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inkskinned · 8 months

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am i gonna put you in the book acknowledgements am i gonna be able to say your name without flinching am i ever gonna get a word in edgewise am i ever gonna recover the time i spent with you. computer virus kid; i arrived in your life already begging to be let in. somehow insecure i could even be your friend. like you had a line outside the door and we were all shifting our weight, begging.

you're so fucking good at that - at making people feel like they need to earn you, like you're a commodity none of us can afford. no kindness or careful communication could work on you - you were so good at just going-ghost, about deciding someone just wasn't cool-enough. something about that is super ironic. even the parts of it that weren't romantic felt like a romance book. i wanted you to like me so badly i scrubbed myself clean just so you'd spare me - what. your favor? a look?

okay okay okay. it's just a friendship - if it was even true that we were friends, if you even saw me as someone you trusted. on reddit someone would tell me girl literally just cut her out of your life, it's not that difficult. even i was aware of how fucked up the whole situation was. like, why the fuck do i even care about your approval? you're like, not even that fun to be around. you are often a little bit cruel.

but for almost four years of my life, i thought i had found someone like me. somebody who liked the same things i do. someone who liked to read and who liked making jokes with esoteric references and who spent maybe too much time on the internet and who was absolutely a little bit pretentious. i don't know, something about that was powerful and addictive.

i keep thinking about our last conversation. about how i said - okay, enough is enough. you pushed me too far, you really hurt my feelings.

and how you laughed and said - you think you're the victim?

#spilled ink #warm up #writeblr #she physically assaulted me and then screamed in my face #but not before sh'ing first and blaming it on me #while she was locked in my bathroom. at 1 in the morning #while i begged her to please just calm down and to try taking a deep breath and to go to sleep #and then she was like - ur just like my abuser #bc she had screamed in my face which was triggering to me and i froze like a deer in the headlights #and since i had shut down at that point evidently i was the problem child #i know she is out there telling our mutual friends i abandoned her and it makes me SO pissed off #like dude you spent so much fucking time forgiving & forgetting that your decrepit asshole of a boyfriend #pushed me down in the fucking hallway #but noooo hes <3 troubled <3 at 43 and divorced #bc according to you it's important that u don't '''see anyone as a monster''#but god forbid i not handle you SCREAMING IN MY FACE #i couldnt even get you to say sorry for crossing my original and only boundary you were like ''what did you want me to do''#babe i said 'the bf is not allowed around here he scares me and u said ur broken up with him'#that was the thing i wanted you to do: not fucking invite him to WHERE I LIVED #godddd typing this shit out and knowing it's only 2% of what actually happened makes me feel pathetic #i can't believe i let you treat me like that. you were a TERRIBLE friend.

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louroth · 23 days

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"It takes guts to grow up like you did-- thousands of years simmering beneath every kind of oppression man could think of."

"With the sky kissing the crown of my head, knighting me with space to roam and the bravery to explore it [...] Big, open fields of barley and rivers like slivers of silver, marbling my veins."

"And yet you prefer...?" "After all that life?" a breath, a laugh, caught between teeth. "Something cultivated by your own will-- the work, the dread, the sought resolution-- it is far grander than the possibility, the dream of it."

art by @fooltofancy (just. fantastic. look at them. !!!!)

#OUROBOROS #ouroboros-if #interactive fiction #yor/yana #go commission vin if you want to like literally sob. The lines! THE LIIIINES!!!!#I'm so happy I could snag these bdfhksjdbf AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA #never in my life did I think anyone could do Y justice in how I see them in my head. and here's vin absolutely slam dunking every line #I was very. emotional. when I got the art-- I've just been served with some dental problems and whatever the fuck else. been in a fugue sta #e when working on ouro (so much is getting done but endless tasks to do!) and this just. perked me up. (sobs) i love them so much. so.somuc #You haven't seen much of Y in the public demo but they have so many things !!! going on!! and I can't wait to share it and hear from you #often I wonder what peoples theories are on Y. I've heard the rumors #the pondering on a particular theory. and it gets me all giddy-- not bc it is wrong #but because it isn't always entirely right. sdlkfjhslkdjfhsd I love being cryptic LMAO bye. love u

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jacksprostate · 14 days

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Treatise on why No, the doctor just giving the narrator of Fight Club (full name) his requested sleep medication or sending him to therapy would not have Fixed Him

Firstly, saying giving him the insomnia meds would’ve fixed him ignores the reason he has insomnia in the first place. He is so deeply upset by his place in society that he literally cannot sleep. Drugging him to sleep would not change that. That, of course, is the easy, quick response.

But with regard to therapy? The biggest flaw is that it ignores a central tenet of the book. Part of what tortures the narrator and drives him to invent Tyler is that his feelings about this collective, systemic issue are constantly reduced to a Just Him thing. His seatmates ask what his company is. He’s the only one upset at the office. He gets weird looks if he says the truth of what he does. People will do anything in their power to pretend he is the issue, as an individual, because it is far scarier to consider the full implications of the systemic issues implied by what he is saying. Everyone treats it as if the issue is him, so he goes insane. He does anything to get someone to say, holy shit, that’s fucked up, what you’re a part of is wrong. In an attempt to feel any sort of vague sympathy and catharsis, he goes to support groups to pretend to be dying, because then at least people don’t habitually blame him for his anguish.

Saying therapy would fix him ignores that his problems are not individual. They are collective. It’s the reason the entire story resonates with people! Something deeply, unignorably wrong with society, where people would rather blame you for bringing it up than try and address it, because it feels impossible. I don’t blame people for this, really, because it IS scary. It’s terrifying to sit and feel like you’ve realized there’s something deeply, deeply wrong, but if you say something, people will get mad at you since it’s so baked into everything around you. Or, even if they agree, it’s easier to deal with the dissonance by pretending it’s individual.

And it’s not like that’s not the purpose therapy and medications largely serve, anyway. Getting into dangerous territory for this website, but ultimately, the reason the narrator was seeking medication was because it’s a bandaid. A very numbing bandaid. For these very large, dissonance causing problems, therapy does very little. Medications do what they always have, and distract you with numbness or side effects. It’s a false solution. He is seeking an individualized false solution because he has been browbeaten with the idea that this is an issue with him alone, when it's plainly clear it's not.

Don't get me wrong. Obviously he has something wrong with him. But it's a product of his situation. It is a fictional exaggeration of a very real occurrence of mental illness provoked by deep unconscionable dissonance and anguish. There is a clear correlation between what happens and his mental state and his job and how isolated he is.

The thing is, even if he were chemically numbed, I do think he would’ve lost it regardless. Many people on meds find they don’t fix things. For reasons I’ll get into, but in this case because even if numbed or distracted, once you’ve learned about deep, far reaching corruption in society, it’s very hard to forget. Especially if, in his case, you literally serve as the acting hand of this particular variety. He’s crawling up the walls.

So why do people say this? Well, it's funny I guess. Maybe the first time or whatever. But also, often, they believe it, to a degree. Maybe they've just been told how effective therapy and meds are for mental illness, they believe wholeheartedly in The Disease Model of Mental Illness, maybe they themselves have engaged with either and have considered it successful. Maybe they or someone they know has been 'saved' by such treatments.

But in all honesty.... What therapy can help with is mentality, it's how you approach problems. For issues on a smaller scale, not meaning they are easier to deal with my any degree, but ones that are not raw and direct from deep awareness of corruption; these are things that can be worked through if you get lucky and get an actually good therapist who helps build up your resiliency. But when your issue is concrete, something large and inescapable? It's useless. At best it can help you develop coping mechanisms, but there is a limit for that. There is a point where that fails. To develop the ability to handle something like this requires intense development of a comfort with ambiguity and dissonance and being isolated and a firm positioning of your purpose and values and and belief in wonder and all the other shit I ramble about. The things that the narrator lacks, which lead him to taking an ineffectual death knell anarchist self-destruction path. Therapy, where the narrator is, full of the knowledge of braces melted to seats and all the people that have to allow this to happen? It fails.

And meds â€” meds are a fucking scam. We know the working mechanism of basically none of them, the serotonin receptor model was made up and paid its way into prominence. We have very little evidence they're any better than placebo, and they come with genuinely horrific side effects. Maybe you got lucky. I did, on some meds. On others? I don't remember 2018. The pharmaceutical industry is also known for rampant medical ghostwriting, and for creating 'off-label' uses for drugs that have gained too many protests in their original use, then creating a cult of use to then have 'grassroots' campaigns for it to be made a label use (ie, legitimize their ghostwritten articles with guided anecdotes).

The DSM itself is basically a marketing segregation plot. It's an attempt to legitimize the disease model by isolating subgroups of symptoms to propose individualized treatments for subgroups that are not necessarily all that separate. But if the groups exist, you can prescribe more and different medications, no? Not to mention, if you use the disease model, you can propose that these diseases are permanent, or permanent until treated, considered more and more severe to offset and justify the horrific side effects of the medications. Do you know why male birth control doesn't really exist? Same reason. They can justify all the horrible side effects for women, because the other option is pregnancy. For men, it's nothing.

And they're not bothering to invent new drugs without side effects. When they invent new drugs it's just because the last one got too bad of a name, or they can enter a new market. Modern drugs don't work any better than gen1 drugs. They still have horrific side effects. At best, the industry will shit out studies saying the old one was flawed (truth) so they can say this new gen will be better (lie). They're doing it with ssris right now.

Fundamentally, the single proposed benefit of any of these drugs is that they numb you. To whatever is torturing you. It's harder to be depressed if you can't feel it, or if you just can't muster the same outrage. Of course, there is people who find that numbness to be helpful, or worth it. But often, it's stasis. For the people who have problems that can be worked on, it serves as a stopgap to not actually work on said problems. The natural outcome of the disease model is stagnation for those whose need is to develop skills and resiliency. It keeps them medicalized and dependent on the idea that they're diseased and incapable. Profitable. Stuck in the womb.

I’ve been there. It’s easier, to wallow, and resist growth because it’s difficult and painful and unfair and cruel and you can think of five billion reasons to justify your languishing. But don’t listen to anyone who tells you you’re just permanently damaged, no matter how nicely they word it, no identity or novel pathologization, no matter how many benefits they promise, especially if they swear up and down some lovely expensive medications with little solid backing and plentiful off-label usage and side effects that’ll kill you. Some days it feels like they want us all stuck in pods, agoraphobic and addicted to the ads they feed us to isolate the markets for the drugs they’ve trained us to beg them to pump us with. Polarization making it as easy as flashing blue light for go, red like for stop, or vice versa. I worry about the kids, for fucks sake. That’s a bit dark and intense, and I apologize. But I want you (generic) to understand, there is a profit motive. Behind everything. And they do not mean well. They do not care about your mental health or your rights or your personhood or your growth. They care about how they can profit off of you.

For those struggling with immovable, society problems, like the narrator grappling with how his job fits into and is accepted by society while his rejection and horror in the face of it does not, it can work about as well as any other drug addiction. Your mileage may vary. From what I've seen, recovering from being on prozac for a long time can be worse than alcohol. They put kids on this shit. They keep campaigning for more. Off label, again. A pharmaceutical company’s favorite thing to do has to be to spread rumors of someone who knows someone who said an off label use of this drug helps with this little understood condition. Or, in the case of mental illness, questionably defined condition. And like, damn, I know I'm posting on the 'medicalization is my identity' website so no one will like all this and has probably stopped reading by now, but yall should be exposed to at least one person who doubts this stuff. Doesn't just trust it. Because I mean, that's the thing right?

It's so big. What would it mean, for this all to be true? Yeah, everyone says pharmaceutical companies are evil and predatory and ghostwriting, but to think about what that really entails. Coming back to the book, everyone knows the car lobby is huge and puts dangerous vehicles through that kill people. What does it mean if the car companies all hire people to calculate the cost of a recall and the cost of lawsuits? No one wants to think about the scale that means for people allowing it or the systems that have to be geared towards money, not safety like they say. Hell, even Chuck misses the beat and has the narrator threaten his boss with the Department of Transportation. And shit, man, if every company is doing this, you think Transportation doesn't know? That they give a fuck? You're better off mailing all the evidence to the news outlets and hoping they only character assassinate you a little bit as they release the news in a way that says it's all the fault of little workers like you, not the whole system. Something something, David McBride, any whistleblower you feel like, etc.

So I don't blame you, if your reaction is "but but but, that can't be right, people wouldn't do it, they wouldn't allow it" or just an overwhelming feeling of dread that pushes you to deny all of this and avoid thinking about it. Just know, that's in the book. That's all the seatmates on the flights. That's all his fellow officemates. It's easier to pretend, I know.

But think about, how the response fits in with the themes of the book. The story, as a movie too. What drives the narrator’s mental breakdown? How would you handle being in his position? How would you handle being his seatmate? It’s easy to say you’d listen. But have you? Have you had any soul wrenching betrayals of how you thought society worked? How about a betrayal by the thing that promised to be the fix of the first? Can you honestly say you wouldn’t follow that gut instinct, saying follow what everyone says, that person must just be crazy, evil, rude, cruel, whatever it is that means you can set what they said aside?

For a lot of people, they can do that, I guess. Set it aside. Reaching that aforementioned state of managing to cope with the dissonance and ambiguity and despair is very hard. The narrator made the Big Realization, but he couldn’t cope. He self-destructed. Even when people don’t make the big realization consciously, they’re already self-destructing. It’s hard to escape it when it feels easier than continuing anyway. When it feels like the only option,

Would therapy fix the narrator of Fight Club? Would meds fix the narrator of Fight Club? No. He knows too much. All meds will do, by the time he’s in the psych ward, is spiritually neuter him. A silly phrase, but really. Take the wind out of his sails.

Is he fixed if he doesn’t try to blow up town? If he just shuts up and settles in and stops costing money? If he still can’t cope with the things he’s unearthed? Do you see how this is a commentary in a commentary in a commentary?

Fight Club is an absolutely fascinating story because of this. The fact that it addresses the fallout of knowing. The isolation. The hopelessness. The spiral that results from a lack of hope. This is, I think, what resonates most with people, even if not consciously. Going insane because you’ve discovered something you wish you could unknow. It’s a classic horror story. Should our society be lovecraftian evil? I don’t think so.

Do I think changing it will be easy? No. Lord knows a lot exists to push people who make these sorts of Realizations towards feelings of individuality and individualized solutions and denial and other distractions and coping methods. And to prevent people who make One realization from expanding on it and considering further ramifications. Fight Club itself gets into this; the isolation of men being a strict part of the role society shapes for their sex leaves them very vulnerable to death fetishes, in a sense, and generally towards self destructive violence. It helps funnel them away from substantial change and towards ineffectual change. Many things, misogyny, racism, serve to keep people isolated from one another, individualized, angry, and impossible to work with. Market segregation; god knows even appealing on those fronts has become such a classic ploy that companies do it now, the US military frames its plundering that way, etc.

I’ve wandered a bit but ultimately, my point is this: Fight Club is a love letter to the horrors of critical thinking, and the importance of not falling into the trap of self destruction and hopelessness in the face of it. The latter is why Tyler was an anarchoterrorist instead of anything useful. The latter is why it was a death cult. It’s important to work through the horrors of critical thinking so you can do it, and stand on the other side ready to believe in each other. It’s worth it.

#fight club #my writing #uh. sorta #If you disagree with me it's fine btw. That's a given for me but I realize that's not usual for this website #my big desire is always to provoke thought and get people to think about why they think things #not necessarily to get them to agree with me. though obviously like any person i enjoy that #it was nice to type this out #also #aside from the prozac withdrawals mention and my own experience w memory loss (hilariously not even the most major of my beefs with the #medical industry! or even just the mental health industry! but its an easy nonoffensive one so #anyway i kept it nonspecific because if you go specific it becomes easier for people to just go 'oh well its That that's the problem and i #dont need to reflect at all on my drug/condition/issue/etc'#which ppl will anyway ofc. but yk #maybe theyll find it easier to ignore without the horrific specific examples but i want to leave it broad because 1. doing research and #going past the first thing you find and confirmation bias stuff is good 4 u #second. it's better imo to leave it more open for people to try and apply it broadly #whew ANYWAY #a bonafide Rant #i shouldve put #anti psychiatry #in the first few tags. i havent really looked on tumblr to see what the community 4 that is like on here because it feels like an oxymoron #on this website #but im sure it probably exists even if its used for smth else #(please change)

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unovaslankiite · 9 days

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Prolly gonna be my one and only rwde post (cus the fanbase is rancid and I'm not rlly a rwby fan, just a person who watches the show): some of you rwby fans are too comfortable using your queerness as a shield to silence BIPOC voices about the racist writing and your 'precious' bigoted CRWBY. You guys unironically act/think that just because you have to deal with queerphobia; you are IMMUNE to being bigoted yourself and you are INCAPABLE of parroting bigoted beliefs. Cus I know there will be a dumbass ant1-rwde posters who will try to drown out this post by saying its 'lies from the EVIL RWDE!!!': You would rather weaponize your queerness to bash on BIPOC voices, while claiming to care about our voices. You would rather be complicit with the racist writers and their racist writing, just because your racist writers gave you a queer ship. There is no shame nor issue in projecting the abused you suffered onto the characters, however you refuse to see through the characters and their writing through a BIPOC lens. You do not get the right to impose your perspective of the characters at the expense of BIPOC voices, you do not get to twist our voices to be alt-right bigots because we called out RWBY's rampant racism. You do not get the right to say you give a shit about BIPOC and have #BLM in your bio when you fervently defend your bigoted company. You do not get to pretend to care about racism when you buy merch off of your bigoted company. My fellow BIPOC (especially the queer BIPOC): why are you guys so comfortable dismissing your fellow poc about their discomfort with RWBY's racist writing? BIPOC are not a monolith with the same opinions about racism in media; but some of you guys are weirdly comfortable with turning a blind eye to your fellow BIPOC getting dogpiled by the white fandom. We can and will disagree, you not agreeing as a BIPOC about RWBY's racist writing is not what I take issue with. The issue lies within you upholding the racial colourblindness in the fandom; like how the fandom was ok with throwing the racism under the bus in favour of queerness, you are ok with throwing your BIPOC peers under the bus for white queerness. Sincerely, a POC who has been watching the fandoms rampant racism problem ever since 2019.

#rwde #bitches be like: 'yeah we know that rwby handled racism bad :)))'#then get fucking furious when you say 'adam taurus being retconned from a minority rights fighter to an abusive ex was kinda bad'#go watch unicornofwar's white fang video and think about it holy shit. listen to the white guy if u dont wanna listen to poc #white fans get furious when you say that rwby has a racism problem TO THIS DAY #you dare mention how the 'villains' are all poc with visible ethnic traits/darker skin tones #while our heroes are white as fucking paper with zero ethnic traits #they would scream to the heavens that ruby and yang are chinese #despite being very much modelled off of white women/afabs #while also be giddy about whitewashing james to fit their evil facist dictator narrative #despite james being modelled off of an ACTUAL asian man unlike ruby and yang #and is one of the few characters who have visible ethnic features unlike ruby and yang #fandom racism goes unchecked over here and i have never felt so unsafe in a fandom #at the end of the day: ig white ppl will always prioritize themselves at the expense of bipoc #'omg we're ur allies #i totally understand how it feels like to be discriminated against 🥺'#<- not even a week later you borderline gaslight a poc rightfully saying its fucking weird to be making animal jokes about blake #at this point? call me a slur #dont pretend you give a shit about me as a poc #dont even fucking bother being my friend as a white queer if ur just gonna spout the same shit i see online #rwby fans you guys are one of the most racist fandoms out there #btw if you guys are gonna come at me with racism and harassment #you will be blocked <3 #especially if u are as slavic as the vikings #do not bother lecturing a poc about how ur racist anime isn't that racist

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turtletoria · 2 years

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THE BLORBOS HAVE BEEN HORSEY-FIED

#turtlearts #wordgirl #wg #mlp #dr two brains #the butcher #i know this has been done ad nauseam but i wanted to try designing ponies too ok!!#sorry that the colors are so damn ugly !!! i didnt want their ponysonas to just be skin colored but also i am not the best at colors so uh.#their colors are subject to change tee bee aech <-- acting like theyre ever gonna draw these designs again #i love becky's colors tho. she looks strawberry #2 brainz is a little creacher #with uh. chicken legs?? idk yellow like his gloves but they r chicken legs in my heart #also all the little kids are blank flanks because they r children #also scoops is green because i refuse to make the east asian kid. the yellow pony. do u see the problem here #also since i opened the can of worms can i just say how hard it is to give scoops a Main Color Code?#like i would say that yellow is his main color (based on outfit) but also. absolutely not im not doing that to him #so i code him a yellowish green hope it looks good

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six-demon-bag · 21 days

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SCHMIDTY textposts (5/?)

#i do not have a problem why are you looking at me likethat #schmidtyyyyyyyyyy #i didnt number these textposts originally bc i thought id make like. two or three. well as u see.#i know hes not 45 here but he is now so let me have this #ernst schmidt #the cloverfield paradox #sixdemon textpost #sixdemon schmidty collection #daniel brühl

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butchez · 8 days

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tbh its unfortunate that it became taboo to ever criticize the ace community like yeah yeah ewww 2017 ass discourse whatever but theres still like Problems . like even before that kink poll was posted i think theres a pretty clear issue of people just Not understanding what sexuality is and a large part of that confusion is definitely coming from the "you can be asexual and still enjoy sex" crowd

#i do feel like the ace community fucked itself over a bit spending more time explaining why it belongs in the lgbt community and not enough #time figuring out what asexuality even Is ... and at this point it has such a broad definition that literally anyone that doesnt immediatel #want to have sex upon meeting someone can consider themselves to be on the ''ace spectrum'' like what are we doing here .#its giving the same energy as conservatives who complain about ''hookup culture'' like i PROMISE you arent in the minority for not #wanting sex on the first date #i just think at this point asexuality has kind of lost any meaning or value it had as a label #like when i see the word asexual in someones bio all it tells me abt that person is that theres like a 30% chance theyre gonna put some #annoying shit complaining about The Allos on my dash #ftr i dont have a problem with everyone who ids as asexual bc who care. if i sound harsh here thats bc i just talk like that 💕#jude talks #ace discourse #<understand im being kind and tagging this so people can blacklist it. not an invitation for randoms to argue with me u will be blocked

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vigilbutts · 5 months

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beans hair debate has me suffering because for accuracy, lynx face + side flip hair is closer to my fursona's design (pictured below in some old arts)

.....buuuuuut i also really like the spiky hair with the jewelry for stand-in for piercings reasons (plus beans has alt hairstyles and it is spiky like some of those).

and also. the lynx face does weird things with like all eyewear and the other face also sparks joy + i like the snoot markings for beans on that face (eyewear issue pictured below)

but also the lynx face is cute despite that any headgear for the eye region is Totally Fucked... but also the other face doesn't have that limit with wardrobe... but also....... ANYWAYS. WITH ALL THAT IN MIND.

#oops all beans #shar art #decisions are so hard for meeeeeeeeeeeeee #i cant help but ask for opinions because if i just wait to decide myself. i will be here forever weighing options #to find the objectively superior choice (there rarely is an objectively superior choice)#do u see my problem #giving u all the reasoning i have behind the choices too because it is Important To Me #also it is an excuse to wave my fursona at people #just shove ur opinions in my hand via this poll please & thank youuuu #sorry i have the 2am zoomies

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rollercoasterwords · 1 year

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I have, a genuine question for you. Do you acknowledge the racism in the original AYTD or at least know about it? Like how MsKingBean uses slurs and racist stereotypes?

hey, so, i'm a bit apprehensive about answering this because...it doesn't feel like a very geniune question to me, if i'm being honest. "do you acknowledge x thing" is a question that is inherently set up so that i'm meant to answer "yes, i acknowledge that x thing is true," because the alternative is saying "no, i don't acknowledge that x thing is true," which is already framing this interaction as if to disagree with you would be a kind of failure on my part to do some due diligence of engaging critically with a text. and the fact that you say mskingbean89 used slurs in atyd shows me that you haven't even engaged with the text, because that simply...isn't true.

if what you're referring to when you say "slurs" is the anti-romani stereotypes--this is coming from an extra chapter in the bootleg tapes focusing on greyback, where there is a slur used to describe his living situation + he + his family were portrayed as nomadic irish people in a way that was insensitive. people who read that chapter and then went back to the canon story with that characterization in mind rightfully pointed out that it was fucked-up. mskingbean89 addressed those criticisms by adding this note to the beginning of that bootleg chapter:

personally, i think this was a good way to take accountability + acknowledge the mistakes she made with that portrayal. she was a human being who made an ignorant mistake, which then just happened to get absolutely blasted to millions of people--she did not have sensitivity readers or editors looking over her fanfiction, because she did not write it expecting it to reach the level of popularity that it has. to be honest, i am not really sure how she could have better acknowledged her mistake, aside from just....not having made it in the first place. she explains her intentions without acting as though that intent cancels out harm, owns up to the fact that the stereotyping was harmful regardless of intention, and provides resources to learn while also committing to be more mindful + educate herself moving forward. honestly, that's exactly the response i would hope to see from someone who makes a mistake like this one.

i agree with you that people reading atyd should acknowledge + understand the racism regarding romani stereotypes stemming from that bootleg chapter, which is why i think it's great that there is a note literally built into the beginning of that chapter acknowledging it! but i feel as though there's been this like...game of telephone happening online when it comes to atyd, where there are now people who have never even read the story talking about things that quite literally do not appear in the base text itself. i've also seen people acting as though mkb herself did not address these issues when they were raised to her, which is just...patently false.

and so what i'm wondering here is what you're looking for from me when you ask a question like "do you acknowledge the racism in atyd." anyone who actually reads the texts has to acknowledge the racism in that bootleg chapter, because mkb puts that acknowledgment front and center at the beginning. and also like...in the part of the fandom i'm in, in the conversations i've listened to or taken part of regarding atyd, people have acknowledged the issues with that bootleg chapter and the ways it reflects back on the main story. so what do you mean by "acknowledge" when so many people, including mkb herself, have already... acknowledged it? what action are you calling for, and who are you calling for it from?

because like. if what u actually want to say here is that atyd is Irredeemably Problematic and we should all like....shun it? universally agree that it's Bad? then it's just like. it is up to each individual reading the story to decide whether that specific portrayal of greyback in the bootleg chapters is something that ruins the story completely for them or whether they still think the story as a whole holds worth. personally, i feel like i can acknowledge that there are issues with mkb's portrayal of greyback and i need to be mindful of that when reading the story so as not to internalize harmful stereotypes while still finding atyd to be a masterpiece that really beautifully deals with a lot of nuanced issues regarding class and disability and systems of power. this is just part of thinking critically when you read; many famous and beloved works of fiction contain the biases of their authors or have mistakes or issues in the way they portray things that are a product of ignorance. and i know everyone reading marauders fanfiction should understand this, because if u genuinely think that a character being negatively stereotyped means u should throw the entire work in the trash, then none of u would be touching harry potter fanfiction with a five foot pole in the first place.

so, anon - if you have actually read atyd, and there are issues with racism that you have found that i am unaware of, and not just telephone-game twitter posts of people taking shit out of context that you're accepting as truth without bothering to engage with the work yourself--if you want to have a real conversation about it, i would invite you to come to me as an actual person and not an anonymous ghost in my inbox. my dms are open, but when it comes to talking about serious issues, i tend to find it more genuine if the person coming to me actually cares enough and believes in what they're saying enough to say it as themself. and if you haven't read atyd and are just parroting things you've heard other people say online then i would invite you to actually sit down and read the work and form your own opinions on it before getting back to me. i know that might sound harsh, but honestly i'm just completely fed-up at this point with all the bad-faith takes and misinformation that i've seen people spreading about atyd just because they think it's cool to dislike a popular thing.

#mkb is literally a human being who never intended for her story to get as popular as it has #i think the people who villainize her for likes on their twitter posts seem to forget that #and i'm not going to take part in some sort of smear campaign being run by people who brag about not even having read the story #i'm happy to acknowledge issues i find in a work. but i typically do that privately. in conversations with other people who have read it #because as i have said a million times there is never a reason for publicly shitting on fics regardless of how popular they get #it's not like mkb is profiting in any way from her story. in fact she has literally had to deal with awful harassment #and most of the 'critiques' i see about atyd are either bad-faith criticism or things that literally are not true. so!!#here's ur acknowledgment anon but if what ur looking for is for me to condemn mkb....sorry but that's not happening #i love atyd and think it's an amazing work of fiction. and i think mkb did a beautiful job exploring + portraying #many nuanced + sensitive issues. if u read the work and feel differently that's fine!#but that doesn't change the fact that it's fanfic....and that u should address any problems u have with it with fic etiquette in mind #ask #ranting and raving

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