#discourse critique

[scarletspider-lily]

this bullshit discourse around cishet aromantic men is driving me insane and im not aromantic or aspect in the slightest but i gotta rant. because it's just getting very ridiculous at this point, because people make assumptions about everyone and also want to twist the definition of being queer- for some reason?? 1) "well- well they dont get oppressed!! >:(" sorry, pause, why the FUCK are we making "oppression" a part being lgbtq+ ? is this some new fucking requirement?? are you people okay?? i dont give a fuck if some queer child has had the best life ever in a super inclusive area from the second they were born, i would be happy for them?? maybe you should too? listen, ive faced oppression for being bisexual, and have felt envious of those with accepting family and whatnot, but what im not going to do is discredit my fellow queer person for facing "less" or no oppression at all for their identity. crazy take, but i think the goal should be to reduce queer oppression...

and oppression is not... some fixed scale type of thing, someone was trying to say that being asked "when will you get married?" to aro people wasn't oppression. as if that is not the only thing aro people face, as if instituitions like marriage dont exist, with certain economic benefits aro people can't partake in, and social constructs making certain people seem "weird" and straight up ostracized from social groups if they choose not to partake in romance.

2) amatonormativity is a thing, look it up. i get that it may be frustrating if you are allo to accept that youve been taught a lot of stuff about romance that seems magical and all encompassing and you dont want to give it up, but no one is asking you to do that. i used to be taken aback at some things aro folks pointed out, but as ive read more, ive realized that romance is wonderful to some people but shouldnt be held up as the ultimate pedestal in society. so, romanticize romance and whatnot if you personally want to, but understand that certain social constructs may harm people, especially those who do not want relationships for whatever reason. plus, learning about amatonormativity has helped me positively go about my own relationships- platonic and otherwise! 3) im gonna piss people off with this one, but please stop with the bullshitty radfem takes about cishet men being the ultimate spawn of satan, or something. the jokes here and there were one thing, but some of you guys actually believing that most of what cishet men do is inherently evil is legitimately concerning and this doesnt do much to actually help any matters. no, the man choosing to have another hookup this week or continuing to fuck a female friend-with-benefits isnt the ultimate enemy here against women. most takes on "hookup culture" generalize a lot of people's experiences, and i know there is research backing multiple perspectives on this, but at the end of the day what needs to be realized is that you cannot stop two consenting people from doing things together. it has no impact on you, and does not have a grand impact on society. unless you have definitive proof that whatever evil man you're talking about is "using women", there's no point to what you are saying, and if there is such a man, cishet aro men still are legitimate in their identity. would you exclude gay people from the community because of gay people who do bad things? would you do that for most identities? no? what makes this so drastically different, then? dont pull the oppression argument again for the love of god anyways, i hope all the cishet aro men and aro people in general are having a nice day. you will always be a part of the lgbtq+ community. dont let anyone tell you otherwise, or discredit you for the amount of "oppression" you face, as im sure they dont know half of any struggles you have. and if you (or any queer person in general) do happen to have few struggles, im very happy for you, as that's how it should be!!

#rant #i genuinely cannot stand this discourse anymore #discourse critique #queer #aro #aromantic #arophobia #tw arophobia #scarletspider-lily #long post #btw im not aro so if i got smth wrong lmk but ya!

[theweeklydiscourse]

No, actually. It is not “shaming Katara’s femininity” or her “maternal traits” to critique the ways in which her character was relegated to a the passive role of the Avatar’s grieving widow and largely ignored by the narrative post-ATLA. Oh my god, we are not “degrading” Katara by pointing out the sexist implications of how her character was handled and to suggest such a thing is just so…infuriating and very revealing of the underlying sexism in the fandom.

No thoughts, just people endlessly glorifying Katara’s maternal tendencies without bothering to question or investigate the adverse effects of her parentification. Apparently anyone who criticizes the writing of Katara’s character is just denigrating “traditional femininity” and THEY are the true misogynists! Not the male writers or viewers who consistently minimize Katara’s significance to the narrative and mock fans who ship her with anyone other than Aang.

Not at all, really we should just accept the conditions of the narrative uncritically and never question the biases of the creators. How dare we criticize them and point out the underlying sexism in their writing?

#pro katara #atla discourse #it’s making me insane and you would not believe the fury a certain TikTok evoked from me #these people HATE HATE HATE to see any logic in the critiques provided by zutara fans because they are so blinded by their desire to consume #the show completely uncritically. #Good lord some of these fans are SO misogynistic and yet we’re the ones who get called *problematic* for shipping zutara #avatar the last airbender #avatar zuko #avatar #zutara #pro zutara #atla critical #atla #atla netflix

[theoddest1]

Hey guys, check out this thread on twitter! Has all the vital info and everything. Also has some people share even more info of Viv being a fucking ass

Like this, for example. Here, we have Viv's sister having to speak for her to talk with Starvader, someone Viv quite literally fucked over....Vuv refused to speak to her herself in dms and refused to properly apologize.

#vivziepop critical #vivziepop criticism #viv get a grip #vivziepop #vivienne medrano #Vivziepop thread #vivziepop critique #anti spindlehorse #anti vivziepop #indie animated series #indie animation #drama #twitter #twitter discourse #hazbin hotel #hazbin

[spopsalt]

Hey quick shoutout to "Rick and Morty" for showing that abusers are people too and are capable of change instead of making them into Sunday cartoon villains with zero depth, or turning them into a precious little baby who did nothing wrong ever, and for putting a traumatized character in therapy instead of stuffing them into a romantic relationship *Cough* Helluva Boss and Spop *Cough*

#spop salt #anti spop #spop discourse #spop criticism #spop crit #spop critical #anti catra #helluva boss critique #anti helluva boss #anti stolas #fuck that bird man #fuck stolas #helluva boss critical #helluva boss criticism #helluva boss salt

[titleknown]

Given my defenses of AI artists/dim view of the moral panic, I think overall people pushing back on this is a good thing.

Like, the sort of AI art I like is by small weirdos doing weirdo things not big megacorps using it to replace workers, and WotC and Hasbro are run by bastards who would probably salivate at the idea of replacing artists on MtG given they'd probably be the easiest ones to replace from a greedy-corporate-bastard view.

However, there's a souple of notes here I think we all should keep an eye on.

Namely, the fact that it was apparently from an artist using an AI tool that WotC didn't know about. Which, I think that's going to be a problem creators run into sooner or later with "AI bans"

Like, I get a lot of images for my photomanip stuff from Pixabay. And more and more I've been seeing a lot of AI art stuff as a part of it. How would those bans impact me if I; say; used them as an ingredient in a photomanip without knowing?

So, there's that. But there's also a disquieting possibility I've noticed.

Namely: Given the main fear about AI is that its ability to work quickly at volume might be used to push out traditional artists and their precision, what happens if corpos push for "the worst of both worlds"?

IE, what if; due to the expanded production speed of AI art; they mandate that creators work at speeds that can only be done if they use AI tools, but also end up forcing them to conceal and lie about it and leaving the artists to take the fall for using it rather than the corpos for pushing the culture of overwork that made it necessary?

TBH, I think that's why we need to focus less on the "stealing" argument being used as a way to talk about the destruction of the artistic ecosystem by mandated speed, and more the idea of the right of the artist to work at their own pace that might be able to do something about it.

But, IDK, that's just me, it's just something to watch out for.

#art #ai art #ai art discourse #critique #magic the gathering #meta

[trans-axolotl2]

Fuck the DSM. Seriously, fuck the DSM.

The DSM is and always has been used primarily as a method of rationalizing mistreatment of the people it labels as "deviant." When you look at the history of psychiatry, it becomes clear that things like drapetomania, protest psychosis, hysteria, and homosexuality as a disorder were not just thrown into there randomly. Rather, it showcases the power of the DSM: labeling and categorizing ways of being as mental illness opens up new paths of incarceration, social control, and curative violence. I need people to understand that the modern DSM still works like this: these classifications of madness/mental distress/neurodivergence into psychiatric labels encourage society to treat madness/mental distress/neurodivergence with the apparatuses used to eradicate "deviance." Diagnosis is not neutral.

As mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, we deserve access to more explanatory models of madness/mental illness/ neurodivergence than what the psychiatric language of normalcy and disorder offers us. Whether this looks like rejecting diagnosis, embracing varying cultural understandings of mental experience, or any million different ways of interpreting our bodymind, we deserve the option to move beyond clinical language that tries to convince us not to trust ourselves. We deserve to view ourselves wholly, leaving room for all our experiences of madness/mental illness/neurodivergence--the meaningful, the terrifying, the joyful, the exhausting. We deserve to have our own relationship with our madness, instead of being pushed to view ourselves as an inherent "danger to self or others" simply by existing as crazy.

Here's another truth: I hate the DSM, and I still call myself bipolar, a diagnosis that came to me through psych incarceration. While I wholeheartedly reject the DSM and the system intertwined with it, I simultaneously acknowledge and believe that many of the collections of symptoms that the DSM describes are very, very real ways of living in the world, and that the distress that they can cause are very very real. When I say fuck the DSM, I don't mean "Mental distress, disability, and neurodivergence aren't real." Rather, I mean that the DSM can never hold my experience of what it is like to be bipolar, the meaning I derive from experiencing life with cyclical moods. The DSM can't hold within its pages what it's like to see my mood cycle not as a tragedy or disaster, but instead as an opportunity, a gift, to grow and shift and go back to the same place over and over again, dying in winter and blooming again in spring. The DSM can't hold the fact that even though I experience very, very real distress due to those mood cycles--they're still mine and I claim that as something that matters to me. I call myself bipolar as a shorthand to tell people that I experience many things both extreme high and low, but I do not mean the same thing when I say "bipolar" as a psychiatrist does.

When we build community as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people, I want us to have room to share, relate, and care for each other in ways that isn't calling to the authority of a fucked up system with strictly defined categories. I don't want us to take those same ways of thinking and rebrand it into advocacy that claims to fight stigma, but really just ends up reinforcing these same ideas about deviance, cure, control, and danger. I dream of the day when psychiatry doesn't loom as a threat in all of our lives, and I think part of that work requires us as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent people to really grapple with and untangle the ways we label and make meaning of our minds.

ok to reblog, if you want to learn more about antipsychiatry/mad studies check out this reading list.

#personal #antipsychiatry #antipsych #mad pride #mad studies #disability justice #disability #prompted by. idk. being tangential to certain spaces lately #seeing ppl who r forming communities focused on neurodivergency #in a way that really just. reinforces and legitimizes the dsm #and constantly refers to the authority of the dsm as a reason why they r right #not going to get into the specific discourse of the week except to say that something i feel strongly. is that we get to have different #explanatory models. but also that we r allowed to critique explanatory models as a community #like i hate the indigo child shit. i think its full of white supremascist dogwhistles #that's not an explanatory model i feel like the autistic community should ever support u know #anyway. getting offtrack

[qtubbo]

It’s kinda frustrating how everyone will say oh we want more egg drama, we want character conflict, we want more infighting, but when it makes their fav cubito look bad suddenly we’re taking everything too seriously and ruining the fun. It’s not just a block game to the characters, because they live there, so making critiques on behavior that is bad or toxic isn’t an attack it’s what happens when there is character conflict. Correcting, or discussing is perfectly normal, but you can’t say you want conflict and then turn it into something lighthearted because that means you didn’t actually want any conflict. You wanted conflict now here’s your conflict and sadly when there is conflict it will make characters look bad, it makes Tallulah, Leo, Foolish, Phil, and Tubbo all look bad it’s what happens.

You can’t tell people to stop making analysis or critiquing behavior because you’re viewing differently, or choosing to change the story to make it more lighthearted. Like I understand saying don’t cross in to reality people often do with ccs, but is anyone actually doing that with the admins?

#qsmp #Qsmp meta #qsmp fandom crit #crit #Anon seemed a bit ragey so I didn’t reply directly but this kinda answering that ask #Discourse #Also yes it makes Phil look bad outside of the museum scene he also made no genuine effort to correct Tallulahs behavior and instead #Encouraged it which was done with good intentions but still was something that can and will be critiqued

[weirdo09]

hobie brown

i’d just like to say, i hope y’all never meet a black boy nor man because y’all’s behavior over one black teenager is honestly disturbing.

like the racist headcanons, the not taking accountability for your disturbing fics about him because “HIS AGE ISNT MENTIONED!!” like don’t act dumb, you know them people said that he’s a slight older boy than miles which would be like 1-2 years, making him 16-17. it’s also just the “i want his dick inside of me” “i want to have his kids” and the sex hcs where it’s like “he’ll fuck you hard and not give you aftercare, just leaves you to take care of yourself.”

i’m not really bothered by the smut fics and hcs cause he is attractive and i will read them every once in awhile but y’all be taking it to the extremes, calling him toxic, making him out like some abusive boyfriend, he’s only sweet when he wants you to have sex with him, he only wants you for sex, he’s a full person but only cool because he’s in a band and has sex with you, he lets his band mates fuck you without your consent, he rapes you for whatever reason (y’all’s writings not mine), he doesn’t care about stopping to see if you’re okay or if you need a break.

basically what i’m seeing is that he’s only good for sex and some of the good fics about him only portray certain parts of him. like i’m all for writing about your favorite characters n what not but if you’re basically gonna treat his character like you’re personal boytoy and not see him as anything else, it’s really harmful. especially with y’all not tagging your fics correctly and the smut fics i previously mention get seen by a minor who would want to read smut of him but not that bullcrap.

y’all literally write him being abusive to his partner, not just physically but call it “teasing”. i’m sorry but if my partner said something about breaking up with me or that i’m not good enough, would i think that that’s just “teasing”? like honestly, if you treat all your ‘blorbos’ like this then i feel sorry for you because hobie’s an amazing character that isn’t just there for you to dream about fucking and getting pregnant by him.

he’s there to show you how corruption and fascism impacting your way of life can lead to you wanting to rebel and become an anarchist to that society. he’s there to teach you that you can make your rules, that you’re more than what one person tells you, you tell yourself what you wanna be. he’s a symbol for black people who don’t wanna follow the rules of a white supremacist, fascist society, for the people who’ve ever just been like “fuck the government, i’m my own person.”

i really feel like y’all take him for granted and he is a character for a children’s type of media so the “well minors shouldn’t be looking for his smut!!” doesn’t work here. honestly, do y’all ever care about characters that aren’t perceived as “fuckable” or “attractive” by your standards? it just really pisses me off because y’all act like that’s all he’s there for, your yearning for BBC has really dimmed your perception of this character. HES A IMPORTANT CHARACTER FOR YALL TO ROLE MODEL CAUSE ITS OBVIOUS YALL DONT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE MOVIE’S CHILD AUDIENCE BUT YOU GIVE A FUCK ABOUT HIM SO

if you care about hobie, please remember that there’s more to him than you wanting him to fuck you and he would hate the things that you’ve done to him because you have bigger issues in the world than “he would fuck you with his big cock.” LIKE WAKE THE FUCK UP WE COULD BE MAKING ANALYSIS OF HIS CHARACTER BUT INSTEAD YOU THINK THAT HES JUST THERE TO BE EYE CANDY LIKE OMGGGG

just please for the sack of everyone, learn more about his character and stop tryna be antiblack and sex crazed over him. if you love hobie, just stop being the way that you are because it’s honestly disgusting to have to see grown adults wanting a canon minor to fuck them. you ain’t slick, the fact that i even have to write this is disgusting. do better, fandom is more than saying that you would fuck a character, care more about the teenagers on this site that are in the fandom with you as well. stop being selfish and start caring about the other people in the fandom.

#cade’s things #cade’s thoughts 💭 #cade rants 🗣️ #hobie brown #hobie spiderverse #hobie brown deserves better #spiderpunk #spiderverse #hobie atsv #hobie brainrot #hobie brown smut #hobie brown x reader #across the spiderverse #atsv #fandom discussion #fandom discourse #fandom racism #fandom critical #fandom criticism #fandom critique #into the spider verse #across the spider verse #itsv #spiderman #spider man

[blinkpen]

found another old one i never posted enjoy

#hhhhverse tag of spite #the first clue that viv cannot write entirely removed from Discourse Factor exists in the hazbin pilot #where vagina pulls AD aside to tell the audience so much badly written self-aware exposition instead of. idunno. #'how do you not know who he is?!' and then being cut off before she can exposition dump at us #the scene continues as normal but now neither AD or the audience knows why to be on edge but that there is reason to #and then AD and the audience get SOME answer when he does that OP shit at the end and then is like lol moving on #there! you answered AD's question without a paragraph of bullshit AND left INTRIGUE for the audience too for wtf all thats about! #wow! #a highschool english teacher would have pointed this out if you handed this to them for a grade! #but you decided you're too good for critique before graduating #and now you get pissy when people say this shit reads like a highschooler or someone still in highschool in their head wrote it #the math is very simple here or did you decide math is also for nerds and not worth your time as well

[i-d-e-g-a-f]

i already have so many gripes with the original show and how they handle aang’s character arc and his relationship with katara/how they disserviced her by putting her in that relationship and i don’t trust netflix to fix ANY of that in the slightest, in fact i think they’ll probably make things i actually like about the original even worse and the actors are so young too oh my god Kiawentiio get behind me and it’s gonna be another horde of new fans rehashing the same tired old discourse i cannot do this again helpppp

#i’m fucking tweaking rn man #here comes a new wave of perfomative activism #atla fandom critical #atla fandom salt #anti kataang #i noticed an uptick in zutara/kataang discourse recently but i didn’t realize it was bc the show is coming out tdy 😭 #i cannot do this again i cannot relive another renaissance where zutara shippers are demonized for existence #i cannot deal with people shitting on katara for no reason again and people selectively ignoring zuko’s character arc when it’s convenient #for their argument and ppl acting like i summoned satan himself when i critique the aang #atla discourse #i don’t even try to engage in discourse it’s just always recommended to me no matter what i do and i’m just so tired of it

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

also “opinion of level 2 & 3 not more important than opinion of level 1” sound innocent on own because like. well yeah.

but when add in context of. level 2 & 3 autism people chronically ignored & spoken over & silenced & targeted & thrown under bus & be subject of ableism by some level 1 autism people. n those level 1 autism people turn autism into “just difference” “don’t need intervention” fun quirk which directly leading often life saving [idk word. services? methods of help? support?] needed by level 2 & 3 people (and also many level 1 people!!!) to be stopped done because those level 1 people say autistic people don’t need them n those stuff ableist. because guess what your “advocacy” not actually just words they have impact because you all loud n have more communication abilities and loud.

and now level 2 & 3 people finally calling out this shit. n now we actually have to debate basic shit like whether autism is disability while many level 2 & 3 autistics n their family are. fucking. sorry don’t have words for what they going through trying to advocate for local services

so turn out person who said it mean they mad at their bigoted opinion being called out n they hide behind their level 1 ness n think they not listened to simply bc they level 1 n level 2 & 3 people responsible for all that we getting heard simply bc we level 2 3

yeah it weird n dogwhistle not good word probably because don’t wanna water down that serious word. maybe microaggression. idk

context under read more but am sorry not have cognitive capacity do image description right now

.

[ok reblog but just fyi know this not like good worded so going miss things n going have things that maybe worded wrong etc cognitive language communication disabilities just be generous in interpretation]

ok under cut now

“bio essential neurodivergents” meaning something like. idk it doesn’t make sense but think like. people who critiquing social model & saying hey medical model have some grounds. n also include people saying autism is inherent disability????

also extremely vile they tag as level 3 autism level 2 autism

can’t just use social justice buzzword for your bigotry

people fall for that so much too

#this is not ABA discourse #some people who critique social model misunderstand what social model trying say yes. but social model alone not full picture also true #🍞.txt #undescribed

[samglyph]

I think the people who were like “damn shuros just an asshole” were missing the point but I think the new people saying that “Shuro isn’t an asshole and it’s all about cultural divides and Laios is just as bad” also might be missing the point.

#there can be a cultural divide AND he can be an asshole #source: the people in his party from the same culture also thought he was being an asshole #like Shuro is meant as a CRITIQUE of a cultural norm #he’s supposed to be a dislikesble character at first #who then experiences growth #dungeon meshi #discourse #I guess? not really just putting it there in case people don’t vibe with arguing

[chamerionwrites]

Aimé Césaire saying that colonization works to decivilize the colonizer truly lives in my head rent-free

#this is the essence of the v problematic anticolonial critique in so much 19thc literature (eg heart of darkness) right? #(and also its more modern inheritors eg apocalypse now and the Doing An Imperialism Makes Our Soldiers Sad genre of war story) #it glosses right over the crucial 'systems of rapacious cruelty are bad IN THEIR OWN RIGHT BECAUSE BROWN PEOPLE ARE HUMAN' bit #but in that one limited sense - that cruelty also brutalizes the perpetrators - it is very much the same critique #anyway i guess my brain continues to find ways to circle back round to discourse on colonialism no matter the initial topic #lit tag #no more war #imperialism #imperial violence always comes home #cultures of dissociation #aimé césaire #i am also choosing to tag this #sherlock holmes #as like solidly 98% of the stories in which the murderer is a former colonial officer or official are ROILING w this exact anxiety #(especially the hella racist ones. lol.) #i mean loads of authors in that time period are doing it but i have a tag for acd so. #my posts

[spopsalt]

Catra and Stolas ran, tripped, and fell flat on their face when trying to make a horrible person sympathetic, so Rick and Bojack could run.

#spop salt #anti spop #spop discourse #spop crit #anti catra #spop criticism #spop critical #helluva boss criticism #helluva boss critical #anti helluva boss #helluva boss critique #anti stolas #fuck stolas

[lord-squiggletits]

In the last salty asks post I unintentionally went on a tangent in the notes about how JRO wrote religious characters which is like actually something I want to bring up on its own so like

Is it just me or does JRO have some real misses when it comes to writing religious characters? Not like every religious character is badly written or evil, but like... several of the ones that are fall into really bad or unflattering/shallow stereotypes? It's hard to put my finger exactly on why I feel that way bc he does write some actually good religious characters (aka Cyclonus).

For example, characters like the Functionist Council and Star Saber are fine to me because I'm like. Well Functionism being religious in origin makes sense, it's an interesting interplay of how religion influences the state/how the state leverages religion to bend the populace to its own whims. Religious bad guys =/= all religious people bad. Star Saber is just some random zealot that wasn't meant to be that deep at all, and eh the Inquisition-type religious zealot can be cool even if it's just the vibes of it.

But then there's stuff like... Tyrest being a normal, rational, not particularly religious guy until he gets shot with a bullet that gives him brain damage, causing him to start ranting about Cyberutopia and thinking God is personally talking to him in his brain...? Like, idk, was it really the best idea for an antagonist to go "he is evil because he got brain damaged against his will w/o even knowing what really happened to him and also because he's brain damaged he's now literally delusional and became a religious (and genocidal) maniac." It comes off as really bad taste/not thinking the implications through as far as how it reflects on religious people (bc the whole "religious people are literally delusional and stupid to think that their gods could possibly exist" thing is tired and offensive). Not to mention kind of ableist w/ the whole "oh he became evil bc he got shot in the brain and now there's literally something wrong with his mind."

(Doesn't help that the MTMTE logbooks revealed that the original idea for Tyrest was to have his killswitch be about trying to identify and execute all of the criminals/"guilty people" on Cybertron, basically an extension of his role as Chief Justice which makes so much more sense and is way more interesting and compelling???? Certainly better than (gets brain damaged) "Ah I'm now going to genocide all cold constructs because God told me to")

And then Drift with spectralism which...which... basically the extent of that whole religion is the name of a single festival (the Lost Light festival the eponymous ship was named after), and some stuff about face/body paint and colors having spiritual symbolism, then the Guiding Hand/Primus stuff that's also shared with Primalism. But then you have Drift who's the main representative of this religion basically being written as a phony who doesn't even believe in the shit coming out of his mouth. Or if his beliefs are sincere, the way he acts is basically just "oooooh, I sense unclean vibes and read into the energy of the universe" which is played for laughs or mocked by the other characters most of the time. And Drift's character is written so inconsistently (and the general religious worldbuilding so one-dimensional) that it's hard to tell if Drift is supposed to be read as some kooky fake hippie type or if he's genuinely a representation of Spectralism in general. Like, idk, the best JRO could come up for for building a religion was "they wear certain colors and patterns on them and vaguely talk about sensing energy from the universe?" It literally feels like baby's first fictional religion or like, religion as understood by a non-religious/atheist person who sees religion as nothing more than an aesthetic or some quirky rituals.

I'm not saying the story had to be about religion or have religion be brought up in every conversation, it's just...... the way he wrote/did worldbuilding for it comes off as as very "non-religious person who doesn't have any particular understanding of religion/why people are religious tries to write what they think religion is about" and most of the time it's kinda cringe.

#squiggposting #negativity #discourse #again i'm reiterating that my critique isn't 'all the religious characters are evil/all the evil ppl are religious' bc that's not true #it's more just that the religious characters are in general written as mediocre at best or offensively at worst #also in the case of drift who's (for better or worse) asian coded #his religion doesn't even have a strong resemblance to any traditional japanese beliefs either #like. all religions have spiritually significant colors or garments or symbols #the whole 'energy of the universe' could be similar to daoism maybe but it's never elaborated on besides that #just. mediocre mediocre mediocre religious worldbuilding/character writing

[dirtytransmasc]

TW - child neglect, lack of hygiene as result of neglect

I think a lot of spider haters are either A. people who have never experienced neglect, especially physical neglect B. people who have internalized and denied themselves the space to heal/acknowledge their neglect and/or its effects C. neglecters themselves.

I say this because spider shows one of the clearest signs of physical and emotional neglect; lack of hygiene and cleanliness, and its one of the things he is mocked for the most.

now, I'm coming from the perspective of a kid who was neglected in that way, as a person who didn't know you needed to use a wash clothe, how to properly wash their hair, and other 'basic' hygiene knowledge until they were 15 or 16 years old.

spider was clearly not family to the sully's so I find it hard to believe they bathed him or even taught him to bathe. the scientists would most likely expect his 'family' to teach him that, and decided to leave those 'intimate' and 'personal' conversations to them.

children, humans in general, do not have the modern-day standards of hygiene ingrained in them; it is not an instinct, it is learned, it is taught.

so if he has no one who is willing to not only teach him, but show him, he will not have those skills. you can't expect him to have those skills. that's truly and honestly unfair, and so disheartening as someone who has suffered that effect of neglect, to see an entire fandom so keen on making that the butt of their jokes.

then you throw on the fact that he never chose, or at the very least, never made an educated decision (considering we first see his hair locked as a toddler/small child) to have his hair locked. locs need to be cared for in a very specific manner to be kept clean and healthy (and that's on the proper hair type, spider's hair in all honesty, is just matted, and can never properly be cleaned).

so this kid who doesn't even know the basics of hygiene, is now saddled with the responsibility of taking care of locs/glorified mats. of course the kid looks like a wreck, he literally doesn't know how to take care of himself, and mimicking what little you see of proper hygiene doesn't do much for very long.

the poor thing is suffering; I don't know if some of y'all know this, but feeling perpetually dirty, even when trying your best to keep clean, is exhausting and soul-crushing.

that boy has suffered on every level and far too many poke at it like its some joke.

#I need yall to understand that every aspect of spider you make jokes of is almost always a direct tie to his abuse/neglect #spider socorro #miles socorro #miles spider socorro #avatar 2 #avatar the way of water #fandom critique #fandom critical #fandom discourse #fandom issue #fandom wank #do better