Tumgik
#I’m not joking just straight up cyber bully me
kimtaegis · 2 years
Note
Hi, I am Korean (non-army) but I wanted to say, I was so relieved to read your post noticing the toxicity of what some armys have been saying. As someone who migrated back and forth between America and Korea, I grew up with racial trauma and xenophobic statements. I’ve often hear statements belittle South Korea, making stereotypical remarks about the Korean culture “oh they’re so superficial” “oh they’re all brainwashed” and hearing things like it’s nothing compared to Japan and China, etc.
all day yesterday I was sick to my stomach being on Twitter and reading so many twts from armys that were belittling sk. I get that people were shocked, upset, and disappointed with the enlistment news. I get even complaining about the government and the politics behind all this. Voicing their frustrations about that is so understandable. BUT seeing remarks like “Korea has nothing else to offer” “will boycott Korea now/I have koreatown so who needs sk now” “Korea is nothing” “oh korea will now collapse” “Koreans will starve to death” all over twt was so disheartening. Some of them having thousands, even ten thousands of likes. I tried to speak up about the xenophobic statements, racist remarks, fetishizing my country only to kpop..without acknowledging the richness of culture and long history, strength and resiliency of our economic growth…and I kept on encountering different armys who took my defense of my country as an attack of BTS. rather than addressing the issue I was talking about, they proceeded to call the group I stan “flops” “no one gives a f*ck about your country” “you’re just saying this cuz you’re jealous your fav could never” which had nothing to do with the issue I was talking about.
Many were even gaslighting saying, no one’s saying any of that you delusional stupid bitch, liar, whiner, etc. and when I would reply with all the screenshot proof, they said “so? that’s the truth. korea WILL fall and be nothing w/o bts.” I’ve had someone tell me I should be ashamed of my country, someone who said it’s our fault people fetishize and stereotype our country, and people saying they’ll boycott to ruin sk / looking forward to the recession.
The final straw for me was when a big account w/ over 65k followers called me out as a liar for accusing armys of belittling sk. Within the first few minutes, the twt got hundreds of likes and I was publicly harassed by so many army accounts mocking, gaslighting, accusing, and attacking me. I felt the trauma of facing racism, speaking up, and then getting bullied or mocked for it, and had thoughts of sh. I ended up deactivating my account. Another big army account was kind and helpful (so I do acknowledge not all armys are like this) and the person who called me out eventually deleted the post.
I’m sorry this is quite long. But I wanted to share about what it’s like as a Korean to be on the receiving end of those remakes, even if they’re just joking comments or out of anger, that they severely impact many Koreans who read them. Samsung alone has a revenue of nearly 280 trillion a year; this is not even including other globally renowned companies like hyundai or kia. People saying Koreans will go broke/our country will collapse/has nothing else to offer are really undermining the country and it shows how people often reduce it to kpop/kpop lalaland. Once again, thank you for calling out behaviors like that and trying to hold people accountable. I’m not generalizing that all armys do this, as there are good people everywhere. But there was surely a lot of those voices that was spreading yesterday.
Tumblr media
reading your message gave me goosebumps and not in the good way. I am so very sorry that this has been happening to you, it’s absolutely disgusting. this is straight up cyber bullying, I can’t believe people have been going this far, but at the same time I do absolutely believe that some completely deranged fans would. those people live in their own deeply delusional internet world, thinking they’re doing bts some kind of favour by spreading these statements. all it does is show how little intelligence they possess and how much hate and aggression is within them. for a fandom that prides itself with being so very diverse and open and kind, a whole lot act like little uneducated racist losers way too many times. They don’t see sk as an actual functioning country, hell how would they, they don’t care for it in the first place. As you said, it’s bts-land and that’s it. It’s okay to not be interested in the culture and industry, no one asked you to, but to be so bold as to say sk is nothing without bts?? Hilarious. As yoongi loves to say, please just go to school. Thank you for providing all these numbers and comparisons, it’s very insightful and puts things once again into perspective. ah I don’t really know what else to say right now. It’s just. shocking. And I’m so sorry. Nothing will ever justify this behaviour. Please please take care of yourself
8 notes · View notes
imapursoon · 3 years
Text
I have 4 assignments left. If u see me on tumblr bully me until I leave.
11 notes · View notes
anomallysm-writing · 3 years
Text
Morioh-Cho with Random Websites Headcanons
This is probably the worst idea ever conceived, but given I’ve posted it, I suppose that goes to show that my fate doesn’t matter to me.
Josuke
has so many damn followers but only follows close friends
millions of likes for every selfie he posts
has actually considered making his account private because of the weird fucking DMs he gets
Gen z humor on his [dashboard] and he finds it fucking hilarious
Okuyasu
gets genuinely sad upon getting cyber bullied in any way
posts pictures of Tonio’s food on Instagram very frequently
the most ridiculous shitposts by pure mistake, doesn’t even realize how funny he is
for example has a lot of like 12 fps 144p Roblox vids with collabing Josuke and they all have spinning letter intros
a surprisingly normal [dashboard] but would absolutely lose his shit at Gen z humor (much like Josuke)
uses 🔥, 💯, 🥶, etc. unironically
Yukako
had a horrendous creepypasta phase
atrocious Mary Sue OCs I can just sense it
viciously attacks anyone who sends hate to Koichi, even if it’s a joke
unironic “deep” quotes
beauty stuff on her [dashboard], the most tolerable thing you can get from her when it comes to social media
Koichi
posts tips for math and stuff
some fun pictures or videos of him and his friends
literally the most normal account :/
has dumb shit on his [dashboard] though
Toshikazu
was on cursed fandom Tumblr (I’m talking Miku binder Jefferson and Down With Cis bus Tumblr)
would have millions of embarrassing cosplay videos and pictures
some actually not half bad art
accompanied by a fan fic blog so cringy it gives you muscle convulsions
posts quotes like, “Enough about my racist past. Let’s discuss my racist future.” and, “Don’t give to the homeless, make the homeless give to you.” just to piss people off
has used Surface to make it look like he’s taken pictures with celebrities/crushes when he in fact has not
Rohan
was on the Down With Cis bus
sends anon hate to random blogs
leaves detailed negative Yelp reviews for places he’s never been to
has a fan fiction blog that he just straight up can’t delete
Tonio
is following only one person across all platforms and that is Okuyasu (because he kept DMing him and he couldn’t he could say no to Okuyasu’s charming face)
not even verified on most sites (underrated as fuck)
idiotic little kids from around the world commenting on his posts with grammar that forces tears from your eyes, seriously that shit is a goldmine
Okuyasu is one of those idiotic little kids
I hope that none of these seemed to limit a character to a certain aspect (e.g. Okuyasu being dumb or Rohan being a dick). Any feedback possible is much appreciated, thank you.
153 notes · View notes
momokos-world · 3 years
Text
Mommy Vlogger Vil
fluff/crack
✧・゚: *✧・゚:*  ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ  *:・゚✧*:・゚✧
“Hello there, and welcome back to my channel. Today I will be showing you what I prepare for the little one’s lunch.” Vil started on his aesthetically pleasing video and preparation of the meal “First I slice up tomatoes as a healthy side. Then I cook these mini sausages, but. I bought this little thing that will give the sausage a little face for Finn since he loves byebye kitty.” He continued on filming and put the finishing touches on the meal before serving it to Finn. “And that is all for today, thank you for watching and we hope to see you later. Bye bye!!” He said his outro with Finn chiming in on the ‘bye bye’. From there he took to cleaning up and got straight to editing.
The video had been up for about an hour or so when Vil got a notification. He checked and saw that another mommy vlogger had commented on his video.
@mommyandbaby - Do you know how many preservatives are in those sausages?! And you just go ahead and fed your child that crap? You are a HORRIBLE parent!
Oh boy, Vil was pissed. He cracked his knuckles, getting ready to drag this bitch in the mud. Sometimes, cyber-bullying is okay. And this was one of those times.
@schoenheithouse - how are you gonna come for me and my parenting when you have your child on a vegan diet? That kid looks like a skeleton with those bird legs. And lets not talk about your canoes for feet. Go learn how to cook good meals for your kid instead of sticking your fat nose in my business. You raggedy ass hoe.
This was it, the start of the mommy vlogger war. It was like a free for all in each persons comment sections. Any fans of the other mommy vlogger in Vil’s comment section got shut down fast with his hoard of fans. Meanwhile the mommy vlogger had swarms of Vil’s fans dragging her and defending Vil’s honor.
“UGH! I can’t believe someone is so STUPID! HOW dare you question MY parenting skills when you can’t even dress your child to not look like they came out of the dumpster!” (Name) listened to her husband rant.
“AND when they question ME on MY parenting choices they automatically question your parenting and that in itself is a CRIME! How dare they speak when you are the better mother out of the two of you by a long shot! This is just insulting!” She patted her husband’s back in an attempt to comfort him.
“Vil? My love? Maybe we could go get boba tomorrow, would that cheer you up? I’m sure Rook could watch Finn.” She spoke as she held her husband’s hand, running her thumb against the back of it in an attempt to calm him. He sighed “I suppose I could use a break, this whole situation has me stressed. I’ll ask Rook to watch him.”
-timeskip-
Both (Name) and Vil walked out of the cafe holding hands with their tea in the other. Suddenly Vil stopped, as they happened to run into the other mommy vlogger. “Oh, well if it isn’t the terrible parents.” She scoffed and gave both of them a dirty look. That’s when Vil snapped. “Oh yeah? Well if it isn’t the raggedy hoe who walks around with canoes for feet. I can hear them slapping down on the ground from a mile away. And next time you come for what I feed my kid I WILL NOT HESITATE TO CASTRATE YOU WITH MY VOUIS LUTTON! YOU COME OVER HERE AND I’LL SHOW YOU SOME FUCKING REALITY! YOU ARE GONNA BE SCARED TO TOUCH YOUR PHONE AGAIN BITCH!” At this point she looked about ready to cry, she scooped her little dog into her arms and started speed walking away. “YEAH THATS RIGHT! GET OUT OF HERE AND TAKE YOUR YAPPING DOG OUT OF HERE TOO! THIS AIN’T THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD…BITCH!”
~bonus~
A video had been posted of Vil yelling at the lady with over 10 million views. All his fans in the comments were laughing about it and cracking jokes.
✧・゚: *✧・゚:*  ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ  *:・゚✧*:・゚✧
Feel free to request anytime! My commissions are open as well!
75 notes · View notes
frogtanii · 4 years
Text
hq boys as the crimes they’d commit
warnings: CRIMES, crackfic, probably many typos idk i’m so tired lmaooo, cursing, drinking ??? idfk 😩💦
an: and i did this for what?? inspired by hq hcs royalty @sugardaddykenma @hina-wit-da-glock (AJSKSJ SORRY FOR TAGGING Y’ALL IF YOU SEE THIS, IT IS DEF NOT UP TO PAR W Y’ALLS WORKS ILY)
Tumblr media
karasuno
sawamura daichi- insurance fraud!! somehow this is such a dad crime to commit?? dadchi didn’t try (dumb excuse, how do you accidentally commit insurance fraud smh) to commit insurance fraud but at one point in his late-thirties, he was very very broke and was already working as much as possible so, he decided to fake an ankle injury, as you do, and filed a bunch of claims which made him bank. daichi kept doing it until he was able to quit one of his jobs and buy himself a really nice suit and a rolex (uhhh 🥵). he somehow never got caught tho and to this day, none of his friends know how he was able to afford a tesla on a cop’s salary (sorry daichi but acab 😔✨)
sugawara kōshi- child abandonment!! ok you can try and fight me on this but i feel in my bones that suga absolutely despises children. he can tolerate ages 10+ but anything younger than that, he will punt them into the next dimension. the thing is, people just assume he likes kids because of how good he is with his team which is why his aunt begged him to babysit his nephew taro. taro was being an absolute brat when suga took him out for the day and he was 👉👈 this close to snapping. he put taro down for like 3 seconds to pay for their ice cream and when he turned back, the demon spawn was gone. he panicked, running around the park looking for taro when it turns out, taro was just bent down behind the bench. some random karen called the police and suga has never craved murder more.
nishinoya yuu- arson!! you CANNOT tell me nishinoya doesn’t have a ~murder~ playlist that he listens to to get himself hype (me too noya, me too). one night, he got a lil too hype listening to start a riot by duckwrth and watching demolition videos on youtube. he snuck out of his house to an empty shed like 30 minutes away and maybe... lit it on fire while genocide by lil darkie played on a speaker nearby. what he did NOT anticipate was the absolute size of the fire so he freaked out and called the firefighters who promptly called the police. he didn’t want to get grounded so he called daichi to bail him out. daichi still told noya’s parents 😔.
tanaka ryūnosuke- vandalism!! tanaka had been on alt tiktok and saw a group of cool friends spray painting an abandoned building. he thought “that’s cool, lemme do that!” but then he realized he had no friends (AHDGS JK I LOVE TANAKA). he asked nishinoya who was grounded from the arson incident and he knew he definitely couldn’t ask daichi, suga, asahi, or enoshita so he decided to go it alone. that proved to be a MASSIVE mistake. he got the supplies, arrived to the building of his choice (thanks saeko :3), and decided to spray paint a huge p3ni5 in bright red paint. he finished “successfully” and zoomed back home. what he didn’t realize with his two-and-a-half braincells is that he signed his glorious piece with his full name. the cops were at his house the next morning...🧍
hinata shoyō- forgery!! hinata did NOT think that forgery was even a crime. how was he supposed to know that he wasn’t allowed to copy his mom’s signature on a permission form! all he wanted was to go to an overnight training camp 😿
kageyama tobio- attempted murder!! kageyama swears it sounds worse than was and he is absolutely incorrect. what happened was so much worse. he and hinata were having a competition to see who could hold their breath the longest underwater (you can’t tell me they haven’t done some dumbass shit like this) and kageyma lost almost instantly (he has the tiny lungs of an asthmatic). he didn’t want hinata to notice so he held hinata’s head under the water for like 10 seconds. suga walked in though, saw hinata thrashing around in the water and immediately called the police. kageyama never forgave him.
tsukishima kei- cyberbullying!! first of all, i had no idea you could get arrested for cyber bullying!? that being said, neither did tsukishima who spent 80% of his time making fun of people online (and on his real account!! bold). eventually one of the people he bullied (hinata) reported him on instagram and his very lame account was deleted (pls don’t bully people online 😤).
yamaguchi tadashi- shoplifting!! andjksh this is so funny because this scenario has happened to me and i can just SEE this happening to poor tadashi. yamaguchi gets super late night cravings (and usually tsukki will walk with him at like 3 am 🥺 nEWAYS) so he’ll sneak out and walk to the mini-mart near his house. one night, he was so tired but also super hungry so he went onto his nightly routine and basically sleepwalked into the store. he picked out his favorite chips and candy bar (which are sour cream&onion lays and milky ways in case you were wondering 😌✨) and just... walked out the store without paying. the store clerk was mysteriously missing so yamaguchi made it all the way home, ate half the bag of chips and passed out without realizing what he’d done. once he did, he cried for 2 hours straight.
nekoma
kuroo tetsurō- telemarketing fraud!! kuroo originally did telemarketing fraud as a joke?? like he was trying to prank call someone pretending that they had lost their information and they actually gave it to him??? he was mildly concerned but even more excited. he did it over and over again but he never used the info for anything. to this day, kuroo literally has a notebook full of credit card numbers and bank account passwords but he refuses to use it because he believes it’s ✨wrong✨(but it isn’t wrong to take all that information in the first place under false pretenses, not realizing that once people find out, they are forced to close credit cards and accounts but go off self righteous king). once he brought the book up to kenma and he offered to sell it on the dark web. now kuroo feels less bad about what he’s done! :D
kozume kenma- computer crime!! pfttt this one seems kinda obvious but what do you expect from kenma :). he spends so much time on the internet, he’s definitely picked up some less than legal skills that still help him now 👀. kenma did little mini crimes like getting into other people’s wifi but his crowning achievement was when he hacked into the minneapolis pd website and had it so when you opened the page, a black lives matter screen came up. he never told anyone that it was him who did it but he thinks it’s the best he’s ever done.
yaku morisuke- racketeering!! yaku, the feral king, ran an underground gambling ring in the basement of nekoma (do they have basements?? who knows! i don’t!) during his third year. the only reason it didn’t get shut down was because coach nekomata took a portion of yaku’s profits whenever he won (which was literally all the time). everyone on the team has lost money to him which is why they never play with him anymore. they won’t even let yaku play monopoly 😔.
haiba lev- indecent exposure!! poor lev’s head is so empty, he tends to fall for whatever pranks his senpai’s do to him. this time kuroo had somehow convinced him that in order to grow his schlong, he had to run outside naked for 10 minutes because the moonlight had special growing properties. lev was a lil scared ngl because he was already superrr tall and didn’t need to grow his height (or his dick ((boy is hung)) but poor lev is insecure) but he did it anyway. long story short, an old woman saw him parading around the neighborhood naked and called el policia. 0/10 dick did NOT grow and had to spend a night in jail naked 😿
aoba johsai
oikawa tōru- prostitution!! KAKKAKA iwazumi made fun of oikawa for being so shitty and said that he couldn’t pick up anyone if he tried. flattykawa took this as a personal challenge and went out onto the street, asking people if they’d have sex with him. with the way he was asking (and the way he was dressed), people assumed he was a paid w h o r e and someone eventually reported him. iwazumi had to pick oikawa up from the station- he never let him live this one down.
iwaizumi hajime- battery!! it wasn’t technically battery but oikawa is a lil bitch and overreacts (at least in his words -_-). the amount of times iwa-chan has beat the absolute shit out of oikawa is uNREAL. he just can’t handle the stupidity sometimes so he just smacks the crap outta him. not for real for real but the way oikawa reacts, you’d think a murder was occurring. one time, shittykawa screeched so loud, they got a noise complaint -_- hajime hates it in these streets.
matsukawa issei & hanamaki takahiro- conspiracy!! issei and hiro have a secret blog where they discuss conspiracy theories and such but one day, hiro found an article that explained how jfk’s death was an inside job. he sent it to issei who began to theorize how HE’D do it. that devolved into a massive thread on their blog of how’d they murder a president which blew up and caught the attention of the cia who sent the a letter telling them to quietly delete the blog. they did because they were terrified but they kept the letter and now it’s framed in issei’s apartment.
kyōtani kentarō- assault!! baby is an angry little boy but for all the right reasons. he was at a bar (when he’s all grown up, duh) and he spotted an absolute drunk creep hitting on a girl who clearlyyyy did not reciprocate his feelings. kyōtani, being the respectful king that he is, went over to the guy, pulled him by the jacket and beat. the. shit. out of him. while the bartender was happy with the fact that the creep was out, he was not impressed with the damage to his bar. he just sent kyōtani out who casually adjusted his leather jacket and rings, and hopped on his motorcycle to ride away into the night. i am the FATTEST simp for this man ONG 🥴
shiratorizawa
ushijima wakatoshi- stalking!! poor ushijima has no idea how intimidating he can be. he was on a train late at night after practice and the woman sitting across from him left her purse sitting on the seat. being the gentleman that he is, he took the purse and followed her to return it. the only problem is that the closer he got, the faster she ran and when he tried to speak (yknow with his scary, deep, baritone voice), the woman screeched and called the cops on him because he was a “strange, big man who was following her home.” when the police showed up, ushijima was painfully confused and just held up this tiny ass purse in his massive hands. the cops laughed.
tendō satori- ???!! no one knows what crimes (or how many 😳) tendō has committed but each of his teammates have different ideas- ushijima: “i don’t believe tendou is capable of committing any sort of felony. well, maybe murder”; semi: “of COURSE he’s capable of crimes??! do you know how many times i’ve seen him come into the dorm with a suspicious stain of red on his sweater?? *shudders* if i end up dead, tendō did it...” in actuality, the only crime tendō has committed is ~drugs~ but he’s not bouta tell his friends that.
goshiki tsutomu- would be a VICTIM!! my baby tsutomu would NEVER commit a crime!!! i love this man with my everything and the only crime he’s committed is being too damn cute 😤🥺
464 notes · View notes
anne-writes · 3 years
Text
Yaoi Fandoms; Representation or Fetishization?
1,305 words, 5 min~ reading time. Seperated into 25 paragrpahs for easier reading/writing. I worked on this while very sleep deprieved so comment an edits uwu. Essay under the divider. 
TW: Sarcasm, slight meaness (from me and others), inappriopriate messages to minors, censored cursing, babies?, I’ll update if I figure out any more.
+===========================================================+
It seems whenever a thing in the media with plenty of men in it (youtube groups, bands, shows, ect.) will eventually come out with an MLM ship. This isn't inherently bad because men loving other men is amazing. Good for them. I'm so proud. The problem comes from the stans focused on this ship/couple. 
Stans, am I right? The majority of unneeded cancel-culture and cyber-bullying. (Note how I say unneeded) I don't actually mind a lot of stans, probably since I don't use Twitter often. 
Now my problem with stans is they find a content creator (musician, artist, YouTuber, ect.) and they try to make this person fit into their specific box of expectations via bullying, and fear of being cancelled and their career ruined. 
This sucks for many reasons, because, these content creators are still human, right? Stans don't usually seem to know this and put these people on an unreachable pedestal. Kind of like your parents who expect you to stay the same gifted kid throughout your life. It eventually gets exhausting. Let's put this train of thought on hold for just a few minutes.
Now all of that brings me to my point of writing this. Are yaoi fandoms a good thing or a bad thing? Are they asking for representation or fetishization of their faves? Are they trying to get more LGBTQA+ creators known or are they looking for their uwu gay babies? 
I think the question boils down to, who is writing the majority of the fanfiction and what kind of fanfiction is it? Are straight women writing your gay man smut for other straight women to enjoy? I think this is a good telltale if your yaoi fandom is good or bad. 
Now, I don't mind straight women writing gay characters having sex, having angsty sex, discovering themselves and falling in love, and straight women reading it,  because good on you for not caring about what kind of romance story it is! Everyone loves a good romance story for the many different tropes, I'm partial to enemies to lovers. 
I do have a problem when it's not really meant as romance and more something for straight women to get their rocks off if you catch my drift. Getting off to a gay relationship because it's gay is really weird in my opinion. (I'm looking at you, straight boys who watch lesbian porn). 
It's quite weird to get off to these kinds of relationships and leads to fetishization. We already are trying to tell the straight boys this, but the gays aren't around for straight people's porn-watching pleasure. It's the same as women liking gay men for being gay. Or men liking lesbians for being lesbian. 
I feel that a lot of Yaoi stans aren't asking for representation more so are they asking for two men making love for their pleasure. This leads to the box of expectations that seem to come with every stan. (I told you we'd come back to that earlier point) 
As soon as the ship is adopted by stans, it seems to always get joked around by the content creators associated with it. Examples can include, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson, and Dream and GeorgeNotFound.
There's now the notation of 'well they brought it up so it must be true!'. And so, if the content creators continue making jokes about their shipname, the more of a cultish following grows and the more expectation for this to be real. 
This is pretty dangerous, as whatever one of those men gets a girlfriend, or a partner that isn't this specific person? Then the fandom turns against the 'traitor' and tries to solve any problems standing in the way of their ship. See Babygate. Whether or not you believe in that situation, the way they (stans) treated the families was just downright terrible. 
I mean sending porncaps to an underage minor? Just because you think the actress might also be the same girl that the minor's brother got pregnant, wtf. (Apparently, those larries aren't very approving of sex workers and porn actors/actresses /maybekidding,whoknows)
As terrible as that situation was handled and everything, it does show what kind of people those stans can be when something or someone gets in the way of their perfect ship. 
They also share the argument of 'this man is in love with another man, so he is gay' which makes me think they're even less so wanting representation. Because representation at its finest would be all sorts of sexualities, genders, ect. not just one specific sexuality.
Representation can come without fetishization. Many content things have been able to accomplish this. For example, some nice MLM webcomics can be found on Webtoon. Blades of Furry is quite cute, and perfect for all my furries out there. Boyfriends is about a Poly MLM group of 4. (Kiss it goodbye, Not So Shoujo Love Story for you WLW in need) (I wanna be a cute anime girl for my trans cuties.) (The Four of Them for a story about a group of kids discovering themselves.)
You can ask for representation without it being about the actual sexual component. LGBTQA+ smut is good for communities with these kinds of ships, but it shouldn't come at the cost of sexualization. Their relationships shouldn't become all about sex, because a lot of people do actually have the ability to keep it in their pants y̶o̶u̶ ̶h̶o̶r̶n̶y̶ ̶f̶*c̶k̶s̶. 
Posters being obsessed with their top and bottom components and how this person has to act a certain way because they are a top or a bottom are just the same people who think dom and sub roles need to be in every relationship. Who cares about who's the top or bottom when we can just care about their love? 
I'm not here to tell you not to ship MLM ships or WLW ships, or any of that. Honestly, that would just be hypocritical of me. I just want people to realize that by allowing yaoi fandoms to sexualize these kinds of relationships, you are solidifying a point in your brain, and other impressionable people's brains that gay people are only for sexual enjoyment. 
Whilst I think that IRL ships are pretty weird, everyone is going to probably do that anyway. Just allow that person to be straight, or any other sexuality, allow them to have other partners and don't make their entire life and career around one little thing. 
Don't expect people IRL to obey/act how YOU want them. They're humans too, and relationships are complicated. Maybe down the line, your fave comes out of the closet, but you shouldn't force them to come out just because you can 'sense' it. 
It's their life, it's their sexuality/gender/identity, allow the choices to be theirs. Forcing someone out of the closet makes you a d*ck. No matter what. No 'but it was so obvious!'. No 'well it was true!'. Forcing someone to reveal a private detail about themselves is creepy and d*ckish. Who cares if you're right, you could've harmed that person's homelife or anything. Maybe they wanted to keep it secret because who are you, as the fan, to dictate what they can share with you. 
And so, I leave you with some final words. Not everyone has to be gay, as much as, not everyone has to be straight. Sexuality and Gender identity are a spectrum and you cannot decide anyone else's. Allow people to be who they are, and don't stalk people. That's f*cking weird. 
I hope you all have a fantastic day/night/whatever. And next time, think about if your actions will be helping the community or not. I'm sure no one means to harm it, but it's ok to check in with yourself and your actions every once in a while to better yourself.  
18 notes · View notes
hws-denmark · 3 years
Text
Very off-brand but literally just venting and vitriol under the cut about recent-ish hetalia discourse, if you don't wanna see it then don't read it! Cheers.
Alright idk what the fuck happened to fandom spaces over the past 5 years but this shit is super toxic now. It's like the internet has over-corrected from "it's the wild west baybeeeee, ship wars and death threats and downright awful behavior galore" to "have you consumed anything problematic or made a mistake anytime in the past 30 years??? Literally go fucking die you deserve to kys!!". Both are shit. But in my experience, one is a fuckton easier to avoid. Hetalia is a problematic show. This is a fact. There's an anti-semetic joke in the dub. There's whitewashing in the earlier anime seasons. Hima's characterisation of South Korea is horrific. France's earliest characterisations are done real dirty with the amount of sexual assault present. You could write essays about this shit, but honestly it's all been said in better ways before so I don't particularly care to. But quite frankly the amount of harassment from sad trolls and bullies online is nuts over this shit. Five fucking months and it's unavoidable- "Your a nazi! Facist, japanese imperialist anti-semite!!" NEWS FLASH- YOUR KEYBOARD WARRIOR CRAP ISN'T DOING JACK SHIT! YOU AREN'T PREVENTING A-NY-THING, YOU AREN'T HELPING A-NY-ONE! GET OFF YOUR ASS AND CALL OUT THE HATE I GUARANTEE WILL BE HAPPENING IN REAL DANG LIFE IN YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY IF YOU ACTUALLY WANNA EDUCATE AND MAKE A POSITIVE CHANGE. There's a world of difference between calling out shitty fandom behavior and whatever the fuck this is. It's madness that I have to point out how saying that people talking about cartoon characters from a five minute OVA even holds a single CANDLE to the worldwide rise in nationalist sentiment and anti-semetic conspiracy theory, bourne from a mass refusal to acknowledge history, is so severely minimising. I take it that's okay though because you can wank yourself off on your nice little high horse without actually doing anything to combat hate or improve the world in any way though? The show has so many faults and for multitudes of good reasons you might never want to see it ever again. So block it. Don't interact with it. Blacklist the tag. But it is downright RUDE to be coming INTO the tag and talking shit. That doesn't tell me you're earnestly trying to avoid the series- it tells me you're really really trying to start fights. Bc I have been using the block button pretty liberally recently, and for every normal user venting I see, there's always an equal amount of people who, ironically, seem to dedicate their blog to bigotry against others and cyber-harassment. I've seen anti-hetalia blogs that have been sexist, racist, panphobic and, maybe most hypocritically, one that was bizarrely insensitive to the connotations of a past political regime. And yet minors look to these same people and parrot what they say for clout. In my experience, in a whole lot of anti-hetalia circles, there's a severe case of "mocking because I think it's cringe, but disguising it as concern for others to not look like a straight-up dickhead and have the moral high ground". Is it seeping from twitter? Bc I see that shit there all the time even in non-fandom spaces, the black/white, we're angels/they're devils thinking that real life and sane adults just do not fucking operate on. What I do know is, in the midst of a difficult pandemic, the one announcement in months that was happy and exciting for me left me feeling like dogshit by the end of the day. The weekly episodes that I should be excited for are just making me dread what I'm gonna see online. The nordic five are kinda like comfort characters for me, since I grew up in an emotionally abusive household and so I treated them like the family I never had. And yet, when I wanna go online and look at headcanons and read cool au fanfics, I always seem to stumble upon the implication that doing this is somehow severely hurting someone and that I'm a terrible monster. Logically, I know this is a load of shit. And yet I've noticed I've been putting myself down and looking at more and more self-harm content again recently bc
guilt-tripping with that much weight seeps into your brain like a nasty case of sepsis. Even the more casual "haha hetalia not another pandemic/more brainrot/will punch you on sight" lark starts to fucking drag when it's just SO widespread. Might just queue nice art, drop the occasional fanfic and otherwise stop interacting with the fandom tbqh. This bullshit is not healthy and some of the people on this hellsite are genuine psychos.
12 notes · View notes
sinagrace · 5 years
Text
As Pride Month comes to a close, it’s time I spoke candidly about my experience at Marvel Comics.
To date, I’ve always been honest about the joy of writing Iceman’s journey as an out gay superhero, but I’ve skirted around the challenges that came along with it. This is partially because I prefer to give off an upbeat vibe, and there’s also a fear that my truth will affect my career. With more corporations patting themselves on the back for profit-led partnerships wherein celebrities take selfies in rainbow apparel, and with buzz that Marvel Studios is preparing to debut their first gay character in the upcoming Eternals movie, there is an urgency to discuss the realities of creating queer pop culture in a hostile or ambivalent environment. Hopefully, my takeaways will serve as a guide for people in positions of power to consider when advocating for more nuanced and rich representation. In an ideal world, embracing our stories and empowering us to tell them will yield far more profitable (and way less messy) results than what I encountered while writing Iceman.
Stand by your people
It’s no surprise that I got the attention of trolls and irate fans for taking on this job. There was already backlash around the manner in which Bobby Drake aka Iceman came out, and Marvel needed to smooth that landing and put a “so what” to the decision. After a point, I could almost laugh off people making light of my death, saying they have "cancerous AIDS" from my book, or insinuating I’m capable of sexual assault… almost. Between Iceman’s cancellation and its subsequent revival, Marvel reached out and said they noticed threatening behavior on my Twitter account (only after asking me to send proof of all the nasty shit popping up online). An editor called, these conversations always happen over the phone, offering to provide “tips and tricks” to deal with the cyber bullying. I cut him off. All he was going to do was tell me how to fend for myself. I needed Marvel to stand by me with more work opportunities to show the trolls that I was more than a diversity hire. “We’ll keep you in mind.” I got so tired of that sentence. 
Even after a year of the new editor-in-chief saying I was talented and needed to be on a book that wasn’t “the gay character,” the only assignment I got outside of Iceman was six pages along, about a version of Wolverine where he had diamond claws. Fabulous, yes. Heterosexual, yes. Still kind of the gay character, though.
We as creators are strongly encouraged to build a platform on social media and use it to promote work-for-hire projects owned by massive corporations… but when the going gets tough, these dudes get going real quick. 
Believe in the work
You may be asking if my Iceman book was any good, or if I’m just being sour grapes over a bad work experience. Believe me, I asked that, too. From the get-go, my first editor asserted that Iceman would be DOA if it were “too gay,” while also telling me to prepare for a cancellation anyway, given that most solo X-Men titles don’t last beyond a year. Never mind that my work on Iceman had gotten positive press in the New York Times (in-print), or that in spite of (since-deleted) critical sandbagging, the series nets glowing reviews on Amazon… Marvel still treated me as someone to be contained, and the book as something to be nervous about. Do you know how hard it is to not argue with a publicist when he’s explaining the value of announcing Iceman’s revival via the Marvel homepage? Sis, that’s a burial. Instead of clapping back, I just went and got myself more press from the New York Times. From there, they tightened my leash. I had to get all opportunities pre-approved, and all interviews pre-reviewed. This would be fine if it was the standard, but I assure you: none of my straight male colleagues seek permission to go on podcasts promoting their books. 
What Marvel should have done is assign me a special projects editor. They should have worked with a specialty PR firm, rather than repeat a tiresome cycle of treating the book like a square peg, and getting confused when it’s a hit. 
Give us a real seat at the table
There was a moment before Iceman was cancelled where I wrote then-editor-in-chief Axel Alonso an email, pleading for a Hail Mary arc. I explained that Iceman was landing with a newer generation of readers who focused more on binge-reading than month-to-month periodicals. The series needed time in the book market before its true strength could be assessed. To Axel’s credit, he was warm to the idea and even gave me an extra month, but when he left Marvel that idea got brushed away. Of course I was right. The first two volumes sold like gangbusters thanks to word-of-mouth, librarian love, and support from retailers big and small. 
When the series returned, no one at Marvel asked me: “What do you think landed with readers?” Nor did they ask the question that Axel did: “What matters to your community?” So when I wrote what I thought the fans would be into, a story about a man learning to be a better ally in the war against hate, editorial totally missed its value.
Seat at the table pt II: The Shade of it all
All of the weird drama I put up with crystallized when I created a drag queen mutant, first called Shade, now called Darkveil. I told my editor that Shade would be a big deal for X-Fans, and asked how we should promote her. He said: “leave it up to the reader’s interpretation.” Everyone at Marvel shrugged off two years of goodwill and acted like I’d coordinated behind their backs on an announcement that made headlines. Beyond mentioning on Instagram the queens who inspired the character, I didn’t coordinate shit. Of course, their head publicist can’t admit that my quotes were pre-approved from an unreleased interview. At this point, I stopped believing that there’d be any more work for me. There were so many shady moves on their end that I’m still having trouble putting into language, but it all aligned with an experience I had in retail where a corrupt manager kept lying and moving the goal posts in order to keep me selling in a department I didn’t want to work in. I offered to give Darkveil a proper character bio, and I walked away.  
I recognize that some of my complaints can be filed under “this is freelance life.” I am aware that it was not a queer person of color who joked to me that “it’s not a matter of if Marvel fucks you over, it’s a matter of when.” That came from a cis white male. The same-day turn-arounds without warning, the work emails on Christmas week… that’s the freelance bullshit. Truly, I don’t even think of this as discrimination, I call it general ineptness. It is my belief that if we are telling stories about heroes doing the right thing in the face of adversity, wouldn’t the hope be to embody those ideals as individuals? Instead of feeling like I worked with some of the most inspiring and brave people in comics, I was surrounded by cowards. 
Truly, I hate writing this. In keeping with Pride Month, I am proud of the work I did on Iceman... I love the book! It sucks that I may be tarnishing its legacy going public about how the cookies were made. That said, the time for self-congratulating is over, and folks should be earnestly listening when they ask: what could we have done better? 
3K notes · View notes
alchemist-shizun · 3 years
Note
have you ever do coming out? how it was?
I did, and let me tell you, I'm really really lucky, even if not every one of them was a good experience.
I've only fully come out to my other LGBT+ friends, online or irl, who are of course very accepting of everything.
I've come out about my sexuality only (the one I identified with at the time, which actually I realized wasn't for me this year) to a very few number of irl non lgbt+ friends in different occasions, it went really well in both, one quite literally made me feel like it was the most normal thing in the world since I was telling a story and he was completely unfazed when I mentioned I had a gf. The other two were really happy I could open up and trust them and were really supportive and would always ask me how it went with the girl I was with at the time. (these two were around 2018)
Then my family. Well.
This one's a little complicated because it's not that they hate me or kicked me out or anything I just kinda.. Feel like they don't care. And it's the type where you would be scared to bring up anything about the community because you're convinced they wouldn't care nor want to know anything. It's the type of "as long as you don't bother me I don't mind." which is the type of mindset my dad has a lot in regards to my sister's bf (just fyi, she's 21 and he's 23 so like... Wow thanks. Sometimes I feel bad for how he treats her about her bf.)
So when I came out about my sexuality to my mum, she was fine with it, we just talked about some lighthearted stuff.
Then she asked me something where I made a huge mistake, she said "do you want me to tell dad for you?" and I said yes, since I'm too scared. Well in hindsight I should've kept my mouth shut about it: see basically at the time I had an online girlfriend who was a couple of years older than me, and I mentioned that to mum, and basically when my dad confronted me, he did it in the worst way possible.
He was mad I was in a relationship with this person and he claimed she promised me something out of it?? Like I was with her only because of something and not because we liked each other. He hated (I think he still does, softened up a bit because my sister has had a long distance bf for 1 year) internet friendships or relationships and my mum lowkey did too because she kept saying how basically it's not real because it's all digital and digital life isn't real. (this really upsets me because what, then you would excuse cyber bullying with that type of reasoning? But whatever, not the topic)
So he was really mad at me and demanded he looked through my phone, to which I couldn't say no or else he would think I was hiding something (and anyway, if I said no he would've done it anyway), and he started looking through the entire chat (and other ones with my friends) and read thousands of texts.
Now at the time I had only said I liked both boys and girls cause I know the concept of nonbinary is already too complicated for them to understand and unfortunately my dad came across the label pansexual (since the gf at the time was pan), I explained it to him and he just said I read too many things on the internet.
Imagine how hurt I was because that was actually how I used to identify back then.
Things escalated during those months, everytime he got mad at me, he would randomly take my phone and read conversations I had with this girl and he would comment on them just because and make me feel even worse, he basically hated her and lowkey hated the fact that I was with her.
The worst thing was that I sadly vented to her about him sometimes and he would basically prohibit me to vent and that's how I ended up deleting every single vent moment I had right after we talked. Years later I come to know that my sister had actually access to my chatting app and would tell my dad what we said, which is why he told me back then "I know you're deleting texts".
My mum wanted to send me to therapy because she didn't understand a single thing of what I said when I said I wasn't sure whether I liked boys girls AND more or just boys and girls. She thought I meant I didn't know if I was straight or not, I meant I didn't know if I was bi or pan, which is why I never mentioned gender identities to them and why I am closeted about me being nonbinary to them. (btw this was the understanding of the difference between bi and pan at the time, I was 15, I now know it's more complicated than that.)
About my sister, she came to know in the worst way possible too. For some reason I was afraid she would be homophobic and after I told mum, there was this one time I was at a restaurant with family friends and my cousins, aunt and uncle.
May I say I was sitting right between my cousin and my sister and in front of my aunt.
Unprompted, she asks me if I'm gay, but like she used this Italian phrase that I really don't like much, since it's usually used to make jokes by straight people about someone being gay.
I was there like GOD FUCKING DAMN IT we're LITERALLY next to our cousin and aunt COULD U SAY THAT LOWER. I told her I wasn't straight and, I don't remember much really, but she was offended I didn't tell her first. Like, wow, okay, coming out is difficult as fuck, but go on, be offended.
I had to go to the bathroom right after because I had an anxiety attack.
After things quieted down with my parents (as in my dad wasn't taking my phone as much), things started escalating with the girl I was with, she assumed a rather toxic behavior and I ended up dumping her.
Can still remember how my sister told me dad had said "thank goodness" when he learnt I wasn't with that girl anymore.
How also my mum said "cmon maybe next time you'll get a boyfriend". Wonderful comfort mum yes I already had a bf before, he dumped me one month after because he liked someone else not sure I want to try the experience again!! :)
Anyway, this is the reason why I do not talk about my relationships to my parents anymore. I had a girlfriend for almost 2 years and my dad knew nothing. My sister did because she actually grew a little bit better about this stuff (she's the embarrassing questions type, but at least she's not a bitch) and my mum knew around 6 months in, because she asked and we were alone. (I still think she thinks I'm a lesbian)
Also the reason why, when I got a pride flag while on school journey in the UK, I hid it in my drawer. And the reason why I'm terrified of asking of going to pride.
As of now, I have a lovely partner and yes, my entire family absolutely doesn't know and will not know if not strictly necessary. Maybe I will tell my sister, I was thinking about it, because that could probably make some personal stuff less difficult to do.
See, technically it's not that bad now, we just never bring it up at all and I never think about the clusterfuck of things that happened in 2016.
6 notes · View notes
gu-fem · 4 years
Text
Is Taylor Swift the Definition of the Modern White Womanhood?
Tumblr media
Written by: Julia Zhigaleva
Call me dumb, call me white, but Taylor Swift’s music has been my guilty pleasure for so long that I eventually stopped feeling guilty about it. You guys, I’m not even kidding when I say that I grew up with Taylor Swift – from crying after school to Teardrops on My Guitar when the guy I liked chose to date my best friend over me, to dressing up like hipsters with my friends and partying to 22 in my college years, to taking forever to get over breakups with All Too Well, to lip-syncing to myself in the mirror to Blank Space wearing red lipstick, to trying to convince my significant other why Lover definitely has to one day play at our wedding.
As we grew up with Taylor, she grew up with us – from an overly dramatic teenager occupied with boy drama from the Fearless era, to a hopeless young romantic of Red and 1989, to an unapologetic bitch from Reputation, to folklore’s big sister Taylor who braids your hair and makes sure you don’t repeat the mistakes she made in her youth. To me Taylor Swift has always been the embodiment of the modern white womanhood, which in my opinion is also a secret to her huge commercial success. If you’re a girl and you don’t know a single Taylor Swift song you could relate to, you’re probably lying. 
This to me is also the reason why haters are always gonna hate – if Taylor Swift embodies so much of the modern femininity, the reason behind the overwhelming hatred towards the singer could easily be misogyny. “Overly dramatic, shallow, immature and always playing the victim” – for years Swift has been bullied for loving our loud, singing her heart out and trying to grow up and figure herself out while being one of the most commercially successful artists in the world. Constantly in the public eye, the singer has often been accused of using this public obsession with her private life to promote her music, which was then dismissed as too girly or not worthy of attention – the double standard Swift herself called out in The Man. 
And then we have the Taylor vs Kanye feud, which is honestly on the list of my possible PhD thesis ideas, as this decade-long beef has everything you could possible wish for - race, gender, cyber bullying, mental health, and even Barack Obama. When Kim’s Snapchat stories broke the internet back in 2016, it led to the outbreak of hatred like never before, with dozens of spiteful articles against Taylor appearing online and tons of snake emojis flooding the comments of the singer’s Twitter and Instagram accounts. And that’s when people that are normally impartial to Swift drama jumped in and reminded that not only is the girl completely crazy, but she also never in her life used her privilege to speak up social injustice and remained politically neutral during 2016 election race. Officially canceled and proclaimed dead, Swift was forced into an exile that very few of us believed she would ever recover from. 
Coming back with her Reputation album, Swift literally reinvented herself, burying her most iconic past selves in the music video for Look What You Made Me Do. But it wasn’t until she put out Miss Americana on Netflix, which, let’s be real, we all watched while being bored at home in quarantine, that Taylor won back over so many of those who turned their backs on her back when the Kim drama happened. In the documentary we get to see the private side of the singer’s life, as well as hear her side of the story on all the scandals that followed her in the past couple of years. Swift confesses that she has always felt pressured to be perfect and unproblematic, which held her from ever taking a political stance, truly speaking her mind, and eventually led her to developing an eating disorder. 
"A nice girl smiles and waves and says thank you. A nice girl doesn’t make people feel uncomfortable with her views. I was so obsessed with not getting in trouble that I’m just not going to do anything that anyone can say something about." – Miss Americana (2020). 
I was sad to see that Taylor’s epic comeback was actually yet another attempt to fit into the image of the exemplary femininity, the new little miss perfect of 2020 - the good girl going bad. We see in the meeting room scene how Swift tries to convince some old white dudes from her management team that taking a public stance against the Republican candidate in Tennessee is the right and important thing to do even if it hurts the Taylor Swift brand. But the truth is, Miss Americana is actually Swift doing damage control after being criticised for being artificially perfect, calculated and politically estranged. If in 2010 good girls curled their hair, skipped lunch and obsessed over cute boys, in 2020 they wear slogan tees, joke about straight white men and have at least one gay friend they can paint their nails with. Yet I wouldn’t dare to accuse Taylor Swift of being hypocritical and self-serving with her recent political activism.
“For someone who’s built their whole belief system on getting people to clap for you, the whole crowd booing is a pretty formative experience.” – Miss Americana (2020)
Taylor confessing that she had based her entire self-image on the constant approval and praise from others, hit too close to home. It made me think that as easy as it would be to point out that the singer who built her entire career upon the society’s conventional idea of femininity, doesn’t get to jump on the bandwagon and call herself a feminist, one cannot in good conscience blame Swift for wanting to fit in, be approved and accepted. In Miss Americana I saw Taylor fighting the losing battle of having to be a 'good girl’ in order to stay relevant and successful, yet being mocked and dismissed for this very conventional femininity of hers. Taylor opening up about her constant pursuit of perfection and need for validation in the world of unreachable standards set for women was perhaps the most vulnerable part of her documentary and it is certainly a struggle many of us can relate to.
Coming from a place of race and class privilege, possessing conventional beauty, and being adorably naive in her attempts to dismantle the patriarchy with the songs like The Man and You Need to Calm Down, still, Taylor Swift is the ultimate white girl that we can’t help but relate to. May she finally find her true self and may we all be lucky enough to be able to do the same.
1 note · View note
rayonfrozenwings · 5 years
Text
Hey mutuals, followers and p0rn bots, 
Its my blogs 3rd birthday! 
I’ve been lurking, posting, ranting in the SJM fandom on tumblr for three years and that’s kinda Crazy to me. 
So here are some fun Facts that kinda evolve into an appreciation post… and then an anecdotal history of this fandom I’ve been a part of. So thanks for hanging round and talking shit with me. :D
if ur tagged it’s just like a thanks or when I met you - lol you don’t have to read the whole thing... 
and the rest is under the cut.... 
I only liked posts for the First month, I never reblogged. It was my first time on tumblr.
I’ve had the same URL since the start
The first post I reblogged and commented on was @miladyaelin ‘s post about a Volcano in the Frozen Wastes - such a wasted opportunity for World destruction that was not used to full potential at all in KoA hahaha - maybe a spin off series? joke.
The first person to reply to one of my asks was abookandacoffee or @bookofmirth 3 months after I joined tumblr and that’s kinda scary because that means we have been speaking longer than we realised. 
@propshophannah​ thanks for letting me go nuts about theory with you!
The Big blogs in the SJM fandom change, and it's cool that being in the fandom for so long means that I get to talk with all these people and make some real friends.
I made read friends from reading books and talking about them - How Cool Is That!
I had fun making shit posts about Dorian’s couch, Rowan’s relationship status after EoS and seeing my friends come up with some pretty clever memes too. 
The Art is amazing, and actually getting to talk to artists about their art is something I didn't think would happen ever. So I’m so grateful to tumblr for that.
I want to tag a lot of people but - having been here so long means that urls change and I lose touch - plus I think I would go over the “50 tag limit” easily. 
The first kiwi blog who I talked to was @verifiefangirl and we bonded over the Old El Paso advert of “why not both”. 
I want to thank those who encouraged me to write my theories, and I did that for the first year on here. 
I want to say thank you to the people who told me “You know, you can write your theories as fic and people don't get as angry.” Because you were right! And so that started my writing of fan fic, and thank you to those people who wanted to be tagged and let me know what was up - sorry I haven’t written in a while. 
Thank You to @faenet and my Faenet Fam. I joined to share theories, switched it up to write fic, and then evolved into Edits. I was able to learn how discord works and be a part of a team and learn new photo editing skills - I knew nothing before I joined and it's so cool to have become a part of that community.
Thanks to my BookClub brotp - It’s been the best getting to know you all over the last year, discuss books and life. And just have fun. I honestly wouldn't have connected with you guys if we just relied on tumblr because it often requires me to say something first, and i'm not good at that. @theyretheirthere​ sorry I had to tag you twinnie. :P 
Some Fandom History for those who have been here a while ... (well for as long as I have been in the fandom, I know there was a time before this).
Phase One - POST EOS Theory and Beach Scene Debate, Elorcan exists now even tho People still HATE Lorcan (not me but lots of people did). ACOMAF love, nickname of Tam the tampon takes off. 
Phase Two - PRE ACOWAR, Moreil Hype, Fandom super excited, Acomaf love, Rhysand love.
Phase Three - ACOWAR IS AWFUL - Dumpsters on Fire, lots of fandom people left. The ones who stayed had discourse about Moriel, Mor’s sexuality, Nessian, the ending and how it was rushed, Azriel is a smol cinnamon roll who deserved better - lots of Az fics and the birth of Elriel started here. 
Phase Four - TOG FANDOM ARE MAD because Chaol’s novella turned into a Novel. Cyber bullying of Chaol lovers in fandom led to a lot of blogs leaving - just be kind to one another, you can talk about stuff without personal attacks.   
Phase Five - WE ARE ALL GOING STIR CRAZY, Someone released a TOD mock cover and there was a lot of ableist stuff going on. Bad time in fandom. 
Phase six - TOD Came out - Lots of people refused to read, other people felt vindicated about theories, other people were shocked about Maeve. Praise and Hate towards the book and for how SJM handled race and disability. Was she being sensitive or appropriating? Mixed Reviews, again fandom got a little smaller. Acotar Fandom was taking off in terms of fics. 
Phase Seven - Acotar Fandom PRE ACOFAS Fan Fic Mania. Most of us re-read acotar, acomaf, acowar and Fix-it fics, Nessian Fics, Feysand Fics, Lots of Fics. Lots of Art. I noticed the ACOTAR fandom kinda took off while the TOG one floundered.
Phase Eight - A New Novella for ACOTAR, ACOFAS - lots of hype. Lots of mixed reviews - “it had no plot” or “I love it” or “I don't like how the first pov changed depending on the character” or “Yay christmas!!!” or “boo wall scene” or “yay Wall scene!!” Again - more fics and art came from it. Snowball fight was a highlight, art was gorgeous, Amren as a snowball was also good. Fandom was flourishing again, yes we lost some people but we also had a resurgence in creative content.
Weird non-phase - Catwoman: Soul Stealer, was released but wasn't a “must read” for many people.
Phase Nine - Pre KoA, Fandom was Hyped! We were all doing our re-reads, theories came out again, discussions about favourite quotes of things we had forgotten were shared. Again - Some good ToG fic came out because people had it fresh in their minds again  - we were preparing. Edits were great, lots of Edits, Lots of Art. 
Phase Ten - KoA Came out and destroyed us. Fandom was relatively quiet while people abandoned tumblr to read it. Anti’s came out in force, they had more to say about it that the fans did. Fans didn't see this immediately because they weren't on tumblr. About a month after release, We got Meta and discourse on KoA and what it means and what Aelin’s story has meant to us personally. Edits started taking off again. This Phase is still ongoing even a year later. Personally I am in Awe of that book and what it managed to achieve, I wanted to re-read it straight away but it still has so many parts that HURT to read. 
New people slowly trickle into fandom, or pick up the books, its sweet, but as a veteran sometimes seeing the same arguments gets tiring and so I dont comment as much as I used to. I’m still here reading, but I don't really want to write another essay like the ones I've previously written to defend a point so i’m quiet. 
Where I think it will go next? 
Most of the people who remain in the fandom are good at looking at things with a critical eye but saying “I can still enjoy a book”, which I like. 
We will get hyped as a fandom for Crescent City which was pushed back to March 2020, even if we are unsure it’s what we want, I don't think we can help ourselves. 
ACOTAR 4 is in the works with no confirmed release date, just vague mention that it was being pushed back - twas supposed to be 2020 but I'm doubtful, especially if other titles are pushed back first like CC:HOEAB - it was by three months from Jan to March. 
WOTOG was also pushed back, first from release with EoS, then from release with ToD and now from release with KoA (those are all goodreads dates as I was waiting for it and keeping an eye out, but we also had novels added and other books like acofas - goodreads also isn't the best at staying on top of release dates)…. we have had mention of it that it will include art and is co-authored by Lynette Noni, so It is still being made at least - I mean I don't have to cry about it being cancelled just yet. And So I have to stay around for those. I became invested in the World building of TOG to not wait for WOTOG. 
So yeah, it’s been a wild 3 years. <3
33 notes · View notes
lastsonlost · 5 years
Text
I needed Marvel to stand by me with more work opportunities to show the trolls that I was more than a diversity hire. “
Tumblr media
Sina Grace on Writing Iceman at Marvel: “I Was Surrounded by Cowards”
Posted by Jude Terror June 28, 2019 48 Comments
As has been documented in various Bleeding Cool articles throughout the course of the book’s two series, one of my personal favorite X-Men comics of the past few years was Iceman, written by Sina Grace, and drawn it its first volume by Alessandro Vitti and Robert Gill and in its second and concluding one-shot by Nathan Stockman. The book breathed new life into a character who it could be argued hadn’t really received significant character development since his days in X-Factor in the 1980s. It’s true that it was “The Great One” Brian Bendis who wrote Iceman outed by Jean Grey’s invasive telepathy, but it was Grace who wrote adult Iceman coming to grips with this and learning to be himself and love himself, alongside, of course, lots of mutant action and drama. The book ended too soon, when it was really just getting going, IMHO.
With all of that in mind, it’s sad but not surprising to read Sina Grace’s comments, posted to his Tumblr, about his time at Marvel writing the book and what he says was a lack of support from Marvel while he dealt with online bullying as well as a lack of support and promotion for Iceman itself.
Tumblr media
Grace writes:
As Pride Month comes to a close, it’s time I spoke candidly about my experience at Marvel Comics.
To date, I’ve always been honest about the joy of writing Iceman’s journey as an out gay superhero, but I’ve skirted around the challenges that came along with it. This is partially because I prefer to give off an upbeat vibe, and there’s also a fear that my truth will affect my career. With more corporations patting themselves on the back for profit-led partnerships wherein celebrities take selfies in rainbow apparel, and with buzz that Marvel Studios is preparing to debut their first gay character in the upcoming Eternals movie, there is an urgency to discuss the realities of creating queer pop culture in a hostile or ambivalent environment. Hopefully, my takeaways will serve as a guide for people in positions of power to consider when advocating for more nuanced and rich representation. In an ideal world, embracing our stories and empowering us to tell them will yield far more profitable (and way less messy) results than what I encountered while writing Iceman.
Stand by your people
It’s no surprise that I got the attention of trolls and irate fans for taking on this job. There was already backlash around the manner in which Bobby Drake aka Iceman came out, and Marvel needed to smooth that landing and put a “so what” to the decision. After a point, I could almost laugh off people making light of my death, saying they have “cancerous AIDS” from my book, or insinuating I’m capable of sexual assault… almost. Between Iceman’s cancellation and its subsequent revival, Marvel reached out and said they noticed threatening behavior on my Twitter account (only after asking me to send proof of all the nasty shit popping up online). An editor called, these conversations always happen over the phone, offering to provide “tips and tricks” to deal with the cyber bullying. I cut him off. All he was going to do was tell me how to fend for myself. 
I needed Marvel to stand by me with more work opportunities to show the trolls that I was more than a diversity hire. 
Tumblr media
“We’ll keep you in mind.”
I got so tired of that sentence.
Even after a year of the new editor-in-chief saying I was talented and needed to be on a book that wasn’t “the gay character,” the only assignment I got outside of Iceman was six pages along, about a version of Wolverine where he had diamond claws. Fabulous, yes. Heterosexual, yes. Still kind of the gay character, though.
We as creators are strongly encouraged to build a platform on social media and use it to promote work-for-hire projects owned by massive corporations… but when the going gets tough, these dudes get going real quick.
Believe in the work
You may be asking if my Iceman book was any good, or if I’m just being sour grapes over a bad work experience. Believe me, I asked that, too. From the get-go, my first editor asserted that Iceman would be DOA if it were “too gay,” while also telling me to prepare for a cancellation anyway, given that most solo X-Men titles don’t last beyond a year. Never mind that my work on Iceman had gotten positive press in the New York Times (in-print), or that in spite of (since-deleted) critical sandbagging, the series nets glowing reviews on Amazon… Marvel still treated me as someone to be contained, and the book as something to be nervous about. Do you know how hard it is to not argue with a publicist when he’s explaining the value of announcing Iceman’s revival via the Marvel homepage? Sis, that’s a burial. Instead of clapping back, I just went and got myself more press from the New York Times. From there, they tightened my leash. I had to get all opportunities pre-approved, and all interviews pre-reviewed. This would be fine if it was the standard, but I assure you: none of my straight male colleagues seek permission to go on podcasts promoting their books.
What Marvel should have done is assign me a special projects editor. They should have worked with a specialty PR firm, rather than repeat a tiresome cycle of treating the book like a square peg, and getting confused when it’s a hit.
Give us a real seat at the table
There was a moment before Iceman was cancelled where I wrote then-editor-in-chief Axel Alonso an email, pleading for a Hail Mary arc. I explained that Icemanwas landing with a newer generation of readers who focused more on binge-reading than month-to-month periodicals. The series needed time in the book market before its true strength could be assessed. To Axel’s credit, he was warm to the idea and even gave me an extra month, but when he left Marvel that idea got brushed away. Of course I was right. The first two volumes sold like gangbusters thanks to word-of-mouth, librarian love, and support from retailers big and small.
When the series returned, no one at Marvel asked me: “What do you think landed with readers?” Nor did they ask the question that Axel did: “What matters to your community?” So when I wrote what I thought the fans would be into, a story about a man learning to be a better ally in the war against hate, editorial totally missed its value.
Seat at the table pt II: The Shade of it all
All of the weird drama I put up with crystallized when I created a drag queen mutant, first called Shade, now called Darkveil. I told my editor that Shade would be a big deal for X-Fans, and asked how we should promote her. He said: “leave it up to the reader’s interpretation.” Everyone at Marvel shrugged off two years of goodwill and acted like I’d coordinated behind their backs on an announcement that made headlines. Beyond mentioning on Instagram the queens who inspired the character, I didn’t coordinate shit. Of course, their head publicist can’t admit that my quotes were pre-approved from an unreleased interview. At this point, I stopped believing that there’d be any more work for me. There were so many shady moves on their end that I’m still having trouble putting into language, but it all aligned with an experience I had in retail where a corrupt manager kept lying and moving the goal posts in order to keep me selling in a department I didn’t want to work in. I offered to give Darkveil a proper character bio, and I walked away.  
I recognize that some of my complaints can be filed under “this is freelance life.” I am aware that it was not a queer person of color who joked to me that “it’s not a matter of if Marvel fucks you over, it’s a matter of when.” That came from a cis white male. The same-day turn-arounds without warning, the work emails on Christmas week… that’s the freelance bullshit. Truly, I don’t even think of this as discrimination, I call it general ineptness. It is my belief that if we are telling stories about heroes doing the right thing in the face of adversity, wouldn’t the hope be to embody those ideals as individuals? Instead of feeling like I worked with some of the most inspiring and brave people in comics, I was surrounded by cowards.
Truly, I hate writing this. In keeping with Pride Month, I am proud of the work I did on Iceman… I love the book! It sucks that I may be tarnishing its legacy going public about how the cookies were made. That said, the time for self-congratulating is over, and folks should be earnestly listening when they ask: what could we have done better?
Tumblr media
so what’s my take.....
Personally I think the kid got used, plain and simple. Also this should not have come as a shock to anyone.
Look at how badly they treat their customers that pay them money,                  OF COURSE THEY’RE GOING TO FUCK THEIR EMPLOYEES EVERY CHANCE THEY GET. A box full of scorpions would have had more loyalty.
@thespectacularspider-girl
______________________________
little history lesson for you kids: tokyopop did practically the same thing with the rising stars of manga. They snatched up young Talent, use them, and drop them.
11 notes · View notes
marigorbital · 6 years
Text
Dumb Ducks in the Water: Part 14
IT’S FINALLY HERE. Three actual years later, but it’s here.
A lot has happened in my life for the past three years and, to make a long excuse short, I was doing a lot of life questioning and dealing with events. And once I got out of my dark cloud, I decided to return to this fic while returning with my own writing projects. So I’m here to finish this fic, though I’m not sure how long it will take (I hope within a year?)--I’m just promising not to go MIA again, is all.
Anyway, some notes on this chapter:
- Listen, I did NOT plan on returning when the 3rd season of Free! came. This is pure coincidence, honestly. That being said, SO MANY THINGS HAVE CHANGED. Side characters have personalities now... Isuzu exists (I’ll have to, at some point, change Yukiko’s name)... People are in college now... Anyway, I want to remind folks that I started this fic in 2014/2015 and I’m trying to stay true to that, so anything that doesn’t match up with the current season is kind of like oh well for me.
- This chapter features tweets. Yeah. I used some website that make them look like they were written in 2009, lol, but we’re just gonna go with it. Also, want to give a shoutout to my best friends, who spent like five hours coming up with the twitter handles.
- Speaking of which, trigger warning possibly: cyber bullying (?) and rumors. Now, I generally try to keep this fic lighthearted, so I am also touching the mentioned subjects in a lighthearted manner for the most part, but I also know that if what happens in this chapter ever happened to me in high school, I would have been mortified. So I tried to respect that and take it a little seriously, which also pertains to the rest of the plot--but this is still Dumb Ducks. No PSAs, just some self-awareness.
- I am a little worried the quality is not up to par with this chapter because it’s been a while and I just wanted to get this chapter over with because I’d rather write other scenes, so I’m super sorry if it’s only sort of funny/cute or too serious. It’ll be better next chapter! (Which hopefully comes out by December?)
Anyway.
Start from the beginning or go to the handy-dandy tag page and pick up where you left off.
Enjoy.
------
It was still Tuesday.
But worse yet, it was time for him to face the swim team.
And to be honest, if you asked Nitori, that was kind of bullshit.
There he stood, observing the pool of sharks in the distance just waiting for him to make a move. A whole lot of damage had been done in the past eight hours since Rin shouted a profound WHAT THE FUCK at Nitori and Momo’s dorm doorway, which immediately stirred up a banana telephone game of epic proportions throughout Samezuka Academy. Pair that with the fact that both of the dimwits were publicly announced to head to the principal’s office together and that something amiss had happened in the cafeteria last night—and boy, oh boy, were the rumors trending the social sphere like something straight out of Nitori’s nightmares. They had gone viral, top of the chart gossip among their peers, who were all too ready to roast the couple into infamy.
It all started with a tweet.
Tumblr media
Some rando on the basketball team had overheard Rin catching Nitori and Momotarou getting caught in an explicit position at their dorm, and what with the rumors of Samezuka’s swim team having more tea than a J-drama now stirring, this caught the attention of several bored teenage boys before classes had even started.
Tumblr media
The sports news network was simple. Basketball passed the rumors around to get some details. One teammate asked who found out about this and were replied to with the captain caught them. Another asked, which one’s the captain?? And another replied, the guy who cries all the time.
Once the rumors spread over to other sports teams at the academy, the Samezuka Swim Team Thot Conspiracy began. It was the volleyball team who mentioned that both Nitori and Mikoshiba were sent to the principal’s office that same day, as sourced by a classmate in Nitori’s homeroom. A peculiar detail because how did the school find out about what the couple was doing in their bedroom? Did someone rat them out?
Then someone on the tennis team who was also in the culinary club mentioned, I heard they got caught doing shit in the cafeteria.
Cue the controversy.
Tumblr media
This made folks on the baseball team wonder just how many times the two had done it and bets were being taken about when the relationship started. Someone on the bicycle team hashtagged the gossip thread as #bombezuka, which set off a flurry of well-intentioned, damage control tweets from students who didn’t want the reputations of Aiichirou Nitori and Momotarou Mikoshiba to get tarnished.
Things like who cares if they’re banging and let them live in PEACE to they’re not gay and who are we even talking about flooded social media circles as the rumor spread outside of Samezuka’s sports clubs and into the general student body. Did things get out of control? Naturally. Details were being made up, people weren’t entirely sure who was involved in the cafeteria fucking, and lavish erotic assumptions about who had the biggest dick energy on the Samezuka swim team were battling it out for all of this side of Japan’s internet to see.
One person assumed the captain (Rin) was angry because he was in a secret love affair with “the silver twink” or something. Another person insisted, Mikoshiba-san has been bragging about being with Nitori-san since last weekend. Another student saw them nuzzling faces on the metro train, claimed they were on a date. Oh, definitely, said another, saw them on the beach making out.
Eventually someone had the nerve to try to confirm some things with the swim team by messaging Toru Iwashimizu, who only responded:
Tumblr media
But because Iwashimizu had responded, the #bombezuka thread had popped up on the rest of the swimming team’s Twitter feeds, who righteously had mixed reactions of freaking out to defend their teammates’ honor and freaking out because their suspicions had finally been confirmed.
Tumblr media
To no one’s surprise, Nagisa Hazuki caught wind of the frenzy, despite being from another school entirely.
Tumblr media
And with Rin Matsuoka’s name mixed in with the rumors, it did not take long before six degrees reached his younger sister Gou, who could not believe what had unfurled throughout the day without any comment by her brother. In a desperate attempt to get him to notice the Twitter storm, she tweeted:
Tumblr media
The only silver lining of the tweetastrophe was that at least no one was being inherently meanspirited about the potential lust blossoming between Nitori and Momotarou, which was partially due to the swimming team’s notoriety. On paper, sure, the swim team was the pride and joy of the Samezuka Academy, but that’s not why they were famous among their peers. They were famous because the rest of the school viewed the swim team as a group of guys obsessed with swimming. They did nothing but swim. The whole point of the indoor swimming pool was for the team to practice even during the winter—when they didn’t even have to swim—or whenever it rained.
Barely anyone knew anything about the students in the swim team, so many folks figured they had the stock personalities of a school of fish. All going for the same goal to be a professional athlete and not much else. They were untouchable; their schedules surrounding practices, training camps, and swim meets, with not much room for dating in between. The only other thing people knew about them was their annual tradition of hosting a maid café at their school’s cultural festival, which no one could reasonably explain.
That was it. Listen, people figured if there was ever going to be a scandal coming from the swim team, it was probably going to be about some guy shooting up steroids in the locker room or wearing unapproved swimsuits for better aerodynamics in competitions or maybe even something crazy like the students were all brainwashed and manufactured into disciples of Poseidon himself to carry on the legend of Samezuka forever. They weren’t known for actual drama, not even while people heard about Rin Matsuoka swimming for some other school’s team halfway through a competition for some reason last year (that was weird, but okay) or even this year when some folks whispered about Sousuke Yamazaki having a hurt shoulder and, like, that was sad, but he still swam in the championship, so other students figured it wasn’t so bad. Hell, if you even heard about those two so-called incidents, you had to be real close to the swim team—and the fact of the matter was, what happened in Samezuka’s swim team generally stayed with the swim team.
So, when rumors spread about last year’s swim team captain’s little brother possibly dating this year’s captain’s ex-roommate, who some said might be next year’s captain, too, things got a little bit juicy.
To the student body of the Samezuka Academy, this was like finding out the royals were having incestuous affairs behind the castle doors, which got people thinking: maybe the reason no one had ever heard of the Samezuka swim team dating anyone outside of school was because maybe the swim team was dating… each other.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Yet, while folks were reveling in the swim team’s supposed love triangle plot twists, it was all at the expense of Aiichirou Nitori’s dignity. People were quick to forget that. It was one thing to be teased by his teammates about possibly dating Momotarou, but to witness his reputation get warped into being the promiscuous sexpot darling of the swim team was a level of humiliation Nitori had never known. He read tweet after tweet, seeing his name become the butt of a thousand jokes by students who he had never heard of, let alone spoken to.
It was a wild exchange. There were positive messages at first that called him cute, saying no surprise he’s dating someone, remembering him as the second-year breaststroke swimmer, saying how quiet in school he was, saying how small he was, saying well, if he’s still on the swim team, he must be good, right? They said he must be flexible, then mentioned Momo and Rin and Sousuke and Seijuro and damn near any teammate people saw him with at some point during the school year. They got more invasive, calling him relay boy, and assumed he was experienced, assumed he was bottom, assumed he was easy.
He cried about this, locked his dorm room and wept at his desk as he used his laptop to delete his Twitter and turn all his other social media accounts private before the gossip switched platforms. And once it was done and he could finally use his phone again without notifications stalling the system, Nitori stared at his last text message, one from Sousuke that read, emergency meeting at the pool now.
There stood Aiichirou Nitori at the entrance of the indoor swimming pool, with eyes puffed red and swollen, just like his ego.
“I hate this,” he muttered, his voice hoarse.
No one wore their swimsuits, which was good because like hell was Nitori going to do some goddamn laps after all the bullshit he went through today. As he sauntered down the gym in his hoodie and sweatpants, he looked down at the tile floor and listed the day’s events in his head. He woke up at 5:30 in the morning, broke into the cafeteria to smuggle in paper cranes, got caught, kissed Momo, had a nice breakfast, kissed Momo again but in his underwear so Rin could catch them—and thus the downward spiral set off. Today was the first day he started his first relationship. He should have been happy. It should have been a good day, really. But all Nitori felt was tired.
He was so, so tired.
“Honestly, fuck ‘em,” said Toru Iwashimizu, who sat at the edge of the pool with his feet dipped in the water. “Summer break is coming up anyway. They’re going to forget all about this.”
Most of the swim team sat down on the floor as a huddled group, with a few teammates just off to the side by the pool edge or by the wall. Nitori couldn’t bring himself to make eye contact with anyone, knowing what had been rumored, but he saw someone approaching him and stepped back.
“Nitori-senpai?” whispered Momotarou, still in his school uniform. Not because he couldn’t get into their dorm room to change clothes, but because he chose not to.
“Where were you?” asked Nitori. He looked up at Momo then, pointing an incredulous glance at his manic kouhai, and didn’t care if anyone noticed their confrontation.
There was no question that Nitori-senpai looked like a wreck. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose and lips cracked at the irritated dry patches he must have wiped too many times, and his skin dulled from exhaustion. Once he found out about all the rumors, Momo’s first reaction was to go straight to his dorm room and talk with Nitori, but when he heard his senpai’s sobbing and how obviously hurt he was, his next impulse was to stop the madness. For the past twenty minutes, Momotarou went to several sports teams and people whose names he recognized in the tweeting threads and made a small statement to each of them in person. He needed to come up with a better solution, he knew that, but it was all he could think of for now.
He told them, you have hurt someone I care about.
“I was trying to fix this,” he told Nitori, even though he also knew the concept of fixing their shattered reputations might have been impossible by now.
“How could you possibly fix this?”
“Oy, Ai,” interjected Rin, who like the rest of the swim team had been taking note of Nitori’s dejected state. “That’s what we’re all trying to do now. Come up with a way to fix this mess.”
Fix messes, huh, Nitori thought. It seemed like he was always caught in some mess that needed to be fixed, at least for the past four days. Eventually the escalation must stop and crash, that’s what he was learning. He just never thought it would crash on him.
Nitori looked up to evaluate the rest of the team, taking note of their worried yet puzzled expressions as they looked back at him. He saw Minami and Uozumi sitting up against the wall, their lips pursed as if holding back their own commentary until they felt safe to do so. Off to the side, where most of the team sat, lied Nakagawa on his back and yet he averted his attention up at Nitori, then began to sit up when he noticed Nitori staring down at him. Iwashimizu took his feet out of the water and turned toward Nitori, sitting cross-legged and cross-armed. They looked guilty, or maybe Nitori just wanted them to feel that way. He wanted to blame them for their casual teasing as some sort of fuel for the rumor fire, even if he couldn’t prove it as the catalyst to the day’s events.
There was a moment when he wanted to blame Rin for shouting so loud that morning, for getting involved, for being so known at school. It didn’t last long, though, because even with everything that had happened, Nitori couldn’t muster up the nerve to blame his senpai for caring about him and his reckless behavior. As he looked Rin directly in the eyes, Nitori noticed the accountability Rin felt for his part of the scandal, how much of a captain he looked during this crisis—if you could call it that, Nitori wondered, feeling dumb. God, he felt so dumb, standing dead center at an emergency swim team meeting—a meeting—over rumors about him fucking—fucking—Momo.
Over fucking Momo.
When it came to Momo, his anger was complicated. It wasn’t the rage of someone who felt betrayed or even the kind of frustration someone felt because of how stupid their friend was. His fury was much more personal, a fury that made him obsess over every bad mistake he made in the past few days because of Momo’s whims and how any sane person would have said no, would have said the line was being crossed, would have realized they were setting themselves up for a messy catastrophe, but not him. Truth was, as Nitori realized it after sobbing at his desk, that he was, in a way, having fun. And the reason he was mad was because it had been spoiled.
He looked back at Momo and weakly raised his hand with his fingers twitching in frustration, pulling the air as he pulled his thoughts together.
“Nitori-senpai,” said Momo, who stepped closer ready to accept any punishment he was about to be given. “I’ll do whatever it takes to fix this.”
Yeah, he got anxious. Yeah, what they were doing was stupid.
But it was fun.
Nitori got mad because he hated how everyone wanted to rewrite his memories. They weren’t there watching the sunset at the beach with Momo while eating ice cream after a day of dancing and shooting water guns. They weren’t there going into downtown to shop for origami paper and eating lunch while binge-watching anime in their dorm room, just hanging out together and enjoying each other’s company for like twelve hours straight. They weren’t there eating breakfast in a little kitchen shop, planning dates and dodging bashful glances on the morning of their first kiss. They had no idea how much of a big deal it was, how it felt, that first time. All they had was this idea of who they were—just a couple of zany kids, off to the side, doing nothing important, just messing around. Who were they to try to tell Nitori the story of (maybe) the first time he fell in love?
Momo and his big mouth, his stupid ideas, his dumb heart.
Nitori dropped his hand. He took one step forward and plopped his head onto Momo’s chest, letting out a deep sigh. First day of a relationship and he was mad. God, he felt so dumb.
“Is it worth all this?” he said to Momo. “How long are we going to hide this secret?”
This secret, of course, referred to the surprise party they were planning, which had clearly become the bane of their existence. What started out as a prank turned sentimental gesture had wildly spun out of a control as the basis of their public outing for all to jest—and there was still another half of the week to go through before it was even supposed to happen.
Yet, given the rumor situation, when the swim team heard “secret,” a slight misunderstanding prompted folks to speak up.
“Oh, well, you don’t have to hide anymore, Nitori-san,” said Minami from the back, a little preemptively. “We’re totally cool with it.”
“Uh,” Momo stuttered, looking down at Nitori, who merely closed his eyes and sighed further. “That’s not—”
“That’s right, Ai,” said Rin. “We’ll make sure this doesn’t get out of control.”
Sousuke also chimed in with a supportive, “You’re not alone.”
And while it was sweet how quickly the Samezuka Swim Team turned into the Momo-Ai Defense Squad, hearing the phrase you’re not alone had channeled the exact reason Nitori was furious in the first place. He wasn’t alone, was quite prophetically forced to not be alone—when that’s what he wanted. He gripped Momo’s shirt, tugged down at the neckline as his silent call for freedom, and whispered into Momo’s ear, “Fix this.”
As more teammates spoke up to lend their support, it dawned on Momotarou that despite the fact that there was no real plan on how to come out as a couple since they were originally just rolling with the team’s own suspicions, this was probably not it. This was not how anything was supposed to go. He wrapped his arms around Nitori, feeling his senpai give in the embrace and start to choke up. Things had gone too far over nothing and no amount of white lies could change the fact that Momo, frankly, messed up.
“Stop,” he announced, then groaned as he gave in to surrender. “We were just trying to plan a party.”
Huh?
Even Sousuke, who was helping plan the party, wondered why the flustered ginger had snapped out and revealed the party plans. Collectively, no one on the team could tie the connection between Momo and Ai’s relationship outing and a… party? Unless, maybe it was a coming out party? Were they gonna be that elaborate about announcing their relationship? Wouldn’t that be a little much? Was that even a thing?
“What are you talking about?” asked Rin.
But the truth had to come out, and so with Nitori still in his arms, Momo exasperatedly confessed, “It started with the bread, but then you saw the bread, so then we couldn’t use it anymore, but I didn’t want to give up on—well, see, I was trying to plan a surprise because, come on, look at this pool, it’s so big! Like, how am I supposed to be at this school and not put stuff in it, so then why not origami cranes? No one can get mad at origami cranes—because they’re beautiful—and it’s barely a prank if there’s 5000 origami cranes—I mean, that’s practically art—like, honestly, I think it’d even be a good idea for the summer festival, just putting it out there because I’ve been working really hard on making them, you can ask Yamazaki-senpai, who—actually—is the reason we started planning a party. Yeah, ugh, because it was just a really good idea and we couldn’t explain why we are on the beach on top of each other—but nothing happened! We weren’t even thinking about that yet! We were just having a good time and then Yamazaki-senpai was like oh, what are you doing, give me my radio back, you’re planning a party, right? And we were like, yeah, that’s a great idea because it was, so then we had to go through with it, which is why we were always together, but then everyone kept thinking we were together together because we took a shower together and like, yeah, okay, so I checked Nitori-senpai out, but who wouldn’t? Look me in the eyes and tell me you wouldn’t—no, you can’t, because Nitori-senpai is an amazing person who deserves to be checked out and, you know what? I’d do it again, honestly.”
Momo took a moment to breathe.
“Ugh, not that it matters,” Momo continued, his confession getting louder, “because then everybody was getting suspicious because of how much we hung out and Yamazaki-senpai couldn’t take the cranes to the cafeteria, so we had to, and the freaking cafeteria manager came in too early, so we had to run and run and it was sunrise and Nitori-senpai looked beautiful and, like, that was the moment—I couldn’t just not kiss him, especially after last night’s failure, so I did and it was great and today was supposed to be a great day because today—TODAY—was the first time I’ve ever kissed someone and today was supposed to be special because I asked Nitori-senpai out on a date and he said sure and I was,” Momo panted before he calmed down and finished, “I was really happy about that.”
Nitori looked up at Momo, then softly uttered, “Momo-kun…”
“I’m angry, too,” said Momo, meeting Nitori’s gaze. “I ruined our first day.”
The team stood there, stunned.
It was a lot to digest, particularly since Momo gave no context to anything he said, just spouted out a stream of consciousness that only select people could put together in a coherent timeline. But while some team members were trying to figure out the missing details, Rin—who felt he understood most of the Momo speak—hesitantly spoke up and said, “So, you two were planning a party here in the gym?”
Momo and Nitori nodded.
“And you knew about this?” Rin asked, turning around to Sousuke.
“Yup,” he said.
“But you two,” Rin turned back to the frazzled couple, “weren’t dating until… today?”
“Right,” confirmed Momo.
“But I saw… you both… this morning,” said Rin, trying to make sense of the lewd scene he walked in on earlier in the day. Who hooks up on the first morning they’re together?
“We were trying to distract you,” explained Nitori, who stood straight while still in Momo’s embrace and motioned his hands toward their intimate hug. “And it worked really well because we ended up distracting the whole school.”
“I can’t believe this.” Rin threw his head back, trying to be respectful toward his kouhais’ newfound relationship, but also absolutely using every fiber of his being to contain his frustration over the day’s events. “You guys literally test me every goddamn day.”
Sousuke chuckled, covering his mouth with his hand.
“What are you laughing at?” snapped Rin. “This is a disaster!”
“Yeah.”
Still waiting for an answer or a punchline, Rin bucked his shoulders for Sousuke to continue.
To which he shrugged and said, “Oh, nothing. I just think they’re funny.”
“Oh my god,” groaned Rin.
A sense of freedom washed over the two kouhais, who both took in a relieved breath about not having to keep up the lies anymore. They looked at each other then and sort of smirked at each other. Nothing was fixed by confessing about the party and, now that they confirmed they were interested in each other, the dating jokes were probably only just beginning, but it was their truth and they just wanted to live in it. For a moment, neither of them wanted to feel anxious about what was going on around them, even as the team shouted more questions about why were they throwing a party in the first place or why were they showering together if they didn’t like each other then or why would they go to these extremes, dear god, and why weren’t they answering?!
Toru Iwashimizu, who knew very well that today was the first day of their relationship, called out to the team, “Let them have a day, guys. We’ll rag on them later.”
All Momo and Ai wanted was a simple moment together.
-
They lied on Nitori’s bed together on top of the sheets, facing each other with a quiet acceptance. So much chaos in one day, but for a moment, it didn’t matter. They could just enjoy being near each other. Give them a chance to get used to each other. Be with each other.
“I’m sorry I ruined today,” said Momotarou.
Nitori reached his hand out to Momo, twiddling their fingers.
“You didn’t really,” he said, accepting that fact. “You didn’t start those rumors.”
They scooted closer to each other, enough to press their chests together and nuzzle their necks like swans. Let them feel each other’s heartbeats, that’s all they wanted. Just enough to hear that they were still excited about each other even with clothes on, that their breathing was still deep for each other because they were comfortable in each other’s arms, that when it got quiet it was intimate, not awkward. Maybe they couldn’t have a first day, but they could have a first night.
“Can we kiss again?” asked Momo, who gently tucked some fallen bangs away from Nitori’s face in case he said yes and who noticed the faint blush creeping up his senpai’s ears.
“Sure.”
Their noses bumped, as they realized they weren’t sure how to tilt their heads for a kiss in bed. A soft giggle slipped out as Nitori pointed his finger to the right, and they both adjusted their heads for a second try. A sweet kiss for an evening, involving parted lips and heated cheeks.
Just a moment to relive that morning, that’s all they wanted.
Another kiss.
29 notes · View notes
Text
Trigger Warning. Cyber bullying, cyber stalking, harassing, impersonation, shaming, depictions of s**c*de, r*pe, p*dophilia, assault,
Please for the love of god be VERY careful with who you share this with. And make sure if they share it with anyone else, they are also very careful with who they share it with. Make sure you trust them and tell them to only share this privately.
Yeah. There is honesty a lot of ground to over here. I mean, the all of this went on for years. Starting around 2010 to…2016? I’m going to try to write down every detail that I can remember, as well as information I learned years later. (Thanks to a guy who kept tabs on the this horrible piece of shit long after I started to not even acknowledge that turd man. Even made a blog about it.) My recollection of events may not be 100 accurate but I’ll try my best to remember.
There was this RP group known as #FUX or occasionally #TheClub. My stalker/harasser/cyberbully (who went by the name Ceno/Cenobite/Simon Palakon) often frequented this group. They’ve were around for a while. Actually from before I even started DCRP. Their style of RP was very different when compared to the RP style at the time. I guess you can say their RP’s were disturbing, god moddy, and triggering.
Needed to clarify that part of the backstory. I’m going to get into how I first clashed with the guy. One of Ceno’s characters, a Superman, wanted to lewd with a friend of mine, but they refused. And that pissed Ceno off.
So Ceno and his friends cooked up an RP plot to have her character r*pe the person as a form of revenge.  
Now, one of the members of this RP group, a “Clark Kent” preformed the act and pressured her into that situation. And he had the character beat up and just left on the ground. Now, everyone thought that was incredibly fucked up. So our group of friends decided to god mod back and “killed” that Clark Kent, all the while he starts quoting Jesus at us. And of course a lot of us had plenty of OOC words to throw at him, and I believe I was one of the most vocal.
So I told him off, blocked him, and told everyone else to block him.
That’s when it all started. Ceno created multiple accounts to harrass me and my friends, making false retweets, jumping into RPs, god modding, targeting my friends, and generally being a pain. We eventually just ignored him and he “went away” for a while. But little did we know that he was still around, planning probably the most horrible thing he’s ever done and probably the thing he was most infamously known for.
Several months had passed, and I had only recently been getting @’s from a very Ceno like person. I ignored it of course, until I found out he was using a RL photo of me on his Facebook page. Eventually, this person gloated but then claimed he was done with me. And of course, I believed him.
It was around this time, a Power Girl RPer named Chrisy Shears showed up, and we talked and became friends, because we both had friends who were hurt by Ceno. I was dating another RPer at this time. They were my friend for years and helped me through this.
When my ex and I broke up during that summer, and they left for camp, I was pretty damn depressed. It was my first break up and Chrisy came along and helped me. We got along. We joked. We got closer and closer. I opened up to her about a lot of my life. I was emotionally vulnerable and as much as I hate to admit this, she used this opportunity of weakness to pretty much seduce me and we wrote some lewd in DMs.
She got close to me and I trusted her…then one day, she told me about her uncle, who was her dentist. She told me he had had molested her when she was younger and that he had been released from prison. A few days later on the 8th of September, she wrote a suicide note on Twitter, told me that she loved me, and vanished, leaving the impression she had killed herself. She named me specifically.
This completely devestated me. Nothing really felt real. I couldn’t think straight. I blamed myself. I felt like I didn’t deserve to live. I felt like killing myself. Because it would be what I deserved. I would visit her Twitter page every day and just read her tweets over and over again. I’d read our DMs over and over again.
…But as the weeks went by, I began to notice…similarities between Ceno and Chrisy. I thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Maybe my brain trying to rationalize the pain.
Someone named Emma, who was claiming to be Chrisy’s sister showed up asking for questions, more specifically, my address and contact info for a Coroner’s report …My alarm bells were going off. And then I did some digging. One of Ceno’s pals went by the alias UncleToothFairy. And I looked into the character and yup…a dentist. And then I came to the horrifying realization.
Chrisy was never real. It was all Ceno. And Ceno wasn’t stupid. Even though I tried to keep my discovery private between myself and my friends, he knew the jig was up. And then he proceeded to post all of the private DMs Chrisy and I shared with each other on the TL, and on a Tumblr blog, and the @‘d my friends with the posts.
I mean…that pretty much was the worst thing he has ever done to me. But this was honestly only the beginning.
Ceno would has constantly shift from admitting he made Chrisy up, to trying to convince everyone that she was real.
He targeted a lot of my friends, making false accounts of them, finding their personal information, stalking them, god modding/harassing their characters
He pretended to be my dad and made an account of him to harass me. He did this by finding his YouTube channel and screencapping his face.
He would constantly attempt to ruin ships and real life relationships. He found a girl who had a crush on a friend of mine (who was dating another RPer). At one point he successfully managed to assist this girl into lewding with my friend and then sent the DMs to that person he was dating. All in an attempt to get that girl and my friend “together”. Chances are, this girl was probably another alias of Ceno. Seems on brand with him honestly.
He did RP lewd with a minor and despite the fact I tried to warn this RPer about Ceno, she didn’t listen. And of course Ceno posted the lewd DMs on the TL. And I think she blamed me for it.
He typed up an RP solo of one of his characters molesting someone’s RL three year old niece…
As mentioned before, the art thing. He got one of the pieces of art I made when I was in…what, third grade…and made a account around it and mocked it
He pretended to be the RP account of one of my friends girlfriend and they started to do lewd before he learned the truth. They later mocked him and harassed him for “cheating” on his girlfriend.
He pretended to be a graduate from my high school. And befriended a lot of my high school friends on Facebook. Possibly to phish for more information. He even once impersonated my high school principal on Twitter. One of the many accounts he used to harass and torment me with.
Ceno’s motives were never consistent. He claimed it was retaliation for the Clark Kent incident. He claimed it was in response to a post I did called “RP Rules” (which in retrospect I should have called RP Tips, but I wanted to make a Fight Club reference.) He claimed he did it because I was an “elitist”. He claimed he did it teach me a lesson on “internet security”. Honestly I think he does what he does because he got some sort of sick pleasure out of making people hurt.
He harassed me and my friends for years. You’d block an account and he’d just make another one. You’d lock your account and he’d either try to Trojan horse his way in there or just patiently wait for the account to unlock before going after you again. And even when I stopped acknowledging me, he went after my friends. I’d beg them to stop interacting and stop acknowledging. Some of them did. Some of them didn’t. I would be constantly anxious that Ceno would do to others what he did to me. It all got to the point where the paranoia of who Ceno was and whether or not he was pretending to be a fiend or not caused a lot of friends to snap at each other and split off. There were even rumors going around that I was Ceno and I had made this elaborate cyberbullying scenario up for attention. And unfortunately some people believed it. And some people would blame me for any harassment they got. Every time someone became a target I felt this overwhelming feeling of guilt. It became increasingly difficult to trust people. I never knew if they could secretly be Ceno. And this paranoia would lead to me, as well as others, to lash out and throw accusations at people. It cost a lot of us good friendships. It was probably one of the most stressful, depressing, paranoid, and anxiety filled times I’ve ever had on the platform.
And eventually I had to go against what I wanted to do. I love helping people and I hate seeing people in pain. But I learned if I reacted, even if the bullying wasn’t happening to me directly, he would never stop. So Id see him do things and I…turned a blind eye. And I hated it. But eventually, he went away. From my friend group, that is. He started to go after other people and his last active account was last seen posting in 2018. And he still remembers my name. But he has left me alone. It did alarm me to discover that despite my paranoia, some of his accounts slipped through the cracks and did still follow me until recently. But they are mostly inactive.
The man behind @MULTiVersesNews, formerly @the_daily_rag, had actually spent years keeping tabs on the guy. Past the point of me even caring and has even kept a blog of the guy’s activity. The live journal is still up and it has information that even I wasn’t privy to. There is probably some cringe from days of RP past and some things I’m probably not exactly proud of, but…whatever. If there is something super bad in relation to me, I am sorry. You can find stuff about Ceno on there via the Nitwit tag or just searching the blog for mentions of Ceno, Basti, or Nitwit I guess.
UPDATE 1: As of May 25, 2022, it’s been brought to my attention he may be back in action. Which is why I’m glad I wrote all this down. I may post further updates and testimonials in the future
0 notes
meusyou-blog1 · 7 years
Text
Discovering Me
I haven’t posted in a while. Things got too busy, but something has changed since the last post. I’ve learned a lot about myself, and the most important thing I’ve learned has to do with this month, Pride Month. 
Buckle up. This will be a long ride. But don’t worry. There will be a tl;dr at the bottom.
CW: Discussion of Erasure, Discourse, brief discussion of rape (#6 on lists), some foul language, let me know if I missed anything.
This past year, I learned that I am asexual. Not only am I asexual, but I’m questioning my romantic orientation. Maybe I’m heteroromantic, and maybe I’m biromantic. Questioning is what started my journey to discovering my asexuality, so I’m embracing this next step in my journey, to fight against my internalized behavior and view on certain subjects and break free to discovering me. But this post isn’t so much about that. That will be a different post, maybe tomorrow or maybe next year. Who knows. Discovering Me Part 2 is on the way.
This post is about my experience within my first year of embracing Asexuality. No one else, though part of my observations have included many people within the Asexual community. If you want to skip this paragraph, feel free, but this is a quick summary of the discovery process. Many moons ago (cheap way to get out of actually having the figure out the years) I met one of my closest friends on a website. We began discussing many subjects, and eventually landed on the subject of sexuality. It was at this point that I learned what Asexuality was. It was the first time I’d ever heard of it. Outside of biology, of course. I had so much to learn, and in learning, I discovered that we had a lot in common. It took me years to figure out that this was because I was, in fact, asexual. My whole life, I’ve been asexual, and never knew. 
Since coming out as Asexual, I’ve never felt better about myself. I’ve learned that there is nothing wrong with me, because there are others like me and I am valid. It’s okay to not feel sexual attraction and it’s okay to not want to engage in sexual activities. Even more so, sexuality is a spectrum and one can be fluid. It’s now my belief that sexual and romantic orientation can be static or fluid equally, and it depends on the individual.
Now, the reason for this post. It’s the end of Pride Month. My first Pride Month. I was so happy to be me, and I was so happy to be able to celebrate with the other Aces I’ve met through group pages on Tumblr and Facebook. There was a lot of positivity for each other in these groups. But what I found outside of them?
Quite frankly, a lot of the behavior has been disgraceful.
Now wait. I’m sure there are plenty of people already writing responses to say how I’m ‘making something out of nothing’ or ‘trying to play the victim.’ Hell, I’m sure there are people who already stopped reading to tell me how I’m not valid. But see, that’s the point of this post. 
Let me list a few things I’ve learned this month about Asexuality specifically. If I talked about everything, this would be the longest post ever, and no one is going to read it anyway so I might as well just cover the one thing. I may or may not agree with these things, we’ll get to that later. This is just a list of what I’ve observed. I will edit as necessary.
1. Asexuals are not oppressed. 
2. Asexuality isn’t a real sexuality.
3. Cisgender, Heteroromantic Asexuals do not belong in the LGBTQIA+ community.
4. Asexuals likely suffer from something (trauma, low libido, blahblahBLAHblahblah, what have you...)
5. Asexuals, by creating their own community, are threatening the LGBTQIA+ community. 
6. The use of the term “Corrective Rape” is inappropriate and an insult to lesbians for which the term was originally used.
These were the biggest ones. There were others, and if anyone is reading this, please feel free to continue this list if you like. Discussion is the point. Also, before we continue, yes, I know not all LGBTQIA+. We have a ton of supporters in the community, and we’re all aware and grateful for the support, just as you are of your supporters. But the others. Those who don’t support. They often have the loudest voices. I’m sure you know. 
Now, I’m not trying to overshadow anyone else’s problems. Trans and Bisexuals in the community are getting a lot of hate from the community as well. I recognize and understand that. Most of us in the Asexual community do. So let’s just start with one easy fact we can all agree on, yes?
For most of us, we feel we were born this way. Of course, other situations can play into our current orientations. But most of us believe that the way we are is the way we’ve always been, at least to some degree. That’s part of the joy of being ‘out,’ isn’t it? So I can’t blame a gay man for only liking men in that manner. Nor can I blame a trans woman for being a woman. No one can blame me for not feeling sexual attraction, or a demisexual for only feeling sexual attraction after creating a strong emotional bond. See, sexuality and romantic orientation are almost impossible to lump into groups. Everyone has a different experience, and that’s why spectrums exist. We need to respect that while someone is under an umbrella term, they may not identify entirely with the majority. One small change is all it takes to be viewed as an outsider. Or at least that’s what I have observed. All sexualities are valid. This does not include anything outside of sexual attraction, though. Do not be confused, and do not tell me pedophiles belong in the lgbtqia+ community. That is a different discussion. Moving on. Let’s talk about the list. 
1. Asexuals are not oppressed. Wrong. NOW WAIT! Before you start typing away, here’s why: Oppression comes in many shapes and sizes. No one is saying we are getting killed in the streets during daytime because we don’t feel sexual attraction. Literally no one, and I’ve been looking. We are not comparing ourselves to other members of the community. We are not systematically oppressed. Sure. But we are oppressed to some degree (This is not to say we are oppressed by outside hate groups). Oppression isn’t a race to the finish line. It’s not a ‘who has it worse’ game. Oppression sucks no matter how much you experience. Telling me that I have never been called an abomination just walking down the street, so that doesn’t make me a member of the community, is the most ridiculous fucking thing I’ve ever heard. “Did you get threatened today? I did. Out with you!” Hi. I have news for you. Perhaps we are not getting death threats from as many straight people as you. But guess what? If you’re about to type in the comments “If you’re not systemically oppressed, you don’t belong in the community,” Many people would say YOU’RE THE OPPRESSOR HI HELLO.
We want other people who AREN’T THE SAME AS US to say “Hi. You’re Asexual? That’s neat. I’m ____. Wanna be friends?” Instead of “Hi. You’re Asexual? Here’s why you’re not.” This, friends, is erasure. It takes many forms, but this one is pretty common. “Oh you just have a low libido/you haven’t met the right person yet/have you tried having sex/etc.” Basically, people are telling us our sexuality is not valid, and more of a ‘phase’ that can be ‘cured’ in some shape or form. Is erasure oppression? A little bit, I’d think. Doesn’t it sound familiar? I mostly think that because other groups have brought up their own erasure as a form of oppression in the past. So....? Let’s move forward.
I’m going to bring number 6 up as it’s own, so have patience. We’re gonna skip right over to the community here. We covered erasure. Let’s next talk about the definition of Oppression. Feel free to look it up on google. Here are some keywords/phrases: Burdened by troubles, adverse conditions, anxiety, etc. The exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, cruel, or unjust manner. 
Oh, Tumblr. How guilty you are. Not just you, of course, but let’s just jump right into the toxicity of many loud bloggers. Cisgender Heteromantic Asexuals often experience not only erasure but straight up bullying. Yes ladies and gents and those in between, cyber bullying. This is not my main blog. This is my ‘who cares what anyone else reads or says of mine’ blog. I have been told I don’t exist. I have been told I don’t belong. I have been told I don’t belong in the community. I have been told I must be a bad girlfriend, unable to provide. I have been told I will never find love, and will die alone. What was that definition again? The exercise of authority or power in a what manner? Get this! most often than not, I am not asked my romantic orientation. I am not given a chance to say “I currently identify as heterosexual, but I’m questioning if I may be bisexual.” That is an afterthought, after all the acid has been spewed. 
I have been told I just need a good lay to be normal. I have been the butt of jokes, because being Asexual is apparently funny. I have been coerced into sexual activities with their partners, even though I didn’t want to. I have been told that I can be ‘fixed’ if I just open up to a therapist (which, btw, for those who don’t know, I’ve been told multiple times that Asexuality was considered a mental illness until like 2013). I have been told, many times, that I should just ‘kill myself’. Not only by straight people. That’s right. Members of the community. All of these Ace Hate pages? Yes, hello, welcome to the party. You are the oppressors! 
I also want to point out that, again, everything is a spectrum. There are Cisgender HETEROROMANTIC Bisexuals. It happens. There are Cisgender Heteroromantic Homosexuals who may choose not to identify as bisexual, and that is their choice. So what makes me straight if I identify as a Cisgender Heteroromantic Asexual? That is not heteronormative.
2. Asexuality isn’t a real sexuality. Well, maybe you’re right. I don’t know. I’m not the authority on this, and you sure as hell aren’t either. I didn’t sign up for this. But let’s talk about sexuality. When we label our sexuality, we are effectively saying “this gets me going.” We’re saying I am sexually attracted to ____. So Asexuals are saying “I am sexually attracted to nothing.” Now, that’s a generalization because again, spectrum, but you get the idea. So maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s just a name for nothing. But where it gets tricky is when we talk about sex-positivity, sex-neutrality, and sex-repulsivity. These are a part of the spectrum of Asexuality, and I’m sure you’re all smart enough to figure out what it means. Basically, you either view sex positively and may like to participate, you don’t care either way, or sex is gross for whatever reason. Everyone perceives sex differently. That’s okay. I think by saying Asexual isn’t a real sexuality, people are erasing that some Asexuals do actually have sex. I don’t know. Could just be me. Either way, I consider Asexuality a real sexuality, because otherwise, I am nothing. I’m not straight. Just a bit of space dust on a rock. :) 
3. Cisgender, Heteroromantic Asexuals do not belong in the community. Why? If you read the last couple paragraphs for my explanation of number 1, as well as my response to number 2, this shouldn’t still be an argument. Let’s discuss what it means to be straight. You must be 3 things to be straight. 1) Cisgender. Check. I bring this up because, while it has been pointed out this is a transphobic statement (which is not my intention,) it is used in arguments literally all the time against asexuals, and therefore, it is only my observation that people are using this to reinforce being ‘straight’. Many people in the community are cisgendered, so watch out! You could be straight, too! Hold on, calm down, two more to go. 2) Heteroromantic. Check(ish?). Phew, some of you are safe! But, still, not all. See, as I stated above, being a certain orientation sexually is not always mirrored romantically. For instance, and this is a real person I know, I have a Heteroromantic friend who is quite Bisexual. There’s totally nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s great. Because, again, spectrum. So look out! You’re not all safe yet! Here we go.....drumroll....3) Heterosexual. Ouch! Missed by one. How’d everyone else do? If you said yes to all 3, you’re straight! If not, guess what! You’re not! And that’s awesome. Everything is awesome. Be who you are proudly! But most of all, stop shitting on everyone else. Now, I understand some straight people are shitty. But some people in the community can be just as shitty. Please see my response to number 1. ;) Basically, if you ain’t straight, you’re in the community, friend! It’s based off of an early principle of the community - You are welcome if you fall outside of heteronormativity. 
4. Asexuality is likely a result of abuse, trauma, illness, etc... Okay so most of the time I hear this from straight people. I’m not surprised. It’s okay to not understand something. But know when to listen and have an open mind. At the end of the day, you need to stay in your lane. It’s cool. It’s a learning process.
Now, for community members who say this. Are you for real? Don’t you remember when people were saying that about you? Treating your orientations as a phase? Telling you it must be from all that abuse, or because mommy let you join choir instead of football, or daddy didn’t let you date? Don’t you remember when everyone thought it was a mental illness? They still say it! You’re still hearing it! Or have you forgotten so quickly? Why do you say this to us? And for those of us for which this statement is true, why in hell does this make us less valid? Whether it was the result of abuse, trauma, etc., or not, it’s not your job to tell us why we are the way we are. Instead of shaming us for the result, try welcoming us and treating us as friends. Again, we’re not getting killed in the streets. No, I don’t fear for my life because I say I’m Asexual. But our emotions are valid, and emotional trauma as well as physical trauma is tragic when happening to anyone. Just because asexuality =/= death (yet, since it’s still barely known who knows what could happen), doesn’t mean we don’t need a space. It’s a smaller space. We’re fine with that. 
5. Asexual communities are a threat to LGBTQIA+ communities. How? Somewhere I read that Asexuals currently make up less than 1% of the population. Maybe that number just came out of someone’s ass, but we’re definitely a minority. I know 2 people irl who identify on the Asexual spectrum. 2. In 25 years of living. Honestly, who knows how many of us are out there, because many people don’t even know what Asexuality is yet, as evidenced by the “you can’t reproduce by yourself” messages some Ace groups get. They’re quite funny. Anyway, yes. We have our own community. It is the Ace community. Are you Ace? You’re in the community. Welcome. Are you Trans? You’re in the Trans community. Are you Gay? You’re in the Gay community. See how this works? And, are you not straight? Welcome. You are in the LGBTQIA+ community. 
Nay-sayers have been telling us to create our own community since we’ve been vocal about our sexuality. “You don’t belong here. If you want a safe space, make your own.” We made our community a little more solid. “How dare you try to overshadow us and steal our resources!” Okay. You’re ridiculous. 
The fact of the matter is, you’re not going to be happy so long as we exist. It’s a lonely world out there, especially when you feel like you don’t belong. Or did you not experience that? Must be nice. Maybe you’ve forgotten. No one understands us completely except for other people like us. So of COURSE we have a community. Just like you do. It’s nice. It helps us feel valid. It’s a support system for when something else in our life falls to hell because, surprise, we’re not ‘normal’. But we’re so. small. We want to be part of something bigger so that we can feel accepted and bond over our shared experiences, instead of being reminded of how we’re different. Isn’t that what you wanted? Did you forget? 
One last note on this. I have seen a LOT of arguments about whether or not the A stands for Ally or Asexual, or both (I mean, the Q is Queer or Questioning, right?) but some people (in and out of our community) feel that straight allies receive less push back than asexuals in the community. Strange. Now, I haven’t seen this because I steer clear of most LGBTQIA+ events. Why? Well I would love to participate, but I’m afraid of being harassed by people who think I don’t belong. So I can show up as an Ally, but I can’t show up as an Asexual? What if I want to be an Ally? I want to help your fight. It’s awful what happens to you. I can’t be, because I’m Asexual? Because I’m not going to keep my Asexuality to myself. I’m proud of my Asexuality. So evidently, I can’t be both. Isn’t the community about several smaller communities coming together to fight for rights and visibility? If the Asexual community wants to join your fight and help the larger community, why is that so terrible?
6. Corrective Rape is a term that was created specifically for Lesbians is how this was first put to me. I nearly choked on air. Yes, Lesbians and female bisexuals (males as well? Let me know if this is the case-) are treated horribly by many societies. Yes, they are raped to teach them the ‘correct’ way to be. It’s disgusting. Everyone knows it’s disgusting, and as a woman who was assaulted in a very different situation, I can tell you firsthand it’s one of the worst things that can happen to a human being. 
I have a story that some of you may not want to read, so skip this if you feel you may get upset. It involves a woman who is Asexual, and a man who is not. The woman trusts this man. He is a father, or brother, or relative, or husband, or date, or stranger. This woman tells this man that she does not feel sexual attraction. Maybe she needed to tell someone. Maybe she needed to tell him so he didn’t create expectations. Maybe she’s just very open about herself and very proud of who she is. Then, this man laughs at her and tells her she’s silly. He tells her she just hasn’t had a good fuck. She becomes offended, and tries to explain her sexuality, but he continues to laugh at her and says he knows how to ‘fix’ her. Maybe he tries.
Get the picture? I won’t continue. We all know what happens next. What does that sound like, to you? Does it sound like a normal rape story? Sure. Except for one keyword. Fix. What about if the man suddenly became irrationally angry? Does that make it more convincing? That happens, too. Either way, in some way or another, it is done with the goal to ‘fix’ her. Or him. Or them. Whoever it may be in this story. Because there are a million different ways this story could go. So tell me. What does this sound like to you? Does it sound like rape with the purpose of correcting? 
Some people argue that the term was ‘coined’ (as was said to me) for Lesbians. But this term is describing an event. Look up the definition. Whether or not that is the case, this is the best way to describe this situation. And it happens. Like it or not, you can’t change that. No one can. And to look someone in the face and say that despite your experiences, you’re not valid? 
Like it or not, if someone is not Cisgender, Heteroromantic, and Heterosexual all at the same time, they are not straight. That is what straight is. You can’t change that definition to *gasp* exclude someone. It’s not your job. This community is about providing a safe space, for everyone to feel welcome and included because we don’t fit in with straight people. Yes, some groups experience more dangerous oppression than others, and they deserve all the resources they require. Yes, other groups needs to recognize when they do not need certain resources. But we all need to realize that oppression in any form is toxic. It is painful, and we could all use love and acceptance. This is working together to understand that we all hurt, but some of us are privileged in being able to have only emotional hurt, instead of physical and emotional hurt. That doesn’t make the hurt less valid. Ever. But it certainly means we have a space, and we need to stay in it. Everyone in the community should be of this mindset: “Come in, join us. You belong somewhere. You are valid. Here is your space. Please stay in your space.” This is working together to create a better community than we left. A better community than the one that rejected us all. 
Happy Pride Month, everyone. I’m PROUD to be a Cisgender, Heteroromanticish Asexual, and I am PROUD to be a part of the LGBTQIA+ community! 
TL;DR: 
You know what? I can’t condense that. It’s all too important. But I WILL leave a reminder: I am but one person speaking on my own about things I have observed in and out of the community. These are my thoughts as it stands, and of course are subject to change. I am open to discussion, and more than willing to learn more about other people’s experiences. 
Finally, most of this post WAS aimed at the minority. Most people in the community do not sit around and hate on Asexuals. I said it earlier and I will say it again and again. But hopefully this post was informative for somebody.
153 notes · View notes
shslshortie · 7 years
Text
Okay I'm going to make a post because I can't deal with everything that got asked/shat out my way
I am sorry for this rant, but I am legit ready to leave tumblr again. Like I forgot why I hated it so much, but lord is this an unhealthy environment for so many reasons. Mainly, because of discourse/call out culture. And I'm obviously not talking about being "PC" or anything, but just being an all around mean spirited person if anyone says anything that either 1) doesn't agree with you/your views/your fandom, 2) if anything is even slightly false or not entirely fact-checked, or 3) goes against most popular opinions without writing an entire graduate-level thesis about why you believe your opinion/view/observation is valid. Like if you want to complain or voice an opinion about anything, or even joke about something that you think is funny, you could very likely almost immediately be called out or even be sent WAVES of hate that usually is completely undeserved. Especially since people are hiding behind a screen of anonymity or at least behind an online persona, they don't think about the person on the receiving end of it. They don't think how their mean spirited comments or backlash could effect them mentally, and they don't even stop to think what else could be going on in their lives. Yesterday, (was it yesterday? I think it was yesterday, but GOD was it a long fucking day if it was) I made some posts after recapping through the Rost. Cup after I watched each medalist's short and long, as well as all the US skaters, big names, and for the men and ladies, almost all 11 skaters honestly. I love figure skating, and NO, unlike a lot of people wrongfully assumed, am not a part of the "fandom" and did not get into it because of YOI. Was a passion reignited from like a barbeque level flame to a bonfire with YOI's help? Yes. But would it probably have gone to a similar level with the Olympic season going into full swing? Highly likely. But anyways, I made some posts because I wanted to voice some observations, complaints, and things I thought were funny because tumblr is the only place I ever really rant/voice theories/talk about a lot of my interests, since I don't have any irl friends who are interested in almost half of the things I am. So, tumblr is usually the place that I dump these feelings/thoughts. Sure, one of them was a little off-color, and posted without thinking, but after about an hour (and like 3-4 replies I think), I looked back on it, and realized it didn't need to be posted out there, even if I didn't mean it to be mean. Does this mean I owed every single person who "called me out" for being uninformed, or for being mean, or for being whatever the hell I am a reply? No. Did I know that some things were answered over Twitter, or weibo (sp?) or Reddit, or whatever other gd social media that I don't use? No. Does that man I am uniformed and spreading lies or whatever? I don't think so, and that doesn't make me a fucking villain. I also deleted it, because I realized I was wrong. End of story, part 1. But then, the figure skating fandom found some of my posts/commentary/rants. (god forbid they somehow find this and attack me ALL OVER AGAIN, except for y'all that were part of this whole issue. I hope y'all see this, because it's not like I blocked you. Except for one tumblr user who blocked me because of my post? Like you do you, except don't reblog my post and block me so I can't see what you said, presumably about how I am a terrible person). And apparently 1) if you insult/don't like/say Y***** H**** didn't do his best/were disappointed in him, or if you like the person who won over him more... Then you deserve to die. And 2) if you even make a post about YOI or other anime, you are a fake fan who knows nothing. And 3) even mirroring almost the exact words of sports (specifically figure skating) commentators in your posts means nothing? Like it OBVIOUSLY means that you are making up bullshit to hate on skaters that are popular and are misinformed, right??? Or if you say one thing that was similar to an APPARENTLY problematic broadcast group, that nothing (including any commentary from official other broadcasts, because GUESS WHAT: it's hard to find recordings of all of the programs and exhibitions with English commentary, and there are usually 3-4 networks that have it, and SO MANY people upload different ones to YouTube) else you say matters or has any merit. I haven't even read all of the hate mail and submissions I received from this debacle. My mental health can't take it. I literally woke up for school the next morning, saw my notifications and couldn't get myself to stop crying from the anger/upsetness/trauma/depressed thoughts that bubbled up with all of it, and I couldn't even get myself to go to class because I was so shaken. Like visibly, physically shaken, to the point where I couldn't think straight and I literally had tremors from how upset and unstable it made me feel. Tumblr should be a place where I can voice my opinion on something I am passionate about without all this hate. I literally have no other place. Right now, irl, I got dragged into drama (not mine, I swear, I was just a witness and got pulled into the mess) with my honor society, and the girl who started it all is trying to pit the entire organization against me. I can't post anything on my finsta, and God forbid I even tried to post anything in Facebook. (Not like I would). I am already in a very dark place mentally and emotionally because of the trauma this is putting me through, and how unwanted, useless and disgusting everybody is making me feel. I shouldn't be getting that from strangers who just decided to make my life even more miserable on top of it. Legitimately, out of the 30-40 comments/asks/replies/submissions I recieved, only one person even tried to realize where I was coming from or to educate me on what I had done wrong or missed in my analysis. But some of their wording just mirrored all the hate l had recieved, or even other things I had been told in real life that just made me cry even harder and I still can't bring myself to reply to even the person who was civil. My one big point to anyone who sees this is (besides don't be a dick/cyber bully/create and stir up unnecessary discourse) is don't assume that people don't know what they're talking about? Or don't assume that they are fake fans? And don't make people spell every letter of their opinion out for you in a 12 page thesis if it doesn't comply with the tumblr norm. Cuz here are some fun facts about me that I don't normally publicize / post about on tumblr: Yes, I am an anime fan, but Jesus Christ I love/am a huge fan of WAY more than I am in the fandom for. I am honestly only in like 4-5 anime fandoms. Same thing goes for other things I like, such as Harry Potter or marvel. I can like things, A LOT, and be passionate about them without being in the fandom. That doesn't mean I don't like it or I'm not knowledgable on the subject. That doesn't mean that I am an idiot for not knowing a fact/opinion/theory that has made its way around the fandom, that I'm not a part of. YES, I am a HUGE SPORTS FAN. It was legitimately also my fucking career (as a sports reporter/journalist/broadcaster). Do I post on tumblr about Baseball or Football or Hockey? Almost never. Does that make me any less of a fan, or does that make me any less knowledgeable about teams and rules? No. Does that mean that I didn't play/participate in almost every sport growing up? (baseball for 6 years, I still play Intermural football, tennis for 3 years, volleyball for 4, soccer for 1, swimming for like 5 years, I tried track, even karate and some other random stuff.) YES, I AM FUCKING KNOWLEDGABLE ABOUT PERFORMANCE SPORTS. I have participated/competed/trained/still watch almost every kind of performance sport. Of course color guard and marching band has been the longest, and the thing I was best at (7 years), but I grew up doing all kinds of dance and I still do lots of dance, as well as TONS of my own choreography. I've done baton and cheer for about 1-2 years each too. I did gymnastics for 4 years — was I very good? hell no. But do I know about it and appreciate it? Yes. SAME THING GOES FOR FIGURE SKATING. I only had like half a years worth of lessons, and like 3 routines that I ever finished and performed with figure skating, but that is because it is an expensive af sport, and I had way more activities and sports that I was better at, more passionate about learning, and were more accessible. BUT did I grow up going to figure skating shows like Disney on Ice or Stars on ice? Did that stop me from waiting in line for hours to get Michelle Kwan and other famous figure skaters autographs? No. Did that stop me from watching almost every single minute of the 2014 and 2010 Olympics? No. Do I still remember watching parts of the 2006 Olympics with my parents and absolutely being ENTHRALLED and wanting to do that too? YES. I still remember watching the 2014 Olympics from my aunt's house when I was staying on a cot in her living room because my mother was in the hospital and CRYING when I saw Y* H* perform, break world records, and win the gold. It was a sense of normalcy and awe because everything else going wrong in my life didn't matter while I was watching these amazing athletes perform. And GUESS WHAT, since I'm not really a part of the Figure Skating fandom (just like I'm not in the musical theatre fandom, or in anything regards to hair or makeup) I don't post about my own hype or plans regarding how excited I am for things to come out. So nobody here on tumblr, or almost ANYONE knew how excited I was for this upcoming Grand Prix season for the first actual competition of the Olympic season. I watched almost every challenger series video, as well as the autumn winter classic and competitions of the like. Even the JGPF events in anticipation. But guess what: I literally have a note on my phone that has all of Team USA's competition schedules, and their scores that they have gotten so far (like at the COR), along with a list of my favorite international skaters, and other new skaters to watch. I was so hype, so excited, and I thought that maybe, since figure skating had boomed in popularity, thanks in part to YOI (but also, helped people be more vocal and open about how much they love the sport even if ex already did) I would be able to discuss the excitement with other people. But no. Instead of being able to say "omg I'm so excited for blah blah blah, I hope they make the Olympic team. But I also love this show concept and this other persons costume, and you also can't count out blah blah blah" and being civil with conversation among other fans... They instead will say " wow you like blah blah blah? But you said this about them, and that offends me so you're wrong, and you forgot this tiny detail from 3 years ago, and you like anime so you OBVIOUSLY only care about figure skating because of YOI. Take your bandwagon fan bullshit away from me and go kill yourself". So now, I am staying the fuck away from the figure skating fandom, I've literally left half of my choreography untouched for almost 2-3 months, don't want to read/finish any of my YOI fanfics, and will probably even have a hard time watching Skate Can this weekend (even though like 6 of my favorite skaters are competing, and I was so excited before). Guess I'll just have to annoy my snapchat friends with videos of skating and me screaming because of skating. Fuck you tumblr, and I doubt I'll make any more original posts outside of APO planning and reblogs in the foreseeable future,
1 note · View note