#other people just worry me because of the societal nuance

[x-adoringvoid-x]

Kiss practice (because it is hard to draw kisses with these face shapes) + Some small cleaned up doodles ♡

#real yearning hours are happening #i love them!! #want to hold want to be held #this is all very overwhelming sometimes! #they are kind of overwhelming in a way #but in a way that they're happy to see me and to be like nearby as much as possible #which might sound bad but they're reasonable enough that we could just chill and not have it be a battle of will or whatever #which is what it feels like with my family. we butt heads a lot in an exhausting passive aggressive way #sometimes with other people too. just feeling like my wants don't fit with other people's wants or interests is tiring #I feel like I could hang out with Hadri and even if they didn't really understand stuff about me they'd still be interested #I could also ask them for stuff or tell them no without it being a problem #i can trust what they say they're feeling which is why it makes it much easier to see myself with them #other people just worry me because of the societal nuance #it's easier to believe i'm not forcing Hadri to do anything #ahh this went on longer than i planned #to sum it up Hadri is comfy <3 #f/o #oc f/o #fictional other #f/o art #self ship community

[power-chords]

I interviewed more than 50 people in relationships with age gaps from ten to 40 years and heard many variations of the same theme: Their relationships were deeply satisfying, and they saw their age differences either as irrelevant or as beneficial. Justin Lehmiller, a social psychologist and researcher at the Kinsey Institute, began studying age-gap relationships of ten years or more in the aughts. As with gay and interracial couples, he found that people in these relationships suffered because they felt judged. Societal unease around age gaps coincided with the feminist movements of the 20th century, as women entered the workforce and marriage was increasingly idealized as a partnership of equals. “The push for equality in all ways has led us to this moment,” Lehmiller said. When people see an age gap, they tend to imagine there is something intrinsically unequal about it — that the older partner wants someone they can control and the younger partner has daddy issues or is just out for money. Our judgments can also reflect our personal histories. If you worry men won’t find you desirable as you age, seeing DiCaprio with his latest model girlfriend might feel like confirmation of that. Sometimes we instinctively dislike what other people do just because it’s different from what we have chosen for ourselves. “People look for simple pieces of information where they can make a judgment without considering all the nuances in that situation,” said Lehmiller. But exploitation can happen in any relationship, regardless of the partners’ ages: “Just because somebody might be older and might have more money does not mean that they’re the one calling all the shots.”

And even if the older partner is calling all the shots, or some of them, that isn’t necessarily abuse. While Me Too made us all too aware of the way power dynamics can be and have been exploited, it didn’t do away with the fact that desire for these dynamics continues to exist. (Daddy, for instance, was the most-searched term on the porn site xHamster among women in America in 2018.) Sex-advice columnist Dan Savage, who is seven years older than his husband and 22 years older than his boyfriend, has found much of the conversation about age gaps to be fundamentally unrealistic about what human relationships are. “We are status-obsessed, power-obsessed primates always jockeying for control — socially and also in our interpersonal relationships,” he said. “There’s no interpersonal relationship without power differentials, without advantages or disadvantages on both sides. And if you want to correct for that, or eliminate that, you have to eliminate human relationships.”

#dan savage is a schmuck but he's right on that point and justin lehmiller is a personal hero. this was a fun read #honestly if I were single and in my twenties again I wouldn't dream of dating a guy my own age. I was lucky to meet adam when I did! #but a dude under 35? NO THANKS.

[alfiely-art]

I'm voting Kotoko Guilty this round for quite a few reasons. First off, the only other two characters who have been voted guilty are Haruka and Muu. Yk. Minors. Who are already in a shitty mindset, who's verdict will most likely make that worse? Yeah. I would rather not have them beat up by Kotoko. And she WOULD beat them up- she would have beat up Amane if she hadn't been stopped, and Amane is much younger than Haruka and Muu.

I don't even mind her fighting injustice to feel good about herself. I mean, she's still fighting injustice. Regardless of her personal feelings about it, she's still doing good things. It's the way she goes about it that worries me. The article she was reading on her phone states that "more violence than necessary was used". Of course, the article could always be biased, but Kotoko has shown herself to be a violent person. Her call to us to vote everyone else in Milgram as Guilty, regardless of their crime, is a request for us to give her permission to make them her enemy and crush them. She would apply the same amount of force to, say, Yuno- someone who simply had an abortion because she didn't want the baby- as a person who kidnapped a child.

Kotoko sees everything in black and white. Yuno's "crime" of an abortion is just as evil as Haruka's crime of murder. Here's a reminder of the character's crimes (from my understanding):

Haruka: killed out of desperation to be seen, to have his mother finally acknowledge him after he wasn't good enough (ie, neurotypical) to keep up with the other kids.

Yuno: Had an abortion because she didn't want the baby. She didn't have some tragic reason why, she had a normal life. She was simply doing as she pleased.

Fuuta: Took part in cancel culture, which ended up doxxing a minor and she took her own life. He didn't want to accept responsibility for this, but it was clearly weighing on his mind.

Muu: She bullied others with her friends, and then her friends turned on her. She reached out to a classmate for help, but didn't receive any. Muu stabbed her in a panic, after alluding to either her or the classmate dying at the end of all of this.

Shido: Medical malpractice ? I think ? It's still not clear to me idk

Mahiru: Abused her boyfriend until he offed himself due to her sheltered life and toxic positivity. She feels as though she can't change, and she wants someone to love even if it hurts both of them.

Kazui: Lied about romantically loving his wife so that he could fit in to society at large. When he finally opened up about his feelings, the shock of it all caused his wife to end her life. He cared for her, but can't continue lying like this.

Amane: Killed her abuser, and is clinging to religion to both justify it to herself and comfort herself.

Mikoto: Still unclear whether he or John did the murder, how many murders there were, who was murdered, etc. The focus isn't exactly on the murder, moreso how mentally ill people are pushed to their limit with no support or help from others and the unhealthy coping mechanisms that can arise from that.

She tells us to throw away our sympathy. But understanding and kindness and sympathy are so so so important- not just in Milgram, but everywhere else, too. Yes, these are just characters, but a popular theory is that they represent societal issues. And I do believe that's true. They may not be real, but they represent real problems real people face. By ignoring the nuance, we blindly swing at whatever we're told is "guilty". Kotoko only attacked the prisoners we announced as Guilty. She won't act on her own moral code, merely the law. We are the law in Milgram, so she follows us.

I adore Kotoko, but her mindset is genuinely dangerous. While this is unlikely (cough, Amane) I hope her Guilty vote will help her. But it probably won't- Guilty votes destroy a person. But I can't vote her Innocent, either. I don't forgive her for her black and white thinking. Thus, she is Guilty to me. I'm very curious how she'll develop after this. I'm a little scared, too, but oh well.

#milgram #textpost #milgram kotoko #kotoko yuzuriha #opinions #milgram voting #if you disagree id love to hear your perspective #about kotoko i mean. shes the focus #i adore her but she scares me also

[oliverferrie]

It's Trans Day of Rememberance, time to support your local trans author while they are still alive

I originally put this thread up on blue birb hellsite, but I wanted to make a longer, more nuanced post for Tumblr. TDOR is a heavy day for me, and every time I see the list of names it makes me want to squirrel away and cry. So instead I want to spread around some books by trans authors, to uplift our voices. The books themselves are not necessarily about trans characters (mine is not) but my experience as a trans guy does inform the text, and when I read these other works, I feel a kinship to the author in that regard, however imagined that is.

I'll start, it's me, buy my horrific (seriously, read the content warning) fantasy book about young queers surviving atrocities: SUGAR PEOPLE

Next up: Δάιος, by Andromeda Ruins (@andromedaexists). A heavy anti-establishment retelling of the fall of Icarus that leans heavily into the reality of queer folk as outcast and put at risk by the powers that be. I have yet to finish it but the prose really slaps you with its urgency.

Next up: FEMININ GANGE (Feminine gait), by Molly Øxnevad, a contemporary novel about the trans healthcare system in Norway. It's written in Norwegian (bokmål) but I really hope to see it translated in English one day because it's such an important piece of literature on the state of our centralised transmedical health system here in norway.

Next up, MAO SIN RAUDE KJOLE (Mao's Red Dress), by Jan Elisabeth Lindvik, (also norwegian, nynorsk) a coming of age novel set in the backdrop of the sixties. It's only really available in Norway, and it's another one I hope to see translated someday, but it's worth knowing about, as it's a seminal novel by a trans activist with so many decades of lived experience, as the country slowly changed its views around trans folk.

Next, we have JACK OF THORNS, Book 1 of INHERITANCE by AK Faulkner, a dark urban fantasy featuring messy queers and LOTS of trauma. I had the pleasure of meeting Faulkner at a con earlier this year, and they have got an awesome thing going with the Inheritance universe. I've been enjoying Jack of Thorns a lot, it does not hold back.

Next, it's the astounding FRESHWATER by Akwaeke Emezi, a magical contemporary novel about dissociative experiences and trauma, and how they interplay with culture and growing up. A very intense and beautifully written book that isn't afraid to tackle dissociative identities AND gender identity (something those of us who have both often have to mask for fear of being denied treatment).

AND THEY LIVED... by Stephen Salvatore, a very contemporary YA romance that deals with societal issues around being gay and nonbinary. It's written from the POV of a cringey, hopeful teen, and dances between happily-ever-after romance and a pointed exhumation of incredibly dark things.

Finally, LARK & KASIM START A REVOLUTION by Kacen Callender, a contemporary YA written in a comfortably snappy rhythm, about love, friendship and a social media mishap that spirals out of control.

If you are an author listed here and you want off this list, just let me know! If you are an author and you want ON this list, feel free to reblog and add your stuff.

Otherwise, go forth and support a trans author today! Connect with our stories, real and imagined. Increase empathy and understanding around the world. Maybe TDOR will be a memorial of the past one day, instead of a memorial of the present day.

#tdor #trans day of remembrance #trans authors #uplift trans voices

[save-the-villainous-cat]

Adore your writing!! Any tips on writing friends to lovers without it coming across as too cheesy? How would you spice it up?

Hey hey!!

Thank you so much for that compliment! :3

First of all, I feel like we all interpret cheesy in different ways, so I think you should be confident in your own abilities and skills. If it doesn’t sound cheesy to you, then don’t worry too much about what other people think!

Secondly, from what I’ve seen/read, there are quite some things I personally (and other people) consider as cheesy.

I’m just gonna use two movies I’ve seen as an example: Titanic and The Kissing Booth.

Whereas The Kissing Booth offers us boring characters (seriously I cannot remember anything about them: what do they want? What are their goals? What are their flaws?), Titanic gives us nuanced main characters (Rose, a young aristocratic woman, trapped in her societal role and Jack, a poor artist who dreams of a better life in America) AND side characters (FABRIZIOOOO).

Flat and boring characters without flaws make romance novels cheesy (in my opinion) and adding clichés just doesn’t help: the bad boy, the good guy, the quirky main character.

And likewise the plot:

What is Titanic’s love story about? A woman who feels so pressured by her role in society that she wants to kill herself, gets saved by a guy, falls in love with this guy and manages to break out of her misery through not only romance but also loving life itself again (because of that guy)?

What is The Kissing Booth about? I actually forgot A teenage girl who falls in love with her guy best friend’s brother…? Honestly sorry that’s all that comes to mind and don’t ask me how on earth that’s a problem?? How is that conflict uhhh

So, I’d argue a good love story per se is about the main character’s growth and overcoming struggles just like every other good story. Your plot needs conflict. Not everything can go smoothly. (Little info: most writers use the climax of a romance [end of act ii] to make it seem like the couple broke up, eg: 10 Things I Hate About You)

When it comes to friends-to-lovers specifically, I’d advise you to be aware of their character dynamic at first since friendships can look very different and how it progresses throughout the story. (Obviously going hand in hand with having established their characters in the first place)

How well do they know each other? Have they opened up to each other before? What are their boundaries in a friendship? Is one of them more interested than the other? Do they have a romantic history (like kissing drunk at a party or something)? Basically: how do they treat each other?

And most importantly: how do the characters themselves change throughout the story and because of the love story? Why this person? Why now?

In case I forgot anything, feel free to add your responses as reblogs or comments!

I hope this somewhat helps! (I’m not a professional don’t listen to me)

#I’m just yapping #no writing #an answer for an ask

[cassyapper]

I hope this doesn't come off the wrong way because I absolutely love Kakyoin's effeminacy and wouldn't get rid of it ever, but it sometimes feels like that one word being in his bio forever doomed him to people being weird about him bc while the traits are undeniably there, he's not really that much more effeminate than other jojo characters, yet they seemingly don't suffer this same sorta weirdness. Ofc people are weird for other reasons, but Kakyoin's femininity seems to be one of those key things. I sometimes wonder how much less prevalent the gay femboy trophy husband interpretation of him would be if that wasn't there.

Again sorry if that comes off wrong. I'm not sure how else to word that thought atm (it's really late here and my brain doesn't wanna function)

no honestly i super agree anon dont worry i get exactly what you're saying here. i agree it feels like people saw that single part of his bio and didnt care to even finish the fuckin sentence it was in which was "he may appear to be effeminate, but in reality, he hates submitting and sucking up to others". he is a character built on complementary contradictions but people hate nuance (esp in fandom spaces) more than anything so they pick one side and run with it and NEITHER on its own is right and ugh. it pisses me off. and since im involved in (non-reddit) fandom spaces i (and i assume u) see the gay femboy trophy husband the most and it's just exhausting honestly cause it's just so ooc. and is imo indicative of larger societal issues about how people see gnc men, particularly asian men, but it is also very late for me in my timezone so i aint gonna get into all that

basically my point is: i get what ur saying. i love kakyoin's femininity and i love it being written explicitly so i can own the dudebros who try to say he wouldnt wear a dress or skirt or whatever, but i also hate that it was written explicitly cause now we have clamp and such fellow-minded people and it's exhausting cause it makes so many people unable to be normal about kakyoin

#cass cries

[thisworldisablackhole]

This week in listening 02/23/24

Okay, wow. Today was a massive day for new releases, so let's get a few of those out of the way first. Starting with...

Job For A Cowboy was like... not on my radar AT ALL this year. I listened to this band a bit around 2010, but they were always a little too extreme for me. I'll be honest, the album cover is what sold me on this. The art is giving me huge Born of Osiris vibes, which is another band I used to listen to in the 2010s and have actually been getting back into lately (The Discovery is a fucking incredible record). So, inspired by amazing psychedelic alien artwork, vague nostalgia, and a healthy dose of morbid curiosity, I decided to jump in to this as soon as I woke up. I am actually blown away by how good this is. I'm not a huge metalhead, so I struggle to describe the intricacies of this type of music, but I know for certain it's activating some disgusting primal neurons in my brain. It's heavy, technical, colourful, thoughtful. The guitars whip around with the sharpness of wire torture devices as the bass paints terrifying rhythms into the background of every song. The drums don't just keep up, they hold the leash to maintain control over the chaos and do so flawlessly. The vocals? They add a nice flavouring to the sound but I'm honestly so intrigued by what's going on underneath the surface of these songs that I keep forgetting to listen to him. It's not really a bad thing.

When I was just starting to get back into metalcore a few years ago, I spent a night swapping the aux and drinking beers with my best friend, and he threw on Darkest Hour's song DEMON(S). I was blown away by their ability to inject melody into their sound in a very subtle and nuanced way. They had a much heavier melodeath influence and didn't rely on huge soaring pop choruses like every other -core band of the 2000s. A lot of the melody in their songs comes from the riffs themselves and I love that about them. Even when clean vocals are present, they are mellow in pitch and are used almost more like a texture to enrich the riffing instead of being the main show. When Darkest Hour started dropping singles for this new album my ears perked up right away. Societal Bile showcased a more straight forward thrash influence and I was a little worried that this album would be lacking in melody, but I'm relieved to find that isn't the case. This song in particular is a perfect showcase of the band ability to be heavy and also execute insanely beautiful choruses without being corny about it. Another absolute standout track from this album is Mausoleum, which sounds almost like if Elliot Smith wrote a melodeath song. Trust me, check it out and you’ll know what I mean. I also want to take a second to appreciate that the artwork for this is clearly a nod to The Black Dahlia Murder (rest in peace Trevor Strnad).

Okay, massive diversion away from metal for a second. MGMT is a band that I have always reserved a spot in my heart for despite not being interested in... well... anything they've put out since their debut. Like many other people my age, Electric Feel is more than just a song, it's a core memory. I've listened to few tracks here and there from their other albums out of curiosity but nothing clicked. Not because they weren't good, but because I just wasn't at a place in my life where I was willing to let the magic of MGMT back into my heart. Loss Of Life may very well be the album to change that. When Bubblegum Dog dropped in 2023 I was immediately captivated by the strange, off kilter folkiness of it. Weird, and catchy? Wait a minute, that's the same reason I fell in love with Oracular Spectacular! I haven't listened to this full album yet so we'll see how much of it delivers on those qualities, but I have been jamming this single a lot over the past few days so I had to include it in the list.

I posted a full review for this album here, but I'll do a quick summary. I've racked up about 270 scrobbles out of this album over the past week since it was released, that's like listening to it about 24 times in full (or 3.4 times a day). I absolutely adore this album because it brings back to life everything I loved about music growing up. It's passionate, catchy, emotional, and heavy. Seriously, if you are a fan of My Chemical Romance, early Escape the Fate, AFI, The Used etc etc.. I can not beg you enough to give this album a chance. It's a very well written love letter to that era of 2000s post hardcore and emo bands and you will find it immediately familiar and comforting.

Okay, we are moving away from new releases now. I mentioned in a previous post how I was getting back into prog by listening to bands like TesseracT, Aviations and Artificial Language. The Contortionist is the newest addition to that roster and they bring something very unique to the table. Their instrumentals are heavy but methodical and hypnotic, much like the image on the album art. The thing that stuck out to about this band the most is their singer. I can't get over how much I love his mellow, folky approach to singing on a metal album. I've never heard anything like it. Seriously, take out the metal instrumentation and replace them with Nick Drake's Pink Moon and his voice wouldn't feel out of place at all. The result is a progressive metal album that feels extremely down to earth. If this album had a scent it would be of bark and dirt. Again, somehow the album art has done an immaculate job at representing the sound of the record. I'm obsessed. This is their last album (released in 2017) and is far from their most popular, but I'm curious to go backward and see how their sound progressed to this point.

Thursday is probably going to keep popping up on these roundups because they are my favourite fucking band right now and I never want to stop listening to them. I initially glossed over WATT as a “good but stagnant” entry to their discog, but after hearing lots of people say this is their favourite Thursday album, I knew there had to be something about it that I was missing. Don’t get me wrong, I always enjoyed it, but I felt it lacked the hooks and the gut wrenching punches of Full Collapse, and it also did nothing to push their sound forward like ACBTLD did. Well, I’ve spent the last two weeks listening to it non stop in honour of their WATT tour, and I have to say it’s grown on me so much to the point where it’s become my go to choice when I need a kick in the teeth. I think this album has some of Thursday's heaviest material both sonically and thematically, and it's also a bit more nuanced in the way it shows it's colours. It has a tough shell that takes multiple listens to crack, but it's so worth the time. “Signals Over the Air” was always my fav song from this, but recently “Steps Ascending” and the closer “Tomorrow I’ll Be You” have started to stand out as serious highlights to me. The ending of this song when Geoff yells “I’M CALLING FROM YOUR HOUSE, IN YOUR ROOM, IN YOUR NAME. LAYING IN YOUR BED, FOLLOWING YOUR DREAMS” sends chills up my spine.

Last but not least, I’ve been jamming this album again for pure nostalgia purposes. This album came out when I was 11 and was one of the first/most life changing CD's I ever owned. I was actually inspired to spin this again because of The Requiem’s song “Less Than Zero” has riffs that remind me soo much of some of the songs here. This album just never gets old though, despite it turning 20 next years (I want to cry thinking about that). In fact, I think the older I get, the better these songs sound. I was listening to this while on a long walk the other day and kept finding myself being wildly impressed by the songwriting and guitar riffing. There are so many subtle switch ups happening underneath the surface, and the way the two guitars play around each other is just incredible. The closer you listen the more depth there seems to be. "Under The Knife" and "Injection" are straight up two of the best melodic punk songs ever written. Pure genius.

#Spotify #rise against #thursday #the contortionist #the requiem #mgmt #darkest hour #job for a cowboy #progressive metal #death metal #post hardcore #hardcore punk #alternative music #melodeath #music

[300iqprower]

As someone who never quite got to finish Persona 4, what exactly is it about Naoto's handling that is so questionable/problematic? I fully believe there's been a lot of mishandling, I've partially took a break from the game because of how Kanji was treated, but the fandom had me believe it was just a fairly standard Mulan-esque crossdressing storyline. I don't mind spoilers

Ok, here we go....[Full spoilers to follow obviously]

Kanji and Naoto are, in a vacuum, both incredibly well written and non-problematic characters. However, Persona 4 is unfortunately very much not a story that exists in a vacuum. The director of the game, Hashino, is a subhuman piece of shit incel who is openly homophobic and transphobic. My favorite go to is how in an interview when asked why in Persona 3 you were forced into romantic relationships with every female character which no option for platonic relationships, he responded it was because "I believe a non-romantic relationship between a man and a woman can never be genuine". He also stole credit from others to get his position and actually contributed almost nothing to the success of the series. I'm not a fan of the site it's on, but this thread does a good job of summarizing all the things he's done.

So how does this tie back into Persona 4? Well, it cast a very undermining shadow over the aforementioned well written characters, who deal with themes of sexuality and gender identity respectively but have a very pro-status quo resolution to both their stories that becomes much less nuanced with the knowledge that a raging bigot was in charge. The localization handled Kanji and Naoto much better than the japanese version did, and IMO effectively salvaged two phobic premises (the ideas of homosexuality being "confusion" and transgenderism being "a lie") by handling the characters with much more tact in their portrayal. I'd go so far as to argue Kanji is written to be pansexual instead, and as a bisexual I don't see the version of the game I played through as even remotely problematic, especially with how he's never written as if he "got over" his sexuality but rather simply stops worrying about gender entirely, which Naoto reinforces heavily due to his attraction to them not even wavering throughout the story's progression (and showing similar attraction to Yu at times). To be clear though my talk of localization is not me throwing shade at the japanese team, rather I'm saying likely because of the localization process giving Hashino less oversight, the localization team were able to portray it much better. The existence of things in both versions like Yosuke's romance route (that reportedly was going to be included until at the last second Hashino mandated it be cut entirely, retroactively turning Yosuke from a repressed gay into an outright homophobe due to never getting resolution that explains his wariness) shows that there was a clearly positive intent even in the japanese development side.

Naoto is the real can of worms though, not Kanji. Naoto's character arc revolves around the extremely patriarchal system of Japan, particularly Japanese law enforcement. They want to be a detective, but due to both their age and gender fear that they will never be accepted in such a role. The conclusion they reached was that if they can't change their age, they can still at least change their gender, and so began presenting as male. The crux of their arc revolves around their acceptance of who they are and not feeling a need to lie about who they are to please other people, presenting as female later on (though their actual appearance remains the exact same outside of a select few instances).

This is where it gets messy. In both Naoto's instance and real life, there ARE people who feel pressured into presenting as something besides what they are comfortable with for reasons such as insecurity, societal standards, or simple lack of understanding on such things. In a vacuum Persona 4 could be argued as simply telling a story of one such case very well. In context, however, this is disturbingly in line with Hashino's statements on transgenderism and him claiming it's equivalent to mental illness. No matter how well done it is in context, to the point I genuinely believe the people actually writing it did so with completely earnest and well-meaning intentions, those malicious intentions from the one in charge still undermine it completely and utterly.

This is where it gets even messier. As I said, the point of Naoto's character arc is self-acceptance and the understanding they do not need to label themselves to live up to the standards of others looking down on them. Understandably, many choose to claim Naoto is a trans character and treat them as such. On the other hand, one can also rightfully see it as flying in the face of the lesson of Naoto's character of how you should not conform to labels and the assumptions of others, especially since Naoto's story very clearly conveys that Naoto has no actual issue with their gender, but due to bullying over their stereotypically masculine interests and fears of the patriarchal society they live in, feel they have no choice but to live as a man. These are very real issues that many can empathize with, and it's understandable why those who particularly empathize with Naoto might find certain circles explicitly treating them as FTM something that rubs them the wrong way, especially when some of said circles are extremely vocal about this.

And so the end result is any actual discourse is basically FUBAR. While there are unquestionably transphobes who would use Naoto as a "gotcha", many have a genuine reason for not wanting to treat the character as trans. Similarly, there are many people who rightfully see the treatment of Naoto as female being a form of trans-denial and among those people are those who push back particularly vehemently. And in the end most any attempt to actually discuss this devolves into one side claiming acknowledgement of the obvious transcoding is disrespectful to the character, while the other side labels anyone who would treat Naoto as a woman as being transphobic.

#never thought i'd get an ask #long post #wall of text #character analysis #you're fcking crazy if you think i'm actually tagging the characters tho

[genderqueerdykes]

Questions about sexuality - and romance alignments -a lot of labels come off like, they don't so much ascribe to a truth so much as a perception+box. But that makes it really hard to figure out what labels to use. Like; for a lot of people, aroace means zero sexual and romantic attraction - and I don't see a lot of people treating it as a spectrum. But for me, I've only ever been sexually+romantically attracted to my gf and her system - no one else. Am I aroace? And then there's demi, but I don't see that used as much. And I'm bi-oriented? Or should i just say bi? Is specifying polyamory too much? I question and doubt every label because I worry about misunderstandings and exclusionism. Mainstream definitions seem to be getting more rigid in who can use them. I was excited to discover m-spec lesbianism before I saw a lot of conversations about "men invading". The way the binary genders are viewed are also very strict. It's a bit overwhelming.

it can definitely get overwhelming at times, i get that! i'm sorry to hear it's been frustrating to research

i think the biggest thing to keep in mind is the boundaries on most identities are not quite that rigid. for a lot of people, aroace can mean 0 attraction, but for many it's used to denote that they're on the aro- and acespectrums, which includes a very wide variety of experiences. i'd also like to say demiromantic and demisexual are very popular terms, and are used very widely, i think the reason they're not seen quite as much at the current moment is because a lot of people aren't as open about it due to a lot of extremely violent aroacephobia from a few years ago. it's been hard for the aroace community to find a footing and it's unfortunate, because the experiences are varied and valid

also ignore any and all rhetoric involving "men invading" lesbian spaces, it's rad fem / t erf rhetoric and it's not worth your time. men are allowed to be in lesbian spaces, lesbians are allowed to identify with male genders, lesbians are allowed to date men, and lesbians are allowed to be attracted to multiple genders, lesbian does not have to be an exclusive identity. i am an m-spec lesbian, myself =) it has never been and will never be a bad thing to be a bisexual, polysexual, pansexual or other multisexual identity lesbian. bi lesbians have been around as long as the community has. lesbians can and do have a wide variety of experiences with sexuality, gender and attraction

things are very confusing at first, but i think eventually the bubble will burst, so to speak, in your mind and you'll have that moment where you realize it's okay if you play with the boundaries of things a little bit. queerness is at its core about pushing the boundaries of what we are societally taught to believe is the "correct" way to go about relationships, and it's okay if you don't fit 100% into a rigid textbook definition of something that can be neatly laid out on paper. you are a person with nuance, and it's okay if your labels have nuance as well

hope you're able to figure things out, identity is confusing and whenever you read about labels online, they can seem like very strict boxes you have to put yourself in. whenever you meet people who identify with these things and see how their identities present, though, those lines become a lot softer, and often times harder to see, and that's a good thing. take care of yourself, good luck in your journey

#asks #answers #questioning

[mollyolikeme]

It is so so fascinating how the marketing for Barbie has simultaneously brought people to the movie and also misled them unintentionally, therefore causing them to dislike it.

I’ve spoken with multiple people who said they didn’t like it because they didn’t see the message or understand the message or were ‘blind sided’ by what the movie actually contained.

For me, a movie lover who loves all of Greta Gerwig’s work, I knew exactly what I was getting into with Barbie. I knew there was going to be some bigger message within this absolute romp. I didn’t even watch any clips or trailers after the first teaser. I was prepared going in because I’m familiar with Greta.

But for people who consumed all the marketing and have never bothered with knowing creators or more ‘behind the scenes’ people in film, all they knew going in was; 'Pink is in! Look at the stacked cast of celebrities and musical artists we have attached to this film! Get on this fun filled train with us!'

Which was indeed, so fun! But these types of audience members were doomed from the beginning. Dropped into a movie that is nuanced from the first scene and they just couldn’t keep up.

So lots of the pivotal moments were not noticed or lost behind the beautiful design of the movie. America’s speech seems out of place or like it wasn’t worked up to.

Depending on the viewers background, they might not even see how Will Ferrell's Mother is essential to the greater message.

I digress, my point is just, its fascinating the route the marketing team took.

Because it might pay off in the short term, and I think it still is, but I worry that the initial societal assumptions made about the film will take away from the actual content within the movie going forward and what the legacy of Barbie will become.

And honestly, I think this fractured audience reaction also highlights how many people are truly dragging their feet in old societal values and stuck in their comfort bubbles, refusing to see things on a bigger scale or from others perspectives.

#barbie #greta gerwig #margot robbie #ryan gosling #america ferrera #greta gerwig's barbie #barbie 2023 #we are kenough #molly thoughts #post barbie word vomit #my mind has just been spinning with thoughts about barbie #this is the most coherent I could make it

[phantom-of-the-north]

Info post about Swedish discussion forum Flashback. Part 1

I wanted to provide some information about Flashback Forum, a part of Swedish internet culture and a discussion forum that is seemingly unprecedented in the rest of the world. This is probably too niche for someone on here to care about, but I thought it would be nice to make information about Flashback available in English.

I've become interested in the forum after I started listening to the humor podcast Flashback Forever three years ago. The podcast is hosted by three women, Ina Lundström, Emma Knyckare and Scroll-Mia (real name: Mia Gruffman-Cruse) and every week they go through some of Flashback's teeming threads and discuss various findings. It's given me a more nuanced picture of the forum and I've come to appreciate it more and more. Growing up I was basically taught that Flashback was an awful place that you should keep away from at all costs. I learned that it's full of racist, misogynistic, homophobic and overall unpleasant people. Which isn't far from the truth I guess. Right-wing extreme opinions are over-represented on Flashback and the majority of the userbase are men aged 26-35. The term Dödsknarkarnazister (stoner nazis) is often used on the site to ironically describe the average Flashback user.

I think, in part, the reason the userbase looks the way it does has to do with this: in a "politically correct" country like Sweden, people with views that would be considered bigoted would be alienated if they expressed these views out loud, so they take refuge in Flashback where they can voice their thoughts without having to worry about societal acceptance.

That being said, Flashback is politically independent. All opinions are welcome there. There's just a high prevalence of xenophobia, misogyny etc because those views can't be voiced anywhere without retaliation, except on Flashback.

Anyways, I think Flashback Forever has helped normalize the public's perception of the forum which I think is positive. Instead of being horrified by the things that people write on there, you can laugh at it. Because the stuff people write there is often ridiculous. However, there are a lot of truly interesting discussions on the forum and some of the users are actually sane and reasonable lol.

I do think traditional media in Sweden gives Flashback an unnecessarily bad reputation. One thing though; you should definitely keep children away from it because there's a lot of information about drugs, weapons and prostitution. But if you delve into it as an adult, Flashback is a pretty fascinating place full of advice, life experience and fun topics. It's a truly unique platform.

So, here's my translation of the text Bakgrund (background) on the page Om Flashback (about Flashback) to give you an idea of it's values:

"In 1776 Sweden was the first country in the world to impose freedom of the press through then existing Tryckfrihetsförordningen. This gave every citizen a statutory right to, among other things, freely render one's opinions without censorship.

Flashback has existed as a newspaper since 1983, and on the internet since 1995. The discussion forum Flashback Forum was launched in 2000. A platform that rests upon a nonconformist value-system; and where the members have the possibility to be anonymous. It is socially acceptable to breach consensus on Flashback, and even those with deviant opinions are welcome in the dialogue.

Freedom of speech is important. Flashback has a long history of defending the free word and it aims to pass on the Swedish tradition of freedom of speech. To actively defend the freedom of opinion and speech, even when it comes to those who wish to abolish or restrict said rights. In the long term, Flashback believes this acting will contribute to a decreased polarisation in society, and an increased understanding of those with opposite views."

Adding to this; the founder of Flashback is a man named Jan Axelsson. I'm not gonna go into detail about Jan as not much is known about him as a person, but freedom of speech seems to have been his passion since he was 14 years old and his intentions with Flashback has been to stimulate the intellectual debate and involve all types of opinions, including distasteful and taboo subjects, that traditional media would otherwize exclude. He believes that freedom of speech is a prerequisite for a literate population.

Here’s a photo of Jan, taken from this article.

The photo caption in the article reads: Jan Axelsson in Stockholm 1999, before he went underground. Photo: Anna Littorin

Yeah so, Axelsson lives under a protected identity, probably because he gets a lot of threats for being the person who founded Flashback.

Because of Flashback's almost complete freedom of speech it's seen as a controversial site and some people have wanted to shut it down. This has happened twice, in 2003 at the latest. During September that year, a sentence in Marknadsdomstolen (the Market Court) forced the forum-part of Flashback to shut down. The TV companies ComHem, Senda and Viasat had found advertisements for piratkort (equipment used for piracy decryption of cable TV) on Flashback's website for advertisements, Popmart.se. The companies demanded that Jan Axelsson censor posts on Flashback, something that would've been pretty much impossible if Flashback were to continue as a discussion forum. After the trial, Axelsson had to pay the trial costs of 250 000 SEK and was threatened with a penalty of 400 000 SEK if advertisements continued to show up on Flashback.

But by moving the operation of Flashback to Great Britain and running the forum through a new domain, flashback.info, the forum could continue, because it no longer had a connection to Axelsson's company Flashback Media Group. As long as Axelsson doesn't publicly represent the forum, the penalty threat is out of sight. In 2010 the domain moved to New York but since 2021 the forum is once again owned by Flashback Media Group and the domain is now flashback.org, which Flashback's admin announced in this thread. The reason why Flashback's domain could move back to Sweden is because the Market Court doesn't exist anymore - it's been replaced by Patent- och marknadsdomstolen, the Patent and Market Court, and thus the sentence from 2003 doesn't apply to Flashback Forum anymore.

Okay, I think that will do it for this first info post, a little insight into Flashback!

#flashback #flashback forum #forum websites #discussion forums #swedish internet culture #internet culture #internet history #internet forums #sweden #sverige #long post #sa du sten #all makt åt tengil vår befriare #svea rike

[sparethedreamer]

WhispDream System

Plural system made up of a Mixedflux and a Paragenic/Dreamway sisasystem (we hope we have the right terms but will change them if we find better ones or if things change/develop)

We consider ourselves traumaendo and have mixed origins

# of headmates: ~20-30?

We're collectively an adult

System members include fictives, factives, OCtives, kinforms, and headmates of various ages, genders, species, origins, and lives.

Health

Severe ME/CFS - bedbound/housebound

Chronic pain, Chronic Migraines, Fibromyalgia

POTS, Vertigo

Depression, Anxiety, cPTSD, ADHD, MaDD, possible Autism

DNI

Bigots (racists, sexists, terfs, homophobes, ableists, etc.)

Anti-endos

Fakeclaimers

Trolls

Basically, if you're mean and/or if you Other people, we don't want you here. No bullies plz and thanks.

Possible content/trigger warnings:

We are very fantasy prone due to having MaDD/immersive daydreaming most of our life. Several headmates live primarily in our Paracosm but may cross over and even front. We also collectively occasionally suffer from delusions/psychosis. We try to use the unreality tw tag but may miss things occasionally.

Spiders

Snakes

Bugs and other creepy crawlies

Discussion of social issues, politics, societal issues

LDS/Queerstake/religion posts

Mental Illness

Chronic Illness

Health

Swearing

Trauma

Death, harm, injustice, pain

Some syscourse?

Please note that some headmates have difficulty determining if something should have a tw, so some content may not be adequately tagged. Feel free to let us know if something is missing an important tag or is mis-tagged.

🍁 is very justice focused and 🔥 is an anger holder. This is their blog, too. Be aware they may post about things that they are passionate about or upset about

Things to keep in mind:

We're usually dealing with some level of brain fog/cognitive dysfunction/forgetfulness. We also have very very low energy levels. Please be patient.

Despite our childlike wonder and youthful demeanor, we're getting older and hitting that point where it's harder to keep up with the youths and their slang. We're also starting to believe in nuance and crap D:

We're not accepting any criticism or hate for our choice of religion. Please don't worry about it affecting our acceptance and love of you. We're also not going to be pushy with our religion at all.

It turns out that we're still learning and growing and are imperfect. We have and will make mistakes but are always willing to learn, grow, and change. We welcome advice, education, and being respectfully called out on our mistakes.

- We use "we" and "I" interchangeably

- We're just doing our best.

This is just our little blog. Don't expect a whole lot from it.

We support Palestine and all other genocide victims. Just because we don't post about certain issues doesn't mean we don't care. We do. Deeply. We just can't cover them here for personal trigger/health reasons. There are plenty of amazing blogs covering these events . Our heart goes out to those suffering. - 🍁

Side blogs

7ateninetales - pokemon IRL/Rotomblr blog - dormant atm

#sparethedreamer #pinned post #whispdream system #whispdream #plural #system #me/cfs #queerstake #neurodivergence #adhd #depression #anxiety #pro endo #endo safe #7ateninetales

[isolatedbubble]

Romance in MXTX, Priest, and SHL

MXTX: Flower, Wine and Dreamworld

The romance in MXTX's works is like flower that grows in ice and snow; colorful, bright and hopelessly romantic, blossoms in misery and hardships.

It features a distinct "us against the world" mindset, depicting love as the only constant in the world. It's an eternal "dreamworld" detached from worldly matters, the perfect escapism as well as a source of strengths in the face of cruel reality.

Both MDZS and TGCF are a critique of mob mentality.

The contrast between CQL and MDZS is very interesting. While the former ends with LWJ taking charge, and therefore changing the world for the better, the novel ends with wangxian isolating themselves from grand politics and focusing more on helping individuals as recluse. It has an essentially pessimistic attitude towards the morality & intelligence of the collective. 

TGCF takes a slightly more optimistic approach, featuring the crowd being courageous under the right circumstances. However, both works share a similar undertone: putting one’s absolute faith in the collective is dangerous, whereas unconditional trust and devotion can be only found in one-to-one connection

MXTX herself compares MDZS and TGCF to 花间一壶酒 (A cup of wine among flowers), MDZS being the wine and TGCF being flower. She also compares MDZS to 风雪夜归人, the person returning home from snow and wind, and TGCF to 红泥小火炉, a small red furnace.

Priest: Breezing Wind and Burning Iron

The romance in priest's works is more complicated. It's the most gentle in its normal state, when it is rational and collected, in which case it's like the breezing wind, soothing, sweet and light-hearted. It gives the individuals more incentive to achieve their individual and/or societal vision, as well as more reason to value their own lives & well-being.

In Faraway Wanderers, the most distinct feature of WenZhou relationship is how in naturally sync they are, and how comfortable & smooth their dynamic is. They both have past burden, but it doesn’t matter, because they bring simple joy, understanding and happiness in each other’s lives.

In Sha Po Lang and The Guardian, the ML’s lingering love for the MC motivates them to become better version of themselves, to care about others, and to form a holistic vision about bettering society. 

In The Defective, Lin Jingheng(MC) explicitly said that Lu Bixing(ML) is the only meaning in his life. He had little incentive to care about his own life after his revenge plan fell apart. LBX helped him reconnect with his inner idealism, and gave him a reason value his life.

When the passion and fiery energy manifests itself, however, the romance is like burning iron, blood and fire. It isn’t actually toxic or unhealthy, but it's not pure and innocent either; in this case, it strives for something deeper and more intense, never content with the past or the present. The sheer intensity of relationship is like a double-edged sword, walking the fine line between unconditional devotion and dangerous obsession. 

SHL: Spring Water and Healing Open Wounds

The romance in SHL is like "spring water"; it's warm, gentle, nurturing. It breaks through the boundary between individuals to bring the couple closer to each other, taking them back to a utopia of their childhood dream, away from social pressure and responsibility. The theme central to their relationship is “salvation”: how love is able to bring people back to integrity.

Both drama wkx and drama zzs have lots of regret about their past sins and wrongdoings. Four Seasons Manor is essentially a metaphor for purity, acceptance and the safety of childhood home. How to make drama wkx open up and accept this safe harbor as his home is one of the most significant plot-lines of the show.

SHL couple is way more emotionally vulnerable and expressive. A significant part of SHL arc is healing the wounds in an open and honest way. They cuddle and confide in each other way more often, talk about their shameful past and even cry about their regrets in front of one another, which is very rare among MXTX/Priest works.

The heat of the relationship sometimes gets too hot and even burns; in other words, there are constant miscommunications, conflicts and misunderstandings in the relationship. However, they can never let each other go, because it's the only source of warmth left for them in their hopeless lives filled with regrets and guilt.

Similarities and Differences

*Note that this is not a SHL/TYK comparison. TYK is kind of an “unorthodox” priest novel; you will know what I mean if you have read 3+ of her works. 

Relationship Dynamic & Narrative:  

In MXTX’s works, the concept of “romance” itself is divined; and the characters are illustration of the ideal of “undying love”. People are made for one another, to complete one another. Her works use colorful symbolism (silver butterflies, the emperor’s smile, the 3 thousand lanterns, etc.) to depict this romanticized ideal of love. 

For MXTX, the romanticization of “destined love” is one of the most recurring themes of her novels. Therefore, the readers look at their relationship through rose-color glasses. Obsession is usually framed in a jolly & romantic light, and doesn’t feature much tension or stress, and has less negative or unhealthy undertone. 

In most of priest’s works and SHL, soulmates are not born but made, so they have to figure out how their relationship works step by step. Therefore the narrative is less of a “rosy picture”. 

Priest has a habit of using derogatory terms to describe relationships that are mostly healthy, but somewhat “bloody” and edgy, full of excessive passion and obsession. The most common phrase is “爱生忧怖”, a Buddhist term meaning “love results in worry and fear”. 

SHL obviously has to be more subtle in expressing love. That said, drama WenZhou are way more emotionally vulnerable and expressive than their novel counterparts, as well as most Priest & MXTX characters. They have a dramatic falling out once in a while, even towards the end. They barely fit the Chinese definition of Zhiji (to know me/to understand one another), but are “lovers” who are buried deep in their passion instead. 

Past, Future and Evolvement: 

In SHL, characters are encouraged to treasure past impressions that are thrown in figurative “wrappings”, whose luster is derived from age-old experiences (Psychological Types, Carl Jung). In other words, they are encouraged to root their love in a shared past, a Utopia of innocence. 

The contrast between The Defective and Word of Honor is very interesting to observe. Both involve long separation, and the suffering and personality changes hat comes from it.   SHL narrative frames their innocent childhood as something to cling to and return to. Drama WKX is encouraged to accept his identity as Four Seasons Manor disciple because it was part of his childhood past. This is a significant part of drama WenZhou relationship.

In The Defective, the narrative doesn't encourage the couple to dwell on the past that much. On the contrary, the all-knowing AI explicitly discouraged the MC from “comparing past to present”. They are advised to accept changes, however painful it might be, and build a better, more equal dynamic out of it, evolving from one-sided pandering to fighting side-by-side.  

In Priest’s novels, the characters rarely return to something in the past, but look into the future. Change is usually framed as inherently beneficial, albeit usually painful and rocky, the implication being that you need to constantly strive for something better.  

Sha Po Lang is a good example of this, with Gu Yun’s changing attitude towards Chang Geng after he as he matures, gradually showing his intelligence in politics. CG starts referring to GY as Zixi instead of YiFu is also a sign of this change---to see him as equal rather than a parental figure & protector.

The Defective is even more obvious in this regard, with both parties uncomfortable with the change initially, but gradually adjusting to the changes during their 16-year separation. The ML also stops calling MC by his surname “Lin”, as a sign of viewing him as equal. 

In MXTX’s works, change in personality or relationship dynamic is neither framed as painful or good. It just happens. It’s a natural flow that take place when it does. Their relationships are rarely challenged by change. They are objectively at a better place compared to their past, but it’s merely the result of a series of events rather than a deliberate choice or struggle.  

WangXian’s relationship naturally changes over time after WWX’s rebirth, but neither of them really struggles with the change. 

Xie Lian doesn’t even recognize Hua Cheng as the someone from his past, so they start out as friends getting to know each other. 

Salvation and Changing one another: 

Priest herself stated in an interview that she doesn’t believe in the concept of salvation, since people have the inner capacity to be their own savior. Therefore, priest characters usually don’t actively try to change their partner’s morals or personality. Some might be willingly influenced by their partner, but there’s rarely an element of moral condemnation. Even when there is a conflict between different values, the options are 1) to reconcile them by choosing the middle ground 2) to maintain their independence and tackle it with nuance 3) to break up.

On surface level, Mo Du/Silent Reading is about Luo Wenzhou being Fei Du’s salvation. However, as LWZ pointed out himself, Fei Du would’ve been a good person at heart with or without his influence. 

In The Defective, when Lu Bixing mistakenly thought Lin Jingheng stayed in the Eighth Galaxy against his own wishes because of their relationship, and that their priorities are irreconcilable, he even thought about breaking up. Of course he was not serious about it, but this showcased that he would never try to change LJH’s convictions. 

In SHL, however, the concept of salvation is central to the theme. Some find it strange that SHL make drama zzs the more “moral” one of the two, despite his action being more objectively questionable. In fact, the only reason he get framed as more “moral” is that he admitted his fault sooner, and therefore could guide drama wkx’s path back to salvation: to recognize the goodness in people, make peace with external world, to clear his name in Jianghu, and to follow due process with his revenge plan to avoid collateral damages. 

“I tried to change you, but you end up changing me”, said drama ZZS. This relationship dynamic is never present in any of priest’s works I’ve read. Priest characters don’t *try* to change one another. 

Does MXTX believe in salvation? Hard to tell. One could argue that Hua Cheng would have be way more amoral and even immoral if it hadn’t been for XL. This is complicated and is a topic for another time.

However, it is certain that MXTX MCs don’t condemn each other morally. “The orthodox one defending their unorthodox partner in front of the world” is a common wuxia trope, but the way MXTX novels approach it is very different from SHL. 

HuaLian never had a serious falling out about being on different sides. Even when they disagree, they respect each other and love each other exactly the way they are. Hua Cheng didn’t approve of Xie Lian saving Mu Qing, but he didn’t interfere with Xie Lian’s decision. Xie Lian feels responsible for helping Shi Qingxuan in Blackwater arc, but he is perfectly fine with HC helping He Xuan keep secrets. In several cases where they have different values, they are able to make it work with ease.

LWJ never *morally* condemned WWX for his action, and never once objected to WWX practicing demonic cultivation after his rebirth. In fact, LWJ never objected to WWX’s morals; in their previous life he was worried about his safety, and struggled with what to do about certain situations due to his family background, but difference in morality is not an issue for them. 

The “righteous” one does not feel the need to guide their unorthodox partner or to be their salvation with regards to integrity. 

*The similarity & differences part is a bit messy and some points are not fleshed-out. Sorry about that. 

**I don’t claim to have the right interpretation. The lens by which we see different styles of romance is ultimately subjective. 

#mdzs #tgcf #mxtx #tian ya ke #mdzs meta #word of honor #shl #sha po lang #mo du #can ci pin

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

#long post #anonymous #ask

[shihalyfie]

@sage-striaton replied to your post:

Idk how people can say Frontier has characters that lack depth. Imo it’s a very psychological season. The whole adventure thing is aimed to making them grown in their behaviours and feelings, it’s a big metaphor of their development

I’m sorry for hijacking your response to my post to segue this into another rant of mine, but I want to emphasize that one of my goals with this blog (if I can be said to have any) is that I really, really, really want people to re-examine whether they actually believe in the rhetoric that’s been dominating this fanbase for two decades, or whether there’s more to it. This is especially in regards to the fact that we’re talking a series deliberately written in such a way that it’ll change meaning and nuance as you get older, so it can “grow up” with you in a sense, and yet it seems like -- especially in regards to Adventure through Frontier, due to their position as the oldest series that the majority of the fanbase was elementary or preteen age during -- people are still regurgitating the same rehashed twenty-year-old ideas like they’re undeniable law. It’s one thing if they’re saying it because the series didn’t sit well with them the first time and they don’t want to watch it again, but we’re reaching a recurring problem where it’s sort of “brainwashing” even people who don’t actually believe it but feel compelled to go along with it, or wouldn’t feel that way if it weren’t for peer pressure. Obviously, there are dissenting opinions, and ones that are even very loud about that, but that pressure remains.

The mainstream opinion in the fanbase is that Adventure is untouchable and impervious to any criticism, 02 is its inferior sequel with half-baked characters, Tamers is an auteur work that’s the “deepest” of the original tetralogy due to being dark, and Frontier is devoid of much substance at all. Even those who don’t really believe in this will still be pressured to go alongside it, those who like 02 or Frontier will be pressured to consider it a “guilty pleasure”, and it’s only very recently when certain events revealed that the idea of 02 actually having quite its own fervent and passionate fanbase that likes it on its own merits became properly recognized. (I have actually noticed a huge uptick in 02 fans, especially casual ones, being more shameless in talking about liking it in the last two years; you’re still going to get the obnoxious person “reminding” you how bad it apparently is if you bring it up, but it’s not nearly as prevalent as it used to be.) I’m not talking about whether something is a “good” or “bad” series -- that concept doesn’t really exist to me as much as whether it’s “to one’s tastes” or not, and I think one of the joys of this franchise is that it has things that cater to people with vastly different preferences -- as much as a lot of potential for analysis and intimate thought about these very fascinating series. Even if 02 and Frontier were as shallow or half-baked as they were accused of, I wouldn’t think it’d be shameful to like them for one’s own reasons anyway, but what frustrates me is that I just don’t think that’s true in the first place!!

Not helping is that there’s still a refusal among the fanbase to admit that there were substantial differences in American English dubbing (especially in regards to Adventure and 02), which I don’t mean as a bad thing in the sense that some people prefer to stick only with that dub and consider that version what they want to work with, but in the sense that the treatment of them as “the same thing” has been horribly detrimental when two people, one coming from that dub and one coming from the Japanese version (or a dub more closely based on it), will end up often having an argument doomed to go nowhere because they were never talking about the same thing to begin with. Recently, a friend admitted to me that although they’d switched to the Japanese version a long time ago, they still couldn’t get the image of Daisuke and Takeru having an inherently hostile relationship (they don’t) out of their head due to the influence of that dub, and although they consciously knew better -- at least enough to admit this to me -- it wasn’t helped by the fact that the fanbase itself continues to reinforce this image because of how normalized it is to treat the dub version and the Japanese version as “virtually the same” and for Western fanbase discourse to assume you should be projecting those takes into the Japanese version. If you’re hanging out in English-speaking circles but are working from the Japanese version or a dub directly based off of it, you do actually have to filter out a lot of takes you’re hearing because they won’t actually apply to the version you’re watching, but not a lot of people realize this.

All four of Adventure through Frontier share tons of key staff, especially Seki, known for her focus on wanting the kids in the audience to be able to empathize with and relate to the characters on screen. All four share some of the best character work I’ve seen not only in this franchise, but also in kids’ media in general, and I also stress that a lot of this has a ton of nuance that isn’t always apparent unless you read between the lines. I do understand that a lot of this probably went over our heads as kids, and I won’t say that the choice to execute it this way should be impervious to criticism, but nevertheless, I think it’s important to call attention to the fact it is there, and much of it becomes recognizable once you see it that way; for instance, so much of "it's contradictory character writing!" comes from the fact that the series tries to represent humans in their inconsistent, messy ways, and while it'll feel "messy" from a writing trope perspective, when you think about it as "since this person has this mentality, does it make sense to approach this with this mindset?", suddenly it becomes very consistent. The supposedly “shallow” 02 and Frontier characters will act in ways that match existing psychological profiles meant for actual humans to terrifying degrees, in ways that you might actually recognize even better once you’ve hit adulthood and start intimately understanding things like depression or anxiety in ways you might not have before. Shockingly, “having heart, important themes, and kindness towards the human condition” are completely valid reasons to uplift a creative work in ways distinct from technical writing or cerebrality or how many tropes they subvert or whatever.

On the flip side, people praise Adventure and Tamers for being the naturally “superior” works with better writing, but when it comes to talking about why the writing is supposedly better, a good chunk of the reasons stated don’t actually explain anything substantial, or go back to actually being passive-aggressive dunks on the other series in some form -- it’s because 02 and Frontier’s character writing sucks that badly, or because Adventure had the “best plot” (which may be true if by “best” you mean “easiest to understand”, but that doesn’t mean much to someone who might not be very happy about how its story progression is just a boss rush), or because Tamers is the “deepest” when by “deep” they actually mean “cerebral, dark, and unsubtle about it” without any further meaning (as if Adventure and 02 were idealistic series that never went into anything nuanced and not, say, the fact they went very viciously deep into societal issues between parents and children, psychological horror, and intimate takes on the human condition). I’m personally saying this as someone who does think Adventure and Tamers have a lot to praise in terms of their approaches to realism and the unique aspects each bring to the table, and I feel that people like this are doing them more of a disservice by not bothering to uplift them for any reason that isn’t actually just inherently condescending. I mean, even taking this outside of the original tetralogy for a bit, when I was plugging Appmon earlier, there’s a reason I focused more on its theme and character writing and the use of “dark” writing to convey its sheer range, rather than trying to boil it down to a shallow “it looks cheery but gets really messed up later!”, which is unfortunately an argument I’ve been seeing about it lately.

In the end, when I write my meta, I write it "making a case" for my point of view, and I welcome others to disagree, but if you disagree, I really hope it'll be because you personally disagree, and not because the entire fanbase has been saying otherwise for twenty years and I sound like a radical. I’m not saying that everyone’s consensus takes are completely unfounded, but frankly speaking, this fanbase has some really bad takes, and in the past few years I’ve found it freeing to not only “say what you feel without worrying what others think”, but actually go out of my way to outright try and purge all the preconceived notions and pick only the ones I agree with because I actually agree with them. I encourage you to do it too! And if you do, you might find things about something you like that you didn’t realize before.

#digimon #shiha's ask box #sage-striaton #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon tamers #digimon frontier #shihameta

[hunxi-after-hours]

Thanks so much to anon and you for talking about gender and women in danmei. I truly appreciate Meng Xi Shi for writing and fleshing out great female side characters (and characters in general). I have tried to bring up this topic to my fellow readers, only to get shut down for it because “danmei is about men, why would it focus on women? Go read baihe if you want women” And that’s not the point???? Why shouldn’t we not focus on women in danmei? They’re characters in a story too! it just saddens me to see people brush the presence of women off in stories just because the focus is on men since the main couple is gay.

(further in the conversation started here)

I think that understanding how gender is navigated in danmei is a kind of knowledge that is infinitely benefitted by, well, a larger sample size. I know I personally have held some rather uncharitable/not very well thought-out reservations about female characters in danmei in the past, and it’s definitely been an ongoing journey of learning and critiquing as I gain nuance by reading more, and more charitably

it is deeply ironic to me that people would say that “danmei is about men, not women,” because like... actually, it is so clearly about women. it’s practically in the definition of danmei, that it’s written by female authors for female consumption, and uses male characters to explore narratives, themes, alternative identities, and transgressive desires. not to oversimplify the genre, but a lot of danmei is about negotiating very female concerns through the neutral space of male bodies, because guess what? being a lady in East Asia, or anywhere else in the world, is often one long train of no good very bad times

the fact of it is simply that the female body is a controversial and contested space, both in real life and in literature. from a legal standpoint, we can talk about abortion legislation; from a literary standpoint, we can talk about objectification and symbolism; from a commercial standpoint, we can talk about Mulvey’s male gaze and commodification; from a cultural standpoint, we can talk about the double standards of gender when it comes to societal mores around desire and power

and danmei, as a genre, sidesteps all of the issues surrounding the female body by focusing its central storyline on the relationship between two men. in one fell swoop, the genre has neatly excised a lot of the trauma that comes with being female-bodied in society, contemporary or historical--for starters, male characters don’t (usually) have to face the intense pain and physical violence of childbirth, or the social pressure to have children. in turn, the act of sex becomes something else entirely when your characters don’t have to worry about birth control--instead, it’s about love, and care, and trust, and intimacy, and pleasure, all without the looming specter of childbirth, childcare, the traditional expectations of society laid on female bodies

and that’s just like, barely scratching the surface of the metatextual dynamics of gender in danmei. There’s another quote from that Jin Feng article that I keep thinking about:

“As the hero in Minami Ozaki’s Zetsu’ai 1989 (Absolute love 1989), a classic Japanese tanbi manga that also initiated many danmei fans, famously asserts: it does not matter whether the object of his affection is a man, woman, dog, cat, plant, or machine; if he falls in love with the other, then so be it. A danmei hero thus loves a man not because he is gay; he simply disregards heterosexist norms in the pursuit of true love.”

so like, in a sense, danmei isn’t even about gay men--it’s about exploring alternative ways of experiencing/expressing love and desire in defiance of the strictures of traditional heteronormative patriarchy, and it just so happens to borrow male bodies to do 

(whether or not danmei is inherently “appropriative” of the gay male voice or the gay male body, I think, is a completely separate--if related!--issue that I’m still working on teasing out in my head because I don’t think it’s as simple as a unidirectional “appropriation,” and look, if we wanted to talk about appropriations of gendered voices, I’ve got 3000 years of the Chinese literary tradition to yell about but that’s neither here nor there, and a lot of the dynamics of “appropriation” come down to representation, which is its own can of worms for a genre that is being produced under an authoritarian regime that can and will jail authors for censorable content, so like, what does it even mean for authors to write queer relationships as narrative device rather than representation when the growth of “real queer literature” in China is something that has been actively stifled by government censorship--)

I find the intersection of wuxia/xianxia fiction with danmei particularly fascinating, because wuxia gives you characters who are generally capable of kicking anyone’s ass seven ways to Sunday (read: characters who are more than capable of self-defense). this does not wholly remove the threat of violence through physical domination, but it greatly evens the playing field. it makes it possible to explore actively challenging relationships, like the dynamic between Shen Qiao and Yan Wushi in 《千秋》--Shen Qiao spends much of the book being, well, harassed by everyone and anyone he meets, including Yan Wushi, and the one life-line we can all cling on to is the fact that Shen Qiao could simply up and leave at any point. for the most part, he’s too polite to do so, but he is absolutely capable of it. he has agency. 

what, then, does it mean for characters to explore relationships of power and agency, consent and intimacy, trust and violence? what are the parameters of forgiveness? what is the source of compassion?

female characters in danmei become three times as interesting because they reveal a lot about the author and their feelings on gender in an overwhelmingly male-dominated society/genre/world. what does it mean for Bai Rong, Yuan Xiuxiu, and the women of the Hehuan Sect in 《千秋》 to literally become more powerful through dual (sexual) cultivation? what does the existence of misogyny in these fantastic worlds tell us about the relationship of gender and sex to power? I spend a lot of time thinking about how, in TGCF, Ling Wen functionally gets away with serious wrongdoing because of the sheer merit of her abilities--in a sense, she embodies the fantasy that merit alone can and will prove your worthiness, regardless of gender or societal expectations of female literacy. Or, the fact that Yuan Zixiao, who might not be able to kick the asses of every man who dares cast aspersion on her character (unlike, say, Gu Hengbo), can observe, analyze, and immediately pinpoint the weaknesses of any person’s fighting style goes to show that there are more options for being a female character with agency in these genres, beyond simply being strong enough to outfight every man who crosses your path. and I’ve barely explored the genre at all; this is pulling from a sample size of two (2) authors.

tl;dr gender in danmei is fascinating and sdlkfjsdlk I still have a long post problem

#oh god I was so out of it last night I literally forgot to tag this #hmmmmm #new tag? new tag #hunxi thinks about danmei and gender