#i believe no art is without politics bc the personal is inherently political

[thethiefandtheairbender]

My homie please don't tell me you tried to equivalate the real life debate and seriousness bof the don't say gay bill to your anti vs. proship bs

Hi, out queer, ace, and trans person here! I also have an honours degree in the study & history of how fiction can influence reality. Let me take you for a walk (and I'll make sure it's short or else you'll pull the "you think I'm reading all that?") I also already know, thanks to looking at your blog, that you’ve decided I - a sex repulsed, ace adult in a relationship with another adult - am a pedophile, so thanks for bringing back the years of harassment I experienced when I was a literal minor but was unwilling to post my age online bc u know, I was a minor who wanted to keep my privacy a mind-whopping... 2.5 years ago. But clearly I’m decrepit and out of touch now. Never change, tumblr.

A lot of current American politics, including the Don't Say Gay bill (and previously the Hayes Code) was derived from puritanical Victorian era leanings and Calvinistic conservative Christianity. This includes: gayness as an identity > an act (trial of Oscar Wilde), idealization of motherhood, and the moral panic surrounding the 'degradation' of the English language that 18-19th century Grammarians were always concerned with (hi Samuel Johnson).

Another thing grammarians and writers have been concerned with since before is what is Okay to be portrayed in art. Plato's The Republic thinks that art is immoral because it may give people unrealistic or unsafe ideas because people are 'unable' to distinguish fiction from reality. He later retracted this, although Aristotle's Poetics was a text where Aristotle disagreed with Plato's prior established opinion.

Re: the past 3000+ years of literary discourse - those who try to restrict the radical aspects of art lose the argument every time, and start it back up 30 years later.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you that art has always been very political, as is most things. Fandom, as a pop-junkie transformative spiel, has also been deeply political, particularly for marginalized people.

Fandom nowadays is full of people who believe that, in order to be really sorry about something, someone has to publicly repent per whatever moral standard has been decided to else the congregation - I mean twitter - will publicly shame them for their sin.

Fandom is entrenched in cultural Christianity and the conservative mindsets that come with it. Aphobia in fandom was rampant from 2014-2017; truscum and tucute discourse as well; how prevalent TERF rhetoric can be (women are inherently good, attraction to men is shameful, etc). I've seen all of these things in fandom. All hinge an idea on being able to decode a person's intent (somehow), the rising attachment of morality to genres of entertainment (antis), and how many antis I've seen that are TERFs or Aphobes or guzzling down that rhetoric without even realizing.

Terfs and the Conservative far-right have a long history of working together. Both frame concerns of gay people as pedophiles, being anti sex work (because sex is nasty and a sin), that we must Protect the Children who cannot monitor or make any decisions for themselves at any age. The anti vs pro ship dynamic online is a microism of larger public discussions regarding purity culture - and that includes how queerness is overly sexualized, how queer sex is seen as especially dirty, the "should kink be at pride?" discourse, and issues with respectability politics.

Antis who say we have to harass people to control what exists in fandom to "protect minors" on a moral basis are ideologically adjacent to parents who decry earlier Sex Education for children (which, every time it's implemented, is shown to decrease the amount of abuse children face, not further it). A quick scroll through your blog tells me you're willing to generalize hundreds of people's personal history with CSA because you don't think survivors can 1) vehemently disagree with you or 2) demand disclosure of their personal history to exist online void of that harassment.

Aka to take some tags to the forefront: #like the schools don't want to talk about queerness and are banning books so kids don't get Ideas#and people also don't want 'problematic' fiction in fandom in case kids get Ideas or can't use critical thinking skills#it's not a hard leap to make

It sounds like you're the one who has a problem with reading comprehension and building connections between different kinds of discourse, not me. It's almost like teenagers (queer or otherwise) raised in conservative or culturally Christian homes are more susceptible to puritanical rhetoric, or something... 🤔 (I could also get into just how American the current fandom anti vs pro conflict is, but I think this is long enough, don't you?)

A final note from this article:

Beyond betraying simple art illiteracy, though, these intensely personal, emotional complaints and appeals to public safety have a clear antecedent: religious and conservative opposition to “obscenity.” The centering of individual values and pain, the assumption that a universal moral standard exists which should guide all public or quasi-public art and behavior, and the belief that art can do material harm to both people and culture as a whole unite the two at first apparently disparate groups of angry indie gamers and religious fundamentalists.

The deployment of victimhood as an unimpeachable defense is an old tactic frequently used by hate groups like One Million Moms and its parent organization, the American Family Association, whose rallying cry “think of the children” now echoes through everything from intra-community Gay Pride discourse to the drearily predictable “there’s too much sex on TV” tweets that seem to sweep across the platform on a weekly basis.

#anti purity culture #thanks for asking #sincerely a very tired nb queer english major #wasn't as short as i wanted but like #had to approach a certain level of incompetence with a direct read

[of-foolish-and-wise]

Here’s the thing to remember about anti-racist book lists:

Read these, yes. But then read books that were not written as treatises on racism. Seek out Black art not only because it can teach you something about race but because Black people are simply doing extraordinary work.

Read Morrison as much for her prose and her mastery of pacing as for her politics. Read Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, an ode to little wonders and a reminder to look at the world with gratitude. Read Elizabeth Alexander’s stunning testament to grief and marriage, The Light of the World, and note the innovations in form as she mixes memoir with poetry and recipes, a collage meant to mirror her late husband’s paintings. Read NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season and marvel at the worlds she builds.

Just a small reminder. Black art does not exist solely to educate non-Black people. Always be expanding your horizons.

#the reading lists are great! #but they are the beginning #i believe no art is without politics bc the personal is inherently political #all art engages race on some level — especially white art #but also find the books that don’t exist specifically to instruct *you* #litblr #black art #bibliophile #anti-racism #bookblr #of foolish and wise #on literature #tori recommends #important

[uta-makura]

I found an old word document where I stuffed my favourite answers under my uquiz question "if you want, add what's your opinion about the mage rights movement & revolution" (to this quiz) and why not post them here so we can all scream mage rights together. if u are any of these people, i love you

The Templar Order is corrupt and does more to encourage Mages to resort to extremist methods than it does anything else. Locking people away and teaching them to have an intrinsic fear of something they were born with is so inherently wrong. Magic is just as dangerous as a man with a sword. Teaching fear will only build prejudice and self-hatred, leading mages to turning to demons. Whilst there are some mages who would use their power to seek authority, the same can be said for anyone who has a big army and a fancy sword to match. Mages need an environment where they can learn safely without being torn from their homes and treated like abominations from the get go. Thedas’ entire concept of Mages (with the exclusion of Tevinter) is based on historical prejudice for a time that no longer exists but this prejudice leads Mages into radicalism- such as domestic terrorism or blood magic. If Mages were treated fairly then there would be less mages turning to darker arts. Furthermore Ander’s was completely justified; Elthina was complacent in the abuse of the mages which then led to larger scale crimes and the Chantry as a whole is guilty of the same problem. The compromise between Meridith and Orsino wouldn’t have worked- what Ander’s did was an unfortunate necessity that stemmed from the incompetence of the Templar order and the Chantry as a whole

mage rights or mage fights. anders was right

fucking good

mage rights (im gay)

if i see a templar its on sight

cullen is shit and anders was right the templar order can get stuffed

I think there should be a codex entry which is a literature review summarising the data on Possessed-Mage-Related Incidents. anyway, Mage Rights Now™, what do you mean it's a complex issue and there are genuinely some safety concerns. Mage Rights Now.

im too lazy to type down my proper opinion in detail so im just gonna: [children yelling: mage rights! mage rights!]

The mage rights movement and revolution both have my full support, as templars and the Chantry are corrupt and nothing will change if they continue to be allowed to treat mages the way they do.

im a mlm (mage loving mage), also fuck da templars

personally i hate the chantry as it functioned prior to the revolution, i dont think any group of people deserves to be oppressed in such a way, especially not by a theocracy driven by fear. mage rights or mage fights! anders did what needed to be done, and the whole "but he blew up a CHURCH" thing is just wrong imo, the kirkwall chantry was never a simple place of worship, it was a sign of the chantry's power and authority in kirkwall (golden statues anyone? the money they're worth could be put to so much good use, but nooope), a political symbol, and i dont believe anders hurt innocents bc 1. we dont really see innocent worshippers in the chantry at any point bc its not that kind of establishment, and 2. he blew it up at night, that one sister got away with m u r d e r in there at night. anders tried peace and nothing happened; destroying such a symbol made the impact that was needed to spark a wave of change. sorry i just feel veryyy strongly about this matter i dont mean to sound hostile ?

i'm a pacifist and would prefer things not resorted to violence, but the mages have been oppressed for centuries and have none of the rights non-mages do. they're locked up in towers and hunted down if they manage to escape. that's cruel and vile and outright inhumane. furthermore, the people in power have made it clear that they don't care nor will they do jackshit about it. the way things are the situation can't be solved through diplomatic means, no matter how much i would like it to, and therefore i'm in favor of forcing change. though, no blood should be spilled unless absolutely necessary. no one deserves to die, no matter who they are or what they've done. justice shouldn't be confused with revenge.

mage rights baybie!!!!!! education and destigmatization is the best way to combat possession & blood magic, not imprisonment (as it is, people are too scared to come forward about their powers which causes ignorance which leaves them even more vulnerable to possession. if people weren't AFRAID of circles that would happen MUCH LESS)

anders did domestic terrorism and that was really sexy of him

mage rights babeyy. i project too hard as a neurodivergent gay ex-catholic (thus, apostate)

Mage rights! Make the circle a school rather than a fucking prison, and separate the chantry from it

Mages deserve their own rights and the revolution is absolutely justified

Anders was (and still is) right, fuck the chantry

Basically, anders was right but the man can't do everything himself. They need to organize and obtain thing without violence. Violance was necessary just to start but can't be forever

Anders was right and I will not forgive the DAI writers for making hawke talk about him like he wasn't. No more circles.

templars/the chantry = trash. burn it all down.

#dragon age #anders #anders was right #mage rights #meta #da2

[thedeadflag]

I’m so confused! I know it’s not your responsibility to educate me but in your post bringing awareness to the negative aspects of g!p fanfic you say

“Why do these g!p characters rarely if ever involve experiences reflective of trans/intersex women? Why are they so utterly cis and perisex-washed? Why do nearly all writers have zero idea that tucking is a thing? “

Doesn’t that answer your original question? The reason they don’t reflect those groups of ppl is bc g!p isn’t trying to represent those groups of people or else it WOULD be transphobic to limit them to one specific fetish right? it just refers to a canonically female character with the addition of a penis (I don’t argue the name “g!p” should be changed bc that’s a no brainer why that could be offensive). But the fanfic in general, how could it be harmful? I’ve noticed in my time reading it as a non binary person it’s given me great gender euphoria reading a reader insert where reader has a penis while being a femme representing person just bc that’s a reflection of my personal experience. I don’t see anywhere where g!p fanfic ever references or tries to emulate the experiences of trans or intersex people so how could it be offensive?

Sorry this is way too long I’m just very confused

I'm going to try and lay this out as politely as I can. It's after 3:30 in the morning here, so this could be a bit disjointed and rambling. More under the cut:

In real life, ~99.999999% of women with penises are trans women. Which puts us in a tricky situation of (A) being the only women with penises around for media involving women with penises to reflect back on, and (B) being in the lovely position of precious few people actually having had meaningful real life exposure to trans women, meaning (C.) all those stigmas and all that misinformation are going to purely affect us and it’s going to be uncritically gobbled up by the masses, since they don’t have any meaningful information to fill in the blanks with instead.

When we peer into the depths of femslash fandoms and see all these folks who aren't trans women writing about women with penises, and using cis women’s bodies as platforms for these penises, it’s the simplest thing.

I mean, some of those folks might actually be struggling and confused about why they’re into it, what the real appeal is, why they get off on it, why they might have some feelings about wanting a penis of their own…

…but from our vantage point, it’s really easy to gauge 99.99% of the time. We can generally see valid, legitimate yearning to have a penis pretty damn easily in a piece of art/writing, and we can also see when people who create this media are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization.

And 99.9% of the time, the creators are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization, and see trans women’s bodies as a perfect vehicle to tap into that, generally due to deeply held cissexist views that link us and our bodies and genitals directly to cis men, to maleness. As if penises are rooted in maleness and masculinity (which is absolutely not true).

And I have sympathy for NB folks (certainly TME ones who have reached out to me in the past about this) who might be struggling with that, but just because they’re non-binary, it doesn’t mean they get to appropriate our bodies and reproduce transmisogyny and trans fetishization in their attempts at feeling better. Shit doesn't work like that.

Because again, the only women with penises in this world, essentially, are trans women. Meaning any woman with a penis in media is a trans woman, implicitly or explicitly. Meaning that when people who aren’t us want to write us, intent doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if it’s just the writer’s fantasy, it’s still going to attach a variety of messages directly onto us.

And more often than not, due to cissexism, those messages are linking us to maleness, to toxic masculinity, etc..

While I do want to believe they're a fairly small minority, a lot of NB folks in fandom spaces like g!p characters in part because they see penises as male and the rest of the body as female and think that duality is interesting and would be comfortable, and is a nice balance of “both worlds” or a nice position “between male and female”, but that’s a wholly cissexist, transmisogynistic view to have, and it’s one that absolutely cannot be supported without directing sexual violence against trans women and invalidating our entire existence. Certainly not all NB folks into g!p like it for that reason, but holy shit a fair bit of them do and it’s weird and wrong and fetishistic.

g!p emerged from the idea that women can't have penises, and drew on the transmisogyny and cissexism of tr*nny porn to structure that frame of desire and the core patterns and trends within these works. It's always been trans women's bodies being used as a vehicle, whether or not the writers of these fics are explicitly aware of it, because the trope itself still holds true to its original patterns and cissexism. It's not the name that's the problem, it's the content; changing the name would be a surface level change that wouldn't affect anything.

g!p objectifies women with penises (trans women). A woman with a penis is more than just a woman with a penis, but the use of the term and trope is literally to (A) remind people that women don't have penises, otherwise the g!p term wouldn't be needed if people actually accepted women with penises as women, and that (B) this is a story centered on a scenario where there's a woman with a penis, with key focus on that genitalia specifically. it's the drawing point, it's the lure, it's what everything is centered on. It is a means for folks to write lesbian sex while also writing about penis in vagina and getting off to it. It's also no surprise that the penises so clearly emulate cis men's penises in these works, that is by design.

As I’ve said many times before, if you’re only writing trans women’s bodies to showcase cis men’s penises, you’re not respecting the womanhood of trans women, and this ultimately has nothing inherent to do with penis-owning women, it has to do with (cis) men and their penises, because trans women are just being used as a vehicle to emulate them. When NB folks do the same thing, and imagining themselves as those g!p characters, they are ultimately embodying cis men, their maleness, and often toxic masculinity, in a way that feels safe and distanced enough for them, a shell that they often code as cisnormative due to their own unprocessed cissexism.

And trans women don’t deserve that.

You seem caught in the idea that if something doesn't directly perfectly reflect trans women, that it can't be linked to us., which ignores the long long history of media being used to misrepresent marginalized peoples and cast us in insulting, dehumanizing lights. You show a lack of understanding of the g!p trope and the long history of its usage across a few other names, even if the content and patterns remained the same. It shows a lack of understanding of tr*nny porn and transmisogynistic stigmas, which the trope draws heavily from.

I think we can all recognize that most 'lesbian' prn that's made does not represent actual lesbians, it's overwhelmingly catered to the male gaze. We can also recognize that this category of porn has led to a lot of harassment towards lesbians from cis men who at the very least want to believe lesbians are just like they are in the porn he watches, that lesbians just need the right man. Lesbians are being used as a vehicle for a fantasy that was created externally to them, and doesn't represent their realities.

It's the same kind of situation here. The way g!p fics play out overwhelmingly doesn't reflect trans women's realities, but they are inherently linked to us regardless, as we're the vehicles for those fantasies, as unrealistic and harmful as they may be.

g!p characters are built in our fetishized image that’s based on a deeply cissexist misunderstanding of us, of the gender binary, and of bodies in general.

I mean, when 99% of cis folks don’t understand how trans women tend to be sexually intimate… when they don’t understand what dysphoria is and how it works and how it can affect us physically and emotionally…when they don’t understand almost any of our lived experiences…then they’re not going to be able to accurately portray us even if they wanted to.

And I’ve read enough g!p fics where authors wrote those as a means of trying to add trans rep, but because they didn’t understand us at all, it wasn’t remotely representative, and it was ultimately fetishistic, even if there was an undercurrent of sympathy and a lack of following certain common g!p patterns there that differentiated it from the norm.

If g!p fics were at all about reducing dysphoria or finding euphoria, then it wouldn’t be explicitly tied up in the performance of very specific sex acts, very specific forms of misogyny and toxic masculinity, very specific forms of sexual violence and exertion of sexual power, etc.

But it is.

So the notion that creating g!p fics helps NB folks? Nope. It CAN certainly prevent/delay those folks from facing a whole boatload of shit they’ve internalized, and coddle them at the expense of trans women.

Because if it was really about bodies and dysphoria/euphoria, there would be a considerable push (allying with out own) to end our fetishization and to represent us in and out of sexual contexts with accuracy, respect, and care. Because they wouldn’t care what sex acts were performed and what smut beats were hit, they’d just want to see someone with a body like their ideal being loved, being sexual, connecting, being authentic, etc. Which very much is not the case in the overwhelming majority of g!p fics. That's what we want, and it's not what g!p writers want, it's nothing they give a shit about.

Like, a ways back I started doing random pulls of g!p fics from various fandoms and assessing them for certain elements to provide some quantitative clarity. I started on The 100 here, and did OuaT here. Never finished the 100 one since the results leveled out and stayed pretty consistent as the sample size grew, so I didn't really see the point in continuing any further after about 140 fics when the data wasn't really changing much at all.

Lastly, media influences people. I've read countless posts and comments from people who use fanfiction as a sex ed guide, in essence. Which is ridiculous, but I also know sex ed curricula often isn't very accurate or extensive in a lot of areas, so people take what they can get. Representation in media can be powerful, and when it overwhelmingly misrepresents people, that's also powerful. Just because fandom is a bit smaller than televised media, it doesn't make that impact any lesser, certainly not for those whose primary media intake is within fandom.

Virtually all trans representation in f/f fanfiction is misrepresentative of us. That has a cost in how people understand us, how people react to us, and how people treat us. Not just online, but in physical spaces, and in intimate settings.

I invite you to read that post you referenced again, or perhaps this longer one which is a response to a trans guy who seemed to feel something similar to you with this trope.

All I can do is lay it out there and try to explain this. It's up to you how you handle this. All I know is whenever there's a big surge in g!p in a fandom, trans women generally leave it en masse, because it's a very clear and consistent message that we're not valued, respected, and that people value getting off on us over finding community with us.

#g!p #creative responsibility #trans fetishization #trans representation #intersex fetishization #intersex representation #genitals tw #genital mention tw #intersexism #transmisogyny #fandom meta #long post #cissexism #t slur tw #media representation #media literacy

[karanoid]

about top joe discord

LET ME ADDRESS A FEW POINTS:

There has been many fear and anxiety regardless the top!joe discord I made. I understand how it gives my discord a bad reputation. Somebody has kindly reached out to me to ask me addressing several points, which I’m now gonna clarify:

1. I am racist, I asked why, and they said mostly because of my dismissive behavior to people who called me out for drawing yusuf adorned in gold jewelry which made their friends feel unsafe. So, I am a muslim and was raised in a muslim household and community. I am fucking brown.

I didn’t say it because you don’t need to know that about me. What bothers me is how some people feel the need to come to my inbox informing me “maam yusuf is a religious muslim who prays 5 times a day and do all the supplementary prayers all while he drinks alcohol and fuck nicky in the dailies, he wouldnt be wearing gold maam no maam.” as if I didn’t know any better. so please, now don’t do that. If you care so much about the littlest details like wearing gold then you’ll also call out yusuf because he draws living beings and drinks champagne. yes it’s true muslim men are forbidden from wearing gold AND silk but let’s not forget, nothing in the comic and movies imply yusuf has ever been religious. It’s easier to see nicolo as religious because he was a fucking priest. Yusuf was a fucking merchant, it’s easy to see that he’d be less faithful because he would have been travelling and seen many kind of people to broaden his horizons and not contained to a little bubble of hyper religious community. However, let me remind you: whether yusuf AND nicolo are religious or not is entirely UP TO THE AUTHOR/ARTIST. It’s totally fine to make him religious and if you can respect it THATS GREAT, I ALSO LIKE HIM THAT WAY, but please remember it’s not even canon and hey sometimes I just draw things because I like the aesthetics. Also please, do not harass writers for getting a thing or two incorrect, even white people cannot get christianity correct, even between two muslims could be a disagreement whether this fic’s yusuf is problematic or not. I wouldn’t even expect anything more and THAT’S OKAY. Just don’t be an ass to muslims of color in real life and don’t fall into the believe that it’s a religion of violence. you can say that greg made him that way bc he knew nothing better but hey, I have no problem with that. again, it’s fine to make him religious, I’d be delighted but it’s ALSO fine to make him not religious.

2. I think that people only write Top!Nicky out of political correctness. OKAY. I apologize for this. I thought like this because I have accounts telling me that they were pressured into writing top!nicky or they wanted more readerships so I make a BIG assumption. I realized this is only a small part of switch and top!nicky fics and the big bulk of this must be out of genuine care. So yeah, I apologize for thinking that people only write top!nicky out of political correctness. I think writers should be allowed to write whatever they want. Yes this includes top!Nicky. And in whatever kinks they want it. However, this still doesn’t change that the discourses do scare people away from writing top!joe. Write top!nicky however you want, but stop vague-blogging about top!joe. racism isn’t inherent to top!joe and you can always remind people to be mindful with their writings but discouraging people from writing top!joe is not the solution. 

3. Top!joe is racist and people in the discord are racist. Okay, I am gonna touch several aspects why top!joe discord is considered racist: (1) because I don’t like to switch them, therefore I am racist. Sorry that’s not how it works. I have a clear preference and that’s just how I roll. Besides, a lot of people in the discord (including me) think either they switch (because they are 900 yo) or joe just doesn’t like bottoming. I’m not the kind of people who refers to reality for fiction I consume but people who prefer to top or to bottom exist (2) i want to be away from accountability and responsibility. Nope. The reason I made it is because I wanted to gather people with same interest as mine. 

4. I paint Yusuf as aggressive and the whole discord like him being an aggressive top. I think this is the only reason why the discord is seen in a negative light. Because wow what a coincidence that someone vagueblogged my discord at the day I celebrated about Nicky suggesting 20 years and wrote a post about how Joe is allowed to be angry. And beside someone made the WRONG assumption that we are focusing on Joe’s anger and violence (what). Okay, I don’t know how to break this down. But I will try. First, yes I was overjoyed at the news. Because I’m one of the people that do not like feral!nicky headcanon. I liked it at first bc it was funny but then it was twisted into Nicky being cold. So I don’t like it (lol), I still like it though but like I don’t seriously think that way. However, I never liked the idea that Nicky suggested higher than Joe. Because then his character just doesn’t click with me, there was a cognitive dissonance for me because joe clearly says nicky’s heart overflows kindness, you can see nicky as a medic in the credit montage. Also, from their body language and from the way the movie set em up, I think Joe is the one who suggested higher and I am glad to be proven right. Second, I did write a post about how Joe is allowed to be angry at Booker. People agreed with me, so I was not alone. But the reason I wrote that post is not because I wanted to paint yusuf as aggressive, but because I’m tired at people who think Joe shouldn’t display any negative emotions. I think it’s out of character. I do NOT think Joe is aggressive. That is NOT his wholeass personality. If you looked at my tog art tag, never once I portrayed Joe as anything aggressive. If I do, please show me. Third, people are conflating this with my post where I reblogged with a comment that implies aggressive Joe isn’t racism. Okay in this, the context is IN BED. It’s Joe being aggressive in BED. It’s literally BED ROLES AND FANTASY. I don’t even have a particular scenario in my head when I reblogged that, the original post clearly refers to bed roles with manhandling and kinks etc. like, why would you spank someone in public? Lastly, about the discord, NOPE, most people in the discord agree that Joe is either a GENTLE DOM or SERVICE TOP. But in my opinion, if someone likes Joe as an aggressive top (again, bed roles baby) I really don’t think it’s racism. It’s just... projection? 

anyway, back to joe’s emotions, these are posts from a moroccan man (paragraph #7) and a brown woman whose posts I agree with. Let’s be real, people of color are expected to shut up in favor of white people’s fragile feelings.

Now, about racism in fandom. I understand the concern because muslim men are painted as violent and aggressive. You know what I will never forgive those radicals for taking away innocents lives and to leave a lasting damage in how muslims are perceived in the west. However, you have to keep in mind, Joe in the movie is far from being stereotyped. I mean, Gina and Marwan practically greenlit him? Now, you might have concerns that writers are gonna turn him into a walking stereotype which is... okay, I understand that concern. But the solution is to communicate this ‘hey I think you make him too stereotypical in this etc etc’ not “write more top!nicky AND shame top!joe” because again, top!joe is not inherently racist.

also some people mentioned that they hope I recognize racial bias in the ship. dude, that goes without saying, all aspects of your life will be influenced by racial biases. however, this kind of thing is not specific to fandom/shipping. Like I said I’m fucking brown, friends and families with facial features that cater to white expectation are treated better. I did say at the bottom of this post, yeah I did notice why it’s always a brown character who’s always openly mad. And that’s in itself a form of racial bias. Racial biases affect everyone, white or POC, it doesn’t matter. But I got an issue with how people think this is racism. like how convenient, if by falling to racial biases mean you are a racist then what about those white people who created this racial biases in the first place? and I noticed the persons who got the audacity to cry about everything in this fandom is white?? I mean okay, they don’t know what I am, but not everyone is comfortable with sharing their private information like ethnic group, faith, etc. what if they really don’t want to share it? Because like you said, racial bias, whether good or bad will affect me. Now, I don’t know what white people are feeling, I’m not white. However, based on my interactions with them. We’re all just people sharing same interest, it could be they fall into racial biases, but all we shared about are just regular HCs. Even people making a conscious effort to combat racial bias still in essence fall for racial bias. You just cannot escape it.

According to this post, fandom assumes that the bottom is the proxy of writers, I don’t think this is applicable to everyone but let’s just say it’s true and people tend to write about their projection better so I’m gonna assume the racism part comes from the fact that..yeah I do think the bottom usually gets more fleshed out as a result of them being the writers proxy, so somebody posted this in the discord which I agree because yes I do think there’s a lack about yusuf’s background especially when it comes to crusade era:

but since I know most writers aren’t muslims, to me it’s not so much about racism but they simply know nothing about it, and not always out of ignorance either but in this climate, if you get a thing or two wrong you’d get harassed. so *shrugs* I understand the reluctancy. But here’s the thing, this is not about top/bottom issue but because most of the fandom are white so they have more freedom in writing the white character. Anyway, plenty of people have projected themselves into yusuf already, the whole “top/bottom” thing in this fandom is not even a thing. Yes, some writers project on the bottom so if you prefer bottom!joe that’s fine, somebody in the discord is doing a research and it turned out top!joe wasn’t even a CLEAR majority in JULY. So clearly they got their share already?

so please, let’s stop with the vitriol. if people are preferring top!joe it’s clearly because of different preferences. it’s not that deep. it’s the same way with how some people are preferring top!nicky. But we’re being driven out based on a hypothetical scenarios? like what do you want? for us to cease existing??? don’t be ridiculous.

I know people won’t listen to me. So this is my suggestion: LETS JUST IGNORE THINGS YOU DON’T LIKE. LET’S ALL JUST AGREE TO DISAGREE. 

#discourse #the old guard #joe x nicky #kaysanova #immortal husbands

[angellicalls-blog]

[ ALEX FITZALAN , CISMALE , HE/HIM ] — hugo william montcroix is the twenty year old sophomore in professor morrow’s classics course. they are a pisces, which is probably what makes them so non-judgemental and anxious. every time i see them, i can’t help but think of the the smell of french perfume, hand rolled cigarettes, paint stained hands, dreamy eyes towards the sky and wrinkled designer clothes.

--- FAMILY 

Hugo is the middle child of the Montcroix family, who are known by their extensive tradition as politicians and investors of a large variety of schools across the globe. They, allegedly, come from a family of scholars and people who value knowledge, his older brother is a well-known astronomer and his younger sister is a tech prodigy, while their mother teaches at Columbia and their father is a politician who fights for education.

 Or at least that’s what everybody should think about them, a family of humble people that use their money wisely. Little did they know his father steals money from education, his mother is frequently absent from her classes, his brother slept his way to the top and his sister following their father’s footsteps. 

Meanwhile, Hugo is the odd one out, who doesn’t give a shit about any of that and just strives to navigate through that mess of a family. He’s the middle child, who’s not into science or politics, who loves arts and literature, and runs away from attention at all costs. 

He actually managed to set up an expo of his sculptures (his parents forgot to attend it), but it blew up pretty big and it was on newspapers all over us.

The reason Hugo isn’t currently at Columbia with his mother lies with a problem involving speed racing, bad reputation and lack of productivity. He’s always loved adrenaline and experience new things, and getting his fifteen minutes of fame was the bridge he needed to live his dreams. 

His parents think of the kids like......... more as if they’re a sciences project than actual human beings. They try to love the kids to an extent, but fail completely and end up passing as condescending, so the kids all think it’s their fault because they’re not good enough.

Cool parties, alcohol and drugs were nothing compared to the thrills of speeding his sports car through the streets of Portland to win races against other rich kids like himself. It was a fight of egos and he loved every single moment of it, nothing his family did could outshine that.

--- PERSONALITY

Hugo is a major soft boy with artist vibes, the one who offers u to go to a café and watch the sky and do stuff in the real world outside internet

I wouldn’t say he’s friendly with everybody, but he’s a pretty warm and chill person, he likes to really pay attention on people and what they have to say -- bc of that he’s a great listener, but don’t fool yourself, he can and will immortalize ur face on an ugly painting if necessary

ABSOLUTE MESS OF A PERSON

Used to be such a nice kid when he was younger, when his older brother told him that their parents didn’t love them he ACTUALLY-CRIED-A-FUCKING-RIVER. After that, Hugo was deeply hurt and tried to prove his brother wrong, until he realized his brother was right and pressed the “FUCK THIS SHIT” button

Followed his brother’s footsteps into becoming a The Riot Club rich boy, but isn’t that preppy bc he cared probably too much about some stuff 

Very sensitive and anxious, but sometimes i think he might get agressive??? idk, the boy has a lot of potential and def will surprise me

That “my problem is that i fall in love with every pretty thing is absolutely him”, he falls in love every 10 seconds

Doesn’t believe in gender and sexuality, but refers himself as a cismale bc he doesn’t mind and society made him this, so i don’t think he’s actually non binary??? help, idk

Relies a lot on money +++ is that one rich boy with expensive (and wrinkled, probably paint stained) clothing

I mean, Hugo’s nice but he’s also a rich boy. He’s inherently selfish lmao, also his parents pretty much fucked up with his head, so don’t expect someone with a lot of morals

Thinks the greeks were right about everything, that says a lot about him already 

--- LIL’ HEADCANONS

Absolute wine snatcher, will steal every available bottle of wine without guilt

Will transform every given room in his personal atelier

Always has pencils and ink with him & draws/paints on places that weren’t made to be drawn/painted at, like 

church benches, walls, anything really

bathroom stalls

receipts, napkins, imPORTANT DOCUMENTS

diner, restaurant, bar or pub tables

walls

doors

newspapers

lost objects

library books (YES, CAN U IMAGINE THIS????)

body parts????

Does art forgery to get some extra ca$$$$hhhh, if you want in, i’d love to plot this!!

Started to roll his own cigarettes bc he likes to mix cannabis and tobacco, and he puts them inside an old lucky strike box he painted over. 

FUN FACT: hugo thinks rolling cigarettes helps him with his anxiety and he only learned to roll a good cigarette bc he compulsively started to roll them, absolutely hyperfixated, until he thought it was acceptable

He is obsessed by the idea of creating a perfect sculpture & the new world’s masterpiece (we all know it’s absolutely unreachable, but don’t tell him that) bc only this will truly fulfill his parents and make them proud of him (poor boy). IT ALSO NEEDS TO BE SAID THAT he doesn’t know what this masterpiece is, he believes he’ll know after he’s finished it. 

Depressed & stressed, never takes his meds bc Hugo thinks they leave him empty and he needs the suffering for his art, but at the same time he’s basically always miserable (HIS ARGUMENT: all the world’s biggest artists were, just look at Van Gogh)

He pays a lot of attention on bodies and he thinks all bodies are beautiful, his goal is to make a perfect replica of Michelangelo’s attention on details like flesh, muscles, bones, etc. He wants to look at other people’s bodies closely and touch it so he can know how to sculpt them

\\ That’s also a slight excuse to sleep around

Mess of a person 

#about.

[fantroll-purgatory]

Heya, this is my first time submitting IIRC!! so like. please be gentle

I don’t actually have a finished drawing of this character yet, I’ll have to work on them later. Is that ok? If I show you their design in a separate post after I’ve finished the art of them? Sorry its just. i really want to hear your thoughts on her personality and such

Of course it’s alright! We take trolls without drawn design concepts all the time. You can definitely send them in later! I’m always happy to review a good character! 

World: Ouranos, a troll planet that orbits a red dwarf, and is tidally locked-one side always faces towards the sun, and the other side faces away. Unlike Alternia, Ouranos has never had any seadwelling trolls, and all the castes simply run from red to purple. All trolls are de jure equal, after a long and bloody history of subjugation under many tyrannical rulers, but this de jure equality hardly matters due to wealth and resource disparities that prevent historical lowbloods from holding any sort of power. Trolls on Ouranos don’t inherently live longer if they have bluer blood, but wealth disparities means that higher bloods can essentially live as long as they want while lowbloods suffer and die within just a few dozen sweeps. I like this world setup a lot! It expands upon some extant questions about Alternian society, too, like if part of the lifespan disparity is simply caused by lack of access and difference in labor expectations. You should think about details of this planet like: Is this just the planet they’ve always lived on in your AU? Or is it a colony planet established by the Condesce? Or is it a forgotten planet that the trolls we are familiar with lived on Before moving to Alternia and there’s been a convergent evolution despite the planetary separation?  Name: Elapea Serpen (Serpen comes from the suborder Serpentes, which defines all snakes, while Elapea comes form Elapidae, a family in Serpentes that contains sea snakes and coral snakes, the two kinds of snakes she is based off of. she isn’t exclusively based off of elapids though, she has some elements of boas as well: see her strife specibus)

I love this a Lot for a character themed around being a landdwelling creature diving into the water.  Age: 5 Sweeps

Theme/Story: So Elapea is kind of a Meenah/Feferi figure on Ouranos- she is the descendant of the Imperial Devourer, the last empress of Ouranos before she was overthrown by a gang of lowbloods. She actually knows this, as her caretaker (who is another troll instead of a lusus) is a very old highblood who was alive during the reign of the Imperial Devourer.

Backstory out of the way, Elapea is basically a weird conspiracy theorist. You remember how I said Ouranos has no seadwellers? Elapea believes they actually do exist, and they’re controlling the entire planet from the shadows, or something. (This was inspired by the story of cults like the Illuminati, or the lizard people conspiracy theory, but I only realized how antisemitic those stories were, so like. I’m trying to think of a way to have it so that she can still believe seadwellers exist and control the planet without it resembling any of those antisemitic conspiracy theories). As such, Elapea dives deep into the ocean to try and hunt down and kill seadwellers, enamored with the idea that by killing them all she could become worshipped by trollkind, or something. She never finds any seadwellers of course (not for a while at least), just a bunch of monsters.

Due to pressures from her now old (898 sweeps exactly) caretaker, who is kind of not great at doing his job and tries to grow her into an extremely strong troll who can rule the planet like her ancestor, she has taken to pitch romanticizing the idea of a seadweller, simply because she thinks she has to. (This part needs working out as well, i want it to be like. uncomfortable. but i also want it to be clear that i dont condone that kind of thing in kids like her? bc once again she’s only five sweeps old and i just realized that this doesnt actually go well with what her caretaker tries to shape her into what do i dO (actually what if i made it so that her caretaker wanted to enforce a traditional notion of femininity that’s akin to our sense of toxic masculinity, simply under a matriarchy as opposed to a patriarchy? that might work)).

Ok I realize I got back into backstory, so one more thing. Elapea is extremely dramatic, akin to a theater kid. Once again, she wants to be a superhero, so she sort of plays out everything she does like she’s in a play and the whole world is watching. She wants to be the protagonist of a story.

I love that you’re actually thinking about the sensitivity implications of these kinds of things, it’s always encouraging to see writers thinking about and researching the backgrounds of this. Wrt the illuminati and snake people thing, the simplest solution is to just try to avoid drawing any kind of aesthetic or cultural similarities to it. You can’t let Ouranos have the same kind of Hype around Illuminati conspiracies or the same degree of online jokes about the ‘lizard people living among us’ premise. I think your safest bet overall is to avoid Any kind of “shadowy cabal of noble people destroying the world,” because that almost always has antisemitic roots unless you’re very careful about it and most non-Jewish people just aren’t going to be able to achieve that kind of nuance without a Jewish sensitivity reader. 

Maybe if you wanted to play on her Hero Bent, you could dive more into an Atlantian/Cosmic Horror (Lovecraft Don’t Interact)/Greek Hero sort of angle? I know that’s an odd sort of mishmash, but instead of her believing seadwellers are some kind of String-Pulling Clique, she could believe more in Furthest Ring style interpretation of seadwellers who aren’t so much controlling the world as they are driving the world mad. You could give her a very classic-style Dive Into The Underworld To Fight A God style vibe. Read about Katabasis.

As for the Bad Guardian thing, I can say that you could probably push the relationship angle effectively without straying into ‘too weird’ territory by having the Guardian try to remind her that a strong leader “HAS” to have strong quadrants backing her and trying to like set her up on dates with other highbloods. You can make it obvious that this has a significant impact on her view of relationships, like having her waffle between believing in true love(s) and thinking of romance as a purely political tool, of her straining between wanting to make her guardian proud/wanting to date nobly and wanting to pursue her own happiness. 

So make that a clear reflection of the pressures her Guardian puts on her in general. Everything is performative, everything is in pursuit of her political aims, everything is so that she can take her proper throne, the Lonesome treats her not as a person but as a tool, as a potentiality, and she is not allowed to be herself in any ways. If you want to keep the Seadweller Fantasy, maybe you could do something that a lot of Abused Kids experience- maybe she experiences the Shape Of Water effect. Daydreams about finding a monster partner who will take her away from the pressures of modern society. 

Goals: Basically, to make sure i can solidly lock her backstory into one that isn’t like. really antisemitic and also somewhat pedophilic? because frankly i dont want people to think im saying its ok to ship literal children or something and like. how do i get that across, that this kid is really not treated very well by her caretaker (ill just say his title, it’s Assassin Lonesome. he’s a pretty edgy dude but i wont get too much in detail with him). Also, I need a fair bit of help with a quest? and also to try and develop who she *really* wants to be and the dichotomy with how her caretaker *wants* her to be.

I think you don’t have to worry about two characters who are the same age dating or having feelings- that’s normal for 15 year olds to do. You should definitely just make it obvious that you don’t think adults should have a hand in children’s relationships the way the Lonesome tries to. As I said above, press on the fact that the Lonesome really puts the weight of her ancestor over her and tries to force her to fit a mold and a role, maybe indicate that he objectifies her/treats her more as a weapon or tool than as a person with her own goals. We’ll get into what SHE wants to be when we get down to personality/interests, etc. Strife Specibus: Elapea uses a Kusarigama, a kind of scythe-on-a-chain weapon, apparently said to have the highest mortality of any weapon of its time. i actually just found that out as i wrote this, i just thought they fit the theme bc she’s a snake. anyways if you dont know they basically have a scythe on one end and a heavy weight on the other end of the chain, and the idea is that you swing the weight end to bind someone in place and then use the scythe to go in for the kill, which is both somewhat representative of how snakes in general bite their prey to kill them, and also how boas in particular will wrap their bodies around their prey to strangle them.

That’s definitely a COOL weapon to use and is fitting themeatically for the snake concept. I do worry about its utility in water, though. She wants to die into the sea and hunt seadwellers, right? A spear or harpoon might end up being the more functional weapon for her in the end… But there’s nothing that says she couldn’t have two strife specibi, one for on land and one for at sea.  Fetch Modus: Elapea uses the Locket Modus; whenever an item is captchalogued, the two halves of its essence are split up between two halves of a heart, diamond, spade, or club locket, and she keeps one half while the other half goes to someone close to her. (they dont have to necessarily be in quadrants, like often times they go to Mullen, who is essentially just her little brother, or to Assassin Lonesome) She can only get the item out by meeting with the person who has the other half of the locket, and combining the lockets. Shenanigans then ensue from this, esp since she has one locket which she has no idea how she got and no idea who holds the other half and it contains a legendary super powerful juju that i can’t get into right now.

Okay, that’s a super cute modus idea that I love the idea and implications of. Always make all your choices together! It also does have the stressful implications, of course, of the idea that the Lonesome in some ways controls her behavior/what she is allowed to do. Dual Purposes!  Blood Color: Purple Symbol and Meaning: 

https://imgur.com/LnlLu0g

(i cant figure out how to embed images mshjbvbxchj) basically it’s a uhh. its a snake. this was my first fanmade sign like, ever, and i love it

It looks great! And fits the purple sign language very well. 

Handle:

 serpentineBloodthirst (SB) (All of my fantrolls and fankids have element symbols for their chat handles, so Elapea’s respective element is antimony, an element traditionally associated with things like femininity and makeup, referencing how elapea is basically supposed to be a queen, but it also- wait no it was tellurium that smells really terrible. i cant remember a lot of its properties tbh)

Well, antimony comes from a root that basically means “Monk-Killer,” so that’d be fun to play with. Out here killing/almost killing a seadweller monk.  

serpentineBloodthirst feels a little too obvious, though. It’s a direct statement of some of her themes and her goals, but it doesn’t tell you much about her character, what she values, or what she’s interested in. Imagine if Kanaya’s handle were something like vampiricFashionista, for example. Remember- the characters pick their handles for themselves. Is this how she would describe herself? You could go with something funner, like slitheringBrutaliberation, with brutaliberation being a portmanteau of Brutality and Liberation, since she thinks she’s being a hero. 

Quirk:

 Elapea opens every line with “~~~< ” and every one of her s’s is replaced with “SSS”. i made this before i learned how common the double s quirk is, so i’m glad it goes the extra mile of not just turning “as” into “ass”, but going so far as to turn it into “aSSS”

Hey, snakes hiss, it’s a good quirk to use. Maybe you could also have her end threats with “vv” (they’re her fangs). ex: ~~~< dont try me unlesss you want to get bit vv 

Special Abilities:

 None (or at least she can’t use psychic powers. Trolls on Ouranos have long ago lost their psychic powers, so all she can really do is punch people and stuff. She’s also a really good swimmer, so you could count that i guess)

Lusus/Guardian:

 once again, trolls on Ouranos don’t have lusii! instead, Elapea has a “caretaker”, who is an older troll who adopts them like a parent. Once again, her caretaker is Assassin Lonesome, who tries to raise her to be like her ancestor, lethal and cold, so that she can continue the tyrant tradition of the bygone days of Ouranos.

Interests:

 Unsure how much of this i accidentally explained in the theme section, once again Elapea loves drama and stories of great heroes, and as such everything she does takes on an incredibly dramatic flair to please whatever Providence watches over her. She is highly interested in romanticism, though really not at all ready for its highs and lows yet.

Elapea also really likes to swim! She goes out into the ocean hunting for seadwellers, and likes to take thrill in slaying the monsters that lurk in the waters, risking life and limb in a dark space where even the luxury of breathing is taken from you, simply for the thrill. This does not concern Assassin Lonesome at all as he is, as has been established multiple times now, an idiot who cannot raise children.

Now I’m going to go ahead and spoil my classpect discussion here when I say I almost think making Elapea a heart player is going to be too obvious. I Mean I think it’s definitely still something you could go with and justify solidly, because she does have a core conflict about her identity and who she is as well as relationship problems, but I feel like that’s such a problem that isn’t only internal to her but is also external- it’s not her being wrapped up in her own head about it, it’s her environment pushing an uncertainty on her. And I think she needs a little more of a classpect push than from the internalized forces of heart and mind. 

All of that is to say I think she reads more like she might need some Void influence to me. She believes in mysterious things out there beyond her view, she wants to hunt them down, find the answers. Delving into dark places to try to find something new is what light’s all about. The blank canvas, the something where there was nothing, that’s void, and that’s interesting. She needs to learn to cast doubt on what she’s known, to bring the lessons she’s been taught under scrutiny, to determine where the truth really lies, if there is a truth at all. 

…Which is all to say I think you could expand her interests to reflect all of this. Does she like stories about the murky dark and the dangers within? Does she like Unsolved Mysteries and conspiracy theories that have lead her to this? Does she like political espionage and intrigue? Does she want to smooch a fish?

Appearance: I won’t get too into detail since I’ll be posting a drawing later, but basically, she wears a black one piece swimsuit with a long swim skirt over it with black, red, and yellow stripes in the pattern of a coral snake. Besides her sign, she only really wears purple on her slippers, and i’m currently debating whether or not she should also wear purple makeup because of the antimony association that forces her to be stereotypically feminine? still unsure there. She also wears a long ponytail with red and yellow streaks down it (because it would be silly to have a horizontally striped ponytail).

Troll femininity is different from human femininity anyways. Alternian femininity mostly seems to mean Long Hair and that’s about it, considering Feferi/Fuchsias are the standard of beauty and not all of them wear makeup. Even a fashion-focused character like Kanaya only rarely wore lipstick and didn’t have lash color. Makeup is more of an accent piece for trolls than a Femininity Standard. Personality: Elapea is, once again, highly dramatic, but also bold and somewhat harsh, with a very strong “holier than thou” attitude. Elapea is older than this meme, but thinking about it now, it’s sort of the same idea as the “NPC wojak” meme, where other people are viewed as more like NPCs in a video game, and the “player characters” view them as lesser, even though they’re not? is that making sense? (and yes, i know npc wojak is a fascist meme, the idea is that she’s sort of been indoctrinated by her fascist dad) she’s also rather violent, tending to take out her anger on innocent people or things. We love a flawed character who gets to learn. Like I described above I think giving her a bit more curiosity and maybe low-level, boiling rebelliousness might be a good idea. As the EZ says about Void, “In order for something new to be built, the old, rotting foundation must often be razed.”  Lunar Sway: Derse- she’s fighting back against a perceived complacency or numbness in society, the one the same “NPC wojak” meme expresses, that other people don’t have an internal dialogue and are less than human. It’s hard to explain? Later she realizes that this is wrong, and starts to fight back against people who push that kind of worldview. Title: Page of Heart. I must admit that I gave her that title based on the idea that the Page is the active counterpart to the Knight who is passive. So that might explain some things; it denotes her struggle to become ok with who she is and not who she’s being pushed to be- she wants to be a dramatic fun loving kid who gets to save people’s lives, and to be a hero, but not the ruthless dictator her caretaker wants her to be.

It’s hard to discuss classes since there’s no canon information on them unfortunately, but I do think there’s something to be said for the history of pages serving knights and how that makes it seem more likely a page would be passive over active, but I do think Page could probably serve her well either way. But I’m honestly leaning more Maid, because I do think she needs an active class in her pocket and she might just need the billowing Force of maidhood behind her, that Snap, That Push To Change. Become One With The Void, Dive Into The Ocean, Become The Mystery, Be The Cryptid.  Land: Land of Mirage and Lockets; it’s a surreal land with lavender soil and clouds, and strange trees with blood red leaves and heart lockets hanging from them. Each of the lockets contain the essence of a desire- in addition, the mirages off in the distance beckon with things that are desirable to the viewer- for example, heroism. The consorts are doves, who flit about speaking… I’m not sure yet. but they speak something to eachother, some sort of secret? I think? I need help with this bit.

Void players are secret-keepers, so I think even with my void recommendation this could continue well. Maybe the doves just whisper rumors/instructions and her quest is to not obsess over which is true while also learning how not to fall for every single bit of “advice” that is given to her. 

Well, I’m finally done, I’m sorry this is so long!! please feel free to take your time ^u^

Hey, sometimes you’ve got a lot to say about a character! I hope I was able to help with the problems you were having. Thank you for the submission! 

-CD

#purpleblood #fan planet #submission #review #cd review #clownpieceoffreedom #elapea serpen #elapea #serpen

[serafique]

so is anyone ever gonna widely address how the whole pale blog movement was and is inherently racist bc even when it portrayed people of colour it only portrayed them as close to european standards of beauty as possible and even then it was peak Eurocentricism™ at its finest and revolved around rich, skinny white people. not to mention the blantant orientalism, romanticization of mental illness, only heteronormative beauty and skinny, white bodies depicted as ethereal and dreamy etc. and what im going to say isn't to victimize myself but i dont think any recent aesthetic movement has ever made me feel so ugly and made the whole "you are not like them" rhetoric so obvious. and i also don't want to be naïve bc i am well aware that fashion and media have been pushing this rhetoric onto us for the longest time but if i think about me as a 17 year old fading my photos so i could look the lightest i could look without completely disappearing, it makes me realize how complicit i am as a biracial person in all of this. i chose white-centric culture subconsciously as a teenager to distance myself from the part of me that wasn't white and i inevitably saw beauty in sofia coppola movies and forcibly inserted myself into those aesthetics even though it was clear it wasn't made for me. i dont think many people understand how implicit racism is and how violent it is to grow up as a person of colour in todays society and how passive agressive white supremacy reigns, undenounced, even on tumblr, even within a community that, for the most part, seems to actively de-stigmatizing poc. i want to say sorry to 17 year old me bc she believed that she wouldn't find beauty in her body without adjusting the saturation on all her pics and forcibly staying out of the sun. years after peak pale blog aesthetics, the whole art hoe movement, created by poc is being appropriated by white girls with their van gogh posters and another generation of young people of colour are growing into a seemingly inclusive community that in reality is only promoting racist rhetoric. problematic obession with white and white centric beauty standards benefits systematic racism on a social and political level. please be critical about marginalized cultures that appropriate your struggle without having to deal with racism. please be aware of the psychological violence of growing up as a person of colour, address it and talk about it. denounce movements that stigmatize poc and uphold uniquely white centric beauty and culture. remember that all though safe spaces are often necessary, true progress comes from the establishement of spaces in which you can exist without having to put up a fight first. you are valid.

#intersectionality #text #delphina says things

[nchyinotes]

What is to be done? Games for Social Impact (Cybersalon @ Newspeak House)

January 25 2018

http://cybersalon.org/what-is-to-be-done-games-for-social-impact-next-event/

Over 2.2 bln people world-wide will be playing games in 2018. A hit game is fun but also an opportunity for deep learning and transformative experience. As technology, politics and urbanisation makes our lives more complex, games can help us to learn faster about things we need to know to thrive in this new post-truth world. Cybersalon.org will host a panel on how game creatives and social innovators can put spotlight on real-world challenges like state and work surveillance, fake news and anti-democratic practices of modern governments while providing inspiring game experience.

Rich Metson – game designer and OFF GRID co-author. The game reveals the world of surveillance and invites player to explore the avoidance and defense techniques.

Amanda Warner –”Fake It to Make it” US-based web games author and interactive designer interested in fighting propaganda and confusion in Mainstream Media in US and beyond (joining via Skype from US)

Osmiotic Studios – Hamburg-based authors of “Orwell” game, sharing the key points from the development and potential of the game for impact

Ben Greenaway – Cybersalon’s games reviewer who will discuss Anders Norén’s Riot – Civil Unrest and also impact of AI and AR in Games for Change

Simon Sarginson – Senior UX Developer at Splash Damage will review the game “Orwell”

Chairing Rosa Carbo-Mascarell – London-based game designer and Corbyn Run game co-author , Creative Director for Game Jam and Games For The Many

THOUGHTS: I thoroughly enjoyed this event. Attended out of sheer curiosity, as I saw the listing on Newspeak House. I hear about video games everywhere and have heard/watched interesting video game analysis, but have never really played video games or seen the appeal. I’m always interested in different creative mediums used to reach people and engage them beyond just entertainment purposes (while also providing the entertainment, but not letting that dilute the message behind it). So I definitely appreciated being introduced to all these video games that hope to make social impact. I found them all fascinating - I even bought the Red Strings Club! I also got to play a bit of Off Grid afterwards, which was quite cool. Looking forward to when it comes out. The panel was the highlight for me though, I found the discussion about video games as a medium informative and thought provoking.

EDITED NOTES

Off Grid the Game (Rich Metson)

Hacking, data privacy

POV of a technophobe trying to understand political impact

End up doing malicious things for a good goal

Collecting data as you go along, to build a profile

Off grid is “simplistic” (ie. a solution in the game to distract a guard is to hack the radio channel to change it to a sports channel so the guy listens to the radio for longer) to make a point

Read more: http://offgridthegame.com/ and http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-01-15-off-grid-is-about-the-principles-of-hacking

Fake it to make it (Amanda)

Targeting people who genuinely believed fake news

Higher level of skepticism + notice/fact check, explain to others/advocate how its spread

Don’t understand that it’s easy to

financial incentives (profitability of ad revenue)

Outcome map - Start with high level (what needs to happen in the world, what needs to support)

Best way for people to gain a deep understanding

Background in training and education

Skill development, behaviour change

Jeopardy: very typical game used in education, but game structure has very little to do with message - the challenge was not connected to learning goals

Game with a goal with defined set of rules to reach it

Power for people to struggle

Integrate skills, behaviours into mechanisms of game

Stories from teachers about impact

Read more: http://www.fakeittomakeitgame.com/ and https://kotaku.com/fake-news-video-game-is-a-little-too-real-1793660926

RIOT (Ben Greenaway)

RIOT, civil unrest (advocate)

Simulator

Real time strategist for police or rioters

Agency issue in games

Layer of AI/separation/representation (2D/3D)

First person = generally OK

Especially in RT strategy games

How does it feel like i’m actually there?

Model computes a reaction to your input for each game character based on different elements (training, adrenaline, etc)

Friction between intent + reality

Game is produced as response to real world events, testimony of what he experienced

Gamespot blogspot, leonard menchian

4 real world historic events (italy, greece, Spain, Egypt)

Simulation tool: how to have player agency in historical event

Key characters that were photographed in Venezuelan + chile events are baked in to the game

Not historic reenactment - fuzzy rean??, real world rules based

Is there ever a winning police/rioter strategy

Pilots use simulators

Experiments - protein folding, scientific testing

Simulation as prediction

Social change as a game (how its portrayed)

RIOT is documentary + offering new POV

Read more: http://riotsimulator.com/ and https://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-the-worlds-riots-inspired-a-video-game/1100-6405315/  

Simon Sarginson

Visceral effects of digital in political engagement

Exploring ideas in games: 3 games of how we interact with governments

Accessible, not very deep

How we deal with influence + govt

Games used to ask qs or answer (how can)

1) ORWELL (Goal: to find terrorists)

How public info makes you easily identifiable

More invasive

1. You get kind of bored looking through people's lives, demotivation of subject its trying to portray

2. You have a lot of power. People's lives are highly ambiguous, where you choose to surface = hugely important

Uncomfortable tension ran there with narrative of game, you’re working for an evil government

Participating, not just watching (like other art). Your agency in this. You are a pawn of evil!

Politically slanted

More: https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/bn3m35/orwell-is-a-game-about-surviellance-with-a-major-blindspot or http://www.surpriseattackgames.com/portfolio-items/orwell/ or https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/4/17062366/orwell-keeping-an-eye-on-you-game-surveillance-short-play

2) Papers, Please

Working as border worker

Tension: face horrible choices - if you do moral things, you pay out of own pocket

Mundane, you just want to get through it - it becomes an annoyance

Involved in process, goal: keep family alive

Very visceral way how people can be stuck in this system

More: http://www.papersplea.se/

3) Red strings club

Info broker influencing people with drinks, like big organisations (do?)

Social influence as personal vs traditional advertising

Role of influence in our lives - trans humanist slant

More: https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/22/16911206/the-red-strings-club-review or https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/the-red-strings-club-review/1900-6416838/

Panel

Lots of political engagement in other art forms, why not in games?

1930s in terms of timeline (where film was)

games come out of something inherently not political - the arcade, for entertainment, to disappear into something entirely different

language is still in development

only recently have video games been considered art, early times

pressure isn’t yet there from us - i need more from this game, i want you to address real issues, not just fantasy escape

reasoning, political will, game making power hasn’t come together in one package yet

when collabs happen, are often mismatched = entertainment game vibe, not in the most positive way

financial incentives, not well positioned to have independent voice. even movie industry while v large and organisational

you need scale to have political message

(young medium, the market, requires some certain independence from the way we make games)

Is there a way to speed up that process?

make better cameras (like lumiere brothers?)

unity engine didn’t think it would politicise game dev but it has (was to democratise), so much easier to do it.

we actually are able to focus on political content more, and have an ability to enter the market and compete commercially, given enough time.

comes down to tooling - access to toolkit to broader group of people

try to do too much ?

beyond confines of game just for entertainment

interaction = what makes games unique, can expose interesting ways of political process

if a game is not fun, no one will use it (unlike film, books)

harder to get entry levels/newcomers into making something interesting?

knowledge required to do a v complicated simulation = v extensive technical

games is difficult medium to use, bc hard to express politics through mechanics and not everyone can create simulations

How do you motivate existing game makers to do this?

game jams - melting point to do ideas, but nobody actually finishes them (a money thing, staying power needs financial)

paolo ?? short games on oil, drones

crowdfunding

consequence of democratisation of more accessibility to making games

if you have a broader set of people contributing content to the field (not CS people), you’ll have different stories told

ie. paperboy falling into pothole into street

politics comes from everywhere - more political games just cause you have more games

Why are society’s most vulnerable people never involved in games that comment on their lives?

south side of chicago - meant to try to engage community in grassroots led basis

maturity of the medium

indie developer without funding, hard to research communities on field (have to just do it on internet)

matty brice, nicky case (coming out) - there are people from marginalised communities making games

channels for conversations to get started

minimal toolkit to get involved, recognising that we need other input (ideation developers, modders, etc)

making games moddable ? modder culture

For Amanda: who is your audience? the people that need the information are not seeking it out

her relatives (lol)

middle of the road people, who are not so unreachable

students - digital literacy in schools

??? GTA ??

speaking up when you think something is a bit heavy handed, voice concern, pressure on studios to compete with you and make something more important / sensitive to issues

star wars battlefront 2 - in game payment system

v bad planning on EA, oversold on promise of game before release (beta & reddit)

debated in EU courts now

so much rooms for games like GTA to explore deeper in to ?? worlds ?? —> will sell more copies of they do

big boys and girls: they don’t absolutely own the market like they used to

#video games #social impact #digital society #london #2018 #tech #activism #event

[vanityxburke]

( character reference sheet . )

Voice:

Typically soft-spoken and rarely raises her voice around anyone, even when angry. If frustrated, her tone takes on a sharp, cold edge.

Limited use of contractions around the pureblood crowd; more polished; fake af.

Playful, witty banter around most others. Pleasant and unassuming.

Generally more crass around the Knockturn Crew out of habit.

Demeanor:

Bright and charming around the pureblood crowd; constantly smiling; submissive.

Cold and withdrawn around the DE’s when they’re on missions/at meetings together. Shuts herself down to be able to better navigate the brutality without losing her nerve. Doesn’t bother “turning on the charm” since she knows the DE’s aren’t the least bit interested in her ass kissing.

Blithe and matter-of-fact around the Order, though still friendly enough (pre-betrayal).

Personality/Quirks/Idk:

That Gemini Bitch

Weird mix of Phlegmatic and Choleric 

Cold, clinical, unflappable on the inside; playful, easygoing, and polite on the outside.

+ Calculative, strong-willed, clever, practical, savvy, adaptable, hardworking

- Duplicitous, manipulative, icy, pessimistic, self-serving, amoral, numb

Stepford Smiler for days; Sugar and Ice personality

Probably too passive for her own good. You gotta shake her a little to get her to care about anything that isn’t quidditch.

Carries patience in spades (unless it’s about Mundungus’ wardrobe). It takes a lot to get her to lose her temper, partly because retail experience and partly because she’s too detached to really take things all that seriously. That patience is a bit two-fold, though, because it lends itself to her being exceptionally good at holding grudges. She’s not completely one track minded about revenge and what not, but she will remember those who’ve wronged her (Order and DE members alike) and if and when she’s allowed the opportunity to fuck them over, even if it’s twenty years later, she’ll jump at the chance.

Pragmatic and efficient; relies more on cold, hard facts than emotions. Quick to make most hard decisions.

Egotistical at school both to keep up appearances and because she legit thought her quidditch skills made her Hot Shit; this leveled out when she joined the Magpies who a) were just as good as she was, and b) weren’t all snooty purebloods she had to posture for. Still maintains a prideful streak, though -- just ask her trophy room.

Her inferiority complex re: purebloods isn’t nearly as bad in the present as it was when she was growing up, but it’ll occasionally pop up from time to time

Ambitious in terms of knowing what she wants and being willing to work hard for it, but she’s not particularly power hungry or greedy. All she really wants rn is peace of mind and the freedom to tear up the pitch without having to worry about the DE’s stringing her up for being a halfblood.

Thinks she’s “above” petty stealing; still does it from time to time because she’s a hypocrite and it’s a force of habit.

Lights up when talking about quidditch or an artifact at the shop she’s taken a real shine to.

Cares more about her crows than u.

Big believer in you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar

Had an Identity Crisis when she found her father’s journal and was emo about it for a while. Got over it when she started her quidditch career but it’s come rushing back now that the question of blood statuses and paternity is everywhere; feels like she’s letting her father down with her morally bankrupt life choices while simultaneously thinking he’s a weak bitch for caving under the DE’s pressure.

Is most herself around her quidditch teammates and the Knockturn crew because she can strike the perfect balance of “asshole with an occasional side of decency” without having to worry about playing pretend for anyone.

The type to spew off morbid and unsettling factoids relating to the Dark Arts in a deadpan voice only to smile at you three seconds later like she’s only just read you the morning paper.

Motivations:

To survive, bitch.

Maybe find out ~who she really is~ 

The current political climate has further exacerbated Emma’s insecurities about her identity. Growing up, so much of who she was supposed to be was rooted in her parent’s legacy and the Burkes’ pureblood heritage. She learned to play the part of a pureblood convincingly enough, though as someone raised outside the world of aristocracy, she never quite felt as though she measured up. When the discovery of her father’s journal proved so much of what she’d been told all her life to be a sham, it fractured whatever sense of stability Emma had built around her pureblood persona. Eventually, she forged an identity around her quidditch prowess, something that was hers and hers alone and that couldn’t be challenged. Now that she’s had to give that up and is back to wearing a mask in order to survive, Emma finds herself torn again, unsure of who she really is.

Really wants to return to her quidditch career and just fly away from all the world’s problems but she can’t really do that with a severed head, so schmoozing it is.

Her joining the Order was a last-ditch effort at trying to get back some semblance of normalcy in her life where she isn’t constantly under the DE’s thumb and not because she especially cares about the little problem of muggles and muggleborns being slaughtered everywhere.

Her eventual betrayal is because she blames the Order for Caractacus’ death after she came to them for help upon his arrest and received no aid; deep down she knows the DE’s are obviously more to blame but in her grief the Order was the easier target and a slew of failures on their end only added to the idea that they were a sinking ship anyway and that at least the DE’s could offer her a better deal in terms of protection.

Beliefs:

Believes people are inherently selfish; don’t trust them or care about them, it’s just a hassle.

Cynic, never expects good things to stick.

Finds the Order members equal parts amusing and exhausting for their self-righteous goals; patronizes them on the regular.

Mostly views people from an angle of what they can offer her/how useful they can be.

Doesn’t buy into the pureblood ideology but growing up at Hogwarts surrounded by her affluent peers, she attached a high value to their lofty lifestyles, egged on by the Burkes’ desire to ingratiate her fully into pureblood society for the sake of their own reputations. This, coupled with her sudden elevation of status at Hogwarts on account of her quidditch skills, led her to believe she deserved better than what Knockturn had to offer; she was meant for the skies, not the grimy streets. Eventually, when her professional quidditch career distances her from the purebloods direct sphere of influence and even later when she returns to Knockturn after leaving the League, she comes to find she will always be drawn back to the place she grew up in and that it’s more a part of her than the pureblood world will ever be.

Her sense of loyalty really only extends to the parameters of Knockturn’s Code: you look out for your fellow thief and stand alongside your community in times of trouble – within reason.

^^^ Borrows from that same standard of loyalty when it comes to her quidditch teammates bc ball is life.

Strong interest in the Dark Arts and the world of the occult that stems from her upbringing around Knockturn Alley and Borgin & Burkes. Was heavily invested in necromancy at one point when she was younger because she used to believe she could somehow bring her parents back from the dead.

Violence for the sake of violence disgusts her. She sees brutality as only a means to an end if force is absolutely necessary. The DE’s sadism straight up terrifies her.

Quotes for reference:

“I don’t deserve to die. I’m not finished yet. See, I actually want to be around for when they release the Nimbus 1700, and the Nimbus 2000 after that, and whatever comes next. I want to live to pick up a broom again and not have to owe anyone a damn thing. So, you compromise. You keep your head low and swim to their current because you’re not fucking finished yet. You do what you need to do first, and then you get to live. Don’t let anyone tell you there’s still a fight here, Benjy. Let the martyrs throw away their lives if they want, but you? You have to know better. Everyone’s got dead people; not all of us are looking to join them.” 

“No, she’d have to bide her time; forge useful connections, build a stronghold for herself in the pureblood community, and, above all else, make sure she mattered enough. If and when the dust settled she needed to have secured a rock solid reputation that shielded her from any scrutiny. Slughorn’s recent rejection for a lunch meeting had struck a sour note; without her flashy career Emma knew she really wasn’t much of anyone in the pureblood community. There was no well-connected husband waiting in the wings, no posh manor house to call her own that the rest of the Burkes wouldn’t try their damnedest to keep her from getting. She was just a salesgirl with a name bigger than herself. Quidditch changed that. It was the only part of her identity that neither Emma, nor anyone else, had ever needed to question. Her one truth in a life built on lies.”

“Maybe she was little more than a sheep in this new world. Maybe she’d gotten so used to biting her own tongue and working within the confines of her shiny silver cage that she’d forgotten others weren’t quite as content with smiling their way through the horror and bloodshed, especially when they didn’t have big, lofty surnames to fall back on. Maybe she was just as big a hypocrite as she’d accused Mundungus of being. But if there was one thing Emma refused to be guilted into thinking, it was that she’d done any of them wrong in trying to survive. She’d been doing that all her life; she wasn’t about to start making excuses for herself now.”

“It was funny how easily the years could come rushing back. She might have faked it till she made it all her life, but it was in the presence of people like Narcissa that Emma was sorely reminded of what she lacked. The pedigree, the posh upbringing… all the things she thought she’d remedied with her sterling quidditch career. That she would never be quite on their level was a thought that’d been lost amongst the chorus of cheers surrounding her name and the lofty heights of flashy stardom, because at the very least she was still someone. Without that reputation to fall back on, she could feel the slight strain now beginning to tug at her smile, once again mindful of the differences that’d bolstered both her resentment and admiration for Narcissa so long ago.”

“Most days her “fellow” purebloods were manageable enough. Emma had found that a decent chunk of them simply liked to hear themselves talk, and if she indulged their lofty chitter chatter of imported curtain drapes or the appropriate silverware for dinner parties with minimal input and the occasional nod, they were putty in her hands. Others were quieter, more calculative; they tended to save their two cents for preaching the gospel of pureblood superiority, wasting no time on the insipid. Those you allowed room to speak, matching their proud, defiant carriages and chiming in every so often to denounce the filth that’d contaminated the Wizarding World. Then there were ones like Amycus; the hardcore traditionalists. Brutal. Unforgiving. A little o f f . Full-fledged Death Eaters with a flair for the sadistic. Those were the ones she’d never quite learned how to deal with.”

“What it can’t hide are the eyes. Hers are a sharp green; they are constantly in motion, making slow circuits around a room like a cat sizing up its prey from a near distance. They are the eyes of someone raised in a business and brought up by thieves; they appraise everyone around her, judging their potential usefulness as if they’re nothing but gemstones being traded in at the shop. The second she spots a crack too big to gloss over, her probing gaze moves on in search of a better deal, discarding all those that fail to measure up. They are eyes that don’t necessarily see as they’re meant to – they are eyes that dissect.”

“And she tells him the truth. She tells him about the old crone who mugged her in the alley once and how Caractacus forbade her from stepping foot in Knockturn for a year after that. How in that year her aunt Eustacia refocused her efforts on ingratiating her into the pureblood world, and how a person would’ve needed to surgically remove her head out of Narcissa Black’s arse that year at Hogwarts as she followed her around everywhere like some pathetic little puppy, intent on molding herself into a perfect pureblood lady. How she let the boyfriends her aunt would handpick for her push her around at school, belittle her, treat her like absolute shit all in the name of being someone in their gilded little world. She tells him she needs this place, that it grounds her, that she hates the person she is when she cuts herself away from it entirely; that she’s three steps closer to knowing who she really is amongst the grime of Knockturn than she ever was seated at a silver table in Narcissa’s world.”

“Talk less, smile more. Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for.”

"People don’t get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don’t stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it."

#; bio #the fact that i even had to make one of these to remind myself of who emma is horrifies me