#You can consider ignoring a stupid person on the internet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ladykailitha · 5 months

Text

Look, considering I've only gotten involved in Stranger Things after season four and therefore haven't been around the fans during other new season filming starts, but my brothers/sisters/nb in fandom what the honest fuck is going on right now?

I have been a part of other fandoms when new seasons started filming and the worst I'd seen was BBC Sherlock. And you lot are behaving worst then they did.

And Jesus fuck, that's a fucking low ass bar.

(Again I am ship and let ship, kinktomato, and headcanon free for all)

But this is just what I've seen in my small deliberately secluded corner of the internet so forgive me if I get some things wrong.

Ronance fans have turned on Steddie fans.

Steddie fans are trying to eat each other over who tops and who bottoms between two horny, barely out of their teens, men.

Eddie is confirmed dead.

Dustin is trying to become Eddie.

People want Will dead because Noah Schnapps said some stupid shit regarding genocide.

And Argyle isn't coming back.

I'm going to give you my feelings on these so buckle up lets go:

1- Steddie and Ronance fans have turned on each other. And I know this because I doom scroll through steddie tag. That Ronance fans think Steddie fans are delusional and that they're going down after season five airs and there will be more Ronance fans because they're perfect for each other.

Where to even begin on this? First, never tell a shipper that their ship is never going to be canon because they don't care. Just ask all the Destiel, johnlock, and merarthur fans. Steddie fans are just going to ignore all but the most salient parts of season 5 if Eddie doesn't come back and write AUs for the rest of their lives. You know, like they have since the last scene on the Piggyback faded to black?

Secondly, I don't think I've seen much Ronance without Steddie. Granted I only read Steddie, but it seems that the two ships are tied pretty heavily together. The fruity four comes to mind. So maybe it's that they're getting tired of being a side ship next to a massive one like Steddie. Who knows. But apparently they're bitter.

And I say that because they keep tagging their anti-Steddie posts as Steddie to make sure we see it. Honestly, I just block them and go about my day. But seriously, I've never understood people's need to be shitty like posting hate on the tag for that thing. If you don't like it, fine. Block and move on.

Thirdly. Lastly. Maybe. I don't like Ronance. I saw the charms when I first joined the fandom and it was cute. Until the more I read and I realized that most of the time they don't bring up that Jonathan is even a person let alone Nancy's current boyfriend. That most of the time Steve is written wildly out of character about not caring that they're a couple and that he just wants them to be happy. Like, one Jonathan is severely under used in the fics I've read. Like Will doesn't have an older brother anymore. It's all Steve or Eddie. Which considering how you like your flavor of queer for Eddie or Steve (gay/pan/bisexual) Will talking to them about being gay makes sense, but Jonathan showed us in the last season that he is going to protect Will no matter what. Then blip! in fanfics, he's gone.

And then the whole Steve being okay with Robin not only dating an ex-girlfriend of his, but the ex. The one he thought he was going to marry. The one he dreamed a whole fucking future on. That was still hurt by two fucking years later. You either think very lowly of Steve or you just don't care. Because if you think Robin and Steve are the same person/share the same braincell/ride or die for life, there is no way even if Nancy threw herself at Robin would she even consider it. (I can write a whole ass post just on this by the way, don't get me started.)

2- This is the most recent bullshittery due to a current event about Sub Eddie. This is the worst discourse in any fandom and the worst offenders on either side tend say the most homophobic shit imaginable.

And it's pointless. Whether you think Steve is a top or bottom, whether you think he's dom or a sub. Same with Eddie. Everyone has their own flavor they prefer and they won't always match up with yours.

Personally I write them whatever feels natural for the story. But here's the major crux of the matter. I don't believe a little nerd in Bumfuck, Indiana has any idea what flagging is. I'm sorry. Left pocket, right pocket. Doesn't matter. The likely of him even knowing what BDSM is is pretty slim. I grew up in a small town. There will be some people that know, but that's because they know adults in the scene.

Don't like, don't read. Seriously, guys. Let people enjoy what they want to.

My personal feelings on the matter is that Steve is a bottom/sub because he deserves to be taken care of and Eddie would absolutely want to be that person for Steve, in and out of the bedroom. Again, you do you, beau.

3- The tombstone. Sigh. It was hard to see that. Not just because it confirms he's dead, but because it's been defaced. Most likely like fans have said, "BURN IN HELL" the poor bastard.

Having a tombstone doesn't necessarily preclude Eddie's return. There are several ways he can still comeback Kas! theory not withstanding. But the wank here is people jumping on Steddie shippers and Eddie fans in general pointing and screaming "see!"

Like we didn't have campaigns for Barb and Bob and (Billy). If someone's favorite character has died, don't be dicks when they want them to be resurrected a la Jim Hopper. Because that right there is the main reason people will still hold out hope until the final scene fades to black, okay?

I guess this one is just be nicer to each other, okay?

4- *sob* like holy fuck. Dustin you sweetheart. The long hair, the torn Hellfire t-shirt, the rings. The horns and sticking out his tongue. That poor boy needs several hugs STAT! And of course, people can't leave well enough alone on Facebook, I couldn't tell you how many of the comments were "steddie fans are going to make this all about them, aren't they?" Even though there wasn't a single comment by a Steddie making it about Steve/Eddie. But so many eye rolls. The other half were death threats against Noah Schnapp.

Which brings me to...

5- Noah Schnapp said some really shitty things about Zionism and the attack on Gaza. There is no escaping that. He said them. He double downed on them. And while yes it sucks he said those things, let's not forget he's still young and stupid. He's barely 18/19 years old. I remember being that age and saying stupid fucked up shit, and hoo boy does this make me grateful I was well into adulthood when the internet became a thing (24ish).

There are a lot of reasons to be upset by his comments and I get that. But death threats and calls for his dismissal/boycotts just seems excessive to me.

One, because the story began with a kidnapped little boy and a runaway little girl. If you get rid of one of them especially this close to the end it would fuck up the story. Now if there was more than one season left, sure. But this is literally the end. And for all we know, Will's character may already be doomed by the narrative. So calling for it now isn't go to do anything. Especially since they already had all the scripts written and would have finished filming if it hadn't been for the strikes.

Two, one person on the cast said something stupid and hurtful and you want to boycott the entire show for it? Like, what did David Harbor, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Millie Bobby Brown and all the others do to deserve you boycotting their show? If the last season tanks it could seriously hurt their careers, but hey Noah Schnapp said something bad, so fuck them?

I'm going to stop there, because this is another one I can go on and on about, but yeah. Don't hurt other people in your rush to vilify an 18 year old.

6- Eduardo Franco recently said that he didn't get a call so he didn't think he would be back. He was sure that ship had sailed.

Fans are upset, naturally. Argyle was a sweetheart and deserves better than to be cut from the story like that.

But thanks to the incident with David Harbor and Jim Hopper supposedly being dead, a lot of fans are saying he's only saying that because it's a "secret" he's coming back. Which would make sense for Eddie or any of the other character died. Martin Brenner, for example, but not Argyle. There would be no need for subterfuge. Plus, he would already be out in Georgia if he was coming back.

It's sad that he was done dirty this way, but if they split up the filming like they've done before there is still a chance he might get to come back, but as far as the current filming is concerned, yeah Argyle isn't coming back.

***

Just... be kind to each other. Remember that the other people on the end of the URL is an actual person with feelings. That people can like what they like so if they aren't hurting you, don't hurt them, okay?

#my writing #stranger things #ladykailitha rants #tw wank #fandom wank #season 5

78 notes · View notes

justapastetic-humanbeing · 9 months

Text

Their reactions to seeing them shipped (Bungo Stray Dog addition)

Ft: Soukoku, Shin Soukoku (afternotes: there was a mistake in the age calculations due to stupidity so just uhh ignore), FyoLai, FyoZai, RanPoe, SigZai Tw: A bit of swearing and mentions of sex but otherwise, none

Soukoku

"The slug??? The slug????" Dazai caught his head with his hand, shamefully covering the upper part of his head. He looks to Chuuyas direction, clearly disgausted. "Out of all the options available, y'all chose him??"

"Don't yap around like you're any better." The ginger scoffs. "I should be the one cursing the lord for being portrayed as even remotely interested in your ass."

"What do people even see in us? Clearly I deserve someone who can at least hold their liquor within at least the first 5 minutes." he fans the air.

"Don't give me that shit. A 7 year partnership with somebody isn't gonna turn into gay love, and that's not even considering the fact that I've repeatedly mentioned how badly I want to strangle this bandage fuck-"

"Actually" Dazai inturrupts with a finger raised. "It does occasionally end in gay sex. Just sayin'"

Chuuyas brows flutter. "PICK A SIDE WOULDYA??"

"I'm JUST stating out the truth"

"You mother-"

----------------------------------------

FyoLai

"Did I just hear that correctly??" the clown gasps dramatically, holding onto the shoulder of the man beside him with a gigantic smile. "People think we have a romantic relationship, Dos!!! How adorbs is that??"

Dostoevsky seems to not pay his deepest attention to the matter. "Oh. That so. How fantastic"

Gogol turns to the side with a finger by his chin. "I wonder what they say about us?? And all the fake stories they write of our relationship! How exciting, how exciting! This has just made my day, no, my month!!" he giggles.

Dostoevsky looks up. "Oh, good for you."

----------------------------------------

FyoZai

"Ohhhhhhhhh god. Nevermind what I said about Chuuya" Dazai shook his head in dismay. "Do I look like I'm remotely interested in a showerless-rat??"

"How foolish." the 'showerless-rat' in question replies. "I suppose I've heard worse in my life. But to come to such conclusion is utterly ridiculous and mindless."

Dazai is still shaking his head, unable to keep eye contact with Dostoevsky. "Couldn't these people pick a more tasteful person? I mean I wouldn't mind if I were to be paired at Kunikida at least."

(Dostoevsky has left the chat)

----------------------------------------

RanPoe

"It's... flattering?..." the novelist mutters. "It's weird but... I don't mind it I guess?" The uncertainty in his voice was clear.

He looks to Ranpo, who doesn't seem to be paying attention. "Ranpo? Are you gonna say anything or..."

"Huh? Oh" He looks up to the man. "I like it."

"Y-you do?"

"Well yeah. You're always providing me with the most free snacks out of all the people in the Agency. Hey by the way" He cocks his head. "Why don't you show me that novel you were talking about? It has something to do with powdered donuts right?"

"Well... I didn't write it but... since that person gave it to me... you can read it... I haven't read it yet so..."

----------------------------------------

SigZai

"Romantic...? With....Dazai?"

"Well isn't that an upgrade." Dazai tosses his head.

"Pardon?"

"Well, when I say a tasteful person, I suppose Sigma would certainly fit the bill."

"Uhm, no, no, no????" The manager denies. "I do not... wish to be a part of this?? Who is the one that makes this statement??"

"It's not a someone. It's the internet, a community of a kind, something that I reccomend you to stay away from"

"I am aware of what the internet is" Sigma says. "I just don't get it?? What romance is there between us? Had I just not noticed?"

"Oh believe me, you don't need that in order to have people create a ship for us"

Sigma raises an eyebrow. "A ship? They built a ship for us?" he questions, thinking of the boat kind of ship. "Why does that have anything to do with all this??"

"Oh Sigma."

#bsd #bsd sigma #bsd dazai #soukoku #skk #sskk #shin soukoku #fyodor dostoevsky #fyolai #nikolai gogol #ranpo edogawa #edgar allan poe #RanPoe #bsd scenarios

112 notes · View notes

kaleidescopeghost · 12 days

Note

Hey with the stuff on womanism, why do you think those like 2-3 white folks were say hating? On the black community, from what I saw they saw a word they never read before and were confused. Instead of educating people told them to choke and die which I don’t think helped anyone out

Well, I don't think those folks were intentionally hating on specifically the Black community as a whole, but they were definitely hating on the term Womanism (simply for,, sounding Black and being a term they never heard before, even if they didn't realize that was Why the term sounded so strange and unnecessary to them) ((probably bc they don't ever actually Talk to Black people tbh)).

However, that being said, it was Not just a case of innocent ignorance, they weren't Just Confused, they were incredibly rude and that's a Major distinction that needs to be acknowledged--Even the people who looked it up on a very surface level immediately agreed with the people who had No clue what it was Stupid and basically pointless, which was just ignorant and rude even when read with good faith. They looked at this term that wasn't theirs, wasn't even About them, and started piling up on this one Black person for calling them out on their aggressive and willfully ignorant behavior (one of those people being an open LGBTQIA+ exclusionist who has a long ass post with the phrase "inclusion is harmful" in it and the Context being they believe the queer community should be, well. Just LGBT, and they consider Q+ folk to be just,, inherently invalid which is Just nasty behavior that I want to mention because it matters who says what and what they believe in conversations like these).

Frankly, I don't mind educating. I'm very used to it and I'm good at what I do-- but this Black person showed discomfort and distress because these folks were just. Attacking a movement that is Important To Black People and Other People Of Color, and they were met with "Just Educate These Adults!!!" "Do you get mad when Literal Children don't know things?? Do you tell them to die when they have Questions???" "People don't know keywords to search for!!" And pushing all this blame for the situation on this person which wasn't fair because truthfully we live in the Internet age and marginalized communities don't Owe anyone a calm, polite, collected, gentle education when those same people are calling shit they don't even understand stupid just for existing, especially when it's culturally relevant, and we're Especially allowed to get mad about the way these people can just Say Whatever and immediately get backed up when they were just incredibly rude for no reason-- we're allowed to get rude back too! :') in all honesty, it was the call out and the disapproval that Was the education ( the lesson being What They Said Was Bad! And that they needed to go give themselves some reeducation bc their ignorance is leading them to say harmful things). It can be a tough pill to swallow, especially when you don't know the gravity of what you're even saying and then being met with harsh rejection, but the only reason that happened was because these folks looked at "Feminism But Black Inclusive" and immediately was like "this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard or seen" 😭 and they Swarmed and Ganged Up On the first person who called them out. Not okay behavior. We're not going to be nice to people who can't A.) genuinely just look things up. If you look up Womanism, you'll see your search engine literally Gives You key terms to help you in your research. And B.) be open minded and calm when hearing Black terms.

We just can't constantly sacrifice our health for these people, because it is genuinely a lot of work and pressure we're expected to just Offer Up at any time simply Because we are Black and just magically know everything and are now also expected to be spokespeople for our entire race which is unfair.

So yeah, I don't think it was completely unfair that this Black person was mad. They used ways of expressing that in a way I wouldn't have, but I'm very much against the idea that Black people need to be Perfect, Articulate, and Polite to people who are aggressors and who speak ignorance. It might not seem like it to someone who doesn't know what Womanism is, but those people dropped the ball in a Major Way. You can't just trigger marginalized people like that and expect a kind, specifically catered education from strangers just because You don't know something-- sometimes you say something fucked up and people yell at you and everybody should be able to learn from their mistakes in these scenarios.

(also, it could be the autism, but they weren't telling people explicitly to die :') just to choke lol in my mind people can survive choking lol + the whole reason it was said was to be like "you might as well be physically unable to speak because I don't care what you have to say here". Like I said, not the way I choose to express myself personally, but I get why it happened and I don't think they deserve crucifixion about it and I Definitely don't think their anger invalidates them at all.)

TLDR:

BIPOC, Especially Black people do not owe anybody an education. We're just people and it's really strange we're expected to be polite teachers in the face of ignorance and aggression.

Those people were willfully ignorant, called the wrong thing stupid, and then got yelled at by people who belong to a marginalized demographic where that word really matters to them. It's not nice, but it is fair.

It shouldn't be our cross to bear, to educate people who act like this, simply because we were born Black or otherwise POC. Honestly, a lot of the stuff we know, we know because we had to educate ourselves using the same internet we're asking them to use but during our time, there were way less resources. To us, it very much is a matter of needing these people to Want to put in their Own work on their Own time, using the resources that already exist. There's loads of BIPOC authors, journalists, and creators who talk loads about this stuff, and the learning process is kind of like math in the way you can't always just be given information plain and simple on a silver plate without a Lot of other context. Which is also why we have such an emphasis on educating yourself. All you gotta do, essentially, is check Who is writing what you're reading and cross reference different material to make sure you're getting a well rounded understanding of what the general consensus of the community is. I literally used a Britannica article to brush up on my knowledge before posting and it wasn't hard to find :") the article wasn't even written by a Black Person from what I can gather.

This might not be the answer you want, but I trust you to see how these people expecting an education from random Black folk They upset is presumptuous and a bit entitled. She didn't owe anybody any sort of gentleness in this situation, even if she said some mean stuff. It wasn't nice, but neither were they and the whole situation could've been avoided by Them looking things up for themselves before calling something that was heavily implied to be influenced by race stupid. It sucks for people who just Don't Know Shit, but BIPOC aren't obligated to be helpful to people who Already aren't putting in the work.

But the good thing is that there Are loads of preexisting resources from willing professionals from all across the world and all across time who are respected that teach you everything you need to know that are Free and At y'all's finger tips. Y'all just gotta look. The reason we're oftentimes so frustrated is because We also did the same research because we cared about learning this stuff, so we Know if these people cared, they'd do the same thing.

Okay! Very long post lol but I'm done now! I am still open to further questions and clarification but I hope this was helpful. We're all just people in the world, and we're all just learning, but it's good to practice just. Being polite and looking before you leap 😅 because the initial thing that started this whole mess was people saying some really rude stuff about something that means a Lot to us culturally as Black people.

#womanism #feminism #race #critical race theory #black feminism #it really sucks that we're made out to be hyperaggressive freaks without a cause for 'no reason' also :')#like i said‚ those people weren't just confused. they were rude about something that mattered a lot in front of the wrong people #so Yes we got mad! we're human just like anybody else. we get mad when we're disrespected like that and it Is hard to keep your composure #i had quite a similar internal response to reading those comments myself honestly! i just chose not to post about them

33 notes · View notes

whoiwanttoday · 2 months

Text

The world is often full of some inherent contradictions that make it hard to navigate. Experience is really the only compass we have, which is why in theory we should listen to our elders but in reality a lot of them have dementia and the truth is an experienced dipshit is still a dipshit, so if you are young you don't really have the experience to tell which else is wizened and which one is just old and bitter. Like drugs are a good example. I grew up in an era where we sure were told a lot about how bad drugs were. I remember this one PSA where it was a guy in profile and he started talking aobut trying pot and the top of his head turned to ash, then he did more drugs and more of him turned to ash and eventually he like died in a gutter and all ash and got blown away at the end. It's scary stuff but as you get older you see other people do drugs and they don't choke on their own vomit at all. Instead Jessica Miles makes out with them. It's not at all what the PSAs warned us about and you start to feel a little lied to when you realize drugs actually make you feel good and if you do them then people think that you're cool. Obviously, it takes time to know there are degrees to all of this. You can do all the lines of coke you want off of a computer desk at 7 AM while sitting in your underwear and writing about who you want to fuck today and pretty much no one will think that you're cool, so context still matters but it is one of those inherent things that meant I saw a lot of people swing too far one way and then the other in response to this sort of thing.

Anyway, I was thinking about this and how we can really vacillate too far one way or another and Anne Hathaway and Christopher Nolan. Nolan recently said he didn't know what the line meant, "You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain" meant when he put it in the movie and I am with him there, like I kind of got it but it felt like a cumbersome line and no one had ever said that before so why did they act like it was a common saying. People say it now though and boy does it resonate as we as a culture turn on things and people. Anne Hathaway said in an interview about how hard it was when the internet turned on her. I remember that. I never quite got it but I was told it was because I wanted to fuck her so I was blinded to what a monster she is I guess. I'd love to counter this claim but my dating history makes it pretty clear that this is entirely possible. Anyway, I don't want to discount the possibility that Anne Hathaway is a monster but the truth is none of us know. She's certainly not our friend and I am willing to believe I would find most celebrities unbearable in person. This is just because they live in a world where they are surrounded by people who makes sure they know they are the center of the universe and I don't really know how that doesn't turn someone into an asshole. Like I have a ZZ Plant in my kitchen named Spencer. He's named Spencer because someone once told me plants are supposed to have names so I named him Spencer. Then they told me that's a stupid name and I said, "You're mom's stupid". We both laughed like it was a joke but I kept the name Spencer just to tweak her and I hope deep down my witty comeback still haunts her when she can't sleep. Anyway, my point is I don't particularly care about Spencer's feelings or if he even thinks Spencer is a good name. I water him when the notification comes up on my phone and otherwise kind of ignore him. What I am saying is lots of plants might think I am an asshole because I consider myself to be far above them and they might be right but Spencer is the only plant here so those other plants are just guessing. So Anne Hathaway might treat people like garbage or just sort of not think about them because she is supporting them and watering them but I don't know. So the idea that celebrities are someone to lionize or vilify is kind of weird but I think about my friends now who give their kids lectures on drugs when I fucking saw you rolling at foam parties and pretty much groping anyone who would let you. We aren't great at inbetweens. So like, sorry Anne Hathaway went through that but it's kind of just how people work. I had a point here but I lost it, I was too caught up laughing about how much it probably burns that I named my plant Spencer and got off a sick Mom joke on someone 4 years ago. I guess my core point is today I want to fuck Anne Hathaway.

#Anne Hathaway #brunette #Actress #whoiwanttofucktoday

38 notes · View notes

gryficowa · 26 days

Text

Leftists have been trumpeting the return of fascism for years, but people ignored it and called it "What you can have in your own opinion" or told us that we are the problem

It started with trans people, and all the way to entire LGBT+ groups, feminists also got hit and there was no reaction because "They could have stayed quiet and not done it" (When they were on strike)

In addition, using September 11 as an excuse to harass people of Arab origin all over the world (although they live in my country and it's more white people who do shit here), dehumanized people, but it's the Arabs' fault that one crazy person flew a plane into two towers , True?

Fascism was reborn at the beginning of this century, but with Trump and Rowling it became more and more visible, but people thought it was nothing bad

2020 was also the point where fascism became acceptable (In my country, there was a campaign against LGBT+ people and women on strike after the ban on abortion on a damaged fetus, and then the dehumanization of people at the border who were deceived by Lukashenko, but as you said, it was was, then they called you under the propaganda of Lukashenko or Putin, yes, being a good person means being a traitor, I'd rather be a traitor than their "Hero")

It's no better abroad either, tik tok has become the only place, which has caused a lot of damage, including the resurgence of pro-ana, the destruction of the postivi body and the acceptance of autism

In 2024, many people's eyes have been opened, when anti-genocide strikes are attacked and people fighting for a free Palestine are called anti-Semites (Even if they are Jews), unfortunately, as before, people woke up to the genocide and the awareness that it is taking place, the holocaust was not stopped either and people were terrified only when it all came to light, now we can try to stop it, but there might not have been a genocide if we had reacted earlier when Israel used segregation to separate them from the Israelis

I'm born in 01, i.e. a zoomer, I used the Internet only for flash games, although I preferred DVD games (I watched as many cartoons from CDs, I watched them on TV when they were on, but that didn't mean I liked them as much as the DVD ones)

I watched Mini Mini while others were watching CN, hence I was considered immature by people in my class (10-14 years old)

It is possible that it was cartoons that helped me develop empathy (I have ASD, and it is a myth that autism does not have empathy), although I was never able to show it, and being a scapegoat did not help me much

I encountered LGBT+ at the age of 13, but thanks to the propaganda from religion classes you can guess what my approach was (Howrse, forum, censoring the word "Gay" as if it was a curse, WTF)

I don't remember when I realized that I was an aroace, because I was always an aroace, but I didn't know, for me the word "Love" didn't mean what cis hetero people consider love, for me it meant relationships where someone is close to you (Family, your pet, friendship etc…)

The first glimpses that something was wrong, I saw a certain Polish YouTuber explaining his transphobia (This was the moment when young and stupid me got a warning light, because if knowing being trans was an option for me, it doesn't change the fact that there was something wrong here yes, cognitive dissonance from cartoons I watched as a kid about that the most important thing is to be yourself and accept yourself, that others should also accept you, and then you come across this, even if you don't understand, you know that this creator's thinking is bad)

I became more interested in politics in 2020, when President Andrzej Duda (Rapper of the Year) said "LGBT+ is not people, it's an ideology", then I already knew that I was LGBT+ (I didn't use "Aroace" then, but "Asexual" and "Aromatic" )

Then I realized how many bad people there are and how they hate someone for their very existence. I can't blame myself for not being interested in politics before, because I was a child (Although pedophiles will probably say that "You weren't a child, you were a teenager", shut up!)

I had Twitter for a year because they blocked it, classic for "Inciting suicide" (But pedophiles and fascists can go unpunished, Twitter standards, they complain that Elon Musk destroyed it, no, he didn't destroy it, he was always fucked up)

I feel like I've grown up too quickly, and I've come so far in my development that it turned out that many people I trusted turned out to be bad, well, maybe loneliness isn't so bad, I have a cat, a dog and my own third party liability insurance, maybe not people (Or real ones…), but it's better than fake friendships, right?

2020 was a turning point for everything, entering politics and discovering how many people were actually mocking you and weren't your friends (Wasted years, even when they started a separate group to mock me and made a remake of my photo from 2013, where they stuck my face into a drawing of a penis… And yet I forgave them + I blamed it on myself, that I reacted badly to everything, when they pointed it out to me, that I was "exaggerating", I left groups, they added me again and so on endlessly)

It doesn't make it easier that in high school I had a toxic support teacher who controlled and criticized me (and laughed at me) at every step, and called my "meltdowns" aggressive and turned them into a note for the diary

So I've been in toxic relationships in real life and online, and this realization is killing me...

But coming back, we had the return of fascism and now people were hit with the realization that "Not an opinion" is "Fascism", the question is how long this approach will last and everything will not return to the status quo

28 notes · View notes

gamergirlbonestaskforce141riot · 6 months

Text

Familia mea mea est domus – My family is my home

I loved @mistydeyes medical checkup thingy here and got a little inspired, so thanks for that, hun

Unedited because I wrote this on a whim

Tagging my usuals that asked, just because: @glitterypirateduck @letsreadallday @jamesrifftapes @sofasoap @mmyrrhh

A soft knock on his office's door made Price look up briefly.

''Come in''

The door opened swiftly, even before the last word was uttered, and Riot stepped inside, closing behind her hurriedly. Then, without asking, she all but collapsed on the chair in front of him.

''Oh, good you're here, I need clarification on what this means, my German is a bit rusty...'' Price leaned back in his chair, leaving his fountain pen and looking up again, but the slight grin on his face disappeared when he saw her eyes.

Her haunted, wide eyes.

''Kid''

Riot's blue-gray eyes - no, Christine's - looked straight into his, unblinking, and he noticed that just as she sat down, her right knee had started bouncing wildly.

''I have my physical checkup'' Even her voice sounded lower than normal, strained, controlled. ''In half an hour''

''I know'' Price nodded, still lost about what could have happened. ''What's the matter, kid?''

''Can you come with me?''

''... what?''

She moved slightly in the chair, visibly uncomfortable, but her eyes didn't waver and still stared at him, desperate, pleading.

''In my file there's specifications that say I only want female personnel in the physical checkup'' When Price nodded again, Christine tried to overcome the knot in her throat. ''I was just there. There's only male personnel working at the moment. They told me Dr. Benítez was on break and wouldn't be back till noon''

''Can't they move your appointment to when she's in?'' Price was already shutting down his laptop, knowing where this was going, and feeling the exasperation boiling inside. Fucking idiots everywhere.

''They said I could either do the checkup now with the personnel that was in or they would put in my file that I refused to do it'' Christine's voice was even lower now, her fingers tapping furiously on her thighs, and her right knee still bouncing. ''Price, I can't...''

Half an hour later, Price was sitting uncomfortably right in front of the door of the room where Dr. Benitez and a female nurse were performing the physical exam on Sgt. Vega. It had cost him only five minutes of raising his voice at the incompetent idiot in charge of the clinic for the day, and a personal call to Dr. Benitez's phone (who had been appalled by the situation and cut her break short, God blessed that woman, and told off herself the idiots at the reception).

''I know. I'll fix this'' Price stood up and walked around his desk to offer his hand to her. ''Come on, kid, we're gonna give them a piece of our minds''

To pass the time, he had sent a text to Heather, explaining the situation, and her answer had been almost instant, and indignant.

I personally put in her file she was NOT to be examined physically by any male presenting person. I'm going to raise hell at whoever is ignoring the personal notes in people's files.

Great, now Heather was in the warpath too. Sighing, Price was about to put his phone away when he got a message from Nikolai, some stupid short video of something he had found on the internet.

For a second he considered telling him, but decided against it. There was no need to have an angry Russian mercenary storming into the base demanding to behead someone for upsetting his solnysh... solhn... his sunshine.

Price also wondered why she hadn't asked Soap or Gaz, or Ghost, but was still musing over it when the door opened and Christine stepped out, talking with Dr. Benitez.

It was like night and day. Now she looked her usual self, or at least her usual masking self, chatty and bright, confident and brilliant. Dr. Benitez nodded at Price and then went back inside, and Christine walked over to him as he stood up.

''All set, kid?''

''All set, sir'' She smiled, and then offered him a lollipop. Price stared at it for a second and then at her eyes, unable to avoid grinning when he saw the usual mischief in there. How in the world he had ended with two Soap in the same unit was beyond him, but it made him feel thankful everyday.

''Really? A lollie?''

''She gave me one and I asked for another one for you'' Christine shrugged, with a cheeky grin. He noticed with sadness how the left corner of her lips was uneven, twisted due to the scar, but he admired her 'fuck it all' attitude about it and her refusal to wear her mask most of the time.

''Oh, thank you then'' Price accepted the lollipop and both unwrapped them as they walked to the exit. ''I'm glad I was still around to come with you. I bet if Ghost, Soap and Gaz had arrived sooner from the drill with the rookies they would have been happy to accompany you''

Christine hummed quietly, enjoying the lollipop, but when he finished talking she looked up at him.

''They were already back when I asked you''

Price opened the door for her, and stared at her hair as she stepped out. She had gone to him, for support and safety, even when she could have chosen any of the other Sergeants or Ghost. Price was well aware of the something brewing between the Lieutenant and her, and that her and Soap were practically siblings, and that Gaz and her were thick as thieves too... but still, she had sought him out instead of them... His heart swelled.

''Alright, sunshine'' Price ruffled her hair playfully, grinning when she protested. ''I think we've earned a coffee. Let's go find the rest of the muppets. My treat''

40 notes · View notes

plinko-mori · 2 months

Note

how can you make the difference between someone you have a deep trauma on with a person that treat you bad but you know is right in some things?

OH YOU ARE ASKING THIS BECAUSE OF WHAT I HAVE SAID ABOUT YOSANO

I'll explain it with three situations: an ex boyfriend of mine, an ex teacher and my mother 🤗

Tw: Age gap, abuse, pedophilia, pedophile(s(?), abusive mother

Ex boyfriend

Ignoring the fact I was 13 and he was 18. I didn't have the best experience with him tbh

I mean, well, he was rude, verbally aggressive, internet user that I don't know how the fuck I got the interest in, always said that my feelings weren't important and the fact I asked him daily "oh hello, I hope I'm not bothering you but how are you doing?" for him was extremely clingy

He broke up with me recording a video, publishing in YouTube in his channel, talking shit about me not saying his mistakes (I think we were both bad), begging me to go away from his life, but keeping everything in anonymous with a gameplay of Sonic in the background. Our social-circle supported him, and the few people that actually knew I was dating him supported me even if they were like "you are so stupid for still loving him"

I have mixed feelings about this situation: I can talk a little about him, I won't add much information though and I panick with every mention, memory, or even when someone mentions a close friend of him! I blocked him from all social medias because I can't deal with the idea of getting close to him again even if he lives a country away from me

Just the idea of thinking in him makes me cry like I'm doing while writing this. You could consider it a trauma, right?

Ex teacher

I was 10, this person was 54 or 56 I can't fucking remember

Remember when I said you all that maybe someone rapped me because I have blurry memories of it and I'm not even sure what happened? He's the guy

I can talk about the situation, I am a little scared of talking to him directly or even tell an adult about it (I'm still a minor). I just want to avoid the topic mostly, don't think about it, leave it in the past and do nothing about it

My mom

The woman who screamed a lot «I wish you weren't even born» to me is finally mentioned here... So yeah what can I say?

I know she's a bastard, she will never love me truly, I will not love her either and I'm completely sure she will never apologizes for hurting me physically and emotionally, yet I can't deny she was right in some things

She raised me and did a disaster? Yes, but I can't deny she fucking taught me to be responsible

I have to speak with her, interact with her, and maybe if she isn't the same as when I was a kid... The pain is still there

But what about Yosano's situation?

I prefer to say it is similar to my situation with my mom

It's obvious she was hurt by Mori, he wasn't the best with her, yet she wasn't the worst

She can talk about him, she can speak both bad and good about him. She doesn't have a huge trauma with him, but REALLY bad memories that at least don't make her panic Just by the thought of him

And I won't add more, sorry, it's about the ex boyfriend situation

#plinko mori #plinko mori asks #bsd mori #bsd ougai mori #bsd ogai mori #bsd mori ougai #bsd mori ogai #bsd analysis #bsd yosano mention

11 notes · View notes

nytfythfhtyf · 2 years

Note

what’s your damage about “gifted kids”?? i mean, i was a nightmare in class but i don’t see any reason to have issues with them

please read this im begging you. i put off breakfast for an hour writing this bc i really care about it

i even capitalized stuff and did punctuation to make it easier to read.

The biggest thing that bothers me is that there is so much content for and about ppl who are “gifted kid burnouts”. It’s literally everywhere on every website, there are thousands of posts and everyone on this site reblogs them. It’s inescapable. And because this subset of people gets so much attention, anyone who didn’t have the “gifted” experience who also wants to talk about their struggles in school gets. Basically ignored.

(Sorry this is long I just wanna explain it as well as I can) On tumblr the “gifted kid problems” thing is extremely popular bc this is the ppl-who-read-books-instead-of-talking-to-people website. Which is totally fine, and I wouldn’t mind it if it didn’t feel like I was the only person out of millions who wasn’t gifted. If someone makes a post about being a burnt out gifted kid it gets thousands of notes. If I make a post about how being the “stupid kid” my whole life fucked me up, it gets three likes from my mutuals and then dies and is never seen again.

I think it also has a lot to do with the idea that overworking yourself, and getting straight As (even if you’re not actually learning anything!), is highly praised in Society. Because schools need good test scores if they want to keep getting money. Bad test scores, while literally being part of the learning process because we learn from mistakes, don’t bring in the funds. So the “dumb” kids get treated like shit, and teachers have to teach kids how to pass tests, instead of actually getting the material into their brains in a meaningful way. If you skip meals and don’t sleep to cram for tests, you’re considered a better student than someone who prioritizes their mental and physical wellbeing.

So you get the culture of kids who brag about sleeping three hours every night and having an iced coffee as their meal for the day, and the less you take care of yourself the more cool and relatable you are. Which I don’t really blame them for. When the school system is this fucked up and you’re struggling this much, of course you want to tell people how much it’s hurting you. I think a lot of people just want someone to tell them that’s not okay, and they shouldn’t have to neglect themselves so much. But unfortunately, it’s usually impossible to graduate college without overworking yourself to the point of exhaustion and illness. So it continues.

I think it’s good that people are posting and sharing their experiences and trying to unlearn the bad habits and mentality. But unfortunately a lot of the “gifted kid” people still think or at least act like they’re the only ones who struggled in school. Because they worked the hardest, they deserve more attention. (I also think being constantly praised by teachers as a child and being the favorite plays a part in the attention seeking behavior).

So anyone who physically couldn’t overwork themselves to the point of earning the “gifted” label, because of disabilities or any other reason (don’t even get me started on the expectation that all autistic people are great at school (((non-gifted non-savant autistic kids are treated like worthless failures their whole lives)))), those people don’t deserve to have the whole internet feel bad for them. You couldn’t see them working themselves to exhaustion studying or doing homework, because their everyday lives were already exhausting, and they literally couldn’t spend any more energy on school.

So, if someone makes a post about how hard it is to do any schoolwork at all, and how their school experience was torture because the classes weren’t made to actually teach them and they weren’t good at test taking, you ignore it, because you “worked harder” and still struggled just as much. Or you comment and say “Oh same but I got all A’s and can write an essay in 5 minutes without even trying and I can read books at the speed of light” or “Oh and did you know how many gifted kids are autistic and adhd. I’m autistic and adhd and it made me so good at school” because you’re so used to having everything cater to you.

My goal isn’t to minimize burnt out gifted kids issues and trauma, it’s to get people to understand that they aren’t the only ones that deserve pity and sympathy. School fucked everyone up in different ways and it sucks no matter how good your grades were.

So no I don’t hate gifted kids themselves just for being gifted (although I will admit I absolutely have a grudge of burning jealousy bc I wish society liked me as much as them, which is where my urge to insult them comes from), I hate the way they act, on social media and in real life. You can post about your struggles and that’s totally fine, but if someone makes a post about how hard school was for them because they weren’t good at it, instead of commenting that your experience was different, or literally just ignoring it, maybe reblog it. Because school sucked and you both had it hard. Maybe even leave some sympathetic or understanding tags (without making it about you) if you’re feeling it.

but if they go on here and make fun of ppl who arent good at school or any academic skills and call them stupid then i hate them and im hitting them with my car

#ok im gonna go eat breakfast now #thanks for coming to my presentation #i say things #i want you people to see this #asks #anon #no reblogs anymore i dont want to fight with people online

164 notes · View notes

atomicdarc · 17 days

Note

Your au designs are literally so cool! Could you tell me more about them? I’m genuinely very interested

Oh hello there! Or course!

I don't have too much information to give for now, but there some things about the principal trio of the Decepticons: Demolisher, Cyclonus and Starscream! — I love how disastrous they look in armada, so I will bring that chaos to my story too! >:]

First of them, Demolisher. Well, Demolisher had a big devotion to Megatron, sacrificing himself a lot for him. He was considered Megatron's right arm on the Decepticons, army. For him being so devotional to Megatron's will, he had a lot of jealous stares at him, but he didn't care! Well, not for so long...

Have in mind that at this time he had his both eyes, he lost one or his eyes because Megatron punished him for slipping a little bit, and with a little bit I mean, for his teammates fault, one important war prisoner has escaped from one of the cells — I still deciding who it will be btw, but it will probably be a wrecker — Megatron was furious, that prisoner could bring a ton of important information, the first person that Megatron saw in his choleric walk was Demolisher, and then the worst happened... That was one of the first times that Megatron really snapped and abused of his power with one of his soldiers.

In this AU he doesn't hates Megatron, but he blames himself for his failure everyday, he has a perfectionist personality and he panicks when everything goes out of his hands, when Starscream meet with him for the first time he didn't understood why Demolisher was so damn afraid of failure, like, he didn't wanna loose and fail, but when Starscream turns into Megatron's second in command he starts to know exactly what is going on.

And how do Cyclonus feels about all of that? He feels bad for his friend and that he could do nothing to help, but he tells dumb and idiot jokes trying to rip a smile of Demolisher's face. Demolisher acts like he doesn't care and that he's indifferent, but he really enjoys his jokes and loves Cyclonus presence. Cyclonus can feel that.

Now about Cyclonus! Well, he's a yong boy! — kinda 22 yroish — he is a bit inexperienced in combat and it's slow to get some information, since his attention span is low, Demolisher always have to explain him things in the most careful and slowly way possible and he's very patience about that, Cyclonus feels very lucky to have a friend that finally comprehend his condition.

Demolisher rather's explain things to Cyclonus one million of times than see his friend suffering like he did in the past, Decepticons can be ignorant, stupid and sadistic sometimes, they would probably smash his brain with information since he is pretty easy to confuse and manipulate, and then they would use it to laugh in the lunch break.

Cyclonus is pretty interested about human comedy and internet culture, it's like hiperfixation for some reason, nor even demolisher understands it, but Demolisher enjoys watching pet videos with him, his favorite type of videos of this kind are about birds, while Cyclonus favorite pet videos includes cats and dogs. He tells to Demolisher that he looks like a soggy cat everyday.

Cyclonus is not so close to Starscream as Demolisher, but he doesn't mistreat him. Starscream can look a bit scary for him since he is almost all the time quiet and he just observes him with a glare when he needs to say something important to him. But with all the things that are happening because of Megatron, he tries to finally get along with him. It's a hard work, but he's trying his best with Demolisher's help.

And finally, we have Starscream dude, that guy is the definition of an LInking Park 2016 AMV, Just like in armada! But his quieter than normal, well, he's cold forged, and his brothers too, almost every cold forge has some mental of physical issue because of the bad development of the spark and by the fact that the spark sometimes feels despersonalizated, so sometimes you can see him fazed by his on thoughts.

He's a strong and pretty intelligent soldier, that got Megatron's eyes and he put the seeker's versatility on proof. Megatron puts him as his second in command, since it would he great if they separated the army by ground and air.

Starscream, his brothers and other seekers joined the cons because they hated their creators who subjected them to so much pain and Megatron knew it, his twisted mind took advantage of that and made the seeker go to the same crooked way as him, doing questionable things against his morals and conceptions of freedom

At the start, he doesn't get along with Demolisher and Cyclonus, but when he see and feel them treating and caring of his wounds caused by Megatron's unfounded rage he started to tolerate their presence at the start, then he finally accepts them as his friends. — he secretly watches videos about kittys without "Cyclonus discovering it" (Cyclonus already knows and he finds it kinda cute) —

That's it, their dynamic. There's a lot of things that I need to fix, add and complement, but for now it's only that!

And one more thing, sorry if my english sounds a little cracked, english is not my first language.

— Thanks for the ask! :]

#transformers #maccadam #starscream #transformers armada #starscream transformers #megatron #transformers au #cyclonus armada #cyclonus #transformers demolisher #demolisher armada #starscream armada

16 notes · View notes

undead-discourse · 7 months

Text

Hey!! Are you a proshipper? Are you an anti? Please read this post, I want engagement from as many people of as many different opinions as possible!

I have a question that I made a temporary sideblog for because I’ve gotten completely different answers depending on who I ask this question (pro vs anti ship)

I fundamentally disagree with a lot of the “talking points” on either side, so I’m not really sure which camp I fit into (and the one I’m assigned usually changes to the opposite of whoever I’m talking to). So I thought it’d be really interesting to see what people have to say about this. I dunno, I like talking, and discussing media. Talk to me about media.

I’ve sorted these into two sections: opinions usually grouped with “proshippers” and opinions usually grouped with “antis.”

Proship Opinions:

Censorship is bad.

We should not censor the internet and banning legal content here is fruitless. It just doesn’t work, and it takes away efforts from restricting actually harmful content.

Harassment is also bad.

Even when the person being harassed is objectively disgusting and vile.

There is never any excuse to tell someone to kill themself. This feels so obvious, why are we even arguing this.

Restricting the content allowed on some sites (AO3) is kinda stupid.

FF.net and Wattpad are living examples of what happens when you restrict written content: it still gets in, but this time completely untagged and with no warning.

I hate AO3’s current policy and I don’t use the site because of that, but the alternative is so much worse, especially considering they can’t afford the extensive mod team that would require.

Just use the block button.

Getting all bent out of shape in someone’s askbox because of their content is completely pointless. You just exhaust yourself and waste your own energy thinking about this person when they definitely don’t give a fuck what you, some bitch on the internet, think of their content.

The easiest solution for your own wellbeing is just to block them and move on. Then you can never think about them again.

Fictional content is never the same as the real thing, and it’s insulting to survivors to insinuate it is.

No children are harmed by the creation of fictional content. Comparing it to real CP is a slap in the face to real survivors.

The concept of “problematic content” being bad by design is kinda dumb.

There are ways to handle anything in fiction tastefully. Your story can cover topics of sexual abuse, murder, exploitation, etc. without being “problematic.”

The reason for the content’s creation and posting greatly changes how it should be viewed and how the creator should be treated.

I’m reminded of Alfred’s Playhouse. It’s so obviously a cry for help, but everyone ignored it because of the gross and shocking subject matter shown. The creator is a disgusting person, but that is unrelated to her creation of Alfred’s Playhouse, a representation of her own real experiences.

It’s… So obvious to me when someone is suffering and using art to vent or call for help. These people aren’t the people we should be talking about when we discuss the handling of sensitive topics in fiction.

Anti Opinions:

The things you create/enjoy completely change the way I view you as a person, fundamentally.

I don’t think you can be a good person and enjoy thinking about fictional children being molested.

I cut people off if I find out they secretly enjoy this content.

Including ex-friends. It hurts and I feel betrayed, but I was not friends with, nor will I ever be friends with, someone who enjoys (whatever).

I think people deserve to know if one of their favorite artists is secretly into something reprehensible.

If a big artist I like had a secret twitter where they posted incest porn, I would be pissed if someone who knew didn’t tell me.

AO3 sucks.

Specifically because of their policy on RPF in reference to (underage) streamers. If someone requests that the NSFW content featuring them be deleted, AO3 should delete it. If someone goes to AO3 and requests they take down a specific fic about them, AO3 should delete it. But they didn’t, and they don’t. So I don’t use AO3.

“Problematic content” should be criticized when it is handled in offensive ways.

There are ways to handle topics such as child abuse, sexual exploitation, etc. tastefully and respectfully to victims, but when creators fail to do this, they deserve to have their treatment of the subject pointed out.

SEE MY ABOVE POINT ABOUT CREATORS WHO ARE SUFFERING, vent art does not fucking count and pointing out the way someone handles their own real experiences in their vent art makes you an asshole.

Proshipping as I’ve seen it looks like such an unhealthy coping mechanism.

To my knowledge, “shipping” means that you enjoy the dynamic between two (or more) characters, typically in a romantic or sexual way. Enjoying the romantic or sexual dynamic between a minor and an adult you headcanon to be grooming them is… So beyond fucked.

This is 100% not my business and I’m never gonna tell someone this, but it’s an opinion I personally hold that I’ve seen attached to antis before.

#proship #proshipper #profic #anti #antiship #antishipper #<= tagged both for reach #someone talk to me about this stuff i find it so interesting and weird

25 notes · View notes

blooming-violets · 3 months

Note

Sorry this is gonna be a bit of a rant since it’s something I’ve had strong feelings about since joining the AG/TASM fanfic part of the internet, and you’ve provided me a great opportunity to talk about it.

As a trans person, I am BEGGING fanfic writers to stop writing Marauders stuff. I’ve seen so many people defend it with “separate art from the artist” but like it or not they are still supporting JKR. Separating art from the artist only really works when the artist can’t profit from it. She has done SO MUCH harm to trans people and particularly trans youth in the UK and it’s so fucking disheartening and gives me such an ick when I see TASM writers also write for Marauders because it truly comes across as “I love and support the trans community except when it comes to this because I like it.”.

Even if you ignore the transphobia and holocaust denial (YES IM SERIOUS, she’s denied parts of the holocaust at LEAST twice and she literally did it a second time the other day), the original writing is so fucking problematic. Things just off the top of my head being;

The goblins being stereotypes of Jewish people

The fucking racism with characters like Cho Chang and Kingsley Shacklebolt

The last Fantastic Beasts movie’s plot literally being trying to make WW2 and the holocaust happen

This point needs to be taken with a grain of salt since this was some bullshit Joanne said after the books came out, but werewolves in the universe being meant to represent people with aids. Which is so fucking awful considering one of the two werewolves was attacked by the other as a CHILD

The most ironic part of this is that if Andrew is truly the person he presents himself as, he would probably fucking despise being associated with HP, even if it is just a fancast. But yeah all this to say fuck JKR, fuck Marauders fans but also thank you so much Katie for that last anon answer because I genuinely don’t see that enough in this corner of the internet.

Even Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter himself, has spoken out against her and continues to loudly support the LGBTQ+ communities. When your own beloved Harry doesn't even want to stand by your side, you should know you fucked up. Sadly, she does not, and instead leans harder into her bigotry and hatred.

I've always been someone who is very loud and opinionated when I see things that I disagree with, which I know can rub some people the wrong way, but fuck it. I don't like to whisper about my issues on the sidelines, I like to confront the problem head on by being very clear about where I stand and how I feel. I'm not gonna sit around and let someone align me with JKR just because I'm writing a stupid werewolf and Peter Parker fic that exactly 5 people are reading lol. It's not even a popular fic like get out of my asks jfc. Esp when I can tell this person has not read a single sentence of my story and is completely basing their judgements on my header image of AG's face next to a wolf gif.

In this past week I have seen both a Steven Harrington werewolf au and a Daredevil werewolf au cross my dash. Do we think they're getting called out for supporting HP?? No. Because their actors weren't "fan casted" as something years ago. Fan casts don't even mean anything! There was never a movie about them. AG was never casted or played this role. It's literally nothing but a bunch of fans agreeing that they like his look for a fictional character.

Anyway, I'm also ranting back at you haha. You can rant to me anytime. I love a good rant and I agree with you 100%.

Werewolves were not created by JKR. Andrew Garfield has nothing to do with Harry Potter. Don't make make snap judgments about a person's character based on a picture you saw. Support your trans community. Don't be dick.

And, if they actually read my werewolf au, they would see that it's literally about learning to overcome your own hatred and biases of people different from you and learning to love those you were taught to hate. Crazy concept, I know! 🙄😉

#asks

11 notes · View notes

bluebudgie · 9 months

Text

Behold! The long announced whiny pissbaby gamer rage essay that noone on the internet asked for.

Disclaimer up front: This is about Eff Eff Sixteen. If you're a fan of this game I advise you to just ignore this because I genuinely don't want to piss into your morning coffee with my negativity. I will rip this game several new assholes. You have been warned.

FAQ Q: Don't you have anything better to spend your time on than writing a ridiculously lengthy internet text post about a video game whose existence you are free to simply ignore? A: Yes, but this matter is personal. I'm writing this for the sake of carthasis. Closure. To be free of the rage that has possessed me for the past months. Q: Have you tried touching grass? A: I have sat in a field of grass for a prolonged amount of time prior to writing this. I am beyond the need of touching grass. Q: Do you expect anyone to actually read all this? A: No.

Spoilers ahead, obviously. Let's go.

------

Table of Contents

Introduction: Is this the worst game ever made? 1.1 It's personal 1.2 Pre-release & producer statements

The battle system

The narrative 3.1 Storytelling and morality 3.2 Pacing 3.3 Visuals 3.4 Characters 3.4.1 The game's biggest mistake 3.4.2 The state of women 3.5 Music

Credit where credit is due 4.1 It's personal again

Conclusion

------

1. Introduction: Is this the worst game ever made? What a strange way to start, you may think. Shouldn't this question rather be addressed in a conclusion at the end? I want to set the record straight from the start: No, it is not the worst game ever made. All things considered I don't even think it's the worst game of its series. And yet I have never in my life felt such unbridled hatred for a video game, or honestly, any piece of entertainment media I can currently think of. Why is that?

1.1 It's personal Usually I'm pretty good at doing the sensible thing people should do when they don't like something - ignore it. Why bother wasting your energy deliberately seeking out something that you know will make you angry?

Hear me out for a moment, I'll have to go on a tangent here.

I didn't actively get into the series until a year before FFXIII released - which at this point in time is 15 years ago now, but considering we've had only two more (singleplayer) mainline games since then, it's still a relatively late entry point. This is to say: I don't think I'm wearing the worst nostalgia goggles, but I do have a long history with the series nonetheless. These games have played a big role in my life for those past 15 years.

I used to roll my eyes at the "the series died after FFX" crowd. FFXII is one of the best in the series, sure FFXIII was a landslide miss for me, but... that's one game, right. Then FFXV's release drew closer. I did not like what I saw, for many reasons I won't detail now. What did I do? I blacklisted the game's name on all social media platforms, and didn't hear anything about it anymore. To this day I haven't actually seen much of it, though I do know the rough outline. And I know that while the game has a dedicated fanbase, it has also received its fair share of harsh criticism.

Why am I telling you all this?

1.2 Pre-release & producer statements

A few years ago, FFXVI was announced. And I have to be honest: I was negatively biased from the start. I hadn't been happy with SE's general direction for years and I wasn't particularly hopeful for this entry either. But - and I want to make this very clear - I was open to give this game a fair chance. The announcement trailer didn't really hook me but it looked alright, some visual and audio gripes aside. I was... cautiously curious. Not quite enough to call it optimistic, but I wanted to be hopeful.

You know what's excellent at crushing hopes? Game producer interviews that range from "that's a severely stupid opinion to have but you do you" aka (paraphrased) "our traditionally turn-based series can't be turn-based anymore because in order to get the production costs covered we have to appeal to the masses, and the masses are kids who love action and not outdated combat systems in which you have to navigate menus to act" (source); to downright offensive statements such as "we are creating a fantasy world based on reality and therefore black people can't exist in our european medieval setting" (source); and "I have gamer pride so I don't want to feature an easy difficulty setting in my game" (source - for clarity's sake there are accessibility options in the game in the form of equipment that helps simplify combat, however the statement itself is still really goddamn stupid).

And I know these statements have been called out by some - but it definitely didn't blow up as much as it should have considering the popularity of this franchise. It's an open secret why this is the case (if you're out of the loop: the game producer in question is an untouchable god with a really large cult fan following), and quite frankly I believe this is probably where the first seeds of my hatred were sown. Knowing that no matter what FFXVI was going to be it would have people defend it out of their blind commitment to the team behind the game's development, left a.... spiteful aftertaste in my mouth.

Ironically looking back now, and plain offensive statements aside, my biggest concern for the game itself was actually the combat system. I'm definitely part of the old-school "a main series FF game needs turn-based combat" crowd. Oh sweet summer child.

At this point I decided it would be better to go the FFXV route (which, by the way, had some similarly stupid dev comments at its release). All marketing made it clear that I was not the target audience for this game, so best to just ignore its existence.

That worked... alright...ish... until the demo's release. I guess you could say curiousity killed the cat. I decided to take a look at someone's playthrough... and that's where my initial "pissbaby gamer rage" draft that I ended up not posting came from. Go big or go home, if I wanted to be angry about this game in public I should at least be fair and wait for the full release. Not judge the game by its (admittedly generous in length) demo. Get the full receipts, see it for all that it is in its entirety. I think in a way I still didn't want to give up hope completely.

And that's where we are now, two months later I've watched a full playthrough of the game including all sidequests. It's been a wild ride to say the least.

2. The battle system

Let's get this out of the way before we finally get to the really meaty part: As mentioned earlier my primary concern before release was the combat system since it's so far removed from the older entries of the series. Ironically, of all things, this is probably the smallest issue I have with the game now.

I still don't think the combat is good, mind you - this is mostly a matter of personal taste but I'll never see how button mashing and a series of QTEs overlayed over 20 minutes of cinematic cutscene is supposed to be more impactful or fun than the oh-so-outdated turn based menu inputs. Then again, I didn't play the game myself and can therefore obviously not judge how good or bad it feels in the heat of battle. I say "button mashing", by the way, as what I've gathered from other people's reviews - who genuinely enjoyed the game - the combat is really watered down and repetitive in comparison to games with similar systems like the DMC series. While you do pick up new abilities over the course of the game it seems like once you've found one combination that works you can solve every single battle following those exact inputs. This is one of the two really big complaints about this game I've seen consistently in almost every review.

Speaking of combat, the game has the weirdest way to pull you out of the action and emotional moments by freezing mid cutscene, showing a "you won the battle - here's your loot" screen while blasting an epic choir rendition of the classic FF fanfare, before picking that same cutscene right back up. I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but it's honestly jarring. For an extremely cinematic game that supposedly wants to break with "outdated" traditions, implementing that very video game-y results screen is a strange choice.

You could say this last point is nitpicking, and if this game had no other issues I would probably not mention it at all, but as it is this little detail is indicative of a much, much larger issue.

3. The narrative

[The sound of cracking knuckles can be heard in the distance.] Let the slaughter begin.

Prior to release the game was marketed as a departure from the rest of the series - the setting was advertised as a darker, more mature, political intrigue for an adult audience. ('But the masses of kids that like action com-' Who? What are you talking about?) Because as we all know, no other FF game has ever been dark before (/sarcasm).

What we got was storytelling and character writing with about the maturity level of a twelve year old teenage boy in his edgelord phase making his first Game of Thrones fanfiction drafts. This game oozes of sexism, really stupid slavery allegories, the most dumbed down black and white morality with a matching set of one-dimensional black and white characters, godawful pacing and some of the worst NPC dialogues I've ever had to witness.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

3.1 Storytelling and morality

So this dark and mature political story... I'm still searching for it. I know GoT started this trend where writers will use "politics" as a buzz word to make their games look complex (FFXVI hasn't been the sole offender in the past years). Then they expose you to a few kingdom names, show you a map with territories, drop a few year dates with barely any significant relevance to anything over the course of the game, and pretend that's a deep political intrigue. I have news for you: It's not.

Alright, then... this dark and mature... oh. Oh you mean that's because there's a plethora of blood splatters and people say "fuck" and "cock" and "whore" and there's goofily censored sex on screen? Ah... oh. Alright, I see. If that's what you'd call that... sure.

But surely the people who are tattooed like cattle and used as slaves due to being born as magic users will have an interesting role in the story dealing with the very delicate topic of slaver- ...oh, uh... what do you mean the perfect king beloved by everyone is the good guy because unlike all the other people who held slaves, he treated his slaves nicely? And, before you ask.... No, this isn't some sort of commentary the game wants you to question. This guy is unironically, unambiguously portrayed as the perfect good guy. Brought up many, many times for how flawless he is.

And that... is where we're diving into one of this game's biggest and most glaring issues. The writing is so mindnumbingly black and white with not the slightest room for ambiguous or grey morality it's painful. Everything and everyone in this game is always either good with no failings - or so stupidly evil they may as well be a bad saturday morning cartoon villain.

Good characters are always good, and always act out of the pure kindness of their heart. When you think a good character fucked up and actually did something bad, it will later be revealed that either it wasn't them at all and it was all a scheme, or they were possessed by the big baddie and therefore not actually responsible for their actions. Can't possibly risk anyone appearing like a realistic person with character depth now, can we?

And don't worry, just in case you have an extremely bad case of media illiteracy with the slightest hint of doubt of anyone's alignment on the binary moral chart, the game will make sure to overexplain literally every tiny detail to you in the worst way possible. You see, the evil woman right at the start? The one who looks really evil and moves really evil and the first thing she does is being mean to the slaves and being dismissive of her own son? In case you didn't get yet that she's evil, there will be guards whispering about how evil she is when she leaves the scene. Also a scene later the good perfect king will point out how evil she is. And worry not, in case you forget in the few hours she's not on screen, characters will make sure to remind you how she has not a single redeeming quality and every breath she has ever taken has been filled with evil.

And this might sound like I'm exaggerating. But the game is like this with Every. Single. Thing. Sometimes I found myself genuinely wondering if the writers were actively trying to insult the player's intelligence with this condescending amount of overexplanation. Characters constantly comment on everything that is visibly happening on screen - for God's sake if you want to make a modern game that moves away from "outdated" mechanics then write it this way. If you show what is going on with detailed realistic graphics, you do not need characters monologuing a description of what they're seeing. You do not need to voice a character saying "I'm sad" when you can clearly see their facial expression. You do not need to make a character loudly ask himself with noone else present by his side "Is he hallucinating?" when showing another character's hallucinations. Old games did that because they had limited visual capabilities. If you sit on your high horse talking about moving the series forward while spitting into your old playerbase's faces, then do it right at the very least.

Once in a while you'll be exposed to some textbook philosophy theories, which in essence wouldn't be a bad idea at all if those philosophies were somehow smartly woven into the game's narrative… but instead you get characters quoting essentially the wikipedia summary of what that philosophy is about and call it a day.

I wish this was the only issue with the game's writing.

3.2 Pacing

This game's pacing is atrocious. Genuinely, utterly awful. And there`s mostly one thing to blame: Sidequests. If you've heard a single criticism for this game even from people who highly praise it, it's this.

The sidequests are absolutely horrendous filler content on so many levels. Gameplay wise they're usually "follow 10 meters of a linear corridor to defeat an enemy and then grab a carrot at the end" fetch quests. Visually they are not just a nose dive but an entire plane crash compared to the well animated main quests, consisting mostly of the same three reused conversation animations from FFXIV (I'm all for reusing assets if it helps developers save time, work smarter not harder, but this one is blatantly obvious in all the worst ways). And the writing.... oh boy.

NPCs go on and on and on and on having the most blandly written expository dialogue. I get that the writer's intention was to give the world a bit of context and make it feel more alive with random people telling you about their life stories and everyday hurdles, but they failed miserably at making this remotely engaging. They may as well have had people read the dictionary. And maybe this would have worked better as purely written textbox dialogue (if about half of the dialogue was cut, which would still leave more than enough padding around the actually relevant information) - but in a game with voice acting, making people audibly speak in ways noone would ever speak to another person, just doesn't work. It's stilted and unnatural, and really awkward to listen to.

Delivery aside, the stories told in these sidequests vary from "farmer's everyday life issues about growing their crops" to "random child ends oppression by convincing an angry mob of adults they shouldn't be stoning someone because that someone has been a valuable asset to their society (by reminding them they need to keep the streets clean) and suddenly every adult in range is free of bigoted feelings". And then everyone in the bus clapped, I guess. And again, I get the intention behind these stories but they're so clumsily written.

And yes, these are sidequests - you are free to ignore them. But they do make up a considerable chunk of the game. And, unfortuantely, a fair handful of the main quests follow this same fetch quest formula.

This game goes long, very long stretches without anything substential happening. And it's good to have downtime to breathe - the game's big main story moments pack a punch in terms of epic adrenaline filled battles. But this game honestly feels like 60 hours of filler fetch quests with the occasional relevant story sequence sprinkled in between.

3.3 Visuals

I'm not a film student so maybe it's not my place to comment on cinematography, but I felt like visually many of the cutscenes were also really... bland. Not necessarily bad looking (if you can see anything behind the millions of particle effects) but it definitely felt like less care was put into choosing narratively interesting image composition compared to a game like FFXII.

And then it also does this really annoying thing where it will constantly fade to black for absolutely no reason.

Character A: Oh that seems like an exciting story! Tell me all about it. Character B: Okay, so this is a long story... [screen fades to black] [screen fades from black to the exact same shot we had before the fade] Character B: So the story goes like this... (starts telling the story you thought was told off screen indicated by the black sreen)

This and similar instances happen fairly often and I just don't get why. It's nothing to hate the game for but it's just... really strange. Just like those really silly "In the meantime..." text overlays for scenes that are very clearly happening in the meantime. Seriously, we get it. You don't have to spell it out. But whatever, this is one of those things I'd look past if it weren't for the whole rest of this trainwreck.

3.4 Characters

Speaking of trainwrecks. [Takes a deep breath] I've avoided this topic for long enough now. This is where the last seams that hold the game together break and make it fall apart entirely. This is where the pile of shit that's been tossed across the room finally hits the fan.

If you're remotely familiar with any Final Fantasy title you know how important a solid cast is to those games. Your allies and party members you meet over the course of the game, their stories and views on the world's happenings... a charismatic villain. Well, how about we just simply didn't have any of that.

3.4.1 The game's biggest mistake

FFXVI's writers made the decision to focus the game's narrative around a single character, our playable protagonist. There is a small supporting cast of characters that you meet, and occasionally travels alongside you temporarily, but most of them have... not much to them. The game makes it clear: This story is about Clive, and him alone.

And... I don't think having a story focused on a single character is necessarily a bad decision per se, even if highly unusual for a series that was driven by party systems for decades, but... If you decide to do that, then your protagonist needs to have more personality than a soggy wet sponge. It's bad enough that pretty much noone in this game has any sort of depth to them, but if you sideline literally every character in favour of your protagonist's narrative then... at least give that protagonist a character?

This man's personality is nothing beyond helping people because it's the right thing to do. The attempted "he feels guilty for killing his brother" (which naturally he didn't actually do, because that would be too complex of a story) subplot gets dropped a few hours in and he's just... that guy who runs everyone's errands with no input of his own. And it doesn't make him unlikeable necessarily, it just makes him terribly boring.

What is really, really grating however is how every other character portrays him. Named characters and unnamed NPCs alike will throw pity parties for him over and over, going on about how he's so self-sacrificial, always doing everything for others while never expecting anything in return and never taking enough care of himself. It's exhausting. We get it. He's the perfect heroic nice guy, just like his (slave having) dad, the unfailable king. And unlike his evil witch of a mother. Who is so evil, by the way. At times I felt like Clive was some sort of dream fantasy guy self insert of the writers.

I'll say it plainly now: the lack of a well developped playable party is, in my opinion, the game's downfall. Clive alone can't carry the narrative because there isn't nearly enough depth to him, and everyone else has deliberately been stripped of any sort of meaningful screentime. Narrative aside I also feel like multiple playable characters would have done a lot for more variety in terms of gameplay. And before you raise your pitchforks - yes, there are few, very few characters that have their own little story moment. But boy... at what cost.

3.4.2 The state of women

! Rape & suicide mention trigger warning for this section !

So you know, Clive's sidekick? No, not the dog, the girl. Jill. The one who spends most of the game sick in bed, kidnapped, or otherwise missing, and whose single personality trait is being Clive's pure and innocent love interest. Surprisingly, she has her own 30 minutes of side story! A side story that essentially boils down to finding out she was held captive by a weird cult that had no relevance prior to this point and will have no relevance at all after this point. You get to beat up the cult's leader who is revealed to sexually assault underage girls.

Is that ever addressed again at any point? No.

But worry not. We still have a few more women in the bigger roles of the game. One of them, Benedikta, is an early game antagonist whose entire thing is seducing men, and most of the screentime she has is sex scenes. Once you defeat her in battle she flees, and a randomly passing by group of bandits is implied to attempt to rape her. This triggers a flashback of a past assault she was rescued from, and she goes mad. You fight her again, now in her powered up form, and kill her. Then she gets decapitated and her head is sent in a box to her lover to fuel his man rage. Don't worry, you'll get more sex scene flashbacks with her after her death.

But hey. We have another woman in a leading role. The supposedly main antagonist before the real big baddie (who is so boring of a villain i can't even get myself to say anything more about him) is revealed to have business with her. Clive's evil slave-mistreating mum. Her purpose in the story is breeding a flawless heir. What fuels this dignified ambition? Hell if I know. She's written in a hateable way for the sake of it. Likely to contrast Clive and his flawless dad. Absolutely zero depth to anything.

Guess her age here.

If you guessed "at least in her 50s" you are correct! Do I even have to say anything more about this.

The moment her perfect heir is killed, she loses it and slits her own throat. A very anticlimatic conclusion to her non-existent character arc.

Yes, there are a couple more secondary female characters who aren't necessarily walking misogyny targets, but they're pretty much irrelevant to the plot.

Here's a quote from my girlfriend, who is a woman, about the state of women in this game: "I have scarcely felt this alienated by the depiction of women in a video game."

! Trigger warning ends here !

So, uh... how do we move on from here... Let's head somewhere less offensive.

3.5 Music

Usually I'd give the soundtrack a lot more attention since I'm of the opinion that music is one of the most vital parts in a game and can absolutely make or break it - but quite frankly I don't have much to say about this one in detail. It's largely generic epic orchestra music with nothing much unique going for it. The regular battle theme is fairly memorable; and then there's that really aggravatingly annoying acoustic guitar ambient song that seems to play for about half of the game's time. Seriously I hate that one. It drove me nuts. In general I don't know if there's more than 10 songs in the OST because I don't think I heard more than that. Either that, or they all sounded the same.

What stuck out negatively to me especially (apart from that godsdamned acoustic guitar) was the overusage of over the top orchestral arrangements for the tiniest occasions, which was unfitting at best and really tiring at worst. I got used to it with time, but still a good soundtrack isn't just making every moment sound like it's as epic as the final boss, it's making varied music that fits the moment and sets the ambience.

Also not to ruin the OST for anyone who actually enjoys it, but the game's leitmotif sounds like Army of Lovers' Crucified. Noticed it during the demo and couldn't unhear it for the entirety of the game. You're welcome.

4. Credit where credit is due

As should be evident by now, I'm not finding much redeemable in this game. And yet - I would be lying if I said I didn't find myself liking some aspects of it.

Some of the armour designs are pretty neat. In general the character design as a whole feels coherent and mostly fits the setting, some questionable haircut choices aside.

There are chocobos. In different colours. They look nice. Not a big surprise, I suppose.

The voice acting is really good. I can't comment much on the English dub since I only watched the demo in English and then watched the full game with a streamer who played in German; but the German voice actors did an amazing job, and I've heard only good things about the English cast as well. Listening to a few comparisons I was surprised how deep English Joshua's voice is. He sounds like a teenage boy even after the last timeskip in German. That took me out a bit. I also realized I'm very partial to Dion's German voice acting. His final scene was extremely strong in that regard.

Speaking of Dion....

4.1 It's personal again

Alright. Listen. I hate this. I fucking hate this. For weeks I suffered through this game, nothing but this burning passionate hatred within me, ready to shred and tear every single aspect of it apart.

And then. So close to the end. In the final stretch. When I've almost made it through with nothing but rage and hatred by my side. This fucking stupid garbage game attacks my one goddamn weak point: The gay prince and his lover share a small "it isn't meant to be" moment. And I genuinely enjoyed the little gestures in that cutscene. It was a good cutscene.

And at this point I was unfortunately confronted with a hard to swallow pill: I had been kinda looking forward to every time Dion showed up on screen. I'll be honest I'm not sure I would have made it through the game without the driving force of "hey maybe he'll show up again". Over time he turned into my single point of fixation, and it's sad because ultimately he too is pretty much a wet sponge of a character, though maybe the least wet and spongy one. I think he does have some of the stronger scenes in the game (as well as the most visually appealing boss battle - whatever was going on with that bullet hell laser fight in space). He's also unfortunately a sad blond Final Fantasy prince and. Uh. Yeah. Ahem. Alas, he's kinda ugly. Subjectively. But he has an absolutely mighty hip swing when he walks. And a pretty cool spear. Good weapon choice.

In general, props to SE for including an unambiguously gay character in a decently written way. We all know this company is pretty behind in terms of diversity and representation, so seeing that was a pleasant surprise.

Anyway I really REALLY hate to admit it but I've been kinda held hostage by the game over this stupid prince. I'm hoping this is a temporary side effect (derogatory) from being exposed to the game for a prolonged amount of time and in a few weeks I won't care anymore. I hate it here.

5. Conclusion

When I finally finished watching the game after having spent 2 entire months with it I was mostly asking myself one question... What is worse in regards to an art medium? To hate it so intensely that you're willing to dive into every little aspect of it; or to feel complete indifference?

I can't tell you if I think FFXVI is the worst game in the series. It's the one I feel the most passionate hate for, that's for sure. But a game like FFXV seems so inherently unappealing I don't even care to look at it. Not because I think I'll dislike it any more, I just think it will bore me. (Irrelevant side note - I do plan to finally watch a playthrough of that one too in the future. Might as well commit now.)

There are aspects of FFXVI I do think are inexcusable in an objective way; delicate topics handled badly, developers that need an attitude check, and also... by god go meet a woman in real life, please.

For a game that was said to modernize and move the series forward, it makes terribly outdated choices in many regards. It somehow tries so hard to be a departure from the other games in the series, losing a lot of what makes a good Final Fantasy game, and simultaneously clings so hard to references that feel so empty when the core of these games has been trampled on. No amount of preludes and FF1 overworld theme rearrangements and corny "this will be your final fantasy" puns can bring the series' essence back that this game failed to capture. A sense of adventure, a compelling story with a meaningful cast of companions, a world to explore beyond grey corridors.

It should have been a spin-off, not a main title game. Obviously a different name wouldn't have changed the quality of the game, but I can't shake off the feeling that had it been called FFXIV: The Offline Singleplayer Experience (which quite frankly it feels like in many regards), I might have been a bit more lenient with my judgement.

Still...public reception of the game seems, surprisingly, fairly mixed. My fears of the game being hailed as the second coming of Christ didn't actually become true. At the very least the gameplay is oftentimes heavily criticized. And while I really have to wonder if all the people who praise the story and character writing have watched the same thing as I have, seeing the game actually receive some nuanced opinions from both people who like and dislike it alike is a refreshing twist I didn't expect. (Just in case this comes across wrong: I don't consider my opinions to be nuanced. I'm just a hater. But I'm right. Ha.)

Well... uh... After all this I don't quite know how to end this. I feel like I've said more than anyone should say about this game and somehow nothing of substance at all. Topical, I suppose. Oh well. Congrats (I guess) to this game for sparking something in me (negative) no other game has ever done before. For all it's worth, it strengthened my bond to some of the older entries I used to judge more harshly. I know better now.

-----

If you're the single person who made it this far, I think you deserve to have some pictures. Here's my favourite battle phase: (Something about those symmetrical orb patterns was very aesthetically pleasing. Better in motion though.)

And here's an exclusive look at parts of my initial draft and some discord liveblogging:

anyway peace out ✌️ go watch dions death scene in german

#this is my villain origin story #and also the unskippable cutscene villain monologue i'll drop 3/4th through the story

31 notes · View notes

drbased · 9 months

Text

JKR's racism/racial insensitivity/cultural ignorance isn't particularly special, unique or evil - it's literally just the product of an average white person of her generation. That's not to say that her racism is good, but rather this attempt to frame her as especially problematic is really tiring. White people will criticise 'Cho Chang', safely in the knowledge that their short stories where the main character's spirit animal is a kitsune and the villain has yellow eyes will never be made public.

In my lifetime, I have witnessed a cultural shift. Historically, there was this understanding in mainstream circles that your morals and your politics were kinda separate. But as the internet shifted the conversation, sympathies were extended to oppressed peoples, and it gradually became understood that in order to be a good person, you have to do things like 'not be racist' and 'not be homophobic' etc. Suddenly, everything that was considered a harmless joke was now 'under attack'. Consequently, there was a near-immediate backlash from conservative groups who wanted to preserve the social norms that meant they never had to consider politics in their actions. The conservative understanding is that 'good morals' means a good character - hard working, not complaining, good social etiquette, well-dressed, well-groomed, amenable, patriotic, 'stiff upper lip', not making a fuss, respecting your elders etc. etc. Now, they can't enjoy a good bit of bum-pinching, or laughing at a fake chinese accent anymore. Those things have now been included in a cultural understanding of what compassion is, and they don't like it. They find another way to distance it from 'real morals and good character', by using 'political correctness' as a way to make these new considerations sound cold and heartless, and 'social justice warrior' became a way to make the proponents of these social changes into over-zealous loonies, in the same vein as 'feminazis'.

I strongly believe the social changes towards anti-racism etc. are for the better, and since I joined the 'SJW' circles on tumblr years ago, I have found it heartening to see how much more consideration and compassion can be found in even the most basic of mainstream media.

These cultural changes were spearheaded by people who were already activists, and the conversations were taking place by well-meaning people, the majority of whom were already adults. There was a bit of jostling for where we should draw the line of acceptability (for example, terms such as 'stupid' and 'crazy' ended up being considered acceptable, since they were considered sufficiently separate from their origins as ableist slurs, and too widespread to reasonably remove from the average person's vocabiulary - a conversation that has fizzled out even though I would argue it still needs to be had), and these arguments were not always the most mature, but ultimately a consensus seemed to be reached on who gets to say what, and why.

Over time, however, I have watched the degradation of the initial concepts and I believe it's because of 1. a growing nihilism developed by over-exposure to world issues via the internet, compounded by the collective response to the 2016 electon result and 2. that movements are always influenced by the loudest voices - and often the ones who are willing to speak the loudest are the young people. When I first joined the internet, I was 12, and there were plenty of spaces for young people back then, but none of these spaces were particularly political. The increase in popularity of all-ages, all-demographic social media spaces meant that young people were being introduced to political concepts way beyond their understanding. I was only just 19 when I joined tumblr, and I was ready to clumsily absorb a lot of new ideas - but these days, most people are joining tumblr, twitter, tiktok and beyond as teenagers, some of them perhaps literal children. Unfortunately that means that this delicate balance of rightly criticising people for holding and perpetuating racist, misogynistic, homophobic, ableist etc. beliefs has rapidly degraded into a hyper-individualistic hellscape where what a person says/does is only used against them if they're already a public scapegoat. The overly zealous mentality of the fandom shipping war, where some ships are Evil and some are Pure has spilled out into real-world political discussions. Of course, that's not to say that this wasn't happening at the time - you had to sift through a lot of garbage - but ultimately the people at the core of The Discourse, who were leading the charge of cultural change, were adults with real political chops.

All of this is to say that there's a real irony in how The Discourse has shifted since I first came across it in 2011. The original 'SJW' understanding was that everyone in an oppressor class will say and do and think things that lie on a spectrum of 'problematic' to 'evil' - nobody is safe, everything we do is worth criticism, and it is not the oppressed person's job to coddle you and tell you that you're *actually* a good person when you continue to perpetuate real-world harm. If punching someone in the face means you're an asshole, then so does saying that women belong in the kitchen. The harm in the latter example may be less immediate than the harm in the former, but we're not children anymore, and we should be able to recognise that harm is still caused. Now, however, that aspect of 'check your privilege' is becoming increasingly muddied. There seems to be a collective cultural understanding that now, since we don't see yellowface or 'objectified women' in media anymore, the conversation is Closed, we've Solved Racism and Sexism and Homophobia and Ableism and so on. The treatment of JKR's writing and behaviour as a unique kind of evil akin to nazi dogwhistles is proof positive that people have latched onto this idea that they can 'cancel' women using all the well-meaning ideological rhetoric introduced by the previously hated 'SJWs' (often to protect women as an oppressed group!). The party line of the neo-SJW is that white women are the people that may not technically be the least oppressed, but they're the group that think they're way more oppressed than they are, and therefore deserve to be held to militantly high standards and mocked brutally when they get too out of line. In doing so they have accidentally outed themselves as not subscribing to their own beliefs; it is patently obvious that JKR's racism is nothing special or deliberate or insidious. That doesn't mean anyone has to like her, but the fact that she is clearly being singled out when no other white person (*cough* man *cough*) is.

It's been said before that white people have latched onto gender identity as a way to 'opt out' of being recognised as part of an oppressor class. Now, when we look at statistics about trans people, it's all 'trans man' and 'black trans woman'. Whiteness goes back to be omitted, invisible and assumed, with the 'trans' label being the primary descriptor of what 'type' this person is, obfuscating their relationship with white supremacy and allowing them to present themselves as Oppressed - the Most Oppressed, even. The cultural discourse has pivoted hard and fast to transgenderism, precisely because it diverts the conversation away from real-world oppression and towards easy things like language and indentity. The former makes oppressor classes uncomfortable and implies if not outright demands actionable structural change; the latter means people get to signal 'support' by putting their pronouns in bio and chanting some easy phrases. You get to put yourself on the right side of history by being trans positive, which means you never have to think too much about the other axes of oppression you may lie on. I have seen in my personal life people with centrist views, apolitical people and incels alike will all be supportive of trans people whilst not knowing or caring about any other leftist cause. The cultural discourse needed a conclusion - if 'being a good person means having good politics' is now the cultural expectation, then your average, apolitical normie needed something to signal that they're a good person without any meaninful change in their actual politics. Transgenderism was the easy pick. Mansplaining still gets to be a cultural joke whilst attack helicopter jokes are seen as a cringe product of the ignorant past. People who don't know what gender is (including trans people themselves!) loudly proclaim the support for transgender people's bravery. And people (women) who dissent are the easy scapegoat - bonus points if they're white, because then you get to pay lipservice to the discourse you are deliberately bastardising and cherry-picking from, thus the collective anxieties over actual societal change can be soothed.

#partisan posting #my writing #radical feminism #thank you if you read the whole thing

38 notes · View notes

defining-trans · 10 months

Text

Ask a Transgender Person Anything 🏳️‍⚧️

I'm tired of watching the same heated conversations over and over again where nothing gets solved. This blog is the solution I've come up with.

Ask me any question YOU have about being transgender.

I don’t care if it’s phrased “problematically”, insensitive or intentionally invasive, I will do my best to answer. However, you may not like the answer I give you.

Whether you're just trying to learn more about us, are too scared to ask a trans person you know for fear of ridicule, or genuinely believe people like me are deluding ourselves into identifying the way that we do and that we need to be "taught better"/"shown the truth", you have full permission to ask me, a trans person, whatever the hell you want.

Ground Rules:

I will respond only to asks and anonymous messages sent directly to my inbox. Any questions directed at me via comments, reblogs or tags on my posts are fair game for me to ignore.

If your question is indeed rude, or would most likely be perceived as such by a trans person you know IRL, I'll explain why and, if possible, give you an example of a better way to ask it.

If your question is about queer and/or trans discourse in general, I will answer it to the best of my ability. If it's about my personal stances on said discourse, I may or may not answer it. That will depend on whether or not I feel like it.

Regardless of how I feel about the questions I’m being asked, I will not resort to ad hominem attacks. (Your background and personal beliefs have no bearing on whether or not I’m capable of answering the question you’ve asked, therefore the most I will do is discuss how said potential background/belief may have prompted you to ask it.)

The only assumption I will make about you is that you want me to answer your question. I believe this to be a fair assumption, considering you will have to go out of your way to send me your question.

Leading questions (ones intended to coerce a specific predetermined answer out of the party being asked) and sealioning (feigned ignorance with the intention of wearing one down through the emotional labor of continually explaining one’s point of view) will be treated differently than genuine questions—I will first point out what about them I find objectionable, then dissect the question. If any part of the question is salvageable or could be a genuine question in another context, I will also attempt to give a genuine answer.

I am doing this purely out of personal interest. There is no secret agenda, I will not attempt to “convert” you to my “side” of things. I’m just curious about what questions people actually want to ask a trans person but are too shy or afraid of being judged to ask someone they know.

I will answer your questions based on my broader knowledge and my own personal experiences. Neither of these things are reflective of the trans experience as a whole and should not be interpreted as such. The only trans person whom I speak for is myself.

Insults are not questions. Words such as "anything other than male or female is a mental illness" and slur-flinging and so on - by themselves - are not questions, so I refuse to entertain them. Additionally, sarcastic questions like "so were you dropped on your head as an infant or are you just stupid by choice?" will be ignored.

We are not entitled to personal information about each other. You can ask me about stuff aside from being trans (i.e. completely unrelated political beliefs), but the focus of this blog is trans stuff, so I may decline to answer any off topic questions.

I'll get to your question when I get to your question. If you start sending me entitled or guilt-tripping nonsense, it will make me less inclined to answer your question. (Not all of us have the luxury of enough free time to entertain the questions of strangers on the internet who may or may not believe we deserve to die horrible deaths, and those of us that have that and the stomach to do it won't be up for it 24/7.)

It's fine to reblog and comment on my posts even if you don't have questions for me. In fact, that would help me reach more people who might have questions about transness that I can help answer.

I'm undecided as to whether or not I'd like to open my direct messages to people looking for a civil debate or more private atmosphere. Please respect my boundaries and do not DM me with questions or arguments at this time.

44 notes · View notes

abronzeagegod · 11 months

Text

WIP: Eldritch Tech Support Chapter 1: Helping a Spider Aspect

[Author's Note: this is the first chapter of a long, multi-chapter story that is likely going to be longer than all the other eldritch tech support stories combined, probably north of 20,000 words. As of writing, I'm just under 8,000 words and I haven't even hit the main plot yet. This is also being written in third person because it feels very necessary for story and scenes, I do plan on redoing some select parts in the traditional second person to see how it flows. Please enjoy and thank you to everyone who has read and supported me so far!]

Tech support is hard, this is a known fact, not a secret.

To be good at tech support you really need to have intelligence, charisma, and lots of faith.

Luckily Aeth knew that they had intelligence, well as much as they could know that about themself. They knew how to code and use some of the languages of computers, including the notoriously complex and silly C++- (C Plus Plus Minus). They had a degree from a local university attesting to that effect. Intelligence also governs knowing how computers interact with each other, and how the hardware within a computer interacts with the computer as a whole.

They're also fairly certain they have charisma. At least that's what their best friend Lyta keeps telling them.

"You have such an easy charisma about you. You're nice, easy to talk to. It's why I like you so much," she says at least once a week.

Charisma for tech support is a must because people can be weirdly cagey with their personal electronics, and they often refuse to tell the whole story from some combination of shame, self interest, and ignorance. The people themselves are a puzzle that require trust to solve and get them to reveal what insane, stupid, nonsensical things that they did to the whole system to get it to function this way.

However, the most crucial skill to have in tech support is faith.

Faith is key to figuring out exactly what the hell is going on and why the client believes that this whole thing is working, and why the working thing suddenly stopped working. Why the things that should work, do work.

They all have to be something of a priest with no god. They become a priest with every job, a priest that believes in this specific code, a priest of servers and computers and cold dead things imbued with the power of lightning and math.

Every job is a little bit different, a little bit stranger than the one before it. Every role of a priest ever so slightly different.

And Aeth has been accused of having too much faith at times. Faith that has to go somewhere, so it goes into the job.

Aeth was out in the field today. Luckily their rotation was pretty easy, they had two days out in the field, two days in the call center. Not that bad, all things considered. This was their last day before their thankfully long weekend which couldn't come soon enough.

It had been a busy day, crisscrossing their district in the northeast of the city, bouncing between several different tech support calls. Mostly internet related things, lots of outages and router trouble, at least one person was having their router haunted by his mother-in-law.

If they were lucky they'd only have two more calls to do before they called it a day and finally went home.

But that's the thing about their luck, it was always bad.

The penultimate job was for an underearth spider aspect god. They couldn't remember the exact religious denomination they belonged to, but it mattered little.

It is the nature of priests and tech support personnel to be superstitious.

They changed in the work van before heading to the third floor walk up the spider aspect lived in.

The rules for spider aspects were to wear colors, but not super bright, anything that attracted too much attention was either predator or prey. A nice pastel blue to signify that they weren't aggressive but also that they weren't something to be consumed.

There were plenty of rules and restrictions on the entities that lived in the city, and they knew that their job would never willingly send a tech support person into the lair of a giant person-eating spider, but they still had that fear, and that fear fed the superstitions.

Thus they changed in the van and before they went into the den of the spider, they grabbed a small vial of an anise solution, something that was supposed to be abhorrent to all spiders.

It was just in case, they told themselves.

They reached the door and knocked a few times, calling out to announce themselves.

"It's Tech Support," Aeth called out.

A few moments later the door cracked open and out spilled some darkness.

"We called for you," the entity just beyond the door said in a raspy voice with several clicks as they spoke.

"My name is Aeth," they say as they hold up their work ID to verify that they are there to help.

"Come in," the spider aspect said.

The door creaked open, and Aeth stepped beyond it to the apartment. It was dark and dry in there, it smelled faintly of some kind of incense, but they couldn't place exactly what kind. The darkness felt almost like a blanket draped over everything.

"You've had some issues installing some hardware?" they say as the spider god closes the door.

The spider was tall, almost seven feet but that was with all the hunching over and keeping their many limbs tucked in close. If they were to straighten up and spread out they would be almost oppressive. They were dressed simply, with a t-shirt that had a very detailed train on it that said, "My One True Love The A57-19 Commuter".

The spider nods it's great, large head.

"New keyboard, won't work," the spider said as it led Aeth towards the area where the desktop sat. "Requires new drivers, very frustrating." They can't help but notice the awkward way the spider can't quite pronounce the s's in their sentences, and how they have been deliberately avoiding them.

"Should be an easy fix," Aeth said as they sat at the computer and took out their own equipment.

The second they said it, they knew that they shouldn't have.

---

Fifteen minutes into the job, they knew that things were much much dumber than they should have been.

The new mechanical keyboard need some kind of new driver installed but it wouldn't give any indication into what driver it needed. Aeth spent a decent amount of time looking up the exact make and model of the keyboard on their own equipment, but it seemed that the company that made it flamed out very hard a few months ago.

("Found keyboard preowned, very cheap, in great condition, am on budget," the spider explained.)

The company wasn't the best or the most trustworthy, thus their sudden and total collapse.

As they were very close to locating the problem suddenly a small train that they didn't notice on a track hidden in the darkness of the apartment all but thundered in. The track was elevated near the ceiling, and the small model train was bright and loud in the dark and quiet room. It looked like some kind of Immortal Dancer party train with bright, flashing neon attached to all the train cars.

The entrance came as a shock to Aeth, but it really shouldn't have. They had a look at the computer and saw the icons on the desktop.

The spider aspect had three different train simulation games and they might have peaked and saw that they had logged close to 800 hours on one of them.

They tried to apologize to Aeth for the interruption and the train was on a timer that they had forgotten about, but honestly, whatever brings people joy, even if they are an underearth spider god aspect that would give some humans nightmares.

"I'm not here to judge," Aeth assured them and returned to the problem.

Eventually, they found the fix when they took the keyboard apart and found the little add-on that shouldn't have been there.

After examining it closely, and double checking their work, Aeth turned to the spider. "I think I found the problem. NDIVISION, the company that made this keyboard went out of business a few months back under a lot of customer complaints and bad business practices. They had, apparently, installed a keylogger in their keyboards to nominally track the use of their keyboards and when things needed to be replaced but was a massive security and privacy risk, so the complain exploded essentially so that suing them would be very hard to do. The keylogger is trying to reach a server that doesn't exist anymore."

The spider looked incredibly disheartened. Aeth privately congratulated themself on recognizing the body language of a spider god aspect.

"I can, probably, fix it. But the trick is that this will 100% void any warranty that you got with the keyboard, but since the company that would fulfill the warranty doesn't exist anymore."

"What can be done?"

"I can fix it, if you tell me I can violate the warranty. It might break later down the line, but this will work for all your day-to-day needs."

"Streaming?" The spider looked eager. Aeth had recognized the setup of a new streamer, trying to get their thing off the ground.

"Absolutely."

"Go ahead."

Aeth nodded and in a few short moments, removed the keylogger, then quickly wrote some code into the driver for the keyboard to bypass the keyboard trying to call the server of a defunct, terrible company.

The whole job took an hour.

Before they left, Aeth left the name of a very good company that made excellent keyboards when the spider was ready to upgrade to something new.

The spider thanked Aeth profusely, and almost didn't let them leave to get to their next job.

It was still early enough to make it to their last job of the day.

Hopefully this one would be much easier than the previous one.

Hopefully Aeth's luck would hold out.

if you like this check out my kofi page where you can read subsequent chapters early and find a bunch of my other stuff

#eldritch tech support #chapter 1 #this is going to be long and hopefully good #it takes a while to get going but that's because everything is necessary #we need a lot of setup and a lot of character #that way you feel something when i take it all away and put them into one of the many many hells #if you need more of this i've got plenty of other ETS stories and this is set in my Cold Black Iron and Green Fire world so read those #i like them a lot

47 notes · View notes