hate, but derogatory shall we say lmao reblogs from other kink posters who say many variations on "this isn't kink, it's just how you should treat people" lmao and like, I get it, In a lot of ways some of my posts if read out of context can totally just seem like love, right? But, my posts are meant to be read with an implied dom/sub, owner/pet, alpha/omega whatever dynamic. And there are some things that when they're in that dynamic, to me, are so so so important, and just exactly what I need from that dynamic.

The phrase "I love you, you're doing so well" can be said by anyone. but,

You sway, gently, back and forth lost in subspace, letting your dominants words flow through you. Your jaw drops once more as you lean forward to taste them again, needing to feel any part of them in your mouth just for connection, just to feel lost and close and safe. All theirs. Totally gone, letting your body take what it needs. The only words that get finally get through;

"I love you, Sweetheart. You're doing so, so well. That's it. My perfect sub."

That's totally different to me. Love, care, and safety in those words in really really intimate moments where a submissive has given all of their trust to someone who completely and utterly owns them. I write what I love personally, and that reassurance and praise is absolutely needed in my dynamic <3 ahahah

Wow, shut up Hailie 😂

Also, Thank you! I'm extremely hydrated atm >.<

🌈🌈⭐🌈⭐🌈⭐

#soft roleplay #soft dom #soft dom hailie #dom x sub #dom/sub #soft bd!sm #soft bd/sm #soft kink #bd/sm lifestyle #dom!sub #bd/sm community

[cesium-sheep]

I saw a [long post] with a lot of different people’s thoughts on use of the word crippled, especially in the context of the able-bodied nd/mentally disordered. I’m having a lot of trouble parsing it so I don’t want to reblog and add my thoughts directly, but I do have thoughts. (btw the post and the other post the ask was ostensibly in response to both have a lot of interesting discussion about ableism towards both physical and mental disability (and a lot of overlapping issues), I just. can’t read very well right now.)

before I got really sick, I started shying away from using the word crippled, because I’d heard other people say it was ableist, just like I started shying away from using the word crazy to describe things like buckwild video game plots, or how we’re not supposed to use “stupid” because it’s just one step down from the r slur dontchaknow, or “dumb” is a slur against the nonverbal (frequently posited by the fully verbal).

but as a cripple myself now (depending on how precise we’re getting with the term; I do not have severe motor dysfunction, paralysis, or loss of limb, but I rely on mobility aids to leave my home for more than a couple minutes and I am severely disabled), I think maybe broad discouragement of use is a bad thing? individuals who are not comfortable with it should be respected, just as individuals who prefer person-first language for themselves should be respected, but as a Broad Community Thing yknow? like, a lot of the instances in which it’s used are just... correct usage. to the best of my knowledge current use of the word “cripple” is basically synonymous with “disable”. crippling illness is generally considered acceptable even by those against other uses. how is that a different use from crippling depression, crippling debt, crippling cold?

it wouldn’t be more or less correct to refer to these things as debilitating instead. but “hey swap in debilitating” never seems to be the talking point. I’ve only ever really seen “don’t use The Bad Word”. which kinda increases stigmatization and stuff.

and like, by the same turn, I’d been nd and mentally ill (different things to me, and it’s very valuable to be able to speak of the cluster of autism adhd and other closely related disorders as a group with a single group term, which again no one is trying to replace as they try to turn nd into a whole-community term they’re only saying “no not for you”) for a very very long time, but one of the first things that happened as a result of me getting very very ill was being hospitalized in a psychiatric unit for several days. (which btw was abysmal and made things much worse mentally so like be careful tossing that kind of recommendation around.) and idk people saying “that’s crazy” doesn’t feel like an attack after that. especially when I’m most often hearing it from other mentally ill people that actually talk about accessibility and call out ableist things in the games they’re playing or their public conversations with friends.

idk it just kinda feels like. people are picking fights over language and in more than ten years it has not helped at all. so while there is absolutely some derogatory language that the outgroup should not say (the n word, the f slur, the r slur, etc), this kinda feels like it falls under the “queer” category for me. a word that absolutely has been used as a weapon (and which targets’ preference to “opt out” should be respected) but also is not inherently a threat.

(plus a lot of it feels like it totally fails to take into account that english is a living language, and use dictates meaning, and these words flat out are not the same as they were 50 or 100 or 1000 years ago, even though understanding how they came to be is valuable and often illustrative.)

#long post #ask to tag

[mean-atheist-posts-containment]

This is my sideblog for atheist memes / posts that are mean / rude / seem a bit aggressive to religious people.

To make some stuff very explicitly clear, I do not hate religious people. I do not want to force people to stop being religious. I do not want to harm or oppress religious people.

I am, however, very very displeased with the many problems in the world, including but not limited to Covid, all the other horrible infectious diseases that are killing people, preventable disasters that weren’t prevented including those caused via climate change, assorted bigotries, etc. A significant number of these problems are caused or enabled by one or more religions or cults. Or, in many cases, by one or more religious persons, often persons of prominence, who use their religion to justify the harm they are doing, and to justify why they can’t or shouldn’t question or change it, and influence others to do likewise. Fuck those people.

I DO oppose and dislike the idea that belief without proof is equal to or superior to belief with proof, magical thinking, and the belief that your personal religious rituals are equal to actually working on problems. If you see someone drowning and, instead of helping, offer to keep them in your prayers, you are the problem I am talking about and you are invited to go fuck yourself for each such offense.

I do not subscribe to the idea that a person being wrong about one thing necessarily means they are wrong about all or most others, and vice versa. Richard Dawkins, to take a notable example, can take his assorted bigotries and go fuck himself with them. That doesn’t mean he is wrong about the number of gods in this universe. Similarly, the fact that X religious person says “we should be kind to other people actually” and is correct about that moral statement does not mean they are correct about the number of gods in the universe.

I am here to complain and vent and find the bits of flawed arguments that got stuck in my brain when I was an indoctrinated religious child to shake them out and figure out where I want to go from there. Please note that my description of my past self is meant to be literal and not derogatory, I literally left my religion when I was 18, and the ordinary course of teaching a person a religion and its doctrine may be literally and legitimately called indoctrination and I use it in that manner.

If you catch me with a straw-man feel free to inform me, I don’t actually want to play with those because they are boring.

I am not particularly interested in throwing sharp words meant to hurt their feelings at religious people. I may still do so if actually necessary to get them to stop doing something harmful, but not for it’s own sake. That is why I am making a separate side blog. So you can follow my main and don’t have to see this. Or not. Up to you.

If you are a religious person feeling offended by stuff I post here, for reasons that aren’t strawmen or other logical fallacies, please feel free to block and/or unfollow me and never look at my blog again. My blog is not for you, and I won’t be offended if you opt out of having it in your space.

I block and report bots. I may ask you to text me like an actual human in dms if you follow me and your blog resembles the profile of a bot. In particular, it is suspicious to have never posted anything. I am informed that this is often occurs among the actual humans likely because you are accustomed to the rules of some other sites such as instagram. It is not the custom here and is genuinely one of the signs of being a bot. I do not say this to shame you, but to provide context. Please post / reblog something, that’s how we share with others on this site. There is technically an algorithm but we don’t like it and many of us turn it off completely. Thus, likes do very little to increase visibility.

[baeddel]

Please. Please can you tell me what a baeddel is and why people (terfs?) used it in a derogatory manner on this website for a hot minute but now no one ever uses it at all

you asked for it, fucker

[2k words; philology and drama]

baeddel is an Old English word. i have no idea where it actually occurs in the Old English written corpus, but it occurs in a few placenames. its diminuitive form, baedling, is much better documented. it appears in the (untranslated) Canons of Theodore, a penitential handbook, a sort of guidebook for priests offering advice on what penances should be recommended for which sins. in a passage devoted to sexual transgressions it gives the penances suggested for a man who sleeps with a woman, a man who sleeps with another man, and then a man who sleeps with a baedling. so you have this construction of a baedling as something other than a man or a woman. and then it gives the penance for a baedling who sleeps with another baedling (a ludicrous one-year fast). then, by way of an explaination, Theodore delivers us one of the most enigmatic phrases in the Old English corpus: "for she is soft, like an adulturess."

the -ling suffix in baedling is masculine. but Theodore uses feminine pronouns and suffixes to describe baedlings. as we said, it's also used separately from male and female. but it's also used separately from their words for intersex and it never appears in this context. all of this means that you have this word that denotes a subject who is, as Christopher Monk put it, "of problematic gender." interested historians have typically interpreted it as referring to some category of homosexual male, such as Wayne R. Dines in his two-volume Encyclopedia of Homosexuality who discusses it in the context of an Old English glossary which works a bit like an Old English-Latin dictionary, giving Old English words and their Latin counterparts. the Latin words the Anglo-Saxon lexicographer chose to correspond with baedling were effeminatus and mollis, and Lang concludes that it refers to an "effeminate homosexual" (pg 60, Anglo Saxon). this same glossary gives as an Old English synonym the word waepenwifstere which literally means "woman with a penis," and which Dines gives the approximate translation (hold on tight) male wife.

R. D. Fulk, a philologist and medievalist, made a separate analysis of the term in his study on the Canons of Theodore 'Male Homoeroticism in the Old English Canons of Theodore', collected in Sex and Sexuality in Medieval England, 2004. he analysed it as a 'sexual category' (sexual as in sexuality), owing to the context of sexual transgressions in the Canons. he decides that it refers to a man who bottoms in sexual relationships with another man. i don't have the article on hand so i'm not sure what his reasoning was, but this seems obviously inadequate given what we know from the glossary described by Dines. Latin has a word for bottom, pathica, and the lexicographer did not use this in their translation, preferring words that emphasized the baedling's femininity like effeminatus, and doesn't address the sexual context at all. Dines, however, only reading this glossary, seems to decide that it refers to a type of male homosexual too hastily, considering the Canons explicitly treat them separately. both Dines and Fulk immediately reduce the baedling to a subcategory of homosexual when neither of the sources to hand actually do so themselves.

by now it should be obvious why, seven or so years ago, we interpreted it as an equivalent to trans woman. I mean come on - a woman with a penis! these days I tend to add a bit of a caution to this understanding, which is that trans woman is the translation of baedling which seems most adequate to us, just as baedling was the translation of effeminatus that seemed most adequate to our lexicographer. but the term cannot translate perfectly; its sense was derived from some minimal context; a legal context, a doctrinal context, and so forth... the way Anglo-Saxons understood sex/gender is complicated but it has been argued that they had a 'one sex model' and didn't regard men and women as biologically separate types, which is obviously quite different from the sexual model accepted today; in any case they didn't have access to the karyotype and so on. the basic categories they used to understand gender and sexuality were different from ours. in particular, Hirschfield et al. should be understood as a particularly revolutionary moment in the genealogy of transsexuality; the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft essentially invented the concept of the 'sex change', the 'transition', conceived as a biological passage from one sex to the other. even in other contexts where (forgive me) #girlslikeus changed their bodies in some way, like the castration of the priestesses of Cybele, or those belonging to the various historical societies which we believe used premarin for feminization [disputed; see this post], there is no record that they were ever considered men at any stage or had some kind of male biology that preceded their 'gender identity.' the concept of the trans woman requires the minimal context of the coercive assignment at birth and its subsequent (civil and bio-technological) rejection. i have never encountered evidence that this has ever been true in any previous society. nonetheless, these societies still had gendered relations, and essentially wherever we find these gendered relations we also find some subject which is omitted or for whom it has been necessary to note exceptions. what is of chief interest to us is not so much that there was such a subject here or there in history (and whatever propagandistic uses this fact might have), but understanding why these regularities exist.

a very parsimonious explanation is that gender is a biological reality, and there is some particular biological subject which a whole host of words have been conjured to denote. if this were the case then we would expect that, no matter what gender/sexual system we encounter in a given society, it will inevitably find some linguistic expression. if, like me, you find this idea revolting, then you should busy yourself trying to come up with an alternative explanation which is not just plausible, but more plausible. my best guesses are outside the scope of this answer...

anyway, all of this must be very interesting to the five or six people invested in the confluence of philology and gender studies. but why on earth did it become so widely used, in so many strange and unusual contexts, in the 2010s? we're very sorry, but yes, it's our fault. you see apart from all of this, there is also a little piece of information which goes along with the word baeddel, which is that it's the root of the Modern English word bad. by way of, no less, the word baedan, 'to defile'. how this defiled historical subject came to bear responsibility for everything bad to English-speakers doesn't seem to be known from linguistic evidence. however, it makes for a very pithy little remark on transmisogyny. my dear friend [REDACTED] made a playful little post making this point and, good Lord, had we only known...

it went like this. its such a funny little idea that we all start changing our urls to include the word baeddel. in those days it was common to make puns with your url (we always did halloween and christmas ones); i was baeddelaire, a play on the French poet Baudelaire. while we all still had these urls a series of events which everyone would like to forget happened, and we became Enemies of Everyone in the Whole World. because of the url thing people started to call us "the baeddels." then there was "a cult" called "the baeddels" and so forth. this cult had various infamies attatched to it and a constellation of indefensible political positions. ultimately we faced a metric fucking shit ton of harassment, including, for some of my friends, really serious and bad irl harassment that had long-term bad awful consequences relating to stable housing and physical safety and i basically never want to talk about that part of my life ever again. and i never have to, because i've come to realize that for most people, when they use the word baeddel, they don't know about that stuff. it doesn't mean that anymore.

so what does it mean? you'll see it in a few contexts. TERFs do use it, as you guessed. i am not quite sure what they really mean by it and how it differs from other TERF barbs. i think being a baeddel invovles being politically active or at least having a political consciousness, but in a way thats distinct from just any 'TRA' or trans activist. so perhaps 'militant' trans women, but perhaps also just any trans woman with any opinions at all. how this was transmitted from tumblr/west coast tranny drama to TERF vocabulary i have no idea. but you will also find - or, could have found a few years ago - i would say 'copycat' groups who didn't know us or what we believed but heard the rumours, and established their own (generously) organizations (usually facebook groups) dedicated to putting those principles into practice. they considered themselves trans lesbian separatists and did things like doxx and harass trans women who dated cafabs. if you don't know about this, yes, there really were such groups. they mostly collapsed and disappeared because they were evildoers who based their ideology on a caricature. i knew a black trans woman who was treated very badly by one of these groups, for predictable reasons. so long-time readers: if you see people talking about their bad experiences with 'baeddels', you can't necessarily relate it to the 2014 context and assume they're carrying around old baggage. there are other dreams in the nightmare.

the most common way you'll see it today, in my experience, is in this form: people will say that it was a "slur" for trans women. they might bring up that it's the root of the word bad, and they might even think that you shouldn't use the word bad because of it, or that you shouldn't use the word baeddel because it's a slur. all of this is a silly game of internet telephone and not worth addressing. except to say that it's by no means clear that baeddel, or baedling, were slurs, or even insulting at all. while Theodore doesn't provide us with a description of how we can have sex with a baedling without sinning, and it may be the case that any sexual relations with a baedling was considered sinful, sexuality-based transgressions were not taken all that seriously in those days. there was a period where homosexuality within the Church was almost sanctioned, and it wasn't until much later that homosexuality became so harshly proscribed, to the extent that it was thought to represent a threat to society, etc. and as i mentioned, there are places in England named after baedlings. there is a little parish near Kent which is called Badlesmere, Baeddel's Lake, which was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Domesday Book (as having a lord, a handful of villagers and a few slaves; perhaps only one or two households). it's not unheard of, but i just don't know very many places called Faggot Town or some such. it's possible that baedlings had some role in Anglo-Saxon society which we are not aware of; it could even have been a prestigious one, as it was in other societies. there is just no evidence other than a couple of passing references in the literature and we'll probably never have a complete picture.

[avintagekiss24]

Hi! I don't want to start anything on here and am always willing for civil conversations. At this point there's so much I've found out about Seb (besides the video he liked, the tommy lee thing, and the girlfriend thing) that I feel so guilty if I would continue to support him. I love him sm but it just doesn't look good rn. He is associated/follows an organisation (for helping veterans) that has posted a blue lives matter flag picture and who's co-founder has sexual assault allegations against him, and worked with him in 'The last full measure'. His friend Paul Walter Hauser has done blackface in the past, and when called out on it he just listed a few people that also did blackface. There's more, I found a discussion on here that I can link. I seriously don't support "cancel culture" bc I don't think it helps anyone but there are just a lot of 'mistakes' and shady people that can be linked to Seb, I wish it wouldn't be that way. I honestly don't know what to think about it anymore.

Hi! I’m also open to having civil conversations and I don’t believe you’re trying to start anything. I really do think this situation of dragging up a four year old video and taking it completely out of context is harmful not just to Black people, but to fandom/activism in general. This is gonna be long because I’m going to take your points one by one, and I want to preface this by saying that I will not answer any derogatory, sideways asks pertaining to this subject. I will delete every single one and will block your silly ass. I’m not going to argue with people who think I’m blindly supporting Sebastian because I’m just trying to get fucked by him, or people who think I hate myself and am trying to appease some white man.

So, on with the discourse!

The video he liked - this video was taken completely out of context and that is my main issue with this whole situation. It was not a video of a white man saying that he thinks he should be able to say the n word as everyone claimed it was. They were quickly debating on whether or not it's okay to say in rap lyrics. He was told no, that's not okay, that's never okay and they moved on from it. That's it. End of story. That somehow was twisted into a click bait style headline of "Sebastian Stan likes a video of a white man defending his right to say the n word" when that is absolutely not true. My other issue is that people are more upset that Sebastian liked the video than they are about the white man in the video literally saying the n word. So, do you really care about the use of the n word like you're claiming? Cuz if you do, you'd be more upset at the white man that said the word than you would be about the white man simply liking the video. Or, are you just using this as an excuse to grandstand against a white man you don't like?

The Tommy Lee thing - Sebastian Stan playing Tommy Lee does not make Sebastian Stan a bad person. Is Charlize Theron a bad person for playing Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who started murdering men? Is Leonardo DiCaprio a bad person for playing a slave owner? Is Edward Norton a bad person for playing a nazi sympathizing racist? Actors play bad people. That doesn't mean that they themselves are bad people. 1990's Tommy Lee was a bad person, but that should have no bearing on who Sebastian Stan is or his character as a man.

The gf/Paul Walter Hauser thing - Why are we holding Sebastian accountable for what the people around him are doing? Again, why are we more upset that Sebastian is associated with people who have done questionable things than the specific people themselves? I'm not going to speak on the kimono wearing -- I'm not Asian. It's not my place to say whether or not its offensive because it's not my culture, but she posted that picture and attended that party before she started dating Sebastian, quite possibly before she even knew him. Same with Paul. I think that black face thing was long before he knew Sebastian. Now, if Sebastian was defending these actions, going around saying "I think it's okay for white women to wear Kimono's" "I think black face is fine" "I think white people should be able to say the n word" then we'd have a different story, wouldn't we? But that's not what we have, and that's not what he is doing. He is not responsible for the things his friends do or have done in the past just because he's more famous than they are, and he is not required to speak on them. Let's put it this way -- would you be comfortable having to be responsible for something a friend of yours did before you knew them? Would you want to have to be forced to answer for your friend when you yourself had nothing to do with the questionable behavior?

The organization that supports the military/blue lives matter - Sebastian cannot control what message that foundation puts out and it does not mean that he is or is not pro-police himself. There is not enough concrete evidence -- if any evidence for that matter -- that Sebastian is a blue lives matter supporter. Did Sebastian donate before they put up the blue lives matter post? Or after? I don’t know, cuz I don’t follow him that closely, but if he donates before they come out with a particular stance, that means he should be held accountable for that? I know I donated to an organization once and they turned out to support something that i’m 100% against. That means I’m a bad person because I couldn’t see into the future? Another point, how can we be certain that Sebastian saw the blue lives matter post in the first place? I know I’m not online 24 hrs a day, I miss posts all the time and I’m just an average person. I make three or four tumblr posts a day, and I’m gone. I have to play catch up on social media, and even then, I still miss stuff. So I’m sure the same happens to a working actor. As for the co-founder, I don't know who this person is and would rather not get into any allegations against them because I don't want to trigger anyone who comes across this post. If Sebastian knows about these allegations, is a willing participant/supporter of this person then yeah, that's pretty shitty, but we don't know the inner workings of this friendship/acquaintance/work relationship. We don’t know how close they are or if they even still speak.

I’m a pretty big fan of Don Cheadle. He’s a stand up guy, he’s a great actor, he’s funny, he’s political and stands up for what he believes in and in a very public way. I support him. Don Cheadle is also friends with Chris Evans, RDJ, Mark Ruffalo, and Letitia Wright (just to name a few). Chris Evans has a bipartisan forum that highlights/promotes right wing politicians, RDJ defended Chris Pratt during the whole “he’s the worst Chris in Hollywood” crap, who’s technically done black face, and who once said to a female reporter “nice tits” when she walked into the room, Mark Ruffalo just walked back his support of Palestine, and Letitia Wright retweeted/supported an anti-vaxxer/anti-trans Pastor who equated an ingredient of the covid vaccine to the devil because it contained some parts of the word Lucifer. Does that mean Don is now a bad person because he’s friends with these people? Why isn’t he getting any heat for his friendships with them? Why isn’t he being held accountable for what they’ve done and said? Oh right, because he’s not a white fave. So people don’t care one way or the other, which brings me to my next point. 

I can guarantee you that if Sebastian’s gf or Paul or this co-founder were not associated with Sebastian in any way, nobody would give a shit about her wearing a kimono, about Paul doing black face, or about the co-founder/organization being blue lives matter supporters and in that lies the actual problem. Being critical of people and their actions should be consistent and should happen all the time -- not just when they interact with your white fave. That’s when it becomes performative and looks like you just want to be able to show internet people that you follow/support/stan unproblematic celebrities, when really, you don’t care.

I think the moral of this post is that I think it's unfair to hold a complete stranger to a standard that I cannot hold myself to. I also don't view celebrities the way most teenagers/twenty somethings do, and that’s because when I entered fandom we didn't have social media, so I grew up with a wall between myself and said celebrities. There is no wall now with the presence of social media. "Fans" nowadays have a weird ownership feeling over celebrities because they can read their personal thoughts or view personal pictures and think that they have this personal quasi-friendship with them. I can't get on board with that. I prefer having the wall and I still keep the wall.

If supporting Sebastian makes you uncomfortable, then by all means, stop supporting him. Just make sure you are making this decision for yourself based on credible sources and concrete evidence and that you're not letting this fake woke activist mob make you feel uncomfortable. Internet activism means nothing unless you put your money where your mouth is in your real life and 90% of the social justice internet warriors do not. Real activism is bigger than changing your avi to a black square.

#asks #answered #sebastian stan

[chichiscloset]

I love your blog! I absolutely adore raising women up and being lifted up spiritually and emotionally as well. All ways actually if I’m being honest. I am so happy I stumbled across you 💕. I love the way you articulate positivity with strength, guided pathways with a sense of direction to travel, and logic. I would love to pass on some words of encouragement, wisdom, and guidance if you wouldn’t mind sharing your thoughts on a circumstance my friend is going through. If you had any piece or pieces of advice to give a woman who is/was in love with a good man, who recently was diagnosed with a long term mental health disorder/illness, started on new medication for it leading to some reality alterations and derogatory side effects from the meds, while making some very poor judgment/choices during the transition, was dishonest about things that can be defined as infidelity, dishonesty, disrespectful, and extremely painful and devastating to a marriage or any relationship what would it be? He did come clean about his actions fully. This is how she found out she said she had no intuitive feelings or saw any red flags that would have lead her to believe what he had told her. Losing trust is a horrific scenario for any relationship. The loss of self worth, low self esteem, and lack of confidence can be devastating. However, from a medical professional vantage point, mental health illness’s can be mind and life altering along with medication side effects or adverse reactions then not to mention other mental instabilities one may endure because of the new diagnosis in general where the reality of the life they have known, all of its components, values, and meanings change for them. Stability is no longer in existence. Is it a justifiable excuse though? I’m not so sure as I believe every persons scenario and thought processes could and would be different. My concern is how to keep their spirits up, having her not feel at fault harvesting shame and remorse, and not sinking into self worth/image or confidence level declines, inappropriate accountability, unwarranted pain and suffering, responsibility in a negative context, severe depression, and unwanted judgment from busy bodies who ridicule and gossip unnecessarily during this time resulting in embarrassment? It has been hard for her and him frankly and I can see they want them make it work. They have an amazing connection and chemistry. It is really very sad for all who know them. She is not on tumblr but I will be forwarding some of your posts and your response if you don’t mind. I’d like to help them in anyway I can… together or not together… Her biggest challenge is trusting him not to do something out of the norm again because she forgave him this time and him use the “mental health” or “medication alteration” as a valid reason to be dismissed of accountability or an “acceptance” of this kind of behavior going forward. Thank you for your time and consideration. Signed, Smart, beautiful, confident, strong, and leading others to excellence if and when not being lead while seeking it myself. Stay beautiful always with a smile my dear friends!!! 🤍💕🤍

Thank you so much anon for sharing your story ! Truly, this is amazing! I hope others can learn from your friends story.

Please can you DM me? I’d love to speak with you . I don’t think I can answer your question within this little text box. Thank you ✨

~Chichi

#answered #levelling up

[puzzle-paradigm]

How to appropriately use the word "Jew"

I've had a lot, and I mean a lot of people ask me if "Jew" is a slur. The answer to that is actually more complicated than a simple "yes" or "no", but I think it's important and that we should be talking about it, so hold onto your kishkes, because it's education time. Let's start with some simple guidelines: Jew should NEVER be a verb. Some examples of using "Jew" as a verb are as follows:

"They Jewed me out of my money"

"I can't believe they Jewed her out of her bonus"

Both of these use "Jew" to denote a greedy, selfish, or conniving individual. This perpetuates harmful stereotypes that have caused great harm to Jews throughout history. In this situation "Jew" is certainly a derogatory word, though I do not think it can be defined as a slur.

Jew should NOT be used as an adjective, unless you are specifying that something has the quality of being Jewish.

A bad usage: "It's awfully Jewish of you to be a doctor."

A good usage: "Yes, that is a Jewish organization. It was founded by Jewish immigrants to the country."

The first example makes assumptions on a person based on two unrelated facts: they are Jewish, and they are a doctor. This perpetuates harmful stereotypes (all Jews are wealthy, all Jews fall into certain professions, etc.) and is inappropriate.

The second example uses the word "Jew" to denote two simple facts: the organization is a Jewish one (such as a charity, shul, or hospital), and was founded by immigrants who were Jewish (relevant to the previous part of the quote). NOTE: using "Jew" in this manner is NOT acceptable when discussing conspiracy theories ("did you know all of the wealthiest media heads are Jewish?").

"Jew" is SOMETIMES ACCEPTABLE as a noun. This one depends on many things, such as context and tone of voice. "Jew" on its own can usually be replaced with "Jewish" or "Jewish person".

"Don't be such a Jew"

"I am a Jew"

"They are a Jew"

Example one once again implies an inherent negativity to being a Jew. It says "Being a Jew is bad. It is something you do not want to be".

Example two shows an individual self-identifying as a Jew. This is them stating a fact about themself and has a positive or neutral connotation.

Example three is ambiguous, because it depends on the tone of the speaker. If the speaker shows other signs of antisemitism, or is using a derisive or otherwise negative tone, "Jew" is not acceptable and is being used in a derogatory manner. If they are not, it is more likely that they are using it appropriately. Context is an important clue.

Finally, why do people think calling someone a Jew is a slur, but have no issues with calling someone "Jewish"? I think the answer comes from several causes, but two are especially prominent in my mind.

The antisemitism ingrained in many cultures leads to people internalizing it as an insult. This makes the most sense when looking at phrases like "Jew down" or "Being Jewed".

The systematic appropriation of Jewishness by antisemitic entities. This is something that is more complex that I may have to go into more detail on later, but in essence antisemitic groups frequently attempt to co-opt Jewish language and identity as dogwhistles and code, working to stigmatize our own language while simultaneously attempting to cause us harm. By perpetuating the idea that our word for ourselves is a slur, they can change our name itself into a forbidden word. Might have to make a separate post on this because it's a thing and it is Bad.

#judaism #jewish #jumblr #religion #antisemitism #ok to reblog #i guess #still not sure how the do/do not reblog thing works #all of those examples are real #i have heard them all multiple times

[jockpoetry]

supernatural sees women as a tool for development and strengthening of narratives/motivation and dean sees his body as a tool. is that anything?

When I saw this ask I really made the 🥴in real life. So, yeah anon, I do think there’s something to this.

Quick Disclaimer before I actually launch into my thoughts™: A lot of my read of Dean stems from my experience as both an oldest daughter and a transman. Being the oldest daughter was an experience I lived for many years, but I am also a man. I wasn’t raised as a man, I wasn’t socialized as a man, and even though once I came out upon reflection my masculinity was obviously there. Like I was a man™ before I knew I was a man. Even when I actively tied my identity to femininity for a long time! A lot of my prideful moments were based around statements like: “I was the only girl who (fill in the blank).” 

So I am just putting that out there before I launch into my spiel about Dean/Gender/Tool because they all interlock for me. 

I am also going to apologize in advance because I know this has fully gone off the rails and I’m not even done writing it yet. If this is incomprehensible ! Well, happens to the best of us.

First off, most importantly I guess before we discuss womanhood and Dean and the way both are utilized on the show I need to say that I personally don’t subscribe the whole Dean is female coded thing. 

It’s a read I can absolutely understand. But for me..he’s not. 

He’s a hypermasculine man to the point that when (and because he is written as a punchline, as the stupid™ brother, as the whore™, as the mother/father™, as daddy’s blunt instrument™, etc) Dean deviates from the pre-accepted definition of hypermasculine it’s Wrong. 

It’s Instantly Feminine. 

I think the internet has made the world very black and white, or blue and pink maybe. This point, I think, colors a lot of these discussions. Dean cooks, he cleans and so therefor he’s female coded. When that really just feeds back into the whole toxic masculinity loop. You can’t be masculine and cook and clean and cry. That’s for feminine people only. 

I get the argument! I do, I just think that Dean’s actions are not inherently feminine, it’s just in the vacuum of Female and in the Absence of Traditional Masculinity it makes sense to assign him female coded and move on.

IN FACT the way that Dean is the action hero of the show, the Masculine™ one on the show - but he cries, and he rages, and he cooks (Again and Again) and cleans (Again and Again). The fact he’s macho and confident but he has so little self esteem. Is frankly insane to me. You have this blaze of glory character who is so depressed that they have him kill himself. Twice. In explicitly “I hate myself, I hate hearing all the things I hate about myself, I want to destroy myself” ways. 

On just a regular ol’ network show that is just ungodly bad at times. They let their Male Hero cry - all the time (if I linked every example of this the essay would be...longer than it already is, but just take my word for it). Dean tears up and grieves and shows more than just Angry Horny Violent™ (he shows plenty of that, don’t get me wrong) but he’s Emotional (Again and Again and Again). In many different ways!

I mean, beyond even just tearing up, they make their Male Hero™ face sexual violence in pretty, uniquely horrifying - and queer! - ways.

Let’s make it clear, they did a lot of this unintentionally. 

Or they do it as a joke. 

Off of dean for a moment to say women are plot devices in this show. I could probably count on one hand female characters who have sincere depth to them that have roles outside of progressing plot, filling a filler episode, and who are still alive. Like even characters such as Charlie who are wholly developed, and interesting, are only remembered/mentioned/utilized to progress plots or fill an episode out - and then she dies. For pain™ for plot™ for no other reason than to traumatize a character. 

Which let’s also make it clear Dean’s trauma is also only used as a plot device (as is Sam’s but in a different way, and Cas’ trauma is a whole other barrel of fish we’re not gonna dive into right now). Like wholesale full stop they don’t actually care about what happened to him. Unless it’s relevant in an episode. 

Oh that boys home he was left at when he was 16 for months? Sure we’ll sprinkle that in in the back half of the series. Oh he was covered in bruises and said it was from a hunt (when it’s clear contextually they were from his father but saying the fantastical but true is easier than saying the uncomfortable but true). As Dean says though the story became the story, he was sixteen. He just went along with what John said.

We only see Dean ever truly rage at John, by the way, when either Dean is dead (when he’s between life and death and he rages at John, right before John “apologizes” for traumatizing him, for putting too much on Dean’s shoulders, and fucking dying) or John is dead (the Djinn episode where Dean is straight™ and John is dead™ and he goes to his grave and just yells and rages like he should have to his father in the real world).

Dean’s trauma from being both tortured and torturer in hell? Yeah, we don’t talk about that after it’s Relevant™. Even though it’s clear - especially in the demon!dean, mark of cain era, all those years later - Alastair still has his hooks inside of Dean. I stopped watching originally after s8 ended. I was fed up with the show, and with this whole renaissance I’ve been doing a rewatch and I’m into season twelve now and it really has never come up again. 

Even when he had the mark of cain and he was tasked with questioning and accused of torturing it was “the mark has changed you” and not “you were victim and victimizer in hell for forty years, which is longer than you’ve been alive on earth” (and, was about as long as he wound up living. Which is desperately sad.

Because we talk about Sam’s desire for a “normal” life but, Dean wanted out too. He was tired in the first few seasons of this show, he never had a chance to taste freedom (we don’t count the boys home, because that was a different kind of regimented life, and it was a false freedom) the way that Sam did in Flagstaff with Bones or at Stanford with Jessica. Love for Dean is sacrificing, it’s putting himself/his happiness/his well-being last.

Because Dean only knows love in the context of violence (like all of these fun examples, for starters) is a phrase that I’ve said a lot both in private chats and on here, and I absolutely think it goes to him being a tool (a blunt instrument, a plot device, so both textually and metatextually) instead of a person. Which Cas sees Dean’s shame/guilt and sees that side of Dean because he touched his soul, and saw more than just the Righteous™ man, more than just the tool, he saw A good man, not a machine. 

On the other side though you have how “bad guys” view Dean: Desperate, Sloppy, Needy, Dean’s hole (Again), which is again so wildly counterintuitive to the story of a Macho Man Hero™. You’re using vocabulary that is both queering him and feminizing (and I know this a meme format, but sincerely it is done in a derogatory way it is feminizing. It’s breaking him down to bare parts, to a sloppy hole). 

My whole rewatch I have been absolutely fascinated by how identity and free will is utilized/conceptualized on this show. Castiel has been my main focus, but Dean and how he is framed by himself and others is...fascinating - and frustrating. The writers inconsistency lends itself not only to this unintentionally queer character, but also one that again is incredibly easily read as a non-traditionally masculine character.

As a feminine character.

This show has so few female characters that of course it had to foist the roles/behaviors/plots that a female character might have onto a male character. Which I think is part of why reading Dean as trans (either transmasc, or transfemme) is so easily done like.   

Half of these are shit posts, but you can find trans allegories/textual evidence in this show again, again, again, again, and again. And this is unintentional, they don’t want you to look at Dean and see woman, former future or present. Like a lot of these I’m sure are punchlines for them, because women/queer folk are punchlines to them. 

Sometimes the only women in an episode are random witnesses who get two sentences of dialogue, and then the main guest character is a man. Who flirts with Dean, and Dean is receptive to it. 

They paint themselves into a corner, there are female Rabbi. So easily could Aaron have been a woman instead of a man, but they made the choice to play up the HaHa Dean & Men card. 

Because, again, Dean has filled the slot of Woman™ of Female Lead™ and the flirting would’ve been straight if Dean was a woman. It’s a plot device, they needed to have the guest character be disarming, be cute, make the main character flustered. 

It’s just the main character is a man, because they’re allergic to women. But they still need those female plots, tools of femininity, to move their show forward. I mean I am a big subscriber to transmasc Jo (no idea if anyone else is with me on this one, but let me explain). Jo is in love with Dean (concept) not Dean (actuality). Which, we’ve all had our eggs cracked by someone like that. We were in love with them until we realized we just wanted to be them.

He loved her like a little sister, she loved him like a lost idol. He’s a golden calf and she dies for him, because she believed in him, she was the original character dashed at the altar of the Winchesters. 

I fully believe if she had lived and if this show had a crumb of actual good writing Jo could have been a deeply compelling transmasc character. But I also think she’s a fascinating inversion of Dean. Dean is a Masculine Character who subverts Toxic Masculinity, Jo is a Tomboy™ she’s not your (if you take it straight, literally and metaphorically) average female love interest. She’s angry, she’s not soft at all, all edges and corners and thorns. She isn’t helpless, she’s stubborn but not in a “you’re going to get punished for this” way. She’s right when she’s stubborn. She’s helpful, she’s a martyr. 

I could do a whole other essay just on Jo (and Ellen, and Ash, what a fucking trio!) but needless to say Jo was one of the first...plot device feminine tools sacrificed to this show. She was a regular, she was unique, she was an engaging character, and she still died (to progress the plot? no. for man pain? yeah, for like three episodes maybe, and then it’s forgotten just like the rest of Dean’s trauma, as we mentioned above). 

Dean and Women and Love is a very interesting tool used too because. Boy they sure try to make Dean love women and it fails in small ways, and in big, meaningless, failed het domesticity (again) ways. Not to mention whatever Lust (in the form of a woman) having no effect upon him, when they could have used that moment to assert his Masculinity and Heterosexuality. He behaved normally? And...also...whatever the fuck the Adios thing was!

Like they have these opportunities to make him Traditionally (toxically) Masculine, but make the choice to...not? To soften him. Because it’s a tool. He’s their female lead, textually he had to take on the role of mother(/father) to Sam, but...I mean this is a million miles long already. I know, but we absolutely can’t not talk about his Paternal/Maternal behaviors. (Which appear again and again again and again, outside of his relationship with Sam even/especially). He’s the mother hen, sage, safety net, beacon, home to so many side characters they meet.

I mean in many ways Jody is also a Dean comparison. Lost her family. Found a new family. She is non-traditionally feminine, but easily flustered and Silly™ (let’s just drop the entire sex talk over family dinner scene with Alex and the boys and looking to them for help, even though she was already a mother, and she’s a cop, and a hunter and this confident no nonsense individual.... She’s not). We are meant to see her as this hard ass, but she makes extra food for the boys to take back to the bunker. She’s deadly in a fight, but also still easily overwhelmed and put into damsel mode, and she cares so much even in the face of adversity.

It’s also fun to see how Jo | Jody are reflections of Dean at different points of his life. Younger, cocky | Older, settled.

Even when the text tries to tell us that he’s not.

When it reminds us that he’s violent. That he is his father, even if he says that Sam is more like John (which was reflexive, which was angry because of Adam and how Sam was behaving like Dean in that episode, and yes there are parallels to be drawn between Sam and John, the show barely dives into them). Instead we’re told that Dean is John (Again and  Again and Again and Again). 

So intensely that a fanfictionalized version of the Winchester Gospels makes it an entire fucking musical number. 

And yet, despite the texts insistence to make Dean Macho Man Father Reborn™ We get this Dean who is silly (and directly compared/contrasted to the female character in this scene), soft, in heels, nagging, and... Sully (you know Sam’s imaginary friend who has the same Haircut Dean has, who is a softer, shorter, friendlier, campier, version of Dean who was a replacement For Dean until the real one let Sam back in? That? Sully?) it’s hard to take them seriously. 

Hell, even when he was A DEMON? What did they do? They had him sing off-key drunken karaoke, they had him doing this ! Like that’s your hero, unhinged, free to be as bad as he could be, and you put him in a cowboy hat in a romance with the king of hell. 

The Female Lead, everyone. Who’s biggest betrayal(s) comes at the hands of his love interest (again, a man even though it was an angel who could’ve taken any vessel! who could’ve been recast, who canonically dies admitting his love to Dean - that one), who he tries so hard to be loyal to. 

The contradictions of his character are laughable. He is so emotional, but if he is engaged about his emotions? He shuts down, or he’s exasperated about being asked about them. It really is Female Lead/Only Here For The Plot disease, because everything is more important than him. How’s he doing? Doesn’t matter outside of the context of how x character is doing or that y character is dead. Or his emotions only matter if they’re done in penance. 

They also really do frame him as Pretty Boy™ in a violent way, or in a derogatory manner. They’ll give us homoerotic shots like this or these and never really acknowledge how these are gay shots. Sorry the gun scene is a a straight up sex scene, the beer sip spilling out over his mouth is oral, the scene where Cas fills up Dean’s glass with whisky is also a sex scene, they do this shit on purpose but accidentally queer it up. If Dean was a woman these scenes wouldn’t even matter. They’d be passing moments, but because he is not just a man but A Man™ they’re insane to see.

Not to mention all of these scenes and all the ones I haven’t linked where Dean dresses up. He performs masculinity, but he performs femininity too. He’s a plot device that is slotted in to whatever role they need. He’s Super Straight Butch Man™ but coaches the lesbian on how to successfully flirt with a man. He’s Action Hero™ who sits through a montage with the same lesbian and yays and nays her outfits, and enjoys himself.

Fuck he loves dressing up, he feels better in these costumes because performing a character is easier than being himself. Because who is Dean? He’s a tool, both textually and metatextually. It is exactly how the women and because of the women on the show that Dean is the way that he is. If there was a more steady female presence Dean would not be half as much of a plot device or half as camp/gay/feminine/non-traditionally masculine/queer coded as he is. 

In conclusion....

#dean winchester #supernatural #spn meta #spn #gender #anon #replies #messages #my writing #ANYWAYS PHEW okay anon i don't know if i even fully got to your point but i woke up at like 3:30 to this ask and i've been fixated on it #HOPE THIS IS EVEN JUST a little bit coherent #the way i meant for this to talk so much more about transness and eldest daughter syndrome and just FORGOT #oops #oh well

[oumakokichi]

What are the differences between the original and localization?

Hmm, that’s a very simple question with a pretty lengthy answer! I did answer some similar questions in the past, but that was a long time ago, much closer to when the localization was first released. There are probably a lot of people whose main experience with the game has only been with the localization, and who don’t really know or remember those differences anymore.

For that reason, I’m going to go into kind of a “masterlist” of things that were changed in the localization in this post. This will be very long, but I really want to explain the whole story behind the localization and its differences from the original to people who might only be hearing about this for the first time. I’m going to cover full spoilers for the game obviously, so be careful when reading!

Also, please feel free to share this post around, as I think it contains a lot of information that might be interesting to people who’ve only experienced the localization!

Before I really get into it though, I want to stipulate that the differences I’m covering in this post are mostly going to be things that I believe could’ve been handled or translated better, not every single line that was changed verbatim in the game. This is because a localization’s purpose is incredibly different from a literal translation.

Where a literal translation seeks to keep as much of the original authorial intent as possible and has the leeway to explain various Japanese terms and cultural specifics to the readers in footnotes or a glossary, a localization is usually much more targeted towards a specific target audience, usually one more unfamiliar with Japanese culture or terminology. As a result, some things in a localization are occasionally changed to make them more understandable to a western audience.

So, for example, I’m not going to fault the localization for changing Monosuke’s extremely heavy Kansai accent in Japanese to a New York accent in the English dub. It’s much easier for western players to immediately grasp that, “hey, this guy has a very specific regional accent that the other characters don’t,” and it works really well as a rough equivalent. Similarly, localization changes like changing a line here or there about the sport of sumo to be about the Jets and the Patriots also helps get the point across to players quickly and easily without having to explain an unfamiliar sport to western players in-depth before they can get the joke.

That being said… there were some liberties taken with ndrv3’s translation which I don’t believe fulfill the point of a localization, and which changed certain deliveries or even perceptions about the characters in a way that I just don’t agree with.

Let me explain first how the localization team actually worked, to people who might be unfamiliar with the process. Ndrv3 had four separate translators working on the localization. When NISA first announced that the game was being localized, these four translators introduced themselves on reddit in an AMA, where they also mentioned that they were by and large dividing up the 16 main characters between themselves, with each translator specifically assigned to four characters.

Having more translators working on a game might sound like a good idea in theory, but it’s often not. The more translators assigned to a game, the harder it is to provide a consistent translation. Translation is messy work: often there are multiple ways to translate the same sentence, or even the same word between two different languages. If a translation has multiple translators, that means they need to be communicating constantly with one another and referencing each other’s work all the time in order to avoid mistranslations: it’s difficult work, but not impossible.

However… this didn’t happen with ndrv3’s translation team. It’s pretty clear they did not reference each other’s work or communicate very well, and the translation suffers for it. I’m not just guessing here, either; it’s a fact that various parts of the game have lines completely ruined by not looking at the context, or words translated two different ways almost back-to-back. I’ll provide specific examples of this later.

Many of the translators also picked which characters they wanted to translate on the basis of which were their favorites—which, again, isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but which does raise the risk of letting character bias influence your work. No work is inherently without bias; all translators have to look at their own biases and still attempt to translate fairly regardless. But because translators were assigned four characters each, this meant that while they might be really enthusiastic about translating for one character in particular, they were less enthusiastic for others. These biases do reflect in the work, and I will provide further examples as I make my list.

This system of delegation also leaves more questions than it answers. It becomes impossible to tell who translated certain parts of the game, particularly in areas where the narrator is unclear. For example, did Saihara’s translator translate Ouma’s motive video, as Saihara is the one watching it in chapter 6? Or did Ouma’s translator do it, since it’s his motive video? Who translated the parts we see at the beginning of certain chapters, where characters from the outside world make occasional comments? It’s really unclear, and I’m not even sure if the translators divvied up these parts amongst themselves or if only one person was supposed to handle them.

To put it simply, there were quite a lot of complications and worrying factors about the way the translation was divided by the team, and the communication (or lack thereof) between said translators. It’s impossible to really discuss the main problems that ndrv3’s localization has without making it clear why those problems happened, and I hope I’ve explained it well here.

With that out of the way, I’m finally going to cover the biggest differences between the original game and the localization, and why many of these changes were such a problem.

1.)    Gonta’s Entire Character

To this day, I still feel like this is probably the most egregious change of the entire localization. Gonta does not talk like a caveman in Japanese. He does not even have a particularly limited vocabularly. He talks like a fairly normal, very polite high school boy, and the only stipulation is that he’s not very familiar with electronics or technology due to his backstory of “growing up in the woods away from humans.”

Gonta does refer to himself in the third-person in Japanese, but I need to stress this: this is a perfectly normal thing to do in Japanese. Many people do it all the time, and it has no bearing on a person’s intelligence or ability to speak. In fact, both Tenko and Angie also refer to themselves in the third-person in the Japanese version of the game, yet mysteriously use first-person pronouns in the localization.

I wouldn’t be so opposed to this change if it weren’t for the fact that Gonta’s entire character arc revolves around being so much smarter than people (even himself!) give him credit for. He constantly downplays his own abilities and contributions to the group despite being fairly knowledgeable, not only about entomology but also about nature and astronomy. He has a fairly good understanding of spatial reasoning and is one of the first people to guess how Toujou’s trick with the rope and tire worked in chapter 2.

Chapter 4 of ndrv3 is so incredibly painful because it makes it clear that while Gonta was, absolutely, manipulated by Ouma into picking up the flashback light, he nonetheless made the decision to kill Miu of his own accord. He was even willing to try and kill everyone else by misleading them in the trial, because he thought it was more merciful than letting them see the outside world for themselves. These were choices that he made, confirmed when we see Gonta’s AI at the end of the trial speak for himself and acknowledge that yes, he really did think the outside world was worth killing people over.

Gonta is supposed to be somewhat naïve and trusting, not stupid. He believes himself to be an idiot, and other characters often talk down to him or don’t take him seriously, but at the end of the day he’s a human being just like the rest of them, and far, far smarter and more capable of making his own decisions than anyone thought him capable of.

Translating all of his speech to “caveman” or “Tarzan speech” really downplays his ability to make decisions for himself, and I think it’s a big part of why I’ve seen considerably more western fans insist that he didn’t know what he was doing than Japanese fans. I love Gonta quite a lot, but I can’t get over the localization essentially changing his character to make him seem more stupid, instead of translating what was actually there in order to more accurately reflect his character.

2.)    Added Some Slurs, Removed Others

It’s time to address the elephant in the room for people who don’t know: Momota is considerably homophobic and transphobic in the original Japanese version of the game. In chapter 2, he uses the word “okama” to refer to Korekiyo in an extremely derogatory fashion. This word has a history of both homophobic and transphobic sentiment in Japan, as it’s often used against flamboyant gay men and trans women, who are sadly and unfortunately conflated as being “the same thing” most of the time. To put it simply, the word has the equivalent of the weight of the t-slur and the f-slur in English rolled into one.

This isn’t the only instance of Momota being homophobic, sadly. In the salmon mode version of the game, should you choose the “let’s undress” option in the gym while with Momota, he has yet another line where he says, “You don’t swing that way, do you!?” to Saihara, using his most terrified and disgusted-looking sprite. This suggests to me that, yes, the homophobia was a deliberate choice in the Japanese version of the game, as Momota consistently reacts this way to even the idea of another guy showing romantic interest in him.

The English version more or less kept the salmon mode comment, but removed the use of the slur in chapter 2 entirely. Which I have… mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I am an LGBT person myself. I don’t want to read slurs if I can help it. On the other hand, I really don’t think the slur was removed out of consideration to the LGBT community so much as Momota’s translator really wanted to downplay any lines that could make his character come across in a more negative light.

This is backed up by the fact that both Miu and Ouma’s translators added slurs to the game that weren’t present in the original Japanese. Where Miu only ever refers to Gonta as “baka” (idiot) or occasionally, “ahou” (a slightly ruder word that still more or less equates to “moron”), her translator decided to add multiple instances of her using the r-slur to refer to Gonta specifically, and on one occasion, even the word “Mongoloid,” a deeply offensive and outdated term. Ouma’s translator similarly took lines where he was already speaking harshly of Miu and added multiple instances of words like “bitch” or “whore.”

To me, this suggests that the translators were completely free to choose how harsh or how likable they wanted their characters to come across. Momota’s translator omitting just the slur could maybe pass for a nice gesture, so people don’t have to read it and be uncomfortable—except, that’s not the only thing that was omitted. Instances of Momota being blatantly misogynistic or rude were also toned down to the point of covering up most of his flaws entirely. His use of “memeshii” against Hoshi (a word which means “cowardly” in Japanese with specifically feminine connotations, like the word “sissy” in English) is simply changed to “weak,” and when he calls Saihara’s trauma “kudaranai” (literally “worthless” or “bullshit”), this is changed to “trivial” in the localization.

Momota’s translator even went so far as to omit a line entirely from the chapter 2 trial, which I touched on in an earlier post. In the original version of the game, Ouma asks Momota dumbfounded if he’s really stupid enough to trust Maki without any proof and if he plans on risking everyone else’s lives in the trial if he turns out to be wrong. And Momota replies saying yes, absolutely, he’s totally willing to bet everyone’s lives on nothing more than a hunch because he thinks he’s going to be right no matter what.

This is a character flaw. It’s a huge, running theme with Momota’s character, and it’s brought up again in chapter 4 deliberately when Momota really does almost kill everyone in the trial because he refuses to believe that Ouma isn’t the culprit. But the localization simply omits it, leaving Momota to seem considerably less hard-headed and reckless in the English version of the game. If anyone wants proof that this line exists, it is still very much there in the Japanese dialogue, but it has no translation whatsoever. This goes beyond “translation decisions I don’t agree with”; omitting an entire line for a character simply because you want other people to like them more is just bad translation, period.

3.)    Angie’s Religion

In the original Japanese version of the game, neither Angie’s god nor her religion have any specific names. She refers to her god simply as “god” in the general sense, and clearly changes aspects of their persona and appearance based on who she’s trying to convince to join her cult. Everything about her is pretty clearly fictionalized, from her island to the religious practices her cult does.

Kodaka’s writing with regard to Angie is already a huge mess. It feeds into a lot of harmful stereotypes about “crazy, exotic brown women” and “bloodthirsty savages,” but at the very least it never correlated with a specific religion or location in the original version of the game.

This all changed when Angie’s translator, for whatever reason, decided to make Angie be Polynesian specifically and appropriate from the real religion of real indigenous peoples native to Polynesia. That’s right: Atua is a real god that has very real significance to tons of indigenous peoples.

In my opinion, this decision was incredibly disrespectful. It spreads incredible misinformation about a god that is still very much a part of tons of real-life people’s religion, and associates it with cults? Blood rituals? Human sacrifices? It’s a terrible localization decision that wasn’t necessary whatsoever and to be quite frank, it’s racist and insensitive.

As I said, the original game never exactly had the peak of “good writing decisions” when it came to Angie; there are still harmful stereotypes with her character, and she deserved to be written so much better. But associating her with a real group of indigenous people and equating a real god to some fictional deity that’s mostly treated as either a scary cult-ish boogeyman or the punchline to a joke is just… bad.

4.)    Ouma’s Motive Video

Some of the decisions taken with Ouma’s translation are… interesting, to say the least. In many ways, he feels like a completely different character between the two versions of the game. This is due not only to the translation, but also the voice direction and casting.

A lot of his lines are tweaked or changed entirely to make his character seem much louder, less serious, and less sincere than the original version of the game. Obviously, Ouma lies, a lot. That’s sort of the whole point of is character. But what I mean is that even lines in the original version of the game, where it was clear he was being truthful via softer delivery, trailing off the end of his sentences, and seeming overall hesitant about whether to divulge certain information or not are literally changed in the localization to him pretty much yelling at the top of his lungs, complete with tons of exclamation points on lines that originally ended with a question mark or ellipses.

Tonally, he just feels very different as a character. The “sowwy” speak, lines like “oopsie poopsie, I’m such a ditz!”—all of these things are taken to such ridiculous extremes that it feels a little hard to take him seriously. Even in the post-trial for chapter 4 when Ouma starts playing the villain after Gonta’s death, a moment which should have been completely serious and intense, the mood is kind of completely killed when the line is changed from him calling everyone a bunch of idiots to him calling everyone…. “stupidheads.” These changes don’t really seem thematically appropriate to me, but overall, they’re not damning.

What is damning, however, is the fact that Ouma’s motive video is completely mistranslated and provides a very poor picture of what his motivations and ideals were like. I still remember being shocked when I played the localization for the first time and discovered that they completely omitted a line stating that Ouma and DICE have a very specific taboo against murder.

Literally, this is one of the very first lines in the entire video. The Japanese version of the game makes it explicitly clear that DICE were forbidden to kill people, and that abiding by this rule was extremely important to them. By contrast, the localization simply makes a nod about him doing “petty nonviolent crimes and pranks,” without ever once mentioning anything at all about rules or taboos.

This feels especially egregious in the localization considering Saihara later uses Ouma’s motive video as evidence in the chapter 6 trial and states there that Ouma and DICE “had a rule against killing people,” despite the game… never actually telling you that. It not only skews the perception of Ouma’s character at a crucial moment, it also just straight-up lies to localization players and expects them to make leaps in logic without actually providing the facts. So it winds up sort of feeling like Saihara is just pulling these assumptions out of his ass more than anything else.

I actually still have my original translation of Ouma’s motive video here, if anyone would like to compare. Again, translation is a tricky line of work, and obviously not all translators are going to agree with one another. But I consider omitting lines entirely to be one of the worst things you can do in a translation, particularly in a mystery game where people are expected to solve said mysteries based on the information and facts provided to them.

5.)    Inconsistencies and Lack of Context

As I mentioned earlier, there are many instances of lines being completely mistranslated, or translated two different ways by multiple translators, or addressed to the wrong character. This is, as I stated, due to the way the translation work was divided by four separate people who appear to have not communicated with each other or cross-referenced each other’s work.

One of the clearest examples of this that I can think of off the top of my head is in chapter 3, where Ouma mentions “doing a little research” on the Caged Child ritual, and Maki in the very next line repeats him by saying… “study?”

On their own, removed from any context, these would both potentially be correct translations. However, it’s very clear that the translators just didn’t care to look at the context, or communicate with each other and share their work. The fact that characters aren’t even quoting each other properly in lines that are back-to-back is a pretty big oversight, and something that should have been accounted for knowing that four separate people were going to be translating various different characters.

This lack of context causes other, even more hilarious and blatantly wrong mistranslations. At the start of the chapter 3 trial, there is a line where Momota mentions that he couldn’t perform a thorough investigation on his own “because Monokuma disrupted him.” In the original, Ouma responds and tells Momota that he’s just using Monokuma as an excuse to cover for his own flaws. However, what we actually got in the localization was… this.

I don’t even have words for how badly this line was butchered (though I could make several hilarious jokes about Monokuma “over-compensating”). Presumably, this happened because Ouma’s translator saw Ouma’s line without any of the lines before it or the context of what Momota was saying, had no clue who Ouma was actually supposed to be talking to, and just ad-libbed it however they could, even though it literally makes no sense and doesn’t even fit into the conversation.

There are other similar instances of this, too. For example, did you know that the scene after Saihara faints in chapter 2, just before he wakes up in Gonta’s lab, is actually supposed to have Ouma talking to him? The narrator is unnamed, but there are several lines just before Saihara wakes up where Ouma tells him “come on, you can’t die on me yet!” and keeps prodding him and poking him to wake up. This is never explicitly told to you from the text… but it becomes pretty obvious when you look at the context and see that a huge CG of Ouma looking over Saihara as he starts to wake up is the very next part of the scene.

In the localization, however, Saihara’s translator pretty clearly had no idea what was happening or who was supposed to be talking to him, because they translated those lines as Saihara talking to himself, even though the manner of speech and phrasing is clearly supposed to be Ouma instead.

I could go on and on listing other examples: Tsumugi makes a joke in the original about Miu being able to dish out dirty jokes but not being very good at hearing them herself, but it’s changed in the localization to Tsumugi saying “I’m not so good with that kind of stuff,” and a line where Momota protests against Maki choking Ouma because she’ll kill him if she keeps going is instead changed to him saying “you’ll get killed if you don’t stop!” In my opinion, the fact that this is a consistent problem throughout the whole game shows that the translators weren’t really communicating or working together at any point, and that it wasn’t simply a one-time mistake here or there.

6.)    Edited CGs and Plot Points

I have made an entirely separate post about this in the past, but at this point I don’t think anyone actually knows anymore: the localization actually edited in-game CGs and made some of them completely different from the Japanese version of the game. I’m not accusing them of “censorship” or anything like that, I mean quite literally that they altered and edited specific CGs to try and fix certain problems with them and only ended up making them worse in the process.

In chapter 5, Momota gets shot in the arm by Maki’s crossbow when trying to defend Ouma, and Ouma gets shot in the back shortly afterward when attempting to make a run for the Exisals. These injuries are relevant to how they died, but they’re not actually very visible in the CGs of Ouma and Momota shown later in the chapter 5 trial.

There are a whole bunch of inconsistencies with the CGs in chapter 5 in general: Momota gives Ouma his jacket to lie on under the press, but is magically still wearing it when he emerges from the Exisal himself at the end of the trial (I like to think he snuck back into the dorms Solid Snake style to get a new one from his room before joining the trial), the cap to the antidote is still on the bottle when Ouma pretends to drink it in front of Maki and Momota, etc. None of these things really deter from the plot though, and so I would say they’re fairly unimportant.

However, for some reason, NISA decided that “fixing” at least some of the CGs in the chapter 5 trial was necessary. They did this by adding bloodstains to Momota’s arm while he’s under the press, to better show his injury from the crossbow…. and in doing so, for some completely inexplicable reason, they changed the entire position of his arm. Here’s what I mean for comparison:

This is how Momota’s arm looked in the original CG from chapter 5, shown when the camcorder is provided as evidence that it’s “Ouma” under the press.

And this is how the localization edited it to look. I can understand and even sympathize with adding the bloodstains, but… changing the entire arm itself? Moving it to be sticking out from under the press? To put it nicely, this change doesn’t make any sense and actually makes it harder to understand Ouma and Momota’s plan.

The whole trick behind their plan was that nothing was supposed to stick out from under the press, other than Momota’s jacket. They waited until the instant when the press completely covered every part of Momota’s body, arms and all, and then performed the switch to mislead people. But the edited version of the CG in the localization just has Momota’s arm sticking completely out, hanging over the side, meaning it would’ve been impossible for the press to hide every part of it and the whole switch feels… well, stupid and impossibly easy to see through in the localized version.

Again, this shows a total disregard for presenting the facts as they actually appear and actually makes things more difficult for English players of the game, because they’re not being given accurate information. I really don’t understand why these changes were necessary, or why the bloodstains couldn’t have just been added without moving Momota’s entire arm.

7.)    In Conclusion

This has gotten extremely long (nearly 10 pages), so I want to wrap things up. I want to specify that my intention with this masterlist isn’t to insult or badmouth the translators who worked on this game. I’m sure they worked very hard, and I have no idea what time or budget constraints they were facing as they did so.

Being a translator is not easy, and typically translators are not very well-paid or recognized for their work. I have the utmost respect for other translators, and I know perfectly well just how difficult and taxing it can be.

I am making this list because these are simply changes which were very different from the original version of the game, and which I believe could have been handled better. Personally, I disagree with many of the choices the localization made, but that does not mean that they didn’t do a fantastic job in other places. I absolutely love whichever translator was responsible for coming up with catchphrases and nicknames throughout the game: little localization decisions like “cospox,” “flashback light,” “Insect Meet n’ Greet,” and “cosplaycat criminal” were all strokes of genius that I highly admire.

I only want to stress that the Japanese version of the game is very different. Making changes to the way a character is presented or portrayed means influencing how people are going to react to said character. Skewing the information and facts presented in trials in the game means changing people’s experience of the game, and giving them less facts to go off of. Equating fictional gods to real-life ones can cause real harm and influence perception of real indigenous peoples. These are all facts that need to be accounted for before deciding whether a certain change is necessary or not, in my opinion.

If you’ve read this far, thank you! Again, feel free to share this post around if you’d like, since this is probably the most comprehensively I’ve ever covered this topic.

#danganronpa #new danganronpa v3 #dangan ronpa #ndrv3 spoilers // #ask #anonymous #this isn't meta but it's IS a comprehensive masterlist of translation comparisons #so i think it's okay to post in the tag #okay to reblog

[bigskydreaming]

Sorry, but that last reblog is a huge pet peeve of mine. I actually don’t have a particular preference myself for how to portray Dick’s responses to his rapes, in terms of sexual behavior at least, but I’ve ranted on more than one occasion about how people tend to be dismissive or outright derogatory of any portrayal of him being hypersexual in the wake of his traumas, when HYPERSEXUALITY IS A COMMON RAPE TRAUMA RESPONSE. 

Its an attempt by a survivor to take back control of the very thing that was used to hurt them. This is NORMAL, and it actually doesn’t even interfere or negate headcanons or interpretations of Dick being demisexual because sexual behavior is not interchangeable with sexual attraction and he wouldn’t be the first person or character to act in ways incongruent with his prior sexual history in the wake of a massive upheaval of his status quo. 

And people don’t realize that the way they swoop in to be dismissive of characterizing Dick this way - IN THESE SPECIFIC CONTEXTS ONLY - like, is massively disrespectful to the legions of people who respond in exactly the same way, even if it ‘doesn’t make sense for them’ as they were PRIOR to their sexual assaults, because the point is, survivors in the wake of sexual traumas don’t HAVE to act in a way that makes sense to them or anyone else, because the entire process of recovery is about us trying to find a new normal, how to make sense of OURSELVES when our old relationship to sex no longer makes sense to us as is.

Course, I have no idea where any of those posts are, because they inevitably flop each time I make them, lol, but yeah. Seriously guys. Please stop shitting on hypersexuality as an extremely normal and yes, valid trauma response. People aren’t sluts for engaging in hypersexuality in an attempt to recenter themselves on the specific axis of their sexual behavior and identity, after that’s been deliberately cast askew by someone externally attacking it and them. And also, what the fuck ever happened to ‘don’t slutshame people’ in the first place, like who cares even if that label does apply, how does that affect their personhood and make them lesser again? Please, explain it to me in words of one syllable like I’m dumb, so I can be sure to get it.

(As always, this is about implied safe, sane and consensual sex between adults. Yes, rape survivors also by the same logic as above frequently engage in unsafe sex in sometimes ill-thought out attempts at reclaiming sexual autonomy - and I don’t say this as a judgment, since I’ve literally done just that myself - but I’m also not here for people using my shit to justify pairing post-rape Dick Grayson with any number of villains who go on to victimize him for the sexual gratification of readers, because way to miss the forest for the trees. You know what I’m saying here, and I can’t stop you from making use of this argument for your own personal agenda or whatever, but like, you have my encouragement to feel shitty or self-conscious about it if you do.)

[renegadewangs]

Van Zieks - the Examination, part 2

Warnings: SPOILERS for The Great Ace Attorney: Chronicles. Additional warning for racist sentiments uttered by fictional characters (and screencaps to show these sentiments).

Disclaimer: (see Part 1 for the more detailed disclaimer.) - These posts are not meant to be taken as fact. Everything I'm outlining stems from my own views and experiences. If you believe that I've missed or misinterpreted something, please let me know so I can edit the post accordingly.  -The purpose of these posts is an analysis, nothing more. Please do not come into these posts expecting me to either defend Barok van Zieks from haters, nor expecting me to encourage the hatred. - I'm using the Western release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for these posts, but may refer to the original Japanese dialogue of Dai Gyakuten Saiban if needed to compare what's said. This also means I’m using the localized names and localized romanization of the names to stay consistent. -It doesn't matter one bit to me whether you like Barok van Zieks or dislike him. However, I will ask that everyone who comments refrains from attacking real, actual people.

It’s time to take a close look at Episode 3, The Runaway Room!

Episode 3: The Runaway Room.

We're skipping the first two cases, as they have no relevance to Barok van Zieks, and starting off here.

So Ryu is tossed into the deep. The Lord Chief Justice tells him that he’s basically the defendant’s only hope; if he doesn’t at least try to fight in court, McGilded will lose the trial and die for sure. (HAH… Good one, Stronghart.) So Ryu falls for this would-be motivational speech and heads for the courthouse where he finds out why McGilded doesn’t have a defense attorney to begin with; it’s because of the prosecution. No one dares to go up against Lord Barok van Zieks, also known as the Reaper of the Old Bailey, because all who he prosecutes are damned. This should sound familiar to anyone who’s played an Ace Attorney game before. ‘The prosecution has never been defeated before’ is the implication, which would initially lead us to believe Van Zieks is another one of those prodigies. Sure enough, Susato points out he must be very talented, to which McGilded replies that Van Zieks is not talented, rather, he’s cursed. This sets the mood even further. With words like “Reaper” and “curse” being tossed around, we’re sooner reminded of a prosecutor like Simon Blackquill, who was a convicted murderer wielding psychological manipulation techniques. Either way, with the grim atmosphere set, Ryu is ushered into the courtroom before he can ask any more questions.

As a sidenote, McGilded really scored some negative points with this remark:

Feels a bit softened compared to how fan translations tackled that line, but a nasty jab all the same.

So anyway, entering the courtroom we get our first look at Van Zieks and if the foreshadowing in the Defendant Antechamber wasn’t already bad enough, he honors his eerie reputation.

So far, he’s meeting the requirements then. He’s intimidating and as a wealthy white man, he’s perfectly juxtaposed to Ryu, the rookie from another country. Meanwhile, the first micro-aggression of this trial is actually uttered by the judge:

Which also makes narrative sense. Ryu’s more practical goal isn’t to win the prosecution’s trust. Heck, he could get through any trial just fine with Van Zieks’s dislike. No, what he needs is to win over the judge and the members of the jury. For them to also hold prejudice but put that aside in order to side with the truth is another important end-game here. So let’s continue. Van Zieks also has something to say here:

Initially, the remark about Ryu’s eyes might read as a typical racist jab towards someone from the East, but he is in fact referring to the way Ryu’s eyes are ‘swimming’ when he’s nervous, as evidenced by the next lines. “They shroud your fear, your doubt, your trepidation… They run wild, clinging to some phantom notion of courage.” Van Zieks is saying that while Ryu puts up a brave front, his swimming eyes betray just how nervous and unsure of his cause he really is. So really, he’s targeting the fact that Ryu is new to the courts. He did, however, make a point of tossing the word “Nipponese” in there when he didn’t need to, drawing attention to Ryu’s race in a derogatory fashion.

After the jurors are introduced, something else of interest happens. The judge points out that Van Zieks hasn’t been seen in the courtroom in a number of years. The judge had assumed that Van Zieks had renounced his fame, to which he replies with the following:

This is a very telling line. We learn several things. Firstly, Van Zieks had retired, and secondly, he doesn’t seem to think too highly of his title of Reaper. If he did, he would have gloated. To describe his reputation as infamy implies negative associations with this ‘curse’ that McGilded spoke of. Putting these two things together, one might conclude he retired because of this curse. When asked why he’s returned to the courts, he says that he’ll leave that to the judge’s imagination. So there’s hints of a backstory already being tossed in before the trial’s even properly kicked off.

Which it does now. So the opening statement happens as always and witnesses are brought in, but once it’s done Ryu interjects to say that he doesn’t understand the circumstances. ‘How could the witnesses have seen the inside of a moving carriage’? It shocks the entire courtroom and Van Zieks is the one to speak:

“-But you’re here in London yourself. Are you really so ignorant about our omnibuses? Tell me, my Nipponese friend… Have you even travelled in an omnibus?”

I have to be honest, I struggled to pinpoint just how I felt about these remarks. Sure, I can overanalyze this, looking at how the words “I’d read-” imply he doesn’t know the following sentiment to be true and therefore doesn’t feel confident enough to say something like “I knew-”... But it doesn’t change that he’s being scummy here. In a roundabout way, he’s still saying Japan is far less civilised than Britain and that Ryu is extra ignorant for not knowing about omnibuses when he’s in London. So basically, he gets scumbag points for this. But then there’s…:

Which is just a basic jab at Ryu’s intelligence. It’s the sort of remark we’d get from every single prosecutor. I think even Klavier would say this sort of line with a smile on his face.

But definitely more scumbag points here, because this was a direct attack in more ways than one. Particularly the word “stray” was uncalled for. CEO of Racism, indeed. Something very interesting happens when the knife gets pulled into the story halfway into the first cross-examination, though. When Ryu asks about it, Van Zieks replies with this:

He’s… actually being civil? (I doublechecked with Scarlet Study, and they are in agreement on the timid nature of this line, translating “yes, Counsel” as “Quite so”.) Instead, Van Zieks turns his attention to the fact that there’s an M on the sheath, directing all his offensive attitude towards McGilded. It gets even more curious when the last juror refuses to cast a guilty verdict, instead talking about what a good man she believes McGilded to be. Van Zieks says:

So he’s not only frustrated with McGilded now, he’s frustrated with the people of London for not knowing what sort of person McGilded really is. Van Zieks reveals he’s a dirty money lender who gained his fortune through corrupt means. He even takes the time to inform Ryu of this with the words “Your client is a shylock, sir!” Edit: I feel a need to address this: shylock is a word with antisemitic roots. It originally came from a Shakespeare play involving a very bad stereotype. It later evolved to have a more broad meaning basically synonymous to loan shark and I think that’s the context the localization means to use it in. There’s absolutely no indication of McGilded’s religious beliefs and even if there were, I highly doubt the localization would use that sort of slur. Still, it’s a very unfortunate choice of words and is sure to accidentally sour Van Zieks even more with some players.

With that, the last juror votes, the scale tips towards Guilty and Van Zieks assumes the trial to be over. He thanks the jurors for their work. Unfortunately, once Susato brings up the Summation Examination, Van Zieks gets very frustrated again. This happens:

IIII don’t know what to do with this line. On first glance, I didn’t think much of it and was even willing to consider it was a compliment. Then I thought it must’ve been passive aggressive somehow; that it’s the sort of thing he wouldn’t believe until he’d seen it with his own eyes. A friend directed me to the notion that it might be referencing a stereotype that ‘Eastern women are fierce’ because they were associated with, well, certain ‘paid services’. I don’t think I need to explain, I’m sure you understand what I mean. And if indeed that’s what Barok is insinuating, that’s a new low I never thought he’d reach. However, when you’ve finished the games and know that Barok was friends with a married Japanese man, it’s entirely possible that he’s remembering a story once told to him by Genshin Asogi. So this is either a bittersweet reminiscence or the most scumbag association he ever could’ve made, but I’m not sure we can ever prove which it is. Edit: As another option, it’s possible he’s referring to the Yamato Nadeshiko stereotype, if indeed it already held the ‘touch of iron’ aspect to it back in 1900. He proceeds to toast his hallowed chalice to “the enigmatic East” and to be honest, I’ve once again got nothing. All I know is that he once again drew attention to the defense’s race when he didn’t need to, so… Scumbag point. As a sidenote, in regards to the wine… I don’t count this as a humanizing trait. The same applies to the leg slam. These are animations meant to add some more lighthearted air and breathe more life into Van Zieks, so he doesn’t just stand there like a statue. They’re just quirks meant to have him stand out from other characters. So yeah, fun as the wine and leg slam animations are, they don’t count in the redemption requirements. Anyway, Van Zieks mocks the age of Susato’s book, saying that judging by its bindings it must be fifty years old. Considering the context of the conversation, this isn’t out of bounds. The defense is using ‘outdated’ information on the law, so he points that out. Any prosecutor would’ve done it like this. Simon Blackquill likely would’ve offered to shred that outdated tome to bits for Susato. Van Zieks does toss in a “Hmph, typical Nipponese” later though, which earns him one more scumbag point. Van Zieks continues to dismiss the Summation Examination, but the judge overrules him and allows it. Law is law, after all! And this is what I meant in my previous post when I said it’s satisfying to see Ryu use actual British law against Van Zieks. Ryu is using a perfectly legitimate technique to win the jurors over, and as Susato tells him, he can only do it by turning the jurors against one another with facts. He can’t appeal to them, he can only have them see sense. Which is difficult, because some jurors are more prejudiced than others:

… Yeah. Uh. Calling Ryu a “Dark Jinx” is pretty awful. Scumbag points for Juror No. 1! Meanwhile, Juror No. 4 keeps us updated on Barok’s actions throughout this trial:

Wow. Typical prosecutor behavior, though. Regardless, Ryu manages to win them all over in the end. With enough of the scales set back to not-guilty, the trial is allowed to continue, which leads to this:

Bye, hallowed chalice. A fun animation to keep things fresh and show us that the trial is about to take a turn. Once again, nothing new. We’ve seen prosecutors lose their patience before. What does interest me, though, is that Barok doesn’t direct physical frustration towards the defense. Remember: Franziska snaps a whip at Phoenix, Godot throws coffee at his head, Blackquill sends a hawk to attack the defense or uses that aijutsu slicing move, Nahyuta throws restricting beads… These were all direct physical attacks. Van Zieks, much like Edgeworth and Klavier, directs his frustration more inward and as a result he destroys his own property.

He succeeds in intimidating Ryu, though. Van Zieks explains that he kept silent, as is the norm during Examination Summation, but makes it clear that he considers it a charade all the same.

Van Zieks has been a pretty good gentleman towards the jury up until now, speaking to them politely despite that one remark about having their head in the clouds. Now that he’s seeing them ‘buy into Ryu’s stories’, as one might describe it, he’s getting frustrated with them. Maybe he’s even frustrated they’re choosing the defense’s side over his own.

He removes his cloak, entering what he says to be the next round of their ‘battle’. More typical prosecutor behavior, this. I’m not sure there’s an underlying thought to this, other than to indicate to the audience that ‘things have gotten serious’. When the next bit of testimony is going on, I noticed something odd. Both Fairplay and Furst testify to having seen blood on McGilded’s hands, to which Van Zieks says:

“... Reported that there was no trace of blood on Mr. McGilded’s gloved hands.” So in a way, by establishing this fact, he’s helping the defense and going against what the witnesses are saying. It doesn’t help the prosecution in any way at all.

The trial continues on, with Van Zieks uttering things like “My Nipponese friend” and “my learned friend from the East” and lord knows what else… I suppose to soften the harshness of the original wording a bit and make Van Zieks just a bit less dislikable? Edit: Tumblr user @beevean​ has pointed out that “my learned friend” is an actual term used in courts of law. There’s a tradition (also employed in British courts of law) that when addressing either the court or the judge, a barrister refers to the opposing counsel using the respectful term, "my learned friend". Of course, it can be said with an air of passive aggression and pretending to be respectful to the court while shamelessly disrespecting it is something Barok has always done, so the addition of “my learned friend” to the localization text is amazingly in-character. Then of course we have:

This is both a scumbag remark and foreshadowing. Naturally, those playing the game for the first time won’t recognize it as the latter and therefore take it as nothing more than a harsh blow. Things spiral even further out of control when he starts talking about how people who claim the island nations of the Far East have a learning and culture of their own use those terms ill-advisedly. He also uses the words “artless backwater” and really, this is the low point of the trial right here when it comes to prejudice. Van Zieks is just plain lashing out with these sort of jabs.

Eventually, McGilded is dragged onto the witness stand to testify about whether or not there was another passenger aboard the omnibus. McGilded admits that there was, and Van Zieks snaps at him some more for using convenient excuses. Ryu is forgotten here for a moment. The whole smoke bomb thing happens, Van Zieks confers with McGilded and Gina in his own chambers, then the trial resumes. McGilded testifies, then Gina testifies… The jury votes not-guilty, buying into McGilded’s story about protecting a poor young pickpocket and Van Zieks loses it. He slams his heel down on the bench, pointing out that this is why he doesn’t like the jury system; because emotions are ruling where evidence and facts ought to be paramount. He points out while the cubbyhole Gina had been hiding in was empty now, it had been full of the coachman’s belongings during the police investigation. Someone tampered with the omnibus. This is where things get interesting, because Van Zieks addresses Ryu:

He’s giving Ryu the benefit of the doubt here. He’s offering an option for Ryu to be truthful about this matter. And that’s curious, because any defense attorney would naturally say what’s best for his client- or so it’s assumed. It puts Ryu in a difficult position for sure, but for some reason Van Zieks put the question forward anyway. The game responds as follows:

For the sake of argument, I attempted all three options. So when Ryu says he didn’t look, Van Zieks says: “Hm… Perhaps I credited you with too much intelligence.”

So when feigning ignorance, Van Zieks is kind of a scumbag about it. He is correct in his expectation that any attorney worth his badge would thoroughly examine the details of the evidence, but he didn’t need to be such a jerk about it. Now, when outright lying and saying it was empty, Van Zieks instead says:

The lines are very similar, which is an interesting note. It adds a feel of these responses being 'rehearsed', in a way. Just a default for him to fall back to. But the real kicker comes when Ryu tells the truth and says it wasn’t empty. Van Zieks is actually speechless at first with no more than a “...!” Clearly, he wasn’t expecting Ryu to respond like this. Everyone in court is baffled, McGilded gets angry… Van Zieks is a bit rattled now.

“Your task is to defend the man in the stand. Why would you say something to compromise his position?”

So really, it seems as if Van Zieks had only ever offered the question to Ryu with pessimistic intentions. He too had assumed there was only one answer the defense could give and was prepared for just that with his silly little wine analogies, only to be shocked when Ryu defies his expectations. Ryu confesses that he’s not entirely sure on where he stands in the matter, to which Van Zieks replies with “... Interesting.” 

So now the jury members are doubting themselves again, with some offering guilty verdicts. Van Zieks decides to honor the ‘Scales of Justice’ once more now that they’re back in his favor, like the hypocrite he is. Gina testifies, Ryu points out an inconsistency, Van Zieks takes that opportunity to turn the tables back in his favor by implying Gina is a liar… He passive aggressively thanks Ryu for saving him considerable trouble and whatnot with some more “my learned Nipponese friend” remarks in there… Ryu turns the tables once more by insisting the victim came into the omnibus through the skylight, Van Zieks demands evidence and points out that furthermore, if indeed such a thing had happened, the witnesses on the roof would’ve seen it. McGilded hops into the conversation to imply that the witnesses themselves were the killers, which sends the court into a frenzy. Both Van Zieks and the judge shift the responsibility of the accusation towards Ryu, even though he never said a word to directly accuse the witnesses. Kind of a douchey move. Barok even states that Ryu’s ‘command of the English tongue must be wanting’, since

Yeahhh, that's pretty unfair. McGilded was the one who dropped that implication. However, since the judge basically accuses Ryu of the same thing, it’s a narrative choice to warn Ryu he needs to anticipate where his reasoning will lead him. Fairplay and Furst testify, pandemonium ensues. McGilded eventually gets what he wants when it’s revealed the skylight can open and there’s blood in there. Van Zieks once again turns his attention to McGilded:

He knows McGilded is at the root of all this tomfoolery and evidence manipulation. McGilded is the real enemy here, in Van Zieks’s eyes. The conversation shows this by having Van Zieks point out that he’s well aware of McGilded’s involvement in dubious matters and that evidence is often ‘adapted’ to suit this guy’s stories. And now, once again, he turns his attention to Ryu. Once again, he’s giving the defense the benefit of the doubt:

The game gives you the illusion of choice here. If you choose to say it’s ‘out of the question’ that the evidence was tampered with, Ryu will refuse to say it out loud. If you say it’s entirely possible, Ryu will admit to that.

This is probably baffling to Van Zieks. It would’ve been so easy for Ryu to insist the tampering couldn’t have happened, but he doesn’t. The game won’t even let him. No matter what you choose, Van Zieks is clued in on the fact that Ryu doesn’t condone the deceit that McGilded is resorting to. But it gets even better, because a short time later, we get:

Another option to either draw attention to forgery, or to feign ignorance. Once again, I chose both options for argument’s sake, but having Ryu say he has no idea doesn’t get us anywhere. Susato will instead object to say it for him. With “I have an inkling”, Ryu says it himself. Van Zieks once again confesses, in his own words, that he’s caught off guard.

Ryu clarifies that he thinks the blood stain inside the omnibus is decisive evidence, but he can’t say for certain whether it’s genuine. McGilded loses it and by this point, is outright branding Van Zieks an enemy. Since the player at this point doesn't know whether McGilded is guilty or not, it leaves Van Zieks in a bit of narrative limbo. One might think: 'if the prosecutor is so intent on taking down a murderer, shouldn't we be on his side? Is he perhaps not as bad as he seems?' Unfortunately, McGilded points out that recollection and memories don’t matter, only evidence does. And… Well.

Which means they can’t rule on a guilty verdict and will have to let McGilded go. Van Zieks admits that he has no more witnesses or evidence to present. He’s out of options. As a formality, the judge asks the defense’s closing statement and we get one last option. Do we believe him to be guilty or not-guilty? When claiming he’s innocent, Van Zieks says:

It seems he means “abject” in the sense of “without pride/respect/dignity for oneself”, which… You know, is fair. By this point it’s very clear that McGilded is guilty, and since Ryu has already admitted that the evidence may be forged, insisting otherwise is indeed pretty spineless. Scumbag points to Van Zieks for continuing to draw attention to the fact that Ryu is from Japan, though.

Let’s instead just admit that we can’t say for certain McGilded is innocent. Unfortunately, we don’t see Van Zieks react to this, which is a bummer because this could’ve been very telling. The judge questions Ryu’s sanity (no joke) and McGilded laughs because it doesn’t matter; it was just a formality anyway. The judge scolds Van Zieks, saying that his case was flawed and it was his job to keep the evidence secure. Instead of objecting, Van Zieks just outright takes the blame for this and apologizes. Very interesting reaction, here. He stops pointing the finger to McGilded, he doesn’t attempt to accuse anyone else… He just admits his performance was flawed. Ryu tries to interject here:

(A badly-timed screenshot if I’ve ever seen one.) Ryu is making an attempt here to defend Van Zieks, the guy who has built up like 20 scumbag points by now. Ryu sincerely doesn’t hold a grudge against him. That’s very interesting. It doesn’t matter, though. The judge won’t hear of it, Ryu thinks it’s unfair, Van Zieks warns McGilded that this isn’t over and then we get the not-guilty verdict.

Hurray??? Profit??? It’s a victory that’s bound to leave the player feeling conflicted and jarred.

But after all’s said and done, we get one last cutscene to establish just how ominous Van Zieks really is. The omnibus is on fire, someone is inside and we know McGilded went into the courtroom earlier to investigate the omnibus in question. So really, by putting two and two together we can already guess what’s going on here. Van Zieks approaches the scene and watches silently.

It’s a good reminder to us that every defendant he prosecutes is ‘damned’ and he’s called the Reaper for a reason. Really puts the finishing touch on the eerie undertones of his character.

All in all, a pretty typical first time against a new prosecutor. Now I just want to draw attention to the fact that the first time we face Van Zieks in court… he’s actually on the right side of the courtroom and Ryu is not. Van Zieks presumably specifically returned to the court after those five years to target McGilded, as he knows about this guy’s shady reputation when it comes to ‘adapting’ evidence. Barok is 'cursed' in such a way that every defendant he faces is damned. So long as he stands as the prosecutor, McGilded can’t get away with his crimes. No matter how much forgery is done, the Reaper will go after McGilded and it seems Van Zieks was banking on this happening.

He likely also expected Ryu to have been bought off by McGilded; to say whatever’s convenient for his case. Turns out, Ryu is actually a man of integrity who’s invested in the truth and near the end of the trial, Barok has seen evidence of this. So what will happen next? We’ll have to play The Clouded Kokoro and find out! Stay tuned!

#dgs #dgs spoilers #tgaa #tgaa spoilers #barok van zieks

[ughwhyislifelikethis]

Guess I might as well do this here since it's a bit more personal/honest than I might want some irl friends to see - and bc I don't want to have to discuss it with them, frankly. I'd rather not lose a friendship over this even though it causes me to be somewhat hurt or whatever. I know, it's not healthy, I should probably not stay friends or whatever, etc but my autistic finally not bullied and excluded ass kinda refuses to be lonely rn and at the end of the day frankly it's not worth it for me personally. Could probably say something about how "saying something about shitty treatment could cause friendships to break up is shit and the queer community needs to do better etc l" but eh. Not the point.

Also, the wording in this is messy, it's long-winded, it is not explicit in exclusions and if I tried to hit every point of "by this I do not mean this specific form of discussion that falls under bigotry" it would be too fucking long, and it is already. So if you're gonna be like "Mra! you're being transmisogynist!" Or soemthing (I have no idea how you're gonna get transmisogyny from this considering I literally only talk about this in the context of cis people's views on me as a transmasculine person and I do my best to avoid things that could be interpreted badly so that that doesn't happen but watch it happen somehow. The mra thing I could see how twisting my words here could get but I do not and will not ever excuse or condone bigotry or sexism or etc under the guise of "MRA bullshit". Just bc I'm saying maybe you should think critically about how cis men are expected and asked to behave in society and how that affects them does not mean I'm saying go fix them or excuse the shitty behavior exhibited.)

I think that covers all of it, idk. Don't really care with how damn long this is and y'know, it being a vent post that's secondarily maybe helpful for explaining experiences to others and also for getting stuff worked out in my own head.

Anyways. My actual point.

I really do think some of the reason it took me so damn long to realize I was trans and specifically a trans guy is because of transandrophobia I heard offline and online. To be crystal clear - the people I'm talking about hearing it from were fucking cis. Hell, even I used to derogatorily mutter "boys" in middle school because the cis boys in my class were assholes and I wasn't great at the whole "wider picture thing". I'd barely started coming into my own awareness - honestly I think it had started fifth grade when I actually felt like a fucking person. My memories kinda really start there - everything else earlier is a blur. Saying "girls" in the same way felt wrong, bc it is, and also highlights the if it's wrong for one why exactly isn't it wrong for the other? so I didn't do it more than a few times, but I also was very confused for a while as to why I felt a separation from the things, why I didn't feel lumped in with the girls "like I should".

Again, I digress. I was saying how I as a middle schooler used to buy into the whole "fuck (not literally) boys" thing that's really popular at that age. Or maybe that was me. Idk, being ace also affected things. (The correct thing to do there would be to actually address the bullying and shit not just ignore it bc the victim is an autistic adhd middle schooler with very few coping skills and a severe lack of ability to mask.) (Also the whole "he bullies you bc he likes you is a whole topic I could probably go into about how no parties deserve that excuse bc it teaches young cis boys extremely unhealthy behaviors and also teaches cis girls that they should take it bc it's a crush, etc but again not the point. I'm ADHD, did I mention that?)

Okay. Hopefully onto the rest of my point.

Growing up afab, I was taught a lot about how "boys are". They're mean because they crush on you, you wont be chastised for saying something derogatory about an entire group of people (who aren't doing it bc of their gender but because they're assholes and the teachers didn't feel like stopping them from being assholes. Or something. There's probably an intersection of ableism there truth be told), you won't be allowed to play hockey but do figure skating it's safer! (And less boyish). Don't be like your tomboy cousins, they're gonna have to grow out of it and we'll reward that behavior when it occurs and push for less of tomboyish behavior too. Shave your legs, wear dresses, don't "look like a boy."

Don't try and "look like a boy". Not just because apparently I'm supposed to be a "girl" but "don't look like a boy."

Apparently, It's gross. Unhygenic, don't you know boys never clean up after themselves? It's undesirable to look like a boy as an afab person but ultimately for me it was taboo to even want to look like a boy.

And like, I get that there's the whole patriarchy thing and that rich cis white abled men who have no other form of intersectional oppression issues tend to be in power and all that. I'm not disputing that.

But for trans men, or at least, this one?

I was told it was bad to look like a boy or to want anything to do with being one.

And I think, honestly, there was an implied "it's a step down for you" with it.

And maybe that had something to do with growing up when a lot of the "girl power! Stuff was taking off". Maybe parents, teachers, etc were just trying to honesly say I didn't need to "step up" to be worthwhile because girls aren't lesser, and that's true. No gender inherently (structure of the world aside, in a world where bigotry isn't a thing etc) is better or worse than any other.

But I didn't hear "I don't need to step up".

I heard "you shouldn't step down, because you're valuable as you are and this would be leaving that all behind for the "easy" road of cis privilege" . And yeah, I have and always will benefit from white privilege, and able-bodied, unless something changes and I'm no longer able-bodied. But I will never be seen as either non queer (deliberately, because I want to be a safe place for queer kids to find, or for queer people in general looking for a friend) or noncis, probably. I'll never, ever be "stepping up". There's a good chance I'll always read something, because I'm autistic, I'm queer, I'm ADHD, and something will probably ring cis people's bells to say "something is off".

And I didn't - don't, as much as I'm working through it - want to "step down". It is so tempting to just recloset myself and live with the dysphoria and go after the scholarships I see aimed at cis women, the internships for that. But I can't. Because I can't even imagine just. Even stepping toward the closet. I couldn't keep the lie that I'm cis and a women up. Pandora's box was opened and I am unable to close it.

So I'll never benefit from those. And I'm stuck in the position where I can't seek out the trans specific ones because I'm not out to my parent, who I live with. And I love him to death, I do, but hearing "why do you want to look like a boy" from him hurts so damn much.

This got really long, sorry. I'm almost done.

I mentioned way above, how I used to mutter "boys" when I thought boys were being ridiculous and stupid or whatever. I've heard my friends say "men" like that and it stings, every time. Do you really think that I'm like this asshole you're talking about? That specific man is an asshole, true, but I can point you to 3 others off the top of my head who aren't. And I know there's a shit ton of shitty men out there. The point is I'm upset you automatically assume that I'm one of them even if you don't really realize that. I'm a man. I'm not cis, but I'm a man. You will pass me on the street and if you don't see the trans, you'll lump me in with the other men in your head who you will toss out a derogatory "why are men?" To.

So maybe it's a struggle because I know causing a fuss to that will get a "I'm talking about cis men" which isn't actually better. I'm a man cis or not and cis men can be good, actually. I know a good few and I'm sick of knowing that even saying that gets seen as "not all men!" Type bullshit. No, maybe I just want you to not assume my cis guy friends aren't total pieces of shit because they were born cis men. Maybe I hesitate(d) to label myself a man because I know that will downgrade their opinion on me, consciously or otherwise, if I made it a point for them to remember it.

I've definitely lost a few trains of thoughts I wanted to post somejwre here and there but anyways. Yeah. Here's a vent post and here's why the form of transphobia I specifically face because I am a trans MAN is a thing I deal with and would like to stop hearing that it doesn't exist.

I think I may make a post about how the whole concept of viewing the other gender as alien or another species isn't/wasn't just limited to cis boys about cis girls and how that ties into transandrophobia specifically (it also ties into transmisogyny I think? But I'm gonna talk about it/ramble about it in the context of transandrophobia) next but it definitely won't fit here cause this is too long already.

#step down thing #failed women #you just want to step up in the world #transandrophobia truther #transandrophobia #transmisandry #trans man #trans men #trans guy #im kinda done being told things i went through dont exist actually #and idk if these sorts of things are just me or not could be tbh #i hadnt really heard about the whole and its a specific family thing i think #i think most of the time people do experience the thing or accusations #but i...didnt so. #yeah. #vent post #all my posts are gonna be vent type posts here but im making a point especially since this blog got hit with gr #its gonna be fucking messy im not gonna be polite and im gonna try and word things so they dont come off badly but at the end of the day #this is for sorting through some feelings and shit and like if you're gonna pick through it to find something wrong just....dont. please. #at the end of the day id like to be able to vent without having it also have to be educational or activistic #sometimes i just want to yell fuck you into the void

[the-ghost-king]

Hullo, anon who asked for clarification re: bingo card post here again!

The two specific phrases I'm a bit confused on are "you need therapy" and "brain rot"

Both of these are used in my friendship group (everybody in this group is neurodivergent and/or mentally ill, if that's at all relevant)

- "you need therapy" is just something we occasionally say to each other in a joking manner

- "brain rot" is an inside joke we came up with, referring to when one of us is distracted and thus does something silly that we wouldn't have done had we been paying attention

I'm not asking for some kind of Free Ableism Pass, and I apologize if that's how this comes across! I genuinely want to know if these joking comments are causing harm

Right out of the gate I just want to say, don't apologize for trying to learn more! Not all disabled people will agree, but I do personally think context and intent matters (both in regards to your ask, and the content you're asking about).

You are asking this with the knowledge that you may have personal biases, and the intention of educating yourself further to help others- this is a positive thing, you are taking action and that's not something to apologize for. You're putting in the first steps to harm prevention and that eventually leads to helping other people learn to stop harm. You've also worded the rest of your ask in a way that shows you're not baiting or anything and are actually interested in making individual change, to me (personally) an apology isn't necessary!

I don't think "you need therapy" is the most extreme form of ableism out there or the most harmful, there is also the important distinction between saying something with the intent to hurt vs the intent of humor. In some cases, hurt and humor are inseparable- for example, even among a "closed" demographic slurs would be hurt no matter what they're coupled with.

The problem with "you need therapy" is outside of contexts where people are all in full agreement that they are friends and that they trust each other it's used in extremely ableist ways not giving the full understanding that therapy is for many people a very serious thing.

Telling someone they need therapy is often used in such a way that people "armchair diagnose" and they may throw other derogatory remarks in with the statment "like oh you must be psychotic" which just further stigmatizes a variety of disabilities.

There's also the issue that stating someone should go to therapy in a derogatory sort of way removes agency from them, you can think of the statement in this context being framed less like "you need therapy" and more as "you do not have the capabilities to determine what you need I will determine for you" which is definitely a problem.

On top of this, "you need therapy" makes assumptions about neurotypicality or individual capability. Someone who's neurodivergent doesn't need therapy because they have a "cringe" interest, etc.

It can be used against many demographics though, for example someone could use this against someone who's queer with the intent of telling them they should go to conversion therapy which is undebateably wrong.

I think this post lays out the issue in a coherent and clear way if anyone is still confused!

As for your friend group, or friend groups in general, this is a different situation that will depend on each individual and the group's functions as a whole. It is of my opinion, that your friend group isn't doing anything wrong as people who do face ableism (because you all have mental illnesses/neurodivergencies/mental disabilities/etc), in my opinion you have the right to reclamation if you want it.

In that same token, I do (personally) think it's important to be aware of the possible unintended effects of reclamation no matter the context. For example is there group trust and consent around these jokes and the contexts they're implied in? If everyone in the group feels comfortable with that being reclaimed, and comfortable with the way they're referred to in the context or content of these jokes then there's no issue. You haven't violated someone's autonomy, or put someone down, or invalidated their capabilities because everyone has consented to the joke. If you're ever concerned someone is uncomfortable, it never hurts to ask- "hey is this okay?", "is this particular topic not something we should jokes about?", etc. If anyone is ever upset with you for reaffirming boundaries that's a personal issue that they need to handle.

Alongside this "you need therapy" is a put down to people who need therapy and therapy itself as well. I do think this makes it possible for some friend groups to reaffirm that societal bias accidentally with their jokes, even when consent to the jokes has occurred. In this situation someone might unintentionally create or harbor more guilt about needing or wanting to attend therapy, worsening an internalized issue. In this situation it's not anyone's fault this happened, we live in an ableist society, but is this is noticed or brought up it's definitely a good place to recheck and reaffirm boundaries about language and jokes used at that person, and around them.

As for "brainrot" I think this post gets the general idea of the issue, but I think it's important to note that "brain dead" or "brain damaged" may also be used in this context.

I'm also going to note right away, that I just hold a personal bias against this word and reclaimation. Not that reclaiming any derogatory word or slur or phrase is inherently a good or bad thing with a "right" decision. Just take note of that fact that I, personally, can't ever see myself comfortable enough with this word to reclaim it and although I'll try to avoid that influencing my answer it may a little bit.

I think this post gets down into the specifics of it quite well! (I will say that personally, and that I am also not the voice to be prioritized here, I don't think there's anything wrong with dumb/stupid/idiotic/etc being used because they've made their way into general lexicon, but I do think it's an issue to use these words to describe people, especially individuals or marginalized groups. Personally, the solution I've found is using the word silly, illogical or ridiculous, or something similar- and I've noticed that I'm more intentful in what I mean by doing this as well).

There's also a lot of disabled people who feel this is just a fancy way to say the r slur and get away with it, and personally I agree. Often times it's not used to describe interpersonal issues but is used to just throw something negative at anyone who disagrees with the original speaker or main point of a conversation. So essentially even if it's not a new way to reference people being like a slur, it's saying that "thinking oppositionally/different/etc is bad and that the correct way to think is the way everyone else thinks". It's like the culmination of ableism, purity culture, and in my opinion therefore it's also about supremacy. Essentially, "normal people think like this, why aren't you normal? you should just be normal because not being normal hurts you" which is a huge red flag.

I'm not going to get too much into whether or not it's appropriate for this to be reclaimed and/or by who, but I will say it is a word/term that definitely requires a lot more thought and care when determining whether or not it should be used/said/reclaimed than something like "you need therapy". I can't however tell you what's right or wrong, and I can't tell you whether or not you have the right to be using this word that's something you have to work out for yourself.

#asks #anon #ableism #ghost's posts