#i’ve heard a good amount of aro rep in books but i was thinking more about movies/shows/series when writing this post

[i-did]

Do you know when the racism and ableism accusations against Nora started? Because back when I was active in 2016/2017 and don't think they were a thing, or were very low-key. Was it something she said or are people just basing it off the things she wrote in the books?

From what I remember, the first time I heard the blanket statement of “Nora is racist/fetishizes gay men” blanket statement was early fall 2019 (which is so ironic for the fandom to say on so many levels lmao). There wasn’t a catalyst or anything, just she went offline 2016 and no new content was coming out and the aftg fandom is such an echo chamber that… an accidental smear campaign happened.

 Before then, I would see occasional “Nora used ableist slur” which… is funny (not that ableism isn’t serious) to me people care more about that than Seth saying the f-slur. IMO this is because with Seth, it clearly shows the character thinking it and not the author who is writing about what will be an end game mlm relationship. 

But anyways! Long story short, it's the fact that she’s an ace/aro woman who wrote a mlm book, and based off of the events in canon. There is no “Nora called me/someone else a slur” it’s “Nora wrote a book where slur(s) are used” and “the Moriyama’s are Japanese.”

Below I put my own opinion on these claims and go into more detail:

CW for discussions of: racism, ableism, mlm fetishization

Fetishization: (and mentions of sexism at the end)

To one question in the EC about her inspo for aftg she jokingly responded how she wanted to write about gay athletes. On other parts of your blog you could see she was a hockey fan and an overall sports fan (anime or otherwise) but I've seen this statement taken out of context and framed as “she's one of those BOYXBOY” shippers. Considering how… well-developed both Andrew and Neil’s relationship is, and it takes them until like the 3rd book and there is a whole complex ass plot going on around, you can see how that's just. Not really true. And considering the fandom is like… 85% women (queer women but still women) and I've gotten into a discussion with someone who is a woman and called Nora a fetishizer and was ignoring my opinions as a mlm, and I really just wanted to say “well what does that make you?” it's a very ironic high horse. She didn’t write 3 all 3 books to put Neil in lingerie pwp or crop-top fem-fatal fashion show, fandom did. 

Also, I talked to an ace/aro friend about this, and she talked to me about how AFTG spoke to her very much so as an ace/aro story. Neil is demisexual, Nora didn’t know of the word at the time of reading it, but she did get an anon asking if Neil was demi after, and she said “had to look it up, and yep, but he doesn't really think about it” (paraphrased). Obviously it would have been cool if andreil were canonly written as wlw by Nora instead, (which would have increased the amount of wlw rep and demi rep) but tbh I don’t think tumblr would have cared about it nearly as much and everyone would just call Neil a cold bitch–like people do with Nora’s other published book with a main character who's a woman. Plus they're her OC’s, not mine. 

The fact is that 50% of all LGBT+ rep in literature is mlm, mostly white mlm, and not written by mlm. I’m not going to hold her to a higher standard than everyone else, she already broke a shit ton of barriers in topics she discusses that otherwise get ignored. I’m grateful to these books for existing even if it's a mlm story written by a woman. I still will prioritize reading mlm written by mlm–and vice versa with wlw– in the way I prioritize reading stories about POC written by POC. But credit where credit is due, this is a very good story, and a very good demi story. 

Ableism:

To me, AFTG is a story about ableism and how we perceive some trauma survivors more worthy than others. Neil and the foxes using ableist language shows how people actually talk. Neil thinks shitty things about Andrew, like the others do too, and thinks he's “psycho”. The story ultimately deconstructs this idea and these perceptions of people. Wymack, someone who says the r-slur (which is still not known by the general population as a slur even in 2021 much less the early 2000s when the book was beginning to be written and what the timeline is based off of) is a character who understands Andrew better than most of the others do, and gives him the most sympathy and understanding despite using words like the m-slur and r-slur. Using these words isn't good, but it is how people talk, and this character talks. Wymack is a playful “name caller” especially when he’s mad, the foxes think Andrew is “crazy” and incapable of humanity and love because of it. They call his meds “antipsychotics” as an assumption and insult in a derogatory way, when really antipsychotics are a very helpful drug for some people who need them. Even Neil thinks these things about Andrew until he learns to care about him. All the foxes are hypocritical to am extent, as people in real life tend to be. Nora herself doesn’t use these or tweet them or something, her characters do to show aspects of their personality and opinions and how they change over time.

Racism:

As for the racism, I've seen people talk about how racial minorities being antagonists is inherently bad, which I think lacks nuance but overall isn't a harmful statement or belief. However, Nora herself said she wrote in the yakuza instead of another gang or mob because she was inspired for AFTG by sports anime, (which often queer-bait for a variety of reasons). I haven’t seen a textual analysis acknowledging the racist undertones surrounding the Moriyama’s as the few characters of color who are also major antagonists, but instead just “Nora is racist”. Wymack having shitty flame tribal tattoo’s is just… a huge 90’s thing and a part of his character design. Her having a character with bad taste in tattoo trends doesn’t mean she's racist. There is the whole how Nicky is handled thing, but that's a whole thing on it’s own. The fandom… really will write Nicky being all “ai ai muy spicy, jaja imma hit on my white–not annoying like me–boyfriend in Spanish. With my booty hole out and open for him ofc.” and as a Mexican mlm I’m like … damn alright. 

I think there is merit to the fact that she writes white as the default* and unless otherwise stated a POC a character was written with the intent to be white is another valid criticism, as well as the fact that the cast is largely white, but everything Nora is accused of I've seen the fandom do worse. That goes to the debate of, is actively writing stereotypes for POC more harmful than no representation at all? And personally I prefer the lack of established race line that lets me ignore Nora’s canon intent of characters to be white and come up with my own HC’s over the fandoms depictions of “zen monk Renee with dark past” “black best friend Matt who got over drugs but is a puppy dog” “ex stripper black Dan who dates Matt” vague tokenism. I HC many of the upperclassmen as POC and do my best to actively give thought behind it and have their own arcs that also avoids the fandom colorism spectrum of “darkest characters we HC go to the back and fandom favorites are in the front and are the lightest.” 

*I however won't criticize her harsher or more than… everyone else who still largely does this in fanfiction regarding AFTG as well as literature in general. This isn't a Nora thing, it's a societal thing, and considering the books came out in like 2014 I'm not gonna hold her to a higher standard than the rest of the world. She's just someone who wrote her personal OC’s and self-published expecting no following. I don’t know her race and I’m not gonna hold her to a higher standard than everyone else just because. 

The criticisms I've seen have always been… ironic IMO, and clearly I have a lot of thoughts on it. I think most people say those things about Nora because they heard them, and it's the woke thing to say and do and don’t critically analyze their actions or anything, but just accept them. 

#ask #aftg discorse #fandom culture #fandom politics #fandom psychology #mailob #damn cant wait for my words to be twisted lmao #sorry the ableism one is the shortest I wrote that one first actually

[siamusotima-aranea]

Bring me all the Ace and / or Aro media!

I’m on a mission! To consume Ace and / or Aro media. (Down for nonbinary / agender / genderqueer etc type content too.) Mainly just for my own enjoyment. The following is what I’ve already seen/ read/ consumed, and my general thoughts and opinions currently. (MY opinions, other people may like or hate them, and that is their business.)

The Magnus Archives Finished it, loved it. The Ace rep here is... good and bad depending on how you look at it. Wiser people then me have written about it. This podcast and some of the great Ace and / or Aro fic writers in the fandom really helped me figure out some things about myself, so for that reason it has a place in my heart.  The Murderbot Diaries      I love the fuck out of this series. I’ve never related to a charicter more. Some people don’t like when representation comes in the form of non human characters, which is understandable, but I don’t tend to mind.  The Outer Worlds I’ve not finished the whole game, but I finished Parvati Holcomb’s parts, and I loved it so much. The part in the bar where she talks about her worries, and where you can tell her you (the player) are Ace and / or Aro, was so good and beautiful, and it made me cry. Parvati Holcomb has a permanent place in my heart.  Gender Queer: A Memoir I love this comic. I didn’t know it existed until I stumbled upon it in my local barns and noble. There was something so special about finding this comic, that I can relate to so deeply, in the middle of the bookstore I basically grew up in. Like...like this book belongs here, unquestionably, and so do I. It inspired me to want to write about my own experiences (someday) Common Bonds: A Speculative Aromantic Anthology I haven't finished it. Not because it’s not good, just because I have such a hard time finishing things. The first story was amazing!! Jar of Rebuke  I like it so far! Still a lot to go, I think.   Critical Role God I just can’t get into it, but I so deeply want to. I’ve heard great things, but every time I sit down to start listening I get so booored. I will keep trying.  Hello from the Hallowoods.  God damn it, I WANT TO LOVE THIS PODCAST, but I have yet to get into it. I will keep trying.  Every heart a doorway I hated it. Others may like it, I did not.  Lets talk about love I’ve not finished it. I rented it from the library, and ran out of time. That first CH hit hard, but in a good way. I’ll give it another go when I can.  Last 8 I’m bad a finishing things. returned it to the library, didn’t get far. Will try again. Moses Sumney’s Aromanticism I really liked it, but I need to give it a re-listen to like, have any real opinions beyond, “ooh sounds so pretty!”  A lady's guide to petticoats and piracy I’m in the middle of this one right now. Felicity has some really relatable moments early on. If someone asked me for my hand in marriage, I also would simply ~Leave~. I’m enjoying it, but its just kind of lost my attention now in the middle, I’ll hold my opinions till i’m finished. Though the amount of times she says “ I’m Felicity Montague!!, I blah blah..etc” It drives me up the fucking wall. Forgivable, but obnoxious.  I also mistakenly skipped the first book in the series.  There's more, but that's all I’m gonna mention for now. I’m still coming down from a flair up and should be saving my hand spoons for other things. (I hope that sentence made sense?) Anyway, tell me if you have any recommendations. Or if something on here was really special to you, tell me about it! I love to hear about people connecting with and / or enjoying media (even if that media wasn’t a hit for me.) (Though if you hate something I like, I don’t really wanna hear it.)

#Ace #asexual #aro #Aromantic

[neth-dugan]

Nine Worlds - Friday

Thursday found [here]

After having had only a couple hours sleep, we got up and got ready for the day. Some of us took longer than others, and no that wasn’t me. @laalratty @knittedace and I went to get breakfast outside of costume and then went back to our rooms to get properly dressed. I also had a nap on the bed as the first session doesn’t start until 10am, which helped I think. But I did spend the rest of the day very tired.

EDUCATION AT HOGWARTS

The first panel I went to at the convention proper, and @unwoundbobbin was on it which was a bonus. 

It was a fun talk in which everyone agreed that education at Hogwarts is severely lacking, completely skips some very important subjects and really needs to look at quality of teaching.

As much as we are meant to root for Hogwarts and its independence, it’s an industry checking itself and what happens when people we don’t like are in charge? Someone said that it’s a great thing to show teachers who are fed up with having a curriculum and ofsted inspections. I agree. There was also a lot of talk that as much as muggle studies needs to be better and mandatory, there needs to be an introductory course for muggle raised students so they know what they’re getting into, the world they’re dumped in and so on. And, as a panelist pointed out, to better know all the shibboleths. She also mused that this may be exactly the reason they don’t do that and honestly, probably true.

ACE REPRESENTATION

So, I did a panel on a similar theme several years back and I was curious how this one would go. It took a different tone but times have moved. A lot of the panelists are relatively new to the community but then there was Nat Titman who is one of the founding persons of the asexual community. 

I didn’t learn a lot, but it was nice to be in a room with a ton of aces talking about ace things. Aros talking about aro things. People still hating on Moffat for the crap he has spewed. Being inclusive aof aros and demis. Which I know for a fact meant a lot to some, as I was talking to a demi person at that meeting later that day who brought it up. I got to espouse my theory on how Yuuri Katsuki is so so very demi even if language, culture and censorship means it’ll never be explicitly canon. 

BSL FOR GEEKS

This was amazing! I know how to say thank you and ‘g’ and that is it. So this was pretty great. Aside from being able to tell you my name at the end, I was delighted to learn the sign for Star Trek is literally the Vulcan salute. I also learnt how to say ‘Space, the final frontier’ though I probably do it with a massive accent. I learnt that this is the new sign coming up for trans:

...and tumblr provides a demonstration of this. Not video from the con.

Which is related to the sign for soul.  Also I learned the sign that’s becoming popular for queer which is a ‘q’ in the motion of a rainbow and it’s awesome.

There were lots of character names and phrases and there’s no way I’m going to remain most of it. And I had a weird hand thing going on that this made worse. So by the end of it, my hand hurt a fair bit. But it was fantastic. It was presented by a a group of interpreters and deaf people who bounced off of each other really well. One person even forgot how to spell their own name. But given a person who shall remain nameless forgot what their name even was at a different session? This isn’t the worst I heard of. 

I really loved it, and this was one of my favourite sessions at the entire convention. I wanted to go to the after dark one for adults only, in which there’d be swearing, but alas I had to take care of my hand and so decided it was a no go.

EVERYBODY HATES MORAL PHILOSOPHERS: THE ETHICS OF THE GOOD PLACE

I’m a big fan of this show. I came across it on Netflix and then got my Mom into it and it is brilliant. It’s smart and funny and thinky all at once. This session was more of a lecture than a panel or workshop which fit, because the person giving it is a philosophy professor. Not a moral philosopher, but a philosopher.

It turns out that it isn’t so much that everyone hates moral philosophers, it’s just really hard to be one. But whilst we were waiting for the session to start I spotted a person in front of me dressed up as Janet. I asked to confirm and was told, perfectly in character that interesting fact, they were Janet. And proceeded to give me a cactus sticky note with a Janet phrase on it. I sent a photo and a test to my Mom who loved it.

 ...I do have a picture, but didn’t ask permission to post on the internet so here is a close approximation minus cactus. 

The lecture itself was pretty interesting. Turns out the writers are using real philosophy and real books and theories and the like when making the show. I can see how Chidi would get so anxious if he follows Kant. Even the text books given to Eleanor are ones the speaker has themselves and sees as foundational texts. So yay! She went through a few schools of philosophy that pop up in the show and it was fun.

Someone pointed out that it seemed that each of the human four seemed to be missing one of the classical virtues. The speaker agreed. There was lots of debate about fair or just the system in this show is, and also how much about it we can objectively know given Michael’s aim in the first season. I pointed out that the entire thing seemed to be unfair to those with disadvantages or some mental health conditions. The last episode of the latest season, without getting into spoilers too much, entirely takes advantage of things about two characters that they’ve no way of doing away with and/or find near impossible to control. It sucks. There seemed to be agreement on this. Privilege, it seems, exists in the systems of The Good Place as we currently know them.

ASSIMILATION AND IDENTITY IN STAR TREK

This was a session hosted by Jaime who some may know and is pretty awesome. I don’t always agree with them on everything but I do appreciate them. And I didn’t agree with a good amount of what was said here. Not that I think it’s wrong, just that some of it is a matter of perspective and assigning aims and motivations to characters that aren’t, to me, clear in canon. I tend to think Worf handed his son off to his parents because he never asked for a kid, didn’t know he had one, works a dangerous job, has no experience parenting and lives on a ship that goes through a major crisis on a fairly regular basis. But people can disagree.

There are some things about Trek that.... aren’t the best. The whole area around the Ferengi is a tricky area and a bit of a mess. I love them, I love the actors, I love some of their episodes, but there are anti-semitic tropes in there made all the more there by the fact that most of the Ferengi actors are of Jewish decent. It’s problematic. It’s meant to be a critic of capitalism and modern culture. Of US. I’ve heard various Trek folk basically state that of all the species in Star Trek, the Ferengi represent modern day humans. But. They fell back on some problematic crap and there’s no way of escaping that.

There was one point when I was a bit worried it was going to get a bit anti-atheist but it didn’t thank goodness. And that’s a whole other thing.

There’s a clip that’s pretty famous amongst DS9 fans, that you fan find here, that exemplifies some of what this panel was about. Not all of it, but some. It was running through my head for sure. After the session ended a group of us had a chat after. It brought up a lot of things to talk about, new ways of looking at things and agree or not that’s usually a good thing.

...Moogie!

‘OH, BRILLIANT.’ ANTICIPATING THE THIRTEENTH DOCTOR

This one had @knittedace on the panel! She’d been talking about doing it last year and here we were . She in her hand knitted Dalek dress, me in the audience feeling a bit woozy and tired. 

Mostly, it did exactly what the tin said. People being excited for Thirteen, recalling days when they’d written fic on the idea but never thought it possible, what people wanted to see or not see and the like. Mostly, it was a feel good panel with happy people glad for a new start that would bring in new and old fans alike.

Someone on the panel pointed out that for some kids, they’ll have never known a time when The Doctor couldn’t be a woman. For whom their Doctor is a woman. And that is amazing. And she gets to keep her accent too, and there is hope we will see some of the North this season. Not just more London, or Cardiff as London.

For myself, I’ve always figured some Time Lords could change genders and sexes. Some couldn’t. And doing so was some kind of Time Lord intersex thing. But I was never really rooting for a woman Doctor.... yet when they announced it was going to happen? I was excited and relieved in a way I hadn’t imagined I would be.

Bring it on.

INTERVAL

At this point I found myself in the bar with some ginger ale talking to some people I’ve never med before. One was a demi person who had been at the Ace Rep talk and was very relieved to see demis included. I explained about the history of the flag and how they’re explicitly on it. Outside of some gatekeepers, the ace community I know has always embraced those other identities under the ace umbrella. 

Me, them and a friend of theirs made our way downstairs after a good chin wag to get good seats for the next panel. We figured we’d probably need them and coincidentally we were all going to the same one. 

FROM A/B/O TO DUBIOUS CONSENTACLES

I’m still not sure what dubious consentacles are to be honest. My mind goes to dubcon hentai but I’m probably wrong. This panel was after 10pm, the last of the day and very much adult only. I was in my TNG uniform and there was a Trek fan vid screening in the room across the hall so a volunteer checked I was where I wanted to be whilst we were waiting for it to start. Which was sweet, people do get lost down there.  Also, @unwoundbobbin was there which was a hoot.

The entire thing was a hoot to be honest. Not that formal, and mostly people sharing things they’d seen online, talk about the value of tagging, and wonder at the way fandom just comes together and decides on what dubious biology looks like. I shared the story of the early early days of Star Trek fandom how writers would come up with new weird and wonderful ways of depicting Spock’s genitals. I just think it’s something everyone should know. Fandom has been like this for a long time. 

I wont go into detail of the things discussed. But it’s amazing how trends change over time, how even over multiple fandoms some of these tropes become so accepted nobody has to explain anything. We just know how it works and dive right into a kind of shared ‘verse thing.

There were some things mentioned that I hadn’t heard of and are very much not talking about on this post. But interesting.

Honestly, this was another of my favourite panels this convention. It was so much fun. So much. Some people were a bit tipsy I think.

I did warn the two mods that I was pretty tired so if my eyes looked funny or closed, I wasn’t asleep, I was just squinting. I got so enthused by the cracky fun of it all though that I needn't have worried. I also found it amusing just how many ace spectrum folk there were there. 

After this I went back to my room. I got changed, went to bed hoping for a better night sleep than the one before. So very very tired. I’d had a great day but I was tired and I needed sleep urgently. Especially as the tired thing was not helping the dizzy thing. Thankfully I did get some sleep, not as good as home but I god some. 

[SATURDAY IS HERE]

#nine worlds #nineworlds #doctor who #star trek #the good place #harry potter