#This is not a moral argument this is literally just correcting inaccuracies

[the-busy-ghost]

Not to bring everyone down this evening, but I feel like it’s worth reminding people: 

When a lot of historians say stuff like “Witches weren’t actually burnt they were hanged!” they are probably- though not always- referring specifically to England and Wales* (possibly also America, I don’t know much about things over there).

Sad to say witches absolutely WERE burned in Scotland, Iceland, and many countries on the European continent, although in some places they were often strangled first. 

It is good to see that certain misapprehensions about the English witch hunts have largely been corrected in the public imagination. But this is probably one of the key examples I can think of where people have said “XXX happened/never actually happened” in history when what they mean is “XXX happened in England” in history and this specific aspect often gets lost when the statement circulates outside of its original context.

#Death tw #Torture tw #historyblr #history #witch trials #When someone says something about the past always ask 'when/where' #I often forget to as well but this is one of the ones I KNOW is actually not 100% true #Especially given the fame of the North Berwick witch trials and the effect James VI had on witch hunts in England and further afield though #You would think people would remember that it is not necessarily the case that no witches were ever burnt #Also like I am in no way an expert on the history of witchcraft; it is really not my specialist subject #And for me it marks the beginning of a really dark period in my country's history #Like Scotland was always violent and unkind to women in particular and persecution for witchcraft had occasionally happened before 1590s #But the North Berwick witch trials sort of symbolise for me the beginning of a hundred or so years of other strife too #The seventeenth century saw famine; religious war; witch trials; executions for blasphemy; and all in all it really wasn't a good time #I've already had it up to here with the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries- generally I can't take much more Dark Times #So I leave the late witch trials and the seventeenth century up to other people #Hanging is really not better than burning btw I'm not implying that simply that this is the truth of the matter #This is not a moral argument this is literally just correcting inaccuracies

[comedicreliefonlyworkswhenfunny]

I am against the "Americanization" of fandoms.

What this applies to

Holding non American characters (and sometimes even fans) to an American moral standard. This includes

Refusing to take into account that, first things first, America is NOT the target audience, so certain tropes that would or would not pass in the west are different in Japan.

Like seriously, quite a few of the jokes are just not going to pass or hit, because they require background information that is not universal.

Assuming all American experience is standard. (This could mean watering down just how much pressure is placed on Japanese youth irl by saying that sort of thing is universal (while it is, to a degree, Japanese suicide rates are pretty fucking high because of how fast paced and work heavy some of their loads tend to be), and it's really annoying and rude when someone is trying to speak out about how heavy and harsh the standards are placed on them to succeed just for some American whose mom occasionally yells at them to do their homework dropping by to say "it's like that everywhere")

Demonizing (or wubbifying) a character using American morals, including and up to harassing fans over their interpretations or gatekeeping whether or not a character "should" get development (while you shouldn't do that fucking period, it's rude and annoying- this is specifically for the people who use American standards without acknowledging the cultural gap between them and, you know, the fucking target audience) ((Like seriously, saying "It's different in Japan" is not the end all be all excusing someone's actions, but sometimes the author didn't immediately think that maybe (insert vaguely universal thing) was that bad or that heavy of a topic before they put it into their media. If you don't want to see things like that? Pick a different series and stop harassing the fans))

Getting mad at or making fun of Japan's attempts to satirize their own culture. (A good example is Ace Attorney! To most of us, it's just a funny laugh can you imagine if courts were actually like that- guess what? Japan's are! (Not that America's are actually that much better, they just look good on paper))

Making America/American issues the center of your fan spaces

(Usually without sharing or bringing light to the issues that other countries are going through)

Your

Experiences

Are

Not

Univseral!

Seriously, very few things across America, even, are universal. Texas things the hundreds are nothing while Minnesota's like "oh it's only thirty degrees below zero"- so for fucks sake, stop assuming that all other countries work in ways similar to America.

It's good and important to share Ameican issues with your American followers, but guess what? America isn't the only country out there, and it's certainly not the only one going through bullshit. Don't pull shit like "why's no one reblogging this?" or "why should I care about what's happening in (X country)?"

Don't assume everyone lives in America.

Stop assuming everyone lives in America.

America is not and has never been the target audience for anime, and it's certainly not the only country outside of Japan that enjoys it.

Like I said above, sometimes Japan attempts to satirize its own culture. We can't tell what is and isn't meant as satire, because it's not our culture.

Social media activism can be tiring and maybe you don't have the energy to focus on things that are out of your control, but, if someone tells you about the shit they're going through, don't bring American politics up.

For the neurodivergent crowd out there thinking, "But why?" it's because a lot of social media, especially, is very heavily Americanized- sometimes to the point where people assume that everyone is American. Not to mention, it's disheartening. I'm sorry to say, but you're not actually relating to the conversation, you're often diverting the focus away from the topic at hand. Even if you mean well, America is heavily pedestaled and talked about frequently, and people from other countries are tired of America taking precedent over their own issues.

Don't divert non-American issues into American ones. Seriously. It's not your place. Please just support the original issue or move on.

Racist Bullshit

This especially goes for islanders and South Asian characters, as well as poc characters (because, yes, Japan DOES have black people)

Making "funny" racist headcanons. Not fucking cool.

Changing the canon interpretation of an explicit character of color in order to fit racist stereotypes.

Whitewashing or color draining characters. Different artistic skill sets can be hard, yes, but are you seriously going to look at someone and say "I don't feel like accurately portraying you or people that look like you, because it's difficult for me." If someone tries to correct you on your cultural depiction of a character and/or their life style, don't be an ass. (If possible, it would be nice for those that do the corrections to be polite as well, but it does get really frustrating).

Seriously, no offense guys, but, if you want to persue art, you're going to need to learn to depict different body types, skin colors, and/or ethnic features.

On that note, purposefully, willingly, or consistently inaccurately portraying people or characters of color (especially if someone in the fandom has "called you out" or specifically told you that what you're doing comes across as racist and you continue to do it). If you need help or suck at looking things up, there are references for you! Ask your followers if they have tutorials on poc (issue that you're having), whether it be bodily portrayal, facial proportions, or coloring and shading. Art is so much more fun when you can depict a wider variety, and guess what? Before you drew the same skinny, basic, white character over and over, you couldn't even draw that!

Attempting or claiming to DEPECT CULTURAL ACCURACY within a work or meta, while being completely fucking wrong. ESPECIALLY and specifically if someone calls you out, and you refuse to fix, correct, or change anything.

*little side note that the discussion revolving art is a very multilayered conversation, and it has quite a few technical potholes, which I'll bring up again farther into this post.

Fucking history

Stop demonizing or for absolute fucks sake wubbifying Japanese history because UwU Japan ♡0♡ or bringing up shit like "you know they sided with Nazis, right?" It's good to recognize poor past decisions, but literally it's not your country keep your nose out of it. And? A lot of decisions made by countries were not made by their general peoples. Even those that were, often involved heavy propaganda that made them think what they were doing was right.

Seriously, it's not your country, not your history. Unless you have some sort of higher education (but honestly even then a lot of those contain heavy bias), just don't butt in.

^^^ this also goes to all countries that are NOT Japan (specifically when people from non American countries talk about their history while in fandoms and someone wants to Amerisplain to them why "well, actually-"). When we said, "question your sources," we didn't mean "question the people who know better than you, while blindly accepting the (more than likely biased) education you were given in the past."

What this does NOT include:

Fanfiction

FANfiction

FanFICTION

FANFICTION.

Seriously, fanfiction is literally UNPAID WORK from RANDOM FANS- a lot of which who are or have started as kids. ((No, I'm not trying to excuse racist depictions of people just because they're free, please see above where I talk about learning to grow a skill and how it's possible tone bad and get good, on top of the fact that some inaccuracies are not just willful ignorance))

"Looking it up" doesn't work

"Looking it up" almost never works

Please, for fucks sake, you know that most all online search engines are heavily biased, right? Not to mention, not everything is universal across the entirety of Japan. You want to look up how the school system works in Hokkaido? Well it's different from the ones in Osaka!

Most fanfiction is meant to be an idealized version of the world. Homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, and racism are very prevalent and heavy topics that some fan authors would prefer to avoid. (Keep in mind, this is also used by some people in those minorities often because thinking about how relevant those kinds of things are is to them every day).

A lot of shit that happens in writing is purely because it's an ideal setting. I've seen a few arguments recently about how fan authors portray Japanese schools wrong- listen, I can't tell you how many random school systems I have pulled from my ass purely because (I need them to interact at these points, in these ways). Sometimes the only compliment I can think of is 'I like your shirt' or sometimes I need character A to realize that character B likes the same thing as they do, so I might ignore the fact that most all Japanese schools require uniforms, so that I can put my character in a shirt that will get someone else's attention.

Sometimes it's difficult to find information on different types of systems, and sometimes when you DO know those things, they directly rule out a plot point that needs to happen (like back on the topic of schools (from what I've seen/heard/read- which guess what? Despite being from multiple sources, might still be inaccurate!) Japanese schools don't have mandatory elective classes (outside of like gym and most of them usually learn English or another language- I've seen stuff about art classes? But the information across the board varies.), but, if I need my character to walk in and see someone completely in their element, I'm probably not going to try and gun for accuracy or make up a million and two reasons as to why this (non elective) person would possibly need something from (elective teacher) after school of all things.)

Some experiences ARE universal- or at least overlap American and Japanese norms! Like friends going to fast food places after school doesn't /sound Japanese/ or whatever, but it's not like a horrible inaccuracy to say that your characters ate at McDonald's because they were hungry. Especially when you consider that the Japanese idolization of American "culture" is also a thing.

Also I saw someone complaining about how, in December, a lot of (usually westerners) write Christmas fics! Well, not only are quite a few of those often gift fics, with it being the season if giving and all, but Japanese people do celebrate Christmas! Not as "the birth of Christ," but rather as a popularized holiday about gift giving (also pst: America isn't the only place that celebrates Christmas)

But, on that note, sometimes things like Holidays are "willfully ignorant" of what actually happens (I've made this point several times, but (also this does by no means excuse actual racism)), because, again: plot convenience! Hey what IF they celebrated Halloween by Trick or Treating? What if Easter was a thing and they got to watch their kids or younger siblings crawl around on the ground looking for tiny plastic eggs?

Fanfiction authors can put in hours of work for one or two thousand words- let alone ten thousand words, fifty thousand words, a hundred thousand words. And all of these are free. There is absolutely no (legal) way to make money off of their fanworks, but they spent hours, days, weeks, months- sometimes even years- writing. It is so unnecessary to EXPECT or REQUIRE them to spend even more hours looking up shit that, no offense, almost no one is going to notice. No one is going go care that all of my combini prices are accurate or that I wrote a fic with a Japanese map of a train station that I had to backwards search three times to find an English version that I could read.

Not everyone has the attention span or ability to spend hours of research before writing a single word. Neurodivergent people are literally a thing yall. Instead of producing the perfectly pretty accurate version of Japan that people want to happen, what ACTUALLY happens is that the writer reads and reads and reads and either never finds the information they need or they lose the motivation to write.

^^^ (This does NOT apply to indigenous or native peoples, like Pacific Islanders or tribes that exist in real life. Please make sure that you portray tribal minorities accurately. If you can't find the information you need (assuming that the content of the series is not specifically about a tribe), please just make one up (and for fucks sake, recognize that a lot of what you've been taught about tribal practices, such as shit like human sacrifices or godly worship, is actually just propaganda.)

Not to mention, it often puts a wall in front of readers who would then need to pull up their OWN information (that may or may not be biased) just in order to interact with the fic ((okay, this one has a little bit of arguability when it comes to things like measurements and currency, because Americans don't know what a meter is and no one else knows what a foot is- either way, one of yall is going to have to look up measurements if they want to get a better understanding of the fic)). However, a lot of Americans who do write using 'feet, Fahrenheit, dollars,' also write for their American followers or friends (which really could go both ways).

On a less easily arguable side, most fic readers aren't going to open up a new tab just to search everything that the author has written (re the whole deep topics, not everyone wants to read about those sorts of things, either). Not only are you making it more difficult on the writer, but you're also making it more difficult for the reader who's now wondering why you decided to add in Grandma's Katsudon recipe, and whether or not the details you have added are accurate.

Some series, themselves, ignore Japanese norms! Piercings, hair dye, and incorrectly wearing ones uniform are frowns upon in Japanese schools- sometimes up to inflicting punishment on those students because of it. However, some anime characters still have naturally or dyed blond hair some of them still have piercings or wear their uniforms wrong. Some series aren't set specifically in Japan, but rather in a vague based-off-real-life Japan that's just slightly different (like Haikyuu and all of its different prefectures). Sometimes they're based on real places, but real places that have gone through major changes (like the Hero Academia series with its quirks and shit).

Fandom is not a full time job. Please stop treating it like it is one. Most people in fandoms have to engage in other things like school or work that most definitely take precident over frantically Googling the cultural implications of dying your hair pink in Japan.

Art is also meant to be a creative freedom and is almost always a hobby, so there are a few cracks that tend to spark debate. Like I said, it is still a hobby, something that's meant to be fun (on this note!)

If trying new things and expanding your portfolio is genuinely making you upset, it's okay to take a break from it. You're not going to get it right on the first try and please, please to everyone out there critiquing artists' works, please take this into account before you post things.

I'm sorry to say, but, while it gets frustrating to see the same things done wrong over and over again, some people are genuinely trying. If it matters enough for you to point out, please offer solutions or resources that would possibly help the artist do better (honestly this could be said about a lot of online activism). I get that they should "want" to do better (and maybe they don't and your annoyance towards them is completely justified- again, as I said, if this becomes a repeated offense and they don't listen to or care about the people trying to help them, yeah you can be a bitch if it helps you feel better- just please don't assume that everyone is willfully ignorant of how hurtful/upsetting/annoying a certain way of portraying things is), but also WANTING to do better and ACTUALLY doing better are two different things.

Maybe they didn't realize what they were doing was inaccurate. Maybe they didn't have the right tutorials. Maybe they tried to look it up, but that failed them. Either way, to some- especially neurodivergent artists- just being told that their work is bad or racist or awful isn't going to make them want to search for better resources in order to be more accurate, it's just going to make them give up.

Also! In fic and in writing, no one is going to get it right on the first try. Especially at the stage where we creators ARE merely in fan spaces is a great time to "fuck around and find out", before we bring our willfully or accidentally racist shit into monetized media. Absolutely hold your fan creators to higher standards, but literally fan work has so little actual impact on popular media (and this goes for just about every debate about fan spaces), and constructive criticism as well as routine practice can mean worlds for representation in future media. NOT allowing for mistakes in micro spaces like fandoms is how you get genuinely harmful or just... bad... portrayals of minorities in popularized media that DOES have an impact on the greater public. OR you get a bunch of creators who are too afraid to walk out of their own little bubbles, because what if they get it wrong and everyone turns against them. It's better to just "stick with what they know" (hobbies are something that you are meant to get better at, even if that is a slow road- for all of my writers and artists out there, it does take time, but you will get it. To everyone else, please do speak up about things that are wrong, but don't make it all about what's wrong and please don't be rude. It's frustrating on both ends, so, if you can, please try not to escalate the situation more.)

Anyways, I'm tired of everyone holding fictional characters to American Puritanical standards, but I'm also tired of seeing every "stop Americanizing fandom" somehow loop into fanfiction and how all authors who don't make their fics as accurate as possible are actually just racist and perpetuating or enabling America's take over of the world or some shit.

Fan interpretation of published media is different than fan creation of mon monetized media. Americans dominating or monopolizing spaces meant for all fans (especially in a fandom that was never meant for them to begin with) is annoying and can be harmful sometimes. Americans writing out their own personal experience using random fictional characters (more often than not) isn't.

#just google it #better represent real life #if you tell a fic reader to ngl you're being pretty ableist and don't really have a good idea of how search engines work #also when people DO try to make culturally accurate fics often times at least one or two people will pop in and say 'actually that's wrong' #not to mention sometimes they might not even be right to begin with... #and okay once or twice it is what it is #but seriously if this keeps happening over and over most people are just going to stop writing or caring #fanfiction #fanfiction is literally free #fanfiction is free labor #adding layers upon layers of research and knowledge needed- on top of how difficult it can be to portray human emotion #it's not going to it's just going to make once starry eyed writers loss their ability to enjoy their work #and guess what #some ACTUALLY racist (or homophobic or transphobic or misogynistic) writer is going to swoop in not giving two fucks #and they're going to go on and get their work published because they don't care about accuracy

[kenobihater]

Hi! I really liked the meta post about cat witchers and psychosis - it raises very good points regarding not only the fanon's seeming obsession with the psychotic label but also canon's own inaccuracy and ableism with the label of "psychopath". I never realized that "unhinged", "feral" and such are used against people witch psychosis and characters labelled/coded as psychotic. I hope it's okay to ask, but would you say that labelling any character as "unhinged" or "feral" - such as the fandom's frequent labelling of Jaskier as feral, and sometimes even Lambert - would always count as ableist or as psychosis-coding? Is that the inherent quality of those monikers even if the person doing so does not intend it/is unaware of the connotations?

And when it comes to non-psychotics writing psychotic characters - are there any "red flags" within the writing that one could look out for, either when reading a fic/story or one's own writing? (besides psychosis being tied with moral bankruptcy and violence?) I think many writers do research exclusively based on clinical texts, which while definitley useful, doesn't always help with an accurate portrayal true to people with the illness/experiencing the symptoms.

I know the post took a lot out of you so feel free to answer this later, and you don't have to answer at all if you don't feel like it! If I said something rude/ableist, I apologize. I don't have much experience when talking about psychosis so I'm not sure how to navigate that. Please correct me?

Hi, you're not being ableist at all! Even if you were you're respectful and kind, so I wouldn't mind correcting you. It's when people are rude that I get heated lol.

I'd say that in my opinion (I can't speak for all psychotic people) "feral" or "unhinged" are fine to use - it's when they're used in tandem with things like "episodes" of emotion, disjointed thinking or speech, erratic behavior, or mood swings that I think they can be problematic. Instances of those behaviors are clearly shorthand of psychosis to me, even if unintentional, and those terms should be avoided when in conjunction with blatant psychotic behavior.

When it comes to red flags, the biggest are the moral bankruptcy and violence, but another one is playing it for laughs, or making it seem "kooky" or "soo random xD". Now, it is possible to find humor in psychosis. We can do some pretty weird things. For example, one time in high-school I stayed up for three days straight absolutely obsessing over the concept of becoming a shepard. I researched sheep breeds, looked at plots of land, and watched countless sheep shearing videos. Looking back I find this hilarious because I do NOT think I could get up at like... 3 am in the spring to birth sheep, and also I'm just not cut out for that life but I was fully convinced that's what I was gonna do. I'm fine with joking about this, but if a non-psychotic person made fun of me for it, I'd feel pretty shit. So, leave finding the humor in the occasional absurdity inherent to psychosis up to people who actually experience it.

Another red flag is when people write characters, usually love interests, snapping someone out of a delusion or hallucination in a dramatic argument. Hate to break it to anyone who thinks this, but the power of love does NOT overcome the power of psychosis. Encouraging delusions isn't good either, but you shouldn't start an argument with someone in the middle of a delusion or hallucination, just support them and GENTLY, CALMY, and LOGICALLY try and steer them in the direction of reality. Support and safety is tantamount, not snapping us back to the real world with a dramatic "gotcha!" moment.

Oh. I just remembered a big red flag that makes me furious. Literal eugenics, which are morally abhorrent (hottake of the century, I know /s). I can't believe I have to type these words, but the concept of "putting someone down" because of an unspecified "madness" that is CLEARLY a shittily written version of psychosis is actual fucking eugenecist rhetoric! Fuck this. Fuck this SO hard. People never deserve death because they're psychotic and supposedly """"dangerous""""! You might say that "the fic is just depicting how shitty the treatment of the mentally ill is in universe!" but it sure as fuck didn't read that way. It read like eugenics, plain and simple. Yes, i'm referencing an actual fic I've read. Don't go looking for it to dunk on OP or whatever, but it exists and it's BAD. I was trying to be forgiving of their missteps in depicting "mad" cat witchers, but that was too far, even for my ever-patient ass.

Also, don't fall into another eugenecist trope (one I've thankfully never seen in this fandom) where a mentally ill character declares they'll never have kids. That's a deeply personal decision we have to make, but when a non-psychotic person has a psychotic person declare they're never going to pass on their illness, it reads as eugenics. I'm never having kids (not only cause I'm trans lol) because I'm bipolar, but not bc I don't want to pass on my disorder. I don't ever wanna go off my meds, something I might have to do if I had a kid to term. So yes, this is a deeply personal decision we all must consider, and it's one I don't trust a non-psychotic person to handle tactfully.

Finally, allow your character to show their full range of psychosis, not just the thematically relevant parts. I can't tell you how annoying it is to engage with media where the character just happens to stop showing symptoms of psychosis right after the climax of their always dramatic breakdown. It's old. It's tired. I don't trust non-psychotics to write recovery stories, because they usually either veer into inspiration porn, the trope of "curing" mental illness, or just use our illness as a plot device. Back to showing their full range of psychosis, decide what that means for the character. What are their symptoms? Are they delusional? Do they hallucinate? Do they have racing thoughts and/or motormouth? Are they manic? Hypomanic? Do they dissociate? Do they get overestimulated? Not every psychotic person has the same symptoms - I for example dissociate, have racing thoughts, motormouth, disjointed thoughts, hypomania, overstimulation, and ocassionally even problems with motor function, and had delusional thinking once after a medicine-induced manic episode I needed to be hospitalized for. Nothing else, though. I've never hallucinated. So, keep in mind that psychosis is a broad term for several different symptoms, some of which certain psychotic people will never experience. One size does not fit all.

I think that's everything? Thank you for asking and being respectful, I truly appreciate when non-psychotic people take the time to educate themselves and act as good allies.

(For anyone who missed it, here is the post this is a response to!)

#len answers #len's meta #cat school #cat school meta #the cat school #cat witchers #long post #getting use out of that banner tonight lol #also i'm REALLY oversharing tonight but i'm doing it in the name of education ig