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feminismisstillahatemovement · 8 months

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Here we go again. Another institution, brimming with self-righteous faux outrage, is trying to airbrush JK Rowling’s name out of history. This time it’s the turn of the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle, Washington, which has removed the world-famous author’s name from its Harry Potter exhibition. Last week, the museum announced that while it will continue to display memorabilia from the Harry Potter books and films, it wants no association with their supposedly problematic creator.

Explaining the decision in a 1,400-word blog, the museum’s exhibitions project manager, Chris Moore, brands Rowling a ‘cold, heartless, joy-sucking entity’. Moore, who identifies as trans and uses ‘he / them’ pronouns, takes exception to Rowling’s ongoing interest in preserving women’s hard-won rights over the ‘right of anyone who insists they are who they say they are’. Once again, Rowling’s reasonable and rational defence of women’s sex-based rights is being presented disingenuously as ‘hateful’ or ‘harmful’ towards transgender people, and therefore deserving of cancellation.

Moore even seems to think it would be better if Rowling had never existed. ‘We would love to go with the internet’s theory that these books were actually written without an author’, he writes, ‘but this certain person is a bit too vocal with her super hateful and divisive views to be ignored’.

Strikingly, Moore goes a few steps further than most of Rowling’s critics. He doesn’t just accuse her of transphobia. He also accuses the Harry Potter books of peddling ‘racial stereotypes’, promoting ‘fat shaming’ and, perhaps most heinous of all, lacking ‘LGBTQIA+ representation’. Surely to goodness there must have been a few pansexual / nonbinary students in the imaginary, magical school of Hogwarts? Shame on JKR for not giving them a voice, eh? The headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, might have been gay, but apparently that’s not enough in our world of 764 genders.

I find myself torn about this particular non-event, to be perfectly honest. On the one hand, I realise this is simply the latest in a long line of attempts to shut Rowling up. ‘I saw Goody Rowling, in the barn, consorting with the devil!’ is the tone of every such outburst. By now, these tricks have become cheap and obvious to anyone observing closely. The smears are always baseless.

On the other hand, the attempts to erase Rowling are deadly serious. Each attempted takedown inevitably leads to her receiving the vilest, cruellest abuse. Abuse which, if you’ve ever taken the time to read it, contains some of the most horrific things one human could say to or about another. Rowling is no doubt a tower of strength and resilience, having been on the receiving end of this bile for years. But it’s probably still having an effect on her, deep down.

Perhaps there is an upside to this stunt by Moore and the MoPOP, however. Removing Rowling’s name from the museum, and condemning her as ‘super hateful’, is so infantile that most right-thinking people will likely see it for the foolishness it really is. Sunlight, on occasions such as these, has a remarkable effect of highlighting the absurd and often cruel behaviour of the gender ideologues. People are getting wise to these smear tactics now that they are so regularly churned out. The problem is it is difficult to get people to speak out against them.

Sadly, most people are still too scared to speak up. This shouldn’t surprise us when the extremist factions of the trans movement use threats of rape, violence and torture to bring people into line. They doxx people’s addresses and workplaces, so the heretics can be hunted down and vilified, resulting in the loss of earnings, jobs, reputations and more. There are countless examples of this. And no doubt there will be many more to come.

Faced with this, we cannot simply stand by and shrug. We have to stand up to the smears. The truth is that Rowling has never said anything untoward about trans people. She has been critical of the behaviour of some trans fanatics. She has been vocal in her support for single-sex spaces for women and girls. And yes, she has vociferously defended herself against hourly abuse. As she damn well has a right to do. But she is not the bigot she has been made out to be.

It’s time we all speak up for what is right. It’s time to break the cycle of fear. It’s time we called out this public assault on JK Rowling – and on all the other gender-critical feminists who’ve been similarly maligned. We need to put a stop to this authoritarian movement.

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James Dreyfus is an actor who has starred in Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, Absolutely Fabulous and The Thin Blue Line.

#jk rowling #witch hunts

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allarica · 10 months

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Okay so i followed you years and years ago. For pjo fan art. And i thank you for your service to the fandom absolutely beautiful stuff.

But THEN i was looking for a new book series to read and i remembered that you posted a lot about the captive prince series. So i grabbed the first book from my library. And MAAM. I do not know what i expected, but damn this is a different tone. Anyway, I'm already on page 100, and I got it yesterday, so thanks.

ahaha, it's DEFINITELY DIFFERENT.

there's a lot of content you should be trigger warned throughout the three books. so yes, warning to all my younger followers this book contains sexual abuse, rape, slavery, torture, lots of murders and attempts thereof, other forms of abuse etc. please do tread with caution. it gets heavy all around.

the first book, especially, was so hard for me to get through, like. WOW.

but i think if you can read past that (like i said, CAN, it's surely not for everybody), it's definitely a really well written story with lots of steamy romance and political intrigue.

also, i do recommend reading the tie in short stories because they're really fun and actually resolve a bunch of issues in the trilogy, i think.

#asks #captive prince

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biopanik · 7 months

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The Morality of Fandom Activities

This might as well be an essay, so apologies for my long asf post. Just a few heads up: this is in no way talking about people who support incest irl and MAPS. Those are extreme cases that I'm not qualified myself to talk about, I only know that I don't want them on my page 😭

I stopped having a very active social media presence when I was finishing high school. For me, this was a huge deal, because as the token weird queer kid all my life, Tumblr and fandom culture provided a safe space for self-expression, developing my writing skills and exploring myself. Fandoms usually play a huge role for teens, since their interactions and their experiences shape their mindsets into the primary form their adult brain takes. Whenever I look at my old posts, I can see the points where I was maturing, I could see my opinions change very clearly without always connecting old posts to significant life events.

What is very important to take into account is that I was in ALL the "red flag" fandoms, even some niche ones. BNHA, Homestuck, RWBY, Okegom, Voltron, you name it. I was into it, I had Instagram edits of it saved on my phone. As a result, I am familiar with all kinds of fujoshi, yuri bros, proshippers, etc. I'm not here to inform you about my entire digital footprint though. I'm here to discuss fandom morality. Fair warning, I will be referring to a bunch of dark themes vaguely.

I want to start by saying I understand the appeal of a toxic ship. A ship that is straight-up problematic given the context of the story. Be it because the characters are abusive to each other, a very big age gap or them being blood relatives - I get it, even if I'm one of the people who's easily repelled by this shit. I get why Junjou Romantica, for example, became so popular. The big body proportions, the "forbidden romance" trope, the guilty pleasure, I get it. I understand how nerdy young women would fawn over yaoi because they craved a soft male touch. I understand the south park proshippers because they inserted their younger selves into the characters and imagined scenarios where their own fucked-up childhoods would make sense.

My experience with Funamusea helped me understand that things that are taboo can be appealing in a fictional form. There were a lot of issues because the horror used in Funa's games was centered around sexual battery and assault. To me, that made perfect sense. Funa games are packed to the brim with gore, war, mental abuse, and disturbing characters. Of course, there would be SA in such a fucked up setting. Rape is a horrifying thing that no one should face because it is a subcategory of violence. VIOLENCE IS SOMETHING NO ONE SHOULD EVER COME ACROSS. Therefore, why is it that people who write stories containing this trope receive so much hate, but 1940s war aus for example get praised? Why is FMA a pacifist masterpiece and not torture porn?

For "glorifying" real-life horrors? Triggering people? Let's broaden this.

Think of your favorite slasher film. Your favorite best-seller horror book. Do you think that the people behind these stories are freaks and murderers? Psychopaths are capable of fitting in anywhere they want, even fucking churches. So it is useless to assume creators are moral instigators for their VILLAINS. Now let's think about Colleen Hoover and Sara J Maas (or as I like to call her, Sara J Ass). Their "love" stories are super popular because of the immense marketing that they have received, despite profiting off romanticized harmful content. Backlash is still minimized in contrast to anime niche, because they are backed by million-dollar industries and the fact that they conform to the norms of a straight story. Although that, is a topic for another discussion - how problematic characteristics are "musts" in irl relationships.

Lastly, I want to talk about the so-called community saviors who want to protect these platforms. Those who want to build a safe environment so that no predators infiltrate our sacred grounds where we discuss Persona 5 ABO dynamics. A lot of them are oftentimes victims of this sort of abuse. I myself have come across groomers. But tbh 15yo kids who reblog Shiro X Keith are not really the enemy? Anyway, that's a little besides the point. I want to directly talk to these people right now, hear me out: you are hypocrites. You only pretend to care about Tumblr communities but do not hesitate to accuse someone of abuse (any kind) and tell them to end their life. How are you protecting anyone like this? How are you a positive role model for the children partaking in fandom activities when you show clearly that you wish death upon someone. VIOLENCE IS SOMETHING NO ONE SHOULD EVER COME ACROSS, I re-iterate and you possibly agree, but YOU ARE STILL VIOLENT, and justify it by being "virtuous". How are you any different from @\hivliving? Her actions will forever be engraved in her victims' heads, even if she was humiliated in the end. Then again, it would have been better for her to write a shitty low-quality fic about Hamilton having HIV or whatever the fuck, if looking up basic things about HIV was so difficult. After 7 years in & out of fandoms, there's one thing I'm fine with, and that's bad fics.

Ultimately there is so much more I want to say. I might cover this topic on my bestie and I's podcast sometime (soz it's in Greek). The bottom line here though is not about keeping a neutral stance on problematic media. It is to enjoy whatever the fuck you want just because it makes you happy. It is to differentiate what's a wolf in sheep's clothing from what's a sheep. It is to accept that kids will ALWAYS lie about their age to access all sorts of NSFW. God knows I did so. It is to recognize them and realize that their creators and fans are most likely not going to act out every bad thing that occurs in said story. Because if that were the case, with the rise of all the Yeagerists, we'd have so many bitchless college students trying to start little rumblings of their own, and the world would be a much funnier place.

Now go outside and spread your moral philosophies to people outside your Discord server

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writingpuddle · 10 months

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So I’ve been following you for a bit and decided to get into AFTG as a result but I don’t know where to look into reading it. Help? It’s not showing up on my library but I also do not want to buy it yet just in case it turns out that it’s not something I’m into

The first book is currently free on kobo, amazon and barnes and noble as an ebook and the second and third cost about a dollar each (may depend on your currency). at the very least you can test drive book one before committing any cash, and even then its not very much. otherwise i know at least one of the library systems im in has an e-copy so check if theres any nearby libraries you can join for free online that may have one.

also--if youve been following me youve probably already gotten a sense of this, but aftg comes with a huge laundry list of trigger tags (rape, physical/psychological abuse, non consensual drug use, torture, and many others). i adore the series, its one of my favourite things that ive ever read, but the plot is buckwild and it contains some hard hitting stuff. if theres anything youre ever concerned about while reading, hmu, i can spoil as much or as little as you like if you want some extra information going in

anyway, good luck, have fun, and thanks for messaging!

#if anyones got a hold of that post where someone compiled that list of trigger tags in aftg #this would be an appropriate time to share that i think #anyway more info than you asked for anon but i am an overexplainer it is my nature #anons #asks #nice things #aftg #the foxhole court

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sg-kree · 2 years

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The Importance of Proper Tagging in FanFiction

trig·ger warn·ing

noun: trigger warning; plural noun: trigger warnings

a statement at the start of a piece of writing, video, etc., alerting the reader or viewer to the fact that it contains potentially distressing material (often used to introduce a description of such content).

"there probably should be a trigger warning for people dealing with grief"

-Google definition

con·tent warn·ing

Noun: a stated warning that the content of the immediately following text, video, etc., may upset or offend some people:

That article needs a content warning at the beginning for a brief discussion of violence.

–Urban Dictionary by user grebe

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The topic of trigger warnings (TW) and content warnings (CW) can be a polarizing one in writing circles. To tag or not to tag, is often the question. It is advisable, however, to veer toward the side of caution, and while omitting TWs is an error that many fanfiction authors have made, it is an error that simply should not continue.

But what, exactly, is a TW tag or a CW tag? Are trigger warnings and content warnings the same?

Trigger warnings and content warnings have graced our media consumption since 1968 in the form of the movie rating system. This system has been revised over the years, added to TV shows and even includes descriptive reasons for the assigned rating. The rating system was adapted for video games in the early 1990s. These ratings were designed to give people a means to control their own media consumption or that of their children. Outside of online fanfiction, the literary industry has been slower to adopt rating systems. Often relying on word of mouth, publishing genres, websites like Goodreads, blogs or published reviews to warn people about content, it is only recently that some traditionally published books have begun to include content warnings.

Fanfiction, on the other hand, has carried versions of content warnings from its early days of internet self-publishing. I vividly remember discovering fanfiction for the first time. I was excited to have new content for my favorite fandoms. And there at the top of several pieces of fiction were content warnings letting me know of the death of canon characters or sexual situations that were never present in original works (slash warnings I’m looking at you).

I’ve only written about content warnings up until this point. Content warnings are warnings about material that might offend a person or cause them to be upset. For a movie example, think about rated R for language and violence. When you see that content warning you know there may be a lot of swearing, fighting and possibly weapons. Viewing (or reading) those things may upset a person due to their age or personality. A trigger warning is a bit more specific and is used when extreme situations may occur such as torture, rape, or suicide. They are used to denote situations that may cause a person to relive their own trauma. (Amanda)

You don’t write tags because something is canon or not canon in a show, book, video game, etc. You write tags to warm people of the content contained in your chosen media. Suicide, rape, physical violence are ones that we tag often. But writing about war, PTSD-related episodes, child abuse, even medical procedures could trigger a person. (Joy)

I read something that had a topic that did send me into a panic. It wasn’t tagged. My breathing increased, I had water welling up in my eyes, and my heart was jumping out of my chest. If I had known what the topic was beforehand, I could have chosen not to read it, or prepared myself knowing the topic was coming. (Joy)

Someone can be triggered by references to a disease, like cancer, especially if they’ve lost a spouse, family member, or someone close. Coming unawares across a character dealing with cancer, or their family dealing with their disease or death can throw someone into a depression, or even worse. A Tag might read: Cancer or Cancer Death. It gives the reader heads up so they can either not read, or be prepared. (Ginger)

But is tagging really THAT important?

“Eh, this probably doesn’t need a trigger warning,” I told myself all the time. I mean, it seemed silly really. How could someone be triggered by reading something written on a page? If you didn’t like it, then stop reading. Simple as that, I thought, until I actually found myself being the one triggered by something seemingly innocuous. (Jessi)

It was a scene about a child being injured. I’d read the same type of scene many times before with no issues, heck I’d written a similar scene. Except this time, reading it struck a nerve so deeply that I went into an immediate panic attack. My eyesight pinholed, my breathing sped up, my heart rate went through the roof. I was bombarded with images of this happening to MY child. My reaction might have been because I was a new mom. It might have been due to the post-partum depression I was dealing with. Or it might have just been a random triggering event. I’ll never know, but the truth is–the reason doesn’t matter. It was a trigger. Simple as that. (Jessi)

It’s important to note that tagging your content isn’t just to warn people about reading your stories. It can also draw people in. How many people search for certain character relationships, enjoy reading a scary story, or are drawn to stories that have sexual situations in them? The point of tagging is to give the reader just enough information that they can make an informed decision about their media consumption. It's like a nutrition label. You look at it so that you can make an informed decision about whether consuming that food is appropriate for your body. (Amanda)

Oh and one other thought… think of trigger warning tags like… well… slash or… fandom tags. You wouldn’t put up a story about Lord of the Rings when you usually write Star Wars and expect people to just read it because you wrote it right? I mean they might anyway but if I’m expecting Obi Wan and I get Gandolf, I’m going to have a WTF moment and go looking for where you warned me hey this isn’t going to be about space wizards this time. (Niki)

So how do you know when to tag?

From that moment I experienced my first panic attack brought on by a story, I never again questioned the need for trigger warnings. I never wanted anyone to experience what I had, especially not when I might be able to prevent it. I also decided to follow two excellent pieces of advice. First, tag and tag often. Second, if you have to pause to think if something might need tagged, it probably does. (Jessi)

Still having trouble wrapping your head around the importance of tagging potential trigger warnings? Read on for one person’s personal experiences.

I’m probably going to come at this from a very different angle here. For reference, I have SEVERAL triggers that intertwine due to happening one on top of each other. It’s what professionals call CPTSD. The C stands for cumulative. Most of the events aren’t individually enough to have caused PTSD on their own… but when you lose six people in the space of three years, some of whom you loved more than your own parents as a kid, it has a profound effect on how you react to people writing about death.

A while back someone in my writing group discussed the story she was working on at length with me before letting me read. Because she knew death by cancer is a huge trigger for me. For some of us, the pain of death just doesn’t go away. We learn to live with it but it never leaves us. To this day, I have an aunt that I can’t think about without crying. Not even my most happy memories of her. She’s literally the reason I have my current job and she passed when I was 12. She shaped my life THAT much.

So when people warn of triggers, they aren’t being sensitive. My husband who has his own CPTSD from surviving an abusive parent, then an abusive spouse, has the joy of navigating trigger episodes like opening my mail because it’s an invasion of privacy which seems silly except the parent that did that used opening my mail to berate me about my purchases and goddess forbid I get a letter from anyone and that person mention ANYTHING about something I had said even slightly negative about her no matter how mild as I did not present her as the pinnacle of parental perfection she’d chosen to believe herself to be and therefore physically beat into me at many opportunities. I get to enjoy knowing what things his ex-spouse did that trigger him, etc. That’s his story to tell.

So Cancer, child abuse, those are triggers. Everyone else laughs watching Joan Crawford freaking out over wire hangers but I have flash backs because my delightful mother threw me out of bed the same way one night over something just as trivial and behaved the same way as Joan did and I had either blocked it out or it simply had blended with all the other beatings but that didn’t change the fact that I ended up curled up in a ball hyperventilating and keening in despair for an hour after seeing that because it was almost exactly what had happened to me. But because everyone who had never been beaten like that thought it was comical I didn’t know it was going to be a trauma inducing event. Thankfully I watched that horrible movie alone as I knew the basics of the story and therefore expected child abuse. Just not… that.

I took care of my dad through six months of failed cancer treatments in a time when most people survive cancer. I cannot express to you enough how devastating it was to fail. How it spiraled me into almost a year of clinical depression after his funeral to the point that I was unable to work or go to school or even function properly. Sometimes I can read about cancer now… but not on… say… September 11th or December 9th. Specifically. For everyone else, September 11th is obviously terrible, but for me specifically, it’s my dad’s cancer diagnosis that we got that morning and THEN the Twin Towers fell. My tower had already fallen. I got up the next morning and begged my dad to tell me yesterday had all been a terrible nightmare. That moment is etched in my mind.

Onward to heart attacks. Last year I almost lost my husband to what they call the ‘widowmaker’ heart attack. He had a 90% blockage in the main artery of his heart. Had he not gone into the hospital for his strange back pain… he’d be gone right now. My new boss does NOT understand why I don’t like to travel for work without him any more. Does not understand how precious that time I have with him is. How anxiety inducing it would be for me to know I’m however many hours away and if something terrible happens to that man and I’m not there that once again I won’t get the chance to say goodbye. Just like when I was a kid and they didn’t let me in to see my aunt.

People don’t want trigger warnings because they are being weak or wimps or whatever you’ve told yourself. They want trigger warnings so they can decided for themself today if they can read this story about cancer or a dying pet or abuse or a character they see as wholesome and good going off the rails into an abusive piece of crap with or without explanation because perhaps they NEED that character to stay wholesome and good because they already survived an abuser and they hang their heart on the reality that even someone with obvious and severe PTSD can still be a moral and ethical person no matter how emotionally unsound they are inside.

Because some part of them… needs to relate to that.

And if you turn that person into garbage… you are telling that reader… oh deep down.. You who relates to this broken man or woman… you’re garbage too.

We need trigger warnings most of all because we tend to read stories about people we relate to on some level. I have people I look up to and admire on so many levels and I read about characters I can see myself in. I nope out if you get OOC without warning simply because well… I know who this person is.

That person is me. I am them. I see through their eyes. I have lived their life. I too am a broken emotionally shattered mess. And I still keep getting up and fighting day to day just like they do.

So if you intend to do bad things to the person whose eyes I see through… be so kind as to warn me first. In case I can’t have flashbacks today because I have to spend time with people who don’t wrap their heads around trauma at some point later in the day.

Chat info:

Amanda: Inquiry: In college I used to read a lot more fanfiction in particular like Star Wars fanfiction. Listen to somewhat of a long-standing tradition that fanfiction on the internet has had content warnings? Back in the good old days of the infancy of the internet when we first started posting our fanfiction there's tons of people who decided that hey they wanted to write slash. And that was always a content warning that was attached to your fanfiction So adding content warnings for anything else should not be a big deal because it's a tradition in the world of fanfiction.

So they think no one reads the beginning information? I understand SG is a militaristic based fandom but plenty of that didn't include torture. So if I saw a content warning for torture I can make an informed decision. It's like reading a nutrition label.

SOURCES:

https://www.filmratings.com/History

#triggering themes #emotional triggers #triggering content #writing advise #fanfic #writing #writers #creative writing #writer things #writing tips #writing help #writing problems #courtesy

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mihrsuri · 2 years

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A fictional tumblr history facts post about John Norwich. Which means a heavy content warning for child sexual abuse discussion.

Okay anon you did ask for this.

Norwich is around 23-27 years older than Thomas Cromwell (basically he has two birth year possibilities based on records - the baptismal records say 1482 but other documents give it as 1478 - which would make him either 54 or 58 around 1536 - most historians these days think the baptismal record was a transcription error because other things - document signatures, property records seem to say 1478 but with Norwich honestly who the fuck knows because he tended to obscure shit - even in his personal journals.

Seems to have had some resentment that his older brother was the heir even though he was quote *weaker* despite John Norwich being absolutely spoiled by like, everyone.

Look those journals it’s like, you have to bear in mind that he probably did want at least some of it to be seen one day as like, Works Of Art Of Staggering Genius *vomit emoji* so it’s coloured by that but also he’s a boring child molesting monster who likes to brag so way more slips in than he thinks - like I don’t think he wanted people to know how much he was helped by his family.

A lot of his focus was on the family he was fostered with in London because he found a kindred spirit in the patriarch - really in terms of the absolute utter entitlement and lack of morals intelligence work etc - it was when he was an adult that the patriarch in question (note - we think he might have been the Count of Hexham but Norwich never actually names him and Hexham was an agent of the Duke of Norfolk so I tend to think he was) introduced him as an agent for the Duke of Norfolk and he started working for him and found out he enjoyed, I’m going to be blunt here - child molestation and also torture.

None of them seem to have quote ‘captivated and obsessed him’ like Thomas Cromwell, then aged about eight. Yeah. However he couldn’t buy him until his mother died when Thomas was ten and then, anon he did in fact brand him and then rape and torture this child for five years until he had to go away on a mission and Thomas booked it to Italy.

Also the snide ‘well why didn’t Cromwell report him then if it was so bad’ discourse is Disgusting because what do you actually think would have happened - this is an Earl’s son versus a commoner youth. It’s going to go approximately nowhere. (There’s a story about Cromwell trying anyway but I’m not getting in it because I’ll cry - see this post (which also contains sources) for details).

At some point after that he got tired of gradually poisoning his brother and just full out poisoned his brother to get his Earldom.

I took this from both my history class notes (the article The Origins Of An Artist - John Norwich’s Journals was heavily featured but I’d also recommend this one (warning both of them have disturbing content) and also from the seminal Norwich Biography which is very much worth reading if you have the stomach for this sort of thing.

I will get to Lionel eventually I just hate him so much it devolves into DIE FUCK FACE OH WAIT YOU DID FUCKER HAH HAH

#lil and her ridiculous aus #ot3: political power trio #tudors ot3 verse reference #fic

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rufousnmacska · 3 years

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Taking a quick break from all the Manorian content to recommend this series. I’ve read it a couple of times but it’s been a while so a lot of it feels new this time around. There’s angst, slow burns (Lucian and Phaedra dear lord 🥵), politics, surviving after trauma, squabbling families, and magical curses. Lots of curses.

#the lumatere chronicles #finnikin of the rock #froi of the exiles #Quintana of charyn #melina marchetta #ya fantasy #books #trigger warning #these books contain rape torture and other abuse #but it’s not overly graphic or sensationalized imo

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theslowesthnery · 3 years

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i don’t rly understand what you mean by problematic.. like you enjoy something in fiction but not when it’s real, but what exactly is it??

i would like to know why exactly you feel entitled to that information. like you want me to list every single thing that i like that contains things that are not good or acceptable in real life?

fine, okay

- naruto. i don't approve of child soldiers.

- fullmetal alchemist. again, child soldiers.

- gunsmith cats. not a fan of the author's clear love for lolis - "legal" (read: over 18) or otherwise.

- hades. i don't approve of abusive parents, and there are many things in greek mythology that are not okay in real life: incest, rape, pedophilia, bestiality and infanticide to name a few

- tekken and soul calibur. i don't actually like real-life violence, and i'm not a huge fan of the ridiculous, over-sexualized outfits of the female characters.

- dead by daylight. do i even have to say what all in this game is not okay in real life?

- marvel comics. ...actually beta ray bill is perfect and has done nothing wrong in his life.

- legend of korra book 1. terrorism is not actually good, and neither is oppression and brushing aside the concerns of oppressed minorities because they dared to criticize you. cheating on your significant other and then acting like none of it was your fault and not even apologizing is not good. telling your brother to not be interested in a girl because you're interested in her but have no intention of actually dating her (because you already have a girlfriend) is shitty. threatening to burn someone's face off is really bad actually. literally everything that mako does in book 1 is shown in either positive or neutral light and i agree with none of it lmao.

- transformers MTMTE. there's violence, there's characters making questionable decisions and generally not being black-and-white good or evil.

- manifest destiny (comic series by image comics). colonizing a continent is not good. murdering an entire tribe (and possibly species) of sentient bird-people is not okay. conspiring to sacrifice an infant to some sort of evil god is not okay.

- shigurui. i don't approve of literally anything in this manga lol don't read it it's horrible and soul-crushing.

- blade of the immortal. the author has a thing for torturing (fictional) women, and it becomes apparent as the series goes on.

- fatal frame games. i don't support sacrificing people, even though the characters in these games had very good reasons for it, it's not like they were doing it for laughs.

- silent hill 2 & 3. please don't make me list everything in these games that is not okay in real life.

- outlast 1 & whistleblower. bro

- final fantasy 9. i'm getting tired.

- undertale. besides the things that are obviously bad and shown in a bad light? idk my brain's not working anymore.

- deltarune. ditto.

- soul reaver 1, 2 and legacy of kain: defiance. all the characters in these games have very grey morality and do questionable things sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons (sometimes intentionally, sometimes unknowingly). a character who's presented as a villain in one game is presented as an ally in the next, and a character who acts as your ally in one point might be an enemy later. you have to confront the fact that the past self you idolized was actually a piece of shit and kill them, and not in a metaphorical sense.

- bloodborne. i don't approve of using the blood of some random "god" you discovered in a labyrinth underground to start a religion. don't murder entire villages. don't do human experiments.

- okami. i really don't like the lecher character type, so i'm not a huge fan of issun. but amaterasu is a perfect protagonist that does nothing wrong.

- tera. i like the elin race (they're so fucking adorable), but i don't like the sexualization of them. the game also suffers from a VERY bad case of bikini-armour for female characters (the castanic race has it particularly bad), and i think it's kinda gross.

i know there are more things that i like (tv shows and movies for example) but i can't be arsed to list anymore.

for tropes and stuff, i like hurt/comfort and whump A LOT. i like drawing my favourite characters hurt, bruised and bleeding, i don't know why. i like angst. i like the BDSM aesthetic, and like drawing (or just thinking of) my favourite characters in bondage, and since a lot of the anti rhetoric comes from radfems and swerfs, they think that those things - and kink stuff in general - are Normalizing and Romanticizing abuse and rape.

oh yeah, and i like M/M ships even though i'm not MLM myself, which means i'm a fetishizer. also i have M/F ships, which means i'm homophobic.

i like ships with size differences: deunan and briareos, sans and toriel, cyclonus and tailgate, asterius and theseus have the biggest size differences, and some antis say that that's normalizing and romanticizing pedophilia. some of my ships also have age gaps: deunan and briareos have one of 9 years, sans and toriel's is not officially known but i headcanon it to be decades if not centuries, kakuzu and hidan have an age difference of about sixty years if i remember correctly (can't be arsed to check), cyclonus and tailgate have a practical age difference of a million years, and asterius and theseus have this interesting situation where most people (myself included) headcanon them as having been about the same age when theseus killed asterius, after which theseus went on to live for at least a few decades more before dying, so in the afterlife theseus is quite a bit older than asterius. and again, age gaps of more than like three years are pedophilia according to antis.

also asterius and theseus are like. the quintessential enemies-to-lovers ship - theseus killed asterius for crying out loud! kakuzu and hidan kinda hate each other (though they do, on some level, also care about each other). cyclonus and tailgate did NOT have a good start. amon bloodbent the lieutenant in the finale of legend of korra book 1. so sometimes i like messy ships, or ships that didn't have the best start. which, y'know, is normalizing and romanticizing abuse.

is that good enough?

#fandom discourse cw #shipping discourse cw #anti discourse cw #fucking spanish inquisition over fandom stuff and fictional interests

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a-study-in-crime · 3 years

Photo

1st picture: Marc Dutroux.

2nd picture: Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo.

3rd picture: An Marchal and Eefje Lambrecks.

4th picture: Sabine Dardenne holding a photograph of herself that was published in the media after she was abducted.

5th picture: Laëtitia Delhez and Sabine Dardenne hugging each other after testifying against Marc Dutroux.

6th picture: The dungeon.

Marc Dutroux: He Kidnapped, Raped and Killed Young Girls and the Police Did Nothing To Stop Him

Background and the crimes

The horrifying abductions and murders carried out by Marc Dutroux in 1995-1996 in Belgium have become internationally infamous and for a good reason; many of the crimes could have been prevented if the police would have done their job properly.

Marc Dutroux was born in 1956 and lived in the Belgian Congo until the early 60s, and his family moved back to Belgium. His parents were both teachers, and Marc's father was considered to be an odd figure. Some people have claimed that Marc's father had abnormal sexual behavior, and it has been reported that Marc suffered abuse at the hands of his parents. He moved at the age of 16 and cut ties with his family at the age of 20. Marc married in the late 70s and had two children with his wife. However, their marriage was often turbulent; Marc beat and raped his wife, and was also cheating on her regularly. One of the women Marc had an affair with was named Michelle Martin, and she would later become his second wife and partner in crime. Marc divorced his first wife, married Michelle, and had three more children with her. However, the couple began engaging in criminal behavior early on in their relationship. They abducted several girls between the ages of 11 and 19 and raped them. The sexual abuse was videotaped by Michelle. The couple was apprehended in 1987 and sent to prison in 1989; Marc was sentenced to 13 years in prison. However, Marc was released after serving just three years of his sentence. This turned out the be a fatal mistake.

Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo, who was 8-years-old at the time, were abducted by Marc in June 1995. Their parents reported them missing the same day they disappeared and began searching for their daughters with the help of neighbors and friends. However, the police were not as helpful; in fact, they did nothing to help locate the girls. While Julie's and Mélissa's parents searched in vain, the two girls were being sexually abused by Marc. He had built a dungeon in his basement where he kept the girls, and only let them out to rape or feed them. The sexual abuse was videotaped, and the girls were kept alive for several months. In late August 1995, two more girls disappeared; 17-year-old An Marchal and 19-year-old Eefje Lambrecks. This time, Marc had an accomplice named Michel Lelièvre. An and Eefje were kept chained in Marc's bedroom, and they were drugged and raped repeatedly. When Marc had gotten tired of them, he and another accomplice named Bernard Weinstein drugged An and Eefje, wrapped them in plastic, and buried them alive. As with the disappearance of Julie and Mélissa, the police did nothing. They told An's and Eefje's parents that their daughters probably had run away. However, their parents were certain they had been abducted and continued to search for their daughters.

Shortly after Marc and Bernard killed An and Eefje, Bernard became the prime suspect in another case. Marc realized that if Bernard was captured and confessed to the police about what they had done, Marc would never see freedom again. To prevent capture, Marc decided to kill Bernard by burying him alive. Shortly thereafter, Marc was arrested for stealing a car. He was apprehended in December 1995 and released in 1996; however, Julie and Mélissa were still locked in the dungeon during Marc's incarceration. Marc ordered his wife Michelle to feed the girls, but she stopped giving them food after a while because she was too afraid to go into the dungeon. Julie and Mélissa suffered a horrible death; they died of dehydration and starvation. Marc buried their bodies in his backyard.

In May 1996, Marc struck again; this time, he abducted 12-year-old Sabine Dardenne. She was, just like Julie and Mélissa, kept in the dungeon and was only released when Marc decided to rape her. Sabine spent two months alone in the dungeon and started complaining to Marc that she longed for a friend. What Sabine did not know was that Marc took her words to heart; Marc and an accomplice kidnapped a 14-year-old girl named Laëtitia Delhez shortly thereafter. Sabine and Laëtitia would likely have suffered the same fate as Julie, Mélissa, An, and Eefje if a man had not seen a suspicious-looking van and remembered the license plate. Finally, the police did their job; they searched through Marc's house but did not find Sabine or Laëtitia. Marc and his accomplice were arrested, and they confessed to kidnapping the girls after two days of intense questioning. Marc told the police about the dungeon, and the girls were finally rescued. Marc also confessed to burying Julie, Mélissa, An, and Eefje, and their bodies were soon found.

Other mistakes made by the police

The police did not only ignore the parents of the abducted girls, but they also made several other mistakes. They received a letter from Marc's mother where she informed them about Marc having abducted two girls and that he was keeping them at his house. The police did not follow this lead. Marc had become a person of interest in the disappearance of An and Eefje, and the police searched through his house 6 months after they had been abducted. They did not find the dungeon, but a locksmith who had accompanied the police heard voices from somewhere inside the house. When he told the police about what he had heard, he was simply ignored. If the police had listened to what the locksmith had told them, they could have saved An and Eefje. The police also found several videotapes in Marc's house, which contained scenes of Marc raping women and constructing the dungeon in his house. However, the police never bothered to look at the tapes. Once again, the police failed to rescue An and Eefje.

Mélissa's parents were not allowed to say goodbye to their daughter or identify her; in fact, it was Marc who identified the girl. The autopsy showed signs of Mélissa being violently raped, but there was no DNA testing done, despite the parents suspecting that Mélissa might have been raped by Marc's accomplices as well. This might have resulted in other people involved in the sexual abuse of Mélissa and the other girls never being prosecuted.

Trial and aftermath

It took almost 8 years until Marc stood trial. Marc testified that he had been a part of a pedophile ring and that he had abused and sexually abused all of his victims. Ten women and girls contacted the police and told them about being brought to sex parties and raped while being just children. One witness stated that Marc had been a part of the sex parties and that he had given the girls drugs and sexually abused them. The witness also told the police that the abuse she and the other minors had suffered could only be described as brutal torture. Another witness gave the police names of several famous politicians and businessmen who had, according to her, being a part of the pedophile ring. The witnesses were not determined to be credible and their statements were therefore not used in the trial. However, a book from 2001 written by two journalists claims that the witnesses were far more credible than they were made out to be by the police. The statements from the witnesses could have been a crucial part of the trial, had they not been dismissed.

Marc Dutroux was found guilty of killing An Marchal, Eefje Lambrecks, and Bernard Weinstein. He was also found guilty of six counts of kidnapping, rape, conspiracy, and drug-related crimes. Michelle Martin, who divorced Marc in 2003, was found guilty of murdering Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo by letting them starve to death. She was also found guilty of kidnapping. One of Marc's accomplices was found guilty of kidnapping An, Eefje, Sabine, and Laetitia and rape. Marc was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after serving 30 years. Michelle was sentenced to 30 years in prison but was released in 2012 after serving 16 years. Marc's accomplice was sentenced to 25 years in prison but was released in 2019.

Marc Dutroux apologized to Sabine Dardenne and Laëtitia Delhez during his trial, but neither of them accepted his apology.

#tcc #true crime #true crime community #tc original #true crime original #murder #kidnapping #my post #crime #scary #serial killer

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