"Oh no, someone's attracted to the aesthetics of my -punk movement but doesn't know the praxis and history behind it like I do--"
OK. Tell them. Make it a teaching moment. Everyone who's in your movement learned the background from somewhere at some point, maybe this is that point for that person. Give them a jumping off point that they can dive into later.
"Oh but I shouldn't be responsible for teaching baby -punks about the history and the how-tos and--"
OK. Then don't tell them. You don't have to be responsible for teaching people with a budding interest in your group the ins and outs and how-tos. That's fair and valid! It can be a lot of work. Someone else will handle it
"But I'm annoyed that they would try to claim to be part of/be interested in my community without knowing all the details that I know after being in it for months/years/decades, they're dumb, they're posers, they're--"
OK. Then don't engage with them, if it's that bad. Maybe someone else will come around and tell them the history, maybe they'll pick it up on their own, maybe they'll just enjoy the fashion elements for awhile.
"But they shouldn't claim to be part of the -punk community if they don't know the--"
I feel like we have a few options here. People can either talk to them, share the history, share the values, share the praxis. Or they can just chase off anyone who even thinks about dipping a toe in their community, and then wonder why it's dying off later down the line.
I dunno, maybe I'm too naive and patient or whatever. But if people are entering your -punk spaces without knowing The Rundown of what you feel they need to know, maybe being nice about it and informing people instead of immediately assuming stupidity and malicious intent could help you make a new friend. Even the loudest voices in a space had to learn from somewhere, and not everyone has the luxury of being in the space as the History was Happening--whether it's an age thing or a not being aware of the space thing. Or maybe I just don't see what the big deal is behind people hating people who like the aesthetic of something and don't know the behind the scenes history about it yet.
Because I believe in the word 'yet.' No one comes into this world knowing everything about everything, and we're all constantly learning new things. I'm not gonna degrade someone and call them a poser for not knowing what I know. Because if it were me, interested in a scene but getting chased out and called a poser? I wouldn't hit the books and study up, I'd go 'that fuckin sucks, those people sucked' and then avoid anyone and anything having to do with it.
So chase people off and call them posers if you want. But if your community starts dwindling, don't be fucking shocked.
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COMPACFLT, ma’am, you’ve absolutely wrecked me with: “My father—my father was kind”. I can’t even tell you exactly why, but that just struck right in the chest with the force of a sledgehammer, gosh. If it’s alright with you, could you please share your headcanons about Ice and Mav’s fathers? I know I’m, like, quoting your own work back to you but I can’t help it: “Well, dead pilot dads, that’s one thing we have in common.” —But do they? Or is one dead pilot dad vastly different from the other?
ice’s dad (Thomas kazansky sr.): asshole army major OH-6 and UH-1 pilot who got shot down over Vietnam in 1967. son of far-eastern-european immigrants. anti-commie. wanted ice to ALSO be a chopper pilot in the army, so ice went navy instead. daredevil dipshit who died & left ice’s mom alone with two young kids & whose death encouraged ice away from breaking the rules or being unsafe (esp. in the air). not necessarily a great person or a great father but died when ice was 8 so also not a huge influence on his life (i know val kilmer has said ice’s father was a big influence… I’ve written elsewhere about why i personally shifted ice’s narrative away from daddy issues and more towards Navy authority in general issues, in light of ice’s character and rank in tgm. GOD i need a master post sorry, but i think you can find it if you search “edts notes” on my blog and scroll for a while). ice’s LACK of a father -> no man to model himself on -> overcompensating & not getting it exactly right (doesn’t know how to talk to other men) -> maverick immediately clocks him as gay -> the plot of my fic.
Maverick’s dad (peter “duke” mitchell sr.): a genuinely awesome person. funny & kind, warm & loving, a truly good father & a great fighter pilot. big american patriot. Comes from a long long line of us navy personnel—maverick has the navy family name & the pedigree ice, as a second generation american, does not. Im still not sure who raised maverick—it’s one of those things I don’t have a strong opinion on, so it could go either way (i posited in the airplane one-shot that he was raised by relatives, aunt & uncle, but I know it’s a popular hc here that he was a foster kid—all equally plausible to me) but I do think he grew up exceedingly bitter, hearing about how great his dad was and how there was just no way! his dad could’ve failed the Navy the way he supposedly did, because he was just such a good person… there’s a real bitterness about original maverick that TGM maverick kind of lost. His bitterness only shows during the “it’s not the plane it’s the pilot” “EXACTLY” exchange (incidentally the scene that gave me the idea that Bradley thinks mav pulled his papers bc he’s openly gay…it’s the pilot not the plane, ouch). but i still think maverick is like deeply deeply bitter about how the navy handled his fathers death, which is what the excerpt i posted on wednesday is actually about—he confesses to ice how disillusioned he has been with the navy as an institution since he found out the truth about his father’s heroism. I know i just just just said that Maverick’s patriotic conservatism is his reason for existence in the meta “why we make mil propaganda movies” sense, and i stand by that, but i think on a human character level there probably has to be a little bit of deep-seated resentment towards the Navy for smearing his father’s good name and his own good name in the process. My maverick grew up a good Christian kid, called himself peter jr. after his good guy father, who never broke ANY rules until he was radicalized by not getting into the academy (“punish the son for the sins of his father”) and basically lost his mind for 30+ years. “If my family name automatically makes me a sinner in the navy’s eyes, then I might as well sin anyway.”
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can you give specific examples of what happened to help people understand what happened
this is non-extensive, just the ones i think are the most egregious of what shes done and said
i'm not sure how much of this is stuff she's deleted, as these are all from screenshots i already had on hand, but i would like to say that deleting a post doesn't necessarily mean you no longer agree with what was said in it, especially if you double down on what was said when you're called out for it. which she has done Plenty of times
and for the record, this is not something i enjoy doing. part of the reason this took me a few days to post is because this is stressing me the fuck out and ive been trying to spend as little brainpower on this as possible
First point: queerphobia in the form of homophobic jokes, sharing panphobic rhetoric, and talking for transgender people on a topic she (as far as i am aware) has no
the pelicansexual "joke" was told at the expense of Ethan and Tobias during the "Ethan Bisexuality Canonity" argument she & i got into in June (which btw i would like to apologize for starting that up, i was frustrated w pb's coddling of the cishet part of the fandom & i was having difficulty phrasing it bc of how upset i was w it. i did not mean to attack the fandom specifically but intent doesn't cover for outcome)
the pelicansexual joke was a since-deleted tag on one of her posts which went something along the lines of "my Ethan and Tobias are now pelicansexuals, which means they have to break up with [her characters] as they are not pelicans". i dont have a screenshot of this unfortunately, but i do have a screenshot of her response to an anon calling her out on it.
in case you don't understand why her "joke" was homophobic, before gay marriage was legalized in the US in 2015, a common anti-homosexuality talking point was "homosexuality being legalized is a slippery slope to bestiality being legalized". while it is good she deleted her "joke", its frankly worrying to me that when called out on it she doubled down on how she was joking when she said it, instead of listening and learning. her bisexuality and queer activism do not mean that she is incapable of saying and doing homophobic things.
the panphobic rhetoric & her talking for transgender people are, if i remember correctly, both part of the same incident wherein she reblogged something panphobic and then, when called out for it, said something that something that most trans people consider transphobic isn't actually transphobic at all
screenshot 1: bisexuality and pansexuality are two very similar sexualities, with the main difference between the two coming down to personal preference for what term you feel like best. while bisexuality does mean "sexual attraction to two or more genders", some people prefer a term that focuses on the "or more" part. neither sexuality excludes transgender people. pitting queer people against each other because theyre not the "right" kind of queer does nothing but damage the queer community as a whole
screenshot 2: agreeing to delete the post, but doubling down on what she said and refusing to listen to anon simply because they're anonymous
screenshot 3: the highlighted part is what we're focusing on here. "We don't consider cis gay men who only date the same to be anti-trans". hi, I'm a trans gay man. Yes We Fucking Do. i don't understand why she thinks she has the authority to speak on this. what "we" is she referring to here?
Second point: lack of respect or understanding of boundaries in fandom spaces, including both blocks and simply not wanting to interact with someone
i'll be honest, i'm a bit unsure if the above paragraph is the right way of describing what i mean, but she has a bit of a history of being.... openly weird about people who have blocked her for "no reason", and not only that has stated she thinks that not wanting to take place in an event run by someone you are uncomfortable with is childish
i believe the first one is about my friend Jay, who has her blocked for similar reasons that i do. while it is perfectly fine for her to assume whatever she wants about the reasoning for a block, her phrasing of "all i ever did was be supportive" in a public post about it allows her to victimize herself over a boundary being placed. speaking of Jay, Elsa has, knowing full well that she's been blocked by xim on the "peonyblossom" blog- which, again, is a boundary that has been placed- decided to message xim on the choicespride blog xe runs
the second one is specifically about a tumblr user who i do not know personally and do not wish to drag them into this as they have left the open heart fandom. she was sent an anon about this user blocking her which, yeah, is really weird and suspicious. but this isn't about that, this is about her response to learning she's been blocked. she refers to herself as this users "biggest fan" and says that it "isn't normal" to block your biggest fan. once again she is victimizing herself over a boundary someone else has placed, only this time she has done it in a post talking about a person with their username in it. when you have a blog as big as hers, people are bound to go after someone in the name of defending the person they feel was slighted
& here's her essentially calling people childish bc they might not want to interact with someone who causes them harm. iirc this was either about certain event blogs in the fandom not disclosing who's running them bc they know full well that some people might not be comfortable interacting with them (hiding ur identity will not help with that) or about people choosing not to participate because they know that the person running the event is someone they don't want to interact with. this ones just bizarre to me. no one has to interact with anyone ever, and calling them childish for it is, frankly, childish
Third point: her callout post for Jeremy and her non-apology
to get it out of the way: i'm friends with Jeremy. i'll try to keep this as unbiased as possible, but i am deeply deeply upset and frustrated with everything thats happened to rain. also, just so yall know, Jeremy gave me permission to talk about this. i'm not just dredging up old drama for drama's sake here.
first- the callout post
the thing that started this was a post to the playchoicesconfessions blog where an anonymous user said- and i'm copy/pasting it here- "Ethan said he and Tobias were like brothers. Weird how many people in the fandom want to get with their brothers.’" essentially, this anonymous user accused people who ship Ethias as being into irl incest which..... we will not be getting into all the ways thats problematic here.
(as an aside, Elsa did at some point reblog and then delete this post, but her commentary was focused squarely on "ship and let ship" which is a sentiment i agree with but she completely ignored the blatant homophobia in this post. here's a version someone reblogged from her in case you're curious as to what she said)
Jeremy reblogged this confession post and added "i genuinely hope this person and others who think like this eat a fucking bullet holy shit" specifically in reference to the anon insinuating incest. in turn, anons on rain's blog assumed rai was referring to people who don't ship Ethais and sent rain nasty messages, which rai would respond to and get more anons who saw the latest response and again assume rai was talking about not shipping a ship they ship and not the actual genuine fucking homophobia from the original confession post.
one of these anons sent screenshots of rain's posts to Elsa, without the context, and told her rai was talking about her. rai was not. not until the post where rai (rightfully, ihmo) called both Elsa and another blogger (this one who also got a similar ask about being blocked by the user i mentioned earlier but who decided to put it in the open heart tags instead of keep it on their blog the way Elsa did. that's the only props i'll give to her in regards of that- yes it was shitty she posted it in the first place but at least she didn't tag it) for complaining about and villainizing someone who blocked them.
tldr version is- Jeremy was venting about anons that were being homophobic to rain, another anon sent screenshots of those posts to Elsa without the context who who rai was talking about and said they were about her, and Elsa, without bothering to verify in any way, decided the best course of action would be to publicly call rai out, painting rain as a bully who has been targeting her specifically and once again victimizing herself. on her blog with a bunch of followers. many of whom also chose not to verify, and instead just heaped more hatred onto Jeremy's blog.
this went on until September, when they talked to each other at first with a third party go-between, and eventually person-to-person. Jeremy explained the context of the vent posts, Elsa explained that she was getting the screenshots with no context from an anon and admitted she should have verified them herself instead of going full nuclear, and they both agreed to apologize publicly
all good, end of story, right?
no.
while in Jeremy's post, rai took accountability for their side of what happened in this awful game of telephone and apologized for rains part in the whole thing. if you want to read it, here is a version of it.
Elsa, on the other hand.... well she apologized, but to be honest I'm not quite sure what for.
she says there's been misunderstandings on both parts led on by one or more anonymous sources (no arguments here), says she understands that the posts that were sent to her were not actually about her (okay good) and says that its a tough world and that she's deleted her posts.
okay.... but that doesn't specify what she did at all to need the apology. which was publicly call out Jeremy on her blog with.... well, i'm not sure how many followers she has, but i do know that she's got the most well known blog in the choices fandom. by publicly calling out Jeremy in the way that she did, she (whether intentional or not) set her followers out to attack rains blog. she did not apologize for this. asking people to stop sending hate to rains blog is not the same as taking accountability for sending those people to rains blog in the first place
so. yeah.
again, non-extensive list, but i dont wanna mention things she's done without having screenshots or links to show proof that she did it, and i dont feel like finding more of her bullshit bc this just. really fucking stressed me out.
also this isn't me saying "shes a terrible person forever and i hate her and nobody should like her ever" this is me saying "hey, shes done/said some hurtful things in the past and it sure would be cool if she acknowledged any of it" but i think coolsville sucks or whatever.
also also most importantly: its possible for queer people to say and do things that are queerphobic. being queer yourself does not give you a shield from people calling you out for that. neither does real life activism. its great that she's done real life activism! but pointing back to things you've done in the past, or for a different group of people than the one youre in does not exempt you from the harm youre causing today, to the people you're interacting with.
i dont have a proper ending to this
thanks for reading i guess
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