#to the fucking racism but like: the socially acceptable kind

[bijoumikhawal]

For the ship ask game: Sisko/Garak, Kira/Dax, O'Brien/Bashir

Sisko/Garak: ship it!

What made you ship it? I Do Not Remember. It may have been @ectogeo-rebubbles ITPM fic and it gradually grew on me but I don't know what to do with I now.

What are your favorite things about the ship? 1. Potential analysis for a very different way of being intimate with Garak, for one. With Julian he's always performing a bit, and his intimacy with Julian is cloaked in layers of complications and subterfuge- they're both very used to performing, performance is how that communicate. I find their dialogue often very easy to write because they're both very witty and vaudevillian (it's a dynamic some of the guys from my attempt at an audio drama have lol). But with Sisko I've noticed that Garak has points where he drops the jovial attitude and is very straightforward with him, kind of like he's dropping a ruse. It's not that Sisko doesn't enjoy those mannerisms of Garak's- as I think @wanderingwriter87 pointed out, Sisko appreciates Garak's bits- or that that's false behavior from Garak, but it's a kind of unmasking Garak is not prone to allow. 2. There's a very different power dynamic between them- perhaps controversial but during the run of the show I think Garak is put in a weak position, powerwise, compared to the vast majority of other characters as an exile who does not seem to have his citizenship sorted out. Socially, however, there are ways he wields power with Julian or even like, Quark where he's clearly got an upper hand that he doesn't with Sisko, who is of the same generation as Garak. Like, Garak does very notably manipulate him, but not the way he does with other people. And 3. Comparing and contrasting the social contexts they come from. Obviously Hebitians are like, my blorbo culture, but they're both middle aged men who adore children, and are pretty family oriented! However Sisko has a pretty healthy relationship to his family and Garak's family is an... on fire dumpster. Garak is very loyal to his father and craves his love and needs his approval for survival, while also calling him a monster and wishing him dead. Sisko seems to have trouble understanding that other people have severely negative relationships to their parents that may not be able to get resolved (it happens at least twice) because his father has been a good man to him. And to top all that off, Sisko has a son who's coming into adulthood! Children are their own whole people! Family is not a physically distant concept for him!

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship? I don't think there are popular opinions... maybe that I don't think Garak actually caught Sisko as off guard as people act like he did during IPTM. Like, Sisko’s anger is less about what Garak did and more about the fact that he knows what he did. Sisko knows who garak is, what he's capable of, and if not specifics of what he used to do, the kind of things he used to do. Hell, this is after Garak went to jail for trying to do mass murder. Sisko was planet side during that!

Kira/Dax: I have no hard feelings on it, but I think saying I ship it is lesbian-pair the spares type cheating. I find Kira interesting and have been trying to read more stuff about Jadzia to understand more about her, but I don't rotate them in my head as much separately or together to feel like it counts. I think I've written more like- character analysis? On Kai Winn than on Kira through my perspective of her as a martyr-that-wasn't and how I think DS9 fails to accurately understand and critique the religious context Bajor exists within. Which is funny, because I like Kira and think Winn is a super shitty person- I've mostly ended up thinking about her more because people have such bad takes about her.

O'Brien/Bashir- I don't ship it

Why don't you ship it? Honestly I genuinely think Miles is straight, I don't think his and Julian's relationship has that kind of intimacy and I struggle to understand the intimacy they do have as friends (Miles being an "everyman" means he's a bit of a "shittyman" and we'd be fine co-workers- he's a lot better than some of the people I worked with in welding, which is like winning and award for tallest dwarf- but I would not voluntarily talk to him on off hours). And frankly any openness I've had to it has been killed by the shitty and annoying behavior I've seen from Jiles fans towards their "competition". I'm sure some of it isn't like- sincere? But it's a style of humor and behavior I find rude and off-putting. Also like- I don't like how most people talking about it regard Keiko.

What would have made you like it? You could maybe analyze how Julian thinks he knows what's best for people and that makes him more inclined towards decisions in intrapersonal relationships that really are bad for everyone, I did read a ficlet like that once with it that I found compelling

Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it? I do think it can be an interesting analysis of repression on Miles's part and I hope people have fun with it

#cipher talk #ds9 #Plus the ringleader of the bad behavior for Jiles stuff made fun of the scene where Julian gets SAed by fake Jadzia in IWWH that I find #Really fucking disgusting as a 'male' SA survivor who is aware of the ways in which its socially acceptable to mock us and play off #Our suffering like it's nothing #Sure it's a joke but do you have any idea how many fucking jokes I hear??? Most of you people aren't funny #Plus there's a type of 'jokes' around how miles interacts with Julian founded on making fun of Julian for being British I find a little uh #Fucked up? I don't think joking about a white person calling a non white person slurs funny and I find a lack of understanding of race in #Their relationship very offputting #Like it's straight up canon that Miles is racist and his wife calls him out on it #And I don't buy that racism doesn't exist in human culture towards other humans. That's what happens when white people try to write that #For me I can't separate 'miles is racist' from him getting fixated on beating Julian at racquet ball and projecting that Julian must be #Being smug towards him about it onto him when he infodumps. Like thats a thing white men constantly do towards men of color #re: athletic ability. It comes off kind of subtly disturbing for me #Plus the Jem'hadar oh my fucking g-d there's such a blatant racial subtext to Miles thinking they need to be kept enslaved for the safety o #The quadrant and Julian thinking that's bad actually

[silverislander]

prof said congrats for writing up a proposal so early i am going to get a good grade in. well this is literally going to be graded. but yk the meme

#i really hope its decent proposals are really hard for me to write. i never really understand how much im supposed to say #also i dont plan stuff in advance! i hate drafts and proposals why cant i just jump in and run w my topic #i dont Know exactly what im going to cover just yet can i get back to you once ive covered it #levi.txt #i spent One page just opening the two page proposal so. i know it needs some cleaning up #but the last time i wrote one of these i only got a 75 (not a bad grade but i could do significantly better) bc. and i am not kidding. #i wrote a several page intro abt the themes of a story i was super pumped to write. and forgot the /plot characters and title/ #a 75 was honestly generous. that prof already liked me and knew my work so i got very lucky #also i just think the guy im working with for my essay is so cool and i want to impress him bfhshsk #ive taken 2 classes with him before he is so smart and so enthusiastic. i was 1 of only 3 who was there for every class both times #everyone whos helped me has been so cool and very nice to me i want to do a good job and prove that im as capable as they think #and also jesus fucking christ ive worked so hard for this degree PLEASE #if i dont get honours im walking into the forest laying down and letting the fae take me as they will #side note: i have 1.5 movies left (its late and im finishing army of the dead tomorrow + watching evil dead rise)!! thats so exciting #theyve (mostly) been really fun and i feel like i have a really good general idea of where im going w my essay now #the movie eras are starting to kind of organize themselves into coherent themes in my mind #i think its smth along the lines of racism/xenophobia -> social change -> satanic panic -> action and militarism -> prejudice/bias #and i actually think were in smth of a thematic reckoning w zombies rn as a culture that im excited to discuss!! #for so long weve accepted that zombies arent people but weve really been starting to interrogate that since abt the mid 2010s #w tropes like searching for a cure (not just a vaccine) or movies like warm bodies or evil dead where you can truly turn back #and im really excited to see where the future takes the zombie genre!!

[qqueenofhades]

what's been particularly vile to me is this group of white online leftists who insist that anyone who cares about more than this one issue for the election is a bad person, like, as if us black and brown people are making up reasons to be afraid and not.....believing the gop when they say they are coming for us. believing trump who has said previously that he does not bluff, that he will do the things he's said he will do (i hate what social media has gone to the word gaslighting but it feels like gaslighting. we lived through four years of trump. we saw the damage. stop treating us like we're being dramatic). it must be great to not have to worry about that i guess? "life won't change under trump" is such a telling admission because maybe theirs won't but mine will. and so many others' will.

and it is often again these (white) online leftists that love to call anyone who disagrees with them a white liberal (derogatory) because they know it would be racist (bad) to be this shitty and condescending to poc but they don't want to actually listen to anything black and brown voters are saying. it's easier to just call us white liberals and throw our opinions out, to ignore the work of black people for decades to gain the right to vote, to disregard the weight of telling them to not do that. it's genuinely appalling. they care so much about racism until it's time to engage with poc who have different opinions than their online echo chambers, then we're just stupid liberals with terrible opinions like..... wanting to live. not wanting four more years of trump. so sorry for that.

sorry for this vent in your inbox, i'm just so fucking tired of white people trying to rewrite history as if trump wasn't that bad. he was for my family and countless others and i am terrified for what's to come if he wins.

The thing about (the often-white) Online Leftists is that they have become just as much as a radicalized death cult as the diehard Trumpists. If you don't want to die for The Revolution and/or sacrifice your life, friends, family, the rest of the country, etc., then you're Insufficiently Pure and must be Purged. (Which I think is just complete BS, as none of them could actually handle sacrificing anything, but it's increasingly the only kind of performative rhetoric that is acceptable in leftist-identified discourse spaces.) This is functionally identical to "if you aren't willing to lay down your life for our Lord and Savior Donald Trump and the Great White Christian Nationalist Dictatorship, you're a liberal cuck," but with the names and justification changed. It doesn't change the underlying radicalization, nihilism, and insanity of the premise.

Another thing the Trumpists and the Online Leftists have in common is that they are busily rewriting just how bad Trump was in order to serve their Ideology. Ever since January 6, 2021, the Republicans have thrown everything they have at revising and whitewashing any suggestion that it was an "insurrection," and the Online Leftists have done the same, in an attempt to "prove" their insane point that Trump "would be better" than Biden. This is embodied in the recent ultimate-brainworm-nonsense maximalist-online take that "Biden has to lose so the rest of the world will see that the US rejects genocide!!!" That's right, the message that the rest of the world would take from Biden losing to Trump is that the US rejects genocide. Never mind if Trump literally wants to commit all the genocide possible and to install himself as a fascist theocratic dictator. In the deeply twisted minds of the Online Leftists, this is the only possible interpretation of Biden's loss, so they'll push for it as hard as they can! The Trumpists and the Online Leftists, at this point, are working pretty much in concert to damage Biden for similar insane reasons and get Trump elected. Etc etc., one Nazi and ten people at the same table is eleven Nazis.

Like. Sure. Four years ago, when Trump was president and people were dying by the thousands because he didn't want to wear a mask because it smeared his bronzer, just to name literally one of the terrible things he did every single day (and not even mentioning how much worse a second term would be) we were absolutely better off. Super-duper great. (Sarcasm.) Either that or "there is suffering and evil in the world and the only solution is to drastically increase the suffering and evil for everyone and to destroy what progress we have managed to make because It Does Not Fix Everything Now" is an absolute moral imperative, and either way, yeah. I'm calling bullshit.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts

[pastadoughie]

i am literally begging people to stop putting sexism and transphobia on my dashboard please fucking think critically abt ur internal biases for 5 secconds and please accept even an ounce of critisism without assuming that someone is attacking you unfairly

alot of you have extremely sexist beliefs that you dont recognize because within social media as a whole these are incredibly normalized, covering blatent homophobia and misandry in tumblr buzzwords doesnt make you not sexist it just lets you be sexist and homophobic and transphobic in a way that is socially acceptable and incouraged within a queer centric space

i keep seeing posts talking abt how people actively like artwork (writing, photography, drawings) more when they find out its of a butch lesbian and not just a dude, and like, if your opinion on a peice of media can change solely based on the gender of the person being depicted by it, with zero change to the character, then that implies an inharent bias against men like, just because its men doesnt mean it isnt sexism

same thing where people think that media depicting gay men is better when it explicitly isnt written by a gay man, like that implies a fundimental disrespect of the work based on the sexuality and gender of the author. if you like an artwork but then you find out its written by a trans women, and all of a sudden you think its garbage, you are transphobic, but when people try to point this same bias out for the works of queer men this is largely written off.

i know ppl will argue abt punching up and whatnot, and while i do in some ways agree with that overall sentiment, i think that we should be striving to uh, not be sexist at all, rather then just being misandrists instead of mysogenists, like, if you only care about sexism when it hurts women/women ajacent people then you dont actually hate sexism you just want it to harm a different group of people, you dont hate the system you just want to be ontop of it and benifit from it

misandry and mysogeny present in different ways, they arent a directly comparable thing, different people have things worse in different ways so its rlly hard to take a group and say "this group has it worse", like yes generalizations like that can help in an extremely broad sense, but the world is not black and white and this kind of shit is mindnumbingly complex, trying to act like there is some kind of objective scoreing system for who is more oppressed then who is just unproductive and harmful

and moreover, someone having it worse then you doesnt make you less deserving of trying to make your situation better, i dont experience racism and in many many many ways i have it easier then poc people, that does not make me undeserving of support and that doesnt make me complaining or trying to better my situation unreasonable

we can care abt the lives and want to better the situation of different groups simoltaniously, we dont have to stop caring about racism because we want to better transphobia

i get that transwomen have it rlly bad and i do not experience the exact same struggles as them, and therefore cant comment on alot of them, but so often i see erasure of queer men in order to give more focus to transwomen, and just because trans girls go through alot of shit doesnt make that ok

one thing that people have to recognize about misandry and specifically transmisandry that you dont really have to see as much with its mysogeny counterparts is that they have far more attention and people care far more about activism for queer women/women in general, queer mens experience and specifically the transmasc experience is very very very often erased and written off even by supposedly trans friendly and queer sorces, people care more about butch lesbians then they do trans men dispite the insane ammount of overlap between the two groups, when researching about historical butch lesbians alot of them are just, trans guys that people are misgendering and mislabeling as butch lesbians because ooooo woemennnnn

being transmasc myself i can say that like, the erasure of trans men is an extremely large issue, for large swaths of history the experiences of trans people arent paid attention to at all, and even looking at media coverage today, if people are going to talk abt transgenderism they are talking about it specifically under the lens of trans women

this is largely because misandry (specifically, people thinking that having cock and ball makese u somehow predatory) makes trans women an easier punching bag, trans women get more attention because they are easier for radfems (misandrists) to be bigoted against in a more violent way, if you assume all men and amab people are violent and predatory by nature then this makes justifying violence against trans women easier

and yea being a punching bag for the media is fucking hard but it does mean that activism for that group is much much much louder, more people are complaining about trans women so more people know abt the specific issues they face

but dispite trans men yaknow, also existing and recieving a shit ton of transphobia and erasure over history they dont get talked about as much, people hate us and are violent twards us but we dont nessasarily get the same outrage for our treatment

trans men are just as often get the dismissal for being women, and the outrage for being men as trans women do we just dont get as much support and thats really difficult! often people seek to treat transmasculinism as some kind of new thing like, i get the comment often that "usually its boys that wanna be girls" and its like, no. its not. its simply that people care less about us

i think that its really easy to misenterpret me here so im gonna just get this out of the way, i dont think that women have it easier then men in a broad socital sense, but also, i dont nessasarily believe that means that my complaints are invalid, being a queer woman is not a walk in the park, and neither is being a queer man, and both groups experience homophobia transphobia and sexism in different ways, so acting as if saying one is objectively worse then the other is unfair and reductive

i think that if we want to get anywhere in regards to making it easier to be trans then we need to talk about all queer experiences, you cant just, only care about trans women you have to care about all trans people, and moreover queer people in general, this means you HAVE to be vigilant about people wrapping up sexism in a tumblr buzzword packadge, you need to consume things critically and you are not immune to pipelines, people dont just wake up and become radfems you get continually fed more and more extreme idologies, being fed things that you 90% agree with untill you eventually become completely removed from the groups you were supposed to stand with

you can care about the oppression of multiple groups at once, and if you think activism in any way involves the erasure of a certain group then you have fundimentally misunderstood what youre supposed to be doing, queer men exist and they deserve support and respect and you need to be able to support and respect them without being like "ohh she is soooooo trransfemme coded" like. men can be queer and still be men, they can be queer and still deserve your love and support, i am begging.

also yes i am aware that outside of my specific experience of tumblr people fuckin hate trans girls and women in general and they dont feel the need to do this shit. but that doesnt mean what im talking about is not an issue and is not something that people need to change and address. if you find urself doing this shit you have got to reflect on yourself, you arent immune to transphobia or homophobia or sexism ESPECIALLY if you think that you somehow are magically immune. nobody is. no identity is. everybody is suseptible to this shit and it takes active critical thinking in order to combat it

#the beast speaks #i keep seeing this shit on my dash crying screaming throwing up i am begging people to get even a single ounce of reading comprehension #i get this is the piss on the poor webbed site but i try to have hope in humanity and every day i am disapointed further #retchid opinions

[scrupulosity-comics]

your comics are lovely because so much of the discussion around certain ocd obsessions (on the internet and elsewhere) seem so fucking unnuanced, lol

Idk. Sorry if this is intrusive. But yeah I also struggle with scrupulosity+ harm ocd and I sometimes get really fed up with people insisting on simple answers (if you’re doubting it you’re probably a good person/ just live with the uncertainty) without recognizing that sometimes you *have* to have a method of at least estimating your impact on other people and if your brain is hell bent on confusing your capacity to notice actual impact with its bizarre overestimations it can make living on the world really hard, lol

I guess with time I’ve managed to find ways that make sense to me to simultaneously keep myself with some kind of moral framework while also not being too rigid and accepting partial uncertainty, but I feel like philosophy and talking with friends who *don’t* know the Correct Advice For People With OCD helped me a lot more than standard psychiatric advice, lol

Anyway. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Extremely relatable and funny

Also, imho, adding complexity to perspectives tends to be better to the world than subtracting it, lol

God yeah I do Not find most OCD support or advice helpful or relatable. I know several people who’ve had really good experiences with ERP therapy but my therapist and I found it nearly impossible to come up with socially and psychologically safe ways to start exposure response prevention. She had me write “I am committing micro-aggressions” on a card—I still joke about it.

Obviously I’m glad that some people are helped by the simplistic stuff. I just find it frustrating when people expect them to also help me reason with obsessions and compulsions that are inherently politicized or interpersonal. A lot of people are upset by racism but still do or believe or say racist things! People apply compassion and empathy towards societal evils all the time! I have acted on impulses I regret before!

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Genuine question. In an anarchistic society what do we do about folks who want to hurt and kill people like it's the fucking Purge? Do we let them, because having rules is the opposite of anarchy, or do we stop them because even anarchists can have morals?

I honestly don't think there are many people who live in our current society who want to hurt and kill others but don't "because there are rules".

In the UK, 2 women a week are killed by their partners. Part of this is about it being difficult (economically, practically, emotionally) to leave an abusive relationship. Some women stay because their partners convince them they will then use the court system to continue their abuse, or they will get access to the children and hurt them (in England, domestic abuse against a parent doesn't stop the other parent getting unsupervised access).

I genuinely believe, in an anarchist system with solid communities where we all look out for and support each other, this sort of scenario would be less likely, because it would be easier for people to leave abusive partners. I also think a true dismantling of patriarchy would make this less likely, and I'd expect relationships to more closely resemble "relationship anarchy" and be less closed, which I truly believe could be a protective factor against domestic abuse (I'm not saying it would never happen in this scenario, just it would be less likely).

To steal part of a slogan from antifascists "we protect us". Certainly ask people who've experienced domestic violence if the police "make things better"- for many, the answer is no.

Much of the other interpersonal violence in our societies is driven by crime. I think most people accept that decriminalising drugs and moving to a harm reduction model reduces crime. In a society where everyone has what they need, and feels they have a "future" available to them, there's no, or far less, incentive to turn towards violence. Most people involved with violent crime don't want to be- they've ended up there due to lack of other options, or lack of a way out, or a lack of basic resources. These scenarios simply wouldn't exist within an anarchist community.

We can also talk about the violence done in the name of racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia and so on between individuals. All of these prejudices arise out of, and are fuelled by, the state creating the idea of in groups and out groups. The state, particularly in times of financial or social turmoil, feeds fascism, and fascism feeds this kind of violence.

And these groups are not protected by the police. If they are protected, they are protected by the wider community- I've seen this recently in Newquay, in South Wales, in London, and it happens all over the UK. A group is targeted, people turn up to protect them, often the police turn their violence on the protectors, or at a bare minimum protect the fascists.

Do you think <30 fascists would stick around for hours in the face of over 200 counter protestors if they didn't have a long line of police protecting them?

Indeed, you need to consider the violence of the state. On a worldwide level, surely a large proportion of killing and violence is carried out by armies and the police. In an anarchist system, these forces would of course cease to exist, and this would cause a massive net reduction in violence. This is a basic principle of anarchism, I would suggest.

Ultimately, to be an anarchist, you need to believe in the inherent goodness of people. You need to understand what causes violence, how the state creates a system where violence is inherent, how power leads to violence and licences certain types of violence. I think without exploring this, you can only ever have a surface level grasp of anarchism.

Some people will read this, and point towards the fact that serial killers and so on exist. And I would like to point out that we know they exist, because they exist now, under capitalism. Nothing within the capitalist system truly prevents a serial killer from hurting others- yes, in some cases, they may be "caught" or "stopped" by the police- equally in some cases, the police imprison and sometimes the state even kills the wrong person.

Firstly, I do think it's possible that some of the situations that may "create" serial killers may be different in an anarchist society. But even if that's not the case, these individuals represent a vanishingly small proportion of the wider population, and there's no reason to believe they are constrained by laws or social rules.

As I say, my vision of anarchism is one where communities protect themselves. I would hope that we'd be able to help even the most damaged individuals in some way, whilst keeping the wider community safe. And yes, this is a suggestion of a utopia, you can say it's unrealistic, but the system we have now isn't working for a huge range of reasons.

In many ways, although this is a pretty shallow ask, there's so much I could write about this. I have things to say about the inherent violence in capitalism, which causes so much injury and starvation worldwide, but I think I'll leave it here for now, and if people are interested in hearing about why capitalism kills far more people than individuals ever could, perhaps someone could prompt me to write this in the future.

#anarchism #capitalism #violence

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITH for cutting off my friendship of 15 years with my best friend?

I(33nb) and A(33F) were friends since elementary school, she just kidnapped me away from my friends one day at school and because we liked the same stuff i never tried to get back to my friends, so we were very tight for a while. Quite literally, she felt i was very warm and pulled me away from my friends, they kind of fought for me for days until she won, it was weird in retrospect.

When middle school came we got into different schools but kept in touch, whenever a friend of mine met her always wondered why i stood her, in their words "she is a very rude person" but i never got why they said that.

She's had many troubling boyfriends i never liked how they treated her but still, when asked for advice she always ignored me and i was always there for her to vent, cry and comfort her.

Whenever we went out and someone tried to hit on her she would pull my hand and say she was already taken, referring to me which was actually very bad for my heart but whatever so she could keep them at bay.

I cannot say it was always bad, we did have fun, shared good moments and still have many fond memories. I also was very much in love with her for a good 10 years lol, but kept it quite to just enjoy the friendship.

As years passed i started picking up on how she talked and depreciated the things i liked, be it music, comics, movies, artists. She even said how embarrassing it was to be with me in public sometimes, because 'i dont have a filter' and if i tried to tell her to not be mean she would just wave me off n say "you know me, im like this and you have to accept me" kinda talk.

Anyways the reason i finally broke was after many times she made me cry for the tiniest thing, i was trying to make her notice how her boyfriend was being a total asshole to both of us, he always changed my name to get on my nerves, and we could never hang the same day he was going to be over because he said so.

I was so tired that he controlled her so much, he broke with her multiple times and made her cry at least once a week, but they somehow always came back and i just couldn't stand this anymore so she had this big talk with him and turned out i was the problem???

He said he was super jealous of our relationship, but she promised there was nothing between us and even got us in agreement that i was going to try to be his friend too... So yeah i did try, by starting to listen to his music and watch the shows he liked.

I budged, watched 2 seasons of a popular show i never really liked, and got back to them to talk about it, share theories and such.

I was having a conversation with her over our DMs and with him through FB about the same show and somehow both insulted the same actors almost at the same time, very racist and abled stuff, about teen actors, one of them is actually disabled and she called him a cr*ppled fr*ak.

Idk why she felt i was a person she could speak about this, through years she knew i was and am against ableism, racism and just bigotry and im very vocal about it.

I stopped her and she got all offended that it was her right to talk about him like that, and i was her best friend so i should know her already, also if he was a public figure that's what he got exposed to.

Just at the same time her bf was explaining how it was his right to call any dark skinned person whoever he liked.

We're not even white?? Idk where they got all this. I stopped both conversations by telling them to apologize or just go eat shit, but they doubled down so i just told them they're made for each other and fuck off, blocked them from everything and because she tried to contact me through my siblings and partner, had to politely ask them to block them to which they agreed when they saw the conversations.

Even deleted all social media accounts i had her in to avoid any contact with her and that asshole.

Why i deleted? Because it was not the first time i tried to cut her off and she still looked for me until i budged, so i had to erase any tracks and even moved away from where i lived.

Anyways, it's been 5 years from this shit, her bday is approaching and i have never been able to stop thinking about her.

Idk why i worry so much about her, people have repeatedly told me i was right but we both grew in very unstable and abusive homes, so i kind of related to her.

I have never tried to reach back to her, i dont intend to.

So, AITA for cutting off a long friendship over chat for what she said was me being stupid?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[thricedead]

Its kind of insane that people are calling Toshiro Dunmeshi ableist towards a character who is not even canonically autistic more readily than calling Laios racist towards a character who is canonically Japanese. If your projection takes precedence over a Japanese author's intentional depiction of racism to the point where you argue that the conflict of the story is ableism you are just deeply racist, seeing this at the same time as that "autistic people unlearn racism less easily than NT people so be understanding" comment is so deeply embarrassing and revolting. Many white autistic people are heavily reliant on their whiteness for safety and social acceptance and this should be criticized not used as an excuse like how can you say "autistic people unlearn racism less easily" and not realize that you are implying that autism is a white only thing.

Somehow Laios not even being called autistic in canon is so ironic and perfectly showcases how people will defend a white man's imagined oppression before the explicit thematized oppression of a man of color... yeah Laios has traits that easily read as autistic but so do a million other characters you are way too defensive of this guy because you want to fuck him

[incarnateirony]

I wonder when it's going to occur to Jared fans that he abandoned them.

If you are an SPN fan. If you are liberal/progressive. Stop projecting at him.

He's vanishing by choice from more and more conventions. He COULD have made it to last Jib, he had the weekend off, Jensen worked Friday too. There's a lot of Could Haves Jared could choose for SPN. He could have dreamed up more than Random Case Idea if he cared. He literally does not care beyond his publicity and paycheck.

He's chosen to signal Good Christian Southern Living. He's chosen Gun and other distinctly right wing and southern articles. His show is literally based on moderacy and riding the edge of the coin. He literally got a tattoo that is so offensive the archaic symbol has been removed from recent issue IDs in the state it was used as a nationalist symbol in--before he chose to get it. Something conscious enough his own wife hides behind stickers on IG posts. He's chosen Tulsi, and Rogan, and all other kinds of blatantly right wing outlets. He's caught covid three times. He's selling random health supplements.

Fam, I don't know how to break this to you, but Jared's become a Republican. Possibly a NeverTrumper, but a Republican none the less.

Stop arguing with me. Go argue with him. It's his fucking marketing, not mine. It's his covid, not mine.

But they wanna argue it away because their playdoll isn't behaving properly and they're just, idk, gonna be insufferable to everybody else that has eyeballs while they argue against not just plain reality, but the marketed one Jared is hanging up with star spangled banners.

But that's not real good if you wanna pretend to care about progressive things (often while butchering important topics to mask severe homophobia or racism), because how will they stay Socially Just Middle Class White Woman then??? So no duh reality isn't real reality can't hurt them.

Guys. What the fuck. You do realize Jared Padalecki is like, an actual person, who is doing and saying and making choices in an actual real world outside of the internet, and not like a doll or some figment of your imagination you can roleplay with, right?

Accept it. He turned on you. Now either shit and get off the pot and admit you turned with him, or make a moral decision on your own time, but leave us out of your psychic bubble burst.

#jared padalecki

[crippled-peeper]

jesus i swear these people would just walk up to a POC and ask them "why is your skin like that" and blame it on "innocent" ignorance

they seriously act like they’ve never been in public before or have never seen another marginalized person before

this is why public schooling is important… if you don’t learn to accept and tolerate the existence of people who are different and unfamiliar and “strange” to you, you’ll become an intolerant little monster who thinks their own feelings > other peoples safety and right to exist in peace

public schools have huge issues but I’ve never met people who went to public school and came out having absolutely no clue what the fuck a wheelchair is or what the fuck racism or xenophobia is

it’s an inoculation for adult social life . that’s why white straight Christians love homeschooling or taking over school boards and banning book. they fucking hate it when functioning, moral, kind kids who ask questions and treat their peers equally are raised into functioning members of society

[maybege]

may's candid and personal take on fandom

On a more candid note, I’d like to talk more about my experience as a writer in fandom. I spent a long time thinking about this (a better part of the last six months, on and off) as I am usually trying to keep my opinions to myself due to events that are long ago now.

I really need you all to be kinder to writers.

I have been here since sometime around May 2020 and I think it is telling that the fandom circles around the same problems again and again and nothing ever changes.

Interaction is really low and I am not the first writer to lament this, nor will I be the last one but maybe I have this naïve hope that if enough people read the same thing again and again, it will finally stick. I know I haven’t put out content on a regular basis for a long time now but while it is not directly related to the level of interactions these works get, that rhythm will for sure not improve if interaction stays as low as it is. It can be really disheartening to know you have over a thousand followers and the reblogs/comments on your works do not even exceed 50.

Obviously, the way tiktok and fast paced social media work have influenced how we interact with things on all kinds of platforms. But I really need you all to understand that a like on tumblr does not count the way it does on Instagram or maybe even tiktok. That is a bookmark at best. Do I mind if you serial like an entire series of mine? Of course not, I am happy to see that someone is actively reading something of mind and enjoying it. But please have the courtesy to maybe comment on the masterlist or the most recent part.

Fandom is taking and giving and I think it is unfair that it is somehow is expected of writers to pump out story after story without having to give them something (comments, asks, reblogs) for it. And when someone complains about it, suddenly we are deemed as ungrateful to the few that actually read our stuff.  

Back in lockdown, there was more of a balance for obvious reasons. But now that I see that writers cannot post as much due to real life or maybe other reasons, it is like the number of notes has diminished across the board. Writers in fandom are people who are not (and cannot be) paid for their works. (Side note: If you accept fanfiction commissions or money for fanfiction, I will find you quicker than the mouse mafia because you will not ruin this for us.) On one hand, the expectation seems to be that writers should update ever single week without fail. On the other hand, it seems too big an ask of readers to actually comment/reblog the things that they read.

(Waiting for a new chapter for weeks, months, hell, even years, was never unusual in fandom spaces and I need this to be more common knowledge.)

Then again, the negativity in fandom has really fucking increased. It comes and goes in wavesand I will not pretend to be affected because I was so inactive this last year. (This is simply a side note but it is something that I think needs more attention: The way I see poc creators treated is despicable and while I do not write for PP characters anymore because of all the drama, people really need to reflect how they see Pedro Pascal as a human being instead of a sex object.)

For me, personally, I have noticed that if I get genuinely angry at something happening on tumblr, it is time for me to log off and really focus on real life and I think it is something that we all should take to heart. Sadly, the more time passes, the more I am convinced that this fandom might not even be worth it anymore and I genuinely understand many creators who decide to leave permanently. It often feels like people are just there to create drama or to vague or that important and serious posts about how we should treat each other and the actors we admire are simply ignored in favour of the “I don’t like drama.” line. Which, like, one is drama and one is not. (Spoiler alert: Discussions on fandom inclusion and racism within fandom are not drama.)

Anyway, Readers need to be more mindful of the power they have over writers and if you want to complain that so many creators have deactivated or become inactive, I would like to ask that you reflect on when was the last time that you commented on someone’s fic.

#fandom #idek if this makes sense #but i really need to vent this out #also yes you can send me your personal opinions but i ask that you be respectful because we are all adults here

[jerzwriter]

5 For Tobías and 4 for Eli! (I love seeing others takes on canon characters 👀)

Hey Thia! Thanks so much for the asks - and OMG, I SO AGREE! Dangerous as that can be around here, I love to see different takes, too, and I think it can really deepen the understanding of characters when we see them through different eyes. OK - let's do this!

(Note after answering: I'm so sorry - this is long - I got two questions that were just too fucking good for these two. lol I'm sorry... really.)

#5 Tobias:

OK. I'll attempt to keep this short and prob fail! lol It was complicated. I have a detailed backstory for Tobias, and his life straddled two extremely different worlds. His white father was from an extremely wealthy, powerful, and influential family. Old money through and through. He was practically disowned for eloping with Tobias's mother, his true love who was a brilliant and beautiful woman from a kind, loving, and moral lower-middle-income family. Classism was part of it, but it was the racism y'all. The couple met in college and was forced apart by both families (his because they felt she was beneath them, hers because they feared the damage his family could do), but their love was true and they eventually eloped. Afterward, her family welcomed Charles (his dad) to the family, but the Carricks were not about to do the same for Vivian (his mom).

When Tobias was born, everyone made a concerted effort to mend fences, but with the exception of a few relatives (notably, his Uncle William), most continued to look down on both Vivian and Tobias. Tobias never felt welcomed amongst the Carricks, where he was subjected to microaggressions, even from well-meaning relatives who truly loved him. (This led to major issues with his father that began during his senior year in high school, leading to their eventual estrangement. Then his dad died before they had a chance to reconcile, but that's for another time! lol) His mother's family was where Tobias felt most loved, wanted, and accepted. It was a warm, safe place that came crashing down in his pre-teens, but we'll stick with early childhood for now. lol

Vivian and Charles were good but imperfect parents. They loved Tobias with all their hearts, but they were often absent during his early years. They were determined to prove themselves in their professions and in the Washington, DC, social scene that his father grew up in. Vivian was very astute and knew playing the game would behoove not only her but many others that she hoped to help. She was determined to effect positive change, and Charles was determined to show his family that he and his wife could thrive without their support. But that took a lot of time away from their son. Another issue was that Vivian and Charles loved each other so much that Tobias sometimes felt like he was an outsider. He was an only child until he was seven years old, so childhood was lonely and filled with contradictions. This set the stage for some major drama later on, and impacted much of his future life.

That wasn't short, was it? lol Sorry! It could have been much longer! lol This is my passion project! lol

#4 Eli:

So, Eli and his family are my other passion project - so once again - I'm going to do my best to keep this short! lol

It was extremely difficult. Eli and his brother David came of age in a post-apocalyptic world. Prior to the outbreak, they lived a fairly normal life filled with school, friends, and little league. Their family and home were filled with love and warmth, providing a safe space for the boys. Eli was old enough to recall the racism the family endured (per canon). That took a toll on him, but his family's strength and devotion to each other saw him through.

He was forced to grow up quickly when the outbreak occurred. I wrote of that extensively in A Mother's Journal shameless plug. lol Life became about survival, but his parents, particularly his mother, did all they could to give their boys some semblance of normalcy among the unimaginable. They moved to their summer cabin in the woods, finding it to be safer than their hometown, and it would be easier to live off the land. His father refused to live in a colony (for good reasons) and was determined to remain independent, but this led to an isolated existence, with only a few other families to socialize with... and one by one, they disappeared.

Adolescence, in particular, was hard. It's a time to find and discover yourself, and how can you do that in a vacuum? How can you do that when tomorrow is never guaranteed? I wrote about this in Coming Up Blank again, a shameless plug. lol Eli and his brother struggled with their sexual identities - how do you really know who you are when you have practically no peer group? Adolescence is always filled with confusion and complexities, and Eli's experience was heightened... and filled with a type of heartbreak none of us could ever know. His solace was his family - a place of unconditional love and devotion. He steeled himself to the rest of the world, believing he had all he needed within the walls of his cabin, and in many ways, he did... until that all came crumbling down.

God, I'm not going back to work after lunch so I can write now! (I mean, I wish! lol)

Thanks so much for the asks! :)

#ask generator #tobias carrick #eli sipes #open heart #wake the dead #asks answered #god i loved these questions!

[daggersandarrows]

i’m having a lot of feelings about seeing more people of color on critical role. i have spent so long both consciously and subconsciously working to appear white. i was raised “white”, i was taught to conform in the exact same breath that i was taught to speak. (quite literally--spanish was not spoken around the house except as a secret; trini slang only comes out when my mother gets very emotionally heightened. i speak like a white person, because for me to learn spanish was for me to “reject the gifts of america”, and people can’t understand my mom unless she adopts her deliberate american accent).

i’ve spent so long learning that this was the only way to acceptance; you pretend to be the same, you take every single microagrression, every single “of course it was two black girls ‘working’ when i got there, standing around and talking no doubt”, every stranger putting a hand in your hair, every “jesus, speak english”, and you pretend you don’t see it, you don’t hear it, you don’t feel it.

you pretend you approve. and that’s the only way to stay safe. that’s the only way to move up in the world. “sticks and stones” was repeated so often in my household that we only needed to hear the first three words to know what mom meant. “sticks and stones”. you’re getting too worked up about racism again, remember, just pretend you’re fine and you will be.

you are invisible, you are fine.

i consume content made only by white people because why would i consume anything else? if my goal is to blend in perfectly why would i look for stories that speak to me about the part of me that i’m doing my damndest to hide?

i made the mistake of stumbling into creators who love themselves enough not to hide. i felt almost betrayed, watching aabria dm for exu. no one ever told me it was possible to sink your teeth into that kind of gentrification-critical worldbuilding, to say it with your whole chest, and not...immediately get ostracized by all your white friends?

(to be clear: i know matt’s doing something very similar in c3, and that’s great. but it is inherently different to say that kind of thing without fear when you’re a poc.)

it’s nothing huge or obvious, but the unapologetic claim that the cast holds on their identity is simply indescribably touching to me. when i was a kid i badly wanted to be “a punk”, and in my mind this was obviously just a white person thing--how could it have been anything else? it was all i saw. super pale skin and stick straight hair was a requirement. so i tried to make myself whiter. staying inside in the summer and spending hours straightening and damaging my hair. i squashed myself into this ill fitting box because it never occurred to me that i could be both black and punk.

and that sort of continued as i got older. cosplays were all model-esque white people. how could i be both hispanic and a cosplayer? how could i be (someone who rode horses, liked video games, was a nerd, a theater kid, hell, someone who fucking enjoyed themself in any way outside of the very specific stereotypes i was given to act out)?

to see aabria dming, playing a high powered and highly emotional woman, mica’s cosplays and her riding adventures--mica playing a literal angel (black angels, guys! how many black angels have you seen outside of the past five years?), aimee playing a character with questionable morals and cool hair, khary playing a disabled character who also somehow just gives off raw sex appeal?, robbie playing a socially awkward, soft, affectionate guy with an appreciation for fancier stuff, erika’s gender fluidity and sheer enthusiasm for everything (getting too excited wasn’t cool, it was too “white”, an actual thing my mother said to me--i know, double standard), anjali’s mixed affection and exasperation as a sibling figure, and more recently lou and luis...i didn’t have this stuff as a kid. i wasn’t allowed to see myself as anything but one dimensional, so i had to alter myself to either fit that one dimension, or pretend to be who i wasn’t so people would accept that i had more than 2-3 emotions and character traits.

i wasn’t aware that it was possible, to be any of this without flattening myself. i wasn’t aware that there were white people out there who wouldn’t immediately hate you for unapologetically existing in their space without squashing yourself into their box.

#this is long and rambly and probably incomprehensible #and maybe i should delete it #i just had to say this somewhere #critical role #thane.txt

[bringmemyrocks]

To Zionists, Zionism comes before Solidarity

I've been remembering the time my "progressive" or at least liberal Jewish community had a rabbi come in to tell us that BLM was dangerous because it didn't support Israel, and on no condition should we support it. He said, (paraphrased) "It's important to oppose police brutality and racism in America, but as Jews, we have to stand by Israel, and we can't let any progressives challenge its legitimacy." And everyone just nodded along. I didn't know much about BLM and wasn't much of an activist then. And so I, like the others there, treated this rabbi like a fountain of knowledge and swallowed the propaganda I was fed. I didn't join any demonstration led by BLM, because BLM was against the Jews. I didn't go to pride because pride was also against the Jews (someone had made a social media post about no Israeli flags being allowed).

This rabbi could have told us to march in solidarity with Black Americans and still be quietly zionist, and people would have done it. They would have been shitty allies, but they would have shown up at a time when that particular city was really struggling to mobilize. Jews are taught to be skeptical of progressive causes, and thus, of the people that these causes are fighting for. Astroturfing orgs like Zioness convince members that pride orgs, BLM, etc. are all out to get the Jews. And they convince these ignorant Jews to stick with these pseudo-progressive Jewish orgs that are actually anything but.

This was in 2017. I've learned to use my brain since then. I've wanted to write about this particular incident for over a year, but I don't know if I have more to say other than "this was fucked up, huh" because it's not unusual for synagogues and community centers to host speakers like this, speakers who use the language of Jewish community and Jewish trauma to make sure Jews never listen to any voices that aren't Zionist. I remember exactly where I was sitting in that room, but I doubt anyone else there has any memory of it at all. The others who attended may have been disappointed that this great rabbi did nothing more than repeat (racist) talking points they had already heard and believed.

It's a hard story to expand on because stuff like this is so commonplace in the American Jewish world. I once studied with a different "social justice rabbi" who described illegal Zionist settlements in the West Bank as "peaceful villages where we coexisted with the Arab residents." He proudly names the settlement where he was ordained on his website, describing it as being "in Israel." This was another rabbi who taught me to keep progressive causes at arm's length--best to stick with the (right kind of) other Jews. Proudly talking about his time in a settlement, all while arguing for raising the minimum wage and stopping police brutality. And now he's partnering with progressives all over the state as an educator. These people clearly don't know the racism he pushes. Or they turn a blind eye because Zionism is the one racism that (some) progressives will accept.

Don't let that be the case in your communities. Don't let Zionism go unchecked and unchallenged, even if it's from a respected religious leader.

(The American "progressive orthodox" world has really been showing its ass of late. The progressive-ish group Torat Chayim Rabbis, known for its statement against conversion therapy, has been doing PR for the occupational forces on its Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ToratChayimRabbis)

#racism #zionism #i #antizionism #anti zionism #me and religion

[patriciavetinari]

Wait I think I figured out the subculture thing in the shower and I think the answer is capitalism as per usual.

So, teens are rarely the spark of the subculture. Not never, but rarely. If anything, it's the college students and some young adults who are very visible or aquired certain popularity to be accessible to the teens. But teens are certainly most important carriers of any subculture, teens are the ones bringing the loud statement of the subculture to their conformist homes and, well, distinguishing themselves from whatever is the 'norm', not even neccessarily the 'accepted' (hipsters rarely struggled with that other than at the hands of other subcultures) but the 'mainstream'. Hipsters were actually very particular about NOT being mainstream even if entirely inoffensive about their demeanor.

The problem I think now is that whoever might be the spark for any new hypothetical subculture, has to go viral or likely goes viral due to increasing prevalence of social media (which was NOT the case with hipsters who despised facebook - too mainstream - and maybe dabbled in twitter but likely just hung out on pinterest and select few on tumblr).

Subcultures I think are incompatible with going viral in approval. If everyone likes this and wants something similar or to emulate it – it's not 'sub', it's culture, it's mainstream. And the companies know that. Clothing and decor and 'lifestyle' companies have harnessed this and now that I think of it, it started precisely around the hipster era, heralding the end of it.

So if any personality teens like – musician, actor, artist, writer gets enough likes on twitter, thus securing the teenage working bees will start carrying their style in a little flock – companies also see that and start producing and advertising exactly that style of clothing, decor and lifestyle. Everything that is different get's glossed and castarted and thrown on shein, thus becoming mainstream immediately.

Especially if you pair that with the book bans, the 'unalived' and the 'seggs' and the sanitisation of internet and social media, rebranding tough questions as 'too difficult', when 'Huckleberry Finn' is seen as ~problematique~ for depicting racism, the whole deal of booktok, and this insufferable, gagged and castrated media as the main source of this kind of inspiration for kids – is it a wonder anything dostinguishable and even mildly offensive struggles to be born?

So if you can't discuss death - how can you be goth? If you can't discuss suicide - are you even emo? If you can't talk about vandalism or post even a measly 'ACAB' without getting banned - what hope is there for punk? If you can't access or discuss controversial ideas some would consider offensive – how can you build a loud identity around (the lack of) such ideas? Even the fucking hipsters had this controversial idea of 'I liked it before it was mainstream'- yeah, it wasn't a good idea, but I disagree with emos on several points as well, yet I will always applaud their commitment to the point of view. Giving your philosophy a dresscode is a ballsy move that requires questioning authority even if in the end that philosophy is reconsidered.

Subculture is a community, communities (based on common interests) are now formed online more than in person, under the watch of companies who do not want any controversy near their precious ads, teens have not known topic-centered forums, just the algorythm spoon-feeding them 'content' and shein advertising 'aesthetics' one can change daily with enough products, all while maintining the most generic preferences and opinions, not backing up those aesthetics with any controversial worldview or philosophy or idea, juat making playlist after playlist for every aesthetic out of the minstreamest spotify top 100 artists, claiming taylor swift has goth songs or something (she doesn't. ABBA is more goth than taylor swift).

So I think to form a proper, healthy subculture, teens need to leave social media, tiktok and instagram particularly and read a bunch of banned books about death and suicide and capitalism and worker's struggle and sex and gender and stuff. But they can't because those books are banned or overshadowed by booktok friends-to-lovers-YA, and they've taken their spaces away and instead put up H&Ms selling them aesthetics.

#subculture #capitalism #goth #etc

[autisticandroids]

tw mentions of transphobia homophobia racism and bullying, here's my ramble

what if i cant make amends? i made amends before, i fucked up with the person again, i fucked up , badly, i acted bigotted and i regret it now, for real this time. and i decided at that time to cut that person off from my life. simply because keeping that cycle of "im sorry, i fuck up again" was unhealthy. i think that making amends with people is needed if and only if the person comes to you for explanation - and apologies.

i think about bojack horseman's apologies episode - but he ended up hurting everyone. it's not because he simply didnt mean it - but also because he showed up, impromptuly, in the life of people he hurt and didn't want to hear about him, ever.

now to say i fucked up as badly as him - but the guilt i feel is there, and this impresion of "what the fuck are you doing back in my life, go away' the people we hurt in the past have - is real.

the internet crowd also - wouldn't be happy about making a donation to a cause. for example - imagine you used to act transphobic or homophobic or racist, and you decide to make a donation to an association. no matter the amount, people will say "you're just performing" or "what, only x dollars? arent you (job)?"

that's why attonement feels impossible, no matter what you do, it's not possible to feel 100 percents healed from the past, because you never will.

voicing your regrets, striving for the best, treating the next people better, being kinder isn't ignoring closure from the past.it's quite moving on from it. i know pretty much so many people who told me they wouldn't want to deal with me again because of views i had, actions i made in the past. with those situations, how am i supposed to "atone for my sins" where i must respect the boundaries those people set, aka "get out from my life"? i can only carry regret in me.

it's good to note that i made those awful life choices when i was between age 17 and 19, i have identity disturbance problems and acted like a sponge to bad influences. getting cancelled is something i fear but that i'd honestly roll with "yeah that just happened, i'm sorry for everything" which is honestly the bare minimum - but at the same time, you can never ever appease everyone.

i remember once someone who bullied me apologized to me, i felt nothing. so when someone fucks up badly, making amends is useless, it's just self serving, because what tells that the victim will actually accept your apology? what if it sinks them down further?

i don't know how comfortable i am answering this ask. it asks me to solve a problem that i'm not really qualified to solve, or frankly able to solve with the information you've given me. i am just a rando on the internet and you should not be treating me as an authority figure.

that said, you are clearly in the middle of the kind of anxious death spiral that is both destructive to yourself and useless for any kind of self-improvement, so... my attempt is under the cut.

i mean, you have to seriously consider whether an attempt to apologize will do anything for the other person - maybe it will, maybe it won't, that's on a case by case basis. i'm not the person to ask about that. i do think in most cases that a properly non-self-centered apology probably won't hurt. but that's just my opinion, i'm not god. it's something you have to decide for yourself. i don't peddle redemption arcs.

but primarily like. the thing you need to do is learn your lesson and then Move On Dot Org. don't wallow, just learn, accept, and live with. it actually doesn't benefit anyone for you to hurt yourself.

now, obviously, there are some things you can do which i think should bar you from being or having certain types of authority.

for a rather small, petty example, i can think of one person i know who was a bully in high school and deeply regretted it, but then got deeply into the "callout witch hunt" side of tumblr social justice and replicated their old bullying behaviors pretty closely, but this time just in a way where they could have it fit with their code of ethics. so like, "i believe i have the right to decide who should be harassed over a callout" is a kind of authority to grant yourself, and i am kind of ambivalent on anyone having that authority, but also specifically That person should not have had it, because they just used it to satisfy their desire to put other people down in a "more ethical" way.

so like. it is more effective to strip yourself of certain types of authority than to punish yourself. if you don't have the right to decide whether people deserve cruelty, you cannot be cruel to them. but this is not a punishment, it's simply a loss of certain privileges.

and things like "being happy," "having friends," "having a nice time playing video games" are all rights you shouldn't have taken away as a result of past behavior. but "presenting yourself as an authority on a topic," "being involved with one specific person," and "making money off your reputation online" are all privileges you might potentially want to strip yourself of if your past behavior showed that you can't be trusted with them. again, this is not a punishment, and is not intended to induce misery - it is simply a reasonable precaution.

and also, with respect to being cancelled or not - do not worry about this. that doesn't really have anything to do with you. get thicker skin. if someone tries to cancel you and they are more popular than you, you will be cancelled. if they are less popular than you, they will be cancelled. whether a cancellation is successful is purely a product of social power and is unrelated to morals. my recommendation is to make peace with the fact that if you live your life in public people will sometimes hate you. this is their problem, but also it's their right. you can't stop them and i would go so far as to say you shouldn't try. they can't do anything to you unless they doxx you, which probably won't happen unless you're really famous. or they can take your internet income stream away if you have one. the best way to defend against this is to have a real job.

#asks #anonymous