#not using gaslighting as a buzzword believe me

[docdalas]

anyone with adhd and/or autism have part of their brain that constantly tries gaslighting itself into thinking that you aren’t actually autistic, that you don’t have adhd? i’m so tired

#not using gaslighting as a buzzword believe me #every day of my life i ponder if i really have adhd and my girlfriend is just like #literally everyone can tell you are #it’s very consoling #personal #actually adhd #actually autism #do ppl still use those tags

[dancefloors]

Hard agree Taylor's interview was weird. There's almost no substance to any of her answers.

for real. I'll try to be brief or at least make this the last one (because I know I am being annoying about this but really I just find her a very fascinating case study), but for a songwriter who is often introspective and eloquent, it all seemed like a very shallow look at her life and career. a hodge-podge of buzzwords and dated pop culture references. I do wonder if that's just the nature of this being a sort of 'PR smooth over' for the unfamiliar audience, setting the record straight on a few accounts, and sort of rewriting the narrative of rep/her last relationship.

but it also was very intriguing how the image she paints of herself, and one she seems to internalise is that of her as a successful 'underdog', a perpetual victim in an uphill battle. I'm sure she's faced adversity in her career, but it's notable to me that the way she frames it ("female rage" at her image destruction, "freedom from patriarchal structures through the flow of economy") is in a way that sort of silently demands an obligation to celebrity and wealth. she points to her "cancellation" as gaslighting from a "social structure" but what structure is that? who is the perpetrator when the dip in your fame can be largely attributed to a PR fumble and public dissent at blatant money-driven strategic friendships (which she personally admitted), relatability marketing, and recognition that they are being sold an image? her song The Man/interviews regarding it detail how structural barriers that bother her the most are the ones preventing her from flaunting her money, chasing fame and fortune openly, being praised for the strategy and calculation behind her capitalist endeavours, from using people and discarding them when done (à la Leo in San Tropez or her partners being "playthings for [her] to use"). is it a structural issue when you leave your record label of your own accord and those very same business strategies and ploys are used against you? are fame and art to be free of criticism? is it victimhood when people point out the parasocial and expositional practises that gave you your fame, which you intentionally intertwined with your image?

I won't brush aside the misogyny that came with it. I believe women have the right to feel safe, supported, their sexual exploits not held against them, their career progression not halted purely because of their gender, that artists have ownership over their work.

but do I think they are owed fortune, that a couple months being reclusive in million dollar mansions and jet-setting around the world equate to 'cancellation', that people becoming aware of hollywood PR ploys is misogyny, that public favour is owed and losing it is the highest punishment (especially when they actively wield their team to push puff pieces to bury their own and their associate's/partners' bigotry), that speculation about a public figure's personal life is the greatest crime, that their own role in their career deserves to be seen simultaneously as that of an innocent subject of magical coincidence AND a mastermind strategist (but never the dagger of "calculated"), that their cries and causes should be heralded and never doubted or viewed with a critical eye even though the activist outfit is only ever put on for themselves, that they should be viewed as a brand when they want to shirk responsibility and an individual when they demand sympathy, that fame is owed, that any common person should think about all of this - consider their 'full story' and believe the image they want to sell of themselves? that we should be actively celebrating their excessiveness (it's for our own good!)?

no. maybe because i lack empathy for the rich and famous, but it all seems very out of touch. it's never been more blatantly about consumer feminism, bread and circuses, a prayer to her own idolatry, even further out of reach at the moment.

her fixation on the past, her own endlessly self-referential world, speaking about "defeating enemies"..... its just fascinating. and confirms to me that her main gripe has always been with the contradictory nature of her own fame. why can't she have it all? i don't say this in a bitter way, i think she's just an interesting case study, especially watching her career come up from the beginning. you only enjoy the circus when they are cheering for you. and she seems to have leaned into that more recently. i don't know what has gone on in her personal life (seemingly many references to a "life she gave away"), but it seems to have driven her closer to that, aware that at least in THIS world (that of fame, fortune, etc) she is somewhat an insurmountable titan not even stoppable by "a force majeure", whatever she may claim. maybe she can't control her personal life, but she can control this to a degree, and if not, the things that stand in her way can be / must be regarded the most unjust of nondescript "social structures".

again.. no hatred, just fascination. her image, success, and fan relationships hinged on relatability for so many years. this feels like a departure from that. an acceptance that she is extraordinary and that even her struggles are out of reach for the common man. she's operating in a different echelon, she's the centre of her world (why wouldn't she be), and she is free from the shackles of self reflection on her place in the broader world... I guess she's too soft for it all. I don't know... an interesting change. I'm sure someone smarter than me has something more interesting and eloquent to say.

[sokkastyles]

I wonder, how widespread is the Azula stan fandom in reality? It seems like wherever I go there is at least one of them. Maybe it's the case of the loud minority, but you've been around longer in the fandom than I have, so I wonder if you think it's the case.

I've only been here three years, but I've been in fandom a long time and some of the Azula stans I recognize from the GoT fandom, where they make the exact same arguments about Cersei Lannister. What is new is the amount of Azula stans, and there always seem to be new ones popping up no matter how many times I block them, but I think a lot of them are just young or easily influenced fans who are reading the things said by the BNFs, which, as I said in the last ask I posted, often come with heavy amounts of guilt-tripping. Do you hate mentally ill abused fourteen year old girls? Of course you don't! Well then listen to me. It's manipulative rhetoric and gaslighting, and it's the same sorts of tactics used by abusers and cults to get you to doubt what you know is true and trust only them. I've even seen Azula stans admit that they realized that was what was going on, that they were just repeating talking points from BNFs that they didn't actually believe, because they thought they should. It's very easy to get caught up in the fandom's sense of self-righteousness, especially when it's a character you identify with and what people are saying sounds reasonable and uses social justice buzzwords to reinforce the arguments.

What's ridiculous is the amount of people that make these arguments and how illogical they actually are, and how pervasive. And how aggressive and entitled the stans are. One of the first posts I saw in the Zuko tag, before I had even finished the series, was a post about how it's "weird" that Zuko acts younger than his sister. And like, at that point I didn't even know Zuko was supposed to be older but I understand enough about logic to know that that isn't how it works, anyway. I didn't even know at that point that this was a common Azula stan anti Zuko talking point, I was just like "okay, someone doesn't understand how family dynamics or kids or abuse works" and moved on with my life. Then I realized why the arbitrary ages of cartoon characters matter so much to these people, more than what is actually onscreen, because what you actually know to be true from watching the show can be manipulated if someone can convince you that numbers matter more.

#azula #zuko #the discourse

[girlwithfish]

the lack of respect is wild im so glad im out. hed always accuse me of "unintentionally gaslighting" or manipulating and alwaysss say im the abuser. And i believed it bc im the one w bpd even tho deep in my heart i knew this wasnt right and how he acts is not right. so much shit i dont have to put up with life is so much better

constantly being told I dont make sense, im incoherent, i dont know or understand english (This one pissed me off and i said ur seriously saying this to me an asian person and he called me racist for saying that lmfao.)

psychology buzzwords always being thrown at me he thinks hes a therapist or something

he thinks he knew my bpd better than me. think its fair to say he used it against me to paint me as the problem and to discredit and invalidate every single if my viewpoints or emotions. anytime im upset its 'youre splitting' and itd be before i was and hed say he knows me better and he knows my bpd the best so his word is law ofc. Then ofc id get pissed and actually split. now hes right! jsut never honored my feelings or let me have space it just sucked so much someoen having that much control over the conversation literally his word was law

constantly calling me immature saying im acting like a kid just a lot of name calling and put downs even when id do my best to refrain from swearing or raising my voice or name calling it didnt matter. literally once i told him u r the one doing all of those things and he was like idc so what that doesnt mean anything. yeah well constantly swearing at me and name calling is pushing to verbal abuse he just didnt care when hed verbally abuse me LMAO. always turnjng it around on me how my bpd is hard on him and how im so much worse even when id make conscious efforts to not lash out he would not make any of the same efforts bc he felt justified

[rosepetalsthings]

My greatest fear is that the accusations are untrue or mostly untrue, even if the victim is not saying Dream was grooming her, it now became a buzz word throughout twitter and this would be the 4/5th time another well-known content creator is being falsely accused. And this frustrates me because actual victims of sa would have a much more difficult time telling their experiences without dealing with more wary or more people outright not believing them bc the amount of false accusations that have happened.

It is incredibly frustrating, especially when people turn words like grooming and gaslighting and make it mean pretty much nothing, and just throw terms around because thats the cool buzzword now. Like it's serious terms but people will use it for practically anything.

And of course false allegations hurt victims most of all, and it absolutely sucks that people will do that cause it's already such a hard time for actual victims. It's horrible.

Like maybe this thread is real, but people keep calling it grooming and that inevitably downplays actual grooming, and makes the word mean nothing

#dreamwastaken #discourse #anon

[butmakeitgayblog]

I am newish to the Clexa fandom (<3yrs) and am totally confused be the tags on these sapphic polls saying Lexa is brown face?? Like, she's an aussie with a tan. How is that brown face? Where did this start, and who is perpetuating it??

*confusion intensifies*

Ugh I cannot believe we're still dealing with this in the year of our hell 2023. I'm not upset with the question or you, I'm just so fucking tired of this being rehashed constantly because some people lack the ability to learn and thus create situations where these things keep having to be explained when they've already been thoroughly dissected and debunked.

Long story short, it was started because some people are chronically online and live their lives one buzzword at a time. I'm convinced these are the same people who can't use the word gaslighting correctly to save their life and talking is "trauma dumping" and everything they don't like is "toxic". Just people who love talking about things they only have a tenuous grasp of because they think it makes them sound intelligent or like they're really fighting the good fight. And what really really pisses me off about the whole brownface/bindi (it was a Helm of Awe, not a bindi) discourse is that it's such a nothing thing when faced with all the actual real, harmful racism and xenophobic tropes that were in the loo. Racism and xenophobia that Clexas have been calling out since day one (the same xenophobia in particular a lot of these same people conveniently ignore or excuse to prop up their fave sweaty boy character but that's another convo entirely). The loo was rife with it, but ffs Lexa wasn't one of them.

Fact is Lexa was white. She was always portrayed as a white woman with a tan BECAUSE SHE CAME FROM A CLAN THAT SPENT THE MAJORITY OF THEIR TIME OUTSIDE. She's been confirmed as nothing but white by the showrunner, the writers, and fellow POC cast members who where immensely confused af when these very tiring people tried pulling them into their shit talking campaign. Case in point because it's the most blatant, Adina Porter. OG tweet was deleted, but it was @ing her asking if Lexa was white or a WOC. To which she answered

And when someone asked why that was asked she answered

Because,,, it's pretty fucking obvious Lexa was white. At no point in her entire story arc was it ever represented or insinuated that Lexa was anything other than a white woman with a tan. She's Lexa kom TRIKRU. The clan of the trees. Meaning she's outside, training and working and traveling in the sun a fucking lot.

Like, I just wish people would be able to use their brains and discern this

from this

Because the differences are real and they're important. Brownface is a real, harmful problem in media and ffs even some actual people irl using it to gain appeal and popularity. It's something that should be called out and addressed at every turn. Which is why it's fucking harmful to just toss the word around for any white character who isn't visually eggshell pasty white and instead just fucking tan

#anon #another fucking dipshit part to all this is by and large they're the same people who call clexas racist for not liking Bellfart #because Bob is a MOC #when BELLAMY IS WHITE #like you just you can't make this shit up #please do not start discourse in my inbox cuz I'm not gonna go on and on about it no offense #the show is over let it die #the people who.are still acting a fool over stuff that's been debunked can just wring themselves in knots I do not care

[xk1llp0px]

Abusive relationships are crazy. I wasted almost 2 years on a girl who would repeatedly abandon, berate, and gaslight me into thinking I was the issue the entire time. I poured all of my time into them, and what I got back was them telling me I was never enough. The last time they abandoned me they established the fact they only wanted to be queer platonic. I accepted it because of the fact that I was utterly desperate for them, and all of them and I wanted that love no matter what form it was. Even when it hurt me when they would say things like, "I would never marry you. I want to meet my soul mate and marry someone else." When everything was all about sex, and how I never provided enough for them. Even on antidepressants that severely lowered my sex drive, there was always complaints on me never being in the mood, and being coerced into indulging in them. Abusive relationships are crazy because I thought I deserved all of this. That I was just a really bad boyfriend, that nobody would ever want anything more than sex with me. They felt so entitled to my love, and yet pushed me away when I tried to give it. Throwing buzzwords at me that they truly didn't know the definition of, which would ultimately be things that they were doing to me. At the end of our """"relationship"""", if you can even call it that- lord knows they hated being labeled as anything but platonic with me- I met a man who genuinely gave me his all and made sure I was safe and loved. I knew any day now that the war would finally be over and that I would be free from their abuse. They had no problem with my new friend until I started showing signs of interest with him, and then all of a sudden I was "just like every other man," and a "player". (Mind you we weren't even really in a relationship with them anymore! As they've established to us many times!). They were so afraid of him telling me to leave them that they hurled insults and harassed me, threatening me with the police and saying I'm a whore and all that. Yeah. And for a long while I believed everything that they said. I believed I deserved everything that they did and said. Abusive relationships are crazy because once you find your true person, you realize how brainwashed you were by your abuser and how horrible they actually were to you. How you can't make any excuses for them anymore. Just one of many men who experienced relationship abuse. I felt so weak compared to them, but I promise you aren't. You're not weak and I know one day you will find your person. My person and I will hit 8 months together very soon, and this relationship has been very healing to me. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Being a male victim of abuse DOES NOT MAKE YOU WEAK. IT MAKES YOU A VICTIM, AND THATS THAT. I love you all, and can only hope for each and every one of your safety.

#abusiveness #abusive girlfriend #toxic ex #abuse mention #tw abuse #do i tag them #domestic abuse #male victims #abuse recovery #gaslighting cw #love bombing #emotional abuse #mental abuse #psychological abuse #ableism

[thetoiletwater]

The "LGB without the T" TikTok and its comments are so rich with enlightening context about transgender ideologues and qu**r theorists' views of the world, and in particular gay rights activism. Aside from the general historical revisionism ("trans women of color threw the first brick at Stonewall" already being something we're all familiar with being wrong in almost every sense, along with the other statements asserting that gay people are not responsible for any of their own activism or attaining of rights), there are a few things of particular note that I want to call attention to.

For starters, I want to shine a spotlight on the second most common sort of comment present in your screenshots (aside from the aforementioned historical revisionism): "You can't leave us." Not in the sense of denial or disbelief, but as a statement of authority. This can be seen in the comments of users coffaeiene, ch1oethebitch, and the user whose name is cropped out of the top of the fourth screenshot.

Now, I understand that the tone of these comments are intended to be jokes. However, I also understand that abusive, entitled, and narcissistic people can, and often do, make jokes about the exact sort of behavior they genuinely present. This is an extremely common form of gaslighting used in abusive relationships. "It's just a joke" doesn't simply serve to negate what has been said, but to call into question if someone who would make jokes that are supposedly mocking abusive behavior would truly be abusers, themselves.

When we contextualize all of the comments with that in mind, as context (though I understand that, to many, this will come across as pretentious; I have seen the way modern conversations have become overly-saturated with psychological terminology and comparisons, myself), the rest of the contents will become eerily familiar to anyone who knows even the slightest thing about emotional abuse (be it romantic, platonic, familial, religious, etc.). "You cannot leave. You are helpless without me. I have done everything for you. If you leave, you will be in danger. Others will harm you more than I have. I will not save you if you leave me. You will be harming me if you go. You are being selfish. Your views are ridiculous and unjustified. You just don't understand how much I have done for you." We are simultaneously helpless victims that they are burdened with protecting, and cruel parasites that do nothing for them.

Anyone familiar with this sort of situation would know it crumbles under the weight of a single question: If it's true, why are they so desperate to keep us? Surely, if they have any reason to so much as believe this, regardless of if it's actually true or not, they would abandon us, or at least allow us to leave them.

The mask of the abuser slipped slightly in one comment, however. "The pettiness in me is saying we should just leave them behind and let them suffer their battles," the user conspicuously named the_rainbow.system says. "But," the comment continues "I know that would divide the community more." The implication here being that the people infuriated by LGB separating from the "TQIA2S+" believe the same-sex attracted individuals attempting to go their own way are both self-destructive and the only thing holding either group (both the LGB and the unrelated TQIA2S+) together, the only thing keeping any of this afloat. It is the precise conflicting sentiment a narcissist would hold over one of his victims; a truth and a lie that do not, and cannot, combine. We are parasites who do nothing for them, or even ourselves, but we are necessary for them to survive.

tl;dr The way TRAs and qu**r theorists speak about LGB people and activists is precisely the same way abusers speak about their victims (if you will pardon me for using psychological terms that have become buzzwords)

Very true. On top of that the way they talk about it is so childish like "why are we being excluded!!!!" is such a immature response; as if LGB is just a fun little club. Sorry but if you're not ssa it's not about you 🤷‍♀️

#transactivism #trans cult

[somespicyshrimp]

I do get where are coming from with the common denominator post and I agree for the most part.

But it's really important to remember that abusers pick their victim.

I had a series of toxic friendships (and most of them were as a teenager so yeah I was toxic back at times) but the worst one was abusive. They isolated me so I had no one to turn to and would ruin any time I tried to make any other friends and when I would try to ask why they would say that I'm the common denominator so it was my fault. They did this so often I believed them and would say it myself. Luckily I'm in a better space now.

Sorry for the rant but it's all to say please try to check who your getting that from. If it's just you joking or letting off steam that's fine. But if someone is telling you this about yourself or some they're also friends with then please stay safe. Sorry again it's just kinda a red flag sentence for me now

you know what, that's honestly completely fair and i hadn't thought about it from that pov. that post was mostly me venting about people i've known or encountered online who are genuinely extremely unpleasant and use tiktok buzzwords like narcissist and gaslighter to just basically project their shit onto everyone else, but while it definitely wasn't my intention, i totally get why that post came across like victim blaming. sorry and i hope you're doing ok <3

#asks

[bigyikes97]

Horror Games and Anthropology

about to graduate with a degree in anthropology and find myself constantly going "oh ok" at the cults, i.e. in RE4, and forgetting it's a horror game because that's the stuff of my textbooks

*skull-faced priest beheading someone on altar beneath an ominous mural of the ritual*

"ok"

"the spider's new"

I mean Moche ft. Paracas + Aztec here like

(ft. screencap from our required watching, BBC's 1999 documentary "Blood and Flowers: In Search of the Aztecs")

As an Anthropologist, we use 'cultural relativity'; judge all cultures by their own internal standards (You know, the standards that say it's acceptable to torture and sacrifice young children and cannibalize your neighbors. I'm not kidding look it up). Moreover, as these customs were well thought-out and intelligible, we should accept them within their own context with a graceful curtsy and admire the humanity of their rationales (I haven't even told you the meat and potatoes of the rituals BTW--use buzzwords of women, kids, toddlers, alive, underage, etc to get the idea). These sacrifice rituals even show, according to the aforementioned documentary, "a superior humane spirit" that sought for "moderation and discretion in all pursuits" (Holly Peters-Golden's 6th edition "Culture Sketches", 2012, p. 29).

So after two years of THAT, seeing a weak and watered-down version used as the plot of an actual horror game has been a riot.

Like. Of course we should try to understand. But also. There Are Limits. You don't have to bend over backwards and juxtapose falling blood with flower petals and poetry as in the documentary to make us know the Aztecs had reasons for doing what they did. I get that. And still:

(^ something we'll still get roasted for saying in Anthro class, no matter how many children are being killed)

Now OBVIOUSLY, there is nuance to this. That is one thing that I do strongly believe, about anthropology and anything else. HOWEVER. My anthro teacher argued strongly and calmly that hacking open someone's chest to pull out their lungs and read the future from the way the veins pulse in their deflating last breath is not a 'violent' death because the victim (a toddler) didn't resist. SO! Do with that what you will. RE:4 is kind of undoing the gaslighting that had me fighting against an entire class and professor to defend my statement that killing and eating your neighbors is wrong.

(also lowkey judging their outfits)

#resident evil 4 remake #anthropology #cult #cw: child death mention #cw: child abuse #cw: child death #cw: violence #cw: gore #horror #horror games

[turnleftaticela]

about the delusion thing/song idea -- i only have mild delusions (stuff like thinking i know the date of my own death, something's following me, or there's something growing under my skin, classic stuff like that that's usually reoccuring and manageable to talk myself through logically, even if the feeling of belief doesn't go away), so keep in mind that i can't speak on for everyone, especially people who deal with worse/significantly different delusions than me.

but i don't think the concept of a song about resisting gaslighting on the premise that you know your own reality is inherently bad to people with delusions. abusers and gaslighters do try to incorrectly convince people that they have mental disorders like delusions. i think you'd just have to be careful how you wrote -- that having delusions/being delusional isn't inherently a bad thing -- but having someone in your life project that onto and try to force it to fit is.

i know not everyone feels the same way, but i still feel a sense of agency with delusions -- not in having them or what they are -- but in having learned/figured out ones that are common for me and ways to sort of, reground my reality based on observable facts even when they don't match what i believe. it's a hard line to walk, like the, do i trust my own mind thing when your mind sometimes lies, and i really appreciate that you want to take that into account/be aware of. maybe read a little about experiences and write your song and see if you can run it by some people, because i do think it's a good and important message. people who get to or find ways to dictate our realities to us have a lot of power and that can be really dangerous

(don't know if this is explained super well sorry tis 2 am here)

Oh man thank you so much for this response 💜 I seriously appreciate it so much

i think you'd just have to be careful how you wrote -- that having delusions/being delusional isn't inherently a bad thing -- but having someone in your life project that onto and try to force it to fit is.

Yeah this is mostly the bit I’m worried about, I don’t want the hook being “I’m not delusional” to make it sound like I’m saying “I’m not one of THOSE people” or whatever. I chose the strength of the word (“delusional” as opposed to like, “incorrect”) bc of the degree to which I’ve felt undermined in my life, as if everything I believe in & stand for is impossible. Not silly or stupid (which would imply the “inherently bad” connotation) but fully false and impossible.

Tbh that does give me some ideas about where to go with the rest of the lyrics, in a way that makes it more clear that what I’m saying isn’t just flippantly using a buzzword. I think that’s what’ll make the difference

Thank you for telling me about your experiences, I will def keep that in mind as well as look into other resources about it. That’s one good thing about tumblr is it’s easy to find people whose lived experiences are these things, as opposed to just random articles on google written by “experts” who’ve only ever seen it from the outside

Thank you again, it means a lot that you took the time to answer 💜

#post #ask

[qqueenofhades]

Hi. I’m curious. What did you mean by “women who read fiction might get Bad Ideas!!!” has just reached its latest and stupidest form via tumblr purity culture.? I haven’t seen any of this but I’m new to tumblr.

Oh man. You really want to get me into trouble on, like, my first day back, don’t you?

Pretty much all of this has been explained elsewhere by people much smarter than me, so this isn’t necessarily going to say anything new, but I’ll do my best to synthesize and summarize it. As ever, it comes with the caveat that it is my personal interpretation, and is not intended as the be-all, end-all. You’ll definitely run across it if you spend any time on Tumblr (or social media in general, including Twitter, and any other fandom-related spaces). This will get long.

In short: in the nineteenth century, when Gothic/romantic literature became popular and women were increasingly able to read these kinds of novels for fun, there was an attendant moral panic over whether they, with their weak female brains, would be able to distinguish fiction from reality, and that they might start making immoral or inappropriate choices in their real life as a result. Obviously, there was a huge sexist and misogynistic component to this, and it would be nice to write it off entirely as just hysterical Victorian pearl-clutching, but that feeds into the “lol people in the past were all much stupider than we are today” kind of historical fallacy that I often and vigorously shut down. (Honestly, I’m not sure how anyone can ever write the “omg medieval people believed such weird things about medicine!” nonsense again after what we’ve gone through with COVID, but that is a whole other rant.) The thinking ran that women shouldn’t read novels for fear of corrupting their impressionable brains, or if they had to read novels at all, they should only be the Right Ones: i.e., those that came with a side of heavy-handed and explicit moralizing so that they wouldn’t be tempted to transgress. Of course, books trying to hammer their readers over the head with their Moral Point aren’t often much fun to read, and that’s not the point of fiction anyway. Or at least, it shouldn’t be.

Fast-forward to today, and the entire generation of young, otherwise well-meaning people who have come to believe that being a moral person involves only consuming the “right” kind of fictional content, and being outrageously mean to strangers on the internet who do not agree with that choice. There are a lot of factors contributing to this. First, the advent of social media and being subject to the judgment of people across the world at all times has made it imperative that you demonstrate the “right” opinions to fit in with your peer-group, and on fandom websites, that often falls into a twisted, hyper-critical, so-called “progressivism” that diligently knows all the social justice buzzwords, but has trouble applying them in nuance, context, and complicated real life. To some extent, this obviously is not a bad thing. People need to be critical of the media they engage with, to know what narratives the creator(s) are promoting, the tropes they are using, the conclusions that they are supporting, and to be able to recognize and push back against genuinely harmful content when it is produced – and this distinction is critical – by professional mainstream creators. Amateur, individual fan content is another kettle of fish. There is a difference between critiquing a professional creator (though social media has also made it incredibly easy to atrociously abuse them) and attacking your fellow fan and peer, who is on the exact same footing as you as a consumer of that content.

Obviously, again, this doesn’t mean that you can’t call out people who are engaging in actually toxic or abusive behavior, fans or otherwise. But certain segments of Tumblr culture have drained both those words (along with “gaslighting”) of almost all critical meaning, until they’re applied indiscriminately to “any fictional content that I don’t like, don’t agree with, or which doesn’t seem to model healthy behavior in real life” and “anyone who likes or engages with this content.” Somewhere along the line, a reactionary mindset has been formed in which the only fictional narratives or relationships are those which would be “acceptable” in real life, to which I say…. what? If I only wanted real life, I would watch the news and only read non-fiction. Once again, the underlying fear, even if it’s framed in different terms, is that the people (often women) enjoying this content can’t be trusted to tell the difference between fiction and reality, and if they like “problematic” fictional content, they will proceed to seek it out in their real life and personal relationships. And this is just… not true.

As I said above, critical media studies and thoughtful consumption of entertainment are both great things! There have been some great metas written on, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it is increasingly relying on villains who have outwardly admirable motives (see: the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) who are then stigmatized by their anti-social, violent behavior and attacks on innocent people, which is bad even as the heroes also rely on violence to achieve their ends. This is a clever way to acknowledge social anxieties – to say that people who identify with the Flag Smashers are right, to an extent, but then the instant they cross the line into violence, they’re upsetting the status quo and need to be put down by the heroes. I watched TFATWS and obviously enjoyed it. I have gone on a Marvel re-watching binge recently as well. I like the MCU! I like the characters and the madcap sci-fi adventures! But I can also recognize it as a flawed piece of media that I don’t have to accept whole-cloth, and to be able to criticize some of the ancillary messages that come with it. It doesn’t have to be black and white.

When it comes to shipping, moreover, the toxic culture of “my ship is better than your ship because it’s Better in Real Life” ™ is both well-known and in my opinion, exhausting and pointless. As also noted, the whole point of fiction is that it allows us to create and experience realities that we don’t always want in real life. I certainly enjoy plenty of things in fiction that I would definitely not want in reality: apocalyptic space operas, violent adventures, and yes, garbage men. A large number of my ships over the years have been labeled “unhealthy” for one reason or another, presumably because they don’t adhere to the stereotype of the coffee-shop AU where there’s no tension and nobody ever makes mistakes or is allowed to have serious flaws. And I’m not even bagging on coffee-shop AUs! Some people want to remove characters from a violent situation and give them that fluff and release from the nonstop trauma that TV writers merrily inflict on them without ever thinking about the consequences. Fanfiction often focuses on the psychology and healing of characters who have been through too much, and since that’s something we can all relate to right now, it’s a very powerful exercise. As a transformative and interpretive tool, fanfic is pretty awesome.

The problem, again, comes when people think that fic/fandom can only be used in this way, and that going the other direction, and exploring darker or complicated or messy dynamics and relationships, is morally bad. As has been said before: shipping is not activism. You don’t get brownie points for only having “healthy” ships (and just my personal opinion as a queer person, these often tend to be heterosexual white ships engaging in notably heteronormative behavior) and only supporting behavior in fiction that you think is acceptable in real life. As we’ve said, there is a systematic problem in identifying what that is. Ironically, for people worried about Women Getting Ideas by confusing fiction and reality, they’re doing the same thing, and treating fiction like reality. Fiction is fiction. Nobody actually dies. Nobody actually gets hurt. These people are not real. We need to normalize the idea of characters as figments of a creator’s imagination, not actual people with their own agency. They exist as they are written, and by the choice of people whose motives can be scrutinized and questioned, but they themselves are not real. Nor do characters reflect the author’s personal views. Period.

This feeds into the fact that the internet, and fandom culture, is not intended as a “safe space” in the sense that no questionable or triggering content can ever be posted. Archive of Our Own, with its reams of scrupulous tagging and requests for you to explicitly click and confirm that you are of age to see M or E-rated content, is a constant target of the purity cultists for hosting fictional material that they see as “immoral.” But it repeatedly, unmistakably, directly asks you for your consent to see this material, and if you then act unfairly victimized, well… that’s on you. You agreed to look at this, and there are very few cases where you didn’t know what it entailed. Fandom involves adults creating contents for adults, and while teenagers and younger people can and do participate, they need to understand this fact, rather than expecting everything to be a PG Disney movie.

When I do write my “dark” ships with garbage men, moreover, they always involve a lot of the man being an idiot, being bluntly called out for an idiot, and learning healthier patterns of behavior, which is one of the fundamental patterns of romance novels. But they also involve an element of the woman realizing that societal standards are, in fact, bullshit, and she can go feral every so often, as a treat. But even if I wrote them another way, that would still be okay! There are plenty of ships and dynamics that I don’t care for and don’t express in my fic and fandom writing, but that doesn’t mean I seek out the people who do like them and reprimand them for it. I know plenty of people who use fiction, including dark fiction, in a cathartic way to process real-life trauma, and that’s exactly the role – one of them, at least – that fiction needs to be able to fulfill. It would be terribly boring and limited if we were only ever allowed to write about Real Life and nothing else. It needs to be complicated, dark, escapist, unreal, twisted, and whatever else. This means absolutely zilch about what the consumers of this fiction believe, act, or do in their real lives.

Once more, I do note the misogyny underlying this. Nobody, after all, seems to care what kind of books or fictional narratives men read, and there’s no reflection on whether this is teaching them unhealthy patterns of behavior, or whether it predicts how they’ll act in real life. (There was some of that with the “do video games cause mass shootings?”, but it was a straw man to distract from the actual issues of toxic masculinity and gun culture.) Certain kinds of fiction, especially historical fiction, romance novels, and fanfic, are intensely gendered and viewed as being “women’s fiction” and therefore hyper-criticized, while nobody’s asking if all the macho-man potboiler military-intrigue tough-guy stereotypical “men’s fiction” is teaching them bad things. So the panic about whether your average woman on the internet is reading dark fanfic with an Unhealthy Ship (zomgz) is, in my opinion, misguided at best, and actively destructive at worst.

#long post #anonymous #ask

[swapauanon]

How would you respond to the recent attempts by the RWDE community to paint Ruby Rose as a "Gaslighter" The "ironwood was right" apologists have begun claiming that Ruby was gaslighting Penny.. Ridiculous claim, I know, but on Tumblr and RWBYCritics, the claiming that Ruby gaslit Penny and that Blake Gaslit Nora is getting seriously out of hand. They are actually believing their accusations against Ruby and Blake.

Heh, "recent" good one!

But aside from that, I did actually go off on a little rant back in the "Ruby's gaslighting Ironwood" days of Volume 7 (or a little ways into the hiatus, it was a while ago), and in that rant, I pointed out the ACTUAL definition of gaslighting: Using words or actions to get someone doubt their own memory and/or sanity.

Lying can be USED to gaslight, but lying alone isn't gaslighting!

Warning someone not to fall for an abuse tactic is not gaslighting!

Telling a girl that she shouldn't base her entire identity around someone she has a crush on isn't gaslighting! (And honestly, it says a LOT about the Hatedumb that they think "Blake told Nora not to base her identity on being Ren's girlfriend" is toxic.)

I actually included a scene depicting ACTUAL gaslighting in one of my fics JUST to remind everyone of what the word ACTUALLY means after how badly the Ironwood stans had misused the term throughout Volume 7!

Again, friendly reminder that this is not recent and they've been doing it since Volume 7 and will probably continue to accuse the girls of gaslighting whenever they do anything other than mindlessly submit to the "alpha males" they want to imagine themselves as so badly!

I said it before and I'll say it again: The more casually a buzzword is used, the less meaning it has.

Also, if you think that the Ironwood stans claiming that Ruby "gaslit" Penny is recent, I'm sorry, but they've been doing it since the Ace Ops gaslit Penny in V8C3!

Like, no joke, it would not surprise me if the accusations were in direct response to the FNDM pointing out that Vine gaslit Penny to try and make her think she selfishly stole the Maiden Powers for herself.

The claims that Blake gaslit Nora is news to me, but honestly not as surprising as it probably should be.

#rwby #asks #answered #hatedumb

[thechangeling]

I bet you thought I was done lecturing y'all. Cue the surprise bitch meme which I'm too lazy to find.

Ok so can we please nip the whole Ty looks into the Hollow Place and feels the pain he caused Kit idea in the bud? Like I don't think the people coming up with this prompt were intentionally trying to be hurtful but please think of how this sounds. You want Ty to suffer by feeling Kit's pain. Like his own isn't already enough? Like he deserves it? Why exactly? That is my question.

I don't see any of these people writing fanfics about Kit feeling Ty's pain in some way, whether it's by the Hallow Place or some other way. And no I'm not saying you should write that.

But the thing is you never would.

Because you dont believe that Ty has pain. Or at least it's not as significant or as noteworthy. Narratives surrounding autistic people regarding emotions and strength can sound positive in some ways. For example the whole "you're invincible. You're powerful. You can change the world. You can do anything" message. It is rooted heavily in inspiration porn which is ableist.

You don't believe that Ty has any pain. Simple. So many people treat us like it's impossible to hurt our feelings and it's obvious in the way they interact with us. It's obvious in the way some of you treat me. Dismissing and gaslighting me or messaging other blogs on anon and complaining about people overusing the word ableism as a buzzword. Like I a disabled person don't know the meaning? And it's obvious in the way some of you treat Ty's character in your fanfictions. It's obvious in the way someone wrote an entire ass fanfiction with the purpose of making Ty feel Kit's pain because once again you put the burden on him to understand Kit. Super interesting to me.

To add insult to injury there is an entire section where Ty feels Julian's pain as well. He feels "the burden of having to look after him all these years." Do you not think of the autistic people reading these things when you write? Did you not for one second stop to think that maybe implying that an autistic character is a burden on his parental figure is going to have an effect on us? Yeah I know it's kinda written in the canon but the canon was ableist too and we already said that! Where were you?

Basically what I'm saying is watching some of you beat up on one of the only canon autistic characters in modern media is not super good for my mental health. 🤘😀

#kaitlin rants #tda #the dark artifices #kit x ty #tsc #kit herondale #tiberius blackthorn #twp #the wicked powers #actuallyautistic

[astralmouseart]

[part 1]

Here is where I show that Alphonso Dunn is literally delusional and people shouldn’t take his words for gospel.

First is the suspicious page from Inktober book preview.

It was what initially convinced me that the Inktober book is a plagiary, before I bothered to watch more of the video. But here’s the thing. I later looked at it and it’s not a copy. It’s similar in style. That is there is hair texture and bubble texture. By the way, the organic shape isn’t invention of Dunn, it’s an established texture called bubbles. I saw it in The Technical Pen book by Gary Simmons.

And even if, the upper right corner fragment may be partially based on Dunn’s book. But the rest of the page isn’t.

The images are similar on surface but layout, flow, etc, are different.

Dunn’s book has instruction about realistic texture, three examples how variety adds interest, three examples about texturing the outline and three examples showing that less is more.

What we see in Inktober book is Texture with and without variety and following form and not.

There’s no copying of flow, no copying of layout.

What happened is that Alphonso Dunn saw something vaguely similar and then started spinning an entire conspiracy theory where Jake Parker plagiarized his book.

Then we have him claiming that Jake Parker copied his page layout when it comes to tools. Does he even understand what layout is?

Jake Parker’s book has descriptions in the centre and he has them on the left. Jake Parker has tool images on both sides of the text, he has them on the centre-right.

Then there’s whole thing where he has a huge A4 format book while Jake Parker’s book is tiny and square.

He went on and on how much effort it took him to create this layout, but it’s irrelevant since Jake Parker’s book has completely different page layout.

What?

Alphonso Dunn did that thing where he was using words that mean very specific things as buzzwords to push his agenda, which is burying Jake Parker’s book. He made vague insinuations to make people think that Jake Parker plagiarized his book, without any solid proof and now there are hordes of people that believe in that and many of them won’t get convinced otherwise due to the amount of gaslighting in the video.

Another example of supposed copied layout. Strokes in large circles. With text on the left. Obvious copy of strokes in multiple tiny squares showing variation with text under them.

PLAGIARY!!!!

#Alphonso Dunn #Jake Parker #inktober #boycott inktober #inktober drama #mouse talks #mouse thinks

[jedilukeskywalkers]

When good and powerful arent substitute for actual personality in female characters aka Ben value to Rey's character.

The thing that i think makes women being so ride or die with Rey + Ben is the way he pushes her story and via their conflicts allows us to truly know Rey in all her struggles, pain and faults in opposition of just a)uncritically worship the floor she walks in therefore creating this bland boring heroine who is just great (cough cough you know what i mean) b) So devoided of goodness that automatically allows Rey to not ever reason or ask questions about herself and reflect on her choices and because of that we are never able to truly know all her edges.

Media lately is just unable to reflect on women with the same keen eye and absolute interest as he does on men. They are all trying to bank on feminism and empowerment as buzzwords they take of the most boring readings of what it means and make more or less the same story: "We are now gonna worship this woman that we are not developing into a fully complex person, she barely has backstory of faults or conflicts with her inner self or complex relationship with people that are either hero worshipping her or blatantly antagonizing and the narrative has decided they are -for exactly that- just evil. No, we are not developing her more. Shup up. You want female empowerment this is the absolute best we can conjure WHEN WILL WOMEN BE SATISFIED???".

It sucks me dry. Im so fucking not excited about this that my sex drive is now residing with Walt Disney's body in Chryogenic state.

We found ourselves trying to swallow that bland cardboard boring woman that we cant relate to because honestly we are far more interesting and the women in our lives are far more interesting but we have been gaslighted by the industry to think this is the absolute best we can aspire.

Enters the absolute accident that is Ben Solo (I honestly believe he is an accident made by Rian Johnson) whose fucking job in the narrative is make us discover a lot of complexity inside our Rey.

He is not here hero worshipping her (Okay he totally is all the time but gladly it does not come across that way all the time). He has his own garbage going on to just dedicate himself to nurture her in a way that is safe for her and also he is not a total dick that she can get herself of the hook and not interact with him ever.

And what happens? Wow...we get to know Rey thanks to that. We get to know that she in fact a person looking -wrongly- for parental figures, denying herself joy and adulthood because she wants to relive the infancy she never had. We learn that she is actually really feral and angry and fucking impulsive to a fault. We learn that she is brash and follows her instinct always.

We learn that she also longs for freedom of those expectations. That she in fact questions autoritive figures and wants to let go on them.

Its amazing how much of what we now about Rey that makes her into this fully fleshed character is thanks to just putting Ben there and let them both have conflicts and question each other and be allowed to be less than nice but also incredible compassionate and just connected overall. That raw intimacy allows us to see Rey at her worst and her best.

I honestly ask people to just go look for anything interesting and human we learn about Rey that comes from interacting with any other character? Something that it is not another copy of the bland cardboard heroine media always serves us. Ill wait.

He is her literal Jack Dawson propelling her story pushing her out of her comfort zone into what she desires. This is the role all female characters play for men in fiction and he is here..just doing that for her.

There is a female gazey heaven and Jack and Ben stand there.

#reylo #rey #ben solo #reylo meta