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shadowmaat · 9 months

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Good Omens s2: criticisms

Look, folks, I thoroughly enjoyed S2 and am not implying that the whole thing is bad or that it doesn't deserve a third season, I'm just an old-school nerd who believes it's possible to criticize and find fault with something you love. So, spoilers ahead.

My biggest problem remains the Gabriel/Beelzebub story. It doesn't make sense within the context of what we know of the characters. I just can't wrap my head around sanctimonious, rules-obsessed Gabriel falling so hard and so fast for Beelzebub. And that Beelzebub would feel the same way. It took millennia for Aziraphale and Crowley to reach a point where "love" was even a question, never mind deciding on an answer. I'm sorry, but you can't speed run a slow burn.

Sure, you can wave your hand and talk about how "sometimes it just happens like that" but that doesn't feel like it should apply to these two.

If we'd seen more evidence of it being something that has gone on for millennia as the two of them are forced into communication over and over again due to "bureaucratic reasons" it might work a little better. As it is, though, it just feels false. About the only way I can think of to resolve it is to have the two of them pop in again during a pivotal catastrophic moment in S3 and reveal that, surprise! They were never in love (ew) and it was all part of Someone's plan to get them out of the picture so they could work on creating something to stop Armageddon 2 without anyone being the wiser. But I don't think that's what's going to happen. I think we're meant to believe they really did fall in love.

It felt very cliché, and without any of the clever twists or lampshading I'd have expected. It does, however, do a good job of showing what could be possible if angels and demons set aside their differences to work together (and maybe even grow closer). And yes, as a sped-up reflection of Aziraphale and Crowley's own relationship, the parallels are pretty clear. Except for the bit where we actually saw how A&C worked together and influenced each other into becoming better entities, and with G&B we just have to take it, ha, on faith.

Where G&B's relationship was bizarre, the stuff between Maggie & Nina was... uncomfortable. They are, again, a watered-down reflection of Aziraphale & Crowley (more on that in a sec), but this time with the added interference of A&C trying to interfere to make them happen as a couple.

Nina herself called them out on that manipulative bullshit, and she was very right. You can't force people to be together, even if they would be a good match and like each other.

I'm also going to put a big red X next to Neil's name if he was, in fact, responsible for implementing one of my most-loathed clichés: giving a character an absolute dick of a partner in order to A) keep the preferred pair from getting together and B) showing how much better the potential partner is in comparison to the absolute dick. It's bad storytelling. More than that, it does a disservice to Maggie. If she is, as we're meant to believe, a genuinely good person and someone who would be a kind and caring match for Nina, then that should be enough. If you have to compare her to someone else to prove how much better she is then you're lacking confidence in the character.

To circle back to our human duo being a reflection of our ineffable ones, I find it a little weird to see Aziraphale & Crowley's relationship become a focus that's reflected in so many unsubtle ways. That isn't, to me, what Good Omens is supposed to be about. Their complicated (and yet simple) relationship is supposed to be background noise, in much the same way as they themselves are meant to be background characters who are simply bumbling around the main plot. I'm not sure I can properly express why it bothers me beyond that. It just does.

I'm also going to say the most wildly unpopular thing I could possibly say about the second season: I didn't like the kiss. I'm SORRY. I know how important and validating it was for 99% of the audience. I know how many people pumped their fists and cheered. And I 100% understand Crowley's utter desperation in doing it and Aziraphale's "I forgive you" auto-response. I'm not in any way trying to piss on anyone's enjoyment of it. I remember what a huge and hate-fueled debacle it was when the last season ended without any formal physical declarations of love. I just... was a tiny bit disappointed.

One of the things I loved most about Aziraphale & Crowley's relationship was that there was no physical intimacy. In a world where we're constantly inundated in every form of media (and advertising, and politics, and so on) that sex/physical romance is the ONLY way to prove you love someone, it was such a profound relief to see one example where that wasn't true. I know I'm in the extreme minority in my preferences, and I wouldn't expect the show to cater to my individual needs at the expense of a broader, more socially-acceptable message, I'm just sorry to have lost that.

Anyway, it was a bit of a thematically weird season, but there was still a lot to love and I hope we get to see how things turn out in season 3.

#good omens spoilers #go2 spoilers #good omens critical

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seasurfacefullofclouds1 · 5 months

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Remember that time when Louis broke his arm and Larries made weird shit as if he did it on purpose. He had to have surgery but he still didn’t cancel the signings he did for fans. He did it even though his arm was sore and stiff.

He was nice to everyone. He had a kind word for everyone who came. He went from city to city too. The Larries still don’t appreciate Louis’ work ethic. They compare him to Harry who would rather hangout with a bunch of celebrities and have press releases for how kind he is for sending the famous people flowers.

Not one UK radio DJ spoke about how Louis still does these things for fans which he doesn’t have to, things like meeting fans for free outside his venues. If Harry did anything like that Rolling Stones would be writing articles about how Harry is setting standards for how to treat fans. There is no nicer celebrity than Harry. He should get a gold star.

That is basically the difference between when image is built for you without doing anything versus when you are actually doing a lot of stuff but the industry won’t ever acknowledge you.

I think there are Larries who have a double standard for Harry and Louis because they have a deepseated belief that Harry deserves everything good, but somehow Louis must earn anything good.

Hence Larries tend to doubt Louis’ words, accuse him of lying, assume he’s lazy, believe Niall and Liam when they say that Louis was lying around drinking and smoking during the pandemic. He must have been hiding in Jeff Azoff’s house with Harry eh? Remember the dog barking in Harry’s interview, that they all joked was Clifford? Because of course Louis would charter a plane in a pandemic to bring a dog across the continent for Harry.

(In actuality, Harry was busy getting papped with Rande Gerber and Kendall Jenner in LA, driving in France and Italy visiting restaurants. He recorded Harry’s House. Sony blitzed his songs on streaming and radio platforms to get him numbers, awards. Louis was writing Faith In The Future— and released at least 21 songs for the second album. He was organizing Live From London, setting up AFHF 2021, and filming All Of Those Voices. He set a world record. Louis’ first concert after the pandemic was a FREE event for 8k fans, something that none of the other 1D guys have ever matched. So much for laziness.)

Then I think there are Larries who know that the double standards come from industry bullshit, but they brainwash their followers anyway.

These are the Larries who say, “When I see Louis doing something bad, I’m going to call it out,” but what they mean is when Louis talks about Freddie or when he calls out Larries’ atrocious behavior. They’re not fans of Louis’ music, lifestyle, friends, family, fashion, achievements, mannerisms, speech. They don’t go to his concerts and they frequently call for boycotts. They don’t listen to his music. They haven’t watched AOTV, and criticize the bits they’ve seen. They also don’t have any real criticism for Harry Styles. They parrot industry critics’ harsh words about Louis.

But they recommend a lot of Larry fanfiction. They do read a lot of fanfic.

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firecrackerhh · 4 months

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You do nothing but get into constant fucking drama with other people in this fandom for no other reason than goddamn clout, that or you’re legit too fucking unaware to understand why people think your behavior is rightfully fucking irritating to everyone around you, and I’m not sure which potential option makes me disrespect you less.

You irritating fucks constantly get under this fandom’s skin for legit retarded fucking reasons and then you act surprised when people tell you that you’re fucking wrong?

You’re so fucking media illiterate you can’t even tell the difference between slapstick and actual abuse in a cartoon and you wanna fucking lecture people about topics you clearly have no business fucking talking about!?

Read the room! Assuming you’re fucking capable of it you goddamn retard. Jesus fuck!

What the fuck is it with the most brain dead people in this fandom thinking they have the right to speak on fucking anything dude, what the fuck!?

If you can’t tell the difference between a character kicking another in the balls Vs a gay man being physically abused by his bitch ex wife, if you legit believe that both require deadly seriousness, then you’re just retarded dude, I’m sorry to tell you.

Not that you care probably, I’ve seen you like one of my posts where I use the word retard, guess ableism only bothers you if it’s directed at you. Kinda hypocritical ngl.

Like yeah you would still be annoying af but at least it would be morally consistent if you hated every instance of the word instead of cherry picking.

Christ never watch the 3 stooges, you might get an aneurism lmao.

Didn’t you fucking say you were gonna leave the fandom? Or is the attention you get by being a lolcow too fucking sweet to ignore?

Maybe more people would be willing to have good faith discussions with you if you weren’t acting so fucking morally superior about everything you goddamn mental midget. The fucking gall.

You ain’t superior to anyone, you’re nothing but an irritating parasite getting high off the attention like a fucking heroin addict looking for a hit of dope, fucking tragic. At least if you were honest about being a fucking attention whore I would respect you a little bit, but nah you wanna bullshit others (and probably yourself) into thinking that any of the shit you say actually has any value. Tragic.

If you’re gonna leave, leave. It’s beyond obvious you don’t fucking belong here if all you wanna do is start shit and make other people miserable.

People recognizing slapstick isn’t actually abuse, isn’t fucking abuse apologia you retarded sack of shit, holy shit, how the fuck can people like you even exist?

I stg if you just love harassing fans cuz of a fucking character they like or because they clearly have better media literacy than you do, then you seriously need to touch grass, leave people the fuck alone you goddamn dumbfuck.

“Don’t harass this person guys!!!” You don’t even fucking bother to use the marker tool in your photo app to hide people’s usernames you fucking sack of shit! If you really cared about people not being fucking harassed you would fucking do the bare minimum!

Tho considering you’re the same person who said “it’s no wonder antis and criticals don’t like you guys!” I expect nothing less, if anyone sounds like an abuse apologist here it’s you.

The entire fandom shouldn’t have to suffer cuz a few people here are assholes, you’re one of them.

Stop fucking projecting onto people so fucking obviously, it’s pathetic af.

At least I’m honest I’m a fucking bitch and I have no qualms in admitting it. I know who I am.

Christ at least Squidiot was fucking funny to laugh at in hindsight, you’re just pathetic and irritating.

Grow tf up or get the fuck out, take your fucking dogshit takes with you.

🧨🔥~Firecracker out~🧨🔥

#tis i the werebitch

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bitchthefuck1 · 2 years

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yikes... you worshiping male characters regardless of what they do while criticizing jen walters for the few bad aspects of her show that can be attributed to the writers and not her... your blog says everything about why you make it a point to hate watch she-hulk every week and it's incredibly disappointing. i'm not some mcu fan who loves everything they put out, but man, it's tiring seeing people criticize media like she-hulk in bad faith waaaay more than mediocre white male media. oh well :/

This is... actually really funny because you don't always get anon hate that tells on itself so much.

I've been very clear and consistent about specifying that I don't dislike Jen Walters and in fact really like how she's portrayed by Tatiana Maslany. Her performance is the only really worthwhile thing the show has to offer, and it's why I find it so frustrating that they don't really do anything interesting with her. Every post I've made has been about the writing or specific narrative choices or the CGI or something to that effect.

As for me "worshipping male characters", whomst??? I'm not even really sure who this is about, as there's not a single male character I've posted about uncritically on here. Best guess is that this is about Matt Murdock, which like... I drag him constantly for being a shitty person and a crappy friend. I think his narrative arc is incredibly compelling and the Netflix series was really good, but I hope I don't need to explain to you that there's a difference between finding a character's narrative compelling and liking them as a person/co-signing their behavior, especially when you also criticize that behavior.

I think a lot of the criticism for she hulk has been bad faith dude bros whining because a woman was in a marvel thing, and that's dumb bullshit, but you can't lump all criticism in the same boat. My problem with she hulk, which is my problem with a lot of marvel's stories centered around women, is that they market them as though they're some groundbreaking feminist storytelling and then do very little to actually develop the story or characters well and coast on mediocrity that's only made passable by the talented women they cast. It's a huge disservice to the characters and to anyone who actually gives a shit about them. I'm not going to applaud them for crumbs, and if you're going to sell your work on it's "feminist storytelling" then you sure as shit better deliver more than a shallow girl power narrative. It's 2022.

#bestie idk whose blog youve been on but it sure as shit isnt mine #oh well :/#genuinely dont know who the white men ive been worshipping are every possibility gets funnier than the last #if its one of the house of the dragon dudes that would be so funny I'm literally only here for R and A's interpersonal drama #like i do think there's a lot to be said about how media made by and aimed at women/poc/lgbtq folks/etc is often given much more scrutiny #to 'do it right' and you should be allowed to tell a story like that and be mediocre without people acting like you're 'failing the #movement' or whatever but if you're going to use the fact that this story is feminist as a selling point you cant then turn around and get #mad when people judge it through that lens. its comes off as a little disingenuous for a giant media corporation with a shitty track record #for female representation to be like 'this is groundbreaking' and then make their big green monster a barbie.#disney doesn't actually care about women babe. they just want more consumers to buy their shit and if that means putting out a low effort #'superheroes: for her' show they'll do it and collect the check #if im being charitable id say this is a misunderstanding based on the fact that she hulk is both her name and the shows name so like. its #possible that this person misread a post about the show as being about jen which like. i feel like ita pretty obvious from context that #thats not what im saying

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marginaletchings · 1 year

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10 FANDOM GRIPES/ADVICE

Actually now that I’m on my fandom bullshit again here’s some general gripes I think any fandom can identify with:

1. Your headcanon/interpretation of canon is not canon. You will be much happier if you stop seeing everyone else in bad faith and being aggressive or passive-aggressive to people who don’t share your same interpretation/headcanon. Trust me, your drama levels will decrease if you put this into practice.

2. Just because you dislike something doesn’t mean it’s bad. Just because you like something doesn’t mean it’s good. This also goes for other people, too. Some people enjoy garbage and they know it’s garbage-- do NOT confuse them with the people who don’t understand something is garbage and are obnoxious about it. The former hate the latter too, believe me.

3. Loving something in spite of how poorly executed/written it is, is a thing. Loving something because of the potential it could’ve had is a thing. But you have to be willing to admit that your hope for a piece of media’s potential does not equate a good execution on the part of the creator(s). And once again, just because there’s some good substance there, does not mean it is above reproach or critique.

4. Critique/criticism are NOT BAD THINGS. I know it can be all too easy to take critique as “shit people have to say that’s always negative” and frankly, a lot, a LOT of “critique” is just unbalanced complaints levied in an aggressive, unfriendly manner. However! Actual media analysis is so, so much more than that. Taking apart a piece of media and figuring out how it works and why, both in-universe and out-of-universe and taking production factors into account, is FUN. Adding context to media is FUN. “Critic” is a dirty word these days, but frankly, I wish we could start turning that around. It feels like fandom is so fucking allergic to genuine civil discourse and critical thought these days and it doesn’t have to be that way. Listen: Learning about your favorite media and why it’s your favorite is actually super fun and great, and part of that is understanding its flaws as well as its highlights. When you really love a piece of media, you learn to love it, warts and all; and loving something despite its flaws (and in some cases because of them) is not an endorsement of those flaws, nor is it problematic behavior.

5. It’s okay to like antagonists/unhealthy character dynamics, HOWEVER, you need to understand WHY they are an antagonist, and WHY those dynamics are unhealthy. There is a difference between thinking Griffith from Berserk is a fascinating character study vs saying Griffith did nothing wrong and he’s your precious little meow meow. Frankly, it’s fucking obnoxious to see antag and/or villain stans go ham on things because they start romanticizing that character’s behavior, and then the antis come out, and then everything gets polarized. Like... y’all, there’s such a thing as not going to extremes, you know that, right? Can we not embrace a character, flaws and all, and understand why they suck and still like them anyway? Self-awareness is a GOOD THING.

6. Fucking touch some grass. No, really, I mean it. Get off your computer/phone. Go do something non-digital. Take deep breaths. Tell a loved one that you love them. Pet your dog, cat, lizard, or whatever other animal you have that can be petted. It will do you some good. The internet will be here when you get back. Twitter and Insta and Tumblr can fucking wait while you take some non-screen time to yourself.

7. Don’t go into tags to shout about how you hate X or Y ship/thing. Years ago I saw a post about how it’s like, going into the blueberry muffins aisle, and loudly complaining about blueberry muffins and how they suck. None of us fucking care what you have to say, we are here for blueberry muffins, and you are clearly here for drama and shit-stirring. Fucking stop. Being like UM, REBLOG IF YOU DON’T LIKE X!!! in the #x tag, is peak basic bitch behavior. You will be much happier and more chill if you learn to just let people like the things they like, I PROMISE you.

Also, people posting in general or gushing about a ship does not constitute as them pushing it on you. If you don’t want to see anything about a ship, block the tag and keywords, it’s that simple.

Frankly, even if you’re outside a ship tag and you start talking about how a certain dynamic is clearly familial/platonic, apropos of ENTIRELY nothing, it makes you come off like a rainbow-ass clown with a passive aggressive bone to pick. Stop fucking vagueblogging. Shit or get off the pot or get over whatever weird hateboner you have and Move. On.

8. Let people write their nasty OOC toxic smutfic. As long as it has appropriate warnings and tags, and isn’t catering to nasty p*doshit (literal adults and literal children), then fucking let. It. Go. No one is being hurt by this. It is fictional. IT. IS. FICTIONAL.

9. Let adults have their safe fandom spaces, and let minors have theirs. I know there’s going to be overlap, especially for groups that are in their late teens/early 20s. Overlap is okay, it’s fine, whatever. But for the love of God, PLEASE respect the boundaries of others-- if you are 18+, don’t go into spaces for minors. Vice versa, do not go into spaces that are 18+ if you are not 18+.

10. Learn to curate your online experience. Stop leaving it up to the algorithms. Learn to block tags, accounts, keywords, etc. I myself have legitimate triggers from trauma and instead of demanding the world bend over backwards to never ever talk about content that might make me uncomfortable, I take the initiative and protect myself first. If I see something that got through that filter, I’m not going to scream and cry about it--it was not a moral failing on the part of the poster, even if they forgot to put up a tag. Shit like this happens and part of living with triggers and discomforts is learning to cope with them when we can’t remove them or ourselves. You will be far happier if you stop following blogs/accounts/hashtags that make you upset.

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derinthescarletpescatarian · 3 years

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What happened w the rationalist community, if you’re ok talking about it?

LONG REPLY TIME.

In my Wild Youth (tm) I was hardcore in the rationalist/skeptic/humanist community. You know, the New Atheist types (the vast majority of the community didn’t call themselves New Atheists, that was mostly American Dawkins fans, but we were those kinds of people, just less arrogant-PR about it). For people who don’t know, the core philosophy of this subculture basically comes down to: - humans are mostly good people, or try to be good people, and we should act in ways that are good for humanity, the environment, etc. - people with better or more accurate information about the world are capable of making better decisions - it is therefore vitally important that we view the world as accurately as possible. Truth is inherently important and valuable. We should do everything we can to make sure that our beliefs about the world are as accurate as possible. - your mind will lie to you. Cognitive biases have their social and evolutionary uses, but they result in bigotry and bad information. We should do everything we can to identify and compensate for these, and think as rationally as a human is capable of. - while it’s not perfect, science is the most effective tool we have for determining what is most likely to be true. Rationalism is therefore massively pro-science and pro-science education. (This isn’t a blind trust; most hardcore rationalists are scientists and fully aware of the limitations of the messy reality of how science is funded and published and the biases that introduces. These are taken into account. The other hardcore rationalists tend to be magicians/illusionists.)

All of this is perfectly fine and a hill I’m still perfectly willing to die on.

When you get a bunch of people together who are sincerely seeking truth and want the world to be a better place, there are some fairly obvious groups that they’re going to tangle with. Before my time, when we were just called skeptics, the main targets had been psychics and life-after-death spirit-communing con artists (this is where our magicians came from, the philosophical descendants of Houdini, one of the earliest voices in the movement, and later James Randi). But the big proponents of harm in my time were the healing crystals/essential oils/faith healing people, and the ‘Creation should be taught instead of evolution’ creationists. We spent a lot of time trying to stop people from selling oils that they said could cure cancer, and fighting against science education being replaced with religious belief inserted in science classes. (I spent a lot of my teenage years debating creationists on the internet. I can summarise this experience as a frustrating waste of time on both sides of the debate. Neither side was going to accomplish anything in these discussions.)

This is all perfectly fine. I won’t pretend I’m completely happy with everyone’s actions; it’s the internet, so of course there were subgroups doing things like mass trolling conservative religion forums and stuff, which had no purpose except to piss off people we happened not to like, but you get that. The problem with this is that it’s easy. People can believe what they want, but if you’re coming into a rational debate, every pro-Creation, anti-evolution argument is complete and utter bullshit, mostly demonstrating nothing beyond the fact that the creationist debater a) doesn’t understand the most fundamental things about biology or b) does understand and is willingly misleading the audience. Every pro healing crystal, pro astrology or pro telepathy argument is fatuous nonsense. Twelve-year-olds could walk into these discussions and completely shred every argument put forth by big-name “creation scientists” in minutes -- I know, I watched it happen regularly. I was on our conservative creationist Christian-owned community TV station for awhile doing a little ‘creation vs evolution!’ debate against the wealthy station owner’s son to fill air time, and I’d see him do a couple of hours of research for anti-evolution arguments every time we filmed, and it always pissed him off that I’d shred anything he said immediately, having done no research whatsoever, because even to me, a child, the giant drive-a-bus-through-this holes in his arguments were obvious. (Also, they were old hash; I’d read all the books by his idols before and checked the reasoning myself long before.)

Fresh voices in the community came from two main sources -- people who’d been pro-people and pro-reason/science for years finding others like them, and ex-creationists and magic healer victims who’d eventually found the holes in what they’d been taught. This second group, for obvious reasons, tended to be the most passionately pro-reason and pro-science people, and discussing different experiences in a place where people could feel safe being critical and actively celebrate doubt was great. But, inevitably, we got lazy.

A lot of the ‘laziness’ was perfectly reasonable and practical. Time and attention is always limited, and when you’ve dealt with six claims of “the eye is too complex to have evolved!” and explained the flaws in the irreducible complexity argument four times that fortnight, when someone walks in with “blood groups couldn’t possibly have evolved, therefore the earth must be 6,000 years old”, you just don’t fucking bother, and you shouldn’t fucking bother, there’s no value in that discussion.

That’s not the kind of laziness I’m talking about. I’m talking about the part where we got so used to ‘that sounds so fucking stupid’ leading directly being able to tear an argument to pieces,that it became normal to assume that anything that sounds stupid on the surface MUST be obviously wrong. Where ‘this is weird, let’s examine it and check for flaws’ became ‘that person disagrees with my preconceived notions, let’s double down and explain why they’re wrong, because I’m already assuming that they’re wrong’. At some point, “we want to be as rational and accurate as we can be, we call ourselves rationalist and work towards that” became “we’re rationalists, so we’re more accurate and rational than average and probably right”.

You might recognise that as in fact being *the exact opposite of the proported philosophy*. There were always some overenthusiastic idiots in any group, but watching it slowly become normal for rationalising to replace active rationalism and for the names of cognitive biases to be thrown around as gotcha buzzwords rather than things people were seriously considering in their own arguments was... concerning. (There were a lot of very smart people in the community, which unfortunately made it far more vulnerable to this particular kind of thing. Smarter people are better at fooling themselves; a person good at reason is also good at rationalising, and you can’t tell the difference between these things when you’re the one doing them.)

In practical terms, this doesn’t matter that much when you’re playing in the easy leagues of explaining to someone that the overpriced eucalyptus oil they bought from an MLM won’t protect them against chicken pox. The person who’s gotten lazy is shit at being a rationalist, but your reasoning skills don’t actually need to be all that impressive for this. You know what they do need to be impressive for? For when somebody says, “women are taken less seriously than men in science and biased against in hiring, payment and promotion”, and this hypothetical you, a male scientist who’s never noticed this and already knows that his profession is full of smart and reasonable people who wouldn’t do something stupid like that, thinks “that is fucking stupid” and automatically, without thinking about it, puts their energy into shouting down and dismissing alternate evidence. Or when somebody points out islamophobia in the community, or passive racism, or... you get the picture. Social issues can (and should) be examined and interrogated using rational philosophies, but it’s so much harder to do that than laugh at creationists who are sending you abusive messages about going to hell. And given the particular hot-button issues in the community, most of the people there were interested in biology, chemistry or physics and simply had no idea how to *do* social sciences, treating the parts that were familiar from their own specialities as valid and the rest as irrational nonsense. And now, you have prominent rationalists panicking about Sharia law, sneering at the made-up problems of feminism, and generally making fools of themselves... because they got lazy.

Because, like how it’s hard to be a liberal (American definition) but easy to be a conservative in a gay hat, it’s hard to be a rationalist, but easy to be an arsehole with a big vocabulary. And that’s why I can’t gush about how great Richard Dawkins’ early science books are without somebody bringing up his bullshit twitter opinions.

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thedreadvampy · 2 years

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hey ik it cam b fun to clown on terfs but reblogging their posts and posting their anon messages with criticisms is a) not going to change any of their minds b) gives more of an audience to thei bullshit thus allowing them to recruit more people and c) if you respond in a way tht implies violence or anger, they will use tht as proof of the violence of trans women even tho your cis. trans women have repeatedly asked tme people to stop poking the terf bear and just deplatform them by blocking them

it isn't fun.

this isn't me having fun.

this is me having an emotional reaction to a bunch of people who showed up on a post I did not target at them or tag with the intent of it being findable.

I recognise that it can do additional harm to respond and I understand your frustration but here's the thing. what I understand to be the right thing and what I do are not always going to be the same thing, particularly when the way people speak to and about me is sending me into a PTSD spiral.

You might notice I've started blocking and stopped responding (also I don't think I have responded to any of the anon messages I've got from TERFs, at least not directly, and they are very much still coming in). The reason this took some time is not because I love to sport and play and Own The Radfems, it's because I sometimes have trouble managing my impulse control and getting past the need to be understood even when I know that other people aren't engaging in good faith.

all which to say: yes you're for sure right which is why I've stopped responding. but I want it to be clear that I'm not going looking for a fight here, I was sitting in place processing my own feelings about an issue that fairly directly affects me in an untagged post when suddenly my mentions filled up with TERFs slinging around the usual bullshit and sometimes you can know that what you're doing is the wrong move but that doesn't change how you react in the moment.

(please read the above in the spirit of recent posts vis a vis reasons not being excuses - this isn't a justification of my response, it's just a reason.)

(but I do feel like there's a meaningful difference between Looking For TERFs To Clown On and Having A Post Unintentionally Breach Containment And Getting TERFs Raking Through Your Posts To Clown On You and that on an emotional level one is a lot easier to avoid than the other)

#Like i do genuinely understand and accept the criticism #it's counterproductive and potentially increasing harm #but i really need you to understand that these sorts of arguments have never been something i consider either fun or noble #I'm not. Terfhunting for clout fun or heroics #i try to avoid engaging with TERFs #and the reason for that is that the shit terfs and people like them being to my door is triggering as fuck for me #and the thing it triggers is an anxiety state where it's really difficult for me to step back and keep quiet even when i know i should #bc i have a lot of experiences that taught me that backing down makes it worse #and that's. not these experiences. it's a compulsive behaviour that's very hard to resist. to try and overexplain and make it make sense.#like a lot of things it feels like shit as it's happening it isn't morally justifiable and i don't want to do it #but it's very difficult to control other than by avoiding the situations that send me into that state #which is why. among other reasons. i don't want terfs to argue with me. it fucking sucks. but as I'm sure you know it's hard to avoid them #i am going to continue to try to control this response but please understand I Don't Want This This Is Literally Never Fun For Me #red said

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disgruntledspacedad · 3 years

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in defense of Din’s subdued reaction to losing the kid...

gif by @quantam-widow

I know we were all thinking it. We got a 2 second reaction shot to the destruction of the Razor Crest (may she forever rest in peace), but then, Grogu gets taken, and... nothing?

What the fuck, Din? we all protest. That’s your baby on that ship! Don’t you care? Scream, curse, kick a rock, cry, make a fist, something!!

I will acknowledge that so far, the show has been excellent with giving us emotional payoff, am I right? I mean, just today we got Din laughing, twice. Twice in a row. I honestly never thought we’d see that. There have been so many excellent, precious soft!Din moments this season, and they all feel deliciously earned.

So, from a meta POV, I guess I’m saying that I have faith in the writers to get it right, and in Pedro to deliver. Duh.

In universe, though, I think it’s fair to point out the obvious - that Din is a pretty reserved guy. He’s much more of a thinker than a feeler. He’s used to keeping things bottled up, and I would even argue that his life often depends on his ability to dissociate from his emotions. Din’s entire journey so far has been about how one little baby yodito shakes his worldview to its very foundations. He’s getting there, but it’s a slow process.

And also, consider this - we haven’t seen Din alone yet, not since Grogu was taken. For a guy who lives a guarded life literally encased in fucking armor, any display of emotion is going to be carefully protected until he’s in private.

But anyway, Din is detached, rational, a little emotionally constipated, and definitely comfortable in a stressful situation. A true ISTP if you ask me (yeah, I know you didn’t, but whatever). Often, it seems that these cool headed, logical types who have never ruffled a feather over anything in their lives are the least adept at handling genuine fear. In other words, when panic does strike, it strikes them hard.

And guys, Din was definitely panicking during this episode.

He’s clearly unsettled from the jump - that outburst of “dank farrik!” in the cockpit sells it, and his distress only becomes more obvious from there. Talking out loud, trying to convince himself that the best thing for Grogu is for him to be trained as a Jedi. Reminding himself of the creed. His overt caution as they approach the seeing stone. His impatience, “Are you seeing anything??”

Then there’s the effects of long term stress. Sure, a bounty hunter in the outer rim doesn’t exactly live an easy life, but Din is definitely used to the drama being on his terms. Compare Din’s body language in the opening scene of season one to when Boba confronts him in chapter fourteen. You can just feel the anxiety, the weariness, the frustration. Din has been on the run for months now, constantly looking over his shoulder, sleeping with one eye open. Notice how he even startles at Fennec’s voice? Season one Din would never have given that much away, regardless of the situation. Long term stress has clearly taken a toll on him.

So we have unsettled, stressed out Din in an emotionally charged situation. He’s exhausted, he’s scared, he’s desperate. This scenario is a recipe for even the most level-headed of adrenaline junkies to loose their cool, and that’s exactly what happens to Din. He panics, and he makes some pretty big fuckups because of it. Leaving Grogu unprotected, twice. Trying three different times to break through that “force field,” even when he knew he couldn’t. Dropping that jetpack and then just forgetting about it (I know we were all screaming about that one, or at least, I was).

So, fear is a positive feedback loop. Those neurotransmitters that do us good in a bad situation - raising heart rate, narrowing focus, shunting blood to the muscles - can also be detrimental if we get too high of a dose - tachypnea and tachycardia, inability to think critically and see the big picture, lack of blood and oxygen to the brain. Epinephrine, in particular, even inhibits the laying down of new memory pathways. In other words, stress leads to poor performance, and poor performance leads to more stress, which leads to... you get the idea.

Then, in the middle of all this chaos, they fucking blast the Razor Crest.

More epinephrine, more cortisol, more stress.

By the end of it all, Din is a fucking shitstorm of stress hormones and pent up emotions. Notice how he seems to be on autopilot in the immediate aftermath, robotically scanning the ashes of the Crest for anything that might be left intact. Notice how empty his voice is when he says, “the child is gone.” This is a dead man walking. Din has nothing left. His whole life has just gone up in smoke, and he can do nothing about it.

Guys, Din is holding onto his sanity by a fucking thread in this scene. “The child is gone,” he says, like he’s reminding himself, grounding himself in his shitty reality. He’s stunned.

And helpless. There’s literally nothing he can do for Grogu. He has no ship, no credits, no resources, nothing to bargain with, nothing to offer. Din literally cannot allow himself the luxury of feelings right now. He’s just got to focus on surviving this very shitty day.

Then, Boba Fett upholds his end of the deal, and suddenly, Din has something to hold onto. An ally, a badass friend, some hope. I don’t think Boba shows Din that chain code in order to verify his claim on the armor - he’s already wearing it, for godssake. I think Boba shows him the code in order to catch Din’s attention - hey friend, I know you’re hurting, but I’m a man of my word. When I make a vow, I keep it. Let’s regroup and go find your kid.

And Din would totally latch onto that. A fighting chance? Din fucking leaps at it. There’s a job to do. A kid to save. All of those stress hormones are going to keep on stewing, because Din has never really come down from his adrenaline high.

It’s like this in real life, too. There isn’t time to be afraid. There isn’t time to be sad, or second-guess, or say, oh how terrible, or wonder what if it doesn’t work? There’s just you and the job, and if you are the only thing standing between life and death, you will put everything else aside and do what you have to do, for as long as you have to do it.

And that’s where Din is at this moment. He’s running on the fumes of his adrenaline, all tempered focus, all strategy and no bullshit.

Emotional shock, my therapist buddy calls it. Apparently, it’s normal. Expected, even.

But guys, the fallout of this kind of crazy ass adrenaline high is insanely intense. I’m talking collapse to the floor, legs won't hold you, trembling, crying so hard you sling snot, shuddering breaths, stare dead-eyed and spent at the ceiling because you’re just too wiped out to even sleep kind of intense.

And then, after the breakdown comes the angst. The detailed thinking. The oh god, what if this had happened, or, should I have done that instead? It seems like every emotion that gets put on the back burner in the moment comes back to bite you with twofold intensity when all is said and done.

In other words, Din is definitely going to feels some things .A lot of very intense things. A reckoning is coming, my dudes. Trust me. It’s just not quite here yet.

That being said, here’s what I can expect from Din going forward:

Just like he’s is slow to acknowledge his growing parental feelings for Grogu, I think Din’s going to be slow at processing his grief at Grogu’s loss. In the next episode, he’s got plenty to distract him - getting together his hit team to take back the kid and coordinating an attack on the empire.

However, I do think we’ll get a slow moment with Din, probably sometime at the beginning of next week’s episode if the pattern holds. I doubt it’s the full-blown breakdown that we’re all needing, but I’m willing to bet money that we’ll see Din grappling with the fact that his kid is gone. I also think that badass beskar murder machine Din from chapter three will resurface. Stress and desperation make us do irrational things, and anger is one of the stages of grief that Din will inevitably have to work through (I think he’s flickering between denial and bargaining for now).

But then, after Din gets Grogu back? I think that’s we’ll have our big, dearly earned emotional payoff.

For one thing, Din won’t be able to deny his feelings anymore. He wants to keep this kid, it’s so very obvious. Losing him just forces it all to the forefront.

And then the relief/joy/regret/guilt that Din is going to feel once he’s got Grogu back? Not to mention the physical exhaustion? All of the fear/terror/angst/grief that he ignored in favor of just going pedal to the metal, guns blazing, get the kid or die trying? That shit’s going to crash into him with all the subtly of a fucking tsunami. I guarantee you, we’re going to get some sort of confession, or adoption vow, or face revel, or other sort of profound softness from Dad!Din in the falling action of this season (At least, I hope we get it at the end this season but I wouldn’t put it past them to kick it into the premier of season three, just for pacing reasons, but then again, I obviously have trust issues).

Personally, I would love to see Din grappling with the long-term fallout of losing Grogu - night terrors, guilt, paranoia, etc. That’s probably the stuff of fanfiction - mandalorians don't have nightmares on screen, surely - but still, some lingering effects Grogu’s kidnapping would be realistic, and I would absolutely live for it.

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dgcatanisiri · 3 years

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I won’t say this is my last word on the subject of Legendary Edition bullshit, because... Well, I know myself enough to be able to say that I NEVER have a last word, I’ll always want to rant again later on. But let’s just make this a sort of master post of the issues overall.

So... Is it fair to hold a game that is a good roughly fifteen years old to the standards of the present? Not inherently. So if the games were being produced in any sort of unedited format, that it was a strict translation, 1:1 ratio, of the original to the remaster... Honestly, I’d still be bitter as all get out, for reasons I’ll expound on in a minute. But it could at least SEEM justified. I could consider it the kind of thing that would be expected - if KOTOR got a remaster today, I would not expect that Carth and Bastila would be made into bi love interests, or Juhani would have her romance patched up so that it has the same level of detail and attention as the het romances. If Jade Empire were remastered, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sky or Silk Fox’s same sex romances adapted so that the straight romances had to be closed out first. That is the kind of thing that, on a functional, practical level, I could understand. Doing a translation from old hardware, the old engine, I get the PRACTICAL reasoning for not making things better. I still object to this on the moral level, to say nothing of the representational one. But PRACTICALLY, I see why - y’know, there’s only so much financial resources going in, and changing things like romances, even if justified, means doing new writing and getting the voice cast back in, which has complications the longer since a game’s original release - actors retire or even die, the passage of time changes voices (like listen to the difference of the exact same lines by James Earl Jones between both versions of the Lion King). Even without those complications, that means paying them, which, in the production of video games, for everything that goes in, something else must go out. So that is the practical argument.

BUT!

But.

But, the thing is, even apart from everything else that I’ll get in to shortly, is that there have been a lot of claims from BioWare about inclusion. There have also been A LOT. of homophobic bullshit from BioWare and Mass Effect. And yes, I’m calling it like I see it.

Because we had the game that followed Jade Empire, with a M/M romance option, be Mass Effect, with NO M/M romance option (but FemShep and Liara could bang - the writing obviously favored the MaleShep portrayal, given that there was no marketing use of FemShep until ME3, and we had ME2 give priority to having loyalty conflicts between MALE Shepard’s romances, but not Female Shepard’s, and we even had BioWare hem and haw about how “well, the asari are monogender, so they’re not TECHNICALLY women, so it’s not REALLY lesbians...”). Because the official claim is that they just “didn’t think about it” in time to have these options included in Mass Effect 1. Because we’ve had writers now come out that Jacob Taylor was originally written as a gay man, but in the game itself was a straight man. Because there are plenty of women who throw themselves at Male Shepard, and Shepard is animated with having Significant Looks™ with these women, but not a single man who expresses any interest in him, until ME3 finally offers SOMETHING, which came to just Kaidan and Cortez.

Because we had one of BioWare’s heads, one of BioWare’s founders, say in an interview right around the release of Mass Effect 2 say “Shepard is too predefined a character to be gay.”

That is what I mean by homophobic bullshit.

And I haven’t even started on Mass Effect Andromeda.

And I’m gonna start on Mass Effect Andromeda now.

So after ME3, after Kaidan and Cortez were actually romances, we honestly gave them a lot of faith - they got the message, we said. They understood that they couldn’t just cut out M/M romance in the game, we said. They didn’t need to have the constant observation that demanded they provide good representation, we said.

And then they cut Jaal’s bisexuality, leaving him straight on release, without even a chance to flirt and be turned down, the bisexual male character who did remain not only was planet bound, he also is a character who a solid argument can be made that he falls into the trope of the Depraved Bisexual, a trope that over in Dragon Age, Patrick Weekes specifically said that they wanted to avoid and so didn’t make a character bisexual because of that. And the gay man is not only almost totally disconnected from the game (aside from one point in the plot, he can be avoided entirely and is not included in almost any other group setting among the Tempest crew), he is also an accessory in his own plot line, which was also heavily criticized for being intensely homophobic. And of these, the only thing BioWare deigned to change was Jaal’s bisexuality. (Which, personal note, I’m uncomfortable with personally, because as it’s implemented, it just feels kind of afterthought-y. Much like Kaidan’s in ME3, being unchanged from a new FemShep romance, despite the active inability to romance him in ME1.)

So it is not just a matter of “you have the ability, you’re changing other things, you should do this.” I mean, that is absolutely there - the mods exist for the original game, to the point of being able to even get the romance scene to fire right without Shepard’s gender magically changing once the clothes come off. (I have a vague memory of, at some point, probably around the “too predefined” comment, that being another excuse, that there was difficulty with having the models play nice with one another in that scene.)

But this is about addressing a pattern of behavior on the part of BioWare, that they have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to the bare minimum that their own statements on matters of representation and inclusion claim they aspire to. That if the fans are not actively holding their feet to the fire, they are GOING to take their fans for granted - “you don’t get better quality content elsewhere, we’re your only choice!” But “only” choice is not a “good” choice. It’s not a choice with quality.

So if we don’t make a big damn deal about this now, when they have a chance - when they have a CHOICE - to make things better, to provide better representation, to correct the mistakes of the past... What will we get in the future? How will they backtrack on this in the future? How will they exclude us in the game they just announced a few months back? How will they continue to tell us that they don’t want gay people in this setting?

Look, I don’t use these words lightly. But that is, whether it’s a conscious attitude at all or not, what they are telling us. By not including us, by making us optionally involved, by making us disposable within our own stories, by cutting out our content, they are saying that they do not envision a world, a future, that includes queer men.

And anyone who does not speak up, does not condemn this, does not demand that they DO. BETTER... That is tacit approval and agreement. Because you’re saying that things as they are now - the removal and undermining of our content, of our EXISTENCE in these games - are perfectly fine and acceptable.

And yeah, I’m sure that reading that has probably made some people mad, believe I’m being unfair by saying that, because it’s going to push away allies. Thing is, and this is one of the things that always comes up in anything even tangentially activism related... THIS ISN’T ABOUT THE FEELINGS OF THE ALLIES. This is about listening to the people who are being hurt and saying “you don’t deserve to be hurt this way, things need to change.”

BioWare needs to change its approach. And, as we have seen, it does not come just because of a handful of angry queers, demanding to be represented in their games. It comes because of the community at large calling them out and saying “this isn’t right. What you have done is not right, and we are calling on you to fix it. To do better.”

Don’t just stand there and shrug this off. Because evidence tells us that if they aren’t called out on this now, the next game will not be better. And we will be in this exact same place, having this exact same argument, all over again, in a few years when the next Mass Effect game comes out. When the queer men are given the shortest end of the stick again, and people who are right now saying “what do you expect from a remaster?” will either suddenly turn around and go “I don’t know why BioWare would do something so homophobic” or, worse, “well, it’s something, I don’t see why you’re upset.”

We’re upset because we keep having this argument. And we are going to keep having this argument until people are willing to actually DEMAND that things be better. This is the chance to make things better now.

At this point, a post-release patch that includes a Male Shepard/Kaidan romance in ME1 that is tracked through to the following games is a bare minimum fix, a change done to make it clear that BioWare understands their mistakes in the past and want to make things BETTER.

It may not be easy, but genuinely fixing problems never is. But it’s work that needs to be done.

#dg rants #bioware critical #mass effect #mass effect critical #dg gets pissed #another angry queer rant

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makeste · 4 years

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1.) I'll dislike it if it turns out that Best Jeanist is still alive since I don't see a scenario where Hawks not killing him makes sense, unless of course if it turns out that it was all staged before hand for the villains (for some reason). The reason why I think this is that Hawks pulled out his swords on BJ after saying "how unfortunate" when BJ say's he'll be going public again. To me this reads as the equivalents as you and a "friend" being together alone in your home.

see, I see it differently. to me, what doesn’t make sense is for Horikoshi to not show us the conclusion of that flashback scene even after Hawks kills Twice. like, if he originally intended for it to build up suspense at the start of this arc, back when we weren’t sure whether or not Hawks would go through with it, that’s one thing. that actually played out beautifully. but to leave Jeanist’s fate up in the air even after Twice’s death makes no sense to me in a scenario where Jeanist is actually dead. at that point there’s no reason to keep it hidden anymore. we know Hawks is a murderer; we know how far he’s willing to go to complete his mission. so at that point there’s no longer any narrative purpose in leaving it ambiguous, right?

like, so we’ve got this mystery. did Hawks kill Jeanist or not? and there are only two possible outcomes. either the twist is that he did kill him, thus stunning the readers with the reveal that a hero would actually go so far as to kill another hero; or the twist is that he didn’t kill him, in which case the payoff comes later, when Jeanist makes a surprise entrance revealing that he’s still very much alive.

as far as the first of those two outcomes is concerned, there’s no longer any reason to keep Jeanist’s death a “secret” now if that’s the case. we’ve already seen his body. we’ve already seen Hawks kill someone else. what possible reason is there for Horikoshi to still be cryptic about it? we already know he’s not above showing us VERY detailed and gory and plain fucked-up things in character flashbacks, so it’s not like he’s barred from showing it to us because it’s too controversial or disturbing. there is just no reason I can think of why he would be so deliberately wishy-washy about it for so long only to have the eventual twist be “yes actually he really has been dead this whole time.”

but if the payoff is instead meant to be “surprise he’s actually alive!!”, then it makes perfect sense to not reveal it beforehand. in this case Twice’s death only adds to the twist and makes it that much more of a surprise. and imo it’s a much more satisfying outcome, and much more consistent with what we know about Hawks’s character. there’s all this talk about how this twist makes him “less morally gray”, as if moral ambiguity is something all characters should aspire to, but what this shows instead is that his morals are consistent, which is much more important to character-building in the long run. Hawks is someone who can see and understand the big picture and figure out the best action to take for the objective, logical greater good. but he is also someone who’s still fueled by his emotions enough that he’ll put the Greater Good at risk in order to try and do what he thinks is the right thing. and so he almost blows his cover at Fukuoka because he helps Endeavor battle the High End Noumu, and he does blow his cover at Gunga Mountain and is nearly killed by Dabi because he tries to arrest and capture Twice rather than killing him. it’s not until he has no other choice that he finally does the deed, and he pays dearly for it.

it is entirely in character for Hawks, when faced with a situation where the Greater Good requires him to make a sacrifice that doesn’t sit right with his conscience, to instead attempt some risky and convoluted “fuck it, let’s see if we can fool ‘em” solution which puts the whole operation at risk, but which allows him to spare the life of a man who’s done nothing wrong. the hubris of Hawks’s character is that because he’s so clever and is usually one step ahead of everyone else, he tries to have it both ways, and attempts to simultaneously stick to his principles and be faithful to his mission, and eventually that’s what does him in. you can’t be a walking, talking Icarus allegory and not expect your wings to eventually be burned off by the metaphorical sun.

anyway. so this outcome ultimately makes a whole lot more sense to me, ngl. as for why Hawks pulled out his feather sword when he was talking to Jeanist, I don’t know! we literally cut off right after that! almost as if whatever action or line of dialogue immediately followed that scene would have explained everything, and so is being withheld from us for exactly that reason lmao. it absolutely is a very odd thing to do while chatting with your friend; but speaking of said chat, let’s take another look at the dialogue here.

Jeanist says he’s planning to step back into the public eye shortly, and Hawks replies with, “that’s too bad.” of course we’re immediately meant to jump to the conclusion of “WTF, JEANIST, RUN,” but there’s another possible interpretation, which is that Hawks is apologizing because he’s about to explain to Jeanist that he’s gonna have to put a rain check on those plans. the sword might simply be his not-so-subtle way of saying “okay you better listen up you beautiful bedenimed man, because shit’s about to get real, and you’re either going to have to go along with the completely ridiculous plan that I am about to propose, or else I am going to have to straight up kill you, which I do not under any circumstances want to do.”

at which point Jeanist is presumably all “okay calm down kid wtf”, and Hawks proceeds to explain how they’re gonna take some random John Doe body from the county morgue and have one of the HPSC’s people use their quirk to transform the body into a perfect clone of Jeanist using a sample of Jeanist’s DNA or something. or whatever secret agent bullshit they pulled out of a hat in order to fool Dabi and the rest of the League. only we don’t see any of it, because Horikoshi does not want us to see any of it, because it would have removed too much of the tension and suspense from the Hawks spy arc.

this to me makes sense. it makes sense with what we know of Hawks’s character, and doesn’t sacrifice all of the work that Horikoshi put into writing his arc for the sake of cheap shock value. it builds on the conflict between Hawks’s own personal morals and the things he is asked to do by the HPSC for the sake of the Greater Good that don’t always sit well with him. it leaves room for the continuation of that arc as more of the HPSC’s secrets come to light, and as the heroes face widespread criticism in the wake of the Jakku disaster, which seems more and more inevitable. and, as a bonus, it provides an unexpected yet plausible last minute save for the heroes against Gigantomachia and Tomura and the rest. because it’s honestly going to take a miracle for them to make it out otherwise at this point lol.

anyway, so I think it works! we’re still missing some pieces here obviously, but all in all I’m more than willing to give Horikoshi the benefit of the doubt until he fills us in on whatever we’ve missed. I just wish we didn’t have to wait two weeks until the next chapter yet again sob, but such is manga-reading life.

#bnha 288 #hawks #best jeanist #bnha meta #hawks meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks #long post

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gh0sthoodie · 3 years

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Okay, but considering a year or so ago, plenty of people complained about the white cast members *not* playing more characters of color and specifically criticizing Fjord, Jester, and Molly as characters that were created so their players didn’t have to play white humanoids but didn’t have to put the work in of trying to be actual representation, you realize this whole discourse is just one giant windmill that everyone’s chasing from different angles? or, compare it to when The Adventure Zone published their first graphic novel, and people were upset that PC played by white players who had very-little canon descriptions of what they looked like were all illustrated as light skin? Marisha and Sam very likely made Veth and Beau listening to criticism from people who had just as much of a right to state criticism as you, even if it’s the opposite of what you’re saying.

I assume you’re here in good faith over like frustration with fandom callout bullshit and not just trying to shrug off a single person’s gentle criticism of a beloved show so I’m gonna answer this in good faith as well:

What I posted is my opinion on the issue. Other people have other opinions. I, personally, am uncomfortable with what seems to be a distinct lack of thought or care behind the choice to make these character Brown (aesthetically, since there isn’t exactly any other cultural background or acknowledgement happening).

My personal opinion about the non-human discourse: I think that’s silly. I don’t rly have any other comment on it and while silly discourse does clearly pollute the water and obscure real concerns I can’t rly do anything about that.

The TAZ stuff is it’s own thing I’m staying out of right now. The differences in medium between a graphic novel and a dnd game, in which a character is fully inhabited by one player, complicate things anyway.

And as for a response I’ve heard every time I level this critique: superficial diversity in PCs is not the same thing and also not at ALL a substitute for having BIPOC players at the table and BIPOC creators weighing in behind the scenes. This is something the CritRole company themselves have come to understand, I think, if their recent additions to the cast are any indications.

TLDR: I get that the discourse gets out of hand but wow does that not prohibit me from gently expressing my opinion here on my blog, where I am full of love, harassing nobody, and where the cast isn’t going to see or concern themselves with it.

#critical role

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beardofkamenev · 3 years

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When Adults Attack! (Teenagers)

(Sorry to everyone for dragging this up again, but some people are chronically incapable of letting drama die down.)

The last time I posted about this was 18 February. It’s now late-March. Despite repeatedly claiming to be “over it”, a self-proclaimed “respected history blogger” has been screaming into the void for over a month now. She seems to be under the unfortunate impression that she’s completely innocent of wrongdoing, all the criticism is unprovoked, she has been targeted by “white bigots”, and that she’s somehow the real victim here. So now I have to explain why that’s bullshit. Unlike her and her two friends, I don’t make extreme but vague accusations with zero evidence. I don’t make empty threats about “exposing” people.

The short story? She involved her own self in a situation that had nothing to do with her, downplayed her friends’ racism towards others, incited her followers to harass a teenager, repeatedly lied to her followers about the multiple POC who criticised her friends being “white”, and has continued to inflame the issue while trying to downplay her role in doing so. The long story? Well, I’ll let the receipts do the talking.

That’s Olivia’s first post at the start of February, days before I or anyone else had even said anything. “My anonymous Jewish friend said!” should have been a red flag to anyone capable of reading anything longer than 280 characters. I’ve already explained why Haley (lucreciadeleon/turtlemoons plus her 92849374 alt accounts) is full of shit and so have plenty of others (here, here, and here, to name a few).

Olivia claims that, as a Romani woman, she’s not obliged to engage with content that offends her. Fine. So why is a black teenager obliged to engage with Haley’s deranged anons? Why are her hate anons are so worthy of a response that not responding is an act of ANTISEMITISM that warrants Olivia telling everyone what an antisemite this teenager is for not responding? FYI, NO ONE is obligated to respond to anon hate, especially from people they’ve already blocked. And considering Haley admitted not once, not twice, but three times to breaking Tumblr’s TOS to circumvent a mutual block and send those anons (including how she did it), people are especially not obligated to engage with her.

I made my first posts exposing Taylor (lucreziaborgia/elizabethblount) and Haley’s lies and backtracking on 6 and 7 February. This was before I acknowledged Olivia’s role in inflaming the situation. In fact, I didn’t even know about her tweets until 8 February. Yet, here she is on 6 FEBRUARY already bitching about my posts to her Twitter followers. She has some nerve acting like I victimised her, just because I posted the screenshots of her bitching about me. And bragging about ‘gaslighting’? The word that multiple people have separately described what her two friends subjected them to? Classy.

I can’t “stalk” her public Twitter any more than she can “stalk” my public blog. What an exceptionally stupid claim to make, considering her tweets kept getting recommended to my mutuals whether they liked it or not. Have some integrity and own the shit you say, rather than backtracking, deleting your posts, and pretending that you didn’t say the things we saw you say. If you want to talk shit about others in public, be ready to answer for it in public.

I also wonder how this started over Henry VII. I specifically wonder how this discussion between myself and May (richmond-rex) triggered Taylor’s totally unprovoked racist comments about how we and Nathen Amin “simp for a dead white man”, and we should “simp for someone who actually advocated for the rights of others” instead. The implication being that Tudor history is only for white people like Taylor, and that only her fave is worthy of discussion (“AnNe BoLeYn WaS oThErEd BeCaUsE sHe WaS tAn.” Good grief).

When multiple POC called bootleg Regina George out for it, not only did she say she couldn’t possibly be racist because Haley approved of her racism, but also tried to argue that Nathen Amin deserved it because it was inappropriate for a British man to joke about Brexit. She then claimed we called her “anti-Welsh” (another fucking lie) to make it seem like a bunch of cRaZy blacks and browns were attacking poor, innocent white her (with Olivia coming to the rescue, of course). And as if that wasn’t enough, Haley then sent these bad faith hate anons calling Nathen Amin’s tweet ANTISEMITIC, for no other reason than to retroactively justify Taylor’s racist comments (though I didn’t see Haley getting offended when she was hate-scrolling through his blog before Taylor was called out).

That was the “antisemitic shit” Haley “privately messaged about” that Olivia thinks deserves a response. In case it's not clear: defending racism makes you complicit in racism. Being Jewish is NOT a get-out-of-racism-free card, and Haley trying to use it as one is absolutely dishonest, especially when NO ONE even knew she was Jewish until she finally admitted in February she was the anonymous ‘Jewish friend’ who sent those batshit anons. Other Jewish people also called Haley out on it, yet Haley and Olivia have conveniently ignored that little fact since it contradicts their narrative.

You think it’s over? Nope. Taylor then slunk into May’s dm’s with a half-arsed apology, where she admitted that the only reason she made those racist comments about Nathen Amin was because we “attacked Gareth Russell first” (“BeCaUsE AnNe FaNs CiTe HiS wOrk”) and she “just wanted to educate us about not lionising Henry VII” (even though anyone with eyeballs can read our discussion see she’s full of shit). At the same time, she and Haley were messaging other history bloggers, telling them that everyone who called them out were antisemites (including an openly Jewish mutual of ours) in an attempt to alienate them from the community. And this was just in JANUARY.

“I can’t be racist! My Jewish friend agrees with my racism!” That steaming load of backtracking horseshit is unfortunately the kind of nonsense Olivia has chosen to defend. FOR WEEKS Taylor ignored May’s messages, explaining why she — a black woman — found Taylor’s comments offensive. Did Taylor listen? Nope. In fact, she only replied in February: after she already started posting about how ignoring Haley’s hate anons was “antisemitism”. How convenient. Taylor might be a fucking idiot but we’re not. She only replied to May because she was afraid we’d use her own words against her. Clearly she never learnt a damn thing because here she is on 6 February backtracking on her apology. “Actually, I did NOTHING wrong! Also, you’re all antisemites for saying I did because my Jewish friend agrees with me!” And what made Taylor feel as though she had permission to start deflecting her vile behaviour onto others in order to get the heat off her? Olivia’s post about ‘their Jewish friend’ Haley: the one that followed Olivia’s “private discussion” with “her two friends”. Taylor is a racist hypocrite who hides behind the few minority friends she has to justify her racism, and attacks every other minority who disagrees with her. It’s no coincidence that the majority of the history bloggers who have a problem with Taylor and Haley’s nasty behaviour happen to be POC.

Despite Olivia admitting that she knew nothing about that situation other than what those two told her, she still took it upon herself to misconstrue and downplay to all her followers the extent of her friends’ racism, lies, and general nastiness (here she is on 9 MARCH). For her, our problems with racism are little more than “stupid drama”, “Henry VII drama”, “Gareth Russell drama”, “overreacting to a joke”, and “petty disagreements over dead people” because her friends are the perpetrators. Yet she demands everyone sympathise with her never-ending dramas and projects her behaviour onto others, despite the fact that she’s shown absolutely no understanding for why so many people have problems with her friends and has consistently defended the perpetrators. She’s entitled to be upset at whatever she wants to be upset at, but she is not entitled to tell her followers that we can’t be upset about racism directed at us, especially when that situation NEVER EVEN INVOLVED HER.

I agree. It’s disturbing that three grown women in their mid to late 20s have a vendetta against an 18 year old. Olivia acknowledged that her posts were reckless and that she would have acted differently if she just sat down and thought for one fucking second. But rather than correct the record on the same platform she made those accusations, she doubled down and took off to Twitter, saying that her anger entitled her to act that way. All with zero acknowledgement of the fact that the teenager SHE falsely accused and repeatedly mocked for her age was still being harassed by HER followers as a direct result of HER posts.

She might love the ‘clout’ that comes with a large following, but she evidently doesn’t care about the responsibility that comes with it. In Taylor and Haley’s case, it’s little more than a means to intimidate others into silence. Olivia might be a “respected history blogger” or a “good historian”, but that definitely doesn’t make her a good person. Far from it, if her behaviour is anything to go by.

This was on 9 February, 3 days after my first post. Bitching about me was all fun and games until the receipts came out, huh?

There’s nothing “insane” about keeping receipts, especially when Taylor and Haley are notorious for lying out of their arses and fake-apologising to people in the dm’s, only to continue mocking them on Twitter afterwards. You know what is insane though? Searching ‘romani’ on our blogs in a pathetic attempt to dig up dirt that doesn’t even exist (yeah, stat trackers exist). Do you know what else is insane? Haley spamming people with passive aggressive anons and sending anon hate to people who’ve already blocked her. She also “stalked” our WOTR group chat, though she’ll never admit to it, despite accidentally posting the dated receipts proving it. Oops!

It’s no secret that Taylor and Haley are cowards (as all bullies are), so it was no surprise when they eventually involved Olivia in their month-old vendetta against a teenager. They wanted to school a black girl on racism and Congolese genocide apologism, so they needed to get a “respectable history blogger” on their side. And Olivia happily obliged, kicking up such a fuss on their behalf that the teenager just offered to end it (despite the fact that Olivia vagued her first). Yet still Olivia continued, publicly mocking her age and calling her an “antisemite” long after the discussion was over (here she is on 24 February still carrying on). Either a teenager is old enough to be publicly shamed for being an “antisemite” and “antiromani bigot”, or she’s too young to be taken seriously. But at 25, Olivia is certainly old enough to know better than to participate in this kind of vile, petty, wannabe Mean Girl behaviour.

Olivia is not black. Taylor is not black. Haley is not black. So for the record, if you are not black, it is not your place to tell BLACK PEOPLE whether they can take issue with apologism for BLACK GENOCIDE. Multiple black history bloggers have already explained why they had a problem with Gareth Russell’s comments about the Congolese genocide (including the teen in question), yet that was less important to Olivia than not being able to call him a sexist weirdo because he’s gay. Olivia cannot speak on all minority issues — especially black and brown issues — and it is arrogant of her to assume that she can, especially since her understanding of the Gareth Russell issue came purely from “what she discussed with her two friends” by her own admission.

What a take. Here’s the “anti-Romani” post that I supposedly made. Precisely ZERO of my posts were about Olivia and not once did I even name her directly. So her claims that I mounted some kind of “vicious attack” against her is, uh, bullshit. Criticising her and her friends for their nasty, dishonest, and irresponsible behaviour isn’t “anti-Romani” just because she’s Romani. It’s no more “anti-Romani” than her erratic attempts to “expose” me are anti-Asian just because I’m Asian. It’s not any more “anti-Romani” just because the UK government has passed anti-Romani laws, any more than her telling deranged lies about me for over a month is an anti-Asian hate crime simply because there’s been an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes. I’m not British. I’m not from the UK. I have no control over whatever dumb, racist crap her government does. So she can fuck off and continue fucking off if she wants to make me personally responsible for that. The backlash she received had nothing to do with her identity and everything to do with how she purposely incited harassment against a teenager, defended her friends’ racism, and spread demonstrable lies to her followers. The “viciousness” of the backlash she received is directly proportionate to the viciousness of her own baseless attacks against others. She can claim to be more mature than an 18 year old all she wants, but do you know what the actual mature thing to do would have been? To not promote her friends’ lies and nonsense, especially when the other people they tried to involve had the sense to stay out of it.

Olivia, Taylor and Haley are fully-grown adults, but take no responsibility for their actions. Yet, they expect teenagers to have total control over not only their own emotions, but also the emotions and actions of others. Olivia thinks that a teen should be personally responsible for the behaviour of fully-grown adults, yet she’s close friends with Taylor — a racist, xenophobic bully who screenshots Tumblr people’s posts to mock them on Twitter (here and here from December), called Poles who’ve lost relatives in the Holocaust “genocidal loving freaks”, accused an openly Ashkenazi Jewish blogger of “internalised antisemitism” just for criticising her (a white gentile), said that people who like Mary I “resent their own siblings”, co-opted our struggles under Spanish imperialism just so she could bully ‘Spaniards’ (despite her being American and therefore equally responsible for genocide, by her flawed logic), and said that the black teen who called out her racism “really deserved to be bullied” and “needed to be policed”. Olivia is also close friends with Haley, who has a history of attacking people over posts that have nothing to do with her, publicly admitted to circumventing blocks in order to send hate anons, and likened me — a Filipino immigrant — to DONALD TRUMP and a neo-Nazi conspiracy theorist just because I posted the receipts exposing her lies, harassment of others, and projection.

Most of the people who have spoken out against these three didn’t even know each other until last month. Some of ‘us’ have actually blocked each other. Yet all of us agree that their behaviour towards others has been absolutely unacceptable. How is it that so many unrelated people from different corners of the ‘fandom’ have exactly the same problems with exactly the same people? If Olivia want us to take personal responsibility for “our friends’” behaviour, then she should first take responsibility for hers.

This is on 26 February, over a week after I last posted. As anyone with eyeballs can see, I called her British once. Not “repeatedly”. ONCE. So she can fuck off again with that bullshit. And why did I point that out? Because Olivia, a British citizen, made pejorative comments about “white Eastern Europeans!!!” just because she thinks some Polish people committed the heinous crime of... screenshotting her tweets. They didn’t even do it, and even if they did, how is that even relevant? Everyone knows that one specific Polish person lives rent free in Taylor’s head, so clearly Olivia just took Taylor’s word for it that it must have been The Poles who were “stalking” her. Maybe don’t take paranoid liars at face value next time?

Shameless, ignorant, tone deaf nonsense. Olivia constantly demands that people treat her and her identity with the utmost respect, yet here she was on 9 February already disrespecting the identities of others just so she can score some petty ‘oppression points’ against them. Why even bring their nationalities up? And why call them “white Eastern Europeans” instead of Polish since she knows they’re Polish? Is it because acknowledging that they are Polish would mean acknowledging that she doesn’t actually have a monopoly on a claim to discrimination or Holocaust trauma? Could it be that dismissing them as just some “white Eastern Europeans” was just another way for her to add credence to her own “pathetic lies” about the situation? There’s a word for that behaviour, and it starts with pro- and ends with -jection.

Let me reiterate: it is IGNORANT of her to use their identity against them, especially when hate-crimes against Polish immigrants have increased in her home country, and especially when the specific people she insulted lost close relatives (including Jewish relatives) in the Holocaust. It’s not “repeatedly mocking her identity” to point out her hypocrisy. Her being Romani is not an excuse for casual xenophobia. She might be able to hide her identity in the UK (though she shouldn’t have to), but Polish immigrants do not have the privilege of passing as first-language white British. I cannot pass as non-Asian. The black girl she and her friends tried to bully off Tumblr cannot pass as non-black. Olivia weaponising people’s identity against them just because she thinks they saw her public tweets is ignorant, petty, and completely uncalled for. She should be absolutely ashamed for using that pathetic argument, but based on her most recent farrago of nonsense, she probably won’t be.

Here’s her on 7 MARCH. And of course Taylor was the first to like it lol. Olivia may have deluded herself into believing she was just an innocent bystander, but unfortunately, enough people saw her admitting to inserting herself into the situation at the behest of her two friends. With every post before and since, her accusations have gotten wilder and wilder, falser and falser, and more and more irrelevant because she knows full well that none of her followers will bother fact-checking her. That’s the beauty of vagueing people. It’s how Taylor and Haley have been able to get away with pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes for so long. Too bad repetition, projection, and self-righteous outrage doesn’t equate to the truth because those are all those three have.

“SOMEONE NEEDS TO EXPOSE THE WHOLE DAMN LOT OF THEM! BUT IT WON’T BE ME!”

No one has said anything since 18 February, yet here’s Olivia publicly inciting her followers again. She’s “done talking about it”, yet she’s the only one continuing the drama. She is being ‘persecuted’, yet she mobilises her followers to go after others. She needs to be defended against critics, yet she also can’t resist bragging about big her Tumblr following is, how “piddly” our notes are compared to hers, how she got over 30 followers to report my posts (they’re still up lol), and how many people she can get to dig through our blogs to find anything to “expose” us. Olivia, I’m sorry that you require constant validation from strangers on the internet, but not everyone has the same priorities as you. Some of us just come here to have fun, but having shitstarters in the community is decidedly un-fun.

All my posts were directed at Taylor and Haley, but since Olivia insists on making this revolve around her, let me clarify: she is a hypocrite and a professional victim. Words have meaning, and those words are the most accurate words to describe her behaviour. It has fuck all to do with her identity. She and Haley are professional victims because they act as if their minority statuses exempt them from basic rules of online courtesy and entitle them to run their mouths about others with no consequence. And Olivia is a hypocrite because she demands the respect and understanding that she has repeatedly refused to show to others. She made ignorant, xenophobic comments against Polish people because she falsely assumed they screenshot her public posts bitching about others. She pretends that the many POC who have spoken out against her are just some “white” hive-mind because admitting that we’re not white will discredit the victimhood narrative she’s been peddling to her followers. And she arrogantly presumes to be ‘our’ voice in the community, all while mobilising her following to intimidate and silence the minorities who take issue with her and her friends’ vile behaviour.

It’s extremely telling that in every one of her unlettered rants, Olivia made the conscious choice to conflate us with “white gentiles”, “white antisemites”, and “white Eastern Europeans”. Why? Because in order to “name and shame” us, she’d have to admit to her followers that the majority of the people criticising her aren’t actually “white”, but are in fact black, brown, and Jewish. Having repeatedly demanded that her followers defend her, her reputation and credibility now depends upon people continuing to see her as the oppressed victim of “bigoted whites”. Unfortunately for her and her friends, the truth will always come out. That’s what receipts are for, no matter what they claim.

The history community didn’t side with “a white gentile woman”. We sided with a black teenager who Olivia and her friends repeatedly mocked for her age, publicly and privately spread false accusations against, and incited their followers to harass with their never-ending posts. We sided against white racists like Taylor, and her white-passing enablers like Olivia and Haley. Since being called out for racism by a black girl discredited them, they had to discredit her. And unlike the others Taylor and Haley tried to involve, Olivia was their willing accomplice. If she has now been “alienated by half the history fandom”, it is because of her own behaviour and rightly so.

The ideal course of action would be for Olivia to finally take some responsibility for her actions, publicly apologise for her role in inflaming this drama, and move on like the rest of us have tried to do. But unfortunately, she may be too far gone in her own pathological need for online validation to ever admit wrongdoing without some serious introspection. So perhaps, Olivia, if anything else, you should just take your own advice and, once and for all, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

#here's my fucking rent #seeing as i've lived in your head for a whole month #dumb and dumber #disk horse for ts #long post

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whitehotharlots · 3 years

Text

CRT and the sad state of educational politics

If our culture is studied 100 years from now, the predominant theme of the research will be a sense of perplexed revulsion toward how we did nothing to address the climate crisis in spite of having decades of forewarning. If there is a second theme, it will be a profound confusion regarding our immense and unearned sense of self-certainty. A retrospective of the early twenty first century would be titled something like Who the Fuck Did These People Think They Were?

The latter theme is illustrated in the debacle surrounding a recent slew of municipal and statewide bills that seek to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public schools. For the record, I am strongly against these bans. But I’m also self-aware enough to know my opinion matters very little, and therefore realize that an analysis of the discussion surrounding the bills will yield much more worthwhile observations than a simple delimitation of their pros and cons. Regardless of your personal opinion, I hope you’ll humor me.

I am, in some regards, a moral absolutist. But I also realize that abstract morality has very little bearing on material and political realities. In my ideal world, classrooms are free from political meddling. Teachers teach to the best of their ability, presenting students with truths that are confidently unvarnished due to the thorough amount of work that was required to reach them. I don’t cotton any of that socratic bullshit. Students are there to learn, not to engage in weird Gotchas with some perverted elder. The teacher’s job is to teach. The material they teach needs to be subjected to some graspable and standardized mechanism of truth adjudication before it is worthy of being taught. Teaching is not therapy. Teaching is not poetry. Teaching is not love, nor is it religion, nor is it a means of social or political indoctrination. There are plenty of other avenues available to accomplish all of those other things. Teaching is teaching.

That’s the ideal. But ideals are just ideals. They never come true. The art of teaching, regardless of setting--from overpacked classrooms to face-to-face instruction to curricular design to nationwide pedagogical initiatives--boils down to a teacher’s ability to reconcile the need to convey truths with social and political pressures that are heavily invested in the suppression of truth.

I have formally studied and practiced education for nearly two decades. In that time, the prevailing political thrust toward education has been a desire to casualize the practice of teaching, to render educators as cheap and fungible as iphones. The thrust takes different shapes depending on the political affiliation of whomever happens to be in charge of the state and federal governments that fund education, but the ultimate desire is always the same. The goal is always to attempt to make teaching rote and algorithmic, something akin to running a google search for How to do math? or What is morality?. The framing is always just windowdressing, empty culture war bullshit.

Maybe it’s the inescapability of this thrust that’s rendered so many educators so blind to it? We only have nominal political choice, after all. The discourse gets more blinkered and vicious as the stakes decrease. At any rate, this is the undeniable reality, and anyone who doesn’t see that isn’t worth listening to.

Non-administrative per-pupil spending as been on a steady decline since George W. Bush was president. Administrative bloat and meddling are becoming as common in k-12 as they are in higher education. The will of parasitic NGOs are implemented as common sense pedagogy without anyone even bothering to ask for any proof that they work. The so-called Education Reform movement is sputtering out due both to its manifest failures and rare, bipartisan backlash. But it will be replaced with something just as idiotic and pernicious. The thrust of causalization will not abate.

And so what do we decide to do? What’s the next big thing on the education policy horizon? Critical Race Theory.

Okay, this makes sense. In 2021, a local paper can’t run a news story about a lost cat without explicitly mentioning the race of every human involved and possibly also nodding toward the implied cisnormativity of pet ownership. So it makes sense that this broad rhetorical mandate would come to dominate the transitional period between Bush-Obama Education Reform and whatever bleak future awaits us. The controversy is so perfectly inefficacious that its adoption was inevitable. Because, seriously, it doesn’t matter. Regardless of the outcome of this kerfuffle, no problems will be solved. The real shortcomings of public education will not be addressed. Larger social problems that are typically blamed on public education in spite of having little to do with public education will especially not be addressed. Maybe white kids will have to do struggle sessions in lieu of the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe black kids will get full credit for drawing the Slayer logo in the part of the test where their geometric proof is supposed to go. Or maybe it won’t happen. Maybe instead these practices will be banned, and in turn liberals will begin to embrace homeschooling, the charter movement will be given new life as a refuge against the terrors of white supremacist behaviors such as, uhh, teaching kids to show their work. Whatever.

Within the context of public education, the outcome will not matter. It cannot matter. There will be broader social impacts, sure. It will continue to drive Democrats more rightward, providing their party’s newly woke corporate wing with progressive-sounding rationales for austerity. But so far as teachers and students are concerned, it won’t matter.

Why do I give a shit about this, then? To put it bluntly, I’m struck by the utter fucking inartfulness of CRT’s proponents. At no point has any advocate of CRT presented a case for their approach to education that was at all concerned with persuading people who aren’t already 100% in their camp. There’s been no demonstration of positive impacts, or even an explanation of how the impacts could hypothetically be positive. In fact, so much as asking for such a rationale is considered proof of racism. Advocates posit an image of existing educational policies that is absolutely fantastical, suggesting that kids never learn about slavery or racism or civil rights. But then... then they don’t even stick with the kayfabe. They’ll say “kids never learn about racism.” In response, people--mostly well-meaning--say “wait, umm, I’m pretty sure they do learn about racism.” The response is “we never said they don’t learn about racism.” You’ll see this shift from one paragraph to the next. It’s insane. Absolutely insane.

Or take this talk from a pro-CRT workshop in Oregon. The speaker freely admits that proto-CRT leanings like anti-bias education, multiculturalism, and centering race in historical discussions have been the norm since the late 1980s. The speaker admits that these practices have been commonplace for 30+ years, as anyone my age or younger will attest. Then, seconds later, the speaker discusses the results of this shift: it failed. Unequivocally:

We had this huge, huge, huge focus on culturally relevant teaching and research. [ ... ] So you would think that with 40+ years of research and really focusing and a lot of lip service and a lot of policies and, you know, a lot of rhetoric about cultural relevancy and about equity and about anti-bias that we would see trends that are significantly different, [but] that’s not what we’re finding. What we’re finding that you see [is] that some cases, particularly black and brown [students] the results, the academic achievement has either stayed the same and gotten worse.

Translation: here’s this approach to teaching. It’s new and vital but also we’ve been doing it for 40 years. It doesn’t work. But we need to keep doing it. Anyone who is in any way confused by this is a dangerous racist.

Even in the darkest days of the Bush-era culture war, I never saw such a complete and open disregard for honesty. This isn’t to say that Bush-era conservatives weren’t shit-eating liars. They were. But they had enough savvy to realize that self-righteousness alone is not an effective way of doing politics. You need to at least pretend to be engaging with issues in good faith.

This is what happens when a movement has its head so far up its own ass that it cannot comprehend the notion of good-faith criticism. These people do not believe that there can exist anyone who shares their basic goals but has concerns that their methods might not work. Their self-certainty is so absolute and unshakeable that they can proffer data demonstrating the complete ineffectiveness of their methods as proof of the necessity of their methods.

For decades, the most effective inoculation against pernicious meddling in education has been to lean upon the ideal form of teaching I described earlier in this post. We claimed that teaching is apolitical and that no one is trying to indoctrinate anybody. Regardless of the abstract impossibility of this claim, it has immense and lasting appeal, and it was upheld by a system of pedagogical standards that allowed teachers to evoke a sense of neutrality. The prevailing thrust in liberal education is to explicitly reject any such notions, and no one--not a single goddamn person--has proffered a convincing replacement for it. We still say, laughably, that we’re eschewing indoctrination. But people aren’t that stupid. If you find it beneath yourself to make your lies digestible, people will be able to tell when you’re lying to them.

This, my friends, bodes very poorly for the future of education, regardless of whatever happens in the coming months. A movement that cannot articulate its own worth is not one that is long for this world. Teachers themselves are the only force that can resit the slow press toward the eventual elimination of public education, and they have embraced a worldview and comportment style that renders them absolutely unable to mount any worthwhile resistance.

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thebluelemontree · 4 years

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I don't know if you've already answered a similar question, if you have I apologize and will look better for it. But do you think Sandor and Sansa would still love each with how much they've both changed? They've almost become new people, but still the same beings.

It’s no problem. I’ve written about that here and probably touched on this in many other posts.

I wouldn’t frame the question as would they “still love each other with how much they’ve both changed.” It implies that their feelings were already understood as love by them when they were together. What they had was a confusing mess of conflicting emotions that neither were fully capable of understanding or accepting at the time. Each had their reasons for why that was so, which goes to some of the issues that stood between them. While there is chemistry, intimacy, and empathy shown, IMO, it’s better to think of them as possessing the building blocks that can lead to love in the future.

On the other hand, there was also:

The fact that she’s too young, immature, and unready for a consummated romance with anyone. She needs space and time to grow up and figure out what she wants. Until AFFC, she’s still only comfortable consciously fantasizing about Loras Tyrell, who is non-threatening, conventionally attractive, and uncomplicated. They are still relatively chaste/borderline erotic fantasies. The unkiss takes time for her to consciously accept and embrace as reciprocated erotic desire.

The fact that he has no idea how to express himself without resorting to the language of violence that he understands best.

The fact that he copes with the unresolved childhood trauma and PTSD in unhealthy ways like his abrasive Hound persona, his overly-cynical worldview, and sometimes abusing alcohol when he’s under stress.

His immaturity and inability to simply ask for and accept the emotional support he wants (which she was perfectly willing to give) without freaking out over being vulnerable with someone.

The fact that they are on opposite sides of a war where Sansa’s family is in open rebellion against her captors who Sandor owes fealty to.

The fact that she’s the king’s betrothed. She’s his property. To explicitly act upon any romantic attraction would be considered treason, punishable by torture and death.

The fact that there is a massive class disparity between them that overshadows the age difference in their world. That’s one reason why neither can put a name to this thing between them. A future queen / high lord’s daughter from an ancient house should not be fraternizing with a non-knight from a house only three generations old. That’s why they struggle even knowing what to call each other because using first names shows too much familiarity and intimacy. This would be true even without any of the other conflicts. Class controls everything in Westeros.

And yes, he still owes her a big heartfelt apology for his abhorrent behavior during the Blackwater, and he should beg her forgiveness.

Most of these points I elaborate on in more detail in the links above. If you notice, though, most of these things have either been resolved or are in the process of being resolved. None of these issues were ever insurmountable obstacles.

The ways in which Sansa and Sandor have evolved even in their separation has been largely positive and complementary of each other. They haven’t grown apart or become incompatibly different at all. If anything, it’s pushed their feelings further along, and it’s clear they are very much on each other’s minds. Since we can see Sansa’s perspective firsthand, she’s only thought about Sandor more since he left.

Sansa has grown and matured a lot more when we see her in the TWOW sample chapter. Had the five-year gap panned out, she would be legally an adult in Westeros; however, dropping it doesn’t seem to have affected GRRM’s intentions for any of his POVs. She’s in the company of unconventional, sexually mature women in their early twenties who can be role models in navigating adult relationships. The sassy way she takes no shit from a brutally honest Harrold Hardyng shows she has confidence and the ability to go toe-to-toe with Sandor’s gruff personality without getting flustered and running away. After she wipes the floor with him with her wit, she ends up winning Harry over to the point he’s begging for her favor. There is no point in the sample chapter where she voices any anxieties about not feeling ready for marriage, sex, or children. This no longer seems to be an issue for her, so we can assume she feels okay with having an adult relationship at this point.

Her time as a bastard girl has made her warmer and friendlier. She was always kind, but proprieties and courtesies can also read as aloof and re-enforcing strict class boundaries. Can you imagine Kings Landing!Sansa hugging someone like Lothor Brune, a landless knight, as she does in TWOW? Or preferring the company of a sex-positive widow who enjoys taking lovers or a bastard girl over the “perfect sister” she saw in Margaery Tyrell and her cousins? Hell no. That would never happen. This new Sansa lacks those prejudices and is openly affectionate towards people she was raised to keep at arm’s length. Once she loosened up and stopped reciting courtesies, people actually got to know her and like her for who she is. That’s what Sandor always wanted from her, right? To drop the courtesies and flattering bullshit and just be a real person with him, not a talking parrot. While that criticism was harsh and rudely put, it had a lot of truth to it. It seems to have made Sansa into a happier person and more in touch with her authentic self. Now that she has accepted in Feast that she wanted Sandor like that, what is there to stop her from acting on it later?

The Quiet Isle didn’t exist before Feast. It was written for Sandor to recover and rehabilitate. Not just physically, but he’s getting what constitutes psychological counseling and a treatment plan that deals directly with his worst traits. He appears to meet with the Elder Brother often enough because the latter seems to know quite a bit about Sandor’s backstory, what his issues are, and exactly who Sansa Stark is. The rest of the time, he must observe the no talking rule and do meaningful work as a novice. This man, who once flaunted his contempt for those who couldn’t defend themselves as weak and deserving of death, is put to work digging graves for the innocent victims of violence. All day long, he has to look at the faces of men, women, and children killed by evil men with that philosophy. One brother even yells at him for carelessly tossing dirt around with the shovel, and he silently takes it. No smart ass backtalk. In the evening, he has to serve food and clear plates for men he would have once mocked. They’re men of faith, they’ve renounced violence, and Sandor sits lower in status than them. To Sandor’s credit, he humbly submits to all this in a show of respect and humility. It’s like he wants to learn these lessons they are offering and is allowing himself to be schooled. Now Sandor may always be Sandor on some level (if Stranger kicking down the stable doors and refusing to be gelded is any indication). Still, it does look like he’s become a gentler, healthier, and sober version of himself. The only part of Sandor that Sansa rejected was the Hound, and it’s both stated in the text and by George himself that the Hound is dead. Period. And yeah, it seems like Sandor is in a place where he is unlikely to backslide into old behavior, and he can make that heartfelt and necessary apology to Sansa. I don't think Sandor could ever be okay with moving their relationship forward without making amends first. It wouldn't sit right with his sense of remorse and personal responsibility, which is a good thing.

All these changes are for the better for them as individuals and as a possible future couple. Contrary to your ask, I would say a positive, fully-fledged romance with "HEA" potential wouldn’t be possible or believable without all the growth and changes they've undergone. When they reunite, they can do so on more equal footing.

Not that there aren’t more conflicts to overcome. They both are currently wanted fugitives for murders they didn’t commit, so they both need to clear their names and reclaim their true identities. There is still the matter of Sansa’s marital status as Tyrion isn’t dead but their marriage was also unconsummated. She could try to have her marriage officially annulled by the Faith somehow, but to do that, she’ll have to take the risk of revealing her true identity. Again, these don’t seem like plots that won’t be resolved anyway at some point. What about that class divide though? Well, the Starks aren’t like Tywin or Cersei, and they actually value things like faithful service. No reason why Sandor couldn’t be awarded a lordship and lands in gratitude for saving the lives of both Arya and Sansa. I’m just sayin’.

#valyrianscrolls #sansan meta #sansan #sansa stark #sandor clegane #asoiaf meta #my meta #future romance #asoiaf characterization #twow spec #asoiaf spec

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