#but like I havent been thinking about it outside of like on topic discussions or seeing fanart

[clunker-n1ne]

My invader zim fixation died </3 oops. I am probably gonna still enjoy it and doodle it sometimes but besides that I dont know if im gonna be super involved with the fandom itself for now oooops.

#oh well #it was fun while it lasted LOL #I still love the show and its so good #its my jam #but like I havent been thinking about it outside of like on topic discussions or seeing fanart #some of the discourse lately burnt me out #in general I dont like how ship heavy the fandom is #its a mess #the only accs I like are the ones I follow at this point LOL #y'all neat #erin talks

[realbeefman]

Do you have any good house fic recs? I am Struggling with my search.

for sure! although Disclaimer, i havent been reading house fanfic for very long and ive pretty much only read house/wilson so far, SO this is more of a hilson fic rec list than anything lol

Warning Signs by out_there - oneshot, 12k words, Wilson-POV, set around the end of s3. SUCH A GOOD FIC i laughed so much while reading this. genuinely delightful. possibly my fav house fic i’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.

The Line of Thought by tevinterimperium - oneshot, 12k, Wilson-POV, set after s3 e15. THEEE classic fake-dating AU. this was the first fic i read in this fandom and it absolutely fucks. im a SAP i love a good “no homo but OH GOD THE FEELINGS” plot!!

Desert Mesa Motel - 8 miles outside of Kingman, Arizona - 12:03 AM by plorp - ficlet, 1k, House-POV, post-canon. this makes me BAWL. very very good fic but SAD. and DEPRESSING. will make you CRY/pos

How Not To Be Boring by fourleggedfish - incomplete/abandoned, 497k, Wilson-POV, AU from around mid-s5. if u like whump (which i absolutely do) u will probably like this fic. if u are squicked out by sex, u will hate it bc these guys bang 24/7. this fic had me pacing, glued to my phone, sick to my stomach, crying (several times), and obliterated my sleep schedule. i can’t rec it highly enough. every chapters includes appropriate content warnings, but some major themes that appear throughout are character death (not of main characters), the aftermath of severe child abuse, and mental illness. if any of these topics are a trigger for you, please don’t read this work.

Forsake Me Here by MonsterBoyf - complete, 8k, Wilson-POV, ambiguous setting. Wilson has intrusive thoughts about mutilating House. He tries to cope. features a lot of very graphic imagery and does an excellent but extremely accurate job of portraying an OCD-spiral that could be triggering to people. i LOVE this fic i think about it so so much.

An Inconvenient Truth by anathaema - complete, 15k, House-POV, ambiguous setting. contains the quote “You’re the suicide bomber of revelations” and is one of the funniest things i’ve ever read. plus the way in which wilson’s sexuality in this fic is handled is honestly so realistic and entertaining. HIGHLY recc this to absolutely everyone who enjoys hilson

the more it took away by scribespirare - oneshot, 10k, House-POV, ambiguous setting. Omega!House has his first heat since presenting. Alpha!Wilson helps him through it. I LOVE OMEGAVERSE AND I LOVE FUCK OR DIE AND I LOVE THE WAY THIS FIC HANDLES THIS IS JUST GRAHHHH. If u don’t enjoy omegaverse u won’t like this but i can’t make a house fic rec list and NOT include this one

Aftershocks by black_cigarette - series, around 125k in total, various POV’s, set sometime post-Tritter arc. this fic IS gen, but honestly, i didn’t know that going in and didn’t realize it wasn’t a slash fic until the very end. tldr is that wilson is brutally assaulted because house has been gambling with some unsavory people, and house helps him deal with the aftermath. this fic does not pull punches. its is extremely graphic and everything wilson goes through is described in detail. it is a messy story about recovering from brutal trauma and everything that entails. DISCLAIMER: there are sequel(s) to this series available on the author’s livejournal, but i haven’t read them and can’t speak to anything they discuss.

no need to worry (making up your mind) by scribespirare - complete, 25k, House-POV, set sometime in the early seasons. House lies about having a Jewish boyfriend to get out of visiting his mother at Christmas. Things quickly get out of hand. THIS FIC IS SOOO *tears into it with my teeth*. I love when they scheme together <3

#ty for the ask!!! had a lot of fun thinking abt which fics i enjoyed the most/stuck with me the hardest #tried to provide tws for everything but if i missed anything plss call me out #house md #hilson #housefic #house md fic recs #hilson fic recs

[liquidstar]

I'm an anime only but i'm curious how is ferris relationship with gender?

im going to answer kinda quickly (and w/o spoilers) bc im abt to have dinner but the basic gist of it is:

crusch and ferris swapped gender presentations as part of a pact, something that goes back to their respective backstories. (might be harder to tell that crusch is intended to lean more masc, but its in like that knightly bishounen kinda way so it can come off more androgynous than anything). ferris takes the deal a lot more seriously than crusch does (partly bc of devotion, partly because of love) and even still "plays the part" when the pact no longer requires it after crusch got her memories eaten (and was acting more girlish). ferris wakes up every morning repeating the mantra of being a "cute girl" as an affirmation- saying that "this has been the mantra for a long time" believing whole-heatedly that there's magic in this sort of believing, and thats why they just somehow havent developed secondary sex characteristics (and they thank their ancestors for the lack of beard hair- i think it must be somekinda undiscovered divine protection of hrt). though they have a bit of a complex about the idea of this girlhood being "borrowed" because of the swap, and sort of have a higher sense of pressure to confirm as strictly to femininity because of this- because its for crusch. but dont necessarily mistake this for ferris disliking the pact itself, the pressure is something more internal. crusch never held herself to the same degree of devotion to it, wearing casual dresses while inside the house and such, while ferris has committed every fiber of their being to it. this has been the mantra for a long time. and there are genuine insecurities to be found within this- at a certain point a villain representing lust accuses ferris of dressing this way to "lead on" men, something that we as the audience know isnt true (ferris still loves crusch), but never the less messes with their head and in a way i think its meant to be a commentary on the general preconceptions audiences have when it comes to characters like ferris- rezero is a deconstruction series after all so stuff like that is to be expected.

all that being said do i think ferris is the most well done amazing rep in the whole universe? not really. i mean im not transfem so im not the authority on this topic, but im echoing stuff ive generally seen discussed- i think ferris is kind of an example of a character that suffers a bit from the creator not reeeaaallly knowing how trans people work or not realizing hes effectively written a trans person because of this. i defaulted to they/them to ferris here because it is kinda complicated and can be taken a few different ways. how much of it is for crusch vs how much is for ferris? how much of an identity does ferris have outside of crusch? outside of being crusch's "girl side" etc. this theme is something we see with ALL the knights! they all have a blinding and often self-destructive devotion to their liege. and a lot of these are heavily reliant on gender roles in a lot of ways (subaru projects his masc powerfantasy onto emilia, julius has to constantly be the Perfect Knight for anastasia, reinhard can only ever be a Hero and stakes his family's redemption on felt becoming king, al lets priscilla just behead him 100 times bc hes a freak.) in the case of crusch and ferris the entire concept is that these roles have been somewhat swapped, but the devotion stayed the same so. theres a lot there. a lot thats a lot more complicated than just like.... "boy dresses like a girl bc its my fetish" eugh

#and btw none of this is to also say that you cant just be a guy who wears dresses bc you like it either #ive heard ppl argue that and its like. theres more there in this case #look on paper i would very much like to be masc but in reality i dont have the body type and i like to dress feminine so ill also never loo #like the part. and i think ive made peace with that for now. for now. but what im saying is its not the dress or appearance itself ever #i think there are plenty of anime boys that wear dresses and are in fact still boys. such as yuki a3 or kuranosuke princess jellyfish #love those guys #i also think there are often characters that have more nuance often bc of meta reasons and ferris is one of them. imo

[johannwolfgangvongoethe]

taking koga nui outside

(koga-watch diary below, except its all about adonis actually)

i havent been able to find a piercing/charm the right size and shape for his left ear yet, so he has a little bat for now :)

its almost june, so rose bloom started. heres another image but a spider snug in lol. its an araniella cucurbitina!! their bright abdomens are quite pretty imo.

sorry if i end up spamming nui images with literally every rose in the garden. maybe with the vegetable patch too.... but first id like to make some matching overalls for him or smth.......

btw happy official adonis center event announcement!! (F to the intern who paid for the accidental leak) i am looki- i am actually terrified of it. since hidden beast was really really ooc and horribly written and multiple levels of offensive. specifically noting this down so i can come back in a week. if its even slightly better than hidden beast, ill count that as a semi-success i guess. but rei is the 4*. so. oh well. a lookback-story makes for a great setup in theory but enstars loves to waste good chances & i think theyre neither comfortable nor able to provide something decent for it.

i feel like undead has had One good center event with nightless city live. bride light was perfectly cute and fluffy and important for kaoru but otherwise without impact... flashback was genuinely alright, but while the topic of undead breaking in two halves was really upfront and present, it wasnt really... discussed or resolved???

the one big thing they all have in common is that they Really undersell adonis and make him a background character who just has to endure whatever happens to him...

his involvement in nightless city live and bride light is cool but limited... he sort of feels like a punching bag in seven bridge... flashback has a really interesting narrative role for him but he only gets to briefly voice his discomfort and everyones attempts of reassurance feel a tad bit like a short afterthought and therefore dishonest. and. well. hidden beast. bottom text. ("Yes, senpai, thank you for putting me in a fake life or death scenario, it really builds character <3" WHERE ARE WE....) the only undead event with adonis in an active role that shows off his competence is sandstorm, i think.... so i really hope the trend does not continue. but, well, enstars writing. baby adonis is the cutest ever though... and i guess an arranged marriage plotline could play out interesting enough, maybe. his family is very famous, so sure, this might as well be a thing. "i hope your fav marries a woman" is funnier to say when its eichi. but you dont want that to happen to your guy. not like this wont be resolved by the end of the story on behalf of gacha idol boy game logic and the inviolability of yume. but i would love some drama.

lets see how that goes........ if nothing else, both 5* cgs are stunning and the song is really nice and the outfits are adorable tbh. AND THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THEY WEAR NAIL POLISH SINCE NIGHTLESS CITY LIVE.... i mean there were the hellsing outfits but hellsing is sort of just a duo lol.

prayer circle for the new koga casual outfit to be really unhinged and for adonis outfit to be..... either really 40yo dad or handsome. either is fine. i dont need them to look good per se. i need them to be funny.

#enstarsposting #i have to... start writing out my thoughts again..... ive gotten so writingphobic fsr............. thats what the blog is for SOB SOB

[sabakos]

lots of people, especially trans people who are undergoing physical transition, (including myself and several of my friends) get asked invasive questions all the time. (are u rly unaware of all the cis people who think its a-ok to ask trans ppl abt their genitals?) but even outside of trans ppl, sexual harassment exists and often takes the form of invasive questions.

the purpose of asking "do you think thats an appropriate question?" is twofold: one, it shows ppl being purposefully malicious that their behavior will not be rewarded, and two, when asked genuinely (as it should be) it can help people who genuinely dont know that its invasive to understand that, if theyve been asked this question before (and thats why they think its normal), that being asked that question is not normal and is in fact invasive.

also just as a general rule, just because you personally havent experienced something, doesnt mean other people are "making up a guy to be mad at"

huh. interesting, I haven't experienced that and would certainly not ask someone about their genitals, but that's gross and invasive and I agree that people shouldn't do that, and I'm very sorry that it does.

I don't think that this is a particularly useful response, though! I think a plain e.g. "I'm not comfortable answering that question" is the best, most polite, and unambiguous response. In a more general sense it communicates to the other person that you do not want to discuss a topic and then lets them infer that other people may not want to answer as appropriate.

Unless it is genuine malice, in which case I also kind of doubt that snark is going to help you here? That sounds like it would encourage that sort of behavior. If someone is trying to troll or harass you, a clap-back is generally not useful to you! But being flat and boring about your boundaries is going to encourage them to bother someone else.

But like, personally? I think if someone in real life ever responded "Do you think that's an appropriate question to ask someone?" to something I asked in good faith, uh, I would probably not want to interact with them ever again, no matter what tone of voice they said it in. I would probably be too hurt if I still didn't think it was a personal question upon further reflection, or too embarrassed if I did!

So it seems more like with this confrontational, passive aggressive strategy that you're encouraging malicious people to interact with you more while driving away people who are simply awkward or don't understand their own personal boundaries. Uh, that doesn't seem great to me!

#anon #anti-autoresponder reblog tag

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Repost: Ask on BTS Paving the Way

Anonymous: Hey bpp. You talked a little bit about the 'BTS paved the way' discourse on your pinned post but I'm curious to see - read? lol - more on your thoughts about it. If youve talked about it before, can you pls link? Since you might not want to discuss/rehash this at all lol. I got curious because this discourse seems neverending and i just watched a yt video essay abt it. Imo, both sides of the spectrum - army and kpop stans -seems to be missing each other's points. Like, i think a lot of kpop stans havent paid attention to what bts have contributed to kpop and theyve dismissed armys arguments entirely and i think a lot of armys havent been into kpop and kpop history to definitively say the stuff I've seen them saying. A lot of the arguments and statements are very inflammatory too and while I agree with what armys are saying, the language they use isnt going to make kpop stans listen - i mean, the ones who arent blinded by their hate for bts/army anyway lol like a lot of kpop stans think when army say bts paved the way/bts popularized kpop, they always think army mean popularized it in the west. When we have receipts of them doing spectacularly globally, especially in places like india where they seem to have exploded since dynamite. Theyve also broken a lot of records in japan, where kpop is already popular but still seem to have a lot of trouble penetrating mainstream bec theyre very insular. They also think that we mean 'first to xxx', which isnt really what we mean at all. And a lot of army seem to dismiss what older kpop groups have achieved too and just like to prop up bts while putting down other groups and dismissing what theyve achieved for the genre. I just think since a lot of armys are in kpop only for bts -same tbh - we tend to be ignorant of the genre as a whole, which isnt good bec we're always arguing x member is the best in the industry or even bts is carrying the industry on their backs, which dismisses a lot of great artists that are doing great work like solo artists like taemin. Like, I'm an army and I'm not a "stan" of any other kpop artists but the whole argument just makes me v v uncomfortable. I guess i still haven't adjusted to stan culture since i've never been a fan of any artists like i am of bts - to the point of joining the fandom and really immersing myself in it - so the intensity of it is still jarring to me. I know it happens with big western fandoms like taylor swifts too but i think i'm still old school when it comes to being a fan of a musician, you listen to the music, rave about it to friends and buy/stream the music and go about your day.

**

Hi Anon,

Anon, I sympathize completely and not to harp on you here, but my first instinct reading this was “who cares?” - this is generally how I feel about this topic whenever I see it, so not knocking you specifically here. And I’d just like to remind everyone there’s an active, senseless, and deadly war raging right now in Ukraine. Please donate and/or pray for Ukraine if you’re able to.

(And then there’s the leader of Stray Kids who is probably a bigger ARMY than me at this point)

This is not me dismissing the gripes of stans of 1st and 2nd generation groups (the usual suspects), this is me saying that what I’ve seen of this discourse is huge swarths of people engaging in an elaborate exercise in collectively missing the point. And yes I’m also referring to those splitting hairs over the semantics of what it means to pave a road. (Heaven help us). And you already allude to this in your ask, anon.

The phrase: 방법을 만들다 which is what a lot of Koreans have used to describe 'paving the way’, is colloquially used to mean 'chart a course’ or someone showing how something can be done.

If this were a normal conversation with normal people and not k-pop stans, it would be enough to point out that yes, BTS was not the first k-pop group to step foot outside Korea or in the US, but BTS is the one group that has gone farther than any k-pop group has before i.e. created the new path. It’s really that simple. BTS has become a household name globally without doing a single show at Coachella nor having any of the mediaplay seen for other groups that attempted to fully break into the US market. The fact that Korea’s military enlistment laws (which before BTS were enshrined as basically unchangeable) have been modified at least partly on their behalf (and for the benefit of any idol who meets the criteria) and that BTS is the first k-pop group to receive a Grammy nomination, has created a new tier, the highest one yet, of what is possible for k-pop artists.

BTS is the biggest group in the world. They rival Coldplay according to Coldplay. Before BTS, the reality is that this ambition was not even within the realm of possibility for much of k-pop. Even with BTS breaking the records and gaining the influence they have, k-pop is still considered to be niche in some circles, though there is undeniably more visibility and investment brought to the genre since BTS started snagging headlines. Some people still hope BTS will go the way of Psy and BoA who were a fad on the Western landscape for a minute then essentially faded into obscurity. But so far, that’s not what has happened, and everyone is paying attention to see what BTS is doing right, that perhaps other groups can emulate.

BTS won’t be the biggest group in the world forever, but the chances that the next biggest group is a k-pop group, is significantly higher now because of BTS.

La fin.

It’s true some ARMYs can be downright disgusting with how they throw around BTS’s accomplishments and sometimes ignore, dismiss, downplay, or just straight up shit on older groups who made the first moves into Western spheres, whenever this topic comes up.

But a part of me understands them. When BTS won the TSA award in 2017, it felt like hell to be on Twitter and I wasn’t even an ARMY at that point. I did a search through my old screenshots and found more than 15 k-pop fandoms spent weeks shitting non-stop on BTS and ARMYs about how useless it was to win at the BBMAs. It was a non-stop barrage of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, all the -isms you can think of related to POC musicians. Though of course BTS was not the first group to go to the US, all of a sudden, k-pop stans were convinced BTS had 'sold out’, abandoned their heritage and were pandering to 'white colonizers’ (sound familiar?). I started calling myself an ARMY the next year (2018) and as I’ve said already, I was reporting things almost constantly. It was hell.

*

You’re right this discourse seems never-ending because it is never-ending. Remember you’re dealing with k-pop stans who will argue with you that water isn’t wet if it means something positive for their group and some ARMYs are just as bad. Whenever I see people arguing about what paved the way I just mute that whole conversation. I sympathize with you feeling uncomfortable about this topic. I’d like to suggest doing what I currently do which is to not waste a single moment of a single day worrying about something that’s already obvious and settled. This particular discourse is the perfect example of a time sink imo, because really, who cares?

Originally posted: March 18th, 2022 1:35pm

#bts army #fandom #paving the way #bts paved the way #repost #kpop #kpop fandom

[tetedump]

Could you talk a bit about your journey with therapy, if you're comfortable and any tips you have for finding a therapist who clicks with you? I havent yet found someone who understands the complexity of my experiences and I feel like i'm losing hope.

for sure! <3 thank you for the question:) so proud of you for still trying to find someone who you click with—i know it can take like literally forever, so massive props to you for sticking with it and knowing what you want (or what you don't) :)

my therapists have spanned general talk therapy (i went in and said 'hi i want help managing day-to-day life/depression/my friend says therapy would be helpful for me so i'm here' and then i let them do their thing), an ocd treatment program, and cptsd trauma therapy.

the general talk therapists I liked because I thought they were kind, i felt heard, and i liked that they offered different perspectives than the other adults in my life at the time did. i only noticed the progress after months and months—it was slower changes to my thought patterns that taught me to think about what was happening more logically in addition to having my emotional reactions to it, as well as thinking about the likelihood of someone else actually feeling or thinking what i thought they did.

the ocd treatment program (i used NOCD, highly enjoyed) was really good for me because the end of my talk therapy I felt a bit like we were chatting, and like progress wasn't being made each session. like i had somewhere i wanted to go and the therapist wasn't finding the same things important that i was. i liked that the ocd therapist was younger (my prior therapists had been 40+ yo and this one was in her late 20s I believe) and she wasn't afraid to talk about intense topics—but i also wasn't afraid to talk about intense topics. her age helped, because it felt less like talking to an adult and more like talking to a peer i really respected, but I also was at a different point in my self confidence ~journey~. i like to think that if i was with the talk therapists now i would be more blunt/honest, but I think younger age therapists have definitely clicked for me more.

my current trauma therapist i found because after realizing that i needed/wanted specialized treatment for my ocd (exposure and response prevention, aka ERP), i went on psychology today and typed in 'cptsd' and 'ocd'. then i went and all the therapists that looked fairly friendly i emailed to confirm that they had experience treating both cptsd and using ERP. i just liked the vibe of the therapist who got back to me the quickest; i liked her website and she sounded kind on the phone and open to working with me even though i didn't know exactly what i needed. I appreciate that her facial expressions really rarely change when I talk to her—that would have terrified me in years prior, but now it just teaches me that she's going to react to everything i say the same, so i can share what i want. I like that she gives me ample time in our EMDR processing for me to work through things on my own, but she's there and doesn't leave me hanging if i'm stuck. I like that she's teaching me to do the work on myself—i liked that about the ocd program as well. i knew exactly what we were doing at any moment and how it was benefitting me, and how i could do a similar thing outside of the session.

questions for you—do you know what topics you'd like to discuss in your therapy? do you know if there's a specific 'disorder' you'd like to work on, or a specific type of therapy? you could put any of those things into psychology today to help narrow down some therapists, and those could be great things to bring up to the therapist. it's also 100% valid to want a therapist who identifies similarly to you—it's not weird at all to not go to a therapist bc they aren't the same or similar gender/race/age/sexuality/immigration status/literally anything. you could also always ask a therapist for recommendations if they don't personally fit what you're looking for—in emailing a bunch of people, i was like 'if you don't have experience in these areas, would you be able to recommend me someone who you think might be a good fit?'

i'm incapable of writing short things, particularly about therapy; we hope i'll get better at that in the years to come 🤦‍♀️ please ask any other questions you may have. it can take time, but you've absolutely got this.

#therapy #therapist #ich

[earlyspringtranscendence]

corin pushing past his own comfort zone to allow patrick the comfort of touch during a deeply traumatic time for p like literally im so fragile right now i can’t even begin to explain all of what’s going thru my mind. but i will.

like i think the biggest reason this mental image is so important to me is that andrew rowe’s writing with patrick (and mara tbh) has always held so much nuance & tenderness, like here’s this golden retriever type of boy who holds so much love and positivity in his heart, here’s this little nerd who loves the world he lives in & loves his friends so much theyre family (again, same goes for mara who im p sure was the one who said she needed family time while they were discussing blackstone banditry but it could very well have been sera which is still a win for me bc all these characters are so fantastic*) & he would do ANYTHING for coring — remember him being the first person to stand up to magnus for corin ?? remember corin being hit & his first thoughts are thank fuck patrick saw this? cause i dont think he’d have felt that way if it were anyone else, not even mara or sera or even derek or keras (though derek & keras ymmv bc they are still adults in this situation so theyd be far more likely to be able to do anything, but still theres the shame of it which i think would be more pronounced w them than it is w patrick bc he’s just such an unbelievably kind hearted character)

he doesn’t have the same sway over corin’s emotional intelligence as sera does but he still offers guidance by just being so emotionally intelligent himself, and anyway these are all his perfect traits but then not only that he’s also vulnerable (which is still a perfect trait but you get what i mean) and its not the first time he gets to be vulnerable but for the tables to have turned so severely that now its corin who has to be the brave, kindhearted one.... when patrick gets to be fr scared and hurt and young it’s by far one of the best parts of the books that happens outside of the story, because theyre ALL like that, bc in silence of unworthy gods im pretty sure theyre still only 18 (and you can tell the difference btwn an 18yr old who grew up in an awful family, an 18 yr old who grew up practically without a full family/her current family, an 18 yr old who had the best family but other circumstances denied her certain privileges and an 18 yr old whose home life idk jackshit about but i feel like it was probably pretty good bc a) how could u not adore patrick and b) well he came out bright as sunshine so you know, but anyway theres nuances in their maturity and patrick is by far the youngest but theyre ALL young & scared & inexperienced & going through far too much... i mean like read wobm keras is 21 in that im p sure and like ok yes he does go through a whole thing in book 1 fighting gods or whatever (overachiever) but his actual training is a piece of cake in comparison to what these guys go through)

anyway idk where that was going so nvm but its not only corin, it’s keras who .. ok to be honest i havent read more than the first book in 6ss which i need to get to bc i feel like im missing some context lately but keras clearly is in a very bad very stressed out place right now & mara telling him he needs to fucking COOL IT &&&& all of this being done through the medium of touch, which is such a taboo topic in AA because its from corin’s perspective and corin is you know. traumatised to hell and back.

its fucking magnificent. andrew rowe is so fucking good, not just for his worldbuilding but for his characters and his KINDNESS towards them, UGH !

* i was gonna go in depth on that but this is long enough so lemme just say im also loving sheridan this book i mean i loved them before but now that theyre like a more established type of love interest (.. sorta ??) it just makes me giggle bc there is no one for coring to end up with without me adoring the shit out of it. jin? im so down. cecily? i feel like itd be a little sad & they need to build to it but i LOVE cecily so sure !!! sheridan? literally i’d scream itd be so funny and SO good, LUTE ??? i mean. no ones even hinting at that happening but yes 100% yes.

plus i feel like corin has a crush on keras in that ‘thisman is 26 and beautiful & knows so much’ kind of way. anyway. AH !!! 

#plus i will not ever get over the very first scene in this book being keras finally standing up to magnus #& frankly i'll never get over teft offering to duel corin #then again ive always loved teft for his fruity ways #but fr there is not a single character in these books that you cant adore #even the evil guys like. other than magnus i could even love children of the tyrant (source: jonan) #recently read

[doomednarrative]

On the topic of listening to "Marsha, Thank You for the Dialectics" one too many times, and the idea that you might be identifying too much with your trauma and mental illness:

----

If you've followed me for any length of time on this blog, you'll probably be aware of two things about me:

A. I'm clearly mentally ill in some regard, and B. I use music to cope and work thru the issues related to my mental illness and trauma a lot.

The past four years have been both the worst and best years of my life. I ran away from an abusive home, I've gone thru two major breakups and one of them just absolutely rocked my shit for awhile, I've been consistently working thru my queer identity and figuring all of that out for myself, and the list goes on.

Finally leaving an environment that had trapped me in a cycle of traumatic experiences for years left me in a weird place. For once I was somewhere where my illness and suffering was being taken seriously and not constantly belittled and ignored, and my queerness was accepted and respected. And that felt great!

What Wasnt so great about that was the Overwhelming feelings of "oh my god I've been suffering for so long and now that i'm out of that place, I cant stop thinking about it and realizing how much its truely fucked me up and worsened my mental health" that came with everything else.

And with that overwhelm, somewhere along the line I started to identify with that suffering. I had spent so long in a place that refused to acknowledge that I was hurting at all, that now that I was in a place where I could truely express that hurt and how it affected me, I didnt want to let go of it.

This was a cycle that went on for awhile, and one that I didn't really realize I was trapped in until about March this year.

Enter Will Wood and his wonderful music.

I'd heard of him months before, already had Dr. Sunshine and Hand Me My Shovel in my spotify library. But I didn't really give him a Proper listen until Miles suggested I do so, and I fell in love almost immediately with his stuff. Underneath his music just being fun and wild to listen to, Will's music talks so openly and genuinely about deeper themes of personal identity and mortality and the current culture we live in, and so many other important things.

"Marsha, Thank You for the Dialectics" is a song about both sides of the mental health discussion and about the struggle of how everyone deals with their own personal identity in relation to their mental health treatment. Its a song that once I heard what it was really saying, it slapped me in the fucking face to say the least. I havent heard someone describe the things this song is trying to say in a way that actually made sense and summed up my feelings on the discussion so nicely ever honestly. The things Will addresses in this song are important, and its all stuff I've personally pondered on for awhile too.

Some lyrics that really stuck out to me would be these two:

"Who makes the call, whats a symptom whats a flaw, can it be both? Well I suppose thats an answer."

"Ain't your identity at stake? Does aspirin kill you with the pain?"

What a complex question, isnt it? Does treatment kill your identity, change who you are as a person? Is that a bad thing? Whats really a symptom of the mental illness and what makes it that? Do those symptoms also count as personal flaws?

What do you do when you identify too much with your illness that you feel you can't get treatment for it?

That was the real question I got stuck on for myself. Because after a lot of deeper reflection on my own behavior and thoughts towards my illness and trauma, I made a discovery I hadn't known before really thinking about what this song was saying:

I found that I was scared to be treated. I was scared of finding an identity outside of my illness. I had become so accustomed to defining a part of myself by my suffering, that i became afraid of what or who I could become without it constantly weighing me down. And thats a very heavy thing to realize about yourself, but it was a very eye opening thought for me to have.

And I dunno how much longer itd have taken me to figure out if it wasnt for this song tbh. Its just not something I wanted to think about for awhile. I became content with identifying myself by my illness, and I was resistant to seeking out treatment for fear that I wouldnt like who I'd become if I tried to treat it.

Thankfully, this is something I've been working thru more recently after having that revelation.

I don't really have some grand statement to make at the end of this. I'm really just here journalling and writing down how I feel about all of this stuff recently. But, I do think theres something to be said about how art and music can really affect people. Hell knows I've had quite a few good mental revelations about myself since listening to Wills music more recently. Its been helpful honestly.

If you take anything away from this tho, maybe it should be that its not a bad thing to examine just how much you define yourself by your illness and trauma sometimes. You might find that you're in a little too deep sometimes and want to pull yourself out.

You're more than what your illness is. And treatment for it isn't a bad thing either. I may just be learning this for myself, but I do think its true.

Just something for yall to ponder for now I suppose.

#like i said. this is just a personal journal post about some thoughts ive had recently related to wills music #lord knows I could talk more about the effect his music has had on me recently too. maybe ill do that later too. #me talking #will wood #wwatt #long post #rambling #ill put a read more on this later but im on mobile rn #okay to rb

[visxme]

can i rq something for lady d?

i keep thinking about what her reaction to a trans guy would be yk? her hatred of men is Severe but what's the actual reason for that? if biology or societal norms are factors would she have different opinions on transmen?

my thoughts have always been that either she hates men cause of resentment at the power they hold in the world, especially at the time she was alive before she met miranda, and now that she has as much power as she does she doesnt want to deal with them in any way whatsoever or my other theory is trauma based, that a man did something to her or being a woman in the time she was alive was literally just a series of traumatic experiences leading to complex trauma perhaps even cptsd or really just a deepseated hatred for the power men held over her as a woman in her time and, again, now that she has the power than she does, she can make it so she never has to see men (other than the other lords of course) again

and of course theres probably a million theories on the origin of her hatred i havent thought of that could explain! maybe shes just an absolute boss who simply hates men cuz they suck! i have no idea but i want to hear people opinions and looking outside of the cis way of things, what would her reaction be to a trans man? a trans woman? a nonbinary person? im very curious especially cause of When shes from and societal opinions surrounding gender at the time and how those effected her, how her ideas have changed over the many years shes been around?

anywho im curious on your thoughts!! this is a topic that Fascinates me

- yr local transmasc psych major

Thanks for such a good topic for discussion! I'd love to chat about it.

At the very beginning I'd like to emphasize - I'm a cis woman so my opinion could be different then yours - point of view depends on where you sit.

However, lets start!

The first thing; why Lady Dimitrescu hates men? Personaly; I think she hm... likes the idea of woman more? For me, she just seems like a er person who could help her greatest enemy (a woman) to prevail over a man.

Now, when I was thinking i came to conclusion; maybe she doesn’t even like women more - she just hates men so she has to like women??

Before Miranda, she lived in a well, hard times. And Im quite sure that she had met a lot of men who were bad. Looking down at her because she was a woman, hating her because she was a woman, pushing her around because she was a woman, subjugating her to themselves because she was a woman.

I think she would live like that quote: “I hated men because they didn’t have to suffer like a woman did. They could die or go to Spain. They could have fun while a woman had birth pangs. They could gamble while a woman skimped on the butter on the bread. Men, nasty lousy men.”

The next thing, she was smart enough to notice the power men had. Just the word "man" hold so much of it - “don’t cry like a woman/do it like a man.” She would notice the way that the men under her were respected more than her. Her title “Countess” seemed to not exist because it weren’t “Count”. And Alcina loves power and freedom.

And i think she truly despised the power men had over women - they had to act like the men please, to speak, to look, to live. They didn’t have the chance to go for a walk in the death of night or to become a politician.

For nonbinary people; I don’t think she would treat them any different than women. I mean; they are not men and a reason why she treats women “better” is because they are not men. From the other side; I don’t really see her caring about the gender of her meal but Im of the opinion that in e.g. conversation she would respect pronouns ect, hell, she would even allow trousers in her castle - because she knows how it is; to be disrespected and humiliated

And when it comes to transmen I see one option really; she seems to be an open-minded person so transmen = men (we all know that, i hope.) I think the biological aspect of that wouldn’t matter. They are men and she would treat them as so. However I do not see her brain cells being like “he is a man now, you hate him from now.”

Maybe, over year her perspective changed a little bit. She could work with some man if she had to - e.g. Karl. So, if she would be in any kind of relations with a transman she would adjust to that thing and live with that - just as she has to live with Karl

I think the subject is interesting and would love to hear your opinion on that!

#Lady Dimitrescu #alcina dimitrescu

[funky-furby]

rough furby fandom timeline

reminiscencing abt old furblr made me wanna revisit some of the changes we’ve seen over time! to give new people an idea of it, and also to spark discussion with older members, i joined in 2017 and i havent been as active as of 2019 so i cant speak of prior or after, but heres my thoughts

2017

fandom is still small, but growing

focus is on them as toys

lots of posts are guides on names of colors, or how to push start

2005s are not very popular, i saw someone struggle to sell 2 working ones just because their beaks were damaged

besides the pink ones, people really liked those

i also lost a bid war on an orange 2005 that ended up going for 50 bucks, do you  understand the regret i feel

lots of furbys are cheap, furbys in general are cheap, besides the occasional person thinking their nib snowball is worth 300

rise of furbology (later furbae)

popular for owning a lot of furbys, and owning a very very roughed up frog furby called swampy

theres discourse abt drawing furbys with 4 feet

small nature of fandom means that discourse usually involves people everyone knows directly (furbyconfessions accidentally contributes to drama but some spin off accounts purposefully try and start it, furby discourse blogs are a thing)

small nature also means that a lot of people remember each others furbys by name

each furby usually has a personality attached to it too, describing things that furby tends  to do more than others, or what its physical differences mean (like being mute)

furby brotherhood is the only furby discord server and it gains notoriety due to the lack of moderation but in my experience it was a really fun wild ride

customization is fairly limited to maybe drawing on freckles, accessories, eyechips (people were poking them out with needles), to my knowledge tracer was the first popular furby to have further customizing

furby blogs humour is very silly, lots of piss and vore jokes

customized furbys from ebay sellers are pretty widely disliked, usually because theyre the clay ones, or because theres a lady trying to pass off her customs as rare releases that never happened

people go out of their way to help each other  find listings for their dreamies

2018

purity culture? in furblr? since a lot of people use furbys to cope (many many posts of people bringing them out in public, describing what  they and their furbys did), theres a pressure for furby blogs to be happy safe places, safefurby tag to avoid swearing and other stuff is started?, and also to avoid hatred in the main tag

theres like, a 70% chance of anyone u interact with in the fandom being a 15 year old trans guy on the autism spectrum, similarities make it really easy to make friends

considering special interests also usually mean wanting to know as much as possible, there is a WELL of information still

rise in popularity also means a lot more information is found abt furbys, like prototypes, a new factory and more obscure merchandise

since a lot of people empathize with  furbys, damaged or not completely working furbys start to go for higher prices than previously as people empathize with them

that one furby that was found in the desert (bumbleweed) gets REALLY popular

rise in customizing coincides with more stylization in how people draw furbys

whenever someone comes up with a new idea u’d see a lot of it in the next week

like stuffing a furby to make them fat, that one took OFF

painting fur and also furby patterns to sew own skins creates a strange demand for  just the furbys faceplate

furbys start to get strange names, like hot  dog water

fall of furbae as shes revealed as a scammer among other reasons

crap ton of new furby discords are started, for specific topics, or just to avoid brotherhood despite them having a completely new mod team (im a little biased)

theres a still a large overlap in furblr with animatronic and other toy robot blogs

an age of really creative stuff tho, content was constantly evolving

oddbodies are a controversial addition to customizing, longfurby wasnt the first, but i do remember a lot of people taking the faces off of plushes and adding a furby face instead

before they were called oddbodies some people were really uncomfortable with them, but people also didnt like their furby friends being tagged bodyhorror, so oddbody was a good compromise

people were calling dibs on listings before, but its more widespread here, even though you cant call dibs on an open listing

furby prices go through the roof oh my god

kid cuisines especially, i saw more than one person pay 600

2005s go up in price too

oddbodies also caused rise in price on furby buddies

2019

mainstream success?

customization and oddbodies seems to the fandoms focus?

customization starts to overtake previous guides to the point where i see newbies struggle to find information

Plushification

First plush ones have clay eyes, later ones add in the eyes of the original furbys

Some controversy over taking apart furbys

popularity from within  and outside of the community further effects prices

since 2012s are both really common, and not popular their prices seem pretty unaffected (besides rainbow crystals)

at this point i think people are taking their furbys out with them less, and i see less people make stories abt what they and their furbys did that day

customization trends were really really cool to watch happen, but since my reasons for being in furblr was the community nature of it, i have a lot less information  for 2019 as i was less active in the fandom

and for 2020, i have nothing! so essentially this is me asking, what was 2019 and 2020 furblr for u like? did i remember any older stuff wrong? whats some stuff u wouldve included or have questions about?

#furby

[transdib]

ive wanted to do youtube, or animation, or anything to do with being an influencer, for literally 6-8 years, ive attempted to make videos during those times, or write scripts, or do anything along those lines. but every single time ive attempted, ive had the same trains of thought or the same voices in my head that essentially make me give up before i even start. i have super complex feelings about it and im in a rambling mood so i guess im just gonna vent all i can about it and get it out.

i mean, a huge reason has been because ive been going through absolute hell my entire teenage/young adulthood, just all these personal traumas/emergencies/crises that have made me need to prioritse surviving day by day, which makes taking time to create genuinely so difficult. it makes me sad because as a preteen/early teen, i of course went through a lot of trauma and family dysfunction, but i used the computer and mt creativty to escape it all. i was really actively making amv’s, stories, art, etc. i arguably had more of a following/community than i do now. and im not sure what changed. i think just the general....fact that my trauma started to get more complex and being repeatedly shown that escaping didnt truly let me escape my abuses. i think ive been rewarded for staying low, keeping quiet, staying agreeable and compliant, because anything outside of that has gotten me hurt in the past.

i feel like im constantly swimming with ideas and inspiration, and i have a lot of feelings and need to talk about things. im not self absorbed by any means, and the idea of being an “influencer” itself is not whats appealing, i just like the idea of having my ideas out there and seeking connection through that. 

and a lot of the thought patterns i get when i think about creating are a combination of “whats the point?” “someone else has already done it and better” “its an oversaturated market” “what makes me more interesting than the next person?” “i cant handle having my existence on display to others for them to critique and form opinions about” etc which i know are all very self-deprecating thoughts

but they get more complex than that

i think about how much youtubers are under scrutiny, i think about how toxic internet culture has become, and not even in a just way, like i literally cant handle the idea of a small group of people stalking my internet history over the 14 years ive been online, even knowing my deadname or some shit. and ive seen how much people can hurt when they wanna hurt.

i also, in a self deprecating way, just find myself not interesting. i think a lot about how people are constantly fighting algorithms and creating an online persona to get an edge, to grow their platform. then i get into this spiral of feeling like ugh. we’re forced to make a brand out of ourselves and sell ourselves. we lose a lot of our humanity through this, because weve curated a very specific version of ourselves that is digestible and consumable. im also not a confrontational person (due to trauma) and i see a lot of the popular youtubers be people that are very outspoken, cemented in their ideas, and unfortunatly, are in dramas or even seek/perpetrate it. of course i follow a lot of people who arent like that, but they feel a lot more educated and well spoken compared to me.

again, i understand a lot of this comes from self depreaction and pesimission, but i literalyl cannot shake these thoughts every time i go to create something. “whats the point” is a very strong thought, because i feel like a nothing, someone who cant add anything substantial to pretty much any topic that has already been discussed into the ground. it feels very bleak and a big reason ive struggled to even draw or create merch the last 2 years. or bothered with my online presence as an artist. i have lots of visions and goals about where i wanna take myself, but dont have the charisma, motivation, or certainty that i want to.

and i know that being a creator isnt as vapid and vain as im making it sound, being a creator online is just that, a creator. expressing creativity, taking the ideas in your head and sharing it with others. i feel like thats, at its core, why pretty much everyone starts out doing this. but i mean, dont even get me started on the need to monetise off your creativty, thats another big chunk as to why i falter in producing “content”. im just so fatigued, because i know i cant ever been like my 13 year old self again where i just created whatever the fuck i wanted out of fun, bc i now feel like the internet has been...”infected by capitalism” for a lack of a better term, and theres a lot of pressure nowadays to sell yourself to a certain standard.

ironically, i feel like composing a proper think piece about my feelings and putting them into a video lmao.

also just practical issues like i dont have the money to invest in a camera/equipment, ive had unstable housing in the past so production has been difficult/impossible, and i havent had the computer to handle video editing up until last year. siiiigh, just so much fuckery

#life of doge #pls dont reblog unless u have something to add about relating or something #i know i sound....whatever in this #also considering im just random user on the internet i know how weird this all comes off #ive got a tiny tiny following already due to my art but idk #just all these complex feelings about creating in general has me feelin not great

[slutaktion]

a few tips on sex with trans men & transmasculine individuals, from my own experience

(these tips could apply to you both as a cis or trans/nonbinary person. a lot of them could probably apply to sex with transfeminine ppl but i dont have the experience to speak on the subject so ill keep it to what i know.)

1. someone who hasnt had top surgery may not be comfortable with you seeing their chest during sex. you also shouldnt assume that they wont be comfortable with it. consider both possibilities before having sex. talk to your partner. are they comfortable having their chest exposed? are they comfortable with you touching their chest? is that in fact something they want you to do? you dont want to trigger dysphoria or discomfort in your partner - you also dont want to avoid touching them when they want you to because you made an assumption about their dysphoria (& possibly make them feel like youre uncomfortable with their body). some transmasculine people may be uncomfortable with seeing or touching their partners chest because it will trigger their own dysphoria. thats also something that may need be discussed.

some examples of possible scenarios: maybe you wont ever see or touch your partners chest. maybe theyll wear a binder, a sports bra or a shirt at all times. maybe you wont see their chest but youll touch it through clothing. maybe youll see their chest but you wont touch it. maybe youll see and touch their chest. etc.

2. the same ideas apply to your partners genitals: if they havent had bottom surgery, dont assume that your partner is looking for genital stimulation, vaginal penetration, or anything that they havent stated they want. 

some transmasculine people are comfortable with vaginal stimulation & sex. some transmasculine ppl prefer anal sex. many transmasculine people dont bottom at all. dont assume that a transmasculine partner will bottom.

3. if your partner hasnt had bottom surgery, ask them what you should refer to their genitals as. personally, i just asked my partners "what do you want me to call your junk?" & that was that.

dont assume that a partner is comfortable with you calling their vagina a "pussy" or another slang word, or even that they want it referred to as a vagina. dont assume they want their clitoris referred to as their clit. on the other hand - dont assume that theyre necessarily uncomfortable with that. some transmasculine people would feel weird calling their clitoris a dick. some transmasculine people dont have bottom dysphoria & are fine with you referring to their genitals with typical slang used for vaginas. some transmasculine people may prefer that you never acknowledge or refer to their genitals at all - especially if they dont want you to touch their genitals at all, they may just want to not be reminded of them at all. 

4. you should always aim to discuss boundaries, with any partners. this is especially important with trans partners because you may have assumptions, doubts, or expectations that you may have never questioned. 

you may assume that a trans partner will always top or always bottom (note: this is often linked to assuming that "everyone with a vagina bottoms" & "everyone with a penis tops", which really is based in cisheterosexual norms of sex; these assumptions align trans ppl with standards of their assigned gender at birth & are pretty transphobic). you may have assumptions about your partners level of comfort with some sexual acts or with their or your anatomy. you should aim to talk about how you view the sex youre going to have so you can know what to actually expect & do. that kind of talk doesnt have to be coldly medical either. ask your partner questions: "do you want to fuck me?" "would you like it if i went down on you?" "do you like when i touch your chest?", etc.

5. if your partner is on testosterone, dont expect their genitals to be the same as the genitals of a cis woman. testosterone causes clitoral growth, which means your partners clitoris is going to be larger. it can be more or less big depending on the person. for many people, it will get visibly harder and bigger when theyre aroused. on t, the clitoris may behave pretty much like a very small penis (think if just the head was poking out of the body). people on testosterone may produce less lubrication, which means if youre going to vaginally penetrate your partner you absolutely should count on having lube (note: you should always count on some lube regardless of your partners sex or hormones anyway bc it can always come in handy). in some cases, transmasculine people may have vaginal atrophy when on testosterone, which means the lack of lubrication will cause tearing to the tissues. this can make vaginal penetration very painful or impossible. if your partners wants vaginal penetration but it became painful after hormones, or if the vaginal atrophy causes them pain in daily life outside of sex, they may want to look into asking a doctor for a topical estrogen treatment. such treatments are applied only to the vagina & do not counterbalance the effects of testosterone, but they can stop vaginal atrophy.

if your partner is getting on testosterone, they may experience a rise in sexual libido, a few weeks/months into testosterone. they may find that theyre horny very often, sometimes even constantly. that can be a pretty fun time! however, if you have a long-term partner who is getting on testosterone, it can be a good idea to talk about this beforehand. would you like to be having a lot more sex, or would you rather they handle it privately?

if you started sleeping with someone after they got on testosterone, and they were very horny all the time as an effect of testosterone - if this wasnt the usual state of their libido before hormones, its likely that its not going to stay like that in the future. after time, their libido will probably decrease again and theyll find themselves to be in the mood less often, closer to their libido pre-testosterone. this doesnt mean that theyre less attracted to you or you did something wrong - its just an effect of hormones.

6. if you have a penis, you need to use a condom whenever you have penis-in-vagina sex, unless your partner has had a hysterectomy. testosterone may reduce fertility or even prevent a person from getting pregnant completely... but you dont know that for sure. many people on testosterone can still become pregnant, even if theyve been on testosterone for months or years, even if they never have periods anymore. (you should also always use protection, unless you & your partner are exclusive & you know what stds you may or may not have & how to prevent spreading them. this is just specifically abt the pregnancy risk.)

7. after all these tips... dont be scared. sex with a trans person is not fundamentally different from sex with a cis person. the goal is still to share an intimate moment with another person, where the both of you try to make one another feel good, & the key to that is still to communicate what both of you are looking for & what your boundaries are. you may be lacking a baseline understanding of parts of sex with a trans person bc you probably havent received education on anything but penis-in-vagina sex between a cis man & a cis woman, & even if you know about gay sex, its probably between two cis men or two cis women. but in the end, its all about just checking in with each other & doing what feels good.

- rezki

more on these subjects:

Sex and Communication

Vaginal bleeding after testosterone

#trans #trans partner #safe sex #boundaries #communication #dysphoria #trans man #transmasc #hrt and sex #rezki

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

Hiya I have been loving that "thirst thread" and i thought i could offer some thoughts of mine. I'm a queer/lesbian woman and also regularly question my gender identity. To give a background i've been told before that I express my sexuality, physically and vocally, like a gay man might (been told that by different gender of the LGBTQ+ community). Very flamboyant and not fitting within butch and femme spectrums (which i know are not the only way a queer woman can present herself but are the (1)

the most recurring frames around me), with physical mannerisms as well. I personally don't feel attracted to Liam at all, because the way he's displayed and portrayed feel aggressive and demanding to me. Niall, most of the time, is a very bland, no-feelings type of relation. To me he gives off a friendly vibe without performing anything but i also havent seen all of the material that has been discussed (last NTMY video). Now Louis, as it has been said before, i feel both attracted and i (2)

i wanna be him type of desire. However it varies. i feel like there is a relaxed and non performative aspect in the way he dresses to be confortable while being also fashion conscious. His appearance feels very non male-gazey to me yet suggests it hints at something and i feel like i read it the same way as i do for queer women. To that is added a witty and caring personality that would instantly draw me in in a woman. There's something about this seemingly open vibe he gives that I feel (3)

that I feel like i relate, physically and personality-wise, to people i'm attracted to and wanna flirt with. So to me, the attraction i might feel feels very queer and not expected/demanded from me. Harry is different in the way that i feel what we see most is a performance of somehow femme flamboyance that i also relate to some queer people i know. I find delightful most of the time and attractive when it's pushed to its more playful or powerful sides. Again, that attraction only comes to me(4)

when it's something I connect with my experience of real life queer people and traits that induced flirting. But more generally i feel again the kind of push pull of wanna be him/be with someone like him that might also say something more about my own relation and questioning around gender and gender/sexuality expression. I also know straight and non-straight people that are attracted to him but when i discussed the topic i found that that attraction would mainly rely on physicality for them (5)

while to me it would revolve more around behaviours/mannerisms. FINALLY i wanted to mention Zayn. For someone that has been perceived as the beautiful one (at least around me) and felt most of the time very unaccessible, i surprise myself to be very drawn in by the softer and quieter sides of him but this time i don't know if it's a protective streak or curiosity to find out more about him generally. However it is an interest that feels accidental or less nurtured (6 and end !)

P.S for the rambly ask : if that gives any insight on the previous thoughts, the only men I feel any form of attraction to in my every day life are queer and very often gay men. But even then that's rare. And I don't know of their queerness beforehand, but it's always confirmed later. (7)

**********

Thanks anon - it’s really interesting to hear how people relate to them.  I loved that you included Zayn - I find it hard to figure out how to talk about him in this context, because he’s not presenting himself to the public. And inaccessibility and desire can work together in curious ways.

Just to pick up on a few other of your points. I thought what you said about male gaze and Louis was really interesting, because I think there are two sides for it.  The first is that he doesn’t dress like he’s presenting himself for an outside gaze - and that’s something that I think that it’s easy to identify with or want to identify with.  But the second is the safety of if he looks at you - it’s not that sort of gaze at all.  I also really liked what you said about it feeling queer, because it’s not expected of you.  I do wonder what’ll happen when Louis goes on tour - which is a much looser space.  Louis will exist in the same space as fans for an hour and a half, which is obviously not what’s been happening.

I thought about what you said about relating to Harry’s performance was really interesting - and I’m going to think about that.

I want to end on Niall, because I do think that is quite interesting.  I know that there is a strong thirst fandom for Niall, even if I don’t understand it.  I don’t think Niall needs to do much to service this thirst fandom.  And I think that’s partly because there isn’t a lot of ambiguity about gender and sexuality about his public image (whoever he’s sleeping with).  

He has attempted to publicly perform sexuality a bit, in the OTL and NTMY music videos.  Both seemed to me to be failures.  But in general Niall’s not very good at music videos - so it’s hard to figure out if he’s specifically bad at performing sexuality.  But to me it’s such a different sort of being bad at performing attraction to women to Louis’. 

#Thanks heaps anon! #all these conversations are really interesting #Anonymous

[atla-fandom-confessions]

There are so many people claiming the cam girl ZK fic has rape content and this shows exactly how much they haven't read it. Which means zero of it. It's obvious that there are a bunch of persons trying to start drama writing unfounded statements and drag the author in because they don't like what they create. Also, as many said, the author left the ZKSW before the release of prompts and new rules, so accusing them of writing rape fics it's a complete lie. I suggest to read other ZK fics from them, like Heart In Hands (warning: rated E for smut) where Zuko literally workships Katara.

This said, I read the message from the indigenous woman where she wrote about sex exploitation of WOC, how it's a complex topic and how the use of sex work for a POC inspired character can be problematic. I think it was one of the few constructive ask about the topic and I'm glad that person decided to share it. I think the author didn't think about those implications simply because the story isn't set in our exact world, so they decided to leave the racism and sexism outside their work. It's meant as a light and smut story between Katara and Zuko, without any rape (not like some other writers), with a lot of focus on what both characters desire and how they wouldn't impose themselves on the other, especially Zuko on Katara.

I understand the cam girl can be perceived as a racist trope used with Katara or Yue, but it was never the intention of the author, if people try to read the fic I think they would notice it.

This obviously doesn't mean they have to like it, but at least avoid to go around and spread false informations about the author and the fic (a thing that's really common in fandoms sadly).

honestly i think we need to talk about topics like this, but we should try to look at it outside of the context of ships. (yes, i see the anti zutara lurkers in my notes feeding this fire. you are not helping and i know you don't actually care)

to the indigenous anon, once again i really appreciate you. i understand it can be difficult to be civil but you did it and you didn't make it about ships, you focused on the issue. we need more honest discussions like this and more people open to listening to you. i mean this is why diversity is so important, because it's easy to make an honest mistake when you havent been exposed to other people's perspectives and miss implications what you write might have. there is no shame in saying 'ok, i was wrong, i'll fix it and do better' and we should support people in trying to do better instead of just attacking like some anons were doing.

sorry for the rant but this is getting tiring and i do not want someone who does seem to be coming from a non malicious place to be attacked.

now please send me some fun asks

#user drama #minors dni #tw rape #atla

[infochores]

Leftism, the DPRK and the Nuclear crisis

I thought id write a thing on this because most of the current far left talking points on this issue are terribly poorly informed. There’s a tendency amongst leftists online, particularly notable on twitter, but also here to conflate two kinds of commentary on contentious geopolitical issues into being one form of sin. Obviously the most current example is regarding the Singapore summit. The way its currently playing out in a lot of cases is basically as follows (I’m being a little snarky here but this is a fairly accurate play by play for a lot of the stupider stuff):

Prominent analyst, journalist, politician or Liberal pundit makes a statement criticizing the deal for a given reason. It might either be ordinary partisanship, or a genuine technical criticism of the content of the circumstances. 

It gets retweeted

People comment on  it in the retweets, claiming that the given person is in favour of  Koreans getting exterminated, because all objections to the circumstances must be borne of a desire for war or something.

The difference between multiple forms of criticism gets totally ignored by the left, we dont learn anything and we continue patting ourselves on the back.

Obviously this is fairly normal for online stuff but even so i think we need to start paying much closer attention to these issues and at the same time, stop being so parochial in our thinking about issues such as these. Therefore I’m minded to make a few points here about why its  short sighted to interpret this via the lens of western domestic political leftist rhetoric, the problem being that there’s severe limitations on that lens. 

Firstly its primarily based on established rhetorical forms that are largely out of date or constrained by a lack of room for outside information. This prevents us from usefully adopting lines of analyses from schools of thought not traditionally connected to existing normal stances within leftism. On the occasions where this does occur, we co-opt it for our own benefit. Essentially, If there’s a form of analysis, or an area of academic or technical expertise where the information and commentary is not directly subordinate to a conservative, US-centric interpretation of anti-imperialism then it tends to get completely discounted. The main example of this type of thing i wish to talk about is an area of interest of mine, namely arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, as well as the place of nuclear weapons within a fairly basic Marxist influenced viewpoint on nuclear politics. 

Secondly, this stance is limited by the dynamics of online sectarian politics and the desire to produce content. Everyones familiar with this and knows how it works so im not going to bother going into this in any great detail. Essentially its providing a great addition to our respective mutual firing squads.

A third issue is the presumption of knowledge, and of moral or intellectual high ground on a combination of ideological bases. This latter point ties into an ongoing dynamic of orientalist thinking and presumptions that tend to seep into leftist rhetoric on subjects surrounding the Korean Peninsula. This is notable particularly within Marxist-Leninist  self styled “anti-imperialist” discourses, which are the main area of failure on all three of the issues ive listed, though there has been cross-pollination with other leftist sects. This behavior is reliant on making the nuclear crisis All About Us, unconsciously sliding over the human and political realities in order to establish credentials, ignoring regional factors beyond what is read about in a few articles and a surface level adherence to popular conceptions of anti imperialist praxis. Its essentially a highly banal form of watered down orientalism mixed with a vague presumption of superior politics. The reality is that we havent really learned anything from the crisis, because we’ve refused to. Arms Control, Non-proliferation and a lack of far-left institutional knowledge: I’m mainly going to address the first issue, that of a general lack of understanding of evolving dynamics in nuclear proliferation issues and arms control within the far left because its where i have the strongest base of knowledge relating to this matter. Functionally, nearly no-one in the circles of the online left I’m in actually knows how arms control is meant to work either in its form as a policy enacted between countries on a mutual basis, or in its form as a system in the world of geopolitics within which countries formulate policies. Im not trying to grandstand here as this circumstance is totally understandable: its a very niche topic and its not as if I’m particularly special for having made it something I’m interested in, but regardless there is a knowledge gap in leftist discussions on this issue and it seems important to highlight it. If there are any leftist arms control nerds that happen to see this assuming it gets more than a handful of notes by all means let me know. Anyway, I think its wise at this point to make the following statement and to explain it:

In the particular example at hand, namely this weeks Singapore summit and the deal made there, what has just happened is very likely a disaster in the long term, and should be absolutely regarded as such by the left. This is due to a combination of technical and political factors relating to the context and structure of the agreement. I am saying this as a Marxist and as someone in favour of internationalism and popular movements directed towards nuclear disarmament. Leftist institutional knowledge and the general knowledge in the community of how arms control works isn't really that great. During the cold war it was ok, due to the size and importance of the disarmament movement, but in the modern era its essentially non-existent. Anyway, the summit was a disaster for arms control and very few of us seem to get why. This is for a few reasons, but the main one is that it has established a precedent for successful, aggressive  strategies of proliferation under extreme duress. Arms control as a concept has taken a serious beating since 2003 and the Iraq war, with other major points of inflection since. The most significant of these have been the collapse of the JCPOA agreement with Iran  and the various chemical warfare atrocities in the Syrian civil war. The collapse of the Libyan state stands as its own special case as well for its own reasons. In the case of the recent summit the precedent set has been one of the solidification of certain dynamics, of the transition undertaken by nuclear weapons from being articles characterized by their technical use into being primarily characterized by a capacity for abstract political use in a way that had not yet been achieved, and of the deliberate manipulation and degradation of existing institutions in order to facilitate proliferation. I am not merely talking about Nuclear weapons being used for political purposes. I am talking about a very specific type of political use. This dynamic is extremely bad and provides a model for action to accompany the diminishing difficulty in producing nuclear weapons, which will provide a great incentive to states seeking to proliferate nuclear weapons. The only outcome possible here is the furthering of the development of weaponry to be used against populations and in so doing, the armory of empire. This is not a victory for Anti-Imperialism, despite its surface appearance having had great propaganda value.

The deal has essentially entrenched both the (many) negative and the (few) positive aspects of the present crisis, essentially providing cover for the ROK to continue a gradualist approach toward achieving a sustainable end result at the same time as providing a model of success for proliferation as a state policy. In fact i would argue that one of the main contributions that this will all make to geopolitical history will be the establishment, testing, and success of a new model of proliferation, one with profoundly negative though interesting consequences from a leftist perspective. Essentially, by forcing the nuclear issue, by making all of the political capital centered upon repeated escalating crises, comprising a protracted greater crisis, the DPRK strategy meant that all political questions were to be decided according to a single signifier of value: the technical usability and validity of its nuclear weapons, demonstrable to all onlookers from the outside. A value which the DPRK leadership were able to be the controlling agents of, determining its magnitude, qualities and effects. In doing so it has essentially managed to manipulate the existing notions of arms control agreements and non-proliferation principles in order to turn those structures to its advantage: to turn them from being systems which constrained nuclear proliferation, to using them as a basis for updating the nuclear weapon into taking on a modern form of its already infamous role as the ultimate political commodity. It was essentially a strategy of folding up all issues into one and forcing everyone's decisions to rest upon that single focused issue. It is now far easier to proliferate nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in terms of technical restrictions than it was 30, 40, 50 years ago. The designs are no-longer unknown and the required production technology is no longer as challenging as it once was. Provided with this, directed efforts towards various kinds of proliferation now have new potentials: the end state no longer has to be one option from a three way fork between a failed program, a successful program and being attacked/sanctioned. Obviously nuclear weapons have always been used as chips to bet on and trade between states, but for the most part those items, in the historical contexts of the cold war, the India/Pakistan standoff, and in the cases of Israel, Iran and the DPRK prior to recent developments, were developed for strict military terms, as items of deterrence, as physical items for physical use as instruments of policy in the most literal sense. In other words, they have been pursued by states for their use either as weapons, articles of deterrence or as a combination of being usable weapons and articles of abstract political power realized. This has now changed, likely irreversibly, and the summit has been a notable moment in the change.

The realization of abstract powers, and the risks of a new Nuclear credit:

What the new development has done is to introduce the potential for the transformation from nuclear weapons as weapons into a sort of proto-commodity form, whereby proliferation, as a behavior that states may engage in and as a form of production existing in a political sphere, has been brought to a such point of technical and political development that it may now be used not merely as an action engaged in to achieve a physical end, a productive approach to achieving a state policy, but takes on a new meaning, as a form of bargaining chip in itself. Elements of this have been present with nuclear weapons since the cold war in  relatively isolated minor forms but never reached the stage of proliferating for the sake of trading against that proliferation.

I believe that the summit has laid the groundwork for the establishment of such a dynamic  and I suspect that the fallout from the summit and the ongoing crisis ( which is not at all over) will now exacerbate this tendency in future cases. It is as if they have succeeded in laying the groundwork for making nuclear weapons not merely commodity items between a state and its industrial complex, but have extended their existence as commodities right into the geopolitical sphere. The truly perverse thing about this is that this change has been achieved without the DPRK even having to actually physically trade any of them: it has merely made a vapor-deal based on vague promises to limit the most obvious cases of its potential power.  In this manner another well established dynamic has been reinforced: The confrontational relationship between the instability of deterrence and the long term tendency evolving from it for states to engage in proliferation. The repeated historical cases of the seeming success of deterrence, (a false semblance) have created a climate of encouragement for proliferation: existing nuclear weapons states are encouraged to expand and proliferate new powers to counter their antagonists advances, whilst non-nuclear weapons states begin to seek the weapons to achieve parity on various fronts. Against this backdrop, both the repeated crises in deterrence, the breakdowns of its various forms, political crises between states etc, and the longer periods of time between them, the long moments of false security, serve to enhance the fetishized value of deterrence. The illusory success of deterrent strategies encourage the proliferation dynamic. Deterrence will therefore, if i am correct, become a contributing factor in commodity-led proliferation. But now a new aspect of this dynamic has appeared: the change in nature of arms control into also becoming a contributing feature. Prior to this arms control was a diplomatic, technical activity, with strict technical aims. It may still take on that characteristic but is at severe risk of being held, in measure of value, against the new measuring standard that i fear is being established.  This situation is profoundly negative for leftist political positions: the brief lull in tensions may be whisked away by a new return to sabre rattling at any point if political capital is to be made, ushering in more risks of accident miscalculation or catalytic war and further it is a massive blow to the disarmament movement. It will certainly serve to entrench national military industrial complexes in nuclear states, as well as further contributing to regional problems in areas where proliferating states are players. Holding all this to be down to the blunderings of one leader and the energy of another is a useless way to think about this issue. This is to the detriment of internationalism. 

#marxism #DPRK #Nuclear Weapons #Arms control #non-proliferation