#this feels extremely like… 2015 tumblr to me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wielderofmysteries · 7 months

Text

(We Need to Talk About Narset)

[Left: Narset, Enlightened Master - Livia Prima. Right, clockwise from top left: Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory, Dr. Shaun Murphy from The Good Doctor, Sam Gardner from Atypical, Spencer Reid from Criminal Minds.]

(This is a re-upload of the original article since there were some formatting issues with the original. You can still read it at this link, but the pictures aren't full resolution.)

This is article is intended to be a primer for my larger upcoming article on autistic representation in Magic.

I found out about Narset in 2018, when I had just started learning about Magic’s lore for the first time. I was overjoyed to see that Magic’s first official autistic character seemed to be the complete opposite of the stereotypical depictions of autism I’d seen in other media. Instead of a nerdy brown-haired white boy, Narset was a 50 year old Asian woman and a badass martial artist. As an Asian autistic kid, I often felt invisible and underrepresented in the media I consumed, so Narset really meant a lot to me.

However, when I actually read Narset’s lore, I was disappointed to find that she wasn’t nearly as revolutionary as I’d thought.

When the Dragons of Tarkir stories were being published in 2015, Doug Beyer, a writer and designer for Magic, confirmed in a Tumblr post that Narset was intentionally created to be an autistic character.

=========

maudlingoblin asked:

hi doug!! reading the new uncharted realms, i felt an enormous amount of sympathy for narset, specifically with reference to the beginning sequence with her as a kid. the restlessness, the sensory overload, the self-distraction with counting and observation - these, to me, heavily code narset as being autistic. i am autistic myself and it would mean the absolute world to me to know that a character in a game i care deeply about is like me, and many other folks. is this something you can confirm?

dougbeyermtg answered:

That was the intent, yes. The most important part of Narset’s character is her amazing mind, which is central to her potential as a powerful Planeswalker and as a pursuer of knowledge — but it happens that she processes information and input differently than a lot of other people. Tarkir denizens might not have a term for the autism spectrum or being neurodivergent or neuro-atypical, but those terms would correctly describe her. In this timeline she is not khan of the Jeskai, but no matter the circumstances, she hasn’t let go of her commitment to seeking her own path to wisdom and truth. Kudos to Creative Team member Kimberly Kreines for exploring this aspect of Narset in her story “The Great Teacher’s Student.”

[https://dougbeyermtg.tumblr.com/post/112727174244/hi-doug-reading-the-new-uncharted-realms-i-felt]

=========

(Art: Dragonlord Ojutai - Chase Stone)

The Great Teacher’s Student tells the story of Narset’s childhood under the rule of Dragonlord Ojutai. At eight years old, Narset was a pretty realistic autistic child, having many traits that I shared. She fidgeted restlessly, had sensory overloads, and her mother found it difficult to take her out to public spaces. Narset’s brain was extremely pattern-oriented, one of the most defining traits of autism. She saw numbers everywhere, and counted to soothe herself.

=========

The cries of the merchants, the bold colors of the wares, and the too-sweet aromas of the produce were like walls that made the marketplace feel too tight, too close, too much. The muscles of Narset’s legs twitched and her lungs felt cramped. She tugged at her robe; it was strangling her. Her mother must have cinched it too tightly.

“Stand still,” her mother scolded from above. “You’ll knock something over.” She was poring over the apples at the top of a tall mound too high for Narset to see.

Narset tried to stand still, but she couldn’t. The restlessness inside her wanted her to move. Sometimes when she felt that way she distracted herself. She would count things, or search for patterns, or study people’s expressions. But she knew the marketplace too well; she knew its numbers and she knew its patrons. She had already taken inventory. The man with the cane was limping less that day, putting more weight on his bad leg; Narset supposed the balm he had purchased from the herbalist the week before had worked to ease the pain. There were, as usual, three dozen meat slabs hanging at the butcher’s stand with an average of eighteen striations per slab; the average number of striations hardly ever changed, although sometimes there was greater variance. The merchant at the squash stand had uneven stains on his sleeves and three stray threads hanging from his robe; he must have gotten it caught in his cart and had to pull himself free. And there were sixty-eight apples in the mound in front of Narset; that was accounting for the volume inside the mound, which she couldn’t see but could predict well enough. There would be sixty-seven apples if her mother would ever just choose one.

Her mother hemmed and hawed, her fingers alighting first on one apple and then another, fluttering over the choices, but never settling.

She’s never going to pick one, Narset thought. We’re never going to leave. Panic set in. Her vision blurred, her ears rang, and her forehead began to sweat. She frantically searched for something else to distract her, but there was nothing else she could see. At eight, Narset wasn’t tall enough to see over any of the stands or any of the bodies. It was like she was in a never-ending maze of tall sweaty, smelly people-trees.

She was trapped.

[The Great Teacher’s Student - Kimberly J. Kreines]

=========

Narset was a believably written autistic character in this story, but that doesn’t automatically mean it was good, or that it was what autistic people wanted to see. To be clear, this story was neither unrealistic nor offensive to me. Writing Narset as an autistic character was something the creative team genuinely cared about and tried to do well. But I was still disappointed because Narset in this story is just another example of the “autistic savant” trope that the media can’t seem to let go of.

Fictional or real, almost every autistic person you will see in the media will be a savant; some kind of socially-inept genius whose intelligence or skill far surpasses their peers. This person may be a mathematician, a surgeon, a child prodigy who attends college but can’t tie their shoes– the list goes on and on. You’ve probably seen many stories like this before.

As a child, Narset had an extraordinary memory and a gift for mental math. She was able to calculate the volume of a pile of apples, find the exact trajectory of a falling apple to catch it in mid-air, and memorize things like the pattern of a river’s flow; all at a glance.

In The Great Teacher’s Student, Narset accidentally knocks over a pile of apples at the market, upsetting the merchant and prompting her mother to send her outside. Dragonlord Ojutai noticed Narset’s talent and desire for knowledge as she explored the field outside, and wanted to encourage her. He tutored her from a distance for several years before officially deciding to train her as a student when she was 11 years old.

After this moment, the story shifts its focus almost entirely to Narset’s academic journey. We get to see that in the years that passed since Narset became a student of Ojutai, she was still really, really smart. She finally felt challenged and supported in the way she needed, and she was good at so many things.

In fact, she was better than everyone else at everything.

She learned more, and faster than everyone else. She won every fight. She spoke Draconic intuitively, and Ojutai constantly praised her. At age 15, Narset became the youngest person to ever hold the rank of Master.

=========

As she looked back now, she recognized her time at the sanctuary as the best years of her life. She was happier than she had ever been; she was challenged, recognized, fulfilled. Her restlessness had ceased haunting her; she had felt a sense of peace. And while she wasn’t physically moving, she knew she was on a path, going where she was meant to go, becoming who she was meant to be. Ojutai was leading her. And not a day went by that she didn’t thank her dragon for the gift.

Narset advanced more quickly than any other student, climbing the ranks of Dragon’s Eye Sanctuary, moving upward from the lowest balconies to the highest terraces, until one day Ojutai called for her to come stand on his own private perch.

[…]

“My student, Narset, it is time. Your hunger for knowledge is your greatest strength. You have become strong, and powerful, and wise because you have never stopped seeking enlightenment.” The dragon beamed down at her. She knew what was about to come, and for one glorious moment everything felt perfect. “I now bestow upon you the title of Master, which you have assuredly earned, and with it all the honor and responsibility it brings.” Ojutai bowed his head and rested his giant paw on her shoulder.

Narset bowed her head in return and clasped her small hand over the dragon’s paw, making no attempt to wipe the hot tear that streaked down her cheek. At fifteen, she was the youngest master Ojutai had ever named. She had reached the top.

[The Great Teacher’s Student - Kimberly J. Kreines]

=========

I didn’t like how Narset’s story focused so much on autistic exceptionalism– on how Ojutai gave her special treatment because she was better than everyone else at everything.

Autistic achievement should be celebrated, and Narset’s desire for endless learning is so deeply, truly autistic. But I feel like Narset’s story and those of other autistic savants are just so extraordinary that it’s too hard to relate to them. These kinds of fictional portrayals and real-world news features attempt to endear autistic people to allistic (non-autistic) audiences by saying, “Look! Autistic people aren’t bad, they’re actually better than us!” But focusing on exceptional individuals doesn’t help to humanize autism.

It sets an unrealistic expectation for autistic people, and can be extremely alienating. Autistic people shouldn’t have to be superhuman to be respected, and the truth is that the overwhelming majority of autistic people are completely ordinary.

When I was diagnosed with autism at age 11, I obsessively searched the internet for information about autism, to learn what other autistic people experienced, and what “normal” people thought of us. I learned that geniuses were loved, and everyone else was hated. I hoped for years that I would magically develop some kind of incredible talent so I could be like the autistic geniuses in the news. I hoped someone would notice me and enroll me in college early or make me famous so I would be respected for something. It didn’t happen. It wasn’t fair to myself, but when I saw stories about savants, I didn’t feel proud to be autistic. Instead, I saw myself as a failure.

Autistic savants don’t need more representation. Most autistic people, even most of the geniuses and prodigies, will never have the kinds of opportunities that Narset and other famous savants have had. But when neurotypical people have only ever seen autistic savants, they expect you to be a genius. And when people expect you to be a genius, being ordinary just makes you a disappointment.

The Magic narrative team clearly recognized the fact that most allistic peoples’ first exposure to autism is through popular media and that it’s a major influence on the audience’s image of what autism is like. So they tried to make a good first impression by making Narset a positive portrayal, but it backfired in one key way: Narset’s writing in this story was so focused on making her as extraordinary and obviously autistic as possible that it neglected to make her a human being. She’s believable, but not compelling. Narset’s story is about an autistic character, but it’s not really about what it’s like to be autistic.

(And I hate to say it, but… there’s nothing revolutionary about making your Asian autistic character a math genius.)

What frustrates me about the way Narset was written is that I actually believe her autism was extremely under-utilized in her writing.

Autism is lifelong, but I don’t really feel like the story treats it that way. Beyond the first scene of Narset as a younger child, the story doesn’t show how Narset’s autism affected her life other than making her really smart.

Upon realizing that Ojutai had nothing left to teach her, Narset became restless and anxious again. She was desperate to learn anything new. When she was 16 years old, Narset discovered the lost history of Tarkir, and it was the possibility of new knowledge that ignited her Planeswalker spark.

Narset’s greatest challenge was that she was literally so good that she couldn’t get any better.

As a child, Narset was shown to have trouble communicating and interacting with others. After Narset became Ojutai’s student, she’s barely shown interacting with anyone other than Ojutai ever again. How did Narset’s differences affect the way she interacted with her fellow students? Did she want to try to make friends? What happened to her mother? How would she have felt about Narset’s progress? The story doesn’t explore any of this. What about her overwhelming sensory overloads? Did she still have them? If so, did her triggers change? She used to soothe herself by counting and finding patterns. When her anxiety returned later in the story, did her coping mechanisms change or stay the same? This isn’t shown, either.

At the end of The Great Teacher’s Student, Narset was still a teenager, but she’s supposed to be about 50 years old now. We know that the present Narset is an independent autistic adult, who has friends and goals and decades of life experience, and that’s beautiful– but we never get to see how she got there. How did she learn to make friends? How did she decide what she wanted to do with her life? That journey is what I want to see being written for autistic characters.

(Art: Quiet Contemplation - Magali Villeneuve)

To contrast, Narset’s story in the Khans of Tarkir timeline does address these things. In Enlightened, Narset is the narrator, and she speaks personally of her challenges as a young autistic person: her academic struggles as a daydreaming student, her feelings of alienation, being bullied, and how she threw herself into her training to cope. These experiences and feelings carried on into adulthood, and influenced the way she approached her responsibilities as the Jeskai Khan.

=========

As a young girl, I had the same “problem,” as my teachers called it. I always lived in my head, but not in the way the instructors wished. I dreamt of fantastical worlds and used the scrolls given for lessons to draw them, incurring the wrath of my elders. I found solace in my own mind and often had difficulty knowing how to talk to others. It was as though my mind was always five steps ahead of my mouth. It was so taxing interacting with others. I never knew what to say, often causing me to blunder, and I was embarrassed in front of my teachers and classmates. I then went over those failed interactions in my mind, and I found the imaginary worlds more forgiving.

Studying was a way to escape my anxiety and I eagerly embraced history and philosophy, memorizing all I could about Jeskai teachings. I impressed my teachers, but I still felt like an outsider. I did enjoy sparring with those who had taunted me, easily humiliating them in combat as they had humiliated me with their words.

[…]

Even though I am now their khan, I still felt like an outsider—like the young girl always fumbling her words—only now I don’t show it. I think this has been what gives me the strength to do what is needed, looking at the Jeskai like I am not really a part of them.

[Enlightened - Matt Knicl]

=========

Overall, I feel like Enlightened was a much more thoughtful story despite being much shorter. Sadly, Tarkir’s time travel plot means that version of Narset no longer exists. We haven’t gotten any stories featuring Narset since 2015, so the version of Narset we saw in The Great Teacher’s Student is the Narset we are stuck with.

I don’t necessarily believe that Narset is “bad” autistic representation. I still love Narset, and she means a lot to me. But Narset’s stories are focused on setting her apart, separating her from other people, and showing that she is too different to be a part of the world around her. In my opinion, Narset deserves better than that, and that is why I believe Narset is not the best autistic representation Magic has to offer.

My next article will be about the autistic representation I wanted to see in Magic. Something a little more down-to-earth. Something I could more easily relate to. And I found that in an unexpected character: Nissa.

#mtg #narset #analysis #reupload

91 notes · View notes

pbnmj · 9 months

Note

Genuinely curious, what’s up with Noir’s age? And what does it have to do with his 08/09 run? ((You may ignore if you wish :D))

i no longer have to do an extremely long explaination about comics noir because it has already been done here, by foolsocracy!!!!!!! really great breakdown of his very vague age, which is never said outright in the 08-09 run, only implied!! my own personal take on this is that he's 17-turning-18 in the first one, just about graduated high school but not able to afford college (see the panel below LOL)

this also got a little longer than i thought it would, so under the cut for the rest of it! the tl:dr is "itsv!noir is not the same as comics!noir, and people saying that he's 19 isn't strictly true. to me, he's around 30!"

eyes without a face (the 09 run!!) only takes place 8 months after, in september 1933, which makes peter 18-turning-19. this is more of a headcanon though!! (see the noir birthday poll, which made me a noir-is-a-december-baby truther)

(peter being a libra is mentioned once in the first issue of amazing spider-man (2015), mostly as a punchline, and a specific date of october 10th was given in another issue that i have lost. other media, like with the mcu, has his birthday on august 10th. but to me noir is a sagittarius and you cannot pry that from me)

the 2020 run of noir begins establishing the year as 1939, making peter around his mid-20s, and 25 if you believe me on the 'peter was 17 in noir 2008' LOL.... i won't lie though i haven't read this one properly i very quickly skimmed so pinch of salt regarding my takes on the 2020 run

noir being in his teens during the first original runs is why "itsv!noir is 17-19" goes around so often! i've seen that on tumblr, twitter AND on tiktok and i don't mind what people hc, but it has become a pet peeve when people say it like its canon even though it's never been mentioned by the writers or the art book. itsv!noir is similar to his comic counterpart, but his differences in his origin story make me interpret him as a different noir (like how peter b.'s dimension is 616B, making him... 90214B?)

again, we are straying from itsv canon/etc here because i'm deranged, but i personally hc noir as being 32! some of my friends think he's in his mid-20s, others think he's older, but really the only reason is that 32 is the midpoint between the other two peter parkers: ripeter was 26 and peter b is 38. he's also voiced by nic cage, which makes me think older in the first place!

i just like the idea that he's more experienced that ripeter, but hasn't gone through as much as peter b. he spends most of the movie being broody ("moral ambiguity of your actions!", "matches burn down to my fingertips", etc etc), or snarkier than you'd expect ("it's that easy" "who are you again?" "you gonna fight or are you just bumping gums" etc etc). he also very sweetly tells everyone that he loves them before he leaves !!! i feel like it can in fact be in character for a peter parker in his late 20-early 30s, distanced from his tragedies in his own world by time (he doesn't forget them, that's different !) being able to look out for the spiders around him.

okay now we are VERY deep into hc territory, but it makes him able to balance out the rest of the itsv spider-gang as an older-brother figure who's able to guide peni, miles and gwen but also be able to act as a voice of reason for peter b. and ham if the sitauation calls for it. that being said noir is still peter parker and is therefore capable of spider-esque tomfoolery, which can lead to him misjudging the need for a snarky one liner ("this is a pretty hard core origin story"). my characterisation of him is also very inspired by heyitsspiderman, the itsv fic that changed me for the better, and noir isn't even in it that much LOL

veering back into itsv!noir's age and your actual question though: he's always read older in the movies, and not at all 17-19. noir is always going to be around 30 (32 if i have to give a number) to me!! if anything, he did go through the same kind of 'canon events' as comics noir did, but is an older and more experienced version of him, with tweaks to the backstory (like a radioactive spider instead of a spider-god, and webshooters instead of organic webbing). there are reasons ofc to see him being younger (egg creams are non-alcoholic, and that if it's 1933, his comicsverse self would be 18-19 too) . however you must consider that sony didn't expand on this and therefore it's up to fan interpretation and also that

#this kind of turns into meta . sort of . sorry about that #and i know some people take those jokes noir makes as like. just very blunt observations of what is happening #i personally believe they are jokes that aren't landing. or just him being a bit annoying <3 i love him for this #i can talk forever and forever about movie noir. its how i got into him in the first place . picked me up and swept me away #and now i overthink and read too much into his like. 6 mins of screentime #also the rich beautiful itsv noir backstory that exists only in my mind..... which is mostly the same #just with small tweaks and adjustments. its MY SIDE CHARACTER and I GET TO CHOOSE THE HCS #eg. the insane 'peter quits working at the bugle very annoyingly for everyone involved before becoming a PI' like this shit just #swirls in my brain. forever and ever.#noir #answered #edit: sorry im just realising this is boiling down to itsv noir is freshly out of his 20s #therefore experiencing post 20s clarity and is not yet going through a peter b-like midlife crisis #and is not a teenager anymore and doesn't have to battle puberty as well as supervillians #so he's somehow doing a little better than the rest of them and able to pass on funny little tips and lifehacks

107 notes · View notes

yuikomorii · 9 months

Note

Is it just me or is Diabolik Lovers losing the popularity it once had?…

// Uhm… that depends. Even if there are still some enthusiasts who would purchase any merch released by Rejet and support the franchise, the volume is obviously lower than in previous years. Nevertheless, they’re not doing that bad for now.

Most people found out about DL when they were still quite young, whether they were from the West or Japan. Teenagers often have more free time, which allows them to engage in whatever they want and create content as a result. But as you get older, your schedule will fill up faster. Many DL fans have begun attending college, landing jobs, or even starting families, making it difficult to maintain a fan account in these circumstances. After all, that isn't intended to be a top priority.

The year 2015 saw the peak of DL's popularity; it received a lot of love and fan support. However, after the release of LE, everything changed. That game got so many negative reactions to the point that fans started boycotting it. I’m sure not everyone meant that in an intentional way but due to the critics, which weren’t just “this game is bad” but rather “this game makes me feel sick/dizzy/too sad etc.”, a lot of people didn’t buy the game and were influenced to dislike it. It became the lowest ranked DL game ever and yeah, they lost plenty of fans with it. Rejet published CL in 2019, but although being more well-liked than LE, it didn't generate as much excitement as previous DL games did because a big number of fans still hadn’t returned.

Moreover, preferences change, opinions change and, most importantly, people change. Only because they liked something 10 years ago, there is no guarantee that they still like it 10 years later and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Otome games became more popular than in the past, therefore a bunch of new ones were released, which piqued the audience's curiosity. Otomate seems to lead with their games, since most of their characters are extremely loved and talked about both in Japan and the West right now and that honestly makes sense because people will undoubtedly be more interested in newer things.

Something seems to happen to Rejet because they got a lot of complaints from fans for: mixing up merchandise packaging, selling merchandise with flaws, delaying a number of things, messing up the voices in various CD dramas, and other things. They did, however, apologize, but I do agree that going through all of that must definitely be a bad experience.

And last but not least, maybe some people are just not active right now. It’s still summer for most of us, so a lot of individuals will most likely choose to enjoy it rather than spend all of their time online. Many of my friends have temporarily stepped away from Tumblr, but they will return as soon as they feel like it. Remember guys: fan accounts should be just for fun and leisure, not something that forces you not to have a social life.

#admin

108 notes · View notes

jakowskis · 7 months

Text

torchwood resources

just some stuff i've accumulated during this fixation :) hope it proves handy :D

ianto's-desktop (livejournal) - archived most of the things found on the torchwood website during season 1 and season 2; the only thing missing is the videos. / note: click the headers of the posts to see the full thing, or some stuff with appear incomplete. took me a sec to figure out, lol

speaking of the website...

season 1 website (archive.org)

season 2 website (archive.org) - unlike the s1 website, the bulk of the s2 site's content is pretty inaccessible through the wayback machine (at least for me; maybe i'm doing something wrong), so thank g-d for ianto's desktop

there's also a good amount of rebloggable site content in this person's tumblr tag.

season 1 declassified (youtube)

season 2 declassified (youtube)

season 1 commentaries (mega.nz)

torchwood books (google drive) - gonna be honest, i haven't tried to download any of these myself

border princes audiobook (read by eve) + all of the radio plays (archive.org)

torchwood magazines (beta.reddit) - download links for all of them! p fuckin kewl

torchwood official yearbook (archive.org)

herecomesthedrums (youtube) - account that started posting before the show came out and is chock full of promos, trailers, interviews... some real fun goodies in there

torchwood: up close (youtube) - handful of bts videos with the cast + crew

season 1 unreleased tracks (soundcloud) - the end of days ones hrhghgh

out of time unreleased tracks (soundcloud) - i absolutely adore the music in this ep so i was so happy when i found these

the torchwood fanpop - this has sooooooo much content like i scrolled for a loooooong time and never reached the bottom. lotta stuff i hadn't seen before, too. there's fun hd promo pics, pics of the cast, and a lot of extremely early 2010s edits, graphics, and fanvids. / note: i also had this page bookmarked + it's got different content than the main page so i'll link it

aaand under the cut i'm gonna dump some silly stuff i've collected of the cast. but yeah, there ya go :-)

gally 2015: zip files of someone's pictures of eve, naoko, and burn (livejournal)

gally 2015: someone's account of the torchwood panels + meeting the cast (everyone was there but gareth!) - naoko & burn's solo panels / autograph table chats + barrowman photo-op + the naoko&burn&eve group panel / barrowman solo panel + burn&eve joint panel

dragon con 2013 (flickr) - i found two albums: this one, and this one, which has torchwood cast images on the first and second pages.

burn at chicago tardis 2012 (flickr) - ehehe 2012-2013 burn gorman w his classy little outfits my beloved. this is just hq pictures of that event. burn's in a bunch at the top and some at the end of the second page

the hub 2009 (flickr) - some kind of torchwood event. gareth, burn, eve, kai, and tom are all there. i dunno

hvff 2018: 'insights from the whole cast'

hvff 2018: video of everybody goofing off (twitter)

gareth endorsing owandy teehee (twitter) - this is getting dumped here bc im gay

sigh. (blogspot) - pics from that one fuckin 08 panel where gareth & john made out like 5 times + gareth took his jeans off for some reason. i don't even go here but i feel like this is unfortunately historically relevant. also the fujoshis in the comments are really funny

incomplete but sizable lists of cons gareth's been to and john's been to, in case anyone wants to dig around for photos/footage of any of these. the other cast members (excluding burn, for some reason) all have pages on this site as well, but theirs are super incomplete so i won't bother linking

#torchwood #mine #txt #torchwood posting #might update w more #ohhhh internet archive my beloved #... ngl i am hoarding some other stuff. but woohoo this means i can delete one of my laptop folders hehehee

84 notes · View notes

mostspecialgirl · 9 months

Text

It might just be the sick talking but i want to make another webcomic and let it be the one i do for the rest of my life on and off that attracts a steady following and yet no one has ever heard of it before despite it running for 10 years. i want to bring a 2000s Gamer Webcomic energy that Webtoon doesnt really fuck with. i want to have a shitty little website with a patreon button and descriptions under every release where i start off making little jokes about the comic but it slowly becomes a blog where i talk about current events that will be outdated to any future readers and how the latest shipment of physical releases might be delayed. i want to suddenly disappear in 2015 leaving people to comb through thin lines on social media only to find i’m active on reddit asking people how to use TMs in the new pokemon game. i want to have characters that check weird boxes for people and watch it blossom into some extremely strange media fixations later in their life. Is that so much to ask for. Let me sell stickers. Let me sell a plush that you can only get from resellers on ebay because the small manufacturer went bankrupt in 2017. I want to see the weirdest person in the world have a cropped panel screenshot as their forum icon and either be the biggest fan in the world or they just found it on pinterest and liked how it looked. I just want to be creating for the rest of my life and have a really select group of people resonate with my work profoundly. I’m feeling really sick and im glad that tumblr lets me just ramble like this

#leastspecialgirl #gayretardgf

64 notes · View notes

cock-holliday · 5 months

Note

the tumblr aita page keeps getting asks mentioning transandrophobia and while the vote tends to swing in a direction implying most people think transandrophobia is real the notes are... really, really hateful. it's stressful. until now i could mostly keep away from the Discourse if i wanted, retreat into a bubble of people who don't post politics. now things are bleeding out. ik this is a step towards awareness but it's made me feel really unsafe.

I’m really sorry you’re experiencing this. I, unfortunately am not really a source of escaping politics. I think you’re right that more conversation is reflective of greater awareness, but that yes, it comes at the toll of backlash. I suppose I would recommend not looking in the notes and seeking out likeminded folks to insulate better against flak.

Transmisogyny as a term has only entered discourse since 2007 so it’s a fairly new term in the scheme of things. Transandrophobia as a term was coined only in 2015(?) I believe, which is extremely recent. Transandrophobia also has the disadvantage of not yet being in a book/wider publication, although the term coiner is working on one and I am excited to read it. Said coiner also had the disadvantage of a smear campaign, making even those who identified with the word unsure if they can use it due to the association.

Whatever term you use, transandrophobia, transmisandry, anti-transmasculinity, the concept exists.

I think one of the worst pieces of dialogue to enter the transphobia conversation is the TMA/TME dichotomy. I’ve never seen any oppressed group come up with a term to say that other oppressed people are by extension incapable of experiencing this type of oppression. The use of the terms automatically makes me take you less seriously, and is frankly a laughable concept.

There are countless examples across identity groups that suggest that even privileged groups can be the target of ‘misdirected’ bigotry if something about their identity diverts from expectations. Feminine straight boys attacked for being ‘gay.’ Indian men attacked for being ‘muslims.’ Latinos of any kind attacked for being ‘Mexican.’ Rejection of othered identities, political vengeance, blind bigotry—there are so many ways people from the out group can be attacked even though they do not hold the attacked identity. Hell, even cis women can experience transmisogyny—especially GNC women—because bigotry does not ever solely rely on your actual identity, it relies primarily in how you are perceived.

I used to have really stunted ideas about transphobia. Only cis-passing trans people were in public discussion. Trans men were transitioning INTO male privilege and trans women were transitioning AWAY from it. So if your gender politics stop at Baby’s First Gender Analysis then sure, that’s the end of the conversation. But it isn’t.

Trans people don’t have gendered privilege across the board over one another. Because they are all trans. They can absolutely wield other intersections over one another. But the “most” we can do is lateral aggression to each other. Even splitting the divide along misogyny is unhelpful for the myriad of ways trans men also experience misogyny. As I’ve said before, either transmisogyny is the intersection of transphobia+misogyny in which case it is possibly applicable to all trans folks, or it is specific to trans women’s experience and it is identity-based, in which case transmasculine identity needs a word for the attacks on them. For what it’s worth, trans women also experience anti-masculinity like trans men experience misogyny, and this word, if NOT identity-based, wouldn’t be an exclusive term othering trans women either, so there shouldn’t be offense taken either way.

I think there are a couple key things at play here. One of the first is a surface level understanding of privilege. There is absolutely no question that cis-passing trans men who are treated like men have in that moment male privilege. But it’s not wholly cis privilege. Cis men have male privilege because they were assigned male, that term fits, and they are seen as men. Even that is not always a given, and straying in your performance of maleness can get you backlash. But no matter how well a trans man passes he isn’t cis. If it comes up over his records, if it comes up over genitalia during sex, if it comes up over reproductive healthcare, even the most cis-passing trans man’s identity is still in question. The assumption that a trans man IS cis can even be unsafe in medical emergencies. Many trans men don’t know how to find contraceptive for their bodies or know how to recognize pregnancy or health emergencies due to their variance from cis women. The privilege is limited, it is conditional, and the condition isn’t about correctly viewing them as men, it is in incorrectly viewing them as cis.

Likewise, I know it is such a dirty topic because people’s grasp of privilege means “your life is roses and this identity is what you want” but it’s even possible and in fact likely for a trans women to have experienced male privilege too. Especially for folks who come out later in life, it is likely that despite your wishes, you were viewed and treated as a man. Maybe your opinions were listened to more, maybe an M on your license let you have a bank account when your cis female friends couldn’t, maybe your name was read on a job application and you got picked before someone with a girl name. All of these things are privileges but they are also extremely conditional. Not only does it make an incorrect assumption about you, but it misgenders you. Any closeted trans woman could tell you how painful it is to be forced to remain hidden. For many, the deep fear of losing things you’ve accumulated keeps people closeted longer. These circumstances are not at all your fault—these perceptions are wrong whether they give you some benefit or not. But it is part of the equation, and understanding privilege as the correct or incorrect assumption and special treatment in a specific instance is crucial for understanding how it is relevant to trans men.

Because if you are not cis-passing, you do not have male privilege. If you are not seen in a space as a man, and specifically a cis man, you are not gaining privilege. Out trans men can still achieve levels of privilege, but will not be viewed as cis. They are automatically in some other gender category—and in a society that loves its binaries, they are going to find their ‘other’ gender as shoved into the cis man or cis woman box—both incorrect for various reasons and both causing some level of harm.

One of the other biggest pitfalls of trans discourse is accepting ra/d/fe/m views on masculinity. I’ve written about it before but larger society views femaleness and female femininity as inferior (with the caveat that if you perform it well you may be mildly rewarded for conformity), but it also doesn’t wholly view masculinity as good. In white cishet male masculinity sure! In Black men, their masculinity is a threat. Does that mean Black men are rewarded for femininity? Absolutely not. There’s no winning. Either you fail to be what’s expected, or you are demonized, or the secret third thing where you abandon one piece of identity in favor of the identity that can bring you closer to privilege. There’s no question that Black men can wield misogyny, turning on Black women, and gain favor in white male spaces. But no matter how much they lean into that, it doesn’t make them white. Trans men can lean into misogyny and turn on trans women and cis women and gain a level of privilege, but they will never be cis.

There is often debate about who has privilege over whom when comparing cis women and trans men. The answer is assumed to be trans men on top always, because they are men. The reality is that they only generally hold a higher level of privilege when they are assumed to be cis men. As soon as their trans status is known, cis women can and do weaponize their cis status to oppress trans men. By viewing “male/female” as the ultimate axis of identity power, we completely ignore they way that other factors hold much more weight in a given conversation and how female identity can weaponize victim status for control. This scenario plays out a lot with the concept of “white woman tears” or the ability for (cis, white) women to wield victimhood as a shield from culpability, encouraging those with power to “save” you from a purported threat. This phenomenon has killed and endangered countless Black men. All this debate about whether cis women can hold power over trans men when white women unquestioningly can hold power over cis men of color. The context of privilege is immensely important.

Both trans men and Black men (and others) are not the intended recipients of male privilege.

Intersectionality was coined as an attempt to understand how various identities one holds intersect with each other and create something new that cannot be separated out. We mostly understand it in intersections of oppressed identities, but cis+white+man is a set of intersections too! A gay man would understandably have his gayness weigh “against” him socially. Now, suppose he is masculine—people don’t tend to view him societally as gay. In this instance his masculinity may protect him. But in queer spaces he is then seen as a threat, an invader. Is it still privilege? I think a lot about how in Paris is Burning, one of the interviewees talked about societal points against you, and he said “Black, gay, and a man.” In his experience, his maleness as a modifier to his other experiences was a strike against him! Not in the implication that women didn’t suffer for their own femininity, but understandably, much of his expression of femininity wouldn’t give him the same sort of flak it did if he was a cis woman. Him being a man was part of his experience of oppression, not the canceling out of it.

Masculinity is treated as the opposite of femininity and implied to always be rewarded. Any cis butch will tell you that’s a lie. As will a trans butch. Butchphobia is an oft-neglected topic in gender discussions. The overlap in experience between cis women butches and trans men is often ignored—either by the need for trans men to understandably try to distance themselves from assumptions of femaleness, or by queer community’s constant forgetting of butches’ existence. The overlap in experience between transfemme butches and transmasc butches is ignored entirely for its implication that “opposite genders” could be the same. A transfemme butch is shoved into one of two categories: either basically a trans woman, or a cis man faking it. Suddenly a category of transfemme is turned on by the larger community, including trans women, for straying outside expected conformity. We turn ourselves into gender cops the way OUR genders were policed.

The trouble for many is, the idea that a transfemme and a transmasc could have the same gender shits on the idea of treating these two categories as diametric opposites. There’s boy trans and girl trans. And because societally it’s good to be a boy and bad to be a girl, and we’re pushing back on that, transfemmes are casting off this yuckiness and choosing purity, and transmascs are joining the dark side. It’s childish analysis, and creates this division where anyone who exists in the grey is a faker or a traitor.

And ultimately what does this help? Transfemmes folding themselves into pretzels to prove they are nothing like men is so damaging, and creates the conditions to cast out transfemmes who don’t fit—after fighting to find acceptance after being cast out for not being cis! And transmascs? They were treated like shit for being women and now either are treated like shit in trans spaces for passing, or treated like shit for not passing—what are THEY supposed to do? Who does this help?

Gender essentialism is a brain rot, gender policing is a disgusting practice, exorsexism is going to destroy the grey area trans folks certainly—but it’s gonna come for the rest of you too.

The inability for people, very much including trans folks, to grapple with the complexities of gender and how it intersects with other identities is not based in logic and does not make you the ultimate victim, it makes you a stunted asshole.

The only way we can move forward is by letting people with direct experience speak to their experience, come up with words to explain that experience, and deconstruct our ideas of gender from binarist, cissexist, intersexist and limited understandings.

#ask #anon ask #long post

29 notes · View notes

the-force-awakens · 6 months

Note

Yeah, that's a pretty good analysis. I don't see Poe included hardly at all, in fandom or in canon to a degree, and I think it's safe to say he has one of the least number of fans who are specifically fans of him. Like I don't see many blogs/accounts that are specifically Poe centric.

Oh man, I actually got up to answer this on my computer rather than my phone, so we'll see how into it I'll get into this ask, but yes! It's vastly unfortunate that he often gets excluded or overlooked when he's the entire catalyst for the sequel trilogy. He is, archetypically and narratively within the story, the Leia of our generation: if it was not for Poe and BB-8 (who is really like an extension of Poe), then Finn wouldn't have been able to escape the Finalizer, and Rey would have never left Jakku.

While yes, it's true that Poe wasn't initially meant to survive The Force Awakens (and other nine word horror stories for me), Poe is still one part of the primary trio of the trilogy and has been since 2015. He is not only Leia's first protégé, but the eventual leader of the Resistance, and according to the Rise of Skywalker novel, the heir to the legacy of House Organa (cue me loudly proclaiming him a Disney Prince). Yet, somehow, at the same time......no one seems to ever want to include him as part of the saga, and an important one as that?

(@dameronalone points out ever so often how much they love the shot where everyone leaves Exegol for this reason, because we see Poe flying alongside the Falcon, which really hammers in that Poe is an important player in the history of the saga).

More thoughts below the cut, because I have more and this is already lengthy.

The worst thing is that Poe was extremely popular. Lucasfilm and Marvel pretty much immediately greenlit a comic series for him, and while that was definitely to flesh his story out, if my memory serves, it was so popular that I believe the first printing sold out? And it was originally only meant to last 25 issues (which personally I think it should have stayed at, because I don't super vibe with 26-onward and it feels off and tonally disconnected to the rest of the series and also the ending of TLJ, and the characterization for Poe also feels off, but that's!! a different rant!!!) but the title was so popular that Marvel decided to extend it for two more storylines!

The issue was the fandom backlash to TLJ.

You don't have to look too far into my blog to know that I adore Poe in TLJ, and that I like his arc in the movie, and that I avidly defend him for it, but the internet in 2017-2019 was an entirely different universe from that. You could not go anywhere - Tumblr, Twitter, Youtube, fucking hell, even most major media news outlets and clickbait websites - without hearing about how much everyone hated Poe Dameron.

Why? Because they walked away from his arc deciding that he was sexist and the movie's perfect example of toxic masculinity (although, lmfao, the First Order clowns are right there). It went further than that, with headlines about how everyone hated him, how he was personally responsible for everything that happens in the Resistance in the film, and how he was the worst character in Star Wars since Jar Jar Binks (because clearly the Star Wars fandom never learns from its previous toxicity, right?). It was to the point that, to my immense horror and frustration, even as far as into promoting TROS, a reporter described Poe as a "secret villain" in TLJ to Oscar (and man do I hope that man knows Poe is loved, actually).

Fandom wasn't much different. Fanon Poe prior to TLJ was....a lot different. In some ways, a lot of fics hit the nail on the head on who Poe was, but there was a definite unifying idea of who Poe was: a pure cinnamon roll who never, ever swore, and always listened to Leia and never argued with her - let alone disobeyed her orders or put a toe out of line (this is even illustrated in canon, with the first Poe Dameron annual, where the author has Poe declare that Leia is "always right" and instantly caving in an argument).

And TLJ Poe is about....as far removed from that vision of Poe as you can possibly get - although nothing about him in TLJ is ooc. We see the bare bones of it in The Force Awakens, and Before the Awakening and the comics further flesh out Poe in a way that perfectly leads into the Last Jedi. But the cinnamon roll fanon was made so common and leaked so far into fandom consciousness, that there was this strange concept that Poe was never, ever angry even in expanded material, which...he does. He gets pissed off plenty of times in the comics, and with the Defense Fleet while arguing with Deso.

So, canon Poe did the unthinkable and, y'know, didn't fall in line with how fanon saw him, which resulted in a huge backlash over the fact that he was a character with agency and a personality (that is NOT sexist thank you), which resulted in us getting books like Resistance Reborn, by authors who can't stand him or describe him as anything besides "supremely arrogant" and spends three hundred pages emotionally torturing him, claiming he needs to die, physically assaulting him, and you know...having the person who attacked him and the other person who claimed he needed to die flirt with him, because it also spends an ungodly amount of time sexualizing him to an uncomfortable degree, because the one thing fanon could agree on outside of the fact that he had been "ruined" or that he was a jackass or a "fuckboi" (yeah that went around too), was that Oscar Isaac is really goddamned fine in the Last Jedi (he is, I'll give them that, there's something about tlj!Poe, scientists remain baffled).

And on top of all of that, a particular fraction of the fandom developed an interesting habit of taking new pieces of canon and spreading them around online out of context, claiming that the writers were now intentionally writing him as sexist and as a jackass, and ruining his character further. I don't know for certain if this had any effect overall on the fandom's perception of him, but I know that it did almost break my spin in him for a while because I thought people were being very genuine, and it wasn't until 2020 that I got curious and started doing my own research into the panels/paragraphs being shared online, and sure enough, discovered that the angle had been falsified to paint Poe into a worse light (which, if anyone is curious, is why I did my deep dive into everything that he was in, because I didn't want to be fooled again. You can't trick me if I know everything lmfao).

So essentially, his popularity nosedived after the Last Jedi. It seemed to bump up a little bit, or at least there definitely seemed to be more people interested in him/writing for him in 2020 coming off the lockdown, but obviously that has very much dwindled. But I've definitely not seen any blogs dedicated to Poe as a character since 2017, and you don't ordinarily see him in miscellaneous Star Wars gifsets that go around either, let alone solo Poe gifsets (I know because I lose my shit anytime there's a new one that's not by me), and Poe creations that have nothing to do with a ship is.........even less likely to be found.

I definitely think canon is at least trying to keep him in our minds though. He was the second character to lead one of the Lego Specials, and that Rey short story ("Through the Turbulence") was focused on her friendship with him. Whether or not that's because of the possibility of Oscar returning for the Rey movie (which feels fairly tangible, considering he's been kind of shady about it after mentioning he'd come back for a good story, and doing that Halcyon video), or if it's just because of Lucasfilm maybe warming up to him as a character again*, I don't know, but I hope it means we get good-faith content for him again soon.

*Because I'm tired of the story group constantly being a little bitch about him, and the same goes for the Topps Trading Card App. Maybe people wouldn't think he was a villain if you stopped describing him like a terrible person? Just a thought.

#ask box #i-belong-to-the-stars #i am so sorry for this motherfucking ESSAY #sometimes the 'ex article writer' jumps out #this was one of those times

34 notes · View notes

miru667 · 9 months

Note

You've been in the fandom for a long time and we all know the big stuff that happened like Ed Helms finding out about oncest but are there any other interesting parts you've witnessed?

Yes I've witnessed almost everything from end of march 2012 and onward (i lurked tumblr for 3 weeks before making an account). A good place to start would be this list here: [link] and you can read summaries of each item here: [link]

But most of those things are big stuff too and I don't see some important things like glovecest and the water hose night blogging event hmmm! And some other prominent things like granch, and swagler getting stuck in a closet (swag was extremely influential in the fandom so that's why a big chunk of the list is swag related)

You can also try reading Pluto's 2012-2014 fandom newspaper: [link]

As well as my 2015 fandom newspaper: [link] which recorded stuff that happened in 2015 as well as talked about a lot of 2012 stuff in every issue, but sadly most of the links in those posts are dead now from people changing urls or deleting their blogs or blogs becoming inactive.

But yes I've witnessed....a lot. If you want me to explain any specific things in the fandom, you can feel free to ask!

#miruask #minti pop #reference

46 notes · View notes

wielderofmysteries · 1 year

Text

(We Need to Talk About Narset)

(This article is intended to be a primer for my larger upcoming article on autistic representation in Magic.)

I found out about Narset in 2018, when I had just started learning about Magic's lore for the first time. I was overjoyed to see that Magic's first official autistic character seemed to be the complete opposite of the stereotypical depictions of autism I'd seen in other media. Instead of a nerdy brown-haired white boy, Narset was a 50 year old Asian woman and a badass martial artist. As an Asian autistic kid, I often felt invisible and underrepresented in the media I consumed, so Narset really meant a lot to me.

However, when I actually read Narset's lore, I was disappointed to find that she wasn't nearly as revolutionary as I'd thought. (Word count: ~2800)

=========

maudlingoblin asked:

dougbeyermtg answered:

[https://dougbeyermtg.tumblr.com/post/112727174244/hi-doug-reading-the-new-uncharted-realms-i-felt]

=========

(Art: Dragonlord Ojutai - Chase Stone)

The Great Teacher's Student tells the story of Narset's childhood under the rule of Dragonlord Ojutai. At eight years old, Narset was a pretty typical autistic child, having many traits that I shared. She fidgeted restlessly, had sensory overloads, and her mother found it difficult to take her out to public spaces. Naret's brain was extremely pattern-oriented, one of the most defining traits of autism. She saw numbers everywhere, and counted to soothe herself.

=========

The cries of the merchants, the bold colors of the wares, and the too-sweet aromas of the produce were like walls that made the marketplace feel too tight, too close, too much. The muscles of Narset's legs twitched and her lungs felt cramped. She tugged at her robe; it was strangling her. Her mother must have cinched it too tightly.

"Stand still," her mother scolded from above. "You'll knock something over." She was poring over the apples at the top of a tall mound too high for Narset to see.

Narset tried to stand still, but she couldn't. The restlessness inside her wanted her to move. Sometimes when she felt that way she distracted herself. She would count things, or search for patterns, or study people's expressions. But she knew the marketplace too well; she knew its numbers and she knew its patrons. She had already taken inventory. The man with the cane was limping less that day, putting more weight on his bad leg; Narset supposed the balm he had purchased from the herbalist the week before had worked to ease the pain. There were, as usual, three dozen meat slabs hanging at the butcher's stand with an average of eighteen striations per slab; the average number of striations hardly ever changed, although sometimes there was greater variance. The merchant at the squash stand had uneven stains on his sleeves and three stray threads hanging from his robe; he must have gotten it caught in his cart and had to pull himself free. And there were sixty-eight apples in the mound in front of Narset; that was accounting for the volume inside the mound, which she couldn't see but could predict well enough. There would be sixty-seven apples if her mother would ever just choose one.

Her mother hemmed and hawed, her fingers alighting first on one apple and then another, fluttering over the choices, but never settling.

She's never going to pick one, Narset thought. We're never going to leave. Panic set in. Her vision blurred, her ears rang, and her forehead began to sweat. She frantically searched for something else to distract her, but there was nothing else she could see. At eight, Narset wasn't tall enough to see over any of the stands or any of the bodies. It was like she was in a never-ending maze of tall sweaty, smelly people-trees.

She was trapped.

[The Great Teacher's Student - Kimberly J. Kreines]

=========

Narset was a believably written autistic character in this story, but that doesn't automatically mean it was good, or that it was what autistic people wanted to see. To be clear, this story was neither unrealistic nor offensive to me. Writing Narset as an autistic character was something the creative team genuinely cared about and tried to do well. But I was still disappointed because Narset in this story is just another example of the "autistic savant" trope that the media can't seem to let go of.

Fictional or real, almost every autistic person you will see in the media will be a savant; some kind of socially-inept genius whose intelligence or skill far surpasses their peers. This person may be a mathematician, a surgeon, a child prodigy who attends college but can't tie their shoes– the list goes on and on. You've probably seen many stories like this before.

In The Great Teacher's Student, Narset accidentally knocks over a pile of apples at the market, upsetting the merchant and prompting her mother to send her outside. Dragonlord Ojutai noticed Narset's talent and desire for knowledge as she explored the field outside, and wanted to encourage her. He tutored her from a distance for several years before officially deciding to train her as a student when she was 11 years old.

After this moment, the story shifts its focus almost entirely to Narset's academic journey. We get to see that in the years that passed since Narset became a student of Ojutai, she was still really, really smart. She finally felt challenged and supported in the way she needed, and she was good at so many things.

In fact, she was better than everyone else at everything.

=========

As she looked back now, she recognized her time at the sanctuary as the best years of her life. She was happier than she had ever been; she was challenged, recognized, fulfilled. Her restlessness had ceased haunting her; she had felt a sense of peace. And while she wasn't physically moving, she knew she was on a path, going where she was meant to go, becoming who she was meant to be. Ojutai was leading her. And not a day went by that she didn't thank her dragon for the gift.

Narset advanced more quickly than any other student, climbing the ranks of Dragon's Eye Sanctuary, moving upward from the lowest balconies to the highest terraces, until one day Ojutai called for her to come stand on his own private perch.

[...]

"My student, Narset, it is time. Your hunger for knowledge is your greatest strength. You have become strong, and powerful, and wise because you have never stopped seeking enlightenment." The dragon beamed down at her. She knew what was about to come, and for one glorious moment everything felt perfect. "I now bestow upon you the title of Master, which you have assuredly earned, and with it all the honor and responsibility it brings." Ojutai bowed his head and rested his giant paw on her shoulder.

Narset bowed her head in return and clasped her small hand over the dragon's paw, making no attempt to wipe the hot tear that streaked down her cheek. At fifteen, she was the youngest master Ojutai had ever named. She had reached the top.

[The Great Teacher's Student - Kimberly J. Kreines]

=========

I didn't like how Narset's story focused so much on autistic exceptionalism– on how Ojutai gave her special treatment because she was better than everyone else at everything.

Autistic achievement should be celebrated, and Narset's desire for endless learning is so deeply, truly autistic. But I feel like Narset's story and those of other autistic savants are just so extraordinary that it's too hard to relate to them. These kinds of fictional portrayals and real-world news features attempt to endear autistic people to allistic (non-autistic) audiences by saying, "Look! Autistic people aren't bad, they're actually better than us!" But focusing on exceptional individuals doesn't help to humanize autism.

It sets an unrealistic expectation for autistic people, and can be extremely alienating. Autistic people shouldn't have to be superhuman to be respected, and the truth is that the overwhelming majority of autistic people are completely ordinary.

When I was diagnosed with autism at age 11, I obsessively searched the internet for information about autism, to learn what other autistic people experienced, and what "normal" people thought of us. I learned that geniuses were loved, and everyone else was hated. I hoped for years that I would magically develop some kind of incredible talent so I could be like the autistic geniuses in the news. I hoped someone would notice me and enroll me in college early or make me famous so I would be respected for something. It didn't happen. It wasn't fair to myself, but when I saw stories about savants, I didn't feel proud to be autistic. Instead, I saw myself as a failure.

Autistic savants don't need more representation. Most autistic people, even most of the geniuses and prodigies, will never have the kinds of opportunities that Narset and other famous savants have had. But when neurotypical people have only ever seen autistic savants, they expect you to be a genius. And when people expect you to be a genius, being ordinary just makes you a disappointment.

The Magic narrative team clearly recognized the fact that most allistic peoples' first exposure to autism is through popular media and that it's a major influence on the audience's image of what autism is like. So they tried to make a good first impression by making Narset a positive portrayal, but it backfired in one key way: Narset's writing in this story was so focused on making her as extraordinary and obviously autistic as possible that it neglected to make her a human being. She's believable, but not compelling. Narset's story is about an autistic character, but it's not really about what it's like to be autistic.

(And I hate to say it, but... there’s nothing revolutionary about making your Asian autistic character a math genius.)

What frustrates me about the way Narset was written is that I actually believe her autism was extremely under-utilized in her writing.

Autism is lifelong, but I don't really feel like the story treats it that way. Beyond the first scene of Narset as a younger child, the story doesn't show how Narset's autism affected her life other than making her really smart.

Narset's greatest challenge was that she was literally so good that she couldn't get any better.

As a child, Narset was shown to have trouble communicating and interacting with others. After Narset became Ojutai's student, she's barely shown interacting with anyone other than Ojutai ever again. How did Narset's differences affect the way she interacted with her fellow students? Did she want to try to make friends? What happened to her mother? How would she have felt about Narset's progress? The story doesn't explore any of this. What about her overwhelming sensory overloads? Did she still have them? If so, did her triggers change? She used to soothe herself by counting and finding patterns. When her anxiety returned later in the story, did her coping mechanisms change or stay the same? This isn't shown, either.

At the end of The Great Teacher's Student, Narset was still a teenager, but she's supposed to be about 50 years old now. We know that the present Narset is an independent autistic adult, who has friends and goals and decades of life experience, and that's beautiful– but we never get to see how she got there. How did she learn to make friends? How did she decide what she wanted to do with her life? That journey is what I want to see being written for autistic characters.

(Art: Quiet Contemplation - Magali Villeneuve)

To contrast, Narset's story in the Khans of Tarkir timeline does address these things. In Enlightened, Narset is the narrator, and she speaks personally of her challenges as a young autistic person: her academic struggles as a daydreaming student, her feelings of alienation, being bullied, and how she threw herself into her training to cope. These experiences and feelings carried on into adulthood, and influenced the way she approached her responsibilities as the Jeskai Khan.

=========

As a young girl, I had the same "problem," as my teachers called it. I always lived in my head, but not in the way the instructors wished. I dreamt of fantastical worlds and used the scrolls given for lessons to draw them, incurring the wrath of my elders. I found solace in my own mind and often had difficulty knowing how to talk to others. It was as though my mind was always five steps ahead of my mouth. It was so taxing interacting with others. I never knew what to say, often causing me to blunder, and I was embarrassed in front of my teachers and classmates. I then went over those failed interactions in my mind, and I found the imaginary worlds more forgiving.

[...]

Even though I am now their khan, I still felt like an outsider—like the young girl always fumbling her words—only now I don't show it. I think this has been what gives me the strength to do what is needed, looking at the Jeskai like I am not really a part of them.

[Enlightened - Matt Knicl]

=========

Overall, I feel like Enlightened was a much more thoughtful story despite being much shorter. Sadly, Tarkir's time travel plot means that version of Narset no longer exists. We haven't gotten any stories featuring Narset since 2015, so the version of Narset we saw in The Great Teacher's Student is the Narset we are stuck with.

I don't necessarily believe that Narset is "bad" autistic representation. I still love Narset, and she means a lot to me. But Narset's stories are focused on setting her apart, separating her from other people, and showing that she is too different to be a part of the world around her. In my opinion, Narset deserves better than that, and that is why I believe Narset is not the best autistic representation Magic has to offer.

#mtg #narset #tarkir #analysis #gwunky

343 notes · View notes

9w1ft · 7 months

Note

So I've been a Kaylor since 2015 but since Karlie came to the Eras tour I've been struggling with the idea of them presenting again to the public as just friends (and how much people seem to want that). I know I'm in the minority here and by minority I mean I think it's just me but to present to the world as just best friends again after so many years seems infantilizing almost, like another step back. To me bearding with Travis and putting Karlie on the map in her life as a best friend again is cut from the same cloth, like the same type of lies going in circles. It wouldn't be authenticity, just more of the same with different actors (I'm also struggling with interest in Taylor with how fake she seems with this whole Travis thing but it might be just performance art and I'm willing to fall for it I guess for the time being). So yeah I don't know how to feel about this anymore and i saw you give some pretty thoughtful answers here and that's why I sent this. Have a nice evening!

i was talking with a mutual about something related to this earlier today actually. i’m not saying everybody needs to think or is able to think the same way but to me, the draw of kaylor is that it’s a story about love enduring through extreme circumstances.

in recent years i’ve read more than one assertion that people who believe she is gay (umbrella term) should be focused on analyzing taylor’s work through a queer lens because a focus on taylor’s muses in interpreting her work is reductive, but i would argue can be somewhat of an inverse situation, at least from taylor’s perspective. because as i see it, her story with karlie spans ages and is the culmination of taylor’s struggles both to find true love and also in defining what she wants that relationship to be. it’s a story that spans multiple spheres… it’s politics, it’s civics, it’s fame, it’s business, it’s philosophy, and yes it’s also about identity. and i would argue that the specifics of their situations shape their story in a way that is meaningful and oh no i’ve gone on a tangent

i brought this up thought to tee myself up to say that, i think i may have engaged with the idea that taylor’s-coming-out-is-the-end-goal for some amount of time, particularly in the beginning of my tumblr tenure, but at some point i came to feel that the end goal for taylor is actually taylor finding true love. it’s what she’s tried for her whole life to put into words. and she found it, and she put it into words (it’s golden).

there can always be new milestones, and hopes to be placed in taylor to do something more, but i think that it’s important to recognize these hopes as our hopes for her, our priorities, our analyses.

and so let’s say that things stay on a certain trajectory and they appear to the public as friends with boyfriends and husbands. i think that there is a big difference between now and the mid 2010’s. because if by some stroke of good fortune or divine intervention, or the years of blood sweat and tears from her and her muse throughout the great war, has coalesced into taylor not only surviving but also settling down with the love of her life but also to have gone so far as to start a family? then she has already won. we too, have already won, if we choose to see it this way.

#there can be different win conditions i think

26 notes · View notes

bekkathyst · 1 year

Text

Sometimes it really hits me how much has happened since I’ve been on this website and have had my little shop. Idk if it’s nostalgia or just procrastination of my current to-do list but I feel like writing out a little synopsis of what’s happened over the years lol. Also for any new followers, you can catch up haha

Also there will be some vague mentions of rough/traumatic circumstances, so just a warning!

I opened my first tumblr account when I was still in high school in like 2009 because all my friends were on here. I had like a fashion blog at one point, a recipe blog at another, but eventually I settled into my little witchy nature crystal niche where I felt the most at home.

In 2013 I was living in a horrible studio apartment in central Los Angeles with my now husband Antonio and we were living in poverty. He was being paid under the table below minimum wage and I was an unemployed high school dropout. I was struggling to find any kind of job and I also knew that it would be impossible for me to keep one because of how I am. (Which at the time I didn’t realize was the result of neurodivergence and a lot of trauma). I was just happy to be away from the abusive home I grew up in and I was really determined to make things work somehow, as impossible as it seemed. Eventually I decided I needed to just work for myself. A job wasn’t going to fix anything for me, and where I was wasn’t safe for me to be walking to and from a job anyway. I dealt with a lot of harassment every time I left my apartment so I pretty much became a hermit for the years I lived there.

One weekend with $10 from our grocery budget I went to a little shop that sold tumbled stones on the Redondo Beach pier and decided to buy a couple and some wire and make some pendants. I also had quite a few stones from my collection from childhood and I used those, too. And I opened my first Etsy shop! I honestly cringe when I look back at pictures of my work from this time, I’d really like to think I’ve come a long way lol.

It took several months to get a single sale and at least a year before I had any kind of consistency. For the next couple of years I worked on my little shop while Antonio went to work. In 2015 we decided that my shop was making just enough for us to work on it together and move somewhere else. So we ended up finding a mobile home for rent on some lady’s horse ranch in the mountains of unincorporated riverside county and we moved there.

We planned to stay for quite a while, but before even a year had passed, life drastically changed again. In early 2016 my little sisters came forward about the abuse they were facing and our father was arrested and a years long criminal court case began. Because my mother was undocumented and had spent the last 20 years pretty much just hiding at home, all their care fell on me. We took in my mom and my 3 sisters and had to move. We found another manufactured home in the same area and we all moved in together. I was truly not financially or emotionally prepared for this and it was extremely difficult. On top of that we were all very traumatized. I had not yet been open about the abuse I had faced because I wasn’t ready.

Amid that struggle is when my mom decided to start working with us as well! And she helped us grow our shop some more until we were a little more stable. Eventually we realized we had to find a bigger home and in 2017 I finally got to realize my goal of living in the big mountains and we found a lovely big house in Big Bear.

Actually during this time I have gaps in my memory so there are some things I start to mix up, but shortly after we moved I also decided to come forward about the abuse I faced which unfortunately further complicated the court case. We were looking at a trial date in 2018 which would eventually get pushed to 2019. But during 2018 my niece was born and I also ended up taking in one of my half brothers as well. So our household was now 9 people that were all surviving off of my shop’s income. Also during this time (I think it was actually 2017) we had been talking to one of our suppliers about taking over their wholesale warehouse near Los Angeles. It was presented as a huge business opportunity and I saw it as a chance to better things for us and hopefully ease the struggle. Taking this opportunity actually did the exact opposite. We were quite honestly deceived and ended up being straddled with a failing business. I lived 2017, 2018 and most of 2019 in a haze. Like I mentioned, I really don’t remember much and sometimes I see posts I made during that time and I’m really surprised by them. I think it was just the combination of extreme stress, burn out, sleep deprivation from trying to run 2 businesses and taking care of a massive household, and the trauma of having to recall all these repressed memories from my childhood.

But, somehow I survived. The plus side of coming forward about my abuse is that it gave me access to free therapy and I ended up finding the most incredible therapist that helped me start my healing and recovery from burnout.

Eventually in early 2019 our court case happened and we all testified in front of a jury, and our father was found guilty and is now serving a 300 year plus sentence. It took me the rest of that year to come out of the haze I’d been living in. After the court case, I decided to take the leap and open our brick and mortar shop in Big Bear. It was the thing I actually wanted to do with all my heart.

Then… 2020 came around. Covid hit and it was the final nail in the coffin for our warehouse business. We closed it and gave up. My other half sibling that was working at the warehouse ended up moving in with us as well and so did a friend of mine, so at this point our household was at 11 or so people and we were beginning a pandemic. I had also found out that I was pregnant.

Finding out I was pregnant caused the biggest flip of a switch in my brain. I knew I couldn’t keep living the way I was living anymore. I couldn’t keep burning myself out and over extending myself to people. I had to put up some kind of boundaries and create a healthier environment. With the help of my amazing therapist supporting me, I made this a reality. It’s also when I finally decided that as soon as we could, we’d be moving to Austria, the country my mother was from, where I had also lived as a young child. I knew I had to make life better, I knew I had to release all of this chaos.

In early 2021, still of course in the middle of a pandemic, our landlord said he wanted to sell our house so we needed to move out and he would not be renewing our lease. This was right when the housing shortage really started to hit our area. I had an infant daughter and all these people in my care and I was very scared. By some miracle we found a listing for a house in the high desert, about a half hour away from our brick and mortar shop and we went for it. We knew we had no other options. At this point most of my household went their own ways and found their footing. So me, Antonio, our infant daughter, my mom, my youngest sister, and my toddler niece all moved to this house in the desert. I knew that this was temporary and I told myself I would not be here for longer than a year. Once our year lease was up, we’d make it to Austria.

It was a lot of work and honestly I probably could have made some smarter choices now that I look back, but early 2022 we sold all our inventory from our brick and mortar shop to a wholesaler and closed it up. And then we moved!

And now here we are, a continent away from where we started. Much happier, much healthier. Now we’re not selling nearly on the scale as we were before, but I know that with time we’ll be back to the level we were at. And I really hope to open a brick and mortar store somewhere in Austria sometime soon.

It really amazes me that some of you have been here from the beginning. It feels like several lifetimes have passed, but it also feels like it all happened in the blink of an eye.

I’m really so thankful for the opportunity I had to grow and learn so much and heal. I feel like I’m a completely different person than the desperate girl who started an Etsy shop in 2013.

And… this is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s still so much more that happened. When I first started seeing my therapist she encouraged me to write my story in a book, and it’s definitely something that I plan to do one day. I don’t think a younger version of myself would believe everything we survived. 🙏💜

147 notes · View notes

vergess · 10 months

Note

Another nsft ask now that I think about it (feel free to ignore or answer privately if you want):

Has the site always been this horny/sex positive?

idk if it's just the circles I'm in but it's so refreshing to see people just be this...openly horny you know? Really encouraged me to get more comfortable expressing that. Especially coming from a private puritanical/sex negative upbringing.

(also the willingness of people to ask for/ participate in horny DMs has been fun for me ngl lmao)

Actually, this is our medium setting.

In the heyday, before SESTA/FOSTA got passed in the US leading to sweeping porn bans across many platforms (and slow creeping porn bans across others, eg twitter)? Tumblr was MUCH more sex positive than even this.

Things started going dramatically down hill circa 2015.

It was so openly expected that people would treat sex as just another subject of discussion and art on tumblr, that it actually left us surprisingly vulnerable.

See, in the US especially, sex is regarded as absolutely evil. Something to be allowed only in the briefest moments of a marriage, solely for popping out kids.

So tumblr's extremely sex positive atmosphere meant it was often rather alarming to newcomers.

And when they expressed any discomfort, SWERFs (Sex Work Exclusionary Radical Feminists; TERFs but for sex instead of gender) would immediately pile onto them, love bombing them and reassuring them that their discomfort is Good, Actually, and all those nasty sexy queers are just trying to sexually abuse them, etc etc.

They would use a combination of extreme affection and isolation to separate these kids from their social groups and families, and force them to watch hours of porn with the specific intent of creating a traumatic trigger around sex, so these victims could be trusted to go out and start harassing the shit out of anyone who mentioned it.

They especially targeted children. The reason "minors do not interact" is such a common phrase is because of that. Same with "don't you know I'm neurodivergent and a minor."

These SWERFs would start huge discord servers and skype groups where they would collect any kid who saw a dick on tumblr and didn't like it, and basically brainwash them. I know how that sounds but it's NOT an exagerration. They literally formed an actual, honest to god cult.

That army of SWERF addled kids not only drove several people to suicide, but actually raped people, hospitalized artists, and caused irreparable damage. If you see someone complaining about "antiships" on here, that's the name of the cult movement in question. You may see people call themselves "ex-anti" in the same way they would "ex-catholic," and those people who got out of that cult can attest to how horrific it is.

Unfortunately, you'll also see them insist that they aren't a cult, or that anyone who calls them a cult (including parents, therapists, and doctors) is just Too Online and needs to Touch Grass instead of "fighting with a minor." Some of these people insistently call themselves minors despite being 25!!

Because of all that, when SESTA/FOSTA forced the porn ban in 2018, there was a massive portion of the user base who literally celebrated it. Even among regular users, it was heralded as an end to that sheer fucking violence.

Of course, the cult just started organizing on twitter so they could continue harassing people, or worse, attending conventions to assault people, etc.

I would say that 2018 was the low point. In the last 5 years, recovering any modicum of sex positivity has been slow, labourious work.

Actually, hand to god, y'all redditors coming in hot with your femboy fridays and your bottomposting made a HUGE difference. I haven't seen this much casual, carefree sexuality in years.

I keep saying "nature is healing" about this. You're like wonderful rehabbed wolves coming to our deer-decimated woodlands.

#Asks #Answered asks #broccoli-bitching

34 notes · View notes