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An Essay About Slash Review of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, A Video Game Which is Very Good

(and also: has prompted many quite wrong rather bad takes)

An essay by Audrey of the joystick system

The very bad discourse and drama around The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has served to obscure the simple fact that it is quite a very good video game and this video essay is here to tell you about that.

Video version:

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Previous video essay: Lost Judgment's Lost Plot

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Transcript:

Hi everyone. So. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is really, really fucking good.

If you’ve heard of this game, you’ve probably heard of it in the context of memes, screenshots divorced from context, and/or capricious moral outrage. If you’ve not heard of this game, well, you’re hearing of it now! And good thing, too, because much of the coverage and discussion around this game that already exists has… been, let’s just say, not particularly earnest. I hope to remedy that at least somewhat with this video.

If you’ve heard about this game because of discourse, and come here expecting drama and hot takes, then, this may not be your video. Or your YouTube channel, even. Or maybe it is, if you’d like the delicious comments section. If you’re that sort of clicker, though— welcome! I’m Audrey of the joystick system, and this is the place where I (and my headmates) talk honestly about things we care about, and I hope you’ll hear me out a little and maybe consider staying and improving our viewer retention. Thanks, if you do.

So, to writ: My purpose today is to gush. I will be gushing here. For most of it. And as for what I will be gushing about, some of it will be gushing BLOOD, GUTS, AND DELICIOUS DEATH. I am entirely serious. The subject of today’s presentation contains mature content, including copious foul language and themes slash depictions of death, cannibalism, cultism, demon summoning rituals, parricide, dystopian social decay, and heterosexuality. Oh, and also a little bit of incest as a treat, I guess, but the incest is heterosexual, and that’s worse.

[long pause]

Excellent. You’re still here. So. This morbidly beautiful video game may not be for everyone, but that’s good, because it is instead for exactly me! A short plot synopsis of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley might go as follows:

if you're not watching the video listen to this for extra effect

Siblings Andrew and Ashley Graves are forcibly quarantined inside their apartment by the local authorities, with no food and even less hope for rescue. Their parents have abandoned them. Absolutely no one is coming to save them. In order to survive and escape this awful situation, they butcher and consume the fresh flesh of some guy who got himself soul vored by a demon that he summoned without a plan.

This conspicuously carnivorous crime, and their effort to cover their tracks, puts them in a fair bit of a deeper shithole than they are already in. So naturally they keep digging themselves deeper by committing even more crimes, AND in the process, also dig themselves deeper into their toxic codependent sibling relationship, which is going just great, thank you. Sure, Andrew almost killed his sister, but he didn’t, and that’s what matters! And she still loves him, so it’s all good!

This is of course a joke.

First thing I absolutely love about this game is the writing. It’s witty, intelligent, uncompromising, and just generally delicious. It holds nothing back in depicting the toxicity of the two leads and their relationship, resulting in two compelling characters whose flaws and few virtues perfectly complement slash exacerbate one another, resulting in a beautiful train wreck of a relationship dynamic that proves equal parts disturbing, mesmerizing, and hilarious.

The charming darkly comedic bite of the writing style also lends a lot of great character to the setting. This sardonically presented dystopian world is both richly detailed and fleetingly elaborated on, a commendable balance to have achieved, in my opinion. The first chapter of this game is hilarious not just because of the banter between Ashley and Andrew (which is terrific), but because it presents such a sharp satire of current year bullshit.

As just an example, I give you, one of my favorite jokes in the game:

I probably don’t need to explain the thing this is making fun of to you, but I will anyway.

The situation presented in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’s first episode is very easily readable as an allegory for how disasters that are a direct result of ongoing 2020s late capitalist decay continuously fuck people over. In particular, this scenario feels like a direct commentary on both the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the Flint, Michigan water crisis. The former obviously has affected way more people but what both have in common is that they are crises created and exacerbated by malfeasance and/or negligence committed in the name of for-profit interests, and that the “response,” to them, such as there was one, has amounted to dehumanizing and marginalizing the victims while minimizing the issue, forcing the victims out of society’s wider view, and being reticent to punish the individuals responsible.

Just as the authorities responded to the water crisis and the worst excesses of the pandemic in real life, the authorities in The Coffin of Andy and Leyley impose half-measures designed to further restrict the freedom of the dirty undesirables who bear the worst damages, while merely shielding the upper echelons of society from the disaster rather than actually addressing or attempting to solve the issue. Most of you who lived through 2020 in the United States probably have experienced the frustration of being on the receiving end of this kind of policy.

During the pandemic, the quarantine was supposed to protect us, but for a lot of people it ended up doing quite the opposite. A lot of folks didn’t have any savings, and couldn’t get any since the employment market wasn’t exactly on fire, and our representatives had to be bothered way too much just to put out a pithy economic stimulus just to save face. Not to say that this all has stopped, exactly, as all that’s changed now is that we’re just, living with this situation, but.

It wasn’t literally a cop outside everyone’s door preventing them from going outside to not die, but for a lot of people, it might as well have been that! Never mind those who, y’know, had no inside to retreat to. Or were imprisoned during the pandemic and left even more unprotected! Or thrown out by their landlords! And so on. And, y’know, the big chain grocery stores keep throwing out all the perfectly good unsold food, so they’re already sending this message in all but, well… these exact words.

So, that’s why I think this joke lands. It’s exaggerated, but familiarly rooted, and that’s just good satire! It’s a joke which feels lifted right out of Invader Zim, which, I would put The Coffin of Andy and Leyley right about on the level of as far as both the tone it’s going for and the quality of its execution. Which of course, brings us to the extremes that these circumstances push its characters, and its plot, to.

Okay, so, also like Invader Zim, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is hardly a polemic, nor is it a morality tale. Sure, there’s social commentary in it, but that’s just a nice side thing. It’s not a story about the otherwise innocent victims of an unjust society who are pushed to do terrible things by circumstances outside their control— it is, rather a story of terrible people, who, both because of their character failings, and the desperate situations they find themselves in, find themselves doing even worse things.

Andrew and Ashley commit the cannibalism the first time in large part because they kind of have to do it. No food! Cop outside their door actively deterring them from getting food! Out of options! So they do it. They could probably be excused, if only they were given a fair trial. Which they realize they’re not going to get. So yeah. It’s understandable that they do it. And that they kill this one cop, who very much has it coming.

But they do not have to keep doing it! And gosh grief, do they keep fucking doing it— so many its. They really do not stop digging that hole that they are in. Even the first time that they do the cannibalism, when they kind of really have to do the cannibalism, Ashley is just a little bit more excited about doing the cannibalism than she probably should be.

I love this kind of delicious edgy dark humor. I love stories that go for it, imagine the worst possible people they can, and also try to make that funny. I love this about Invader Zim, that it presents a character who is unquestionably a monster, but also has relatable human desires like wanting to fit in and being concerned about looking weird or abnormal, but has those feelings for very different reasons and acts on them by committing some very despicable crimes. It really gets at a deep-seated darkness that I and a lot of other fucked up traumatized queer people who were little kids when this show aired have, the catharsis of visualizing some of our worst intrusive thoughts while evoking the emotions that pushed us to imagine this kind of fucked up shit.

I’ve loved this kind of thing since we saw Heathers when we were 14. Heathers is an absolutely incredible film that you should check out, by the way, and about which we failed to properly or interestingly articulate our thoughts a few years back. Its lead protagonists, Jason “J.D.” Dean and Veronica Sawyer, are similarly relatable characters who have familiar feeling flaws and emotionally resonant trauma hangups, and also function as very toxic enablers of each other’s worst traits, leading them to work through those feelings by, y’know, murdering their classmates!

Heathers made us realize just how exactly mentally ill of a 14 year old we really were when we were 14, and I love it for that. So. So fucking much.

That was ten years and change ago.

We are still a mentally ill 24 year old.

And Andrew and Ashley Graves, if I had to sum them up, are basically J.D. and Veronica, if they were in their twenties, siblings, and also way, way, way worse.

And I love them.

So, obviously. Ashley and Andrew are hilarious. At least, I find them to be such. They’re terrible, and awful, and amazing, and Ashley is such a girlboss. She is one of the most God Forbid Women Do Anything characters ever.

Anyway! I’ve talked about the cannibalism, and the dystopia, and the characters, and why all of that’s good. I’ve also forgotten to talk about the part where they evade an assassin, and, also a host of other things.

I love that this game has so many fun little optional interactions with NPCs, objects, and items, that you can totally miss. I love how the narration hints at the solutions to puzzles by snarkily referring to things you can interact with as what their purpose is to the characters rather than what they are, this quip about the mop that you clean up a murder scene with, the interactions that Andrew has with these cultists who suck at demon summoning, the excellent in-game art and the brilliant visual duality of Andrew and Ashley’s character designs, this line where Andrew is upset that life is so hard for them as fugitives from the law because they can only find this one shitty motel that takes cash and doesn’t ask them for their ID, and also the music, which is royalty free music made by people unassociated with the developer but is nonetheless perfectly suited for the game.

So much about this game is stuff I find so completely brilliant, and I have so little to criticize, that I think we’d probably be here all day if I kept going. So.

Let’s spend a thousand ish more words talking about the parents.

When The Coffin of Andy and Leyley begins, the protagonists’ parents are absent. You can optionally find two early references to them early on— one, if you interact with the bed in their bedroom, and encounter the shocking revelation that “Your parents have FUCKED on this bed.”

The second, is if you interact with the phone, the game dutifully informs you that,

You’re probably less than five minutes into the game at this point, barely begun solving the first puzzle, which prompted you to “find nutrients to not die.” And of course, this says about all you need to know. These children have been abandoned. But if it needed to be any clearer, the game later delivers unto you a flashback to prior in the story, when Ashley desperately calls Mrs. Graves for help after they leave and go move to a hotel, and later a new house, to which the kids are of course not invited. And this specific scene, specific line, here, fucking hit me:

“And I don’t want to hear these lies about starving anymore.”

Emphasis mine.

Even as Ashley and Andrew escalate the severity of their crimes which gradually come to have less and less to do with their need to survive as the story goes on, I find it very hard to not be on their side at least a little bit, and this is easily the biggest reason why.

I have had this phone call.

Not this exact specific phone call, of course. Obviously, I’ve never been locked up in an apartment with an armed patrol outside my door whose job it was to gaslight me while ensuring that I starved to death. Obviously, my mom has never said those exact words.

But gosh grief and fuck me if it’s never felt like she has. She may as well have fucking told me that, with all the things she told me I was lying about. And who fucking knows, maybe she did say those exact words to us, and we repressed them. I don’t know. I am very not done working through all the bullshit that she gaslit us over.

*sighs, preparing to vent*

I have called our mother and had to beg her to pay for food. I have called her and had to beg to pay for our rent, while our parents were supposed to be supporting us studying abroad. I have called her and begged her to forgive me for daring to use just a few of the thirty dollars our parents used to send us to live with every month back then, to buy a drink or a movie ticket or something. I have had to concede to our parents financially holding us hostage, had to go the last week of the month on a shoestring diet while waiting for them to graciously deposit another thirty dollars into our bank account... so that we could continue eating. I used to relish February, the shortest month, for being the one part of the year in which I had to stretch out that thirty dollars the least. And once, I pleaded with our mother to pay for us to move to another apartment when the landlord suddenly kicked us out of the current one, abruptly and obligatorily switching gears from arguing with her to kissing her ass through our gritted teeth, under threat of our parents cutting off their financial support of us completely, abandoning us in a foreign country where we had no money, no job, and barely spoke the language.

And one day, after I stopped dancing to their tune, they just stopped listening, stopped even pretending to want to help. After nineteen years of escalating emotional and physical abuse and neglect, they abandoned us. And one day, after I spent months working 10 hour days every week Ubering food around for tips, sending my resume, filling applications, making calls, stopping into places to ask for work, all to no avail, for months, and desperately plugging the Patreon page of this very YouTube channel praying that some generous soul with money to burn would solve all our problems. All of this still wasn’t enough, and wasn’t going anywhere, and I’d run out of money and was short on rent on the one sublet room we could get that cost exactly three hundred dollars…

And I called her, and I asked her for help. I really didn’t want to. I wanted to hear nothing of her again. And she said to stop lying. To stop bullshitting her that I couldn’t get enough money, or find a job.

Not too long after, I swore off all contact with her, and eventually also with our father. And every time I have spoken to either of them since, I have made no secret of how I feel. Because if I get nothing out of kissing their ass, why fucking pretend.

My family is not poor. They own their house. They own, and leased out, a second house. Their house is full of fancy IKEA furniture and various other niceties, they’ve renovated the place at least twice, they live in a nice, safe neighborhood, they have an attic and a basement, they at one point paid for multiple plane tickets for us per year while still refusing to let us eat on any more than thirty five dollars, an extra five dollars we also had to beg them for. Our dad has a lucrative tech job. All of this, and they insisted, while refusing to answer questions about their finances in any detail, that they couldn’t afford to help us go to where we wanted to go for college, that they had no place for us in their house, that they couldn’t afford three hundred dollars of rent to help us have a roof over our head for one more month.

So when I read this delightful jaunt of a chapter of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, where Andrew and Ashley break into their parents’ new huge house to steal all their shit, and Ashley says “This is some rich people stuff!” about their fireplace,

And when their mom says, “there’s no room to keep housing you here indefinitely,” and the internal monologue says, “even though it’s way bigger than the old house.” It’s both an entertaining mockery of the attitude of the typical American family, how first you’re your parents’ property for eighteen years and then you’re turned out on your own to face the world without their support, and how the fuck are you supposed to live like that, to figure out how to live your life in the face of that, to meaningfully be a fulfilled person in that situation, especially in a time, when, no, mom, I can’t pay a college tuition on a waitress salary like you did back in the fucking nineties, you c--t,

Even though they have an extra bed in their basement and a perfectly good couch and plenty of space for another bed besides, and a vegetable garden, and a kitchen, and all these other middle-class petty bougie niceties, the Graves mom says, “sorry, we can’t keep helping you,” and. And. I read all this, and I think,

“I understand why Ashley wants to fucking flay these people. I understand why she wants to K1!L them.”

I cannot tell you how much catharsis the ending of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley episode 2 gave me. I cannot convey the weight of my gratitude that someone out there validated my anger and my specific fucked up power fantasy with their art. I didn’t even ask them to. I probably would’ve eventually done it on my own. But I’m so glad that someone did it for me.

If I ever hypothetically meet Nemlei, somehow, and have some cash, I will happily buy them a drink. Hopefully, by paying this excellent game’s ten dollar cover price, I already have!

I know you’re not watching this, but on the off chance this reaches your ears, I just wanna say thanks. For giving me a safe, legal, regret-free, socially acceptable, non-violent outlet for the rage I feel towards my parents.

Well.

Mostly socially acceptable.

Meow.

This game is not finished, as you may have noticed if you’ve gone to check it out on Steam. It ends on an ambiguous and open note, but in my opinion, a perfectly satisfying one. Nemlei could disappear absolutely, never release the proper ending of this game, and never make another game again, and I would not be mad. I've already got more than my money’s worth and then some. So. Yeah. I’m happy. Count me as happy!

I kinda wanna start talking a bit more about the branches of the second episode. I wanna say how it’s a brilliant idea to have two separate story arcs for the two variations of this episode’s ending, and how I hope that that’s executed on as beautifully as the rest of the game already is. I wanna talk about the ways in which Andrew and Ashley’s mom is ambiguously humanized despite being so obviously terrible. I wanna talk about the dialogue Andrew does when his parents offer him a chance to make amends, and he has doubts, if you choose to let him have them, and how I would probably also have doubts in his position, and not be able to follow through without my lovely evil cannibal sister pushing me towards… the thing. I wanna talk about this line, where Ashley talks about why she likes eating people, and how it’s so equal parts poetic and macabre and edgy bullshit and that that’s such a beautifully balanced cocktail of emotion to nail and Nemlei totally fucking nails it

I WANT TO GUSH FOREVER. ABOUT THIS GAME. AND I WANT NO ONE TO STOP ME.

Alas, I will stop myself.

And move on to the elephant in the room!

THE FUCKING.

Mom: “But that-.... That doesn’t make any sense.” Mom: “Why would you not-......” Mom: “Ah, I get it.” Andrew: “..........??” Mom: “You fuck her.” Andrew: “Wha— HUUUUH?!?!!?” Mom: “Oh that is disgusting! Andrew, she’s your sister for god’s sake!” Andrew: “I haven’t done anything!? What the hell, mom!?” Mom: “Then what does she give you that makes it worth all this?” Andrew: “W-well that’s none of your business, is it??” Mom: “I knew something was off… How did I fuck up so bad? I’m the worst mother ever..!” Andrew: “No! I mean yes you are, but I have never—!” Ashley: “I’m baaaa-ack!!!” Andrew: “Now of all times!?” Ashley: “I got the money! Did you miss me, handsome?? Did you? Did you??” Mom: “...........................” Andrew: “(I WANT TO DIE!!!!!!)”

Okay. So. I said I didn’t want to talk about this. But I’m talking about this game. I can’t not talk about it.

Yep, it’s hot takes and drama time!

So, not too long ago, Nemlei deleted their Twitter, their Itch.io, their everything, their entire online presence. The Steam page for The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, which used to list Nemlei as the developer and publisher, now lists “Kit9 Studio.” It is the only game to their name on the platform. A community forum post from said entity known as Kit9 announces that “the developer” (no name given) “has decided to permanently and completely terminate their activities online from here on.”

I don’t know exactly what happened, or why they did this. There’s a lot of people around who sure think they know. But in brief, as neutrally as possible: Nemlei, or someone close to them, was doxxed, or at least sought out as a doxxing target, by one or multiple users of an online forum. Their supposed crime? Making a video game “for degenerates.”

I don’t know who did the doxxing. I don’t know what their motive was, and for my own sanity, I am not going to look. I am choosing not to care. The most important and most obvious fact at hand here is that Nemlei’s creation has been met with controversy amongst social media users, and about one or two hack video game outrage journalists, who seem to have nothing better to do or say. And it seems clear that the doxxing wouldn’t have happened had they not been met with this negative attention. And all because of this.

Not the cannibalism, not the parricide, not the demon sacrifices. No, um, the one implied sex scene.

And it doesn’t even actually happen! It’s just a premonition of a possible future event that Ashley and Andrew supernaturally receive. It’s not particularly graphic, it doesn’t yet go anywhere, and it’s a short scene on an optional route that the game actively forewarns you about. You have to be trying to see it on purpose.

Well, that’s all true. It is indeed a minor and avoidable scene, and the discourse about it has absolutely poisoned the well when it comes to the conversation about the game. But also, “uhh, it’s optional and not a big thing,” is inadequate as a defense. This is still content in the game that Nemlei actively chose to put in the game, and even discounting this, the themes of incest are all over the game. Ashley speaks flirtatiously to Andrew at basically every turn. Even if you avoid this specific scene, the incest themes are not something you’re going to just not notice, if you’re paying attention to the text.

All that being said, it’s not like this content comes as a surprise. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley’s Steam store page accurately represents the product! A brother and sister. Codependency and cannibalism. It’s not as if you don’t know what you’re paying for and choosing to play. You came here for this! Most of the people playing this are here for this! You have to figure that if they are fine with killing and eating people, they’re probably fine with fucking each other, or, eventually possibly eventually going to be, at least.

So you’d think, except that many people seem to unironically believe that the cannibalism is more moral than the incest.

Oh, god, I’m doing this right now, aren’t I.

So, I get it. While I’m pretty skeptical of the notion that cannibalism is not as bad as incest, I do realize that incest is, at the very least, the more taboo of these things, and that a lot of people are more uncomfortable with it than they are with the cannibalism and the murder. To quote the one positive and in-depth review available in any media outlet at the time of this writing, from Destructoid:

“This aspect is undoubtedly the most controversial element about The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, and I understand why. While cannibalism is a taboo subject, it’s present in mainstream games like Fallout as an option for players. Having incestuous themes crosses over into Drakengard territory, and even then, no option allows Caim to reciprocate Furiae’s feelings for him.”

"The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is horrifying and I can’t get enough of it" Andrea Gonzalez, Destructoid, November 12 2023

So, yeah, I. y’know. Get it. I know why. However.

I can point to a lot of things that Andrew and Ashley do wrong in this game. They are, as per the game’s premise, very not okay, not as individuals, and not together. Andrew is way too attached to Ashley, and Ashley is generally an awful person who is way too attached herself, and also, all too quick on the draw to take advantage of Andrew’s attachment to her to make him do what she wants. This is not a healthy relationship. And we’re here for it! It’s compelling!

But, I think it’s worth asking why it’s such a toxic dynamic. Is it because they’re siblings? Well, not really. It’s a dynamic that’s specifically possible with them being siblings, but it’s not because of their sibling connection.

The actual reason why Andrew and Ashley’s relationship turns abusive isn’t because their relationship is abusive by necessity or nature, but because Ashley abuses their relationship. And she is doing this for basically the whole game. Like, it is abusive the whole time. It doesn’t become abusive when their relationship takes its romantic turn. Does it become more abusive? I mean. Maybe. Maybe the romance exacerbates the abuse. I dunno, we’ll have to wait and see what the next episode says.

So, then, why is the notion of them possibly in the future having sex the elephant in the room here, when before that, they do so many objectively worse things that cause much more harm both to themselves and others? Is that really so much more of a bigger deal than the murder and the people eating?

Or. To phrase it Ashley’s way. You played a game about mutilating and eating your parents’ corpses, and getting laid is what you’re freaking out about?

Is the incest really that much more extreme, or are you just more disgusted with it?

And even if you are more disgusted with it. Even if we grant that it is, actually, somehow, more harmful for siblings to have sex with each other, than to do murder and cannibalism. Is this the hill you’re dying on? What you’ve decided is of such utmost importance and injustice that you decide to go harass some random indie dev who just wants to make a silly video game about a couple of siblings eating people?

Does it truly make sense to let your kneejerk moral disgust guide you to the conclusion that the creator of this game deserves to be persecuted for merely writing about and drawing a thing you don’t like?

Well, to answer that, we have to get into the question of whether or not “immoral fiction” is harmful, or “normalizing” things that are wrong. Does fictionally depicting an immoral action actually cause harm?

I could dance around in circles for a little while about the edge cases, and certain writers who are publishing bad or hateful material in bad faith, or fascist propaganda, which is of course always bad, or whatever other example I could use to qualify my point or list out an exception to appease the people who disagree with me, but, I’ll just cut right to the chase, and tell you the answer

No!

The answer is NO!

The thing about taboos is that they don’t make us more safe. They don’t protect us from bad things. All they do is protect people’s comfort by silencing people they don’t want to understand, and enable bad actors by keeping their victims in the dark, and denying them the ability to talk about it.

The only thing we end up doing by censoring stories about these uncomfortable topics, and making it socially unacceptable to talk about them, is make it harder to know. We deny ourselves knowledge. We deny ourselves a conversation about these subjects, we deny ourselves the ability to meaningfully understand them. We deny ourselves power, what little we have, as readers, to understand, and to critique, to reason.

There’s a tumblr post I really like. Well, a number of them, I really like, on this topic, but I’m picking this one, because it’s got a quote I really like. It talks about Lolita. That Lolita. And, now, I’ve never read Lolita, at least not yet. Lolita is a novel about child sexual abuse, told from the perspective of an abuser. It’s an uncomfortable book with an uncomfortable topic, and it’s not wrong to be uncomfortable with it. The author of this post acknowledges that.

But they talk about it. They talk about how it shines a light on its subject matter. The why and the how of abusers and their actions. The ways in which their victims suffer. How it shows all of this in a way that it only could from the perspective it takes. And, I’m just going to quote them. I can’t do anything else. They said it better than I could, right now.

“Embrace disgusting fiction and then fucking talk about why it’s nasty. Now YOU have the power over reality.” - tumblr user legsdemandias

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley has been ridiculed, joked about, hot taked on, made a target, drama-ed over, and so on, but it’s hardly been criticized. No one I’ve seen admitting to not liking it talks critically about why it’s disgusting to them, or tries to understand why it exists, or what it’s for. And this is most people’s reaction to most media that deals seriously with anything taboo. “I don’t get it. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t exist. Get it away from me.”

I’m annoyed that the medium, the art form, of video games, is valued so little by so many that this is the wide reaction when something like this gets popular. That the mainstream games journalism media ridicules it, and the creator gets threatened by an internet mob, and it falls on the weirdos and the freaks and the no-name YouTube uwu girls, to give it the serious consideration and recognition it deserves.

To summarize, The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is, in my opinion, a very good video game, and on its behalf, I am mad at video games.

Now, go on. You made it through this video. I told you the plot! You can probably stomach the plot! So go, go. Shoo. Go buy Nemlei a drink. If you want to.

Or, buy us, the joystick system, a drink! You can do that at patreon dot com slash joycestick, or, ko-fi dot com slash joycestick. You can buy us drinks in both of those places.

I’ve been Audrey. Thank you for listening.

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fandomsoda · 3 months

Text

I’ve come to make an announcement!

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I’m doing a prompt week, starting Monday(just to give y’all enough time to prepare)!

What’s the theme? Well, rarepairs! Around this time of year, the fanart space is often overrun with oversaturated fandom-favorite pairings and there’s rarely any room for the more underrated stuff! That’s why I’m hosting this week.

This week is primarily focused around the Undertale AU community, but plenty of other fandoms are welcome! Here are the prompts! (There are image descriptions in alt text)

But wait, there’s more!

Bonus prompts are entirely optional, and can either replace one of the main week prompts or be done afterwards! You decide!

now, let’s get to the important part, read these carefully;

THE RULES: -please @ me in art created for this project, I’m not gonna force you to but I’d appreciate it if you did -however, tag all posts with “#rarepair week 2024” in order to keep things organized! -Ok let’s get this out of the way, absolutely NO pro/ship or com/ship content. No incest, no pe/dophilia. If your ship ain’t legal, it ain’t allowed. -No ship-bashing. If someone’s pairing is legal and ethical, don’t dog on them for it. I also don’t want any discourse on whether or not a pairing is abusive, if someone isn’t adhering to canon and isn’t portraying it in an unhealthy way, they don’t need flack for it. -On that note, no romanticizing abuse either. None of that. -I can’t believe I have to say this, but rarepairs only! Of course what constitutes as a rarepair is subjective, but if it’s a pairing you see very often or is considered the standard for those given characters, it’s not allowed. No Errorink, no Nightkiller, no Cream, no Afterdeath. It’s not that these pairings are bad, they’re just not rarepairs.

All that said, have fun! I look forward to seeing what y’all come up with! Reblogs appreciated!

#announcement #rarepair week 2024 #undertale au ships #prompt week

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hashtagloveloses · 1 year

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so are you back on tumblr after a while or you're new? welcome! it's a lot nicer here lately, and, shockingly enough, the website actually works a lot better too, thanks to the hard work of a bunch of very talented people. the mobile app is constantly improving, but if you're on desktop and used to use things like missing e or xkit, the latest helpful extension is XKIT REWRITTEN, which you can go download and read about at @addons that was created by @april, who worked on new xkit back in the day and now works at tumblr itself!

here's some other helpful tips to know:

PLEASE REBLOG THINGS. it's the main form of engagement here. there is no penalizing for spam interaction, most people are not looking at your blog directly, and it is the main way people find you and you find good content to follow. for original content like fanart and fanfic, it also REALLY helps people out. likes are better for like, personal posts, and for storing things for later. also, it doesn't matter if you blog is a jumble of things - it's yours, nobody cares, and that's kind of the purpose of the site

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A PROFILE PHOTO, BANNER PHOTO, AND UNIQUE URL (that isnt like a bunch of numbers or something), or else people will think you are a bot and block you. you don't have to do anything fancy, you can use the default tumblr theme on your blog itself, but just make sure you look like a real account PLEASE

DO NOT CENSOR WORDS. much like on twitter, if you censor a word for a trigger, it will do the opposite of what you want - people's blacklist and mute functions won't work if the word isn't spelled out in the tags or the text of the post. also there isn't post suppression here.

Don't like your dashboard? Getting bored? Feel like your community is getting annoying? JUST FOLLOW MORE PEOPLE (and maybe unfollow some. a block and an unfollow are always ok). nobody cares, or can see about your follow ratio, and it'll help your dashboard feel more lively (you'll also not give as much of a shit about petty dramas). the follow limit is 5000 last i checked

keep your comments to the tags (unless it's like....really funny or adding something good? use your best judgement). the tags are helpful for subject matter, but you should also use them to talk as like side commentary!

Close your ask box to anons and don't share personal information if you don't want to. You are under no obligation to share your name, age, diagnoses, history, location, face, and you SHOULDN'T. and the ask box is great but if it gets overwhelming just close it. If you're a minor, maybe say somewhere that you're a minor, but that's it. (that goes for any social media site)

MAKE YOUR LIKES AND FOLLOWS PRIVATE. for the love of god. just protect yourself.

just like any social media site - be critical about the things people claim are true on here. screenshots, takes, facts, can be skewed and you should do extra research before believing anything just because somebody said it on tumblr dot com

DON'T GET INTO QUEER OR NEURODIVERGENT LABEL IDENTITY DISCOURSE. whether you are young or old, on tumblr or another site, things will just get confusing and weird. if you learn something here that makes you feel affirmed, great! but also please make sure your interaction with fellow queers (or other neurodivergent people) is not limited to just this site. get involved with a local or school lgbtq center if you can, get to know queer people in your life or queer spaces if you can. (and if you can't - go read about queer history somewhere other than tumblr. do research, watch movies and documentaries. look into disability organizing and history outside this hellsite). Label discourse is also how many unknowing queers and others get recruited to T*RFy shit unknowingly so....be careful out there.

Don't get guilted into things on your dashboard. You should definitely care about the things people are talking about, but you don't have to know about every ill happening in the world at once to be a good person. If you're feeling lost, or hopeless and endlessly scrolling or feel guilted by people online, pick ONE thing you can do, for people in your local community, and then just make a reasonable effort to stay informed otherwise.

create an original tag for your "original" posts, aka the posts you make that aren't reblogs, so you can look at them later

explore the QUEUE FUNCTION! you don't have to use it, nobody cares if you reblog spam, but sometimes it's fun!

Don't know who to follow? Go follow the tags of things you like (TV shows, movies, musicians, aesthetics, whatever!), and suggested posts will pop up on your feed, or you can go through the tag and follow some people who look interesting

#tumblr tips #tumblr #twitter exodus #original post

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the-ultimate-squish · 7 months

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Welcome to the Ultimate Squishmallow Tournament!

PLEASE DO NOT BUY SQUISHMALLOWS IRL. If you do want to still purchase Squishmallows, buying them secondhand should still be okay. I made this blog before the CEO of Squishmallows made it aware that he is financially supporting Israel. More information/resources will be provided under the cut.

I will begin posting resources at the bottom of each poll. Any additional posts related to this will be tagged with #SquishBoycott ; while this is an important matter to keep up to date on and I urge you to continue your research/keep up to date on the matter as a whole outside of Squishmallows, I understand muting this tag for the sake of mental health, as this blog was originally created for fun away from the cruelties of the world. As a note this is not a part of the official boycott.

As of right now, I am not postponing the tournament but am open to doing so as the matter progresses.

This is a tournament to determine Tumblr's favorite squishmallow, inspired by accounts such as @webkinztournament, including all 2,000+ Squishmallows as seen on the wikipedia (which can be viewed here).

More info under the cut

Current Round

Round 2 will begin November 27 @ 12 A.M. EST and be posted every hour. Each poll will run for one week. Specific schedule for each matchup can be found here.

Resources

Squishmallow Alternatives + my current reasoning for the tournament (subject to change)

More info on the matter with sources

Official Boycott

If anyone has more resources please send them my way.

Exclusions

The only squishmallows that will not be considered for the tournament are licensed squads, unnamed squish, and any squish without a link on the wiki page. This last decision is due to the fact that I cannot find images or information on these squishes if they do not have a wiki page. A list will be provided here of all unincluded squish. If anyone would like to send a picture of said squish to be included, I will gladly do so! Otherwise, they basically don't exist anywhere I can find on the internet and will not be considered. Unnamed squishmallows and licensed squads will not be included regardless.

Pairings

For round 1, each squishmallow was randomly paired by spinning a wheel (this took actually forever). From there, winners will move on the face off the winner of the next pair, and then the winner of the next pair, and so on in a bracket. More information on each squish will be provided once there are less squish per round.

Ties

In the case of an even 50/50 tie, I (the host) will ask 3 irl friends that have not voted to break the tie.

Propaganda

You are welcome to send propaganda for your favorite squish via the ask box, by reblogging the poll, or @'ing this account. I will do my best to promote said propaganda on this page, tagged with #propaganda. Overall, please BE KIND. This is a tournament for fun and not meant to cause actual discourse.

Tags

#Announcement - Poll Announcements #SOT2023 - Squishmallow of Tumblr Poll #Propaganda - Propaganda for Squish #Not Poll - Other posts, likely reblogs. Will be used in this beginning week to promote the blog before voting begins, in attempt to get a bigger sample size

Additional tags will be tags for each round, such as SOT2023R1 (Squishmallow of Tumblr 2023 Round 1), the name of each 'mallow, and #Squishmallow #Squishmallows on one poll a day to avoid flooding (there are a lot of 'mallows). #tournament poll and #poll will also be used for sample size, as well as some other additional tags at least in the beginning. However, these are all the main ones to be used for navigations!

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rthko · 1 year

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Anon, while I appreciate your clarification, your message still includes subjective and unsupported claims that paint me in a negative light. I hope you understand I know better than to publish my own callout post. I cannot be everything for everyone. I am not a celebrity with a PR team but a person with my own experiences and a job who blogs in my free time. If I blog about what's familiar to me, I'm centering myself and maliciously excluding others. Yet if I blog about experiences I'm not familiar with, I'm stepping out of my lane and trying to speak for others. If every word written about identity and overcoming prejudice has to be perfect, then the only way to win is to not talk about it at all.

Recently, I have blogged about the overlap in experiences between cis or marginally cis queer people and trans people. I am interested in establishing common ground and bonding, even organizing over it. That said, in a culture of "LGB alliance," I realize the responsibility of reconciliation falls moreso on cis people. I am cis. Yes, my own weird version of it, but cis. Cis enough to know that when ghouls in Congress and on TV talk about "gender ideology," they don't have me in mind. All my trans friends are terrified right now, but my cis gay friends are only afraid if they've specifically decided to tune into the news. The ability to turn off the news and ignore it is a privilege. There is a social utility in unpacking these invisible knapsacks.

I also believe that online "check your privilege" culture is often hollow and self serving. When I posted a joke roast of Taylor Swift, I was flooded with comments decrying me as a "cis white gay," embellished with remarks about how I'm probably ignorant, sex-obsessed and disease-ridden. Nevermind the fact that Taylor Swift is herself a cis straight white woman and that cis white gays make up her most loyal following (and presumably many of the comments lobbed in my direction). This is one of many examples where it's not about identity politics at all, except to embellish and connote moral superiority. I believe cis white gay men do hold privilege in many ways--look no further than how HIV was considered "over" once it went from being seen as a "gay disease" to a "black disease," or how so many of us look the other way in this current transphobic climate. But what, for instance, does Taylor Swift have to do with any of this?

That is one problem with privilege discourse, but also, it's oversimplified. Checking my privilege is a mathematical equation. Cis plus man minus gay. There is no convenient formula that accounts for the fact that I have never been welcome among men or treated as "one of the boys," that I had to find my own self worth outside of their inclusion. It doesn't account for the fact that "cis" is the approximate conclusion I reached after countless clandestine name and pronoun changes in forums and group chats, "what if I had just been born a girl" questions, and anger at the expectation to be a "real man" or a "man" at all. And I just don't have this explanation in my back pocket all the time.

I woke up this morning, checked my inbox, and was informed that there's a callout post going around about me. Something to do with problematic daddy kinks and my "fuck that old man" shitposts. Whatever. I found it funny. What stood out to me is that a popular blogger who to my knowledge has never posted about any of that was roped into it just for reblogging from me. She was considered guilty by association with me, and my perceived guilt was at best subjective and at worst prejudiced. So maybe I'm on the defensive today. Maybe this is my Lana Del Rey "question for the culture" meltdown. But if you want to dive into my psyche and help me to "do better," talk to me like a person and not a public figure.

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heraisgod · 10 months

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Now, for the anticipated subjects...

Okay so, I'm here to formally welcome discussions surrounding personal development, makeup, skin care, fashion, kpop recommendations and basically anything else we all take interest in. This is a space away from LOA discourse so do nottttttt come to me asking how to do x, what y means, etc. Moving on,

Here's the first subject related concerns dedicated to my kpop girls:

I'm looking for EXO recommendations and I'm undecided on a bias, so if you're an exol please drop your favorite songs as well as a bit about your bias. Right now I'm in between suho, chanyeol, baekhyun and kai. Aside from that I'm also interested in recommendations from your ult as well as a bit about your bias if you'd like. I'm still relatively new to kpop and it's usually a hit or miss for me so I'm open to your recommendations I'm not that into 3rd gen groups and have gravitated more towards 4th gen, if this matters. ♡

With that I'm also creating three new playlists for you guys to add music to including the recommendations I just mentioned, here they are:

SUMMER RENAISSANCE (summer playlist)

Kim Namjoon (bg kpop recs)

like you a little (gg kpop recs)

Please don't feel shy to add as many songs as you'd like ♡

I'll link my other playlists into a pinned post on this blog and we'll get around to the other subjects soon as well. You guys are welcome to drop anything regarding the aforementioned topics whether it's a song rec or a holy grail product, your favorite trends at the moment, etc. That's all for now, my loves. <3

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roo-bastmoon · 1 year

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"Paying" attention to "unreliable" narrators

Folks? Don't.

Your time and energy are precious.

Redirect your focus to whatever brings you joy.

There are always going to be assholes, bullies, conspiracy theorists, trolls, and idiots. Always.

No amount of education, proof, discourse, or facts will matter to them, because they aren't in it for the truth--they are in it for the emotional payoff.

Specifically, they want to siphon off your energy to empower themselves, and they do it by creating chaos and negativity.

In the last few months, even before solo era, there's been a LOT of misinformation and misdirection going on in the BTS fandom. Frankly, I'm tired of analyzing photos of footprints or shoes, or dissecting background audio trying to figure out who is in a room or not.

In the end, it is whatever it is.

Now look.

I am OT7 ARMY and there are things I love about Kim Taehyung. Specifically I am endeared by how much he loves his members, by what a great dog dad he is, by how wonderful he is with kids, and his fantastic taste in music and fashion. We resonate on that stuff.

But let's be very honest: he enjoys causing chaos and whipping up his fans.

I am a person who does not enjoy being jerked around. It communicates disdain, to me. But I recongize humor is subjective.

I think like all performers, there are times when he craves attention. Whether it's pretending to play the trumpet, or posting right after JK's tattoo reveal to prank us with a sharpie marker, or creating a lot of mystery around a photo of a shadow of a bucket hat, or popping off quickly from a live after dropping names.

Like clockwork. You can almost set your watch to when he's going to do this. There is a pattern at work here, whether conscious or not. And the cult falls for it every time, when they aren't out there making up their own lies and narratives.

Then--in a move that truly baffles me--they SEEK OUT Jikook accounts to try to rub noses in their "proof." Which... frankly? Secure people never need to do.

Now look, I cannot tell you Jimin and Jungkook are in a romantic relationship with each other, or anyone, because they are no longer sharing their personal lives for various LEGITIMATE reasons. So no one in ARMY *knows* for sure--and that's on purpose.

But I can tell you that I force myself to watch all content and try to see it from every angle, every point of view. Even if it makes me uncomfortable, I try to look with an unbiased eye. And I remain unbothered about Taekook. Just like Jimin remains totally unbothered by Taekook.

If someone wants to ship Taekook romantically, they are so very welcome to do whatever brings even an iota of pleasure into their lives. But for me, the math doesn't math, there. When I add it all up, there's no company conspiracy, no secret handshakes or symbols, no hints to fans about their "real" feelings or "mystery dates." Taehyung and Jungkook are very, very close friends--as are all the BTS members. And if fans want to see more to it, they will let them.

For me, if it's not Jikook, it's not anyone. They've been consistent--even if quiet--for years. That's my conclusion even now. If I'm wrong, I'll say I'm wrong and keep doing what I always do: buy, stream, vote, trend, and watch all 7. I'm in this ARMY shit for life.

But I'm done PAYING ATTENTION to unreliable narrators. I don't owe anyone my time or energy. And neither do you. Frankly, you should think twice before giving them your platform. They will only use it to siphon your joy.

Instead, SPEND YOUR ENERGY on what you LOVE. Don't thrash around. Lean back into what brings you bliss.

You feel me, y'all? Lean back.

Love, Roo

#jikook

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inkovert · 5 months

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SPILLED INK SATURDAY 》 Writeblr Discourse Series

Session 1: Book-to-Screen Adaptations

Welcome to our first session of Spilled Ink (get it? like spilled tea?), a new writeblr discourse series that I'm excited to introduce into the community. I wanted to start this series to generate some discussion and camaraderie within the writeblr community, but also because I think there are a lot of writer/reader/author-related topics and debates that crop up pretty frequently and I figured it would be interesting to hear thoughts and opinions on these matters from a writer's perspective.

So every Saturday (or potentially every other Saturday depending on how things go), I will post a topic of discussion. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you can do so one of two ways:

➸ Return to the OG post (which will always be linked in the title of the post) and reblog with your take on the topic, either in text or in the tags

➸ If you see someone's take on your feed and you want to chime in on something they said, feel free to reblog their response

I want to stress that the purpose of this series is to have healthy, open-minded dialogue about these topics and hear perspectives that you may not have considered otherwise. I think one of the beautiful things about writeblr is that it's rich with people from a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences who can lend a wider perspective on the subjects discussed. That said, I'm asking that everyone who chooses to participate please be respectful when providing your opinion or when responding to someone else's. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how strong it is, but there's a difference between being opinionated and being borderline rude and antagonizing. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or hateful speech of any kind will not be condoned or tolerated. I want to set that bar straight now because future sessions will touch on topics such as race and sexuality, so I will always have this reminder at the top of the post for each session. I truly want this to be a safe space for people to share their thoughts freely and not be afraid to speak up, so just please be mindful of your words in your responses.

With that out of the way, the discourse question for our first session is:

How do you feel about the frequency with which books are adapted to movies/tv shows these days?

You know what I mean. When you open any social media platform these days and you're immediately bombarded with ads for the latest tv show or movie being released on Hulu or Paramount+. I've often wondered if writers or up-and-coming authors have any personal feelings about this. Do you find it exciting? Does it make you hopeful that your work could one day be on the big screen? Or is it a bit...irksome? Or are you completely indifferent?

Reblog and share your thoughts. Mine will be under the cut, below. 👇🏾

・❥・

I know it may seem like something absolutely trivial and harmless to some, so perfectly understandable if people are indifferent about it all. But I personally find it irksome.

I could be wrong about the increased frequency of book-to-screen adaptations compared to 10 years prior, but for me personally it feels like it's increased quite a lot. I feel like I'll see a book hyped by booktok and/or other online book communities all over my social media feed one minute, and the next minute it's announced that it's headed for the big screen. And for the author's in question, I'm sure it's thrilling, because it provides the exposure that authors need nowadays to sell their books and their brand. But it bothers me because...well, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it makes it more and more evident that the movie/tv industry is running out of ideas. How often do we hear about some 90s/00s TV show being rebooted for god-knows-why when no one asked for it? It's not a secret that the entertainment industry is running on fumes when it comes to generating original ideas for the screen. And the same way that reboots are a lazy way of pumping out entertainment for a consumerist audience, outsourcing ideas from authors because you can't think of your own is also just that - lazy. And the consequence of that, I feel, is that authors will begin to write stories with the intention that it will be visually consumed, thereby feeding into that book-to-screen pipeline.

I recently read a book from a sci-fi author whose novels I really enjoyed in the past, but with each new release of his the quality of his books decreased just a bit. And with the latest book of his I read, it was easy to pinpoint why. It was clear as day that he had written the book with the idea/intention that it would be put on the screen. I don't know how to quite describe it, but it felt like I was reading a screenplay, with certain storytelling elements ignored and with action scenes written like cue cards for an actor. It was like a slapdash job with the note "fix it in post" slapped onto it. And it was just so...disappointing. Not only as a reader, but as a writer. Writers are free to write screenplays, but they are considered screenwriters, not authors, and the craft that is required for each medium is a bit different. Neither is superior to the other, but there's a depth that goes into writing a novel or short story that isn't necessarily needed for a screenplay because the screenwriter will work in collaboration with the director and others to carry out the vision (I'm happy to have screenwriters on writeblr chime in on whether this is true, because I'm speaking off my own understanding, not known experiences). The end product of a screenplay is a visual. Whereas the end product for a novel is the novel itself, and how it stimulates the readers imagination. If we get more novels written with the intention of being translated to a visual medium, then all the typically necessary components like description, exposition etc no longer become necessary. I'm not saying that this is happening just yet. There are many quality novels that have received screen adaptations recently (Pachinko, A Man Called Ove etc), but luckily those authors were dedicated to the craft of writing and storytelling first. The movie and tv deals were an added bonus that came after. But what happens when you have an emergence of authors who have those priorities in reverse? Movie deal first to increase my exposure and worry about good storytelling second? It inevitably causes a change in the writing landscape (that I argue is already happening (see: future discourse session), and not necessarily for the better.

#spilled ink #session 1 #writeblr #pls appreciate the banner that took me several hours to make (bc I tried many different designs and styles)#and the clever ass title of the series that I've gotta give my irl friend credit for #really hoping that people engage with this so I can figure out whether it's worth continuing !

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pleaseburger · 1 month

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I've been trying to find any kind of local community in my town that I could integrate into but it's literally so dry where I live. every public event I've seen is either a kid's learning program or speed dating for middle aged divorcees

I joined a discord server ran by people in my region. one keyword search for "trans" throughout the server shows that anyone who's felt the need to preemptively make a bad faith argument justifying why they played the harry potter game (remember that?) or why they love hazbin hotel despite the "controversial views of the creator" is still around or even a mod/admin but anyone who's ever mentioned being trans is long gone. guess people like me aren't welcome there!

another server advertised as being for lgbt people in my region was choc full of teenagers hurling slurs at each other with a dedicated channel for fandom discourse. I've been on tumblr for nearly a decade I don't need to start subjecting myself to that shit now. bye

I'm grateful for my online friends but I've been disconnected from any form of local community for so long that I'm starting to lose my mind. I deserve better but at this point I don't even know where to start. what the fuck are you supposed to do?

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intersexcat-tboy · 1 month

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Call me Whiskers or whatever idrc. This blog focuses on raising awareness, sharing personal experiences, and connecting with others in the intersex and ATM theory community. I love doing in depth research onto topics, esp writing intersex educational essays. I tend to be very verbose as I'm hyperlexic. Everything goes onto queue

I use hy/hym, e/ey, kit/fae and oneself pronouns

DNI/beware of dog:

radfems, febfem, self ID'd baededels, if you use "misandrodorks" / "theyfab", or otherwise don't believe there's any type of oppression specifically faced by (or disproportionately affects) transmascs, supporters of the Israel government and their actions, transX/transID ("transitioning to intersex/black/harmful/etc") or otherwise radqueer/LSDqueer/basedqueer, inter+exorsexist, any other type of bigoted -phobe or -ist (racist, transphobes [inclu exclus/transmeds and transmisogynists], ableist, homophobe, etc).

I have not been subjected to the violence of IGM but was mistransitioned via hormones, and thus, I am now re-entransitioning. I'm not TME or TMA as binaries (especially ones based on birth assignment "privilege") do not reflect my intersex experience, nor is bigotry based solely on internal identity, but rather influenced by how you are perceived.

Well what about [XYZ]?

Individuals with BIID where their dysphoria is centered around the physical body rather than "not being disabled" are perfectly fine and welcomed here. I do not mind those with alters who understand that their body does not hold the responsibilities of enduring oppressions their marginalized alter would face, and thus will not be fully capable of understanding oppression regarding that minority, who do not describe their discomfort as being "transrace", and uplift voices of the minorities rather than speaking over ("I have a black/transmasc alter so I get to decide what's bigoted" 👎)

More about me:

I'm autistic, part of a small system, and am disabled with CAH-X. I use mobility aids. Cripplepunk and radinclu

Schrodigender's catboy. I'll use masc language for myself but do not actually identify with manhood. Prefer not to be gendered or sexed. Call me a catboy or don't call me a boy at all. Neutroix tfemmasc.

Tags I'll use often:

#actually intersex / #actually autistic

#purrspectives for posts I've written or heavily added to. May occasionally contain others posts if I completely agree w them and have no better way to convey

#intercommunity discourse / #trans discourse

#intersex issues / #transmasc issues / #trans issues

#trans infighting / #queer infighting

#queer solidarity / #trans solidarity

#intersex history / #transmasc history / #trans history / #queer history

#intersex theory / #trans theory

#ableism / #exorsexism / #intersexism / #trans intersexism for posts regarding intersexism from perisex trans people

#intersex erasure / #transmasc erasure

#antitransmasculinity / #anti transmasculinity / #transandrophobia / #transandromisia

#disability justice

#trans intersex / #transintersex

#system stuff

#trans tag / #trans

#autistic tag / #autistic

#trans positivity

#intro post #blog intro #intro

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vampiremeerkat · 5 months

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I kinda need some advice (if you're comfortable giving), how does one keep their cool/sanity in the hellish atmosphere that is fandom nowadays? I really wanna get back to fanart and stuff as purely a hobby (and it was a huge part of my childhood) but considering how much of a warzone it is nowadays, I dunno if I can. Got anything?

Don't think I'm the right person to ask, I've not had that many entanglements with fellow fans throughout my online career. It's easy to assume that's because my overall viewership/online presence is low, but I've had the occasional semi-viral success and always enjoyed more praise than "criticism". I'd say fandoms in general are lenient and supportive, but every and any kind of community in the world has an insufferable minority. They shout and have alot of time on their hands, making it seem like you're dealing with a crowd, but that's never the case. Even if hundreds of people jump you, billions walk the Earth; it's not even a fraction of a percent you've displeased. But here's an actual answer to your question: In short:

Choose your fandoms wisely.

Don't overstay your welcome by sticking with one.

Don't join any online communities or participate in ongoing discourse. You're only here to draw.

Train yourself to understand that nothing in life fucking matters anyway. :(

In ｌｏｎｇ: I switch my focus alot. If I attract fans of a particular fandom, but the next thing I show off is less likely to tickle their interest, most will leave again, and it's kinda protecting me from growing an unsettlingly invested fanbase. Praise and attention never motivated me to stick around with one series for long, because I know what's waiting around the corner and don't want to be known as "the <insert this one piece of media here> artist", anyway. Look at my nonsense and go away, I just want to die alone! I'm also not active at any online forums and rarely look up and comment on other people's work. Spares you alot of "who asked you"-styled responses. I might've not when I was younger, but agree with the sentiment now. Unless you come across something criminal, why intrude on someone else's fun. Grumble about it on your account if you must, but don't take it to theirs.. even though it's valid to argue that posting something online is an automatic invitation for others to critique it, especially when you don't apply any form of visibility restrictions. I don't really care to discuss ideas with fellow fans. Weird claim, since my Tumblr exists, but I started this account to post Deviantart stuff. People showed up one day and started asking questions about the fandoms I've been involved in (or haven't), but it's not my hobby to get deep about a fictional property. Without getting instigated, anyway. I think about a question's subject as I read the words, do my best to dissect the whole thing and not throw around one-sentence replies, but seldom have the answer ready in my head. The3Eds was the only forum I enjoyed myself at, and the things I talked about over there barely had anything to do with Ed, Edd n Eddy. In the end, no one will be able to offer you one foolproof strategy on this matter. There've been many artists in the past who minded their business and were slaughtered by strangers. You need to be the kind of person who doesn't take online verbal abuse to bed. That's hard to do if you're looking for validation. You could avoid large fandoms that are known to attract the overly defensive and offensive, but if you have to tiptoe through life for others, what's even the point. Know that the internet is a luxury you don't have to participate in. Log off for a week or so if you're feeling down, or alternatively, delete all comment notifications indiscriminately as you keep on doing your thing.. unless you insist on deleting negative comments, but I don't think you should. Why stop people from embarrassing themselves in public. I don't think I've ever deleted comments, unless it's copy-pasted stuff/spam, because what often happens is that the poster regrets and deletes it themselves. I suppose that has value too. Allow that shit to stay alive, so the poster may one day return to it and potentially realise they're better than that. It's easier to keep your calm when you humanize your critics, if you can. The way a person expresses themselves may be trash, but what is it they're saying, and can the reason be empathized with? Sometimes you're dealing with someone who's obviously a child. I struggle to get angry at people under the age of 20. But really -and more importantly- no one should waste their time on fighting fellow fans when it concerns an issue that's objectively not important, you have better things to do. Try to close your eyes for it, it's seldom personal, even if the attacks try to be. People can pretend, but they don't know you and never will.

#fandom

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peta-official · 3 months

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So with Palworld being the hot, new thing, I got to see some of what it had to offer, but mostly the discourse and the like following it. Ignoring accusations against the company, yes, they were parodying Pokèmon, and that especially includes the design.

This leads into my main point of this post. Most of the Pals are perfectly servicable designs. They are usually similar to Pokèmon designs, but they at least put a bit of a spin on them, or at the very least they look interesting. However, one rather popular one right now actually upsets me with its design. I don't like Lovander's design at all.

Now, I'd like to show a back image to accompany it and help show my critiques, but this is the single image I can find of it at all.

In terms of furbait, it succeeds. I conceed the point that they made it a very furry design. But the problem I have is that it fails at being a lizard design; I would not call this scalie or scale-bait.

So Lovander appears to be a take on Salazzle, the poison/fire scale-bait Pokèmon. In particular, it appears to resemble its shiny. it might also be inspired by shiny Lopunny, what with the hair and arm pieces.

They've nearly the same palette, while also being sexy lizards. As an aside, the reason why Salazzle is Like That may be inspired by mo`o, lizards of Hawaiian myth would would eat men at night.

Anyways, Salazzle is a design I can appreciate as it at least looks like a lizard; it has a long tail, slim body, claws, you get the point. When you see it, you think, "wow, that's a sexy lizard", and "wow, that's in a kid's game." On the contrary, Lovander has a design that doesn't immediately scream reptile. When I first saw it, my thoughts were, "Lopunny II", and "this is gonna happen in every Pokèmon-like game, huh".

It took a bit of close inspection to make the connection to Salazzle, and an even longer time to learn that it is a reptile, not a mammal.

So first and foremost, a big reason why this didn't click as a lizard Pal, is the biology of it.

Look at these salamanders. lizards are usually slim, because they scuttle and also because they hide in small spaces. Salazzle is indeed slender, which helps it look right. Lizards also don't have protruding ears, fur, or mammory glands. Yet again, neither does Salazzle.

With Lovander, they go for a more typically attractive humanoid design. They gave it breasts, hips, and what appears to be hair. Together, these design features make it less and less similar to actual, ya know, salamanders. To be clear, I'm not saying that the Video Game Animal Girl has to be a biological mirror of its source material, but it helps a design look nice if it at least tries to be similar. Despite the game saying its a reptile, nothing in its design would imply that. I can at least forgive the hair though, as it may have been designed to be like the Frilled Lizard. In that case, yeah, that is a rather cool trait.

They also got rid of its tail, which does not help its case.

Now, its design is not the only reason I dislike Lovander. It's name doesn't make sense. it took me 22 days, (days since Palworld was released, as of writing) to realize it was supposed to be a combination of the words "love" and "salamander." When you say it, it sounds far more similar to "love" and "lavender". One of the points I was going to make if I'dn't procrastinate on writing this post, was the lack of lavender in its colour palette. Lavender is a light purple, but Lovander has a dark and bold purple instead. It would have been That Easy to make it a 3-in-1 name with a minor colour change, but that is not the case.

Overall, I say this not as a jab at Palworld or anything, I just like complaining. Palworld is a game that sure does exist. I do not care for or against it. This one design has been peeving me, and I just wanted to say something about it.

In other news, welcome to Peta-official! Side blog of @teeth-collector64. Not sure what this'll be for, but it made sense for the subject of Palworld.

#palworld #lovander #palworld crititcal #salazzle #pokemon #lopunny #character design

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radish-lesbian · 3 months

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I've been wanting to make a masterpost of my ideology for a while now, so here goes.

My Beliefs

All of my political positions are based upon material conditions- that is, unprovable or nebulous politics have little to no use. Factors of material analysis include money, health, labor relations and compensation, political power, access to education, bodily autonomy, etc.

I've tried to use unbiased sources from a variety of institutions that I've gathered by beliefs and statistics from. However, a lot of this is simply my opinion. I am far from the most versed in feminism and political discourse.

Any disagreement or critique is welcome.

Gender, sex, and class consciousness:

Natal sex is an immutable material reality that has a direct impact on one's placement in the societal hierarchy from the moment of birth.

While sex is perhaps not as clean as XX and XY, it is two bell curves with very distinct populations. If a score was given to every human based on sex characteristics (say, adding 1 for feminine traits and subtracting 1 for masculine traits), there would be a very clear and large separation between the predominant sexes-- (there is a good critique on the paper I linked to here as well). If a human falls somewhere in the middle of these traits, or have a 'disorder of sex development (DSD)', often they are subject to other forms of oppression and harm such as unnecessary surgery or from hatred of gender nonconformity (see point 5)-- however, this does not eliminate the fact that a large majority of people have a set of traits aligning with one of two biological castes (only around 1% of the population has a DSD).

Gender and gender roles are not a material reality, but a construct of behavioral and social expectations assigned to people based largely upon natal sex. The repercussions of gender are very much materially real (similarily, a $20 bill has no intrinsic material worth, but the way others will react to it does have worth). All gender-based roles and oppression is inherently tied to sex and the expression of primary and secondary sex characteristics.

Gender nonconformity is punished due to it disintegrating this rigid sex-based hierarchy, and refusal to participate in gender roles is seen as a rebellion against tradition. Any gender or sex can suffer from this punishment.

While men and women both face negative repercussions due to the rigid gender hierarchy, women as a class have their power and autonomy stripped away. This is also present in 'structural violence' against women. Individual men can face punishment due to the aformentioned gender nonconformity, as 'choosing' to perform as the 'weaker' sex is a failure. However, men created these hierarchies as ways to subjugate and control women, and materially benefit from patriarchal systems in money, political power, bodily autonomy, etc.

Women's oppression is rooted in historical commodification and control of the female body. Females are the only sex that can go through menarche and become pregnant. Not every female is capable of pregnancy, but only females are. Due to this, much of gender based-oppression is centered around the control of and use of women's ability to create life. Access to birth control and reproductive freedom is the one of the most important advancements in female equality.

Different cultures have variations in the expression of gender roles; however, there are common threads throughout a majority of large cultures. Women are the primary childcarers, as they are the only ones capable of bearing children, and their access to roles and opportunities outside of child rearing is limited due to this. Looking at trends from major religions and cultures, none of them are matriarchal.

There is no such thing as a 'male' or 'female' brain. Gendered socialization can account for the differences in skillsets between men and women. Gendered socialization is a material reality of access to opportunities and support, and denying its existence erases an inherent inequity that women face.

By limiting the opportunities that women can obtain, societies are shooting themselves in the foot. Restricting 50% of the population from becoming leaders in technological and scientific fields stunts productivity.

Body dysmorphia and transgender politics:

There are individuals who face body dysmorphia centered around their sex characteristics. Their discomfort is important and should be respected. As with any mental or physical health condition, the least invasive procedures should be done first to try and alleviate the symptoms, with the most invasive restricted to those who have honestly tried everything else.

Many females (myself included) have felt body dysmorphia and self-hatred due to the demonization and sexualization of female sex characteristics. This is due to social stigma, and not an intrinsic otherwise-unsolvable mental condition. The push of vulnerable, gender nonconforming youth (who are also often homosexual) towards invasive sex-changing procedures is exploitative and not in their best interest.

A fully transitioned trans woman is capable of experiencing misogyny. This is because gendered oppression is based upon the expression of secondary sex characteristics. Many trans individuals can fully 'pass' as their desired gender, at least to passerby. However, this does not eliminate the fact that this trans woman received a male-socialized childhood, and the benefits and privileges that grants. Additionally, these trans women can never be of the female sex, and will never experience some aspects of female oppression, such as society's treatment of pregnancy and menarche, as well as medical misogyny. This is why female-only spaces are still important.

The erosion of female and women's class consciousness is detrimental to the elimination of gendered oppression and sexism. The fact that gender is not real does not mean that the repercussions of it are not very real. Preventing the use of gendered terms when discussing oppression, and preventing women from organizing around their shared experiences, is misogyny and should not be tolerated.

Homosexuality:

Homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality are immutable, biological realities. These sexualities are not fluid.

Some homosexuals may be interested in fully transitioned transgender individuals, I really don't have a strong opinion on this. However, if a transgender individual retains their birth sex characteristics, homosexuals will not be attracted to them if they are the opposite sex.

The demonization of homosexuals unwilling to date non-transitioned trans people is just another facet of homophobia.

I may expand on this document as I go. Other things I feel strongly about are anti-kink, anti-porn, and anti-makeup.

#feminism #radfem #radical feminism #gender critical #reproductive rights #ref #radfem safe #radical feminists do interact #radblr #me

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justinsentertainmentcorner · 2 days

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Miles Klee at Rolling Stone:

YOU CAN’T PLEASE all the people all of the time — even if you’re as popular as Taylor Swift. Having attained a somehow higher level of mega-celebrity with her record-breaking Eras Tour and a closely followed romance with Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs (who are headed back to the Super Bowl as the defending NFL champs), the singer now faces the perplexing wrath of MAGA conspiracy theorists who have decided the league and the relationship are rigged to help Joe Biden’s chances in the 2024 presidential election. The premise is as disconnected from reality as it sounds, but it’s all the stranger given that this courtship between a pop icon and football star — both white, Christian, good-looking, wholesome public figures — should fit the all-American conservative ideal. And Swift herself long retained her mass appeal with a mostly apolitical presence on the world stage, only voicing liberal positions and endorsing a select few Democrats from 2018 onward. But it was, in part, this late entry into civic discourse that allowed right-wingers to sell themselves a narrative of Swift as a propaganda puppet, after years in which some ardently worshiped her as a blonde, blue-eyed avatar for white supremacy. Here’s the complete timeline of how the far right fell in, and out of, love with Taylor Swift.

Pre-2016: Country Roots

Swift came up in the Nashville scene, from the age of 14, as a country singer-songwriter inspired by the likes of Dolly Parton and Shania Twain. Her debut single, “Tim McGraw,” alluded to her love of another country legend — and her early hits climbed the genre’s charts along with heartland tunes full of cowboy twang and pickup trucks. Whatever the identities of individual performers, this music has always been conservative-coded, and its biggest names have rarely shied away from an aggressive style of red-meat patriotism. Swift, of course, was a teenager singing about innocent young love: She only happened to suit the fantasy of a small-town girl next door that informs so much Americana. (And she certainly didn’t have Parental Advisory stickers on her CDs.) It was when she started to drift from these roots on Red (2012), and fully embraced electronic pop with 1989 (2014), that fans could begin to think of her as totally distinct from the traditionalist milieu of her early career. The latter’s “Welcome to New York” signaled a new, cosmopolitan life far from the backroads of country radio. In fact, a civilian Donald Trump was blasting the album’s second single, “Blank Space,” while driving around with wife Melania and son Barron, as seen in a 2014 video Melania shared on her Facebook page [...]

The ascendant alt-right, shitposters by nature, saw a chance to disingenuously claim Swift for their own, as both a secret Trump supporter and neo-Nazi. (It didn’t seem to matter that she had previously expressed her happiness at Barack Obama taking the White House in 2008, her first election.) The attempt to rebrand her had older, murky origins, including 4chan in-jokes and a Pinterest user who in 2013 went viral for images falsely attributing Hitler quotes to Swift, but picked up steam as Trump did. Andrew Anglin, founder of the white supremacist website the Daily Stormer, declared her an “aryan goddess,” while Milo Yiannopoulos, in a column for Breitbart, explained why she was an “alt-right pop icon,” noting her whiteness, blondeness, unrevealing clothes, lack of piercings, and occasional mini-scandals over music videos accused of racist undertones. It probably didn’t help that Swift endorsed neither Hillary Clinton nor Trump, leaving room for misinformation about how she secretly voted for the GOP candidate. Following Trump’s victory, some Democrats vented their frustration at Swift’s silence during the campaign, believing she could have moved the needle for Clinton. [...]

In the following months, the #MeToo movement shed light on how often sexual misconduct is dismissed or covered up to the perpetrator’s benefit, and Swift became one of the founding signatories of Time’s Up, an advocacy group for survivors, and donated to its legal defense fund. None of this was likely to endear Swift to conservatives who had already begun to argue that #MeToo had “gone too far,” yet she continued to press the issue, gracing the cover of Time’s Person of the Year issue along with fellow “silence breakers.” And the next year, she finally waded into electoral politics, sharing on Instagram that she would be backing Democratic congressional candidates in Tennessee for the 2018 midterms. [...]

2019-2020: The Activist

By 2019, Swift’s politics were no mystery. She was openly in favor of gun-control reform, took a pro-choice stance against government attempts to crack down on abortion, gave a surprise performance at New York’s Stonewall Inn for that year’s Pride celebration, and urged the senate to pass anti-discrimination laws. Any far-right fan clinging to the notion that she harbored extremist views would’ve been in clinical denial. For the most part, conservative commentators got in the habit of attacking her as they would any other liberal entertainer with a massive platform. Ben Shapiro, for one, complained of her “abrupt and obviously pandering shift into a political wokescold.” At last, Swift also formally denounced any admiration from the racist far right in a cover story interview with Rolling Stone. “There’s literally nothing worse than white supremacy,” she said. “It’s repulsive. There should be no place for it.” She explained that she feared a 2016 endorsement of Hillary Clinton could have backfired, since Clinton’s celebrity support was “used against her in a lot of ways.” As for conservatives who had once assumed she was on their side, she quipped, “I don’t think they do anymore.” [...]

2021-2024: Taylor Derangement Syndrome

The “aryan goddess” interpretation of Swift had been more or less put to bed by the time Biden assumed office. But the reorganizing MAGA right had little reason to single her out among the legions of professional entertainers who express their distaste for Trump here and there. She didn’t endorse candidates in the 2022 midterms, either, though she did communicate her dismay at the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Conservatives who bothered to take a swipe at her tended toward lazy outrage bait: calling her boring, overrated, or a lonely cat lady (mind you, she was in a long-term relationship with actor Joe Alwyn that was heavily covered by the tabloids). In 2021, Swift embarked on the formidable project of rerecording her first six studio albums after the rights to that catalog were sold to a company run by controversial music mogul Scooter Braun, and released the hit record Midnights in 2022.

It was in 2023 that American conservatism launched into an enduring freakout about Swift, her cultural dominance, and her potential influence on voters. Anyone dimly aware of the Eras Tour — an unprecedented run of sold-out stadium shows — could see she had reached another pinnacle of success, and amassed a near-cultish audience of millions who hung on her every utterance. We got plenty of think pieces on whether this was a good or bad phenomenon, with varied musings on how Swift had created her own monoculture. The sheer saturation of Taylor content was enough to irk those less disposed to her vibe — and there were gripes about that, too.

[...] The release of The Tortured Poets Departmentlast Friday, April 19, inevitably (and unfortunately) brought a new round of grousing. Sean Feucht, the far-right “MAGA Pastor,” raised the alarm on social media, saying “half the songs” on the album “contain explicit lyrics (E), make fun of Christians, and straight up blaspheme God.” And lest you think he’s “just being religious & overreacting,” Feucht shared several apparently offending lyrics that certainly dabble in classic religious imagery, but in the most basic, writerly way imaginable. Among the most harrowing lines, to Feucht: “I would’ve died for your sins, instead I just died inside” (from “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”); “What If I roll the stone away / They’re gonna crucify me anyway” (“Guilty as Sin”); and “God save the most judgmental creeps / Who say they want what’s best for me / Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see,” from “But Daddy I Love Him,” which definitely seems more critical of Swift’s own fans than an entire religion. And, of course, Shapiro got back in on the action as well with a YouTube video dubbed, “Taylor Swift’s New Album Is GARBAGE” and nuanced opinions like, “Can we stop pretending she’s high art?” and, “She’s so tortured that she’s worth billions of dollars for singing songs that are most appropriately sung by 16 and 17 year old girls.”

Rolling Stone has an in-depth report on the timeline of Taylor Swift's career that led to the eventual right-wing sour grapes-fueled culture war against her, especially in the last few years or so.

#Taylor Swift #The Tortured Poets Department #Donald Trump #4chan #Milo Yiannopoulos #MeToo #Ben Shapiro #Sean Feucht

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