#‘is it that serious’ < person who’s about to accuse me of being an elitist artist hating gaslighter or whatever | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

abybweisse · 1 year

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After the real Ciel returns as a doll, I don't understand his feelings for our ciel. After all, does he love him or is he looking for competition and is angry with him?

He claimed that he was not angry with our Earl. He said he likes to see his development . Defended Earl's lie about his identity to Francis. He told Undertaker that he just wanted to spend time with his brother.

But he also left the blood in the basement of the mansion and called the police to accuse his brother. And he asked Tanaka to burn the rabbit dolls and he doesn't want to see them again. I also feel that he killed Agni personally. just for make our Earl and Soma enemy.

because he was jealous that someone getting close to his brother.

I understand that his brain probably hasn't developed since he was 10 years old and is childish. But still seem contradictory.

Real Ciel's emotions

I've touched on this subject before, but I always find it a bit difficult to read this character.

We don't know too much about him from before, but he seems to have always been a little bit fickle minded. One minute he's happy and wanting to know about his brother's life goals, but when it means his brother might move away, he tries to change his brother's mind and control his decisions. Then he's all of a sudden against being the heir, if it means not getting to do as he pleases and being with his brother all the time.

And elitist; when Vincent tells them about keeping the workers on their land happy and productive, our earl ponders how hard it must be to keep everyone happy... while real Ciel compares them to sheep who must be provided with the basics to keep them from going astray.

With a big helping of "big brother syndrome", where he thinks he knows what's best and feels a need to be the protector all the time. And to be right all the time, like telling our earl the truth about Santa and where the presents really come from. Oh, and being competitive -- typically the winner -- like at chess. It's a little condescending when he says our earl and their dad are the only ones who can even present a challenge for him. Getting kidnapped and sold to the cult gave him a serious reality check, but it doesn't seem to have stuck too well.

Like I've said before, the process of turning him into an advanced bizarre doll (using all his life goals as "episodes") seems to have brought his negative traits to the forefront.

We see that when he confronts our earl, Sebastian, and the rest of the household. Even Tanaka winces when real Ciel puts Sebastian in his place as a servant. Then there's the whole blood transfusion thing: he could accept any whole blood donation (since Rh factor doesn't seem to be a thing in the Kuroverse), and Blavat apparently knows this. So, why does he only use Sirius blood? Does he not also know... or is he simply refusing any other blood type, with the belief it's too inferior for him? 🤔

There's a strong dichotomy to his thinking. On the one hand, he wants to be with his twin, just like before, but he also wants to punish him for taking the ring and pretending to be him. He calls our earl a liar but then says he'll have nothing to do with anyone who says the same thing... then doesn't seem to care when Lizzie almost immediately points her finger, doing exactly what real Ciel said others shouldn't do. He quickly learns to appreciate and even admire what our earl has managed to accomplish in the past nearly four years, but he has no personal interest in the same things, like the toy and confectionery company. He would have invested in the railway system or something. It seems likely that he was invested in Blue Star Line, so he's way more into transportation and infrastructure than he is into providing the simple joys of toys and sweets. Like he'd rather be an industrial tycoon. It's really sad to me that he basically tells Tanaka to get rid of those toys because he is still upset with our earl for wanting to pursue such a career. Like he doesn't think it's a particularly serious occupation. Maybe he truly thinks it's not worthy or proper for a member of a noble family to do that sort of work. He even says something like that in ch132.

Real Ciel has, since that moment (if not before), wanted his little brother to be dependent on him. Forever.

So, yeah, at the point where he's had the blood planted at the manor and is calling his younger twin by "Lord Sirius", he's perfectly willing to have him arrested and detained for questioning. Things would have played out quite differently if Sebastian and our earl hadn't gotten away from the Yard. After a few days of letting our earl think about what he's done, sitting in some jail cell, he might have gone down to the station and dropped the charges -- making who knows what excuse about the blood and the deaths -- on the condition that his younger twin would return to the manor and stay there, doing whatever real Ciel wants him to do. Maybe he would pin the entire thing on Blavat and let him rot there. Considering how Druitt keeps getting out of situations with the law, I'm sure real Ciel could talk or bribe his brother's way out of legal trouble.

Since real Ciel now runs entirely on his personal goals and desires, what we see now is a much more selfish version of himself. So selfish and elitist that he'll:

Have Lord Polaris kill Agni to turn Soma against his younger twin

Have his brother locked up just to physically contain him

Destroy what his brother has built for the estate and Funtom, despite recognizing the effort it took

Belittle the servants that his brother showed compassion and leniency to

Use his fiancée as a bodyguard but otherwise barely speak to her

Drain people dry to accept only Sirius (AB) blood when he could accept any type

I'm sure there are things I've left out that I intended to include, but this seems pretty thorough to me... for now.

He does love his brother, but as a soulless bizarre doll, it's a cold sort of love. The self-centered aspects of it remain. Not what he can truly do for his younger twin but what his younger twin can do for him. And he is angry... and still competitive.

ETA: Real Ciel's lies to Francis/Frances aren't really to protect our earl; the excuses he makes, etc. are to help cover up the dark truths about himself. Just imagine him trying to explain it truthfully and in relatively good detail. It wouldn't go over well at all.

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vrishchikawrites · 3 years

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About YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids Post-WWX Arrival

Dear Dee, feel free to delete or ignore this or post it, whatever floats your boat. This just stuck in my head after those posts and I had to blurt it all to someone. Thanks for taking the time to read my word vomit.

So I had to do this instead of an ask because it got long and I wasn't sure how many asks it'd need or how short I could cut it down without losing parts of the argument. And then other things came up as I was writing and, well. Well..... >_>;;;;

But you know, after that post/ask you had about YZY fics saying 'Fuck U' to YMJ/JFM & leaving both with her kids, I had a sarcastic 'yeah right' attitude about it. Mainly due to a lot of negation emotions to such an abusive (and delusional) bitch, partly due to how she wouldn't do that since it doesn't seem to be something her sort of character would consider either because she'd think of it as 'losing' (losing what, IDK, it's why I consider her type of person crazy) or she legit wouldn't think about such a viable action.

But then later, in the shower, I seriously went 'Wait, she can't fucking do that' and it wouldn't be about how MXTX uses her as a part of the narrative but entirely about the/their culture in the novel; the actions that have and would be taken in response; and her entire toxic personality as well.

1) We already know that the sects and the cultivation world in general is sexist, elitist and so Capital T 'Traditional' to the point that it's starting to petrify and any deviancy from this is an exception rather than the norm. YZY might be a madame of a great sect (for what that's worth considering how shit of a madame she's been and the titles she's chosen for herself) but she's still a woman even with her high rank and the things she's personally accomplished.

Even if she was in her rights to leave a 'bad' marriage, she'd be the one who'd get scolded more instead of JFM by her natal family, her former husband's family and by their entire society at large even if she had a few singular supporters. Because That's Not How Things Are Done in their society and I do believe that such a thing was rare even when it was accepted method by the upper echelons. Especially since it would have to be done by more than YZY simply deciding that She Wants Out and just- goes and Gets Out. With no serious allegations that would allow her to divorce or separate from YMJ/JFM without the input from her family, JFM's family and, I think, possibly some measure of compensation as well. And no, having or bringing in a 'bastard child' is not a serious enough offence for such a humongous decision. I think something more along the lines of treason or crimes against multiple, high-ranking parties would be more along the lines. Maybe.

And even if she does this, she'd be considered 'Used Goods' (such a terrible comment) and there'd be no other good/proper marriage prospects for a divorced woman with children let alone a woman like YZY with her entire abrasive personality and attitude put off even easy-going JFM.

(If she'd been widowed then it'd be more forgiven but I consider that a Real Bad End since, IMO, it would lead to the sudden and inevitable decline of YMJ either via mass exodus of disciples and/or residents of LP; being merged with another sect due to it's unstable leadership; or create an internal political war 'cause I bet you anything that the YMJ Elders/relatives (if they have any) Would Not Want YZY in charge of YMJ when she's already proven herself such a shit betrothed let alone madame.)

2) Speaking of families, while YMJ/JFM/LP as a whole might be glad to see YZY's back, I don't think her natal sect, MSY, will be glad to see her come storming back after all the effort they put into getting that particular marriage alliance with YMJ. And if she brings her children with her? Oh man, oh boy- mother or not, that could be considered as kidnapping or line theft (is that a thing?) especially if YZY is also seriously considering divorce proceedings and raising them as Yu and not Jiang. That could give leave to, for anyone more unforgiving and maybe JFM if he's pushed enough, disown both JYL and JWY from the Jiangs through no fault of their own (though I'm sure YZY would make it so as well as blame JFM for her own decisions and mistakes).

Therefore, any inheritance or benefits they might gain for being legitimised children of a great sect are forfeited. JYL will likely lose that betrothal with JZX because JGS will drop it like a hot potato and JWY won't be a sect heir because YZY literally decided to remove that by deciding to raise JWY as a Yu, no matter their blood relation to JFM. They leave him, they leave YMJ and everything attached with it. Which is if YMJ/JFM doesn't demand MSY to give back their heir/ess and to punish YZY for her actions. Or send all three of them back for the appropriate reactions/decisions.

Their society would demand no less in reaction because, to them, it would seem like YZY had gone mad and JFM would look weak (or weaker) and imply that YMJ is vulnerable and exploitable if JFM doesn't do something in response to her actions. That's not even getting into what the other smaller sects may try to do in an attempt to curry favour with YMJ or what LLJ or QSW would try in order to destroy or diminish YMJ. And whether JFM chooses to demand his children back or not, it may not change the fact that this may give him reason enough to choose a nephew or niece to be the new sect heir especially if, even after getting rid of YZY's poisonous influence, JWY grows up to be his mother's child more than his father's or even his own person.

Either way, such a thing would bring great backlash on YZY, and MSY as well as the collateral. No one would want to give face to her or her children because it would bring up some very uncomfortable questions and scenarios to the other sects- specifically, what would happen if the female members of their clans/sets decided to follow the footsteps of YZY and leave with their children and heirs. Especially if they use it as an excuse to leave for their own comfort and whims and not some legitimate wrongs and dangers. That would create some more restrictions on women thanks to YZY

3) And lastly, if any one of those idiot YZY stans think that she'd ever give up the status of being a madame of a great sect they'd be as crazy or crazier than her. YZY is all about status and power and face. Specifically, her status, power and face and how people in her reach reflect her or 'insult' her. She is a selfish, terrible, abusive and toxic person and can only see people in regards to how they would benefit her and the elevation of her and in no other way. Especially her family. They cannot be their own person, they can only be an extension of her and gods forbid they go against her.

We can see this in how she treats the people she supposedly loves. JFM? Arguments day in, day out along with accusations and slander of cheating, having one(1) supposed 'bastard' and being 'in love' with CSSR. Which all seems sus as hell. And that's when she's actually there and not out 'night hunting'. Even her 'training' seems to border on unhelpful rather then helpful if my vague recollections of juniors fainting from exhaustion can be relied upon (please call me out if they're not or find proof).

JYL? Berated by not being 'strong' but not helped at all to be 'strong'. It doesn't help that YZY seems to believe in the same standards strength in their society- that is, of martial masculine strength which does not and should not apply to JYL who has been said to be sickly. Which means h should have been learning a different way of cultivation/fighting anyway. If that was something she wanted and had been offered in the first place- which I doubt. That isn't even getting into her repeated generational trauma mess of a betrothal which was decided only by those 'sworn sisters', accepted by her as a way out of her terrible home life and puts her squarely within reach of JGS who we know to be a womaniser, rapist, predator and a possible ephebophile considering we don't know the exact age of his youngest 'conquest' or the age of MZY's mother when they met which could be anywhere from 14 to 21.

JWY? Gods, so much meta on him and his(non-) relationships with his parents that I don't think I can contribute more to it. It's been all said and done. Unless people want me to stir the pot by saying that, maybe, just maybe, YZY resents JWY as much as she 'loves' him.Either because he's her son and yet never manages to 'accomplish as much' as WWX or because he's a boy and therefore, more benefits and allowances than a girl/woman- more than anything that YZY ever got without either a fight or screaming at someone about. *shrug*

So, in conclusion to this sudden an unexpected essay that I wrote(I'm so sorry about that, I thought it would be shorter -.-;;;;), YZY leaving YMJ/JFM with her kids? Impossible. Not without some sort of personality transplant or a complete AU. She's too prideful, too bitter, too angry, too everything negative and little positive. She's a resentful product of the values and restraints of her society taken to the extreme negative with a willingness to inflict her pain on others to an abusive degree. But she's also too obsessed and reliant on those same values and restraints to keep up the image of her status. So her? Giving those up? You'd be more likely to see WRH as a doting grandfather than that.

---

Dee - All of this is true and yes YZY leaving YMJ is highly unlikely. While there will be consequences if she decides to leave, she does canonically lives separately from her husband. They seem to be in a situation where they are married but living separately, which was a common way to end a marriage (at least in spirit) back then. She essentially had all the perks of being Madam Jiang but fulfilled none of the responsibilities.

Afaik, her training the Jiang disciples is a donghua thing? I may be wrong but I recall she spent most of her time nighthunting.

As for taking her children along with her- that's completely impossible. At that point, children were the property of the father. She could leave but she would've never been allowed to take JC.

#submission

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rpbetter · 3 years

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I'm so tired of roleplaying with people who don't put half the commitment I do into our threads and muses. I'm so tired of feeling like I'm a weirdo or like I don't belong for that. Any other hobby and people wouldn't care if I took it seriously. Why is roleplaying different? How can I keep going like this if I'm getting rudeness from all sides? I can't even go outside my already tiny bubble and find more partners, because I always see people putting roleplayers like me down and it's exhausting.

"Why is roleplaying different?"

Well, Anon, I know that was a rhetorical question, but I have some thoughts on that. To the surprise of no one!

I strongly believe that this is an issue with how fandom has come to dominate roleplaying. As I've said before, it really wasn't always like that. Of course, you always had canon characters and almost all RPers were invested in a fandom or two. The difference was that online RP was once viewed much more like tabletop RPGs are.

When the RPC became a near-total offshoot of Fandom, a lot of shit changed and very rapidly...and within Fandom, a lot of shit was changing very rapidly as well at that time.

RP has always been something looked down on (though, at least no one ever accused written RP online of being literally demonic like they did DnD, or made correlations to murder sprees like they did LARPing, so there's that) as strange, not the good, understandable sort of dorky.

Part of that is almost certainly because of the difference in the way society views writing vs the way it views hobbies like gaming - writing is seen as an intellectual pursuit and a job, gaming, even at its most negative points of view in wider society, has been seen traditionally as a downtime activity only.

But. RP was not looked down upon from within Fandom or in roleplay communities themselves like it is now.

When the whole experience of fandoms themselves became extremely mainstream and open, it welcomed in a ton of shit ideas and behaviors that were not previously prevalent. It changed RP, too, along many of those same lines.

When your hobby is considered objectionably weird by people within the fandoms you love and RP in and that makes you a sort of lowest-tier fan, the viewpoint of RP to RPers becomes something lesser than a valid hobby. When RPers are the same people who engage with Fandom monetarily, anything not monetized is passively consumable content, including RP. And RPers are trying to both deflect shame and struggling with wider society's mixed messages, that now hit them everywhere online as well. Shit like, "you don't have to monetize your hobby, it's okay to just make really good cross stitches of memes for yourself" and "if you're not paying me, you have no control over me."

We seriously do not view RP as a proper hobby anymore, that's why. There are many factors to that, those are just few, but that's the ultimate answer. It's not seen that way because it's not valued in the same way.

I think much of the problem with muns losing their entire shit over anyone else approaching the hobby differently, dare I say...more seriously, is related to a lot of complex psychology about self-esteem, control, and anxiety. So many people here struggle with serious self-worth and confidence issues, and I think to many of them, whether they realize it or not, when they see serious RPers, they feel like that's an inherent judgment and a danger to their own enjoyment. Because RP, as writing, is a skilled hobby - the more you practice it, the more skilled you become with it. Meaning that someone who approaches the writing seriously is going to be at a higher skill level.

Enter the way we're training to think about writing again - when they see someone who is very practiced, skilled, and confident with their writing, the learned idea is that they're somehow superior in a nasty, personal way.

I most certainly do not think that makes it alright, it isn't, and I'm not very tolerant of it.

It's absolutely alright to engage with RP in any way you see fit. If that's extremely casual, it's a minor hobby for you, that's great! I'm so happy you're enjoying yourself, and I mean that in no facetious way. But not when that is the only form of it respected and accepted. It's just as alright to have RP as your primary, serious hobby!

The only way we can all enjoy a hobby with such great variance within it is by respecting each other's variables, not by vilifying them. It's recognizing that, no matter how much you enjoy the mun and/or muse, they're not engaging with the hobby in the way you are, it's not a good fit to write together. (Please, begging y'all to be friends with those who are different, not enemies, shit's sake. You've not got to write together to be friends!) Instead of labeling them and being hateful. Different =/= a threat.

And, to go off a bit lol y'all demonizing serious RPers really don't get that there are some intense tones of ableism and more going on in that narrative of yours, huh?

Not that anyone requires a reason to be serious about any hobby, but when people pick a hobby like RP as their primary one...you should probably have the maturity to consider why that is. Could it be that they focus on a hobby they can do from their homes and that requires low physical involvement, and has a degree of separation from direct socializing, for a reason?

Serious RPers tend to be limited in their ability to pursue other hobbies. Mental and physical health, region, finances, and ability to spend time outside of the home are all very common limits for those who "take RP too seriously/are addicted to RP."

Maybe take five seconds away from your own issues to consider that the person you're shitting on for something so minor as a difference of importance of a hobby might be the full-time caretaker of a special needs child, having to remain home and on a very small income. They might be chronically ill or suffer from agoraphobia. They might live in an area with no hobbies of interest, affordability, or at all...or they might live somewhere that is incredibly dangerous for them.

I honestly do not know where these people have been that they've been aggressed at by serious RPers, but that's usually the excuse. (I'm not saying it has never happened or does not happen, before anyone goes there.) The idea that serious RPers are extreme elitists who are demanding that other muns do what they do, how they do it. That they expect other muns to be online and RPing all the time, that they be "available for entertainment at all times" at the cost of real-life matters. Having the expectation that threads not be dropped constantly or that a writing partner not leave for months with no contact is neither of those things.

In over two decades of RPing across almost every platform type that has existed, I have literally never seen that be either a singular RPer-type problem or one that serious RPers are even more likely to deal in. I've seen the opposite, actually. Which is not a condemnation or a statement that all casual RPers do this, just what my experience has been. And one that actually stands to reason based on the way they view and engage with RP - quick replies, quick entertainment, and very low commitment to threads, muses, or other muns. Of course, it's annoying to them when a more serious RPer is unwilling to do rapid-fire style quick, short threads from an ask with them, but is writing the lengthy replies they already owed instead.

That's probably a factor as well, in here among a plethora of misunderstanding/unawareness of differences - for many serious RPers, it's not easier and more fun to write short, quick threads. So, what a casual RPer is seeing is that they're willing to put all this extraordinary effort into a massive reply to someone else while their easy, fun, quickly done thread is waiting in line.

Misunderstandings and unawareness breed hostility, period. And there is a hell of a lot of those things in the RPC.

What serious RPers are expressing are either boundaries/expectations or frustration. Not a demand that you be around all the time, but an expectation that you leave them alone if you're not also a serious RPer who will be committed to threads and muses. Not hostility and elitism, the frustration that it's already difficult to find muns who will work out before you add in the majority rule of casual RPers.

It's incredibly disheartening, frustrating, and honestly, a bit anxiety-inducing to constantly be the weird one, always have few choices, and to be at risk of being Problematic purely because you take the hobby seriously. You can't vent without someone jumping on your ass to remind you (even if you said numerous times that "real life comes first" and "people can do what they want") that omg, people have lives, people can do what makes them happy, it's just RP.

It's so upsetting when you think you might have found a good writing partner, then, you see a PSA they've reblogged about how it's a "hobby, not a jobby," and "no one owes anyone anything, ever." Excuse me, as that last one is a direct quote, let me redo it so it is verbatim: "no one owes anyone here anything - EVER !!!"

I said I wasn't very tolerant :)

But seriously, exactly what you've expressed is why I'm not...it's another form of controlling others instead of trying your best to control your own experience, and it's often extremely hateful. I'm not tolerant of anything like that, it's no longer supporting preferences at that point. When your preference is the only one that will be tolerated in the community, it's not a preference anymore.

It's something that makes others feel isolated, afraid of harassment, and depressed. It is a hobby and it isn't supposed to make you feel like that!

And, no, absolutely the fuck not lol the "answer" to this isn't that you're taking it too seriously and need to take a break. I'm so tired of seeing that shit tacked onto RPH responses and vents and PSAs. You're not saying that RP is making you feel this way, "just take a break and come back when you agree with everyone else" isn't a solution.

Of course, if you do feel like your time here has become so upsetting? Yeah, obviously, you should try to find some other things to supplement your downtime that make you feel happier again. Engage in some other forms of writing just meant for yourself, or that can be published as fics. Spend some more time on a game you enjoy for a while, or get invested in a new one. Learn to shape bonsai or make no-knead rolls. Whatever would make you happy as a hobby when you're not here.

Other than that, however, well...we're not going to be implying on this blog that you're too serious and need to take a hiatus until you have no emotional investment in your hobby. That's insane. I'd not say it about hiking, martial arts, dog obedience competitions, hobby farming, or painting either.

I wish I could think of some solutions as to where you could look that wasn't like this, but it's definitely the majority of the RPC. It doesn't help that, due to this, serious RPers have a tendency to quietly stick together and not venture out into the RPC. They're just not incredibly easy to find.

I will say that they tend to be:

novella - if you're not here for serious RP and sticking around for a while, you're not going to invest the time and energy into particularly lengthy writing

older RPers - I would say that twenty-five is probably the youngest, with early thirties to late forties being the majority

in fandoms with a large adult base of fans - even if it's a franchise friendly to, or even meant for, younger fans, if it has a particularly active adult fanbase, it's a better chance of finding serious RPers in it

as above, old fandoms - fandoms that have been around for a long time tend to have more serious RPers in them

fandomless OCs - tend to have a higher chance of being written by serious RPers than canons or heavily fandom-involved OCs

RPers who do not do a ton of advertising for their muse(s), but when they do, they don't advertise them based on activism points or trends

slightly more likely to not have an emphasis on highly aesthetic blogs, graphics, icons etc. - they use a modified basic tumblr theme, low on graphics, their aesthetics are not on-trend, for example

anti-content policing/"write what you want" style muns

muns with more extensive rules pages - they plan to be here for a while, they take writing, RP, and their muse(s) seriously, so, it's a bit more important to them to head off problems before they start

those with older characters/FCs - be that literally in age or the character being one that has existed for a long time

"stay in your lane" style muns - if they're opining on fandom or the RPC, they must really be angry about something

those with numerous and detailed headcanons - for example, their response to a HC meme ask like, "what's your muse's favorite ice cream flavor?" is going to be treated seriously, not simply answered with "mint chocolate chip because my bby is gross"

As usual, not a complete or perfect list. I don't fit some of the things on there! It could give you some things to look for when trying to find other serious RPers, though. It's based on observances from someone who was never a casual RPer, even as a minor (me, obviously), and maybe it could at least keep you from continuously running into hostility about your approach to RP.

I've honestly considered making a list of some sort expressly for RPers who are on the more serious end of the spectrum, but...in a RPC back when things were dominated by serious RPers, I did that sort of thing with a RPH I had, and it still got labeled as being a list for and by Elitists. I don't know that anyone would want to put themselves out there for potential harassment on tumblr, you know? It was a joke then, just having a group of RPers label you as an Elitist. Here, you get told to kill yourself, and none of us need more of that shit, right?

Try to hang in there, Anon, I know it's upsetting, and I'm so sorry that something fun has gotten to be like this.

Try to understand that these people are coming from a place of irrational defensiveness, often in response to bullying themselves at some point or feeling bad about themselves. That doesn't make it right, but it does make it easier to not take to heart.

And keep at it! In my experience here, once you find a group of people you fit into, it really is...A Group. Especially among RPers who are ostracized, they stick together, they promote each other, and they're very happy for their mutuals to become your mutuals. Once you find them, it unlocks so many opportunities for the interactions and type of RP you've been missing!

#answered #anonymous #serious rpers #rp problems #rp advice

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arcticdementor · 3 years

Link

The hilarious headline in the Daily Beast yesterday read like a cross of Clickhole and Izvestia circa 1937: “Is Glenn Greenwald the New Master of Right-Wing Media? FROM HIS MOUTH TO FOX’S EARS?”

The story, fed to poor Beast media writer Lloyd Grove by certain unnamed embittered personages at the Intercept, is that their former star writer Greenwald appears on, and helps provide content for — gasp! — right-wing media! It’s nearly the exclusive point of the article. Greenwald goes on TV with… those people! The Beast’s furious journalisming includes a “spot check” of the number of Fox items inspired by Greenwald articles (“dozens”!) and multiple passages comparing Greenwald to Donald Trump, the ultimate insult in #Resistance world. This one made me laugh out loud:

In a self-perpetuating feedback loop that runs from Twitter to Fox News and back again, Greenwald has managed, like Trump before him, to orchestrate his very own news cycles.

This, folks, is from the Daily Beast, a publication that has spent much of the last five years huffing horseshit into headlines, from Bountygate to Bernie’s Mittens to classics like SNL: Alec Baldwin's Trump Admits 'I Don't Care About America'. The best example was its “investigation” revealing that three of Tulsi Gabbard’s 75,000 individual donors — the late Princeton professor Stephen Cohen, peace activist Sharon Tennison, and a person called “Goofy Grapes” who may or may not have worked for Russia Today host Lee Camp — were, in their estimation, Putin “apologists.”

…

For years now, this has been the go-to conversation-ender for prestige media pundits and Twitter trolls alike, directed at any progressive critic of the political mainstream: you’re a Republican! A MAGA-sympathizer! Or (lately), an “insurrectionist”! The Beast in its Greenwald piece used the most common of the Twitter epithets: “Trump-defender.” Treachery and secret devotion to right-wing politics are also the default explanation for the growing list of progressives making their way onto Fox of late, from Greenwald to Kyle Kulinski to Aaron Mate to Jimmy Dore to Cornel West.

The truth is, Trump conservatives and ACLU-raised liberals like myself, Greenwald, and millions of others do have real common cause, against an epistemic revolution taking hold in America’s political and media elite. The traditional liberal approach to the search for truth, which stresses skepticism and free-flowing debate, is giving way to a reactionary movement that Plato himself would have loved, one that believes knowledge is too dangerous for the rabble and must be tightly regulated by a priesthood of “experts.” It’s anti-democratic, un-American, and naturally unites the residents of even the most extreme opposite ends of our national political spectrum.

…

Follow the logic. Isikoff, who himself denounced the Steele dossier, and said in the exchange he essentially agreed with Meier’s conclusions, went on to wonder aloud how right a thing could be, if it’s being embraced by The Federalist and Tucker Carlson. Never mind the more salient point, which is that Meier was “ignored by other media” because that’s how #Resistance media deals with unpleasant truths: it blacks them out, forcing reporters to spread the news on channels like Fox, which in turn triggers instant accusations of unreliability and collaborationism.

It’s a Catch-22. Isikoff’s implication is a journalist can’t make an impact if the only outlet picking up his or her work is The Federalist, but “reputable” outlets won’t touch news (and sometimes will even call for its suppression) if it questions prevailing notions of Conventional Wisdom.

These tactics have worked traditionally because for people like Meier, or myself, or even Greenwald, who grew up in the blue-leaning media ecosystem, there’s nothing more ominous professionally than being accused of aiding the cause of Trump or the right-wing. It not only implies intellectual unseriousness, but racism, sexism, reactionary meanness, greed, simple wrongness, and a long list of other hideous/evil characteristics that could render a person unemployable in the regular press. The label of “Trump-defender” isn’t easily removed, so most media people will go far out of their way to avoid even accidentally incurring it.

…

The consistent pattern with the Trump-era press, which also happens to be the subject of so many of those Greenwald stories the Beast and the Intercept employees are complaining about, is that information that is true but doesn’t cut the right way politically is now routinely either non-reported or actively misreported.

Whether it’s Hunter Biden’s laptop or the Brian Sicknick affair or infamous fictions like the “find the fraud” story, the public increasingly now isn’t getting the right information from the bulk of the commercial press corps. That doesn’t just hurt Trump and conservatives, it misinforms the whole public. As Thomas Frank just pointed out in The Guardian, the brand of politicized reporting that informed the lab-leak fiasco risks obliterating the public’s faith in a whole range of institutions, a disaster that would not be borne by conservatives alone.

But this is only a minor point, compared to the more immediate reason the constant accusations of treachery and Trumpism aimed at dissenters should be ignored.

From the embrace of oligarchical censorship to the aggressive hawking of “noble lies” like Russiagate to the constant humbugging of Enlightenment values like due process to the nonstop scolding of peasants unschooled in the latest academic jargon, the political style of the modern Democratic mainstream isn’t just elitist and authoritarian, it’s almost laughably off-putting. In one moment it’s cheering for a Domestic War on Terror and in the next, declaring war on a Jeopardy contestant flashing the “A-OK” sign. It’s Dick Cheney meets Robin DiAngelo, maybe the most loathsome conceivable admixture. Who could be surprised a politically diverse group finds it obnoxious?

During the Trump years conventional wisdom didn’t just take aim at Trumpism. The Beltway smart set used the election of Trump to make profound arguments against traditional tenets of democracy, as well as “populism,” (which increasingly became synonymous with “the unsanctioned exercise of political power by the unqualified”), and various liberal traditions undergirding the American experiment. Endless permutations of the same argument were made over and over. Any country in which a Trump could be elected had a “too much democracy” problem, the “marketplace of ideas” must be a flawed model if it leads to people choosing Trump, the “presumption of innocence” was never meant to apply to the likes of Trump, and so on.

…

By last summer, after the patriotic mania of Russiagate receded, the newest moral panic that the kente-cloth-clad Schumers and Pelosis were suddenly selling, in solidarity with famed progressive change agents like Bank of America, PayPal, Apple, ComCast, and Alphabet, was that any nation capable of electing Trump must always have been a historically unredeemable white supremacist construct, the America of the 1619 Project. The original propaganda line was that “half” of Trump supporters were deplorable racists, then it was all of them, and then, four years in, the whole country and all its traditions were deemed deplorable.

Now, when the statues of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt came down, there was a new target, separate and apart from Trump. The whole history of American liberalism was indicted as well, denounced as an ineffectual trick of the oppressor, accomplishing nothing but giving legitimacy to racial despotism.

The American liberalism I knew growing up was inclusive, humble, and democratic. It valued the free exchange of ideas among other things because a central part of the liberal’s identity was skepticism and doubt, most of all about your own correctitude. Truth was not a fixed thing that someone owned, it was at best a fleeting consensus, and in our country everyone, down to the last kook, at least theoretically got a say. We celebrated the fact that in criminal courts, we literally voted to decide the truth of things.

This new elitist politics of the #Resistance era (I won’t ennoble it by calling it liberalism) has an opposite view. Truth, they believe, is properly guarded by “experts” and “authorities” or (as Jon Karl put it) “serious people,” who alone can be trusted to decide such matters as whether or not the Hunter Biden laptop story can be shown to the public. A huge part of the frustration that the general public feels is this sense of being dictated to by an inaccessible priesthood, whether on censorship matters or on the seemingly daily instructions in the ear-smashing new vernacular of the revealed religion, from “Latinx” to “birthing persons.”

In the tone of these discussions is a constant subtext that it’s not necessary to ask the opinions of ordinary people on certain matters. As Plato put it, philosophy is “not for the multitude.” The plebes don’t get a say on speech, their views don’t need to be represented in news coverage, and as for their political choices, they’re still free to vote — provided their favorite politicians are removed from the Internet, their conspiratorial discussions are banned (ours are okay), and they’re preferably all placed under the benevolent mass surveillance of “experts” and “professionals.”

Add the total absence of a sense of humor and the inability of “moral clarity” politics to co-exist with any form of disagreement, and there’s a reason why traditional liberals are suddenly finding it easier to talk with old conservative rivals on Fox than the new authoritarian Snob-Lords at CNN, MSNBC, the Daily Beast or The Intercept. For all their other flaws, Fox types don’t fall to pieces and write group letters about their intolerable suffering and “trauma” if forced to share a room with someone with different political views. They’re also not terrified to speak their minds, which used to be a virtue of the American left (no more).

From the moment Donald Trump was elected, popular media began denouncing a broad cast of characters deemed responsible. Nativists, misogynists and racists were first in line, but from there they started adding new classes of offender: Greens, Bernie Bros, “both-sidesers,” Russia-denialists, Intellectual dark-webbers, class-not-racers, anti-New-Normalers, the “Substackerati,” and countless others, casting every new group out with the moronic admonition that they’re all really servants of the “far right” and “grifters” (all income earned in service of non-#Resistance politics is “grifting”). By now conventional wisdom has denounced everyone but its own little slice of aristocratic purity as the “far right.”

#matt taibbi #substack #glenn greenwald #journalism in action

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the-lightning-strikes-again · 4 years

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Hey Lightning, I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on something. One take that seems to keep returning every once in a while is the "Allura fell for Lotor only after he revealed his Altean heritage," but I know u and others have disproven this many times, which does reassure me. While I love Allura, I definitely think one of her weaknesses was her devotion to Altea and singing Alfor's praises, which sometimes became too much. At the same time, it bothers me when I see some ppl (1/?)

Continuing anon message: “ say that she thought Alteans were superior to all other races, and that when the colony plot twist happened, she became repulsed by Lotor's Galra side, which is why she rejected him. For them, that's why she forced violent memories onto an uncorrupted Zarkon, but somehow "saw the good/redeemed" Honerva, the Altean. I can kind of understand where they're coming from, but for me, it just didn't make sense that Allura suddenly had a change of heart considering for most of s8, she was angry and dead set on going after Honerva. Even with that, I think to a lot of her fans, s8 made Allura so ooc that she became unrecognizable, which hurt to watch. I guess for me it's hard seeing antis and people who don't like her claim that that's just how she is and has always been. Haha sorry for rambling, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, since your arguments ease my mind on a lot of things when it comes to Allura :)”

Hi, anon. Wow, thanks for your extended note! I don’t know anywhere in canon that Allura champions Alteans as a superior race. The definition of racial supremacy is a belief that inherent genetic differences between races determine cultural or individual achievement, with social/governmental policies championing intolerance of other races. To get Allura to fit into such a label:

1. A viewer has to ignore or undermine all the evidence available about who the main-universe Alteans really were before main-universe Zarkon’s massacre of them.

2. A viewer has to ignore or undermine how Allura actually responds to a variety of different races in the show, including her own.

So let’s start with issue one. To support an “Allura was a racial supremacist” opinion, a lot of antis (and even non-militant, average viewers) are favorable to the opinion that Alteans as a group, including Alfor, were actually evil and violent colonizer elitists before Galrans killed them off. In other words, they question Altean victimhood, and this allows the militant antis to poison and undermine scenes of a woman mourning her home and her beloved family. And it just gets to be a really unsettling conversation, to listen to someone actually try to justify genocide. They’ll also have suspicions that all of our foundational backstory in the s3 finale was just “cleansed” propaganda from Coran. So if antis can undermine Allura’s entire race and family as corrupt, then they can intentionally undermine any of her canonical statements about or efforts toward peace. Which is hilarious, because this racist tactic applied to Allura is actually what a lot of antis accuse Allura of doing with Lotor.

For the record, I don’t think the show production team actually intended the subliminal messaging/cognitive dissonance that I’m about to discuss. The people who designed and developed this show are fans of robot kitties and aren’t PhDs in social issues. But I think there is a very serious issue about the portrayal of genocide victims that feeds into some very real problems in our world, especially regarding the concept of racial supremacy and conspiracy theories about genocide victims.

VLD tried to play with both genocide politics for edge™ points while ALSO playing with shatterglass theory (shatterglass meaning an AU where the heroes are villains and villains are heroes). Combining these two concepts into the same universe creates some incredibly disturbing subliminal messaging about Alteans that very closely mimics ongoing neo-Nazi propaganda against Jews. Nazis and other anti-Semitists justify their hatred of Jews by equating them as terrible villains out for world domination via some underhanded shadow control of the mass populace. It’s an incredibly malicious form of propaganda, because it works so terribly well. And what do you know, VLD plays right into this kind of propaganda. In the season 3 episode, Hole in the Sky, we’re faced with team Voltron confronting an Altean Empire that was actually evil and out for multiverse domination. And oh by the way, they’re using malicious shadow tech to control a mass populace.

It’s like someone on the production team read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and then just copied/pasted that incredibly damaging and widely accepted conspiracy theory right onto Alteans for s3 funsies because edge content.

This is incredibly punishing, for the narrative to wave the carrot stick in front of genocide survivors that maybe some others survived—and then to suggest that Alteans were the evil ones all along. A shatterglass twist worked very well in Captain Marvel (2019) for a lot of reasons, for example, but it just doesn’t work well in the VLD universe given that the show explicitly portrays the genocide victims as evil and validates this concept. And this episode unfortunately feeds ongoing cognitive dissonance in antis that if AU Alteans could be so evil…how certain are you that they aren’t in the main universe too? On the reverse side, the main-universe goes out of its way to portray that not all Galrans are evil, and even that Galrans were the primary resistance (BOM). But in this singular episode, we see a united Altean empire. And the only Altean who moves to stand against it once the shine wears off…is Allura. There is no AU Altean actually shown in the Guns of Gamara. So Allura stands alone as an Altean against her own people.

For this reason, this episode doesn’t function very well as a shatterglass AU either, because the moral “flip” isn’t a mirror balance to main universe. The Alteans of the AU world appear as fully united in their evil plans. And then, no doubt, anti-alluras point out other quirky things about main-universe Alteans throughout the show—the violent language-learning system that scares Pidge, and the ancient Altean terraforming technology that Haggar activates, and the fact that Oriande is a hidden place that keeps out the less magical with a violent guardian. These details, when removed from main-universe world building, create a cognitive dissonance about whether main-universe Allura and Alteans were actually genuine in how they depicted respectful “peace and diplomacy.” So anti alluras who believe Allura was a racial supremacist really rely on this s3 episode and these details to uphold their conspiracy theory.

So let’s focus on Allura in this episode, because it says a lot about who she ultimately is as a person, and people have forgotten how she actually responded in this episode. Allura is unquestionably hopeful at the thought that her and Coran might not be the last Alteans alive. Pretty understandable. If I were the last human, I’d be darn excited to find out there’s more of me left, lol. So her experience as a genocide victim initially blinds her to the evilness of these Alteans. You can even see the ache on her face, of how badly she wants to believe their narrative of peace.

So Allura is initially star-struck that she and Coran are not the last Alteans, yes, and that somehow they’ve achieved a “peace.” She is also not afraid to admit that they would be valuable allies in the war:

And she’s not wrong there, considering that they have what appears to be extensive military resources and a robot force of their own. But she makes a critical mistake in assuming that “these are my people” means that they share main-universe cultural sentiments. The instant Allura hears Slav (so not someone of her own race) call these Alteans out as actually evil colonizers turning people into slaves, she begins to question the narrative she’s received.

In this instance, she actually affords the Alteans the same courtesy she afforded Lotor—the opportunity to deny the accusations.

But in the AU Altean’s case, they try to turn blame back on other parties. Allura listens to Keith when he grows increasingly fearful of what the Alteans might do to the others, and she tries to plead for actual peace:

And actually, this is a pretty interesting moment for Allura. She tries to salvage an alliance…until she realizes that their differences are irreconcilable, and that their definition of peace is inherently different from her own. This probably sets the stage for why Allura was so triggered by Lotor talking about peace while also killing people—because she’s seen people misappropriate that term before. And also probably informs why she trusts the information of both Keith and Krolia (both of whom have Galran blood, btw).

Ultimately, Allura turns against her own people. Violently:

When they get angry about her wanting actual peace, Allura draws a weapon against them and rejects them from her people. This mimics how she spends several seasons fighting an Altean Haggar/Honerva for her crimes, and how she turns against Lotor too.

So case in point here, Allura loves her people, obviously—but she also is holding them to moral standards regarding their behavior, which is something that a genuine racist doesn’t do. As a matter of fact, Lotor is the only person of Altean blood that Allura genuinely bonds with ever again in the series. She’s distant with Romelle, she’s distant with the s8 Alteans… In s8, Allura even says this about Luca, which refers back to her own mistakes she made with initially being star-struck by the s3 AU Alteans who came in “peace”:

Allura herself had been manipulated in s3, wanting so desperately to not be the last Altean alive that it initially blinded her to how Commander Hira was manipulating her. The plight of the s8 Alteans who are deceived by Honerva is inherently frustrating to her, because she can see herself in them.

Absolutely none of this correlates with Allura seeing or perpetuating Alteans as a superior race. At every turn, her own people continue to disappoint her, and she increasingly and progressively separates herself from them in hopelessness, because they’re so brainwashed that they can’t see they’re just cannon fodder for someone else’s military agendas. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a superior race, lol.

So let’s think about anti accusations here. Allura is a racial supremacist…but she’s arguing against her people who believe unquestionably in Honerva, another full Altean like herself? Nothing about that accusation makes sense with her actions.

The fact is, consistently from season 3 and onward, Allura is faced with her own people morally disappointing her.

The good news for the s8 Alteans like Tavo is that Allura is able to remove the dark entity Honerva is using to control him. Which allows other Alteans to “wake up” from being manipulated and try to make amends.

Regardless, Allura makes a very clear line that simply being Altean doesn’t make someone “right.” She sees herself fully at odds with her own people who are drawn in by Honerva’s lies. And she experienced well back in s2 (revealing Haggar as Honerva) and s3 (evil AU Alteans) that any given race, including her own, can house people who do bad things.

The fact is, she’s consistently and willingly drawn weapons against even her own people when they didn’t meet her moral expectations. So her response to Lotor isn’t particularly out of line there. She’s repulsed by a moral flaw.

And actually, Lotor himself wouldn’t have known this, but he very oddly echoed the AU Alteans by getting angry that Allura was angry over the means through which he was trying to get peace:

So Lotor actually reverts to the same logic of the AU Alteans—peace at any cost, just look at the results—

And keep in mind that the AU Alteans also manipulated Allura’s excitement about them, to get her to make the transreality comet usable so they could go into other realities. So Allura has felt betrayed and used before, by her own people.

So when she says this:

Yes, it’s a reference back to how Zarkon manipulated his friends in order to get access to the quintessence field, at the explicit cost of potentially killing his own people. But it’s not without understanding that yes, Alteans can be just as manipulative and betraying as Zarkon. Because she’s experienced it, again and again.

As a matter of fact, six out of the eight seasons of Voltron: Legendary Defender feature villainous Alteans/Alteans on the wrong side of the war, and we continuously see Allura punished again and again for wishing that Alteans still lived.

No wonder she wanted to die.

This is something that I find uncomfortable about the narrative of the show. Previous iterations of Voltron did in fact have a “blood on everyone’s hands” perspective, such as within the ages 16+ Dynamic Comics. However, Arusians/Alteans in those old Voltron narratives were not victims of genocide. VLD turns Alteans into victims of the worst racial crime possible and then also consistently portrays them as inherently antagonistic to genuine peace efforts in some way, instead of focusing on the evil of the oppressors.

And this is such a double whammy for Lotor’s characters as well, given that he was abused by his parents and threatened with slavery via his Galran culture, and that he was half-Altean too trying to connect to his lost culture.

As a matter of fact, the larger show’s narrative interest in “victims as antagonists” makes it such that when we see victims try to enact actual justice, it feels almost jarring. Let’s look at that s8 Zarkon moment you brought up as an example, where Allura destroys his innocent perspective by showing him his evil deeds.

The s8 Zarkon is a weird topic because 1) This Zarkon actually doesn’t exist outside of Honerva’s mind, so how he has any kind of actual free-will is beyond me, unless someone wants to argue that Honerva actually cursed his true soul just as she cursed the other paladins. It’s hilarious too, because Honerva-mind-Zarkon also calls Honerva a psychopath, so I guess now Honerva is psychoanalyzing herself using her dead husband as the vehicle, while also discreetly helping the paladins to stop herself—

ANYWAY, using this Zarkon as a “proof” of Allura’s “racism” is also cherry picking in the weirdest of ways. Is she angry about his horrific and incalculable crimes, including even how he betrayed the OG paladins and ruined his own planet? Absolutely. Does she want him to be aware of his crimes instead of having to pretend like nothing’s wrong? Yes.

But notice here, this Zarkon actually shows remorse. He is actually crying over those memories and recognizing that he had done something wrong. And Allura can work with that. In fact, out of everyone standing around and doing nothing, it’s Allura who gives him a second chance and offers an alliance with Zarkon in order to stop a crazy Altean:

Keep in mind too, Honerva didn’t have memory loss at the end of s8. She knew exactly what she’d done and had given up and had to actually be convinced to do anything halfway constructive. That’s a very different circumstance than mind-Zarkon had, who jumped at the chance to do something to fix what all had happened, and gets even morally righteous about it, calling his own wife a psychopath, lol.

So generally, antis who believe Allura was a racial supremacist haven’t watched the show holistically. We see her hold the same standards to her own people as she expects out of others. This show would look incredibly different if Allura were a true racial supremacist.

Ah, you ask. Okay, so we’ve refuted the big pieces of “evidence” used to incriminate Allura. But what about all of those weird details about ancient Altean history? The violent language-learning program that scared Pidge? The violent terraforming tech that almost kills Voltron? The concept that Alfor tried to play “police” over the Galra and actually blew up their planet? The Alteans’ ongoing discussions of “peace and diplomacy” and spreading it throughout the universe while they happen to sit on a massive load of ancient power?

The s3 finale and other facts throughout the series very heavily smash the claim that our canon, in-universe Alteans were evil colonizers like the AU Alteans. The biggest piece of evidence to the contrary is that the Altea we know was one (1) planet. You counted right. One planet. Not an empire, but a singular planet. The s3 finale corroborates this, showing Altea as being largely isolationist from a military perspective while Daibazaal and Nalquod warred "for generations," right in front of their salad.

So some viewers would have you believe that Alteans were these big bad, intergalactic police state colonizers. But for all of its great power and knowledge, the singular planet of Altea didn't even canonically interfere in the wars of its own galaxy for actual millennia? And looking at the screenshots upon the stabilization of the alliance, Alfor is revealed to not have had experience with a neighboring culture. His face while exploring Gyrgan’s homeworld is an indication that it’s all rather new for him too. So again, we have evidence showing that Alteans were not colonizing or even functioning as a police state.

Note here that in the s3 flashbacks, the show confirms that it actually wasn’t just Alfor who suggested an alliance. All five leaders had common interests in protecting their galaxy from even worse threats, so all five came together at the same time. This is actually the first piece of evidence we have of Altea entering into some kind of intergalactic military agreement to stave off said worse threats.

And all of this is on top of a history where in s6, the Galran Archivist confirms that the Galran Empire had existed before Zarkon for 3,000 years, with times of “expansion.” It’s very easy to see that Blaytz’s people were actively fighting off Galran occupation of their homeworld within this past.

And that’s actually what I think makes Alfor and the OG paladins some pretty interesting characters. Here, we had colonizing Galran empire setting down its sword and accepting the value and space of its neighbors. Here, we had master alchemist Alfor giving up military power within their group by acknowledging Zarkon as the superior strategist. Here, we had Blaytz who had previously been battling Galran occupation…fully accepting the Galra?

So the OG Paladin backstory represents a pretty incredible alliance that removed a lot of intergalactic toxicity and helped heal broken bonds. But it required all five leaders to agree to that. Alfor did not throw his weight or power around within this. There were several checks and balances here.

But this backstory also helps to explain some of the quirky details about Alteans. Their planet existed within an active war zone, and it’s very likely that they’d had to fight off Galran occupation just as Blaytz’s people did. So the violent robot trainers and fear-based language learning systems start to make sense. Alteans weren’t just simpering people playing harps all day and eating grapes. They were actively prepared to defend their planet and their culture.

So when Allura says in season 1 that Alteans were “spreading diplomacy” across the universe, the only pieces of evidence we have of that is the OG paladins themselves, in which Alfor was a big part in creating that alliance—and then possibly the Alteans with the Balmerans, given their deep collective rituals with that planet while the Galra literally just came in and ripped the planet nearly to death. Allura tries to mimic what it means to accept and interact with a culture without changing it well in season 1, when she stumbles through trying to respect Arusian culture and its demands on its people. Also, there is a big fact that antis like to overlook:

The fact is, despite the untold numbers of civilizations we interact with across 76 episodes, no outside race remembers Alteans as evil colonizers. If they were really so big and bad, we would have heard it, like, “Man, yeah the Galrans are bad. Just as bad as those Alteans, back in the day.” Or something. But nope, nothing.

So I heavily question the history of Altea as an ancient colonizing race. If they were, then Altea wouldn't have just been a single planet with limited resources to fight wars in even its own galaxy. All of this supports the idea of Altean children being raised to fight--because they were preparing to defend themselves when/if diplomacy fails.... But the fact that the Balmerans see Alteans fondly and that literally every other race we run into is explicitly suspicious of Galrans and not at all of Alteans says something.

I think the only piece of evidence there might be for a genuinely colonizing ancient Altea is the use of terraforming technology, as mentioned in s4. Haggar discovers it and activates it to try and kill Voltron--and she nearly succeeds, because said tech destroys the entire crust of the planet to reform it. But you have to step back for a second and wonder--if ancient Alteans were so powerful, why was Alfor struggling so hard to even hold his own planet together in the midst of all these other cultures warring and larger threats? If they had this technology--and they did know about it because Allura recognized it right away as ancient technology--why the heck wouldn't they use it? Or were they using it, and it was to reform uninhabited planets to help sustain displaced peoples? Why is it, if Alteans were so terribly bad, we have no record across ANY of the many alien races being cautious of them? Even Galran Lieutenant Lahn snapped at Allura only because he was jealous of the general security she had back on, you guessed it, explicitly Altea. There's a lot of potential explanations for a positive use of terraforming technology, and the evidence against colonization and Altea committing omnicide against other races is incredibly more aligned with the other details in the canon.

And even Alfor’s creation of Voltron and the blowing up of Daibazaal—that’s something that antis like to position as evidence of his police-state ways to underhandedly control other cultures.

So let’s tackle those too while we’re at it.

Honestly, I know people like to hate on Alfor, and I do think his character picks up some misogynism just from the writers....But I don't think he was as much of a controller as people think he was. He was already in an alliance with four other leaders to try and stop bad things from happening in their galaxy. That meant they were expending incredible amounts of time and resources to accomplish that end—resources that were not renewable and may have been straining various planets. We know that he started building Voltron with Zarkon and everyone else's blessing because he called them "clean ships," but it's only after the rift creatures attack that suddenly Alfor's perception of Voltron moves from "clean energy" to "omg we need a more powerful weapon against this unknown enemy.”

So these are his intentions BEFORE he discovers rift creatures are a threat to the universe. While Zarkon states that these new ships are to be endlessly powerful for the Galra Empire, Alfor shames him by offering what his desire is for them:

After the rift creatures nearly destroy Daibazaal, intentions change.

So here, we see the game change in a BIG way. Voltron is not just about offering a more renewable way of sustaining peace-keeping efforts. Alfor is now adjusting and finishing these ships with the explicit knowledge that if they are not powerful enough, then Daibazaal and the Galran people will die. Alfor’s got a LOT of pressure on him now to deliver a mighty and powerful weapon to stop this new threat. So even his creation of Voltron as a superweapon involved using it to protect people from imminent death—not to police them.

And about Alfor blowing up Daibazaal—once again, it’s Alfor trying to clean up Honerva and Zarkon’s mess. Honerva had convinced Zarkon that the rift needed to be wider, and so Zarkon deceived the paladins into widening it.

So keep in mind here, at this point in time—the rift was destabilizing and eating an entire planet. The entire universe was now at stake. Alfor had to choose between a bad fix and an even worse option of allowing everyone to die, but he very clearly evacuated people before destroying Daibazaal, as part of his promise to keep Galrans safe. So that no one would have to die.

And as a matter of fact—about that terraforming technology. How sure are you that Alfor didn’t intend to use it to build Galrans a new home? It’s entirely within the realm of acceptable conjecture that he allowed for the existence of that technology because it could restore what had been lost.

And here’s where the story gets really screwy and feeds into some anti hate. Because when Zarkon wakes up as a zombie, he desires more quintessence as zombies do.

So he’s pissed that Alfor just cut off his gateway, and he manipulates his people:

And it’s here where we get the idea that Alfor was an evil controller. The idea came from Zarkon, who—we can look around pretty easily and see that he was not a man of honor, ultimately. Even if you chose to not believe the s3 finale flashbacks as being objective, there’s something wrong with Zarkon. (It’s clear that the show thought using Coran was a smart way to shell off massive amounts of info, because clearly if this were truly in Coran’s perspective, we would NOT have had intimate looks into Zarkon and Honerva’s bedroom as Zarkon is tending to her, like omg.) Numerous sources, histories, and cultures outside of Coran confirm that Zarkon hit a point of no return on the evil scale, and that he projected his own blame for Daibazaal’s destabilization onto Alfor in order to raise up his new regime in the name of Quintessence™.

So at the end of the day, even Alfor was a victim. But yet somehow, various antis choose to believe Zarkon’s victim-punishing narrative because said antis can’t or else refuse to connect one scene to another since it undermines their justifications for why they can hate on Allura. And that’s not so much an issue with the story itself as it is just poor critical analysis or malicious weaponization of content against other fans.

Now, at this point, we’ve talked about Allura and we’ve talked about Altean history. I have numerous other posts about Allura’s interactions with other races and Galrans and overcoming trauma to give the entire universe a second chance. So if there is anything in this show that suggests Alteans were in any way a superior race, then it’s probably within the show’s own worldbuilding. The show contradicts its own definitions of what quintessence even is by suggesting Alteans have “bluer/purer quintessence” in order to justify why Lotor would even be trying to sacrifice them for anything. The show-championed concept that Alteans have a bluer, purer life force above all other people, and that only Altean energy could interface with the fabric of space-time. Now, this is a problem in the later seasons’ world building itself. And you know who wrote that in? The production team. So once again, we do have racial issues in this show, in ways that shows like Star Wars desperately try avoid by showing racial diversity in who has Midi-chlorians.

That said, I’m not a perfectly woke storyteller either. I think every story and show is going to have something problematic™, but with VLD it’s very clear that its disrespectful handling of genocide politics and shatterglass conspiracy theories, on top of its weird master race angle created the perfect storm. These mishandled and quirky details have created a cognitive dissonance with the provided narrative, resulting in some people in the anti fandoms to champion what aligns very closely to actual neo-Nazi propaganda against Jews, who according to them are not victims but instead the true perpetrators of all bad things. For the sake of the antis, I’m pretty sure they’re not intentionally looking at VLD this way and are probably just looking for any easily graspable reason to hate on Allura for interfering with their ship or something.

But this kind of subliminal propaganda that undermines victims, and the effect it has had on fandom morality politics, is deeply concerning to me. I really wish that we’d had an opportunity to respectfully and critically discuss this with the production team of the show, because a Y7-FV show about “strength in unity” should NOT result in us needing to have a conversation about people walking away with neo-Nazi-ish propaganda sentiments against genocide survivors. Like. Clearly, VLD is fictional, but it’s feeding into a real-life beast that it does NOT need to feed. And it’s keeping alive ongoing conspiracy narratives against some of our most vulnerable populations on the planet.

So, we need better stories. We need a production team that, if they’re going to get paid to do something involving portrayals of genocide and politics, that they need to do their research on those topics. Nobody is going to be perfect with a creation, but VLD validated some very damaging things—and it ALL is something that could have been fixable. I think it would have been incredibly validating to hear the production talk about and accept that these were issues that cropped up unintentionally, and to hear them confirm that these issues are not the sorts of things that VLD was supposed to champion.

The greatest tragedy of all of this is the potential that this show had to really champion some great and validating messages, and the potential that we as a fandom had to come together and do something that fandom was meant to do—which was celebrate the things we love. Because that’s why we’re all here. That’s why this crazy tumblr of mine even exists. It was supposed to celebrate things.

For that reason, I’m going to end this here. I’ve written several responses now as to my thoughts on the inappropriate narrative lens of the show, its contradictory and damaging worldbuilding about the purest race, and how it champions demonizing or punishing genocide survivors again and again. Within all of that, I’ve talked at length about Allura’s character and behavior over 8 seasons and how she built even empathetic connections with militant Galrans like Commander Lahn. In fact even her own homesickness is how she emotionally connects with Lahn, because she understands that desire to call something one’s own. To have a home. A family.

I now really would like to get back to writing stories that I find meaningful to me using these characters and these worlds—and trying to find the hope in all of this darkness, haha. And maybe with any luck, I can hope to do VLD some justice, knowing that I am still on a learning journey as well.

But I appreciate your note, and I hope this very extensive response helps to settle your questions and concerns once and for all regarding VLD Allura. If you should have any remaining questions, please feel free to reach out via a private message to discuss. Thank you!

#Volron #VLD #Allura #VLD Critical #Alfor #Zarkon #Honerva #Lotor #I hope this helps explain my perspective #I think this might have to be my last refutation to the Allura as racist/racist supremacist conspiracy theory #at a certain point #people either watch the show holistically or they don't #you can't convince an anti #so this meta will probably not help an anti #but if you're sitting on the fence and felt drawn in by anti propaganda #then I hope that maybe this post provides an alternate perspective #and one that tries to be more holistically fair to all 8 seasons of the show #and to the intentions and general oversights that can occur during production #Ultimately it doesn't matter if someone likes or dislikes Allura as a fictional character #we need better entertainment that can handle these hard topics and handle them well #And we also need a fandom who's willing to look at all of the information and not weaponize it to specifically demonize and silence others #Maybe a family TV show shouldn't be appropriating conspiracy theories from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion #real-world fans are incredibly vulnerable to such conspiracy theories #and it creates a lot of real-world strife as a result

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lecterthewhale · 3 years

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Okay, I don’t tend to get political where people see it, but that crap going on today with the Tr*mp supporters? Disgusting. Tr*mp has proven time and time again that he is mysoginistic, homophobic, racist, elitist, xenophobic, ignorant, and just and all around terrible person time and time again. He’s petty, childish, selfish, and tyrannical. Protests can be tools for good—I mean just look at the civil rights, women’s rights, and lgbtq+ movements and the marches and protests that they’ve done to show that there are major issues in this country that need to be addressed. Even this past year with the BLM movement, we see people banding together for a cause, to fight against a complicated yet obvious and very serious issue. What are the republicans who are storming the capital building fighting against? The fact that Tr*mp lost the election—and he did, don’t give me that crap about voter fraud or rigged elections because it’s been looked into and any fraud that happened wasn’t wide-spread enough to affect the election results and many of the places Tr*mp accused of fraudulence showed any eveidence of that being the case. That’s not a cause, that’s people throwing tantrums because they aren’t getting their way. What cause could they use to possibly justify this? White supremacy? Close-minded, strict conservatism? What??? Maybe I’m not as informed as some people, I will be one of the first to admit that, but what I’m seeing today looks like mindless, prejudice-driven actions against a system that, though it has issues, works at the end of the day. I am disgusted and disappointed. And if all that weren’t enough, the responses of the police force and army to this? Honestly, I’m deeply disappointed, though sadly not surprised. We saw them do horrendous things just this past year to BLM protesters and not even a fraction of that is happening in response to those in the capital today. No, I don’t want anybody to be tear gassed or beaten, of course not, but I can’t help but see the extreme difference in response to these two different groups and feel extremely saddened by the way the priorities of the government are off, how those who are fighting for equal rights and to be treated as human beings—like they deserve to be—are beaten and fought back while selfish and self-absorbed entitled brats who happen to have lighter skin colors are given an almost free-pass. I did not participate in the rallies, protests, or riots for BLM, but I hold a deep admiration for all those that did. I have friends who did and saw them posting messages about ways to keep yourselves safe out there, both from the physical dangers and from the possible effects that were created from the reporters and poor decisions of people in power. I wish this country was better than it is. I wish I were brave enough to stand up for what I believe in—after all, I am a coward and this is just a post on an anonymous tumblr blog that very few people will likely see. I wish things were better. I can only hope that they will be.

#government #USA #America #voting #election #tr*mp #capital #capital building #riot #republicans #racism #black lives matter #BLM #misogyny #homophobia #prejudice #american government #politics #American politics

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quakerjoe · 5 years

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This is a long read, but it’s the best damned thing I’ve read in a long time... ~Joe

I stopped watching Chernobyl after the first episode because a lifetime ago, I was a serious physics nerd and everything they were saying was absurd about the levels of radiation. Last night we watched the other 4 episodes and I thought maybe I might try and push the rock up the hill again and maybe open some eyes about where we are right now in this truly dystopic Orwellian nightmare. J. Robert Oppenheimer was a particular hero to me as a teen because he was so brilliant and accomplished the impossible in just 18 months. If you have not read American Prometheus, I highly recommend it because it details a time when we had a government of imbeciles running around with their hair on fire about communists who threw people in jail who wouldn't admit to that old drunk McCarthy that they were communists. Like all demagogues, McCarthy thought he was the lone arbiter of who was and who wasn't a patriot and he rose to such prominence because he was willing to lie about anything to make his baseless allegations. But Joe McCarthy was no patriot nor was his principle henchman Roy Cohn. They used the collective paranoias of stupid people to manufacture a crisis that did not exist. They destroyed lives and relished doing it to what would be referred now as the 'elitist liberals' like Dalton Trumbo and Oppy. Oppy was an extremely educated liberal who spoke to other people like him. Some of whom were communists. This made him a threat in the minds of the men who put Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death. Ethel was entirely innocent but that didn't matter to a public brought to full froth by the hysteria of the day. Those men beating the drums of patriotism could not conceive of a man like Oppy talking to a communist and not be a communist himself, the same was said of Trumbo. Guilt by association was just enough for the likes of Cohn and McCarthy. "For each lie, a debt to the truth is incurred." Chernobyl Historians have written heroic books about the great generals of WWII, MacArthur and Patton being the most famous and they do deserve their notoriety but they ignored to a large extent who actually won the war for the allies and that comes down to two men: Alan Turing and J. Robert Oppenheimer. By any measure, Alan was the greatest man of the 20th century. Oppy is a bit harder to fit into that calculus and he said so himself because he knew atomic weapons would change the world and not in a good way. It's true the Japanese were whipped and that Doolittle could have continued to firebomb Japanese cities until the Japanese came to heel but that is still speculation. After Nagasaki, the war was over right or wrong, Oppy did that and saved hundreds of thousands of American troops. After the war, McCarthy went after Oppy. He wasn't treated like the hero he was and didn't want to be. He was treated like a Soviet agent and stripped of all of his security clearances because he would not name names. He was threatened with prison, his jobs were taken from him and he was exiled from the community of scientists that *he* built because of the lies of scum like McCarthy and Cohn. Alan Turing didn't fair much better from his government either. The McCarthys of that time didn't really believe in America at all, he wasn't a patriot no matter how loudly his supporters screamed it. McCarthy didn't think the idea of America could survive 'communist infiltration'. He had no grasp of why communism spread in Russia like wildfire because to his primitive and ignorant mind, he didn't know what it was like to live under a Tsar. 'If it spread there then it can spread here' was the thinking because McCarthy didn't understand or believe in the ideals that founded America. To him, they were so weak and feeble that communism would be preferable than what we had in America. That lie destroyed lives, destroyed families and stands as a black stain on our nation's history. The thing about liars is that they have to tell bigger and bigger lies to cover for all the small ones and then that debt to the truth comes due. It came to McCarthy when Joseph Welch lanced the festering boil that was McCarthyism with the truth. Before Welch delivered his fatal blow, he reacted to McCarthy's slander with this: "And so, Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is true he is still with Hale & Dorr. It is true that he will continue to be with Hale & Dorr. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I'm a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me." Then a moment later, he drew the blade that ended the national nightmare when he murdered McCarthy with the indelible truth: Mr. Welch: You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? McCarthy and Cohn of course had no decency. Cohn delighted in going after homosexuals and destroying their lives while being a homosexual himself. They were the most vile hypocrites the world had ever known. McCarthy incapable of feeling shame, drank himself to death after he was humiliated as the coward he was. I sat there thinking about this as the full horror of what happened at Chernobyl unfolded. The entirety of the Russian government played out exactly like Trump having all of his cabinet praising his greatness, it was vulgar, it was disgusting. Then I remembered all the other dictators I've read about in history who surrounded themselves with sycophants. Martin Bormann being the reference example who served Hitler so faithfully. Bormann was a slack-jowled imbecile who was barely qualified to lick stamps but nobody in the Reich dare cross the thug because he was Hitler's favorite yes man. I remember that day Trump's cabinet took turns telling Trump how honored they were to serve under his super terrifically awesomeness and that they were but boot-licking sycophants. Pence really had to lather up Trump's ass before he could muster a vulgar enough kiss to satisfy that insidious git. I sat thinking that this was the lowest moment in the history of the Republic. What separated them from the Soviet Central Committee under Gorbechev? Not a damn thing. They *all* lie for a living and kiss the dear leader's ass. It was the most unAmerican thing ever done in the White House. It was sheer cowardice by each and every single one of them. Any man who had a lick of honor would have walked out in disgust to save what's left of their honor. The *only* one who got out of this administration with any was General Mattis. And you can see this cult in all of its terrible glory if you just glance at any of the stories coming in from visitors to the concentration camps now open on United States' soil. There are zero testimonials from any objective visitor who says conditions are fine. Last Thursday a government Lawyer argued to 3 appellate judges that giving toothbrushes and toothpaste were luxury items not to be afforded for the $700-$800 a day American tax payers are paying private prison companies to house these thousands of misdemeanor offenders. Republicans have strenuously objected to calling these 'detention centers' 'concentration camps' because nothing offends cult members like the truth about what they are really do. Ask any Scientologist if you're not positive of this undeniable fact. Children are living outside, locked up and fully exposed to the elements without food and running water because the man who concocted this policy is a 32-year-old psychopath named Stephen Miller who has devised schemes to strip parents of their children as a 'deterrent' from coming to the US. I remember wondering as I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich how so many people were duped into voting Hitler into office and here I am now witnessing it. I see right wing lunatics actually calling people 'Antifa' as if it is some slur. "Antifa'' meaning 'anti-fascist.' They seem wholly unaware that Americans won a war against fascism because we were all against what the Axis was doing. What the nazis knew was that they needed to control the press. What modern fascists like Rupert Murdoch have learned is that it is easier to control the masses with propaganda and to do that is to obey Goebbels' edict to 'accuse the other side for what you are guilty of.' This is where Republicans are now. There is no Republican party anymore. It is a cult of personality except it isn't Hitler being exalted by the hoards of half-literate morons, it's Trump. Trump lies to them and they breath in his lies and they repeat them with a religious fervor because none of them are aware that for each lie they tell, they incur a debt to the truth. In Germany and in Chernobyl, those lies always caused death on a mass scale either through incompetence or outright evildoing. Here we are at a crossroads in American history with an ignorant electorate chanting 'lock her up' as if that's something that's going to happen. The Secretary of the Treasury is openly breaking federal law in full few of all these miscreants and the cult doesn't care. The Attorney General of the United States, the highest law enforcement official in the land openly committed perjury before the US Congress. The President has committed election fraud, violated the emoluments clause and committed more acts of obstruction of justice than can be counted in full view of the American people and the sad fact of the matter is nothing is being done about it. The Republican cult doesn't even want to pretend like they don't want the Russians involved in the next election. They've done exactly nothing to safeguard our elections from Russian interference because they are so easily bought by Putin that they aren't going to do a damn thing to stop someone who is trying to help them win elections. I don't know what it takes before the people take to the streets but if opening up concentration camps isn't appalling enough to put the spurs in then nothing will. This is how it was done, the chipping away of normalcy with outrage after outrage until insanity became the new normal because as Voltaire so presciently said, 'anyone who can make you believe absurdity can make you commit atrocities.' Little children are locked up outside in the elements without so much as a blanket to protect them. They have no rights to anything because the courts are so overwhelmed with cases now that it will take many years before any of these refugees get a hearing. They're standing children up in front of a judge without a lawyer to defend themselves against imaginary crimes of crossing a line on a rock turning 35,000 mph in a small solar system. Republicans stole a supreme court seat and they will continue to lie, cheat and steal to remain in power. That's why Mitch has delivered over 100 carefully selected members of the Heritage Society to fill vacant judicial posts because he does not care about our democracy, he cares about power. As many Republicans have said, they only need someone to sign stuff, they don't care who. Trump is perfect for their agenda and democracy has never been on their agenda, usurping it is. 20 years of Murdoch's brainwashing has gotten us to this point and if anyone really believed in justice in this country, the heads of everyone at Fox would be rolling down main street as a lesson to future ambitious propagandists who mean to undermine our nation as that rogue Australian has done more than any other. To rid ourselves of this seditious scourge is going to take all of us who agree to speak with one voice at the ballot box. It's going to take protests on a scale not seen in the US. Blood is already being spilled in these concentration camps. Edmund Burke's warning that all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing is coming to pass *yet again* and here we are at tyranny's doorstep. How much is enough? What atrocity must be committed on American soil before we get off our sorry asses and start doing something about it? If you don't think we aren't at war with a very determined enemy bent on destroying our country then you need to wake up to reality before we wake up that one morning like Martin Niemöller did when he said, "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." Every single Republican in office right now is an enemy of the United States who are conspiring with our foreign enemies to keep themselves in power. So are the people who vote for them because they are no different than the people who voted Hitler into office. I sincerely hope if you agree with what I have said here that you spread this message with any like-minded people because as of yet, I haven't seen any presidential candidates calling these concentration camps what they are. If we don't start preparing for next November today, we could wake up to another 4 years of Trump. Our nation cannot survive such a reckless criminal administration the likes of this one for another four years. The nation will be bankrupt and in its death rattle. We can start speaking in unison this Independence Day by squelching this Trump celebration in DC by turning the real patriots out on a scale he can't imagine. It's time to start fighting and dirty at that while there's still something worth fighting for. #Resist Your very life depends on it as does our future.

- Thomas Clay

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phaedrecameron · 6 years

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The Accused, James Fraser Chapter 5 Mens Rea

Claire was startled awake. She felt Frank’s breath on her neck; his hand on her breast. Since learning of Frank’s most recent affair, she’d been sleeping on the sofa in her home office. Frank didn’t seem to mind. He kept late nights. But after her meeting with Fraser, the office was no longer comforting.

Claire wanted to leave, but Geillis, herself twice divorced, warned against rash action.

“Get yerself a good lawyer, get yer finances in order, find a place to stay where he can’t find ye, and get proof,”Geillis had instructed. She even suggested Claire hire a private investigator.

Ultimately, Claire had agreed to stay. She didn’t want Frank to have the upper hand; not ever again. She needed to prepare to leave him. But she’d been busy with work, busy with the Fraser case.

Now Claire could no longer wait.

“Don’t!” Claire spat as she pushed Frank’s hand away and got up from their bed.

“What’s gotten into you?” Frank asked as he sat up.

“I don’t like being awoken for sex.” At least not by you.

“Since when? I’ve been plenty patient, Claire.”

“Patient!? I’ve al..”

“I’m trying to make this work!” Frank cut her off as though she had not spoken. “I’ve given you your space, haven’t I? I agreed to your therapy? Agreed not to ask for your help? Agreed to raise a child not my own? Is that it? You’ve decided adoption? And that’s it. It’s always your way, Claire. You can’t give me anything.”

“How dare you, you goddamn bloody bastard!” Claire’s voice shook with rage. Instinctively, her eyes searched for something to throw at him, finding nothing, her fists curled. “I’ve given up everything for you! I moved to a foreign country for you. I had to take extra classes and exams to become licensed to practice in America. I went to all your boring work functions and humored all your pretentious asshole colleagues!” She closed her eyes, her voice now under control, “it takes two people to make a child and sometimes those people can’t, it isn’t anyone’s fault.”

Frank walked toward their bathroom. He turned to face her. “Don’t play the victim, Claire. I didn’t force you to do any of that. Those are the things you should want to do if you love someone. And you barely did it. You couldn’t be quiet. So what if you had to listen to a few old timers? I needed those people for my work and you embarrassed me every time.”

“I’m not the meek and obedient type!” Claire shot back. “I’m sure Sandy and all the others are more than happy to be doormats for your success.”

“Sandy was there for me when you refused to be. I let her go for you. I asked you to try for a child of our own blood and you even half-assed that.” Frank shut the bathroom door.

Claire removed her wedding ring, got dressed and left.

**************************************************************************************

John Grey was trying not to vomit. He’d been pulling double duty; prepping the Fraser case and actively avoiding his family. The case wasn’t coming together as he’d liked and he felt the telltale sign of a tension headache beginning to form. He’d left his fifth floor office at the Boston Criminal Court Building to retrieve what he hoped would be the cure; caffeine. Once at the first floor cafeteria, Grey had to choose between the lesser of two evils; an espresso macchiato or a cortado. He knew the the barista couldn’t even manage a decent hot cocoa, but he was desperate. He grabbed the cortado and decided a five minute break would do him good. He took a sip and made to sit on one of the cafeteria’s hard plastic chairs.

Christ! Grey thought as the offensively bitter and unbalanced liquid hit his palate. It was all he could do to keep it down. Then he noticed a dribble on his tie. He glared at the barista. He vaguely wondered if his family could begin a community outreach program to train baristas from underprivileged backgrounds. He immediately dismissed the idea as elitist bullshit. And it would require him to speak to Hal.

Grey observed the mass of jurors, attorneys, and witnesses as they scrambled to make the afternoon court sessions. He sighed. John was feeling the pressure. James Fraser had been cleared for trial by Dr. Claire Beauchamp. Her report hadn’t been expected for at least another two weeks and the State’s case was nowhere near ready for a jury. John got a reprieve when Fraser’s next court appearance had been postponed 3 weeks. Fraser had broken several bones in his left hand and the case was delayed while he underwent surgery and started a rehab schedule.

Grey chalked that incident up to reality hitting Fraser square in the face. The State had filed murder charges and a special allegation for use of a knife in the commission of a felony. He was facing life in prison, with no chance of parole.

John’s boss, Harry, had authorized the charges after they were briefed by Detectives Christie and Cinnamon. John remembered Christie explaining that Fraser should “fry.” John’s face soured at the thought. John had a personal dislike of Christie. The man made too many off color comments and was frankly a neanderthal. He was rumored to have been forced to attend sensitivity training on more than one occasion, but he did present well on the stand. John wasn’t familiar with Christie’s new partner, Cinnamon, who was considerably younger. Cinnamon appeared to be around John’s age. He was fit, tall, sexy, and slightly brown- everything Christie wasn’t. John wondered if Cinnamon was part of Christies’ on-going sensitivity training.

John pushed Christie from his mind. He was more worried about his own skill. This would be the biggest case of career. But so far Harry had supported his choices, including Beauchamp for the eval.

“Good, Beauchamp’s good,” Harry had said. Not up for anyone’s bullshit, she’s got that fantastic ass and accent to match.”

Grey had stared at his boss.

“What!” cried Harry. “I’m not dead yet, and you know as well as I do that jurors are more likely to believe good looking people! Besides, that’s why I put you on this case.”

Grey hadn’t known whether to be flattered or offended.

John felt his phone vibrate, but ignored it. He thought of Frasers’s lawyer and felt a twinge just behind his left eye. Fraser was represented by one of the best public defenders in the State, Ned Gowan. But Gowan was a court appointed attorney. “I thought for sure he’d have some fancy uptown lawyer. He’s rich isn’t he?” Harry had asked.

“Yup, but he’s also smart. Ned’s the best homicide defense attorney in the state. I need to bring my A game.” John had countered. But it did give him pause.

Truthfully, there was something off about the entire case. There was no motive. John swirled the black sludge in his cup. Yes, Fraser was caught on CCTV arguing with Laoghaire MacKenzie a few days before her murder. The night of her murder, Fraser lured her to a bar where they were caught, yet again, arguing on CCTV. Fraser then forcibly moved Mackenzie to an alley behind the bar - an area not covered by video surveillance. Within minutes she was dead.

Yet, why? Grey thought. The obvious answer being he was a spurned lover. Fraser stalked and killed her in a jealous rage. That was Christie’s position. But lovers who never spoke? At least not according to their phone records. A lover that none of Laoghaire’s coworkers, friends, and family knew she had? A few weeks before her death, Laoghaire had called the police over loud music from a neighbor’s late night party. Surely, this woman would have told someone she was being stalked?

What the case needed was further investigation.

As John rose to return to his office, he spotted Ned Gowan. John’s phone vibrated again. He had two missed texts and a new one from his boss, Harry.

Gowan started toward John.

Quickly, John opened Harry’s message,

Where the hell are you? Browns here…..get back to the office.

John looked up and saw Gowan had been waylaid by a crying elderly woman. Probably the mother of one of his clients.

John glanced back down at the two missed texts:

From Hal Grey

We need 2 talk, be at Pardloe on Saturday

From Stephan von Namtzen

I’m here. Jetlags a bitch. You call this beer?

John stuffed the phone in his jacket pocket and greeted Gowan.

“Hello, Mr Gowan.”

Gowan extended his hand and laughed. “Please, call me Ned.” Grey was wary. He knew Gowan’s bumbling country lawyer routine was an act. He was ruthless at trial.

Gowan produced a document and handed it to Grey. “I was going to file this at the clerk’s office, but then I saw you, so here it is, hand delivered.” Gowan smiled as Grey read the document.

“You can’t be serious, you read Beauchamp’s report,” Grey stated.

“I did, but this is a separate issue – Fraser’s adding a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Of course he’s not guilty, but if he were guilty, he was insane at the time.” Gowan’s smiled faded. “What did you expect given your office’s change in position.”

“What?”John asked, his head beginning to pound.

“Your office is seeking the death penalty.”

#the accused #jamieandclaireau #outlander au #john grey au #my first fic #outlander modern au

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totaldramachoices-blog · 6 years

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after a few weeks of considering, it was decided that it may be best for the people in the fandom to be aware of trever’s, also known as annelyseadair, behaviors and actions especially considering he is a twenty two year old within a fandom full of minors. he has repeatedly shown a serious disregard for their feelings and whether or not he might be making them uncomfortable. this is something that has affected many people greatly and it isn’t something that should be considered drama, discourse, and anything alike. it’s a lot more than that. don’t treat it like it is drama if you choose to comment on this.

i’m sure plenty of people in the choices fandom on tumblr is aware of the discord server that members refer to as “the elitists” (thank you yuginoh and legbeanstacy!), and trever was in the discord server for quite some time. until he was banned from it. why? you may ask, which is where we get into the troubling pieces of evidence to explain why he was banned from our server. proceed with caution as the content may make some people uncomfortable.

the first thing i’m going to talk about is the inappropriate commentary. if you are familiar with discord, you are aware of how the app operates. i’ll explain briefly how the elitist discord is set up because it’s important to this story. the discord server has various channels for general, choices spoilers, fandom discourse, lovestuck, venting, etc. but the most important in this scenario will be the presence of the nsfw channel. the nsfw channel is blocked from minors in our discord server because each person is given a role. minors have their own specific role so they are unable to see the conversations in the nsfw channel. the nsfw channel is for not safe for work content, as well all know. keep this in mind as i continue.

there are plenty of things wrong with this screenshot. first of all, this was posted in the general chat. a chat that everyone in the discord is aware is open for minors and that minors can contribute to. i don’t think i need to explain how and why this is disturbing like it’s self explanatory. also.. “oh, nevermind” instead of apologizing immediately speaks volumes to me.

here’s another example of trever making inappropriate comments to minors in the server. now, unfortunately i do not have receipts for this one because these messages were deleted, but this is one of the people in the discord that told the mods (there are four mods in our discord server) what happened. i blocked some names out of the messages due to confidentiality reasons, but the people who have agreed to be mentioned will be included. the screenshot below is another person who recalled this happening.

you would think that may be the last one, but i assure you.. it gets worse. the screenshot below is what trever said to jonah, @zagmund, and jonah is another minor in the server. jonah was telling a story about how he went to the see the emoji movie, and saw an adult jacking off in the movie theater. trever immediately blamed jonah for enabling pedophilia and yelling at him for not doing anything about it.. even though jonah was extremely uncomfortable and is a minor?

as we all see in most of these screenshots, trever is being told by others to stop, yet continues pushing the subject anyway. it’s unsettling because trever was told many times by someone close with jonah that jonah was uncomfortable because of what he said to him and accused him of. but trever didn’t apologize until neelam, @davereyes, messaged him privately and had to explain why it was wrong and why it made jonah and the others uncomfortable. he also claimed this was a miscommunication when this was brought to his attention to diffuse the situation.

here’s another reminder that most of these screenshots are not from the nsfw channel because they involve minors. these are all the instances that were brought to the mods attention and led them to their decision of kicking him out. now i’m going to go into the prejudiced commentary.

i'd like to point out beforehand that he did realize his error in making fetishizing comments about people of color without being told, but they still shouldn't have been made regardless.

i don’t even know what to say about these, honestly. the screenshot below is probably the worst of them all. let’s set up the scenario: everyone was discussing the haunting in braidwood manor in the choices channel and trever said he did not like that story. everyone was giving him shit about it with one of these people being jade, @valentinagreaves . jade was one of the many people in this discussion about thobm, yet trever chose jade specifically to point out as being aggressive. also, coining the term aggressive against a black woman is... not great word choice. and out of all people in the conversation, why was jade singled out?

if ya’ll were curious or didn’t figure it out by now, trever is a white man.

now, we’re going to get into what happened when trever was kicked out of the discord server. neelam had talked to trever about his behavior, and while he did apologize for some of what happened, many members were still uncomfortable with him in the server. all of these accounts/screenshots were brought to the mods, the mods participated in a deliberation, and they all agreed that they should kick trever out of the server. stephanie, @estelamontoya, is the person who began the server and took it upon herself to message trever once he was banned. she explained to him why he was kicked out and he got frustrated with the situation because stephanie did not send him the screenshots others sent her to protect the individuals who came forward. i’d like to take a moment to explain that stephanie is recovering from an abusive relationship that ended fairly recently. she has been fairly open about this with the discord server, so there’s no way that trever wasn’t aware of who he was speaking to at the time.

what drives me insane about these messages is that he, as a twenty-two-year-old, should be more aware of what he is saying to someone and reminding himself who he is speaking to. there is a lack in communication skills when you’re throwing obscenities at an abuse victim or anyone, really. whether or not you are aware of who you are speaking with, it is not necessary to talk to them like that. there are more screenshots of stephanie’s conversation with trever and she’s willing to share them if you’d like to see others, but to summarize: he said it wasn’t fair that he was kicked out without warning (he was), he said he was being treated unfairly, claimed these were misinterpreted occurrences, said he wasn’t aware they were minors, that these comments were jokes, and said he could explain what he said. it was all practically bullshit to victimize himself and deflect blame onto others because he was ‘unfairly treated’.

now, i know for a fact that trever is going to say that he made an apology letter and therefore none of this matters, although.. from what i have heard from many members of the server, his apology lacked greatly and he continued to label these happenings as misinterpretations or miscommunications. i will not share the apology letter because it is quite long with many things to dissect of how it’s a bullshit apology, but it’s been said by many who read the apology that it was.. bad. i guess you’ll have to take our word for it.

this is all the information we as a group think are important for others to be aware of. please do not take this with a grain of salt, but understand the reason this is becoming public is to preserve safety for everyone in the fandom (specifically minors). we as a group decided it would be best to reveal this information to the fandom to protect others. this is not the result of pettiness or spite, and it is up to you to decide for yourself what to do with this information.

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alvctc · 6 years

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A tie; it wasn’t anywhere near what she expected. In fact, she expected Helena to win by a landslide. The people seemed to want a middle ground and perhaps she and Emmeline were too far to either end of the spectrum. Still, despite knwing Helena most her life, and the few years since she had been betrothed to Amycus, didn’t give her the confidence that Helena would do well in the position. Helena was kind, compasionate and seemed willing to help all people, Alecto also knew she was helping the Uprising but she wasn’t outright supporting them. Sure, she had to keep it secret, Amycus would literally kill her if she were discovered but she seemed to have a penchant for high risk scenarios, that didn’t sit well with Alecto. So despite all those good traits she saw all the flaws in the image Helena projected and a lot of her answers in interviews were outright lies. Alecto felt she might also be railroaded by someone like Rodolphus, someone that could and would threaten her and the people she loved to get what he wanted should she win and he become minister. If Remus won she wasn’t sure Helena could be firm enough with him, despite her medical career. There were serious red flags for Alecto with each new response and interaction she experienced with Helena. Plus, their personal argument. The woman had come at her in a pub with her complaints, playing the role of victim, putting all of the blame on Alecto and taking zero responsibility for her own choices.

Alecto had meant to attack her brother, to call attention to his abuse in order to keep Helena safer, with a spotlight on him and such intense scrutiny he was less likely to harm her, Alecto knew that from experience. But she also felt Helena had more choices than she believed. It was 2018 for fucks sake, betrothals were arcane to most families at this point and believing she was trapped, as a capable, intelligent and apparently fierce adult was absurd to Alecto. If Helena wanted too she could free her damn self, but she actually seemed to enjoy the ----Alecto wasn’t sure what the right word here was, but again, high risk scenarios that her own choices put her in, that seemed to be what Helena thrived off of. The wizarding world might still be behind muggles in some specific areas but law enforcement, and all the friends Helena seemed to have, and the strength she displayed in openly lying to the world...it just didn’t add up to Alecto. And being verbally assaulted by her, she had immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion, she hadn’t even bothered to ask Alecto what she’d meant by it or why she’d done it, just immediate accusation and blame. She had experienced that her entire life, not being given a chance to defend herself, immediately being guilty of whatever the crime was. Helena might have thought she was right, or righteous and she was certainly entitled to whatever she was feeling but what kind of person went right for You did this thing to me on purpose for this reason and i’m hurt, and i deserve to be hurt, so fuck you.?

It wasn’t a real secret, that the old pureblood families were still abusive, elitist sacks of shit, they were all supposed to support one another, to not put each other through the crap their families had. Alecto had given a poor choice of words, but she’d meant to threaten Amycus and to warn Helena, as if she didn’t know, that her actions were well beyond dangerous and she chose them anyway. Instead of working to remove herself from the Carrow family clutches she had provoked a man she knew would seek retribution. Turning the eyes of the world on Amycus could have kept her safe, but only if she actually wanted to be, and Alecto just wasn’t sure she did. When people remained in situations like that, though she knew abusive relationships weren’t a cakewalk to escape from, for this woman it seemed more a conscious choice than one of fear. She wasn’t even sure why Helena had decided to run, it felt odd. The girl was a Healer, a good one from what she heard and well liked but no background in politics and no public face whatsoever and when the stakes of running were so high why go ahead when others could do a better job?

Perhaps alecto figured she’d lose, after being outed publicly, it would make sense and only go to highlight how deep the prejudice was against halfbreeds and magical creatures. If she had kept her mouth shut, if she hadn’t admitted to being a werewolf, maybe she’d have won. There was really no way to know now. But even if she had won, or if she did now, the consequences of HER choices would not disappear, they’d increase but she had prepared herself for that.

Under Rodolphus as minister she wouldn’t back down from him, not ever and none of his threats would matter because she could take care of herself and she wasn’t under anybody’s thumb. Her thoughts and beliefs were her own but she wouldn’t let him pass laws that appeared to help when they truly oppressed and she’d never stop fighting for the rights of all people in their world, including the ones like him, and the ones that voted for him. ALL magical beings deserved equal rights. And if Remus won, she saw what everyone else did, that perhaps the two most important seats in government would be vulnerable once a month. But wolfsbane was becoming more effective and Severus Snape was working on a cure. Plus they would implement plans for those times and she’d make sure Remus didn’t fold under the pressure or let his personal feelings keep him from governing them all. She was the perfect candidate, the perfect undersecretary, between her background and her platform, and her ability to handle both candidates for minister she should have won perhaps. And it was wrong to believe she had only tied, or lost, because of her admittance but no one wanted to see a half breed in power, they’d do anything to avoid that, including electing a girl who was easily manipulated, who enjoyed dangerous situations and who seemed to be playing at a life she didn’t really want. Someone with that much self denial shouldn’t be given so much power.

So Alecto found herself in the booth, voting again. It was good Emmeline had been knocked out, she’d throw them all into endless war, perhaps bring about the end of the world and she’d certainly eradicate everyone like Alecto and everyone who sympathized or supported those like her. Maybe they were all dangerous choices, filled with risk but that was how politics worked. Alecto wanted this, from the moment she’d actually stopped fighting how well she fit the role, knowing she could bring change and equality to everyone and terrified that with Helena as undersecretary they’d never get it. With this fear and determination in her bloodstream she checked the box by her own name and hoped to Merlin people were ready for someone like her.

#* CASE FILE : aмιd тнe cloυdѕ oғ тнe nιgнт #self para #SEC2018 #abuse mention tw #abuse mention cw

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 7 years

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In a recent ‘exchange’ I had with somebody they accused Spidey of being a an egotistical dick and an example of ‘toxic masculinity’ in the above interactions he had with the Avengers. I want to revisit this because I find that reading so utterly nonsensical.

Now look did Spider-Man have a temper here and resort to violence?

Sure.

But was it due to ‘toxic masculinity’?

Hardly. It comes down to several factors but the single biggest is recognizing that...this is a massive trope.

In the 1960s Marvel’s brand new set of superheroes were defined very much in contrast to their DC Comics counterparts. In the mind of the comic book reading zeitgeist, DC’s heroes were moral paragons who were perfectly chummy with one another. Why wouldn’t Superman and Batman like one another? They were both super heroic crusaders for justice after all.

Marvel wanted to subvert that trope and be more realistic. Their heroes would be flawed and imperfect and one way to exemplify that was that fairly often they bickered and didn’t get along. This is actually the very genesis of the entire ‘heroic misunderstanding’ trope that’s now a cliché.

Typically whenever a hero guest starred in someone else’s book they were the hostile jerk, though that wasn’t always the case. The Fantastic Four in Spider-Man comic books tended to be like this, whilst Spider-Man in FF or Strange Tales stories tended to be a jerk. It wasn’t even exclusive to guest stars, the Fantastic Four famously bickered amongst themselves.

Whilst Stan and other creators of the times probably went too far with it, that is the real reason this is happening in this issue so to extrapolate Spidey’s character as an arrogant, machismo jerk with serious issues is going way too far and ignoring historical context, suspension of disbelief, etc.

However even in-universe Spider-Man’s actions in this story really aren’t that unjustified.

His temper and his presumption that he’d have to fight somebody have a lot to do with his youthfulness (he is only 19 in this story) and his explicitly stated concern for Aunt May, which make his hot headedness forgivable. Even his presumption he’d have to fight somebody or that he might be being tested without realizing it has a lot more to do with youthful naiveté than anything to do with alleged arrogance or ’toxic masculinity’.

However...what are Hawkeye, Wasp and Thor’s excuses for being obviously hostile jerks given that they are fully grown adults?

Spider-Man sincerely asks who he has to fight because he thinks a test to join a fighting team would naturally involve that but Hawkeye an adult who knows the test will not involve that volunteers to trade punches with this stranger he wants to join their team.

WTF?

Meanwhile you’ve got Iron Man who for no reason says an obviously dickish thing by telling Spider-Man leave the room he entered less than five minutes ago and stop breathing down their necks. At the same time Janet Van Dyne insanely seems to hate Spider-Man entirely because he is name and costume associates him with spiders which she as someone associated with wasps therefore sees as her natural enemy. This is utterly bonkers at best, immature as Hell at worst.

And then there’s Thor. Thor who shows up out of the blue whilst Spidey is just minding his own business and doesn’t ask but literally commands Spider-Man give him his attention. And what does he want? He wants to outright summon Spider-Man to the Avengers, ordering him to report to their HQ. He even ends that statement with a ‘I Have Spoken’ line.

This is if not hostile then supremely arrogant of Thor and utterly demeaning towards Spider-Man. Most people with any self-respect would be irked by being spoken to this way.

But it gets worse.

Put aside how Thor insults him by calling him a ‘neophyte’ later in the story, but just in their initial exchange after showing up to Spidey being a bossy jerk he proceeds to reprimand Spider-Man because he isn’t basically grovelling and grateful as the ‘honour’ of joining this team he isn’t even sure he’s interested in. He even insults Spider-Man’s standing ‘as a man’. Important distinction to make, having pride, even having pride ‘as a man’ doesn’t inherently mean we’re dealing with issues of ‘toxic masculinity’. It just means Thor is insulting Peter as a person and questioning his sense of homour. Which is a dick move no matter what.

Moreover, remember this is the early days of the Marvel Universe. The Avengers don’t have quite the same reverence they have in modern Marvel or the MCU. At this point in time they are just another superhero team. A notable one, but not one veritably worshiped and universally adored. Though Thor does mention the Avengers record, specifically referring to them as a ‘fighting team’. Which is probably a huge thing that sticks in Spidey’s mind and informs his beliefs about the Avengers when he walks in to the team HQ later.

Basically Thor, as a representative of the Avengers came off as a rude, arrogant elitist jerk and then the other Avengers really didn’t do much to reform Spidey’s opinion of them.

He was as a person treated in an utterly insulting manner.

And the worst insult of all was...the test.

Let’s put aside how incompetent it makes the Avengers look to bark loudly about the honour bestowed upon Spider-Man that he is going to be tested for membership...and then not actually have a test prepared for him when he shows up. Let’s instead consider how goddam ridiculous the idea of having to test Spider-Man is.

I’m no Avengers expert but I think I know enough to say that...Thor is full of shit.

“Every candidate must submit to a trial! It is the way of the Avengers!”

...No...it really isn’t...

Lets say we agree that the founding members (Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Wasp and Hank Pym) don’t need to be tested because they created the team to begin with. Every other member since them has NOT been tested for membership. Captain America, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were all either invited to join or just applied to do so getting accepted once other members backed them up.

The Avengers are making an exception for Spider-Man. He has to be tested to see if he’s Avengers material.

This then taps into my counterargument about Spider-Man being egotistical. The detractor was claiming Spidey is egotistical because he believes himself as good or better than guys like the Avengers.

Well really...that isn’t exactly unfounded.

Spider-Man is a powerful super powered person who’s taken on petty crooks, crime lords, a few Soviet operatives, general super villains, mad scientists and even held his own against a few other superheroes, often winning most of those encounters. Most of his battles and victories are matters of public record so the Avengers would know about them.

More poignantly Spidey has been doing this stuff with very little help, no tutelage at all and whilst also coping with a slander campaign by the media, mistrust and a lack of gratitude from the public, financial burdens, being ostracized at school, earning a scholarship, and supporting a sickly/elderly family member.

The guy is well within his rights to have a sense of pride and believe himself to be the measure of (or superior to) any of the Avengers who to his observation don’t have to deal with the crap he does, have gratitude and resources to help them with stuff and also have the benefit of backing each other up.

He has made it this long off his own back without any of that stuff...and he’s been doing it for longer than most of the Avengers too.

But maybe the most insulting part of being tested is the fact that despite his record of victories he has to be tested for admission to a team that Hawkeye and the Maximoff twins are a part of.

Let me remind you that Hawkeye is a former criminal who worked with a literal Soviet spy for awhile and the Maximoff twins were allied under an infamous mutant terrorist! And they were given membership without any kind of test!

And to make things really bad...Spidey SAVED the Avengers in one of their own stories! Captain America even acknowledges that fact!

And now these guys have pompously shown up and treated him like some kid who’s they’re charitably offering a piece of candy to if he shows them the proper reverence?

Is it really egotistical ‘toxic masculinity’ which would thereby drive him to react the way he does?

#Spider-Man #Avengers #Marvel #Marvel Comics #Peter Parker #Aunt May #May Parker #Quicksilver #Scarlet Witch #wanda maximoff #pietro maximoff #Magneto #Thor #Thor Odinson #Iron Man #Hawkeye #clint barton #tony stark

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owlishwitch · 5 years

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Finally came across toxicity

So I’ve been on Witchblr for around 10-ish months now, and on the whole my experience has been fantastic. People are generally wonderful. But today, I finally encountered the crummy side. If you’re following this blog you will already have seen the response to my cute little emoji spell.

But if not, here’s a rundown.

So my emoji spell was so that those of us against white supremacists in our midst could direct some energy towards defeating them. Obviously it wasn’t intended to be some kind of end in and of itself, but charitable people already know that.

On the other hand, assholes will accuse me of some kind of keyboard warrioring. Apparently, even people who believe in magic may potentially accuse me of such, even though an emoji spell is no less valid a way to do magic than any other. It may not be your kind of thing, but if you don’t think it’s going to do anything, then what about an emoji spell-- which uses symbolism, intention, and manifestation-- is any different to a traditional spell? If you don’t believe an emoji spell is capable of working, then why would you believe any other form would work?

So that brings me to my new “pal” psygothicpws - who I will not tag because they don’t deserve further attention.

First off, they call me a “fluff bunny.”

That’ll be 1 premium yike.

Baby Wiccans used to be called fluff bunnies back when I was on the message boards of Bolt.com circa 2000. The idea was that fluffies, as we called them, were here to cast love spells and play light as a feather, stiff as a board. They weren’t seen as serious in craft or in religion, and were mostly in it for aesthetic.

I’m 33 now, and over time I’ve realised just how elitist that kind of thinking is. These days, I don’t care if people wear witchy clothes and collect crystals, as long as they’re not trying to convince people not to take their prescribed medications or vaccinations. I don’t care if people “dabble” and move on. What does it matter to me? People should do what makes their short, crummy time on this godforsaken planet slightly less shit.

All that said, me being called a fluff bunny is closing a hilarious circle for me and genuinely makes me picture this person as a young teen, like I was when I used that term. I don’t know or care to know how old they actually are, because they might as well be a baby to me after what they’ve said - which I’ll get to in a moment.

So here is their initial reply to my post:

Fluff bunnies are inherently lazy. They refuse to accept that magic has a balance and it will negatively effect them. For every new positive there’s a new negative. Try and guess what side OP is on? 😂

This amuses me, considering what they will say next. It’s clear to me that they think they are on the so-called “positive” side and I am not, because I want to destroy racists. I wonder why. Could they be racist themselves?

So I posted quite a scathing reply to this BS. Their response came swiftly thereafter:

This almost makes me feel sorry for this terrible person. But considering they are repeating something Tucker Carlson said - which was SO RACIST THAT FOX NEWS MADE HIM GO ON VACATION - my empathy dries up pretty quickly.

Strange, too, that they continue to accuse me of being a “craptivist” - even though I gave my real world activism credentials in my last reply. I regularly petition my government for changes, and actively fight the fascist elements that sometimes rear their ugly heads in my country. So I mean - clearly they did not read a word I said.

Don’t be this person. They are equal parts arrogant and ignorant, which is a very unfortunate combination. Breeds a lot of bad takes. And lets neo-Nazi groups flourish in the garden of looking the other way.

Whatever “occult circles” this person runs in are clearly not the kind of circles I give a shit about, much less what they think of me.

Why do I get the feeling this person is part of a white identitarian Odinist group or something?

(Also, who the fuck are “EA Koetting” and “Varg?”)

#witchblr #witchcraft #white supremacy

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fucknomeanpeople · 7 years

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I think I’m starting to see where the problem is...

I think it’s a bit hard for me to really wrap my mind around value systems that differ drastically from that of mine. Like, I’ll use music as an example.

I can certainly understanding disliking bands or musicians - or even genres. There was a time when I strongly disliked country music, and I was fed up with it. That was back when I had a job when I had to hear country music pretty much every day. So my resentment was with the fact that I was being forced to listen to country music - not the fact that country music existed at all, or the fact that people like country music. Once I stopped being forced to hear country music every day, then I was able to ignore that genre and just listen to what I like.

Likewise, I do have a personal dislike for Stevie Ray Vaughan. I tend to prefer blues music such as Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, and Jimmy Reed. I will admit that, about a year ago, I did go through a brief period of being a bit more forceful in expressing my dislike of SRV - which I now apologize it. I never said that SRV “sucks ass” or that his fans were “fucking morons”, but I did get a bit repetitive and forceful in expressing my dislike of him - which I think was fueled largely by being fed up with metal elitists constantly feeling the need to shit on Avenged Sevenfold and Five Finger Death Punch. So, if I hadn’t been confronted on it early on, I can see where it maybe could’ve snowballed into outright vitriol for SRV. So that’s a past mistake of mine that I now regret.

Then, ages ago, I had this idea in my head that everyone should listen to Christian music and *only* Christian music. God, I cringe now thinking about myself way back them. I think the only major thing that really separated that attitude from that of metal elitists was that I would claim “morals” to back up my views. I would go on about how “secular” music was evil, not really considering that many Christian artists themselves gained heavy inspiration from “secular” artists - and also that, had “secular” rock not existed, then neither would Christian rock. But I really wasn’t thinking about all that, back then. Even with that history, though - I still don’t quite understand metal elitists, since they don’t even claim “morals” as grounds for condemning people who like bands that they don’t like.

I know I’ve ranted a lot about people hypocritically heaping vitriol on Avenged Sevenfold for plagiarism when they themselves like Led Zeppelin, but I guess something I hadn’t considered is that some people genuinely believe that Led Zeppelin are innocent of all plagiarism charges. Before I myself really got into blues music, I didn’t realize just how serious Led Zeppelin’s plagiarism was. However, I also didn’t go criticizing other bands for plagiarism. Call me “shallow” - but, when it comes to music, I look directly at the surface: Do I like how the music sounds? If the answer is “yes”, then I listen to it.

Also, maybe I am a bit too quick to cry “hypocrite”. When you accuse others of engaging in “hypocritical” behaviour, you’re sort of operating under the assumption that said “hypocrite” shares (or *should* share) the same value system that you do. For example, I guess someone who consistently heaps vitriol on Avenged Sevenfold but flips out at even the mildest criticism of The Beatles isn’t exactly being a “hypocrite” - if they’ve never made any claim of upholding “mutual respect” as a value. Certainly, we can see that person as being a complete shithead - but calling that person a “hypocrite” would be a bit inaccurate.

I know I do come off ranty, a lot of times - but I genuinely do wanna understand the rationale of music elitists. Why be so vicious towards the existence of a band simply making music that you don’t like, when you should really reserve that viciousness for people who actually harm others. That’s where the confusion lies, and it’s hard for me to find a satisfactory answer for that - and music elitists themselves are pretty much the last group one could expect a satisfactory answer from.

Does anyone get what I’m saying? Can anyone add onto this, or maybe correct me in some possible misconceptions?

#music elitism #discourse #serafina speaks

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tantkill · 7 years

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let’s address a serious matter

In response to this following post regarding “let’s let tumblr elitism die”, I have to say it’s a direct attack towards the points that were made. This post shall explain all the points into a proper manner because, quite frankly, these kind of points are what accuse countless blogs for the mun being an elitist when clearly THEY ARE NOT ATTEMPTING THIS BY ANY MANNER.

you don’t need fancy icons to role play with me

Admittedly, the only rule I have ever seen regarding this is not using the word “fancy”; they either inform they cannot use icons due to their muse having limited screen time or for icons to be used to enhance their reply. Never has there been a case where roleplayers have confronted others in terms of icon usage or not seeing them as “fancy”. Be it whatever size, the exception ever asked is to use bigger icon sizes due to vision adjustments or having an icon presentable. People have never complained about a role player who didn’t use “fancy” icons --- keep in mind that blogs who do use, as you call “fancy”, are icons they worked hard. People do it because THEY WANT TO DIFFERENTIATE THEMSELVES FROM OTHERS WITH A SIMILAR MUSE. Obviously, impressing others does become a habit as reality is confronted on a daily basis: we humans wish to impress people even if it seems like it isn’t necessary. It’s no different from animals who have to display mating traits in order to expand their species; we have no control over this and it’s neither an excuse. Just realize PEOPLE HAVE THEIR OWN TASTES WHO WANT TO BE ORIGINAL WITH “FANCY” ICONS. It’s not called elitism to have these type of icons that were edited in their vision and no one has ever complained about people who use regular icons that were cropped out of a screencap or manga page.

you don’t need to write in small fonts to roleplay with me

Another issue in which the issue can be addressed! For the blogs who use small font in order to roleplay, it falls underneath the same category as explained of the fancy icons: PEOPLE HAVE THEIR OWN AESTHETICS AND THAT INCLUDES SELECTING A FORMATTING THEY’RE COMFORTABLE WITH. It’s no different than people who wish to use regular font to do their replies. Confusing others who use small font as if they’re “elitists” who will complain for using regular font is not true. There has never come a time where small font roleplayers have lashed out at other roleplayers for their choice of writing. People have their ways of typing in response to things they have learned on their own, plus the impressions still resonates with their choice of font. BEING DIFFERENT IS NOTHING TO BE CALLED OUT FOR AS AN “ELITIST”; there’s also actually giving these people a chance and informing them into what formatting or font is used for their specific reply. Don’t be afraid to ask people who use small font to adjust in your comforting replies. Accusing them as an elitist is not the right option!

your theme doesn’t have to look like you gave your soul to photoshop to roleplay with me

Okay this probably has to be the WORST POINT EVER ADDRESSED towards roleplayers who make their own themes. While the coding is available from certain tumblr users for them to use, the background image is what this post was directing. How can you call someone who actually does spend hours to making a nice theme as if they gave their soul to photoshop?? It’s actually complicated than people imagine and I’ve personally witnessed other roleplayers with themes that certainly look like they placed a lot of effort into making. Think of making a theme as ELEVATING YOUR GRADES IN SCHOOL. Obviously you cannot hope to succeed if you don’t put the effort. Have you ever thought of how long these role players worked hard into making the theme?? Adding everything they known, even searching online on tutorials, trying to figure out a technique that works, hell they even MAKE THEMES FOR A STRESS RELIEF, the list goes on. Chances are the roleplayers with these kind of themes that they “gave their souls to” doesn’t happen overnight, neither is it that simple for people who are barely beginning. But it’s not a crime to have these themes without them getting accused as an “elitist”.

Just note another trait: APPEARANCE DOES MATTER IN A JOB INTERVIEW. People wish to give other roleplayers a taste of their aesthetics as well as provide them with a nice sight. It’s not saying they dislike people who use basic codes and background; usually, themes that aren’t given effort means they made the muse on a dare or they’re not going to be dedicated into portraying the muse. Sometimes themes that look like “people gave their souls to photoshop” carry people who are dedicated into their muse more than the theme. Consider it a sample of what the muse is about as well. There’s never been a case where someone’s rules specifically stated “I shall not role play with people who don’t have a fancy theme as my own”. Plus, commissions for themes and coding ARE CONSTANTLY DONE; do not underestimate their abilities either by addressing this point so carelessly.

i won’t roleplay with you if you don’t read my rules

This might be one of the greatest disappointing points of all; it’s like saying “I won’t hire you if you don’t submit an application for our job”. That won’t ever be the case because you do need to send an application and read the handbook to understand your own job’s regulations and what not to do. The same applies for a roleplayer’s rules; they’re made FOR THE COMFORT OF EACH ROLEPLAYER. Roleplayers have rules because, believe it or not, we are humans and may have things that aren’t to our liking. It’s not a crime to not roleplay subjects that ultimately trigger the person. That won’t bring a comforting environment for the roleplayer if they didn’t specify the things they’re willing to roleplay or what triggers them; like stated, humans have the capacity to think and feel. Rules are also created for the sake of the person who wishes to roleplay with the other roleplayer. You’d be surprised how many problems have arise because they didn’t read the rules and communication was not done. Arguments occur far more when rules are neglected; they’re essential to keep a stable environment for the roleplayer. There may be a thing as “this is my blog and I’m free to do whatever I want” but realize people think differently. No one will have the same opinions nor things they want to be accomplished or not on their blogs AND THIS IS NOT ELITISM.

Realize the reasons why people won’t roleplay with others is because they didn’t abide to the rules and stirred up drama because they neglected the roleplayer. Nothing about this pertains to elitism by any means.

i won’t roleplay with you if you have a sucky attitude

So the post is saying people who have all these points apparently have “sucky attitudes”?? There’s sincerely not much to say about this because ANYONE IS CAPABLE OF HAVING THIS SO-CALLED SUCKY ATTITUDE DESPITE NOT HAVING THESE POINTS TO “ELITISM”.

To end this post, please remember the true points:

FANCY ICONS DOES NOT EQUAL ELITISM; SMALL FONTS DOES NOT EQUAL ELITISM ; FANCY THEMES DOES NOT EQUAL ELITISM ; HAVING RULES AS WELL AS REQUIRED TO BE READ DOES NOT EQUAL ELITISM ; HAVING A SUCKY ATTITUDE DOES NOT EQUAL ELITISM

please stop accusing people who have these points as if they’re elitists.

#( psa. )#✖ ┇ ❝ behind the fog-cutter of truth / ooc #long post tw #( sorry but i seriously got irritated by this post so much. seeing how i have the whole fancy icons and the formatting??? )#( so i'm an elitist then??? geez sorry. )

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dat-imagine-tho · 7 years

Text

A Turn of Events - Part 2

Pairing: Draco x Reader

Warnings: Pansy verbally attacks the reader, I suggest you don’t read that part at least if you’re feeling down, (It will be within the three stars ‘***’) please take care of yourselves, dear readers~

A/N: Gif is not mine. Requested by an awesome anon with the prompt like Part 1, you can read here (x)

The brunette played with the plait in her hair, twisting and twirling it as she spoke to the blond, "(y/n)'s hair was awesome!" She exaggerated the last word, not even looking at the boy but rather towards the ceiling in thought, hair in hand clearly thinking if she should cut her own. "Was it her idea or Pansy's."

The boy froze, quickly gaining composure to act the nonchalant part, "Mm." Was all he replied, not a full answer, not really an answer at all as the brunette finally looked at him realising he neither confirmed nor denied the assumption.

"Oh ok, Pansy was super keen for us to watch your arrival into the Great Hall, particularly (y/n)'s. I thought it was because she suggested (y/n) cut her hair short. Hey, do you think I would be able to cut my hair short and pull it off, or would it just seem like I'm copying (y/n)?" Draco's mind was ticking over as he was analysing the new found information and working out the best way to move forward.

A moment longer than the brunette probably expected for a reply, her question processed in Draco's mind, "You should definitely go for it." Draco offered her a kind smile in part to make up for his mental absence.

The talkative student excused herself and made her leave. They weren't particularly friends, her and Draco, but small talk was expected from the female conversationist, even if it was just one sided.

Although his mind was elsewhere throughout the conversation, Slytherin's do look out for their own. Draco now had a matter to attend to.

Walking down the halls you were heading to the Great Hall for lunch, late as normal, as you had stayed behind asking Professor McGonigall questions about your essay.

Turning a corner you noticed the green-clad student, with her loyal followers metres ahead of you, they seemed to be whispering. Something was wrong, you had a gut feeling that something bad was going to happen.

***

"Hey, (y/n)!" One of them yelled in fake happiness running over to you with another girl with Pansy following behind.

You looked on cautiously, you tried stepping around them but Pansy stood in front of you. "Where are you going?" Her high-pitched voice was a clear indicator that she was playing the friend.

"Lunch." Was all you replied, you wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.

Again Pansy physically and verbally stopped all possibilities of escaping, "But, we’re just talking with you (y/n)."

"Yeah, we're just being nice." Whined the girl to Pansy's right.

"I don't want to talk. Excuse me." You replied sternly.

Pansy, however, refused to move. "You think that you're better than us? Ever since you started dating Draco, you walk around like you're perfect." The other two girls nodded in agreement.

"I don't think I'm better than anyone." You said back sharply, the truth was; you were quite humble in this retrospect.

Your non-judgemental nature was one of the many things that attracted Draco to you. He saw this about you and desperately wanted this quality for himself, instead of the marred classist, elitist entitlement and the other 'statuses' he was lead to believe he possessed and mattered. Only you saw through this façade of his.

"You're certainly not good enough for him." The overly confident girl sneered.This caught your attention, she had hit a big insecurity of yours. "You think you're woman enough? Look at you." The other two girls beside Pansy laughed.

You grit your teeth, you would not cry in front of her, you would not give her that satisfaction. "I'm the only one who truly understands him! Who are you to say those things to me, or to anyone for that matter?! I will not stand here and let you bully me. Move!"

Despite your efforts, she didn't budge. She continued to nitpick at your revealed insecurity, your self-worth, "What, you thought he actually cared for you?" All those times he had opened up to you swam in your mind but was replaced with doubt by your own lack of self-confidence.

That was it, you couldn't take it anymore, being passive wasn't working, you barged past them.

Overcoming the shock the girls looked to Pansy for answers "Leave, this is now personal, she's not getting away with that.” The bitterness dripped from her tongue. Pansy ran after you yelling, "Expelliarmus!" You went crashing to the ground your wand metres away.

Lifting your head slowly, wincing from the new found pain you saw a streak of brown stalking over to you. "You think you can do that to me, how dare someone, like you, touch me!" You went to stand on your feet but was shoved into the wall fiercely. You screamed in pain at the impact. She grabbed a fist-full of your restored long hair. “Awe, did Draco fix your hair for you so no one can cut it again? How sweet of him.”

Breathing heavily and glaring at your captor as she snarled at you. You managed to say, "Attacking someone while their back is turned, how brave," you spat in her direction, "You lash out at me, not because of who I am, but you can't deal with your own insecurities; all the ones you accuse me of." You saw Pansy's eyes swiftly betray her with a tiny lapse before going back to her stone cold glare, you smirked slightly.

***

"Miss Parkinson, do you care to explain what you and Miss (L/n) are doing?" A deep voice cut through the atmosphere that had built around the two of you.

"Just practising some spells for transfiguration, Professor, right (y/n)?" She glared at you, you glared back. 'Please don't believe it, Professor Snape, please,' you mentally asked pleadingly, although your dangerous stare never faulted.

"I suggest Miss Parkinson, that you take your leave unless you wish to earn yourself a month's worth of detention." The tall professor stated.

She lied, "It wasn't my fault, Professor, she started it calling me such horrid names and harassing me."

"Do you dare disobey orders Miss Parkinson, or do I have to escort you to Professor Dumbledore's office to discuss your position here at Hogwarts? 25 points from Slytherin for unruly behaviour and another 25 for blatant lying. I can assure you the consequence of your actions will be severe once the rest of your house finds out you may have well cost them the House Cup." Snape wasted no time in putting Pansy in her place.

Pansy gawked at the Potions Master, "You can't be serious, you're taking points away from your own House?"

"No, I am." A feminine voice swooped in, "We have a strictly No Bullying Policy here at Hogwarts Miss Parkinson, and it would do well for the future you remember it." McGonigall was fierce as she spoke and still managed to hold herself with elegance.

Word had eventually got back to Draco, all of Slytherin knew.

He began to clench and unclench his jaw, his knuckles now white from his balled fists. He could barely think straight as he rounded the corner of the common room, the exact person he was looking for sat precariously on the lounge with her adoring fleet by her side as always.

They marvelled at her in their daft way. Her group of fans laughed every time she supposedly made a joke, Miss Parkinson left no room for individual thought and that is just how she liked it; identical copies of herself and constant positive affirmation.

"Draco, what are you doing here, come to see me?" She said batting her eyelashes and acting the innocent part.

The boy marched over to her, "Leave. Now." He demanded her zombie-minded copycats, with a groan of disgust, they got up and left.

"Hey, Draco. What brings you here?" She said, self-confidence radiating off her.

"I heard what you did to (y/n)."

"Oh that. Draco, when will you see that she's not perfect like me? She isn't the girl for you."

Infuriated, still-level-headed Draco simply replied simply, "And you know all about me and who I should be with? You only know what my family wants me to be. (Y/n) was there for me when no one else was, she has a heart of gold, and if you ever threaten the one I love again I can't promise I'll hold back."

The anger fuelled within him but he swallowed it back and took a deep breath. There wasn't a thing Pansy could think of to say, so Draco continued, "She is the one who has my heart, always has and always will."

In one last attempt, Pansy tried, "Why can't you see I could be that girl instead!"

He quickly retorted back, "You don’t care about anyone but yourself!” His voice now lower and neutral he looked directly into her hopeless eyes, "Goodbye, Pansy.”

More? (x)

#Draco Malfoy #Reader #Reader insert #insert #fanfiction #fan fiction #short #story #imagine #Pansy Parkinson

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