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alicuntisms · 2 years

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sorry for the long ass ask about the fic, I sent it separately in case you don't want to publish it. (another long ass ask incoming lol) I have to say I disagree about the crazy betrayal bit because I don't think it's that crazy in the sense, that intense and shocking, because everyone repeatedly tells edwina from the beginning that anthony is explicitly looking for a loveless marriage and kate also repeatedly tries to talk her out of accepting being courted by him because she wants love for her and all that that we rehashed a thousand times in the fandom. imo the writers overplayed it a bit with how oblivious and naive edwina is, it comes across a little too much, like how willfully ignorant can she be written as. but i do agree that it's understandable that she did feel a betrayal, unless she was supernaturally perceptive, she wouldn't know what had been developing between kate and anthony when she wasn't with them. and like, your sister gave her approval for this guy to marry you, everyone acts supportive, suddenly literally at the altar you get an inkling something's happened between them... i don't think the writing was that bad regarding her reaction. what's she supposed to do, say oh hey kate, wanna switch places and I'll just get publicly humiliated at what's supposed to be my own wedding. i mostly don't feel like their reconciliation afterwards was all that it could (should) be, because kate was clearly prepared to let her sister marry a man she had feelings for if it meant her sister could be happy and edwina doesn't seem to appreciate the weight of that. also I agree with you about people's preference for book edwina - it is straight up hilarious to see people call show edwina plot device, when book edwina's entire purpose is to get kate and anthony together and be their cheerleader, like gimme a break... I don't even think people who like kate can't hate edwina, I don't care, but you can't project your own hate on kate and think you're doing the character justice. or when people were writing posts how if anthony found out edwina called kate half sister, he'd ban her from bridgerton properties or take away the dowry he gave edwina or whatever else with the purpose to hurt her. incredible galaxy braining defending a woman of color (kate) by imagining the ways a white guy can be horrible towards a different woman of color.

there's being told something and seeing it for yourself and while everyone and their mom told edwina he didn't want a love match, anthony never explicitly says that he does not love edwin, he does not say TO EDWINA that he does not seek a love match. as far as edwina is concerned (especially with the amount of effort that anthony put into courting her) he clearly feels something for her, something that her 18yo mind can only interpret as love. edwina is naive! she's romantic! she's idealistic! of course she's just going to take everything at face value: kate says she hates him, so kate hates anthony. anthony says he wants to marry edwina, that he'll be good to her, he defends her family from the sheffields, he goes forward with the engagement despite the lack of dowry, then clearly that means he wants her more than anything, that he must love her more than anything. if it were just business why go through so much effort, you know? and then you have mary, violet, danbury, even the queen of fucking england telling her its a love match with zero contradictions from anthony OR kate - what else is she supposed to believe? i don't think she's oblivious but definitely naive. her only example of love is mary and her father and we can only assume that it's nothing like what's happening between kate and anthony. why would edwina be able to identify lust and longing and attraction when she's never experienced it herself? at the end of the day, the reveal at the wedding rocks edwina's entire world and i do think she views it as the ultimate act of betrayal and i don't think she's wrong. i'm a big proponent of off-screen moments so i don't think a proper "apology" conversation needed to happen on screen, i think the conversation in the dressing room and the dance between sisters heavily implies that the conversation had been had and that they were reconciled. i'm willing to take that point at face value, you know? (and i don't give a FUCK what cvd says - it's not actually on the screen in the show so it's not canon, it's just their opinion) but as far as the weight of it all - edwina never asked kate to put her own feelings aside. she didn't ask kate to give up her own hopes and dreams and wants in order to give edwina what she wanted and thus we get the 'i didn't ask for any of it' line (and like don't even get me started on how people are determined to say 'well she said she wanted anthony so she's lying here' and it's just. clearly she is talking about the sacrifices that kate CHOSE TO MAKE ON HER OWN that were never asked for.) i don't know. for me putting so much blame on edwina is a disservice to kate's character in general. ignoring how much kate loves her family and would never disown them, the fact remains that kate made these choices, she CHOSE to give these things up without talking to edwina about what SHE wants. she CHOSE to be edwina's internal voice, pushing her towards decisions that KATE thinks is the best for edwina and edwina has never known different so why would she contradict her beloved sister? i know i've gone off on a tag rant before about how anthony is probably the first time that edwina has wanted something outside of her relationship with kate. you can see that when edwina is unsure about lumley but because kate likes him, she puts her own concerns aside to follow kate's advice. and i think that gets missed so often (it's like two seconds in ep2) and is such a huge indicator of what their relationship is like. so then to get to the altar at the end of what edwina thinks is her first solo decision ever only to find out that there's this HUGE aspect of anthony and kate that edwina was unaware of that everyone else seemed to sense and say nothing to her about and i'm sure her decision feels infinitely less like something SHE chose and something that KATE pushed her into with her desperation for edwina to get her hea.

and now that i'm done ranting and am completely unsure that i'm making any fucking sense lol. the point is: everyone is to blame for the fuck ups that happened in s2 except newton. and gregory and hyacinth. (and definitely more blame should go to anthony than anyone else since he could have stopped this entire circus so many fucking times and just DOESN'T!!!!!!)

#love getting the chance to just go apeshit with my opinions #i have so many of them!#*insert old man yells at cloud pic*#seriously ask my opinions 9 times out of 10 they'll be salty and that's always fun lol

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cantfightfatetoo · 4 years

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white fandoms be really gaslighting poc. like when we're criticizing problematic racist ships-- an example, the white fandom will leapfrog over the characters of color in favor of a white character, who had maybe 5 lines with said protagonist. it's wild, or it can be canon and white fandom will go though xyz reasons why the ship isn't valid.... or they completely ignore the characters of color's existence all together. only propping up the white characters. the actual brain rot. stop it. i'm so tired. the argument "let people ship what they want" is a clever way of shutting us down. invalidating poc's experiences in racist fandoms is a worn out theme. stop automatically defending racism and maybe take a step back to listen.

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goldafterglow · 3 years

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Posting your work is incredibly vunerable, so how is it ok for authors to continue to attack each other and say “no hate but...” This author has gotten so much hate from the community because of its success. I’ve seen multiple authors on here admit they’ve never read it or say it sucks. How’s that ok? Not all fans of that fic are horrible people. I didn’t even discover it h til I came on tumblr. I only read it on AO3. They’re standing up for her just as you’re standing up for your friends. All fics can exist, but this one keeps being brought up because of its popularity.

I’m going to assume you’re talking about RD.

1) I don’t have a super concrete opinion on criticism under works, but I don’t like when my friends get hate and I don’t think it’s fair that the author of RD is getting hate. Criticism isn’t fun and it would make me quite sad if I ever got any, but that’s all subjective and where there is negative criticism there is positive criticism. I want to be clear: I absolutely do not endorse sending unwarranted hate to the author of the fic. It’s not their fault they’re popular, and they are not responsible for the actions of their followers.

2) That’s like, how success works. I want you to understand that RD has like a fucking insane, gargantuan cult following. It holds immense power in that fandom. Not everyone is going to like it, and people will be more inclined to speak out about that when the fans of the work are shoving it down everyone’s throat. The fic still is overwhelmingly beloved.

3) Yes, posting art is very vulnerable. But you cannot compare the vulnerability of someone who hasn’t even breached 1k followers to that of someone with multiple thousands of followers, at the top of AO3 with hundreds of thousands of hits. So many of my friends are afraid of posting their content because they don’t have a giant backing. Art is inherently vulnerable, but the presence of a community or lack thereof is completely different and is sometimes even more of a deterrent.

4) I never said all of the fans of that fic are horrible people.

5) You’re not like...oppressed? Because you like RD???? As a member of multiple marginalized groups that insinuation is insulting. I know you didn’t technically say that, but I’m going to address this anyways because that is how some of the fans of the work act. Fans of the work are not systemically hate crimed, and people don’t typically make assumptions about individual fans. If someone says “I like RD” no one is going to say “oh so then you’re a hateful racist bigot then?” RD fans are not a marginalized group lmao.

6) I have a lot of friends who actually genuinely enjoy RD. Do you know why we’re friends? BECAUSE THEY’RE STILL KIND PEOPLE, WHO DON’T LEAVE RANDOM HATE ON OTHER PEOPLE’S WORK. It is possible to be a fan of something and not be toxic. Some people just choose to be unkind over the fic.

7) It is still totally fair to acknowledge the harm that the RD fandom has done to this community. The white-washing of the main character that makes fans of color feel unwelcome, willfully ignoring small creators, comparing everything to the fic like it’s the source material, and in general making a fandom space that’s supposed to be people’s happy place something toxic. I’m not saying YOU did that, and if you didn’t contribute then good job!! Pat on the back to you. But the RD fandom is huge and I am allowed to speak out about the general trends I have seen.

8) I’m sorry, but this last point is just fucking bogus. “Standing up?” What did my friends (small creators mind you, many of them creators of color) do to RD? How does someone else posting content serve as a threat to your fave? This is the main problem I have with some of you, which is that when other people simply create (I will reiterate, a very vulnerable thing ESPECIALLY when you have a small following) you feel like everyone is gonna fucking stop reading RD all of the sudden. How is leaving unwarranted reminders that a fic isn’t RD “standing up” for anything? I am standing up for my friends because they don’t get a giant payoff from thousands of people every time they post and yet people still have the audacity to make them feel like they shouldn’t. If someone leaves negative criticism or hate about RD, then feel free to address that specifically. But just fucking reminding people that they’re not extremely powerful and famous in this fandom is not defending anyone.

I don’t want to become the “RD hate blog” because I don’t hate the fic. I just dislike how some people who really enjoy it treat others.

All this to implore unto people to stop being toxic fans. Be a fan of the work! Support the creator, read their content and enjoy it! That’s super rad and what fandoms are for. But if you’re not going to take the time to support smaller creators, then don’t attack them for it. It’s not fair to them.

#thank you for reading and listening #again if you’re a RD fan that is GREAT dude that’s fucking sick as hell rock on #keep doing that!!! I love that for you!!! I’m glad something you read makes you happy!!!#as long as you’re not actively trying to make other people Not Happy then you and I have no beef mi vida #iris answers

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bigskydreaming · 3 years

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Current mood: thinking about the damage done to society by the myth of perpetual cycles of abuse and the flip side of that coin, the incessant woobification of abusers and victimizers.

Like.......one of my biggest.....I don’t want to call it pet peeves cuz its bigger than that, but I don’t want to call it triggers cuz its smaller than that, but somewhere in between, but like....whatever you want to call that, one of the biggest for me in regards to both my two big faves, Scott McCall and Dick Grayson is like......the simultaneous dismissal or erasure of their own traumas and abuse, alongside the erasure/invalidation of how their choices are THEIR choices.

What I mean by that is....let’s look at Scott first. There’s a huge issue of empathy gap when it comes to his character, and people looking past, around or through instances of outright harm, exploitation, trauma and abuse.......in large part because fandom has come to consider these things a kind of shield from criticism. So not only is there the problem of ignoring the harm and damage done to his character by these traumas and abuse.......there’s the compounding issue of how the whole reason this shell game of ‘hide the trauma’ is played in the first place, has literally nothing to do with his character or the effects of these things on him.....but rather the completely superfluous element of like.....people not wanting these things to be usable to defend the character from criticism....even though that’s not what trauma is or why it exists/happens in the first place. It just DOES, and what happens after that is entirely what we make of it......but nothing ever CAN be made of it at all, if its not acknowledged as existing, purely for the sake of ‘winning’ arguments that should have nothing to do with it in the first place.

Like.....this is a character whose father once knocked him down a flight of stairs while drunk, knocking him unconscious and giving him a lasting scar.....and people have had to fight over the years to have this actually acknowledged or considered an instance of abuse. Not because of anything to do with the actual incident itself or what the effects of it were and weren’t on Scott, or how they inform his dynamic with his father.....but purely because fandom is so married to the idea of “abuse makes a character sympathetic regardless of all other context” that they don’t just apply it to villainous characters (and usually just white ones, it must be acknowledged), but they equally apply it in reverse to heroic characters (and usually just ones of color) in order to REMOVE sympathy.....ie, can’t be sympathized with for being abused, if they weren’t actually abused.

Now at the exact same time, this goes hand in hand with the erasure/invalidation of Scott’s good qualities or choices being a credit to him as a person and a character, compounding everything. What I mean HERE is how often do we see Scott’s character and personality being attributed to the influence of his mother, his friends, the Sheriff and Deaton as role models, the idea that he had a better or more stable home life than he otherwise could’ve (with it all being relative, as in, the focus is never even on “was his home life completely happy, healthy and stable at all times: y/n” but rather on the much more malleable “at least it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been/as others’ were.”)

And to be clear: its not that these positive elements DIDN’T exist or that he was completely miserable or anything of the sort, its just something I’m emphasizing in the specific context of how often this is all held up in deliberate contrast to the home lives or pasts of characters like Derek, Jackson, Theo, etc, with the specific aim of pointing to “well of course they don’t make the kinds of choices Scott makes, but that’s because they didn’t have the kind of atmosphere/home/influences Scott had.”

And again, its not that environmental factors, the influences of different parents/nurturers on an individual’s formative years....its not that any of that is irrelevant or meaningless, that it doesn’t play a role, its the EXTREMES I’m talking about here. The fact that its all or nothing, that Scott’s choices and personality being a credit to HIMSELF rather than to his upbringing or surrounding factors just gets washed away as an afterthought, as less than a thought......in order to present as a given.....a premise that is NOT innately true: that anyone could be him or make the choices he makes, if they had the life he had.

(Something that is frequently born out in the literal hundreds if not thousands of fics that run with the premise of Stiles is bit instead of Scott, or an OC that’s Scott’s sibling is bit instead, and everything else about the show plays out exactly the same, as if Scott himself is irrelevant, that his character, his personality, his choices had absolutely nothing to do with the shape the show took, and that he’s completely interchangeable with anyone else if you just transplant them into his shoes.....all of which leads to the inevitable conclusion that there’s nothing especially worthy of consideration about him, and he’s unnecessary).

Now let’s shift focus to Dick Grayson, and how the exact same thing plays out there. The way so many of his greatest hits: Trauma Edition, are just like....completely glossed over or left out in the cold any time his characterization is happy, upbeat, positive.....as if its completely inconceivable that someone can be those things and yes, also traumatized.

But also, the way that specific instances of trauma and abuse are erased or invalidated the second his choices are being upheld as especially ‘good’ in contrast to another character like Jason. There are other elements in play when it comes to the overall picture of fandom not wanting to engage with Bruce’s instances of abuse with Dick, to be clear......plenty of that hails from fans of Bruce’s character not wanting to interact with canon or fanon that upholds him as capable of treating ANY of his children that way. But what I’m talking about here is like, the specific times and ways when fans who are perfectly willing and even EAGER to interact and engage with canon/fanon where Bruce behaves abusively towards Jason, like....are equally dismissive of the idea that Bruce has an extremely poor track record with Dick as well.

And same as what I was outlining above with Scott’s character.......we run into the same issue of where its not even ABOUT Dick’s character or his choices......but nevertheless, any way in which his choices might be upheld or examined as a good thing or aspirational, just...vanishes, because the spotlight of focus is basically restricted to shaping the idea that well, the problem is never Jason’s choices but rather that he never got the opportunities that Dick did, that Bruce has never done anything wrong in his raising of Dick or given Dick cause to resent him or make poor choices in general or specifically in terms of his dynamic with Bruce, the way Bruce has with Jason.....all leading to the framing narrative that not just are negative choices or decisions not inherently someone’s fault if there are elements of abuse in the mix....but equally that if elements of abuse can be erased from the mix - whether because they literally just weren’t present or they’re willfully being suppressed as part of making the following case - then any positive choices or decisions are not inherently to another character’s credit either.

Resulting in the same issue, both coming and going:

Over and over, we’re forcefed the narrative that most people prefer to just reaffirm and uphold as true, even if they nominally criticize it here and there......that cycles of abuse are inviolate, and that once abused, that character’s future as an abuser is set in stone......and thus its not really their fault.

While at the exact same time, its equally reaffirmed and upheld as true.......that positive choices are the inevitable end result of positive upbringings, environments and influences.....and thus anyone who doesn’t have these things not making these positive choices....that isn’t really their fault either, nor is it to the credit of anyone who does have these things, if and when they make such choices.

And here’s the kicker: Its not that either of these above statements are inherently UNTRUE.

Its just that they’re not....inherently true.

Its not that abuse victims NEVER become abusers themselves, and its not that their pasts don’t directly have a hand in shaping them following that direction in life.

And its not that people with positive, supportive upbringings never turn out as positive, nurturing individuals, just as its not that their pasts don’t directly play into shaping THEM following THAT direction.

Its that.....its never all or nothing, and this willful insistence that it is....usually for reasons that have absolutely NOTHING whatsoever to do with ACTUALLY examining abuse and trauma and the impacts of this on fictional characters and real life people, choices and decision-making...but rather with abuse and trauma just being completely hijacked and co-opted in the name of ‘winning’ arguments......

Like....it results in the complete erasure of not one, but two entire swaths of people:

1) The people who grew up abused, had no real positive environments, role models or influences, BUT WHO STILL MANAGED TO BECOME POSITIVE, EMPATHETIC, AND CARING PEOPLE REGARDLESS.....

2) And the people who grew up supported, affirmed, sheltered and with plenty of positive role models to potentially choose from, BUT WHO STILL MAKE THE DECISION TO DO HARM, HAVE A TOXIC OR DESTRUCTIVE IMPACT ON OTHERS, AND PRIORITIZE NOTHING BUT THEMSELVES REGARDLESS.

And like yes, both these kinds of people absolutely do exist, and the fact that their existence, their choices, their reasons for making those choices and potential examinations of who they are and why they’re that way and how they’re impacted by things both positive and negative even if the choices they then make don’t match up with what choices are typically expected to go hand in hand with various life experiences or walks of life.......

The fact that all of these things are entirely erased and glossed over and invalidated simply because they’re INCONVENIENT to the more simple, binary perception of ‘good people vs bad people’ and why people are like that.....

Its fucking infuriating, lmfao.

Anyway. So that’s what’s on my mind at the moment.

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not-a-space-alien · 5 years

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hey its me again wall of text sorry not sorry

k i saw your little treatise justifying zadr and yknow its a cartoon its not the worst thing ever of course nobody is gonna sue you for reblogging fanart or burn you at the stake or w/e and im glad you decided to open yourself up to a differing opinion but zim IS portrayed as an adult. there was even an unfinished episode where zim’s childhood and growing up training from start to finish would be shown so by the time of the pilot he is definitely a full grown developed adult by irken standards especially if hes a former member of an elite military force like the invaders. jhonen has said that the irony and sad comedy of zims character is that hes a grown ass man and a war veteran to boot who VOLUNTARILY goes to an elementary school every day and throws hands with an 11 year old boy who should be well below his notice because he’s that pathetic and desperate for validation that he’ll stoop to seeking it from a child. it also sets up a dynamic between them where dib is CHALLENGED by having to go up against an adult with way more experience than him while dib is just a child, so when he wins its more meaningful, which is a common trope in childrens fiction that an underdog young hero has to take down a powerful adult villain.

jhonen might joke a lot but he’s serious about this part of the characterization of zim and dib and he even went to great lengths to make dib look and act more like a kid in ETF (more emotional and naive, designed to look smaller/softer, going in depth with his relationship to his dad and sister and needing his dad to protect him at the end when he’s too overrun to fight alone) just to drive home the point of how young he is. it was a very deliberate move and jhonen knows what hes doing ESPECIALLY since he also left zim pretty much unchanged and also includes gags about zim’s relative maturity like animating him briefly grimacing because his joints are sore and the part where he pretty much gestures to his crotch and goes “theyre afraid to look at ALL-A THIS”. like you would not see jhonen do that sort of joke with an underage character ok. dont confuse his social awkwardness and self deprecating/trolling humor for not knowing the difference between right and wrong and not acknowledge when he means something sincerely because he doesn’t just clown on people and troll ALL THE TIME 24/7 hes a human, and times have changed with more awareness on issues such as the grooming of minors so he can go back on things he may have said in the past that he doesn’t agree with now or said by mistake. he has said enough times that zim is older than any human alive that its safe to take his word for it by now. judging by the one strip he did in JTHM about johnny murdering a pedophile who was about to prey on squee i think his stance on protecting kids is pretty clear. also i wouldnt put it past jhonen to have redesigned membrane to be more chaddy looking to divert the adult fandom’s attention away from dib and throw the fangirls a bone but thats a whole nother can of worms lol.

and the justification that zim is immature so hes essentially on dib’s level is a reversal of something lots of kids hear from either creepy or ignorant adults who tell them theyre “so mature for their age”. no matter how emotionally mature you are it wont ever compensate for the number of years youve been alive so that’s not very sound logic, and even in fic where theyre both adults it’s still pretty weird because it doesn’t erase their history where zim knew dib as a kid. that’s sort of like a grownup waiting with bated breath until a kid is “legal” so they can start dating. kinda like when jacob imprints on bella’s newborn daughter in twilight then having it handwaved away by saying he’ll wait till she’s grown up, which understandably drew a huge amount of criticism. it’s a loophole that might be mildly acceptable in some cases but the context leaves it colored with a residual ickiness that sets off some red flags for me and a lot of other people.

also you said zim is an alien and therefore the situation itself is unrealistic, but the reason invader zim’s writing resonates with people is because zim is written with very HUMAN emotions and motivations and part of the humor again is how irkens despite being aliens from another planet mirror some of humanity’s worst flaws such as being petty, gluttonous, willfully ignorant, arrogantly believing they are special and better than everyone else, easily manipulated by propaganda, all too eager to greedily colonize other societies etc making them not so different from us at all. so the premise out of context might not seem realistic but the idea of a sad burnout adult who doesn’t realize how humiliating it is to be consistently outsmarted by a kid less than half their age IS realistic and applicable to human interaction since we’ve likely all met someone like this before at one point in our lives for example a schoolteacher who has a personal vendetta against one or more of their students and has nothing better to do than antagonize them, or a really dumb parent that you fight with a lot.

another thing, i know you and other fans probably have a lot of sentimental value and nostalgia attached to zadr because you probably shipped it back when you were a kid yourself and you cant be blamed for something you liked as a kid, but youre an adult now, and you have to listen to the portion of kids in the fandom who dont like zadr and say without question that the age gap makes them uncomfortable. those kids ARE the priority. we’re grown up now and we have to put our feelings aside for them because that’s part of being responsible and mature. i feel like zim himself is a pretty good example of how not to act at our age [shrug emoji]

and anyway a lot of the same elements of zadr can be explored with zadf just as well with just as much potential for cute moments and as a bonus is it’s not creepy

You do bring up some good points, and I’m not saying you’re wrong... But honestly I’m still not convinced. I mean, stuff that Jhonen said, the thing is even if it’s the author saying it it’s still outside of canon, that’s the reason why Neil Gaiman got flack for Good Omens because they didn’t write an actual kiss or hug or hand-hold between Aziraphale and Crowley yet Neil Gaiman went on Twitter saying they were queer representation. I still don’t really put much stock into what he says because the unfinished episodes and Jhonen’s commentary don’t really change the dynamic that’s actually in the show. And again...Jhonen said if there were going to be romance in the show it would be Zim/Gaz, so he’s either a huge hypocrite or doesn’t view Zim as being incompatible with Gaz.

I do think it’s much better when Dib is an adult and it just makes more sense, and I actually do prefer zadf to zadr and if i were going to ever write fanfiction or make fanart it would probably just be zadf, just because i know this does have some stuff to think about and I totally respect that you have a different view of it, but i honestly just don’t see it that way. The analogy with Jacob imprinting on Bella’s child in Twilight isn’t really the same thing honestly. The author in that situation tried to make it not......that....by saying that imprinting isn’t always a romantic relationship thing, and that Jacob would be more of an older brother, but honestly that doesn’t really negate the impact of grooming that kid would have with Jacob around. The idea that Zim would somehow be grooming Dib seems really silly to me although you’re right, I think his characterization in Into the Florpus has evolved somewhat especially with regard to Dib wanting to get his father’s approval, but again Zim has parallels with that in trying to please the Tallest. the world-building and characterizations are inconsistent and scattershot at best. Like no, zim isn’t waiting for him to turn legal, that’s absurd, they’re nemeses coming at each other then learning to be friends. You’re right that that doesn’t have to be zadr but I still tag it as zadr so people can block it if they want to.

Like, I’ve seen people ship Zim with Professor Membrane instead of Dib. That seems very weird to me. that professor membrane would have a relationship with someone who literally goes to his son’s elementary school and who doesn’t know anything at all about human behavior and emotions.

I feel like with this discussion people don’t really understand the problem with age gaps. With age gaps, it’s not a matter of mature/immature, it’s about development. A ten year age gap sounds like a lot right? a 25-year-old and a 15-year old would absolutely have a predatory “relationship.” But a 35- and a 45-year old, that’s perfectly fine. Having a difference in age doesn’t automatically make the relationship unhealthy. so if Dib is 25 and Zim is [whatever the hell aliens years i still don’t really take Jhonen’s word for it bc he’s not consistent], that’s doesn’t mean it has to be bad. The thing about telling minors they’re “so mature for their age” to try and convince them that a person interested in them isn’t a pedophile is that we know a human being who is 15 isn’t developmentally at the same level as a 25-year-old regardless of their behavior. What is Zim? All we have to go on is how he acts, and he acts like Dib is an equal match, it’s not “he’s immature for his age,” it’s very unclear. Raw number of years isn’t the ultimate decider, for example in DnD lore elves reach maturity at, like, 100 years old so a 25-yo human trying to get with a 50-year-old elf would be predatory to the young elf even though the “younger” one is technically twice as old as the human. Do you see what I’m saying?

I also don’t really buy the idea that Invader Zim’s writing resonates with people because Zim is ~~so human~~. The guy steals a bunch of kid’s organs in one episode and flies into a tantrum over the slightest inconvenience. You have to be reading really deeply into it and dig into some old internet archives of things Jhonen Vasquez has said to paint it as realistic. You can do some interesting things with it wrt like, Zim being defective and starting to experience human emotions but that’s mostly fanon.

Well, you’ve given me some things to think about, thanks for explaining your side to me. I’m still going to tag things as #zadr so people can block if it can’t plausibly be categorized as zadf. I’m not actually making any fan content for Invader Zim so the point is kind of moot, but if I ever do I’ll definitely take this into consideration.

#invader zim #zadr #submission

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landofsomethingsomething · 7 years

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It’s so god damn easy to tear people down. People do it every day. It’s simple, it’s satisfying, it’s cathartic, it feels like balm to people who have been wronged, to people who have suffered, to people who have to live their lives outside this virtual space in fear and in real danger, in abusive households and abusive communities and situations that do not foster kindness, empathy, or the extension of good faith toward strangers. Being able to lash out safely from behind a screen at people that are safe to lash out at and who feel like a source of your continuing oppression -- that’s novel, at first. It’s invigorating. It’s freeing. The ability to be angry, to say angry things, to express your hurt and rage at any number of nameless or unnamable things is so fucking seductive it’s no wonder so many lgbt+ people have spent time in that place, have had periods of their lives where they engaged in this behavior and said what they wanted and lashed out without thought and allowed others so similar to them to enable their behavior.

It’s so easy to find lgbt+ people who are in pain. To take these people who are in pain and to give them targets. To mold young people and your peers and take advantage of their trauma (so like your own!) and whip it up, normalize it within your group, foster it on any number of available platforms. Focus it on whoever you deem deserving at any given time. Actions speak louder than words. Context is irrelevant. Dialogue is weak. Abusers are abusers are abusers, except when you’re the abuser, because the abuse you have suffered justifies your actions. Your abuse makes you relatable. Your abuse is more important, more valid, more meaningful, more deserving of the care and empathy of others regardless of your coping mechanisms.

It’s so damn fucking easy to just say whatever you want on the internet. It’s so easy to paint a group with whatever paintbrush you like, because no one fact checks, no one cares about context, no one concerns themselves with nuance, no one views the words on the screen in front of them as coming from another human being with an entirely separate lived history full of its own tragedy and triumph and biases and triggers and needs and understanding and hard fucking learned lessons.

We separate into teams and look for ways to score points against the other side. We make ourselves willfully ignorant so we don’t have to switch sides, or even better, remove ourselves from the game entirely. We busy ourselves with tearing our enemies down with unattainable standards, ignore our own hypocrisy, and look to our side to tell us we’re right, we’re right, this time we are right and we will not be silenced and we will not be bullied and we will not let them win.

Our actual abusers don’t see any of it. They don’t care. They go on living their lives. We take our rage and our pain and our frustration out in arenas we understand, in the places we feel safe, and the people we lash out at are the people who should be our friends, our allies, our brothers and sisters and nonbinary siblings who have suffered so much in a world that denies our sexuality, denies our gender, denies our expression, denies our right to exist.

We know our abusers won’t listen. We know our pain is nothing to them, a drop in a bucket. So we hurt the people that can’t help but listen, because our stories are so alike.

I went through an angry phase. I spent a few years screaming at people I felt deserved it, too. Some of them did and some of them didn’t, and doing so brought me short term satisfaction and a deep sense of power that I had not experienced anywhere else. A deep resonance with my own identity that I was powerless to exhibit anywhere in my real life, because family is complicated, friends are the choir and speaking up about microaggressions at work gets queer people fucking fired every fucking day, and you need that god damn money to eat. to live. to pay for your fucking brain pills.

So.

When you have a platform and a fandom and you feel that thrill of being heard, finally -- I get it.

But here’s the thing.

Your abuse never justifies levying abuse on others, strangers, people whose context you do not know and whose stories you have not heard.

Your emotions are valid. You are free to feel however you like. If you need to vent in private, among friends and colleagues and people you feel safe with, by all means.

Your favorite characters and your favorite ships and your favorite relationships and your fanfiction and your fanart may be how you express yourself or vent or cope. Your Shit means different things to different people, and to some, it means nothing at all. Let it fucking go. Your shit is not the bar of lived experience other people in fandom must meet to be considered sufficiently oppressed to spare them your bullying.

Your trigger and your context and your trauma is your own. It does not belong to anyone else. It is your responsibility to understand your limits and respect the rights of other creators, just as it is the responsibility of creators to properly tag and label their work to spare those whom it might upset the indignity of reliving their trauma within a space that is supposed to be safe for them. A space that for some may be the only safe space they have. A space that for some may be the only escape available to them. A space that, for some, may be the only way they can begin to express themselves, furtively, in stolen moments in an oppressive environment.

Fandom is where so many of us found ourselves. It’s full of us, lgbt+ people in various life stages, expressing ourselves in communities dedicated to content that made us feel enough to find ourselves here in the first place. It’s where children currently are discovering labels for feelings they have never had the words to talk about before. It’s where adults go in the midst of their busy lives to contribute to a body of work motivated by nothing but emotion for the source, for the community, and/or for the hope of encouraging feedback from their peers, their fans, their heroes, all three. It’s where everyone goes and discovers there are people out there just like them, after all.

It’s where people are picking their teams and suiting up and getting in line and hurting people just like them, every day.

It’s where people are putting the feelings and wellbeing and sanctity and rights of fictional characters over those of actual human beings who committed the grave sin of enjoying a thing a different way, or for different reasons.

Fandom is full of amazing connection and moments I wouldn’t trade for the world. I wouldn’t be married to my amazing wife right now without it. But it’s also a battlefield in a bubble where I watch oppressed people tear each other apart every single day, while of course, in the meantime, outside the filmy fucking boundary between this world and the real one, the same privileged sorts continue to dominate every aspect of mainstream media, the white house is full of incompetent, hateful people, some of whom are literal nazis, white nationalists feel safe enough to wear swastikas on public transit in liberal epicenters, gay men in russia are being sent to death camps, the police are murdering people of color indiscriminately without fear of personal or professional consequence, the supreme court is one death or retirement away from setting back civil rights in the united states a century, trans people have to watch a nation of frightened pissbabies scream about the sanctity of public bathrooms while they themselves suffer from an increased rate of being literally fucking murdered simply for existing, gay teenagers ostracized from conservative families sleep homeless in the street with winter fast approaching, hurricanes devastate a dozen nations because this century has paved a political landscape where corporate profits prevail over basic human rights -- and you know what, fuck it, let’s make it a little personal --

half my family has never acknowledged the fact that I have been married for a year because they don’t believe it is a legitimate marriage because I and my wife are both women, my wife and I went to the hairdresser the other day and when we checked in with the same last name we were asked if we were sisters (and upon clarifying, the woman who was to cut our hair loudly and incredulously gasped, “is that legal here?”), one of my best friends, a woman I have known since high school (that’s 17 years ago, for those keeping count) was told she would have to undergo a thorough and lengthy process via working with HR, her boss and the owner of her company before she could represent herself as her correct gender at work - and even after she jumped through all those hoops, she was told she was absolutely not allowed to use the women’s restroom under any circumstances - When I told my father about my engagement, he tearfully turned to me and said “but you’re supposed to marry a guy, and have babies” - and because this was my father, who I have always had a good relationship with despite remaining closeted most of my life, who I have always and still deeply love despite the shit that comes out of his mouth sometimes, who worked 12 hour days in construction to support me after divorcing my mother when he was nineteen years old - I actually fucking felt guilty.

The memory of how I felt in that moment will follow me until I fucking die, and when I log on to this website at the end of the day and just want to fucking relax and spend time yammering about things I like with people who like those same things, when I just want to spend time in this space that makes me feel good, when I just want to create content for the joy of creating it and the joy of seeing others enjoy the thing I created -- the fucking last thing I want is to see myself, my wife, my close friends and fandom friends alike being put on blast by petty people leveraging a nebulous, ever-changing definition of purity, backed by a group of people I know have suffered and hurt and feel justified hurting others because of it.

Fandom is where we go to escape the hellish fucking bullshit that is reality, for fuck’s sake.

I don’t fucking care who hurt you. Visiting pain upon others in the aftermath is your choice. Bullying others because a group of impressionable, hurting people looking for a leader will follow you into the trenches here on a battlefield where we should all fucking know better is your choice.

Your feelings aren’t always your choice. That’s fair.

The way you choose to express and react to and process and deal with those feelings IS your choice.

Your actions are your choice.

So try to be kind. Try to be empathetic. Understand your feelings and understand when you are being manipulated and for god’s sake, when other queer people come out in droves to tell their stories, try to think critically, even if they are on the other “team.” Block content that upsets you. Use tools available to you to keep yourself safe! Blacklist tags. Blacklist URLs. Block people. Be frank about your triggers if you are able and try to give people the benefit of the doubt -- and if you can’t, put space between you and them, and then use the myriad of tools available to you to put a wall in that space.

I know all about the kind of catharsis that comes from being a “mean gay.” I know all about constructing a set of rules within a group and then judging others outside that group by that context and punishing them when they fail purity tests they knew nothing about. I know all about fighting disrespect with disrespect and anger with anger and logging out at the end of the day to go cry -- not because I was sad, but because I was so fucking angry I couldn’t process the emotion any other way.

I also know all about walking away from that life, that toxicity. I know about taking a break. I know about reading, a lot, for months and years, about experiences both like and very much unlike my own. I know about resolving to be better. I know about cutting out the people who made me worse, and keeping the people who encouraged me to be better.

I know how much my life improved when I endeavored to keep my venting and negativity among friends who could actually support me, in places where I couldn’t hurt anyone, and present a positive force to the public, instead. To lift up the things I like and to block and move on with the things I don’t. To let creators have their space and their platform here in this one place where we can each carve out some small part for ourselves and feel like we are in control for once in our fucking lives. I know I stopped crying so much. I know my hobbies stopped making me so angry, all the time. I know that the only times I have been truly, deeply upset in my time in this fandom have been when I have been targeted or those I care about have been targeted.

I know how fucking hard it is to tear yourself away.

I know how fucking worth it it is.

Take care of yourselves.

#text #personal #fuck antis #fuck purity culture #fuck gatekeeping #fandom is for everyone #the fights that matter are out beyond this fucking bubble #but we just cant help ourselves #and while were busy tearing each other apart #the backlash against the gains weve made threaten the lives and livelihoods of real people #we have too far to go to make ourselves and others feel so fucking awful every day for the sake of fictional characters #for gods fucking sake

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theadventurezone · 7 years

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On The Adventure Zone Graphic Novel, Blue Taako, and Representation

Yesterday, we revealed some pages for our graphic novel adaptation of the first Adventure Zone arc, and received some criticism of the direction we went with for Taako’s coloring. This artwork reveal came some months after the first reveal of some of our characters, for which we also received criticism of our three leads, all of whom were white in these initial designs. Us and the graphic novel team realized that, yes, that is extremely bad, went back to the drawing board, and had several long discussions about how to best rectify this situation, resulting in the artwork revealed yesterday.

More or less all of the criticism we’ve received centers on Taako, whose skin is a pale blue color in these designs. What we’ve heard most is disappointment that Taako is not realized in these pages as a person of color — or, to be more specific, a Latinx or explicitly Mexican character. There was concern we had failed to follow through on an opportunity to get better representation for Latinx listeners, instead opting to take a safe route, and make Taako a fantasy color without any kind of real-world connection. Much of the criticism also focuses on how that color (or, to be more specific, green skin) has anti-semitic connotations.

This conversation was happening in certain corners of our fandom long before the graphic novel art reveal took place yesterday. We’ve heard criticism from some folks over our policy of not having canonical visual representations of any of our characters — a policy that has resulted in a genuinely humbling ocean of fan art, but also some instances of in-fighting between members of the community who take umbrage with one another’s disparate interpretations of these characters. Another criticism of that policy is that it inherently does not foster good representation, and in fact represents a noncommittal way of handling racial representation on this show.

Here’s the truth of the matter: I think all of this comes from this underlying friction between where The Adventure Zone and us, its creators, were when we started doing the podcast, and where we, the show, and you, the community, are at now.

Justin once described the show as a “car that learned how to fly,” which I think is an accurate way of describing this friction.

When we started, we did not consider the fact that folks would relate to these characters, or would care about what they looked like, or if they looked like them, or anything along those lines. We did not prioritize representation because we did not even think of it as being something we would need to prioritize. Part of that I can lay at the feet of the fact that The Adventure Zone started as a one-off filler episode of MBMBaM that we published while Justin was on paternity leave — we didn’t have that conversation because we didn’t think this show would be a show. But the larger reason is that the four of us are all white dudes, and have never had to think about our representation in media our entire lives.

I don’t take that shortcoming lightly, and I don’t expect anyone else to, either. There are so many things I would change if I could start over — some narrative loopholes, some shitty and thoughtless tropes — but this would be the largest one. If we had known what this show would become, we would have been more thoughtful about representation when we first made these characters. Instead, we didn’t consider what they would look like beyond what it said on these pre-rolled character sheets. We didn’t consider race beyond deciding whether Halflings, Elves, Tieflings or Dwarves possessed the best passive abilities.

Doing this show has educated all of us about representation, and clearly, we’re still not great at it. But starting out, it wasn’t even an afterthought — it just wasn’t a thought, because we didn’t know it was a thing to think about. Now we know, and the difficulties involved with reconciling where we started with what we now know are, simply put, monumental.

Justin named his character Taako, the joke being that this name sounds like “taco,” and that he would be pursuing a quest to invent tacos in this fantasy world. Justin thought of this name as a big and goofy joke several minutes before we started recording. The weight of that naming decision — that the decision could even have weight — did not enter his mind. This was a goofy one-off episode. He named his wizard Taako for the same reason that I named my Dwarven Cleric in the one-off D&D videos I’ve done at Polygon “Crag T’Nelson.”

Knowing the strife it’s caused, Justin wouldn’t have named this character Taako. In his own words:

“It was, in actuality, a dumb thing to do, compounded by the spur of the moment joke that Taako’s quest was to invent the taco. That was stupid, because the taco was invented by Mexican silver miners and not a wizard who, in the first episode, I claim hailed from “New Elfington.

“It was a spur of the moment goof, but one that I’ve felt consistently guilty about, on some level, for years. I never intended to be dismissive of a group, or a heritage, but that’s exactly what I did.”

This is the position we are in now, and have been in since the show started, and it is irreconcilable because of the decisions we made when we started doing this show: There are listeners and fans who want us to, in pursuit of better representation, make Taako a canonically Latinx or Mexican character. The result of that decision would be that Justin had made a Mexican character that he named after tacos, whose quest was to make a taco, and who spent the first half of the campaign stealing everything that wasn’t nailed to the ground.

That’s an oversimplified way of describing this inherently complicated problem. We have listeners who have no problem with Taako being a Mexican character named after tacos, as created by a white man. We have listeners who do have issues with that interpretation, and I can only imagine how a decision like that would read to someone who just picked this graphic novel up off a shelf at their local shop. We feel immensely uncomfortable with the idea of retroactively declaring Taako a member of any particular real-world group without factoring in that identity at all points while playing the game, viewing each action taken through a lens that has to be the first and last thing we would consider.

This was the stuff we and the graphic novel team considered while weighing the character designs, and deliberations were fucking tough. Where we landed was that, since Merle was canonically a Beach Dwarf, it made all kinds of sense for him to have darker skin. After wrestling with the above considerations, we landed on a look that felt right for Taako, which was based on a look that had started to become more popular among the fan art community for the show, in which he was drawn with green skin.

This was a while ago, and before the pushback against green Taako really kicked off. The historical basis for these claims are kind of speculative, but we took them seriously, and, in an effort to avoid running foul of them, went with more of a pale blue hue.

Yesterday, we learned there’s a High Elf variant in the PHB — which, clearly, we didn’t read that carefully when we started — called the Moon Elf that has those features. There’s also a Sun Elf variant that has “bronze skin and hair of copper, black, or golden blond,” which we also didn’t know about. (Though we’ve gotten lots of criticism saying that Taako’s original pre-made character sheet said he was a Sun Elf, and that we willfully ignored that canon aspect of his character, none of which is remotely true.)

Yesterday, after all this went down, we were all on the phone for hours, trying to figure out what to do. Our original line of thinking hadn’t changed: Making Taako Latinx means that Justin would have made a Mexican wizard that he named after tacos — which, from our perspective, isn’t great — who he then played without any consideration for the cultural ramifications of that identity. We got in the weeds a bit: Could we just make him a Sun Elf, and make him look closer to what the folks who are leveraging these criticisms want him to look, without addressing the specific real-world cultural identity that they want him to fill? Or is that a chicken shit half measure, and would do more harm than good?

That’s where we’re at today. There’s not an easy solution. There just isn’t. We have fans who want us to do better, to have more diversity in the three main characters of this book. But those characters were created and played by white people who didn’t consider the ramifications of their every action when viewed through a specific cultural lens while playing. Yesterday, we heard from folks who said it was problematic that we made Merle brown, considering that he has a backstory where he was, more or less, a deadbeat dad. That’s a harsh boiling down of the character, but the criticism absolutely has merit. We didn’t think of that when we decided on Merle’s new design. But it’s kind of exactly what I’m talking about here: If the Taako in this graphic novel had dark skin, how many similar criticisms could be laid at his feet? If we gave Magnus dark skin, and then he spent the campaign being the more physical, more aggressive, less intellectual member of his team, there are issues there, too. Is any of that good representation?

I’m not pitching these possibilities to be snide — I genuinely am not. But these are the things we’ve been struggling with since we decided to do this graphic novel. Our policy hasn’t changed — we still don’t consider any visual representations of these characters to be canon, and never will — but we also understand that this an insufficient way of responding to these criticisms.

The solution the whole team landed on for this graphic novel is imperfect. It has disappointed some people, and it is going to continue to disappoint some people. But there is no non-disappointing solution. And that’s not First Second’s fault, and it certainly isn’t Carey’s fault. It is completely because of the rock and a hard place that we’re positioned between, and all because of our failure to establish a solid foundation for these characters and their identities when we started this show. And for that, we’re so, earnestly, deeply sorry.

We’ve all felt fucking miserable since all of this happened yesterday, and not because of the criticism coming in, but because the folks offering that criticism feel unheard, ignored and hurt. I promise you, we did not ignore that criticism — we tried to do our best in a scenario without a perfect solution. That does not change the fact that this show is what it is because of the feedback our listeners have given us, full stop. It has made this project better, and us better, and all I can promise is that we’ll keep trying our hardest to do, and be, better.

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ganymedesclock · 7 years

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I mean, I kind of get why? Chunks of the fandom have this very strong perception of the galra as Hostile And Dangerous and they project that onto that side of Keith’s heritage. You see it in a lot of really body-horrific “transformation” concepts of like. Keith being slowly physically converted, often under torture, or the process itself is torture- or the idea of “instincts” that are invasive and mind-hijacking. That Keith’s own heritage is an invasion from within or a malicious, harmful influence he has to fight off. (That’s not behind all of it, but it’s a sometimes-unintended impression it gives: that Keith’s heritage is here to hurt him.)

Which in the actual context of the show, just looks ridiculous, because, yes, the galra are very big cat-esque but big cats are not murder machines. Even if they are apex predators, you would not expect a room full of human accountants to behave like a baboon troop as soon as the right stimulus is presented so I’m not sure why we’re expecting a people who have, if anything, had way more history than ours separating them from their early ancestors, to be that way. Big cats are predators? Dude, have you ever looked at a gorilla? Our end of the family tree is not exactly packed with ruminants.

It willfully ignores how Varkon and Sal show us there are ordinary civilians doing a nine to five job and they are no more threatening to the paladins than any of the other civilians they’re dealing with, unless you’re insinuating Hunk would sit down Emperor Zarkon and teach him the joys of cooking.

It willfully ignores the Blade who are at worst cagey and closed-off as befitting an espionage organization whose survival strategy is “if your enemies know you exist that is an immediate problem” and Kolivan who, bluster aside, basically adopted the team as soon as he had a reason to suspect that was his business.

It even ignores that the rank-and-file foot soldiers are literally also just people doing their job. If Zarkon’s high command is stocked with bullies, it’s because we watch him putting them there, setting them up. It’s because he’s artificially built an environment where being nasty and eager to subjugate gets you pushed up the ranks and being thoughtful, conservative, or empathetic gets you dragged off by robots.

We have multiple onscreen shots of Zarkon trying to cultivate the galra into generic space orcs and endless, endless piles of evidence that despite lavishly rewarding the jerks and punishing the kind, the latter party is still there after ten thousand years of Zarkon’s rule.

There is nothing inherently ominous or malicious about the galra. There is absolutely nothing barring that Keith, legitimately, as the show has overwhelmingly pointed us towards, had a loving mother who was worried about him and left her blade with him so he could find his way home- back to the Blade, back to her people. The same people who, as soon as that weapon awakens, immediately start trying to look after Keith and take care of him.

A lot of times in the fandom there is this image of the galra as inherently vicious, which... is ridiculous to me because that’s the exact garbage Zarkon’s insisting on (the guy we’re not supposed to agree with?) and we also see him blatantly enforcing it, which, if this is the inherent nature of the galra, he shouldn’t have to. If this is the inherent nature of the galra, Varkon and Sal shouldn’t exist. The Blade shouldn’t exist. Kolivan shouldn’t be accusing Zarkon of being an awful corrupting influence.

This image of the galra as basically Space Orcs contrasts the fact that as little as we have of Mom Kogane suggests that she really did love her baby. That if anything, in practice, the galra tend toward getting massively emotionally attached. That even the unpleasant high-ranking bully characters we encounter do things like cultivate companion animals (The warden and Laika), have genuine romantic relationships (heavily implied between Zarkon and Haggar, considering Lotor), or are deeply, personally moved by actually being able to bring happiness to people (Sal would not consider Hunk a genius if people enjoying their food didn’t leave an impression on him)

Canon supports the idea that Mom Kogane was a real person, and totally capable of falling in love, and having a child, and wanting the best for that child that she could provide given her situation. It’s only that odd thread of fanon of the remorseless, heartless galra- unsupported by even the antagonistic galra in the empire- that can’t get behind that.

The galra are not “the evil” and Keith’s story is not about relying on his morally upright human lineage to fight off The Evil.

I mean, Keith says so himself: “I didn’t turn galra.” This is a presence that’s been here from day one. Keith did not have any more trouble signing up to try and save the universe than anyone else. The knife was with him in the very first episode. He’s always had purple eyes- unusual for a human, and a color associated with the galra. In fact, comparing Keith to most of the Blade, they fight the same way- high-speed forward rush with a bladed weapon. Keith’s bayard takes the form of a katar, which is sometimes used specifically as an off-handed weapon for a swordsman who fights with a ‘proper’ more conventional sword in his other hand. As in: his bayard took its shape, from the start, to accompany the marmora blade.

The trial literally framed that Keith had to say no to both the image of his father and the image of Shiro. That giving up either his heritage or his role as a paladin was the wrong answer.

If anything, I think that the show is building towards the fact that Keith, much like Pidge, needs to find his family, beyond just the paladins. Because as close as they are, and as much as they mean to each other... more or less all the other paladins have things waiting for them back home.

What Keith had on Earth was pretty much nothing. He’d been expelled from the Garrison and it’s unclear if he’d really want to go back. He doesn’t really talk about it as something that meant that much to him, and when everyone else discusses their plans, he offers a lackluster “I guess I could look for [my family],”. The guy had a shack in the middle of nowhere and yeah, the peace and quiet was nice but that’s an awfully bleak thing to make your entire life out of.

Earth and humanity are not a valiant strong shackle holding Keith back from inherent evil. This isn’t a werewolf movie where Keith is at war with some “inner beast”.

The Red Lion’s thing is instinct. If anything, that suggests that Keith trying to hold back, resist, and distrust himself is bad for him- it’s running upstream against his established virtue which requires letting go and trusting- trusting that if he drives his hoverbike off a cliff he will be able to catch himself before he hits the bottom. Identifying what he needs to do and doing it- hitting fast and with conviction.

Physiologically these are things that it looks, a lot, like the galra as a species, and the Blade’s fighting style as a philosophy, specialize in. These things align directly with Keith’s fighting style, aptitudes, and virtues as a paladin.

It’s a big neon sign that actually, exploring his heritage further is the right thing to do. This is the good thing that’s going to help Keith. Are there going to be growing pains involved? Absolutely. But so far, the nastiest shakeup- Keith isolating himself from the team and being rejected by Allura- is tying to an issue Keith brought to the table, not in his blood, but in his mind.

It ties back to how hard it’s been for Keith to find ‘his place’. To feel connected and belonging. It ties back to isolation and the fear of rejection and being a bad person. Which has very little to do with being a galra, except- once again, looking at most of the other galra in the cast, who tend to get really attached to things and people? Keith’s heritage is lining up with the rest of his character.

The sorta TL;DR here is- there’s a basically baseless-in-canon lens on the galra as inherently Dangerous, Malicious, and Predatory. This gets projected onto Keith, and it gets projected onto Mom Kogane, as the source of his galra heritage.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Keith #Mom Kogane #galra #readmore #galra ain't b-movie werewolves my dudes

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