While I do think the internet has the unique opportunity to amplify brain-poisoning, I wish discourse wasn’t so heavily split into “online vs irl” when it’s much more an issue of…exclusionary politics and idpol hierarchy brainrot.
“This doesn’t happen offline” the problem is, it does. Because people who captain themselves the arbiter of validity on tumblr dot org are possibly also going to be a self-righteous dorkass at your DEI training, or when organizing lesbian night at the bar, or being president of a queer org on campus, or running LGBT orgs people rely on for survival. Many of the most exclusionary queer spaces were made offline first. Offline spaces organized by young folks from online spaces with no grasp of offline history are going to be just as rife with “terminally online” takes as any website.
Your local steel mill line is both likely to be violently homophobic out of bigoted ignorance AND supremely immune to microidentity politics because it means absolutely nothing to Joe Factory, who will shrug and go “hey man whatever makes you happy.”
Your liberal arts college is both likely to be aware of the niche politics of queer identity and will have heard of and be welcoming to your set of neopronouns AND will find new and cruel ways to be bigoted while smiling in your face because their flavor of queer is celebrated by the city mayor and so LGBT-phobia (please don’t say q***r) ended with marriage equality.
LGBT community that refuses intersectional lenses will always be rife with bigotry, both directed at minorities within this space and indirectly hitting people they think belong (ie assigning masculinity to Black queer women due to racism but then also exhibiting butchphobia/antimasculism at all masculine women, man-hating directed at cis men to “punch up” being weaponized against trans folks, etc)
Cishet society is still not safe for LGBT people, but has gotten better in some areas and worse in others as visibility has increased. Which means micro-infighting potentially is a non-issue in a space that is tolerant to other (more visible) forms of queerness, AND if there is a problem there with family friendly gays and lesbians then they will absolutely take issue with polyam genderfluid aces.
“In real life” has near nothing to do with it. If your space, online or in real life, is neither radically intentionally inclusive or tolerantly indifferent it’s gonna be bigoted—intentionally or not, queer or not.
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Will never forgive certain parts of the fandom for letting the idea of "Claude being confused over Hilda's willingness to die for him is a showing of how morally lacking he is" become an idea that's any kind of popular.
This man spent the first 15-16 years of his life having basically no friends and having everyone around him either trying to murder him outright for attributes about himself he had no control over or otherwise forced him to completely fend for himself against said attempts on his life (Parents of the Year), but he's supposed to just accept that he has someone willing to die protecting him? With that someone being a person who presented herself as someone who would never do exactly that (and who in fact genuinely believed that she would never do that)? After he'd told them to retreat if things got dicey?
His parents literally wouldn't even lift a finger to help stop people trying to murder their child - they told his ass to Get Gud or perish. But him being horrified and baffled that someone would die for him means he's a shitty person who never actually cared for anyone in Fodlan. What complete balderdash
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The parallels, in Imogen, who had spent years, and years, and years, running from the storm. Felt that fear in every inch of her and had fled it, for years. The only directive she ever had when the sky turned red, her only defense. Run. And only recently, so recently, had she started to do something else, started to screw up that courage to walk into it, to face it head on, to do something, anything, other than run. Sitting after a nightmare in the darkness with Fearne and Orym and Laudna around her, promising they'll be there, promising they'll help, promising she isn't alone.
The parallels to this battle, to her, running, her being quickest and cleanest to exit, heart in her throat, hoping against all odds they can get out too-
She's running, of course she's running, she's hiding, she hasn't left, not yet, but she's running.
And Orym falls.
Orym falls, and Orym was the one to put a hand on her knee and tell her, intent, urgent, that she wasn't alone. Orym, sweet Orym, who trusts her, right? To do good, to stay good-
And she stops running, and she gets angry, and furious, she flies up, she plants herself as a distraction, as a prize, demands STOP.
She flies into the eye of the storm.
(The eye of a hurricane is the calmest part. The rest of the storm rages on).
Far below, Fearne falls. Fearne, sweet and fickle and a matched pair with Orym, Fearne who watches her with worry whenever she wakes up shaking, Fearne, who wrapped a bracelet around her wrist so Imogen would know when it was a nightmare, so she could look down and know she could just wake up and be surrounded by them again.
(Is the bracelet still there? Would Imogen even want to look?)
Pleading, now, desperate, angry, negotiating- what do you WANT? What do you want. Her friends, her friends, scattered far below and hurt and broken, scraping themselves together and trying so hard to haul themselves upright, trying to give each other those last little scraps of healing. Trying. Trying so hard, so far, far below.
"I want you to give in"
(It felt wonderful.) (Maybe I should just give in.)
She doesn't give in, she doesn't. She fights. She attacks. She tries to give herself up.
"Is she your favorite?"
"Ill go with you! I give in!"
She tries. She tries. She tries to give up. She tries to give in.
Laudna falls.
Imogen doesn't give in. The storm takes her.
The storm takes all of them, by the end.
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When Oddpelt asked for Haytail to be his mate, he really didn’t see why he should say no. They were friends, and sure, Oddpelt was pretty handsome, what’s the downside?
And then those eyes. Those round, blue eyes. Haytail was always close with Weevilheart. The whole clan was, it seemed like that goofball always knew what to say. How to make cats laugh.
Reedbee had assigned Haytail and Weevilheart on the same patrol, one out to the meadow. Haytail was usually on the top of his hunting game out in the meadow, but whenever he’d catch a glance from Weevilheart his heart would flutter- his paws would shake, and the mouse he was stalking would scurry away. Was Weevilheart doing this on purpose? Didn’t he know Haytail had a mate?
But Haytail couldn’t stop himself from getting lost in those eyes. No one would notice, right?
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